12 First Contact

The basement of the house was rather spacious, although the area was mostly occupied with shelves full of useless junk that Joshua had no interest in. The most interesting thing he saw was some sort of power regulator, which connected into the ground to a large network, most likely a central in the city. One thing he noticed, or rather the lack thereof was the plumbing. It was an interesting design. Rather than making large water canals, the water coming out of the faucets in the house was generated via a rune, therefore, the power supply not only provided energy to the house but freshwater as well. If it went down the drain, the water would once again be recycled into raw neutral energy.

Of course, Joshua didn't come down here to examine the power network, even if he was interested in the subject. He took a glance at the corner of the room and saw that the two bodies had been placed there, covered by a drape. He then turned his gaze toward the main attraction of the place.

In the center of the room was the fool they had captured. He had been tied to a chair and was still unconscious. He was also drenched, which made Joshua frown. Next to him stood Eric, holding a small bottle in his right hand.

He looked a bit annoyed and told Joshua: "Seriously, this guy is out cold. Lord Joshua, you really did a number on him."

"You can't wake him up?"

"I tried in several ways. Even poured a bucket of water over him. No reaction. I asked Luna for advice and it pointed me toward this bottle I picked up from the shelves," Eric replied showing the bottle to Joshua.

It was a plastic bottle containing ammonium.

"That's pretty strong stuff, it should work."

Eric opened the bottle and carefully smelled its content.

"Wow! Indeed, I see what you mean. Well, if that doesn't wake him up, I dunno what to try," he told Joshua after pulling the bottle far from his head.

He placed it right under the guy's nose. There was an immediate reaction as the guy's eyes opened and he began to cough loudly.

'Finally! Good job, Eric!' Joshua transmitted mentally.

'You're talking via Luna?'

'Yup, that way he can't hear us. Should allow us to talk freely without revealing too much.'

'Makes sense. Anyway, I'll hypnotize him and we should be able to extract anything we want from him. Just let me know if you have a question in particular.'

'OK!'

The man finally stopped coughing and began looking around the room. His expression was, however, not what they expected. He appeared very peaceful and had a smile on his face. Finally, he turned toward Eric and Joshua and said:

"Good day, sirs! How's your day been so far?"

A bit perplexed, Eric replied: "I'm sorry, what?"

"Oh, forgive me! I suppose it's rude of me to randomly initiate a conversation with a stranger. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Lucien Smith. I'm a humble watchmaker. And you are?"

'Lord Joshua, has this guy lost his mind?'

'… No idea. Let's play along for now. At least the instant translation is working properly.'

"My name is Tergeist, Paul Tergeist," Joshua answered, eternally punny.

"I'm… Vincent … Sumthing," Eric added, a bit embarrassed.

"A pleasure meeting both of you. I'm a bit in a pickle though as I appear to be tied up. Could you please lend me a hand?"

"Mister Smith," Eric began, "Do you remember what happened to you?"

"Hmm, let me think for a moment. No, I don't think I do. I think I was planning to visit my friends, Henry and Clarisse Bloom, but I seem to have had a Wiping. I had several in the past year already, even my doctor can't find the cause," Lucien replied as it was the most natural thing in the world.

'Is this guy for real? Hi, I'm Lucien, I'm a moron who just murdered my friends Henry and Clarisse for some money, except I don't remember any of it because I suffer from chronicle memory loss!' Joshua yelled internally.

'You gotta admit, he's quite something...' Eric commented.

'He's not screwing with us, right?'

'I don't think so, I'm pretty good at reading people and this fellow seems genuine. I can still hypnotize him if needed, but I think we should continue to talk for now.'

Before they could come up with a relevant question, Lucien continued his small talk.

"By the way, good sirs. Pardon me for being indiscreet, but your accouterments are quite original, I must say. Are you not from around here?"

"Oh, we're actually a wandering actor troupe! We're performing a fantasy story taking place in a mystical land" Joshua quickly replied.

"Oh really, what's your troupe's name?"

'Stop asking questions!', Joshua thought and replied "The Fellowship of the Runes!"

"Nice! What's your play about?"

"Well hmm, it's about a group of people who…" Joshua began.

"I'm sorry, Mister Smith, the play is still in preparation and the story is confidential!" Eric interjected.

"I see, a pity but that makes sense. Let me know where and when you'll perform and I'll definitely come and see your play."

'Lord Joshua, calm down. You're being dragged in the flow of his ridiculous conversation.'

'I suppose I am. Thanks for interfering. Even for me, this situation is getting too absurd, this guy has more loose screws than me. I feel like I'll be banging my head against the wall in a few minutes if we don't take control of things.'

Eric grinned and said: 'I understand your frustration. To be honest, I sometimes get a similar impression from hearing you talk. And yet, once brave enough to traverse of your nonsense you would always be rewarded by finding a source of wisdom. You just have to watch your step carefully.'

'That's… oddly accurate. But I do it willingly, this guy is just spouting nonsense.'

'Mostly but he still said something interesting', Eric replied before turning toward Lucien, "Mister Smith, can you tell us more about your memory losses? You referred to them as a Wiping. Is that some sort of illness?"

"Oh dear, Mister Sumthing, did you have a Wiping too recently? It's a pretty frequent phenomenon. A person loses consciousness and when they wake up, they suffer from amnesia. Usually, the missing memory period is rather short, like a few hours. But in some more extreme cases, it can wipe out months or even years of a person's existence. It can randomly happen to anyone and our researchers cannot pinpoint the cause. If you had one recently, you should probably consult a doctor."

Frequent amnesia everyone is suffering from? That was clearly unnatural. Joshua immediately scanned Lucien's body. His body rank was a mere rank one and while he couldn't scan his soul without installing a client rune in their brain he doubted it was ranked. This guy was too dumb to form a soul world anyway. There was, however, a treasure to be found inside his brain.

"Holly Molly!" he said out loud.

As expected, the limiting rune was present in his brain. However, that wasn't all. An enormous complex rune was spanning through the entirety of his brain matter. In fact, the limiting rune Joshua had so much trouble to dismantle seemed to be a mere subpart of this monstrous rune.

'Luna, copy this in my library, I need to fully analyze it!'

[Copying rune…]

[Process completed.]

[Attempting to match with existing patterns...]

[22% of patterns recognized. Unable to determine the use of the rest without more data. ]

'Ha, looks like this guy had a use after all. I wonder if the two corpses had the same pattern. Stuff happened so fast, I didn't even have time to analyze them properly.'

Persuaded he obtained all he needed from Lucien, he left the conversation up to Eric and turned toward the two bodies.

He quickly spotted the drape they had put them under. The problem was that the two dead fellows, who were still there a minute ago were nowhere to be seen.

"Wha…?" he mumbled while pulling on Eric's sleeve.

Eric, who was trying to change the subject from Lucien's favorite cheese to something more relevant slowly turned his head. He saw Joshua's finger-pointing toward the corner of the room. Upon seeing the empty corner, he looked at Joshua and they both stared at each other with a similarly confused expression.

"Is there anything normal in this place?" Eric said.

Before Joshua could answer, however, Luna's radar beeped. Something was approaching the house at great speed, probably a similar vehicle that Lucien had used. Ignoring Lucien, they both ran upstairs.

'I'll go take a look! You guys stay hidden!' Joshua transmitted to everyone while running outside. Closing the door behind him, he quickly dismissed his body and flew toward the vehicle.

He quickly arrived near it, the vehicle parked itself near the house. Two people were inside, a man and a woman. Of course, Joshua recognized them. They were the recently deceased Clarisse and Henry Bloom, who were happily coming home as if nothing had happened after their bodies had just vanished from their basement.

At the end of his wits, Joshua just made a wall appear next to his spirit and began banging his head against it.