Ede waited patiently for Marcus to finish processing the story thus far and did not bother to continue until Marcus finally asked, “Well, what do you mean by ‘really interesting’?”
The surrounding returned to the library and Ede was sitting in front of him again. He put down his mug, leaned to the front and grinned, “Because that’s when I came in. Up o that point, I had just been one of the handful of programmers they managed to round up. Mind you, the real tech wizards, those who worked for Google and Amazon and all those big shots had all gone with the remaining elite...well, or died shortly after. Us programmers are not all that resilient when times get tough. I only survived up to that point because of sheer luck and my unwillingness to submit to desperation. I did whatever I could to stay alive, which really was mostly hiding from the more savage members of ‘society’. Aaanyway, do you know what ‘autism’ is?”
Marcus shook his head. He had come across the word before in one of his books, but was not quite sure what it was supposed to mean. Every time it seemed to describe something different.
Ede nodded and said, “Autism is a rather particular way to think. One that is hard for ‘normal’ people to follow. Most autistic people have trouble socializing with others and much rather live in their own world. Mind you, autism is not an illness, which needs to be treated. Autistic people are not ‘sick’ or ‘wrong’, they just are ‘different’ in a way that is well beyond the bell curve.”
“The...you know what, never mind.”
Ede nodded and said, “Interestingly enough, autistic people are often gifted with a particular field of expertise they excel in. For example some can barely speak a coherent sentence, but have the entire schedule of a major train station memorized. Put them into a control room and they easily do the job of three men with astonishing accuracy. And my ‘field of expertise’ just happened to be programming.”
“You are...autistic?”
“Well, ‘was’ is more like it. Besides, I was of the ‘highly-functional’ sort. People could tell that I was ‘different’, but I did not curl up into a ball and hide in the corner of the next room...much.”
“...much?”
“Yeah well, you go lose everything you’ve ever known and see the world around you crumble and deal with that. I just needed a moment every now and then, okay?!”
Marcus raised his arms and said, “It’s okay. I just...find it a little hard to believe.”
“It’s a stress-related thing. The important thing is, that you snap back out of your ‘comfort ball’ once you’ve calmed down enough to continue to function. Either way, the scientists on duty figured, ‘if that guy speaks computer, maybe he’ll be okay’. I’m telling you though, they just didn’t want to be next themselves.”

Ede got up and threw another piece of wood into the stove, yet another gesture Marcus considered ‘strange’ in the context of things. After all, if this man was God in this realm, why would he need to do something like that in the first place? Regardless, he decided to not ask.

“But...it worked...right?”
“No thanks to them, mind you. The security guys dragged me to the chair kicking and screaming. Needless to say, I had of course heard what had happened to the previous volunteers.”
“But...didn’t it occur to them, that their machine was maybe faulty? That it wasn’t even Ede who did this to them?”
“They were desperate and this was the best shot they had, really. So either way, the strapped me to the chair, forced the helmet on my head against all my objections and turned it on…”
Marcus leaned to the front and asked, “Well, then what? I mean, you’re here, so…”
“Remember what I said about the ‘comfort ball’ earlier? Upon my brain being flooded by a whole world of information, I shut myself down, focusing solely on that image, an empty room and myself, curled up in the corner of the room, whilst the world beyond the door was going to hell. I still don’t know why, but eventually the storm passed and the room around me with it. And I started to see it. The structures. The logic. The grand picture. I somehow managed to connected with Ede on a level I did not even think possible. And I understood things. Things I had never even dared to consider up to that point. I saw it all. How Ede got launched by an alien species far more advanced than mankind to the depths of space. How it traversed a black hole to bridge time and space. How it landed on the young Earth trillions of years ago and began developing life itself there.”
“Wait, you say...Ede created life on Earth?! But…”
“Don’t get me wrong. There’s life just about everywhere out there. Just this galaxy alone has trillions of exoplanets where life developed in one way of another. There was also already life in its beginning stages when Ede arrived. But want to know the funny thing?”
“Sure…?” Marcus replied, unsure whether he really wanted to.
“I’ve scoured the entire information set in the meantime. And up to today, I have no idea whatsoever what Ede was originally meant to do.”
“...okay, what? But...I thought you ‘had seen it all’?”
“I have seen recordings stored in Ede’s memory. But that actually was only later. I don’t know how or what exactly happened, but within all these information that traversed my synapses, there was a gaping hole. A yearning for a purpose. A desperate cry for help from Ede itself.”

“A...cry for help? But...why did Ede accept you of all people?”

Ede grinned and explained, “That’s simple, actually. The previous volunteers were all battle-hardened soldiers, the best we had, trained and equipped to fight whatever threat they might encounter. And they went about the task accordingly. I understood that they triggered a defense routine, which sent a powerful feedback, basically reformatting the attackers brain. They became drones, an extension to Ede himself, however without a signal…”
“They were left to ‘await commands’,” Marcus concluded the sentence.
“Precisely.”
“I’m sorry, but you keep saying ‘you understood’...what do you mean by that?”
“Yes well, unlike what we are doing right now, Ede back then did not ‘talk’ to me. It was incapable of interfacing with me on that kind of level. Or much rather, I was incapable of interfacing with it on that kind of level. All these memories suddenly ‘appeared’ in my mind, as if I had always known these things, if that makes any sense.”
“Then...why weren’t you turned into a drone like the rest of them?”
Ede grinned again and said, “Because I was scared.”
“...scared?”
“That’s not even the right word. I was in a state of panic, afraid of what would happen to me. I did not move. Did not try to attack. I cowered and hid. This allowed Ede to find me before its defense mechanism. It allowed Ede to ‘connect’ with me and show me all these things I never knew. And to reveal its plea for help to me.”
“Then...what happened next?”
“I woke up in the chair, every pair of eyes in the entire frigging room on me. When I managed to get up, walk over to the next basket and empty my stomach into it, they grew uneasy. When I asked for a some water, they erupted into cheer. Of course they bombarded me with questions, but I found myself unable to really answer any of them. With the connection gone, so was my understanding of ‘things’. I mean, the memories were still there, but it was like a fog had settled over them. Oh and I had forgotten my name.”
“You...what?!”
“Yup, completely gone, together with large chunks of my past. They kept calling out to me and it took me like 5 minutes to realize they were talking to me. When I realized that, I began to cry...because, you know, we are all shaped by our past experience. And with my past now having been erased, I simply didn’t know who I was any more.”
“That...sounds terrible.”
“It was. I was later returned to my room, being a nervous wreck and all that...and it was the room of a stranger. The pictures, books, everything was just...gone. There was no connection whatsoever to them in my mind. The next day I went back in.”
“After that kind of shock?! You’re crazy!”
“I was desperate, that’s what I was. Besides, I had already lost who I was. Whatever more could this machine have taken from me?”
“I don’t know...kill you? Turn you into one of those drones?”
Ede gave Marcus a sad smile, “And it would’ve done me a favor with that. Besides, I still had a mission. We all still had a mission. As the dives continued, we quickly developed way for me to stay ‘semi-responsive’, allowing me to interact with the outside world while connected. From there on out, things went a whole lot more smoothly. As it turned out, Ede was equipped with powerful terraforming abilities and a whole slew of substances nobody had ever even dreamed about. When I revealed the ‘terraforming’, they higher ups were quick to deduce that mankind could be saved with that. Because, as you may recall, the biggest problem we actually had to deal with were the climate changes caused by the extensive and continued pollution of the previous generations. The idea was, that Ede could ‘make the Earth a great place to live’ again. There was just one small problem.”
“...you were against it?”
“What? No, I wasn’t against it. I mean, that whole ‘saving mankind’ was my entire purpose in life at that point. The one thing I held on to, so I would not despair entirely. No, the problem was something else. Because, you see, Ede had long since used up the resources to actually perform terraforming. I believe you can imagine the disappointment on the faces of my colleagues when I told them after figuring that out.”
“Then...what did you do next?”
“Not today. Your body needs to be taken care of again.”
“What?! No! Don’t just leave me hanging here!”

But it was for naught and Marcus soon found himself back in his body, disgruntled and unhappy for being thrown out in the middle of the story. After taking care of things, he walked into the room again, but Ede remained silent, completely ignoring Marcus’ calls.
As he turned around however, Ede’s voice echoed in his mind, “I won’t be going anywhere. But you should return home for now. Your people must be worried sick about you.”
Marcus hurled back around and yelled, “That’s none of your business!”
It was as if a sigh went through the room before everything fell back into silence.
Marcus left the room, shaking his head, muttering, “Doesn’t that guy know they’ll never let me come back if I went home now? Without anything but a half-told story to show for it?”
However he soon had to realize that he really did have to go back. If not for the emotional comfort of being home, then for more supplies, since the batteries of his flashlight were slowly dying and his food and water reserves were running out.

The next day, he stepped into Ede’s chamber again and said aloud, “...I need to go fetch more supplies. I’ll try to be back as soon as I can.”
And Ede replied, “Best of luck out there.”
And just for a moment, it was there. The ‘understanding’ Ede had spoken of. Marcus understood that Ede knew very well that Marcus might never return if he left now. And this understanding was filled with a great sense of sadness, unlike any he had ever known.
Marcus walked out and muttered, “I’ll come back, just you wait.”