Simulated Lover

01: Simulated Universe Gone Wrong! (I)

oops

As every single atom in his body was being reconstituted at the space anchor located at Herta's office, Caelus felt a bit lightheaded. This was par for the course, as the feeling of the floor disappearing beneath your feet before getting launched at what feels like superluminal velocities is a sensation that one never really gets used to. In fact the first time the Nameless tried, he vomited on the floor of the Express, though after months of acclimation he could at least hold the contents of his lunch in.

The meeting at Herta's office was rather ad-hoc, with Herta rushing him to come as soon as possible. With the IPC taking intrest in the Simulated Universe project, some last minuite adjustments had to be made, adjustments that he had been brought along to test. He was of course happy to help, especially with the apparent arrival of most of the other Genius Society members that were working on the project.

Once enough of Caelus' atoms were reconstituted for him to see his surroundings, he was met with familiar faces. Inside the room was a round table with seven chairs around it. Seated on one of those chairs was Asta, who was staring at a piece of paper while being beside an inactive Herta puppet. On the other side of the round table however was seated a person which Caelus wasn't as familiar with.

The man was dressed extravagantly with a black suit with golden embroidery emblazoned all over it, alongside white gloves and slacks of the same jet black fabric that made up his suit. The appearance of the young Trailblazer into Herta's office seemed to alert the man, with him abruptly swiveling his head to meet his gaze.

After a few seconds of uncomfortable eye contact, the man's face contorted into a smile. Standing up from his chair, he started to introduce himself to Caelus.

"Caelus am I correct? I believe this is the first time we have met in person." the man said, amused "To refresh your memory, I am Genius Society Number 82, Weiss Fischer. Pleasure to finally meet the Stellaron Receptacle in the flesh."

If Caelus was being completely honest, he had never met Weiss before even within the Simulated Universe as he had never appeared outside of automated voice messages and occurrences involving him typically were just random stuff he left for Caelus within an unassuming box. A couple of hundred cosmic fragments here, a subtle curio here and there, almost always when he needed it the most. While his occurrences weren't as disgustingly overpowered as the times, he had stumbled onto Ruan Mei's secret laboratory, they were often the difference between "life" and "death".

"Nice to meet you too, Weiss" Caelus replied. Weiss chuckled in response, gesturing for Caelus to take a seat.

With a terrifying amount of nonchalance, the Genius Society member snapped his fingers, which caused a small black hole to manifest out of nowhere at the tip of Weiss' fingertips. After summoning the black hole, a cup full of tea and some pudding manifested in front of Caelus seemingly out of nowhere, startling him.

"Ehh a shame that Stephen couldn't come. He always liked Ruan Mei's treats" Weiss said to no one in particular, before clasping his hands "Anyways, I would like to thank you on behalf of Herta for your contributions to this little project of ours. With out you, gathering the data that we need for the calibrations we need today would be much more of a pain"

"Helping you guys out is no problem" Caelus replied "As long as I'm getting paid, of course"

Weiss chuckled in response. "I hope what Herta's paying you is enough. If it isn't, then I'll knock some sense into that skull of hers."

"She pays me well enough" Caelus replied "Anyways, you were talking about..."

"Calibrations yes" Weiss responded "As much of a marvel the Simulated Universe is, there is still much work to be done, especially now that the IPC has garnered intrest in the project. The energy consumption of the simulation is so high that efficiency improvements ranging from zero point five to one percent would result into an incredible increase in potential performance of the simulation, making it a bit more... true to life. For this session, we removed a lot of Stephen's game-ification for the time being, so youre going to be sent to just a normal simulated galaxy cluster for now. As for the specifics, the easiest way I could simplify it would be that were going to monitor the tetragametron flux rate in order to mitigate the effects of the Uncertainty Principle..."

Caelus... nodded along at what Weiss said, pretending to understand the niche scientific lingo that was spewing out of the scientist's mouth, barely being able to register terms like "Stellarium Biocardia" or "Imaginary-Quantum Wave Flux Phenomena". It took a few minuites for the genius to finish his rant, not caring about whether or not Caelus was going to have a migraine afterwards.

"... If you want to read more about Quantum-Imaginary dynamics, then you can head over to the Intelligentsia guild and request for a copy of Quantum-Imaginary Dynamics as observed in Celestintafera Megalith by Schwarzschild and Mei, dated around early 2157 AE. It's one of my older works, but no one has been able to disprove the theory behind it just yet! Hey... are you still there?"

"Uhm yeah, still here" Caelus replied "What were we talking about again?"

"Haah, so you didn't listen after all" Weiss sighed "It's fine, we can switch topics. You were the champion for the Aetherium Wars championship, correct?"

"You play Aetherium Wars?" Caelus remarked, surprised

"Watched your championship match against that hot IPC exec on live TV" Weiss admitted "After that, I started playing ever since Ashy and Cheesy started to give it a try"

"Wow, didn't exactly peg you as the type."

"All of us play it actually" Weiss said "Screwllum is disgustingly good at it and is surprisingly invested. Herta plays casually, and when the IPC caught wind of that I'm sure you know what happened. Ruan Mei plays as well, but she has a habit about rambling on and on about the biological inaccuracies that she notices. Stephen got us all into this mess in the first place, and I'm in the same boat as Herta admittedly."

"So, where is this going?" Caelus questioned

"Please teach me strategies" Weiss asked "Screwllum keeps beating my ass, and I may or may not have bet a few important samples when I was drunk a few days ago. Not to mention, they aren't my samples exclusively and pissing off Ruan Mei is the last thing I want to do at the moment"

"Now that's... irresponsible"

"I study the fabric of the universe, not responsible life decisions." Weiss replied, taking out an Aether Coin out of this pocket "Anyways, bring it on!"

Caelus sighed

Maybe geniuses didn't know everything after all.

One Hour Later

After some teatime with Herta, Weiss and Asta, the two other members of the Genius Society that were present onboard the station arrived within Herta's office. After exchanging greetings with each other and a short chat amongst the Genius Society members, Weiss and Screwllum played their long-awaited Aetherium Wars match with arguably predictable results.

"Weiss' last Aether Spirit is downed! Screwllum wins!"

After Screwllum told Weiss that he would not in fact be taking his samples away and assured him that it was all a joke, preparations were made in order to send Caelus into the Simulated Universe. Once everything was in order, Caelus stood on the platform to the entrance, the ambient energy causing a fuzzy feeling to rise up within him.

"Energy levels are stable" Screwllum said. "Conclusion: It is now safe to send Caelus to the Simulated Universe."

Caelus took a deep breath and exhaled, calming his nerves as he began to float

in the air. A voice he recognized as Herta cut through the noise of all the machinery, an excited tone coating her words.

"Alright everyone, let's get this show on the road! And by the way Caelus... good luck!"

And just like that, the young Trailblazer was launched into the simulated world.

But unbeknownst to him... something had gone terribly wrong.

...

Fluffy

That was the first thing Caelus thought of as he opened his eyes. Much to his surprise, he was laid down on a rather fluffy bed, perfectly fitting his size. Looking around, he found himself inside a strange room. Posters were strewn across the wall for games like "Aetherium Wars" and "Honkai Impact", while a closet, a metal trash can, and a rather vintage computer were also present.

Caelus dashed towards the trashcan eager to see its contents, but as his feet left the bed, time seemed to stop around him. The entire world turned monochrome, and a voice whispered inside his ear.

[Congratulations, you have become the protagonist!]

Herta Space Station

Fifteen seconds

That was the amount of time Herta Space Station's power was out for, disabling everything from lights to artificial gravity generators. For fifteen seconds, all of the people in the station suddenly felt weightless, as the singularity reactor in the Station's core sputtered out with all the backup power being consumed.

And just as abruptly as the reactor stopped, it once again spooled back to power, causing the artificial gravity generators to power on. In an instant, hundreds of people were slammed towards the space station's floor, with injuries ranging from light bruises to broken bones.

After recovering from the sudden jolt, Herta looked at the entrance to the Simulated Universe, expecting the device's safeties to have kicked in and booted him out of the Simulated Universe.

Except... he wasn't there.

Before anyone else could recover from the turbulence, Herta sprinted towards the Simulated Universe's control panel, and inputted her acess codes. To her horror, instead of letting her interface with the machine, the panel displayed a red, menacing pop up.

[YOU CAN NO LONGER ACESS THE SIMULATED UNIVERSE]

So... it certainly has been a while hasn't it. Life happened so i couldn't get it out in time for the tail end of 1.6. In fact, I'm what... two updates late and they released a harmony unit who i like equally as much as Ruan Mei. I also got Acheron completely by accident and she does some incredibly funny numbers, which I appreciate greatly. I do still find QQ's mechanics more engaging though, because you can take the man out of the gamba but you can't take the gamba out of the man.

As for where this story happens chronologically within HSR's timeline, this is post-Fyexstroll Garden but pre-Peacony, replacing the Ruan Mei plotline in its entirety. While you might think this means a chronic lack of FireBlazer, trust me I am enough of a Firefly fan to shove her in here somehow.

I sure do hope that life doesn't get in the way, again, and adios for now.