.
.
"I still don't get how my phone got signal - that tells me there must be a way back," Mebuki said.
She was resting on Jacob's bare chest, Jacob idly stroking her hair as she lay on him. "I don't like that you're talking about leaving when we just got married," Jacob said.
"I'm not leaving, I'm just saying. It's fucking weird, is all I'm saying."
"It's our wedding night, why are you even thinking about that?"
"Because," Mebuki said, and she laced her fingers with his. "I wanna show you off to my parents."
Jacob smiled sadly at her. They kissed. "I'm sorry we can't meet your parents."
"I still think there's a way to go back." She rested on his chest again, pulling up his hand. She held their hands up, looking at their closed fist against the darkness of the ceiling. "I got one bar down here, then two bars when I pointed my phone east. Maybe if we take a trip there, maybe we'll find a portal or something. And then I can go back."
"How would we find it when your phone is broken?" Jacob asked. Mebuki dropped their hands.
"I don't know," she said, tucking herself against him. "But I'm pretty sure if my mom found out I got married without her, she'd be super pissed."
Their voices were soft. They lay together in the darkness. Jacob murmured. "Do you regret marrying me?"
"What? Of course not." Mebuki grinned and kissed his neck. "I romanced the trashiest. Douchiest. Villain." She dropped little kisses between her words, hugging him. "And I totally get to bang him."
He laughed softly.
"I'll totally cut your dick off if you cheat on me."
"I have no intention of cheating," Jacob said.
"You think I'm joking, but I'm not kidding."
"I won't," Jacob said, smiling. They kissed again, Mebuki giggling against his lips as they kissed.
"God, what is wrong with me?" she giggled. He grinned and kissed her forehead.
"You are happy, just like me."
They kissed, Mebuki sighing as the kiss deepened. He moved his hand between their bodies and smoothly slid in, Mebuki still wet and pliant after their previous exertions.
"This is nice." Mebuki's voice was breathy as she hugged him, feeling him sliding in and out, her body slick and swollen and his length a delicious intrusion. He pressed a kiss to her eyes as his thrusts deepened.
Somewhere, deep at the bottom of the wooded part of the castle, at the edge of the highest tower, a pair of heavy boots crunched on the tall dry grass. The night was dark and the grass was trampled, but as a pair of gloved hands reached down, the clouds parted, the moon illuminating the remnants of an LED light from a broken cathode.
xXx
.
This is what happened when Mebuki first showed Gautier her phone.
"So what do you think?" Gautier asked the archbishop, who was examining Mebuki's phone. It was a few days after Mebuki burst into the throne room and waved her phone around, shouting desperately that she had the divine protection of the gods, she wanted to go to the Abbey and didn't want to get married.
"This is indeed miraculous," the archbishop said. He turned on the phone. The screen flared; strange characters floated on top of a background of a tropical forest He touched the button again and the lock screen opened into the home screen, strange squares floating atop the photograph of magnificent trees.
"There is, what she called, an 'app,'" Gautier said, showing the archbishop. He tapped the flashlight app and both men gasped at the sudden flare of light beaming out from a small gemstone at the top of the phone.
"Amazing," the archbishop said.
"Sir Archbishop, we must turn off the phone now, lest we drain its life prematurely," Princess Audrey said.
"Life?" the archbishop said. He handed the princess her phone.
"Indeed. This phone has been imbued with...with a magical current, called a 'charge.' Do you see this number here? The longer the phone is on, the more its battery is drained. Once it hits zero, the phone will be forever dark."
"A fleeting miracle from the gods," the archbishop muttered. The princess turned off her phone and slipped it into her satchel. "How on earth did you come upon something so precious?"
"It...it was in my hand when I awoke. I know not how I came upon it."
"I see. Very strange indeed." The archbishop stroked his chin.
xXx
.
"You say she might be a Saint?" the archbishop said.
Both the Princess and the Crown Price were standing desperately in front of him. The priceless miracle, the magical gift from God, had shattered, and the Prince and Princess sought an audience with him.
"Archbishop. We come here seeking advice. But we are trepidatious; my sister fears charges of witchcraft and heresy," Gautier said.
"There will be no trials for heretics for someone earnestly seeking the Church's protection," the archbishop said. Gautier and Mebuki glanced at each other.
"Has there ever been," and Mebuki glanced at Gautier, before steeling herself: "has there ever been Saints who've come from other worlds?"
"Yes, of course," the archbishop said. Mebuki sucked in her breath. "But they didn't come from other worlds as much as they were given divine revelations about the future. Saints such as those are given visions of a life they'd live a hundred years hence. When they awaken, they are convinced they somehow transmigrated."
"Then you know of this? This has happened?"
"Only in the mind, Your Highness," the archbishop said. Gautier stepped forward.
"But my sister had here that device from the other world. Is that not proof enough this other world exists?"
"The way the gods work is mysterious," the archbishop said.
xXx
.
"This is fucked," Mebuki said.
She was standing behind a court artist, who was carefully copying the schematics for a sewer system, while a painter hurriedly tried to render a photo-like painting of a ceramic toilet. "Can you guys work quicker? My phone is losing its magic," she said.
"O-of course, Your Highness! But the details here are so intricate, and...and these symbols here are hard to decipher."
He was copying the engineering schematics that were written in Japanese and English. Mebuki frowned at him.
"Don't worry about that. I shall write those symbols later. Focus on copying the blueprints."
"Yes, Your Highness."
Mebuki will just have to translate it to Sevran's language once it was finished. The artists took a breath.
The external battery still had some charge left; her phone was down to 17%; she could just press the button and charge it back to a hundred percent again.
"Your Highness. I-is it true? That these are pictures of God's revelations?"
"Um. Yes," Mebuki said. The artists' eyes widened.
"We shall copy it at once, Your Highness!"
"Good. Keep doing it."
They worked hurriedly, Mebuki scrolling through the webpages.
Thank god she still somehow had access to the digital library through her work, one of the random perks she had working at the HR department. "Why do we even need this?" she'd asked once, before her company transferred her to sales, and the most her boss could muster was that HR was a demanding and difficult field, it was good to have access to many books covering different disciplines.
"I wish I had access to a fucking printer," she said, watching the battery slowly drain again.
xXx
.
Gautier took her hard work and flushed it down the proverbial toilet.
"Do you realize how long it took me to translate this?!" Mebuki raged at him, when she found out Gautier had tossed her schematics in the trash. Gautier sniffed, looking down at her from above his glasses.
"It is your own fault. You left them for my disposal. I did not know you wanted them back."
"Are you fucking serious? How the fuck is it Jacob has the shitty reputation? You're a bigger asshole than him."
(She had no idea he'd sent the diagrams to Zachary, or that Zachary would look at them with great interest. Or that Zachary would spend his time deciphering English and Japanese and teach himself to read based on those documents.
"Holy shit," Mebuki said, after she found out. "He really is the male protagonist.")
xXx
.
Gautier and Jacob tried to fix her phone.
It was a cute attempt. Not understanding circuits or diodes or motherboards, they'd just had the royal jeweler glue the pieces back together with no discernible pattern; the motherboard was fractured. The battery had burst and corroded, catching on fire.
"The royal jeweler tried gluing on some jewels, but, ah, we tried to explain to him the parts necessitated a particular order," Gautier said. Mebuki took the shitty fake phone back, touched. It was like getting a shitty drawing from a preschooler, worthless yet adorable.
xXx
.
There were strange men prowling around the castle walls.
"We found the source of the anomaly," one man said, in Japanese, as the other man picked up the piece of broken phone. "How do you think we should fix this?"
"Halt! Who goes there!" the knight on guard duty said, but the men turned and started running, the knight bursting into a sprint. "Halt! I said, halt!"
xXx
.
"I don't remember being in the castle!" the man said tearfully.
He was just a simple farmer. "I was tending my cattle and somehow I woke up here," he said. The knights glanced at each other.
"I was possessed!" the man said. He gripped the bars of his cell. "It was like my body was taken over by spirits speaking another language!"
"Get the archbishop," the knight said.
xXx
.
The archbishop came, flanked by guards, as the two men who were found outside the castle were kneeling, their hands tied behind their backs and their heads bowed.
"They said they were taken over by spirits?" Gautier asked, walking briskly down the prison. "Were they trying to break in?"
"We're not sure, Your Highness. We thought perhaps they were spies of Second Prince Jacob."
xXx
.
"Are they yours?" Gautier asked, as Jacob walked behind him. It was just the two of them, Gautier dismissing the guards so that he and Jacob could speak unimpeded.
"No, they're not mine," Jacob said. "They were skulking about the castle?"
"They were wandering around the lookout tower. One of the guards caught them."
"Oof," Mebuki said, coming behind them. Gautier's eyes widened.
"What are you doing here?" Gautier said. Mebuki gestured.
"Hey, it's our honeymoon, I wanted to see my husband." Jacob preened at this. Mebuki grinned at him. "Anyway, who's this? Someone trying to break in?" she peered into the cell as the men crouched, glaring at them.
One of the men's eyes rolled back. He crouched into himself, then groaned, rubbing his head.
"Ugh. I hate jumping in with no prep," the man groaned in Japanese. Mebuki's eyes widened.
"Oi," the man said, looking at her. "Mebuki Mayumi. You're a part of the anomaly."
And Mebuki tried her very best not to shit herself.
xXx
.
Mebuki screamed. "What the fuck?! He's speaking Japanese! What the fuck?! Why is talking to me?!"
"Okay, calm down," the man said in Japanese, holding up his hands. Mebuki screamed again. "Christ, okay! I'm not gonna hurt you, I'm literally locked up, calm down!"
"What is he saying?!" Jacob said to Gautier, as Mebuki cowered against his chest.
"I don't know! What is he saying?!" Gautier said to Mebuki, who kept screaming.
"He's speaking Japanese. He's speaking my language. He knows me!"
"Tell those guys to unchain me," the man said in Japanese. Beside him, the second man groaned.
"Aw, fuck, you already made contact?" he said in English. Mebuki shrieked again.
"He's speaking English?!" Mebuki said, in hysterical English. "Wha- why is he speaking English?!"
"Because he's Singaporean. That's why he's speaking English."
"What?" Mebuki said, confused.
"I don't speak Japanese, sorry Princess," the other man said in English. The first man turned to him.
"She's not a princess, she's the female lead of the hentai manga, remember?"
"Wha- hentai manga?" Mebuki's head was spinning.
"It- it's all very complicated, but if you could just get us out of this cell, we could explain everything and it'd be very much appreciated."
"What are they saying?" Jacob said.
"They said I'm a comic book character."
"Oh, just like you told us," Gautier said.
"I think I'm gonna be sick." Mebuki slid down the wall.
The guards came, unlocking the cell. "Keep the chains on," Gautier said. "Take them to the interrogation room. I want to talk to them."
"Yes, Your Highness." They put the men in shackles.
xXx
.
"Okay. So this is going to blow your mind a little bit, but this whole thing is a computer simulation."
"What?" Mebuki said. The Japanese man smiled apologetically at her.
"Would you rather I explain it in Japanese? Hey Tianji, I'm gonna speak to her in Japanese so there's no misunderstandings."
Tianji nodded. "Go ahead," he said, in English. The Japanese man continued.
"Okay, so, first of all, my name's Jun. That's Tianji. We're scientists working on an experiment. It's a kind of virtual reality within a supercomputer creating whole universes."
"Like the Matrix?" Mebuki said. Jun nodded.
"Yeah, like the Matrix," Jun said.
"So am I...am I a human battery somewhere? Was...was the planet taken over by machines?"
"Oh no, ha ha, sorry, nothing that elaborate."
"...Oh."
("What is going on?" Gautier muttered. Jacob shook his head.)
"Wait, can't you guys speak their language? They're sitting here like bumps on a log, I don't wanna have to translate for them," Mebuki said.
"Uh." They glanced at each other.
"What language do they speak?" Jun asked Tianji.
"I think it's Welsh," Tianji said.
"Do any programmers speak Welsh?" Jun said.
"Jesus Christ! Can't you just download how to speak the language like in the fucking Matrix?!" Mebuki said.
"Oh right. Yeah. Hold on a second." Jun lowered his head. "Okay, we speak their language," he said. He turned to Gautier and Jacob. "I was just telling her your lives are inside a computer. The long and short of it is, we created a quantum supercomputer powerful enough to simulate the big bang and all the universes created from it. The result is hyper-realistic universes populated with billions of independent NPCs who are able to interact with their environment and create a more immersive experience. This has a lot of potential applications, but eventually we wanted to use this technology to create video games where the players can enter the game through virtual reality."
("I still don't understand what they're saying," Gautier said to Jacob. Jacob gestured helplessly.)
"Just before we came here, there was a massive power outage; a bird flew into the electrical grid, which caused a momentary error in processing. At the same time, you, Mayumi Mebuki, got hit by a truck, while Princess Audulie fell down the stairs and sustained a lethal head injury. The computer started back up, but instead of you two dying, the glitch led to the two of you trading places.
"Now, normally we let these simulations play out; it's unethical to wipe out entire universes, but we do have fail safes in case anything happens - say, if the computer overheats, or there's a fire, or a player is trapped in a simulation and is having a medical crisis. But because of the glitch, we can't turn off the computer. It's like when your computer won't shut down because of unwanted applications running in the background. It's a safety issue.
"So basically, the only way to fix the glitch is to get rid of the anomaly. We could kill both you and Princess Audulie-"
"What?" Jacob said, rising. Gautier pushed him down.
"-or we have them trade places again. We've already programmed a portal so you two can go walk back to your own universes. That should be enough to take care of the glitch."
"Wait, wait, can I take Jacob?" Mebuki said.
"Unfortunately not; he's not from your universe. It'll just cause another glitch," Jun said.
"But Jacob and I just got married, you can't do this," Mebuki said.
"We either do this, or we force a hard reset," Tianji said. "It will wipe out your entire universe. We don't want to do it, because the reboot process is a nightmare and we'll lose months of work."
"You can't do this!" Mebuki said. She started crying. "You tore me from my family and dropped me in here, now you're going to pluck me out and throw me out again?!"
"I heard enough," Jacob said. He pulled out his sword.
Mebuki screamed. "Jacob!"
He slashed the sword across Tianji's chest. Tianji's eyes widened. Blood trickled down his mouth.
His body fell with a thud.
"Dammit, Jacob!" Gautier said.
"It's okay, it's okay," Jun held up his hands. "He's not dead, he's just logged out. I'm talking to him right now."
They stared at him. Jun laughed.
"Oh, ha ha! Right, you're NPCs. You can't see the message bubbles. Think of it like your office Slack. Just, put down the sword, no one's gonna take her," Jun said. "There may be another solution, but it's a little bit of a pain in the ass."
"What solution?" Mebuki said.
"We merge your two universes. Now, currently your universes are only partially merged, and thus unstable, but we could probably stabilize it. It'll take a bit of programming on our part, but I think if I took this to the ethics board, they'd be okay with it."
"Wait, can you program toilets?" Mebuki said. Jun blinked.
"Yeah, I think so. We can probably program toilets."
"And running water? And showers?!"
"Yeah," Jun said. Mebuki pushed forward.
"Can you take this stupid castle and add in electricity?!"
"I mean, probably," Jun said. Mebuki started sobbing.
"Oh my god," Mebuki said, crying. "I hate it here! Everything sucks! There's no air conditioning! I have to shit in a hole! I have to free bleed into my fucking bloomers, I miss having tampons! No one wears deodorant and there's no such thing as showers!"
xXx
.
"Wait a second. What's this about me being a character in a hentai manga?" Mebuki said.
"Oh," Jun said, and he laughed. "Until recently, we've been letting universes evolve independently, but now we're experimenting with creating worlds based on fictional settings. Your world is from a comic, The Weird Senior in the Seat Next to Me."
He handed Mebuki the manga. She flipped through it. Her eyes widened.
"What the fuck, why is he masturbating in front of me?!"
"It's just a hentai manga, he got aroused looking at you sleeping," Jun said.
"Yeah but I know Asahina-san, he's a nice guy, he just draped his jacket on my shoulders and walked me home, he never did that to me," Mebuki said.
"I mean, we inputted the variables, but universes evolve realistically. So even though he might have the same personality, the world's social mores and values still kept him from actually masturbating. I bet he probably wanted to, though," Jun said.
"So...am I real? Am I alive? Did I just start existing one day as a full-grown human?"
"No," Jun said. "You were born, just like I was. It's just that your world is in a computer."
"This is so fucked up," Mebuki said.
"For what it's worth, there's a non-zero chance my world isn't also a simulation," Jun said.
"Jesus Christ. My head is starting to hurt," Mebuki said.
xXx
.
"So, time runs faster here. Fifteen minutes in the real world is roughly one year here. So after I log out, there's a good chance you won't see me come back until a few decades from now. Are you sure you don't want to go back?" Jun asked. Mebuki shook her head.
"No. I have family here," Mebuki said. She took Jacob's hand.
"Okay then. But just so you know, when I leave, we'll be permanently shutting down that tunnel. That way none of the locals accidentally make their way to Tokyo," Jun said.
"That's fine. I don't want to go back."
"Suit yourself." He lowered his head.
He woke up as the farmer, who started screaming about being possessed again.
xXx
.
"What is that?" Saveur said, riding on horseback, looking at the rainbow shimmer of light in front of them. It was just on the border between Arno and Aragon, a gash of distorted light cutting through the sunset.
"It looks like some kind of light tunnel. Should we check it out?" Robert asked. Gaspar tightened his fists on the reins as the horses whinnied, skittish. Zachary kept his eyes fixed on the spot and nodded.
"Yes," he said, and he moved his horse to a gallop. "Let's go check it out."
In the middle of Tokyo, just after midnight, Audulie and Tomoko were walking.
"Audulie de Sevran," a man said, coming out of a black van, looking like someone from the Secret Service. "You are the source of the anomaly."
Audulie shrieked and pepper sprayed him.
xXx
.
"Can you explain to me what happened?" Jacob said.
They were sitting in the bedroom, after Mebuki had spent the day drifting in a haze.
"I guess, I'm a character in a comic? And we exist in a computer, which is kind of like my phone, but bigger, just like the one I showed you?"
"Oh."
"It's just crazy, right? I mean, it really makes you question the nature of your reality. What's real? What isn't? What's important right now? Am I this way because I'm me, or because I'm programmed to be? What the hell does it mean, being a character in a hentai comic, when I never experienced those things? Are we all just storybook characters? What does it mean to be existing?"
"Does it matter?" Jacob asked.
"I mean, I guess not really."
"Do you want to have sex?" Jacob found whenever something was bothering him, he always felt better after having sex.
Mebuki paused, then nodded.
"Sure."