Ancient Route: The Lost Home

Part 1: The Library

Rebooting is a painful process. It is basically a restart after my CPU shut itself down, and most of the case is because I run out of battery. It is a painful because a very high energy consumption required to run all the hardware in my CPU.

Although, Holosistants with the newer or latest CPU model might not feel the pain I had during rebooting. Their CPU balanced the power usage better than mine could.

It took me at least 10 minutes to complete my hologram projection. My hologram core enables me to walk, see, talk and move only in my hologram state.

There are four main cores inside me, each have their own specific jobs. The first would be my brain core, the most important of all the fours. It controls everything in me, including my speech, my thoughts, my actions... just like a human brain.

The second core is my hologram core. All Holosistants have a hologram core inside them. I mean, of course they do. We are called 'hologram assistant' anyway. But my hologram CPU is special because it gives me the ability to shot out more than one hologram at a time, and it is special because no other Holosistant can do that.

The third core is my solidiser core. It is what responsible to turn me from hologram to my solid form, and vice versa.

And the fourth core is my teleportation core. It does the thing its name suggest: teleporting!

I was standing next to my charging terminal, a cuboid metal just wide enough to put my humongous CPU. Mauler was sitting at his bedside, facing away from me. He was holding something in his hand, a paper.

He did not move an inch and that made me worried. His eyes just locked onto the paper he was holding. I really want to read what was on the paper using my long-range scanner, but then I rethink about my decision. Mauler liked to keep everything secret from me.

I mocked a cough to get his attention. His muscles halted by the signal I gave out. In a panic move, he turned the paper off with a tap of his finger on it. The white paper then turned black, just like a computer screen when it was turned off.

"What the- How long have you been awake? Did you read the paper?" he asked in such a hurried voice.

"I just gained my conscious a minute ago, and no I did not read the paper. I know the value of secrecy to you."

He just relieved when I told that.

"Just one thing. How did I end up here? What exactly happened?"

"Don't you remember? You drained your battery last night to get me out of the game." Oh. So, he knew my intention. I had no idea how he knew that, but I had learned one thing from 17,000 years of service to Mauler and his ancestors, and that was my masters had their own ways to know things I did not tell them. It did not make sense. I used to ask that all the time but decided that it did not really matter and just blend in with it.

"I am sorry, Master, for my action back there."

"No need to apologise," he sighed. For the first time in my service to Mauler, I saw him looking sad and heavy-hearted, as if he was making a hard decision. "I thanked you for taking me out of that situation. Honestly, I wasn't sure what will happen if you didn't do that."

Wait. Did Mauler just thank me? He never did such thing. I was shocked a little, but I paused my hologram to hide my reaction. Then I replied, "By all means, Master. That was what I was programmed for."

"Please, Hault. Call me Mauler from now on."

"Excuse me, Master- "

"You called my father with his name when he insisted. Why can't I ask the same thing? This is an order."