TRINITY TOWN, 22 YEARS AGO
"SNAILS!" Louie cheers, opening up a box full of them.
The eyes of the child in front of him widen, her mouth clipping through the ground. She takes the flower headband on her head and rushes herself into the container box.
She puts her head inside it.
"Bob..." She says with stars in her eyes.
Her name is Pital.
"Pital?" Her aunt interrupts. "We're going to the mall now. Let's go!"
"Coming!" Pital says as she runs towards her aunt's embrace.
Her aunt looks directly at Louie.
"How did the session go, Doctor Larry Lemming?" She asks.
"So far, she's been showing signs of IMPROVEEEEMEEENTTT!"
Party poppers everywhere.
"Really? That's good to hear..."
"I'll be talking more about Pital in her upcoming appointment right... here." He says, selecting a date in his out of nowhere giant calendar. "Oh, and if you want me to be her lifetime doctor, just tell me!" He gestures with excitement.
"If she does... she gets to change my first naaaameee!"
"...I wanna call him Floowie." Pital suggests.
"Anything but that, my young child!" He points with swag.
Minutes after sunset, Louie, with his backpack, walks through rush hour. Happy and content, he makes his way for his shift at a local community college.
He rests his bag against his wall and relaxes himself inside the guard house.
"Ah... Security guard Larry..." He says to himself.
Everything is pretty chill. The sun is setting, the lights are on, and the cars are beeping...
A young woman walks out of the college, a downer, to say the least, her clothes a bit ragged. With her are a few papers torn to shreds, littered everywhere in the schoolyard.
"Hey! Miss Lady!" Louie says. "Littering in Trinity College is a no-no!"
She elicits no response.
"Lady?"
"One more word, and I'm going to fucking kill you." She says, barely even looking at Louie.
"...Mayonnaise?"
A random word, indeed, but it is enough to make the lady look back at him with confusion.
"What?"
"See? You didn't kill me!" Louie shrugs.
"...Maybe if you say something else, I will."
"What's the problem?" Louie slowly mutters about.
"I don't know. You?"
Louie looks back at the shredded papers everywhere.
"Your papers say otherwise."
"...They're not accepting enrollment. That's all." She says.
"That's not everything there's to it. You got a knife in your left pocket!"
"...Planning to kill someone?"
"No."
Louie uncomfortably zooms into the lady's face.
She changes her answer.
"Yes."
Louie snaps his fingers. A portal appears under the lady's feet.
"...What the~ aaaaaa!"
She drops down the portal and into nothingness.
Louie, his eyes looking left and right, notices no one in sight... It's safe to leave the premises without getting caught.
He snaps another portal to existence beside him, removing the other one, and he slides his way through it... On the other side?
His office.
It is filled to the brim with oneiric flowers that calm the senses.
The lady falls down face flat.
Louie pops out of the portal and sits down on the chair, flicking his chin in interest.
"You're ONE really dangerous person, young lady!" Louie points out at her. "You need professional help!" He blissfully smiles.
"I don't need your help, I'm okay. You don't need to care about me." The lady says.
Louie sits there in silence.
"Then take it to save other people by caring about what you're thinking."
Her eyes dilate, her hands numb, and her whole body is frozen.
"So, can you tell me your name?"
"...Gaia."
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"Gaia. I will tell you outright. I can tell that your mind is a dangerous thing. You're going to have to learn to tame that." He says.
"Your past. Tell me about it."
"You can't know the source. I can't tell you."
"I trust that you don't want me to know?"
"...Yes."
Louie thinks to himself.
"I can't afford not to help someone like you... I'll be your lifetime therapist, how about it, huh?"
"Okay." Gaia nonchalantly replies.
"Just... don't ask about my past. And don't ever question anything."
PRESENT DAY
A few words are on the Scrabble board.
"So, I didn't question anything." Louie says.
"It's challenging to tame a brain without knowing its past." Cider says, placing a few words on the board.
22 YEARS AGO
Louie comes into his office with an Arduino kit.
"Morning, Gaia!" He waves with joy. "Did you kill anyone yesterday?"
"No. You told me not to."
"That's GREAT to hear!" He says, punching the air. He slides the Arduino kit to Gaia.
"...What's this?"
"To keep your mind off things, I decided it would be a good idea if we learn some basic Logic Design!"
She looks at the wires inside the kit and opens it.
"You should make something out of this to get your mind off things." Louie added.
PRESENT DAY
Snakes and Ladders.
"How did she fare?" Cider questions curiously, rolling a die.
"I've never expected to see her get invested before..." Louie answers.
22 YEARS AGO
Gaia had spent the whole afternoon tinkering with the Arduino.
"Doc, look. Lights." She says, sharing her breadboard circuit with Louie.
Louie's nose starts to bleed as he checks the circuitry.
"What in the Logic Design is this..."
"I connected these two lights to their respective resistors, I learned that they controlled the electric flow, so I used it before I blew up the rest of the LED lights..."
"Hmm, interesting... How are you... going to kill me with that?" Louie says, pointing at the breadboard.
Gaia gets confused by yet another unexpected question.
"You want me to kill you now that I don't want to?"
"Got 'em." Louie says.
She realizes what she just told Louie.
"I actually... do not want to kill you?"
"Gaia..." Louie mentions, pointing and tapping on his head. "The brain is weird."
Grinning, Louie drops out a whiteboard from nowhere and begins explaining.
"You see, when you take your mind off those harmful ideas and replace them with things that stimulate you, amazing things can happen! It's like a cliff; if your one hand loses grip, it's desperate to find another cliff to cling to!"
"And that's one bad cliff you're hanging to, young lady. I just guided your hands to a better one."
Louie hears a hmph from Gaia. "My life was boring. Always picnics and board games..."
His head uncomfortably tilts in curiosity.
"No, you're still not going to know about my past."
"Eventually, I will." Louie grins as he winks through his sunglasses.
"...Can I take this home?" She requests Louie.
"From the looks of it, your clothes match that of yesterday's." He chuckles a bit.
"You're homeless, are you?"
Gaia refuses to answer the question.
"I'm going to kill you~"
"Stay here. The couch over there is a convertible."
It has to be the nth time her eyes slightly dilated in front of his doctor.
"Doctor Larry?"
"?" Louie asks.
"Won't you mind if I call you Logic instead?"
Louie remembers the conditions for his name change.
"Oh, and if you want me to be her lifetime doctor, just tell me! If she does... she gets to change my first naaaameee!"
"Alright. Give me time to change my certificate."
"...What?"
"Let's just call it company policy." Louie says as he exits the door. He, however, realizes that something's amiss.
"Wait, you don't have money, right?"
An airy silence fills the room.
"Follow me. Let's have dinner outside."
PRESENT DAY
Checkers.
Louie captures two pieces for the enemy team.
"Then, things picked up from there."
He picks up the pieces and puts them in the corner of the table.
"You know, Cider, you do have a point. Time sure does fly fast, huh?"
22 YEARS AGO
HOUR 1
Louie lets out a big laugh as he talks things with Gaia. The food had been served earlier, so he takes a fry out and shoves it up his nose.
Gaia is unimpressed.
DAY 2, HOUR 8
Gaia checks out a few books from the local library.
DAY 3, HOUR 6
Using Louie's typewriter, she begins encoding instructions to the mainboard of the kit. She navigates through the books she has borrowed and follows what's written on them.
DAY 7, HOUR 18
After long days of work, a sweaty Gaia finally finishes her first contraption: Stabby Princess. She enthusiastically shows it to a very confused Louie, but he commends and appreciates her work nonetheless...
Then the motors start to move and the hand starts to stab the air.
DAY 15, HOUR 9
With a pencil and a checklist in hand, Louie checks up on Gaia. His mildly concerned face is shown... They still have a long way to go.
MONTH 2, DAY 31
Gaia, with a uniform and a cap, is serving burgers in a restaurant.
She had found a part-time job.
MONTH 4, DAY 3
Her projects get even more complex as Louie's office gets filled with more wires and breadboards. The place is starting to look more like a computer laboratory than it is a doctor's office.
Her notebook which used to bear a list of names she'd like to kill gradually turns into a notebook of her creations and concepts.
MONTH 6, DAY 23
Louie brings Gaia along to Pital's house so that his two clients can get to know each other. Gaia seems rather unbothered, but Pital is the opposite. She shows her newest contraption to Pital, much to her awe. Her jaw clips through the floor again.
MONTH 8, DAY 18
Enrollment at the Community College has begun, so Gaia takes the perfect opportunity to enroll in a course inclined to her liking: Electronics.
A joyous Gaia comes out of the community college. She passes by Louie, who is in the guard house for his shift, and raises her untorn papers...
It contains her registration certificate.
YEAR 2, MONTH 1
Gaia has been holding a knife for 80 long minutes. Right in front of him is a Louie checking his papers.
He looks back up to Gaia and does a slit gesture; though she nods in disagreement.
Louie gives her a thumbs up.
YEAR 2, MONTH 9
Louie looks at his checklist again; it concludes a slow but steady improvement in the mind of Gaia. Her violent brain is getting tamer; though the entire office has become a hellfire of mechanics and wires.
The improvement had proven large enough; she finally freed Gaia of his strict supervision.
Meanwhile in a blank apartment...
"Here, thanks." Gaia says, a few porters bringing along a few boxes.
"You sure my client won't need help unpacking those boxes?" Louie volunteers.
"No. I'll kill you if you break my things." Gaia jokingly replies.
"Alright, alright. If you say so."
The typewriter radio from the other apartment starts to ring.
> BREAKING NEWS
>
> HEADLINES: UPDATE 163 MAINTENANCE
>
> To prepare for Update 164, The entirety of Timeline-2 shall undergo maintenance. The maintenance period shall finish in fifteen days or in one month.
>
> Please be guided.
"Folks, Update 164 is coming to your doorsteps, so prepare your beds and sleep tight! It will be a LONG 15-30 days so cuddle up and have a good night's rest!"
Gaia overhears the radio.
Gaia snaps. "Crap, the angels... every last one of them will be looking for me!"
"You okay, Gaia?" Louie asks.
"No... I need to get out of here."
"Emergency vacation?"
"You can say that, or whatever." Gaia says, panicking inside. She picks up her bag from the porch and makes a run for it.
"Where to?"
"Little Farmland... Uh... I would like to taste their vegetables!"
"But why?"
"I'll kill you if you ask another question!" She tells Louie.
"Gaia! Wait!"
"What!?"
"Have fun." Louie happily tells her with a bit of concern in his face, waving.
"If you're worried about me. I have my kit and my medicine. I'll be okay."
She walks away in a hurry.
"And~ uh, fine! Load my stuff!" She added.
Gaia fades away to the distance.
PRESENT DAY.
"Hmph. That has to be the most scariest 30 days of your entire life." Cider reacts.
"Haha, yeah..." Louie replies...
"Well, it's half past midnight." Cider checks. She stands up from her table and leaves for her room.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Logic."
"..But I'm not done yet~"
"You need your rest; I need mine."
She continues walking to her room without hesitation.
"We'll talk this over some tea in the morning."