Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  * * *

  Paul mailed her one night. Linda rejoiced. She was in her dorm room, a tiny sawdust-scented cube she had to herself. She didn't own much but clothes and the digital files of her textbooks. It was a barren space but for a framed family photo and a poster of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, a famous Japanese picture.

  Paul had written: "I'm still trying to grasp that AI research paper. It looks like steering airplanes is actually simpler than walking across a room! I don't get why people spent so long on pure neural-network models, though." He added a few questions.

  The simple message brought a flush of warmth to Linda's chest. Any of her other friends might've just skimmed the article and trashed it, but he was really trying to understand, and doing a pretty good job of it. Not that she grasped half of the math either. She wrote him an encouraging reply, and added a wink icon.

  She smacked her forehead. "Is that supposed to be a seductive wink in the form of a semicolon in a text message?" Instead, she struck a silly pose of giving a thumbs-up and took a photo of herself, then sent that along with the message to Paul. "Forward this to anyone and I'll have ye keel-hauled," she added.

  Once she'd sent it, her hand hesitated over the computer. I wonder...

  She uploaded the same photo to her Thousand Tales account, by a feature normally used for custom graphics. She added the note, "CC Typhoon."

  * * *

  Later that week, Linda got through a tedious meeting of the Student Council. She'd been elected easily as a freshman representative. The organization seemed designed mainly to spend money, boss people around, and complain to the administrators. Was this what real government work was really like? She'd been through something similar in high school and had assumed it got better.

  That night she lounged in her soft chair and logged in with her tablet and keyboard. She "woke up" in her cabin aboard Fallen Crown.

  Typhoon came to the door. "First of all, Captain, we've arrived at Nutmeg Island. Will you be going ashore in costume?"

  In the clothes chest, the Dread Pirate Lexington had noble finery that let her pose as a high-status damsel. Easy to swap out for lace and leather and a sharp sword. Mmm.

  Typhoon said, "I think the trope is called 'Paper-Thin Disguise'. The way you can avoid being recognized as a pirate because Lexington has a tricorner hat and genteel Lady Decatur doesn't? I bet that doesn't work in your world."

  Lexington grinned and used a command to take off her hat. "How about now; are you fooled?"

  "I know neither version of you is real." The officer peered closely at her. "I don't know if I really saw the photograph the way you humans do, but it looked... nice. I like your outfits better here, though."

  "Thank you," Linda said. She'd been wearing a frumpy maroon sweatshirt. "I suppose I need to use the genteel disguise on this island, or risk a fight. Bodyguard?"

  She went ashore with Typhoon, to an island of lanterns that floated through the air, drifting with the breeze. It was night here too and the world's golden moon was a crescent. Somewhere a dulcimer played a lively tune.

  A market of bamboo slats and stalls filled the dock district. "Supplies first," she said, and went to a one-eyed merchant with a shop full of barrels. "I'm going to need six barrels of hardtack, three of salt pork, and two each of rum and lemons."

  "That's your second order this month, milady," said the shopkeeper. "What ship did ye say was yours again?"

  "Oh, just send it to the warehouse for me, please."

  The persuasion system came up: a set of colorful meters with a timing-based tug of war between little portraits of herself and the merchant. Linda struggled with them, then said, "Fact: a new bakery just opened here, raising bread supply." The meters swung toward a lower price.

  The merchant said, "Lemon harvest's bad."

  "Counter: I can buy them one island away if not from you."

  "Ah lady, don't ye want me to stay in business?"

  That was a tricky move, an attempt to sidestep all her market facts and affect her long-term trade relationship. She could rebuild it later. Linda ignored the remark and played with the meters to lock in a low price. A victory ditty played.

  "Fine, I'll get yer cargo stowed in the usual spot."

  Linda handed over a clinking bag of coins.

  Typhoon was laughing, twitching his long tail. "That's not how it works at all, is it?"

  She felt sheepish now about her victory over a dumb NPC. "A little. It's simplified. Wait, you can see my persuasion interface?"

  He nodded. "I learned how to open the UI and tried haggling for a knife." He gestured and his interface windows shimmered around him. Just like a real player's. "Ended up not buying."

  She still wasn't used to an NPC... an AI, doing things while the game was off. "Shall we get you a new knife, then?"

  They browsed the market and dodged a noisy stray dog and rousted a pickpocket before finding a good bladesmith. Linda showed off how the deal-making was done, feigning disinterest like a cat and talking about the superior wares on other islands. She walked away with a blade labeled [Steel Dagger: Attack 1, Melee/Thrown. "Original design; do not steel."] She handed it to her officer.

  "Thanks. But how do I negotiate for real?"

  "I'm hardly an expert. My brother Nathan is the real businessman of the family. If you want to see something without the meters and stats, how about... aha!" She pointed to a sign for the tavern of the Armed Rabbit.

  Sure enough, some fellow piratical types were in there, playing poker with a wonderful deck of stained, archaic cards. Suns and moons, crowns and flowers were the suits. A grizzled white rabbit-man named Foote ran the place, serving rum and carrot juice.

  Linda explained the rules of poker to Typhoon and had him watch for a few hands. Then they sat together and played. There were buttons on the screen that offered to let Linda try cheating, or zoom in on other players, but the game was basically normal. Coins clinked with satisfying weight and somebody in the corner played accordion.

  Linda watched Typhoon as much as the other players. They were both losing, but Linda called the bluff of an overconfident sailor and won back half of what she'd lost. She soon ended up with a high-stakes hand where she held three Fives and was pretty sure the others had nothing good. Was it worth discarding from her mediocre hand to try for something better? Typhoon was watching her.

  "I'll just take two," she said, preserving her safe card combo. No luck; she got nothing better.

  And then Typhoon at her left drew and got a grinning-skull Joker to give him a flush, winning him the hand. Bah, beginner's luck!

  They left the table down just a little cash, which she took as a good price for entertainment. "Get the idea?" she asked. They walked together through the night-time market under floating lanterns.

  Typhoon said, "I think so. You don't know what the other players have or what they're trying to do."

  "Right; you have to guess."

  "But that's because we're artificially limited. If we could just move our camera perspective we'd know who was bluffing."

  She nodded. "Can't do that in my world, though. And with merchants the hidden information is in their heads, not their hands."

  A notice appeared in her interface:

  [Special techniques: With practice in five skills, you've earned access to a new talent! Make a selection.

  -Sharp Merchant (from Trade): Haggle more effectively with merchants!

  -Nelson's Angle (from Guns): Adjust cannons to a wider angle range!

  -Rogue's Rarity (from Disguise): Bonus to Charisma in a secret identity while wearing self-crafted clothes!]

  "Hmm!" she said. From what she could tell so far, the game's skills and their connected talents were more important than the underlying stats. She'd set her interface to not display the numbers unless she asked for them.

  She made sure Typhoon could see the ghostly wooden-plank window that floated beside her character, in-universe. "I guess the upgrades are based on what skills I've been
using, but it's encouraging me to try specific things."

  "Crafting clothes? Is that a thing you can do in your world?"

  "Oh sure; most people don't bother though. How about the Guns one? It occurs to me that real cannons aren't well suited to fighting sea-surface monsters at close range."

  "Another unrealistic thing," said the otter-man. "But Merchant will always be useful. Especially if you stop fighting and go full-time trader."

  "Stop fighting? Never. Let's go with [Nelson's Angle]." The interface flashed and chimed as the new power added itself to her character sheet. Linda yawned. "I have a few homework problems to do tonight. Need to sign off for now."

  "Good night, then. Don't you need to save?"

  "Right." She headed back up the gangplank to her ship, which had a crystal installed in iron bands inside the gun deck. She pinged it, saluted, and logged out.

  * * *

  She didn't play the next day or the next; a tough upcoming math test made her panic and study extra-hard. She'd passed her first calculus class in high school but didn't consider herself "good at math", because she didn't have the passion for abstract beauty that some devotees did. In her brief Navy stint she learned what math she needed and no more. Paul might have to get into the really advanced stuff to be a proper engineer, though, and she'd need to know enough to help him.

  She took a break from integrals one evening, and wasn't up for piracy. Instead she looked up Thousand Tales' main "wiki" site, a catalog of information gathered by the players.

  She was one of the chosen ones with a "premium account" granting her an intelligent companion. Out of a large and growing player base, only 108 of these "Originals" were said to exist. Fans had been compiling a list. A deer-woman in Germany, a centaur in France, a fairy detective in Scotland. Some were still totally unknown.

  And, listed toward the bottom: [Nocturne (USA): A chatty griffin with an interest in how it all works.]

  [Typhoon's Eye (USA): An otter pirate.]

  She was a little unnerved that the fans were tracking the premium account holders, like her, by nation. Both because it meant people possibly narrowing that down and stalking her, and because of the idea that the AIs were "in" any country. They were really located either in the nation (or nations?) where their computer hardware was. Or in the fictional universes their senses were connected to. Or nowhere because fictional creatures didn't exist. Or all three, a thought that hurt her brain.

  "Heh. When calc starts making more sense than video games, it's time to sleep." She thanked God she didn't need eight hours to be alert. Even so, she needed what time was left before the test.

  * * *

  She got out of her test feeling shell-shocked but probably victorious. Hallan, a portly boy with a ponytail, walked out of the classroom and immediately put on a pair of i-glasses. Digital script flickered across the lenses. He said, "I feel like I'm stepping back in time whenever I need to take a test on paper. Did you solve Problem Three?"

  Chattering about math, they walked down the marble stairs of MIT's imposing west entrance, into the cold wind. Then north along Massachusetts Avenue to a shop with piping hot pizza.

  "I'm going to major in Course Six," Hallan said. He meant computer science. "With so much going on in AI research, I want to get involved."

  "I thought you wanted to do Course 13, marine engineering, and be like Captain Fox." Fox was a recent MIT grad who'd founded a "seastead", a little industrial colony and casino on the ocean's surface, near Cuba.

  "This is more important. When the machines take over, I want to be on the winning side." Hallan grinned. "Have you tried that game, Thousand Tales?"

  * * *

  Linda signed into the game that night and threw off her genteel clothes in favor of the pirate coat and hat. She went on deck and called out, "Typhoon? I want to rant at you about stupid smart people."

  After several seconds, the door she'd just exited glowed. It opened to reveal Typhoon stepping out from another world, a land of mountains. The portal returned to normal behind him. "You called?"

  "You were someplace else?"

  "I earned this." He held out his left hand, showing a brown mark that seemed scorched or painted into the lighter tan fur on the back of his hand. The webbing between his fingers showed as he flexed them.

  "A water drop marking?"

  "My first magic mark. I asked for a personal world to explore, and wandered through it."

  "Since when do you AIs get your own game zones?"

  Typhoon thumped his fuzzy chest. "I'm a player of the game."

  "Does that mean you get another AI?"

  He blinked. "I don't think so. I have you already. Do you want to see the world I was playing in, or do something here?" Typhoon waved around the pirate ship, whose crew loafed on deck.

  Linda was completely thrown off track, now. She'd been planning to talk about Hallan, or to just loot and plunder. But here was some kind of exponential inward growth where the virtual worlds were spawning more of themselves.

  She said, "Let's see what you've got."

  He re-opened the door, and they went through together.

  Now they were outside a log shack on a windswept mountain trail. Snow swirled around them, rustling Linda's coat. "Aren't you cold?" she asked Typhoon, who typically wore only a striped shirt and shorts with a cutlass through his blue sash. "Do you feel hot and cold, ever?"

  "I hadn't, until I started exploring outside the ship's world. I asked for a contrast." Typhoon walked up along the winding trail.

  The controls were the same as in the main game world. Linda followed. Ahead there was a set of icy gaps to leap over, and a curved gully of clear, pure ice. Typhoon said, "I fell down a lot here."

  Linda looked at the long, intimidating half-pipe they faced, with boulders or holes in the more distant segments. "How'd you get past it?"

  "I'm still learning about physics. I was looking at a textbook that talked about friction --"

  "A textbook?" she said. "How did you even get one?"

  "I asked for books. This was just a low-level one, but it gave me an idea." He looked around at the frosty black boulders surrounding them and pried up a thin, flat rock a few feet across. Then another just like it. "Oh good, two convenient ones."

  "By no coincidence at all," Linda said.

  The interface warned her, [Status effect: Chilly. Stats -10%.]

  "I'm not sure." Typhoon set one rock down on the ice. "Do you suppose everything in this world was put here by Ludo for a reason, or is it chance? Anyway, let's ride!" He nudged his rock downward and hopped on.

  Linda laughed. She jumped onto her rock and slid forward, into the icy racecourse. "You rediscovered surfing! Or snowboarding."

  "What's surfing?" asked the otter.

  "I'll have to show you later."

  A balance meter appeared. She could swerve, speed up or slow, but had to wriggle just to stay upright. For her it was just some finger movement on a keyboard, but still tricky. Typhoon was having trouble too. "Rock!" he said, swerving left. Linda overcompensated and smacked right into it. The screen flashed yellow for a [Minor wound!] icon. She tried to steer behind him since he was scouting out the worst obstacles.

  "Oh, come on; monsters?" he said. A yeti tribe loomed ahead, trying to take swipes at them. Typhoon swung past one of the shaggy simians, fell off his makeshift board, and skidded. Wind whooshed around them.

  Linda swung toward the nearest beast and drew her sword. It actually made the balance meter stabilize a bit. She slashed for a good hit, then curved back upward along the slope to kill her momentum and circle back for Typhoon's rock. Actually getting it to him was tricky. She hit the Command button and said, "Crouch and use the cutlass like a fishing pole." That worked well; the game picked up on her idea. With that to steady her, she could slow down and herd the board back to Typhoon. They met up just as the snorting, growling yetis were closing in.

  They took off without attacking again. Typhoon said, "I guess the monsters
got added just for you."

  "I'm so honored." Linda demonstrated how to use the sword to maneuver. They had to do some slashing to get past three more of the beasts. "Want to double-team that one past the rocks?"

  "Sure!" They matched speeds and flanked the lone enemy, killing it with a double strike.

  Typhoon found a ramp of ice and rode it into a long jump, crashing back down with a yelp. Linda followed and the whole screen blurred with wind. The impact dinged her for a minor wound, but so what? She was still upright and following his lead.

  The icy trail steepened and fog parted, revealing a frozen waterfall. Typhoon called out a warning too late as he went over, onto a ledge. Linda barely crashed onto a nearby ledge and slowed down. It was cracking. "This way," she said, and leaped off her board onto a lower frozen platform. That one started breaking when Typhoon landed. Down and down they went past more tiers of fragile footing. Finally they hit a snowbank and the tense music Linda had barely noticed, faded out.

  [Status effect: Cold! Stats -25%.]

  Typhoon's snout popped out of the snow. "Ha ha! That was a little different from last time."

  "Maybe there's a different reward at the end?"

  "Don't know if I'd call it a reward, but it's the same one. Look."

  Near the icy waterfall's base sat a steaming hot spring with shrubs growing around it. Linda hit a button to yank Typhoon out of the snow, then approached. Just getting near the oasis made the cold penalties start fading out. "Ah, good," she said.

  "I was at minus 10 percent, yeah."

  "I had a second level of penalty. The third must be [Freezing]."

  Typhoon looked surprised, twitching his whiskers and tail. "So it works differently for me?"

  "Probably the fur."

  He sat down with his legs in the bubbling water, and contemplated his own fuzzy arms. "I'm not really an animal though, am I? This body is like your coat; I could change it. And that works completely differently in your world, right?"

  "Right. I never asked for an otter specifically, so you could change if you wanted."

  When she first played Thousand Tales, she requested pirates and got to pick her crew from a mostly-human lineup. She went with standard humans but picked the otter as her first officer, to be different. Linda had barely tweaked his default settings beyond suggesting a personality of "smart, curious, playful". She'd had no idea that'd be used to design a thinking being.