System Discord-Chapter 48: SysDi : Recovering 3

Evan placed a small bowl filled with vegetables in front of Iva. It’s just a simple vegetable salad. Nothing new or interesting about it.

"Did you ever have a form before?" Evan asked, staring at Iva.

Iva looks up to him from staring at the bowl. "If form you mean this slime body. No, not that I remember."

Evan raised an eyebrow at that. "What does that mean?"

Iva scoots closer to the bowl. "Means I know some things about other watch users before you but my knowledge is far in between. Time passes and there are a lot of things I have to re-learn."

Evan pushes the bowl closer to Iva. "The reason why I was asking you if you have a form is to know if you can eat that. Do you want to try?"

Iva hums. "Yeah, I do. Slime body doesn’t particularly have a mouth to consume something. Can you put me on the bowl?"

"Can’t you just bounce in the bowl?" Evan asked, confused.

"I would, but I will just have all of those fly in the air. That would be a waste." It bounced towards Evan’s shoulder.

"Fine... I’ll do it." Evan removes Iva from his shoulder and placed it on top of the bowl.

Nothing seems to happen at first. The vegetables are just inside Iva the slime’s body. Soon enough, there are some colored bubbles rising from Iva the slime’s lower body and towards up its head. It doesn’t completely leave, but it joins the main slime body.

"That feels weird." Iva says, after a while.

Evan is just watching the vegetables that were inside slowly bubble up and dissolve. It took a while for them all to dissolve, but it all slowly did, not at the same time.

"How was that? It’s all gone now." Evan says, moving back and starting to eat his own vegetables.

Iva didn’t move for a bit, its slime body slowly pushing the bowl in it.

"Ah ah!" Evan carries Iva away from the bowl. "There’s no more! Do you want more of the vegetables? I can grab you some but don’t eat the bowl."

"Not my intention." Iva replies. "But it has something weird... I don’t know if I should feel icky or happy. It’s rough and bleh a little bit."

"Are you trying to describe taste?" Evan stared at the slime with furrowed eyebrows. "You’re probably experiencing taste and texture at the same time. That’s what taste is."

"I think I don’t like vegetable taste then." Iva decides. "Still, there’s some things that I could get from it that seems good. Is there a way to have them without consuming the vegetables?"

Evan shook his head. "I don’t know what you want from them but eating it would probably be the only thing you can do."

There’s a bit of silence between them as Evan ate his own salad.

"By the way, Iva." Evan calls him, in between mouthfuls of the vegetables. "When you’re out, can you see the panels?"

Iva bounced to the table to face him. "What panels? The one with your user data?"

Evan paused before nodding his head. "Yeah, is that what you call it?"

"No. If I’m out, I can’t see it. If you called for your status numbers while I’m in your head though, I can see them. I can see it in a different way even before you can see them yourself."

Evan leans forward in interest. "What did it look like?"

"Strings of numbers. Ones or zeroes." fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm

Ones and zeroes? Evan would have to make sure he remembers what that meant. That felt familiar somehow. He would have to look it up in the library tomorrow or later?

"Nothing else? Just... Those numbers?" He asked.

Iva hums. "Yeah, just that. I can interpret it just from that. I don’t think you will be able to understand it like when I read the poem outside the stone hill cave. The language spoken was dormant, something your ancestors learned."

"So, that’s not because of you?"

"It still is because of me. I read it, remember? If I didn’t, you still won’t understand it. But me reading it meant you could interpret the words on your own then. The more you read it, the more you begin to understand more of it, your blood remembers it." Iva explains.

So that was why Evan could read the words from on the other smooth stones all on his own without Iva reading it beforehand, even without seeing it before. It was like Iva had turned on a switch within him that allowed him to do so.

Not only that, but the other smooth stone he had read, Iva was gone. When it was quiet in his mind, he could still read it.

"What is the dead language called?" Evan asked. "I speak Himea, just like everyone else now. There’s other dialects, but dad said they were all derived from Himea, whatever that means."

"The old language?" Iva echoes. "I don’t think I remember or know what it is called. Like I said, some of the things I know either faded away or is limited."

Evan looks disappointed. The library computers never mentioned about any other languages except for the ancient ones that didn’t make sense to Evan. He checked, and double-checked.

If any information was on anywhere, Evan thinks it wouldn’t be easily accessible.

Evan’s eyes widened. The third floor of the library

"Iva, do you remember me going to the library?" He asked, a small smile emerging on his face.

Iva hums. "I do remember that. Why are you asking?"

A full blown grin is now on his face. "There’s a floor that is off limits to just about anyone else, except for those researchers."

"You’re telling me this because...?" If Iva has eyebrows, Evan could practically imagine one of them being raised suspiciously.

"Well, maybe we can find a way to get there and get some information we needed. There has to be a reason why they are not letting the people there right?"

The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l