Round room

The man walked ahead, entering the ship. There were too many questions left unanswered for Uli to hesitate. There was no choice. But when he was about to cross the entrance, the man stopped and turned around.

"I am a very busy person, so you will start your studies immediately. There is basic knowledge you need to acquire before we can even understand each other. I will now disconnect the machine that lets me speak you language. Each morning I will talk to you once. By the seventh day, I will expect you to understand what I say. The ship's IA will guide you to a room. Inside it you will find everything you need to complete your task. Once you complete it, I will answer your simple questions and give you the means to answer the complex ones. we will also talk about your powers. Elemental affinities, I believe you call them here" the man scoffed and turned his back to him. As he disapeared into the ship, Uli could hear "What a ridiculous term".

Uli finally entered the vehicle. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were merged between them, forming oval shapes, and rendering it devoid of edges in a way that gave the inner grey structure a weird organic vibe. Like a hole in the earth, dug out by some worm or something. Uli felt like tripping very hard. Only with very hard psychodelic drugs had he seen such ridiculous things. Digital lights, panels and artifacts hanged around the corridors. He couldn't even start to comprehend their use. Uli came from a civilization that used stone, wood and, in some cases, baked clay to construct buildings. The few metals they knew, they used them to forge weapons, jewels, or little ornaments and the like. Being exposed to this kind of technology felt like a weird dream. A round pebble like thing with a big white dot levitated towards Uli. "Follow me, it said" its robotic femmenine voice echoed around the room. Any other demon would probably faint in the spot, but Uli just took out a cigarette, and forced his hand to stop shaking. After a brief pause, he followed the big pebble.

The robot light suddenly went red. An arm came out of its seemingly soft and edgeless surface, and tried to snatch his cigarette away. Uli easily moved the cigarette around with his mind, evading the little mechanical arm.

"Smoking is prohibited in this area. Please, surrender your cigarette, or prepare to be ejected"

Uli actually considered being ejected. After a few seconds and a two profound puffs, he threw his cigarette out of the ship, and exhaled the smoke on the robots red dot.

Naturally, the robot didn't even notice the provocation, and started levitating forward. The corridors were all very alike, and sudden turns and doors that opened suddenly in the walls made it impossible for him to even think about tracing his way back to the exit later on. After a long walk across the seemingly endless corridors, the round robot stopped, and Uli almost bumped into it.

"Here" it said.

Uli went into the circular room. It was almost empty. Only a small round carpet lied in the center of it. At his right, one of the walls started becoming transparent, and a giant window that followed the roundness of the walls gave him a spectacular view of the jungle. Very much like the one they saw from the black pillar.

"You will stay here for 7 days. Every morning you will receive a visit form the captain. Every 8 hours you will receive a meal. Soon, the ship with leave planet AB-7613, also known as Berlanga 1. Enjoy your stay."

The door of the room closed, and the robot levitated towards the wall, merging with it, and leaving Uli behind, with his mouth still open wide.

Uli walked around the room, carefully touching the walls of the room. They were soft and slightly warm. He couldn't feel any difference between the walls and the window. Then, he walked to the center of the room, and sat cross legged in the circular blanket. He noticed a slight rumble coming from beneath. Amazed, he stood up again and ran towards the window. He had noticed something. The vehicle was moving now! It was slowly moving upwards.

Uli realized it wasn't moving slowly. In fact, it was actually pretty fast. The long distance between the vehicle and the jungle made it more difficult to notice. As time passed, he started noticing something he had already read about. The roundness of the world. As the ship moved upwards, the horizon started curving more and more.

Uli's s silvery eyes were wet. His breath was fast. His face was as close to the window as it was possible to be. In front of him, he could see, fitting inside the window, everything he had touched, smelled or killed. A round giant world full of life and death stood in equilibrium, hanging around in the black, endless void. He could no longer see any meaning in his past struggles. He could no longer make sense of his past worries. Who was The Father in front of that verdant giant? What was money worth in front of the endless void? All the fucking, the killing. All the misery and joy happened somewhere in that sphere. Yet, there was no trace of it. If, suddenly, all civilization was wiped clean out of the world, or, if by some mysterious magic, the world turned back in time, way before their time came. Would the view even change? It most likely wouldn't, he answered himself.

Something changed inside of him in that very moment. He had never been the sensitive type, but his perspective of the world was crushed mercilessly. He was now pretty sure that, from that moment, he could only forget everything he thought he knew. Every bit of knowledge he had amassed with the years was most likely shallow and worthless. He had always been a very curious person. To the point where he would use that adjective to describe his most defining quality.

When the shock of these sights started to leave, only happiness and excitement remained. He forced himself to calm down to slowly let everything he had lived in the last hours permeate his soul.

He had killed The Father, he had faced some weirdos with strange machines that turned to ashes instead of dying and talked about stats and weird missions and locators, he had lost a friend and a mentor, and he had entered a ship with a powerful being that didn't even tell him his name. He had entered a flying invisible vehicle that flew so high that it left the world he was leaving in. He had seen his world from afar, and he had seen the space surrounding it.

He processed everything, and worked hard to supress the countless questions that arised in front of it. He forced himself to think about the weird and seemingly impossible mission that he had to accomplish. He was told that everything he needed was inside this room. But there were no language books at sight. His carpet was of a plain red color. It didn't have any information written in it.

Minutes went by, hours went by, and he could not find an answer to his problem.

He looked through the window the whole time.

Eventually, he fell asleep.