---Richard---

  Richard followed the suspicious woman through an airlock, down a corridor and onto a strange sort of shuttle. It looked like a cross between an elevator and a miniature train – the long boxy shape sliding sideways in some willy wonka manner.

  Volunteer?

  The Truth?

  Richard was impatient to figure out what she was talking about.

  Fuck this elevator was long – was the whole city connected underground? Richard had through this was a simple lab for a single company not some massive secret society or whatever the fuck this was shaping up to be.

  …it’s a good thing he liked trains. Who doesn’t like trains after all?

  Coming up to a stop, their ride slid off the tracks and into a side tunnel with a lurch. The tram dropped a good ten – twenty feet down and then slowly pulled into a wide open atrium. Several NPC’s in lab coats wandered around the area as background aesthetic while the walls were absolutely peppered with doors they could walk through.

  Today was a yellow door day it seemed – the pair continued through another corridor before reaching a larger tramway. Instead of heading off on another random trip the woman turned towards a scanning device and set of industrial sized doors.

  Richard had tried sending a few ‘where are we going’ style messages but had only got ‘please be patient’ style responses the whole trip over. Why was he being led along to his kill box like a meek little sheep? Should he ‘so anyways I started blasting?’.

  No…he was actually curious despite himself and – memes aside – he wasn’t that bloodthirsty if they weren’t out to get him. The woman seemed to change her communication policy as soon as they reached this scanner, turning to Richard and sending AI messages rapid fire.

  Hesitating for a second, Richard forcefully relaxed his body and stepped forward towards the device. With no more weak actions, Richard shoved his hand into the machine and watched flickering lights and bars come to life all over the machine.

  All of them turned green within a few seconds and Richard stood suddenly imagining his arm was being shoved up a cow's ass. Why was his brain like this?

  Finally an ai ping filled his vision – the scanners readout helpfully translating into English for the poor foreigner.

  Richard nearly confirmed they were entering a radioactive area but…well it was pretty obvious. He could roll with it.

  Following the stranger through into a side room he watched as she slid a clear form fitting suit over herself. It looked almost like sliding into a human shaped glove – the mouth area had a metal band and filter but the rest looked like she was wrapped in plastic wrap or something.

  Isn’t that a fetish? Gross.

  Depositing several items in a locked box the woman turned to him and paused.

  Richard still wasn’t discounting this all being a trap – what kind of work area was both full of radiation and required a weapon? He hesitated. Ah well. Why not – it seemed like a pain to wander around with radioactive items. Also for some reason the need for a weapon being stated made him think the chance of this being a trap was smaller? For some strange reason?

  Dumping his side cannon and bag of nicknacks Richard followed her through a triple set of airlocks – walking past decontamination showers and boxes to toss irradiated items.

  Collecting a pistol and saber – both disappointing energy based variants – Richard continued on into a room.

  Thankfully his guide was more talkative now that they were at the area she wanted him to…volunteer in.

  “I mean an AI has dozens of different microscopic parts but…something like a battery. That’s made by alternating aether infused elements right? Sometimes elements are shifted in state or form – I can imagine iron blended with light and then crystalized once again?” Richard responded.

  Richard…had to admit he didn’t know. He could try quarrying an archive – doing the equivalent of googling the answer on his phone all sketchy like – but he just told the truth. He didn’t actually care what people thought of him. If she didn’t respond well he could search it up later.

  Something…something felt incredibly weird from this.

  Something suddenly popped up like a plot hole in this fake worlds lore.

  “I have a question. Radiation…that makes it sound like you can make nukes. If we have atomic bombs why is there a clump of nests called the ‘badlands’ that is actively noted as an area too dangerous to reach. Just nuke the shit out of them?”

  Richard could see a faint twitch of her lip. She seemed amused by his question. The group stopped near a red line in the ground and began waiting for Richard's radiation defense to raise while she explained more about their surroundings.

  Ah, okay no this checked out. Plot hole filled.

  Pointing out an unnecessary lip of a room as they moved to the next line, Richard bent down to enter a oval doorframe looking like some playpen door.

  Raising his head Richard froze for a second in shock.

  The room…was enchanting.

  …

  Fucking hell this shits pretty.

  Drifting slowly down from the ceiling what looked like sparkling lightning crossed with oil spill flavored snowstorm blew and swirled.

  Powdered metals slowly spritzed from the ceiling and drifted down – the various metals used all fell at different rates and reacted differently as they moved through the air. They seemed to be passing through an aether altered radiation field that grew in strength the closer to the ground they fell. Radioactive metal spontaneously – and mostly randomly – sparked and flashed in fractal patterns denser and more frequent the closer to the ground they got. The snow resonated with the air and field and surrounding snow – all with different effects that were hard to describe as anything but ‘rainbow’ and ‘beautiful’. It was like each mote of snow erupted with flashes of brilliant rainbow lightning or held a cosmos or flickered with fantastical lights.

  All around them tiny slug like creatures crawled along the ground and ate rainbow snow drifts of radioactive metals.

  The slugs were eyeless – the woman guiding him said the slimes sensed through several brands of radiation outside of the regular light spectrum. Their sensing organs were completely enclosed in their body – filtered through various types of skin on the slugs backs and front.

  Seemed excessive, but who was Richard to claim a slug should see using the most common type of radiation – who would use boring light when such a wide buffet of esoteric rays were available. Ones that could see through walls or stealth abilities while observing the rank – and thus threat – of a creature.

  Theta and Nu radiation? Sure, of course Richard had heard of them. Sounded super real and useful.

  …jokes and beauty aside, Richard was surprised by just how out of place he felt. He didn’t know how to react.

  Most of the slugs glommed away from the pair as soon as they entered the room. One suicidal slug charged Richard happily attacking his foot and slowly climbing his body with all the energy of a golden retriever.

  His guide had made to attack it when it latched onto Richard but he stopped her. The slug was kind of cute – it didn’t feel like much as it climbed about his body other than a faint heat. Supposedly it was pushing enough gamma rays into his body to kill a base human in seconds…but Richard’s defense truly was a cheat.

  Wouldn’t…wouldn’t it be really funny if I threw this face hugger on some POS’s face? What a way to go…some human monster is walking along and BLAM, Pocket slug. I wonder if I can smuggle one of these guys out of the farm?

  Perfect prank. Bet it would be an achievement.

  Richard picked his surprise suicide slug – SS Larry – and held in in both arms trying to understand what his guide was now telling him.

  “Sauel”

  “exci’t”

  “Somena”

  …

  Slowly Richard categorized random words and sentences seemingly at random. She would note down a list of words and names and then tell him about complex organic processing of unstable elements as if trying to throw someone off the scent.

  One of the more interesting pieces of trivia was how different materials could be classified.

  One common split was the difference between materials in aether dependance. There was ‘pure’ materials either formed through non aether processes or formed through an aether pipeline that outputted a ‘mundane’ aether free result. There was ‘pure plus’ – stable aether altered elements that remained in regular environments and either had strange effects or were consumed to produce a result and unravel the energy contained in them…and then there were more useful materials that only produced results when linked to an active slot and fresh aether flow. They existed in an inactive state and then turned ‘on’ when turned on by a humans link. Finally there were materials that could only exist beside an aether flow. That last group was mostly a collection of oddities – psudo matter and strange natural skill results that disappeared if they left the vicinity of the person who had created it. Sometimes the strongest and most useful of materials but often far from worth attempting to duplicate.

  Technically Richards stone hands were made from that last category – he couldn’t imagine someone else cutting off and using his hands with how much a part of him they were. He also didn’t know if he could replicate the series of processes he had put them through to replicate it on someone else.

  At first nothing besides the cool trivia and useful information made sense…but slowly but surely the words she spoke drifted from the translation she told him. The hidden message started to slowly appear.

  It took over an hour to churn through her fears and the disconnect began to feel more and more weird.

  Creepy almost.

  Richard stopped paying attention to the facts and anecdotes sticking to the ‘true’ story – a strange slightly shitty feeling overcoming him as he listened. Some jumps he had to make in translation – even if he knew the words the phonetic translation butchered grammar and needed a round of common sense editing. Still…creepy.

  Her translation might say.

  Translating her words through sound and a growing dictionary Instead might give a response more like…”I cannot trust my memories. Too many inconsistencies pop up and to make things worst I cannot even trust my own technology. Did you know I woke up thinking I had a tail? It's silly and stupid – I can’t imagine something that silly having existed – but…enough twitches like that and I’m not sure anymore. It’s started to feel real in a way not much has felt real lately. I’m nearly positive I had a tail – or I’m supposed to have a tail. I…I remember random tangential memories that include pulling it to the side as I sat or shopping for decorations for it. And the baker is supposed to have a bald head or an armoured head or something? Why do I think that? Am I growing crazy?

  "I recorded my day you know? Went through what I remember and what my AI remembered? I then noted several points where they differed – mostly involving all you foreigners appearing and how no one seems to think its strange? I then forgot about recording that information and found my own diary after the fact. I backed up that diary and my findings in an experimental storage medium – noted they were wiped from the original location – and then forgot them once again. I currently

  "I’m sorry, am I rambling? Do I sound insane? The ramblings of a crazy minx sleep deprived and broken through overwork? Are you even getting any of this? Nod if you understood that last part. Now blink twice.

  "I don’t know what’s happening anymore. Am I who I think I am? Who am I to you? Please. Can you tell me what’s happened? Do you even know? Are you the first foreigner I’ve gotten to listen to my fears…or have I forgotten the others? If you don’t think your description is translating properly…can you pass your response back through a game as well? I remember trusting my own AI with my life but…this isn’t the AI I remember making."

  By the end of it the woman was crying. Tears silently fell from her eyes – the water pressing against the plastic suit she wore and staining her mascara. She seemed frustrated and scared and intensely focused on bypassing the translation barrier - the barrier Richard had taken for granted as being crossed by the cheap translation software attached to each AI.

  At first Richard thought this was all a game. A secret quest or oddity. Maybe a hidden storyline? The more she spoke and the more of her translated story appeared however...

  Well the more he heard the more he felt…the more he felt he wanted to help her. If he was a hero as he wished he could be he’d definitely be jumping to save her. She was…she was someone he wanted to save.

  Was he trying to justify being a simp? Was he secretly weak to female tears?

  Richard wanted…he wanted to believe that wasn’t true. It was hard to justify it to himself but he wanted to believe it wasn’t her just her story. No he didn’t care that she was a girl. He wasn’t some white knight – equal opportunity justice with no vision for the different sexes. Fuck. He was willing to kill her earlier when he thought she was leading him into a trap.

  Richard felt like some nagging part of his mind was falling apart. Some delusion he’d kept alive these past weeks.

  These people…these people were real. They weren’t NPCs. This wasn’t a game and the hidden background he had taken for granted…he couldn’t continue to just accept it.

  He’d actually killed some of them you know? Richard…he didn’t regret it. Murder was surprisingly easy once you tossed sense for a bit – Richard could continue with barely a thought in the future as long as he kept to his personal code.

  He hadn’t gotten a taste for blood – no he’d just accidentally crossed an unimportant line society had told him was important. Nothing that really mattered, not in the grand scheme of things.

  Listen, some people just deserved to be deleted. No regrets.

  And he still didn’t subscribe to how much importance society gave the average life. Life was meaningless and…really the modern idea of life being sacred was propaganda to keep the slave workforce that was the working class full and productive.

  No what Richard found was he felt…Well confused because he still didn’t understand what this truly meant. Horrified at imagining what the mind control or whatever this manipulated victim was dealing with was…and angry because if she was controlled than most of the NPCs were probably controlled and the people he killed who had wholeheartedly deserved it might…well they might not have actually deserved it.

  What was he even supposed to do with this?

  How could he even repent for that? "My bad, Thought the way you were acting was real?"

  Maybe…Maybe Richard could try his hardest to actually give a fuck about someone other than him self?

  “Hey…”

  Richard asked his question. He spoke not in English but in this woman's native tongue the sounds butchered beyond belive by his awkward pronunciation.

  “What…What is your name? I never caught it?”

  “My name is Mix. Stands for Mixin – I’ve heard all the jokes. So…can you tell me anything?”