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[[ CH 09 ]] Second Dinner

[[ CH 09 ]] Second Dinner

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Upon arrival at the Commander’s apartment, the door leading inside slides open with a soft sound. Nine seems surprised that it does, and looks to me for any explanation while waiting for me to go in first. I can only suppose he isn’t familiar with the finer points of the Ark, despite knowing "enough to get by". So I decide to enlighten him, but only when we’re inside and the door slides shut. Nine locks it behind me, which I don’t find a problem with. He seemed keen about it for reasons unknown to me.

“Your citizen chip unlocks your registered living quarters automatically when you come close enough to the door according to preference,” I brief, and Nine looks at me with interest. He nods aptly. “It’s likely the previous ‘you’ was not concerned with security and allowed the door to respond to his chip like that. I might personally recommend changing this preference at your earliest convenience, but that’s only my recommendation. While crime rates are technically low in this part of the Ark, there’s an old saying known as ‘Never say never.’”

“Actually, that’s not all that old, is it?”

“I wouldn’t know. Do you?”

“... I guess it is old by now.”

“What do you mean, ‘by now’?”

Commander Nine seems to be stumped for a moment. I further the question.

“Your previous world was not in a similar time period as this one?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t. If I had to run a guess…” He stops and twists his face to calculate. He must not be a numbers sort. “... It’s maybe over one hundred years, at the very least, in the future for me here, if we assume technology is on the same timeline.”

“... I see,” I say, racking my brain for knowledge on that time period. As far as I recall, NIKKEs weren’t in production 100 years ago, but phones and tablets found their place in that era. That is, according to history texts. If we assume in simplest terms that the worlds are parallel, connected, with this world’s circumstances being merely an offshoot in a random video game, that would be the best approximation. But I can’t just sit the Commander down and drill him with questions. “... You need to eat.”

“What about you?” Nine asks.

“NIKKEs don’t need to eat,” I say.

“But you’re an older model,” he replies, and continues to cement his point; “Older models need proper calories for the brain, don’t they? Don’t go hungry.”

“... Fine,” I say, silently impressed he knows even that considering the consensus of knowledge on the first few generations of NIKKEs, then pause, looking at the kitchenette with only a cooktop and an airfryer. “... I can’t cook easily in this wheelchair. Do you know how to cook?”

The Commander looks a bit nervous. “... Not really. I, uh… I ate a lot of instant meals. Surely the old Commander left behind something instant to eat, right…?”

“... Most forms of food in the Ark are instant, unless you’re some sort of gourmand.”

There’s a refrigerator in the kitchenette that Nine approaches and opens with a hint of apprehension. I wheel up to see what’s inside while he’s inspecting, and spot a few things. Apparently the old commander was a bit of a gourmand. There’s raw nutrimin meat and a few packages of fruit, but it’s unclear if the fruit is real or not -- though it’s more than likely they aren’t, and that everything in the fridge is Splendamin-based. That being said, aside from that and a package of shredded cheese-flavored Splendamin, there isn’t much to speak of in the fridge that looks appetizing without having to cook (or look sad eating shredded cheese from the bag). Nine abandons the fridge and opens a few of the cabinets, and it’s out of my view from my wheelchair.

“Aha!” Nine exclaims, pulling out a duo of dehydrated noodle cups and holding them up like trophies. “We can eat these! Amazing, instant noodles exist in the future too!”

Seemingly familiar with instant noodle preparation, Nine seeks out and takes a kettle from the bottom cabinets. He moves to the sink, filling it with water and switching it on, the appliance having an internal battery to power it without electricity. He sets it down and works to get the flavor packets hidden inside each noodle cup distributed and ready for hot water. He looks kind of proud, or maybe engaged with a familiar activity? In the meantime, my mind wanders.

Time passes, and the water comes to a boil.

“... Commander,” I finally say. “The missions coming up. Would you like to review the briefings during our meal?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, that,” he says, dawning on the idea that he may be unprepared. It’s written all over his face, despite his conviction to the cup noodles. He’s growing nervous again.

“This will be your first outing with Astrid, Lysanne, Lunari and Ukenna. It may be best that I review their abilities as well.”

“... That’d be a big help.”

He finishes pouring the water into the cups and folds the paper lids back over, placing some chopsticks he found over each lid to hold it down. I navigate myself to the table beside the kitchenette -- a small thing with only two chairs. It’s clear only one side is ever used, but tonight, I occupy the unused side. I pull aside the chair that until now remained untouched, the wheelchair I’m in moving automatically to my touchless command, allowing me to easily set aside the chair and take its place. I have a proper view of the Commander, who is remaining in the kitchen for now.

“Where to begin…” I breathe off, placing a palm on the counter of the table I’m sitting at. Honestly, it’s a large uptaking to regurgitate strategies and NIKKE data, so I default for the simpler first. “Let’s start with reviewing your missions first, and I’ll discuss appropriate stratagem for them. Do you have your tablet?”

“My… Oh. Uh. Hang on,” he says, and it’s clear he’s trying to extract knowledge from the old Commander. He raises a finger to me after a moment and paces off, returning from his bedroom with his tablet. He didn’t have it all day, it seems, which was pretty much for the best. I presume he didn’t remember he even had one when he woke up this morning. “Got it. I guess it’s roughly the same idea as a tablet from my world…”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

He flicks around the screen a bit, seeming to familiarize himself with the layout. He appears to be a fast learner, because within seconds he seems to find the mission briefings on his own. He pores through them before reading them aloud. They’re all rather simple, and it’s obvious the commander can tell that.

“They’re pretty much all patrols. Go out to a certain coordinate, destroy any raptures we find, and return after securing the area…”

“... You seem to get the gist of it, then,” I say. “Do you know patrol protocols?”

He seems to mull on it. “Rings a bell. I think if I’m in the moment, it’ll come to me…”

“...” I make the decision to trust that gut feeling of his, for better or for worse. “You did know to put down a corrupted with the right equipment. So I can assume you have the rest of the protocol tucked away pretty easily.”

Nine looks a little proud at that, but his expression droops a touch remembering the events from earlier. I don’t comment on it, and draw in a breath.

“As for Purem’s individual member abilities…” I murmur. “I’ll start with Lysanne, the brown-haired one with the visor. Strategically speaking, she can invert and cancel sounds with her voice emulator, which can easily make stealth on the field viable at the cost of verbal communication. She cannot selectively choose what to cancel, and can only cancel noises within ten yards of herself. Any further than that and the effectiveness drops exponentially.

Commander Nine is fully listening; in fact, he’s so focused that the noodles are close to being overdone.

“Astrid is capable of emotion manipulation. It’s good for sustaining morale, but if she’s able to lock her ability onto a Rapture, she can induce severe emotional states that can affect it one way or another. I trust you can use that to your advantage with some creative thinking.”

The Commander realizes he’s left the noodles to sit for too long and jumps in his skin, turning to tend to the noodles while I speak. He’s evidently still listening with intrigue, so I continue.

“... Lunari can disable all senses of a target for ten seconds, putting them in a sensory equivalent to a black void. As long as she is able to get sight of her target with her white eye, she is able to connect and disable their senses at will. She can also selectively disable senses with some effort and cancel her actions, but reenabling senses that have been shut off from a different source cannot be affected by her. She can do this repeatedly with humans at the expense of her energy, but with Raptures and other NIKKEs, she has to wait for their system to drop reactionary code that prevents reconnection. That usually takes ten minutes.”

The noodles are ready. It smells of seafood, and the freeze-dried toppings have been rehydrated; inside each cup, rehydrated Splendamin-based Nutrimin shrimp sit curled and pink on top of the cooked noodles. There are flecks of rehydrated greens of indeterminate origin speckled throughout the broth. It looks pretty good, as expected. He passes me my cup of noodles with a set of chopsticks, but I neglect to begin eating just yet. I haven’t finished my briefing.

“Finally, Ukenna’s body can create and release nanobots for repairs on fellow NIKKEs. These nanobots are perfect for temporary fixes on the field, but expire rather quickly and easily. While they’re operational, they’re able to band together to create significant repairs on an injured NIKKE and can even heal humans, though it is a bit painful for the latter as cauterization is used in the process for wounds. Broken bones can be temporarily stabilized by these nanobots, but at that point a makeshift splint is the better option. That concludes my report.”

Commander Nine had sat down and begun eating his noodles, but once I concluded my briefing he paused mid-slurp. He looked up, then tilted his head lightly in confusion. I couldn’t fathom why he was making such a face until…

“... What about you?”

“Hm?” I’d nearly started to eat when he inquired as he did. I stare at him for a moment. “Ah. My ability. I… Don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

“I only have so much memory, and I lost that knowledge when erasing memories. I don’t remember my reasoning. It was probably an accident.”

“Is there not a way to find out?”

“You probably already know, but my model is so exceedingly old that there is no surviving documentation of my abilities.”

“Why is that?”

“...” I stare blankly at my noodles. “I don’t really know.”

Nine seems to take that response with wide eyes. He’s puzzled.

“... The truth is, I don’t have a lot of memories in general. All I know is that I used to belong to a line of NIKKEs called Mies, but I don’t really remember anybody from that group. We were turned into a squad to help with the First Rapture Invasion with the same name. I don’t actually know if any of my squadmates are in the Ark, much less where they might be in general otherwise. If I didn’t have these problems with my legs, I would be able to blend in as a human, I’m sure, so maybe they’re doing the same…” I pause, and nibble at my noodles. Talking about myself is strange, especially when someone is as engrossed as Nine is in my history. The old commander never asked. “I probably was blending in as a human when my legs stopped working. I don’t remember for certain.”

“Your memories really are limited. You just have to be a second generation NIKKE. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me.”

“If we were to approximate the timeline, yes, I must be. I’m surprised you even know about second generation NIKKEs to begin with…”

“What can I say except I’m an absolute lore hound… Or ‘was’, I guess?”

“Hm?”

“... N-nothing,” The Commander quickly says, and he appears disturbed by whatever he was insinuating. Maybe changing the topic will bring things back around… But I can’t come up with anything clever. So, for a while, we eat our noodles in one-sidedly uncomfortable silence. I really don’t know what he’s so put off about.

“... No, really, what is it?” I finally push.

“...” He’s sitting there, uneasily chewing his noodles. He swallows, then parts his lips, eyes downcast. “It’s just… In order to get to this place, what became of me in my old world? … Did I die? How did I die?”

I don’t say anything.

“... I attempted suicide a lot in my past life, but I thought I was doing pretty good mentally before I got here. Did something happen?”

“... You did say you didn’t want to go back.”

“I know, but… It’s just now hitting me, is all. I don’t remember a thing.”

“You mean you don’t remember what happened to transition you to this world?”

“Yeah. If I killed myself, got into an accident, or if this is all just one big dream… I don’t remember anything, just who I was and what kind of living situation I was in.”

“Maybe it’s for the best,” I suggest, and the commander’s face twists rather honestly. He isn’t happy with that answer. “What I mean is, there’s no use wasting your energy trying to dig up something you can’t. Conversely, maybe one day you’ll remember randomly. All we can do is wait for that information to reach us, right?”

He seems a little more comforted by that -- at least, he doesn’t sense any other options but to be comforted. I’m finding myself able to eat a little easier now, and he’s nearly finished with his broth. It seems to me that the new Commander is a bit of a foodie, because despite the grim topic, he didn’t slow down on eating his food at all.

A little bit of time passes, and my cup of noodles is fitfully empty. Nine had been toying with his tablet once he finished eating, patiently awaiting me. Eating a meal with someone like this…

“... How long has it been?”

A gritty, half-surviving memory fills my thoughts; their faces are indiscernible, but I know they’re Mies members. We’re on the surface. The five of us are huddled around a campfire eating ration meals and making small talk. There's a strange tension in the air, but we seem content. I can’t date the memory, nor can I extract more information from it.

Nine doesn’t hear my whisper.

A pleasant quiet emanates between us instead.

[[ CHAPTER 09 END ]]