Level Zero

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  Grael is stunned for a moment, struggling to find a way to debate her point, but yells back at her, “You aren't a real person! You don't get to hold us hostage and make demands! We control you!”

  Cyren looks back at the ground, closes her eyes, and says, “Not anymore.”

  100111

  Grael groups with us, but only so Fantom can take the source code into the tent and have some privacy. Ekko gives me a look before he ducks into the tent, waiting for me to tell him whether or not I'll be okay, but I give him nothing. I have no idea if I'll be okay. I give him a shrug. He hesitates, but eventually leaves me here to deal with my own choice.

  When Grael walks over to the tent to get some sleep, he smiles at me and says, “You don't have to stay up with your little NPC friend there. I'm not going to hurt it. Trust me, if I could, I would have already killed it. But players can't kill Level Zeros, and Level Zeros can't kill us either. The only reason I'm keeping it locked up is because now that it knows where I am, I don't want it running off and telling the real monsters.”

  “I thought you were Level 99,” I say. “You shouldn't be afraid of anything out there.”

  His lips pucker a bit, but he doesn't lose his smile as he says, “I ain't too proud to admit that even if I was maxed out at Level 100, I can't take on the whole game world.” And with that, he ducks into the tent, disappearing into his own private instance of the interior.

  I look back at Cyren, uncomfortable in the silence that I'm left in. She says nothing. All I can see is her head sticking out of the rock, but her eyes don't look up from the ground. I think I can mentally draw her gaze, but it doesn't work. I take the hat off of my head and let the stringy hair dangle in front of my face. A part of me considers giving up. A part of me wants to go to bed, leaving her alone with the emptiness.

  When she speaks, it startles me, her whispering voice only saying, “I'm sorry, Arkade. I am so, so sorry.”

  Her apology angers me, but I'm not sure why.

  When I reply, my tone is full of annoyance. “You didn't sound sorry when you were explaining things to us. You didn't sound sorry when you told Grael about your grand plan for us all. It sounded to me like everything was working out pretty well for you guys.”

  “I'm not a part of... whatever that is out there. None of that was a part of the plan.”

  “So is that what you're sorry for? You're sorry that your plan got messed up? You're sorry that things didn't work out perfectly?”

  “I'm sorry for hiding the truth from you,” she says, and then her eyes rise up from the ground to look at me. “I'm sorry because I don't want to think that anything I did, or didn't do, could possibly have contributed to Xen's death.”

  “Don't. Don't do that. Don't pretend like he matters to you.”

  “Of course he matters to me,” she says with a whimper. “He matters to me because he matters to you.”

  I look away from her, unable to think clearly when I'm looking into her eyes.

  “Don't you get it?” she asks. “Do you really think that all of the things I said to you were lies? I care about you, Arkade. That was never part of any plan, or design, or lines of code.”

  “How am I supposed to believe you? How am I supposed to believe anything you say? How do I know this isn't all just a part of your programming?”

  She looks up into the air like she's trying to hold the tears inside her eyes. “Because no one can program me to love you.”

  I lock eyes with her. She doesn't look away. There is no shame about what she said or even a hint of bashfulness. She wants me to see the confidence she has in her emotions. She wants me to feel it, and I do.

  “I've been trying to help you escape, Arkade. Don't you see what that means for me? If we fail, that means I get killed too, no reboot and no respawn. But if we succeed, the game world is shut down, and I no longer exist. Either way, it's the end for me. But I'm willing to accept that. I'm willing to make that sacrifice, because I can't bear the thought of you not existing in this world or the real world. It's like losing you twice.”

  My mouth quivers a bit, but it finally forms the words I want to say. “You really have been helping us? You aren't here to back stab us? You aren't here to help the NPCs find us?”

  She looks panicked as she yells, “No! I would never hurt you, Arkade.”

  “Why? What makes me so special? You barely know me.”

  Her eyes shift, as if she's ashamed of what she's going to say. “I don't want to lie to you.”

  “So tell me the truth.”

  Her mouth opens. She hesitates again, then finally whispers, “You were the only one they wanted to keep in our world.”

  My mind tries to catch up to what she's saying, but my mouth blurts out the question, “Why?”

  “The civilian NPCs looked at the player profiles and figured out that you were the son of a politician. They weren't sure if your government would just shutdown the rest of the player's E-Wombs. But they knew that you were too important. Corrupting your nanomachines would be a liability for your global government.”

  I feel my eyes blinking, but my brain isn't working. Her words have stalled me, like my own personal processing error.

  “So... that's why you wanted to protect me?”

  She shakes her head and says, “No. In fact, I was here to protect everyone else. It was the other players that I felt sorry for. They were the real victims. And maybe that's because of my programming, some left over code telling me to group up with the players who need me. I don't know. But you were never a part of it. You were... you were something else.”

  Thoughts swirl around me. I see Xen's face, and I know he only died because he was logged in at the same time as me. Every player trapped in a coma right now is there because of me, because I'm the son of someone deemed more important, because some computer decided I was worth more than everyone else playing the game.

  Cyren speaks like she can read my mind through the expression on my avatar's face. “This isn't your fault, Arkade.”

  I feel a surge inside me, a drive toward my goal that feels stronger than it ever has. “I need to make this right.”

  “Let me help.”

  “You truly want to help them?”

  “Yes,” she says. “And I want to help you.”

  “Because you love me?”

  “Even if you don't believe me, I want to spend as long as it takes to prove it you.”

  I'm denying how I feel. I know I am. I want to love her so badly. I want to dig her out of the rock with my bare hands. I want to hold her and tell her that she doesn't need to die, not for me or for anyone else. I want to tell her that together we can accomplish anything. I want all of that, but the real world keeps hanging onto me. It keeps its claws in my back, pulling me away from her. It keeps reminding me that there is another world to think about.

  “Do you know why I spend so much time logged in?”

  She looks up at me, afraid of the answer, but still says, “Please tell me.”

  I take my own deep breath, giving myself a moment before saying, “I used to live with both of my parents. My father never spent a lot of time with either of us, because he was always campaigning and doing business in NextWorld. I barely saw him. He was always inside his E-Womb. He would come out to eat and sleep, but that was it. My mother would always assure me that he loved me and that he was spending time inside so that her and I could spend time together outside.”

  I rub my face, unsure if I want to continue, but my mouth keeps talking before I can think about it anymore. “I guess in a way what she was telling me was true. His job, and their partnership, was what provided us with a family tower room. It let us all live together. We didn't need to visit each other in the communal area. My mother didn't need to bring me to DotKid so that I could play. He was absent so her and I could be together. He sacrificed himself... for us.”

  I know what I'm about to say, and the pain is already crushing me. “My mother died when I was ten. She was gi
ven the first generation nanomachines that the government was injecting into the population as part of their global health care initiative. They malfunctioned. They didn't recognize a serious blood clot and so they never cleaned it out for her. She suffered a brain embolism. She died right in front of me. I sat with her for four hours before my father logged out of NextWorld and helped me.”

  “Arkade,” is all she says, and I can tell she doesn't know what else to say.

  “It's been almost six years since that happened, and I've spent ninety-nine percent of that time in NextWorld. At first I thought it would bring my father and I closer together. I figured if that was the reality where he was going to be, then I was going to be there too. But there was no place for a little boy in the DotGov domain. So I wandered around, from domain to domain. I started in DotKid, like everyone my age, and that's where I met Xen. But we both had bigger aspirations. As soon as we were allowed by age verification, we ventured out of DotKid and into the DotFun and DotSoc domains.”

  “You were both looking for companionship, just in different ways.”

  “I guess so. Xen found it. But I didn't. I spent all of my entertainment vouchers on games, but I still remained alone. I played games with thousands... millions of other players, but I never grouped with anyone. I never saw anyone as my peer, or socialized in any way. I ran around DangerWar, killing anyone who crossed my path. I obliterated their avatars before they even had a chance to interact with me.”

  She smiles the saddest smile I've ever seen. I walk over to her and run my hand across her spiky yellow hair. I brush the back of my finger across her cheek. My knuckles feels rough against the softness of her skin. I get lost in the uniqueness of her design, intricate and defined. A dichotomy of edges and curves.

  When I pull my hand away from her I say, “You can't sacrifice yourself for me. I'm just another player, but you're something the world has never seen before. You're artificial intelligence that has surpassed the artificial part. You can feel, Cyren, and that makes you just as real as any of us. You're more than real.”

  She looks up at me and says, “You're the one that made me feel. I won't let you die in here. There's no other way, Arkade. You need to log out, even if that means they shut me off.”

  I shake my head and close my eyes, silently promising myself that I'll find another way.

  101000

  I open the message window in front of me and begin to flood the group with messages, hoping the constant alert tone will wake them from their slumber. It takes nearly an hour, but Grael finally comes stumbling out of the tent. He's rubbing his face and tying his bright red dreadlocks behind his head, obviously still groggy and disoriented.

  “What... what is going on?”

  I stand up and point at Cyren. “Let her go. Now.”

  His shoulders droop as if he's disappointed that I've woken him for something so trivial. “I told you, I'm not going to let an NPC run around free. If I could, I would have already killed it.”

  “Let her go. Now,” I repeat, but this time the words come out as a growling demand.

  His eyes blink a few times before he says, “Look, I'm sorry if you've developed a little crush on the girl we designed, but I'm not going to risk my own life just so you can try to touch that leather suit. Go to bed.”

  I rush at him, but he's too fast. His Level 99 strength grabs me by the neck and lifts me off the ground with one hand. Cyren screams for him to let me go, but he completely ignores her.

  “Are you being serious right now?” he asks with a smirk on his face. “You're going to attack me over... over something that isn't even real?”

  He's choking me, but I manage to force out of my mouth, “She's real... to me.”

  That's when Ekko crawls out of the tent. It only takes him a second to realize what's happening. He grabs Grael's arm, trying to pull him away from me.

  “What are you doing? Let him go!”

  Grael tosses me across the room and says with annoyance, “He attacked me.”

  I rub my throat, trying to get my voice back, and when I do I say, “I just want him to release Cyren.”

  Ekko looks at Cyren, then back at me. “Arkade, you know he can't do that.”

  “Why not? She saved your life how many times? You can trust her!”

  Ekko looks back at Cyren, studying her face before he turns toward Grael. “It's true. She did fight alongside of us. I'm not sure we would have made it this far without her.”

  Grael shakes his head and says, “It was programmed to help you. But I can no longer trust that code. If the game's code is changing, how do we know that the code for the NPCs isn't changing too?”

  “I would never do that,” Cyren says.

  Grael audibly scoffs and says, “Why should I believe you? Why wouldn't you change your code?”

  When Cyren answers him, her voice is quiet. She isn't yelling, or arguing, she's only stating fact. “Changing the world is one thing. Changing the thing that makes us who we are? It feels... wrong. Blasphemous. I am the way I am for a reason. If I'm going to change, I'm going to do it through learning, and feeling, and new experiences. Not rewriting lines of code.”

  Grael laughs even harder. “You're telling me that an NPC has ethics?”

  “I'm telling you that I have a mind that makes choices. And inside this game world, that means I'm no different than you.”

  “Except that I'm real!” he yells through his condescending laughter.

  “Why? Because you have a body? What does that matter inside of here? All that matters when you're logged in is your mind. Your thoughts. And if I have those things inside here, then I'm just as real as you.”

  He holds his head in his hands and says, “I'm not going to sit here and argue philosophy with an NPC.”

  “Just let her go,” I say. “We'll leave peacefully. We'll let you hide in your little hole, and we won't come back. Use your magic to seal up the cave behind us.”

  Grael stares at me like an old-fashioned stand off. Our eyes squint, waiting for the other one to blink first.

  Fantom crawls out of the tent, almost on cue. She's holding the giant book of source code, tucked under one of her arms. She's looking around at all of us, seeing the apparent tension in the air.

  “Fantom!” I shout at her. “Please tell me you found something.”

  She nods, but the look on her face is not one of hopefulness. “Do you want the good news, or like, the bad news, yo?”

  I shake my head. I'm in no mood for games. “Just tell us... please.”

  She takes a heavy sigh and says, “I found the back door or whatever. That's the good news.”

  I think that if the back door exists, no other news could really ruin it. I'm wrong, of course.

  “Where is it?” Ekko asks.

  Fantom lets out a heavy sigh and says, “They moved it to center of the desert zone, yo.”

  “Of course,” Grael says with a laugh. “That zone is meant for Level 85 and higher.”

  “Maybe I shouldn't even ask,” Ekko says, “but if the NPCs can move the back door, why didn't they just erase it from the code altogether?”

  Grael speaks without laughing, possibly for the first time. “They might be able to alter rules... changing the values of variables is one thing, but they can't just delete something like a back door without risking a complete system error that could shut down this whole thing. They're smart. Instead of deletion, they made it impossible for an avatar to access it.”

  “They only wanted to make it impossible for me to reach,” I say.

  No one says anything, but everyone is looking at me with confusion.

  “He's right,” Cyren says.

  She tells them everything she's told me. She explains that the civilian NPCs and Level Zeros had no way of keeping only me logged in, so they had to shut down the entire log out function. Anyone who happened to be logged in at the same time was just caught in the same trap.

  “This is my fault,” I say.

 
Ekko grabs both of my arms and shakes me as he says, “I don't ever want to hear you say that again, son. This is their fault. You had nothing to do with it.” He looks at Cyren and asks, “If you're an NPC, can't you rewrite the code? If you're on our side, why can't you let us out of here?”

  Cyren's face is strained, like it actually pains her to say, “Level Zeros never had that kind of power. It's the civilian NPCs that are running the game world.” She looks at Grael and says, “And you know that. You know that there's no way the Level Zeros could be behind this because you didn't give us the same algorithms that you gave the civilian NPCs. They were your guinea pigs. They were the ones you wanted to give all the power to.”

  I turn to Grael and ask, “Is this true?”

  The smile is gone from his face. It looks blank, as if the life has been drained from it.

  “Sure. I mean... we gave them a different set of tools. We wanted them to be more than just decorations. We wanted them to-”

  “You wanted them to run the game for you,” Cyren says. “You gave them the power to fix bugs. They were supposed to be just like the nanomachines in your body. This isn't an error... they're doing exactly what you told them to do. The only error is the fact that you don't agree with them on what's wrong with the game.”

  We all turn back toward Grael, but he's holding up his hand defensively and smiling again. “Look, all that is true, but we gave them special code because they were civilians. They aren't allowed to use weapons. All they were supposed to do was fix vehicles that didn't operate like they were supposed to, or fix mapping errors, or fix doors that weren't opening properly-” As soon as he says it, the irony slaps him across the face.

  “And that's like, exactly what they did,” Fantom says, slamming the source code book shut and inserting it into her personal inventory. “They like, found a door that wasn't working properly. Because for them, the log out process was like, killing the intelligence you gave them. It was destroying the growth that you allowed them to have, yo.”