*Hello everyone! It's Naoki-the-Dreamer, but I forgot my password ;_; So I'm here as Alvery from now on! I hope you enjoy the story; it's rather different than what I usually write, but I like it very much and hope you do too.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Brawl.
The students quietly filed one-by-one into the white-walled room.
Nobody spoke; everybody just gazed in fascinated silence at the many machines in the room. The hundreds of computers. Old, tattered charts plastered over the walls. Large tubes filled with unidentifiable liquid, ranging from thin and short to as wide and tall as a hallway. Against the windows, snow swirled incessantly. The wind howled. It sounded like the sad song of a wolf.
A man was seated at a table in the midst of the machines, dressed in a white coat to match the walls. He almost blended in.
"Velkomin, börn," he said in Icelandic, smiling at them in a fatherly way. "Ég mun vera sýna þér frekar spennandi hlutum í dag."
One of the students shivered. Another one coughed.
"I am Professor Flosadottir," said the man in the same language. "I am a scientist dealing with experimental numerology. And forgive me, but are you students from the Academy of Guðfræði?"
There was a long silence. "Yes, Professor," said one of the students finally, also in Icelandic.
"Ah, good," said Flosadottir. "I do so love it when students take an interest in matters beyond the simple world of scent, touch, sight, taste, and sound." He beckoned to them. "Come gather around me, children."
They did, slowly and uncertainly.
"This is a number chart," said Flosadottir. "Now, what does everyone know about the ancient art of numerology? What do the numbers represent?"
A girl raised her hand.
"Yes?" said Flosadottir, smiling encouragingly.
"Well," said the girl timidly, "there's zero –"
"Ah! Yes! Zero!" said Flosadottir. "Perhaps the most overlooked of all numbers, and yet the most important! Explain more about zero, my dear."
"I was getting to that, Professor." She took a deep breath. "Zero's…supposed to be the moon, I think…zero's like an accessory, it sort of enhances whatever number it's before or after. Right?"
"Perfect!" cried Flosadottir. He pointed to the number zero on the chart. "It enhances the other numbers. Zero is supplementary and often left out, but I consider it a very important number! Does anyone know why zero is so important?"
A boy raised his hand. "But how is zero important?" he asked, looking confused. "Zero means nothing."
Flosadottir practically jumped up and down in his chair. "Exactly right! It does mean nothing! It means null. It's a void. It's nothing. And that's precisely why it's so important. It is blank, but it contains everything. It encloses the universe within its boundaries, and all the physical world and the elements; earth, water, fire, air. Some even consider it the spiritual essence of God!"
The students were looking at each other now, more confused than ever.
"Everything was created out of nothing," explained Flosadottir. "Therefore, everything was taken from zero. It is the blank canvas before a masterpiece. Do you see now, students?"
A few heads nodded agreeably, but the same boy raised his hand again and asked, "Sir…what exactly is numerology? I know the theory and everything…but…we didn't spend much time on the subject…"
The snow picked up and the wind howled even more mournfully. The lights flickered briefly. When power returned, Flosadottir was gazing thoughtfully at the chart.
"Numerology," he said. "Numerology."
The boy looked sorry that he asked.
"That's a very good question," said Flosadottir. "A very, very good question. Numerology is a thing which has no easy answers. It is a study, my child, of numeric vibrations. Of numbers. Numbers and their meanings, meanings that stretch beyond the physical plane of this world."
"Oh," said a different boy. "So…it's kind of a spiritual thing?"
"That's a simplistic way of putting it. But yes."
"But what does it do?" said the first boy impatiently.
Flosadottir looked at him suddenly, his focus sharpening. "Do?"
"Yeah," said the boy. "What does numerology do for society?"
There were general murmurs of agreement. Flosadottir shook his head at such childish folly.
"Anything and everything, boy," he said. "It gives us answers. Peace. It connects us with our own spirituality. Its power is endless, my children. And that is why you are here. That is why I am here. I am conducting experiments. I am testing this power. And yes, it is extraordinarily dangerous."
Someone snorted. Flosadottir lost his fatherly smile.
"Oh?" he said in a much less pleasant voice. "You don't think numbers can be dangerous? You don't think they have the power to create and destroy with ease? You are wrong."
There was a terse silence, and then a third boy prodded one of the computers and said, "What's all this stuff?"
"DON'T TOUCH IT!" snapped Flosadottir, and the boy withdrew his hand as though he had been burned. "That's very delicate equipment. All of these are my newest and rawest resources for conducting the most edgy experiment I have ever taken on. Keep your grubby paws off."
Miffed, the boy shoved his hands in his pockets, his face pink.
Flosadottir inhaled deeply and exhaled again, evidently trying to calm himself. "Sorry about that. But you ought to know better. I assume everyone wants to know about my latest experiment, yes?"
The audience grumbled. He took it as a yes.
"Good! Well, let's return again to the importance of zero and all the other numbers. Computers think and read and function in numbers, correct?"
A few grunts.
"Right. Well, my team and I…we were delving into the language of a computer. How they function. How they read. And we figured that the spiritual essence, those vibrations, could speak through a computer as well as through the stars themselves.
"So we did a few experiments. The computer was soon responding in ways that baffled even the most tech-savvy of the nation. Like they were trying to communicate with us.
"That sounds ridiculous. Even I admit that. But it truly happened, and my team and I, we came up with something even more ridiculous…we thought that perhaps, if we deciphered some of the codes in computer games, if we ran the Upprisa experiment, we could create life out of nothing. Out of…"
"…zero," someone finished.
Flosadottir nodded.
"Life?" asked a girl skeptically. "What sort of life? Real life? Like living cells?"
"We started with cells," said Flosadottir. "But for some reason, the computer could not generate true life. It gave us a pale imitation at best."
"Sir," said a different girl. "I'm having some trouble understanding. What exactly did the computer do?"
"It projected aspects of the game's coding into this dimension," said Flosadottir knowledgably. "At first, we got wispy shadows, nothing greater. But then, by tapping into the deeper coding, I managed to conjure up something much, much more interesting…"
The window rattled with the force of the blizzard. The white-coated scientist rose slowly from his table and approached the nearest tube, gesturing for the students to join him. Within it was a colorless, shrunken creature, curled up in a ball, breathing shallowly. It looked like an alien – it was faceless and blocky, like cheap graphics ripped straight out of a computer monitor. It was frightening. One girl screamed, and several tried to stifle their gasps.
"What – what is this?" a boy demanded, looking disgusted.
"It's my creation," said Flosadottir calmly.
"It looks sick," whispered one girl.
"It's alive," said another in an awed voice.
"Yes," said Flosadottir. "It's very much alive. It came from this game." He held up a Swedish computer game. On the front was a picture of a friendly white alien who looked virtually nothing like the curled-up thing in the tube. "This is the main character, ripped straight from the game itself."
Everyone gazed in silence at the pale, sick creature.
"It's dying," Flosadottir continued. "I don't know how to keep it alive. I force-fed it at first, but it didn't respond well to human food. Its body even rejected water. But don't worry…perhaps they aren't truly alive…perhaps they are only imitations…"
He pressed a button on the computer, and the little white body jerked and trembled in the tube.
"Stop that!" shrieked on one of the girls. "You're hurting it!"
"I am not," said Flosadottir. "It does not feel pain. It is almost completely brain-dead as well. No intelligence whatsoever, and no sense of self or life. Physically, it exists, but spiritually and mentally, it has about as much significance as a piece of wood."
"So what's the point of it?" asked the first boy.
Flosadottir looked at him with dislike. "Ah. You're the What's-The-Point boy. Well, What's-The-Point, the point is that I created it out of zero! Zero, the mother of all! I made it out of numbers! And if I can do that, then perhaps I will grow even better at it. Perhaps, one day, I might create a character that resembles us.
"There is no possible way to create them as truly living things, with thoughts and memories and feelings and nerves. But perhaps I can get very, very close. And then –" He chuckled. "Then I can sell them to the companies to which they belong. Do you realize how much people will pay for this? It is much more than 3D gaming. Video game characters, actually standing next to you and giving you advice as you played the game! People would dish out thousands of dollars for that kind of experience! It will be revolutionary!"
A few of the students smiled at the thought, but a majority of them looked dumbfounded, as though they didn't believe what they were hearing.
"That's ridiculous," said one.
"That's the future!" cried Flosadottir. "Now…children…do you want a tour of the rest of the laboratory?"
They looked at each other, then a few mumbled, "No, thank you, sir. We better be going home."
"Yeah, this fieldtrip was fun, but school ends soon, and we must be getting back," said one girl with a brave little smile. "Good luck with your experiment, Professor."
Flosadottir dipped his head in response. The students filed out of the room, securely shutting the door behind them, buzzing about what they had seen, leaving the scientist to his numerology.
Flosadottir was silent for a moment, standing with his hand resting on the tube. Then he grabbed his next project – a Wii game by the name of Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which he heard was filled with a plethora of colorful characters. He inserted the disk into the computer. While waiting for it to boot up, he took one last glance into the tube at the shrunken creature inside. He sighed, looking older than ever, steeled himself, and flicked a switch that said 'off'.
"Kveðja," he whispered.
The snow swirled, the wind screamed, and the tiny milk-white creature shuddered out its final breath and quietly, peacefully died.