~Chapter 181~ Part 1
I didn't know if it could be called a talent or just a result of sporadic practice, but I was getting pretty good at navigating the lack of space between spaces. As infuriatingly vague and topologically nonsensical as it was, by now I felt familiar enough with its lack of ins and outs to make finding The Girl's, pardon, Oriole's Domain as easy as visiting a grocery store orbiting Neptune.
…
Okay, maybe that wasn't the best analogy, but my point stands. After but a subjectively short moment, I found the 'keyhole in reality' leading to her Domain, and once I succeeded in threading myself through, my vaguely humanoid temporary body manifested with a quiet pop inside a rather unsteady room.
"Finally! What took you so long!"
My welcome left something to be desired, and I propped what passed for my forehead against my ambiguously defined fingers.
"Oh, don't you get started with the stupid time-block bollocks again. We literally just talked, so I got here as fast as I could." I paused there to take a look around, and couldn't help but ask, "What's with the shaking?"
Oriole's domain was the same as usual, in the sense that it was once again completely different from before. The broad strokes were similar; a large square living room without doors or windows and a bunch of furniture, but instead of the pink and beige girly aesthetics, everything was black and white. Moreover, the furnishings were quaking, like they were from an old-timey cartoon and afraid of the approaching Big Purple Cabinet-Eater, or something.
"It's your fault!" the owner of the room/Domain accused me on the spot, earning her a flat look in return.
"I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything to make the furniture dread me."
"No, that's not what I… Ugh…" Oriole stomped her feet, but then right after that she took a couple of deep breaths, and not only did the fixtures stop trembling, but even some of the colour had returned to our surroundings. I didn't have the opportunity to take a closer look, because she pointed a belligerent finger at me. "Listen up! Because of what you said last time, we're in deep trouble, and we need to figure out what to do about it right now!"
The hint of desperation in her voice made me unconsciously straighten my back, and I uttered a terse, "What did I do?"
"That thing you told them! About the scenario moving to that other place!" She was looking at me intently, as if I should've gotten the full story just from that, and when I didn't, she threw her hands into the air. "Ugh! Listen, I told you that I'm in charge of the technical backbone of the project. I don't really pay attention the internal records, so I don't follow the whole situation with the angels and the demons and the other things."
"Celestials and Abyssals," I pointed out reflexively, and Oriole rolled her eyes, which, when it momentarily got superimposed on her planetary form, created a rather silly display.
"You're as bad as **********," she grumbled, and it was essentially a shortened version of the 'true' name of The Man. The 'torrent of audiovisual information funnelled directly into one's head' kind. I thought I would get used to these after a while, but whenever they happened, I always ended up a bit disoriented. My host didn't care (or more likely didn't even notice) and barrelled on with, "And that's the problem! Because of what you said last time, he started observing the Simulacrum more closely! If not for that, I could've just dismissed all the ********* in the ************ of the ***********, but now he noticed, and he told ************! And we were so close to the finish line!"
First off, I had to admit that I didn't understand diddly squat of the last bit of what she said. The only thing I was fairly certain of was that the person The Man notified at the end was The Woman, because her ruby red oceans were hard to mistake even in the deluge and multi-sensory information flooding my way.
"And that's bad."
"Very," she confirmed with a nod that made her twin-tails cascade around her head.
"Okay, I more or less get it so far," I lied, just to keep the conversation rolling, and pointed a finger at my chest. "What does this have to do with me?"
"You were the one who brought up the topic, so The Boy figured you would have an idea about what's going on, and then they all told me to find you!"
Curiously enough, out of all of the Emergents, she was only referring to The Boy with the nickname I gave him.
"Hold on, let me see if I got the gist of this. Is the issue that now that they know the Simulacrum is not following the scenario's boundaries, it might get shut down?"
She looked at me like I had just said the silliest thing she had ever heard and promptly shook her head.
"No, of course not."
"Then… is this endangering the stability of the Simulacrum itself?"
"You should know better than anyone that it's not the case."
"If not that, then… is there a chance this might draw the attention of the Predator Moon? That would be a big deal."
"That's not it!" Oriole stomped her feet in frustration, making the whole floor ripple like the surface of a lake. "I've been covering up the divergences in the ******** since the beginning! If they realize it was me, I'll be neck deep in trouble!"
"Oh. So that's what this is all about?"
That was both relieving and a bit disappointing. I mean, I thought we had a serious emergency of the existential threat variety. This was… not that. I was almost tempted to use the classic 'I fail to see how that's my problem,' line, but before I could point it out, the whole room around us shimmered and Oriole let out a startled 'Eeep!' sound.
"Have you found him yet?" a distorted and echoing yet at the same time familiar voice sounded out from every direction at once, and a moment later, The Woman materialised inside Oriole's domain. "We need to get to the bottom of—"
Her eyes opened wide the moment she noticed me, and there was just the faintest hint of delight tugging on the corners of her lips.
I greeted her with a slightly awkward, "Hello," and that blossomed into a full-blown smile.
"Hi." She walked over to us and looked me over from head to toe. Not that there was much to see, considering I was in a vague, featureless white humanoid form at the moment, but she didn't seem to mind. "It's been a while. Have you been well?"
"There were some ups and downs lately, but I'm mostly fine," I responded a bit irresolutely, but she didn't mind that either.
Her smile lingered on me for a while longer, but then she finally noticed the owner of the Domain fuming on our left, and she nodded in her direction.
"Good job, *************." There was a momentary pause, then she asked, "Or would you prefer The Girl nowadays?"
Our diminutive host's eyes opened wide and, without warning, she flashed a smug grin at her.
"Haha! That's old news! I've got a new one since then!" She rubbed her palms together and added, in a low voice, "Listen to this! It's…" There was a literal drumroll sound coming from somewhere, and as it reached its crescendo, she abruptly threw her fist into the air and did a little hop, like how a kid her apparent age would do when excited. "Oriole!"
The Woman blinked in surprise, then looked at me.
"Did you give her another name?"
"The previous one felt a bit passé." I tried my best not to sound too sheepish. "I didn't even get the opportunity to ask if she liked it."
"Do I ever?" Oriole beamed at me, positively glowing with delight. No, scratch that; literally glowing. Whether it was with delight or something else was purely academic. "It's the most flattering thing I've ever heard! The others are going to be so jelly! Especially The Boy!"
As always, her unbridled enthusiasm once again made me realise that while we ostensibly communicated in the same language that I used everywhere else, it was something of a 'translation convention', and the name 'Oriole' must've conveyed a much deeper and more complex meaning than I thought. At least she was happy with it. Note to self: tell Elly she picked a good name.
"I… actually prepared new titles for everyone," I noted a tad absently, and while The Woman looked intrigued at first, she hastily shook her head.
"I'm curious, but let's hear them later. The others are already waiting."
"W-Wait! Can I finish talking with him first?" Oriole pleaded, but it only earned her a disparaging look.
"You can talk after we're finished."
"B-But…" Seeing that she wasn't going to budge, the child-like Emergent let out a distressed noise and sidled closer to me. "Listen! Just don't say anything to make things worse, okay?"
She whispered, but even though her voice wasn't all that quiet, The Woman didn't seem to pay attention to us. I nodded along, and before I knew it, the Domain surrounding us folded in on us, and we were back in the spaceless void between voids, except my two Emergent companions were in their cosmic forms. Flanked by a blood-red planet covered in a single stormy vermillion ocean on one side and a smaller sphere surrounded by bright yellow orbital rings, I felt tiny in comparison.
It only lasted for a blink of an eye, and then they both disappeared, no doubt already in the not-dark not-room. I naturally followed in their footsteps, and before I knew it, I was in the familiar ever-changing non-chamber, with The Boy and The Man eagerly waiting for my arrival.
"Ah, welcome!" the latter greeted me, looking the same as the last time we met, down to the retro casualwear right out of the roaring 20s. "The others said you're coming shortly! It's a pleasure to meet again!"
"H-Hi!" The Boy followed suit behind him, looking unusually eager. "Did you really give her that name?"
Okay, so even though from my perspective, I only arrived a few seconds late, from the Emergents', a couple of minutes must've passed. Glancing over, I could also see the other two in the back, with Oriole in particular looking pretty smug.
More importantly, she and The Woman were standing by a large, low pedestal. It looked kind of like a war table, but instead of the terrain of the operations and minifigures representing the units on the field, it had a strange shifting surface that looked kind of… pixelated? Yeah, like an old video game. Or maybe more like zooming in and out of a low-resolution photo?
Even more startling was the peculiar object hovering over it. It kind of looked like a shining purple… something-hedron. It’s the best way I could describe it, because its angles and surfaces kept shifting both in shape and numbers. Considering the context, was that supposed to be a representation of the Simulacrum? Probably not. If I had to make an educated guess, it was probably something like a display or a control panel operated by Emergents, and this was my brain's best heroic effort to make it look like something semi-comprehensible to me.
My eyes couldn't linger for long, because The Boy was still waiting for an answer.
"Yes, but we can discuss it later. What's the situation?"
"Ah, that's just the problem! We have no earthly clue!" The Man fumed and beckoned me towards the pedestal. Once we were all standing around it, he reached out towards the something-hedron in the middle, and it shifted and turned a few times before settling into a relatively stable icosahedron (also known as the venerable d20 dice). "Last time we talked, you said you thought the scenario would naturally proceed to the Abyss."
"That is the ******** of the ******** right over here," The Woman added, and a few careless twitch of her fingers caused the surface of the pedestal to ripple and the polyhedron to spin around. "As you can see, the ******* is not in the *************."
The Boy then helpfully added, "M-Meaning ****************** is ****** and the ****************** is—"
"W-Wait!" Oriole interjected in mild panic and frantically waved towards me, "H-He's a highly skilled professional! He doesn't need all of these things explained to him!"
Actually, it would've been more accurate to say that even if they tried, I wouldn't have understood a goddamn thing! I mean, what the bloody hell!? How was I supposed to not say anything that could make things worse if I didn't have the faintest of clues about what the conversation was even about?!
"Thank you for the vote of confidence, but…"
I tried to temper things a little, but then The Boy decided to be supportive again.
"R-Right! Since he's a highly competent specialist, all of this should be immediately obvious at a glance. There's no need to explain something this rudimentary."
After saying that, he looked at me with an expression that was one cheesy thumbs-up away from a meme saying, 'Look! I'm helping!', but since we were in the middle of an allegedly important meeting, I couldn't exactly snap at him.
That said, I was completely stumped. If I had the time, I could probably try to individually dissect and disentangle the meanings of the technical jargon they were throwing at me, but even if I did, it would've been meaningless. This whole conversation reminded me of the time when Penny started talking about some computer stuff at the dinner table, and she just kept going on about how she was trying to find out what wrote to a floating point value so that she could create a pointer-map to find a permanent pointer, and how she made a silly mistake because she used the EAX value in the assembly and forgot to adjust for the offset.
I mean, what the heck was I supposed to do with that?! Other than nod along and pretend to have the slightest of clues. Unfortunately, that probably wouldn't work here, so I had to get a bit more… creative.
"So, to put it plainly," I started and pointed at the polyhedron. It shook a bit and almost changed shape, so I hastily pulled back my hand. "Sorry. Didn't mean to do that." Nobody reacted, so I let out a long breath and tried again. "From what I gathered, the issue is that the main characters moved into the Abyss."
"Yes, precisely," The Man agreed with a soft huff. "As I said, the ************** is outside of the scope of the ***********."
Again, I didn't have the time to analyse it in detail, but based on context clues and snippets, the second thought-torrent was probably the more precise Emergent term for the 'scenario'. 'The chain of causality/events/time that is/was/will happen', or something to that effect, but the length of a bloody phone-book.
But back to the previous point: if I replaced it with the word, then The Man essentially told me that 'something' is outside the scope of the 'scenario'. That something was, most likely, either Josh's actions as a Free Actor or future-me's retcon shenanigans. Either way, that was a start.
"Yeah, I expected as much." I spoke casually, putting on my best 'highly competent specialist' impression. "I told you it was the natural direction things were heading."
"There's nothing natural about it!" The Man grumbled, and even The Woman looked a bit impatient.
"True," she began as her fingers tapped on the pedestal, sending colourful waves across the pixelated surface. "But it doesn't help us with the problem at hand."
"And the problem is?" The Emergents in the not-dark not-room looked at me like I just said the most nonsensical thing they heard in this time-block, but I was on a roll, so I made another vague gesture towards the pedestal and the polyhedron lazily spinning over it. "The Crowned Coalescence and the Predator Moon are out there doing their own thing now, so all you should care about is whether the scenario can finish without a problem. So? Is there a problem?"
"I… I mean…" The Boy followed my gesture and squinted at the angled thing in front of us, causing it to shift into a trapezohedron for a few seconds before snapping back into the shape of a giant d20 dice. "It's true that the ********** is outside of the ***********, but the *********** is ***, so…"
"What about the Submerged Ones?" The Woman interjected. "Will this affect their ***************?"
The Boy shook his head.
"No, I don't think so."
"Right. The ***** and ********** are both stable," Oriole, sensing an opportunity, jumped in to push hard. "He's right, you know? There's no problem whatsoever! No wonder nobody noticed that ********** until now!"
"Nonsense!" The Man pushed back, arms crossed and eyes set into an unyielding glare. "The *********, I mean, the scenario should not have been able to shift to this degree! The ********* ******* must be broken! It has to be!"
"But look! It's working fine!" Oriole argued back while repeatedly pointing at the icosahedron, causing it to turn all spiky every time her finger got closer. "You can see the ************ of the recursive ********* right here!"
"She's not wrong," The Boy supported her, if weakly, so I chose this moment to contribute as well.
"In other words, there's no problem. Case closed?"
"It… might not be a fault, but it's still a peculiarity," The Woman noted, her voice quiet and thoughtful, only to then snap her finger and freeze the ever-changing surface of the pedestal. "Our working theory is that the ********** within the framework of the ********* were caused by having two Free Actors, and the ********…" While listening, I was beginning to passively figure out some of the Emergent jargon they were spewing, and after hearing it a couple of times, I was pretty sure that the last term was referring to what I originally dubbed the 'Narrative'. So, starting from the top, she said, "… and the Narrative is moving beyond its directives. Could it have caused this situation?" She looked at me for answers, but first added, "You said such development was 'natural', so maybe it was following the same logic."
Okay, this was definitely one of those 'be careful about what you say' moments, and after some fervent consideration, I uttered an eminently inconclusive, "… Possibly?"
"But then that would mean the Narrative not only grew beyond its initial constraints, but it's also capable of affecting areas…" For the record, the term used here was more like 'segments/microcosms/organs/the insides of the outside', so I defaulted it to something simpler, because I was getting really tired of all the **********s today. Anyhow, back to The Woman saying, "… that aren't part of the scenario. If left unchecked, that could lead to issues in future projects."
"But is it an issue to be worried about right now?" I insisted, and that left a lingering silence around the icosahedron.
"Well, no…" The Boy relented first, and Oriole once again jumped to back him up.
"That's right! Everything's completely stable!"
"So still no problem," I concluded, and when nobody argued, I let out a silent breath of relief. "Just let the scenario play out, and everything will be clear in retrospect."
I hoped that would be the end of it, but I suddenly found myself in the crosshairs of The Man's glare.
"Do you know something you're not telling us?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you! You knew about the Abyss getting involved in the scenario!"
"Erm… I mean, it was really obvious." I glanced around, and seeing that not even Oriole was backing me, I uttered a slightly confounded, "Was I the only one who thought so?"
"Yes! … No!" His contradictory yells made the polyhedron in the middle turn into a cube of all things and spin like crazy. Meanwhile, he crossed his arms and declared, "Nobody could've seen it coming, because it was impossible!"
"Until it wasn't," I pointed out, earning me a huff in return.
"You can't justify something like this in retrospect!"
"I'm not, I'm just saying that things do make more sense in hindsight."
"But—"
"**********, please stop aggravating our guest," The Woman cut in, and even though she sounded calm, The Man fell silent right away. She then turned to me again. "You already helped us out with your advice, so please accept my apology in his stead."
"Hey! Don't just apologize for me! Gah! You're being too soft on him again!"
The Woman squinted at the indignant man.
"Excuse me?"
"D-Don't mind that. Just a slip of the tongue," The Man backpedalled at record speed, and she let out a soft huff that I could easily translate as 'It better be,' without the need of any multi-meaning figment-torrents.
Seeing that the conversation effectively concluded, Oriole was eager to put the lid on it.
"All right, everyone! In conclusion, nothing went wrong, nobody's at fault, and it's all just a quirk of the *********** that's not threatening the stability of the **********! In other words, everything's fine!"
"I wouldn't go so far, but it's true that the situation is considerably less dire than it first appeared," The Man continued to gripe, while The Woman only nodded along. That left only The Boy, and his reaction was…
"In that case, can we talk about the names again? Not that I don't like The Boy, but Oriole is so much better! Can you come up with another one for me, too?"
Before I could get a word in, The Woman smiled at me and let out a low chuckle.
"I'm also curious. Coming up with so many names one after the other… being able to peer at someone's essence and Define them in such an elegant way requires considerable talent. Who knows? Maybe that is your true calling, instead of Simulacrum scenarios?"
"Now, now! Let's not overstate things like that," The Man yelped, but then he also glanced at me and his tone turned a bit more sheepish. "Not that I'm not curious, but let's not jump to conclusions. We men of culture are a dying breed already; there's no need to give him strange ideas like that!"
Like that, the emergency was successfully swept under the rug, buying us some time to finish the scenario in peace. On the other hand, things somehow took an unexpected turn, and now everyone (including Oriole, who already got her new name) was looking at me with sky-high expectations.
Whether I could meet them or not… well, that was a story for another time.