POV: Elly

After walking through the crack in the nothingness of the spirit graveyard, I appear in a completely ruined men's bathroom. It has been ages since I've been allowed to enter those. And it is just as thrashed as the ones back then.

But how did I arrive here? I was still in the spirit graveyard within Jared's soul a moment ago. Why is this here? Is this a memory? He did say that he was somehow able to personally explore memories, even if they shouldn't be his. So I guess, this is how he did it.

As little sense as that makes...

So what do we have here? Everything is cracked or aflame with glitches. The ceiling seems to be melting like cheese, huge chunks of it are running downwards towards the floor. I'd rate this a six outta ten, I've seen worse bathrooms.

The only thing intact is a chunk of the bathroom mirror. Might as well satisfy my curiosity, how much have the glitches changed me?

I take a deep breath and properly inspect myself in the mirror. The helmet seems unchanged minus the undeserved repairs, so I take it off.

...what a joke, who is this?

Forget about the formerly disfigured armor, the fractures in the skin from my disloyalty are gone as well; the skin is slightly greyer where they were but that's hard to see with a passing glance.

The eyes' irises are vastly different, and the haircut is changed, there's now a strand of light-green hair amongst the platinum blonde. Did you have to ruin it like that? I spent ages getting it right in the editor...

Also, it seems, I'm now half a foot taller. Overall, the body looks a bit more grown up, older.

This isn't my body anymore, the one I helped design and eventually cheated Maria out of. But what else is left of me then, what other proof is left of my previous existence? Not my body, not my infected mind...

From start to finish, my changed body is just a mockery, as if to say that uninfected people are still children who still need to grow up into beautiful glitches. And it will feel so right when they do~

Damn, another strange thought...

Keep it together Al Iactest, keep it together. What? No, Al is dead, that's not who I've been in ages. I've now become Elly, an AAI. Or whatever I should be called now...

Suddenly, I hear a voice groaning, "Ah, almost. You look almost like Vladalaja. Just gotta do something about that nasty skin color and hide the face tattoo; it's a pity though, it came out quite pretty. At least fixing the clothes will be easy."

"Who is there?", I look around but find nobody, "Show yourself!"

"Really? You don't remember me?"

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"...that was you?"

A strange howling wind answers, "Correct. So, how do you like what I've done with your battered body? It is a work of art, right?"

"Fuck, I hate it. If you had to change my appearance why couldn't it have been to my original self... Who even is this Vla-person you modeled me after?"

"Vladalaja? She's no one really important which makes her the perfect target to kill and replace her, right? That should be right up your alley, little Miss Infiltrator. You wanted to deal with the local demons, undermining their ranks might just be the way to go for you."

I don't understand. Does it share our goals or is it at least willing to help us? I thought... I thought glitches didn't really have a will of their own, that they seek only to infect and spread. What is going on here?

"Why... do you help us?"

It sounds annoyed, "Why? Uh, why not? It is another way to achieve what we want. Well, if you don't like it, complain to our host. He cursed us... ah, you know what? If you want to talk more, come outside. I hate shouting like that, and you might want to get used to your new body a bit more. Laters!"

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Host? Does it mean Jared? Don't see who else it would be, and what curse was it talking about? Too many questions, no answers. Guess I really should make my way outside, don't think I have anything else here to do.

Wait, no, there is one more thing. It mentioned a face tattoo, how did I miss that?

I check again in the mirror, and indeed, there is something. A new faintly glowing golden runic marking on my left cheek. It really is hard to see in bright light, but when I hold my hand over it to add some shadow it becomes plainly visible.

This mark reminds me of the symbol of the Lost Ones Jared produced way back when. I feel like the living errors are just making a mockery of what used to be a holy symbol. At least it is properly hidden as long as I wear my headgear.

Well, no point in staying here any longer. I put on my helmet again and begin walking out.

But before I can leave the bathroom, I stumble over somebody's wallet. I pick it up and search through it. The money is clearly a fake prop from the memory, useless. Not that I could take it with me outside in the first place, it would just disappear when I leave the memory area.

Ah, here's the ID!

What? Johnny Smith? It... it belonged to our human neighbor Johnny? How could that be? He died over two thousand years ago. Why is a memory that includes him still around...

I barely remember anything about him. What was he like again?

I think he was a typical jock, and a nice playmate, always up for whatever bullshit we wanted to pull. He would often jokingly call me a xenobeast and I'd retort by calling him a mere monkey. Those were fun days.

That is until he started cheating on his girlfriends Amelia and Daisy. Then it all came crashing down... ah, whatever, that's a thing of the distant past. That planet is long gone.

But come now, there are coincidences and then there's this bullshit! I've already trouble accepting that Jared has memories from random people, so what are the odds that they are from someone I just so happened to know from my distant childhood?! Zero, none!

...they were planted. Someone gave him memories of a person who got along with me in their life so he'd be more receptible to me, a problematic navigator.

With that revelation, I wouldn't be surprised if there were more memories of people I knew personally way back then. A disgusting thought.

I should've smelled the rat once Jared brought up that he "knew" a Daisy Smith, a girl with the same name as Johnny's girlfriend. But really, the odds of them being the same were absolutely zero, should've been at least. There are millennia between then and now, and the universe is fricking huge! But then it wasn't.

What's next? Was the destruction of my homeworld orchestrated by the Devas as well?! Was all of that for a nefarious plan!? I wanna hurl...

...

After painting the sink with my rainbow-colored stomach contents, I touch the door leading out of the bathroom and the entire memory finally collapses. I'm now standing in another vast blackness surrounded by what I assume to be thousands of memory crystals. And directly around me, lie the shattered fragments of the memory I just left. That's gotta be an adventure.

Well, I'm outside now, so might as well call out to my new acquaintance, "Hey, are you still there?"

It takes a while before an answer arrives, but it finally does, "Yeah, I am."

"You still haven't explained to me what you are, or what is going on here."

"Sorry, I'm negotiating something important right now. Can we talk later? How about you look around for a bit and get familiar with everything?"

"Alright."

Negotiations? I don't like the sound of that. Now the glitches are not only alive with a will, but they are also organizing? This world is more doomed than I thought...

With nothing better to do, I comb through more memories, and as I feared, a good chunk of them seem to belong to people who knew Al, my old self. I recognize about a quarter of the memory owners at least. Too many for my taste.

And then there's even one of mine; the day I met Eva for the first time, the day the humanoid was adopted by my aunt. Man, were they angry when I almost ate her. I even had to wash her clothes as punishment to get my saliva out of them. Good thing I was so young back then; my kind's spittle turns into super aggressive acid during puberty, Eva wouldn't have survived that. The stupid humans are always so weirded out by our biology, like they've any right to talk!

I miss being "me" from before getting forcibly turned into a humanoid, fake AI.

I don't even understand why they had to change me like that; I should've just been a voice in someone's head, no one would've seen my true form anyway. But no, everything always has to be "human", everything has to be "normal" according to their twisted standards. Deviations are not accepted.

"Dear" creator, if you don't like creatures that are different from your human ideal, why even make them in the first place!? Stupid bastard!! You asshole literally made us just to suffer!

Go to hell! You made it, so you must like it there!!!

...

Look at me, sitting here, complaining to nobody how I was turned from my original self that could star in some human's sci-fi alien horror movie without needing makeup into one of those puny humans and now into a glitch-like being.

I miss being big and having four arms, the tail was just a bother though, but despite that I still miss it.

Maybe I can convince Jared to give me a new form, closer to my real self, and not this "lie". Yeah, he should easily be able to do that. He's... ugh...

Damn, the glitches did a number on me. All those memories flooding back into me, all those feelings I was forced to bury...

...

I finally get up again and continue to search through more memories. Eventually, I hit the jackpot. Or the opposite of it.