wenbmete

What if one morning you woke up with no memories? 

What if all you had was a video message you left for yourself, warning you that you were in grave danger? 

What if the only way to survive was in discovering what you forgot? 

And what if your biggest enemy was yourself? 

**

"There is a bug. It allows unmitigated access to the users' consciousness. You're the only one who knows. You must stop the release. You must stop them." 

That was the primal directive. Min needed time to understand, to accept. But time was the one thing he didn't have. 

He woke up with no memories. He only had the one video message he left himself to work with. The video told him he was a beta tester of Gaia, and he had discovered a bug that could very well be intentional. 

What he was asking of himself was to be a hero. But was that what he wanted? Was that really him in the video? 

If it was him, why go through all that trouble? Why did he delete all of his memories himself? 

Who were the people helping him from the shadows? Were they friends? Or, were they something else entirely? 

Who were those that were after him? Were they all related to Gaia? Or were there other secrets too? 

School was the perfect refuge. Friendless and unremarkable, he couldn't be hidden better. But with less than three months to graduation, he was running out of time...

osmosis

He cursed at how far his dorm was. Couldn't it be nearer? He was no athlete. He wasn't able to cover the vast distance fast enough. To make matters worse, classes had ended. His fellow students were out on the grounds, enjoying a relaxing walk, expending excess energy, or simply flirting. The one good thing about everyone being busy was that no one gave him a second look. 


 Sweating and huffing he locked himself in his dorm. He collapsed in the chair, feeling foolish and so very close to laughing at himself. He needed the prophecy of the giants to be able to see the meaning in his clue. He had been staring at the answer in Prof Wuchang's preface, but he couldn't see it then. 


 The Black Gate was a term referring to the black terminal. Although the terminal remained mostly the same from the old days, it was a lot more powerful as well as a lot more unnecessary for anyone but a specialised code writer. It was like the gateway separating the rest from the specialised code writers. And that was how the phrase was coined. The Black Gate was the terminal. And he had seen the Black Gate only hours ago. 


 He tapped on the tabletop, and the floating screen appeared. It was blank. And transparent. It wasn't difficult to see the black. 


 As he stared at the blank screen, he realised what the Black Gate meant for him. He aced math. He was in the Modern Evolution program. He was a student of sociology. He would never need to interact with the Black Gate. Unless, he was also something else. 


 He kept staring at the blank screen, unsure of what to do. There should be a clue or two in here. At least telling him what to do next. The old him seemed to be acting on a clear plan. 


 He started at the table. Then studied the chair, before moving to the bed, and finally ending at the cupboard. It seemed like forever, but he found nothing. But he was absolutely certain there was something. In the dorm. Maybe the very first clue, or a clue that was to be found early, was definitely hidden in the dorm. 


 What if he was looking wrong? What if the clue wasn't in the form he was expecting? 


 He made a list of what he had. The Black Gate. The note that brought him here. 


 And what did he need? The method for passing through the Black Gate. And an input method. 


 He stared at the table a long time before it struck. The tabletop. The blinking red light notified of a message received. The screed popped up with a tap on the tabletop. What if that was all he needed to do? 


 He returned to the chair. Extended his hands and rest them on the table. His fingers were floating a couple inches above. As he lowered them, just before they touched the tabletop, a keyboard appeared. He was grinning without explicitly intending to. 


 Now that he had the input method, he could begin. As he typed, the letters appeared on the screen as white characters. By the end of the first command, he had understood how he customised his system. All the frills were switched off. The interface was the most primitive kind. He felt comforted by it. 


 -: No file or directory under the name 'logs' 


 He froze. Could it be that simple? He didn't know what the other two were, but the first two were clearly the Beta Tester logs. Since there were only the two, they should have the bug. Shouldn't they? 


B-5