Alterra: Foreign Eden

The sun crept in through the half-drawn blinds, spilling golden slats across my bedroom floor like someone had spilled a box of light. My alarm chimed politely, as if apologizing for the interruption. I groaned anyway, rolling over and thumbing it off.

Another day. Another round of inspections. Another set of polite conversations with androids pretending they weren’t exhausted from being perfect.

I sat up. My apartment was small but clean, all soft whites and light wood. Artificial plants in every corner. I used to have real ones, but then one died, and I can’t be bothered to replace it with a real one.

The floor was cold. Though, honestly, I kind of liked it that way. Woke me up faster.

Shower. Towel. Toothbrush. Rinse. Clothes. Standard-issue uniform—not that it mattered much today. If I wasn’t crawling through a maintenance shaft or having a heart-to-heart with a combat unit, I kept it light. Shirt, slacks, and a coat with the faded Alterra logo stitched into the breast pocket.

Breakfast was just eggs and rice. Maybe a little too much soy sauce. Not that anyone was grading me.

I sat down, plate steaming, chopsticks in hand, when my phone vibrated.

===

New message.

[From: Alterra Personnel Dispatch]

[Subject: Reassignment - Priority Order]

===

I tapped it open. The body of the email unfolded like a letter I hadn’t asked for.

===

Inspector Sakuta Kusunoki,

You have been selected for temporary reassignment to the interdimensional operations division.

Effective immediately, you are to report to Alterra HQ by 09:00 today for a briefing and transport to Site EB-01.

Duration of assignment is currently indeterminate. You are advised to prepare for an extended stay.

Further details will be disclosed upon arrival. Your cooperation, as always, is appreciated.

- Personnel Dispatch Coordinator Division 3

===

“... Are you kidding me?” I muttered.

It wasn’t the strangest message I’d received working for Alterra, but it was definitely in the top five, merely because of how sudden it was. And they didn’t even bother signing with a name. Cool. I’ve worked here for almost seven years now, but it seems that they forgot that I haven’t been turned into one of their robots.

... Though, I probably shouldn’t jinx it.

I sighed and set the phone down, poking at my meal like they’d personally betrayed me.

An extended stay in Caelum... or Apeiron. Whatever the hell they decided to call that world now. Either way, that wasn’t something they asked lightly. Most inspectors rotated in and out—brief assignments, specialized evaluations. If they were sending me for longer than a week, then something wasn’t sitting right over there.

Still, orders were orders. And to be fair... part of me missed it.

Before I left, I opened my messaging app and sent a quick text.

===

[Morning. I got pulled to HQ again. Might be gone a while. Let my sis know, alright?]>

===

My little sister is not exactly a morning person. She wouldn’t see it until noon. She was staying with one of my childhood friends. Her school was better than anything near my apartment. I can’t believe she’s already in her senior year. After that, a short four years in college, and then... Well, I don’t have to babysit her anymore.

I didn’t like the empty apartment. But I liked her being safe more.

I cleaned up, tied my shoes, grabbed my bag, and locked the door behind me.

Outside, the city buzzed like a sleeping beast. And somewhere far beyond its skyline, past Alterra’s towering gates and their guarded portal deep underground, Caelum was waiting. Probably with more paperwork.

I can’t make them wait, though. So I made my way to the nearest train station. Waited for a bit until the train arrived.

The train ride into the city was uneventful—thankfully. Aside from the brutal fighting of getting into the train. That part never changes.

The train was crowded, as usual. A sleek, humming bullet of chrome and silence, sliding through the veins of the city. I stand by the window and watched the world pass by. Towering buildings. Trees that were probably real. People are commuting with the same dead-eyed determination as yesterday. A kid in a school uniform playing a gacha game on her phone. I could tell by the sound effects—limited-time banner, probably. I hoped she got what she wanted.

I stared at the ceiling. Trains were the best place to think. Or pretend you weren’t thinking.

Maybe I was a little too used to being dragged back to HQ.

I mean, sure, Alterra paid well. Inspections came with decent hazard bonuses, even if the worst thing I usually faced was a broken personality matrix or a combat unit that had developed a minor existential crisis. But still, after seven years? You start thinking of it less like a job and more like a very strange family that keeps handing you tools and asking if you hear voices in the vents.

The train slowed. Sleek buildings gave way to a block of matte-black glass and chrome that jutted out of the city’s industrial core like a blade. Alterra HQ—home of the world’s most advanced android research, the gateway to another dimension, and, unfortunately, my employer.

I stepped off the platform and into the lobby.

Inside, the air was cold and filtered. Not a single speck of dust, no unnecessary color. The walls curved in minimalist grace, accented by geometric light strips that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat. Employees moved through the halls in crisp uniforms, black with muted silver trim, each on a mission, eyes ahead. Like ants, but with better dental coverage.

Mixed in were the androids. Most people couldn’t pick them out in a crowd. They were almost indistinguishable from humans. That was the point, as they were humans.

I used to wonder if it bothered them. I still do sometimes. All those life lessons they had until their inevitable death—they were deemed too valuable for a company like this.

As I made my way through the atrium, I passed a glass-paneled observation room, where a cluster of fresh recruits were undergoing orientation. A young instructor paced in front of a wall display, outlining emergency protocols. A few of the newbies whispered to each other behind their ID badges, probably placing bets on which division they’d end up in.

I remembered standing in that same room, seven years ago. Young, and clueless... and terrible haircut.

Back then, the gateway to Apherion didn’t exist. Back then, androids were just machines to talk to.

And back then... I think I joined Alterra because I wanted to be around something that almost understood me. Something that wouldn’t ask why I didn’t smile much, or why I always stayed up until 3 A.M. rewatching old anime about lonely cyborg girls finding meaning through soft piano music and space battles.

Now? The machines were different. More human, almost. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. All those hardware updates just keep making them more like humans. With how much they’re jamming these androids with high-end processors, chances are this is going to be the alternative way of living for some.

“Sakuta Kusunoki,” a voice called from the side hallway. “Briefing room three.”

Standing up, I made my way to my manager’s office. I turned and saw her, Kawahara, my division manager. Tall, sharp-eyed, and always looking like she was two minutes away from firing someone just to maintain discipline. But we’d worked together long enough to skip the pleasantries.

I gave her a lazy salute. “You rang.”

“Sakuta,” she said, without looking up. “You’re late.”

“I’m literally right on time. Not my fault they made me wait outside for 10 minutes.”

She sighed, motioning me inside. “Try to act professional for once. Just once.”

The briefing room was small. No windows, just a terminal, a projection table, and chairs that made you forget you had a spine. Kawahara tapped her badge, and the room locked behind us with a hiss.

She slid a file across the table.

“Another relocation,” she said. “Extended assignment.”

“Got the email this morning. So, you’re really sending me back to Caelum with no return ticket, huh?”

She finally looked up. Her face was the same. Sharp lines, half-irritated, half-amused. “We’re not‘sending’you. You’re being reassigned. Temporarily.”

“Sure. And you’ll take me home before New Year, right?”

“... Standard secrecy clause applies.” She didn’t even bother to answer. “You’ll be stationed in Apherion until further notice. Primary directive is oversight of android behavior across the subsidiaries. Secondary directive: reporting anomalies to internal security before they become problems.”

“‘Until further notice,’” I said, making finger quotes. “Yeah, right. That usually means ‘until someone screws up again.’”

She did not comment on my sarcastic remark. How quaint. I took a seat and grabbed the file she tossed at me. I picked it up and read it for a moment.

“So... what’s the big deal, hm?”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “Nothing official. Just... deviations. Androids are thinking too independently. Employees are getting attached.”

I leaned back in my chair. “And that’s a bad thing? Just let them enjoy their lives for once, yeah?”

She sighed before folding her arms. “It’s getting more frequent now. You’ve been there before. You understand what’s at stake.”

And I did. Alterra didn’t just build androids.They built culture. Infrastructure. An entire support system in a world no one knew existed, except for the ones they sent through the gate. Don’t know why they even bothered to do that. They could’ve colonized the entire place and made it their personal natural resources extraction area. I suppose the divine entity living there wouldn’t be very happy knowing their people are being used as forced labor.

“You’ll be leaving immediately. Head down to Sector E, sublevel six. They’re prepping the gateway now.” Kawahara continued. “Pack light. Report downstairs within the hour.”

I hesitated. “You could’ve told me this through the email.”

She gave me a dry look. “And let you ignore it?”

Fair enough.

As I was about to stand and leave, Kawahara added, “Just... try to act like a professional once you’re through. You’re good at this, Sakuta. But you get too close.”

“I don’t treat androids like tools,” I said.

“No. You treat them like people. That’s not a compliment.”

“It’s a good thing I still have empathy then.” I stood, pocketed the file. “By the way... Any chance I get a new company jacket this time? Mine’s starting to smell like jet fuel and loneliness.”

She gave me a flat look. “Out.”

With that, I turned and made my way toward the elevator. But before heading down to the gateway, I made a brief stop at my office.

It was tucked away in a quiet wing of the diagnostics floor, wedged between a stairwell and the server room. Nothing fancy. Just a steel desk, a stiff chair, and a wall shelf lined with data drives and a dusty model kit I never finished. The kind where you need tweezers and the patience of a saint. I liked having it there. Proof that I once tried to build something with my own hands.

I grabbed a few things from the drawer: my field badge, a half-used notebook with chicken-scratch handwriting, and a small charm made of blue string and glass beads. My sister gave it to me before she left. Said it was for protection. I never believed in that stuff, but I carried it anyway. Damn chuuni.

With that, I slid my coat back on and shut off the lights. A short walk later, I was heading toward the elevator bank near Sector E.

Two voices echoed down the corridor before I turned the corner.

“... I’m just saying, some of them look too real. Like, what’s the point if you can’t even tell anymore?”

“Yeah, right? I mean, did you see the intake unit in Logistics? Absolute knockout. If she didn’t blink like a metronome, I wouldn’t have guessed.”

They laughed. Young voices, two recruits, probably interns from the tech division. Fresh out of university and full of opinions. Neither of them noticed me as I trailed behind, hands in my pockets, silent as a ghost.

“Think they let you date one? Off the record?”

“Dude, seriously... if I could pick one up like a company phone...”

The rest faded under the hum of the corridor lights.

We reached the elevators. The pair peeled off to the left and entered the general-use lift, still whispering and chuckling. The one on the right had no buttons. Just a sleek slot and a blank screen. I pulled out my ID and pressed it against the reader.

A chime. The screen blinked blue.

[ACCESS GRANTED.]

The doors slid open with a low hiss.

The two newbies glanced over. One nudged the other, and their conversation died on their tongues. I didn’t say anything. A moment passed in silence before the doors shut me off from them completely.

I rode the elevator down, deep below the structure, past the standard facilities and secured databanks, down into the floor they didn’t put on the blueprints. The hum of the lift changed as it went.

When the doors opened, I stepped into a massive chamber lit by fluorescent lights embedded into the floor and walls. The space hummed not with machinery, but withsomething else. Something that may or may not be entirely from this world.

There, the gateway stood like a wound in reality, an irregular circular hole of shimmering violet light, encased in a ring of rotating alloy covered in glyphs we never deciphered. It was not made by us. We just found it. Buried beneath kilometers of rock.

A few technicians monitored the terminal nearby. One of them gave me a nod.

“System’s stable. You’re clear for traversal, sir.”

“Got it,” I said, my voice low.

As I stepped closer, I felt the pull. Not physical, but a kind of awareness, like the gateway knew I was there. Like it... remembered me.

I paused, fingertips brushing the charm in my coat pocket.

Then I stepped through.

The sensation was... indescribable. Like passing through warm water and static, time folding in on itself just long enough to forget how long it took. My breath caught in my chest. My thoughts fragmented and reassembled.

And then—I was through.

Still inside a building. The other side of the mirror. The walls were the same sterile gray. The floor hummed with familiar energy. I could’ve been back on Earth if I hadn’t just walked through a literal rift in spacetime.

A lift waited for me just ahead. I stepped in.

Up I went, rising floor by floor until finally, daylight filtered through the cracks. Leaving the lift, I walked straight onto the lobby doors. And when the doors slid open—I stepped out into another world.

The air hit me like a half-forgotten dream. Warm, light, and tinged with scents I couldn’t place.

Last time I was here, the change of environment was clear. One moment, I was in a sterile room; the next, I was in a medieval fantasy land. Now, even as I stepped outside of what should be Alterra’s boundary, my eyes were greeted with the sight of a sprawling city. Like a piece of Earth sliced and moved here.

Home away from home. Then I heard it.

"Guten tag, Inspector Kusunoki.”

The voice was clear. Almost too formal.

I turned to see a petite girl standing just a few meters away. Blonde hair, cut short in a bobbed style, blue eyes, a black uniform pressed with surgical precision. Skin so smooth it caught the sun without a single flaw.

An android.

She smiled faintly and bowed.

“Welcome to Neu Berlin."

To be continued...