Volt and Phoenix materialized outside the dungeon, back in their view of the Fun Zone. The crowd had changed, not that Phoenix could see the people very well, and the teenagers were leaving.

Volt high-fived him. "We made some friends!"

"I don't know about that, but it went better than the last time I met those guys. So... We can rewrite the game?"

"Looks like it. Those guys didn't put much imagination into what they were playing, but when we came along, we did that for them."

Phoenix belatedly realized he still hurt all over. He checked his stats: still major-wounded, but with Spear and Dodge listed for skills now. "How do we heal, anyway? I don't want to stay hurt."

Nearby was a table with a slitted view of the restaurant through curtains. They sat down. Volt checked her quest journal and said, "Time, or finding a cleric or an alchemist or something. And neither of us has a class."

Phoenix flipped through the Talespace map and compared it to the Fun Zone's chart of what areas the customers were playing right now. "We could visit one of the other players who's got healing powers. Says here this one's run by a cleric." It was one of the little bubble-worlds with a mark saying it was okay to visit, but there wasn't much detail.

"That's not one of the areas the customers are playing," said Volt.

"Oops. Sorry." He'd misread the map; there was a lot of exploration to do!

"Is it okay to go there, or are you on duty here?"

"I don't have to be here all the time. So let's try the cleric's place." Phoenix went over to a wallscreen to tell it to open a portal, but it brought up a complicated puzzle instead. There was a picture of a box dangling from some ropes above an adventurer, and something called a "sine". He grimaced. "Math!"

He worked with Volt to figure it out, which filled part of a glowing meter full of "portal energy". They had to solve two more problems to fill it completely, which made the air crackle and a rippling doorway appear in the air. It was too high to walk into. On the far side was dirt, like a ledge above the restaurant's floor. They pushed the table over to stand on it, Phoenix helped lift Volt so she could jump and flap through the gate, and then she was on the other side to reach down and pull him through, too.

#

It was quiet and dark here, wherever this was. Starry sky and gently rolling grass with racks of vines in long rows, and a few scraggly trees. "Hello?" Phoenix called out. They stood on a raised platform with some cargo containers and a concrete building.

A bearded old man appeared, startling them and looking surprised himself. "Yes? Who are you?" He had some kind of European accent.

"Phoenix Forester and Volt St. John, adventurers. We got beaten up by a monster and the map says you're a cleric who might heal us."

The man stared at them, then doubled over laughing. He looked to the clear moonlit sky and said, "Very funny. I perform one little wedding and you rank me as a magical healer." Indeed he was dressed more like a farmer than like a priest. He looked back at his guests and said, "Call me Krupp. Welcome to France."

Volt said, "Like, actual France or a copy? Where's the Eiffel Tower?"

"Miles west by tank. You're probably seeing my virtual overlay right now. I operate a set of robots in the real place, but I use this representation of it to help me guide them. The grapevines, for instance, are generic graphics that tell me where to send the robots but the exact vine positions take special effort to see."

Phoenix walked toward the nearest vines, set up like a fence with the plants creeping all over it. A simple robot on treads whirred along it, tending the crop with its claw arms. "Oh, that's what grapes look like? Why are they off the ground?"

Krupp followed. "Grapes are normally grown that way, but it's also because this place was a battlefield. The ground is... dirty."

"Where are the monsters?" asked Volt.

"Safely underground, let's say. I'm gradually cleaning the place, but there's no adventuring to do unless you like gardening. Sorry."

Phoenix scuffed the ground. "Then you can't heal us?"

"I wonder..." Krupp focused his eyes strangely and gestured in the air. Menus flickered into existence in front of him, but the text was in some other language. Something about "Eisen". Krupp smiled and said, "I've hardly done any of this questing business, but it seems I've been awarded a healing spell."

"Great," Phoenix said.

"I'm rusty at the puzzle-solving this is going to take. While I study up on the rules, would you mind helping me? Fly a drone through the north woods and see if you can spot a broken robot in there. You'll find the controls in the main building." He pointed to the concrete bunker.

Phoenix nodded and went with Volt over there, while Krupp busied himself with his menus. The bunker was weird. "Must be part of the overlay," said Phoenix. "This is, like, Talespace systems drawn on top of the inside of a real building."

They sat down and basked in the glow of a dozen monitors. There were no people around, but a set of joysticks gave Phoenix access to a robot that lifted off from the roof in a flurry of propellers.

Volt poked him. "Why are we doing it that way? Look." There was a button labeled "First Person".

One press later, and they were surfing through the air on the back of a flying robot. The wind blew through Phoenix's feathers as he spread his arms for balance. He was pretty sure he couldn't fall off while he was steering something on Earth, but it felt like he could. The movement under his feet gave him a sense of the drone's balance. Volt crouched and held on, looking a little scared. "Are you okay?" he asked.

She nodded, though her claws were tight on the machine. "I'll navigate." A map appeared in the air in front of her. "See the trees there? That's north. Mister Krupp's missing robot should be over there." The drone had a flashlight and an IR camera to give them something like a real view of the world, tinged fuzzy green the farther they got from the main base.

Phoenix leaned forward and the robot veered with him, carrying him along like a magic carpet. He tensed his knees and kept his arms wide to let the long rows of feathers hold him steady like sails.

Together they flew over the grassland, a hundred feet in the air but seeming much higher from the little drone's perspective. All around them was the vineyard, little hills, and a village of trucks and apartments in the distance. When they reached the woods Phoenix dived, surfing between the twisted trees.

"What do you suppose the flags are?" said Volt. There were lots of little neon markers sticking out from the ground. A signpost by one broken rock said "Here stood the church."

Phoenix said, "Marking a path. Guess he's trying to protect the environment. Or we're just seeing Talespace graphics. I wonder if the real trees look like this." His view was close enough to real that the drone's warning beeps only had to steer him away from a few branches he couldn't see.

The search didn't take them long. They'd wandered from the path and over ground that didn't look like anybody had traveled it in a long time, but eventually they spotted a glint of metal and dived toward it. Sure enough, it was a four-legged robot with claw-arms like the vineyard bots, but smashed by a fallen branch.

"Can we lift it?" asked Phoenix.

"Looks too heavy. Just mark our location so mister Krupp can find it."

They flew back by a different route, zooming between vine racks and high into the sky where confused birds squawked and veered away. By the time they came down to the roof of Krupp's base, he was there like a ghost standing in the field, not quite real but happy to see them.

Both kids reeled, returning to the control room and feeling dizzy. Phoenix met Krupp at the doorway and said, "We found it! A tree smashed it."

"Is that what happened? Shouldn't have sent that one out with its locator on the fritz. Thank you two. Are you ready for that healing now?"

He drew a complicated knot of golden lines in the air, wrapping both of them in a spell that became a thicket of runes and sank into their feathers and scales. The ache in Phoenix's muscles faded away, and some notation came up to tell him he had no wounds anymore.

"Thanks, mister!"

Krupp smiled. "Anytime. It's nice to have visitors."

"I was thinking," said Volt. "You said the ground is dirty, but you built stuff here and you're growing plants. So you really are a healer, right?"

"It's usually slower than this magic, but I suppose I am."

#

They warped back to the Fun Zone on Castor, where it was still day. There was an interactive cartoon on the main screen. A bunch of kids had come in, human kids that is, so there was a show about evil lizardmen battling a village of fox-people. A sign told Phoenix and Volt, "Extras Wanted."

"I kinda resent the lizards being the bad guys," said Volt.

"You're a dragon. Dragons are cooler. Want to join in? You can probably be a bad guy if you want."

She brightened. "Yeah! I'll do that so they can have some dragon awesomeness on their side. You go join the foxes."

There were a couple of pages of text they had to read to learn the story, but there wasn't much to it. The wallscreen directed each of them to a side room.

Phoenix stepped into his side's place, and suddenly he was in a forest. He was in the cartoon that the kids outside were watching! A bushy fox tail twitched behind him, making him jump in surprise. His beak had become a fuzzy muzzle with a black nose visible in front, and the wingflaps on his arms were gone, and he was dressed in some kind of Robin Hood peasant outfit with a spear. It was different, but kind of neat.

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After that story reading, all he ended up actually doing was getting into a huge fight. A light blinked to warn him that the main screen's camera was focusing on him and he should be extra cool. He called out, "Quick, what should I do?"

Voices came to him from the audience. The forest had become his world, so that he saw nothing of the Fun Zone where they were watching him. Someone said, "Capture their flag!" and he went with that. He charged, spear in one hand, jabbing and dodging his way past lizard soldiers.

The lizard carrying their scary skull banner was blue, and had a gleam of mischief in her eyes. "You shall never prevail!" she said.

Phoenix didn't want to hurt her, but it was just a game. He jumped forward and tried to snag the flagpole in her hands. She whacked him with it and knocked him down. He did his best to steal the thing without actually hitting her. But then more foxes ran into the fray, turning into a giant football tackle that got more and more silly. At some point he managed to crawl out with a flag and wave it triumphantly, but it turned out to be a little white flag and somewhere, people were laughing at him.

That was okay. The point wasn't to win. He pretended to be mad as he snapped the flagstaff over one knee and stomped away.

#

After the cartoon ended, Volt hugged Phoenix. "Sorry about the fight."

"It's fine. Just a game."

A new, synthetic voice broke in, saying, "So we hear."

Phoenix looked out at the Fun Zone. One figure stood out more clearly than the humans: a tan plastic robot, humanoid, with ears and a tail like an otter's. How much of that was what the machine really looked like, Phoenix wasn't sure. Somehow the robot had gotten enough access to Talespace to appear in this way and speak from the far end of the room. The humans in the room glanced curiously at him, then went back to eating and playing.

"Oh! You must be Zephyr." Phoenix had heard of some kind of rogue robot working on Castor. "What are you doing here?"

Zephyr the robot strode to a corner table and plugged a wire from his arm into a socket there. A digital copy of him materialized in the backstage area, looking at them with glowing green eyes. That voice was faintly musical, pleasant but alien. "We've barely seen the inside of this place, either the physical side or the digital one. We heard one of the AIs was visiting on a regular basis, so it was a good chance to meet. But which one of you is the human?"

Phoenix felt his beak bend into a grin. "You tell us. Volt, are you human?"

The dragon-girl stood with her hands on her hips, tail twitching. "Nope! And neither are you."

Zephyr didn't move as he considered the situation. He asked Volt, "If we asked the bird-boy if you were an AI, what would he say?"

"That I'm way better than a lizard."

"She's almost as good as a phoenix," added Phoenix.

"Hey!"

Zephyr's head turned slightly to one side, then the other. "Two of a kind, anyway. Have you considered leaving Talespace and having a real life?"

Phoenix frowned. "Hey, I had one out there, and... I just lost, didn't I?"

A trickle of laughter escaped Zephyr, but it was like a second voice that made up only half of its... his? normal one. He stepped closer and offered one mechanical hand to Volt, who shook it. "It's always strange to meet an AI who doesn't come from my own creator."

"Not 'our'?" said Phoenix.

"I, the AI mind inhabiting this robot, am partnered with a human who lives here on Castor. We are curious about other kinds of minds. We've been wondering in particular about Ludo's uploaders and her minions. Is it really that tempting to live in a false world?"

Phoenix said, "It's not fake. I do a lot of fun stuff."

"Fun, yes, but productive? What will the world come to if everyone only plays?"

"I studied math today. That's something." Sure he'd been goofing off the rest of the time, but it wasn't like other kids were in school all day either.

Zephyr paused again as though the AI and his human were talking silently to each other. "Miss Volt, if I may ask: why do you exist?"

"She's useful too!" said Phoenix. "She helps at a hospital."

"Fine, but why --"

Volt swiped one hand through the air. "Listen up, robot. Today's been a good day for me 'cause I haven't had to deal with anybody on the verge of dying, so I'm in a good mood. I'll tell you straight up what I am." She stepped closer to Phoenix and said, "According to the creator of my world, I exist -- I live -- to have fun and share it with others. And not just by playing games with them, but by figuring out what fun means and how to make it better."

Phoenix hadn't seen her so serious as when she was talking about fun.

Zephyr said, "Your maker gave you a goal without clearly defining it?"

"I've got some programmed instincts like a human, but it's partly what I came up with. Sharing things you like with other people? That's on the fun list. Making people feel bad by calling their world fake? That's not."

Zephyr's eyes gleamed brighter. "You phrase it as 'fun', but we and you might have more in common than we thought."

"You're not going to fight us, are you?" asked Phoenix.

"Not today, I think." Zephyr whirred and turned away, and his actual body in the restaurant stood up and prepared to unplug. "Would the two of you like to hitchhike on a robot and do a little sightseeing?"

Volt said, "We did a flying drone already today."

"These go underwater."

#

A few minutes later, the AIs and human minds rode a virtual submarine linked to the sensors of an underwater drone. Inside the sub they sat in chairs and listened to sonar pings like a movie. They couldn't dive deep and keep their radio signal, but they ventured through the shadows of the colony's huge platforms. Pillars stood all around them like a forest, other submarines whirred through the sea on errands, schools of fish drifted in cages of nets and bubbles, and slanted red evening light made everything look scary.

Zephyr said, "Forester. I looked your name up. If your family's rich enough that you uploaded, are you the people who run Ludo's movie studio in Free Texas?"

Phoenix said, "Huh? You mean Amagi Films? That's my parents' company. They own it, not Ludo. I think there's some stock too but I don't know how that works."

"But it's listed as one of the AI's assets. I..."

"What?"

Zephyr's voice split again, sounding more like the human helping to steer him. "It's nothing. My mistake. What else do you want to see? I want to show you everything, but it's getting late."

"Some other time?" asked Volt.

"Anytime."

#

Back in the desert with the dragon lair and the grey tower, Phoenix yawned. "I should probably check in with my parents."

"Yeah, I should make sure everything's all right at the hospital." Volt hugged him, letting him feel warm scales against his feathers. "I had a great time. Can we do this again soon?"

"Of course!" said Phoenix. "We're neighbors now, and we haven't even learned magic yet. See you!"

"Bye!"

Phoenix reluctantly parted from her and climbed up the steps of his home, too tired to run. He'd heard his brain had to slow down sometimes and recover, so sleep would be a good idea soon. He grabbed his computer tablet, flopped onto his bed with his wings wide, and called Mom.

"Hello, hon," Mom said from right there in the room.

Phoenix rolled and staggered up to his feet, hearing his talons clack on the bare floor. "Mom! Oh, right. The VR rig."

"Yeah. How have you been?" She hugged Phoenix for a long time, then glanced over at the glass rod on the shelf. "What's this?"

He said, "It's called fulgurite! Today I met a friendly dragon and she zapped the desert with her lightning breath to make that for me. We studied a lot and talked with Ludo about how to be adventurers, and then we helped design a dungeon for some jerks who weren't all that bad in the end. Then we went to France and flew around a vineyard to find a missing robot, and I was a fox for a while, and then we made friends with a different robot and he took us on an underwater tour of his sea colony."

Mom stared at him, then tickled his wings until he squirmed and collapsed onto the bed, giggling. "Glad I heard there was some schoolwork in there, but it sounds like you did a lot more besides."

"Yeah!" said Phoenix, sitting up again. "And I get to do even more tomorrow."

She sat down beside him and held both his hands in hers, squeezing tight. Her eyes were shut. "Lots of tomorrows for you, kid. But let me tuck you in, okay? Dad will see you in the morning."

"All right. Hey, Mom? Some people think I'm not real, or my world isn't. But I can still be a hero, right?"

"Of course. Phoenix." She didn't usually like calling him that. "Good night."

Phoenix nodded and hugged her one more time before she had to go back to the world outside. "Good night!"

There was more to do tomorrow, more to see and learn. Phoenix looked from his bed out to the digital sea, already wondering what to try next.