Continue Online The Complete Series

by Stephan Morse

  “I enjoy talking to you too.” My words felt numb. Hal Pal and I hadn’t talked as much since the whole Continue Online process. It seemed oddly unfair to the artificial intelligence. Part of me assumed it had tons of other jobs to be doing.

  “Lovely weather we’re having,” it said again, without even looking out the window. The glow of Hal Pal’s eyes felt subdued and lazy.

  I nodded and tried not to worry about my future as an armor polisher for our eventual robotic overlords. A few minutes of silence passed while the van drifted along the highway.

  “This unit does have a question, User Legate.”

  “Fire away, Jeeves.” Jeeves was a nickname I’d given to the physical shell Trillium included with the job. It, since Hal Pal used both male and female tones without care, rode around anytime I used Trillium’s van.

  “A recent change in user permissions has locked you out of Continue Online.” The AI loved to put out leading statements. As if I needed a reminder of my current situation.

  “That’s right.” And the whole reason I was in the van heading toward Liz’s house this late in the afternoon.

  “Why does User Legate not take advantage of his access code to override the restrictions?” it said.

  Hal Pal’s words didn’t help my brain process things correctly. How it knew about the [NPC Conspiracy] function didn’t make sense until I realized that Hal Pal was an AI. The skill itself related to having all AIs out here in the real world assist me for up to twenty-four hours.

  The ability came with limited uses and a whole series of questions about the future of humanity. AIs within Continue Online had given me an ability that worked with the AIs outside the machine. That, in and of itself, was beyond questionable.

  I had used it to get the ARC devices to recognize me as an admin on other users’ machines, which allowed me to do all sorts of terrible things. During my ride around between jobs, I’d used that access to keep an eye on Requiem’s—Matthew’s—ARC device.

  “My sister might be reasonable.” I doubted it though.

  “Humans are rarely reasonable in emotional matters.”

  “No, we’re not, are we?” I said while debating my lack of foresight.

  Poor wording and eagerness to resolve Xin Yu’s genesis had led to bad decisions. I hadn’t been brilliant enough to set aside admin access to my own account because it had seemed like a waste of time. Plus, my access was restricted to the Trillium-provided van since that was where I’d used the password.

  Hal Pal didn’t answer right away. Ten minutes later, in the same nanny tone, it said, “Lovely weather we’re having.”

  Maybe it had decided to practice sarcasm. If so, Hal Pal’s commentary summed up my day so far. The overcast sky held true all the way to my sister’s home. Lovely weather indeed for the conversation to come. Underneath that blissfully dull gray, I stewed and tried to figure out what magical combination of words would return life to a normal path.

  If a concept of normal applied anymore. There couldn’t be many people in the world who played Continue Online like me. Having direct access to the Voices? My copy of the game was an Ultimate Edition and came with some weird side effects.

  Liz’s house was a split level a few hours away from my own. Her neighborhood contained at least one home per block that was for sale or rent. She lived in a suburb of New York that had slowly moved away from itself. A digital era filled with computers and virtual reality meetings in ARC devices let people escape the clustered hellholes that most major cities had become.

  Our last war had not been kind to this country. Many buildings were destroyed, especially near the old Mexican border. Large cities were subjected to terrorist action and violent protests; families torn apart as people were shipped off to war. Technology didn’t make it better for soldiers; it just made it easier to get them to the frontline.

  We, as a country, suffered far less than many Asian areas. Even now, a few stigmas were still associated with people from China.

  For a moment, I felt happy that Xin, or her computerized recreation, would no longer need to suffer that, being inside a machine. At least I hoped so. Unless cliques were also within the AI world—ones where they hated those based on real people.

  That whole line of thinking was crazy and served to distract me from the general anger I’d built against my sister. Deep thinking and questions about the nature of reality made my head spin. Who was I to guess what machines inside a computer would do? I tried to treat the Voices and Hal Pal as real people because anything else seemed disrespectful to a thinking creature.

  I mean, if people could love dogs as if they were human, then why not a machine that could be touched or felt real inside the ARC? Xin Yu’s fingers had felt better than any memory plaguing my life for the last few years. Real, tangible, and just… right.

  My niece, Beth, opened the door and shouted happily, “Uncle Grant!” She was one of the few bright spots in my life that had kept me going after Xin passed.

  “Hey, munchkin,” I said and gave her a hug.

  “Mom!”

  “What?” Liz had a hint of anger in her scratchy voice. She typically sounded like me, which was hard to describe. Normal, I guessed.

  “Uncle Grant’s here!” Beth shouted up the stairs while turning.

  “I’m sure she’s expecting me.”

  “God. Yes, come in,” my sister said from the top portion of her house.

  I raised my head to see Liz. Her face was puffy from sickness and she had a mug clutched in one hand.

  “Beth, you’ve got homework to finish, right?” she said.

  “Yeah. A project for Space and Energy Dynamics in Transit,” Beth said before pulling her lips to one side in a halfhearted growl. “They want me to plot a way to get to Jupiter with limited resources. It’s nonsense!”

  “Do it anyway.” My sister sniffed and took a sip from her mug.

  “I’m going, I’m going. Talk to you later, Uncle Grant!” Beth shouted as she clomped down the stairs. My niece was light but always seemed energetic.

  “Bye.” I feigned happiness for her sake. Knowing my sister and our history, this situation wouldn’t be peaceful for long. Liz tended to sort out problems with her vocal cords. Our tried-and-true method for problem-solving since childhood.

  “Mh.” Liz sniffed again and sluggishly marched to her kitchen as I followed. She stared at the tabletop, reading a manual of sorts.

  I tossed out a neutral question. “Cold?”

  “Yeah.” She sniffed again, then blew her nose. “None of this medicine works. They can beam thoughts into our heads and send people to Mars, but still fail to cure the common cold.”

  I eyed the tissue and tried not to feel grossed out. They had much better stuff out now for collecting snot. Like tissue paper but easier to biodegrade. Not for Liz though. She went old-fashioned on a lot of things. My father was even worse.

  “That’s gross.” The judgment came out anyway.

  “Whatever,” Liz said with a clogged nose. “Why are you here, Grant?”

  Irritation surged inside me, and my prepared speech diminished into a few curt words. “You already know… you locked me out of Continue.”

  Liz’s eyes studied me for a good minute, during which they almost rolled closed with each breath. Finally, my sister leaned over, then poked the kitchen table. An image came to life, showing my niece logged into her Atrium and doing homework.

  After confirming Beth wouldn’t hear us, Liz said, “Yes. Because I’m worried about you.”

  She often surprised me with her ability to be a parent. I remembered my sister’s gap-toothed smile and her screaming at kids in school.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m attending my meetings, talking to a counselor, everything is fine.” The list of pros I had compiled in the van sounded pathetic now. Elegant words and jabs citing I was an adult meant nothing to her.

  “You missed your last session with Doctor Litt. It was a week ago,” she said.
>
  A week ago, I had been logged into Continue Online and roaming the mountains, delivering a letter. The appointment must have slipped my mind despite all the normal reminders inside an ARC. No, the meeting did vaguely ring a bell. I had dismissed the message three times while figuring out where a tower entrance was located.

  “I’m doing okay, Liz. It was one meeting.” My temporary elation at seeing Beth quickly faded. Liz must have thought I was a child or somehow planning to harm myself again. Hadn’t I earned a little bit of forgiveness for the past?

  “First it’s one meeting—then it’s drinking. You’re not drinking again, are you?”

  “No.” Though the brewery I had delivered a letter to had tempted me. The familiar smell of hops sat inches away, tantalizing me. “I’m sober.” Liberal usage of the [Blink] skill had carried me away before weakness won.

  “Are you sure?” Liz chewed on one lip and sniffed again. Her eyes watered, but it might have been from the cold.

  “I’m doing better than I ever have been.” I weakly smiled. James, the heavyset black Voice, had previously asked me a similar question.

  “Then why do you believe Xin is real in this game?” My sister blew her nose while the world about me spun.

  Hearing it from my sister hit hard. I fell against the wall and neither leg worked right. My legs retained little in terms of strength in the face of Liz’s questioning.

  “Xin is dead.” I calmed my reaction and recited the answer mechanically. Despite my letters back and forth with her, I don’t know, autopilot on steroids, Xin no longer existed outside the ARC.

  After the latest wall of noise to issue forth from her nose, she said, “I saw the letter, little brother, and the replay. You killed yourself after giving Beth that message from her. A woman who passed away. You just killed yourself because a game said to!” she yelled, then sniffled twice before coughing into the tissue. Liz’s restraint had broken apart.

  I blinked rapidly and straightened myself. My sister’s abruptly violent explosion only served to panic me. Adrenaline flooded through me, making my arms tremble. She had essentially called me crazy.

  Weeks in-game, where I lived with a weapon just a foot away, turned a flight mentality into preparation for battle. This was reality. Liz wasn’t stacking up to a monster from Continue. She only yelled, and I had faced worse demons.

  My words were steady. “I didn’t really kill myself.” All that gameplay in Continue and conquering my fear helped.

  “You didn’t even hesitate!” Liz coughed again. “Why would you leave that for Beth? Why?” Her voice still scratched, and coughing broke up her words.

  I broke and shouted back, “Because I wanted to explain!” My arms shivered a little.

  “Explain what?” She stopped and picked up her coffee. A quick sip went down and made her face twist up in distaste. “That you’ve gone mad over a game? That you’ve lost touch with reality?”

  “No!” I hadn’t lost touch at all. Reality occupied a huge portion of my life.

  “I used to be able to understand you, Grant. I used to know your thoughts like they were my own. Then one day, it stopped, and it was like you were a stranger.” She sniffed again and blinked rapidly. “I just don’t understand. I don’t.”

  “It’s possible. Technology…”

  “She’s dead, Grant.” Liz coughed during my name and kept hacking until both eyes watered.

  I pulled out a clean tissue and put it on the table in front of her. She nodded and tried to clear out more snot.

  “I know. It’s not exactly her,” I said.

  “It’s not her, and I think”—she swallowed to avoid coughing—“that I won’t turn that… game back on until Doctor Litt signs off. Until I’m sure we won’t have an episode again.”

  “You can’t. I’m better now.” I shook my head. My face felt slack with disbelief. Liz and I had always seen eye to eye, and now we weren’t. “And it’s for me to decide if I believe it’s Xin or not.”

  “I need more than your say-so that everything’s fine. I was a fool to believe you last time. Never again. Until Doctor Litt signs off on your health out here, in reality, you’re not getting access back.”

  “You can’t do this to me. You can’t.”

  “I’ve already done it. No more Continue. You need to return to reality before I’ll let you back in,” Liz said.

  “I’ll get it overturned.” There were legal routes that could be taken. Liz had received guardianship over me after a second time I tried to end things. Fixing that was possible but never seemed important until now.

  “You try that. But until Doctor Litt agrees, I retain court-ordered control.” Her nose kept running, and the steam from the warm coffee couldn’t be helping. “You’re not in the right place with this. You’re just not.”

  “But I’m fine.” I felt like a kid trying to defend my actions to an adult.

  “Just like the first two times you tried to kill yourself? Where you called me and said ‘I’m fine’ less than two days before? Because I’m not going…” God, Liz was breaking down. “I can’t do this with you. I can’t, not again. Seeing you flirt so casually with death…”

  My mind ran through a silly thought that almost made me laugh while Liz was breaking down. So far, I had never actually met the Voice of Death. Maybe they were worse than the Jester Voice of Something. Or like Jean, the Voice of Blood. Voices were Continue Online’s version of game gods.

  “You don’t treat Beth like this. She’s killed herself more in that game than anyone else,” I said. We had discussed Beth’s leaning toward self-destruction in the game before.

  “But not in real life! Not out here where death doesn’t come with a stupid, stupid… save point!” Liz said, practically sputtering.

  “What’s going on?” Beth whispered.

  I turned around to see her standing at the top of Liz’s stairs, a confused twist to her face. My eyes closed and lips tucked in. Saying nothing would be a lie. There was no good way to know how long my niece had been listening.

  “Nothing. Your mom and I are just talking,” I said.

  When I looked back, I saw Liz had managed to lose what little color remained in her face. Beth didn’t seem much better. Her normal bubbly attitude and bouncy posture held very still. Like a rabbit paralyzed by something huge and scary.

  “You tried to kill yourself?” my niece said.

  “Goddammit, Grant! Goddammit!” Liz coughed and shouted. “Get out! Get out of my house!”

  I fled. Monsters and demons in a virtual landscape seemed suddenly friendly compared to my sister shouting at me. My sister was rapidly trying to say something to her daughter, but nothing felt clear.

  “Uncle Grant?” Beth’s wounded whisper followed me out of the door.

  The van sat a house away, at the curb. I dove into the driver’s seat and quickly punched home on a navigation menu. The car’s programming asked me to confirm. My shouting and banging on the vehicle dashboard somehow got a yes into the machine.

  Soon I was off down the street, worried about how badly things had gone. It shouldn’t have been like that. We could have calmly talked things out, only Liz was sick and I was crazy. As siblings, there should have been a stronger bond of trust.

  But Liz didn’t trust me because I had tried to kill myself twice after Xin Yu passed. Twice my sister had come to try to tape me back together. That was my fault, which meant her worry over Xin Yu was my fault as well. Maybe if I had been a better person after her passing, this wouldn’t have happened. Liz would have supported me if I hadn’t screwed up my life and fallen apart.

  I banged the car’s steering wheel over and over. I cried and shouted and pleaded for things not to end like this. No one answered my prayers, and finally I rationalized all of it.

  I’d spent too much time in therapy groups and self-reflecting. Being ignorant of the hurt inflicted upon others by my actions was no longer an available luxury. Winning back my sister’s trust could be done by explaining
my situation to my therapist, a man who always seemed very open-minded.

  No. There was one other possible option.

  I put on the phone’s intercom and dialed Vice President Riley. If anyone knew of a legal route to negate this mess, she would. The call went through surprisingly fast.

  “Mister Legate. You have one minute before I need to move on to another situation.”

  “Do you have any way to override a restriction placed on my ARC software? I’m unable to access Continue Online.” I didn’t want to say that my failure as a human being had led to the loss of control.

  “Is this something caused by the AIs within Continue?” Miz Riley waved her hands and pulled up something on her side. I watched her face tilt back slightly. She must be looking at a report.

  “No,” I said. Not directly.

  “Then no, I do not. Your legal matters are your own to solve. In fact, it might be better if you spend less time within the game world, at least for now.” She waved one hand, and a noise echoed in the background. Miz Riley no longer looked directly at the screen and instead seemed to be motioning someone to sit down.

  “What?” I asked in confusion. I’d had hope that Miz Riley would have something for me. Anything. A number in legal. An override button or magic laser beam.

  “Good day, Mister Legate. If your status returns to Continue, please keep submitting reports,” she said with a fleeting glance my way. Someone else’s voice could be heard in the background.

  My confusion increased and I asked again, “What?”

  The conversation shut off, and I abused the dashboard once more. My attempt at bringing in the big guns to solve this problem had failed.

  Minutes passed as the van drove. I mumbled to myself, trying to measure a way out of everything. Checklists were formed, prior history items reviewed, anything to make sense of the whole situation.

  Hal Pal clicked to life behind me. “User Legate?”

  “I’m not in the mood, Jeeves.” I tried to run through what had happened again.

  “This unit is only offering a warning.” The male butler voice was back.

  “Okay.” I tried not to be angry at Hal Pal.