“So what do we—”

I was interrupted by a familiar sensation. It was as if I had used Undead Domination but without the cold or area expansion. The only way I could describe it was a feeling of openness. One second it was me alone in my head and the next I could feel everyone's presence near me.

Kevin's mom was asleep in the other room dreaming about a train ride.

A couple and their two kids in the sphere above were eating dinner.

Below us was another couple with a daughter. The little girl’s Zix was out and I could even sense it.

Kevin sat there slack-jawed until he finally said, “Whoa.”

“You won't be able to sense the other people around you like this unless you get the upgrades like I sent out. You're being routed through Azerail's implant to get the full experience,” Raccoon explained.

Excitement burst to life and spread through Kevin's body as if it had a mind of its own.

Then I remembered something and pulled away from Raccoon. Turns out I didn’t have to touch him for it to work.

“I thought only the Remnant was sophisticated enough to modify implants like this?” I asked Raccoon as I placed my hand back on him.

A building of curiosity flowed through Kevin before it released and he asked. “Who is the Remnant?”

Instead of answering him, I shared the information directly. I'd spent a lot of my life talking with the Remnant discussing and showcasing what I could do with my Narrative Design.

She was quiet most of the time but sometimes she would get interested in what I showed her. She'd entrusted me with her name. I wasn't sure if that made me special but I had access to her much more often than most of Ambition's residents.

Unlike the Zix she was the only one able to help us design new things. At least, until Raccoon.

“So she's a—”

I put a finger to Kevin's mouth.

Can you wipe that Raccoon? I asked.

Kevin blinked at me. I could hear that. This place is crazy!

Cleared, Raccoon responded.

I sighed. Her gender was something she told me in confidence.

So you do have more secrets, Kevin said.

There were things I hadn't told anyone. Like what happened in the Chronofield.

I see a floating version of you. What’s a Chronofield? Kevin asked.

Shit, shit, I thought.

Raccoon looked up at me. W-we do need to talk about that Azerail.

Not now, not with him here! I said.

I'm not going to say anything, Kevin replied while shrugging.

It's just, that was very private and I didn't mean to share it, I said.

Kevin picked up Raccoon and sat next to me. I can tell you some of my secrets if you want. That way we're even.

Was that a good idea?

I know why the Abandon— I mean Architects left. It's something they teach us in school, He said.

I shook my head. No one knows why they left. My mom was in a relationship with one of them and they didn't even tell her why.

Your mom is keeping the Architect’s secrets from everyone, Azerail, Raccoon said.

He had me there but I didn't have to like it. What do you know about the Architects Raccoon?

Raccoon sat, his whiskers twitching. I… He paused. I've been learning a lot by observing the people in Ambition but other than a few small discrepancies, what you know is what I know. I'm interested in what Kevin has to say.

Do you want to know where they went or how they were made first? Kevin asked.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

I rolled my eyes. Everyone knows Joan Kumar created them.

Yeah but do you know how she made them? he asked.

No one knows how—

I do, he interrupted me.

Raccoon squirmed. How?

It was an accident, he said. The nanobots were more volatile back then and people could program them. The code running the nanobots got mixed up with the language model and it couldn't stop improving itself.

That didn't seem right. There's no way that's how it happened.

It was an open-source model running on her implant at the time. My grandpa said it moved itself to their town's data center, he explained.

I shook my head. They didn't have smart cities back then.

It wasn't the first one in the world but it was the first in the US, he said.

A lot of the history surrounding that era was lost to time. They taught us that the Architects took it with them which is the only way anything could be erased from the Internet. If what Kevin said was true someone had hidden the information from the Architects which was more impressive than anything else he'd said.

They didn't leave the planet by the way, Kevin said.

That didn’t make sense. Of course, they left.

My grandpa said they are so small they can’t observe us anymore and left the Zix to send them data on what we do, he said.

His grandpa seemed to know a lot. So you knew about the Zix before you got one?

Ahh, he scratched the back of his head. Yeah, but it's so different knowing about them and having one.

Was all the wide-eyed wonder you had fake too? I asked.

He smiled but didn't say anything this time.

A rush of pure joy flooded my senses followed by images of him seeing Ambition for the first time. He was in a car that had pulled over. Then someone tapped his shoulder breaking him out of his stupor.

Something even more beautiful graced his vision. It was me.

His emotions were so strong it made it hard for me to breathe. Even though I technically didn't need to.

My body involuntarily flushed with warmth.

Then several of his memories peppered me. They were all of us on his first day in town.

He was so scared of going to the doctor but I'd distracted him. For some reason, he was surprised that I'd spent so much time with him. As if he were expecting me to abandon him.

Jasper and he had connected. They were quick friends. Jasper was very busy though so talking to him was a chore.

It made me feel bad about what we'd done to him earlier. I paid careful attention to keeping that memory to myself.

The thoughts kept coming. We were suddenly back in my home where Kumo had assaulted me.

Kevin was petrified. He'd never seen anything so horrifying. The image of my leg with a hole in it was stuck in his mind.

Technology was so advanced that he wasn't sure if I was in true danger or not.

After the threat had passed he didn't know how to breach the subject. Instead, he acted as if everything was normal.

In the next memory, we sat next to each other ready to log into the DO test server. He watched me as my eyes closed, jumping into the game. He was torn in that moment wondering why the hell he hadn't run away the second the weirdness started. He didn't know exactly why he followed me into the game: part loyalty, or his love of video games.

Then I'd gotten stuck in the server further pushing him into confusion.

My mother had told him to log out of the game behind my back when they shut off the server. I suspected as much but she had told him that she was hoping it would log me out as well. It didn’t and the void it sent me into was terrifying.

I shared that with him, the horrifying moment when they left.

His face changed and a tear crept down his cheek. He sent me his crazed version of what had happened. For a few seconds, he was alone next to me in my room again. His heart felt as if it were going to burst. People suddenly flooded my room to check in on me and he was forced into the living room.

Worry confusion and impatience flowed over my consciousness. He wanted back into the game to see if I was okay.

It was weird seeing life happening from someone else's point of view. This wasn’t anything like the VRV point-of-view stories out there. These were as if I had been him. His whole experience from the tiniest of details of rubbing his fingers together to the sorrow of him logging out of the game and going home.

He didn’t sleep that night, he couldn’t while knowing I was still stuck in the server. That’s when he decided to find out who Jakson was while also becoming obsessed with the Q.U.B.E. He’d talked to my parents to get Jakson’s information and took a maglev to see him.

Jakson was as cryptic as ever and took over a dozen scans of the device but he didn’t keep it. He’d told Kevin to take it home and hide it without telling anyone where it was.

Kevin set Raccoon aside and let go of him breaking the connection.

It was weird being alone in my head again. I could still feel him and the other people near us but the connection I'd had with him was intense.

Was that how people felt when I sent them my emotions and experiences?

Yes, Raccoon replied.

No wonder why everyone was freaking out about the VRV and why so many people were camped out waiting for me to join them. I’d watched the VRV but they were my experiences being shared and having already lived through them they didn’t feel as significant.

I leaned on Kevin's shoulder and he put an arm around me. We sat there for a while until he let his hand slip from my shoulder onto my leg.

When I reached out to touch it I hesitated for a moment letting the memory of how he felt about me play back in my head. I slipped my fingers through his letting the sensations of our shared experiences wash over me.

“You want to try that hole game again?” he asked. “I think I know how we can get it open.”

He was insufferable. “You really want to beat that game don't you?”

“I think I know what we did wrong,” he said.

Raccoon? I asked.

Raccoon scooted back and handed me another one of the holes.

Kevin and I disconnected and got back into our original positions.

I laid the hole between us and said, “Show me.”

***