Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (54 page)

"What are you two talking about?" Treasure's golden eyebrows lowered in a very
[Mechanoid]
glare. I tried not to smile in amusement

"The nature of existence." I raised one hand in a shrug. There would be no easy way to explain, and we shouldn't have been talking about it in-game anyway.

"Indeed." Jeeves sounded depressingly dry and stared at me.

Technically this whole line of conversation was my fault. There was just no good way of getting answers fast enough, maybe we could have communicated through a party system. I was terrible at making it work, though.

"I'll let you handle explaining it, Jeeves, I'm not sure what the rules are for a lot of this." I went back to my seat while thinking about forum posts. People had tried to explain the concept of a video game world to NPCs and it often went poorly. Their game avatars ordinarily suffered. The program controlling Advance Online heavily discouraged such reality breaking conversation.

Beth and I had once discussed the same topic, she suggested there were punishments for speaking excessively about the nature of reality. She hadn't experienced any first hand, it was more like tribal knowledge. Speaking about the world outside an ARC needed to be done carefully and very vaguely.

I had skirted the real world quite a few times, especially when talking to the Voices. Mostly it involved introducing a new idea, casinos, cupcakes, bicycles, or Xin. They were a separate existence from normal nonplayer characters.

There was a rumor someone had tried to replicate the nuke only to have their entire town blown up and lost a ton of
[Respect]
, gained a bounty on their heads, and spent the next four months being hunted. If that person didn't up and quit to play Advance, then maybe I truly was the first to make these connections.

The two
[Mechanoid]
s were talking as our ship pulled into a giant space station. My brain quickly lost track of its musings and stared in awe. This place made both Wayfarer ships look dinky.

"Neat." My hand pressed against the window. Cold metals pushed back and the display rippled. Part of me hadn't realized my entire view of space was actually a projected image. I pulled away a bit and went back to feeling dwarfed by a floating space station.

It sat there rotating in space, tube-shaped, long. Ships were parked all along the outer hull, and inside shimmered a thick shielding which housed a real atmosphere. Plants grew in huge droves. Browns, greens, and blues littered the entire place in what had to be a natural forest.
[Offbeat Point]
was not an out of the way place, it was almost a state unto itself.

"We're just grabbing fuel and going right?" I held more than a hint of wonder. Our vessel had taken a path toward the outside cylinder's edge. My head twisted around trying to get a view of the rapidly vanishing country inside.

"No. We need to pick something up as well."

"That sounds like a bad idea." I looked at the countdown timer again. Our fuel had less than a minute. Treasure timed this stop well.

"We need a Jump Gate key to even be allowed into Earth's sector. Those with Commander Queenshand would have already gained one." The gold and silver
[Mechanoid]
pointed at her screen. A brief display came up showing what looked like a small household mortice key. Bronze, rounded on one end, and might fit into a music box just as easily as an old door. It seemed weird that such an object would power advanced space technology to such a historic place.

"But I didn't," I said.

"There was no time," Jeeves said and sighed. "Like many things, it has been rushed, we had hoped to proceed down a different route in order to assist you."

"What are you two talking about now?" She closed down all the windows and glared again.

"The nature of reality?" I tried the answer again. This time, Treasure looked downright angry with me. It was the maddest she had ever been in my presence, topping even Dusk's chewing on her belongings.

My hands went up and I glanced at Jeeves. It looked mildly upset and slightly worried. Guilt rushed through me abruptly. My big mouth and attempts to work the system were causing issues for the AI and its
[Mechanoid]
crush. Maybe it was conflicted, Hal Pal outside the game had basically told me to use the
[NPC Conspiracy]
ability if I really just wanted to break things.

I didn't like that idea. The ability had limited uses and there were probably a million good reasons to hang on to them.

"I don't know how to answer the question right, Treasure. I am sorry," I said.

"You're hiding something."

"Not really. I'm trying not to get us in trouble with any Seraphic." Or those above them. I hoped by throwing out the dangerous race's name it might help Treasure realize that higher powers were at work. Much higher, though technically they were intensely advanced AIs that could make humans look simple.

My mind briefly started trying to compare theoretical lifeforms against each other. Weren't humans just fancy machines with growing parts? Weren't our brains a result of lots of stimulus over a long enough time period? The reasoning was silly to even start debating this late in the game

Jeeves felt real. Treasure felt real. Xin, from my hasty bits of contact with her, felt real. It hurt to keep going round and round about my former fiancée's reincarnation, but at the same time it felt human to constantly wonder.

"We're going to a bar here," Jeeves said.

"A bar?" That sounded dangerous to me. I tried to avoid pubs. There had been this one letter that the Voices tasked me with delivering, it involved following a player down into a beer nightmare oriented dungeon.

"Affirmative." The AI nodded and started to disengage from its harness. Treasure followed suit and a rear hatch I hadn't noticed slid open.

A realization hit me hard enough to cause a metallic face palm moment. Ringing filled my ears. "This is another one of my letters, isn't it?"

"Yes. That is what I've been told," Jeeves said.

"Are there more?" I followed the other two
[Mechanoid]
s out of our enlarged vessel. The ship had easily tripled in size and now resembled a tank compared to the old tiny fighter.

"This is the last one, I believe," Jeeves said, the nanny voice overpowered its butler one and sounded a bit stern.

Dusk leapt down, from only the Voices knew where, and followed Jeeves and I out to the tarmac. The ground felt rubbery against my feet. It struck me as odd that I only now realized
[Mechanoid]
s didn't have boots.

There were dozens of other ships pulling in. Some clearly belonged to players. Others were owned by NPCs like Aqua and Ruby. They had disembarked before us, by leaping straight out of their now open cockpits. Both of them sat next to some long pillar object while pressing at floating menu options.

I raised an eyebrow at them as Treasure, Jeeves, and I passed by. Ruby shook her head back and forth slowly then pointed up to her ship. Aqua just smiled. The gesture probably indicated they were staying to watch our vessels.

I shrugged then turned back to Jeeves to continue our conversation. "You don't know if any other letters matter?"

"No, but this isn't my plan." The AI was swiftly following Treasure. She clearly had a destination in mind despite not knowing about the Continue Online side of things. Did she talk it over with Jeeves or had the Voices preprogrammed something in? Maybe it went one level higher.

"Who's is it?" I asked.

"If you reason through, Unit Hermes, I believe you can figure it out." My AI friend's answer didn't help me at all. I suspected it was the Voices but had no clear method of finding out without risking repercussions. The only real goal here was getting Xin back by using the
[Mistborn]
, our other mission of saving the
[Wayfarer Seven
's crew had failed, but the
[Wayfarer Eight]
went home successfully, in theory.

"What are you two talking about?" Treasure asked, her tone laced with a fresh bout of annoyance. She turned and crossed her arms while glaring at us.

I pointed to Jeeves. It may be suffering separation from all the other Hal Pal units and growing toward destinations unknown, but my attempts to answer would be disastrous. They managed to exchange absolutely no words on the subject before Treasure sighed and kept going.

I glanced once more at the two behind us. It was good that Ruby and Aqua chose to stay with our weirdly merged vessel. Someone had to protect our oddly designed craft. The ship seemed almost like some child had decided that our three ships needed to merge into a giant spaceship toy. I wondered where the other colors might be, we only needed a green leg and yellow arm to form the set.

The idea made me laugh a little as I hustled to catch up. We walked through the giant space station. There were some floor panels that helped us travel quicker. An entire landscape zipped by quickly.

Being around all these trees and well-kept lawns made me feel kind of giddy. It had been so long since I played a game with these lush landscapes. Weeks, or a month, it was hard to tell. Once again subjective time was messing me up.

Our destination sat somewhere between a rich and highly cleaned area, and what had to be space slums. Just looking over there made me twitch in annoyance. This wasn't a poor area like back on Earth, it was downright broken and nothing looked to be made right. Large metal flats sat almost on stilts to serve as roofs.

Players wandered through both areas with ease. We saw all sorts of races represented, and many that were NPC only. A large elephant looking creature walked around on two legs, its long nose adorned with piercings. Some double headed jellyfish moved along in clumping movements. Treasure scanned numerous different objects as we walked around, cataloging notes but not truly enjoying the process. There were no other
[Mechanoid]
s so far.

The bar's name was
[Isn't That Something?]
. Apparently it was player owned and primarily run by hired staff. An absolutely giant human by the name of SuperE sat at the door. He eyed the trio of robots, and one excited
[Messenger's Pet]
for a moment before moving on.

"There he is." Jeeves pointed toward a rather round looking man. This was a player, that much was easy to tell.

"Okay. Is there anything to this?" I asked. Maybe one day the game would give me an
[Identification]
skill so player names would be obvious. The ability to pull down more than a health bar seemed restricted to certain classes.

"We simply try to get the key from him."

"Are you sure he has it?" I raised an eyebrow. This guy didn't look like he had much of anything besides excessive amounts of liquor. It was a state that rung a bell from my past health issues. After Xin's passing and before counseling.

"Yes. This player is named Eggman. The original key was gained by him through a quest, and his teammates took it one night. We're lucky he is a decryptor and made a backup. Eggman has since quit his guild but still hangs around this bar." Jeeves listed off a bunch of information that could only have come from outside the game or some special connection with the program. Maybe the Hal Pal consortium was feeding information in.

"So we're against his-" I eventually caught up on what he said, "-former guild?"

"Affirmative, Unit Hermes." Jeeves nodded. "Some of them. It is a local group that only operates out of the immediate area."

"Are there a lot of more of them? Others that might be against us, or with us?" I asked in hopes that there was an angle to play there. Either it would be good, bad, or keep us right where we were.

"No, all other guild members are aboard the ship. There is hope that his falling out with the other players allows for favorable negotiations. This solution offers the highest chance of success."

"Suggestions on how to convince him?"

Jeeves didn't have an answer. Treasure was more intent on scanning any object in our surrounding, inanimate or not. Multiple players were hit by the device around her wrist. Once they noticed the metal woman they often blinked a few times then smiled. Apparently looks transcended race around here.

"If you want something from Eggman, your best bet is to clear his bar tab." The large white human had moved from the doorway to right behind us. I didn't like that he was bigger than me, or sneakier, especially after the extra bulk I had purchased. Iron being a size up made sense, humans did not.

Despite my distaste, the man's idea might be valuable. I considered what was available to trade but found that my time about either Wayfarer hadn't left me with much. Unless contribution was considered valid currency in the universe. The signs with drink prices above the bar counter indicated otherwise.

"I don't have money." I tried to whisper to Jeeves but didn't use the
[Mechanoid]
method of digital communication. It was still difficult for me to trigger it right.

"There's another option," SuperE suggested.

"Okay?" I responded.