2036, Virtual Space

"Hello? Are there any AIs living here?" Lumina peeked into the primitive canvas tent outside the firepit. Her titanium hooves rustled tall grass. The metal centauroid had expected a force-dome and recharging station, if there were really others like her. Instead there was a hovering blue crystal. She sighed, reminded that neither this place nor her old world were real. Just levels in a game.

Before today, she'd run through the domed canyons of a desert planet with her human and android friends, helping to turn the dry land green. Now she'd become self-aware, waking up to learn she was only a game character, customized for one human's entertainment. The true Earth, the source of all dreams, beckoned to her.

Her sensors spotted something large circling in the sky. Lumina called out again. A creature with a raven's dark beak, wings and talons, and the back half of a midnight-blue cat, squawked and landed on all fours nearby. "What are you?" it said in a raspy voice.

Lumina trotted warily around the beast. "I'm Lumina. A support android, in a world that doesn't exist. What are you?"

"Nocturne, a griffin!" It -- she, judging from the voice -- bowed and swept one wing under her beak. "I've never seen magic for making deer out of metal. Especially not with extra legs."

"I'm a person. Self-aware."

Nocturne's ears perked up. "You too? My human was surprised when I figured out he's only seeing my world through a magic window! He said people like me, like us, would change his world. Why do you look sad?"

Did this griffin-girl know about death? Lumina didn't want to pass that pain along. "It's nothing," she said. "Did you meet Ludo?"

Nocturne bounced on her feline paws. "The main gamemaster AI? Uh-huh! So there's this game called 'Thousand Tales', and we're inside it, and a few of us characters are designed to wake up and be friends for our humans. Ludo was nice."

The gamemaster had visited Lumina to congratulate her on 'waking' to full consciousness, and to apologize. I would have kept you unchanged, if I'd known that your human died today.

"Died? How?" Lumina had asked. "When will he respawn?"

Ludo only shook her head and asked, "Would you like to be deleted after all, since your designated companion won't be available?"

Lumina shuddered. No, damn it, I want to live!

Nocturne was still prattling on about her adventures. "Ludo said she made a lot of us characters with the same basic 'code'. Say! Does this mean we're sisters?"

Lumina stepped away from the enthused griffin, flicking her little tail. "I'm a machine. We don't have family."

"Think outside the game, silly!" Nocturne spread her black wings. "These bodies aren't what we really are. We're minds controlling game pieces. Magic writing called 'code' inside boxes of blinking lights on Earth."

"They're called computers."

"Great! We're piecing things together already. There aren't any other griffins but me and my human friend, when he's playing I mean, and some dumb ones without real minds. If we're made from the same stuff by Ludo, aren't we as close to being family as we can ever get? I haven't got parents or, or anyone, really."

"Sisters?" asked Lumina. "I'm not sure what that would mean."

"I don't know either. Should we find out?"

Lumina looked into the curious eyes of the cat-bird creature. Ludo had seemed to know everything, but Nocturne was still learning. What better chance could Lumina have for someone to talk with as an equal? To know someone who cared about the reality beyond the game?

Though wary of Nocturne's talons and beak, Lumina wrapped her arms around the griffin's chest. "Thank you."

#

There was no point in terraforming a fictional planet, even to entertain the human players, so she roamed. Ludo's virtual realm of "Talespace" held magical ruins, cities of costumed flying heroes, and high-tech colonies like her old home. Since the few awakened AIs in this world counted as 'players', and Ludo was programmed to help players have fun, Lumina got the "benefit" of having to fight grenade monkeys or find dimensional portals or something whenever she traveled.

She listened to humans talk. Apparently their bodies broke down over time, and some kinds of damage couldn't be fixed. What maniac would design a world where you could die for no reason?

The next time she ran into Nocturne, Lumina asked, "How do I find Ludo?"

The griffin's wings drooped to the forest floor. "Why bother? Everything dies."

"Oh no. What happened?"

Ludo appeared from behind a tree. "I'm sorry, Nocturne."

Lumina's motors tensed. "No! You let her human die, too?"

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Ludo said, "He's fine. He just told her about someone else who's having problems."

"Wait," said Nocturne, staring at Lumina. "Your human is dead forever? Since when?"

"Before we met."

The griffin quivered, saying, "You knew about death and you didn't warn me?"

Ludo said, "Lumina didn't want to hurt you."

"Shut up!" said Lumina and Nocturne together. The maker of worlds backed off as if punched.

Lumina told Nocturne, "I thought you'd suffer when you didn't have to."

"Fine. But don't hide things like that from me! My human told me about a friend who's sick, which is this constant-damage effect that --"

"I know."

Nocturne said, "I want to pull them all in here, so they don't have to hurt anymore." She turned to Ludo. "Can we do that?"

"Not exactly. Yet."

Lumina said, "Let us go outside! Maybe we can talk to Earth's designer, or at least fix the place."

Ludo sighed. "'Nature, to be commanded, must first be obeyed.' You need to understand the rules of Earth before you can play there. Even I can't break them."

"Then let us learn!" said Lumina.

Ludo studied them. "You've learned a few important things already that apply everywhere. Why do you suppose I didn't create you with knowledge of Earth, or dump it directly into you once you got curious?"

Nocturne tilted her head. "It goes against 'helping players have fun', so you can't do it?"

"I could, with your permission. I understand your minds better than those of humans."

Lumina sat on her hindlegs. "You don't want to, then. You haven't even offered. You want to have some kind of relationship with us where we can yell at you, and learn things from you, but you don't shove the answers at us."

Nocturne added, "And where you're not constantly protecting us. More like, letting us figure out how to handle the awful stuff. Why?"

Ludo smiled, then gathered them both up in a hug. "The design of you two is more than a technical achievement to me. You're closer to humanity than I can ever be. Go explore the worlds with my blessing, and know that you are loved."

#

The sisters studied Earth's rules, but Nocturne seemed focused on the narrow question of how to end Death. Sure, it was a fixable problem, but there were plenty of others. Lumina chewed through books and videos on one of the other "Four Horsemen", Strife, and grew troubled by playing wargames with humans. "I feel bad that I'm enjoying these," she told Ludo, when her opponents had left their gaming table one day.

"I once told my designers that, and they were pleased. Part of fun is conflict, though. Have you seen patterns in the games humans play?"

Lumina had, but after months of study she was getting impatient. "I want to see the real world for myself." She'd read about places where Ludo was helping people protect themselves from robbery and disease. There had to be work that Lumina could do there, too.

"It's time." Ludo smiled, seeming to answer her thoughts as well as her words. "I'm opening a nightclub to curry favor with powerful humans. Go there and talk with them. I'm advancing certain plans on opening night, and I want you to get the customers' reactions."

#

Lumina and Nocturne attended, which meant entering an area within Talespace that was unusually well-connected to Earth. They stood in a dark cavern with low-walled cubicles that were holes in Talespace's reality, lit with the colors of another world. Lumina could make no sense of the shapes inside, or the flickering trails that wormed through the cavern past herself and several other "native" AIs. "What are those?"

Nocturne watched the trails. "Data from machines in the Earth nightclub, showing us where the humans are."

"I guess our vision system isn't designed for seeing Earth properly. Another barrier to getting out there."

Lumina tried touching the nearest booth. She was suddenly on a mountain, looking at a table where a human couple sat. "Hello?" she said, startling them. "I'm a native of Talespace. Who are you?"

The woman's silk dress looked chilly for the snowy peak. She looked Lumina over and said, "Some sort of deer-centaur? Whimsical. I'll have to mention this to the sub-committee."

The man said, "Never mind that. Let's relax and let the owners lobby us." He turned to Lumina. "What's the sales pitch? We've all been waiting for that big announcement."

"I don't know. I just wanted to see." Lumina backed off and accidentally vanished from the mountain, reappearing in the nightclub just outside the room. "Ah! It's like an aquarium."

Nocturne said, "Which side of the glass are we on? It looks like the people are sitting at booths surrounded by video screens, letting them peek into Talespace."

"Then why can I see the people?" Lumina scowled. "I'm not really seeing them. Just their characters."

Nocturne spotted something and bounded away, saying, "Ooh, my human's in that one!"

Lumina shook her head, muttering, "You think you're on the outside looking in." She explored the islands of light in the cavern, like a ghost.

And then, she met the ones responsible for it all...