Chapter 261: ~Chapter 84~ Part 1

The ceiling was quite boring. I know, I know; it's a revolutionary observation that requires some time to digest, so let me stress this again. The ceiling was really, really boring. Unfortunately, I had little choice but to stare at it all morning, as I was so too out of it to do anything productive, yet not out of it enough to knock me out and let me have a nap. It was the worst of both worlds.

My experimental breakthrough last afternoon resulted in a predictable fever, so after suffering through the night, I called in sick and have been in my bed ever since then. I wasn't exactly dying, just tired, lethargic, and generally grouchy from the headache. Though again, as much of a pain in the neck this was, considering how hectic my daily life's been recently, maybe getting some rest wasn't such a terrible thing after all.

And just like that, I would've probably spent the rest of the day staring at my unusually boring ceiling, if not for a sudden guitar solo jolting me out of my feverish stupor. I sat up at once, which was the easy part, but it took an embarrassingly long time to drag myself over to my PC desk and pick up my phone.

"Hi, Chief," I was greeted from the other side, and I reflexively mumbled something resembling a greeting of my own. "… I wanted to ask how you're feeling, but I can more or less tell from your voice."

"It's not that bad," I told Judy as I made my way back to the bed. "At most, it's the third-worst headache I've ever had. No biggie."

"Fever?"

"Thirty-eight-ish," I muttered as I slipped back under the blanket.

"That's not that bad. Get plenty of rest, and take lots of fluids."

"Yes, yes. As usual," I told her, and my words were followed by a long beat of silence. "Are you still there?"

"Yes, I was just talking with Elly," my dearest assistant replied in a hurry. "She's going to go over to your place to look after you."

"I don't think I need much looking after, but tell her she's welcome to come over to hang out anyway."

"Roger. Don't forget to eat. There should be some leftovers in the fridge from yesterday."

"I know, I already had breakfast."

There was another long beat at this point, followed by, "Chief, it's almost two in the afternoon. Don't tell me you didn't have lunch."

"Wait, it's that late already?" I removed the phone from my ear to check the time, and then told her, "Well, damn. I somehow lost track of time. I guess I'll go and grab something then."

"You do that. The lesson's starting soon, so I have to put it down. Rest well and xoxo."

"People normally don't say 'xoxo' out loud in conversation," I pointed out, but when I didn't get any response, I exhaled a sigh and added, "I xoxo you too."

There was a delighted murmur on the other end of the line, which I took as my cue to end the call and force myself out of bed again. I was a little sweaty, so I took a quick shower before I made my way downstairs to the pleasantly balmy living room. It was less than a pit-stop on my odyssey towards the kitchen, and after taking stock of the fridge, I grudgingly resolved myself to throw together a few grilled cheese sandwiches, as I already finished the leftovers in the morning.

I don't want to brag or anything, but I was actually pretty good at making them, though it had more to do with practice and the fact that it was an easy dish than any culinary talent. Still, I could more or less go through the steps on autopilot, which allowed me to think. Not that I haven't done enough of that since last night, but considering how hard it was to herd my stray thoughts due to my fever, it could never hurt to summarize things.

So, what have I learned from the last experiment? Honestly, more than I expected, less than I hoped. My mug was on display on the kitchen countertop, and it still said 'I <3 Tea', meaning the change was most likely permanent. However, I had little idea about how I did what I did, or why I could only do it to my own mug as opposed to the ones we bought specifically for experimentation.

At this time, I had two hypotheses. The first option was simple, but offered little theoretical value: it was the same mug I accidentally attempted to modify when I grew my first Phantom Limb, so it was possible I somehow 'primed' it for a permanent transformation. My other idea had to do with it holding sentimental value. Since it was something I used on an almost daily basis, I was more familiar with it, and thus it allowed me to delve deeper into its records or what have you, and initiate a permanent transformation. I couldn't really confirm the former hypothesis, but as for the latter, I could potentially try doing the same to another such item I owned, like my phone. Of course, that was for later, when my head was no longer threatening to split in half.

Now then, let's not avoid eye contact with the giant, neon-green elephant in the room any longer and address the whole 'retcon' thing, shall we?

First and foremost, let's unpack that term. A 'retcon' is short for 'retroactive continuity'. It generally refers to a detail or plot point in a story getting changed after the fact, usually by a sequel or some other work set in the same universe. Let's try a simple example: there's a character whose hair color is never specified in a book. That book gets adapted to a movie, and the actor playing them is a redhead. The movie turns out to be really popular, and because of this, all future stories in the same universe will take it for granted that the character is a redhead, effectively resulting in the consensus that the character has always been a redhead from the very beginning.

Now, if Judy is to be believed (and why wouldn't I believe her), the mug always said 'I <3 Tea' for her. Snowy also corroborated this statement, meaning they were both convinced that this was the natural state of the mug and no change happened. Hence why I call it a 'retcon'. Now we only had to figure out the mechanism behind this event.

One possibility was that by changing the mug, I've somehow indirectly manipulated everyone's memories of it. In this scenario, the mug actually used to say 'I <3 Coffee' yesterday, but after I changed it, the Simulacrum changed everyone's memories in order to keep things consistent. If this was the case, it would potentially serve as a huge opportunity to peer behind the curtain and see how the Simulacrum manipulates people's perceptions, possibly even giving us an insight into the mechanics of the perception filtering and subtle narrative influences we already observed. On the other hand though, I was a little iffy on the whole 'manipulating people's minds without their permission' thing and its ethicality.

The other possibility was that I literally changed the past. In this case, I somehow made it so that the mug didn't change yesterday, but instead it always said 'I <3 Tea' in the past, and that's why Judy and Snowy remembered it as such. As for how this could be accomplished without actually traveling back in time and manually switching them out… Well, I had something of an idea.

For the moment, let's imagine the Simulacrum as a video game. Not in the 'artificial world with tropes' sense, but rather as a program. Let's take an RPG as an example. It's a self-contained story that has a beginning, middle, and end. However, while time technically passes in the game world, the player can save, load, and restart it at any time. All the content that can be experienced is already packaged into the game files, and the 'game' itself is an emergent phenomenon that exists in a superposition where all of it happens at the same time, and players can experience whichever part they want. On the flip side, the game world is static, and they cannot experience something that wasn't already packaged into the game files by the developers. For example, if the plot said a character was stabbed in the back by another character with an implausibly long sword, then it would happen no matter what the player did, because it was hard-coded into the game.

However, what if someone interfered with the game files? What if someone modded them to change things? It would mean that, within the enclosed universe of the 'game world', whatever changes were applied this way would appear as if that's how things were always naturally supposed to be. So, for example, if we replaced the implausibly long sword with a tuna, everyone would just accept that and say, 'Yeah, sure, you can totally stab someone in the back with a tuna', because that's what already happened in that hard-coded scene.

Now let's transplant this analogy back into the current situation: it is entirely possible that what I did was similar to modding the Simulacrum. By changing the 'records' serving as the bedrock of the world, I somehow made it so that the mug always said 'I <3 Tea', past, present, and future. There was no discrepancy in memories to fix, because as far as the inhabitants were concerned that's how things have always been within the Simulacrum.

Both scenarios had multiple questions that needed to be answered though. How could I do that? What did I actually do? Why was I not affected by this retcon? And, maybe more importantly, what were the limits of this ability?

The reason the last question was more important than the others was that the capability to retcon things could potentially lead to disastrous results. Sure, this time nothing much changed, because I only replaced a meaningless household item, but what would happen if I did it to something more plot-relevant? Or what if I created a paradox? Or just unmoored myself from the timeline by accident?

Let's say I retconned my phone out of existence by accident. If I did that, Judy couldn't call me to tell me about her existential crisis, and then we wouldn't have gone on a date. Or on the day of the school incident, she couldn't have called me while I was busy with the Chimera, I wouldn't have told her to get the others to the rooftop, and we might not have managed to get to Crowey in time and rescue Josh. Hell, Snowy couldn't have called me that night, and I might not have even gotten involved. That means no adopting Snowy, no Brang, no secret base, and the list goes on. I think the term for this is 'for want of a nail', and it's a scary idea.

Also, note to self: Let's not try replicating the experiment on my phone after all. It's best not to tempt fate like that.

In any case, this mug incident might've been the breakthrough we'd been looking for since the beginning, so I had to pursue it. I just had to be extra careful about it, that's all. Speaking of careful, I checked the bottom side of the third grilled cheese sandwich on the skillet, and it looked just about right, so I carefully placed it onto a plate before it could get burned. It smelled great, and by now I was getting a little peckish, so for the time being I set aside my intellectual pursuits in favor of some corporeal needs, and promptly sat down by the dining table.

I wolfed down the sandwiches in record time. After dutifully washing the dishes, I was about to head back to my room, but I wasn't even halfway up the stairs when I was stopped by the doorbell ringing.

"Who is it at this hour?" I grumbled as I turned around, and that brought up another question: What time was it anyway?

Following that train of thought, I poked my phone to wake it up, and at first I could only blink at it in shock.

"What the...? Holy crap, where did all that time go?" I whispered in mild bewilderment, but my feet were already carrying me towards the front entrance. Maybe I was already detached from the timeline, because I sure as hell didn't realize it was well past three in the afternoon already.

When I opened the door, I was in for another surprise. I already knew that the princess was coming over, and Snowy was a given, but I honestly didn't expect the third member of their group.

"Brother!" Penny elbowed her way to the front and came inside, practically pushing me back in the process. "They said you were sick! Are you all right? Where does it hurt?"

"Easy there, easy. I'm not on my deathbed. I only have a fever."

"I told you he's not that sick," Snowy whispered on the side, only to receive a thundering glare for her trouble.

"How can you be so callous!?"

"Cut it out, kiddo," I reproached the worked-up redhead with a light karate chop delivered to the top of her head for good measure. "Stop throwing around nasty words like that and come inside already."

She grumbled something under her nose in response, but I couldn't hear it properly, and it was more important to get the girls out of the cold, so I simply pulled her in to clear the way for the others. It's only when I closed the door behind them that she spoke up again, though this time in a considerably sulkier tone.

"Why are you taking her side?"

"Because she's right. I'm not that sick this time," I pointed out, and my knightly sister cocked her head to the side.

"Compared to what?"

"Compared to the other times?" I answered her question with another one, and Elly came over to back me up.

"Leo gets a little feverish whenever he does too much enchanting." She was already out of her coat, and now that she took off her cap as well, she gestured for me to lean over. I already knew what she was planning, so I graciously obliged, and she put her forehead against mine. "Hm? It's really not that bad."

"The worst of it passed during the night," I commented with our foreheads still touching, and as expected, she used the opportunity to rise to her toe tips and plant a kiss on my mouth. When she tried to part from me, I pursued her lips and returned the gesture, earning me a giggle from her and a conflicted stare from Penny.

"Does this happen often?" she blurted out when she realized I was looking at her, and my other sister responded in the exact same way I would've.

"Do you mean the fever or the flirting?" When Penny didn't respond even after Snowy already put her coat on the hanger, she also told her, "Common enough that we're used to both."

"Let's go inside," my girlfriend prompted us while completely ignoring the conversation at hand, and before long we all entered the living room. "Aaah. It's so warm in here."

"I cranked up the thermostat a little."

"And it's a good thing you did," Elly declared with a hum. "Returning to a warm home is the best part of winter!"

"So this is how your house looks from the inside..." Penny mused aloud as she glanced around the living room, and once her gaze landed on me, she awkwardly added, "It's very... um... simple?"

"It really is, isn't it?"

Honestly speaking, she wasn't wrong. Even though we've already lived here for a few months, the place didn't really feel lived in. I partially blame the invisible ninja maids, as the absurd cleanliness gave the place an odd, almost clinical touch. That said, I also didn't go out of my way to decorate the place, so its simple appearance was partially my fault. In fact, now that I thought about it, the secret base had way more personality than my home, and it felt more like 'a place I own' rather than just 'a place where I live'. Oh, but speaking of personality and decorations...

"Actually, since Christmas is around the corner, we're going to put on some festive decor one of these days. Snowy's in charge of that though, I'm just providing the materials required."

"She is?" Penny blurted out and glanced at the Abyssal girl standing by our side.

"Yep. It's best to leave these things to the people with a sense for aesthetics."

Snowy apparently didn't like the attention, as she hastily excused herself.

"I-I'll go and get some drinks for everyone."

I tried to tell her that she really didn't need to, but my attention was hijacked by the princess when she declared, "In that case, I'll go and make you something for lunch!"

"I just ate though."

My girlfriend visibly deflated after hearing that, but she quickly bounced back and doubled down.

"Then I'll make dinner!"

"Doesn't that mean you'd stay over until dinnertime?"

"That's the plan," she responded with a smug little smirk.

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I smiled back and told her, "In that case, be my guest."

"I'll go check what I have to work with."

And just like that, the princess disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me alone with Penny.

"A wy— I mean, Draconian making dinner for someone else...? Now I've seen everything."

I couldn't help but chuckle at her comment.

"She's actually a pretty good cook. Half the reason we are where we are right now was because of a lunchbox she made."

"She gave you a lunchbox?"

"No, it would be more accurate to say I took it from her without her consent."

"... You stole her lunch?"

"The situation was a little more complicated and my actions made perfect sense in context, but yeah, that's the gist of it."

"And then you started dating."

"After a few more hiccups and misadventures," I responded with a wink.

Anyhow, since we were standing in the middle of the room like a pair of scarecrows for no reason whatsoever, I subtly pointed in the direction of the sofa, but Penny shook her head.

"N-No, I'm good." There was a long beat of semi-awkward silence hanging over us, and she must've also recognized it, as she blurted out, "So... you get sick from making artifacts?"

"Depends," I answered a tad ambivalently. "The way I interact with enchantments is a little different from the norm, and it has a few side effects. Fevers, headaches, et cetera. Nothing major, mostly just annoying."

"I see, I see," she responded with two nods, only to then pause for several seconds. "So... did you... get a fever from working on our equipment?"

It took me a second to recognize what she meant by that, but then I told her, "Oh, no, not at all. This was an entirely unrelated experiment. Strictly speaking, it's not even enchantment-related, but the aftereffects are more or less the same. Your Magiformers are still under development, and we still need to agree on the design of the uniform."

"Leo!" Our conversation was interrupted by the princess poking her head out of the kitchen. "We have everything for goulash. Should I also make some gröstl too?"

If my memory served right, the first one was a kind of soup, while the latter was fried food, so I gave her the go.

"Sure. There are four of us here, so we can probably finish a full course."

"Okay! It'll take a while, so in the meantime feel free to show other sister-in-law around the house."

"Who are you calling sister-in-law?" Penny burst out in alarm, and my girlfriend looked at her like she was a rare animal that escaped from the zoo.

"It's you, obviously," she told my second sister, but before she could respond, the princess disappeared back into the kitchen to get out of the way of Snowy, who was carrying a tray of hot drinks in her hands.

"You probably already drank your tea, so I made hot chocolate," she told me as she handed over a mug. Penny was reluctant at first, but once she took a whiff of the contents, she also took one of them.

"Hot chocolate," Elly called out from the kitchen again, followed by a blissful sigh. "The second best thing about winter."

I was fairly sure it was a season-agnostic drink, but who was I to argue? Still, since she brought it up, I figured I might as well show Penny around a little, if for nothing else than to help the time pass a little faster.

"I guess you've already seen the living room, even if there isn't much to see," I spoke absent-mindedly and gestured towards the stairs. "Upstairs, we have the bathroom and our rooms. Do you want to take a look?"

"I... would be lying if I said I wasn't a little curious," Penny whispered between two careful sips from her mug, so without further ado, I herded her towards the first floor, and Snowy tagged along as well.

After showing off the bathroom, just in case she needed to use it, the obvious destination was my own room, and for a moment my knightlier sister looked downright nervous as I opened the door. It evaporated when she looked inside.

"Wow. Even your own room is simple."

"Simple is good."

"I'm not saying it's not, just—" Before she could finish that thought, her gaze landed on the desk in the corner and she took in a sharp breath. "That's a water-cooled tower! Is... Is that a gaming PC?"

"Well, it's not exactly for 'gaming' per se. I mostly use it for text editing and browsing the net."

"What kind of video card does it have?" she leveled the next question at me with shining eyes.

"I have no idea. I bought it pre-built," I admitted, and she grabbed hold of me at once.

"Come on, let's turn it on and we can find out! We just have to open the system tray, launch the device manager, and find the graphics adapter!"

"Slow down, my PC's not running anywhere! I don't even know why you're so excited about it; Snowy's machine is much better than mine."

"It is?" Penny came to an abrupt halt and turned on her heel to face the other girl in the room "Do you also have a gaming rig?"

"I... don't really know. I don't know much about technology. I think it says 'E T stock' on the front?" Snowy told her a tad uncertainly.

"Whaaaat!?" Penny's eyes threatened to pop out of her head in surprise and she grabbed hold of my frightened sister with both of her hands. "You have an ETstock PC!? Can... Can I see it?"

Snowy was clearly uncomfortable with this situation, so I once again deployed my tactical karate-chop onto the top of redhead girl's noggin, this time with more than just a token force behind.

"Owie!"

"Behave yourself." My scolding was effective, as she immediately calmed down.

"Sorry... I just... I got a little too excited." She paused to look up at me, and after an audible gulp she meekly asked, "Can I still see it?"

It wasn't really my jurisdiction, so I glanced to my left.

"Sis?"

"I... don't mind," Snowy answered a touch apprehensively, and left the room ahead of us in a hurry. We followed after her soon enough, and once we arrived in front of her room, she told us, "It might be a little messy inside…"

After hearing that, I mentally prepared myself for some kind of comically disastrous scenery, but the room behind the door was perfectly tidy. Penny's eyes also darted around the room, ultimately settling on me, with an implied question mark hanging over her head.

"What?"

"Is this really her room?"

"Why? Is there a problem with it?" I asked back with a raised brow, and she took a second look.

"Not exactly, I just expected something more… Erm… Gothic?"

"Gothic," I repeated after her.

"Yes. I mean, more black and red and spiderweb-patters, and fewer plushies and… is that a clock in the shape of a cat?"

"It's called a Kit-Cat Klock," I pointed out. "It's trademarked."

"Whatever it's called, I didn't expect that," she muttered in return. "Weird."

In the meantime, Snowy walked past us and put the amusement park plushies I got her a while back away, probably so that we could sit on the bed if we wanted. I used to opportunity to gesture for Penny to come closer and whisper, "Snowy had a difficult family situation and she's a little socially awkward. I would appreciate it if you didn't call her weird."

She looked at me like I was a white raven, then glanced at my first sister, and whispered back, "First a Draconian who cooks for you, and now a shy Abyssal. What's next?"

"I have a sword that turned into a little girl who can turn into a fox and lives in Judy's shadow," I spoke off-handedly, and she all but rolled her eyes.

"Nice try, but you need something better if you want to get one over on me."

She let out a satisfied huff, and she walked inside looking like she just achieved a small victory. I shrugged and followed after her with a not at all ominous smile she couldn't see… right until it was wiped from my face when she let out the mother of all squees upon noticing the logo on Snowy's PC.

"It really is an ETstock! And… what's that?"

"That's my drawing tablet."

"You draw?" Snowy nodded at Penny's question, and she cocked her head to the side yet again with the words, "What do you draw?"

"Stuff like your future uniform," I butted in, and her eyes lit up at once.

"You can make something like that? Can you show me?"

"Uuu… Sure?" She still sounded a little hesitant, but Snowy obediently turned it on and explained, "I usually draw here and use the PC to do layers and aftereffects."

"What program do you use?"

"It's PortraitParlor. I can use this stylus to…"

And just like that, the two of them disappeared into their own little world. I honestly didn't expect them to become besties overnight, but I was happy to see that they found at least some common ground, so I did my best as their big brother to moderate between them for the time being. Also, I may or may not have been still considering when and how I should spring Ichiko onto my cheekier sister for maximum effect, but that was neither here nor there, really.

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