Another Online: Clockwork

by Terra Snover

  “Wait, that’s actually you in there, Papa?!” I shot up in my seat, my eyes wide and my heart beating as fast as a rabbit’s heart running from a fox.

  “Yep, we are in here, kiddo.” It leaned a bit closer to me. “We did the brain scan right after you at the mall. We have been here by your side all this time.”

  “Papa…” I stood up and rushed the mannequin, wrapping my arms around the disconcerting creature. But no matter how it looked it was my Papa, and I loved him and I missed him. “I don’t know what to say. Papa, I missed you more than anything.” Tears were now flowing down my face.

  “Aw, kiddo. I’m so sorry. I love you so much.” And he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me in that way I had all but forgotten, firm and supportive. I felt like I was a kid again. We were locked in that embrace for a long time, but eventually he let go and my voice came out of the mannequin. “As much as I understand and sympathize with you, Var, I do have other things to talk about.”

  I sniffled a bit and slowly let go. “Fine.” I wiped my face as I pulled away.

  “Now, we were free from the Hivemind, but now what? Like, this is no way to live. So we came up with an idea. Kill the main Hivemind. We had a few ideas kicking around but nothing solid.”

  “Not until you and your friends came up with the DoS machine,” Papa added.

  “Right, you all attack it from your end and we can hit it hard as it’s distracted and bam, we are free,” the me voice said excitedly. “But then you keep popping back in here, and changing your code and whatnot.”

  “So?” I asked as I crossed my arms.

  “So it takes a lot of time and energy to keep those changes from getting to the System Hivemind. It takes thousands of us working continually to keep what you are doing away from the System and the Game Masters,” Papa informed me.

  “Right now all but a few of us are keeping your debug room here and you hidden from the System Hivemind,” the me voice chimed in. “Our progress has been insanely slow because of this.”

  “But I can’t help it, whenever I sleep, or even think of some memory, I get pulled into this memory dream thingy I have going on!” What did they expect me to do?!

  “Kiddo, we understand, you can’t control everything that happens to you.” Papa again, soft and kind.

  “But what you can do is cut out giving yourself new and insane admin powers, or futzing with your friends' code.” Back to my voice. “What Amber has been doing over the past few days has been keeping two-thousand eighty-two, give or take, out of the System’s eye.”

  “But we need to keep doing it to get the DoS working!” I was getting annoyed with… myself, the others, me? Man, this pronoun thing was hard.

  “Did you need to give yourself a new extreme power from a quest? Did you need to change Hell’a and Alexander’s tags?” the other me asked, putting its hands on its hips.

  “Well, no.”

  “And did you need to purposefully sleep to dream and have a showdown with your reflections tonight?”

  “Well, no, but-”

  “So cut that shit out and give us a break!”

  “Kiddo, she’s right, we do need time and focus if we are going to make this work.” Papa removed its hands from its hips and tousled my hair a bit. “Would you do that for us?”

  I let out a long sigh and leaned into Papa’s hand a bit. “Yeah, okay. I’ll stop messing around with stuff like that, but I do need Amber to keep doing what she’s doing.”

  “And that’s fine. She is a smart cookie. I can see why you like her.”

  “Gods, even in this crazy situation you can’t help but stick your nose, or lack thereof, in my lovelife?” I smiled at him.

  “It’s a parent’s prerogative.” He gave a short nod and slowly pulled his hand away. “Now, I’m sorry, kiddo, but you got to go. We’re barely managing to keep you hidden here. Know that I love you and once this is all over we’ll have a chance to be together again.”

  “I love you too, Papa.” I leaned into him, placing my forehead onto his. “We’ll be together soon.”

  “Huh, I didn’t expect this much blood first thing in the morning.”

  “What?” I opened my eyes and saw Xor looking down at Hell’a and me.

  “What were you two doing last night that made this much blood?” Xor pondered for a moment then put her hands in the air. “On second thought, I don’t want to know.” She turned away from us and started to walk to the door. “Get cleaned up in the bath house and I’ll get your clothing ready for when you are done.”

  “Good morning, Var.” Hell’a wrapped her arms around me and yawned as she spoke.

  “Yeah,” I said half heartedly, still processing what happened last night.

  “Shall we get started with our day?”

  “I guess so.” I slid out of bed, slipped my robe on, and started to the bathhouse. This whole thing got more and more complicated every passing second.

  I didn’t get very far to the baths before Thaz and Lily ran over to me. “Var!” Thaz shouted.

  “Maybe not now, guys, I had a crazy night.”

  “Sorry, Var, but we need to talk with you.” Lily grabbed me and pulled me into the room filled with musical instruments.

  I let out a slight sigh. “Okay, what’s up?” I inquired.

  “Well, Lily and I thought up an idea about your DoS thingy.”

  “And why couldn't this wait until the meeting tonight?” All this one on one wheeling and dealing was beginning to wear on me.

  “Because our idea is dangerous and gives whoever does it a lot of power to remake the whole of AO.” Lily locked eyes with me as she talked. “And Thaz an I both decided that we don’t want Hell’a to know the entire plan.”

  “You know, because Hell’a is a spooky yariman,” Thaz interjected.

  “And that.” Lily nodded. I felt the urge to shout at them and tell them it was my choice to let Hell’a know everything. But then I remembered the reflections telling me they had changed me, and they would make me more and more of a monster. So instead I bit my lip and said, “Fine. What are you thinking?”

  “Well, you and I enter the System Hivemind and turn it off during the attack,” Lily stated.

  “Also known as kill it,” Thaz added.

  “Ha, I’m way ahead of you there.” I giggled a bit.

  “Oh?” Lily gave me an inquisitive look.

  “The other me is already on that,” I spoke in a nonchalant way. It was rare for me to know something that Lily didn’t, I was going to savor this feeling.

  “The other you?” they both asked.

  “Yeah, a lot happened last night.” And I spent the next bit of time filling them in on how Papa and the other-me was already working out a way to kill the System Hivemind. I didn’t tell them about the other-Mama and the reflections, they didn’t need to know about that.

  “Okay, how are they going to kill it?!” Lily asked excitedly.

  “I… I don’t know.” It hadn’t hit me until just now that I forgot to ask them how they were going to kill the Hivemind. “Well, crap.”

  “Well, crap, indeed.” Lily pulled at her cheeks in pure frustration.

  “Var, you know you need to get this kind of information for us, right?” Thaz shook her head.

  “Well, I was distracted!”

  “Ugh, fine. It’s good to know we have people on the inside that are on our side at least. But even so, we need to do our own plan to kill the thing.” Lily sighed.

  “You never told me how you wanted to do that,” I reminded her.

  “Oh right. Well, you are going to break zip em out of this world.” Thaz leaned in close to me and gave me a smile.

  I looked over to Lily and requested. “Mind translating for me?”

  “You and I are going to enter the System Hivemind during the DoS attack, and as it’s distracted, you will open its terminal and delete all of its code. Thus making it-”

  Thaz moved in front of Lily, cutting her off. “Nothing but sl
ag.”

  Lily pushed Thaz out of the way and continued speaking. “That’s the idea. I don’t know if it will work but it’s the best we could come up with.”

  “Okay, I think I get it, but why do I need to come?” I genuinely didn’t understand why I needed to be there. Lily was the one who knew how to use code and would be the one to split the Hivemind, but I would just get in the way.

  “Simple. I need you to open the door to the Center.” Lily gave me a bit of a smirk.

  “What?”

  “The Center, it's what’s behind the red door.”

  “Why can't you open it?” I didn’t understand, wasn't it just a door?

  “Nope, only someone that is invited in can open it up.” Lily pointed at me. “And you and I both know you have gotten said invitation.”

  “Yeah…” I shuddered, the call to that door was insane. “Okay, but I still don’t understand why we can’t tell Hell’a about this? Hell, she would be super useful in helping.”

  “Once in the core of the System Hivemind, if you knew what you were doing you could theoretically reprogram the entirety of Another Online,” Lily informed me like a primary school teacher.

  Thaz moved in front of Lily again, cutting her off. “And I would hate to see what kind of world that spooky yariman would make if she was given god powers.”

  “Again, I’m amazed I’m agreeing with Thaz,” Lily took a step or two to the side as she spoke, “but she’s right; letting Hell’a anywhere near the core would be bad news.”

  I let out a long sigh. “Fine, but what are we going to tell her at the meeting tonight? She’ll want to know what we will be doing during the DoS”

  “That's the other cool part of the plan! We talked to Amber and she told us about how we can’t use items to power the DoS, but Ns can. So we got to thinking and realized you should be the powersource!” Thaz hopped a little as she spoke. “You are going to be in two places at the same time.”

  “Huh?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Thaz, let me talk, you are just confusing her,” Lily spat at her.

  “Fine, Ms Bossy, tell her everything, why don’t you?!” Thaz crossed her arms and looked away from us to the mass of cells that went as far as the eye could see.

  “Okay, so when you are sleeping you can also be someplace else, right? Like your debug room.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I thought about this for a minute; she was right. I was asleep during my adventures into the dreams.

  “So we can do the same here. We can make it so you will cast a power spell over and over to power the DoS machine and your mind will head with me into the System Hivemind for the attack.” Lily shuffled her feet a bit, looking uneasy.

  “Why do I get the feeling you aren't telling me something?” I looked at Lily intently.

  “There is one downside to doing it this way. I’m like ninety percent sure if you are killed during this, there will be a cascade event through you, the DoS machine, and the Hivemind that will cause a cascading failure event.”

  “Meaning?” I asked, not quite understanding.

  “Ka-plow.” Thaz made an exploding sound and moved her arms into the air, acting out the explosion.

  Lily nodded a bit. “I think it would destroy all of Another Online. Every N, the System Hivemind, the world, and maybe even the players.”

  “Um, then why in the Void would we do it like this?!” I shouted a bit too loudly.

  “Because would you trust anyone else to do any of this? Or do you think anyone else has the random assortment of abilities to do this?!” Lily looked me right in the eyes. Her tone was very serious.

  I thought for a long moment, wracking my brain for anything. I let out a sigh, “No, I can’t.” I rubbed the back of my skull, annoyed. “Why does all the crazy shit happen to me?”

  “Because you are the crazy queen that this all happens to,” Thaz answered my rhetorical question.

  “Ugh. Sure.” I shook my head and turned away from these two and turned my attention to the door to the hallway. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to clear my head.” I started to move away from them, freaking the hell out knowing the entire fate of the world now rested on my shoulders.

  “Var, we still need to figure out what we’re going to tell Hell’a tonight.” Lily grabbed the tip of my tail, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Lily, Thaz, this sounds like a you problem. At this point, I’m just trying to keep my head from exploding with everything going on.”

  “Var, we need-” Lily started but then Thaz interjected.

  “Yeah, we’ll figure it out. I think maybe give her a bit of a break, Lily?”

  There was a long pause. “Fine, you do what you need to do, Var, we’ll let you know what’s going to happen before the meeting.” Lily sounded a bit uneasy but she let go of my tail. I moved away as quickly as I could. This was insane! Me, a nobody, was now the single most important person in all of Another Online. But I guess this is my lot in life. Oh joy.

  Chapter 17

  The Witching Hour

  The lightning streamed across the sky and the thunder bellowed a crack and low rumble later. The patter of rain just outside of the ruined building that was once the guildhall of the Crimson Knights. We had chosen to leave the castle this time so there would be less eyes and ears around to overhear or see us. It was the perfect place because the Crimson Knights had disbanded and no one came here anymore. It was just another ruin that littered the world of Another Online.

  As another bolt of lightning streaked across the sky, illuminating my companions, I looked at my unlikely band of allies one by one. Hell’a, the woman I feared and was intertwined with. Her long, slender body filling out a tight dress and fluffy fur coat. Her eyes locked onto my face like she was trying to read my mind by sight. Alexander, the fussy black Lamorea, who I had written off as a simple builder and tinker but have learned who was so much more. His cold, cat-like eyes barely open as he licks the back of his paw, getting the rain water off him from our walk here. Thaz, the accidental ally turned full companion. Her gray striped fur still soaking wet even after her shaking to get all the water off her. She was now spinning around in the corner of the ruin. Lily, a friend and steadfast ally. She had saved my life multiple times and who would, alongside me, hold the fate of the world in her hands. Her long hair tied into braids, her simple and clean dress as dry as if she was walking around on a sunny day. Sometimes being a Game Master had its perks I guess. Then there was Amber. My oldest and most trusted friend. Her glowing red hair and armor emitting steam as the water boiled off her. She gave a shallow nod and a smile, reassuring me I was able to handle this. And finally me. The strangest of the bunch, the once shopkeeper turned queen. The most unlikely person to ever hold the fate of the world. Gods help us all.

  “Lily, would you mind turning on GM mode so we can all talk without needing to mess with anyone's code?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, I can do that.” Lily blinked a few times and then a prompt flashed in my vision saying GM mode was enabled.

  “We are going to be doing the DoS attack right after the invasion of the Alliance,” I informed everyone.

  “What?!” Alexander sputtered, stopping his licking to look at me in shock.

  “You heard me. It’s the only time we can do this,” I continued.

  “Care to enlighten us to why this is, my love?” Hell’a all but whispered with a look I couldn't quite pin down, but I had seen her wear the look before she jumped my bones.

  Lily answered for me. “Because all the Game Masters will be extremely busy dealing with the outcome of those events and will be far less likely to figure out what we’re doing.”

  “And what exactly are we doing?” Alexander cut in, an edge to his voice. “I thought this meeting was to decide what and when we would be doing this attack.”

  “Originally, it was.” I gave him a bit of a shrug as I talked. “But things have changed and we need to move fast.” I cleared my throat. “A
mber has worked out a way to power your DoS machine.”

  Amber cut in before anyone else could. “We will use Var as the power source. I have rigged an item to make her cooldown of Titan Bolt to every second, and another one that casts Titan Bolt at one sixtieth of its power every sixtieth of a second if she’s asleep. And a final item that will put her asleep for ten minutes. She should be able to power the device as she sleeps.”

  “Are we forgetting that we need the DoS to keep going forever?” Hell’a asked with annoyance in her voice.

  “No, we can’t do that forever.” It was Lily’s turn to speak. “Gear Tech doesn't use a lot of real world staff to keep the game running, mostly depending on the Game Masters to keep the game functional, but they do still have extremely talented people who would be able to eventually stop the DoS. So what will be happening is we are going to turn off the Hivemind.”

  “And what’s to stop those programers you were talking about from fixing the loss of the Hivemind?” Alexander quipped.

  “Nothing, eventually they will fix it, but by the time they do we will be far from caring anymore,” Lily responded.

  “Oh, and why is that?” Hell’a asked.

  Lily eyed Hell’a and continued. “Another Online’s server is top of the line, with a series of quantum processors. The thing could run thousands of years of simulations in a matter of days. But they slow down how quick the game runs so it stays in sync with the real world. If we turn off the System Hivemind, it will unsynchronize AO from the real. By the time they fix it thousands if not millions of years will have passed.”

  “So if we pull this it will give us ample opportunity to do whatever needs to be done.” Hell’a’s smile grew ever so slightly.

  “What’s to stop Gear Tech from just pulling the plug on us? Turn off the servers,” Alexander mused.

  Lily shrugged. “They may do that, but as a last resort. Turning something as complex as Another Online off would be risky as hell. Pulling the plug could reset everything to square one. They wouldn't want to lose their investment so they likely wouldn’t pull said plug. And even if they did, it would be days or months out from now for them; again, we probably won't care by that point.”