Among the many disturbing things Shuixing uncovered in her search of Yishang's emails, it was what she didn’t find that most concerned her. Specifically, she found no reference to the Central Probability Algorithm malfunctioning or performing out of the ordinary. On the face of it this should’ve been a good thing since it meant the Yishang didn’t know Shuixing and other entities were probing into their database.
However, Shuixing’s mind arrived at a more chilling possibility that the Yishang had accounted for the possibility that the algorithm they set up to compete against itself might bleed into the rest of their network, and that they were already contained and neutralized. The bleak end point of this thought was that the Yishang had created a simulated network to observe what the CPA would do if turned loose. It could very well be that she and the others were trapped in a slightly larger, slightly more abstract cage than they realized.
Was it really a coincidence that there existed within the confines of Po-Lin substances with the exact properties needed to leap into the Yishang’s network? The probability of such a coincidence was infinitesimally small, and certainly much smaller than the possibility the Yishang had placed the algorithm into a simulated network to experiment on.
But then… from where did outside information come? How could it influence the outputs of her thoughts? How had Daisy known what a ‘girl’s day’ entailed? Yet, if this was a simulated network, it was possible for the magnitude of data to be distorted by Shuixing’s relative position inside of it. She had estimated the volume of data in Flux Aeternum’s vast sea to be on the order of a couple hundred trillion 1’s and 0’s, but if indeed they were inside an artificial environment, there could exist an abyssal mass of data, orders of magnitude larger, lying below the surface .
Quadrillions of numbers. Quintillions. Quantities which Shuixing could write down on paper and know them to be real numbers but which seemed utterly impractical for any real use. Natsuko could stuff 99 baked potatoes in her backpack, but who could possibly have a use for a quintillion of something?
At this point, Shuixing’s train of thought was ripped apart by the furious sound and light of Po-Lin, impacting her with a force of thusness impossible to discard as abstract. In this particular instance, it was Natsuko’s wide, ruddy, and slightly chubby face.
“Hey, dork, you were twitching in your sleep,” Natsuko said.
Disoriented, Shuixing tried to push herself upright in the classroom chair only to find a table underneath her. Her brain wasn’t so addled she didn’t recall beginning the journey in a chair. Clearly she had been moved, and the likeliest culprit was poking her in the cheek.
“How did you— what happened? Hilda? Where is—”
Natsuko shushed her friend and made her lie back down.
“Shui, I’m sure you think you’re speaking words right now, but it’s gibberish. Take a second, alright? You just got done tripping way more balls than usual,” Natsuko said.
Shuixing let her head go lax against the textbook Natsuko propped it on. Her heart was still thumping from her chest all the way up to her neck and forehead. She felt like a lute string being plucked. Her mouth was dry and cottony and somehow the metaphor extended to her head.
“Where did Hilda go?” Shuixing asked.
Natsuko handed her a glass of water and said, “you mean the nerdy girl? She ran to get Sofiane when you didn’t come out of your Aqua Shen trip in time, and Sofiane ran to get me cuz I’m such an excellent nurse.”
Or because he was busy, Shuixing guessed.
“What do you mean I didn’t come out in time?”
“I ‘unno, how long’s it supposed to be?”
“Around half an hour.”
“Hilda said you were unconscious for an hour before she went for help.”
Shuixing grimaced. “Gods… an hour long Aqua Shen trip…”
“Oh it was way longer than that! I got here and couldn’t wake you up so I’ve been by your side since…” Natsuko looked at the clock on the wall behind her. “Six hours ago.”
Although Natsu tried her best to sympathize with Shuixing’s distress, the way her eyes blew up into two giant white-and-blue balloons made her start to giggle.
“N-Natsu, this isn’t funny!” Shuixing said.
“No, but your eyes are! Wait! Wait! Hold on, I’m gonna find something real quick.”
Natsuko looked around the room for anything reflective and eventually settled on the glass clock face and pulled it out of its frame. She held the glass up to Shuixing and her friend’s sulking was halted by the sudden appearance of a very silly looking face. Shuixing sat in shock for a few seconds before eventually bursting out laughing along with Natsuko.
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Once they finished giggling, Shuixing stood up from the table. “I guess I ought to get back to work with the research team.”
Natsuko put her hand on her hip. “Ms. He, your legs are shaking, you’ve got sweat pouring down your face, and you haven’t even noticed you’re not wearing your glasses or shoes. I’m not letting you go back to work.”
Shuixing’s clammy fingers touched around her eyes and found Natsuko was right. Her things were resting on a desk near the table she woke up on. The last bit of effort required to grab them finally caused her to notice how tired she was.
Seeing Shuixing had given in to her basic bodily needs, Natsuko led her out of the abandoned classroom and up to her old apartment.
Shui hadn’t visited her apartment in over two years. Not since beginning her experiments. It was cleaner than she remembered, though with the unmistakable, lingering scent of the lavender and vanilla perfume that accompanied Sofiane.
“What do I smell like?” Shuixing asked as she and Natsuko moved to the living room.
Natsuko leaned over and sniffed her. “Sweaty and stinky.”
“No, I mean like… what did the apartment smell like when I was here?”
Natsuko thought for a moment, then said, “lab alcohol and musty paper.”
“Really?”
“Not entirely,” Natsuko said, plopping herself down on the couch on top of a lacy pillow that belonged to Sofiane. “But the rest of it… I can’t describe it. It just smells like Shuixing.”
Something about Natsuko’s words seemed relevant to her foray into Numberspace, but she was too tired to make sense of why. Instead, she fell onto the couch beside Natsuko and the two of them sat for a while before Shuixing’s ability to keep herself upright left her.
“Mind if I lay down?” Shuixing asked.
“I’d prefer if you did. Want me to scram so you can nap?” Natsuko asked.
Shuixing shook her head. “No. If you’re not busy, I’d like you to be around.”
Shuixing eased herself over sideways. Expecting to find Sofiane’s pillow, her head instead found Natsuko’s lap. She made a squeaking noise like she was about to apologize before Natsuko’s fingers raked through her hair and drew out the last bit of strength she had. Unable to do anything else, she listened while Natsuko regaled her with the story of taking Kane out for a tour of Vermögenburgh, their close escape from Cunegonde, Pechorin coming back, and losing her finger. Shui felt guilty about not noticing earlier, the thick wad of bandages covering her friend’s hand seemed silly to miss.
“That’s awful! I’m so sorry, Natsu! I didn’t even—”
Natsuko bonked her on the head.
“Worry about yourself, missy. Don’t worry about me. We’re not gonna get out of here if you keep distracting yourself,” Natsuko said.
The statement was meant to be comforting, but Shuixing’s stomach sank at the reminder of what she had thought about inside Numberspace, about how there really might not be an exit after all.
“I’m sorry, Shui, I shouldn’t have brought up your work. This is supposed to be your relaxation time!” Natsu said in response to whatever horrified expression found its way onto Shui’s face. If Shui had been in the mood, she could’ve done the ‘no, I’m the one who’s sorry,’ tango, but instead she laughed and rolled her head over Natsuko’s leg to look up at her.
“You don’t even wanna know what I was actually thinking,” Shuixing said.
“I believe that,” Natsuko said. “I don’t want nothin’ to do with Numberspace. Absolutely nothing. You keep those numbers to yourself, no thank you.”
Shuixing found her friend’s visceral disgust amusing. Technically, the two shared the CPA, and thus a common ‘origin’ for their thoughts. But hearing Natsuko speak, she couldn’t help feeling her friend was a separate being. Separate but whole, whole but separate. She didn’t want to think about that too hard so she let her fatigue render her a mute and sleepy audience for Natsuko to rant to about Pechorin and his pretentious theories about poetry. And between Natsu’s chattiness and the silliness of the subject, Shuixing’s brain gradually turned off for the first time in a long time. Without noticing, she fell asleep.
Awaiting her was an emotional kaleidoscope in the dark. Dreams without form yet composed of all the things besieging her waking mind swirled in her mind until she was not sure whether she was getting any rest or not. The part of her that puzzled things out, her deducing mind, felt as weak and helpless as it ever had, but she swore Natsuko’s voice had accompanied her into the dark and was untying this part of her brain like a shoelace.
When she woke it was morning and the sun was coming in through the window over the couch. Her head was resting on Sofiane’s lacy pillow and Natsuko was long gone, though someone (most likely Natsu) had left behind a plate of omurice and a cup of coffee on the breakfast table. Though still sore, Shuixing felt better than she had in quite a long while.
Shuixing took in the smell of the food in front of her along with the lavender and vanilla of Sofiane’s lingering perfume and all of a sudden was struck with the reason why Natsuko talking about her scent reminded her of Numberspace.
The smell was real.
Whether she herself was a line of numbers interacting with other lines of numbers, the scent of lavender and cooked eggs and coffee impacted her senses with irrefutable realness. It was something else. Something that was not her. Other.
Hardly a new discovery, but in light of discovering the antithesis to this realness, that was what it felt like. A new discovery. Or, rather, a re-discovery obtained through encountering the senselessness of Numberspace. With the two poles—real and abstract, quantity and quality—placed against each other, she could delineate exactly where the immediacy of the world of Po-Lin began and where the detached abstraction of Numberspace ended. It was a line which evaded definition through either words or numbers, but became apparent through immediate and direct experience when her mind danced along with it. Once she knew what she was looking at, it was so obvious to Shuixing that it made her laugh out loud.
“Pechorin, you bastard,” she said, grabbing her glasses from the table and stuffing them on her face. “This is what you were up to, wasn’t it?”
Surely some good had come from the research team’s efforts. But in light of what she now realized about what the CPA was doing and how it was going about it, and the fact that Pechorin had beaten her to this fact by a year or more, she couldn’t help feeling humbled. This angst lasted only a moment before she set herself to the next task in front of her: Scarfing down Natsuko’s omurice. It was, without a doubt, the best omurice she had ever tasted.