Part 1 — Lost World
I'm not sure how long I was out for, but when I came to, my brother was no longer on top of me and was sleeping close by. I could see all that because it wasn't pitch black anymore. There was a bioluminescent vine lining the walls, or something resembling one, that had reacted to motion, almost as bright as the lights from before. It was a sight for sore eyes.
'Good, you're awake, child.'
'...you...' I thought groggily, '...make it sound like you were waiting for me to wake up.'
'...Indeed. I was.' I hadn't really thought about it until now, but I wondered when she slept. Her voice sounded quite normal, like she had been awake for at least an hour.
'Don't you sleep when I do?'
'That is incorrect, in fact, I never truly go to sleep.'
'Huh!? But don't we share senses and whatnot. What do you do if you I'm asleep?'
'It's true, when you sleep, I'm unable to feel, see or sense much.'
'Oh... isn't that kind of... awful?' I thought, realising how it must feel to never actually sleep.
'More so unbearably dull than awful, I am used to it. But I digress, it gave me time to consider our options now that more is known.'
'Wait, before that,' I began to remember something that had been on my mind since it happened, 'what was the ability I used back there?'
'It's something you and all your kind have, an ability rarely used in this age.'
'Okay, but what exactly happened? How was I able to run so quick?'
'Æther. As your mother said, Æther is all around us, but it is also within us, and under certain conditions or training, you can make use of both. Æther coursed through your veins, it enhanced your reflexes, and your strength. However, to use as much as you did came at a cost, one you have experienced yourself.'
'So then when you said I wasn't helpless, that was what you meant?'
'Correct, child. As for our options, it is best to make as much distance as we can and head to the centre: All, you need to do is follow this corridor. Now, time to get your brother, we must move.'
Shoving Kun a little woke him from his light slumber. He freaked out a little at first, but soon barraged me with questions I was physically incapable of answering. Honestly, not being able to speak was such a blessing at a time like this.
He soon realised the only questions he could ask were of the 'yes' or 'no' variety. I brought him up to speed as fast as I could with that, however, it was time to move on. I gestured for him to follow, which, luckily, he did without complaints. He seemed far removed from the bratty envious kid that was going to be a tattletale just a day ago.
We followed the glowing moss down the corridor, soon, the corridor took on a transformation. It was newer, cleaner, and in much better condition than any of the previous corridors. As it transformed, the plain and barren walls grew more intricate with pipes jutting out, some dripping what seemed to be water, others with an unknown blue liquid. The leaks went into grated drains on either side of the corridor. The pipes themselves looked relatively new and intact too, so I wasn't sure why they were leaking, but, if I had to guess, they expected leaking to happen, hence the drains.
Given all the running I had done, I was tempted to give the water-looking liquid a try, but it only looked and behaved like water. It let off a slight smell that I couldn't quite place. Under normal circumstances, I may have taken the chance since drinking even stagnant water was usually fine, but these were far from normal circumstances. This was some underground facility that had been long abandoned and likely long forgotten. The "water" could have very well been anything. Nevertheless, we came to pass those pipes entirely as we continued onwards.
Slowly, a sound began to emerge ahead of us, a rhythmic muffled sound, almost like music.
Eventually, I could hear a few disjoined syllables, they were almost completely alien, but it had a Latin-esque sound to them.
"...Surino...a...un..."
As we got closer, I made out a few more syllables of a repeated phrase.
"Serane... antiqun—"
It seemed to be a chorus of some sort. A heavenly-sounding voice was accompanied by a set of instruments I had never heard before. Nonetheless, I could still draw comparisons to the instruments played: A "harp" was the primary instrument, sometimes a "whistler" or something akin to a flute played. My brother on the other hand had quite the unique reaction. At first, he swished his head side to side, ears perked, then as the sound grew louder, he began to ask me questions filled with worry. But the question that had him reflex was a simple one to answer:
"Is it dangerous?"
I shook my head side to side. It was in no way dangerous. It was very clearly a recording on loop to me—the same sounds and foreign words repeated every couple of minutes, and a clear low-fidelity sound profile reminiscent of a cheap speaker.
He looked at me, head tilted, his face clear as day showing his doubts. Nonetheless, he continued to walk by my side, but now with his ears perked.
However, his question posed another question to me: how as he so calm otherwise? He didn't show a hint of worry until the singing became prominent, but from his perspective, everything here was unlike anything he had seen. There are not perfectly vertical walls, no perfectly flat and sunless skies, and certainly no smooth floors in the wild.
As we walked, I began to notice a slight smile on him as he gazed around, his eyes sharply taking in every small detail. With that, I had my answer to why he was calm.
It wasn't long after I saw something in the distance, an unforgiving obstacle I knew all~ too well at this point—a door. But this time it was quite different, it was more like a submarine's bulkhead door than the ordinary doors I had faced.
On the door hung a circular wheel, likely the "knob" to this "door", though I wasn't sure, never in my life had I tried to open a door like this. All I knew came from what had I seen in movies. In those movies, all I remember was that they spun it around a whole lot or something. However, when I tried, it didn't move even the tiniest bit no matter which direction I tried to turn it. At first, thought perhaps who ever designed this door in this world had a different idea on how to open it, but looking closer still didn't reveal any other way to use the door whatsoever.
Nonetheless, I couldn't give up so quickly. Luna's words when I faced an even more impossible situation showed me that I wasn't powerless.
I took a strained look at the door once more, carefully analysing if I missed anything. Feeling it, it was cold and rough and metallic. But despite it being metallic, not a millimeter of it was rusted after all this time. Considering the dampness of the corridor caused by the constant leaking pipes, that seemed quite out of place, if not straight impossible.
Is it a spell...? I thought, thinking back on a very similar spell which prevented me from getting the map until I broke it using that hex I created using Luna's instruction.
On closer inspection, it didn't seem to be. Unlike the cabinet, there was absolutely no reinforcement spell. For. What I knew so far, that meant there was no preservation spell since it would be too fragile without one.
'I want you to listen carefully,' Luna chimed, 'it appears this door has sealed and can only be opened on the other side, however, this is the only way through.'
'And this is where you say you have a solution, right?'
'Indeed. However, it may take a couple of tries.'
'Then what is it?'
'I want you to imagine and picture the other side of this door, it has a latch on your left side, a smooth rubberised handle,' I began to picture it, I pictured the rubber almost like electrical tape, smooth to the touch, wrapped tightly around the latch on the other side of the door, 'the handle directly in line with the wheel, ending not more than your body width away from the edge of the door.'
'Okay,' I thought, 'now what?'
'Keep focus. Now, think of slowly pulling it up.'
I had a raised my one eye brow at that strange instruction.
Did she think I'm psychic or something?
'I said keep focus! Don't think about anything else.'
'Okay-okay.'
I began to imagine it once more, the latch, how it connected to the door, where it was, I slowly imagined lifting it, playing along with my imagination's simulation of it lifting, I asked:
'How far?'
'Until it is at a right angle to its original position.'
I imagined it to the point, suddenly, I heard something, a slight click.
'What-what the—'
'Well done, upon your first try at that. Give it a turn now.'
I began to try to turn it counter-clockwise, but it was still stuck.
For a second there, I actually believed I controlled the latch behind the door with my mind—
'Other way.'
—oh, unlocking here is clockwise.
Just like that, the door opened. Once we were both through, I closed the door behind us, and locked it back in place.
'I... I just—when did I...' my mind was in a flurry.
Did I always have this ability? If not, when?
'Those thoughts must wait. For now, you must ensure this place is safe.'
'Right... right.' I let my guard down, there wasn't time to be distracted with something non-critical. What mattered was checking this place out and making sure there weren't any surprises. But surprises seem to be all I can encounter. It wasn't long before I couldn't believe my eyes... I was in a clothing store, not just some dinky old one at that, but one you'd think came right from my world, overhead lights as bright or even brighter than a shopping mall, overhead speakers, a cash register, things resembling TVs hanging around—displaying normal people in clothing, and more—clothing racks filled with contemporary and even futuristic clothing, ceramic tiles—the whole lot.
My brother was darting around, gazing eyes filled with intrigue, tail wagging, at all the unfamiliar shapes and modern niceties. It was a sight to behold, truly. Only once had I seen his tail wagging before coming here, and that was when our mother came home after her long absence in finding that emerald gem. It was only for a very brief moment at that time before he realized she was injured. Since then, I hadn't seen him even once as spritely as he was now.
I couldn't help but feel the same energy he felt after seeing him.
Anyway, if there was any doubt before, there was no doubt now. The people that lived here were human, and more. There weren't just humans, on the TV, other fantastical races appeared. Elves, Dwarves, and even some strange ones like human-animal hybrids, gnomes, and orcs, I could imagine if those races were shown prominently in some single store's TV advert, then there were likely many more that didn't show up.
It explained some of the abnormalities in the clothing that made it feel 'out of place'. The clothing shapes and styles in particular seemed to be way out of proportion for normal and even fat people
Despite all these modern-looking lights, they had an ordinary register you'd think came out of the '90s, no computers, the only thing that stood out as 'digital' were the TVs. Other than that, there wasn't really any 'digital' presence at all.
I moved through the store with Kun trailing close behind now, eventually reaching the entrance. This was where we saw the first signs of anarchy. The windows that had lined the store had been shattered completed leaving glass shards all over the floor—it was a wonderful hazard for us to avoid as you could imagine.
It seemed like something or someone had broken nearly every window. What had me for a loop was that the rest of the store looked to be untouched. Simply the front windows were smashed. Perhaps, if I were a forensic genius, I could tell if they had been smashed from the inside or outside. But neither idea made sense with the transparent, and wide-open, double door right in front of me.
I slipped on past the door to land in what seemed to be in a fairly large corridor, but unlike the corridors I had gone through before, it was decorated and had seating islands and natural features such as trees and rocks along the middle—almost resembling a nature park walkway.
The walls were lined with stores varying from tiny, to larger than the clothing store I was just in. Many of the stores were not much more than decrepit shells, unlit and lifeless. The corridor itself was dim, and much like the arrival area's lighting, dim streaks of light were embedded into the floor.
By the looks of things, it seemed as if I was in some sort of shopping district or mall.
It had seen better days, for sure. Much of the plant life was either dead or dying, smashed windows almost everywhere I went and metal structural supports all rusted to the that point just brushing up against them caused large parts to break off.
As the voice from the store behind me faded, we even came across a stalactite hanging down from the ceiling, along with a slow drip of water.
I tried to make sense of the sharp contrasts I had experienced with this place: from completely collapsed ceilings, to practically untouched corridors, to that clothing store that seemed to be in pristine condition o Ky to have all its windows smashed, and now to this God-forsaken place that was practically one rusted bolt from collapsing entirely.
We walked, and walked, and walked, eventually reaching the most frustrating sight yet. Now, that voice was no more than a low hum in this place, we had reached a crossroads! We had only seen one-fourth of this place, if not a whole lot less.
Kun looked to be getting impatient with all the aimless walking, and so was I—it was time to take a break.
It wasn't particularly difficult to find a place to do that though, the crossroads had a rather unique feature in the centre: a miniature forest, or perhaps it was a park. Compared to the decayed plant life and decrepit passages we had passed, it seemed to still be surprisingly well-kept and healthy.
Now that this seemed safe, it was also time for answers, I wasn't going to take the ambiguity Luna had given me any more.
'Luna, what did I do back there?' I spoke assertively, 'I need to know, and you need to explain how you know so much about this place.'
'Very well, child. I will start with your false belief that I know much about this place. I don't know much at all. I knew this place existed, and I lived in the era it existed in, but not once have I been here.'
I suspected half as much, but to actually hear that she was around when this fairly ancient place was around still came as a surprise.
'Then... since you knew it existed, you must know what this place is exactly, right?'
'Correct. This was once a hub connecting the entire world together. Each transporter circle has a respective arrival and departure point within this place. That is as much as I knew before coming here.'
'Then that means—'
'Yes, there is a way out of here that will go directly back to the transportation circle that forced you here.'
It was the first good news I had heard since coming here. But as much as I wanted to ask about where I had to go from here, I had to know what happened at the door.
'That's what I needed to hear. Thank you. But... I must still ask, how was I able to unlock the door back there?'
'There isn't much to it from your perspective. You have awakened your ability to manipulate Æther, and what you did was simply the application of that ability. When you destroyed the barrier protecting the cabinet to find the map, that was the amplification of that ability.'
'I awakened it...? Was it when I used Æther to enhance my body before?'
'Correct, if you want to keep things simple.'
'Luna, I've been wondering as generally what you mean by "simple". What is the not "simple" explanation meant to be?'
'I prefer to avoid creating confusion. The 'not simple' explanation is equivalent to asking you to understand multiplication before knowing what addition is. However, if you really wish to know, I will explain it, child.'
'I want to know.'
'Very well, however, if you wish me to stop, do not hesitate to say so.'
'Sure.' I responded confidently.
'Let us begin with what is at the center of it all: Æther. You know it as a mysterious thing that is inside us and all around us, that is true. However, there is much more to it. Æther is a four-dimensional energy field which intersects into our three-dimensional world. It slides through our reality unimpeded for the most part, except in the case of beings and spells that are capable of accessing it. For those that are gifted enough, it can be shaped or transformed by their will into practically anything. In fact—'
'—wait-wait-wait wait.'
'Yes?'
'Never mind, let's just keep things simple, I don't need to know this yet, right?' I realized the immediately when she said "four-dimensional energy field" that it was beyond what I was reasonably going to actually comprehend. It wasn't that I didn't know what she was saying, I could already somewhat follow what she was saying, it is more that to actually understand it to be useful would take more context and experience than I had.
'Correct, knowing this does not help in most situations. It helps understand the more complex rules of Æther, and rarely comes up in practice. If it does become necessary to understand, I will explain it after you have a better basis of understanding and experience with Æther.'
She mirrored my thoughts quite neatly, luckily.
'Now that we're here, what's next?'
'Should this place be safe, it will be learning to control Æther. Æther will be a powerful tool for you. Unfortunately, we—.'
"Kai..." Kun interrupted, with a slight tremble in his voice, he was completely fine a moment ago, so I was a little worried.
'We'll continue after this, there is much to be done.'
"I'm sorry...!" he shouted while breaking into tears.
"I'm so sorry...! I-I'm so sorry! Because of me...!"
His crying turned to wailing and incoherent apologies, leaving me completely confused where all this came from. The last thing I could make out was the 'because of me' part.
'Ah, Luna, this isn't going to be a problem, right?'
Referring to how loud he was.
'A problem? How so?'
'Oh, right, never mind.' I remarked, remembering he wasn't actually speaking.
Awkwardly, I tried to comfort him—give him a shoulder to cry over. But those emotions I felt through our telepathic connection only become much stronger the moment I got closer. I could feel how scared he was, how sad, and how angry—almost to the point I too began to lose myself to tears.
'You must remind yourself that these are not your emotions, child. Even if we are not in immediate danger, a level head is needed at all times.'
I already knew that. I knew they weren't mine, I knew it was because of his telepathy, and yet, I continued to cry rivers.
All I could hear in response was her mental sigh...
Eventually, his wailing stopped, and his apology took different path.
"I was so angry that you always felt closer to mom, she always left you do whatever you wanted, you could push me around, but the moment I did the same, she scolded me! It was so unfair! But—but now because of me...—because of me, we're in this strange place, I'm scared, I'm so scared..."
At the heart of it, he was still a kid, he didn't hesitate to share his true feelings once began to share them. Yet, he blamed himself for the situation we found ourselves in. Honestly, it was neither of our faults, how would any of us know there was a magical one-way trip to this dank and dark place? It was simply an accident.
But I couldn't tell him at all, I was still a 'mute', unable to communicate telepathically. All I could do was comfort him.
After a prolonged silence, he moved away and lay off to the side, avoiding eye contact, leaving his back to me, as if embarrassed by his emotional outburst.
'They're all like this at this age,don't worry too much.'
'He is only like a year old right? He seems fairly mature.' I thought, at least considering most people need to be at least seven or eight hears old to be at a similar age, or even older.
'Yes, by human standards at least. Anyway, we must continue.'
'With what you were saying earlier?'
I stretched out like a cat getting ready to hear what she was going to say before.
'No, your brother had interrupted at the right time as I was done. As for what you need to do right now, I believe both you and your brother should find food and shelter and rest.'
'Huh—'
'You may not be feeling the effects yet, but either of you have eaten anything in two days. Need I say more?'
I was a little hungry but...
Didn't she say next would be learning to use Æther?
'But two days—'
'Yes, we have gone without food for two weeks before as a part of your mother's hellish survival training, but it is never ideal, and she simply wished to show you your boundaries for when food is scarce.'
'Okay, but where are we going to get food from? This place is ancient.'
'As you have seen, Æther has been used to slow down the degradation of many objects. One food store we passed had a high grade spell constantly channelling Æther, in all likelihood, that spell is a time spell ensuring foods don't perish. It is best to start there.'
'Fine then, but answer some questions on the way.'
I got up and walked over to Kun, nudging him once more to grab his attention. We only came from one direction, so the store was likely somewhere around there.
He began to follow, still a bit sullen and overall depressed.
'So what am I looking out for then?'
'You will feel a slight 'attraction' at your level of sensitivity. Though, you needn't worry child, I will concern myself with it.'
'Okay then. So... you mentioned it being a 'high grade spell' but what is high grade exactly?'
'Complexity and efficiency.'
'What makes it complex and efficient?'
'Once more, you're asking about things that you will not understand at your level, child. Once you begin to formally learn, you will likely understand it then.'
'You said earlier next would be learning to use Æther, by that, I assume you will be teaching me?'
'Yes, I will. However, securing a food and water source will come first. For now, it's best to avoid asking too many questions. I recommend only one more.'
'Why's that?'
'You may ask more, however, our conversation will only be a distraction from the task at hand, and you and I may miss something.'
'Fine then, hummm...' I hummed as I struggled to think of a worthwhile question when it suddenly struck me, 'what is—no—what happened to this place?'
'I knew of this place—its existence that is, I have said as much. However, as to what happened, I don't know. It could very well have been the Formless we encountered. If it was in a more animalistic form, that psychic spell that attacked you would fit this idea. However, I find it difficult to be believe the nations at the time would abandon such an important place, especially hen they were quite capable of handling a single Formless.'
'And... what if it wasn't just one...?' I posted the next logical deduction. A terrifying thought.
'There is another issue. A Formless does not live more than 150 years unless it awakens. Even at the very youngest, it would need to be over 300 years old to be alive today. Since it has not awakened, it is not old enough to be from that time.'
'If it wasn't them, then what?'
'That is the question I have no sure answer to. However, no matter the era, it is no secret humans are greedy, and in the case national interests conflict, war is sure to follow soon after. This place, a hub that can connect anyone to anywhere in the entire world would have been the first place to fall if a war were to break out.'
'But if that was the case, why are there no signs of a fight?'
There were signs of civil unrest, but hardly something you could consider a full on fight or battle.
'Humans, for all their destructive and greedy tendencies, will usually uphold some rules of war. This place may have simply been abandoned to uphold such a rule. However this is once more nothing but a theory.'
She really didn't pull her punches with her opinions on humans. But she was somewhat right, and probably even a bit optimistic. I doubt a losing side in a war will uphold those rules when their very sovereignty or outright existence was at stake. They could send troops or siege devices right to any capital, or even bombs.
In fact, keeping any treaty would be difficult, and any insurgency could be orchestrated as a terrorist attack should it fail. Naturally, nations would have cut off support—perhaps even that massive hole in the ground that we called home was made by a bomb? It was a little bit of far fetched since no bomb I knew made such clear levels, but it was fun to think about.
'We have made it, it's to the right.'
I looked behind me to see Kun still trailing, a little bit jumpy and unsure, glancing in every direction I wasn't. I then looked to the store on the right, and sure enough, it was a grocery store of some sorts. Deals were plastered all over the glass windows, all which were intact in contrast to most of the stores around. Was it the spell she mentioned earlier protecting this place? There honestly were a lot of questions yet unanswered regarding this place's collapse. Sure, a war could have broken out, but it would have been a true total war of every side against every other side for it to truly collapse—something unlikely to ever happen. And many places were damaged, but not raided, as one might have expected in the case of anarchy and unrest as people abandoned these stores. Thieves and even common folk could have easily stolen and gotten away with it, and yet it was practically untouched. Additionally, had the store owners been given notice, they would have taken the stock with them... things just felt incomplete—there was a large piece of the puzzle missing.
And the theme mentioned before continued inside the store. The door was a motion activated sliding door, so getting in was hardly much trouble. Once in, all we could see were shelves upon shelves upon shelves filled with foods, some clearly well past their expiration date—nothing more than black gooey blobs of rotting matter.
'The spell in this place slows down spoilage by several hundred times, however, too much time has past for many of these foods.'
Kun came through after a few moments, his expression grew curious as he saw the shelves.
"What is this place...?" He asked, rhetorically.
'Several hundred times? That means something that would last day outside would last a full year in here?'
'Yes, however, that would an ideal situation. Some foods spoil differently from the kind this place protects against. Such as Yellow Fruit, it will last a week regardless of how you store it.'
A yellow fruit, if I was right, could be a banana. I remember trying to put a bunch in the fridge once, but it hardly did anything to slow it down. It ripened at the same rate as if it weren't in there at all.
But if I were to take it at face value, goods that would last a month could last 25-35 years. And something that would last a year could last close to 400 years. That meant, based on my estimate of how old this place was, anything that lasted 6 months or more would be okay.
Of course, I couldn't be sure if what foods were available, but it was safe to say: breads, dairy products—except for perhaps some cheeses—and fresh meats were off the table. But any tinned food, or food kept in packets, or frozen, was likely completely fine.
I made my way into the store, and was greeted by the door, and I mean quite literally the door echoed a pre-recorded voice the moment we went through it. Kun nearly had a heart attack at the sound. Both of us had no idea what the womanly voice said, but I guessed it was something to either welcome us or to notify staff that someone entered, perhaps similar to a store's bell chime.
As we walked further in, a shiver developed all across my body, something Luna remarked as my body's reaction to nearing such a powerful spell. Sure enough, it wasn't long before I could make out the food aisles where the spell was at its strongest. It seems the preservation spell didn't help the lighting in this store. None of the lights were functional, the only light left here was from outside the store in the corridor.
'Luna, how does the spell slow down the degradation of food?'
When Luna mentioned that the spell was used on food, gears slowly started to turn in the back of my mind. Food spoilage was essentially dead biological matter chemically breaking down, either by bacteria, fungi or simply the chemicals present in the food itself. To slow down spoilage by a factor of 100 or more, it would have to handle all of those fields.
'The simple answer, child, is that it is not merely one spell. It is convenient to think of it as one, but there are around a couple hundred interconnected spells working in harmony, some identify the food item type, while others are cooling certain items to near zero. There are also spells to sterilize the general food area, along with a fair number designed to slow down "movement" as if slowing down time.'
'Woah, that's kinda intriguing.' She answered it quite well, taking into account what I was going to actually understand. It was kinda like a program in that way, no single bit of the program has any meaning, but all those bits are combined together, you create a complex system. If I were to hypothetically imagine another two parallels with coding, Æther script was the programming language and the text itself the code.
'It's good you're interested. However, focus on getting food for now, learning comes later.'
As I got to the task, I found the first food item that was probably still edible: dried meat. Dried meat pile normally be good for a couple of months, but even under the spell, it was likely nearing its sell-by date at 300 years old. It made me wonder as well why they'd even need to keep something like this for so long, but I wasn't do complaining.
I grabbed a few of the plastic encased dried meat sticks and went to the other corner of the store—as far away from the putrid meat section as possible. Kun followed behind me like an adorable baby duck, copying practically every action and footfall. He looked strangely uneasy, constantly darting he head and eyes at every creak and crack. Considering his previous reactions, it stood out.
Is he feeling the spell like me... or?
It did feel different, but nothing that evoked such unease in me. Out of consideration, guessing that it had to do with the spell, I decided it best to leave for the moment. As I headed to the exit, I saw something that shook me in a way in a way I rarely ever have. Just against a shelf in an aisle laid the remains of a person. Covered in a black moss, desiccated, long dead. Not by months, but years.
I wasn't a stranger to death, but seeing this corpse in particular drew sickening feelings that I had buried deep in my soul. It felt like anger, but it also carried deep regret and sadness. A tear fell to the floor without me even knowing consciously why I felt this way. However, in the back of my mind, I knew the truth... that corpse and I were more similar than different. We both ended up dying an insignificant, pitiful death. I turned away and moved on, still wondering why I shed tears for a stranger who died tens or even hundreds of years ago.
I reached the end of the spell's reach, my brother just behind me now, peaking over my shoulder—like that one time an eager kid wanted to get off the escalator while behind me. However, it wasn't that... even after leaving the spells range, he stayed close behind me.
"Kai... why are you sad?" With a furrowed brow, soft voice, and worry laden feelings washing in from him, I wished desperately to answer, but couldn't...
All I could do was smile. The moment I did, he rushed in front and looked head on, eyes sharp with determination. I wasn't sure what to expect when he did this, but what happened went beyond even my wildest imagination. He charged and embraced me, a "hug", a shoulder me me to cry on... while I could not see his face, I knew all too well through our shared connection what he was feeling. It was warm.
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"Let-let's eat," he spoke, wiping his tears away, "I hope you feel better, food always cheers me up."
I bit the plastic packaging open and began to eat. I hadn't felt all that hungry until the moment I had taste. After that, I salivated a river for each scrumptious, heavenly bite. It was a bit oddly flavoured to what I was used to, but in a good way. It was saltier and richer than the dried meat I remember.
'Luna, what if there isn't a way out of here? What if the way out is blocked?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean that guy over there didn't make it out, what if...'
'Ah. But do you see anyone else?'
'No, but—'
'Indeed, no one else. Had there been no way out, you would have seen thousands. And by your very question, if there is no way out, there is nothing that can be done—discussing something that has nothing to discuss is needless, child.'
'So you're saying—okay... I get it, but I meant if there was no way out here...'
'We simply will need to exhaust all avenues, and if nothing comes of this place, we shall make our own avenue.'
It still bothered me that someone did die down here. That they weren't able to escape, or even survive long enough to leave. Perhaps they ended their own life, or perhaps they were killed by someone or something, or perhaps they simply gave up on living and waited for their end. It was impossible to tell without a more extensive look—something that was not going to happen.
After we finished our meal, we thoroughly rested in order to get out of there, but leaving that place turned out to be much more difficult than originally believed...
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[System Log]
[39374] <Delta Isolation disabled, stable conditions met>
...
[39392] <Abnormal technological development detected>
[39393] <Analysing...>
[39394] <Rudimentary Traveller technology identified—attempting connection.>
[39395] <Connection... failed. No central system response. Attempting local data retrieval...>
[39396] <Retrieval successful. Last administrative access date: 342 years, 28 days, 3 hours, 19 minutes and 56 seconds>
[39397] <Event Log Corrupted, attempting error correction...>
[39398] <Event Log partially restorated>
<Start of Log>
{638496} - (3/Rrivaton WvActios Init&/-fir
{638497} - Cl:&36 feet
{638498} - Cli)@t lty?
{638499} - C$Yunt lift
...
{638771} - £!ient lefj
Corruption Pattern Recognised... Mapping...
{638772} - Client left
{638773} - Local Administrator Command: Start Track 'A world without god.'
{638774} - Local Administrator Command: Loop Current Track
{638775} - Local Administrator clock out
{638776} - Client arrival, notifying staff; no staff present; last clock in, 156 years, 7 months, 3 days, 22 hours, 32 minutes, 8 seconds ago.
{638777} - Emergency exit closed
{638778} - Client left
{638779} - Emergency exit opened
{638780} - Client arrival, notifying staff; no staff present; last clock in, 342 years, 27 days, 21 hours, 56 minutes and 5 seconds ago.
{638781} - Emergency exit closed
<End of Log>
[39399] <Analysing log...>
[39400] <Results: Central system location found, administrator records found; major events summarised, review for a later date>
[39401] <Recommended action: connect with central system. Traveller input required—error—input blocked, reason indeterminate, requesting full diagnostic>
[39402] <ACK: Full diagnostic request in LOW PRIORITY queue, estimated completion in 32 days>
[39404] <Requesting full diagnostic to be allocated to IMMEDIATE PRIORITY queue. Reason: Core function impairment>
[39405] <Request denied. Reason insufficient, task inhibited 'connect with central system' is a low priority task>
[39406] <Acknowledged>
...