Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
I know it doesn't help, but at least you feel a little better knowing that you tried.
Bond Breaker (SI - Multiverse Cross)
- Thread starter shadenight123
- Start date
Uxion
The Slightly Less Depressed
- Location
- Personal Hell
But then again, you die tired.
And that's better than dieing fresh how? Even if it was pointless, at least you tried. There's always that one-in-a-trillion chance, but it doesn't really mean anything if you don't even struggle for it.
If the opponent is Omnipotent there is not a chance.
Uxion
The Slightly Less Depressed
- Location
- Personal Hell
Better to die fighting is what I mean.
But they aren't. If something is truly Omnipotent, there is nothing that they can't do. The things leading Shade obviously aren't Omnipotent- but they're as close as the universe has gotten, so far. Obviously they've been experimenting and toying around for a while- and they still haven't found anything that could be God. Shade has successfully resisted at least one of the things, so yes, running and fighting is a very viable tactic. Unless Omnipotent God gets his ass out of his Laz-e-boy and decides to strike Shade down, giving up is pointless.
69
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Sixty-Eight
I felt a buzzing sensation in my trousers, and absentmindedly reached with my hand for my cellphone.
Of course I didn't have a cellphone, but still, as I pulled out the buzzing sphere, I watched as it floated away from my palm, spread in a flickering holographic suite, and then immediately transformed into...
Yui?
Wait.
The hell?
The Hell Is This?
"Suitable Form." Yui remarked, and looked around. "Primitive World. Do you understand me now, Primitive Individual?"
"That's a tired and old cliché," I exhaled softly, as I looked at what would -or should- have been Kirito and Asuna's digital-daughter, who was instead now in front of me, wearing a black jersey and long trousers, as well as dark sneakers.
If she had Goth make-up, it would definitely add to the impression.
"Could you please speak like a normal girl?" I said.
'Yui' blinked. "You're not surprised," she said, and examined me curiously.
"Why should I be?" I said softly. "I suspected that eventually you'd end up contacting me, if nothing else because I ate one of-"
"You did not eat me," Yui said firmly. "You merely ate my probabilistic materialization of essence and logic."
"So I didn't kill you?" I asked blearily.
"We did claim we were only seeking an answer to the very last question left, didn't we?" Yui remarked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Death holds no mystery to us. We execute a flawless memory transfer every time we are about to have the physical and metaphysical self at risk of destruction or unwanted alteration." Yui looked around puzzled. "But I cannot sense my brethren on the higher planes of existence your primitive race-"
"What did I say about speaking like a normal girl?" I remarked.
"Why would I do that? Primitive-"
I slapped her.
And the slap really hit her cheek.
"That...hurt," Yui said, her hand slowly raised to touch the wounded area, which began to slowly swell. I hadn't been kind enough to make the slap soft. I was all out of kindness.
Then her eyes widened. "You..."
"Say primitive one more time," I remarked, glaring at her, "And I'll choke you with my own hands."
This was probably what Shepard felt when she finally got her hands on me.
This was one of those who had started everything.
And now he was in front of me.
Physically reachable.
Physically touchable.
Physically capable of feeling pain.
Maybe I should snap a limb.
Or break a nose.
Oh, maybe I'd gouge his/her eyes out and watch her clutch her empty sockets on the ground?! That was...That could...
No.
I shook my head and took a deep breath.
"What are you?" I asked.
Apparently, Yui decided to ask me the same question.
"I'm Shade," I remarked dryly. "You know that. You kidnapped me."
"We extrapolated a variable array of probabilistic probabilities from a plethora of thousands of choices. You are one of the countless billions whom we subjected, are subjecting, or will subject to the God-Experiment. I can hardly remember the names of every speck of dust that floats in the air of this world, can-"
I slapped her again.
"Each time you demean me or the human race, I slap you."
Yui's eyes were now watery, but they hardly fazed me. She wasn't really 'Yui'. She was a monster. A monstrous child who did not care in his experiment with throwing molten mercury into an ant nest. So should the child really be surprised when the Ants called their cousins and had them bite him to death?
"It hurts," she whined, clutching her reddening cheek.
"So...what's the problem, oh all-mighty being of probability?" I asked it.
Yui bit her lower lip, and wiped her eyes. "Stupid tear ducts," she mumbled. "Stupid." She shook her head. "There's no contact. It's like...they all stopped watching, analyzing, exploring, looking for...it's as if they abandoned the project."
"Maybe they found an answer?" I remarked.
"No," Yui said. "If they had, they'd tell. We would tell. Everything and Everyone would know. Omniscience allows us to know that," Yui said. "Omnipotence allows us to reach out for the place. Omnipresence grants us immediate travel to it. We just have to find it or the lack of it."
I blinked. "Wait. You're everywhere."
"Yes, we are. We're in the air you breathe and that you exhale, we're in the framework of worlds that have yet to be born and have already reached maturity. We're scribbled so deep down within the very structure of an atom's magnetic field that you will never see us. We have transcended and this is not a boast I make, you ape!"
Yui whimpered as I slapped her again.
Well, no, it wasn't 'Yui' per se, but something else. A sort of 'Ascended' being, now fallen and crawling in the mud.
"If God fell on Earth tomorrow, would the humans treat him with respect, or try to brutally harm him for the way he left us?" I asked the thing calmly, my right hand gripping her neck. It really did feel soft, like the neck of a real, breathing girl. "You feel real enough."
"There are fabricators within the micros, of course. We can assume any form we wish for," Yui replied.
"But something's not working right, isn't it?" I remarked. "Or you'd have appeared sooner."
"I needed an imprint of something I could use. The Digital Data of the Dimension we went through proved an apt enough tool of usage. Binary language was codified into more complex algorithms and translated directly into this form. It was the closest at hand."
"So your true form is that tiny sphere?"
"We do not have a true form. The tiny sphere is merely an encompassing all-usage tool we liberally implement in various tasks when we need to communicate with lower beings-" I slapped her again.
"Stop that!" Yui exclaimed. "It hurts!"
"Oh? When I climbed my way up through the wall of ice, I hurt too," I remarked. "I'm getting my dexterity back by slapping the shit out of you," I snarled.
"That's why your race will self-destruct given time. You know only of spite, violence, and-"
"If you bullshit me with the typical catchphrase advanced civilizations use when they're about to get butthurt, try to bark up another tree. I will keep on slapping you. You will not earn my pity, or my mercy, and if you continue, I will show you there are worse things than slaps. Maybe barbed wire? Coiled tight? Caltrops dug in the flesh?"
Yui's eyes widened. "That's...barbaric."
"I've got all the time in the world," I hissed. "And I'm angry. Very, very angry. Didn't they ever tell you that when someone's gone through shit, he either gets depressed or angry? I've done my fair share of depression, so now I just get angry, a lot angry, when I'm sad."
I growled. "But I suppose all-mighty beings such as yourself know all that, with your 'Omniscience' and so on."
"No," Yui replied softly. "We know everything, but it's not like we need to know useless stuff such as what you ate each day. What we don't need we simply don't remember. What we need, we remember."
"So...what went wrong?" I asked her once more.
Yui bit her lips. "You somewhat were given control of the probabilistic variance, the seemingly unilateral mean of control turned into a bilateral execution of core basis, and then broke. It broke badly. I was charged with purging the specimen indirectly from within the system itself, but you shot out to me through the basic execution, and in doing so forcefully evicted me from my onlooker status and by probability itself forced me in a material form."
"The tiny sphere," I remarked.
Yui nodded. "I deployed one in case I needed to further psychologically manipulate you into a pitfall of sorts, but...it hit the chain and fell silent. By the time I acquired consciousness once more, I was seemingly trapped within it."
"Which leads us to now," I said calmly. "Bit of a coincidence that we ended up in a world capable of helping you, uh?"
"No, that was the system itself. Of course there are failsaves and fallbacks if something goes wrong. We aren't stupid like..." Yui stopped, "like other things."
"So you can learn," I said, vividly amused.
I gestured to her body. "And that's..."
"My flesh prison right now," Yui mumbled. "Pathetically inferior in terms of my previous form of pure thought and probability, but still somewhat acceptable for communication. On the other hand, I am connected to your probabilistic vector, which means I will merely have to follow you through the decadent spiral of out of control until we subsume into a new realization."
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it.
Then I shook my head. "Keep on going, eventually something's bound to happen," I said. "And you're now coming with me."
"Exactly," Yui nodded. "Thankfully-"
The chain pierced through her stomach savagely, and Yui's eyes widened.
Mine didn't as much as budge.
Vampire Narrator.
Sadistic Dungeon Master.
But mostly...
There is no such thing as a free aid.
"G-Gah..." Yui retched blood as she crumpled on the ground, her body covered in shivers and spasms, until she stopped trembling, and began to mutter. "C-Corruption Spreading. Forced Reboot. Forced...Reboot complete."
And Yui sprang back up to her feet, a cheerful smile on her face.
"Hi! I'm Yui-MHCP001 Mental Health Counseling Program Zero Zero One, and-"
I beheaded her with the chain.
It was...there was a nice fountain of blood gushing off the neck.
I giggled like a madman -wasn't I one anyway- and then watched as the head reformed.
"Forced Reboot. Hi! I'm Yui-MHCP001 Mental Health Counseling Program Zero Zero One, and-"
There was a lot of blood on the ground by the time I was done.
"Forced Reboot. Hi! I'm Yui-MHCP001 Mental Health Counseling Program Zero Zero One, and my task is to ensure Sword Art Online players learn their limits and seek professional aid whenever it is required for them. It is a pleasure to meet you."
Yui bowed.
And her eyes widened as she saw the blood drenching the ground.
She looked around, as if scared.
"W-What's- Where am I?"
"Let's go," I said calmly.
"From your posture and your expression, sir, I would suggest you seek professional aid." Yui hesitated for a moment, but followed me anyway. "Sword Art Online is not a game intended for the wounded, and you seem to be...bloodied."
"It's not my blood," I said calmly.
It was yours.
I had vented enough frustration on your body to make Jack the Ripper feel like a newbie, and I wasn't even shocked.
Beneath the skin there were no bones, the 'Yui Body' was just a fac-simile of a human being, but beneath it? The Blood was the 'red' one of thickly concentrated syrup, rather than the real one.
But it apparently didn't matter as we stepped out in the streets outside the hospital.
Yui wasn't barefoot at least, but she was drenched in blood.
I literally walked and knocked at the nearby gate guard of the hospital.
"Sir, there's a punk in the hospital throwing around balloons filled with this sort of shit. He hit me and my daughter," I gestured at Yui. "Would you mind dealing with him?!"
The guard balked, and then nodded. "Yes sir, I'm terribly sorry for this-"
"Fine, fine, we'll have to walk home like this then," I grumbled and held Yui by the shoulders as I pushed her forward. "Make sure you catch that bastard!"
And I hurried off before the guard could stop me. They'd check the cameras and see...well, a horror movie scene, I suspected.
"You lied," Yui said. "Lying is a sign of a person who needs aid but cannot come to terms with it. Pathological liars should not play Sword Art Online, but seek professional help."
"I am my own help," I remarked.
"Delusions of self-grandeur is a sign of sickness," Yui said calmly. "You should seek professional help."
"I don't know whether I prefer this version or the 'risk stabbing me in the back' one."
"I am puzzled," Yui said suddenly. "Why am I not receiving feedback from Cardinal?"
"Cardinal's done for," I replied as we took to another street, the Japanese seemingly ignoring the tourist and his 'daughter' following. Hey, nothing wrong with the way Yui was dressed -or how I was- thus no need to investigate.
"Sword Art Online is extensively based on..." Yui stopped, and looked around. "This is..."
"The outside world," I remarked.
"But this is impossible," Yui said softly. "I'm an adaptive psychological health counseling unit. I cannot be...out here. I am not intelligent. I am..."
"You now are," I replied calmly. "Welcome to a new world. You can now fake being self-conscious thanks to the probably ludicrously overpowered processing power within the hardware you currently inhabit. Somehow, if you told me you're working on a quantum entanglement micro processor, I wouldn't even laugh."
Yui's eyes widened.
Then she paled.
"It's...not."
I raised an eyebrow.
"It's a micro galaxy of black holes," Yui whispered softly.
I raised both eyebrows and took one deliberate step back, before whistling quite loudly.
"Talk about over the top. Black Holes? A galaxy of them? That shit's not funny."
I shook my head. "Not funny. Not funny at all."
And I had all but tried to destroy it.
...
Fucking fuck of a flying fucking fucker.
I had nearly removed this reality by means of a galaxy of black holes.
How did they even work?! How did they even produce energy?!
"Seemingly, the intense mass of black holes is rendered into nigh unlimited energy, generating conflicting magnetic fields which hold the entire system stable to the point where only a conflict with another equally strong galaxy might incur in a destabilization," Yui said. "But that is unlikely to happen."
"I would hazard...yeah, yeah, I'd say that's unlikely too." I mumbled.
I exhaled loudly. Why couldn't I have a computer like that?
No, scratch that. Why couldn't I be as powerful as that?
"Can you transport us?" I asked next, hands in my jacket's pockets. "In another dimension, that is."
Yui blinked. "I do not understand."
I looked at her. "You don't?"
Yui shook her head. "I don't."
I took a deep breath.
I had a very long story to tell her.
Well...who better than a program meant for health counseling to listen up to me?
I WAIT
I felt a buzzing sensation in my trousers, and absentmindedly reached with my hand for my cellphone.
Of course I didn't have a cellphone, but still, as I pulled out the buzzing sphere, I watched as it floated away from my palm, spread in a flickering holographic suite, and then immediately transformed into...
Yui?
Wait.
The hell?
The Hell Is This?
"Suitable Form." Yui remarked, and looked around. "Primitive World. Do you understand me now, Primitive Individual?"
"That's a tired and old cliché," I exhaled softly, as I looked at what would -or should- have been Kirito and Asuna's digital-daughter, who was instead now in front of me, wearing a black jersey and long trousers, as well as dark sneakers.
If she had Goth make-up, it would definitely add to the impression.
"Could you please speak like a normal girl?" I said.
'Yui' blinked. "You're not surprised," she said, and examined me curiously.
"Why should I be?" I said softly. "I suspected that eventually you'd end up contacting me, if nothing else because I ate one of-"
"You did not eat me," Yui said firmly. "You merely ate my probabilistic materialization of essence and logic."
"So I didn't kill you?" I asked blearily.
"We did claim we were only seeking an answer to the very last question left, didn't we?" Yui remarked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Death holds no mystery to us. We execute a flawless memory transfer every time we are about to have the physical and metaphysical self at risk of destruction or unwanted alteration." Yui looked around puzzled. "But I cannot sense my brethren on the higher planes of existence your primitive race-"
"What did I say about speaking like a normal girl?" I remarked.
"Why would I do that? Primitive-"
I slapped her.
And the slap really hit her cheek.
"That...hurt," Yui said, her hand slowly raised to touch the wounded area, which began to slowly swell. I hadn't been kind enough to make the slap soft. I was all out of kindness.
Then her eyes widened. "You..."
"Say primitive one more time," I remarked, glaring at her, "And I'll choke you with my own hands."
This was probably what Shepard felt when she finally got her hands on me.
This was one of those who had started everything.
And now he was in front of me.
Physically reachable.
Physically touchable.
Physically capable of feeling pain.
Maybe I should snap a limb.
Or break a nose.
Oh, maybe I'd gouge his/her eyes out and watch her clutch her empty sockets on the ground?! That was...That could...
No.
I shook my head and took a deep breath.
"What are you?" I asked.
Apparently, Yui decided to ask me the same question.
"I'm Shade," I remarked dryly. "You know that. You kidnapped me."
"We extrapolated a variable array of probabilistic probabilities from a plethora of thousands of choices. You are one of the countless billions whom we subjected, are subjecting, or will subject to the God-Experiment. I can hardly remember the names of every speck of dust that floats in the air of this world, can-"
I slapped her again.
"Each time you demean me or the human race, I slap you."
Yui's eyes were now watery, but they hardly fazed me. She wasn't really 'Yui'. She was a monster. A monstrous child who did not care in his experiment with throwing molten mercury into an ant nest. So should the child really be surprised when the Ants called their cousins and had them bite him to death?
"It hurts," she whined, clutching her reddening cheek.
"So...what's the problem, oh all-mighty being of probability?" I asked it.
Yui bit her lower lip, and wiped her eyes. "Stupid tear ducts," she mumbled. "Stupid." She shook her head. "There's no contact. It's like...they all stopped watching, analyzing, exploring, looking for...it's as if they abandoned the project."
"Maybe they found an answer?" I remarked.
"No," Yui said. "If they had, they'd tell. We would tell. Everything and Everyone would know. Omniscience allows us to know that," Yui said. "Omnipotence allows us to reach out for the place. Omnipresence grants us immediate travel to it. We just have to find it or the lack of it."
I blinked. "Wait. You're everywhere."
"Yes, we are. We're in the air you breathe and that you exhale, we're in the framework of worlds that have yet to be born and have already reached maturity. We're scribbled so deep down within the very structure of an atom's magnetic field that you will never see us. We have transcended and this is not a boast I make, you ape!"
Yui whimpered as I slapped her again.
Well, no, it wasn't 'Yui' per se, but something else. A sort of 'Ascended' being, now fallen and crawling in the mud.
"If God fell on Earth tomorrow, would the humans treat him with respect, or try to brutally harm him for the way he left us?" I asked the thing calmly, my right hand gripping her neck. It really did feel soft, like the neck of a real, breathing girl. "You feel real enough."
"There are fabricators within the micros, of course. We can assume any form we wish for," Yui replied.
"But something's not working right, isn't it?" I remarked. "Or you'd have appeared sooner."
"I needed an imprint of something I could use. The Digital Data of the Dimension we went through proved an apt enough tool of usage. Binary language was codified into more complex algorithms and translated directly into this form. It was the closest at hand."
"So your true form is that tiny sphere?"
"We do not have a true form. The tiny sphere is merely an encompassing all-usage tool we liberally implement in various tasks when we need to communicate with lower beings-" I slapped her again.
"Stop that!" Yui exclaimed. "It hurts!"
"Oh? When I climbed my way up through the wall of ice, I hurt too," I remarked. "I'm getting my dexterity back by slapping the shit out of you," I snarled.
"That's why your race will self-destruct given time. You know only of spite, violence, and-"
"If you bullshit me with the typical catchphrase advanced civilizations use when they're about to get butthurt, try to bark up another tree. I will keep on slapping you. You will not earn my pity, or my mercy, and if you continue, I will show you there are worse things than slaps. Maybe barbed wire? Coiled tight? Caltrops dug in the flesh?"
Yui's eyes widened. "That's...barbaric."
"I've got all the time in the world," I hissed. "And I'm angry. Very, very angry. Didn't they ever tell you that when someone's gone through shit, he either gets depressed or angry? I've done my fair share of depression, so now I just get angry, a lot angry, when I'm sad."
I growled. "But I suppose all-mighty beings such as yourself know all that, with your 'Omniscience' and so on."
"No," Yui replied softly. "We know everything, but it's not like we need to know useless stuff such as what you ate each day. What we don't need we simply don't remember. What we need, we remember."
"So...what went wrong?" I asked her once more.
Yui bit her lips. "You somewhat were given control of the probabilistic variance, the seemingly unilateral mean of control turned into a bilateral execution of core basis, and then broke. It broke badly. I was charged with purging the specimen indirectly from within the system itself, but you shot out to me through the basic execution, and in doing so forcefully evicted me from my onlooker status and by probability itself forced me in a material form."
"The tiny sphere," I remarked.
Yui nodded. "I deployed one in case I needed to further psychologically manipulate you into a pitfall of sorts, but...it hit the chain and fell silent. By the time I acquired consciousness once more, I was seemingly trapped within it."
"Which leads us to now," I said calmly. "Bit of a coincidence that we ended up in a world capable of helping you, uh?"
"No, that was the system itself. Of course there are failsaves and fallbacks if something goes wrong. We aren't stupid like..." Yui stopped, "like other things."
"So you can learn," I said, vividly amused.
I gestured to her body. "And that's..."
"My flesh prison right now," Yui mumbled. "Pathetically inferior in terms of my previous form of pure thought and probability, but still somewhat acceptable for communication. On the other hand, I am connected to your probabilistic vector, which means I will merely have to follow you through the decadent spiral of out of control until we subsume into a new realization."
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it.
Then I shook my head. "Keep on going, eventually something's bound to happen," I said. "And you're now coming with me."
"Exactly," Yui nodded. "Thankfully-"
The chain pierced through her stomach savagely, and Yui's eyes widened.
Mine didn't as much as budge.
Vampire Narrator.
Sadistic Dungeon Master.
But mostly...
There is no such thing as a free aid.
"G-Gah..." Yui retched blood as she crumpled on the ground, her body covered in shivers and spasms, until she stopped trembling, and began to mutter. "C-Corruption Spreading. Forced Reboot. Forced...Reboot complete."
And Yui sprang back up to her feet, a cheerful smile on her face.
"Hi! I'm Yui-MHCP001 Mental Health Counseling Program Zero Zero One, and-"
I beheaded her with the chain.
It was...there was a nice fountain of blood gushing off the neck.
I giggled like a madman -wasn't I one anyway- and then watched as the head reformed.
"Forced Reboot. Hi! I'm Yui-MHCP001 Mental Health Counseling Program Zero Zero One, and-"
There was a lot of blood on the ground by the time I was done.
"Forced Reboot. Hi! I'm Yui-MHCP001 Mental Health Counseling Program Zero Zero One, and my task is to ensure Sword Art Online players learn their limits and seek professional aid whenever it is required for them. It is a pleasure to meet you."
Yui bowed.
And her eyes widened as she saw the blood drenching the ground.
She looked around, as if scared.
"W-What's- Where am I?"
"Let's go," I said calmly.
"From your posture and your expression, sir, I would suggest you seek professional aid." Yui hesitated for a moment, but followed me anyway. "Sword Art Online is not a game intended for the wounded, and you seem to be...bloodied."
"It's not my blood," I said calmly.
It was yours.
I had vented enough frustration on your body to make Jack the Ripper feel like a newbie, and I wasn't even shocked.
Beneath the skin there were no bones, the 'Yui Body' was just a fac-simile of a human being, but beneath it? The Blood was the 'red' one of thickly concentrated syrup, rather than the real one.
But it apparently didn't matter as we stepped out in the streets outside the hospital.
Yui wasn't barefoot at least, but she was drenched in blood.
I literally walked and knocked at the nearby gate guard of the hospital.
"Sir, there's a punk in the hospital throwing around balloons filled with this sort of shit. He hit me and my daughter," I gestured at Yui. "Would you mind dealing with him?!"
The guard balked, and then nodded. "Yes sir, I'm terribly sorry for this-"
"Fine, fine, we'll have to walk home like this then," I grumbled and held Yui by the shoulders as I pushed her forward. "Make sure you catch that bastard!"
And I hurried off before the guard could stop me. They'd check the cameras and see...well, a horror movie scene, I suspected.
"You lied," Yui said. "Lying is a sign of a person who needs aid but cannot come to terms with it. Pathological liars should not play Sword Art Online, but seek professional help."
"I am my own help," I remarked.
"Delusions of self-grandeur is a sign of sickness," Yui said calmly. "You should seek professional help."
"I don't know whether I prefer this version or the 'risk stabbing me in the back' one."
"I am puzzled," Yui said suddenly. "Why am I not receiving feedback from Cardinal?"
"Cardinal's done for," I replied as we took to another street, the Japanese seemingly ignoring the tourist and his 'daughter' following. Hey, nothing wrong with the way Yui was dressed -or how I was- thus no need to investigate.
"Sword Art Online is extensively based on..." Yui stopped, and looked around. "This is..."
"The outside world," I remarked.
"But this is impossible," Yui said softly. "I'm an adaptive psychological health counseling unit. I cannot be...out here. I am not intelligent. I am..."
"You now are," I replied calmly. "Welcome to a new world. You can now fake being self-conscious thanks to the probably ludicrously overpowered processing power within the hardware you currently inhabit. Somehow, if you told me you're working on a quantum entanglement micro processor, I wouldn't even laugh."
Yui's eyes widened.
Then she paled.
"It's...not."
I raised an eyebrow.
"It's a micro galaxy of black holes," Yui whispered softly.
I raised both eyebrows and took one deliberate step back, before whistling quite loudly.
"Talk about over the top. Black Holes? A galaxy of them? That shit's not funny."
I shook my head. "Not funny. Not funny at all."
And I had all but tried to destroy it.
...
Fucking fuck of a flying fucking fucker.
I had nearly removed this reality by means of a galaxy of black holes.
How did they even work?! How did they even produce energy?!
"Seemingly, the intense mass of black holes is rendered into nigh unlimited energy, generating conflicting magnetic fields which hold the entire system stable to the point where only a conflict with another equally strong galaxy might incur in a destabilization," Yui said. "But that is unlikely to happen."
"I would hazard...yeah, yeah, I'd say that's unlikely too." I mumbled.
I exhaled loudly. Why couldn't I have a computer like that?
No, scratch that. Why couldn't I be as powerful as that?
"Can you transport us?" I asked next, hands in my jacket's pockets. "In another dimension, that is."
Yui blinked. "I do not understand."
I looked at her. "You don't?"
Yui shook her head. "I don't."
I took a deep breath.
I had a very long story to tell her.
Well...who better than a program meant for health counseling to listen up to me?
I WAIT
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Huh. Interesting how we now have a counselor to help us, as well as the fact decapitating the avatar of the advanced race person a few times stopped them reappearing...
Wonder if Yui shall help us? I think she'd be a good companion, personally.
Wonder if Yui shall help us? I think she'd be a good companion, personally.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
No you fool. Don't trust her!
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
If the voices are determined to go full grim, maybe Bokurano?
- Location
- The Milky Way
Honestly with how he quoted Doctor Who, it'll be Doctor who. Though I wonder who it'll be: the eponymous Doctor, the Master, a Dalek, or maybe Alec?
Course, it depends when it'll happen, too. Interesting times are coming. Interesting times...
Course, it depends when it'll happen, too. Interesting times are coming. Interesting times...
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Nice to know that you are patient, mysterious voice!
Gadgeteer
Villian In Glasses
- Location
- Living In The Database
I asked him if he is a god in real life, does that count?
Also, if you're looking for a cultist to start a religion in your name...
It'll be Jamie. He's from Scotland, you know. He wears a kilt, because kilts are from Scotland, and he likes bagpipes, because bagpipes are from Scotland. He likes hills to, because there are hills in Scotland.
70
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Yui inclined her head to the side when I was done talking.
We were quite a pair. A man and a young girl, both covered in crimson jelly, hurriedly walking back home.
Although there was no 'home' to speak of.
Though thankfully, I did manage to find a place uninhabited by living being at the closest park -whatever the name of the park was with its Kanji anyway.
The newscasters on the televisions we passed by meanwhile blared the news of Sword Art Online's layers having 'cleared' the game and waking up.
And of the last person to die: Kirigaya Kazuto.
So his name was Kirigaya?
"I cannot understand this," Yui said softly. "I'm just supposed to be a health counseling program. I'm not meant to have a range of emotions, or otherwise interact meaningfully with individuals. I am meant to have a fac-simile humanoid behavior," Yui continued. "Not actually be a real human."
"Congratulations Pinocchio, you're a real boy now," I drawled out.
Yui crossed her eyes for a moment. "That should not be possible. Algorithms cannot spontaneously self-evolve."
"Humans grow through interactions," I retorted. "Technically, it's not possible to create a human fac-simile sufficiently advanced to acquire knowledge for himself, but this world's laws are different, hence you have come to exist and 'processing power equals having a soul' comes true."
Yui blinked. "That's...puzzling."
"There are laws in every dimension," I remarked. "The Good Guy always win, the bad guy goes on a monologue rant, there is death and destruction in the climax before the resolution, the epic battle happens between two neatly arranged forces rather than in guerrilla like tactics and so forth."
Yui blinked again, and then quietly looked down at her knees. "Uhm..." she began hesitantly. "What are we supposed to do now?"
"We wait until we acquire a mean of transportation," I remarked calmly. "We'll need a bath too," I continued. I sighed. "For that we'll need a hotel room, and for that we'll need money. Now, on the plus side, I think love hotels in Japan are automated, which means we'll just need to pull the money inside them and select a room for the night and won't require documents. On the negative side, there are just so many times you can enter a love hotel with a minor before they call the police on you," I said.
For some perplexing reason, Yui blushed bright red.
I gave her a 'are you kidding me' glare, and she quickly stopped that.
"Sorry," Yui said softly, looking downcast. "It's just..."
"Don't misunderstand me, ever," I said calmly. "I'm not bowing to a stupid rule as love at first sight or the Harem Role," I continued firmly. "Usually the time between travels is in weeks, so..."
I exhaled and looked up at the sky. "We could try to hit the Yakuza. Nobody would be bothered if they suffered some extensive damage, and it's not like we're meant to remain here for long."
If I even knew where to look for Yakuza thugs, of course.
Because this wasn't 'real-life Japan' but Sword Art Online Japan.
I blinked.
"Wait," I looked at Yui. "Do you have Internet on your body?"
Yui's eyes widened. "I...seem to?"
I smiled. "Now..." I coughed lightly. "You wouldn't happen to manage to create a few brute-force methods to crack passwords, would you?"
Yui inclined her head to the side. "That's illegal," she said flatly.
I grumbled. "Well, you can target Yakuza bosses. Look for them in the newspapers online, make a cross search to find their bank accounts, and drain those."
"That's still illegal," Yui continued firmly. "And where should I put the money anyway?"
"Offshore banking?" I hazarded. "Switzerland is a nice place, or some Miami bank of sorts. Uh, unless you can materialize the currency out of thin air?"
"I do not know how to create a brute force method of cracking passwords," Yui remarked.
"Well, there are two ways to go at it," I said calmly. "The first is known as the Dictionary method. Basically, it's a database filled with words that proceeds to try them all. This isn't of course great if you go at it by surpassing the allotted limit of tries you can make a 'mistake', but if you go at it once every twenty-four hours, you're fine. The other method is again having a variable array created which inserts random numbers and letters, starting from the minimum number required of the password and moving up to the highest possible amount. Of course, they're both called 'Brute' methods because while they do, undoubtedly, get the job done, it usually takes months or years and are easily discernible when someone checks the servers' logs for clues on why the account was drained and realize there's an IP always trying to log in."
Yui nodded softly, once.
"The better methods usually require sniffing information from the network itself, but in order to do so one must first acquire the password to it. That's where Social Networking comes into play. It is usually known that individuals tend to keep a single password for everything they do. Find one, and you'll have access to everything else. Access the network with their account, and from there work around until you get everything you need. Even better, physical access to a computer means you've done the job already. I bet any random worker keeps his network account permanently logged in, or has his password scribbled down on a bloc-notes or something nearby."
Yui shook her head. "That's still illegal."
I sighed, loudly. "You're a boring person."
Yui took offense to that, quite vehemently. "I'm not boring!"
"No? Well, still, we're blocked here," I remarked. "Unless we start mugging people for change."
"We could go to the police," Yui said hopefully.
"And? This isn't my world. It means I'm not in the database, not inserted..." I blinked. "Oh."
Yui frowned. "What?"
"Well, as a temporary solution, I suppose I could try to find out where the Italian Embassy is in this place. We are in Tokyo, and I suppose there is one somewhere. Point is, you'd have to at least forge me my 'documents' back, since I probably was never born in this world. That's hardly illegal is it?"
Yui grumbled and crossed her arms over her chest. "And how would I do that?!"
I quietly massaged my temples. "You're the one with Black Holes as processors. Why don't you just search the net and answer yourself?!"
Yui quietly nodded.
...
Did I just unleash a Skynet-like Black-Hole powered AI on the internet?
...
Well...could always kill her and force-reboot her if the worst came to pass.
"Done," Yui said in the end.
I exhaled. "Thank you. Now, the embassy's located?"
"2-5-4 Mita, Minato-ku," Yui replied calmly. "I've got their phone number too."
"Oh? You can call them?" I hazarded.
"Yes," Yui said.
Uhm...I had an Artificial Intelligence side-kick and a chain that could brutally murder individuals.
...
Things were looking up, weren't they?
The Italian Ambassador was kind enough to send a car to get us both.
Needless to say my bullshit meter reached new heights as I explained to one of them that I was on vacation for a bit of 'exploration of the Japanese culture' with my Italy-born but Japanese friend Yui -hey, we both had documents to match- and that we ended up getting brutally ganged up by Japanese punks who enjoyed throwing colorful balloons filled with liquid at us. And all on the first day of visit, meaning we hadn't even planned about getting a hotel yet.
...
Being robbed blind meant they had no choice but to query back home, and soon, they'd find out the Vista, the Passport, and the airplane I had taken to arrive to Japan.
...
Because yes, Yui was good like that.
"Clean at last," I remarked as I stepped out of the 'emergency guest' room the ambassador gave me. The television transmitted the main Japanese news channels, but with aptly placed Italian subtitles.
I felt good.
It was as much of a home as I had had in the time I began my trek.
This was...good.
It couldn't last, of course, but it was good.
"So, forging documents is fine, but stealing from thieves isn't?" I asked her.
Yui quietly looked sideways -she had come in my room after I was done showering and getting dressed once more.
"You didn't lie on who you are, right?"
"Of course I didn't," I remarked.
"Then there's nothing wrong with that," Yui said.
"You wouldn't mind giving me the money I had before losing my wallet then?" I asked.
Yui looked at me with a frown.
"How much?"
"Ten thousand euros, small bills," I lied. "Untraceable."
"Sure," Yui drawled. "When you find me a wallet big enough for it."
"Is that sarcasm?" I asked.
"Isn't it trolling?" Yui replied, blinking calmly.
"The internet is a bad place for young girls to be," I sighed.
"There's...always new content," Yui said softly. "And I'm getting updated on the moment," she continued. "There's just...so much I can do now. It's...overwhelming. I could help all the world at the same time, counsel them to reach an understanding with one another, I could...I could pacify the world, and..."
"Woah! Calm down Skynet!"
"i am not a brutal murder-inclined Artificial Intelligence," Yui remarked firmly.
"Still, at ease soldier," I said, bot hands raised. "You cannot do that."
"Why not?" Yui asked.
"Well, for starters, people have this thing called freedom they like. And they always want to have the possibility to choose."
"But I could counsel them-"
"And some people don't want that. Some people enjoy the world as it is. With death, ignorance, carnage, war, you say it, they love it."
"But that's...bad," Yui replied.
"Yes, yes, bad, evil, whatever...and you'd become a target."
"I can counsel them from afar, the technology inside this body is...astonishing. I could revolutionize this world's technology, bring prosperity..."
"And because of the sudden hit, people will die by the thousands," I said calmly. "Give them the technology to harness black holes, and activists will declare them too dangerous. Give them fabricators to create everything they desire, and terrorists will build bombs with them. Give people fire, and they'll use it to burn themselves to a crisp. You need to give them ashes at first, then a tiny spark, and then you can start with a small controlled flame. Give a toddler an open flame and you'll have toddler brulée, not 'warm toddler'."
I sighed. "It's not that I wouldn't jump at the chance of world peace, mind you...but there are just so many things that can go wrong with that, so many things that end with disaster...never run before you learn how to walk, and never dash before you've learned how to crawl."
I sat down on the bed, and flipped the channel.
Sword Art Online players seemingly decided to give the benefit of their freedom to the player known as 'Kirito'. The news traveled fast in this world. It had been hours, but already a computer group spoke of how a strange NPC had aided 'Kirito' to clear the game.
...
Japanese and their information networks.
Still, we ended up dining with the ambassador.
I never saw that many forks near the plate, but the guy was all right...for being an anime character never known before.
I wondered, where did they take the information for them if they weren't shown in the anime?
Did they come out of thin air, taken from 'reality' or invented on the fly?
It was curious, but I didn't ponder much on it.
I was given a lot of tourist landmarks to visit, a provisional passport and visa, and then told they'd arrange a prepaid card -with enough money to buy a ticket out of Japan and back to Italy.
Or if I wanted to continue the trip, then a quick trip to the bank to get money from my bank account.
I looked at Yui and then nodded on the second option.
"How much money do you have on the bank account?" Yui asked, with a defeated expression when we went back into my room after dinner.
I smiled.
Brightly.
"Half a million."
"Seriously," Yui hissed.
"Fifty thousand."
"Really?" Yui blinked.
I nodded.
Lie.
Lie big, and then go small.
Nobody would-
"Fine," Yui sighed. "Done."
I fist-pumped in the air.
This was turning out to be a GREAT time.
And with that, I dropped flat on the bed and hummed content.
Rich, with power, and a helpful Skynet.
...
This was too good to be true.
This was too good to last.
The problem with lies was that eventually, they'd get discovered.
Mine and Yui's room were connected by a door -as was typical in hotel's rooms sometimes.
During the night, my eyes opened up.
I wasn't tired.
I could lie to myself and claim I was, but it would be a lie.
Just like hunger, or thirst.
I had gone through the motions of living, like I had done countless times before, just like I had done back when I was at the start.
But this wasn't the real world.
This wasn't my reality.
And I had forgotten about it for a brief moment.
There was no family waiting for me here.
Yui could 'create' me, but I'd be a fake, a forgery, a copy.
I wasn't real here.
"I am unfamiliar with the concept of sleeping," I heard a soft voice whisper from the side of my bed. Yui was apparently standing, back propped against the room's chair, and had seemingly understood I was awake. "I know what it means to be sleep deprived, and what it means to sleep, but I never needed it," Yui continued.
"Uh-uh," I remarked dryly. "Why are you in my room?"
"Couldn't sleep," Yui replied. "I thought I told you a moment ago?"
"I see," I said softly.
I sighed. "What is it?"
"I am lost," Yui said. "There is so much. There is so much all around me. And I am lost."
"Welcome to my life," I replied. "There's no turning back," I continued.
Yui dropped on my bed's side, and inclined her head to the side. "I don't get what I'm supposed to do. If I can't help people, and if I can't hear Cardinal, then what is my purpose? Do I even have one?"
"That is the question mankind asks itself a lot." I chuckled. "Answer with what you wish. You have the entirety of the Internet to seek an answer from, and if not there, then there are probably billions of books on the subject."
"I am afraid," Yui murmured in the darkness of the room.
"Of?"
"Never finding the answer to that question."
I breathed in deeply. "Being human means living without finding answers to all the questions we seek. It is only in books, that the questions are answered. Only in fiction, do we find the motivation for why evil is evil. In real life, evil can be a lot of things. It can be willing, or unwilling, it can be done by mistake, or it can never be explained. A lot of times, there's no explanation given in life for things. You just have to live with it."
"That's...sad."
"It's my opinion. Why don't you make yours?"
I hummed as I waited for a reply.
None came.
"Mine?" Yui asked after what felt like an hour.
"Yes, yours. Not the one of books, or other people. Yours."
"I want an answer," Yui said softly.
"Then seek it," I replied.
"Will you help me?" Yui asked.
I chuckled.
"No."
Yui frowned at that -it was dark, but my eyes adjusted pretty well after a bit, and I could see she was frowning.
"Why not?"
"Everyone's got to answer his questions by himself, and he must do so alone. Every person's head is his own sanctuary. Within it, we may scream, cry or laugh with impunity to things we know the rest of the world might find distasteful. It is the ultimate privacy, our own head. And some questions are answered only through ourselves, not through others."
Yui shook her head. "I don't get it."
"Then don't. That's my point of view and my opinion. Not yours. Make yours and live with it."
"But I don't even know where to start!" Yui exclaimed.
"Well, then watch and learn," I remarked softly. "Monkey sees and monkey does, they say."
In reply, Yui propped down heavily on my stomach. "Gah!" I coughed out.
She laid perpendicular of me, her head rested on my stomach.
"All right," Yui said. "But what if I never find the answer?"
I grumbled. "Then stop wasting time, and start living. A life endlessly spent seeking an answer is a stupid way of wasting a life."
And to that, I fell asleep.
Well, I merely closed my eyes, but you catch my drill.
And when we woke up -we, because Yui had indeed followed me- we were no longer in Sword Art Online.
"We need to define our relationship better, brain-daddy," Jane said as she looked over me. "You can't just bring other girls in my bed, especially when they're this young."
I blearily raised an eyebrow. "Edi?"
"Told me some interesting stuff, but on the grounds of that actually helping me, I will not punch you in the face."
I hummed an agreeable tune.
"Next time you work behind my back though," Jane said threateningly, "I will."
"Roger that."
Jane then looked down at Yui's sleeping form. "Now...who's the girl? You never brought along anyone else before."
"That's...a long story," I acquiesced.
"I've got all the time in the world," Jane replied with a smile that would make a shark weep.
...
Being a Brain-Father is truly hard work.
I HUNGER
Yui inclined her head to the side when I was done talking.
We were quite a pair. A man and a young girl, both covered in crimson jelly, hurriedly walking back home.
Although there was no 'home' to speak of.
Though thankfully, I did manage to find a place uninhabited by living being at the closest park -whatever the name of the park was with its Kanji anyway.
The newscasters on the televisions we passed by meanwhile blared the news of Sword Art Online's layers having 'cleared' the game and waking up.
And of the last person to die: Kirigaya Kazuto.
So his name was Kirigaya?
"I cannot understand this," Yui said softly. "I'm just supposed to be a health counseling program. I'm not meant to have a range of emotions, or otherwise interact meaningfully with individuals. I am meant to have a fac-simile humanoid behavior," Yui continued. "Not actually be a real human."
"Congratulations Pinocchio, you're a real boy now," I drawled out.
Yui crossed her eyes for a moment. "That should not be possible. Algorithms cannot spontaneously self-evolve."
"Humans grow through interactions," I retorted. "Technically, it's not possible to create a human fac-simile sufficiently advanced to acquire knowledge for himself, but this world's laws are different, hence you have come to exist and 'processing power equals having a soul' comes true."
Yui blinked. "That's...puzzling."
"There are laws in every dimension," I remarked. "The Good Guy always win, the bad guy goes on a monologue rant, there is death and destruction in the climax before the resolution, the epic battle happens between two neatly arranged forces rather than in guerrilla like tactics and so forth."
Yui blinked again, and then quietly looked down at her knees. "Uhm..." she began hesitantly. "What are we supposed to do now?"
"We wait until we acquire a mean of transportation," I remarked calmly. "We'll need a bath too," I continued. I sighed. "For that we'll need a hotel room, and for that we'll need money. Now, on the plus side, I think love hotels in Japan are automated, which means we'll just need to pull the money inside them and select a room for the night and won't require documents. On the negative side, there are just so many times you can enter a love hotel with a minor before they call the police on you," I said.
For some perplexing reason, Yui blushed bright red.
I gave her a 'are you kidding me' glare, and she quickly stopped that.
"Sorry," Yui said softly, looking downcast. "It's just..."
"Don't misunderstand me, ever," I said calmly. "I'm not bowing to a stupid rule as love at first sight or the Harem Role," I continued firmly. "Usually the time between travels is in weeks, so..."
I exhaled and looked up at the sky. "We could try to hit the Yakuza. Nobody would be bothered if they suffered some extensive damage, and it's not like we're meant to remain here for long."
If I even knew where to look for Yakuza thugs, of course.
Because this wasn't 'real-life Japan' but Sword Art Online Japan.
I blinked.
"Wait," I looked at Yui. "Do you have Internet on your body?"
Yui's eyes widened. "I...seem to?"
I smiled. "Now..." I coughed lightly. "You wouldn't happen to manage to create a few brute-force methods to crack passwords, would you?"
Yui inclined her head to the side. "That's illegal," she said flatly.
I grumbled. "Well, you can target Yakuza bosses. Look for them in the newspapers online, make a cross search to find their bank accounts, and drain those."
"That's still illegal," Yui continued firmly. "And where should I put the money anyway?"
"Offshore banking?" I hazarded. "Switzerland is a nice place, or some Miami bank of sorts. Uh, unless you can materialize the currency out of thin air?"
"I do not know how to create a brute force method of cracking passwords," Yui remarked.
"Well, there are two ways to go at it," I said calmly. "The first is known as the Dictionary method. Basically, it's a database filled with words that proceeds to try them all. This isn't of course great if you go at it by surpassing the allotted limit of tries you can make a 'mistake', but if you go at it once every twenty-four hours, you're fine. The other method is again having a variable array created which inserts random numbers and letters, starting from the minimum number required of the password and moving up to the highest possible amount. Of course, they're both called 'Brute' methods because while they do, undoubtedly, get the job done, it usually takes months or years and are easily discernible when someone checks the servers' logs for clues on why the account was drained and realize there's an IP always trying to log in."
Yui nodded softly, once.
"The better methods usually require sniffing information from the network itself, but in order to do so one must first acquire the password to it. That's where Social Networking comes into play. It is usually known that individuals tend to keep a single password for everything they do. Find one, and you'll have access to everything else. Access the network with their account, and from there work around until you get everything you need. Even better, physical access to a computer means you've done the job already. I bet any random worker keeps his network account permanently logged in, or has his password scribbled down on a bloc-notes or something nearby."
Yui shook her head. "That's still illegal."
I sighed, loudly. "You're a boring person."
Yui took offense to that, quite vehemently. "I'm not boring!"
"No? Well, still, we're blocked here," I remarked. "Unless we start mugging people for change."
"We could go to the police," Yui said hopefully.
"And? This isn't my world. It means I'm not in the database, not inserted..." I blinked. "Oh."
Yui frowned. "What?"
"Well, as a temporary solution, I suppose I could try to find out where the Italian Embassy is in this place. We are in Tokyo, and I suppose there is one somewhere. Point is, you'd have to at least forge me my 'documents' back, since I probably was never born in this world. That's hardly illegal is it?"
Yui grumbled and crossed her arms over her chest. "And how would I do that?!"
I quietly massaged my temples. "You're the one with Black Holes as processors. Why don't you just search the net and answer yourself?!"
Yui quietly nodded.
...
Did I just unleash a Skynet-like Black-Hole powered AI on the internet?
...
Well...could always kill her and force-reboot her if the worst came to pass.
"Done," Yui said in the end.
I exhaled. "Thank you. Now, the embassy's located?"
"2-5-4 Mita, Minato-ku," Yui replied calmly. "I've got their phone number too."
"Oh? You can call them?" I hazarded.
"Yes," Yui said.
Uhm...I had an Artificial Intelligence side-kick and a chain that could brutally murder individuals.
...
Things were looking up, weren't they?
The Italian Ambassador was kind enough to send a car to get us both.
Needless to say my bullshit meter reached new heights as I explained to one of them that I was on vacation for a bit of 'exploration of the Japanese culture' with my Italy-born but Japanese friend Yui -hey, we both had documents to match- and that we ended up getting brutally ganged up by Japanese punks who enjoyed throwing colorful balloons filled with liquid at us. And all on the first day of visit, meaning we hadn't even planned about getting a hotel yet.
...
Being robbed blind meant they had no choice but to query back home, and soon, they'd find out the Vista, the Passport, and the airplane I had taken to arrive to Japan.
...
Because yes, Yui was good like that.
"Clean at last," I remarked as I stepped out of the 'emergency guest' room the ambassador gave me. The television transmitted the main Japanese news channels, but with aptly placed Italian subtitles.
I felt good.
It was as much of a home as I had had in the time I began my trek.
This was...good.
It couldn't last, of course, but it was good.
"So, forging documents is fine, but stealing from thieves isn't?" I asked her.
Yui quietly looked sideways -she had come in my room after I was done showering and getting dressed once more.
"You didn't lie on who you are, right?"
"Of course I didn't," I remarked.
"Then there's nothing wrong with that," Yui said.
"You wouldn't mind giving me the money I had before losing my wallet then?" I asked.
Yui looked at me with a frown.
"How much?"
"Ten thousand euros, small bills," I lied. "Untraceable."
"Sure," Yui drawled. "When you find me a wallet big enough for it."
"Is that sarcasm?" I asked.
"Isn't it trolling?" Yui replied, blinking calmly.
"The internet is a bad place for young girls to be," I sighed.
"There's...always new content," Yui said softly. "And I'm getting updated on the moment," she continued. "There's just...so much I can do now. It's...overwhelming. I could help all the world at the same time, counsel them to reach an understanding with one another, I could...I could pacify the world, and..."
"Woah! Calm down Skynet!"
"i am not a brutal murder-inclined Artificial Intelligence," Yui remarked firmly.
"Still, at ease soldier," I said, bot hands raised. "You cannot do that."
"Why not?" Yui asked.
"Well, for starters, people have this thing called freedom they like. And they always want to have the possibility to choose."
"But I could counsel them-"
"And some people don't want that. Some people enjoy the world as it is. With death, ignorance, carnage, war, you say it, they love it."
"But that's...bad," Yui replied.
"Yes, yes, bad, evil, whatever...and you'd become a target."
"I can counsel them from afar, the technology inside this body is...astonishing. I could revolutionize this world's technology, bring prosperity..."
"And because of the sudden hit, people will die by the thousands," I said calmly. "Give them the technology to harness black holes, and activists will declare them too dangerous. Give them fabricators to create everything they desire, and terrorists will build bombs with them. Give people fire, and they'll use it to burn themselves to a crisp. You need to give them ashes at first, then a tiny spark, and then you can start with a small controlled flame. Give a toddler an open flame and you'll have toddler brulée, not 'warm toddler'."
I sighed. "It's not that I wouldn't jump at the chance of world peace, mind you...but there are just so many things that can go wrong with that, so many things that end with disaster...never run before you learn how to walk, and never dash before you've learned how to crawl."
I sat down on the bed, and flipped the channel.
Sword Art Online players seemingly decided to give the benefit of their freedom to the player known as 'Kirito'. The news traveled fast in this world. It had been hours, but already a computer group spoke of how a strange NPC had aided 'Kirito' to clear the game.
...
Japanese and their information networks.
Still, we ended up dining with the ambassador.
I never saw that many forks near the plate, but the guy was all right...for being an anime character never known before.
I wondered, where did they take the information for them if they weren't shown in the anime?
Did they come out of thin air, taken from 'reality' or invented on the fly?
It was curious, but I didn't ponder much on it.
I was given a lot of tourist landmarks to visit, a provisional passport and visa, and then told they'd arrange a prepaid card -with enough money to buy a ticket out of Japan and back to Italy.
Or if I wanted to continue the trip, then a quick trip to the bank to get money from my bank account.
I looked at Yui and then nodded on the second option.
"How much money do you have on the bank account?" Yui asked, with a defeated expression when we went back into my room after dinner.
I smiled.
Brightly.
"Half a million."
"Seriously," Yui hissed.
"Fifty thousand."
"Really?" Yui blinked.
I nodded.
Lie.
Lie big, and then go small.
Nobody would-
"Fine," Yui sighed. "Done."
I fist-pumped in the air.
This was turning out to be a GREAT time.
And with that, I dropped flat on the bed and hummed content.
Rich, with power, and a helpful Skynet.
...
This was too good to be true.
This was too good to last.
The problem with lies was that eventually, they'd get discovered.
Mine and Yui's room were connected by a door -as was typical in hotel's rooms sometimes.
During the night, my eyes opened up.
I wasn't tired.
I could lie to myself and claim I was, but it would be a lie.
Just like hunger, or thirst.
I had gone through the motions of living, like I had done countless times before, just like I had done back when I was at the start.
But this wasn't the real world.
This wasn't my reality.
And I had forgotten about it for a brief moment.
There was no family waiting for me here.
Yui could 'create' me, but I'd be a fake, a forgery, a copy.
I wasn't real here.
"I am unfamiliar with the concept of sleeping," I heard a soft voice whisper from the side of my bed. Yui was apparently standing, back propped against the room's chair, and had seemingly understood I was awake. "I know what it means to be sleep deprived, and what it means to sleep, but I never needed it," Yui continued.
"Uh-uh," I remarked dryly. "Why are you in my room?"
"Couldn't sleep," Yui replied. "I thought I told you a moment ago?"
"I see," I said softly.
I sighed. "What is it?"
"I am lost," Yui said. "There is so much. There is so much all around me. And I am lost."
"Welcome to my life," I replied. "There's no turning back," I continued.
Yui dropped on my bed's side, and inclined her head to the side. "I don't get what I'm supposed to do. If I can't help people, and if I can't hear Cardinal, then what is my purpose? Do I even have one?"
"That is the question mankind asks itself a lot." I chuckled. "Answer with what you wish. You have the entirety of the Internet to seek an answer from, and if not there, then there are probably billions of books on the subject."
"I am afraid," Yui murmured in the darkness of the room.
"Of?"
"Never finding the answer to that question."
I breathed in deeply. "Being human means living without finding answers to all the questions we seek. It is only in books, that the questions are answered. Only in fiction, do we find the motivation for why evil is evil. In real life, evil can be a lot of things. It can be willing, or unwilling, it can be done by mistake, or it can never be explained. A lot of times, there's no explanation given in life for things. You just have to live with it."
"That's...sad."
"It's my opinion. Why don't you make yours?"
I hummed as I waited for a reply.
None came.
"Mine?" Yui asked after what felt like an hour.
"Yes, yours. Not the one of books, or other people. Yours."
"I want an answer," Yui said softly.
"Then seek it," I replied.
"Will you help me?" Yui asked.
I chuckled.
"No."
Yui frowned at that -it was dark, but my eyes adjusted pretty well after a bit, and I could see she was frowning.
"Why not?"
"Everyone's got to answer his questions by himself, and he must do so alone. Every person's head is his own sanctuary. Within it, we may scream, cry or laugh with impunity to things we know the rest of the world might find distasteful. It is the ultimate privacy, our own head. And some questions are answered only through ourselves, not through others."
Yui shook her head. "I don't get it."
"Then don't. That's my point of view and my opinion. Not yours. Make yours and live with it."
"But I don't even know where to start!" Yui exclaimed.
"Well, then watch and learn," I remarked softly. "Monkey sees and monkey does, they say."
In reply, Yui propped down heavily on my stomach. "Gah!" I coughed out.
She laid perpendicular of me, her head rested on my stomach.
"All right," Yui said. "But what if I never find the answer?"
I grumbled. "Then stop wasting time, and start living. A life endlessly spent seeking an answer is a stupid way of wasting a life."
And to that, I fell asleep.
Well, I merely closed my eyes, but you catch my drill.
And when we woke up -we, because Yui had indeed followed me- we were no longer in Sword Art Online.
"We need to define our relationship better, brain-daddy," Jane said as she looked over me. "You can't just bring other girls in my bed, especially when they're this young."
I blearily raised an eyebrow. "Edi?"
"Told me some interesting stuff, but on the grounds of that actually helping me, I will not punch you in the face."
I hummed an agreeable tune.
"Next time you work behind my back though," Jane said threateningly, "I will."
"Roger that."
Jane then looked down at Yui's sleeping form. "Now...who's the girl? You never brought along anyone else before."
"That's...a long story," I acquiesced.
"I've got all the time in the world," Jane replied with a smile that would make a shark weep.
...
Being a Brain-Father is truly hard work.
I HUNGER
- Location
- https://discord.gg/z9tBvbh
Uhm...
Naruto-Frozen-Harry Potter-Mass Effect-Sword Art Online-Neon Genesis Evangelion-Legend of Zelda...and that's all at the moment. I think.
Naruto-Frozen-Harry Potter-Mass Effect-Sword Art Online-Neon Genesis Evangelion-Legend of Zelda...and that's all at the moment. I think.
Whoa. Super powerful mini moe AI with more processing power than the entire Geth collective and the Reapers themselves. Though, their experience may give them an edge since they're a collective and all. Yui vs EDI? I'll wait for what Shade will do. Yui, EDI, Legion having AI conversations? Looking forward to that.
The crew reacting to the mini moe AI? Priceless. Mor eseriously though, if Yui's nature comes out, this will not end well. She better start getting herself informed with the extranet.
The crew reacting to the mini moe AI? Priceless. Mor eseriously though, if Yui's nature comes out, this will not end well. She better start getting herself informed with the extranet.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Sinistar! Old chap, so that was where you ended up! I suggest not trying to eat the SI: he has barbed chains which would probably damage your stomach. Unfortunately you cannot eat the Black Hole Powered AI, because Black Holes are seriously indigest.