Chapter 11 – Without Past, Without Future

The empty gray void pulsed once, which was a good sign. The command had at least been acknowledged. It was already more than what she hoped.

This alone raised some questions immediately. The build version of Vainfall had included the letter ‘F’ at the beginning, which marked it as final. There should be nothing left to fix in this version. Keeping that aside, developer access was never a part of Verse Gear. She was supposed to enjoy the game, not bug-fix it.

/dev was a terminal command that was used internally in Amberlith. It didn’t make sense for Verse Research to be using the same command. They were a subsidy, but it didn’t mean they had full access to Amberlith processes, especially not one that was specific to Amberlith games.

Verse Gear, as a brain interface, had far bigger ambitions than gaming and simulation. There was no way to know why this even worked.

The void pulsed again as Darya was trying to rationalize what had just happened. It flashed a tint of blue this time. The light bounced back and gathered at a luminous blue line across the horizon.

A voice emerged inside her head. The void was speaking to her with her own thoughts. She had experienced this with the initial Verse Gear trials. The luminous line across the horizon fluctuated as it spoke. Letters flashed before her, flickering into existence out of nowhere.

Credentials verified, nstrum.

Darya didn’t have a body to wear an expression on her face, but it would’ve been utter confusion if she did. The void had called her a strange name. She remembered it from the book that she found on her bed back on the ship. The Oracle Book of something, with the painting of a woman with the signature N. Strum.

The way that was written in a single word awakened something within that she didn’t know before. She recognized the name in this form. She had used it for a long time. She remembered the day she entered it into the terminal on her first day at Amberlith when she was prompted for a username.

Why did I use a name that’s not mine?

She was Darya Altazark. That was her name—

Or was it?

She had died and been resurrected. She had endless memories of working on Vainfall. She knew everything she needed to know about the magic system. Has it always been that way? Something was wrong.

[Soul Merge Conflict: Resolve Identity]

A strange command again. She couldn’t read it this time either. It came and went, setting her at ease. If she had to guess, Verse Gear was still calibrating her with the character.

It didn’t matter. The word ‘nstrum’ had flashed right before her eyes, and she had last seen it on a painting attached to a strange book. This void beneath Vainfall had something to do with the Reverend Mother of Light that Seris told her about. Along that line, it had something to do with Dovarism as well. Everything in her life had led her here.

Led who here?

Darya Altazark.

The sense of wrongness returned. Where did the devout Dovarist princess of Karossa gain the memories of creating Vainfall? How was she so confident about what this void was? In that case, how was she even using the force quit command at all?

Something was wrong here.

[Soul Merge Conflict: Resolve Identity]

The unreadable words had flashed from the depths of her brain again. She felt the sense of wrongness lift—

Wasn’t that happening too often now?

She hadn’t been counting, but she remembered other instances of this same thing happening. It was perhaps lower than ten times, but definitely more than five.

What could Verse be fixing so often? This hasn’t happened in the trial phase. Verse Gear was the most polished piece of hardware ever. It was specially polished since it was heading towards the first human trials. Why had the princess of Karossa ended up with this faulty unit? Surely, she had enough gold to buy the best of everything. She had a luxury ship, surely, a brain interface wouldn’t have cost—

“What the hell am I thinking about?” She asked it out loud. The sense of wrongness returned, and she suddenly realized something she hadn’t even thought about since she woke up.

Who was she?

“Hm?”

These memories couldn’t be welded together. The princess of Karossa from Vainfall hadn’t worked on an Amberlith VRMMO on Earth. For the first time, she realized how wrong that was. She had almost settled into it without question, but it had always been wrong.

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The missing piece was who she was as a person before she woke up in Vainfall. She couldn’t remember any of it. Every memory that she could recall of herself was of honey-skinned, hot-as-a-fashion-model Darya.

She had been Darya when her picture was taken in preschool. She had been Darya when she was trying lipstick for the first time at twelve years old. She had been Darya when she took a selfie on the day she was called for an interview at Amberlith. She had been Darya in the mirror when she brushed her teeth for the last time before her coma.

There were obvious discrepancies that she knew were wrong. She looked far better than her mean girl bullies, whose faces she had forgotten. Now she looked like she would’ve been one of them. She looked too good as a teen not to have anyone paying any attention to her. Now she looked like someone who could’ve easily claimed her crushes.

Wait a minute. How do I have a pretty girl face, but ugly girl memories?!

Her brain went into overdrive to solve this puzzle of gargantuan importance. At the end of it, she managed to boil it down to its most fundamental insight.

She was two people. From the perspective of Darya Altazark, she had lost every memory before her death. She had lost her past. From the perspective of this developer woman from Earth, she had lost her future.

What was that woman’s name?