The Simulacrum

~Chapter 145~ Part 1

In the end, our roll in the hay with the princess was a short one, mostly due to my consideration. Despite the brave front she put up, Elly was still clearly worried about The Girl interrupting us again, so I did my best to have a quick finish and to keep things under the sheets. That didn't mean she would let me 'work' afterwards though, and she doggedly refused to let me out of her sight all evening. I didn't mind her pampering, though I admit I was a tiny bit worried about making the Emergent wait for too long.

The princess didn't share my concerns and she was clearly trying her best to take my mind off the matter despite its importance. Was it because she was oblivious to the significance of our contact, was it her habitual optimism, or did she just trust that everything would turn out right so long as I was involved? Maybe a combination of all three. In any case, after our quick romp we took a shower and then spent the rest of the evening brainstorming hobby ideas for me.

That part felt a bit unnatural, to be honest. I admit that getting a hobby would've been good for my mental health, but trying to forcefully adopt one felt like putting the cart before the horse. Elly had fun while we were 'shopping for options' on the internet though, so it wasn't time wasted. I seriously doubted that I would ever pick up woodworking or tabletop wargaming as a regular hobby though.

The evening passed us by remarkably fast, and tried as she might, the princess eventually got so sleepy she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. It was my cue to guide her to the bed, and once I tucked her in and made sure that she was fast asleep, I sneaked out of her embrace and, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, I prepared myself for the inevitable.

But before that, a quick mental organization was in order. What did I know about The Girl?

…

Not much, that was for sure. I knew that she was part of this group of Emergents that once planned to do something to the Crowned Coalescence, except back then he was the Red Sun of Somethingsomethingidunno (seriously, some of the Emergent-specific lingo was fundamentally untranslatable). It failed, or maybe not, and I could see them freaking out about it whenever I unconsciously or consciously infiltrated their clubhouse by any other name. Out of all of them, The Girl had the least presence. She was mostly just hanging out with the rest and not doing much, which now made sense, considering she was apparently in cahoots with the Crowned Coalescence ever since I didn't even know when.

Again, my understanding of the situation was so full of holes that the Swiss was about to sue me for copyright infringement on their cheese, but it was still better than the abject lack of understanding I had until very recently. Or maybe it wasn't. Ignorance was bliss, after all.

But putting all of that aside, I sat down at the edge of my bed, calmed my nerves by practising the simple breathing exercises I learned a while back, and once I felt sufficiently calm and collected (or at the very least tolerably shaky and agitated), something occurred to me.

The Girl manifested here, in my room, by ripping a hole in reality. That was markedly different compared to how I usually moved between the here and the void of lack of space that wasn't here. Outside the Simulacrum, I guessed. Either way, since our methods differed, what if I wasn't able to find her? What if we missed each other? Would I need to figure out a way to contact her on the fly?

"I'll build that bridge when I get there," I whispered under my breath and immediately plunged my only unique phantom limb, the one I affectionately called 'the stubby one' into my own head.

I'd experienced this so many times I'd long since gotten used to it, but the sensation of getting compressed and my whole being getting sucked through the metaphysical equivalent of a plastic straw would never not be weird. While I was vaguely aware of the passage of time, or lack thereof, I was still startled by how quickly I found myself in the spaceless void between spaces. Was it because I was getting more experienced with this kind of thing, or just because I kept growing more phantom limbs? They'd been enhancing all aspects of my out-of-context abilities, so why not this one?

But putting these mostly meaningless academic questions aside, I glanced around at my surroundings. Well, as much as that applied to this situation; in truth, it felt less like I moved, and more like everything around me moved in response to my will while I remained perfectly stationary. Normally, I would've looked for some anomalies to search for traces of the not-dark-not-room, but I sincerely doubted she would want to meet me there. In that case, what other option did I have? Maybe I should've just waited for her to make contact again, but that felt both anticlimactic and unpredictable.

Since I came this far, I figured I might as well try to manually look for her. Since she came into the Simulacrum, there had to be some traces left behind, and my off-the-cup deduction was proven to be correct soon. When I focused on her image, it was like there was an odd itch inside my brain (which, need I point out, didn't exist in my current disembodied state, making the feeling extra creepy). Following that sensation like a dowsing rod, the lack of space around me shook and twisted around, until I found myself staring at a tiny yet clearly visible hole.

It wasn't like the tidy, orange-bordered portal she used to manifest, but more like a puncture with frayed edges. It was also in three dimensions, with the plane of said hole pointing in every possible direction at once, but I was so used to weird, non-Euclidian crap by this point, I barely took notice.

I extended my consciousness towards the tear in non-space and I felt a familiar suction right away. It was just like when I tried to enter into the not-dark-not-room, and I instinctively understood that The Girl was on the other side of this… gate? Entry point? Junction?

Hole. She was on the other side of the hole, and I didn't want to make her wait any longer. With that resolve in mind, I plunged into the hole in front of me, and after an especially topsy-turvy journey through an extra-long plastic-straw analogy…

"Eep!"

I was welcomed by a startled cry. Go figure.

While I was still disembodied, it felt different from before. Closer to the way I experienced the world through Far Sight; more of a floating point of view than a fully detached consciousness.

Much more importantly, I was inside a not-room, similar to the not-dark one, but still very different. It was hard to make out its features in concrete terms, but it gave off certain… vibes. It had no colours, and I couldn't fully perceive any of the furniture, or even just the walls and ceiling, but it all felt very soft and upbeat. Girlish. Smelling like sweets and… pumpkins? Or maybe made of pumpkins. As I said, it was more of a vague impression than anything else.

In the middle of this not-room, with its indeterminate features and boundaries, The Girl was glaring at me with her hands on her hips.

"Hey! You can't just barge into someone else's Domain without announcing yourself first!"

Her voice, usually giving off the impression of birdsong, was closer to the high-pitched screech of a hawk, and the same sentiment was communicated by her expression, hazy as it was.

"Oh, that's rich coming from you," I responded with a frown of my own, as much as that applied to my current state of being, and she blinked in shock.

"Ah… Now that you mention it…" She hastily shook her head, her pigtails simultaneously looking like hair and sparkling sand kicked up by the wind. "Water under the bridge, then! But I didn't expect you to show up right away! I didn't even have time to tidy up!"

"It wasn't right away," I pointed out, and she suddenly hammered her palm.

"Right. You're young, so you probably don't quite get how time works. From my perspective, you only just kicked me out a minute ago."

"That sounds confusing."

"Not really. You'll get used to it." She flashed a toothy grin at me and gestured at thin air. "Come in, and sit down. I bet you have lots of questions."

"That's an understatement, but…" I wanted to point out that there was nothing to sit on, or that even if there was, I lacked the body to do so, but then the whole not-room quaked and shifted, and a blink of an eye later, we were both seated around an indistinct round table and I had a similarly vague body. "Huh. How does this work?"

"Definition," she answered me, her voice back to the energetic chirps I was familiar with. Of course, she was completely oblivious to the fact that it wasn't an answer, but before I could point it out, she barrelled on with the conversation, whether I liked it or not. "First, let me stress this hard: don't try to make contact with the others. I asked the Crowned Coalescence about it, and, oh, by the way, he really likes the name you gave him, but more importantly, he also said that you should not come out of the Simulacrum until the project is finished. Got that?"

"Yes, but…"

"Good! Now, ask away!"

She stared at me expectantly, her eyes growing unnaturally large and literally sparkling like stars in the night sky, and I needed a moment to collect my thoughts. Where did I even begin?

"Okay, first thing first: Nobody in the Simulacrum is in danger, right?"

"No, of course not," she told me without any pretences, followed by a borderline sinister chuckle. "Hihi! Even if the others tried to interfere, at this point even the Venerated Emergent couldn't do anything!"

"You mean the Predator Moon."

"Oh! That's another good name! You're good at this!" She grinned and waited for me to ask my next question with bated breath.

"So we aren't in danger of getting cancelled out of existence. Good. Can you give me a rundown of how we ended up here? As you said, I'm new to things outside the Simulacrum, and I could really use a lesson on the basics."

"Sure!"

The not-room changed its shape again without warning, and by the time I regained my bearings, we were suddenly in a small classroom. I was sitting behind a desk at the front row, while The Girl was in front of the blackboard, standing on top of a stool.

"From the beginning then!" she declared, and her stool slid to the left end of the blackboard, so she could start writing on it. "You see, *************** called us to make a new scenario, but it was just a trick!" That indescribable torrent of images and notions was referring to The Woman, by the way. "She got really mad at Crowned Coalescence for a prank he pulled a long time ago, so the goal was to draw him into the Simulacrum, and then give him a taste of his own medicine! Of course, what she didn't know was that he reached out to me first, and we put together this plan to prank her back! Or, at least I think that was the plan. It doesn't really matter though, because when he pretended to get caught in the trap, something went wrong, and he fell into the Simulacrum."

I must've had a rather confused expression on my face, because when she glanced back at me, The Girl crossed her arms and huffed.

"I'm not kidding! I mean, he literally fell into the Simulacrum! It was crazy!"

"That… is the least of my confusion right now," I told her wearily and tried to massage my forehead, but my fingers passed through my skull. By evidence, his vague body of mine wasn't too stable. "Can we first establish what the Simulacrum is?"

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Then, her expression twisted, and somehow a shocked, doubtful, excited, and confused face was overlaid on her at the same time. It only lasted for a moment before it snapped into a mildly intrigued one.

"You don't know? How can you not know? You are… wait. Did he seriously not tell you anything?"

"No?"

She repeatedly blinked at me and crossed her arms.

"Hmm. Hmmmmm. That could mean that he doesn't want you to know this, but why wouldn't he? Or maybe he doesn't know that you don't know? No way! He's too good to miss something obvious like that! Could it be that you do know, but you just think you don't know? You do seem pretty fragmented right now, so maybe…"

"Hold on! Please, stop! One thing at a time!" I called out with my palms raised, and after a startled glance, she produced a piece of chalk from somewhere, and let out a huff.

"Well, he never told me not to tell you about it, so it should be fine. I think. If not, then at least it'll make things more interesting!" She turned around, with her stool automatically getting higher so she could reach the top of the blackboard, and she started writing. "Okay, let's start with the basics of the basics. You know what an Emergent is, right?"

She used the brain-clogging, multi-layered info-torrent version of the term, but my mind automatically translated it, so I nodded. Then, after a moment of consideration, I shook my head.

"Which is it then?" she demanded impatiently, and I could only shrug.

"I have a vague understanding of Emergents and Submerged Ones, but I really don't grasp the substance of those terms."

"But… but you just used the…" Seemingly baffled by the direction of the conversation, The Girl let out a low groan. "This is going to be more complicated than I thought. Okay, listen. Do you know anything about what we are?"

"Emergents," I told her, and she nodded.

"The fact you can say that should mean you already understand, but… Ug, whatever. Let's try again: what are we?"

"… Star-people?"

For a moment, she stared at me in dumb-founded silence, but then her expression slowly softened until it became more of a thoughtful, profound mien, and she absent-mindedly tapped a finger on her chin.

"You know, that's not entirely incorrect, but it kind of is." With a shake of her head that sent her pigtails/sands cascading again, she turned back to the blackboard and started scribbling. How do I describe this…? It was kind of like watching an old-school anime, where the animators were cutting corners wherever they could, and there were just three sustained frames of her writing followed by the whole blackboard being full of text. It would've been amusing if not for the circumstances. "I'm not going into the nitty-gritty details, but think of us as consciousnesses embedded into the… I think humans call it 'space-time', right? We're embedded into that."

She circled a word on the blackboard, which I presumed to be space-time. Or maybe 'Emergent'? Honestly, it all looked like just scribbles to me, further reinforcing the whole 'cost-efficient 90s anime' aesthetic of the present scene.

"I don't want to spend too much time on this, so here's how it works: there's a lot of wriggly things in space-time. Let's call it Noise. In this noise, through a riiidiculously long stretch of linear causality, or 'time' as you would call it, patterns can show up. These patterns could amplify themselves over even more 'time', and then a consciousness could Emerge from there. These were the original Venerated Emergents, and they are… kind of scary. They didn't have the concept of Defining themselves at the beginning, so all of them are weird in their own way."

Was that why the Predator Moon looked and felt fundamentally different from the other four, I wondered. I didn't have the time to ask, because The Girl continued without pause, but I made a mental note about it all the same.

"While 'time' means little to us, we still interact with the concept. Retro-causality is a big no-no, meaning one cannot exist until they are born, so even if we knew that a new Emergent would rise from a certain clump of Noise, they couldn't start existing until they did, so the Venerated Emergents had to wait for them to do so. Because of this, the rise of new Emergents was a painfully slow process back then. But as luck would have it, the Venerated Emergents discovered life. Based on atoms and molecules and chemistry and stuff! Some of the Venerated Emergents used them to help Define themselves, but they were all very simple creatures, so it gave rise to ones like the Venerated 'Predator Moon'. Hihi. It's such a fun name."

"Sure, sure, but what does this have to do with the Simulacrum and—"

Before I could finish the sentence, the piece of chalk in The Girl's hand flew across the not-room and passed right through my head. Of course, just like with my fingers before, there was no resistance to it, nor did I feel anything, so it was only for show. I still blinked in surprise, but by then the chalk was back in her hand and she was writing on the blackboard again.

"Don't try to roll when you can't even walk. Is that how the idiom goes? Whatever, you get the point." She turned back to me and poked the board behind her. "So, as I was saying, now that the Venerable Emergents properly Defined themselves, they realized that there were only a few of them, and it would take ages before more of us would Emerge from the Noise, and that was disappointing. Now, before we get to the next step, let's talk about Domains."

She hopped off her stool and stood in front of my desk, and then she opened her arms wide and did a pirouette.

"This is my Domain. It's what I am." Coming to an abrupt stop, she pointed both hands at her own chest. "And this is how I Define myself. It's who I am. All of us are like that. However, there are some irregularities from time to time."

"Such as?"

"I'm getting to it! Patience!" She huffed and puffed and waved her chalk at me. "You see, there are a few places around the galaxy with life, but at one point, when shifting through linear causality, the Venerated Emergents discovered one that was special. Not only because life arose on it early, but because in the future, there would be intelligent life on it! Not intelligent like us, but still intelligent in a very, very different way!"

"So, Earth."

"Precisely! Not only that, these intelligent life-forms, these humans were just boundlessly fascinating, because they would never stop running simulations by communicating ideas through material means and then recreating them in their internal neural networks! They call them stories and tales and myths, but it's all the same, and through these simulations, endless scenarios and behaviors could be observed! It was like they always existed to help us better Define ourselves, so to capitalize on this, the Venerated Emergents stimulated the local star, creating an artificial Domain without a Definition, and then as soon as humans finally emerged from their material world bound to linear causality, their internal simulations were used to give form of this empty Domain. And that's how the ******************** was created."

While the proper nouns used by the Emergents sent me on a loop at the best of times, this one was somehow much, much worse. There was no way for me to understand why, but the deepest reaches of my very being reacted with a strong, instinctual revulsion and denial towards the concepts she was trying to convey to me. Just interacting with the ideas and impressions embedded in there felt like I was about to throw up, but I grit my teeth and, with considerable effort, I managed to chisel their meaning down to two words.

"Stillborn Sun."

"Yes, that!" The Girl smiled at me like I was a problem student who finally got an answer right.

"And this artificial 'Domain' is… the Simulacrum?"

"Exactly."

This whole discussion was starting to make me feel a bit woozy, but I tried to organize my thoughts. So, the Simulacrum wasn't on Earth, or any planet, but… inside a star? The Girl said that her Domain was 'what' she was, so what did that make everything and everyone in the Simulacrum? I doubted I would get a straight answer, so first, I asked about something else that's been bothering me ever since it came up.

"So… are Earth and humanity still out there?"

"Hm? Of course. Last I checked, they are still orbiting the Stillborn Sun."

"So, it's not like they're extinct or anything?"

"Oh, goodness no! I mean, I really hope they stay around for a long while, because we kind of need them to provide ideas for new scenarios. The current Simulacrum is… I guess 'temporally anchored' would be a good way to put it. Last I checked it was around the year two thousand, using the same calendar as the one in the Simulacrum. I have a friend who's living in a wider causality-spectrum, and she said they still were/will be around in twenty years, but we are only progressing the Simulacrum's internal causality very slowly, just in case they suddenly blow up their planet one day. I mean, it would be a tragedy to lose them; where else are we going to find billions of minds endlessly simulating scenarios perfect for helping Submerged Ones to Define themselves?"

"Stop, please. That was… really dense." For emphasis, I raised both of my hands in surrender and followed it up with a groan. "So if I get this right, the Simulacrum is like… a giant nursery for the Submerged Ones, using humanity's stories and tropes as a kind of template to define themselves after?"

"More or less."

"And Submerged Ones are…" I wanted to say 'characters', but it felt wrong. I tried 'placeholders', but it didn't feel right either. "They are in the Simulacrum, but in what way?"

"That's… a tricky question," she told me, and then she walked back to the blackboard and, in another low-budget anime fashion, her arms moved and all the previous scribbling got replaced by a wild array of dots and small circles. It kind of reminded me of one of those magic-eye pictures, where one had to cross their eyes to see an image, and I must've been closer to the right answer than I thought, because she told me, "This is Noise." Then, she waved her hand, and the two halves of the chaotic mess got overlaid, and it formed the vague outline of a dog in the middle. "And now there's a puppy." Suddenly, the abstract dog jumped off the blackboard and excitedly ran around her and her stool. "You could say the puppy was always in the noise, but it needed the right perspective to Emerge, and an understanding of what a doggy is to Define itself. That's what the Simulacrum does. It exists to help the Submerged Ones on the brink of Emerging to help Define themselves through the scenarios within."

Honestly, the longer I listened to her, the more I fell into a state where I was only nodding along. It felt like I already knew this. Well, most of this, at any rate, but I just needed someone to put it into words for me to put the pieces together. Kind of like this whole example with the dog requiring a different perspective and some nudging. But that meant…

"So it's not like Submerged Ones are playing any characters, nor are they watching, but they are literally part of the Simulacrum."

"Exactly."

"And they Emerge when…"

"When the current scenario ends. Or rather, if they do, it's considered to be a successful scenario."

"But if the Submerged Ones are fundamental building blocks of the Simulacrum's scenario, what happens to it when they Emerge?"

"Hm? Ah, don't worry about that!" The Girl dismissed me with a wave of her hand. Or so I thought, but then she kept waving. "No, seriously. Stop worrying. It's making you unstable."

I didn't get what she meant by that right away, but then I glanced at my hand and found that it was already half-sublimated out of existence.

"Ah, darn! You're still young, and spending so much time in someone else's Domain is taking a toll on you."

"Didn't you say that time has no meaning to you?"

"Don't nitpick me," she scoffed and sent another chalk through my head. Was she the 'childishly violent tsundere' archetype, I wondered? I mean, if what she said was true, and the Emergents literally patterned themselves after characters and tropes from human fiction, it wasn't entirely out of the picture. "You better head back before it affects you negatively. We can talk again later."

"Yes, but my last question? About the Submerged Ones?"

"I told you not to worry about that. The Simulacrum is already yours, so there's no reason for you to stress over it. Now, shoo, and relax!"

Before I could respond, the classroom version of the non-room, disappeared, and The Girl hopped off her stool for the last time before abruptly pushing my stomach with both hands. It felt like a cutesy gesture, yet a moment later I felt like I was shot out of a cannon, and with the echoes of a chirpy "Bye-bye!", I reawakened in my body with a startle.

"Bloody hell," I whispered under my breath and rubbed my forehead, finding it reassuring when my fingers didn't pass through this time. "Why do I feel like I learned a lot, but somehow none of that was helping me at the moment?"

My grumbles made Elly stir from her sleep, so I presented her with a hand to hold onto, and once she was back in dreamland, I carefully slipped away and turned on my PC. I was worried that the light might bother her, but I had to note all of these things down while they were still fresh in my memory, as while The Girl's infodump didn't help with our current predicament, I knew Judy would kill me if I didn't share the lore with her.

Funnily enough, it was almost morning by the time a rather important question reared its ugly head in the back of my mind, waiting until I nearly finished taking notes about the Submerged Ones to show up.

So, Venerated Emergents were things like the Predator Moon and the Crowned Coalescence, with non-human or vaguely-human avatars. That wasn't me. 'Normal' Emergents were beings who rose from the Noise of time-space by Defining themselves using humanity's characters and tropes as a template. That wasn't me either. Submerged Ones were Emergents-in-the-making who were still 'unconscious' and part of the Simulacrum's framework, passively absorbing the scenario being played out to help Define themselves. Once again, not me.

If so, then… what the heck was I?