“My Grandmother, game name Vaelyz, was a Last Sojourn survivor,” War said simply. Aidan, Raven, and Forsythe immediately began smiling. War noticed and turned. “You know of her?”
“Oh man. She made the best clothes. She made them for us for free and she was always encouraging us. We went out of our way to see her whenever we could. She was based out of Carthage.” Raven practically sang. “She was so nice. She used to tell me these stories about camels…”
War smiled. “The spitting camels of Egypt?”
Raven perked up immediately. “Oh my god, yes! Sometimes when I couldn’t sleep I’d beg Aidan to take us to Carthage. Her stories were the best.”
“Yes.” War quieted for a moment and then looked up sadly. “She passed a few years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Forsythe whispered.
Amelia was struck then by how sad they all looked. They must have really liked Vaelyz, this woman who believed in them and told them stories so they could sleep.
“Yes. Thank you.” War straightened, his gaze hardening behind his visor. “When I was growing up she would tell me about the death game. I asked her once when I didn’t know better. I was so small, that I didn’t understand about the regulation regarding the protection of Last Sojourn survivors and their right to privacy. She just smiled at me and told me a story about how she first started, and after that she never stopped telling me stories. I went to visit her almost every day when I was at school because she would tell me these fantastic, mind-blowing, horrible stories. She never once kept out the death. She told me that the death was what made her journey remarkable. She told me that the people who freed her were just people. Incredible, insane, brilliant, loving yes, but people. That I should never believe the propaganda about how the virus had run its course and that’s why everyone woke up. They weren’t supposed to talk about Last Sojourn because of a government rule, but she would always just say that was why these stories had to be between me and her.”
Larkin looked like she was going to lose her mind, either from what was being said or the fact that War was talking nonstop.
Raven moved back a bit and poked Aidan in the ribs with her elbow. “She thought you were insane.”
“Mmmhmm.” Aidan gave the impression that he didn’t think he was the one she was talking about.
“Is that true?” Larkin demanded. Her face was scrunched in disbelief. “That was 50 years ago. You have all got to be pushing 70 or 80 years old but you look… young?” She didn't appear to be the only one who was having serious doubt. It was natural, honestly. Already looks were passing amongst the people in the room as everyone quietly contemplated what this meant.
Amelia looked around nervously, wondering if she would wake up tomorrow and find the ethernet blasting about this on all channels. She could almost hear the headline, 'fact or fiction, you decide...'
"I eat right." Raven confided. "You know, moisturizing helps too."
That wasn't enough to put anyone at ease like it might have with other conversations. Everyone continued to shift their feet uncomfortably, all trying to take in or accept the information in their own way. Most of them were just choosing to ignore it for now. Amelia was almost grateful.
War also looked interested. “When I saw the battle for the Far… No, for Elysium, I saw them. You all look different but I knew it was you. My grandmother had screenshots from her dive gear and I had huge posters of all of you. So I’m curious as well.”
“Posters?” Raven's voice sounded positively dreamlike as though she couldn’t believe it. She really did love attention. “Was I doing something amazing?”
“You were climbing a rock wall,” War said, answering her respectfully.
"How do you get pictures off the old dive gear?" Forsythe's face started to scrunch up in disbelief. War was about to explain but was cut off.
“One of the survivors was Catherine Waide.” Aidan took over, ignoring Raven and Forsythe. Looks passed between Shadow Fall and War. “We died fighting the last boss but the game ended before we fried. She took us in as coma patients and froze us, for lack of a better word, using space exploration technology and theory that was discarded when we gave up the stars. It sounds… pretty sci-fi.” He admitted freely. “But there you have it. Some things happened.”
“Why did it take so long?” War asked, shockingly enough having seemed to accept the explanation pretty easily.
“We had to wait for a Chronicler to learn transform stone.” Forsythe deadpanned. It was actually pretty funny, but no one laughed because they couldn’t believe the source.
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Actually, the AI of Awakened Aspiration finally deconstructed all the virus code and the original Last Sojourn code and managed to rewrite a large portion to, temporarily, emulate Last Sojourn and reteach the chip to not fry you when you logged out or died. You beat the game, was one of the conditions it used. As for the rest of it? I'm not sure because it was way over my head.”
“Really? Did you just, 'well akshully me'?” Shock rode Aidan’s voice when he asked. The others were staring at her stupefied as well.
“Well, yeah, Catherine Waide bought out Last Sojourn. I mean a lot of AA is based on Last Sojourn code.” Amelia said, surprised at the looks she was getting. “I mean dragons, orcs, towns, and people are pretty much the same in any game, right? You use them because everyone loves to fight recognizable bad guys? Why waste time re-writing everything when it's already available? Games do it all the time.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Then why did it take so long?” Aidan pressed. His eyes were narrowing in that way he had. Amelia knew she was treading thin ice because this was something she should have shared with him. To be fair though the pieces had only fallen into place for Amelia a few hours before when she chatted with Kbyte.
“Well, for one thing, the team of researchers and the AI tried simulations on ways to get you out without deconstruction and all the simulations ended with you fried,” Amelia said simply, omitting her conversation with Kbyte completely.
“As to why the deconstruction took so long? I guess because of safety reasons? I don’t know anything about the technology so what do you really want me to give you? People were afraid the virus would get out again and mutate. We don’t have the neural chips anymore but anyone with an arm chip can still get in bunches of trouble with malfunctions.” Amelia hastened to defend the length of time. “...and frankly they were all doing it on the down-low. They weren’t breaking any laws because you were all technically corpses, but if you sprung back to life they had to be very careful about how they popped you. Legal nightmare.”
“Incredible,” War whispered.
"Incredibly underwhelming," Forsythe said after some thought. "That is a long time to work on a math problem."
"Next time, you can do it?" Aidan snickered.
“What are you talking about?” The Half Queen Victoria had returned and had been listening quietly, unnoticed with her retinue behind the guild War. “What is this sorcery of freezing beings and reviving them?”
“An old story.” Amelia supplied immediately. “Other worlds.”
“There are many worlds,” Victoria said crossly, obviously beginning to tire of the excuse. “I am beginning to think they are extremely obnoxious and should stay where they are. That is becoming quite a convenient excuse.” Her eyes danced on the new group, regaining much of their humor. “Who are these?”
“They are mine.” Amelia was glad when War didn’t repudiate her statement.
“Already your allies appear? Impressive.” Victoria turned to War, as if immediately identifying him as the leader. “Are you strong?”
Larkin stepped forward proudly as if she had decided to ignore the mind-blowing information she had just been given. “He is the strongest of Aspiria.”
“Really?” Raven piped up with the slightest hint of contention.
“No,” Forsythe answered simultaneously.
“No,” Aidan said a half-beat later. “Amelia is the strongest.”
Amelia sighed. “Why is he the strongest? It’s not a competition but let’s just get it out of the way so we don’t have to talk about it.”
“He’s level 600 and has never died,” Larkin said simply. "Also, there are plenty of people working on Amelia's class now, so--" Larkin gave a hesitant smile, "...no offense."
Silence once again fell on the room. Who could have said anything to that? He was almost twice the level of everyone else in the room and had never died? What kind of crazy leveling had he done? Why hadn’t anyone ever heard of him?
“I don’t know what that means,” Victoria said simply. “Will you join us on the Grendel hunt?”
“Yes,” War said. He smiled.
“Show me your face.” Raven insisted.
“No.” He replied.
“Don’t cross me War. Show me your face or I’ll write on it when you’re asleep!” Raven practically started sobbing. She pounded her tiny little fist ineffectively on his chest.
“No,” War said again, looking at her strangely.
Aidan sighed as if already envisioning the rest of the day.
↢↦
The Grendel hunt was more of a production than anyone had realized. Several hundred Half were clad in armor and waiting in ranks when the members of War and Shadow Fall prepared to leave. Victoria immediately seized control and split up the Transients to bolster the Resident forces preparing to leave.
“This couldn’t take long,” Raven mentioned at one point, staring at the vast numbers of Half.
Victoria had, with no real indication why, kept most of them together in groups they were comfortable with. Perhaps the game had knowledge of smaller groups and knew who everyone preferred to party quest with? As a result, Aidan, Forsythe, Hunter, Raven, Elisha, Larkin, War, Amelia, and the Chronicler wizard Fate had been partied together with a small group of Half. Fate, as Amelia later determined, was actually Larkin’s husband and a great fan of hers. He had immediately started Chronicling because he thought it was cool after watching her streams.
His attention was flattering but a little smothering.
Fate turned to her, as if somehow knowing she was thinking of him but perhaps not understanding the reason why. Amelia forced herself to smile as another question came from him. “Why did you start Chronicling?”
Everyone turned, a sudden interest in the answer diverting them from checking over their gear. Aiden and Raven looked particularly interested while Forsythe only glanced up briefly to show he was listening for the answer. It wasn’t, Amelia decided after a moment of thought, as easy to answer as she might have thought.
“I love to read.” She said finally. “I wanted to be a writer when I was younger but I never did anything exciting or daring, nothing thoughtful or provocative so I had nothing to draw on. Here though…”
Fate nodded immediately in understanding, but Raven’s brow started to furrow and she asked, “...here what?”
“Here, Raven, everyone can do exciting things even if they’re not exciting people. I have seen things first hand that no one else has. I’ve done things that I can share with people who haven’t done them or have done so only casually, and have the room fill up with smiles at the stories.” Amelia shrugged, her head dipping a bit as she grinned. "Additionally, things happen all the time that I can't explain. It is all magical."
“There it is again.” Forsythe pointed at her, his face blank. “Creepy smile. We’re going to win.” He sounded relieved and pleased.
“I’m not creepy.” Amelia hissed defensively.
“Yeah, kinda are.” Raven nodded knowingly.
“Check your damn gear and stop laughing!” Amelia glared as she spoke the words, but it did nothing other than cause a series of snickering in the Transients around her. War didn’t laugh, but he was smiling slightly.
“That’s an order from your Empress!” Aidan said, laughter and fake anger in his voice. “There will be absolutely no laughing on this expedition! For the love of the Empire, wipe those smirks off your damn faces. I will BURN the lot of you traitorous dogs.”