“Has the system been explained to you?” a technician asked.

Sophia nodded. Her friend, Joshua, had been overzealous in his explanation that Sophia left their conversation more confused than when it started. He had not been involved in the creation or operation of the omnilens but he helped refine the system that took all the information from the omnilens and constructed a three dimensional recreation of what was observed.

The omnilens from what Sophia came to understand was like a telescope only reversed. It observed everywhere except the desired location and pieced together an image from light that had been refracted through the calculations of the placements of celestial bodies to find the light shed from ages past in the endless expanse of space. There was more to it but it captured a shadow from the times before. Oddly, it could not observe the immediate present.

Which was why Sophia had been accepted as a tester. She chose early in life to become a historian but the opportunities to use one’s knowledge had been lacking recently. They hired her so she could help calibrate it, look at events and tell them what place in time they were observing. That concern remained her sole responsibility, to tell them if their calculations led to a different time period than expected and help refine it to be more precise. She also viewed this as an opportunity to view historical events with her own eyes, something others in her field had only dreamed of.

It was rather fortunate that she had met Joshua. It was he who recommended her for the position, though she would have earned it herself if not for the fact the position was not advertised. They wanted to keep development of the project as small of a circle as possible as the omnilens could be used for spying if someone so desired.

“Alright, we will be using an observation from three days ago as the control sample so you can grow accustomed to the visuals. We will then adjust chronological observations and ask you to confirm if our calculations are accurate. Do you need any clarification?”

“No, I understand.”

“Good, let us begin.”

A visored helmet lowered onto Sophia’s head as she grabbed onto her armrests. For a long moment, her entire world was simply darkness and silence.

“Can you hear me?” the technician’s voice buzzed in her ears.

“Yes, I can hear you.”

“Good. The coordinates are set in this city from three days ago. Can you see it?”

A cityscape slowly formed beneath her. It started as a shadow before bit by bit it gained color. It was as if she was a bird watching the blank terrain mold itself like clay for some unseen painter to add detail.

All appeared as it should have been. Vehicles were moving about while towers crowned the city. Even the sounds one would expect from such a bustling reached her ears.

It had been explained to her the sounds were artificial, simulated based on scenery. It was most certainly far from perfect, if a mute person were to form words on their lips, the simulation would voice them out.

Some alleys in certain corners remained utterly black while the tops of the towers were glistening white. The omnilens relied on light, it could not show where light failed to touch and showed areas that were overexposed as white. Joshua claimed with confidence, it would still be able to show areas at night, using the moon. Unfortunately, it would not be able to show much from a moonless night where the clouds blocked out even the stars.

“Yes, I can see the city,” Sophia confirmed. She proceeded to describe what she saw in detail.

“Excellent. We will now adjust the c-axis to two centuries ago.”

The omnilens possessed a x, y, z, and c-axis. X, y, z and were for coordinates in space and c referred to time.

The scenery simply disappeared into black and reformed itself the way it had before. However, this time it resembled more an imperfect dome before color was lent to it.

“Can you see anything?”

Sophia strained her eyes to discern the details within the yellowish grey fog before her. The scenery was blanketed in the stuff beyond almost all recognition.

“Just a haze,” Sophia specified. She paused before adding. “Wait, I can see some buildings, they are not very tall, except for what I think might be… yes, the thin chimneys of the factories. The structures are more wide than tall.”

“Oh dear,” the technician replied. “There must be an error.”

“It is alright. This time had been an industrious age. What I am looking at is likely smog. This could be an accurate image.”

There was silence for a while. “Alright. Due to that unexpected obstacle, we will be looking back further than planned. We will be attempting to observe the laying of the first stone of this city. Lower technology use should lead to less obstructions.”

“That was twenty-eight hundred years ago,” Sophia noted.

“Exactly. We will try to drop you years after the fact, though it is possible you might wind up there before. We want to place you ahead so we can work backwards based on your assessments of the evolving townscape.”

“So, you just need me to tell you how many years and months you need to adjust?” She was finally using her knowledge. It was quite thrilling to employ what one studied. “Excellent.”

All Sophia heard was “Now adjusting -axis to -“ before the words cut short. The technician might have said “c-axis” but Sophia would just as easily be convinced that for some reason “z” was said.

This time, the world did not fade to black. It burned white. Heat coursed through her body as if she had been cast into a furnace. What could she call what she was in other than a sea of light, a realm of celestial brilliance flooding over her.

She could see her own arms and legs flailing about in her agony, a ghostly figure of speckled light and darkness scattered about in some pattern she could not appreciate or comprehend while wracked with such pain. She reached for the helmet over her head to tear it off but found nothing.

As suddenly as it came, the pain passed as the view in front of her gained definition even as her own shadow vanished. A white hot inferno raged above her instead of a sky. What should have been the ground blazed brilliantly as well. She would think she was standing on a star, the light’s intensity from below only seemed dim in comparison to the luminescence that stood above.

She tried taking a step forward and the blackness seemed to come a little closer. So, she could move. Or maybe in this case, she was moving the world. It was difficult to discern motion when she could not see herself and there was only one landmark to serve as a guide.

She drifted towards the structure. She eventually reached it and found it offered no resistance, she entered it the way one would enter shade. Yet, the view changed as if she was inside something, everything was black except the whiteness visible through a rectangular window of sorts.

Then she noticed movement, a shadow a shade lighter than the surrounding darkness. It appeared to be a silhouette a human standing by the window, but it’s head was directed towards her.

“What is that?” it seemed to mutter curiously.

She moved to the side but its gaze followed her.

It can see me? she wondered.

She did not mean to speak but the outline responded to her thought all the same as it recoiled in surprise.

At least a dozen thoughts ran through her mind in that moment as it spoke in a low voice, it came to her oddly clear for a recreation, capturing a sense of confused merriment. “Should I not be able to see you?” The silhouette raised its hands as if to push away an o rushing flood. “Wait, I require a moment to answer each question and would like to ask some of my own.”

“I have not talked yet have I?” she asked

“I do not mean to be rude and interrupt you but you are speaking to me even now. Do you not mean to? You are saying questions that seem to be meant for yourself.”

This must have been a dream. A recording could not interact with her. The fact a figure in a surreal realm knowing what she thought would reinforce that notion.

“You seem to be of the impression I might be a hallucination but you are the strange seemingly unreal thing to me,” the stranger informed her. “I wonder how you even talk.”

“How is it strange for a human to be talking?” she asked.

The stranger paused as the individual appeared to be filtering through her alleged chatter. “You look like no human I have seen. Are you communicating through some device?”

“What do I look like to you?”

“You look like a speck of light, like something you would find on a glass surface. You appear to me as something akin to a fairy or a sprite.”

“I am neither. I am most certainly human.”

“May I ask my fellow human’s name?” The stranger probed, growing more confident in his choice of words, no longer pausing so obviously to discern what she wanted to know.

“I am Sophia.”

“I am Captain Samael," he introduced himself.

“A captain? Of what?”

He gestured to their unseeable surroundings.“The very ship you are in, though I can’t quite call it a ship anymore now that it is trapped here.”

"I am afraid I can not see anything in detail the same way you can't see me. I see no ship. I only see shadow."

"There is not much for you to see anyway," Samael pronounced with a sense of levitity that could exist to conceal something dire.

He answered a number of questions she never meant to ask. Though she did learn they occupied the observation deck. It turned out that without a mouth, there was little difference between cognition and speech as far as Samael was concerned.

“Can you describe the landscape?” she asked as she intended, trying to gaze through the blistering light outside. “I can not see anything.”

“Of course. Beyond this ship is an expanse of clear crystal. The entirely world is made of it with few imperfections. There is no water or foliage. The three suns are not friendly towards life.”

“What do you mean there are three suns?”

“Exactly what I said. We are orbiting around a set of three suns.”

“And how many moons?”

“There are no moons.”

This world was too different to be her own no matter the time. The omnilens had to be looking at somewhere else in space. If that was the case, maybe she was somehow speaking to someone on another world. Was that possible? Could the C-axis be set for the present and he be somehow observing her in turn?

"So, where are you communicating from?" the captain asked. "Hopefully our fellow survivors found better fortune than us."

"I do not know what you mean by survivors," she clarified. "But I inhabit a planet with more water than land and a moon."

"That sounds to me like the old world."

"Old world?"

"The world we humans came from. There were other peoples we shared it with but this vessel was meant for humans only. Is your world inhabited by those that would be myth to us now?"

"The world I'm from is the only world we have ever known and we humans its only intelligent occupants. We developed and grew there."

"Maybe your people forgot or maybe we are not the same species… or maybe you were seeded through other means… Strange. As for this planet here, we call it Raziel. I mentioned the crystals, right? It looked like a gleaming eye as we approached, watching us."

She explained her situation to him and he explained his further. It took a bit to figure out how to moderate the vocalization of her thoughts or else he might be privy to every musing that surfaced in her mind. Not that there were many secrets left to hide by then, her rampant honesty until that point won her his trust it seemed, he knew far more of her than she knew of him.

Inevitably the subject came to how his ship wound up where it was.

“The stars died and everything went with them. Darkness is an absence, it is nothingness. Who knows how many seeds like our own drifted through the void waiting for the universe to begin anew. The stars reignited and planets formed around them.” Samael pointed outside, maybe forgetting she was blind to what lied beyond. “This was such a planet and our “ship” was pulled into it.”

"And how did you survive the wait?"

"We slept until we crashed."

Neither fully comprehended the position of the other but they accepted the situation, even experimented. They found she could only see and hear him while he was near the window of the observation deck but he was always aware of her presence. To the other survivors, she was nonexistent and the shadows of the other people did not even seem to register Samael acknowledging her and went about their business undisturbed.

“Is this a fated meeting?” he jested after concluding the communication was exclusive to them.

Sophia feared it was not. Wherever she was, these events already happened, maybe a few days ago, maybe years ago. With time to think, it was clear to her the omnilens could not view the present. There had to be a delay of some sort, as light needed it’s time to travel. She may have been a historian, not an astronomer, but even she knew the simple trivia that it took minutes for the rays of her own sun to grace her world.

Or could it see the present by her understanding? It was like a reversed telescope, could the lenses be focused somehow on a distant world through some fluke, the way an observatory might gaze upon a comet's path?

It was perhaps more difficult for Samael to accept that he was in the past than Sophia was from another world. He expected other people but who would think they themselves were an observation?

"But you have a means of peering directly into the past?" he inquired. "How wonderful. Here, the issue is all the things we have recorded are the only that which has already been seen by man."

“Or woman,” she amended.

The faint outline of his lips smiled a bit to conceal his embarrassment. “You know what I mean,” he laughed. “An old phrase we are so used to hearing.”

“Indeed. It is easier to say than humans. Still, what were you about to say?”

“Ah, yes. What I wanted to say is that everything we wrote down is what happened to still be around with us humans. If we were talking about world’s largest mammals, I would think the ancient beasties we only found the bones of would be the record holders over anything that still shared the planet with us.”

"What did you share your planet with?"

"Many things. Though we consorted less with the inhumans near the end," he answered. “Our records only extend as far as ourselves and our own history. Actually, not even that far. They only could have begun after we mastered language to pass those memories along to others. The world remembered though, at least before it died as well. The landscape, fossils, the distribution of plants and animals all were evidence of what came before. Now, we are among the only proof that our world once stood.”

The way he spoke carried emotion. The more she listened to him, the more she had trouble remembering he was just an observation, a phantasm from some unknown time and place.

She was with someone with a trove of knowledge, history from another world. She should use this opportunity to learn what she could. But if there was any chance this was not a dream or recording, then she was speaking to someone in the present, someone in need.

"If I found some kind of shelter, do you think that would help?" she asked. "Maybe your people could find a way to leave."

"It would not hurt. If we could find some shade, we could build something… so… It is worth considering. If you can go where we can not, maybe you might detect something that can give us hope."

Sophia acted on her offer and wandered the white emptiness in search of something, anything. Maybe along the way could find a means for herself to escape, or some shelter to inform Samael of. All she found were the rare patches of blankness which she assumed were the imperfections in the crystal the captain mentioned. Still, she informed him of anything she came across, hoping it might be soil rather than solid rock.

Time passed nigh-indiscernibly. There were no days or nights. The passing of a day could only be appreciated when Samael went to sleep. Sophia did not feel hunger or tiredness to suggest time was passing for herself. Samael's stature dwindled and he slowly stopped being able to stand as straight as he used to.

“The suns here are too intense," he informed her. "The heat is damaging the systems overtime and while we have the skill to make repairs, we lack the resources. We have to cannibalize what we have to maintain living conditions. With each repair, the quality of life grows a little bit worse, if we can call being in a cage “life”. One day something vital is going to give way and everyone has been made aware. I fear our population is not dropping due to natural causes but because of suicide. Within the void, we at least had hope of something better than this constant diminishment.”

"I am sorry I am not able to help."

"It is possible this all happened already for you, right? There may be nothing one could do to change this event. Thank you for trying though. Maybe the future gets better."

“It is also possible this is the present,” she speculated.

Or a dream, she made sure not to say.

“I know I resisted the prospect that this is all set in stone. What soul would accept that both fate is cruel and one is not real. Sometimes I think you some fantasy but I pray I am the fictional one. If this is the past and I am some construct, then there is hope.”

“Maybe it will get better,” she comforted.

“No, no… Not maybe,” he practically begged for a moment before she imagined some desperate light in his unreadable eyes as it slipped into his voice. “With you here, I know the future will get better. Here you are, somewhere in the universe.”

They did not say much more as if any other words might extinguish his hope. Sophia went back outside once Samael returned to the depths where she could no longer see him.

She wandered again and lost track of time when a square "hole" appeared in the firmament of light she had come to believe was the sky. A lack of anything to provide scale made it impossible to discern size or distance.

She had forgotten the brilliance that was the sea of light she bathed in before she arrived in that place. She thought perhaps the light was of the same nature to what blazed around her but what came from the “hole” was constant rays while the world she dwelled in alternated wildly like an inferno. She would not have noticed a difference when they were both so seemingly similar in intensity until she saw both at once.

Within the downpouring rays, descending at first from a thread came an eight legged figure. What appeared to be a large winged spider flew down towards her, its silver thread still attached to it.

Unlike everything else, it was clear to see with texture, color, and definition. Sophia tried to raise her no longer present hands to shield herself out of reflex but rather than swoop down to snatch her away, it landed in front of her and stared with its twelve eyes.

It began muttering to itself while observing her in a language she understood.

“Report: Subject found. No terminal located. Continuing deployment of direct line.”

Sophia moved away but it scuttled after her. She thought herself not afraid of spiders but its twelve unblinking eyes would have been unnerving no matter what they were planted upon. She just wanted to get away yet she felt no hostility as it followed her every move.

“Request: Minister permission required,” it continued, still moving as she tried to run with nonexistent legs. It seemed to maintain their set distance no matter what pace she chose. “Subject lacks sufficient means to be returned to home sector.”

It went still for a moment and Sophia kept “running”. Without, a neck she was not sure how managed to turn her head but she kept her visioned locked upon it even as she put distance between her and it. Then it seemed to completely forget her existence as threads poured from its mouth. Its mandibles sewed the threads together into a sheet with nigh undetectable speed and dexterity.

Sophia stopped as she watched in gross fascination.

The threads blackened as if stained by ink. It clamped its maw shut, shearing the sheet. It took the object with its front two legs. The cloak appeared like a piece of the midnight sky had been cut out and brought down into this world of pure white.

“Confirmation: Artifact received. Permission expires upon subject’s return to home sector.”

It could speak. Maybe she could communicate with it. Even if that might be possible, she would choose to run away first and foremost.

But retreat proved to not be an option. It took flight once more and quickly caught up to her, it landing in front of her like before. She stopped if only to not rush into it.

It held out the cloak towards her. “Request: Please accept permissions.”

It was definitely addressing her. “What are you?” she asked, more out of horror than wanting a genuine answer.

“Identification: This unit is a daemon.”

“I must be dreaming.” She concluded, the manner of its straightforward statement was like an electrical shock through her sense of reality. She could believe what she saw before was some telecommunication but a giant talking spider was what nightmares were made from. “I must have fell asleep while using the omnilens… No, why would I fall asleep while living out my life’s dream? That pain… Maybe the equipment sent a shock through my system. Am I dead?”

“Assessment: Why would subject fall asleep? Unknown,” it assessed. “Denial: Is the subject dead? No.”

Sophia tried to understand its speech pattern. It was a bit of an inconvenience to at this point ignore the first word it began any statement with.

If she still had hands, she would be rubbing her temples. It would be best to treat everything as if it was reality. If it was all a hallucination, no harm could be done. But if it was real, it was perhaps wise not to irritate a giant spider.

“What do you mean by “daemon?”” she could not believe she found herself ever asking. There were several types of beings that went by similar names across many cultures.

“Definition: A shaping system that operates just out of sight to ensure the world is functioning optimally.”

That was no definition she was familiar with. “Shaping? What do you mean by that?”

“Definition: The act of altering the root source, usually via a mantra performed by a morphologist.”

It offered the cloak again. “Request: Please accept permissions.”

“Why are you here?”

“Report: This unit is responding to the event of an inhabitant leaving subject’s sector without permission,” it replied clearly and concisely.

It was giving her more terms yet no context. It seemed to respond to her questions near immediately. Maybe she could piece the meanings together if she asked more.

And indeed she did. Through a network of ideas and concepts, she gained enough insight to understand the daemon was the product of a morphologist, possibly the same one that it claimed made her world.

The definitions suggested that her world was what it referred to as a “sector”. It stated earlier that she was to be returned to her sector.

“So, I am really here?” she concluded, if it was to be believed. She wanted to not believe it but there being a giant talking spider in front of her, what was there left for her to not accept? Maybe she was dreaming, she hoped she was. If she was dreaming, whatever she believed would be treated as true anyway. She just needed to wake up and all those troubles would be for naught but until then, she would accept everything as fact.

“Correction: Subject’s core is present. Subject’s frame is still in the subject’s native sector, currently not operating.”

“Are you referring to me every time you say “the subject?””

It was one thing to be called a “subject” when it was talking to itself. It was another thing for it to repeatedly call her such while addressing her.

“Confirmation: Correct,” it replied

“Can you call me Sophia?” she asked in irritation but not expecting such. It was worth a try.

“Confirmation: Correct. This unit can call Subject “Sophia”.”

She imagined herself smiling at that pleasant development. “Please call me Sophia.”

“Relationship: “Subject” equals Sophia.”

It repeated the process of offering the cloak. “Request: Sophia, please accept permissions.”

“What will happen if I accept?”

“Assessment: Sophia’s core will be returned to its frame.”

She had come to learn “frame” meant body and “core” was either mind or soul. “How is my frame at the moment?”

“Report: It is inert.”

“So, over there, I’m dead?” she asked hesitantly. It said she was not dead earlier but what did a daemon consider as alive?

“Correction: Occupants of Sophia’s sector would register Sophia as unconscious.”

That would have earned a sigh of relief though the prospect of it now saying her name with such frequency was going to grate on her nerves swiftly.

“So, I’m in a hospital bed somewhere right now? How long have I been unconscious?” She imagined her unresponsive body being in an infirmary for what she estimated could have been years.

“Report: Sophia’s frame is currently on the floor of-“ It began listing the exact address of the building she was in, the floor level, even the room number. She did not bother to memorize that but the details sounded familiar. She felt her mind blank as it streamed out the location. It recaptured her attention as it moved on to a new statement. “Correction: Paramedics are still being dispatched to Sophia’s location. Calculation: We are currently in a space operating at the same pace as the sea of light at-“ It listed an absurdly high number that meant nothing to her at the moment before continuing, “while Sophia’s sector is moving at a pace equal to 1.3 standard time. We could travel from one side of the sea to the next several times in the span of a second in Sophia’s native time.”

“Alright, I think I understand,” as she processed it all. “Any more details might be too much to take in at once.”

The spider creature’s responses felt prepared. She might as well have been conversing with a machine. However, this was a machine that contained answers.

It asked her to accept the permissions again.

“Not yet,” she replied in annoyance.

So, time was moving differently for her.

“If I am moving that much faster here. Can I stay a while longer?”

“Request: Permission from minister required,” it stated to the air. A moment passed. “Confirmation: Privileges granted by minister.”

That was a new term. “What is a minister?”

“Definition: One that has power over the functions of life, nature, or concepts.”

“A god?”

“Confirmation: By Sophia’s sector’s most common definition, yes.” It then resorted to a familiar statement after a short pause. “Request: Will Sophia please accept permissions?”

She could see it pestering her to accept for hours if not forever. From the way it calmly reacted to her rejections, it likely had more patience then her. Sooner or later, she would have to accept or find a way to get away from it.

Even if it spoke the truth, she could not leave, not yet. She thought back to Samael in his ship.

“If I accept, will it be immediate? I will I just-” She tried to make a popping sound with nonexistent lips for emphasis. “Be back there like that?”

“Assessment: There will be a transition.”

“If I accept, can you delay that transition?”

“Confirmation: This unit can but it would require minister approval.”

“If you are sending them messages. Tell them I will not accept the permissions unless you promise only to take me home when I decide is best.”

“Report: Dispatching request.” There was a pause. “Approval granted.”

She felt relief as she also realized she could have almost doomed herself. If she was dealing with a person she would imagine someone saying “We can just leave you then.” Then again, the daemon could be lying but if it was already a liar, it might be pulling her into some new nightmarish realm anyway.

“Alright. We agree that I get to decide when to leave?” she wanted to confirm.

“Report: The agreement has been finalized.”

“Then pass me those permissions.”

With its frontmost legs the daemon lifted the cloak and seemed to let it drape over her. The cloak turned invisible or melded with her being. Either way, it disappeared.

Here she was being garbed by a daemon and she still could not fully accept her strange new reality. In a dream, everything, no matter how outlandish, seemed real. The fact she doubted what she saw made it all the more likely it was not a dream. The paradox was maddening.

She could not prove at the moment if this was true or not but if she woke up from a coma after this then surely there was a way to discern it from any other fever dream. She heard once that one could not learn in a dream something one did not already know. If she asked for a simple fact, it might list something she encountered in her studies and forgot. It needed to be random trivia.

“List the thirty closest stars to my planet in my home reality or sector as you call it, ordered by size.”

It listed out a set of names without hesitation but once it was done it tilted its head. “Inquiry: Why does Sophia require that information?”

“I want to know one day that what I will see next is real,” she answered. She tried to think of something else. If she was dealing with a daemon, she might as well ask it of the infernal element. “Now, what is the atomic weight of phosphorus?”

“Report: 30.973762 u.”

It could easily be listing out nonsense for all she knew. Phosphorus was an element she learned the nature of in her own studies as it was shrouded in superstition from when its discoverers found it so easily burst into flames.

“Who killed the Duke of Osterheim?”

“Clarification: Which Duke of Osterheim?”

“Ah, Jacob Aigner III,” she specified quickly.

“Report: Lukas Paar.”

“I thought so.”

There was no way to confirm the last question. It was a historical mystery, one she worked to solve. If the previous answers were true then she could believe she had been correct.

She hoped this was all just some imagining or that she might return to Samael’s ship to discover they found salvation in some form.

“So…” she hesitated. “Am I in just another sector? Is this all happening or is it like my sector’s omnilens? Just shadows of the past?”

“Report: Sophia’s core is currently in the root information. Sophia would call it a “recording,” “archive,” or “log.””

“So this has all already happened?”

“Confirmation: Correct.”

She suspected from the start that who she was speaking to was in the past, it was a question of how far. Light did not travel instantly but if she was being reasonable, an unknown planet in an undiscovered system would be lightyears away.

Though she was curious what it meant by “root information.” She knew a few philosophical quandaries, the shadows on the wall, multiple worlds, the world’s memories. Sectors appeared to refer to worlds of what she would assume were part of a multiverse, but where was here? Her mind was sent adrift, could it be the grand records of the universe suggested in esoteric records?

“I would like to see it to the end.” She began her journey back to the ship before turning back to the daemon. “Though one more question for now. How old is this information? Is it fresh or is it-“ She did not want to finish the question.

The daemon listed a measure of time that threatened to crush her comprehension by the mere suggestion of its span. Maybe she hoped it might have been only a few years back, that what she saw or said could make a difference somehow but what she found herself in was ancient and immutable, no different from the histories she studied. The one she spoke with was already dead long before she met him.

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The daemon followed her wordlessly even into the ship. She found Samael at the deck further diminished, his posture weak and his frame slim.

“We meet again, Sophia,” he greeted her with what she had to accept was a wheeze. She did not mind hearing him say her name with fleeting warm compared to the giant spider’s monotone. “Did you discover anything?”

Sophia directed her gaze to the daemon. Samael did not seem to notice it. “Nothing of importance,” she said as she resolved to ignore the arachnid for now.

She stayed with him from then on. Waiting for some rescue to arrive that never came. He refused to hibernate, someone had to track the gauges and make repairs though his spirit was strong his flesh no longer proved so accommodating, eventually others were forced to take on his tasks as he supervised from some sort of bed. To the confusion of others, he insisted to remain in the observation deck even to sleep now.

“I’m not scared of dying,” he told her in his final days. “What bothers me is that there will be no one to remember me. Even my bones will be reduced to dust. I will be erased.”

“I will remember you,” she promised.

She wished she could see what she hoped was a smile of comfort grow across his lips. It was a slow death with him growing weaker and weaker until he simply stopped breathing. When he finally passed, she was not sure it was over until many long moments of silence and stillness.

Everyone else eventually ceased to appear before her but she could not be so certain as to why they abandoned the observation deck. It was something she was no longer a part of, a hidden scene for her to catch glimpses of like a play concealed behind a curtain. She hoped the unseen stage show concluded with them reentering hibernation and not more permanent alternative.

Sophia finally addressed the daemon. “You will let me return as I am, aware that my world might be false? It is that simple?” She did not want to forget but in the stories of fiction she knew, people rarely returned with their memories.

“Assessment: Protocol allows Sophia to retain Sophia’s memories.”

“What if I told others about this?”

“Assessment: Based on previous samples, Sophia will most likely be ignored with a possibility of Sophia’s claims becoming the basis of a religion or accepted as a work of fiction. Once the error is corrected, there would be no evidence of Sophia’s experience to validate Sophia’s claims.”

Seemed like she might have dropped a frequent question to warrant such assurances. If they would allow it then she should learn as much as she could.

“I will not return home,” she declared. “Not yet. Our agreement was that I will decide when I go home. I will not go home until I see what came of this.” She interrupted before it could say anything in response. “Tell the ministers that if you have to.”

The daemon’s eyes went blank. “Processing, processing…” It repeated that several times, this time there was not an immediate affirmation. “Report: Terms accepted. Request: Come with this unit to the observation platform.”

It seemed to wait for her to approach but as soon as she did, it lunged at her and closed its eight legs around her.

Perhaps she forgot the detail of the thread but the thread it came with was still attached to its abdomen even then and it seemed to get pulled back by the thread like a fish being reeled in. The next instant, she was passing through the square hole in the sky to be bathed in that sea of light once more.

The experience was far less intense and traumatic than the first or it should have been if she was not in the clutches of a spider. The light seemed bearable, perhaps due to familiarity or the cloak she was bequeathed.

Then she was somewhere unfamiliar. First thing to grace her vision was the top half of an enormous gear. The gear drew closer to her or rather she drew closer to it. The world beside her moved as the ground underneath her steadily moved forward. She recognized the operation of a conveyor belt.

Riding ahead of her were faint glowing lights before being inserted between the gear’s teeth and riding it like a ferris wheel.

The sight of gears made her imagine the hissing of stream or ticking of clockwork but the facility was eerily silent except the consistent heavy pounding of metal on metal each time the gear shifted.

“Request: Please step out of the queue once Sophia have been scanned for corruption,” a familiar voice instructed from her side.

She looked accusingly to the daemon that was drifting further away from her as it remained stationary but she was carried to an unknown destination.

“Why are we here?”

“Report: There is an above average number of gateways here, purpusebuilt to send cores to their next destination and the system will examine you for defects and corruption.”

Glowing green orbs floated around, shooting out a flat beam that slowly swept over the sparks in front of her from top to bottom. One scan seemed enough for them as once an orb showed attention to a spark, the others showed no further interest, none of the sparks so far receiving the treatment twice.

She was then subjected to the beam. It tickled harmlessly but felt invasive as if it passed through her, learning everything there was to know, gaining a glimpse at her every facet the way she would if she shined a light through a shard of glass.

Was that it? Was that what she was told to wait for? She hesitated and found she could not move as easily as before as if magnetized to the floor like something was pulling to stay rather simply being stuck.

The daemon watched in silence. She could not discern its wide eyed stare expressed interest or apathy.

So, she drew near the gear. The pounding carried with it a dreadful finality. In a burst of desperation, she saw the world move as she wished it to as she “ran” from the gear.

The conveyor belt moved all the same and it took a panicked moment for reason to shine through enough for her exit from it diagonally onto what appeared to be a strange floor in the pattern of a net with pillars rising at the intersection points. She was not sure what she was looking at as she could not tell what was up or down, she felt that if she went “sideways” she would somehow find herself horizontal like she was standing on a cylinder defiant of gravity.

“You were going to just let me get caught in that thing?” she shouted.

“Assessment: This unit would have provided aid if Sophia requested it.”

Sophia let herself stew in her anger for a bit. There was little point in being mad at a machine and its usual monotone offered no resistance so she only had her own self to feed the momentary sense of betrayal.

“What would have happened if I got caught in the gear?” she brought herself to ask after taking that time.

“Assessment: Sophia would have been sanitized and prepared for reinstallation.”

“Wonderful,” she replied, having a few guesses what that might have meant.

The spider then led to the “gateway” as it called it. They had navigated through what should have been sidesteps and other seemingly innocuous movements to navigate what her mind could only accept as a multidimensional maze, the net pattern on the floor was its own at least three dimensional structure, point connecting at odd angles to the pillars and vice versa.

The gateway itself was like a portal of white fire. Light caught in a ring or perhaps drawn into the ring, sinking into a fathomless corridor. The tunnel itself was two dimensional, maybe, it looked like it had depth when looking in yet the view she saw of its sides suggested to it her it was flat, just a hole for the light and for just a moment, herself, to slip through.

There was no drowning or burning. Unlike before, travel was instant as she moved through the portal. For moment she was standing before the gateway, the next she was in a massive chamber.

An empty throne stood upon a dias overlooking three stages of panels and other machinery that might as well have been arcane in nature for all she could hope to understand of them. The layout was like a series of steps, wide at the base and narrowing to the lone throne so the layers above could overlook those below.

The chamber seemed too sterile to ever be occupied by human occupants. It should have been gears and naked machinery at the controls yet was occupied with people in white robes. She doubted they were people the way the daemon resembled a spider but was undoubtedly not one, their expressions were so blank they might as well have not had faces and their fingers operated the machinery robotically.

Carved into an archway over all was a massive written declaration she somehow understood. “No being created to administer logic and reason can be expected to abandon those very tools.” Each letter was colossal as if to make her and those below seem small. It felt hostile to her.

At the head of the throne seemed to be an inscription. What she saw was muddled and shifted even as she observed it as if cut into tiny blocks and rearranged with every second that passed. Either the script was tiny for the scale or what was concealed was a single word or name.

“Assessment: The observation platform will allow Sophia to witness the world outside,” the daemon beside her claimed, drawing her attention to it for a moment.

As Sophia turned back to reassess the room, a stranger approached, their blank expression turned into a wide theatrical smile. “Welcome,” they said with a jovial tone disturbingly devoid of inflection like the daemon. “How may I help you?”

“I would like to…” Sophia directed her question to the daemon. “What was it that would allow me to see the outside world?”

“Report: The observation platform.”

“Yes, I would like access to the observation platform.”

The stranger stared forward intensely as if frozen. Suddenly, they spoke. “Access granted. Will you require assistance?”

There was something especially uncanny about this person. It took Sophia a few moments as she stared trying to find something that should not be there when she instead found something missing. The person did not blink or even breathe.

“Yes,” she answered, certain in at least her own inexperience in whatever may come next.

The room seemed to jolt and a circular stage approached as the chamber seemed to spin, she was now behind the throne and staring at the backs of those at work. The platform itself came to her or maybe she did come to it. All she knew was the distance closed, maybe she was standing on the facet of a puzzle and the layout beneath her became rearranged.

A crystal sphere floated in the center of her new location. She stared at it for a long moment, unsure if it was a hologram or a near transparent crystal.

“Please specify coordinates,” the stranger requested.

Sophia consulted the spider beside her. “Where was the crash site for Captain Samael’s ship?”

The daemon quoted the coordinates and Sophia repeated them to the stranger.

“I will set it for those coordinates.” The stranger placed their fingers on the sphere and seemed to turn it. The sphere could not have been solid as Sophia watched the fingers move in opposing directions. If it was a physical object, it would have just been fumbled about as the user would have twisted half in one direction and other half another before a window appeared overhead. “Is this display satisfactory?” the stranger asked.

She paused. “Yes… I believe so.” She was not sure if it was referring to the quality of the image or the window itself. What mattered was that she could see at all.

And what a sight or lack of sight did she see. There was nothing blurry, no distortion for her to squint her eyes at to give her hope or doubt. It was clear as crystal.

The window showed only a crater she assumed from the ship’s crash in a shimmering crystal landscape. The metal had rusted away and the sun bleached bones had been reduced to dust.

“What am I seeing?” She hoped maybe someone would tell her she looked upon nothing or the image was still adjusting.

“Report: The outside.”

“The outside of what?”

“Report: Outside of here. The visitors called it “Raziel” or “reality.””

Sophia looked to the daemon “Did you say Raziel?”

Where had she heard that name?

“Confirmation: Correct.”

She remembered, that was the name of the lifeless planet. The very planet whose surface she gazed upon. If the ruins were outside then there was only one place she could be. “Are we inside Raziel?”

“Confirmation: Correct.”

That had been reality or so the people that died there thought. She thought for a moment the term might have meant “their only reality” that it was a different world. But she was there, that felt “real” while she was surrounded by fantastic beings. Yet what she experienced her whole life until bathing in the sea of light was what she came to believe was the truth. She would not disregard Samael as some illusion but he was a part of something separate from her realm.

"So, he had been real. What am I then?"

She had to have been real. Though now that she thought about it the terms the daemon used were remarkably unsubtle in their association with the artificial but the thing spoke odd to begin with,

"Report: Sophia is a core."

"What is a core? And no, do not give me some vague definition. What is a core made of?” She wished she had hands, something to touch or to hold to prove there was substance to her existence. “What am I made of?”

“Report: A core is composed of data obtained from observations of the outside and information retrieved from the human archive. Request: Please specify “I” in “What am I made of?” Suggestion: Does Sophia mean “frame?” Core has already been defined.”

The human archive? Was it referring to the wealth of knowledge the ship once stored according to Samael? “Yes, tell me what my frame is made of. No, tell me what we are all made of before that.”

The daemon explained as she tried best she could to understand. It was a matter of mechanics rather than biochemistry, two fields she was not the best in though she hoped for the latter but anticipated the former. Apparently, their very existence was the passing of light through the lattice of a planet, like a signal sent through a glass cable. The three suns Samael once mentioned offered both power and modulation.

The arachnid listed out a number of commands and routines involved with her frame. Soon enough it became clear it was describing the makings of an interface.

“Where did the design for my frame come from?”

“Report: From observations of the outside.”

“Observations of those people?” she assumed with a cold finality of an obvious conclusion.

“Confirmation: Correct.”

So, she was a ghost. Or was she a copy of a ghost? The shadows she saw in that blazing world were cast from real people. They had been the ones that were once alive.

Yet she herself had what she knew to be considered a full range of emotion and did not have awkward pauses like the ghostly beings around her. She thought, therefore she was. Her core and body were born from outside observations but where did her thoughts and ideals come from? From herself, she knew or at least hoped. She was not ready to ask the daemon to explain how her own mind worked, such an answer would be unwelcome no matter what it was.

It was all so strange and there was so much to process. Maybe if she did not have the doubt of whether she was dreaming or lucid, she might have had to come to more immediate terms with the burgeoning evidence. But she would not know if this was real or not until she woke up.

In a strange way, the new nature of herself was reassuring. Questioning reality was something people happened to do sometimes, and proving one was not in a dream was often foolhardy. But if she was something other than flesh and blood yet could confirm herself through her own thoughts then the reality she knew was no less “real” than when she thought it to be utterly true, her world just happened to be part of something bigger. Well, technically her world was smaller than she hoped, she was living in a single planet when she thought she was roaming a universe but what a magnificent place the outside world must be for her reality to just be a mere fraction of it. Better, she knew the person she consoled on his deathbed was real and not an utter fabrication of her own mind unless this experience truly was a dream.

She wondered if this was how the great philosophers she studied felt when they realized the world was not flat. Were those people ever real? How much of what she dedicated her life to learn was utter fiction? There had to have been a starting point where the legends ended and where her society’s true origin began.

That perhaps troubled her the most of all things. That her profession was now little different from an avid enjoyer of fantasy. But that also meant there were new mysteries to unfurl and a greater past to understand.

She consulted her memory for some ancient belief, some clue that her people once knew the truth or the ones that designed the world left such a clue for her predecessors. Popular fiction often questioned the nature of reality, but normally the hero would wake to the real world by the end. There was no real world for her, not one she could reach.

There was once a popular religion that declared that material reality was just an illusion to conceal the grand spiritual reality of beyond. She almost laughed to think that was the closest approximation of her situation she could think of from ancient lore.

Was that legend truthful? Was this the insight followers of such sects sought? To her, it appeared her circumstances were the opposite. She was a being of light and energy that had been ignorant of the material reality.

She noticed no demiurge, not yet at least. She bet could meet a creator, maybe the creator or creators of her sector if she tried. But she already met someone braver than some designer, an explorer.

She looked back at the ruins . To call them ruins was an exaggeration, one could look at it and not even know it was the impact site of a long gone ship. No one would think how there had been people struggling to stay alive until the end.

“How did Captain Samael die?” she asked aloud. Did he really fade the same slow, cruel way she witnessed?

“Clarification: Which Captain Samael?”

Those words hurt. It felt like a hammer blow that the daemon even needed to ask.

“The real Samael!” she shouted, as she spoke to herself rather than those around her. “Not the one I met in the “root information,” he would have never met someone like me. Did he die without hope?”

The daemon replied with its same monotone as it repeated such a common phrase that to her now were the cruelest words in the universe. “Confirmation: Correct.”

Sophia let that sink in. She felt the phantom of her nonexistent blood run cold. Maybe she froze like the daemon and stranger without realizing it.

“And I will remember all this?” she asked slowly.

“Assessment: Protocol allows Sophia to retain Sophia’s memories,” the daemon gave a prior answer.

She could not leave this to faith and chance, not anymore. She needed to be sure someone remembered. She stared at the view of the crater and the utter absence of evidence that life ever graced the planet’s surface. “I would like to hear that from a minister.”

“Request: Please wait.”

“Do you require anything else?” the stranger interrupted.

She looked to the stranger, not surprised anymore thanks to the daemon’s own persistence to find them still there. “No, thank you.”

The stranger bowed their head. “Call for us if you need assistance,” they stated before being what looked to her carried off by the room itself back to their station.

Sophia stared at the spider as if she might grab ahold of its mandibles and shout into whatever passed for its ears so the ministers might hear her plea.

But it did not come to that. The sphere that served as the platform’s controls vanished. The vision to outside went black. It was not a dark like midnight as much as pure blankness, a lack of input.

“Report: Request accepted,” the daemon chimed. “Connecting.”

The window split in two vertically and the faces of two people occupied opposite sides of the image. There was a definitive life to them, they actually breathed she noticed. Before they even seemed to perceive her through the window they shared perturbed expressions on their faces, the one on the left seemed more confused while the one on the right displayed an amused curiosity.

“Identification: You speak with the ministers of Law and Morality,” the daemon introduced her to the grand figures.

Sophia stared, unsure if they were deities or human. They were certainly the most seemingly human individuals she met so far. She also asked herself which one was which between the roles of Law and Morality? They shared the same golden hair and shining green eyes. The one on the right had an undeniable nobility to her bearing while the other appeared roughened in spite of his fine attire, traces of stubble grew along his chin.

“What appears to be the problem?” The one on the right asked softly with a smile. “We received a complaint that you seem to be under the impression that your memories should be erased?”

Sophia was not sure how she should address ministers, she thought to bow her head if she had one. “That is correct… your honor.” She decided to at least treat them like judges.

“You can call me Nous,” the minister soothed. “Though I must ask what gave you that idea?”

“It seems too good to be true,” Sophia replied. “I hope it is true but It sounds too convenient to me to accept so easily. If this is a trick, I would like to be prepared. If it is allowed, I would like to understand why.”

“Why not though?” Nous asked back.

Sophia paused. She did not want to give them reason to take this experience away. It just seemed odd that they were being laissez-faire about it. Maybe she would have felt more comfortable if they treated it like some grand revelation.

The one on the left seemed to back away, Sophia could then see his shoulders and upper chest. Their attire reminded her of clothes from the early Industrial Age, formal and regal. “Let me examine your case,” he said firmly yet without malice like it was a mere business transaction.

Nous looked to her side. “Pass me the record, Aleth,” she addressed her fellow minister.

The one called Aleth reached for something. For a moment, the back of his hand graced the screen, the image of a snake seemed to be shaped into a horseshoe-like symbol of the Omega. In the center of the icon’s arch appeared to be the outline of an apple, an almost round shape crowned with a short stem and an oval for a leaf.

“I sent you a copy, Nous,” he declared as he seemed to study something in front of him.

It was a welcome relief to interact with someone recognizably “alive” or at least convincingly so. Their movements were organic and unnecessary compared to the cold efficiency of a machine.

“It would appear you are from a sector with a restricted stage,” Aleth assessed, not looking at Sophia at first but at what she assumed was the record. He then raised his head and made eye contact with her. “However, as you are currently not in that sector, you are no longer restricted at this time while your core is outside such domains.”

“If you are concerned of restrictions, we can reinstall you in a domain with the stage set with no or at least less constraints,” Nous offered.

“If my sector is restricted…” Sophia struggled to engage as she used terms she still only had a guess of their true meaning. She had to assume restricted was not good. “Why would I be allowed to return as if nothing happened?”

“As far as others in your sector are concerned, nothing strange happened. The error that brought you here has been corrected and a plausible explanation will be provided,” Nous explained.

“It will likely be retroactively traced to an accident,” Aleth politely added after letting the other minister finish.

“Why correct the error?” Sophia asked for the sake of asking. These people were people but their understanding of matters was so alien to her she doubted she could understand their motives unless they spelled it out for her.

“Your sector was designed to allow those that inhabit it to believe they are from their understanding “real,”” Aleth humored her. “Cores can choose to be installed there from another sector or be transferred out once their permissions expire. An error like that if left to persist could jeopardize that perception. Encountering an error like you did is not a crime by any measure and should not be punished.”

“It was just a happy or unhappy accident, based on how you look at it,” Nous

Aleth stated what followed clearly as if prepared for this exact scenario, “If the event can not be recreated and there is no evidence that it happened, then can it even be said to have happened?”

Sophia wanted to say that it would have still happened but she did not want to argue when they seemed inclined to approach it as if they were the ones defending her position.

“One can say it still happened,” Nous replied to him to which Sophia offered silent gratitude for at least addressing that fact. “But one will have no evidence. The inhabitants will have no more reason to believe the truth than any other dream or delusion. Though what does it matter when we control every shadow.”

“What does that mean?” Sophia interjected in the momentary silence as she considered that final statement.

“Report: It means the ministers possess administrative privileges over every shadow.”

Sophia wished she had a face to grimace at such an unhelpful rephrasing of the obvious. “Yes, but what does that mean? “Controlling every shadow” is what spies and assassins might say in books.”

“Do you think that was meant as a threat?” Nous snickered. “No, nothing so quaint. It is optional to occupy your world but we need to sustain a large population to maintain the illusion. We fill the gaps in numbers when we are short with people that aren’t quite people, shadows if you will.”

Sophia did her best to simulate a nod of understanding as her view of the world went up and down. She thought of the strangers in the room.

“Indeed,” Aleth verified his fellow minister’s explanation before glancing at something out of view. “This is no longer a concern of legality. Once you are returned to your world, there is no law you need to fear retribution for. If your world permits those actions then it is allowed. You most certainly can retain your memories so if you wish to discuss whether you should, Nous is the better of the two of us regarding this. Interesting as this may be, I believe my time here is finished. Unless there is something else in need of my attention, I will take my leave.”

Aleth dismissed himself after accepting a moment of silence as affirmation. He disappeared and Nous’s half of the window stretched to encompass the whole screen.

“Are you convinced now that we are not concerned about the matter of memory?” Nous asked gently.

“Yes,” Sophia said with relief even as she voiced a nagging discomfort. “Though I believe I understand how it is not a concern to you. I still do not understand why.” They had counter measures ready from the talk of shadows but she wondered why they would even risk it. They could just not return her. Though she did not want to give them that idea.

Nous’s smile widened. “But from what you have said, it seems clear to me that you want to retain this experience for your own reasons, not ours. You can and you want to, that should be grounds enough to let it all be. You are free to remember but are you sure you do not want to forget?”

Sophia hesitated, certain that a minister might prove wiser than herself. Nous might have noticed some complication that she herself failed to consider. “Why would I want to forget?”

“Do you want to return to an illusion knowing it is an illusion?” The minster inquired, her tone suggesting it was not a pleasant prospect. “You can tell others the truth but there is no guarantee they will not find you mad. After a few years, maybe you will start doubting it yourself. Forgetting is not an option without its merits. But you get to decide that. You get to choose whether to hold your tongue or not and all others will choose whether or not to believe you.

“People will believe what they believe,” the minster continued with a hint of whimsy while her every word felt cemented with experience. “And more often than not, they are under the impression that what they think is reality to be the one and only truth. So, if you collected a manuscript of each person’s “Only Truth” and stocked a library with them and planted the actual truth among them, what difference would that have among thousands of equally believable lies?

“People do not need to know the truth but nor do they need to be protected from it, even in an illusion.” The minister’s tone lightened and she lifted a hand into view and spun a finger as if the world rotated within it. “Doubts are part of life, the truth simply adds a bit of realism to the dream, making it all the more lifelike.”

Nous looked to Sophia expectantly and Sophia found herself less than ready to reply to such prose. She went over it all a second time in her mind before replying. “Um… I believe you are right about there being many “Only Truths,” she recollected. “I had one as well until recently. But now I have seen so much and I believe this to be the truth. However, I do not believe this is much different from believing in an afterlife, don’t you think? Shedding my frame and going to a better place sounds like a preacher’s promise of paradise and being “reinstalled” as I recently avoided runs parallel with reincarnation. I have heard these ideas before… Just never had them confirmed.”

“Ah yes, religion and ideals,” Nous commented. “We stopped interfering with prophets be they true or false as they have a tendency to undermine each other. We are still performing studies on their presence and absence but we have found people conquered worlds for less. If you wish to testify of these confirmations, you could lay the foundation of a theocracy or plant the seeds of a suicide cult, it would be your world that endures the consequences, not us. As long as the laws of causality remain within established parameters, your sector can progress however the people there want it to.”

“I mean no offense in asking this, but are you the Minister of Law or Morality?” Sophia inquired cautiously. “Doing something just because I want to seems-”

“Simplistic?” The minister finished for Sophia with a more agreeable word than Sophia had in mind. “Immoral?”

“I would not say it that way,” Sophia replied diplomatically.

“I would at least hope you would think that way. It means we are performing our tasks correctly. You should not think entirely like us.”

“Why is that?”

“Because villains seemed to be the ones that defined morality in the world that was,” Nous It is easier to agree what is not righteous than to agree to what the term means. I doubt we have the same personalities of darklords Tristain and Lilian but such people were our inspirations.”

More unfamiliar concepts. It seemed easier to backtrack than to delve into some ancient history, as much as she relished the thought. “Fortunately, I do not want to spread a cult,” Sophia dismissed the notion.

“Then why do you wish to remember? You have been asking us why we will let you remember but you have not told us why you want to remember.”

Sophia wanted to hold a hand over her chest where a swelling heart should have been. “I just want to remember.”

“Is that all you wish to do?”

“What else can I do?”

“Anything,” the minister declared enthusiastically before lowering her voice as if to correct herself. “Within certain places. It depends on where you are. You have a daemon chaperoning you. Anything it lets you do is within legal range. Or…” The minister paused for dramatic effect. “You can go home. It is your choice. We agreed to the terms of your arrangement. You decide when you go home. Until then, you have our blessings in all ventures.”

“What about the daemon, does it not have other tasks?” Sophia asked as she noticed how the minster seemed so quick to lend the daemon to her.

“Report: This unit’s task is to return Sophia to Sophia’s sector.”

“There are countless daemons,” Nous dismissed the concern. “It will not be missed.”

Sophia looked to the spider. For all the discussion of choices, it voiced little. It may have been a machine but if it could talk, it seemed rude not to ask. “Are you willing to help me with something for a while before returning me home?” It technically already had been helping her but it was better to ask late than never.

The arachnid tilted its head for a moment. There was not an immediate reply at first. “Assessment: This unit will support Sophia until Sophia agrees to return to Sophia’s sector.”

“It seems to me you have little need for my presence anymore. I know not what you intend to do but it seems you have already decided,” Nous observed. “The daemon can be the one to tell you the where and how. My twin is the one that decides what you can do without worrying about recompense. I am the one that discusses whether or not something should happen. Unfortunately, he is so simplistic in his approach that there is often little to consider by the time he is done. Most people can agree the simple extremes are right and wrong. Murder is evil and other details. Though I do get to decide the more complicated matters.”

“Wait, Nous,” Sophia called before the minister could end their communication. “I believe I have one or two more questions.” She calculated in her mind. “Three at most,” she promised.

Nous brought a hand to her chin in consideration, her eyes alight with interest at either Sophia calling her to wait or probably wondering what Sophia just thought of. “Alright, let me hear them.”

“I can do anything in certain places, but is there a way for me to communicate with others in a restricted stage?”

“You wish to reach your friends and family?” the minister guessed half correctly. “People still dream. Even under the strictest of regulations, one can send a dream or two to those in restricted sectors.”

“Thank you, that answers my second question as well.” Sophia planned to ask what methods were allowed. “Then I must ask, can I have dreams sent to someone?”

“Interesting…” Nous mused. “I can give you such privileges for restricted stages… You appear to already have a substantial number of rights given to you to make your escape… There you have them. Normally, there would be a bit of a learning curve as you have no experience in morphology, it appears. Unless you want to spend time learning that, I will just duplicate those rights into your accompanying daemon and it should be able to do the job for you. I think you should find that sufficient.”

Sophia looked at the floor in an attempt to bow. “Thank you.”

“With those questions settled,” Nous concluded. “I wish you well.” The window went blank and silent as Nous disappeared.

After a moment, Sophia turned to the daemon. "Is there a core or frame inspired after Captain Samael?" She hoped she used the correct word, she recalled Nous saying the minsters were inspired by previous beings. She cared not if it was the daemon or anyone else that answered, just that someone confirmed or denied her suspicion. “Captain Samael from the ship that crashed,” she found herself adding after a moment of silence, anticipating the daemon to ask her to specify.

“Confirmation: Correct.”

“Can you take me to them?”

“Report: There are multiple results for your parameters.”

“Take me to the closest-“ she began before she questioned the meaning of distance. “Take me to the one you can take me to quickest. You can do that right?”

“Confirmation: Correct. This unit can take Sophia to the subject with the fastest route.”

“Thank you,” Sophia replied before adding. “Though before we go if you can say “I” or “we” when referring to yourself instead of “this unit,” please do so. “This unit” and “the subject” can get confusing.” She skipped the question as she phrased her request. She made sure to add “please,” as she expected to be with it for a while.

“Relationship: “This unit” equals I.”

“Thank you.”

“Suggestion: Would Sophia prefer that I refer to Sophia as “you” as well.”

So, it could learn or at least make connections? That surprised her but what shock she felt at that would have given way to a smile. “I would appreciate that.”

“Relationship: “Sophia” when addressing Sophia equals you.”

The spider grabbed her as they left as it had before in the blazing world. Sophia supposed that when she asked it to take her to the one they could get to quickest, it correctly assumed she also wanted to take the swiftest path.

They travelled like lightning, they moved so rapidly across the network path they took the chamber she did not even register that they entered into a second gateway.

Before her were tilled fields. What looked similar in shape to the ship’s shadow she knew stood in the center of a prosperous town as some monument or activity center.

Industry had yet to encroach upon the world. No factories yet stood and no skyscrapers or pillars of smoke bit into the skyline. After gazing upon a world or crystal and witnessing the workings of gears and machinery, it was a welcome change.

And best of all, there were people. People laughing, talking, bantering, bargaining, arguing. She missed such displays of communication. The place felt alive.

Yet she was not a part of it. Someone walked right through her. If people could see her, they showed no sign of it and her presence did nothing to hinder their path.

“People here can not see me either?” She just accepted the situation at this point. No one in the blazing world other than Samael could register her so this seemed simply a return to the odd norm she grew accustomed to.

“Report : With your current privileges: you can enter this restricted stage but you can not interact with the sector and its users except those with permission to see you.

“Okay, so I can enter restricted stages,” she found herself pleasantly surprised, anticipating them to be sealed from outsiders. “But I can not be seen, heard, or touched by anyone. What can I do in a restricted stage?”

That question invited a number of explanations as there were, as she discovered from the list the daemon provided, innumerable settings. A grand majority, she could at the very least enter but not be seen or interact with the world. Only the most severe barred entry entirely. Fortunately, dreams as Nous explained earlier remained an option.

Sophia looked about. “Where is Samael?” She wondered if she could even recognize him if she saw him. “I mean the one inspired by Samael,” she corrected herself before the daemon might.

“Request: Follow me.”

The daemon led her to what she had to assume was a park. The daemon lifted a foreleg to point at something and words began to come from its mouth but Sophia already knew.

She never saw Samael's eyes, hair, or even facial features but she recognized his silhouette even from a distance. The way he carried himself. Now she had coloring to confirm or reject her many imaginings of what he looked like beneath an outline of shadow.

He sat upon a bench, reading a book beneath the shade of a tree. “Samael,” she found herself calling out to him. However, he failed to lift his eyes from the pages even as she stood in front of him.

She felt a deep ache of disappointment. Probably the closest thing she knew anymore to pain after bathing in the sea of light and witnessing the original Samael’s slow passing.

She pushed that dismay to the back of her mind. She expected this but had hoped he would somehow see like he had before.

“Can you give someone a daydream?” she asked the daemon.

“Confirmation: Correct. Daydreams are recognized phenomenons.”

“Can you, I do not know your word for it… um… does “projecting” mean anything to you? Can you project me and my surroundings into the daydream? As close of a recreation as you can?” she concocted her solution.

“Confirmation: Yes. I can.”

“Then please do that.”

The daemon stared at her. She did not think its emotionless stare could become more intense but its many eyes focused on her and narrowed like cameras. “Report: Initiated.”

“Are you a fairy or spite?” she heard a familiar voice address her as she watched the daemon. So, it really was him or someone very similar.

She was glad she could not cry. Tears might have ruined her vision as she looked to address him. “No, I am neither.”

He leaned forward and tried to examine whatever it was he saw. “Then, what are you?”

“A messenger, I suppose,” she tried to sound stately even as familiarity bled into her words.

He put away his book and gave her his full attention. “From who?”

“The world. I wanted to tell you that you will be remembered. I will remember you, the world will remember you.”

She said more things but that was what she needed him to know.

“Inquiry: Satisfied?” the daemon asked once they parted from Samael’s simulacrum.

“You said there were other results,” Sophia recalled. “There have to be countless others like him in other sectors. I want to tell each one, then I will be satisfied.”

“Warning: Some of the sectors you wish to visit will be operating at a pace similar to or slower than your own. The more time you spend, the longer your frame will remain inert. It has been less than an hour in your sector so far but that time will accumulate.”

“Think about it this way,” she explained. “If this is a delusion, I will wake up no matter what I do. But if it is not, then why not spend that time in worlds I might never see?”

“Assessment: Based on that reasoning, that would be logical, if you were dreaming”

She began to count the time. If she spent an hour in each of a thousand realms, how much time would pass? Perhaps she thought aloud.

“Calculation: One thousand hours in sectors operating at the same pace as your native sector, without factoring additional time spent in transit would result in 41 days and 16 hours passing. There are 8760 hours in a standardized year.”

“Then I will visit more than a thousand worlds if I can. I would not mind a year or two or more,” she declared. “The world can wait like he did. Are you still able and willing to stay with me for such a long time?”

“Assessment: I will still accompany you,” the daemon stated.

“Do you have a name?” Sophia asked as she felt what she admitted to herself to be gratitude towards a machine. “If you are accompanying me, I might as well call you by name.” She was not even sure how many times she called it by “you.”

“Identification: This unit possesses identification number-“ The daemon listed a long stream of numbers. Sophia imagined herself scratching her head in awkward silence as she tried to even begin memorizing the designation after it entered into the double digits.

“Can we shorten that? Can I call you by the first few numbers?” she negotiated.

“Rejection: That designation would belong to another unit,” it declined.

“How about a name then? A real name, not just numbers. Can I give you that?”

The daemon entered into a long silence and offered no further reply.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Sophia pressed.

“Error: Unknown. Do as you please.”

“Alright. You are Valentinus.” The name meant healthy. Hopefully its presence would help keep her sane in spite of the madness all around her.

The daemon offered no questions or resistance. “Relationship: Accepted. “This unit” equals Valentinus.”

A moment of silence passed as she let Valentinus accept its new name. “Inquiry: Why did you tell him that he will be remembered?”

“You asked me why?”

“Confirmation: Correct.”

She stopped to think. Perhaps she spent more time than she anticipated as the next thing she noticed was it speaking to her again.

“Inquiry: No response to previous inquiry. Do I end inquiry?”

After it so often provided her answers, she owed it an explanation in turn but how was she supposed to explain that it just felt like the right thing to do?

“Can you place that inquiry on hold?”

“Confirmation: Affirmative. Reminder set for 168 standard hours from now.” It already anticipated her request.

“Thank you.”

She needed to delay that answer several more times after that. Even then she was not entirely satisfied with her own answer. Though with time, she forgot that very answer.

As she later learned, Captain Samael and the passengers on his ship were a baseline for most sectors so a version of them existed in most renditions of reality, be they shadows, a mere name for someone entirely different to wear, or someone who somehow turned out similar to them. Sophia would say “name” over guise because not every version matched, as various as there were worlds. She interacted directly with those dwelling on more lenient stages while she slowly refined the daydreaming scenario into an art form.

For each world so vastly different from another, there were a thousand versions layers atop them. Reiterations with the most subtle of differences. At least a score of times she thought she accidentally made it back home.

Home sickness gnawed deep the first time but after what she had to believe was longer than any mortal lifetime, she started to forget where it was she came from.

However, she never forgot the goal of her endless pilgrimage. Each encounter with the many versions of Samael served as reminders. She wondered if the spider would remind her of what it was she set herself out to do if she ever strayed. The variety of realms and reactions helped combat the monotony enough to keep the spark of anticipation alight.

While her goal failed to slip from her mind, the reason why began to. When the purpose for it all finally faded, she knew she needed to stop or forever march through the myriad realities. She had done enough, she hoped.

It was time to go home, as alien as the concept then seemed to one that traveled more than any soul should have, more time spent jumping across the gap than in any one world.

Would she miss this life? It was all she really knew anymore. The only thing she was certain was real. How did she even get there? What brought her to all those places?

Out of what should have been a long forgotten habit, she tried to hold out her arms to accept her fate as she long ago settled for simply standing still for it to take her to the next sector as it so often did. Rather than snatch her and reel her back to her world like she expected, the daemon tilted its expressionless head.

“Inquiry: If the information this unit relayed to you proves false, would this still be real to you?”

“What information?”

“Retrieval: You asked me for information regarding the following matters: “List the thirty closest stars to my planet in my home reality or sector as you call it, ordered by size,” “What is the atomic weight of phosphorus,” and “Who killed the Duke of Osterheim.””

Sophia did not spare that much thought anymore. She had accepted the idea of what her reality was, a simulacrum of the outside world. She happened to just be made of data and light instead of flesh and blood like she first thought. “I do not know.”

“Request: Please answer yes or no.”

“If I wake up from a coma, won’t that be proof enough?” she reasoned. “The fact that I know I am in a coma is proof this experience is real, right?”

“Assessment: Your mind could have correctly assumed you were in a coma, based on your experiencing occurrences not within the parameters of your sector.”

“What’s strange is that I do not even remember your answers, Valentinus,” she struggled to recollect. “That felt like ages ago. Why did you bring them up?”

“Error: I do not know,” it replied clearly with the same old monotone. “I just want you to remember.”

She felt like giving a short laugh but its earnestness stifled any reaction other than shock. For all that time, she failed to recall Valentinus ever state that it wanted something. It was a relief to her that it could apply such a word to itself otherwise she might as well have been talking to herself in the age that they travelled together.

She wished again she had a face. That way she could leave with a smile, however sad it might have looked. “Care to remind me then, Valentinus?”

“Assessment: I will provide the original answers to your inquiry before you leave.”

It repeated answers she long ago forgot and she did her best to etch them into her mind. Satisfied, Sophia prepared herself. “Goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye,” Valentinus returned.

There was a flash of motion as it grabbed her for the final time.

The world around her was black and strange sounds came to her. She blinked and noticed how for the first time in what felt like forever her vision was blurred as indistinct shapes and colors peaked through her eyelids. She groaned as she moved long forgotten lips and breath escaped from a dry throat.

She turned her head and shuffled as her arms pulled against attached tubes and wires. She looked for anyone and asked “What are the names of the thirty closest stars?”