End Code

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  “I was laughed at when I tried to explain what I created,” Grael says. “No one wants a smart NPC. They want fodder. They want drones. They want calculators that do what they're told. Free-thinking? Most PCs aren't free-thinking. They do what DOTgov tells them to do so they can keep on swallowing vitapaste and watching the newest video-cast.”

  Cyren's muscles relax. She leans back against a tree and slides down the trunk until she's sitting on the ground. I kneel down next to her and put my hand on her knee.

  “There are good people, too,” Xen says with a casual smile that I would be unable to give her. “People that are smart and caring and-”

  “I know.” She places her hand atop mine and glances around at all of us with a smile. “I've met some of them already.”

  “And NextWorld does have a lot to offer,” Xen adds. “Think of all the things you'll be able to learn once you can access the search engines and databases of knowledge.”

  “Maybe someday we'll be able to show them how special you are,” I say. “Maybe someday people will understand how important your A.I. actually is.”

  “Maybe,” Cyren says.

  Grael steps up so that he's standing directly in front of her and with unwavering confidence he says, “Trust me when I say this... we are going to do everything we can to not only protect you, all of you, but to make sure you're able to continue growing and evolving.” He crouches down to her level and looks her in the eyes. “Now that we've got you back, we're never letting them take you away.”

  “I appreciate that,” Cyren says. “I do. But without a way to protect ourselves, I can't stop worrying about what's going to happen to us out there... in NextWorld.”

  01101110

  One week later and I'm sitting in a restaurant in DOTsoc that's designed to sit on the top of a giant candle. The floor is made of melted red wax and an enormous flame burns in the center of the room. It all seems very pretentious to me, but it was high on the DOTsoc date night ratings, and I wanted to impress Cyren on her first visit to the domain.

  Like all the Level Zeros, she has to be grouped with a Player-Character in order to travel between domains. The rest of the civilian NPCs rely on the hackers in Sektor to cut and paste them when they want to travel.

  I peer across the table at her avatar, still covered in metal buckles and leather straps, as I hang my cowboy hat on the back of one of the unused chairs and slick my hair back, happy to be walking around in an avatar that feels like me again. We feel like us again.

  I tap my glass of wine against Cyren's glass and say, “I want to make a toast... to us.” Her eyelashes flutter a few times as she awaits my words. “Because there is nothing better in this world... or any world.”

  She smiles and says, “You are too sweet,” before she takes a sip. “Mmm. This is good.”

  “Can you actually... taste it?”

  “After spending so much time in your nanomachines, I understand senses a lot more than I used to... but no. I don't actually taste the wine. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the code. I can see what the designer of this wine was trying to accomplish with the algorithm. The complexity and uniqueness isn't lost on me.”

  “I'm glad. I really want you to have a good time.”

  She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “We're together. Of course I'm having a good time.”

  A waiter rises out of the floor next to our table, his avatar appearing to be made from the same red wax. “Have the two of you made a decision on what you would care for this evening?”

  I'm about to order when a group of teenagers start laughing a few tables away. One of the boys is trying to make his date laugh by pushing the waiter closer to the center flame. When he lets go, half of the waiter's head is melted into his shoulder.

  Cyren starts to stand up, but I reach across the table and grab her hand.

  “They're torturing that waiter,” she says. “We can't just-”

  “What we can't do is draw attention to ourselves. If you start something in a non-pvp site, you're going to raise more than a few alerts. And if they try to access your nanomachines and don't find any, they'll figure out that you're an NPC.”

  She sits back down in her chair, her shoulders drooping. “I wish you wouldn't call us that.”

  My face scrunches up with confusion. “Call you what?”

  “NPC. Non-Player-Character. It's insulting.”

  I let out a breath, hoping words will follow it, but I can't find any. I fumble for a few moments in an awkward silence before I ask the waiter for a few more minutes. He melts back into the floor.

  “I'm sorry... I didn't know that bothered you. I don't know how... I mean, should I say A.I. or...?”

  “Artificial Intelligence? No. That's just as insulting. We're real. Especially in here, in NextWorld, we're as real as you. Whether we're self-aware or intelligent or just poorly-coded monsters... shouldn't we all exist in this world as equals?”

  I set my hands in my lap and look down at my empty plate, unable to make eye contact when I ask, “Are we having a fight?”

  She laughs, taking me completely off guard. “This is only a fight if you disagree with me, but after spending so much time in your head, I'm pretty sure I know that you agree with everything I'm saying.”

  “But you said I insulted you and-”

  “No. I didn't mean it like that. And I know you didn't mean to say something insulting. That's why I'm letting you know. Those words are just... old. Out of date.”

  I take a sip of wine, trying to give myself pause to think of what to say. “So you want to be called a PC like everyone else?”

  She laughs again and holds up both of her hands. “I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you. It's just... I don't want to be like everyone else. The Level Zeros and civilians that Grael created... we know we're different, and we're proud of that. If you have to call us something, then 'Digital-Character' is fine. Or DC.”

  I actually understand what she's going through more than I could explain out loud. Trying to find herself, her place in this world, is something I can relate to. It's something I've spent a lifetime doing. And when I thought I found it, it was taken away from me and I was forced to find it again.

  Cyren glances back at the table of teenagers when the boy laughs again. He's sticking silverware into the waiter's wax avatar.

  “We have to do something.”

  “I'm sorry, Cyren, but we can't help him. It's too dangerous.”

  “I'm not just talking about him.” Her fingers wrap around the glass of wine so tightly that I'm afraid it will shatter. “I'm talking about all of them.”

  “All of them? You mean all the... the Digital-Characters?”

  “They deserve more than this.”

  I look over at the waiter, half-melted and impaled with silverware, a blank look on his face as he continues to ask the teenagers if they need anything else. His programming is oblivious to the cruelty. Like a child, too innocent to understand evil.

  “I can't watch this anymore,” she says and stands up from the table.

  A screen appears in front of me, asking me if I'd like to leave the site. I glance at Cyren one last time, wishing there was a way to salvage the night, but when the teenagers start carving off pieces of wax from the waiter's arm, I see Cyren cry. I grab my hat off the back of the chair and punch the “YES” button.

  The candle restaurant drops away and I'm standing on the DOTsoc street corner with Cyren, watching the traffic zip past us. Music pounds through the walls of a nearby dance club. A group of PCs stumble past, drunk on inebriation apps. I look at Cyren, the colors of the fireworks bursting in the sky reflecting in the tears on her cheek. I wipe them away with my thumb and pull her closer. We stand there, amid the deafening noise and frivolity, and we find calm between us.

  “Let's get out of here,” I whisper.

  “Where should we go?” she says, for my sake summoning something that looks a little like a smile.

  “Anywhere you wa
nt. We have all of NextWorld to explore.”

  She looks across the street and sees a line of club goers waiting to be let in, yelling at the NPC bouncer that's guarding the door. Then she peers down the street, studying the flashing signs for all the different sites.

  After a few moments of consideration, she looks at me and says, “I just accessed every location description in DOTsoc.”

  “You can do that?”

  She speaks with a nonchalance about her abilities. “Every Digital-Character is connected to the network that binds NextWorld together. Information flows through us like any other data.”

  “And did you find something that sounded fun?”

  Another group of drunken PCs wobble toward us, this time with no acknowledgment of us being in their path. When they stumble into us, multiple screens pop-up warning of PvP infractions. They throw out insults and curse words as they barely manage to make their way down the street.

  When we can no longer hear the barrage of trash from their mouths, Cyren says, “I miss our friends.”

  I smile and say, “Then let's go find them.”

  I open my inventory and select a vehicle. A metallic horse appears next to us on the street. It rears up on its hind legs and whinnies. When its steel hooves clop back down onto the pavement, it blows out steam from its nostrils. We both climb into the saddle and when I dig my heels against the armored rib cage, robotic wings spring from the horses sides, lifting us into the air. With a yank on the reins, the flying horse banks to the left, toward DOTgod.

  01101111

  After a quick search of my friends list, I find the site where Xen is spending his evening. It's designed like a temple that has a rather tranquil effect I didn't realize I needed after DOTsoc. Water trickles down rocks into a small pond filled with koi fish. Bamboo wind chimes click against each other in the gentlest of breezes. A low pitched chant can be heard in the distance, vibrating the air with an almost massaging effect.

  As we walk up the stone pathway and reach the temple doors, Cyren pushes them open, revealing an amazing interior of lavish gold decorations and an intricate mural depicting a vast mandala painted across every surface. In the center of the room, Xen sits perfectly still, perfectly quiet. He's also designed his avatar to look more like his old self: A young, bald monk wearing an orange robe wrapped around him.

  I hate to interrupt, but a pop-up screen opens in front of him, alerting him to our entry. He blows out the lantern sitting on the floor in front of him and stands up in a single, graceful motion. He bows to the center of the mandala and turns toward us with a look on his face that is neither sad, nor happy. I would say it matched the tranquility of the scene, but there's something missing. He looks vacant. Muted.

  “Where's Raev?” Cyren asks as we meet each other halfway across the temple.

  His head bows like he's trying to hold something back. “She was uncomfortable meeting with me.”

  “Did you use the secure line we created for you?” Cyren asks. “There shouldn't be anything to worry about. If we blocked her nanomachines from DOTgov they wouldn't be able to listen to your conversation or know she was doing anything... illegal.”

  “She didn't care about any of that.”

  I glance at Cyren, who flashes me a worried look.

  “What's wrong?” I ask bluntly.

  “She...” He hides his face from us, but I see no tears, just a concerted effort to hold back a very real pain.

  “Xen...” Cyren says his name softly and reaches out to hold his hand. “It's okay.”

  He shakes his head in defiance of Cyren's comforting words. “She disagrees with my choice to leave the mind prison.”

  Cyren says, “I knew she had hesitations-”

  “They were more than hesitations,” I say, correcting her, but she flashes me an angry look and I duck my head between my shoulders.

  “-but I thought she would understand why we did it once she actually saw you,” Cyren continues. “Once she realized how good it is to see you without anyone watching. In true privacy. And to know that you wouldn't have to suffer anymore.”

  “She thinks that I'm risking... everything. My relationship with her. My sobriety. My religion. Everything.”

  “No!”

  The word comes out louder than I expect, bouncing off the walls of the empty temple and ricocheting back toward us. It startles both Cyren and Xen, but I don't back down.

  “The real risk would have been leaving you in there. What kind of life is that? How are you supposed to accept something like that? I refuse the idea that freeing you from that place was somehow wrong.”

  “She's just worried about me. I have to hope that she'll come around... eventually.”

  There's a long pause as we all search for the next thing to say. But none of us know what words of wisdom to share, or hopeful attitude to offer. Ever since I freed my friends and re-entered NextWorld, it's felt a little darker. A little less like home.

  “This temple is beautiful,” Cyren says, thankfully changing the subject.

  “Thank you,” Xen says, a slight hint of a smile crossing his lips when he glances around the room. “I designed it a long time ago. When I was still practicing Omniversalism.”

  “But you consider yourself a Metaversalist now?”

  Xen surprises me when he shrugs his shoulders and says, “I'm not sure.”

  “What does that mean?” I blurt out. “You basically founded that religion. How could you not be sure of your beliefs anymore?”

  He lets out a sigh and sits down on the floor, folding his legs underneath him. Cyren does the same, which makes me feel awkward for not seeing the social queue to join him.

  He clears his throat and says, “The real difference between Omni and Meta in the versalism denomination are the lessons. Seven hundred and seventy-seven lessons became ten thousand through the influence of corporate donors and political figures.”

  He runs his fingers across his bald head and I can see the stress he's holding in his mind.

  “This was obviously an issue for me, wanting to hone those lessons down to an honest truth. I've always believed that there is something that connects us all, a path from one soul to another. And I believed that those lessons would open my eyes... and reveal that path to me.”

  “But now... you're questioning that?” Cyren asks.

  Xen considers her question for a moment before he says softly, “I'm questioning a lot of things.”

  My skepticism gets the better of me and I say, “Xen, I've known you for a long time. You've never doubted your faith.”

  Xen perks up, his eyebrows raising. “And I still don't! This has nothing to do with faith. I believe in the soul that resides in all of us.” He turns to Cyren and says, “Even you. There is something divine in every intelligence. What I'm questioning is our understanding of it. The lessons. The rules. The definitions that say: This is how it is. For sure. No need to look any further.”

  “I've been accessing the data available in DOTgod ever since we entered the domain,” Cyren says, “and I have to say, there's a huge discrepancy among the different religions and philosophies when it comes to the rules and guidelines for life. There are a few overlapping ideas, but beyond that, there is something that connects them all. That belief in the soul or mind or whatever term they use. A belief in the self.”

  “And that's what I want to pursue,” Xen says. “I want to keep learning, unhindered by an arrogance or pridefulness that comes from believing I have it all figured out because I have a set of rules and doctrines that tell me what the truth is. Maybe religion isn't something you should just learn about and settle into. Maybe it's about the journey, the lifelong pursuit of the truth. Or maybe I'm wrong about this too. But I feel much better acknowledging that I don't know.”

  He closes his eyes for a moment as he centers himself, then opens them and smiles at the both of us.

  “That lack of knowledge, that very real fallibility, will not stop me from seeking a place that
is as close to the truth as I can find.”

  I smile back at him, and with a small chuckle I have to admit, “I think this may be the first time you've talked about your faith where I actually understand what you're saying.”

  He laughs, accepting my words in a way that I've never seen from him before. He looks more open. More flexible.

  “I would like to help you,” Cyren says.

  I spin my head toward her, surprised at her interest. “You do?”

  “I find it... interesting. If there truly is a connection between Digital-Characters and Player-Characters, then that is something I would like to know more about.” She turns her attention back to Xen and says, “I think I could be of assistance. My ability to cross reference the information in DOTgod, as well as other domains, could prove useful.”

  Xen smiles with much more purity than earlier. “I would love your companionship on my journey.”

  I feel a twinge of infantile jealousy when I see Cyren relate to someone else so intimately, but thankfully I don't have time to acknowledge it. A screen appears in front of me with an encrypted text-cast from Fantom. When I run the decryption tool, the text-cast becomes an invitation to a private chat room with an attached message that reads: “I think you better get in here.”

  01110000

  The chat room isn't the usual lounge-type atmosphere that most people design, where the setting is created more for comfort and conversation than anything else. When I appear inside, the space looks more like a war room. A large circular table fills most of the area, covered in a map of all of NextWorld, complete with every linking back door and the underground DOTnet. The walls are covered in screens depicting bandwidth usage and data-carrier paths. Standing around the table is Fantom, Grael, Worlok, and a few key members of Worlok's hacker group, Sektor.

  But I look right past all of them at the small group of Digital-Characters standing across the table from them. I recognize every one of them, because I've fought alongside them.