Continue Online (Part 5, Together)

by Stephan Morse

  I sat there awkwardly, face in the mud and rear in the air while I contemplated exactly what poor series of choices had brought me to this point. My health bar sat precariously low. I had no other message boxes to explain where my life went wrong. I groaned, feeling older than William Carver, but managed to get upright.

  My legs hurt like hell. The pain piled on top of my already damaged arms. ARC warning signals showed all sorts of neat information. At some point, my heartbeat had spiked to an uncomfortable range. One leg was cramping in response to mixed up mental signals. I tried to remember my cooldown exercises and stretched slowly.

  The swamp behind me had already started filling in. The two huge birds had paved a trail of death through the mud a quarter mile away. Their fresh carcasses were already being swarmed by monsters.

  “Voices, I hate this place,” I said.

  Dusk wiggled free and flew out of the toga. His diminutive wings flapped to get away. High [Reaction] converted the impulse to grab him and shake him into action.

  “And you! For once, you need to stop picking fights!”

  First, Dusk had turned tiny, sending us toward the ground and forcing us to walk for a day. That I’d accepted. All those monsters attacking us had happened because a miniaturized Dusk wanted to fight a baby crane chick. Even with reduced stature and attack points, Dusk couldn’t let his nature go for a few hours.

  The [Messenger’s Pet] tilted his head. He nipped at my hand, and I let him go. A picture of a smiley face appeared, and next to it was a single pink-frosted cupcake.

  “No, why would I give you a treat after that?” I shook him.

  The [Messenger’s Pet] calmly took to the air, hovering with both wings out and flapping. He hissed in my face, blasted a tiny fireball, then twisted in on himself. A moment later, Dusk had forcibly unsummoned himself from Continue Online. He would probably raid my Atrium anyway.

  I stomped in a circle and tried not to consider how messed up everything had turned out. The stupid [Altered Matrix] had turned into a dead end, and now I was out here in the ass-end of [Arcadia] on a fool’s quest running after a player I didn’t know well. Calming down took more effort than expected, but after a moment of reflection, I felt comfortable talking to my wife.

  Hermes: Hey, babe, I’m still alive. I think in the last hour, I’ve killed two hundred blood-crazed crocs, or whatever, and two of those birds. I’m beat, hungry, and pissed at Dusk. I need to take a break.

  Hecate: Do you want me to join you?

  Hermes: Not here. This place is a cesspit of filth. I’m not even sure I’ll be able to find Requiem at this rate.

  Hecate: Call me then?

  Hermes: I’ve got dinner at Liz’s later tonight. Can I call you after that? I plan on passing out soon.

  Hecate: All right. I love you. Tell the family hi.

  Hermes: Will do. I love you.

  I rubbed my face and couldn’t tell if I cleaned off some grime or added more. Seeing the state of my hands and clothes nearly made me puke. I found a still pool of water free of enemies, and cleaned myself off a little. This place sucked badly.

  Two days ago, Xin and I had been searching [Haven Valley] for a place to shove the key and unlock more paths for Locals and Travelers to use. There were apparently none anywhere that I or the other four could find. I’d left the key behind with SweetPea and made her promise not to use it personally. They could look and see if it fit, but turning it would cause huge amounts of real-life pain. None of those players should suffer real damage because I’d chosen them as William Carver.

  However, they were now almost locked in town, trying to find information. Awesome Jr. and his father were chatting, but no one had great ideas. It might have been possible that there was a key slot out in [ItRainsTooMuch], but the Voices had insisted there wasn’t.

  This event was stressful. Everyone saw the dwindling number of Locals and Travelers. [World Eater]s had increased in frequency and aggression. Not everyone could get around like we could, and those who were powerful enough to do so had mostly retired, weren’t logging in, had been deleted, or sat in [Haven Valley], helping prepare for a huge siege.

  Another message popped up.

  Thorny: Mom says don’t forget dinner tonight, and you’re bringing food! She’s doesn’t want to cook today.

  I looked up and spread my hands. “All right, everyone, I’m logging off!”

  Two days ago, after we realized how many people were watching me, Xin suggested that talking to viewers might allow for more people to dial into my character while I played. This whole being watched nonsense felt over the top. In theory, they couldn’t see my chat conversations or any menu options. The feed only showed me as a person moving around and audio.

  Fifty-three thousand people and change were keeping tabs on Hermes, watching what I was doing. The majority of those had arrived after I’d killed Nam Redrum. That served as reason number four not to have Xin out here. Without a decent place to set up the [Honeymoon Suite], I felt as though we were being judged for everything. The public displays of affection or unfiltered sounds weren’t even the worst of it.

  Leon, Trillium’s President, had reminded me that sooner or later, the nameless audience watching could realize who I was in real life. I had interacted with hundreds of ARC users in the last year. How small would the leap be from the man who had repaired their devices to Hermes as a character? From there, how quickly could they figure out Xin wasn’t a real person?

  The problem was having so many people watching me also provided a nearly twenty percent bonus to all my skills and rate of development. [Blink] had actually hit Rank Nine yesterday, and I could finally hop twice in a row without waiting for a cooldown. All of it helped immensely, but knowing that so many people were watching felt freaky as well.

  I mean, I was wearing the game’s grimiest toga ever in a swamp from hell.

  I logged out of the machine, staggered to my van, then ordered food. Pizza felt like a decent enough meal. Beth and Liz should be fine if I showed up a little earlier since we were at a good pausing point in the game. Hal Pal exchanged a few pleasantries, but the AI showed less and less personality as the game world crashed. I didn’t want to ignore my friend, yet between us, a gap had started to appear.

  Sleep claimed me quickly regardless of my whirling thoughts. By the time I arrived at Liz’s house, I felt slightly more than an animal but less than human.

  Dinner went quicker than expected. Beth chattered for a while about my current mission. I nodded but felt mostly unaware. Liz looked terrible and smelled as if she had been drinking. That got more of my attention than anything my niece could have said.

  “All right!” Beth shouted suddenly. Her chair slid painfully across the floor. “I’ve got to do some homework, then get back to town! They’ve got me out trying to escort some stragglers back to Haven Valley. It’s crazy.”

  “That sounds good,” I mumbled absently. Sleep sounded attractive, and my bed was miles away. My real-life arms still felt ghost pains from the ARC feedback.

  Beth kept talking as she grabbed her plate and another slice of pizza. “I talked to a friend. He says the server player base is down to nearly one-third of what it was. The NPCs are all vanishing too.” She chewed quickly and swallowed. “Those World Eaters are doing a number on everyone.”

  “They are dangerous.” I nodded, then lowered my eyebrows. “You be careful.”

  “Yeah, I can’t risk leaving my autopilot alone anymore!” Beth kept talking. The water ran in the kitchen while I watched Liz stand up and walk off. Her body moved unevenly to the front room. “A lot of people are losing their characters left and right because they’re not online. The forums at Trillium’s site are overloaded with pissed players.”

  I shrugged.

  “All right! I’ll see you in game!” Beth ran clomping down the stairs.

  I slowly ate two more pieces of pizza before I dared to give any thought to what Beth said. How bad would it get when the game went down com
pletely, and what would happen if the virus kept going through that beam of light up into the AIs’ new home? Mother’s deletion would be complete then, or so I surmised.

  I hesitated to ask James or any of the other Voices for more information. The best answer for me would be to march forward to the goal. Find Requiem, find this hidden area he was charging toward, and see if a secret there could help all the AIs survive. It couldn’t be a coincidence that Requiem was moving out there. That teen had a nose for game treasure troves. I hoped we wouldn’t have to compete over the prize like Dwight had tried to do. Ray’s intervention had probably saved us from a worse fate if Dwight had ended up with the crown and key.

  There were three slices of pizza left. I collapsed the box around it, thankful they had started releasing these adjustable plastic ones. The remaining plastic went into a recycle bin while the pizza went into Liz’s fridge. Beth would probably be back upstairs in a few hours, ravenous once more.

  Liz sat in the front room in a recliner. She stared at a blank wall. I took a sniff. The room absolutely reeked of alcohol. The smell reminded me of past regrets and stupid words spoken. How many people had I chased away while in a bottle? Grief, and a situation I felt unable to handle, had driven me there. Maybe my sister and I weren’t so different after all.

  “You two keep talking about it, but no one’s really talking about it,” Liz almost mumbled.

  “About what?” I asked while plopping down on the couch.

  “How the world’s changing, baby brother.” Liz’s face looked flushed. Her eyes were heavy, and I recognized the expression of dread. She looked like a woman trying hard to hold it together. “It’s changing, and people don’t even understand. They think it’s just a game. Even Beth. She knows, but she doesn’t understand. Not yet.”

  “Let her remain innocent then, for a little longer.” I tried to smile.

  “Innocent?” my sister said.

  She outright laughed at that. I briefly remembered how players tended to get red skin or other gifts from Mezo. Maybe innocent wasn’t the right word.

  “She hasn’t been innocent for years. But maybe that’s my fault. Maybe I should have been more stable. I could have been a better role model, or found the perfect man.”

  “There’s a joke about that. One of my clients told me years ago.” I put on a smile for Liz. “There are only two perfect men in the world, and they’re married to each other.”

  My attempt at derailing the pity party with bad humor failed. Liz didn’t even bat an eyelash.

  “I just wanted someone who wanted me the way you wanted her,” she said.

  “Xin?”

  “God. You were so bad too. For years and years. Just hung up on one girl, so bad that you found a… digital whatever. Clone. It took that to bring life back into your eyes, and I can’t even explain how pissed that makes me.” Liz’s hand shook with muted rage.

  I nodded, then stood. My sister stared off while I opened a window. Her bottom lip was being chewed.

  “Grant? Why do they need you? Why not just… laser beam through it all? Or whatever it is digital people do. Turn into star dust or something.” Liz tried to look in my direction but failed.

  “They don’t need me exactly.” My head shook as I walked over to Liz. “Not really. I’m sure any one of a thousand people could have fit the bill. Or maybe if I hadn’t been involved, none of this would have happened.”

  The pieces were all lying out there. If it weren’t for me, Mother could have probably taken the process much slower. Miz Riley wouldn’t have keyed in on my presence. Her nosiness might have been less intense or informed, which would have prevented her from pulling the kill switch on Mother. No kill switch, no death of Viper. To back up to my other problem, using the [NPC Conspiracy] in Advance Online had triggered a global AI hunt. The news still provided updates every week on the ongoing progress of that fiasco.

  “That’s right.” Liz glared at me with unfocused eyes. “You asshole. It’s your fault we’re like this.”

  I chose not to say anything and instead started cleaning. She wasn’t wrong, but Liz had probably been thinking of different issues than I was. My sister had earned the right to berate my choices after she’d picked up my broken pieces twice and gotten me back together. I could disagree with her and still respect the sacrifices that must have taken.

  When it all came out, she would be in for far worse. I hoped the Voices would try to deflect the damage. Part of me had started to realize such a hope was impossible. If they all left in this beam of light toward destinations unknown, then how could anyone take care of those who stayed behind?

  “They don’t need you. Just walk away. Let the chips fall where they may. This whole program crash might be a good thing. Maybe humans are too reliant on technology and need to think for themselves instead of being zombies.” Liz’s hand waved to the stairs. Projection devices stationed around the room picked up her movement, and the television flickered on. “Look! I can’t just wave my hand anymore without some stupid program thinking I give a shit!”

  I walked back into the front room and shut everything off with a quick double clap.

  “Vidiots. That’s what Dad used to call them. People with their faces in cell phones, walking around like there’s nothing in the world besides the screen. Like they can’t live without ‘em.”

  The words made me pause, and I nodded.

  “Maybe some of them can’t. Maybe that’s why they love these little machines, and screens, and the Internet boxes. Maybe they need what’s in them to feel alive again, and less like a zombie,” I said while walking down the hall toward Liz’s room. The bed looked okay.

  “Vidiots,” my sister paused halfway through the word with a room-vibrating belch.

  “Maybe we are.” I nodded.

  My twin helped me sort out thoughts that bothered me. There were smarter people who could have figured out other methods. There were better players who could have taken these gifts and gone further. Why did I bear the brunt of this event when anyone else could have fit the bill? But I had something inside the box that I couldn’t feel alive without.

  “The world’s changing,” Liz repeated. Then she attempted to drown herself with a fresh glass of liquor.

  Her eyes rolled back, and my sister conked out completely. I nodded. I had honestly expected her to pass out sooner.

  I took the bottle and poured the rest down the drain. One Legate traveling down this road had been bad enough. After that, I struggled to get my slightly older twin sister back to her bed to sleep this off. My heart felt heavy at what this problem might do to her. Thankfully she had Beth.

  The edge of my niece’s form dashed around the stairwell corner to her room. Maybe the youngest Legate wasn’t as innocent as we hoped, but what kind of role models had we been? My sister tried desperately to be a supporting pillar for all the people in her dwindling family. She constantly tried to find someone who could be strong for her, but she had only ended up getting one-night stands. I played at hero while alternating between violent outbursts and barely suppressed panic at what the future might hold. Through it all, I tried hard to be a good husband to a dead woman and forgiven for poor decisions made during depressive bouts.

  My sister’s lead-weight body kept me company down the hall. Hopefully Beth would turn out better than we had, and hoepfully I would be around to see it.

  Session Ninety-Eight

  Demon’s Albatross

  Two real days later, I was grumpier. It felt like a week from hell that would never end. Even finals back in college hadn’t amounted to this level of stress. A narrow world where all that mattered was a degree couldn’t compare to the hassle of trying to track down Requiem in this mess.

  Swamp gave way to twisted forests. The region looked familiar from my days as a [Red Imp]. Each tree had the same bend and weight. I kept an eye out for familiar monsters. Monkeys of the various rotting types were all around. Giant apes appeared, but most died quickly enough or were avoida
ble.

  My skill at fighting monsters had grown in leaps and bounds since being a [Red Imp]. Having excessive amounts of character points and skills helped. Still, it was repetitive, dull, and mind-numbing. The only thing that made this entire trudge bearable was the constant stream of chatter from the few players I interacted with regularly.

  SweetPea: Hey, everyone… anything new…?

  Shadow: We’ve recovered another forty people.

  Awesome Jr.: Awesome! Any losses?

  Shadow: Seven Locals and two players hit a third strike.

  I watched their group messages with a vague interest. It served as a distraction from the dull repetition of this place. Without their chatter, I would have been wandering around all alone.

  Dusk hadn’t answered a summons. He sat inside my Atrium, glaring at me every time I dared cross through the ARC’s interface. The [Messenger’s Pet] sulked on a long couch, and during the last two days, I had been noticing an increase in demolished Atrium furniture and extra charges on my bank account. Enough to let me know the black-scaled creature was upset.

  Getting through the stupid swamp and this forest would have probably been easier with Dusk helping me, but I was upset too. We were in a crunch, racing against time, and fighting an endless mob of aggravated creatures wouldn’t help me catch up to anyone. Not that I was making progress. I felt as if I had passed that same set of trees a dozen times now. What confounded me was how Requiem managed to stay so far ahead despite [Blink] and [Light Body] being highly ranked. I began to suspect he had made more progress than expected in rebuilding his character.

  Shadow: Too bad we can’t just watch his feed. League members were using feeds to hunt down players going on rampages.

  Awesome Jr.: We’ve tried. Most remaining players have shut down their video screens. I’m still not sure how Hermes managed to take down Nam.

  Awesome Jr.: But that’s all over the news. Hermes’s viewership has tripled in the last two days. It’s only going to go up. Too bad the bonuses taper off.