Gallery Newbie

Dozens of them. Hundreds. Names he'd never seen and voices he'd never heard flooded the blue window, each one talking over the last.

People. Actual people. After three years of hearing no one at all, their voices poured down over him like a waterfall.

"There are really... this many people?"

The words slipped out before he could stop them. The moment they did, a notice bloomed across the screen.

Three years. That was how long it had been since the world ended — three years without a single real conversation.

His eyes drifted, unbidden, to the post at the very top. The contents didn't matter. Someone had written something, and someone else had written back. That fact alone was enough. Once it sank in, the heart that had been sitting still in his chest began, little by little, to beat.

The comments were having a serious debate.

They were using the word relationship. About a rock. The heart that had been racing cooled just as fast.

Apparently this was a place where people, having failed to find anyone to talk to, had gone and started families with rocks. He quietly moved on to the next post.

The second one looked almost normal, at least from the title.

The contents were not normal. The comments ended in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a sincere consolation that he would still be a knight even if he took a day off, followed by a serious argument over whether bunny pajamas were unbecoming of a knight's dignity.

These were definitely not ordinary people. Someone would post an absurd problem, and someone else would answer it in complete earnest. They'd offer genuine comfort and then swear at each other by the end. Sometimes they'd pick up a fight from a hundred years ago and continue it today.

What mattered was that no matter how unhinged the topic, the conversation kept going.

"Still... not bad."

It didn't take him long to figure out how a gallery worked. Three years out of date or not, it was still a remnant of a civilization he knew. After reading a few posts, his fingers started to itch. He wanted to talk just as badly as they did.

He tapped the new-post button, and a window appeared.

A nickname. He looked around the room. What caught his eye was the pile of empty cans stacked against one wall — the food he'd eaten more of than anything else over the last few years, the thing that still put a ghost of salt on his tongue just from looking at it. He couldn't even ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠eat those anymore. He'd run out.

He didn't think about it long.

The same window popped up again immediately.

He blinked.

"I just did that."

The window did not answer. He started to reach for it, thinking it was a glitch, then stopped. The nickname field was definitely a second one. And there were two of them in this room.

He turned slowly toward Harin. Harin was already looking at him.

"Whaat?"

"No way."

His gaze flicked between Harin and the input window. Harin was his imaginary friend. The possibility that the system had excluded her from the achievement headcount and then gone out of its way to issue her a separate gallery account... made no sense.

Then again, this was a system that had stuffed loners from entirely different worldlines onto a single forum. Pretending anything about it was reasonable would have been even funnier.

"Harin. Is this one yours?"

"Wait, so I get to use the gallery too?"

Harin's eyes lit up as she came closer — but the window passed straight through her hand. She poked at the screen, or made a show of it, and nothing happened. The moment he brought his own finger near, the field responded at once.

So he was the only one who could actually use it. Which left him with one free extra account. He decided not to think about it too hard. A win was a win.

He couldn't be bothered to come up with a second name. He hit the auto-generate button beside the field. Letters scrambled, whirled, and stopped on two characters.

A person who didn't talk. Didn't suit him at all — but an alt was supposed to have a different vibe from the main if you didn't want to get caught.

"I'll use CannedFood day to day, and Mute as the alt."

"Why do you need an alt?"

"Beats me. Don't know yet. But if I've got one, it'll come in handy eventually, right? It's free."

Harin gave a small nod, then slowly stopped. Her eyes narrowed.

"So you can scam people?"

"Can we call it identity diversification?"

The two nicknames sat side by side on the profile. Whichever one he picked, the fingers doing the moving were his. He selected CannedFood and tossed up a casual post.

Comments landed almost immediately.

Helpful advice: zero, as expected. He snorted and typed a reply.

He peered through a gap in the bookshelf. The mutant was still squatting at the base of the building. Its body was gaunt, but the four arms were grotesquely thick, out of all proportion. The thing lifted its head. He ducked back behind the shelf.

He stared at the comment for a moment. Jump from the seventh floor? Was this a joke?

Different worldlines, different common sense. Apparently.

The conversation rolled on so naturally that neither he nor they noticed anything strange. About a dozen more comments in, someone asked:

The comments paused.

The comments cut out again. Longer this time. Then one more appeared.

That one sentence detonated the board.

Every time he refreshed, the posts multiplied.

"……."

He eased back from the screen a little. As if they'd seen him do it, the comments turned frantic.

He looked over at Harin.

"What's wrong with these people?"

"They're lonely, I guess."

"Is it normal to lose your minds over one person showing up just because you're lonely?"

Harin looked at him and said nothing.

"What."

"You created me because you were lonely."

Low blow. He had nothing.

Harin glanced at the screen. Dozens of people were waiting on his answer.

"Don't get too close to them, though."

"Why?"

"Because I was first."

On the screen, they were still looking for him. It was a lot, and deeply weird. But he didn't hate it. Until now, the only one who'd ever looked for him was Harin.

He raised his hand over the gallery. Let's be honest. He was—

Lonely as hell, and bored out of his skull.

Every comment stopped at once. And then, a moment later, the upvotes started climbing like they'd lost their minds.

The promise he made that day — I'm not going anywhere — he kept. The problem was that he kept it with a little too much sincerity.

Two days. That was all it took for him to plant himself in the Loners' Gallery and refuse to leave. In that time he put up twenty-seven posts and a hundred and forty-three comments. He also got banned, twice.

Bans around here weren't UFC. They were WWE. They lifted automatically after ten minutes.

All in all, a very productive two days. He'd wake up and check whatever had been posted overnight. If a fight broke out in the comments, he'd read it from the top; if the original post had been deleted, he'd go digging through the author's old threads. It took less than a day for a succession crisis in a kingdom that had fallen several thousand years ago to become more important than his sleep schedule.

Not that he was addicted to the gallery. This was research. A sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation into the survival methods and cultures of other worlds.

"And refreshing every thirty seconds because there's no new post is part of that?"

Harin asked it, sulky.

"Intel has a shelf life. Real-time matters."

"You smile the second a comment comes in."

"You have to show a positive reaction to useful intel or the tips stop coming in."

A low gurgle cut his argument short. The intel had piled up. His stomach had not. He dug through the gallery menus until he found a shop, and went in.

Ramen. A glossy tangle of noodles and a fried egg printed on a red packet. He hadn't seen one in three years, but he remembered the taste. Spicy broth. Springy noodles. Perfect if you stirred a bowl of rice into whatever was left at the end.

"Harin."

"Whaat?"

"There's ramen."

"Buy it."

"I don't have money."

"Earn some."

The conversation was so unreasonably sensible it put him in a bad mood. He opened the general board.

Comments came in fast. Two days of sitting on this gallery and not moving were finally paying off.

The conversation with SwordFor5000Years dead-ended right on schedule. The man had a habit of substituting the word sword for every noun a problem required, and inside that worldview, the kitchen knife he'd splurged on was already a fine divine weapon.

He'd gotten an apology and somehow felt worse. That was when MachineAscensionFailed dropped a long reply.

He looked around the room. Things he could sell: a rusty kitchen knife, a sleeping bag with holes in it, empty water bottles, and one unidentified Miyoki. All of it was either essential to his own survival or something nobody would want. His skills were even more depressing. The degree knowledge from university was useless without equipment, and the one thing he could actually do — coding — did not have a great job outlook in a world where the power had gone out.

He typed out computer engineering for MachineAscensionFailed. Ten seconds later, the answer came back.

"Could you maybe phrase that a little nicer?"

"It's a machine."

"Even machines should be polite if they're in customer service."

A new comment appeared under the post.

The finger that had been reaching for the screen stopped. Among dozens of comments, that one sentence stood out with an almost strange clarity.

A story.