“Hello Kevin, my name is Sapphire. Or rather Sapphire is the name I chose to go by while I lived and traveled your planet. Xa the 3rd is my name as a citizen of the Core.” She said as she glided over to stand a few feet away from me. Joe followed her and told Tutor to “come along”.

They all three stood a few feet from me as Sapphire gazed intently at me and seemingly through me. “This is the first instance on record of this happening.” She seemed to say as if she was reading something only she could see. I looked over my shoulder to see if she actually was looking through me and sure enough, there was a huge swirl of drifting and ever-changing array of colors and swirls happening off in the distance. As if she was looking through me at a screen the size of a mountain thousands of feet away behind me.

“Guest account created. High time rate. Able to become a citizen at certain stages of development and income. A perfect transfer of an uncopied alien mind. Recently suffered a trauma at the understanding of his change in life situation.” She said as her eyes came back into focus on me.

“Firstly, Kevin, let me say that yes, I am sure that you have plenty of questions and concerns. Let me alleviate a couple of them for you that I think you might have. Firstly, you are not dead, you are still alive and are standing right here. I will skip over the details of how you are alive at this present moment, just trust me when I tell you that it is not all as bad as you think. Yes, your body was erased from existence on your home planet and your bike was scattered as well. This is what happens to all travelers when they travel to and from the Core. A body can be remade if the person has enough cr to do so. Also, time, as you think of it, is not traveling at the same rate that you expect. I gather that you feel that you have been here for a while when in fact only fractions of a second have passed from the moment that you touched Hxerdinand. You, your mind, has been uploaded to the Core, a structure, or rather what you would call a computer surrounding a star. As long as you have a guest account you will be within this accelerated time state. We use this state to educate young ones so that they can grow up and enter society, leaving behind their destructive and childish ways and to enter society when they are smart enough to be able to function.”

“It is just the same way that you teach someone young how to drive a car before giving them a license and letting them out on their own. Our society is vastly different from the one you come from and thus, we do not want you getting in harm or danger while being a guest. Citizens are wise enough and given the freedom to choose to continue existing at their own rate or choice. Guests or children are cared for and not given the option of self-termination or harm. Tutor is a self-learning program that was designed to slowly integrate and educate young ones into a citizen, you are an alien and have already lived a quarter or a fifth of your natural existence so Tutor has had to try to catch up to your current state.” She said as she once again unfocused for a moment before coming back and turning to look at Joe and Tutor.

“Joe please grant Tutor access to your personality matrix you developed concerning North American humans. Tutor simulate a middle school teacher or a talkative 20-year-old female jewelry store worker. My memory says that those are the most over the top informative types of individuals.”

Before my very eyes, Tutor became more alive and active. She crossed her arms and looked at me with a friendly and yet pensive stare as if she couldn’t wait to “educate my thick skull”. I swear she was even tapping her foot.

“Lastly, Kevin, I feel the burden of your arrival here being in regards to my choice to not delay my return to the Core until I was away from people. Most people don’t pay much attention to things on your planet and I was sure that even if someone saw me, they would be forced to forget my leaving 13 hours later. You somehow circumvented that by spending the very moments that erasure would have happened in deep contemplation of the said events. The records show that the cr had to either cut away those sections of your mind or let you continue to read and remember what had occurred. The system did not want to harm you so it chose to not harm your mind after the minute of required erasure time was past. Thus here you are after finding Hxerdinand on his retirement and touching him as he was in transfer. Your mind had already been scanned and heavily invested with cr from your erasure experience. Cr that stayed because of a security protocol in place about erasing data about the core. It had failed its 13-hour timeframe deadline for wiping your memories and had become part of your mind for the next 10 years. This I believe was the sole reason why you arrived intact and functional. The last 10 years had given the cr enough time to acclimate to your alien mind and to keep a perfect copy for transfer.” She said as she looked around.

The environment changed and the library moved off behind us. Around us formed my apartment from my memory. The more I looked at it the more details came into focus and being. Sapphire walked over to the fridge in my small kitchen and pulled the fridge door open. I swear I saw her roll her eyes when she saw that it was almost full of Mountain Dew and microwave dinners.

“I will be leaving you here.” She said as she turned around and surveyed the small apartment that had just appeared out of thin air. The sheets on my bed instantly straightened as the bed was made and the trash was made to be cleared away and into oblivion. Everything took on a cleaned sheen and the air even started to smell like Windex and Lysol. I laughed “Very funny, I doubt that germs and Mountain Dew BO exists in this virtual space.” I said as I noticed how she looked at the room like my mom would if she came over to visit.

This made her smile and one empty can of Mountain Dew appeared back where it was originally on the coffee table by the couch. She raised an eyebrow at me as if that was all that I was going to get out of her regarding the mess I had left before.

“Tutor should be more able to help you now. Just understand that you are not at her beck and call. This is your Guest account… think of it as if it was a normal life. You can choose to go to college at your own pace or you can work or go on bike rides. To cancel my burden of debt I feel towards you I will grant your account Simulation rights. This will let you live simulations and possibly allow you to earn cr.” She said as she walked back to her circle of marble. I realized that she was just doing that for me to give me time to say or do something before she left. Off to the left of me, I noticed words appearing in the air.

Simulation access granted to Kevin via -30,000 cr from Xa the 3rd.

My eyebrows shot up like crazy. “Thank you, Xa!” I shouted after her as she reached her circle and turned to face me with a mysterious smile on her face before she and the circle vanished in a golden glow. It was odd… the surroundings seemed to lose a percentage of light the moment that she left.

Joe seemed to let out a breath that he was holding the moment Xa left. “Whew… well that was interesting. Kevin, you might not know it but Xa the 3rd and anyone with a title above Five is essentially like royalty where you come from. They have been around so long that their cr and access to the Core is so much higher than a normal person. Just the fact that she came here and was interested in you is amazing.” Joe said before I heard him mutter “And the fact that we got to meet her.”

He looked around and gestured to the apartment room just existing out in the open space and the vast array of library shelves behind him. “This is your virtual space, Kevin. You can make it how and into what you want just by willing the system to change it. Because you are in a virtual space you can do this without spending cr. Outside, in reality, we spend cr for anything that we want to do or create or buy.”

“What exactly is cr?” I asked him after a moment. “You make it sound like money and also like something that you can use as a board or nails,” I commented.

“In essence, it is both. Cr is, in layman’s terms, microscopic transdimensional nanorobots. Think of them as if they are nanobots, they can move atoms and materials around or they can link together and form various machines and things that you might want. Need a pair of sunglasses? Simply will the cr to create you a pair, either from memory or from a design catalog. The cr that you have ownership of will form into that pair and become what you want. If you want you can wear your cr in that linked together to form or you can will them to fuse, becoming a permanent and real item that you willed. If you have the materials you can simply use your cr to form and melt the materials into what you want to be made. Fusing cr together is wasteful for the example that I gave you. Unless you want a near-indestructible pair of sunglasses that is. If you just made them form and not fuse, they would still be very durable and repair easily. Cr is currency at its core because it gives you the power to do and create things. Xa spent 30,000 cr on you to create and dedicate simulation access for you. You might think of it as if she bought you a 30,000 dollar car or computer. Now you can travel farther, go places, and do things that you wouldn’t have been able to without the access. Also, it will allow you to make cr if you can create or do creative things that other citizens like to see while you are in a simulation.” He said.

“Just hang in there young one. You still have a life and you still have choices and things you can do. I understand you had a panic attack a little bit ago when you realized that your existence had been changed. Take it from me: Things are not as bad as you think at all. It is kind of like we gave a turtle rockets to move faster or wings.” He said as he got a thoughtful look on his face. “No no… that is a bad analogy.” He started to mutter to himself as he went back towards his bench that had appeared where it originally was. This time however it was turned to face towards us so he could sit down when he got near.

“Look, it has been a long 80 years and I need to go take a human decompression session. Ask Tutor if you need anything and I am sure that a young snapper like you can figure all this out. Take it from me, you are healthy and you have all your limbs so you will do fine.” With that and not a word able to get out of me he was gone, vanished into thin air.

“Okay then…” I said.