Chapter 58 10.X Interlude: A Passing Guidance

Alicia Ferren had never fashioned herself to be a middling graphics artist growing up. Being raised in the era of the internet and modern availability of knowledge, her younger self had been engrossed with gaming despite her parents vehemently denying her hobbies with every opportunity. With every handheld console she bought with her hard-earned allowance, her grades had to take the brunt of her attention just to let her keep playing. For every hour that she played on her PC, three hours of studying had to be the price for her to continue. Truly, her childhood was one of constant fighting, with Alicia trying her best to justify her growing passion for games despite her many talents.

"And now look at me... being a graphics artist at a software company..."

Alica stared at her poor self in the mirror. What was once a bright-eyed young girl was now a burnt-out adult, her bags marring her once youthful features as her grey eyes reflected her gaunt features off of her reflection. Having to survive off her own job due to being cut off from her family, the stress took a toll on what was once arguably a woman beautiful enough to never need to work such a demanding job.

With a sigh, the programmer shook her head as she removed her work clothes, replacing them with comfortable pajamas before she made her way to her bed. Along the way, empty cups of instant noodles and makeup hampered her progress, the utter disarray of her living space doing little to uplift her spirits. Nevertheless, even if her apartment was a pigsty, it was still her pigsty. She simply didn't have the time to clean up.

"Do I even want to try...."

The tired woman mumbled to herself, her eyes landing on her beast of a computer. It was the one piece of appliance Alicia had that she truly took care of despite all odds. Even with rising costs of parts and general living, she never failed to replace or upgrade any hardware that needed the attention. Built both for work and gaming, it was the straw that broke her parents' back that resulted in her being disowned.

"The pains of being a developer..."

Letting out a sigh, Alicia made her way to her computer seat, leaning her elbow on the desk as she turned on the power with her feet. Immediately, her three screens were brought to life, the PC booting up in as fast as five seconds as her desktop displayed her current projects. Predictably, her eyes wandered over to the shortcut of 'The Seams,' its lame icon flashing in her mind as the unbelievability of her current life played itself out in her head again.

The moment she realized that someone wanted to play her game was the moment a seed of hope had planted itself in her heart. Her game was her last attempt at trying to break out of her lot in life as a measly graphics artist and truly becoming a game developer. She had self-studied the art of programming, and even broke company rules by stealing a proprietary engine not available to the general public for her dreams. And to know that someone found her concept interesting enough to play had been the most excited she had been in her short life. Days of handcrafting Kattleyna and the Shallow Deep had suddenly been vindicated, months of pouring into programming language immediately being worth it in her eyes as she tried her best to stop herself from screaming in joy.

Unfortunately, that had been the end of her excitement as the pains of being a rookie developer immediately reared its ugly head. Almost immediately, bugs began showing up in her code in ways that she had no idea how to fix. Even as that one player downloaded the game, Alicia was working double-time just to make sure that the program would even run properly. Granted, the Re:Mind Engine being as powerful as it was, made her work both easier and harder at the same time as the minutiae of proper scriptwriting clashed wildly with her artistic vision. Thankfully, she somehow managed to update the game just as the one player's download had completed.

And that was when something completely unexpected happened.

Somehow, Moriya had gotten himself stuck inside her game with no way out. At the thought of having to be responsible for another living being, Alicia almost balked at the responsibility until her overwhelming guilt kicked in. It also didn't help that she heard him mumbling and complaining in her head all the time, dissing her hard-earned work as if she even had a choice on the matter. Suddenly, she found herself fixing bugs nonstop, working desperately to not have the game break on the man and have him killed out of negligence. She was shy at first when she first started talking to him, but it all disappeared the more her game seemed to break right before her eyes. Her apprehension turned into simmering annoyance, her focus trained solely on keeping the game stable enough to run even if her real-life responsibilities kept her down.

It also didn't help that she could now theoretically talk to her own characters. A part of her just wouldn't let that pass her by.

"Let's see how they're doing..."

Double-clicking on the icon, the debug build of her game sprang to life within her screen. On her other monitor, windows of code began roaring to life as her rig chugged, the Re:Mind Engine utilizing the full capacity of her top-of-the-line PC as her game began loading.

"Damn, this thing is massive..."

Absently looking at her PC's performance, all three main components of her rig were being pushed to their operational limits every time she even booted up the game. Her CPU, GPU, and RAM were all maxed out, her stolen engine eating everything it could just to run itself. After a good minute of loading, the game finally loaded up its title screen.

"I really have to optimize that," Alicia mumbled to herself as she typed in her credentials. "If it can barely run on my specs, what more for the average PC?"

[USER: Guidance]

[DESIGNATION: ADMIN]

Peeling off the layers of her UI, Alicia slowly became Guidance, her online handle even after over a decade of using it in her games. In the safety of her seat, the dev began looking through her code, noting any possible changes that she could observe and fix quickly.

"Of course, that's gonna be broken..."

Clicking her tongue, Guidance got to work. Her fingers moved swiftly over her keyboard, the sound of plastic keys clacking through the air letting her settle into a trance-like state as lines of red slowly became green with each pass that she made. A few missing textures replaced, a few numbers readjusted, her world was like putty in her hands, molding itself to her will as she fixed her precious baby. Even if she never got married, her game will be more than enough for her to-

[ERROR!!!]

"E-eh..."

Her fingers froze midstroke, her right eye twitching with annoyance and disbelief as a massive red prompt hovered over her coding programs. Quickly reading the error log, Guidance felt her heart hammer with fear the more she got into the very details of the error.

How... "How?!"

It was inconceivable. How could her code produce an error dire enough for her programs to crash this hard?!

"Damn it!" she cried out, tears forming in her eyes as her PC turned itself off, the strain of the Re:Mind Engine forcing it to power down. "How?! How is that even possible!?"

Guidance slammed on her desk with balled fists, her anger turning into frustration as she sobbed. There were people counting on her now. People that she herself painstakingly designed in a world that was meant to be the culmination of her efforts.

"I-I have to fix this quickly..."

She didn't know if Moriya could hear her in the same way she could hear him, but it didn't matter to her as she quickly booted her PC back up. Screw sleeping tonight, she was going to make sure that she fixed her own mistakes before the sun even rises!

Ignoring her blurring vision, Guidance set off to work, her fingers working sluggishly as she forced herself to stay awake. Her three monitors slowly became six, the lines of code on her screen practically burning themselves into her retinas as her eyelids began drooping.

"Just... one more line..."

Not yet.... Not until it was fixed....

[BZZTTT]

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"hey...."

Guidance smacked her lips as she was roused awake, her head hurting like there was no tomorrow as she blinked her drowsiness away. She was pretty sure she slept on her desk again, but for some reason, she felt a bit... dirty?

"we don't even know who this woman is, shizu..."

Voices echoed out above her, two familiar tones if she was being honest with herself. She didn't have any friends though... Was this a dream? Wait....

"Hey, are you okay?"

Grey eyes widened, her heart hammering in fight-or-flight as she sat herself up. Blinkingly, a dawning realization washed over her as she recognized the two figures in front of her.

"M-Moriya? Shizu?"

"Guidance?!"

Well, at least she didn't have to go to work tomorrow.

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AN: And that's the end of Volume 1. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. With the plot now completely derailed, the nonsensical bugs and whims of the Re:Mind Engine now reign supreme throughout the world of 'The Seams.'

This will also be the start of reducing my update rate from 2 chapters per day to just 1 barring other circumstances. This will only change if I get contracted, or if I can support myself through writing this story. So please, kindly lend me your support.