The Core: The First Guest

6. Where to begin?

It seemed that I had had my wish come true. I was now somewhere else and basically in the heart of the mystery that I had witnessed so long ago. I felt my heart flare in panic as I thought about my family and life that was ever so slowly moving on without me. The panic started to fade after just a couple of moments and I started to feel a bit normal again.

"Ok, what the actual heck is happening? Tutor, why do I feel so calm and normal about all of this?" I asked as I turned my head to look at her, finding her leaning back in the chair and seemingly engrossed in a romance novel.

She glanced at me around the side of the book and answered my question with another question before explaining. "You know that feeling that you have when you do anything new? Like going to school the first day, having everyone stare at you as you walk to your desk and sit down, or even the fear of a new job or getting up on stage to speak in front of people? Well, the system understands this feeling and knows that there is always a calm that comes after it, let's say an "Acceptance stage". The system is helping you get to the acceptance stage faster so that you can be more rational and make better and wiser choices. Your human fight or flight response is outdated and the system is letting you have time to pick and choose what you want." She said as she bookmarked her page and swiped at something in the air.

A menu appeared before my eyes like you would see on a Settings menu on a computer. An option was highlighted in yellow for me to find it faster and it had both a selection on/off box as well as a slider bar to pick the level of intensity I wanted to experience. It was labeled as "Fight or Flight response".

"So what would have just happened if this was off or lowered in value?" I asked as I started to read over the list of options to mess with that were presented to me.

"Oh? Well, you would have curled up into a ball and cried for a while before becoming inconsolable for the next couple of days. After which you would feel down and have mood shifts up and down until you got used to your new beginning here." She said as her expression seemed to become one of disdain. "For all that you seem to understand the value of time, your species seems to take a lot of it to get over things and to deal with events that are harmful instead of getting right back up and figuring out the best way forward." She said as she floated data in front of me.

Pages and pages flew rapidly in front of me displaying average recovery times for different events. Some of the events like "loss of a loved one" had years to infinity displayed next to them. It showed that someone's love of life could be lost forever with different situations. I understood that I didn't have time to mope and to get lost in despair like that if I was going to be able to find my way home sometime soon. My family wasn't lost to me and I shouldn't even think of this in such a manner. I should instead think of it like going to college or on an adventure to invest in myself with this amazing opportunity that I was given.

"That brings me to another question, Tutor. How long have I been here compared to my time back on Earth? I mean... you said it was just a little after 4 pm a few minutes ago..." I trailed off as I waited for her answer.

She looked at me and smiled before answering "Ah, I feel the change in you, the need to get up and to get into things." She said as she pretended to consider something for a moment. I say pretend because I already figured that she was modifying her behavior to fit what I was used to... and that I could change that as well if I needed so that she would just answer every question like a computer... but I wasn't going to do that. I didn't want to turn into a robot or a jerk after all this was done.

"The short way of thinking about it is that for every hour that passes back in the real world... you will have experienced 41.6666666667 years of time here. Or rather 42 years roughly if you want to round up to have an easy way of thinking about it. It just goes to show you that it truly is the answer to life, the universe, and everything." she said with a twinkle in her eye.