《Castles & Changelings》


 Chapter 1: On the Nature of Biscuits

    Marta was dreaming. She knew this in the way that one knows how to breath. She also knew, in the very back of her mind, that she was about to wake up, because she had realized she was dreaming.


    When she''d been a bit younger, around the age of sixteen, she''d been really into the concept of lucid dreams. She''d watched videos about techniques to increase her chances at a lucid dream, of things that one should and shouldn''t do in a lucid dream ,like thinking about bad things, because they would most likely appear to scare her and reinforce their presence with that fear. At the time, she''d thought about what would happen if she were to begin thinking about spiders: would a giant eight legged and furry monstrosity appear from a door and try to tear her in half? Would it hiss at her and try to bind her in a cocoon of webs to afterwards eat her? At the time, the idea had actually scared her.


    Nowadays, though, she knew that her fear of those little scuttling things had been unfounded and senseless: spiders were much more scared of her than she was of them and, in truth, they were actually kind of cute. Also, they ate mosquitoes, so because of that alone she thought they were deserving of a great amount of kindness and respect. She hoped, one day, to finally get enough money to buy herself one of those giant spider plushies you could sometimes see people make memes about online.


    Anyways, at the point in life she was at, spiders weren''t what scared her most. No, that was her mother, and she made semi-regular appearances in most of her nightmares (the few she could remember), mostly as being angry for some reason or another (probably something stupid. It was always something stupid) or as a sort of background ghost to haunt the back of her thoughts in those dreams, a reminder that she''d done something wrong and she knew and was about to come yell at her and punish her and...


    It was exhausting. Every time she woke up from those dreams she felt more tired than when she''d laid down to sleep and, always, for a minute or two, she had to stay laid down and stare at the ceiling, dividing her memory of the dream from her memories of reality, telling her brain that ''No, we''ve done nothing wrong, she''s not going to yell at us''.


    Or maybe, even worse, start a ''discussion''. Her mother of so liked her discussions.


    Luckily for her, right now, she wasn''t dreaming of something like that. Instead, she was having a rather fuzzy dream of playing cards with a technicolor cat with the Mad Hatter''s hat on top of his very fluffy looking ears. She knew that, if she won this round at PokUno-Oh, she would be allowed to pet his royal belly.


    Sadly, as she placed her final card down and won, the dream became even more fuzzy and, in the end, she woke up, just two minutes before her phone''s alarm was supposed to start ringing. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered to set it up: her biological clock always woke her up two minutes before her alarm. Then she remembered the one time it hadn''t, how she''d woken up late and misses the first two lessons of the day, and the discussion she''d had afterwards with her mother on the phone. Yeah, that was why.


    Slowly, saddened by her inability to pet His Majesty the Cat Hatter, she got up from her bed, reached in the total darkness of her room for the pills she knew were waiting on the bedside table, fumbled for a moment looking for an unpopped one, and popped it right into her mouth, feeling it begin to dissolve under her tongue. Two more years of this and she would possibly manage to clean her apartment without needing to wear a mask. Her allergies had been getting better in the last year since she''d started this therapy.


    Then she fell back down in bed, phone in hand. She turned off the alarm for the day before it could go off, as always, and as always imagined that one day her phone would just tell her to fuck off, showing her a photo of a middle finger, before turning off her alarm once and for all.


    She began lazily scrolling through Webtoon, reading cute little comics about people having much more interesting lives than her and, even with all the trouble, better ones.


    And that way, half an hour passed.


    <hr>


    A man wondered: what is immortality? Can it be possible? Is it more than just a madman''s dream?


    And so it was that God said: "Heed me: I am immortal. I created the world as you know it, and I''ll be there to watch its end."


    But then the skeptic said: "You were born the day we chose that you exist. One day, we will choose to forget you, or we will disappear, and with us, you''ll be gone, like a cloud in the sky."


    And so God wilted away.


    <hr>


    The microwave reached 1 second on the countdown to its ticking time bomb and secret agent Marta, Code Name 001 (because she was number 1! Yay!) managed to press the stop button just in time to stop it from exploding! No, really, the damn thing was so loud when it reached 0. And she didn''t want to disturb her neighbors on the... oh, right, her neighbors on this floor had been kicked out.


    Well, she still did it to have some mercy on her ears, and not to disturb too much the soft music playing from her phone.


    As she took the glass of milk out of the microwave she hummed along to the song, ''Father''s Lament'' by Poor Man''s Poison. She''ll admit that she''d found out about the group thanks to all the videos and animations on YouTube about their most recent and most well known song, ''Hell''s Coming With Me'', which, by the way, was a masterpiece. But, she liked to think, unlike most other people, she''d gone and listened to many of their other songs, and while not all fo them she liked, some, like this, she''d fallen in love with.


    She sat down at the small table in her kitchen-dining room and began dipping chocolate chip biscuits in her milk. It was bad for her sugar, she knew that for a fact after the last blood test she''d had, but that was a problem for future Marta. Also, she''d been going on for the last two weeks on cereals for breakfast and her body demanded its sweet damnation in the form of ''Gocciole'', her most beloved cookies since she could remember as a child.


    She began eating, belatedly sending a good morning to her mother as she hoped she wouldn''t be too angered by the fact she hadn''t done that first thing as she''d woken up. She''d just forgotten in her sleep addled state with an extra coating of Webtoon numbness.


    She kept eating as ''Entrance'' from the game Cytus II began playing and she let her imagination wander, imagining a woman with an insane glint in her eyes laugh as she imagine her own OC, a woman with a mad glint in her eyes, dark hair and a charming smile, wearing a lab coat yellowed by the passage of the years, playing said song on a piano and feeding her own insanity to demons around her, causing them to go mad with bloodlust and assaulting an incoming army where people were beginning to fight among themselves as they got a taste of the madness lying behind her eyes.


    She smiled appreciatively at the mental image and, when the song ended, she opened her Spotify (cracked, naturally, because who in their right mind would buy something if they could get it for free?), went back to that song and put it on repeat. She needed the boost of self esteem that fantasy gave her, and that song was too connected with it.


    She proceeded through her usual morning routine, washing her teeth and face, putting on some light make up (not much though, it wasn''t really worth it), hiding a few small pimples, and she was out, headphones plugged in her phone and playing songs in her ears.


    As she walked on the bus her mum called her, wishing her a good morning.


    "WHy are you out this early in the morning?" she asked.


    Marta managed to not sigh outwardly, knowing full well how bad an idea that was, before she answered: "You know the answer to that mum. I''m gonna get to the station with the bus, and then I''m gonna walk to university."


    "But the bus can bring you closer to uni. It can get you as far as the center of the city, and from there it''s fifteen minutes to uni."


    "Yes mu, I know, I live here, but a fifteen minute walk isn''t much of a walk to begin with."


    "As if thirty minutes was any better."


    "It''s surely better than fifteen. And I like it."


    "No, you can''t be liking something like that. It''s winter, outside it''s cold, and it''s still dark -"


    "The sun is already rising mum."


    "-and you know I don''t like the train station. Druggies and migrants are there. What if they do something to you?"


    "Mum, there''s basically a police car there all the time. And if it''s not the police then it''s the military."


    Which wasn''t strictly true. The cops usually arrived around eight or nine in the morning together with the morning rush. When she arrived at the station it would barely be seven and a half, they wouldn''t be there, but her mother didn''t have to know.


    "I don''t care! You shouldn''t go there! Tell me the truth, you''re actually meeting someone there! Are you doing drugs?"


    For a single moment Martha couldn''t answer, trying to understand what kind of fucking connection there could possibly be between her going out for walks early in the morning and her supposedly doing drugs. Just... why?


    "Mum, I''m not doing drugs, you brought me up better than that."


    Even though you always say that I''m just a selfish little leech who only thinks about herself and has accomplished nothing in her entire life.


    Her mother stayed silent for a moment, then, finally, said: "I don''t like it. I don''t want you to do this anymore."


    "Mum -"


    "Don''t mum me. You''re acting strange, I can see that. Why else would you want to wake up at six in the morning when you could be sleeping ''till seven and be much more refreshed."


    A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    And then she started, and Marta tuned her out and began looking at the people around her who were ignoring her, looking at their phones or chatting lightly among themselves. She wondered if there was a single boy or girl her age in this bus who had her same issues with a control-freak mother who thought the world (her family was part of said world) existed to attempt to fuck with her and ruin everything she worked on.


    Finally, her mother stopped blabbering on as she reached the train station and got off. She hummed some sad-sounding responses in her heaphones'' microphone and, finally, clicked the call closed.


    Then, sighing as she began preparing psychologically for a hopefully short discussion that evening on her right to have a walk whenever she wanted to get to her university, she put on a podcast, ''Hello From the Hallowoods'', and began marching slowly. She had time, and she wanted to savor Nick''s stories.


    <hr>


    Then the Scientist spoke: "The universe is endlessly exapnding ever outwards. Surely, that is immortal!"


    And the answer, for a time, was satifactory, until other Scientists joined the conversation with their newer knowledge and theories, and said: "No, one day the stars will burn out, everything will be plunged in cold darkness, and all will turn to dust and disappear. Not even the Universe is immortal."


    And so they watched as the stars, one by one, began winking out.


    <hr>


    "Hello guys!" she waved at her friends as they walked into the class and marched towards her.


    Clara and Arnold waved and smiled, and the expressions seemed genuine to her. Or maybe they just were that good at faking it.


    Clara sat beside her, while Arnold took a seat in front, taking out his notepad and pens and beginning to look over his notes from yesterday, while Clara began blabbering on about how anxious she was about an exam she needed to pass but couldn''t and how anxious she was and could Marta maybe help her out, give her some exercises, correct them with her, and explain things, and had she asked to that other friend of hers from the next year if he could help...


    And Marta smiled and helped and answered, because that''s what friends do. No, she didn''t have any more exercises, she''d given her all the ones she had, maybe she should look some up on the internet. Yes, she would gladly look at the four pages of exercises she did yesterday and correct them. Yes, she''d asked her friend from next year, he''d answered that he would gladly help (a good thing, because Marta wasn''t that good at this subject. She''d passed the exam, but barely).


    And then, while she corrected the exercises, trying to remember what she''d studied nearly a year ago, she watched from the corner of her eye as Clara andArnold began speaking among themselves, and when she finished and gave Clara her notebook with the corrections she thanked her and then went back to talking with him and Marta just sat there, listening but not feeling part of this conversation. An outsider. And that feeling of loneliness that was ever present in the back of her mind since that year in middle school when everyone had abandoned her, when the person she''d called a friend had stabbed her in the back, leaving her behind to fend for herself, grew up to show its ugly little head.


    She squashed it back, smiling as she listened, as her mother''s words resounded from that little demon''s mouth:


    You don''t have any friends!


    What about Arnold and Clara? What about my group from high school?


    Arnold and Clara aren''t friends. They''re acquaintaces at best! True friends go out and spend time together as often as they can, not just in university. Same goes for your high school group. You''ve all gone your own way.


    Well, it''s not my fault that we have to study so we can''t go out!


    No, it is. True friends can find some time.


    Finally she shut it up, but the fact remained: she felt like an outsider here.


    Then the professor walked in, and the lessons began, an endless droning of words and words and words.


    <hr>


    In truth, I always thought that immortality was impossible for one much more simpe reason: change.


    People change all the time. Every minute of their life, they change, they die, they are reborn. Their bodies, their cells, they wither away, disappearing, while also growing back, in an equilibrium that, sooner or later, will be broken, bringing upon them the final change, the final death.


    People change all the time, and because of that they will never be immortal. For immortality is the idea of something never changing. Haaa, the proverbial ship of Theseus, dismantled at last.


    Our very nature that precludes us from immortality.


    And, truth be told: it is better that way.


    <hr>


    She was back home now, preparing lunch.


    She wished her parents a good lunch over the phone, and her mother sounded completely normal after the discussion they''d had that morning. Not unsurprising. The woman was, by her own admission (and that of her parents, Marta''s grandparents) like dynamite: she was explosive when she got angry, but after the explosion it was like nothing had ever beent there to begin with.


    Marta had always wondered why her mother didn''t try to correct this side of herself. Why did she have to change to suit other people and what society and her mother thought was best, but her mother couldn''t change this side of her.


    Well, she''d asked her once, and the answer had been: I''m sorry Marta, but I''m like this. Always have been. I cannot change.


    Which, as you can well imagine, had left her with a bitter taste in her mouth.


    Because what her mother always forgot about explosions was this: sure, the fire that had caused it may have disappeared together with the dynamite, but it damaged everything around it. And if you keep making things explode, sooner or later there will be too much rubble to make anything out of it.


    That was more or less how she saw her relationship with her mother: a pile of rubble that had once been a building.


    A building that had started to fall down the day she''d walked into elementary school.


    Now, after lunch, she stared at her university books and notes.


    She stared. And stared. And stared some more.


    Then she sat up from her chair in her small study (the apartment was big. That much she had to give to her parents), walked towards the small living room, sat down on the sofa and turned on the television. It was one of those big ones that had access to internet and everything. She mostly used it to watch YouTube these days. Sure, it was full of ads, which was annoying, but it was the best around. She could''ve used her computer, where she had some anti-ads installed, but the damn thing was monitored by her mother through an app she''d installed there, and she could see every time she turnded the thing on, how much time she spent on it and what she used it for. She''d have to wait for the evening to come to use it in relative safety and without risk of starting a discussion.


    She sat in front of the TV.


    And her thoughts reminded her that she was losing time, that she should be studying, that if she kept going like this she wouldn''t have a future.


    But she couldn''t do it. She was... tired. So tired. Routine and her near-obsession with the passage of time was the only reason she moved out of bed most mornings these days, and she knew that if she decided to sit down at that desk she wouldn''t be able to concentrate on studying.


    She''d done enough of that for thirteen years of her life, from elementary to high school. Studying every day of her life, trying to be the best for her future, trying to make her mother and father happy, to keep everything running smootly so there wouldn''t be any discussions on her attitude and how she didn''t respect all her parents'' sacrifices to make her study and give her everything she had.


    She had studied and studied, always with the fear that if she didn''t get top marks or close to the top she would be berated and punished with the removal of the few things she had to pass the little free time he had: her games, her books, her computer and TV shows. There was never enough time to go out with friends, because she had to study hard! And then at school she had been an idiot, flaunting her intelligence, her high marks, hoping that people would notice her, would see that she was great and would want to befriend her. But it didn''t work, so she tried harder, but it never worked and the boys and girls didn''t want to spend time with her.


    Middle school was more of the same, only then she realized, after her best friend had abandoned her, that flaunting how good she was wouldn''t help her get friends. It would only hinder her.


    But then, what could she talk about with the others? She didn''t like sports, she liked games and books, but everyone seemed to only talk about things that weren''t what she knew, and she didn''t know where to start to build herself her little clique.


    Then, finally, she found other people like her, outcasts like her, and they even liked the same things she liked! It was great!


    You and your friends only talk about video games, I don''t like that.


    Always those words.


    That''s the only thing you have in common, it won''t last. You should stop spending so much time in the internet and instead go out and make yourself some better friends.


    But she had to study. Always study to be good, for the future. Always think about the future.


    When could she get new friends when she had barely the time to live?


    Just like in elementary school, she graduated as one of the people with the highest grades. Her final presentation at the oral exam was praised by the professors and kept to be shown to the future generations as an example of what a great work looked like. She''d felt so proud!


    Then came high school.


    And while she managed to make herself some friends, keeping the old ones, the disliked ones, she wasn''t much better.


    Her parents kept telling her that she shoud spend less time on electronical things, even if at that point her time on them was reduced to an hour, two at most, each evening, because she had to study, because she had to go to the gym and train in martial arts (they had forced her to start, but she found out it was a great outlet for her stress. But not enough), she had to do stretches for her spine, because that had gone to shit too.


    Then she started having trouble to breath, and she found out, after many visits to many doctors, that it wasn''t an illness, that it was all her pent up stress that had fucked up her breathing. She liked to joke with herself that she''d get as far as forty years old and then her heart would join her lungs and kill her.


    HIgh school was when she came to hate discussions and hate even more the word attitude. If she could''ve, she would''ve gladly deleted it from every dictionary and mind in this world.


    It was hard, oh o hard. The bump in difficulty was great, and no matter how much she studied, sometimes it just wasn''t enough. And her mother was all about attitude this, attitude that, you have the wrong attitude to life, and all that.


    On her third year, she had to repeat a subject during summer physics. Her professor sucked at explaining the subject, and she was no good with the formulas and numbers. She was great whenever it came to biology, she wanted to be a doctor after all, but not with numbers. So she lost an entire summer to get ready for the exam, not resting a single day, and she did it! And what did she get from her mother?


    I hope this taught you a lesson. I hope it won''t happen again.


    It hadn''t.


    The next two summers she lost preparing for the admittance exam for medicine, again, with no rest for her.


    She graduated from high school with a score of 98 out of 100. Great, but not enough to get a scholarship. And what had her mother said when she''d found out?


    Well, you could''ve striven for those final two points. Had you not had to repeat that subject two years ago surely you could''ve done it.


    It had been a joke. She''d even said it with a smile at the restaurant table, while Marta''s uncle had looked at her like she was a stain on the world for even daring to say that as a joke. Her mother had never liked her uncle. She, on the other hand, had always loved the expansive man with an easy laugh and no qualms about saying what he thought of people. Like the fact that her mother was too strict.


    Then the time for the admittance test came.


    And she''d failed.


    But she had a plan B.


    A plan B that had brought her here.


    In front of that TV.


    She''d realised something halfway through her first year of Uni: she''d spent all her life thinking about her future. She''d lived for that future, worked hard for it every single day of her life.


    She''d never once actually lived in the present. Even the days at amusement parks, the holidays in the mountains or at the beach, it had all been a means to give her the strength to keep working for that future.


    The day she''d realised that she''d lost all her desire to work for that future.


    Was it the right thing to do? To stop now? No, it wasn''t, she knew it.


    But she didn''t care. She couldn''t bring herself to care anymore.


    The future had had her for all her life. Now, it could wait.


    That night she ate dinner, listening to some relaxing songs.


    She had a discussion with her mother about her morning walks to the university. She managed to get the right to have them.


    She washed herself and played for a short while on her computer, but not too long so as not to upset her mother. Then she went to bed, read a book, and fell asleep.


    That night, she didn''t dream.


    The next morning, she woke up in an unfamiliar bed, in an unknown place.

 Chapter 2: The Algorytm of Daddy Issues

    Imagine:


    You go to sleep in your bed, in your room, in your apartment. You spend two hours reading a book you downloaded online, because you don''t have the money to buy one since you don''t want to ask your parents for too many things, risking to cause a discussion. You then proceed to go to sleep at around half past midnight, and that only because your eyes cannot physically stay open for longer.


    You sleep, and when you wake up, you''re not in your room anymore.


    That''s what happened to Marta.


    When she opened her eyes, she noticed many things all at once: first, her phone''s alarm wasan''t ringing, which wasn''t unusual. Second, there was an awful lot of light streaming into her room, which was unusual. She always slept in total darkness, her blinds closed so as to not let light in in the morning. And she knew for a fact that she hadn''t forgotten to close them this time, so something was up.


    The third thing she noticed, once her brain had gone through these thoughts, was that something was hanging from the ceiling on top of her. Something red and big and... it wasn''t actually hanging from the ceilings, no, it was connected to four wooden poles that were keeping it up.


    It''s a four poster bed, she realized.


    Then: I''m lying on a four poster bed.


    And finally: I don''t own a four poster bed.


    Slowly, because whatever the fuck had happened there was still no reason to get up fast, it had already happened after all, she lifted herself from the very comfortable bed and looked around.


    "Yep, I am not in my apartment."


    The room she was in would''ve fit better in a stereotypical fantasy castle: it was large beyond need, the walls painted a light, minty, green. The bed she was sitting on followed the same color scheme, with the covers being a dark green that reminded her of the color of oak leaves under the summer sun and the bed sheets being an even darker green that got really close to looking like a lilipad. The pillows, in contrast, were a bright orange, like freshly autumn leaves.


    Beside the bed, on her left side, was a night stand in a baroque style with little angels carved in the borders, their small hands pointing at the drawers or holding them as they fluttered their tiny wings, mischievous smiles on their faces. The wood it was carved from was a deep dark red, probably acacia, or maybe cherry, she couldn''t say, she wasn''t an expert.


    To her right stood a single door, tall enough to let four of her piled one on top of each other through. The same went for the wall in front of her, only the doors there were two.


    "Ok, so, I probably ate something that had gone horribly bad yesterday."


    Indeed, because that was the most logical possibility. Gods she sucked at this.


    "Ok, no, my food didn''t go bad. This hallucination is not caused by food poisoning. Then, I must''ve finally cracked and gone down the deep end!" she looked around some more, her eyes delighted by the beautiful colors of the room despite herself, and shrugged.


    "Well, might as well enjoy it."


    There was a good chance she was still in her room back home, that all she was seeing was just her demented mind projecting her idea of the perfect room on the world around her, and that as she began walking around she would bump into something and end up breaking her neck against her wardrobe or something like that. Which, you know? Not the worst way to go. At least she''d die while seeing something so beautiful.


    She put her feet on the floor and immediately regret it as the cold passed from the tile to her, making her shiver.


    "Socks it is!" she told herself as she went questing for her night socks underneath her pillow, where she hid them every time when she went to sleep and the covers made her feel too hot. She searched around... and her hand felt no warm wool anywhere. She lifted her pillow, expecting to see the red wool socks her grandma had knitted her a few years back for christmas, and found nothing.


    "So, either the sock fairy finally decided to pass but didn''t leave me any money, or I moved around too much in my sleep and now they''re somewhere... on... the floor."


    She looked around at the image her mind was projecting of the room, shaking her head: "Yeah, no, they''re lost."


    In the back of her mind Marta knew she should''ve been panicking, but then again, it was at the very back. Right behind that corner, in a deep, dark, place where not even a glimmer of light reached, behind a solid steel door with numerous locks, all to make sure those pesky negative emotions such as sadness and hate, together with the happy memories of people that were long gone, wouldn''t bother her. Sadly, the door had long since cracked and now, every once in a while, the things she kept there emerged. They were the reason she felt so tired in these last two years.


    Again, she tried to get out of the bed, and again her feet felt the cold tiles underneath, but this time around she just endured it.


    "Alright! Let''s go bump into a wall," she whispered to herself cheerfully, as if she didn''t want some invisible observer to notice that she was talking to herself, maybe in the hopes that they wouldn''t think she had, indeed, gone insane.


    She walked confidently towards a tall window on the left side of the room, the clear glass covered by green curtains that let a bit of light through, expecting to bump into the wardrobe that sat exactly where she was going... but there was nothing but air there.


    What? she asked herself.


    And yet she reached the window and looked out, and all the while she encountered no resistance from invisible furniture.


    "Hmmm... maybe I''m dreaming. Some kind of lucid dream? Or maybe I''ve ended up in a coma and I''m lying in my bed drooling like a dog while my mind built this place to keep me safe. Or maybe I still went insane and this is only happening in my mind. Although... would someone who''s gone insane be reasoning like I do?"


    She mulled that over for a few seconds, then shrugged: "Who cares. Not like I can do much to fix it. At least now I won''t have to worry about... everything else. Huh, who would''ve thought that falling into a coma would be so liberating?"


    Then she looked out the window.


    And stopped for a moment, her mind going blank, her irises slowly beginning to widen as her mouth opened wide in horror, surprise and curiosity. For, outside of her window, instead of a blue sky filled with white fluffy clouds, or in general a sky of any type, or actually ground as well, was a wall of darkness. Total, absolute, all-encompassing, you-name-it, blackness. A part of her mind registered some other buildings around her and high walls like those usually found around big castles, but it was, again, in the very back of her mind.


    At the forefront lay a single thought: Where am I? Am I dead?


    She fell to the ground and crawled backwards as a sound like a banshee''s scream filled the room. She realized it was her producing it, but she didn''t stop. Instead, she screamed louder and managed, somehow, to get to her feet and begin running. She ran to one of the doors and opened it, a part of her surprised at just how easy it was considering their dimensions.


    Then she ran and ran, because a part of her knew that the darkness wasn''t just a construct of her mind, that it was something more. No, not more, less, much less, so much less that it was practically nothing. A void that could devour her in a moment if it were allowed. A Nothingness that hungered for all that existed, that desired to feed on the place she was currently in. That desired her. It called to her, told her to come just a bit closer, to let it feed, to let it put an end to her. Wouldn''t it be oh so easy? She just had to let go, to take a short walk through these halls and step right out. Afterwards, there would be nothing to worry about anymore. No more discussions, no more tiredness, no more need to suppress her emotions at the mere memory of a lost loved one. Absolute Nothingness.


    And she ran away from it, not just because she feared it, but also because she desired it. She had never wanted something in her life more than she wanted to listen to the Nothingness'' call.


    How long she ran? She couldn''t have told you. What she did know was that, at some point, she heard a strangely monotone voice shout at her: "WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP SCREECHING AROUND LIKE A BAT?"


    That was enough to make her stop right in her tracks. She fell to her knees, breathing heavily as she tried to calm down her racing heart.


    "There. Better," said the same voice.


    Marta did not, in fact, immediately look up towards the surprisingly reassuring voice that had gotten her to stop screaming like a madwoman. Instead, she spent an entire minute staring at her hands and the floor underneath. It was a beautiful floor, wooden, probably some sort of parquet, with tiny little grooves here and there that were a tad darker than the rest of the board. All in all, it was simple, a blessing for the eyes, and not at all dark like the Nothingness.


    "So, you gonna get up and eat or keep staring at the floor?"


    Her hands weren''t so bad as well. They were smooth up to the fingers, where they became a bit rougher, the skin split from the cold and the little care she took of them, veins could be seen emerging from her flesh here and there and she couldn''t help herself reaching out to one with a finger and caressing it. She never understood why, but it relaxed her. Her fingernails were kept short and trimmed, long enough to come in handy when she wanted to peel an orange, but not so long that she had to actually spend the time to do more than occasionally file them. They were, as always, pale, turning slightly blue when they got closer to her skin. A circulatory problem, her parents thought, but she''d never bothered to go get it checked out by a doctor since the worst thing it did was cause her to have cold hands. Although, this time around, they looked a lot darker than usual. Maybe the run increased the blood circulating through them.


    "Floor it is then."


    Finally, she looked up, feeling a lot more anchored to the reality than before, and took in the place she''d ended up in.


    It was a rather small room compared to her... the bedroom she''d woken up in. Oh, sure, it still fit perfectly the palace aestetic, but at the same time it was much simpler, homier even. Like the floor, the walls were made out of wood, this one white, with a great carving of a group of people eating and being merry at a banquet extending from one end of the room to another. It reminded her a bit of Leonardo da Vinci''s ''The Last Dinner'', although in this case there were no shocked disciples around a Christ in the center, only various groups of people holding mugs of what she thought were beers or outright bottles of wine or other alcohols, with a few of them even toasting their friends with skewers of meats and fishes. They all had an air of thoughtlessness and enjoyment. For a moment, she felt a pang of envy, until she remembered that was just a carving.


    There was a table on one side of the room, ready to seat eight people if they so desired, although that wasn''t the centerpiece of the room. No, that was the massive central kitchen surrounded on all sides by a counter made out of basalt, sporting all sorts of cooking implements, from an antique wood oven to much more modern induction plates.


    Currently, behind the counter, and looking at her, stood a robot.


    That made her stop another moment as she stared at him.


    "Oh, so the floor got boring? Well, I''m glad you finally decided to give some attention to something else in the room. Or are you going to gawk at me for a while before you decide you''ve had enough and start staring at something else, before leaving the room the same way you entered, screaming?"


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    ... How could someone tell if they''d had a stroke?


    "To answer your questions, yes, I am a robot, even though I prefer the appellative android, are we clear? Then yes, I can talk, and yes, I''m the cook here, and no, you''re most probably not having an aneurism or a stroke, although I can never be certain with your fragile human flesh."


    Which more or less answered all the questions she''d wanted to ask. But, since she was her and she wasn''t going to let, of all things, a robot, sass her, she had to say something: "I am not so fragile."


    The robot''s shiny head, which lacked any sort of human features, only having two bright green sensors in place of eyes and some little holes just underneath where she guessed his (its?) speaker was... actually, didn''t that mean he didn''t qualify as an android? Like, didn''t those have to look at least slightly human to be called that way? Whatever: he (yes, for now she was going to call the robot a he) spoke: "Can your bones not break if you''re thrown from a great height? Will your skin not boil away if you accidentally spill boiling oil on yourself? Would you survive being left underwater at a depth of a thousand meters without any diving gear? Trust me, little bat, to me all fleshies appear fragile."


    She got up on her feet and reached a nearby chair with a deep red padding that fit perfectly with the color of the wood underneath and contrasted well with the stone countertop.


    Sitting down she said: "Well then, there''s no need for sass. Waking up in a strange castle and witnessig an endless hungry void isn''t exactly my typical wednesday."


    "What is a wednesday?" asked the robot.


    Marta batted her eyes a few times, her brain registering the simple question and wondering if she had misheard: "Wednesday? It''s a day of the week."


    "What is a week?" he asked as he turned around and started cooking something on a nearby stove, his body covering his actions.


    Again, Marta stopped for a moment before answering: "Well, a week is a group of seven days. You do know what days are, right?"


    "I do not know what you are referring to when you speak of these ''days'', no," answered the robot very nonchalantly, turning away from the stove to look at her. She imagined that his featureless face was expressing confusion and wondering if she was crazy. Which, you know, still wasn''t off the table as a possibility.


    "Days are... they''re twenty-four hours."


    "What are hours?"


    "Oh come the fuck on, you can''t be serious, do you even know what time is?"


    The robot stopped for a moment, before shaking his head: "I do not know what time is. You are kindly requested to describe it that I may update my database."


    Marta opened her mouth to answer, then stopped and closed it. How could you explain time to someone who didn''t even know the concept of its passage? When one probably couldn''t even perceive it? The thing in front of her, it was a robot. Robots didn''t age. And if he didn''t already know what time was, then how... ?


    "Is there something that happens inside you regularly? Like, do you have servers inside you, things that tick or send signals or impulses every so often with regularity?"


    The robot nodded: "Yes, I do. My internal graphic processor performs ticks at regular intervals."


    "Alright, the... space... between those ticks is time."


    The robot inclined its head slightly in a very human way: "But the ticks are not a distance. Nor a sound. They do not have space between them."


    Marta put her face in her hands and sighed dejectedly. Then she had an idea: "Alright. I''ll beat a rhytm with my finger, and you have to tell me how many times you tick between one beat and another, alright?"


    The robot inclined its head again, before looking back at the stove: "Sure, little bat. If this is some kind of way for you to prove your superiority over me, though, you will be greatly disappointed."


    "Just... just do as I say."


    "Are you ordering me around? Already? It''s a bit nostalgic, I''ll admit, but you are not my creator."


    Creator? Was there someone else in this castle with her other than this robot? Well, probably. Surely, right? Someone must be around to clean the place, or at least, someone who had cleaned her room. That is, if this wasn''t just all in her mind. Whatever, one thing at a time. Right now the best thing for her and her sanity was to teach this robot to understand time. Although, she did wonder: how could he cook without knowing how much time things had to be cooked?


    "It''s nothing like that, I promise."


    Then she began tapping her finger on the countertop, trying to make sure one second passed between one beat and the next.


    After she did this ten times, the robot said: "Between each of those beats, which, I will add, were definitely not equal in length, which means what I''m about to tell you is just a mean, my graphic processor ticked one thousand four hundred and fifteen times."


    Wow. That... was a lot.


    "Alright. Then, every... that number, is one second. Sixty seconds form one minute. Sixty minutes form one hour. Twenty-four hours form a day, seven days form a week and three hundred and sixty-five days form a year. Do you understand?"


    The robot looked at her for a moment, his eyes fladhing green, before answering: "The information has been added to the database. You are being thanked, little bat."


    "Please, stop calling me little bat, that''s how you can thank me."


    The robot turned back to his cooking, his hands moving towards a nearby spatula: "Then what should I call you? The information given to me by my creator states that humans prefer to be called with ''nicknames'' and-slash-or their original names, but I know neither of those for you, so I was forced to create one for you, and seeing your natural propensity for emitting high frequency sounds from your mouth and your general hairiness, together with your black hair, I have identified that you look quite similar to the mammal commonly known as bat. Your height is also below average for your species, therefore I have also added the adjective little. Does this not please you? If you express the desire, I will just call you ''Fleshie''."


    Marta''s mouth hung open as she listened to the bot''s concise and matter-of-fact explanation, followed a moment later by her looking at her arms and legs, which, under the clothes, looked indeed hairier than she remembered.


    That''s... strange. I wasnt exactly at my best in the last few weeks, but I never let myself go that way. Or maybe it really was worse than usual. I really hope this castle has a razor somewhere for me to shave.


    In the end she shook herself away from the thoughts and turned back to the robot: "Yeah, no, just call me Marta. What''s your name?"


    "My name is Failed_Prototype_018," answered the robot immediately, almost hurriedly, "But I''ve since decided to call myself Ed-18. It is much more flattering."


    "Wait, Faile -"


    "Ed."


    "...Alright. Ed. Now that you have a basic understanding of time, would you mind telling me how long you''ve been here? And is your creator here? Are there more of you? Robots, I mean."


    "As already states, I prefer the term android. And for your other questions, I am the only one in this castle. Android, that is. My creator isn''t here. He said he was going to go get some milk a while ago."


    ...


    "How long ago was that?"


    "Using your method for the calculation of the passage of time, which, may I add, fits quite better than counting a number of ticks while performing my duty as cook, he left to get the milk around two thousand seven hundred eighteen years, eight months, twelve days, fifteen hours, forty six minutes and nine seconds ago. Ten seconds. Eleven seconds. Twelve..."


    He kept counting, but Marta didn''t listen. She just stared open mouthed at the back of the android (because she didn''t have any water to spit) until he bent down and opened a drawer, getting out a big white plate and dishing out the food he''d prepared. When he turned around and placed it all in front of her he began staring at her.


    "Your breakfast is ready, Marta the Bat. You are required to enjoy it."


    He kept observing her as, very slowly, she looked down from him to the plate... and scowled: "Wait, did you just call me ''Marta the Bat? What am I, some Batman rip off?"


    Then she focused on the plate, and her scowl deepened, but this time it was also mixed with a chuckle: "And did you just style my breakfast into a bat?"


    The plate was scrambled eggs and sausages, which was definitely not her typical breakfast food (really, it was too much effort to her), and Ed-18 had made a little bat out of it, with the eggs making up the body and the sausages the wings.


    She began eating it... and was in heaven.


    "Ed... can I call you just Ed? This is heavenly. I don''t know what you did to make these so tasty, but they''re one of the best things I''ve eaten in my entire life."


    For a moment, she remembered her mother''s cooking. The woman hated staying in front of the kitchen burners with a passion, or so she always said, but he was one of the best cooks she''d ever known of outside of TV shows like Masterchef. And, if that wasn''t enough, she liked to experiment, made up new dishes, always tried new things, all because she said that she loved Marta and her dad. Those were the kinds of moments she missed from her past. Now though... she''d half expected to feel sad, or even guilty. She was here, in this misterious castle, stranded... someplace, yeah, definitely someplace, and not Nowhere, and eating some damn great food, and all she could feel was a sort of relief. Relief that, for now, her family and her life and her future weren''t the things she had to worry about. Hell, if this matter resolved itself, there was even a chance that for a while afterwards she wouldn''t have to worry about any of that! And maybe, just maybe, all the worry her mother and father would have to go through in her absence would mellow them out a bit.


    "Yes, Marta, you may just call me Ed. Relationship status updated to: Close Friends. Reason: Given Nickname. I am now entitled to also give you a nickname, and it shall remain ''Little Bat'', because that is what I desire, and you may do nothing to change, weak human. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha... Laughing is still beyond me."


    Marta sighed, and kept eating.


    Finally, she asked: "So, your creator abandoned you."


    "No," answered the android way too fast.


    "I mean... I''d say he did. He left you here for over two thousand years after saying he went out to buy the milk. That seems pretty... ''abandonative''... to me."


    "The word ''abandonative'' does not exist, human. And even so, two thousand years is not long. There must be some issue for him with returning from the Nothingness outside. We did have some difficulty getting here the first time through it, after all."


    "Wait, so you weren''t built here?"


    "I was not. My creator has a workshop away from this palace, in another dimension. He is one of the greatest minds of his world."


    "...So, let me get this straight: your creator built you, in another dimension of all places, decided that you were a failed attempt -"


    "I am not failed. My name Failed_Prototype_18 is just an appellative, a means to define me as an individual, it does not mean anything."


    "...Yeah. I actually kind of agree, your cooking is great. Anyways, he brought you here, away from your dimension if I understood your wording right, and here, in a place surrounded by this Nothingness, which is creepy as fuck -"


    "It can and will devour anything and everything. This castle, too, shall one day be devoured," interrupted her again Ed. The information also caused a trickle of cold sweat to go down her back, although it didn''t travel far, seemingly absorbed by some hair on her back (she really needed to shave), but she decided to ingore it on account of being unable to do shit about it.


    "Yes, great, thanks for the information."


    "You are welcome."


    "And after he brought you here... by the way, can you go back? Like, walk out there and go back where he built you?"


    "I would be devoured by the Nothingness, as I already stated. Do you have hearing impairment, Marta?"


    "No, I heard you perfectly well, I was just trying to make a point. Anyways, he left you here, unable to leave, and then went away, saying that he was going to buy milk, and he hasn''t come back for the last two thousand years. I''m really sorry pal, and I don''t want to sound like a piece of shit breaking your hopes or the like, but the truth is he abandoned you."


    "He did not," said the android, staring deep into her soul.


    "Dude, it''s two thousand years. Where I''m from that was enough time for..." she gesticulated with her hands grandly in what looked suspiciously like an explosion, as if that would explain anything, but how could someone sum up thousands of years of hitory for in a few mere sentences.


    Well, Marta tried: "Dozens of nations were born and fell, hundreds, thousands, of kings sa on thrones and died or, more often, were killed, tens of wars were started and ended, even world wars. It''s so much time."


    Ed kept staring at her: "So? I do not see how that matters. It is only time. I have lots of it. I am a robot. I am, what is the word? Ah, yes, immortal. Just like my creator."


    Marta scoffed: "Immortality is a myth Ed."


    "Maybe where you''re from, but my creator is surely immortal."


    She opened her mouth to say something else, but the android, which had apprently still been working while conversing with her, placed a small plate of various diced fruits in front of her. It was a macedonia of mangoes, bananas and dates with small fig seed bits or whatever they were called here and there.


    It looked surprisingly appetising even though she''d never liked someof those. Especially the mangoes, she''d always found them tasteless.


    "My archives state that bats really like these fruits. Eat, fleshies need lots of vitamins to function."


    Sighing, Marta dropped the argument and began eating. There was no real need to keep discussing with him anyway, he was probably in denial or something like that.


    "Why do you keep going on with the bat joke? It was funny at first, but now it''s not anymore."


    Ed inclined his head in that way she was beginning to understand meant he was being questioning: "It is no joke. You look like a bat. At least, the face and the ears are similar enough, and the fur seems right, although I cannot see any wings."


    Marta stopped with a spoonful of fruit in mid air and raised an eyebrow: "Are you calling me a furry? Really?"


    "If by furry you mean that you have lots of fur all over your body, which I can see even through your clothes because of my superior eyes, then yes, you are a furry."


    She chuckled: "Ed, I understand that you''re an android and all, but that is fucking rude."


    "It is the truth though."


    "Oh, shut the fu -" she looked down at her arm, ready to lift up her pajama''s sleeve to show him she was not, in fact, that furry, and stopped when she saw that he was right.


    Her arm, the part not covered by the pajama, was covered in a thin layer of dark brown fur and looked much more flimsy than it had before, the meat that have covered it seemingly having disappeared, absorbed into the bones, which now were much more defined under the skin. She moved upwards, towards the hand holding the spoon, and saw that her fingers, too, were much more smaller and a good deal longer, her nails having extended and curved, turning into black claws.


    For a moment, the only thing she thought of was this: how hadn''t she noticed that up ''till now?


    She tried to move her hand, to make her fingers contract and relax, and the long clawed appendage holding the spoon did exactly as she ordered it to, dropping the utensil with all the food to the ground in the process.


    She stared in pure, mounting, horror at the appendage, at her... no, no, this couldn''t.


    But it did just as she...


    No! That wasn''t her hand.


    But...


    "Hey, why did you drop that? Now I''ll have to clean up."


    That was all the confirmation she needed.


    She began screaming.


    And ran out of the room, hoping against all hope that she was wrong and that maybe escaping from the room would leave behind that horrible vision, that maybe she could come back later and she would find, seated on a nearby chair, a strange batlike creature who would call her rude for not having noticed her up until the end only to run screaming when she finally did.


    Meanwhile, Ed-18 stared at Marta''s back as she ran out of the room screaming in a much shriller tone than when she''d entered the room, and then stared at the closed door for a moment, before sighing, a sound like water going down a drain.


    "Well, I was right. She did run away screaming when she had enough. Maybe that''s a human thing? Hmmm... Update Database."