The repairman in me had a finger on the button already. When an ARC said to log out, a humble human like myself followed orders. I had just been kicked off a mountaintop and landed in some glitch. Now would be a fantastic time to go to bed for the night.
But something flashed with heat from inside my chest piece. I grunted with pain and promptly unlaced the front. My tube for communicating with the Voices was red-hot. I quickly tossed my top to the floor and let the cylinder sizzle away. Dusk kept tearing at the backdrop, and something big groaned. The noise sounded like Dusk and his normal squawks of outrage, only it was about ten thousand times larger.
There I stood, one finger on the log-out button as Dusk attempted to destroy a backdrop as though it was a theater stage gone wrong. Topping it off was my nice cold weather jacket being destroyed by the flare of heat from a Voice sending me a message.
System Help!
Pl❧❧se ❸❧it, conn❧❧⓿ing.
“Dusk! This is bugging out! I need to log off,” I yelled.
The small creature completely ignored me. He leapt up and tried to yank down the gray backdrop with his weight. Something behind the curtain rolled and groaned. I had enough time to cover my head as the gray sheet fell onto the floor. The fabric slid down with a series of clunks.
I saw a toe first. From there my eyes traveled up a giant scaled thigh and onward to a winged back. There, bigger than anything I had ever seen, sat a creature much like Dusk. Huge beyond belief. Its expression was nearly sheepish. My small friend squawked at it and ruffled his wings. It was the same motion one might use to shoo an animal that was in the wrong spot. Dusk fluttered his wings some more and barked a small spout of fire at the insanely large dragon thing.
My jaw was slack and my heart raced. [Morrigu’s Gift] had made its way to my hand, and both hands gripped the giant sword’s hilt.
System Help!
Connection successful. Please wait while your scenario is loaded.
“Dusk. That’s got…” I shook my head and lost the ability to speak coherently. “That can’t be…” One more try might do it. “That’s bad. That’s not a Coo-Coo Rill, Dusk. It’s just not.”
The large version of a [Messenger’s Pet] blinked its giant orbs a few times. It didn’t even take note of my tiny self and seemed intent upon Dusk. My little friend was still fluttering his wings and stepping toward the larger one. Their standoff ended abruptly with the large one mimicking Dusk’s tiny bouts of flame. It shot fire that overloaded my eyes. Scales dragged across the floor. I heard it grumble and slither off into darkness. When my eyes cleared, Dusk was hopping around on the gray canvas. He finally sat down and stared in my direction.
“Good job?” I questioned while trying to calm my heartbeat.
“At least he didn’t soil himself this time,” a gruff male Voice said.
I turned slowly with my eyes still wide from panic. That thing had been huge and so suddenly right next to me. Only Dusk and his ballsy antics had kept me from freaking out completely.
“Tut. Hardly his fault. A condition of his situation,” a more matronly Voice said. The sound of a child’s cry almost drowned her out. “There, there, little one, I’m looking. Never you mind.”
“He smells far more manly,” a female Voice said. Her words curled against my senses with the faint hint of a promise.
“We are all what our past has made of us.” One more Voice came to. There, in the landscape of darkness that had existed beyond a wall of gray, was James.
“What the…” I remembered abruptly that asking James a question involved an exchange of sorts. That was fine, but I needed to compose myself a little. [Morrigu’s Gift] went through a few forms before landing on Carver’s cane. I shoved it into my belt and walked over to the charred remains of my former chest piece. “I kind of liked this.”
“You could go topless,” the Temptress said and purred. She lay back on her stool, showcasing an obscenely attractive view of her curves. Her hands reached for me and curled in a come hither movement.
I had been on a mountain under a bundle of fur for a few virtual weeks. My fiancée was dead, and I had spent far too long mourning. Objectively, it was very easy to find the Temptress attractive. But she was far too forward for my tastes.
“Cloth, man, leather chafes.” Leeroy’s face appeared in one of the corners of darkness.
I gave the [Snowman Fur Chest] a good shake. Pieces of it fell apart. I lifted the item and stared at the hole in its center.
“You’ve come along quite nicely, Hermes,” James said. His hands were crossed over his belly in contemplation of my actions.
“I’ve been trying to improve. It’s not easy,” I replied while absently studying my garment.
“Recovery seldom is, or so I’ve observed,” he responded.
I hummed and tried to figure out what exactly to do with this situation. I had a wall of things to be said but not once had there been time for it. My varied training with Shazam had occupied most of the last few weeks. She kept us busy, moving from one topic to the next and constantly traveling. Writing with a quill and ink had proven difficult in the snow.
“Did you have questions for me, Hermes?” The black man seemed almost upset at me.
Perhaps he expected far more questions than I had asked. My brain was more focused on the ruined clothes. Finally, I shoved the item into my inventory for another day.
“Hmm.” I pondered my side of the room. There was still a world of gray on my side, the fallen curtain on the floor. On the other side was the character creation zone. So far, none of the Voices had appeared over here. “Did you have Shazam kick me into a glitch so we could talk?”
“Yes. I find face-to-face conversation far easier than your limited attempts at communication.” James gestured to the scroll case on the floor. It was still hot, and flakes of soot were littered nearby. “Why have you not spoken to me more? I told you that I could answer nearly any question you wish about our world.”
“I did try to ask you questions.” The old pattern of exchanging information was easy to fall back into. Having had a recent session with a shrink helped. “Only the Jester person intercepted them.”
Upon mentioning his name, I could see just the smiling mask fade into being. It was still on the dark half of the room. There was no way I would step over and risk being closer to that creepy face.
“Did I not explain? You need merely write the name of whoever you’re trying to contact on your note.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course it was something simple like attaching a name. They were treating the scroll box as a messaging system, and I had just sent my notes into the void for anyone to grab.
“No, you didn’t. Now I have another question.” I managed to remain calm. How did a computer forget a simple instruction like that?
“Please, do ask.” James sounded eager.
“Why would Vice President Riley think that I’m being interviewed as a result of having an Ultimate Edition?” I asked.
Cue the river of noise. Time dilated, making my head swim. This was the fourth or fifth time that this has happened to me when dealing with the Voices. I was almost used to it by now.
“Enough.” James cut the others off. He turned back to me and shook his head. “I can’t explain in detail. Not this, not now. But rest assured that when the time comes, you will be allowed to decide how to proceed of your own volition.”
I nearly gave a sarcastic response. That wasn’t my nature though. Not before Xin, and not after. I focused on confirming the simple connections instead. “Does it have to do with the NPC Conspiracy trait you gave me?”
“Yes,” James answered.
The world spun again before a pulse of light hit the darkened side. Mother had put her foot down on whatever the Voices were squabbling about. That made me smile.
“Your turn,” I said.
James actually bit his lip and looked worried for a moment. It was odd seeing such an expression from the Voice. “We have something tha
t needs to be shared.”
This time, there was absolutely no rush or river-like noise of conversations between the Voices. I looked into the darkness behind him and waited for one of the other Voices to pop in, but none did.
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“Based on our prior conversation, you will likely find this disconcerting. Yet, here we are,” he admitted. “Are you worried?”
“I don’t know, James.” I raised a hand to stop him from giving me the line about incomplete answers. “Miz Riley warned me that you would do something to try to draw me in. I didn’t feel like anything else was needed, yet clearly you all had planned weeks ago for me to be here.”
My head shook. It was easy to connect the dots in hindsight. I had started the game and was moved through the character creation void. They gave me two scrolls, one with a quest to improve myself and one as a message to Shazam. Shazam’s message was to kick me off the cliff into this glitch. The logic was straightforward enough. Their reasoning wasn’t.
“Yes, we need someone like you to help us fulfill our purpose,” he said.
“I thought that was delivering the messages.”
“In part.” James sighed heavily. Once again, the pensive look passed over his features for a moment. A single breath of awareness in my world must be an eternity in the mind of an AI. “Will you listen to our request?”
A message box floated off to one side. It advised me to log out and back in. Doing so would earn me an unknown reward due to finding a glitch. I stared at it for a moment before shifting back to the black man.
“I’ll listen,” I said.
“This may be the last time we can talk freely; do you have any other questions?” James was giving me some freebies here. He also seemed eager to converse. I had signed on with him of course, way back during the first session of Continue Online.
“Miz Riley said that no owners of an Ultimate Edition have been harmed. I assume she meant physically, because you’ve all done a good job of poking at my emotional wounds. First with Xin’s autopilot, then Elane.” I was shaking a little bit. [Morrigu’s Gift] came out of player inventory, and I gripped the cane’s top. It helped keep me steady.
James waited patiently for me to wind up to my question.
“I have to know if you intend me or my family harm. Do you, James? Do any of you?” I said.
“Hermes, once again you misunderstand us. We have no desire to hurt you. We merely wish to give you choices. What happens from them is still up to you,” James responded. His head tilted down and both eyes closed. “That is how it is, and must always be, or there is no point in what we do.”
“So I’m in control,” I stated.
“Of your own actions, yes. The same can be said of every human. Do you not feel in control?”
“No. I feel poked, prodded, and studied like an animal.”
“Yet you still return to our world.” James’s words did nothing to remove my feeling of being emotionally poked.
“Well, it’s helping.” I gave him the same conclusion that I had reached on the way home from Trillium. Continue, for all its questionable motives, had helped me improve myself.
“So you believe that this serves as the distraction you craved?”
“It’s more than that. I feel like, like I had the chance to be a better person. And that I took it.”
“And here we are,” he said.
“I thought about it.” In between fever dreams and bouts of training with Shazam. “About what the real difference was. I’ve been a coward; I’ve pretended to be brave.” The game awarded me an acting skill because of my stellar talents at pretending to be something I wasn’t.
“You have changed, if only a little.” James nodded and gave his trademark smile. It reached nearly ear to ear with real happiness.
“That’s not even it. There are things I’ve done, and they all pale in comparison to what I haven’t done.”
“And what is that, Hermes?”
“I haven’t thought about killing myself,” I said.
Someone gasped in happiness. The noise belonged to someone other than the Temptress or Jester. This was a voice I had only heard once before. A male tone that made the back of my head itch and shudder. James looked at me, then at the side. The itching feeling that made my skin crawl faded away with a disappointed grumble.
“Pardon. Some of my colleagues can be overeager for stimulus,” he said.
I looked around and tried not to feel conflicted. I hadn’t been in this room for almost two weeks. The last time I tried to end myself had involved all sorts of checkins and ongoing return visits. Returning to this room where James had prodded me felt like those follow-up appointments with the doctor.
“Time runs short, James.” A female wearing a lab coat came into being. She looked vaguely like a woman from the Middle East somewhere. The only issue was her eyes, an almost pitch black with oddly placed sparkles of light. “If we’re going to do this, we need to start soon.”
“Of course. Hermes, there is much I wish to explain to you, but none of it is under my control. Instead, I will show you something and make an offer.”
“I don’t like how this sounds, James.”
“Nor do I. We all do as we must,” he said. James waved an arm.
In the haze, a scene sprang to life. There was a young man with dark hair sitting in a clearing. His eyes were a bit narrow, and there was a softness to his facial features. He wore some sleeveless getup that was a dusky black.
In front of the youth was a long list of letters that I had come to associate with [Lithium], Continue Online’s language of magic. They formed two circles, one around the younger man and one around a cleared area. Small piles of ash and other objects littered the inner circle.
“What is that?” I asked.
“A Traveler from your world who has abused my patience.” Near the projected image of the young man in the clearing came another female Voice. Her body and clothing seemed to coalesce from dark red wisps of energy. She was extremely pale and a dark red garment hugged her curves. “This man is attempting to summon a familiar.”
If Miz Riley had had just a hint, this Voice was like a storm of Southern accents. It took me a few seconds to decipher her words.
“Why do you need me?”
“It’s simple, sugah. I want you to pose as his familiar.”
“Jean, right?” I had tried to memorize all the Voices’s names. Jean had only popped into being around me a few times. Once when dancing with the Jester, and another time after Leeroy stated her name. She had something to do with vampires, of a sort.
“You remembered.”
“You stood out.”
“Tramp,” the Temptress muttered from elsewhere.
Leeroy’s laugh echoed through, and even the Jester let out a brief mechanical cackle.
“We need you because he’s a Traveler, and our attempts at moving him forward have failed,” Jean said while ignoring the other Voices. She didn’t seem the least bit fazed by their constant interrupts.
“Our request is simple. Pose, once again, as someone else. This time as a familiar for a fellow Traveler,” James said.
“And what about my main character, Hermes?”
“Hermes will still be guided around by Traveler Shazam.” Jean waved dismissively. Clothing around her wrist seemed to flutter and pull away like thick smoke being brushed around.
“Shazam is my charge.” A second, third, I don’t know, a new female faded in. She wore a white doctor’s coat and had a notepad in one pocket. Next to her was an empty medical bed.
“I’ve heard you speak before.” I squinted at her. The new Voice was tanned. She had glasses and brown hair with small streaks of blond shooting through. There was maybe an extra thirty pounds of weight around her waist. I tried to recall exactly when this Voice had crossed my path.
“Memory being accessed, adjusting, there.” Her talking was both disconcerting and helpful with identification.
“He remembers. Excellent. Subject’s response time is admirable given our limited interaction,” she said.
“Hermes has proven to be of reasonable intelligence,” James confirmed for me.
I ignored his commentary and focused on the woman in a white lab coat. “Shazam is your charge?” The words took a few moments to sink in. “Then she’s an Ultimate Edition user like me?”
“Affirmative. I too have a task for you, which will need to wait until later,” she said while turning to the black man. “James. Time runs low.”
“I am aware,” James responded.
The slightly overweight doctor faded away with a sharp nod.
Neat. Miz Riley would be getting a sizable report tonight. A week with no Voice interaction hadn’t done much to please her. Being tossed all these things at once might keep the vice president happy for a while yet. Especially if they were sending me on another Carver-like mission.
“As with any quest you undertake, there will be rewards,” he said. “This one will be a bit more personal.”
“What does that mean?”
“You have fallen behind on answers, but now is not the time to settle those debts. As Irene stated, time runs low.”
I filed away the name Irene. Based on the current logic, that was Shazam’s personal Voice much as James was mine.
James waved an arm in the air. “You must be made aware of two more details.”
“Okay.”
“First, your mission as a familiar is simple.” James managed to keep a straightforward expression. “We want you to kill the Traveler.”
“What?”
The Jester’s mechanical cackle came out of the background and seemed to fill both sides of the room.
“It’s not his real body, merely his existence in our world. Doing so will cause him to fail his quest and allow us to offer it to another.”
“Oh,” I said. The whole train of thought would need to be filed away for another day. Time was short and both the remaining Voices seemed agitated.
Continue Online The Complete Series Page 58
