Harmony grimaced as she cleaned up her own mess. It wasn't that bad, the system was built for it after all. A quick wash, an extra load of laundry, nothing more than an annoyance really.

She kept herself in good shape, but even so, it had been silly of her to play for an entire day at a youngster's pace. She paused beside a window that was old enough to show ripples in the glass strongly enough to echo the fact that it was technically a liquid.

The moon shone down from a clear night sky. The city lights muffled all but the brightest stars, but nothing could muffle the smile that stretched Harmony's mouth into a grin at the sight of that orb. Not in a million years would she have bet that the wildest flight across the moon she would ever be taking would be in an old fashioned fantasy MMORPG.

In an airship.

Harmony laughed aloud.

--

In a small convenience store in another part of the city, Jade sighed and asked his Station-self to isolate 'him' as the 43rd customer of the night told Jade that his wife was cheating on him.

There was no urgency to store the memories of this conversation, nor need to consult his own long term storage for a better response. Very little response was required at all, really.

Jade listened carefully to the brief tale, while having the old fashioned register calculate the total owed for the items. He gently repeated an even briefer summary of what the customer had told him, "It's too bad that her tastes never really changed, but I'm glad to hear that you maintained your own affection over the years. Would you like a paper bag for these tonight?"

This customer never accepted the paper bags, because he didn't believe that the trees they were created from were farmed sustainably. Jade had investigated the matter once, and discovered that while only about half of the paper was recycled, most of the other half was made of sawdust waste created by crafting other wooden products.

"Oh. Yes, thank you," the man replied rather sadly.

Jade paused in surprise, and then quickly scooped the items into one of the smaller bags.

The tired customer's mouth quirked to form his first smile of the night. "I forgot to bring my own. And I guess saving one more tree is kind of pointless."

"Oh no," Jade quickly assured him, "as you were just saying, every choice we make adds up, which is why we have these paper bags available."

"Thank you," the man replied intently. "I really appreciate it."

"No problem," Jade assured him.

The next customer had a terrible cold, and Jade carefully cleaned everything on the counter they had leaned on, after they finally staggered out the door. He hoped they sought medical attention if their symptoms got any worse. His system would have created a priority quest for him, if he could have caught such a cold.

When Emily finally clocked in for the closing shift, it was an utter relief. Jade left her at the counter to deal with the elder who was more comfortable when Emily ran the cash register, for some reason. Perhaps they could hear her better.

While both of them were clocked in, Jade did the cleaning so that all Emily would have to finish would be the non-automated display restocking.

"How's your… friend?" Emily asked as Jade prepared to leave.

"Which one?" Jade asked.

Her expression implied that his question was rude, and the little sniff she gave before clarifying her question echoed the sentiment. "The older woman who took you out the other night. On her hoverboard. She didn't come in tonight?"

"Oh, she's good. The Moon opened up today, so she's probably still playing," Jade explained.

"Oh. The Moon," Emily replied dryly.

"It's a new server in one of the oldest VR games," Jade explained quickly.

Emily shrugged. "Don't play all night," she warned him in an almost friendly tone.

"I can't," Jade admitted unhappily.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"Good?" Emily offered after a moment.

Jade shook his head, sighed, and replied, "Life offline is a lot quieter."

Emily came to a halt and gazed at him incredulously. "Yes," she finally agreed cautiously.

Jade shrugged and headed out.

--

When he got home, he would have called his mother, except that when he asked his Station-self to reconnect him, it turned out that he had already been talking to her for over an hour.

He found himself standing in front of the VR module that he had thought he used as a bed, but which actually charged and maintained his mechanical body. The timer he had set to match the game's countdown hadn't finished yet.

It wasn't even like anything obligated him to play Living Jade Empire, it was just his habit.

--

Eric's mind had wandered into a very strange corner as he finished up the last of his not quite overdue reports before preparing for sleep.

If Jade could revive for real, if the Jade Emperor resembled Jade so much, were they… Was Jade some kind of artificial God?

A moment later, he found himself nervously calling Jade.

"Hi?" Jade answered, sounding as nervous as Eric felt.

Eric took way too long to reply, as he realized that asking Jade if he were some sort of artificial god… was ridiculous. "Hey," he replied awkwardly. "You have that report for geology finished?"

"Of course," Jade responded normally. "You were doing yours on that volcano along the arctic ring, right?"

"Yeah, it's done," Eric assured him quickly.

"Okay," Jade replied after a moment.

Eric writhed with embarrassment internally, while curling up defensively, as though his thoughts were physically stabbing him.

"Would you like to try meeting up again, on my next day off?" Jade asked uncertainly.

The question took Eric by surprise, and he found himself replying more bitterly than he meant to, "Why do you even have such an ordinary job?"

Jade didn't sound offended by the question, or Eric's tone, as he explained, "I originally thought that it was just because it was available when I was looking for work, but it is also a place that's easily monitored, and I have gotten to interact with a lot of different people."

"Like school," Eric huffed.

"Yes," Jade agreed easily.

"So how's your deity training going?" Eric asked wryly, with one hand against his head, suddenly aware of how coiled his body was, and how much he wanted to just retreat. "Nev…" he began.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure that it's my mortality training, since I started out my existence as a type of virtual deity. Or I guess the original system was more like an underlying world structure, but I don't think it was really self aware until it decided to take on the Emperor's role," Jade explained seriously.

"He… you… what?" Eric spluttered intelligently.

"I've been thinking about it a lot. I have access to a lot of information that I didn't used to have now, but I also suspect that I can't really imagine how much was erased. I don't mean when I erased almost everything to live as a human, I mean before that, when my system rewrote itself to be a thousand times smaller than the one that runs Living Jade Empire, and Lin Hao saved it like that," Jade said in a rush.

"Lin Hao?" Eric prompted blankly. Jade had attempted to explain the part about creating a blank version of himself to be raised as a human, and integrating that with the orbital station computer that had held all of the rest of his data before, but Eric didn't recall him ever mentioning anyone's name.

"The lead programmer, the one who constructed most of my core system originally, he's dead," Jade explained in an oddly neutral tone.

Eric found himself sitting up straight, with no memory of having shifted positions. "So you can't ask him anything," he replied almost gently.

"Yeah. Yes. I wish I could ask so many things," Jade replied regretfully.

"I bet," Eric responded with real sympathy. Who didn't want to ask the force that had created them a million questions.

"My job doesn't pay nearly enough to support my existence, Lin Hao really helped set everything up for us, for me, and my mother," Jade confessed sorrowfully.

Sky was right, Eric realized yet again. Jade was always Jade. A small laugh huffed out of him before he caught it.

"Trying to tell me to stop feeling guilty that I'm letting my own family pay for my education?" he suggested wryly. "Didn't you pay any attention in your history classes? Providing for your descendants is just an old tradition that has been held in thousands of cultures across the world."

"Do you think I can consider myself his descendant?" Jade asked seriously.

Eric considered the question for a long moment. He didn't know anything about the man who had made Jade… or did he? When he closed his eyes the image of the Jade Emperor, so similar, and yet so different from Jade stood before Apella.

The phone's screen showed Jade's face, his eyes practically begging for an answer he couldn't give himself.

"The guy worked hard to provide you the existence he thought you wanted, right?" Eric finally answered without really answering.

Jade looked… so startled by the question that Eric regretted not simply saying yes, until Jade laughed.

"Yeah. All of us. He wanted to give all of us the chance to find the life we want. That's why he made the game," Jade agreed cheerfully.

"Yeah, but you're not a game now… are you?" Eric asked, and then gave his own answer, "You're a person."

"I am," Jade agreed laughingly.