"No, absolutely not. No, no, no. Not in a million years," I said as I closed the door behind us. He looked at me with his blank face again but something felt different this time

"Chloe, we need to," he said, "Just think about the capabilities and opportunities that open up if we knew how to minmax her magic-- minmax as in minimizing costs while maximizing benefits."

"Don't you dare talk about her like she's some kind of tool," I said as I tried not to outwardly seethe, "She's just a child."

"She's not a tool and I don't see her as one," he replied.

"Bullshit. You said you wanted to run tests on her, like she's some kind of mag rat," I shot back.

"Huh. Mag rat, that's a cute parallel. But yes, I do want to run tests on her. Not all tests hurt. Not all tests are uncomfortable. Tests are actually fun. You get to engage your curiousity about something that matters to you, and learn something new that could make your life better. Chloe, I'm the Archmagus. What's downstream of our testing won't make just my life better, it could make life better for everyone in Aeolia, and it could make her life better too."

"Okay, how then. You haven't given a single justification for how life could be better," I said. I started calming down enough to control my tone and diction.

"Sure. You're my informant, and you're a good one. You found two capable Arma Mages in less than twenty-four hours, before I even asked you to. Imagine: what if Clone Magic is learnable? We could have informants all over every city in Aeolia, a living information super highway," he said with an excitement I couldn't match, "and imagine if I could clone myself. What would happen when one of me dies? I might be able to escape the loop reset of death without the Church ever knowing."

"I can see how that could be beneficial, but it's not worth torturing a child over," I said bluntly.

"I said not all tests hurt. We could encourage her with candy or sweets; it's Pavlovian conditioning," he said.

"What training?" I asked.

"So on Earth, we trained animals by pairing a signal and with a stimulous to perform a neutral action. The dog would respond in expectation of the stimulous when presented with the signal and perform a desired neutral action."

"You're still talking about a child like she's an animal, and it's even worse since she's a beastkin. Have some tact," I said with a bite.

"No, it's just," he said, getting frustrated, "never mind. It's a good thing. Pavlovian conditioning is fun and it's not just for animals. That's how I studied in school. I gave myself candy whenever I got a question right. Then, when I had candy later, my memory would co-associate with what I studied. But whatever," he said dismissively, "Look, if you really want to know how this benefits her, we can start there," he said and I nodded, "Here's a simple question I bet you haven't considered yet. What does it feel like to be a clone?"

"I'll have you know, I did, in fact, think of it," I said, getting annoyed at his condescension, "When I used soulsight to observe her other bodies, I saw dim, small souls emitting mana inside every single one of them. Since the soul is the conscious observer, we know that each Kei feels and thinks independently," I replied.

"Errh errh!" He made a harsh, couplet of a buzzing noise with his throat and followed up with, "You don't 'know' that, you 'believe' that and you have three premises, one: that the soul is the conscious observer and two: that each kei has a soul."

"Those are solid justifications," I said, getting irritated again, trying to hide my annoyance, "also that's only two."

"No, because there's a third premise snuck into your conclusion: the soul is the only avenue for conscious observation," he said.

"I didn't say that," I replied, coming off a bit more upset that I meant to.

"You didn't need to say it because you implied it. You can't know that each body thinks and feels independently, because in this world, there exists other methods of observing, feeling, and thinking outside of your soul as a conscious observer," he said, and I immediately put together what he's trying to say and it's not good. Really not good.

"So what are you implying?" I asked with a lump in my throat.

"Well, for one, you could be right. Maybe each body experiences independently from one another. That could be pretty interesting. It has some cool scifi implications--"

"Okay, what else?" I interrupted.

"Uh, okay. It's also possible that they're all 'Mind-Linked' together like a hivemind. There could be one central 'conscious observer' that recieves the inputs of every individual body. Actually, this would be way cooler than Linking, because I can't actually control anyone I'm Linked to, I can only communicate with them, and experience what they're experience. Kei may be able to control each one independently," he replied

"That's the worst case scenario. My Goddess, I didn't even think about that. Remi, we need to go back to Platier, we need to collect her clones. If she's experiencing everything simultaneously-- I can't even imagine what that would feel like emotionally. And physically, if she's down there making arma all day. She's so young, Remi, she's just a kid. I don't-- I can't..." I rushed through my words until I had none left to say, and I felt anxiety sinking like a rock in my chest.

"Wait, what? She has other clones out there?" he asked.

"Yes! Yes! I gave one of her clones to Stratus!" I replied

"Why the hell would you do that?" he asked incredulously.

"He held her at gunpoint. He threatened to kill her when I was about to take her away-- not just her clone, her, the last one left, well I speculate-- because he needed her clones to manufactor arma for his shitty underground opteration and I wanted to talk to you about saving her, I just-- I..."

"Hmm. In that case, testing is even more important than ever before," he countered.

"Huh? What, why?" I shot back.

"Because the way she feels Clone Magic changes how we can use the mechanics to save her," he replied. "When I was in the dungeon," and he paused for a long moment.

"Remi? Are you okay?" I asked as I saw his face, and I felt all of the anger and annoyance escape me at once. He didn't answer, he just looked down and to the side, as if he wanted to hide away from me. I walked over to hook his arm and I sat the both of us down on the edge of the bed. "Is it about the subjugation?"

"... Mind Link," he said, almost in a whisper, "it, um, feels confusing, diorienting, hurtful, terrifying. I heard the three of them and I heard their voices, felt all of their pain, experienced all of their emotions, all at the same time. I didn't want to but I had to, for the final fight. I had to practice it dozens and dozens of times, and throughout the whole process, I was so nauseous I wanted to throw up. Actually I did, quite a few times. I never really got used to it. I just, forced myself, I guess," He paused for a moment and he leaned his bodyweight against me. "When Nat... When Nat lost her hand, she was freaking out. It happened on fight fourteen, right before the next resting area. She was anxious and scared. She couldn't focus on the fight at all, she kept spiraling in her own mind, the physical pain was so overwhelming that she couldn't think at all. She's sensitive. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and felt it. All of it. Out of the three Mind Mages sensations were the most intense. I couldn't stand it."

I wrapped my arm around his waist and we sat in silence for a moment longer until he started again, "I don't feel like that. I can't name my emotions or feel my body as well as she does. When she's scared, she's thinking, 'I'm scared'. When she's angry, she's thinking, 'I'm angry'. When she's sad, she's thinking, 'I'm sad'. That was actually helpful for me, for orienting myself in her body. I could pair her bodily sensations with her thoughts and feelings. But they were as overwhelming me for as they were for her. The worst was the guilt, every single Respawn. I couldn't stop them all from dying-- hundreds of iterations, and somebody always died, and whenever someone did, I could feel how much she hated herself for failing to protect them. It felt like there were a thousand knives in our chests, and like there was an invisible weight over our body that prevented us from walking straight. I couldn't separate my sensations from hers, and even when it was all over and I could walk outside in the rain, I could still feel her shame washing over me. Or maybe it wasn't hers at all. I can't tell. I still can't. But I can it. The same feeling and I can't even explain it. She felt it every time. I can't imagine being her, being that sensitive. I would do anything to escape those awful sensations, and if it weren't for Respawn Magic, if I could, I would-- I would..." He trailed off. He paused again and we sat together. I couldn't hear him crying but I could feel my shoulder getting a little wet.

He straightened his head, wiped his tears, and continued, "In our most successful runs, Fymner was protective of her. By the end of the dungeon, I knew he had a crush on her. They worked so well together, the party would have suffered grave losses without the two of them, synergizing. He kept his eyes on her almost throughout the whole dungeon and sometimes called out shots to protect her. He couldn't stop thinking about her, either. About her cute round face and her beautiful brown hair, about how she persisted past her fear and pain for the sake of her team, about her fluid motions and keen observations. Even her nervousness, he loved it, he fell harder and harder. By the halfway point, he always felt a grip on his heart and a flutter in his stomach, and if they were my emotions, I would have associated them with fear if he hadn't fantasized about asking her out for dinner after the subjugation. Or, maybe that was a real fear, just not fear for life and limb like Nat and Sunma.

Fight fourteen was awful. It was the Great Filter. Not once in my hundreds and hundreds of Respawns did the party come out the other end unharmed. Every single Respawn, she protected him, and every single time, she lost her left hand because of it. God, it was so consistent, I would have thought it was a Narrative Thread. And every time she lost her hand, he flew into a blind rage. It was very unlike himself. In most iterations, he was calm and composed, even when Nat got hurt, but some permutation of causes and effects that I couldn't stop forced this development of romantic feelings which led to this blind rage. It felt exactly like how I felt when the Archbishop erased Tavi from existence, when I learned that the world itself had forgotten her. It was the same exact feeling. When he saw her hand drop to the floor, he exhausted himself physically and emotionally to take out as many demons as possible.

Then Sunma blew up at him for mispositioning the Tank Team, and they all suffered for it. Sunma watched as Alyx lost her arm-- they were married, apparently. None of the healers could reattach her arm, and everyone who could try tried. Two lost limbs in one fight, and that was the bare minimum loss. Neither of them recovered their limb, and one of them died for it. There was a rest stop after that fight, a clearing with a small lake with potable water, but no one ever enjoyed it. They were yelling at each other. I watched this scene play out dozens of times. Somehow, it felt worse than any of the other fights. Sunma was furious. She thought about killing Fymner right then and there and the first time, before I intervened, she did, and every time she didn't, she wished she did, the whole rest of the dungeon. And at the end? After I fucking killed myself hundreds of times to save them, when I thought I had the perfect run? She killed him. I cried. I thought it was over. I thought I could come back here, where we are now, and see you. It was grief. I felt it from her and I felt it from me as I screamed at her. I told her she deserved it. There's a timeline that exists out there somewhere, where I told a grieving widow that she deserved to have her wife taken away from her.

Nat felt that same overwhelming grief-- no shame, she called it that, she said she was ashamed. She hyperventilated. After surviving almost the entire dungeon, four people died on the final fight. She cried, and I cried her tears too. Two of her party members died, Chloe. Two people she was responsible for. She promised both of them that she would do everything in her power to keep them alive, that she would go as far as to beg the Archmagus to keep them safe, and she did. By the final fight, she was exhausted, but proud that her entire team made it through, that they only had one fight left, and they would celebrate at the bar and have drinks, but she wouldn't smoke, she's not that kind of person, she wouldn't even drink enough to get a mild buzz, but I took that future away from her. And you know what's fucked? Completely, and utterly fucked? I killed the two of them to save Stratus's life and Drossel's left arm, I saved the man with infinite bodies, because I didn't know, I didn't fucking know Chloe, because I thought he was an impoetant character in the Narrative Thread." He paused for a long time, sobbing loudly, gripping my shirt, and I tried to comfort him, wrap my arms around him, hug him tightly, but nothing I could do would help him feel any better. We just had to wait it out.

"I couldn't stand it anymore," he said through the end of his tears, "So I called it. I called it early. I could have kept going another few months, if I just pushed myself harder. I gave up because I'm weak, and I let them die. I killed four of them. And the rest will never be the same."

"Remi, don't say that. You're allowed to feel like shit but you're not allowed to blame yourself. You're the strongest person in all of Aeolia for going through that, going through what nobody should have to," I said as I ran my fingers through his hair, "Their deaths aren't on your hands. Let go of that thought."

"I don't know, Chloe," he whispered, "None of that matters anymore. What's done is done. I only said any of that because, what if Kei is the same way? What if, if she feels everything, just like I did?"

Yeah. That would be really, really bad.

...

I sat down on the couch with Kei, who was playing with the two stuffed bunnies I
bought her at the Bazaar.

"Hi Kei!" I called out as I kneeled down to talk to her, "Are you having fun playing?"

"..." She nodded and handed me the white one, gesturing at the black one in her hands.

"Oh, can I play?" I asked with a smile.

"..." She nodded at me and went back to playing with her bunny. We played with her toys for a little while longer, playing pretend that our bunnies were in a grassy field, and for a moment I recalled how Remi and I met, but I returned my attention to our play. She gestured with her bunny as if it were trapped in some kind of cage that she made with her hands and looked at me, so my bunny came by and opened the cage to let her free. They danced together and she smiled so I smiled too.

"So, sweetie, can we talk about what happened with your dad?" I asked, and I wasn't sure how to bring up the topic without making her recall painful memories. She looks so happy playing with her toys, even if she has that same expressionless face as usual, that just the thought of taking her away from the moment twinged my heart.

"..." She didn't respond for a moment, but eventually she gave a slight nod, and she played with her bunny a little slower.

"I know it's hurtful to think about. What he did to you is wrong. But I want to rescue the parts of you he took away, okay?" I asked.

"..." She nodded, but I noticed her ears beginning to droop. She put down her bunny and held her palm flat, pressing her index and middle finger in the middle.

"Oh, you want a piece of paper? You know Paper Magic?" I asked.

"..." She nodded and her ears straightened up again. I grabbed a page from my satchel and handed it to her. She placed her fingers on the page and poured mana inside of it.

Kei is scared.

"Oh. Oh, honey. It's okay to be scared, but big sis is here to protect you," I said as I placed my arm around her, "Can I ask you some questions about your magic?"

"..." She looked at me and nodded.

"Okay. How do your clones feel?" I asked, trying to be gentle.

Kei is scared too she wrote as her ears drooped again and I suddenly felt myself beginning to cry. How could anyone treat a child so sweet, so cruelly? But I held them back and put on a brave face for her.

"Can you feel her? The other Kei's?" I asked back.

Kei is scared. Kei is making more waepons, she misspelled.

"Is your dad there with her?" I asked, trying to nail down whether or not she can access her clone's embodied experience.

Yes, she wrote.

"Where is he?" I asked.

In the cormer on a chair, she replied.

"Okay. How many Kei's are there?" I asked.

Twemty one, she replied.

"Are they all in the same place?"

No. Twemty Keis, twemty daddys, she wrote. Fuck.

"Okay, I see. Can the other Kei's hear me?" I asked.

"..." She looked at me and nodded.

"Can they see and feel me, too?" I asked, following up.

"..." She nodded again. I held her hands and leaned in to kiss her on the forehead.

"You're so brave. I'm very, very proud of you. I promise, we're going to get you all together again, okay?" I said, trying to reassure her, and she tackled me with a hug. I felt her tears beginning to soak my shirt and I started sobbing quietly, too.

---

"I just don't get why you hate Sword Art Online so much," Sophie said to me while she sat in my desk chair.

"I just don't get why you love it so much. You're just a shonen junkie," I said back to her jokingly. I secretly love having these conversations even if she annoys the hell out of me.

"Um, yeah, because shonen highlights the importance of diversity of thought. On the other hand, you're just a slice of life junkie," she said back to me.

"Oh okay, so slice of life doesn't showcase diversity enough for you?" I said, jabbing back.

"No, absolutely not. There's no character-conflict in slice of life," she replied.

"I don't want to hear that from someone who hasn't even watched K-On!," I said, waving her away with my hand.

"Look, I think what's so neat about shonen is how you have all these different characters from different backgrounds with competing values, who are forced to reconcile the differences in their beliefs for the greater good," she said with that little smile I love so much.

"I don't even disagree with you but SAO doesn't even do that well!-- God, just read Don Quixote already," I responded, "Him and Sancho do that for a thousand pages, and it's actually interesting beyond just reconciliation, with it's satirized genre criticisms of the 1500s literary chivalric culture, and even Cervante's self-insert--"

"No. I don't read because I'm not a nerd," she said.

"And that's why there's a rise in anti-intellectualism in our country," I replied, snarkily.

"If you understand the concept of reconciliation so well, and if you can critically analyze characters so well, why don't you apply it to your own friendships?" she asked.

"Real people are different," I said, "What's nice about fiction is that everything is self-contained. In anime, the motivations and values and beliefs of every character are laid out in a line, right in front of you. I don't have to guess at why Azusa is upset. The scene just tells me that she wants to take music seriously and her friends want to relax and sip tea. Real people are different. I could ask someone twenty-one questions to figure out why they're upset, and they could just lie because they're embarassed, avoid the question because it makes them uncomfortable, mask the truth to control my perception of them, or any one of a million different methods to get me to believe in something that isn't true. And then, I'm an asshole for 'not getting it' when they don't even try to explain why they're upset. It's stupid," I said.

"And did Kyle do that? Any of it?" she asked me.

"He just got pissed off and started railing me. I don't know why. He didn't bother to explain it to me," I said, and I started getting pissed off just thinking about it, and that awful pressure in my head came back which I tried to ignore.

"C'mon, you're smarter than that. Premise, premise, conclusion, or whatever you usually say. What actually happened?" she asked.

"I said my life feels empty and hollow, that I like fiction because the conflicts are interesting, that a conflict would make me feel something, then he called me a spoiled brat, therefore, I don't know, he's an asshole," I said, calming down a little, depressurizing.

"Okay, I'm no philosopher, but I don't think that conclusion follows from the premises," she said.

"Whatever," I replied dismissively.

"Well, it sounds like he gave you exactly what you asked for and you hate him for it," she said to me with her arms crossed.

"That's not the kind of conflict I like," I replied.

"Why not? This is an Azusa-flavored conflict and you liked that," she said, uncrossing her arms.

"No, I want a conflict to give me meaning, the kind of conflict I can actually study without failing to resolve it. This conflict does nothing but make me feel like shit," I shot back.

"I think this kind of human conflict would help you more than whatever it is you think you want," she said.

"Real human conflicts aren't fun because I don't have access to people's actual thoughts and feelings and I can't interpret information I don't have," I argued.

"I don't get it. You don't seem to struggle when it comes to interpreting characters with hidden motivations and beliefs and stuff. You talk about Lolita all the time, the one with the unreliable narrator or something. What's the difference between interpreting a book and a person?" she said.

"I can read and pause and reread and take notes and look up information on the Internet and the book doesn't get pissed off about it, that's the difference," I replied.

"I see, I see. Then why don't you struggle to read me?" she got up to close the door and sat next to me on the bed.

"Because you're more like a book than a person," I replied, softer since she's closer to me now, as I looked her in the eyes, feeling the fluttering in my chest.

"Wow. I would be offended if I knew you any less than I already do, so instead I'm genuinely flattered," she said.

"I mean that you don't get upset when I misunderstand something you said, you don't think it's creepy that I have a database filled with notes about you, and you enjoy letting me read you, and I have, more than any other person or book in my life," I said.

"God, I love you. What's crazy is that's the most romantic thing you've ever said to me and I know for a fact you didn't mean to," she replied, "Look, did you ever work out that argument with Kyle?"

"No," I replied.

"C'mon Remmy, I thought you knew soooo much about reconciliation?" she asked.

"He completely dismissed me when I was vulnerable with him. I can no longer trust him," I replied.

"Can't you just pretend he's a character from a book?" she asked.

"No. There's an epistemic and metaphysical difference between a person and a character." I replied.

"Whatever nerd, those dual enrollment philosophy classes are rotting your brain and giving you an excuse to give up. I think you need to trust him," she said, "he's the only person other than me who can even tolerate you." I felt a sinking feeling in my chest but I pushed it down and it went away.

"I told you. I needed someone to confide with and he used the information I trusted him with to attack me. I don't trust him anymore. I'm done with him," I replied, feeling irritated, but I pushed that down too.

"Come one Remmy, Kyle cares about you, he just shows it in a different way," she said, "You're only in high school once, then, he'll never have a reason to talk to you again, especially if you're acting out like this. You're such a teenager sometimes."

"You're literally 26, you're not all that more mature than I am compared to someone 10 years your senior," I shot back.

"Whatever, little boy. Why don't you just watch anime with him? It would make him happy, and I bet it would make you happy too," she said, and I could feel myself getting pissed but I ignored the feeling because nothing good has ever come from being angry.

"Not happening," I replied.

"See, I told you before, you push away everyone in your life you have even a minor conflict with," and for a second, I thought I was going to blow up at her, but she pushed me down on the bed and held my hands down as she sat on top of me, "but you'll never push me away. I won't let you."

And we did what we always do when I get upset, and I got over it.

...

"Hello Kei, my name is Remi," I said to the child as she looked up at me, "Chloe told me you know Paper Magic?" I asked. Chloe sat on the couch next to her (she said she wouldn't leave me alone with her because she doesn't want me experimenting on her, which I found a little offensive).

"..." She nodded and continued staring inti my eyes which I found very uncomfortable but I continued anyways.

"Okay great. I'm the Archmagus of Locria. Do you know what that means?" I asked.

"..." She shook her head and hugged her stuffed animal (very cute).

"Hmm, alright. I'm a high-ranking official for the city of Locria, basically the head of the Locrian executive branch of government," I said, and Chloe gave me a look.

What is gover mint? Okay, this is going to be impossible.

"Nevermind that. Chloe and I are going to save your clones, but first I need your help making an arma," I said.

"..." She didn't respond at all.

"I can't die permanently. Whenever I die, I get sent back in time to a point where I don't die. So, I need you to make an arma for me. A ring, preferably, that severs my brain stem, limited by use on my brain stem only," I said.

"..." She hugged her bunny even tighter.

"Honey, you don't need to do it if you don't want to," Chloe said, and this time I gave her a look. We need this arma. No isn't an acceptable answer. We don't have anyone else who can do this for us. She continued, "But we need it to help save all the other Kei's. Because of Remi's magic, if you get captured again, he can go back in time and stop it from happening."

"..." Kei looked at Chloe then hooked her arm and leaned against her, hiding her face from me. I heard her sob, softly.

"It's okay sweetheart," she said as she stroked her hair, "don't worry."

I walked back to my room to write in my notebook. I've been practicing Paper Magic, but surprisingly, even Kei is better than I am. It still takes quite a bit of time for me to write even one word. If I had to pen down my words per minute, I would probably say five, although I'm impressed with how neat my writing is. It's almost as consistent as a printed document, but my words per minute is almost half of my writing speed. If I hand to guess, probably about half the speed of my hand writing. Paper Magic is half visualizing the shape and structure of the desired text, and half transfering mana into the paper as that exact shape. Aphantasia is therefore unfortunately limiting, which makes this near impossible for me. Instead, I have to shape the text first, and adjust as I write.

If I could just get that ring, maybe I could practice my Paper Magic. Like, with the suicide equivalent of Goku's hyperbolic time chamber, except mine has no time limit. If I wanted to, I could spend a near infinite amount of time doing... anything. No Church. No subjugation. No party management. I could just, live. Maybe, like a normal person. It would kind of be like my life on Earth. Restarting the same day over and over. Minor changes on the day to day. I don't know. I don't know what I want. I heard a knock on my door.

"Come in," I said, with my head on my desk.

"Hey. I laid Kei down to bed, she's exhausted. Can't blame her," Chloe said as she came into my room, "I wanted to talk about her. Is that okay?"

"Yeah, sure," I replied, turning my head on my desk to look at her as she pulled up a chair to sit down next to me.

"She's just a kid and it seems like she may have lived most of her life in a basement, producing illegal armas. I know you struggle with talking to people, so--"

"Yeah thanks, as if I didn't already know," I said as I turned my head the other direction, resting on my arm.

"I don't mean it as an insult," she said, "we all have our limitations. I believe you, this morning, when you said you don't see her as a tool. But I do need you to see her as a child." She started stroking my backside.

"I don't know how," I replied, "I've never been around children before."

"I see," she said, "just, for now, try to use simple words and exercise a little kindness. Okay?" I've always hated walking on eggshells around people.

"I'll try my best," I said as I sat up.

"Remi, what about you, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I'm just. I don't know. Don't worry about me. Do we have a plan to get the clones back?" I asked.

"No we don't, not yet, but it's too late, I'm already worried about you. You've been acting different since the subjugation. I can tell you're going through something difficult, and I don't want to pry, but if you're willing to talk to me, I'm here for you," she said. I looked out the window and saw the last light of the sunset hide behind the horizon. I didn't realize it was already this late. I guess Respawn Magic messes with my sense of time.

"I don't know Chloe. I just, I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my time on Aeolia. I need to escape the Church. I can't do another one of these. I can't live with the blood of others on my hands. I never thought I would say this, but I actually miss my old life. I wanted to escape it so badly, I thought I was suffocating there, but now..." I trailed off as unwanted thoughts and feelings started assaulting me, and I tried to bat them away, but I couldn't. I feel exactly like I did moments before I came to Aeolia to begin with.

"Can I ask, what was your life like back on Earth?" she asked as she led me to the bed and sat us both down on the edge. She leaned closer to me and held my hand with hers and I felt myself calming down a little.

"Hah, miserable. I worked for a shitty software as a service company in San Fracisco-- imagine Locria but one sixteeth the size-- and I worked overtime most of the week. I was basically the only person who could maintain the client database, even as the company kept growing, and I was on call. There was really no separation between my work life and my personal life," I said.

"Sounds remarkably similar to what I went through at the Church before I met you," she started, "although, I was never cut out to be a Library Mage. I worked most of the time, traveling to neighboring cities, carrying out missions. Work was my life. I guess it still is, for both of us."

"Yeah how lame is that. I got transported to another world and I still have to work myself to death," I said with a slight smile, "You know, this was a media trope back on Earth, and it was so done to death that everyone on /a/ hated it-- oh, uh, we had these things called the Internet and forums where people could communicate wirelessly from around the entire world, /a/ was a little section of the particular forum I frequented. Anyways, the genre was called isekai, and it was always about some degenerate loser who gets transported to a world with a different metaphysical structure. On Earth, we didn't have magic-- or well, I guess the Internet was kinda like magic, but it was so heavily integrated with daily life that it became pretty mundane-- so we fantasized about worlds with magic, worlds like this one, to escape how awful the real world was. I guess what sucks is that happened to me, but Aeolia is a shithole-- not to be rude, but it really is. It has all the genre tropes of a fantasy world but it's just like Earth with shittier governments and magic instead of electricity."

"You know, about a week and half ago before we met, I would have argued against you. But after everything that's happened, I'm poised to agree with you. I don't know. Sometimes it feels like the world is falling apart," she said, stroking my hand with her thumb as our hands intertwined, "but I agree with you. Aeolia is a shithole. The more you talk about Earth, the more I wish I could visit there. The Internet sounds mystical to me. Global communication. What a fascinating concept. Who could access it?"

"I mean, I would say the vast majority of people," I replied "In my country-- the United States-- almost everybody had access to the Internet. Even the homeless. We had public libraries with computers that could access the Internet."

"That's... almost unbelievable," she said, "The most we have here, in terms of mass communication, is newspapers. Libraries too, I guess. Print in general."

"We had a few mass communication revolutions. Did Aeolia ever invent radio? It transmits electromagnetic radiowaves through the air to be recieved by personal devices." I asked.

"No, I don't know what that means at all," she replied.

"That's what I don't get," I started, "There have been, I don't know, countless Archmaguses that have ported Eartian culture to Locria. Food, architecture, transportation, even your documents mimic design principles from the Internet. And yet, none of them have tried electronics? Electricity?"

"Hey now," she said as she elbowed me softly in the side, "That's speculation. Prose is that it doesn't exist. Speculation is they never tried."

"I guess you're right," I said, "Maybe it's just unnecessary. And yeah, yeah, that's speculation too. The Internet was just so revolutionary. I don't know."

"The more you talk about the Internet, the more mystical it seems to me. I wish I could visit Earth, just to try it out."

"You wouldn't have enjoyed it. You're too sweet, too kind," and we shared a glance that lasted a little while longer than usual, "It was a cesspool. Like, imagine war, but instead of hard power like sending armies to destroy other, countries-- or, cities for you I guess-- they exercised soft power by engaging in covert operations to destabilize opposing countries. Pumping the Internet with deliberately false information, stoking unrest by shifting the cultural narrative, pitting people who would typically be amicable against each other. You would hate the disinformation the most. Nobody practiced 'speculation and prose'. It was awful."

"Well, to me, that sounds far more effective and honestly preferable to the alternative. Hard power has us sending our most skilled laborers to their deaths. I'll have keep that in mind," she said as she leaned against me, "but tell me something you enjoyed on Earth. Something you miss," she said, softly, almost whispering into my ear.

"I wish I could tell you," I said, trying not to remember everything that pushed me over the ledge.

"Well, I can give you something to miss, if you ever want to go back," she said in a full whisper, as she gently laid me down on the bed, and for the first time in a long time, I thought about high school.