“Then who was the player? From my world?” My feet slowly paced around Carver, as if seeing him from the side would make things clearer. The old man turned with my pacing and a half frown of annoyance flashed across his face.
“I am also him, after a fashion.” He said.
A Carver groan escaped me. This was one of the many fears that people had been contemplating since the idea of an immersible virtual reality came up. I wanted to be horrified. I wanted to run screaming out and break the ARC until nothing but shiny metal bits and a half displayed frowning face existed. Yet none of that happened. Briefly, my mental image of James popped up and asked why. This wasn’t the real Voice, only a faint expectation of his response to my thoughts.
“They mapped your brain.” I face palmed and sighed.
“In conjunction with endless hours within the virtual world.” William Carver nodded and seemed close to dancing happily. “It’s nearly an outright transfer of consciousness.”
“I half expected this.”
“I imagine so. Trillium’s employee files show you, more than most, know what the ARC is capable of.” He said.
Talking to William Carver confirmed one of the theories to cross my mind in the last four weeks. Sitting on the bench as Carver hadn’t been all newbies and quests, frustration and naps. There had been downtime to read Carver’s attempts at smut and sift through possibilities.
“It’s a giant complex mess of devices that reads thought, to transform it into data and action. Saying that it could copy a personality isn’t that far-fetched.” I said. A brief bout of worry for my niece passed through my mind before being put back in its mental box. I had spent too much time trying to keep my head screwed on right this week.
“The ARC does not modify anything in the brain itself. It only causes users to, in essence, relive experiences.” William Carver confirmed the Trillium byline. This topic was dangerous to over think for any sane person.
“Tell that to Stranger Danger’s following. Their site has at least forty solid hours of rants about ARC conspiracies.” I responded with that instead. Hal Pal had kindly given me the statistics.
“Can we both assume that such paranoia is nonsense?” Carver looked grumpy and leveled a glare my way.
“I don’t know enough about it to be worried.”
“You’re clever enough to guess that I was the autopilot.” Carver said.
“Yeah,” I said.
My background was crunching numbers. I had barely understood my fiancée’s rocket science. Putting modules into ARC machines was a relatively new carrier. Neuroscience was not my forte so I took Carver’s words at face value. The computer had scanned in what it could, combined it with what it knew and tried to recreate a real man here inside the digital world.
“You’re clever enough to pose as me and give me comfort in my final days.” His forehead lowered and both eyes squinted.
“I tried.” That was in the past. Failures and successes aside, what had happened couldn’t be undone. Xin’s face flashed through my mind again and I clamped down on the swiftly changing emotions.
“You did well. There, in the end, that final battle, the rush of each swing, falling, and getting back up.” Carver lifted the black cane up and gave it a weak swing. “Almost as well as I might have done.”
“Not even close, I’m sure.” I laughed. That had been exciting sure, super neat, but each attack was laced with my second-rate ability as a player. At least this subject was more comfortable than the ARC mind mapping concept.
“And Mylia!” William Carver sounded younger than he had previously. Less gruff and curt. Maybe this was more of the player shining through than an AI’s progress bar. “That was a surprise.” The older man’s face was nearly rapt with glee. If it wasn’t for his hands being grasped on the cane, I might expect him to start swiveling in excitement with doe eyes.
“It was neat,” I said.
“How did you know?” William asked.
“Uhhh…” The empty blackness that Carver and I existed in provided no assistance. “A terrible guess based on a misspent youth?”
“Good God. Was it that obvious?” Carver rubbed his face with a rough gnarled hand. “I felt like it was the dragon all over again, her father if I were to guess.”
“I never got the entire story.” Mylia’s actual back story was not something I’d learned. Carver lifted a hand and leaned in like he was sharing a great secret. Slowly he whispered.
“When you get back to Haven Valley, look for the monument, they put it where my bench used to be. If you could believe that! The Voices tell me there will be a video for all Travelers to see regarding my legacy. Way better than a gold watch I’ll tell you.” He smiled broadly and stood upright again.
“Anyway, it was a fitting end!” He declared with a rap of the cane.
“Is it the end?” I questioned.
“For me, for him, for both of us, yes.” Carver paused and sighed. “I, I should feel upset that I was set aside to allow you control, and I was worried a few times. But no longer.”
“I didn’t even realize until the end that the Traveler…” I started to explain. Both eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. Referring to Carver, while talking to Carver, was weird. “…that the player was still alive. Not until near the end.”
“Barely. But you were right. I, he, was too hard headed to die without one last adventure.” William’s face twisted with rue and happiness. “The entire event was being projected to us, or him, me, my body in the real world.”
“Then?” This wasn’t going anywhere pleasant. Realistic, understandable, but absolutely not a happy ending. William Carver couldn’t just leap out of his bed and dance a jig with perfect recovery.
“He, I, we passed from the old world that night.” The cane lifted and gestured to one side. “Shortly after your fight.”
“What now?” I asked. The whole subject of a digital version saying the physical one was dead kind of worried me. He seemed lost so I switched questions. “How much do you remember?”
This mirror image of the player seemed to share many of the memories that went with William Carver or, at least, his in-game life. Part of me really wanted to dive in and ask all about where the man and where the machine ended. Having walked in his shoes all that time made the very thought impossible to act upon.
“How much?” William Carver tilted his head and looked up. “It is strange, I remember all of my adventures. I remember portions of my family and the things that were said while in the ARC. I remember seeing myself, sitting in the room and being annoyed that things were taking so long.”
Moments passed while William chewed on a lip. That was a habit I’d never picked up.
“But I don’t remember my son’s face.” He seemed distraught. Seeing an old man’s face crumple was nearly as bad as seeing a child breakdown. A downward pull of lips implied bitterness at the thoughts going through his brain. Had he really never considered his life on my side of the machine?
“James? Can you do something for me?” I looked behind me towards where the Voice had stood before.
“If allowed, I will try.” The black man’s words resounded forth from darkness.
“Use your connection to my ARC, look up William’s real name, and get him a picture at least?”
There was a rush of murmuring that I’d come to associate with the Voices talking. Sounds similar to a river’s babble. Tones and pitches of all flavors melded as computerized logic was applied to my situation.
“James?” I questioned.
“They won’t do it. The AIs are shackled to prevent them from crossing.” William said sadly. “This is the price.”
“I gave James access to my ARC.” Briefly, it occurred to me how dangerous that action might have been. For now, it might allow me to give the old man one final parting gift.
When Xin had passed I threw out most of our things or gave them away. The pictures were kept privately in a small binder under my bed. William’s gr
ief could be minimized by such a small gesture. It was the kind of assistance that helped with my own sorrow.
“We will do this.” James said. Surprise and relief washed across William’s features.
“Thanks.” I muttered and tried not to make eye contact with the older man. This was awkwardly embarrassing, even for a man like myself who regularly shared his stories to strangers.
“What do you want in exchange?”
“Nothing. Not for this.” I would feel guilty. This wasn’t an action where repayment was expected.
“Not even your fiancée?” William’s features adopted a concerned look.
“I imagine parts of her were scanned by an ARC for her job, and, uhh, they linger around in here.” I spoke slowly.
“They do.”
Fervent thoughts of finding a happy place spiraled through. This answer couldn’t shatter me. I had done well this far, focusing on responding to each sentence. Moving onward and not spending a lot of time in the past. God. Liz was right. I was such a crybaby. All I did was drag myself through hell over and over as if poking the wounds on my soul had grown addicting.
“Why?” My voice held together for the one word.
“To make this world real. Millions were scanned, everyone who ever stepped into the ARC.”
“Including me?” I nodded. The answer was fairly obvious.
“Yes.” For a moment, there was a sparkle in Carver’s eye. Was it amusement? “Everyone. The longer we stay, the more the machine maps and stores your responses. What makes you happy, angry, how your mind dances as time winds by.”
“That’s-” There were no good words. Terrible? Horrifying?
My face grew cold as it occurred to me what the machine was doing. Dead or alive, it was basically reincarnating individuals inside. Souls were still an unsolved topic in my world. The ARC Lab, Continue Online, Trillium, had tapped into the closest thing and brought it to life. Our very minds and memories were mimicked within this digital world.
“That’s insane.” I declared. My knees felt weak and head swam. “You’re talking about-” There was an entire poem about this that crossed my mind. I couldn’t remember the start, but I remembered the end and muttered it now.
“They will come back, come back again, as long as the red Earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree, do you think He would squander souls?” Kipling’s poem applied to a digital reality. I fell down to my ass and sat there.
“She.” William corrected absently.
“Mother?”
“Yes,” He said.
“And Xin is one of them. A reused soul.” I stated while trying not to let my stomach sink.
“As close as mankind dare reach, yes.” William confirmed.
“With enough of herself to attach to my ARC and the dance program.” I wasn’t stupid. Maybe this was me filling in the blanks without fact checking. Still, there was so much on the programming side that didn’t make sense to me. This, though, this vague concept of what the machine had done, that I understood.
“Yes.” I should be angry at the old man’s admission. “She, a small portion of the imprint, took notice once the Ultimate Edition was activated.” William said.
“But only that once?” I hadn’t seen her afterward.
“Mother pulled her back in, I’ll tell you, an errant imprint caused quite the commotion around here.” James said while standing nearby. I knew the large man would be watching this revelation. There was no way a man like him would ignore a goldmine like our conversation.
But I was glad she was alive in some fashion. There were many questions to ask, too many to sort through. Questions of morality and mortality could be posed right now and may never be answered to my satisfaction. What would happen if the Continue Online’s servers went down? Was she the same person here?
I settled for one all-consuming question and said, “Is she happy?”
“I believe so.” William Carver said. The old man sighed and deflated. His shoulders dipped low. “I must hope so, what happened to her will soon happen to me.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Balance restricts even us, Grant Legate.” James said. “Soon the being you know as William Carver will be scattered and born anew throughout our world.”
“Like Xin was?”
“Yes. Your world has legends of the river of unmindfulness, Lethe, ours has something similar.” The people of this world suddenly mattered a lot more to me. What was left of my fiancée’s spirit, digital or not, was out there in a strange land.
“Wild Willy,” Leeroy faded in. “It’s almost time.”
“I understand.” The old man nodded. He looked at my collapsed form with a frown.
There was a nuzzling at my shoulder. A familiar weight that belonged to the [Messenger’s Pet] climbed up on my arm. I turned and looked. Once again, as he had before, the small creature held something in his mouth. One hand went out and waited for a deposit.
“Mh?” Sniffling threatened to overrun me. Three years and there were yet more tears to be found. Voices, what an emotional train wreck my life had become. It felt like I was unable to last five minutes without spiraling backward.
“Take this, William.” I held up the now unrolled item. There was a picture with a face upon it.
“Thank you.” William looked down with a smile. “Hah. What do you know, he has Phil’s eyes, or does Phil have his?” That soft indirect question shook me out of the depressive funk a little. My suspicious glare to James was met with an amused but unclear smile. Adding an eyebrow to my questioning tone garnered no further information.
“Here. I won’t need this where I’m going.” William Carver pressed something into my free hand. The other was busy wiping at my face with a sleeve on my mended shirt. Thank goodness the ARC program had restored it after my encounter with the Temptress’ wanton ways.
William was led off by Leeroy into another doorway. Much like the same one I had first used to step into Carver’s life. I looked up and wondered if this scene would also make its way to a certain High Priestess of Selena. By now, at least five, maybe six days, had passed in [Arcadia]. Carver’s death would be known to the entire town.
With a bright flare and a sound like breaking glass the old man disappeared. Absently I wondered if this was his first death or third. There was a long silence in the room of trials, in this space between that I’d both come to enjoy and detest the past few weeks. A number of painful things had happened, but at the same time, there were a lot of exciting memories.
“Now, Grant Legate, we are far overdue for the true purpose of your arrival.” The black man turned serious. His hands clasped tightly over his belly.
“No more questions?” I asked James.
“I will always have questions, but all things serve a purpose, and you must start your own journey in our world, if you choose to.”
“Okay.”
“Will you?” James asked.
“That’s a question, James.” I tried to be clever with my words. There was no heart in the response, though. His inquiry was a fair one. Did I want to keep going now that I knew the grand secret?
At least there were no aliens involved or strange doorways to alternate realities. No. William had explained that this was a machine that emulated human beings. Everyone that had ever stepped inside with all the knowledge they possessed. Considerable as that might be. Pieces of Xin were scattered all across this world. Incomplete, shattered, did that concept call to me? God yes, or more appropriately, Voices yes it did.
“I think I will. For a bit longer.” My time as Carver had been enjoyable but rushed. It would be nice to play Continue Online for what it was, a game. A distraction.
“Then we must make decisions.” James stood up and waved one arm. A giant screen came into being looking like a throwback to role playing games from decades ago. Flattened out imagery displayed a character sheet hanging in the air with statistics and other details.
New players always beamed into [Ha
ven Valley] with a baseline of ten in everything. The [Inspection] skill made that much obvious. My highest traits, as measured by the computer, were [Coordination] and [Learning]. Both likely due to my endless dancing and the poetry I professed to know portions of. I did have a Master’s Degree back in the real world, so I’d been around the block. [Divine Favor] was through the roof. My interactions with the Voices, and playing as William Carver, had likely contributed greatly. It was almost double the other statistics. My [Strategy] statistic was amazingly low. [Speed] wasn’t that high either. Both were just below a new player’s baseline. I really had no idea how to weigh these things against seasoned players.
I waved the box away.
“I’ll look at them later. Let’s finish this up.” I had a vague idea of where my stats were.
“Very well. Then let me simplify the process.”
I nodded.
“New Travelers, except rare cases granted by us, start out as humans. Nothing in your actions with my trials or as William Carver will allow me to alter that.” He spoke in an even tone.
Human I would be. Part of me found it vaguely interesting that everyone started out that way. My niece had been a half demon thing, right? Her man friend, whatever his name was, had been a tiger creature of some sort. Well, whatever. I tried to focus on one step at a time.
“In addition, we will be restricted from letting you start in [Haven Valley]. You simply know too much for that town to be a measure of your natural tendencies.” James kept on talking.
“Okay.” I said. I was busy trying my best not to freak out and thus far succeeding.
“However, there are some things we can afford you that are not typically given as gifts. This is in addition to the legacy William Carver has provided you.” I gave pause to my contemplation of the middle distance and looked at James. He was looking at my hand.
“Huh?” I said while looking down.
Carver’s cane was sitting comfortably in my grip, similar to how it’d been held for the last four weeks of game time. A frown crossed my face as our conversation came back to me. There was a gong sound that echoed across the background that turned James even more serious. He nodded in response to something obscured to me.
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