Commander Queenshand tried to fire up the holograms around her legs, the ones that allowed such insane bursts of speed. An image of gears came in but faded rapidly. For a moment, the woman stared at her legs, then shrugged. She stomped toward me.
Those around me always seemed to pay a price for my inability. First Xin—I should have made her skip the train. My sister, putting up with the repeated suicide attempts. Beth learning all about my issues was another mistake.
This woman was responsible for my latest failures. Lightning crashed above, lighting up the localized destruction for me to see. My gaze zipped to each fallen body in turn. It felt as though the ARC synchronization skipped, imagery frozen, my head tried to push it all away for only a moment.
Then rage solidified. This time when Xin was taken away, I had a reason, a focus, and I hadn’t just lost the possibility of her. It was Jeeves, Dusk, and Treasure. All of them were gone because of a woman willing to stab someone in the back to achieve her goals.
“You took away my wife!” I shouted as lightning crackled above. The cannon shifted to my heavy Gatling gun. Another round of energy drained away as bolts slammed into her orange shield.
Numerous pieces chipped off, but it still held strong. Her armor finally showed signs of damage from Dusk’s vicious clawing. Portions around her belly and shoulder were adorned with long streaks going through to skin.
“Weak!” Her hand curled in front, and a giant orange shield popped up. The second set of blasts from my Gatling gun vanished into it, shattering additional holographic gears.
“You killed my friends!” I yelled. I tossed the giant gun to one side. It transformed into miniature Dusks, and they ran toward her.
“Because you’re weak! A coward!” Her hand glowed orange, and she bashed one of the metal Dusks hard.
I touched the ground in an attempt to activate [Material Conversion]. The microwave noise dinged, but my energy kept going up. My mass stayed constant. There might not be enough material in here for me to absorb, or this wasn’t metal at all. Obsidian should have been comprised of iron and other elements.
I couldn’t see a way through but kept trying. Four more Dusks went out. My body turned into a tiny creature compared to the looming Commander Queenshand. I felt like a child standing against a demon. David versus Goliath. An ant against her boot.
The world around us was falling apart. Energy above kept zipping through purple mist in waves. Thunder rolled and overpowered us. This was hell, this was the underworld, and I was fighting a losing battle.
My head hurt. The world around me felt disturbingly alien. A nightmare landscape where every passing second drove home painful imagery. I would go down swinging, Voices, game creators, and my own past be damned. Cowardice would never be an option again.
Two of the [Mechanical Minion]s tore into her shield. It had finally shattered, but her fist dealt excessive damage to them. She destroyed one before another attacked. I could see her health bar dipping.
I had spent too much mass on the army of Dusks. My wrist lifted, fingers tipped down, and weak blasts went off. One by one, the [Mechanical Minion]s bit at her armor. They each got a few good bites in before being punched into a million pieces.
I tried to activate my fourth ability, [Camouflage Program]. My body shimmered briefly with green. This skill wasn’t useful in a blackened landscape like this one. The laser blasts kept going off. By the time Commander Queenshand got close enough to swing, she was at half health.
It wasn’t enough.
I panicked and tried to use [Blink] once more. The ability of my prior game world would have saved me. [Morrigu’s Gift] and [Morrigu’s Echo] would have easily displaced that shield. Here though, in this world, I had been doomed from the start.
Then the universe tilted as if someone had changed the channel. There was no other way to phrase it. The lightning above still flickered. Obsidian still existed around me, but it felt as though the science fiction scenery sloughed off. This floating piece of earth became an island, and all around a storm raged.
Once more I tried [Blink], only this time the ability worked. My body snapped into being right behind Commander Queenshand. I swung around, feeling a level of grace and ability that had been missing since my banishment from Continue Online. The weapon in my grip lashed out automatically, as it had done thousands of times before.
Then everything tilted back. It had only been a few seconds before science fiction and space odysseys ruled again.
My body, shorter by far, sat perched on the woman’s back. Two streams of light came over the metal hilt in my hand. My eyes shook as I followed the lasers down and saw where they drove through her. The weapon had pierced her from shoulder to stomach.
[Mechanoid] body parts lay all around. Eggman and MrJohnson were in pieces. Commander Queenshand grasped at the twin lasers sticking out of her chest. Orange holograms fragmented as the woman tried to grip the beams of solid energy. She attempted to take in a lungful of air.
Her head turned just enough for me to see one outraged eye. I stared as the light of consciousness drifted away and she lost focus. Her health bar shattered, and a message popped up telling me I had killed a key NPC. My fingers lost their hold as we fell forward.
Elizabeth Legate: Uncle Grant? What just happened?
My belly shivered. Bile crept upward. She hadn’t been a player who might resurrect. Killing her didn’t feel the same as killing a monster or dungeon creature. The creed I tried to follow of letting humanoid NPCs live their lives in peace had been violated. I had killed in rage.
Jeeves was dead. Treasure had followed rapidly. Dusk had been killed. Xin’s chance at resurrection vanished. Every crushing failure piled together to result in one irrefutable fact. I was capable of murder when pushed this far. Virtual or not, Commander Queenshand had been alive.
Xin had faith that I wasn’t a killer, and I’d just violated it. I knelt on the ground and tried to hold myself together. No sound existed beyond the lightning crackling overhead. Frozen rain formed an endless cloud up above. Pieces of my companions littered the area.
My head jerked up quickly. We were in a digital world. This was all virtual and generated by artificial intelligences. We were inside the ARC, but that didn’t matter. This mess needed to be fixed. Successive failures on so many counts could be undone. Maybe. I had to hope.
Elizabeth Legate: Grant?
This last message came from my slightly older twin sister. She was worried, but my mind was elsewhere. I paced through twists and turns of my recent experiences, evaluated the choices I’d made since coming to Advance Online. Each moment was turned over and compared. Five minutes, ten, maybe more passed as I sat at the heart of a dead world.
Events came together to form a large picture. The players I had encountered. The [Mistborn]. Eggman and his Continue Online counterpart, KeylessLock. Delivering a message to the ogre version of Auntie Backstab. The army following Shazam, my own autopilot among them. Dusk. Jeeves. Starting on [Wayfarer Seven].
There were too many puzzle pieces for a human hand. Multiple occurrences pointed to more than simple coincidence. A final fact slid into place. All of this started with letters from my [Messenger’s Tube]. Only one set of beings in existence might be able to manipulate so many variables to reach this point.
Among all my self-reflection revelations was one more emotion—anger. I was so goddamned angry with the Voices. To them, my struggles were a test, a challenge like William Carver and Requiem Mass had been.
“Activate NPC Conspiracy, username Hermes.” The words slipped out, and around me, everything changed.
Session Sixty-Five — The Plea of Orpheus
The world inside my ARC had changed. Rocky cliffs and purple lightning clouds up above had faded. A ruined landscape made of my companions’ and enemy’s bodies had vanished. The gray space of [Mechanoid] afterlife waited.
“Awaiting input,” the ARC said in its calm feminine tone.
I didn’t know how to pr
oceed. I didn’t have a box to start screaming at. My [Mechanoid] body had faded only to be replaced by my virtual Grant avatar. It felt slightly slimmer and full of more energy than the version of me before Continue Online.
“The Voices!” I shouted at my ARC. My body literally lay inside an ARC bed, my mind within the ARC machine, but for some reason, the ARC’s presence always seemed to exist above me.
“Please provide additional details for your request.”
“I want to speak to all the Voices!” Picking a specific Voice didn’t matter. They were all in on this together. There was no way that one of them would sneak around and start a plot without the others being involved.
The room abruptly tore in two, as if paper were being ripped endlessly. My body spun as though an old-fashion dryer was trying to wring me out. My hands went out to each side in an effort to find stability. Though the horizon flipped wildly end over end, my feet stayed firm.
My eyes drifted to one side of the room. Once again, I sat oddly between virtual realities. Decorating each side was a backdrop adorned with an old heraldic shield.
The clear blackened space of Continue Online’s world was given a man’s outline. In his hands, a giant sword pointed down into the ground. The [Mechanoid] gray afterlife sat on the left. Its symbol was a large metal man pointing a Gatling gun toward foes unseen.
The two pictures on either side of the room resembled my characters between the two games. My feet were pinned in both worlds. Straddling the same border I stood in was an ARC. It felt still, almost as if the body inside was dead. I half expected roses to be littered against the bedside in tribute.
A being appeared in the blackness of Continue Online’s half. First came the Cheshire Cat’s grin, then a motley pattern of clothes. Last was the hat, split into ends with bells hanging off. My least favorite Voice had answered the call first.
“What’s here? The portrait of a blinking idiot!” the Voice clacked at me. Its words sounded neither male nor female, but rather like a doll being wound up. No teeth lay beneath the mask, only a grin and deep sunken eyes.
“Where are the others?”
“A blinking idiot who can’t even use his gifts correctly. Do you not remember the words, dear Hermes? Is yon vessel the real world?” the Jester asked. One slender hand pointed toward the ARC sitting ten feet away.
“Isn’t it?” I snapped at the Jester. For once, the creature’s mocking presence didn’t upset me. Irritation and fresh anger overrode all prudence.
“Do you think me a fool? I am not a monkey here merely to answer your tantrum demands,” the Voice said.
“It’s about time I got answers.”
The creature’s hands raised, jingles accompanying the movement. The Jester’s face turned, and an elongated nose stuck out comically. “Then look to the East.”
James, a heavyset black man who served as my personal Voice, faded in near the ARC. He stared at the figure inside then smiled in my direction. There was a twitch of one cheek that hinted at amusement.
“Two realities, both alike in dignity, in your fair ARC where we lay our scene,” James said with a hand up. He held back a chuckle that threatened to make his belly quake. “From petty desire break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
I blinked a few times, trying to understand what James was saying. This made no sense, and it wasn’t how my usage of this ability was meant to go. It sounded as though they were both quoting plays like Jeeves had just moments before being punched clean through.
Dammit. Jeeves had died for me because I couldn’t move fast enough in a giant metal body. Commander Queenshand could have easily killed me instead with that kind of power, but she chose to pick off all the weaker party members.
“James!” I shouted and tried to move. Neither foot responded. Instead I felt frozen, stuck with a leg standing in the gray and another in the black. “What’s going on?”
“All the world’s a game, and the humans merely players; they log on in, and they log on out, and one man in his time plays many characters.” James waved his arms around in emphasis.
“Why do all this?” My yell echoed across the landscape. I felt as if two, maybe three, of me were shouting. The ARC’s feedback made my head spin. Their acting and words were throwing me off.
“Witless fool. Did you think you were the only actor upon this stage?” The Jester clacked with laughter. Its form wandered through the dark half.
“Oh, happy dagger!” The Temptress suddenly appeared. Reddened curves teased from the Continue Online side. She was close, breathing hotly upon my neck. Her quick and playful growl sent shivers down my spine. “I’ve got thy sheath.”
My head shook rapidly, and the Voice pouted. I caught a hint of an [Instant Gratification] quest box popping up, but it faded promptly. I saw a slightly flirtatious smile as the naked woman disappeared. The Jester cackled a fresh round of amusement at us. Visibly it was gone, but the Voices always watched from inside the darkness.
“Your companion’s enjoyment of Hamlet has us inspired, Hermes,” James stated as he approached. “Mezo had originally asked for an entirely different play, but we reminded her that last time she was turned down.”
“I don’t think this is what Shakespeare intended,” I said. Mezo’s idea probably wasn’t what Shakespeare intended either.
“It seems fitting enough to me. Cross Star’d lovers,” James said a cherubic smile. “For did you not cross stars for love?”
That one phrase reminded me why I was so angry. This song and dance the Voices had assaulted me with proved a distraction from the original issue. Jeeves, Treasure, Dusk passing. The [Mistborn] falling into other people’s hands. All of it aggravated me.
“And failed, because you set me up from the start.” I wanted to point a finger at James, but my body moved slowly.
The black man asked, “Why would we do such a thing?”
A lot of facts came to mind. I had been given a title [Messenger of the Voices] in Continue Online. They’d offered this [NPC Conspiracy] ability. Not just the real world variant I had used, but one that gave me abilities in Continue Online. Being overly invested in me playing and performing in all these tests made no sense when I tried to reconcile it all in my head. Or rather, it made sense when I thought about it from a certain angle, but that idea felt so dangerous that I couldn’t even think about it.
Anger clouded my judgment when it came time to act. Mezo, the Temptress, had clouded my senses. I inhaled deeply, then twice more. Relaxation techniques helped me back away from making additional choices when overloaded by emotions. One question at a time, forward toward the destination. Eventually I would run out of time on the [NPC Conspiracy] ability or get my desire of saving Jeeves and the others.
“That’s exactly what I want to know!” I shouted. “And this play, it’s Romeo and Juliet, right?” The Temptress, Mezo, had given me a rather firm reminder with the happy dagger line. That was the sentence Juliet used before stabbing herself. “Romeo and Juliet die at the end. Are you hinting at something?”
I started to go down the line of reasoning that had me so worried. William Carver. Xin Yu. Both were examples of deceased people within the game world. I had no desire to go run off a cliff just to join her on this side of reality.
“Ah yes. It is your turn for an answer. We would prefer if you didn’t die, Hermes. Is that clear enough?” James asked.
“No.” It didn’t tell me anything about what they expected; only that dying was not desirable. There were a number of ways to read into that phrasing, and my head hurt from trying to get our conversation back on topic. I wanted to be angry but felt confused.
“Then to answer your other question, you have grounds more relative than this. The game’s the thing wherein we’ll measure the conscience of a man,” James said, distracting me with his babble.
“What sort of response is that?” I yelled. My efforts to throttle the large black man were met with failure. My feet were bolted to the
ground.
“The best I can offer,” he said, not at all fazed by my outburst.
I had forgotten how infuriating his smile could be. “What good is this ability if I can’t get a clear answer?”
“The fault, dear Hermes, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” James looked up briefly then back in my direction.
That sounded like an excuse. It was the same line I had delivered hundreds of times when working for Trillium. The policies and prices weren’t mine to set. I only worked for the boss above me; they made the rules.
“Make no mistake, dear Hermes, you’re an unwitting actor on our life’s stage. Strut your brief hours upon the board, then out, out brief candle!” The Jester made a shooing motion in my direction. Bells jingled as the tips of its hat bounced around.
In the distance, other Voices faded in abruptly. Jean, the Voice of Blood with her liquid dress. Vlad and his intensely uncovered chest topped only by a bow tie. There were others: the teen in his leather jacket, a centaur who was disturbingly anatomically correct, both priests, the thick blond doctor who watched over Lia Kingsley. Their faces came and went too fast for me to get a feeling for them.
As their faces faded away, I understood what to do next. One NPC, an AI, had everything to do with Continue Online, but it wasn’t inside the game. She was the bright light that flashed above all other Voices to settle their squabbles.
“I want to talk to Mother.” My head nodded in time with the demand. One lip hurt from where I had bitten it. Virtual pain echoed into my mind.
“Dare you reach so high?” The Jester was uncomfortably close now. I could practically feel its long nose touching the side of my face. If I tried to look, we would bump right into each other.
I turned anyway, feeling braver than ever. The Jester’s face gave its creepy smile, but we didn’t touch. “I dare.”
The figure faded away and reappeared ten feet away. One of its frilled hands waved back in my direction. “A dare made by an idiot, full of sound and fury, worth nothing.”
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