Even with the limited knowledge I gained upon materializing in this era, Hosea was a strange man to me. He seemed to understand things outside his realm of influence and was rather quick to adapt to this strange phenomenon before him. That was made evident when he immediately set about to establish a base of operations with which we could conduct activities in secret. I made a few suggestions, but ultimately he decided it to be a place so obvious from what I expected that I had to question his judgement.
“Here, master?” I ask still in shock.
“Why not?” He said as a matter of fact.
I looked to my right where not even ten meters away was the data center we just left from. “Doesn’t this seem a bit too obvious?”
He shrugged, “I’ve known this building to be here my whole life. It’s not like anyone can use it anyways, with it being so worn down.”
He did have a point there. The building was certainly the run of the mill falling apart warehouse, even being digitized as it was. Bits of source code floated around it fluidly as if speaking volumes about its current state of existence. For all my complaints about it though, I had to admit that it still was solid enough of a structure that it could be used quite easily to hide any unwanted activity, given that this day an age uses a lot of data manipulation.
I shrugged after giving it another once over. “It’s your decision, master. Not my place to really argue.”
Hosea made a weird clicking noise with his tongue. “Good, then we can start right away.” He waltzed right into the building without a second thought.
“Do you believe in magic?” My young master asked me as I breached the walls.
I stared at him, but quickly noticed he was multitasking on a virtual surface. Assuming he knew what he was doing by being this open in such a flimsy structure, I responded. “Can’t say I really have.” I paused and took another look around me. “Why, I’d almost say this is magic in my eyes, considering I never got to see anything like this in my lifetime.”
He paused to look at me for a second. “Excuse me if this is just me reading to far into it, but did you expect this?”
I shrugged, “Not to the extent it is now, but yes, I did have an inkling.” I glance at my strange staff almost mumbling to myself, “Given that I’m the one who invented the means for it.”
He seemed unfazed by that last comment and just busily worked around on his digital tablet. He looked up suddenly and the screen followed his eyes. “There, that should do it.” He pressed a button and the whole interior changed.
At first I didn’t know what had just happened, it seemed as though I just stepped into an entirely different world. There was a sky above my head instead of a roof; grass beneath my feet rather than scattered deleted data waiting for garbage collection; and a strange house in the middle of nowhere. As I looked around, trees began to appear where there was once none, mountains rose in the distance and waters flowed between my feet. Standing in the middle of the river, it was like my eyes were now perceiving a world I could have only dreamed of.
“Pocket dimensions.” Hosea said in his usual calm manner. “I read a lot about them in old texts, though much like the genre they were supposedly in, it was merely fantasy.” He gestured around, “However, with data encroaching on reality like this, I found many useful tricks like this.” He smiled, “It’s helped me on more than one occasion to avoid something disastrous.
“But how?” My amazement clear in my voice.
He shrugged, “I’ve tinkered with many things, so I just learned how to apply all of it.” He snapped his fingers, “That reminds me, because this world is kind of separate, we can move and talk freely without being interrupted. This space only really exists in a small portion of that warehouse, a single data point, if you would.” His smile widens, “And even if someone did find it, they’d need to be a really good hacker to crack my firewall.”
I relax a little, then realize something, “How do we get out?”
He points to the house, “That door is the way out.”
“We have a way out, but what stops someone from finding our little hiding hole?”
“There’s nothing really stopping them to find it while we are in it, but..” He emphasizes his next point, “This place doesn’t exist unless WE are in it.” He gestures between us, “I have a setting saved on my personal data link to open and close this as we see fit.”
I shake my head in amazement, “Is there anything you didn’t think of?”
Hosea gets a sad look on his face, “That’s all I can really do.” He sighs, “I’m honestly just an average person who thinks, that’s all.”
I knew I had thoughts like that growing up, but this kid seems way beyond my own intellectual curiosity that I had at that age. I wish there was a way I could convey that to him without sounding berating like he needs to fix something. We seem similar in some regards and yet it feels as though he’s succeeded at many things, while my life has been a series of failed experiments. What seems to have happened before my eyes is merely a byproduct of something I failed to produce. If only I had never come up with that idea.
