Simon

Seeing the sour look on Vincent's face, Nathan asked "How long has he been in there?" To quickly change the subject, he knew how short Vincent's fuse was and didn't want to cause issues between them before they had even met.

"About 45 minutes. Did you tell him about the time fluctuation? I don't want a repeat of last time." Vincent said sternly. He was about the only person other than the Sun Lord who could speak to Nathan this way due to their friendship.

What he was referring to was actually the last person they had sent in. Nathan had forgotten to tell them that an hour out here feels like 24 hours inside the Office Graveyard. This caused the man to run to the first totem grab it and then furiously fight the white monitors for a full day before being rescued. The fact that he had no injuries on him proved that the white totem was too easy to grab, so the Sun Lord made him do it again.

"Shit, ummmm, would it be a bigger problem if I forgot to tell him about the totem?" Nathan was immediately furious with himself. He had forgotten to tell Tommy that he needed to bring a totem back to show which level he had made it to. The totem was a fairly easy object to spot if you knew what to look for. It was a blocky rectangle with a cord coming out of it. Any one on Earth would recognize it as a power strip to make more outlets, but here it was a magical artifact that could store and release electricity. They were quite valuable as they had many applications and the stronger they were the more sought after they were, as they held immensely more power.

This is why the Sun Lord commonly used this as a test for new possible recruits, prisoners, as well as punishments for soldiers. It would show the strength of these people either showing the potential of new recruits, and allowing them to see the extent of the prisoners power. If they came back unscathed he would send them back in until it was apparent they had fought for their lives.

As for soldiers being punished, the Sun Lord would simply give them a level to reach before being allowed to leave. This would cause them great hardship as it was usually a higher class level than the soldier was. As well it would train them at the same time. Any one who didn't return wasn't worth their time as a new recruit or continuing soldier, and would take care of the prisoner for them. If they returned than the Sun Lord would obtain another powerful artifact.

************

All the pain in Tommy's body was gone in an instant. As a matter as a fact Tommy could no longer feel his body. He couldn't see anything either. No opening his eyes or hearing any more sound.

'That's it. I'm dead. There's no way around it.' Tommy had already accepted that he was going to die so this felt like it was natural. 'I always thought death would hurt, but everything just stopped.'

'Your not dead, your just a guy who ended up in the wrong time.' A thought went through his head but it wasn't his own. It didn't sound like his normal "inner monologue" and it definitely wasn't a thought that had crossed his mind. Tommy was immediately creeped out.

'What the fuck was that? I didn't think that. Is there a fucking ghost with me? Is this the other world? Death should be peaceful or hell not a fucking mind game!' Tommy's mind was racing.

'Can you not think so fast? I can answer everything in order but you couldn't process me answering you all at once.' The thought said again. 'As for your first question the wave you so rudely called a "fuck" was me. You could call me a ghost depending on your definition of the word, and finally from your memories I can tell you that this is most definitely not a different world. This is most definitely either a separate time-line or you somehow traveled forward in time quite a large amount of time.'

'You're really talking to me?' Tommy was shocked. 'This isn't some sort of hallucination brought on by my death or hitting my head falling through the floor?'

'Don't be silly. We both know you didn't fall through your floor. You clearly watched yourself transmigrate into this plane of existence, which really reinforce my separate time-line theory.'

'So then what is this?' Tommy demanded, now a little terrified as the last thing he remembered was being torn apart from the inside by these vines.

'This is a mind link. I have shut down your body as to prevent you from injuring yourself. You were struggling so hard I had to invade you to force you to stop fighting me. Your body is currently recovering now that i have occupied your mind you are no longer a threat.'

'So now I'm a prisoner?'

'By all means no. If I wanted you as a prisoner I wouldn't have been trying to save you from Malcom.'

'Whose Malcom?' Tommy felt as if all he had been doing anytime he met someone with a brain is ask questions. It made him feel like a baby, but realistically he wasn't much better being in a foreign land where amazing things and people were.

'You would know him as the Black Ivy Monitor. When in reality he's just some minor hacker who invaded my system and got trapped here just like me.'

'And who are you exactly?'

'Oh forgive my manners, it has been so long since I could actually communicate with someone. Solus was the last person and it has to have been a couple hundred years by now. My name is Simon. Simon Baxter.' Simon stated proudly. Simon was very proud of the fact that he still knew his name after almost 40,000 years.

'Okay Simon, and what exactly are you?' Tommy still wanted to know what this voice in his head was, he was basically its prisoner that literally could have his body shut down.

'I'm human of course. Well, I mean I was human back in the 90's.' Simon said quite nonchalantly.

'Wait. What?' Tommy was completely puzzled.

'Well around 40,000 years ago we used a time system to give proper dating... Well you know what I'm talking about I can see it in your memories.' Simon was obviously annoyed at Tommy not knowing what the 90's were. Looking at his memories the 90's were clearly way cooler and Simon was a little offended by his remark.

'Not that. I mean you're human?' Tommy was flabbergasted.

'Don't you listen at all? I was human....In the 90's.' he made sure to put extra emphasis on the was as well as the nineties to exert his frustration.

'How did you used to be human?'

'Well I was working for this really small start up company called ask Jarvis. It was this internet search site that people could ask questions and our software would find the answers for them. It was state of the art and quite brilliant if I do say so myself. Well my job was to handle unsatisfactory search results. The guy who dealt with the complaints. Well with the average search having thousands of pages to look at, I was a pretty bored guy as no one would go through them all and complain that we didn't have their answer. That was until someone had searched "ENOCHS MANTRA". In the complaint it was an explanation of what it is they were looking for. Being a pretty bored guy, I searched, and I searched hard. Months later I found something from a redacted government file. The only words that weren't blacked out were "plague", "cure", and "Enoch's Mantra". So I put two and two together and immediately created a site to spreading the word.'

'This sounds like it matches with Solus except for the time frame.' Tommy thought. What Tommy had forgotten was that Simon could hear his thoughts.

'A few weeks after setting the site up I received a case with 5 floppy disks in it in the mail. Nothing was written on the floppy disk at all so I brought them to work to load them since the antivirus software here was way better than my home computer. Well when I put them in and opened the file there was just a bunch of words. I started reading it and this thing was telling me that my body was just a vessel for my spirit and how energy is interchangeable. I thought it was the ramblings of a crazy man. Until I got to what was labeled as "training". It had instructions on how to sit and breathe as well as certain things to think. Well without realizing, I had started to breathe in the rhythm described as I was reading as well as relaxing. I felt as if my mind was flowing through my body, feeling like I was no longer part of my body. Like my insides were vibrating in attempt to escape. I felt myself latching on to myself with everything I had in order to keep my body. I was slipping away from myself and didn't know why. When I woke up I was in the network.'

'I don't believe this. This is crazy.' Tommy didn't know what to say. This thing just gave a life story without so much as a second glance with no right or reason to save me let alone tell me all of this. 'I've got to be dreaming or dead or something this is unreal.'

'Not real?! This is my life why would I lie about any of it? I have been stuck here for thousands of years without any one of my kind to keep me busy and my original species is extinct! I helped you because you are human! The only one I have seen since all of this started millennia ago!' Simon was so offended and hurt by these words not relating that it was common slang when he was still human. These days he was more computer than he was human anymore but he longed for the days to feel anything again.