The swirl began to settle, slowly. She was standing on a large, grassy, windy meadow, stretching endlessly in every direction, wherever she looked. Above, in the purple sky, dark clouds were chasing one other. Sometimes, thunder could be heard in the distance.
She touched one of the greenish-yellow plants, reaching up to three feet high; it looked like it contained a bit of red too, due to the strange, purpleish-red illumination. "It's real", she concluded, then she noticed, surprised: even when she moved her hand away, she could still feel the texture of the stalk. This strange phenomenon did go away a couple seconds later though.
She took a few steps forward, then stopped. She felt better, compared to when she was outside, at least physically: she wasn't sleepy, nor was she freezing, and it's as if she didn't drink that cocktail, either. On the other hand...
All the new impressions made her forget why she is here, after all. Her mind was full of strange goals that she couldn't make sense of; never-seen-before objects with odd implied connections and properties, left behind from that big swirl, slowly fading. Only gradually did the world take shape again, in its reasonable order, as her memories started to surface what they held inside.
This process was nevertheless greatly accelerated by the object flying past her, screaming through the air, eventually meeting the ground and blasting a 60 foot crater in the earth, just a couple hundred feet from her. The shockwave of the explosion followed a moment later, even louder than the flyby (if that's even possible). The earth trembled, chunks of dirt and rocks were flying around.
What could this strange world be?
She headed out towards the direction the projectile was coming from. It's not like she can get hurt, it's all virtual. At least Akos was talking about something like that. Who, right now, is... OK, this is not something that should be thought about, not now...
For a long time, she was just walking, walking forward, through the completely uniform landscape, which... began to look increasingly familiar. After a while, in the distance, she spotted a large depression, a kind of valley. A valley about a mile wide, cutting lengthwise through the plains, with groups of rocks and trees on its steep walls. The bottom wasn't visible right until she got right up to the precipice. And then, in a flash, the mystery became clear, of what this place might be...
She was watching it the same afternooon. Her favorite animated TV show. That big, sparkling, white, floating glass castle in that valley. And... she's now here! The castle, the valley... with the notable difference of half of the castle missing; its charred, torn-apart remains lay scattered below, belching dark smoke, having decimated entire groups of trees at some places as they fell.
On the side of the rocky valley wall, she found a staircase, leading to a hidden cave, grown over by plants. That's where they kept those winged gliders, made out of flexible glass and blue energy, that they used to get up to the castle. She of course knew about this (they were up to Episode 23 already, after all). She got into one of these vehicles, placing her hands on the control panel; blue energy wrapped around them, the machine lifted off silently, and flew out of the cave though its narrow entrance. Anne set out towards the castle, at least whatever was left of it. The inhabitants: the blue energy creatures and the winged sheep, could not be seen anywhere.
Underneath, trees were rushing by, a round lake, surrounded by plants of strange shapes... Trees also, hovering in the air; spherical, rootless trees, often grazed upon by the winged sheep. She barely saw any; the ones that were still there were drifting around torn, singed.
She finally reached the castle. Hovering hundreds of feet above the ground, the gigantic, white-glass, all-triangles building was covered by bullet holes and gaping, smoldering scorch marks multiple feet of size. The whole building was leaning slightly sideways, with terrible, creaking sounds emanating from it, accompanied by explosions and machine gun fire. Anne landed on one of the protruding terraces, covered in some dark material; she left the vehicle and climbed up to the door.
The door opened to a long, triangular corridor, continuing and branching off in all directions, with colorful strips on its sides. She started forward, as if she knew where she was going... and yet, she had no idea what's coming next and why. After all, it's not as simple as her deciding that they can write stuff into her brain and so they just do it...
Suddely, she heard noises from the end of the corridor, from the direction she was heading towards. Frightened, she pulled back into an alcove. The sounds were approaching: someone was running this way. The stranger could have been just a dozen feet away from her when the sounds stopped. Are they looking for her? Anne held her breath, waiting for what would happen.
Then, the figure moved on, passing by in front of her. A giant tower of muscle, more than seven feet tall, his giant, shovel-sized hands holding a rocket launcher... but this not preventing him, at all, from jumping around lightly from wall to wall, sometimes turning back lightning-fast and looking around. Fortunately, he did not end up spotting her.
She hid a bit more in the alcove after, but (apart from the explosions and creaking) she didn't hear anyone moving around nearby. She peeked around carefully, then started to head outside.
Except... as if... there was someone here?
"Hi." the voice spoke up. Which... was oddly similar to her own. "Can we talk for a minute?"
The room was small and dark; most of it was taken up by two filing cabinets, reaching up to the ceiling. The place was permeated by the distinctive smell of paper; you could hear the quite hum of air conditioning, too. From the other side of the door, the typical noises of a LAN party, slowly fading, then suddenly surging again, laughter, gunshots from speakers, the monotonous sounds of steps on steel flooring, on grass, on snow...
"Sounds like we don't really need to worry about her, after all", Akos whispered. "I mean, it's pretty unlikely that they packed the Cube full of games, so..."
"She is managing it quite well. Anne, that is. As it sounds like, half of the machines just crashed, just to make things more realistic."
"But... yes, everything could just stay exactly the way it was before, but... how about the plan?"
"Well, without Anne... not much." Akos concluded grimly.
Anne was (as of recently) sitting in a small, bright and fairly interesting room, in a blue armchair.
"Isn't nice to have decided what you actually want?" the voice said. "Otherwise, just relax. Even I was only convinced by this entire situation that is going on outside."
"And then... what now?"
"Well... Laci and the others currently believe that they found some cool new game. They have, in the process, taken apart my favorite world, but it doesn't count anymore anyway. On the other hand, they're taking up all the computing power of the Cube."
"Yeah but once they leave, we'll have to leave too! I mean us as in..."
"That's what Plan B is for! The issue, as of now, is that it's me who keeps everything running. But there is always little bits of extra time left, so in the meantime, I'm writing some cute game for them. They download it, play around with it, and by the time they get bored, we're long gone."
"You... how many things are you... looking into right now?"
"Well... so Laci and friends are shredding each other in winged-sheep-land, and then I'm coding a "Starcraft 2", and... oh yeah, and I'm talking to you. It's a little bit much, even for me. Should be done though in... give me an hour."
A soft buzzing sound, from Akos's backpack.
"Sounds like... a text. Who the hell does, at this time... oh wait, it's Anne... from inside...
"What does she say?"
"Just that we should stay where we are... and... and that right now, she's chatting with... herself?"
Another corner of the Cube. Somewhere down in the depths, a huge, and yet crowded, hall. Its walls were painted red by the glow of molten metal, flowing from the huge, throbbing central furnace, standing in the middle. Steel scaffoldings everywhere; dark machines, steam whistling out of a valve or another at times. Around the machines, dark, hoofed devils; across the various levels, swarms of bats sweep through, emitting high-pitched squeaks.
On the walls of the cavern, there are many openings of black, deep tunnels everywhere. Through some of them, many kinds of unsightly creatures traverse back and forth, fangs jutting out from their mouths, spikes protruding from their heads. Some other tunnels were dark and abandoned.
Out of one of the tunnels, a large, booming sound could be heard. Some of the bats changed directions sharply, heading down that way. They could have been flying for a couple hundred feet in the darkness until the tunnel finally came to an end. It terminated in a single, thick, metal door, on it a steel lock mechanism, with a bar. The bats perched on the bar, listening intently. In the hot air, it was as if there were, sometimes, bright ones and zeroes flickering into the void... One of the animals let out a loud, angry screech, then the entire swarm headed out backwards.
The knocking on the door continued for a while, then stopped.
"Access denied", they saw it showing up the screen, for the third time.
The man sprawling in front of the computer slammed his fist into the desk so hard it almost broke in two.
"Damn it!!! What the hell are these idiots doing, yet again?"
He picked up the phone and dialed.
"Hello, Szabo here", a sleepy voice said from the other side.
"My great pleasure. May I ask why the system is down as of currently?", the President asked in a calm, measured voice.
"Um... well... which system?"
"Which one do you think it is? The Cube, you idiot!!!"
"Well when I left... it was still up... I'm not sure why it might be... Tomorow morning I can..."
Ferenc Fenyes slammed down the phone, and reached for another one. He dialed again. Yet another sleepy voice.
"Who was the last coming down from the 13th?" he asked yet another question.
"Just a moment, sir, I'll check in a moment... it was Chief Engineer Mr. Szabo. At Six zero-one PM, this afternoon."
"And since...?"
"No one. The entire floor is empty."
"Are you sure? You should look carefully... using your actual two eyes that you supposedly have... or else..."
"Well um... I'm... sure... here are the cameras, like, the displays, it's all empty, it's just blurry a little bit, surely because it's dark..."
"Great. Have you, somehow, never managed to notice the fact that these are infrared cameras? Y'know, the kind that can see in the dark? Bye."
It all started to sound a little bit suspicious. Well sure, his entire company consists of hopeless, card-carrying dumbasses, especially compared to himself, but still... and The Project is valuable enough to check on. Well, tomorrow. No one will make it in there anyway. Someone just ended up being so unspeakably intelligent that they managed to flip some switch they should not have. Or a magnetic storm. Or...
Driven by a sudden idea, he reached for the phone again. It was ringing for a long time; he was about to hang up when the other side answered.
"Hey, it's your dad. You still around there?"
"Yes, here still..."
Laci was standing in the farthest corner possible that he could get to while the phone was still ringing. Of course, he also had to pay attention to not to run into any walls, so he didn't get especially far. Unfortunately, the noises of the battle could be heard pretty well from here too... what the hell should he say?
"There is a little issue with the corporate servers... was there a power outage, a lightning strike or something like that? Surely you'd hear that from the 8th floor too..."
"No, no... everything is pretty ordinary."
Why did he even have to pick up that damn phone. Yeah, sure, anyone can be very smart in hindsight.
"I see. What's that noise in the background? Are you under fire or something?"
"Yeah, we did a little LAN party."
"What? Where did you take computers from, even? Yours is still here at home?"
"Um... the others brought some."
"And you didn't want to bring yours? Or was it like a surprise LAN? Otherwise, well, isn't this such a well thought out move, going to a LAN party but with no machine to play on..." F. F. liked to make it felt if he was in a bad mood. And as of now, he was in a bad mood.
Laci, on the other hand, specifically hated when his dad was doing this to him. But... now, for once... he'll win. Because he has the upper hand now.
"Well I didn't bring one because there were some around already." he remarked innocently.
"On the 8th? So that's why you sound so sneaky, after all. Not sure where you got the passwords from, but... progress? Always use all the resources available, right?"
This did brighten up Fenyes' mood somewhat. Look, his son did learn something from him, after all. Not just lost and clueless. Almost as perfect as he himself.
"Oh yes", Laci continued with the story. "Well, actually, not exactly around there. Like... it's not eight but thirteen."
"What's thirteen? The floor number? Did you not end up drinking a little bit too much? There aren't even elevators that would go there..." F. F. started thinking. Sure, Laci was very interested in what The Project was about, but that he could make it inside is entirely imposs..."
"Well, they wouldn't go there for anyone else. But... we're not fans of things staying so mysterious, which we'll only 'get to hear about at some point', so we got in and took a look. At the Cube."
Baffled silence on the other end of the line.
"And... but... and her... have you talked to her?"
Laci was enjoying the hell out of this entire situation. Finally, he could tell his otherwise always-so-perfect dad something new that he had no idea about.
"Talked to whom? Well, we've seen things like... Half-Life 3, Quake 4, wouldn't even have thought that you'd be working on stuff like this. Not bad, after all. Rocket launchers are pretty well done; other weapons still need some... refinement", he remarked, with over-exaggerated criticism.
"... what...?" F. F. was entirely lost at this point. They got into his extremely well-protected HQ, defended by the most modern tech... and... ohh of course! Anne is a genius!"
"Well... nice. Okay, you win! You can keep playing if you don't mess up anything, but... out of curiosity, how the hell did you manage to get into that place?"
"I just needed to make use of some of my connections."
It's obvious: he'll need to fire half of the company. Good thing that it was just his son, succeeding first. So... first thing tomorrow: fire the chief engineer, the head of security, the...
"I just happened to have heard some rumors from Anne, last night, that Akos and his friends are also curious about this thing."
His world collapsed again.... What are they even doing there? How did they get in? And why? What do they know? Everything???
"And... where exactly are they now?"
"Akos and Aladar are hanging out in the file storage room; Anne is sitting around here in some kind of armchair with this thing on her head, I guess she must be pretty drunk, since she's been quiet for like an hour. It's a pretty cool solution, right?"
Two minutes later, out of the garage of the Fenyes residence emerged a BMW the size of a smaller yacht, engine roaring; direction: FCI.
Akos straightened up, next to the door where he was listening against before.
"Did you hear all of it?" he spoke up.
"Yep. We must somehow tell them, to make it... faster."
"Phone number?"
"She doesn't have her phone with her. And she wouldn't pick it up anyway."
"Air ducts it is then."
Aladar surfaced a screwdriver from his coat, climbed one of the filing cabinets, and started tearing one of the ventilation duct openings on the ceiling. He was only hoping that this one did not happen to have an alarm system.
Meanwhile, Akos was calculating the number of minutes they might still have until Ferenc Fenyes makes it out here. 15 minutes, tops. And Anne has no idea about any of this happening.
As it appears, the ducts haven't really been designed for humans to conveniently get around in; unlike most of its movie cousins, it happened to be remarkably tight. There were also numerous other downsides: there were no arrows whatsoever that would show the way. Despite all this, they did manage to make it reasonably quickly to a sufficiently covered corner of the central room.
They were now peeking out from behind a cabinet, crammed with networking gear and cables. About 10-15 feet from them: the armchair, the one Anne was sitting in, with the sphere on her head.
"The terminals are all too far", Aladar concluded. "Plenty of people around there, too. Darn."
"Wait. If I remember correctly... theoretically, when you're dreaming, you're still somewhat paying attention towards the outside, too, right? Wait here."
Akos glanced around; no one was coming their way at the moment. Crawling behind the desks, he approached the armchair. On the other side of which happened to be all the terminals. With Laci and friends.
He knelt up slowly. Anne had a slight smile on her face. As if she was sleeping. Akos checked again whether it was all clear: everyone was very busy with trying out all the newest video games. He leaned close to Anne's ears, and whispered something.
In ten seconds, a certain "Internet connection error" showed up on the Quake 4 screens. "Try again later". Ohh also, "Restoring Internet connection in 09:59... 58... 57..."
Akos and Aladar, behind the cabinet, were giving each other high fives... just quietly, let alone anyone would hear them.
Two minutes later, Laci and friends got bored of waiting, and switched over to Starcraft 2, just in case it doesn't need an Internet connection. Well, it did not need any, it just crashed about every 5 minutes, and some of the maps didn't appear to be working, either. Pretty cool game though.
Time just didn't appear to want to pass.
Five minutes.
Akos was already thinking about... what if it doesn't work. They did, in theory, figure out how to write back into brains, but they never got to try it in practice yet. Especially if all they have for it is ten minutes.
Seven minutes.
And, by the way, that bottle of vodka in Anne's hands was... fairly suspicious. They definitely didn't count on that one.
Three minutes.
Laci's crew got bored of all the crashes, they rather popped open some more beers & waited out the two more minutes. What if they spot something... and where could Laci's dad be? As if they heard a door slamming from towards the windows...
One minute to go.
They'll make it. No matter what. And if they run into... if they run into anyone, they won't be able to do anything anymore.
Anne, in the armchair, opened her eyes. Just barely, just to a narrow slit, but she definitely did.
It worked!!!
A few moments later, both of them were hiding in the shadows of the armchair already. Anne rose too, she took an unsteady step towards them, then tripped over in a cable lying around; she was caught by the two of them in the end.
"Are you OK?" Akos asked, his voice muffled, worried. He did have his reasons: she was white as a sheet.
"Well... the world is so strange from here...." Anne whispered.
"Yeah but... I know, it's hard from there... so, who are you exactly now?"
"Could you ask... an easier one?" she smiled faintly. "For example... if one furnace will take five seconds to burn two disco music CDs, then... how many would it take to burn... how many do I happen to own lately?"
"Got you... Come, let's go to the elevator..."
No one was paying attention to the sudden quiet that started happening during the past half minute.
"Well well well" a voice spoke up behind them. "What do you happen to be doing here?"
Ferenc Fenyes was standing in the door of the computer room, with three security guards behind him. In one of his hands, he was holding a piece of their alarm system neutralizer equipment.
"So?" F. F. took a step forward. "But no worries, everyone can be curious, right?" he glanced over to his son's friends, who were watching from next to the terminals, behind the chairs, trying to look as uninteresting as possible.
"You can bring anyone", Aladar spoke up in a somewhat uncertain voice that got increasingly steady in the process, "but this experiment is over."
"Over?" F. F.'s experession darkened. He stepped to one of the machines and hit a few keys. An ominous message appeared on the screen. "Deleting all files, please wait..."; underneath, names of files scrolling by, too fast to be readable.
"Well... I didn't think you had this in you. Just like that... Are you this afraid of me? So that you sacrificed her too?"
"Me?" Anne was facing him bravely. "Dear Mr. Chief Devil, you ended up being wrong, yet again. I, in fact, do happen to be here."
There was a moment of surprise reflecting on F. F.'s face, then... as if he started thinking.
"No... this can't be... Damn!!! For all this, someone will...." he bellowed. He snatched up a CD drive from one of the desks, spun it for a bit in his hands, then put it down yet again still.
"So be it." he announced eventually. "This time, you win. Don't think it's over though. But... before you leave... just so that you see that there exist people who always keep their moral high ground..." he smiled, as if he found a thought especially funny, "I'll tell you about what you managed to so nicely take apart here."
If Fenyes slams that CD drive into one of the screens, shattering it to tiny pieces... if he smashes the entire place, if he starts shouting at them five inches from their face... it would have been less surprising to them. For him to just nicely sit down and start telling stories...
Something must be up.
"So, the way this entire thing started is..." F. F. started in a sweet, smiling voice, "that my company consists exclusively of card-carrying dumbasses. They never come up with anything new. When Pokémon turns out to be popular, the only thing they could do is making something very similar, but with another name... but, with their vestigal brains, they couldn't think of anything more original."
"This is where I come in. 'If it doesn't work with people', I thought, 'maybe machines will be more intelligent'. We created the secret 13th Floor, the Cube, and, after all, competent engineers are not that hard to find. The machine was smart, but... not really. It did have some imagination, but the only things it could make up were like its own world. And what kind of jackass would want their kids to watch 'how to write code in a cool way' videos all day?"
"Laci went to math camp, last year still. By that time, we ended up hiring some extra bio-engineers. If it doesn't work just by machine, let's add something human to it! The school principal was retiring anyway, got some... extra material support from us, in exchange we gave a roomful of students a few pieces of sleep meds and copied the brain of the best math student. Math, imagination, computers..."
"... but I wasn't even there last year...?" Anne interjected.
"It wasn't you, you little silly thing. It was Akos, of course. But... first experiments rarely work. His brain wasn't being read deeply enough."
"So... it was... me too, after all", Akos finally understood. "And that's why, for Anne, you had to deactivate..."
"Exactly. It's a somewhat more blunt method, but we didn't have a better one. What we have already read, we deactivate, so that it doesn't mess things up. We didn't have write-back yet, at that time, but, as it looks like, you guys have..."
"Yes, we did it. You, you... evil piece of..."
"Well, that's a point of view, too. But anyway, Anne seems to have had a pretty good time in here, and, just for fun, put together a world that did end up being a world-class success story indeed."
"And, to achieve this, you'll just use whatever, and whoever, you can..."
"That's how the world works. Now, how about you? How did you figure it out?"
"Guess it yourself. That's how the world works." Aladar replied, dryly.
"It's all right for me this way, too. Could have been such a great discussion though, in such a nice mood. Didn't you enjoy it? Well, okay then." He stood, paced up and down for a bit. Then he turned to them again.
"Luckily, I do happen to have a backup copy of at least the base system. Which... is it looks like to me, has been installed already." He was typing something on the terminals for a while. "So, let's see. I'm assuming... your exceedingly smart brains have already come up with the question: how stupid could this guy be, to just tell us everything? Fortunately... he is not entirely stupid."
"Why, what do you want? Not let us out? If it's more violent than this, then everyone will know about it, and..."
"No... you might end up being happy about what's coming. Surely not right now, but... afterwards. We can't really write brains back anymore, that's too complicated, and we have experimented on you two just enough already. Happy?"
"Very... but you don't get to experiment on anyone else either. For sure."
"Sure? Well. Lo and behold: the Cube. We can't quite upload minds to it, the system it's running right now is too primitive for that. But... every computer comes with a key labeled 'DEL'!"
F. F. surveyed the surprised looks triumphantly.
"You won't remember a thing. Who knows why. You have been to some party, right? Well, stuff like this does in fact happen... and Anne stopped liking math already anyway."
"You can't do this...."
"Well? The system is ready. Just to make you happy, Anne will come first."
Akos's blood froze over in his veins. He imagined as the next day... like Anne, after the math camp. If not worse. They'll surely take apart their entire brains, and not even just to the level like back then... and no one... will hurt... his sister... EVER AGAIN!
He glanced around lightning-fast. The three security guards were holding tranquilizer guns. Smart. Him and the others were standing next to the armchair. The CD drive, next to Akos's right hand. He looked at Aladar, Aladar glanced back. His gaze moved to the drive, he lifted it unnoticed from the desk, then, in a sudden move, hurled it towards Fenyes and the others. Exploiting the surprise, all three of us started bolting towards the other door.
Projectiles whizzed by their heads, but they reached the exit unscathed. They kept running, down the corridor. From a turn, suddenly, two guards jumped out, one of them was already lifting his tranquilizer when Aladar's well-directed fist knocked him out. The other one, seeing this, jumped back into cover. Behind them, more guards showing up. Akos only heard a hiss, then a sharp pain in his right thigh... he saw, still, Aladar looking at him, hopelessly, then everything went black.
He didn't know how much time passed before he woke up. His head was still buzzing, but, as one of his first thoughts, he happily concluded that he still knew where he was and why. He opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground, in front of the armchair. He looked around: F. F. and the guards were still there. And in the armchair... Anne.
Slowly, he stood. His arms and legs were tied up, just tightly enough so that they couldn't make another escape attempt. Aladar was also starting to awaken, right next to him.
"You have been asleep for a bit", F. F. spoke up suddenly. His head had been wrapped in quite an amount of bandage. "Very persistent, you are. But let's see what became of our little Anne."
'Deletion' must have just concluded. Anne was also 'waking up', removing the helmet from her head, then just... staring blankly into space. Akos knew this look very well already. The big, blue, curious eyes were gone again. How can it be this bad...
"Well. Fortunately, we did manage to block long term memory for 2-3 hours more, so she won't remember even things that are happening right now. Right, Anne? So... who are you exactly now, just to quote... you.", he gave Akos a smile, an expression that, on him, looked more like baring his teeth, even when he hadn't just been hit on the head with a CD drive.
"Me... Anne?" she blinked, somewhat confused. "Where am I?"
"On the 13th floor. But worry not, you'll ask about it in five minutes again. So, Akos..."
Anne was moved over into another chair, replacing her with Akos. No, this can't be... What will happen now? To them? All of them? But... it won't even be 'them' anymore! And no one knows about this happening, Laci and the others were sent out from the room too, they'll say the three of them just drank too much, that's why they don't remember what happened tonight... and if anyone notices how they're different now, they won't be able to do anything about it.
He closed his eyes. To the right, the clicking of a keyboard; above his head, rigid, black buzzing. He was shivering.
He decided to look around still, instead. Once more. Everyone was looking at him. Aladar: looks like he didn't give up yet, thinking hard. Fenyes: giving instructions. Very Important Person. The guards: they have no idea what's happening. And Anne. Sitting around peacefully, looking around, blankly... playing around with some bottle... or a cable... sometimes looking at him, too... what could that large white thingy be, over her brother's head? It would be great, to be able to count on her, at least. If there was just a little bit of thought, flashing in those eyes. If only...
and then... if she wasn't even sure whether she'd want this... Anne give him a subtle wink. With a trace of a smile.
Or... did she really?
The corridor was long and greenish. The symbols were running down the walls irregularly, changing color and shape as they went. Drawings hung in the air, as if a fine gossamer, bright, translucent. All of them must mean something.
She set out towards one of the doors confidently. That one surely has an apple behind it. Her train of thought might still have errors in it, it's so complicated after all, she can barely imagine everything... but still. Just a hunch.
The door opened. In front of her, metal scaffolding reached down into the abyss. And at the bottom... the furnace, the one she had once seen already. Her head felt perfectly clear; she knew: that was the CPU of the Cube. It's how it looks, from the inside.
She didn't have much time to enjoy analyzing which subsystem corresponds to which steam engine, paddle or even which ugly creature. Behind her, a draft slammed the door shut, the boom echoed along the hall. And, suddenly, from behind her, someone stepped forward.
"Welcome to Hell, Krisztike", the devil rasped. "I'm hoping the task is pretty clear by this point. Just... continue. You won't consciously remember what's happening right here and now... but don't worry, you'll be using it anyway."
"Who are you?"
"Not important. What's more so is... who I will be! Just mentioning that... soon, you won't be alone. Many Cubes... and the entire world!"
"But I... don't..."
A few moments later, she found herself on a big, wide, green field. Brimming with energy. And... the world was interesting.