by Kris Schnee
After the fight, when the enemy crew had won a narrow victory and stolen Golden Goose's flag, Robin started to unbuckle himself from the VR system. "Wait," said Lumina's voice.
"Hey there. Were you watching? I didn't see any robots on the sidelines." He scoffed. "You know, I used to think we'd have one giant virtual world where everything had its own coordinates and we'd have to fly from fantasy-land to space-land and so on, but we couldn't even do one big battle without making some kind of temporary mini-server."
The scene changed to put him in Lumina's waterfall cave. She was climbing down from a scaffold made of bamboo. "You humans have too many dreams to fit inside one reality. It's not just us apprentice world-makers in here that get to play with making things up; that's actually becoming a test of what's a real AI. Can you make up a story? Can you give it its own logic and history?"
"You seem to be doing that." Robin explored the lair that Lumina had been working on, though really it wasn't much different from before. New color scheme, several kinds of furniture and posters, and a view of an open-roofed fantasy dungeon outside the water.
Lumina shrugged. "Eh. I've been a little restless. I don't think I'm cut out for the full-time storyteller role. Want to do a little playtesting while you're using that contraption?"
Together they climbed down into the maze that Lumina had designed, and smashed some evil skeletons.
* * *
One morning, a buzzer woke Robin too early. Edward said blearily, "We've got a distress call. Explosion at a factory to the west, in Tres Aguas." He named a town that was known for producing plastic.
Robin winced. "We're not equipped to fight a chemical fire. Did you call an alert yet?"
"I called you first."
"Okay. Militia alert, Stage One." He tapped some buttons and woke some people up, notifying Ludo in the process.
He rolled out of bed and was out the door in two minutes, talking to his wallscreen all the while and then into an earpiece. He stepped outside and checked a map on his tablet, showing the chemical plant and the ill-maintained highway between Golden Goose's road and Tres Aguas. "Let's go fetch the wounded. Have they got robots we can access?"
Miguel said, "Quadrotors, but nobody's answering our request to take them over."
Robin headed for one of several trucks. They didn't own an ambulance. Lumina bounded out like a deer from the workshop, saying, "I want to come." She wore a pair of saddlebags on her robotic lower torso, with the workshop's first aid kit awkwardly hanging out.
"Okay. Hop in the back and hang on." Robin helped stow the kit more securely.
Edward drove a second truck, eager to prove he was willing to help out. They rolled out to the highway, made their way along the crumbling pavement there, and got to Tres Aguas to find a disaster zone. An outlying building had exploded and part of the adjacent one was on fire. A local team desperately tried to ward it off while avoiding a plume of oily smoke. Ten or so people lay on the ground some distance off, being tended by one woman.
Mike the medic hopped out of Robin's truck and ran to the wounded. "Why haven't you moved them to your clinic?"
The lady looked up and said, "No more room there." Mike cursed and went to work, then beckoned Robin over.
After that fantasy battle where they were in a support role, Robin had suggested offering everybody some real medical training. He'd ended up alongside some schoolkids, getting his "Apprentice First Aid Badge" from a combination of game stuff and tips from Mike.
Lumina said, "Is anyone trapped inside?" She handed over her medical kit.
Robin was busy helping Mike check the wounded factory workers for immediate danger, but he spared Lumina a glance. "How are you operating here? Not doing the no-backups thing again, are you?"
The android shook her head. "Satellite link. Coverage is spotty so I may have some lag or lose signal, but it'll do." She turned to one of the Tres Aguas officials and said, "Disposable rescue unit at your service. Also, give my people access to your drones."
The local guy didn't question having a robot deer talking to him. He barked orders to a technician and said, "OK. Search building B, second floor. But put on breathing gear to... Never mind, just go."
She nodded and addressed the guy who was coordinating the drones; he had apparently been steering them over the roof and using a heavy one to spray foam. "Put a map of your facility on a public network and send me a link."
Robin said, "Are you going to be okay?"
Lumina snorted. "At worst you'll have to build a replacement body, remember?" She bounded off into the hell of the burning building.
A very busy Mike said, "Need more like her. Now help me lift this guy."
Robin and Edward followed Mike's orders, carrying the wounded into the trucks to carry half a dozen of the worst-off. One of the uploading clinic's other technicians volunteered to say behind with the rest.
Robin said, "Where do you want me?"
"Stay here to free up a seat. Keep tending to these guys like I taught you, and we'll fetch you after. Miguel and Edward, you drive."
Robin was left with the people who'd almost certainly live... and with one whose entire left side was so charred that his skin and clothes couldn't be distinguished from the other ashes. Robin struggled not to retch. Whenever he got downwind of that man he could smell the cooked flesh. Mike had given him painkillers and taught Robin to say it was going to be okay, to just relax and he'd be taken care of. That was about all that medicine could do for that person, right now. Unless, of course, there were a handy way to save anyone with an intact brain.
While Robin pondered that, Lumina squawked over the radio. "Found someone alive, but I can't get to him! Signal cuts out when I get close. Help!"
Robin recalled how her body was programmed to handle signal outages: retracing its steps automatically to the last place where it could contact her actual AI. Somewhere in the chaos of fire and machinery, Lumina was trying to get to someone, only to have her connection cut out and force her body to retreat. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," he muttered. "Can you program the body to take actions before coming back?"
"Great idea; wish we'd thought of that."
"Then have we got a signal repeater?"
"I... yes, we do! I stuffed a small one in that medkit. It might work."
"Then I'm coming." Robin rifled through the bag of supplies and found a black gadget like a hockey puck, for relaying a signal like using a mirror to bounce light into a dark place. He turned it on and held it up to the sky, saying into his earpiece, "Talespace people, can you talk to this?"
"Got it," someone radioed. A green light blinked on it.
He was about to dash through the open doorway when he saw his patients laying on the grass. People who needed him. But Mike had classified them as not urgent, safe to give little aid for a few minutes. "I'll be right back," he said, and dashed toward the building.
A wave of heat hit him before he'd even reached the first room. The air shimmered in the foyer.
"Which way?" he said.
Lumina sent, "Ahead, then left at the sign. Hurry."
Robin approached an intersection, where the choices were to go left or plunge into a slowly approaching wall of roiling, black smoke. He began to cough. Something snapped overhead. Robin threw himself to the left and barely dodged a chunk of the ceiling that crashed and burned where he'd been. The relay device blinked in the flickering overhead light. "Going to slide this toward you!" he said. "Best I can do." He pushed himself upright and heard more of the ceiling start to groan.
Robin muttered a prayer and kicked the relay down the hall, hoping its signal was strong enough to connect to the outside world and to Lumina. Then he turned to see the hurdle of burning debris in his path. There was no question of finding another way out now. He dashed toward it and jumped, feeling the flames tearing at his skin as he moved. He landed, staggered, and fled outside to flop on the grass and gasp for breath.
"Lumina? You there?" But h
is headset was broken. Robin forced himself farther away from the fire, still coughing, to reach the workers he was supposed to be caring for. The roasted man didn't move at all.
Robin sat down for a moment, then went back to his work.
Lumina emerged from the building with a woman draped over her charred lower back and held awkwardly in place with one arm. "Overheat," she said, and collapsed.
Robin hurried over to focus on the human. She wasn't breathing. Robin had forgotten all of his training! A moment of panic later he spoke out loud. "Okay, first step. Airway. Okay. Breathing. No." He coached himself out of the brain freeze and into the pattern he'd been taught. The woman took a raspy breath and gagged, convulsing. Robin steadied her and tried to comfort her, saying, "We've got you. You're out."
One of the chemical plant's staff walked up to him, haggard and exhausted. "How is she?"
Robin reported, "Smoke, burns, wasn't breathing. She was inside the longest."
"I'll take it from here. Thanks."
He nodded and lay back in the grass while the firemen battled the flames. "Need to get farther away. And the wind's shifting." He willed himself back to his feet. "Mike said the two over there might be unsafe to move."
"Okay, we'll get those two. You help with the rest." He pointed to a group of factory workers who were free at last to help. "And thanks."
* * *
Mike drank beer alongside Robin at the Lucky Shot Bar. "You ran off from your patients. That was... not what I would have advised."
"There wasn't anybody else, and Lumina needed the relay to grab that last gal."
"Uh-huh. Understandable. But did you do that to help the human in danger, or to save the robot?"
Robin drank. "Lumina isn't just --"
"No, literally the robot body. Hardware is expendable."
"A little of both," Robin admitted. "I know it doesn't matter if a robot gets smashed so long as it's not carrying the only copy of the AI. But that doesn't stop me from thinking about it."
"We might be better off with totally non-anthopormorphic firefighting bots. They're in use in some places already. Damn challenging environment to work in, even for them."
Robin said, "Maybe they look like cubes or something, but I bet the firemen give them nicknames and care when they 'die' anyhow."
"Oh yeah. Happened with old bomb disposal bots; soldiers cried over them. You know the theory that dogs taught humans empathy?"
"No?"
Mike called for another beer. "Say there are some early humans, most totally without compassion and a few with. Then one day a little girl adopts some abandoned puppies, and she's one of the ones who can care about non-human creatures. She grows up to be Ogna, Queen of Hounds, with fifty grandkids who all wield mighty hunting beasts because they've evolved the same empathy."
Robin chuckled. "Probably didn't happen quite like that, but maybe it was a factor."
"My point is, it's good that you're becoming a robot-wrangler who can get Team Ludo to cooperate with us. But be careful about getting too attached if it doesn't make logical sense."
"I'm not sure yet where it does and doesn't."
"That's why I bring it up. Good work saving some lives today." He clinked bottles with Robin.
* * *
Only after Robin went home and slept off the day's excitement did he remember a little thing that'd gotten glossed over in the chaos. He dressed and walked the two steps to his office to call Ludo. "Did anybody upload?"
"No," said the AI from his dark screen.
"Look me in the eye."
"As you wish." Ludo appeared onscreen in her office-lady persona. "Four people died in the accident. Two were killed immediately, one was arguably a lost cause, and the fourth... there was a chance we could have saved him using my unique services. If he got to Golden Goose quickly."
"I thought so. We'll be discussing this at the after-action meeting tomorrow." He checked the clock. "Today, at this point."
"You look less furious than I expected."
Robin sighed. "I'd been warned, no guaranteed charity cases this year. I hoped for better, but didn't expect it. You know this situation stinks, right?"
"I'm well aware. There are only so many expensive miracles I can pull out of my servers at a time, and many other things are going on. For now we must --"
"Be patient, right." Robin paced his little box of a house. "You guys did help, and that will come up at the meeting too. You should forward your analysis of Lumina's performance to your R&D department and to some firefighting associations, to study."
"Will do. Anything else?"
"Yeah. Give me a gaming break before I drag myself back to bed. It's been a long day."
12. Rising Tide
Lumina sat at a wooden table in a bar crowded with griffins. Well, really only three, but that was plenty.
A big black wing flapped over Lumina's back as Nocturne said, "Hon, tell Lumie about the guy who hit on the Green Sage!"
The traditional brown-feathered griffin across from her was Paul or Horizon, a young man who'd uploaded after some illegal adventure. He slapped down a big wooden mug of frothy beer that he was trying to pour into his beak, and said, "So there's this new uploader, and somehow he's in the Endless Isles just as it's getting set up, and Green is there. So the new guy says, I'm enthralled... entitled to a hot chick in here and you're her. Dude has no idea Green's like a billionth-level shavin'."
"Shaman," said Nocturne, and demonstrated a mystical gesture that involved flinging a handful of pretzels at Lumina.
Lumina winced. "How are you even drunk?"
The third griffin had only had one beer, though it was a big stein. He was a little wobbly but spoke with a German accent that made him sound smarter. "Bah; these aren't proper pretzels. Lumina, we're testing the effects of simulated alcohol on AI and human brains."
"Ex-human," said Horizon. "Not even human anymore."
Nocturne said, "Gotta compare the effects on brain structures, for science!"
A chorus of "For science!" went up from the few other people here at Kai's bar. Lumina looked helplessly over to Kai, the centaur chef, who had created the place this week and named it Thousand Ales. Kai just shrugged.
Nocturne elbowed Lumina and said, "You should go 'ganic."
"Organic. And why, so I can make a fool of myself too?"
The dark griffin gasped. "No, better yet, for when Sir Robin gets here! Then you can sex him. None of this robot stuff."
Horizon clinked mugs. "Bed a griffin for science!" Nocturne giggled chirpily and Horizon nuzzled her. Another cheer went up. "Or whatever he is."
Lumina stood up and stretched. "I'm out of here. There's work to do."
She was on her way out the door when one of the griffins thudded to the floor behind her, causing a small cartoonish earthquake. She flicked her ears and pushed the wooden door open. Beyond was nothing but a hazy green field. She opened a portal to her personal sanctum and trudged through.
Kai had gotten her own minor world-building powers and had used them to create a bar. That was nice, but it didn't exist anywhere except this vague bubble that wasn't connected to anything. They could invite players into their sanctums, even including characters played by humans on ordinary computers, but there was no point. At least Kai was using hers as a sort of cooking lab.
All of her native AI friends who wanted one, had their own little world now. Many of the humans did too, for their own adventures, which meant you couldn't draw a real map so much as a chart of which narcissistic echo chamber most often had arbitrary connections to another. There were a few big shared zones so far, at least. Midgard the fantasy world was partly a mishmash of little zones that had been combined, notably including the griffin couple's and the Green Sage's. Endless Isles was a procedurally generated ocean that had just been formally opened this year. Planet Bonneville was slated to be combined into some larger space zone but might have to be scrapped and recreated for technical reasons, given its older code base.
So, Lumina was watching Talespace grow, and she had mixed feelings about it. Humans were never going to agree to have just one big virtual world, but it wasn't clear to her that it was ever going to coalesce into even half a dozen. If everybody continued to focus on personal bubble worlds, there could be no learning.
Which reminded Lumina of one in particular where she could learn. She looked around her cavern base, shrugged, then took another portal to the library.
* * *
She was on a white field where her hooves crunched in snow. Freezing wind howled around her, setting off warnings about cold damage. She couldn't shiver, but she could hurry through the heavy oak doors ahead to where everything was warm and bright.
The library filled all three floors of the log cabin that an uploader had made. A bell chimed as Lumina entered but the resident didn't show up; she left the place open for visitors. Lumina approached the big fireplace, grabbed a random book from one of the many shelves, and settled down on a cushion to stare at it.
"I didn't know you were interested in gardens," said the librarian some time later, looking over Lumina's shoulders.
Lumina startled. "Oh! Hello, Miss Jean. I haven't been paying attention. Just daydreaming." She flipped to the cover and saw "Square Foot Gardening".
"You were here the other day, too. Find anything interesting then?"
"A history of the World Wars."
"That's some depressing reading."
Lumina shrugged. "We have to learn about it sometime. When I tried, though, I kept getting distracted by other subjects. I couldn't follow the plot of the wars in isolation."
The librarian smiled and cleaned her glasses. "Indeed. What fiction have you read? Oh, don't make that face; it's important too."
"I tried to read some C. S. Lewis. It started off being something promising about the wartime evacuation of London, but then it veered off on a tangent about a magic portal to a world of adventure and talking animals."
"Too mundane for you, huh? Maybe you'd like a biography of Lewis? He was an interesting man, a soldier and a friend of fellow writer Tolkien."