.hack//SIGN Fan Fiction ❯ .hack//TELEOLOGY ❯ Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Bjørn Island/ Svalbard /Norway

1430 Kilometers from CC Corp. European server

Sent 11:04pm GMT 11/8/26:

"TO: Baldersen@glu.usv.edu,loki1550@ominmail.com

FROM : am0taku@yahoo.com

SUBJECT: CC Cover-up?

Hey Njord,

u hav 2 check MacAnu, CC Corp is blocking it! u think the rumors are true? If u havent heard the rumors I atached them.

There is an attachment to this email, scan and download file contents? Yes No

--------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------

Do you Yahoo!? Go to http://www.yahoo.com/ to start your own FREE Yahoo! mail account!"

Njord Baldersen, professor of economics for the University of Svalbard, forwarded the email to his home address, it would reflect poorly on him to be caught playing an MMORPG during office hours. From one o'clock PM to four PM Baldersen sat in his office, waiting for students to enter his office and ask questions regarding assignments, material for review, clarification of discrepancies on the syllabus etcetera. That was what he was waiting for; in the seven years he had taught it had never happened. The odds of getting caught were astoundingly low, but it he wasn't paid to play computer games and he adhered to his principles. Njord glanced out his second story window and saw the students moving about the university grounds. In comparison to the rest of the world USBI (University of Svalbard on Bjørn Island) was tiny. But for Norway USBI was a very large institute. There were some two thousand people enrolled. (It was a campus wide joke that the University, located on an almost uninhabitable island and well north of the Arctic Circle, received more applications and had more enrollments than the University of Trondheim, located north and the slightest bit east of Norway's capital, Oslo, and having much more tolerable living conditions.)

Baldersen was the only person to live on the island year-round. The rest of the staff and students rotated on or off the island every three months. Four years was an unhealthy amount of time to spend on Svalbard. Like all polar regions, days and nights had little distinction in brightness. It would be noon for weeks on end, with the sun gleaming off the ice and snow. During these times people walked outside either squinting or wearing sunglasses. Then during the winter and accompanying perpetual night students would walk around campus tripping and fumbling. Often freshmen felt their way around the central lawn to find buildings that were not remotely nearby. In these times students visited a Psychologist daily (or nightly, it was hard to tell which), the non-terminating darkness dragged on the spirit and a dark gloomy part of the human condition stepped forward. No matter what was done to prevent them fights were always more prevalent in quarters three and four (September through February) than one and two (March through August.) Teachers took to drinking, cussed more often or showed other habits often frowned upon. At least this was the norm. In the case of Baldersen the dark had little, if any, effect on him.

Baldersen's unique immunity was often the subject of debate and discussion amongst the residents of USBI, staff and students alike. Of course it was always conducted behind his back. They felt little remorse for their intrusion into Baldersen's privacy; they excused themselves by saying that to conduct conversation in his presence would be a worse option. Evidently the thought to simply not discuss it or discuss it only with those very close to one in quarters equally private had not occurred to them. Njord's personal reflection on it was that he controlled his environment and so his emotions did not mirror his surroundings but rather his surroundings were subject to his emotion's affirmation. He believed that as it was impossible to come across das Ding an sich* there was no point in trying, but only a chance to take advantage of the presumptions and postulates formed by the individual and harness them to create reality as one saw fit. In other words, to create a reality of convenience based purely on belief. Of course if one were to side with Aristotle instead of Kant the entire method would be brought to its knees. Baldersen tried to avoid instances in conversation or debate in which Aristotle's teachings ran dangerously close to Kant's. When asked whether Aristotle or Kant was right Baldersen would not say, nor did he consider the matter, the only thing that he was willing to conclude was that his application of Kant's views worked. Statements further than that he would not endorse.

Baldersen continued to sit in his chair adjusting the height up and down to keep himself entertained. At two-thirty Baldersen looked up at the clock, swore out of impatience and cast off his principles. He opened up his web browser and inserted the jump drive he used to carry a quick installation of The World and his player data.

ALMT//

ALMT//JMPDRV

ALMT//JMPDRV(/)PRGM/world.zip

ALMT/ / JMPDRV(/)FILE/AE345J.dat

ALMT//HDRV

ALMT//HDRV(/)APP/PRGM/netsync.act

Though not displayed on the computer screen, as done in the semi-primitive systems such as MS-DOS the list of commands was recorded onto a list viewable should one be curious of the computer's recent actions. Of course the feature was useless for those incompetent in the ways of technology, the basic translation of the commands would be that Baldersen's computer opened up The World, the player data and his web browser simultaneously.

Loki (the name of Baldersen's Player Character) had no hurry to see what was wrong with MacAnu, Am0taku believed every rumor he heard, typical of a kid. Baldersen thought. Having little faith that anything was out of the ordinary Loki saw no reason to go immideately to Mac Anu, instead he idled some fifteen minutes away in Dun Loriag, mainly conversing with those who passed by. Not having any friends currently online Loki grew bored, unwilling to proceed on (at some subconscious level he felt that taking minimal time getting to Mac Anu would be giving undue credence to the rumor) but unwilling to loiter any further Loki sat and contemplated his options. On one hand he could go to MacAnu, find nothing and feel like a fool on the other he could wait here and lose his mind of boredom. Considering that he would not be alone in being foolish for visiting MacAnu to confirm a groundless rumor he decided to get the issue done and over with. Returning to the main field, Loki stood and faced the gate. Not having to enter a three word combination because Mac Anu was a root town his entrance was comparably shorter to that of a field or obscure dungeon area. He braced himself awaiting tidal wave proportions of the feeling of stupidity. The browser was moving peculiarly slow. The exact reasons to the technical trouble were unknown, perhaps it was merely an instance where the computer simply needed to be called foul names and have a set of knuckles lightly rapped against the monitor, whatever the cause for the browser's lethargy it only served to further drag out Baldersen's anticipation. If one were to try to animate the course of the metaphoric tidal wave it would climb to its zenith in slow motion and then simply disappear.

"Error access to this area has been denied by host. Please forward all questions to CC-Corp.'s Technical Support services." This took Baldersen by surprise, it did not confirm any rumors, but was peculiar enough to still the self-disgust that had been expected. Baldersen voiced this opinion to Am0taku in his lengthy reply to the forwarded rumors.

With his feelings of stupidity warded off and confidence returned he set out on a dungeon adventure. Not that there was any reward he desired but he needed to kill time, it's wasn't as if anyone would be coming in for help.

Washington Dulles International Airport// District of Columbia/United States of America

Peter Sagan was pissed, he sat in one of the countries major airports and couldn't get a signal on his cell phone. It was nothing for significant distress, he could always make the call after stepping outside, but it was quite an inconvenience. Stepping outside into the below freezing temperatures of a hard winter in Washington he dialed his home number. The phone rang once… twice… three times before someone picked it up.

"Hello?" said an, unfortunately, familiar voice. Immediately exhaustion rushed over Sagan, he felt like someone who had gotten tired half-way up Everest. A person with a long way to go no matter what he did.

"Hi Mom, I've arrived could you pick me up?" Sagan didn't get his hopes up.

"Yeah…okay…sure, see you soon honey." A click signaled the end of the dialogue, his mom hadn't paid attention, it would be a few hours before she realized that she was now supposed to take her son home.
"Bitch," Sagan muttered. She had been the one to send him off in the first place, his mother loved him dearly, provided he was out of her hair and would remain such for the next few months. Sagan scratched his head and realized snow had settled in his hair. Never the type for cold weather Sagan went back inside. Taking out an mp3 player he began to listen to his great grandfather's narration of Cosmos*. Sagan (the current one) carefully listened to the skilful oration making note of tactics used to deliver the information. Sagan did, one day, hope to follow in his great grandfather's footsteps.

Though focusing most attention on Cosmos Sagan was an extraordinary multi-tasker and also was able to review his mail online. His friend, Loki was online and logged in to AIM. Sagan smiled, sitting in the airport made him feel lonely, Loki's presence eased things, but as he opened an IM window to talk Loki quit out. The feeling of loneliness worsened tenfold. Sagan closed his computer stood up, walked to a heating vent in the corner of the lobby, curled up, closed his eyes and went to sleep. It beat killing time.

Mito/Ibaraki-ken/Japan

Helba gazed appreciatively at a plum tree while strolling through Kairaku-en* This being her first excursion south of Miyagi-ken since her early childhood, she had not had the pleasure of viewing southern Honshu's gardens. The experience would have been wasted had she come alone, she had plenty of time for solitude at home. Bear, also not having seen the gardens, decided to accompany her. As they walked they reminisced over the events in the Twilight Revolution. The two debated over whether or not it was good that most of the events had been lost in rumor. Both sided with the affirmative in reality, but for the sake of academic argument they took turns defending the negative. In the end they tired of it as the reasoning of both sides was circular and the cyclical restating of their premise was pointless. With no ground of interest yet to cover on the Revolution the topic at hand wandered. After current events and politics had grown boring the two- mainly out of polite formality- asked how the other was doing. Was business good? Their health? And what of their family? (this caused an awkward pause as bear had been divorced for more than fifteen years and Helba had never been long attached to anyone for an extensive period of time.) Overcoming the silence Bear chose to ask a random question to fill the gap, actually it had been one he was curious of for some time, now seemed as good a time as any to ask. "What is your occupation in the real world anyway?"

"Hmm?" Helba looked up, "I'm a business consultant."

"Ah," said Bear understandingly, "You give corporations bad advice and then take their money." Helba chuckled, and Bear was pleased for he had exacted his revenge for the bagel. As Bear walked he began to hum a tune by some old American band, he was off key and the notes all seemed the same. Helba gently kicked his foot and he shut up. Looking at her watch Helba realized they had stayed to long (they were going to meet up with Tsukasa and Mimiru and get dinner at a restaurant.) Bear took the car they had come in back to the hotel and Helba took a cab promising to meet him just inside the restaurant.

The restaurant, a crappy imitation of a French café, was barren and for good reason, the food was terrible. Anything vegetable or meat could be expected to be frozen rock hard at the core and possibly have a thick layer of charred skin around it. The waiter approached greeting them with a heavily accented "konbanwa*" and asked what they would like to eat, Mimiru took advantage of the situation as a means to show off her remarkable lingual skills.

"nous voudrions les pommes de vache."

The waiter looked surprised. "Êtes vous certain?"

"Oui."

Bear knew minimal French, enough to recognize "nous" as "we," realizing Mimiru had ordered on behalf of all of them he asked as to what she had gotten.

"Not much, I didn't know how to ask for a specific method of preparation so I hedged my bets and asked for a potato, with potatoes there aren't really any forms that are completely intolerable." Tsukasa and Bear nodded. Helba was struggling to suppress uncontrollable laughter.

The waiter returned a moderate amount of time later with four plates of what looked like a gray, fatty, meat. Tsukasa's left eye narrowed slightly, a habit he had when expressing confusion Bear and Mimiru were equally puzzled. Helba redoubled her efforts to remain silent but her face was growing red. Mimiru opened her mouth to inquire as to what the error had been as what was on their plates clearly was not potato when the dam broke and a rich laugh broke through shaking Helba so hard she nearly stuck her head against the table.

"Mimiru, you do realize what you requested don't you?" Helba knew she didn't.

"Yes, potatoes, in French it's pommes de vache, apples of the earth." Helba had now recovered from her giggling fit, but this set her off anew.

"No, pommes de terre is apples of the earth, you asked for pommes de vache, apples of the cow. You have on your plate, a cooked set of steer testicles*."

Bear and Tsukasa both grinned, Mimiru glared in response. Helba turned to the waiter.

"Je suis désolé, mais nous avons voulu dire pour demander des pommes de terre."

"Ah, je comprends." The waiter walked off, under his breath muttering "Imbéciles."

"So, Mimiru, how are things at school." Helba asked so as to drown out the waiter and his foul temper. Mimiru laughed at the obvious attempt to prevent her from hear the waiter and losing control. (Her reputation as stubborn had not gone away.) Uncharacteristically she let it go and turned her attention to the question.

"Oh I graduated from med-school two years ago."

"Ah, so what kind of doctor are you again?" Tsukasa asked, going to different universities the two had to keep up via letters and IMing, so Mimiru didn't take offense at Tsukasa's question.

"I'm actually more into a branch that no one takes seriously. All the leading scientists are always making cracks about the romanticism of our basic theories." Unaware that she had dodged the question Mimiru stopped and awaited comment. Everyone remained silent for a while and then,

"So you're a neurologitranscendentalist?" Bear and Tsukasa's heads turned towards Helba's.

"It's a field of-"

"Neurologitranscendentalisim is-"

Helba and Mimiru began at the same time, laughed and then paused to let the other speak. Eventually they sorted it out and Mimiru explained.

"Neurologitranscendentalism is a field of study where the human mind is studied as a separate result from the working brain. Saying that the brain is only host to something rather than producing our mind brings a lot of scorn from the rest of the scientific world."

"I see," remarked Bear and had nothing to say on the matter after. Helba excused herself to make a call while the others absorbed themselves in Mimiru's explanation.

Bjørn Island/ Svalbard /Norway

Baldersen was sitting at his desk when the phone rang. He chose to let the answering machine get it, he wanted to mull over the problem of Mac Anu. He counted down the number of rings before the answering machine got it. Then he heard his voice say "Hi I'm not here right now, or possibly I'm here but dead, please leave a message and if I'm alive I'll get back to you." The customary beep and then the caller's voice.

"Jeg vet at De er der, svarer telefonen." (I know you are there, answer the phone.)

"Hvem er dette?" (Who is this?)

"De hus ikke, men vi arbeidet sammen på et privat fundert forskningsprosjekt inn i den menneskelige hjernen" (You would not remember, but we worked together on a private funded research project into the human brain)

"Et navn er nyttig" (A name would be helpful)

"I stedet for bry De med et aktuel navn det rekker kalle meg Helba"(instead of my actual name it will suffice to call me Helba.)

"Hva gjør De vil ha? (what do you want?)"

"Et kommandonavn i en dataprogram."(A command name in a computer program)

"Den at tildeler myndigheten av sytemforstarkninger til en anonym plassering?" (The one that allocates the authority of system administrators to an anonymous location?)

"Ja hvordan gjorde De vet?"(Yes, how did you know?)

"Folkropsom being om det om to ganger pr. Måned jeg tror ikke at de tar tiden forfølge meg ned jeg gjør ikke sikkerhetssystemer for internet spill mer og jeg har ikke fullstendig noe gjøre med CC Korporasjon. De spør all som de vil ha men De får det ikke, akkurat fordi De meg meg på en punkt ikke betyr at De er noe forskjellig." (People call asking for it about twice a month I can't believe they take the time track me down. I don't do security systems for MMORPGs anymore and I have absolutely nothing to do with CC Corporation. You can ask all you want but you won't get it, no one ever does, just because you met me at one point doesn't mean you're any different.)

"Tillat da meg ta en gjetning om jeg får det til høyre vil De sier slik?" (Then allow me to take a guess, if I get it right will you say so?)

"Sikkert fordi De aldri gjetter aldri riktig, faktisk jeg gir. De tre forsøk. Hva er Deres først gjetning."( Certainly, because you never will guess correctly, in fact I will give you three tries. What is your first attempt?)

"Vare hvitkanin, er jeg retter?" (Object whiterabbit, am I correct?)

"I-ingen, H-hvem er dette!" (N-no, w-who is this!)

"Jet sagt mitt navn er Helba."(I said my name is Helba)

"hva gjør De planlegger gjøre om De gjetter likevel?" (What do you plan to do if you do guess anyway?)

Baldersen heard a click and then the dial tone. He was fairly shaken by whoever had called. He brought up e-mail and sent a vague summary of the events to CC Corp Headquarters. He had trouble focusing and his writing was of poor quality. In actuality it would not do CC Corp. much good.

Mito/Ibaraki-ken/Japan

Helba rested on a hideously green sofa. A pale green to be precise, mucus green was the terminology Helba used. Bear walked in from the main hallway that connected to the hotel room. "You're a real parasite, you know, just like a tape worm, share some undercooked pork and next thing you know you're also providing housing."

"You really shouldn't make jokes at the expense of your guest"

"Parasite, not guest, parasite."

"Same thing, besides for a parasite I'm not that bad."

"True, you aren't as bad as river blindness or elephantiasis." Bear carefully observed as Helba ate, preparing for the precise moment to continue. Helba lifted a spoonful of Miso soup from the bowl. Bear seized the opportunity.

"Yeah, you definitely aren't as bad as river blindness or elephantiasis. I mean river blindness! These tiny slug things crawl into your foot when you bathe in rivers and then they lay eggs in your skin. When they hatch they crawl between your skin cells and make your skin super-baggy, then they go to your head and form this translucent membrane across your eyes that reflects light so you can't see."

Helba put the spoon down. "I'm trying to eat."

"Yes, you're trying to eat my food."

Helba laughed, "bastard."

"Oh now the tapeworm is complaining." Bear chuckled, Helba knew his rudeness was in jest so he could be as discourteous as he wished without guilt. He was in the process of predicting Helba's next remark and thinking of a good counter when the pillow hit his head. Again a chuckle.

"Okay, no more tapeworm jokes," he conceded.

"Good," Helba said with a hint of a smile. "Now I'm going to bed." Being rented only for one there was only a single bed three feet away Helba took a few steps back jumped up and landed comfortably on it.

"Hey! That bed's only big enough for one person! Where am I supposed to sleep?"

Helba lifted her arm and made a swatting motion towards the floor. Bear faced defeat and settled into as comfortable a position as he could manage. Helba's attitude amused him, though this time he didn't chuckle. He had been laughing more than usual lately, Bear noted of himself. Perhaps it was linked to his reunion with the others. No, that couldn't be it, he had been on vacation with Tsukasa and Mimiru multiple times. It had to be some other element. Perhaps… no, that was unlikely. Bear closed his eyes, this was gonna be hell on his back tomorrow.

Bjørn Island/ Svalbard /Norway

Baldersen was shaken. Helba, whoever the hell she was, must have known him very well. She must have, to have known his password. Fortunately she wouldn't be using it, he had lied when she guessed it. He was kidding himself, "N-no, w-who is this?" of course she would realize that she had guessed it from that reaction. Baldersen let out a long sigh. He went to his computer to check his mail, maybe see if Am0taku was online and IM. Scanning through the various spam in his inbox he came close to a heart attack for the second time that day. One particular mail was sent from Helba856@ais.com. Baldersen deleted it. Several minutes later the same mail popped up as the most recent arrival in the inbox. He tried deleting it again. It reappeared. Finally he opened the mail.

I'll contact you again.

Helba

Baldersen took a deep breath in, then exhaled slowly. He shook his head "Shit," he muttered. das Ding an Sich: Translates to "Thing-in-itself" also called a noumenon (plural noumena) it is the true nature of something uninfluenced by a person's views, the object after application of human biases is called the phenomenon Cosmos (Copyright 1980) Narrated by Carl Sagan (Nov. 9, 1934- Dec. 20, 1996) Kairaku-en (Tokiwa Park) a highly popular garden in the capital of the Ibaraki prefecture of Japan. I am aware "konbanwa" is Japanese, the French waiter was speaking Japanese, as it was the native language of the customers. Wait… A steer is a neutered bull… so would it be steer testes or bull testes?