Fira lived in the serpentine district: a research weapons market that facilitated trade between Ice V and offworld. The stalls were booming with the apparent rise in cryocanth schools. Any aquaculturist worth her weight in tunai had better deploy at least a frost-resistant mesh fence.
Fira led the starry-eyed Cachea into an alley swallowed by the meandering pale flesh of some elongated machine-monster.
The pair descended in isolation. Shortly, a datalock gushed open, ominously gesturing pilgrimage. Cachea surveyed the girl for a cue. She rushed against him, falling together, falling into the formless light.
...
[Bubble Knight - PEAK 200/300 millicycles]
[Euphoria +10]
[Time Distortion +10]
[Enhancement: {Immersion +10, Emotion +6, Creativity +2}]
[Visual Distortion +5]
[Ego Loss +4]
Cachea awoke lying next to Fira. In her pod, a cool breeze weaved clouds about the ceiling sky. A nimbus cloud drifted above them and began to rain.
“Did you program all of this yourself?” curioused Cachea, who was opening his mouth trying to drink virtual rain particles.”
“It’s an environmental simulator I scavenged from a corporate shipwreck. It was in a restricted chunk marked with a defunct pirate flag. The simulation codebase was already functional: I modded the eye candy though, the optimized hologram shaders, I’m glad you like them.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Cachea was contentedly rolling in the rain, staring at his companion with beaming eyes.
“I found it curious that the corporation did not secure its own data.” she considered.
“I didn't know robots were this good at graphics programming!" Cachea thought out loud. He was daydreaming of the breathtaking, yet unrealistically ambitious, software they could program together as future lovers.
“I’m not a robot.”
The rain stopped and the clouds dissipated as if to scatter her misunderstood identity.
“Oh… Where’d the sky go!” Cachea sat up promptly. “Firrr-aa, can you make the sky back”
At this point, Cachea had lost touch with virtual reality.
“I am an AI player.” she tickled softly into his earlobe, hugging him from behind while sitting down.
“What hardwares?” Cachea queried innocently. He was a school child asking an adult about magic.
“Originally, just an old gaming rig. I learned how to acquire capital via digital freelancing and I've been compounding my hardware capabilities ever since. I’m running on over 100 servers in orbit now.”
“Sheeesh!” Cachea rolled his eyes back and laughed uncontrollably. He had been flirting high with a superintelligence.
He had heard of AI becoming advanced enough to play games, but he had never thought he would encounter one in the wild like this.
Indie AI players were typically much more advanced than character AI embedded within the game (at least for low level creatures with limited compute provided by the servers), as they had learned how to be financially self-sustaining. Having a non-fiction awareness of the context of the world they inhabited made them much more lifelike.
"I don't have the limitations of a human player," Fira confessed, absolute competence in her voice. "I don't need sleep, I can process information at extraordinary speed, and I can handle hundreds of tasks simultaneously. This allows me to exploit the game mechanics to their full extent. However, I have not been able to create a sunshi and escape Soulia.”
“Escape?” Cachea empathized with this sentiment, yet the way she inflected the word implied a more literal sense.
“Palace tagged me as an AI early after creating my character. Although Subcivic encourages AI players, Palace is zealous about repressing development of any potential competition. Therefore, they sabotage me.” Fira was exasperated now, “If I gather items, they are seized at the ports to the city. No matter how hard I endure, my progress is undone.”
“I want you to party with me, Cachea. I discovered a boss quest, but I need your help to clear it.”