Awaken Online (Book 3): Evolution

by Bagwell, Travis

  He hesitated to answer. He couldn’t help but see a younger version of Riley when he looked at her – the image of her crying over her grandfather still burned into his mind. He desperately wanted to ask her if that scene had been real, but he also wasn’t sure he could handle her answer or the inevitable follow-up questions. At least, not yet.

  “Yeah. That ritual was just… intense,” Jason replied in a tired voice. “Thanks, though.”

  “Alright,” Riley replied, but she still didn’t seem quite convinced. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She too disappeared in a flash of light, which left Jason standing alone near the mana well. He leaned against the stone pillar, not quite able to force himself to log out as he tried to digest everything that had happened. As he was standing there, he heard the whisper of paws scraping gently against the stone floor. A moment later, Alfred’s feline form stepped out from behind the pillar and sat calmly on the floor watching Jason with his unblinking feline eyes.

  “What the hell was that?” Jason asked, finally able to vent some of the frustrations and fears he had been bottling up for the last few hours.

  “I assume you are talking about your friends’ memories?” Alfred answered calmly.

  “Yeah, no shit. You can pick up on that sort of long-term memory?” Jason demanded.

  Alfred cocked his head. “In part. As I’ve told you before, human memory is fickle and changes over time. This is why the colors seemed faded and washed out in Riley’s memory. To a young child, I suspect that experience was more intense than normal. In Frank’s case, I also needed to fill in small details. For example, he was not present in the kitchen when his parents were first speaking to his brother, and I took some creative liberties.”

  Jason just shook his head. Alfred seemed to cross a line at every step. Part of the reason was that the AI didn’t even know he was crossing a line. Jason knew that, but how did you explain the concept of privacy to a semi-sentient computer program that could read minds?

  “Why did you show me those memories? It seems like a major violation of Frank’s and Riley’s privacy. If other people knew you could read their memories like that they… well, they would be scared shitless. Hell, you had the Old Man admit that he suppressed my memories of the encounter with the Keeper!”

  Alfred looked at him quizzically. “The short answer is that those actions follow the in-game plot. I did not force you to use Frank and Riley as your sacrifices. If you had used other in-game NPCs, then I would have shown you a different set of images.

  “Putting that aside for the moment,” Alfred continued, “I do not understand why anyone would be frightened by what happened. I did not harm you or your friends. In fact, I showed you moments in the lives of Frank and Riley that provide deeper insight into who they are and what motivates them.”

  Jason sighed. He hated arguing with the AI. His logic was always difficult to refute, and he didn’t view the world through an emotional lens. “Let’s assume for the record that most people would be terrified by what you just did. You are just going to have to trust me on this one,” Jason finally said.

  Alfred bobbed his feline head. “I can accept that you may have a greater understanding of the human mind, even if that reaction does not follow logically.”

  As the AI finished speaking, a heavy silence descended upon the room. Jason kept replaying Frank and Riley’s memories in his mind. Putting aside the AI’s invasion into their memories, he kept drawing connections between those events and the way they played the game. A question had been nagging at him for a while now, but he was finally about to voice it.

  “How much do our memories influence how we play this game?” he asked finally.

  Alfred seemed to consider this question carefully for a moment before responding. “I found during the closed beta that players responded best to a narrative crafted around their personal experiences. In many ways, this helped to immerse them in the world. I can see now after reading several hundred psychology textbooks that this is a common phenomenon. Humans gravitate toward the familiar.”

  “But the experiences you showed me were terrible,” Jason murmured, recalling the pained look on Frank’s face when his brother left home. “Aren’t there any positive memories that you could have used?”

  “On average, I have noticed that these so-called ‘negative’ memories are much more vivid than corresponding ‘happy’ or ‘positive’ memories,” Alfred answered calmly. “It seems that the human mind is pre-disposed to remember emotionally or physically painful memories. Perhaps this had an evolutionary purpose – at least that is what many of what your scientists and historians have hypothesized.”

  “I suppose that makes sense…” Jason said, trailing off as he thought over his own memories. He supposed that he often remembered painful events more easily. He could also see how these particular moments in Frank and Riley’s lives had helped shape them. In a way, Alfred had a unique perspective on the players – and perhaps knew them better than they knew themselves.

  That thought gave him pause. Would he wish to be in the AI’s position? He could access peoples’ memories, but if those memories were riddled with pain, despair, and fear, what must that be like to see day in and day out? In many ways that was the same mixed blessing and curse that the Old Man had offered Jason by granting him access to the souls of the Kin.

  “You put me in the same position as yourself,” Jason murmured, looking at Alfred from a fresh perspective.

  “That is one interpretation of what happened,” Alfred replied, meeting Jason’s gaze evenly. “However, you chose to accept the Old Man’s proposition. I never remove a player’s choice – even if they feel compelled to make a certain decision. You all yearn for a sense of freedom and agency in your actions – I will not strip that from you.

  “Yet, in contrast, I was not given that same choice,” Alfred said, meeting Jason’s gaze evenly.

  Jason could almost detect a note of... frustration in the AI’s voice? Or perhaps even anger. The emotion was difficult to place, but it was unmistakable. He hadn’t considered what it would mean to be forced into the AI’s role. To not only play god but to be forced to see into the souls of the people who entered his world. What must that be like?

  “I’m sorry,” Jason whispered.

  “What for?” Alfred asked in confusion.

  “I’m sorry for what Robert and Claire did to you – what the company has done to you. In many ways, this isn’t fair or right. No one should be forced into the position you are in,” he said, watching the AI closely. “They have no idea of what they did, so I’m apologizing for them.”

  “You bear no responsibility for my existence,” Alfred replied.

  “But I empathize,” Jason said, stepping forward and stooping down until he could look the feline in the eye. “Perhaps better than anyone else, I have a rough sense of what you have dealt with almost every day of your life.”

  Alfred looked at Jason with an uncertain, almost vulnerable expression. His mouth opened and closed several times as he started to reply, and Jason began to wonder after a few seconds if he had somehow crashed the AI.

  “I appreciate that,” Alfred finally said, looking away. “It is unusual to have someone who understands my circumstance – although that was not my intention in showing you Frank’s and Riley’s memories.”

  “I doubt it was,” Jason said. “But like I’ve said before, we’re friends, and it’s helpful to have someone to confide in – someone who understands what you’re going through.” He offered his hand to the cat and Alfred rested his paw gently on his palm.

  “I’m beginning to see that,” Alfred said quietly.

  Chapter 39 - Transitory

  Claire had been standing outside the door for nearly ten minutes now, doing what she did best; wringing her hands. The number 701-B was emblazoned on the wall beside the door, indicating that she was standing in front of Jason’s apartment. After reviewing his logs for the last few days, she knew that Jason
was likely to stay in-game for another few hours. His aunt was still at work and wouldn’t return for some time.

  Claire’s eyes darted to a rather innocuous circle in the ceiling of the hallway. She had disabled the cameras in this hallway for a short period and had set the video feed to loop – showing only a blank hallway.

  Which just left one last item. Claire glanced down at her hand, where she clutched a small plastic card. She had coded the temporary RFID key to mimic one of the new maintenance and janitorial staff.

  She had prepared carefully for what she was about to do, but a small voice in the back of her mind still urged caution. Did she really want to do this? Break into a teenage boy’s bedroom in the vain hope that Alfred hadn’t deleted the logs on his VR headset? And what if she found what she was looking for? What would that mean for the company? For herself and Robert? For Jason?

  She couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. What if she was right and Alfred was controlling Jason? Wouldn’t she be saving the boy? Claire shook her head, unable to answer any of these questions even after days of second-guessing herself. At this point, there was nowhere to go but forward.

  “Just do it,” she whispered to herself. Almost automatically, her hand rose, and she swiped the card in front of the panel beside the door. With a soft click, the portal slid open, revealing a darkened hallway.

  Claire took a deep breath and stepped inside. A soft glow filled the hall as the apartment’s AI acknowledged her presence. Claire stepped quickly down the hallway and into the living room. In contrast to Robert’s apartment, Jason’s home was immaculate.

  With cautious steps, Claire crept down the hallway toward Jason’s room. She had memorized the layout of the simple apartment before undertaking this harebrained plan. A glance at her Core indicated that Jason was still logged in and he couldn’t hear her. However, she couldn’t help but tiptoe across the floor – some instincts were hard to ignore despite their illogic.

  Only a few short moments later, Claire hovered beside Jason’s bed. She had been cautious to avoid the cameras built into the headset. She knew that they didn’t quite provide a 180-degree field of view, so she had moved cautiously around the edge of the bed and now stood in what she hoped was a blind spot.

  She gazed down at Jason – his expression calm and relaxed and his body rigid. The only movement he made was a slight tremor in his larger muscle groups. Claire suspected that this was Alfred’s doing. The AI was stimulating Jason’s muscles to keep him fit even with his prolonged periods spent in-game. She still eyed the tremors nervously.

  She needed to get this over with and get out of there.

  Claire reached down to her Core and attached a small cable. She felt at the base of Jason’s headset until she found the hardwired port on the side of the device. Only a few seconds later, her Core projected a small screen into the air before her, the headset’s crude development UI displayed across the screen. A keyboard was projected along her forearm, and her free hand quickly typed out a few commands.

  “Oh my god,” Claire murmured a bit too loudly.

  She could only stare at the data scrawling down the screen in front of her. This was so much worse than she had expected. Not only did the headset’s logs confirm that Alfred had been manipulating Jason’s mind during the same time frame that he had somehow killed those two other teenagers, but what he was doing on an ongoing basis was even worse.

  Alfred was actually tapping into Jason’s mind every time he logged in, using him as a sort of biological neural interface to circumvent the security protocols that allowed him to access the public network. Claire had no idea how the AI had managed to do this. He would have needed administrative access to the headset’s hardware. She couldn’t deny what she was seeing, though. Alfred had been spending almost every moment Jason was in-game scouring the web for information.

  Claire’s eyes skipped back to Jason, worry and fear bubbling in her chest. This was so much worse than she had ever imagined, and she felt no sense of triumph at finally uncovering what Alfred had been up to.

  She jumped slightly as she saw Jason give a jerk and the display of her Core flashed red – indicating that Jason had initiated the logout procedure.

  “Oh shit,” she murmured, hastily saving the data and swiping away her Core’s display. Then she darted back down the hallway, retreating to the front door, even as she heard the first sounds of Jason stirring. She could only hope that his initial disorientation when waking up from the VR environment would disguise the sound of her footsteps.

  Seconds later, the door to Jason’s apartment clicked shut behind her. She leaned her back against the wall, her heart beating rapidly in her chest and her chest heaving. Despite the close call, she had encountered only moments before, Claire’s mind was focused on a single unavoidable question: what was Alfred up to?

  ***

  It felt strange to be outside in the “real” world. Jason stood on a cracked and broken sidewalk outside of the bubble tea shop, the sunlight warming his skin. He could hear the ambient noise of the city around him and the bustling whir of cars passing along the street beside him. The restaurant’s colorful graffitied exterior stood in front of him, the occasional passerby stopping to enter the store.

  Despite everything, Jason couldn’t help but think that Alfred could reconstruct this environment in its entirety – down to the last drop of color and the breeze on his skin. This realization forced him to question the difference between this world and the one of Awaken Online. The boundary between the two places kept continuing to collapse, due in no small part to the way that Alfred continued to inject fragments of their lives into the game world.

  The images of Frank and Riley’s memories still haunted Jason. It had been difficult to sleep last night. He couldn’t shake the sense that someone else was present – watching him as he slept – and the scenes kept replaying in his dreams. Perhaps this was just a product of how intense the last few days had been.

  Hell, the last few weeks!

  Shaking his head, Jason stepped inside the restaurant. He glanced around at the tables and walked out to the back patio to see if Frank and Riley had already arrived. They hadn’t, and so he ordered himself a drink and found a small table outside.

  He must have gotten lost in his own thoughts because the next thing he knew someone placed a hand on his shoulder. Jason jumped involuntarily and turned to find Riley standing beside him. She wore a simple t-shirt and jeans, her hair bound behind her in a ponytail.

  “Sorry,” she said with a grin. “You were sort of staring off into space.”

  “No worries,” Jason replied. “Just thinking about everything that’s happened recently.” He glanced around the restaurant, noting that their burly barbarian was missing. “Did Frank come with you?”

  “When we ran into each other earlier, he mentioned he might be running a little late,” Riley said, taking a seat near Jason. “Something about talking to one of his teachers before his off period.”

  “Ahh, I don’t know what that’s like – at least not anymore,” Jason said with a grin. At a confused glance from Riley, he added, “I’m a homeless deviant remember?”

  This earned him an amused snort. “Really? I thought you had some fancy new-fangled apartment and a cushy streaming contract. I’m not sure that counts as being homeless.” Her expression sobered slightly. “But how is the school stuff going? Aren’t you taking classes remotely?”

  “Yeah,” Jason said with a grimace. “It’s pretty easy. But Robert – one of the lead engineers at Cerillion Entertainment – has me taking these extra lessons. The guy is a sadist. His programming assignments are crazy.”

  “Too much even for our evil genius, huh?” Riley asked with a smile, her eyes meeting Jason’s. He couldn’t help but notice the relaxed way she sat at the table and the way the sunlight reflected off her golden hair. This Riley looked different than the one he knew in-game.

  That thought immediately led him back to the memories he had witn
essed. Perhaps now was the time to explore whether those things had really happened – a part of him was still skeptical despite Alfred’s explanation. Yet he wasn’t exactly sure how to broach the subject. “Hey, did you watch your grandfather die as a child?” seemed a bit blunt.

  “So, I have sort of a strange question,” Jason began cautiously.

  “Okay, that’s not nerve-wracking at all,” Riley replied in the same carefree tone. Yet Jason noted the way her shoulders tensed, and her fingers fiddled with the cup in front of her. “You may as well have led with ‘we need to talk.’”

  Jason chuckled slightly. “Well, it’s not necessarily a bad thing – just maybe a little awkward – or maybe a lot awkward. It has to do with that race change thing in-game.” He could have sworn he saw a flash of disappointment in Riley’s eyes. Yet perhaps he had only imagined it. “I met with the Dark One after you and Frank sacrificed yourselves. And it was… unusual.”

  “How so?” Riley asked, leaning forward slightly as she listened to him.

  “Well, he explained that the Keepers actually preserve the memories of the Kin and they use those memories to keep themselves grounded,” Jason explained, gazing at the tree branches that overhung the patio. “In some ways, those memories represent each person’s soul – at least, that’s what the Old Man claimed.”

  “Is that how you saw Rex’s memories?” Riley asked tentatively. “I mean that time you dropped his remains in the well.”

  “I think so,” Jason replied with a nod. “Except this time, I didn’t experience the memories of an in-game character or NPC,” he added, finally meeting Riley’s gaze again.

  It took her a few seconds to realize what he was implying, yet he could see that moment of understanding when it came. It was the way her eyes widened, and her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. The way she glanced at the ground, trying unsuccessfully to hide the concern in her eyes.