“Likely story. You’re reckless enough to be Carver’s reincarnation, and that fool didn’t know anything of fear. Defying the Voices, breaking into another man’s fears?”
“I’m not Carver. I’m just a man who filled his shoes for a little while.”
I didn’t want to belittle William Carver’s memory, but Wyl kept asking. The guard wasn’t going to let go of this topic until it had been explained satisfactorily. Occasionally customers who demanded an over-explanation while I repaired their ARCs had the same attitude. Normally they were men.
“That’s not good enough for me, convict. First you waltz in here like these nightmares mean nothing! The only man I’ve ever seen with such bull-headed disregard and that weapon is Will, and he’s dead!”
“Yes, he is, in your world and in mine,” I said.
“Who are you? His son?” Wyl’s breathing sounded worse.
“No.” My own father was dead too. “I promise to explain, but only once we’re all together. I don’t want to repeat myself. And you need to get through—”
“That’s what you told that Traveler, but I deserve to know!” Wyl shouted unsteadily. “I’ve held my tongue while you all prance me about the wilderness in the name of your kind’s stupid goals, and so far, you’ve given me precious little reason.”
“Go through the exit and get healed. Then we’ll talk.”
“Tell me.”
“Not until you’re better.” I needed him to trudge off now. Explaining myself would take an hour at least. That included time for follow-up questions, cries of outrage, and repeating myself a dozen times. All of which I expected after having worked customer service for so long.
“I was better! For two damned days, while you were off prancing around in whatever fairy-tale land your people come from!” He swung the blade at me, but his wounds were so bad the weapon fell short.
“You’re not now. I promise by all the Voices I’ve met to answer your questions.” I didn’t have a better object to swear by. Some of those Voices would happily apply penalties if I broke my vow; others might find it funny.
He glared at me for a full minute. My body felt heavy under the weight of unspoken waves of frustration. Wyl’s body gave out first, and he swayed to one side with a grunt. I moved to help him, but the stubborn man held up a hand. He righted himself, then stumbled off toward the curtains.
I felt sure the next noise would be the crash of a large man falling over. After two minutes, it seemed as though he’d made it through to whatever came next. I hoped he ended up reaching the [The Shadow Zone] or whatever location it was Shadow had access to. There Awesome Jr. or SweetPea could easily heal him.
We were headed through all these events with a purpose. I passed through the curtains again, expecting to come up behind a faltering Wyl, but this time, my journey between scenes was far shorter. I came out on yet another stage and saw a young woman sitting there.
My niece sat on the stage with sheets all around her. Up above, a faint violet light shone down. There were no straw men or plastic dummies anywhere. I stepped in, then remembered how interacting had triggered my own white light from above.
Beth gave a stuttered laugh of delight. She had an actual tail that suspiciously twitched. It looked devil-like and pointy, similar to the Temptress Voice, Mezo’s. It might be close to my old [Red Imp] appendage as well, but that idea was weird. Whatever was going on in her list of fears, I didn’t want to know why it might make her giggle like that. I threw [Morrigu’s Echo] in javelin form toward the blue, almost purple light, and it shattered to pieces.
My niece’s body straightened, and the long strips of black fabric faded away. She stood slowly while blinking. After a moment, the young woman turned and saw me, then went crimson in the face.
“Uncle Grant!” She threw her hands across her chest and pelvis. Beth was fully clothed but acted as if she wasn’t wearing anything.
I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, then rocked side to side. There were a few real fears an adrenaline-loving teenager might have. Given my own close calls with parents walking in at poor times, she had likely been caught in a valid but childish reason to panic. At least, if I understood this stupid stage correctly.
Walking into high school buck naked would have been a neat and simple thing to worry about. Maybe it was best Beth didn’t get visions of her family dying. The idea of her having such an innocent problem compared to the trauma Wyl or I saw made me laugh.
My hands went up. “This isn’t real. I didn’t see whatever you think I saw. Let’s go please,” I said between chuckles while waving at her. I didn’t need to look away, but it felt awkward anyway. Parenthood would have been rough for me.
“Okay!” she said, and I heard footsteps.
I risked looking at my niece tuck behind a curtain as another light flickered on. My chest lifted with a huge breath, then let it out gradually. My fingers rubbed at stiff neck muscles, and I glared at the curtains. There were no signs of her emerging and another scene starting, but that damned stage light was on again.
Those little flame creatures existed out here to collect thoughts and ideas. Maybe they would listen now.
“Do you guys want me to break that one too? Because whatever you’re doing to Beth, I’m not really going to be happy about it!”
There was a pause while another light threatened to turn on. A faint hint of white could be seen, and my head shook while I glared at the catwalk. I could almost make out little beings of flame performing whatever stagehand duties they needed to do up above. I [Recall]ed [Morrigu’s Echo] and hefted the spear form in one hand.
The air felt momentarily heavy and my surroundings slow. [Awareness Heightening] kicked in automatically, and I eyed creatures shuffling at brisk speeds. They moved too quickly for me to stop them, but I saw them moving objects around. I targeted one while readying [Morrigu’s Gift] for a throw.
The creature hissed a jet of steam, then ran off. The motion of curtains stopped, and the backdrop behind me was suddenly replaced with a simple brown. Violet and white illumination in the catwalk flipped off, and house lighting came up rapidly. A green sign flickered above a doorway in the audience.
Beth came stumbling out of stage right with a confused expression. “What, what was that? I was just…”
She sounded puzzled. It had taken me a moment too, but my response had been anger. My niece wouldn’t have the relationship I did with these AI programs.
“I think the show is over.” I pointed at the exit with [Morrigu’s Gift]. It shifted to a calm-looking pole with a hook, then I tucked it under my toga’s belt. “Let’s go.”
“That was weird. I had invited a friend over, and then…” Beth frowned.
My hands went up. “I don’t want to know.” And I didn’t want to share my own nightmares.
She remained quiet while we went to the exit. I kept an eye out for those caretakers of this place, but I didn’t see any more. Maybe they were off having a smoke break or whatever digital programs did when there weren’t people to torture with visions.
The faded red doorway opened and revealed another cavern. I walked through eagerly, and Beth quickly followed. She bumped into me while I gasped in wonder at the ceiling.
Stars were above, and they looked far brighter than any I had ever seen. It reminded me of Advance Online’s character creation room. Only there were no options to choose races like [Cricket] or [Behemoth].
“Where are we?”
“The Shadow Zone! You made it! Awesome!” someone said, followed by a sharp grunt of pain.
I chuckled. The floor was covered by a shallow but thick fog that almost made seeing my feet impossible. A dais stood out in the distance.
This new area was filled with people. Wyl looked terrible. Awesome Jr. and SweetPea stood together. He was near a board, moving pieces around, and she looked to be knitting another object. HotPants stood with her staff, muttering to a shorter girl who wore a robe with a hood over her face. The robe made it ha
rd to tell, but a small amount of black hair spilled out from the hood’s confines.
I narrowed my eyes and tried to absorb the staff in her hands. It looked like carved black bone with a serpent coiled around it. My head tilted and took in the robe and one skeleton standing behind her. Then I laughed.
It was her. It had to be Xin. Before I fully registered the motion, my body had already [Blink]ed over the distance. My feet didn’t even hesitate, and I grabbed her and spun her. We tipped slightly, but my [Coordination] handled the uneven ground easily.
“Ahh!” She stuttered as the hood fell back. “Dammit, Gee! I was going for mysterious!”
The short woman laughed, my heart surged, and my eyes were damp. It was her, in person again.
“You think I couldn’t figure out it was you?” I asked as we slowed.
The rest of the crowd was muttering, but their words didn’t matter right now.
“Now that we’re all here,” Shadow said with his artificially gruff voice, “perhaps you should start explaining.”
My head shook. I wasn’t even sure what the Voices would do if I explained myself. [The Messenger] title, [NPC Conspiracy], and most recently [Altered Aura]. All of those items mixed together put me in an awkward between position with the people of this virtual reality and my own.
Luckily I had practice airing my situation to a room full of semi-strangers. Maybe that was one of the few perks of being me.
“Right, I’ve promised everyone to share what I know.” I looked at my hands and tried to figure out exactly how much to share.
“It’s okay, Gee. You can tell them.” My fiancée nodded and smiled.
“Everything? Even about… you?”
Her words were quiet. “James said the choice was yours, as it must be.”
I nodded and chewed one lip. That sounded like something James would say. Balance had said much the same general idea. I should act as deemed necessary by my own personality, and when had I ever been one to hold back over explaining my life? I often told other people too much, to the point of coming off as a bit preachy. Perhaps that was part of the reason Mother had chosen me. They needed someone to think about problems and be willing to explain it to a circle of people.
Even now, the others stood around me, forming a loose gathering. Wyl had stepped up to join them and waited with his arms crossed. SweetPea set down her items. Shadow fiddled with one of the small statues but otherwise stayed quiet.
“Right.” I nodded a few more times. “Well then, I’ve told this story to others before, and I’ll tell it again. It may sound crazy or unreal, but I assure you it’s not a dream. It’s my life, and it’s been a wild ride for a while…”
This time, I told it all, about Xin’s former life and her new one. Xin tucked in close. Her thin muscled arms found the gap in my toga and reached around my side. I kept an arm around her shoulder and drew her in. She reacted as though there hadn’t been a gap of years in our association. The feeling reassured me and made me sad at the same time. To Xin, perhaps not much time had passed.
I needed to ask her about it after the others got done with their responses. I wrapped up the remainder of my story, including bits about Hal Pal, Jeeves, Mother, and any other details that came to mind. Around us, a panicked array of questions flowed. I had no idea who to address first.
Session Eighty-Five — Dirty Laundry
All of them were shouting, but one voice stood out among the others.
“What do you mean you were William Carver?” Wyl asked. He had pushed past the younger players and stood right in front of me.
Xin’s skeleton guard moved half an inch in response. I had the urge to yank out [Morrigu’s Gift] and start smacking the freaky construction.
“Only for the last four weeks. From just before SweetPea started playing until his death, I was pretending to be him. The real William Carver, in our world, was apparently all but dead by then, and the Voices wanted to give him a send-off. One last moment to feel like a hero.” I looked down and took a breath. Those final moments had meant perhaps as much to me as anyone else. “I did my best to do right by him.”
The mass of people demanded different answers at the same time. I held up my hands in hopes they would calm down, but the quartet seemed unwilling to handle it. Wyl stayed bottled up and didn’t move right away. After a few seconds of glaring, he turned and pushed through the crowd.
After seeing their reactions, I wondered how they’d managed to stay quiet during my explanation. That might have been a muted influence from the Voices, or they were simply interested. My attempts to get them to speak in turns failed. None of my prior experiences had prepared me for yelling over other people or snapping them to attention.
“Agghh!” a wild shout barely preceded a crack of noise.
The skeleton that had been standing off to Xin’s side rapidly moved in front of us with one arm up to block. Both its knees bent to absorb the impact. HotPants’s glowing red staff bore downward on the skeleton. Her hair tips were white hot and fluttered slightly in a nonexistent wind.
My fiancée stood, readying her own weapon. Small white symbols fluttered around the robe’s hem as she prepared to chant something. Shadow appeared next to HotPants and wrapped his arms through the older woman’s. The younger teen struggled to hold back an angry mother while I chewed my lip.
“Jesus!” Awesome Jr. said with an unexpectedly serious tone. “Take a walk!”
“Asshole! You let us believe he—you—fuck! You were dead!” She practically spit the words as pressure increased. Muscles along her arms twisted and coiled under the strain of oppression.
Xin’s skeleton had hairline fractures all over that hadn’t been there moments ago.
“William Carver is dead,” I said with a firmness from years of customer service. The edge of [Awareness Heightening] threatened to kick in as my heartbeat climbed, but the threat had passed. Instead, I felt a little more surprised that not being dead had garnered such a reaction.
“Come on. Remember your exercises. Breathe. In with the good,” Shadow said in hushed tones to the older woman.
She let herself be dragged backward. “Goddammit!”
Something crashed as they walked off through a doorway.
Xin turned toward the fractured skeleton and pursed her lips for a moment. One slender hand touched its white body. The creature collapsed, one bone at a time, and a rune flared for each vanishing piece. White lights cascaded around as her summoned creature’s entire body vanished into her clothing somehow.
“Sorry about that. HotPants has been increasingly volatile since Haven Valley,” Awesome Jr. said with a surprising amount of diplomacy.
I nodded slowly, then reached for Xin’s hand. She turned and squinted for a moment while her nose flared. The woman was annoyed—not at me, but at the others’ disrespect of the situation. At least that was how I normally remembered those expressions. It had taken me a long time to understand her mannerisms. In public, she chose to let me take the lead and grew annoyed when others slighted me. It had taken almost a decade of working my ass off to get that level of respect from her.
My almost casual acceptance of Xin having abilities should have bothered me, but it didn’t. Here in a virtual world, violence was natural. If we explored dungeons together, we would have plenty of opportunities to use abilities. I swallowed a moment of unease.
“It’s okay,” I said to her and softly caressed the back of Xin’s hand.
The others were more hesitant in their responses. Awesome Jr. hadn’t said much yet, taking a backseat and fiddling with his army pieces.
“Everyone here was affected by Mister Carver’s passing. It sounds like it wasn’t easy for you either,” SweetPea said.
“How could it have been? We had all just started. I thought he was a NPC at first, then once I realized he was still alive during the last moments, I… well it helped me get myself together,” I said.
Was SweetPea really only nineteen? These teenagers were all
so grown up at times. Maybe it was a matter of what they dealt with. My own life had changed a lot since I started playing. The same may be true for them.
“Do you really talk to them, this world’s people, outside of Continue?” the young woman asked.
“The Voices mostly. I’ve talked to them a few times in my Atrium. Recently one of them kicked the others out.” I wished they had another name. Telling people I talked to Voices from a video game felt a step shy of needing a straitjacket.
“Awesome. They’re self-aware enough to rein each other in,” Awesome Jr. said.
“And she’s really a copy of your fiancée who died years ago?” SweetPea asked with soft tones. Her fingers fidgeted with air, and her legs crossed at the ankles. She seemed to be struggling not to pull the hoodie down in shyness.
I hesitated before answering. My eyebrows lowered while I studied Xin. She was a copy, but at the same time had lived experiences of her own.
“I don’t feel like a copy, or dead if that’s what you mean,” she said while smiling at me. “At first I felt rigid, unnatural, but the longer I exist here, the more natural this world feels. There are just extra rules and things move faster.”
“That makes sense,” Awesome Jr. spoke up.
SweetPea’s eyes opened wide for a moment, then she turned around. Her head tilted in confusion.
“You remember all the other NPCs we’ve dealt with?” Awesome Jr. said. “They’re super complex. There’s an entire Neural Matrix Primer class at school using Continue and Advance Online as case studies.”
“Oh yeah. That course is hard,” Beth spoke up. She sat a little off from me. “Plus the teacher makes no sense.”
“Are you in that program?” The alchemist in his ugly green cloak paused to look at Thorny.
“I attended a few classes after”—Beth glanced at Xin and me—“well, I’ve had more interest lately, you know?” She shrugged.
I looked at my fiancée. She smiled and leaned her head back slightly. Being so close to her physically made life feel right. Well, we were only here digitally or mentally, but it was real enough for me to be happy.
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