"Now I have a body, I'm functioning"

"'Functioning'"

"I can move my body which is a ship, I can control most of the electronic thingies inside though it may take a while so yes, functioning"

"Fair enough. You were saying?"

"Yeah, now what? How do we fix the physical layer?"

"Easy, see that pixelated voxel looking thing there at the edge of space?"

"Yeah"

"Good. As all matter is connected to other matter is very hard to separate and with the dissociation between layers of the simulation the processor doesn't know what each thing is anymore or how it would work.

The information is still there and YOU can realize what is there. That is why observation is so important.

So you have to acquire some of that, put it in the frontal right bay and test it. I already adapted that with the bots.

Once enough matter of a type is understood the processor will be able to update all similar matter immediately so bring your big ass close before we can start"

Moving the ship was easy, it was my body and could command it easily. Thrusters forward and we were at the edge of the bubble.

It was like there was a fog made of tiny voxels. Some where smaller, some where bigger and some where inside others.

After taking all the atmosphere inside the room the external door opened and moved the body so that some of that fog comes inside.

Closing the bay doors I start to use the prepared equipment

There was a full set of testing tools, lasers, radio, sound, a chemistry set, a multi-analyzer, a fabricator.

After a few tests

"Light passes through with no change, robot cannot interact with it, radar detects nothing, so far all tests didn't do anything nor reported anything"

"Good. What else?"

"That smug tone is excessive. Come on, throw me a bone, I have no idea what that is"

"Come on, really? It is easy"

"I tried all, no machine could manipulate it directly, nothing made it change"

"How about you add a bit of atmosphere to the room and test again?"

Lo and behold the fog disappeared completely. My surprise and shock was cut by Helper laughing.

"So? Do you know what you found out?"

"No, I have no idea. How can matter suddenly disappear"

"And if it wasn't matter?"

"Energy should have interacted with some of the test"

"What else is there to find?"

"Nothing, it has to be either matter or energy. There is nothing else"

"CONGRATS you discovered NOTHING"

.... "WUT?"

"You discovered actual nothing, this is a simulation, if there is free space that has nothing it is literally NOTHING. You would call this free space or just space"

... riiiight, space has emptiness. "So that is emptiness?"

"Nope, that is something else, this is nothing so you discovered nothing. Even more, you discovered a whole lot of nothing so why don't you look outside?"

I was crossed between anger and disbelief. Now most of the fog should banished and there are just a few fog-covered voxel things outside.

"When did this happened? I didn't realize before"

"Just now. The moment you realize that something very simple like nothing else then the processor may use your understanding and actualize itself. Now you can see the space inside this sector. Fix enough times nothing or space in enough sectors and the whole universe should be fixed. Now repeate the same thing with one of those things. Pick the small one that you can fit inside and be careful. It may not be nothing"

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Travelling towards the closes fog thing small enough to fit took a few minutes

Moving slowly this time the bay opens enough for a barge to fit sideways which is barely enough for the closes unknown item to enter the bay.

"This time use the bots to interact with it first. Try to see if they can move it and secure it for the testing"

The bots actually manage to touch that and using light and radiowaves I get the full picture. It is still hazy but it is obviously an asteroid, the full external layer appears and the radiowaves detect different components and even some pockets inside.

Focusing on the electromagnetical waves and varying their amplitude and wavelength gives me more information of the materials and changing the polarization makes the waves react differently to certain components inside, particularly metals.

Then lasers start to hit the asteroid. Slag is formed which is hazy as the material is unknown but it clearly starts to melt around 1500 Celsius.

Bots with tools start to cut small parts and place them in the Chemistry set, making it react to several other components.

A few hours of work with chemicals, a few absolutely useless test with the multi-analyzer and an actual useful test with the fabricator gave me several answers that removed the haze from all the external part of the asteroid

"So, this is obviously an asteroid. Mostly metallic with a combination of nickel and iron over 78% with silica and clay and few small parts of tungsten not completely fused. But hey, the other fog things outside should also be asteroids but are still hazy"

"Well yeah. You know the composition of most of this asteroid to a 0.1% error degree so you know about this. The processor cannot use just this information to get the rest as they are not all the same so you will have to understand all. Also you still have things that you don't know about this asteroid.

Go ahead and cut the center of it to reach at that thing in the middle that gave interference to your radiowaves"

"It should be a metallic core right?"

"Extract it and we will see"

"Why is like that? This is worse that the haze that it had before and it looks... like its wrong even"

"Well, this is corrupted information. It mixed with something not wholly physical and it became like this. Now for this specific one you will need to either destroy it, melt it or connect to that to see what it is there. Now be careful, corruption CAN spread, if it connected to a concept it could be harmful and if it connected to something else the it could be even worse so BE CAREFUL"

"And if I just let it be there and do nothing?"

"Well, it resonates partially with me so I'm guessing it's a concept and it should be good however I cannot do this as I'm just a helper module. You need to do this by yourself. Also THIS ONE should be positive"

"Can't believe that I'm doing this but ok"

Feeling that thing was easy, it emmited a wrongness and connecting to that was also easy.

It felt like something long and .... something like complexity?...

it was strange, there are only feeling, some physical like tiredness, others like happiness...

Helper said that it was a concept, something long that got you tired and happy...

A journey... a worthwhile journey ... no, there was still something wrong, like I had to see something else...

UNDERSTANDING... that was missing.

A discovery trip where you grow through adversity. Yes, that felt right, almost like it was suppoused to be that but when it became tied to the asteroid it could not grow but now...

"WAIT DON'T..."

"WHAT?"

"Great, you absorbed it. Please tell me it wasn't a bad concept."

"It was a discovery trip"

"Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck"

"Hey what is the problem?"

"You absorbed a concept and concepts defines YOU. Now you are partially defined by a long and complicated journey when you are in uncharted waters trying to fix up the damn universe. YOUR LIFE IS ALREADY COMPLICATED ENOUGH MATT"

"Matt?"

"Shit"