Part of the Puzzle

I squeezed the teddy bear hard, feeling the soft filling move around. Opposite me, I saw the two men sitting in the beanbags at the corner. I almost expected them to start a pillow fight, or some sort of commotion, like they always did outside. But in this room, they were dead silent, leaning back and letting themselves sink into the fluff.

Turning my head, I saw Sazzy trotting over to a dog shaped soft toy her size. Grabbing it by its 'fur', she took a deep breath and hauled herself onto it's back. Splayed on the dog, she closed her eyes and immersed herself in the feeling.

Following her, I closed my eyes as I hugged the large bear. Laying my head onto its chest, I could feel my eyelids fill with weight.

Oh no...I think I'm going to... fall asleep.

zzzzzzz

I opened my eyes to meet a white wall. Sitting up, I noticed I was back at my room. My full body suit was hanging neatly at its usual place, and Sazzy was missing. Pulling up my personal terminal, I rubbed my eyes as I confirmed the time was way too early to be awake.

Ben and Wilber had probably carried me back to my room. They most likely referenced the tag that was engraved behind the full body suit, which displayed the apartment it belonged to, and returned both me and my suit back.

Yawning, I got up to check the door. Locked. Sazzy probably helped me lock it, since she didn't need any sleep anyway.

I dragged my feet back to my bed and flopped onto it. Checking that my alarm was on for tomorrow, I allowed my heavy eyelids to shut. I'll do something to thank the two when I wake up.

...

In pitch darkness, I saw the vague outline of my brother. Although there was no color, and I couldn't see his face properly, I knew it was him. I could recognize that nervous body gesture anywhere.

I'm sorry I wasn't reliable enough. I'm sorry that as your sister, I added more worries to you then I helped. Even though I was the one who took your hand and led you away from those adults that couldn't care less about their own children, in the end I didn't manage to change anything.

The figure, my brother, seemed to notice my presence and turn around. But at the same time, a gray block seemed to grow darker from behind him. The truck! The truck that killed him!

Trying, and failing, to stretch out my hand to warn him, I could only watch in helplessness as the gray block seemed to engulf him. I could see his outline turn around, and freeze as he noticed the truck. He then started running. Running towards me, but it was not fast enough. In front of my eyes, I could see his colorless outline blend in with the gray block.

NO! RUN! IF NOT YOUR SISTER...YOUR SISTER IS GOING TO TURN INTO A MONSTER!

My eyes snapped open. The first thing I saw was the white ceiling of the apartment. The second thing I saw was Sazzy's concerned face coming into view.

A nightmare.

That's right. My brother was not dead. And I had left that world behind, including illness that had gripped a hold of not only mine, but my brother's life as well.

[Are you ok?]

I saw Sazzy's face disappear from my sight. Turning my head, I followed her as she walked over to pour a cup of water from the water bottle we had brought into Vastum.

"I'm fine. It was just a silly nightmare."

I sat up from my bed and pulled up my personal terminal. It was just a couple minutes before the alarm rang.

Accepting the cup of water, I chugged it down and took a deep breath. While I calmed down, I followed Sazzy with my eyes as she bustled around. The presence of someone lively was always calming. It didn't matter if it was my brother who often liked to arrange his belongings to calm down, or Sazzy who had a habit of running around finding things to do to kill time.

Tracking Sazzy for 5 minutes, I finally calmed down enough to get up. Just nice, the alarm from my personal terminal rang. Turning it off, I washed up and we both headed out of the apartment.

The first appointment in our schedule was one with the vending machines in the canteen. Letting Sazzy choose again, I brought the dish over to the closest table and started scooping the delicious food into my mouth.

Today's meal was a meat dish. It involved the muskrat that I had made meat and gravy with before, as well as another familiar ingredient, clams. But this time, clam powder wasn't added for taste but was one of the main ingredients of the dish. According to the website, the meat was boiled in a solution of clam powder and Jasmine milk, with a couple other ingredients that were for taste. Then, once it had its texture hardened, it was boiled in a fresh batch of Jasmine milk and then quickly taken out. This created a chewy outer texture with a firmer inner texture and flavor. It was simply divine!

Finishing the dish, I fed it to the dishwashing machine, and we headed over to the research counter. Meeting very few people, we grabbed the successful ingredients from the necessity store and brought it over to our counter.

Today's goal was to hopefully find out the right ratios to be used for the neutralizer for the preservative. By mixing the successful ingredients with different ratios together and then measuring the toxicity, just like how we found the ratio of original preservatives, we would narrow down the ratios based on elimination.

Going over with Sazzy the plan for today once more, we got to work on the first batch of experiments.

First, we placed the first successful ingredient plus the preservative into each of the 5 containers. Then, we placed an equal amount of all the other ingredients except for the last one. For this last ingredient, we placed different amounts into each container. Then we boiled them for 5 minutes, and placed them into the dark for another 5 minutes, before analyzing them with the cylinder analyzer.

Noting down the data, we then scanned through it in order to decide which ratio had lowered the toxicity the most. Except, we ran into an unexpected issue. They all lowered the toxicity to the same extent.

Sazzy and I looked at each other with a growing sense of foreboding. Surely all the other experiments weren't going to be like this?

Moving onto our second batch, we changed the ingredient that had its ratio adjusted and repeated the steps again. While waiting, the both of us were whispering about what we should do if the toxicity didn't change.

"We might be missing extra steps in the middle to release more of whatever is neutralizing the toxins."

[I thought the Colonizers only brought ingredients that could be boiled or fried? Why is it suddenly so complicated?]

Sazzy complained as we took out the five containers and measured their toxicity.

And as if confirming our fears, all of the containers had around the same toxicity.

Scratching our heads, we put aside the containers and started an emergency discussion.

[Since they used both boiling and frying, maybe we should fry some of the ingredients?]

"We could try that. Although there is also the option of changing the degree of boiling we are doing with the ingredients. Maybe some of them have to be boiled longer, maybe some have to be added raw. Maybe there's a certain order we have to add them in. Before we do any more experiments, we need to plan out what we are going to do from now onwards."

Nodding her head, the both of us pushed all the containers and machinery aside to discuss our next move.

Once we had made sure we had enough space to comfortably discuss, we were suddenly interrupted by two familiar voices.

Turning our heads, we saw Tom and Ralph heading towards us. Tom was waving his hands enthusiastically, while Ralph had a refreshing expression on. Something good must have happened.

Reaching our counter, They both entered the barrier and stopped in front of us.

"We have great news to bring!"

Practically jumping with joy, Tom pulled up an unfinished chemical structure and showed it to me.

"After a lot of calculations, we have managed to come up with the crucial parts of the chemical that might neutralize the poison!"

Tom pointed at the completed parts of the drawing, opening his mouth, and I prepared for a long and complicated explanation. Thankfully, before he could even make a single sound, he was interrupted by Ralph.

"No one but industry professionals are going to understand your explanations so don't bother. Anyway, that's only part of the reason we came here."

In a speed visible to the naked eye, Tom seemed to wilt to the point I almost felt bad for him. But in the next second, faster than the time it took for him to wilt, he sprung back up again like nothing happened and kept the drawing.

"The main reason we came here is to discuss the next step with you. Since the essential part of the chemical structure has been found, we thought you might be more knowledgeable in the next stage of the flowchart. Right now, although we have the structure, we still don't know what ingredients are involved in making it. Furthermore we only know the essential parts that could be found from the structure of chemical X, but not the rest of the chemical structure. So, we came over to ask whether you had a list of ingredients you reckon would be good candidates. After all, compared to us, you are more of an expert in exotic ingredients belonging to minorities."

As Ralph explained the reasoning why they came over, I saw his eyes drift to the ingredients pushed aside on my counter. And he raised an eyebrow as the choice of the ingredients.

"Actually, you two came just in time! Through my own experiments, I have narrowed down the list of ingredients that might be needed to neutralize the pre - poison. In fact, I had just encountered a problem of not knowing how to go forward after this."

Heading over to where the ingredients were, I explained the experiments I had conducted over the past day as well as my reasoning behind them. Ralph and Tom had a surprised look on their faces.

[Maybe they never expected such a crude method of trial and error would produce such results.]

Sazzy haughtily huffed from the side as I explained things.

Tom reached his hand forward to grab the ingredients as I finished explaining, his eyes as bright as lightbulbs. Ralph saw this and gave a sigh, before facing me with obviously much more respect than before.

"Since this is the case, we can probably start with the computing and analyzing stage already."

Filing out of the space behind the counter, Ralph gestured for me to follow him.