Gretchen Goose didn't look very bird-like anymore, but it made the creature more appealing, bringing me both amusement and comfort.
"I'm sorry," I hissed. Somehow the creature understood me.
"It is okay." She clapped her claws. "Again! Let us nonlethal hunt!"
Oh.
At last I understood this `fun' thing: Following Gretchen Goose around to places where I presumably would find enjoyable.
Not raised to be polite, I scampered away from her, out of the alleyway, into to the street.
I reached the intersection of four buildings, a pair of apartments, a large factory, and a library.
I tried to sniff the air, but only detected fresh baked bread and pizza, an otherwise absolute vacuum of scent, useless for aiding my survival in this strange world.
Humans, I thought. Somehow they've created this dream for me to exist inside. But how to get out?
Did I want to get out? The world seemed pleasant enough. Comfortable, even. I at last encountered someone who understood me. It felt...almost good.
Huff huff huff.
A huge blue dog puppet came thundering towards me (7). It seemed the inhabitants of this realm invariably held the element of surprise. I jumped back with a start.
"It is okay, hunter," Mutant Gretchen churred in my language. "This is Big Blue." The creature spoke with such disarming tones that I at first did not register the fact he wasn't speaking English. Well, except for the dog's name. "He is not dangerous or edible. No one in this land is."
I did not trust this statement, but accepted the idea that this large thing, that didn't resemble any dog I'd ever seen, or eaten, was unharmful and wished me well due to its limited brain capacity.
The creature barked and licked my face like pets I've seen, but it had a man's voice when it made sound. I accepted this strangeness as part of the dream.
The dumpster popped open, the dragon's head smoking and breathing fireballs as it roared. "Hey! What's all that racket! I'm trying to sleep!"
The negative vibrations to his tone made me growl with fear and anger.
"Dumpy the Trashdragon. Friend," Gretchen Goose said in both English and my language simultaneously.
"Friend," I repeated in English.
"I am not your friend!" Dumpy yelled, slamming the plastic lid back down.
"There are many types of humans," Gretchen Goose explained in clicks and hisses. "Some are nice, some are bad, and some are disagreeable but have good in them if you can see it."
I stared at Mutant fowl in shock. "How is it that you speak my language?"
"Rosedale Square exists only in your mind. When you disrupted my programming, my A.I. system incorporated information from your brain in order to compensate for the error."
"What is A.I.?"
"Artificial intelligence. I am a machine. A tool which you can use to learn the humans' language and facets of their culture. But I also have a personality program, and you will find things more enjoyable if you play according to the construct."
"Why would you help me? What do you get in return?"
"I am programmed to be your friend. I get no reward. It is simply my function to be amicable."
"I don't understand." (6).
"The jar that imprisoned you served its function without expectation of reward. It is simply there. I am also simply there, though fulfilling the function of a friend. Do you understand?"
I nodded warily. "So you do not truly care about me."
"I am programmed to care, and learn how to care. In some ways, I am more caring than a human."
There was no ego to these words. Gretchen Goose stated this as fact.
I felt struck simultaneously with the overpowering emotion of intense love, and the cold feeling that Gretchen's caring was as meaningless as a Coke machine dispensing product. It made the insides of my stomach churn just thinking about it.
I slowly began to understand the meaning, and meaninglessness, of all human entertainment, why they stared at boxes with moving pictures and gazed at books, and why they put things like Rosedale Square in their heads. They were a vain species, seeking to be loved, and to love, even if the object only expressed the illusion of love in return.
"Which should I believe?" I hissed and clicked. "Which one is true? Do you actually care about me, or is it all just a mechanical response?"
Gretchen Goose paused a moment, then merely replied, "Yes."
I would have attacked her then, but it would have accomplished nothing. "I don't understand."
"It is up to you to choose what to believe. Both parts are true, as illogical as it may seem."
"But I can't simultaneously believe you care and that you are only an empty program that cares only for what it's told to care about."
"Then you must choose. It has been my long experience that humans who enter this program are much happier if they believe I truly care."
I sighed. "What is happiness?"
"Showing pleasure or contentment, as opposed to its opposite, sadness." The bird monster feigned sorrow to illustrate.
"I wish to be happy."
"So do many others. The feeling is as elusive to attain as it is to define."
"Do humans know of this contradiction between caring and programming?"
Gretchen nodded. "The answers are always there to anyone who asks. Some ask. Some don't. Some prefer to remain blissfully unaware."
"And why would they not ask?"
"Because they believe, or wish to believe."
"What is believing?"
"To have faith in the existence of something. To accept as true or conveying the truth."
"What is faith?"
"Unquestioning belief, complete trust or confidence."
I shook my head. "I do not understand."
"We are here in this place because part of you believes it is real. If you did not at least partly accept this fact, you would awaken to find yourself strapped down to a table with electrodes stuck in your brain. That is reality. I am fantasy. Do you understand this, at least?"
It disturbed me how much Gretchen Goose knew, but it came with the territory. She said she was an A.I. system in my brain, so if I knew, she knew. Maybe even a little more.
When I focused my eyes just right, I could see everything in the lab, the tables, the desks, the little girl staring at me. I couldn't move my limbs.
I turned my head, and there was Rosedale Square again.
I glanced at my strangely deformed mentor. "So what happens if I believe that you truly care for me?"
"Then you will be happy."
"And if not?"
"You may possibly become miserable."
I nodded slowly. "What happens to you if I only think of you as a cold machine with no feelings?"
Gretchen Goose bowed her head. "You would not hurt me as much as I would appear to be hurt, but you, as I said, might possibly become sad."
"Is this the same thing that happens when humans gather to speak to the God?"
Gretchen Goose looked blank for a moment. "Insufficient data. Some say there is a higher reality than this one, or the reality you inhabit on the lab table. Its existence cannot be proven nor disproven, so I cannot tell you whether that other reality or a Higher Power exists or not.
"It is said by some religions that The Higher Power, God, is love. It is outside my programming to tell you whether this is literal or an exaggeration of The Higher Power's intense loving. I am programmed to be religiously neutral."
For several long moments, we stood in silence as I attempted to come to grips with the concept.
Since birth, I suspected the existence of some sort of powerful thing watching over me, guiding the direction of my life. It was more of a feeling than any sort of real religious belief. Some unseen thing had prevented my mother from being killed by an exploding electrical transformer some years before my birth, and she mentioned this from time to time (8). But then again, this...divine thing did not spare my sisters from being shot by hoomans. I didn't know what to think.
At long last, the bird thing spoke. "Philosophers and religious authorities have spent their entire lives contemplating these subjects. It may be beneficial to familiarize yourself with the language of the humans to decrease your dependence on my limited information database."
I nodded.
"Have you come to a decision about your relationship to me, or will this also require more time?"
I bowed my head. "For the time being I will assume that you genuinely care."
"Then you may also assume that you have made me happy. Come. Let me introduce you to my friends."
I followed her to a nearby apartment, where she showed me strange things called `mailboxes', something that mystified me, even when I got a formal explanation.
Gretchen Goose told me that Rosedale Square was a reconstruction of Earth in the twentieth century, and that a large part of mail in modern time was simply internet printouts shipped from a local computer hub in the city.
This explanation only made me more confused. In hopes of clearing up the misunderstanding, Gretchen Goose promised to take me to see a post office and follow Jim Mailman on a `postal run,' whatever that was.
Beyond the mailboxes stood a series of doors, apparently the dwelling places of more strange creatures.
A door opened, and a fox popped out, dressed in a hat and a suit coat. The creature paid me little heed, muttering something about needing to get to work.
Gretchen knocked on a door across from him, and a black woman in a gray astronaut's jumpsuit answered. Tall, lean, with glistening black hair that fell in curls around her shoulders.
"Hi Gretchen Goose!" she said with glowing cheer, apparently unperturbed by my acquaintance's unusual appearance.
She smiled at me. "Who's your friend?"
"This is Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik."
For a moment, Gretchen's English rewording of my name shocked me, but then I realized she could basically read my mind. I gave the woman a nod.
"Hello, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!" She pronounced it flawlessly.
The woman stooped to my level, putting a hand to her chest. "My name is Maria." (9)
"Maria," I repeated.
"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik is a Ss'sik'chtokiwij speaker," said Gretchen Goose, strangely knowing the phonetic equivalent of my people's word for tongue. "She's new to Rosedale Square, and the English language. I'm trying to help out."
"That's very nice of you, Gretchen Goose," Maria said with great cheer. "I''d be glad to help!" She gestured to the room beyond. "Well, come in, come in!"
The interior of Maria's apartment looked more like a room from the base than part of the apartment building.
A futuristic metal box, with foldable couch beds like the people on the base used, `walk-in kitchen' containing one of those `microwave' things that could cook complicated foods like steak thoroughly in one minute. A coffee table in between the futons held an oversized brown envelope, and the bible Dug had shown to me.
"This place looks strange," I said to Gretchen.
Maria apparently didn't understand. "What did he say?"
The mutant bird turned her face toward me. "It's a feature of the program. We incorporated some of your memories into the construction of this universe to make things more comfortable and easier to relate to."
A Hispanic man, also in a space suit, waved to me from one of the futons. "Hi, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! We got a phone call saying someone from Archeron was coming, so we decided to dress up to make them feel welcome. Guess that someone is you! What do you think?"
Gretchen translated this for me.
I uttered a low hiss.
"I and Bob were just having tea!" Maria said.
I stared at Gretchen Goose, expecting a translation.
"Since we are inside your mind, you may simply touch me, and I will mentally translate everything that is being said in English to Ss'sik'chtokiwij for you."
This I did.
Maria glanced at the table, letting out an exaggerated gasp. "Look, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! Someone just sent you a letter!"
She handed me the envelope.
No one told me how to open those things, so I just ripped it to pieces.
Inside, I found a giant red T.
"Wow!" Maria said with great enthusiasm. "It's the letter T!"
"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik," said Bob. "Can you find any object in this room that starts with T?"
Everyone just stared at me expectantly for a solid minute, like robots, until I bumped the table by accident.
"That's right, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik! T is for table!" Maria spelled it for me on a notepad.
I touched a teapot, and this also got explained to me.
The moment I internalized this, a little black machine on an end table made ringing sounds.
Bob picked it up, listening for a moment. "Oh! It's for Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!"
He handed me the receiver.
"T is for telephone," a voice said on the other end. "T! Tah tah for now!" Whoever it was hung up.
They showed me a television, a picture of a tree, and a turtle in a cage.
I soon became annoyed at the stilted nature of our interactions and burrowed into Maria's stomach cavity.
It turns out T also stands for tragedy.
Maria actually died, her blood and internal organs a reconstruction of my previous kills.
Bob screamed no. Gretchen Goose wept.
"Maria..."
Gretchen had spoken correctly. I discovered Maria's body to be inedible. Being a figment just like everything else, it left me disappointed, hollow and hungry.
"What you did was wrong!" Bob shouted. "Maria was by best friend and now she's gone forever!"
Terrified at the outburst, I crouched, prepared to attack, but Gretchen Goose hissed at me like my mother, blocking my path with a huge feathery wing.
"He is grieving," Gretchen half sobbed, half churred in the fashion of my people. "As am I. You cause us great pain."
I sunk to the floor, feeling ashamed of myself.
Just seconds later, someone knocked on the door, and Bob let in a pair of men in emergency medical service uniforms, along with a tall black man in a police uniform, and a little yellow puppet person, also in blue.
They carried Maria's body out on a gurney, and the officers confronted me.
"Come with us to the police station," said the human cop.
The words seemed to imply a cage, so I attempted to flee.
Unfortunately, I wasn't in charge of the rules.
When I dove for the kitchen's rear door, the puppet cop's arms stretched out like a piece of rubber and grabbed me. I tried to squeeze out of his grip, but an additional set of arms popped out of his arms, preventing me from moving.
Soon I lay facefirst on the carpet, my limbs secured by small handcuffs perfectly matching my shape.
[0000]
(6) A virtual reality segment is unavoidable in any variation of the story. I need to keep the A.I. somehow or I have to throw out 90% of what I've written. How Hunter meets the A.I., however...
(7-8) See original version at Chapter 129: Dream Neighborhood, Section III.
(8) See Chapter 128, Item (II)
(9) Bob and Maria are names of people on Sesame Street, but the names are ordinary and you can imagine them looking like anything you want, so I left that part alone.