41 - A Clockwork Hash (2)

Lumo is actually pretty easy to talk to.

Perhaps not in a practical sense, as such—what I mentioned still very much applies: her slow speech, and the short, blunt answers.

I just mean that, our conversations can kinda flow (or not flow) naturally, you know? If I have something to say, I'll say it, and she listens. And if she has something to say, she'll say it, and I'll listen.

And between those sporadic bursts of verbal communication—if we have nothing to say in between, then we just don't say anything.

… Isn't that nice?

One thing I always hated about talking to people, back in the real world, was the fact that sometimes, I just had nothing to say. Even in the middle of a conversation. And so … I'd say nothing.

People didn't like that.

… You ever stop and really listen to a conversation that normal, well-adjusted people have between themselves?

Thoughts don't resolve properly. People trail off. People interrupt each other, and suddenly shift topics.

I mean, if you transcribed it all out, and wrote it verbatim as dialogue as part of a story, you'd be accused of shitty writing. (At this thought I hear an imaginary Alex in my head, offering some hot take on verisimilitude, and how it's aesthetically worthless.) Most of it is just jumbled-up, shizophrenic noise, the ratio of coherent, meaningful thought to chaotic nonsense way too low for my liking.

And the worst part of it was that, those same well-adjusted people had no problem understanding each other. It was like they were all on some wavelength I just couldn't tune into. … Whenever I ended up in these conversations at work, I'd always be on the sidelines, struggling to keep up with the constant (to me, at least) schizophrenic context-switching, wondering how the hell everybody else was able to follow all these tangled threads of thought so easily. (And of course, somebody would inevitably turn to me and say, "So, [REDACTED]-kun, why are you being so quiet?")

… So it's a real breath of fresh air, when I can just say to Lumo, "… It's a really nice day to just sit here and do nothing, huh, Lumo?"

And she'll say something like, "… Yes, Odd-kun. … It's nice."

And then that's the end of that.

No follow-up needed.

Silence until somebody else feels like saying something.

And if nobody feels like saying anything for the rest of the day? Well, that's just fine too.

I spend most of my days like this now, with Lumo.

I mean, I still pop into the club room from time to time, but …

I dunno.

Something's different.

I feel so tired all the time.

I don't feel like making jokes.

… I'm just so tired, dammit.

And I don't know why.

"Maybe … you should … take it … easy, Odd-kun."

"But I thought that's what I've been doing, all this time, though. Hanging out in the club room. Putting off my reincarnation. … And I love everyone in the IWC. I really do. Getting to be with them every day has probably been the most fun I've had since I was a kid."

"Perhaps … you should … tell them … that."

I laugh. "Naw, that's not happening. No way, Jose."

Okay, I realize it sounds like I'm treating Lumo as an inanimate object, to vent my frustrations. Like one of those rubber ducks programmers use. Talking at her instead of talking to her.

But I assure you, that's not true!

I learn a lot about Lumo, too.

The story she's from, ya see, it's a time loop story.

"Oh. Like Gr**ndhog D*y," I say, using the go-to example, ignoring, for whatever reason, all the anime and VNs that have done the concept better, and expanded upon the trope.

"I … don't know … what that … is."

"That's okay."

"But … the main … character … she is … a girl. She—…"

(Alright, you know what, to save you the pain of having to parse through Lumo-nese, I'll just summarize it all for you.)

The main character is a girl stuck in a month-long time loop.

Memories retained at the start of each loop. You know—the classic setup.

And of course, she's the only one who retains her memories. Her friends, her family, they forget everything when the month resets.

Now, during each loop, a new heroine is featured. With problems that the MC aims to help solve.

Lumo being, of course, one such heroine. (… Man, Alex would get a kick out of this plot.)

Each loop brings the MC closer to 'figuring out' what the cause of the loop is, as each heroine reveals a another piece of the overall puzzle, after the MC helps solve whatever problem they have.

But here's the thing, says Lumo: At the end of each route, when the world 'disappears', as it always does preceding the monthly loop reset, a tall, mysterious man with an eyepatch appears, and … 'erases' that loop's heroine from existence.

(I should note here that, when Lumo mentions the primary villain of her story, a sharp pain in my head forces me to close my eyes and lie down for a bit.)

Lumo's the second-to-last route of her story. The last route before what she calls the endgame, or True End.

Lumo says she's plot-crucial for two main reasons.

You see, 1) she's not a human. This makes her immune to being erased by the mysterious eyepatch man.

And 2) … Well, maybe I'll let her describe it in her own words.

"… I am … not only … a doll. There is … a tabulation … mechanism … inside me."

(It takes me a while, and a bit of further prying for explication, to realize she means she's basically a computer.)

"Yes. … My architects … were not … of the world … my story … takes place in."

"Wait, are you saying you're … an alien?"

Lumo looks up at me. Since her face is frozen in the same expression, I can't tell what emotion she's trying to convey. (Especially since she talks in that slow monotone …)

"… Perhaps. I … am not … sure. I don't believe … we ever explore … that part … of my … backstory."

I ask her what kind of computational tasks she's used for, and she tells me that (ellipses removed for readability):

"Every moment in time can be represented by a sort of checksum. That might be used for a sort of parity check. Everything that has happened up to that point, is the data used to calculate that moment's hash. The world my story is set in, the technocrats have a monitoring machine that's constantly calculating hashes from the environment.

"If you can account for every corpuscle, you can reconstitute any moment in time. And that's the key to remembering.

"But the hash function works only one way, you see. You can reduce each moment in time to a string of data—but you can't reconstitute that string of data back into the moment in time."

I actually (kinda) get what she's talking about.

Remember, that I spent a decade-plus as an office grunt; and while I wasn't directly involved in the day-to-day programming, I had to familiarize myself with the tools the coders used. The checksum crap she's describing was basically how we did source code version control.

Lumo continues (most ellipses removed; some retained for dramatic effect), "… But if you have that checksum string … Then it's just a matter of running simulations of different worlds until you arrive at that same checksum."

"But," I argue, "that would be a ridiculous amount of calculations to do. You're talking about brute-force simulating every possible permutation of reality, the position of every, err, 'corpuscle', to use your word, until you get a matching hash."

Lumo looks at me for a long time. "That is … the power … of technology …" She points upwards, to the sky. "… from up there."