The Simulacrum - Chapter 100 - Part 1 (Patreon)

"Can we get started already? I'm starting to feel stupid."

"Ki-hi-hi! Don't worry, boss! Nobody's going to laugh at you!" my personal mad scientist tried to placate me, but I couldn't say it had much of an effect.

"We request further patience, grandmaster. There are calibrations to be done. None of us wants to repeat this experiment more than once today."

Galatea was reasonably more successful, and after an obligatory sigh, I shifted on my chair and patiently waited for them to finish fiddling with the equipment around me. Fred's workshop was more chaotic than usual (which said a lot) due to some last-second rearrangements, and as a result, I was currently sitting on a plain dining chair in the corner, surrounded by an anachronistic array of machines and stage lights. Some looked new and sleek, the kind of futuristic tech you would see in a sci-fi movie; all white curves, fancy tilting monitor arms holding even fancier displays, and a low, static hum. Pretty impressive.

Then, I galnced to my left, and there was an enormous, boxy machine the size of a wardrobe, covered in a bunch of flashing red, yellow, and green square lights and giving off freaking dial-up modem noises. Much less impressive, but not the worst. That title belonged to the even bigger device behind my back, with honest-to-goodness vacuum tubes, magnetic tapes, and something that looked like a freaking flux capacitor by any other name. Needless to say, it was the one I was currently plugged into via a tangle of multi-coloured wires attached to my limbs and my head. It was almost like I was getting an EEG examination, except all the electrodes were held in place by a huge wireframe hat that made my head look like a big mushroom.

"Task completed," Galatea said in a monotone voice and stepped away from the recording equipment. Behind her, there was a small, off-the-shelf webcam, a significantly fancier infrared camera, a significantly older 8-millimeter film camera, and finally, a significantly weirder floating orb consisting of a large, white, cartoonish eyeball surrounded a series of gears in concentric circles.

"Ki-hi-hi! Marvelous! Readings are within expected parameters, so we can get started!" Saying so, Fred got up from his seat behind the screens and stood between my spot and the recording devices pointed at me. "Hum. The lighting isn't quite perfect. Rabom? Can you move that one to the left, please?"

There was an affirmative grunt, and one of the blinding stage lights moved a bit, no doubt due to the Faun's contribution.

"Thanks, that's enough." Once he made sure everything was in order, Fred stopped for a beat, just long enough to theatrically tug at the lapels of his coat, and turned to the cameras. "Experiment six-oh-six. Topic: weird stuff related to the magical substrate of reality. The date... doesn't really matter. Go ahead, Boss; do your thing!"

After saying those words, he unceremoniously got out of the way and back behind the screens. I was pretty sure that wasn't proper experimental protocol, but to be fair, I had places to be and wanted to get this over with, so I refrained from speaking up and picked up the antique pocket watch from the small table on my left.

It had obviously seen better days, as it had a few dents, and the gold plating was flaking off here and there. The item itself was fairly unimportant though, as the subject of today's experiment was the softly glowing enchantment on it. Or to be precise, my way of interacting with it. It wasn't the first occasion we'd done this, though the experimental setup was obviously much more elaborate this time around.

Anyhow, I had to establish a baseline first, so I plunged one of my phantom limbs into the device, and soon I found myself inside the familiar, yet no less hard to describe, non-euclidian representation of the enchantment. It was a simple warding array, designed to monitor the user's immediate surroundings (read: approximately ten centimeters from their skin), and upon detecting a sudden influx of mana, it would deploy a flash-shield in a split second. It was a reactive magical defense tool, with a couple of limitations, but it already saved its previous owner's life a couple of times if Gowan, my main contact among the artificers of the Critias School of Magic, was to be believed.

It wasn't for combat use though; more of a safety device in case something went haywire in the workshop. That meant it wasn't particularly robust, and that's why I was asked to fix it after it had taken one too many hits. It was a fairly simple task, and that's why I choose it as today's subject for establishing my baseline readings before we dived into the real experiment. Reinforcing a connection here, rewriting some detection heuristics there, getting rid of the unnecessary parts... I'd been doing this kind of thing so much, it became second nature, and I was pretty sure I could fix ten such enchantments before I would get the first hints of a headache. As they say, practice makes perfect.

In any case, it only took me a couple of subjective minutes to whip the enchantment into shape, and when I exited into realspace, the considerably brighter glow around the watch told me I was successful.

"Done. How are the readings?" I asked while handing the enchanted device over to Galatea.

"Ki-hi-hi! Fascinating as usual, boss! Quick, let's start stage two!"

He didn't have to say that twice, as I'd already picked up the ugly green Christmas mug from the same table. It had a wide base, an eye-watering colour combination, and the most depressed reindeer in the history of the world printed on its side.

"Can I start?" Freed was too immersed in his readings, so Galatea gave me a nod instead, and I promptly stuck both of my standard-sized phantom limbs into the mug. In a matter of seconds, my vision was completely overtaken by a spiraling fractal of holiday-themed mugs filling my entire universe. Normally this was the point where I'd take a couple of measured breaths to calm my nerves, but since I was currently quite disembodied, I settled on a few seconds of motionlessness before searching for a suitable substitute.

I didn't plan to fully retcon this mug, as we were going on our hot-springs trip the next morning, and I didn't need the second coming of the mother of all headaches to spoil the day. At this stage, the goal was still just to establish some baseline readings, so I didn't spend too much time pondering on what to do next. Using my phantom limb, I picked one of the near-infinite mugs around me, and carefully overlaid it on top of the original until the two snapped together, simultaneously forcing me back into the real world.

Blinking, I took a closer look at my handiwork and was pleased to see that the sad reindeer was replaced by a deadpan orange cat wearing a reindeer costume. How original.

At any rate, there was no time to waste, so I held it out for Galatea. In the half-minute since I'd last seen her, she somehow managed to put on one of those crime scene investigator overalls and a pair of oven mittens, and she gingerly accepted the mug like it was a priceless artifact from a pharaoh's tomb that could crumble if held too tightly. I imagined her getup was so that the 'experimental sample' wouldn't get contaminated, but I still felt that she was overdoing it a bit.

More importantly, once she had it, she walked over to a device at the other end of the workshop, which kind of looked like a giant microwave oven (it even had a turntable and made pinging noises) and put it inside. Meanwhile, Fred exhaled a long sigh and took a sip from a bottle of mineral water on the desk.

"You know, boss, even though this isn't our first time, seeing you casually ignore every law of physics and mystics in the world to rearrange the molecular structure of a macro-object without a hint of mana-fluctuation is still so… wrong."

"Yes, yes, we've been over this," I grumbled, still feeling a little irritable due to the giant electrode scaffolding on my head making it hard to move. "Can I get started on the last stage?"

"Just a moment. Let me take a look at the readings first."

While I waited for him to do that, Galatea peeled herself out of the white overall as swiftly as she donned it and walked over to my side.

"Grandmaster? I would like to request a review of the prohibitions on my weapons systems."

"Not now," I responded in a low voice. "Not to mention, you've yet to provide a convincing argument for why you absolutely need your plasma disintegrators reinstalled."

"According to the records on my hard drive, I have made exactly thirty-seven highly detailed and nuanced requests so far."

"No, you made the same request thirty-six times, just using different potential threats they would be useful against, including aliens, giant ants, and the taxman. The thirty-seventh was just you repeating 'But I wanna' for ten minutes straight."

"My drives contain no such memory," she declared in a genuinely indignant huff, once again making me wonder if she really was as mechanical as she often claimed.

I had no doubt that she was going to keep arguing, but before she could get to it, Fred let out one of his trademark 'Ki-hi-hi's to draw our attention.

"Everything looks good so far! Let's go!"

He didn't need to say that twice. Without further ado, I used the third, comparatively stubbier phantom limb, and reached into myself. The moment I did that, all colours drained out of the world, and after a long yet short moment of vertigo later, I found myself inside the not-black lack of space I was already very familiar with.

I made it a habit to do this every once in a while, hoping to find the not-dark not-room and its enigmatic occupants again in search for some more potential clues about the nature of the Simulacrum we lived in, but so far I'd yet to be successful. Trying to actively search around didn't prove fruitful either, so after confirming that neither the stellar-people, nor their meeting place was around, I promptly returned to my body.

"Okay, I'm… done?" My words trailed into a confused mutter by the time I reached the end of the sentence, and looking at the completely blanched Fred, I couldn't help but ask, "Was there a problem?"

"… No offense, boss, but what the hell are you?"

He sounded genuinely rattled, but the best I could do was to answer his question with one of my own.

"Wasn't the point of this experiment to figure that out?"

"Yes, but…"

"Wait. Before anything else, do we still need all of this?" I gestured at my wireframe mushroom headgear, and Fred belatedly shook his head. "Great. Then can you tell me the details while taking it off?"

Galatea wordlessly moved in to comply with my request, and a beat later she was joined by Fred as well, while I waited until the every single electrode was off my head before addressing the elephant in the room.

"So? What got you so spooked? Are the readings off the chart or something?"

"No! That's the problem!" my personal mad scientist griped aloud and all but tossed the delicate testing tools aside. "That would at least tell us we need to get bigger charts! This makes no sense whatsoever!"

"What master means," the android cut in, placing her share of equipment aside much more carefully, "Is that the readings make no sense whatsoever."

"… Yes, I've got that," I murmured a touch irritated, and stood up. "Can you explain to me why they didn't make sense? Preferably in ten words or less."

"Processing." After saying that, she remained silent for several seconds, her fingers furling and unfurling as if she was counting on them. At last, she found a satisfactory answer, and said, "Please imagine the following scenario: Grandmaster divided zero by zero, and got an actual number. That's what happened."

"Close enough," Fred agreed in the company of a vexed grouan. "When working on enchantments, your readings are similar to watching a supercomputer crunching the numbers. Odd, but considering your capabilities, not completely outrageous. When you change the material composition of things on the fly, the readings are closer to the output of a quantum computer. It's not intuitive, but so long as you understand what you're looking at, it can be interpreted and makes sense. This?" For emphasis, he walked over to the machine at the back and raised a long, continuous strip of paper covered in dots, small holes, and something that looked like an EKG reading. "This doesn't make a lick of sense! We don't have a model for this!"

"What master means is that, according to these readings, you violated all known rules of logic, metaphysics, and epistemology."

"It would be impressive if it wasn't so fundamentally freaky," Fred continued to grouse, but then shook his head and added. "What exactly wereyou doing, anyway?"

"It's kind of hard to properly explain it without experiencing it yourself, but I'll try."

True to my word, I did my best to explain the space made of imaginary numbers, the not-dark not-room, and all my other past experiences relating to them. The mad science duo listened attentively, yet despite their best effort, neither of them seemed to fully comprehend me. Or maybe I was just bad at explaining it. To be fair, even I wasn't sure how to properly describe things like the sensation of moving by staying perfectly still and making the entire universe move around me instead, but I did my best anyway.

"I'll be honest with you boss; I can't even begin to develop an experimental protocol for this." Pausing for a beat, our resident mad scientist let out a sigh and rubbed his forehead. "When you told me you wanted to figure out the nature of magic, reality, and everything, I didn't think we would literally move beyond the boundaries of existence. Or that you could do it on your own, without any external help."

"Well, it's just something I do," I responded with a shrug, which might've touched a nerve, as Fred's face instantly flushed red and he began waving the previously mentioned long strip of paper again.

"You can't just do this! You should've imploded like a helium balloon at the sea floor!"

"But I didn't though."

"And that's why I asked just what are you!" Fred worked himself up quite a bit, but finally managed to catch himself, and took several deep breaths to catch his nerves. "Well, at least it doesn't seem like you know either, so there's room for some juicy discoveries. Who knows? Maybe I can even get a Trismegistus out of this! I mean, if I could ever make anyone believe half of this!"

"Explanation: the Trismegistus Award is a prestigious distinction granted by the Assembly. It is roughly analogous to a Nobel Prize."

"Thanks, Galatea. I was just about to ask," I said a touch absently before shaking my head and adding, "I guess we didn't learn anything new, huh?"

"We only learned how little we know," Fred stated solemnly. "I guess I have to start working on a brand new experimental protocol."

"You do that."

That was the end of it, and while we share a few more words of small talk, when the definitely-not-a-microwave-oven holding the holiday mug let out a ping and the duo moved over to check, I used the opportunity to bid my farewells and leave the workshop. In the end, Fred put it succinctly; the only new thing I learned today was that my abilities were even weirder than they appeared at first glance, which was saying a lot, considering even my most basic supernatural powers violated the magical common sense of this world.

There was little I could do about that, though I'd be lying if I said I wasn't bothered by Fred's big question. Just what exactly was I? Putting all my titles (some more deserved than others) aside, I was a Knight, with all the prerequisite magical sockets for equipment to slot into, but I could also read Celestial Script, could instinctively speak an archaic dialect of Faunish, I may or may not got situational wings, and as far as I knew, I was the only non-Faun who could engage in Dominance, and those are just the crazy things that technically still made a modicum of sense in-universe. If we counted my ability to teleport, to remove-view people, to use immaterial tendrils to cut magic, tweak enchantments, and move souls around, not needing sleep, and being the first known person to break through the reality-filtering and realize we were in an artificial world running on tropes… Seriously, what the hell wasI?

Of course, that was a rhetorical question at best, as I had no answer whatsoever. For now, I settled on 'Leonard S. Dunning', and moved along, as by mentioning Dominance, I just reminded myself that I promised Brang that I would spar with him before I headed home. Thinking so, I made my way over to the main hall and quickly found him near the training area. By the looks of it, he was overseeing some kind of drill involving the nameless Squires and the equally nameless Kage ninjas. First, the trainee Knights would do a series of swings, at the end of which the ninjas would appear from beneath their feet to deliver a follow-up strike, and then immediately dive back into their shadows.

It was needlessly fancy and impractical, but if Mountain Girl's fighting style had taught me one thing, it was that this world was more often than not operating on the rule of cool, and so long as something looked suitably fancy and high-impact, the universe would line things up to make it work, no matter how infeasible and ineffective it seemed at first glance. It annoyed me to no end, but again, it was something I couldn't do much about, and as far as it was only training, I could overlook it. As such, I held my tongue until I reached the Faun ex-general's side.

"[Ah. I greet thee, Blackcloak,]" Brang spoke up once I was in arm's reach and gave me a curt salute. I returned the greeting with a shallow nod.

"[I bid you to stand at ease, general. I hope health finds you in abundance like grains of sand on a shore.]"

The old Faun chuckled at my response, which made me wonder if I said something weird, but before I could ask, he turned to the men and women on the training field and did a couple of hand gestures. I've been trying to memorize the Faun's system of combat sign language, and I was pretty sure it meant 'Two more repetitions, then break'. He waited for the majority to nod in acknowledgement, and only then did he turn to me again.

"[Arth thou here to honor this old man's request?]"

"[Aye. The days of leisure are upon us, and before their coming, we shall contest our frames and wits by means of Dominance one last instance, for the path of accomplishment is paved by tiles crafted of repetition.]" I paused for a beat as I replayed the words in my head, but soon gave up and said, "What I was trying to say was that practice is the road to success."

"[Aye. I have heard thou loud and clear, Blackcloak,]" Brand responded with a toothy grin, followed by a less enthusiastic smile. "[I must confess, I feel the day at which hour I would no longer serve as thine opponent in battle draws nearer still.]"

"Yeah, sure. Say that after I manage to beat your specters without cheating."

"[I told thee before; using all thine abilities in battle could hardly be considered underhanded.]"

"I still think it does though, so I'll hold back on Phasing, as usual. Come, let's find a quiet spot."

The old Faun didn't seem fully convinced, yet he nodded all the same, and we headed to the other side of the training area. At the end of the day, there was nothing better for taking my mind off heavy subjects than fighting half a dozen copies of Brang at the same time. It was quite therapeutic and helped me cope with all the daily stressors in my life. Like the forming of a brand new supernatural superpower causing us to be sitting on a political powder-keg. Or Josh's chosen-one-status slowly but surely coming to the forefront and its potential consequences. Or whether playing my roles of Bel and Admin might've actually turned me into an Abyssal and/or a Celestial at the same time, and how that will affect my future prospects.

In conclusion: Damn, my life was weird. Also, damn, my life being weird was becoming normal. In other words, double-damn.