Limitless

by John Gold

“There was no mistake. Working on the basis of the overall statistics for the human race, the possibility for error was less than one billionth of a percent.”

  “The keeper’s death has been confirmed.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Confirmed.”

  “Papir was experimenting to see how far humans can develop. He expanded their consciousness, forced mental self-control, and let them push their physical bodies to the limit. The result was that humans were found to be capable of exceeding their predicted future. Papir losing his character proves that human potential exceeds ours—their mental logic is highly adaptive, their physical bodies adjust when overloaded, and they can move beyond the limits placed on them by nature. Among all the races, humans have the best shot at reaching a first-order world and going through the final trial.”

  “They can do what has remained inaccessible to us.”

  “Find the path to the Fukai protorace that left for another universe.”

  “Do our experiments violate the rules of the trial?”

  “No. The compensation offered to humankind is commensurate to the harm done to them. Thirty years is the average time it takes for a human to reach their peak cognitive abilities, and if Sagie was a unicorn outpacing the entirety of humanity, they aren’t yet ready to find the Fukai. In that case, the six trials won’t make much difference in their progress through the Talzeur worlds.”

  “Why was one of humankind’s chosen ones isolated from the whole world?”

  “The first precept of the Fukai: ‘Planets are categorically protected from destruction. All guilty parties shall suffer the maximum punishment for their world.’ Races can be destroyed, and planets can be made inhospitable to life, but they cannot be destroyed. You can’t wreck the basis of the trial.”

  “For humans, excommunication from society is the strongest form of punishment. It’s the cultural decline of the individual, a lost ability for personal development within the context of civilization, and forfeited relevance to society.”

  “Can he leave the isolation zone?”

  “No. If he does, however, all charges will be dropped—we have no right to judge those who exceed our understanding. That does not run counter to the precepts of the Fukai, and it even presupposes that line of reasoning and action. The death of a keeper proves that the Fukai identified our development potential even before we were able to do so, even before we were named the senior representatives of all Talzeur worlds. The rules assume that beings higher than us will be able to find the path to the Fukai and another universe.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  A year passed after the portal to Papilio was unlocked. Most players, regardless of all the horrors Akashi described, decided to head up to the butterfly world. The news that we weren’t alone in the universe, that we’d long before come into contact with other civilizations, roused all of humanity. But there were plenty of unpleasant surprises in store for the players who made their way to the new world. The locals were much smarter, stronger, and well-developed than those in Project Chrysalis, and new characters were conscripted into the army, onto farms, by rogue sorcerers, and by the dark empire of Klaim. A large-scale war broke out for territory, resources, and political positioning. It was a harsh reality after the sandbox games that were played in Project Chrysalis, and lots of players outfitted their virtual capsule for long-term immersion and moved to the new world to live. Papilio wasn’t nearly as kind, bright, and beautiful as Project Chrysalis. On the other hand, it was far more realistic, interesting, and engaging.

  One way of becoming a skilled mage was to join the Academy of Magic, which accepted new students once a year. Alternatively, you could find an instructor or teacher on the side, or even go visit the orc shamans. The variability and result depended on the choice you made.

  Akashi had been telling the truth when he said that you could only become a good warrior by joining the army. It was demanding, difficult work that pushed you to the edge of your legacy and natural development. Good soldiers had to know how to use swords, shields, bows, and throwing weapons. Players who were drafted experienced all the difficulties of army life in the context of constant war. On the other hand, the Golden Hand began reforming in Papilio, sans Leon but with his idea of building a path other players could take that lived on in his disciples. The players were still too weak to declare themselves an independent nation or faction, however.

  Fiji received the letters from Sagie that described his life. It was the story of a boy from an orphanage who found a family and wandered the world looking for a way to resurrect his dead loved ones. Fiji published all the letters on the official Project Chrysalis site, hoping that any information about Sagie would help her find him. It had already been a year since he went missing. His old friends could see in the interface that he spent all his time in the game, though Fiji didn’t mention two things: the space ship he was building and Ledge, the ArtIn that disappeared with him. Fiji joined forces with the Lunar government to look for her friend, and a year later, they found a camouflaged factory on the edge of the solar system that was autonomously assembling an enormous spaceship.

  Reasonably enough, the security system recognized Fiji, gave her access, and made her a super admin with control over the entire operation. The frontier ship was already built, and the factory was beginning work on a second. It was five kilometers long, six kilometers wide, and two kilometers tall, an enormous flat space on which a city could be built. The lower compartments in the ship had working hydroponic facilities, a life-support system, and propulsion systems to move the whole mass to other stars. The ship was built using technology even Lunar didn’t know about or use in their ships. It wasn’t that Sagie had made new discoveries; he just thought in completely different categories. The frontier didn’t have citizenship grades. Instead, the life support system was built such that everyone living on the station ship was identical. There was security, duplicate nodes and communication systems, two backup generators, and drives that served as alternative ways of moving through space in case the main engines broke down. Every detail on the ship had at least three purposes, expanding the frontier’s capabilities and giving its crew a better chance of survival in extreme conditions. But the ship didn’t have what Fiji cared about most: Sagie and Ledge.

  Lunar checked all the hospitals, coma facilities, clinics, and underground labs that could have hidden the young man’s body. But they didn’t find a single trace or mention of him. There was almost no information to be found anywhere online about Anji Ganet, Ribonz Almart, Bak Kvan, or Sagie. Fiji guessed that Ledge was wiping all mention of him, and so she tried to break through to the ArtIn’s logic and convince it that she was a friend looking to help Sagie. But Ledge ignored every attempt she made except for hacking into her server to delete them. The only untouched information about Sagie was in Lunar, where their sites as databases were strong enough to withstand the ArtIn.

  For the whole year, scout drones scoured the planet in search of Sagie or the ship that took him away from Earth. The Azure August was ransacked from top to bottom, and even the body regeneration and other medical equipment was checked to make sure it hadn’t been used to genetically modify Sagie’s appearance. Again, nothing was found that pointed to his whereabouts.

  But then, Fiji received another letter from her grandfather, Miguel Elmaro. They met in the same café.

  “I should tell you about the third person who reached a second-order world. Her name was Europe in the game, but in reality, it was Persea de Bran, a scientist specializing in alternative life forms. We were staying with the Eru, and she lost her mind after the first contact with aliens. It happened in Papilio. As soon as she moved up to the new world, she caught the eye of an egregore who exerted pressure on her mind until she picked up the guide ability and stаrted avoiding his attention. To use the old terminology, she’s a druid, a healer, and a Life Magic master, not to mention a little crazy. You have to be born with a certain mental
ity if you want to pick up the guide ability, so what the egregore did damaged her mind. Anyway, I read Sagie’s letters. She is the woman he saw in his dreams. When Akashi and I pulled Sagie into the control room, he said, ‘take me to your field of flowers.’ I have no doubt that she managed to somehow manipulate Sagie, giving him dreams full of harmony and love, to lure him over to her side. I also know that neither she nor I will ever see where Sagie is. The last thing she was able to do was hack into the Project Chrysalis control room to let Sagie through into Papilio. That happened a long time ago. All the boy had to do was give the code phrase. There’s nobody who can say where he is or what frame of mind he’s in.”

  “Where is that monster? Europe, was that it? She might know where he could have gone. We need to beat it out of her.”

  “Fiji, if it were that simple, it would already be done. Europe went over to the Hlou, an insectoid civilization that stands alone against the alliance of twenty-five civilizations, of which humanity is one. It’s the first time in history that they’ve accepted someone into their ranks. Because of what Europe did, they now have the kind of monsters ten knights of the order would have a hard time beating. She introduced a new class of bug, the zero. They’re battle marshals, they guard the queen, and they fight in special forces. Do you realize how terrible it is that Sagie might have gone over to the enemy? He hates people.”

  “Yes, I get that, but I’m not sure how that can possibly explain how he could have disappeared in the real world.”

  After the conversation with her grandfather, Fiji started the Sagie Foundation. Releasing his letters brought out quite a few players willing to donate money in appreciation for the information the letters included on how to get achievements, while others donated by way of an apology. The League of Hunters dedicated a portion of their yearly proceeds to the hunt for Sagie in real life as well as the in-game world. Hawk’s group was the driver behind that movement. The league and its members knew the unique personality traits Sagie had that drove him to be the first to get to unheard-of places, and their introduction to Papilio quickly told them how valuable it would be to have someone like that in their team. It was a world in constant turmoil, which meant that it needed people capable of breaking the status quo and moving humanity toward stability and prosperity—not heroes, but people who could take responsibility for their actions.

  The frontier ship was christened Sagie and launched into orbit around the Earth. In keeping with Anji Ganet’s last secret venture, it was made a health resort for orphanages throughout the entire solar system. Its life-support system made it identical to living on Earth: the gravitational pull was 1G, the air was filled with the smell of the forest, there was an enormous lake in the middle, and the many islands were littered with residential buildings. Sagie wanted every child who found himself there to be infected with the desire to visit the cradle of humankind: Earth.

  The money earned by selling finished designs was donated to the Sagie Foundation. The operations were carefully monitored by Lunar to make sure the balance of power wasn’t altered, and they added compensation for disadvantageous sales of technology. The interstar drive was removed and sent to Lunar. Once there, the technology behind it was used to develop an entire series of drives for lower-ton ships.

  Sagie’s final letter included the key to his accounts in the net. Over the year that had passed, however, not a single credit had been touched. Ledge wasn’t about to try any operations, knowing that Lunar would be keeping an eye out for them, and Femida couldn’t remove them without confirmation of Ribonz Almark’s death. It could have been faked, but she wasn’t about to get into that. She cared too much about the relationship they’d had. She wanted Sagie on the side of humankind, and he needed to see loyalty and good intentions rather than greed.

  The most important event that happened in Project Chrysalis was the opening of pathways to Hell, the Gray Lands, and Heaven. In Kurg, in Lone Forest Field, three two-way portals opened in its living half. Three one-way exit portals were opened in the dead half. It was only after this that the players remembered how trees served as the axis of the world in all the mythologies , connecting heaven and earth, and that they were humankind’s pathway to spiritual heights. They represented the circle of life, death, and rebirth. Each of the portals had a primary and a secondary name.

  Tree of life: Heaven

  Tree of knowledge: Hell

  Tree of good and evil: Gray Lands

  Sagie’s records hinted that the second name could change when the player completed the trial. Tiamat, still in his role as death, had intimated to Sagie that the ninth circle in Hell was the path to Limbo, which was yet another trial zone offering special abilities to the players who went through it.

  Sagie’s old friend Kirk, the one he studied with at the Academy of Magic, returned from Papilio and ventured into the Gray Lands in search of his dead fiancée. He was the one who discovered that players who died during the trials no longer lost their character. Instead, they just lost ten levels and everything they had with them at the moment of their death. This rule applied to everyone who had gone through the interworldly portal, so a wave of players looking to pick up the abilities Sagie had described poured back in from Papilio. Sadly, the percentage of them who successfully got through the first circle of Hell was extremely low, and the reward for beating the trials had also been split into the circles. You couldn’t work on your second stream of consciousness until you got through the first circle.

  The discoveries pulled from Sagie’s notes led to a golden age for humanity.

  In the chronicles of the Project Chrysalis world, Sagie came to be known as Limitless Sagie. Plenty of unhappy Hunters complained to Fiji about it, saying that the only player in the world who had ever been limitless was Reiji, the one who saved the planet from the asteroid. But one person in the argument, someone with the simple name of Izdier, had something to say that only the Hunters could understand.

  Neither Sagie nor Reiji were limitless. There’s only one person worthy of that title, and that’s the one who killed Tser’Kareni Papir.

  Fiji knew it was Reiji himself who wrote the message. He was the only one who knew the whole truth about humanity’s strongest player.

  Over the entire year, Reiji wrote her just one message.

  I’m going to find him. And when I do, we’re going to have a talk.

  And that was the last anyone saw of Reiji.

  Epilogue

  It was a year before, the day the seal was broken on the interworldly portal.

  In one of the more remote locations in Papilio, there was a flying island completely isolated from the world. It was a spatial trap impossible to get to or get away from. The tiny piece of land, just fifty meters in diameter, floated freely in the air, the vegetation sparse and completely lacking in trees and animals.

  A five-meter humanoid creature sat motionless at the center of the island. It had two arms and two legs, but no nose or mouth. There were ten eyes scattered around its head. From its seated position, it could see the entire island without moving, and it was the perfect prison warden—it needed neither food, water, nor sleep.

  The body of a young man fell out of the sky and landed on the island. He was dressed in nothing but the underwear given to all players when they created their account, and his once-gray hair had turned black. The thin, exhausted body practically broke in half on impact.

  The young man howled in pain. Blood dripped from his empty eye sockets, the bridge of his nose was cut in half, the bone plates in his temples were sliced open, and a variety of other wounds were scattered across his body. The warden watched him suffer without making a single movement.

  “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you all!”

  The young man went limp, his left arm and leg twitched unnaturally, and foam dribbled from his mouth. He melted into the air four seconds later.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Anji Ganet opened his eyes and tried to push back the lid covering his med capsule. H
is head was foggy, and the medical solution was red. Blood flowed from his nose, ears, and eyes; there was a metallic taste in his mouth. Anji screamed in pain and fainted. But when that happened, his body gave off a shock wave of such pure power that it destroyed his clothing. The armored med capsule, the entire room, and even the wall of the building shattered.

  In the midst of the chaos, among the rubble, his naked body lay in a pool of blood, his arms and legs twitching, almost as if he were testing his muscles.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Ledge did exactly what it was supposed to do, identifying anomalies in super admin Sagie’s higher brain function. The data coming from Lunar’s med capsule had been decrypted long before, and the ArtIn started going through potential actions as soon as it received the SOS signal.

  Twenty-six burst blood vessels identified in the brain. Medulla, occipital lobes, left temporal lobe, and pituitary—all critical.

  All software resources moved to Doctor Brain mode. Connection to the neuronet established.

  Heavy bleeding. Coagulation needed, connecting to medbots still in the body. Not enough medbots found. Transferring resources to treat more serious injuries.

  The clatter of running feet was heard in the hallway.

  Critical threat. Probability of fatal consequences: 99.7%. Executing departure per Omega Plan.

  The young man was still bleeding, but he sat up and pulled the virtual reality lenses out of his eyes. They were the last devices that could have been used to track the super admin.

  Top priority: escape. Parallel process flows activating.

  1. Bypass security system, substitute data flow.

  2. Hack satellite system covering resort complex. Partial replacement of aerial imagery data.

  3. Diversions beginning.

  The young man limped through the demolished wall, his stiff body barely responding, and stopped in the underbrush. It was nearly impossible to spot him there, though he’d left a trail of blood leading out of his room. Only the worst of the bleeding in his brain had been stopped. The whites of his eyes were far from white, the broken blood vessels filling them with red.