“What else is there to explain?” Omar thought. “I already know how to start the registration process, so I'll just do that while he talks me through it.” In any other context, Omar's thought would have been somewhat reasonable. Like most people, Omar knew the meaning of the word, “registration,” and had encountered many situations where he had to “register for something.” Doing just that, Omar leaned over and impulsively grabbed the ticket in order to begin, and once that's out of the way, he'd then go and make himself a rice sandwich.
Seeing this, the blood drained from Suman's face as he desperately stammered, “Wa—wa—wait! Wait! … ,” very loudly, starting from where he sat on the plush leather easy chair, and then continuing from right next to the couch. In a blink, he'd gone from sitting comfortably in a chair, to kneeling on the floor, grabbing at the metal ticket, while being extra careful to not to rip it violently out of Omar's grasp. Suman had moved with supernatural speed, lunging straight towards the pathetic madman, who did not know any better, and in one swift motion, reached for the ticket while coming to a complete stop.
While both men held onto the ticket, Suman ironically said, “Hold … on … hold on … ,” in the sort of calm and quiet voice that one might use to talk someone out of jumping off a building. It was a poor choice of words for his to use, given that he actually wanted Omar to stop what he was doing and let go of the ticket.
From Omar's perspective, he had only just picked up the ticket when a sudden gust of wind nearly blew him off the back of the couch. Remarkably, or perhaps stubbornly, he managed to not drop the ticket. Then, as he righted himself, Omar felt something gently tugging on the ticket before he even realized that Suman was kneeling right next to him.
Suman, while still on a knee, as if he was proposing, gently moved the ticket back to where it sat had on the couch, but only nearly so, and a little bit further away. Omar looked back and forth between the nearest window, and the front door, trying to figure out where that huge gust of wind came from.
“First, let me explain what will happen,” Suman said slowly.
Omar wasn't sure if he should be annoyed, amused, or freaking the hell out, at the moment, so instead, he chooses to shrug and then nod encouragingly for Suman to continue. “Whatever,” he thought. “I have a sandwich to make.”
It mattered little to Omar that he had no idea what just happened. Sure, at the moment, he was a tad confused, but he considered that to be a fairly normal affair which he was quite familiar with. As he understood it, confusion was an inevitable part of talking to other people, sort of like death, taxes, and telemarketers. If someone had to be confused, and it wasn't the other person, then naturally the role of being confused would fall to Omar.
With regard to his tendency to deliberately confuse other people, and of his sometimes-job as a telemarketer, Omar was not entirely oblivious to the irony here, just mostly so.
Even compared to normal human reflexes, let alone his supernatural lunge, Suman was now moving rather slow. He stood up, taking his time, and then made his way leisurely back to his chair, where he said, bluntly, “The registration process starts with a bit of intense stabbing pain that disappears, suddenly, after a few brief seconds.”
For his part, Omar tried to scoot away from the ticket without touching it, but he was already at the end of the couch. More worryingly, Omar saw that his response seemed to appease Suman, who then nodded approvingly and visibly relaxed. This made Omar very nervous. “Do you—you mean,” he began to say, with a squeak, “that it's like the pinch of a needle. Right?”
Suman's response was a silent, brief shake of his head. His eyes pointed down to the floor and his lips were pressed tightly into a thin line. It was easily the grimmest head shake that Omar had ever seen.
“The pain will last two to three seconds, at most, before it abruptly cuts off like it was never there. Basically, the ticket itself is made of nanites or something—I have no idea how it actually works—and the ticket will seem to bond to your skin. Then it will begin, bit-by-bit, injecting itself into you.” While gesturing with his hands, he said, “It actually does this rather quickly—like pop,” though he said ‘pop’ like it was some sort of sound effect. “It reaches your nervous system pretty fast—which is good—that's how it stops the pain, by completely blocking the nerves sending pain signals to your brain. The ticket has all the material it needs to add the cybernetic tech that ultimately provides you with the interface and—”
“Um … uh-huh … ,” was the best response Omar was able to give. Stunned as he was, Suman noticed this and tried to reassure him in a macho and dismissive way.
“—Oh! Don't worry about that,” Suman said, brushing aside Omar's concerns with a cavalier gesture. Nonetheless, he began speaking very quickly, literally in imitation of the voice-actors who read the list of side-effects in pharmaceutical commercials.
“The process numbs your entire body, immobilizing you almost instantly, placing you in state of complete anesthetic paralysis, whereupon the majority of the necessary modifications will be made—which will take five to ten minutes—but it will render you unconscious for most of that time. Not recommend if you are pregnant or think you might be pregnant.” Then, unlike a pharmaceutical commercial, he tries to laugh dismissively, saying, “Hehe, that last bit was a jo—” but stops cold as Omar whips his head to lock eyes with Suman, his face beaming with hope. “I mean … just the pregnant—thing was a joke. They wouldn't let someone anywhere near a ticket if they were pregnant.”
Omar's face remained a frozen mask of hope, after it had been left abandoned and dead in a ditch somewhere. “This thing,” Omar said while looking at, but not actually touching, the shiny metal ticket. The inflection in his voice suggested that there was more to the sentence, but as Suman waited, it became apparent that there wasn't.
Omar's mind was still processing Suman's words, and the sentence ended early because that was as far as it got.
Initially, he actually started to get excited, something that hadn't happened in years, if his memory was correct. He was going to get his own cybernetic interface with his own extradimensional pocket space, and then, on top of that, he'd be able to travel through time! But then Suman started talking about the pain, and that made Omar a little bit concerned, as in, he was very very concerned.
“Yesss?” Suman finally said while nodding in either confirmation, or to encourage Omar to continue. Despite this, Suman didn't actually wait for Omar, and before saying , “I also recommend that you do this while lying down, otherwise you will just collapse to the ground when it immobilizes your body.”
After ten seconds of motionless silence, Suman also became concerned. Then he remembered that he still had to say something about the tutorial.
“When you wake up … ,” Suman began, but then Omar suddenly looked straight at him as if to ask, “Did you just say, ‘wake up’?” His dead and frozen mask of hope, now also dead and buried. Still, this left Suman stammering, “Uh—uhm” continuing. “Yeah, so after that is the tutorial.”
When Omar turned to continue gazing accusingly at his ticket, Suman tried bringing his instructor-voice back. “There are four parts to the tutorial, but you won't remember all of them.”
Omar responded with a quiet, “Eh. …”
Suman paused for a moment, wondering to himself if that was the sound of Omar's soul slowly escaping his body. “Um, yeah. Well, parts one and two are automated, but in part three there will be an actual instructor.”
When Suman said, “instructor,” the keyword seemed to be some sort of trigger for Omar, causing him to turn and lift his head to look straight at the tall man, again. Suman continued speaking, but his words floundered at the sight of Omar's lifeless gaze. “B—by default, your instructor will be a random player who accepted the role as part of a quest. However, you can request that a specific player be your instructor, if you know their name, or they are your sponsor. But, … in your case, your, um, sponsor has already declined to be your instructor. So yeah. … Your only choice is to either request me as your instructor, or to let the system automatically assign you some random player.”
“You're an instructor,” Omar said somewhat soullessly, as though he'd just remembered, because he sort of did.
Tutorial instructors do not normally deliver tickets to prospective new players, and so Suman has only done this on a few occasions. Still, every time he did so, he followed the same script he's using now to advertise his services.
“That I am. And I'm a trained instructor at that, with an AMI supervisor overseeing my performance. If you go with a random player, they would most likely not be trained or monitored—at least, not more than usual.”
Before Suman could think about what he'd just said, a notification popped up in his interface. This wasn't a coincidence. Suman, who was already somewhat distracted by Omar's pre-registration jitters, minimized the notification without reading it. Unlike Omar, Suman was a fairly decent human being. Because of this, when he sees that someone is becoming increasingly distressed, he feels a natural need to help.
Sounding lifeless, soulless, and halfway to zombie land, Omar spoke like he wasn't all there and asked, “Do I have to sign anything?”
“Wh-what? No, Omar,” he said with forced kindness, “you don't have to sign anything.”
“But I thought I was just going to fill out some forms?” he asked again, by way of confirmation. Despite Suman's expectations, Omar sounded even more pathetic and subdued. He mumbled and slurred his words like a man who miraculously survived 50 years worth of hard drug abuse.
“Uhm, no. You can't implant a cybernetic interface with just a few forms.” Suman said, matter-of-factly, as if just saying the obvious would make Omar feel better.
In a raspy and barely audible voice, Omar squeaked out, “Implant?!”
As he spoke, Omar's voice oozed a miasma of distress; his words full of panic, but devoid any energy. Omar's frightened movements were painfully slow, like someone had tied and bound his fight-or-flight response with a thick rope, and then nearly beaten it to death with a stick.
Suman took a deep breath. He was nearly out of ideas and trick to use to comfort Omar in his time of need. Because of this, and stress that comes with an empathic understanding of one's fellow human beings, it was understandable that Suman would try appealing to Omar's sense of reason, even though he really ought to know better. “Would you rather go through several hours of surgery and then spend weeks to months recovering?”
“Are you sure I don't have to sign something?” was Omar's reply to that.
“Yes, I'm sure.” Suman answered simply. Really, he should have known better.
“I think I'd rather sign something.”
Suman isn't always a nice person. As a player, he's of the type that fights with ruthless efficiency, whether its on the battlefield with a weapon, or in the boardroom with a pen. While he won't sell his own ethics and morals for a profit or a quick victory, he will sell someone else's ethics and morals. “Listen Omar,” he began to say, his irritation drawing out hints of the battle-hardened player. “You're not a time-traveler, at least not yet, and the clock is ticking here. If the timeline changes, then I guarantee you that this whole conversation will unhappen.”
In reality, Suman knew full well that due to his use of the System Skill, “Temp. Temp. Stabilization,” this conversation was not actually on the verge of unhappening.
“What are the chances that you'd even find the ticket if it was buried in all that,” and Suman pointed to the pile of Omar's unopened mail.
Omar saw this and reflexively nodded in response. Underneath that pile, the surface of the wooden coffee table was black and charred. He'd “accidentally” set fire to the prior incarnation of that pile when he tried to balance a lit candle on top of the flammable paper mail. Once he finally extinguished the small fire, he was left with a pile of burnt and unburnt mail to sort through. The pile existed, initially, because he didn't want to deal with it. Now the fire made the prospect of sorting through it even worse. It was such a gigantic mess that he was left with no choice but to take it outside and finish burning it. His only real regret was that the spectacular fire was short-lived. That was why the current pile was so much larger.
“Would you really burn this, Omar?” he asked himself, while looking at the helpless metal ticket that was so very pretty. “It's just a little pain. Let the ticket do its job, and then you can quit your jobs. Do you want to work for the rest of your life?” He mumbled, “No,” almost inaudibly. “Are you going to let this burn?” Omar shook his head, and the act of defiance was almost self-empowering. But not quite. Then he asked himself, “Would you let some little girl find this ticket instead?” and this was the real question he needed. “Neverrr!” he whispered, using all the strength he could muster.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
With that thought, he decided that the mere chance that someone else would get their grubby hands all over his precious ticket, horrified him more than what was about to happen.
In this he was absolutely wrong. On top of that, Omar wasn't really thinking about the consequences of his actions, but that's hardly surprising.
From Suman's perspective, it looked like Omar was thinking about backing out. Having fed Omar one lie already, Suman decided that he might as well try another. “Hey, just think of it like a vaccination. Its just a little pinch. Actually, you'll be automatically vaccinated against mostly everything. So no more needles for vaccinations. I think that's a fair tradeoff. Don't you agree?”
He actually would be vaccinated against mostly everything. The vaccination program is critical in reducing the transmission of diseases and pathogens from between different eras. Even natural chrononauts, regardless of whether they ever become players, are part of the AMIs vaccination program, though they tend to not be aware of this.
This slight bit of unintentional truth makes Suman feel better about telling Omar that “its just a little pinch.” It helped, he reasoned, that he technically did not verbally answer that question.
As a response, Omar shrugged noncommittally.
“Good, good.” Suman said encouragingly. By now, he'd come to recognize that noncommittal shrug as Omar's goto response. The annoying habit was an encouraging sign.
Then, for a moment, Omar eyes went wide before they became droopy again, just like they had been when Suman first arrived. After taking a deep breath, he began breathing so shallowly that it almost seemed like he was dead.
This was Omar's “Zen of not trying,” and he invoked it without invoking it. “One must not try, to not try,” he reminded himself. “That is the only way.”
His mantra of laziness stirred something at the edge of his understanding, and then suddenly he knew! “If there is suffering to be had, just pretend like it won't happen, and then this too shall pass.”
Omar was on the verge of making a new rule, and when it came, he knew it was true, even if he did not understand it. Generally, that was how he thought epiphanies worked.
He cleared his throat and then, in an act of minimal effort, he delicately touched the ticket with a finger. In an almost painfully slow motion, his eyes met with Suman's. He asked, plainly at first, “What if I just put a finger on it, like this?” but half way through, it seemed like he lost interest in what he was saying.
“Oh, that actually might be a good idea.” Suman said with a supportive nod, like it was the most brilliant idea he'd ever heard. “Yes, you can do that. It will work just the same, so long as it is in contact with your skin.”
This was just more confirmation that his way was true.
With only his thumb and forefinger, Omar picked up the ticket, almost daintily, and held it while he adjusted himself on the couch. Lifting his legs up, he leaned back into a reclining position, but wasn't completely flat on his back. He actually thought that laying down was a great idea. However, this time, he felt like he needed to consider Suman's suggestion, while also finding his own way.
In reality, he felt like arbitrarily defying Suman's suggestion because, even though it was a great idea, Suman came up with it first.
Omar noticed that his leg was on the empty envelope from earlier. He totally forgot about it, even though it had been on the couch this entire time. Contemptuously, he kicked the envelope off the couch and onto the floor. He thought, “Now I can forget about it all over again.”
With one leg, he swept the it onto the floor, while atop the other leg, he placed the ticket in his lap, right
After he place his ticket on his leg, Suman asked, with some concern, “Are you sure you don't want to try lying down? Like all the way? It's two to three seconds of intense—uhm—pinching, before it goes away. You'll probably start jumping and yelling and generally thrash about wildly until then.”
⁂
Searching for something else to say or do, Suman realized that he was done. There was nothing else to do; no other way that he could help. This was, after all, the simple part. Only Omar could initiate the registration process, and Suman could not do anything to make that process easier
The fact of the matter is that for most people, their decision is based on a brief description that doesn't even mention anything about time-travel. Few ever get to make a truly informed decision, like Omar has, about becoming a player, and yet fewer still regret their choice. At least, not for a long time.
The tall man said nothing while he watched and waited.
Even after knowing that it was probably foolish and unnecessary, Suman remained because he thought that his presence might help Omar get through this. Despite this, he also admitted to himself, somewhat guiltily, that some part of him would find the little bastard's suffering to be mildly cathartic. After all, he was only human.
Back when he first registered, Suman's sponsor gave him a consumer product from the future called a “scream box.” He'd been told that it was needed to avoid “unnecessary disruptions” by anyone who was within earshot. This too was a lie. The AMIs make arrangements that reduce the likelihood of anyone being that close, and when issues do pop up, they can go back and prevent them. It always amused Suman that despite everything that happened, his sponsor did not want to hear him scream.
While Suman debated with himself about offering his scream box to Omar, the soon-to-be player spoke.
“Yes—no … ,” he said, with some confusion. Suman had no idea what Omar meant by that, but he thought that at least his voice sounded promising. “I mean, yes, I'll stay like this. I think—I wanted to actually see what happens,” was all Omar said by way of an explanation. He spoke with increasing confidence that was obviously just bravado. This was even more apparent when he jokingly said, “I'll try to keep the thrashing and yelling to a minimum.”
“Ah, yes” Suman thought grimly. “Gallows humor.”
Omar carefully touched the ticket with his index finger. “I want to register as a player,” he said clearly, with a degree of confidence he did not have. His subconscious mind went to “red alert,” briefly, before quietly withdrawing. This slowed down Omar's reaction time, and his IQ dropped precipitously.
For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, and Omar thought, “Hey, that wasn't that bad.”
He looked at Suman, in order to say as much, but he just stared at the tall man who was busy adjusting some earplugs that were already in his ears. Suman gave him a quick thumbs up, and so he did the same. However, when he lifted his hand, Omar noticed that the metal ticket was stuck to his index finger, like glue. Like an idiot, he said, “Uhh, it's stuck.”
Suman was covering his ears with his hands when Omar looked at him again. He began to wonder if Suman decided use his hands instead of those earplugs.
He had not. The earplugs were still in place.
The first thing Omar felt was a paper cut, and while this brought his attention back to the ticket that was firmly attached to his finger, the pain was easy enough to ignore. He laughed once and tried to say something dismissive and likely asinine, but that was when the pain went from “a paper cut” to “most definitely NOT a paper cut.”
He began to say, “What the … ,” in a confused tone, but this quickly crescendoed into a loudening cry of, “ah? Ahh. … AHHH!” The loud cry became a yell, and then the yelling became screams accompanied by the very sort of wild thrashing that he dimly recalled saying he would “keep to a minimum.”
His mind raced with all sorts of regret such as, “I changed my mind,” “Undo! Undo!” and “Nope! I was wrong. This is more horrifying,” and at that last thought, he seemed to look around in panic for a little girl, as if he could give his own pain away.
Now writhing and squirming in pain, his legs dug into the couch as if he was trying to flee from the ticket, but this merely caused him to kick one of the seat cushions onto the floor. With his other hand, he tried to remove the metal ticket, but it was wet and slippery, and wouldn't budge. He stopped trying to remove the thing when one of his wildly kicking legs made him knee himself in the arm. There was a hard “Thwack!” that had an awful howl ring to it, but the impact oddly enough, brought him back to his senses. He could, once again, focus on the real issue here. He screamed, “YYYOOOUUU!” at Suman, or at least he tried to scream that. What actually came out was, “aaarrRAAWWAA,” which was just as well, since Suman wouldn't have responded, even if he had heard it correctly. “Youuu lied! You liarrr! You didn't say it would be this bad!” he thought with growing anger.
Technically, Suman did lie, and he did heavily imply that it would be this bad, so Omar was not entirely wrong.
To Omar, it felt like his finger was being cut, repeatedly, with an innumerable number of razor blades while he was simultaneously being electrocuted. It was in his hand, slicing him from the inside in sharp straight lines and jagged edges.
As he would later find out, that was more or less an apt description of what was actually occurring.
It cut, over and over again, and never stopped. Soft flesh and tendons felt like they were twisting and wrapping themselves around the bones in his palm. A jarring sensation let him know that something hard had hit his bones.
Through slicing pain and teary eyes, Omar glared daggers at Suman, while shouting at him in rage. He'd become dimly aware that he was making all sorts of sounds that he did not intend to make, and even then, what he intended did not quite sound right. Gathering his fury and channeling his unbearable agony, he focused what was left of his mind, stared accusingly at Suman, and then tried his best to violently scream, “It's all YOUR fault! YOU, … ” plus a few carefully chosen words. What actually came out was, “Gshhh, AH, FOW, nghnnn … ,” which eventually devolved into various assorted growling noises.
Suman heard unintelligible muffles that sounded a lot like growling, which, he thought, was fitting, now that Omar looked like a slobbering rabid dog that wanted to eat him. It was clear enough to Suman that he had become the target of Omar's ire for some reason, but he was absolutely fine with that, and hoped it helped him. While he remained tactfully attentive, he had a gnawing urge to at least try to say or gesture something. After lowering his hands, he gestured and mouthed, “I told you so,” because he really did. Admittedly, that wasn't exactly what he'd initially intended to do, but he decided that he was fine with that as well.
It had moved and spread further inside him, digging its way deep within the flesh of his wrist and arm. Omar felt it begin as a jabbing pain, pushing itself through his wrist and shooting up his arm like ice picks or hot coals. He could hardly tell the difference.
At this point that he remembered something about how he wanted to watch the process, though he could not remember why. His hand, now just a mass of throbbing agony, felt wrong, and yet it looked completely normal.
“Where's all the blood,” he thought, indignantly. He felt cheapened, like he'd been ripped off or had his home burglarized.
He thought, dimly, that he should be drenched in blood, but all he could see was a dot of red here and there. On his pants, there was just this one small drop, soaking itself into the fabric, almost mocking. It was ludicrous. Insulting, even. The lack of blood made it seem like it was all in his head, like it wasn't real.
Something had happened to his forearm, and when he looked, he saw that his arm was covered in unnaturally black veins that protruded grossly under the skin. He watched with a detached sense of curiosity as they moved and twitched wildly, like they were dancing. It was far too fast, as if there was black electricity under his skin. Oddly enough, Omar found the sight to be somewhat reassuring, as though it proved that the pain he felt wasn't all in his head.
“Wait a … was it always that smaller—that small?” he said drunkenly, and surprised by the sound of his own voice.
He lifting his hand, examining it by turning it around, back and forth, when he finally noticed that half the ticket was now missing and that even now, it continued to visibly shrink. Omar's subconscious mind came back and gave the all-clear signal. A strange echo of his agony remained, though only diminishingly, as he tried to clear his delirium-stricken mind.
“Did it stop hurting?” he wondered, and mumbled to himself, like he forgot which was which. The pain was gone, completely, his agony ended, but all he could say was, “When did that happen?” He wondered how much of what he had experienced was actual pain, and how much was simply the memory of it.
The arm attached to the shrinking ticket felt entirely numb and extremely weak. A moment later, it went completely limp, no longer under his control, as it unceremoniously flopped to his lap. He touched the warm appendage with his other hand, poking it with his finger, and marveled at how profoundly numb it felt.
There was a sick slurping sound as his finger sucked up what was left of the ticket. Still no blood, and what blood he vaguely recalls seeing, had also seemingly vanished. He could feel a strange gritty residue all over his numb hand, and there seemed to be more of it in his good hand and on his pants. With the ticket gone, the only evidence that it had been stuck to his finger was a dent and some redness that was even now vanishing.
“It's gone,” he mumbled to himself. Although it seemed obvious now, Omar realized that he didn't really think about what would happen to his pretty ticket. “Our's was a complicated relationship,” he thought, “like a roller coaster with plenty of ups and downs. But now, even though you are gone, you will never leave me.”
It felt like an eternity had passed, and the many, many memories he had of his experience, suggested to Omar that it was even longer. Out loud, he said, somewhat clearly, “Was that really just two to three seconds?”
Omar had déjà vu, or something like it, except that he wasn't quite sure when he had it. It was weird and somehow wrong in a way that made him think it wasn't déjà vu. He stared, confused at his big black chair, complete empty now that Suman was gone. It was strange because he'd been looking right at Suman, who then silently waved at him before vanishing. “Or did he vanish first and then wave good-bye? No that doesn't make any sense.”
Instead of leaning back, even partially, Omar sat on the only remaining cushion of his couch, the others being on the floor, while hunched, slightly, and leaning forward. The towel, which he'd long since forgotten about, is out of sight behind the couch.
When Omar realized that he was talking to himself, completely alone in his empty living room, he could feel his mind, which had been clearing, become increasingly fuzzy. He kept forgetting about his limp and useless arm, which he would glance at to remind him that it existed. However, for the better part of half a minute, he just sat there staring at the empty chair as though he'd never seen it before.
Omar's déjà vu had déjà vu, or he had it again, except that he'd never had déjà vu like this before. It was weird and somehow wrong. “That wasn't ten seconds. That felt like—” Omar began to say, but when he looked up, Suman was gone. Since then, his eyes remained fixed on the empty chair. Over and over again, he thought, “It's so confusing, it's so confusing,” and occasional he even mumbled it out loud. He recalled his last, but brief, conversation with the tall man, trying to remember when it happened.
Just before he vanished, Suman responded to his unanswered question. “Yup. It hasn't even been ten seconds since you started,” he had said, before adding, “Well, I gotta go. I can't be here for the first two parts of the tutorial. Also, I'm officially on vacation now.” Without waving good-bye, he vanished.
Now, Omar wasn't sure if he ever managed to ask his unanswered question.
“Thank you for choosing to play the game Reality Break! Brought to you by AMI incorporated, please be kind to thinking machines.”
“What!? Who said that?” Omar yelled as he frantically looked around for the source of the new female voice. His eyes met with Suman's, who sat in his chair shaking his increasingly blurry head. “What? … back? … but I was looking … ,” Omar began to say to an empty room.
Unceremoniously, he abruptly slumped forward like a wilting flower; his entire body completely numb. “Hey Suman, why am I staring at my crotch?” he wanted to ask, but no words actually come out of his mouth. “Oh well,” he thought, “he's probably gone again.” In front of his eyes, large black letters appeared on his pants, or floating in the air above them. They read, “Please wait while we finish reconfiguring your nervous system …”.
Ineffectually, he tried to reach out and touch the letters, but his arms would no longer respond to his will. In any case, he finally notices that one of his arms is already in front of him so that he's already touching some of the letters. “That's neat,” he tries to say again, but can't.
A growing sense of dread envelops him as he finally processes the words in the sentence floating in front of him. However, before he can object, or even begin to panic, he loses consciousness.
End of Part 0
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