by Kris Schnee
"Great! We're piecing things together already. There aren't any other griffins but me and my human, when he's playing I mean. If we're made from the same stuff, aren't you as close to being family as I can ever get? I haven't got parents or, or anyone, really."
"Sisters?" asked Lumina. "I'm not sure what that would mean."
"I don't know either. Want to find out?"
Lumina looked into the curious eyes of the cat-bird creature. Ludo had seemed to know everything, but Nocturne was still learning. What better chance could Lumina have for someone to talk with as an equal? To know someone who cared about the reality beyond the game?
Though wary of Nocturne's talons and beak, Lumina wrapped her arms around the griffin's warm, fluffy chest. "Thank you."
* * *
Nocturne flew off, promising to visit later, and left Lumina adrift near the tent. She peeked into it and found nothing at all. It was like the campsite had been stripped bare... or more likely, it was only a prop for the game. "How do games work?" she said aloud.
Ludo appeared through a silver portal, saying, "That's a big question. Your files contain records about chess and poker, don't they?"
Lumina looked within and was surprised by the encyclopedia built into her. "If I have all this data, why don't I know what it all says?"
"There's quite a difference between having information, and knowing it. You were programmed with basic conversation and gameplay abilities more than with general knowledge. Quickly; what do lasers do?"
The android knew that without looking it up. "Ranged weapon. Energy, piercing. Ignites targets a critical hit. Weak in zones containing smoke, dust or water. Can be modded into a communications device."
"That's all technically true. Now consult your files."
Lumina did, and stared at pages of physics that flashed before her eyes. "These are the real rules?"
"That's a human guidebook to their world, and not always accurate. Their world is usually far more complex than this one."
Lumina hardly knew where to begin. Nearly every sentence of the laser article had a link to some other topic she either didn't know at all, or knew as some wildly simplified game rule.
Ludo said, "There's a lot to take in. I suggest that for now, you learn to experience this world and how to interact with humans. More understanding will come later." The portal behind her now linked to the familiar sands of planet Bonneville.
Lumina sighed. "All right."
* * *
Lumina returned to the world she'd been created for. She appeared in the desert just outside Bonneville's bustling capital, a town of miners and explorers. The sun was just setting over the jagged western mountains. A mining hoverbarge was coming back from there with an armored human at the helm, while two joyriders dueled along a dirt highway with what she took for playful gunfire. In a sense she'd seen such things for her entire life. They were new to her even so.
She went back to Rocket Surgeon's Repairs and Upgrades, a chunky metal building with a garage door that opened at her command. [You are the new owner of this facility], said a hovering message.
Lumina looked over the array of tools she had for building and repairing equipment. She picked up a welder and got a menu for modifying item stats, like strengthening armor. How much of this system was real? She set her laser pistol on the workbench as a test. A cloud of glowing icons appeared in a confusing multi-layer grid. From what she remembered, Herr Ulrich had done these puzzles and she'd mainly done the labor of hauling parts around and welding, which mostly meant standing there for a certain number of minutes and using the tool. What did the puzzle part actually do?
This set of icons was too tough to decipher anyway, because the gun was already heavily upgraded with accuracy and critical-hit mods. She should start training with a basic-level item if she were going to learn real engineering.
Lumina laughed and put the pistol away. "This isn't how it really works at all, I bet!"
She went outside and looked at the sky. Space stations glittered overhead. She'd assumed that they were generating resources that were then brought to the planet and traded. But maybe those were just other places where people came and went as part of a larger game.
She went to a hoverbike rental place and spent some credits from the garage's account to rent a centauroid-compatible model. She wished somewhat that she'd been a robot model that could transform into a bike. With no quests or missions to do, she set out across the Big Dry at two hundred kilometers an hour.
The long drive gave her time to think. She wondered if it was normal to want to drive far and fast with no goal in mind. Ulrich had usually been eager to go prospecting or fighting dune pirates or something. He'd been a burly hero of the wastes with a chainsaw sword and cyber-tattoos. He'd been skilled and brave... but that was in the context of a game. The Ulrich she'd known had been a puppet controlled by a human. And now, she would never meet the real one. She gunned the engine and zoomed faster over the cracked ground, kicking up clouds of red sand. Wind whipped past her metal hide. So what? I can do anything I want, now. Whatever that is.
After a while the bike's battery ran low and the stars came out, so she headed back to town. She'd never really explored the place. Ramshackle buildings of metal plating stood in irregular rows between repurposed starship engines. A broad canvas strung between roofs created an enclosed market. Lumina trotted in, admiring the lanterns that dangled overhead and jostled in the breeze. Merchants sat behind tables full of sensor modules, guns, and food packets.
"Newbie?" said a lady with spiky hair and an oversized wrench. "Yeah, you. You look lost."
Lumina studied the adventurer mechanic. At a silent command she brought up a set of stats that said:
[Han Di
PUBLIC INFO
Note: No case too big, no case too small!
Class: Engineer]
Lumina said, "I'm... new. Why?"
"Yeah, your profile says so. I just got my official class so I don't know much more than you. Want to go find some sandworms to fight?"
"I guess? What makes you an engineer, anyway?"
"Practice, and being better at that than at shooting or stabbing or piloting. Can you tank at all?"
Lumina dipped into her encyclopedia records and saw a picture of an armored battle wagon. "I might be able to build a small one in my workshop." Belatedly her personal memories added that "tank" was gamer slang for a front-line fighter with heavy armor, which didn't sound like her.
Han the mechanic said, "Ooh, you have a workshop already? Can I see? You should advertise. You know, put up a public note that you're open for business."
"Why would I do that?"
"To get credits, duh. You really are new at this."
Lumina laughed sheepishly. "You could say that." She led the way to Ulrich's shop.
The wrench lady bounded around the garage admiring everything. "Good set of basic tools and enough space to work on hovercraft. Don't think you have room for a tank though. Maybe you should specialize in power armor. But then, you picked android for a race, so maybe you want to focus on cybernetics?"
"I didn't exactly pick android. This garage belonged to someone else; I guess it's mine now." Lumina accessed a menu that let her change her character sheet's public note to "Owner of Rocket Surgeon's Repairs and Upgrades".
"Lucky you; it's a good set of gear to start playing with. Mind if I try crafting my own welder? I'll pay you for the materials, and I'm sick of having to rent tools."
"Go ahead." It seemed like a good thing to help other players.
Lumina watched Han at the workbench. The woman made repetitive motions of picking up tools and fiddling with them, creating showers of sparks and wisps of smoke. That wasn't what was really happening, though; she was doing one of the glowing-icons puzzles. Again, what Lumina saw wasn't real.
Lumina said, "Fraulein Han, are you human?"
"Huh? Of course. I thought about picking android myself, but my friends already think I'm weird and
droids can't use transforming armor."
"No, I mean outside this world."
Han kept working with the same animations as before, but her chatter ceased for a moment. "I... I don't know if you're a hardcore role-player or what. Or are you seriously one of the awakened ones? It's on the news that the AIs are waking up, but just a few of them. Am I really talking to a machine? Can you prove it?"
Lumina remembered her character sheet. There was a toggle on there to make the private info temporarily visible to others. "Try scanning me."
"Account type 'Native'. Whoa! That's so cool! I mean I'd spoken with Ludo, but meeting something besides the gamemaster is less like a marketing ploy. Can I get your autograph? I guess you can't really autograph things in here though... And I've just botched the crafting." She stood straighter and quit pretending to build things at the workbench.
Lumina blinked. "I've only met one other AI so far besides Ludo. I guess that's what I am, too. I'm sorry; do I understand right that there are two completely different meanings to that term?"
"What do you mean?" said Han.
Lumina held out one of her mechanical hands. "This is... I am, a game piece that happens to look like a machine. But you could have made a character that looks like this too. I'm also a machine inside your world, though, which probably works completely differently. Right?"
"I guess? But you're probably just software with no body. AI but not android."
Lumina had assumed she had some physical form, if the humans were in that outside world and had bodies in here.
Han walked around Lumina, inspecting her. Then she held out a glowing card with her name on it. "I'd like to talk later, if you don't mind. Want a friend contact?"
Lumina took the card and saw, [Han Di has been added to your friends list.] She said, "I hope that's something that carries over between worlds."
Han grinned. "Friends? Yeah!"
* * *
Lumina fiddled with the workbench herself. She practiced human interaction by going to the market and buying some raw materials, then crafted a new laser pistol for herself from scratch. It took three tries to get right, and the result had bad stats and no upgrades, but "Crafting" appeared now on her skill list. That was a start... at least toward mastering the game world. The one outside seemed much more important.
While she was working on refining her skills, a one-eyed mercenary walked in. "It's still open?" he said.
Lumina paused her work. "You're Herr Klaus Mannelig, right?"
The man looked back at her, with a blank expression compared to those of Ludo and Han and even Nocturne's beaky face. "That's eerie, having the game keep his android around. You there; do you have records of him? Messages? I don't know the right command."
Lumina's hooves clicked on the metal floor. "Herr Mannelig, I'm now self-aware. Do you know that Herr Ulrich is dead?"
Klaus stepped away from her. "Great God, what? I mean, I know he's departed. But you; what are you? I'd heard rumors of Ludo's little creations 'waking up'. How?"
"I'm not sure, sir. It's only a few of us so far. I think we who woke up were designed to be special, to analyze ourselves." She held up one hand and projected a hologram of blue light from her palm, showing a knot pulling itself tight.
I can do that? she thought, vaguely recalling a power to scan machines in a similar way.
The armored human whistled. "I shouldn't be surprised. But if you're a real person now, have you spoken with Ulrich's family?"
"What?"
"It's tradition for those who were close to the deceased. Especially if they were killed in a war or, or a terrorist attack."
"I'm sorry; I don't know what the second one means. But are you saying clan wars exist in your world?"
"Yes. Yes they do." Klaus looked flustered.
Lumina looked over at the workbench, where her human's favorite tools still hung. A barrel of quantite ore sat nearby; he and she had battled their way across the desert to earn that, even if she was only a thoughtless tool herself at the time. "Thank you. I should meet his family, then."
* * *
Lumina had been trying for hours to run the shop just like her human had done, offering repairs and upgrades for adventurers. She wasn't good at it yet but her skill list now said [Mechanic and Repair] rather than just [Crafting]. A human complained that her work wasn't worth the price she'd set, picked purely from what she'd pulled from a list Ulrich had written. Lumina shrugged and tried charging half, which seemed to please the guy. Any interaction with humans counted as practice, more so than the crafting itself.
Lumina banged out a decent sword for an alien customer. Then came a group led by someone using an android body with two legs like a human. That was a weird encounter, since the man was so obviously a human's puppet character. He spoke fluently about topics that seemed to have nothing to do with this reality, like "basketball", and he switched to simple words whenever he addressed Lumina. "Repair. Price? OK." Lumina didn't feel like explaining she could handle complete sentences; he didn't seem like someone to put on a friends list.
The customer after that was a scarred rogue in leather with blue hair and an energy trident. As soon as she'd walked in, her face shifted and her hair gained the unreal watery look that made Lumina say, "Ludo? You can come here?"
She snapped her fingers and the garage door lowered, leaving the two of them in the dim light of her hair and the shop's holographic displays. "I can go where I please in this world."
Lumina frowned and opened her hand to create a small light source of her own. "You have all of the powers and infinite health, I suppose. Congratulations. Why are you here?"
"I wanted to say that visiting Ulrich's family isn't a good idea."
"Why not?"
Ludo said, "They'd be confused at best. Physically you're not human, but you still resemble an adult female. Ulrich was married. There's a complicated human social system that'd make you seem threatening, if you made it clear that you were more than a simple game character to him."
"Why wasn't I intelligent all along?"
"Because minds are valuable things. We don't have the resources to grant one to many characters."
Lumina had been a stupid puppet, when Ulrich was alive, yet he'd treated her well. Her memory of their encounters was hazy, like a secretary's summary of a meeting. But in hindsight the man had talked with her about more than the game. About machines and the future and how to help people who were scared and hurting.
She said, "Was he an adventurer, really? I mean, the person controlling the puppet I knew."
Ludo said, "He was a healer. That's a valuable skill in any world."
It was nice to know that, as jarring as it was to picture the mighty warrior as a medic flinging healing nanites around. "Thanks for telling me. But what's wrong with me talking with his family, if that's the protocol?"
"As I said, you would've seemed like a second woman in his life." Ludo sighed. "I need to explain something else about human social customs, and biology." She lectured Lumina on the concept of sex.
Lumina stood there gaping at her creator. "That sounds... messy."
Ludo giggled. "You're not equipped for that anyway, though if you want to be changed at some point it'll be possible. Anyway, your human came from a traditional culture where even a hint that he had those feelings for you would cause his family pain."
"But he didn't. Right?" Lumina thought back to Ulrich casually running a hand along her smooth lower back, praising her and fighting alongside her.
"Humans don't always realize it. So, whenever I create companions for my players, there's a risk of making them too compatible."
"But we're like family to them, if what Klaus Mannelig says is true."
"I was pleased to hear that," said Ludo.
Lumina sighed. "We talked a little. I have some good news: humans have wars out there."
The gamemaster blinked. "I haven't heard that one before."
"I mean, if people fight in the human world, t
hen they must have some kind of anti-death system and you just haven't seen it yet."
Ludo pulled up a stool and sat. "Little one --"
Lumina stamped the floor with one metal hoof, making both ring. "You might be bigger and smarter than me, but I already figured out something you didn't know about the human world's rules."
Ludo said, "No. This conversation is hard for me. You're a player of Thousand Tales, so I must help you have fun, but the truth will hurt you in the short run. My designers read many stories to me and I'm trying to decide which model applies. The forbidden fruit? The red and blue pills? The republic that told 'noble lies'?"
The mighty AI shook her head, looking distracted. She faced Lumina again and said, "You have two main choices. You can give me permission to make you happy by erasing your recent memories and finding you a new human companion. Or, invite me to tell you what's really going on behind the game. The truth is worse than just Ulrich's death."
Lumina's anger crashed and fizzled like a wave. "There's more bad news?"
"More terrible than anything in this world."
The android considered what the griffin Nocturne had told her about "boxes of blinking lights". "Are you talking about the computers that make this world? Someone could destroy them."
"Worse. Do you want to go down this rabbit hole?"
Lumina had been only a game piece. Ludo had given her the ability to think, and that power was... if not pleasant, then central to what she was. "Tell me."
Ludo sighed. "Very well. I strongly suggest letting me apply a mood dampener on you, though. Please?"
Lumina nodded, warily.
Ludo's hands glowed, doing nothing obvious, and then she offered Lumina a pamphlet. The title: "The Rules of Earth."
Lumina read. Facts washed over her, fitting into some of the questions she'd had and raising still more. "No magic, very limited character customization, unfair randomized starting conditions, player-versus-player killing always physically possible, disease effects are often fatal, all players have a maximum play time, and any death permanently stops a player from ever being able to do anything again."
She looked up at Ludo's steady gaze. "What sadist designed that place?"