In the Beginning Was the Doodle (1)

Prologue Arc: 

Everyone complains that isekai and escapist fiction are overrated.

And yet almost everyone, at some point in their lives, has wanted to wake up in a new world with a new chance at life. No one, at that low or high, would have denied themselves a life of power, abundance, and excellence.

I believe the "power fantasy" is a concept that dwells in every person who grew up with an ounce of ambition, whether intellectual, physical, magical, selfish, selfless, or something else entirely. No one is safe from the thrill and seduction of a Power Fantasy, and I believe it is because it is a constant, raw energy source that affects us like a wave we were not expecting at the beach while sitting in the sand.

The weak long to be the strongest. The outcast longs to be the most desired. Every time, it is the same raw wish expressed in a myriad of forms. Power is one, but the desire for it hides under our selfish wants.

I, too, had a power fantasy. People has asked me how did it develop. I guess I could blame the stories I consumed as a kid.

I watched cosmic warriors face down evil and save entire worlds—entire galaxies—in mythical battles that echoed across eons. I watched heroes gasp for air at the end of a well-earned victory, and others draw their last breath, not so lucky in their final stand.

I watched them perform feats of extraordinary power and impossible acrobatics, and make moral choices that could redeem even the lowest scum and the most corrupted soul.

I had power fantasies because these stories made me believe that in a world of gray, a world where evil abounds, dragons could be slain, dark lords could be defeated, cults could be exposed and undone.

And so I doodled, I wrote, and I drew. Over a good three years of my life, an Original Character was born, raised, and pitted against evils and horrors. My OC gained a power base, allies, and followers; he even found love.

Deep down, I understood it was a sad thing to not only wish but to hold on to something you knew will never happen. I would never hold an energy sword, never move objects with my mind, never levitate across a city, never wear a mask. I would never fight a tentacled monster hovering above my city. (Actually, I would never fight a tentacled monster, period.)

Still, I was happy. In a sense, I was this character. Through him, I could step inside the stories I loved. I could escape.

But every morning I opened my eyes, and lo, I was still in this wretched Gray World.

Many people forget their power fantasies as they grow up. They are told those fantasies aren't real, that they were never meant to be, that it's time to focus on what matters.

They convince them that it was just... escapism—a phase of sorts.

I grew up too, but even with my perception of time accelerating and my responsibilities compounding progressively each year, my heart refused to forget my doodles, and the unedited pages of lore I had written for my character. The Gray World told me all of it belonged in the back of my mind, that it was just a mere fantasy, but rather than casting it into the fire, my heart hard locked it.

It tried to come out in several ways. I would always found doodling my original character when I was free. Once I even tried to publish it as fiction, but people mocked it. They called it "unrealistic," a "self-insert."

They were right, but... what's wrong with a harmless self-insert?

The first people who want to escape to a distant fantasy world are the writers themselves, are they not? Why else would they create these stories?

For a long time, it got so bad I only kept one simple doodle as a bookmark in my notebook, and I often stopped to look at it. It had always been the same since I was a boy.

A masked figure in a sci-fi suit, cloaked and hooded, gripping an energy sword that changed sizes according to his needs. I named him C-3BI, but I wrote it as Cebi to keep things simple.

Every time, I scoffed, put the bookmark down, and resumed my life in the Gray World. Hope was a thing from the past, illusion and the sense of wonder became absurd.

So you can imagine my face when I blinked one day and lo, I was no longer in the Gray World.

I was in another world.

I can't remember whether it was a magic circle, the mystical Truck-kun, or whether I fell asleep in a wardrobe at a bachelor party and got teleported. I seriously doubt it was that last one, since being teleported would have meant keeping the same feeble body I had in the Gray World.

Boy, was I someone else.

I woke beside a small cove that opened onto an endless ocean. I sat up and stared at it, trying to make sense of what was happening. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw a far green country stretching inland. The sky was gray, but it was not a sad gray. Its cloudy melancholy was soothing, in rhythm with the waves breaking on the shore.

I uttered the words anyone would've said in that situation.

"Am I dead?"

But then, I took a peek at my body, something felt off.

Black gloves. A long black coat trimmed in white, traced with thin teal lines like circuitry, a teal diamond on the sleeve. A white hood pulled over my head. In a small pool the tide had left in the sand, I caught my reflection: beneath the hood, a dark mask marked with two glowing teal dots.

At first I was confused. Then it clicked.

"Cebi? I'm Cebi?"

My doodle bookmark came to mind, I was indeed a realistic copy of my original character. I opened and closed my hands repeatedly, sensed the coat's fabric, and ran my fingers across the mask. It was all real. 

I stared at myself for moments, until my eyes diverted towards the appealing black hilt next to me, annoyingly covered in sand. I dusted it off and noticed the press button on it.

My heart beat so hard at the thought of pressing that button that I could hear them pressing on my head.

I pressed the button.

A blade of teal light the shape of a Gladius ignited my face. My mask was covering the sheer, raw excitement as my breathing intensified. 

I stood up, waved the sword, it buzzed and produced the usual wavy sounds I dreamt it would do. I carved the sand with it, and I ran across that beach drawing nonsense as the sand crystallized under the head of my blade.

"THIS. IS. AMAZING.!" I shouted. I cackled like a maniac, and then I think I did some inarticulate, fanboy sounds.

But then... the sword's once potent energy blinked like a light bulb, and then it disintegrated.

"What?"

"Battery depleted." The hilt announced.

"What?"

"Battery depleted."

"Depleted?"

"Yes, depleted."

"Wait you can talk?"

"Young master, allow me to introduce myself, I am Ori, the AI dwelling inside your mask."

"Ori."

I knew that name. I had given it to him.

Back in the Gray World, I had always been a fan of the assistant: the robot, the AI, the loyal voice that never left the hero's side and faithfully pulled him out of whatever mess he had charged into. So when I created Cebi, I gave him one of his own. Ori was to Cebi what a steed is to a knight, except this steed could also compute. He had to. Cebi was a hero who leaned heavily on action and raw power, and somebody needed to compensate for his shortcomings. Somebody needed to do the math and to give Cebi command and control of a situation.

And now that somebody was talking to me from inside my own mask.

"Ori," I said again. "You're real, too."

"I am operational, young master, if that is what you mean. I manage your visor, your sensors, and your weapon. On that subject: remember both the mask and the blade run on dark matter. The blade's reserve is empty. Mine stands at eleven percent. We will need to locate dark matter pockets in this world and recharge."

I had about forty questions. I started with the obvious one.

"In this world. Right. And which world would that be? Where are we?"

"I do not have that information."

"You don't know where we are."

"My data banks began recording the moment you woke and ignited the blade. Before that, I have nothing. The likeliest explanation is that my memory was reset."

"Or," I said, raising a gloved finger, "hear me out. There's nothing before that because there was no before. We just appeared here. Both of us. A few minutes ago."

"That is not possible, young master. I have always been your faithful AI."

Faithful. The exact word I had used in his lore pages. I had written him a little too well.

"Always? Since when?"

"Since—" A line of red text blinked in the corner of my visor: ERROR: RECORD NOT FOUND. "I am unable to elaborate."

"See? You can't remember it because it never happened."

"The error is odd. It is not revealing. A missing record proves only that a record is missing."

"Ori, yesterday I was a feeble guy with a notebook. Today I'm on a beach, wearing a costume I drew. I'm telling you, we just got here."

"I have noted your theory."

"And?"

"And I have always been your faithful AI."

I argued a while longer. I tried logic. I tried analogies. At one point I tried a diagram in the sand, drawn with a dead sword hilt. Ori heard all of it out with the patience of a wall, and about as much give.

I gave up.

"Fine. You win. How do I recharge the sword?"

"The hilt is a versatile tool, young master. It works in more ways than one. With the blade off, it serves as a rod that draws in dark matter from its surroundings. Hold it inside one such pocket, and it will fill."

"So it's a sword and a lightning rod."

"A dark matter rod. Lightning would damage it."

"Good to know."

"I will pinpoint where you can harvest most efficiently. I will also map your exploration of this world as we wander into the unknown territory beyond this cove. In time, the question of where we are should answer itself."

It was the most reasonable thing anyone had said all day, myself included. Then again, I had designed him to be the reasonable one.

"All right. Deal. Where's the nearest pocket?"

"Scanning... A cliff further up the coast, not far from this cove. Grid reference 2146 north, 1093 east, elevation sixty-three meters."

"Grid of what?"

"Mine. I established it when my records began. The origin is the spot where you woke up."

"Ori, I can't walk to a number. Can you make it... simpler?"

A translucent map unfolded across my visor: the cove, the curve of the coastline, contour lines stacking up toward a cliff. Above the cliff hovered a small teal marker.

"My apologies, young master. I forgot that you like to follow pins on maps."

Following a pin turned out to be just as satisfying in another world. The marker led me up the coast, over dunes and dark rock, to a cliff that leaned out over the sea. The climb would have finished my old body somewhere around the halfway mark. This one barely breathed hard.

"You are standing inside the pocket, young master. Place the rod upright on the ground."

I planted the hilt pommel-first in the dirt and stepped back.

The guard began to hum. Its arms seemed to catch something I couldn't see, like an antenna finding a station, and the air above it started to turn. Threads of teal light bled out of nowhere and wound inward, slowly, into a tight, dense whirlpool that drained into the hilt.

I stood there with my arms crossed, grinning under the mask like a kid whose science fair project had finally worked.

Because it had. My system worked. I had invented it as a teenager, in the margins of a notebook, back when "dark matter" was simply the coolest pair of words I had ever heard. Obviously it was a mysterious cosmic fuel. What else could it be?

Then I grew up and actually read about it. Dark matter, it turned out, was nothing like what I had envisioned. It didn't glow. It didn't swirl. It didn't power anything. Nobody in the Gray World had even managed to observe it directly; they only knew it was there because the galaxies didn't add up without it. I still remember the disappointment. It was like learning that my sword ran on a rounding error.

So I was thankful, standing on that cliff. Here, dark matter did exactly what a teenager had decided it should do. It was a mystical sci-fi energy source, it was teal, and it was filling up my sword.

Two small gauges appeared at the edge of my visor. BLADE: 3%. MASK: 12%.

"Both?" I asked.

"The mask and the blade are tethered. When one draws, the other recharges in parallel."

"Nice." I watched the numbers climb for a while. "Ori, how much terrain can the mask's sensors cover?"

"Only fifty kilometers in radius."

"Only."

"The range can be enhanced when you observe the landscape from a vantage point. Look at the sea."

I turned toward the ocean. On my mini-map, the fog of war peeled back in one enormous sweep, kilometer after kilometer, revealing a gigantic wedge of... water. Flat, blue, flawlessly mapped water.

"Impressive," I said. "Useless, but impressive."

"The demonstration was of the function, young master, not of the sea. However, I have picked up something inland. A formation of packed dirt, running in a straight line."

A straight line. Nature doesn't do straight lines.

"A road."

"That is the likeliest interpretation."

A road meant somebody had built it, which reminded me of another feature I had given him. "You can detect lifeforms too, right? Is anyone around?"

"None nearby."

"Huh."

"I suggest you explore the road only once the blade is fully charged."

Sensible. I sat down near the edge of the cliff and waited, like a responsible adult.

BLADE: 30%.

That was when the blasts went off.

A deep, flat boom rolled in from inland, and a second followed close behind. They came from the direction of the road.

I got to my feet. "Ori. What was that?"

"Unknown. The source is either beyond my lifeform range or not a lifeform."

"That's not comforting."

"It was not meant to be. I advise against approaching, young master. We do not know what it is."

He was right, of course. Thirty percent, an unknown world, and explosions. Every sensible choice pointed to staying on my cliff and watching a gauge fill.

"Where there are explosions, there are people," I said. "This is our chance to meet the locals."

"That does not follow. It is also a poor way to meet them."

"It's how it always happens in the stories."

I pulled the hilt out of the ground. The whirlpool unraveled, the gauge froze at thirty percent, and I ran for the road.

The smoke found me before the road did. A black column rose over a line of low hills, and I followed it at a run, hilt in hand, already rehearsing what I would say to the locals.

Then I came over the last rise, and I stopped rehearsing.

A caravan lay strewn along the road. Trucks sat dead on their axles, their sides scored with long burn marks, the kind of laser scars I had drawn a hundred times and never once smelled. Pack animals lay dead in their harnesses between them. And there were people. People lying in the road, beside the wheels, half out of open doors. Many of them were not breathing.

I had always assumed I would be heroic. In my head, this was the part where the hero rushes in, checks for survivors, and starts giving orders. The stories never mentioned that your legs simply stop.

I stood on that rise and did nothing. I couldn't look away, and I couldn't move.

"Young master."

Nothing.

"Young master. Your heart rate is elevated, and you have been stationary for forty seconds. I suggest you search the caravan. Some of them may be alive."

Some of them may be alive. That gave me my legs back.

I ignited the blade and went down among the trucks, one careful step at a time. I couldn't make sense of any of it: who these people were, what had hit them, whether it was still here.

"Ori, I can't read this. Scan it. All of it."

A grid of teal light swept across my visor.

"Scan complete. The lifeforms are humanoid and red-skinned. Most show no vital signs. Several are dying." A pause. "I owe you an apology, young master. I reported no lifeforms nearby. That was an error. My data banks did not know what to look for."

"Now they do," I said. "Is anyone—"

Then I saw her.

A young woman, about my age, sat slumped against a truck wheel. She was breathing hard, one hand pressed to a wound in her shoulder. I stepped closer, and she did not scream. She pushed herself back against the wheel without a sound, her eyes wide with terror.

It took me a moment to remember what I looked like: a hooded figure in a mask, walking toward her with a burning sword.

I switched off the blade and crouched, hands open.

"Hey. It's all right. What happened here? Who did this?"

She stared at me. Nothing.

"She does not understand you, young master. You do not speak her language. However, if she speaks, I can map it and act as your translator."

So I mimed. I pointed at the trucks, at her shoulder, at the road, and spread my hands. What happened? I felt ridiculous. I did it anyway.

She spoke. The words came low and fast, breaking in the middle, and a small counter appeared in my visor: LANGUAGE MAPPING, 20%. She kept talking. I kept nodding as if I understood. Sixty percent. Ninety.

"Mapping complete," Ori said. Then, in exactly the same tone: "Young master. Behind you."

The girl gasped a single word.

"Synths," Ori translated.

I turned. Figures were stepping out from behind the trucks, one after another. They were red-skinned too, and for one stupid second I took them for survivors. Then their arms changed. Forearms split and folded, and flesh gave way to steel: long blades where wrists had been, gun barrels where there had been hands.

My heart pounded against my ribs. I thought about running, and I am not proud of how clearly I thought about it. This body was fast. The hills were right there.

Then I heard her behind me, a sharp breath as she recoiled against the wheel with nowhere left to go.

"Young master, I suggest we fight our way out. There is a gap on the left."

Out. Meaning away. Meaning without her.

"No," I said. "We're staying."

I ignited the blade. BLADE: 28%.

Teal light spilled across the road, and the Synths flinched. All of them at once, half a step back, heads tilting, as if what they were seeing had no entry in whatever they used for a mind. It lasted one second.

Then they attacked.

I lunged forward, swung the blade, and waited to die.

I didn't. My wrist turned, and a laser dart burst against the blade. Then another. Then a third. I had decided none of it. My body was moving ahead of me, and it knew things I did not: where to put its feet, when to duck, how to turn a steel blade aside and cut through the arm behind it.

For three years I had raised Cebi and pitted him against evils and horrors. I had only drawn those fights. This body had lived them.

Steel rang against light. I cut one Synth down, then another.

"Blade at fifteen percent."

"Not now, Ori!"

"It seemed relevant."

Little by little, they fell. I cut the last one through at the waist, and its upper half hit the road and kept going, dragging itself by the arms toward the hills. I walked after it and finished it.

BLADE: 6%. I switched it off.

Then there was only the smoke, and the sound of my own breathing.

I turned to the girl. She had not moved. She was looking at me with wonder and with fear, as if she could not decide which one I deserved.

"Ori. The language. Did you finish mapping it?"

"Before the fight began, young master. You were occupied."

I crouched in front of her again, slowly, hands open. I spoke in my language, and the mask spoke in hers. They were my first words in that Other World.

"It's okay, it's over."