The Simulacrum
~Chapter 169~ Part 3

A spacious yet hard-to-define space that was neither dim nor bright. It had walls and a ceiling, but it was impossible to tell how far away they were from me at any time, and it didn't have furniture as much as it had clumps of matter that would turn into convenient shapes as soon as the need arose. When compared to The Girl's domain, it felt less defined and more… primordial? Yes, let's go with that. It was less solid and more chaotic, but it also felt more welcoming. It was alien, yet familiar.

Standing (by a certain definition of the word) inside the not-dark not-room once again felt rather strange, and not just because of the peculiarities of the space itself. The last time I'd been here, I was planning to introduce myself to the Emergents and ask a whole lot of questions, but then The Girl intercepted me, so I didn't stay around for long. As for before that occasion… Well, the Predator Moon bit me, and that's why I was staying away from this place.

Being invited in the open like this, even if nobody other than The Girl knew my true identity, still made me a little tense. Of course, I could still slip away at any moment just by retracting my phantom limb, so I wasn't too tense, but nevertheless, it took conscious effort to appear natural.

"This is our usual meeting space," The Boy told me with a hint of excitement, sounding like he was welcoming a new member to their three-house club. "It's embedded into the shallows of the Simulacrum, so we can keep a close eye on it."

Since we already established that they didn't exactly have up-to-date information on the current events, I figured he probably wasn't referring to the scenario, but rather whether some other Emergent was trying to sneakily interfere with it from the outside. I couldn't be sure, so… Wait. Why didn't I just ask?

"Did you set this up to catch the Crowned Coalescence?"

The Boy was about to nod, but he was beaten to the punch by The Woman.

"You call him that too? Who came up with that name?"

"It's fitting, isn't it?" The Girl came to the rescue with the cheerful vehemence of a flock of magpies.

The Woman's expression clouded over for a moment, but then she whispered, "It does, strangely enough."

Meanwhile, The Boy eagerly responded to my previous question.

"Yes, you're correct. Since it's close to the Simulacrum, it's easier to detect any anomalies here."

"Such as a certain someone messing with the setting of the scenario," The Man commented with a scoff, and was it just me or he looked a bit different from before? It was hard to say for sure, but maybe his features were a bit more angular? Were the Emergents' appearances influenced by the location? Or the beholder? Maybe both.

I made a mental note to pay close attention to all of them while in the not-dark not-room, but first, I needed to respond to The Boy.

"Is that how you normally do things, or was it just because of the Crowned Coalescence?"

"The latter," The Man answered a bit dourly, and in the short while I wasn't paying attention to him, he already conjured up a table set identical to the one from The Girl's Domain and sat down.

"Does that kind of thing happen often enough to be on the lookout like this?" came my next idle question, and this time it was The Woman who responded.

"Not normally, no, but he's a… special case."

"He already messed up a few of our scenarios before," The Boy hastily elaborated, sounding just a bit angrier than usual. "He called them pranks, but it's still very inconsiderate!"

"This kind of thing isn't common at all," The Girl followed him up with an impish grin. "But a Venerated Emergent does what a Venerated Emergent wants, I suppose."

"But why is he messing with you in particular?" the question slipped out, and the Emergents in the not-room seemed to be taken aback by it. All but one of them, at least.

"That's because he has a history with—" The Man started, but then bit back the last words when The Woman glared at him. Blink and you miss it, but for a moment I could practically see the bright red planet loom over a grey moon, and then he abruptly cleared his throat and looked away.

"Don't worry about that," she said the moment she looked back at me, her demeanour turning on a dime, and she even smiled at me. "It's a matter of the past. Now that the Venerated *************** is on his trail, he won't bother us anymore. I think." She sounded a bit uncertain at the end, even worried, but then she shook her head and redoubled her efforts to give me the most amicable smile she could manage. "No need to worry about any of that anymore, so you can make yourself comfortable and…"

"Here!" Before I could react, I was scooped up into a comfy chair, evidently conjured up by The Girl. "You're welcome!"

"Hey, ************. Don't mess with…" The Woman began to chide her, but then her expression turned pensive for a second before turning back to me again. "I don't believe you've introduced yourself yet."

I muttered a quiet 'déjà vu' under my breath and told her, "Considering the situation, I would like to keep my identity a secret. At least until the situation with the Predator Moon and the Crowned Coalescence is resolved."

My response made her frown, but her focus was on something else other than my plans to stay incognito.

"Are you perchance the source of these new names in circulation?"

Once again, The Girl came to my support with a cheerful, "He's good at them, right?"

"It's not a question of being good or not, but propriety, and…" she argued back, but then after a long pause, she shifted her stance to, "I suppose as long as the recipients don't complain, it should be fine."

Her statement was followed by a short lull in the conversation, and while they tried to be quiet, I couldn't help but overhear The Man whispering, "Is it just me, or she's going really easy on our guest?"

"I-I don't know…" The Boy whispered back, sounding just a touch panicked. "Maybe… a little?"

"Do you think there's something between them?"

"She did say he felt familiar to her, so maybe?"

"Gentlemen?" I wasn't the only one who overheard the two's hushed discussion, and The Woman's glare shut them up at once. Yet, once more, her expression eased up the moment she faced me again. "It's true that I do find you familiar. Are you certain we never met before?"

I was tempted to use a Bel line and tell her 'Maybe we were meant to meet in the future,' but with all of the timey-wimey stuff going on, and The Girl's dogged repulsion over retro-causality, I figured it would've been a bad idea.

"Maybe I'm just reminding you of someone else."

She considered my words carefully, and eventually nodded, though she didn't seem one hundred percent convinced.

"Maybe. In any case, you're welcome here at any time."

"You see? I told you she's being inexplicably soft on him," The Man whispered in the back, but when she glanced at him, he immediately changed his tune. "What I meant to say was that there's not much point in hiding his identity at this point."

He made a gesture in my direction, and suddenly the whole not-dark not-room shifted so we were all facing him, including the chair I was sitting on.

"I think we're all in agreement in that we're off the hook about his disappearance, and while the Venerated Emergent might not be the most pleasant company, our current goal is to have the Simulacrum's scenario reach its conclusion. There should be nothing wrong about requesting external help at this stage." He paused for a beat, and then quickly added, "By the way, you didn't hear me say that. The part about the Venerated Emergent."

"Sure, sure," The Girl said in a sing-song voice that didn't reassure him at all.

"I'd still like to stay incognito for the time being," I interjected, and before anyone could get a word in, I quickly changed the topic. "But speaking of the Venerated Emergents, why did everything turn out like this? You said the Crowned Coalescence was interfering with your scenarios, so did you try to prank him back, or something?"

"Y-You could say that," The Boy confirmed in a quiet voice, and when I gestured for him to continue, the whole not-room shifted again and suddenly everyone was seated in fancy padded chairs like mine, sitting in a circle with a vigorous campfire in the middle.

Was the scenery changing to reflect the more laidback atmosphere, I wondered. That wasn't the only thing that changed though; the outfits on the Emergents, vague as ever, also became slightly more casual, with The Boy in particular almost looking like he was wearing fancy pyjamas, while The Girl's dress was now resembling a nigh-gown.

Illuminated by the flickering light of the fire, The Woman let out a wistful sigh and began their tale.

"We didn't want to hurt him. Not that we could, even if we tried. We just wanted to… I guess 'teach him a lesson' makes it sound more grandiose than the truth."

"I… I mean, we isolated this scenario," The Boy picked up the baton where she left off while fidgeting with his fingers in his lap. "It wasn't anything complicated. Not really. We just left one vulnerability open on purpose and tried to draw him in, and then… erm… slam the door shut just as he was about to enter. Is that the right way to say it?"

Instead of answering his question, The Woman continued with, "Of course, to lure him in, we needed a good bait, so we made our biggest scenario yet, building on multiple previous scenarios."

"Mostly my work, by the way," The Man commented on the side.

"Yes. I figured that he couldn't resist a juicy target like that, and everything proceeded as planned until… well, they didn't." She let out a deep sigh and leaned back in her chair. "Just as he was about to access the Simulacrum and our scenario, he just… disappeared. At first, we thought he was just hiding his presence, just to provoke us. We even thought that he gave up and left, so we focused on the scenario… but then the scenario started going out of control, and we realized that he somehow slipped into the Simulacrum itself and subtly altered it."

"We still couldn't figure out how he did it," The Boy chimed in, causing The Girl to giggle uncontrollably.

"It's because he's just that good at this."

The others sighed or rolled their eyes at her comment, but by the looks of it, they were already used to them. None of them showed the slightest hint of suspicion, so the Crowned Coalescence's accomplice continued to giggle and grin like a well-fed cat.

"Then news of his disappearance began to spread, and so the Venerated ************ came to investigate," The Woman picked up where they left off, and it caused The Girl to interject again.

"Just call him Predator Moon. It's much snappier."

"It's also impertinent," she argued back. "We don't know if he approves of it or not, so refrain from addressing him that way."

"You see? She didn't complain when he did it?" The Man, who was suddenly sitting next to The Boy, whispered while unsubtly pointing at me. "I tell you; this is suspicious."

"M-Maybe?" he responded meekly, audibly questioning why The Man kept talking to him.

The Woman ignored them and told me, "It wasn't until he set a trap for the Venerated Emergent and purposefully revealed himself that we discovered that he, somehow, integrated himself into the Simulacrum itself."

I was waiting for this to come up, so I immediately raised the question I'd been sitting on for a while.

"How does that work? Technically speaking, I mean?"

"We don't know," The Boy admitted, while The Girl had a different opinion.

"I don't think it's that complicated. The Simulacrum is a reeeally big Domain, with countless Submerged Ones already in it, so why couldn't he just slip in?"

"It's not like inserting an avatar into someone else's Domain," The Boy argued back at once. "His entire Domain is now inside the Simulacrum."

"Yes, and as I just said, the Simulacrum is reeeally big, so he could easily fit inside."

"But how would you go about doing that?" The Man asked on the side, and she made a vague shrug.

"I don't know. I'm not the Crowned Coalescence. Ask him about how he did it."

"This is all beside the point," The Woman cut the tangent short by making an actual chopping motion with her hand. It also made the campfire flare up in the middle, but I couldn't tell if that was on purpose or not. "What's important is that he can't interfere with our scenario anymore, so while the Venerated Emergent is dealing with him, we need to focus on completing the scenario."

I nodded along, even though from their perspective it had little to do with me. The Woman didn't fail to catch it though, and after some consideration, she made a nonchalant gesture towards me.

"From what I gathered, you seem to be well-versed in both the internal workings and the scenarios of the Simulacrum. I believe ***************** even called you a 'fellow man of culture', did he not?" That term still made me flinch a bit, but she continued without bringing attention to it. "Once this session is over, would you like to join us for our next project?"

"You see?" Like clockwork, The Man started whispering again. "She never asks anyone for help, and yet he invited him right away! I mean, I don't mind or anything, but it's still suspicious!"

"Would you two stop whispering over there?" she snapped at them, followed by The Girl's schadenfreude-filled chuckles and The Boy whining about how he wasn't even whispering this time. Yet, once again, by the time she faced me, her expression softened and she urged me with a gentle, "So? How does that sound?"

"I'm… flattered by the offer, but I'm currently in the middle of something, and I still don't know for sure what'll happen once it's done. How about we get back to this later?"

"Of course. You know where to find us."

She smiled at me, and I could once more hear The Man whisper 'Suspicious!' under his breath. Of course, this wasn't the end of the conversation, and for a long while, the five of us sat around the campfire and continued to make small talk, share anecdotes, and occasionally bicker. It was a remarkably laidback scene, and while I tried to remain quiet as much as possible, lest I accidentally blow my cover, it didn't mean that I wasn't paying attention.

Most of the exchanges between the Emergents were of the fluff variety, but there were also some juicier bits and pieces of info peppered in that I immediately gobbled up and inserted into the tapestry that was my understanding of these star-people and the Simulacrum. Of course, it was still more holes than texture, but I didn't let that deter me, and I occasionally even tried to steer the conversation to subtly gather even more intel.

At least until The Boy suddenly declared, "Ah, I need to go. I haven't finished my work with the ************* yet."

"Then get to it," The Woman told him blandly before addressing me again. "I hope we didn't hold you up."

"No, not at all. This was a very… fruitful encounter."

My response made The Man raise a brow, while she smiled along, satisfied by my answer.

"All right, everyone. Let's get back to work." As soon as she said that, the not-dark not-room went back to its usual not-dark not-roominess, and I found myself standing and surrounded by the Emergents.

"Thanks again for the help!" The Boy spoke first, then disappeared.

"Next time, let's have a proper discussion. Just the two of us," The Man told me with a hint of bluster, then popped out of existence as well.

"I'll accompany you out!" The Girl came next, and she grabbed hold of my hand, which left only The Woman, and she was looking at me with a conflicted expression.

"We'll… see each other after this scenario is over."

It was a statement, but somehow it also sounded like a question, so I nodded with a somewhat ambivalent, "If everything works out."

She smiled at me, and there was something wistful and forlorn in her expression, as if she was reflecting on a memory from long ago. It only lasted for the blink of an eye, then she gave me a light wave, and before I could respond, The Girl effectively dragged me out of the not-dark not-room, and we were suddenly floating in the formless void. Then the lack of space, somehow, trembled it was made of Jello when she let out a huge groan.

"That was waaay too dicey!" she moaned and then pointed a finger at me. Except, she was currently more planet than person, so it was extra bizarre. "You did well this time, but you really need to lay low now! Do you have any idea what the Crowned Coalescence will do to me if you get caught at this stage?"

"… No?"

"Me neither! And I don't want to find out!" she continued to fume with the cacophony of an entire penguin colony in her voice. "I thought she was onto you for a while, but it worked out in the end."

"Do you mean The Woman?"

"Yes, I mean the…" She began, but then her orbital rings started flashing with the colours of the rainbow, which I somehow instinctively interpreted as… a glare? Was that right? "Hey! Why does she get a cuter name than mine?"

Yeah, that was definitely a glare. Also…

"It's not though. More importantly, what do you mean by she was 'onto me'?"

Was she suspicious of my cover story, I wondered. That much should've been a given, though again, I was woefully inexperienced about the etiquette among Emergents, and everyone took my insistence on staying anonymous in stride, so I wasn't that worried. Until now, that is.

"I'm talking about your connection to the Crowned Coalescence, of course," the ringed planet continued to fume and pout at me, and it only made me more confused.

"Wait. I'm connected to him?"

"Of course you are! You're the…" She began, only for her colours to suddenly fade. "Oh, I've got to go now. Remember, stay out of trouble."

"Hey! You can't just leave—" 'in the middle of an important sentence like that!' is what I would've said, if not for her already disappearing, leaving me all alone in the endless, spaceless void.

"Typical…" I grumbled and took a few minutes to organize my thoughts.

First off, I've learned the Emergents were used to just arriving and leaving at their own pace, without a single hello or goodbye. Was it important information? No, but it was a very prevalent one.

Next, I could now rest mostly assured that they weren't going to pull the plug on the Simulacrum any time soon. From our discussion, it was clear that they were at least as invested in seeing the current scenario's culmination as I was, so I didn't have to worry about their interference at any rate. The same couldn't be said about the Predator Moon, but from what I gathered, he was busy playing cat and mouse with the Crowned Coalescence for the time being.

Thirdly, while I had my suspicions about this for a while, today's events solidified my impression about one thing in particular: the way Emergents communicated was fundamentally different from how we did, and some parts of me, maybe the ones I inherited from other-me, were actively translating and simplifying things so that I could comprehend them. They didn't say that I sounded weird, so that whole translation process might've worked both ways; kind of like how my words got twisted and embellished whenever I spoke Faunish.

That would've explained their reactions to the nicknames I gave them, and how The Boy kept insisting that the ad-hoc word-salad explanation I gave him during the Ottawa-incident had deep, cutting insights that helped him greatly. Also, I was still iffy about that whole 'man of culture' thing. It sounded like praise, but it also made my skin crawl for some reason, so something was probably lost in translation there as well.

Fourthly, there was clearly something going on between The Woman and the Crowned Coalescence, and, according to The Girl, I was somehow related to it. Hopefully she didn't mean that I was the punchline to his latest prank, but I couldn't say for sure, and that just irked me to no end.

Lastly, and not leastly… should I come up with new names for the Emergent quartet? The Boy didn't seem to mind, and The Girl seemed to be fine with hers as well, depending on the intonation, but if I was going to interact with them in the future, I would probably need some more distinct monikers for them.

"I'll work on that later."

My mutters made the formless void quiver again, so I pulled myself back into my body with my phantom limb, same as usual. A very long split-second later, I let out a soft gasp and found myself staring at my ceiling. I was also feeling slightly more awake than before, so maybe my body recovered in my absence.

I would've checked, but my girlfriends were still hogging my arms, and… wait. Why was it still dark outside?

While I didn't actively keep track of time, I was pretty sure I spent the whole night in the company of the Emergents, so shouldn't it be morning already? Craning my neck, I managed to take a look at the clock on my nightstand, and then my head immediately fell back onto the pillows.

It was barely past midnight, meaning very little time passed while I was out of my body, which meant… I still had the whole night ahead of me, with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling.

"Bloody Emergent time-block bollocks…" I whispered under my breath and closed my eyes, but quickly got over it. Let's look on the bright side; now I had a whole lot of time to workshop those names. For a start… "Hmmm. Something with rubies…"

And thus began my long, ponderous night. Still more productive than watching cat videos though, if only barely.