by Ros Per
CHAPTER XXX: MAYBE I SHOULD GO SEE MY THERAPIST?
It felt like my mind had been turned on: they’d come right up to me, found the power button, and my mind instantly booted up. I’ve lost consciousness a few times during my life and every time it happened, it was a struggle to wake up again. Castra’s cry distracted me from my thoughts and I turned my head to see what was going on. Unfortunately, things were kind of hazy and every time I blinked, it felt like a lot had changed.
I was lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and wondering what had happened to fill it with so many holes. Then again, judging by my interface’s clock, I’d been out for half an hour, so anything goes, really. I was a bit confused by what I felt was… sunlight? Or were those search lights that I could see through the holes in the ceiling?
Suddenly, a cacophony of sounds practically slammed into me. That’s when I realized that, for the past few seconds, I’d been unable to hear anything. I rolled over quickly, took a knee, and lifted both of my “Orsun” guns, ready to use them on any threats.
“Commander, calm down! The fighting’s over.”
Turning toward the voice, I stared at Quartz. He was sitting a few meters away from me, leaning against the wall, with his wounded left hand bandaged tight against his body.
- What happened? -
- “A lot of things happened. You’ll need a detailed explanation.”
- What's wrong with your hand? -
- “It’s fractured in three places; I didn’t have enough time to deactivate Martha and as it began to transform I barely had enough time to get out of it, but I couldn’t save my hand. It practically got crushed between two moving elements. I’d thought it would get torn off altogether.”
- Alright, and where are the others? -
- “They’ve taken up a protective semi-circle formation around us. They’ve been waiting for you to regain consciousness again.”
- Why do I hear battle? -
- “Because of the clans; they’re trying to get Martha. When it turned on, it became level 60 and rushed off. It was evident that it was trying, as usual, to hide, but the clans were already outside by that point so they didn’t allow it to leave. Instead, the queen went into combat mode, its level increased to 90, and it now has two layers of energy protection: one covers it along the contours of its body, the second looks like a dome, completely enveloping it. The clans have been trying to destroy its defenses for twenty minutes now. Forty percent of the dome has already been removed, but at the same time, two dozen fighters have been lost. The system gave Martha the status of sector boss. The Wolves somehow managed to send out a system-wide call for aid. They’ve promised rewards to all who aid them in taking it down, not just their own clan members.”
- Hmmm ... They started it all, but it looks like they’d expected something like this from the beginning. Last question: how did I end up unconscious? -
- “I didn’t see it myself, but according to Tilorn, you destroyed a droid that had a force field, and when you turned away from it, it exploded. That would be enough to knock most people out.”
After quickly checking my weapon, I put it in order: replacing the magazines with full ones and making sure the mechanisms were functioning well. All in all, it was all working well enough, even if I didn’t have much ammo left. My armor, the helmet in particular, was in a sorry state, but there were more important things to worry about right at that moment.
- Tilorn, it’s me, Volper. Respond! - I demanded urgently.
- “Oh, you’ve finally come to; you took a nasty hit, didn’t you? I have a lot to say to you, you know, but since most of it is profanity, it’ll have to wait for when we have a face-to-face meeting.”
- Roger that! Agreed! But I still want a report of the situation. -
- “The droids are gone. Sargos, Castra and I settled in to defend, waiting for the trophy team. It should appear in about five minutes, but they’ve warned us that they will just loot and go. The fire support group will be ensuring our safety and our safety alone. About two hundred and fifty meters away, a large-scale battle is taking place. The clans are trying to figure out what to do with the queen, but I doubt that they’ll succeed. What else… Our group cannot go on for much longer: Quartz has a severe triple fracture of his left hand, and Castra has a serious burn on her leg. I suggest waiting for the trophy team and going back to the base on their transport.”
- I agree, that’s what we’ll do, - I said, after thinking for a few seconds.
Well, judging by the results, we handled the main objective well: we didn’t lose anybody and we got a lot of trophies. There were, of course, problems that we hadn’t expected, but I think we will get a handle on them before moving on to the laboratory. I’m just worried about the upcoming conversation with Tilorn. Honestly, even if I could turn back time and work alone, as I usually do, I would probably choose to do it all over again. I found myself surprised by that thought. Quartz distracted me from thinking too much on all of this.
“Volper, forgive me for not handling it,” he began in a hushed tone.
- It’s fine, never mind, everything is alright, - I said, but this didn’t reassure him.
- “No, it's not ok! I let you down when you were counting on me, and it sucks. You believed in us, invested in our training. You haven’t yet made good fighters out of us, but we’re already much better than a week ago! And we’ll only get better, please believe that!”
Quartz, it seems, had been fired up by the battle and was now more determined than before. I couldn’t help but admire his drive, and yet I knew I couldn’t let him go overboard. Approaching Quartz, I sat down next to him, also leaning against the wall.
- Quartz, don’t worry, everything is fine; it didn’t work out this time, but there will be other opportunities to do better. - I tried to calm him down, but he was already dejected.
- “You just… don’t understand. - He smoothed his hair absently, obviously thinking something over, and then, looking up to the remains of the ceiling, he continued. “You know, out there, in real life, our own parents gave up on us when we were still kids. There are almost fifty of us in the center, all with complex brain-related conditions; probably the only thing that science still can’t heal. You can grow a hand or a leg, they can treat a lot of complex genetic diseases… but the brain, unfortunately, is still a mystery to our medical science, despite all the pompous assurances of various physicians.”
I just sat quietly and listened. Quartz was having a tough time getting the words out, but all I could do was be there for him. Give him a chance to talk to someone, offer him understanding. Quartz raised his hand in front of his eyes and then clenched and unclenched it several times.
- “You see how well my hand obeys me in here… and yet, out there, in real life, my hands do what they want, heedless of my own desires. I can’t eat anything on my own, I can’t even wipe my own ass. The best I could manage in reality was to walk around with my hands tied to my body… but here, everything works just fine, and I can do what I’ve dreamed of doing for all my adult life. I can do something with these fingers: create or repair, as I like. It might not seem like much, being able to work with intricate mechanisms... Not needing to be fed with a spoon, not…” His voice broke a little. “Not being a burden.” Turning his head, he looked into my eyes, after which he slowly looked down and continued in a quiet voice: “Remember when we told you that you’d need to pick a profession to do anything properly?”
- Yes. -
- “It was all bullshit! Forgive us, we lied to you. We were just ashamed to admit that we’d practically gotten our professions randomly. When we realized what we could do, what was available to us, the euphoria swept us away. We just picked whatever we wanted, without any understanding of what we were doing. That’s why we ended up as such a useless, weird group.”
We spent the next several seconds in silence, Quartz collecting his thoughts while I was looking at the cracks on the opposite wall. I’d heard ab
out such hospitals, ones where they kept the terminally ill patients. No matter how sad it was to admit, it wasn’t the norm to take care of children with disabilities in our present day society. Almost all diseases could be treated with our current level of medical technology and knowledge, with only a few exceptions. Therefore, it was believed that they shouldn’t spend money or waste their efforts on outliers.
There were three categories of incurable patients. The first were those who simply didn’t have enough money for proper treatment. The second were those who couldn’t undergo certain treatments due to special circumstances. The third were abandoned children, who had a rare, incurable condition, and their parents simply didn’t want to spend their entire lives looking after them. And so they were cared for by volunteers in special centers. Quartz, meanwhile, had collected his thoughts and continued speaking.
- “But reality proved harsh indeed! We were ridiculed and told to reroll constantly. We even tried to join a couple of clans, but they refused us because they didn’t need such professions in the field, and we didn’t want to sit around all the time and craft. In general, we got nothing but disappointment after disappointment. And then you came out of the blue: showed us what we could potentially achieve, did your best to teach us, and most importantly, we have never seen you look at us with pity or like you’re better than us. You simply treat us like children. You know, if Tilorn is someone we think of as an older brother, then, in just a few days, you’ve become almost like a father to us. Someone who will help us, explain things, punish us if necessary, and if we make a mistake, he will smile and just show us how to do it properly. I don’t know how the others feel, but… Disappointing you is painful for me because I’ve failed the one person that doesn’t owe us anything but is still trying to helps us. I hope you understand me, despite my rambling.”
- I got it, Quartz, I understand! - I replied while patting his head gently - And I say again, stop worrying about it. You and the others will get plenty of chances to show me what you can do. -
After I said that, I could see he was clearly relieved, which, in turn, made me relax. I’d been worried he’d take it too hard ever since he failed to handle Martha.
- “By the way,” he continued, in a slightly more cheerful voice, “I don’t know if Martha will win or not, but I managed to leave a beacon inside of it, so if it defeats the clans, they can demand a rematch.”
- And this, I tell you, is a very good way to improve my mood. Let’s get going, we don’t want to just sit around while everyone else does work. -
We slowly left the ruins and met the rest of the group at the exit. Although everyone could move on their own, I didn’t even need to see their health bars to see they were hurt. Castra was limping pretty badly, her leg bandaged heavily. Sargos was covered in soot (I can't even imagine where he’d found so much of it). Tilorn had cracked or even broken his ribs, judging by how he moved and breathed.
We looked more like a group of tourists that had been mugged than a proper fighting squad. We got into one of the trucks and settled there to rest while the outpost fighters collected all the trophies. After about forty minutes, the shooting stopped, and we learned from one of the fighters that the clans had failed to handle Martha and it had gone off somewhere to found a new base, but only seven percent of the dome's energy had been left by the time they’d been bested by it. Quartz reminded me about the beacon he’d installed in a whisper, causing everyone to smile and look very eager to try something else another day.
Only Tilorn was frowning while looking at me. It took the trophy team almost two hours to collect everything. At first, I even thought that they wouldn’t have enough room to transport all these automated machines and the remains of the droids, but it turned out that most of the trucks had special containers with a miniaturization system installed within that allowed them to load much more than they should’ve been able to. But how they solved the issue of weight, I have no idea. I didn’t want to torture myself by posing questions to the engineers who were accompanying the convoy. They seemed angry at us, probably because we’d destroyed several droids they would’ve loved to get their hands on in the process of clearing everything.
When we arrived at the base, they immediately sent Quartz and Castra to the regeneration capsules. I dragged Tilorn into a separate room and, sitting down in front of him, invited him to speak. He hesitated for a couple of minutes, and then he laid into me with such ferocity that I was rendered mute with shock. For about ten minutes, he went off with such an artistic flare and depth to his curses that I began to respect him. I’d thought of him as a respectable practitioner of medicine, and here he was, peeling the paint off the walls with his foul language. I just sat there and smiled, silently listening to him.
I soon realized the conversation wasn’t about anything I’d feared, so I just let him went. It was kind of adorable, he sounded like a mother afraid for her baby. He kept lecturing me about being irresponsible, risking myself needlessly and possibly leaving the group alone, etc. Eventually, I did have to interrupt him, however:
- It’s strange how your wards haven’t started calling you “Mommy” behind your back! -
- “Um ... Oh ... that is ... What are you talking about?" he asked, taken aback and unable to process my words.
- Yes, I’m calling you a mother hen! You fret and worry and threaten punishment, generally meddling everywhere. This is the problem with most volunteers; you treat everyone with excessive care. -
- “But we’re trying to help them,” he began, then abruptly interrupted himself. “How do you know what we’re like?”
- By word of mouth, from what old grannies have told me… what a stupid question! Believe it or not, I do have a head on my shoulders, and sometimes, I even use it to think. And about the help you give... Yes, some volunteers help, but the others only make it worse. And worst of all, they’re really trying to help, from the bottom of their hearts. But instead of supporting your team, giving them the opportunity to fight, achieve something and end up being proud that they were able to overcome their problems, you just start doing everything for them. Then they give up because the incentive to do something is lost. Indeed, why strain themselves when there is a volunteer who will do everything for them? No, I’m not against what you do; the problem is in the approach. How about an example... Well, let's say a man was left without work and lost his documents. A normal volunteer would help him find a job and get new documents, after which the person returns to a normal life thanks to the volunteer. Unfortunately, the majority of volunteers come at the problem in a different way: they feed him, provide him with clothes, find a shelter for him and run around him almost every day, trying to help him with everything they can. Naturally, that person doesn’t even think about new documents, nor tries to look for a job, why would they? And now that he has everything, thanks to the volunteers, is there any sense in trying to accomplish anything himself? -
- “But some can’t get documents or work, ever! There are people with medical problems that simply cannot be treated at all. What do they do?” He was indignant.
- Tilorn, you seem like a smart man, but sometimes you act like a fool. They have health problems in here? -
- “No, but in real life...”
- What real life? Fuck that! We’re here, not out there! And here they have no problems, you’ve given them the opportunity to live a relatively normal life. They no longer need a volunteer’s help; they don’t need Tilorn the volunteer, but Tilorn the friend, comrade in arms and brother. A person they can just rely on in a difficult moment, not a nanny who will walk behind them and wipe their asses, tying their bibs around their necks for them if necessary. Yes, I understand that you are their caretaker, but that doesn’t mean that you have to lead them by the hand everywhere; it means that you just have to be there and help them, not do everything for them. Thank God that, for now, they perceive you as an older brother, but you will go too far with your care, and if that happens, that’s liable to c
hange. You think about that, and I’ll go sort out the equipment. -
Then I left Tilorn alone with his thoughts. Today was apparently the day Volper would be offering counseling to all, even if they didn’t schedule an appointment. Unfortunately, Carefire didn’t have any news for me. What Sanych was doing was totally incomprehensible: after our conversation, he’d closed off the training grounds and wasn’t letting anyone in, wasn’t even responding to messages. In terms of trophies, Carefire had good news for me; we’d earned at least a few million, but the full assessment wasn’t done yet. We’d damaged a lot of the equipment, so they had to run tests on all of it. We’d know the actual amount we’d earned in a couple of days. Well, now that that was all settled, I could go rest.
After settling in, I remembered my unspent points. Until now, I hadn’t believed Tilorn's explanations, but if everything was really as he’d said, then an extremely unpleasant image of my future was forming in front of me. There were too many different things I didn’t understand. Irala, for example. How can there be an artificial intelligence in the game, if all the experiments in reality thus far have failed? I’ll need to visit the lab tomorrow… Okay, the day after tomorrow, and get to its processor. Because if it really is self-aware, sooner or later, she will go mad with loneliness.