Gamers and Gods: AES

by Matthew Kennedy

Chapter 56: Darla: Tí dýskolon? Tò heautòn gnônai.

  (“What is hard? To know thyself.” – Thales)

  Darla woke up the next day with no memory of logging out.

  I must have fallen asleep, she decided, swinging her legs off the link bed. Her second thought was regret; she must have disappeared on Aes again. Her third thought was the memory of what she had been doing before she fell asleep. Oh. My. God.

  Stumbling down the stairs, she tried to think. Part of her was as dippy as a Disney character singing with bluebirds. Part of her was afraid to ever log in again. And part of her was swearing the other two to secrecy with solemn blood oaths.

  She was halfway through her bowl of oatmeal and blueberries before she realized her father was waiting for her to speak.

  “Brain dead from studying too hard?” he guessed out loud. “No, too much to expect. Taken a vow of silence? No, that's crazy; what woman could keep that? I'm guessing a new boyfriend.”

  She stared at him, her spoon halfway to her mouth, forcing herself to remember that Manny could not read minds. But all her willpower couldn't stop her face from turning beet-red.

  “Aha! Nailed it, didn't I? Who is it, this Farker who's been messaging you? Is it the doctor? Or did you meet someone else?”

  “It's...it's not like that,” she began. God, she thought, please be real, Aes! She wasn't sure she could even log in to face him.

  “Oh, sure, it never is,” he agreed, but his eyes twinkled. “Are you going to see him again? Remember, your midterms are in two days.”

  She wanted to scream. Midterms? Was he kidding? This was her life, dammit! “I haven't forgotten,” she said.

  When she didn't answer him with a jibe or a joke, Manny began to look concerned. “Are you all right, zeisele?”

  "I'm fine,” she mumbled. “I'm just feeling zerged. I must not have slept well.”

  He gave her a calculating look, but said nothing until she finished the oatmeal and dumped the bowl and spoon in the recycler. When she turned toward the fridge to grab an iced tea, he was tapping the register's screen. “At least I know you were sleeping, not gaming,” he said. “Because you got a game-mail message from someone named Rita who wonders where you are.”

  “What?” She looked at the message he brought up. For decades now, virtual worlds and MMOs had included a feature to forward messages to your private email when you were offline. Even people who didn't know your email address could send you messages if they knew your in-game avatar name. This must have come in after she fell asleep and got logged out.

  It said: Darla. Finished midterms. Call when you can play. Rita.

  “Thanks,” she tossed over her shoulder as she dashed up the stairs.

  Manny raised an eyebrow but refrained from replying. “Young love,” he said, shaking his head. Then he closed his eyes and touched his shirt pocket again for a moment.

  Darla was flat on her back and logging into UNET in seconds. Floating in null-space she scanned her friends list. Thank the gods! Rita was online, in class. Thinking rapidly, she sent Rita a whispered plea to meet her in the Girls Room as soon as she could get away. If anyone could help her, it was Rita.

  FLASH.

  Darla looked around her and sighed. There was no time to tidy up. She started into it anyway, just to have something to do while she waited. Waving a hand, she deleted some of the older posters and set the wall screen. The talking head was doing a piece on recent renovations at the Fermilab museum in Batavia, Illinois.

  FLASH.

  “Hey, girl, what's up?” Rita looked around her. “Wow, instant deja. How long since we used this place? Six months, a year?”

  “Almost two,” said Darla. “I built it when I was a freshman taking Introductory CAD, remember? I never really finished it.”

  “I remember why you didn't,” Rita said, grinning. “Was his name Brad...or was it Tony? You were such a cyberslut back then.”

  “Gimme a break,” Darla muttered. “You weren't so monogamous yourself, back then. We both went a little wild when we discovered we could go all the way virtually and stay virgins in real life.”

  “Good times,” Rita agreed. “Too bad PanGames is kid-safe. There's a few mountaintops there I'd like to do it on.”

  Darla collapsed on the couch. Where to begin? “It's not as safe as you think,” she said.

  Rita's eyes went wide. “You found a way around the safeguards? Omigod! C'mon, sister, share it!”

  Darla took a breath. “Not an it, it's more of a who. I found us a healer for the team. But he's...complicated. A lot of the rules don't seem to apply to him.”

  “You're getting involved with a GM?” Rita was taken aback. “That's risky. Could make trouble for you, when you dump him. Now I see why you want my advice again.”

  “He's not a GM,” said Darla. She knew she wasn't explaining this well. She wasn't even sure what she was explaining. All she knew at the moment was that she really needed to talk to someone about it or she'd go crazy. “I did meet a GM named Farker though, sort of, but that's another story. He's the CIO of PanGames.”

  If Rita's eyes got any wider, they would need skull extensions. “You're dating the Chief Information Officer of PanGames?” She whistled. “Talk about aiming high. Way to go! Got to be rich.”

  “No, I'm not. I only met him. That's something else we need to talk about. But Aes comes first. A-e-s, not A-c-e. He's the one I was...intimate with.”

  “An odd name, Aes,” Rita commented. “It sounds like Latin.”

  “It's Greek. He calls himself Asklepios but that's such a mouthful that I shortened it.”

  Rita was looking at her strangely. “Is he a med student?”

  “Close,” Darla admitted. “He's a physician.”

  “It figures, with an avatar name like that. An older man?”

  “You have no idea,” said Darla. “I think he's very old.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “Why does it figure? Because I was looking for a healer?”

  “Because his name's in the first sentence of the Hippocratic oath,” said Rita. “Which, by the way, was probably not written by Hippocrates, but by one of his students later.”

  “You mean he knew Hippocrates?”

  “No,” laughed Rita. “I keep forgetting you're not a med student. All the technology overlaps these days. Asklepios was the Greek god of medicine. I looked him up while I was doing a paper on the Oath last semester. They say he was the son of the god Apollo and a mortal woman.”

  “Let me guess,” said Darla. “His mother's name was Coronis. And he married a woman in Thessaly called Epione. He had at least two sons, Machaon and Podilarius, who served in the Trojan War.” She thought for a second, remembering the butterfly. “Machaon was killed in the war, but Podilarius made it back to Hellas.”

  “I see you've done your research,” said Rita. “Why are you asking me about him, if you know all of this? Are you thinking of changing your major to History? You should talk to Sam. His specialty is Classical art.”

  “I think Aes is history,” Darla told her. “I have been too busy to do any research. He told me all that, as if he lived it himself. I think...I think he's a ghost in the machine, the real deal.”

  “Whoa! Back up, rewind that,” Rita ordered. “Now you're off the deep end. Are you telling me you think he's the original Asklepios? You don't need a friend, girl, you need a shrink!”

  Darla exhaled. “I thought you were the only one who might believe me,” she said sadly. “And instead, you think–”

  “I think you're getting sucked into his roleplay, is what I think,” said Rita. “I mean, we're talking mythology here. Even if you believe someone with the name Asklepios lived three thousand years ago, the legend says he was killed by Zeus.”

  “For bringing Hippolytus back to life?”

  “Yes,” said Rita, her eyes narrowing. “Did Aes tell you that?”

  “It's the last thing he remembers before waking up in PanGames. I found him on mount Pelion, in t
he Realm of Legends. He knew nothing about modern life or gaming. He didn't even know he was in a simulation, until I told him!”

  “Role play,” said Rita dismissively. “He sounds like a Random with a good back story. And now he's got you believing it.”

  “I don't think so,” said Darla. “According to Farker, who helped write Realm of Legends, Aes is supposed to be a NPC. You know what sticklers programmers are for name uniqueness. You can't make an avatar with the same name as a NPC, it would confuse people. It would mess with the system.”

  “Think about what you're saying, what you're asking me to believe,” said Rita. “You're saying the gods are real, and that 3000 years ago one of them got a woman pregnant, that their son healed people, raised the dead, was killed, and came back to life.”

  “A thousand years later, they said the same things about Jesus of Nazareth,” Darla pointed out. “Lots of people have no trouble believing in him. I'll bet I can find people who think Aes got rolled into his story.”

  “Not quite the same story,” said Rita, “but I see your point. But he was only dead for three days, not three thousand years. What's Aes been doing all this time? Lost his way in the Afterlife, did he?”

  “I don't know,” Darla admitted. “Sometimes I think I am going crazy. It's all so weird. You have to meet him. When Aes gets shot, his avatar bleeds! I've seen his leg bone stick out. According to Farker, who's met him, Aes doesn't have a user account. He's as puzzled as I am...and he wrote the game.”

  “Maybe Farker is playing you. Maybe he is Aes and likes to mess with people.”

  “No.” Darla shook her head. “I've seen them both at the same time. You think Farker can somehow be in two link beds at the same time? In the old days, with keyboards, maybe. But not now.”

  “I don't like it,” said Rita. “Someone is messing with us.”

  “Please try to keep an open mind when you meet him,” Darla begged. “He's become very important to me. You'll see why, when you get to know him. He'll never lie to you. He took a terrible beating when we finished the Snarky mission without you and Sam, because he was more concerned with healing us, even though we weren't feeling a thing. He feels pain, Rita. Even Sherman was shocked when he saw the compound fracture and all the blood. Aes was a mess. Thank the gods he's a good healer.”

  “Why didn't he just teleport to the hospital? He sounds like a sicko to me, some kind of masochist, maybe even a cutter.”

  “He didn't know how! He was like, level one or two, when we went in there. Sherman was pissed at me for taking him in there with us in a level 12 mission. He seems to like Aes.”

  Rita shook her head. “You're all nuts,” she declared. “All right, all right,” she said, holding up a hand when Darla was about to say more. “I'll meet him. Just don't expect me to fall to my knees and start worshiping the guy, okay?”

  Darla frowned. “Stay off your knees, period. Nutcase or whatever, he's my god of medicine. Only I get to worship him, if you know what I mean.”

  Rita rolled her eyes. “Oh, get real. I thought you knew Sam and I are together.”

  “I suspected,” Darla admitted. “I just never found the right time to ask you, then all this happened. How's it working out?”

  “Okay, for the most part. Living in distant time zones is a pain, since he's in London. But we get together in PanGames and we have a virtual condo in Eternium for our special times. It's an adults-only sim, so it's almost as good as the real thing. When I graduate I'm moving east to be with him.”

  “I'm happy for you,” said Darla. “Do you have to get back to your class right away? You should meet Aes before you decide I'm insane.”

  Rita shrugged. “The lecture is canned. I can always resume it later. Let's go meet the God of Healing.”