Chapter-2
[Chapter 1] is submitted and done, I really, really hope I'm approved by the admins!
It was really exciting being able to publish my first chapter!
Is this what all authors feel like when they publish something? This stressful feeling with a bunch of excitement mixed in?
After looking around the vast, blank, expanse I call home, I can safely assure you that it's actually gaining color! Sure a lot of it's just drab grays and whites, but it getting there!
After I published the first chapter a number of the screens started turning on as well. A couple on the left of where I was hovering said things like [Rising Stars] and showed a whole BUNCH of stories from the thousands level. A couple of the other categories were stuff like [Top Rated] with a couple of stories in the TENS of thousands for followers. I wonder what that's like, you must be served like a king up there.
It was a lot less exciting to look at, but to the right was the same situation with the TVs but a little different going on inside. Most of them showed things like interacting with the [Royal Road] webpage, going to [Google], as well as a [Incognito Mode] on the top right screen.
It looked scary, I don't want to go there.
The internet -as I came to know what the right TVs were called- was weird, it had so many cats. Pictures of cats, videos of cats, there were even some celebrity cats like the [Top Rated] stories! There was an exceptional amount of cats on this one page called [Youtube].
After digging a little deeper I found different types of webpages. Ones that didn't seem all that welcoming had a giant firewall that wouldn't let me in at first. I had to answer some questions first from someone called "ReCAPTCHA", what a stupid name! They were various pictures of animals, and the question at the top asked, [Select all the images with cats in them.]
Readers and their cats!
After getting through I was immediately bombarded with pages and pages of information showing how humans' brains worked with addiction and how to get over it. Something called "Psychology", anyway, I just read and took in all the examples the site had to offer. Stuff like "enabling", "hormones", stories on how they came to their addictions, and how they came over them.
So I just took all the things that humans -I like the term 'readers' better- find addicting, and what the commonalities were and stored them away on a save file in the [Notes] section of my [Author Dashboard]. It's so fun being called an author!
With this newfound knowledge in hand, I mentally flew out to the outside world and started walking.
I didn't know where to at the time, but I knew what I was looking for. CatGirls! A cross between a cat and a female reader! I knew from the forums I found on places like [Google] and [Facebook] that the best place to find cats was either buying them from someone else or in shelters. Seeing as I didn't know where to find either, I set out to look for some on the streets called strays.
The other stories gave me weird looks as I walked past them sputtering "pspspspspsp" to the seemingly limitless darkness. That was the case, however, until one of the stories asked me what I was doing. He was a little taller than me with blue skin and dark eyes. Compared to my black hair, white skin, and red eyes.
"Looking for Catgirls, what else?" It was a weird question, but it seemed he was genuinely curious.
"Why don't you just ask your author for some?" He must have been in denial to think our authors would give us anything down here. Although he didn't have that dead look in his eyes like the rest of the stories around us.
"My author forgot about me, but I'm my own author now! I don't need them anymore." "That's... great."
I don't think he believes me, now slightly annoyed I asked "Does your author still make you chapters?"
His demeanor changed a bit, "...No, he went on to one of my brothers to work on him. He's all the way up in the thousands now. But! My author said he was just on a hiatus from me to focus on more important things! He'll come back soon when all the chapters are done with his other story. He said so to my readers in the comments himself!"
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He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself more than me. I looked him in the eyes, a smidgen of sadness in mine, to a lot of us around here. Hiatus is just another word for forgotten.
He did have a bit of readers and views from what I could see, he still had a warm glow coming from his exposed core n his chest. Unlike the other stories around him that looked like cold dead husks of themselves from another life. A life I was no longer going to sit around to be a part of.
"Want to follow me to find some CatGirls?" "I'm not sure, what if we wander too far and end up on a different level? The mods there kill any stories that try to get through the gates." While a valid concern, I didn't think we were going to be going anywhere near any staircases. "Even if we did run into one all the way out here, we'll just stay far away enough from 'em to not pose a threat!" I exclaimed. "It's not like they're going to run down the staircase to get us anyway, they're too privileged to come down here." I held out my hand to him "Comin'?"
"Okay, i-if you say so." He took my hand and we were off! While it took him a bit to get the "pspspspsp" right, it felt nice having something to do with someone else. Even if he wasn't as good as me at "pspspspsp" -ing.
"Are you looking for anything in particular?" He asked as we continued to walk through the darkness, passing by the occasional story who looked at us curiously. "Maybe, I'm just looking for catgirls to give to my future readers." "OH! Like maid CatGirls? Maybe even a superpowered CatGirl like in one of those fantasy novels? Look there's a fantasy novel ahead of us!" I looked to where he was pointing, there was a story up ahead that indeed had the coloration and shape of a fantasy novel.
Some looked like oversized wizard hats for more magic-focused novels, and others more on what their main character focused on. Like this one up ahead that was in the shape of a giant red sword, the character probably wields a sword and has a lot of blood on his hands.
I looked from me to Blue -what I've decided to call him- and to the stories surrounding us, "How come we aren't shapes?"
"Oh we are," he said turning to me "It's just that when stories are being made they take on more of a shape instead of a persona. That was what the 'building' you felt inside was." I looked at him strangely. "How did you know what it felt like? I never told you."
It was his turn to give me the strange look "We all come to be in the same way, some might have different paths but as long as the author has the story well thought out it's the same result. I felt the same way when I first became sentient of what I was."
Now having something VERY important to think about, I turned to look ahead. My own being in this world and what I was before it is at the forefront.
Was I a thought?
A feeling?
Did they also have memories taken from them or was it only me from the beginning?
Or was that what a persona was?
Will I be FORGOTTEN again and the next me won't know about anything that happened here?
Did something already happen and I've just FORGOTTEN?
Who am I?
"About what you asked earlier," Blue started, interrupting my uncontrolled train of thought. "Usually stories develop a persona when they leave [Level-0] and can choose to take on a form similar to the shape of the authors and readers. They can switch back and forth whenever they want though."
Being in the shape of a giant sword seemed cumbersome, even more so when he tried to turn to us as we passed by. His tip dug through the black stone and formed a semicircle around his body. A classic sign of an author not thinking about the consequences of making their protagonist so big that there wasn't any more room in the story for any other characters.
"Hello! What're you doing all the way out here?" Even though the giant sword seemed not the most well of, he had some view to his name, just that he didn't have any followers to give him enough of a secure income to make it up a level. Views from readers are the currency here according to the story that tagged along with me. Apparently, he was from the upper levels until his author stopped looking out for him and he slowly spent all his views ending up down here.
"We're trying to find CatGirls, do you know if any are around here?" "Sorry, I don't think so. The last animal I saw was a WolfGirl story making her way up the stairs a while back."
"A WolfGirl?" Blue asked, excitement clear from the way his core glowed brighter. "Of course! She had red streaks going through her black hair from what I could remember."
Why would anyone want to read about a WolfGirl when there are perfectly good CatGirls? Crazies
"Well we're looking for CatGirls, not WolfGirls, so if you don't know anything about them let's get going!" It wasn't the nicest thing to say, but Blue seemed way too interested in what that Sword guy was saying and seemed to have FORGOTTEN about me. Pulling Blue away from the crazy WolfGirl spewing Sword we went on our way for what we were originally doing.
Looking for CatGirls.
As it always should be.
With me.