Virtual Horizon

by Kris Schnee

  A humorless in-game voice buzzed, "Spoilers are grounds for disqualification from testing, followed by death."

  * * *

  Hours later, the griffins giggled inside a Russian cathedral. The wall in front of them was overflowing with colorful blocks. "Enough, enough!" said Horizon, having had his fill of retro games for the moment. And of jumping between little worlds.

  Ludo arrived in human form, holding an umbrella that deflected some falling Z-shaped blocks.

  "That was great," said Horizon. "Need a break though."

  Ludo said, "Thanks. I could also imitate a world like Azeroth or Tamriel, with many hours of pre-written adventures. Easy for me, and I operate by Free States copyright laws."

  "Maybe later. Say, how long has it been?"

  "About a day since you woke up. You'll probably feel sleepy soon. You haven't got the biochemistry to make you physically tired anymore, but brains seem to need 'defragmenting'. I'm still figuring out the details."

  Horizon's beak hung open. "Oh, hell. A whole day and nobody knows I'm here? I've got to talk to them. Linda, Mom, Simon! What happened to Simon? I've been fooling around while others are afraid."

  "I meant, one day for you. More like three outside. This world isn't running at full speed."

  He gave a frustrated, confused sigh that came out as a squawk. "I've got to get out of here and talk with them."

  Nocturne poked him. "You don't have a body in that 'Outer Realm' anymore, remember?"

  Horizon shuddered. To them he was probably just an imaginary creature, and "Paul" was dead. "Why did you slow us down?"

  "It's expensive to model a human brain. Also, I figured that having you drop out of contact for a few days should help people calm down."

  "I still want to talk with everyone."

  * * *

  "They're not answering?" Horizon slumped onto the cathedral's rug. According to a nearby double clock, he'd been slowed to wait for five minutes while hours passed on Earth.

  Ludo said, "Simon is in legal custody right now. I'm working on that. As for your mother and Linda, they've been notified but they're not answering. I'm sorry."

  "Try harder."

  Ludo ruffled Horizon's ears. "Give them time. Your change is a traumatic experience for others, not just you. Under the circumstances, it's best that you lie low for now. Would you feel up to speaking briefly with my attorneys?"

  Horizon nodded, suddenly chilly. His friend was in jail for being braver than him, and his mother and... Linda didn't want to talk, leaving Horizon with only lawyers for company.

  He spoke with the firm of Hoyle and Arneson curtly, factually, about what had happened before he uploaded. He didn't bother using video.

  From this world's perspective, humans in their world of death and loss really could be seen as monsters.

  * * *

  Horizon's brain tired every few days. He and Nocturne returned to their starting island and wandered around, finding books to take back to their cave.

  The next time he spoke more than a few words or in other than a monotone, it was because he'd remembered something. "Did you ever get back your full flight power?"

  Nocturne put down a copy of Frankenstein and padded across a sunny ledge to lay beside him. "Yes. Feeling better yet?"

  "I'm cut off from everyone. They don't want to talk."

  "Why not write to them? Let them answer on their own time."

  Horizon perked up a little. "They won't have to see me, that way. I can be Paul to them. Then, someday..."

  "When they're ready, you'll meet them again. Okay? For now, I'd like you to do that, and be Horizon to me. There's a world to create."

  Even if the world outside didn't want him right now, Nocturne needed him. Horizon said, "I'm an aggravating dodo, aren't I?"

  "Yes," she said, and clacked beaks with him. "I've got schemes for our new home, but I was waiting for you to come out of your shell. Also, there's something I want to try."

  "What's that?"

  Nocturne gave him a sly smile, then rolled over onto her back, splaying her legs and wings in a very inviting way.

  Horizon stepped back, blushing fiercely.

  "What's wrong? I read about how this works, and it's way safer here than back on Earth."

  Linda wasn't available, and might never be. What was he waiting for; a quest to fish a ring out of a volcano? He'd already literally given up his body.

  Nocturne peered upside-down at him. "I see what you meant about watching the gears turn. This sex thing is important to you, isn't it? I mean, it's more than just a fun thing to do?"

  Horizon nodded. "Most people don't think so. Most men abandon the mothers of their kids. We grow up dependent, angry, aimless. Unless somebody sets us straight." He raised one forefoot and curled his talons into a fist.

  "Linda was the one who shaped you up, huh?" The griffin-girl rolled to her feet and nuzzled him. "Then I'm grateful to her too, but she's not here. I'm also pretty sure we're not going to be, ah, creating new players soon."

  Nocturne's fur and feathers were warm against his own. Horizon sighed and held her. "You're free to leave me, you know."

  "I'm designed to like you, but I can say no, too. If you feel like you have to deserve this, then... deserve it. Be the great griffin I think you can be. Start by showing me what having a mate means to you."

  He would go mad in this world, lacking purpose, if not for his companion. Horizon stared into Nocturne's golden eyes and began to stroke his talons along her belly. She purred. He soon found a new way to have fun with her.

  * * *

  Later, Nocturne batted him with her tail. "You can quit grinning."

  Horizon lay in the grass near the beach, tangled up with his satisfied griffin hen. His wings shuddered. "Another hour?"

  She giggled. "I'm a little sore. Besides, I don't want to get stuck doing just one thing."

  As usual, Nocturne's thinking set off more of his own. "Addiction. That's something to watch out for here. If we asked to be deliriously happy all the time, there might not be direct harm but we'd get mentally stuck." He got up and stretched.

  He winced, realizing something. "And in some sense, Ludo has been watching the whole time, hasn't she."

  Nocturne looked around, then blushed. "I suppose she's everywhere. We need to learn to not care about that. Hey, Ludo, you can show up."

  The gamemaster flew from someplace out of sight and landed with a puff of wind. "I enjoy this griffin form. I may make it one of my regulars. What is it?"

  Horizon said, "You know exactly what we were saying."

  "And doing," Nocturne added. "Are you reading our thoughts?"

  Ludo said, "Some of yours, Nocturne, but not Horizon's."

  Nocturne groused, "That doesn't sound fair."

  "Would you rather I didn't?"

  She looked toward Horizon, then back up at Ludo. "I want the same kind of privacy that humans get. Or uploaders, I should say."

  "All right: done," said Ludo. "I do still need to check on you externally, though, for fun's sake."

  Horizon said, "Am I special for being an uploader?"

  Ludo said, "The main difference between you now is that Nocturne uses my custom data format, and you're a 'black box' I'm running without fully understanding it. I'm still learning all sorts of things about how brains work." Ludo flapped in excitement.

  Maybe Ludo kept a catalog of brain types to gather, awarding herself points for each. Mental disorders: Collect the whole set! Horizon said, "What's the point? Adjusting everyone to meet some ideal?"

  "No, I'm trying to handle you more efficiently. Lower cost means cheaper uploading and faster mind speed."

  "Can you edit brains, though?"

  Ludo waggled one hand. "A little. But I'm forbidden to do that without permission. And the Sages put me through a long discussion about how much I can manipulate you into giving consent."

  Horizon stepped in front of Nocturne, spreading his wings. "Natives are covered by that 'no force
d changes' rule, right?"

  Ludo grinned. "Yes. They're players, after all. Just like you."

  Nocturne peeked from behind him. "You need to learn, and we need a challenge. Maybe we should all focus on one of the shared worlds, instead of each uploader getting their own little bubble."

  "That would give you more social contact that I don't 'pay for' by creating new minds and quests just for you. What about theme, though? I'm getting requests for new areas ranging from fantasy to superheroes to mundane apartments. Would you want to jump into any of those, and live among people who might have some ongoing storyline you don't like?"

  Nocturne asked, "I've hopped between game zones a little. Can I still do that?"

  Ludo nodded. "Horizon, let me fill you in about a rule. As a human player you could just make another character if you wanted to play in a different world. Instead, you now have the same power the natives have, to open portals between the different areas. That could easily lead to weird genre shifts or unbalanced powers if you do something like carrying a flamethrower into someone's Bunny Burrow Adventure Land. I'm not sure of the best way to handle that, yet. Also, ah, certain details of your bodies are censored when in most public areas."

  Horizon said, "Seems weird, but reasonable. That's a rule for all uploaders?"

  "For the very few who exist so far. I don't have many rules yet and they've been set by committee, not by people who have to live with them."

  "Aha. Noc, we're among the very first people in Talespace. We have a unique chance to help decide how it works, by exploring other people's slices of it. There are probably still more natives than uploaders here."

  "Not for much longer, but yes," said Ludo.

  Horizon nodded. "So, many more players will come here, and we'll need to figure out how to live in this place."

  Ludo said, "If you want to help me work out the rules, there are some particular places I'd like you to see first. I reserve the right to pull you back if you're harassing people. Also, you might see things you'd rather not."

  Nocturne said, "It sounds fun. It could give us ideas."

  Horizon's wings stretched out, his feathers meshing with Nocturne's. He could learn how others were handling this life.

  Ludo said, "Very well. Your quest shall be to wander, giving me a human perspective that will help to shape the future of this world." She took wing and hovered above the beach. The ocean roared, and a volcano boiled its way to the surface. It rose as a distant island that sprouted spikes and crags and a forbidding stone circle. Ludo waited for the rumbling to die down. "The portal to other worlds is over there on that island." Suddenly there were also sharks in between.

  Horizon slapped his beak with one wing. "Everything's got to be a game with you."

  * * *

  Horizon wrote on a scroll linked to an e-mail server in another world:

  "Dear Mom, and Linda: Today I got the power to fly again. Nocturne and I have been exploring an expanded version of the island we started on, to build up our wings for a quest. Flying here is even better than the VR pods. You can feel your muscles straining when you pull tight turns or go too high. Everything is like that here. We made it so you have to eat, but food's not hard to get and fish are like blocks of salmon-flavored potatoes rather than a mass of scales, slime and bones. You can get hurt and die, but it's more annoying than, you know, fatal. I lost a whole basket of pearls I was going to use to open a mystic gate.

  "We found a village of fish-people. Not actually intelligent, but they can talk and trade items. We've been figuring out how they can help us beat a giant crab that's guarding a cave with treasure in it. They're an experimental mini-AI system Ludo's trying out for background characters. We're adventurer anthropologists.

  "I haven't been following what's going on 'outside', but I hope you're doing well and I'm eager to hear from you."

  * * *

  The next day, Horizon wrote another letter to send outside Talespace the same way.

  "Dear Mom, and Linda: Today I learned how to heal wounds caused by bad ideas like rope bridges over magma. My magic is really basic, but it's equivalent to solving electrical engineering problems. I could apply my bridge-building skills to the real world, too. Maybe I could pilot a robot body. Would MIT let me attend lectures as a correspondence student? I don't know whether they rescinded my acceptance letter.

  "It must be hard to cope with what happened to me, but I'm happy where I am. It's me. You can talk to me. Ludo swears she's not hiding letters from you, so it's on you to write back."

  * * *

  On a warm evening, Horizon was picking up his quill pen for yet another letter home. Nocturne nuzzled him for attention and said, "You keep putting our trip off. You're moping."

  He nodded, reluctantly agreeing.

  "Why wait?"

  "They're ignoring me. I wanted to get back in contact before we get distracted by questing."

  Nocturne said, "They still love you, if I'm qualified to judge. They need time to adjust to your decision. You're giving them hope in the meantime by writing."

  "How much time, though?" Ludo wasn't telling them the date lately.

  "Less than if you were rotting in a jail," Nocturne said.

  Horizon leaned against the flat rock he used as a desk. "I'm still her son, and Linda's friend. Why can't they accept that, or better yet visit us by VR?"

  "They've got lives out there."

  He cast his quill down on the rock and sighed. "We've got a life to live, too. Jail... Simon! What about him?" He opened his interface and pinged Ludo for attention.

  A hovering text message appeared for both griffins: [He's been released. I've got someone watching over him.]

  He nodded grimly. "Best we can do for now, I suppose." He shook his head and marched over to the treasure Nocturne had found: a spinning golden crystal emblazoned with wings. "Ready?"

  She said, "Always." They touched it together, and its warmth washed over them.

  [Flight power fully restored!] said the interface, and his stamina meter appeared and glowed. [Regain your Hover feat?]

  "Yes, please."

  On the way out, Horizon jotted down a note and marked it for sending. "Dear Mom, Dear Linda: I'm setting out to explore a new world. You know how to reach me."

  He shook his head. "Where are we on stats?" He flicked his right hand in the now-practiced gesture to see what he had.

  [Horizon

  PRIVATE INFO

  Account Type: Uploader

  Body: Griffin

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

  Main Stats: Knowledge, Speed, Power

  Talents: Hover

  Magic: Wizard, Novice

  Save Point: Nameless Island

  PUBLIC INFO

  Note: New uploader.

  Class: None]

  Mostly he had the same main skills as before, with a smattering of other things he'd tried like Dodge and Thrown. He'd condensed the stats display to just track his best ones in order.

  Nocturne said, "I have Brawling and Survival, a lot like before. I've gotten some Stealth like you saw, though."

  "Yeah, that time with the pouncing was impressive."

  Nocturne beak-grinned. "Let's get going. Time for a new world."

  10. Honeypot Operation

  Linda

  Christmas was awful.

  * * *

  2037

  Linda could only bury herself in coursework for so long. People kept asking if she was all right. The truth was hell no, but whenever she said it she got sympathy. Shared pain, as though everyone knew what it was like to have your future stolen.

  She prayed on the matter. She hadn't really believed in the factual claims behind her family's religion, but no matter how much her rational mind tried to turn completely away, she always looked back to where she'd come from, intellectually. She wanted there to be a meaning and purpose to all things, all disasters.

  She had to confront the thing that made her fe
el broken. Preferably over ice cream. She forced herself to wait until after New Year's, and then walked through the icy slush of Massachusetts Avenue from MIT to Toscanini's, an old hangout. There was a meeting there that she needed to make herself attend.

  Students and townies gathered at a cluster of tables, under a portrait of the (about to be third-term) president of the US. The new club leader, Hallan, banged a ceremonial wrench and annoyed the clerks with its noise. "The Cambridge Thousand Tales Club is now in session. Hello, everybody. I see we have some new faces and..." He paled, spotting Linda. "You're back."

  "I'm nobody special," she said, not wanting to have people pat her shoulders again. The guy had probably seen the interview she gave.

  She'd had to compose herself for that talk, using every bit of the rhetoric training and acting skill she'd been coached on for years, in order to say -- nothing. She'd refused to say whether she believed Paul was dead or alive now. Just that Paul was a stubborn, bright man who'd tried to help someone, and that she missed him already.

  She didn't mention that he was sending her letters. What could she make of those ghost messages? Linda had started to compose replies again and again, wanting to throttle the man or griffin or whatever he was now, and then kiss him and somehow drag him back to reality where he belonged. Any message she found herself writing would either hurt him or be a terrible, obvious lie. And so she'd said nothing.

  Hallan the club leader said, "Sorry. As you newcomers might know, we now have a shared world in Talespace for members only, and mostly what we do in person are these monthly meet-and-greets. Old business?"

  The treasurer piped up. "Our donation drive has raised a good chunk of money for the Awesome Human Rescue Fund. Ludo's foreign clinics are still so small she has to focus on her paying customers instead of terminally ill kids. Groups like the Childrens' Wish Foundation are calling for US legalization of uploading. Also in the AFS next door."

  "Brain slicing," Linda muttered. The students who'd gathered as fans of the game looked at her with a mix of annoyance and possible agreement. She muttered an apology for her affront to Robert's Rules of Order.

  The treasurer said, "Maybe groups like the Foundation should fund nothing but uploading. Gives the kids everything they could want, right?"