Solipsism: Chapter 4 (Patreon)

“I’ll make this quick. You’re different from everyone else in that your consciousness is slightly untethered from reality, bigger than you yourself, and able to interact with the cosmos in a way that others can’t. This lets you change the world by thinking about it, provided you’ve attuned yourself to the ways in which you’re trying to change it. I’m your…Let’s say I’m your magic.”

She did make it quick. Too quick, actually. Too quick by far. I was blinking, staring, frowning. So concerned with absorbing everything that I momentarily forgot to embarrass myself in front of the gorgeous supermodel currently lecturing me.

“I…Uh.” I worked my mouth, trying to get it to actually do something useful. “I have many questions.”“You get one.” She replied. That one focused me a bit, anger soon taking care of the painfully intense horniness. 

“That is ridiculously arbitrary, why one?”

She rolled her eyes. 

“Because if I have to sit here and deal with every question you can think up, you’ll die of old age and I’ll fizzle out of existence along with you. You get one.”

Bitch. Fine then, I gave it some thought. 

“Why are you a ridiculously attractive goth girl in a black miniskirt and fishnets?”

“Because I’m a reflection of your subconscious,” she explained, eying herself as if it were the first time she’d seen her own body, “...And you’re a complete degenerate.”

Yeah, fair enough. 

“Now listen,” she continued, “The time we can spend chatting is limited by…Something that’s irrelevant for now. So I’m going to speak fast and you need to hear faster.”

I nodded, gesturing her on. She continued.

“You need to go cross-eyed.”

“Fuck off.”

She didn’t get annoyed again, but did seem suddenly tense.

“You’re in a magic fantasy land you made up in your head and the girl of your literal dreams is standing right in front of you, play along.”

I thought about that for about two seconds before realising too much of my blood was preoccupied for thinking to do much good. I just nodded, and obeyed the booby woman. 

My eyes always hurt when I crossed them, never knew why. I was half expecting that to be different but, of course, it was just as unpleasant as ever. The only difference this time was that it was accompanied by a spectacular visual hallucination, and one which persisted after I stopped.

Well, everything was a hallucination. So this would be a double hallucination. It certainly clashed with the general delirium I’d erected around myself. 

I’d played enough RPGs to know a stat spread when I saw one, the only mystery here was what the damned stats were. Mostly. Some were simple enough, others…Irritatingly obscure.

ATTRIBUTES;

Strength 3, Speed 3, Dexterity 6, Stamina 2, Toughness 4, Alertness 7, Charisma 1, Intelligence 9

FUNDAMENTS;

Energy 1, Matter 1, Force 1, Entropy 1, Cognition 1, Space 1, Time 1

Willpower 10, Attunement 1

As something of an expert in reading numbers on screens, I found several things striking about this experience. 

The first, of course, was that the screen in question was not typically my own eyeballs. It felt odd to see this…Data, for want of a better word, the way I did. It was almost like looking at it in an actual game, seeing it overlaid with the world behind it. Except this time the world was real. Sort of. Whatever. 

The sun. It was like when you look at the sun, or some other bright light, and then look away. The residual dots that left in one’s vision was a dead ringer for how the spread before me was, albeit with less detail and more distortion. 

Less useful information, too, I’d have guessed, though I couldn’t exactly verify that until I had a bit of time figuring out what…

No, hang on. Stupid. ‘

“What do these “Fundaments” do?” I asked the magic goth girl who told me useful information. True to form, she told me. Usefully. 

“They represent the aspects of reality you can influence with your mind, and the extent to which they can be influenced with your current level of mastery over them.”

I took a moment to swallow that. 

“But they’re everything.” I replied. “Energy, matter- fucking time and cognition. They’re everything, that’s…I can do everything, anything, right? Why not just give me the ‘everything’ stat?”

For some reason, my rapier wit failed to impress her. 

“Because you can’t do everything, you can influence those things, individually, in small ways. For now.”

I frowned at that.

“So one isn’t a decimal representation.” I noted. “Is it a percentage?”

Once more, she did not look amused. Worse, she looked at me like I was being terribly, painfully optimistic. Perhaps level one in the Richter scale was a better comparison then. Not ideal.

“What can I do then?” I muttered, suddenly less enthusiastic about everything. I didn’t go to all the trouble of hallucinating a universe just to still have rules I needed to follow.

“That, you’ll need to discover yourself. I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

She actually looked irritated at that, but…Not with me. More with herself, or her situation. She had the face of someone trying to do something with all they had, and finding themselves simply unable. 

“I just can’t.” She said at last, and I believed her. 

“So is that it then?” I prodded. “Is that everything in my lesson plan today, or do you have a copy of Isekai-For-Dummies I can borrow?”

She eyed me evenly, no more amused by what I said than ever. 

“There is one more thing.” She began. “Perhaps the most important, about your perception of this world.”

I had to resist groaning.

“You’re not going to try and convince me this is all real?” I sighed, and she was doing so well. 

“Why would I?” She frowned, as if perplexed at my stupidity. “That’s literally impossible. I’m going to convince you that it doesn’t matter.”

That, I had to admit, had me interested.

“Go on?” I prodded.

“Whether this is all real or some hallucination of yours makes no difference, because what you experience here is real. The people’s reactions, to you, are real. If you’re in so deep into your own unreality that you can’t prove it’s fake or real, then at that point it’s functionally just your reality. So why not enjoy it like an actual life?”

It was an interesting point to hear, I had to admit. 

“I thought for sure you’d try to point out how ultra-realistic everything was.” I muttered. 

“If your brain were mulched-up waste, then you could misconstrue anything as ultra-realistic.” She countered. “For all you know I’m speaking complete horseshit- or rather you’re imagining me speak complete horseshit- that only sounds reasonable because your cerebrum is too mangled to tell the difference.”

Despite being one of the more horrific suggestions I’ve received in my life, that did get me thinking. 

“I’ll consider it.” I said at last. 

“Yeah, you will.” The woman responded. “Hopefully you’ll even do something with the idea. Now I actually need to go.” She was already fading away as she said it, becoming translucent, approaching transparent. I might have found the sight strange or striking, but frankly there’s only so much room a man’s mind has for surprise or awe in one day. Mine had been used up by getting attacked by Greek mythology and finding out I was a wizard.

“Wait.” I blurted out, “What’s your name?”

Her head tilted at that. 

“I don’t have one.”

She was still fading, but slow enough that I knew I had a few more words before she was gone properly I decided to use them well. 

“How about…Cortana?” I asked. I’d played Halo last night, it just sort of popped into my head. 

The lady who lived in my brain and told me things looked thoughtful at that, and then she was gone. 

I was alone again, but I’d been given a lot to think about. More pressingly, I’d been given a lot to analyze and experiment with. I turned my focus back to the weird sheet that appeared before my vision. 

As I moved my head, it followed. Always centred in my field of view, like it was built into my eyeballs. It was actually quite nauseating, enough so that one of the first things I ended up discovering was how to “disable” it, which I could evidently do with a thought. That was convenient, but it wouldn’t do me much good if a pissed off deity showed up to floss his teeth with my spine. 

Soon enough, I stumbled onto something. If I used my hands I could interface with the menu, like some sort of touch-screen except without the need to actually make contact. Flicking my fingers one way would scroll, or, sometimes, reveal extra information beside something. 

Strength: This represents a character’s physical prowess, allowing them to exert force to hit hard, lift great weights and halt great pressures with their own bodies.

I blinked. Well, that was convenient. What about another?

Intelligence: This represents a person’s cognitive potence, allowing them to memorise details, perform accurate leaps in logic and quickly internalise complex information to be rearranged and utilised effectively.

Huh. Well, I had no way of knowing what an “average” stat was in these areas, but my Intelligence being far above my others seemed about right. 

Speed: This represents the swiftness a character can move their body with, used to sprint rapidly and sidestep instantly.

Dexterity: This represents a character’s precision and spatial judgement. It allows for accurate shooting, precise movements and light stepping.

Stamina: This represents a character’s ability to weather exhaustion, pain and damage while continuing to act.

Toughness: This represents a character’s physical durability. It allows them to weather great blows without being injured.

Alertness: This represents a character’s reaction time and reflexes, allowing them to respond quickly and instantly to danger.

Charisma: This represents a character’s strength of personality, dictating how magnetic others find them, how immediately likeable they appear and how impressive and awe-inspiring their presence is.

It hurt, a little, to see I was sitting at a one there, but…Well, I looked in the mirror every now and then, and I knew full well what my circle of friends was. Or lack thereof.

Of course it was good to know what the structural hierarchy my immutable characteristics were categorised into actually meant, but the thing that really interested me was those fundaments. I gave a whirl to reading through the elaborative text on them, and sure enough…There wasn’t any. 

Figure it out yourself my ass. I grumbled, suddenly finding myself a lot less appreciative of Cortana’s lectures. It’d be one thing to see her that smug over actually good information, but-

The door opened, and I spun around. My menu disappeared from my eyes with a frantic thought. There wasn’t anything particularly incriminating on it, mind, but over the years I’d developed a very particular reflex involving any screens I’m looking at when someone suddenly enters the room I’m in. 

It was the young woman from before, the one who’d saved me. She’d changed her clothes, now looking like she was planning a very long hike. I noted the bow strewn across her back, a bloody big one I had to say, and at least two quivers full of arrows complete with a pair of knives at her hips. Her eyes seemed sharper than the steel, though. 

“What were you doing?” She asked. 

Many possibly answers came to mind at that, and I just shrugged.

“Very impressive hero stuff.”

She rolled her eyes. 

“You can stop the bullshit now, I’m not buying it anymore. You’re not a hero are you? Just some asshole I accidentally summoned trying to get a real one.”

I paused. I could have lied, or tried to, but…

“Yeah.” I said instead, feeling hollow as I did. She nodded, unsurprised. 

“Well, either way, listen up. Because I need your help again.”