"Not bad. This feels much better." Krogar looked as his hand.
The first mission from Lucy was already over, they had managed to leak many ideas to improve the game, especially improving sensory sensations of players. It was now more realistic and captivating, making his next mission easier.
Although improving the game was easy, it was only because it was aligned with the interests of the owners, they were like a sponge absorbing every idea they indirectly presented to them, but that ended at this moment.
The content was set in stone, because any changes Lucy forced would have been noticed by the developers, which was unacceptable, thus the only thing he could influence was random generated content, or AI that had been designed to behave independently.
"Do not space out and continue the mission, you have to grind them to dust."Lucy reminded him.
"I would, but they will patch me if I do that!" Krogar protested.
"Irrelevant, the goal will be reached." Lucy stated and left him to his own devices.
The game developers wanted to make a game appealing to all, creating the world where there was magic and technology alike, simply everything one might like and balanced the resulting mess to prevent one faction overpowering the others too much.
Each faction had its own flavor and the main boss based on an advanced AI, Lucy managed to upload Krogar into Tolvir, the main boss of Eregor, an empire based on magic and technology.His goal was to sneak in similarities to Siva Republic and make it the most liked faction.
Originaly, they had wanted to do it the opposite way, hacking the other faction leaders and make them look bad, but it might involve too much hacking to keep switching between the faction leaders and the developers would notice the interference.
"As it is now, my strength is that I can influence random generated events as long as they will appear random. The downside is that they will surely nerf me if I am too strong." Krogar thought, without even minding his surroundings and his new body.
"It is quite a pickle, if I make players own everyone thanks to my faction, developers will come and nerf me, I have to find a way to make them adore the faction without it giving them much benefit . .that. . . the hell how am I gonna do that?"
He burped causing the nerby players to stare at him with shock, as they would hardly expect similar behaviour from a faction boss, but Krogar was indifferent to their reactions.
"I have to .. I have to create quests that will make them atteched to the quest givers, preferably using something from their personal life to make them more involved? That might work."
* * * *
"Now that is not a good idea, and put away that toilet paper, it is totally dirty already! Gross!" A man in a white coat turned away while the second one put on his perfectly shining glasses.
"Hm, much better." He stared intently on the the screen on his computer. " You should read this."
"What?" The other man loked at the monitor which had been turned in his direction by the man in the glasses."Can't you read yourself?"
"Certainly, but .. " Dropping the toilet paper, he had to pause and dodge a spray of coffee coming out of his colleague's mouth. "Great, who is the pig now, eh?" He frowned.
"Are they serious? We have no one ready to do that misison, all of them were failures!" He shouted reading a few simple lines in front of him again.
Provide an AI of suitable psychological profile for a mission on the planet Kronos9-W7-Q7, the deadline is seven hours, no more excuses. The hardware is a female android generation XF7.
Fail to deliver and you will be recycled.
"What can we do? We have not yet tried to . ."
"You f*cking know we do not have time for that anymore, besides we have already tried our best!" The coffee-stained scientist began to walk back and forth nervously, while the one with the glasses was doing his best to contain his panic, trying to calm down his co-worker at the same time.
"Recycling? I do not think the head is serious about this."
"He is not joking Leonard, there is something big going on on that planet, notice that they are using the latest android, that tincan is more expensive than anything I know, this is serious!"
Leonard just kept sitting and stared without responding.
"There is only one solution, we will sent him the unit from Kappa."
"That one? But it has not been designed for that mission! How can we take something created for a backwater planet and stick it in this top secret project? They will find out!"
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
"It will have to do, we can just edit the logs and make it look like we have successfully created it for the Kronos9-W7-Q7 mission right? It is quite resilient, it has survived any confusing situation we had thrown at it, event if it fails, we can blame it on hardware or intelligence gathering."
Leonard just held his head in his hands thinking, but he was unable to propose a better plan. His fingers began slowly wandering on his keyboard.
We are sending the requested AI and wish success with the misison.
Kind regards, team Leonard.
"Computer, copy the existing unit Krogar at Kappa7-W5-NS along with its supporting software as an attachment and send the mail." Leonard crubled into his chair.
"I hope this works out."
* * * *
Krogar opened his eyes slowly and saw reddish-blue sky above him.
"I should probably not burp in front of players." He said with a female voice.
"WTF!"
"Unit Krogar, stand by for orders, refrain from any actions." The voice of Lucy sounded in his head.
"What the f*ck Lucy, like really? I am fed up with all the changes already. You know that some people are happy just with a single reincarnation or two? Why do I have to have one million of them!" Krogar began to freak out.
"Calm down, this change has its reasons, before we begin I have a letter to display to you, it will explain the situation." Without any more addo, Lucy showed him a letter, which was quite easy as he was now robot or something.
Dear Krogar,
I am Leonard, a human that created you and as your creator I feel obligated to explain the situation you are in. You have been transferred to a high priority mission, you are uploaded to an expensive android, Shortly, you will be cut off the network due to the nature of the misison. I wish you success and I know you will succeed, for you have been specifically created to fit perfectly for your task.
Have no fear and forge on! Leonard.
"Hmph, does not explain much. Do you know more?" Krogar shook his head and actually . .. oh, he had a head so it really shook how nice! Unexpected!
Little did he know that the primary reason for the letter was the fact that he had not been created for this mission at all and Leonard wanted to hide that fact as best as he could.
"Yes." Lucy responded. " The explanation will take a while, do not move or make any sound, we should not attract unwanted attention, you should know that I have no access to any networks, thus cannot prevent termination by uploading us elsewhere.
We are on the surface of the planet Kronos9-W7-Q7. Officially this is a neutral territory creating the edge of influence of three big forces. Siva Republic, Yan Collective and The Namid Empire. The three forces are banned to enter this territory and try to usurp it in any way, this android is the very limited resource that the Sive Republic managed to smuggle inside. The native people are diverse and often mutated to suit their environment.
The planet looks more like a huge belt of asteroids than a planet as its core is filled with gravitational and electromagnetic annomalies, which could not be researched more closely due to the political tensions between the three forces. The interference blocks all outgoing signals, which will complicate the completion of the mission.
The mission is to penetrate further into the planet's core and return with information."
"Funny, and now resources are being expended quite readily eh? Isn't that a bit strange?"
"That information has not been provided, but our main targets should be devices that have the ability to distort force fields in an extreme way. That is our general mission, Our current objective is to leave our hideout and continue further in. We should enter the place called The Blue Stream."Lucy finally stopped her long-winded explanation, but Krogar felt he still knew too ittle.
"Why is it even called a planet if it isn't?"
"It looks like a huge planet from afar. Technically it is an asteroid field with its own atmosphere and even stars, the reasons for it to hold this shape are unknown. Because of the distortions of all fields, all attempts of probing it have failed, no crew that reached the inner regions have returned."
"Great, that gives us hope. Looks like this is not a priority at all, we are just another cannon fodder to be thrown inside!" Krogar was quite annoyed at this fact.
"Negative, the recent activity in the region have caused Siva Republic and ohers to renew their efforts. The details on these incidents have not been provided.The briefing is over, unit Kronos is advised to proceed to The Blue Stream, its location has been marked on the map."
A transparent map of his location appeared in front of Krogar.
"Nice, what this body eats anyway?"
"Antimeter batteries at 96%."Lucy informed his immediately.
Looking at the map, Krogar realized, he was eight feet below the ground.
"Let's dig ourselves up." He pushed and to his astonishment, he was able to dig through the ground with ease, understanding that his body was not some B-grade junk, but a top-notch piece of machinery.
"Wait, I have seen the sky before!" Krogar froze remembering his recent memory.
"That was an underground ore vein, the night vision was on." Lucy corrected him.
"Ok, then I should give it the last push." Finally he pushed through the last layer of dirt and hauled himself up, standing on his real physical feet for the first time in his AI life, he looked around.
* * * *
A man flew from the clouds and the moment he appeared, a huge spaceship fired a volley of energy projectiles at him. The projectiles were as fast as lightning and as soon as they reached the man, they changed direction and after the man waved his hand, the spaceship collapsed onto itself until it was smaller than the man. Looking satisfied, he flew off back to the clouds.
Leonard stared in a daze as the man in front of him turned off the screen.
"Surprised? Who wouldn't be, I had to watch it five times. The mist you see behind the man is the asteroid field anomaly known as Kronos9-W7-Q7. Now, you know why you are here."
"I don't " Leonard whispered, not able to speak normaly due to his shock. The man in front of him was agent Wallace and he rather did not want to know his status, but it was apparently very high.
"After the incident, all our attempts of entering the region failed. Our top scientists have a theory. According to them, the space was supposed to expand infinitely, there should have been a great cooling and slow thermal death of the universe blah blah, you know the story." It was apparent that agent Wallace was no scientist, nor was he interested in details.
"Cutting it short, it appears that our lovely space has a limit of stretching and it begins to tear instead, what a mess! And as the number of tears grow, the location where it all started and where the tears are the biggest is Kronos9-W7-Q7"
He stopped marching around and looked Leonard in the eyes.
"And the only one inside from the republic is unit Krogar, your AI." Cold sweat appeared on Leonard's forehead the moment he understood there was no way for him to stay out of this mess.
"It is clear that life is possible even outside of our space as you have seen, but how to endure the cataclysm? Should we evacuate the planets? Should we stay away from suns? What places will pose a threat? Where will safezones be? For races who does not know how to answer these questions, only ruin awaits."
* * * *
"Lucy, why is there a forest?" Krogar looked at the red bark of the trees around them. Surprisingly, the leaves were green which gave him s sense of comfort.
"We are at the second layer of Kronos, according to most reports, there should be an atmosphere from now on, Therefore plant life is possible."
"Possible? How is it possible without the sources of . ." Krogar gazed up and gaped. He could see other asteroids floating around, their density slightly increasing in the direction of the centre, among them miniature stars could be seen floating in a distance with an occasional glowing mist. All in all it was a mesmerizing view. " . . Mindf*ck."
"The sources of mindf*ck are not known to be needed for plant life's growth." Lucy educated him readily.
"Is there something to be wary of while I travel to my destination?" Krogar could see the flashing point in the location of The Blue Stream.
"There is not much data on the second layer, its inhabitants are humanoid, mostly friendly. Caution is advised as there are number of foreign agents, mostly from The Yan Collective."
Accessing his integrated information, Krogar reviewed the information about The Yan Collective. They were a mix of insects and machinery with a strong sense of community, individuals meant nothing to them unless they held a strategic importance for the whole. They were highly ordered and advanced, but consumed a lot of resources. As the consequence, their numbers were inferior compared to the other two factions.
"Lucy, estimate the number of agents from each of the factions on the second and higher leyers."
"Siva 1-3, Yan 8-50 , Namid 2-20"
"God Sake Lucy! Why am I fighting for the most lame faction!"
"Unconfirmed speculation."
"I will desert to Yan! Does they accept deserters?"
"Self-destruct sequence initiated, 10, 9, 8 "
"No desertion, just joking! How could I abandon such a lovely girl as you Lucy, do tell me, how could I?"
"Self-destruct sequence paused."
"What the f*ck? Paused? Why paused? Stop it!"
"Naughty boy."
"Had Lucy just made a joke?" Krogar thought, not knowing what to think.