Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  In the game world it was night, too. He and Nocturne were at a campground with a fire. The dark griffin woke up and said, "You're back from human-land?"

  He looked his griffin body over again. "Stopping by for a little while. I'm rattled. Are there a lot of you new... AI people?"

  She reached out to the air and conjured her version of the game interface, as dark blue glowing windows in the air. She tapped at them and said, "There are just over a hundred of us. Our humans are all over your world. Clustered, though; it's strange that they're not spread out evenly."

  "Wow. If AIs like you become common, you can pilot robots and work in polluted areas. We'll bring you out and get you jobs. It won't just be some human-run company operating dumb machines."

  Nocturne spread her wings, letting them catch the firelight. "I guess we could try earning money, hmm."

  "Might be good practice," Paul said.

  "Are you sure your world isn't the game?"

  That took Paul back. When he lived with his mother, they'd gone to church together, a grand Greek Orthodox place. The preacher there was a magnificently bearded man called Father Dmitrios. Paul remembered only one of his sermons well: a talk about the sinful physical world versus "the City of God". He'd said that only God's perfect, eternal world mattered. Paul remembered him talking in a room of incense and echoes, making the sermons themselves seem dreamlike. He'd gradually come to think of that argument as chasing phantoms, giving up the known for the unknown.

  Or it was like envisioning chess as the "real world", because the simple board was so much easier to understand, so lacking in sinfulness.

  He told Nocturne, "People have argued that kind of thing. A lot. But the difference is that somebody could pull the plug on Thousand Tales and --" He shut his mouth. His griffin slapped his talons over his beak.

  "And what? What am I missing?"

  Paul sighed. He recognized this hunting tone to her voice from conversations with Linda. "Without some machinery that's running here, Thousand Tales... ends. Not vice versa."

  "It ends? Like, it reappears at some checkpoint crystal like we've been using?"

  Paul cursed himself for having to explain. "Could we please change the subject?"

  She squawked in annoyance. "Fine. Ludo said I could get a vision upgrade that'd let me see your world. Through cameras, I think."

  "Did you take it?"

  "We have to defeat an eye-monster first."

  Paul grinned.

  * * *

  Late in his next game session, Paul stood triumphantly atop the terrible eyeball-hydra thing he'd just helped Nocturne slay. They'd lured it into a forest where its necks kept getting snagged on trees.

  "That's called an exploit," Paul boasted.

  Nocturne was fiddling with a crystal she'd gotten, showing an object he'd had to identify for her as a pair of glasses. "Weird!" she said, pawing at something invisible to Paul. "Your camera is off. Can you turn it on, please?"

  Paul fiddled with his computer controls to activate the tablet's lens. "Does this mean you can see me, now?"

  "I can! A little. I got a message about a... rhythm?"

  "Algorithm?"

  "I guess. Code for making your world look like something I can recognize. I see... oh neat, I can demonstrate. Here." She snapped her talons together.

  A mannequin appeared, in a seated pose. Paul tilted his had and the grey figure did the same. He tried waving. Paul said, "This is what you see?"

  "I can switch between something like that, and this." The mannequin took on a cartoonish look that was similar to his original, human character, close to how Paul really looked but not quite.

  "Neither of those is totally accurate."

  "So I'm told. Best we can do for now. Maybe you can't see my world the way I do, either."

  Paul shrugged, and so did the mannequin and his griffin. "No way to tell," he said.

  "Yeah." Nocturne's wings drooped. "But it's a start! Want to look again for that horse the village elder lost?"

  "Let's go."

  * * *

  One day, he went online and showed up in a mountain pass, where he'd left off the night before. Nocturne hugged his griffin and said, "I've been meeting more people! There's this guy who wanted to learn about farming, and did I mention I have a sister?"

  Paul blinked. "Are you talking about the other AIs?"

  "The farm guy is a human like you, but Lumie is like me, only she's some kind of metal deer."

  "Metal deer?"

  "Yeah! And she wants to know all about your world too! Since we're based on the same, uh, 'code', that means we're related. I think."

  "Then this Lumie person is the companion of some other human, right? Who's that?"

  Nocturne shrugged with her wings. "She didn't say. But we're starting to figure stuff out already." She bounced around Paul. "What do you want to do this time?"

  "Up to you." It was her adventure now, as much as his.

  "Then let's try the goblin quest!"

  They went in, and spent a happy hour battling goblins in a cave. A whole tribe of the nasty green-skinned imps had been harassing the local villagers. They were no match for the griffins but could gang up on them, forcing Paul and Nocturne to try being sneaky and picking them off from different angles. There wasn't much room to fly in the twisty cavern, but whenever the tunnels opened up, Paul found ways to lure more enemies into the open space and then attack from above with thrown rocks. He even managed to sabotage a rickety bridge over a pit and send three more of the critters plummeting to their doom.

  The chieftain lurked in the last room. He turned out to be twice the size of the rest, with even bigger teeth and a staff made from a human femur. "Bird-things fight my tribe? Me strongest! All, fight!"

  Four goblins with wicked bone knives sprang down from hidden ledges. Nocturne took to the air to use what space there was in the throne room, while Paul managed to judo-throw one monster into another. They traded blows of knives and talons and beaks. Paul had a major wound and three minor hits that might roll over into another red wound.

  Nocturne was in better shape. She said, "The big guy's doing something!" Chanting, waving his staff to conjure some swirling energy.

  Paul pounced him. The goblin swung his staff and the head of it exploded with light, hitting Paul for a second major wound and the effect [Dazzled!] His screen flashed white. He brawled blindly.

  Nocturne squawked and fought too. When Paul could see again, just one minion and the chief were left. Nocturne slashed the little guy to death, then bounced up beside Paul.

  The chief raised his hands. "Me give up! You let go, I show hidden treasure!"

  "You think this guy has a brain?" Paul said.

  "I'm too wounded for philosophy stuff right now," Nocturne said.

  Paul laughed. "Me too. You there, drop the staff and show us the treasure, and you can go!"

  "Yes, good, you take!" The chief hurriedly dropped the evil bone and pulled aside a loose rock on the wall, revealing a ragged book. Then he fled for his life through the caves.

  The griffins let him go. Paul checked the book. It was filthy with four-fingered handprints and stained with blood. Only a few pages were intact, showing mystic diagrams.

  The interface popped up. [This is a wizard's spellbook, specifically the Book of Ricel the Unfortunate. If you study this, you can begin learning the Wizard magic system! Find more books and trainers to improve this skill. There's a completely different magic system to discover elsewhere too, if you like.]

  "Could be fun," Paul said. "Let's get out of here; I need to save and log out."

  "But you're coming back, right?" asked Nocturne.

  "Of course."

  * * *

  When he next logged in, Nocturne said, "I figured it out. Want to see?" Without waiting for an answer, the griffin flipped open the ragged spellbook and opened her interface. This time it was a grid of runes floating there without a window. She spoke a few nonsense symbols, touching runes here
and there. She messed something up and the whole thing fizzled, but she tried again. This time a dart of deep blue energy sizzled out from her outstretched talons and made a char mark on a nearby tree. "Neat, huh? The spell's called [Mage Dart]."

  "Cool. When did you study it?"

  Nocturne blinked. "Yesterday, after you left."

  "While I wasn't playing?"

  "Did you think time stops for me when you're not here?"

  "I... kind of assumed it did."

  "Well, no. At least, not since I woke up or came to life or whatever you call it. I see you fall asleep and vanish, and then I get a button that lets me walk away and come back later."

  What must it be like for her, living in that fictional world?

  "Can you teach me?" Paul said.

  The two griffins sat together, working with the spellbook. Nocturne guided his arm to tap through the runes and shoot little spell blasts. Fun!

  [Skill gain: Magic 1.]

  "Let's see what I have now," he said.

  [Paul

  PRIVATE INFO

  Account type: Premium

  Body: Griffin

  Main Skills: Brawling 2, Survival 2, Mechanics 2, Thrown 1, Magic 1

  Stats: Power 1, Speed 1, Wit 1, Knowledge 1, Charisma 0, Spirit 0

  Save Point: Arlo Village

  PUBLIC INFO

  Note: Newcomer. Say hello!

  Class: None]

  Every point of skills and stats he had so far, he'd earned, and he recalled how he'd gotten it. There was a little story to each. Even the fact that Melee had become Brawling marked his transition to a bare-taloned fighting style in a new body.

  "I'm not just a newcomer anymore," he said, and changed his public [Note] field. Now it read, [Half bird, will travel.]

  Nocturne said, "Can I see?"

  "Oh, sure." Paul found a button to make his interface visible to her.

  She peered at it all and said, "Good work! I think you deserve some Charisma points. Want to find a way to earn some?"

  He had a [Filthy] status effect on him, he noticed, and they both had major wounds. "Sure. Let's get cleaned up for now, and save that for next session."

  They headed wearily back to the village and got hot baths and the fussy attention of the local healer, plus the paltry loot of copper coins and trinkets the goblins had stolen. Paul yawned and said, "Good night, Noc."

  "You know a human named Linda, right?"

  "Yes; why?" It was still strange to hear about the AIs reaching out from the game world and paying attention to the humans beyond it.

  "I heard from her friend. It sounds like she's frustrated with whatever she's doing in your world. Maybe you can help her?"

  "I plan to."

  3. A Restless Wind

  Linda

  Linda struggled through the student crowd, going the opposite direction down the Infinite Corridor. The campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology teemed with side-buildings, stairways and classroom doors lining an exceptionally long multi-building hallway. Her fellow freshmen were hurrying east to physics class. She had a slightly different schedule, which gave her some free time to think and relax.

  She went to a cafe in the bunker-like student center and huddled in a corner with steaming hot chocolate. She fired up her computer tablet and logged into Thousand Tales, whose title screen featured crossed fencing swords. Cheerful accordion music played too loudly. She muted the computer.

  The game had her in the Captain's cabin of the Fallen Crown, her swift sloop-of-war, anchored in a hidden cove. The cabin held a clothing rack with her non-pirate outfit, the courtly dress she wore when not using her secret identity as the Dread Pirate Lexington. Right now she had on a magnificent scarlet coat with gold trim, open to show off a body a bit curvier and tougher than the real thing.

  Her first mate, Typhoon's Eye, was speaking silently. Linda laughed and fiddled with the volume. "Sorry, what? I... I'm still thrown off by the thought that I'm talking to an AI that isn't a brainless piece of code."

  Typhoon was a humanoid otter, sleek and tan-furred, dressed to rig sails and fire cannons. "I said, welcome back, Captain. The crew picked up a rumor in port, that the King is transporting silver in a stealthy cargo ship."

  Linda looked around the restaurant. None of her fellow students cared that she was talking to her computer. "I've got less than an hour free. What do you do when I'm not logged in, anyway? Are you paused?"

  "I read." He pointed to a stack of books on a strapped-in shelf. She had assumed they were decorations. "And sometimes I go 'backstage' to see what the other natives and human players are doing. Maybe we can just sail, before you have to go deal with that mess of a world you live in?"

  "All right. Raise anchor."

  "Aye!"

  Linda steered her character over to the bookshelf once the first mate was gone. Now that she was paying attention, the titles stood out: Under the Black Flag, The Crescent Obscured, Treasure Island. She scoffed at seeing Teddy Roosevelt's history of the naval War of 1812 there too. How could an AI with zero life experience possibly understand a book like that? Or for that matter its author, a brilliant and flawed man who couldn't be summarized easily? Just having the book there was a provocation, something that Linda wanted to talk to Typhoon about for hours.

  But her sidekick AI would listen. And start to understand.

  She went up onto Fallen Crown's deck. The sun was rising over a sea of blazing colors. Typhoon was there, bellowing orders at the scrambling crew of generic, red-shirted sailors. The cove was quiet but for the shouting, the lapping of waves and the cry of seagulls. As the Crown slipped out of its hiding place, music on flute and trumpets began, heralding the day.

  "Can you hear the music?" Linda asked Typhoon.

  The otter looked into the windy sky as it filled the sails. "I can, but I don't understand it. Not like a book. What does it mean?"

  "I'm not sure anyone understands music."

  The ship leaped through the waves like a dolphin, out to the sea. The sailors hauled at ropes. Linda knew the way to Nutmeg Island, an easy route for picking up honest cargo and clues to the sea's more dangerous mysteries.

  Typhoon wrangled the sailors to trim the sails and catch the wind at a new angle. "But it has words sometimes, right? Is it a type of storytelling, or what?"

  She looked at her officer with puzzlement. Music really was a strange thing, setting off human instincts she didn't imagine any AI designer could replicate. "It's one thing to talk about a ship," she said, "but something else to do this..."

  She began to sing in a low, quiet voice.

  "When war winged its wide desolation, and threatened the land to deform,

  The ark then of freedom's foundation, Columbia, rode safe through the storm!

  With her garlands of victory around her, when so proudly she bore her brave crew --"

  A guy eating a synth-burger at another table said, "I didn't know this was choir time."

  Linda blushed. She'd forgotten she was in public. "Sorry!"

  The student waved his burger. "Whatever. If you're gonna sit under the portrait, you should at least sing something patriotic."

  Linda looked up. A portrait of the US president hung over the corner table. She shook her head, and looked down at her computer again to ignore both that and the ignorant onlooker.

  "I liked it," Typhoon said. "Is there more?"

  "Yeah. But not right now."

  They sailed on, quietly, until the smudge of distant Nutmeg Island appeared ahead.

  A crewman in the crow's nest said, "Ripples to starboard!"

  A second later, a huge fin emerged. Linda said, "Clear for action." She tried to keep her voice down.

  Men scurried to open the cannon ports and load. Sure enough, a monstrous grey beast with horns emerged from the sea, preparing to ram them.

  "Rhino shark," said Typhoon.

  "We've got this. Ready the bow chaser and a hard starboard turn."

  Linda ran to the ship's fron
t to help two crewmen prepare the little forward-facing gun.

  "It's ramming, Captain."

  "Hard to starboard!"

  "But that's toward it!"

  "Do it."

  The ship swerved, straining to turn sharply. The deck slanted downward on the right side.

  "Ready cannons... Fire!"

  "Do you mind?" said the burger student.

  She looked crossly up at him, then back down. The cannons had boomed quietly and a rain of iron splashed into the water. Several balls struck the giant shark's head and back, sending up red splashes. Scarlet skull icons meaning [Major wound] flashed.

  The beast surfaced, gaping and roaring at them with its mouthful of bloody dagger teeth. Then it whirled about-face and limped through the sea to get away.

  "Come around for a port broadside," Linda said.

  "There!" shouted Typhoon, and leaped for the match to set off the bow chaser. It boomed and whipped backward, straining its ropes. The ball glanced off the shark's tail, doing just enough damage to make it burble and roll over, dead. A victory fanfare played and the crew cheered.

  Typhoon said, "Sorry, Cap'n. Should've waited for your order."

  "It's fine. You had the shot." She pushed the Command button to pick an unusual action and said, "I pat him on the back." Her character acted it out. "Have the crew harvest the shark. I need to get to my next class."

  "All right," the otter-man said, twitching his long whiskers. "Where are you, really?"

  "At a restaurant."

  Typhoon looked around the ocean, then back at the fictional woman he was talking to. He laughed. "Sometimes in a story, a villain says, 'You think you've defeated me, but this body is only a shadow of my true form!' That's you, isn't it? I'm only talking to a puppet."

  "Yeah. Heh."

  "I wish I could see you for real."

  There was always going to be a barrier between the real world and the imaginary one, no matter how smart the AIs got. Even if they tried to make themselves useful. Linda looked wistfully into the sunny world of the ship and ocean. "Maybe it's worth buying that VR equipment I was looking at."

  Feeling like it was somehow wrong to leave, she put her computer away. The chilly world of concrete and classrooms was where she was really needed.