Chapter 23: Technicality [6]
Would it hurt?
The thought voiced through the void, sharp and clear. Estelle trembled, cold sweat tracing icy paths down her skin as her heartbeat thundered in her ears, drowning out everything else. She forced her eyes open, the control center's bridge materializing through a haze of blurred edges and murky shapes.
Sinclair—her creation, the phantom born of her imagination—was gone. Only Estelle remained.
She gasped, frigid air searing her lungs with each desperate breath. For a fleeting moment, that beautiful scene—the perfect culmination of her work—flashed before her eyes. It had been too perfect, really, a conclusion so powerful she'd forgotten it was merely a possibility waiting in an uncertain future.
A brittle laugh escaped her lips, echoing strangely in the empty air. Her hands tightened around the pylon until her knuckles whitened, its metal surface trembling beneath her desperate grip as she fought to steady herself.
"Ha... haha. Damn... I love that development..." She scoffed, lowering the pylon. "But this is different from the original," she murmured, the words trailing off as if afraid to voice the fundamental problem with her grand idea.
She twisted the pylon in her hands, flipping it with a smooth motion, only to smack it against her other palm harder than intended. The jolt startled her. Instinctively, she clutched the pylon tighter before it could slip away. "In the first place, the original—" she began, her voice dissolving again into incoherence.
With a heavy sigh, her smile faltered, a creeping tension overtaking it. 'Estelle, you're giving me too many problems,' she thought, forcing her reluctant feet to move forward.
Estelle's eyes locked onto the bridge ahead, its central span stretching more than 500 meters in length. Her heart pounded as she stepped onto it, each movement deliberate and cautious, her footfalls echoing faintly in the vast emptiness. Like how good worldbuilders illustrate their settings, consistency was key, and the visual theme was apparent for every element. The surrounding area was devoid of any safety measures: no protective nets, no holographic warning signs, no indication of concern for human life. The bridge lacked guardrails, leaving every edge open to a sheer, dizzying drop.
Yet despite the unnerving exposure, the sheer width of the bridge brought a strange sense of relief. It was so expansive that even if her body multiplied seventyfold and marched side by side in perfect unison, there would still be more than enough space to spare.
"Yeah, yeah," Estelle mumbled. 'The original narratives were different. Sinclair was alone, without allies, searching for the last Architect's core—the Nous Crux Pattern Sphere. This untouched realm was the only plausible option she had at that time. But for a Timekeeper like her, it became a deathtrap—she was trapped here, dying again and again with each destruction of the space station.'
"The world shook," she began, her voice steady but strained, each word carved with soft, sharp clarity. "The metal roared—not just sound. It howled through every corner of the ship, every creak a warning that clawed at her nerves. Sinclair's hands latched onto the pillars, gripping them like they were her last anchor of hope."
She paused, her gaze drifting, as if she could see it all unfolding again. Her fingers worked the pylon absently, spinning it like a pen. "And the alarms... there weren't any. Not the way you'd think. No blaring sirens. They were in her head—burrowing deep, crawling into her mind, stirring something primal—"
Estelle waited, trembling as if trying to invoke the tension and emotion of the narrative. "Fe—"
The pylon slipped. It twisted free from her fingers in a sudden, jerking motion.
"—oh shit!" she blurted, scrambling to catch it. Her palm smacked against the metallic length, sending it spinning out of control. She lunged after it but froze mid-step, breath hitching as she realized how close she had come to the ledge.
Few meters away, the pylon struck the floor with a loud, metallic clack, spinning and wobbling. The abrupt noise startled Estelle within her silence, and her breath caught as she saw its final position—precariously close to the bridge's edge. 'Of all the fucking places,' she thought, her cheeks twitching.
Her makeshift fiddle toy now teetered near disaster, mocking her as if it knew what lay beyond. Beyond the edge stretched a vast expanse, the massive chamber walls stretching far beyond her view. She swallowed hard, stepping closer but stopping short, dread pooling in her chest. The fall plunged so deep that the ground disappeared beneath the length of the bridge. Estelle shuddered as endless waves of chill assaulted her spine.
Her mind grappled with disjointed recollections, her chest heaving as the motion in her vision throbbed, as if pulling her entire being toward the edge. She slid a step backward, struggling to resist whatever her mind was compelling her to do. The specifications felt fundamentally wrong—her memories clashed with what she saw. Numbers and images refused to align into a coherent scale. The details she remembered—from ceiling to middle section, down to the docking area's ground—should have been longer than the main bridge. She wanted to confirm it, but staring into the abyss below, it appeared impossibly vast, an impossible act.
Estelle sighed, the tightness in her chest finally easing. "Aha, ha." The laugh that escaped was forced, broken—an awkward release of pent-up tension. "No," she muttered firmly, pivoting on her heel.
"It'll disappear… sometime… I think," her words trailed. She shifted her position, strafing toward the center of the room, seeking some semblance of safety.
"Why did I take this path again?" she wondered aloud, brow furrowed in confusion and exasperation. "Oh, right—the protagonist, Sinclair." Her thoughts crystallized as she snapped her fingers. "I'll make the proposal later, finalize the details if I really want this meta-narrative to work. Dropping this climax onto some random ship in the middle of God-knows-where... it doesn't feel right."
"Yes and no," she said, shaking her head as her resolve hardened. "This narrative needs to land at the very end. I want Sinclair elevated to the highest pinnacle, I want something that becomes the grand arch-villain. And not just that—the grand arch-villain should embody a meta-narrative between the created, Sinclair, and the creator. This fight needs to be monumental, demanding to be witnessed in all its glory."
She gulped, pace slowing as her eyes fell to her trembling fingers. "If I'm going to fight her... I need to become stronger—far more powerful than she'll ever be. Thankfully, I still have thousands of years before that could happen. Oh!" She snapped her fingers, the thought igniting like a flame. "I need to write this down before I forget—which, let's be honest, is probably going to happen."
Abruptly, her eyes widened as clarity cut through her mind's chaos, sharp and startling. She froze, then let out a forced laugh that rang awkwardly in the empty air. "Ahaha. That's so true. This is such a self-insert, what the actual fuck. God must be cringing—God must be cringing—I am cringing right now." She paused, a mischievous grin creeping onto her face at those pretentious words.
"If I don't want to face her myself," she muttered, the grin fading to contemplation. "Then I'll need someone else. A new character... That character I was thinking about earlier... I wonder if we can make an avatar with consciousness? I mean, the Architect can create an avatar, but can it be autonomous? Or maybe we can control the body from the distance like a doll master of some sort. I just need someone powerful enough to take her on instead. But we'll see—I still need to figure out how to make a body—and also, we don't want to forget about that one too... Didn't we? Oh, and also that too, huh?"
Words spilled rapidly from her mouth, forming and falling before she could grasp their meaning. Ideas sprawled in cryptic fragments—scenes, motives, and hidden meanings agreed upon long before her mind could catch up. Her thoughts leapt from one to the next, halting only when something in her vision demanded attention. She slowed her steps, raising a curious brow, as if trying to temper the chaos within. "Oh?" A dumbfounded voice escaped her lips.
The bridge's pathway diverged, revealing clusters of terminal devices lining one side—sleek constructs reminiscent of the integrated station she had encountered earlier. These, however, were predominantly black, their surfaces adorned with darker screens and intricate, unlit patterns. A flicker of recognition stirred within her—a hazy memory of online advices on transforming a bridge into more than just a walkway. The specifics hovered just out of reach, she could feel her tongue forming the words of what this particular area was. Curiosity drew her forward.
As she approached, the intricacies of the design came into focus. The devices bore a striking resemblance to the integrated station terminal she had seen before, but these were sleeker and freestanding. Holographic icons hovering above each screen identified them unmistakably as crafting terminals. Eight such devices stood in a circular arrangement, facing inward, with rod-like pedestals rising between them, each crowned by a floating, glowing cube of varying colors.
"Why... is it?" Estelle murmured, brow furrowing in confusion.
The silent questions swirling in her mind—particularly about the circular arrangement with its central gap—found sudden answers as she glimpsed a massive opening through the spaces between devices. She gasped, "Oh. Oh, yeah," snapping her fingers as words tumbled out. "The retrieval system—or well, whatever it's called—input and output of the storage system."
An unusual light emanated from the center—not from holographs or visible lighting devices, but from the opening itself. Rays stretched upward to the ceiling, where a circular sphere protruded like a liquid-mirror swell. The central opening spanned more than thirty meters in diameter, with pathways curving gracefully into three distinct routes—right, left, and central passage beyond.
As her searching gaze cataloged the final details, Estelle stepped onto the circular pathway. Her eyes swept the space, recognition prickling at her—not from the terminals rimming the edges, but from the entire scene. She was certain she had captured this place before, its images stored within her phone for offline moments beyond usual digital renders.
A sudden wave of confusion surged through her. "Huh? What?" Her brow furrowed as her heart hammered against her ribs, overwhelming déjà vu sending prickles across her skin.
She turned her head, scanning left to right, her movements sharp with unease.
Then it hit her. "Oh!" Her fingers snapped, expression brightening. "This place—I remember now. The Community Challenge; the storyboard drafts initially started here—I remember taking pictures to draw wherever I wanted... And spent days drawing it, only to scrap the entire thing because the idea simply didn't meet the prompt. Damn," Estelle nodded sharply, clicking her tongue. "Damn. I really liked that idea too. Quite unfortunate."
Even after observing so many details—details her own eyes had seen take shape during their creation—Estelle's gaze remained greedy for more. Her head swiveled constantly, left to right, right to left, seeking anything new or forgotten. "Yeah, that was also one storyboard," she remarked absently. "I was fine with rewriting the original story narrative because it was just too good to just disappear. Oh, so unfortunate."
Despite her melodramatic tone and wandering thoughts, Estelle's focus lay elsewhere. As she contemplated alternatives and improvements, her feet mindlessly led her to one of the nearby terminals lining the circle.
"Oh?" Estelle's voice lifted in surprise as a new detail caught her eye. The filamentary screen—the same kind she had seen before, with its pale green glow like a thin light curtain or transparent glass. Though it first appeared as merely a faint stretching line, with each step its form grew more distinct.
"I see," she nodded. "So that's what I was trying to find."
Tracing the filamentary screens stretching toward the ceiling, Estelle noticed a thin opening encircling the watery, textured swell drooping from above. Her gaze followed the flow downward, where eight filamentary screens gradually faded into transparency behind the terminals. Realizing how close she had come to the devices, she came to a sudden halt, leaning in to peer at the floor, which gaped open. Beyond it, another bridge—similar in structure—extended into the obscurity beneath her own. That bridge, the middle section of the space station, mirrored hers perfectly; she was certain of it. Far below, at a dizzying height that churned her stomach, she glimpsed the station's distant ground floor
White fog drifted across plated floors—nearly empty except for strange devices Estelle couldn't recall creating. The details were too distant to discern fully. She forced a breath from her lungs, trying to steady herself against the cold chill prickling her skin.
"Urgh," Estelle forcefully gagged, sliding backward from the seemingly close ledge. Eyeing the now-distant terminal device, she thought, 'I want to use you later, but not now. Still need to go to the gestation hall to actually figure out how other essential things work—which are far more important.'
With her visual greed settled and sprawling thoughts quieted, Estelle forced another breath out. The mysterious light and surrounding devices provoked a memory: 'I remember drawing a concept for this one too. The phantom light had boxes of objects or containers moving from top to bottom, each surrounded by strips of holographic windows that the Architects could read to see the contents.'
Shifting her eyes to the massive spaces flanking the bridges, her thoughts continued, 'And I think that's where the Architects create other massive structures manually if all the other fabricating facilities are occupied. The spaces beneath and above this bridge are just way too spacious—I feel like that's what I intended? Not so sure.'
Before she registered the motion, her legs carried her forward, following the curve of the circular pathway. Each step echoed faintly, swallowed by the vast indifferent emptiness. Her gaze swept across the space, searching for something—anything—but meaning eluded her wherever her eyes fell. Shapes blurred into shadows, details slipping through her mind like grains of sand. It was as though her thoughts were already satisfied and full, or the silence had infected her mind, leaving only hollow stillness behind.
As she crossed to the other side, her gaze settled on another circular area in the distance, lined with yet another set of devices. Her brows knitted as she strained to focus on the far-off details, stirring fragmented memories that surfaced in disjointed flashes. The longer she stared, the more the recollection took shape—vague, but enough to spark recognition.
"Oh, right," Estelle muttered under her breath. "I did have these duplicated four more times... Five sets in total each main bridge—for the entire population of the Architects to use." She paused, tilting her head thoughtfully. "Didn't I even draft a concept art for this once? Did I finish that one? I think I did."
Estelle trudged forward, thoughts adrift—until the sight of the extending bridge jolted her back to the present. "Koh," she muttered, inhaling sharply as her voice faltered. "Right—damn it, I completely forgot I was trying to remember the official details regarding Sinclair's ability. And all those other stories..." She exhaled sharply, her pace quickening. "Then there's this missing character—this villain Sinclair's supposed to face. Maybe... Maybe creating clones is the answer."
Her focus felt strangely firm, despite the occasional noise—her mind wrestling to shape alternative ideas, only to abandon them when the main focus grew louder. Suddenly, Estelle jolted, nodding absently. It was as if the earlier discovery of the Control Center, fragmenting her thoughts with spectacles of distant memory, now coalesced as those thoughts settled.
She delved deeper into the idea of clones and their potential, but theory alone could only take her so far. The understanding of her own world may have overlooked countless forgotten rules and laws. She pondered if a hivemind race similar to the architects could learn human magic—but practical application, bound by rules and laws she had mostly forgotten, threatened to cloud her approach. Frustrated, Estelle clicked her tongue, uncertainty pressing against her resolve.
"Clones... If they can't get the blessings from the Pillars, or spirits, bloodline, channels of the Source, or be answered by the call of magic... Then, they might not be the actual answer..." Estelle muttered, gazing toward the bridge's end.
The massive gates of the gestation hall stood tightly shut, prominent and holding answers to her speculation. Estelle swallowed, "Let's just see how it goes for now. We might be able to make a powerful body," her words trailed into a whisper.