Unknowingly, I lose track of the time while giving all my thoughts to the cube in my hands. Most likely half a day has gone by and I am not alone anymore. None of the other representatives of humanity has talked to me and I’ve not acted on my curiosity yet either. The closest of them is about 40 meters away from me and one of them is a girl that looks like a rabbit. I’ll call her -Toothie-, Earlier, Toothie talked to a blurry book floating in front of her. That’s probably her totem, just like the one that usually is by my side. I’ll call mine -Tablet-
Most representatives appear my age and none of them is a child or a grandpa. Surviving until now indeed required physical resilience and my body shivers for a moment before I put away the thoughts that my parents are probably dead by now. According to Tablet, the few humans sitting on lonely chairs in this World will all get a Sice for reaching this place quickly. I make a mental note of as many of them as possible because they’re more likely to survive along with me.
-Birdie- has long hair and he seems to look nervously look all around him. I can’t see his totem.
-Buffy- has dark hair and a gothic watch on her right wrist. Her totem is a stake and she looks like a vampire killer.
-Bono- has blond hair and he is trying to comfort the nearby -Mischa- that has cried for a while now. Perhaps Bono will save her and the rest of the World. Bono’s totem is a shield that looks like it comes from a medieval movie. It’s a square one that big enough you can hide behind. Mischa’s totem seems blurry and it could be an arrow or a long pencil.
Tablet moves a little bit closer to me.
“ Awwwwww boy, not many have arrived yet. I’ve said that a Sice is usually one in 50 or so… well let’s talk about that. I can see farther than your human eyes, little one, there are about 2000 humans here. The ones that arrived within 4 hours after the opening update are Sice like you and your elite group numbers fewer than 500. Way too many chairs have been prepared. If that’s the case, the Emergency Council might commit seppuku at the end of this. They should not have given you as much as 2 weeks time alone in the desert. This death toll is unimaginable. On this chair you’re safe, but of the 300 millions other humans, perhaps half will die today. It looks like there are many chairs but the Council expected to fill them more than once. They’re delaying the final update, while waiting on Soul Investors and that might let more humans survive.”
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-Tablet, I’ve never bothered with it but you can call me -Xenos-. It’s not good for my pride as a man if you make it as if I’m a little one. If you’re the totem of my soul, then I suspect that you’re not older than I am. It won’t do, definitely call me Xenos.
“Sure Xenos, now little one have you tried to challenge the cube?”
-Yup, that’s all I did today. I’ve made some progress in regard to it. At first it would not react at all, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a Koi pond that my mother brought me to see a few times and it’s helping me with this cube. They’re very alike and I’m the skimmer that must refine its surface. It’s a slow process during which I forget everything else around me and pretend that there are impurities on the surface of the cube. Sometimes it feels like the cube emits something that I can only feel, not see. Then, that invisible stuff leaves the surface of the cube and it never comes back. If more of that stuff goes away, perhaps I can then see inside the cube.-
“Oh you Sice, you’ll make me cry. What you do is beautiful, but STOP IT. You’ll die. That cube is way stronger than you. Just feel it, feel your soul and that cube's then take a look WITHOUT MAKING IT MORE DANGEROUS THAN IT IS.