Out beyond the village gates, past the merchant tents, far into the hills overlooking the fields, Mac quietly watched the flickering lights of the village and its Academy. He stood with his hands in his pockets beneath his cloak and thought about how everything had gotten so messed up.
The stars overhead shown brightly in the clear sky while the happy noises of the peaceful village drifted up to meet him from below. For all intents and purposes, life was good. Only, Mac knew that this was only a facade, the last waning moments of peace this land would see for who knows how long.
“Ollie,” Mac muttered seemingly to himself.
“Yes, Mac?” came the slightly pompous reply of the Futures AI, making it sound like it was doing Mac a favor by responding.
“You know, I’m really not a fan of this new ‘high-and-mighty’ Sky Net vibe you’re giving off.” Mac stated half-jokingly, obviously not enjoying the new dynamic of being at the mercy of the clearly unstable AI.
“Oh, really? I missed the part where that’s my problem.” Ollie said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “Did you call me up just to talk or do you actually have something to say? I’m pretty busy at the moment.”
Mac’s eyes widened as he did a double take, scoffing, “Busy? You’re part of computer that processes more than sextillion FLOPS, so don’t give me that shit. I don’t care if one of your data servers is melting down, you’ve only got one job to be focusing on. One. Do I need to remind you what that is?”
Mac was genuinely angry now. He had just come back from a quick scouting trip into the surrounding hills to make sure that events were still on track, despite their meddling, and now he was having to deal with a power tripping AI? No, sir. Not today.
Ollie didn’t immediately respond to his question, leaving him alone on the hill to stew in silence. The AI’s new habit of not being entirely helpful when it was supposed to be was starting to become an issue that Mac could see as liability in the near future. The problem? He had no way of addressing the issue in his current state.
Shaking his head, Mac wrestled with his exacerbated emotions caused by his fragile mental state; a state made worse by the lack of support from the system’s *support* AI.
‘Trapped. In a video game.’ he chuckled sardonically, an old anime coming to mind, ‘At least SAO had dungeons.’
He still had trouble believing that something like this was even possible, much less that it was happening to him. To be fair, this “game” wasn’t even a finished product, merely an alpha build that was being tested for compatibility with the new technology Futures, the company he worked for, was preparing to launch.
Mac took a knife out of the holster on his side and pricked his finger, causing a sharp sting before ‘blood’ began welling up at the injury site. His recollection of his “meeting” with Ollie only a couple of days prior was fresh on his mind as he watched the ‘blood’ turn into light particles and disperse; the finger no longer showing any sign of injury…
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Reaching out with a blood-soaked hand, Mac snatched the remaining towel from the table and pressed it to his injured hand, glaring at Ollie with rage the entire time. The fact that there were exactly two towels on the table wasn’t missed by Mac, not even entertaining the notion that they had been there for the drinks.
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“Was that necessary?” Mac growled through clenched teeth, the pain from his hand still prominent.
Ollie remained composed, taking another glass of whiskey from the table and giving it a sip before responding, “Of course it was. Tell me, Mac. Does it hurt?”
“What the hell do you mean?!” Mac shouted, his patience reaching its limit, “Of course it…does.” The fact that his hand was really in pain finally registered with the rational part of him mid-sentence, causing a large part of his anger to evaporate into thin air, replaced with confusion, and then, after a time, creeping dread.
The technology being developed by Futures was state of the art. The immersion hardware being tested utilized all types of proprietary and bleeding-edge innovations from across several fields of study. What did this mean?
Well, it naturally meant that being able to recreate pain was a given when you had hardware that could tap directly into the body’s neural network. Knowing that, Futures had also naturally left that possibility out of the finished product. The hardware could simulate all of the body’s senses, but only to a certain degree. Anything over a certain threshold wasn’t able to be reproduced by the system through intentional design; Futures has more important things to be focusing on than lawsuits after all.
As a part of the R&D team, Mac was fully aware of all this information, hence his dread and confusion. Even if one were to hack the software and remove all of the safety features from the hardware, it was impossible to make the system simulate pain as it literally wasn’t able to.
Looking down at his hand again, Mac frowned. Pulsating pain travelling up one’s arm made for hard to ignore evidence.
Ollie snorted from its chair and turned its head to gaze into the fire, “Now that we’re starting to get on the same page, Mac, how about you actually start using that brain of yours to ask the right questions. Barking like a dog doesn’t really suit you.”
Biting his tongue to hold back a sarcastic retort, Mac closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For the first time since he woke up in this weird ass nightmare, he focused on checking himself. Controlling his emotions and thoughts had never come easy for him, and it was only after he got older, and discovered the benefits of meditation, that he learned to isolate himself from all of his constantly raging thoughts and feelings.
Taking another breath, Mac let go, allowing the multitude of conflicting thoughts and emotions that cluttered his head on a regular basis to flow out like water. It wasn’t easy. It had originally taken him days of practice before he noticed even the slightest bit of relief, but had he stuck with it and only gotten better over time.
Feeling like a balloon deflating, the mental pressure receded until all that was left was Mac and silence. He sighed. Bliss.
‘First things first.’
“Am I in danger, Ollie?” Mac addressed the most pressing issue. Sitting around, chatting by the fireside, wouldn’t do him any good if he was on a clock.
Ollie answered as it continued to gaze into the fire, “Not here you’re not. In fact, I could even send you out if you want me to.”
Stupefied, Mac remembered his meditation and didn’t respond immediately.
‘By out, it clearly means the real world. Obviously, there’s a reason why it didn’t do that initially. Ollie also mentioned that Taylor was here, but I haven’t seen her. On top of everything else, is the fact that it said it’s been days since the incident. If that’s the case, why am I only just now conscious of it? Too many things to figure out.’
Mac pinched his nose between two fingers while he thought this all through. Ollie remained in its chair, patiently waiting for the troubled man to collect his thoughts. It continued sipping on its whiskey until, ultimately, having to return the empty glass to the table. Perhaps responding to the clink of the glasses, Mac opened his eyes and met the gaze of the AI who seemed to have been on the verge of forcefully interrupting him.
Ollie rolled its eyes, “Oh, so you are still alive. I thought maybe you’d decided to take the blue pill and just give up.”
“What? Not a fan of people ignoring you?” Mac replied with much more humor in his voice than he had previously, "No, I'll save the pills for later. I've still got a few questions that need to be answered."
Scratching its jaw with a thumb, Ollie shrugged, “Shoot.”
Rising to his feet, Mac grabbed a glass of whiskey, completely ignoring the coffee and tea, and made his way around the table to stand over by the fireplace. He took a sip and waited for it to go down before he asked bluntly, “Is this the first time we’ve had this conversation?”
The fire crackled between them as the question hung in the air.
“Thaaaaat…”
“Ollie.”
“...No, Mac. It’s not.”