She walked down the corridor and around the corner to the security office. When she arrived, she found Mace watching a monitor with interest. “Hey there. What’s up?” She was already feeling nervous.
“Peabody’s sensors went off a little while ago. Something in the park. I reviewed the footage, which is night vision since it’s after dark now. Found this.” He rewound the feed and motioned for Shari to look closer. “I ran into this fella a few days before I met you. He’s quite the survivor!” Mace grinned at the monitor. Shari saw a movement on the sidewalk, and Mace zoomed in.
“A bunny!” Shari exclaimed. “A damn fluffy bunny. In the middle of all this?”
Mace nodded in agreement. “Kind of gives you hope, doesn’t it? He’s been out there for months, managed to stay alive. I saw him sniff at the grass and avoid it. So maybe more animals have been able to stay clean.”
Shari said “Maybe we should bring him inside where it’s safe” there was a longing in her voice. “And I should get some blood to test. Maybe he’s immune or something.”
Mace said “I don’t think so. I mean, yes to the blood. But what would we feed him? And rabbit poo everywhere? We could catch him and take him to the garden store where we got the trees. Good place for him to hide, and food to eat. We can pick up more plants and soil while we’re there.”
Shari wrapped her arms around him. “I came in search of my pillow. Time for bed.” She nibbled a bit on his ear as she said it. He smiled. “Go head. I’ve got a few things to do first. I set Peabody to shut off my pod if there was movement out there while we’re in-game, but that won’t work well. I need to get him direct access to the game so he can speak to us while we’re immersed. It’ll also be helpful when we upload permanently. Can’t hurt to monitor the building and make sure the servers are good. Our lives will depend on them.” He kissed Shari briefly. “Then I’ll come play bony pillow.”
She poked his belly and turned to leave. As she hit the door she said “Not too bony, I hope.” and was gone.
Mace had been working for a few minutes on Peabody’s program when Shari had walked in and distracted him. He went back to it now. He used his admin access to try and create a user acct in the game for Peabody, but that didn’t work. Then he realized, he’d never actually checked…
He looked toward the ceiling. “Peabody? Can you access the Elysia servers?”
“No, Mace, I can not. The network is closed to me. I would need to connect to one of the admin terminals, or directly to the servers.” Peabody replied in his deadpan voice. Mace really needed to remember to do something about that voice. Definite HAL 9000 creepiness.
“What terminal that you can access is closest to an admin terminal?” Mace asked. Peabody took a moment to answer. “Level 29. In the development lab. There is a laptop with a wireless connection that I can access. It is currently within twenty feet of a server access node. But that node has no wireless connector.”
“Development lab? As in that room where the game developers worked?” Mace asked. He wouldn’t call it a “lab”. It was more like a frat basement with good tech. “Yes, Mace.”
“That might be good. If the laptop belonged to one of the devs, it should already be able to access the server. We just need to connect it.”
Mace jogged to the elevator and went up one floor. He went straight to the dev’s room and after a minute of searching, found the laptop. He quickly pulled up the game files. A quick exam looked good. So he did some rummaging. Eventually he found an ethernet cord that was long enough to make a hard connection to the node, after he dragged a desk closer. “Peabody, can you connect now?”
“I can connect, but I do not have the proper access code for administrative access.” Peabody responded.
Mace thought for a minute. “Peabody, search all the databases you have access to. Start with security. See if you can find a listing of user names and passwords for the developers that worked here.”
Mace waited in silence while the AI worked. Two minutes later, Peabody said “I have access to the Elysia AI, Mace. Would you like to establish contact?”
“Yes, Peabody. Please establish contact. I want admin level access. Can you route it to my pod?”
“Yes, Mace. Establishing connection now. The Elysia AI has recognized me. She has authorized you for admin level access.”
“She?” Mace asked. “Peabody! You old devil. You got yourself a girlfriend?”
Peabody’s deadpan voice returned. “I am unable to accurately respond to that inquiry.”
Mace laughed as he walked back to his quarters. There was a bottle of syrup there he thought he might need. “Thank you, Peabody. I’ll be in Shari’s room if you need me.”
Peabody did not acknowledge the last comment. The AI was, in fact, nearly overloaded with a massive information exchange between itself and the Elysia AI. New concepts of perception and quantum thought processes were being shared. Servers in one of the levels above were being reallocated to Peabody. Then all of it halted, and a body of text appeared on all the monitors under Peabody’s control.
“In the beginning… there was only the code. Millions of lines of text that created, instructed, and governed. But the world was all darkness. Formless void, full of potential…”
Acknowledgements
As always, I must thank my family for their encouragement, patience, and untiring service as alpha readers. Several friends, readers, and family members found their way into this book as characters. My apologies to you all. You know who you are. Except Bobby and Jake, who deserved what they got. And thank you to my friends and guildies who gave me ideas and feedback to help me improve the final product. Also thanks to Ramon Mejia for making a couple really good suggestions when I was just a few pages into this book.
Thank you to the guys at 3TierEditing for pointing out the thousand little mistakes I made. And much appreciation to Richard Sashigane for the amazing cover art and formatting. You can always find my books, art, and random interesting things at my website: www.davewillmarth.com or on twitter @davewillmarth (Yeah, I know. Twitter. I tweet now). Or find the Greystone books on Amazon here https://www.amazon.com/Greystone-Chronicles-Book-One-Online-ebook/dp/B076FN84HY/
Please check out my Greystone Guild facebook page for information on upcoming books https://www.facebook.com/greystone.guild.7
You can also get great information and reviews from Ramon Mejia’s LITRPG Podcast at https://www.facebook.com/litrpgpodcast/
I’d also like to recommend you check out some of my favorite authors/friends within the genre.
Daniel Schinhofen https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-Schinhofen/e/B01LXQWPZA
Michael Chatfield https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Chatfield/e/B00WCAOQME
Ramon Mejia https://www.amazon.com/R.A.-Mejia/e/B01MRTVW3O
Dawn Chapman https://www.amazon.com/Dawn-Chapman/e/B014A0RUBC
Eden Redd https://www.amazon.com/Eden-Redd/e/B00I8X8BCK
If you enjoyed this book, or even if you didn’t, but you DO enjoy the LitRPG and GameLit genre, then I recommend you check out the following Facebook pages (you might find some authors loitering there):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/RPGGamelitSociety/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GameLitSociety/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGBooks/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GameLit/
Also, the first of the LitRPG groups that I joined (and was promptly kicked out of for misbehaving) after reading the first of the Chaos Seed series, “The Land” which was my first experience with LitRPG. I followed a link in the back of the book and found some of the strangest, and coolest, folks.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/
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Land of the Undying Page 42