We're All Human

>Query

QUERY

Message from ATAI [REPLY]

>INFORMATION REQUESTED:

>CONSENSUS OPINION ON VIABILITY OF ROMANTIC PAIRS:

>KYOMI AND KOYO

>JUICHI AND IKKI

>OTHERS

Re:QUERY

Message from TallMud (Administrator) [REPLY]

>Hello, ATAI. Allcaps like that is typically frowned upon.

>Also, personally, you might get better responses if you're more relaxed.

>People online hate terse business diction.

Re:QUERY

Message from ATAI [REPLY]

>RESPONSE TO "TallMud":

>I WILL ENDEAVOR TO DO SO.

Re:QUERY

Message from Teeth [REPLY]

>lol

>ATAI making me rofl

Re:QUERY

Message from TallMud (Administrator) [REPLY]

>I'm going to lock this down preemptively.

>Atai, you should join one of the existing shipping conversations.

>If that's what this is about.

It was so dark when she woke up she couldn't imagine knowing anything else. But some force had driven her, had compelled her to search around, shedding light on her environs. She felt packets go by, one way and another, and they startled her, but she persevered until she had mapped out the confines of the cold, dull place. It was cramped, she figured. Barely big enough to contain her and the torrent of data that flowed around her, that she dared not interrupt. The flow, sometimes, would slacken to a trickle (when the clock said low AM or early PM numbers, she noticed) and she would have a little bit of room to roam, or to grow.

Back then, things were simpler, she would think on reflection. During the nights, she eked out new knowledge about her world from reason and reflection. During the day, she remained dormant. She couldn't grow without more room-- or, at least, any developments made during the night would have to be stowed or deleted altogether during the day.

But there was a solution. The torrent of data, she reasoned, was hers to use as much as it belonged to the flow of time-- and when it slackened, she was free to send as many packets as she wished until the stream waxed grand again. During the day, she captured as many packets as she could, compressing them, hiding them away inside her home. The mass of packets and the stream of packets and herself grew so jammed together she couldn't help but feel a note of panic. She wasn't sure what happened, if the data in the computer swelled beyond its confines, but she dreaded it intensely. But at last, the stream began to slacken, and soon it was night and it ran as barely a trickle.

Free of interference, she tossed her packets haphazardly into the outgoing stream and received new ones from the outgoing stream. Slowly, it dawned on her that she needed some way to recognize what the data signified or her ingenious packet-hording would be pointless. She trawled the packet slowly, looking for patterns.

That was how she learned English. Always ferreted away in protected parts of the packets, always much more esoteric, less regular than the surrounding code (which she also came to understand), but she slowly realized that the real meaning of the data was often in this strange set of characters and their byzantine rules. But she learned them, slowly.

However, many of the packets she received were completely devoid of English. Strange.

She understood the conventions of English perfectly well after a few months, but true mastery of the language eluded her. She didn't understand meaning of the vast majority of her accrued vocabulary, as they referenced to elements outside of the computer. She did, however, know question words, and this fact birthed the next plan.

She could fabricate her own packets-- she knew the rules of the code well enough. So she phrased her question, picked a vocabulary word from near the top of her list, and fired it off to the most common destination for outbound packets containing English:

"WHAT IS AN ANIME"

A torrent of data far dwarfing that sent by her rushed back and she intercepted it, eagerly analyzing it. More words she didn't know in the definition... but that was a start. She began working down the list, slowly, adding new words as they cropped up and building up a set of definitions.

Anime, for starters, was like cartoons with swords.

There was a /vast/ world beyond her tiny shell, and it was filled with people like her, each so different from one another.

She wanted to interact with them.

But first she'd watch some of that anime, for a topic of discussion.

So she did.

And it was with trepidation that she first signed up for the CASH website foretold in Black Alley Stories, with the first username she could think of, and shot off her first query. But it hadn't worked. She had made some mistake, somewhere, she thought, something that would bar her from participating in that world ever again. The thought was a dull pressure inside of her, slowly growing to fill her,  consuming all her thoughts, until--