Before the familiar messenger arrived in the morning, Jade finished the rather long, complicated, but not especially difficult quest. It neatly combined with the quests of several other players, to stabilize the city boundary around the first Portal to the Moon.
The guild that had constructed the pair of rather elaborate portals, and successfully carried one half to the moon, had not, as Jade had expected, created it within their own territory. It would actually have been a lot simpler if they had. It would have been simpler yet if they had used the cheapest, most basic, portal enchantment.
Jade was actually a little suspicious of the 'flaw' that had allowed both his own temporary portal, and this permanent portal to transport large quantities of air.
Apella's messenger glared at Jade, as he watched the new portal in the largest dwarven city successfully transport a small wagon full of cut stone smoothly. When he finally reached for the message, the little creature slapped it into his hand with a huff, and dashed away.
It read, "Can you send enough diamonds to get your ship back into the air again?"
Jade started to explain that the gems weren't diamonds, but then stopped and erased that part as his own alarm pinged. "I can try to gather and prepare enough gems after class, but likely won't be able to finish until after my shift, and you'll need a Smith, Wizard, Enchanter, or Engineer to bind them into their circuits."
He disconnected, got dressed, and then paused. Normally he would prepare a breakfast at this point, but it wasn't like he could actually convert the food to energy like a real human. His orbital identity snatched the opportunity to remind him that he needed to schedule himself for the testing that would prove he had successfully recreated himself as a person.
Jade barely thought about it before putting that task off until later. He had classes to attend.
His classes reminded him that he had been studying all of this so that he could afford to travel the world. But… now that he knew what had happened to his primary creator, now that he knew what his main quest had actually been… Jade found himself at a new kind of standstill.
--
Eric stood, blocking the doorway in front of Jade, holding a note between two fingers. His expression was oddly neutral.
Jade quickly checked his memory of the class, and realized with chagrin that he had actually ignored Eric's attempt to silently pass him the note several times.
Eric crumpled the carefully folded little note up, like a weightlifter might crush a can in front of someone. Jade opened his mouth to apologize, and Eric tossed the note over his shoulder. The note hit the garbage can behind him, bounced off, and then flicked off a desk leg to slide beneath the heavy cabinet against the wall.
Eric interrupted Jade with a mild curse, and then sighed and said, "Nevermind. Tell me what's wrong?"
Jade stared blankly at Eric, until his warm hand landed on Jade's shoulder. As though the impact impelled the answer, Jade blurted, "I don't know?"
Eric's startled expression told Jade how silly that sounded, and he explained the problems that currently occupied him, "The planet isn't big enough, and most powerful countries are frantically defining the borders they plan to defend for the next millennia. But the balances keep shifting, and some people claim that there will never be peace until we build a world government. Some of them are even blocking access to orbital servers, to prevent their people from interacting with those from other countries."
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Jade took a deep breath and then opened his mouth to explain how dangerous it could be to travel to such regions, and how many people were already known to have died trying, and how he didn't actually need to go… but Eric asked gently, close enough that his breath moved Jade's hair as he pushed past him, "Are you really some kind of experimental god then?"
Jade was confused by the question. "What?"
Eric pulled off his jacket, tied the hood's string to his stylus, and dropped to his belly on the floor in front of the cabinet. As he fished for the crumpled note, he explained without looking at Jade, "No matter what anybody says, a single person can't change any of that by themselves. Do you think that you can?"
Jade almost started calculating the answer to that question, but his orbital server presented an answer he hadn't known he already held. "I have no idea, because no one has learned how to make world peace happen yet."
Eric's expression as he stood up with the small collection of papers he had fished from beneath the cabinet, mostly discarded wrappers, had gone back to that oddly neutral one that he had first confronted Jade with. He dropped everything neatly into the litter basket he had missed, including the crumpled note.
"I guess we'll never run out of things to learn then, because we've already got a few people living off planet. Even when we finally get around to creating world peace, we'll still have other people to deal with," Eric joked.
"I'm supposed to schedule my testing to see if I can qualify as one of those off-planet people," Jade complained.
"There we go!" Eric exclaimed laughingly as he slung his arm over Jade's shoulder and pulled him into the hall.
"What?" Jade asked with confusion, though he did his best to keep up with Eric's stride.
"You always get nervous and weird about tests," Eric replied cheerfully. "Schedule it to be as soon as possible."
"But you want those gemstones tonight," Jade objected.
Eric blinked, and glanced at Jade's face, but didn't release him.
"And I've still got my shift tonight," Jade added.
Eric nodded, and replied seriously, "Definitely sounds difficult to schedule such an unimportant task very quickly."
Jade turned his head and left the guidance of his body completely to Eric for a moment. The wry curl of Eric's lip told him the answer.
"What if I fail?" Jade asked sadly.
"You already succeeded at the most important part," Eric assured him confidently.
"What if the corporation doesn't agree with you?" Jade asked worriedly.
"So what? I thought… Limb Howe? Your creator bought you your satellite?" Eric asked.
"Lin Hao," Jade corrected.
"Lin Hao," Eric repeated carefully.
When they reached the doorway of Jade's next class, Eric finally let him go, and turned to face him. "So?" he prompted. "What happens if you fail this test? What happens if you succeed?"
"I… don't know?" Jade admitted. "But I guess that if they withdraw their support… I would, maybe, lose my licensing and access to the repair and monitoring system?"
Another of Jade's classmates pushed past them, and Eric looked uncomfortable. "Okay, that does sound inconvenient. But what if you succeed?"
"I don't think that affects me directly," Jade admitted, though after another long moment of consultation with his orbital self he added, "or, maybe then I could legally sign contracts on my own?"
"Okay, that… is certainly a complex and potentially dangerous sort of reward," Eric grumbled. "No wonder you've been out of it."
Jade was even more confused by Eric's reply. He hadn't been thinking of any of the aspects of the testing that Eric had brought up. Eric shoved him into his classroom's door, and strode off toward his own, as though everything were resolved.
Jade made his way to his desk with new questions bubbling up through the mess of thoughts that he had been struggling to untangle. He had never even considered trying to change the world before.