Jade almost created another copy of himself to play the game while he finished his certifications and worked the job at the convenience store, but something held him back.
Desire.
He wanted to play the game as he always had, as himself. Part of him argued that a synchronized copy was identical, and that the very himself that he referred to was obviously a copy of a previous 'self', downloaded after his previous body had been wrecked. Orbital Jade supported Jade's position, by pointing out incidences where their choices and opinions had diverged within hours of full synchronization.
--
Emily had a troubled look on her face when Jade showed up for his shift.
"What happened?" he asked with concern. The surprise on her face as she turned to answer him worried him even more.
"Nothing," she replied shortly.
Jade glanced around, and took note of which stock items were running a bit short, while comparing it to the list of items in their small storage area. He checked that no one else had already updated the order list before adding the ones that had run completely out, or would soon.
Emily heaved a long sigh as she straightened up from the counter.
A moment later the entry chime rang and one of their regular customers walked in. The young man bit his lip as he browsed every single shelf, as though he had never been here before, or was looking for something he didn't usually get.
"Can I help you find something?" Jade offered.
"No," the customer replied unhappily.
Jade silently asked Orbital Jade what he could find out. Obviously something was going on that affected both Emily and this young man today.
Jade couldn't find anything especially grim or distressing happening locally, but on the other side of the world it seemed that a small country had finally been defeated.
The young man brought a single self warming cup of soup up to the counter, where Emily summoned up a grimace that could pass as a polite smile if you didn't know her very well.
After their solitary customer left, Jade asked, "Want me to do the cleaning tonight?"
The sigh that she heaved made it sound like he had asked her to do it, but instead of protesting she told him, "That'd be good, thanks."
Jade didn't mind cleaning up messes as much as most people did, but things were actually pretty tidy tonight. He was careful to make sure that everything in the restrooms was properly disinfected even if he couldn't see anything, but they hardly seemed used.
"Should I worry that we're about to go out of business?" Jade asked with concern after he finished up the last pass over the floors.
Emily shrugged fatalistically, but then finally explained a fragment of her worries, "Not until the elections are over and they reveal what percentage this year's taxes will actually take away."
It took a while for Jade to realize that Emily's distress was caused by the fact that she was opening up more. She was developing in a way. Connecting to things going on in the world around her through the information channels that she had been keeping closed off.
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It took even longer before Jade realized that he had also isolated himself from outside influences and kept himself offline for years, in order to develop. His coworker was actually far more like him than he had ever realized. Simplification could help you clarify things.
As though some deadline had been met, the usual customers began to roll in. Some in a hurry, some slow with exhaustion. Each one doing their best to live as well as they could.
--
When Jade logged in that night, it was after a brief pause for a system synchronization. 'He' was the same, but each of his 'selves' were updated with his primary data, while he was updated on the events they had experienced.
Within Living Jade Empire, Sky was busy collecting flowers from the Jade Emperor's footprints on the Moon Tree's roots, while Jade and Apella were elbowing their way across the moving sea of Augusmin.
"How much longer?" Apella demanded huffily. To Hisui's questioning glance, she added, "Until the rest of the gems are ready."
His shrug as an answer annoyed her even more, but her reaction made him really focus on her. She was Eric, the way Hisui was actually Jade, but now he wondered which of their relationships was the "real" friendship for his friend.
The Jade Emperor had implied that most people separated their relationships by the spaces that they were formed within, but Eric had come to the same school that Jade had enrolled in, in order to move past those boundaries. But now Eric had declared that they would never date. It was confusing.
Apella elbowed a robust Augusmin a bit more firmly than was strictly necessary so that Hisui's path was clear for the moment he needed to move toward the coordinates that he had calculated as optimal for the new temporary portal placement.
Through Hisui's eyes, Jade looked up at her familiar face. Eric's character really didn't resemble him very much. The reflection of Hisui's dwarven face beneath his own visor was not very similar to Jade's usual face either, but he felt like both were his own.
Apella reached down and took Hisui's hand as naturally as she breathed, and pulled him forward. The warmth of her soft fingers gripped him for a moment. Warmth was supposed to mean closeness. Warmth was also something that Hisui could feel through the game better than Jade could through his mechanical body.
Apella met his eyes and dropped his hand as though the warmth had burned her. Her cough was a gruff clearing of the thoughts between them rather than a mechanism to clear her throat.
"Pay attention and don't get trampled," she warned him.
"I will," Jade promised.
--
When they reached the site that Jade had calculated as optimal, he started pulling stones from the bag of holding at Hisui's hip. They weren't small stones by any measure other than the limitation of the largest opening the bag could be stretched to display.
Hisui was stronger than Apella, but Apella had more visibility, so she blocked the Augusmin and forced them to step aside as he laid the stones in their path. Even with dwarven strength, it took a while to get the barrier up. Long enough for Sky to finish up with gathering the flowers she needed to complete the quest she had taken.
"I think they are just going around to be polite," Sky commented as she joined Apella and Hisui where they stood in the small space behind the sturdy stone wall barrier.
"As soon as it activates I'm pretty sure they'll be able to see why going over the top would be a bad idea," Jade pointed out as he laid out the temporary portal frame.
It glittered like some kind of historical necklace of legend, rather than resembling the plain metal circle he had once carried. But this portal would also be reduced to nothing but a charred circle of ash when the diamond ring could no longer sustain the enchantment.
"I thought you didn't know when you'd be finished making diamonds?" Apella protested as she gazed at the ring of gemstone that was large enough to stand in.
"One won't be enough," Jade pointed out.
The ring's duplicate was already placed in one of the windiest places in Living Jade Empire, in the Dragon's mountains.
"Let me activate it?" Sky asked hopefully.
Apella huffed, but agreed, "Let her."
"I can't, since I have to use a skill to complete the circuit," Jade explained. "Both of you should stand back as far as you can."
Hisui's steady hands lifted the tiny silver hammer and the diamond pins that should seal the nearly invisible gaps at the joints of the ring. The first seven went into their places neatly, with tiny musical tones. The last... felt more like driving an iron spike all the way into the Moon itself.
The wind that lifted Hisui into the air was almost nostalgic, and the view of the traveling Augusmin crowd suddenly giving the barrier they had been crowding so much space was rather amusing. Hisui's steady dwarven hands pulled the enchanted feather from his cuff before the wind stopped lifting him.