Work Text:
007n7's POV
Saying that being in eternal purgatory is horrible is an understatement; it's also worse knowing that you are stuck with a group of people who only see you for your past mistakes. Despite being stuck here for who knows how long, I persist. As they say, the human spirit is indomitable. It was the beginning of another round; however, I was transported to a different area this time. I didn't see anything familiar, but I saw... the Sky? It had been so long, I forgot how beautiful the blue was; I noticed the clouds as well: the cumulus type, more specifically. I felt the warmth of the welcoming sun. It was so warm. It brought me back to the days when I made sandcastles with c00lkid at the beach. I could almost see him laughing away. I sighed deeply as my thoughts began to spiral. Oh c00lkid....
"Ahem."
Who was that? I looked to my left and saw-
Chance?
"Chance?!" I jumped as I saw him. They looked back at me warily.
Chance responded with, "007n7."
I couldn't decipher the tone Chance used. I could never really decipher the subtle emotions of others well. To fix such a problem, I had developed software on an earlier prototype; it scanned a person's face and then told me their emotional state. It wasn't foolproof, but it told me enough that people never really found my presence welcome. Even after all these years, I haven't changed a bit. No, stop that, I HAVE changed; I have changed, I have better morals! I can hold myself accountable now! Chane gave me a funny look; it was understandable, as I was making these weird hand motions. Sigh.
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Chance's POV
I looked at the older man, perplexed. I saw him genuinely smiling, though, that was something new. He was kind of cute. I wondered what caused him to go through all those emotions. Now, not to dwell on that. I looked around and saw parkour like those obby courses on TV. I surmised that we needed to reach the end to escape or something. I gazed at the parkour more closely, and I realised it didn't look too difficult, but some parts did require teamwork work and so I motioned at him to look at the parkour with me. It wasn't the time to hold onto whatever animosity towards 007n7.
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007n7's POV
Oh, cheese and crackers. I sigh in my head. I walk towards him and give him a hand to shake.
"We work together and then we go our separate ways?" I say. Chance looks a little confused, but shakes nonetheless.
I know that Chance doesn't take my presence kindly, and so I wanted this done quickly. I don't want to form a connection with him. I don't want to be disappointed by delusions. Yet the tiny part in me hopes that this experience leads me to make friends with him. I drop those fantasies and look at the path ahead.
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Chance's POV
I wasn't expecting him to be so quick with it. I knew he was adverse to such connections, but I didn't know it was this much. It kind of stung to see how quickly 007n7 wanted to get this over with. It was reasonable, though, I wasn't the most friendly with him in the first place. My judgment was clouded by my need to be neutral. I saw 007n7 walk towards the first bit, but then a large screen popped up with a... MATH PROBLEM???
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007n7's POV
I looked at the screen and realised it was just basic calculus: a simple limit question. (The image shown below is the problem that popped up. Please, do not mind my terrible attempt at a graph; I used a mouse.)
In a couple of seconds, I had entered all the right answers in the boxes and we moved onto the next stage. It was the same as last time but with a different graph. I was about to answer the question until-
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Chance's POV
"WAIT! 007n7, how'd you do that so fast? What even is this?" I asked rapidly. I didn't understand how he could do that so rapidly, I think it only took like 15-30 seconds?!?! to figure it out. Geez, this guy was a math whiz!
"It's just some calculus, nothing much," 007n7 replied sheepishly.
"Can you teach me?!" I replied. I don't know what compelled me (It was me, THE AUTHOR, who compelled you to want to learn Calculus, Chance.) to want to learn this. After all, I hadn't bothered with math since my trigonometry class. I never went to college as my parents wanted me to manage the casino.
"I will try." 007n7 said, mulling over the thought.
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007n7's POV
I thought it over a bit. I began to recall how my college professor taught the class.
"Alright, so we’re going to start at the very beginning. First off, what's the last math class you took?" I asked him.
"I think it was trigonometry in high school," they replied.
I could work with this.
"Alright, that's good, but we’re going to use your trigonometry knowledge maybe later. Trigonometry plays a part in calculus. But first, let's begin with what exactly is Calculus. Calculus is the way we track change over a continuous change using math." I say, then a smaller screen popped up in front of me. I looked at it, and then a pen appeared in front of it as well. I used it to draw a line on the tablet, realising I could use this for instruction and notes. A similar screen popped in front of Chance as well. The screen was similar to the c00lgui. I wondered if I could make it bigger and change its location. I tried using a similar motion I used when changing the size and length of a c00lgui. It worked. I unknowingly smile. As I was about to continue the graph, I was working on appeared on the other screen.
"Functions and graphs are what calculus is in the beginning, as you can see by this problem. A large part of calculus is limits, and the question here is asking for the limit of x values. Before you ask, a limit is the value of y that is outputted as x approaches a certain number. Er... in better words, limits describe how a function behaves around a point." I say as I accidentally scroll the screen, and then the problem from before appears. I'm glad because the problems on the new stage were on a higher level, and these were easier.
"Okay, so you see this right?" I say, pointing to my enlarged screen. I then write out what the little part at the bottom means.
"So with this, when we look at the graph and we look at -4 from the right... and..." I say as I look at it more closely. Oh crap. I had forgotten to mention the different types of points on a graph.
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Chance's POV
I listened to him intently, It was somewhat endearing to see him try to teach me. It was kind of nice to see this side of 007n7. He was always on the edge; I wouldn't blame him. So far, this calculus thing doesn't seem so bad. I look at the graph he motioned to and saw there was a empty cirlce with a filled circle on top.
"What's the difference between the two?" I asked earnestly.
"My apologies, Chance, I meant to explain this further, but the empty circle is called a discontinuity while the filled-in circle is a point defined on a graph. If you do not know what a discontinuity is, it is a point where the function fails to maintain a continuous line. There are functions controlling the graph, but they aren't written. They will start popping up sooner or later. Anyways, for this problem, you want to look only at the point where the line is touching. To find the answer, Chance, you would look at where the x is and then look at what the point's y-axis is, being 1. So, therefore, the answer to this question is 1," said 007n7. I wrote it down on the screen like taking notes to remember for next time. It felt like being in class again, but it wasn't bad. I enjoyed this a lot more.
"You should give it a try for the next couple of ones. I'll tell you which ones you got right and which ones you got wrong," said 007n7.
"Sure, I'll give it a try," said I.
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Nobody's POV.
Chance got them all right on the first try. They moved on to the next couple of stages. The entire level only dealt with limits.