Then I remembered. He didn’t think I was a real person. Requiem Mass thought I was a computer program acting out a part. I would show him. Somehow the tables would turn and Requiem would be the one being beaten soundly.
“We’ll do this again tomorrow until you understand that I’m not playing around,” Requiem said.
My eyes drifted to a small pop-up message on one side.
Character Traits Established:
[Rude] (3), [Self-Serving] (2), [Clever] (4), [Greedy] (1), [Defiant] (6)
Something unintelligible escaped me. I smiled. This pain was nothing compared to what William Carver had felt. It was nothing compared to what I had done to myself. Suffering this was nothing, not for Xin.
Health Successfully Reached Zero!
Total health loss: 100%
Your summons status is being released.
I could have logged out and let the autopilot take it, but I spent my time studying the young man who was trying his hardest to beat some sense into me. His gaze was shockingly serious for one so young. How had he been raised to think that hitting someone taught a lesson? The feedback was muted enough that I could gather all types of details before being presented with a death screen. Luckily, this was a game. Reaching zero health was just a chance to take a bathroom break.
Session Thirty — Beatings Continue
I took my recent death as a good time to catch up on real life. Two items from the Trillium ARC repair queue served to keep me grounded. Historically, drowning out my problems while solving other people’s mechanical woes served as a good distraction. After work, I called my niece.
“Uncle Grant!” She was fiddling with some three-dimensional projection in the background. It looked like the model of an energy formula in action.
“Hey, munchkin, what’s that?” I nodded at the image.
“My final for Intro to Advanced Energy Dynamics. It’s super dull.” She squinted and pieced another portion together. “They’re making me create an entire sequence from scratch on their server.”
“Can’t do this one in the ARC?” I asked.
Beth raised both hands then winced as she pressed a button. Her model spun and exploded. “Nope. That’s cheating. You should take this class, like audit it, or something.” Beth waved at her project and scowled briefly. Two buttons later, it was reset back to an un-exploded version.
“Why?”
“Last week, I took some of the theories about energy conversion and used them in Continue. Then bam!” Beth lit up happily as she pressed Go again. “Biggest fireball ever.”
“That’s neat,” I said. Score one for science.
“Yep.” My niece was easily excited by things. Every time we spoke though, her excitement seemed to revolve around Continue. “What are you doing in-game?”
“Fighting frozen dinners and dealing with another weird quest.” I thought that summed things up neatly.
“Oh?” Beth ran away from the science project and came over to her camera.
“Yeah. It’s a player-versus-player sort of thing.”
“Ewww…” Beth used the same face during her childhood exposure to olives. “One on one, or groups?”
“Just one, a guy named Requiem Mass.” I felt there was no harm in telling Beth his name. Worst-case scenario, she would show up and cast one of her big fireballs at him. Could a [Red Imp] summon players? Wait, was that conspiring to do harm to Requiem?
Better yet, how on earth could the game prevent me from doing that? It hadn’t stopped me from dropping a rock on that other guy’s face. What was his name, Gaston? There were ways around the system.
“Mmmh, nope, I’ve never heard of him. But Continue has a mesh they use. Not everyone encounters the same batch of players.” She fiddled with her science project some more. I thought she was just playing now, since the image was spinning around.
“Oh? How did you figure that one out?” I asked.
“We did a paper survey at school and compiled the results.” She grabbed the project and zoomed in on a portion. “We got about five hundred responses before Trillium confiscated the documents.”
“That’s sneaky,” I said.
The Trillium van beeped, and a small message advised me that we would be home soon.
“Yeah. The Internet Social Dynamics teacher, Mister Edelstein, took a hit from it. We accidentally almost got him fired last quarter.” Beth looked up for a bit and her cheek pulled back. A moment later, she was back in the science project.
“Well, they take those things seriously.” There were a number of legal documents I’d had to sign just to sit in this Trillium-owned van.
“I know. Anyway. People tend to run into people they know more often than anyone else. I’m not sure how they programmed it to do that.” Beth shrugged and started spinning the picture again. She seemed to be killing time. Was it because I was boring?
“Really? What about guilds?” I asked.
“Have you joined one?” She grabbed the image and proceeded to shake it. Everything fell apart.
“Not yet.”
“You’ll see then.” An alarm went off in the background. “Oh! Time to go! My death timer is cleared.”
“Again?” I said.
“Yeah, we’re doing practice drills for next month’s event—I mean, week. A real week. Whatever.” Beth shrugged and waved away every image having to do with her science project. They whooshed into her ARC, and she pressed another green button.
“Oh, right.”
I had been thinking off and on about Beth’s battle plan for a few weeks now. Spending time with family while doing something interesting was going to be great. If Liz played, I would bother her. Though knowing my sister, she would be stalking guys in the game. I really needed friends of my own.
Requiem Mass was not friend-material, judging by our brief interaction. James and the other Voices were friendly, but they weren’t real or out here. Then again, if I had reallife friends still, maybe I would have had no reason to start playing. That thought made me sad.
“You’re going to join us, right?” she asked.
“I’m trying. This quest might make it hard.”
“Okay, get to a Porter. It’ll be easier to talk about it then!” The alarm in the background was growing louder. Beth turned and looked at her ARC. “Got to go!”
“Bye, munchkin.” I waved.
“Gah! I’m an adult now!” She flicked off the screen with an irritated expression.
I sat chuckling in the Trillium van for a good while. She was right, but part of me still saw a little girl who used to demand games of hide and seek. Xin had been great with her. My fiancée would have been a wonderful mother. If the train crash hadn’t happened…
It hurt a little, but it raised more questions. This Xin in the machine was a recreation of the woman I knew. I had no illusion about her spirit or soul being reincarnated. I didn’t believe Xin’s ghost had come out of the afterlife to haunt me.
But this was virtually the same thing, wasn’t it?
I desperately wanted to talk to her. There were only a few minutes left on the van’s Auto-NAV countdown. Soon I could see what the world of Continue had cooked up for me.
“Have a good night, Hal,” I said.
Hal Pal had sat behind me and been oddly quiet the entire way home. My future as an armor polisher meant that I needed to at least say good-bye.
“Farewell, User Legate.” The AI moved its robotic shell enough to wave before going back into standby.
I hummed to myself and walked through the house. Logging into the game was similar to a ritual now. One lap through the house resolved life’s necessities. This helped prevent awkward autopilot pauses later on. The very idea of logging off during Requiem Mass’s attempted lessons had me giggling. He tried so hard to instill obedience, and I skipped out when it got boring.
Minor bouts of amusement kept me going as I cleaned up the house and lay down in the ARC.
“ARC, log in.” My mirth dripped away slight
ly as thoughts of Xin came back again. I had to deal with Requiem and get back to my own body. From there, it would be time to ask James some real questions.
The Atrium sprang into being. Everything was still the dull empty blankness I had set it to after Dusk destroyed a good portion of items. Looking at it was starting to irritate me.
“ARC!” I said.
“Awaiting input,” the toneless machine responded.
“Match current—wait, restart command line.” I should do something different. “Match Atrium to prior address, Seventeen Walk Home Avenue. Purchase extras as needed.”
“Confirm authorization for purchases.”
“Confirmed.” I nodded.
Around me, the Atrium shimmered. A cash-register-style noise went off repeatedly as digital items were downloaded in exchange for real money. Outfitting an Atrium was pretty cheap. My savings account was well-off if I wanted to tap into it.
A recreation of our old couch materialized nearby. It and many of the other items in the house were decorative. With her being away for weeks at a time due to training and me immersed in work most nights, there wasn’t a need for things.
Another hour passed while I fiddled with additional purchases. A new doorway was put in. The view to a digital representation of our lawn was edited to be a beach. These were all items we had wanted to buy in the real world but couldn’t justify spending money on. Soon it was a near-perfect replication of our old home, plus a few items.
My face crumpled. What on earth was I doing? I had engaged in this kind of behavior before. Trying to build a home like Xin was going to return at any moment. This time I was going through the motions while she was stuck inside Continue Online.
I had other things to think about as well. What if I talked to her and it was extremely weird? The woman I had known was gone. No matter how well the Atrium fooled my senses, her death was an undeniable fact. What if she didn’t feel the same after being reconstructed? What if she blamed me for her death in the real world?
One step at a time. I might fail this quest. None of it would matter then. I was sure the Voices would happily scatter Xin’s existence back across the digital landscape. James admitted they had done so multiple times already.
Following the Voices was Trillium. What if they found out? There was no way that woman, Miz Riley, would let such a thing slide. She had been upset enough at William Carver’s autopilot.
“ARC, del…” I thought better of it. “Save the current layout and reset Atrium back to default.”
“Please provide a name,” the ARC system said.
“Grant is an idiot,” was my shaky response.
A million possible ideas flooded through my brain. If I took it on faith that this was Xin, what happened if I failed her this time? It had only taken one violent train wreck to tear me apart from her in reality. Losing her again, with the tenuous existence Xin had, would destroy me.
My head shook. I had to focus. What tempo fit a classic waltz? No. I needed something spicier. What was the tempo for salsa dancing?
“ARC! Load up Continue Online preview,” I said.
A screen popped into being nearby, and I dragged it over. The game feed was showing my [Red Imp] avatar bound and rolling on the ground. The imp was gagged. Vicious annoyance in the small red bundle’s eyes was mirrored by Requiem Mass.
I hummed some more and tapped a foot slowly. Salsas were fast and could be sultry. With my weight loss, it might be possible to pull one off and not feel completely goofy. Losing weight reflected inside the Atrium as well.
Salsa. There was something to that idea. Logging in with Requiem wouldn’t go anywhere, and I needed to clear my head. Two doors still led into programs off my Atrium. One went to Continue. The other exited to my dance instruction game. Dancing worked during the Age of Carver; it might work again.
I fired up a generic dance partner for a few rounds. It was easier with something that didn’t resemble Xin. Using a digital version of her felt wrong now. Before, I had been dancing with the image of a deceased woman. Now she wasn’t. Or was. Voices, this whole situation had me confused.
Slowly I drowned out my analytical thoughts with dance. The program led me through various steps. An hour later, I felt as though it would be possible to do a few rounds with a real person.
My thoughts went back to my vaguely reincarnated fiancée. Would she like the changes in me? They weren’t all positive. Another idea hit me. What if she found out about my brushes with death? Would she understand that?
I returned to the dance program and kept at it for another hour. Biometrics from the EXR-Sevens showed my heart rate was up and impulses were being fired to all corners of my body to simulate exercise. Sweat was probably dripping across me in reality too.
Toweling off in the video game only served to clean up my digital character and slow down the feedback. While my hands wiped away at illusion sweat, I stared at Continue Online’s preview window. The digital projection moved in high speed due to the time dilation differences.
Requiem had set up camp. My [Red Imp] body was strung up on a tree branch and glaring. The Traveler was sharpening a blade while muttering. A small fire crackling off to one side. It was hard to tell from the preview window, but it looked as though I was being hung over the flames.
I rolled my eyes. Requiem Mass was single-minded with his stupidity. Still, a small message hung off to one side. I pinched the picture and zoomed in.
Warning!
Excessive autopilot time has reduced synchronization
The Voices were politely hinting that avoiding the pain wouldn’t solve any problems. Dealing with the ARC’s muted feedback was bearable but not enjoyable. Now seemed safe enough since no physical torture was being inflicted upon the [Red Imp] character. Switching to Continue Online was also a good way to put thoughts of Xin and her version of reality out of my head.
Stepping back through the Atrium into Continue left me upside down and confused. The world looked downright odd from this angle. Trees curled toward the ground and the gray clouds seemed like a second ground.
I wiggled and got nowhere. Requiem had trussed me up exceptionally well. My tail was loose. That threw me for a loop. How on earth did anyone control a tail? Everything else in Continue reacted to thoughts. A new appendage should as well. Failing that, there would be an autopilot system of some sort.
Happy humming escaped me. Aside from being bound and upside down, this whole situation was kind of neat. My tail bobbed in time with the humming and a box displayed.
Skill Learned: [Idle Humming]
Type: Common
Rank: 2 - (Beginner)
Details: This skill demonstrates your ability to generate music if no one else is. Higher skills will find it easier to harmonize with other Travelers using music. All skills that benefit from music will see an increase.
“Mmheh.” A gag across my face made it hard to speak. [Idle Humming] was nearly the same as my [Battle Hum] skill. Oh well, if Continue wanted to throw a second version at me, then okay.
I tried to hum. A small box with a musical note appeared on the bottom right of my vision. That spot on the interface was where I used to see details about William Carver’s [Old Age] effect.
A few minutes passed while Requiem Mass grumbled and I tried to focus on tail control. My head had a little wiggle, and moving it in time with the appendage seemed to help. The tips of both feet moved around with my humming. That was how I learned [Red Imp] toes were kind of clumpy-looking and had giant ugly warts.
“What are you doing?” the Traveler startled me with his sudden shouting.
I raised an eyebrow and mumbled the first thing that came to mind. It was my attempt at impishly insulting his mother, and the synchronization bar jumped up. That made me smile and raise my cheeks high.
“What a failure of a pet,” Requiem said. “Can’t even get out of some rope.”
Part of me was in agreement. Escaping rope seemed to be a worthwhile skill to learn. Maybe Be
th would have an idea next time we spoke. I would say “Hey, munchkin, how do I escape being tied up by crazy people?” Her response would probably be “Use fire.”
Oh. I looked at the fire pit below me and wondered how strong my resistance was in this form. A little pain would be easy enough to bear for an escape. Maybe my tail was sharp.
“Time for another round of beatings. Maybe this time you’ll listen and stop playing games when I give you an order.” His voice sounded like a teen’s who was barely hitting puberty.
Requiem pulled at the rope used to hang me up. He had it strung over a sturdy branch then wound it around another tree trunk.
I twisted and managed to get a closer look at my tail tip. It seemed pokey, not super sharp or needle-like. That wouldn’t be much use in cutting the rope. Did [Red Imp]s grind their tails against flat rocks to sharpen them like birds did with their beaks?
Another question for the pile.
The ground approached suddenly as Requiem let the rope go. My neck nearly snapped, and these odd wings struggled automatically to right me. They failed due to being bound. ARC feedback sent my shoulder muscles into spasms.
“Mmmhgrh!” Muffled noises came out.
Inverted Tumble Halted
Total health loss: 20%
Where was my pitchfork? I needed it right this minute to stab Requiem in the face. That would solve both the growing irritation and quest in one go. Fortunately, I had a year and change of meetings and self-distancing techniques to calm myself.
This last month in Continue Online had sent my emotions all over the place. One thing after another had turned my world upside down. Xin existing in some form was the greatest of them. The thought replayed in my head as the world spun from dizziness. Xin wasn’t completely dead.
“Seriously? How are you going to help me?” Requiem said while undoing my bindings.
My wings quivered and shook as they regained feeling. It felt like trying to stretch out a pinkie that was attached to back muscles somehow.
Continue Online The Complete Series Page 63
