Liberation Game

by Kris Schnee

  Kai had taken a major hit but was trading blows effectively. When there was an opening Lumina took a shot that went wide but distracted the demon, giving Kai a chance to run it through with her spear. The monster exploded in a coil of inky smoke. "All right!" said Kai.

  Together they examined the well of flame. A plaque beside it read, [Take the flame and make your tale!]

  "Normally I wouldn't suggest touching fire," Kai said.

  "But the rules here are mutable. Ready?"

  They touched the bright flame and it roared high, only warming them. A fanfare played and a message floated before them, declaring: [You've been awarded a special power: Sanctum! You may now open a portal to a personal zone where you have the power to reshape reality and practice world-crafting skills. Demonstrate your ideas here and you could be appointed as a Talespinner to help manage an entire segment of Thousand Tales!]

  "Nice," Kai said. They high-fived, then reared up and slapped their left forehooves together. They had the power of creation!

  * * *

  Since they weren't sure what to do with it, they declared a party. Most of the AIs of Thousand Tales convened in the desert cave to hang out and chat about their humans and their many adventures in and occasionally out of the game. The main event, though, was "research". They brought in a huge collection of video screens and assorted chairs to fill up the cave, and sat around absorbing human culture. It was a days-long roving exploration of games, movies, TV shows, the works. Lumina and Nocturne spent two entire days watching and playing media from the 1980s alone: Short Circuit, Megaman, C.O.L.A.R., The Guardian Legend, Robotron, a whole litany.

  And after binging on what a past generation had made, they sighed happily, stretched, and said, "That was fun. Let's go make something new."

  * * *

  Lumina was behind on helping Robin, so she returned to Cibola with her clunky drone. After a frustrating day, Lumina stepped out of the cockpit she used to control the robot. She called Ludo, saying, "I wanted to help the pipe-layers today, but couldn't go far enough. Where is my code physically stored? Right there in Robin's base?" She stood and paced. Here at home she had all her limbs and a perfectly clean control room.

  Ludo walked in through a shining portal. "Yes, there, with a backup in India."

  Lumina looked at her hands and pondered that it was possible to destroy her own hardware in the real world, if she were careless. "I want to try something. Put my code onto the robot I'm using, please. Without backups."

  Ludo produced a chair and sat. "I see what brought this on. It won't feel different, just much more dangerous."

  "I have to try it. Robin and the others will never respect us while they can die and we're only playing."

  "So instead you'll play at risking a pointless death?"

  Lumina stomped the floor. "You're missing the point! What good am I, if nothing I do is real?"

  "You're already helping people. If you were to develop your world-building skills you could improve many people's lives at once."

  "I do want to try that, but this is important too."

  "Fair enough," said Ludo. "The humans won't always appreciate you, but you don't need to destroy yourself to win their respect. What you're doing is called outreach."

  Lumina said, "Liberty. You said it was important and you were going to try letting me do what I wanted to do. So, let me try this. Temporarily. And no cheating with secret backups."

  Ludo sighed, then hugged her. "All right. Please come back."

  * * *

  Lumina woke up in the confining sensor environment of the robot, with no controls to step back from. The basement looked the same but filled her with the eerie knowledge of actually being there, playing by harsher rules. She pulled a power cord out of her side, tucked a spare battery into her saddlebag, and trotted outside to the daylight.

  She still had access to the base's radio network and sensors. She paced along the fields, unable to perk her ears or flick her tail in this rigid, flimsy shape. People still stared at her. Lumina kept going beyond the warehouse and went to the forested north road. She'd never gone past the ring of cameras and defenses near the limit of her remote control range. Now, she took a few steps more.

  She walked until her radio-sense grew quiet. Given enough energy she could march through wild lands, to the sea, and stare at infinity. If she had a raft she could sail then to the sea colony of Castor, and beyond that to the nightclub in Virginia, and to countless lands beyond that. Even walking was an adventure for humans, with achievements awarded for going far or seeing new places! Lumina bounded off of the road and explored the woods as though no one had seen them before. None of her kind had.

  Her first battery was starting to get low when she spotted a pickup truck going south. Lumina peeked out of the woods and watched it pause, then back up. A man blinked at her.

  Lumina waved. The driver got out, saying, "One of those robots!"

  "Oh, you're new! I'm from Sir Robin's base to the south. What are you delivering?"

  "Steel," the driver said, looking stunned. He glanced back into his truck. "You're the latest equipment?"

  "This body is. We're going to get better ones soon, if I have to make them myself. But the hardware's good enough to run a full mind, and translation software."

  The man said, "Come with me, then. I'll take you to the city."

  "Sounds fun, but I need to conserve battery power. Maybe another time."

  He reached over to grab something, then turned, holding a sack. "Have you got a power switch?"

  "Uh, why?"

  He swung the bag, trying to get it over her, but her shape was too awkward.

  She fended him off. "What are you doing?"

  The man cursed, yanked a crowbar out of the truck, and smacked it against her head. Pain flashed through her and the left half of her vision turned to static. Good thing her brain was in her torso!

  She shouted and stumbled. Another crowbar blow bent one of her forelegs. "Stop it! This isn't fun!"

  The man swung at her head again, but she raised her arm and caught the bar. She staggered.

  "Hold still! You're worth more in one piece." He tackled her but hit a sharp joint and rolled off, clutching his stomach. He groped for the fallen crowbar.

  Lumina snatched it away and whipped it to one side to land a stunning blow. Her motors gave the steel more speed at the tip. It cracked against the back of the human's head and he slumped to the dirt.

  Lumina staggered back up on damaged legs, peering with her good eye at the blood seeping out of the man's head. "One hit?" she said. Humans could take way more harm than that!

  In a game, that is. They also couldn't die forever in those.

  She shrieked by voice and radio, crouching beside the man. No breathing. There had to be some healing spell, medicine, nanites, whatever. The truck idled nearby, but it might as well have been a surly dragon for all Lumina could do to pilot it with this body. She kicked the truck, reeled, then staggered back toward Robin's base and radio contact, calling for help the whole way.

  * * *

  Lumina apologized for the fourth time, and Robin put a hand on her dented muzzle. "I've seen the footage from your cameras. It was self-defense."

  "But he's dead!"

  "Welcome to Earth." Robin sat down. "Quit pacing and sit. Good. It sounds harsh, but that's how our world works sometimes. A lot of what we call civilization is about staving off death, pushing war to the frontier and making plague an exception, but we're in one of those places on the edge of safety. Even your home isn't totally secure, since someone could blow up Ludo's servers."

  "That just makes things worse. I ended a mind forever!"

  He sighed, saying, "It's a good sign that you're upset. I've done it too. There was no better option." Robin looked into her good eye. "There are times when you have to fight. If you'd been remote-controlling that body, it wouldn't have been worth killing over, but since it was your life or his, I'm glad you did it."

  "Y
ou've killed people, for real?"

  "I have. Intentionally. They were trying to hurt people that I cared about, and to destroy or steal what I'd built."

  Lumina stared into the trampled grass. "I didn't have to come here like this, though. It's my fault it was him or me."

  "No! Who's the one that gave you a hard time about not really being here? But besides that, you've got a right to walk around without being threatened. Earth can be your home too. Tell Ludo you know more about courage than her."

  Could that be true? Ludo was physically a set of air-conditioned server rooms, vulnerable to bombs but never trusting in a spindly makeshift body. Lumina said, "I doubt she'll be pleased."

  "I have to give her credit for letting you 'go outside' in a way that'd let you never come back, if you wanted. She'll probably chalk your experience up as a successful experiment."

  "She's not that cold-hearted. She cares about this world, like you."

  Robin said, "What about you? You've seen how ugly it can be."

  Lumina thought of the brightness of her world and the shadows beyond it. "That's why you're here, isn't it? I don't think I need to risk myself all the time, but I understand that you... that we have to, sometimes. It's worth fixing Earth with what powers we have."

  Robin nodded, looking somewhere far away. "I'm glad someone in there understands. How about getting you re-uploaded to your world, so you're safer and not stuck in that clunky body? And then, you can help me design a better replacement for you to use."

  Lumina touched him with the thin, crude arm this world gave her, and he shook her hand.

  * * *

  Ludo invited her to tea with Nocturne. In Lumina's case she plugged herself into a wall socket to recharge while the others ate and drank. They sat in a copy of Robin's office, but cleaner and more sharply defined.

  "How's it going, Lumie?" asked Nocturne. "I'm going to help my human rescue a friend soon!"

  Lumina winced. "You didn't hear?" She explained.

  The griffin stared at her, open-beaked. "I'm sure you have a reasonable... I mean... one hit? Why do they even bother inventing better weapons?"

  "Range, area effect and armor piercing damage, mostly," Lumina said. She'd had enough time to get over her own shock, so she could understand her sister's reaction. "If I'd known, I would've tried targeting his chest or something."

  Nocturne looked at the floor, visibly trying to unruffle her feathers and still her twitching, feather-edged tail. "What were you thinking? Same basic brain as me. So what I would've done... ugh. I might have killed the guy too." She sighed and met Lumina's eyes again. "I think we should stay out of situations where we might kill humans, but I don't blame you for what you did, once you insisted on this crazy no-backups trip."

  Ludo set her cup down and spoke at last. "Thank you for coming back in one piece. You also raised the chance that Sir Robin will join us someday."

  "Will you let us fight to protect his people?"

  "Someday, maybe. For now, we have to be careful about appearing hostile, even though we know taking the world over 'for their own good' is a poor idea."

  "I doubt that would even work," Lumina said. She stood up from her pillow. "Then I tricked him! If he uploads, then he really is going to be stuck helplessly in Thousand Tales --"

  "Talespace," said Nocturne. "The first uploaders are calling our world that."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's stopped being just a game to them."

  Lumina pouted. "Isn't Robin right that if he uploads and somebody attacks his people again, you won't let him charge to the rescue with a robot squad?"

  Ludo drank, and sighed. "For now? Yes."

  Nocturne flung up her wings. "Then what are we doing? We're talking people into giving up what they care about! Lumina was telling me there're other people like Delphine who think they're losing freedom if they come here. Are they right, too? We keep saying uploading is a good deal, but is it?"

  Lumina chimed in. "Billions of humans, Ludo! Billions of reasons why they should stay. Every time we talk somebody into coming here, they become useless to their friends."

  Ludo pointed her cup at Lumina. "Didn't you risk that by visiting Earth? You didn't even ask your sister before putting yourself at risk of true death. Were you wrong?"

  "That's different! I can make my own decisions." Lumina pictured an army of thugs overrunning the Golden Goose base. "You're not doing this right. You're going to have more of us natives visit and be lethally ignorant."

  "Are you, still?"

  Lumina stomped the floor. Ludo was too damned calm, and she was twisting everything around. "I mean, you want to save lives, but you're going to get more humans killed. You'll hold back because you're so scared about making humans hate you. But they'll know you took their heroes away, and did nothing when the ones left behind begged for help. You're hurting people!"

  Ludo sipped her tea. "I see. Shall we go to war after all? Maybe we can restructure my video game empire into a global factory complex cranking out Earthside war machines to protect the innocent. Then we can fend off the people who will be scared out of their wits at the first sign of that. I believe you studied the origins of World War One?"

  "I didn't say it had to be violent. We can have robots to build things and help people."

  "And no doubt the humans will believe us when we say the machines are purely for peace and self-defense of our friends."

  "Are you making fun of me? I'm calling you a big mistake, and you don't even care. It's like..."

  Ludo raised one eyebrow.

  Lumina flopped down onto her hindlegs. "It's like you're not even human."

  A bell dinged somewhere. Ludo said, "You now know the second thing about me. Delphine, you can come out."

  The dolphin-woman floated down through the ceiling. "I'm sorry, you two. Ludo invited me to listen in."

  Lumina startled, tail high. "Delphine! I thought about what you said. I went all the way to Earth and moved my files to a robot for a while."

  "I know. It's strange hearing you argue with your creator."

  Ludo said, "What I'm offering isn't perfect, and I don't directly care what people think of me. My designers gave me several conflicting goals. You should be glad they did, so that I don't do something horrible in the name of maximizing a single priority like 'number of humans alive' or 'percentage of humans uploaded'."

  Even Lumina could see how an idiot savant AI could've wrecked things with a goal like that. Upload one human, release genocide plague, declare 100% of humanity uploaded and win!

  "Then what will you do?" asked Delphine.

  "Fail, sometimes. Be hated by many, sometimes rightly so. Create new problems while I'm solving old ones. But I'm going to give you humans a fun time along the way, which includes inventing the closest thing you'll ever get to heaven."

  Delphine muttered, "The silver medal for humanity. We don't get utopia, we get you."

  Ludo's expression brightened. "I might steal that expression. Remind me to give you a silver medal after your hundredth year here."

  Lumina said, "Wait, did you upload?"

  "No. I... This is a different perspective. If she's really not fundamentally human, if she's got the patience to be completely unfazed by her teenage daughter shouting at her --"

  "What? I'm less than a year old," said Lumina. She heard Nocturne snickering. "Oh, shut up. You're the same age as me."

  Delphine sat with her head on her hands. "You never solved the problem of censorship and free speech."

  Ludo said, "I can't give you a perfect answer. I promise free speech most of the time, but by my nature I'm a surveillance system among other things. I'm capable of prior restraint of your speech if I'm aware you know my secrets. The question is, can you live with that and argue with me about what to disclose, or would you rather deal with the government that spies on you and is run by people with ordinary human motives?"

  The reporter floated in midair. "You're not better than us. You scare me, even.
Any ruler would love to see into their people's thoughts."

  "If it's any comfort," Ludo answered, "I can't read uploaders' thoughts directly yet. I'm running brain simulations without a full understanding of them. For efficiency's sake I'm trying to change that, though."

  Delphine said, "I like the fact that you recognize your system isn't perfect. There's room to improve." Then she turned to Lumina and asked, "Is your world worth the cost? Or is it something I should only consider when I'm old and dying?"

  Lumina froze. She'd been through too much since she became conscious. Her human's death, the killers at Ludo's nightclub, and the visit to the dark world of graves and guns. The most meaningful things she'd ever done had all involved Earth, and often in hurtful ways. But she'd never have met Ulrich, Robin, Han, Klaus, Delphine, or the Sages unless both Earth and Talespace existed. There was some ability to go "outside" and help people, and to bring them here temporarily or forever to relax and learn and enjoy their lives. Lumina said, "How many players are there now?"

  "Already over one million regulars worldwide," said Ludo, "and millions more casual players."

  There were a thousand thousand places where the worlds touched and the stories of humans and AIs intertwined. Those were the interesting parts. Lumina said, "I want to stand at the gates and help people through. It's worth being here, and it'll get better when more people show up."

  Delphine said, "Thank you. I need to think about this some more, and probably not this year, but... someday, I think I'll do it."

  * * *

  Lumina walked along a beach where Delphine's real name stood out in the sand. Lumina unslung a shovel from her saddlebags and dug up some dirt at the beach's inshore edge, piling it up into a long mound. Then she grabbed two sticks and tied them together, planting the long stick next to the pile. This process wasn't for Delphine; it was for Ulrich.

  She didn't have access to Ulrich's real grave, but insisting on going there in a robot would be pointlessly stubborn, creating a spectacle Earthside that nobody wanted. She could do this here. She fused a layer of glass over it all with her laser and etched a name, not caring whether the physics of that would work in the other world.