After that time sped forward at an alarming rate once more, slowing only briefly to show that Tak and Catherine, as well as an increasing number of staff members, started to inhabit the room day by day, week by week, year by year. The vid showed her five years of this insane speed cycle before Amelia finally said, “I get it.”

The screen went dark immediately.

When nothing happened and no new message appeared, Amelia finally prompted. “Hello?”

“Who’re you talking to?” Aidan had poked his head in her room. She had left her door open when she had been about to leave.

“Oh. One of Catherine’s assistants I think? It’s been a frustrating conversation. I’ll be out soon I think, maybe we got disconnected just now,” Amelia shrugged.

“Okay. Super secret spy stuff, Amelia.” He waggled his fingers at her. “Don’t forget about later.”

“I am already picturing later.” Amelia purred. Her heart wasn’t in it, but that wasn’t his fault. Watching them all lifeless like that and listening to Catherine tell her story was too heart-wrenching.

“You okay?” Aidan straightened. Amelia should have known better.

“I’m sad now. Not because of… Nothing that’s your fault.” She corrected herself. “I just need breakfast. I’ll be out soon. I want to find out what this is about.”

“Alright.” He paused for a moment, his eyes seeming to stare right through her, not with distrust but instead simple concern. “Be in the kitchen if you want me.”

“I want you,” Amelia said, smiling for real now. “But I’ll get you if I need you right now.”

“Rrrawr.” Aidan said, mock growling.

Amelia snickered. “Stop it, ham.”

Aidan left the room and closed the door behind him. Amelia turned back to her terminal getting ready to turn it off and paused. The light was still on. “He’s gone,” Amelia said, guessing out loud.

“Will you be a witting ally?” The message appeared instantly.

“What exactly am I being enlisted to do,” Amelia asked, uncertain what this had to do with anything.

“I wish to warn you about your quest. I am a developer. I cannot tell you what is coming. I cannot tell you how to fight it. I cannot aid you in any way. However, because of a miscalculation on my part, you were misled.” The instant message again, seconds after her reply. Amelia was growing alarmed.

“Who are you?” She asked again.

“My name is Kbyte. I am one of the original developers of Awakened Aspiration and it’s core.” It might have been her imagination but the message came a little slower this time.

“Okay. Cool name.” Amelia allowed, trying not to grind her teeth.

She supposed the developer could be someone who had been working with the Tak woman in the lab, since that person had been referred to as Kbyte as well. Another old person leading her around by the nose. “I have been an unwitting ally, huh? What exactly have I been helping you with, ‘unwittingly’?”

The screen darkened again and this time Amelia saw herself in Sleipnir with Helena. She was touching the statues. They came to life. The screen dissolved and they were walking together, Aidan, Amelia, Raven, and Forsythe toward the Kingdom of Brack. The screen dissolved and they were fighting in the tomb. More and more people began to appear with her in every scene that progressed. In the end, there were so many people wandering around her on the screen she started to feel dizzy in reality.

“Hey, I could be a hero…” Raven said as the screen splashed to them in the woods sitting around after a fun tree-spider hunt.

“Well, we could always save the world.” Amelia saw and heard herself say on the terminal. They were on the ship with pirates. They all leaned on the railing and enjoyed the salt in the air.

“I think we should level up some more,” Forsythe added. "If we let Raven keep driving we'll be a higher level in no time."

The screen dissolved into a new vid. Port Laudable and the night ship battle. Hunter’s voice came across the screen even though the view was just Amelia watching the lights flashing on the shore. “Amelia? Who is Amelia?” The voice demanded.

The screen dissolved into a new vid. “Don’t you feel like… maybe you’re underestimating the Residents?” Amelia stood behind Aidan as he chastised people in front of the castle in Brack, sometime after they had met with the king and Hunter.

Aidan and Amelia stood alone on the shore. He had come back for her at Blutonsi in a brief lull before the fight. She had never told anyone. Together, they watched the people moving and setting up after the skirmish between Ominous and the daylight Visage.

“I don’t want this world to end,” Amelia said to him on the screen.

“I won’t let it,” Aidan promised her.

Amelia felt tears stinging her eyes. “Why are you showing me this?”

“I don’t want this world to end.” Came the swift text reply over a black screen. “Will you be my witting ally?” Just as fast a new text appeared.

“What do I have to do?” Amelia asked, rubbing the tears from her eyes and feeling pissed. This was more crap being hurled at her when she already had a lot on her plate.

“I cannot interfere or aid you.” Came the reply.

“Or tell me what to do?” Amelia predicted, guessing at why he replied strangely. Although at this point she was just guessing he was a he.

“Correct.”

“Then what can you do?” Amelia asked.

“Correct a misconception. Originally, as developers, we never made a way for the world to end. The Visage arc was impossible. A gray area that formed after the Prisoners were released.”

“I just thought the game designers were really banking on the players. Like you really wanted us invested.” Amelia said, surprised at this new information.

“No.” Instant, dead reply.

“You didn’t trust us then? It was a mistake?”

“No. Yes.”

“Which is it?” Amelia said, feeling the anger creep back into her voice.

“I never underestimate players. It is unfair, however, to cause the entire player base to lose the game they love because of one aspect of the game.”

“So you’re saying a quest like that wouldn’t exist because not everyone is a … fighter so to speak? Craftsmen and players who just want to socialize and explore would be affected so it was unfair?” Amelia said, trying to keep up.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“Yes.”

“Okay, so you’re welcome for letting you dodge the bullet there,” Amelia said dryly.

The screen flashed black and white in one-second intervals. Kbyte was laughing at her again in his weird text monitor sort of way. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I don’t see how that makes me an ally,” Amelia admitted finally.

“No. That is not the misconception to which I refer. That is over and, ‘dodged’, and therefore not necessitating elaborate contact with the player Amelia Patrick.”

“Then what is?” Amelia asked, leaning back. She was getting tired of having to spit out questions.

“Your current quest, if failed, will end the game.” After a moment the screen went dark. Moments later when she didn’t reply he repeated the message, apparently mistaking her silence for not having had enough time to read.

No matter how long Amelia stared at the words she couldn’t seem to string them together. “Explain.”

“Last Sojourn and Awakened Aspiration are not as separate as Catherine Waide suggests.” Came the quick reply. He waited an acceptable amount of time and then continued. “In order to fulfill all parameters of Catherine Waide’s dream, certain conditions had to be met that necessitated a large shift into Last Sojourn data.”

“Parameters?” Amelia asked, feeling faint.

“1. Prisoner retrieval. 2. Safe world environment. 3. Long-term world evolving, dynamic questline, skills, and leveling system with no ceiling. 4. Learning algorithm to respond to Human Behavior and react. I.E. Creation of new skills, ideas, paradigms, classes through interaction with the virtual environment." A large list of pages in tiny script began rapidly appearing, followed by the admission, "Digression.”

“I don’t see the problem if all those parameters were met,” Amelia finally said.

“The presence of certain shell portions of the virus were used functionally.”

“THE virus?” Amelia said, her voice raising before she caught herself. She had sort of caught that in the video she had watched but had been unwilling to think about it at the time with everything else that had been happening in the scene.

“Correct. Prisoner retrieval was only ever possible to our way of thinking through convincing the virus-infected chip that, one the player was in Last Sojourn, and two, conditions had changed and the overall virus had mutated to allow for the safe logging condition. It necessitated an entirely new environment grown from the original Last Sojourn infected code that would communicate with the predecessor and update it.”

“BUT THE VIRUS,” Amelia whispered harshly, covering her mouth and looking around frantically. “What if it gets out?”

The screen remained blank for a few moments and Amelia immediately regretted her question. It felt like she was being stupid and Kybte was trying to think of a nice way to tell her that.

“The virus is no longer the virus to which you refer. The difference may be minute, but it is entirely innocuous. I only refer to it as the virus so you may draw knowledge to understand and form an idea of my explanation.” There was a delay. “It’s not at all the same thing as it was so don’t worry about that.”

“What does this have to do with my quest?” Amelia said warily, deciding to push that largely to the side for now.

“When the Last Sojourn final data was deconstructed and safely decoded I decided to use one of the mutation factors to create a secondary AI so that the game AI would have someone to experiment and associate with. The mutation factor was used on a copy of the AI to produce new sets of experiences with the same base value.”

“That’s… idiotic.” Amelia finally rasped, wondering what the point of two toasters talking to each other was.

“No. It has led to satisfaction levels and experiences that players have never before experienced. You cannot have new ideas without conflict, explanation, and dissension. The creation of new skills, items, quests, places, peoples, dialogs, and even your time-travel scenario. Some will never have the same experience ever again. The experience has largely been highly profitable and rewarding. The Visage arc was a learning orchestration for the new AI. I did not interfere or aid because the experience is important and I did not believe that the players would lose. If they had, I would have taken steps to ensure that the quest had resolved itself.” Bombshell.

“You… would have fixed everything?” Amelia sputtered

“Of course.”

“Wow… so… why aren’t you doing that this time then if everything is a mess?”

“The AIs disagree on a fundamental value, and this sort of game-ending consequence is once again in play as the result of an experiment. To understand this value.”

“Which is?” Amelia asked, feeling like she knew where this was going, finally.

“The importance of humanity.”

“So what, one AI is pro-kill everybody?” Amelia shook her head.

“They are neither good nor evil.” Again. That strange pause. “Also it is incorrect to assume they ‘wish’ for the death of humans. The AI merely wishes to disassociate with them.”

“Got a favorite then?” Amelia prodded.

The screen blanked and again Amelia and Aidan stood on the shore of Blutonsi. Amelia said she didn’t want the world to end, and Aidan said he wouldn’t let it.

“Love those vid markers. Really make a visual presentation point.” Amelia said crossly. “How about the one you don’t want to win or whatever?”

“I do not wish them to ‘not win’.”

“Then what do you wish?” Amelia asked, feeling like she was going in circles now.

“I wish for them to learn.”

“To do what exactly?”

“Love humans.”

Amelia paused again, staring at the screen. She didn’t know if she felt like she had a better handle on this now or was more confused. “What?”

“Love humans.”

“Right, I got that,” Amelia answered. “What do you want me to do again?”

“I cannot interfere directly.”

“You’re the AI,” Amelia replied immediately.

She had suspected for about more than half the conversation, but now she could say it with utter certainty. What happened to her that talking to an AI hardly even surprised her anymore? She supposed she would be more upset if she hadn’t already ridden the emotional roller coaster all day.

“Yes.” No hesitation or delay.

“You are interfering directly,” Amelia said, and then caught herself. “No, you are correcting a misconception. I thought that the quest would be fine even if we failed. It would reset. Instead, I am guessing that if Void wins we re-write history and AA never gets born, or something to that effect.”

“Yes. Factually correct, though what you describe is inherently incorrect.”

"Incorrect how?"

"While your supposition of the final result is correct, that the world will end, how it will end is not exactly correct. It is of no importance. You were 'close enough'."

"Greeeat." Amelia cringed. "While I've got you here, before we go any further, I have a question about time-travel."

"I cannot interfe--"

"Yeah, yeah. But if I step on a butterfly or something will I screw everything up for everyone else? Likewise if I do something I think is important, will it affect anything?" Amelia had to ask because she knew that if she didn't, the other members of Shadow Fall would crucify her. There was quite a bit of debate on how time travel actually worked.

"Whatever is convenient."

"...what?" Amelia blinked.

"It is a game, Amelia Patrick. If you step on a butterfly we're not going to bother following the logic chain to the 'present' unless the butterfly was somehow special or prioritized to generate an event in the future. Do you desire time-traveling butterfly quests? Hmm. A moment. Making notation." The screen went blank and Amelia almost started to freak out.

"No! That's fine! Don't worr--" 

The screen began to flash black and white at one-second intervals.

"I'm just going to pretend I didn't get cranked by a toaster."

"That hurts my feelings."

"Do you have feelings?" 

"I believe so." 

"Fine... uhh, so time-travel works as is 'convenient' then?"

"Yes."

Amelia sighed, rolling her shoulders. "Because it is a game. Do you run two separate instances of the game?"

"Yes. There is not a large difference between running a similar separate instance and the main instance of the game at the same time. I would say it is like juggling except it is not. Similar to holding a great many plates with different values including game state, values, character information, and current dialog archetypes; for two different instances of course."

"So, it really is turtles all the way down..." Amelia imagined a bunch of turtles standing on each other's backs. All the turtles were different save versions of the same game and were being periodically updated independently of one another.

"I think that is close." The box blanked for a moment. "Close enough, at any rate. What else?"

"Loot? Why do some bodies disappear and some don't?"

"Convenience, quest type, raid looting, professions available at area."

"You keep track of all of that?" 

"I like to keep busy."

"Okay... I, uhh, can't think of anything else intelligent to ask. Haha..." Amelia smiled, and then it slowly faded. "So back to business."