The Core: The First Guest

4. Xa the Third

"Hello Kevin, my name is Sapphire. Or rather Sapphire is the name I chose to go by while I lived and traveled your planet. Xa the 3rd is my name as a citizen of the Core." She said as she glided over to stand a few feet away from me. Joe followed her and told Tutor to "come along".

They all three stood a few feet from me as Sapphire gazed intently at me and seemingly through me. "This is the first instance on record of this happening." She seemed to say as if she was reading something only she could see. I looked over my shoulder to see if she actually was looking through me and sure enough, there was a huge swirl of drifting and ever-changing array of colors and swirls happening off in the distance. As if she was looking through me at a screen the size of a mountain thousands of feet away behind me.

"Guest account created. High time rate. Able to become a citizen at certain stages of development and income. A perfect transfer of an uncopied alien mind. Recently suffered a trauma at the understanding of his change in life situation." She said as her eyes came back into focus on me.

"Firstly, Kevin, let me say that yes, I am sure that you have plenty of questions and concerns. Let me alleviate a couple of them for you that I think you might have. Firstly, you are not dead, you are still alive and are standing right here. I will skip over the details of how you are alive at this present moment, just trust me when I tell you that it is not all as bad as you think. Yes, your body was erased from existence on your home planet and your bike was scattered as well. This is what happens to all travelers when they travel to and from the Core. A body can be remade if the person has enough cr to do so. Also, time, as you think of it, is not traveling at the same rate that you expect. I gather that you feel that you have been here for a while when in fact only fractions of a second have passed from the moment that you touched Hxerdinand. You, your mind, has been uploaded to the Core, a structure, or rather what you would call a computer surrounding a star. As long as you have a guest account you will be within this accelerated time state. We use this state to educate young ones so that they can grow up and enter society, leaving behind their destructive and childish ways and to enter society when they are smart enough to be able to function."

"It is just the same way that you teach someone young how to drive a car before giving them a license and letting them out on their own. Our society is vastly different from the one you come from and thus, we do not want you getting in harm or danger while being a guest. Citizens are wise enough and given the freedom to choose to continue existing at their own rate or choice. Guests or children are cared for and not given the option of self-termination or harm. Tutor is a self-learning program that was designed to slowly integrate and educate young ones into a citizen, you are an alien and have already lived a quarter or a fifth of your natural existence so Tutor has had to try to catch up to your current state." She said as she once again unfocused for a moment before coming back and turning to look at Joe and Tutor.

"Joe please grant Tutor access to your personality matrix you developed concerning North American humans. Tutor simulate a middle school teacher or a talkative 20-year-old female jewelry store worker. My memory says that those are the most over the top informative types of individuals."

Before my very eyes, Tutor became more alive and active. She crossed her arms and looked at me with a friendly and yet pensive stare as if she couldn't wait to "educate my thick skull". I swear she was even tapping her foot.

"Lastly, Kevin, I feel the burden of your arrival here being in regards to my choice to not delay my return to the Core until I was away from people. Most people don't pay much attention to things on your planet and I was sure that even if someone saw me, they would be forced to forget my leaving 13 hours later. You somehow circumvented that by spending the very moments that erasure would have happened in deep contemplation of the said events. The records show that the cr had to either cut away those sections of your mind or let you continue to read and remember what had occurred. The system did not want to harm you so it chose to not harm your mind after the minute of required erasure time was past. Thus here you are after finding Hxerdinand on his retirement and touching him as he was in transfer. Your mind had already been scanned and heavily invested with cr from your erasure experience. Cr that stayed because of a security protocol in place about erasing data about the core. It had failed its 13-hour timeframe deadline for wiping your memories and had become part of your mind for the next 10 years. This I believe was the sole reason why you arrived intact and functional. The last 10 years had given the cr enough time to acclimate to your alien mind and to keep a perfect copy for transfer." She said as she looked around.