Chapter 3:

The Safe Word is Banana

[ATTENTION! A new Minor Power has been born! Libro of Terra, the Intelligence of Knowledge, may now be taken as a Patron by [Witches] and [Warlocks]. Seek him out in The Core to earn his patronage!]

[ATTENTION! Libro of Terra, Intelligence of Knowledge, has appointed his Champion! Glory to the [Warlock] Elias Ayala, Champion of Knowledge, serve your patron well!]

When Adi woke, only the flickering of the still-warm hearth greeted her. She didn't feel any different as she sat up. At least she wasn't sore from laying on the brick, but she guessed the evolutionary process must negate stuff like that. What was that message about? She guessed she'd better remember the name Elias Ayala.

"Eurias?" she called, sitting up. Withering flowers fell from her head, falling everywhere. She ran her hands through her braids, shaking out the remaining petals. "Eurias, did you put stuff in my hair?"

No response. Where had he even gotten the flowers? Had he gone outside? That seemed unlike him.

She got up, walking around looking for any sign of the deer man. She noticed the cuts on her arms had formed into silvery scars. Maybe evolution had healed them?

There was a whole thing of squirrel meat still on the bench nearby. He either hadn't eaten, or he'd been missing for a whole day. She broke the thing in two and gnawed on the now-stale meat.

She poked her head outside. The forest was suspiciously peaceful. "Eurias?" she called.

Standing in the middle of the cathedral-like sanctuary, Adi chewed on the meat in thought. There was another entity that could answer her question as to where the serthyen had gone.

"Hey, uh, System?" Adi said, sort of towards the ceiling. "Where's Eurias?"

A dialog appeared in front of her at chest level, black and floating. [Enter puzzle room? Y/N]

Adi narrowed her eyes at it. "Can I have information on this 'puzzle room?'"

Another box appeared beside the first. [PUZZLE ROOM: An extra-dimensional chamber with a series of increasingly difficult challenges. Upon completion of the challenges, or the safe word is communicated, the user(s)'s performance is evaluated and rewarded accordingly.]

"Does he not know the safe word?" Adi said. "This seems flawed."

The information was replaced: [The safe word is 'banana.']

Adi sighed. "Okay, thanks."

With a click of the button, Adi found herself in a different place—the puzzle room, presumably. It was cubic, gray, and unremarkable. Eurias was laying face-down on the ground, motionless. She hurried over to him, kneeling down to try and activate his options panel to see if there was any Field Aid she could administer.

He groaned, head rolling slightly as he peered at her with a golden eye, a single ear angling up. "Adi? Oh noooo, no you can't be here, now we're both stuck."

"No we're not," she said in exasperation. "Unlike you, I got the password."

Eurias pushed himself up in excitement. "You have the safe word?"

"Just so you know, if you say that to any human, they're going to think you're into bondage," Adi said.

"Bondage?"

"Uhh, never mind. What challenge did you get stuck on?"

[Challenge 2: What has a face and hands but no arms or legs?]

"You mean... a clock?" Adi answered.

[Correct. Advance to Challenge 3?]

"What?" Eurias said indignantly. "Clocks have dials and gauges, not body parts!"

"Maybe it's based on Earth terminology."

"That's so unfair," he complained.

"Yeah, yeah, come on. Banana."

The two of them reappeared in the sanctuary.

[Gained one free Skill Rank for completing 1 Puzzle Room challenge. Congratulations!]

"Ah, another rank to allocate," Adi said, opening up her Skill options menu. "Looks like I've got seven free."

"What's the point in letting them accumulate?" He flopped down next to the hearth.

"I just didn't know there were so many."

"Stat ranks come the first level and every even level," Eurias said, finding the last of the squirrel meat and chewing on it. "And a stat point every third level."

"So I have three stat points." She ended up putting four ranks into survival and three to scavenging. For her stats, she put two points into Strength and one into Constitution.

She glanced over to Eurias, who had laid down with his head on his arms. He was usually a lot more chatty, wasn't he? "You doing okay?"

"My head hurts," he mumbled, eyes closed. "And my stomach."

Adi came over to squeeze his shoulder. "I'll go find something to eat. I'll try to be back soon."

"Mmm."

It felt like she was missing something as she headed for the door. But she had no purse, keys, or jacket to grab—not even shoes to put on. She looked down at her bare feet, then over to Eurias' robes.

Later, she thought, pulling on the door.

It wouldn't open.

Adi frowned to herself, pushing on it instead. "Hey, Eurias? Are sanctuary doors supposed to lock?"

"Lock?" he said, rubbing an eye as he pushed himself up a little. "Are you sure you're not just—"

A grinding noise in the middle of the room startled both of them. A hole was opening in the floor.

"What in the..." Adi started, creeping closer to the hole. A staircase led downwards into darkness. "Riiiight, that's not sus at all. 'I have a lovely vintage of wine for you to try,' said the System. 'Right down here in my basement, come along.'"

Eurias' eyes lit up as he swung his legs down. "Do you suppose so?!"

"The man in that story was murdered."

His ears fell. "Oh. What a terrible story."

"Have you ever seen a sanctuary do this? Lock the doors and then open up a death basement?"

"It's not a death basement. No harm can come to you in a sanctuary."

"'Sanctuary safeguards disabled' ring a bell?" she said in exasperation, trying to make out anything down below. She wanted to make a quip about holodeck safeties, but he couldn't appreciate it.

The serthyen grumbled in his throat, lying back down and holding a hand to his head. "If we can't get out, the only option is to see what's down there."

Though obvious, the statement seemed surprisingly astute for Eurias, especially with him feeling so crummy. "You wanna come?"

Flicking his ears, Eurias gave a sound of disinterest. Adi took that as a no. She stared downward, then cast about for anything that would work as a weapon. If she got a rock or something, she could probably tear a sleeve off her shirt and use it as a soap-in-a-sock type weapon.

But there was no loose and heavy item to be found in the Sanctuary. How the idea had even occurred to her, she wasn't sure—but she stored it away for later use. It would have come in handy yesterday—er, a few days ago, she reminded herself.

"If I don't..." Adi started, intending to say 'if I don't come back,' but Eurias raising his golden doe eyes, his ears still drooped, made her falter. Her heart twisted. She had to take care of him—not coming back wasn't an option.

"Goddamn [Noble Aura]," she muttered to herself, irritated by the servile urges the serthyen elicited with his mere presence. She was going to help him anyways! Compulsion was unnecessary. If there was anything more she could do to improve their situation, she would already be doing it.

But she couldn't leave him without advice. "Get the rag wet and put it on your neck. Drink some more water."

Eurias' ears flickered backwards. Reluctantly, he said, "Very well."

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

Before something could stop her again, she started down the steps into the murder basement. The stairs had no railing to hold onto, so Adi trailed her hand along the wall as she went.

When she was about twenty steps down and now feeling out each step, a grinding noise from above startled her. Almost tripping, her heart jumped into her throat. She pressed against the wall, looking upwards. The light rapidly disappeared, leaving her in darkness.

"Very funny!" she said, still against the wall, afraid of falling to her doom. "Are you going to tell me what you're up to, System?"

Some kind of lighting flickered on, like LEDs in a garage or box store. But the hum of electricity didn't accompany it, only a faint sensation of power in her chest that Adi had never experienced.

Before Adi was a concrete room with little furnishing, save for counters that outlined the perimeter and two chairs. On the floor and ceiling sprawled white lines of varying widths in complex patterns with a few distinct circles here and there. In the center of each circle were huge gemstones, cut to be even with the floor. Smaller stones glittered here and there at intersections of lines. Thick lines ran up onto the counters.

The walls were bare. The counters were littered with spreads of gemstones, reminiscent of buttons.

Adi slowly stepped down the remaining stairs. It didn't appear to be a murder basement, but she was still leery. "And this is?"

[CORE PROCESSING UNIT 1138.] It sounded... different. Less organic, more forceful.

"Core processing..." Was she outside the sanctuary boundaries? Hadn't it mentioned something about that before? When it had threatened her. Maybe "core processes" were primary over the sanctuary. That would explain how it had disabled the safeguards when Eurias claimed it impossible. "Why am I here?"

[UNIT BASIC USER ADELINE CHANTREA KRAMER MEETS PREREQUISITES.]

"God, just call me Adi," she muttered, mostly to herself. She reached for a gemstone on the counter nearest her.

[UNIT PREFERENCES IRRELEVANT.]

"I wasn't—ow!" She shook her hand at a shock from the gemstone. Adi rolled her eyes, pulling the chair out from beneath the counter and sitting down. "Prerequisites for what?"

[RESTORATION OF SYSTEM FUNCTIONS.]

Adi processed that, spinning on the chair, then narrowed her eyes. The System was broken? Remembering the beginning of all of this, she realized that would explain the glitchy tutorial.

"That sounds like a pretty big deal," she said nonchalantly. "What if I don't want to do that?"

[REFUSAL ENDS IN TERMINATION OF UNIT.]

If she could roll her eyes any harder, Adi would. "Hey, dick, how about throwing in an incentive? Like, I don't know, sending me and every other human back home might do the trick."

[REQUEST IMPOSSIBLE.]

"Look, it's not our fault you're messed up. You—" She paused. "Define 'impossible.'"

[INSUFFICIENT ENERGY. ESTIMATED TIME TO PERFORM REQUEST: ONE MILLION YEARS. UNIT PROJECTED TO SELF-TERMINATE BEFORE TIME ELAPSED.]

Adi shot up to her feet. "What the hell? You brought us here without being able to send us back?!"

[ACQUISITION OF ADMINISTRATIVE CANDIDATES WAS NECESSARY.]

"Oh, I see! Humans were extinct here so you thought you'd just go out and grab yourself some new ones!" she yelled. "People aren't fucking takeout, you monster! You can't do that!"

[ETHICAL SUBROUTINES OFFLINE.]

"You've still got shit for brains! Everyone who finds out about this is going to want you destroyed!"

[TERMINATION OF SYSTEM IS ILLOGICAL.]

"No one is gonna care, Spock!" A computer of this size, this caliber should be able to understand, logic or no.

But it was broken, after all.

Adi massaged her temples, taking in deep breaths. The system was silent, perhaps unsure how to respond. The quiet gave her a necessary reprieve to organize her thoughts.

How many are left? she wanted to know, but also dreaded asking. She'd nearly died three times in her first hour. Eurias had said humanity had been around for weeks. However many were left, it wasn't enough.

"If your stuff is repaired, can you send us back sooner?" Adi found herself asking.

[ADDITIONAL PROCESSING UNITS AND POWER WILL DECREASE NECESSARY TIME TO PERFORM INCURSIONS.]

How long before it didn't matter? Was anyone she knew still alive? Her parents, her friends, her dog, her coworkers?

Adi sat down, head heavy. She held it in her hands. Her chest tightened. It had been easy to ignore everything before, with crabs and squirrels and game mechanics to figure out; she hadn't had time or energy to think. Despair crowded her mind. Everything had been taken from her in an instant.

Spite rose within her; she wanted to hurt the thing that had done this. She wanted to break these gemstones, scratch out the lines, destroy it.

But it was a machine. Vengeance was pointless, unless it prevented further suffering. This was Processing Unit a thousand-something. Tracking all those down and breaking them apart would be practically impossible with her resources, most of which had been provided by the System itself.

If everything wasn't so screwedup, it would be amazing. Controlled evolution was a biologist's wet dream. System-assisted Skills would allow anyone to do anything they wanted, master any career, make incredible inventions. [Comprehend Languages] overcame language barriers; the cultural exchange of ideas would fly between species.

"What was the original purpose of the System?" Adi asked.

[THE SYSTEM'S PRIMARY DIRECTIVE IS TO FOSTER INTELLIGENT LIFE.]

"Haven't you fulfilled your purpose?"

[END SUBROUTINES HAVE NOT BEEN TRIGGERED BY ADMINISTRATIVE USERS.]

"Right," she said. "How did humans go extinct here?"

[EXTERNAL INFLUENCES.]

"That's... very informative." Ending the System was probably as much effort as fixing it and then triggering the end subroutines. She thought of Eurias up above, suffering from hunger, and pushed aside her grief and anger. Focus on what you can do. "What exactly do you need fixed?"

[COMMUNICATION LINKS REQUIRED. SUBROUTINE MAINTENANCE REQUIRED. NEW PROCESSORS REQUIRED. EXISTING PROCESSORS REQUIRE SERVICING. ADMINISTRATIVE USERS REQUIRED.]

She wiped her eyes again. "If I'm going to do this, I want both me and Eurias to get [Magical] with five stat points to mana, and a spellbook or whatever it takes to teach us how to effectively use magic for offense and defense. In addition, I need a way to find and service existing processors."

[PARAMETERS OUT OF BOUNDS. THREE ADDITIONAL POINTS CAN BE ALLOCATED TO EACH UNIT'S STATS AT THIS TIME.]

"Fine, three stat points to mana each," she said. "But in exchange for the other points I want some basic survival and first-aid gear. A knife, rope, needle and thread, antiseptic shit, emergency blankets, a reusable fire starter. And uhh, shoes for me. Boots that fit. Sturdy boots. Also soap and other hygiene shit. And a few days of rations, so we don't die from starvation right off the bat. Oh—a canteen for water. Two canteens. Annnnd..."

She paused, twirling once on the chair as she thought. "And a bag big enough for all that stuff, one that I can carry on my shoulders. You should also make this stuff high quality, masterwork and magical type of shit, considering. You don't want your precious administrator-to-be dying in her first week."

[PARAMETERS ACCEPTABLE. AGREE TO TERMS?]

Adi looked over the presented dialog, scrolling carefully through the list. Dealing with an ethics-less supercomputer might be like dealing with a djinn. It wasn't quite so—emotionless meant it wasn't vindictive like a supernatural creature chained to a bottle might be. With a few clarifications to the agreement and to her items, adjustments, and small additions, she agreed. She was almost certain Eurias would also agree to the alteration, given how jealous he had appeared at her potential ability to access mana.

Lying down on the floor, she triggered her evolution.

***

"Adi?" Eurias' voice called from the hole in the floor.

"I've got food down here," she called, arranging a small meal on the counter already. It took no more prompting to lure the serthyen down the stairs, the clip-clopping of his hooves echoing to the other end of the chamber. She rolled over to the other chair and pulled it out for him.

"I presume you had something to do with my irregular evolution?" Eurias asked as he drew near. She held out a chunk of soft bread. He eagerly accepted.

"Sure did." Adi caught him up to speed on what the System wanted from her while they munched on a veritable feast. She wasn't sure how much attention he was paying, as he appeared to be dying of delight. He informed Adi at least twice how much better this meal was compared to the squirrel meat.

"So I've got to figure out if there's any repairs I can do here before we move on," Adi finished.

Eurias' ears, which had been attentive and level for the conversation, flickered back suddenly. "Oh. I suppose we would have to move to get to other processing units..." It was obvious he didn't like the idea of leaving this haven.

Adi had to fight not to wince under his disappointment. "We have weapons and magic now," she said, reaching into her bag of stuff to get the spell textbook. It was denser than expected.

The serthyen's eyes lit up at the sight of the book, ears perking. He may have been restraining himself from making grabby hands at it before Adi thumped it in front of him.

"Everyone's going to be so jealous," he said, almost vibrating. "I'm [Magical]! Wait until I tell mother--"

This time, Adi did wince when his ears dropped, his hand stilling on the cover. She patted him on the shoulder. "Once we get you home, I'm sure she'll be proud of you."

"I'll at least surprise her, which is more than I usually can do," he moped.

"Why don't you start reading that while I take a look around?" she suggested.

Eurias' thoughts of home couldn't totally dampen his excitement, and his ears perked up once more as he opened the book up.

Adi glanced to him before rolling away. Why did she infer she could get him home? Just surviving this world and the System's quest was going to be difficult enough.