Earth was a simulation.
Chris could hardly believe that this wasn't a dream. If not for how real it felt, he probably would have assumed it was a dream. That this was actually a simulation. He wasn't prone to denial. Not being prone to denial didn't mean that an Earth-shattering revelation didn't take time and privacy to digest.
Earth-shattering… The choice of words made his lips twitch upward despite himself. Gallows humor, maybe. But his father—who wasn't really his father—was watching him expectantly, and that look made him straighten his back. A faint, unwelcome instinct whispered at the edge of his mind: Do what he says before he gets mad. He pivoted on his heel and headed for his sister's room.
Amina… her name alone created a bitter twist in his stomach, although his thoughts were still too muddled by thoughts of Earth to figure out why. He knocked before entering—just simple manners, really.
"Ashe?" A high-pitched, childish tone spoke.
Ashe? Was that a nickname his family and friends used for Ashanti? Still, he found himself oddly charmed by the voice Ashanti's sister had. No matter what world you were in, children sounded the same, apparently. Amina was just… five, he recalled as he pushed his memory to the limit while trying his best not to fall into the memories of this body.
"Papa told me to come help with your homework."
The door didn't open.
The silence felt awkward.
"Ashe… coming in?" She asked, sounding somewhat hesitant.
He jolted and remembered that in order to open the bedroom doors from the outside, you would slide a finger down the thin panel and it would automatically open. From the inside, however, just a light push would work. This was the most basic safety you could get in this world.
He ran a finger down the polished panel of the door, and it popped open with a satisfying click.
Amina had her long blonde hair tugged up into a ponytail, slightly puffy from the faint waves their father had passed down. Chris had to admit, their father had very pervasive genes. He gave both Ashanti and Amina the same slightly wavy hair, even if it was in different color ways, the same easily tanned skin, and the same eye color. On Ashanti and Amina, that eye color was a completely dull dark green, as if their eyes were voids pulling in light, with no shine to them at all, no signs of Breakthroughs that gave life to the eyes of the people in this world. Once Amina gained a breakthrough, similar to their father, she would gain one thin luminescent line escaping from her pupils.
Like their father had just said, it was likely only a matter of time until his sister finally got a breakthrough. The most common breakthrough that people got was at school. When they studied enough, people would get a breakthrough. Of course, this breakthrough could express itself in several ways. Many people found themselves able to read just a little faster, their memory just slightly better, and things of that nature. Someone's first breakthrough wasn't what most people would consider powerful, after all. Breakthroughs scaled with amounts.
Not that he would know much about that. Chris, for one, wasn't sure that he even wanted to go through those memories. If he did, would he even be himself at the end of going through them? And even with the lack of knowledge from memory, Chris still knew that there was a bigger problem here. Something that made it even harder for Ashanti to understand what it meant to actually have a Breakthrough.
That was the fact that Ashanti had never had a breakthrough.
"Ashe, help me with learning these new words?" Amina poked her finger toward the papers in front of her.
Bitterness swelled in his chest, and Chris scowled at her.
Amina shrunk back, her head casting itself away from her brother and back to the papers with a quivering lip.
Why had he done that?
Memories flashed through his eyes but Chris didn't allow himself to pay any attention to them. He stayed focused on the now, not allowing that flow to take him downstream—to change him against his will. Instead, he looked at the girl in front of him, not his sister, but just kid who wanted help with their homework and now looked like she wanted to cry. Chris had never been a cruel person by any means, though he had a distaste of children; that didn't mean he wanted her to cry.
A hand came up to his hair, running those thin digits through it with a sigh. "Sure, kid, let's look at what we have."
Her immediate turn toward her brother with a blinding smile really had Chris wondering just what this kid could have done to make her brother dislike her so much?
Shifting closer, Chris glanced at the papers Amina was studying. His eyes widened slightly as he took it in. This was not the work one would expect a five-year-old to be doing. Casting his mind into Ashanti's memories, when his curiosity finally overwhelmed him enough to risk it, he realized that such work was quite common in this world. The work of a third grader on Earth was expected of five-year-old kids on this planet—Apeiron. That was because once kids had their first Breakthrough, it was expected that they could learn more quickly, and most typically got their first Breakthrough when they were first learning their ABCs. Not only was the vocabulary far more advanced than one would expect, but it was also a multifaceted lesson. Vocabulary, yes, but the vocabulary words were written between historical facts. Though history and facts were rarely an exact match. This was probably the case for Apeiron as well.
Curiosity was natural in this type of situation, Chris thought to himself almost wryly. Ashanti probably knew this information, but the fear of digging through those memories and what that meant for Chris stalled him. This, however, let him learn things without risking it, "Amani, would you mind if I looked at these before we studied?"
"Why?" Her head tilted in a way that might've been cute if not for the unsettling way her eyes seemed to swallow light. They weren't black, but a dull, dark green. This was worse, somehow, because a true black at least looked like a void you could understand, but the way that this shade of green swallowed light really pushed expection.
"Part of teaching is making sure you know the material yourself first." He lied immediately, not waiting for her to agree before gathering up the papers to flick through. Not that Amina argued; she was probably just doing that thing Earth kids did when they asked WHY about everything.
He skimmed the text. A basic overview of the city's political setup. Not what he'd hoped for—he'd been wishing for something about modern history, maybe a mention of Earth or the simulation—but knowledge was knowledge. In short, it was a love letter to Zyunda and a hit piece on Solenga and Onvura. Political bullshit.
Should he even bother to learn such things? Was he going to be here for any length of time? Did he have any other choice?
With a sigh, he set the papers back on the desk. The only real saving grace so far was that the dominant language here was basically English. Who knew how screwed he'd be otherwise? Sure, it wasn't called English, but that man—Kaelith—wasn't exactly overflowing with originality. Earth mirrored this place to a ridiculous degree, with zero creative integrity. Apeiron… Apeiron… Apeiron, he repeated in his head, just to remember the planet's name. Honestly, it should sue Kaelith for plagiarism.
"What exactly is the assignment?" Chris asked, trying to focus back on the current situation.
"Gotta read it, then write all the words we don't know, and… um… write what we think they mean, from the other words around it."
Using context clues to figure out word meanings—was that really a useful assignment? In this world, maybe forcing kids to think in unfamiliar patterns was useful for earning Breakthroughs. Which meant, technically, it was counterintuitive for him to help. He waved the thought away when he realized the bitterness behind it wasn't his—it was Ashanti's, and it had no logical weight.
"Did you pick the words out already?"
"Mhm!" Amani hummed happily, pointing toward her notebook.
"Why don't you read the sentences out-loud and see if that helps you to get the meaning?" Chris wasn't sure if that was bullshit advice or not.
"'Kay… Apeiron has three nations. Of the three, the one known to hold the most magnificence is Zyunda, with its crystal-clear stalagmites hanging down around the city of cavescrapers. The word is 'cavescrapers." She spoke slowly, carefully, but there was no actual issue in her intonation or pronunciation. For her to do this at five with no Breakthrough, Amani would have been a prodigy back on Earth. The only reason she wasn't one here was just because she didn't have a Breakthrough yet. If she had even one, the attention that she would receive for this level of intelligence…
"We have a similar word in our city, right?"
Immediately, the light of realization jumped into her eyes, "Cavescrappers are big tall buildings, but not reaching toward the sky, but the top the cave Zyunda is made in!"
Chris felt some fondness at the sight of her enthusiastically putting the puzzle pieces together. An aching curiosity to dig into Ashanti's memories to understand just where that putrid source of ugly emotions came from, for a girl that was nothing but innocent.
He leaned back and watched as she slashed through the rest of the homework with no problem now that he'd given her that general advice for the first word. Amina really was something else. Maybe that was why Ashanti had so much bitterness—Amina wasn't lacking in natural talent, intelligence, or memory.
"Did you forget you were going to get some food at the store today, Ashe?"
… Could one say that they forgot to do something, when it wasn't even their own memories they were attempting to recall?
Time to see more of what this world had to offer, huh?
Everywhere you looked there were more signs of just how unoriginal Kaelith had been in his creation of Earth. Another big one, Chris realized as he pulled on outdoor clothing, was that the currency system was the same as North America's. The only difference was slight, that between a quarter and a dollar, there was a 50-cent piece called halfies. Though Chris had to admit he understood why Kaelith hadn't included that one, the name of it sounded kind of childish.
The pants here were made of a material that felt just slightly unfamiliar and warmer than you'd expect, but also lighter. What looked like it should be a heavy fabric sat chunky on the body, comfortably warm, and gave the appearance of baggy pants. Most of Ashanti's clothing was the same dull, dark green as his unbroken eyes, outlined in neon green. This style of a dark base with a vibrant accent was popular, at least in their nation of Solenga and most of its cities. Paired with a similarly baggy-looking jacket and heavy black boots, he made his way toward the door.
"Is your sister's homework done?" His dad called.
There was an almost instinctive urge to roll his eyes, but Chris ignored it. "Yeah."
He straightened his back when he realized how abrupt that sounded, hoping his father wouldn't take it as attitude. It must have been an instinct that came from Ashanti, as it wasn't one of Chris' instincts.
"Don't give me grief for that! I just want to make sure your sister gets a breakthrough—I've never seen someone get so annoyed over something so simple!" His father snapped immediately, his features twisted in anger and pain.
Chris swallowed down the emotions threatening to erupt, letting himself sink into confusion instead. He didn't want to dig through Ashanti's memories to figure out this body's reactions, but even without them, it didn't take a genius to see his father's moods swung fast; snappy one moment, radiating parental adoration the next. And it had only been a few hours since Chris had woken up in Apeiron.
It was chilly outside, which was why he'd put on the jacket. Rows of buildings made of what looked like crystals stretched in every direction, and the ground seemed to be paved with the same crystal material, refracting light in every possible way. Chris felt the urge to search his memory—what was this crystal material?—but instead stalked forward, scanning for any sign of where to go without touching the creeping poison of Ashanti's memories.
People ran past him at startling speeds. Cars and other methods of transportation looked similar to those on Earth, except everything was faster. Bike lanes were shared by sprinters, and people who could run even faster than the vehicles themselves shared the roads. It was an odd sight. So were the people—clad in dark clothing accented with streaks of bright green, red, orange, and blue, eyes glowing random, bright colors that you wouldn't find natural on Earth. Some people had purple eyes, or pink, or any other combination. Hair colors also ran extreme, though Chris wasn't sure if dye was just the style or if such abnormal colors could run natural in this world.
He tried to control his expression as he looked around, almost stumbling into this new world.
The sheer amount of people, this had to be similar in population to New York, but he knew that the actual city that he lived in was a low-middle class neighborhood at best, but the look of it was almost like the top of the line from Earth. It made him wonder what the actual high-status cities looked like. As he walked forward, he felt the shock fade and his shoulders relaxed, and so too, increased his ability to actually note his surroundings. That's when things got a little more familiar, when he looked down thin alleyways and noticed some homeless individuals looking up toward the blazing star with empty eyes and dazed expressions. Drugs. Homeless. Only the main street was actually clean, but down those alleyways you could see the same effort wasn't afforded there. The walls looked stained rather than the almost pristine white prisms that lined the main street. A facade.
Chris followed the primary group of people, moved with the flow of traffic, until finally he came across a few street markets.
He didn't want to look into Ashanti's memories, so he had to make an assumption. His family was poor and becoming poorer most likely, considering the disability his father had and just the general vibes he was getting without touching the memories. On Earth, a side vendor rather than a chain store could mean many things. In places like Argentina, a street vendor would be more affordable, but in many places in North America, it was much the opposite. He stepped toward the vendor, putting his hopes on the fact that Apeiron would have affordable street vendors with a silent hope in his mind.
The stall didn't work like a typical supermarket; instead, goods came prepackaged, almost like a ready-to-cook meal delivery service. The boxes held the ingredients, but you didn't pick them out individually.
The prices, though…
One box, labeled for a family of three, cost $79.99 and contained enough ingredients to last two days. That number was ridiculous. On Earth, Chris had only shopped for himself and stuck to a strict budget of $30 a week. It was doable if you lived frugally, but it came with constant pressure and anxiety. Here, spending this much for just two days? That worked out to around $27 a day—nearly $80 a week—per person.
A cold thread of anxiety crept up his back. Without more research, he couldn't be sure if this was normal here, but at least if they bought this box today, he could study the prices and plan better for the future.
He reached for his card, which frankly looked exactly like a debit card, and pulled it out, he looked up from the stall and made eye contact with the vendor. "I'll take this one."
"Unbroken, huh?" The vendor wrinkled his nose, and Chris felt a bitterness rise from within him, "I'll sell to you so long as you promise not to come back here again."
… An example of this world's version of racism, huh?
"Sure," Chris answered back simply, pushing those emotions to the side.
As predicted, the man's glare deepened. He'd wanted Chris to snap, to give him an excuse to cause trouble. People like him always looked for an opening to put down those they hated, hoping for a bite back. An authentic display of hatred. Chris's fingers itched to narrow his eyes, but he kept his face blank and pressed his card to the counter.
That was another of Ashanti's instincts—Chris wouldn't have even known how to pay otherwise—but this time, he was grateful for it. The counter worked like a no-contact payment system, sparing him any extra fumbling under the vendor's watch, a fumbling that surely would have brought more trouble his way, judging by how a small crowd was forming around him. Each person having the faintest of glows to their eyes as they watched him.
He gathered the ingredients and turned on his heel back toward the apartment. As he did so, his eyes met someone else's just briefly. They stood out specifically because they too had a void, dark red pulling in light and not releasing it. The red complemented her red hair. Chris forced his eyes away and focused on speed-walking the rest of the way home.
Unbroken huh?
A frown grew on his face as he stalked back to the apartment they lived in.