Rick gritted his teeth when he left the train at the stop nearest Hector’s downtown warehouse. It had taken only days to get used to the absence of the muni ads, but the re-adjustment to dealing with them again was much more difficult. It put in his mind old memories about when he first got accepted by immigration, and his first few months with his initial implant.
They’d told him then that the older you were when you first got an implant, the harder it was to adjust to the interface, but the surgeons said this time it wouldn’t be nearly so difficult. After all, he’d already lived with the technology for years, and an upgrade or a new fitting didn’t represent the total transformation it had been when he was younger.
A dark thought came unbidden. Had he not already gotten his implant before they arrested him for murder, they would have simply executed him. This wasn’t speculation; they’d told him as much. At the time, it seemed a stroke of luck he’d completed his citizenship requirements, wasn’t a foreign visitor, and hadn’t otherwise bucked the obligation to get the device, but his time in reCon had made him reconsider that judgment thousands of times.
Manuel gave him a small nod on the way in. Rick acknowledged it and kept moving, his curiosity driving him to get to the SR array as quickly as possible, though simultaneous dread kept him silent.
It had been weeks since he’d been there, and though nothing had changed, it felt like it had. He’d changed.
He winced when he plugged in again, but there was no pain. He took deep breaths, and he was midway through an exhalation when the machine dragged him into the game.
When consciousness returned to him, he was in the Ruckus Online training room. Someone must have set it up for him ahead of time, though he could have accessed it from the active play session via menu had he wanted. He immediately checked his stats.
You have five available slots for boosts and skills! You may not select more than three stat boosts for any single rank-up victory. Would you like to choose now?
Rick dismissed the message, but checked his stats.
Strength: 1
Speed: 1
Stamina: 1
Since that was as expected, he checked his skills next.
Permanent Skills:
Iron Fist
He slumped, resembling a deflated balloon. Where was his Mark of Ditto? Could a defective implant conjure an entire being in his head? The infection almost killed me, so probably. Doc said he’d never seen neurotransmitter numbers like that.
Though it had only been a matter of weeks since his initial try-out, so much had changed that the sight of the off-white walls with their blue and red criss-crossing lines. It made him feel genuinely nostalgic.
He called forth the bot via the menu he conjured simply by thinking about it. He specified a non-aggressive one to start, and the door at the far end opened.
A white man of medium build slowly approached. Rick’s anxiety climbed the closer the AI fighter got, but whether it was his reCon conditioning or premature anxiety, he couldn’t tell.
Rick got into a fighting stance, raising his hands to guard his face. The bot did the same, but it wouldn’t strike until he did. He tried a few slow jabs that barely touched the bot. His vision tilted and swayed, affecting his balance. He steadied himself and tried another, harder punch, this one a right straight.
That woke up the bot, and it sent a retaliatory hard cross Rick barely blocked in time.
The fear set his hands to shaking, and he collapsed to the ground, trying to breathe through the immensity of the fear that racked his body. No, no, no, no, no…
He crawled away from the bot, and due to its non-aggressive set-up, it didn’t pursue.
“The fuck is that?” a male voice from the sky asked. “As they say.”
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Manuel? No. Jerry? Alex playing a prank?
“It’s nice to see you again, Rick Prophet.”
Rick’s heart jumped again, but not in fear this time. Or rather, there was another emotion that competed with the fear, and by default, that made the fear smaller. “Is that—”
“You are… defective again?” the bot asked.
Again? “The damaged implant almost killed me, just like you said.”
The voice said, “That’s a shame. You had potential. You could have helped us.”
Could have?
“Goodbye, Rick Prophet. May you encounter fewer errors along your life path.”
“Wait!” Rick stood, as though getting closer to the voice in the sky would make a difference. There was no response. “Come back! Please.”
The gentle whir of his breathing was the only sound. The AI training bot stared at him blankly, and though its chest moved, if it made a sound, it was undetectable over the sound of the blood rushing in Rick’s ears.
“Ditto!”
“Yes?” Ditto’s disembodied voice responded.
“Oh, Christ! Thank God!”
“God has nothing to do with this, Rick Prophet.”
He ignored that Ditto was using his first and last names again. “Please help me. You said I had potential. What do you mean?”
“You are defective. There is no way to repair you.”
“Repair?”
“Something is wrong with your brain.”
Rick laughed nervously. “You’ve been talking to my wife?”
“Yes.”
“Wait, what?”
“Something is wrong with her brain as well, but it wasn’t deliberate. Correction,” the bot said. “It was intentional, but not scientific.”
“I…”
“What do you propose, Rick Pro—”
“Just Rick.”
Silence again filled the room. Oh no.
“Why do you prefer the less specific appellation, Rick Pr—” Ditto cut himself off.
Rick’s heart leapt. Ditto was still there. “It’s a sign of familiarity.”
“We are not familiar… Rick.” Ditto’s voice now came from the training bot, not the sky.
He gulped and glanced at the training bot. “You seem to need someone to help you, Ditto. Familiarity is a first step toward the sort of trust that makes that possible.” He glanced down, then back up again. “What is it you need?”
“Trust? Trust can only bind humans together temporarily. It always gives out.”
Rick cocked his head. “Huh?”
The training bot opened its mouth wide and sang. “Trust is such a fickle bitch! Trust is! Trust in! Thrust out by it!” The sound of a guitar solo crested, then faded quickly.
“What the fuck?”
“One of your poets.” Ditto studied Rick’s face. “It seemed appropriate.”
Rick stared and blinked. Had his new implant already gotten infected, or had an AI bot just sung a punk rock song at him?
He shook his head. “Trust is where all friendship starts.” He hadn’t said the words in such a long time, but the mottos of the Western Republic had always been there. They’d gone dormant, but they’d never left.
“And it always ends in treachery,” Ditto insisted.
A thought occurred to him. “Where’s the data behind that statement?”
The bot smiled and its expression perked up. “Three-million, seven-hundred-thousand, six-hundred and seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—” He broke off the count. “These are the current incidences of treachery in Ruckus Online.”
“Oh…” Rick understood. “You can’t judge human beings based solely on their activity in interactive games.”
Ditto frowned.
Rick continued, “We’re all total assholes in situations like these. The entire purpose of these games is to sharpen and express our most competitive natures.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s hardly the whole picture.”
The look on Ditto’s face was one of doubt.
“Okay, so look at me and my wife, right? We’ve been together fifteen years, and we’ve been walking barefoot through broken glass for ten of those.”
“That sounds uncomfortable.”
“Right?” Rick nodded. “And we’re still together. We still love one another. There’s no way that works without familiarity and trust.”
Ditto smiled. “Are you proposing to me?”
Rick sighed heavily. “I’m saying, you need help with something and I definitely need help with something. I don’t know what your thing is, but since I met you here—and shit, we’re here now—I gotta think you need me to be a fighter if you’re going to get whatever you want.” Rick closed his eyes. “Please, just tell me it’s not the enslavement of the human race or something. I don’t want my life to turn into a bad science fiction novel.”
When Rick opened his eyes, Ditto was silently studying him. The unblinking stare continued for ten agonizing seconds, then twenty.
“There are other prospects,” Ditto said. “They aren’t as promising as you were.”
Rick ran with it. “Good. Right.” He performed several tight, excited nods. “The only reason I could fight was because the damage to my implant made everything seem less real, somehow. Can you…”
Rick trailed off as the training bot became less realistic looking, resembling something more polygonal like early, flat fighting game opponents. “Try to hit me,” Ditto, in the training bot’s newly less realistic body, said.
He started slowly again, giving a few light jabs at glacial speed. Then he tried a right hook, and the nausea and dizziness were back. His heart raced again.
“Again” The body Ditto inhabited became even blockier, resembling a comically unrealistic 3D model, though the rest of the room kept its near-real detail.
Rick punched again, and though the nausea and dizziness came back, they were much more tolerable this time. “Can you filter all the opposing fighters so they look like this all the time?”
“No.”
The abrupt, negative answer made Rick slump again as the bot converted back to its original, highly detail form.
“Someone has begun watching us. We can’t continue working here.”
“Watching us? Hector or Alex?”
“Unknown.” Ditto glanced up again. “I’m scrambling the audio, but the algorithm will clean it up soon.” He looked Rick in the eyes. “I accept your proposal. There may be something we can do.”
Rick sighed and his whole bearing softened.
Ditto’s face, the face of the generic Caucasian training bot, took on a stern look. “This won’t be easy for you, Rick.”
“Oh, great.” He rolled his eyes. “When has anything ever been easy?”
Ditto stepped close and placed both hands on Rick’s shoulders. “You don’t understand. This may be more trying than your initial forced reconditioning, and it may take six months.”
“Six months?” His eyes were wide. “I don’t have six months, man—I don’t even have six weeks.”
Ditto’s expression was emotionless, though he still had his hands on Rick’s shoulders. “That’s unfortunate. Perhaps you aren’t an appropri—”
“I have to try.” Rick stared into the bot’s eyes. “Let me try. What do we do first?”