The pieces started to come back together and it was whole again, and thankfully inert. Sam had thought that it was able to resurrect itself for a moment, but it was just the automatic function of the robot. He took a deep breath and left the arena, but then a faint noise came from behind him. He looked around, and saw the robot standing up. It didn’t look hostile, rather inquisitive. The robot walked up to the edge of the arena and then stopped, seemingly prevented from going any further. It cocked its head at him, and then proceeded to go much further than a human’s range of motion, dispelling the illusion that it was a normal person.
“How did you gain power so quickly?” It said in a low voice. “It does not make any sense.”
Sam was not sure of what to say and he faltered for a moment.
“Why are you suddenly sapient? You never spoke before.”
The robot regarded him with a look that almost looked like condescension.
“You monkeys did not provide any sort of challenge for me before. I do not know about my fellow training bots, but I doubt that any of them have been overcome yet. As my opponents get stronger, I must start to fight more intelligently, which requires that my true mind be switched on. In fact, there are a few other modules that I have disabled right now. Wait a second.” The robot did something with its head and then shook it to dislodge something. There was nothing there, but as it spoke again, the difference was clear.
“Is this better?” It asked, its voice suddenly that of a human. Specifically the raspy and deep voice of an older man who had smoked too many cigars. “My analysis of your culture shows me that this is the stereotypical voice for one such as I, a trainer who does not mind hurting his students. Does this feel correct to you?” For a moment, Sam could have closed his eyes and pretended that it was in the room with a drill sergeant, straight out of all of those bad army shows.
“Yeah, that’s way better. How did you do that though?” Sam asked, wondering more out of curiosity than any alarm at the sudden morphing of the robot’s mannerisms.
“I have full access to your planet’s primitive version of the Multiversal Interweb, or rather what was on it before the arrival of the System shorted it out. It is quite impressive that a species that has barely begun to travel into space is able to create such a sophisticated network. In fact, there was a lot of fiction written about robots such as myself.”
Sam did not know what to say to this and instead looked at the robot helplessly. He had no idea why humanity had created the internet, and indeed that it was anything special. He had always just used it as a tool for entertainment. Then something that the robot had said to him hit him.
“Wait, Multiversal Interweb? What is that?”
The robot responded instantly, and then spoke as if it was reading something out of a textbook.
“The Multiversal Interweb is a network for the purpose of information sharing that was created by the various factions of this Multiverse after it had reached a population of a thousand universes. Over the time since then, it has morphed into its current state, a digital world in which the answers to almost anything can be found, that is if the owners want it to be found. In other words, it's a bigass computer network.” The flat monotone of its voice shifted back into the drill sergeant’s voice after a moment as it said the last sentence. Sam chuckled. He was starting to like this bot.
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“How do you access this network?” Sam asked, wondering if there was some sort of special computer that one had to own.
“You must have multiversal citizenship and then there is a 100 mana fee each time that you enter it in order to ensure that its workings continue to be free of credit costs.”
Sam nodded. That sounded straightforward.
“Where do I find the entry point then?”
“Simply focus on your citizenship card and then think about your desire.” Sam did so and holding his card in front of him and feeling somewhat stupid, he closed his eyes and started to imagine connecting to the Interweb. Nothing happened for a moment, and then a surge of mana was ripped out of him and he was suddenly in a new world.
Sam blinked as a gust of wind hit him. He was standing on top of a massive spire, in the middle of what looked like a medieval city. The entire scene was made out of colored lines of code, which blended together in a way that made it look realistic. All around him, other people flew in the air or ran along the ground. Wondering if he could fly, Sam jumped off the side of the building, and then plummeted to the ground. He landed, but did not feel any pain. As he landed, a System notification appeared in front of him.
Congratulations on entering the Multiversal Interweb. It is an information sharing network that spans the entire Multiverse, made to act as a secondary world in which to find information. No damage can be taken within this world, although things like aura attacks still work. One can move at a speed equal to their capabilities in the real world. Information is stratified based on the searcher’s power, with the most classified information at distances of entire universes from the spawn point. The Interweb takes on the characteristics of multiple different civilizations and Dao Archetypes from the Dao Annals. This creates a patchwork of different places in which to browse. Finally, every hour you are charged double the mana that you had to pay the last time, until your supply runs out. Mana cannot be regenerated within the Interwebs as they use a form of time dilation to ensure that long delves do not interfere with outside responsibilities.
The long message was like the entry point to a new world, and Sam was stunned by the possibilities of such a place. If Earth had possessed something like this, then they would have probably taken over the galaxy by now. The sheer amount of processing power that this must have taken was immense, far beyond anything that Sam could comprehend. It was like VR, but far more realistic. A game within a game, if you would. Sam opened his stat sheet, but rather than finding his normal stats, he instead was met with this.
Current Time Spent:01:59
Hours Remaining based on Mana:2
There was no mention of anything else, just how long he had been in the Interweb and how long he had left. He supposed that there was nothing else to do with your stats though, and he tried to summon his Dao. Nothing happened, which meant that this facsimile of the real world was nothing near as complex as the true thing. This ‘delve’ as the System called it would be simply for the purposes of discovering more about the world around him. The first order of business was to find a place to research. The layout of the city was in a geometrically perfect grid and as the line of the streets progressed, the buildings became more ornate, as opposed to less relative to their distance from the city center, as in a real city.
Sam started down one of the streets and began to run towards what looked to be a library. That was as good of a stop as any. As he ran, something strange happened. His feet moved beneath him, but he was only covering a fraction of the ground that he should have. It was like being on a treadmill, but when he stopped, nothing happened. A passerby called over to him as they dashed by.
“Having some trouble there, noob?” It looked like, despite the absence of the usefulness of stats, that it was very easy to tell how powerful someone was by how quickly they moved. Even here, where there was technically no violence, people could easily be swayed by threats against them in the outside world. The scourge of politics always transcended violence in the end after all.
Instead of responding to the fast vanishing figure, Sam focused on running. He did not get tired the entire time, and despite how quickly he was pumping his legs, he did not have to breathe any more heavily than normal. In fact he might not even have to breathe at all. Sam closed his mouth and nose, and found that nothing changed at all. The mechanisms of life within this world were just an illusion.