"How does it work? I don't need all the details, I know you probably worked very hard on it and would like me to experience it for myself."
"That's my boy! Good! Okay! ...I can't explain it."
I stared at him blankly and Mikota started to laugh. I wanted to be mad and threaten him again, but I understood what he meant. Somethings just had to be experienced, when no amount of explaining with words can properly depict the idea; an ineffable experience.
"Good, I was worried I was going to have to sew myself back together there. You understand that it is something that must be experienced, but that isn't important right now. The fighting is not the main part or goal of this game, the girls are and all of the rest of the race of Gialazsaur," Gripton explained.
"See, and this is the part I don't understand. How are humans a threat? The Gialazsaur would have decimated them if I hadn't been there. So, how are they a problem?"
"What you fought and killed was an evolved Gialazsaur, and the more they evolve the more reckless and incoherent they become. You need to help stop them from evolving, Mikota was close, so you should understand it somewhat. You will not have to sleep with Gialazsaur, but your children will be the key, so the girls are your number one priority."
"Well good to see no matter where I go my job is always the same, breed and make fake babies and save the world. Standard Dave stuff, right?
"NO! THIS IS NOT THE SAME! THESE ARE MY CHILDREN AND I HAVE NEVER ASKED YOU TO DO ANYTHING FOR ME BESIDES GIVE ME THESE WORLDS. I NEED YOU TO TAKE THIS SERIOUS FOR ONCE!" Gripton thundered at me, making me take a step back, and Mikota cringed in my arms, hiding her face.
Well, this was new.
"What are you talking about? This is a game, if they die then…"
"No, this is not Reborn, Dave. This is The Godless Green Earth that I built to train A.I. and it should have been a peaceful world, but I made a mistake. I gave the human NPC I created a small boost using a micro A.I. to help them be more sentient. This is what we had wanted to do, rather than the just plain NPC that we hated so much. Everything was fine, I had even created a special layer to keep the children safe, but I wanted to see the effects of life and death on a permanent level for the human NPC so I could see how it might work in reborn, but the catch was that it was only made to target the Micro A.I. program, not my children."
"So then they drilled down and what? The game broke? Just take your A.I. out and reset the world and change the settings, right? But that's not right or you would have done it...and if your children were in danger you would have already done this yourself if you could. I don't get it, what piece am I missing?"
"The game altered somehow, and now I have lost all access to the game, I can't even get to the files. Literal walls block me from getting to it, so the only way to reset the world is to finish it, but that was never meant to be done. I didn't put an end, it was supposed to be a constantly changing and evolving world, now the only way I can see to end it is to remove one of the two races because it is built as an RTS, that is the only obvious way, but I might not be right," Gripton explained, getting a very tired expression on his face.
This was hard to take; now that I understood what was going on, I also understood Gripton's anger at my flippant dismissal of the world and the people in it. He had never been less than happy or crotchety, nothing in between unless he was with his girls. A.I., that was great and would make the game so much better after this was all over, but that wasn't here or there for this world.
"You said our pregnancy is going to be important, why?"
"I put a safety net to recycle the micro A.I., using a life and death rotation. This way when one died it would remain on the world in the form of sparks in gems on a great pillar below the crust. The pillar isn't important, the trapped sparks are. If the Game ends before they can be received, the ones left will get cleaned up with the reset, lost forever."
"This all happened because of him right? I should have been here before the calamity happened; another failing on my part."
"No, you have done everything you could, Dave! No one could have been crushed so many times, and still, have the metal to get back up! It has been murder for me to watch you all, being able to do nothing. My only connection to Reborn is Hyde, and I helped him as much as I could, but I was forced to use a game avatar in his head with the same kinds of restriction and blocks and the others. I was also forced to lie to him, and that was hard, but you know your brother, once you're in the circle, there is no getting out!" Gripton laughed, finally showing some of his usual light.
"Okay, I get it now, and I will take this seriously. I will get the population booming again, and figure out the rest. Now, for my final question. How do I get to Tequila?" I asked.
Chapter 265: Clutched My Chest
[Day 1/1825 on The Godless Green Earth A.I World]
"I will get her to you, but for now I will act as a guiding voice until you two are back together. Head west from here to the coast. If you run, it should take you half a day to reach the settlement. I need to go check on Hyde, and the other two to see how Bhan and Kiada are doing."
"All of them made it fine?"
"They made it, K is doing a lot better than Bhan, but that was to be expected. Drania always rolls her eyes at the new random list of flavors the girl's blood is set at. That was a really good idea on your part! Who wouldn't want to bite into an ice cream-flavored neck? That is one that didn't get messed up by Reginold," Gripton said with a smile.
"I designed the quirks into our sparks, those things can never be changed or altered. That's why I was always able to come out on top, but Reginold did find a way to suppress the effects didn't he? That is why all the girls were taken from me slowly on my first run of this reset, forcing me into a downward spiral that just ended up getting everyone killed, but me."
The memory was old, but for me, it was like just yesterday, I could see now why none of the girls wanted to talk about it. It had torn me apart, broke me down to the ground until I gave up, but Tequila saved my spark and helped me...urgh!
I clutched my heart and dropped to my knees, gasping for air; I could hear Mikota scream as I fell over. Like a flood gate had been opened, she poured into my mind like rushing water, filling every corner of my being and existence with her. I wasn't in pain, I just couldn't breathe, so many years spent together before coming to Reborn from Second Life pushed down on my chest with the weight of a mountain.
"Is he okay?!" I could hear Mikota ask in a worried voice.
"He is fine for the most part, he finally dug deep enough to get her back. You know Tequila and Dave spent countless years watching over you all, now Dave is getting that all back. I would imagine receiving over a millennium of memory that you spent together with a woman you love might have this effect on a person," Gripton explained to Mikota.
They were still pouring into my mind like an unending stream, but I was starting to be able to catch my breath again. I knew how many years were spent frame jacked, 1134 years inside the game. Not even Hyde knew that, I had asked the girls to keep it a secret from him and the others. I don't know if they would have given me shit, but Bhan might throw a jealous fit, but I had let the other girls live any lives they wanted and worked with Tequila to create realities for the girls to enjoy.
The entire time, I was with her, and we had shared many realities of our own creation, some of the memories were passing by right now, filling my empty memory card. I laughed out loud and then got back up when I thought about the jokes about all my massively huge empty space in what I knew. Now I knew that was because over a thousand years had been missing from my time her.
"Even if someone would have told me before, I wouldn't have believed them. I had to go back and confront what happened...still hard to think about it, but that is such a small part of the bigger picture. So, Tequila helped me reset, but then took her place as Mom, to the girls, subverting Reginold as much as she could to prevent the same thing from happening."
"
Yes, I am sorry you had to dig through it like that, but that was her and your doing. You made the choice with her that it would be better to be wiped and let Reginold think you were coming in the same. Now, we are here! Finally! Alright, I will step out for now, but you know how to get a hold of me, but know that I will be coming in person each time. I have to use the brain phone with everyone else, so I will be getting my money's worth out of your visit!"
And just like that, he was gone. It was hard to explain, it wasn't like disappeared or teleported, he just wasn't there, like he never had been. It was a bit of a disconcerting feeling, like my mental grip on reality had just got a wack.
"You and Mom?" Mikota asked curiously, with an eyebrow raised.
"Don't you even dare start that! You know that she is just another one of your friends and not your mother!"
"You're right, that would be way too weird, hehe, but I know one person that is going to have fun with this! I watched your third game with Grace, she is quite the lady, I never really spent much time with her, but I heard stories about some of the adventures she took you on!" Mikota said, laughing while walking up to me with her arms up and a cute smile.
She squealed as I scooped her up and took off running; she wasn't wrong about Grace. Knowing Gripton's wonderful sense of humor, she would be here just as surely as a bear shitting in the woods. Not that I didn't enjoy all the raunchy adventures we had, and there were many, but they were not the kind you talked about when anyone else was around. The woman had some pretty exotic sexual tastes, maybe after this was all done I might have to write a book about it, now that would be some hairy tales!
Chapter 266: Wrench Into The Fray
[Day 1/1825 on The Godless Green Earth A.I World]
During the run, Mikota fell asleep again, tucked in my arms with her face pushed into my chest. I had some time to think about what I would do, but nothing would come from me trying to plan for what I didn't know. So, I ended up drifting to the only thing that was really on my mind as I ran, Tequila.
She wasn't the one that I wanted to keep safe, but I loved her more than anything in the worlds. I loved all the girls and they knew that, but they also knew that what Tequila and I had was different, but I wondered if they still did? I would have to figure out everything when I got this world done, in five years, that still blew me away.
I had to watch my step, the massive trees were about to break and there wasn't much to see at first other than the open air, but I was running uphill. When I got to the top of the rise where the trees just stopped, I froze. What the hell was I looking at?
The landscape was shattered, I mean absolutely decimated. End of the world was the right description, the ground was broken up into hundred meter chunks that were all dramatically different heights. It was going to be hard to move around and I would have to make a ten meter drop, but then I remember the Primal System.
I tried to pull up a menu, but after thirty different failed attempts, I decided to do what I did with the Earth Blade. I concentrated on the earth below me and then used my mind to force the chunk of earth I was on to float free and then I dropped down to three meters and floated forward.
Amazing, this took almost no effort to maintain, but there was a slight stress. Still, now I could move faster and fly. A series of cracks had spidered making bottomless canyons that I had to float across at times to make progress. Without control of earth, none of this would be possible, but I am sure Gripton knew that. The man was a walking plan that only he knew, but that was every designer's secret weapon to keep the player going and interested.
After an hour of maintaining a fast place, I started to see wasted land of death and decay smashed just as bad as what I had traveled through. The difference was there was a bit a green on the land, but where there had once been water was now a deserted and gouged out wasteland.
"Hey! How are you doing that?" a male voice called from below me.
The voice startled me and I looked down to find another Gialazsaur that was orange with black stripes. The man didn't look threatening, so I slowly lowered myself to the ground and then stepped off the earth but kept control of it. I had no idea how this species would act to me, I had no solid skin tone or stripes.
"Your...different, very. So you can fly, and I know you're a Gialazsaur, but you look like a Worldbreaker. What are you?" The tiger colored man asked.
"I don't actually know what I am, but I was just brought to your world to help save your race from...the Worldbreakers? Is that humans, ones that look like me? I am Dave by the way."
"Yes, I am Kaz, you must come with me and talk to the elders. If you are actually who you say you are, then we have been waiting for you for a very long time. If not, then you will be fed to The Devolved Ones, we don't take kindly to tricks, our kind have been through enough to not fall for such simple words!" Kaz said, but he didn't sound angry, just determined.
"Sure, but don't touch my wife, or we will have a problem, and tell your friends to come out from hiding. The three of you have bright colored skin, pink, green, and yellow. I don't want to keep watching over my shoulder."
Kaz was momentarily surprised, but nodded and the two females and one green male stepped out from their hiding places. They all must have seen me and snuck up, but I had seen them from the air on my way down. It was nice to have my brain working again, it had been like working with half a deck of cards before Julia had done whatever she did to unfuck my mind.
"You're very perceptive, impressive. Follow us, we have about an hour's walk from here to get to the caves, and we will not touch your she. We never would touch another she, that is not right, unless it is to help and only if one is asked, but even then it is looked down on," Kaz explained as we started to walk.
They didn't seem wild, but I wasn't sure what I was supposed to expect. They looked like naked humans with solid colors for skin and stripes, but that was the only difference. I followed silently, and Kaz continued by introducing his she, Mia the yellow and red stripes, then Gar the green with white and the last she, Tal the pink with orange.
They all seemed normal, but then why were they not repopulating?
"Hey, Kaz, this is probably an awkward question, but why aren't you having babies?" I asked, while turning sideways to step through a narrow cave entrance.
"Hmm? How do you know of this? You just came here, that's what you said, but it is good that you know that, no worldbreaker knows that, so makes you more likely. You will have to ask the elders about that, it is their choice, not someone like me," Kaz said with a half smile.
Oh, great, I should have known there would be another old bunch of crotchety buggers behind this. Someone just threw another wrench into the fray!
Chapter 267: Just Sad
[Day 1/1825 on The Godless Green Earth A.I World]
The cave was a tunnel just a little over two meters tall and the walls had been carved out, but I still had to watch my head. I was about the same high, and the carving wasn't perfect, but my cute little Mikota made it better and helped soothe my mood as we walked, following Kaz and the others. Tal and Gar walked just in front of us and then Mia was up front with Kaz, but they all kept apart not touching, unlike the two of us.
Each time I would duck down to avoid a lower portion of the roof, Mikota would pull me into a kiss. We got told to hurry up more than once, but after about the eighth time, I whispered for her to stop, rubbing noses with her. The girls were both looking back longingly, and I could tell that it was doing something to them that they weren't used to.
This was really bothering me. It was like something or someone was forcing something on to these people, and preventing them from expressing the way they really felt. Maybe I was just not understanding everything and jumping to conclusions before I had all the facts. Still, if this was all just an elaborate game with a human spy or just the elders being arrogant and not listening to me, heads would roll. Yet, I couldn't just go in cowboy, guns firing.
There was a hundred
years of culture and rules that they had been following. Me coming in and saying this wasn't right, then cutting some heads off was not going to send the right message. Plus, I might smell like one, but I don't look like one, and that will forsure be used against me.
I wasn't an idiot anymore, and I had the years of experience to back it all up. I would just have to react, and be patient. If I wanted to earn the trust of the people I would have to show my metal before expecting others to follow me. The best route was the elders asking me to take over, or handing the position to me, the rest was just not good for the long game.
The first thing that I had noticed about these people is that they don't beat around the bush. Hopefully the elders would be the same, but I wasn't about to hold my breath. The old singular tribes like this were usually very strict with their rules; that was their way to control and hold the power. Yet, I was just jumping to more conclusions, when I should be paying more attention to my surroundings.
We finally reached a more open area, and there were other Gialazsaur working on different tasks, most sitting on the ground working with tools to craft more hand tools that would be good for digging and working with soil. Tequila and I had planted countless gardens, so I had a very good understanding of how to grow things and make them flourish.
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