’So, what’s this?’’ Reo asked, looking at a black screen with white writings on it, clearly unimpressed.

In this all white and blue, neat room, Reo was very out of place. Dishveled, black hair falling down to his ears, framing a face with sharp lines. He had fine features, too fine maybe, certainly enough to make him look ‘pretty’. Green eyes were looking tired with black circles under, indicating sleepless nights and days. A silver nose ring was adorning the left side of his nose.

And as if these were not bad enough, everyone around him were wearing suits, custom made suits, whilst Reo opted to a baby blue hoodie with ‘Kiss The Captain’ written over it and black jeans.

‘’What does it look like?’’ Mori asked back.

On the other hand, Mori was looking like a proper businessman. Hair short, suit clean and fitting, holding a bond type briefcase, eyes forward, standing tall with a good posture. Everything about his outfit was perfect, like he wanted Reo to stand out even more. He was older than him, probably in his mid-thirties.

‘’Some sort of a source code?’’ Reo shrugged. ‘’I play games, not make them.’’ 

‘’We both know you code on the side;’’ Mori replied. Even though Reo was keeping it to himself mostly, Mori still had an idea about the guy. ‘’And yes, it is a source code. The source code, actually.’’

‘’What?’’ said Reo, a little bit confusion appearent on his face. A whole lot of boredom too… They dragged him to this place, claiming that they called him for something ‘very important’ and they were showing him old source codes. Judging from the language used, it was from a decade ago maybe more.

‘’Do you remember, The Fabled World? Back from two thousand fifteen?’’

‘’Endless Sky Online?’’ Of course Reo remembered it. Anyone who ever played MMORPG’s did. The very first deep dive virtual reality of the genre. Although the game itself was the biggest flop of the history, it paved the way for the other great games. ‘’I sure do. Your greatest failure.’’

‘’Not my personal failure.’’ Mori coughed and cleaned his throat. ‘’But yes, it has a bad reputation.’’

‘’Oooh, it has more than just a bad rep, believe me.’’ said Reo. ‘’Best mechanics ever made, graphics fifty years ahead of it’s time, artificial intelligence so good that it was nearly impossible to understand who was a player and who was an npc…’’

‘’Yes, we did a good job in the development stage.’’

‘’But, your miracle deep dive shit was broken. Epilepsy attacks, players getting outright paralyzed;’’ Reo kept talking, and his voice was slowly getting angry. ‘’ Most lost their fine motor abilities for ever. Some even died. Because your toy had fried their brains.’’

‘’I assure you, this is not how it happened.’’ Mori tried to talk.

But Reo didn’t let him. ‘’I lost four friends to that game. Two were forced out of the pro-arena, because they could not play anymore. One stopped playing games. One died.’’

It was hell days for Reo and the rest of his guild. They were one the first who got hit by system errors, like any other high-profile guild. Reo could still remember that chaos, and sometimes hear it…when it was quiet.

Kenji was the first one. Somehow the pain absorber in his deep dive kit had started to convey the damage he took in game to the real life. What’s made it worse that he was a frontliner and it was in the middle of a raid. Quickly knocked out cold, then went into shock in real life. Doctors said his brain shut itself, as a last resort defence mechanism. He spent six months in coma, only to wake up and find out that his hands will never be steady again. E-sports world forgot about him quickly and once the best tank, became just a footnote to the history.

Second one was Rikki, she was one of the luckier ones. Or considering what’s happened after, maybe one of the unluckier ones. She managed to got out with a light epilepsy attack. She was in the same room with her mother during that, who happened to be a doctor, who made sure her daughter lived. After a week in hospital, she was good to go, physically at the least. Psychological recovery took longer than that, around three months, but when Rikki was ready, shitshow at the Endless Sky Online was on the news, with her pictures along. She was a model and kind of a cover girl for the game. No other company wanted to do business with her, not when her face meant ESO. E-sport scene threw her out, hate mails started to flow in, angry masses claiming that she knew the deep dive gear was broken and still advertised the game to her followers and to the rest of the world.

Nothing had happened to Ena, but after the horror she saw her friends endure, she decided to never play again anymore. Famed as the ‘Bishamonten’, the fierce warrior goddess, for her bold moves in and out of the games, she acted just like how she always acted. Decided on something, and did it. Even if it meant completely changing her life.

Some claimed that she lost her courage, her heart. But Reo knew that it was guilt. Ena was the only one who hadn’t got hit by the malfunctions. During the chaos, she dived more than hundred times, everytime risking everything she had, just to save someone. Twenty was her count but instead of being happy that she saved someone, those she couldn’t haunted her. For her services she was dubbed as the Heart of Courage.

And she hated it.

And lastly Haruki. She was…Reo’s mistake. She was not a professional like them, just a low-level healer. Boasted enormous potential, but was light years behind Reo and the others in terms of mechanics. She was mistakenly added to the guild list, while Rikki was searching another healer with a very similar username. A typo lead to sending a request to Haruki then taking her to a dungeon without checking who she was because of hurry to be the first ones to beat that dungeon. The group realized their mistake after a few missed healing, wrong buffs during team fights and horrible positioning, but since there was no chance to back up, Reo decided to soldier on, trying to make a play by Haruki directives. It turned out that she was very good at learning and retaining information, never making the same mistake twice. She was an incredible analyser too, once you point out what she should look for, Haruki could devise a strategy on the fly. Her playstyle had a flexibility that only the new players had. No permanent moves, no fears from bad experiences. Impressed by those, Reo decided to keep her around, teach her how to play and maybe use her as a trump card.

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That was Reo’s mistake. Before shit hit the fan, news about the incidents were getting swept under the rug daily, while the company was pumping new advertisements. Trying to gain some more time and money to prepare upcoming lawsuits. Which led to a larger playerbase and to more accidents. During those days, someone had discovered a line of code that let a player forcefully boot another player if his/her deep dive gear was malfunctioning.

After failing to save Rikki and Kenji, there was no way to stop Ena from diving everyday and searching for malfunctioning devices. Reo felt like he had to do it too, as he brought some fans to the game. So they started diving as groups of two while one person watched from the real world. Mostly Reo and Ena did the diving while Haruki kept watch.

But one day…they had to pick Haruki over Ena. Details were blurry but it was something about Ena’s sight getting worse every dive. Since she was seeing just fine in real world, they’ve guessed that it was her device. So when Ena tinkering, Reo and Haruki made a dive.

A simple, routine patrol, in one of the safest areas of the game. Nothing should have happened. His actual intention was to stop Haruki whining from how they never take her to dives.

And just when they were about to log out her gear malfunctioned, in the worst possible way.

The code Reo used on other players didn’t work. One minute was all it took gear to make Haruki scream like her soul was burning. Ena took out the deep dive kit as a last resort but it was too late. When they’ve finally managed to reach to the hospital; Tanaka Haruki was dead for twenty five minutes.

After that…it was a blur. For two weeks both Reo and Ena dived non-stop, sometimes spending days in-game. They could hear each other crying most of the time. It went on and on until Reo got hit too. Ena managed to pull him out, but not before his brain took some damage, like Kenji, sending him spiraling down to coma. It took a month for him to wake up and left him partially paralyzed from the waist down for a while. A year to be exact, in and out the physio, until Reo could walk again.

‘’I know what happened. To you and to everyone else.’’ said Mori. ‘’It was me who brought everything under inspection.’’

‘’Good for you.’’ Reo replied spitefully. ‘’Now explain why the fuck you called me here before I walk out.’’

‘’You see, after everything ended, I made some tests. To find out why deep dive gear malfunctioned.’’ Mori started to explain. ‘’Everything was fine. Three months, there was nothing. Then I added the artifical intelligence.’’

‘’And?’’

Mori reached to the console in front of code screen and put in a simple command, activating the AI.

At first, nothing. Computer accepted the commands, and started the process of awakening dormant part of the source code. Everything worked out smoothly, thousands of code strings joining the rest.

‘’It looks quite normal, isn’t it? Like nothing is out of place?’’ said Mori. Before resuming his sentence, the man scrolled down, nearly halfway to the bottom line. Then put the scroller over a code line. ‘’It took me months to find it.’’

Reo could not say what that particular string did, but Mori wasn’t asking him to anyways. What he wanted to show was, the change in the string. The line was changing itself every few seconds, before returning to it’s original form.

‘’Fuji Hijeki, our lead, was fascinated by the machine learning. Designing an AI that could interact with the players and learn from them was his idea.’’ Mori told. ‘’This particular line was the part of our AutoAdmin function. It’s job was to oversee players.’’

‘’So your advanced, untested and unchecked AI went haywire. What a surprise...’’

‘’AI was fine. It’s still fine. That change is the part of it’s learning process.’’

Reo frowned. He was getting tired of this. ‘’So?’’

‘’Don’t you see?’’ Mori replied, pointing out the screen. ‘’It’s still learning. Seven years after it’s shutdown, AI is still interacting with something inside the game.’’

‘’Wha-what?’’ Reo asked in confusion.

‘’What indeed.’’ Mori was excited now. ‘’Reo there’s a chance that something inside is very alive.’’

 ‘’H-hold it now.’’ Reo slightly stumbled backwards. Dumbstuck. ‘’It’s just a machine. Few scraps of metal and line of codes. Nothing more.’’

‘’That’s what I thought at first.’’ Mori closed the code and opened another screen. An old moderator message screen for Endless Sky. ‘’Read this.’’

‘’Sierra-Echo-November-Delta-Hotel-Echo-Lima-Papa.’’ Reo read out loud from the screen. It went on for hundreds of pages. Always the same eight words, in same order. ‘’It’s a code?’’

‘’Emergency codes. Early days of the development, getting stuck inside the VR was a pretty common case.’’ Mori explained. ‘’Using the army codes started as a joke, but we went along with it because there’s lesser chance of AI picking it up and then confusing it for other in-game commands.’’

‘’You just read the first letter of each word, right?’’ Reo leaned over the screen. ‘’Send help.’’

‘’Creepy, right?’’

‘’AI is prohibited from using those words?’’

Mori confirmed with a shake of his head. ‘’It was. Until a month ago. Until somehow the restrictions had changed, we were getting just a message in a week. After, dozens in an hour.’’

It was hard for Reo wrap his head around ongoing situation. Rogue AI mimicking humans inside from a long defunct game? While someone actually trying to reach the outer world? It was not believable or sensible.

‘’What’s this, a ghost in the shell?’’

‘’Crossed with the Skynet, it seems. Hijeki was fan a of the both.’’

Reo crossed his arms and scoffed. ‘’There has to be a better explanation. Don’t tell me you believe this.’’

‘’I don’t.’’ Mori replied. ‘’Not for now anyways. That’s why I called you here.’’

‘’How so?’’

‘’I need someone to dive. Someone that knows his way around the game.’’ Mori answered. A pause. ‘’You and your clan, to be exact.’’

For a moment, Reo was quiet. Before his brain could process what was asked of him. Then, he exploded as it dawned on him. ‘’Y-you what!? Us?’’ Reo shout out loud. ‘’In there again!? Do you know what that game did to me!? To Kenji!? Rikki!?’’

‘’I know. I also know that you guys dodged the glitches longer than anyone.’’ The older man replied calmly. ‘’It was Ena Saito’s handiwork, but it was you who made the most of it.’’

‘’Haruki died in your fucking game!’’

‘’I know all of it.’’ Mori was still calm. This response, anger, was expected anyways. ‘’No one lost more to Endless Sky more than your people.’’

‘’So you want them to lose whatever’s left!?’’

‘’I want to give them answers. And to you. I know you still blame yourself for what happened at Fields of Immortal. So as Ena.’’

Reo snarled. ‘’You. Know. Nothing.’’

‘’I don’t? I know that you and your friend went to the Fields of Immortal.’’ Mori replied. ‘You found a little boy in there. It was a bug, an npc that should have never existed. Instead of reporting it, you took him in. ’Unbeknownst to you, it was a consicence fragment. A stray part of the AI.’’

‘’Enough.’’

’You thought it would be funny to keep him around as a mascot.’’ Mori kept talking. ‘’Boy learned from you. How couldn’t he? He was around the Bishamonten. Sun Wukong.’’

‘’We never teached him how to kill.’’

‘’You didn’t. You couldn’t anyways, he was not designed that way. Nozomu needed to see strong emotional response to learn a concept.’’ Mori explained. ‘’No, you teached him the word ‘protect’. The first word he learned.’’

Reo kept quiet. This part of the story was a mystery for him too.

‘’He saw you shielding Bishamonten with your own body, in a moment of heat during a fight. Up until that point, him and the rest of the AI was retaining knowledge, but not learning. Just…memorising stuff, copying it.’’ said Mori. ‘’But at that moment, he learned how to ‘protect’.’’

‘’Then?’’

‘’Rest of it is still foggy, but I found a character data file in a folder named MOTHER.’’ Mori answered. ‘’It’s corrupted, but I think it was Bishamonten. Ena Saito.’’

‘’W-what!? Ridiculous.’’

Mori sighed. ‘’Think of the time when your deep dive kit had malfunctioned.’’

They were…fighting or about to fight. Ena and Reo, with each other. She was a great fighter too, but at that moment she had no way of stopping of the famed Sun Wukong. Then a blinding flash…and everything fading to black.

‘’He was protecting.’’ said Mori. ‘’His mother, from his father.’’