Eyes slowly slid down a long, shining road. He hit a bump, nearly dropping the fragile box he carefully held. He looked down at the box, thin, calcified, perhaps a snail’s summer home? Either way, it was a welcome break, the Heretics had just taken a long string of losses, things weren’t looking good. The box was a welcome change in the constant downward slope he was sliding down, no matter how shiny it was. As the thought of the box continued to spiral around in his head, the front face of the box suddenly sprung open. Eyes stared down at the opening, a portal into matte black nothingness. Suddenly, a strange creature poured out of the box like a vicious liquid. It slapped itself onto the ground with a palpable noise, unfurling two short legs and skittering across the slope, constantly pulling more and more of itself out of the box. It stared at Eyes with two large, triangular eyes and flashed him a grin that seemed to extend past its face.
“Eyes, can I call you Eyes? Eyes, everything is Variable Eyes. Nothing is constant, entropy makes fools of us all, you should just give in, it’s not like Vyo can live forever Eyes” The creature said in a smug tone
“But Vyo is already dead” Eyes responded
“Then what are you doing here?”
Eyes woke with a shock, snapping to an upright position. His many eyes each darted in different directions, searching his dark bedroom for nonexistent danger as his heart nearly beat out of his metal chest. As he adjusted his heart rate, he heard a knock at his door.
“Eyes? Are you okay? That was pretty loud” Wraith asked from the other side
“Affirmations, I am of wellness”
“Alright”
Eyes listened to Wraith’s metallic footsteps grow distant before closing his eyes and laying his face directly onto his pillow. As he drifted slowly back to sleep, a voice quietly echoed inside his head.
“You know it’s all just Variable, all of it”
Wraith groaned, and heaved its heavy body out of bed, its feet making a muffled thud against the floor. It trudged across the room, lethargy oozing from each invisible joint. It wasn’t very excited to face another day of unfamiliarity. It unlocked a heavy sliding door with a tap, and listened to it slide open. Eyes assured Wraith that the door was a common design, but it still felt like it was meant to keep it in somehow.
Wraith crossed through the doorway and through a long, thin hallway. It glanced at the shuttered windows lined across the wall. Purple hued sunlight crept into the room through the gaps in the shades, reminding Wraith of how far it was from home, and how late it was in the day. It crossed through a doorless arch and into a small dining room, sitting in one of four empty chairs and resting its faceplate on its hands.
“Ah! Seeing that you are awaken, I’m trusting of the acceptability of your nightly unconsciousness?” Eyes said from somewhere behind Wraith
“No, I didn’t sleep well. Being made of metal is going to take getting used to”
“Assurances of this. It was taking of several weeks, moreover the possibility of months to regulate that which was myself”
“I can’t even imagine getting used to this. Everything feels heavy and cold, and I miss my face… even if I don’t remember it” Wraith said
“Trying to avoid ponderance of your past, acceptable that which is present to you. Such a process is taking of time, but you are can finish this easily because of assistance of such as me, hoping of myself”
Wraith sighed. It was starting to figure out Eyes’s speech patterns, but understanding it was still difficult. It tried to remind itself that it had only been here a day, but its mind rejected the proposal. It felt like it didn’t have a concrete sense of time to latch onto, after all, it could only properly remember the last 32 hours.
“Wraith, believance I am obtaining a process such as for accelerated acceptance. I am having such authority and as the supply to being bestow upon yourself. Such device will enabling of you to accessible information greater than which bounds I am of capability to recite to you”
Wraith looked up, separating its faceplate from its hands.
“What is it?”
“It is of calling the device such as the Slate. It is of multiple potential uses, access to informational potentially being that which the least”
Eyes set a small device on the table. It was featureless and rectangular, gray in coloration. Eyes tapped the surface, and the device lit up. He spent a few minutes teaching Wraith how to operate the device, saying things like ‘Palpate such’, and ‘Operating of the function’. His instructions were about as helpful as an instructional manual written in another language, but the device already seemed familiar to Wraith. Eyes seemed surprised how fast it caught on. Eyes explained that he had put some restrictions on the device, particularly regarding access to sensitive information. He assured Wraith that he himself would teach it everything.
“It would probably be easier if I could just teach myself” Wraith muttered
“Affirmations, but as such would potentially be carry the possibility for the overloading of the psyche of belongings as you. Topics and the information as such shall be teaching to yourself by myself and such beings as ones I have selected times past”
“Alright I guess”
Wraith sat hunched over the table, prodding at the slate with its metallic fingers. The design was intuitive and easy to use once the basics had been learned. The difficult part to learn was what the device couldn’t do. Certain gestures would make the device change shape, or project what seemed to be holographic displays. It had been sitting over the device for over an hour, learning everything it could, which didn’t seem to be much. Eyes had locked out any information that Wraith considered actually useful, leaving only bits of useless trivia and fragments of a larger picture that seemed to grow bigger and bigger whenever one piece was assembled. Wraith’s psyche pulled against itself, both enveloped in morbid curiosity, and begging itself to pretend that it was still in its own world. After a few minutes of trying to bypass the lockouts, Wraith heard a door open from inside the house.
“Eyes, are you sure I’m the best for this?” came an unknown voice from another room
“Affirmations, you are owning empatheticals to the situations present to Wraith”
“Yeah, but won’t I be a bit… alarming?”
“Who would you to having this as opposed? Exalia? You are of choices best I believe, trusting in which is yourself”
“I mean, I don’t really know what Exalia is like as a person, but I guess you have a point”
The door to the dining room slid open, and Eyes walked in.
“Wraith, it is of great introduction to invite a being of new that is to teach you additionally information I have since barred from the view. Glow is to be teaching of you addition to concepts, shall be softening of potential impact to you”
Wraith nodded hesitantly, trying its best to decode Eyes’s shredded grammar. Another being walked slowly into the room. Wraith thought that an extra light had been turned on, but it quickly realized that the source of the glaring white light was the new being. Whoever it was glowed far brighter than a lightbulb. Wraith could just barely see parts of its form behind the glare. It seemed to have two arms and two legs, and its body seemed jagged and angular, almost as if it had been carved from stone.
“Hi Wraith, I’m Glow. Eyes asked me to teach you about some of the more sensitive topics”
Glow spoke with a voice entirely different than the one Wraith had overheard from the other room. Instead of hesitant and insecure, they sounded completely confident, like they had just flipped some mental switch.
“Uh, hi” Wraith said, left shocked by the sudden change in demeanor
Glow looked at Eyes, who nodded and left the room. They sat at the table opposite to Wraith, and placed their hands on the table, lacing their barely visible fingers.
“So, the things I’m going to be telling you about will be jarring. I’ll try to soften the blow as much as I can, I remember how it felt when I learned about them, but you’re the one who will have to make peace with them”
Wraith nodded hesitantly, a vague feeling of dread growing inside it. Despite its previous curiosity, it now felt scared to learn more about this alien reality. Now that the information wasn’t locked behind an unsolvable puzzle, its morbid curiosity seemed to have lost its bravery. It sat up in its chair, and placed the slate face down on the table.
“So, how long have you been here, Wraith?” Glow asked
“About a day. What about you?”
“Nearly seven years”
The words cut into Wraith’s mind as the realization that it would be staying here for the rest of its life was thrown back into its face, chilling it to the metallic bones. Glow seemed to notice the shivering.
“I know this is a lot to take in. Eyes may be hard to understand, but there’s no one more qualified to orient you. You’re in good hands, for whatever it's worth”
“Doesn’t seem like it’s worth much right now” Wraith muttered
Glow sighed, a sympathetic air emanating from the walking lightsource.
“So, as I told you, I’m going to be teaching you about some of the more sensitive topics. They will be pretty jarring, but they’re things you will have to live with. I guess we should start with twisting”
Glow paused, seeming to rehearse what they were about to say in their head.
“How do I put this.. Things grow where you’re from, right?”
“Yeah?” Wraith answered hesitantly
“Well, something similar happens here, although the process is different. Instead of growing and aging, we have twisting. So far, no one knows why it happens, and we don’t know much about it in general. Basically, instead of aging and slowly breaking down, our bodies… change with time”
“What do you mean by change?”
Glow sighed, and rested their hand on their face.
“Well… you’re in a robotic body right now, a shell body. If you aged, the materials that make up your body would slowly decay. I mean, that still happens, just in a different capacity. You’ll still rust and break apart if you don’t take care of yourself, but…”
“What are you talking about”
“Sorry, it hasn’t been that long since I learned about this. Think of a child. Instead of growing, getting larger and stronger, like it would where you and me come from, here it would twist and change. It’s kind of like mutating, just a lot more focused. Instead of growing cancers, they could grow another arm or leg, even wings. Twisting isn’t only organic either, it applies to metallic beings as well. A fully organic being may find their bones turned to steel, or their joints may become a complex mechanical system”
“W-what?”
“Yeah, try to take this in slowly. Twisting is going to change you. It won’t be noticeable for a while, but eventually you’ll be completely unrecognizable. You may start to develop organic muscles or organs, you’ll gain new robotic components, even your brain might change. The process is alarming, but normal. The important thing to remember is that twisting does not create harmful changes in your body, actually all signs point to the changes twisting makes being somehow directed, almost intelligently designed”
Wraith sat back in its chair, trying to turn the information over as slowly as possible. It wasn’t working. So it had lost its body and its face, but not only that, its body would constantly change, never leaving it time to get used to itself? As soon as it was handed a vague fragment of familiarity, it was crushed under the endless expansion of this new paradigm.
“Maybe I should have started with something a bit easier to swallow. Keep in mind, the process is usually very slow, you probably won't notice any changes for over a month, and they’ll be small at first. You also won’t notice any half grown fingers or anything, the changes happen all at once”
Wraith recoiled in its chair, sinking away from the foreign information. It felt cold again, another rhythm disrupted. Nothing made sense, and as soon as the puzzle pieces started coming together, the table was flipped. Glow tried to offer some comforting words, Wraith ignored them. The sympathy felt strangely alienating, the way Glow and Eyes assured it they had been through the same thing made somehow it feel even more alone.
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