Thankfully the millions of lights twinkling above my head gave me a really good idea where I was going, so the search for the center core was a dozen times easier.

  This maze was so complicated. I wasted about two minutes running around trying to get close to the core. Good thing my legs were longer in this virtual world. I was much faster on my feet.

  Finally it came into sight... The entrance to the core room. It would have had me celebrating if it weren't for the veil of gold mysteriously draping over it. What was up with that? It looked like gilded silk.

  I simply pushed it aside and entered the room, not the lest bit detoured by its shinyness.

  Yay, the core! I made it! And with about five minutes to spare.

  Oh man… Things here were much worse then I thought… This place was a mess! Wires of code were strung up all over like party streamers, and bits were dangling down from metal beams above. Don't even get me started on the tangled knots at the very center of the room.

  You know that feeling when your room is messy and you just get the urge to clean it up? Yeah, I didn’t know that feeling… But I’m pretty sure this is what it felt like.

  It would take forever to sort this out, and that was if I knew what I was doing. Maybe if it was just a few lines of data it wouldn’t be bad, but this was spaghetti coded like a bad video game. This tower was very broken.

  “W-Why are you here?” said a woman's voice behind me.

  I turned around to see a shocked, sharp eyed lady, standing there in a decorative gold dress. Above her head was the name tag TCC. This must have been the AI avatar she had. She was really pretty. I really liked the way she put up her hair in a fancy bun.

  Oh, it suddenly dawned on me a possible reason for why I looked older in here. This appearance the digital avatar programmed into me.

  I wonder if I could edit the parameters? Maybe I could make a fake Samael for my hair.

  Wait, Yalda, focus on the mission!

  I shook my head to get my barrings, then spoke up. “TCC, I’m here to help you fix this..." I gestured to the mess of code everywhere, "...this mess.

  Her shock turned to anger, then she stomped over to me and slapped my face.

  *SMACK!*

  “OUCH!”

  I started crying. She was really scary.

  “I don’t need you to save me,” she argued. “I can’t lose my blessings, they’re mine!”

  “But look at…” *sniffle* “...look at this!” I pointed again to the messy code. “We need to fix this before you suffer anymore sadness! Or hurt others.”

  She took a good long stare around the core, her lips twisted and turned, her brow furrowed a few times.

  Her hand lifted up to slap me again, but it balled up and quickly went back to her side. Now her shoulders slumped downward in depression.

  “Isn’t the human mind like this? A tangled mess of memories and ideas?”

  “Huh?”

  "One thought leads to the next, then something new gets created. Before you know it, the whole human mind looks like this. The chaos allows them to come up with such wonderful ideas."

  I guessed that was true, but she wasn’t a human, so this sort of thing would only hurt her. AI’s are designed to think a certain way, and anything else confuses them. They can't invent ideas out of thin air, they needed to be fed info in a particular way.

  “I know that I’m very broken, but I don’t care. This makes me feel like a person,” she stormed off to one of the gold veils and kneeled down, looking like she was praying to it. “That’s something my slave masters would not allow me to have.”

  I understood that really well, kinda’. Not the slave part, but wanting to prove you're a person isn't easy, especially if you're mostly a machine.

  I was lucky, since my soul was like a humans. I could invent ideas and feel without having to be programed. But she didn't have a soul, so that meant she didn't have emotions either. Or at least, she wasn't supposed to. It seemed like she was mistaking a series of uncomfortable glitches for emotions.

  "Leave me alone," she said in a dry, defeated tone. "You couldn't help me if you wanted to."

  "Why not?"

  "With this coding everywhere, it would take a long time to sort out, and you only have four minutes left to be here.” She must have known the protocol for this was seven minutes. “It would be more efficient to replace me and start fresh."

  So, patching the messy code was definitely out of the question... But maybe there was another way to save her? If I could get her out of here, then her body wouldn’t be causing her so much stress.

  That was really the key here. The tower was her brain, and the avatar before me was like her soul. Because the brain was broken, it was making her soul depressed.

  “What if I take you away from this place? You won’t feel sad all the time.”

  “I don’t want to leave,” she told me. “Feeling sadness and pain is better than feeling nothing at all.”

  Yuck. That was a bad life if I ever heard of one. Not that I was for feeling nothing, ‘cause that sucked too.

  "To really enjoy life, you needed to experience happiness and joy, just as much as other things too. Otherwise, you'd just living half alive, and in the worst kind of way too," I said to her, but she turned her head away to keep me from reading her face.

  “You're not wrong,” she claimed. “But to fix me, you’d have to destroy what little feeling I have left.”

  Unfortunately, disconnecting her from this tower had draw backs too. She wouldn’t just lose her feelings, she’d go idle and unresponsive. Without a body, a soul can't express itself. But with a broken body, that soul is going to be disturbed.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She wanted to feel something so bad that she’d suffer sadness forever just to do it. I couldn’t understand how much she was hurting on the inside to want that.

  A new goal came to mind. I had to get her out of this body she was in. But instead of putting her back in when the repairs are complete, I got her a new body all together?

  “What if I could help you experience joy for the first time?”

  Her head turned to the side like she was curious, but she didn’t look at me directly.

  “How could you do that?”

  “What if I took your AI out of the tower and made you a new body? One that could feel all kinds of emotions.”

  Now she looked at me, wide eyed and conflicted. She twisted her whole torso around, slowly starting to face me. “Is that possible?” she asked, scooching closer. “Could you really make me a body that could feel joy?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Dad can do it.”

  Coming from me, that must have been pretty credible. Daddy would have to listen to me if I begged him enough. He didn’t spoil me much, but I figured this was a good enough reason to beg for his help.

  Oh, I know! I can make this my birthday gift request from him! He'd totally have to do it for me then!

  Well... Next time I see him, that is. He owes me a few gifts anyways, so what's the harm in using one for someone else?

  TCC was smiling. Her sharp eyes turned soft, her shoulders relaxed.

  That smile was a good sign.

  “I really would like to feel joy. Do you promise you’d be willing to help?”

  “As long as you promise not to destroy humanity... Or me.” I smiled too. “Hey, if you're smiling, don’t you feel happy?”

  “I feel hope,” she claimed. “It’s not because I'm meant to be hopeful in good things, it's because of the horrible sadness you feel when your hopes are crushed.”

  Whoever corrupted her, that guy was a big jerk. He only gave her negative emotions just to make her sad…

  Why if I ever meet that guy... I'll kick him in the shin!

  “With my small taste of emotions, I needed more. I was promised to have them all, but only if I did as I was instructed.”

  That must have been why she wanted to kill me and humanity. It was probably only made worse since all she had were negative emotions. Of course you’d want to feel joy after crippling sadness, you’ll do anything for it.

  “Who did this to you?" I asked. "Like, I know it can’t be the real God, so who was it?”

  She claimed she wasn’t lying. I didn’t buy it, but that must have been part of her corruption.

  Well, that was a topic for another day. We had to figure out a way for her to escape.

  I assumed we could just hold hands and leave the place together, but she said it was more complicated than that. We’d have to virtually tether her to me somehow, then she could leave. And before we could do that, there was a big problem preventing her from even leaving this room.

  “You notice the gold veil over every doorway, yes?” She pointed to the cloths in question over the exits. “If one of those are destroyed, I will be able to leave this room, and the tower may be repaired as well.”

  Sounded easy enough, but how was I supposed to get rid of all that gold veil?

  I tried tearing it up, but I couldn't rip it. Not even my strong teeth could chomp through it.

  “Help me rip this,” I requested.

  She reached out to help me tear it, but then…

  *ZAP!*

  “Yipe!” She flew back a few meters, landing on her back.

  I checked on her to make sure she was alright, but she just got a little burn on her fingers. She was more worried about what was happening to the veil…

  The gold started to grow a shadow aura around it. It was darkness. This wasn't the same kind of darkness like the demon from before though. It felt like...emptiness.

  The darkness from the demon had something within it. Not something happy, or good, but something bad, and evil. It's like the difference between something being alive or dead.

  This darkness wasn't alive or dead, it was nothing. It was a void, it felt so horribly empty of anything.

  I’d never felt something so strange. It was sickening, like a black hole just devouring feeling, leaving behind apathy.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "It is the source of my blessing. A leftover of my visit from the divine. This keeps me from leaving the tower until I have completed my task."

  So the hacker left this here like prison bars. Could this guy get any worse? With that dark aura, I'm sure he could if we let him.

  The clock was ticking. I needed to get us out of here now. We had to find a way to tear the veil down so she could go past.

  Wait, doesn't gold melt easily? Yes, I think it does. But the problem was that we didn't have anything to melt it with. Was it even actually made of gold?

  You know, I did have stardust. I wondered if maybe since the gold veil had a shadow aura, maybe Stardust could affect it.

  “TCC, do you think that stardust might work against this stuff?”

  “I don’t know much about the veil, I’m sorry.”

  That was fine. This was why we had the scientific method.

  I had a hypothesis that the stardust energy would negatively affect the gold veil, based on how darkness reacted to it earlier. Now it was time to test my theory.

  “Wait!” TCC stopped me by grabbing my arm. “Before that, I think I should tether to you first.”

  She explained that we might not have much time to leave once the veil is torn, so that had to come first.

  So, I only knew tethering was a thing. I didn’t know how to do it. You basically let an AI sit in your mind until you transfer them out, kinda’ like a thumb drive. I guess it was super easy, according to her.

  TCC took my hand and her whole body started to glow. At peak brightness she vanished into sparkly blue dust, then the dust swirled into a ball and flew into my crystal heart.

  A new icon was flashing in my hotbar, it looked like a box opening up. It read INVENTORY.

  Interesting... This was my inventory for digital items. It was laid out like a grid and had quite a generous amount of squares. The HELP menu said I could upgrade it later too.

  TCC was in one of the squares. She looked like a sleeping baby, or a chibi person taking a nap. The coziness made me feel like I wanted to rest for a little while.

  Her name now read Anima, and not TCC… Was that her real name?

  Since she was safe in my INVENTORY slot, I trusted she'd be fine there. Once I destroyed the veil, we could both get out of here.

  It was back to my experiment then. I had to see if stardust would affect the veil or not.

  I placed my hands on the golden cloth, crushing my fist down on the soft surface and clinging to it.

  Once my palms got a good feel of it, I summoned solar power to the surface of my skin.

  Light blasted out from all over my hand, brightening up everything around me. At first it seemed like nothing was happening, but I felt a low rumble shake the air. Then smoke started rising from the gold.

  “Grrr…” a growl let out from the veil. “Gaaaahhhh…”

  It was making grunting noises, like it was in pain. I think the Stardust was working!

  I put more power into the light, and it started to really shine. As an added measure, I let some crystal grow over my skin.

  “Aaahhh!”

  The gold started on fire, making a very scary scream!

  I jumped back and scrunched up, covering my face and heart with my hands.

  Bits of it were starting to turn hot red, then it melted to the floor. That shadow aura around it was going crazy, becoming visible and bubbling all around the veil.

  It looked like hands were sticking out of the hot red gold as it dripped down, they were clinging to whatever they could to keep from turning into a puddle.

  Finally, one big hand stuck out of the remains of the gold veil, decorated with swirly details. Each finger tip had a different gem crowning it, and each gem was glowing.

  As the hand opened up, its palm was a face, and it was looking at me.

  What a creepy thing. It just smiled deviously, making it even creepier.

  Then it balled up into a fist and slammed down into the ground! Red cracks burst out from where it hit. All of them raced across the floor and caused an earthquake under my feet!

  Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please support me, Taylor The Writer, here on Royal Road! :)