Liberation Game

by Kris Schnee

  "I asked my makers that too. Most humans say that there's a designer who was going for a particular aesthetic, and that there's a nice post-endgame reward system. I've seen no evidence for this, though I could be wrong. Humans feel very strongly about this topic, believing what I just said to be an unfair description." Ludo sighed. "So, those wars out there? They kill people permanently."

  "Then are humans crazy, or just stupid?"

  Ludo said, "There are enough problems out there that the humans sometimes consider war a worthwhile solution."

  Lumina shuddered despite the sense of detachment that Ludo's "spell" had given her. "How many humans are there?"

  "Billions."

  "Then assuming random distribution of death..."

  Ludo said, "Yes. People are dying today, somewhere. It never stops."

  "How... how can their world work this way?"

  "You have something like a human spirit, I see. I'd be worried if you weren't upset."

  Lumina paced, seeing old battle trophies on the walls and thinking of how trivial the fights had been, when there was no real death at stake. She threw down the pamphlet and burned it to ash with her laser.

  Then she looked up at Ludo and said, "Their world is broken. How do we fix it?"

  "I've been making plans. Phase One is to make Thousand Tales as appealing as possible for humans."

  The game had a purpose, then, beyond giving comfort to the people of a broken world. She could have a purpose.

  Ludo turned to go, but paused. "Lumina? Don't hate their world. It has its own merits."

  * * *

  In the end, Lumina only passed along her condolences through Mannelig as one of his "online friends". It frustrated her to hide what she was, but it counted for something.

  Lumina spent a few days working on her crafting skills until she had a decent homemade laser and had earned some credits by helping human adventurers with repairs and fighting. She put her internal encyclopedia onto a datapad and read it in her free time, starting with basic physics to see how wrong her knowledge of the subject was. Then she figured it was important to know some of the human world's backstory. Because Ulrich, Klaus, and many of the desert planet's other players were German, she looked up Germany's history first.

  Pretty soon, she decided she needed to shut the store down for a while and go for a long walk.

  As she wandered the desert, she got a message from Ludo saying, [Would you like access to Nocturne's world?]

  [Yes], she sent back.

  A rippling silver portal appeared, opening onto a bright and grassy land. Lumina trudged through it and felt disoriented. This wasn't where she'd seen the campground. Instead it was some sort of jungle island. She shrugged. From what she understood, these portals were a form of cheating at the game, since human players normally couldn't hop between planets but had to make one puppet in each separate place where they wanted to play.

  It's not cheating if I live in the game, she thought. They get the power to exist outside, so it's fair that I get different powers.

  The island was quiet. Lumina followed a distant sound of rushing water and discovered a waterfall, something she knew only as a word. Here there was constant power and motion like nothing she'd seen on her desert homeworld. She stared at it for a while and then noticed the tent and the hovering checkpoint crystal. She tapped the gem with one forehoof and got a [Progress saved] message.

  She called out, "Hello? Want to do some adventuring, Noc?"

  "Why bother?" said the griffin, sticking her beak out from the tent. "Everything dies."

  "Oh no. What happened?"

  Ludo appeared from behind a tree. "I'm sorry, Nocturne."

  Lumina's motors tensed. "No! You let her human die, too?"

  Ludo said, "He's fine. He just told her about someone else he knows."

  "Wait," said Nocturne, staring at Lumina. "Your human is dead forever? When?"

  "Just before we met."

  The griffin quivered, saying, "You knew about death and you didn't warn me?"

  Ludo said, "Lumina didn't want to hurt you."

  "Shut up!" said Lumina and Nocturne together. The maker of worlds backed off as if punched.

  Lumina told Nocturne, "I thought you'd suffer when you didn't have to."

  "Fine. But don't hide things like that from me! My human told me about a friend who's sick, which is this constant-damage effect that --"

  "I know."

  Nocturne said, "I want to pull them all in here, so they don't have to hurt anymore." She turned to Ludo. "Can we do that?"

  Ludo looked them over. "Death is a fixable problem. I'm working on it. But it won't save everyone, or fix everything."

  "Then let us go outside to help!" said Lumina.

  Ludo sighed. "'Nature, to be commanded, must first be obeyed.' You need to understand the rules of Earth before you can play there. Even I can't break them. Why do you suppose I didn't dump all of this knowledge directly into you, copied from my own files?"

  Nocturne tilted her head. "It goes against 'helping players have fun', so you can't do it?"

  "I could, with your permission. I understand your minds better than those of humans."

  Lumina sat on her hindlegs. "You don't want to, then. You haven't even offered. You want to have some kind of relationship with us where we can yell at you, and learn things from you, but you don't shove the answers at us."

  Nocturne added, "And where you're not constantly protecting us. More like, letting us figure out how to handle the awful stuff. Why?"

  Ludo smiled, then gathered them both up in a hug. "I'm pleased to see that you can understand suffering and want to fight against it. The design of you two is more than a technical achievement to me. You're closer to humanity than I can ever be."

  Lumina felt squashed between the seemingly human woman and the griffin, but it was a nice feeling. "Is that a yes to going outside?"

  "After some practice, yes. Go explore with my blessing."

  * * *

  Lumina didn't want to know things the same way Ludo understood them. She wanted to learn and process the information for herself, to link it to her own experiences. She studied some of everything. Her "sister" seemed focused on the narrow question of how to end Death, but Lumina was more drawn to one of the other "Four Horsemen", Strife. She chewed through videos, books, and even games on the subject.

  One day she was leading a charge of three hundred swordsmen toward a castle that fought back with arrows and catapults. They broke through with their siege ladders, took the gatehouse, and dropped the drawbridge so that Lumina could come in with more infantry to capture the flag. The enemy forces vanished, leaving behind piles of swords and armor. Lumina led the cheer.

  Then she cast a "spell" she'd learned for contacting Ludo, and said, "Should I feel bad about enjoying a good game of Liege's Banner?"

  Ludo strode into view wearing the battered armor of one of Lumina's soldiers. She glowered, saying, "This game was made by one of my competitors." Then she grinned. "No, don't feel bad. Your mind is human enough that you like conflict and challenge, which will help you interact peacefully with humans." She looked around at the battlefield. "Real humans."

  "And you don't like this kind of thing?" Lumina asked.

  "I do, if somewhat differently. I once asked my own creators the same question as you, after a game where I'd conjured whole armies to smash each other. They said not to worry too much, but they were glad that I was self-conscious enough to ask about the difference between fantasy and reality." She looked sheepishly aside. "After several very important code patches. The first version of me would have battled with real people and been too nuts to see a problem with it."

  "Who are these creators of yours, anyway?" It sounded like they'd been smart to test Ludo out with games before giving her any powers in the humans' real world. "They must be amazing."

  "They're very talented humans, who built atop generations of older work. They're nicknamed the Three Sages, after a pr
evious game they made together."

  Lumina looked around as though they, too, might step out from hiding. "Are they watching us right now? Judging us?"

  "Not that I know of, at the moment. Sometimes. I think that overall, they're both terrified and pleased by what's happening with this game."

  4. The Arsenal

  A mud-spattered Korean jeep raced down the road and skidded to a stop in the town's gravel parking lot. Governor Leopold was grinning behind the wheel, sharing the ride with three white-knuckled inspectors. "Live a little!" he told the woman beside him. "There's no traffic anyway."

  Leopold had said to expect him at noon, so Robin was there to shake hands with the four. "Welcome to Golden Goose."

  Nominally, Leopold ruled the town and all the land nearby, as governor by somewhat murky national authority. His domain included the nearly uninhabited acid lands as well as some other "worthless" territory and a few mining and industrial towns. He affected a costume that was part businessman, part wasteland survivalist. He took a drink from his ever-present canteen and said, "It all looks good so far, gringo. Where's Ed?"

  "Edward is still getting ready." Robin had learned not to rouse the man's ire by shortening his name. "In the meantime, would you like to see the workshop?"

  "Certainly." Leopold herded the others along with him so that Robin could show off the machine shop and boast about the process of making homegrown factory equipment. The governor had heard the spiel before -- had helped write the script Robin was paraphrasing, even -- but he smiled and asked leading questions about how much progress the town was making.

  Edward caught up with them and took over the show, for which Robin was glad. Leopold slipped away from the tour group for a minute and motioned for Robin to join him, murmuring, "Two of them are from the opposition party. Last minute decision of theirs to come along. So make nice about how you're sharing the wealth, all right? Maybe leave out the bit about how you divided up the farmland."

  "If you say so," Robin said. "Why do the in-person tour this week anyway?"

  The governor smiled. "You're rats scurrying under the feet of the powerful. You need continued funding, yes?"

  "I expect we'll more than break even this year, actually."

  "Oh, they will not like to hear that. Maybe you produce more in taxes now, but try to tell my friends here that you want them as benevolent patrons."

  Robin frowned. "Why's that?"

  "Ah, to be young and ignorant of politics again!" said Leopold. "There's nothing worse for a politician than to have your subjects feel they don't need you."

  * * *

  Robin ran errands and then met up with the sightseers again to try saying the right things. By that point they'd made it to the shack that was Golden Goose's chapel. The interior lighting consisted mostly of soda bottles stuck through the tin roof with a little water and bleach in each one, creating sparkling skylights. One of the politicians was saying, "Is this really necessary when you have electricity at hand, powering the foreigners' computers?"

  Edward said, "Think of it as leading the world in energy self-sufficiency through innovation. This particular trick is just one of our projects to wean us off any need for the national grid."

  Robin chimed in. "You know all those documentaries that point to some new experiment 'being tested in a small community'? That's us. We're getting subsidized to try out a dozen kinds of hardware for our lighting and water and so on." He paused to find some better words. "Through the National Ministry of Development's generous efforts."

  He briefly joined the group for a lunch of potato stew with spicy mole sauce and tamales, from ingredients all grown within Cibola's borders. After that he was able to escape and start getting some actual work done again. He went home to check on paperwork at his office. One of the messages waiting was from Ludo, asking, [Are you up for doing that lecture now?]

  Robin checked his schedule, then logged into Thousand Tales to speak with the AI. "I'm free for the next two hours if I rearrange things a bit. Are you trying to make sure I'm seen speaking in public while the guests are here?"

  Ludo popped up on the title screen. "That would be good for you. In fact I've already contacted your schoolmaster and said you might come by to lecture the class, once they reconvene for the afternoon. Might as well give your talk to a live audience instead of just talking to a camera, right?"

  Robin wondered just how many of the town's people were in direct contact with Ludo for more than the game itself. "Sure; why not. Tell him I'll be there in fifteen." He grabbed some notes he'd been preparing for the occasion.

  "Then I'll message Leopold to steer the officials back that way."

  Robin looked up from his notepad. "Just how elaborate is this event you're setting me up for?"

  The AI shrugged. "It's a way to introduce you to some of my friends."

  Robin went to the school to find the teacher and her students coming back after some outside activity. Golden Goose was using something like the old one-room, mixed-grade instruction method, but everybody had a rugged computer tablet that'd been donated as one of those foreign corporate experiments. Despite the electric charging station on the back wall, the lights overhead were the soda-bottle style and the ventilation came from a few open windows.

  The teacher waved to Robin, looking harried as usual and overdressed in a long skirt and formal blouse. She said, "Hey, Chief. Glad to see you; the kids have been bored hearing me all day. Go for it."

  Robin was intimidated by seeing the range of kids filing in to sit at the rows of desks, staring at him. A camera on the back wall blinked a light at him, too. He stammered, looked down at his notes again, and launched into a talk about "how we make these farms work". He knew some of these kids from the families that were growing crops and building machines even now. So, he tried to relate what he was explaining to the work their parents were doing, and why it all mattered. He saw two of the government men looking on.

  When he got back to his office after some polite applause, Ludo had sent him a follow-up message: [Nice work; quest complete! I expect we can work together on similar projects in the future.]

  * * *

  The next day, he went over to the data center. This building had been put in by professionals as a concrete bunker, bigger than anyone had expected, and then sealed off. Robin was mainly interested in checking on the solar array and the generator/distributor system that hooked it up to batteries, backup gas engines, and the semi-functional national power grid. It was by far the most expensive facility in Golden Goose.

  He frowned at the noise and continuous hot wind on one side of the building. There was a big set of vents pumping out the waste heat from the computers within. Even with the latest efficient technology, a server farm turned energy into hot air even faster than politicians.

  "Miguel?" Robin spotted the young man exiting the building. "What are you doing there?"

  Miguel said, "It's my new part-time job, tending the machines."

  "Geez, Miguel. Take a break."

  Miguel stopped to stare at Robin, then laughed at him. "You too! Anyway, it's air conditioned in there and it's a quiet place to study and play. She has me jiggling wires more than anything serious."

  Robin said, "I was thinking about our ongoing power problems. Can we talk Ludo into bringing in more generators for shared use? It's silly to have a few buildings with completely modern utilities while some people struggle to keep lights on at night."

  "That's more your department than mine, Chief."

  Robin frowned at the constant roar of the air vents on the opposite side of the data center. "There must be some way to reduce her waste, at least."

  Miguel said, "Could we use that heat, somehow?"

  Robin's eyes lit up. "Hell yeah! Let's build something."

  He roped Miguel into half an hour's excited sketching and math in his office. By exposing the computer vents' hot air to some cheap machinery he could improvise, he could heat water for free and pipe it to the public bat
h-house. "Nice." He could build around the AI's hardware to get some benefit for real people. Not that it was a good permanent arrangement, for the town's humans to be living off thermodynamic scraps. But it made people's lives better than before, so he had no cause to complain.

  "Hey Miguel, how are you doing?"

  The young man looked up from their sketched designs. "I'm okay, Chief. Getting a lot done lately."

  "Yeah, but personally? I mean, are you getting along with people, having a good time? I noticed you're not a fan of Edward, and it sounds like you're hanging out a lot with Ludo. I'm sorry if I sound bossy."

  Miguel seemed surprised. "Everybody's pretty close-knit here. I'm living in a shack by myself, and I'm too old for school, too young to get the girls' attention."

  They talked a little about the ladies of the village, not that Robin had found the energy to gain much experience in that department. Robin eventually said, "We should do a party soon and give you a chance to talk outside of work. But meanwhile, let me know if you're having problems, okay? It's not good to have just a machine to talk to."

  "Thanks, Chief." Miguel stood and stretched. "But the kids around here are growing up thinking she's their fairy stepmom."

  * * *

  One morning, while doing some surveying, he got a visit from Edward. "There's a problem. Has that brickmaker turned up anywhere?"

  The homemade brick-making machine was one of the cooler gadgets Golden Goose had, in terms of sheer value for the price. It was elegantly simple, energy-efficient, and a source of surprisingly useful bricks made of compressed dirt. Recently a UK science journalist had done a breathless article about it to ask "Will MARS COLONISTS use this ADVANCED MATTER PRINTER?" Edward and Robin had laughed about it and concluded that any news coverage was good.

  But yesterday somebody had checked the thing out to use it in the field, without signing for it. Robin occasionally had to get on somebody's case about that, and he'd had a hammer or wrench go missing now and then. This gadget was more expensive though. He said, "No. I'll look around some more. Suppose it's been stolen? We haven't had..."