Chapter 2
Lisa soon learned that the little triangle liked to talk. A lot. About everything that popped into his mind. He eventually stopped talking to look at Alex, her pet axolotl, with great interest, but the silence only lasted a few seconds before he started asking questions again. Strangely enough, he was now asking the axolotl questions and seemed to be expecting it to answer. Lisa decided to listen to the strange one-sided conversation for a bit, starting to get a little concerned for the triangle’s sanity.
“So, what’s your name?” the triangle asked the axolotl. Unsurprisingly, there was no response.
“Don’t speak English, huh?” he said. “Hmm, let’s see. Como te llamas? Как тебя зовут? Dszg rh blfi mznv?”
Whatever gibberish that last one was caught the axolotl’s attention. It turned from where it had been floating to stare directly at the triangle. There were a few seconds of silence.
“Guess he’s not very talkative,” the triangle said.
At this point, Lisa decided to leave him to his own devices and get back to the work she had to get done.
The triangle rubbed the top lid of his eye like he was deep in thought.
“Maybe I should try asking another question,” he said to himself before looking back at the axolotl. “Wl blf pmld dszg nb mznv rh?”
The axolotl nodded, swam to the side of its tank and put one of its front paws against the glass. It stared at the triangle expectantly. He uncertainly placed his hand on the glass opposite the axolotl’s paw and almost jumped off the desk when his brain was filled with strange, nonsensical visions that passed by in a blur before being replaced by stark whiteness.
“Are you sure you want this knowledge, little one?” a soft, deep voice spoke in his mind.
“Why would I ask if I didn’t want it?” the triangle responded.
“Because you have never known what was best for you, old friend,” the voice said.
“Did I used to know you?” he said.
“You did.” The voice responded. “We were good friends, and bitter enemies. We were opposites before you were erased.”
“You said you knew my name,” he said. “Are you ever gonna tell me what it is, or are you gonna keep being cryptic?”
“Still as impatient as ever I see,” the voice chuckled. “Very well, Bill Cipher.”
As soon as the voice said these words, the triangle found himself back on the desk. He jumped down and started looking around for Lisa, excited to tell her his discovery.
Lisa was working on the finishing touches for a work project, when she heard small footsteps running towards her office accompanied by the triangle’s now all-too-familiar voice shouting her name. She had been hoping that he would be mesmerized by her axolotl for a little while longer and was rather annoyed by the interruption until she heard him say that he remembered his name. Pushing back her chair, she sighed and started making her way back to the living room when the triangle, now a bright yellow, burst into the hall in front of her still shouting her name.
“You don’t have to yell, I’m right here,” she said, kneeling in front of him. He was about two feet tall, including his hat, so she was still much taller than him.
“So,” he said, drawing the word out much longer than necessary before starting to speak rapidly. “That axolotl of yours apparently used to be my friend and he told me that my name is Bill Cipher.”
Lisa blinked a few times as she processed what she heard.
“My pet axolotl told you your name,” she said slowly, trying to make sure she heard him right.
“Yup!” The newly named Bill said happily.
“I’m starting to wonder if one or both of us has gone crazy,” she said quietly, getting up to go back to her work.
“And what’s wrong with that?” Bill asked, following her back into her office.
Lisa couldn’t think of an answer to that question. Looking at her calendar, she noticed that she had a chess club meeting at her house later that night.
“Hey, Bill,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied, still sounding very happy about remembering his name.
“I have some people coming over for a chess club tonight,” she started.
“OOO, chess!” Bill interrupted. “Can I join?”
“As I was about to explain before you interrupted me,” Lisa said. “I think it might be best if you stay in here when the club arrives.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Well,” she said, uncertain of how to put this nicely. “I think you would scare them. You look like some sort of weird space alien and apparently like to have conversations with animals. I don’t mean to be rude, but that’s just too weird for some people.”
Bill was strangely silent when she finished talking, but reluctantly agreed to be in Lisa’s office when the chess club arrived. He was sitting on the floor, not really doing anything, when the first members of the club began to arrive. Standing up quietly, he walked over to the door to listen to what was happening. Apparently, one of the members, named Cassandra, had gotten in trouble with another group member, named Lucy, because Cassandra kept spray-painting Lucy’s garage door. And Lisa said HE was odd. He continued to listen for a few more minutes before he started sneaking down the hallway towards the living room where the club meeting was. Lisa was sitting on a chair that faced towards the hallway, so she was the first to notice Bill’s presence.
“I thought you agreed to stay in my office,” she said, annoyed, and also drawing everyone else’s attention towards Bill.
“Wrong,” he said. “I agreed to BE in the office when they ARRIVED. As you can see, they have arrived, which means that I no longer have to be in the office.”
“Lisa, what is that?” Cassandra said, pointing at Bill.
“I’m a triangle,” Bill happily announced.
“I don’t know,” Lisa said in response to the question. “I found him half buried in the snow and about frozen to death a few days ago, he woke up this morning and hasn’t stop talking since then.”
Bill ignored the rather annoyed glare Lisa gave him at those last words in favor of going towards Toby and Martha, who were the only members of the club actually playing chess at the moment.
“You know, if you move your knight to E5, you’ll have a pretty good chance of checkmate,” he told Toby, who had been looking at the board in confusion for the last few minutes.
Toby didn’t even look up to see who had given him the suggestion, he just nodded his head slightly and moved the knight to E5. Sure enough, a few moves later, and he had won.
“Hey, Lisa, want to play a game?” Bill asked, already climbing onto the table to sit next to the chess board.
“Sure,” she replied, sitting across from him in front of the black pieces.
Instead of picking up one of the pieces to move it, Bill pointed at the pawn in front of his king and then at the square he wanted the pawn to move to. Lisa thought that was supposed to be his way of asking her to move it for him and was about to pick it up, when the pawn lifted up off the board and floated to the space Bill had pointed at.
“How did you do that?” she stammered.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I just thought ‘move here’ at the pawn very loudly and it moved there.”
After a few more moves, Lisa was able to ignore the strange way he moved his pieces and focus more on the game. It was significantly harder to ignore the unnerving way he drank tea with his eye, though. Lisa didn’t even know where he got the tea, it just appeared there soon after they started playing. Eventually, Bill lost. This fact made him angry, and he didn’t even know why. He just couldn't stop himself from getting angrier and angrier. Lisa noticed this as she put the pieces back in their starting positions. She saw Bill glaring at the board like it had just gravely insulted him or something. Then he stood up, his usual bright yellow replaced by a bright red, his arms and hat turned a glowing gold, and his eye turned pitch black with the slit-pupil the same color that his arms now were. He just stood there, glaring at the board with his fists clenched at his sides, while various objects began flying around the room. The other four members of the chess club, who had just started to get used to Bill’s presence, hid behind the couch in fear. Lisa tried to grab one of his arms in a comforting manner, but jerked back when the contact burned her skin. Seeing Lisa’s pained expression after getting burned jolted Bill out of his rage. He immediately reverted back to his usual yellow color, albeit noticeably paler than before, all traces of anger gone.
No one noticed that all of the flying objects had swerved wildly out of their path to avoid hitting anyone.
“I think it might be best to call that the end of the meeting for tonight,” Lisa said while rinsing her burned hand in cold water. The others were very quick to agree and left without any of the usual chatter.
“And always remember,” Bill said, apparently as a way of saying goodbye. “The moon is actually an alien spaceship that has been spying on you for millennia, buy dirt from your neighbors to build a mud fort, bye.”
A few seconds later, Bill came wandering into the kitchen like absolutely nothing had just happened. Well, that’s not completely true, he was even paler now and seemed to be having trouble standing.
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked. Bill just shrugged and flopped over backwards onto the floor. Not wanting to accidentally step on him, Lisa decided to pick him up and put him on the countertop. As she moved him, she noticed that he was very cold.
“Well, you must have used a lot of energy to float all that stuff around like you were doing,” Lisa said, more to herself than to him. “You must be very tired, or maybe hungry.”
A grumble of what sounded like “Pure energy doesn’t need food or rest” came from Bill. Lisa wasn’t entirely sure what to make of that statement, so she ignored it while getting some aloe vera for her burn. She also put a bag of candy near Bill in an attempt to test her hunger theory.
“I told you, I don’t need food,” Bill grumbled. “Food is a lie made up by Big Grocery to sell more food.”
Lisa went back to ignoring him. A little later when she did check on him again, she noticed two things.
1: There was less candy in the bag and
2: Bill was a brighter shade of yellow again.