That made me pause. Hal Pal’s skill set was suspiciously convenient. Its ability to fight had clearly been lacking. Maybe the AI had chosen a crafting subset to feel more comfortable in the game. Perhaps he felt putting together objects was familiar, like our job repairing ARC devices.
I had to trust the AI. It was that or let go, push off toward the [Wayfarer Seven], and hope an emergency beacon would work. Worst-case scenario, we could try that. We had no decent means of acceleration to make it back in time. Nor long-range communication. That would be a gamble.
“Turn the ship into a bomb, drag it to the right location, and set it off. Afterward, we enjoy fireworks and flag down our mothership. Sounds simple enough,” I said it but didn’t believe it. “Where do we place it?”
“Deep in the creature’s rectum would likely be a good location,” the other [Mechanoid] responded.
I laughed. The moment of levity brought on by a machine AI from the past, posing as a machine AI from the distant future, caught me off guard. How often would anyone else hear an AI suggest shoving explosives up a creature’s ass with such a dry tone? I’d bet the club was exclusive.
“All right. Dusk, can you guide us to the best place for detonation?” I looked at my [Messenger’s Pet], who was sniffing around the hole in [Wayfarer’s Hope].
He pushed off the ship’s hull with his hind legs and whipped his tail into the [Leviathan]’s shell. Dusk looked up at me then along the great length of our giant ride. His nostrils flared and his head tilted in contemplation. A shrug rippled through him. My small companion looked up with one eye squinting and gave a hesitant nod.
“What is it, boy? Danger?” I tried to remember our communication methods from Continue Online. Reading his moods was way easier with smiley faces and thought bubbles.
Dusk nodded.
“Of course. Giant space monster that eats ships for a living. It probably has giant space lice.” I hated bugs. All insects of any type drove me batty. Spiders were the worst though. My skin itched and crawled without any assistance from the ARC’s feedback.
Dusk nodded and coughed a glob of acid into the air.
“Ah. User Legate, I have recognized a hurdle.”
“What?” I asked. My bladder was urgently demanding attention. Only by focusing on creating a plan had I been able to stave off the stinging pain.
“Without gravity, I will be unable to assist. I have no way to deliver a converted vehicle that far.” Hal Pal peered over the edge. The AI wore a look of mild panic that had to be close to my own.
“Can we find a rope? Or a metal chain link? If we get something similar, I can drag us,” I said. Training for cleaning had given me some stats. Nothing superhuman or game breaking, but enough [Brawn] and [Endurance] for dragging a ship through zero gravity. Maybe. Hopefully.
“Are you sure, User Legate?”
I nodded. “I’ve got practice, and if this is our only way, so be it.”
“All right. This unit will attempt to channel the ship’s self-repair into compositional restructuring. I see an option for a volatile mixture upon exposure to enough energy.” Hal Pal ducked back inside the ship and pressed something that beeped.
Not in the atmosphere, I heard the noise in my head. “I’ll take care of that as well.” A large sword made of dual laser beams should suffice. “If, as Dusk suggested, there are creatures between here and the optimal location, they may also feed off metals.”
Hal Pal peeked over the edge again to look at me. “Recovering as many as possible should allow me to increase the explosive payload.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that actual science?”
“Parts, but most of this seems to be built into the Mechanoid crafting system. It is rather clever and unlikely to be possible in a more realistic setting.” Hal Pal displayed an unusually intense smile. Maybe pride in a species modeled after Hal Pal’s possible future impacted its emotions. “Everything uses the same series of resources, allowing one object to serve in multiple designs.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
My mind flashed back to how the two-handed sword rolled up from my own body as a handle and focal point. The [Mechanoid] species had adapted to use all sorts of metal combinations to progress forward. It was similar to how humans might eat meats and plants, organic matter, to build up muscle or fat. Only faster and preprogrammed.
“Please hurry, User Legate. We cannot spare a lot of time,” Hal Pal said.
“You ready, Dusk?”
The small creature nodded.
“All right, you show me where the best point is for an explosive, and we’ll try to clear any danger around it. Like a dungeon, right?”
Dusk nodded twice, then turned and pointed toward the distance. I smiled. This felt normal to me. The only thing missing was Shazam’s passive expression as we moved forth. Hal Pal may have muted emotions, but he was no tall Amazonian warrior.
[Anchor] activated with its now relatively minor energy drain. Days of alternating between combat and cleaning the ship’s hull had elevated my skill by leaps and bounds. I should be able to make it quite some ways before the energy drain set me back. Combat would be harder though.
“Will you be okay, Hal?” I asked again.
“The ship’s lasers remain active, but please do not”—a slightly pained expression came across its face—“do not leave me alone here.”
“I’ll be back.” My bladder surged again, reminding me that I had been holding in my own pathetic biological needs during our entire chase. “After a quick break. Sorry, I’m only human outside this.”
“I envy your ability to remain level-headed during such chaos.”
“I’ve got a lot of practice coping.” Dozens of exercises and techniques helped keep me from panicking when stress hit. Still, they didn’t keep me stable at all times. Not in the face of everything.
I looked behind me and saw the gas giant floating across in the distance. It dwarfed Earth’s moon with a swirl of crimson through yellow. Too big, too damned big. How had Xin coped with all those training flights? She must have spent endless hours in near-earth orbit to adapt.
Right. Her training in the ARC must have helped, much like what I was going through now. Only she did without the giant space eel who would eat me. The pain in my midsection reminded me of the other urgency.
I logged out of the ARC and tried to quickly solve the simple day-to-day needs of being human.
Session Forty-Eight — Space Bugs Everyone
Autopilot didn’t exist in the same way in this game. My character locked down where it was and couldn’t interact with the digital world. I could have been killed by monsters during log out, but I wouldn’t float into space.
Out in the real world, things were harried.
“ARC!” I slurred around food I shoved into my face. I needed to understand a bit more before logging back in. Research would help. Similar to how I’d watched videos for survival techniques in Continue Online. It helped me adapt to new situations in a game that enjoyed a measure of realism.
“Awaiting input,” the ARC responded.
“I need information on gravity in space, atmosphere, and sound. Just highlights.” Something to read while serving my reallife needs.
A box displayed nearby. It followed me from the bathroom to the kitchen. I read quickly, trying to understand how everything lined up.
Having harnesses in a spaceship seemed weird. Newton’s first law of motion basically meant that nothing slowed us down if the engines stayed on, except a very reduced form of gravity. I could have probably saved a ton of fuel just knowing that fact. The note went down on a list of things to do better.
Dusk’s ability to make noise in space didn’t seem to jive with everything else. According to the internet, sound required molecules to vibrate, and no air meant no molecules. So how then did Dusk make noise? Hal Pal I could buy; we probably spoke in secret [Mechanoid] code. Cyber code and digital bits equated to language. Fine.
At least the fact
that space didn’t freeze exactly seemed bound by scientific fact. Insulation was a big factor, but I didn’t worry about it since I wasn’t actually in space. I only played a robot roaming around in space.
Either way, after these last few days of work, sleep, and life, I felt conflicted about Advance Online’s realism. It seemed shoddy for a game about space to not be founded in actual science. However, the more notes I read, the more vaguely possible everything seemed.
Accepting the realism required assuming another one thousand years of scientific development, except the space eel [Leviathan]. Voices, I hoped nothing like that existed in real life. I couldn’t imagine flying to Mars and running into one of those rolling around.
“All right.” I lay in my ARC and felt better. Some people might be able to ignore real life needs in favor of grinding stats, but I could only do so much. “ARC, log me in.”
The Atrium spun into being. Continue Online sat barred. I ignored it and dove through to Advance and the space rock with far more enthusiasm than I would have expected a week ago. Adventure, that was what made this game worth playing.
Continue Online didn’t have monsters this big. Or did it? Beth had vaguely mentioned something in the ocean once. And there was a guild dedicated to reaching the moon. Various memories briefly triggered, too fast to grasp.
Advance loaded up my character with a swirl of lights and nausea-inducing speed as the ARC-simulated feedback assaulted the senses. Despite the heady rush and pain feedback from combat, this game was worth it.
“User Legate. Are you ready?”
“Jeeves, neat. You’re working fast.”
My [Anchor] ability had kept me situated during the hour of game time I had been absent. Hal, on the other hand, had managed to reshape half the ship. I could see where our small propulsion jets were switched around. The hull coloring had a much different pattern now. Chains that were only a few feet long hung out of the side.
“I am attempting to increase my contribution. In addition, this venture seems to be providing rapid gains to my capabilities.”
“See? Difficult situations provide higher rewards. I knew the internet was right.” I walked over to the chains. My feet felt intensely heavy with each step. One hand reached out to grab the length of chain—no, not chain. It looked like twine in metal form. “How long before this is ready to go?”
“Two hours and I should have enough to be mobile. After that, it is a matter of collecting enough of the right minerals to increase our payload.”
“All right. I’ll get to it.”
I looked at the [Messenger’s Pet]. During my absence, Dusk had gotten into a fight with something small. It looked like a black kitten-sized bug.
A shudder passed through me.
“How much is that worth?” I pointed at the small icky creature but refused to touch it.
“Minor amounts. Leaching trace metals from its body will increase the payload by…” Hal Pal spouted numbers, and my brain almost shut off. After more than two decimal points, it didn’t matter. At least in accounting we could round off.
I filed it away as “lots of these are needed to be worth a damn.” The Hal Pal AI interrupted my thought by throwing something at me. The small black object approached without curving or arching from gravity.
“A container. It will increase efficiency,” it said.
I nodded. A single bucketful wouldn’t be enough material. Maybe we could find a bunch of the bugs around a corner. I could bring back ten buckets, then upgrade it to a golden bucket.
“Let’s find something bigger, Dusk.”
The [Messenger’s Pet] ignored me in favor of shaking the dead bug wildly until pieces floated about.
“Come on. Time to murder disgusting space bugs.”
Dusk finally acknowledged me with an excited chirp. I resignedly shook my head.
[Anchor] worked, but my footing missed frequently. A lot of the time I awkwardly climbed and was unable to keep either weapon program ready. Dusk leapt around as though he were a monkey, or lemur, and made me feel as if I was an old man again, limping along.
Ridges took a while to get over. Dusk wrangled small creatures, and once he’d shaken them to death, they were deposited in our bucket. I had to shove my hand into the pile of bodies and mash them into place so they wouldn’t float out.
“Space gophers,” I muttered while shoving another one into my bucket. “I’ve been reduced to collecting space gophers.”
They had a bug-like exoskeleton. Dusk crunched away while small drops of acid dribbled from his mouth. Thankfully, in space, I couldn’t hear them squeal, but the [Messenger’s Pet] somehow filled my ears with his slobberish chewing. That almost constant noise was the only sound filling up our silence, aside from [Anchor]’s constant hum.
“Why are there only a few at a time?” I angrily muttered. “This is a game, right? Shouldn’t there be a bunch? I wouldn’t call this a raid challenge.”
Dusk chewed on yet another small victim as we traveled. I searched for any portion of this creature’s landscape that looked different—a hint as to weaknesses or places to shove an explosive.
Voices. Was I was truly considering this? The ride was in full force, and I was in all the way.
The stream of endless giant space mites continued. These ridges reminded me of a picture from high school. The human skin close up had ridges as well. They served to help me measure the immensity of this beast. Miles long, miles and miles. [Anchor] felt a bit easier to use the closer to the tail I got.
“Dusk, do the same rules apply? If you die here, are you back in Continue?” I tried at least to clear up one question while making progress.
Dusk shook his head.
“Or are you just permanently dead?” I asked the [Messenger’s Pet] after another lap of messed up fetch.
Dusk shook his head again, then bounded off before I could think of something else to ask. He wouldn’t be dead, and that was the important part.
“Where do you end up?”
Dusk shrugged. All our time together had taught me that shrugs meant one of three possible things: my question didn’t matter, was poorly phrased, or he didn’t know.
“You end up somewhere safe, right?” I couldn’t let it alone. Besides, there wasn’t a lot to do aside from stumble around like a paranoid baby.
Dusk nodded, then shrugged. His shoulders felt off without the wings sitting there. So yes, and he didn’t care. Goodness. At least getting an answer this time was easier than my journey through the giant labyrinth and all its monsters.
I gave up trying to sort out that problem. His well-being had been verified, as much as any digital stream of code that broke the boundary between games could be. Part of me desperately hoped he might develop some kind of mind-speech one day, but no luck so far. Even with using [Wild Bill] or the letters to the Voices.
“Dusk, we need a ton of these guys. Is there a nest or something?” I stared at Dusk and tried to read his expression. I sorely missed the thought bubble window from Continue Online.
He dropped the latest minor conquest and dove over another ridge. I sighed and trudged after him, bucket half full of gross leftovers that threatened to escape every time I stopped abruptly. Low gravity couldn’t halt the laws of inertia, and my hand only did so much to keep the leftovers corralled.
“How far?” I asked.
A month ago, that would have come across as whiny. Now my only goal was to be ready for combat before we stumbled across a batch of them.
No sooner had the thought crossed my brain than my foot slipped and I lost [Anchor]. No, my foot hadn’t slipped—[Leviathan] had shifted slightly. The ripple was barely visible as I moved through space.
“Ah!” I shouted but quickly figured out something.
I concentrated and triggered the two-handed laser sword. The blue bar for my energy dropped ten percent. Rays of solid energy drove out almost four feet in length. A quick spin and jab sent both beams into the [Leviathan]’s thick skin. They hardly
made a dent, but my trajectory shifted from floating in space to curving downward from drag.
The blade slipped before I could reuse [Anchor]. I floated by, parallel to the current ridge. It looked safe enough, just moving slowly. But beneath me was something new.
And gross and squiggly. Oh Voices, it was an entire nest of those creatures and I was floating right into it. Dozens—no, maybe even a hundred—of those gross little bugs.
A portion of the bugs had twisted their tiny heads up in my direction. Their slit-shaped eyes narrowed en mass. Small whiskers and nasty bodies that rolled littered the nest. I tried to retch, but [Mechanoid]s apparently didn’t barf.
“Gross, gross, gross.” I hated bugs. That annoyance had followed me from Continue Online. The only thing worse would have been spiders.
I moved the sword to my other hand and let off a few laser blasts with the light weapon. I had no time to ready a bigger attack picked up from my second [Core]. Small blasts collided with the bugs and only served to send them hopping around.
How were they able to hop while I was stuck floating? Dirty little jerks. Filthy. At least six were on top of me, nipping away with tiny little mouths.
“Get off!” I violently shuddered and almost stabbed myself with the sword. A few bugs sizzled from contact.
I forgot this wasn’t [Morrigu’s Gift] and tried to shift my weapon into a dagger form. Reaching for [Morrigu’s Echo] and its [Recall] ability failed me. Old habits were still in place when I panicked.
Dusk spit a few tiny acid balls. I managed to grab a bug and throw it into space. A brief thought about missed resources passed by before more painful little bites distracted me.
The small gathering and I crashed into a ridge, and one of the creatures wiggled against my side. It was disgusting. I imagined that it was similar to a squid monster’s tentacles attacking.
I swung an elbow out of reflex, but once again, the lack of gravity made my swing nearly ineffective. Thrashing around with my laser sword almost vaulted me back into space from the [Leviathan]’s energy resistance. I curled up my knees to get a better angle on my legs. My feet hit the ground, and [Anchor] took effect.
Continue Online The Complete Series Page 95
