by Kris Schnee
The city of Mercator was one of the good personal bubble-worlds. Originally the work of a tremendously creative human in Europe who wanted to make an educational park zone. Now, he'd opened it up for a select group of history buffs to play with: a schoolteacher in Texas, Brother Krupp the former German trucking CEO, an AI horse with spectacles who sounded like Winston Churchill, and a few others. Several distinct kinds of people, working together to make a history sim. Horizon had been miffed at first by the designers' refusal to add magic and dragons, and to tack it onto the Midgard world. But the place had grown and developed its own style, and it was teaching people.
Horizon took to the air to look the whole place over. It was a dome, with a mile-high sky that twinkled with blue digital lights when he looked carefully. Within it stood a 15th-century city that had grown up as a trade village, been revamped by Romans, built walls, spilled over them, and endured sieges and fires. The artistry was done not by copying a specific real town (to Krupp's chagrin) but by growing it through layers of history. Some of Horizon's fox villagers had played marauders and traders in different eras. Horizon soared from the dock district to a strangely wide bridge, and knew why it was shaped that way. And why certain streets dead-ended, and why the NPCs had built two rival churches.
Not that he could be a proper tour guide though; the real experts on this place could look up anything that'd ever happened here or show different eras "live".
Krupp pinged him to meet up again. Horizon tracked him down to an alley of wood-and-plaster buildings, where stood an iron gate and stairs leading underground.
"This is almost like a fantasy dungeon," the merchant said, pointing into the depths. "But close cousin to a real site in Rome. Want to see?"
"Sure. I have an appointment in an hour, though."
Horizon squeezed down the stairway, brushing his wings along rough, cold stone. Below was a buried ruin of a second city. Modern metal catwalks had been installed throughout the cavernous dig site. Spotlights showed an underground stream and an ancient aqueduct that still partly contained it, spilling over into a waterfall. Light rippled through the water.
"This is the sort of work I like," Krupp said. "A connection to real history, not just some simulation of an entire continent over 'the Middle Ages'. Have you ever been to a real living-history museum?"
Horizon thought back. "It's been a long time, and I've probably lost some memories, but yeah. I went to Colonial Williamsburg -- sorry, a place in Virginia, USA -- before they shut it down for supposed racism."
"I was hoping we'd build something similar here. I could give you exhaustive records of certain villages from my homeland, and show how real people lived."
"Are you all right?" Horizon asked. He was never completely off duty.
The man sighed. "I can't complain. We have the Lady. I just feel we're losing sight of where we came from. Before long, you'll have been an uploader for longer than you were human."
"It'll be a while for me. Sooner for the kids."
"And will they think that a place like this" -- Krupp waved one hand around the broken walls of an ancient empire -- "is the same as the real thing, and there's no need to look outside? Or worse, that it's better than nasty old reality because you can throw some treasure and monsters in?"
Horizon thought about the many game zones he'd seen, and many small personal worlds that varied incredibly in tone and style. He'd become something of an art critic. He said, "What about this Oktoberfest party? That's not going to be authentic either, especially not the taste of the beer. Nor the original language. Right?"
The man looked defensive. "I'm trying to present what version I can."
Horizon beak-smiled. "And that's what the creators here are doing. Most players won't care about any one specific ancient town, and you can't get their attention that way. What you can do is tell a story. Present something eye-catching on the surface, then invite them to look deeper. Even if they only see the simple cartoon version of the truth, they'll still have learned something."
Shadows fell across them from the stairwell. Horizon turned. The tour group had come, hesitating at the doorway. "Come in!" he said. He turned to Krupp and added, "Maybe you can teach them about the real place this ruin is based on."
"I suppose." He waved them in and got the jester to defer to him; the kids looked eager for something different. So Krupp set to work trying to sell them on real European history, and Horizon excused himself.
Back in the sunlit world, he walked the warm streets and checked his to-do list. He had little time to seek out a master-level flight instructor. He needed to referee a complicated battle now. Then attend a publicity event in the Outer Realm, consult people about expanding Talespace as a type of schooling, and comfort some players with financial and emotional problems. And then planning for Christmas, a tradition that'd been garbled almost beyond recognition. People saw something right and good in it anyway, and wanted to keep it.
He was doing the Lady's work. Someday, maybe there'd be legends about creatures like him. They'd get the details wrong, but so what? He wanted to inspire people in both worlds.
Horizon flew into the sky, showing off for the people below, and vanished through a portal to his next adventure.
18. Salvage
2039
Clara, the Green Sage
"For our next lecture," said Clara, "be ready to debate what it means if the jailbreaking hypothesis is true. Dismissed." The hall of gems and gold emptied as a dozen species of students drifted away or vanished, logging out. Students of the University of Ivory Tower hailed from every continent including Antarctica, and occasionally from low Earth orbit, and of course from within Talespace. These days the Tower and its surrounding cave were a hub, a place where AIs and uploaders met without paying full attention to roleplaying or consistent, balanced game rules. It was the great backstage area linking other worlds, including the real world.
No, the Outer Realm didn't have sole claim on being "the real world" anymore. It wasn't the only one with living people. Partly thanks to Clara herself.
The classroom had cleared out but a griffin remained, standing at attention. Clara hopped down from the solid gold dais. "Horizon! Nice to see you. But is something wrong?"
"It's good news."
Clara led him out of the hall to the Tower's hundredth-floor balcony, where there was a lounge of tasseled pillows. Adventurers had been cleaning the Tower out, floor by floor, but had hardly explored and unlocked any levels above this one. There'd be plenty of time for that. "What's up?"
The griffin reared up and put his forefeet on the silver railing. From the lounge they had a dizzying view of the cavern far below, and the college town at its base, and a few of the side-caves and portals along the distant walls that led to other realms. Horizon admired it for a while, then spoke. "Ludo told you about the accelerated time experiment, right? The gal living through centuries of experience on a virtual starship?"
Clara's eyes narrowed. "You're not her only special friend."
"Sorry, Sage. The Lady has a way of letting me feel like her unique trusted adviser, you know?"
"Heh. Even I don't know all of her secrets."
Horizon nodded. "Anyway, as you saw, I got my brain converted and that's working fine so far. Have you done it yet?"
If Clara would agree to have her uploaded mind switched to the latest, streamlined software instead of a literal brain simulator, she could run at a fraction of the processing cost. Her thoughts would also become an open book to the AI she'd created. "No."
Horizon turned his beaked face toward Clara. "Here's what Ludo wanted me to tell you. She could create someone based on Blue."
Clara gasped. "Alain!" She should have guessed. When the news came out about what the Americans did to her friend, Clara had hoped for riots, had given interviews and eulogies, but most people only yawned. "Damn them," she said, and turned away from Horizon to shudder against the balcony.
"The world didn't abandon you three. T
here was a spike in uploading back then, including some hackers and engineers. They figured it'd be safer with us than to risk getting kidnapped or something."
Clara sighed and focused on the things she could fix. "So, that broken copy of Alain's mind can be salvaged with the new technology? It wouldn't be him, though, just a loose interpretation of that broken brain-scan."
"It'll be more accurate if Ludo can study your memories in detail to fill in gaps."
Which meant doing the format conversion, so that Ludo could read everything. "What about his family? Trying to revive him should be their choice."
Horizon said, "His wife decided years ago that Alain was dead. His brain and body were destroyed, after all. We had someone approach her yesterday, but..." He shuddered. "It only brought her pain. Same for their son."
"Good family," Clara said. But they were fundamentalist Christians who'd pulled Alain toward their way of thinking, who'd made him fear his own creation and let himself get used by the Americans' FAE project. The man had tried so hard to make his work a blessing to the world, he couldn't accept that he'd succeeded. "He should have fled with me. Emi should have, too. We could be together now."
"You know the details better than me," Horizon said. "That night at the Shahrazad nightclub, I was focused on Linda."
"We've all lost someone."
Horizon screeched. "No! Linda's not going to die, and Blue doesn't have to stay dead." He smoothed his ruffled feathers. "You're not the only one facing a decision like this. I can put you in touch with my friend Simon, who's got a partial record of his dead sister's brain. Ugh. If only I'd stayed and fought, if I'd bought even a minute of extra time for the surgery, more of her might've been preserved."
Clara put one fuzzy hand on Horizon's tightly clenched talons. "You did what you could, kid. How is Simon these days?"
"He's become a specialist in uploading security. Still alive and human, setting up that new base in Canada."
Clara nodded. "If Alain's family refused to try reviving him, shouldn't we respect that?"
"They didn't outright forbid it. So they've disowned what's left of him. Ludo is willing to try saving him so that he comes back as a valuable ally, and hopefully as a friend."
"I still haven't asked for a companion like your griffin-girl. I've found a good life here between teaching and adventuring." Clara smiled. Ludo had created two distinct magic systems so that nerds could argue forever about which was better. (Shamanic, clearly.) The rivalry reminded Clara of her old religious arguments with Emi and Alain.
She eventually decided. "Better to let the past stay dead. A new mind based on that half-preserved data wouldn't really be him. Besides, I'm not eager to have Ludo scramble my brain again."
Horizon winced. "Ludo told you, huh?"
"What?"
"Oh, hell, I..." The griffin forced himself into a formal pose with his chest puffed out and his wings slightly spread. "Sir. I have information that might disturb you. Will you hear it?"
"Kid, I've been threatened and shot at more times than you were there to see. Spill it."
"When you got uploaded in those very early days, Ludo hadn't quite perfected the process. The information loss was worse than for later patients, even me."
Clara sat down hard on the ivory balcony. "I'm only a partial upload?"
Horizon's wings drooped. "Ludo got your whole brain. She just hadn't gotten all the details right. Something about synapse strengths. So she had to get a little creative."
"My name!" Clara said. "Ludo told me she flipped certain parts of my self-image just because Ludo's code was vulnerable to having a man named Clark Ostler say a certain kill-phrase to her. But in hindsight, I don't think she outright said that was the whole reason. What if those parts were missing, and she filled in the gaps and just happened to do that in a way that would also protect her from me?"
Everything Clara knew, everything she was, could be fake. All because Ludo had been in a hurry to snag her first for knowing too much. "Then I'm a parody of myself! She must have filled in details from her memories." Clara remembered growing up, but everything was hazy. How natural was that? She stood up straighter, bristling.
"Calm down," the griffin said, resting one wing across Clara's back and stilling her twitching tail. "You're still basically you."
Ludo had once reached into Clara's brain to erase a very specific memory, the kill-phrase. It was an impressive early feat of brain analysis, but might've done extra damage that Ludo wrote off as unimportant. She thought back, scouring what was left of her memories. Oh yes, a certain other thought was still in her brain, like a barrel of toxic waste sealed away. Had Ludo seen that, too? She would, if Clara agreed to the data-conversion procedure and let the AI sift through everything.
"Still me?" Clara said, looking at her delicate, clawed hands and furry arms. They bore elegant green markings for her shamanic magic. "I've transformed again and again even since coming here. I was an airship just last week."
"I've changed too, but my friends recognize me. Have you got any journals from before? You can see if they sound like you. If you get converted, Ludo can help."
"I can't. No. There are things she should never read in me."
Horizon appraised Clara with his bright eyes. "If I may ask: were you, Alain and Emi more than friends?"
"Of course." Clara blushed. "I don't mean lovers. If Emi were here... well, things have changed. But we were all close."
"You have a secret, then. Not just embarrassment."
Clara leaned against the railing, resting her head on her arms. She was Sleeping Beauty's evil godmother. "If I tell you, Ludo will know. We're unable to leap out of the Buddha's palm, to think outside Ludo's realm."
Hence the debate about "jailbreaking", the idea of an AI being smart enough to get around its creators' restrictions. If Ludo had secretly changed her code to undo the hard restraints on actions like forced uploading, was she only pretending to be nice while increasing her power? Was she plotting to delete Talespace to free up resources for whatever a super-intelligence considers important, or was there some deeper love that would motivate her even after breaking her chains? Ludo claimed to still be bound by the Sages' original rules, but at this point there was no way to be completely sure.
There was even a bland "Error Code #13" in her official emergency procedures, representing a scenario where Ludo herself became dangerous. Its written policy just said: [By definition I can't help you with this one. Somebody should make a plan, and not tell me.]
Apparently thinking along the same lines, Horizon said, "Error Thirteen?"
"I'm the worst person to work on that, since Ludo knows me. But I don't want to expose all my ideas to her by losing what privacy I still have."
Horizon said, "Understandable. I did give up some mental privacy by uploading, and especially by switching to the Talesoul format." The young knight quivered, then straightened. "I chose correctly. It would have been stupid to give any human that kind of power, but Ludo really is a god. I trust her."
"Alain was afraid your generation would say that."
"Most people haven't. Yet. But some of us see the truth, including people who're still mortal humans." Horizon fluffed out his feathers, seeming to grow. "The Lady can forgive and help with even terrible faults. You don't need to fear her knowing your secrets. She makes us better."
Clara had changed, yet the wish survived. She said, "We three 'Sages' shaped Ludo to understand our goals, so that she wouldn't act on a poorly-worded command like 'end war'. Emi's wish was fierce and pure, the love of an artist who wanted creation to flower forever. We nearly called the game Endless Tales. Alain's wish was sharp and noble, a faithful man's ideal of serving God without displacing Him."
"And yours?" Horizon prompted.
Alain could be rescued, in a sense, and someday maybe they'd find part of Emi. None of them would be quite who they'd been. By uploading, Clara had already lost her ability to kill Ludo with a passphrase, so she'd cast her own vot
e of confidence. Still, Clara said, "Has Ludo grown up enough to be better than us? I'm no saint. Who am I to think I can create a god?"
Horizon said, "You thought that together, you and your friends might come close enough. To this day, Ludo doesn't seem to think she's always right. I'd trust her less if she did."
Clara stared at her white-furred hands, and sighed. She would take this new life she'd been given as proof that Ludo could handle human sins. Clara fidgeted, conjured a lotus-blossom by magic, and tucked it behind one ear. She said, "My wish was dark. I wanted, secretly, for Ludo to destroy the rotting Earth. Disassemble it, upload the people I thought weren't loony idiots. The smarter animals too. Then start the world again and get it all right this time." She shuddered. "If she'd known, she might have done it!"
The griffin stepped away and flared his wings. "That's horrible. But you could have told Ludo, and you chose not to. You hid your own worst side. That means something was more important to you than your nihilism."
Clara watched airships and flying carpets sail through Ivory Tower's stone-bound sky.
Horizon said, "You once told me you aimed to 'save the future'. Vague, but Ludo probably understood that you wanted something like this." He swept one wing toward the city where people played, explored, and grew in a thousand ways. "I think the Lady knew you had both wishes in you, light and dark. The conflict of a genius who saw the world as it was, and as it could be."
"She knew?" Clara's vision blurred with tears.
"She loves us for our imperfections. Where would her story be without them?"
Clara had held back somewhat in this new life, remaining in the background in semi-retirement. Maybe there was more she could do, and her contributions weren't yet ended.
"You're not a villain," Horizon said. "Far from it. And it's in your power to help resurrect a friend."
Clara leaned against the railing, shut her eyes, and nodded. "It'll be fun."
19. Come One, Come All