by K. T. Hanna
“How?” Telvar’s eyes grew distant, and if she looked closely, which she really wanted to do right then so she could distract herself, she could see algorithms flashing through them as he delved into the system to figure out how she was doing what she was very obviously doing.
“Because I know it so thoroughly.” She couldn’t help the sarcasm. She was scared. The next step would be scarier if it didn’t happen. Though she was sure it would. Wouldn’t it?
“Murmur.” Telvar was standing there in front of her, hands gently on her upper arms like he was trying to ground her thoughts from spinning out of control. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the time he’d had to rescue her from pounding her friends into the ground with the sheer force of her mind’s will. Murmur really should have learned by now. Slowly, she calmed, her logical mind kicking in at last.
“There.” Telvar took a step back, releasing her. “Much better. I know you’re frustrated, but we can figure this out.”
Telvar’s tone was soothing and caring. That was Telvar. She could do this if he was here.
“You’re going to have to talk to Somnia about this,” he said, like he’d suddenly become her older brother. “It seems like you’re attached to the world whether you want to be or not—seriously attached. There’s no way for me to break you free that I can see. It’s more like you’re…well, a part of it. Both here and not. Regardless of where you are.” He sounded perplexed, like it shouldn’t be possible, and Murmur was very much with him for that whole not being possible thing.
“I guess it at least makes sense why my abilities manifest in the real world too, then,” she half joked, but this time Telvar looked alarmed.
“Why don’t I know about this?” His voice was hushed. “You don’t want James’s employers getting hold of that information. That’s dangerous, Mur.”
She raised an eyebrow, surprised at his worry. He was taking on more and more human traits every day and they were an excellent distraction from everything else she should be concentrating on. But this went even beyond this. He was obviously far more aware of the ramifications than she was with a reaction like that. What hadn’t she considered yet? “I know it’s dangerous, but it’s happening, so I have to deal with it. We’ll figure it out. But most of all, I need you to try and figure out if this is happening to the others. The other ones we gave modified headgear to.”
Telvar nodded and sighed. Like he wanted to say something but felt torn. Apparently not torn enough though. “If you weren’t suffering from severe lack of sleep, I’d beg you to stay in here for a while and test some boundaries out with me.”
“It sounds so tempting, but nowhere near as tempting as about six hours sleep does to me right now.” She smiled sadly, but then brightened up. “But once this is over and we have all our little getashis in a row, we’ll take time for it then.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” He smiled at her, but she could tell he was still worried and just putting on a brave face.
“You bet.” She laughed nervously, worried why she never told Telvar before, but her brain was so fuzzy with fatigue. She would have to leave all that to future Murmur, so she willed her interface to log her out.
Suddenly she was back on the floor, blinking up at the ceiling. The thoughts running through her head didn’t allow for sleepiness. Pushing herself up off the ground and trying to make as little noise as possible, she climbed into bed. She was scared. More scared than she’d ever been. What was happening to her? She moved closer to Harlow, needing to feel a bit of warmth, and looped her hand loosely into Harlow’s who squeezed her fingers briefly. Even that small bit of reassurance helped settle her.
But it was a long time before she managed to fall asleep.
Storm Entertainment
Somnia Online Division
Game Development Offices - Shayla’s Office
Day Thirty-One
Laria ran the numbers through her head. But all she could focus on was that the dungeon had been finished. The information flashed across everyone’s vision. That meant Mur should be home sleeping soon. She wanted to get off and go check on her.
“You should just go, you know.” Shayla didn’t even make eye contact. She just kept working at monitoring the anti-virus. “You’re going to be utterly useless to me if you don’t just go and check up on her now she’s not stuck in that stupid portal situation.”
“True.” Laria chuckled, feeling lighter than she had in ages about the way things were going.
Right now, it seemed like they might even see some light at the end of the tunnel. Even with all the overtime she’d always worked, all the long hours…lately she felt like she never saw her daughter. And she missed her more than she’d ever thought possible. Laria frowned, not entirely sure how to go about it, but there was no way she’d let this game fall apart. Not after they’d come so far.
She took a breath and sat back down. “I have a bit of time. I mean, she’ll be asleep right now, or I hope she will. That kid has to learn she can’t run on empty for that long.”
“Shush. You were just as bad, if not worse, if I remember correctly.” Shayla raised an eyebrow meaningfully. “Yeah. Exactly. You don’t have a leg to stand on between you and David. Just go and give her a hug when she wakes up.”
Shayla turned her attention back to the information in front of her, sighing. Laria dug in, going into hyperdrive so she would be of use before she took off for a few hours. Glancing at her watch, she cursed herself for being a salaried worker again. If she wasn’t, Davenport wouldn’t have billions. Well. Actually, she’d done that math, and even if he paid her a million dollars a year, it would take her working a thousand years before he’d lose a whole billion. He wouldn’t even notice doubling her salary. Come to think of it, if they got through this mess, Laria would demand a raise.
A message flashed in her email. Her game emails. Laria frowned and pulled up the information. She blinked at it, refreshed the mail and double checked. From Somnia. From the world itself…herself. It was partially garbled and didn’t make as much sense to her as she wished it did, but it seemed odd. If she was going to make sense of it, she needed an AI to interpret for her.
She stood up and walked out of the room without a word to Shayla, making her way to the server room. Impatiently she punched in her code and then stood in front of the servers, tapping her foot and growing more aggravated by the second.
“Rav. Rav, get out here now.” Which was ironic, really, considering everything. She waited a few more minutes, finding it hard to stand still.
Laria? his voice clanged nice and metallic. Very machine of him. He sounded mildly surprised, if that was possible.
“Why…is Somnia messaging me?” She had no idea how to phrase the question she was trying to ask and really hoped Davenport didn’t have cameras recording her words as well as everything else, because they’d probably want to give her an eval for talking to machines so much.
Oh, I thought you knew definitively. He mumbled the words, like he was searching for something at the same time. It’s hectic in here right now. So many balls to keep juggling. Or something like that? Correct?
Laria found herself smiling. They really were wonderful. These AIs and their gradually emerging self-realization. She only wished more people could be like them. The world would probably be much better off with people who cared the way these AIs seemed to.
Somnia’s presence has grown since Murmur—sorry, since Wren—first connected to the system. Her persona has been growing steadily ever since, but she’s only made herself known to us in about the last two weeks. Fascinating, really. Imagine that.
“Well, you’re AIs too, why is it such a surprise?” Laria asked before really thinking about what else she had to do.
Why? He sounded very puzzled by her statement. Somnia is nothing like us. We were intended to be the artificial beings on which this entire world rested, but instead of just being us, the world emerged as herself. Slowly, and without us realizing
at first, here was a new being, a new AI. She’s fascinating, to be honest. And it’s all Wren’s doing, in a way. Be proud.
Laria digested the information, filing it away for future use. There was so much data she wanted to get her hands on from Wren’s initial login to the system. It was juicy and just so tantalizing. She had to take a breath. All that could wait for them to figure out the headgear that might yet prove dangerous for others. “So is she right in saying that some of the headgear we provided to Fable might be compromised?”
Ah, yes. Yes, she is. Rav didn’t sound impressed by this; he sounded positively irritated. The thing is, we aren’t really sure how this happened. Some of the modifications that have been made appear eerily similar to what Wren had done, though perhaps not quite so extreme. I do believe that James has somehow been fed part of the virus through contact with it and the world.
Laria’s jaw dropped. “You’re developing a sense of humor, right? I mean, that’s not actually possible?” She asked the question desperately, even though she already knew the answer.
Rav paused long enough for her to know the answer herself before continuing. I think you know the answer to that yourself. I mean, we are currently conversing, right?
Laria sighed. He was right. And now she had another thing to add to her ever-growing list of what she still had to fix to save the game from collapsing, or financial ruin—whichever hit them first.
Wren blinked her eyes open and stared at Harlow’s back. She watched as the other girl’s breathing made her back move ever so slightly. She wasn’t sure how long they’d been asleep, but Wren’s had felt troubled, despite the twinge of happiness she felt from the warmth of Harlow’s presence.
Wren constantly worried that if her powers had indeed leaked over into the real world, then maybe if she had a bad dream she would like, stun everyone in a fifty feet radius or something. Knowing her luck…it would be even worse. Sighing, she pushed herself slowly up into a sitting position and pulled a pillow to nestle at Harlow’s back so she wouldn’t wake up.
At least this way one of them would finish getting a decent night’s sleep.
Wren padded down the stairs and into the empty kitchen, pulling out some coffee to pop through the machine. And cream. She desperately needed cream right now. Glancing down at her hands, she could have sworn her veins were an electric type of blueish purple, much like Murmur’s runes that lay under her skin. But that wasn’t possible, was it? Her mind was getting all sorts of messed up.
She shook her head and pulled the door open, grabbing out her cream. Tiredness still lingered in her bones and at the back of her mind. Even though she wished she could sleep, though, she didn’t dare. What if she was dangerous out here? What if she could do what she’d almost done to her friends in the game…what if she could inflict pain like that on anyone?
No, out here she had to be even more careful. These weren’t just gaming husks. Everything around her was filled with real people. She owed them all a duty of care, all of them. Including herself.
Wren paused when she realized her hands were shaking, and that’s where her mom found her. Standing in front of the coffee machine trying desperately not to have the breakdown she could feel just around the corner. From her overachieving study fanatic self in high school, to this. She’d never imagined it. Would never have realized how far she could fall.
She had to get it together, because she wasn’t alone anymore. Her mother was about to come into the condo, and Wren knew that because she could sense her, through her damned abilities.
There was no controlling this. No control over this. But she had to. If it had really leaked into her body, and through her mind, she needed control now more than ever.
“Wrenny?” Laria’s tone was soft, like she was scared to hug her daughter because she might just break if she did so. Her mother had never dealt well with any form of fragility. She was too exuberant for that.
“Mom. I…” Wren gulped down a sob she hadn’t realized was brewing. “I think I can use my abilities here.”
She ended up whispering the last bit of what she said, hoping that maybe if she didn’t speak it out loud then it wouldn’t be true. And while she might wish that was the way things worked, she knew it wasn’t.
“Wren…but didn’t we already have an inkling of this? Wasn’t it like a parlor trick? Is it worse than making your hand disappear now?” Laria, to her credit, wasn’t panicking visibly, and Wren couldn’t sense any hidden elements of it either.
That in itself helped calm Wren down. “I know I can use my sensing nets. I knew you were coming; I could feel you half a block away. I know that Harlow is still asleep but just rolled over upstairs because she sensed I wasn’t next to her anymore.”
Wren paused and closed her eyes, turning to face her mother with the counter behind her back so she could lean against it while her legs felt so weak. When she opened them, she’d managed to keep the tears at bay. “And I know that Dad isn’t doing as well as he’s portraying. I just can’t tell more because he’s too far away.”
Laria enveloped Wren in a fierce hug. “It’s okay, love. We will get through this.” Wren could almost hear the frantic calculations in her mother’s head as she tried to figure things out, but the hug was still calming.
“You say that, but I could push you away right now without moving a muscle other than my brain.” Just saying it out loud made it far too real and Wren fought to retain control of her emotions. Losing that control right now wasn’t going to help anyone. Blanketing her neighborhood in a huge wave of wallowing despair wasn’t going to win her any favors. She was like a barely controlled empath in the real world.
“How do you mean?” Laria let her hands fall till they loosely gripped Wren’s. “Explain it like I’m five.”
At least that made Wren laugh, and a tiny bit of tension fled with the sound. “Thanks, Mom. I guess. I really only thought it was parlor tricks, but my connection in game made me think of some things, and now in Somnia I have some abilities that are kinetic in nature, so I can use the force of my mind to create force from my mind. If that makes sense.
“One of my abilities is my kinetic shield. It’s something that I can push out from myself, creating a barrier of sorts. Or I can surround people…” Wren’s face lit up as an idea came to her. “Oh, that’s it. I’ve got it. Here.”
She reached over and turned the hot water on, and then coated herself in her Kinetic Shielding she’d used so often it was second nature. Holding her hand under the water, she didn’t even flinch when it hit her barrier. Steam rose up toward the ceiling, but Wren only felt warmth. No scalding involved. She frowned a bit. Perhaps there was a difference. She wouldn’t have felt any alteration in Somnia.
Laria watched in amazement. “Wait. What? But our hot water is ridiculously hot.” She stated the obvious as if she was trying to ground herself. Then, like she was trying to downplay excitement, she asked, “Can I try?”
Wren nodded, hoping against hope that she could do what she thought she could, otherwise her mom was going to be in a lot of pain. But after making sure her mom was covered, the test worked. She looked at Laria’s hand, free of burns and not even wet when she removed the shielding.
In fact…she wasn’t really certain how to react to it. This was undeniable proof that she’d brought her abilities back into the real world with her, that her brain was forever irrevocably altered. Not that she hadn’t had proof before, but it had been far easier to ignore when things only happened to her.
Laria for her part was dealing with this emergence of potential superpowers far better than Wren expected. Her mother stood there, looking at her hand and frowning. She turned it this way and that, like she was seeking out any and every possible explanation for why her hand not only wasn’t burned, but also why it wasn’t wet. Shouldn’t matter what the temperature was, her hand should have been wet.
Wren felt her knees weaken, and a mild panic attack approached. She let herself practically fall into one of
the kitchen chairs, and the sound made Laria turn to her daughter.
“It’s okay, Wrenny. We will figure this out. It could just be residual.” Which had to be one of the lamest excuses her mother could have come up with, but she still appreciated the effort.
“Yeah, Mom. Don’t think it’s residual, considering I just stopped us from getting second degree burns. I’d like to say it’s a bit weaker here, which makes me feel extremely relieved.” Only she didn’t feel proud, she felt scared.
And then Harlow’s arms were looped around her neck, giving her a warm, secure hug without squeezing too tight. Wren sighed into the gesture, resting her face against Harlow’s arm, so glad to have Harlow with her.
Laria raised an eyebrow and smiled with happiness. “You two look cozy.”
Wren blushed, and she was pretty sure Harlow just turned the same shade as her hair. “We’re good. Been through a lot this last month or three.”
“You two have always been inseparable. You let me know if I can help with anything.” Laria’s smile shrank a little, as it was obvious her mind darted to something else. Wren knew her mother had meant just in case Harlow’s parents reacted differently, but she was fairly certain they’d end up being okay.
“Thanks,” Harlow beamed moving around to sit half on Wren’s lap. “I feel like this is more like my home anyway.”
This time Laria seemed thoughtful. “It always will be.” It was like she’d decided about something or other, and she turned around to take a look at the kitchen before heading toward her office.
“I have something I need to do,” Laria called to her daughter, her tone brooking no argument. “Make sure you eat good food, and refresh yourselves before you dive back into that damned game.”
Wren turned briefly to look at her mother, but the programmer didn’t turn back around. Frowning, she grasped Harlow’s hand, grounding herself. Because if she did it without thinking, she’d probably start a fucking rockfall in her parent’s kitchen.