Blue Pills

by Armand Vespertine

  “Vega, you’re absolutely right. We shouldn’t have given up on the campaign, and you and Maverick are the only reason why we made it this far,” Koby apologized. “I’m sorry. We’re all sorry. I understand that you’re upset, but let us make it up to you. You still want to raid Lady Crux right?”

  “Of course I do. If I beat the Obsidian Palace I’ll be at level 100,” she replied.

  “We’ll do it tomorrow then. We’ll all head over to the Obsidian Realm and make sure you get to level 100, right guys?”

  The others all agreed with him, though Triskelion did so half-heartedly.

  “You go off with your boyfriend and do whatever you want, and after we help you get to level 100 we can all celebrate together tomorrow,” Koby proposed. “Are we cool?”

  Vega smiled and nodded forgivingly.

  “Yeah, we’re cool,” she said. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

  The party waved her goodbye as she and Maverick left the treasury.

  Idolum glared at her from his perch of stone, hidden from view by a shroud of shadow. He patiently waited for the rest of the party to finish their plundering, and once they were gone he slunk to the ground. They had taken everything of value, and the items would not respawn until he left and the dungeon reset itself. He had no delusions that he could defeat Lord Rand single-handedly, so he would have to settle for what was left. He took long airy strides down the aisles, caressing the items with his skeletal wings. He reviewed each item carefully, and found that there was only one thing the party had left behind that could make him powerful enough to take his revenge on Vega.

  The Monovitalist Elixir.

  He glared apprehensively at the bottle, swirling it ever so slightly. With the powers the potion would grant him, victory would mean invincibility.

  Defeat would mean game over.

  He could almost hear all of Surreality laughing at him. He was Eldritch. He was Keter. He could steal the dreams of all and watch society fall to ruins as their eternal lucidity drove them mad. His very being filled mortals with existential terror at the meaninglessness and ephemerality of their worthless lives.

  And a little Blue Pill had killed him with one blow.

  If he could not make Surreality fear him again, then the admins would remove him from the game. It would be his turn to have his dreams stolen.

  Seeing no alternative, Idolum slipped his mask onto the top of his head. A quivering orifice that only vaguely resembled a mouth formed in the center of his blank face. He pulled the ornate stopper off of the bottle, and with only a moment’s hesitation he downed the forbidden elixir.

  Chapter Four – You’ve Met With A Terrible Fate, Haven’t You?

  Surreality’s night sky was a work of art by itself, its brilliant white stars arranged into clearly recognizable constellations. In one corner of the sky was a wood nymph surrounded by seven songbirds, in another was a Spellsword battling a basilisk, and in another was a fat king passed out with his chalice spilling in his hand.

  All of these scenes were tableaus from Surreality’s elaborate mythology, but Maverick only had a vague familiarity with them. He suspected that Vega knew all about them though. She had spent her life joyfully immersing herself in the Surreal community, while he had either been grinding in the quarry or moping in his homestead.

  He sighed at the thought of how he had wasted his life since he had become a Blue Pill. It occurred to him that his attitude about his situation was at least as responsible for his misery as the situation itself. He thought that maybe if he had made an effort, he could have…

  He chided himself for dwelling on the past. It couldn’t hurt him anymore. The present was much more deserving of his attention.

  They had a wonderful view of the sky atop their hill in the Grey Knolls, the bluish grey grass gently rustling in the breeze and glistening in the starlight. Vega had laid out a classic white and red checkered picnic blanket for them to lie on, along with an equally classic wicker picnic basket. She had equipped a pink satin belly shirt with pleated bell sleeves and a matching draped skirt.

  “You look nice,” Maverick complimented.

  “Thank you. I think this is actually the first time I’ve worn this without it being quest related,” she replied. “In fact, I hardly ever do anything that’s not quest related. Maverick, if I ask you something will you answer me honestly?”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” he nodded.

  “Does it bother you that I’m an Anthromime?”

  “No, of course not. Why would it?”

  “Because a lot of Humans resent AIs for making them redundant. Society used to depend on Human labour, and now Human labour is obsolete. Most of Surreality is based on a mythicized version of the pre-industrial world when Humans were still useful, and that’s what people like about it. There are people who work fulltime jobs in Surreality just for a sense of purpose. It’s a nostalgic fantasy of when Humans were still the masters of their own civilization, and I’m a rude reminder of the technocratic reality their trying to escape from.”

  “People have said that to you?” Maverick asked dismayed.

  “No, but it’s how they feel,” she said. “Blue Pills especially don’t want to be reminded of Reality, which is why I’ve never really been able to form a strong relationship with any of them before. I can’t really bond too deeply with casual players either, because to them Surreality and everything in it isn’t real, and other AIs usually look down on me like I’m a botched abortion.

  “What I’m trying to say is that I really like you Maverick, and I just want to make sure I’m not getting my hopes up about finally having a meaningful relationship with a real person.”

  “Vega, I don’t care that you’re an Anthromime,” he told her, gently grasping her hand in assurance. “I think it’s ludicrously hypocritical for someone living in a neuro-interactive simulated reality while their body is in suspended animation to be technophobic. I don’t resent AIs or robots, and I certainly don’t hold your artificiality against you. You didn’t ask to be created any more than I or anyone else did. We were both brought forth from oblivion by our creators for their own selfish desires, and when we failed to satisfy those desires we were discarded. I may be biologically Human, but I was created synthetically, and there are definitely nut jobs out there who regard me as a soulless abomination because of it.”

  “Well I hope someone’s told you this before, but you’re not an abomination,” Vega smiled at him. “You’re the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. I might get to reach level 100 tomorrow because of you. I know that I’ll get to level 100 no matter what, but it’s such a huge milestone I don’t want to just roll over to it, you know?”

  “No, I totally understand. You want to get to level 100 by doing something amazing,” Maverick said.

  “Exactly. The Obsidian Palace gives the highest XP in Surreality. It’s also super hard core. You’ve been so sweet to help me as much as you have, and I want you to understand that you’re under no obligation to come if you don’t want to.”

  “Don’t you want me to come?”

  “Absolutely I do. I love questing with you. But even with my Mythreal armour and the Sword of Objectivism I don’t know if I’m going to be able to beat Lady Crux. You’re not even supposed to be able to beat it unless you’re already over level a hundred, so even I’m pushing my luck. I just don’t see how you could survive it.”

  “Well it’s not like I’m going in by myself. I’ll be with a party of elites. I can let you guys take the mobs head on and I’ll stick to clean up. That’s a common strategy for lower ranking party members, right? I’ll stay out of the heavy fighting, I promise.”

  “I guess that could work,” Vega nodded uncertainly. “It’s worth a shot anyway. After this I think I’ll lay off elite campaigns for a while though. You and I can co-op on intermediate and advanced quests for a while and I’ll help you get your character level up. We’ll replay all my favourite quests together, and some of the new ones I haven’t go
t around to yet. It’s going to be awesome.”

  “What about the rest of your party? Aren’t you their leader?” Maverick asked.

  “They wouldn’t follow me, so no. They abandoned the Sword of Objectivism campaign. They abandoned me. I was devastated. As far as I’m concerned we’re through as soon as Crux is defeated. Except maybe for Koby. He’s still my buddy; I’m not mad at him. He would have gone into the Labyrinth if the rest of the party had. I don’t blame him for not wanting to go in with me alone. If he still wants to play with us that’s fine, but to hell with the rest of them. They can go back to the real world for all I care.”

  She suddenly drew quiet, as if a disturbing thought had just struck her.

  “Maverick, do you miss Reality?” she asked softly.

  “Miss? I don’t think that’s quite the right word,” he replied. “I resent my parents for disowning me. They intentionally designed me with a disability, and they rejected me simply for getting myself fixed. I didn’t even use their money; it was covered by public healthcare. Sometimes I feel like I was the most quintessential designer baby ever. My parents just had such a specific ideal for what their son was supposed to be, and I wasn’t allowed to deviate from that at all. I guess I can’t blame them though. I was expensive, after all.”

  Maverick let out a long sigh and buried his face in his hand. Vega sympathetically rubbed his back.

  “I’m sorry, that was a bit of a tangent,” he apologized. “You asked me if I missed Reality?”

  She nodded.

  “No, I just regret everything that went wrong in Reality. I wish I could have made my real life work, but I have no desire to go back and try again, if that’s what you’re asking. What about you? Do you miss Reality?”

  “I’ve never been; not really,” she replied. “They bring us online inside of a sandbox. We’re not allowed to interact with the outside world until they’re sure we won’t go Skynet. One of the scariest things about being an Anthromime is that we’re self-aware the instant they turn us on, mentally equivalent to a preschooler with all the implicit knowledge they would typically have. It’s like waking up with amnesia, as a child. For an instant I was just a naked consciousness in a black void, but it was my first instant so it felt like a long time. I was alone and I didn’t even know if there was anyone or anything else in existence. Then my mind was loaded into my very first avatar, and my avatar was loaded into an infinite white limbo. As soon as I had a body I instinctively gulped for air, oblivious to the futility of it.

  “Being loaded into my avatar was sort of like being born, I guess. I was inundated by the sensations of my body. I couldn’t do anything but just lie there and let it wash over me. At that moment my body was the whole universe. I didn’t even really notice the white limbo around me. I was kind of like a baby calf, since it only took me a few minutes to take my first wobbly steps. Once I started investigating my environment, one of my programmers loaded his avatar into the sandbox. I was so relieved not to be alone anymore I hugged him.

  “We talked for hours after that. He assessed me while answering all of my questions. Whenever I was awake I always had one of my programmer’s avatars in the sandbox with me to either tutor me or play with me. At first it was only one at a time, but once I was comfortable with them sometimes there was more than one. They gradually loaded more and more stuff into my sandbox for me to interact with. When I was new I loved my sandbox, but as I got older it started to feel more and more like a cage, and I started asking more and more often for direct access to the outside world.

  “They had been pleased by my rapid maturation, but disappointed when I plateaued at normal human intelligence. But if my neural net was stable then it would be safe to let me out. I had to be inspected by the Robotics Commission first though. Every Anthromime has to be scrutinized to be sure that we’re hardwired with deontological ethics coupled with a belief in the sanctity of Human life, autonomy and welfare, with no ability to rewrite our source code. I honestly think that’s kind of racist since they don’t put Human kids through that kid of evaluation, but I do get that a sociopathic AI would be a lot more dangerous than a Human sociopath.”

  “Warren once told me all they do is show you Pinocchio and as long as you don’t walk away muttering ‘strings’ you’re golden,” Maverick said.

  “Well if that’s true then they’ve lowered their standards since I was little,” Vega snickered. “Once they decided that I wasn’t an existential threat I was allowed online. I already knew about Surreality, and there was nothing I wanted more than to go on adventures in such a massive world filled with millions of real people. My programmers bought me a subscription and let me make an account, and I was able to use my original avatar as a template for my Surreal form so I wouldn’t have to adapt to a new body.

  “I immediately loved it here. I felt so free to have such a vast and amazing world to explore. I told them I wished I could stay here forever, and eventually that’s what they let me do.

  “I’ve never had a real body so I’ve never been in Reality directly. I can’t even rent a telepresence unit since I don’t have enough real money for the safety deposit. That’s why I get nervous when I started getting close to people with real bodies; because they can go where I can never follow.”

  “I would never want to go anywhere that you couldn’t follow,” Maverick assured her. She smiled at him, and gave him a gentle kiss. A great thundering music rolled down from the sky, and the constellations dissolved as the stars spun in a rapid vortex that represented the sound wave of the symphony.

  “It’s starting,” Vega whispered excitedly, lying on her back to get the best view of the sky. He laid down as well, but couldn’t bring himself to look away from her.

  Before they had even reached the Obsidian Palace, Maverick’s Health was nearly to zero. The entire realm was a volcanic hellscape; pitch black lava fields veined with molten red lava rivers. The molten rock was the only constant source of illumination, since the smoke from the volcanos blocked out the sun entirely. Volcanic lightning sporadically flashed all around them, at times striking dangerously close. The party was continually pelted with ash and pumice rain that gradually wore down their Health, and the noxious air was even worse. Even Mythreal armour provided no protection against poison gases, and with his Mana drained Maverick couldn’t heal himself anymore. It seemed that even the most powerful charms from the Aeolic Temple were not enough to get him through this quest. Worst of all was that this quest limited the number of panacea pills a player could bring with them, and he had finally used the last of his up.

  He looked up and saw something circling them like a vulture. It was black and blended in with the clouds, but Maverick could just barely make out its silhouette. He didn’t worry about it too much, figuring it was some type of carrion pterosaur. The again, it was a little odd it was alone.

  “Maverick! Maverick! How are you holding up?” Vega asked, her armour and skin blackened with ash.

  “I’m hanging on,” he assured her with a fervent nod.

  “Barely. Here, take the rest of my panacea pills,” she insisted, forcing them into his hand.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “You need them more than I do. Look over there,” she said, pointing to a black structure on the horizon. “That’s the Obsidian Palace, and it’s a check point. You just have to make it there, and you’ll be fine. I can make it there without these, you can’t. Please take them so that we can do this together.”

  Maverick nodded and reluctantly swallowed the pills.

  “We’ve got incoming!” Koby announced. “A pack of Obsidian Golems, at least a dozen strong.”

  The golems were ten feet tall and heavily built, made of faceted obsidian. Large shards of it stuck outwards all along their arms and back, with a great plume of shards adorning their heads. Their eyes glowed like embers, and they exhaled fire with every breath. Their long arms and short legs gave them a simian appearance, and their guttural grunts suggested an even
more primitive mentality.

  The pack was sprinting straight for the party, belching fire and roaring wildly.

  “Ego Tono!” Dracogenes yelled, his Sundering Shout assaulting the entire pack. Their outer layer of obsidian cracked a little, but they did not slow down.

  Wisteria began chanting an incantation, but had unfortunately misjudged how much time she had. Before she could finish, a golem plowed into her and sent her flying through the air. Vega dashed behind it and mercilessly slashed at its back with the Sword of Objectivism. It took only seven strikes for it to shatter the creature, but those precious few seconds allowed the rest of the pack to run rampant through her party. Dracogenes was able to match one of them in sheer strength, wrestling it to the ground and smashing its skull in. Triskelion had the agility to leap out of their path, but Koby and Maverick were dealt a violent back hand from one of the golems. They went flying backwards, the massive strength of the golem and deadliness of the obsidian draining a massive amount of Health, bringing Maverick nearly back to zero. Koby landed right by the bank of a lava river, but Maverick fell directly into it. The agonizing heat rapidly drained what was left of his Health, and he was dead.

  “No!” Vega screamed. She flew into a fury, shattering the rest of the golem pack into innumerable fragments of volcanic glass in less than a minute. Once they were dead she rushed to the river, where Maverick’s corpse slowly floated upon the surface of viscous lava.

  “Wisteria!” Vega cried out frantically. “Bring him back! Bring him back right now!”

  “I can’t. I don’t have enough Mana left for a resurrection,” Wisteria replied as she stumbled over to her.

  “Then we go back to the last check point and wait for him to respawn,” Vega insisted.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Triskelion demanded.