Straining, plasticy noises simmer down as the construct shimmies back into place. I raise an eyebrow and send the message again. A bolt of magic connects my Class Card to the construct, and the wound appears on its back. No gradual shift, nothing falling out of its body, no sign of any reason for why it’s there in the first place.

  “Hm.” I swipe the message away. This time the wound just disappears, and there’s no message in response. “I wonder if this’d work on other constructs, or just this one. Gotta keep that in mind for later.”

  Jumble hurries up behind me, Euro at her side. “Are you okay?”

  I wave her off again. “I’m fine. Looks like the message puts the wound in the construct instead of giving us a response. Did you get the weird message?”

  “Weird message?” Jumble opens her Class Card and stares at it, eyes lighting with understanding. “Yep, that’s weird. But I guess this means we’ve found one of the wrong things, right? So we can keep searching?”

  Euro looks like they want to say something, but decides against it at the last moment. Instead, they just shake their head and start walking back to the bedroom while muttering something under their breath that I can’t make out. Jumble’s ears perk up and she turns with a huff to follow her friend.

  “I can hear you, you know.” She grumbles.

  I watch them go once more, hopefully for the last time, until they round the corner. After a few seconds the sound of searching barely leaves the bedroom, which is my signal to start my own search of the main room. There’s enough stuff here that picking everything up to ask questions about it is a waste of time, so instead, I need to be strategic. Ask things that can lead to multiple answers.

  Like… all the coloured sheets of fabric. If I was the quest, I’d make at least one of them an anomaly. I step over to the bean bag Euro had sat in and lean over to feel the fabric between my fingers. It’s soft, but despite how it looks, it isn’t smooth. Not like silk, but more like the material used to make cheap pajama pants. Almost… plasticy.

  “Don’t freak out; synthetic fibers are a thing.” I quietly remind myself. “Let’s see if there’s an obvious outlier here before I start asking questions.”

  I quickly go around feeling every sheet of colourful fabric. Each and every one of them has a very slightly different feel to it, and that different feel corresponds to a colour. All the pink ones feel the same, as do all the oranges, and so on. Probably just a difference in the dye or the material, but it’s a difference nonetheless. Which gives me a bunch of questions to ask. I open my Class Card to begin.

  ‘How many colours of fabric are in your living room?’

  (Question Recognized; Answer Forgotten)

  I don’t remember; I’d have to count again to see.

  It can’t remember. Well, that throws a wrench in things. Or… actually, this is just another way to tell me that the question isn’t important. Hopefully. Otherwise things are going to get really annoying fast. Alright, let’s try something else.

  ‘Do all your fabrics feel different?’

  (Question Recognized)

  Yes. All the different colours are different materials, so they’ll feel different.

  ‘Are they all yours?’

  (Question Not Recognized)

  Alright, maybe a little too general. ‘Are the fabrics in the living room all yours?’

  (Question Recognized)

  I decorated this room all on my own. If you want to see the plan, it should be around here somewhere.

  Plan? Oh, floor plan. That makes sense. ‘Is the plan in the living room?’

  (Question Recognized)

  No. I left it in my bedroom; but I don’t remember exactly where.

  Bedroom. Gotcha. “Jumble, Euro! Keep an eye out for anything that looks like a design document for the living room!”

  “I’m watching the construct’s responses on my Class Card!” Jumble calls back. “Can we send a few messages now?”

  I take a step away and spread my arms. “Go ahead. Give me a holler when you’re done.”

  “Okay! Thanks!” Jumble says, her words muffled by looking down. “Euro, what’s the exact wording? Ah, right, that…”

  The conversation grows quiet as Jumble remembers that she doesn’t have to yell. I scratch my neck in thought and scour the room with my eyes; even after they find the plan, the differences won’t necessarily stop there. Now, if the thing is like the trio of jars, I won’t even recognize it until I ask the construct about the anomaly.

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  Obviously, my eyes are drawn to the fabrics first. There’s a lot of them, and they’re strewn about generously and almost haphazardly. If one of them is out of place, then it’s just a matter of asking the construct about them over and over. Feels repetitive and kind of… pointless. So what around here is actually worth talking about? Not the furniture; that’s about what I’d expect from a one-person apartment. All the art on the walls–mostly covered in almost clear fabric–has next to nothing in common with each other. Now the knick-knacks on the shelves… that feels like the right place to start looking.

  I carefully maneuver around the edges of draping fabric and lean in close to a low shelf. Nothing on it immediately stands out to me; rocks, statues, little plants that are definitely made of plastic… and some books. Turned so the edge of the pages–not the spine–is facing me. The only reason someone would store a book like that is if they’re an absolutely insane person. I pull out my Class Card to see if Jumble’s still sending messages, and a dozen construct responses spring up to meet me with another appearing as I flick my wrist to send it away.

  “Do you think we’ll trigger a trapdoor if we pull them out?” Pearl asks eagerly.

  “No idea.” I say quietly. “Probably not, but a girl can hope.”

  I wrap my fingers around the bundle of four thin-ish books and pull them all out at once. None of them resist, no hidden switches click at their removal, and no magic surges through the air. Pearl huffs in disappointment, and I’m a little inclined to agree with her. For how much effort must’ve gone into recreating this place, there sure isn’t much to actually do in this subquest.

  “Shellrisen War volume two: Into the Glistening Depths.” I read off the back of one of the books. “Our glorious paindne heroes delve deep into enemy territory, finding saddening enemies and unlikely allies as they venture deep in an attempt to rid the world of the shellraiser scourge once and for all. …Hm. Glistening Depths. Where do I remember that from?”

  “It’s kind of close to my full name. Kind of. Well, it has the word ‘depths’ in it, so halfway there. Is that it?” Pearl nods to herself without waiting for my answer. “It definitely is. I wonder how propagandaliciouos these books are.”

  That’s definitely not a word. But she’s right; this sounds exactly like the kind of ‘fantasy’ book you’d give someone if you were indoctrinating them to your cause. I set the other two down and flip through the pages, scanning the completely illegible text while Pearl giggles to herself in amusement.

  “Oh, wow, this is poorly written. Really, really poorly written. Wait–stop there.” She leans in, suddenly lazer focused on the page I’m in the process of flipping over. “That page is written in future tense. All the others are past-tense.”

  “What, like a prophecy?” I ask while flipping back to the page. “Is it written all that differently from the rest of the book?”

  She studies the page with an ever-deepening frown. When she finishes she leans back, sighs, and rubs her hands down her face with a mixture of exasperation and onset tiredness.

  “It’s literally a page from a different book. There’s a paragraph of dialogue that starts halfway through, and all the characters aren’t the same as the ones on the pages before or after it. Then the book just continues on like there isn’t a page from a random other book stuck in there with the others.”

  “And how the hell was I supposed to know that?” I ask with an annoyed sigh. “This quest really was just made for Paindne. Should I rip the page out?”

  Pearl shakes her head, her face still obscured by hands. “Just put it face-down on the table while we check the others. Maybe it’s a… series gimmick, and we’d be damaging our chances of clearing the subquest by ripping it out.”

  “No sense not being careful, I guess.” I hold the book open with my thumb as I set it down pages-first on the table. “Might as well check the other two just in case; books one and three could tell us… if…”

  I frown as I pick up the second book, realization slapping me across the face like a scorned lover. For more reasons than one. Reason number one; the book I’m holding is labeled sixteen of the same series. Reason number two; the system translated the back cover, but not the contents of the book. Reason numero tres; all the front covers are solid grey. Finally, the last reason; the other book is number one-hundred and thirty-three. And… reason last plus one, I guess, is that they stopped using the full title at some point and now it’s abbreviated as ‘S.W.’.

  “How far apart were these written?” I ask in disbelief as I open book one thirty three. “Even at two books a year, that’s over sixty years of publishing.”

  Pearl swallows hard. “Try one book every two years. The front page has a list of all the titles, and they’re all two years apart.”

  “A single series that’s gone on for… two hundred and sixty-six years. How long was the system using this facility?”

  “At least that long.” Pearl states. “From these dates, there’s _____.”

  I wince. “Censorship.”

  She grimaces. “Really? I can tell you how far apart they’re published, but not the exact years? Fine. I guess the system just wants to be petty. I don’t even know if it reset the calendar once it got rid of all the shellraisers. Skim through the book, please, just in case there’s another future page.”

  I shift the book in my hands and ruffle through the pages. Pearl stares intently at the pages with a focus that’s almost alarming, pages flying by under her watchful eye. The halfway mark flies by. Then the three-quarters mark. My thumb hits the back cover without Pearl saying a single word; her face is just… confused.

  “Nothing at all?” I almost raise my voice in surprise. “Guess we shouldn’t be surprised. One outlier doesn’t make a pattern.”

  “No no no–there’s something weird about it. It’s just not as obvious as the first one. Flip to the back. I need to read it.”

  ‘Need’? That’s worrying. I flip the book to the front, just to make sure there isn’t a cover on this one, then swap to the back. Scratches deep enough to penetrate the cover completely conceal whatever words were there. The spine with the volume number and title is the only indication of what the book actually contains. I flip to it and quietly read it to myself.

  “S.W. volume one-hundred and thirty three; A Scream for Freedom.”

  Pearl nods solemnly. “That’s what the spine says. But the actual contents of the book aren’t even close to embodying that title; either the author put something random as a title, or the contents of this book aren’t for this title.”

  “Hrm. And what does that mean for us?”

  “A little too much. Here. Flip to a random page and I’ll translate for you.”

  “Um, sure?” I do as she asks until she holds a hand out for me to stop. “Right here?”

  She swallows hard. “All I need is three sentences. Here… here goes. ‘Knowing that they could not succeed alone, the party of adventurers called on the aid of the strange people who appeared out of nowhere. These mostly hairless bipeds–these humans–fought with a desire to survive long forgotten in the paindne. One that, at this moment, Darb wishes she could muster for herself.”