It was early in the morning. Soft purple light was just beginning to creep through the curtains of Eyes’s home. The kitchen was dark except for that light, nobody had bothered to turn on the lights yet. Wraith sat at a small, round dining table, furiously imagining a bowl of sugary cereal sitting on top of the placemat laid in front of it. It hadn’t quite gotten used to the lack of hunger that came with its robotic body, food had been such an integral part of its past life, it could still barely imagine living without it. It had found that imagining each meal helped with this dissonance.
All the normal senses were there, but Wraith’s shell body still felt so alien. It could still smell, but it couldn’t breathe, not that it needed to. It could touch the chair, feeling the strange, swirling grain, but it couldn’t feel anything working inside of its body, no heartbeat, no constant expansion and contraction of its lungs.
Eyes stood at a counter, rapidly tapping at his Slate. Wraith thought he had some sort of frustrated expression, but it was hard to tell. It was always hard to tell what Eyes was thinking, he had no face to display his emotions, nor did he have eyelids to slant. It was hard to read a plain mass of eyes.
“What’s up?” Wraith asked
“Nothing nearing importance. Of inability to location teacher of today. Glow is creating inability to arrive” Eyes responded in his usual mangled speech
Wraith shrugged, and went back to its imaginary cereal.
“Wraith, guest of education is of arrival!” Eyes shouted from somewhere near the entryway
Wraith looked up from its cereal as Eyes walked into the room, followed by a mechanical stranger. The stranger was tall, nearly two heads more so than Wraith. It was thin, whenever it took a step Wraith worried that something in its legs would snap. It had an uncanny face, appearing as a metal and mechanical mockery of any fleshy person’s, except for the lack of lips, permanently putting its grin on display. Two long antennae swept back from the top of its head, dangling down to its waist.
“Hi… um… Eyes, what’s this one’s name again?” asked the stranger
“Wraith”
“Ah, right of course. Hey Wraith! I’m Stomach, nice to meet ya!”
Stomach held his hand out to Wraith. Wraith, its introduction having been taken by Eyes, just awkwardly grabbed and shook his hand. His hand was unusually warm for a robot.
“So… Eyes wanted me to take you out somewhere. Y’know, see what life is like outside these walls. Seems a bit weird to keep you cooped up for so long, but I guess I’m no orienter”
“Stomach commencement of arrival to near recreation area locating in city” Eyes said, three of his eyes giving Stomach a dirty look
The land outside Eyes’s house was mostly flat, with an occasional hill. Grass of all colors painted a pastel splatter across the ground, no two patches of plants looking the same. Wraith wondered if it was the fault of what Glow had called twisting. Past this flat stretch were long arms of farmland, extending all the way to the outskirts of Surrealite City, Wraith and Stomach’s destination.
“So why is it called Surrealite?” Wraith asked
“Huh? Oh, right, you don’t know all the history yet. Well it’s sorta a long story, you sure you wanna hear it now?” Stomach asked
“Yeah, that’s why I asked” Wraith said
“Heh, good. Well, it was the first full city to be recaptured by the Heretics-”
“Who were the Heretics?” Wraith interrupted
“Eh, you’ll probly learn more about all this later, just lemme tell the story”
Wraith nodded
“Well, it was captured during the early days of the Undeath, like, just a few years after the collapse. Since it was the only safe place on this side of the planet, it was mainly used as a place for soldiers to go on leave. Y’know, get their heads on straight, reattach arms n’ shit. For a while the place didn’t have a name, since, y’know, nobody wanted to use the name Vyo gave it”
Wraith did not know
“So there were all these hardened soldiers, in this safe, comfortable city, surrounded by this horrific bloody war. To them, it all felt pretty surreal, hence the name”
Stomach’s explanation only raised infinitely more questions, like Wraith felt all answers were starting to do. Wraith dropped its faceplate to the ground, staring at the many colored grass. Just another reminder of how far it was from home. Stomach seemed to notice how Wraith was feeling.
“You know” Stomach said “I wish I could tell you that all this is going to make sense. But the truth is a lot more important. The truth is that nobody here knows what’s going on. I know firsthand, orientation can make you feel like you’re the only one who’s confused, but that’s all a lie. Everyone here is confused, 24/7, all the time. Wraith, this is a wacky crazy off-the-fucking-walls insane place. The only way to adapt is to accept that, not to try to make sense of it”
Wraith took his faceplate off the ground, looking up at Stomach, taking in his widening grin. The words of the second person it’d ever encountered in this world started ringing in its head.
“It’s all going to make sense eventually, that’s what I was told” Wraith muttered
“Sorry to break it to you, but that was a complete lie. It’s never going to make sense, that’s a fact. But, you’ll get used to it. Wraith, you’re going to adapt, I sure did. I went from being a constant drunk, unable to face the fact I was away from home, to only a part time drunk with a great job! Speaking of drunk, we should get going. I wanna make it before noon”
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