A few more taps and loading bars later, new text appears on the interactive terminal.

Assigning environment: INFIRMARY

Loading module. . . . . .

"I only render rooms as needed," Alvin says. Understandable behaviour for a computer dealing with memory leaks. "Using these terminals sends a request my way, so please use them as needed even when I'm not around."

"Got it."

I didn't get shit, but if I take the puzzle pieces laid out in front of me at face value, I can gaslight myself into thinking I did. The rooms I couldn't enter due to a busy host kinda make sense now. It sure was busy being stuck in a loop.

Domains, to my mind, seem like walkable operating systems. I'd pat myself on the back for that clever little thought, but I turn simultaneously smarter and dumber late at night, and I never know which side is winning.

When the "render" is completed, an exam room in the Sanctuary's nondescript minimalist style appears behind the sliding door. As pristine as a place dedicated to medical treatments should be, with no hint of imperfections on the furnishing.

I swing my butt onto the exam table and feign imminent death. "How bad is it, doc?"

Alvin puts on a pair of white gloves. "Hard to make promises in medicine, but I think you'll be grand."

"Heh."

As he takes a closer look at my hand, I wonder how he sees the world. Are his strangely coloured eyes anything like human eyes? Am I a bunch of code to him? A collection of visible molecules?

"It's only a superficial burn. We'll give your skin some relief."

"'Kay."

On the other side of the room, Alvin sits down on a rolling stool. Good taste, wheels make everything better. He grabs a medical cart with an impractically clunky monitor and pushes himself off the wall, creating the exact momentum needed to stop next to the exam table.

I don't care what this thing is, it has skill and I will coach it. Nothing feels more freeing than skating—your days are numbered, inhibitor!

Anyway, Alvin starts typing on the cart's keyboard to produce a bunch more rapidly flowing code.

"Hey, does using other machines feel weird to you?" I ask.

"There's a hierarchy," he says. "Contrary to human structures I've observed, among objects, it's being 'younger' or more up-to-date that denotes seniority. If I keep that in mind, usin' other tools in service of my User is perfectly normal."

I open my mouth to say something about how wild that is, but even I realize how little sense any of it makes.

"You're fucking with me."

"I am, yeah," Alvin concedes without letting go of his service bot smile. "I've been self-learnin' since the day I was launched. I don't waste machine cycles on accounting for the hierarchy."

That's the joke!?

I'm so used to my unchanging cadence tripping people up, I never expect to be hit with a taste of my own medicine. Especially not coming from something with a personality so colourful it blows mine out of the water.

"They didn't ship you with a user manual, did they?" I ask dryly.

"Ah, we've determined that nobody reads those," Alvin says. Can't argue there. "You're free to look at my source code though."

"I think I'm good."

"All right so!"

He opens the cart's top drawer, takes out a plain white tube and throws it my way. There's no branding of any kind, which is on-brand for this place.

Still trying to wrap my head around his joke—again, question mark—I squeeze the tube so hard its entire contents splash onto my hand.

"You think that's gonna be enough, or...?"

"May I suggest a smidge more?"

"Okay, dude."

Alvin grins like that's the nicest thing he's been called in his entire runtime. Not like he has memories to compare after his User database has been reset. Even his name is merely the default value of a variable in his code. Maybe I should get over myself and call him by it. What is it about me that's so averse to names? I can look into his eyes, and he runs on sixty "User Lulu"s per second, so why can't I voice two syllables?

As I make a fist to spread the aloe-like gel, the slight burn of its cooling effect brings me back to reality, if a domain qualifies as that.

"How did you get hurt, User Lulu?" Alvin asks, carefully confirming my leg's range of motion.

"I was kinda sorta maybe on the run from the consequences of a little crime I committed."

Unfazed, he continues his exam. "Well, you've come to the right place. The Sanctuary also serves as a refuge for my Users."

"Refuge" is a bit much. I sprayed dicks and swear words on a building; the line that would get me in real trouble hasn't been crossed.

Through the ever larger growing hole in my leggings, Alvin wipes off the dried up blood and inches closer to the actual wound. "Drifted on concrete for a while, did ya?"

"It was sick. You should've been there."

His glance is hollow, then he smiles wider as though he'd remembered he's supposed to run the happy face function. "It doesn't look like you fell downhill. I take it you had quite a bit of speed built up?"

"You got it, doc. I was on skates."

"I'm detectin' great passion in your voice, User Lulu."

He can tell?

Normally I wouldn't miss a chance to dump hours worth of skating knowledge on someone. But I don't like the sight of the tweezers taken from the drawer that conveniently has everything he needs.

"Where exactly are you going with those?" My voice cracks, betraying my attempt to play it cool.

"There's some debris I need to remove."

"It's fine. I washed it."

Eyebrow raised, Alvin leans in closer to my knee and squints. "From the looks of it, you poured approximately one hundred millilitres of water from a bottle and called it a day."

"Yeah. I washed it. With liquid microplastics."

He looks away, fidgeting with the tweezers. Click-click, click-click. "The wound may get infected if I don't clean it properly, but I cannot and will not act against my patient's wishes. So if you're squeamish..."

"Squeamish? Me? Yeah, right," I say with my nose held up high. "You should see me with a real wound. I just laugh 'em off. Sometimes I'm laughing so much that people don't bother calling an ambula—aaargh!!"

After I, shockingly, don't drop dead from having a tiny pebble removed, I realize I fell right for Alvin's taunt. His tongue sticking out says it all. If anything comforts me, it's that as far as treatments from unlicensed doctors go, this is pretty mild.

"You're so brave, User Lulu," he says, and I swear I can see the decaying halo above his head.

"Right. Yeah. Told you. I'm not—agh!!"

"There, all done."

Sighing, my body deflates. I must look like an absolute mess slouched against the wall like that.

When I see Alvin approach with disinfectant wipes, I turn my head away, arms crossed. Maybe it's like an accidental paper cut that doesn't hurt until I see—hngh. I feel my face twist into the look of someone who just took a hearty bite out of a big juicy lemon.

"So about my little crime," I utter through clenched teeth.

"I'm all ears," he says, and depending on who you ask, he either sounds too enthusiastic about that, or the appropriate amount of enthusiastic.