Journeys to the Dreamscape

Part 3

Musouka
I looked around the halls curiously. Where could they be? I tested a few doors I came across along the way. Locked. Locked. And locked. I shook my head. How the heck am I going to find them? I then noticed a door opened just a crack. The light from inside its room was bright. I opened it slowly and peeked inside. Once I opened it all the way, I stayed standing by the door for a moment. What was all this? I walked in and moved the door to how I'd found it. There were multiple panels with a variety of buttons and blinking lights. It was a surprisingly spacious room. At front and to the right of the room there was a large screen with what looked like a lense on top built into the wall. Below it was another panel with a keyboard, buttons and blinking lights. I walked up to it warily. What was this? Was this...Satoru...? When I stood just in front of it, I looked up at the lense as I squinted my eyes suspiciously. It then began to blink a sort of orange light from inside. I took a step back, nervous if Bedryf's people had caught me. "Welcome to Bedryf Complex," I heard the monitor say monotonously as the orange light stopped blinking. "The ultimate in Scientifically Advanced Technology is here to enlighten you in your information acquiring needs. As the name explains, Project SAToru is literally the "Enlightener," of the Complex and will provide you with the answers to anything you must know." "Satoru??" I exclaimed out loud. "This... Is you?" I said as I took a few steps to the side as I passed my hand on the panel. "Welcome, Visitor. What is your name?" The voice was Satoru's! I could hear it exactly the same as in their translator! "It's me! Musouka." I said hoping that would trigger them to remember. The light in the lends flickered rapidly for a moment. It went silent.

I then heard them speak once again. "Y-young Dreamer?" they said. The light in the lense blinked as they spoke now, giving the illusion of a sort of life come back to them. "Y-yes!" I exclaimed excitedly. "Ah.. I apologize for my semblance at the moment," they said with a hint of shame in their voice. "No no it's ok! I understand," I said reassuringly. "Here, let's fix this," they said then. The screen then flickered to life in a mess of static. After a moment, a blue background appeared. Then a strip of binary code came down from the top of the screen to the bottom, seemingly putting something together. It took on a silhouette of the upper body of a male figure. The code then dispersed and scattered off the screen in different directions and revealed Satoru's image. They had their eyes closed then slowly began to open them. I put a hand to my mouth in shock. Ok, this tech's power is becoming a little frightening now. Satoru blinked and looked to me then. After a moment, they smiled in their usual tender way. "S-Satoru!" I exclaimed in disbelief. I hurriedly walked up to the screen then. "Hello, young Dreamer," they said. Wait... They SAID. They SPOKE. Their lips moved as the sound of their voice formed audible WORDS. "You can SPEAK!" I said excitedly. They chuckled shortly. "Yes, but only when I'm in my true state here as the computer. I can not speak outside my coding like in the Dreamscape or in the real world. It's a sort of bug in my programming. But I'm just glad to see you again," they said holding their hand up to the screen. I noticed they still wore the translator on their wrist. "Yeah I'm so glad to see you here too," I said as I placed my hand over theirs. We looked down at our hands a moment then looked at each other again. I could only feel the glass of the screen but their hand was there caringly like if there wasn't a barrier at all.

"Wait... You said neither in the real world. You can do that? Come out here?" I asked. "Oh well... That is something I've been meaning to talk to you about," they said as they lowered their hand from the screen. I did the same. "I have actually not stopped thinking about you since our last encounter," they began "I can't understand it. I still can't even grasp what it was that we had done before you had gone." 'What we had done' Before I had gone? Meaning... Just before I awoke... What did we do? I can never remember how my dreams end. Not even the ones in Nightopia. This can prove to be very troublesome, especially now when I needed to remember. "But it has made me think about other human activities I would much like to partake in with you. So..." They said with a clever look. They then closed their eyes once again. And they once again turned into the silhouette of binary code which formed itself into a thin strip as before but went up toward the lense. The lense then projected a sort of light to the floor in front of me. The light slowly rose in a cluster of pixels and gleams. The light then went back to the lense leaving the cluster behind. The pixels and gleams then dispersed and vanished to thin air showing Satoru as a sort of... Semi-physical hologram. This time, they looked right at me with a smile. "{...Would you care to dance? My young Dreamer?}" I heard them say now through the translator once again as they signed. They then offered their hand out to me tenderly.