As soon as I regained my sight, I was surprised to notice that I was no longer on the previous balcony, but rather in the center of a square room in Roman style. All around me, the walls were decorated with semi-columns with Corinthian capitals, connected by round arches. Above me, a hemispherical dome with a central oculus served as the ceiling.
"What the hell…" I commented, puzzled.
"We've just taken a medium-distance bridge," Ari explained, seeing my confusion, "we've arrived at the citadel you saw earlier in the distance."
"I see…" not that I really understood completely, "we took a… teleport?" I asked, chuckling in confusion.
"You can call it that," she replied.
"I see…" I didn't fully understand, but I didn't have the strength or will to try. After what I had experienced, I could only accept the existence of all these sci-fi things.
"Oh, right… Ari." I tried to get her attention, as she looked around, as if waiting for someone or something. "Earlier I was able to see the citadel in great detail, even though I was really far away… how is that possible?" I asked, intrigued.
"That's because-"
"Identify yourselves!" ordered two huge men in silver uniforms with human features but cross-shaped eyes, interrupting Ari's explanation.
"I'm Ari, code B-32018," she said, extending her right wrist toward them.
The two guards, because they did seem to be guards, looked at her wrist for three seconds at most, then commented in unison, "You may pass."
After that, the section of wall between the two semi-columns behind them slid to the right like a sliding door, letting us out.
A blazing sun shone down on the dusty stone pavement of the street. On either side of the road ran two rows of pale buildings, supported by colonnaded marble porticos and topped with reddish-tiled roofs.
Each building seemed to house people on the upper floors, while the ground floors were used for various types of commerce, including bars, restaurants, taverns, and even tourist shops, clothing stores, and other places unfamiliar to me.
Every now and then, there were unlit wrought-iron street lamps that clashed a bit with the ancient aesthetic.
A multitude of people of various appearances and clothing walked along the road. Some wore thick armor, whether medieval or futuristic, while others wore very little, covering only their intimate parts.
Most appeared human, but among the crowd there were blue, green, or red skins, hair that turned into tentacles or horns, faces with two, three, even five eyes. Most were bipedal, but there were also quadrupeds, legless beings floating in the air, and creatures with two or more arms, when they had arms at all.
I was fascinated by it all.
Ari walked briskly ahead of me, so, even though I would have liked to stop and enjoy the view, I had to quicken my pace so as not to lose her in the crowd around us.
"Are you enjoying the city?" Ari asked, turning around.
"It's… incredible." I didn't know how else to describe it.
Ari responded to my words with a hesitant smile.
"As for the question you asked me before… you'll notice that not only your sight, but other aspects of yourself will be better than you remember, because while you were asleep your body was partially enhanced."
To her words, I could only swallow nervously.
'Who knows what else they've done to me…'
"And not just that… don't you find it strange that we can communicate so easily?" she then asked.
"Actually…" Thinking about it, I wasn't speaking in my own language.
'Now that I think about it, I'm not speaking… Spanish, nor English… but something else. But what? What language am I even using to think?'
Thinking about it gave me chills, after all, I was speaking and thinking in a different language from the one I had used in the past, and I hadn't even noticed, as if it were natural for me to speak, and even think, in it.
"While you slept, a new language was taught to you… or rather, 'overwritten' in place of your own, and that is the SE, Standard Etheralith."
I looked at the ground, these revelations had brought me back to harsh reality.
'Remember you're their slave,' I thought, looking at the beautiful city around me, and the people walking in it.
'They made it beautiful to distract us…' I convinced myself.
I noticed that, among the people around me, some had cross-shaped pupils and a kind of blue halo above their heads. I assumed they were Etheralith tourists, and, asking Ari, she confirmed this theory.
'Not just that… both the city and we are nothing more than tourist attractions…'
I sighed at the bitter truth.
"What else did you do to me?" I asked, my gaze now serious.
Ari looked at me, with a smile this time sincere.
"We've acclimated your body to Ka."
I furrowed my brow, trying to guess what on earth 'Ka' could be. No lightbulb lit up.
"Ka? What is it?"
"Ka, together with space and time, forms the triad that makes up the universe… immaterial, but capable of interacting with matter, timeless, but able to bind to it."
"I might… not have understood, I think."
It was a far too poetic and ethereal explanation.
"Think of it like the mana described in the video games and movies of your old world. Not that it's exactly that, but for now, that explanation will do," she said nonchalantly.
"It's easier to learn to understand it by using it… and in the near future, you'll have to use it if you want to keep living here," she then added.
We continued walking in a straight line until we reached a round square, decorated in the center by a massive marble statue towering over a fountain.
Ari turned to me.
"This is the first of the three main squares in the residential sector where you'll be living from now on, called the Primrose Sector, a sector built mostly inspired by ancient Rome and Greece… this square we're in is called Minor Square," she said, spreading her arms, her tone of voice almost like a tour guide's. "Following the main road…" she said, pointing to the road we had walked down and its continuation ahead of me past the fountain, "…called Grand Way, you'll reach the main square of the sector, called Primrose Square. The house you'll live in is near there…" she explained finally.
To my surprise, Ari didn't continue down Grand Way but changed direction, entering a smaller street to my left. A rectangular sign at the edge of the alley read "Entertainment Avenue." Below it were other arrow-shaped signs pointing down the road.
Reading the signs, I noticed something that should have been obvious by now… I could read!
Ari had told me they had replaced my language with theirs… still, being able to read those signs, written only in lines and triangles joined in various combinations, left me, at the very least, amazed.
The surprise soon gave way to a heavy sense of dread.
'They've replaced everything… nothing remains of my old language… what else… What else have they taken away? Or replaced… added… overwritten…'
A lump formed in my throat as my doubts grew stronger.
'Am I really still Elías?… or did they just put memories in my head… after all… after all they replaced an ENTIRE DAMN LANGUAGE!' The thought thundered in my mind.
'If… if they can do that… what else… who am I… am I really me… me?'
I followed Ari like an automaton, my eyes looking straight ahead, but staring at nothing concrete, while my head kept spiraling into those thoughts that tore at my chest second after second, draining life and leaving only emptiness and fear, as my steps grew heavier with each pace. I was afraid, afraid of not even knowing myself.
"We're here!" Ari chirped, bringing me partly back to reality.
"Are you okay? You look pale…" she said, looking at me with an expression that seemed genuinely concerned.
'She's probably faking concern…' I thought, looking at her with a weary gaze.
"Where did you take me?" I asked, trying to hide my momentary fragility as much as possible.
"This place is a SkyView Theater, a place where you can watch gladiator games from an aerial perspective… I told you I wanted to show you a game, didn't I?" she explained.
"Right…" I replied absentmindedly.
Ari looked at me a little concerned, then turned to the building and led the way.
We entered through a revolving door, then went up some stairs, followed by a dark red corridor. Ari spoke to a floating silver orb, a passage opened, and we ended up in a large room with other people. Ari handed me transparent glasses to wear.
Under my feet was a floor that looked like glass, the room's only light source. Through the glass, you could see an enormous wooded field, with six towers lined up down the center, three gold and three silver. In miniature, you could see people, the so-called "gladiators". Focusing my gaze on them, I saw their actions magnified. I watched them fight and throw colorful things at each other, including lightning and flames, killing each other repeatedly for the aliens' amusement.
It was a surreal sight, yet even that couldn't distract me from the fog of my thoughts.
"This is called the Towers Game… it was inspired by… the gladiators…"
Ari's words blended into my anxiety and faded. It was suffocating to not even have a single certainty anymore, especially while surrounded by shape-shifting aliens with cross-shaped eyes watching puppets fight for their entertainment.
I pressed my fingers to my forehead, I was tired, and my head began to throb.
"A- e yo- o-?" Ari was speaking to me, but I couldn't understand… maybe I wasn't even listening. My breathing was labored, and my mind was losing clarity by the second.
"Am I really me… me?" I blurted out to Ari, staring into her eyes.
I couldn't keep that weight in my head anymore, and I had no one else to ask, just Ari, an Etheralith alien I had just met, and yet, I needed to cling to something.
"Am I really Elías? Are the memories I have… really mine?" I added quickly.
She looked at me first with sad eyes, her lips trembled slightly.
Then she sighed, as if releasing a weight and mustering strength.
She grabbed my shoulders, and her now-serious eyes looked straight into my soul.
"You are Elías, your memories are TRULY yours," she said with deep conviction, not just in her words, but in the expression on her face.
A bit of that weight lifted from my chest.
A tear of tension rolled down my cheek. I caught it with my hand before it could go its own way.
'I'm… crying?'
I smiled. I wanted to laugh at myself. Was I really believing the words of a stranger? From the very race that had enslaved me, no less!? I had to be insane… and yet, her words, simple and direct, her eyes and demeanor… I wanted to hold on, and even if it was illogical, trust her.
Just a little.