Ten Zero

It's been a week. I know logically that I've been here longer than that; after some back and forth charades with Ko-lee I was able to learn that I had been in a coma for 10 days. However, since I didn't end up remembering anything from it, I figured it didn't really count. Now though, I could actually count a week of wakefulness in the Warframe universe. That is 7 whole days of sleeping and waking in a house in the Warframe universe. 7 days of eating food in the Warframe universe. 7 days of completely normal, mundane activities, taking place in a universe that had flesh robots and magic void powers and corruption monsters floating around in it. Honestly, if I didn't know those facts, from where I was standing, I could have just been hanging out in some sort of odd recreation village, or new age hippie commune. Other than the fact that I was still struggling to understand what people were saying, this entire setup could've been transplanted to somewhere in California or Oregon and I wouldn't have really batted an eye. But the fact of the matter was that even if I hadn't seen any of it, it all still existed in the same place I did.

It was a weird thing to think about, and I kept getting hit with flashes of it as I was doing my best to focus on chores, or while I was eating, or hell, even while using the restroom. My brain would just drop in with a 'hey, you're taking a shit within Warframe', and I'd just be sat there like, yea, that is a true fact, even though it doesn't seem entirely relevant to the toilet. And then I'd just have to keep trucking along. I'd leave the bathroom, and I'd walk outside and start working on my words, or I'd grab a bite to eat, and no matter how much my brain kept bombarding me with the fact, I still had to participate in general everyday activities. As well as the not so general activities. For example, the day immediately following the realization, we were eating some jerky, and I was enjoying it a lot, so I tried get some information from Ko-lee about what animal it came from. Ko-lee just looked at me strangely, and told me it wasn't animal meat. Then I remembered, "oh yea, there's a flesh building that people eat. I'm eating tower jerky". It was a strange moment, as my brain tried to reconcile the seemingly impossible fact with the very clear reality of the meat in my mouth.

It wasn't bad either! The meat was well preserved, and salted, and while it wasn't something I'd want to eat every single day, that's only because I'd get bored, not because it tasted weird. It did make me curious as to what non-jerky tower flesh tasted like, but I found out from Ko-lee during one of our language lessons that Cetus was some distance away on foot; about two weeks of solid journeying. While I did ultimately plan to go there, I wasn't prepared to make that journey as of yet. Plus, I knew I would need to get someone to accompany me, since there was no way I'd be able to make that trip on my own. Beyond getting lost, I had no plans to get in another fight with a 'jackreature', more commonly known as a jakir-et. When I explained to Ko-lee that that was the thing that had attacked me, and given me my wound, she had grimaced, and nodded her head in acknowledgment, pointing at the scar on her nose. She had had a run in with one when she was much younger, and much like the one I fought, it had gone straight for the face and neck.

All that is to say, I'd need a chaperone to get there. While I was starting to get to know some people, like Nathom, it was likely going to be Ko-lee who got me there. She was the one I could hold the best conversation with, mainly because she was getting used to us needing to communicate half with words and half with hand signs. Plus, I'd be less likely to end up in another 'inside out shirt' debacle. It took a while for her to explain that not only was I wearing the shirt/top wrong, but I had spent that entire day responding to people and telling them that their top was on inside out. To be fair, the only reason it took a long time to explain, was because she had to stop every 5 seconds to start laughing again. I could see the humor though, so I took it in good stride. As of this moment though, I was no longer working on my words with Ko-lee. I was actually with Nathom, checking the lorrids. They were an incredibly neat piece of flora, although I couldn't get any answers on whether they were created intentionally, or if they were simply a product of their environment.

A lorrid was a round, nearly gray colored gourd that was totally inedible for humans. It could range from 5 pounds, all the way up to 50, and generally looked like a summer squash with a wider, flatter base. It was mostly used by the Ostron settlers as a method to filter chemicals and other undesirables out of their water sources. The process was pretty simple, and just involved plopping the lorrid into some water, and then leaving it be for a while. It had to be in the dark to mimic it's growth pattern, but that was easy enough to do by simply covering it with a heavy cloth. After about a week, it would have filtered out all of the chemicals, and nearly all the microorganisms, leaving almost entirely pure water. You'd still need to boil it if you were going to consume it directly, but it was a passive process that got the water 95% of the way to potability.

A single lorrid can purify up to 10 gallons of water in a week, depending on the size of the gourd, and can usually be used up to three times before needing to be discarded. As it gets used up, it starts to turn yellow, although the color would be different depending on the chemicals it absorbs. In our use case though, it would have the same tinge as the the leaves of the various flora in Lyka forest, which was the name of the chunk of forest I had woke up in. Having done this process for a few days, I was starting to get an understanding for why Nathom was so lassiez-faire about the whole process. While it was super important to get it done, you only needed to check the water for any container every 30 minutes or so. At maximum efficiency, that's exactly the amount of time it takes to check every container once. Alternatively, you could check each one every 2 to 3 hours, and not really notice a dip in water production. What's an hour or two compared to a week of marinating?

That being said, I had no plans to laze about like my mentor. If I wanted to convince Ko-lee to lead me to Cetus, I had to first convince her that it was worth her time and effort, and showing that I was actually trying when it came to the few assigned chores I had helped. "You are inakgm me look bad, Antimony," says Nathom, as I finish my final round for the day. "You tndo nede ot try os hard." I look at the brown haired man, whose eyes have the clear wrinkle of a suppressed joke. There were still words here and there that I wasn't able to understand, but I had enough context from what I did know that I could generally piece together the meaning of sentences. "Work hard, Ko-lee likes," I say, shrugging. Nathom just looked at me, a small smirk on his face. He's very clearly trying to goad me; my fragmented Origin missing the definite articles and prepositions needed to specify exactly what I'm trying to convey. "Ha. Ha. You're not gonna get me to fall for it. Again," I think, as I finish setting all my tools down and start making my way towards the house.

It wasn't that I didn't like Ko-lee... it was mainly that even considering the possibility felt like getting comfortable with being here. I had no intentions of staying in this universe, if I could help it, and so even if Ko-lee felt the same way, what would happen if I succeeded in going back home? "Oh, hello partners of mine. Sorry I've been gone for so long, I was sucked into an interdimensional portal that sent me to a video game universe. By the way, I know we're supposed to clear it with each other before we start seeing new people, but I had no service, so I hope you don't mind I hooked up with a Chief In Training from a village in said universe," I think to myself sarcastically. Plus, I had consumed enough media to know that getting entangled with the people in whatever new place just made it all that much harder to go home when presented with the option. "No, it's definitely better for me to keep my head straight and hands to myself. I'm literally asking for trouble otherwise."

I open the door to Ko-lee's place, and make my way towards the stairs, with the intent to get more practice in on my Origin with the flash cards I had been making. I don't really have a lot to do otherwise; Ko-lee had given me my phone back but the battery was at 37% percent and I really didn't want to spend time draining it until I could find a way to charge it. On top of that, while Ko-lee and Sanza do have a few books, it was all stuff that was too dense for me to parse through, and it was in Ostron on top of that. While I am technically learning Ostron and Origin at the same time, Origin is my main focus, and so I want to make sure to keep my focus there as much as possible. Luckily, Sanza was able to procure a children's book for me to read that's written in Origin, so I did have something with pictures and reference text side by side.

As I pass by the kitchen though, I see Ko-lee sitting at one of the tables. She waves me over, and I pivot into the room, taking a seat across from her. "Hey," I greet, trying to get a feel for why she might've been waiting for me. "Probably not my chores; I've been pretty anal about doing those to a T. Maybe she's got another children's book for me?" I think, as I look into her eyes. There's a focus there that I've grown to expect from Ko-lee; she has a one track mind, both positively and negatively. When she had her mind set on a task, it was like trying to redirect a moving train, which could either be very helpful or very frustrating depending on if you were in front of or behind the locomotive. "You want me?" She just looks at me, with an expression I can't entirely parse.

"Hey, Antimony. I want to ask semo questions. Aubt eoth future," she says, making sure to enunciate each word clearly and slowly, so that I can follow along. I just nod in response, and she continues, "We can understand cahe oethr better, so I want to ask you ainag. Where rae you from?" I take a moment as my brain chew on her words, trying to figure out how to explain the situation in it's entirety. It's tricky, because not only do I not have the vocabulary necessary to explain the nuances of where I'm from, but also because I still hadn't decided if it was something I wanted to explain fully. I had been thinking about the situation over the past few days, because I knew Ko-lee would want more information about me, and how I ended up in the forest, but just telling her the facts from start to finish (putting aside the difficulty of such an endeavor) was a cognito-hazard. Once she knew, she wouldn't be able to unknow, and I had no idea how she'd handle an idea like 'my entire universe is a fabrication, designed as a free-to-play video game in a higher reality'.

Of course, I'm not sure how much, if any of that is true. It could be that this entire universe is actually the spasms of a dying human mind, or it is real and the original game director actually has a portal in his house that he uses to pop in and out of for some creative inspiration. Overall, it just seems like a mess to get into, so my plan was to just stick with a refined version of my original statement from when she first asked me. "I do not know. I do not remember," I lie, leaning hard on my 6 years of theater training. "My memory is..." I try to think of a word like missing, or fragmented, but eventually land on "...broken." Ko-lee looks at me, seemingly unsurprised by my words. "That is okay, Antimony. Ubt awht rea your panls for the future? Where wlil ouy go?" she says to me, scanning my eyes as though trying to read my mind directly.

This is a much easier question for me to answer, because although I didn't have every step laid out on getting home, I knew that it would (in one way or another) need to involve the Tenno. Since we were out in the middle of effectively bum fuck nowhere, I would need to make my way to the closest place I can could get in touch with one (Cetus). From there though, my planning gets incredibly hazy. What I would actually say to a Tenno wasn't clear, especially since we were still pre-Second Dream, which I can easily tell from the fact that the moon is still missing. Success is 90% being in the right place at the right time though, so I know that ultimately I want to position myself so that I can strike when an opportunity is presented. "Cetus," I state to Ko-lee, nodding my head up and down. Ko-lee, for her part, remains silent, clearly wanting me to elaborate, so I continue, "Cetus. I want talk to Tenno."

Ko-lee's look sharpens even more somehow, and she prompts me to explain, but I know that explaining why I want to talk to the Tenno has all the same pitfalls as trying to explain my origin, if only shuffled around a bit. "Can not explain. Important." I say, doing my best to impress upon her my intention with the limited amount of words that I had at my disposal. "Important." Ko-lee just looks at me, clearly dying for more specifics. After nearly 10 seconds of silence between the two of us, Ko-lee simply sighs, and says, "I ma sorry, Antimony. Sanza seod not want Sharip ot hvae hiagyntn ot od thiw the Tenno. Ta estb, I cudol help you whit eth journey to Cetus-" but it's at this point I have to cut her off, overwhelmed by the flood of language. I do my best to wrap my head around everything I had heard up to that moment, and repeat it back to her to confirm. "Sanza not want Tenno? Sharip? I talk Tenno, I Cetus?" I ask, my brain feeling like it was in the middle of it's tenth set of pull-ups. "Yes Antimony. Fi you talk to the Tenno, you iwll eedn ot stay ni Cetus." Ko-lee just looks at me, with an expression that says that she doesn't think I'd last a week by myself.

For my part, I do think she's right. I have maybe 10% of the language down, and it's even less when I'm the one who has to speak it. Total immersion has been fantastic for my learning rate - "so much faster than French class" - but it can only speed me up so fast. If I were to try to make it on my own in Cetus, without someone there to lean on, I'd just end up as a bum in the market, relying on the generosity of people I could barely converse with. "Why Sanza no Tenno?" I ask Ko-lee, curious as to why he'd have an issue with them. I knew Konzu, and by extension, Cetus, worked with the Tenno. Sharip was an Ostron settlement, so it seemed like there wouldn't be any conflict there. But it was possible that it was a Sanza specific issue, and I was hoping that it was something I could solve. "He thinks tath htye rea dangerous. He thinks ew wlli eb tgiininv danger, if we dise with them. The Grineer lilw nokw fi Sharip eritesnds talk to the Tenno," says Ko-lee, with barely constrained frustration written on her face.

"Hmm, so this a Sanza specific thing. It's classic old people stuff; if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But it seems like the sticking point here is that the Grineer would know if one of the Sharip people talks to the Tenno. Which I guess makes sense, it's a two week journey on foot. They could probably just spot them during a fly-by or something. But I'm not part of Sharip, not really. I don't look like an Ostron member, and I literally just showed up out of nowhere. There's no way they'd connect me to Sharip if I went to converse with the Tenno. Even Ko-lee thought I was Corpus originally. Maybe I could convince him that it's safe having Ko-lee ferry me back and forth," I think to myself, musing over the possibilities that were laid out in front of me. "Ko-lee," I say, looking at her from across the table. "I talk to Sanza."