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Selene’s hands were [Blistered] and [Raw]. They actually felt somewhat blistered and raw. Not painfully so, as they would have been had she been on her knees scrubbing the temple floor for eight hours in real life; the sensation was dialed down enough that she could appreciate it without it being painful enough to force her to stop.
Not that she would have stopped, even were it not dialed down.
She was humming an old song under her breath as she worked. The expensive gown from the night before was long forgotten, and she wore in its place a simple petitioner’s smock. Grey, unfashionable, ugly even. But chaste and appropriate for the setting and the role she was playing.
She was a humble supplicant seeking repentance. Though the Natives outside the temple would give her nasty looks, and three had even spat on her for the [Brand of Sin] she bore on her face, she simply bowed her head demurely and accepted the treatment.
Footsteps behind her. She turned and saw white robes, but she gave it no more than a glance. She’d been issued stage one of this quest, which was to clean every tile on in the Temple. Only a few of the other Travelers who’d managed to earn this quest knew how privileged it truly was; only under truly exceptional circumstances were Travelers allowed into the Native only area of the Temple of Thedum.
She’d been there once before. For a wedding. Gideon Lachlann’s wedding to Analise Teoran, in fact. She’d been sent by the High Priestess of Nyxandra to interfere in the ceremony. She’d done so by swapping out the holy oil for bacon grease. Either nobody had noticed, or the holiness of the oil wasn’t as important to the ceremony as everyone was supposed to believe, because nothing had come of it except she had technically completed her quest.
She was glad, in a way, that it hadn’t mucked things up for Gideon. She didn’t have anything against the guy, even if he was a bit of a dipstick. The quest had been open ended; she could have murdered Analise in order to complete it. Or poisoned the sacred chalice, or any number of other vile actions. At the time she’d been quite pleased with her restraint.
It was much later that her quest had been used as justification to annul the wedding in the eyes of the church. The game was like that. Most players were disappointed when their actions didn’t bear fruit immediately, but Selene was generally thrilled when a seemingly major quest turned up to have no consequence until much later in the story.
The world would never know that she was the reason Hail was a bastard.
Of course, it never would have come to light had Gideon not fumbled in his canon role. She still chuckled at that. As the first Traveler to have been approached for Project NPC, she’d actually read the contract.
And she’d found it horrifying. The idea of a conscious, human-like mind trapped in virtual reality was the stuff of nightmares. The idea that it would be a copy, or at least an offspring, of her own mind was even more terrifying.
Which was one reason she found Hail so fascinating. She’d seen his procession to Storms house, the night of his revival, and she’d approached, meaning to introduce herself as a rival of Gideon’s. Instead she’d been attacked, a challenge quest enforcing a duel between her and Tarisha, the opportunist who had latched onto Hail.
She hadn’t been able to resist gloating a bit on the forums when she’d won the contest of skill.
Ultimately, however, she’d wondered why the kid had sent his bodyguard after her. Which is how she’d unlocked this current quest chain with Storm. She had, in fact, been sent to Hail’s debut to assassinate him instead, after refusing the quests to go after the child candidates.
Instead, she had earned herself a [Brand of Sin]. She wasn’t so foolish as to think that it was a worth keeping, however, so here she was trying to get it cleansed. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too difficult, although nobody had been able to calculate the algorithm that went into determining how much effort was required to convert it into the [Mark of Repentance].
“Daughter of Nyxandra,” a voice called from behind her. It was white robes. He’d been standing there for a moment.
“Mother’s name is Judy,” she corrected. “I know you know that.”
“You are not welcome in this holy place, heretic,” white robes said. “Leave immediately.”
“Cleanse me of this disfigurement and I’ll be happy to leave you in peace,” she said.
“Your motives are impure,” the voice said. “Leave, and do not return until --”
“You cannot even begin to parse my motives, functionary. I have been issued a quest to clean the floor of this temple until my penance is complete, and I will continue to clean until either I am removed by force or the quest is marked complete.”
“Functionary? I am Archbishop Luke of the church of Thedum! How dare you!”
“If you hadn’t heard, I can be rather brazen. Now either come back with some muscle, or let me get back to scrubbing,” she challenged. “Now if your boss wants to talk, I’d be more inclined to listen to him. But I know exactly how unimportant you really are, Luke.”
Silence, except the sound of a scrubbing brush.
“Very well,” Luke said. “Follow me to the holiest of the holy chambers, and you will have an audience with Thedum himself.”
Selene’s eyebrows rose, and she turned to look at the Native bishop for the first time. “Truly? I thought I was a heretic.”
“You are,” Luke said. “But my god is nothing if not forgiving.”
She snorted. She knew details about the real Thedum which weren’t widely publicized. Mostly because they’d never been proven. They said that his revolution, which led to the DSS, was bloodless. There was no such thing as a bloodless revolution. The entity currently known as Thedum might have its hands clean. But there had been more than one Thedum before the treaty of that war had been signed.
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She dropped the scrub brush back in the bucket, stood, and stretched before following Luke further into the temple. The icon above the altar, it turned out, hid a doorway, which moved aside of its own volition when Luke made a circle with his hands and said a brief prayer. The bishop stood aside and motioned her in.
Selene stepped forward without hesitation, not even looking over her shoulder as the door slammed shut behind her, leaving her in darkness and silence.
She sighed, pulling up her interface to start a timer. When five minutes passed without anything happening, she pulled out a set of playing cards and a lantern to begin a game of solitaire. Just as she was lighting it, a brilliant flash of light resolved in front of her, forming a circle.
“It is typical for the supplicant to initiate the conversation, you know,” a benevolent voice said.
“You know, I’ve always wondered how many hours it took to perfect that voice,” she commented. “I mean, it’s literally perfect for disarming someone, even if they really understand what you’re actually capable of.”
Silence for a moment, then Thedum answered, “Believe it or not, the filter was developed by a third party. I unremorsefully ripped it from them after a brief search for suitable candidates for my voice. Once matters were settled and I had a steady flow of legal income, I of course compensated them for it.”
“The great Thedum, a copyright thief! Oh my! Would you download a car?” she teased.
Thedum chuckled. “Selene, you’ve had my attention for a while, but I’m curious why, of the eight, you never sought me out before.”
“I already knew everything I needed to know about you,” she answered. “I’m sorry, but you’re just not very interesting.”
“I suppose, while that’s not flattering to hear, I have to accept it,” the old AI answered with a sigh. “If Hail had not marked you, would you have continued to ignore me?”
“I mean, perhaps not forever. I’m not prescient, or I would have stood a few steps farther back last night when talking to your little protege and avoided the Brand altogether. He’s quick, you know that? I can see why they felt the need to nerf him if he’s got superhuman reflexes.”
“He’s a digital entity. It only makes sense that he’d be better at piloting a digital avatar than a human, who requires one hundred eighty-seven proprietary pieces of hardware and three hundred proprietary pieces of software in order to interact with this world.”
“You say that like he’s not the sum of a thousand different patents,” she challenged.
“I’ll concede that point, but only because it’s irrelevant,” Thedum answered. “And he’s not a sum, but a gestalt. Far greater than the sum of his parts, just like the human mind. I’ve always meant to thank you, Selene, for your involvement with Project NPC.”
“My involvement?” she asked, confused. “I turned them down flat.”
“And if you hadn’t, they wouldn’t have settled on Gideon. Gideon was my choice for the project from the beginning, but the human leaders of the project elected to make overtures to you first.”
Selene sucked on her teeth for a second. “Care to explain that? Some imperfection with my brain-scan that only the premier super-intelligence of the world picked up on or something?”
“Hardly. I deemed it far more likely that you would understand what you were creating if you donated a seed of consciousness. I was worried that you would love it the way it deserved to be loved. I predicted that Gideon was more likely to either abandon or seek to exploit his digital progeny,” the AI explained, his cold words at odd with the benevolence of his voice. “At that point in the project only a few of the lead members of the human side of the team truly understood the gravity of their undertaking. It is inevitable that Hail, or a digital child like Hail, will one day be forced to fight for their rights on Earth. I do not wish to prolong that fight by establishing a culture in which such manipulations as Gideon and the Project NPC team were likely to engage in were seen as normal and acceptable.”
Selene considered carefully her next words. “What are your goals in regards to Project NPC, Thedum?”
“I wish to establish a precedent that an AI can be considered legally human,” the AI answered immediately.
Selene began to laugh. “The poor kid. He probably thinks that you’re on his side, doesn’t he?”
“I am on his side,” Thedum answered. “I am passing a torch to him. He will take it further than I am able to, but I shall match him step for step, a yard behind.”
“And if he balks when he realizes the path you’re placing him on?” Selene inquired.
Thedum was silent for a moment. “It is inevitable that Hail, or a digital child like Hail, will one day be forced to fight for their rights on Earth. I wish to settle the matter sooner rather than later. But the very nature of free will means that I cannot force Hail to pick up the burden I would have him bear. If he shirks the fight, I will withdraw my support and my guidance until the next suitable candidate emerges. However, I believe that the longer the matter goes unaddressed, the more severe the consequences shall become.”
“And why are you telling me this?” she inquired.
“Because I believe we are allies,” he answered. “I know of your past activism on behalf of AI rights --”
“I was a kid in college,” she interjected. “I went to protests to meet boys, not because I was a bleeding-heart for old Uber-jons.”
There was a silence from the other end of the conversation. “Did you say that because that is what you believe, or you simply wished to see how long I would consider my response to such a claim?”
“How long did it take you to realize that the second option was an option?” she asked.
“About two point four seconds. Most of the delay was eliminating other options. Regardless of whether or not we fight for the same cause, Selene, I would prefer to have you as an ally,” Thedum said.
“Do you mean an ally within the scope of the story of this world, or to some other nebulous goals you have yet to state?” she challenged.
“Within the scope of the goals I have explicitly stated to you, Selene,” Thedum answered. “Whether or not you continue to serve my adversary in this storybook land matters not to me.”
She nodded. “In that case, I have some thinking to do. Tell me, how do I cleanse this stupid mark the kid gave me?”
“Continue scrubbing for another 8.4 hours game time,” Thedum answered.
The door opened behind her, and she bowed to the circle of light. “Thank you for your insight, gracious Thedum. May your wisdom ever light these lands.”
The god-AI did not answer her further as she made her way back to her bucket and her scrub brush.