This is an alternate branch of the storyline continuing from [24A]

The Tall and Short Problems of a Cute Gamer Girl

[25A----]/Bridge
For the Primary Branch [----]

The first week contained a striking amount of excitement. There were discoveries and work to do with setting everything up and deciding what would go where. Jeremy had the inkling that in the next year or so they would have to move and did not look forward to that. However, Giselle had to remind herself that this was the main event, this was their situation. No media productions to juggle. No records to create, although she did film some video just to keep in practice and to record time since, even though the place kept to a cycle of day and night, she operated on her own little circadian rhythm bolstered by coffee and workaholism.

A decent collection of games numbering in the hundreds provided by the vault was no match for Jeremy‘s collection, and the most recent releases stopped with the PlayStation 4, but they spent a few days messing around, especially with the classics. Olivia rapidly learned the buttons, despite there being so many different controllers. And, if they needed something newer, what they had grabbed to take with them also worked with the local setup.

Blessin did most of the monitoring of the systems to make sure that the protective lights blocked the monsters and an external field of energy like Olivia‘s provided an all-encompassing electrical fence. At least once a day, Blessin sprawled out on a long couch and appeared to quietly meditate. She would always take notes before and never mention why. Giselle was pretty done with trying to figure out her mysteries.

Fortunately, the air-filtration systems, sewer lines, water pumps, and fuel from a small-scale nuclear reactor were self-sustaining and didn’t require any upkeep from them for least three months. Giselle still looked around and eyeballed things despite not touching any buttons. In her head, of course, her mind returned to the series she played all the games of except for 76 as Jeremy. The key difference was if the subject matter or environment got too heavy then she could just shut it off and return to the regular world. But the regular world had been subsumed. Some part of her wondered if this was a punishment by some cosmic force for taking so long with certain episodes. It was a silly notion, but she had plenty of time for silly notions.

Rachel, Olivia, and her enjoyed board games provided by their benefactors along with Blessin sometimes stopping by to contribute as player four. The selection was actually quite extensive with an emphasis on simple card games and classics, likely because the young Radiants wouldn’t be up for more than a simple logic puzzle. The truly challenging competitions for Olivia were survival scenarios that cut dangerously close to home and couldn’t provide her with anything but compromises.

Copious vitamin D supplements were necessary, even though the special light seemed to have certain solar qualities. Herschel got especially antsy, not only because he knew that You was lurking around at all times. Once he was able to explore all the confines, he kept poking his head through windows looking for signs of wildlife or sunbeams to roll around in. The provided light didn’t seem to agree with him on the same level. The best they could offer were stock videos of fluttering wildlife on 24-hour cycles. He seemed to notice it was prerecorded but eventually got used to it.

To pass a good measure of the time, Giselle finally acquiesced to watching the first several seasons of the Simpsons. The first season was interesting but reminded her of someone’s amateur online animation project, demonstrating how much animation creation changed. However, it was night and day with the second, as soon she found familiar snippets of memes regurgitated ad infinitum by the Internet. After that point, she eagerly anticipated each upcoming episode. Blessin provided the digital copies, but there was also a version saved locally to the bunker servers. Hundreds of thousands of hours of digital video had been loaded to that server and carefully shielded. The first couple of weeks went smoothly like this, evoking their 2020 quarantine. Giselle found little projects like creating short random films with whatever thoughts occupied Olivia. Rachel raced her on bikes (with her right side tied off for balance) and on foot for simple bragging rights.

Olivia even gave Giselle a cat tail and paws to exercise transformation and to feed her emotions, even though they found that the general level of emotions they felt provided a feedback loop that didn’t need supplementing. Giselle‘s normal stretch of emotions kept Athena satiated while whatever outfits and imaginings Olivia toyed with also rejuvenated her. They noticed that Blessin sometimes lingered around their rejuvenation sessions more than usual. Neither of them hated the woman by this point, but circumstances were hard to heal.

Around the first month, Giselle was deeply horrified to discover her body already had a cycle going on despite being so young. Everything Rachel taught her using the prolific supplies they’d been given was met by the brightest nervous blush on Giselle‘s cheeks as she dipped her head down and waited for it to be over. She wasn’t spared a single month through the three, but it got easier. They often joked ad nauseam that Jeremy‘s terrible memory reset every couple of weeks. Coming up on that point, Giselle lamented how the feeling and love of her parents felt ghostly faded aside from the videos they brought with them. She used all of her thoughts and willpower to keep her loved ones clear and strong.

Memories of the sun and the air outside also lost their full dimension. She slept for longer hours than she really wanted but which she desperately needed. This was the inglorious aspect of a post-apocalyptic world, just surviving one day to the next with a different normal. To mix things up, Giselle actually started reading books. She used to be a fervent reader at this age but work and responsibility pushed all that aside. Jeremy had a 1200-page astronomer biography often resting by his bedside as a paperweight used to hold his charger up. A friend jokingly got him the children’s version at one point, and he embarrassingly had read “most of it”.

By comparison, Giselle pounded several classics into her brain. Little Women. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Call of the Wild. Moby Dick. Several C.S. Lewis books and a decent amount of Lord of the Rings. Alice in Wonderland. And several of the more popular titles she’d been recommended by friends but had to set aside due to work. This whirlwind of reading was followed by idle efforts at writing something that wasn’t just a goofy mess meant to meme for the Internet masses, but rather something deeply personal for her.

Olivia and Rachel worked together creating little plushies while composing poetry and sifting through a deep archive of music. Songs brought the most confusion but simultaneous understanding from Olivia’s sensibilities. She struggled to understand the feeling and comprehension of songs but eagerly dived into their sentiment, especially when they resonated with her.

Every so often, they noticed that some of the albino blankness in Olivia’s skin gently peeled off in a shower or overnight as though it were an inverse sunburn. Her arms and lower shoulders appeared just like a little girl’s. At the same time, her feet were advancing with coloration to meet the top. Like a very slow painting.

Athena didn’t show any physical signs she was emerging, developing, or popping loose, but Giselle noticed sinus headaches would come and go on rare occasions as she fretted, despite assurances, that the mythological allusion might come to pass. The pool of fire that shifted around her skull acquired less viscosity, as though starting out as plasma yolks and now becoming blazing torrents of egg. She got hungry at the weirdest times and for the weirdest things.

The second month was the hardest to get through because everything had settled into a certain routine that even little choices and surprises couldn’t quite shake from practiced certainty. The cycles of the chamber would come and go, they would prioritize which foods amongst the best kept to eat first and it sometimes wasn’t something she was at all hungry for or wanted to stomach. Frozen fish with the eyeballs included called for a quick decapitation but still left her queasy. The biggest problem was not having anything to do after she had settled and resolved not only the immediate considerations but the ones she invented of importance.

Digging through the computer archives of Flush with Pride and Quantum provided her with the vague lore of hundreds of people who no longer existed but thought they were doing the right thing for the company and the world. She simultaneously hated and pitied them for their pride and hubris.

The final month actually went the fastest as they opted to get through the last of the good fish and available produce that survived for several fine meals which weren’t wasteful. Averaging roughly two Simpsons episodes a day, they managed to get through all 178 of the Blessin-approved installments in the first eight seasons. The cold sentiment between them eroded to a sense more like a respected neighbor not regularly visited. Of course, Giselle vaguely wanted to see more of the show and recalled other memes that hasn’t popped up yet but was more excited to finish the waiting game and actually fix whatever was wrong.

Blessin seemed to just decide on the right appointed day. They cleaned off the rainbow ring and worked to reroute power from the main part of the chamber into a side system. There was plenty of space for all of them but not enough to also include their vehicles. Aside from essentials and the cats, they grabbed weapons, despite the fact none of them had been used yet, and a few mementos.

Channeling an arcing electrical field into the area, Blessin joined them as they held hands close together and waited to see what happened. Jumping across the universes, sliding between realities. Giselle expected a momentous tear in reality or a ripple like a floating pond in the air. Instead, something like a portal from the game but with the room slightly altered fanned out and dropped beneath the floor. Giselle immediately found that her ears popped, and it hurt like hell. Everyone else staggered and recouped as they had a similar reaction.

The first thing that Giselle noticed and had to point out was that their cars were gone. Blessin gave a guarded breath and explained, “They are still in that branch reality that used to be our home. Now we’re in the other one and we should be at the right time, hopefully.” Looking around, Giselle noticed that the lights were slightly dimmer, as though on a power-saving mode. Furthermore, all the little changes they made to their home environment had reverted to the base state. This was another universe with a different sequence of events. A vague smell of rotting produce wafted through the air. Shame, she deduced, it seemed like there was no one to enjoy the supplies when they were last dropped off.

Blessin encouraged them to approach the door. Giselle didn’t wanna open it, because she knew what the hell was out there. Even though this was a different reality, she knew that fucking Cerberus could stretch across worlds. It didn’t take long before incoherent screams with traces of words breached the silence. Loud beeping issued from the console, with the notification, “INTRUDERS”. Working quickly, Blessin entered several things into the keypad and the beeping went away. Despite the trust built over all these weeks and calm tolerance, they wanted to scream at Blessin. Slowly, the door hissed open with bright blooms of radiance flowing over every inch of the interior. Frantic figures spilled through the opening when there was barely enough room and tumbled to the ground beside them.

Once they were all through, a familiar voice screamed for the door to be shut again. The voice came from Blessin, from a copy of her in similar clothes with an oozing scratch on her arm. The last through, lumbering and out of breath, was Finley plastered in sweat with several guns on his shoulders. Next to him was a heavyset, voluptuous woman who vaguely looked like Jeremy‘s roommate in college, Dale, if he had a twin sister. A stick-thin, disheveled woman who their Blessin seemed to recognize stood next to female Dale. And then there was Olivia, the other Olivia. Well, according to what traveling Blessin from this universe told Giselle, her name was Hanako.

This Hanako looked like her Olivia from before the movie. Same demeanor with a slight tint of humanity but still the early stiffness, as though wearing a mask that was uncomfortable for her. The man she didn’t recognize locked eyes with Rachel and they both stared in shock at one another. Owing to adult Giselle standing right next to him, young Giselle could assume that this man was a version of Rachel, a notion helped by the fact that he resembled several of Rachel‘s Wisconsin-resident cousins. The man was missing his right eye though, just like she learned in the hospital. And, of course, the adult female version of herself. Darker hair like she used to have and the same tense frown she used to feel.

All together.

Now what?

[Since this is meant to be interactive, feel free to suggest ideas and prompts for future/alternate branch storylines. Some branches are already written but this will allow me to best pick new/alternate ones. I'm currently just rolling dice.]

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