The Laptop - Ch.57 - Independent Studies (Patreon)

"I still can't believe she just up and left like that," Gwen commented quietly. "You only had what, a couple weeks of training with her? And that's supposed to be the equivalent of the fifty or a hundred years she's spent learning all that stuff?"

Chelsea's ears were folded back and her tail flicked back and forth in irritation as she stated, "It was more than three weeks I think? Anyways Gwen's got a point."

"I'm not surprised at how suddenly she left though. She's never struck me as someone who's terribly reliable. Or stable," the little catgirl added with a frown.

After a couple seconds of silence Gwyneth spoke up again, "I can't help thinking it's probably no coincidence Annie suddenly disappeared literally hours after her boyfriend packed up and left town."

I shrugged, "Maybe? And you're both right about her seeming kind of flakey."

Then I pointed out, "On the other hand she did teach me a lot, even if she wasn't around that long. And I think the stuff she shared was really important. Like who knows how long it would have taken me to figure out how to travel to different realms without her help? Now I've got four destinations bookmarked in the laptop, and hopefully after today we'll have a whole bunch more we can go check out."

"I think that's maybe the most important lesson of all," I continued as the three of us made our way down the quiet abandoned street. "Instead of her just giving me a dozen or so location IDs, she taught me how to find them for myself. And how to figure out the pattern and everything else. It makes me wonder how long it took for her to learn all that stuff from scratch."

Chels reminded me, "She had a mentor too, didn't she? Or at least, she got the laptop from someone else. We don't know how much they taught her."

"Ok that's a good point," I admitted. Then I gestured, "Anyways there's the library. Hopefully it won't take too long to go through the archives and find a list of new places we can visit."

Following Annie's abrupt departure yesterday, my girlfriends and I spent a couple hours discussing our options and figuring out what we all wanted to do next. And I finally found out what they'd been up to while I was stuck in 'class' with my temporary prof.

It turned out that the two of them had been taking odd jobs around the village. Sort of like beginner missions in an RPG, they'd done some simple scavenging and a bit of hunting in the wilderness surrounding Hoag's Hole. Between Gwyneth's magic and Chelsea's stealth and knife skills, not to mention Vix's scouting talents, they'd found and eliminated a handful of slightly-dangerous monsters that lived close enough to worry some of the civilians.

So while I'd spent most of the last few weeks cooped up in our medieval hotel room, they'd been out exploring and doing some safe adventuring. Which sounded kind of fun, except it also meant they'd pretty much exhausted all the options and easy missions in the area. It also meant they'd had enough of Daearen, and were ready to move on and try visiting somewhere else.

We spent one final night in our nice hotel room, then after a decent breakfast the three of us packed up our gear and checked out. We marched off into the woods, then I opened a portal and we left Daearen-2605 for possibly the last time.

Our first stop wasn't anywhere new or exciting though, I'd brought us back to Enðedd so we could visit the library again.

"Hopefully this won't take too long," I commented as I picked the same cubical as before.

I shrugged my backpack off and set it on the floor by the desk, along with my bow and quiver. Then I sat down in front of the dusty old terminal and tapped a key to wake it up.

Meanwhile my girlfriends headed into the two adjacent cubicles, but rather than grabbing chairs then pulling them into my cubical to join me, I heard Gwen shed her backpack before sitting down in front of the terminal in the cube on my left. Chelsea was in the cube on my right, but instead of grabbing the chair or sitting down she was just standing there quietly.

"Hold up," the catgirl said in a soft wary voice. "We didn't put these chairs back last time we were here. So how'd they get moved back into their original cubes? Is there someone else around here? A dusty old librarian maybe?"

I smiled and shook my head, "It's a static realm. Anything we disturb or move gets reset again afterwards."

"That's why nobody can live here," I added. "Like if we tried to camp out or move in somewhere, whatever we did would keep getting undone. So it's ok to visit, but if we tried to stay here it'd get frustrating pretty quickly."

"Gotcha," Chels replied. A moment later I heard her put her backpack down, then she settled into the chair and fired up the terminal in there.

My eyebrows crept up as I asked, "I take it you're both doing your own independent studies this time?"

Chelsea replied, "Yeah. There's some stuff I want to look up."

"Same here," Gwen added.

I nodded, "Alright. Good luck with whatever you two are working on."

"Thanks," the elf girl replied. "You too Lisa."

After that we were all quiet, the only sounds were the clacking of keys as we worked on our separate terminals.

It didn't take long for me to find a master list of all four thousand and ninety-six realm servers. It was sorted numerically, from 000 to FFF, and appeared to contain everything I'd ever want or need to know about any particular realm. In fact I quickly realized there was almost too much data for it to be useful, so while it only took a few minutes to find the database I spent the next twenty minutes trying to get the information I wanted out of it.

The main problem was even though there were plenty of options to sort and filter the data, there wasn't any easy way to pick what realms would be safe and fun for my girlfriends and I to explore. It was also a challenge to filter on things like 'theme' or 'genre' since those weren't actually fields in the system.

Like Daearen wasn't listed as a swords and sorcery realm, and the Popławska wasn't listed as a sci-fi realm. Those were our interpretations based on our cultural references. The closest approximation I could get was to search for keywords in the realm summaries, like 'magic' or 'science'.

So even though I had loads of information on thousands of realms all at my fingertips, I still hadn't come up with a single place for us to visit before my girlfriends were both finished their own research projects.

"So I uh, found out who I used to be, back when this place was real," Gwyneth commented quietly.

I frowned as I looked up from my terminal, "You looked up your pre-digitization self?"

"Yeah," she replied. "I also looked up my previous digital life too."

Then she got up and dragged her chair around and into my cubical, before sitting back down again. She had her backpack and staff with her, the pack ended up on the floor next to mine while she rested her staff across her lap.

"Do you want to share?" I asked as I turned in my seat to look at her. "No pressure."

The elf girl shrugged quietly. It was hard to make out her expression under the wide brim of her hat, but I had a feeling it was kind of distant, or maybe a bit melancholy.

After another couple seconds she finally responded, "Like Chelsea said last time we were here, my life wasn't anything great or special or fun or whatever. It wasn't anything awful either, so yay for that. The most validating thing I found was my original biological body was a girl."

"Same with my previous digital incarnation, I was a girl then too," she added.

She made a face at that point, then grimaced slightly as she admitted, "I guess I was worried about the girl thing? It's probably because I'm trans, but I wanted to know if I'd always been a girl or not. Like maybe being AMAB this time around was a mistake or something."

By that point Chelsea had left her cubical and was standing in the doorway of mine so she could see both me and Gwen. The little catgirl asked quietly, "Do you want to tell us about your life on this world? Or your last digital life?"

Gwen shrugged again, "My previous life was on a medieval-style world, like Daearen but without the magic and mythical races. My family were peasants, I helped out on my parents' farm. Until I was sixteen, when raiders attacked and killed everyone."

"As for my life here," she continued, "I was twenty-eight when I was digitized. I worked as a ship-hand for a big freight company. Not like delivering parcels or whatever, but hauling processed protein gloop from the big space-based factory farms down here to feed the massive population."

She added quietly, "I had a husband, and two little girls. We were all digitized together. And I can't help wondering what happened after that? Like would they be on Earth now too? Does the system keep families together? And if so, who are they? Maybe my folks in this life were part of my family in that life?"

"You could probably figure that out if you wanted to," I responded in a soft gentle voice. "I don't know if that would help though? Who they were then doesn't have any bearing on who they are now. I'm glad you got that validation, but you're not a delivery girl in this life. Or a peasant farmer."

My best friend nodded slowly, "I know that. It's just... I guess it's weird? Like back on Earth there's this whole mystery about what happens when you die? And you sometimes hear people talk about reincarnation and past lives and stuff? Only here we are in a kind of digital purgatory, where we have access to all those records and everyone's past life data is available at our fingertips."

"Not just past lives," Chelsea added softly. Her ears were drooping to either side while her tail hung down low behind her as she continued, "Next lives too, for those who've already moved on."

I looked at her and sighed, "You looked up your mom?"

The catgirl grimaced, "Yeah. Yours too Lisa. I won't say anything if you don't want me to, but I figured I'd research them both just in case."

Hearing that left me with some mixed emotions. I took a deep breath then said, "I'm not sure I want to know about my mom. But if you want to tell us about yours I'd be happy to listen?"

Gwen nodded quietly in agreement. Chelsea ducked into the other cubical for a moment, then returned with her backpack and chair. And once she was comfortable she told us what she learned.

"My mother was reborn on a realm called Honnui-2273," she began. "Her family is part of a nomadic tribe of boat-people. They sail from island to island, fishing and hunting and harvesting stuff they gather when they're on land. From what I could see she seems happy, her new family loves her. She's twelve now, she has a new mom and dad, and a big brother who's seventeen."

Chels continued, "I don't know much about that world, but from what I could gather from my mom's character they don't have much in the way of technology? I wouldn't exactly call it primitive, but they don't seem to have anything like machines or industry or anything like that."

I turned around and punched in the realm number on my terminal, then had a quick look at what it had to say about the place.

"You're right," I nodded. "It's a water world, no significant landmasses or continents. Just loads of small scattered tropical islands. The people have language and culture, but it looks like it's mostly late stone age level in terms of technology. Their world has some magic, but that seems to be mostly limited to shamans or witch-doctors."

Finally I turned to face the little catgirl again and asked, "Are you thinking about trying to see her? Do you want us to visit that world?"

Chelsea shrugged, "I don't know yet. I guess I wouldn't mind seeing what the place is like, but I'm not sure I want to actually see her. I don't know if I could handle that?"

"It's hard enough knowing she's gone from being a smart well-educated woman with a career in nursing to being someone who probably can't even read or write," she added as her ears and tail all drooped even further.

I frowned, "Her world may not be very advanced but that doesn't mean she's not a smart person. For all we know she might be destined to be her tribe's next healer or wise woman?"

"I guess," Chels mumbled quietly. Then she asked, "Do you want to hear about your mom?"

That made me hesitate, while I thought it over. Then I asked, "Without any details, can you at least say if she's doing ok or not? Like, is she happy? Or is she in a good place, with a good family?"

She cringed slightly, "That's actually hard for me to say? I can tell it's a sci-fi realm, they're an affluent family living on a fancy space station."

After debating with myself for a few more seconds I sighed, "Alright. I guess I'm too curious for my own good. Tell me what else you found?"

"So your mom's now a six year old boy," Chelsea stated softly. "Like I said, she... or he I guess? Is living on a space station with his mom and dad. His mom's a scientist, his dad's some kind of leader or something. The realm's called Æðelwine-3268 and they're on the Æðelwine Research Station. They live in some sort of luxury condo, your mom's an only child but he goes to school and has friends there. He seems happy I guess?"

By the time she was finished talking I was staring at a spot on the side of the cubical as I tried to process how I felt about all that. It was hard enough imagining my mom being reincarnated on some space station, trying to picture her as a six year old boy was beyond me.

The three of us ended up sitting in silence for the next few minutes, as we all processed our different revelations in our own ways.

Eventually it was Gwen who broke the silence once again.

"I wouldn't mind visiting a tropical island world," she stated softly. "I also wouldn't mind visiting a sci-fi space station, if you wanted to check that out Lisa. I'm not saying we have to go find your moms, just that both of those realms sound kind of interesting."

Chelsea frowned, then nodded. "Yeah ok. I still don't know if I want to see my mom, but like I said I wouldn't mind seeing her new world."

I turned around and reached for my terminal again as I responded, "Then let me read up a bit more on both of those realms first. Just to confirm they're both safe to visit, and so we don't make any mistakes or screw things up by going there."