Chapter 6 Ad Infinitum

“You want my name on that damn thing? Fine, let me immortalise myself on a mural of my dead classmates.” - Frederic Goethel, B Class Hunter

The return home was uneventful. Though Aiden made sure to memorise the easiest and fastest route through that absurd schoolyard. “Four minutes late!” He half wanted to crawl into a hole for the travesty he caused.

When he got home though, he saw an elderly woman frowning slightly as she looked at the stairs up to the apartment complex.

Squinting as he approached, he only recognised her upon getting near. “Mrs Jemina?” he asked, remembering the nice black lady who lived the floor down from him.

She blinked slowly as he spoke, “Ah,” she said, as if not fully there, “just got back sugar?”

He nodded, glancing at the grocery bags by her feet. “Need help getting them up?”

“Oh, that would be wonderful of you dear,” Mrs Jemina replied as Aiden lifted her bags with ease.

He gestured at the older lady to go up first, following behind her. Not only so he could keep pace with the elderly lady, but also on the off chance if she fell Aiden would be in a position to catch her. Or if his reflexes weren’t fast enough, act as a semi-soft human cushion.

Nothing of the sort happened though and Aiden uneventfully helped her carry her groceries to her apartment.

“If you need me to carry anything else just call for me,” Aiden said as he set the bags down on her counter, sorting them out before helping the older lady put them in her fridge.

“Thank you sugar, I’d love to say I won’t need that help but I’m not getting any younger,” she replied with a wistful smile.

“It’s all right,” he replied, “I don’t have anything much to do recently.”

“What have you been doing?” she asked as her hand stopped Aiden’s, gently taking the bread and placing it away into her cupboard.

“I Awakened, I’m starting to go to M.I.A.”

Mrs Jemina brightened up at that, “Oh your parents would be proud to hear that.”

Aiden froze for the briefest moment, his fist clenched, nails digging into his palm before he abruptly relaxed them. Putting on a fake smile, he replied, “I’m sure they will.”

After making sure she didn’t need anything else, Aiden returned to his own apartment. Closing the door behind him, he took a moment before collapsing on the front door.

“It’s not them she was talking about,” he thought.

And yet it still affected him, years after Aiden Lu thought he got over it.

“Is my brain also that of a sixteen year old?” he muttered quietly to himself. Though he had almost half a century worth of life experience combined between Bu and Lu, the body was still that of a teenager.

There were some benefits, he thought as he flexed his arm. Even after a day of hard exercise, going over a 30-minute obstacle course twice, he was barely tired. Aiden was young again, he didn’t get random cramps or joint pain. He was at the physical prime of his life.

But was his brain also undeveloped?

It was said the male brain only finished developing at twenty-five. Until then it was a mess of hormones and testosterone.

Even if he was mentally more experienced, his brain was still sixteen. Doesn’t matter if the software is better if the hardware can’t run it properly.

Aiden sighed, dusting his legs as he got back up. There were ups and downs. That was it. No need to have an existential crisis about it.

Packing away his things, he briefly looked over the new forms and electives he could pick. “Later,” he thought, there were more pressing matters. Piled beside the fridge were stacks and stacks of newspapers. It was surprising how many uses there were for them, table cloths when you were eating, coverings when you were painting, to simply throw them away was a waste. Not to mention there were plenty of places that just gave them away for free.

Opening up the recent ones, he skipped over the big headlines, like Zombies spotted on Sideonay Shores, Muriga to Hire Cheap Immigrant Labour for Border Patrol or Kaiju Slain in Yindia City.

Instead, he headed towards the back. Where dozens of small adverts, less than a paragraph each, were placed. Dutifully, he logged every listing looking to hire in the past two months.

There were plenty of mundane ones, store clerks, handymen, shelf stockers. He tentatively wrote down a listing looking for an accountant, before he scribbled it out. It didn’t matter that he knew how the job was done, just that Aiden Bu, his supposed identity didn’t.

Then there were the stranger ones, Beast Wrangler, Gate Insurance Consultant, Gate Courier, Bleed Material Loader and lastly a listing looking for a Hunter to join a monster harvesting business.

Those ones he made great care to note and memorise because Bu recalled that those jobs made significantly higher than usual. Aiden could understand why, normal humans physically can’t survive in most Gates without some form of assistance. Less than 10% of the population were Awakened, even fewer had an actually useful ability. Just the fact that only a few people could do these jobs made the job pay well.

But would it pay well enough was the question.

A thousand dollars a week. That was his goal right now. Curing Jaiden was still a far off dream, right now, he needed to find a way to make enough money to sustain both their lives.

He glanced towards his resume, less than a page long, it included his name, address, home phone, educational history and that was it. Aiden Bu lived the textbook boring life, not joining any sports teams, keeping to himself and spending his free time holed up in a library. All the connections he had were dead or in a coma. He had a list of skills that was heavily edited from Aiden Lu’s actual skills. Tentatively, he put ‘Recently Awakened’ on the draft. He would need to type it up and print it afterwards. Unfortunately, this era wasn’t advanced enough for everyone to have a home computer or printer for that matter.

He would use the school library for that tomorrow, saving on costs to get it done at a store.

His work done for the day, he meandered around his apartment for things to do, before he took out a book from the Bu’s shelf, ‘The Overcoat’. Snuggling into his bed and reading it before he went to sleep.

Lu dreamt of ocean waves.

A mouldy pier, barnacles stubbornly clinging to the wood. That intrusive smell of the sea wrinkling his nose.

He adjusted his glasses, mildly pleased they were there. Dream logic he supposed. Though he was keeping someone waiting. The teen sitting on the pier, legs huddled to his chest as he stared at the dark waters below.

Lu silently joined the boy, noting how he was only a few centimetres taller than him. But Bu’s face still had youth to it, none of the gauntness that haunted his own. Their eyes, however, were the same. Dots of black, carrying a perpetually empty expression.

Below them, multicoloured fish swam and danced in the black waters, a stark contrast to the dreariness of this dream.

“Nice view?” Bu asked.

“It is a nice view,” Lu replied, staring at the fish, “shame I won’t remember it.”

“It’s like that isn’t it? You’re the waking, I’m the dreaming.”

“Yeah.”

They were quiet for a moment, together staring at an endless black sea, their placid pier the lone place of calm in this strange dream.

“Are you ready to talk about it?” Lu asked as some time passed.

Bu was silent, staring at the black sea and the strange fish that inhabited it. Quietly he considered, before he shook his head, “No, I don’t think I am.”

“Then, whenever you are ready,” Lu quietly answered.

And he woke up.

Aiden went through his morning routine. First brushing his teeth before wiping his face with a wet towel. Prepping a simple breakfast of toast and jam, before he left for the day.

Today he was prepared, coming to the Academy half an hour earlier as before, but this time he had the schoolyard route memorised. That humiliating showing of coming four whole minutes late would not repeat itself this day-

He paused as he stood before the front gate. Eyes squinting before the obstacle course of a schoolyard before him. Not sure if he was going blind early or seeing hallucinations.

“When did they add a moat?”

“Three minutes,” he thought with irritation as he finally made it past the yard. Rubbing a bruise on his face, he ruminated on the fact that the entire route had changed. First, there was the moat, then he reached the pitfall traps he had encountered far later yesterday before he found himself in a minefield, where a wrong step caused a boxing glove to shoot out of the ground and into his face, after that was a massive ravine where the only safe choice to cross was to go all the way down and climb back out on the other side and he could’ve sworn he saw a student fighting off a lion as they went through a literal jungle.

And he passed all that with his socks still wet from the moat.

There were words he wanted to use. Words he learnt when dealing with belligerent customers during his retail years. Words that he had never said before in his life and was seriously considering breaking that streak.

Thankfully(?), someone called out to him, “Oh hey kid, you’re here!”

Looking up, he squinted at the blurry form coming near, not recognising him because of the distance and the fact they were wearing casual clothing this time. Jeans with a leather jacket.

“Don’t recognise me?” he called out again and Aiden recognised him by the voice.

“Good morning Mr Fred,” Aiden replied. “Unfortunately I couldn’t, my glasses haven’t come by yet.”

“No need to call me a ‘mister’, I’m only twenty-two,” he replied with a chuckle. “I assume you got in?”

He nodded, “Yeah, I got in.”

“The morning tutorials at 9:30?”

Aiden nodded again, raising an eyebrow at the older man.

Freddy shrugged, “I’m teaching that one, I swear they keep making a third-rate like me do everything. I’m overworked as hell.”

“That does sound terrible,” Aiden replied with sympathy. “Do make sure to look after your health.”

“You sound like my old man,” Freddy complained as he slung an arm around Aiden’s neck, “C’mon, we’re early so lemme show you around.”

“We’re three- no, four minutes late now,” Aiden pointed out, uncaring of the fact his personal space was being invaded.

The other Awakened raised a finger, “Lesson number one, the schedule you get for semester one is bullshit, they expect you to be late by half an hour due to the course, but they’ll abruptly change that without warning by sem two.”

“So shouldn’t I get into the habit of coming on time?”

“Nope,” Freddy shook his head. “It means for your first semester you can come late by half an hour.”

And like that, Aiden was dragged away by the other Awakened.

As they walked around campus, he saw people regularly calling out to Freddy. He was apparently on good terms with a lot of people, casually exchanging greetings and once even doing a weird handshake with another student.

“That’s the gym, don’t get caught in the sparring room, the MMA club is ruthless…”

As they walked around he would point out school landmarks, the administration desk which he visited yesterday, the cafeteria, the library, the bok choy plant that would punch you if you got too close, the gym where he saw someone get thrown back several metres and finally,

“And here’s the Wall,” Freddy declared with an air of finality.

In front of them stood a grey stone surface, almost like a large plaque. As he got a closer look, Aiden noticed the dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of scratched lines on its surface were names. And as they walked closer, he felt that he was nearing without making the right amount of distance, like every step only travelled half as far and the granite surface only seemed to become further as they drew near.

Freddy chuckled at his brows furrowed in confusion, “Look beside you.”

And Aiden did, noticing that the grey stone seemed to have lengthened to far wider than it should’ve been. Every step they took, the plaque increased slightly in length, every step they took revealed a new line of names at the very edge of his vision and the plaque.

Some of these names were eloquently carved and others hastily scratched on. Many of the names in front of him were fresh, but towards his left, many of the names had a line crossing them out.

“This is a list of all alumni of this Academy, put there by their own hands on the day of their graduation,” Freddy explained, his own eyes wandering over the wall before he found it. Reaching his hand to feel the familiar furrows of his own name, ‘Frederic Goethal’, jaggedly carved onto the stone surface.

“Yours isn’t crossed out,” Aiden pointed out. “Why is that?”

Freddy chuckled, “Well I’m still kicking aren’t I?”

Aiden’s eyes widened as he walked just slightly faster to the portion where Freddy stood. And Aiden saw that on that portion of the wall, Freddy was the sole uncrossed name amongst dozens.

“Ad Infinitum,” Freddy spoke, “that’s what we call this dumb thing. Some ancient Hunter from before the Long Night left this piece of warped space, where the wall will forever expand to allow for new names.”

He began walking towards the left, towards the start of where the wall should be, “When you’re close and walking beside it, you can keep going on forever but if you go away from it you’ll always be at the same place in the school.”

“Where does it start?” Aiden muttered as he caught up to the man. Seeing the wall full of crossed names go past them.

“Dunno,” Freddy replied, “back when I was a student, XLR8- that is, a Speedster 5 tried to find the start.”

He stopped and glanced at Aiden, “Ran for six whole days before he gave up. Never found it.”

Freddy took a step away from the wall, from Aiden’s perspective he seemed to gradually become more and more stretched apart as he walked away. Taking a tentative step in the same direction, Aiden found himself exactly where they started, only a few metres away from the Wall, where space was not distorted.

“When you’re nearing or looking at it, you always get the last filled portion. Towards the end of the list.”

He didn’t answer, simply looking at the wall, taking another tentative step closer. Once again feeling the space warp as the Wall became longer and longer around him.

“It’s a real mind screw,” Freddy said as he stepped behind him.

“I’ve never seen something like this,” he quietly replied.

“Well get used to it,” the man casually answered. “Stuff like this isn’t special in our line of work. Some Gates screw with space in ways way weirder than this does.”

Freddy glanced at his watch, “Well time’s up for the tour, gape in awe at this later, let’s see if your other classmates made it.”

He only nodded, mutely following the man back to the classroom.