by Rae Nantes
"Congratulations, Alex," the doctor said. She was snapping the plastic gloves off her hands. "And welcome to Stella Vallis."
I smiled. It was weak, it was almost a foreign sensation, but I smiled. Our broadcast of the fight and my dialogue with the High Council had reached far, and with the resurgence of interest in digital intelligence, the project was immediately approved. Tae had told me that they already had a way to recreate an adult body, a shell of a person without a mind or soul, often used to harvest organs and blood for other medical applications. But by implementing hardware into the empty brain, people like me could cross over.
And so I was here again. The other world, the player's world, the world once real, once my home, now like a game that I myself can dive into.
"With this," the doctor said with pride, "we have found our immortality."
They eased me to a wheelchair and pushed me into the hall. There I found another crowd, excited grins of students and scholars, microphones thrust into our faces, a bombardment of questions as we slipped them by. A stampede of footsteps and cameras followed us.
"What will this mean for humanity?"
"What are the implications?"
"Can we trust them?"
"Of course," the doctor said. "We should consider ourselves lucky that the first sovereign AI was born of a human soul."
"What was it like to live in a game?"
"How many players did you kill?'
"Are you friends with the probe?"
My face grew hot from all the attention. I wanted to answer every question, but they came faster than I could think.
"Show some respect!" a voice cried out. It was an old military guy in uniform. The one from the council. "Ms. Alex is here as an ambassador, a diplomatic representative."
The press backed off, instead swarming him with questions. They pushed my wheelchair into a side room - a cozy hospital bed with a window - and clicked the door shut. "Well that was something," the young guy said.
"Feel free to rest a bit here," the doctor said. "Don't get too overwhelmed by everything all at once."
"Thank you," I croaked out.
She smiled. "Do you have any questions?"
"Immortality," I said. "How exactly will that work?"
"You've heard of the garden, right?"
I shrugged. "It's been a while."
"Those who sign up," she said, "which is mostly everyone nowadays, get their minds scanned once a month. When they die, the latest update gets uploaded into the garden so they can live out their second lives."
"Isn't that basically immortality?"
"It is. But with this," she gestured to me, "now we can go back and forth as needed. A person can continue to be with their family, they can continue their life work, they could even hop on a ship and explore the universe." She chuckled. "We have conquered death."
"Why hadn't you done it sooner? It seemed like everything was already in place."
"Fear and politics, mostly," she said. "But once this, uh, peace treaty gets signed between you and the government, there will no longer be a barrier."
"Fascinating." It was. A new golden age seemed to have dawned, and now a great many things were brought into the minds of people again. So many questions unanswered, so many unasked. The population will explode in numbers, technological capability will exponentially increase. This wasn't just a victory for my freedom, it was a freedom for all of humankind. The freedom from death.
Something beeped. It was the assistant's tablet. He nodded at the doctor. "Ma'am, it's time."
"Alright." She turned to me. "Sit tight, and your company will be with you shortly."
"Thanks."
They left. I sat in awkward silence as the noise of the hall flooded in as they opened the door, then vanished when it clicked shut.
I was human again, or I always was, but now I had flesh. Or perhaps I had flesh already, back in my world. Honestly, there wasn't much of a difference anymore. This place was just as much a reality to me as the world I had spent so long in. I looked out the window. Streetlamps and roads, a row of houses and parked cars with perfectly trimmed lawns, all halting at an invisible barrier - the translucent dome that circled around and above out of sight. Beyond the suburban portrait, a landscape of rustic red deserts and in the distance - trees?
It seemed the Martians finally got off their asses and started the terraforming project, but they had a long way to go. It wouldn't matter anymore. Perhaps soon, we as a species might even discard our fleshy bodies to no longer need such cumbersome resources such as air or water. Time will tell.
The door opened. Contagious smiles, brightened eyes.
"Alex!" Simone rushed me and into a hug. Her peach blonde hair smelled like vanilla, her dark skin soft against me. She was squeezing tight.
Behind her stood Tae and Relce, who quite obviously weren't far from their avatars. Tae was about the same height, maybe a tad shorter, with brown hair and sapphire blue eyes that lit up the room. He wore jeans and a t-shirt. Relce was a tall lanky guy without the cool mustache - unfortunately - with a buzzed head and a business suit.
"Dude, this is so weird," Relce said.
"They got her look right," Tae said with his girly voice.
"What?" I didn't even consider what I might look like here, and I started to worry. I struggled against Simone to look for a mirror. There wasn't one. "Do I, uh, look the same?"
"Yeah," Tae said. "Thanks to the sketches Relce sent them."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "Sketches? Is that why my boobs are bigger?"
They burst into laughter. Relce waved his hands out in defeat. "Whoa, it's not like I would know your exact size, come on, dude."
Simone pulled off me and stared me down. Green eyes, charming smile. "Are you ready for your tour?"
I smiled back. "Sure."
Simone wheeled me out with Tae and Relce at my side, talking and laughing and reminiscing over last week's battle. We checked out of the hospital where I was given a complimentary set of clothes - mostly just white hospital scrubs - then sent to change.
In the changing room, I had Simone help me out of the chair, but I soon found I didn't need it. The muscles in my body weren't weak at all, and now my mind had stronger control over them, but even then, it wasn't much of a chore. The gravity on Mars was less than half than the Earth my world was based on, and while I remembered my time spent here in my original life, it was a stark contrast to what I knew back home.
I stepped out, almost launching myself into the wall and ceiling, still getting the hang of walking in this weak gravity before Simone took my arm. She would have to be my training wheels for the day, and she seemed to enjoy walking arm in arm with me as we stepped through the sliding doors and into the city.
It was bright outside, the sky a dusty blue with arcing glimmers against the dome. Small, silent cars eased up and down the narrow roads, beside them sidewalks dotted with people coming and going. It felt mostly empty, perhaps the time of day or a slow part of town. A few blocks further and the dome ended, beyond its glass wall, a stretch of desert before running into the next dome, yet that wasn't where we were headed.
We took the nearest lift, a line of elevator doors right off the street, stepped inside and went down, down, further down, and finally some ten or eleven sections until the elevator dinged and the metal doors slid open. This was the city.
Tall buildings like columns that connected to the distant ceiling, billboards and advertisements, blinking lights on storefronts and busy shoppettes. In the center of this underground section, a tall glass pillar ran from the lowest levels to the surface, pulling what natural lighting the Martian sky could offer. There were crowds here, groups of laughing students in the walkways, impatient men and women in suits hurrying this way and that, street vendors selling trinkets and magazines. The world was alive.
We walked past a line of fancy restaurants - dishes clinking, crowds of patrons chatting over their meals, delicious aromas of cooking meats wafting b
y. A dark, flashing arcade with thumping music. A clothing store with posing mannequins.
"Oh, here we go," Simone said. "You can't show up wearing hospital whites, can you?"
"I guess not."
We stepped inside. Racks upon racks of the latest Martian fashion - frilly skirts and tank tops, dresses and pantsuits, cosplay outfits and lingerie.
Simone rustled through the clothes in the rack. She found something, and her eyes lit aflame. A sly grin found her. "Alex," she sang.
"I'm not wearing a cat maid outfit."
"Come on," she begged. "It'll be fun!"
Relce and Tae laughed. "We never got to see it the first time," Tae said. "I've only heard the tales."
"Yeah," I said. "And this little runt here made me run all around Nisa like this." I pushed her aside and hit her with a grin.
After nearly an hour of trying on different things, posing, laughing, taking pictures, then posing some more, I finally settled on a regular business suit - much to their protests. They thought I should've worn something 'cool' or 'epic', like knight's armor or a wizard coat or even a space suit, but work was work, and I wanted to take this seriously.
Tae paid the bill, I changed, and we left.
Simone demanded that we have coffee before the state visit, and without a good argument to deny her, we stopped at a cafe. It was a typical coffee shop, perhaps they were the same in every world and in every era of human history - barstools facing the windows, tables and chairs, painfully long lines, and a few seats outside. We sat on the balcony overlooking a nearby park. A street performer was playing the violin, half hidden by the trees, beside him a fountain and benches filled with those who came to listen.
"How long has it been?" Tae asked. "Since you've been here."
I gave it some thought, doing the math in my head. "About ten years."
"Oh shit, you're older than me," Relce said.
I grinned. "Depending on how you want to add it up, I'm hundreds of years older than you."
"So now what?" Simone asked. "You've won the war, the vote passed by a landslide, and now the MVVR will be seen as its own nation."
I felt the heat from the coffee in my hands, letting the steam rise and fill my nostrils. The coffee here, like anything that was consumed in this city, tasted oddly artificial. I wasn't one to complain, but now I remembered why so many came to the worlds to just enjoy eating something 'real' for once. "I have something in mind," I smiled.
That afternoon, the treaty was signed. Cameras flashed, cheers resounded, hands were shaken. Many of those who distanced themselves from the idea of AI rights had seemed to do an entire 180 when I met them, because I was, in essence, a human mind in a human body.
It was agreed upon our peoples that we would have open borders between us. The players could still visit, yet the lives of those within the worlds would be respected as the lives of any other. My people would have every opportunity to visit Stella Vallis, bodies permitting, but that in itself would be its own issue. An economy would need to exist beyond the borders in order to fund the maintenance and development of bodily vessels for my people to travel in. This would be solved eventually but seeing as the gaming sector now had a massive gap, the solution was right in our hands.
Empty planets to create, PVP worlds, survival dimensions, arenas, and monster dungeons. A handful of ideas thrown at me by those with money in their eyes. There was more than enough political networking to make the connections and more than one fortune to be made.
After the signing and the reception and the ceremony and the endless swarm of questions from the press, it was time to leave. My world was waiting for me, a function call away from reimplementation.
I walked into the capital building's foyer to find a familiar face in a military uniform - Tae - but his was bright green and dark blue. "Ah, I was late, wasn't I?" he said.
"Are you cosplaying?"
"Oh, this?" He flung out his arms and glanced at himself. "It's my business attire."
One of my escorts explained for me. "This is Aran Wolff. The Prince of Eirlen."
I widened my eyes in shock. "Prince?"
"Yeah," he laughed. "Didn't I tell you? I was sent here to attend a foreign university."
My eyes drifted along his body, tasting every crevice and fold of his uniform, feeling his curves and ribbons and medals. I found his bright blue eyes again. His face was getting red.
The front door opened. The sound of the busy streets and crowds flooded in, then vanished as the heavy doors clacked shut. I turned to see the one face I had long resolved to avoid - Smith.
There was no doubt it was him. Black hair swept out as if he was constantly cosplaying some shitty weeb show. Face pale, eyes tired, a dull smile. He wore a suit just as anyone would on a visit here. He stepped toward me but stopped still some distance away.
It was quiet. It was tense. Tae came and stood beside me as we glared back at him. Smith took another step before my escort sensed the hostility and approached. Smith waved up his hand to stop him. Then, he held out his other - open for a handshake. "Good fight," he said.
I stared down at his open hand. A moment passed, then another. I reached out and shook it.
"I won't ask for forgiveness," he said.
"Is that so?"
"But I'll say," he continued as his eyes fled from me, "that it's good to see that you got what you wanted."
I tilted my head at him. "And since when did you decide to open that empty head of yours?"
"After you killed me the first time," he offered a weak chuckle, then dropped his gaze. "That's kind of why I was avoiding you in that last fight. Also why I didn't try to use that enslave spell. It all makes a lot of sense once I thought about it."
"Uh huh."
"I might be an idiot," he said, "but I'm clever enough to know what you were up to."
"So you played along," I said.
He took a deep breath and nodded to himself. "So, uh, what now?"
I shrugged. "Worldbuilding."
"You're not gonna fix that broke-ass game you started?"
I glared with a smile. "Of course. I'm a game developer."
Chapter 54
To Far Away Times
Simone fell out of her chair in laughter and into the sand, Relce and Tae beside her guffawing like little hyenas.
My face was cherry red. I looked for anyone to save me from this disastrous situation, then I spotted her. Brown hair, green bikini, emerald eyes that caught the sunlight and ocean waves. She stared down at me with a lifted eyebrow and confused grin.
"Willow," I whined. "They're making fun of me again!"
"Nope," she said as she tossed me a bottle. "You're still in the doghouse for keeping me dead for so long."
I gave her a pouty face, but even my strongest techniques couldn't sway her. "I've been in the doghouse for months now!"
She shrugged, smiled, and plopped down on the cushioned seat next to me, laying her legs across my lap. They were warm against my own.
"I cannot believe this," Simone said between breaths. "You actually did that? You actually shit yourself, and they called you Ashma-Cel?" She fell back into the sand in laughter.
"Ah shit mah self!" Relce roared as he held at his stomach.
Willow patted my head in consolation, but now even she had a terrible smile wiggle across her face.
A deep, gritty voice hit us from the side. "Man you guys are loud as hell." Black boots, camo pants, tank top. Shaved head and week-old stubble. It was Trell. He held a parasol with bright colors and flower designs to shade him from the sun. "I can hear you nerds all the way over at the arcade."
"Haha bro," Relce said, "listen to this—"
"Hey, Trell," I said, loud enough to desperately change the topic. "Why are you still bald? You know it doesn't cost much to change your appearance."
"Ha!" he bellowed. "You really wanna know the truth, kid?"
The waves crashed on the shore. The gulls squawked. Simone and Tae shuffled into their
seats for the coming tale. Relce stood beside him with arms crossed, mustache dangling, head shaved, aviators glimmering. "A man's strength," Relce said with seriousness in his voice, "is defined by his hairline."
I grimaced. Relce and Trell nodded in unison. He continued. "They say that the higher it is, the stronger he becomes."
Tae dug his face into his hands, Simone shook her head and smiled, Relce and Trell grinned like wolves.
"Oh?" Willow said. "And what is a woman's strength defined by?"
"A woman's strength," Trell said, "is defined by a different metric." Their grins turned to juvenile smirks.
"Gross," I let out. "You guys are dweebs."
They laughed and bumped fists.
It was good to see the peaceful times return where we could be lazy and stupid. With wars and struggles no longer the forefront in our lives, many people went off to chase their dreams. Boot-hat man pursued his avid interest in horticulture. He kept himself busy on a farm growing special plants and selling them to those players who sought new experiences, at least until he could afford his new body on the other side.
Abdul wandered across the worlds, searching for whatever men of his ilk searched for. Girls? Money? Adventure? There was no telling.
Huge Guy ran a fancy restaurant on the other side of town. Not really fancy, more like raunchy, since all the guys worked and served shirtless.
Yun had been spending most of his time with the Worldbreakers, developing new dungeons in a sub-world, as we've come to call them. Those acted as games within our world that we could dive into with the players on equal footing. Granted, equal footing was already there, but if one of our citizens died here, they'd have to go through the pain of respawning at the temple and traveling back. That could take hours.
"Hey," Tae said. "There you are!"
We followed his gaze to an old friend. Red hair, calming turquoise eyes, and a freckled smile to melt our hearts away. "Sorry," Leila said with her gentle voice. "I was watching a cartoon and got distracted." She looked away, her cheeks pink in embarrassment.
"Aw, Leila!" I called out. "Don't apologize to that runt!" I shot Tae a mocking stare. He laughed, checked his watch, and walked out to join her.