While Pea had disliked the big ring of brown couches on sight, and had grown to hate them more and more as her time in the escape pod went on, she had assumed that they would at least be conducive for talking. It was obvious that whoever designed the interior of the pod was emulating the kind of conversation pit that she vaguely associated with disco, mustaches, and pot smoking. The kind of place intended for long, self-important conversations between people who were eager to demonstrate how smart or philosophical they could be.
However, the circle was simply too large to accommodate a group discussion. Anyone seated on opposite sides was too far away to talk without raising their voices. The curve was too rounded to sit close, since your knees would knock together, but too shallow for easy, face to face conversation among multiple people sitting in a row.
Pea suspected knees pressing together were the point of the thing, and that the entire ring of seating existed solely to impress a single person (or possibly a pair), to make them want to snuggle closer to their partner for the night, and perhaps to draw their attention to the hot tub and the possibility of using it together.
That would also explain why the lighting in the so-called recreation room was perpetually dim and why only the captain could operate any part of the pod. You wouldn’t want your one-night-stands to order their own daiquiris, or get disgruntled and sabotage your ship from the control room.
Pea wondered if she was being too cynical. She had been ordered to this escape pod to save her life, after all. Surely a person who did that wasn’t also this… tacky? Maybe he bought the pod recently and hadn’t refitted it yet. Maybe he just really liked brown velvet. Right now, Pea told herself, she was in no position to judge.
Aditi announced that she would return shortly, then disappeared down the hatch. Pea and Matt the Egghunter sat stiffly on the couches, with a good three feet and a mahogany tabletop between them. No chance at all for bumping knees.
Pea had insisted that the escape pod computer reestablish a stable connection with Junebug, but the little alien ship seemed to be directing its chatter at Aditi, rather than at Pea. It was fascinated by the people it had encountered so far, the newer the better, and Aditi was the latest, shiniest arrival. Pea suspected it was also drawn to Aditi because her demeanor was far closer to the Mother it missed than Pea could ever be.
The thought made her strangely jealous.
Pea was stuck with the jittery platypus furry. He was jiggling one leg in a tic-like fashion and looking anywhere except in her direction.
“So…” Pea searched for a way to break the awkward silence. “Why are you called an egghunter?”
He jumped, as if he’d forgotten that she was there, and Pea rolled her eyes. Yup, sure, he’d forgotten the only other person in the room.
“Oh um… I look for eggs and bugs,” he said dismissively, as if the answer were obvious. Pea waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t say anything else. Instead, he returned to an obsessive contemplation of the ceiling.
“I don’t know what those are,” Pea finally said. “Everyone keeps using these terms like we’re all supposed to know them. I didn’t even know I was in a computer game until a few hours ago when I found my HUD.”
“It’s not really a game you know…” Matt focused his attention on Pea and hesitated for a moment, then his constant tapping suddenly ceased as though soothed by the clockwork of his brain beginning to turn.
“Oh, that actually makes sense!” He pointed at her, as if she were an object under scrutiny, rather than the person he was explaining it to.
“You’re a Bright Companion. That’s a really, really old model. If you only just started like… processing your memories? Understanding your surroundings? …If you only just came awake, maybe you don’t have any recent knowledge. You might only have data from up to the year you were released.”
He nodded to himself, as if pleased with his own deduction. Pea was decidedly less so, and only slightly assuaged when he noticed her glaring and dropped the finger.
“The original Bright Companions were created and sold back in the very earliest days of the ARcade. Back in the 50s or 60s. So even if you know this is a… a game, you’re still working with the understanding of someone from 40 years ago.”
Pea felt her face contract, the muscles between her brows squeezing together almost painfully. She could understand why they seemed to think she was an… NPC?… AI? Some kind of love-bot?
But she knew in her heart that she wasn’t.
It’s pretty obvious what your player wanted a Bright Companion for… Why else would it burn so much to be reminded of the platypus’ words? If she was some kind of sex toy wouldn’t she be OK with it?
Why program humiliation and rage into a doll?
Maybe she did have some kind of fixation on the word companion, but even that made sense. She could remember someone ordering her away. That implied a friend or partner of some kind, someone who cared about her.
Hell, maybe even an employer. Maybe she had been thinking so fondly of an upstanding boss. A captain who ordered his subordinates to escape and then went down with his ship.
Every part of her body told her that she was real, and that she had memories of the real world somewhere in her brain, even if she couldn’t quite touch them yet.
Unfortunately, there was absolutely no way to prove it. Even Pea had to admit that her HUD was obviously intended to be read from the outside, and not by her own eyes.
And if she really was a player, a person with a body somewhere, why hadn’t she been discovered yet? Pea imagined herself lying in a bed, or maybe in some kind of sci-fi cradle, hooked up to whatever it was they used to put people into this godforsaken game. Was she floating in goop? Was she covered in wires? It had been at least 36 hours now, since she had become aware of herself. By this point, her body in the real world was probably starting to suffer from a lack of fluids.
Did she not have a family? Friends? A workplace that might call, wanting to know why she’d missed her shift, and wake her up from this mess?
To her surprise, Matt just sat quietly and observed her as she struggled with the possibilities. He waited until her eyes focused on him again, and then hesitantly reached out and put a gentle, webbed hand on her shoulder. His hand was warmer than she expected. Or maybe her bare arms were cold.
He left it there for only a moment before withdrawing and looking back at the hatch.
“I don’t know if you’ve learned much about the ARcade so far, but it used to have a… a kind of boss? Or a caretaker? Called the ARC. The ARC was a synthetic intelligence, just like….” He paused and then coughed as if clearing his throat. It was such an obvious and awkward adjustment that an unwilling smile crept onto Pea’s face.
“Um, well, anyway, she was an incredible thing. She made sure everyone in the ARcade was treated fairly, and no one had an advantage because they were rich or powerful in real-space. I mean… I was just a kid, but my mum used to tell me stories about her. We needed someone impartial to monitor everything, to make sure it was fair, because a lot of people make their living here.”
“How?” Pea interrupted. “You guys keep acting like this game, or whatever, is… is basically the real world, but it’s not… it’s not real, right? Like, this ship, these couches, none of it is real, physical stuff, is it?”
Matt shrugged. He settled back into his chair and stretched out his long, purple legs, crossing them at the ankles.
“I guess not, but… I mean, money isn’t exactly real either, but it makes the difference between whether I get to eat or not this week. Real-space isn’t a great place right now. The environment is shot. Most people are barely scraping by. I guess a lot of people aren’t even doing that. Everyone wants to escape, so they come here. And units- the currency here- can be exchanged for real dollars or whatever people use in their countries. So, if I find a bug and sell the location to some idiot who thinks he can exploit it for something, I get units, and then I convert them to US dollars.” He sighed as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders. “Keeps me in ramen at least.”
“So a bug is like… a computer bug? A mistake in the code?”
“Yep,” Matt said, nodding. “And an egg is… I think they called them Easter Eggs before? But here we mean some… message, I guess? That the ARC left behind. Something hidden.”
“And the ARC isn’t here anymore?”
“No,” Matt said, his voice taking on a sour edge. “The official line is that she was ‘accidentally’ broken up into separate parts when they moved the whole ARcade onto permanent servers. But we all know that’s bullshit.” He shifted positions again, this time drawing in his feet and leaning forward. He dropped his voice and Pea instinctively leaned in as well, although she had no idea why he was bothering to act so secretively.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“The government didn’t like having an independent entity that wouldn’t subscribe to their bullshit laws.”
“Which government?” Aditi asked as she emerged from the hatch. Matt shot back from his super-secret pose like he was being tugged by elastic. Pea wondered if he’d actually been about to say something scandalous, or if complaining about the government was highly illegal these days.
Maybe Matt was just a weirdo.
She turned to look at Aditi and realized the diminutive woman was carrying a massive platter of deli meats, cheeses, crackers, and pickled vegetables. Pea almost cried when she saw it. Her full Satiety trait could go to hell. She wanted to eat real food.
Surely that was another sign that she was a real person?
“It’s just like an American to go on and on about the government as if there’s only one government,” Aditi continued, as she placed the platter on the mahogany table between them. Pea fell on the food like a starving wolf. She hoped belatedly that the whole no-toilet thing was a general rule for the ARcade, and not just a quirk of this escape pod. Popping a stack of pepperoni and cheddar slices in her mouth, she decided she didn’t care.
“Well, there’s only one government that counts anyway,” Matt said, and gave Aditi the open-bill grin that made him seem almost cute.
“So the ARC left messages for people?” Pea said, in between stuffing her face. She didn’t want them to start up their aggressive banter and get sidetracked now that she finally seemed to be getting answers. “Like… instructions on how to get her back? Or hints at how to play the game?”
“There’s a lot of debate over what it intended,” Aditi said. She took a small handful of crackers and a few pieces of cheese and sat next to Pea. Close enough for Pea to feel the warmth radiating from the woman’s skin.
“The ARC was a she,” Matt insisted as he picked out black olives and tossed them into his mouth. One of them bounced off the top of his bill and straight into the slowly filling spa.
“Why don’t you take that ridiculous skin off?” Aditi said. “You’re going to put someone’s eye out with that thing.”
“It’s very rude,” Matt said to Pea, “in the ARcade, to ask someone to take off a skin.”
“I’m… I’m pretty sure it’s rude in the real world too,” Pea said, although secretly she was dying to see what Matt looked like in reality. It occurred to her that Aditi might also be wearing a costume. For all the companion knew, she was actually sitting between two men, or an elderly granny and a child.
“What’s a skin?” Junebug asked. It was pressing itself against the dome, taking in everything that was said. Pea wondered if it needed to eat. It didn’t seem to have a mouth, but that didn’t mean much.
Matt began to answer when Pea interrupted him.
“Why weren’t you all worried about Junebug the same way you were worried about me? You know, with that whole… sword-lock thing?” Pea said, the thought having suddenly crystalized in her brain. If anything, the little alien had done a lot more violence to Matt than Pea had.
Matt shrugged. “I mean, I was a little bit, but that thing is just some kind of… of clone of a Quentith ship. It’s obviously illegal, and there’s no way it’s real. The Quentith would be going absolutely apeshit if one of their ships were missing. It must be something that was made in the Sandbox, so it would vanish the second someone tried to take it outside the Sandbox. It’s not a threat.”
He kept talking, oblivious to the fact that all the blood had drained from Pea’s face. He didn’t seem to notice Aditi trying to hush him either.
“You were inside the escape pod, and I know the escape pod is from outside the Sandbox, so you’re probably from outside the Sandbox as well. Anything you could do in here, you could probably do in a proper Cade.”
Junebug pressed so close to the pod that blue sparks filled the air. Responding to the sudden pressure, the pod lurched away from the alien, almost flinging Pea from her seat. Both Aditi and Matt, and even the damn platter, seemed completely unmoved by the suddenly change in gravity. Pea cursed them both silently and took a firm grip of the couch seat, careful not to let her fingers punch through the fabric this time.
“Shut up, Matt,” Aditi snapped. “Of course Junebug is real.”
“I’m just a… a cone?” Junebug whispered, the child-like voice dripping with misery. “What is a cone?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Pea said automatically, even though she wasn’t at all sure whether or not Matt was right.
What she did know was how it felt for someone to tell her she didn’t really exist. That she didn’t matter.
What she did know was that no one was going to treat Junebug that way.
Aditi sighed, although the sound came out more like a growl.
“Matt, you are a fucking moron sometimes.”
“Tell me how I’m wrong,” Matt said, stubbornly. “Tell me you somehow know the Quentith are missing a ship.”
Aditi looked as if she wanted to strangle Matt. She stood up and leaned over the platypus, so that he tensed up and Pea felt a shot of adrenaline at the prospect of violence.
Instead, Aditi’s hands twisted together and a small, black and silver microphone appeared in them, as if she had done a magic trick. Still looming over Matt and, Pea realized, hiding the microphone from Junebug, Aditi rubbed her thumb over the silver mesh that covered the sphere of the old-fashioned mic. A blast of static filled the room.
“Computer, please disconnect us from the Quentith ship,” Aditi said, so quietly under the static that Pea almost missed it.
“Disconnected.”
“You flipping idiot,” Aditi said calmly. She made another arcane gesture with her hands and the microphone blinked out of existence. The moment it was gone, Aditi threw up her hands and marched around as if yelling at Matt. Her voice, however, continued to come out as low and husky as ever.
“I assumed you’d figured it out,” Aditi said. She wagged a finger in Matt’s face. It was difficult to determine Matt’s expression but he seemed to be feeling as stunned and confused as Pea.
“Of course it’s real,” Aditi continued as she acted out her charade of anger. “Junebug’s as real as Pea is. It’s not even really a ship. Quentith train their children in the ARcade. Junebug is a Quenti child.”
“So… what, they don’t care that they lost a child?” Matt protested weakly. His black marble eyes had bugged out more than they usually did at the news that Junebug was a Quenti itself.
Pea, who had long-since worked out that Junebug was not exactly a ship, wondered just how big that revelation was to make Matt look that way.
Turning on a dime, Aditi marched over to Pea, pointing at Matt as if she were still angry at him and asking Pea to agree with her. Pea glanced overhead. Junebug was still up there, pressing its sensor close to the shield, making it look like the alien child was swimming among blue fireflies. It was rocking slightly, making a dull scraping noise as it juddered along the surface of the shield.
“When you woke up, what was it you asked the pod computer to do?”
Pea frowned at Aditi, trying to think. When she woke up this morning (if, indeed, it was morning) it was to an alarm. So she’d screamed at Pod to help her escape.
No, she realized, that was the second time I ‘woke up’.
The first time she woke up, it was in the closet. And she had asked Pod to…
“Um, I guess I asked Pod to get us to a star system? The one we just left.”
Matt started and then shook his head. “It was you? I don’t even… you were the one who made the star system in here? That should be impossible. Like, even for a regular player, that should be impossible.”
“That’s what I suspected.” Aditi pressed her lips together, then appeared to make a decision. “You can’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. I got this information from a very secret, confidential source and I swore never to reveal that I know it. Especially not to a Quenti child, like Junebug.”
So that was why she was pretending not to know that Junebug had been shut out of the conversation, Pea realized. Pretending to storm around and yell at Matt, as if the disconnection was accidental and any moment now Junebug would be able to hear what they were saying.
Matt shrugged. “Fine. I won’t.”
“Swear by the ARC.”
“Really?” Matt’s tone was whithering. “I’m not like those idiots who worship The Great Snail. I don’t believe in magical sky fairies.”
Aditi rolled her eyes and for a moment Pea really believed from her body language that she was going to hit Matt.
“Fine, believe in me then. If you tell anyone what I’m about to tell you I’ll hunt you down and you will wish you had a god to pray to.”
Matt slumped sullenly in his chair and refused to make eye contact. Pea wondered briefly why she didn’t seem to merit threats.
However Aditi seemed satisfied.
“Quenti children are uploaded directly into the ARcade. They apparently go through some extreme kinds of metamorphosis during their lives anyway, so they don’t bother letting them out again until well after they finish their version of puberty. They consider it too dangerous and costly to transmit all of their data constantly, across galaxies, even with their level of technology. However, they don’t tell them that. They let the children think they are living normally in real-space. And they let everyone else believe they are only Ships. Only Items.”
“What’s that got to do with…. Oh. Oh no.”
Aditi nodded grimly as if everyone was on the same page. Pea decided it was her turn to take advantage of the ridiculous charade and made some rude gestures of her own at both of them.
“Explain it to the dumb one, please,” she said pleasantly, as she waved both middle fingers in the direction of the others.
“To upload someone you have to… basically copy their brain into a computer,” Matt explained.
“Isn’t that what we all… what you all are already doing?”
Matt shook his head. “It’s more like… my head is a computer that is transmitting to the ARcade computers, but my data is all safe in my head and my new memories of being here are being put back there in real time. If someone is uploaded, that means they are completely put into the ARcade servers. Uh, the ARcade computers.”
“I know what servers are,” Pea snapped. “So, what, Junebug doesn’t exist in the real world? There’s no backup brain?”
“I assume in this case, they have some way of putting them back into their bodies, or maybe they clone new bodies and put them in those? Humans can’t do that yet. Uploading is a one-way street for us.”
Pea put that little tidbit of information away to examine it later. Humans could be uploaded as well.
“So that little… that Junebug was copied into the ARcade, but it thought it was still in a real body. It’s been growing up here, just… I don’t know, doing whatever Quentith do.”
Matt turned to Aditi, who was posing with her hands on her hips as if still angry, but nodded in response to his questioning look. Pea wondered briefly if all this acting was even worth it, considering Junebug probably had very little idea of what human body language should look like. She supposed it didn’t matter, as long as they all looked so preoccupied that they plausibly wouldn’t notice that Junebug had been disconnected.
“OK, so Junebug probably has a body and probably will get put back into it at some point. What’s the problem? Are you afraid it’s been severed from the body?” Pea felt her face grow cold as blood drained from her cheeks. “Did I remove Junebug from its body somehow?”
“Not… exactly.
“OK, so what?”
“So… what we have out there now is a copy of a copy. Your Junebug is a real person, but it can never go home. It can never even leave this Sandbox. The real…" Matt winced and paused for a moment, searching for the right term.
"The other Junebug most likely has no idea that this place exists and is safely at home with its Mother right now.”
Pea was pretty sure she had gotten the gist now, but didn’t want to believe it. She turned to Aditi to try and get a different answer but the woman only shook her head sadly.
“You asked the Pod to take you to the star system where the incident happened,” she said, her voice gentle. “Which it couldn’t exactly do when it was in a Sandbox. So somehow it copied the entire star system into the Sandbox instead, including everything that it didn’t recognize as a player. Debris, Items, stars and planets… and apparently one Quenti child.”