Aoba might have been just as confused as Declan, really. Maybe it was something more subconscious, like a fear of losing all this kindness and relative comfort after he’d been stuck with the Deckers so long. Maybe it was just an ingrained softheartedness. Whatever it was, it felt like a victory when Declan stepped back inside long enough to show him how the communicator screens could be expanded and shifted around the apartment.
Urgent or not, maybe it really wasn’t so bad of a mission. Aoba had trouble imagining someone being able to call back home every day if some kind of war erupted back home.
What was going on back home, anyway? Aoba had already been gone for a month, and nothing in the Guide’s message had told him (that he could remember, anyway) that time wasn’t continuing to flow just the same in his home era. Was it too much to hope that falling through that first portal had been like hitting a big ‘pause’ button on his normal, mostly safe, only occasionally irritating life? Could the world he’d come from still be aging even though he supposedly wasn’t?
Two weeks was a lot of time, but at the same time, it absolutely flew by. Aoba wasn’t kept bored and idle, after all, as if he nothing to do but waste away and worry.
Medical examinations with Jolene-9 were just a drop in a bucket. Aoba found himself with cause to use her injectors—and report on the results—only thrice in that time. As weird a feeling as it was, to go days at a time without medicating, all he could decide and admit was that the future had more effective medication than his home time. Granny had done everything she could for his unique systems, but Declan’s world was years—and probably timelines—apart from theirs.
He had no way to know that some nights he was up and about anyway, strolling the balconies of the Tower and drinking in the world with golden eyes. Desire found himself… oddly mollified by the medications, but not quite buried. If anything, it was more like the holes he’d punched in Reason’s barriers were being shaped into guarded doors, rather than completely sealed up again. As if the robot-woman’s medications somehow truly healed, despite her not knowing what she was healing. Despite her scans continuing to insist nothing was physically wrong with Aoba’s brain. Desire could still break through, and that was still the way he was strongly inclined to after being ignored so long, but when it came to experimenting with carefully leaning those doors open while Aoba was asleep… well, results were results.
His days were busy, but at the same time, only felt like even more drops in some vast bucket he couldn’t even see the bottom of. Tess did indeed take him on for courier jobs to help him earn his keep, but after a few days of puzzling his way around with Ren and the maps Declan’s Ghost had given them, Aoba had finally conceded that… maybe upgrades were the way to go. He’d held off out of concern for his ancient little Allmate and a worry of him no longer matching up with the technology back home, until one moment where it occurred to him: he was acting as if the next portal he tried might magically dump him back in the Old Residents District when the chances of that were, in fact, infinitesimal. Upgrading Ren might not just benefit him in this world, but in every other one he’d have to pass through.
So Aoba ran routes, earned money, coordinated with recommended Exos for custom parts that cost all his money, and worked on Ren. He also spent time in the library that The Speaker had invited him to peruse, though he ultimately learned little of any use. Mostly he was just left confused and small-feeling, ever more distant from home.
Declan’s calls home, without any real conscious recognition of it, became the closest thing Aoba had to a feeling of stability and regularity. Even though it was foolish, Aoba sometimes even allowed himself a delusion: Declan couldn’t possibly be in danger in such beautiful places. It was comfortable to update his new friend on the things he’d spent the day on and ask about the sights he was seeing, as if he were doing nothing more threatening than vacationing for a while. Even the people that sometimes interrupted his calls seemed too at ease to cause stress. Even the overly flirty one, who ordinarily would have grated on Aoba’s nerves to no end. Oh he was still grating in a way, earning dry you’re a familiar sort look from Aoba, but the wayward wanderer’s eyes usually drifted back to Declan anyway, watching the Guardian’s embarrassed expressions with a softer sympathy.
The day that Declan returned home, it would be to an apartment only barely changed. Because the Guardian had seemed, to Aoba, to want him to make use of the shaders, he had finally taken the time to play around with what he’d found until the apartment had added some gentle blues to its existing grays. Accents, rather than taking over the place completely. Aoba and Ren themselves weren’t hard to spot at all. Both were at the little table by the couch, the latter in sleep mode while the former worked over his latest hardware installations. Aoba, himself, had applied shaders to his clothes that rendered them the bright whites and cyan shades he’d worn most back home, but he heard no one’s entry because he had his headphones on and drowning out the world with Goatbed beats.
no subject
Urgent or not, maybe it really wasn’t so bad of a mission. Aoba had trouble imagining someone being able to call back home every day if some kind of war erupted back home.
What was going on back home, anyway? Aoba had already been gone for a month, and nothing in the Guide’s message had told him (that he could remember, anyway) that time wasn’t continuing to flow just the same in his home era. Was it too much to hope that falling through that first portal had been like hitting a big ‘pause’ button on his normal, mostly safe, only occasionally irritating life? Could the world he’d come from still be aging even though he supposedly wasn’t?
Two weeks was a lot of time, but at the same time, it absolutely flew by. Aoba wasn’t kept bored and idle, after all, as if he nothing to do but waste away and worry.
Medical examinations with Jolene-9 were just a drop in a bucket. Aoba found himself with cause to use her injectors—and report on the results—only thrice in that time. As weird a feeling as it was, to go days at a time without medicating, all he could decide and admit was that the future had more effective medication than his home time. Granny had done everything she could for his unique systems, but Declan’s world was years—and probably timelines—apart from theirs.
He had no way to know that some nights he was up and about anyway, strolling the balconies of the Tower and drinking in the world with golden eyes. Desire found himself… oddly mollified by the medications, but not quite buried. If anything, it was more like the holes he’d punched in Reason’s barriers were being shaped into guarded doors, rather than completely sealed up again. As if the robot-woman’s medications somehow truly healed, despite her not knowing what she was healing. Despite her scans continuing to insist nothing was physically wrong with Aoba’s brain. Desire could still break through, and that was still the way he was strongly inclined to after being ignored so long, but when it came to experimenting with carefully leaning those doors open while Aoba was asleep… well, results were results.
His days were busy, but at the same time, only felt like even more drops in some vast bucket he couldn’t even see the bottom of. Tess did indeed take him on for courier jobs to help him earn his keep, but after a few days of puzzling his way around with Ren and the maps Declan’s Ghost had given them, Aoba had finally conceded that… maybe upgrades were the way to go. He’d held off out of concern for his ancient little Allmate and a worry of him no longer matching up with the technology back home, until one moment where it occurred to him: he was acting as if the next portal he tried might magically dump him back in the Old Residents District when the chances of that were, in fact, infinitesimal. Upgrading Ren might not just benefit him in this world, but in every other one he’d have to pass through.
So Aoba ran routes, earned money, coordinated with recommended Exos for custom parts that cost all his money, and worked on Ren. He also spent time in the library that The Speaker had invited him to peruse, though he ultimately learned little of any use. Mostly he was just left confused and small-feeling, ever more distant from home.
Declan’s calls home, without any real conscious recognition of it, became the closest thing Aoba had to a feeling of stability and regularity. Even though it was foolish, Aoba sometimes even allowed himself a delusion: Declan couldn’t possibly be in danger in such beautiful places. It was comfortable to update his new friend on the things he’d spent the day on and ask about the sights he was seeing, as if he were doing nothing more threatening than vacationing for a while. Even the people that sometimes interrupted his calls seemed too at ease to cause stress. Even the overly flirty one, who ordinarily would have grated on Aoba’s nerves to no end. Oh he was still grating in a way, earning dry you’re a familiar sort look from Aoba, but the wayward wanderer’s eyes usually drifted back to Declan anyway, watching the Guardian’s embarrassed expressions with a softer sympathy.
The day that Declan returned home, it would be to an apartment only barely changed. Because the Guardian had seemed, to Aoba, to want him to make use of the shaders, he had finally taken the time to play around with what he’d found until the apartment had added some gentle blues to its existing grays. Accents, rather than taking over the place completely. Aoba and Ren themselves weren’t hard to spot at all. Both were at the little table by the couch, the latter in sleep mode while the former worked over his latest hardware installations. Aoba, himself, had applied shaders to his clothes that rendered them the bright whites and cyan shades he’d worn most back home, but he heard no one’s entry because he had his headphones on and drowning out the world with Goatbed beats.