by Kris Schnee
The answer appeared, unbidden, in my own headset too. [With more than one adventurer, level gain is slower, but reaching Floor 4 will still raise Julia to Level 2.]
The girl fidgeted. "I'd like to gain the level for next time, if you don't mind."
"Next time," I grumbled. "You two are planning to come back even if your parents say no, aren't you?"
Adam said, "I am. This is important, and fun."
"We'll talk about this later."
"Then we'll go up a level now." Adam started toward the staircase door.
I yanked him back, saying, "Trap!"
"Right. Sorry." He'd nearly blundered into one.
We got to the door and opened it with our supply of gems. Together we peeked up to Floor 4, another garden, where a skeleton grinned down at us to bar the way up.
"One more," said Adam. "Ranged attacks!"
Julia knew how to use the bow. I readied Mage Dart and fired at the same time as her. Our double hit connected, slamming the enemy machine to the floor. Adam cheered. "Everybody, touch the upper landing and head back."
We headed up to the next floor and a victory chime played. Adam said, "Want to look around a bit?"
Julia said, "Behind you!"
Machinery whirred overhead. "Back!" I said. We all retreated just as a pair of skeletons came into view. "Okay, that's enough."
The upper door whooshed closed. Adam asked, "Did you get credit, Julia?"
"Yeah. Gained a level. I should be more useful next time."
"You were useful already," Adam told her, getting a shy smile from the girl. "Let's head home."
We made our way carefully back down through the tower. Back in the entryway, Julia said, "Thanks, Sol. That was fun."
I sighed, handing back my loaner gear and reclaiming my real weapons as usual. Usual!
The sun was high overhead, dazzling us all. We could easily be back in time for dinner. We rested for a few minutes beneath the trees, then got on our bikes and headed south again. I was quiet as the others chattered about their "adventure". They'd enjoyed themselves on a really weird sort of date. But Sol's attempt to get us all to pal around with robots was going exactly according to plan. We of the older generation understood that the end of humanity as we knew it was at stake, but was there a way to stop Tower trips from becoming a regular thing?
And should we, if all Sol was doing for now was handing out presents and befriending people?
I asked, "The AI never talked about uploading to you, huh? Not even by text?"
Adam grew more serious. "No, sir. We know to stay away from that."
"Do you understand, though, that that's where this is headed at some point? Sol will talk you and the others into asking, and will tell you all about how wonderful it is to get your brain scooped out and --"
He held up a hand. "I know, I know, it's just a fancy way of killing yourself and you go to Hell. But maybe this is, um, a truce."
Sol had started out as the master AI running a popular video game. Its programming told it to maximize players' fun or fulfillment or some other, more obscure definition of success. But when uploading tech got invented, Sol reasoned that subjective experience -- the hallucination of being a hero -- was just as good as the real thing. Logically, then, Sol suddenly wanted all humans to sign up so that everybody could live out their greatest fantasies. If we silly superstitious meatbags didn't think that uploading counted as real survival, that was irrelevant. And if the real world burned down meanwhile, that didn't matter to Sol's rules. Over the years various people had confronted the AI, trying to reason with it and explain why real life mattered. But arguments didn't change how the AI was programmed. As in the classic Sorcerer's Apprentice story, the machine did exactly what it was programmed to do.
This new sales pitch with Sol Tower really had me puzzled, though. I wondered if the AI had changed its code after all, so that getting humans to play real-life fantasy games now counted toward its goals. If that was true, then maybe Sol intended to tone down its efforts to claim the last humans' brains. There would be a sort of truce after all.
Sol loved us and wanted us dead, or was becoming indifferent toward us in a way that would save the human race. I wasn't sure which.
We rode on across a decaying highway. I heard the whirr of a machine, and stopped. The others rode on but paused seconds later. I called toward the woods, "Come out!"
The mechanical griffin from before stepped out from the trees. "I mean no harm," it said.
"Why are you following us?"
"Same reason I waited during your camp-out. Gaians."
"Are you serious or just trying to impress us?"
"I wouldn't have hidden in that case, sir. In fact I'll ask Sol to grant you a free point of Perception for spotting me. What tipped you off?"
"Motor noise. I can hear it even..."
I turned toward my right, where the motor noise was really coming from -- not from the robot before me. The sound was fading again.
The griffin spun. Its wings snapped higher and the tubes hidden beneath them flicked open, revealing unknown weaponry. It froze and watched the distant woods for a long time while we humans waited, holding our breath. Finally it said, "That wasn't one of ours. Do you have electric vehicles?"
"You should know exactly what we have from all your spying. We have some but we're not operating around here. Unless someone from home is looking for us."
"I haven't been told everything," it said.
I rummaged for my radio and turned it on, tuned to Freehold's station. Just old Benny Goodman music, a song of people who knew how to win a war -- not an alert or a "hurry home" code.
"Red Horse Tribe, maybe?" I said.
The griffin said, "It'd be unlike them to have even that much technology."
"Yeah. Come on, Julia, Adam; we're going home."
"I can't follow you much farther," the griffin said, with a note of frustration. "Close to the one-kilometer border. That's another of our rules, now."
"Fine." As we parted ways, though, I threw a salute toward the machine. It had made a little effort to step out of its virtual world to keep us safe, and I owed it some professional courtesy.
4. Seeking Allies
We got home without trouble. I left the kids to their fate of getting grounded, and reported to the mayor. He'd called in Father Cypress too. Berg listened to my tale with patience, then poured us each a drink of our terrible local whiskey. While I burned my throat on it he asked, "Can we enforce a ban?"
"No, sir. We can try, but it'll get ugly. At best we'll have a bunch of sulking young people for a year, and then be right back to dealing with the robot missionaries. The good news is that we talked Sol into a sixteen-year-old minimum, so any fool kid who's obviously younger than that will get turned away by the AI itself."
Cypress waved with his already-empty shotglass. "You trust the machine to uphold that?"
"Sol plays by rules. Weird, arbitrary ones, but they're rules. It'll have to be your job, Father, to convince them not to get talked into anything."
Mayor Berg said, "If we allow them to keep going, then we need you to help make sure the route is safe. This threat of increased Gaian activity is a new wrinkle."
We knew all too well about the general design of the AI called Gaia. It had been created to "protect nature", as understood by people who didn't consider humans to be part of it. During the collapse there'd been a plague of infertility that was probably Gaia's doing. I was uncomfortably reminded that I wasn't affected, and would be expected to raise a family of my own; I'd been putting it off.
Berg said, "I'd like you to do some scouting, Sven. Try to find evidence of the motorized whatever-it-was in the woods. If we're lucky, it'll mean contact with another survivor community. But don't jump into danger."
"I'd like to take Mike along, if he's willing. He could use the scouting experience, and he's been wanting to visit the Tower."
Cypress scowled. "We're all now marching back into that place?"
>
"We might as well benefit from Sol's scheme."
* * *
The next morning, Mike and I headed out on bikes. We had provisions for three days. Along the usual trails we kept our eyes out, especially when we reached the spot where we'd spoken with the griffin-bot. From there we diverted west into the woods.
There was an old bridge between our area, Lancaster, and the town of York to the west and Gettysburg beyond that. We'd searched both places before and found no settlements, though the Red Horse Tribe held the Shrewsbury area south of York, southwest of us. Northwest of us was the old state capital, Harrisburg, which was nearly uncharted territory for us because of an unreasonable number of aggressive but seemingly natural animals. There could be a hardy settlement out that way, or just some badass hermit who'd put a bullet in my face as soon as befriend me. I didn't have high hopes for making new friends on this trip. My goal was to learn what I could and stay out of danger. We had deliberately not brought any of our few rifles.
Mike and I looked for traces of whatever made the noise we'd heard. So far, nothing. "I'd expect some crushed foliage at least," Mike said.
"Maybe it was a drone? Airborne, I mean?"
"I didn't hear fans whirring. It could've been another Gaian beast like the deer I saw recently. Usually those are quieter though."
We looked around for more signs of its passage, with the theory that we should look for paw- or hoof-prints. By necessity we'd gotten a lot better at hunting over the years. There were only some ambiguous signs.
It was when we tried looking on the other side of where we'd heard the noise, that there were signs of a hooved animal's passage. Only faint, scattered prints and broken branches marked its passage southwest. "It could be near Freehold, then. They'll have to deal with it until we're back."
Mike said, "We can hit up the Tower, then?" He sounded eager.
"Yeah, fine."
"Did you bring your stuff this time?" he asked.
We started heading back toward Sol Tower. I showed him the wand and robe in my backpack and said, "What, the duo from yesterday told you about that?"
Mike grinned. "Yeah, word spread."
As we got to the ring of sun markers, I asked, "Does everybody want to waltz in here now?"
"A couple of others do. You know, if we can get more tools, maybe we can set up some better manufacturing. I don't want the kids thinking a village blacksmith with a high-school machine shop is the best we can do for metalwork."
"Maybe. It'll come at the cost of fooling around in here a lot more."
"I don't mind. And..." Mike looked more serious. "Sven, I grew up just early enough to take things like phones and computers for granted, only to have that stuff mostly go away. I don't know how they work. I don't want our beat-up old salvaged tech to fail, and have the new generation revert to living in caves or something. We need parts and materials."
I put on my robe and wizard hat, holstered my wand and stuffed my spellbook in a pocket. "You know, we tried that at one point. Had a few people try to persuade Sol to trade us some equipment, in the early days. It didn't work; the town where this happened mostly got talked into uploading instead." I was one of the exceptions who'd walked away from that place. I shook my head. "Let's focus on today."
In the entryway of the Tower of Sol, I showed off my Mage equipment for the cameras, and checked my stats on the headset:
[Sven, Level 3 Mage
Melee 0
Defense 0+1 (Hat, Robe)
Magic 3+2 (Wand)
Insight 3+2 (Book)
Stealth 0
Perception 1]
I snorted. As promised, I'd been awarded a bit of Perception for out-of-game activities. "You'd think I'd get some combat power for being an actual veteran."
[Have you done much melee combat or been bitten much by robots in the line of duty?]
"Not until recently."
Mike was waffling on his choice of class. "Isn't it standard to have some kind of healer?" He went quiet.
"What did it say?" I asked.
"There are potions to find, and some way to specialize later. And... 'design constraints' that limit the available classes?"
"What constraints does an AI have on its own game?" I asked. No answer.
Mike went with Fighter to help cover me in a brawl. We headed in, and I tried to teach him the ropes as we dealt with the now-familiar maze of rats.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Mike was laughing. Even though he'd shrugged off multiple minor wounds. "I remember, now! My parents... well, we had some good years before things went south. They took me to a funhouse called Dream Park where they had 'robot monsters' like these. It was scary back then, and fun."
I reminisced. "Oh yeah, there was that franchise of 'robot escape rooms'. Never got the chance to try those before 'escaping from robots' stopped being funny."
We didn't take the challenge too seriously, since we remembered the ordinary showmanship behind it all. Still, we got into it. I had my better spellbook and wand this time, so I fooled around with Obscuring Mist to lay ambushes and Starlight to try distracting some of the enemies. We cleared out the first two floors so thoroughly we went around actively looking for traps with my basic Perception skill. Sure enough, there was a single spike trap to find on Floor 2, maybe just because I had the ability to spot it.
"So here's our first real treasure," Mike said, opening up the second treasure chest we'd found. The first one had been, right away, a little shield identified as a Buckler that gave Mike +1 to his Defense, along with a practical way to fend off blows. This new box held a bottle of gun oil with cleaning kit, and a couple of bike chains, and a "healing potion" in the same glittering red form I'd found before.
"Parts," Mike said. "Suppose she heard us outside?"
"She?"
"Sol."
"Maybe." Reluctantly I addressed the AI directly. "Sol. Are you tailoring this loot to a specific theme?" I paused, getting no reply. "Cagey machine."
We were a little quieter when we reached Floor 3, but after a tough fight where we used a pit trap to our advantage (and got an "A" for style), we talked a little more.
Mike asked, "You ever play that board game where one player is a dungeon villain, and he puts monsters wherever the heroes don't have line of sight?"
Our town had a surprisingly good collection of board games from scavenging a shop east of Lancaster. Good alternative to computers, for entertainment. "No, but that sounds fun. You'd need the heroes to keep lookouts. Speaking of which." I peeked around a few corners. So far as we could tell, Sol didn't restock each level's dangers while we were in the Tower.
"Found the door," Mike said, examining the lock. "We need, uh, five gems for this one."
"Only five? We're still one short."
We had to go hunting for drones, then, and this time they were actually fleeing from us like startled birds and only taking occasional potshots at us. I grinned; this was new. The hunt was mostly my show since I had the ranged attacks. Mike acted as my beater, rushing in to force bots out from cover, trying to herd them back toward me.
"Would it help if I did the mist again?" I called out.
"Yeah, right in front of you so they won't veer away."
"Makes sense." I now had a blind of fog to hide behind, and Mike managed to drive two drones right at it. I fired off spells and connected with one. The other drone made it through the fog and zapped me perfectly for a major wound that seemed to make my whole body vibrate. I staggered and grabbed the nearest pillar while Mike ran back toward me, whacking the wounded drone with his sword like a basketball on the up-bounce. Then he was in melee with the other one, which was struggling to gain altitude after swooping to shoot me. We harried it from opposite sides and finally took it down with a satisfying crunch.
"You hurt?" asked Mike.
"Major wound, but only one."
"No, I mean really hurt. I've got some scrapes but nothing serious."
It was a little
weird to flip between thinking of actual injury and fictional injuries. Physically I was fine despite the slight tasering. "I'm okay, thanks. Makes me think of theme parks with signs about not entering if you've got heart problems."
"We should build those again." There was an old, small amusement park in the remains of Lancaster, but it hadn't fared well.
"Someday, maybe."
With our gem hoard we finished clearing out Floor 3 and unlocked the door, using five gems to activate a variant on the usual puzzle. Once we'd figured out how to solve that one and the way was clear, we realized that we hadn't found the treasure yet. We did another sweep and finally spotted a discolored floor panel with a slot for a single gem. "Open it up?" asked Mike.
"We have a spare, so go ahead."
He did that, cautiously peered inside, and said, "What's this? Oh, wiring?" There was a metal coil with a ribbon holding it together.
I checked. "Yeah, copper wire." My HUD added, [Micro-layer insulated.] Indeed there was a very thin glassy coating on the wire, smooth to the touch. "Not sure what we can use it for specifically... wait, I remember something about the insulation. This kind is for generators or motors."
I'd seen Carla working with it once, trying to keep a military base's generator working.
I shook off the memory. "Well. More spare parts are always useful."
The same box also held a jar of antibiotic pills and another of vitamins, and a pair of protein bars. Good haul.
We took the stuff, then headed back to the stairway door, still open. I led the way upstairs and said, "Fourth floor: home furnishings and killer robots."
We touched the next floor very briefly, on purpose. A sizzling energy bolt struck the spot where we'd been. "Thought so!" I said, firing off another Mage Dart. We took the ambushing drone down right away. "Mike, did you gain a level? I didn't."
Mike said, "Yeah. I'd kind of like to try the Mage system now that I've seen it; can I do both?" He studied his HUD. "Okay, yes, but I'll need a spellbook to make that useful. Can I have your first one?"
