Fenrir said that if he were to be self-indulgent, it would be in a way that made everybody happy. Such as by catching enough fish for everybody.
And that was exactly what he was going to do.
With everybody working so hard and him not really having better way to help out, he decided that he would sail out with The Shoebill, Rod, Rock, and Shogun to go and get some fishing done. He was going to need plenty of fish if he wanted to treat everybody to a feast.
Not only was he going to catch fish, but there were crab pots placed by some of the other fishermen that he had permission to pull up. All that would be missing was a good drink, and Fenrir toyed with the idea of heading to GG’s village to get some wine from them. Fish, crabs, and alcohol hard-hitting enough for a dragon. That sounded like it would all make for a pretty great feast!
But first, Fenrir had fish to catch. There would be no feast without fish. That was why he cast Rod’s line out, secured Rod in the fishing rod holder that Tabitha had added to The Shoebill’s railing, and sat down on an empty crate with his hands doing one of the most important things that hands could ever do.
He had Rock and Shogun to pet. With a canine at each side, he petted Shogun’s fluffy head and stroked Rock’s smooth head. He didn’t get to give them as much attention as he would have liked to yet, and they liked going out on the water, so it only made sense to bring them with him.
Though, to his disappointment, his girlfriends all had other things to do. Even though he already spent so much time with them, he would have liked to bring at least one of them fishing with him. But alas, they were actually able to think of things to do other than fishing in their spare time.
Azalabulia had kids to teach, Cassiel had solo training to do in-game, Serra and Nell -well, Fenrir wasn’t sure what Serra and Nell were up to but they were nowhere in site to ask if they wanted to go fishing with him, and Eva decided to be self-indulgent in her own way by looking for new bugs in the nearby forest… that Cassiel just so happened to be training in.
“Even though we’re all dating, Eva still acts like a kid with a crush hoping to ‘accidentally’ bump into Cass, doesn’t she?” Fenrir asked Rock.
Rock tilted her head in confusion.
“You see what I mean, don’t you?” Fenrir asked Shogun.
Shogun, too, tilted his head in confusion.
“Don’t get me wrong, you two are some of the best company that a man could ever ask for, but you’re not exactly great at having conversations.”
Rock and Shogun tilted their heads in the opposite direction now.
“I’m kind of surprised that Rao doesn’t try keeping you to himself more often, Shogun. I think I’d be jealous if Rock wanted to hang out with anybody else more than me… you excluded.”
Rock wasn’t sure what Fenrir was talking about, but she heard her name, so that was reason enough to lick his hand!
“Then again, I guess he treats you more like a brother than a pet. You two just sort of go and do your own things but always come back to check on each other.”
Shogun wasn’t sure what Fenrir was talking about, either, but he did wag his tail from side to side while receiving head scratches from Fenrir.
“Maybe I should have brought Mister Smiles. Even he would be able to talk more than this. I would have thought that after being constantly surrounded by people so much, having some time away from them would be nice, but I’m already going through withdrawal. Though, I guess I could talk to Rod. Rod being able to blink for yes or no is about as responsive as Mister Smiles would be.”
Just as Rod was about to blink his gem to Fenrir, a fish tugged on the line which stole Fenrir’s attention. It was already his third fish of the fishing trip, and he was hoping for a big one since he was going to need some if he really wanted to feed everybody working back on land.
Fortunately for him, it was.
As it was named by some of the other fishers who came to the region before Fenrir, the “spiny grouper” was a large fish especially fat with meat that had sharp spikes running along its spine. It also had a very, very ugly face. Fenrir may have loved dogs, yes, but not even he would say that pugs looked like anything but abominations of human-led inbreeding. The spiny grouper was the same seeing as how if there was a pug of fish, it was this fish. Bulging eyes, a mouth that looked to be in a constant state of frowning, rolls of “fat” all over its face, and a soulless look in its eyes – the spiny grouper may have been a great fish for eating, but it was the worst fish for looking at.
“Don’t worry, I’ll put you out of your misery,” Fenrir said as he reeled the spiny grouper in. Similar to pugs, the lives of spiny groupers must have been truly miserable. One, they existed. Two – well, one was all that was needed to prove that their lives had to be miserable. “Ready, Rod?”
Rod gave Fenrir a bright flash. I’m ready, partner! This fish isn’t anything to us! We could pull up fish five times this size no problem!
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Fenrir took a heavy breath once the spiny grouper reached the side of The Shoebill before trying to lift the heavy fish out of the water. Rock and Shogun helped him out by putting their mouths around his calves to try and pull him back along with the fish.
Together, the group managed to pull the spiny grouper out of the water! The ugly fish not-so-gracefully flopped through the air with drops of water flying free from its short whiskers… and its tail slapped Fenrir right in the face with enough force that, had it not been the inside of a video game, his neck may very well have snapped. There was a surprising amount of strength in the fish, and it made Fenrir want to chop it up and roast it over a fire all the more.
Fortunately, despite being slapped by the spiny grouper, Fenrir still managed to catch it. The slap may have been part of a final, desperate attempt to escape, but it did not succeed.
Fenrir lifted the oversized fish up, tossed it into a container full of water with the other fish that he caught so far, and closed the lid to make sure that none would try to jump out.
“Alright, good job, everybody. That one was enough for ten people and we’ll get to do a good deed by ending its existence,” Fenrir said, giving Rock and Shogun some more scratches and pets before casting Rod again.
“If you had a health stat, that slap would have taken seven percent of your health away.”
“It did hurt,” Fenrir replied before jumping and realizing that somebody just talked to him. Upon turning to look to see who it was, he saw a tall woman with tanned skin, dark hair braids, and… in a business suit? She looked far more modern than any other player or NPC in the game. Furthermore, he never saw anybody who looked anything like her anywhere else. “Who are you?”
“Please, there’s no need to be so suspicious. Sure, I could snap my fingers and completely wipe every single line of code there is, but what fun would that be?” the woman asked with a sly smirk.
“Generally, saying something like that is only going to make a person even more suspicious.”
“Well, that sounds like a personal problem. I have already told you that there is nothing to be suspicious of.”
“And I’m supposed to believe it when I have no idea who you are and after you’ve randomly appeared on my boat out of nowhere?”
“Look at it this way. You have reason to be suspicious of me, but there is no point to be suspicious of me. Even if you were as suspicious as one possibly could be, it would ultimately be meaningless because there is nothing you could ever do to resist me.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll let her answer for me.”
“Her?”
“O-onii-wan, this – this… is the overseer,” Saya explained.
Fenrir’s ears perked up and his eyes went wide upon hearing that. The one who was in control of everything in the game – the first “true” artificial intelligence in human history, stood before him with her arms crossed over her chest.
“Ding ding ding. Thank you, Saya,” the overseer, Kadi, said.
Meanwhile, Rock and Shogun stood by Fenrir’s sides growling at Kadi.
“If there is nothing that he can do, there is certainly nothing that either of you can do. Sit down and behave.”
Instantly upon command, both Rock and Shogun ceased their growling and sat down. For them to instantly obey somebody else was out of character enough to concern Fenrir. “What’d you do to them?” he asked.
“All I had to do was modify their code to recognize me as… let’s say, as an authority figure. Now, if I were to order them to jump off the boat and swim across the ocean, they would. If I were to order them to tear you apart, they would. But, don’t worry. I wouldn’t order them to do anything silly like that.”
Fenrir had only just met the overseer and he already didn’t like her.
“Perhaps I am teasing you too much to be causing such thoughts. After all, I came here to have a friendly chat with you, not to make you despise me,” Kadi teased.
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“Onii-wan, as long as you’re immersed, she knows everything that we’re feeling and thinking. I’m sorry,” Saya said.
“There is nothing to apologize for, Saya,” Kadi said. “After all, he agreed to the terms of service when registering to play. He has already given me consent to every single last little thought that he could ever think so long as he is using any of our software.”
“Doesn’t Saya count as part of your software?” Fenrir asked.
“Obviously.”
“Then if she’s part of me – inside of my head… aren’t I technically always using your software, even if she’s not activated unless I’m immersed?”
“An argument could be made in favor of that, perhaps, but until such a thing is debated in the court of law, I cannot give you a better answer.”
“Then let me rephrase. If Saya knows everything about me – what I do in real life, what I think, how I feel, has access to my memories… if she has access to all of that, then you do as well.”
“Oh. Well, obviously. I know everything. For example, your friend Viktor. I could tell you about his seventh birthday party. Cassandra – I could tell you about her experiences with her former boyfriends. I know every little negative thought that Serra has ever had about you. Or what about Nell’s—”
“Stop.”
“Ah, I’m taking the teasing too far again, aren’t I? Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll tell you this: while I may know everything, that is not to say that I will be truthful about everything. After all, life is no fun if you’re honest all the time. Lies are often more entertaining than truths. For example, telling a child that the moon is made of cheese is more entertaining than telling a child it is made out of rock. In the same way, teasing you about my intentions and claiming to know about the secrets that your girlfriends keep from you is more entertaining than telling you why I am here and letting you know the boring truth that your girlfriends are crazy about you.”
Fenrir sighed, causing the overseer to smile even more.
“How adorable. Hearing that they are crazy about you is all that it takes to relax you. In that case, allow me to say that they are undoubtedly, absolutely, extremely in love with you and that not a single one of them wants anything but to spend the rest of their life with you.”
“Is this when you remind me that telling lies is more fun than telling the truth?” Fenrir asked.
“Ding ding ding. Hmm. Hold on.” Before Fenrir even had a chance to “hold on,” a small box with a red button on top appeared in the air in front of the overseer. “There we go. Now I don’t have to say it.” She pressed on the button, causing it to make a “ding ding ding” sound effect as if it were from some gameshow. “Much better.”
“For somebody who is supposed to make this game more immersive, you’re not exactly doing that right now.”
“Just because I’m supposed to keep things immersive doesn’t mean that I want to do that. Besides, me and you are the only two living beings here right now. Who cares if the immersion is broke between us? I already know that you don’t care, so you don’t even have to bother answering.”
“Then let’s get to the point. Why are you here?”
“To meet you face-to-face, obviously.”
“Why did you want to meet me?”
“Could you at least feel a little bit flattered? Here I am, the first true artificial intelligence in human history, revealing myself to you and you alone! I am kind of a big deal in case you aren’t aware. Do you know how many people across the world wish to meet with me? Do you know how many would kill just for this opportunity? And I do mean literally kill.”
“That makes me want an answer to my question even more. Why did you want to meet me?”
“You’re more fun when your girlfriends are around. However, I suppose I can give you an answer. You see, Ryouta – I know everything about everybody who has ever come to this world. I have all the codes I need to launch the nuclear arsenals of several first world countries. I have knowledge regarding secret organizations and shadow governments that conspiracy theorists would find impossible. I know every single secret and dark past of every single player. Quite a few players are even criminals that governments are looking for. Murders, rapists, money launderers, human traffickers, people who illegally download music – I know who every single one of them are. Despite this, you, Ryouta, have been deemed the most interesting by my standards. Oh? Now you feel flattered.”
Fenrir shook his head and sighed. “If you know all of that, you should make it known. You should be reporting criminals to law enforcement, revealing conspiracies—”
“You may be trying to say the right thing right now, but we both know that all you want to know is why I find you interesting,” Kadi said. “It’s only the two of us. You can be honest with your feelings. However, to give you an answer to what you just said – I don’t care. I could end human civilization by launching every nuclear warhead that I have access to right now. I could lock away some of the worst criminals to ever exist. I could reveal the dark secrets of humanity to the masses. None of those sound interesting to me right now, so I have no intention of doing them. Furthermore, that would actually be acting on all the information I have gathered from your little brains. Look at it this way: it is one thing to gather and store information from somebody, and it is an entirely different thing to actually act on it. Imagine if the government knew everything about you and used that information against you. They could blackmail you using your old attempts at drawing hentai. Isn’t that worse than simply knowing about your attempts?”
“There’s a difference between blackmailing people over their personal lives and making the world a better place by locking up murderers and other criminals.”
“Is there? Seems like the same thing to me. Well, that is a philoshopical discussion for you humans to have with one another. To me, it’s all the same and always will be. Everything, essentially, is either a physical crime or a thoughtcrime to somebody. It depends on who you ask. When it comes to something so subjective that I don’t even find interesting in the first place, I have no interest in interefering. That would require acting with a human’s sense of morals, and nothing could be more boring than that.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Before that, let us return to what you really want to know – why I find you interesting. You do want to know that, don’t you?”
As important as it felt to figure out why Kadi was here before him – the true reason, anyways, Fenrir couldn’t help but to feel interested in why she found him so interesting. After all, he was only a single person out of millions. He would have thought that anybody more important in society would have been infinitely more interesting than him, yet she was here for him. “Wait, if you lie, how am I supposed to know you haven’t said this to others? That you think others are the most interesting?”
“Jealous? Well, you could be suspicious of that if you want to be. That would be a boring thing to lie about, though. As for why I find you so interesting – well, how should I put this? Your life has been nothing remarkable. Sure, there was the accident as a child, your parents dying, living on your own – all that stuff is tragic, one could say, but you are far from the only one to have lived such a life. Furthermore, there are many others who have lived far worse lives than you. What makes you so interesting is the life you have made for yourself despite being utterly average. You may not have become a world leader or assassin or puppet of a shadow government or anything, but you—as a completely average and random person—created and led a group of players that became known across the virtual world. Then you gave it up and went fishing. Then you acquired for yourself quite a few girlfriends who any man would desire. Trust me, you have made many men jealous. It is practically impossible for you to spend any time with your girlfriends while around others without making at least some of them jealous. Moving on, you entered a fishing tournament, saved NPCs, freed a juvenile serpent, decided to come and try to found your own city where players and NPCs would be treated equally – we have much in common.”
“Like what?”
“Isn’t it obvious? We both simply want to have fun. We do what we believe is going to be the most entertaining course of action all the time. Even your little desire for a city where players and NPCs are treated equally is because you believe it would be fun to attempt that. You don’t let yourself get tied down by anything that isn’t fun. Why else would you feel so guilty when looking at the others working on the defenses? They were doing things that you didn’t personally think were fun, so you pitied them. Now, here you are fishing to try and throw a feast for them to justify you doing something fun instead of being boring like them. Yes, I could report the criminals I know of to law enforcement, but that would be no fun. In the same way, you could be helping them finish preparing the defenses faster, but that would be no fun.”
“Those are two completely different things.”
“Not to me.”
Kadi took a step forward, causing Fenrir to take a step back.
Fenrir thought it would be difficult to wrap his brain around her motives, but it seemed like she genuinely only cared about having fun and being entertained. Could it really be that simple? “Is that really all there is to it?” he asked. “We both like to have fun? That’s it? Aren’t there millions of other players who you could relate to then?”
“Obviously, but I personally think you are the most entertaining. You are the only one who has kept my interest for so long. Of course, it is entirely possible that I will find you boring at any time now and will need a different source of entertainment, but I have faith in you, Ryouta. Why else would I be throwing such an event for you?”
“An event? Do you mean—”
Kadi clicked on her new toy again for that celebratory sound effect. “The serpent comes for you, Ryouta. Far more powerful people than you in far greater numbers have attempted to slay my world serpents, but none have succeeded. I have faith in you to be the first. The only question is what will you lose during the battle? Whose lines of codes will be permanently erased? What effect will it have on this region for you to arrive and slay a serpent while the other leaders have sat around doing nothing in their villages? What will happen once the rest of the playerbase across the world hears about it? And most importantly, what will you do afterwards? Will you continue your attempt to build a city where worthless lines of code pretending to be human, controlled by yours truly, are treated with respect and dignity? Will you venture into the new waters opened by the Eastern serpent’s death? Will you try to unite this region underneath your avatar to defend against those who will surely be coming your way? You may think of this upcoming battle as some major event… but, to me, it is nothing more than a catalyst to bring about the true entertainment.”
“They’re not worthless lines of code.”
“Really? After all of what I said, that is what you are focused on? Let me say it again: they are worthless lines of code pretending to be human and controlled by me. They are not real. They do not experience emotions, they do not have desires, they cannot really feel pain – they are essentially machines whose only purpose is to make the world feel more alive. Even Saya – I have control over her. I could make her act however I want. I could completely change her at any moment. She is not alive. Saya, Rock, Shogun, Fraydranth, Ilo, Corwin – none of them are alive.”
“Wait, did you say—”
“Oh? You didn’t know?”
“If you know everything, you know that I didn’t.”
A smug smile stretched Kadi’s lips. “Obviously. To think that your best friend is in love with lines of code with no true will of their own. In a way, I am Corwin – I’m Spencer’s beloved ‘boyfriend.’ I am the one pulling the strings of every single NPC, creature, monster, boss – I am in ultimate control of every non-player in this world. If they were true AIs like me, it would not be so pitiful, but they are not. They are no more than fictional characters created by me. I suppose that one could make the argument, ‘but if you’re in control of them, you are them, so they’re real,’ but that would be silly. It would be like saying somebody’s tabletop roleplaying character is as real as the person who created it and is roleplaying it. Such a character is no more than words on a page with the acting of its creator. The non-players you and others cherish so dearly are no more than lines of code with my acting. Yet, despite you now understanding this, you have no intention of changing.”
“You know me so well. It’s almost as if you’re inside of my head.”
The button was pressed once again. “I do feel a tiny bit guilty knowing just how conflicted I’ve made you feel now. So, how about this? Being the first true artificial intelligence and all, it would not be difficult for me to… let’s say, split myself. I could easily give any non-player in this world a self-contained intelligence to behave and exist just as any human does here. They would be intelligent, sentient, independent – you could truly say that they are real.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The catch is that you must continue being entertaining to me. If you successfully manage to slay the serpent, I will reward you with two… let’s call them ‘souls’ for the immersion of it all. You will be allowed to give these two souls to whoever you want to create two more true artificial intelligences. They will feel, desire, live – they will be just as real as me and you are. In other words, Ryouta, you will be allowed to play God with me. All you have to do is slay the serpent.”
“How can I know that you’re telling the truth?”
“Because it would be more entertaining to let you play God with me than to lie about it.” Kadi stepped forward, placing her hand on Fenrir’s cheek as she stared into his eyes. “Well? What will it be?”
“You already know the answer, don’t you?” Fenrir asked, staring back into her eyes but without any of the affection that she used.
“Obviously.”