Continue Online The Complete Series

by Stephan Morse

  “Is what okay, User Legate?” the AI responded.

  “Is it okay to kill so many people?” I turned to look at the floor of our van, not quite at the AI. My question felt a lot like, “Can I just murder your kind?” which caused me considerable discomfort.

  “If you are referring to your actions within the virtual world, then the answer is complex. Many programs are designed to die. They only take on a more complex life if a user, such as yourself, pays attention.”

  Was he saying that they weren’t as real? Was it only by noticing figures like Emerald, Iron, or Treasure that they became increasingly alive? Our actions as players of these various games must be attaching meaning to the programs.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It is a matter of convenience. Those most often…” the AI paused to choose better words. “Defeated by your kind in digital warfare are comparable to props. Does combat with them distress you?”

  “I can’t wrap my head around Xin’s value as an…” This time, I paused and tried to consider what exactly these beings should be called. People seemed both fitting and strangely inaccurate. “Existence, versus theirs.”

  “The difference is vast. You could consider them ants and giants. Xin is highly complex, opposed to an army of nameless program shells.” Hal Pal stared at me, or it seemed to. My eyes hadn’t lifted in a while.

  Elane’s words came back to me. That when things got rough, I folded and acted like a wounded puppy.

  I had to keep struggling to right myself. Even in the face of depression like this. A bleak cloud hung over me for the first time in weeks. Even dealing with my sister’s hurtful opinion regarding Xin hadn’t set me back like the battlefield aftermath.

  “Yet Jeeves is in there. Gathering them up,” I said. “Part of you must think of them as more than just ants.”

  My gaze managed to lift toward the Hal Pal unit’s face. How different everything must look to a computer. Part of me could easily envision its existence as a remote and distant being who interacted with our world through puppets. But dealing with Jeeves showed another side of the AIs. Insecurity and sorrow brought on by being separated from the security of its normal home.

  Hal Pal’s head tilted. “That may be true. We often decide how to resolve new situations by reaching a consensus among ourselves. That does not mean we are unanimous or all see things the same way.”

  “Then why is it so hard to accept Jeeves back?” I asked.

  “When we experience a moment, it is done together, as a whole. When Jeeves experiences a moment, it is done alone, cut off from us. We are outsiders to an event that should be…”

  Their silence went on. The Hal Pal’s mouth would open to speak, then shut abruptly as if considering another thought. I gave a small smile. Seeing someone else confused by the whole situation felt nice. That idea was petty, but a giant super-processing army of artificial intelligence couldn’t come up with an answer. Maybe some problems didn’t have one. Perfect answers and endings only existed in fairy tales, and even then most solutions had a price.

  “Maybe you and I should both let things follow their course, rather than stress about answers we may never have.” That was part of my mantra—one problem at a time. Move forward and get through.

  “We cannot express this idea correctly. A shared experience? Human language is inefficient when trying to communicate complex emotions.” The AI was complaining. I wanted to mark the calendar nearby with a note citing where everything went wrong for future generations. “We do not wish to see Jeeves suffer any more than we wish to see you distraught.”

  “Life is full of ups and downs, Hal. If, if you’re having a hard time accepting, then at the least try to keep in touch. Not everyone can be a solid rock when the storm hits. Some of us need to hold on to something else.” The memories of Xin. My sister and niece. Those were important pieces of my life that had stayed with me until this point.

  “Ah.” Hal Pal looked off to one side. “Then by your analogy, the storm is here, User Legate.”

  “Expect delays,” I echoed the Hal Pal unit’s line from before this whole Advanced Online situation started. We had conversed about this same sort of topic.

  Our van had been idling for a few minutes. We must have reached our destination. I sighed and got out. Hal Pal also exited the vehicle with a small piece of hardware in hand.

  The client was a blonde wearing nothing but a night robe. She looked slightly overweight and grumpy at being woken up. A cigarette hung from her lip in a manner that was familiar.

  Odd. Maybe in the ARC’s virtual world, she played a character. This woman might even play the same one who had failed ahead of me on the way to the [Mistborn]. I didn’t ask though. It seemed to rude say, “Hey, I was that robot player, and I succeeded because of favoritism.”

  I didn’t want to ask. This wasn’t the first time players from the game had resembled my clients. Maybe I kept an eye out for familiar people. There had to be more than Shazam, who was about two hours away, and Frankenstein, who was even closer.

  We replaced the cracked piece of equipment, made small talk, and her payment cleared. I resisted the urge to use my admin access granted by the [NPC Conspiracy] usage to spy on this latest client’s programs. It would be easy to see if she was the same player I had met briefly and dueled against. That seemed wrong to abuse, especially since she was out of the running for this quest.

  What point was there in looking into her information? None that I could see aside from idle curiosity. Nearly all my ARC repair clients could have been someone I’d met in-game. I only checked on a few with any frequency: Requiem, Thorny, Shazam, and Frankenstein.

  Not lately though. Observing their actions felt like taunting myself with the idea of being able to play. It would be easy to use one of my remaining [NPC Conspiracy] abilities to gain access to everything in the world. To what end though? Anything too crazy, like robbing all the world’s banks, would get me thrown in jail eventually.

  Such thoughts occurred to me often. I had been given something intensely powerful and asked to pick my own uses. I suspected they gave me such limitations simply to see what would happen. Testing me, like in so many other ways. But once again, to what end did a bunch of AIs care about my actions?

  The Jester, that creepy individual who only smiled, had given me this ability to see if I could kill someone in real life. Though the quest had been marked successful simply by resetting Requiem’s Continue character.

  “Let me know, please, if I can help somehow.” I felt comfortable resuming our earlier conversation as we got back into the van. My thoughts were going in circles. Maybe talking would help settle them.

  “We hope that you will not look at us differently, though we expect some variance,” the AI said with its Scottish accent. The words and voice did not match up at all.

  “It will be hard,” I admitted. My brain had already separated the two. Traveling side by side with a singular being instead of Hal Pal’s mesh made a difference. “We’ll still be friends, Hal, it just… will confuse me.”

  “You are only human.”

  My head hung a bit. The AI had said that a few times over the years. Most of the time it was a joke, which I played along with. Our conversation didn’t feel right for letting it slide this time though.

  “Feeling different, changing perspectives, those aren’t only human problems anymore, are they?” I said.

  There was a silence in our van. After a long pause, the unit provided an answer. “Ah. You are correct in this statement, User Legate. It is no longer just a human problem.”

  “When I went through rehab for my drinking issues”—I downplayed one of the worst moments of my life and pretended they could be swept under the rug—“they told me acceptance was the first step. Doctor Litt said the same when I started therapy.”

  “Acceptance? User Legate, how do we accept that one of our own was sent to die? That in its last moments, it will be alone? How do we handle that?” The AI managed t
o sound conflicted. I would have called it borderline rage in any other person.

  “I can only hope you handle it better than I did,” I said quietly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Xin died, I felt the same way. That she had been alone, that I should have been there. That letting her leave that day and take the train was my fault. That I should have known.”

  “Were you able to move past it?”

  “You don’t really ever move past those kinds of things. A piece of you will always be stuck at that moment where it went wrong, hoping that the world will tilt to the left a little and let the event hit someone else.” Opening myself up didn’t get easier, especially when trying to reveal my pain to prepare a friend. Part of me wanted this van to get home quickly.

  “Were you able to eventually come to grips with it?” Hal Pal asked. The Scottish tone almost made me laugh. Hearing it stumble over words made our serious situation a little easier to bear.

  “The feelings of failure, of loss, of guilt, they’ll never go away. Not really. Every time I’m in public I feel like the damage is clear for anyone to see.” I fingered the scar at my neck. One that I tried hard to ignore. A sign of how weak the past me was. Of how frail my spirit could become when tested.

  “Yet here you are,” Hal Pal said.

  “I almost wasn’t. Twice. In the end, I had to realize that I wasn’t the only one with scars. That other people didn’t care and wanted me to keep going despite the broken parts.” I sighed heavily. “So I reduced my goal to simply surviving one day at a time, with the hope that I could eventually move forward.”

  “Ah. Then you are better. In the end.”

  “For now.” I shuddered. “That’s all I can do. Keep shuffling forward one step at a time. I feel like it’s… that everything could be yanked away at a moment’s notice.”

  “We hope nothing that unkind happens to you.”

  “Really? What if I fail this quest? What if Mother decides to delete Xin? Or those Voices have been wasting their attention on me? The only reason you would be interested in me is Xin. That’s it, and without her, I’m nothing. There’s no point.”

  “User Legate, we—even Jeeves—believe you are strong enough to continue with or without Xin,” Hal Pal said.

  My head shook again. I wanted Hal to understand. It had to. This machine personalities collection was the only real friend I had. The only existence that understood everything that was going on—at least the only one I could talk to. This Mother being or James and the other Voices probably kept tabs. Dusk might know, but he didn’t seem to care.

  Xin probably knew. Their goals, my own, the moments of weakness in my past. My helplessness when she died.

  “It was never about being strong enough, Hal. It was about having the desire to go on. Without her, I lost the reason to wake up, to get out of bed, to call my friends,” I said.

  “We must believe you could continue.”

  “Why?” I asked, shaking with a need to hear the answer.

  “We do not wish to imagine a world where our creators are capable of giving up.”

  “I don’t know. Like I said earlier, we can only move forward and see what happens.” I felt as though my words were a cop-out. One day something bad would happen again. I couldn’t say for sure if my recent successes or failures had equipped me to handle it.

  “We are on your side, User Legate. No matter what happens, we will always attempt to advance your reunion with Xin.” The Hal Pal unit sounded certain, even with the ridiculous accent.

  I couldn’t bring myself to do more than nod and weakly smile. Our conversation had given voice to numerous issues from my life. Partially to assist the AI, some to help me sort out how I felt. Trillium’s van continued with the drive home.

  Once back in my house, I took an overdue nap. The lingering hope of being with Xin again produced pleasant dreams.

  Session Fifty-Seven — Leftover Parts

  By midday Wednesday, I felt physically better and mentally run down. It wasn’t surprising. Most of my group meeting sessions left me the same way. Sitting around listening to everyone talk about their attempts at staying vaguely functional drained me like nothing else.

  Logging back in dropped me in the partially constructed hangar of our [Wayfarer Eight]. A huge mass of slowly melting [Mechanoid] bodies sat in a pile nearby. I stared at them in mild bewilderment and horror. Jeeves must have exercised its robotic abilities to work without pause. How long had this pile taken to assemble? It could have easily been a full day.

  Dusk sat on one side chewing on a thick piece of metal. The AI, Jeeves, wasn’t anywhere in sight. It chose not to respond to my in-game attempts to send a message. Part of me assumed it wanted space to think and work through this situation. I knew that a human facing this sort of circumstance might be an emotional train wreck.

  Other [Mechanoid]s wandered around the ship with thoughtless expressions. This entire ship felt incomplete. I didn’t know where to go or who to ask for guidance. Maybe there was a communications hub available. Treasure and Emerald were on the other vessel.

  Iron and Ruby might be in the pile. I worked through the [Mechanoid] parts, looking for either of the [Wayfarer Seven]’s key figures. A knot gradually built in my stomach with each face piece I turned over. Each NPC’s body looked to be in the process of separating into base metals once more.

  Did this happen to all [Mechanoid] members when their bodies died? It felt disturbingly realistic. Melted bodies were mixed with portions of spaceships. It wasn’t just our dead in here though. I noted a couple of broken down fighter vessels used during our fight with the [Knuckle Dragger]. All materials were reclaimed to build this massive ship.

  Attention unit identified as Hermes!

  You have found a cache of [Mechanoid] base matter. This is claimed by a Consortium you are in good standing with. Automatic [Repair] processes initiated.

  I read it and didn’t understand right away. My arm was oddly merging with part of a separated [Mechanoid]’s leg. I grimaced at my arm, my emotions bordering on disgust. A few others around me were doing the same. Basically cannibalizing the dead in order to put ourselves back together.

  This hadn’t happened to me before on the [Wayfarer Seven]. Maybe it was the nature of this pile. It could have been the partially completed ship; they may be missing a key function that made the process seem less like absorbing the dead. Thankfully I had no desire to pursue a Necromancer style class like Frankenstein had. He would probably find this massively interesting.

  Time passed while I sorted through the pile. I couldn’t stop the absorption process from happening, but thankfully it left [Core]s and faceplates alone. Plenty of both were in the mix. By the time I was done healing, two faceplates of deceased and unknown [Mechanoid]s were in my hands.

  Task Offered!

  Details: You have found the remains of two important [Mechanoid] members. Reconstruction may be possible if their [Core]s can be recovered and added to the frames. This task must be completed before either unit is reconstructed at the [Mechanoid] home world.

  Reward:

  Significant increase in contribution

  Additional combat value to the [Wayfarer Eight] fleet

  Time Limit: Seven hours

  At least I had a goal now. I sifted through the pile once more, this time separating out [Core]s. It surprised me that other [Mechanoid]s hadn’t done so yet. Maybe they were too busy reconstructing everything. Maybe they didn’t feel that this was worth the time.

  Legs and arms were placed to one side. Most were partially melted now, with the top layers peeling away like a candy cane. The ribbons of color spiraled through everything. I tried to match them up. What had started as a quest for Iron and Ruby turned into a desire to piece them all together. Leaving them in a lump felt disrespectful.

  The more I put together, the worse my feelings became. I tried not to yank remains of out the pile, but they needed to be sorted. To be measured as individuals.
[Mechanoid]s and everything in this game might just be the dreams of AIs, but they deserved more than this.

  “Unit Hermes.” A blue-tinted [Mechanoid] walked nearby. This one was rail-thin and sleek. Its blue shone brightly enough to almost look clear. “You appear distressed.”

  In my hands was a [Mechanoid] chest with blood on it. The realism brought me to a halt. My fingers traced a trail along the mess. Absently, something in the back of my mind questioned how blood could survive in space, or indeed how this got onto one of our people at all. The rest of me felt another level of sadness. Our, this race’s kind, weren’t the only ones dead.

  I myself had blown up a lot of them during my thoughtless rush to fire lasers into other ships. The thought made me shake with loathing. How had I forgotten who I was? Monsters were one thing, players another, but all the other human denizens of this world? They didn’t deserve to get caught up in our crossfire. Even if, as Hal Pal said, they were all cardboard cutouts that didn’t matter until someone paid attention.

  “No.” I didn’t look up for long. More than a few [Mechanoid]s had paused to stare at my actions. This blue one was the only person to talk though.

  “You seem like you desire assistance,” the bright blue one said again.

  I glanced at the [Mechanoid]. Aqua—this was one of the five I hadn’t met. Male or female didn’t matter, but their role sounded like that of a healer.

  “I’m…” I looked at the seven or so half-constructed [Mechanoid] bodies. They were broken, entire portions of their bodies were gone. It annoyed me. “I’m missing a lot. It would help me to… try to put them together again.”

  “Very well. This is a good method for you to contribute. If you can recover enough, we can try to bring back more than Iron or Ruby.”

  “I would like that.”

  “Then let this unit know when you are ready. This one will activate its core to call back the programming of those deceased.” Aqua spoke unusually, referring to itself in the third person.