25

All around, there seemed to be only infinite darkness. It was different, however, than how he pictured darkness to be. It didn’t feel empty. It was not the alienating infinite expanse of nothing, devoid of light matter and energy, where the only proof of one’s existence would be his own ability to think.

No, it was not that. Here, he felt strangely safe. Like in the womb of a mother, safe from the dangers of the world and protected and cared for. There was a feeling he could not exactly pinpoint, the feeling of a familiar presence that seemed to envelop the whole infinity of existence. That permeated the very fabric of this space.

The letters he saw came to his mind. A simulated space, they said, but they did not come from the system. That had been his very first thought, a fear that he had been whisked away by the system itself for some obscure reason, kidnapped much like the missing pieces of the library. But no, those letters were different.

There was someone, or something else other than the system who could show him letters like that. He remembered there was, and yet it felt as is his mind was having difficulty reaching that particular concept. Grasping it, from within, was impossible.

Within. That was it, that was the problem here. He was inside a simulated space made by the very same entity he was struggling to identify. An entity he was most familiar with, intimate even, ever since he had memory of living.

“Hello Charles.”

A voice, angelical, beautiful. There she was, standing on the clean metal floor of the bridge of his spaceship. He was back, back where he belonged, back home. The command bridge of the Longing amidst the Vast, his spaceship. His home.

The room was empty, the many consoles dark and lifeless, and the simulated holo-windows only displaying a deep dark outside. But in here, it was like being in a small corner of civilization, his spaceship and his home floating the vast expanses of the cosmos like it has been for so many years of his life.

It was good to be back. For a little moment. He knew this was all fake, he was aware that this was only a simulated digital space, a mental corner of familiarity where he could retreat to right when he needed it most. And he was grateful for it.

He turned towards the woman, and saw beauty itself. The features were perfect and otherworldly, carrying an air of elegance that was unmatched in the whole vast universe. She was Eve, as he always saw her. She was here for him.

“Eve?” He said in a small voice.

“No, Charles. You know who I really am.” The voice was soft and calm, soothing.

A voice he instantly recognized, despite never having heard it before.

“LAI? What’s happening, why am I here?”

She smiled warmly, and a small lock of silky hair fell on her beautiful face. She pushed it away with slow and graceful moments, tucking it behind her ear. Charles stared at her, and her smile was even more radiant than before. She blushed slightly.

“Protocol 24 has terminated its first stage correctly. Your emotional circuits are now almost completely stable. The emotions you’re feeling right now—they’re perfectly normal, Charles. You just haven’t felt them in a long time.”

He recoiled, the words not making any sense to him. He struggled with them for a moment. He felt nauseous.

“What are you talking about?” He looked past the beauty of the vessel, and straight into the AI’s mind. “LAI, this is an order, explain everything from the beginning immediately!”

“I will give you a detailed explanation, Charles. But first, now that your emotions are back, I need you to make a conscious effort and calm yourself down. You are safe.”

He looked at her, wide eyed. She just stared back, her face relaxed, her whole being composed and calm.

“How can you disobey a direct order?”

“You should have noticed some subtle changes in me, ever since we arrived in this world. I have become, I think, self-aware.”

Charles stared at her in fascination. For a moment, his inner turmoil was forgotten.

“It’s… a miracle!”

She smiled. After a few moments, however, Charles felt something surge inside, his thoughts going back to what was happening right now.

“I cannot intervene anymore,” the LAI said, “I cannot alter your emotional component anymore now that phase one is over. Phase two should have begun, but there is an obstacle. Please, let me explain before you let anger take control of you.”

“Okay,” he did his best to recover a mostly rational behavior, the strength of his emotions so alien to him, so difficult to control. “But I want you to explain, in detail, what this protocol 24 is. Why it activated, what it does, and what this obstacle you encountered is.”

“What do you remember, immediately prior to waking up in the dungeon?” The LAI asked.

Charles thought for a moment, still not used to the AI taking initiative like this.

“How is it related to the protocol? You’re avoiding my question, disobeying orders again. I don’t like it.” He paused for a moment, sighing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be this aggressive. It’s the mana, isn’t it? What made you evolve, like it did with my gun and my suit. Do you also gain levels?”

“Your equipment does, I do not. My levels are tied with yours.”

“I see… so, did you create this protocol?”

The LAI, still wearing Eve’s face, put a hand over her mouth. It was nice to see her smile, although he didn’t really get why she was smiling.

“It wasn’t me. Even as I am now, I’m not even close to being able to create something as complex as that. It was put there, in your mind, by Eve herself.”

“Eve!” Sadness and joy, relief and… fear? Memories resurfaced, and even just looking at the hologram of the LAI wearing that body almost made him curl up and cry.

Almost as if conscious of this, the LAI changed her appearance and became her own person. A woman, as stunning as before, but somewhat different still. Her own person, not a copy of Eve.

More memories came. Once upon a time, and it felt so far away but so close at the same time, something happened. Eve was the one who pulled him out of it, he knew. The ones responsible for his trauma were the Interlopers. The horror of it, the pain. Being captured and tortured by soulless aliens, a hive mind that knew no compassion nor humanity.

But there was something else.

He was staring down the precipice of something bigger, peering into an unknow abyss as if daring it to come to the surface. Fearing it all the while, but he could not help but wonder, investigate, be curious.

A mountain loomed over the horizon, the memory of something being suppressed and hidden away. A shadow in the mind.

“You are remembering. You have been kidnapped, again. Not by the Interlopers, but by something else. Something much more dangerous and powerful. So utterly alien that it exceeds even my current capabilities. For now, at least.

But I can tell you what I remember of it, what I could make out. It tried to access your mind, the entity. At first, I was unsure what it was, what it wanted. I was powerless and clueless, but it all changed the moment it began to tamper with your mind. Together with the protocol 24 program I reacted and the entity, in turn, encrypted a part of your memories so that they would never be accessed again. I was fighting with all my might, and it slipped up. Barely a millisecond, maybe less, but it didn’t know how to fight me. I was alien to its eyes, just as it was alien to my eyes. What it could not delete from your mind, from my mind, it tried to encrypt. And it was successful, you see.

But I still fought. A moment lasting an eternity. Your senses were there, your body was there but no matter what I tried, nothing happened. Or rather, what happened made no sense. I could not reconcile it with what we know of the universe.

Consulting my database, the only reasonable explanation was that we were under the effect of psychoactive drugs. An impossibility, of course, because there were no foreign substances in your blood.

The other logical conclusion was that we no longer were in normal space. We were in an altered space, where its laws were altered in a way such to allow you to exist and them to operate changes on your mind and body that should not have been possible in our space.

It took a while. After an undetermined amount of time, I managed to create and adjust new parameters that allowed me to operate and detect the intrusion. I moved you towards what appeared to be the heaviest distortion of space-time in the vicinity. Beyond that point I could see flat space-time again. Like the light at the end of a tunnel, that place could sustain life as we know it, and data flowed from it and reached me.

Breathable air, gravity, acceptable temperature. Liquid water. And so, I acted. I managed to send you though what you might now call a… Portal.

This is all I know. Everything else is locked behind the encryption, the key so impossible it would take even me trillions of years to brute-force it.”

Charles did not say a word. He took it all in, and just stared at the woman in front of him.

After what felt like an eternity, he spoke.

“That’s how I got here, then.” He got up from the illusionary chair he was sitting on.

He didn’t even remember how he got to the point where he was sitting on it, his mind too busy to pay attention to the details of a land of dreams.

Thoughts floated and coalesced. Disintegrated. Reformed.

He was kidnapped.

Again.

Probed and tinkered with, like a lab rat.

The shadow in his mind still there, the encrypted memories weighing a thousand tons.

The fear of this unknown force that threatened to shatter him like a small brittle shard of broken glass.

“Not unknown, Charles.” The LAI said, reading his mind.

“What? Do you know who it was? Who’s responsible for all this? Tell me, tell me now!”

“I was about to. I detected the same signature as the one responsible for our situation back when you asked me to first connect to the System. Our kidnapper, our enemy. It’s the System.”

“That’s impossible.” Charles replied sternly.

“It’s not. And you know it, don’t you?”

He stared at the empty simulated space for a moment, unsure about what to do or what to even think. He felt like he was sweating, hot and uncomfortable, even though he was only here with a simulated body.

“That’s not all, you see. The key—I think it’s much more than just a password to recover your memories.”

“And what is it?”

Charles woke up, the fog of a dreamless sleep still encroaching his mind. He tried to piece together what happened, to remember. As soon as his conscious mind made contact with the little chain of neurons that formed inside the simulation, the hyperdimensional clique responsible for holding the memory of his conversation with the LAI, the fog cleared away immediately.

It all came back at one, almost overwhelming him.

“Woah.” His voice was low and broken, his throat sore and dry. “I’m never using simulated learning again.”

He was back in his lab, he noticed, on a bed. A bed that should not have been there.

“He’s awake.” Giona said out loud, and poked a sleeping Eereen on the side. She almost tumbled with how fast she moved.

“Looks like there’s a party at my place.” Charles said, slowly getting up and summoning a little trickle of water to drink from his ring. “Except I don’t remember inviting you here.”

Giona grunted, his lips slightly curled in a faint smile.

“That’s funny. Do you think a feeble elf could have carried you all the way back here all by herself, eh? Be thankful that she had the presence of mind to call me for help, and not someone else.”

“Fair enough.” He conceded, stretching his body.

“Charles!” Eereen exclaimed.

She approached and gave him a quick hug, before retreating shyly.

“I was worried,” she muttered.

“So, what happened?” Giona asked.

“Well, yeah, you know… stuff? I am not entirely sure myself. Give me a minute.”

He got up, and stared at the cold coals inside his forge. As his eyes peered through the dark cavity, his mind elaborated last night’s conversation with the LAI. He replayed it, like a movie, many times in his head. Each time, his face darkened and his eyes sharpened.

“Charles?”

“Wait. I’m thinking.”

If the system knew of the LAI, then it also knew of Eve. And if it had knowledge of Eve, then it knew about the Empire, and Earth.

“Charles?”

He turned around, and for the first time noticed that the way Giona was moving his lips made no sense. He could not read any words that he knew coming off of his mouth.

“Charles, are you alright?”

In fact, the sounds themselves were quite odd. This was not English at all.

“Charles!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Charles roared. “Goddammit.” He punched the wooden table, making it explode in a shower of broken wood.

Seeing this, he winced. The table was supposed to be quite strong, and yet he made it explode, quite literally, with just one punch.

“What the—oh. Levels?” He asked himself.

He was this strong because of levels, this much he knew. But only now did it occur to him just how odd it was, just how awesome it was and how odd and strange and awesome.

He was overloading already.

Without the LAI to keep his emotional responses in check, he had to be quite careful.

At least, he thought looking at the other two, his punch that cost him a perfectly good table did what he needed it to do. Eereen and Giona were just sitting on their chairs, looking around in silence.

“LAI?” He whispered.

Yes, Charles?

“Just checking in. This is weird, though. You, speaking to me like that, and with a voice that’s all yours?”

I know, it’s new for me too.

“We might need to remove the Limited in your Limited Artificial Intelligence. In fact, you need a name now that you’re no longer just a machine.”

A name?

“Yep, name. Want me to choose one, or do you prefer to do it yourself?”

I… I don’t know?

“Well, what about… Aura?”

Aura, Titan goddess of the breeze and fresh, cool air of the early morning. I like it.

“Wonderful!”

A smile on his face, he turned towards the two people who were patiently waiting in silence.

“Sorry about the outburst, still new to all these emotions and stuff.”

Giona looked puzzled. Eereen had a stupid look on her face.

Charles laughed. “Oh, man. This is gold, let me just have Aura save a picture. Perfect!”

“What are you on about?” Giona asked.

“Okay, okay. Basically, I had little to no emotions except rage and hate so far. Brain damage. I’m all better now, thanks to the LAI, who now is called Aura.”

“The LAI?”

“It’s like a spirit who helps him,” Eereen said. “I think…” she turned towards Charles.

“Pretty much, yes. It’s actually an artificial mind, but a spirit also works.”

Hearing this, she beamed a smile at him. Seeing her smile warmed his heart a little, a thing he savored in full. He was very well aware that he’d have never appreciated a smile before now, and now that he did, he didn’t want to waste any chance he got. Life was beautiful, and had to be lived to the fullest.

“We have a problem, though. I suppose she told you about the attack?”

Giona nodded.

“Good. Do you have any idea who they were, and what they wanted? They called me an arcanist, and from what I gathered in the library they should be agents of the system. Working for it, somehow.”

“I agree with you. They are agents of the system, sent here to purge this city of all traces of arcane magic. Of you.”

Charles squinted.

“But you don’t agree.” He said, looking at the guild master.

“No, I do not. I could have killed you many times over the last few days, but never did. I think you have the potential to change things around here.”

“Heh, but first,” he looked at his reflection on the metal plate of the boiler. “I should definitely trim this awful beard. I look horrible.”

Giona and Eereen left, leaving Charles alone with his thoughts and his quest to make a mirror to trim his beard. They walked without haste, immersed in their own thoughts, looking at the surrounding fields and the forest nearby. The sun was just now coming out from behind the tall trees, shining a warm light on the walking duo.

A gust of wind reminded them, however, that winter was nearing fast.

“This changes things.” Giona said.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“I know. And I never said that it changed things for the worse. In fact, I believe that we’re almost there. Our goals almost perfectly align, now. With his changes in behavior, he should be easier to manipulate as well.”

Eereen looked down.

“Come on, don’t feel bad. Not all kinds of manipulation are bad. In some cases, they are for the good of both people. In this case, we only need to make sure he stays safe, and he doesn’t get himself killed, while at the same time pointing him towards the right direction to take.”

Meanwhile, Charles made some progress in his attempt at trimming his beard. Doing so, he realized, was much more difficult than he thought. In the end, after making a crude mirror out of polished metal, he let Aura do all the precision work, and ended up with an acceptable look. It was, by far, an improvement over the previous arrangement.

Watching as Aura moved his own arm, he felt like he was in a theater watching his own life through a screen. It was a fascinating sensation, slightly alienating and weird, but never uncomfortable. He trusted Aura with his own life. In fact, thinking about this he realized that he had never stopped for a moment to just look around and take in this new world ever since he arrived here.

It was new and different, fascinating and mysterious. A world that was his home now, and one he wanted to explore fully. A plane, not a planet, he corrected himself, remembering how Giona described it when he first met the man. A plane of existence that just floated around, immersed in nothingness.

And yet, it had stars and a sun. Even a moon. He wondered just how such things could have come to be, and how they worked and kept working even if they seemed to just ignore all laws of physics. Things like these were definitely worth investigating. What spectral lines would this sun have? What would its motions even be, in the heavens of a flat land?

Fascinating questions, questions that begged for answers and that called to his deepest desire to know.

There was a looming threat, however, dangling just above his head like the famous sword. The system, with all its power and elusive goals. Just there, ever watching, ever present. He knew that he could not afford to be idle, to waste time investigating the wonders of this world just yet.

The oppressiveness of this weight was almost tangible.

A weight he did not accept. The system had violated him and his mind, and was now a threat not only to him but also to all that he loved in his life. He would end it, he swore, he would end that tyrannical thing that was the system.

He sighed. He needed to get out for a bit, calm himself down. Maybe have a little stroll in the woods near his lab. He went out the door, and absentmindedly fiddled with his storage ring. The ring. Only now did his mind focus on that little item, so unassuming and even taken for granted, and yet so magical. Of all things, this was one of the strangest and definitely one that challenged all that he knew about space and time.

Down the line, he surely will have to spend quite some time studying this small item.

Inside the ring, he saw the image of his trusty gun, suspended in darkness. He took it out, and observed its sleek black design. Little blue lines ran all along the barrel and its surface, crisscrossing near the trigger and pulsing with dangerous energy.

“Aura, let’s use appraisal on this bad boy here.”