Chapter 37 - People Who Are Connected To The Old World Domain (2/2)
It was really out of the blue when Alpha suddenly moved his augmented suit. Thus Akira could not follow its movement and his body was subjected to intense stress which left his body in stinging pain after that. He looked annoyed because of her sudden move and his pain as he glared at Alpha.
But Alpha looked back at Akira with a stern worried face as if his annoyed glare was invisible.
“Do you have any headache?! Do you feel like puking at all?! Do you feel dizzy?! Can you clearly hear my voice?! Can you clearly see me?!”
Akira was taken aback by that barrage of questions.
“I-I’m okay. I don’t feel any headache, I don’t feel like puking, and my mind is clear. Only that my body is feeling stinging pain.”
“I see, thank goodness.”
Alpha let out a sigh of relief as she smiled at Akira.
“Akira. Can you still see the person that you saw just now?”
Akira s.h.i.+fted his gaze to where that maid girl was standing, but she had completely vanished.
“…No, I can’t see her anymore. So, what was that exactly? Why were you so panicked?”
Alpha made a serious face as she started her explanation.
“Akira, I’ll explain it to you. You almost lost your life just now, you know.”
“L-lost my life? What do you mean?”
“There’s actually some kind of wireless receiver inside your brain. I’ve told you about this before, right? That’s the special power of the people who can connect to the old world domain, and someone tried to abuse that power just a moment ago that it might even kill you.”
Akira was taken aback when Alpha said that he almost got killed, she then continued her explanation.
The network of the old world facilities that were still connected and working even in this era was called the old world domain. Normally, people would need to use an old-world terminal relic in order to connect to the old world domain.
But among the people of the eastern district, there was a very rare type of people who could do that even without using any special relics. These people were known as the people who were connected to the old world domain.
“…So basically, you’re someone who is connected to the old world domain. I know that you don’t recognize it yourself, but the reason why you can see me or receive my support is because you’re connected to the old world domain.”
Akira was both surprised and puzzled.
“So then, how is it connected to why I almost got killed just now? Even if what I saw just now was something that only people who are connected to the old world can see, that doesn’t explain why that would kill me, right? If I’m going to die because I see one, then I should’ve been already dead after seeing you so many times, right?”
“Everyone who is connected to the old world has a different threshold of how much information and what type of information he or she can process. And in your case, fortunately enough, you have a high level of compatibility with me. The person that you just saw might be someone from the old world domain. People of the old world used to get help from those ent.i.ties with no corporeal bodies to expand their vision and sense of hearing or to provide them with other kinds of support. They might also exist as a part of a facility as a guide, to provide explanations about that facility. Some might even be sent to gather information or other kinds of jobs. I bet there were a lot of people who were connected to the old world domain during the old world era.”
“It sounds nothing but good things though, so, what’s so dangerous about them?”
“The person that you saw was invisible to me, so what kind of person was it?”
“It was a girl in a maid uniform. She didn’t look dangerous at all.”
“Well, they were originally not dangerous after all. The problem is that she was an ent.i.ty from the old world, thus she was created for the people with old-world equipment. In short, they might be not compatible with the people of this era. But since you were able to see it, it meant that you could receive information sent by her without any trouble. Hypothetically speaking, if that girl was the manager of this mansion and asked you if you need any information about this mansion, then what would you answer?”
“Something like okay, sure, or maybe even yes, please.”
“You might be killed the moment you answer back with that, you see.”
“That’ll be enough to kill me?!!”
Akira was shocked by that unexpected answer, Alpha continued her explanation while giving him a warning.
“As I said, they might not be compatible with the people of this era. Thus she might send you all the information about the mansion into your brain in one go. She might even send the complete blueprint of this mansion down to its molecular level and that amount of data will be enormous. It would be fortunate if your brain filters it as noise and ignores it, but if you’re not lucky, the part of your brain that allows you to connect to the old world domain might try to receive all of that information, and that would likely leave you paralyzed for the rest of your life or even fry your brain and kill you. After all, there were people who were connected to the old world that met their ends just like that.”
Akira was completely shocked. It took sometime before he came back to his senses as he tried to calm himself down by taking a deep breath. Alpha just waited for him until he finished.
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Y-yeah… Alpha, about that question, what should I answer back if I’m asked?”
“Let’s see, I think you should say no in that case. Either that or you should request the information to be displayed in the simplest form so that you can process it through your vision, maybe something in the form of blurry images. Or you can also ask the information to be sent to your information terminal and then ask it to explain the details through that method. There are many methods that you can request so that it won’t overload your brain. But even so, I still can’t say that you’ll be safe for sure. It might be alright if they ask you for permission for every information that they will send, but there are cases where they don’t, you see.”
“…If I meet one like that, then what should I do? Can I do something about it?”
Akira’s face looked grim. It was because he was just told that he was someone who was connected to the old world domain. But there was a danger of sudden death that came with it and there was no way to avoid that sudden death.
Alpha suddenly started talking in a monotonous voice with an expressionless face. It was completely different compared to her usual self.
“Are you sure you want to allow downloading information from the old world domain through this unit, Alpha, in order to avoid harming the subject, Akira? To be more precise, the downloaded information will contain the following topic. First-”
Akira remembered something similar had happened to him before, thus he swiftly answered back without waiting for Alpha to finish.
“You have my permission.”
“Permission confirmed… Well, this will do the trick.”
As Alpha’s voice and demeanour turned back to normal, Akira felt a bit of relief.
“That was the same thing, right? Something like you needed my permission for stuff, right?”
“Yep.”
“The reason why you didn’t do that back then was because you didn’t have the permission to ask for the same, huh?”
“That’s correct. Although I got your permission to help you with all kinds of support, this wasn’t included in that permission.”
“Will this happen again in the future?”
“Of course, there are still a lot of things that I need to ask for your permission. But it’s not like I can tell you all the details, but you do know the reason, right?”
“Yeah. Because that’ll take 100 years of oral explanation and you don’t have the permission to ask for the same, right?”
“It’s great that you’re a smart boy.”
Alpha smiled at Akira and he returned with a bitter smile. Deep down, he felt relieved now that he was at least safe from that sudden death.
Akira then turned off his flashlight once more and stood on that place again. The room was immediately filled with colours as the maid girl from before appeared again.
That beautiful girl was smiling gently at Akira. The black and white maid uniform focused more on beauty rather than functionality. It was made of very beautiful fabric and it had an elaborate design all the way up to her neck. Her black shoes were peeking out from her long skirt and both her hands were enveloped in snow white gloves. The ribbon that she used to tie her hair was extremely long. She was floating above the ground ignoring the gravity.
Akira knew that the thing he was seeing was not real, it was just like Alpha. He was looking at that maid girl full of curiosity.
“Alpha, you can’t see her, huh?”
“It’s okay, because of the permission that you just gave, I can see her just fine now. But it’s not like we know for sure if she can see me or not. So be careful.”
“Alright. But that means to her I might look like I’m just talking to myself, right?”
“That is if she can also see you. If it’s only a video data, then it’s the same as those holographic human-type signboards.”
“Now that I think about it, she’s not moving at all. Uhmm, can you hear me?”
When Akira spoke to her, the maid girl bowed politely and gracefully.
“Nice to meet you. Are you here to register yourself as a new user?”
Akira did not understand what she was talking about. But he remembered what Alpha just told him not too long ago, so he decided to refuse it for now.
“No. I just want to ask you some questions…”
“Very well, we’ll be waiting for your next visit.”
That maid girl bowed gracefully once more to Akira before vanis.h.i.+ng completely.
“…What in the world was that?”
“It has no real body, it could react when you talk to it, and it vanishes if you refuse its offer. Try to step out from there and then step back in again, but this time try to be more positive and ask for an explanation from her.”
“I guess I’ll try that.”
Akira took a step out of the circle before stepping back in. That maid girl immediately appeared in front of him again.
“I want to ask you something.”
As Akira tried to talk to her again, the maid girl gracefully bowed just like before and said.
“Nice to meet you. Are you here to register yourself as a new user?”
“We need some information first before we can decide about that. So we have some questions we want to ask if it’s okay with you?”
Alpha suddenly interjected, but the maid girl did not respond at all.
“It didn’t work. Akira, take your information terminal out.”
After Akira took out his information terminal, Alpha’s voice then came out from the terminal.
“We want to think about it first, so, is it possible to send your information to this terminal?”
Alpha said that not through telepathy but from the information terminal as her voice echoed inside the bas.e.m.e.nt. But the maid girl still did not respond back.
“Even this doesn’t work, huh? Akira, you go ahead and try asking it.”
“I want you to send your information to this terminal, is that possible?”
The maid girl finally reacted.
“Certainly. Thank you very much for considering using our product.”
Akira then looked at his information terminal, but nothing happened. Alpha also confirmed the same.
“There’s nothing in the terminal. Unfortunately, it seems that the data is sent in a format that this terminal can’t receive. So let’s just give up and go back home.”
“Is there anything else that I can try?”
“We can try to download the data to the terminal through you. Since you can see it, it means that you can receive information broadcasted by that maid girl. But as I explained before, it’s an extremely dangerous thing. I’ll try my best to keep you safe, but I still can’t guarantee your safety. So what will you do?”
Akira hesitated before answering.
“…Let’s do that. It will bother me if we give up and return back without understanding anything like this, not to mention that facing danger is quite normal in this line of work.”
“Alright then. Be sure to tell her to only transfer the data bit by bit, okay? If you feel nauseous, quickly step away from that place. I think the data transfer will stop if you step away from where you’re standing now.”
Akira made his resolve and said.
“…Send the information to me rather than to my information terminal, but do it in small amounts.”
The maid girl bowed politely.
“Certainly. Sending the information now.”
Akira prepared himself to step away from that place in case anything bad happened. But unlike what he expected, he felt nothing at all. He did not feel nauseous nor any headache at all, and his mind and vision were still clear like usual.
“Akira, it’s finished, it’s alright now.”
“That was fast. I was so prepared but I didn’t feel anything, you know?”
“I intercepted and received the data straight to me without pa.s.sing it through you. The amount of information that went through you was kept to a minimum. To make it simple, I immediately took over the line after you exchanged address and established a connection with that maid girl.”
“I see. So in the end, what exactly was that girl? Not to mention that she already vanished too.”
“It’ll take a long time to explain everything. Let’s just go back home for now. Although it’s not like it can be exchanged for money right away, we have received good results for today. That was rather an unexpected result since we originally came here just to test the information gathering device.”
“Is that so? Well, I guess it’s fine for now. You can explain it to me later.”
Akira agreed with her and decided to end his exploration. And since his bike was alright, he did not have to go back home on foot.
Silavin: Hmm… was hoping there was a second Alpha. That would be an interesting development.
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