Chapter 264: Volume 4 Extra 1: Just a small change

The space between spaces. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Leonard. Its mission: to find out where the bloody hell he was, and to figure out how to go somewhere else. Preferably boldly.

This noble goal was, unfortunately, made much more complicated by the fact that in the unending inky blackness surrounding me, there were no directions, so I couldn't get anywhere by definition. In fact, my environs weren't even black; I figured it was closer to what someone who was born blind would imagine when someone tried to explain to them how an optical illusion worked. Absolute, unintuitive nothingness.

Ever since my initial exposure to this lack of space or whatever, I tried to replicate the event, but I've only got as far as this. I would use my stubby third Phantom Limb on my head, it would immediately dump me here without any fanfare, and that's it. There was nothing to see, hear, feel, or do in general, there was nowhere to move, and I wasn't even sure the concepts of 'time' and 'movement' could apply to this place. Thankfully, returning to my body was dead simple, so at least I wasn't at the risk of getting stuck as a consciousness floating in the middle of the philosophical concept of nowhere.

This attempt didn't seem any more bountiful than the previous ones either, and while just floating around without any external stimulus was oddly meditative, I had better things to do, so I got ready to leave. Needless to say, it was at this exact moment when something finally happened, and it made me stop in my nonexistent tracks.

I focused my attention on the change, and what I found was a small discrepancy in the consistency of the nothing around me, simultaneously close by and astoundingly far away. It was, for the lack of better terms, very loud, to the point it would've been impossible for me not to notice it in the sea of emptiness even if I tried.

Now, here came the million Jen question: Should I investigate this, or should I not? In retrospect, it was something of a moot one as well, as I obviously didn't stay behind just to twiddle my proverbial thumbs. As such, maybe against my better judgment, I focused my attention on the anomaly. The very same moment I made up my mind, the vast emptiness around me began to move, at least by some sense of the world, which was effectively the same as if I was moving.

It took no time to arrive at my destination. It wasn't an exaggeration; time was all kinds of screwy here. In fact, it almost felt like I was already there even before I consciously headed in that non-direction. Long story short, once my senses began to construct something resembling a scene in front of my nonexistent eyes, I was alarmed by the appearance of a familiar room that would've been dark if it was new, but it wasn't, because it wasn't a room, and therefore it was dark. That was confusing, but then time began to move, first at the pace of a geriatric snail, and as it sped up, the details of the space around me became more defined. That, of course, also included the non-room's inhabitants as well.

"I tell you, there was a change!" a young male voice whined, and if I had a lung, I would've inhaled sharply. Crap. It's those guys again.

All right, Leo. It's time to activate stealth mode. It wasn't even that hard; I just had to be really, really quiet and pretend to be a perfectly normal piece of non-furniture sitting in all of the round not-corners of the not-room at the same time. Well, okay, maybe that doesn't sound so easy when I try to explain it, but it was in practice.

"What kind of change are we talking about?" the voice of The Woman pressed The Boy with unexpected zeal. "How much did it affect the integrity of the Simulacrum?"

"It didn't. I mean, it was a small one. I would've missed it if I wasn't looking at the time."

"What were you even doing?" The Man thundered, with the image of an actual lightning bolt flashing before my lack of eyes.

"I was just... calibrating," The Boy explained himself with such clumsiness, it didn't take a detective in a deer-stalker hat to realize he was hiding something. Whatever it was, the others didn't have time to interrogate him, as the last member of their little group arrived out of the blue. Or was she always there?

"I'm back!"

No, apparently she wasn't. The three turned to The Girl, at least as much as odd, disembodied stellar vistas can turn.

"What did you find?" The Boy asked in a hurry, trying to move the conversation along.

"Nothing!" The Girl answered in a chirping tone.

"Then what are you so happy about?" The Man asked the obvious question, and she... shrugged, I think? With so many overlapping images, it was hard to tell sometimes, but I was pretty sure I saw a pair of shoulders there somewhere.

"Because it just means it's guaranteed to be him! He's the only one good enough to do something like this without leaving any evidence behind! See, I told you he's still kicking!"

"So you didn't find any trace of him?" The Woman asked a touch impatiently, and The Girl must have shaken her head or something, because she let out a thoughtful hum. "Then do we know what was changed? Maybe it can serve as a clue."

"That's the weirdest part!" The Girl exclaimed with a fireworks display of colors. "It was just a mug!"

"A mug?" The Man echoed her with a pinch of skepticism.

"Wait, let me double-check," The Boy cut in, and a very long moment later he returned with the words, "That's weird."

"What?" The Woman leveled the question at him, getting more impatient by the second.

"It's Leonard Dunning's mug that was changed."

Normally this would've been the point when my eyes opened wide in apprehension, as I seriously didn't expect my name to come up in this context, but I didn't want a repeat of last time, so I stilled myself and listened even closer.

"Is it a critical item?"

"N-No. It's just a normal white mug that says 'I less-than-symbol three tea'."

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"It's a heart, you imbecile," The Man grumbled.

"Is it?"

"Yes! You have to look at it sideways!"

"I-I'm not that knowledgeable about the symbology of this time period..."

"The heart is irrelevant. What was changed?" The Woman cut in.

"I... just told you. It now says 'I heart-symbol tea'."

There was a long beat of stumped silence.

"What did it say before?" came the next, considerably calmer question from The Woman, but it only made The Boy squirm more.

"I don't know. I tried looking it up, but while it was definitely changed, all the records I've found say it wasn't. It's like it has always been like that, but the signs of alteration say it couldn't have been. It's like everything related to it was altered at the same time from the inside."

"Yup. Covered his tracks as always. He's good," The Girl chimed in with a self-satisfied hum, but nobody paid her any heed.

"Are you sure it was changed?" The Woman mused aloud. "Considering how much tea he's drinking, it would make perfect sense if it always said that."

"Of course he's drinking tea. He's British," The Man all but scoffed, like it was obvious.

"Oh, you and your stereotypes!" The Girl teased him, I think, but he didn't grace her with a response.

"So it's a minor change that makes internal sense, with all trails and traces perfectly erased, and yet you found it seemingly by accident," The Woman summarized, and a long beat later she... erm... Slapped the top of a table that wasn't there a moment ago. "It's a diversion!"

"What?" The Boy sputtered with The Woman's finger pointing at him, and I just noticed that the table was gone again. Damn, this place is confusing…

"That was no accident! He put it there for you to notice and distract us! He must be doing something right now! I want a full integrity check, now!"

"But... We just did one..." The Boy complained, but one glare made him change his tune at once. "I-I'm on it!"

"I told you he's good!" The Girl quipped and followed after the rapidly sublimating The Boy. Wait, did that make grammatical sense? Are the rules of language also breaking down in this not-dark not-room?

In the meantime, the other two soon phased out of existence as well, leaving me all alone, still pretending to be part of the scenery. I was tempted to try and explore this weird place, but this time I actually listened to my better sense, and quietly retreated into the lack of space-time surrounding everything.

Okay, so that was less tense or scary than the last time, and I learned a few things. First and foremost, whoever these weird stellar entities were, they had to be closely related to the Simulacrum's operation. They also knew about the recent incident with my mug, but it could apparently not be traced back to me, which was good news if I've ever heard one. More importantly, they knew about me, and… they say that I like tea because I was British? Bollocks. I like it because I like it, end of story. I refuse to be categorized like that.

Much more importantly, there was a crucial snippet that really intrigued me: apparently, they were looking for someone. When it first came up, I thought it was me, and they were trying to track me down for messing with the Simulacrum's internal structure, but that didn't seem to be the case. They called me by name when the mug came up, while they referred to this other guy as 'he' or 'one', like they were afraid to call them by name. Not that they called each other by name either, but that's neither here nor there.

Now, if we were in the Simulacrum, and tropes were still in full effect, I would've guessed that this unknown 'he' was some kind of plot hook. Something like foreshadowing an important character, potentially on their level, who's currently hiding, but would appear at a suitably dramatic moment to pull the curtain apart and reveal the true nature of the world. Or, in the worst-case scenario, some kind of baddie whose goal was the destroy the Simulacrum and everyone in it, which was kind of scary, because I just happened to live there and I wasn't sure I could do anything about outside-context outer-god-expies. Of course, all of this was based on tropes, which probably didn't apply here.

On second thought though, maybe I shouldn't rule out the possibility that they were looking for me just yet. I'm still something of a black box, with my outside-context abilities capable of interacting with the underlying starta of the Simulacrum, and they immediately attributed what I did with the mug to this mysterious fifth entity. There was also that part of me who seemed to know much more about the operation of the world than I did, and held me back from altering plot devices, and could help me do even weirder things I was usually incapable of so… Could I be somehow related to their target? There was no way to say for sure now, but the fact that I was still flying under their radar was at least somewhat reassuring. That said, with such questions raised, I was feeling increasingly more obligated to listen in on these guys for useful snippets when the next chance presented itself.

While I'm on the topic of chance encounters, I also figured out another important detail, though this one was still more of a hypothesis at this point. I've ventured into the vast nothingness a few times, but only managed to get somewhere when I found these four and their anti-room. They say the third time's the charm, but if my two encounters could be used as an indicator, I most likely needed them to be around to create an anomaly I could use as a destination. In fact, it's possible that the existence-deficient room where they talked only came into existence when they were around, and I couldn't find them outside of it even if I tried.

Following up on that idea, I tried to find the room again, and even though I'd been there just a few seconds ago, I couldn't sense any trace of it anymore. Maybe it was something that naturally formed when two or more of these star-people were at the same place? Or rather, their images were at the same place. It would be nice to know what the heck they were, or what to even call them.

They probably had some kind of name for themselves, but their language was weird, with the words swimming around in my head and feeling fuzzy. It was kind of like looking at Celestial Script or listening to Brang speak, but a magnitude harder to interpret. I wasn't even sure I fully understood everything they said, but I had a gut feeling I was close enough. As for where that confidence came from… maybe that mysterious fifth entity? For the time being, I should workshop some terminology with Judy.

In conclusion, while this encounter raised more questions than it answered, and I wasn't too happy about ill-defined entities from a potential higher state of existence commenting on my choice of drink, I had to admit that even catching snippets of their conversation opened up brand new interesting, enlightening, and potentially terrifying venues of research. That last one would've been troubling, but let us be honest, that's how things have been since the first day I woke up, so I was already used to it.

Now then, it was time to return to my body and drink a cup of tea in the most non-British manner possible, because nobody can just call me stereotypical and then expect me to take it lying down, not even disembodied talking stellar beings.

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