Work Text:
[SLEEP SIMULATION COMPLETE / LOADING STARTUP SEQUENCE]
[LOADING]
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[ERROR / STARTUP FILES CORRUPTED]
[INITIATING HARD REBOOT]
[INITIÁxçG]
[ŽsšINITÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊÒÓÔÕÖ]
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There’s a supermarket shoved up against Jaime’s room. It wasn’t there yesterday, but when Khaji Da reaches to its sensors for confirmation, the only response is a dull, sustained buzzing. Access to Jaime’s senses, on the other hand, is still functional, and all of them (well, the relevant ones) register it too. The rooms open up into each other, walls clipping through at strange angles, and when Khaji Da tries to ask Jaime to explain, the question comes out of Jaime’s mouth instead of through their cerebral link. “Query: host/friend Reyes-Jaime, please elaborate. How is this possible?”
Jaime’s mouth is heavy and wet, and Khaji Da is suddenly, powerfully aware of every movement it makes.
[I dunno, bug. How d’you think?]
Khaji Da stares at place where the walls meet, through Jaime’s eyes. “No data is forthcoming.” The walls’ edges begin to decay into fractals as it watches. Jaime’s presence feels wryly sympathetic, from somewhere near the base of Khaji Da’s skull.
[Well, staring at it isn’t gonna make it go away. Besides, we might as well take advantage of this—Mom put us on grocery duty for today, remember?] Khaji Da blinks.
“Yes. Of course.” This is familiar enough. Humans require organic fuel, and the supermarket is right there. Maneuvering off the bed and into a standing position is harder than Khaji Da anticipates, although once it’s up the walking is easy enough. Jaime’s body is still wearing nothing but boxer shorts, but given that no one in the supermarket is staring at them, either, Jaime lets it go. When they reach the first aisle, Khaji Da stops short, staring at the products. The staring continues for several seconds—or minutes, or hours? Khaji Da’s internal clock is malfunctioning along with all the external ones in sight, spinning wildly back and forth along their paths. After a while, Jaime takes pity and gives the cerebral link a nudge.
“I—yes?” The product labels are somehow written in a script that Khaji Da cannot read and does not recognize, despite being in possession of the largest language database currently in use by the Reach empire. It’s incredibly distracting.
[Milk.]
“Yes.” Out of habit, Khaji Da reaches for the armor’s flight sequence, before realizing that it, too, is inaccessible. Walking will have to do.
[The supermarket’s not that big.]
“Efficiency is important.” Jaime laughs; it reverberates strangely through the link.
The milk is in the back, with all the other refrigerated goods. On the way there, Khaji Da passes three different products packaged in non-intersecting Klein bottles, and two more whose labeling has been skewed three feet to the left of the product itself. Jaime does not comment on either of these, so Khaji Da ignores them.
There's a lot of milk on the back shelves; in fact, there is nothing else along the entire wall of the store. Khaji Da supposes that makes at least as much sense as anything else. It walks closer, trying to decide if it matters which individual milk carton it chooses. There’s different kinds, aren’t there? These all look the same, though, so it grabs for one of the nearest ones—only to have its hand pass right through the handle.
That’s probably not supposed to happen. It tries again, aiming for a different carton this time, but the results are the same. “Error.” It takes two more tries before Khaji Da gives in, calling for the armor. “Host/friend Reyes-Jaime, activate function: localized mass manipulation field. Please.” There’s a pause before Jaime responds, buzzing good-naturedly in the back of Khaji Da’s mind.
[No, dude, you have to use your hands.]
Khaji Da stares at its hands, turning them over a few times like there might be an intangibility toggle hidden somewhere on them. There's not. “Clarify,” it says, but Jaime appears to have decided that that was enough “clarification,” and hums softly instead. The hands have not, at any point, stopped being hands. Khaji Da curls each of its fingers in turn, examining them more closely. It makes an abortive grasping gesture, then reaches out for the milk again. This time Khaji Da is successful, and the resultant shock nearly makes it drop its prize. There’s no telling whether it’ll have to repeat the whole thing if that happens, though, so Khaji Da recovers quickly, and keeps its grip firm on the handle. “Milk obtained,” it says, turning around to retrace its steps.
It gets as far as the front of the aisle before it becomes apparent that the way into Jaime’s room has vanished. That’s fine. The supermarket does have front doors of its own, after all. This thought, however, brings Jaime up fast.
[No, no! You can’t just leave. See the cashier there?]
“Yes. Human acknowledged.”
[Go over and talk to her first.]
There’s no one else standing in front of the register until Khaji Da is nearly there, figures materializing out of the air like they’d never been anywhere else, and it’s about to brush past them when Jaime interrupts again. [You gotta wait your turn, now. No cutting in line.]
So Khaji Da waits. It waits quite a while, actually. It’s impossible to tell exactly how long, with the clocks still spinning, but the line is only going at a moderate pace. By the time Khaji Da gets to the front, it feels like it might fall asleep standing up, and isn’t that a strange sensation? Generally Khaji Da only “sleeps” when Jaime does, because Jaime needs to, and that isn’t even true shutdown, what with all the sensor programs and threat assessments still running in the background. The sensation of actually being tired is new and… well, it’s not exciting, but new data is always valuable. It’s a shame Khaji Da can’t reach the memory banks necessary to tag and file it away for later.
Then, finally, the cashier begins to ring up Khaji Da’s single carton of milk. She seems incapable of speech, and stares mutely at Khaji Da, waiting. Khaji Da stares back. Ah, of course. This is a monetary transaction—familiar territory. Unfortunately, it remembers too late that it left Jaime’s wallet back in his room, and so, for lack of anything else to do, continues to stare at the cashier. Jaime sighs.
[Dude, what happened to all that fancy Reach business programming? Come on, we’ve gotta go put the milk back.] Khaji Da picks the carton up and turns around, only to find that the supermarket layout has changed drastically. The milk section no longer appears to be in the back. Unsure, Khaji Da takes a few steps into a nearby aisle, then attempts to deposit the milk there.
[Back where we found it.]
“Error. Impossible: floorplan has been altered.”
[No, it hasn’t.]
Khaji Da looks around again, confused. “Locate milk section.” This time Jaime obliges, and a small beacon lights up in Khaji Da’s mind. It floats slowly back and forth along the map, but Khaji Da is taking what it can get, at this point.
When the milk is back where it’s supposed to be (probably), Khaji Da exits the supermarket in order to head back to Jaime’s house. The trip starts out familiar, enough that Khaji Da can navigate without having access to the maps that it usually has, although the buildings keep stacking themselves in strange geometric patterns, and more than one side alleyway opens into an optical illusion. Two blocks in, however, and between steps, El Paso vanishes, leaving what looks like empty space behind. Khaji Da recognizes it immediately as the bleed, and freezes.
“Host/friend Reyes-Jaime. Please explain.”
[Oh, uh. This is that space between dimensions, right?] Jaime’s presence feels sluggish, the same way it does when he has to wake up early for school, or he’s been in school for too long. He’s also wrong, but Khaji Da doesn’t have the information to correct him on hand.
“Query: nature of translocation?”
[Uh…] Jaime goes silent for a few seconds. [I don’t actually think we went anywhere. Just, you know, keep walking.] What? That’s not how the bleed works, and it doesn’t answer Khaji Da’s question. There’s not much of a choice, though, so it keeps going—more slowly, this time, as if the bleed might swallow them up at any moment.
“Host/friend Reyes-Jaime.”
[What’s up?]
“Previous visits to supermarket did not result in quantum anomalies. Query: what is happening?”
[I dunno, this feels pretty normal to me.]
“Impossible.” Jaime laughs. “... Highly improbable.”
[It’s all perspective, scarab.]
“Elaborate.” But Jaime’s gone again, back behind the boundary of Khaji Da’s mental space. Khaji Da continues to walk.
The trek through the bleed is long, and silent in a way that suggests sound would not ordinarily be capable of traveling here, despite the fact that only moments ago it spoke to Jaime out loud—Khaji Da’s footsteps make no noise, and there is no sound to the breathing that its body is, presumably, doing. Khaji Da presses a hand to its chest, just to make sure.
Another indeterminate length of time passes, and the bleed still persists, empty and unchanging. Yet for all its void, the bleed has somehow become suffocating—Khaji Da’s steps have turned hasty, its breath shallow, and Jaime has still not resurfaced, for aid or conversation or anything. For once, Khaji Da finds itself wishing for his chatter. “... Host/friend Reyes-Jaime.”
No answer.
Overhead, the emptiness of the bleed flashes away, revealing a dark shape against sterile blue lights; it’s only visible for the briefest fraction of seconds, but that’s enough for Khaji Da to identify it—the Reach Negotiator, looming and massive, reaching down towards the back of Khaji Da’s neck with claws outstretched. The image vanishes, but Khaji Da has seen enough, every instinct still left buzzing in aggression and anticipation of battle. The armor. Where is the armor? “Reyes-Jaime!” Still nothing. Khaji Da’s skin runs hot. It tries frantically to reach through the space where Jaime should be, meeting dull resistance again and again.
“Friend—”
“Jaime!”
“Battle protocols required!”
“You must—”
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[BATTLE PROTOCOLS: ONLINE]
Jaime wakes like he’s been smacked, and is immediately assaulted by a cacophony of sensations—the scarab’s yelling in his brain, he’s seeing in five different classes of electromagnetic wavelength, and he can hear every goddamn bird within a mile of his house all at once. And his armor’s on. Why’s the armor on.
“Khaji Da,” he tries to say. It comes out more like “Gnhh,” but Khaji Da gets the gist, and shuts everything down immediately. Jaime closes his eyes; pushes his fingers gently against them and rubs out all the crust in his eyelashes. He tries again.
“Hey. Are we being attacked? ‘Cause if not, I’m going back to sleep.” There’s no answer, but Jaime gets the distinct impression that the scarab is somehow very embarrassed about something. He cracks an eye open.
Half his outside wall is missing. Jaime closes his eye again, gives both of them another good press with the heels of his palms, and exhales deeply. He opens both eyes then, too tired to be truly angry, and stares blankly at the damage. Okay, not half, but there’s a pretty sizeable hole in the wall, shaped suspiciously like the armor’s cannon discharge. “Well?”
[ host/friend Reyes-Jaime / apologies ]
[ battle protocols / auto-activated during [sleep mode] ]
“You’re glitching?”
[ negative / current hypothesis— ] There’s a pause. Khaji Da is hedging. Jaime cannot believe this. The alien killing machine lodged in his spine is trying to hedge around the smoking hole in his bedroom wall.
“Yes?”
[ current hypothesis: error in [defragmentation cycle] / corrupted memory replay ]
[ result: [false sensor reading] ]
Jaime’s brows come down, confused, as he parses that. “... Are you telling me you had a bad dream?” Another pause.
[ analogy acceptable ]
“Oh my god.”