“In the last murder, the one in the park... he-he left me a message,” she said, rubbing the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other. “A kind of code that we use together in the workshop. My quest updated and told me to meet him here. That’s... that’s how I know he’s not doing this of his own free will.”
“That don’t make no sense,” my dragon grumped.
I was with Karalti on that one. If what Rin was saying was true, then Kanzo had led us straight to his precious apprentice. Rin didn’t seem like a much better liar than she was a combatant, but she was the best lead we had. I was going to push her excuses to their limit. “What could cause him to do something like this?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head miserably, looking down at the ground. “I’m trying to find out. The message he left for me... it was a plea for help. You have to understand - Kanzo is a good man, a good teacher! That’s why he’s in Taltos, and not the head of a House in Zaunt. I-I care about him a lot, and I want to know why he’s doing these terrible things, but I can’t let you hurt him.”
The work I saw going on in the hospital was just about the opposite of anything a ‘pacifist’ was likely to do. I planted the end of my spear on the ground. “Look, the sob story is great and everything, but I can’t just drop this. I’m on a time limit.”
Rin blinked. “I... uh...”
“The fact remains that a bunch of priests are dead.” I jabbed a finger in the direction Kanzo-the-Pacifist had fled. “That guy hasn’t just been killing people. He’s a butcher, and none of those men deserved what they got. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“You don’t know if they deserved it or not. But… I guess.” Rin’s small shoulders slumped.
I nearly resumed chewing her out, but then paused for a second. Yes, my first instinct was to argue. My second was to think back to the Order of St Grigori: to Knight-Commander Arnaud, who was so polished and righteous on the outside, and so rotten at the core. The whole Order had been that way, Charismatic to the point of seduction, but built on a lie. What did I know about the Volod, the priesthood of Khors, or the men who’d been killed? Fuck all, really.
I cracked my neck. “How about we set up a time and place to talk more about this? We can’t just stand out here.”
“Oh. Okay.” Rin bit her lip. “How about I give you the coordinates of my workshop? I have to repair Lovelace and Hopper after your dragon… umm… cooked them. Maybe that would help you trust me?”
“Maybe.” But don’t count on it. I eyed the turret twins. “Lovelace as in Ada Lovelace?”
Rin smiled shyly. “Yes. And Hopper as in Grace Hopper. They’re both nerd heroes, too. Hopper was a Rear Admiral and one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I in the 1940s, and she popularized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, which is… ummm… oh, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
She blushed, turning her cheeks a bright turquoise blue. Goddammit. I was starting to think this Kanzo asshole had led me here because he knew there was no earthly way anyone could fight Rin. She was a Scottish Fold kitten in humanoid form. I sighed in defeat. “Which one’s which?”
“That’s Hopper.” Smiling, she pointed at the one Karalti had managed to roast a little more thoroughly. Parts of its armor had melted, and it was walking with a limp. “They’re encoded with different Words of Power. Do you, umm, want to come back with me to the shop? I can send you a Friend Request…”
I hesitated. I was banged up and exhausted. It was close to three a.m. Karalti was already only 14 EXP from reaching Level 3, and I was only about a hundred from Level 10, which was going to be a gamechanger for me. It was the level where I could either take a new Advanced Path, or reuse all of my skill points and redistribute them back into Dark Lancer abilities. I planned to do the latter, because I understood this class a lot better than I had when I first took it. Not to mention, I needed to find Suri and at least do her the courtesy of telling her what I’d discovered.
“I really have to get some crafting supplies, re-gear, and everything.” I held up my spear. “And get this fixed, if I can. It’s down to nineteen percent durability now.“
“Oh my gosh! Is that lazula!?” Rin rushed me, nearly crashing into me as she clasped the Spear. Her eyes were huge and glittering, as if really seeing my weapon for the first time. It put her uncomfortably close to me, so close that I could smell the strange, clean chemical scent of her breath. “Wow, this is an amazing artifact, where did you…?”
Karalti lifted her wings and rushed at her, snapping her jaws. Rin squealed and threw her hands up. She tripped over herself and fell on her ass. “Eeek!”
“Leave it, Tidbit.” I reached out to catch Karalti by the edge of her wing.
“Bad lady!” Her head snaked, and she hissed, drooling white fire from between her teeth. “No touchy!”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Rin wailed.
“Hey, cool it. It’s okay.” I patted my dragon on the neck. She eased down slowly, but her stare bored into my back as I offered Rin a hand up. The Mercurion accepted shakily. “I-I-I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten her.”
“Don’t worry. She’s protective of me.” I swallowed down the laughter pushing at the back of my throat and pulled her to her feet. Like Kanzo, she was heavy – really heavy. Rin was only five foot two and petite, but she weighed at least two hundred pounds. “Yeah, this spear is made of bluesteel. Lazula, whatever it is. I don’t suppose you know how to fix it?”
“No. You need a Level 20-plus Master Artificer with Grade-A Aesari technology knowledge to repair lazula artifacts like this one.” She shook her head. “There’s only one Level 20 Master in Artana that I know of, and he’s… well…”
I facepalmed. “It’s Kanzo, isn’t it?”
Rin nodded, keeping her hands up close to her face. “Yes. But I have B-Grade knowledge of Aesari Artifacts. And this is… this looks like the Spear of Nine Spheres?”
“Yeah, but it’s probably a good fake,” I replied. “The Spear of Nine Spheres is supposed to be soul-bound, and this one says it is, but it’s really not.”
Rin’s brows creased. Now that she was closer to me, I could see that her eyebrows weren’t made out of hair. They were filigree lace metal. “That’s strange. Where did you get it?”
“Ilia,” My throat tightened a little. “As part of a World quest from the Court Sorceress, Rutha.”
A strange expression passed over Rin’s face. She glanced at Karalti, who was looking at her the way she’d usually look at a plump mouse. “Rutha of Vasteau? If you don’t mind me asking, is that where you got your dragon? There’s only two places you can take the Dragon Knight class in Archemi: The Order of Saint Grigori in Ilia, or the Lysidian school in Lustria.”
“Door number one. Though I’m not a Dragon Knight.” I edged back cautiously, keeping an eye on Lovelace and Hopper. “And I don’t want to become one. The Skyrdon are fucked up, slaving assholes-“
Rin blinked rapidly. “What?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said. Once the story started, I couldn’t stop myself from blurting it out. “The Skyrdon had the Matriarch – Karalti’s mother – chained up in this pit in the middle of the Eyrie. All the dragons and the knights are bound under this magic spell that basically makes them slaves to the Knight-Commander…”
Rin gasped, pressing her hands to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
“Yeah, ‘oh no’ is about right.” I gestured angrily at the sky. “I don’t know what sick fuck decided this would make for a fun game, but they need to get their head checked.”
“No… no, that’s not how it was supposed to be at all.” Rin caught me urgently by the hand. “We need to go and talk. Now. Follow me.”
The Mercurion’s palm was hot and dry. I paused in confusion. “I thought we were going to put a raincheck on-“
“This is bigger than our quests here,” she said urgently. “Before we do anything else, I nee
d to tell you about a Dev who called himself Ororgael.”
Chapter 12
“His name was Michael Pratt.” Rin was sitting beside a work table, her head resting in one of her slim silver hands. Under light, she wasn’t just adorable – she was gorgeous, a living sculpture with opalescent color dancing through her Valkyrie-like ear wings, her translucent hair, and over her lips and nails. “Ororgael was his gamer handle. Your brother would have known him… They were on the same team, OUROS Neuromorphic R&D.”
We were sitting inside of Rin and Kanzo’s workshop. It took up the entirety of a small warehouse crammed in among the countless shops, machine shops, smelteries and tanneries of the Tanner’s District on the outskirts of town. This was the Mercurion ghetto, and the site of nearly all the city’s factories, mage shops, and artificing workshops. The place was cozy. Half-finished projects littered tables, counters, and rolling tool cabinets. Nearly everything Rin and Kanzo worked on was clockwork, magical, or both. They made watches, carriage parts, and animal-shaped artifacts as masterful as the magitech spider we’d found in the High Priest’s chambers. It was half-garage, half-wizard’s laboratory. The room was dominated by a pair of forges and a small smeltery.
Karalti snored away on a nest of blankets in front of the hot forge. She was now around seven feet from nose to tail-tip, almost big enough to ride. I watched her thoughtfully, cradling a steaming cup of real, honest-to-god coffee between my hands like a precious treasure. It wasn’t necessarily that coffee was rare in Archemi – the eastern and southern parts, at least – but thanks to the Army, I hadn’t had real coffee for years. Conscripts weren’t given coffee in their rations, and it wasn’t served at mess. Not only was it delicious, it gave me a buff to learning Craft skills.
“I don’t even know what ‘Neuromorphic R&D’ is,” I admitted. “I have no idea what Steve was doing all these years. All I know is that he was on a first-name basis with Ryuko’s CEO.”
“Yeah. That was because of his breakthroughs on the radiant AI framework that generates our NPCs, ATHENA. Michael was close to Ms. Hashimoto as well.”
I shook my head. “Shame they both died of HEX. I knew Steve was smart, but I didn’t know he was like… brilliant.”
“Michael didn’t have HEX. He got cancer. Prostate cancer, I think,” Rin continued. “He was amazing at his job, but he was a really intense person. You know that Ryuko has… had a military contract division, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Michael was one of the military guys who came over to our campus as part of the OUROS handover team,” Rin said. “He was reporting back to the government on us. Like, he never said it, but we all knew. I’m surprised Steve didn’t tell you about him. Michael was, well, he was kind of a prima donna, to be honest. Everyone had an opinion about him. You never met him through your brother? They worked together.”
If I remembered correctly, GNOSIS was the system that copied human minds and consciousness over to OUROS, which was the AI that ran Archemi. I sort of nod-shrugged uncomfortably. “Me and Steve weren’t on speaking terms for a really long time. We only made up because we both got HEX and realized we were going to die hating each other. He grandfathered me into the refugee program, but… he didn’t make the transfer.”
“Oh.” Rin looked down at her hands in her lap. “I’m sorry.”
I had a sip of coffee in the awkward pause that followed, savoring the earthy, sweet flavor. “Anyway, what happened to Michael?”
“Umm, yes… Well, his treatment for the cancer didn’t work, because it had spread into his bones and even the nanite treatment couldn’t stop it. This was around the time the HEX refugee program was being worked out. He volunteered to go in as a ‘vanguard’, and was the first person permanently sent to Archemi.” Rin still didn’t look up at me, picking a bit of lint off her glove. “We had this joke about him being the ‘Archinaut’.”
“Did something happen to him?”
“Yeah.” Rin winced as she pulled a trolley over to her broken Artifact. She took up a small crowbar, and began to lever off the slagged armor plating. “Michael was how we learned about cyber psychosis in perma-uploaded players. OUROS and GNOSIS were considered safe by the time we beamed him in, but it was confirmed only for immersion sessions, not for upload. Our version of OUROS was still being rated for permanent transfers. Michael’s upload was successful, but...”
“But what?”
“Something went wrong,” Rin admitted. Now that she was concentrating on fixing Hopper, her voice was more confident, less hesitant and girlish. “He got stuck in some glitch and the system didn’t recognize him as a character. It self-corrected, but he kept spawning in the wrong place. He incarnated in the sky somewhere over the Northern Continent and fell through the map into this void, then died. Every time he died, he’d respawn in the same place, and… well… smoosh.”
It was my turn to wince. I hadn’t repeatedly fallen to my doom, but I’d definitely had some variant of the same problem. “Jesus.”
“The game corrected itself after about a dozen iterations, but it was too late. It turns out dying a lot is like… really bad for you, psychologically.”
“Gee. Who’d have thought?”
“I know, right? Well, there’s a temporary amnesia thing in place now to stop what we called the ‘Michael Effect’. We didn’t know dying would be so much of a problem, because the testers who hadn’t perma-jumped had no problem with dying in game. They were nervous the first time, but after that they’d just laugh it off like a normal game experience.”
“Seems like something that should have been picked up.”
“Sure, but they didn’t.” She shrugged. “The Transference Team predicted it would be a bigger deal for permas, but they didn’t know how much of a bigger deal. Mind you, Michael hid his psychosis for a good long while.”
I shook my head. “So what happened?”
“Michael seemed okay to me,” Rin said slowly. “We were all following his progress on our screens, you know... it was kind of a company-wide miracle. He was obviously still him, even though his body was now in cryo and everything. He performed for us, showed us all around Ilia… but that whole time, he was modifying the game from the inside. Little bit by little bit. That corruption you’re describing in the Knights of St. Grigori? That’s not part of the game canon. That was all stuff he did. He started this secret personality cult, the ‘Cult of the Architect’, elevated himself to demi-god status, and rewrote bits of Ilia’s history. Then, one day he just… upped and killed King Rosvin and took over the country.”
“How?”
Rin shrugged. “He had access to the developer panel and he knew how to program ATHENA to make it look like the NPCs around him were acting of their own free will. Of course, as soon as the company realized he was treating Archemi like his own personal sandbox, they removed his Developer access. And then he just… got it back, and kept screwing with the game. He told them this is why he thought the HEX refugee program was a bunch of baloney. ‘Imagine if someone who wasn’t responsible did this.’ He used to say that all the time.”
I blinked. “What do you mean he kept ‘screwing with the game’?”
“They kept taking his Dev access away. And he kept getting it back somehow.” Rin replied, tooling around on Hopper’s frame. “They changed his character type to NPC and rolled back the changes he’d made, but then the AI organically carried out Michael’s version of events and gave him back his special character status and access to the Dev Panel. He blocked out other players from uploading and continued to just… taking over the world.”
“He turned himself into a virus?” I looked down at the Spear of Nine Spheres resting in my lap, and swallowed.
“Basically. The CEO had to make the decision to... well... delete him. It was horrible, but they had to. They deleted him and rolled back his changes to the game, because otherwise the refugees would be compromised. I know that the AI kept executing his version of the Ilian civil war, but I did
n’t know it had kept going with all the other horrible stuff he decided was fun. The incident with Michael destabilized OUROS and ATHENA and made perma-uploads for new players more dangerous. It nearly derailed the entire refugee program.”
I grimaced, rubbing the back of my right hand. “Did anyone ever say whether or not his glitchy upload was a factor in his turning into some evil overlord of suck?”
“Almost certainly.” Rin replied fussily. “I mean, if the data is corrupt to start with, it’s just going to corrupt further over time. Entropy is the natural trajectory of things. Even if a human profile preserves consciousness, the perception of the conscious individual is warped by their corrupted data. Especially if they die over and over. No one ever said porting our minds to a game was an ideal solution, you know?”
I felt my heart sink with every word. Swallowing, I glanced over at Karalti. She was sleeping peacefully, her tail wrapped around her body, her foreclaws clasped over her eyes. Her chest rose and fell, and now and then, her tail twitched in time with her dreams. Had my brother known about the Michael incident? He had to have known. Why hadn’t he said anything to me, or even told me about the risks?
“Listen, there were some really dodgy quests in Ilia,” I said quietly. “Michael – Ororgael – was Rutha’s teacher, and she gave me the Spear. Like I said, it’s a soul-bonded weapon that doesn’t really seem to be soul-bonded. As far as I can tell, it’s only purpose was to trick a player into opening this Pandora’s Box thing down in the ruins of Cham Garai. Do you know anything about that?”
“Well, I have a read-only mod overlay, so I can tell you the Spear is definitely real.” Rin looked back uncomfortably. “What you’re describing sounds like something Ororgael would have done. He set up trojans for the other Devs when they were trying to clean him out. Did you complete the quest line?”
“No.” I got up restlessly. “Someone else took the Spear from me and did it. He’s a dragon knight now... or I assume he is. His name’s Baldr Hyland. Last I saw, he had the Pearl of Glorious Dawn embedded in his face.”
Archemi Online Chronicles Boxset Page 46