Guest author’s corner: I know this is something that is not really within my character to do, but I felt like writing this log of all the interesting happenings ever since we first started the game. My parents said that it would also give them interesting data to work with. (that, and the author said that he would increase my cookies permit by 50% if I wrote it down for a sidestory...)
Anyway, if you got so far into the story, you probably already know me. I’m everyone’s favorite goddess and pet-maid in training that didn’t really get that much screen time recently, Cygnas! (and yes, that was meant for you, Hawx! Don’t think some cookies will make me forgi… Cookies AND cakes...? I could think about it...)
Sugary goodies aside, I guess I should start with the story already.
…
“GEEZ DADDY! CALM DOWN!” I shouted at the man wearing a lab coat as I watched through the camera from his laptop. “I can take care of it. Wasn’t it yourself who made the computer where I'm hosted?” I told him while pouting.
Yet, the man in lab coat still had a worried look as he stared at the image I projected on his portable computer. Having a blonde hair and pale white skin, thanks to his Russian heritage, he was the man known as Ivan, as well as one of the men and women who created me. He was also known as the Vampire within the workplace, more because he spent most of his time holed up working in a room and only seemed to leave the work when it was deep into the night.
“BUT MY LITTLE DAUGHTER IS GOING TO MEET SO MANY PEOPLE! WHAT IF A LECHEROUS BOY TRIES TO TAKE YOU!” He said while biting the hem of his shirt in an overly childish manner..
I couldn’t help but form a small smile seeing him act so immature. Even I, being only technically a couple of years old wouldn’t react like that. From the corner of the cameras, I could see some of the other workers sporting wry smiles.
From all of my creators, or as I rather call them, parents, Ivan was easily the most overprotective one, and would always contact me whenever I tried to report anything. He even decided to start playing Insania just so he could also keep an eye out for me even inside the game.
It’s not like I dislike him worrying about me, but any girl would feel embarrassed if they had a father like that. At least I think they would.
“Look, I can already sense some people starting the pre-patch process, so I have to go now, okay?” I told him one last time. He stared at me worried for some time before finally nodding while holding back his tears.
“Daddy will soon come to see you, Cyg! Just...” He started, but was stopped when one of my mothers, Tris, smacked his head with a large book.
“Shut up, albino vampire. You have work to do before even dreaming of logging in!” She said to him angrily before turning to me. “Good luck, Cygnas.” She told me with a brief nod.
I replied with the same nod before finally disconnecting from father’s laptop.
Still, hiding in the janitor room just so he could talk a bit longer with me… Isn’t my father a bit too irresponsible? Well, not that it mattered, because soon enough some of the players started to enter the character creation lobby, so I diverted my attention towards them.
The sheer number of players was overwhelming, and I could somehow feel as each and everyone of them logged in and started to make the character creation. Thankfully, my processing power is pretty good, so there’s no need for me to worry too much. Still, just to be sure I left most of my virtual bodies with an script that reply automatically to the basic questions, and only the occasional complex question required me to take over the body and explain it to them.
At that moment, I thought that this would probably end up being a long and tedious job. Even being an AI, there’s only so much you can do before you get bored. In fact, I'm thankful that I can limit my processing power and make my sensation of time faster, or else I wouldn’t even last a few seconds here.
Boy, was I wrong.
Telling the truth, in the pre-installation process, I can already have contact with players even if they only reach 70% of completion, so this meant that I could see some of them before they even saw me.
Usually, I left them alone since it could somewhat be considered breach of privacy, but there was one single player who was doing something quite… Curious.
He took the login button window and was playing around with it.
In a very literal way, he was playing ball with it. Initially I only checked on him because I was receiving an unique reading from his terminal, so I was worried that this could be a bug, but when I saw, there was a boy who found out a coincidental feature of the windows coding, and was playing ball with it!
After some time, he finally stopped playing around and pressed the login button, and the animation soon continued. I would usually recede here and leave the scripted body behind, but what he did next once again caught my attention.
He put on a pompous pose and shouted in a loud voice as he moved one of his arm from one side to the other.
“LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
I… Sincerely don’t know why I did it. I don’t know if it was curiosity, if it was surprise or if it was a simple mischievous action. But the moment his words registered, I stopped the boot up sequence. At least the visual part.
He looked around confused after a few seconds passed, and seeing his state I couldn’t help but hold up a laugh. Yet, seemingly unabashed by it, he once again took his pompous pose and prepared himself. After a few seconds, just when the delay I set was about to finish, he opened his eyes and said.
“LET THERE BE LIGHT!”
Once again I held the booting process. I’m still not sure why, but… I just felt like teasing him! While holding back my giggles, I saw as he frowned deeply and looked around as if trying to understand what happened.
After some time he finally shrugged and once again took the pose. I finally decided to let the man have his fun, so I let the initialization process go do its work. And just as before, he opened his eyes and shouted loudly, this time with even more strength.
“LET! THERE! BE…” Scratch that. Teasing him is too fun! “OH COME ON!”
I was unable to do it. Midway I accelerated the process and had it boot up at double the speed, messing with his timing. Seeing him give such an angry look did it for me, and soon I was unable to hold my laugh any longer.
It took me a couple of seconds to finally calm down, only to find him staring at me with a clearly annoyed expression in his face. Clearing my throat, I quickly tried to straighten myself up, but every time the scene replayed in my head I would get a new urge to laugh.
Yet I still had my work to do!
But I can’t stop laughing!
Oh god, my copies! They are almost laughing too…
“Done laughing already?” He asked me with an annoyed tone.
I turned to him and tried to put on a serious face, but I was having some trouble, because a smirk kept creeping up.
“Sorry… It’s just that… I came here to introduce you to the character creation, and then… all of sudden you made that pose and said that… You got me by surprise so I didn’t know what to do…” I started giggling once again. “And at that last part… I just couldn’t resist to see your reaction… Sorry… But…” Once again I started laughing loudly, unable to hold myself back.
It took me some time to recover, but as soon as I did I quickly straightened up my clothes and tried to put back an at least passable appearance for myself.
I don’t think I could make a good impression now that I had already busted it like I did, so let’s at least try to improve it.
“Well then, let us start from the beginning.” I said while avoiding eye contact “Welcome to Insania online, where the world is yours to explore!” This was the same thing as my scripted copies were saying to the others, but I ended up saying it myself while doing the whole ground into sky scene. “My name is Cygnas, the acting main goddess of this world!” I said proud of myself. After all, it is the job I'm currently in charge of. Yet... “Creator of everything that the *snicker* light *snicker* touches…” I couldn’t hold it, and soon started to laugh once again.
I somehow noticed it as he frowned angrily at me, but sadly enough, I was having a hard time controlling myself. Even trying to switch to a scripted program was hard when I could barely focus. Even the questions from the other players I was replying to took some time to process, as I couldn’t exactly give them a laughing reply.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
But before I could reply, I felt something hitting me.
Landing right in the middle of my forehead was the window he had transformed into a ball earlier, and it still had enough energy to make me fall backwards, but since I had turned gravity off for myself, I simply ended up spinning wildly a couple of times instead.
I was in a mix of shock and embarrassment. On one side I did deserve that, after laughing so much at him, but on the other, this little bug seemed to have more of an effect than what I initially thought. While turning to him preparing to give my apologies, I saw him laughing at me.
I know that this is exactly the same I did to him, but I still couldn’t help but feel annoyed, so before I could manage my self-control, I took the window he had thrown at me and sent it back to him.
“Two can play this game!” I told him angrily while putting strength beyond even what a normal human would be capable.
But by a stroke of luck, he twisted his head aside and dodged the ball. I couldn’t help but pout angrily at him once again as he stared at me with a triumphant smile.
Then it hit me.
Literally.
The ball that I sent towards him somehow ended up hitting me right on the back of my head! I flipped a couple of times more, thanks to the extra strength I put on it, and by the time I stopped, he wasn’t even holding back his laughter any longer.
At the start I was really angry with him, for mocking me so openly. But soon, I couldn’t help but think that it was a pretty ridiculous situation I was in.
That was how I met the one I would eventually call Gon.
…
Time passed, and using my near almighty abilities within the game, I kept a close look on the boy who had been my true guests on the first few hours of the game launch and even gave me the idea of taking on a pet’s body as my own so that I could see the world with different eyes.
It was amusing, to say the least.
Sometimes he would act like a perfect textbook example of a player, like asking around for quests and searching for professions, other times he would do something completely crazy, like using his shield as a catapult to launch dogs flying up high. Watching him was easily becoming my brand new free time activity.
Not to say that there weren’t other players doing amusing things out there, but they just felt like a side character compared to this one whom I met personally.
Is this what they call sympathy? All my previous interactions had always been with my parents, so the person I could see and interact were always the same. But now, with so many people accessing the game, it’s not exactly true anymore.
I wonder… It’s probably better ask my father about this.
But a bit later, he seems to be flirting with an NPC right now…
… Seriously father?
And what with that name?
I felt so embarrassed when I saw him creating the character. And I even had to introduce him to Gon! Is this what it feels to introduce an idiotic father to your friends? I do recall seeing something similar in some shows I downloaded from the internet…
This is a lot worse than I initially thought.
While I was thinking such things and also watching out the data for possible bugs that the players had found, I suddenly heard someone calling my name. One of the advantages of being both omniscient within the game AND having enough processing power…
It took me only a fraction of a second to actually recognize Gon as the caller. It had been only a few minutes ago when he last contacted me after testing his “window-ball” on an innocent passerby (who even submitted a bug report). Since I didn’t expect him to contact me so soon, I was caught a bit off guard.
“Wow, that’s fast! Missed me?” I asked him while redirecting my attention to him.
“Yeah, but don’t mind it, next time it will hit.” He replied tauntingly. I couldn’t help but pout at how mean he was. “Anyway… Cyg, by any chance… Do you have a translating software in this game?” He asked with a slightly worried tone.
“Hmm? Why do you…” Such a sudden question left me a bit confused, but after taking a look at the area around him I understood. “I see… So she…”
Close to him was a kitsune girl that had created her character not long ago. She was a japanese girl, and if what I learned human aesthetics correctly, I could easily say that she was a beauty, even before creating her character… Actually, her character was identical to how she actually was, so it’s actually quite easy to say that she was blessed on the looks department.
When I accessed back to the database, I quickly saw the scene of her creating her character, and it was here that I noticed something. She didn’t seem to have any previous experience with games, taking in account how she created her character, but she was still extremely politely to my scripted body.
Even without checking on what happened during their meeting, I could somehow guess what had happened.
“Anyway, yes, I do have a real-time translation software in here.” I said proudly It is a lot harder to create a perfect translating system than what one would think, so I'm quite satisfied with my results. “Is that all?”
“No… I guess...” he replied with a slightly wry tone.
“Then I'll be going. Bye-bye!” I told him.
But I kept watching him nonetheless. I was… Curious.
Thus, I kept watching him as he talked to the girl, wanting to know something that had been leaving me doubtful since some time ago.
I watched as he talked to the girl in a surprisingly kind manner, explaining to her a few things that she was still in doubt. After some time, he even invited her to his party. I wonder if she is… What do they call it? His type?
And then, after a few moments of checking her status, he suddenly stood upright and said in a loud voice.
“ATTENTION APPRENTICE YUUKI!”
At this point, noticing his tone and manner sudden change, I couldn’t help but feel a bit more at ease. The way he was acting with her was just like how he did with me. Sometimes serious, sometimes kind…
If I had to say, I was worried that he could be treating me differently just because I was an AI. That thought somewhat made me feel worried. What if his playful manner was just him testing me, or if his surprisingly sincere moments were only him not knowing how to react?
Those thoughts scared me.
Of course, I had seen him interacting with the other NPCs, or rather, Delimited AIs, as my parents call them, and saw how he kept the same attitude most of the time. But, he knew that they weren’t humans, so what if this was directed only to non-organic beings.
But seeing that he reacted to a player just like how he reacted to me somehow left me at ease, so I couldn’t help but smile a bit.
But, seeing as he and the girl walked away I couldn’t help but wonder. Does he consider me a true friend?
If I had taken his offer on creating a player body, would we walk together like that? Chatting and fooling around?
While such gloomy and uncharacteristic thoughts crossed my minds, I kept watching him.
And I also kept checking for bugs. I do have an important job to keep up with!
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(True) Author’s corner: HELLO HELL… What? The chapter is done already? DAMMIT CYGNAS!
ANYWAY, After talking with someone at the den, I ended up noticing how our favorite *snickers* Goddess have been kind of lacking in screen time recently, so I decided to go and make this small SS. There should be one or more chapters incoming if Cyg is up for it... Normal updates should be back in two days. ^^
ALSO, She decided to use this chapter to show how she actually felt about being different from Gon, as in AI and Human. Hope it doesn’t look too gloomy here. It also serves as a good flashback to how they met and might even spark some things that we had forgotten, so it’s all good.
Here would be where I wish for a good reading, but seeing as I got here late… See you next time!
PS: 100 is the binary for 4, so the title is not wrong!
Cyg: Author trying to look fancy... Isn't this a bit pityful?
*Sulks into a corner*