The Trail Ends and Then Resumes

83 253 struggled to hold onto the energy trail. He knew that he had been misled, and if he was honest, he was happy about it. He did not want to locate the tutorial anymore. The longer his search had taken the more time he had to think things over. The Tutorial had served for a period of time that was almost as long as time had existed. The core, well, what they’d done to get that soul should never have happened. The two of them deserved to be free.

If his people died from their loss, then it was their own fault. They were the ones who had stifled creativity to such a degree that only dungeons seemed able to create new things. How many times had multiple worlds have a writer who had written a play based on two youths from rival families; who fell in love and then died tragically? The story was the same, only the names had changed, and even then they were similar to one another. Romulus and Gillette, Homeo and Ghoulliette, Roberto and July X; it just went on and on, and it was like that with everything.

Prime had died trying to reinvigorate the creative juices of the sapients that the dungeons cared for; he had realized that the Overseers themselves were responsible for what had happened. As agents of order and logic, they had literally smothered originality and creativity. Not only had they suffocated it in the life forms that they cared for, but they had kept the dragons away.

Dragons were chaos. The dragons carried everything that the overseers had lost. They were random, unpredictable, free. They were emotions unleashed and thoughts unfettered. They were everchanging and unknown, and they could not feed the overseers. That was the worst of it. Their energies were not compatible with the overseer’s forms, but the concepts that they spawned in others did. The dragons inspired and mortals created; which in turn fed the overseers who guided.

Somewhere along the way, 83 253’s people went from overseeing to controlling. The controlling led to the dragons leaving their partners, order and chaos needed one another, and their absence drove the Prime mad. Or maybe it hadn’t. It was really hard to tell, and Eighty-Three to the two-hundred and fifty-third power was a fractal of the Prime. That was proof positive that something had gone wrong. As an exact replicant of the original Eighty-Three should have possessed the Prime’s complete memories, but there were pieces missing, whole parts of his mind that were simply gone. It was as if they had been scooped away, and no one else had noticed.

It was like the energy trail that the tutorial had left. It started strongly but faded out further down the line. By the time that Eighty-Three had come into being there was nothing left other than a hole. He wondered how Ten-thousand-six-hundred-and-thirty-one to the nine thousandth and seven-hundred-and twenty-first power perceived that missing time. Was it a blip that was missing? Had the overseer even noticed it?

For fractals, they all seemed to be experiencing some sort of drift. Eighty-Three had noticed it, so had others who had spoken to him. The fact that he had a gender spoke volumes. Prime was as far from being a flesh and blood being as it could have been; a pure crystalline form, nothing more. Cores were modeled on the purity of the prime.

The question was what had happened to prime? Rumors said that there was a fracture that got out of control and led to the overseers, but Prime had overseen the overseers so that didn’t fit. Some said dragons had shattered the Prime. Others claimed it was a sacrifice, but the ones who knew the truth were not telling the rest of them. They had almost actively worked to keep the truth secret.

Now, 83 253 was out in the middle of nowhere on a planet that the tutorial had clearly not remained upon, and he had no leads. All he had were questions, and he wasn’t interested in asking the ones he was supposed to, such as, where had the tutorial taken the DV-8 core? Were they still in this universe? He imagined so, the tutorial hadn’t been given information on other dimensions. There hadn’t been a reason to do so. The tutorial knew a lot, but there were still incalculable amounts of data that he had been excluded from. Things that 83 253 did know and have access to himself.

Traveling in an energy form left a signature through subspace, was one of those things the program hadn’t been privy to. After all, he wouldn’t have been going off to chase anything or anyone around the universe, nor would his cores. It almost felt like cheating.

The overseer turned his eyes to look for subspace abrasions. Having to take a physical form meant that he couldn’t see the way he normally could, and when he had been immaterial he hadn’t been looking for such things. His Kirlian vision kicked in and he studied not the world that he stood on, but the framework beneath it. Unlike energy, abrasions didn’t dissipate. They would last in perpetuity.

It took him less than a minute to see what he had overlooked along his journey. The trail was there after all, and it led right back into overseer territory. He shook his temporary physical form’s head in admiration. What better place to hide than the heart of their realm. No one would look there. Additionally, the tutorial had somehow barely left a trace in subspace. Eighty-three wasn’t sure how he had accomplished that, but the trail was pretty faint. If the program had known a little more about the underverse or the otherverse then Eighty-three doubted he would have left anything behind for him to follow.

The program was subtle, and it was clear as to how it had been chosen to become the tutor in the first place. It was highly efficient. When he finally found the place that they now called home Eighty-three would have to be very careful because he doubted that the dungeon would be easy to recognize, let alone find.

He shed his physical form and began following his new trail as a sense of dread filled his non-existent heart. Finding them was the easy part. He dreaded doing the next step, which was taking them back for destruction or reeducation. The tutorial would be reeducated, they couldn’t afford to lose it, but the ultimate fate of the core was unknown, but the overseer was fairly certain it would mean death for the core. It had been a terrible risk using the exact soul that they had, and the regret of that action grew upon its escape.

As awful as it was 83 253 knew the others would call for the core’s destruction. They wouldn’t see the opportunity that they had, a core with a dragon soul would be an inspiration to every being that came into contact with. To lose it over something so inane as a minor rebellion was foolish. Of course, it choked on the thought of working for them, memories or no it was still a dragon soul no matter how hard they tried to drive those parts out of it.

They would never recover from the loss. He would never recover from the atrocity he was about to commit. It was hard, but the fractal being forced himself to follow the inadvertent path that laid before him. 83 253 couldn’t help but feel like an executioner putting on his hood while he was on his way to the gallows.