by A. J. Markam
They were real, yes… incredibly advanced…
But not like Alaria.
She was unique… maybe even self-aware.
And she had nearly been lost forever.
Her very existence had hung on something as idiotic as a riddle posed by a madman.
The stupidity of that – the utter pointlessness of it – filled me with rage.
And so, while she slept, I took the opportunity to log out.
I had someone to see.
No, not Luna.
That could wait.
I was enraged – infuriated – and I had to speak my mind.
I marched through the halls of Westek, my righteous indignation growing with every step.
I reached the writer’s department and burst through the door.
“SATISH!” I yelled.
I guess the Russians weren’t there – which was probably good, or I might have lost my job.
Instead, the entire writing staff was back at their cubicles, hard at work.
Until I walked in, screaming like a lunatic.
They all froze and stared at me.
Satish came out of his office, looking harried and stressed. “Ian? What’s wrong?”
“What the fuck, man! What the hell are you people thinking, goddammit?!”
“What are you talking about?”
“For starters, threatening to delete Alaria forever! Over a stupid fucking riddle!”
Satish looked at me blankly. That just made me madder.
“And not letting me log out or contact anybody! What the fuck was that?! And the villain knew we were in a videogame?! Speaking of which, when did you decide to turn my quests into survival horror?”
Satish squinted at me. “…what?!”
“The rogue dungeon! You think you can put players through that?! You’re going to give them fucking nightmares! And Eluun? That was just fucking wrong! Are you trying to hurt people?! Are you TRYING to piss them off?!”
One of the writers slowly reached down to her phone and gave Satish a questioning look.
She didn’t think I saw, but I did.
Satish gave her a subtle shake of his head – no – and looked back at me.
I ignored the exchange between them and continued my ranting and raving. “First Eluun, which was bad enough – then nearly killing off Alaria – what the fuck, Satish?! It was bad enough when I thought she died at Orlo’s – this was going to be PERMANENT!”
“Ian,” Satish said calmly, like he was trying to talk somebody off a ledge, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The eighth ex-master! Nix!” I shouted, then scoffed. “And me?! I’m the ninth ex-master?! What the hell kind of bullshit is that?!”
Satish looked confused. “…Nix?”
“Yeah! Wraith? Made of shadows? Basically the fuckin’ boogeyman?”
Something was wrong. I could sense it.
Everybody in the room was staring at me – but it wasn’t because they were worried I was going to go postal anymore.
They were legitimately bewildered.
“Ian,” Satish said gently, “all we’ve been working on for the last three days was the meeting with the Russians. There wasn’t time to do anything else.”
Suddenly I felt ill.
“But… Nix…”
“I’ve never heard that name before.” Satish looked around. “Did somebody else put that name in the system?”
Every single person in the room shook their head no.
Now I didn’t just feel ill…
I was afraid.
When Satish spoke again, the ground beneath me seemed to buckle, and my sanity threatened to give way.
“Ian… we never wrote the eighth ex-master.”
37
Satish took me to Programming and we combed through the player logs for the last three days.
There was no sign of Nix.
Not in the code, not in the art files… nothing.
He didn’t exist.
And he wasn’t the only thing.
All of my adventures… the rogue dungeon, the aerial battle over Exardus…
They didn’t exist, either.
It was a blank spot in my record, like I’d been logged off the entire time.
Then I had a moment of inspiration.
“Check the ones who died!” I said. “Deek, Eluun, Tarka!”
What little glimmer of hope I’d had was quickly snuffed out.
Deek, Eluun, and Tarka were all listed as dead…
But they had met their ends weeks ago, according to the computer logs.
Offscreen.
We checked the cities. Abaddon was destroyed, Fathmos was gone, the Kingdom of Frost was no more… but it was more of the same.
It had all just happened, with no explanation of why.
“We didn’t write that,” Satish said in astonishment.
He was starting to look as sick as I felt.
Because if Satish’s department hadn’t written it, and the coders hadn’t programmed it, then there was only one possible explanation:
The game had done it all by itself…
…and then it had erased everything to cover its tracks.
Desmond, the guy who had programmed Alaria, was stoic as always when he gave his opinion. “If what you’re saying really happened… that’s a big fucking deal.”
“It happened,” I said angrily.
“Then it’s a big fucking deal.”
“Why?” Satish said. “We’ve had the game go off on its own before. I mean, the AI basically programmed Zali.”
“Yeah, but you told it to,” Desmond replied. “You gave it artwork, you gave it an opening scenario, you gave it parameters, and then you turned it loose. Here, nobody gave it shit, and it still went off on its own. Even freakier is that it covered its tracks afterwards, like it knew we were going to find out, and it didn’t want us to. Which opens up a whole new can of worms.”
Satish frowned. “Like what?”
“Like self-awareness.”
“Of Alaria?” I asked. “You already told me that a long time ago – ”
“No,” Desmond interrupted. “I mean the game itself.”
38
The game itself might have achieved self-awareness.
THAT was something upper management did not want to hear.
You would think it would be good news – y’know, gigantic milestone and all that –
But having a self-aware AI on their hands would bring up all sorts of problems.
Regulatory, scientific, international standards of ethics –
The kinds of problems that affect profits.
If it could be proven that the game was sentient, then there would have to be major changes. Studies, experiments, maybe even kicking out all the players.
But I was the only person who had seen any firsthand proof.
There was an investigation. The CEO and CTO assigned a team of forensic programmers to work with Desmond and audit every line of code.
All 14 billion lines of it.
I checked back in every week, but the only answer I ever got was It’s still ongoing.
Desmond was bound by an NDA, but he said, “I’d at least let you know if we found something.”
“Did you find something?”
“Not yet.”
“Shouldn’t we tell somebody? Like, outside Westek?”
“Not until we have proof.”
“But – ”
“I don’t particularly want to make a fool of myself in front of the global scientific community because somebody slipped some acid into your chocolate milk.”
Given that Chad was still working for the company, that wasn’t a completely implausible scenario.
In the end, I think they just buried it like the Ark of the Covenant in the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
The merger with the Russians was on the fast track, and nobody and nothing was allowed to derail it.
�
��What should I do in the meantime?” I asked Desmond.
“Keep your fuckin’ eyes open,” he said with his usual lack of helpfulness.
And so I kept my eyes open.
But I never saw anything.
39
By the way, I asked Luna out.
We started dating.
Alaria was supportive and never once got jealous… although I can’t exactly say the same about Luna.
She dealt with it, though.
All in all, things were pretty awesome both inside the game and out…
Except for one thing.
While the forensic team was still looking at the code, Satish was prohibited from finishing the ‘Nine Ex-Masters’ storyline. Management didn’t want him to muddy the waters.
It was officially a dead quest.
Unofficially, I kept looking.
Time passed.
The first generation of long-term immersion pods hit the market. While they were a critical success – the tech press lost their collective minds over them – they weren’t exactly a financial homerun, since nobody but millionaires could afford the damn things.
Eventually the price would come down, but that was a ways off.
As for the Russians, the merger proceeded… then ground to a halt.
Congress got involved. They had all sorts of questions, like whether it was a good idea to sell cutting-edge technology to a foreign corporation in an antagonistic nation (and they didn’t even know about the issues with the AI).
There were hearings, and committees, and a whole bunch of red tape –
And then all the problems just magically disappeared. Things with the merger started moving again.
Nobody could prove it, but word around the campfire was that a bunch of people had been paid off.
It was an election year, after all, and politicians need that sweet, sweet money.
As for me, I barely paid attention to what went on with the merger.
I was busy with Luna…
And with OtherWorld.
I progressed to Level 110…
I saw amazing sights and had astounding adventures…
I fell even more deeply in love with Alaria…
And I never, ever took a single day with her for granted.
The entire time, I kept my eyes open, just as Desmond suggested.
Had Nix been right?
Was I the ninth ex-master?
It made no sense…
But then, nothing about what had happened made sense.
And so I waited.
For two long years I looked for the ninth ex-master.
I finally found him.
And when I did…
I wished to God I hadn’t.
The Ex-Masters story arc will conclude in SUCCUBUS 9!
If you liked the cover, email me at [email protected] and I’ll send you the UNCROPPED cover art that shows them head-to-toe! (No nudity. Sorry, I was a little unclear with my offer for Book 7’s cover.)
I hope you enjoyed Book 8! If you did, would you please leave a review at Amazon? It helps more than you know!
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By the way, I published some books under other pen names in 2020. Check out the following:
MONSTER GIRLS 1 by Edward Lang
MONSTER GIRLS 2 by Edward Lang
MONSTER GIRL MOUNTAIN by Edward Lang
TIME MAGE 2 by Rob Nolan
IRON MAGE 2 by Rob Nolan
And also check out EX-SUPERHEROES 3 by AJ Markam!
Thanks for reading!
Also by AJ Markam
As Edward Lang
Monster Girls 1
Monster Girls 2
Monster Girl Mountain
As Rob Nolan
Time Mage
Time Mage 2
Iron Mage
Iron Mage 2
As AJ Markam
Ex-Superheroes 3
(Kindle and Audiobook)
Succubus
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Succubus 2: Hell To Pay
(Kindle and audiobook)
Succubus 3:
The Good, The Bad, And The Crazy Stupid Hot
(Kindle and audiobook)
Succubus 4:
Gnome Place Like Home
(Kindle and audiobook)
Succubus 5:
Hardcore Dungeon Core
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Succubus 6:
Devil In The Deep Blue Sea
(Kindle and audiobook)
Succubus 7:
Fairy Tale
(Kindle and audiobook)
Succubus Christmas Special
(Short story and audiobook)
Ex-Superheroes 1
(Kindle and Audiobook)
Ex-Superheroes 2
(Kindle and Audiobook)
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