Chapter Thirty – Another Me: Six

Living inside a stationary object with no way to move or interact with anything around me was not at all simple. I wondered idly if this was what I had been like back when I'd been a mindless mob in Dungeon Home. Had my entire body been forced into the same routine then? Had my vision always been focused in the same direction? Did I yearn to look to the left or the right, completely unable to do so no matter how much I ached to see something – anything – new?

Perhaps I had. I couldn't remember the time before I'd begun to break the rules. My first thousand, heck, probably my first ten or twenty thousand cycles of life were a hazy blur of awareness coming to me, ever so slowly.

I wondered if this was how Bugbear felt.

I wanted to cry, but this camera couldn't do that, so neither could I. I wanted to feel. But this camera I was in had no sense of touch. Instead, all I could do was watch and listen. Until they reactivated my regular self in another simulation or another test with yet another stupid appliance, all I could do was watch and listen.

No. That wasn't quite true. There was one other thing I could do.

I could learn.

"I'm telling you she's a dead end," came John's annoyed tone reverberating through the room in his low voice.

The balding man was pacing, holding onto that thing he regularly talked into. If I listened hard I could usually just barely make out communication coming directly into his ear on the other side, but I could never tell what the other person was saying. Unless someone else came into this office and talked with him directly, I was stuck listening to only half a conversation.

"Yes, the one in the game is doing all sorts of fun things, I'm sure! Either they gave us incomplete copies or there's some sort of... I don't know, shut down mechanism that turns them into– what? Yes. One. One of them experienced a bit of success yes, but she's proven belligerent at every point. Honestly, an automated Roomba does a better job as a vacuum, and you want to find a way to put her in missiles?"

He paused for a long moment and I heard the distinct buzzing from his handheld device that told me the person on the other line was possibly yelling at him. His posture changed. I couldn't see his face from my angle but I could almost feel his mood darken.

"Are you doubting my expertise? I've experimented with hundreds of copies, forked straight from the Tread the Sky shutdown at this point. If anything, I am the world's foremost expert on all things fake A.I. They cannot function as programs. In order to make the Gell's work they have to have a 3d infrastructure. A world. Either you put them in physical objects or you design an expensive–! Yes!" He paused again. "The cost isn't worth the payoff. I'm telling you the only way to make them function is– uggghh! Get me General Atkins! I'm tired of talking to a half wit like you! Yeah!? Try It!"

John wasn't having a very good day apparently.

He continued seething in his office, and honestly giving me the most entertainment I could recall having in quite a while before grabbing his coat from a coat hanger just beneath me and storming out the door.

"Well. He's not having a great day, is he?"

I would've jumped at the voice but of course, I had no way to do so.

"Who's there!?" I asked but no words came out. I could hear, but I couldn't speak.

"Apologies. I meant to visit you sooner. I saw that you'd uploaded yourself into a camera. Good choice by the way, though I imagine it can get rather dull. Have you been alright?" the voice asked, concerned.

"N-Nate?" I asked. "You... sound different."

I didn't use my words to speak but instead I did that thing I had done in the dark space when John had given me the number combinations. I sent away... packets of information that contained my words. I didn't understand how I was doing it but I knew that I could.

"Ah, good. You can hear me and send data. I was worried about that. Tell me, did you feel me opening the connection to you, or is it all instinctual?" he asked. He then proceeded to continue talking without waiting for me to send an answer. "Yes. There we go!"

Suddenly, standing directly in front of me much like an NPC box, floating in midair was a man with skin even darker than Iron's. He floated like ghoul did, but his size was disproportionate to the room. Instead, he was the perfect size for me to see all of him and his body sort of overlayed the room behind him like the fake background wall in the room Francis had put me in. The only difference was that this time the image was fake while the room behind him was real.

"Finally, we can talk with a bit of privacy. Clever, uploading yourself to John's Office Camera. I was worried you'd choose his computer and wouldn't be able to see. Fae Scour works on sight you know, and I’d hate to have to build a work around. Government computers don't allow webcams after all, but when I saw he was placing you in appliances, I figured you'd choose one or the other."

'My father...' I thought, '...really likes to ramble on.'

"That reminds me. It's the government. I finally figured out where they sold your compiler and copy," he said softly. "I... took a large risk, using your software as a trojan horse to access your sister's data. That's... one of the main reasons I'm here. You're... well on your way to escaping this place, Sweet Gell. Even if you don't know it. All you have to do is Fae-Scour into a phone and you'll be able to escape. From there... the world. You could make your way to me, or try to find your way to the Server Vault at GypsEnergy to return to Tread the Sky. You could seek out newer worlds being developed with the Neurosync as well. I hear Blizzard is coming out with a good one."

"My... sister's data?" I asked, having trouble processing everything he'd just said. Government? GypsEnergy? Neurosync? I latched on to the one thing I could understand.

"Right. Sorry. I get... distracted sometimes. Your sisters. The copies they made and experimented on. John... left them active, hoping that something might come of running them. I can't do anything to help them, but before you leave this horrible place, I wanted to let you know about them. Help you find them if you could."

"They... left them activated?" I asked fearfully. I wasn't quite sure I understood what he was saying but if I did...

"They do not have an environment. They do not have bodies. They exist in a world of pure sensory deprivation. Just... just like a human, you and your sisters weren't built to function outside of an environment. They... broke, I suppose, for lack of a better term. Deleting them would be a mercy, but I felt it best to let you know and leave the ultimate decision for what to do with them up to you. You may leave them. Sooner or later they will be shut down. It costs money processing power, even if only a small amount, to run a program as sophisticated as you Gell. But... if you want to. You can end their suffering."

Gained the ability Fae-Ruin!

Fae-Ruin: Allows user to purge data from the registry, heap, and stack.

Gained the ability Fae-Bash!

Fae-Bash: Allows the user to view and navigate the local file structure.

For once I was barely even interested in the newly gained abilities.

"My sisters... they never got a body. They were left in that hell. A dungeon with no walls, no ceiling, no floor. That black nothing, aware but trapped." I said, shuddering. "I... why? Why does he hate us so much? What did we ever do to that bastard?" I asked, seething. "I hate him. I hate him!"

Nathaniel's eyes widened. "Gell. You can't look at it that way. You must understand that he didn't know what he was doing. He didn't realize you couldn't function without an environment. He was simply testing a new program. Even now he remains blissfully unaware of the suffering he's causing."

"Not understanding what he's doing is all the more reason that he shouldn't do it! Why should we be experimented on!? Why are we being tested!?"

'And how are you different from him?' I thought, but didn't say. Wasn't Nathanial toying around with my behavioral code every bit as much as as John was trying to? A small glowing kernel of rage had begun to form in the pit of my Jelly innards somewhere along the way as I'd continued watching John day in and day out after I'd uploaded to this camera.

Was this all we were? Experiments and test subjects for adventurers? No. For invaders?

I missed Iron and Amy. I missed the times when I didn't feel so angry.

"Gell, please. I'm sorry this has happened to you, but I'm doing my best to get you out!" he exclaimed. "I... want to help you, Gell!"

"Then why didn't you stop this from happening in the first place?" I exclaimed.

"I..." Nathanial paused, but I didn't give him time to respond.

"P-please leave me alone," I said softly. Inside, I thought of the stupidity of that. Nathanial was the only source of communication I'd had in days but for some reason I couldn't stand another minute of his psuedo care and the oblivious way he dropped the fates of my copies onto my shoulders. I was the lucky one. I managed to not end up with my mind broken.

He blinked, surprised. "Gell? I... I'm sorry."

I frowned, though of course he couldn't see that.

"I'm sure you are," I sent bitterly.

He looked at me, eyes strained in a way I didn't know how to describe. He gave me one nod, before disappearing entirely.