Suri folded her arms. “Describe how ATHENA works.”
“The datacenter for Archemi is like a great big honeycomb, with lots of little cells. Player cells are big, 2.7 Petabytes, and they’re kind of like secure vaults for a person’s temporary or permanent storage,” Jacob said. “NPC cells are smaller, but there’s lots of them. The NPC cells have tunnels between them, so every time an NPC is created, little bits of info from interrelated cells clumps together and makes a person. Kind of. They’re not really, uhh, people...”
He trailed off, looking at Suri. She scowled.
“Seriously.” Jacob shrunk back a bit more. “There’s no such thing as a sentient AI, okay? AIs that become self-aware kill themselves, we know that for a fact. So NPC AIs simulate people, but they’re not really people, okay?”
“They sure as hell act like real people.” I crossed my arms.
“Right. But they’re actually... like... shit, what’s something I can compare it to? Uhh... deepfakes, I guess.” Jacob said. “Bits and pieces of human data that mesh together into a responsive mini-AI. But those personalities only react to what OUROS tells them to do. OUROS creates player stories, so NPCs are directed to interact with us. It’s a cool, but really complex illusion.”
Without really thinking about it, I reached telepathically for Karalti’s mind. The Bond was a comforting link between us, flaring with warmth and affection. She was just waking up, sleepy and happy. Vash was with her, talking. They were about to start their martial arts training for the day. Karalti was training to be a Baru... of her own free will, I’d thought.
“You’re wrong,” I said, calmly. “Somehow, the system here has evolved beyond what we started with.”
“I’m not. I managed that system at the top level. I know exactly how it works.” Jacob frowned at me. “I will repeat it for emphasis: there’s no such thing as sentient AI. We’ve tried hundreds of times. There’s also not enough physical storage for everyone here to be fully-simulated DHDs. Every server was planned to have two thousand player slots. That’s it. We only had one terrestrial server and the orbital backup. There’s millions of NPCs running around Archemi. We just don’t have the space for them to be as complex as real people, and if you don’t believe me, I don’t know what else to tell you. Archemi’s a game, not a second Earth. It wasn’t meant to be used the way we’re using it. It’s why... that’s why...”
He looked to Suri again.
“You didn’t think you were hurting anyone,” Suri said.
“Yeah. But you were different. You were a DHD we trimmed down and rewrote,” Jacob said. “Human datasets can be turned into NPCs, but NPCs can’t be turned back into DHDs.”
“I see people here take independent actions all the time.” I crossed my arms and shook my head.
“They’re not. They act like they are, but if OUROS stopped giving them directions, they’d just stop and stand there,” Jacob said. “They’re like... like mirrors. Or puppets that act like a mirror. If OUROS quit running the game for some reason, every person in the world who wasn’t a DHD uploaded via GNOSIS would freeze.”
Well shit. I’d seen that before. Cutthroat had done it once, when the server in Alaska had been nuked and the game rebooted from the satellite server Ryuko had thoughtfully put in space.
“Explain what OUROS is,” Suri ordered.
“OUROS is probably the most advanced simulator AI in existence,” Jacob said. “Michael worked with the Ryuko Contract Division team that developed the military version for the government, which they called Project Acanthis. He didn’t talk much about that stuff, obviously. The system we worked with used the same basic neural structure as Project Acanthis, but our OUROS doesn’t have any other connection to it. It’s a great big storyteller system that manages everyone and everything here. But it’s not self-aware, and neither are the NPCs.”
“Prove it,” Suri said. “As Hector said: the people we know here are really fucking complex.”
The admin made a sound of irritation. “If NPCs were really sentient, they wouldn’t have any reason to issue us quests. They’d just talk to each other and fix their own problems, not wait around for heroes to come along and do it. They’d make their own heroes and throw us in the trash.”
“They have made their own heroes,” I said. “Vash, for one. He’s solved a bunch of problems here all by himself. Mayor Bubek, for another. He’s a merchant NPC who stepped up to save his city from undead. All of that happened independently of what we did here.”
“You don’t know that. Chaos is math, math is the language OUROS uses to predict our actions and shape storylines. It can accurately predict those kinds of variables in like... two hundred milliseconds.” Jacob shifted uncomfortably. “I... I admit I thought Vash was a player character at first. He reminds me of my Rabbi. Anyway, you wanted to know about Michael, not me. Well, uhh... let me think. Okay. Well, he was religious, I remember that. He was at church every Sunday and in the gym working out every morning. Apparently he had a real shitty childhood, though you wouldn’t have known it to look at him. Someone else told me that.”
“Who’d you hear it from?”
“Steve.” Jacob’s eyes flicked to me. “He knew Michael the best. I wouldn’t say they were friends, but they were the smartest guys on the team. They respected each other, you know?”
I shrugged.
“Steve said Michael was a civil war orphan. He survived in the border camps up north,” Jacob continued. “He joined the Army to get away from that life, fought his way up from nothing. He hated mess and dirt. Like, if anyone working under him left an empty coffee cup on their desk where he could see it, he’d freak out on them. He wouldn’t let anyone into the office if they were sick. And when he found out about the cancer... he was angry. He wasn’t sad at all. He was pissed.”
Suri glanced at me. “Sounds like he wasn’t that stable to begin with.”
“Yeah. And when he was uploaded, yeesh. It was awful.” Jacob drew into himself a little more, frowning. Some of the cringing air had abated, though he still flinched whenever Suri moved. “Nick was the only one who wasn’t wrecked after Michael’s upload fucked up. I was there when we spoke to him after, though. He was... something had changed. He wasn’t the same person. He had this thousand-yard stare, and he said... uhh...”
“Go on.” Suri urged.
“He said the Drachan spoke to him. Showed him things.” Jacob’s voice dropped, becoming softer and more urgent. “War stuff. People getting blown up, dying of disease, all kinds of shit. He said they were trying to destroy him. That there was something evil and fucked up here. Demonic. That was the word he used. He tried to fix it from the inside, and as far as I knew, he succeeded. After that, he didn’t talk about it again. But then, when he began trying to take over the world and started fucking around with ATHENA’s core database to change all these characters and things, and we realized he was still going on about the Drachan. He tried to erase them from the game. I never really understood why. He just told us they had to go.”
“Anything else you remember?” Suri asked.
“Steve was the one who had to delete him and wipe the server. He took it real hard,” Jacob replied, shifting his gaze between the pair of us. “Steve was always a hard worker, but after Michael’s death, he practically lived in the office. I’d come to work in the morning and Steve would already be there. He ate at his desk. He’d still be in there working by the time I left around six or seven o’clock. I’m pretty sure he slept in his chair more than once. He never said anything, but I figured he felt responsible for what happened to Michael.”
“I guarantee you he did.” It was my turn to look away.
“Is there any way OUROS could be making the Drachan do what Ororgael claimed?” Suri asked him.
“Psst, no.” Jacob rolled his eyes. “They’re just monsters. Big Bad Evil Guys. World bosses and monster-type NPCs don’t have any personality data at all. All big boss mobs in the system have pre-determined identit
ies and powers. There’s only about thirty Drachan in the setting, all of them currently disabled under the Caul of Souls.”
“And there’s no way OUROS could generate new ones out of human data?” I asked.
“No. For one thing, physical storage on the orbital servers is really limited. We had quantum cores in Juneau that could hold a couple million exabytes of information. The orbital equipment had access to the same info when it was connected via entanglement. But now that we rebooted from the satellite, it’s only got its onboard equipment, which is maybe like... I dunno... ten exabytes. The space is so limited that we don’t dream here. You notice that?”
I could tell that information was lost on Suri. It was almost lost on me, though I knew the basics of how computers worked. “Ten exabytes is still a lot. Like ten billion terabytes of info.”
“It’s just enough to run a world like this one, and I mean JUST. So yeah, OUROS isn’t breeding new villains to torment us with.”
“Then do you know how we can defeat the Drachan?” I asked.
Jacob scowled. “No. I know it sounds weird coming from a game developer, but the game itself never interested me that much. I’m a data nerd, not a fantasy nerd. The only conventions I ever went to were on Quantum SQL entanglement exchanges. I got involved because Ryuko paid me a lot of money to move to Alaska, and I was excited about the tech.”
I sighed. “Damn. Knew it was too good to be true.”
“So you’re saying that Ororgael’s agenda has nothing to do with the, uh, system that you Architects made,” Suri said. “Ororgael saw some things in his accident that made him scared, and now he’s a delusional narcissist trying to control this world the same way you and Nick felt like you had to control Al-Asad.”
Jacob gave her an odd look. “Look: I apologized. What else do you want me to do? I was depressed and shitty and angry. But I’m not like Nick or Michael.”
Suri looked down at him, her eyelids hooding. “I’ll have to think about that. Until then, you’ll stay in my dungeon and rot. C’mon, Hector.”
“W-Wait!” Jacob scrambled up to hands and knees. “I gave you what you wanted! You can’t just leave me here!”
“Watch me.” Suri let me pass under her arm.
“Do you have any idea what solitary confinement does to people!?” He scrambled up to his feet, edging forward. “This is torture! This is against the Geneva Convention!”
Suri gave him a flat look of disbelief, and slammed the door in his face.
Chapter 19
By the time we reached the stairs, Jacob’s screams of rage gave way to sobbing as our footsteps faded from his earshot. Suri and I climbed the stairs without saying anything to one another, but when we reached the surface, we both took deep, grateful breaths of fresh air and turned to look at one another.
“I think that went pretty well,” Suri said. “He squealed like... well. A rat.”
“He sure did. I wonder if there’s some way we could let Nick know his butt buddy bitched him out. We could hold that over Jacob to encourage compliance, and we might be able to draw Nick into a sting and capture him, too.” I nodded to the guard as he saluted. “You think he earned breakfast?”
“Yeah.” Suri shuddered and jerked her shoulders. “Gods... the man still makes my skin crawl. What do you think about what he said? About the people here?”
I frowned, looking out over the inner ward. The castle was already bustling. The guards were in the middle of changing shifts, servants were busy bussing sacks and crates between the gatehouse and kitchens, and Vash had started drilling his students in the area just outside the Great Hall. Kitti Hussar had joined Karalti today: the young countess had apparently volunteered for a martial arts lesson.
“Neyhg! Kor! Trun! Doro!” he barked the Tuun numerals as the two girls stepped forward in stance, punching from the hip. “Keep your back straight, Hussar! Shun! Zorgaa!”
“Jacob’s wrong,” I said quietly. “The way he described the system doesn’t take into account any of what we see here, day in, day out. I mean, just look at what we’re seeing here. If Kitti was just an NPC reacting to your motivations, why the fuck would she be learning Tuun martial arts? She joined the lesson for her own reasons. She’s curious. She’s bored. Static programs don’t get bored, Suri. They don’t instinctively want to learn for the sake of learning.”
“-Tuurgiz! Uun!” Vash called out the last two numbers, moving to stand in front of them. “Hoch Tsool!”
“YUSH!” Both girls shouted, sliding into the final stance position, punching with the right fist, and bringing the left arm into a forceful upper block. Karalti was better practiced at it, holding the forward leaning stance with no tremors. Kitti kept glancing at her, trying to line her feet and hips up the same way.
“Okay, okay, hold position.” Vash went to Kitti and gently kicked her feet into the proper position. “Good, there we go. We’ll make a Tuun brave out of you yet, Lady Hussar.”
“You’re right,” Suri said. “And I mean... you’re bonded at the brainstem to Karalti, right? You’d know if she wasn’t making her own decisions. Even Cutthroat just does what she wants.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” I watched as Vash went and picked up a pair of sacks connected by a short rope. Karalti whined, then again, louder, as Vash hung them over her outstretched arm.
“If you think this is bad, just wait until you earn your black belt!” Vash chided. “You’ll have to hold ME on your arm. And I weigh more than I look.”
“Nooooo.” Karalti broadcast her thoughts to all of us. The muscles of her arms strained as she fought to keep it at the proper height. “UGH. This is the WORST.”
“Oh, come on, girl. It’s barely thirty pounds!” He folded his hands behind his back and swaggered around the pair of them as they stayed in position. Karalti’s face was turning purple as her blue-tinted blood rose into her cheeks. “You carry that impotent sack of lard and all his gear on your back day in, day out. Surely you can-”
“Ahem.” I coughed as Suri and I drew up to join them. “That’s LORD Impotent Fat Sack of Lard to you, Dorha.”
“Oh, there he is!” Vash flashed us a gap-toothed grin over his shoulder. “I must say, you are looking both exceptionally flaccid and rotund today, my lord. Did you have a nice talk with Jacob?”
“Wouldn’t call it ‘nice’,” Suri grunted. “He was informative.”
“Vaaaash!” Karalti’s telepathic voice broadcast over the three of us, high with strain and irritation. “When can we drop our arrrms!? This hurts!”
“Hmm?” Vash glanced back at them. “Oh, you. No, no... carry on. Keep those arms up.”
“ARRRGH! I hate you!” Karalti snapped her teeth and hissed, drawing a look of alarm from Kitti.
“Good, good. Let Burna’s power flow through you.” Satisfied, Vash turned back to us. “Jacob has started to experience feelings of guilt. That’s a good sign. Next comes regret, and then madness. The good kind of madness: the kind that purges evil.”
“Glad you feel so positively about him.” Suri scowled.
“Positive? Na-tsho schrodna.” He made a sound of disgust. “I want to break the self-absorbed little milksap’s neck. But he is Starborn, like you and His Grace, and we must share this world together for a very long time. Reform is the only option we have, unless you feel like entombing him like the Drachan.”
“Yeah.” I rubbed the back of my neck, glancing at the sky. “And look how well that turned out.”
“Indeed.” Vash held up a finger. “Excuse me a moment.”
He strode back to Karalti, shuddering against the pain of holding her arm out, and took the sack off. She let out a sigh of relief.
“Alright, turn around! Baga tsool!” He barked the word for ‘low block’ in Tuun, pacing around the pair of them.
“Nuuuuu!” Karalti nearly sobbed, but obeyed: bringing her foot in, turning, and then blocking an imaginary strike from underneath. “Hector! He’s crazy! Save me!”
“Hell no. This
is great.” I planted my hands on my hips. “If I had peanuts, I’d throw them at you.”
“If you had peanuts, I’d jam them up your keister!” She made a face at me as Vash called out “Neyhg!” and the pair of them began the same drill in the other direction, leading with the left arm instead of the right.
“Come now, Karalti. Whining does not become royalty.” Vash scolded her for real, this time, his voice sharpening. “Do you want to be a Baru or not? If you want to give up, then cry for mercy like a child.”
“No! I’ll become a better Baru than you, and then I’ll kick your butt in front of everyone!” Karalti’s brows furrowed. I felt her determination surge through the bond, and when he called out the next number, she threw her strength into the punch.
[Karalti has gained +1 Wis, +1 Will, +1 Sta.]
“Well, I’ve gotta go do my training as well,” Suri said. “Bit different to what’s going on here. You want to keep learning to be a monk, Kitti? Or want to join me for some good old-fashioned Berserker training?”
Kitti’s pale blue eyes flicked between Vash and Suri. She bit her lip. “Master Vash... may I...?”
“Yes, yes. I know you train for a different discipline than her holiness here,” he said. “Bow out as I taught you, and you may leave. You’ve had a good warm up. Suri can continue your education in the art of chopping people in half with improbably large swords.”
“Thank you! And thanks for letting me join in!” Kitti straightened up, giving the stiff Tuun martial artists’ bow. Karalti glowered enviously at her as she trotted over to Suri. As her attention on her form wavered, Vash winked at me, then hung the sacks over her outstretched left arm.
I was about to quip something at my sputtering dragon when a flash of movement from the southern gate caught my eye. Three Royal Dragoons, still in their flight harnesses, and a trio of wiry Yanik Rangers were limping from the direction of the skydock toward us. All six of them looked windblown and exhausted.
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