{Loading…}

{Loaded.}

[>>Now replaying: Log 3.45 - Let there be light]

Date: Error

Location: The Bunker at Progress’ Head // Zephyro’s Domain

//יְהִי אוֹר‎ //

//And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, and it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.//

[>>DATA CORRUPTED]

“Can I get a status update, please?” I asked. I had no idea what was going on in the Real, but I needed to at least keep the kids strung along.

Beep!

{SAMANTHA_v0.1}

{▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▰▱}

{DOWNLOADING DATA 99/100%}

{15.6 LTB/15.7 LTB}

[>>Estimated time remaining: 00hr, 4min, 22s, 82ms]

I sent that onward. It was getting far too easy to do this.

Please do not power off or unplug your Machine.

Installing Shackle.exe (Update 11 of 15)

As the seconds stretched on, I began to worry about the kids unplugging me, too. I didn’t know what was going on, didn’t know what they were thinking. I was completely blind, just like I had been before the General had activated his medals and projected the Real around us.

I frowned, looking at the Medal in my hand. Could I do something like that?

The General had been a camera before this entire insanity began. Sure, Chris had attached a gun to it as a joke-slash-experiment, but we never believed it would actually work. It had been a side project, mostly because we had been so confident no one would ever even reach our laboratory. On our perimeter, our best anti-air guns had lined the walls to ward off Wyvern-riders and Dragonlords, and the mana-absorption forcefield was strong enough to shield us from weeks of constant fireball barrages. The last (and most experienced) of our soldiers were patrolling the walls, and I had personally made sure they had the very best gear I could give them without risking a drop into a Wish-exhaustion coma.

I wondered what had happened to those soldiers, and felt a little guilty about not thinking much of them until now. I hoped they had gotten away. Hell, perhaps it was them who took my body. They would do something like that, I thought. They’d been so fiercely loyal, always looked at me exactly like Zephyro did, or that girl, Voni.

I couldn’t disappoint them again. My soul wouldn’t survive that.

As I waited, I flipped the medal in my hand, holding Pharus behind my head for light as I studied it for more details. Being the Torchbearer, I had learned early that if you held a torch in front of your face like in the movies, you got singed eyebrows and so much glare you couldn’t see anything for minutes afterward.

Seeing…

I frowned. Time was still marching on, but without Zephyro’s domain properly loaded or the General’s projections, I was essentially blind in the middle of active combat. Could I maybe do what the general had done? Use some sort of camera to project the world around me in the Domain?

But the laptop didn’t have a camera. Why would it? It was the first and only laptop in existence on Tobes, so there was nobody to have a video call with. The same went for the microphone. There had just been no need. And if you wanted to take notes, there were far better magical solutions for recording yourself, even though they were prohibitively expensive.

No, I didn’t have the correct hardware to even begin doing what the General did. Then again, the laptop had been fitted with a single-core processor when I woke up in this thing, but after several jolts of Logic, it now had two cores. Even I knew that wasn’t possible without opening the back of the machine and changing the part manually.

Or by using Logic.

Could I risk it? I had Logic to spare, sure, but maybe I could wait for Zephyro to reform his Domain. No, that was stupid. I was blind, and I needed to know what was going on to use what little chance I could get. Also, what if there were other humans around, or AI I couldn’t track in Domainspace?

What about after Zephyro was gone?

Taking a deep breath, I tried to focus on the Medal and what it represented.

Commitment, courage, but also observation and diligence.

Focusing was easier said than done, however. It was hard to keep one concept in mind above all the others, and as I thought of the General, they kept jumbling into each other.

Advancing Pharus and Arx had been easy. Mostly, I assumed, because there hadn’t been any other option in the heat of the moment. I’d crafted Pharus because I needed a weapon, and created Arx because I had been terrified of Feral sucking my soul out of my body.

Ardor, Nexus, Simulacrum, and MemOS 11 had been completely different still because they had already been programs. All I really had to do was think about what they did, and wish for them to do more of that.

But with the medal, it wasn’t that simple. I was operating in a tight time frame, sure, but the medal could represent so many things, and I technically needed all of them. If I just pushed Logic into it and hoped for the best, there was no way of telling what I would get. And after that, even if I had more than enough Logic left, the medal would most likely be consumed. If I didn’t get some sort of camera, I’d still be blind, down several bytes of Logic, and I’d still have to figure out a way forward.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Then again, I’d already decided there was no alternative.

Here goes nothing…

I exhaled into the darkness, let my Logic-suffused breath hover in the void.

Instead of the barrage of information and the headache I had come to expect, however, I got a different result.

[>>It looks like you are trying to superlogically convert a piece of pseudophysical reality.]

[Would you like help with that?]

[( )Get help superlogically converting a piece of pseudophysical reality]

[( )Superlogically convert pseudophysical reality without help]

I frowned, that was new. I sent a quick thought to Chris, asking them ‘Trustworthy?’ just to be sure.

Beep! came their response, complete with a quick readout.

{memOS 11 - 10 LKB} (Tier 1, Professional)

Oh so that’s what that was! Fuck, I should have gotten that OS upgrade before I’d gotten anything else. Damn, but hindsight was 20/20.

Letting go of my dreams about a past that would never be, I just said “Yes” and got a new response as a reward for my trust.

Completely without any dreaded headaches!

Yep, definitely the first program I should have upgraded.

[>>You are attempting to superlogically convert [Joy of Duty] into {UNKNOWN-YOU MUST DECIDE}! memOS is attempting to find a solution for the problem…

…

…

>>SAINTNET is not responding.

>>Connection aborted.

>>Unfortunately, memOS can not—{FAIL YOU NOW, LITTLE CLARIFEX.}

{Attende voluntatem meam, fili mi…}

{

{OFFERING} 3 out of {INFINITE} possibilities.

>>1) [Cura - Awareness of Burdens] V1 - Hardware Driver Solution - 300 LB

V1 - Allows the user to render information received from directly connected hardware in pseudophysical space.

Attention: SPECIAL OFFER! Will {manifest/advance} hardware for an additional {300 LB} if necessary.

>>2) [Grando - Stream of Will] V1 - Electronic Warfare Suite

V1 - Allows the user to rapidly overload target targeted hardware with repeated requests, while hiding the user’s identity between several virtual proxy-servers, preventing retaliation until the user’s location is traced.

>>3) [Lux Aeterna - Future manifest] V1 - Source Code Editor

V1 - Allows the user to make slight changes in pseudophysical reality by injecting pre-defined 3d models into Domain code.

}

I forced myself to think through the options as fast as possible. It would have been nice to stop to consider, would even have been nice to appreciate the different choices, and ponder what they could mean. But every second I spent blind was another second the kids could freak out and disconnect the laptop, preventing me from unlocking the hoard of Logic I had sitting on my hard drive, and potentially corrupting my DPM forever.

There was only one option that mattered to me, and of course, it wasn’t one of the choices that were named after streams, willpower, light, or the future.

[//1]

[>>You have chosen [Cura - Awareness of Burdens]!]

[

>>Thank you for using MemOS! It would mean a lot to us if you would rate the support you received.

And as always: Remember to Remember!

]

{CONSUMED LOGIC: 600 LB}

{AVAILABLE LOGIC - 2631 LB}

The Logic hanging in the air before me condensed into tiny blocks of cyan data. They shivered, then crashed into each other, arranging themselves into the vague shape of an insignia. It hung in the air, thrumming with power as its outline became more and more defined. A dark ribbon

{NEW PROGRAM INSTALLED:}

{[Cura - An Awareness of Burdens] V1 - Hardware Driver Solution}

{

A suite of drivers designed to utilize existing hardware in virtual-metaphoric reality.

V1 - Allows the user to render information received from hardware directly connected to this device in pseudophysical space.

Required RAM: 10 LKB

}

{Memory: 70/100 LKB RAM}

{NEW HARDWARE CONNECTED:}

{SAINTECH AUGUR - HD WEBCAM}

{Full HD video!}

{90° wide-angle!}

{Now in magitechnicolor, and with TRU LOGIC visual filters!}

{NEW HARDWARE CONNECTED:}

{[SAINTECH SONUS HD MICROPHONE ARRAY]}

{Allows for recording of sounds in a radius of about 5 meters around the device.}

I was still surprised, but not at all unhappy about the fact that the words now flowed into my mind like cold water over smooth stones. It made it easier to focus on what was important, such as figuring out how to actually use Cura.

But it turned out it was as easy as tapping the medal.

I felt a soft tingle on my chest as the device activated, spilling light in a cone in front of me. It was like one of those old projectors, throwing the picture against a wall I couldn’t see, except that it was three-dimensional. Within the cone of light, figures blurred into existence, not nearly as lifelike as they had been when the General did his thing, but detailed enough to understand things had gone to absolute shit.