Chapter 33: Lost Chapters [5]

  Everything had gone wrong ever since she successfully transferred into this vessel. The future Estelle envisioned had been simple, perhaps too simple: taking quiet walks along the edge of the floating island with a mug of coffee, surveying both the lands beyond and those shattered. She'd hoped to witness ancient storytelling from the environment itself—tales of how godly weapons once fractured the earth, where immortal blood transformed reality into a mirror realm. Perhaps then her impulsiveness might resurface, stronger than before, compelling her to finally follow the flow of her own desires.

  That's all she wanted—to exist quietly as the world of Astris did; gather resources, and never disturb the natural progression of history. It would only take time to restore the facilities, bring them back to a functional state, and connect them to a network across the world, allowing her to begin recording history, perhaps.

  But now? She stood frozen in this room before a mechanical being clearly from the old world. Its numerous hands slithered out from beneath heavy curtains of clothing, spreading as if to welcome her in their embrace—and above it all, it wore a halo. A halo. The implications made her mind throb with pain, her eyes narrowing as she watched the mechanical being cautiously step forward, shielding the woman who retreated behind it.

  Estelle's lips pursed. Regardless of the circumstances, she noted the woman's earlier physical aggression—assaulting her suddenly, pinning her to the wall with a sword at her neck. Whatever had triggered such hostility remained unclear. She brought her hands together, feeling the unfamiliar outlines of her now-male vessel. The wrists felt rough to the touch, outlined by visible muscles that subtly shaped the skin. With a slight brush of her wrist, the spot where the woman had gripped her burned, sending an electrifying sensation beneath the surface.

  She jolted from the uncomfortable pain—lingering longer than the usual phantom sensation following a prolonged drawing session. Strangely, unlike her original body, the navy blue gloves she currently wore ended at her wrists. A fleeting thought captured her attention as she observed her hand: a red strangulation marked her skin along with numerous black random lines and scribbles that were unfamiliar. 'Huh? What's this tattoo? This body has tattoos? I wonder if I can still draw? Oh, wait—isn't this the creator's mark?'

  She massaged her wrist, sliding her hands into her cuffs, trying to feel the tattoos, but only the outlines of her vessel were apparent. 'At least we confirmed we still have our Creator's Mark—that's wonderful.'

  As Estelle contemplated this, something entered her field of vision—large leather shoes barely visible through the heavy white drapes, followed by a hand with thickly worn gloves, metallic plating visible through holes, and steel-textured tubes running through the gaps.

  'Not now—you stupid autistic fuck,' her mind snapped, forcing her head up to face the mechanical being and its floating halo.

  'Is that halo fake?' Estelle wondered, frowning at the mechanical head with its glowing red etchings. Green ambient light cast perpetual glints on its metallic outline, while the bright glow from the halo threw sharp shadows beneath the mechanical being's chin. Studying it carefully, Estelle estimated the halo's diameter to be somewhere between 50 to 60 centimeters—slightly larger than she remembered—perhaps due to the proportions of the mechanical head compared to a human's. 'And why is it so bright? Was it always this intense?'

  Without warning, the mechanical being moved forward, startling Estelle. Her head snapped up as she glared at the figure, almost twice the size of her current vessel, and noticed its hands extending toward her own.

  A deep electronic beep chimed twice—a sound so familiar that her expression immediately darkened into a frown. She focused intently, watching as the red glow in the etchings gradually shifted to green—its emotionless smiley face collapsed, transforming into something resembling an Architect's facilities wall.

  The being leaned slightly forward—movements strangely robotic—and spoke.

  “Sir, my apologies for the incon[----]ce—”

  Estelle's eyes widened, her heart thumping beneath her chest. Their voice carried the intonations of her mother tongue—words shaped in the familiar cadence of home. But something was wrong. The speech felt off, as if processed through a voice bank, stripped of organic nuance. It made sense for a mechanical being to sound artificial, yet—this wasn't just that.

  Certain words clashed with her expectations, standing like jagged disruptions in an otherwise smooth transmission. She had never heard them before, yet her mind insisted she understood. The context filled in the blanks, and somehow, she comprehended—but comprehension wasn’t the same as recognition. The language felt both intimately familiar and wholly alien, creating a dissonance between what she knew and what she perceived.

  By the time she realized they had finished speaking, the words themselves had slipped from her memory, leaving only the phantom impression of an unfamiliar term she had failed to grasp.

  Estelle's lips fell agape—realizing what had happened, only to end up in this situation. She tried to recall what her ears had heard, but those sounds too were blurry and incomprehensible. She wanted to smack her head with her hands or bash it against the ground. It was one of those situations, frustratingly familiar.

  She swallowed, her lips cringing. "Sorry—can you repeat that? I was... slightly distracted..."

  Immediately, a thought roused her mind: 'Didn't he mention that my language relates to 49 languages? Did he perhaps speak in my native tongue, but with evolved words? Like a language tree branching through time? It must be—they almost sounded like someone from the north of my country; somewhere between Parivet or Sagidhabad—always slurring their words, assuming people would understand when they barely understand themselves.'

  As thoughts continued to occupy her mind, Estelle caught movement—the mechanical head straightened, and simultaneously, eight metallic limbs moved in perfect synchronicity. They fell to the sides and back, some longer than others, making the mechanical being look like it was draped in worn-out rags and mannequin limbs from a shop window. Though her mind found it amusing, her eyes couldn't help but follow the movement of each limb, cataloguing every change she could capture.

  'Oh—that's so fucking cool. Sir, do you have any idea how painful your hands were to animate?' Estelle's lips stretched into a forced smile, masking the exhaustion behind her eyes. She was slightly taken aback, but the absurdity of the situation kept her grounded. 'Aside from the software crashing every now and then—wiping out thirty minutes of progress—has anyone ever told you that every single jolting frame makes you look like you have arthritis? Hell, a render artist would develop osteoporosis just trying to get your character model to "pick up" a simple object. You're every render artist's nightmare!'

  Beep-Beep. The mechanical head chimed twice this time, the green glow flowing in a slow, pleasing pattern of light like something from a musical's light show. Estelle spotted one of its hands—a humanoid limb with five metallic fingers covered by worn-out leather gloves—it had been there before, she was certain. Instinctively, her hand bolted forward to grasp the mechanical hand, following some deeply ingrained social protocol. 'Oh god, why am I like this?'

  Stolen story; please report.

  Despite both wearing gloves, Estelle felt a strange, penetrating coldness through the fabric. With worry still clouding her mind, she bit her lower lip, then forced her mouth into a wide smile as she looked at the mechanical being, which had abruptly stopped—the green pattern halting as if someone had paused a video. She tilted her head in wonder, a fleeting thought crossing her mind: ‘I really wonder who this Tissan is—Have I made this model? Certainly, I have made something similar—but never this. And if I had, Tissan’s model is too amazing to be forgotten. Or has the world spawned one? Wait—shouldn't I be thinking about how to talk my way out of this? It might be better to stick around them and formulate an escape plan.'

  The glow resumed its dance. The mechanical figure's hand tightened slightly around her fingers and shook, as if responding to her unspoken thoughts. "I hope you can forgive my strange speech—"

  Estelle jolted, her eyes snapping open as she immediately noticed the change in the mechanical being's speech. Though still filtered through white noise, the words had more clarity than before, possibly using her native tongue to form words, though at altered frequencies.

  "—I am currently trying to match the language you are speaking. Is this alright?"

  She nodded in reply; the handshake ended as she opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to reply before her mind fully processed every word, but what came out was only a strange stutter, "ah-eh–oh."

  'Wait—no,' Estelle's thoughts reeled, considering possibilities. 'Wouldn't it be better if I just outright ask about their body? I don't remember—do people from the old world have these mechanical beings? And I really want to know where they got that halo that's supposedly from the far future, or far past. Wait—isn't this our first encounter? Isn't it more normal to share names first and then gre—'

  "Sir? Are you alright?" The mechanical head continued, the green lights across its surface turning dark blue—too faint in the cast shadows. "Do you understand me?"

  "—Ah, yes, yes," Estelle blurted, an almost too-wide smile stretching across her lips. She waved her hand in a rolling motion, as if dismissing her own lapse. "I was—I was slightly out of it. Uh, slightly in shock, you might say—Um, I mean the way you suddenly switched to my language—"

  She snapped her fingers, a little too quickly, forcing an overly eager nod. "That being said—I've never seen your... How do I put this? Your kind? Your race? You appear quite strange to me. A robot? An android? A mechanical being? Who made you, and is there anyone like you? Can you tell me?"

  Estelle's jaw clenched—a bit too much. Her words felt strange—perhaps because of her current male vessel, her ears not registering what she expected to hear. She felt disconnected, as if trying to speak but not speaking, wanting to convey but not communicating. Her fingers formed a fist, then bloomed open without strength. 'Perhaps that was a good act? Let's not do that a lot—my body feels weird, but my voice is even stranger. Oh shit, I just realized I bombarded them with questions—wouldn't this get us off track, like usual, and then we'll completely shift to the next topic?'

  A mechanical hand abruptly appeared in her view, halting her from taking another step forward with a calm, open gesture. Beep-boop. "I am Ti san. A mechanical android—A Remora Maestro conductor series. Many prefer to call me Tissan, and you, sir?"

  'Fuck—it didn't answer all my questions. A Remora Maestro model series, what in the world? I don't quite remember,' Estelle thought, her expression forcing a smile—or perhaps just her lips stretching wide across her face. 'Wait—I have to introduce myself?'

  She snapped her fingers, tilting her head to the side and shuffling her feet—trying to move away from the mechanical head's blockade—her attention shifting elsewhere. Her eyes locked on the space behind the mechanical being as she anticipated seeing other people. As she maneuvered, Estelle spoke, "Remora Maestro Conductor? I don't know what Remora means, but the other terms suggest you play instruments—were you created to play instruments?"

  Out of nowhere, the mechanical figure began to move to the side—opposite to where Estelle was moving, as if providing a pathway for her. Noticing this, Estelle felt her chest lighten with relief, the implications and bodily movement telling stories her eyes could read.

  However, she hurriedly reined in her thoughts as she used her newly enhanced vision to her advantage. 'Let's not get ahead—be careful. Don't tell anything more than necessary. Lead the conversation, always ask, buy time with words, and get context. We don't die, at the very least.'

  The mechanical head retracted, finally revealing what had been hidden behind it: three figures perched at the edge of the sarcophagus she had awakened from, with several more clustered to the right where corpses should have been. Estelle's gaze darted between them—people with faces hidden beneath similar burkas, a few exposed in the green light of the room.

  She caught hushed whispers exchanged between them, but her mind was too occupied to process what they said. Her attention glimpsed the lifeless bodies laid on the ground, then snagged on a strange object besides them—a coffin-like structure of dark wood with barely visible contents. Inside lay a red mattress, while chains dangled from its exterior sides, secured to the coffin's frame.

  Her eyes twitched involuntarily. She took a tentative step forward before an electronic chime—beep-boop—sounded from her right. 'Why did that question take him several seconds to answer?'

  The nagging thought drew her attention to where the once-blue glow of the etchings had already shifted back to green. The assumption that this was an Architect robot grew stronger in Estelle's mind; however, something contradicted it—

  'Why would this mechanical figure not recognize its maker? If it had, we would have spoken in a language no others could understand,' Estelle's thoughts raced as things become clearer in her mind. 'This being might be work from the Remnants—they knew the Architects and must have been inspired by the drones that the Architects made. I'm certain of it—I mean, there are a lot of others like this thing walking in the world, but I forgot what they are called.'

  "It's actually lettered as 'M-N-E' as in 'Re' and 'mo-ra'," came the voice. "I can't quite access my memories due to some internal issues."

  'Mnemora? Mnemora Maestro Conductor Series? It's still not clicking with me—perhaps, is this one of the official back-end taglines as a parent race? But they are called differently in the perspective of the story?'She tilted her head, raising a brow as she directed all her focus onto the mechanical head. "Internal issues?"

  "Due to some issues with my operating system, several of my memory banks have deteriorated. Various components, including my self-repair modules, were removed following a particular incident," the mechanical head answered, its voice maintaining that artificial steadiness.

  'Oh—so that's where the white noise is coming from. This thing is actually answering my questions—' The fleeting observation crossed her mind, quickly replaced by thoughts of what to say next.

  Estelle's smile stretched further as an idea formed. 'I know what to do. But—we won't be able to question the halo above their head just yet. Let's save that for later when I can steer the conversation in that direction. I don't know how the mechanical head might respond—it could say something unexpected that would leave me at a loss. So, please. Comply with the script your Creator is trying to craft, Mr. Mechanical Head?'

  "Hehe—that's silly," she said, feeling her cheeks soften as her fingers snapped twice, then paused before continuing the cycle again. "Why didn't you go to the engineering department? A high-quality mechanical android—a maestro at that—surely your tones of a bard would entertain the gods and the likes?"

  Abruptly—though faint and almost instantaneous—Estelle noticed the green glow flicker on its etchings, dimming briefly before returning to full green. She didn't know the implications of this reaction, but hoped her words would elicit the correction she anticipated from the being before her—a correction to facts she already knew.

  "Hehehe," an unbearable grin stretched almost manically across her face as she turned her head forward, her fleeting glance immediately catching several stray looks from the mechanical head's companions.

  She swallowed, "You're quite silly, aren't you?" She covered her mouth with her hand, trying her best to stop grinning at what was clearly an inappropriate moment.

  Beep-Boop. Another chime, and words followed.

  "Sir—this may be hard to believe, but—" The mechanical head's voice rang out, its usual monotone laced with something heavier—something careful, deliberate.

  Estelle turned slowly, as if stepping into a role, her expression shaping into an innocent smile.

  "—The world has changed; our gods have long since died."