Private to Siobhan, Laina, Murderbot over the Sendjewel Network

[ohaiyo_isekai]

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.

Comments

1

[terraboo]

I. Erm. Yes hello. Hi.

[Laina is blinking.]

Akira Tsukoda. That was you. Except taller and less wing-y. Darker hair. Skateboards are cool. I probably looked crazy the entire time didn't I.

Where should we meet? I didn't do anything hurtful right? I-I'm sorry if I did???

[Yup. There's some stress in there.]

[ohaiyo_isekai]

...I was far more American and therefore far less inclined to say 'innit' but that fucking shitshow was more or less a reasonable facsimile of the trials of the real Akira, nee Michiko, Tsukuda.

Which is to say myself. As I was on Earth. During the early Screaming Twenties.

Given the circumstances you did well, but if you would speak to me in person I'll be in the garden.

[terraboo]

Right. Yes. See you there.

[... She's actually there pretty quickly, in part due to having the skill for it.]

Hello.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

[He is tending to a small rosebush, in gloved hands. Spreading fertilizer. He gets up from on hands and knees, and removes the gloves.]

...I was quite fortunate, really, compared to my British counterpart. Even as early as 2012, the UK was not kind to those who realized they are the sons of Scherzo or daughters of Eranda late in life. By 2025, the height of what made the generation who came of age then 'Screamers,' both sides of the pond had a nickname for that country. "TERF Island."

I don't think you've had the dubious pleasure of meeting Sara Dreschner, but she is the Queen of the TERFs. Or trying to set herself up as such on Mundus.

[ugh_emotions]

...I don't know you. Although I guess you know Siobhan. You have the same Feed connection.

(Because oops, it doesn't have anyone by that name it its records; it has no way to connect Hikaru to his Story persona.)

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Thank you for introducing her to some new and exciting works. That girl is brilliant and deserves every byte.

But no, I rather think you do, better than I know you, which I would correct. There are too few people of my time, or that one, who would defend a young transgender man's right to be himself.

My Earthside name is Akira Tsukuda. You've heard it before. I'm sorry he was Like That, I grew out of it, mostly.

[ugh_emotions]

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.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

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.)

[ugh_emotions]

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?

[ohaiyo_isekai]

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.)

[ugh_emotions]

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.)

[ohaiyo_isekai]

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?

[ugh_emotions]

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.)

[ohaiyo_isekai]

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.

[ugh_emotions]

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

[ohaiyo_isekai]

...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.

[ugh_emotions]

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.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

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.

[ugh_emotions]

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.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

...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.

[ugh_emotions]

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.)

[ohaiyo_isekai]

...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.

[codeswitchcraft]

Michiko was you, yes. I'm sorry it took me far too long to realize that, but you look very different as an Earth Andrax--sorry, as a human--than you do as a pixie. And I didn't know you'd done Scherzo's special rites--or the Earthly equivalent, I guess. But I did know it was you when I kissed you.

There's a brief pause there.

I don't regret the kissing. But I should probably warn you about the complications to that back on Mundus.

[ugh_emotions]

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.)

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Bless you for your unique genius. And no, I can well guess some of those complications, but I would fain speak to thee in person about both complications and kisses.

The gardens await, o defender of those who cannot well defend themselves.