"What does it mean to speak normally?", Josh gave a blank stare as he asked. The girl glared with disappointment as she looked on the young man in front of her, "The hell's that random question for?", she asked with an interested tone.
"...", Josh didn't answer, he himself didn't know why he asked such question. She felt as if she was ignored and became annoyed,'Why is the one who started this conversation the one not speaking?', was what she thought.
"I have regrets sitting here, get your legs out of the way.", she stood up not wanting to speak with the blonde boy beside her.
[All Passengers Sit.], a robotic voice had ordered.
[Train Levitating...], the same voice stated and Josh sunk to his comfy seat because of the sudden acceleration.
The girl was forced to sit back down and sighed to herself. She knew from experience that once the train starts to levitate, it also prepares to speed up and accelerate to a point where people would either have their face or butt collide with train's floor as they lose balance from inertia.
Josh fixed his seating into a more upright posture and cushioned the back of his head with the headrest, and whilst he fixed his seating a countdown started
[...3...]
[...2...]
[...1]
His whole body felt the crushing weight of the g forces as the maglev train accelerated to the point of 650km/h in 5 seconds.
"Approximately 5 seconds, an initial speed of 0km/h and a final speed of 650km/h means an acceleration of about 36 meter squared..."
'The heck is this guy talking about?', the girl next to Josh wondered.
"Ahhh! You computed the acceleration of the train in less than a second.", she realizes what his previous words were and was impressed by his computing ability.
Josh nodded as the girl asks, "How much did your computing chip cost?"
"What computing chip?", Josh asks as he hadn't heard of such thing before.
"What do you mean (What)? It's the thing that we put on our ears and get information of mathematical equations and the like..."
"What are you talking about? Here, I'll turn my head for my ears to show you I have no such thing.", he shows both his left and right ear to her and nothing was inside his ears.
"I don't remember my childhood..."
"What you had your memory removed or somet-?"
"-Every single one of my memories were removed, about 4 years ago.", he said with no emotion painted on his face.
"You don't seem to care about it too much.", she noticed his disconnected outlook on the situation.
"I didn't express my emotion until about 2 years ago. My mom asked me about the day, I answered indifferently, as if she was a random person walking around. She didn't like it and grew angry, telling me I had no respect. Because of that, she started berating me, calling me a fucking sock puppet, at first I didn't react. But as she continued verbally harassing me I felt tears flow from my eyes, she was about to hit me too, but thankfully my father came home at the right moment and stopped her just in time", the girl felt sad for his past, for she thinks that the one who should be trying to help Josh most was busy screaming at him.
"Are you okay?", the girl asked compassionately.
"Yes?", he affirmed, as tears flowed down his face. Soon those few drops of tears had become a river that ran down his face as he truly burst into tears. He cried as he remembered a sad moment from his past and felt even worse as he truly couldn't feel anything the first 2 years when his memory was wiped, to be honest to himself, he had felt pain
As the boy continued to cry, he felt someone hold him. "Cry, let it out.", with those few words he felt validation for the first time in his whole life, he felt warmth as he let his pent up feelings out.
After a while his crying stopped and the girl judged that he wouldn't need anymore comforting, "I'm sorry", she apologized.
"Why apologize to me?", Josh asked as he wiped his still teary eyes.
"A random stranger hugged you out of nowhere, don't you consider that creepy?", she genuinely asked.
"I'm thankful that you comforted me.", Josh let out an endearing smile.
In her eyes the blonde pretty boy in front of her had started to sparkle, she had forgotten about the frustration she felt earlier when she heard his story. "What's your name?", she asked abruptly.
"Joshua Riley Ainsley, it's my full name.", he felt joy hearing the one who made him feel himself ask for his name and gleefully answered her question. "You, what's yours?", Josh returned her question.
"Alice... Adelheid Reich, however you can just call me by my first name.", she hesitated saying her second and last name. "So... Josh, why are you travelling to Central?", Alice asked.
"Central's Super Mall has a section that I need to visit.", Josh explained.
"It seems we're going to the same place.", Alice grinned as she found that a coincidence had popped up.
The Super Mall was a landmark of Central City. It was by far the biggest, most visited place in the continent, so two people visiting there at a weekend isn't a rarity. It had hotels, water parks, traditional malls, there was even an artificial beach, filled with white sand and crystal clear waters. It only recreated the salinity, feel, and atmosphere, however the Super Mall's artifical beach is just a pool filled with flora and fauna with sand covering the edges of the water.
The two joyfully chatted, even when the rapid deceleration of the bullet train felt like making them fly off their seats, they just wore their seatbelts and continued talking. It was honestly creepy, in the span of 2 hours, 2 random strangers became newly made friends.
As they both walked to the Super Mall's entrance, they both looked around in awe at the sheer scale and size of the place, not only that, there were many people entering too. "Joshua let's head to the line over there.", she pointed towards their left.
An absurd scene filled Josh's eyes, hundreds of people were in one line, that wasn't the absurd part, he also saw that most of them immediately got into cars and freely drove on the Super Mall's roads. This place was no mall, it was the hardcore shopper's idea of heaven, or hell.
Even with the hundreds in line, both Josh and Alice got their own car to drive in. It was Alice who had drove the car, Joshua was completely dumbfounded when he realized cars can be driven manually.
He put the side of his head outside the window and immediately felt the wind and its violent, yet harmless blowing. "Can you take me to the Gaming Center?", Josh asked as he let the wind's noise process in his ears.
"Hahaha, brace yourself.", she laughed as Josh raised the windows, they turned right at an intersection. As Josh looked through the windows and saw people on the sidewalks peacefully walking around, a thought came to himself, 'What circumstances happened to them, for them to be walking at that spot, at this exact time.
"Joshua you're spacing out.", Alice noticed him gazing around and stopped Joshua from gaining an existential nightmare.
"How long will it take?", he stopped wondering around and asked.
"Just one more turn to the left in the next intersection.", Alice answered clearly, she seemed to be knowledgeable of the Mall, as she hasn't asked anyone for directions.
Josh stared at Alice, who was too focused at driving to notice him stare at her. Josh felt comfortable everytime she talked to her, even now he was deeply appreciative of the fact that she had comforted him earlier, even when Alice had gotten frustrated at his social awkwardness.
Speaking of social awkwardness, since he cried back then he had began to reply well, and he could express himself better through words, whether his improvement happened because of the therapeutic event earlier, or he was purely trying to not annoy his newly acquired friend, it didn't matter, as long as he could say what he wished to it was enough.
"Here we are.", Alice said as the car abruptly stopped.
Josh exited the car and said his goodbye, "Let's meet at a later date.", Alice smiled confidently and replied, "Yeah, we'll visit through the whole Mall!".
With their farewells said, the car had left. Josh sighed and turned around, on his left was a building for console games, and on his right was a building with hundreds of people on line. He was disappointed by the fact that he had to wait and stand in a line.
[30 minutes later, 10:45A.M, Central Super Mall, Gaming District.]
He had progressed on the line to the point where he could see A.Is measuring the height and build of people with a machine that glowed green in the inside.
[30 people in the line, go and occupy my friends over there.], an A.I on the side ordered Josh and 29 other humans to bother his friends, at least the A.I's horrible joke was still better than Josh's future attempts at humour.
[Name: Joshua "Riley" Ainsley]
[Weight: 70KG]
[Body Fat: Approx... 13%]
[Height: 1.72 Meters]
[You may proceed to the testing room.]
Josh performed a physical test and scored just a bit higher than the average, 8.24M/S in sprinting speed. And .75 Meters in the standing vertical jump.
Now it was time for the Intelligence test. For his own personalized test, Josh was instructed to make a blueprint, a blueprint for a weapon, whether ranged or close quarters, and were given materials to make them.
He drew the schematics for a miniature railgun and built one, it's destructive power wasn't powerful enough to go through an inch of paper, for some reason the fire lit on fire.
[Your Lothaedon Account is Complete.]
Josh yawned and exited the building, the line was now Far FAR longer than before, now there was likely 300-500 people, at the line outside the building. He looked at the time and headed for a vehicle borrowing area, where he had an A.I drive for him.
[I'm Isaac Neutron, give me 10 stars on Uder.}, the A.I made an obsucre joke with a dumb reference. Joshua had asked Isaac Neutron to drive to the Food Center, the ultimate place for joy, at least for him.
"Thanks Isaac Neutron.", he kept calling the A.I by its joke name.
[This is a Wend-], another reference was about to be stated.
"No.", said Josh. Every joke was just his hallucination after all.
As Josh walked through the sidewalk, looking for a good place to eat, he saw something else. A girl with long silver hair, and big red eyes appeared on his peripheral vision.
He ran up to her to check if it was actually Alice.
"Joshua, was this the (Later Date) you were talking about?", she asked jokingly.
"I guess you could say that, anyway are you heading off to eat?", Josh asked.
"Yeah, do you want to come? I have friends with me though, so you might be shy.", she invited him.
"I am not shy.", Joshua retorted.
"Yes you are.", Alice teased him for it.