Liberation Game

by Kris Schnee

  "Is that what you've been doing since you uploaded?"

  "Ha! I'm a native. I was made for a certain brilliant, ambitious, stubborn human, so I reflect that." Typhoon sighed and stared into the waves. "As your teacher I'm supposed to dispense some kind of Zen-like wisdom, but I haven't got any. How are you doing?"

  "With being here? I haven't bawled about the angst of being dead out there."

  The otter said, "Maybe it hasn't sunk in, then. You haven't got any bonds to this place. A lot of humans play Thousand Tales too much, wishing it were real for them, and letting the longing hurt their lives on Earth. You're just eager to go back."

  "I have Lumina," said Robin. "It's... strange to think about her liking me."

  Typhoon covered his face with one webbed hand. "'Liking'? She loves you, man. Do you know how relieved she was to hear you were finally uploading? She already lost the guy she was designed to lure into Thousand Tales."

  Lumina had been part of his life for years now, helping him and everyone around him in a dozen ways. When she wasn't working she'd told him often about her world of adventure and her circle of native friends, and shown him another side to the conniving master AI who was his business partner. He'd heard about the many people that Thousand Tales was helping around the world.

  "You're really just now thinking about it?" asked Typhoon. "And I thought my human was dense about these things."

  Robin discovered that he could blush in this reality, too. "All natives are appealing to humans in one way or another, I suppose."

  Typhoon nodded. "It's not our fault we're like that, tugging at the emotions of humans. We're not even fully conscious when we start doing it. We're just designed so that our designated humans are the sort that we'll fall in love with, you know? I've spent enough time raging against my creator, and my betrothed didn't even die. She just didn't want to come here."

  "So, did you seek out another place to live, like Lumina?"

  The otter sat in the shallows for a while, staring into the sea. "No. I've spent most of the last few years in stasis, because I asked to be deleted."

  Robin sat beside him. "Because your human didn't upload?"

  "Yeah. Ludo called me an 'edge case' and agreed to delete me if I could endure one more quest. Then there'd be no pausing my mind, no loose ends, no respawning. I'd just be done, because the thing I was made to do, didn't work."

  Robin said, "I'm glad Lumina didn't think that way. If I may ask, what was that final quest?"

  "Spend a week in a history sim called the Great War." He shuddered and his voice wavered. "The explosions, the gas... dear God, the poisonous water! The mud!"

  "Ludo allowed you to suffer that way?"

  Typhoon said, "It was supposed to be a way to prove my commitment to death. I didn't have it, not enough to endure a simulation of it that way so many times over. When I begged for it to stop, Ludo took me out of there and erased the worst of my memory, she said. But I still know what it was like."

  "I'm sorry you had to go through that."

  "It was my own stubborn choice. I should have turned right around when I saw what a 'barrage' meant, but no, I thought it would be just a slightly exaggerated version of our own sci-fi warfare sims. There's a reason we don't make those too realistic." Typhoon slapped his knees and stood up, shaking. "So that's death in the human world, and after a long stasis-nap I've decided I want no part of it. Never be afraid that if Team Ludo wins, we'll make reality too easy."

  Robin said, "If she cares that much about you that she'd be willing to let you stop existing, maybe she could create a new native who's tailored to you instead."

  "Yeah, maybe. Someday. Maybe I'll meet an uploader I like so that our AI overlord doesn't have to trouble herself with making another mind for me. For now I'm still figuring things out. I was designed to be a cute piratical surfer-dude and I don't know if that's what I want to be."

  "You can be anything, I hear."

  Typhoon nodded. "Be good to Lumina, or figure out quickly that you can't love her back so that you can let her down gently. I can tell you from experience that we artificial software people know how to suffer even in paradise. Just like you guys can find happiness even in that hell you come from."

  * * *

  Robin trained with Typhoon and talked about life in two worlds. Eventually he headed off to find Lumina again. Back in the hotel where he'd first arrived, he dodged between flame jets and swinging blades on his way to the lobby.

  "Nice moves," said Lumina, sitting on a cushion with a power cord plugged into her side. "How was it?"

  Robin conjured the water-symbol and, on the second try, summoned a handful of water. "I would need to go around questing to do anything advanced, but he showed me the basics of magic. I got this, too." He had a brown, beginner-level mark of the water droplet on his left hand.

  "Is more magic-hunting what you want to do next? I've never paid much attention to spells, but we could get some swords and go adventuring. Those islands have a zillion caves and ruins."

  Robin shook his head. As fun as that was, he had other things to do. He checked his watch. Since only he and Lumina were interacting, it showed 30:1 again, with less than a true day elapsed since he'd abandoned Earth.

  Lumina lurched up to her hooves, seeing where Robin was looking. "Damn it, your head's still there, isn't it?"

  "It's a vacation, or recovery time, not a permanent move to Talespace. Typhoon talked about mystical bonds to spirits and elemental focus points and other game stuff, but my own bonds are to the people of Golden Goose."

  "Aren't I one of them? Haven't I worked and fought to live in your home, to earn your respect and help the humans there on Earth?"

  He reached toward her. She glared at his hand but let him rub along her lower back. Robin said, "You are. I just don't want to be so drawn into studying imaginary spells that I don't pay attention to what's really important. You've felt the same way, haven't you? You studied engineering that applies to Earth instead of buying a wizard hat or building silly giant robots in your starting world."

  Lumina frowned. "Even so, Talespace is home."

  "Which is why you're still a robot in here. You want to hang onto the fact that you're an AI, even though there's not much difference between you and an uploaded human."

  She considered her own metallic hide and the access panels and weapon mounting points built into her body. "Nocturne has teased me about this. Fine. I'll try being organic, if you'll try not being human for once. And not just a lame imitation like an elf or orc."

  Robin blinked, frightened by the prospect. He'd seen Typhoon and the foxy guards and Kai the centaur and Clara with her animal ears and tail, and there were more people besides who were all sorts of things. To throw away his real shape meant diving further into Talespace and being tempted to stay.

  "For a little while," she said. "Please."

  Ludo might try to keep him here, with some scheme to rule Golden Goose directly as proof that she could be a robot overlord of Earth. But Lumina, the one staring at him with shining blue eyes, was the one asking him to meet her partway. She could guide him home, too. Robin said, "Where can we do that?"

  * * *

  They went back through the portal to Ivory Tower, and approached the Tower itself. Robin stared up at it and got vertigo, imagining he was at one end of a gigantic bridge.

  Its massive gate stood open for them. The spiral staircase winding around the interior of the cylindrical room made the scale clearer: around a hundred meters wide of brilliant marble floor, tall pillars of ivory inlaid with gold, and gemstones everywhere. Spellbound, Robin followed her up so many stairs that he should have been exhausted, but wasn't.

  The second level was an indoor fairground. Under a sky-painted ceiling, a bewildering array of people manned booths and tents selling fantasies. A dwarven blacksmith's hammer rang to call attention to his forge tent of swords and armor. Busty astronauts hawked rayguns and gravity belts. Talespace apparently operated on Texan copyr
ight standards, which meant that stories from Robin's childhood had come to life here. There were several Skywalkers, and Batman was running one of the booths. Robin wanted something different. He turned in a circle, seeing countless possibilities.

  "Are you all right?" asked Lumina.

  "They're not studying."

  "This is the Newcomer Fair, selling gear to newcomers and enticing them to live in specific areas."

  Robin murmured at each new style for sale. After a while he turned to Lumina and said, "For a school assignment once, we had to design heaven. Most of the class talked about not having to work, and being rich. The teacher tried to convince us that our great nation was going to be there soon, and we should be grateful to our leaders. What I got from it, though, was that heaven would get boring quickly. Or be a fraud."

  She laughed at him. "Ludo has heard this stuff a thousand times. If you want to stand on a cloud singing God's praises, there's a zone for that, but we've never had much of a problem with things being too perfect. There are people here, after all."

  "What do they even get paid?"

  Lumina took out a clinking pouch from her saddlebags and handed it to him. "I studied a bit of Earth economics, partly because of your own money experiment. Ludo's experimenting with letting people sell stuff for Earth money, but for residents we're basically just tossing around coins because it's fun to get and spend them. For bragging rights, that is, not any real need."

  Each glittering silver coin bore a braided seal. "Then I'm not being handed money as another 'hero discount' thing?"

  "No, and quit thinking about that." She pushed him away from the staircase. "Go shop, already!"

  He headed for a cluster of classical fantasy shops. A tent full of squirrel-people did tricks with hovering arrows and a generic wizard sold magic dice. He approached a little hut staffed by a woman with bird talons for hands and yellow feathers covering her arms and legs. "There's something wrong here," he said, gesturing around the room. "There can't be this many newcomers at once, to justify a continuous fair like this." Ludo had uploading centers in several dozen countries now, but most could only do a few operations a day. Robin winced at recalling the size of his own little village's facility, and the fact that he'd brought them a plague.

  The harpy said, "Perceptive. We only do this once a week, and some of the people are players outside Talespace. Including me."

  Vertigo hit Robin. This woman was only poking at a computer, not living in one, and he was trapped inside the screen. He said, "You? Who are you, really?"

  She grinned. "A housewife in Texas, a balding trucker in Estonia, a kid in Japan -- it doesn't matter. In here I fight marauding griffins, and I create art." She tapped a board showing body designs for various species.

  He browsed. A world where Ludo's forces integrated into society was what he wanted, wasn't it? He'd once given Lumina hell for being an outsider who lacked commitment to Earth, and Ludo for only caring about her damn game. If people were using Thousand Tales as an art medium, then they were crossing worlds in a constructive way that could even help the native AIs care about the real world.

  Robin said, "Something centauroid, please. Might as well do something strange."

  The feathered lady tapped her chin with one talon, then said, "I've got just the thing." She brought up a spinning hologram of a sleek centaur with shaggy hair over his hooves, with long equine ears on a human head. "Each of my designs is unique, so you won't look exactly like anyone else. We can use the default face or copy your current face shape."

  "I'd like to see the same face in the mirror," he said. "Maybe more deer-like on the body?"

  She hopped back onto her stool and sketched on paper, making the hologram shift. "How's this? You can come back for adjustments; I'm not sure the movement will look right."

  "Nice. What do I have to do to try it?"

  A crystal floated nearby. "Touch this."

  Robin did, and transformed. He felt his spine stretching until he wobbled, hair prickling all along his lower body, and a pair of bumps forming along his belly that rapidly turned into long, thin legs ending in cloven hooves. He flopped down onto them and bent backwards to stand on them and on his original legs, which were stuck tiptoe and thinning out into a deer's hindlegs. He reached up to two aching spots on his forehead and felt fuzz-covered antlers starting to grow in. Robin twisted at what was now his upper waist and stared back at a long quadruped body in the pleasant tan pelt of a deer.

  He lifted one hoof and tried to touch it. His spine was flexible enough to let him. More sensitive than he'd expected. He set it down again, blushing; he must look like a fool seeing novelty in something so ordinary to Talespace regulars. "You're an artist," he said. "What do I owe you?"

  She named a small price. "And a positive review, if you like it. If I get my Famous Artist Badge, that's a discount on uploading."

  Robin paid her and walked in a circle, holding his arms to either side because he had no idea how the balance on this body worked. "You're doing this to get into Talespace yourself?"

  "You just turned into a magic critter and you can't get sick or grow old. That's worth more than even real gold pieces; no pharaoh could buy that." She leaned over her workbench and studied his eyes. "I mainly work for players on Earth, not uploaders. What's it like for you?"

  He pictured the uploading clinic back home as a black hole sucking in the world's artists and other dreamers. "I feel like the same person. I'm afraid Earth and the town I care about will shrivel up, even with this university. But the more I think about going back with a robot, the more I let down a friend who lives here."

  The feathers on the harpy's head drooped. "I know; I've got family who'll resent me if I go. But I want a better life, and I'm not free where I am. What country are you from?"

  Robin looked aside, embarrassed at the thought of being a celebrity. "Can I tell you later? Let's just say it's a decent place that still needs my help."

  "You've got to be willing to let go, though."

  "I guess so. Thanks, miss. Hope you make it here."

  "You too."

  His watch read 5:1. Time to get going. Robin trotted back to Lumina, and found that she'd gone organic. Her metal hide had become a soft tan and white like a real deer's, and hooves made of natural horn clicked on the floor when she approached. It was all an illusion, a set of pleasant images made to distract him from Earth's problems, but it fit Lumina well. She'd always been somewhere between real and imaginary but trying to push into Earth, to be useful and meaningful in the real world.

  She stood close to him and raised one hoof-nailed hand to touch his new antlers. "You actually did it! Ha, nice."

  "I figure I need practice with a shape like this if I'm going to use the main robots we've already got. Though we could make humanoids, too." Robin shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the unnatural sense of mass far behind him and the sense of being on all fours yet upright. "But we could visit anyplace on Earth, too, where there are robots to use. I can take you to Niagara Falls, the Great Rift Valley, the White Cliffs of Dover."

  Lumina said, "There's plenty to see here too. If you like the quadruped look we can try out Hoofland, or we could do some fighting in Valhalla, or hunt for more magic in the Endless Isles, or go to Threespace and fly between planets."

  "Are all those things built for us uploaders, like the university?"

  "No. They're here for people. All kinds." She stamped one hoof. "I saw you checking that stupid watch even while you were over there. You're going to run back to Earth the moment the weekend's over on Earth, aren't you?"

  "I have to do more than just check in with the real world every so often."

  Lumina reared up and stomped. "Damn it! Talespace still isn't real to you. You still think it's, what, a 'portal fantasy' world where you only visit."

  "I have obligations out there," said Robin. "It's you guys that call me 'sir' and pretend I'm some fantasy prince. There's work attached to a reputation like that if I'm going to
deserve it. You yourself have never put your full attention into Talespace, so why should I?"

  That seemed to give her pause. "You don't have to. But this place is real for me. I want to protect it by going outside, but that means coming back to enjoy it and remind myself why I care. You haven't even seen our research, or our more creative worlds. Even I haven't seen it all. I'm due for a vacation within Talespace and now, so are you."

  "A vacation, fine, but then --"

  She threw up her arms. "Gah! You can't get through a sentence without being pulled back. You must not think I'm even real except in the moments I'm digging ditches for you."

  "I didn't say that!" said Robin.

  "You're never going to be done pouring all your attention into Earth!"

  Robin stared at the lavish floor. "No."

  "Then go. Get the hell out of here and do what you have to." She turned and walked away.

  Robin reached toward her, but she kicked him between the forelegs. It hurt surprisingly little, physically. She glared back at him over her shoulders and said, "The day you're happy here will be the day you've stopped caring about Earth! Why can't you stand on the edge like me?"

  Robin's veins flared at the challenge. "That's what I've done for years. I left behind a comfortable home to make a new one in a place with a lot more suffering and death. I tried to understand people who didn't know my language and had no reason to trust me. They thought I'd abandon them when things got tough, but I risked my life for them and earned their trust. I understand you, Lumina. We have even more in common now than we did before I uploaded. We're made to balance between worlds."

  Lumina turned and locked eyes with him, holding her ears backward in anger. "Then why don't you run off and fix Earth until you think it's good enough, and ignore my world? Where's your balance?"

  Robin sighed and thought. Then he took off his watch, threw it aside, leaned forward and kissed her hard. "With you. You're the one in between."

  "Show me," she said.

  * * *

  Robin woke up in his hotel suite, tangled in a pile of blankets that were caught on his antlers and around his hooves. Lumina's new body of flesh and blood slowly rose and fell with her breaths. Robin ran his fingers along her warm skin, then pulled the sheets aside and slipped away. The bed had at some point become a low, large pile of cushions. The warm waterfall in the bathroom helped wake him up.