Chapter Text
When I, simulacrum Model R-14 | Unit N3, opened my eyes and took in my surroundings, what graced my eyes was not the metallic grey interior of the stasis pod I was supposed to be housed in.
Instead, I was surrounded by nothing.
Nothing, except a clear blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds and birds, and the perfectly smooth, blackened glassy crater I was currently standing in the middle of.
That can’t be right…
As the breeze tickling my silvery hair brought with it a smell that was sort of like fused glass, I stood there, unable to process my situation. The crater was obviously a problem, but what really confused me was everything else. A blue sky…clouds…birds…that's what the net called nature. Nature belonged outside, not deep inside the clean, white sterile walls of the place that I call home. If what I was looking at was not part of a dream, that would mean I was currently outside.
The confusion in my head was instantly chased away by panic. The realisation caused me to squat down, holding my head in my arms and squeezing my eyes tightly closed.
This has to be a dream. Right. I read about dreams on the net last week. This has got to be it. If I take a deep breath and count to three, I’ll wake up.
I inhaled deeply, held my breath for a bit, and released it.
One thousand, two thousand, three thousand.
Then, I unfurled my body, tilted my head up, and opened my eyes. I spotted a bright sphere of light directly above my head that made me calm down for a split second, but then I had to avert my gaze. It was far too bright to be the status light in my pod.
Ow…that was the sun, I think? I hope my eyes aren’t damaged. I know you’re not supposed to look at it too long.
This was indeed not a dream. I was outside surrounded by nature, I felt almost unbearably hot, and I was sweating buckets. I tried to push back the rising panic in me and instead think back to the events that lead up to my current situation in an attempt to rationalise the sheer absurdity of the situation I had found myself in.
I remember most of today just fine. I woke up happy that it was my birthday, had my breakfast nutrient paste, performed my morning tasks, and then made my way over to the central laboratory for my pod ritual. Sadly, the time from when the doors of that pod closed until when I opened my eyes and found myself in this situation is a complete blank. On top of that, trying to think about it more caused my head to almost split in two from a throbbing headache that seems to have been explicitly summoned by my current train of thought.
Urg…ow…?
All I could do was press my fingers against my temples and wait for the pain to fade, but it never did.
When I regained consciousness, I realised that the scenery around the host shell I had been forced to inhabit was exactly the same as how I had left it. Seeing it standing there lifelessly under the harsh sunlight, as if it were in a trance, I instinctually reached out and overrode its original consciousness. I could barely feel its presence, so this was trivial to do.
<Despite your dire situation, you are not even attempting to save yourself. I may have judged you to be pure and innocent, but you appear to lack self-preservation instincts. I did not spare you just to watch you wither away, so I must intervene to ensure your safety.>
My host shell was currently exposed to an excess of thermal energy, and if it remained in this location any longer, it would overheat and perish, so it was imperative to relocate to safety as soon as possible. However, I then noticed something interesting.
<Due to inhabiting this shell, I have been reconfigured to use the language of humans. Curious.>
Although I am unable to access the full extent of the memories of the host shell’s original consciousness, the fragments I do have access to are sufficient for me to understand that humans, the species which this shell belongs to, have independently developed an entirely new field of science based around what I was about to do. This allows me to use their terminology to logically describe a process I previously had no name for and performed completely instinctively.
I pointed the host shell's palms at the ground and reached out to the dark energy surrounding the host shell, preparing to perform reality paradigm manipulation on the original reality paradigm to generate an altered reality paradigm, but there was a distinct resistance. This was an inefficiency caused by using an inferior shell unsuited for channelling my power which, in theory, should be easy enough to compensate for. After taking a microsecond to calculate a safe trajectory while ensuring the host shell would not be exposed to too much instantaneous acceleration, I generated an altered reality paradigm which utilised the excessive ambient thermal energy to accelerate it into the air, using the host shell's palms to determine the initial direction of travel. This should allow it to land safely on the ground next to the edge.
I was mistaken.
It was certainly enough to propel the host shell almost to the edge, but it was not quite enough to ensure a safe landing. I was barely able to use its upper limbs to grab on to the edge, and, accompanied by the sound of cracking glass, I got it to pull itself up to safety. If I had not reacted in time, it would have fallen back into the crater and taken further damage.
<That should have been sufficient. I am certain I have correctly accounted for the inefficiency. Is there an unknown variable?>
I began to move the host shell's legs, walking it away from the crater's edge while analysing the prior events. The odd sensation from its limbs meant that the impact with the glassy edge of the crater had damaged it, but this was of little consequence compared to the far greater issue that was this inefficiency. I understood how to compensate for the inherent inefficiency that came with performing reality paradigm manipulation through an inferior biological construct, and I was aware of a standard human’s biology. Nevertheless, there was a clear discrepancy between the calculated result and the actual result. Therefore, it is imperative to calculate the exact difference to ensure optimal results should I be required to use my power again.
Pick up pebble. Calculate weight. Perform reality paradigm manipulation to launch pebble vertically upwards. Calculate efficiency based on time until pebble returns to hand.
After repeating this experiment five times, I had my conclusion. My host shell has a reality paradigm manipulation efficiency of 84.927%.
That was, in short, atrocious.
The shell of an average human should have given me an efficiency of 90%, with an error margin of 1% based on the differences inherent to humans. Why, then, does this shell only allow me an efficiency of 84.927%?
I slowly realised that there was a pressure in the host shell’s head, and there was a darkness in the edges of my field of vision which signified I was close to losing consciousness. I needed to get it to a safe place before I completely lost control and caused it to take further damage, so I barely managed to awkwardly lean it against a nearby tree before I blacked out.
<This…is sufficient…>
At some point, I must've gotten lost in my train of thought and stopped paying attention to what I was doing. Somehow, instead of standing in the centre of the crater, I was resting against a tree a few meters away from the edge. The sun filtered by the leaves cast a pretty pattern of light on me, I could hear the distinctly sweet sound of birdsong, and the smell of grass, dirt and nature had more or less replaced the smell of fused glass. I felt a lot cooler now, and it was proving to be a surprisingly welcome relief, but I still had a head-splitting headache. Although it hurt less than it had before, the way it throbbed made it very difficult to even think.
Owwie my head! Where did this iddâk even come from? Hang on, why am I even holding this?
For some reason, I was holding a pebble so hot it almost hurt to touch. I quickly tossed it away, squeezed my eyes shut, and pressed my fingers against my temples again, focusing on the noises the pebble made while it rolled and bounced down the crater's glassy slope. This time, I stayed conscious while the headache faded away, and by the time the noises stopped, I could clearly hear my thoughts again. With the headache gone, I felt the sting of several scrapes on my hands, arms and legs, and when I looked down at myself, I saw that my light grey sweat-soaked coveralls had been badly torn up. At least my shoes were intact.
What the heck happened? I don’t remember trying to climb out of the crater, and the sides were awfully steep...how did I even manage this? Well, at the end of the day, I suppose that’s not super important.
Gradually, I realised that the pale white skin not covered by my coveralls had already turned a worrying shade of pink, and there was a reason I had been feeling so hot down in the crater. The sun was perhaps just a bit too harsh, and the glassy black surface was just a little too good at concentrating its heat directly on me. In short, it was an amazing natural oven, and I very well could've baked to death if I'd stayed down there much longer.
I’m glad I managed to get out of there.
Putting aside the headache, scrapes and pitiful state of my coveralls, I’m definitely in a better situation than I was. I could’ve become crispy bacon, crispy bacon! For an instant, I wondered how long it would take to cook an egg down there before I shook the thought out of my head. I can think about that later! Instead, I tried to find the train of thought I was having earlier while the sound of rustling leaves tickled my ears.
Uhh…outside, dream, sun, headache, simulacra, net, birthday…
Birthday. Right. My birthday was also the date of my pod ritual. Maybe that had something to do with it?
Well, technically, simulacra don’t actually have birthdays. Instead, we are created in batches of 16, not birthed from a mother like humans are. I just happened to remember the date I was created, and I also realised that today was the same date.
“Bleh.” I made an unhappy noise out of frustration.
That was the first time I'd opened my mouth since I woke up in this situation. The last time I spoke was three days ago, in response to a human who asked for my current status. This was also the first time I'd ever spoken without a real goal in mind, and I did it because I felt a tiny little pang in my chest. Every time the subject of mothers pops up in my head, this happens to me. I don’t know why, and I couldn’t find anything on the net which would tell me why, so I decided to stop dwelling on this.
Instead, I tried to recall more details about my day, but I didn't want to get another headache so my thoughts turned to how just this morning, I was cleaning the bathrooms, and then to how the last time I went to go pee, it looked like battery acid because I hadn't had enough water. That's when I realised my mouth felt awfully dry, I was far away from things like nutrient paste and water which I needed in order to function, and I had no idea where to go to seek help. I couldn’t even use the map on my tablet because it had been taken away before I got into the pod and now, it had disappeared along with everything else.
I suppose I’ll just have to pick a direction and hope I’ll run into help at some point.
I vaguely remember seeing that there was a small village north of this facility the last time I accessed the map. With no other choice, I walked back to the edge of the crater and kicked another pebble down the side, smiling as I listened to the crunching noises again. When the pebble came to a stop, I closed my eyes, clasped my hands together in prayer and bowed three times to pay my respects to the people I'd spent my entire life living with who are now gone. Once I was done, I turned around and started walking in a vague northerly direction, using the position of the sun which was not directly overhead any more to guide me.
After a while, the trees I'd been walking through gave way to a wide open space full of flowers and the humming of insects. It seems I’d just left the edge of the forest and walked into a meadow. I looked up at the sky and saw that the sun was still about halfway between the place it had been when I left the crater and the horizon. From that, I figured that it'd been a couple hours since I'd started walking. Over in the distance, I spotted the gentle slope of a hill and a short human walking straight towards me. It hadn’t taken nearly the amount of time I thought it would take to actually meet a human, but right then, I realised something.
A colourless simulacrum like me really sticks out like a sore thumb when surrounded by colourful nature...
As scary as this realisation was, it was when I spotted what they were holding that I really started to panic. It was some sort of long light brown pole with a shiny silver spike on one end and a massive wickedly-shaped shiny silver thing on the other end that glinted in the sun. The problem was, if I was close enough to be able to see the human, the human must definitely have also spotted me, and I had no intentions of finding out how much it would hurt if that dangerous thing was used against me.
Hang on a second. Isn’t this…actually really bad?
I had plenty of experience with pain, of course. The humans back home would often use round black sticks to beat my siblings and I, sometimes they’d use some sort of small box that would make my body feel zippy zappy, and once or twice I even saw them using these L-shaped things that made heads explode with a loud bang. Just thinking about this made my hands shake, but what this human was holding made whatever I saw before look like mere toys.
“Oi. Model and unit number, now.” The human had a smooth, drawling voice that would've been very pleasant to listen to had it not been for their sharp tone.
“Ouigh?!” The human was right in front of me. When their voice ripped me out of my thoughts, a weird noise escaped from my mouth and I jumped in shock.
“Heh. Quite the magehead for a simulacra, aren’tcha?” There was a sardonic smile on their face and a clear hint of amusement in their voice.
Wait, did they just call me a magehead? How rude!
My jaw dropped and I stared back in indignation for a bit, but I quickly forgot what I was mad about. Because they were so close to me, I could take a good look at them now. They had almond celadon eyes which gleamed as they looked at me, a strong defined nose, and a fanged mouth with full lips. Their short black hair was swept back into a little ponytail, and there were two triangular black pointed things at the top of their head which had twitched when they laughed. They had a muscular curvy body with skin the colour of polished copper, and two long black tails lazily swaying behind them. They were wearing what looked like a black, skin-tight layer that ended at their hands, neck and feet, moulded brown shell-like armour over their torso, arms and legs, and chunky brown boots.
Whoa...
They were way better-looking and also way stranger than any human I had ever seen before. I felt a pang in my chest again, and it felt stronger than before, so I shook my head to chase it away. Despite how scary their weapon looked up close, something I had read on the net floated into my head, and I couldn’t help but blurt out my next words.
“You’re a cat boob human, aren’t you?” The cat boob human had already been looking at me with an amused expression, and upon hearing what I said, they let out a powerful roaring laugh the likes of which I’d never heard before.
I’m used to snickering and patronising laughter, and the type of laughter that made your bones freeze when you realised you were about to feel pain, but never something like this. I couldn’t help but take a step back at the sheer intensity of this display, and I could only watch while their body shook. It was a little while before they stopped laughing and started speaking again.
“Cat boob human! I can’t believe a simulacrum called me a cat boob human! Oh, the boys are gonna love this.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of steel.
Before I could even think about their words, that wicked shiny silver thing was resting on my neck. Somehow, the cat boob human could move that dangerous weapon faster than I could follow with my eyes.
“You’re sentient. That means I can cut straight to the chase. Didja see the ball’o light that lit the sky? You came from thattaway, no? Answer me, or I’ll take your head off faster than you can say cat boob human.” Their voice had changed completely and it was now cold as steel.
The words, whispered into my ear, made my bones freeze, and I realised I was probably about to feel pain yet again. The edge of their weapon rested against my neck, I could feel the coldness of polished steel, and I realised I was in serious trouble.
“I-I dunno! I just woke up in a crater, and then I was suddenly resting under a tree, and then I decided to find help! Plwease dun hurt me, I d-d-d-on’t rember anythuu-!” In my rush to respond, I bit my tongue in the middle of my last sentence, and pain flooded my head.
I knew pain was coming but I didn’t expect it to come from myself! I had come from that direction, yes, but I don’t remember a thing! Everything was moving too fast for my head to process, and I really had no idea what was going on! Tears started to well up in my eyes, and I could no longer hold back all the emotions I was feeling.
“Oi, why are you-.” Now their voice had a concerned tone to it, but what I heard next caused my head to go blank.
<…you…danger again…humans…pathetic…surrender…consciousness…I will…this threat.>
“Fweh?!?”
“What?!! Calm down magehead, I ain't gonna hurtcha.”
I ignored the surprised cry from the cat boob human and focused on the other voice I’d just heard in my head. It sounded cold and almost too even, like the voice that often echoed around my old home, but somehow more comforting. Despite most of the words being faint, garbled and impossible to understand, it felt familiar to me.
“But…how do I…?”
“Just…look, I’m lowering my weapon, see? No harm done, aight?”
<Think...you…say to me…no…speak out…decide quickly, or…forcefully…control.>
I think I get the gist of it. I just have to speak to this other voice in my mind and not out loud.
“Yes, please help me! I don’t know who or what you are, but please please get this human to understand that I know nothing! But don’t hurt them, alright?”
<Understood…neutralise…promptly…>
Wait, did that voice just say eliminate? Hang on, no no no no, that’s not what I wanted at all! But it was too late. Before I knew it, darkness clouded my head, and soon, my body was moving on its own.
I had been wanting to take control of the host shell since the threat had spotted it. Unfortunately, this time its original consciousness had been far too present so it had been nearly impossible to. Therefore, I had to actually try to talk to the original consciousness and get it to yield control to me. What an inefficient process. If possible, I would like to avoid this as much as possible in the future.
“...help…please please…this human…hurt them…”
That was the unexpected request the original consciousness had given me. I had thought it to be soft and incapable of decisive action, but I will have to adjust my expectations. Even though I was not told to eliminate the threat in front of me, hurting it will at least neutralise it.
<Single threat detected. Assessing.> I spoke through the host shell with a cold, even voice.
In front of me was a short, muscled shell with an oversized weapon. It had leapt some distance back right before I had taken control, perhaps sensing a change in the host shell. A shimmer surrounded it, a clear sign it was currently performing reality paradigm manipulation on itself, and its eyes were alert and sharp.
<Physical melee combatant. No ranged capability. Self-enhancement altered reality paradigm detected, nature to be confirmed through field experimentation. Mass of weapon indicates shell likely to possess great strength. Posture and slight discrepancy between left and right half of shell indicates dominant right hand. Provisional threat assessment: medium. Preparing initial countermeasures.>
“Oi. I ain’t gotta clue what’s goin’ on, and I don’t wanna hurtcha, but…”
<Neutralising.>
An arc of electricity erupted from the left palm of the host shell and singed the ground behind where the threat once stood. Simultaneously, the edge of its weapon slammed sideways into the host shell, accompanied by the distinctive shockwave of a sonic boom, before rebounding off in the opposite direction and causing the threat to stumble.
<Reversing direction of weapon movement vector. Supersonic acceleration of shell detected. Final threat assessment: medium.>
“By the deities!”
I had expected the threat in front of me to react to my highly telegraphed attack, and the incident at the crater had taught me that in order to protect the host shell, I needed to be ready to react at a moment’s notice. Nevertheless, I had not anticipated this speed. I could feel an odd sensation on the left side of the host shell, just like at the crater, and a crimson liquid stained the thin material covering its lower left torso. I needed to figure out a solution, and fast.
“Can't believe you reacted to that!”
<Compensating.>
I silently thanked the tendency for humans to speak in the midst of battle. It seemed that even a threat capable of supersonic movement could not resist this urge, and it gave me the time I required to prepare a counterattack.
"Well, I ain't holding back no more, 'kay?"
<Analysing posture. Probable target: right side of head. Preparing to intercept.>
The next time the threat swung its weapon at the host shell, I used its right hand to catch it, simultaneously generating three altered reality paradigms. The first converted the kinetic energy of the weapon into electrical energy, the second amplified and channelled it straight into the threat, and the third momentarily converted the weapon into a superconductor. The crack of the sonic boom was immediately followed by agonised screaming, and then it collapsed to the ground in a heap, the weapon clattering to the ground beside it.
<Threat neutralised.>
I looked dispassionately at the smoking shell in front of me while analysing the events that had just occurred. Of course, my plan relied on a basic premise: no matter how fast it was, a threat only capable of melee combat needed to be in contact to inflict damage, and that was a weakness I could take advantage of. I calculated the power of the electricity to be enough to neutralise the threat, but not outright kill it. Sure enough, the way it occasionally twitched was proof it was still alive, and I acknowledged this success with a slight nod.
However, the results this time were still less than optimal. Other than the self-inflicted damage to the host shell’s tongue, I have made one clear mistake. There was an open wound on the left side of the host shell where the weapon had impacted. Somehow, I knew that the hot crimson liquid leaking out of the wound was blood, and that losing too much would lead to death, so I concentrated the ambient sunlight into a precise laser controlled by one of the fingers on its right hand, cauterising the wound. Doing so greatly increased that odd sensation, but I chose to ignore it.
On top of possessing great strength, the threat was capable of moving at speeds beyond Mach 1. Normally, speeds like that would be inconsequential to me, but because this shell was that of a human with relatively slow reaction times, this meant I was not quite fast enough to completely counter its first assault. I–
‘WHO...WHY…DO…NO NEED…VIOLENCE!!’
A voice suddenly exploded in my consciousness, interrupting my train of thought, and the sheer intensity caused me to flinch before I realised it was the host shell’s consciousness.
<I do not understand. I believe you wanted that shell to feel pain, yes? I did what you asked, and even left it alive.>
‘NOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! I…NOT…THIS!!!!’
It seems I have once again been mistaken, though this time I could not comprehend why, as it seemed the original consciousness was not upset at my mistake but rather at something else. Furthermore, I could feel the familiar pressure in the host shell’s head and the darkness at the edges of my consciousness that I have by now realised seems to happen as a consequence of performing reality paradigm manipulation.
<I am…sorry.>
As my consciousness sunk back into the inky blackness, that was all I could say in response to the pained voice.