by Kris Schnee
Lumina sent, [I completely forgot. Be right there.]
This floor had a grand spiral staircase in the center leading down. After some awkward stair-walking (ramps were superior) she reached a maze of living oak wood, dimly lit by firefly-filled lanterns.
"Hey, have you got any spare healing potions?" said a passing rogue.
Lumina reached into her saddlebags and handed him one, trading for a few coins. If only Golden Goose's problems were that simple! Lumina tagged along with the rogue since he was going the right way, and provided some laser fire when a wolf made of jagged lumber tried to jump him.
She opened the door to room nine. In there a burning demon unsheathed twin scimitars, saying, "THOSE WHO WOULD DEFILE THE SHRINE MUST DIE!"
Lumina blinked. "I thought this was the Hexapod Support Group meeting."
"ROOM EIGHT."
"Sorry." Lumina trotted next door and thought about getting that schedule assistant after all.
Room eight was a garden with glass walls, full of flowers and waterfalls. Large pillows suitable for her six-limbed kind littered the floor. She settled onto one, saying to the few assembled people, "I don't have a lot of time; I need to get back to the Outer Realm." Already a griffin and a small peach-colored dragon had arrived.
Then she recognized the traditional centaur who was examining some shrubs. He was a mighty stallion with a leather vest and saddlebags, but was also clearly... "Kai?!"
He gave a weak grin. "My human and I had a... disagreement. I decided it was time to try something new." His original French accent had vanished, too.
"Is he all right?"
"Yeah, just a hard-hearted bastard. If food doesn't taste right in Talespace then, why, it's not worth uploading. For a chef it'd be like giving up breathing."
Lumina's ears drooped. "Tell me if there's anything I can do." She thought of the reporter Delphine, who still hadn't uploaded despite a standing offer.
"Thanks. Maybe later; we're here to talk 'taur."
Nocturne called the meeting to order, and they spent a while having what Lumina assumed would be a silly and pointless conversation. Eventually a massive pillow fight broke out and Lumina had some fun just bounding around the garden pummeling people, enjoying the consequence-free violence and the freedom to move around in this body with no chance of breaking it. Once she'd excused herself, she walked the Tower's halls and thought about how surprisingly significant the meet-and-greet had been.
She had expected to be wasting an hour talking about how fun it was to have extra legs or arms or wings, when to her it was normal. Instead, the gaggle of AIs, uploaders and human players with centauroid characters had talked about minds. Nocturne's ex-human mate had decided to have his mind reformatted into the latest, most efficient data structure. A human had made a tentative decision to upload based on meeting some new friends. Some kind of Aussie cat-centaur with gold fur had bounded up to Lumina and boasted about being part uploader and part AI, after getting modified specifically to use their new body better. And then, somebody had asked whether all this six-limb stuff was ridiculous navel-gazing by bored people living in a fantasy world beyond poverty and death.
The answer they'd all roughly agreed on was that it was an experiment, one of many, in finding new ways to think and live. That it was one small part of making the strange, convoluted, interwoven dream of Ludo's creators real.
Lumina was thoughtful as she made her way down through flights of stairs and the occasional battle or teleport, to reach the first-floor lobby. The spacious, high-ceilinged ground level of Ivory Tower was an adventurer hub with a hovering checkpoint crystal. Nearby stood big screens with messages that mocked people who'd gotten killed and then revived here. [DEATH. Squarewave tried to hug it out with a bear.] Lumina stood at the fringe of the lobby's lounge, smiling faintly. She'd had some part in this silliness and people were enjoying it.
The cavern outside of the Tower itself was miles wide, though nearly all empty. She navigated by projecting her own light. Along a rocky outcrop in the cave's uneven wall stood a wall of dark glassy windows and balconies, the outside surface of a space that wasn't technically part of the cavern's geometry: Hotel Computronium.
Lumina walked into the fancy lobby of gold and ivory and crystal. A new uploader in a generic shirt and shorts was just starting his adventure, by sitting in the lobby looking shell-shocked instead of going out and fighting monsters. "You okay over there?" asked Lumina.
The man looked up with a start. He looked her metal body over and said, "Are you one of the NPCs? I can't tell. I don't know what's real anymore."
"I'm a native, a real person. There should be an orientation pamphlet in your room." Newcomers got basic instructions in the hotel rooms where they began this life, to answer questions like "Do I need to eat?" (The answer was no, though Ludo would start piling on stat penalties over time rather than pain.)
The man guffawed. "A pamphlet! I just died and went to digital heaven and the answer is in an FAQ file?"
"Reality includes here." Lumina stamped one forehoof. "It also includes the Outer Realm you came from. They just work on different rules and this world is dependent on that one."
"But... but it's only a game. I saw a freaking elf float past me with a spellbook." Nearby, two pirates were scheming over a boat schematic, and for some reason a herd of cattle was stampeding down a hall. They watched it go by.
"Yes, that happens around here. Look; what did you do for a living to buy your way in?"
"Event planner. I set up celebrity weddings and concerts with tens of thousands of people."
"Perfect. Want to come do something meaningful to help get your head on straight?"
He said, "Like killing dragons or aliens or whatever you do? I don't know. After all my hype about uploading, I don't know how to live."
The android offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet, saying, "Then come with me if you want to live."
There was the slight problem of the Unnecessary Deathtrap Hall in between the robot-piloting center and the hotel lobby. This week it was full of whirling, bouncing crystal shards that could clobber anyone trying to get through. Lumina tapped the save crystal in the lobby and had the newcomer do the same. "Follow my lead, and come back here if you die."
"This is a strange definition of --"
"Now!" Lumina spotted an opening in the traps and leaped into the array of jagged crystals. The bewildered man followed her through a carefully timed dance of turns, jumps, and ducking. At last they reached the other side, where a holographic panel gave credit to the designer and invited them to leave a rating. It had scored nine kills since yesterday.
The human stared at it, then back at the traps. "You do this all the time? I'm... I'm out of breath. How?"
Lumina said, "You do have some physical limits, not that we always enforce them. And yes, you can have this kind of experience whenever you want, or more laid-back ones. I'm proposing to have you pilot a robot to do some... crowd management outside. Are you interested?" She pointed toward a white room full of "VR pods" that were really for uploaders and natives to connect to Outer Realm bots.
The man looked at the stark, quiet machinery in the next room, then back at the deadly contraption he'd just crossed to get here. "You're just software. I am too, now. Why did we do that? Why don't you just teleport within the game world to wherever you want to go?"
"I do that when it's really important, or between zones that don't have direct connections. But usually, walking these halls and checking on people is just as important as arriving quickly."
* * *
She got into the "VR" system and let her senses be taken over by the machinery of a centauroid robot in Tres Aguas. The newcomer was somewhere back in the robot-piloting tutorial system, so she got started without him.
She put her face up on the bot's head-mounted screen, wrote her name on a little LCD panel on her flank, and unplugged the power and data cables that connected her to the shed. She trotted out to the sun
light of a busy day. There was a new sign on the shed that labeled it "Robot Invasion HQ", which made her snort. She went out to the field to check on the town's refugee population of over 100.
White tents had bloomed like flowers and people were milling about. She sent to Robin and to the mayor, [Lumina reporting in at Tres Aguas. I recruited a new uploader with "event planning" experience. He needs something to do, so grab him when he arrives. Anything I can do here?]
The mayor wrote back, [Good to have you. I'm at my shop; come see me.]
Lumina trotted into the restaurant that the mayor owned; she'd been shrewd enough to build one just as the local chemical plant was expanding, and had become one of the most popular people in town. The grey-haired mayor smiled at her from behind the counter, which was piled with sacks of rice and potatoes instead of the usual pies under glass. "Can you please talk to some of these people and get them building more shelters, the way they're doing at Golden Goose?"
Lumina relayed their conversation to Robin, with permission. "Sure. Have you got materials?"
"We're trying those strange boards made out of straw, using one of your machines. Cob construction, I think Robin called it. Get to storage building C for those and instruct the refugees on assembling them."
"Yes, ma'am." Lumina made a note to get that built-in map system next time she was free.
From his own base, Robin sent, [That sounds good. You two, we're detecting more people coming unannounced from the southeast, along that dirt trail.] Lumina played the text aloud.
"More of them," said the mayor, throwing up her hands. "But that's not even the direction of the coast!"
[Yeah. Going to see what's up with that.]
Lumina said, "Send a drone to ask. I can pilot it to the edge of our network."
"Can it wait until after the construction training?"
"I can do both!" said Lumina, displaying a grin on her screen.
* * *
So, she possessed a robot over in Golden Goose and told it to march in the direction of the incoming party. Then she switched back to Tres Aguas, where her body was just arriving at the rows of shelter tents. She cranked up her voice's volume and said, "I need able-bodied adults to come over for some lessons."
The people just blinked at her. Lumina realized she'd spoken in German, and switched to Spanish to repeat it. Although she'd picked up English, she'd been relying on auto-translation software for Spanish, which wasn't the same as "knowing" the language. Another thing for the upgrade list. When someone called out, "For what?", Lumina said, "Construction. We're going to get you into new houses and out of those tents."
"When will the houses be ready?" said one of the older women.
"When you build them. Come on; I'll show you how."
"I'm tired and I have a cold. Let me know when mine's ready." She and others were gathered around a portable television showing what Robin had called a soap opera.
Lumina stared at her uncomprehendingly. "In my world, it's technically possible to sit there doing nothing, yet hardly anyone does."
Two men got up and said, "We'll build. Show us." They looked around, glaring, until another two men and a woman joined them.
That's not promising, thought Lumina, and led them to the materials shed to explain how to cut and assemble panels. There were enough to build plenty of the minimalist Hexayurt things, but Robin had said "do floors" and that meant another hundred-plus square feet of material each. She shook her head at the inefficiency, and continued her lesson.
"Do we get paid?" asked the youngest of this little class.
"You get a house. Isn't that better than those tents? Now try doing the fasteners, like I showed you, and keep going once you master that. I'll be back in a few minutes; a dumb program will be around to help answer questions." She moved her consciousness back out of the robot and left a Tier-II assistant program in her place.
Back in Talespace she looked up from the control console where her "real" body straddled a bench. She took a moment to relax and then jumped into the robot that was walking southeast from Golden Goose.
I wonder what it's like to be a real deer, she thought, trotting along through the forest and listening for human noises. I guess if animal brains got dissected to help invent AI, then we AIs are also part animal.
She froze at the sound of a group of humans. Dozens, making no effort at stealth. She crept closer to observe them as men, women and children, carrying overfull backpacks and shopping bags. She relayed a picture and her assessment to Robin, saying, [Orders, sir?]
Robin sighed. [Impress them that we're the authorities here. If they're somehow fleeing the flood from that direction, send them on, but otherwise turn them back. We need what resources we've got for the refugees.]
Impress them, huh? Lumina crept through the forest and then bounded into sight in the middle of the dirt trail. She held up one hand and said, "Halt, travelers! I'm Lumina, an agent of the Lady of Games and the Silver Circle. Why have you come?"
From their stunned reaction, she half expected they'd laugh at her. Instead, one of the lead men said, "So it's true! There really are robots taking care of everybody!"
Lumina pushed a mental button to speed up her mind for a few seconds by running her software faster. She'd pay later in reduced thinking speed or a sort of sleep. She fed their images to scanning software and judged that several were sick, which made things yet more complicated. She dropped back to real-time speed and said, "We help our people, but we don't solve every problem. Again, why are you here?"
"Shelter!" said one woman. "Jobs and medicine!" said another. "My land got seized!" said a third. Finally someone added, "I've got cancer. I need to upload."
"Where are you from?" They called out the names of towns south of here, well away from the flood zone. Lumina relayed everything to Robin, then said, "We're not taking new people right now other than the flood victims."
"We're victims too!" said the lead man, and then his voice grew calm and reasonable. "Okay, robot, it's like this: a flood victim is someone hurt by a flood, right? Well, when it hit, it hurt the whole economy, which is hurting us, so we qualify. Does that compute?"
One of the tougher things to program in AI had been the power to switch between two thinking modes. One was the strictly formal, logical thought process by which A implies B implies C. The other was the sloppy intuitive mode that allowed humans to correctly see when someone was using "logic" to pull one over on them. "No," said Lumina. "Turn back; we can't take you, especially since you might be contagious with something."
"Then: This sentence is false!"
"Seriously? Do you think that will make me explode?"
"Come on!" said the leader to the other humans, while Lumina was distracted. They advanced down the trail, veering to Lumina's left.
"Stop," she said, and hopped to get in their way, but they swarmed around her. She reached back for her laser pistol, then recalled that it only existed in Talespace, the world where shooting people was often helpful. She sent out an alert to Robin replaying the last minute, then hustled to get in front of the incoming crowd again. "If you people enter our land, you are not welcome and we won't help you."
They cursed her as they passed her by, and somebody threw a rock that clanged off her hide. Lumina vanished into the woods, put this body on autopilot to return to base, and stepped back from her control console again to swear.
Ludo sent a message: [Are you okay?]
[Yes, Mom, I'm fine, but Golden Goose isn't. And the last time I tried to talk to you, you told me to go through some elaborate dungeon in Ivory Tower to reach you.]
"You didn't say it was especially important," Ludo said as she stepped into the room in human shape. No one else seemed to see her.
Lumina said, "What are our options? Here; can you review my last five minutes' memories?"
The Lady of Games cast a spell of digital sparkles to make it plain she was doing something to Lumina. "I see. I'm suggesting to Robin that he dispatch more bots
from headquarters to offer to help build temporary housing a safe distance from the village, where they can be quarantined. There are rumors of a new disease appearing, though it could just be common colds they're displaying."
Robin's voice sounded from nowhere: "Damn. If we try to stop this group we'll either need to have robots using force, or risk humans getting sick. I'm not risking an infection of any kind spreading right now from people we haven't had time to inspect."
"My suggestion," said Ludo, "is that I formally release all of the robots you've built from being under my people's control. The hardware is yours already, and I can free up a server so that technically it's yours. Sign the document I'm sending."
Robin said, "And then what? You get to keep your hands clean so that it's 'my' robots beating people up?"
Lumina winced. "I don't want to be cut off from operating those robots. Put me on a dedicated server or something and sell that server to Robin. Er, with backups though."
Ludo nodded. "Exactly. I can move your code to hardware that's not mine, along with any other volunteers and some Tier-II extras."
Robin said, "I'm on the phone with Edward now. Are you trying to stick us with full liability for a fight that you're really involved with?"
"I have to, Robin, even if making the bots fully yours is a fig-leaf excuse. And even if you just recorded that line. As soon as my machines are openly under orders to fight, the game changes for us all."
The human growled. There were sounds of argument in the background. Lumina told him, "I'll fight for you, Robin, if it comes to that. If we're lucky we're all overreacting, and we can stop this new influx without force."
"Fine. Just... fine." Robin sighed. "I'm signing that release form. I need the manpower. Move the code and go wash your hands, Ludo. We'll protect your data center for you." He hung up.
Lumina said, "This isn't fair to him, Mom. We should be fully in support of Golden Goose and the Circle."
"I agree," Ludo said, clasping her hands behind her back. "That's why I'm sending people who have more freedom of action than me. Tell Robin that some careless person left a few riot shields, small medical kits and other junk in the data center foyer."
