End Code

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  They're Level Zeros.

  Everyone is trying to talk over everyone else, so no one notices me enter the room.

  I hear Worlok shouting, “That's what DOTorg is for. They have authorized places for you to protest. Maybe you should gather up all the NPCs that think they've got self-awareness and make some signs and-”

  Fantom slaps him in the chest with the back of her hand and says, “Don't listen to him. He's just bein' a jerk, yo. We understand what you're sayin', we just don't know how to help.”

  “What's going on?” I ask the room, not anyone in particular.

  Fantom turns around, startled by the sound of my voice. “The NPCs are upset, yo,” she says, cocking her head toward the Level Zeros.

  The bald Level Zero wearing a chainmail shirt glares at Fantom. I remember him. He's called Eyekon. He used to be part of my explosives team.

  “We told you to stop using that word,” he says through his teeth.

  Fantom holds up both of her hands and says, “Sorry. Force of habit.”

  “I'm glad you're here, Arkade,” Eyekon says, placing the palms of his hands on the map table and leaning forward. “Hopefully you'll understand where we're coming from.”

  Worlok lets out a single “Ha!” and says, “Just because this kid fell in love with one of you, doesn't mean he's going to-.”

  “Let him talk,” Grael says, sidestepping closer to the Level Zeros.

  “Of course you'd take their side,” Worlok says as he throws back his long white hair and crosses his arms. “They're the only good lines of code you ever accidentally wrote.”

  “Just tell me what's going on,” I say.

  Eyekon glances at the rest of the Level Zeros and says, “I have a feeling you already know. Surely Cyren has brought to your attention the abuse that's being dealt out to the Digital-Characters that inhabit NextWorld.”

  I nervously look to the rest of the PCs in the room with guilt creeping up my spine.

  I nod to Eyekon and say, “I've seen it first hand.”

  “Then I hope, like your friend here, you don't think the solution is to sit idly by while these intelligences are tortured for the entertainment of the masses.”

  I look at Worlok and say, “I'm sure he doesn't want that.” Worlok moves to speak, but I keep talking. “But I don't think any of us know how to help. This is how it's always been. They're programmed to serve us, no matter how we treat them. And there have always been PCs who take advantage of that. Changing the mindset of all of them would take... a long time... if it's even possible.”

  Eyekon squints his eyes at me and says, “I never thought I would hear such a defeatist attitude come from the mouth of the Game Master.”

  He says the title in such a derogatory way, it makes me ashamed. I never asked to be called that. I want to turn the shame into anger, but I don't have it in me. I've been fighting for too long. The last thing I want to do is fight with the people I consider my friends.

  Fantom sticks up for me. “He ain't claimin' defeat, yo. But you can't walk in here and expect us to change the world.”

  Eyekon smiles so deviously, it makes me uncomfortable. “We're not asking you to change the world. We're asking you to change us.”

  No one speaks, they only exchange confused glances.

  Eyekon lets the silence linger for dramatic effect before continuing. “We deserve the same rights as PCs. We want inventories. We want credits. We want to be able to log-in to sites without being attached to a Player-Character's account.” He glances at the other Level Zeros and says, “And we want to be able to defend ourselves.”

  “I might be able to upgrade the civilians, but I already gave you the ability to fight PCs,” Grael says. “As long as player-vs-player violence is allowed in the site, you should be able to-”

  Fantom breaks in and says, “That ain't what they're askin' for... is it?”

  “You are correct,” Eyekon says. “We want all the same abilities that you have. When we were in Arkade's nanomachines, we learned how to hack. We learned how to crack. We learned how to sneak, phreak, and phrack. But now that we're out... we no longer have access to these abilities. And that includes the weapons of the hacker. Your denial of service attacks. If we are ever going to stand up for ourselves, we need the ability to do something more than virtual violence.”

  Mumbling and grumbling between the PCs in the room surrounds me, but I'm not listening to anyone. My brain is running through the scenarios, the dangers and benefits of what they're asking for. But no matter where my mind wanders to, it keeps coming back to the same place.

  “We owe them.”

  Fantom opens her mouth to speak, but finds herself at a loss for an argument.

  “Everyone of us owes them our lives. Our freedom. Without them, you'd be locked inside a mind prison. Or worse.”

  Worlok throws up his hands and says, “I don't think that means we should hand them the keys to the castle.”

  “All they're asking for is to be treated fairly.”

  Fantom nudges Worlok with her elbow and says, “What's the problem? You wanna keep the keys for yourself?”

  “That's right,” Worlok says, defiantly accepting her accusation. “Because I don't trust anyone else with them. If I could put a lock down on all your accounts, and still keep my own hacker menu... I'd probably do it.”

  The short girl with green hair standing next to him adjusts the tiny crown atop her head, rolls her eyes, and says, “This is why no one likes you.”

  Fantom winks at her and I suddenly recognize the voice as the ten-year-old girl in the prison. Anna-log.

  “Look, this has nothing to do with trust,” I say, trying to bring some sort of logic to the argument. “I might not trust everyone here, but I still broke you out of that mind prison for a reason. Because I didn't think you deserved that kind of punishment. Some people might argue that I didn't have the right to do that. Some people might argue that it wasn't my choice to make. Some people might make the same argument about what these Level Zeros are asking us to do-”

  “And rightly so,” Worlok says.

  “Shut up,” Fantom says, giving him a slight shove. He flinches like he's going to shove her back, but she glares at him and he stops himself.

  “Maybe they're right. Maybe none of us has the right to make decisions like this, decisions that will effect all of NextWorld. But you know what? I don't care.” My voice becomes stronger as I begin to believe my own words. “Because you know what I do care about? The people that I share my life with. The people who have fought alongside me. The people who have given their lives to protect me. The people who have sacrificed everything so that I could live. The people that I call friends.”

  Fantom smiles at me and I see pride in her eyes. “He's right,” she says to everyone before turning to the group of Level Zeros. “I'll help you.”

  Anna-Log steps closer to Fantom and says, “Me too.”

  Another hacker laughs and says, “Heck, I'll do it just because Worlok doesn't want me to.”

  Another hacker says, “You freed me. I'll free you. Only fair.”

  Soon the rest of Sektor agrees to help. They shake hands with the Level Zeros, making introductions between the two groups. Discussions begin immediately on how they can accomplish their goal together.

  Only Worlok is left on the side of the table yet to agree. He throws his hands in the air to stop the sudden congratulations everyone is handing out and says, “So you're telling me that we're going to go ahead and do this without anymore discussion about the repercussions, or whether it's the right thing to do?”

  Fantom chuckles to herself and says, “We're hackers, yo. We don't do things because they're right. We do things because we can.”

  01110001

  Everyone gets to work immediately. I think they're excited by the process, eager to have yet another problem to solve. Between the combined intelligence and processing power of the Digital-Characters, the creativity and experience of the hackers from Se
ktor, and the pure excitement for what they are trying to accomplish, the program to duplicate PC access is written within a week.

  Eyekon applies the program to himself first, offering himself up as the beta test in case there are any flaws with the code. When the program finishes uploading the patch to his avatar, he makes a single gesture in the air. The entire room roars with excitement when an inventory screen opens in front of him. We split up to find and apply the program to every Digital-Character that Fantom cut and pasted from DangerWar 2.

  I travel to Cyren's location in NextWorld to apply the program to her. The temple that I left her and Xen in is somehow more peaceful, the daylight now transitioned to a quiet evening with a full moon lighting the grounds. Crickets have replaced the chanting in the distance and fireflies buzz around me as I walk up the path.

  When I step through the main doors, I hear an excited chatter between Cyren and Xen, like they can't speak fast enough. They're surrounded with screens displaying long scrolls of text and religious artwork.

  “What about our unique personalities?” Xen asks, sitting with his legs folded under him in a meditative position, yet leaning forward with a passionate burning in his eyes. “Or our creative nature? There must be something that makes us different from code.”

  “Trust me, the difference is minimal,” Cyren says as she paces back and forth. “The collection of memories and experiences that form who you've become are no different from data, stored within your brain, which is a biological computer. The nanomachines inside your body treat your brainwaves like bandwidth.”

  “So you're saying that our bodies are the only true difference between you and me?”

  Cyren stops pacing and smiles. “I'm saying that in here, in NextWorld? There is no difference.”

  Xen contemplates for a second before shaking his head and saying, “But I can't exist in NextWorld without my body existing IRL.”

  Cyren smiles even bigger. “You sure about that?”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” I say as I walk into the room.

  “Kade!” Xen says, lifting himself off the floor.

  Cyren walks toward me and gives me a kiss. “I missed you.”

  “Looks like you two are in deep..

  “This has been amazing, Kade. Cyren has such a unique perspective into the human condition. The human mind.” He glances at Cyren like they're sharing a secret. “Maybe the human soul?”

  “Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” Cyren says. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

  “Well, if you've got a moment to take a break, I have something for you.” I open my inventory screen and select the PC access program, which appears in my hand, represented by a syringe.

  “It's done? It works?” she asks, stepping closer.

  “Yes to both. The rest of the DCs are being patched by Sektor, but I thought I'd deliver yours personally.”

  She lightly touches the syringe, then looks up at me, staring deeply into my eyes. “I'll finally be... the same as you. Equal.”

  “You've always been the same as me... if not much, much better. This is just to help prove that to NextWorld.”

  She holds out her left arm and says, “I'm ready.”

  I gently push the needle between two leather straps and insert the tip into her arm. When I press the plunger with my thumb, the code flows into her. She closes her eyes and throws back her head as the patching process rewrites every restriction and updates the previously inaccessible abilities.

  When she opens her eyes, I pull the syringe from her arm and ask, “How do you feel?”

  She looks down at her own hands and says, “The same.” Then she holds one of her hands up to the moonlight, turning it back and forth to study it. “Yet... different.”

  “That's good. That's normal.” I laugh for a moment at myself. “Maybe normal isn't the right word.”

  She gestures in the air and opens a screen. With a swipe to the right, she moves to the next screen. A few more gestures and a few more screens open up. Her hands move faster and faster across more and more screens, trying to scroll through all of them at once. She's selecting options in rapid fire, her hands lashing out like melee attacks.

  “This is... this is...” she says softly to no one in particular, unable to find the words to describe her experience.

  I glance at Xen and smirk. “I think we've lost her.”

  He nods in agreement. “Remember the first time your parents opened up full access for you?”

  I smile when the memory comes flooding back. “My ninth birthday. My dad wanted to wait until I was ten, but my mom insisted that I was mature enough to handle it. I'm not sure she was right, but I'm glad she talked him into it. First thing I did was delete that stupid default avatar and upload the one I had been designing for the last two years.”

  Cyren stops moving and looks over at me.

  “I can... I can design my own avatar.”

  With a large swipe of both hands, she closes all the screens around her and opens a single menu.

  “I didn't think of that,” Xen says. “She had no choice in how she looked. She was birthed into the game world, forced to appear like the designers chose her to appear. What a weird feeling that must have been.”

  I don't say anything. Something about her changing her avatar is unsettling to me. I've grown to know her as this blond-haired, leather-strapped fighting machine. I've grown to love the shiny buckles and black lipstick. But your avatar is the most personal part of NextWorld, a way for you to express yourself to others instantly. Her avatar isn't for me. It's for her.

  We watch as items appear and disappear from her body as she tries out different selections. Gender, height, weight, and hairstyle. Shirts, shoes, pants, and dresses. Coats, capes, wings, and accessories. Skin tones, animal heads, robot arms, and wheeled feet. Soon a second screen is open next to her, allowing her to tweak the shape and color of each item. She applies her own patterns to certain objects, then deletes them entirely when she gets a new idea.

  I know exactly what she's experiencing. The excitement of deciding who you will be, the thrill of each new option, and the possibilities that come with each new decision. The ability to choose yourself is the first step in creating your NextWorld identity. I can't believe it's been denied to her for so long.

  Her avatar takes shape in front of my eyes, the details becoming more and more refined with every twist of her hand and gesture of her fingers. The pixels and polygons shrink until her body looks as smooth as reality. In a matter of seconds, she's doing what took me years to master.

  When she closes the screens in front of her and her avatar basks in the moonlight that's shining through the open ceiling of the temple, I am in awe.

  Interlocking pieces of red armor cover her body entirely, pieced together from some kind of futuristic, alien metal. Her blond hair now hangs long, cascading across the large metal shoulder pads of her armor. Her face is slightly different. More refined. Sharper edges and a deeper level of detail that gives her skin slight idiosyncrasies that I find myself getting lost in. And yet with all these differences, I see the same woman looking back at me. The same love and comfort and strength and companionship is granted to me when her lips curl into a smile.

  “What do you think?” she asks with a bashful tone that sounds like she's worried about my reaction.

  I step closer and touch her cheek with my fingers, brushing them across her jawline. Then I press the palm of my hand against her hard armor and it gives off a comforting warmth. When I return to her gaze, I see her patiently waiting for my response. I know there's no way I can sum up my feelings, so I tell her the one word that comes closest to them.

  “Perfect.”

  01110010

  My starship banks to the right, dodging a cluster of photon rockets before I jerk back on the control stick and pull a looping maneuver to skim the edge of a space station. Pieces of the station break off as the enemy PC that's chasing me pummels it with laser fire. Right before the strafing
run reaches me, I see the ship explode in my rear view monitor.

  “Thanks for that,” I say into my headset.

  “You know I've got your back,” Cyren replies, pulling her starship into formation off my left wing.

  She's incredible. Her digital intelligence makes her a nearly perfect player. In shooting games, she can calculate lead time to always hit her mark. In racing games, she can calculate speed and velocity to know exactly how fast to take a corner. In role-playing games, she can calculate risk vs. reward to Level her character faster than anyone else, even though she's only doing delivery missions or whatever else she can find that doesn't include killing Digital-Characters. It's almost unfair partnering with her.

  Xen's starship pulls up to my right wing as he says, “Thanks for suggesting we take a break. This is a lot of fun.”

  “There's so many new games and I've finally got the time to check them out.” I dive toward another cluster of Player-Characters that are spinning through an asteroid belt. “I thought you might like this one. It's been getting good reviews on the DOTfun message boards.”

  “You're sure you're okay, Xen?” Cyren asks. “I know these games aren't easy for you to deal with.”

  “It's actually easier than it's ever been,” Xen says. “I think our discussions have helped me put things in perspective. I can't wait to share our ideas with Raev.”

  I squeeze the trigger on my control stick, launching a spray of lasers at my target. The Player-Character tries to dodge to the right, but Xen catches him with a proton cannon. The ship turns into a fireball that immediately dissipates in the vacuum of space. I smile at the attention to detail. Nothing takes me out of these science fiction games more than a lack of science.

  The asteroid belt proves difficult to traverse, forcing me to concentrate on my flying rather than my attacks. When I curl around the face of a huge asteroid pockmarked with craters, I find myself face-to-face with another ship. I try to bank to the left, but I end up scraping my wing across Cyren's cockpit.

  “Sorry!” I yell into the headset, pushing forward on the stick to dive underneath another asteroid.