Bexy starts to nod, then shakes his head. “Why did you prevent me from terminating the test?”

  “Because if you had just terminated the test with the children like this, they would, in a way, remain in the program!” says the AI doctor.

  At this, hearing that their children were about to be stuck in the program even after it was turned off, the Watsons start to panic.

  Bexy calculates quickly, then says, “That would never happen. I created this machine and program myself. Even in the event of a power failure, the machine has a reserve power source to terminate the program and disconnect itself from the patient.”

  “That might be true,” says the AI. “But even so, even if you disconnect one sector at a time and they exit talking and acting normal, they will be in the program—well, subconsciously.”

  “What do you mean when you say that they will still be in the program?” asks Fionna.

  “That is easy to explain, Nurse…” The AI halts for a second, then looks at Lee and nods, then back at the nurse. “Nurse Fionna, if the program is terminated with the children like this, they can take the helmet off and everything remains the same; there is no change. That is also why I appeared in this cartoonish form.”

  “I don’t understand what you are trying to say,” says Bexy.

  “That is normal; you are an alien, after all. You probably wouldn’t understand a human child's brain's ability to turn a simple cardboard box into anything.” The AI says, then lifts a hand. “Before I explain any more, let’s take care of the children.” He then turns his hand around and presses his thumb and middle finger together. “Lights out,” he says, and snaps his fingers; then the image around Lee and Sakura starts to slowly darken.

  “Big brother, I’m scared,” Sakura says, walking close to Lee and holding onto his arm tight.

  “I’m here, no worry,” Lee says, tapping her hand. Inside, his five-year-old self is slightly afraid, but the maturity of his supposed past self is relaxed, knowing that no physical harm can come from the cartoonish doctor in front of them.

  Then it is complete darkness around them; but even so, Lee and Sakura can see each other without a problem, and then they look at the AI doctor expecting to see the cartoon figure. Instead, they see a proper human being smiling at them.

  “It’s okay, children. Just like the digital fire you were playing with, I can change too.” The doctor says, emphasising the words ‘digital fire’, then shows his hand, that starts to change from human to digital to cartoon, among others, before settling back to human. He then stands up straight and looks around. “Now I can’t see where the glass wall is. Give me a second, children.”

  The AI crosses his arms and looks down. Lee can hear the medical crew and his parents talking; he starts to listen carefully and pinpoints the sound's location. He turns his head; the AI, noticing Lee’s head turn and him squinting his eyes, looks in that same direction.

  “Eureka! I know what I can do. Just give me a second.” The AI starts to pull something from his pocket but is unable. “I hate when even my ability goes against my common sense.” He then shifts into an anime appearance; then, reaching into his pocket again, he pulls out a flat twenty-four-inch LCD TV screen. When he places it down, he looks at Lee and Sakura. “This, children, believe it or not, was a TV on Earth. Now let’s see what’s on.” He points at the TV and makes a hand gesture; as the TV turns on, the glass wall is visible on the screen.

  Sakura starts laughing. “Lee look, Mom and Dad are on TV!”

  The AI gives off a chuckle. “That phrase never gets old.” He then looks at the TV screen. “Now we can talk. What did you ask again?”

  Bexy looks at the screen showing what the children are looking at, then at the one with their brain activity; he shakes his head as he talks quietly to the nurses.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  The AI, still in his anime form, lifts an eyebrow, making him look comical. “Did I forget the sound?” He faces his palm to the TV, then makes a gesture like he is grabbing something with the tips of his fingers; afterwards, he turns his hand clockwise and the image of a volume bar going up appears on the TV display. “It does have sound.”

  Then Bexy speaks. “Why did you say that the children couldn’t just be disconnected from the test?” He then adds, “And what does me being an alien have to do with a box?”

  The AI face-palms. “For the first question: to the children's brains, they had surpassed their limitations; they had gone against reality. So if you had turned it off like that, they would take some time to readjust to reality. They could try to grab fire or try to make fire with only the power of their minds.”

  “Because they did it in an environment so realistic, for their brains, it wasn’t that they were in a program, but that what they thought was impossible was a lie?” asks Raxen.

  “That is possible; I did think I could do anything,” says Lee having understood Raxen.

  Bexy nods. “Okay, so what about the box? What did you try to say?”

  The AI shakes his head. “To a human child, a cardboard box can be anything. A car that travels at a breakneck speed, a spaceship traveling through the stars, a fort. Give a child a box and some time and they will surprise you.” The AI looks at Lee, then at Sakura. “Well, at least that is what the children in my time and era—by my time and era, I mean the time and era of my original master—would do. I haven’t investigated this era that much.”

  Then, as if to explain even better, the image on the TV changes and shows children playing with cardboard boxes, making the most of their imagination simply by colouring, making small cuts for windows, and joining a few boxes together to build a castle.

  “This is only with cardboard boxes; the children's imagination, in my opinion, is one of the most amazing wonders of the universe,” says the AI; then another image shows up on the TV as the AI says. “To an adult, they would see this.”

  Lee and Sakura see the image of a boy on an object made of a sort of metal with two wheels. As he moves the hand grip, the front wheel moves sideways; he puts his feet on something that goes around and he starts moving when he applies pressure. As he goes down the road, he comes across a ramp; as he goes over it, he becomes airborne for a few seconds then lands, and the back wheel spins sideways going around as the front one stops, making him face the other way, and then he is traveling back to the top of the road where he started.

  Memory fragments appear in Lee’s head; he sees someone doing similar things, not just once but a few times; he then sees himself doing the same, and as he is airborne, time seems to slow down. He sees time to make a few calculations at once: bike position, weight shift, objects in the way where he is about to land; and even before touching the ground, he already knows he is going to fall and makes preparations to protect himself.

  Lee gets back to reality at the sound of the AI’s voice, and even before anyone says what the foreign object the boy is on, Lee already knows. “These children used to play like this with their bikes; the bike can also be called a pedal-bike to differentiate it from the motor-bike. To the children, this is what it felt like in their imagination.”

  Another image shows, this time of a bike show; on the TV, Lee and Sakura see something similar to the one from before, but this one is loud, the roar of the engine coming to them clear. Lee gets goosebumps at the past memories, affecting his physical adrenaline as he remembers the rush of watching and riding on top of one, making daredevil jumps.

  Then, on the TV, the crowd goes silent; the bike's engine roars even more and then it takes off, a cloud of smoke and dirt left behind. The bike is seen reaching the ramp and becoming airborne. Unlike the pedal-bike, this one is really high up; the rider makes a few manoeuvres in the air, then he is back on top of the bike and lands safely on the other ramp.

  ------

  Lee has a twinkle in his eyes, the excitement clear on his face; Sakura is trembling slightly. Lee, sensing the trembling, holds her closer.

  Sakura looks up at Lee and says, “I don’t like it; it’s too noisy.” Lee smiles but doesn't say a word.

  As they look back at the TV, both Lee and Sakura get another headache and a small drip of blood comes from their noses; this time Sakura panics, noticing the blood on Lee.

  “Get them out, my children, get them out now!” Lee hears Kenji scream; one hand is holding Bexy by his collar, the other pointing at Lee and Sakura.

  “Don’t worry, the bleeding is a good sign!” the AI says, and in his hands is a tablet-like object. “This blood is a sign of their brains overworking themselves. That is why I placed them in this dark room, to cut any visual contact to allow their brains to, well, reset back into reality.”

  Raxen taps on the glass wall, then says, “He is right. Look, there is not so much activity in their brains; before it was on high, now it is practically normal.”

  Lee is about to talk when it clicks into place. “How?” he asks. When everyone looks at him, he is pointing at Raxen. “How are you speaking Japanese? I thought you didn’t speak it.”