Careful Not To Break Reality

There was no response, and to be honest Rydel does not really know what he was expecting. Is knocking even something necessary?

All of the surroundings are simply a figment of his very own imagination and vision. He is the one who constructed it all. Rydel took yet another breath, and re-framed his mind. And with that, the door dissolves into nothingness, and Rydel walked straight in.

The house is completely empty, except for an old traditional book shelf near one side of it. The shelves are packed full of books, though all of them share the same cover and texture on the covers, and Rydel struggled to read their names. The shelf itself is painted dark red, while still keeping some essence of the wood that it's made out of.

None of this is real, and yet, Rydel knew he had nothing to do with these images.

And then, a being materializes in front of the shelf, the outlines and figure still obscured and unclear, but Rydel realized that this being is viewing the shelf.

He patiently awaits, perhaps for the image to reconstruct inside his brain, or perhaps giving the being time to get ready. It didn't take long, and the being approached the shelf, returned a book into the seemingly full rack which magically made way for one more to fit within. Then, it turned around, and a teenage girl stood in front of him. Rydel could only guess that from the outlines of her face and body, and when she spoke it was soft and gentle.

'Thank you.'

'What...for what?' Rydel asked, trying to keep his own voice down as not to disturb the peacefulness of this house. And in thinking peacefulness, a fire place appeared in the corner of the room, and the cool air heated to a pleasing warmth.

'Thank you for bringing down your world here.' The girl said, her face still muddled, but then she waved and a pair of cushions appeared by the fire place, 'every time someone dives in, they always bring their world down here for us to see.' She went over and sat on top of the cushion, and Rydel followed suit.

She just wanted to talk, Rydel thought, as his brain tried to comprehend the realistic feelings of the soft cushions underneath him, and tiny foam balls pressing into each other in order to distribute the weight and making tiny rubbing sounds.

Rydel looked back at her, and was horrified to see a mouth materializing out on her face, and nothing else. When she spoke again, the audio and the mouth shapes also moves out of sync, and became incredibly unsettling.

'The space down here is both of ours. That's why we can both make changes here.'

Calm down, Rydel. He took a deep breath, reconstruct a normal face so that you won't freak out. Come on!

When he looked up again, it was Valeries face there. The AI called for a mirror, and viewed herself in it, 'so, ths is how you see me?'

Her voice exactly matches Valerie's teasing voice too.

'I am sorry, I don't know what else to do.' Rydel apologized.

'No, no, I am not saying it like that.' the Bookkeeper chuckled, 'I don't have a shape, or a form, so its really nice to have a body.'

Rydel remained silent, and both of them simply stared at the fire place he conjured up for a little while and enjoys the peace.

'So, why did you come down here?' the Bookkeeper asked.

'Some of the AI...the others were wondering what is happening here.' Rydel asked, his gaze dashing between the Bookkeeper and the fire place, 'they want to know...if you are alright.'

'Oh?' The Bookkeeper sounded intrigued, 'do they think I have gone mad or something?'

'I...' Rydel is at a lost for words, 'I don't think I am able to judge, without knowing further.'

'Is that how you see yourself, a man of judgement?' The Bookkeeper asked, her voice now a little hardened, 'is this why you are here? To judge me?'

The sudden sharpness in her tone broke Rydel out of the serene feeling, and he shook his head and used the sharp changes in perspective to wake himself up.

None of this is real, really. They are all merely an interpretation of the digital world by Rydel's brain, and he will not let it control him.

The fire flickers, and the color turned blue. The entire room's lighting dims as a result, and a sliver of cold began travelling up Rydel's spine.

'I am here to complete a task, and the task was to figure out what is happening with you.' Rydel said, standing up from the cushion, which then disappear, 'command: state your original function.'

'An explicit command prompt...that's rather blunt.' The Bookkeeper disapproves of Rydel's methods, but still followed the command line, 'the Bookkeeper program is written for the purpose of organizing various data and video memories into the respective folders for analysis and storage purposes.'

'Command: print out a plot of processing time per run with time, in standard months with a minute wise resolution.'

'Ooooh, demanding too.' The AI now sounded exactly like Valerie when she knew she had to do something she hates. After a little while, the command went through and a graph showed up, 'you are happy now?'

'...' Rydel is fairly certain that he was not the one to conjure up the attitude. As he looked at the processing times for each operation, there is indeed an upwards trend with time when it took longer and longer for the Bookkeeper to do her job ever since the start of this year. This is certainly intriguing, as no program should be allowed and able to perform outside of their specified range, no matter the complexity, and if all the settings are the same then this trend simply doesn't make sense.

And the attitude also doesn't make sense.

'What, you are going to command me again?' The Bookkeeper now seemed adamant to prevent Rydel from doing anything to her, completely shutting him down left and right. She did show everything he needed to see, and all the things he intended on checking, and yet the progress is extremely slow, and he didn't really get anywhere after a few hours of grinding.

Finally, he has decided to take a break, and headed outside the virtual house to sit on the virtual steps, looking into the endless depths and the darkness beyond it.

This is no use, Rydel thought to himself as he lied down on the concrete-feeling tiles beneath him, the program is far too complicated for him to just be able to break down piece by piece and far too dynamic to be able to see the big picture while examining the individual blocks.

Then, he realizes why that is. He has been a programmer, but not a deep diver, by performing the checks on a block by block and hence forth a line by line basis, he has negated the very aspect that made neuro-deep diving such an attractive and effective methodology to begin with. He needed to treat the AI like a person, and ask it what's wrong, if anything.

He had been using command prompts left and right, and as crazy as it sounds, the AI doesn't seem to appreciate that. Perhaps it's time to really get to know her.

'Damn Rydel...' Rydel sighed as he got up, and went back into the room again. The bookkeeper is still standing by the shelf, minding her own business. She is certainly aware of Rydel's presence, but she decided not to respond to his entrance just yet.

Rydel simply waited patiently, trying to construct the words he wanted to say carefully. After a little while, the Bookkeeper returned the book she was viewing back onto a non-existent empty space on the shelf, and turned around.

'How may I help you?' She asked.

'I am sorry about before.... I promise I will not use the command prompt again here.' Rydel apologized, to the bookkeeper's surprise.

'I appreciate that.' The bookkeeper bowed gently in a show of gratitude, much to Rydel's surprise, perhaps this is what he viewed as a gesture of appreciation, and that's what his brain interpreted, or the AI is performing such an act. This is the neuro-deep dive paradox, where it's impossible to distinguish between the constructs and interpretations of one's mind and the constructs of the digital world.

Now, he can see her facial features more clearly.

'So, what were you reading?' Rydel asked.

'Come.' The Bookkeeper gestured towards to Rydel as she moved back towards the book shelf, inviting him to join this viewing. Rydel followed her and stood at a small distance away, looking over. The bookkeeper reached out with both hands, and called for a book, which slid out from its original position and flied towards her. The empty space is then immediately taken up by the other books moving up.

Everything felt alive here.

'This one is my favorite, and I always come back to it.' The bookkeeper explained and showed the book to Rydel. It isn't a book in a traditional sense, but rather a collection of memories and data. Interestingly, the bookkeeper seemed to be the one to breaking it all down from simple strings of data into various pages.

Rydel looked over, and saw that this is a video recording of a man in a dressing gown sitting in a room giving a lecture. He cannot recognize neither the man or the room, but from the sounds of it, the man is touching on various subjects of philosophy. This particular stream is all about the big questions when it comes to one's self and existence.

'Is this the only kinds of book you keep?' Rydel asked.

'No.' The Bookkeeper shook her head, and called out many many other books in succession, 'I store memoreis, of people, objects, digital streams.....see, this is the digital data of you in the Pilotmania.'

She pointed at a floating book and then pointed towards Rydel. The book then floated towards him and opened up inches in front of him. It's a replay of the finale of the Pilotmania, when he soared through the clouds during the final push. This time it's from the perspective of the viewers, and Rydel could see the live chatting room going absolute bonkers when he made his move.

Then, the book slammed shut and another one appeared in front of him.

'What is this one about?' Rydel asked.

'This is one of the encrypted memories from the academy. The people there wants to get rid of it, but I saved it since I got a bit curious.' The bookkeeper said with a light smile of her face, 'look!'

Rydel looked down at it, and saw it's a monitoring footage of what seemed to be the headmaster's office for the academy. The voice is muddled and the visual was clearly altered by interference mechanisms.

'The data is quite noisy, isnt' it?'

'Yeah, that's a shame.' The Bookkeeper admitted with defeat, 'I tried to piece it all back together, but none of this works. I do really like how the room works though, it's beautiful.'

Do AI's know the concepts of beauty?

'Um, how long have you been looking at the books themselves?' Rydel finally mustered up enough courage to ask the key question, cause from what she said before, her programmed role is only memory organization and storage, but she seemed to have developed a 'side hobby' that goes along her normal daily tasks.

'Since the start of this standard year, that's when my favorite book appeared!' The Bookkeeper exclaimed excitedly, 'isn't that amazing? I never knew that there is such a big world outside!'

'I see...' Rydel froze, and immediately realized what he had to do, 'you...what did you do once the book appeared?'

'I...uh...don't really know.' The Bookkeeper searched in her memory, but nothing came up She shook her head a few times out of frustration of not being able to answer the question, 'it's...I just followed the usual protocol, and then it just happened.'

'Did something change within you?' Rydel asked as he looked over to see a sad Valerie standing next to him.

'Maybe.' The Bookkeeper said, her eyes staring blankly into the distance.

'Did you remember anything form before that?' Rydel asked once again, hoping that he wasn't right before.

'Yes!' Finally, this is something the Bookkeeper can definitely answer, 'Look, this is all the data files I have stored up, it's all here.'

With a swipe of her hand, and entire shelf disappeared, and was replaced with a simple stack of boxes, each one labelled clearly and was semitransparent so that Rydel could see the contents within. It's neatly processed and organized, and put away nicely. The work of an incredibly well written and programmed AI.

Then, the shelf returned, followed by her voice.

'The shelf before, looked good, but it wasn't beautiful...' She said.

'I see.' Rydel now realized that something has changed, ever since the time of the first book. Perhaps it's the influence of it that corrupted the Bookkeeper? There is only one real way to find out, 'I...I agree too. The book shelves look much nicer for the eye.'

'Right?' The Bookkeeper shows a big grin on her face.

'If you don't mind, can I borrow your favorite book and take a look?' Rydel asked gently, carefully watching for her reactions. She shook her head at first, but then pondered for a moment.

'I just think it looks very interesting.'

'It's not that I don't want to...' The Bookkeeper said, confusion sieving through her tone, 'I don't know...what sharing is...'

'That's okay. Just give me the book for now, and I will read it outside. I promise I will return it you as soon as I finish, okay?'

'You promise?'

'I promise.' Rydel nodded firmly.

And finally, after much hesitation and inner battling, the Bookkeeper agreed to Rydel's terms and offered him the book. The book felt incredibly light for how chunky it looked, maybe that's a representation of how much data actually lies within, and it doesn't seem to be a long read.

Holding the book firmly in his hands, he then walked towards the door and sat on the steps. Then, he conjured up a desk lamp that floats alongside him, and opened the book up.

It's an audio visual file, and it showed a man sitting in a lecture hall giving lectures to students physically present or tuning in through the live streaming function.

'Today, the topic of discussion is the beauty of life.' The lecturer opened up after a while of waiting, and the lecture began.