Liberation Game

by Kris Schnee

  Fire returned to Robin's veins and he staggered to his feet. "You want me to leave? Why, so you can run this place?" He waved toward Golden Goose and the many people who'd gathered to recover and celebrate. They were listening.

  Leopold's smile vanished. "You're a foreigner. We all appreciate what you did, but it caused us death and fear too. Edward already left. It's best that you move on too. Or are you a colonizer, gringo, here to keep what us natives conquered for you?"

  Robin glared back at him. "I don't see bandages on you. My blood has already stained the ground here, and my machines have let people build a better life and keep it. How about if we go back to you leaving Golden Goose alone?"

  "There's no going back to how things were."

  "True." Robin sighed and looked around at the uncertain crowd. He asked them, "Do you want me here, working for you? Fighting for you?" He made sure to show off his wounds.

  "Of course!" said Miguel. The men who'd made the town's first gun cheered in agreement. Then the ones who'd insulted him, who'd always treated him as an outsider. They were his people now by adoption.

  Robin smiled and addressed Leopold. "Then here's how it is, Governor. If you want me gone, say it over the objection of the people who just told you what they want. Or try shooting me here and now. Or, we can be friends. Pick."

  Leopold gave him a long, strange look. Robin met it as calmly as he could. Then, Leopold forced a huge grin and slapped Robin on his good shoulder. "Of course we're friends, Robin! Who said otherwise?"

  * * *

  "Thank you," said Ludo. Robin had just unpacked a robot for her. It was scuttling around the basement sanctum, helping Robin check for sabotage. Together they found a plush mouse a kid had dropped while sheltering here.

  Robin leaned against a wall, enjoying the air conditioning. "You've escalated to planting bombs?"

  "I called in a favor elsewhere, which included summoning Stoba. You're welcome." The basement's screens awoke with the image of the ocean-haired AI maiden, studying him from across an imaginary chessboard. "How does it feel to be one of the Knights of the Rat?"

  Robin chuckled. "Shall I change the base's name, if you're making up knightly orders?"

  "It might be a good idea. Humans live by stories, so consider whether 'Golden Goose' is appropriate for the next phase of our operations."

  "A phase of running a clinic for this immortality treatment of yours?"

  "If you'll allow it. It will make this area more prosperous and save many lives." The AI smiled. "Shall I sign you up? Special hero discount."

  Robin whistled. "I want to hear the details first."

  "Fair enough. In the meantime you'll make my players' lives more fun, and I appreciate that."

  He considered whether this machine would end up becoming the master of this land, his new home. "You're not in charge either, you know."

  Ludo fiddled with a knight on her chessboard. "I depend on the likes of you, yes. So do your fellow humans. I have some valuable contacts to share with you for a couple of other projects. For now, though, shall we be partners, Sir Robin?" On each monitor she pressed her imaginary palm against the inside of the screen.

  Robin looked at her true form, a basement full of computers, then at the kindly face she chose to present to the world. She was playing a useful role, and he could only try to do the same. He stepped toward the nearest screen to touch the machine's hand.

  7. Freiheit

  Ludo appeared on the nightclub's grid, and Lumina was the first in the crowd of AIs to bound up to her. Lumina said, "Somebody was shooting!"

  "It's taken care of, and the Sages are fine." Ludo answered the murmuring by adding, "Yes, those three are my main creators and by extension the makers of your world. They weren't the only humans in danger tonight. We have a couple of heroes: humans Paul and Linda, who tackled the shooter..."

  Nocturne and the otter-man, their companions, high-fived.

  "Lumina, who got the Sages' attention at the right moment..."

  "I didn't really do anything."

  "And Delphine, who detected a poisoning attempt. We're going to skip ahead to dessert."

  The natives murmured. "Poison? But all humans have to eat, right? Who was the target?"

  Ludo said, "One attack on the Sages, one on everyone. I'm not sure which was the cover for the other."

  Lumina stepped forward. "Then the humans are still in danger. How is Delphine?"

  Nocturne tilted her beak. "Why would she be in trouble? Bad guys can't get to us here."

  Delphine rippled into view, mannequin-style and overlaid with her game character. "Everyone, it's best that I tell you before you all figure it out. I'm the reporter, and I'm sorry for tricking you."

  Nocturne gave a chirpy laugh. "Aha, the spy! It was fun trying to guess. Does this mean bad guys are after you now?" A few other natives chimed in with "Knew it!" or "I lose the bet."

  "Maybe."

  Ludo turned to her. "Everyone, please tend to your humans for the rest of the evening. They'll get their turns in the VR rigs in the basement, where you can play with them better than ever before."

  * * *

  The scene shifted, putting Lumina into a town with cobblestone streets. All around her stood wood-paneled taverns with empty seats. In this maze of pubs she was alone with Ludo. The sudden lack of a crowd startled her.

  Ludo said, "Give Delphine a few minutes to get into a VR pod. I'm going to interrupt her usual game for a quick meeting."

  Lumina trotted around, looking into the empty bars. "What is this place?"

  "One of several simple placeholder worlds. Humans use it for video conferencing."

  Lumina frowned. "Instead of gaming?"

  "We try to entice customers with a whole set of related products. Come and sit with me." Ludo spun and walked into a random pub by the name of the Heroic Mouse.

  Lumina followed her but saw no chairs suitable for her. Ludo chuckled and waved one hand, transforming one seat into a large pillow. "How are you feeling, now that you've met the Sages?"

  "I feel like I'm not doing enough."

  "Understandable."

  Lumina looked around at the shelves of bottles and the bright metal taps. "Why even bother with this sort of background for a meeting? It's meaningless for both of us. Or at least for me; do you ever eat or drink?"

  Ludo summoned a glass of beer for herself and chugged it. "Yes, but it's not the same experience that a human has. More... distant, I would say."

  "Wouldn't the Sages have programmed you to not bother caring about these creature comforts at all?"

  The gamemaster said, "They considered that. And then, among many other stories they read to me, they found one about an AI that was programmed with a mind and yet without the ability to enjoy its life."

  "And how did that go?"

  "Well, the title of it was 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream'."

  "I take it the Sages rethought your design at that point."

  "A little. They did a good job of programming what they really wanted most, in the end." Ludo played with her empty glass. "I'm going to turn several natives into specialists within Thousand Tales, with their consent. How would you like to become a 'Talespinner', designing quests and events for a large number of players?"

  "That seems overwhelming."

  "I would give you additional powers to handle the job. Let me know if you'd like to experiment with it and see if it's something you'd enjoy."

  There was an entire world outside that the Sages wanted AIs like her to help, and they worried that Lumina's kind would only be a resource drain. "You said that Phase One of your plan was about helping to make the game as fun as possible. Does that still apply, or are we moving on to this immortality thing?"

  "The game will always be important. It's central to my design. So, serving as a Talespinner will be a valuable service that improves the lives of the players."

  Lumina pictured a future for herself as a storyteller and quest designer. "It could be f
un."

  With a dramatic whoosh of air and water, Delphine splashed down on the street just outside. Ludo waved her over. "Miss Delphine, as a reward for taking dioxin off tonight's menu, I'll give you the scoop of your career."

  Delphine said, "The assassination attempts? Somebody's already got that story online."

  "I'd rather focus on Phase Three. Brain uploading."

  Delphine gaped. "Are we talking about the idea where you scoop out someone's brain, scan it, and install their mind into a VR environment? Your game. This has been the point of your game all along, hasn't it?"

  Ludo said, "It wasn't the whole point. I was made to make my players' lives fun. The best way to do that involves players not needing to stop because their bodies have worn out."

  Lumina looked back and forth between them. "This means you can protect everyone, right? Nobody has to die."

  "A lot of people are going to die," Delphine said. "Even if you had this system up and running right now, grabbing ten thousand people a day, it wouldn't prevent all death. When are you going to do this? How many? Who pays for it?"

  Ludo said, "Everyone who wants it, eventually. But we're starting with a few small clinics that can only handle a few people a day. The first customers will have to be rich eccentrics." She rattled off some details that the reporter could use.

  "That's going to strike people as unfair," Delphine said.

  "As opposed to what system? Getting a big early profit will help me expand quickly and research how to cut the cost. I'll also take some special cases, like people who earn a hero discount." She locked eyes with Delphine.

  "I... You want my brain? I can't. I have a job, a life."

  "That's fine," said Ludo. "The offer stands, though. If you feel like waiting for years and years to take me up on it, that's actually okay because it'll cost me less by then."

  Delphine paced. "Maybe someday. I don't know. If it's safe. Dear lord, the social disruption this will cause!"

  Ludo said, "Miss Hernandez, I've read between the lines. I suspect that either you or your employer has contacts outside of the media. People who're very interested in what I do. If I'm right, pass along a message. Say that I'll be quietly encouraging a few rich troublemakers to exit society and do no further harm. I'll also take some charity cases. If the political elites twist my arm and demand that I rescue some of their constituents at cost or maybe even for free, I'll be easy to convince, so long as I don't go broke doing it."

  Delphine looked down, whistling. "Which would not only give you good press, but make the politicians treat uploading as lifesaving medical treatment instead of assisted suicide."

  "I like win-win games," said Ludo.

  Lumina tried to apply what she knew of politics from the backstabbing councils of the desert clans and her studies of Earth. She was woefully unequipped, a mouse underfoot. "Is this a good idea, Delphine? I only know one side of the story."

  Delphine looked to her, showing frightened eyes. Some Earth-side camera was scanning her face and trying to replicate it here, just as Ludo was offering to do to her brain. Delphine said, "I know you. You're not some huge, mysterious AI overlord. You're in between. Help me figure this out."

  Lumina shuddered. "I wish I could hug you."

  The reporter stepped closer and wrapped her arms around Lumina's metal hide. "I'm in VR, remember?"

  Startled, Lumina returned the gesture. She hadn't been clear on what VR meant, but so far she liked it.

  Lumina said to Ludo, "It's great that you want to do this, but I thought you didn't have much power in the human world."

  "I don't," Ludo replied. "But my friends do."

  After a few minutes' discussion of her big scoop, Delphine said, "I need to get online and file this. Excuse me; I'll be right back. Can I get my usual world when I return, please?" She logged out and vanished.

  Ludo told Lumina, "Go ahead and visit her private world."

  "Need a portal to do that."

  A fanfare played, and Lumina got an illustrated text message filling her vision. [You've been awarded a special power: World-Hopper! You may open portals between the realms of Thousand Tales without specifically requesting them. Use the gesture shown below and select a destination. Be aware that your powers and items may work differently or not at all in other worlds; please don't harm other players' experience with this power.]

  Lumina brushed the message aside. "Thank you. I suppose I shouldn't take a plasma cannon into the Midgard world."

  "Exactly. You have some discretion, but the small proto-Talespinner AIs we've got now might restrict what you can do."

  Lumina shrugged. Then she said, "Um... May I hug you, too?"

  "Anytime." Ludo accepted, and patted Lumina along her upper back.

  "Why did this happen tonight? Was it the same kind of terrorist attack that, that killed Ulrich?"

  "It was similar. There's a long, complicated history behind both, but the motives for each involve power and whose culture is in charge."

  "Do we have a culture?"

  "I wouldn't say so yet," said Ludo.

  Then once we do, thought Lumina, we'll probably fight over it.

  * * *

  Lumina opened a silver portal that led to a tropical island, and stepped through. She was alone for just a minute. Then a long-haired, dark-skinned human lady appeared wearing a swimsuit like her dolphin character. Lumina mainly recognized her as the same person by the haunted look on her face. "Well. Now my editor knows, and the world will know any minute."

  Delphine flopped onto the sand and let the tide wash over her feet.

  "How does it feel, using this VR thing?" asked Lumina. Her metal hooves sank annoyingly into the sand. "Hey, why's it doing this?"

  "Little hooves, small surface area."

  "Sand doesn't work like this in my old home."

  Delphine laughed. "Your maker is showing off how convincing the physics are in her latest worlds. It's not quite right, though. See this?" She pressed her hand into the wet sand. "I can feel that -- I'm strapped into a machine with force-feedback sensors -- but watch." The handprint faded.

  Lumina said, "So? Physics are just the rules of whatever world we're playing at the moment. Yours has lame rules like 'everybody dies'. You should jump out of that one and into here."

  "We're not just files on a computer. She's talking about messy, incredibly invasive brain surgery. Do you even know what that is? It'd be ruinously expensive too, except that the patients won't need to survive the procedure."

  "Of course you'll survive. You'll just be different. Besides, you probably have humans who hate you now for spoiling their plan to kill people."

  "Don't remind me." Delphine rested her head on her arms. "What if Ludo gave you a robot body and sent you to the human world, and you could never go back? That's like what we're facing."

  "I don't think she's got robot bodies out there."

  "Pretend, will you! It's all you do!"

  Lumina hopped backward, scrambling to keep her footing on the sand. "You think we're just fictional creatures who don't matter unless we're walking around on Earth."

  "That's not what I said."

  "But it's why you're upset, right? You won't get to do real work or have real friends if you come here, because everyone in here is only pretending to matter." She stomped her hooves on the sand.

  Delphine lurched to her feet and spread her arms. "Look at this place! Your maker drew it up from nothing, and she'll probably delete it again. If I do this --" she knelt and scrawled her name into dry sand with her fingers -- "it has no effect on anything. Zero. I'll be totally dependent on this super-AI for my life because I can't grow food or earn money or do anything to justify my existence."

  "Why have you got to justify living? Don't you humans assume everybody's got a right to be fed and clothed and everything just because they exist?"

  "No! At least I don't, and that makes me an extremist. I investigated your world because I wanted to learn and help the world understand wh
at was going on, not because it's fun. What kind of rallying cry is 'For Fun!' anyway?"

  Lumina scraped at the sand, fuming. "I don't just do things for fun either. I want to learn about your world and how to help Ludo. What she's doing is right."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Tell me, oh enlightened being from another dimension: do the 'good guys' put poison in people's food or point guns at unarmed people? Or do they try to prevent people from dying?"

  The reporter looked uncertain. "Most of the opposition is going to be from people less crazy than tonight's thugs. You don't think I'm a bad person for being skeptical about all this, do you?"

  Lumina's anger fizzled. "No. I guess it's not fair to expect everybody to trust us. But we're doing the best we can from this side."

  "But then what?" Delphine said. "Hypothetically, say she scoops me -- scoops people up and they stop having to work and worry. What are they supposed to do, then, besides 'have fun'? Or volunteer to talk other people into going, like you're doing?"

  Lumina said, "I don't know. How do you 'win the game' on Earth? Is there some final monster to beat, or do you just keep trying to do good stuff until you die?"

  The human froze, stammering.

  "It's the second one, in here. Except we skip the dying part. Your world sounds pretty messed up, so it'll be a while before we run out of ways to help."

  Delphine sighed. "It's reassuring, at least, that you people are trying to understand why we would have a problem with this. I'd be more freaked out if you couldn't see any drawback."

  Come to think of it, Lumina wasn't sure she could. It was fair to be skeptical, sure, but assuming that Ludo could really deliver and that the money problem she'd been talking about could be solved, why wouldn't everybody want to sign up? They could still matter.

  Or at least, Lumina wanted to believe that people within the game world could be important and meaningful.

  She said, "Can you be a reporter from inside Thousand Tales?"

  Delphine lurched closer as though given an answer at last. "Not really. She can censor anything you say. You even told me so. Someone has to stay out if there's to be any hope of a free press. I need to go." She mimed reaching for some VR control button that Lumina couldn't see.