Finally, The Talk

As we were eating, we were also chatting with the audience.

After a while, Oliver got more comfortable interacting with them. At first, he was quite quiet, leaving the talking to me. But once I pointed several questions his way and allowed him to get the feel of talking with the chat, he started biting back at those who were teasing him, as well as thanking the viewers for watching when we ended the stream.

I bit off one kebab in one go, sliding my gaze to Oliver who was happily enjoying himself. Then when we finished the food, we started cleaning up. I was in charge of all the large items like the grill, while Oliver brought all the dishes back to the kitchen to wash.

"This is usually how the personal streams go. The larger streams usually take place on a different planet or somewhere that is not in the house. Since they involve the different cultures of the many ethnic groups in this world, sometimes we will have someone from that ethnic group cooking and presenting their food and culture with us."

I wiped the fat that had dripped down from the cooking kebabs and onto the bottom of the grill. Then after making sure everything was cleaned and wiped down, I kept it back in the store room.

"So we will be traveling quite frequently?"

Oliver placed the dishes into the dish rack beside the sink.

"Yeah we will be traveling around quite a bit. But since we just came back from our break, we can take a little more time to decide where to go. After all, we just did our personal stream."

I saw Oliver wipe his hands dry on the kitchen towel and the both of us went back to the sofa to wait for Sazzy and Ava to return.

"What do you think about Ava?"

As we returned to the position we were previously, where Oliver was lying on my arm, I opened up my personal terminal and looked through Sazzy and my list of planets to visit.

"Ava is ... a blabbermouth. She looks mature, and tries to act mature in the beginning. But her whole act quickly crumbles once you've been with her for one day. She talks before she thinks, and makes some silly mistakes because of this."

Oliver laughed as he recounted one episode where Ava had casually blurted out what the nurse that was in charge of him, Katty, had discussed with the doctors.

"It was obviously a confidential conversation. The doctor was asking the person who picked me up, Henry, where I was found and the progress of finding my guardian. They were also talking about the health cost, as well as what the health institute would do if a guardian wasn't found within the year. Ava had heard that and had told me the whole thing, which would be pretty serious if I didn't know that you were going to pick me up from the hospital before the year was up."

I patted Oliver on the head and he told more tidbits about his life at the health institute. I wonder if they had such deep conversations so fast into hospitalization?

Eventually, Oliver's voice got softer and softer, and I heard a large yawn before he closed his eyes and snuggled into my arms as he went off to dreamland.

Scooping him into my arms, I pushed open his room door with my shoulder and laid him on his bed.

And the moment I exited the room, as if they were waiting for our sibling to sibling moment to be over, Sazzy and Ava appeared together.

"I'll look over Oliver."

Ava excused herself and entered Oliver's room.

Sazzy and I walked over to the sofa and we sat opposite each other.

[I...have been keeping some things from you.]

After a little silence, Sazzy spoke this sentence as if she was testing the waters.

[There are quite a few things. Uh...the first thing I guess should be what Ava and I are. I introduced myself as a system when I first met you, but there are a lot of asterisks behind the term 'system'. The term, to simplify it, means that we are part of this structure that tries to help the various worlds that exist. We all were once also inhabitants of the world, but for unknown reasons we were taken out of our worlds after we died and joined this sort of 'middle-world'. We can't use magic or anything like that, but we are able to do some weird things like transfer people to different worlds or code this sub-system that can give a certain form of aid. All within a certain line of reasoning.]

While explaining this as clearly as she could, Sazzy looked me in the eye. Within those eyes, I could see a swirling amount of guilt, so heavy and large that it seemed to consume Sazzy herself.

She then blinked and I could see a strong ball of determination within the tornado of guilt.

[In my past life, I was the daughter of a rich person. And I didn't know how much better I had it until I became a system.]

At those words, the guilt tornado swirled fiercer, and I could almost feel it leak out from Sazzy's eyes.

[I knew my parents were rich. That was obvious, since I went to a prestigious school for rich people, never really had any major worries aside from studying, and had friends who were also rich. In fact, even though I knew we were rich, I didn't think the difference between the rich and poor were large. My parents frequently donated to charities, and as their daughter I would tag along. Everyone at the charity parties were always well dressed, and whenever I visited those who we were helping, they were at least properly dressed, and looked pretty decent.]

[When I graduated, my parents introduced me to my boss, who worked out of his garage at that time. He was incredibly skeptical that a rich second generation like me would be a liability, but I worked hard to show him that money was not the only thing I had. Throughout my entire life, I was stuck in a peaceful bubble that my parents created for me.]

At this point, I saw the guilt lessen a little to make way for the intense love for her parents. But included in that love was the feeling of being betrayed by those she trusted the most.

She then snapped out of her past and continued explaining.

[Other than my origin, I also mentioned that systems like us can code for sub-systems. Everyone, including systems themselves, usually have several sub-systems.]

Sazzy closed her hands together and then opened them to materialize something that looked like a Rubik cube. She then touched one of the smaller squares and 'pulled' it out like it was a drawer compartment. The square extended out into a cuboid shape, and within that cuboid shape was more squares. Sazzy 'pulled' out another square halfway and then pointed to it.

[This is the sub-system that one of my co-workers coded for. It's a language system that allows people from different worlds to understand each other. The only downside about this is that users can only be mono-lingual unless we reconnect the language to another language that is available. But most worlds only have one international language so the majority of people who use this sub-system are monolingual.]

She then kept the sub-system.

[Us systems are also usually part of at least one department. And although we call them departments, in truth they are just a group of systems with common goals. I am part of the villain rehabilitation department, which is a department in charge of handling these 'villains'. We usually either send them to other worlds, or guide them in their own world.]

Speaking up to here, I saw her glance at me, trying to ascertain how I was feeling.

"And I am one of these 'villains'?"

Asking an obvious question, I thought back to my own life. I don't think I did a serious enough crime to warrant being transferred out of my own world.

[Long story short, yes. However, the label 'villains' is another term that has a lot of asterisks. 'Villains' don't necessarily have to be evil, or do any actual crime. They are people who are usually involved in the turning point of history, more specifically they are directly influencing whether the world heads to a darker timeline.]

Nodding my head at her explanation, I certainly did fit the description of a 'villain'. Being the first case of an MDVA patient being left alive after diagnosis, whatever action I took would certainly affect the future prospects of my fellow patients.

[Although our name contains the word rehabilitation, sometimes we do more compensation than rehabilitation. For your case, I am your system so I get to decide what to do and where to bring you to. The missions I mentioned in the beginning are optional. Usually, when transferring people between worlds, we try to make either a neutral or a positive impact. And the whole 4 months of waiting was to ensure that your mind and body work together fine.]

"Is this related to my MDVA?"

As we talked, I could see the nervousness in Sazzy start to calm down.

[Yes. This world doesn't have anything similar to MDVA, so it was a bit unknown whether there would be any side effects. There was also the issue of whether your brain would still cling onto the symptoms of MDVA even though its cause was gone.]

Sazzy mentioned that my current body was a replication based off my original body, but it was not perfect. Not all the materials in my original world were the same as that of this world.

At this point, Sazzy bit her lip and broke eye contact with me.

[There is a common side effect to this. Since your body isn't very 'natural', the total lifespan is shortened.]

I remember Sazzy did mention this before. She also casually mentioned that there was another person who stayed here for 20 years.

"Is the lifespan around 20 years?"

Sazzy froze before she gave a sigh.

[It is around 20 years. After that period, you won't feel any pain or anything like that, but your body will start to break down quite quickly. After the 20 years, the maximum extension will probably be 1 to 2 years. ]

She looked nervously at me, most likely waiting for my outcry at never being told this from the start. Or why did she wait until now to tell me. However, after being with her for 4 months, I could tell that she only kept this a secret because she was afraid that it would negatively affect my stay here.

I sighed and reassured her.

"20 years is nice. I probably wouldn't even have 20 years back in my original world."

I got up from where I was sitting and went over to the seat beside Sazzy. Sazzy still wouldn't face me head on, so I pulled her in for a hug.

"Thank you for telling me this."

Feeling her small body tremble, I hear a small voice from within the embrace.

[You shouldn't thank me. I wasn't planning on telling any of this so soon, but Oliver told me that keeping it from you would just make things worse when you found out.]

I patted her back and the two of us hugged until she calmed down.

After the trembling stopped, we parted and I couldn't help but smile at her red eyes.

Finally, Sazzy sniffed a little before excusing herself and disappearing into her room.

With the talk over, I walked over to the dish holder and placed the dishes back into the cupboard. I then made several timed delivery purchases for stools that Oliver could use around the house.

Once everything seemed in place, I headed back to my room to take my clothes to wash up.

Suddenly, there was a notification on my personal terminal. Opening it up, it was from Margret.

"Sorry for messaging so late, but are you free to come to our house tomorrow? There are some things we need to tell you."