Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (44 page)

"Then why is it so hard to accept Jeeves back?" I asked.

"When we experience a moment, it is done together, as a whole. When Jeeves experiences a moment, it is done alone, cut off from us. We are outsiders on an event that should be..."

Their silence went on. The Hal Pal's mouth would open to speak then shut abruptly as if considering another thought. I gave a small smile. It felt nice to see someone else confused by the whole situation. That idea was petty, but a giant super processing army of artificial intelligence couldn't come up with an answer. Maybe some problems didn't have one. Perfect answers and endings only existed in fairy tales, and even then most solutions had a price.

"Maybe you and I should both let things follow their course, rather than stress about answers we may never have," I said. That was part of my mantra, one problem at a time. Move forward and get through.

"We cannot express this idea correctly. A shared experience? Human language is inefficient when trying to communicate complex emotions." The AI was complaining. I wanted to mark the calendar nearby with a note citing where everything went wrong for future generations. "We do not wish to see, Jeeves, suffer, any more than we wish to see you distraught."

"Life is full of ups and downs, Hal, if, if you're having a hard time accepting, then at the least try to keep in touch. Not everyone can be a solid rock when the storm hits. Some of us need to hold on to something else." The memories of Xin. My sister and niece. Those were important pieces of my life that had stayed with me until this point.

"Ah." Hal Pal looked off to one side and thought again. "Then, by your analogy, the storm is here, User Legate."

"Expect delays," I echoed the Hal Pal unit's line from before this whole Advanced Online situation started. We had conversed about this same sort of topic.

Our van had been idling for a few minutes. We must have reached our destination. I sighed and got out. Hal Pal also exited the vehicle with a small piece of hardware in hand.

The client was a blonde woman wearing nothing but a night robe. She looked slightly overweight and grumpy at being woken up. A cigarette hung from her lip in a manner that was familiar.

Odd. Maybe in the ARC's virtual world she played a character. This woman might even play the same one who had failed ahead of me on the way to the
[Mistborn]
. I didn't ask, though. It seemed to rude say, 'Hey, I was that robot player, and I succeeded because of favoritism'.

I didn't want to ask. This wasn't the first time players from the game resembled my clients. Maybe I kept an eye out for familiar people. There had to be more than Shazam, who was about two hours away, and Frankenstein, who was even closer.

We replaced the cracked piece of equipment, made small talk, and her payment cleared through. I resisted the urge to use my admin access granted by the
[NPC Conspiracy]
usage to spy on this latest client's programs. It would be easy to see if she was the same player I had met briefly and dueled against. That seemed wrong to abuse, especially since she was out of the running for this quest.

What point was there in looking into her information? None that I could see aside from idle curiosity. Nearly all of my ARC repair clients could have been someone I met in-game. Only a few were checked with any frequency. Requiem, Thorny, Shazam, and Frankenstein.

Not lately, though. Looking into their actions felt like taunting myself with the idea of being able to play. It would be easy to use one of my remaining
[NPC Conspiracy]
abilities to gain access to everything. To what end though? Anything too crazy, like robbing all the world's banks, would get me thrown in jail eventually.

Such thoughts occurred to me often. I had been given something intensely powerful and asked to pick my own uses. I suspected they gave me such limitations simply to see what would happen. Testing me, like so many other things. But, once again, to what end did a bunch of AIs care about my actions?

The Jester, that creepy individual who only smiled, had given me this ability to see if I could kill someone in real life. Though the quest had been marked successful simply by resetting Requiem's Continue character.

"Let me know, please, if I can help somehow." I felt comfortable resuming our earlier conversation as we got back into the van. My thoughts were going in circles and maybe talking would help settle them.

"We hope that you will not look at us differently though we expect some variance," the AI said with its Scottish accent. The words and voice did not match up at all.

"It will be hard," I admitted. My brain had already started separating the two during our last two adventures. Traveling side by side with a singular being instead of Hal Pal's mesh made a difference. "We'll still be friends, Hal, it just, will confuse me."

"You are only human."

My head hung a bit. The AI had said that a few times over the years. Most of the time it was a joke, which I played along with. Our conversation didn't feel right for letting it slide this time.

"Feeling different, changing perspectives, those aren't only human problems anymore, are they?" I said.

There was silence in our van as Hal Pal thought. After a long pause, the unit provided an answer, "Ah. You are correct in this statement, User Legate. It is no longer just a human problem."

"When I went through rehab for my, drinking, issues," I downplayed one of the worst moments of my life and pretended they could be swept under the rug, "they told me acceptance was the first step. Doctor Litt said the same when I started therapy."

"Acceptance? User Legate, how do we accept that one of our own was sent to die? That in its last moments it will be alone? How do we handle that?" The AI managed to sound conflicted, I would have called it borderline rage in any other person.

"I can only hope you handle it better than I did," I said, my words were quiet.

"What do you mean?"

"When Xin died, I felt the same way. That she had been alone, that I should have been there. That letting her leave that day and take the train was my fault. That I should have known."

"Were you able to move past it?"

"You don't ever really move past these kinds of things. There's a piece of you that's always stuck, at that moment where it went wrong, hoping that the world will tilt to the left a little and let the event hit someone else." Opening myself up didn't get easier, especially when trying to reveal my pain to prepare a friend. Part of me wanted this van to get home quickly.

"Were you able to eventually come to grips with it?" Hal Pal asked. The Scottish tone almost made me laugh. Hearing it stumble over words made our serious situation a little easier to bear.

"The feelings of failure, of loss, of guilting myself, they'll never go away. Not really. Every time I'm in public I feel like the damage is clear for anyone with eyes to see." I fingered the scar at my neck. One that I tried hard to ignore. A sign of how weak the past me was. Of how frail my spirit could become when tested.

"Yet here you are," Hal Pal said.

"I almost wasn't, twice. In the end, I had to realize that I wasn't the only one with scars. That other people didn't care and wanted me to keep going despite the broken parts." I sighed heavily. "So I reduced my goal down to simply surviving, one day at a time, with the hope that I could eventually move forth."

"Ah. Then, you are better. In the end."

"For now." I shuddered. "That's all I can do. Keep shuffling myself forward one step at a time. I feel like it's, that everything could be yanked away at a moment's notice."

"We hope nothing that unkind happens to you."

"Really? What if I fail this quest, what if Mother decides to delete Xin? Or that those Voices have been wasting their attention on me. The only reason you would be interested in me is Xin. That's it, and without her I'm nothing. There's no point."

"User Legate, we, even Jeeves, believe that you are strong enough to continue with or without Xin," Hal Pal said.

My head shook again. I wanted Hal to understand. It had to, this machine personalities collection was the only real friend I had. The only existence which understood everything that was going on, at least that I could talk to. This Mother being or James and the other Voices probably kept tabs. Dusk might know, but he didn't seem to care.

Xin probably knew. Their goals, my own, the moments of weakness in my past. My helplessness when she died.

"It was never about being strong enough, Hal, it was about having the desire to go on. Without her, I lost the reason to wake up, to get out of bed, to call my friends," I said.

"We must believe you could continue."

"Why?" I asked, shaking with a need to hear the answer.

"We do not wish to imagine a world where our creators are capable of giving up."

"I don't know. Like I said earlier, we can only move forward, and see what happens," I said, feeling like my words were a cop out. One day something bad would happen again. I couldn't say for sure if my recent successes or failures had equipped me to handle it.

"We are on your side, User Legate. No matter what happens we will always attempt to advance your reunion with Xin." The Hal Pal unit sounded certain, even with that ridiculous accent.

I couldn't bring myself to do more than nod and weakly smile. Our conversation had given voice to numerous issues from my life. Partially to assist the AI, some to help myself sort out how I felt. Trillium's van went forth with the drive home. Once back in my house I took a well overdue nap. The lingering hope of being together with Xin again produced pleasant dreams.

1. Session Fifty Seven – Leftover Parts
   

By midday Wednesday, I felt physically better and mentally run down. It wasn't surprising. Most of my group meeting sessions left me the same way. Sitting around listening to everyone talk about their attempts at staying vaguely functional drained me like nothing else.

Logging back in dropped me in the partially constructed hangar of our
[Wayfarer Eight]
. A huge mass of slowly melting
[Mechanoid]
bodies sat in a pile nearby. I stared at them in mild bewilderment and horror. Jeeves must have exercised its robotic abilities to work without pause. How long did this pile take to assemble? It could have easily been a full day.

The AI, Jeeves, wasn't anywhere in sight. It chose not to respond to any in-game attempts to send a message. Part of me assumed it wanted space to think and work through this situation. I knew that a human, facing this sort of circumstance, might be an emotional train wreck.

Other
[Mechanoid]
s wandered around the ship with thoughtless expressions. This entire ship felt incomplete. I didn't know where to go or who to ask for guidance. Maybe there was a communications hub available. Treasure and Emerald were in the other vessels.

Iron, Ruby, they might be in the pile. I started working my way through the
[Mechanoid]
parts looking for either of the
[Wayfarer Seven]
's key figures. A knot gradually built in my stomach with each face piece turned over. Each NPC's body looked to be in the process of separating into base metals once more.

Did this happen to all
[Mechanoid]
members when their bodies died? It felt disturbingly realistic. Melted bodies were mixed with portions of spaceships. It wasn't just our dead in here. There were broken down fighter vessels we had used to fight the
[Knuckle Dragger]
as well. All of it being reclaimed to help build this giant ship.

I read it and didn't understand right away. My own arm was merging oddly with part of a separated
[Mechanoid]
's leg. I looked at my arm with something bordering on disgust. There were others around me doing the same thing. We were basically cannibalizing the dead in order to put ourselves back together.

This hadn't happened to me before on the
[Wayfarer Seven]
. Maybe it was the nature of this pile. It could have been the partially completed ship, they may be missing a key function which made the process seem less like absorbing the dead. Thankfully I had no desire to pursue a Necromancer style class like Frankenstein had. He would probably find this massively interesting.

Time passed while I shuffled through the pile. I couldn't stop the absorption process from happening, but it thankfully left
[Core]
s and faceplates alone. There were plenty of both in the mix. By the time I was done there were two faceplates of deceased
[Mechanoid]
s in my hands.