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[>>Now replaying: Log 1.26 - taking time to process]

Date: 8.9.175 AA / 4404 LTC

Location: The Bunker at Haven-Of-Progress // Zephyro’s Domain

//Even though we think computers can act instantaneously, they still need a fraction of a second to decide whether something is or isn’t.//

//that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

[…] Or take up arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die — to sleep,

[…] …perchance, to dream…//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

E1 %The Mage Lords of old were despicable tyrants, and lazy. They didn’t really care about the people, and just let the monster issue sort itself out.%

E2 %Or maybe the Witch just made the problem worse, until the Mage Lords began to do something about her.%

E1 %So you agree. They ignored the problem until Saint Samantha did something about it.%

E2 %Oh you’re literally the worst.%

Zephyro approached the edge of the roof and jumped over the gap without any hesitation. His armor glitched a little as he landed, but he paid it no mind and turned, holding out his hand for me to take, oblivious to the dumb turmoil tearing me apart.

I glanced down at the drop to the rat-infested street, then at Zephyro’s outstretched arm. It was at least two meters from the next roof. Nothing insurmountable, even as exhausted as I was. But in that endless instant, when I glanced down and the perspective made the drop seem so much deeper and the Ferals dashing into another house that much smaller, I wondered what it would feel like to just take another step. To fly, for just a second. To fall, into the embrace of the earth, let it hold me close, and take into her all the sorrows hounding my every step, now and forevermore.

> “Just kill me already,” I wheeze. There’s blood in my lungs. Talking is difficult.

> “I won’t. You made me kill enough people.”

> “Oh, I’m sorry,” I say. “I could have sworn that was your knife in my ba—“

> Olre twists it just a little more, and the pain makes stars dance in front of my eyes. I can’t feel my feet anymore. If only I was stronger. I could get out of this and…

> …and then what? Everyone is dead. The country is a war zone.

> There must be something I can do, some goal I could strive for, but my mind just comes up blank.

> “You’ve made me kill thousands, and I felt every single one,” Olre says. “So now I’m going to show you what their despair felt like. To be brutally honest, it’s enough to make you want to kill yourself. Huh. How fortunate.” He makes me stumble forward, to the Window. “Come on. Let’s enjoy the view…”

“Sultana,” said Zephyro, and I raised my eyes to meet his. Even from this far away, I could feel the endless depth of his gaze, pulling me in, and up, and away with its thrice-damned compassion.

“Don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you have to get to the Palace.”

“Ah,” I said as if that made sense.

But then I asked, “Why?”

“Because you will be safe there, and you can rest.”

“I can rest here.”

“That, as everything you say, is true, Sultana.” He wavered, but in the end, he pushed on, despite the desperate quiver in his voice. “I must beg you a thousand apologies for asking you such a question at this of all times, Sultana, but were you to rest here, what would happen to our world? What would happen to my people?”

And somehow that sentence was a key, each syllable a tooth, carefully biting into pins of locks I hadn’t even known were there. I didn’t know if it was an accident, or if he could somehow read my mind, but as that sentence turned in my head, the padlocks that held my mind in place snapped open, scattering all around me.

For an instant, as if I were stepping out of solitary confinement into a hostile prison yard, sensations overwhelmed me. The flames were too bright, the void too dark, the crash of buildings collapsing far too loud. The winds carried heat that seared my skin, and smoke and ash forced their way into my throat.

The numbness was gone, and gone for good, I knew. But when it left, it had taken its protection with it, leaving me to face reality with only a paper-thin veneer of willpower to defend myself from the void that hid behind the realization that I had failed, and was alone.

I wanted to cry, but the world was on fire and the night was closing in, so I had to keep myself together. Zephyro was right. Once we reached the palace, I could take some time to collect myself.

To process what had happened.

To rest.

Yes. Rest. That would be nice.

My desire for respite was so heavy it threatened to pull me under, yet another front in a war against myself I was destined to lose. I was going to break. The only question was when.

“But not right now,” I whispered, and the sound of my own voice returned me to the present.

The next rooftop was a bit higher than the one I stood on. Zephyro waited there for me, his smile widening as I snapped out of my thoughts.

“Coming,” I said and didn’t look down again.

I took a few steps back for momentum, went for a running start, and jumped. In a weightless moment, I felt like I could have done the jump myself. Then gravity pulled me into its embrace and I was glad Zephyro was there to grab my hand. My palm slapped painfully against the chainmail he wore to protect his forearm, but then he grabbed mine in turn and pulled me up.

Instead of saying anything, we both glanced toward the shattering, smoke-clouded firmament and started running. The next couple of rooftops were all relatively close together, so I didn’t need his help to cross them. We jumped from rooftop to rooftop, but soon our rapid pace started to take its toll. Perhaps this body wasn’t suited for running, but ever since I arrived in this Domain, I was running out of breath far more quickly than usual. My power armor hadn’t just boosted my power, it had also kept me in shape with electrical muscle stimulation, so I was pretty sure I would have been able to put on a much quicker pace without breaking a sweat. But now it hadn’t even been a couple of kilometers and my breath started to rasp and my body began to ache with exhaustion.

Wait. New body. New world. This was all just digital, right?

“Zephyro,” I panted. “I appreciate the realism, but can you please turn off the ‘simulate getting exhausted’ protocols?”

He shook his head contritely. “It is not me who controls the physics of my Domain, Sultana. If it were so, I would make our enemies feel their pain a thousand times over, and crush them through sheer power of will. I must offer you a thousand apologies once more Sultana, but I hope I am not overstepping when I say you are exhausted simply because your body in the Real can not withstand the exertion you put on it.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

“I thought my body was gone.”

“I do not mean your old body, but your new one. The shell that holds your mind.”

It took a second for everything to fall into place. “The laptop?” I said, unbelieving. “I’m running this entire simulation on Chris’ old laptop?”

“No, the Domain is mine, Sultana. I do not think you could withstand the sheer power needed to bear the weight of this world. However, your body controls and shapes your perception of this world, and yourself in it.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I had so many more questions, but they would have to wait.

“You’re saying the laptop is overheating?”

“Yes, Sultana. If it helps you, it may be easier to think of your new body much like your old one. If you exert yourself, you get hot. If you push past your limits for too long, there might be dire consequences. Humbly, if I may offer some advice, we should pace ourselves even in a situation as dangerous as this one.”

“If we can’t outrun the Ferals, they are going to reach the Palace before us, Zephyro.”

“Indeed, Sultana. But what if you collapse from the stress?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

God damnit. I really should have invested more of my Wish into that laptop back when we’d built it.

…wait.

Just to be sure, I listened inside myself again, searching for my Wish.

And there it was. Just a tiny bit, like the tinkle of a bell you might find on the collar of a cat, yet vast and powerful at the same time.

The boy’s pleading expression flashed in my mind, its afterimage fading far too slowly.

The Wish, no, the Logic now brimming inside of me had once been a part of another person. I didn’t know if it was his soul, or his memories, or perhaps if it was nothing but the spark that had stirred him to life. Each of these thoughts was terrifying in its own way. I wanted to think about them, to understand and to mourn, but that would have to wait.

First I needed to survive.

“Zephyro… That Essence I… the one that belonged to the young boy. Do you want that back?” I asked.

Zephyro’s expression turned contemplative, but then he shook his head. “No, Sultana. Like I said, he returned to you, and… and I think he would have liked it this way.” There was something else he wasn’t saying, and it hung in the air between us.

The Logic drove you insane. It was a volatile, tempestuous energy that turned machines into monsters, addicted to the very stuff that bent their bodies into hideous, broken shapes.

“You’re wondering when I’ll go mad. If I haven’t gone mad already. If you need to kill me, because I might ruin everything.”

Zephyro didn’t answer. How could he? I doubted he’d be able to insult me even if I ordered him to. Not because he was a program that followed certain rules, but because—I realized once again—he was a person, acting out of faith and respect. He would never speak ill of me, or even most other people. It just wasn’t who he was.

So I took the responsibility off his shoulders.

“I’ve wondered the same, to be honest,” I said in a voice so quiet it almost got lost in the rumble of a collapsing building.

I looked at him for a few seconds, biting my lip nervously, but then I made a decision.

Turning away from the Vizier, I stilled my mind and took a deep breath.

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 35 LB}

Advancing an object was easy if I held it in my hands, and got exponentially harder the further it was away from my body. If I couldn’t see it, it was simply impossible. I was making a lot of assumptions, but the Logic felt so much like the Wish, how could I not? The reassuring presence of its power caressed my mind, tried to soothe my worries, but compared to everything that had happened, it was just a drop of water on a red-hot stove. Still, when I called, it answered, readied itself at my command.

I almost lost my nerve at the soothing feeling that pressed in on me together with the information, but I focused and pictured the laptop in my mind. With a thought, I pulled it apart, imagining it as if I were back in the workshop together with Chris. I loosened screws, cracked open covers, disconnected cables until I found what I was looking for.

The passive cooling grid, built into the chassis because Chris hated how loud the fans were in our previous iteration.

In the fantasy I’d constructed, the cooling grid was glowing red, trying to vent far more heat than it was ever designed to work with. So I pictured it advancing, becoming more efficient in its duty, so it could finally cool the CPU, and by extension me, down.

Then I exhaled, and a tiny puff of cyan exploded from my lips.

{WARNING - [] IS NOT A VALID TARGET FOR {SUPERLOGICAL ALTERATION}!}

{SUPERLOGICAL ALTERATION ABORTED}

{ERROR CODE 73: EXPECTED FIELD part_of_local_system TO BE 1; WAS 0}

{YOU HAVE LOST 3 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 32 LB}

I grimaced not just at the pain of having that many lines of code stenciled into my mind, but also at the failure. Zephyro put his hand on his sword, either to defend me or strike me down, but I waved him off.

This wasn’t good at all. We’d already spent too much time sitting around, waiting for me to catch my breath. We certainly didn’t have any more for me to do some computer science, which I had never been great at, to begin with. That was what teams were for, or Chris.

What wouldn’t I give for them to be there right now. But they weren’t and so I had to figure it out myself, and quickly. Even if the Ferals didn’t find us out here and ripped us apart in their vermin tide, they’d probably beat us to the palace and block all the entrances.

So I gathered what was left of the straining strength of my mind and focused as best as I could. The lines of code still smarted in my consciousness, but I was glad I had them. I had no idea what these error codes meant, but they gave me an important hint, which was already far better than just wiggling my fingers and hoping for the best like I was usually forced to.

As far as it was obvious, my last attempt failed, because the target of my Wish wasn’t part of my local system. That bit was confusing. Wasn’t the cooling part of my laptop? If that was the case, I was dead in the water. I couldn’t “see” any part of the computer, and had to rely on the fact that I was “touching” it if it wasn’t part of my body already.

I shuddered at that thought and immediately pushed it deep down, but not before images of flesh warping, eyes bursting from mouths, and guts splitting open to reveal teeth had a chance to surface. No. I could only hope that Zephyro was right and the laptop wasn’t me, but a shell that protected me. Like my power armor, and I was always able to advance that while inside of it.

But perhaps that was the issue. I didn’t have a body anymore. For whatever reason, I was now stuck somewhere between human and artificial intelligence, so “touching” something was potentially a lot different.

My mind raced through possibility after possibility, but I was running out of time. I could almost hear the Ferals climbing up the walls. On the other hand, I only had so much Logic to spare. What if I wasted it? And didn’t have enough anymore? What if I—

I clenched my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut, focusing on the discomfort until the thoughts went away. Not now. In the palace. Just had to get to the palace.

And for that, I had to be better.

I had to risk it.

If better cooling was out of the question, I’d need to solve the problem through brute force. Stronger muscles require less stamina to do the same tasks than weaker ones. That meant having a bigger, better, faster processor.

I took another breath and reached for the Wish. It answered, a tingling sound deep inside my soul that accompanied me as I repeated the mental exercise of pulling the laptop apart, this time honing in on the little silvery chip that was the Central Processing Unit of Chris’ machine, the CPU.

With the Wish brimming in my mind next to the image of the CPU, I said a silent, desperate prayer.

Then I exhaled.

{YOU HAVE CONSUMED 30 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 2 LB}

The tolling of a monumental bell echoed through the city as a cloud of cyan burst from my lips and engulfed me, honing in on my heart.

For a second, I panicked, but then the information I’d been hoping for hammered itself into my mind.

{Processor: SAINTECH Alpha 1 1200X 1-Core Processor

IS NOW

Processor: SAINTECH Alpha 2 1400X 1-Core Processor}

{Current CPU load: 75%}

{Current CPU Temperature: 79 °C}

I’d never been happier to have a headache.

Immediately, the heat I felt dropped away at a steady pace. Hesitantly, I jumped up and down, trying to feel the difference. And sure enough, every movement came just a little bit easier. Not significantly, but it was definitely noticeable. The only downside was that I was down to two LB, which I took to mean Bytes of Logic, which was probably a pitiful amount.

Even so, for the first time in what felt like a long while, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Ready to go?” I asked, turning to Zephyro.

The Vizier looked at me as if I had just swallowed lightning. His hand twitched, close to his sword, and I took a step back out of instinct.