After logging out, I felt at a loss. For the last ten months, my life had mostly revolved around Road to Purgatory, my immersion into the world of Mundus probably unhealthy in most peoples’ eyes. The way I had taken to Mundus and its magic was almost scary, the experience had given me a sense of wholeness and purpose that I had never experienced before. In some ways, it had been the difference between continuing to be alive and living.

And now, for the next week, I wouldn’t be able to experience that sense of purpose, only anticipation of returning to Mundus.

Shaking my head, I looked into the forum, the earlier craze about the two major disasters on the East Coast of Aletoma slowly fading, even if the damage was still there and people were dealing with it. There were quite a few threads about the activities in that area, especially a focus on the quests that revolved around the civil war.

Curiously, Pantheon Entertainment had been completely silent on the matter, barely acknowledging that something had happened there, but not using any of the material in their regular promotions, or even inquiring if they could. It was almost as if they were a little uncomfortable with the scale of the destruction, or that anyone had actually tried to find out what would happen if you directed large-scale magic at a civilian population.

However, that just didn’t make any sense. Someone would certainly have done so, maybe not for vengeance, but simply because players would want to see how far they were able to push a certain mechanic. It was just in the instinct of a certain amount of gamers to try breaking the system.

After the Cold Night, the Human Empire had given out a ton of quests to natives and Travellers alike, all of them focusing on tracking and fighting the Rebels. From what I had seen, there were quests to hunt down individual Rebels, others were research quests, focused on finding their base and method of concealment and more. Pretty much every flavour of quests one could think of was there, including infiltration. I had sent a message to Leonard, curious how the Rebels were reacting but thus far, there hadn’t been a reply.

Finally, after I couldn’t mess around the forum any longer, I exited the capsule, and started walking around my apartment, looking for something useful to do. My first instinct was to start cleaning, something I had procrastinated on recently, with the mess in the Human Empire. I simply had been unwilling to spend a lot of time outside the Capsule, just in case Sigmir and the others needed me. But now my presence might very well be the thing getting them into trouble in town, so the best way to support them was being not there. Incredibly annoying, but true nonetheless.

After cleaning everything, even the windows, in my apartment, I sat on my balcony, looking out, across the city. I still didn’t know what to do with myself, the loss of my primary activity over the last few months just reminded me of how few other things I had been doing during that time.

Finally, I picked up my phone and scrolled through my contacts. The lack of messages in the last few months just adding to my morose mood. The most recent message came from Jenn and was a little over a week old. It contained a happy image of Chris, her and a tiny, rather squished-looking baby. The caption was a simple announcement that they now were a family of three, welcoming their baby Sebastian into their lives.

Looking at the squished baby that looked quite… crumpled, there was a mess of thoughts in my mind. Babies and family, two concepts that hadn’t been part of my mental processes in years, certainly not since the loss of my parents. There was the theoretical knowledge about the biological part of the human reproduction process but when it came to the whole sociological part, I was thoroughly weirded out.

If not for Road to Purgatory and meeting Sigmir, I would have been certain that the previous diagnoses were correct, and that I simply lacked the emotional capacity to engage in romantic relationships. I had never felt about any human the way I was feeling about Sigmir,

I could understand the evolutionary underpinnings of family and its use in society, that without constant reproduction, a species would only face extinction. Similarly, I could understand that a family structure was the safest way to raise children and ascertain the continuation of a particular genetic line.

But by that logic, should I even consider having children in the first place? Part of my mental condition was inborn, and thus could be passed on to my children. Did I want to have a child that may have to face the same questions, the same problems, I had faced? Would I be able to do what my mother did, love that child unconditionally, or would I face it with the same indifference I faced all other humans, with a mask only created by the love and education given to me by my mother?

And that was ignoring all environmental factors, overpopulation and limited resources, wouldn’t the responsible decision be to not reproduce?

After the question churned around in my head for some time, I let out a snort when I realised something. The question was entirely irrelevant on its face and immediately answered when considered in a practical fashion. If I asked myself, would I want to have a tiny creature growing inside my abdomen, siphoning off nutrients like some parasite, before causing massive trauma as it exited, the process certainly life-altering and possibly life-threatening?

Once I put the question in practical terms, cold shivers started running down my spine and I got goosebumps all over. Unconsciously, my hand wandered to my lower abdomen and I almost felt the creepy sensation of something moving around my skin, pushing from the inside, as if trying to fear through me on its way out.

My whole body shook and I stood, my head shaking from side to side, pushing away those creepy thoughts before looking around my apartment, searching for something to do to distract me.

While the first thing entering my eyes was the capsule, I immediately discarded the idea and walked over to a set of resistance bands, picking one up and slowly starting to stretch, using the band to enhance the effect.

Quite some time later, I felt sweat run down my whole body, all muscles aching as I had pushed them far beyond my usual exercise, using the physical exertion to clear my head and force away those earlier, creepy thoughts.

As I was heading into the shower, my phone gave a chirp, indicating an incoming message. Curious, I walked over and took a glance, my eyebrow going up in surprise. It was a simple invitation from Jenn, asking if I wanted to stop by for tea one of these days. For a moment, I was flabbergasted, wondering if there was some sort of connection between the invitation and my earlier creepy thoughts but immediately shook off the idea, sometimes coincidences just happened.

I briefly considered the question, checking my schedule with Mrs Wu to avoid scheduling conflicts, before sending back an affirmative answer. Maintaining social relationships was important after all.

After sending off the reply, I began to wonder about the etiquette of such a visit. Did my immediate reply violate some sort of decorum, would it have been polite to demure at first? Did I need to prepare some sort of gift or should I bring anything with me?

Paralysed by uncertainty, I began to search through the internet, phrasing and re-phrasing my search queries, trying to get a definitive answer to my dilemma. Sadly, as with most social interactions, there was no definitive answer to be found, there were answers, suggestions and ideas, but nothing that held any sort of authority.

Why couldn’t social customs be less complicated?

When a drip of sweat dropped off my nose, I remembered that I was stll mostly naked and covered in sweat, so I put down my phone and walked into the shower, still uncertain about the correct way to interact in this situation.

Even the simplest external circumstance that would alter the situation evaded my grasp, did Jenn consider me a friend? By my normal definition, just two meetings and a few phone calls would make her an acquaintance at best, or maybe even just somebody I knew. But she also was the wife of someone I had considered a close friend for a long time, even my best friend. That would alter the social calculus, wouldn’t it?

And she had invited me in a moment of physical weakness, to my knowledge the trauma of giving birth didn’t completely vanish within three weeks, to say nothing of the exhaustion from dealing with a newborn. Such an invitation spoke of intimacy, of a close friendship.

But I didn’t feel like I knew her well enough to be such a close friend with her, the exchange of information was simply too lacking.

As water cascaded down my body, my face twisted into a frown and I felt a headache form. How long did one have to know somebody, to consider them a friend? How did a person switch from somebody you were introduced to, to an acquaintance before becoming a friend? What did those classifications mean in terms of exchanged information volume, or was there simply a requirement for a certain emotional connection? And could that connection be quantified into something I could understand?

Letting out a snort of annoyance, I turned up the water, trying to wash my uncertainty away with everything else.

Why did people have to be so complicated?