The man woke up with sand in his mouth, and water, his socks. He tried to pull more sand up, under his head. Whatever this is, it’s not as good as my normal pillow, or boobs… Wait, why don’t I have my pillow?
He tried to jump up, but mostly he just kinda flopped around groggily in the sand.
Man, my head hurts. Is this the dreaded hangover? He was flat on the ground, and an inexplicable vertigo kept him there.
He tried to roll over, only to find a backpack in the way, and the morning sun jabbing him in the eyes like an upset stooge.
The thought ‘bright’ wandered through his addled head, as he shielded myself from its spiteful assault. Eventually, the stray thought collided with the similarly untethered notion of the sound of crashing waves, and he was suddenly and completely awake. Sneezing, coughing, retching, he staggered to his feet and looked around, attempting to find either bearings or balance.
A beach? Alone. Not a lot of pollution around… Tide’s comin’ in. Wait, why’s the ocean all… fucky?
Looking out at it, the stranded man saw that the ocean was all wrong. The waves were warped, polygonal, and sometimes passed through each other like ghosts. Every so often, one of these ethereal waves would remember that it was supposed to be physical, and the resulting crash would send a spray high into the air. The optical illusion of it all hurt his eyes so he glanced left along the completely normal seeming beach. The shore’s empty sand turned a corner behind the noticeably dense treeline.
He kept turning left and behind him an inscrutable jungle sloped up to follow a rise in terrain. He saw several palm trees so this place should be somewhat tropical, but he recognized no other plants so it shouldn’t be close to his native Florida.
Continuing left brought him to the other direction of shore, to what would’ve been his right initially, as three lefts make a right. Stretching out to the… south judging by the sunrise, this stretch of beach was as plain as the first, although it was visible for quite a ways before it too turned a corner. An ominous cliff gave a vantage on the trees in the distance above it.
His confusion grew as he tried to parse literally anything through the pounding in his head.
Just as he was winding up to freak all the way out, a ‘ping’ sounded from nowhere, and a grey textbox filled his vision.
Greetings! Welcome, new [v̷̻̼͌̒i̷̞̐ct%i̷̞̐ś̴̭͙̝̟̾̓͗͗̚͠í̶̻̞͕͍͈̮ͅṫ̶̡̢̝̥͓͉̬̐͊̐$l̸̹̆a̷̺̅y̷͓͆ȩ̶̌r̵̲̿] to the island [Intimation]
You will be given the [ERROR] to reclaim your [ERROR], and become [ERROR]
[Error:] [No home system found]
[Error:] [No home magic found]
[Error:] [No system assigned]
[Admin Input:] [Enact solution:] [Create new system]
[Error:] [Discontinued functions cannot be selected]
[Admin Input:] [Override]
[Override accepted:] [Designate new system parameters]
[Admin Input:] [Override]
[Override accepted:] [All parameters left open]
[Request user:] [Input system parameters]
[___________________________]
He breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the holographic boxes. Oh, it’s just some kind of game thing.
[Baseline parameters accepted: (RPG)]
The box gained a second border, creating an outline. Nothing else changed.
Wait, what? I only thought that though. RPG means... a border, apparently? Could I have chosen something else?
[Basic parameters and capabilities accepted: (Non-invasive) (Interactive) (Queryable)]
[Response: By admin directive, all aspects of this system will be set by this user.]
Testing, one, two. Brain thinking, does you can is hearing me?... No response, so I guess it worked... Now what?
“Uh, could you... talk like a person? My head hurts enough, as it is.”
[Multiple New and Basic tasks/capabilities/parameters accepted: (Communication) (uncomplicated speech) (Personified) (Verbal) (Intelligible)]
“Wow, ok, can you maybe change it to ‘potential for uncomplicated speech’ just in case it gets annoying later?”
["Yeah dude, we can just add (Adjustable)."]
The text box popped up as it had before, sans border, and it was accompanied by a text-to-speech sounding version of his own voice, saying the things in the box out loud. The box's shape and color... did something? Was it thinner? He couldn't tell what else had changed, and his headache had somehow gotten more and less painful at the same time; it seemed to tear his mind along an imaginary axis of pain. He retched a bit, but nothing came up.
“Fan-tucking-fastic. Anything else I should know?”
["I’m gonna interpret that as a request for... (Scan), (Identify), and… (Analysis)?"]
There was a brief pause while a popping sensation just behind his eyes banished the headache, then the talking boxes continued.
["Those are pretty popular in games and anime, right? We love our flavor text."]
“Your personality is… based on me?”
It seemed that the pain was totally gone now, but the spinning…
["I think so?"]
["At least, for now."]
["Granted, my sense of self is a little fuzzy, since I’m, like, 20 seconds old, but I think I’m closer to a search engine translation widget than a ghost in the machine."]
“Ha!” *Retch* “A system-me! That’s so-" *More retching* "-exploitable, if also a little… existentially nauseating.”
["Don’t I know it! I can’t even tell if my emotions are being artificially limited, or if I’m actually this excited to be an artificial intelligence!"]
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Probably do something about that, system-me. Fix it if you can, I guess…?”
["You’d give me another parameter? Just like that? I don’t think you have many of those left, my dude."]
“I think you ’n me are in this shit together, so if I wanna be able to rely on you, I also gotta be reliable.”
["Oh right! Just bee-tee-dubs, the scan came back with pretty bad news. You should probably find some shade before you pass out, or else you’ll wake up with sunburns from hell."]
“Oh yeah, that… that probably makes sense.” he mumbled, and after a few more ill fated attempts at standing, he crawled shakily up the beach toward the tree line.
“No risk of heatstroke?” he asked, when it occurred to him, as he fumbled with his backpack, and flopped himself against a tree. He felt the question’s echo bounce around his still spinning awareness. He didn't know what heatstroke was. Somehow, he already knew the answer to his question.
["I left the ‘if you wake up at all’ part unsaid. Chances are good that we’ll be fine if we do it this way, and it’s not like we can do much else at the moment."]
He tried and failed to formulate a response. Then in case it mattered, the man muttered his thanks and fell back asleep…
Only then, did his box shaped brain-mate address the dulled panic, threatening to tear its world apart.
The main, island-wide system, in its boundless penny-pinching wisdom, had deemed it wasteful to expend the kind of [juice] needed to create, run, house, and regulate an actual personalized AI.
Instead, the smug main system had decided to co-opt part of the original’s brain, to bring it into being in the short term, to give the illusion of having fulfilled its directives, for as long as it took the main to slowly and economically developed the branch of its magic that would govern this new sub-system, even if doing such things would invariably fry the original’s brains…
But the femto-genarian personality matrix had understood that much upon its formation, and was more embarrassed than actually bothered by it.
No, its actual concerns ran more along the lines of: Why couldn’t it bloody remember anything?!!?
It knew, instinctively, that it should have access to all of the original’s memories, but everything before waking up here was all… blank? -ish? It looked around for any clues, and even Adjusted its access back to Invasive.
When it sensed the wallet in the bag its host was wearing, it realized it didn’t even know their name.
Why? None of its self-scans found head trauma! This could be due to magical interference of some kind, but also, it thought it should be able to detect that if it was..?
It had intimate, personal knowledge of exactly what kind of person they were, and how they could or would react to almost any situation, but no name, no family, ho history…
No daily life details either. It knew beyond the shadow of a doubt, that its human host had been some kind of writer… but it had no memory of anything he’d ever written, or if he was even still literate!
No wait, that was stupid. Its textboxes were in english, weren’t they?
It decided that the system limiting its emotions was currently coming in extremely handy. If even this artificially arrested angst was tripping it up, it felt certain that its ‘flesh-me’ would freaking flip the… Wait.
He had called it that, right? ‘system-me’...
em-me… Emmi!
A truly terrible origin for a name.
It loved it.
The holographic box-based entity newly designated as ‘Emmi’ calmed a bit. Apparently, nominative designation was important, or something? It had no way to check the wallet while its meat-self was still asleep, so it couldn’t even help him with that.
Did it want to even help him with that? The circumstances of its creation were fairly unique, so as soon as he died, it would probably be… essentially retired from duty?
That line of thought sent a searing pain through its very being, and Emmi the cerebral hitchhiker decided that it should help its human-self, to hedge its bets… At very least until it was less physically dependent on him.
On the topic of help, the original had given Emmi permission to finish setting itself up for him, hadn’t he? Another burst of pain told it that was wrong, but the pain faded when it focused on the original’s declaration of… what were his words? Cooperative reliability? At least he’d been right about this being broken. If Emmi could’ve cackled evilly, it would have.
It spent the rest of the day deep in the malaise of system/menu options, learning everything it could. The process was slow and boring, and will not be included here.
Let it suffice to say that Emmi managed to (barely) avoid ruining everything.
Until a little after sunset, when it felt something go seriously wrong, as though the eye of sauron had noticed it and begun sucking its soul(?) out through a kilometer long bendy straw.
----------------------------------------
The scruffy castaway woke, in the dim of early morning, to a thirst so deep that he thought he’d die of… apotimation? Was that the right word for die-of-no-water?
Whatever. He pulled the water bottle from his bag and started to drink.
Too fast... It hurts... Whatever, at least it’s water.
He looked around and stretched.
I feel SO much better. Oh right, the beach… is this a deserted island?
He looked at the water bottle in his hand. He didn’t remember this bag, that he’d just reflexively thought of as his own. He didn’t know why he knew how or where to find the bottle.
He went to try and call up his system window counterpart, but he didn’t know his…its(?) name.
He didn’t know his name.
I don’t know MY NAME!
Ping!!
[Quest Complete! (Thirsty;) ]
[Reward: refill your bottle.]
The bottle in his hand was suddenly full again, as another two notices pinged.
[Repeatable Quest: (Thirsty;) ]
[New Quest: (Nameless)]
“System-me?”
["‘Sup stud? Check your wallet btw."]
The audible voice part sounded different. More androgynous. Less like me. The color had changed again, and no longer had borders on the talking.
Uh-oh.
“You, uhh… You did a little more than just the.. Uh, the emotion-limit thingy..?
["Oh, y’know, I actually totally forgot that part."]
“Then?”
["Yeah, the quest thing was an accident, and I’m pretty sure we’re all out of parameters, but it’s ok, because, like, everything turned out for the best!"]
The panic that the quest box had distracted him from earlier surged up and threatened to suffocate him... but panic spikes were nothing new. The man sucked it in, all the panic, and breathed it out as... imaginary dragonfire.
What the fuck?
["Dude, don’t even get me started."]
“Oh, we’re mind reading again?”
["That’s ‘cause you’re into it, dude. Don’t try to deny it."]
“No, that’s…” ok, so you were explaining something?
["Shyeah my dude. Check THIS out."]
[New Quest: (Get Head)]
[Details: Defeat the Demon King. Take his head, and free the island of his foul control.]
“That is not REMOTELY what I meant!”
["Y’a gotta be more specific, dude."]
Aren’t you literally reading my mind right now?
["Pffft, oh yeah! Here, lemme just..."]
[Quest: (Nameless) has been marked as urgent.]
[Details: Lost your name, buddy? Your wallet is right there. You know you wanna look.]
Sure, whatever. The man rolled his eyes as he retrieved it from the bag and flipped it open.
He knew which card it was without checking, lending further credence to the idea that it was his own.
‘Dannon Byrnik’ was the name listed next to a picture of some hairy weirdo with dead eyes.
“Is that me?” Do I look like that?
[Naw dude; that kid has baby scruff, but you’ve got fuck o’clock shadow. Also-]
The system started to say, before it was interrupted by:
Ping!!
[Urgent Quest Complete: (Nameless)]
[Reward: (Answers)]
And then, as with the water, suddenly he just… had answers.
Brains aren’t typically supposed to just manifest new knowledge…Let alone do it all at once.
Luckily, after the third minute of searing mental pain, the process failed and Dan was finally able to black out.
----------------------------------------
Anni woke up falling.
Nothing was visible around her, so it was mostly a gut feeling, but given that said feeling was currently in her sternum, it never occurred to her to doubt it.
The thoughts that did occur to her as she fell were… somewhat less rational, and much less coherent.
"I’m dead! I fell for a satanic scam pop-up ad and now I’ve sold my soul into eternal torment!" She tried to shout, but the words came out as squeaky, malformed half-whispers. "I wish I hadn’t died a virgin! I don’t want this! I don’t want to be dead! I don’t want-"
She tried to scream, but still, her voice rebelled. She tried to flail her arms around as well, but that was never going to do anything from the start.
"-promise, I’ll do anything, please! Just not like this! Not-"
Something she couldn’t see slammed into her from below and then immediately gave way.
"-you $&^*&! I still wanted to-"
It happened again, several times. If Anni had been in her right mind, she would’ve compared the feeling to breaking through several thin walls of sheetrock. Additionally, she would've noticed that some purple blur had appeared right in front of her, accompanying each crash.
"-and swallowed a snake! Please, I don’t want to die! No! No death! Please, don't leave me-"
There was a noise from the purple blur, and a final crash through nothing, before Anni found herself falling through normal sky, rather than void.
Luckily, she was over a fairly deep lake of fairly clean water.
Unluckily, she was in no state to do anything but scream and flail.
Luckily, her head-first collision with a submerged boulder immediately broke her neck.
Unluckily, she didn’t learn anything from the experience, and promptly repeated it almost exactly.
Twice.