The Simulacrum

Part 1

When did the formless void become so familiar?

It was an idle thought, yet it made me stop in transit and ponder it for a long moment. When I first came here, I was completely freaked out by the alien geometries and the lack of physical body and everything, yet look at me right now. I'm treating this place like my backyard. How weird was that on a ten-point scale? Eleven? No, more like banana, plus or minus one.

Once I resolved that fleeting figment, I resumed my metaphorical journey through the lack of space. At least until another question reared its ugly head in the back of my mind. It went something like this: what exactly was I supposed to do again?

Pestering the girl, sure, but why? Because future-me told me so? That was as good an answer as any, but it made me consider some other things, and it made me feel less sure about everything. For a start, future-me was in the middle of a sneaky retcon to maintain a time loop or whatever, meaning that he was interacting with the Simulacrum's past. To him, present-me meeting up with The Girl was in the past, while from my perspective, it was in the future. However, the Emergents weren't part of the Simulacrum and its timeline, so how did any of that work?

This whole thing was confusing the heck out of me, but I couldn't even ask The Girl about it because it would've let the cat out of the bag. But then what else was I supposed to pester her about?

While I was pondering these things, I stumbled upon a familiar anomaly. It was a kind of hole in the non-space, just like the one I used the last time I visited The Girl. The kind that was two-dimensional, yet it was simultaneously facing every possible direction at once. In other words, the nonsense kind.

There was one difference worth mentioning though: there was a sort of restriction on the hole this time around. It wasn't quite like the weird maze-like lock I had to squeeze myself through the last time I tried to access the not-dark not-room of the Emergents, but more of a… I guess the best way I could visualize it was a bunch of yellow police tape saying 'No Entry' on them. More of a warning than a proper barrier.

It made me vacillate for quite a while. On one hand, if this was set up by The Girl, it was probably for a good reason. On the other hand, if future-me told me to do this, it must've been for a good reason. On the other other hand, from future-me's perspective, he'd already talked to The Girl in his past, and Emergents perceived time in 'blocks' or something, so wouldn't that mean that from her perspective, we've already talked? But if that was the case, it should've been the case for all the other times we contacted each other, so what gives?

I let out a soft groan and put all of that aside for the moment. The more I learned about the Emergents' loose relation to time, the more it confused me, which was just counter-productive. I needed to focus.

With that determination in mind, I approached the hole in the void and carefully slipped through the not-police-tape around it. Then, with a swirl and a stretch and a pop…

"Eeek!"

… I was inside The Girl's Domain.

"Hey! You can't just invade someone's personal space like that!" she screeched at me like a swarm of angry puffins, her twin tails billowing like she had an industrial-strength fan under her feet, but it only lasted for a moment before her expression took a one-eighty turn and she folded her arms. "Wait, didn't I already tell you that?"

"Maybe," I responded flippantly and crossed my arms too. I was pleased to see that I actually had those, along with the rest of a body, even if it was a bit wavy and featureless at the moment. "You didn't ask me for permission when you were bothering me not too long ago either."

"I didn't bother you; I was asking for information! Because it was important!" she argued back with an indignant huff that momentarily made her appearance shimmer and gave me the impression of a series of rainbow-coloured orbital rings shaking in the starlit sky. It went away as quickly as it came, and she flashed a delighted grin at me. "By the way, you were right!"

I had no idea what she was talking about. Or rather, I had a vague idea; I could remember her and The Boy asking about things related to the Simulacrum, but I was busy dismantling a bunch of angry golems at the time and I just bullshitted my way out of the conversation with some vague, faux-philosophical drivel. Which reminded me to make a note to myself: refuge in audacity worked on Emergents. Go figure.

Maybe it shouldn't have surprised me; most tropes were based on reality, if ever-so-distantly and twisted by theatrics and artistic fiat. In fact, while the majority of the tropes were exaggerations of reality, it worked the other way too. And yes, that was also a trope, called Reality is Unrealistic. Or maybe Aluminium Christmas Trees.

Anyhow, I shook my head, took a deep breath, and made another observation. By the looks of it, even though I wasn't even in my body anymore, I still had a hard time concentrating, once again proving that the whole mind-over-matter thing was bullcrap.

The Girl's Domain shifted and morphed in the meantime, slowly turning into a girly living room kind of space with quirky furniture and painted in pastel colours. More importantly, even while all of it was going on around us, she never stopped scrutinizing me.

"So? Is there something we need to discuss right now?"

"Maybe," I told her a tad uncertainly, and her eyes quickly narrowed into a critical squint.

"I think I also told you that you shouldn't contact me unless it was really important! The Venerated Predator Moon is still on the hunt, you know?"

"Is he hunting me?" I asked back reflexively, taking her aback.

"N-No?"

"And did the fact that he's out there stop you from pulling me in?"

"That was an emergency!" she argued back with a… honk? What kind of bird honks? Was that a goose? Anyhow, she puffed out her cheeks and told me, "And why are you still holding a grudge over that? It happened ages ago!"

"Oh, dammit. Not the stupid time-block—" I started with a groan, only to freeze when a sudden image flashed through my mind's eye.

"Ah! Not now!" The Girl squeaked in panic and tried to do something, but it was too late.

The figment of a small planet, its endless dunes of sand whipped by softly glowing sulfuric winds, materialized in the room next to us, only to immediately shrink and fold over and over again until abruptly assuming a humanoid appearance.

"H-Hey! What was that… for?" The Boy complained in a high-pitched whine, only to freeze up the moment he noticed me. "Aaah? A-A-Am I interrupting something? S-Sorry!"

He was clearly startled out of his mind, but I wasn't far behind him either. I could never take a good 'look' at him until now because he was always in the background of the not-dark not-room, with the others having a much bigger presence, but not this time. As for how to best describe him… let's go with 'paper boy'. The old-timey type, with the suspenders, britches, long socks, and he even had the classic newsboy cap. His whole ensemble was in various shades of pale yellow and grey, and he had soft, slightly chubby features you would see on a vintage postcard character.

"Wait, let me explain!" The Girl exclaimed in a panic, further startling The Boy and making him shrink back even more. "This is… erm…"

"Hello," I interjected, trying to sound as calm and collected as possible, and as soon as he recognized my voice, The Boy immediately raised his head and looked at me with bright eyes.

"Ah! It's you!" he exclaimed with a smile, but then he tugged on his sleeves and readjusted his cap. "S-Sorry for intruding… I wasn't expecting us to meet so soon. Your advice helped me a lot, mister…" His words, both reserved and excited at the same time, trailed off as his face paled and he hastily put his hands together in front of his chest. "Please, excuse me! I forgot to introduce myself! I'm **************!"

And there it was. That torrent of images and sounds and concepts and tastes that Emergents used to define certain concepts. I could've attempted to decipher it as I'd done in the past, but it usually just led to a multi-layered and utterly confusing word salad, so I decided to privately stick to The Boy for now.

"Pleased to meet you. I'm… going incognito at the moment. I hope you don't mind," I responded with a straight face, and he nodded along at once.

"R-Right. We aren't supposed to let others in on what's happening with the Simulacrum right now, so I can understand that. A-And I'm also pleased to meet you!"

"Do you mind?" The Girl interjected, pouting with all her might. "Don't just barge into my Domain and make small talk with my guest without even asking me first!"

"Y-Yes, you're right. Sorry. I just… didn't expect you would have someone over." The Boy blinked and glanced between the two of us. "Is this… a secret meeting?"

"In a sense, yes," I confirmed, much to The Girl's chagrin.

"Hey!"

"But… is it a normal secret meeting or…" His gaze fluttered back and forth again and he put a hand next to his mouth, as if sharing something confidential. "Or… that kind of meeting?"

"What do you mean by…?" The Girl started, but then her eyes opened wide and she stomped her feet, causing the room around us to change its colour scheme into a furious mix of blacks and reds. "What do you think you're suggesting?! Do you want to get kicked?! Huh?!"

"W-Wait! I'm not going to tell anyone about it! About your relationship, I mean!"

"There's no relationship, you little…!"

And with that, the two of them started running all over the place, with even the furniture and décor morphing and trying to hit the panicking Emergent. Which reminded me: these were some weird, pan-cosmic eldritch entities, yet they acted positively childish, so… was their behaviour affected by their outward appearance, or did they look like kids because of their personalities?

Either way, we weren't getting anywhere like this, so I took the first opportunity and slipped between the two of them, holding my palms in front of The Girl to stall her.

"Calm down. If you explode like this, it's just going to make The Boy misunderstand even more."

My interjection made both of them stop dead still in their tracks and they looked at me with wide open eyes.

"What did you just call him?" she asked a touch incredulously, as if that was the biggest problem at the moment.

"The Boy?" I repeated myself, and for a moment I was afraid I messed up. That is until The Girl stomped her feet again.

"What's with that!? You gave him a nickname right away! Where's my nickname?"

"You already have one," I blurted out, which made her stop throwing a tantrum and she looked at me expectantly. "It's The Girl."

She blinked at me uncertainly at first, but soon her mouth twisted into a pout and she folded her arms again.

"I want something cuter!"

"I think it's plenty cute," I argued back, just going with the flow without much thinking.

"But not cute enough! There's too much focus on the *** and not enough emphasis on the ****!"

"Then… The Girl?" I tried again, putting a bit more stress on the second word, and after mulling over it for a few seconds, she put her hands on her hips with a grin, followed by a delighted, birdsong-y response.

"That's much better! I like it!"

Meanwhile The Boy, hiding behind my back, kept eyeing us.

"Are you sure there's nothing between you two?"

The atmosphere in the room, which was just about to go back to pastel-pinks, turned red-hot again as The Girl shook her fist at the other Emergent.

"You're sooo getting kicked!"

"S-Sorry, I didn't mean it! I was just curious!" The Boy whimpered.

"He's just a…" The Girl began, only to falter. "He's like a…"

"You can think of me as a specialist contractor," I came to her rescue, sticking to the cover story she gave me the last time.

"Oh? Do you mean, you help fix things when something goes wrong with the Simulacrum?" The Boy inquired with a clear interest in his voice, and seeing that the owner of this space was no longer planning to hit him, he finally stepped out of my shadow. "Since when did you two know each other?"

"Not too long," I answered vaguely, while The Girl gave a considerably more concrete response.

"I've known about him for a while, but we only talked after that incident between the Venerable Predator Moon and the Venerable Crowned Coalescence."

"Ah, r-right! Wouldn't the Venerable Emergent be mad if he learned that you contracted an outsider?"

"That's why this is a secret meeting," I chimed in, and The Girl nodded so hard it made her twin tails cascade all over the place.

"Exactly! And we have to make very, very sure that the others won't learn about this, or we could be in a looot of trouble, so keep your mouth—"

"What's this commotion about?"

The two Emergents in the room froze up the moment a new voice joined the fray. As for me, while I was also feeling rather apprehensive, my thoughts were currently preoccupied with a single question: did the rules of dramatic timing apply outside of the Simulacrum? Was it maybe one of those Aluminium Christmas Tree tropes I mentioned before? Or was I just overthinking this, and The Man's sudden appearance had nothing to do with that?

Speaking of him, the image of a barren grey moon circling a gas giant appeared inside The Girl's room, only for a bolt of bright lightning to flash and be replaced by a dapper middle-aged man with a bushy moustache. He was almost a head shorter than me and dressed in a fifties-style casual outfit consisting of a white shirt, a diamond-patterned brown sweater vest, and matching dark trousers.

His eyes and mouth both opened wide in shock when he noticed me and he exclaimed a thunderclap-like, "Who's this?!"

"The better question is this: why does everyone keep barging into my Domain like they own the place?!" The Girl yelled back, her voice reminiscent of a flock of angry parrots.

The Man was taken aback for a moment and he self-consciously raised a balled fist to his mouth before forcefully clearing his throat.

"As I said, I felt a disturbance and wanted to make sure everything was all right, and…" He blinked and pointed at me again. "And more importantly, you didn't answer my question! Who's this?"

"He's…" The Boy tried to interject, only to realize that I never told him my name, so after floundering for a bit he blurted out, "He's a Simulacrum expert! We asked him for advice!"

"And expert, eh?" The Man kept eyeing me for a while, then let out a huff. "Does the Venerated Emergent know about this?"

"No, but…" The Girl began a bit weakly, but she quickly steeled herself and stood her ground. "It was an emergency, and he already helped us out."

"Yes! He knows a lot!" The Boy backed her up, though the way he was hiding behind me gave his words little gravity.

"Help with what?" The Man asked while not looking away from me for even a moment, and after a long beat, The Girl tried to respond confidently. It didn't quite work.

"Issues related to the current scenario. You know? Plot and stuff."

"That's not your job," he spoke flatly and squinted at me. "And what makes him qualified, anyway?"

"I think I'm plenty qualified to discuss the Narrative," I told him defiantly, his attitude stoking my temper.

"Riiight…" He sounded more than skeptical, but then he abruptly pointed at me. "Vampires."

"… What of them?"

He squinted even harder and waved his finger at me.

"I'm the one asking the questions! What can you tell me about them?"

That was kind of off-the-wall, but in the end, I just shrugged and told him, "A type of Abyssal people. Can turn into mist and possess people."

"Huh. Lucky guess!" The Man scoffed at me and was about to wag his finger again, but I beat him to the punch by pointing at his face first.

"My turn!" He was visibly taken aback by that, but I didn't give him time to think. "Why are vampires like that? All other Abyssals are a mixture of Celestials and dragon bloodlines, but the vampires seem different."

"Of course you wouldn't know that!" he scoffed again, but his expression looked just a bit less severe than before. "Vampires in the current scenario are a result of genetic engineering!"

"Oh, so they were created separately? That would explain why they're so rare," I said, nodding along. "Is it like a homunculus situation?"

"Not quite, and you're also wrong about another thing!" The Man declared and… produced a chair from somewhere. Did The Girl make it for him, or did he make it himself, I wondered. Anyhow, he sat down, crossed his legs, and declared. "Not all Abyssals are the products of Celestial and draconic interbreeding!"

"Yeah, I figured. Some of them are the descendants of other Phantasmal Species, right?"

"Precisely! It allows for much greater design freedom, within reasonable bounds, of course."

"Meaning, the bad guys can look more demonic, while the good guys look a bit more heroic and normal. Like how the Cr— I mean, when the head of House Inanna transforms, his form is referencing Levi's Baphomet, because it's a well-known depiction of a demon."

"Yes! Precisely! Finally, someone got the reference!" The Man exclaimed with delight, and seeing that, I couldn't help but keep asking.

"Speaking of animal-headed men, what about the Fauns?"

"That's a rather fascinating topic. You see, back when I started working on the first iteration of the setting, I…"

"Excuse me?" The Girl interjected with a huff and slapped the top of the table, and… when did we all get seated around a table again? "I'm glad to see that you're hitting it off, but need I remind you that you all just barged into my Domain without asking?"

The Man casually loosened the collar of his outfit and shrugged.

"Well, I admit I might've been a bit too rash, but considering the current circumstances around the Simulacrum, you can't blame me, and…" His words trailed off as our eyes met. "Have we officially introduced ourselves yet?"

"No, but if you don't mind, I would like to keep a low profile and remain incognito until things calmed down a bit," I responded with a veneer of politeness. "I wasn't planning to get involved and only tried to help a little with the problems you're currently facing, but then one thing followed another, and here we are. It was all just bad timing."

"Hm. Indeed. Something like that can happen even to the best of us." The Man was desperately trying to sound sophisticated and amiable. He took a sip from his cappuccino, which also appeared out of thin air, and as soon as he put down his cup he continued in an absent-minded tone. "I believe we were discussing the Abyss, weren't we? So, you see, during a previous scenario…"

And that was how my short trip to pester The Girl somehow turned into a lore discussion, surrounded by one fuming, one nervous, and one uncharacteristically enthusiastic Emergent. It wasn't what I planned, and I wasn't sure that meeting them like this was a good idea, but as they say, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.

Part 2

So… While I didn't plan or even intend it, I somehow ended up infiltrating the inner circle of the Emergents. Here I was, in the lion's den. Behind enemy lines. In the jaws of the beast.

"Fritters?"

"Yes, thank you," I said and picked up a pastry. Now, where was I?

Ah, right. I was in deep, but I never forgot to maintain my lifeline, ready to bail at a moment's notice. The knowledge that I had an emergency exit naturally emboldened me, and so I didn't hesitate to brave these dangerous uncharted waters. To venture where no Leonard S. Dunning ventured before. To ask the hard-hitting questions and to get some well-deserved answers. Such as…

"Seriously, what's with the Italian accents in the Abyss?"

The Man blinked at me, not expecting the sudden inquiry, and he put aside the seafood-filled fritter at the end of his toothpick. They were conjured up by The Girl, seemingly out of thin air, and while at first I was a bit worried about them suddenly changing into something else depending on her mood, the Emergents around the table were happy to eat them without a hint of reservation, so I followed suit. It was a somewhat plain dish, but not bad by any means.

Anyhow, The Man let out a low huff and used his food to point at me, which was a bit rude, but I was already used to it due to Angie sharing the same bad habit.

"Now, listen. When you think of the Abyssals, they should have an aura of menace. A mien that says 'I'm a dangerous individual with connections to even more dangerous people, so don't get on my bad side'. That's why they're given traits to evoke the imagery of organized crime."

"So how come only some of them have the accent?" I pressed on, but he remained silent. "Also, it's not like all the Abyssals are scary and dangerous. Some of them are quite nice and endearing."

"That's just Free Actors mucking things up," The Man grumbled and finally ate his pastry… only to then immediately use the bare toothpick to point at me again. "That's something out of our control, unfortunately, but it's the setting and lore that counts."

"It's not 'unfortunately'. It's by design," The Boy chimed in while holding a large paper cup of soda in his hands, and his comment earned him a literally thundering squint from the other Emergent.

"We all know that, and we all know what I meant!"

"R-Right…"

The Boy shrunk back, The Man huffed and puffed, while The Girl only rolled her eyes in mild annoyance. Very human behaviours and responses, which only made the whole scene more incongruous in my eyes.

While our meta-discussion with The Man was a bit all over the place, it made me draw a bunch of troubling conclusions. For example, the thundering barren moon masquerading as a middle-class academic in front of me was, based on his stray comments, single-handedly responsible for the basic setting and scenario of the Simulacrum.

I repeat: he made the current scenario. With the plot and the terminology and character traits and everything. I was currently talking with a world-scale reality-warping entity, the closest thing to a literal eldritch god I could imagine… and we were sitting at a table and having a jovial discussion about tropes while eating off-brand Takoyaki.

This wasn't just run-of-the-mill weirdness, the kind that was common within the Simulacrum. Oh, nooo. This was advanced weirdness, and the other two Emergents only added to it with their presence.

I mean, let's look at this objectively: these three, plus The Woman (wherever she was at the moment), were literally responsible for the existence of everyone and everything I knew. Maybe not quite literally on the 'conjured out of thin air' level, as they would've had to adhere to the already existing bits and bobs of the Simulacrum's previous scenarios, but close. Heck, they were responsible for my existence! It wasn't a pleasant thought by the least, and it made me a bit unnerved, and… was this how others felt around me in the Simulacrum, I wondered.

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After all, while I wasn't exactly some omnipotent stellar consciousness or whatever, I routinely broke common sense, could rewrite parts of the Simulacrum (read: reality, for anyone else concerned), and could even retcon things out of existence. Was I… was I actually really scary?

A thought for later. For now, I figured it was best to keep the conversation rolling and try to tease out more meta-information from them. For example…

"Okay, I get that. Free Actors mess things up by their very presence, but how is that related to the Abyssals being all over the place?"

"Are you still going on about that…?" The Girl muttered, none too pleased by our discussion continuing unabated, but I ignored her and looked The Man in the eye. Which was kind of a bad idea, because I was suddenly hit by the sensation that I was about to be struck by the mother of all thunderbolts.

Funnily enough, it was the Emergent who averted his eyes first and lightly cleared his throat.

"What do you mean by 'all over the place'? I thought we already discussed the phenotypes."

"I'm not talking about that, but the mafioso aesthetic. Why do they have that outside while they've got more of a gothic vampire nobility thing going on inside the Abyss?"

"Oh, you mean that?" The Man absently picked up another fritter and made a vague, circling motion with it. "The Abyss was already an established element of the current iteration of the Simulacrum. One of my previous works, by the way, and I'm quite proud of it. In any case, since the current scenario already involves an archetype of modern-day nobility in the form of the Draconians, I figured I could take some… hm… let's say 'creative liberties' to make the Abyssals more distinct."

So, he just off-handedly confirmed that the current scenario was indeed built on an existing Simulacrum framework. Note taken. I'd have to tell Judy about it first thing in the morning, but first…

"But won't that cause incongruity once the plot moves into the Abyss?"

My entirely reasonable question made the Emergents around the table freeze up for a moment, as I just said something preposterous.

"That's…" The Man started, sounding completely flabbergasted. "Why would they go to the Abyss?"

"Isn't that the next logical step in the scenario's progression?"

"N-No?" The Boy tried to argue, and when I glanced his way, he immediately shrunk back.

"What he's trying to say is that the current scenario was never meant to move into the Abyss."

"Exactly. That's why I could take creative liberties with the major Abyssal actors."

My confusion was palpable, but I tried to keep it under the surface. Were they not paying any attention to how the plot was going right now, I wondered.

"You already said that the Free Actors have mixed up the original scenario, didn't they?"

"Yes, but having multiple Free Actors is already an anomalous situation."

"We didn't plan that," The Boy chimed in a touch hesitantly. "It was supposed to be a simple scenario."

"Not that simple," The Man scoffed, and The Boy hurriedly raised his palms.

"I-I mean, simple in terms of execution. The only reason things got a little out of hand was because the—" His eyes abruptly opened wide as saucers and he put both hands on his mouth. I didn't know what to make of that, but then he unsubtly glanced at The Girl and whispered, "Does he… you know… know?"

"If you mean about the Crowned Coalescence, then yes," she confirmed, earning her a thunderous glare from The Man.

"What!? Consulting an outsider is already bad enough, even if he's a man of culture, but you even told him about him?!"

I was momentarily taken aback by that 'man of culture' phrase, but before I could ask what he meant, The Boy muttered, "Uuuh… ********** isn't going to like this…"

And here it was again. Fortunately, it didn't take much effort to figure out that he was talking about The Woman. Her ruby oceans were quite distinct.

"She didn't need to tell me," I cut in before an argument could start, and that drew all attention to me.

"Then how did you know?" The Man asked with a squint, and after hesitating for a second, I decided to go with an evasive answer.

"I just had to look at the Simulacrum, and I saw his fingerprints everywhere."

"Right! I told you he's a Simulacrum expert, right?" The Girl followed me up with gusto. "It would've been strange if he didn't notice."

"Yes, he's well-versed in the current scenario, but…" The Man began to object, but then he suddenly switched tracks and asked something else entirely. "Which reminds me: what did you consult him about?"

"It was about the ************* within the **** of the internal framework," The Boy answered, making me sneakily frown at him. I still had no idea what that meant, so if I was going to be asked about it in the open here, I reckoned I'd be in trouble.

"The thing you talked about during the last meeting?" The Man addressed The Boy instead, and The Girl used the opportunity to interject.

"Yes, that one! We figured out that it's caused by the multiple Free Actors, right?"

"A-As she says," The Boy nodded and put down his drink in preparation for launching into a full-on explanation. "It turns out that the Simulacrum's natural self-correcting mechanisms, designed to adapt and develop in response to stimuli caused by the Free Actors, are simply over-compensating due to having two of them. This causes a kind of domino-like effect that spreads and reinforces these alterations in a cascade that reaches beyond the immediate range of a single Free Actor's effective influence."

"In other words, there's nothing wrong with the Simulacrum, and we have nothing to worry about," The Girl concluded.

"Hm." The Man's hum sounded more disinterested than anything, and after a long beat, he looked at me. "Is that why you thought the scenario could move into the Abyss? Because of the multiple Free Actors?"

"Among other things," I responded, trying not to sound too evasive.

"Even if we presume that this… what did you call it? Cascade? So, kind of like a *******…" He didn't even wait for The Boy to respond and poked the table with his finger for emphasis. "Yes, we've seen some major deviations from the original scenario, but the Abyss getting involved is still nonsense. It's still an internal divergence, right?"

The question was aimed at me, but once again, The Girl came to the rescue.

"Yes. There was absolutely no sign of external influence or manipulation. None. Zero. Nada."

"That's it then," The Man concluded with a shrug. "The scenario can bend to a certain degree, but the Abyss was never meant to be a setting for it, so no matter how much they tangle it up, the Free Actors can't just move the plot there."

"It's impossible without external alteration, and we could see that," The Boy pointed out, and then sheepishly added. "That… was the entire point of this scenario. To catch the Crowned Coalescence in the act…"

"Not the entire point," The Man objected indignantly and poked the table again. "I was taking this project seriously from the very beginning, unlike some of you, who were just messing around."

Those last words were aimed at The Girl, but she pretended to didn't notice. Meanwhile, I tried my best to absorb whatever fragmentary information I could gleam from this conversation. From the sound of it, the Emergents weren't clear on what was going on in the Simulacrum. Otherwise, they would've realized where the whole Bel plot was heading ages ago. There was no reason why they wouldn't want to keep a close eye on the events, and I could distinctly remember them discussing recent developments when I sneaked into some of their meetings in the past.

This led me to an extremely important conclusion: despite all the talk about how they viewed time differently and whatnot, the Emergents could apparently only see the past of the Simulacrum, not the present, and certainly not the future. Maybe it was related to The Girl's whole 'no retro-causality' mantra, or maybe some other restriction I was unaware of, but either way, this was valuable information.

I hesitated for a moment, but I couldn't help myself and asked, "You said there was no sign of external manipulation. What about internal ones?"

"Internal?" The Man echoed me, once again sounding so baffled that it completely erased his previous indignation. "How would that work?"

"I mean… couldn't someone do it from the inside? Alter things to allow the scenario to completely change?"

"What rubbish!" The Man scoffed at me, and even The Boy looked skeptical of my claim.

"W-Well, the Crowned Coalescence is… technically inside the Simulacrum. Somehow. We don't know how it happened, but even still, it's impossible."

"That's right!" Even The Girl agreed with them, and she defiantly folded her arms. "The Simulacrum is effectively one reeeally big Domain, right? You can't just alter someone else's Domain without express permission, and in this case, that would mean any such requests would have to go through us. There's no reason to even entertain this idea!"

Was it just me, or was the way she glared at me practically screaming 'Shut up, you're giving them clues!' to anyone else? If we were in a crime procedural drama, this would've been the point where the investigator would raise a brow to show he noticed something, followed by a music sting and an ad break, but fortunately, neither of the other Emergents around the table had the right disposition. Or they were just used to ignoring The Girl's odd body language. One or the other.

"Actually… didn't the Crowned Coalescence insert a second Free Actor into the scenario without our notice?" The Boy spoke up in a mousy voice, but she quickly shot him down.

"That doesn't matter! Didn't we conclude he did it before the scenario started?"

"N-No, we just figured it was the only time he could've done so, but…"

"So at the end of the day, no one should be able to alter the Simulacrum from the inside," I cut in, re-railing the discussion. "Meaning, it's impossible to forcefully change the scenario by, say, removing plot elements that would lead to things completely going off-course. That's what you're saying?"

"I mean… yes?" The Man was taken aback by my sudden vehemence, but I pushed on.

"And you're saying that not even the Free Actors could do it."

"Free Actors can ignore and deviate from certain elements of the scenario," The Boy interjected. "That's what makes them Free Actors, and it's necessary for the Simulacrum's function, but completely ignoring or rewriting the scenario…"

"That should be plain impossible," The Man concluded. "Not even with two Free Actors."

"Right! Let's talk about something else," The Girl insisted, but before that, I raised a finger at her and focused on the man.

"But let's say it happened. Theoretically speaking. What then?"

"Then…" he began, but The Girl cut in again.

"Then we learn from this and won't have multiple Free Actors so that it won't happen again, am I right?"

"I… suppose," The Boy agreed, while The Man only shrugged and continued to eye me.

"You seem very invested in the idea," he spoke in a low voice, sounding rather contemplative. "Is it maybe your pet theory?"

I didn't expect those words from his mouth, so it was my turn to shrug.

"Maybe?"

"It's still not going to happen. Let's move on," The Girl insisted. "What were you talking about before this? The demons and their accents?"

"Abyssals!"/"You mean the Abyssals?" The Man and I spoke at the same time, and after a long beat, he shook his head.

"Fine. I abhor these technical discussions anyway. Let's get back to…"

"Excuse me?"

The atmosphere in the room immediately froze up as a new voice joined the fray, and The Girl even whispered a dejected 'Oh, poop,' just as the room around us wavered, momentarily overlaid by the image of a huge, vibrant planet of countless crimson hues. It only lasted for a blink of an eye, only to be replaced by an equally stunning sight.

"What are you all doing here?"

The Woman was… how should I put this? It wasn't my first time seeing her, by a long shot, but I was still momentarily dazed by her appearance. It wasn't that she was especially pretty, but she just had a kind of presence that was different from the other Emergents in the room. She was tall and slim, with an attractive face framed by tidy locks of dazzling wavy red hair. The kind that looked like it was glowing from within.

Her matching red eyes scanned everyone one by one, ultimately settling on me, and she was… surprised? No, more than that. She looked about as stunned as I felt a moment ago, and it took her considerably longer to recover.

"Who are you?"

She wasn't angry, or accusative. If anything, she sounded utterly bamboozled by my presence, as if she just met a long-dead relative and couldn't believe her eyes.

"He's a…" The Girl started, but she cut her off.

"Do I know you?" she asked, sounding more confused by the second.

"No, I don't think we've met."

I almost wanted to add 'You make a strong impression, so I would've remembered', but I figured I shouldn't overplay my hand.

"You still feel familiar…" she whispered, and to be fair, I also felt a vague sense of familiarity towards her, but before I could examine it further, The Girl finally asserted herself and clarified the situation to her.

So, one short but entirely redundant explanation later…

"I don't like this," The Woman stated, and The Boy was giving me an 'I told you so' kind of look. "And the ********** **************** won't like it either."

She was using the hyper-complex thought-salad way to refer to the Predator Moon, but The Girl already had a response in talon.

"No, he won't! We already found the Crowned Coalescence, and he's too busy chasing him! There's nothing wrong with asking for a third party's advice at this point, right?"

"He did help…" The Boy agreed on the spot.

"And he's a man of culture," The Man insisted, and I once again felt a bit incredulous about his choice of words.

The Woman listened to them all, her eyes glued to me with a complicated look on her face.

"It appears you've already made an impression on everyone present," she stated in a low, contemplative voice. "I would also like to get to know you better, but first…" She paused and looked around the wavering room. "It's a little crowded in here. How about we first move to a better location?"

And that was how I got officially invited to the not-dark not-room for the first time. Out of the frying pan, and into the fire, eh?

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 tree-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.