Author’s Note: So I was planning to just update this tomorrow since I didn’t think I’d get a chance to post it today. Anyway a warning, but this chapter has lots of feelings and emotions and I’m sure that some people won’t like how everything was handled. Please enjoy the chapter.

On a brief note, but no one commented to give me opinions about the tables I put in last chapter so I was a bit sad.

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Chapter 7

I was laying lifelessly on the floor of my room as I listened to the incessant knocks at my door. “Mistress, please come out! It's almost been three days and you haven't eaten anything. Please!” I could hear Lynn entreating me, but I didn't bother responding. What was the point?

Beer cans plus wine and whiskey bottles were strewn all around me and the shredded carpeted floor of my room. I had quite quickly turned to alcohol to try to distract myself from my problems, but I discovered that it seems like I can't even drink myself to unconsciousness. I'm fucking immune to getting inebriated in this body. Of course it didn't stop me getting sick, even violently so, but I hadn't cared in the least about that.

All I cared about was the fact that my life as I knew it was over.

I so desperately wanted to cling to the belief this was still the game, but the time I've spent here has told me that I'm definitely not in the game anymore.

Things that I hadn't really paid attention to suddenly became obvious after I started thinking of this as a real world. The sensations were just too perfect. Of course, the game had been quite realistic in that area but now that I was actually examining every single thing I couldn't help but notice the many small differences. The metal of the ship felt colder and my blankets felt softer. Even the carpet of my floor had felt wrong when I compared it with my memories of how it should be. It was all just too vivid.

The only thing that makes the world feel unreal is the fact that the status screen and Classes still work. I’m not sure why but this world appears to have a game like system and it seems like my own system works with it for some reason. The game system alone couldn’t overcome all the other sensations I was experiencing, though that was telling me this world was real.

The worst thing to happen were the dreams. That first night after failing to get drunk, I passed out on the floor and had dreams about a variety of topics.  Dreams about piloting my mech for the first time or times when I had fought giant beasts with it. Other dreams were about when I started out as a mercenary and how I found it difficult to talk to all the new people I met. Another had been when I finally got hired into a large mercenary company and how I had been so ecstatic that Lynn and I had thrown a small party.

After waking up and recollecting them, I realized that these dreams were Seri’s, this body’s, memories. None of them quite connected with how I recalled the events playing out when I played the game, and it was another trigger for my growing terror. The fear, that was fueled by the thought that I was being replaced by somebody else, caused a psionic meltdown. My psi had lashed out and started to destroy the furniture and the various nicknacks I had scattered around my room. Lynn in her android body had rushed into the room and tried to calm me down but her efforts were for naught. By the end of my meltdown that had lasted about half an hour, my room was in tatters.

Somehow Lynn had avoided all the blasts of psi, or possibly I had just enough self control that I had diverted blasts from hitting her, but regardless in the aftermath Lynn had started asking questions about what was wrong. My emotions that were in turmoil saw her as simply yet another sign of how my life was over and I responded as if on autopilot. I had glared at her and then told her to not to come into my room anymore. The expression on her face when I gave that order was heartbreaking and I almost found myself countermanding it immediately. Then the anger and fear about my situation returned in full and I repeated the order and she was forced to leave.

In the days since, Lynn had constantly called for me from outside my room. The deep worry in her voice was clear, but because of my orders she could no longer even open my door. She tried a number of ways to get me to come out or to at least respond to her, but I never did. At one point she even tried sending the maintenance droids in her place but a new order stopped her. I knew she would be monitoring what I was doing in here, but as long as she couldn’t come in, she could only watch as I continued to drink what was left of the alcohol I had brought in.

The only thing I did, outside of drinking, was to desperately struggle to not fall asleep. I didn’t want any more of those memories that weren’t my own! I was so afraid that if I slept I really would find myself replaced with a different person. I kept the memories of who I really was at the forefront of my mind. I especially held on dearly to my memories of Carol, though thinking of her just served to make me more depressed and despondent, since I was sure I’d never see her again. I don’t know what it was that happened to me, but I just had to believe that she was alright. It was possible that what had happened to me had also happened to others, and I prayed that she had been spared a similar fate.

At this point it was growing difficult to stay awake. I haven’t slept since that night, which means I’ve been awake for probably seventy plus hours by now. With my room in its current state, I’ve destroyed just about anything I could use to distract myself, too. I’ve also ran out of alcohol. I sat up and wrapped my hands around my knees and started rocking back and forth. What should I do? I was so exhausted and hungry and I knew I would crack at some point and either sleep or have to go out of the room to get food. Either way I’d lose. Once I open the door Lynn would make me talk to her and I no longer have the energy to fight her on it. It’s the main reason I don’t respond to her, I know once I do, I’d probably let it all out.

I don’t have any hope that I’ll be rescued or saved from this. Even if I was rescued, where would I even end up? No longer being me and living as someone else without my friends or family. I don’t want this fate but what options do I even have!?

It was as if a light bulb lit up in my brain. Of course it’s obvious! I mean I’ve already been thinking my life was over, so the obvious solution is to just kill myself. If it’s a real world, even if it has a game like system, death should still be the end.

How should I accomplish it though. I tried to use my psi to break my neck but I don’t have the mental faculty to even feel my psi at the moment. I’m simply too drained from the last few days. Looking around there’s no way to hang myself, I don’t have any rope anyway. I didn’t see my bag that had my guns in it so Lynn must have managed to remove it from the room before I sent her out. I picked up one of the empty whiskey bottles and turned it over in my hand.

I swung it at the side of my head and felt the impact but nothing more than that. Outside the room I heard Lynn, “Mistress!?” Looking at the bottle in my hand it was broken. I felt around my head but there wasn’t any bleeding. I guess this is where being a max level comes into play as a downside. Plus I felt so weak from exhaustion and hunger that that was no where near my full strength. I tried to cut myself with the bottle fragments but no luck that way either. I barely pierced my skin, not deep enough to make me bleed to death. <((If you are reading this series on any website other than royalroad.com, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money and bought the story on Amazon or some other store, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))>

Fuck, I can’t even kill myself! What did I do to deserve all this!?

There’s only one other option. I stood up unsteadily and walked to the bathroom. My bathtub was large and much bigger than my current small body so I’ll use that to drown myself. I’ve read in the past that it’s difficult to drown as a suicide method without having a very deep body of water to use but this will have to do. I started filling up the tub and stood there watching as it did so. I was still wearing my pajamas that I had put on a few days ago and didn’t see any point in taking them off.

Once the tub was filled, I left the faucet running and stepped in and then lowered myself into the water. I wasn’t sure how to go about doing this, but I figured it involves breathing in water and then keeping myself from rising up to take a real breath. I turned over so I was facing the bottom of the tub and just let my breath run out. It took a few minutes but as I finally ran out of air my body tried to force taking a breath, but all it got was water and I experienced a spasm as my body tried to jerk out of the water, but I used what small fragments of willpower I had to keep my head under the water. I felt like I was about to lose consciousness which I thought was a good sign. Once I lost consciousness there would be no way I could survive.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It was this moment when I felt two cold metal arms pull me out of the tub. I started sputtering and wheezing as my body found itself able to breath again. I tried to struggle and break out of the arms holding me but they were solid and I didn’t have the necessary strength. There’s only one entity that could do this but she shouldn’t be able too. I gave her an order! Lynn pulled off my soggy pajamas and dried my body as I hung limply in her grasp. There was no longer any fight in me.  

I was carried back to my bedroom and Lynn sat down with me still in her arms. The look on her face as she looked down at me was a mixture of sadness, anger, and worry. “Mistress, why? Why did you try to do that?” She pulled me tighter into her arms as she embraced me.

I couldn’t stop myself from responding. “My life is over. Nothing matters anymore. Just let me die.”

Lynn gave me a small shake. “Stop that Mistress! I won’t allow you to kill yourself!”

I felt tears start to run down my cheeks. I hadn’t cried at all until now, but it felt like the floodgates had been opened. “Why can’t you just let me die, Lynn! I don’t want to live a life that’s not my own! I don’t want to lose who I am!”

Lynn’s face lost a bit of the anger and got replaced by confusion. “Mistress, what are you talking about?”

With that question as a signal, I unloaded everything on to her. Everything about my life as Aaron, including my family and Carol. The fact that who I currently was, was just a game character I had made for a virtual reality game. Everything odd that I had experienced since the crash landing on this world. By the time I was done, Lynn was totally silent as she continued to contemplate what she had just heard. I had no idea how she would take it and I found myself afraid that she might abandon me too.

I’d be truly alone then.

As if she could sense my thoughts she once again pulled me into a tight embrace. “Mistress, I find your story hard to believe but at the same time all those details were quite compelling. You’ve never come up with stories like that before, even in your deepest depressed moments, so I feel inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. “You, you really believe me Lynn?”

“Mistress. I can’t fully believe you. I’m sorry, even for me this is a bit of a tall tale and seems more like a delusion. Even if I don’t fully believe you, that doesn’t mean I’m not going to do everything I can to aid you. After all, we’ve been together for almost five decades.” Lynn smiled at me.

“Five decades? But I bought Lullaby three decades ago in game…”

“Well of course, I became Lullaby’s AI when you bought the ship, but before that I was your companion AI since during your rehabilitation. That’s where my old directives come from. I was to be your friend and companion and to take care of you. So when you were about to do permanent harm to yourself, I was able to disobey your orders and intervene.” Lynn gave me a hard look, “Is this something that conflicts with your own memories?”

“Yeah, in my memories you’ve always been Lullaby’s AI and so we haven’t known each other as long. I’m sorry, I have no memories of anything else.” I curled up tighter against Lynn, “I’m so afraid that I’m going to stop being me. That I’m going to become Seri and forget all about Aaron. I’ve already got some of Seri’s memories, and they’re so different.”

“I see.” Lynn was silent again and looked like she was thinking. “Mistress, you said you obtained memories every time you slept, correct?” I nodded. “Were your memories ever actually replaced with new ones or do you just have two conflicting sets of memories now?”

I thought hard, going through my memories trying to find one that overlapped with an event I knew from in game. Eventually I found one. It was a memory from a few nights ago, when I joined the mercenary company. The two memories were quite similar, I even acted identically in both of them. Except in my game version of the memory after getting in, I sent a message to Carson to share the news and then logged out back at the inn I had been renting a place at. I didn’t have Lullaby yet at that time so there was no Lynn to have a party with. I could clearly remember these two very different memories. “Lynn, I have both sets of memories. They feel clearly separate, but they both are there. Does this mean, I’ll end up with both Aaron’s memories and Seri’s? Please tell me it does.” I pleaded.

Lynn had a sad smile on her face. “I can’t promise that. This isn’t something I know how to solve, Mistress. Since so far it looks like the memories are just doubling up, we can hope that continues.”

I sighed in relief but then felt a different stab of uncertainty. “But Lynn, what do I do now? I’m not in a game anymore, we’re stuck on some random world and we have no way of knowing if my game universe turned real or if some other kind of weird scenario happened.”

“Mistress, what do you want to do?” Lynn asked quietly.

I looked into her eyes. “I want to see my family. I want to see Carol. I don’t want to believe that I’m forever cut off from them, Lynn.” I broke the eye contact and hung my head down before continuing. “It’s hopeless though. How could I ever see them again if I’m stuck in some kind of weird parallel universe?”

“Mistress, what if you’re not stuck in a weird parallel universe? What if you’re in the same universe as your world. why don’t we make that our destination, the planet Earth? We’ll need one anyway after we leave this world.”

Hope flared up in my heart. Maybe it would be possible to return to Earth. Maybe I could meet my parents and Carol again. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to and I’d just find a different world there at my destination. The hope died. “Lynn, do you really think it’s possible?” <((This series is only officially posted to royalroad.com. If you are reading this series on any other website, then you are doing so without the permission of the author, Xacual. If you have paid money for this story, please file a report and request a refund as it has been stolen and is being sold illegally.))>

Lynn gave me a cheerful smile, and as good as a shrug as she could considering the tight embrace she still held me in. “Who knows Mistress? Your story is unbelievable, but what if it is true? If it’s true then it means crazy and impossible things are possible! What’s stopping us from visiting your world and meeting your family other than insisting on the worst possibilities. Maybe you can even introduce me to them. I’m especially interested in meeting that girl Carol.” She gave me a pointed look at that part then smiled a very different sort of smile. “Mistress has always been interested in girls, but who would have guessed it was because Mistress was actually a boy!” She teased and giggled.

I couldn’t help but join her in laughing. The laughter banished some of the dark clouds from my mind. I could just imagine how a future conversation between Lynn and Carol might go!

I suddenly felt dizzy, like my tiredness was hitting me all at once.

Lynn took note of it right away and she stood up with me still in her arms. “Mistress, let’s go to the room next door. After you destroyed your room, including your bed, I made a cot and had it placed in the next room. I’ll let you get some much needed sleep there, and while you do, I and the maintenance droids will fix what we can of your room. Then when you wake up, I’ll fix you a gigantic breakfast. How does that sound?”

I nodded gratefully. “It sounds good.”

Lynn walked to the next room, it had been a small storage room but that didn’t matter much at the current time. Lynn slipped a night gown over me and laid me down on the cot carefully and then pulled the blanket up over me. “Mistress. Please rest well. If you need me just call and I’ll be here.”

As I watched her leave though, I felt a fresh surge of panic. I didn’t want to be alone! “Lynn! Please don’t go!”

Lynn rushed back to me and kneeled down at the side of the cot. She held my hand while her other hand stroked my hair. Her hands were cold and metal but I didn’t mind. “Mistress. I promise you that no matter what happens, I will always, always be here for you. I’ll absolutely never abandon you. I’ll stay here for you tonight alright?”

I nodded and clasped Lynn’s hand tightly with both of mine and finally after three days, fell asleep.