It takes some time before I manage to fully calm down enough to think in a coherent manner. One that lets me direct my thoughts instead of serving as a passenger while they figure out their own destination.

I am grateful to Aethos for attempting to calm me down, however ultimately little it had the potential to help given my mental state and situation

They still did a better job of it than anyone else I’d had growing up. I’m not sure what that says, exactly, but it says something about my childhood that no one did a good job of comforting me up until this point.

Except maybe Mr. Jenkins. I’m not sure he counts, though, because he didn’t comfort me with words. He just let me stay after school for as long as I wanted to use the Smithing Club equipment, giving me pointers where he saw that I needed them. He also died that Summer, before I'd entered junior year. He was a very important person to me, so it hurt when he passed. I really needed kindness that year.

As for now, I’m not a fan of my situation in the slightest. I am also supremely embarrassed about my loss of composure despite how otherwise understandable it was for me to do so.

I mean, who wouldn’t break down in panic and fear after being kidnapped, not only from your home but your Universe entirely, and told you can’t ever go back because not even the Gods know where you are. Oh, and also because you don’t have a body anymore!

Even when I get a new body, as that's apparently what I have to look forward to, I’ll be stuck here because, again, even if the possibility for me to leave the Universe through some other portal is there, I don’t know where my Universe is relative to this one. What kind of bullshit is that? My world’s scientists hadn’t even proved the multiverse theory, let alone knew where our universe was inside it.

Just thinking about it gives me a headache, quite frankly. Which is even more impressive since I don’t have a head to ache in the first place.

Aethos has yet to return, though their hug hasn’t let up for even a second. It is supremely comfortable, yes, but it can only do so much to assuage the spiraling. I don’t think it’s possible to experience such a level of comfort inside of a body.

Imagine waking up at the perfect temperature, in the perfect position in your bed, perfectly snuggled up in the softest blankets. You don’t have to pee. You could go back to bed but you get to just bask in the sensation for a while.

It’s that times a thousand. It probably has to do with the sensation being applied directly to my soul, which is apparently now made of “Conscious Essence,” whatever that is, through the temporary “container” Aethos has apparently placed me in. Plus the fact that it’s directly to the soul instead of through a buffer like the body. I could be wrong, but I’m probably not.

“Aethos,” I call out after a while. I’d long since stopped crying, though the panic attack had taken some time to abate. I’m still afraid, of course; why wouldn’t I be? I have no idea what I’ll be walking, or falling rather, into on the other side of the portal. The only reason I have any chance at collecting myself at all is because Aethos’s consciousness had been “nearby.”

I’m not sure how it works, exactly, but it’s obviously some sort of liminal space between Universes and outside the effects of time. It must be selective as far as the time aspect goes, otherwise Aethos would be unable to observe anything inside the System. Which is also them. It sounds complicated. Way too complicated for me to grasp fully.

Aethos must have some sort of authority over the laws of physics in this place but not enough to change the laws of reality entirely, apparently.

Spells, which must be powered by a different “state” of Essence than Conscious or Divine—whatever that state represents in a literal manner—cannot affect the soul due to its status as Conscious Essence. For some reason.

I suppose that means Soul Magic is impossible, then. Does that mean that Liches don’t exist in this Universe?

Aethos's presence suddenly returns in full force, or at least the same amount of force they'd been subjecting me to earlier, since they'd said if they used the full brunt of it I'd lose myself entirely. “Lichdom is possible because the soul, which is how I’ll be referring to Conscious Essence in future for the most part, isn't the target of the Spell, the phylactery is. The phylactery is a container for the soul the same way a body is, though it isn’t biological. It has to do with the conceptual understanding of the soul that one has, the nature of it as Essence. Some, for instance, couldn't conceive of their soul existing outside of their body for even an instant, which would disallow such a thing from happening. It requires Spells cast outside System assistance, however.”

“So a person would cast a Spell on the container and it would allow them to transfer their soul to it somehow?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. There are different ways to complete such a thing, but it isn’t common and it's mostly the realm of those not powerful enough to reach a sufficient soul density to extend their lifespan past the biological limit. Those who cannot grow on their own and are unwilling to die, thinking that in death, even undeath, they’ll become something great. This is largely not the case.”

It sounds like Liches are weaklings in this Universe, then, rather than a super-tier undead with an uncountable number of Spells and a crazy amount of magical power like in Earth fiction.

“That’s most probably because this isn’t fiction. If you can’t reach immortality on your own, or gather enough of a density that would satisfy your requirements for life expectancy, only then would you resort to becoming undead. It's unpopular, to say the least. A last resort as you cease to be part of the System and every scrap of power you gain after that comes from metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears. Of course, that's not to say that there aren't powerful Liches.”

“You keep referring to soul density. What does that even mean?”

“It is the basis of power for the entirety of this Universe. As you grow in ability, traveling down your Path toward Deification, your soul grows denser. As this happens, you get stronger, faster, longer lived, and so on as you begin to embody, quite literally in fact, your cultivated Concept.”

“So basically I’m now living in a Xianxia novel?”

“Xianxia is Chinese cultivation. You’re not Chinese. You’re not even in a body, anymore. You’re in a portal fantasy, if anything.”

“Okay, ouch, too soon, but also portal fantasies don’t have cultivation as a major plot point, do they?”

“Not necessarily, but they can. Yours apparently does. It’s not Xianxia, though. Just cultivation since you’re a white boy.”

“Jeez, what happened to the weirdly empathetic God of the System I was talking to before this?” It’s almost a completely different personality at this point!

“You needed me to be that for you before. I’m almost a quarter of a million years old in subjective time. It gets boring not being able to talk to anyone. You’re the first person I’ve spoken to in several thousand years in real time. Much, much more than that in subjective time. When that portal opened and you came through, I learned an incredible amount of information and I gained a lot of new and fun ways to talk. Memes.”

“Memes are pretty great,” I concede.

“Right? Anyway, back on track. As you continue cultivating a specific Concept, which can pretty much be anything, you eventually begin embodying it. The idea is that you will eventually become a Deity of a specific Concept. Darkness, Shadow, Death, Nature, Air, et cetera. They can get pretty specific, though those are rarer.”

“That would imply that there is a God or Goddess of bubbles or farts. Or fart bubbles.”

“Would it, though?” They say incredulously, sarcasm very heavy in their tone. “That's an interesting fallacy for you to suddenly attempt committing. Would you want to think of everything in the realm of fart bubbles? Because that’s what would happen if you somehow managed to cultivate to Godhood on the Concept of fart bubbles, whatever that is. You would have to be able to view everything in the context of a fart bubble.” Their voice is sarcastic, but amused.

“So if I were to ‘cultivate’ on the Concept of solitude, I would have to stay alone?”

“If that’s what solitude meant to you, you would eventually embody your understanding of it, yes. You would avoid others as much as possible because you wouldn’t be able to conceptualize doing anything else. You would become Solitude, the further you went down your Path. It's not that you're being forced or coerced to act a certain way, but more that certain portions of you become entrenched as you go along.”

“How do you gain density, though? I know what you’re saying as far as what you have to do for the most part but how does it work?”

“Essence is taken in through channels in your body. That Essence is in the form of Unconscious Essence, also called Dormant Essence, and becomes Reactive Essence, or Active Essence, upon entering your Essence bladder just behind your heart. The Conscious Essence that makes up your soul essentially instigates a 'phase shift,' from the former to the latter. Reactive Essence is what is used to power Spells and Skills, both that which sits in the Channels themselves, but also what is drawn in. The portion that sits in the Channels, over time, transitions into Conscious Essence through a process called Maturation.”

"What are all these phases of Essence? You've referenced a few now."

"There is Divine Essence, or the Anchor state. This is the state reached upon becoming a Deity at the end of your Path, where your soul density reaches a point of oversaturation and essentially crystallizes—again, so reductive—though it is incredibly, incredibly rare, even now after the System. There is Reactive Essence, which, as I said, is the Active state. It's the Essence utilized to power Spell Arrays and Skill molds, and when extended your Aura can stimulate this type of Essence, another concept I wish I had forever to explain to you. Typically the terms are shortened to just Spells and Skills. Next is Unconscious Essence, which is the Dormant state of Essence, the most abundant type and the type that permeates the ambient atmosphere. Then there is Conscious Essence, the Sapient state, arguably the most important type as the state of Essence that makes up your soul. Not necessarily in that order, but they follow a lot of the same laws of matter you're familiar with."

“So it requires me to take in Essence somehow for my soul to get denser, then?”

“Well, how else would it happen? You can’t gain something you don’t take in. Law of conservation of matter. Well, you'll notice how that relates to Essence as you go about your life, but it still applies. Even if it's strange. There is a certain level of density that can be obtained after the fact through Aura exercises, but that’s a result of condensing the Essence further rather than because your soul gains more of itself. Again, simplistic explanation, but it suits our needs.”

“Aura? ”

“It’s the portion of your soul that can be consciously controlled. The internally expanding density I mentioned. It—the expanded portion—is inverted, essentially, and can be utilized outside the body at a range that increases as your density does. You use it to cast Spells and power Skills, though Skills are always internal, meaning Aura is less important for Skill use but essential for Spells as those are external. Spells can be cast on yourself, yes, but it’s more like at yourself whereas Skills are powered internally.”

“I have some concept of what an Aura is, and I know what Spells and Skills are in a rudimentary way—you know the lore; you've seen my Universe, somehow—but how do they work in this Universe or System or whatever, exactly?”

I can tell this is all the barest of the bare as far as information they could be giving me goes, but anything more advanced than the basics would be pointless. Even this much is nearly overwhelming. It would be like someone who had never heard of photosynthesis asking someone with a PhD in the subject how plants worked.

The PhD might have all the information in the world, but that person who’d asked the question wouldn't understand something that complex in such a short amount of time. The PhD had spent upwards of six years, presumably, on the dedicated research of such a topic. In this analogy, Aethos is to a PhD what a PhD is to me. They're hundreds of thousands of years old, apparently. I can't imagine all that they know.

“Exactly. Keep in mind, as I've stated several times, that what I'm giving you is incredibly simplistic, and not even close to the whole picture. Not because I view you as lacking in intelligence, but because all of this took many years to learn and to do anything else would be a disservice. You wouldn't grasp the details and, although I would love to explain to you the mechanics of the very Universe itself as I understand it, it wouldn't do you any good. Even though I can keep you here in subjective time for as long as I want, as long as you want, time isn't everything. Keeping you here that long would only serve to make the anxiety of the other side unbearable, and I do have to let the world turn, as it were, eventually.”

It’s true. I might go back into a panic. I’m only barely keeping it together as it is.

“To answer your question, in the same way your soul converts Reactive Essence into a compatible form, it can also use it to express your Intent and Will through specific formations called Arrays. These are geometrical patterns that serve to translate this Reactive Essence, Intent, and Will into the Spell. The System supplies these, though they are ‘cookie-cutter’ arrays not specific to you at all, and automates the process of casting until you learn how to do it on your own. Creating Arrays that is. The ones that the System supplies are universal, not made for scaling.”

“So I will eventually have to learn how to do it? Even with the System?”

“Yes. You can’t reach Mastery of a Skill or Spell until you're able to recreate its effects without System assistance, and then modify it in ways that suit you. Plus, System Spells are all at the base levels of power, anyway. No personalization. Until you know how to modify them, you aren’t getting as much 'bang for your buck,' as it were.”

“I suppose that makes sense. You did say the System was basically an incredibly complex teaching aid, though not in those words.”

“You could say that, yes. It's accurate, if reductive. It was also a tool for everyone to immediately access enough power to keep themselves from dying, either through catastrophic failure, random encounter with some dangerous animal, or a Confluence.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Confluence? That seems important.”

“They’re a function of the Universe I can’t—couldn't—stop because we never figured out exactly how they happen. We know what happens, just not exactly how. They arise from collections of Unconscious Essence suddenly shifting to Reactive Essence outside the effects of Conscious Essence, given form as Beasts ranging from killer puppies to eldritch horrors the likes of which might make your shit shit itself. The latter are typically handled by those of a higher advancement, but not always.”

“So monsters spawn from ambient Essence?”

“To put it simply, yes, though they're colloquially known as Beasts, not monsters. The Universe designed a really horrible recycling service. The Confluences don’t get as bad now that the System is in place because there are so many more people in the Universe. That means more Essence is being utilized at any given moment than before but they still happen. When they do, the very first thing those Beasts do is look for the nearest source of life and attempt to exterminate it, no holds barred.”

“Why, though?”

“For the same reason you should kill them. Essence recycling. When a Beast is killed, their Essence disperses back into the atmosphere to be used or to settle again, but in a wider, less condensed area. When a person is killed, the Conscious Essence, which is vastly more concentrated than that stored in a spawned Confluence Beast, returns to its natural state of Unconscious Essence to be used by the rest of the population, recycled into the atmosphere.”

“That’s horrible.”

“It is. That's why I said it's a horrible recycling service. The Universe, and thus Essence itself, is somewhat sentient but has no concept of morality, nor does it have intelligence as you or I. To it, the most logical way for it to keep Essence in circulation, which is required for just about everything but especially for maintaining life in the Universe in general, is to disperse it. The most efficient way to do that is to release it from its container as quickly as possible, if you catch my meaning."

"That's beyond messed up."

"Indeed. It’s why I became the System rather than Transcend beyond this plane entirely. To save as many as I could from such a fate. Considering the world contained maybe seven billion people at its most populated prior to the System, Ackellia, which is about seven and a half times as large as your world, is now averaging numbers above fifty billion, I’d say I’ve accomplished that."

Holy shit! Fifty billion people on one planet? That’s crazy!

“I can't disagree with you there," I say.

“If you did, I’d question your intelligence.”

“Hey!”

“I'm just telling the truth. It’s the entire reason I exist, after all. To keep people alive when the Universe actively attempts to kill them. It’s the reason you’re here, too. Before me, with the portal Spell you unfortunately found yourself a victim of, you would have ceased to exist. Your atoms would have simply broken into their component parts, never to be detected again, leaving your soul without a space to occupy as this space wouldn't have existed.”

“But why, though? What does the membrane of the Universe, or whatever you were saying, have to do with my body not being able to pass through? Is that what happened to it? My body, I mean. It got atomized?” I’m horrified. Aethos had said I couldn't go back to my body, but I didn’t think the reason was because it had been destroyed.

“… Yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to describe it earlier because hearing such a thing, I can imagine, is terrible. The reason is because this Universe is ‘heavier,’ in a way. It has a force that your Universe does not and, as such, is inimical to anything without this force or something of a similar weight. This is the ‘brane’ theory in action.”

I think I understand somewhat. I've never heard of the 'brane' theory," whatever that is, but from their explanation of it, supposing two Universes occupied the same amount of space—though this Universe definitely can't be infinite as I doubt very highly that Aethos's 'net' reaches forever in every direction—but one also had something "extra" as this Universe does in Essence, then there would theoretically be less intervening space between particles. Which means that were something without such energy to come in contact with it, and that energy attempted to enter those spaces it sees as empty, despite that not being the case, then it might simply disintegrate whatever it came in contact with.

“So because my Universe didn’t have Essence, by trying to force my body through the portal, I was essentially atomized by the force exerted on my flesh as the Essence tried to fill space it saw as empty despite not really being empty?”

“Yes!" Their voice is joyous, excited even, as if they hadn't truly expected me to understand what was going on. I don't know if I should be offended by that.

"It seems that you are grasping the concepts quite well, especially under the circumstances. The membrane theory is essentially positing that each Universe, should there indeed be others out there—and now, of course, you know for certain there are—is a three dimensional membrane embedded in some higher dimensional space. Each one is native to itself, meaning each has its own fundamental laws of physics, the authority of which depends on the 'weight' of those laws should they interact with each other. Unfortunately, that law—the law of Essence—seems to have more authority than those without some form of equal law."

It's a complicated concept, for certain, and I understand, I suppose. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it. If you were put on a boat in the middle of the ocean while you were sleeping, and when you woke up they told you the reason you had to stay on the boat the rest of your life is because all the land had disappeared, you'd have a reason, sure, but that's still depressing as hell.

Even with as little information as I have, I'm getting overwhelmed. It's barely any information, really. The smallest amount. Which is another piece to this whole pie that I just don't like the taste of. I don't know anything. I know nothing about how the Universe works except the broadest bits of information. The only way for me to learn those things would be to stay here and ask question after question after question and ... I don't want to do that. I can't do that. I would just be prolonging the fear I have of what's on the other side. Giving into the idea that I should just wait until I'm less afraid.

I am afraid, yes, but I'm also angry. So fucking angry. There are so many emotions burbling around in this big blob of soul shit that I can hardly identify them all. They're just churning around in the cauldron, bubbling, toiling, troubling.

Aethos snorts. I can't imagine why.

This feeling is a rage I'm more than familiar with. I've felt it on more than one occasion. I felt it when my father threw Chester—a black lab I'd bought with my own money when I was thirteen—out of the driver's side window of his ugly blue pickup truck when he had snuck out of my arms. He'd gotten up between the two front seats, tail wagging, and licked his face. I'd laughed, because it was silly, but my father didn't think so. He grabbed him by the collar, threw him out the window even though we were on an Interstate highway, and refused to go back so I could get him.

I'd felt it when I was fifteen and I'd punched him in the face so hard I'd broken his eye socket and fractured his cheek bone. That was the day before my mother died. The day before he killed her. It had been my fault, too, for all the therapists attempts at making me believe otherwise. My actions had directly brought about the circumstances leading to her death. I'd told the cops that, even, but they didn't agree with my assessment. My father had still tried to blame me at trial, though. The jury hadn't liked that move, either.

I may have pissed him off by exposing her affair, but he could simply have divorced her instead of sloppily orchestrating her murder, drowning her in the river less than five miles from the bar they frequented regularly. A bar he knew had cameras.

My mother had been just as terrible as my father. In some ways, she'd been worse. She'd never hit me. No, that was my father's job, and she reminded him of it often. She had, however, been instrumental in the dissolution of my self-esteem. Gave me the bricks I'd used to build the dam between who I was and who I acted like and told me which parts were good enough to stay outside of it. As you can imagine, not much made the cut.

She let me know every chance she got that she didn't love me. She told me she wished I'd died the way the last one had so she didn't have to look at me every day. So she didn't have to burden herself with dealing with such a stupid child. Such a weak and disgusting and ugly child.

"Why didn't you just die? Why can't you just kill yourself?" She'd say, the bottle clinking against my doorframe as she swung her arm around with drunken coordination. "It's disgusting that I had to carry something like you inside me for nine months, only to be disappointed at every turn you've managed to live this long. It's too bad your father wasn't man enough to finish the job all those times. You and those other little brats."

Most of the time, I kept my door locked. She would just bang on the outside of it, attempting to cajole me into opening it so she could say it all to my face. She was deeply ill, I realize in hindsight, not that it makes any difference. I know now that she'd hated her life and resented me for it. Resented my father and my other siblings, too, though I got the brunt of it as the oldest. Even from them. She'd somehow made them believe that I was the reason she was the way she was and that if I weren't there, they would all be happier.

What a crock of shit. That woman had a heart as black as the void itself. She knew who her husband was, what he'd done. She'd laughed at me when I told her. I was only ten.

He didn't even remember doing it.

That was the first time I'd made an attempt on my life, to say it in a softer way. Imagine that. A ten year old doing something so fucking horrible. She didn't care. Didn't even take me to the hospital after. Just let me vomit the pills up all over my bed and refused to help me clean it up when I finally managed to stop.

That's one of the many reasons I don't care that she's dead. I feel guilty about the circumstances leading up to it, but I think in a lot of ways I immediately felt better when I'd found out. I felt safer, if only marginally. Thank whatever God exists in my Universe my father was born so stupid, honestly. If he were smart enough to cover his tracks, I might have ended up in a much different situation.

I'd known forever about the affair but I hadn't cared. My father was evil and I got some sick satisfaction in knowing that, even if he didn't know about it, in some small way he was being fucked over. It wasn't until the next day—the day after I'd punched him and he'd returned from the hospital with a big patch of gauze over a bruised and bloodied eye, face swollen and grotesquely distended due to his injuries—when my mother had returned from one of her short "business trips," that I'd decided to get even.

When my father had seen the evidence—pictures and video evidence from her secret phone she'd kept in a compartment I'd caught one of her "partners" putting in—I'd sent him from a fake number, he'd taken matters into his own hands.

They took me out of class the next day to inform me that she'd drowned and that they'd taken my father into custody awaiting arraignment. He posted bail. They couldn't put together the necessary paperwork fast enough to get me temporary housing and I'd been forced to stay with him for eight days until it went through.

He hadn't been found guilty, yet, they'd offered as an apology. It was the shortest trial I'd ever heard of. They'd made a decision in four hours. I was the only witness they'd brought in. They played the camera footage of my father parking his vehicle, getting into the passenger seat of my mother's car which then drove away, some time later returning on foot with sopping wet clothing, getting back into his vehicle and driving away again.

They made me tell the story of what I had done. The lawyer had told me they might try to frame it as if I had done it, saying that my mother had been a terrible woman who neglected all her children and that I had the means and motive, but they didn't do that. I cried on the stand while explaining how I thought it was my fault she died. All I'd wanted was for her to stop being mean to me.

The judge called for a recess, rubbed my back as I cried, and when I was done had the therapist they'd assigned as my guardian take me back to the hospital where she worked. She's the one who tried making me understand that what I had done was not what caused my mother's death. My father had taken the information and decided to do something horrible with it. I was not responsible for his actions. My mother had done something bad, too, and it isn't my responsibility as the child to hide that information.

There was other stuff, too, but that was the gist of it. It wasn't my fault.

I don't know if I ever truly accepted that. I believe it now, I suppose, logically at least. I haven't missed her once, though.

They told me the verdict had been reached not an hour after that and that my father had been taken to a state prison, sentenced to life without parole. I never asked what all he was being charged with.

He was stabbed to death a few weeks later. I didn't go to his funeral.

It's that rage that I feel now. It burns away at the fear as I stoke it further. I can be afraid later. Now? I want to fight. I might be using it as a way to avoid my actual issues, but if it keeps me on my metaphorical feet, I'll take it. If they die, those fuckers who kidnapped me, so be it.

Morality is a luxury reserved for those perched atop the pedestal, gazing down at the desperate but distant struggle below. It's easy to debate right and wrong from such heights, where the gnawing pangs of hunger are but distant echoes, and the brutal fight for survival is nothing more than a speck in the window of their privilege. You can debate the morality of killing your oppressors all you want, but until you're in that position, in the streets looking up at the ivory towers that have overtaken your whole world, you're just throwing your shit off the penthouse balcony complaining about how much it stinks and everyone else just has to live in it.

Maybe it should be a hard decision for me to make. The decision to kill them. I don't even know them, who they are, what their motivations were. They could be cogs in some grander machine for all I know. I still don't care. It isn't a hard decision. They're already metaphorically dead to me. I just have to make it a reality.

"I enjoy the way your mind works. You're definitely unable to stay on a single track in that little rail system you call a mind, but your introspection is impressive. I agree with your assertions of morality and who gets to define it. Often to the victor go the spoils, including defining right and wrong, and thus shaping the moral hierarchy. Society sets the standards, and the sheep follow the herd, as they say. Those who stray risk being cut off, left behind to make their own way through the trenches."

"Where, then, does the cliff of 'good' plunge into the valley of 'bad?' Who decides that? Is it not you? If something is a law, does that make it inherently moral? Can there be no immoral laws? Should the general consensus, then, be deferred to over one's own perceptions? Of course not. You must make your own decisions, chart your own course, find your own definition of morality. Figure for yourself where the metaphorical line in the sand is drawn and strive not to cross it. You may make mistakes, but as long as you learn from them and keep trying, that's what matters. There are no easy answers, unfortunately, but having principles to gauge your responses on is an easy way to work through the hard ones."

Aethos pauses. Dramatically, of course. They chuckle.

"Come on! Don't draw attention to the theatrics. I didn't point out your Shakespeare reference while you were being melodramatic, why must you point out my own dramatics? You're no fun." They pause again. "Seriously, though, Zed. If you feel like it would be best, kill them. Don't look back. They'll only keep doing this to others after you. If you can't kill them, escape and find a member of authority to take matters out of your hands. Or leave them be. You aren't responsible for their actions, nor what they decide to do with the life you allow them to keep, should you do so."

"They're dead," I say numbly. I've never killed anyone before, of course, and I may be putting the cart before the horse, presupposing I even can defeat however many people are on the other side of the portal, but for some reason I'm not sensing any doubts bubbling up from inside me. My quandary earlier was more about how I feel like I should feel bad about not feeling bad.

"No one else will gift you the same consideration, though. Your friends are your friends and they will behave as such, but your enemies will gut you like a fish with barely a blink and drink ale over your cooling corpse. I hinted at it already, Zed, but your world was aloof to the point of coldness but what I didn't say was that there is very little neutrality in this Universe. The good is very good, and the bad is the same. You might see things you wish you could burn from your mind, but you'll also get to live through moments you hope shine in your memory forever. As with your morals, find your place in that world. Don't try to live outside of it."

"Alright. I think I'm ready to do whatever it is you had planned. I'm not really one for research and theory, although I can definitely get stuck on that particular train track if interested enough. Right now, though, I want to do."

"Perfect. We'll get you set up to live a very long and healthy life. We'll make your body as strong as your spirit is, too."

"Make it stronger. I don't want to shatter under the first gust of wind."

"Make jokes all you like, but you're still here. Even after all that you've been through."

"Yeah, yeah. You said that before."

"It was true then and it's true now."

"... What's next?"

"Next, we ...." Aethos extends the "e" on "we," for a second before a little blue box pops up in my line of sight.

~ PICK YOUR SPECIES! ~

"... give you the illusion of choice!"

"Huh?"