(⁠ノ⁠T ⁠෴⁠ T⁠)⁠ノ⁠ ⁠＾⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

Spencer leads his groggy Handler into the shiny dining room. No amount of vacuuming or sweeping will ever truly get rid of the endless specks that now adorn the surfaces in here, but at least it makes his bonfire a tad more appealing. The room is no longer empty; metal wires lead across the walls and converge directly above his fire, suspending a small plastic container.

"What... is this?"

"C'mere, hand." Spencer ignores her as he stops at the fire, motioning for her to place her hand in the lidless box. Kotomi tries to rub the sleep away; He didn't wake her up early this time but he was waiting outside her door. Whatever he wants to show her can't even wait until she's had her coffee?

She reluctantly agrees, placing her hand in the box. Spencer takes her wrist and pushes it against the bottom. Brandishing a lighter in his other hand, he flicks the flame on and holds it directly underneath the box, so the edge of the tongue barely makes contact.

"H-hey, wait, What Are You-"

"Ssh. Notice? You feel heat, only right here."

"S-stop! Where did you get a lighter?"

Kotomi reels her hand back. Spencer ignores her again with a huff as he tucks the device back into his pocket. He's trying to show her something but she hasn't clued in yet, so he attempts to speak the way she does when she rambles about her science stuff.

"I… made what it sounds like, when it goes down. Here, hand again. Uh... Please."

What it sounds like? Wait, does he mean...

She shuffles back a few paces, focusing on his project. Kotomi's smirk finally awakens.

"You... YOU MADE A SIMULATION OF THE ROOM! Yo this is sick! But where did all the wires-"

"Ko. Hand." Spencer isn't smiling.

This is a serious experiment! He's trying to convey an idea to me! Okay, time to focus. Work mode.

The scientist clears her throat and does as Spencer asks, repeating his instruction with more vigor.

This time, Spencer shakes it before slowly pulling it down with one finger, towards his bonfire.

"See now?"

"Um... Oh, this isn't just a simulation of The Room, is it? You're replicating the heat we feel when we're wrong!"

Spencer snaps in agreement. He relieves the pressure to bring the cube back to its normal position, but he's still not content. He wants Kotomi to focus on something specific, so he holds her wrist in place again and repeats the movement.

"You're... Showing me how the difference of how the heat feels. Wait ...WAIT DID YOU FIGURE OUT WHAT IT IS‽"

"Almost. It's, um... Anja Fire, but from Humams. Natural, but not natural. It's both."

Kotomi assumed The Room was inside some kind of facility, and with the precision measurements and structure she assumed whatever lay below is some kind of Furnace... But Spencer is suggesting otherwise.

"Wait... Wait, hang on."

Kotomi takes a few steps back again, this time attempting to visualize Spencer's project and simulate it again in her mind.

"Natural... But not natural?" Spencer takes out the pocket candle, flicks it on, then points at his glowing waypoint.

". . . . OH, I GET IT! You're saying if the heat was artificial then we'd feel it in the center of the room first, meaning whatever the source is must be massive!"

Spencer snaps again. She's getting closer. For some reason his snap reminds her of the colour yellow.

Too big to be a furnace, no building could feasibly hold a constant flame like that. Heat outside of a building?

Her smirk fades. Spencer's triangle loses its warmth. She takes another, long pan at the homemade project. Then she locks focus on Spencer.

"It's. . . . It's a wildfire. We're suspended in the air, and being lowered into a forest fire."

Spencer nods. He may be chaotic this month, but he still gets the gravity of this revelation. Something bad is happening wherever that Room exists.

He confirms her guess by attempting to mimic The Room's audio signal for a correct answer.

It's our turn next. Good thing the café is almost empty today.

"Alright bud, get ready." She whispers to him.

Kotomi has been asked to attempt the final steps of Spencer's re-integration into society. Simple in practice, but anything can go wrong here.

She likes coming here now. It's close to the house, only a few minutes even by limping, and the person behind the counter is always warm and friendly.

Something about this place makes her feel different, though. She can't quite place it, but most of her authority, her eloquence just... Shatters.

"Good morning, dear!" The Barista's melodic voice chimes out as they recognize their new regular.

"What would you like today?"

Spencer clears his throat, rubs his hands together to gain some confidence... And silently points at the cookie on display.

"One chocolate chunk cookie! Anything else?"

Spencer looks up at the board.

Words, words, words. The maze of lines and squiggles elude his understanding, but the numbers remind him of why it exists. This is how modern humans choose their teas and snacks. He doesn't recognize any of the pictured potions either, but he tries vocalizing for the one that at least looks familiar.

"G... The green one."

"Green tea, okay. And what size, hun?"

"Big."

Nudge. Growl.

"P...please."

"Hm Hm, alright~! And the usual for you, Ko?"

"Huh, y-yeah, the uh, same."

"That'll be 9 dollars, 25 cents!"

Another nudge, accompanied by a wider smirk. Spencer can almost hear her face split wide open. He hands the kind person the paper Kotomi gave him.

She told him to expect some coins in exchange but he still reels back as they complete the transaction, hands already blurred into their next task.

Glove, tong, cookie, bag. Such speed, such finesse-

The Barista's question nearly makes Spencer fumble his grab.

"You're so adorable! I've never seen you 'round before, where are you from?"

Where is Spencer from? The island, obviously, doesn't everyone know this? And what the heck does 'adorable' mean? Wait, no, this must be like The Room. The barista wants to know Spencer's earliest memory. He tries to search through the forest of his mind, hunting for the oldest of bark...

Falling.

Falling, for a long time. Higher than any tree. No ground in sight. Sky above him, sky below him.

For a long time, too. The end of the fall wasn't fun.

Spencer responds before Kotomi can interject.

"I came from the sky."

"Ah! H-heh, he uh, says that to everyone. He's from a small island in the Pacific. He's still, er... New to this kind of life."

× × ×

Kotomi is writing down the results of Spencer's conversation at the café. Spencer is sitting beside her on the porch steps, watching her weird contraption whirring and spinning as it collects math from the air. She was expecting him to wander off by now, but she's glad he hasn't. She has questions for him.

"Why do you always say that to people?" She asks.

"Hm?"

" 'I came from the sky.' You say it so... So matter-of-factly, like it's the only possible solution."

"I did."

Kotomi's pen breaks traction and slides a line of blue off her page. She pinches her nose.

"S I G H . . . . I didn't find you in the sky. I found you in a forest full of dinosaurs, which is somehow more believable."

He gulps down the last of his Green Tea. He never made a face and didn't chug it down, so Kotomi guesses the taste was at least palatable for him.

"I'm… Not Lying."

His phonetic knives lack their usual sting. He hates the fact that he has something locked in his memory. Something deep and distorted rests within his song, just a few seconds of static that mould themselves into an intense emotion.

He knows what happened, and he can't extrapolate it to her. If only she could see his memories.

Memories... The Room knows everything about us. Could it maybe hold the answers about where he's from? Ah, don't think like that Ko, The Room doesn't trust us and we sure as Hell can't trust It.

Her skin's complaints finally prompt her to remove her labcoat and deal with the itch in her hand.

"I. . . . I know you're not lying. That's what bothers me so much about this, dude. The geomagnetic fluctuations in that region are so incongruent that--"

Blank stare. Change how you word it...

"Er… You've never seen metal birds in your sky."

The colour returns to his eyes.

"Oh, yeah, I only see them here."

"There aren't even any records of planes flying over your island. But if that's the case, how did you fall? Where did you fall from? Can... Can you remember what happened before you fell?"

Vertigo has asked him this before. So have the other scientists, but they way they ask it makes him angry. Kotomi is the only person he actually tries to answer, but every time he comes up short.

And this time, it's no different.

Spencer fell from the sky. He doesn't know how, he doesn't know why.

A ball of nighttime wanders onto the lawn towards Kotomi's machine. If it were a skunk, Spencer would be scowling.

"Aurora, piss on that thing."

The room immediately becomes bright white, transporting her and Spencer back home, much faster than usual, as if it's kicking them out.

Kotomi is standing in her office, adrenaline vibrating her hands. She eases herself into her office chair. They just had another White Room Visit, but this time... She can remember being there. The memory is faint, like waking up halfway through a boring dream, but it's there.

In her last Progress report, she had requested R&D make her a chemical that will boost her short term memory. She slides her clipboard onto the desk and digs through her Labcoat's pockets, pulling out a voice recorder, a broken petri dish, and two small vials. Only one vial is full of a menacing black liquid, and a bitter spike burns the back of her throat.

"I took it... But I still can't remember everything. I'll need a stronger batch." She summarizes to herself.

A pause. Itchy hand. Bug bite? No, nothing there, just pale vitiligo blotches.

Vitiligo... She articulates her fingers, watching how they bend. She's never really cared about this condition until recently. Did The Room bring it up in a question? She's always been grateful she didn't get the scaly, painful kind her Father got... Not yet, at least.

Knocking.

"Intrude."

Spencer's not crying for once. That's a good thing... Right?

He places a hot bamboo cup on her atom shaped coaster. She turns down the UK Rap blasting from her headphones.

"...Wazzi?"

"Tea... You asked me for one?"

"Oh aye, thanks. What kind?"

" . . . You're welcome." He smirks and turns to leave, but she stops him.

"Spence? Uhhh..." Strange, she thinks.

I want to say something to him, but I'm at a sudden loss for words. What was I gonna ask him, dammit?

"...Hm?"

"Um... Don't leave, I might have to do some... Tests. On you. Today."

Spencer shrugs.

"Okay. I'll be at my fire."

. . . Okay. OKAY? I was expecting him to protest, or at least show disgust, not be complacent with it.

Too late to question it, Spencer has already walked away. Kotomi scratches her only sharp fingernail against the edge of her clipboard, feeling the fake corkboard wrestle between the chitin and skin of her right pinky.

Something doesn't feel right. Spencer's been acting weird since they came here. She's been acting weird. The people here look and act weird, but so far she's the one that feels like an outsider. Kotomi would never admit this out loud, but until she gains the trust of a local, she can't make any more progress on her investigation.

Whatever... Let's just see if the recording worked.

Her device claims over 40 minutes of recorded audio.

A quick glance between her watch and the wall clock shows a difference of 24 minutes. She's already aware of The Room's temporal shenanigans, but it still intrigues her.

She promises herself to stop procrastinating as she hits the "Play" button.

"Ooookay, let's get this started. Chief Anomaly Enforcer Kotomi Pylia, for Research Project KP—016, Audio Log 01. I wasn't fast enough on the draw but they just asked us new questions. Spence, watch? … In sync, great."

Static behind her voice. Kotomi tested the device beforehand; it's an older piece of equipment but 100% analog and in perfect condition. It shouldn't give off any static, unless something - like an extra-dimensional room - interferes.

A distorted sound follows her voice. Kotomi pauses and rewinds the recording, and then slows it down while raising the pitch. It's not enough to be good evidence, but she knows the room spoke there.

'Answer The Questions And You May Leave.' That's what the room voice says every session. This time it sounded a bit more emotional. Closer to annoyance than anger, but it's getting there.

Kotomi grabs Spencer's tea and takes a whiff.

The aroma reminds her of the soil directly underneath a freshly pulled weed; it doesn't smell sweet, but it's not exactly "bad." She blows on it and tempts a fateful sip.

Spencer always makes weird teas with questionable ingredients, but she's never grown ill from any of his concoctions. Maybe he can turn this into a business in the future.

As expected, the potion tastes far better than it smells, but she can't place the flavour profile just yet. She itches her hand again as the recording continues.

"Yeah yeah, we know... Who do you want first this time?"

"~^•π√" More distortion. She knows it said 'Boy answers first.'

"Oh good, then we have some time. Knock yourself out kid, I'll be over here. Ahem, so Spencer and I have just been ...-{STATIC}-... Voice asks us questions and won't let us leave until they're answered. Sounds easy on the surface but we immediately noticed some issues. First, it wants a VERY emotional, "honest" answer, but it seems to be biased in certain aspects.

"Second... We seem to be pressed for time. If we take too long to answer, we get threatened with ominous downwards movement. This is now our... Fifth time being here. Uh... No, six rather."

Her voice is replaced with shuffling and a grunt; she remembers she found a wall and slumped into a sit to rest her leg.

WAIT, REMEMBER! I JUST REMEMBERED. I CAN SEE IT NOW!

Kotomi dips into the dubious dram before setting it down and shutting her eyes tight, trying to put herself back into The Scene.

"The room just asked us the following questions: What is your primary comfort? What do you do when you need to feel safe? What relaxes you the most in your downtime? Unfortunately those questions seem a little too easy to answer, so I don't think we'll-"

She gets cut off. On the recording, the interrupting sound is scratchy and bit-crushed, like some kind of old video game's audio getting corrupted.

Kotomi pauses the recording and thinks about what happened next before pressing Play again.

She's written down in the past how The Room turns red and shakes, but this is the first time she can actually visualize it.

The sudden shift of the world surrounding her, morphing colour and tone from neutral to vehemence.

The grinding of unknown mechanical variables assaulting the two with the screeches of irregular movement.

The tactile response of their equilibriums to an intangible force, a clear reminder of their own mortality.

Okay, no, that's TOO vivid, Ko.

A gulp of turbulent tisane and she's ready to proceed. The taste is powerful, almost meaty, minus the phenolic tinge of a broth. Her hand won't stop itching.

She presses play, but nothing happens. Static, the ambient ticking and whirring of tape moving but nothing else.

She pauses the recording, rewinds to her talking, then presses Play again.

"So I don't think we'll-"

Loud bit-crushed scratching, then... Nothing.

No, that didn't happen. She knows what happened next and it DEFINITELY wasn't nothing.

She pauses, skips forward 30 seconds, and presses Play.

Silence. She looks back at her clipboard.

A Scribble, scratchy and ominous. She etched it as fast as possible:

ANGRY RECORD.

Angry Record... The room got angry that I was recording.

In her mind, The room turns a vibrant red and violently shakes, much worse than last time. Whatever just happened, the room is definitely angry.

"Whoa! Wh-what the hell, room!? We haven't done anything this time!"

Spencer picks himself up and looks at the recorder, now on the floor as it fell out of Kotomi's hand.

"No... You did that and the room doesn't like it."

He points at her small metallic box.

"What, my voice recorder? Oh come on, room, you're testing us but I'm not allowed to test you? Why were you letting us move around and do stuff la-"

She gets cut off by a jolting downward movement, this time faster and more aggressive.

"OKAY OKAY FINE! HOLY CROW, CHILL! Friggin hypocrite, I'll stop recording! Happy now‽"

The room finally turns white and stops moving. Kotomi places her recorder in her chest pocket but 'forgets' to press pause.

She kept it recording. Did it ruin the tape?

She pauses the device and opens it, checking all the equipment inside. Everything seems to be in working order and the tape isn't corrupted. Maybe the machine itself broke somehow? Or perhaps The Room anomalously expunged the tape itself.

She closes the recorder and tries fast forwarding five, ten, then 15 minutes. Finally, the audio kicks back in... And it's right where it left off.

Odd. 15 minutes of silence, presumably dead space where nothing happened. Did the room freeze them for 15 minutes while it tried to calm down?

"Friggin hypocrite, I'll stop recording! Happy now‽ Ugh... Spence, room said you first. Got anything yet?"

"I Almost had something until you interrupted. Now let me think..."

Cloth shuffling. The sound of Kotomi getting up and moving again. She remembers she got up and held a hand out as she found a corner, then leaned her back against it. Her next experiment would be a bit more clandestine, partially testing to see how much this place could 'see' all at once.

"'Primary... Comfort.' That's like... Feeling good. Stuff that makes me happy."

"Correct. Like i said, this one's an easier one."

"Not for me... Sigh, what makes me feel better..."

A slight rubbing sound, Spencer dragging his finger back and forth across the ultra-smooth floor.

"Exploring."

Kotomi fills in the silent gap with her own memory of a yellow flash.

"What I mean is... Just, wandering, I guess. I like finding something I've never seen before and learning how it works."

"Like skunks? You still stink by the way, I should give you more baths."

"Ko. Uh... Fire. I like fire. It feels... Nice. Warm... Alive, but not. Like it knows I'm there, helping it grow, and it reacts by cooking stuff for me. I like my teas too, those always help me feel good."

Yellow. Spence frowns as he starts to get impatient.

"Mm, cooking... Oh, cookies! I like cookies, they taste awesome. Hmm, Maybe I should learn how to make cookies."

"NO. You'll waste my whole budget on flour and fill the damn house with cookies!"

"I'll eat them all."

"Our house will reek of vanilla!"

"I fail to see the problem. Isn't that better than skunk?"

Another yellow. Not quite enough, but Kotomi isn't really sure herself of what Spencer actually likes besides those things.

"Still yellow... Mm... Oh, maps. That's a new one for me. I like looking at maps and figuring out where stuff is."

The room still isn't satisfied. It wants a deep comfort of his, and neither of them really know what the correct answer is this time. What he likes. . . . What about what he liked? Kotomi thinks back to the Jungle she found him in, and about that creature that seemed to prefer his company. What did he call that thing again?

"Spence." The sound of tapping. She rapidly taps her fingers on her arm, trying to replicate Spencer's Thunderblight. This only annoys him.

"N-no, that hurts. I mean, I make teas to help with that, but none of your science buddies have been able to find a cure for... For..."

Oh boy, here he goes.

He realized what Kotomi was getting at, and she realized just a bit too late what reminding him of home could do to him. Luckily though, he pushes through his homesickness to talk about it.

"Oh… Kadachi. My friend. I lived with her, back in the Jungle. She didn't do this to me on purpose, she's just uh... Prickly. But she still felt... good to rest against when I was tired, or when I had head pain."

"Your little Dino friend helped you feel safe. She was your comfort."

A silent nod from his red flushed face.

Wait, WAIT! Kotomi's eyes snap open. She pauses and goes back a few seconds, then listens carefully.

A Ding!

No aberration, no corrupted audio! Exactly 24 minutes and 24 seconds in, she gets her very first, Viable audio proof that she's NOT crazy! It exists! The Room is real, and it rmesses with your emotions! It really does force a biased truth out of its Victims!

She pushes herself away from her desk and pops off, standing up fast enough to make her chair fall over as her first piece of real evidence makes her lose control from elation. Both her leg and skin whine in complaint, but she's simply too excited to care about the pain in this moment.

"Y E S ! YES, YES, YES! LET'S GOOOOOOO! LET'S FREAKIN GO MY G, WE GOT IT! TAKE IT ALL IN WASEMAN, YA DONE NOW. FINNA BUN'DEM, WASEMAN, YA DONE NOW! OOOOOOOH— Ah-"

She freezes in place, mid-shimmy. Spencer is staring at her from the office entrance. He came over when he heard Kotomi's shrieks and wasn't expecting her dance of excitement. Her face suddenly feels hot.

". . . . I caught the room on audio. It's, uh. Proof. That we're not crazy."

"How's the tea?" His curled lip remains, but there's something deeper in his eyes this time. It almost feels like Kotomi's looking at her own reflection.

"It's… Fiiiine? Why w-what, what did you put in it?"

"Dragonfly."

"...Y... You're joking, right? It tastes good, tell me you lie."

"Nope. Glad you like it, enjoy the dance party, weirdo!"

Kotomi shuffles around for a minute as she cleans up the slight spill she made and struggles to right her chair. Once she's situated again, she adds the current song in her ears to a special playlist. She does this any time she makes an achievement or breakthrough, making a sort of Audio Trophy Case for herself, her own version of sentimentality.

"PISS OFF! ALSO THANKS."

Okay, enough playing around. Back to business.

"My turn now, huh? Aight give me a-AAAH!"

She tries to ready her memory vial, only for The Room to interrupt with more violent shaking.

Her vial survives the fall. Unfortunately, her petri dish does not.

"K-ko! Stop doing that and j-just-!"

Kotomi had been hiding her other action for a few minutes; using her lab coat as a cover, she was pretending to fidget with her hands, when in reality she managed to slide a knife against the wall and catch a few shavings into her dish; her arm tapping from earlier served as the perfect distraction to hide her instruments, but the shaking has revealed her schemes.

The shaking hurts. Everything hurts, and the hurting everything prevents Spencer from finishing his scold.

"Dammit! Enough, Room, I'm about to answer you!"

The shaking quells, slower than last time. Spencer is holding his sides, grimacing at her with as much animosity as he can muster. She carefully cleans up her mess before sucking back the contents of the vial, forcing herself to swallow the oily substance.

"Stupid Ting, yah should know this by now. I'm a - Ugh, oh god, that tastes like death - Ahem, I am a scientist. You really expect to stuff me in here and NOT have me try to figure you out? Yah brain smooth like wall, finna ri."

Kotomi pauses her memory and grabs another swig of Spencer's Dragonfly tea.

Yup, he ain't joking, that's insect... Still good though.

Her hand is itching again. Is she allergic to his tea? No... It must be the chemical, something about it is bothering her. She should've read the ingredients label.

She doesn't need to press play on the recording again; She has all the evidence she needs.

She savours her next taste and presses play on her memory.

Clipboard scribbling is followed by a page flip.

"Comfort. I'll get the drop on you this time and say that music is a big comfort for me. It's the only thing keeping the whole cancer thing from making me go crazy.

"... Heh, yellow on my first try. I'm getting better at this. Yeah, music isn't the only thing. As long as it's some form of mental stimuli, I'll take anything to keep my mind occupied. Games, reading, research... Hell, I'm fine with work itself if I'm in a good mood."

Another yellow. Alright, no more beating around the bush. The Room wants an answer? She'll give it one.

The young scientist lets her clipboard fall to her side and stares into the nearby wall, concentrating her glare into the blank.

"You know what else comforts me? Knowledge. Learning things. You, the one asking us questions, already know everything about us. But I know nothing about you. I want, more than anything else in the world, Information. Raw Data. You have what I want, something I yearn for each and every waking day.

"I'm going to learn everything. I'm gonna find out why we keep being kidnapped and interrogated AND DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT INTERRUPTING ME AGAIN BECAUSE I'M ANSWERING YOU!

"I take the ultimate comfort in knowing that no matter what happens next, what you ask or how exposed and rotten you make us feel in here… One day I'm going to be asking you the Questions.

"And you. Will . . . . Answer."

Kotomi touches a finger to the lifeless wall she's monologuing to.

She doesn't get a Yellow response this time.

In fact, the wall doesn't turn Red, or Green.