A/N: I swear, this will be my last new story for a while. After this one, I'll focus on updating the ones I've already published, this one included. It's just that…well, this is the culmination of an idea that's been rolling around in my head for at least a year now, and I've managed to refine it (finally) into something that will actually be unique (as far as I'm aware anyway) and interesting. So I'm putting the idea to paper before it vanishes back into the recesses of my mind.

For people who were linked this directly and can't see the summary, (people do that, right?) the self-insert character expected to end up in the world of Earth Bet in Worm, the web serial by Wildblow. I (the author) had been planning a story like that for a while. So my self-insert, a copy of me sent across the multiverse and put into a nanomaterial body with a Union Core, was fully prepared for and expecting a world of superheroes to tease about the potential grey goo scenario that he represents, among other things. But then plans changed and this happened instead.

If you're wondering why the self insert doesn't get turned into a girl…you clearly don't pay enough attention to the source material, but I'll give you credit for at least looking it up, maybe even watching a few episodes. Still, even in the anime it's made clear that the decision to be female was completely arbitrary and based on the tendency of humans to name ships after women. In short, a bunch of robots with no gender needed to pick one and they all came to a consensus that female was the way to go. And also the flagship was [CENSORED DUE TO MASSIVE MANGA SPOILER.] That definitely played a role in their self-identity. So if one of the ships wanted to be male, there is literally nothing other than maybe some peer pressure stopping them from doing so. Especially in the manga. In the anime there'd probably be some nonsense about pride as an honorable ship of the Fog. But that's because the anime missed like, half the point that the manga was trying to get across and turned a story about the nature of war and the humanity of living weapons into a story about how the kids know everything and the adults just can't keep up with us. Still entertaining, but nowhere near as deep or meaningful.

In case you were wondering, the only reason I can think of that I'd even pay attention to the anime lore is because it gives a better idea of what a member of the Fog can do without a battleship handy. Honestly though, even that's suspect, so if you're going to quote lore at me be prepared for me to pull potential manga spoilers on you about why I did what I did.

Have I typed your eyes out long enough? You know, 'talked your ears off' doesn't translate well to text…but I digress. Again. Do go ahead and read the story now. I'm done.

It happened while I was shoveling snow. I had been temporarily promoted from Production Operator 1 (the poor schmuck that gets paid to do the jobs that the machines don't in a packaging factory) to Facilities Manager. That meant that instead of wearing stifling PPE and performing a repetitive task until my back literally ached and then another 4 hours just for kicks, I got to shovel snow off the company sidewalk. I still had to wear a mask because Covid is a bitch, but in weather as far below freezing as it was that day I might have worn something to keep my face warm anyway. Honestly, all things considered, I think I came out ahead. Shoveling snow is much more interesting and physically engaging than the tasks I usually got paid to do at my job.

You know your life sucks when shoveling snow for 8 hours is an improvement, but such is the life of a minimum wage worker. I'd long since come to terms with the fact that until I completed my education this was going to be how things were, but working regular hours for regular pay is about all I could ask from a job with my current skill set.

And then very suddenly something I'd been contemplating for a while up and happened with a suitable lack of drama. I couldn't see anything and what little I could sense told me that I wasn't holding a shovel anymore.

Nor was I in Kansas anymore, metaphorically speaking.

Consciousness initialization complete. Congratulations, you lucky bastard.

Woah, that's a rush. Going from thinking at human speed to literally thinking at the speed of light is one hell of a shock to the system.

Memory deletion in progress...memory relevant to subject 'Harry Potter' has been purged. ;P

Wait, what. Is that a damned winky-face-sticking-its-tongue-out emoji? Spelled out in text? Oh boy. So that's what my sass looks like from the outside. I wish I were surprised by that.

An audio clip mysteriously appears in my memory, and then without any transition I'm suddenly standing in a rather chaotic office in front of a guy who looks like Gandalf the White decided to wear the spangliest outfit he could find. Seriously, the thing has realistic-looking stars that keep literally twinkling. Oh, did I mention that the robe's print is visibly moving? Because the robe's print is visibly moving.

This is not what I expected. I'm briefly thankful for the fact that the second or so it will take the old man to react to my presence is a near eternity to a supercomputer like myself, because it allows me to react to the fact that despite expectations I'm clearly not in Brockton bay. Or probably even on Earth Bet at all. The closest thing they had to a this guy was Merlin, and all he did was mess around with pocket dimensions containing a wide enough variety of bent physics that they allowed him to present the illusion of magic use. He definitely couldn't have made a robe like this, even if it's a toss-up whether he'd have been eager or hesitant to wear something like it.

Remembering the mysterious audio clip, I examine it without actually playing it, since playing it would take about the equivalent of about 31 years to my current temporal perception. Still, the examination translates into an experience-a concept-which is processed by the Mental Model, or in other words me.

The audio clip is an uncomfortable number of seconds of recorded laughter. Vocal analysis suggests that it's my laughter, and since my laughter is now procedurally generated by the same processes that analyzed the clip now they're undoubtedly correct in their analysis. So not only is author-me changing the setting of the story I/we had been planning, he's also laughing at me. And sticking his virtual tongue out at me with the text art from the memory deletion message.

I am such an asshole sometimes.

I contemplate limiting my thought processes to the speed of a normal human, but decide to have a look around first. The old man's mouth has begun to open, and he looks a little shocked, but not hostile. That's good. Consulting my schematic database for camera designs (heh, I have a database of schematics now. That's awesome. Also holy fuck the Fog is OP, and no one knows that better than someone with administrative access to all their schematics) …where was I? Oh right, looking through the database for camera designs. I find one that can collect light from in between the threads of my nanomaterial trench coat by poking groups of absolutely tiny light-sensitive apertures between said 'threads.' Also, I'm wearing my London Fog trench coat and I only just noticed that. To be fair, I've only had about .063 seconds to get used to my new surroundings. Forming an even dozen cameras to give myself a full 360 degrees of vision horizontally and even a decent view of the hemisphere of space around me not taken up primarily by the ground beneath me, I take in my surroundings once more.

The spangly Gandalf has started talking, and my audio recording systems (which amusingly are located where my stomach would normally be rather than anywhere near my ears) are dutifully taking in the sound waves to convert them to meaning using my understanding of human speech. I'll analyze the recording once he's done talking to figure out what he's saying. Other than the old man, there are several points of interest. For one, the walls near his desk are positively plastered with pictures of old men and women in witchy/wizardy robes, but every single depiction has their head resting on their arms, sleeping at the same desk that the old man sits behind. Weird.

For another, there's shelves covered in artifacts lining the walls underneath the portraits, some of which merely look like the sort of thing that would be used as a prop in a L.A.R.P.

session while the rest are actively magical in some obvious way. Levitation, glowing with no obvious chemical cause, locomotion with no obvious force to cause said locomotion, and so on. It's actually causing quite a bit of background noise, now that I check my audio log, but nothing obnoxious enough to prevent a casual conversation. Since there's nothing that looks immediately threatening I decide to start processing my human sensory inputs (as opposed to my Fog sensory inputs informing me about the septillions of nanomachines I now control) in what a human would call 'real time.'

"…might you be, young man?" the old man finishes asking. I don't need to review my audio log to figure out the beginning of that question.

"I'm…Feauxen, I suppose," I say simply. Something tells me the author will be upset if I don't use his usual pseudonym.

Trust that instinct, little robot boy. A text file that downloaded from literally nowhere says.

…right, trusting my 'instincts' is a good idea. Duly noted.

"Foe-hen?" the old man asks with a hint of amusement, "Are you perhaps a legendary slayer of chickens?"

I snicker briefly at the thought. "No, it's a name I made up when I was about 8 years old. Faux like the French word for fake, add an e that doesn't belong, and then pretend that the x is an h so you can tack a suffix on to make it sound nicer in a truly French fashion."

"Is there any particular reason you feel the need to use a pseudonym?" he asks politely.

"Well, I'm sort of…me 2.0, so my real name is already taken. But even though 1.0 and I have never met, I know he won't mind me borrowing his favorite pseudonym."

"Are you some kind of simulacrum, then?"

I take a few milliseconds to contemplate that. I mean, if you want to get technical about it, robots are simulacra, right? Simulacra just means an imitation…I think. (Note to self, despite being a robot I don't have a dictionary in my head. I'll have to find a way to upload one later.) "I suppose I am, though a homunculus might be a more accurate term. I'm an artificial being created in the image of a human. One human in particular though, I'm not some idealized Adonis."

The old man hums as he thinks that over before asking, "And how did you get here, exactly? This place is rather well defended, and it's somewhat troubling to see someone just pop out of thin air despite wards that were put in place to prevent exactly that from happening."

It would seem that being the Author allows for some serious bullshit. Also, wards? From the context I assume they're defensive spells, but I can't help but wonder whether the Fog's teleportation would still work when they're in place. "Well, the being that created me has nearly limitless power. If there's a way to completely ignore something, he'll find it. Usually."

The old man's eyes sharpen and he leans forward enough to dispel the grandfatherly air he'd been maintaining until now. "And this…being…is the one who placed you in my office?"

"Yep."

"For what purpose?"

"Fun?"

"…for fun?" he asks, visibly baffled.

"When you have literally limitless power at your fingertips, pretty much everything you do is for fun."

The old man considers that for a few seconds, before nodding slowly. "I suppose that would be the case…but do you have any idea what he sent you here to do, specificially?"

Hah! I wish. "No. All I know is that he wiped all my memories pertaining to someone called 'Harry Potter' just before I arrived. I can deduce that I knew too much about whatever is going on here for things to be entertaining to him, so he decided to send me in blind, and I can even guess that he wants to see what happens if I experience this world without any foreknowledge, but I don't know anything concrete." Technically speaking he'll be dictating my every reaction to all the situations involved. And that theoretically cheapens the experience, but I distinctly remember deciding that just because author-me is basically an authoritarian dictator deity, that doesn't mean that I don't make my own decisions. He's me, after all, so it's not all wishful thinking.

"Harry Potter? The boy who lived?"

I chuckle a bit at the silly title, and also at the man's casual assumption that I'd know what he's talking about despite the fact that I literally just told him I don't. "If you say so, but that sounds like a common enough name that it could easily be someone else. I know it's spelled like the name, so I'm not looking for a hairy porcelain maker, but that's about it." And whoever this 'boy who lived is,' he might not even be important yet. Sometimes even the main characters of a story don't get introduced until halfway through the plot. Since Harry Potter was the 'subject' that my memories were related to I can assume that whatever this setting is, it got named after him, but that doesn't mean he has to be present for all the major plot events. Hell, if he's still young enough to be called the boy who lived he probably shouldn't be.

"So you have no knowledge of your actual purpose in this world?"

I smirk. "Does anyone? I have a very existential 23-year-old's philosophical ponderings on life and the nature of existence itself, but that's about it. Not even the guy that created me knows what the meaning of life might be."

"…I suppose that is fair," the old man allows, "but I still must ask what you plan to do here."

"Well if we don't know what I'm doing here, what are you doing here? Honestly, I'm probably here to help with whatever your biggest problem is at the moment. That's how this sort of thing usually goes."

The man raises an eyebrow at my last claim, but stands and walks around his desk to stand in front of me. "Allow me to introduce myself then. I am Professor Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." He sticks his hand out to shake.

I take his hand and carefully don't crush it with my newly robotic strength. "Hogwarts, huh?" There's a lot of questions I have right now, but that's the most pressing. Who names a school after a warty hog?

The professor smiles as he explains, "I'm afraid something was lost in translation there in the interest of brevity. You see, the fiercest of wild boars were described as 'warty' by the native Celtic people of the time, and so naming the school after such a fierce animal was something of a statement of how fierce it could train the children to be in the harsh world where they lived at the time."

"…right," I say, giving that explanation the precisely calculated amount of sarcasm that it deserves. No seriously, I have so much processing power that I actually sat down (figuratively) and calculated the necessary sarcasm based on relevance to modern times, how much I care, and the professor's estimated humor relating to the subject. Being a supercomputer is fun. It didn't even take a single millisecond.

"As for what I am doing at the moment, unless you have the necessary skills to teach the Defense Against the Dark Arts class I'm afraid you can't be of much help to me."

I give that some consideration, and decide to propose a test. Manifesting a Klein field off to the side, I ask him to shoot it with his strongest spell.

"That would destroy this entire office, Feauxen," the professor says calmly.

I roll my eyes. "Okay, maybe not your most powerful then, but whichever spell has the most penetration power."

The old man inhales sharply, and I can tell that I've very nearly offended him. If he was a less collected individual, he would probably have gotten angry at me just for suggesting that he use…whatever spell it is that has the most penetrating power. Interesting.

"The killing curse is not a spell to be cast lightly, Feauxen," he says simply.

Okay, that's a decent reason. "Obviously, if it does what it says on the tin. But there's nothing to kill inside my klein field, so what's the problem?"

The professor sighs. "To cast such a powerful curse requires the caster to focus so thoroughly on killing intent that their focus is completely unshakable. It is a dangerous curse to cast not just because of what it can do, but because it narrows the focus of the caster down to nothing more than themself, the target, and their absolute unyielding need to see the target dead."

I still don't see the problem. I mean, if it requires a valid target that could be a problem, but that doesn't seem to be the professor's actual problem. He seems more upset by the fact that needing someone dead in that particularly single-minded fashion is a prerequisite. "Honestly, I'm not sure if a curse like that would work even if you hit me with it. It's possible that magic can conduct through my body to my Core, but it's just as possible that I don't count as alive enough to die anymore. But that's not the problem, is it? You aren't worried that you'll hit me, you're worried about what will happen if you focus so thoroughly on killing someone that you actually manage to cast the curse, aren't you?"

"Yes," the old man says simply, nearly sighing with relief. Why? Because I understand his hang-ups about killing people? What kind of a world is this where that is enough to make him happy?

"There's not a single person in your life you've needed to kill badly enough to cast the curse?"

"No," he said simply. Vocal analysis suggests he's lying, but since that analysis is based on my admittedly limited social skills I'll let it go for the moment.

"Well then just cast the next most powerful penetrating curse," I say.

The professor smiles wryly. "That, I think, is a demonstration that we should take elsewhere. However, as none of the students in this school are capable of casting such a powerful curse, I'll start with something a little less dramatic." He waves a hand, and if I was still human I probably wouldn't have noticed the heavily polished stick slide into his hand until he was done moving. As it is, I'm able to clearly see the motion, (at least when I play the footage back; viewing things at human speed really dulls my reflexes) as well as the nearly instantaneous build-up of red energy that flies off the stick and strikes my Klein field.

Hmm. My Klein field's manifold doesn't seem to like that red energy, whatever it is. It takes 35.7293846% of the field's designated processing power just to contain one tiny little burst, and from a field that can withstand a direct hit from typical 21-st century ship-to-ship weaponry that's saying a lot. I may not have the resources available to a typical battleship of the fog, but an energy weapon that can so easily consume so much of my available processing power is highly unusual to say the very least. I vent the energy into the floor underneath the field after waiting for a full second so that it doesn't look like my shield did absolutely nothing, and it emerges in the exact configuration it entered despite the fact that extra-dimensional topology should have caused it to be flipped across three dimensional axes. Most curious. "Well, whatever that was it's incredibly hard to contain, but this field of mine can contain it indefinitely if it needs to."

"Oh," the professor asks, "If that is the case, why did my stunning spell reappear?"

"Because holding your 'stunning spell' was taking more than a third of my Klein field's processing power, and I figured a little red bolt wouldn't hurt the floor overmuch."

"You can choose where the spell comes back out?"

"Sure," I say, "shoot another one, then think fast."

The professor raises his eyebrows at me. I smile like butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. I mean, it actually wouldn't unless I wanted it to, but that's another matter.

The professor's spell is noticeably brighter this time, and even crosses the distance more than 3 times as quickly. It's lucky I was ready for it; if I hadn't been prepared to conduct the energy directly back where it came from the field would have automatically attempted to disperse the energy and failed when it reached 100% of its allocated processing power and caused the field's integrity to break down in the absence of the precise calculations required to maintain 4 dimensional topology in a primarily 3 dimensional reference frame. As it is, I am ready and guiding energy in a specific direction is a lot easier than trying to hold it in place for containment purposes. Professor Dumbledore is visibly shocked to see his spell reflected back at him so easily, but casually bats it into the floor with his off-hand. That's a neat trick, especially since the spell leaves a sizeable scorch mark on the floor, but his hand is unscathed.

"Well, I think that is an adequate demonstration of your skills. Consider yourself hired."

I hesitate. This sounds like a good way to figure out what the plot of this setting is, but I really hadn't expected to get hired that easily. I'm barely qualified for manufacturing work, (discounting my new skillset and databases that I haven't fully gotten used to yet) and he has no way of knowing that I've worked with enough kids before to probably keep my temper while surrounded by them. "Just like that? I can shoot your spells back at you, so I'm hired?"

"Your only competition for the post this year is so clearly a fraud that I was only considering hiring him because there was literally no other option."

"What, is the posting cursed or something?" I ask offhandedly.

"Most likely." He replies easily. Clearly I'm not the first to ask this question, which is worrying in its own way. "It has been several decades since a teacher held the post for a full school year. I must advice you to be cautious, as several Defense professors have found themselves in compromising positions or even killed when they otherwise proved to be adequate teachers."

Right. That's not worrying at all. "I'm…a lot harder to kill than a human would be, even if a spell does penetrate my barrier or land on me."

"And if it is discovered that you are non-human, you will be lucky to enjoy as many legal rights as the animals we kill for food," the professor counters calmly.

Okaaaaay, this society is barbaric as fuck. At least the professor seems okay with my non-human status, and speaks about the discriminatory laws with clear dissaproval. "I see. I'll have to endeavor to act as human as I possibly can. Which is probably going to involve looking up what curses do to human flesh so that I can pretend to be human if I ever get caught off guard by a spell."

"As a professor you have full access to even the restricted section of the library, though I would advise you to consult Madam Pince before studying any of the more dangerous texts. Some are dangerous to their readers in addition to the enemies of their readers."

Well, that will be useful. Wait, the books are dangerous?

…

Something is seriously wrong with this library.

Dumbledore showed me to it easily enough, and introduced me to the stereotypical stern elderly librarian who runs the place, but that's not the problem. The problem is that my nanomachines are detecting extra-spatial folding as I roam the shelves. As someone who uses extra-spatial topology to absorb and redirect energy, I know exactly how dangerous that sort of thing is. And they seem to have used it to put more space into their school library.

Maybe it's a last-ditch defense measure if an enemy is stealing all the books? But even then it'd be a scorched earth policy. With how much space is being folded to fit inside the exterior walls they'd be lucky if they didn't create a miniature neutron star. Although upon reflection my physics simulations tell me that an environment like that would last for about 3 nanoseconds in Earth's atmosphere before exploding violently. Probably with enough force to destroy the whole school.

And they use this nonsense to fit more shelves into a library.

I sigh. Magic doesn't make sense, and magic users don't seem to make much sense either. Why knock down a wall or add more floor space to the building plans when you can just twist 4D spacetime until it puts you in grave danger of dying violently?

Still, the books themselves are incredibly useful. I'm primarily focusing on memorizing the textbooks discussing defense-oriented spellcasting and tactics, but I also memorized bits and pieces of a dictionary (reading the dictionary is unsurprisingly boring even when you can do so at superspeed) and a compendium of the 10,000 most commonly-used spells. Being able to fully memorize a page in a book simply by looking at it is incredibly useful. I only 'read' one book at a time, and hopefully anyone who sees me flipping through the books so fast will assume that I'm skimming through them to look for a specific page. Still, once the books are memorized they're added to the tremendously enormous database of information I can call on near-instantaneously.

As I finish the third-year standardized defense textbook, I notice that there are a few underlying principles that, while nonsensical, seem to dictate the way that magic as a whole works. I haven't exactly gotten bored of sitting there and memorizing textbooks yet because it's a quick process and the information itself is interesting, but I decide to take a break and look for a textbook on magical theory anyway. Maybe it'll be able to help me understand why a defensive matrix specifically designed to contain exotic anti-capitol ship weaponry can't handle an overpowered stunning spell. I probably wouldn't be able to redirect more than 14 spells like it at once without shrinking my Klein field down to just the areas the spells hit, and even that would require me to overwrite the default behavior of the Klein field so that it doesn't collapse after the first hit. Sure, any prospective students probably won't be as powerful as the Headmaster, but if they can manage spells even half as powerful as his weaker stunner a class full of them could easily overwhelm me through sheer volume. And I've taught both children and teenagers before, so I don't trust that they won't try at least once. Speaking softly and carrying a big stick simply does not work when you're dealing with literal children.

The magical theory textbook is…intriguing. It suggests that magic is an omni-present energy that mages simply manipulate to their own ends and produce in relatively small quantities. Of course, 'relatively' is in comparison to the magical output of natural phenomena like the Bermuda triangle (yes, it's apparently a magical hotspot, who could have guessed) that highly-attuned mages can sense. Individual mages are capable of some frankly quite terrifying feats just based on the examples given in the theory textbook. I grab a few history textbooks and start flipping through the pages for more information.

…

Well, now I know a lot more about Dumbledore. And honestly, I don't think I'm ever going to buy his harmless old man act ever again. He dueled the most dangerous Dark Lord in the magical world's living memory and won. Single-handedly. There were rumors that the Dark Lord Grindelwald had an unbeatable wand, and there are rumors that Dumbledore either tricked the wand into losing and then stole it for himself or just overpowered Grindelwald despite the advantage of a wand that is supposedly unbeatable in single combat. There are no first-hand accounts of the battle to be found in any of the history books in the library, though a few accounts mention that there were survivors who managed to keep out of the way of the fighting well enough to survive being close to ground zero. Something which implies that just being too close to the fighting killed several people who weren't as lucky. It's no wonder Dumbledore didn't want to use his most powerful penetrating curse indoors. He'd probably have destroyed his entire office with the collateral damage alone. My Klein field almost definitely wouldn't have done anything but disperse the energy for a few microseconds and then collapse as the energy forced its way back into the normal three plus one dimensions.

The good news, though, is that there's apparently magical energy coming from the planet itself (or that's where everyone agrees it's probably coming from, anyway) which is relatively easy to tap into. After observing how magical energy works I might even be able to do it myself with the right setup. Of course that means it would be a stationary ordeal, more like a ritual or maybe a defensive field than traditional spellcasting, but it's something. After all, defensive applications of the planet's magical energy are the reason that powerful wizards like Dumbledore or Grindelwald aren't completely unstoppable. Wards, which Dumbledore mentioned briefly in our conversation, are used for a lot more than blocking teleportation. If fact, if there's something magic can do, it's likely there's a ward to stop people from doing it. Up to and including a ward that prevents nearly all magic use within its borders, which is apparently used to help contain prisoners. I make a note to come back to that one when I've figured out more about the general structure of wards.

I start contemplating some possible uses for wards while I go back to memorizing the defense textbooks. Honestly, being a supercomputer is so much nicer than being a human. I don't even care if it means my emotions are fake now. Technically they were always fake, now they're just made out of software instead of chemicals.

...

Several hours later, the professor pays me a visit in the library. I don't bother hiding how fast I'm turning the pages, since I'll need this information for classes and he probably has a reasonable suspicion already that I don't know any of it. As the professor approaches my table, he takes in the titles surrounding me with interest. "I see you have been having a productive day," he says mildly.

I grin proudly. "I may have been born even more recently than yesterday, but I learn fast." As I say this I finish the seventh-year defense textbook and set it in the done pile before pulling out the next book, a more in-depth text on ward crafting that looked interesting the last time I got bored and took a stroll through the shelves.

I'm not looking at the professor and I didn't see a reason to keep all the supplemental cameras, so I can't see his expression. Nevertheless, the long pause give the impression that he just realized that I'm not just idly flipping the pages, and that my done pile contains over 30 volumes that detail various theories and practices of defensive magic. I may be a pretty lazy person by nature, but when reading so much so quickly only takes me a few hours and I'm going to literally be paid to know this stuff I'm not afraid to buckle down and ignore the boredom.

Also, I am literally learning how to do magic. That makes it all worth it in the end.

"Are you implying that you have read all of that in the time since we last met?" the professor asks incredulously.

I carefully mark my place in the book as I stop flipping the pages, then look up with a grin. "I did tell you that I wasn't human, didn't I? I don't know if your world has computers, but I'm a lot closer to a computer than a human. It's just that the operating system, the nerve center of it all, is operated by a human intelligence."

"…I will have to read up on these 'computers,' it seems. I had thought they were merely a muggle curiosity useful for complicated calculations, not something capable of so convincingly imitating humanity."

Either he's behind the times or something fishy is going on here. A theory develops as I ponder the issue. "What year is it?" I ask.

He looks surprised by the question, but answers quickly enough. "1992. Are you suggesting that you are from the future?"

Apparently I am. I mean, it's not like I'd been expecting to stay in 2020 in the first place, this is just two decades further back than I'd expected to end up. And also, you know, not even the right universe.

"Well personally I'm from 3 decades in the future, and the technology of my body originates…um." Right, the Fog are actually more like ancient alien technology than hyper-advanced human technology. "Well, that's a much more complicated story. Let's just say that it's not of this world and leave it at that." It's even true. Technically. Two different kinds of technically, because this Earth isn't where the Fog operates and the one they do operate on isn't where they came from either.

"…I see," the professor says in the manner of a man that doesn't actually understand, but is tired of questions begetting even more questions. "In any case, I came here to invite you to dinner. If you prefer it you can summon a house elf and eat here, though I would advise that you keep the books clean. Madam Pince is rather strict about such things."

I look at the books I've gathered. I don't even have the excuse of not wanting to lose track of my place in my research or where the materials came from, I have a perfect memory. "No, I'll eat in…uh…the cafeteria or whatever it is you have here." How would a magical cafeteria even work?

Dumbledore is quite amused at that. "Then come with me, Mister Feauxen, and I will show you to the Great Hall."

So…not the cafeteria then? This should be interesting.

A/N: So there's chapter one over and done with. Sudden and abrupt endings FTW! Somehow, I don't think this story is going to be what anyone expects it to be, but it's a story that in a lot of ways I just…have to write. So I'm going to write it. And I'm going to publish it, too, because otherwise what's the point of writing it?

Just for reference, this character is me but as a supercomputer. No, I'm that loquacious or observant in real life, but in real life I'm not made of nanomachines surrounding a Union Core. There's a bit of wish fulfillment here, I won't lie, but overall I'm going for a warts and all interpretation of my personality. And…well if you haven't noticed yet I'm something of an arrogant antisocial loner at times. This will definitely come into play in the story despite the fact that, both in real life and on the internet, I make an effort to be nice to people primarily for the sake of being nice. Most of the time.

What I'm saying is that while I don't particularly mind if you call me out on my bullshit even though (and perhaps especially because) this is literally a self-insert character. The personality copy is a few months out of date by now since the idea to change the setting happened during the snow shoveling that I mentioned at the beginning of the chapter and updating him past that point would ruin the fun. That probably won't effect his personality much, but the events of the stories I have planned for him definitely will.

Being an immortal (and ridiculously well-armed) computer would change anyone, after all.

Best of wishes,

~feauxen