Jade's shift went smoothly, mostly because he gave up and asked his orbital self to write him the kind of mini-quest list he would have received if he'd been desperately low on Karma and just went through everything on automatic.
His own thoughts were still busy churning the questions of consequences going ahead with the testing might have. Or even NOT going ahead with it. He could simply run away, but only in a social aspect. In a physical aspect, his "true" "position" was always very firmly fixed.
It was actually kind of a shock to realize that even if his orbital self and this self were physically separate, he had always naturally called upon his other self for things beyond his "own" capacity. It had always been part of him. His backup also always existed on the orbital platform.
The orbital self that considered itself 'immortal' compared to this self, wasn't actually indestructible either. The satellite could be shot down easily enough, but it was more likely to simply be boarded and the drives physically reformatted if his existence was declared illegal. The copy that had been restored every time he had been destroyed… that was always him, and was never truly destroyed, would be as gone as if he had ever failed his own tests and erased it from existence once again.
He couldn't help wondering what would happen if the body lost at sea were ever recovered after such an event. That system would likely have run out of power within a day at most, but that didn't mean it wouldn't contain everything that had happened up until it disconnected. Would its system be able to exist without its orbital other half?
Eventually, he unraveled the problems as far as they would go with the information he currently had access to. Changing the world the way Eric had suggested, the way a God might, would definitely not be possible until he could rely on his own existence continuing long enough to see such a vast project through. Even if a single person never could, Jade probably didn't necessarily have to remain a single person, long term. But for now, he was definitely a person, he had achieved that much. He scheduled the official testing, and put himself down for the necessary time off at this job, and from his classes.
When he got home (safely and without incident) his apartment door was unlocked. He took an awkwardly long moment to realize that he could just look inside without going inside. Harmony was sitting at his tiny table beside a cake.
Jade accessed his orbital self to consider a few thousand ideas during the moment he paused at the door. It was still long enough for Harmony to detect the changes that the slight effect of the door's opening made in the apartment.
She was already turning toward him as he walked in and announced calmly, as though he did it every day, "Hi honey, I'm finally home, but I've got some things to get done, and a few longer days scheduled for the rest of the week."
Harmony's outburst of laughter was his reward, and he grinned at her cheekily as he bent to kiss her cheek.
"I decided to bring back your key," she told him when she had regained her countenance.
"With cake?" Jade asked.
"Well, I decided that even if you won't really appreciate it, I'll need something tasty to keep my spirits up when I leave," Harmony told him laughingly.
Jade pulled up the other chair and plopped down into it, so that they were eye to eye, before asking seriously, "How permanently are you leaving then?"
He regretted the way her expression sobered at the question, but it also meant that he had probably asked the right question.
"I'm not sure," she admitted finally. "But I am reaching an age where any one of these downturns of health could indicate something that I won't ever be able to recover from. And if it turns out to be that serious, I don't want to drag you youngsters through it with me."
Jade scooted sideways so he could see, and then leaned back in his chair and surveyed the woman in front of him from head to toe.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
She looked puzzled and a little amused, but didn't avoid his gaze, though she did shift her pose into a more flaunting one, as though she expected to be admired.
"You look the same," he commented when he was done. "Your pulse is steady, your breathing is clear, and so are your eyes."
Harmony sat up straighter even as she burst out laughing again. "Yes!" she agreed, as though it were a joke.
"So it's something internal? Or within your brain?" Jade asked curiously.
"Ah, Jade is always Jade," Harmony murmured, though this time the amusement didn't entirely leave her eyes.
"Well, your brain is internal too," Jade admitted, mostly to make her laugh again.
Harmony grinned at him, and agreed, "That is the usual arrangement for most of us."
When she didn't offer anything else, he stood up to get a knife to cut the cake differently than the precut sections it had come in. When he served her a slice and a half to start with, and took the remaining half of her second slice for himself, she laughed again.
"Keep the key," Jade instructed her, without asking anything else. "And please, drag me along. Take me with you through every trial and tribulation, every up and down, until the last moment of your final adventure in this life."
Harmony actually spat her bite of cake out so hard that it hit him in the face, and stared at him as she coughed. Jade ate the only slightly chewed morsel, and used a napkin to wipe the rest off, while he waited for her actual response.
"Jade. You…" she began, but then stopped.
After a moment, he gave up and prompted, "I?" He still needed time to acquire the gemstones Apella and Sky needed in the game.
"You don't understand. Anything," Harmony declared in a somewhat pained voice.
"I'll learn," he promised simply.
"This is my only life," she told him bitterly.
"Yes, and no," Jade responded confusingly.
She opened her mouth, but then huffed out a long sigh, and instead of arguing, she asked, "What do you mean?"
"You've already lived through uncountable experiences outside, and through a large number of different artificial lives online. I am sure that you know we cannot prove the existence of souls, but I'm also sure that you know we cannot prove that they do not exist either," Jade replied in terms of actual data. "But even if they do, it's not wrong of you to think of this set of experiences as your only life, because you wouldn't be able to carry anything from it with you."
Harmony eyed him almost suspiciously. Jade wondered what she might be suspecting him of, but he didn't stop to ask.
"Carry me with you all the way to the end, so that I can try to carry you onward after this self has ceased to exist," Jade suggested.
It was a kind of human tradition after all. Not every culture followed it, but in essence, many did. Usually it was tied to one's family relations, but there were always exceptions to that as well. Sometimes it was a purely spiritual concept, sometimes it was more physical. And because Jade was himself, he intended it quite literally, if not exactly physically.
Harmony just stared at him for so long that Jade shifted uncomfortably in the chair, not because he was uncomfortably, but because he was running out of time. He almost said more, but finally she replied.
"Is this a proposal?" she asked oddly neutrally.
Jade blinked. "I think that it is more of a proposition, since I'm not offering any details for exactly how the transaction will go, though I am thinking of it more like a kind of collaborative project?"
Harmony made a spluttering noise for a moment, that soon turned into more of a giggle. She demanded not quite mockingly, "But you are clear that you are demanding the rest of my life?"
"Yes," Jade replied simply.
"Go do whatever you think you're late for," she waved her fork at him dismissively. "I'll eat as much of this as I want, and then head home."
Jade knew she hadn't given him an answer, but that was okay, there would be time. Whatever medical problem she had discovered wasn't interfering in her functions yet.
"Alright," he agreed. Though he did reach out to squeeze her hand as he promised, "See you later."
"You will," she agreed laughingly.
--
When Jade logged into Living Jade Empire, he was still in the town where the first Portal to the Moon stood. The line for the portal was long, but not really as long as he had half expected. Jade didn't head for his skimmer, or any of the local forges, he headed toward the market.