Chapter 2: Daybreak in Eden

Part 1 of 1 :/

“Hey, wake up, sleepy head!” a girl’s voice said softly.

My eyes snapped open instantly.

I yawned and woke up. I rubbed my eyes tiredly and tried to get up, however, gravity said no… Oh well, I didn’t plan on getting up anyways.

I continued to lie in bed for a few seconds before I came to the realization that Charlotte was looking at me worriedly.

I looked around me, but something seemed a bit off.

Now that I think of it, I died and talked to a giant chicken, didn’t I?

Pfft, I’m home. What a dream.

I mean, what kind of god would take on the form of a chicken? That’s completely ridiculous.

“Are you okay?” Charlotte asked. “You look sick.”

“I’m completely fine,” I replied. “We’ve got a busy day ahead of us!”

“Alright then,” she said, clearly not convinced.

“I was just contemplating chickens, no biggie.”

“Now I’m curious…”

“Nothing much, I just got shot and killed, where I went to an afterlife. Then I was sold to a gigantic chicken who wanted me to take over a world.”

“Sounds exactly like something you’d think about,” she remarked, rolling her eyes. “Besides, how would you get shot in this day and age? Crime and murder are almost inexistent in the first world now!”

“You’re also one of the top players of ‘Battlefield: Vanguard’ I don’t think anyone could kill you if they tried.”

“Pfft, anyone could kill me if they had the jump.”

I threw the covers off and jumped out of bed.

After I dug out two random articles of clothing, I put them on and went to the kitchen.

“What the hell, Steele! What the fuck are you wearing?”

“It’s an orange shirt and green shorts… what’s wrong with it?”

“You can’t go outside wearing that! It’s ugly!”

I looked down at my clothes. They don’t look really ugly… but then, I’m pretty bad at judging beauty.

“I never thought these would need to be burned… they look fine to me.”

“Individually they’re fine, but those two colors clash!”

“It’s okay. No one will notice.” I said, patting her head.

“EVERYONE will notice! That’s dull orange and bright green you’re wearing, people will go blind from the fugliness!”

“Doubt,” I shrugged.

“You just watch,” she said smugly.

Sighing, I went back and found a green shirt and put it on. Quite frankly, it didn’t look or feel any different.

I got a pancake and started pouring syrup on it.

A small pool of the golden liquid started gathering around the fluffy pancake.

On the TV, an advertisement for orange juice was panning over a few ugly orange trees.

“Ha, those are ugly trees! They’re orange and green! Ha, it’s just further proof that nature sucks, haha! Can’t even prevent clashing colors!

“I think it’s kinda pretty with the white flowers though…” Charlotte remarked.

“...”

Life is confusing.

Later that day, while I was working on an energy equation at my lab, I found myself thinking that it was too easy.

It was as if I already knew the answer to the problem. In fact, I did!

I had the entire proof in my head.

I reached back into my memory, but I couldn’t quite remember anywhere I saw it before. This shouldn’t have been anywhere before either… we got these results from the research wing today.

Additionally, it feels like I’m missing a piece of me.

Whatever, the equation was probably part of some similar experiment in the experiments of year 2092 anomaly series.

I jumped up from my seat as a loud, shrill ring pierced through the silence of my office space. I looked down at my phone in alarm. I don’t remember setting my ringtone to this crap… God dammit, Josh probably changed it for some shitty prank or something.

I sighed in annoyance and answered the call.

“Hello, who is it?”

“Hello, is this Mister Anders-,” a monotone voice said.

“Sorry, wrong number,” I interrupted as I hung up.

God dammit, random people calling. Probably some telemarketer from the East claiming to be from Macrohard or Peach something. Leave me alone, god dammit, I know how to get rid of viruses, I wasn’t born yesterday. I was born the day before yesterday.

I focused my mind and drove out the competing squabbling in order to finish writing the proof.

When I finished, I took it to the research wing, where I handed it to Lindsey Stephens, the research department head.

“I swear I’ve seen this problem before,” I said to her. “It was like the proof was in my memory or something.”

“Well, I’m sorry you’re so smart proofs just walk into your memory,” she answered sarcastically.

I frowned. God dammit, she can’t take a hint.

“Well, if you feel so strongly about it, I guess I could take a look at past proofs we’ve had you solve…”

I sighed as she handed me another folder, this time almost empty.

I’m not paid enough to do this.

Well, actually I am. It’s still annoying though.

I popped open the folder and looked through the details.

“God dammit, I’ve seen this one too.”

“Oh, really… did someone eat too many mushrooms?” she asked sarcastically.

Why is everything she says sarcastic?

“No, I don’t eat psychedelic mushrooms; second of all, the answer is FORTY THREE FUCKING DEGREES. I’ve seen this before, I swear!”

“Is this some kind of joke?” she muttered. “You just solved, in twelve seconds, a problem that the entire research division couldn’t make heads or tails of for half a month. By looking at only the first page, no less.”

I stopped for a second. “Wait, how do you know it’s the correct answer?”

“We know it’s between 40.5 and 44.5 degrees, so your answer makes sense. Why? Did you just guess a number?”

“Of course not, I’ve seen this shit before!” I tried to explain exasperatedly.

“No way you saw it here then, I personally work on the dilation experiments and this one was nothing like anything we had you do before.”

“I don’t do research problems anywhere else. I swear you’ve sent me a problem about the curve of light near light speed in an instantiation field before! How do you forget about doing research about post time dilation effects on photon wave curve in the fucking huge ass field collider?”

“Steele, we installed the Camery Adam’s Field Collider 35 days ago. This was the first time we used it. Ever.”

With this new revelation, I massaged my temples and sighed.

“Maybe I do need to start taking some drugs… Whatever, I need to go back to sleep.”

“Wait, you can’t just give me the answer, we need a proof!”

“Screw that, I’ll do that when I wake up again.”

“At least give us the unrounded answer then…”

“Forty two and nine hundred fourteen thousandths plus thirty-one over eight hundred and seven thousand, four hundred thirty-three times pi.”

“You did all that in your head?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course not. As I was saying, I’ve done this problem before. I just happen to remember the answer.”

She scowled disapprovingly at me. “You should take your nap,” she suggested.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get out of your hair.”

Suddenly, my stomach made the rumblies. The rumblies that only a mozzarella cheese stick would satisfy.

I know a good mozzarella cheese stick place!

Immediately, I departed in noble pursuit of my mozzarella cheese stick.

I followed a well familiar sidewalk to a bakery. I’ve certainly been here before. I come here at least three times a week.

I walked into the small bakery. The air inside was slightly warmer than outside and it had the pleasant fragrance of pastries.

I approached the counter where they had a mozzarella cheese stick for me. Heh, I guess I come here way too often.

The lady gave me a smile as she handed me the bag and the receipt. It wasn’t really a friendly smile, in a sense… more like the smile you give to special people. There’s nothing wrong with eating only mozzarella cheese sticks. Mozzarella cheese sticks are life.

I handed her my credit card and 1.3 resource points were deducted off along with a 0.1 point tip. I always leave a tip when they have cheese sticks waiting. Waiting is so last century.

Wonder what the smile is for then.

Whatever, she’s probably a non-believer in mozzarella cheese sticks. It’s the only rational explanation.

With a bag of mozzarella cheese sticks under my arm, I headed back to my apartment.

As I got home, a girl with dirty blonde hair ran up to me.

“Steele! How was your day today?” she asked.

“About to be a whole lot better,” I said as I patted my bag.

“That’s good to hear,” she said, smiling as she saw the bag. “That party last night was pretty fun!”

“I know, right?”

Wait, what party? Aipers, what party is she talking about?

Still no reply huh.

What party? C’mon, Aipers, talk to me!

“It was so great Steele; I still can’t believe you proposed like that! It was so cute!” She said, hugging me.

Wut. How come she didn’t bring this up this morning? This literally makes no sense at all. Plus, how come she knows that but I don’t? I must have hit my head in my sleep or something.

I don’t remember drinking bottles of Nyquil either. What the actual hell is going on?

C’mon Aipers, I need you. What’s going on?

“Are you okay, Steele?” Charlotte asked worriedly.

“I don’t even know anymore…” I mutter under my breath.

Somehow, she heard me.

“Fight me,” she bellowed, grinning like a wolf. “It’ll cheer you up for sure!”

“You won’t win though, a support character isn’t going to beat a front liner...” I said skeptically.

“Not even with a 60% strength penalty?” she asked. “I suppose if you’re scared then…”

“Well, if you insist,” I replied.

“I’m looking forward to fighting the new martial art memories you got last week.” she said, smiling.

She practically dragged me into her room where she put a headset on and laid down.

I laid down on the bed and put on the headset.

After logging in, it disconnects me from my body and reattaches my brain input/output to the device, brilliantly displayed on a high tech scene colloquially known as ‘the loading bar.’

As soon as I enter the game, I begin to repeatedly receive invites to party ‘gg ezpz.’

I accept and enter the lobby.

She starts a private server and we are dumped into character selection.

We both select the well-rounded one for our respective genders, aka the average human. Using console commands, I drop my physical strength down to 40%. Overpowering strength is unnecessary to win a fight.

Nc_game start 1

One second later, the game starts and we materialize in a fight ring.

“Ready or not, here I come!” She calls before moving forward.

For a few awkward seconds, I attempt to dodge with my now frail strength, but I manage it in the end.

When I finally got used to the weakened body, it got a lot easier. It was as if a shroud had been thrown off of me. Suddenly, her punches stopped landing. It was like fighting a child.

Every attack from her was easily predictable.

The physical difference, even with a 60% reduction wasn’t as large as expected. It was probably because sexual dimorphism settings reduce her strength by 20% in exchange for speed.

Her lower body was a lot stronger than mine in this current state. Her upper body was much closer, in comparison. Her arms were still stronger, but by my estimations, only 33% at the most.

Seeing as her attacks stopped landing, she tried to bear hug me.

How exactly, do you escape from someone who is stronger and faster than you?

As she moved in, I quickly landed a blow on the corner of her jaw before backing off.

Unfortunately, it did nothing. Cuz I’m the strongest person on the planet right now.

She tried to grab me, but I managed to slip out somehow.

Immediately, I changed targets.

I put all the force I could possibly muster into a single punch as she turned towards me again.

With a light crunch, her collarbone broke. At 12% maximum local pain, however, that didn’t really do anything.

The pain from that would be largely ignorable.

Before I could back off however, she caught my arm, and I realized with horror that she had willingly walked into the attack for an opportunity to catch me.

Half a second later, I found myself reeling from a hit to my gut. It didn’t hurt though, just a ‘dazed’ state simulation from getting hit at 40% reduced stats.

I hit the ground and tripped backwards.

By forcing more momentum backwards, I managed to complete a roll and end up back on my feet.

Without even looking, I jumped back and checked for a blow to the head.

I managed to mostly block off her follow up blow, but my arms went numb from the shock.

Being a support, she didn’t have any extremely specialized fighting styles; however, she was still extremely crafty.

I have to be extremely careful, since she has the strength advantage, if she were to get me into a submission hold, it would be game.

The only reason I’m even good at martial arts is because throughout my early life, I had wandered the world with my good friend Kyle and we roofied martial arts masters from the four corners of the earth. Well, if a sphere can have corners anyways.

While they were out, we would connect the memory logger and take their memories. Some allowed us to copy off memories for other memories, but the vast majority needed coercing. Sleep-coercing.

We managed to get all kinds of experts! For instance, for the close combat mastery, we interviewed prison felons, MMA masters, karate black belts, 11th dan judo kiddos, dragon warriors, hitmen etc.

All we had to do was either get them to cooperate or roofie them, then copy off their memories and use AI: EVE to cut out all the useless parts like their emotions, sentimental attachments and all that mushy gushy stuff.

I couldn’t have done it without Kyle… I mean, he had the most ingenious ways of smuggling rohypnol and carrying out all these extractions.

For instance, there was this Dough-joe in Japan where they have this weird sword fighting style called Can-Dough. This lady refused to let us put a large black webby device on her head so we came back around midnight, pumped sleeping gas into her AC, melted her door handle off and then copied her memories. I still don’t know where he gets sleeping gas, thermite, guns or Tasers in practically every country.

Yep, without my muscle memory augments, I would have to spend unrealistic amounts of time just to learn all the movements.

With practiced efficiency, I a feigned an all-in, but instead, stepped back to execute a spinning hook kick.

I personally liked this combo because of how quickly you could execute the surprise kick.

The kick, as expected, caught her off guard and dazed her.

I didn’t let the opportunity slip. Fate forsakes those who let opportunities slip.

I was about to finish it with an uppercut to the jaw, but her hand shot out suddenly and caught my arm. Again.

God dammit, we spar too much. She can predict what I’ll do and catch me twice in a match? Getting caught is my least favorite thing to do.

Her dazed expression had been replaced by the cold smile of a predator.

“That’s not good.”

Inspire has knocked out Apex, Red team victory!

-

“Hah…. Crafty little thing,” I muttered while smiling at her after we took off our Neurogear.

“That was fun! Let’s do that again sometime.”

“Ahgred,” I replied as I took a bite out of a mozzarella cheese stick.

By now, I was relatively certain this was a dream. I mean, my AI doesn’t respond, the order of events makes no sense. Why would Charlotte only bring up my proposal at the end of the day? Why don’t I remember the event? Why do I remember doing the problems at the lab?

“Emergency Command, run Advanced Diagnostics.”

The emergency command series were commands that used a backup mechanism to ensure that emergency procedures could be executed in the AI- networked devices in my body even with partial or complete loss of the brain.

「Error: Bridge device failed to respond to ICMP request.」

「Bridge has rebooted.」

「Error: Information received from brain severely corrupted. Recovery of received information is impossible.」

「12 known hallucinogens detected in bloodstream.」

Huh?

Hallucinogen?

It must have been the berries, I thought, remembering back to the bushes laden with the red fruit.

Certainly not the best choice I’ve ever made.

「Toxin levels have dropped below 1% fatal levels, complete brain reboot is possible.」

I should probably wake up before I get skewered by something.

“Emergency Command, begin the restart sequence.”

My mind went blank for a second.

「Emergency reboot complete. Hallucinogen concentration estimated 0.8% of fatal concentration. (1522) attempts to suppress effects: 1522 Failures. Down time estimated at approximately 6 hours.」

Without warning, a very loud familiar voice shouted into my head, “As stated in your contract, Section II, part B, your capture and status as a slave is grounds for termination of the contract. As per Section IV, I have evoked the failure clause and you have been sold to Fast-████. Further information on this status will be sent to you at a later time. You have been permanently excommunicated from the Chickenlord Church. This is non-negotiable and irreversible. I wish you a horrible day and an even worse life, Sincerely, the Chickenlord’s attorney.

P.S. You have the record for the quickest failure. Ever.”

Huh? The fuck? You underestimate my escape skills.

Without warning, another voice appeared in my head, “Hello Steele Johnson, this is Daisy, a representative of Fast-████. You have been sold to Fast-████ for a total of 818 ████. Thus, in accordance with our code of operations, you will gain your freedom upon sacrificing 1636 ████’s worth of life force. In your current location, that is worth exactly 103 human lives. Killing 103 humans or obtaining an equivalent amount of life force will suffice. You will not gain EXP from absorbed life force while you have not paid your loan. I wish you luck on the battlefield.”

Huh? A human’s life force is only worth 12 ████s?! ████s must be worth a lot! Either that or there’s a large deduction off the cost for greater profit margins.

But still, I’m worth 103 humans?

A hundred error messages scrolled past as Aipers tried to reconstruct my memory.

Looking around, I noticed that I was captured exactly as the Chickenlord’s attorney had claimed.

Gods have attorneys. The more you know.

It didn’t really shock or surprise me, considering I had already expected something along the lines of this.

I appeared to be in some kind of dull gray metal cage which shook violently as it traversed slowly over a decrepit dirt road.

Around me, people with light metallic armor and assorted weapons walked alongside the cage. I looked around and counted fourteen of them.

Two horses were up front pulling the contraption and two of the people seemed to be talking in a foreign language. Go figure, people in a different world don’t speak English.

“Not much chance to escape even if I did make it out of the cage.” I sighed. Who even walks around with a cage randomly lying around? How did this happen?

My hands were bound in front of me in leather handcuffs and there seemed to be some kind of collar around my neck. As much as I’d like to stay for the kinky stuff, I hope I get to leave soon.

Exactly as I expected, my shanks were gone. In fact, I seem to be left with nothing but my mind.

I tried to stand up, but I found that I couldn’t. My legs were bound to rings at the bottom of the cart.

This has to be overkill...

I examined the lock in front of me to pass the time, but much to my surprise, it was just some metal bars with a lock on it. The existence of only one lock surprised me. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were two or more, really.

The lock seemed rather rudimentary, but I lacked materials of any sort to pick it. Not that it would have helped to have something. I’d probably just get skewered if I tried to escape.

I looked around and examined the faces of my captors. All I found was weariness and apathy. Nothing I say would probably guilt trip them. They probably wouldn’t respond to sobbing at all.

I laid down and contemplated the meaning of life.

What is the meaning of my life? Probably to participate in an experiment or something and then to die. The objective of me living is to die. Huh.

Well, I’m not afraid of death. I’ve already died. This world means nothing to me.

After all, the only thing that mattered was my past life, but Charlotte was gone. Not because she had died, but rather because I had.

Lady luck had given me the middle finger. Nothing I could have done about it.

Actually, I could have worn a Class-IV armor plate.

In a world with 0.1 homicides per 100 000, I had found a way to get killed.

There was definitely a hole in my heart, knowing that I’d never see her again, but at least she was okay. There was no way in hell the last few terrorists would have found a way to kill her. I can worry about that later though; I need to find a way out of this predicament first.

Can I even escape this? What would I do if I could?

I would only be able to survive. I don’t really have any goals to speak of.

Surviving is kinda hard actually as well, considering I don’t speak their language or know their customs. This is the part where I magically get some kind of way to speak with the local population, right? RIGHT? Some magic amulet or ring that lets me speak and write the language or something? Pfft, as if.

Wait, maybe I can relax as a slave… I mean, the conditions would need to be set up and adjusted, but in the end, I should theoretically have at least a chance of success.

Even if I did escape, I don’t know the way back to the dungeon...

A small growl escaped my stomach.

Looks like I’m hungry again. It was hunger that got me into this mess in the first place…

I hit my palm on the floor of the cart repeatedly and pointed at my mouth.

A guy to my side said something angrily and whacked the cage with his spear.

A few of them rolled their eyes and continued walking.

Looks like I’m not getting food.

Well, fuck you too.

I laid down again and tried to take a nap. Unfortunately, we had already entered a city and the loud clamor of people around me and the rude bumping of the cart repeatedly woke me up.

The activities around me were exactly what you would expect from a rural urban district. Crystals and glass balls exchanged hands with multi-colored coins. Weird robed people chanted and sang to fields and children. A man seemed to be selling sticks. Ya know, all the normal stuff.

The cart drew quite a lot of attention from the people around.

A young girl pulled an older woman’s skirt and said what sounded like, “mah mah, ridgis pedeh mix shin alvie smin,” before pointing at me.

People have done studies in the past about different languages on Earth. They found that children will usually refer to their maternal units as some kind of soft consonant followed by, usually the ‘ah’ or something to that effect. Someone told me this, but I can’t really remember where.

Thus, I can conclude that the girl was holding onto likely a mother, aunt or something along those lines.

I can certainly make these dickheads who captured me have a miserable time. I’ve also got nothing better to do…

「You want to create enmity between the townsfolk and your capturers? 」 Aipers asked.

Yep. It’ll be fun! Plus, I’ve got nothing to lose.

In an extremely short time, I had a plan of attack. Not all battles are won with physical strength.

Within seconds, I was sniffling and gently sobbing.

A fat tear rolled down my cheek, compliments of Aipers.

A few more of the villagers started looking in my direction.

I didn’t know their entire language, but I didn’t need to. I had one word.

With a raptor screech carrying the power of a thousand suns, I howled to the wind in a choked back cry.

“Maaah Mahhh” I cried.

Inwardly, I was holding back a laugh at my performance.

Almost every eye in the street stared in surprise at my raptor screech.

I coughed violently, intentionally ‘accidentally’ spraying my spit all over the escort with the spear.

Immediately, his expression of annoyance turned to confusion and then rage.

I could barely suppress my glee at succeeding in my provocation.

He flipped his spear and slammed it into my head with the butt of the weapon, while yelling some form of insult.

Aipers reduced the pain to 12%, so it barely hurt.

Taking the momentum from the blow, I slammed my face into the ground on the other side as naturally as I could.

I heard a sickening crunch as my nose broke.

Simultaneously, I bit my tongue, causing blood to flow into my mouth.

Immediately, I fell into a coughing ‘fit’ while half crying.

Blood particles and spit flew everywhere. I was half aware of blood running down my nose and covering half my face.

As I continued my desperate cries, I found that the onlooker’s expressions had turned from apathy to utter disdain and disgust.

Uncomfortable from the pressure of the crowds, a few of the escorts brandished their weapons.

The angry spear-wielder hit me with the butt of his weapon again. I cut my cry off short and pretended to fall down, losing consciousness.

From my vantage point, I observed a woman with a child run up in front of the caravan and publicly scold them.

The group, sensing the immediate danger from the crowds around them, didn’t dare make a move against her.

The people in the crowd seemed to begin spitting and throwing rocks at the escorts.

Clearly there was quite a bit of enmity before I even got here. For this to escalate at this speed, the townies and my escorts must be opposing factions or something.

Minutes later, the town guard arrived and the townspeople were herded out of the area.

One of my escorts were interrogated and threatened by a few of the guards before he took out a few gold coins and handed them to a large burly man spearheading the guards.

The man harrumphed and the guards made their exit.

Slowly, we advanced again.

As we went deeper into the city, stone buildings started appearing at some point. The road got smoother too. Although it was still only a cobblestone road, it was better than the dirt road before.

Eventually, we reached a large building. The cage was opened, and my ‘unconscious body’ was carried into the building.

Inside, there seemed to be an argument between one of my captives and a sorta big, but mostly medium sized guy with a mullet and a large stache.

After a while of bickering, they seemed to make up and shake hands. A small sack was handed to my black haired captive before he nodded with satisfaction and left with my other captors.

I was handed to a bear of a man who picked me up with one hand and brought me up a flight of stairs and through a dirty hallway.

I was dropped into a room with around twenty bored children about my age. They all looked pretty clean, but the floor was pretty nasty. Bits of garbage and other assorted worthless shit were strewn along the ground.

As soon as the man left, everyone seemed to approach me in a wave.

Someone poked my ears.

I rate this hotel zero stars.