by Sam Ferguson
“And Barry is dead, like actually dead. I found his body out at Site 1 the day after you went down at that camp,” Brian was surprised by how calm his voice sounded. He felt as though there was ice flowing from his heart out to the rest of his body and he was beginning to tremble with anger.
Meredith was silent for a moment. Taking the words in. “That. That can’t be possible,” she stated flatly.
Brian threw his hands up in the air and turned away, taking a few steps toward the locked door before folding his arms and standing still, not in the mood to do this whole conversation again, especially not with her.
“His consciousness still registers as active,” Meredith insisted, displaying a glowing stream of code running across her virtual palm like liquid-light ticker tape.
“What?” Brian asked, turning around.
“This is an admin terminal. I can see that the professor and Barry still have an active consciousness stored in the system here. I can’t access them the way you are accessing mine through my code key,” she pointed down to the glass object with the blue tear drop inside, “but I can clearly see they are here. The code is lengthy enough, complicated enough, I’m sure it isn’t just an echo.”
Brian’s heart lifted. The others all looked at each other with similar expressions of hope on their faces. “How is that possible?” Brian asked.
“The system is designed to safeguard the mind of each player. The neural link is so complete for the game to operate as designed that it could do serious harm if there were a malfunction. The bridge code that puts the game in touch with a human mind dictates that the full consciousness of any and every player must be preserved undamaged in the event of a critical failure. There are hundreds of back-up points across the game server, even the mobile one that is running this testing version. They store files until the protocols can be reset. Under a full-operating scenario there would be an admin actively monitoring things at every moment, but since I’m the only admin, and I’m currently down, we will need you to reset us.”
“But…” the burst of hope that had gone straight to Brian’s brain suddenly shattered, “but there is no body to reset Barry to. He is actually dead. Decaying and completely unable to be resuscitated. Probably three or four days ago,” Brian clarified.
“That just can’t be possible,” Meredith insisted again. “I was monitoring activity off and on the whole time. He showed as actively logged in even on the day of the Brightblade camp fiasco. My admin system would have showed me he had been moved to a back-up point otherwise.”
“Well, I guess we found the biggest glitch of all, Meredith,” Mike stepped in front of Brian and put a hand on his chest, clearly seeing the anger that was boiling inside of him. “You didn’t see when someone was terminally locked in limbo inside of your software program.”
Brian lost it when Meredith’s response was to cross her arms and roll her eyes in exasperation. He pushed past Mike and snatched the crystal pyramid from the pedestal, deactivating Meredith’s hologram.
“Carefully, carefully!” the scholar cried out, retrieving the object from Brian’s hand.
“I’m sorry guys, but I needed a time out from that conversation,” Brian breathed heavily, trying to get himself under control.
“Me too, thank you, my friend!” Augustin’s voice was thick as he too tried to gain control of his breathing and began to pace angrily.
“You work with the builders?” the scholar asked in awe.
“What?” Brian practically snapped at him.
“The builders, those that created this world,” the scholar clarified, turning to the others.
“Do you mean the old gods?” Mike asked.
“Oh no,” the scholar laughed gently, shaking his head. “I have seen too much, learned too much, to believe that I exist in a world created by the gods. Even they seem to have been designed by your builders.”
Brian’s eyes went wide. This is an NPC who is all too awake and aware of the situation.
“Scholar, what do you—” Brian began, but the scholar waved him off with another chuckle.
“I have a name,” he smiled.
“You do?” Augustin asked with surprise, and then seemed to come to himself. “What is your name?”
“I realized I wasn’t given one by the builders, but that seemed entirely unfair. I perform an essential function in this world after all. I’ve carefully looked through my available resources and have decided upon Zammin.”
“Zammin, that’s a nice name,” Rhonda said in a friendly tone. The scholar turned to her with an appreciative smile and bowed slightly.
“Zammin is a watcher,” Mike stated. “He isn’t allowed to interfere with what happens on the world. Is that why you picked the name?”
“Mmm, partially. Indeed, I’m not intended to interfere with who wins or who loses in this world. But every Zammin runs into a moment when he just can’t help himself,” he laughed again as he gazed into the depths of Meredith’s code key. “Let me show you.” He carefully placed the code key on the ground next to the pedestal, nestled in a tuft of plush carpeting, and pulled a smooth round stone out of his pocket. “I came across this earlier in the afternoon. I discovered your friend last night and got quite an earful from her about tracking you down at your house, among other things. Since then, I’ve been curious about this admin terminal. This appears to be a blank code key—neither of your other friends are attached to it,” he clarified, “but it has allowed me some access to the same system your Meredith sees.”
He placed the stone into the depression along the edge of the pedestal in front of the dragon. He began projecting various sequences of code, 3D mesh models of unpainted game artifacts and characters, similar in appearance to the model Meredith had been creating of their dig sites.
As he scrolled through, apparently looking for something particular, Brian leaned over to Chris and asked as quietly as possible, “What do you suppose this guy’s base program is? He could be even more trouble than Rored. He actually seems to understand this is a computer-based world.”
“Base program?” Zammin answered as though Brian had spoken at full volume. “I suppose that is an apt way to describe what drives my motives. My dear boy, I am a scholar of Anorit. The only thing I want is the truth. I exist to learn information, to record it, and to share it. Information is not your enemy, though I admit it can hurt to hear the truth sometimes. Aha! There it is.” Zammin finally stopped scrolling through images.
“Here, I think, is where you have come from.” He was projecting the 3D mesh model of Brian’s dig site, with Site 5 sitting off to the side on another level. The scholar manipulated the image and zoomed out. Now that the image was being projected in miniature, Brian could see that there were mesh models of all five sites placed around Quetrupillan volcano, with Villarrica to the West and Lanin to the East.
“Yeah, that’s it all right,” Chris breathed out in amazement.
“And this is where your friend Meredith is working.” Zammin zoomed in to the portion of the map that showed where site 5 was located. It expanded until the image showed the interior of the cavern, completely painted with the platform, pillars, mummified remains, and alien supercomputer. “I think it would be a very bad idea to let that Morr’Tai guildmaster have access to this information. From what I have read about him, he would strongly disapprove of this world if he were to discover that it was a fanciful creation of builders from his first world.”
“I agree,” Brian was a little taken aback by how matter-of-fact Zammin was being about all of this. No existential quandary. No fighting against the system. Was this all a manipulation?
“What have you read that would let you know this?” Augustin asked.
“Oh!” Zammin sounded surprised but delighted by the question. “Let me show you.” He scrolled through a set of images for another few seconds and then stopped on a 3D scan of the stone carvings from Brian’s Machi. “These.” He pointed casually and leaned back on one foot.
/> “You can read these?” Brian asked.
“Of course,” Zammin replied. He began pointing to each carving in turn as he interpreted, “It says that the priest discovered the womb of the spirits. After many years of prayer, the oracle at last spoke to him after a blood ceremony—an animal sacrifice by the looks of it. The oracle requested the priest prepare a sacred place for supplicants to request assistance. The oracle taught them the true way of order. The young and strong removed the old and weak, and a new priest ascended each generation. There are several sections that go over the generations of priests and the general crux of the oracle’s words during the time of each priest, just one-liners really, but the good part comes here, on the last two stones. A young priest declares the oracle to be a devil and is determined to break the power of its altar. The priest dies in smoke and flame, and the oracle is lost to men.”
Zammin had been glancing up to each of their rapt, attentive faces throughout the reading and seemed immensely pleased to share knowledge with such eager students. He stepped back, smiling appreciatively at the group and the projection of the stone carvings they were still examining.
“I think we need something similar,” Mike finally spoke. “We need to take that sucker out. Burn it down.”
Brian nodded. “But first we have to save Professor Rojas.”
“Meredith too?” Chris asked.
Brian was just as angry as any of them at her attitude, but he wasn’t about to leave her to a horrible, slow death. “Yeah, Meredith too.”
“Excellent. Shall we confer with your friend again? She may have had enough time to calm herself by now,” Zammin retrieved the crystal code key with the same pleasant attitude and replaced it on the admin terminal.
“Let’s try this again,” Brian said when Meredith materialized. “Let me start, if that’s okay. I’m sorry you’re trapped, but it seems that there is an artificial intelligence that had manifested itself as an oracle to the ancient people we have been studying and now has woken up to find itself a Morr’Tai non-player character. We’re going to try and kill it to see if that stops it. The problem, though, is that the save point that your files are attached to is broken. If we can stop the AI by killing its character, how do we bring you out of the system safely?”
Meredith listened quietly while Brian spoke, and while she didn’t look happy about it, it looked like she was thinking of a way to work with the information. Finally, she spoke. “If you can remove the source of the problem from the code, I can reset the protocols from here. I’m just not sure that killing it will do the trick. NPCs aren’t made to be permanently removable. They eventually respawn. I guess it’s possible you might succeed in separating the alien AI from the origin code for the character it has attached to.” She shrugged noncommittally.
“So if that doesn’t work, what else do you propose?” Chris asked.
“I think the most logical solution is to win. When you claim the crystal, it will launch the end game sequence. In the final version, this will be a cut scene that gives the wining faction a sense of victory but will leave them afterwards to defend their position as rulers of Prirodha against rivals. However, in this testing version, after the cut scene, the game should fully reset. It should exit all the discrete consciousnesses to their respective bodies.” She held up a finger to silence Brian’s question. “I’m not sure what that means for Barry. I’ll work on creating a protocol for assigning him an avatar body at that point. I understand it isn’t the same as bringing him back, but at least he won’t be completely gone. From there I’ll create a save packet, like I did for the translations I sent to you. I can download his entire consciousness that’s been saved and then partition it onto my computer separate from the game. That way the AI can’t harm him anymore.”
Brian nodded. “So beat the game, and then we can all get out of this?”
Meredith cocked her head. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
Brian turned around. “We’ll have to be quick about it, otherwise Meredith and Professor Rojas might physically die of dehydration like Barry did. But if we work together we can get this done.”
“I have already taken the liberty of compiling a master list of all main line quests,” Meredith said. “It’s one of the few admin functions I have left. Complete the main quest as quickly as you can. With any luck, you will get to the end of the game before the AI realizes what’s happening. But you should probably be prepared to fight him if necessary—we cannot allow the AI to win. If he wins, since he isn’t part of our assigned group, then we will see a losing screen, not the end game sequence.”
“And we’ll be stuck forever,” Brian guessed.
Meredith nodded. “Or at least until our bodies die. Once I’m gone, I won’t be able to download anybody. I mean, I can try to work on a way to download myself, but that’s likely beyond my reach without another admin to finish the process.”
“All right, then hit us with the quest list and we’ll get moving,” Chris said.
The scholar reached around his back and pulled out a book. “Here are all the quests you need to complete to finish your task. May the gods go with you and keep you safe.”
Mike took the book and thanked the scholar.
[QUEST ADDED: ROAD TO PANTERRA]
[QUEST ADDED: BIEL PASS]
[QUEST ADDED: TO BATTLE]
[QUEST ADDED: LOCATE THE KEYS]
[QUEST ADDED: THE GREAT TREE]
[QUEST ADDED: THERE BE GIANTS]
[QUEST ADDED: UNDER THE SEA]
[QUEST ADDED: CONQUEST OF KATHYR]
[QUEST ADDED: EXPEDITION LOST]
[QUEST ADDED: BEWARE THE DRAGON]
That’s a lot of quests...
“Well, no use standing around, hop to it! The likelihood is you’ll still be mucking around in Panterra by the time my body gives out two days from now, but with the infinitesimal chance you might, by some miracle, manage to not completely screw it up, get a move on! Oh, and another thing, you inexperienced bunch of noobs—”
This time it was Rhonda who gracefully swept the code key off the pedestal and handed it back to Zammin with a smile and a dramatic flourish. “Thank you. Thank you very much, my fine scholar. It’s been a pleasure.”
15
Respawn
Moving out into the main library, Brian could see that early morning light was beginning to peek in through the stained-glass windows along the top of each wall running the length of the large room. Though the light wasn’t strong, it made him squint after the darkness of the secret library. He looked up to search for the rippling effect in the glass on the east wall, but thought he saw something different this time.
“Hey Rhonda, what do you see up there?” He whispered, indicating with his eyes rather than his hand the direction he wanted her to look.
Rhonda gasped and took a double take. Brian was looking as well, and the thing was gone in almost the same moment that it finally seemed to come into focus.
“Zammin, do you have a fairy in your library?” Rhonda turned around and whispered to him as the scholar finished sliding the hidden door back into place and closed the glass door to shut in the books it held.
“What? Me? Where?” He looked surprised and looked almost everywhere except in Rhonda’s eyes. “What?” He finally repeated again, this time in a more studiously absent-minded, yet casual way as he finally met Rhonda’s gaze.
She smiled knowingly and ran her tongue across the surface of her side teeth as she nodded. Tapping the side of her nose, she then turned to grab Brian by the arm and drag him behind her out of the main room of the library and into the foyer.
“We’ve got other things to worry about, Brian, don’t you agree?” she asked, thumbing toward the companions who were still faithfully guarding the steps to the library.
Brian nodded and decided to let it go. He turned and looked at Mike. “How much money do you have?”
“Well, I...”
Brian waved his hands in the air as if the question
had suddenly caused the air to smell of bean-fueled flatulence. “Wait, what am I saying?” He turned to Rhonda. “How much do you have?”
A brief moment of levity hit the group as they all shared a laugh.
Rhonda said, “I have about ten thousand after selling all of our loot from the recent quests. I spent a few thousand on ingredients, but I haven’t made potions with them yet. I am sure I will exponentially recoup the investment. Why?”
“We need more guards,” Brian said. “We need to hire a lot of guards for House Bob, and we need to upgrade the house itself if we can. If the AI is going after save points, then we’ll want to protect that one if possible.”
“Good idea.”
“Let’s go,” Chris said.
The group called a final thanks to the scholar, who waved and promised to keep their secret safe, and then they exited the building to find their five companions talking with a group of town guards.
“Uh-oh,” Chris muttered.
Freya turned around and gestured for Brian to approach.
“These men say that Fezhik will stand with you,” she said. “Given all that you have done for the Greencaps, they will support you as best they can, but they advise you to be careful, as the Morr’Tai have been more active lately.”
Brian wondered if all the Morr’Tai activity was new, or if perhaps they were also speaking of his dealings. After all, he had murdered a nobleman in this very city. Either way, it was good to know the town guard trusted them. One of the guards stepped forward.
