He was Almost Absorbed by the System

Chapter Ninety Four - Kyan and the System

Kyan felt old and yet he felt young. It was an indescribable feeling and not wholly pleasant. His body in the real world was just sixteen years old when he had entered the archive, so he felt as if he was young.  Yet his mind had experienced thousands of years in various worlds within the archive, he felt so old. 

At first he had told himself that these worlds were not real and the people were not real, they were memories at best and moving holographs at worst. But the people he interacted with, the things he touched, the tears that moved him, the pets that gave him joy... how could he not become effected by these things?

The System had told him the same story that the men who had recruited him had told him; he was going into the archive to free the V.I.P's stuck in its virtual data banks. It had added that he would need to enter the worlds, push certain individuals together through various actions. These 'protagonists' acted as keys to those men and women's escape from the archive. He had found out his role was generally a stepping stone, antagonist or cannon fodder. He simply had to follow the tasks set, continuously stay in character and fulfil the storyline so that the 'protagonists' had their happily ever after.

He was so naive.

The first world he had entered gave him the first realisation of how difficult this was going to be, despite the fact this was supposed to be a world with a low difficulty. He had felt as if his soul had been forced into his new skull through a sieve and if that was not bad enough, his host brain released all its memories at once. Suffering a blinding headache and having had to relive another person's life in less than five seconds was not an experience for the faint hearted. His new sixteen year old self had ran to the bathroom in his shabby apartment to throw up. The System had offered sympathy and soothing words, but he had had to rest for the remainder of that first day in order to recover. The next day, the System, through an ancient looking mobile phone device, had sent him several tasks. Some had seemed really stupid. Looking back, he believed now, that it had all been a test to see how well behaved he was.

His role had fortunately been fairly minor, it was barely even memorable now and he had lived in the world for ten years until the System insisted he need to move to the next world. His job there complete.

The second world had also been a test, he realised. Would he kill himself or allow himself to be killed if the System told him too? Considering the fact that he had honestly believed he was doing the right thing, he had run in front of a car. It had hurt like a bitch!

There in fell a pattern. Arrive in the world and suffer. Perform tasks whenever and wherever; even at 2am, when he was trying to sleep, even if it was ridiculously embarrassing, even if it caused his death or the death of another. Then leave the world and if he was lucky, it was painless... but that was infrequent. The longest he spent in one of those worlds was probably 25 years and at least five of them was suffering under the torture of his Emperor. In all of this, he clung to the belief that he was helping people, clung to the thought his body would be restored when he was finished, clung to the System as the constant in this existence.

So when the System was no longer there, he felt somewhat freaked out and helpless, set adrift with no anchor. But his small ship had found a rock for him to cling to, a boy who although was just as much code as anyone else in these worlds, got close to him and enveloped him in warmth. His gratitude hadn't shown itself and he foolishly thought that this boy would be his rock until he had to leave that world, but he had almost lost him too. He would never be able to express how he felt when he realised that that boy, that man, had just been waiting for him to love him as well. Aidan had become his new purpose, his new anchor and he believed that even though he would eventually leave him one day, to continue his missions, the memory of him would sustain him until the end.