unfinishednetwork | Private to Siobhan, Laina, Murderbot over the Sendjewel Network

Current Location: His bed in the barracks
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Private to Siobhan, Laina, Murderbot over the Sendjewel Network

WARNING: frank discussion of IRL transphobia; the deep deep spoilers to the Wonders of Mundus series as a whole are likely.

To Siobhan, Laina:
I - suspect you two had a better idea than I did of who young Tsukuda was but I would speak to you both about the context.

To Murderbot:
I suspect you are more inclined to talk to me over the Sendjewel than in person. My name is, for the sake of argument, Hikaru Aozora; I knew you in the story as Rin. I'd like to talk with you about what I perceived of what happened if you'll allow me.

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Oh.

(Okay, so Hikaru had basically looked like someone else completely. Guess that was a thing that could happen, apparently.)

(There is also an overwhelming sense of [bafflement] from SecUnit: it does not understand what, exactly, it is being thanked for. Except it doesn't seem to be for the rescue, for some reason.)

Uh. Hi? Again, I guess. Sorry you had to be someone else for a while, or whatever the fuck just happened.

Someone else, yes. Someone I haven't been for years. I didn't appreciate the reminder.

Should I still call you Rin, and is it still they and them? I think it's best to call me Hikaru, he and him, though Akira is acceptable.

(Basic courtesies are due everyone, after all.)

Yes.

(It wasn't. But SecUnit wasn't about to tell anyone that they should be preferring to it as 'it/its'. Or that they should actually call it SecUnit. That would be revealing far too much.)

You and Other You still share a name?

That's a more difficult question than it seems. How much did Siobhan explain about my situation? For all of her intelligence she only has her half of the story, for all I'm amazed at all the flotsam from my world that washed up on her shores.

(Himself included.)

She didn't.

Are you the friend who transcoded the media I gave her?

(Siobhan's been rather vague about this particular 'friend' of hers, but SecUnit has assumed that whoever they are, they're around here somewhere. Analysis suggests a 67% likelihood that Hikaru and the 'friend' are the same person.)

Edited 2025-12-13 07:01 (UTC)

I... no. And I doubt Laina would know how, though it's possible. That's... a secret she deserves to explain herself, but...

She shouldn't have access to that kind of technology unless there are game master and administrative functions to the Sendjewel she somehow found before I did. Gnomon's infinite scroll. Fuck.

Alright. From the top. Are you familiar at all with virtual reality games? MMORPG, online battle arenas, and the like?

Edited 2025-12-13 07:04 (UTC)

Uh, okay. I know your Sendjewels are limited, but it's just basic file transcoding. It's nothing special.

(Not where SecUnit comes from, anyway. Even unaugmented humans could do that.)

Not really. I know about games, of course, but I don't like them. They're not very interesting. I like visual media.

(It had tried some games. But turns out it's hard to get invested in a medium where you can just immediately break the game and hack your way into success, all of the time.)

Alright then. Here I go.

The world that Siobhan and Laina are from - and that I found myself trapped in, in this form - is almost exactly the one described by a full-immersion massively multiplayer roleplaying game called The Wonders of Mundus that I regularly played with a core group of close personal friends, who were trapped on those shores with me.

One month ago I would have said that her world was that simulation but proof is mounting that her Mundus is, in some sense, a real place that acts more like reality than even the best simulations my Earth's state of the art can produce.

Wait. Siobhan's Tourist Planet is actually a simulation game?

...I used to think so? I... definitely ran into someone I thought was her or was once her playing the game, but too much about the physics and little details of Mundus does not add up to 'shockingly detailed VR space.' The gravity being slightly off of 9.8 meters per second squared. The sun being too bright. The stars being only very slightly wrong for Earth.

I think that somehow the Other Worlds Tourism Bureau's name might have been a little too apt, that the game they made somehow was a window to Siobhan's world.

But for years in League of Valor Eternal they didn't catch a bug that made blue-side toplaners have 10 more hit points, so maybe those are just bugs or oversights in a very, very good simulated space and I'm recognizing patterns that aren't actually there.

Edited 2025-12-13 08:01 (UTC)

Siobhan is here. Physically, I mean. She couldn't do that if she was a simulation.

Well, unless this place is even more fucking bullshit, and I don't know, gave her a fucking body or something. Ugh.

That could be more proof for the 'physically extant world' theory or not. Recall that we were just sent into an unfinished work of fiction to get kidnapped and given psychotherapy by aliens with brains, how did my counterpart put it, made entirely of yogurt and granola. We seemed quite physical and extant there.

For now I will consider the fact that I can touch Siobhan weak evidence that there is more to Mundus than the game describing it. Perhaps because it's stories, all the way down.

But you were asking if I was Hikaru or Akira or somehow both. Now you have enough background for me to explain why the answer is the lattermost.

Edited 2025-12-13 08:14 (UTC)

Yeah, and that was also fucking bullshit. This whole place is bullshit.

(And is it very, very over all of it? Why yes, it absolutely is.)

Uh. Okay? But I just need to know which one I'm supposed to use.

...Gnomon's wand, for someone who maxed Mind I can be an idiot sometimes.

Hikaru. I don't want my legal name in circulation. There are already two people from Mundus here. I dread my earthside legal name finding its way to the ears of my enemies - our MORTAL enemies - should they arrive.

Then don't tell anyone it was your legal name. Just say the Story gave you some other stupid name and you've never heard it before, or whatever.

(Fucking hell, this is why humans - or Sentient Organic Beings - should not do their own Security.)

...barring those for whom the secret is already out I think that is a very good idea.

Against such idiocy even the gods contend in vain, I suppose. Thank you for proposing the simple and obvious solution I overthought around.

Yeah, well, this is why people who, uh...don't know anything about Security shouldn't do their own Security.

(Fuck, that's a stupid way of saying that. This is what it gets for pretending to be human; now it can't just say how bad humans are at Security, because it's supposed to be one of them. Ugh.)

…I will therefore in the future rely on your expert counsel, if you offer it.

Edited 2025-12-13 14:41 (UTC)

Other you didn't. I told him to stay put, and then he fucking wondered off. After telling me he'd follow my instructions.

(Does it sound annoyed about this? Yes. Yes, it absolutely does.)

Speaking of my younger self being a ridiculous little twerp.

…you know “Akira the Blue” was a reference to a fantasy movie and it’s wizards of many colors? He was just relieved you weren’t - hostile to him for wanting his hormones.

Edited 2025-12-13 23:46 (UTC)

I don't know that one. What's it called? Do you have a copy?

And why the fuck would I be hostile about his hormones? I don't care if he can't afford them.

…you really have no idea why, do you. Bless you for that, Namers can be so unreasonable about letting folk identify themselves as they see fit.

I’ll see if I can find a copy of Jackson’s take on the Three Jewels for A Crown trilogy. Quite unfortunately Akira’s backpack did not go with me back to the stacks, so I can’t immediately.

Edited 2025-12-14 00:15 (UTC)

What, you think they'll object to your gender? That's stupid.

(Just when it thinks humans couldn't find a way to get even more stupid about gender, they find a way to do so anyway. Ugh.

It's okay. I've got other media. And there's all these books, I guess. Except none of them are fucking finished.

I agree - that people do and have is nonsense of the highest order. See also the aforementioned mortal enemies, though this is the least of those graceless, fascist thugs sins.

(SecUnit was starting to suspect that Hikaru never stopped talking like he was in a serial with really, really over dramatic dialogue. It was kind of fascinating to watch; it had never seen a real human talk like that.)

Right. Well...you probably don't have to worry about them here. Apparently any violent actions get you taken away to a boat. Don't ask me why a boat; I have no fucking idea.

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