Having recruited our newest member Sab into the team, we walked out of the cramped shed Throne apparently called home to begin discussing our next course of action. With him, we were now given the ability of fast travel by way of winged flight, but even then we had to figure out how we would go about it.
"How strong would you reckon those wings are?" Gale asked.
"Definitely not strong enough to carry all of you in one go." He shook his head, "Even disregarding the sheer strength of the wings themselves, I don't have enough hands to carry you all."
"Eh? Your strength doesn't dictate how much you can carry?" Sheep tilted his head.
"Ah, as odd as it may sound, he's telling the truth." Vastoria chimed in with her own personal experiences, "A seraphim's wings are galvanically connected to their owner's body, so load weight isn't an issue for us."
These wings keep getting more and more overpowered by the second. Ultra fast, durable, detachable, and now you're telling me they can just carry as much as you want them to? Wait, but then the solution is pretty simple, isn't it?
"If we find some kind of container that can fit all of us, then couldn't we just tie it to Sab and fly together that way?" I suggested.
"That could work... Right?" Gale turned to Sab.
"Don't ask me, she's the expert." Sab pointed to Vastoria.
Eagerly, we all turned our heads in unison to wait for her answer. She looked at all of us with her signature aloof stare before promptly giving a thumbs up. Success! That's a gold star for me, right there!
"Great, we've got the basic mode of transport down." Sheep's content smile dragged on as he spoke, "Now all we need to do is find the materials to make it happen."
"Ah." The rest of us realized.
Heaven isn't exactly a place ripe for salvaging materials, when you really stop to look at it. Sure you've got the houses that contain their owner's biggest wishes in life, but even if we were to somehow luck out in finding the exact materials we needed to make the container, we'd have to go through a super lengthy and annoying process of getting the owners to willingly hand them over to us. Then again, there's always the option of burglary or even full on stealing it right from their hands, but that might be a troublesome endeavor in and of itself. We ARE in Heaven, after all, so even though there's no Hell to get sent to as punishment for bad behavior, it does feel wrong to do so.
"I feel like we're just straying further from the main goal..." Sheep offhandedly mentioned.
"Come again?" Gale glanced back at him.
"The original goal was to find Throne and have him explain how everyone remembers yestercycle, but then we found Sab instead." He elaborated, "Then we switched to attempting to travel to the Shrine, but to get to there we have to go out on a scavenger hunt for a container and some rope to tie it around Sab. It's just becoming more and more convoluted is what I mean."
Well we'd all much rather fancy the answer to be a piece of cake to find out, but sadly—The bigger the goal, the more steps it takes to achieve it. Going off course and following side tangents is part of the package, ironically enough. It'll all eventually circle back to the first goal, which is for us to figure out why our memories remained, thus how to reproduce them, thus giving me enough time to figure out how to go back to the World of the Living.
"Wait..." Sab stopped dead in his tracks, "What do you mean, everyone remembers? It wasn't just you guys?"
"Ah, you misunderstoo-" I chuckled.
"Nope, everyone remembers." Gale spoke over me, "Not just us, the entirety of Heaven 2.0. You didn't realize?"
Surprised by this revelation myself even, I followed Sab's example as I finally tuned into the conversations of the passers-by around us. Common words included "before going to sleep", "yesterday" and of course "previous cycle". I didn't notice it before, but it seems this anomaly has also been extended to everyone else, and not just exclusive to Gale and I. But unlike me, Gale did recognize this. Surprisingly enough, it looks like Vastoria was also ignorant of this just like me and Sab.
"That's... I didn't notice that." Vastoria looked puzzled as well, "Everyone recalls yestercycle... So can we take that to mean that the loop has been broken?"
"I hope so, it gets annoying to constantly explain stuff to people you know." Sheep chuckled, "I'm surprised you didn't notice this sooner though."
"How could I? I was way too focused on the... Shrine." Vastoria realized, "Gasp, could that be it!?"
Confused, we stared back at her blankly. She explored the Shrine with some guy named Energy, but we don't exactly know how it went down there too much. Did she find something important inside after all?
"Could what be it?" Gale raised an Eyebrow.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
"The Shrine, I think I know its purpose!" She smiled, "I think it advances time!"
"How?" Sab furrowed his brows.
"Three perilous floors." She explained, "Energy and I made it past them safely enough to reach the final layer—A room that appears to mimic the explorers' very own bedrooms. By then, Energy and I were dead tired, so we went to sleep on our respective beds, and when I woke up... I was back in my room up here! It all makes sense now, sleeping on a bed in that room is how time gets advanced to the next day!"
"A new day... In other words, we aren't talking about cycles." Gale nodded with a wry smirk, "I guess we have you and Energy to thank, if that's the case! It's entirely possible that you've permanently shifted the "reset checkpoint" forward by one day."
"You may get it, but the rest of us don't." I sighed.
"Essentially, if my theory is correct..." Gale grinned, "Our memories of yesterday are set in stone, even after the reset. This cycle is now the one that repeats over and over, but the previous one has passed."
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***
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Our memories of yesterday, o-of the Gods' Abode... and of the Book. They're all permanent now? We'll forever keep them with us? Wait, my brain isn't comprehending this fully, so can we retain our memories now or not?
"Ah, I get it." Sab immediately got the gist, "When Vastoria slept in that bed at the bottom of the Shrine, it's like she saved in a game. Now no matter how many resets occur, they'll always start from that point onwards."
"...Game?" We didn't exactly understand him.
"You guys don't get it?" He pouted, "I'd say I found a rather easy analogy, though..."
"Probably for someone from your time, but we don't exactly hail from the same era, I presume." Sheep noted.
"Ehh?! So you're ancient like Throne?!" He looked at us in disbelief, "Alright, you know what a GameStation is, right?"
"A what now?" We shook our heads.
"A Ybox 720?"
"Nope."
"An MES?!" He kept going.
"Never heard of it."
"Oh geez, you guys don't even hail from the technological era, then!" He groaned.
"That's not true, I know technology!" Gale proudly replied, "Transport wagons and Firestarter Pistols, that's the cutting edge, you know?"
"...Oooooh my Godsssss~" Sab couldn't even bring himself to laugh at that, "Dude, I only faintly know of Firestarters because they're historical relics! Isn't that like the first ever version of the modern day gun or something!?"
"It is indeed." Sheep chimed in, "Though it was shoddy and unreliable, so better versions were quickly made after just a couple years."
"I didn't know that..." Gale looked kind of sad about that fact.
"And what's with the transport wagons? Aren't those basically horseless horse carriages?" I even joined in on the diss session.
"Yes, and they don't go any faster than their horse counterparts." Vastoria giggled, "Gale, you may not be ancient, but you're definitely the oldest among us."
"Nah, I can't accept this." Sab shook his head, spreading his wings to go high up into the sky and find something from above, "Okay, follow me you guys!"
"Eh? Where to?" I shouted back from down below.
"My house, where else!" He grinned excitedly, "I refuse to work with anyone that hasn't ever played a game console before! Prepare yourselves, 'cause you're about to witness the peak of human technology!"
And just like that, he stalled his wings before dropping back down to the ground. Picking himself back up as he still kept that grin on, he began walking in the right direction as he led us like a herd sheep. I'll admit, it's hard to pass up the generous offer of seeing "the peak of human technology" or whatever, but don't we have more important business to take care of first?
"Sab. Sab!" Sheep hollered at him, "We don't have much time left before the reset. Let's not waste any more time than we already have."
"Oh come on, like we made any significant progress not worth losing." Sab retorted, "Now that we memory retainers know what our plan is, we can just pick these two up and give them the rundown on the way to the Shrine!"
"Sab, just because I said what I said about time advancing doesn't mean that it's 100% true." Vastoria even disliked the idea as well, "We might be wrong on this, in which case..."
"To hell with this!" Gale and I threw our hands in the air with large frowns and furrowed Eyebrows.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!" I argued.
"Absolutely, Maggie!" Gale added onto this, "And even if we do forget everything, we have you guys to count on to re-explain it to us, don't we!?"
"We'd rather not have to..." Sheep weakly replied.
"And besides!" Gale and I glanced at each other, tossing a mutual nod of agreement as we shouted in unison, "We really wanna see what a game console is!"
Staring blankly at our childish whims, Vastoria and Sheep were left speechless as Sab could barely stifle his laughter. In the end, a majority vote led to us opting to put the mission on hold in favor of sitting back for a moment of rest to have some fun. The walk over to Sab's house was neither long nor short, but rather just enough for him to explain to us the gist of them. Once we made it inside, we were greeted with a large two story house that was filled to the brim with pillows. Upstairs, however, we were greeted with a TV... and a magical rectangular plastic box with a sleek design. The insignia on it showed two letters and a number. This was the fabled GS5...
"Graahhh!" Gale was practically screaming as I incessantly headshotted him in the game, "How the hell is that even possible!? You were nowhere to be found on my screen, dammit!"
"That's the point of holding a good angle." I replied smugly.
"Cut the crap! You've been stealing glances at my screen this entire time, haven't you!?" He turned to complain to Sab, "Dude, don't you have like another one of these screens for us to use!? I don't wanna have to share a split screen with a cheater like her!"
"Even if I did, you'd need a second GS5 and a network connection for that to work." He sighed, "Ah, she picked up the sniper. Dude, you're cooked."
"You don't think I knew that already!?" He raged, "Gah!"
"Psst, Sheep!" Vastoria could be heard whispering behind us, "Should we stop them before he breaks anything?"
"...Nah, let him steam." Sheep inspected the livid Gale before replying with an impish grin, "I kinda wanna see him dropkick the screen."
It appears Sheep was right on the money, because right after I sniped him from across the map one last time the second he left spawn, Gale proceeded to throw the controller at the wall before standing up and delivering a mighty and glorious dropkick to the TV. Now, the roles were reversed—Vastoria and Sheep were curbing their laughter, and poor Sab learned never to let Gale play this game again.