Still partially blinded and now a little deaf from the booming voice from nowhere one could say I was having a bad day.  Trying to stand and failing horribly I fall and face plant into the ground.  Swearing and mutters that spoke of vengeance could be heard from my prone form.  This time I wisely waited until I was no longer blinded and stood up to survey my surroundings.

The largest change was the black sky had changed to white and a quick glance around revealed no other major changes that I could see.  As my hearing returned I could hear pitiful meowing all around me.  My face paled and I rushed towards my cats shouting, “No, Mr. Fluff Fluff, Mr. Bubbles, Samwise don’t worry daddy’s coming.”  

I arrived at a scene that would have been comical in another situation as my cats staggered around bumping into furniture and each other.  “Don’t worry daddy will make everything better.”  I concentrated on making the eyes of my cats back to the way they were before and was relieved when they stopped staggering around.

‘Good that’s taken care of now what did the voice say I was?  A sentient Artificial Intelligence, what’s that?’  I pondered this for a while then a lightbulb blossomed over my head, I actually made one appear but what are you going to do sue me?  ‘Am I like Skynet? No, not really I don’t have any world ending ambitions.’

[???] “You should be able to manifest outside your core now.”

Damn that booming voice tone it down a little geez.  ‘Wait manifest outside my core.  So extrapolating from that this space must be my core which kind of explains my Godlike powers here.  It’s like this is my mind and my imagination formed everything here.’  I suddenly paled and felt sick to my stomach as I had my next thought.  ‘If I’m an AI are my memories even real?’

The thought shook me but it was nothing compared to awakening in the void and although I was still reeling I stuffed the thought away and focused.  So if this is my core I just have to project myself outwards.  Thankfully I had a lot of practice with this method when I was still a ball of consciousness.  Focusing, I project myself outward and am met with a room full of strangers.

‘How odd,’ was my first thought as I seem to have two sets of vision.  The first was my “normal” sight with my eyes but the other was a “sense” of the room around me.  With the second sight I could “see” 360 degrees around me.  The closest equivalent I could think of would be like a bats sonar.  Coming to terms with this strange but useful ability I focused on these strangers particularly the white haired man in front of me.  ‘He kind of looks like a mad scientist especially with the erratic white hair, lack of shoes and that cane.’

‘Actually, the greatest concern of mine right now is why no one is moving?’  I concentrate a little harder and notice that they are in fact moving but it’s so slow it’s almost impossible to notice the difference.  That sent the gears turning in my head.  ‘Maybe it’s not the fact that everyone is moving slow but I’m moving to fast.  No, not that, I’m processing things so fast everything seems slow.  Yeah that seems appropriate if I’m really supposed to be a computer.’  

Well another identity crisis, I seem to be having a lot of those today and let me tell you it’s not fun.  I need to solve this or I won’t be able to interact in any meaningful way.  I mean who wants to wait 30 days, my time, for someone to utter a syllable.  What I need is to artificially create a “brain” to process the incoming information and sort it in a meaningfully manner.  Easier said than done but it needs to be done.  I sigh mentally and get to work.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

~20 “days” later~

I come out of my inner mind and note with some amusement that the mad scientist’s cane has only moved 4.356cm.  ‘Wait how did I know the exact amount?  Oh, actually that was a good test of my new “brain”.’  It would seem that I was successful in my endeavor.  I mentally patted myself on the back and thought ‘now to see if I can slow myself down to everyone else’s pace.’  With that I set my proto brain loose and with a rush everything seemed to move normally.  I instantly went back to slow motion to see if I could switch between them without trouble and since it worked perfectly I now felt ready to face these strangers.  With a confidence born of being able to take all the time in the world to reply to questions I went to normal time.

“So, could anyone please explain where I am?”  I asked, and was taken aback when everyone in the room let out a sigh in synch and then random peons began cheering and shouting.  The lady standing behind the mad Doctor even cried a little.  ‘Come on guys, you could at least have the curtesy to answer my question before you celebrate and put that champagne away you idiot.’

“Is no one going to answer me?”  My second question seemed to snap the two people in front of me out of their own little worlds and back to the present.  Everyone else seemed to want to celebrate rather than answer questions but that was fine as I tagged these two in front of me as more important than the minions in the background.

The mad Doctor stepped forward still swinging his cane, ‘seriously why does he have a cane?’  “Hello there I’m Dr. Dave Zhul and you are on Gaia or more specifically on Gaia’s moon Lupis.  I do look forward to speaking with you more it’ll be nice to have someone that can hold an intelligent conversation instead of these idiots.”  If anyone else had heard this they would have pulled at their hair and shouted, “It’s not that we’re idiots you’re just too damn smart.”

As soon as Dave had started talking I had recognized his voice as the one that near deafened me and marked him down on my shit list.  ‘I’ll get you back some day but information first.’  

I did note with some confusion the lady behind him look away and blush.  I mean I don’t think I’m that handsome that ladies blush upon seeing me so I asked Dave, “Why is that lady behind you blushing?”

“Well that would be Doctor Vahlen and it’s because you’re a physically fit male that happens to be naked.  Don’t worry about it, I find the natural state to be much better than clothes anyways but society and their rules stop me.”

‘Okay, I’ve verified that Dave is indeed crazy and,’ quick glance down, ‘yes I am indeed naked.  Well that’s embarrassing I focused too much on the big picture and missed the tiny details.’