LCE E.G.O::Dimension Shredder, Yi Sang's Story

Strictly construed, I could not rightly be described as a person of sociable disposition.

Nay... Even should such a strict observation be dispensed with, many would naturally arrive at that judgment, for I myself have long thought the same.

I confess I was beset by concern when I first entered this company's employ.

For a department so devoted to research... there was an astonishing preponderance of socially disposed individuals here.

I had expected to be in the company of those who prefer to remain seated quietly in the research facility, surrounded by books and apparatus, with their fingers wrapped around pens or tapping on keyboards. Yet more often than not, someone would approach me with a precipitous proposal of a dining excursion. Another would invite me to joint experiments on some new prototype...

By conventional definition, the title "researcher" refers to those who bear glasses of substantial bulk and liberal refraction, those who so seldom depart their seats that their neck, back, and tongue alike have grown stiff. Here, however, were researchers of unconventional vocational disposition - some boasting the physique of a circus strongman, some who were engrossed in embellishing themselves with the latest cosmetics and clothes...

And that led me to realize that the compass of my understanding of the common state of things was narrower than even the tiniest of birdcages.

.......

Khh...

Being hardly sociable myself, I spent my time here wondering whether this would be a suitable workplace for me in the long run.

I have never been one with much predilection for change.

In those days, I constantly wondered whether the ceaselessly excitable personalities of those around me would send me into bouts of vertigo and nausea... and whether it would be wiser to seek another job while the opportunity still remained.

But it is said that even the flow of the smallest brook may wear away the stone.

Unobtrusive and persistent, their overtures did, in the end, manage to turn me toward them.

Though I was yet to grow wholly accustomed to the habit of that brawny hand striking my back, that is (and the hearty laughter that came with that breach of personal space).

That being said, were it not for them, I would never have understood that sequestering oneself to the laboratory was not the most ideal answer.

And once I began to examine the E.G.O Gear researched here in the LCE, I also came to understand that the old-fashioned practice of conducting research in the confines of rooms could hardly contribute to the proper study of subjects...

... Because the notion that human emotion could react so directly to a research subject was not one I had ever entertained before.

Not here, either...

And if it's not...

My coworkers had taken to providing me with fermented dairy drinks. One appeared upon my desk, and then another. By the time the beverages accumulated beyond the prospect of solitary consumption, and when, eventually, the sole solution was to pass some of them along to other people, the company entrusted me with the exclusive responsibility for researching a particular piece of E.G.O Gear.

It was denominated "Dimension Shredder." As its name intimated, it possessed the ability to tear through the empty air, opening a passage by which one might traverse another dimension.

I had thought that the assignment of responsibility, too, was... attentive solicitude on the management's part.

An act of care for an employee who had just begun to exchange words with his coworkers, but had yet to learn the finer points of actively initiating an interaction of his own accord.

Aid extended toward one such as I, who would approach others with the intention of sharing a beverage, only to pause and dither bashfully before returning to his seat, the bottle still in his hand.

Though all things considered, I now believe it was less an act of care than a cunning expedient.

A human resource management policy to foster camaraderie and permit me the guise of testing E.G.O Gear's capabilities through which I may, however circuitously, initiate. I might "test" passing through a dimensional aperture to surreptitiously place a bottle of beverage on a colleague's desk and return from thence to my own desk, perhaps with a comment or two on the successful use of it - something along the lines of "Hm. I have arrived at the intended coordinates without deviation." An unabashedly blatant loophole, but initiation nonetheless.

Perhaps the expectation was to have me, through the incremental repetition of such acts, grow sociable enough to someday leave a small note of greeting beside the drink. Or mayhap, on another someday, to initiate, however awkwardly, a conversation with a coworker whom I might encounter at the end of the brief dimensional travel.

Until, perhaps, upon a someday more distant still, I might finally converse in comfort with my fellows in the company cafeteria, without requiring any dimensional travel as a means to close the distance between myself and another.

Until someday, I might approach, by my own volition, a new hire who joins the department to place a bottle of beverage before them and say... "Pray have one of these. This is for you."

This cannot be...

It ought surely to lie there, waiting for my return betwixt the passing dimensions.

I have already torn open hundreds of dimensional pathways to pass through, and the coordinates, too, had to have been correct...

Perhaps I'd been...

... overly reliant on the convenient ambiguity the word "someday" affords, by which I had purchased the permission to postpone every unactioned gesture.

It seems that those vague, vacillant assurances of the past have finally returned to have me reap the consequences.

It was just another experiment on the dimensions. A routine test of the E.G.O Gear.

As the purpose of this particular experiment was to leap through more dimensions than I had in the prior experiments, I had prepared a greater variety of loopholes.

And as a contingency for unforeseen emergencies, I had identified the absolute dimension from which I could guarantee my return to whence I departed.

In spite of my vigilance, in spite of my thoroughness, however, I cannot find my way to my home dimension.

I must scour the path to find the way back...

The path to where the welcoming camaraderie and warmth await...

Alas, leap after leap, only the remnants of carnage and its bloodsteeped scent hail my return.

In between scenes of carnage, I witnessed repeatedly the effervescent pits of venom, lands in ceaseless tremor, and globes of plasma charged with high-voltage electricity that fried every molecule it struck.

How much time I have spent searching, I cannot know.

It may be that, in the liminal spacetimes that exist within and without the multiplicity of dimensions, time has already progressed to such a longitude that it has crossed past the fringes of my capacity to perceive it.

Nevertheless, I am left bereft of choice but to still my lungs' trebled respiration and persevere in the search for my colleagues, endlessly longing for their warmth...

... That I may tell them I am sorry. That I was content to only receive, never give. That I made my bed in the comfort of doing naught to reciprocate.

... Until, at last, I came to realize:

... Hah.

As a matter of fact, the alley was an open one.

I hadn't gone astray.

That "an accident" of sorts had brought scourge to whence I came and wrought such carnage that it was no more recognizable than an alien dimension.

Had we not been assured that the security systems of our company, comprised of contraptions of peerless worth, made it nigh-impossible to penetrate?

So how -

... The security systems were disabled from within...?

A... traitor in our midst...?

.......

Thus, I embrace a second realization:

Of course. In the infinite possibilities afforded by the multitude of dimensions, a world of such preposterous treachery may also exist.

But that cannot possibly be the dimension I call home.

Of this, I am certain. I know of no colleague of mine who would dare commit such a -

... Nay, there is no time to dally on such worthless musing.

Hurry along I must, hurry along...

... to my world where warmth and kindness await.