Breaking the Silence

Chapter 24

I had a lot on my mind after my discussion with Mira and Hetcha. Most of it was trying to figure out how to entice them into making a deal with me. A smaller amount was dealing with my store. The phone call and my new mouth apparently weren't the full extent of what I'd been given.

I'd put some of the items to use already, but still had a lot of them to inspect. Since they couldn't activate until I bought them it was a low priority. I was still fiddling with my design for the red layers and had a backlog of resident requests to sort out.

I'd started with human skeletons and prioritized filling out the classes with them. They were the most common local species. I'd moved on to halflings and dwarves but was taking my time.

Both had integrated without a problem in the necropolis. The catch was that they had different needs for accommodations. I'd expected a certain amount of scale and aesthetic issues, but culture was also playing a role.

The halflings didn't feel comfortable with the apartment-style human crypts. They liked an almost capsule hotel design with a room full of stacked personal crypts and a common area. This subset was tied into a warren of other such areas by hallways.

They broke into groups based on how many they liked in a chamber first. Then they grouped by how many chambers they wanted to be connected. It wasn't all that difficult to accommodate but wasn't stable yet. They were still getting to know each other and form social relationships. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to move around after a couple days. Clusters were what I decided to call the groups in a room. Whole clusters would also want to move to different warrens or split off at times.

The Dwarves were likewise quirky but in different ways. The halflings were grouping up with those they made friends with. The Dwarves seemed to be forming families. They started by forming pairs and then finding other's they got along with to make clans. They liked shared crypts with their partners with a small personal area. The personal area connected to the family common. That family area would lead to the general commons area.

Similar, yet different from the halflings. The major hurdle with the dwarves was blending their aesthetic preferences. Partners could be very different which complicated things. Once I worked out a blend, they were happy with I had to then try and make that work with the other pairs in the family.

While I was working, I spotted a simple communication item that caught my fancy. It was a pair of stones that would cause the opposite one to produce a tone when touched. The idea of installing magic doorbells amused me greatly.

“Hello?” A female voice that wasn’t mine echoed in my chamber of machinations causing me to jump several feet into the air. It took a moment for me to remember the communication devices I’d placed in a niche nearby.

“Hello, this is 42, how can I help you?” I said after floating over. I could have kicked myself when I realized I was holding the red stone instead of the green one. The red one was for Andria and Mina and they likely wouldn’t find my chipper answer comforting.

“Oh, hello… Can we request a different dinner?” Mina asked and I was surprised. I’d sent them salad and chicken which Elim liked and seemed like a safe choice.

“Uhm, I have two alternative dressings for salad. Pork, beef, or fish main courses, and a selection of soups,” I replied, knowing my inventory of food pretty well. They had been my prisoners for a while, but this was the first time we’d spoken. I wondered if something had happened that might have prompted the discussion.

Like a creep rather than ask I went straight to my event log. Scanning the past couple of days, I wanted to kick myself again. I’d been lost in thought and sent them the chicken dinner three days running for lunch and dinner. That and a monotone oatmeal breakfast. I could see how their resolve might have weakened.

“One pork and a beef… I guess surprise us with the soup?” Mina continued. She misunderstood the actual number of options since I’d said it poorly. I put the invention of a toaster tart equivalent on my to-do list. That and the strudel deals with cream cheese and jam filling. I had those labeled as ‘crack tarts’ in my head so I figured they’d be a hit.

“Hang on…” I said as I started constructing a menu and an order slip in my image editor. Using pictures from my inventory it wasn’t hard to write out an ingredients list. It would be time-consuming to do my full inventory thought. As such I limited the options to what I could write out in a few minutes then placed them in the room.

“What the hell? Mina! We agreed not to!” Andria’s voice came through loud and clear along with a yelp from Mina. The sound of a stone hitting stone followed but the connection didn’t cut out since I was still holding mine.

“What does it matter if I ask for different food?” Mina demanded defensively.

“If we start talking to them, they’ll figure things out,” Andria countered. A reasonable argument since she didn’t know I had Mira as an alternative information source.

“I’m sick of chicken!” Mina shouted and sounded on the verge of tears. Being confined wasn’t easy no matter how comfortable the conditions were. My fuck up with the menu had likely reduced that already low-level several notches.

“Sure, ask what they fucking did with Lillian and Reiner’s bodies while you’re at it,” Andria shouted. Her original personality starting to assert itself aggressively. I felt bad for Mina, but it wasn’t like Andria was wrong not to trust me.

“I placed them in marked crypts in a small chamber near the entrance to the mine,” I said. I couldn’t leave the bodies near them in the open without health consequences. That didn’t change that taking them away like that had been a bad move for trust-building. I could have placed the crypts in the safe zone if I'd been thinking about it.

“Why!?” Mina demanded. I was wondering if she thought I was lying and regretting asking for a pork option for dinner.

“To preserve them. You can bury them later. Or carry out whatever sort of funeral is appropriate. Once we can reach an agreement anyway,” I said, doing my best to keep my temper in check. Andrea likely didn't know any better about health risks. Mina probably should have.

“I’m aware this will seem like bullshit, but I’d actually rather let you two go. The problem is that I need some binding promises before that. I won't put myself at risk by letting you go without them,” I added, needing the conversation to move forward.

“Such as what?” Andria asked and I was tempted to just send her a contract. The fact that she’d likely close it without reading it and waste my time was all that stopped me.

“That you won’t talk about what happened here beyond some broad strokes. Also, no coming back to try to take revenge or going through a proxy,” I said, not sure if they’d thought that far ahead.

“I can get behind that!” Mina said in a grumpy tone.

“I guess we can think about that much. I want to see the written terms first though,” Andria said. Her response was more reasonable than I expected. I created a contract then copied it over to a parchment document. I dropped it into the room as I removed the unwanted dinners.

“Alright, so take a look at the menu for now. We can worry about the contract when you aren’t hangry-” I said and cut off as a gasp came through the other side.

“Hangry!? How do you know that word!” Mina asked and I remember my thought that she could be an Iskeai kid from my world. This was not how I had intended to broach the subject.

“From my old world-” I started only to get cut off again by a squeal of joy.

“Did you get transported to the game world playing a VRMMO too!?” Mina demanded and my orbs flickered a couple times in confusion.

“No, I died back when 4k TVs were a new technology,” I said. I tried and failed to guess how much further into the future she’d live than I had. Wanting to see facial expressions I opened a view of their room. After some fussing with the placement, I could see both reasonably well.

“What’s a TeeVee?” She asked and I knew that we were not on the same wavelength at all. It took some time and a lot of follow up questions to sort things out. In the end, Mina and I agreed that we weren't from the same place rather than from different time periods.

It took that long because of the similarities rather than the differences. Since neither of us was an expert we ended up talking about random things which slowed the process down. They were both called earth and had similar cultures, geography, and historical events. It wasn’t until we started naming countries that the differences became more obvious.

"No world wars? That’s pretty different,” I said with flickering orbs. The history of her world only had smaller scale inter-country wars. A reflection of how the nations were smaller and more isolationist. Russia and Prussia were both modern countries. Also, no one had shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, but not for want of trying.

“Yeah, it’s weird that you have space rockets but no VR. I mean, do people game professionally where you’re from? I’m a third-tier solo player which is pretty good since I only made my debut a year ago,” Mina said, and I had to think about it.

“It’s different between countries. In most live sports play was more popular, but e-sports were gaining momentum. Some of it was gaming, some of it was stuff like hover drone racing,” I said, hoping I wasn’t overselling it. The drones were little remote-controlled numbers, not heavy duty. I also only knew that commercials for it existed. It didn’t seem like I’d ever actually watched any of it.

“So not all summoned hero-… people are from the same place?” Andria asked, and I realized we’d been ignoring her while comparing notes.

“I can’t be sure if that’s a difference between sides or how it is for everyone,” I said. I could see in my display that Mina was nodding in agreement.

“Yeah, it might just be that evil summons from her world,” Mina said, and I felt an uncomfortable little twitch.

“Chaos,” I corrected.

“What?” Andria asked, distracted as she picked at what was left of a dessert cobbler. I’d had Elim add it to the menu especially after they started talking to me more about their preferences.

“I was summoned by chaos, not evil. Not saying I’m not evil or anything. Even so, no one’s mentioned morality on my side of things,” I clarified. I got that it wasn’t a distinction that anyone would care about, but it bothered me. Steve was hard to get a handle on, and Agony was a professional murder coach, but I didn’t think of either of them that way.

“Oh… Yeah, I guess no one said that for me either, just that I was on the side of order,” Mina said after some thought.

“I’m lawful good though… I guess… I mean my stats say it, but I’ve done some really awful stuff,” Mina added. She looked dispirited as she finished, and I felt bad for her.

“You were under a very powerful compulsion for an extended time. It would be a dick move to judge you by that,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t be too hard on herself. I felt bad for all of them now that I knew what was going on but couldn’t do much more for the moment.

“I agree with our captor,” Andria said, and the pair started giggling. It was a bit absurd that I was giving my prisoner a pep talk. Once they stopped laughing, I decided that we’d chatted enough for one day. Peeking outside it was dark and they needed sleep unlike me.

“Alright, let’s talk again tomorrow. Use the stone again when you’re ready,” I said and set it down once the pair agreed.