Later, Thieren had brought Stacey a little tablet computer. He allowed her to watch all the episodes of the program, 'Let Me Entertain You 4000' so far, and all the little videos in her channel. There were a lot. However, he didn't let her read any of the comments viewers had left for her.
What she saw surprised her. It made her head spin and ache. She had been such a confused person with low self-esteem. It looked like she had already had some sort of amnesia before, and then sometimes it looked like she was just pretending to have forgotten. Her acting had really been lacking. No wonder Thieren told her that the fan comments and reactions were so mixed.
That was a very familiar piano piece she had played in the audition. Where had it come from?
Since when could she sing and dance? It looked so tiring.
The videos of her earnestly studying definitely looked like her. The production writers had nicknamed her Studybot because when she was learning, she was so single focussed and unrelenting that she neither heard nor saw anyone else until she had emerged from her study trance. Then when she often dazed off in the middle of things, the production named her Spacey Stacey.
Some of the elementary classes that she had undergone had been turned into childrens' educational episodes. There, she was called Classmate Stacey. She had to admit that those episodes were kind of cute, however her uncoordinated stumbling was cringeworthy. Obviously, she had found it all very difficult. Even she had applauded herself when the her in the videos finally got the hang of things and succeeded in performing the childish little song and dance numbers.
It looked like she was going to have to relearn a lot of information again. Especially the Tadpole language that looked and sounded nothing like any language she had ever come across before.
Then there were the videos where she seemed to have gone crazy in training and learning to fight. That person didn't seem like her. That hadn't looked like her at all. Although it was her face and body along with her single minded concentration, something seemed wrong there. Very wrong. Her face was blank and eyes were empty. She had said and done things she would normally never do.
A camera had followed her throughout the gory battle. Watching the recording had been gut turning. It wasn't just the blood and guts, but the various types of beastmen and what they had done as well. Some men and women hadn't been much better, behaving like beasts themselves. It had made her feel queasy.
That had been her fighting? She had known how to fight? She had been that tough? How did she go from being a scaredy-cat that she recognised as herself to that crazy robot who didn't recognise or hear anybody?
She wondered how the cameraman had kept up with her when the centaur had run away with her. Had the centaur purposely been running slow enough for the cameraman to stay within visual distance or was her cameraman a superman in disguise?
She saw herself getting injured but she had seemed to have been able to brush off any pain or symptoms. There was just the occasional pause and grimace to show she was in pain. Then there she was helping clean up the battlefield. Just watching the blood spattered pictures and listening to the screams made Stacey want to throw up. And yet, the strange emotionless her in the video hadn't. Only after she had given her thumbprint to sign off on the community service had she vomited and collapsed.
They had called an ambulance but then Thieren had leapt into view. He had carried her into a car and sped to the hospital. When she had been carried into the emergency department, triage nurses had immediately let her in. A doctor had immediately sent her for scans and before she knew it, she'd been sent in for emergency operations. One to the head. One to the chest.
No wonder there was a bald patch on her head. Then she'd been in ICU with tubes and beeping machines everywhere. At one stage, her heart had even stopped beating and she had stopped breathing. Stacey hadn't realised things had been that bad. The doctors had really brushed over how serious things had been. On one x-ray, one of her broken ribs had looked like it had been preparing to pierce through her lung and into her heart.
There was a short clip of when she had come out of ICU. Lines of visitors she recognised from the show's staff and trainees from previous videos had filed in and out of her room. Everyone looked so tired and worried. Many of them were still wearing wound dressings or hospital gowns themselves.
Stacey wondered if she would remember any of the things she had studied. Would she still be able to fight if she needed? Seeing all these clips, she half hoped she'd never remember and half was glad she couldn't remember any of it.
After watching all the clips, Stacey felt mentally and physically exhausted. It had been a lot to take in. Some of the clips had been of her learning and taking classes. She had learnt a lot just now and her brain was on overload. She felt Ning take the tablet away before she could drop it and tuck her back into the bed covers.
So much had happened. Nevertheless those videos hadn't told her about the other missing part of her life. Before she arrived in the program, who had she been? Where had she been from? Why was she here? Why did she have blurry memories of another place and culture that didn't match up to her current reality?
After watching all the videos, she was lethargic for the next two days, becoming easily fatigued. After that, she spent shorter times rewatching some video clips to relearn information. When she wasn't doing that, she was sleeping.