Deadworld Isekai

“It says it’s fixed, Lucy! We can go back in!” Matt was figuratively bouncing up and down.

“That’s great, Matt!” Lucy smiled. But the moment Matt saw Lucy's smile, he knew that something was wrong.

“Do you… do you not want to go in for some reason?” Matt asked as he settled down.

“No, no!” Lucy put up her hands in protest. “It’s not that. We can go in. It’s just… confusing for me, I guess.”

“In what way? I thought you’d love this. You're always bored.”

“I mean, yeah, there's really not a lot for me to do besides look at things and talk. I can't even smell. So of course I'd be bored. And sometimes we, you know, we do dungeons. That's already working, and we can do it for free.”

“Well, sure. But this isn’t just a dungeon, Lucy. We can see how these people were. What they did. We can figure out what happened to them.”

Lucy put her hand on the plinth, thinking.

“Look, Matt, it’s not like I don’t get it. When this thing first popped up, I was totally on board. But it’s… I dunno. It would be nice to know. But, it’s not like we can bring whatever world we see in there back, Matt. Think about it. You saw this world for, what, a minute? And you just spent MONTHS working on getting to where you can see a few more. Are you sure this is good for you?”

Matt had always had a bad habit of delaying important conversations until they caused problems, most famously by not telling his family about his cancer until it came up until after one too many drinks at a gathering.

This wouldn’t have been so bad if the gathering in question wasn’t on Christmas Eve. But it was. Understandably, his cancer announcement put a bit of a damper on the whole opening-stockings-and-having-eggnog feel of the evening. It wasn't an especially fond remembrance for Matt.

Picking his words carefully, he said, “Okay, I understand. I hear you. And first, you can always bring this kind of stuff up. Having you around helps me out a lot, but I’m pretty sure this whole experience with Gaia hasn’t left me…”

“Normal?”

“Sure. If you think I’m going crazy, tell me. It’s relevant. I promise I won’t get angry unless I actually am going crazy, in which case I make no promises.”

Lucy gave a little sigh of relief. It looked like she had been avoiding talking to him about problems too. Matt made a mental note to check in with her a bit more to make sure she had really voiced all of her concerns.

Matt tried his best to emulate his old therapist, “It sounds like you think I might get… addicted? Is that right?”

Lucy nodded. “Something like that. Or just go flat-out crazy. I don’t know.”

“Got it. I get it, I think. And I’m not going to say I’m not at some risk of going crazy. But I think the big thing that’s making me obsessed isn’t so much trying to get back in there, or having a different kind of synthetic company…”

“I don’t really like the word synthetic,” Lucy cut in.

“Noted. I won't use it again. Anyway, the problem, I think, is more… not knowing. We were really close to finding out what happened here before, and then the whole thing just shut off. And I want to know what the system instance took from me. I want to know what it took from those people by not doing its job right. I need to know.”

“And after that?”

“That’s the other thing. We have a big job ahead of us, and we only have so many low-level dungeons near us. We're talking about trying to terraform this whole planet, and it takes us like three dungeons just to buy a tree.”

“And?”

“And I’m stronger now. And higher-level dungeons have higher-level loot, probably. Eventually the system is going to figure out how long it needs to save up energy to throw something really big at us. If we don’t stay ahead of that, it'll take me down. I have to take risks. This was a nice break from that and I had fun. I thought you needed the break. But it's time to get serious again.”

“So now you're going to just go into high-level dungeons? Just like that?”

“Not just like that. We'll work up gradually. But yeah, I think we have to.”

Matt was nervously keeping an eye on Lucy the whole time. Both her little hands were pretending to grip the edge of the plinth for all it was worth. She faked being a physical being for so long that he wondered if she even knew she was still pretending. She looked conflicted, grimacing and deep in thought. Suddenly, she sighed.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Matt wanted the confirmation.

“Yeah, it’s okay. I think I probably knew this on some level. Remember when we first found that bunker with food? You had the chance to just stay behind and just rest at the bunker. But you decided to keep going to dungeons. At the time, I thought you had a reason for leaving safety and risking danger. But maybe it's just in your nature to keep moving forward. Maybe that's why you're a reincarnator,” Lucy paused and looked up at Matt. “You were right that I needed the break, and thank you. But… I don’t want to see you die, Matt. And between the system coming back and you starving to death, that’s starting to seem more and more likely again. So if you feel like you have to take risks, fine. Take them.”

Matt took a few seconds to digest everything that Lucy had said before he found a response. A bad one. “I don’t like it either, you know. But it might just be part of my nature.”

Lucy gave a sad little smile, “I know. I’ve blamed you for things that weren’t your fault before. It's the circumstance we're in. Don’t worry, I’m going to be there with you for everything.”

Matt got a little teary-eyed. He really didn’t like tough talks, but it was better for Lucy to tell him how she felt than keep everything bottled up. He was just thankful that Lucy couldn’t tell he was almost crying.

“Stop that. You are a grown man. A little girl shouldn’t be able to make you cry like that.”

Matt ran his sleeve over his eyes. “I’m not crying. It’s just dust.”

Lucy rolled her eyes. “Sure. So, are we doing this?”

“Yup, let’s.”

Matt slammed his hand down on the plinth, teleporting him and Lucy into the Museum once more.

—

This time, everything was normal. The same video played, showing the same gorgeous, happy people, and finally working up to the same climax that had cut off suddenly before. Anticipating another wild ride, he held his breath.

“Within these walls, you will learn about our people. About yourselves. You will see how we have lived, and how we live.”

So far, so good. Come on, little video.

“You will see the failures and triumphs of our past, and learn about the hopes of our people. Most of all, you will learn about the danger that threatens every aspect of the life we lead: the scourge. Repeat visitors to these halls will recognize this as a sudden change to our programming, and it is. In the few short weeks that the scourge has spent sweeping across our land, it has demanded those kinds of sudden changes.

While all our previous exhibits are still available, we encourage every man, woman and child who calls Gaia home to visit these new information centers and learn about this terrible threat. We must all do our part to resist this so that Gaia may continue on, strong, unified, and beautiful. Enjoy!”

And with that, everything faded. But this time, not to black. The room around Matt and Lucy dissolved to white, before suddenly beginning to reform. Suddenly, they found themselves standing on stone-paved streets, near a beautiful fountain, in a busy square lined by beautiful buildings. Each structure was built in a style somewhere between classic Greek and what Matt thought of as old English architecture. They had both bricks and stone pillars interacting in ways that might not have worked in less thought-out designs, but everything felt natural here.

It was like the richest of rich people neighborhoods, and Matt was loving every eyeful of it.

Out of nowhere, the voice started speaking again.

“Not all of our places of living look this way. Some rely more on technology to shine. Others are more rural, while still others are aimed at those who like busier spaces with more people for purposes of commerce or lifestyle.”

As he listed off these variants, the town faded and re-emerged in examples of each of the mentioned forms before settling back into the image of the original location. Each was beautiful.

“Holy shit, oh my god.” Matt realized what was happening.

“What?”

“Holy Shit. Holy Shit!”

“What?!”

The voice came back, “In each of these buildings, you will find the story of either a different aspect of either our history or our lives, past, present, and future. You will see our hopes, and our shames - not in a book, but as we see them, through our own eyes.”

“It’s a living history museum!” Matt exclaimed.

—

Unfortunately, Lucy could NOT wrap her head around the idea of a living history museum.

“So, then you walk up, and he’s like ‘I am the town’s cobbler! I make all sorts of things, from shoes to boots to hunting skins.' And for those more dedicated to the bit, they'll actually go through the process of making a shoe from scratch.”

“And this is entertaining?”

Lucy still didn't get it. Somehow, her overall data store about Matt’s life on Earth had missed that particular wrinkle. She could imagine both acting and museums, but couldn’t get the two of them to work together in her head. Matt had been trying to help her understand for the better part of five minutes.

“Oh, a ton. You have to remember that you are maybe eight years old in this scenario, and you talking to some guy who really likes history, and who overall probably loves his job, but who right then has just said ‘And I make shoes for luminaries as Thomas Jefferson and Paul Revere!’ for the fortieth time that day, and it’s 60% humidity, and he’s wearing an all-wool outfit.”

“So the fun is that he temporarily hates it?” Lucy asked.

“Kind of! And you get to churn butter.”

“And you still think it's fun? As a full-grown adult?”

They went back and forth for a minute or so. Matt tried desperately to explain to Lucy why this boring-on-paper experience was the most amazing thing possible, and she was constitutionally unable to imagine anything fitting that description being fun. Eventually, they snapped out of the argument, realizing that he could just show her what appeared to be a magical-technology version of the same thing, and got to work.

From what they could tell, the museum allowed visitors to visit the exhibits in any order, but was clearly designed for a certain order, working its way from Gaia’s distant past towards its present and future. Since the dungeon seemed to be functioning just fine, they decided to take their chances, make a day of it, and sweep through the exhibits in the recommended order. That meant starting with Gaian prehistory.

“The earliest days of our ancestors were not of agriculture, but of suffering. When our people came down from the trees, they ate what food they could find. And unfortunately, there was very little food to be had in the original plants.”

It only occurred to Matt now how much the “hunter” half of “hunter-gatherer” factored into how primitive Earth humans were depicted. Every drawing or sculpture of a caveman he had ever seen had been more than a little yoked, just generally buff in a crossfit-and-carnivore diet sort of way. Gaians were different.

“Do they look a little…” Lucy asked.

“Starved? Yeah. It’s weird to me too,” said Matt.

The video shifted through several biomes, showing images of early Gaians scavenging food from various sources that didn’t seem to have a lot of it. There were fruit trees with small, unappetizing fruits. There were stalks of wild grain that they harvested, but these stalks were rare and each offered only a few grains for the trouble. Matt was sure there was some editorial work at play, and the direction of those edits were clear. This was the “stuff was bad” era of Gaia.

“And it was one discovery that changed everything for our people, that set us on the path we find ourselves on today,” the museum echoed.

“Hold on to your butt. It’s time for FIRE,” Matt said in his best tour-guide tone.

“Matt, you are way too excited about this.”

“I bet it's going to be flints. Maybe lightning striking a tree. I’m appropriately psyched.”

“And that discovery was this…” the museum continued.

The scene dissolved around them, zooming in on the one item that, according to the Gaians, had changed the entire course of their history.

Matt blinked. “Shit. Of course, it’s that.”

“The shovel. With the shovel, Gaians could prepare the soil for seeds, putting them where they would. Early shovels were wood, and used by nomadic tribes who would break small amounts of soil, scatter seeds, and return to the land once the plants had been given sufficient time to grow.”

The shovel morphed from a primitive scoop to a stone-bladed tool, and then was surrounded by a number of different implements. Scythes. Hoes. Rakes. Everything you could want to till the soil, all presented like they were the biggest breakthroughs ever. And, Matt reflected, for the Gaians they probably were.

“As wood was replaced by the heavier and more durable stone, more and more types of soils could be broken, faster and faster. This led to the nomads settling down, and the seeds of our civilization were finally planted.”