Monday, November 3rd, 314 years since Start

Journal entry 30

As I have mentioned in previous journals, there is still a snag on the replication of memories. The dilemma is that the outcome is far too unpredictable. Through three-hundred and nineteen experiments, there have been a total of twenty different outcomes. Though the majority may come out positive, the issue is the inconsistencies.

In this regard I came to a decision. I talked to Olania today about getting a squad to power-level me. I had never gotten to the level needed for a class before joining the faction. Now I want to get a class related to my research. Olania has pushed me to get a class based on one of the senses, as they are extremely enhanced due to faction perks. I would prefer to get something that would help me synergize with the system Abel and I have from the fourteenth race.

Side note: though we have their ability, none have come after Abel. He believes hiding in the mental faction has given him a little longer before they show up.

So contrary to Olania’s wishes, I am going to try for a “memory manipulator” class of some sort. I am captivated by the possibilities of using these physical memories. I have a theory that these crystals are manifestations of a dream dimension. This would explain the slot system that this system has. If I could craft materials or weapons with them, could I not imbue them with the same properties? It would far surpass any enchantments that Reforms currently have.

Either way, tomorrow I am going to power-level. I will try to use the fourteenth system only when my life is in danger, as using the system would give me far less experience. I will journal once more when I have my class.

Cynical laughter filled the now desolate valley.

“A joke? Obviously! I’m just waiting for the punch-line,” Yuclaus proceeded to laugh at his own poorly executed joke. Isencia took a hesitant step back, not expecting the response Cause gave. The anger she felt was being replaced by anxiety at the way Yuclaus was acting. As she was figuring out how to respond, Yuclaus stopped laughing and continued to talk.

“Isencia, how do you know you're real?” The nymph was confused at the question. It was asked completely out of the blue. To her: unrelated.

“What do you mean ‘real’?”

“How do you know you're a living, independent being?”

“I am living in the present, have memories of the past, and can decide the future. So I am independent. I am living because I am.”

“With that logic, I could say my slaughter of the monkeys was just, because it is. It was a just cause because I decided it was,” Yuclaus pointed out the fallacy in Isencia’s thinking.

“What are you trying to say?” Isencia was too off-balance to care about being mysterious anymore.

“You aren't real.” Sen started to think Cause was insane. Yuclaus, seeing where her mind was going, continued, “Here wait a second, I’ll prove it.”

He closed his eyes, entering his mindscape. He thought of a game he had played years ago, following the resulting salmon colored memory-bolt. Cause proceeded to touch a few gems in the area lightly to get a sense of their respective memories. After mentally selecting a few, he grabbed them one by one. Sen —on the outside— saw gems appear in his restrained open hand, falling on the dirt by her feet.

She looked down at the crystals, then back up to Yuclaus. She knew what he wanted, but hesitated.

“Go on, crush them,” Yuclaus said, opening his eyes —returning from his mindscape to watch. Isencia was worried. She didn’t know what abilities Yuclaus had, or what he could do to memories she absorbed. For all she knew, she would be absorbing a piece of his mind. He would then take control of her —similar to what her vines did. There was one thing that pushed her to do as he asked. On multiple occasions, Yuclaus could have harmed her, yet didn't. She never felt threatened by him in any way. Granted she also never thought Cause was capable of genocide. She decided to give Yuclaus one final chance. Her sheltered upbringing led her to be far more trusting than most.

Sen looked down to the gems, lifting them to her hands with a few vines. She grabbed a couple in each of her hands —there were too many for her to break with a single fist. She felt like she should break them all at once. Cause picked this information to be taken at the same time, she reasoned. Sen looked up at Yuclaus one final time, seeing him disturbingly quiet. There were no usual questions, no mindless chatter, no subconscious humming.

She squeezed. A tugging sensation in her brain attempted to pull her away. She resisted for a moment, before she felt like she was roughly pushed into the torrent from behind. It pulled her away.

Isencia found herself sitting in a completely fantastical area. She was in a… room that many of the Reforms slept in. This one was vastly different from the stories she heard however. Supposedly, Reform cities were a mix of new and old technologies from their world. Described as full of steam and moving parts. This room did not resemble that image in any sense. There was a lifted platform —a bed— off to the side. The black shades were drawn, the only light sources were from the LED lamp, and the screen directly in front of her.

A few clothes were scattered upon the floor, a pair of pajamas, some t-shirts that were too tight. There were even a few music tabs strewn about. The room was about as dark as Overcast. Just enough light to see by, but much less than the light of day. Two doors led either in or out of the room. Where they went was something Sen found herself unable to investigate.

This was not what she expected a Reform home to look like. There was no hiss of mechanics that her mother told her about. The walls were empty. Rather than the moving machines she expected, the only moving object was the screen in front of her.

She was about to look around, when she found her gaze was fixed. She attempted to move her fingers, her hands, summon her Soul Spore, but nothing worked.

“We have time for another quest bro, which one you wanna do?” A deep, husky voice asked her over the headset. She was stunned by how smooth it sounded. Sometimes even I surprise myself by how great my voice is.

“Shall we partake in an advent of the sea of trees?” Sen said in a masculine voice, focusing on the monitor in front of her. Something flickered in the corner of her eye, but she was unable to look. She could only enjoy the ride. She started controlling her character, named simply Warden. Warden walked up to an NPC, and the quest dialogue started.

There was an accept button underneath, as well as a decline one.

“What are you waiting for man? Accept the quest! You’re the party leader, I can't do it.”

“Apologies, the moniker granted to the Emerald Sea is different than I recalled.”

“The Edge of Reality? That's what this has always been called.”

“If thine words speak truth,” Isencia responded. She moved her mouse to the accept prompt. As she was about to click on it, the screen rippled. The text changed.

Before she could process what she was reading, she accepted the quest. The text box shrunk into a list in the corner of the screen. Her character started walking forward. Warden was covered in scale mail, heavily armored to properly tank. In his right hand was a massive claym— nothing. His hands were empty. Slowly the pixels started merging, Isencia was pulled from a third person perspective of the game, to a first person perspective of Warden.

“The quest marker is this way,” the deep voice from earlier said to me. The other character I had previously been watching from the screen, now walked in front of me. The tag Cain floated over his head. From behind he looked eerily like Yuclaus. At either hip of the man, rested a shortsword. He was covered from neck to heel in loose black fabric.

“I comprehend the sizable imprint upon mine window,” I found myself saying, without much of a choice. We walked out of the gate of the city —Fort Colon as my mind said. We followed our quest prompt, an arrow resting in my peripheral. The further we walked, the further the pixels continually sharpened until it was indistinguishable from reality. That forest we are approaching… it looks very familiar. Is that the Misfortune? I have never really seen it from the outside, I could be wrong.

I brushed a tall strand of grass away from my face, my guantle—sleeve keeping it from whipping me. We walked on a thin dirt road, it seemed well traversed, but there was no one in sight. Ah the ghosts of my past. Huh? What did I just think? I felt as if my mind was forcefully directed away from questioning what just happened. After we had walked for a quarter a descent, or around an hour and a half as my mind said, we reached the demarcation of trees.

It was unfortunate we had to walk so far, we would get the teleport loc— Fort Colon truly was far away, it was a shame it led to a long travel time. Somehow I feel like it was still sped up for me. I… feel like it should be two weeks or more by foot. Not to mention if one were fielding a group of people or an army. That would take, at the earliest, a month. I stopped just before we pondered between two trees, before we entered the forest. I know these trees. Cain must have misinterpreted my hesitation, as he soon came to a conclusion of his own.

“This should be easy dude, your class is broken. If I hadn't been playing this game with you for so long, I’d think you were a hacker! I mean, how can you just rip memories from people?” What he said was disturbingly familiar to what had caused me to restrain Yuclaus, “The prompt is right up ahead, buff up.”

We started pulling glass bottles from satchels. I pulled potions from my hip while he took some from a bandolier that had hung from his back. I started drinking potions. One for strength. One for stamina. One for health regen. This would be more than enough for an armored tank— mage. I’m glad I have mana regeneration potions. I knew it was smart to stock up in town. As we both finished our drinks, washing down the acrid flavors with splashes from canteens; we trekked into the forest. The flora was astounding. Astounding because of its familiarity.

My vision blurred and I found us in the ruins of a city. Broken lamp posts kept watch over the destruction. Circular slots dotted the faces of the few walls that remained standing. Over to the right was a bisected tower, standing by a line of rubble that encompassed the ghost town. We ambled through the decay, until we found ourselves entering a plaza. Waiting there for us in the middle was...me. An Environ which looked just like me stood, back straight, poised for conflict. Next to my doppelganger was a man in a leather jerkin, a cloak around his shoulders. We went closer to the two.

The nymph said from beside me. Where I had been a second ago, now stood a gaunt mage, an older man with lightly greying hair. By his side, stood a black-haired woman with a rapier.

“I'm afraid not. This isn't about multiple systems, this is personal. The Warden must pay, but bloom, you are free to go. My business is solely with him,” when the older man said “him”, he turned to face me. I was incensed at the rude slang, but I was unable to verbally defend myself. A wind rushed through the city, a gentle howling resonated as it filled the husks of buildings. A foreboding filled the area. A tumbleweed sat motionlessly in a puddle. My cloak fluttered in the wind. The bag at my back also swayed, much lighter without the computer. Before combat broke out, my cloak froze in the air. Sound abruptly cut off. The thin mage and woman were motionless.

“You know Yuclaus,” the nymph turned to me, speaking in baritone, “if you had never forcefully accessed the mental plane, this would never have happened. You really should be careful, it gives away our position when you use your powers willy-nilly like that,” He was staring right at me, but my body refused to reciprocate.

“I mean after all, when you think of this all as a dream, you forget to be cautious. You are airheaded like that. I mean you’re even putting such a beautiful Environ in danger.” Finally, with great effort, I turned to look at him. Where once there was an Environ, now a man stood there. A man who looked just like Yuclaus. Except for one thing: purple eyes stared back at me.

“Watch over it for me Isencia. If something happens to my bo—”

Isencia found herself alone in her mindscape. She slightly trembled at what she had just witnessed. She went back over the memories, but the references to reality were all but gone. Instead a top down RPG was played, in where Yuclaus and Cain saved a village of nymphs. She returned to her physical body, not seeing the circular, purple gem that rested by the pedestal.

Yuclaus was staring at her expectantly. Sen considered leaving right then, abandoning Cause. But she didn't move. She looked into his eyes, and saw the truth once more. A broken, beaten, downtrodden, confused shell of a man. A man who was resigned, thinking she would ignore the knowledge of his reality. She would just say that the memory was completely normal. She would just be a character in his dream ignoring the fourth wall. Isencia didn’t understand what was going through his mind. She did know that she related with him.

Here she was, in the thick of mystery and adventure; this is what she had always wanted. Never having the courage to ask her mother to leave, but resenting a peaceful life. She was unable to accept that her mother was a kind, caring figure. She wasn’t trapping Isencia here, Isencia was trapping herself. Just like Yuclaus.

“Yuclaus,” she finally said, “to you, this may be a game. This may be fake,” she paused for a moment considering her next words. She didn’t expect to change Cause’s opinion of the world, not when seeing the actual memory he had given her. That was a challenge for another day. If what she thought was true, there was a far more important matter to discuss.

“But to me, this is reality. I know you don’t believe it, but please, act like it is. You may find yourself one day thinking back at this made-up world, but I will find myself living in it,” Isencia didn’t fully know what Yuclaus thought of Start, so she made vague assumptions hoping he would fill in when he was ready.

“What harm will it be to pretend for a little while? At the end of the day you will move on. So enjoy the moment, be yourself. And I’ll be myself. Let's be honest with each other. Let's be friends.” Isencia stopped. She couldn’t show emotion, but Yuclaus got the sense she was distressed. Her words truly hit deep. They cut to the center of his being, where he was coming to terms with a possible truth.

What Sen had said was true. It matched perfectly with his logic before the discovery of his mindscape. He was here now. Perhaps he would forget this all, but maybe he wouldn't. So, just for now, he should enjoy this. He may not come to terms with it, but he could at least be himself. Maybe, he could even become a better person. So he decided: he would act like himself. No fancy language. No tough act. Just Yuclaus.

“That was cheesy,” Yuclaus said, committing to being himself. A small curve appeared at the edges of Sen’s lips. If he didn't know better he would think she was smiling. “But thank you, I needed that.” The two awkwardly stood where they were for a while longer. Isencia looking at Cause, Cause looking around for something to distract himself from his embarrassment.

“Um,” Yuclaus finally looked back at the nymph, “could you let me go now?”

“Oh! Sorry! Here.” The vines retreated into the earth. Yuclaus shuffled his feet a little bit, before he finally spoke.

“I'm sorry Sen,” he said, using her nickname for the first time aloud, “I really have been… a jerk for the past week.” Isencia —internally— couldn’t agree more. He didn’t know all the trouble he had put her through, but she would be sure to bring it up in the coming weeks.

“But, you're right. Maybe I’ve been approaching this dream all wrong from the start. Maybe this is a gift not a trial. So let me start again,” He held his hand out to the nymph, “My name is Yuclaus, a human from Earth.”

“My name is Isencia,” Sen responded in kind, grabbing his left hand with hers, “an Environ from the Misfortune.”

“It's nice to meet you.”

“It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” They both spoke at the same time. Yuclaus with casual speech, Isencia using what he gave her. Yuclaus laughed while Isencia’s leaves rustled. They both shared in the laughter. For the first time since meeting, they relaxed. They were themselves. However, all good things must come to an end.

After they eventually quieted, Isencia got to business.

“Alright, we need to leave. Now.”