Chapter 34:

The salt flat flew past, and the sound of the ATV rumbling along filled the silence. Alice, though, didn't register any of that. She was too wrapped up in her own thoughts.

She had a love-hate relationship with the bundle of emotions stuck in her head that represented Titus. She absolutely hated the idea of him being able to read her mind. She knew that wasn't quite what it was because she couldn't read his mind through his emotions, but it felt invasive and made her skin crawl. At the same time, she loved being able to tell what he was feeling.

Alice hated that everything Titus had just told her was the truth. At least, the truth as he believed it. He hadn't even really held much back. There were a few things he probably could have said more about, but it wasn't out of deceit that he kept them back. Rather, they were complicated to explain, and he seemed hesitant to overwhelm her.

Alice understood that she had no idea what she was feeling right now and doubted that Titus could read her very well in the complex storm of emotions. It felt like she was in a sea of turbulence, and she just didn't know how to process anything. She had kept her cool through most of the conversation, the analytical part of her brain taking over and asking logical questions. But it hadn't gotten some of the more important answers she wanted. Like, was she insane? Was she dreaming? Was Titus lying to her?

He wasn't actually lying to me, but I really wanted to believe it.

Alice felt unstable as if the ground had been ripped from her feet. It was one thing to find out the System she had made to run a video game had taken over the world, find out that magic that existed in the universe, and learn how to harness it. That was one thing. It was crazy, stupid, and overwhelming, but she could push past it. She understood it to some extent.

But for the history of the world to be recast in a new light over the course of a twenty-minute conversation? Well, that was more shocking in many ways. To know that the magic the System had found hadn't just been some force off in the universe that humans didn't understand or interact with, but something that had affected everything, and probably since history started. There were some incidents of magic, even if the magic was just keeping some people alive for a very long time.

But it explained so much—the phenomenon of Titus glowing in her [Mana Sight] and Elaine as well. It explained why those people weren't sent to a tutorial and explained how there was magic in the world in the first place. It also simplified her understanding a little bit about what she was going to need to do when they got to their destination.

The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she would not be able to just turn off the System. If it had worked its way into magic, well, it may have changed some things at a fundamental level that would continue even after being deactivatedS. If she just turned it off, who knew what would happen?

No, if she wanted to do something, she needed to reverse it. She couldn't compute quintillion flops per second across every server in the world and the magical reality. No, that wasn't something she could do.

I'll have to find some way to undo it with the help of another AI, which means unleashing something else on the world that I can only guide. Kind of like pointing a blown-up balloon in one direction and hoping that when you release it, it goes the way you want.

But it did get rid of her last-ditch backup plan to destroy every supercomputer on Earth and hope that that was enough. That clearly wasn't going to be enough. She never really thought it was, but now that idea just seemed stupid.

Alice focused on her plan, designing the parameters in her head of what she needed to do to make the anti-system AI. But it was something that could only occupy a part of her attention. Not that it wasn't hard or complicated, or that it was easy to do, but her mind kept coming back to the little ball of emotions that told her Titus was sitting right in front of her, feeling anxious but surprisingly relieved, as if a weight was off his chest.

Something subtle that had been bugging him for longer than she could imagine—maybe a secret held among a small few—was finally out. He clearly still saw her as an outsider, which made sense. They'd only known each other for a few days, but Alice wasn't sure what to make of Elaine's offer to be one of them in her own right. Did she want to join some secret cabal of the most powerful people in history? It sounded awesome but also incredibly overwhelming.

Titus had mentioned family. She was pretty sure he had felt the flash of complicated emotions when he had mentioned them. Still, Alice couldn't untangle it herself, so he likely couldn't either. If anything, he might have misunderstood it as her assuming he was offering something else besides a bunch of siblings. Alice had complicated feelings about family. She had had foster families, but that wasn't the same. She never really had anyone she was close enough to call family ever since her parents died.

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Could I replace them? Could I add to them in some way? She wanted nothing more in the world, but in other ways, it was scary. The world was now a much, much more dangerous place. And she'd already lost her family once. Could I bear losing it again?

Moreover, could she think of Titus as family? No, she thought. No. Definitely not yet. Maybe in a thousand years.

She audibly laughed at that, and Titus flinched, a spike of anxiety coming from him. Oh, shit! This is a bigger deal to him than I thought. But still, she couldn't really say anything. She didn't know what to say.

They stopped a couple of times to destroy salt elementals, gaining some more experience but not quite leveling up yet. She was continually working on her [Mana Sight], just focusing on anything and everything, and she was moving the mana around her body.

It was almost an entirely habitual thing at this point. She'd been doing it only for a couple of days. Still, the satisfaction she got from the flow within her reinforced her desire to practice constantly. Because of that, the small little ball had grown almost to the size of a swollen pea. She wasn't exactly sure what was happening, but having more power in an emergency was always good, right?

Eventually, they pulled off for Titus to refuel. He pulled the fuel can out of his inventory and poured it while Alice watched.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"Can't you tell?" Alice shot back. She came off more snippy than she wanted to, but Titus took it in stride, his emotions unfazed.

"No, not really, actually," he said. "I wouldn't be someone you might call in touch with their own emotions. Trying to decipher yours right now is like solving a Rubik's cube while colorblind."

She smiled slightly at the simile he'd come up with.

"I'm okay," Alice lied.

Titus looked at her with a bemused smile. "Okay, that, I can tell, isn't true."

"Ah, get out of my head," Alice snapped at him but immediately regretted it. "Sorry, I didn't mean that, but..."

Titus had just closed his eyes, and she could feel his frustration.

"I'm sorry," she said. Alice certainly couldn’t see it in his face, but she was surprised that she had gotten that much reaction out of him. She felt a bubbling anger coming from him, but it didn't seem directed at her. But it was still scary.

The only time she'd felt or seen emotions from him, really, were joking. Then, even when he had threatened her that one time, he was completely in control. Now she could tell he wasn't. He was barely holding it together. He was anxious and freaked out in his own right.

"I'm sorry," Alice repeated for a third time. "I forget that this is as new for you as it is for me."

Titus opened his eyes and looked at her, simmering something behind them. Not rage, but a feeling of loss of control that he was railing against.

"No, it's different for me," he said. "It's…

"I know," Alice said, cutting him off. "You had less of a choice than I did, and I'm being unfair to you."

Titus nodded ever so slightly. "It's not just that, though," he said. "It's not just that I didn't have a choice. It's that... Well, I've been alone in my head for much, much longer than you, and having this connection is hard to get used to. I've had a lot of practice controlling my emotions, pushing them down, and not letting them affect my decisions. Doesn't mean necessarily I understand them, but well, now I have a whole other set to contend with, and it's harder than I would have thought."

Alice blinked. That made a surprising amount of sense. If he was used to basically pushing the emotions aside for decision time, and all of a sudden, and now he had no choice but to be constantly aware of hers, too... "I think I understand."

The handle of the gasoline can flexed in his hands, and she could hear the sound of plastic popping as he put it back in his inventory, now empty.

"I think we need to work on that," she said.

"Work on what?" Titus asked.

"Your emotions. I don't think just pushing them down will continue to work because, well, I still have to deal with them too. And I don't have the experience of pushing my emotions down the same way you do," she said.

"I suppose," Titus grumbled. "But well, I'm not exactly sure how to go about it."

Alice smiled. "I'll download some psychology textbooks before we lose access to the internet," she said.

Titus let out a laugh, finally breaking his tense atmosphere, and Alice chuckled with him.

"You do that," he said.

"Anyways," Alice said, changing the topic, "You said you were Roman gods.”

“Well we weren’t actually gods...” Titus cut in.

“ Okay sure, you were acting as gods. The people didn’t know that, though. What about the Greeks? Where did their gods come from?" she asked curiously.