CHAPTER FIFTEEN – THE WORLD IN THE MACHINE
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It felt very similar to teleporting. The world around me faded from existence and then it faded back in somewhere else.
It looked kind of like a teleportation hub, only not. I stood in a huge room with giant vehicles sitting in bays. My dictionary function provided me with the word “Trains,” but I got the feeling these weren’t like any trains that had ever existed in either the real world or Tread the Sky.
They were pellets. Eggs on wheels. Sleek white ovals sitting on tracks that each headed out of a tunnel. Many of the spots were vacant too as if the train was already gone. There were also two layers of stations. A top layer and a lower layer, all connected by tiny little staircases. I could go to the top or the bottom and I thought I could board any one of these trains.
As I walked a short ways one direction, I realized that there were forty eight total stations. Twenty four on the bottom, and twenty four on the top layer. Some of them were shut down too. Blinking green lights flared out of most of the little trains but several of them were dormant. I didn’t think I could get anywhere with those.
None of them felt right though. There were two other stations that looked grander on the sides of the grand station. I had the feeling they would just take me to still more identical stations. Each of these had different destinations but all of them were connected to Tread The Sky. All of them were part of that world.
I gleaned that from the giant banner across the ceiling. It read “TTS 12.12.1.1/24, Stack 01.” I didn’t know what the numbers were but TTS was obviously shorthand for Tread The Sky.
All Identical. All leading towards different parts of the world I’d just left. Except the two at the back that shared a banner which read “ae0 Core QFX5700” .
These train stations looked different, though. They were sleek and gave an impression of speed and capacity beyond anything the other trains could achieve. They were also… bigger. Alot bigger. They drew my eye immediately. These had to be the way out. The way to whatever lay beyond Tread the Sky.
Was this where Amy went when she logged off?
It… didn’t seem like it. Still! This was new! Completely, utterly new! I felt excited. I stayed in my Jellyfae form, a thrill filling my insides as I approached. Both stations held trains but only one of them was lit up and active. This was where I needed to go. Out. On. Somewhere further.
The problem was, that I couldn’t think of an actual destination. I’d chosen to come to this world so I could learn how to stop making everyone so mad at me, but where was I supposed to go?
I supposed I could try to find Akwa, or perhaps Iron. I had the feeling they’d just get mad at me all over again and then insist that I return right back to Tread the Sky.
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This didn’t seem like the real world either though. Some sort of… in-between. Purgatory, my dictionary provided. I beamed, happy to know that was still working, at least here inside the guts of Tread the Sky.
I needed a better goal. I needed to know what Francis knew so I could start to solve the problems he dealt with. If creating more life inside the machine like myself would result in crashing the world then I needed to learn how to solve that. But where had I ever learned anything before?
Looking back, all of my lessons had rarely involved specific places. Instead I’d learned from other people, or Miss Tutorial. Or, of course, my dictionary which seemed to follow me. There was one static source of information though.
I pulled up my inventory and discovered that I could no longer access it. I panicked for a moment. No inventory!? How would I eat!? Or change my armor if I needed to!?
I sighed. I’d intended to pull out the book that Francis had given me, but I remembered what it had said well enough.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I’d go there. Maybe there I could learn more about… about myself. About why Fae-Touch was so scary and about… well. Everything really.
I floated onto the train and screamed as it took off at lightning speed. For a moment I was terrified but once I looked outside and saw the lights streaming by, greens, blues, oranges, browns, and whites, my scream took on a decidedly more thrilled quality.
“This is amazing!” I laughed.
There was no transition period between moving and stopped. One moment I was flying through a tunnel of colorful lights before I was stopped at another station.
This one looked almost identical to the previous one, except this time all of the stations had the huge trains, like the one I’d taken to arrive here.
I looked up and found the banner, before I suddenly realized that all of the stations had small banners of their own, telling me where they were going! The one I stepped off had a similar one to the main one in the previous station but the numbers were different. “AS32163 Gypsenergy” TTS 167.205.44.114/30 Interface 1/13.” There was nothing about the stack on this one, whatever that was, but sure enough, when I started counting the stations, the one leading back to tread the sky was the thirteenth. So… was each station connected via an interface?
I walked further out into the station and found another massive banner. “AS64016 ATT 167.205.44.113/30 Interface 6/11.” As I looked around, the only real difference, other than the quality and color of the trains, that I could see was that this station didn’t appear to have a teleportation hub like the one in Tread the Sky had. No way to… log in as it were.
I grumbled. Was this what the real world was like? Surely not. For one thing, I had yet to see any people! No NPCs, no monsters… nobody. It was like the entire world had been made simply for me to move through.
Perhaps the real world could be viewed through one of these stations!
I gulped.
“Does… does that mean that all of these ports lead to different worlds!? Gods, it would take forever to find the real one!”
It wasn’t as if I had anything better to do though. Worst case scenario, it looked like I could always head back to interface thirteen and return to Tread the Sky. If I went back now, Francis might not even know I’d left!
But no.
I’d wanted to find out what was out here. I couldn’t just… stop at the first sign of adversity. I’d crack this maze and find my way to the real world. I’d learn all of these things! Maybe I could finally understand why.
As I picked an interface at random, AS136560 MCDAPASN01-AS-AP 167.205.44.4/30, interface 7/18,” I wondered what MCDAP was…