Hacker

Meanwhile, in Some Dimension…

Fire finds himself in a featureless white room. In the center, a girl sits at a desk, working on a computer, wearing cute pastel-colored pajamas adorned with the many expressions of a recognizable cartoon character. She looks as though she’s just freshened up after a bath. Her fingers tap frenetically across the keyboard, filling the room with a rapid, satisfying rhythm in midst of the continuous humming sound of cooling fans, electrical buzzes and hard drive noises.

“Fire, you’re totally buggy! How do you even do this? Tell me all your secrets! I can’t find anything in your log files!” She said, keeping her focus locked on the display.

“Lady… Entanglement?” asked Fire, looking confused like someone who just woke up.

“Oh good! This time you can remember my name!”

“I don’t underst—”

“That thing you created earlier is literally a delete button inside reality!”

Her desk is crowded with monitors, each displaying transparent terminal windows arranged in a tiled layout. Fire notices a sunset wallpaper in the background. As he steps into the room, he sees her compact, pastel-colored keyboard arranged in an ortholinear layout. The keys have no labels, though some are decorated with tiny, cat-themed figurines—clearly, something she customized herself. Nearby, there’s a basket of yarn matching her keyboard’s colors, a pair of long knitting needles, and an unfinished hat.

“This place… What are you doing here?” Fire asks, frustrated.

Without looking up, she says, “Isn’t it obvious? I’m hacking the Aetherway. Studying it. Testing its limits. Sometimes… I play a little,” she adds with a cheeky grin, finally glancing over at him and adjusting her glasses. “Do you mind opening that door?”

Fire notices a door in the corner of the room that wasn’t there before. As he hesitantly opens it, he stares in confusion.

“What do you see?” the girl asks.

“It’s… the room we use for our music club at school.”

“Hmm… Interesting… This place is important to you, isn’t it?”

“Is this… a game?” Fire asks, bewildered.

“A game? Oh, so that’s how you’re perceiving it!” she chuckles. “I see it more as an interface! You know, thoughts and emotions are a dynamically typed language—highly flexible but prone to unpredictable behaviors…” Her voice begins to fade as she mumbles, “…ambiguous semantics, no memory control, poor error reporting…” She sighs. “…a rogue routine, maybe?” she speaks to herself. “Ah! Want to see something cool? Don’t freak out!”

Suddenly, on the other side of the room, Fire sees himself—not as a reflection but a physical duplicate. They both recoil in surprise.

“Calm down. I have some questions!”

Fire’s eyes widen as he takes a shaky step back, his mind racing to understand. The other Fire stood before him—same face, same posture, identical in every way, down to the creases in his pajamas.

“Why are there two of me?” both Fires exclaim in unison.

“Hmm… everything seems normal… How about… this?” She presses a few keys, and the duplicate Fire transforms into his That Dimension self: red skin, even longer and messier hair, pointy horns, and a tail. His eyes are closed, as if in a deep slumber. “Recognize this guy?” she asks.

“All these things you can do… Are you a goddess?” Fire asks, his voice wavering as he hesitates, trying to process what had just happened and who the figure in front of him truly was.

“A goddess?” She pondered for a moment, caught off-guard by the question. “No, of course not. Don’t be silly. I’m a module, just like you. Just like anyone else,” her eyes fixed on the screen, one hand propping up her head as she rests her cheek against her palm.