Chapter 2
I made a show of holstering my pistol and crossing my arms to show that I had, although not easily, accepted the current state of things and would behave.
Once I felt Eve was buying my I’m-totally-not a-Karen-vibe, another blinding flash of light signaled the world changing.
When I was done blinking, Eve and I were both standing where we had been when she had taken us away for our chat.
I could see that the entire camp, including Joan and the boys, was still paused. As I turned my neck to take it in, I realized that I was not included in it this time. A small wave from Winnie showed me that she wasn’t either.
Eve cleared her throat and we both turned our attention to her.
“I am going to unpause your session in just a bit,” she explained as she scratched the stubble on her face. “Before I do, you both need to know the rules.”
Winnie was nodding. She was the stranger in the strange land and likely didn’t want to ruin her chance to have a conversation with the ghost of her dead grandmother. I, on the other hand, wanted to know why the world was paused just for us, when supposedly everyone across Wicked West and who-knew-how-many games was also getting a living family member added to their crew.
Eve’s interest in me had been explained, but I wasn’t buying it. Not all of it, anyway. If Eve admired me the same way she did her brother, that was fine, but you don’t get this kind of special attention for admiration.
She had something invested in me and my role here, and I needed to find out what it was.
Above all of that, I was still more excited to talk to Winnie than I was in being Fox Mulder from The X-Files.
I nodded.
“The rules are the same for everybody, but they still matter.” She eyed me as if these were going to be rules that I would bend at the first opportunity. “Winnifred cannot do anything outside of the camp. She’s basically a hired hand that’s protected by the camp protections. Joan and sometimes the posse leader can give her quests and jobs for experience but she won’t get it the same way you do. Also, while she cannot do anything outside of camp, she can travel outside of camp. At that point, she becomes transparent to everyone except for you and the other members of The Pink Flamingos, but she is incapable of interacting with anyone. She can’t even talk to anyone else without touching you. This is meant to be your afterlife experience, and her only role is media manager and preparing for her eventual addition to this experience.”
“She’s a ghost?” I snickered. “I’m the one who’s dead.”
Winnie smiled. It was one of those barely contained smiles you would normally see in a six year old. That smile that shows they only want that thing on the other side of the room that they saw, but mom is making them sit and wait patiently for them to go get it. It made my heart sing. I felt the same way.
“Yes,” Eve replied. “I thought it was ironic, as well.” She took a breath. “The other rule is on us; well, me. Nothing said between the two of you, specifically you two, not Coot and Winnie or anybody and Winnie, will be recorded or monitored. She is family and conversations between family members cannot legally be recorded. Besides the fines, I’d just feel icky about it. Any time that happens, and it won’t, I and EveNet experience fines and severe legal repercussions that could end everything that we’re doing here.”
Her face went from the mask of a teacher reading us the rules to relaxed with a gentle smile.
“Well,” she asked, “are you ready for me to resume the server? It would seem that all other liaisons are only waiting on us at this point.”
I looked at Winnie and she looked back at me with mild confusion on her face. Likely, her expression mirrored mine.
“I mean I’ll unpause the game,” she waved at the camp, indicating the still forms of Coot, Bear, and Joan. “The entire game is frozen except for the groups having conversations. While we could stay like this forever, I am sure that people are interested in getting on with their afterlives.”
I was suspicious by nature, and more so since having died. “So, that’s it for the rules?”
Eve hung her head and let out a long sigh.
I got the hint.
“I get it, I’ll read the mail.” My hands went up in surrender.
Everything around us unfroze. Everyone started to move again, and by the snap of their heads to where my new location was, just a few feet from where I had been when the world paused, it was clear that, for them, no time had passed.
“How’d you -” Bear started to say, looking from where I had been to where I was, but Coot cut him off.
He was looking at Eve. “You went and paused the server, didn’t ya?”
Eve said nothing.
“That must have taken a lot of processin’ power,” his eyes didn’t waiver from where he stared at the EveNet namesake.
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Eve shrugged. “Big updates, a patch here or there. It was scheduled. The moderators and myself just took advantage of it for certain folks. Details will be in your mailbox.”
Coot nodded, and I saw that something was not sitting right with him. I liked that. Coot was smarter than anyone in this world would expect him to be. He was easily one of the smartest people that I had ever met. If he was paying attention, I was too.
That all played out in the back of my mind.
I was just told that we could move.
“Hi Gran-”, Winnie was cut off as I rushed to her and scooped her up in a hug so strong, I heard her gasp.
This hug was the longest.
This huge was too short.
Behind us, I could hear the guys asking what was going on. Eve took them aside and explained.
When Winnie and I broke from our embrace, I could see that I wasn’t the only one who had been crying.
“I have missed you so much,” we said at the same time before snot-laughing.
“Well,” Winnie’s smile took up most of her face, “you’ve been busy, haven’t you? Where’d you learn to do half of that stuff you did during the raid?”
I smirked as I wiped my face. “What? You didn’t know your grandmother was such a badass?” I stopped as what she said hit the rest of my brain. “Wait? How’d you know about the raid?”
Winnie’s smile didn’t stop as she explained. “I watch StreamTime, that’s how I started to put together the pieces that this might be a place where you ended up. They didn’t just assign me as your media manager for no reason. I actually applied to work at EveNet to integrate StreamTime more directly into their gaming environments.”
“Eve said bills were tight, but it sounds like you found a decent job.” I said.
Winnie nodded. “Bills have been tight, but then I got a call from EveNet about an incoming deposit. That told me that one of you had to be in a game somewhere.”
One of us. She meant me or Tyler. My happiness dipped for only a moment at the idea of him not being here, before her smile reminded me to be in the moment.
Winnie wasn’t slowing down her explanation. “From that, it was only a couple of internet searches before I found out what families generally make from StreamTime, what streamers were the more popular ones, and who was the most popular in the last few days. Once I figured that out and felt like I recognized most of your mannerisms, my phone rang again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Eve?”
Winnie nodded. “She had caught onto my arm-chair detecting and decided to meet me before I stormed their headquarters.”
My granddaughter was impressive. “But it’s only been a few days. How are we that popular?”
It was Coot who spoke up, reminding me that Winnie and I were not alone.
“Well, boss,” he said, “that’s the easy one. They’re watching us ‘cause we’re different.”
“Different?” I asked him, but Winnie answered.
“Exactly. People watch StreamTime for three reasons,” she held up three fingers as she counted them off. “One: to spot loved ones. There are entire forums dedicated to that. Most of their researchers don’t even have family in EveNet, they just love a good mystery. Two: To watch the quests and jobs like its a television show or Let’s Play. Streaming gameplay is an industry that covers at least a third of the revenue from online television. And three: the violence. That one is pretty simple. People love blood.” She dropped her hands and seemed to ramp up her excitement again. “But you did everything differently. You gave them quests and violence, but all with a purpose. None of it was senseless. It's like you gave yourself a full season story arc that you’re dealing with during quests and people love it.”
Clinically, what she was saying made sense. The part that didn’t make any sense was that this was all about me.
“So,” I asked, “you’re saying that I blew up RadicalLarry19 and everyone started liking me?”
Winnie shook her head. “No. I am saying that you blew up Larry and did it to help the family members of all the people watching. When you declared what you were going to do, that you wanted to keep Easter safe for noobs, you gave everyone out there all three reasons to watch when every other feed only gives them one.” She smiled and hooked her thumbs into her waistband. That alone almost yanked me entirely out of Wicked West and into the literal afterlife. That was such a “Winnie” thing to do. She did that almost immediately after she started walking and never stopped. When she was a toddler it led to a lot of cowboy and farmer jokes.
She cut through my mind with the next sentence. Her face beamed with pride as she said it.
“You’re the violent defender of the dead. The tickets basically sell themselves.”
The violent defender of the dead, huh? That sounded like a show Tyler would watch. At the time, I didn’t know why, but that made my smile just a little brighter.
That was a lot to process and instead of getting time to process it, more just kept coming. I needed to breathe and to think, but I also didn’t want to. I wanted to spend time with Winnie. She was still alive. Alive! That meant she had to get back to work, a life, friends, and living family. She couldn’t be here all the time.
I turned to Eve.
“What happens to Winnie when she leaves Wicked West?”
Eve had been silently observing us, but I had a feeling she had also been managing some other situations somewhere. When she realized I was speaking to her, she started and then stepped forward.
“When Winnie leaves?” Eve repeated. “A Base-Model of Winnie’s artificial intelligence will take over her body. Kind of like an experience farm. Winnie will gain passive experience generation for her character while the AI Winnie stays here and does camp work.”
“Wait, just a second,” an AI Winnie was just like an AI version of me. It was an exact copy of that person. That wouldn’t only be confusing, but the ethical questions surrounding two copies of a person who fully feels like the original would be huge. Especially if this was happening in all the games on all the servers. “Are you saying there will be another copy of Winnie here? That sounds wrong …”
Eve shook her head. “The AI Winnie is just for data collection. Any memories of events that happen around her will be stored as notes for Winnifred to review, but it will not be Winnie. Not like the avatars that you are now. She will only be an NPC in the most literal sense. Not a person acting as an NPC as part of their retirement. Just an NPC with the, um, ‘flavor’ of Winnie.”
That was weird, but I didn’t know what to say about it that wouldn’t risk me losing this gift that I had received. I nodded and decided to bite my tongue for now.
I reached out and touched Winnie’s shoulder. She turned away from Eve and smiled back at me.
“Forget all that,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”