A failure.
That's all she was and will ever be.
Walking a path of not even loneliness... Or if this is loneliness she can't tell.
The failure of one of the greatest geniuses known in the universe.
The worst failure that could ever be born.
The incom...
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(I changed a bit how this little critter looks, I wasn't gonna draw it but my mind could not let me pass it up. It will not be brought up unless asked in the story with is really unlikely but the little lotus flower jewel on the little critter was given to it by Nihl.)
Hmm...
...
Well this is less then ideal.
Nihl typed away at the screen, the small purple critter having scooted up her literal back to sit on her shoulder... She still doesn't understand how it is more elastic and sticky then the rest, much less why it is so small compared to the others but logic couldn't answer her question so she dropped it.
The blue glow of the screen filling the dim room with a flickering light.
"Meow?" The little one eyed critter said, looking at her.
She tapped on the portable screen, drumming her finger on it before entering a backup coding system.
She listened to the the buzzing of machines coming alive around the chamber, looking at the mechanical arms unfold towards the sphere that was glowing orange compared to the blue creature in, rolled up in slumber in a thick liquid.
Watching the arms connect in their sockets before she touched the switches on the screen and flipped them on.
"This clone of the emanator of propagation has been stable for a long while." She simply explained to the little critter, watching a burst of ink black liquid be blasted into the viscous liquid. "Seems that despite being a creation at the hand of a human, being the copy of the real thing makes the results faulty... Even now, I'd be unable to say how soon before the safeguards fail and we need to deal with another swarm disaster... Last was bothersome enough already."
The little critter jumped off, bouncing like a dog toy and towards the suspended orb of goop and creation.
"I wouldn't do that." Catching it by the tail and lifting it eye level. "I can never tell if you are stupidly brave or just stupid. A critter like you should not near it, even I shouldn't, it could sense our presence and instead of just stirring, actually wake up."
Nihl carried the little cat-cake out of the room with a sigh.
She looked over her shoulder, this thing just reminding her of how much of a failure she is... She was meant to be a normal person, it was meant to be the emanator... So why was she the one shrouded in the powers of the path? One she never got to chose.
"Life is meaningless." She muttered.
A cold chill hit through her for a moment but inlike most, it didn't change. Ix only cast their gaze upon someone uttering similar feelings and would either turn them into fanatic with the dream of showing the aoen that life is not meaningless.
...
Or make then self-annihilators, their bodies themselves losing the will to live, all affected differently but becoming shrouded in nihility.
...
And yet.
The little feelings she could conjure up inside her opposed the idea plainly.
Even self-annihilators are more human then she'll ever be.
But she is not pure enough to be an emanator, she is not void of all and everything, there is still something in her, broken beyond repair but still there, keeping her away from that step... Yet another failure.
Plap.
She looked ahead, the little dessert cat's paw stuck to her cheek.
"Are you sure you are not a piece chewing-gum? You are way too elastic and sticky." She muttered, walking on and leaving the incubation chamber. "I'll need to feed you hardening agents."
"Meow!"
"Don't complain."
------------------------------------------
"Hmm... That's worrisome but I assume you have it under control?"
Nihl hadn't told Herta the truth, as logical as it would have been, she was still loyal and her creator didn't want them to know of this. She had just made up a story about the fragmentum corrosion being more sever in the lower levels and it would be unsafe to try to reopen the subsection.
"Of course, like I have until now."
"We'll keep that section quarantined and you'll deal with it?"
"The critters are there, they might be failed experiments but they are still data and information."
"True... Hmm, fine, I'll permanently seal off the area with only the members of the genius society and you having access to it as I do pay you to be a guard."
"You don't pay me." But she was already gone, having lost interest in this all.
Nihl gave a soft sigh before looking at the weird machine.
Can she just stop disappointing one of these days? Being who she was made her a good test dummy... If it wasn't for the simulated universe always crashing when Herta wanted to try it with her, no matter how many changes she made to it.
She found a newer toy to play with anyway, this Stelle...
The first time Nihl had seen her it was almost the last... Lacking feelings and many of her senses came with others taking over.
Her sense of touch was beyond human, feeling familiar buzzing in her flesh, itching at her skin... The unmistakable pulses of energy from a stelleron that no one should feel but she lacked so much that the sense that compensated did.
It took a threat from Welt's cane and Herta's demand for her to leg the walking stelleron go off, alive, with the express.
And Herta was... Using her now for experiment when she'd use a space anchor to visit.
