The Truth About The Strange Man

"I am Gabi!", then she adds like an afterthought, "Haven't we met before when you came to visit Gen a few years ago?"

"I mean yeah, I am often not home because of my work, but I recall we have met at least once! I think about 7 years ago?", to stop her rambling I hurry and send a command to open the door.

Then I run down, while frantically choosing an outfit from my virtual wardrobe to project onto my pajama, I miss click a few times. Normally you only use the virtual wardrobe to add little touches to your physical clothes like a flame effect or a flower. But if you need a new outfit in a hurry, it can also do that even if it's not perfect, meaning the projection won't react to weather effects and so on.

As I reach the kitchen, I already see Gabi sitting perfectly still at the kitchen table. "Oh my, you have really grown up, I almost didn't recognize you if it weren't for me sitting in your kitchen Hihi! Maybe it's justified that you didn't recognize me, though personally, I don't think that I changed much.", she ponders about the last part for a while.

After standing just around for a minute and not really doing anything I remember that I should probably sit down and not just passively listen, "Actually you haven't changed that much, it's just that it has been 7 years since I last saw you."

Furrowing her trimmed brows as if she needs to think hard about that, she replies, "I reckon that makes sense."

"But never mind that, I came for something different."

"Gen", I guess, she nods, "Yes, I just heard about it, I came home about an hour ago, can you imagine my shock, luckily it's not as bad as I first thought. As you might have heard from Gen I was working abroad for one month"

"I also heard it happened in GOS and you were the one that first found out about his body's death. I am really glad that it was inside one of these pods, so his conscience at least got uploaded. Also, I learned from the hospital that his conscience has gone 'missing', how does that even happen? You don't know anything about it right?"

As it's Gens aunt I am talking to, I have no intention of hiding what I found out, "Actually I currently try to investigate that myself, yesterday I talked to all of the possible witnesses, I didn't really find out anything except the observation of one girl, she saw a strange man in a suit walking through the solid lid of the pod and shortly after just disappearing into thin air, and I saw the same he even gave me a smile!"

Her eyes grow wide and she starts to frown again, "Can you give me more details about his appearance? Like did he have reddish skin or something looking like little horns, maybe even yellow eyes?"

I think for a moment, "Maybe his skin was a bit red? But I can't be really sure, in GOS are many different RGB light strips and similar stuff that could illuminate him in a different color."

"Lower demon", at least that's what I think she whispered to herself.

"Can you please repeat that? I couldn't really understand you.", I can't really comprehend what I heard, how should 'lower demon' make any sense in our current discussion.

"Ah, nothing, just thought aloud.", then she falls into thought again, I decide to drop the subject.

After a while I decide to make some coffee as it seems she still needs a few minutes, I put two cups under the machine and tell the machine to use the data from her phone to brew her favorite coffee.

Shortly after the coffee is finished and I want to pick it up and bring it to the table, but suddenly Gabi speaks up again after such a long silence she almost makes me jump, "Did Gen say something that you -erm- could consider related to hell?".

"What a strange question, but I don-", I stop, 'Wait wasn't there something shortly before Gen go nearly hit by that truck?', "Sa-Tan! He got chatted up by someone calling themselves Sa-Tan if you remove the hyphen then... But how should any of this superstitious stuff matter?!", her frown deepens when she hears the name Satan being brought up.

I now seriously question Gabi's dedication to find out more about Gen's disappearance, "Do you even try to find Gen?!".

It seems like my accusation hits hard, really hard, I almost regret the low blow.

With a pained smile, she replies, "You must know I can't really tell you much, at least now, but for everything I ask there is a reason. And as it turns out, for this question even more than for the others.".

"At least I can tell you some things for now, Gen is in really big trouble if what you just told me is true, also I can help you understand what you witnessed and give you a few hints. But for anything more, I first need to get permission."

A suspicion grows inside me, "Has it to do with your work?"

"You could say that", she says with hesitation, "But I'll tell you what I am allowed to regarding the situation, even if I am stretching the rules a little bit. "

"So if you agree to not tell anybody, even Gen, about what I am going to say, you'll find out the truth about the disappearing guy and maybe you'll find the way to solve this mess. Or at least I hope you do."

"Do you even need to ask? You already know my answer, I won't tell anybody about what you reveal to me, but I don't know about all the microphones in the electronics around us."

"Oh, you don't need to worry about that, hihi.", she chuckles about my concern as if I am a little boy asking a stupid question.

"OK, I think I should tell you about the strange man first. I think you can already tell he's not a normal human, not to say he is hardly a human at all! First, he's a demon, a lower one at that. Second, it depends on the race and or species he belonged to when he was alive. Lower demons are in general either demonized sentient beings or born from lower demons, or sometimes, if the child is particularly unlucky, from more powerful intermediary demons. The man you described seems to be a lower demon, but without seeing him I can't say if he is on the upper or lower end of the spectrum. As to why he can just walk through the solid objects from the third dimension, he's a higher dimensional being and at least for now, your perception is only three dimensional. But even then you could argue a human's perception is more or less not truly three dimensional, note that I am talking about your primary perception of reality, your eyes. You can imagine, for simplicity, each of your eyes as cameras capturing a 2D image, though a slightly offset image if you compare them both, that is due to your eyes being in different positions. So you have two 2D images from your eyes and if you overlay them and let the brain do its magic you can practically perceive depth and see things three dimensional.", she takes a deep breath.

{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pupillary_distance -describes the distance between the pupils, this is why some HMDs have IPD adjustment sliders, so it's more comfortable and easier to see. Disclaimer: This article doesn't go further into the "3D vision part"; For a more in-depth explanation about "3D Vision" I have found this 'paper': http://scecinfo.usc.edu/geowall/stereohow.html#:~:text=We%20are%203D%20creatures%2C%20living,and%20try%20to%20play%20tennis.}

"Oh my, it seems like I have gone a little overboard with the explanation and I even tried to shorten it. Well, whatever, I know that is all hard to comprehend and if you trust me, it is even more so."

"You certainly are right with that assumption, I am totally blown away from that.", blown away is an understatement if it weren't for the current situation and me knowing that Gabi cares about Gen, a lot, then I would just laugh and walk away.

She looks at her clock as if she has an appointment, "I'll go now, I need to sort some things out after talking to you. You have to decide by yourself if you believe me or not, also the coffee was delicious!", then she just walks out of the kitchen, baffled I stare at the point I last saw her.

*Ding*

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