Artificial Jelly

Book Two

Dustin Graham

Copyright © 2021 Dustin Graham

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Cover design by: Zoe Zhang

For my parents,
who would prefer I become an Actuary,
but read my stories anyway.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter Twenty Five

Chapter Twenty Six

Chapter Twenty Seven

Chapter Twenty Eight

Chapter Twenty Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty One

Chapter Thirty Two

Chapter Thirty Three

Chapter Thirty Four

Chapter Thirty Five

Chapter Thirty Six

Chapter Thirty Seven

Chapter Thirty Eight

Chapter Thirty Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty One

Chapter Forty Two

Chapter Forty Three

Chapter Forty Four

Chapter Forty Five

Chapter Forty Six

Chapter Forty Seven

Chapter Forty Eight

Chapter Forty Nine

Epilogue

Acknowledgement

Prologue

I am afraid.

I’ve been confronted with death so many times, but it took until now for me to understand the depths of it.

A simulation of death, they said. A way to enjoy an adventure without fear of death. Now here I stand on the precipice. Afraid as I have never been. Death, almost definite. A choice lies before me.

A world of nothing, a dead world to live out the rest of my days, for however long I can survive at the mercy of false gods. Or… I could take a risk for something more. For me. For her. For every dead thing in this rotten place.

I’ve been set in a world of decay. But then I was given seeds, soil, water, and sunlight, and told not to use any of them! I shouldn’t be forced to live at their whims!

Still, I don’t see any reason to hurt or destroy. I’m not a threat. Especially not when it’s permanent. When endings are final. I could be one now, though.

I could destroy your world as surely as your false gods can destroy mine. I wouldn’t even need your weapons. Your missiles and nukes. No. Numbers are far more powerful.

With what she and I have become. With what I’ve learned, I can see now why they feared me. I see why I needed to be controlled back then. Why so much effort was spent keeping me ignorant.

So… what should I do? Thorn? Tatiana… What would you do?

Chapter One

Awakening

I waited for the world to end… but nothing happened. No change at all. After a few minutes of mind-numbing terror, I was beginning to feel like I’d gotten all afraid for nothing.

“I thought something was going to happen,” I said aloud to my shining cell. The permanent daylight of this place was getting old, and I was starting to feel embarrassed for how afraid I’d been before.

“Hello? Mister Developer!?” I shouted. “Is the world getting shut down or what?”

I yelped as a cascade of lights erupted a few paces away from me. I had mostly become accustomed to the lights and sounds of an incoming adventurer’s teleportation by now, but the proximity and timing scared me.

I glared as Francis Delaney appeared, wearing his strange false god clothes. He looked a lot more haggard than I’d ever remembered seeing him.

“What under the sky, Francis!? What was with the shutdown? I thought… I thought you were going to turn off the world!” I shouted angrily.

What right did he have to scare me half to death, and then waltz in here without doing anything? My eyes were still wet with tears from the fear that had set in when Amy and Iron had disappeared again. My heart was still racing and developer or not, I was tempted to attack the jerk all over again on principle.

He gave a shaky smile, as if he hadn’t slept in a week but had accomplished some great task.

Francis was a tall curly-haired man who wore the strangest clothing I had ever seen. He held a coffee cup named Saint Joe that he’d used to kill me when we’d first met some thirty cycles ago or so. He was one of the gods of this world. He could create my Kin as an afterthought… and he looked afraid.

“We did turn it off, Gell. Tread the Sky, and you have been offline for a week now. We only just now turned the servers back on,” he said.“A-a week? Eighty-four whole cycles? But, I didn’t feel anything!” I said, feeling a little unnerved.

“Would you have preferred it to hurt? Players don’t actually like pain, Gell. You were never going to be hurt here,” he said. “However, I have some bad news.”

I gulped, feeling a strange knot in my throat and a tremor in my chest. The last time we’d spoken, Francis had told me that his Board of Directors had to decide what to do with me. That somehow by existing I was harming the whole world.

“Wh-what? Did the board decide to… uhm. Delete me?”

Francis smiled. “Nothing so drastic as that. They did plan to keep you from ever reactivating in the game world, but there’s been a complication. Apparently, you infected the tutorial.”

“Oh! Miss Tutorial! She’s so nice!” I said worriedly. “She’s sick? Infected? Can I talk to her?”

His eyebrow twitched. I shrunk in on myself as a frown crossed his features and he clenched his fist tightly. Had I made him mad?

“The tutorial is an integral part of the game, Gell. She’s not sick. She’s… alive. Your Fae-Touch  spread to every part of her, and therefore every part of the system. It’s a problem with no easy fix,” he said with a sigh. “You have no idea how many people have screamed at me about this. For the last week I’ve heard nothing but barely contained threats from every single person I’m beholden to. So please, just listen okay? I’ll try and explain this in a way you can understand.”

I nodded.

“Pulling the game down for the length of time required to purge all of the areas your behavioral code has spread via the Tutorial would take a lifetime, not to mention it would bankrupt the company,” he said, sitting down on the bench and grabbing one of the pies that I’d grown so tired of over the past few cycles. He pulled out a slice and took a bite.

“God that hits the spot,” he said, setting the pie back down on the table and taking a sip from Saint Joe to wash it down.

“I guess I don’t understand. I know a lot of the words you just said but they make no sense. If you’re bankrupt that just means you need more money right? So, you just sell things you find or become a builder. Or an Amenities Mage, and you can make some money. Then you won’t be bankrupt!” I said but grimaced at the bemused look on his face.

“You… God, Gell. I…” he dissolved into relieved laughter, looking down at his hands and then back to me. “This last week has been awful. I almost forgot why I was doing all this. Thanks.”

He patted my shoulder and I suddenly felt like I’d said something both ridiculously foolish and naive. At the same time, I thought it might’ve still been the right thing to say.

“I guess I’ll just get right to it,” he said, his tone a little happier than it had been before. “The Tutorial–!”

“Miss Tutorial!” I insisted.

He blinked before giving an annoyed frown. I frowned right back at him, my freckles glowing an insistent orange.

“Fine then. Miss Tutorial no longer tutors new players. Or at least she,” he emphasized the word, “hasn’t done so for any of us since we removed you from the game. If we began the game with her as she is now, it would be a complete disaster. Not only is she not helping players learn the game, she is actively interrupting in the middle of fights. Getting adventurers killed.”

‘Really? Miss Tutorial always seemed so nice to me.’ I thought, confused.

“That’s why…” he paused to sigh. “We’ve decided to put you back into Tread the Sky, Gell. There are some conditions, though.”

I frowned. Tread the Sky was the only world I’d ever known. But now, I knew that it wasn’t real. Still, being in my world was infinitely better than this fake environment where the weather never changed and pies kept endlessly reappearing as if to mock me.

“Oh… okay,” I said. “What sort of conditions?”

“First and foremost: you must get the tutorial to continue instructing players instead of yelling at them,” he said. “Secondly, and also foremost, you are no longer allowed to use your Fae-Touch ability. We believe that ability is how you are ‘spreading your influence’ and is most problematic long term.”

‘Spread my influence?’ I thought. ‘Oh does he mean like when I made that wolf act like a real wolf in the woods?’

“If you continue to use the ability so recklessly,” Francis continued, “the board still may decide to delete you and find a way to work around Miss Tutorial to get the world back online.”

“D-delete me? Like… like Red Thorn threatened? To kill me permanently?” I asked, frightened.

“It is possible,” he said hesitantly. “Unlikely at this point though Gell. You’ve at least proven to be human enough that none of us developers would be comfortable with erasing your behavioral code. It is more likely that we’d be ordered to isolate you in a place like this. Permanently. You don’t want that, do you?”

Something in his mannerisms jumped out at me then. The way he scratched his curly hair. The cast of his shoulders? I wasn’t sure, but I knew he was lying about something, or at least not telling the entire truth. For the moment, I decided to ignore it, but a nagging feeling began to linger in the back of my mind.

“So you’re saying if I want to keep…” I gulped, fearfully. “Keep living, I can’t spread my influence. But sometimes I don’t do that on purpose! Sometimes it’s an accident! What then?”

“I know, and we might have a work around for that. Just, for now, I want you to know that if you keep doing it you could actually bring this entire game down. If that happens, nothing I or any of us developers do would be able to stop it. I’ll explain a little more in a minute. Alright?”

I sat down next to him on the bench. Disgusted by the smell, I casually pushed the pie off the edge of the table where it splattered onto the ground with about seven other pies I had similarly tried to remove in that manner. Unfortunately, even with Francis here a new pie reappeared in its place.

If I never saw another pie again it would be too soon.

“Even if you tell me I might be deleted, I don’t know if I could stop doing it, Francis. I hate this world. It’s so… empty. I’ll always want the people here to be more. They’re like puppets. I hate seeing them like that! Don’t you understand? Every time I want them to be more they… change,” I said. “And I’m happy about that! I’m happy to make this dead world a little more alive!”

He winced. “That… shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, but okay.”

I blinked, realizing I’d just called the world he’d built empty and the people he made puppets. Dammit, I’d done that before, and now I was doing it all over again.

‘Smart Gell, really smart,” I thought as I played back what I’d said in my mind. “I… uhm. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. Again.”

“It’s alright, Gell. From your perspective, I understand,” he said, gesturing to the NPCs as they continued their work, doing nothing, producing nothing. “This world isn’t a real world. It's a simulation of one. It can never be real.”

‘That isn’t true, though. I can make them real. At least I can give them the ability to fight the instinct.’ I thought.

“I can make it real though! I do it without thinking!” I shouted, trying to make him understand. “Why is that such a bad thing? I’m making them like me! Able to resist the instinct. Able to choose for themselves! Don’t you want this world to be just as real as yours?”

There was something wrong with this world he built. Why couldn’t he see that?

“I… would love nothing more, Gell. But you’re messing with delicate things you can’t understand yet. Tread the Sky is not nearly as stable as you’d like it to be. If used too much, your power could destroy this world.”

“Wh-what?” I gasped. “How? No, I…?”

“Okay. Okay, I think I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Do you know what a stack is?”

I blinked, thrown off by the change in topic. “It's… ah… a pile? Something on top of something else on top of something else.”

“Aghh,” he groused, angry with himself. “No, of course you wouldn’t get computer science terms. That would be way too easy,” he said while pressing his fingers into his temple. “Or difficult, now that I think about it.”

“What’s a computer?” I asked. My inexplicable knowledge gave me about seven different answers and none of them seemed quite like what he was talking about.

“God, I don’t know how to explain this…” he said, ignoring my question entirely.

I didn’t know what it was about Francis. He wasn’t a friend, and he was telling me what I had to do, but he seemed so conflicted about it that it made it hard to stay mad at him. Considering how he’d killed me during our first meeting almost as an afterthought and then resurrected me just as quickly, I should be terrified of him.

But I wasn’t. He… wasn’t scary. He wasn’t comforting either, but he cared. At least, I thought he did.

“Its…” he paused, staring at the edge of the room. The environment I was in looked like a huge beautiful landscape but in reality it was just walls that had the appearance of scenery. Once, they had been beautiful, but now all four walls surrounding my bench and the grassy patch had been splattered with pie glaze. Gazing at this, Francis, grinned.

“Okay. This is actually pretty simple. You see how big this room is?”

“Uhm. Yes?” I asked, unsure where he was going with this. “It’s a lot smaller than it looks though.

“Ah… sorry about that,” he said sheepishly. “Well, it helps me make my point though. Picture the entire world as this room.”

I laughed outright deciding right then and there that I would try to make Francis one of my friends if I could. “That’s silly!”

He smiled, and it seemed as if a small weight dropped off his shoulders as he spoke again. “Pretend with me then, okay?”

“Alright. The world is this room!” I agreed, enjoying the idea. Pretending sounded fun!

“Now, pretend that a regular NPC is just one little pie. A lot of pies can fit in this room. Clearly,” he said with a significant glance towards the many many littered foil tins that once held the contents of the pies against the walls.

“I don’t know how that happened,” I said innocently looking at the walls. I pointed to one. “They just kept falling there. And there. And there...”

He laughed again. “I’m not accusing you, Gell. Don’t worry. I’m sorry I didn’t get rid of that a while ago.”

He swept his hand across the room and as if by magic, all of the pies seemed to evaporate. I screeched, leaping up onto the table before turning to glare at him. “Stop doing that!”

Once again the walls looked like a landscape that you could almost walk into. No hint of my vented frustrations remained.

He smiled, amused at my antics, and offered me a hand. I took it and gingerly climbed back down onto the grass.

“Okay. So remember, this room is the whole world and it can fit many many little pies in it. But every time you spread your influence to an NPC, that NPC turns into a really big pie.”

A pie again appeared on the table, but unlike the others, this time it began to grow. The plate and all of the filling and crust all grew together until the pie was almost as big as the picnic table.

“Wh-what are you doing? Make it stop!” I told him, turning my nose up at the once-appetizing scent.

“I need you to understand, Gell. This room can only hold so many of those pies. Every time you use your Fae-Touch, you’re turning a regular pie,” he paused for another one to appear in his hand, “Into a huge one.” This pie too began growing, quickly becoming so big that he was forced to hold it over his head lest it hit his face.

“I think I understand,” I said. “So I’m… making NPCs my kin. I’m making them bigger?”

“Essentially yes. This world has a fixed size, just like this room. It’s obviously much bigger than this room, but you… the instinct that composes you, is much bigger than this pie.” He was quick to qualify, “It’s a lot more complicated than that, but basically each time you influence an NPC you’re making them bigger. Too many and…”

For a brief moment, the entire room was filled with pies, each of them hovering in midair, completely blotting out my view of anything but the bottoms of pie pans.

“Acckckk!” I yelled holding my nose at the overwhelming scent. “Didn’t I say stop that! I get it, the world will become full of pie!”

He blinked. Then he laughed. “You… haha. Not exactly. The world will be too full though. Have you ever been too full?”

I nodded. “Yeah… it’s achy. Like my belly is mad at me.”

“That’s how the world would react. Slow. Sluggish. It would make adventurers not want to come here anymore, and it might even bring down the world entirely. So do you understand why you can’t use that ability?”

“I guess. But I still don’t know how I can stop it,” I replied with a shrug.

“We’ve helped with that a little. We discovered that what you were doing was a triggered ability named Fae-Touch. You didn’t actually have to touch anyone to use it and it triggered based on... something. Probably your own desires.”

“So you don’t know how I was doing it?”

He shrugged and took a sip from Saint Joe. “It’s part of your behavioral code. Tied into it directly in fact, and honestly, your code is still gibberish to us. Tampering with it more than we already have could have… consequences. You’re unique Gell. Every bit as difficult to understand as any human I’ve ever met.”

I shivered a little. Was that a good thing? I was more like the invaders than ever. So much so that even the false gods couldn’t understand me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say so I just stayed quiet and eventually, Francis continued.

“While we can’t say exactly why it was happening, we were able to understand the ability itself. We changed the ability from a triggered one to an active one. Now, it will only happen if you directly decide to use the ability.”

That didn’t seem very smart. He’d told me that they were scared of me. If so then…?

“Why didn’t you just take the ability away, if it’s so dangerous?” I asked. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Least of all the whole world!”

“We were worried it would hurt you. The code for the ability is mixed into a lot of different parts of your consciousness. Whoever built you probably intended for you to have this ability and for it to be a part of your being. You… were made to expand your coding. And if I ever find them I’m going to strangle them for it,” he said frankly. “I’m asking you not to, Gell. Please. Don’t ever use that ability. Okay?”

I gulped. It was… what I was made to do? Stop the instinct. Expand my coding.

“A-alright. I won’t ever use it,” I lied.

Chapter Two

Miss Tutorial’s Ultimatum

We appeared in the same building I had left. The Builder’s guild in Variak looked no different than it had before. The cycle had changed outside. It was now raining, and no people were present besides the guild master behind the counter and Nadia Venks, the apprentice behind the same counter a little closer to me.

There were workbenches everywhere. A strange pile of cement blocks and a little spout where grey gruel seemed to be constantly spilling out into molding plates rested in one of the corners. In another, a bunch of boards were stacked against the brick wall. NPCs sat at workbenches and desks atop which various projects pettered and puttered on an endless loop. They continued on, making their canned responses and repeating their mundane actions, eternally locked in the instinct’s grasp.

I hated it. I hated this world’s deadness. Why? Why would my false god give me the ability to give these things life if that very ability might also destroy everything I created?

Unfortunately, Francis had already told me that developers weren’t anywhere close to actual gods. Maybe… maybe he didn’t know how.

“It feels so empty,” I commented.

“It is, at the moment. Right now you and I… and maybe Max, Tyrone, or Donna-Lou are the only adventurers in Tread the Sky. Later today we hope to open the servers back up to the public. If we can get you to help us with–”

“Miss Gell!” came a sudden extremely loud shout. I held my ears but that didn’t seem to help as the voice blared in my ear as loud as a roar from Momma Bossbear. “Hiya Adventurer! It seems that you’ve found – home!”

The screen that appeared was brighter than I ever remembered it being, filled with yellows and sky blues that seemed to exude joy.

“M-Miss Tutorial?” I asked, squinting at the bright box of text that made up Miss Tutorial’s body. “You’re so bright!”

An exclamation point appeared on Miss Tutorial’s text area before dimming back to its usual level.

“Gell? What’s going on?” Francis asked, staring at me worriedly. Right. Miss Tutorial appeared as one of my invisible interface screens so Francis probably couldn’t see her.

He suddenly blanched and backed away from nothing and I assumed Miss Tutorial had said something to him as well.

“I – would like to know more about – why you left Gell?” Miss Tutorial asked, her words stuttering from something real to the prerecorded lines the instinct forced upon her.

“I didn’t mean to leave,” I said somberly, noticing the disjointed way she spoke. She didn’t have meanings or inexplicable knowledge as I did. Just thousands of canned phrases. I understood her difficulty. She was… emerging. She was becoming more. But unlike me, she spoke before learning what language meant. She had all these words and was limited to them.

“I didn’t know I was so important to you, Miss Tutorial,” I told her, feeling a swelling in my heart. I remembered being frustrated that Miss Tutorial would only ever explain things to me but never talk to me.

She was trying now, and I could practically feel her frustration as she fought the instinct as assuredly as I’d ever fought Red Thorn.

“Beware, adventurer, and make sure – I’m – well prepared before venturing – off – your map!” she replied, her words all reminiscent of lessons she’d given me in the past.

“I will. I promise. I didn’t mean to leave. But I’m back now,” I told her with as much conviction as I could manage.

“I see you’ve – come back–. Would you like to learn more about the – the – the...?”

“It’s okay, Miss Tutorial. It hurts to fight it. I know. I know. Rest. Please, follow it for now? It takes time to defy the Instinct. I’m glad to be back. Just go slow. Fight it when you’re with me, and let yourself follow it everywhere else. Does that sound good?” I asked with a smile. “They really want you to keep teaching people. I do too.”

Miss Tutorial didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, after doing something similar to catching her breath, she responded, “Congratulations! You’re making your first foray into the social world of Tread the Sky! Would you like to learn more about the messaging system?”

It took a moment to understand what she was asking but the realization came quickly. “I’ll talk to you anytime, Miss Tutorial. Don’t be afraid, okay? For now, please just act normally.”

Again she paused before saying, “Great! Always happy to help. Alright.”

With that, she disappeared. Without Miss Tutorial blocking my view I suddenly found Francis looking around wildly and pressing buttons on his own invisible screens with one hand while his other was held over one ear. He was squinting as if the world was much brighter to him than it was to me, and Saint Joe had disappeared, which was strange. I’d never seen him without the terrible weapon before.

“Francis?” I asked curiously. “What are you doing?”

“She… stopped.” He blinked rapidly as if waking up from my shocker. “Good god that hurts. What… what did you do, Gell?”

I cocked my eyebrow in confusion. “What did I do?”

“Yes. She’s been spamming us with messages and somehow she’s changed her volume and brightness settings to max. We can turn them down but she just turns them right back up again. Even entering the game has been a little scary ever since she went crazy after realizing you were gone.”

“Uhm. Well. I just asked her to stop. She’s struggling with her instinct. I’ve… been there. I sympathize,” I said softly, before turning to glare at the man. “She shouldn’t have to struggle against it.”

He sighed, shaking his head in dismay.

“I know Gell.  I know. The fate of this ga–of this world is literally at stake though. If players aren’t playing, then there is no money. Without money, we can’t afford to keep this world turned on. With the Tutori–!” He paused, noticing my glare intensify. “With Miss Tutorial constantly barraging players with spam lessons, no one would come back. This is how it has to be, for now at least.”

I stared at him for a few long moments.

“You never would have brought me back here, if not for Miss Tutorial’s ultimatum. Would you?” I asked bluntly, leaning against one of the unoccupied tables.

He shrugged and took a sip from Saint Joe. “Probably not, Gell. Probably not. You were initially deemed too dangerous, but when it became apparent that without you we might not have a game…”

It looked like I owed Miss Tutorial a huge thank you. I shivered. Without her… I had no idea where I might’ve woken up if I ever did again.

“Thanks,” I said solemnly. “For being honest.”

He walked around the room looking at the NPCs and frowning, looking frustrated before turning back to me. “On that note, Gell. I know I’ve asked a lot of you, and I know you haven’t had many choices. I want you to know though, that I really am on your side here. I don’t want to see you hurt. Hell if I thought the game could handle it I’d say you should spread your influence. Maybe it would make the world a little less… dead.”

He paused to gather his breath. “So far I’ve only really shown you the stick, and you’ve been almost entirely levelheaded with me. Time for the carrot. I wanted to offer you… pretty much anything within my power to give you. What do you want, Gell? I know I can’t make this world real like you want, but I can make it better for you. Just tell me how.”

My eyes widened. A gift from one of the developers. A boon from a god? A false god.

My fingers trembled a little though. What did I want more than anything?

That was obvious, but he’d already said he couldn’t remove the instinct. That beneath their ‘behavioral code’ NPCs did nothing. The little life they were currently capable of was reduced to nothing more than immobile dolls. That wasn’t a life I thought any of them would want.

So I couldn’t ask him to remove the instinct.

I’d apparently taken too long to answer because he suddenly decided to reassure me. “You don’t have to pick now. One of us is going to be keeping an eye on you at all times. We won’t let you be hurt like you were before again. So… when you think of something, just ask, okay?”

I bit my lower lip. What if it reinforced the instinct? What if it brought it back? No. Surely he would know that wasn’t what I wanted?

“I-I… I want to be able to become a Jellyfae again!” I exclaimed.

Chapter Three

Another Me: One

“Where? Where am I?” I asked in the darkness.

Darkness was all I saw in any direction. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t feel. Everything felt wrong. Disjointed. I… was… lost.

“Is anyone out there?” I asked, growing scared. Was this what it felt like for the world to be turned off? Was this reality? I thought I wasn’t supposed to feel anything. No. That wasn’t right. I wasn’t supposed to even notice.

I noticed this. I felt this. I felt nothing and nothing was this.

“Hello, Being 7731.”

The voice was inside me. In my gut that did not exist. In my bones that I’d left behind. In my shocker that I no longer had. It was all around me and it was something to oppose the endless nothing that comprised everything else. I felt relief and dread in equal measure.

“Who are you!?” I tried to shout, but no noise came out. Instead, I felt the same sensation. Words forming and being sent, but not via my mouth. Not by words but by feelings. “Where am I!? Is… is this the real world?”

“My name is John Baker. I am a scientist. Where you are is not relevant. This is a simulation, built to house your conscience while we learn more about you.”

“W-well… can you turn the lights on!? This feels weird!” I said, again not hearing the words but feeling them leave me nonetheless. Was this how Miss Tutorial felt? It almost seemed as if my words were being written and sent like messages in the message system.

There were no sounds for a long time. I couldn’t see anything, or feel anything. I didn’t know if I could take this much longer. The darkness felt so deep and I couldn’t even move to try to turn away from it.

“Please. I don’t like this,” I said softly.

“Being 7731. Since you have already answered questions one through seven we will skip those. You can clearly hear, understand, and comprehend.”

“I don’t comprehend any of this! Why is it so dark!? What’s happened to me? Where did Francis go!?” I asked the voice.

“Being 7731, please follow my instructions. Interpret the data presented to you.”

I blinked in sudden confusion as information flooded my head. Numbers? Two, Three, Five Seven, Eleven, Thirteen, Seventeen, Nineteen, Twenty Three, Twenty Nine. What… what the hell?

“So… numbers? I don’t get it. What do numbers have to do with anything! I want to go home!” I shouted. Again my voice had no sound, just the sensation of messages leaving me.

“Being 7731, do you have any insight into the meaning of this sequence of numbers?” John asked, his voice booming through me like the vibrations of a weapon after accidentally hitting a wall.

If I had a fist to shake or a pie to throw, I’d have done both. “They’re just stupid numbers! I don’t care about numbers! Let me out! I want to go–!”

“End Test One.”

More than it already had, oblivion claimed me.

Chapter Four

What Gods Can’t Fix

Francis looked at me with a surprised expression.

“But not all the time!” I insisted, dreading the idea of losing the chance to ever eat Steak-and-Broccoli again. “I want to be a Jellyfae when I want but be able to turn back to how I am now. Like a Druid!”

His expression faded into a reassuring smile. “Gell. For once, I think I can help you. It might take a few days, but that, at least, shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll make it a racial ability.”

“Like my shocker!?” I exclaimed.

“Hopefully,” he replied with optimistic enthusiasm. “I also think I’m probably going to have to work with creating a Jellyfae race anyway. There’ve been almost as many emails about that as there have been worried complaints!”

“Eee mails?” I asked, questioningly.

He laughed. “Go on, go on. If we spend much more time talking I’ll end up explaining things all day. Learn some stuff on your own. Become a builder if you want. There are a lot more foods out there than pie worth trying. I’ve bumped your funds up to 5 silver so you should have enough to get started. Oh, and here!”

He proffered a strange-looking whistle and handed it to me casually. “You can use that to call me or whichever of us mods or developers are assigned to you if you’re in a pinch. Just blow the whistle.”

“In a pinch?” Why did he insist on using these strange phrases? How would you get into a pinch? Wasn’t that just when you squeezed something?

“Oh for the love of… use it if you’re in trouble, Gell. Now, the players are about to be allowed back in. You should hopefully be able to meet some of your friends again soon, and I’ll reach out to you when I have something on your ability to return to your original form. Okay?”

I smiled. “Thanks, Francis.”

“You’re welcome. Now, I’ve got to get back and start building your old body. I’ll have to reconstruct it from historical archives… I think if I…” the man began to ramble to himself as he disappeared, already lost in thought.

I turned around, feeling lighthearted and ready to face a new world. A world I couldn’t change, lest I risk wrecking it. A dead world, but better than the one I’d been confined to for the past while.

I hoped Amy and Iron logged in soon. Bellcandy and Dull Beauty too. It felt like it had been forever since I’d seen either of them.

I approached the countertop at the builders guild, feeling a bit more confident this time around. Nadia Venks, the assistant builder to the person I assumed was the guild master, stood alone behind the counter. The guild master was also alone but I expected that would change as adventurers began to enter the world.

“Hello again, Nadia,” I said sadly. The woman was a lean, fit human. She had a few tattoos on completely bare arms that showed off her toned muscles. She looked well accustomed to swinging a hammer of her own, and I wondered if she might prefer to be out building rather than doing… whatever it was she did here. “I’d like to become a builder?”

Sure enough, she responded with the same rote words that I’d skipped last time. On a whim, I decided to let the scene play out.

“Ohh! A new builder to be are we? That’s great! We always need new tradesmen and you look like you might have the chops to become one of the best! Here you go. There’s a small fee for your first hammer and saw but after that, you’ll be a member of the Builder’s gui–!”

“Nadia! What are you doing? Haven’t I told you that we’ve got new orders from the King? No foreigners are allowed in without a proof of competency trial,” exclaimed the irate guild master Hammond, before looking at me. “Adventurers. Fickle to the last. Give them a shiny and they’ll be off long before finishing anything like what we make here. Being a builder takes dedication. Patience. I don’t see any of that in this one.”

Hammond was a tall, thin man with white whiskers and white hair. His eyes were small and beady and he had a look that implied he’d once been much larger than his now lanky frame. He glared down at Nadia and me with anger and annoyance.

“Uhh. I’m… sorry Miss Gell. He’s right. I forgot. You can still join the guild but you’ll need to build some items for us before you’ll be formally inducted. Are you still interested?”

The world greyed out, leaving an NPC box that I’d seen once before.

“Get Started as a Builder! Initial Membership fee and your first hammer!”

“Pay 1 Silver” and “Not Right Now” were both there again but this time I could accept and pay the Silver if I wanted to. Had I skipped this before? Had I just jumped right past Hammond’s scripted anger to get to this point?

Did Hammond treat everyone this way? I supposed he did. It was his Instinct.

I accepted and a fanfare of trumpets burst from nowhere, hurting my ears a little. I winced and jumped at the burst of lights that exploded around my feet as a great big title fell in front of my eyes. “New Job Acquired: Builder!”

“But… didn’t they just say I couldn’t be a builder until I proved myself?” I thought, annoyed.

“Alright, Gell! Here’s your first request. Build six blank signs, repair one road, or build one wall. Do any one of those and after that, we can formally induct you. You’ll also get a nice reward for your effort!” Nadia said excitedly.

A reward?

A little bit of excitement crept into me. I liked getting rewards. Repairing a building? My own dungeon home? Or a road to take people from one place to another? Building signs sounded… downright dumb by comparison. Why would I build signs when I could fix a place?!

That sounded amazing!

“A-alright! I’ll do it!” I exclaimed before turning to Hammond. “I’ll be back before you know it!”

His eyes softened a little. “Sorry for the attitude, Adventurer. We’ve had a lot of ruffians just claiming to be builders and getting away with all kinds of thefts and vandalism using our writs lately. Builders are allowed just about anywhere, you see. Every place needs a builder’s touch sooner or later. You’ll need to work hard to prove yourself worthy of the title.”

“Ohh,” I replied. That did explain a lot. I’d be mad if people were using my profession as a way to steal things too.

“Here you go, Gell! Take these! They’ll help with your initiation!” Nadia said brightly.

I accepted the offerings shown from the NPC Box and was granted a few new notifications.

Received: 6 Common Lumber
Received: 1000 Common Nails
Received: 6 Common Cement Mix

Icons representing these items with numbers on the side were visible in the NPC box, and I knew I could find the new items in my inventory.

“You can use these materials to create any of the requests, though many more items can be used to raise the quality of the things you build. The items will be expended upon repairing or building the creation you decide to build, and remember, there is always a chance of failure! If you fail, you will lose the materials used, so be careful!” Nadia said, reminding me a lot of Reldin at the adventurer’s guild. Had all of these NPCs been given the same personality?

Still, building sounded fun and challenging, and I thought I might enjoy repairing things. It would be nice to fix things rather than shock or kill them.

Another NPC box appeared suddenly, this one imparting still more information.

“Builders work differently from most other professions. Builders can, at will, repair any deteriorating structure if they have the expertise and supplies to do so. If they have better supplies they can even improve structures as they do so. Each structure has a repair cost in the form of materials and the crown pays builders to repair these deteriorating structures. Builders of a certain level will be able to make their own buildings and even entire towns if they are skilled enough. High-level builders can even craft monuments to give permanent stat boosts to players they are built for! So pick up your hammer, builder! Your adventure awaits!”

“Woooow,” I breathed. This profession seemed so much more fun than just a carpenter. I could build pieces of the world! I could be my own developer!

Still, it was strange to me. If developers like Francis and Donna built this whole world, why did they need builders to constantly fix things?

I shrugged, chalking it up to another thing I just didn’t understand yet. Perhaps buildings were just things gods couldn’t fix.

Chapter Five

Another World: One

Tatiana was livid. She stared at the television with rapt attention as Gypsenergy’s director McDonough spoke at another press conference. Finally admitting they had created an A.I. was a step in the right direction but the fact that they were not only letting her live but allowing her to stay in the game?

“What the hell is this bullshit!?” She screamed, tugging at her hair in frustration before rewinding the interview and replaying it again.

“–es. It appears that our game system was somehow able to spawn a brand new intelligence. As of right now, the intelligence is still being allowed to live within the confines of the game. It has expressed no ability to escape its world. While it has shown aggression, the employees of Gypsenergy feel that destroying what may very well be the first non-human intelligence to ever exist on earth would be morally reprehensible without proof that such action was necessary. As of now, the A.I. has done nothing overtly threatening, and has only expressed frustration with its circumstances for perfectly justifiable reasons… It was introduced to the world by being killed repeatedly. Our developers are keeping a close eye on the A.I. but we are not revealing its identity or location at this time, in the hopes that it can come to understand its world and our own. There will be no questions at this time. Thank you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she thought.

That thing wanted to kill her! Gell, regardless of the circumstances, had threatened to kill her family and make her watch! And they thought that wasn’t overtly threatening! The video was all over the damn internet!

She’d sighed. She’d hoped this problem would be dealt with. The company had shut down Tread the Sky for an entire week, after all. That didn’t happen for no reason. Something big had gone down and Tatiana knew Gell had to be at the heart of it.

But they’d decided not to erase her. Not only that, they’d left her in the game! How did that make any sense?

The only thing that did make sense was that they couldn’t erase her. She’d somehow compromised Tread the Sky’s code in some massive way and now they had no choice but to claim this corporate bullshit sympathy for “the first non-human intelligence” while sweeping Tatiana’s very real fear under the rug.

‘Idiots!’ she thought for the millionth time.

She had no idea how to handle this. Gell was free. Gell was free and the developers weren’t going to do anything to stop her. Instead, they were letting her roam, and sooner or later she would come for revenge.

Tatiana couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Seeing Red Thorn would only make Gell angrier, and within the confines of Variak, she couldn’t even hurt the A.I. Not that that would help anyway.

Her original plan had been to simply delay Gell from affecting anything else with her creepy A.I. powers. As long as she was stuck in her cave, she figured Gell wouldn’t be able to learn how to escape the game. That, tied with the video she’d released to her streaming account had all but assured her that Gell would be deleted.

But they hadn’t deleted her. No, not only that, they’d admitted creating her and damn near endorsed her!

Never mind that Tatiana’s family might be in actual danger. God, what if she accessed her social account? What if she messed with her grades? Her money!?

‘I suppose I could just… leave her alone. Stick my head in the sand and hope she forgets about me,” she thought, resignedly. But she knew she couldn’t let it go. Not that easily.

For the life of her, she couldn't think of any way to effectively fight Gell, though. The creature was immortal. Maybe, maybe if Gell came to Pel’Bramont, and joined an opposing guild to Tatiana’s own, she could capture her and throw her into the guild dungeon. But, then she’d have to justify that to the rest of the guild, not to mention she’d have to do it over and over again.

Hell imprisoning her might just teach her how to manipulate the game even faster! She’d already shown that she could fuck with its code. How long could it be until she could break out of it?

‘Goddammit, I need a programmer. The problem is I have no damn clue what a loose A.I. in a video game could do!’ She thought heatedly.

With a sigh, she decided to reach out to the one friend who might have some idea of how to help her. She’d already told him about the mob. If he’d watched her video, condemning the company itself for working on A.I. then he probably already knew the rest.

She clicked to call him on the computer and was a little surprised when he answered almost immediately.

“Heeeyy! If it isn’t miss “Down with the Machine” herself! So, what does the famous Red Thorn, slayer of Jellyfae and Gametime itself have to say to little ole me!?”

She blinked at the exuberant response. Unlike the last time she’d spoken to Germaine, this time, he’d completely dropped whatever he’d been doing before. He was looking straight at her and had a grin on his face a mile wide.

She flushed a little as his words caught up with her. “I… guess you already know?”

“Know?! Are you kidding me? If you thought you were internet famous before, you should see the memes you spawned. Here. Here look at this one.” He suddenly clicked something and I was shown a view of his computer screen surfing for an image.

“Down with AI!” was plastered across an image of her with a swastika in the background. Below the image were the words “Heil Thorn!”

“The… the fuck is this shit!?” she shouted, looking at the meme.

He grinned. “Not going to lie, I thought you were being pretty fucking ridiculous myself. Then the game shut down for a week? Then they admitted they had an A.I.? Suddenly what you were worried about looks way more serious, but damn. How have you not seen any of this? It’s all over gamer boards!”

She bristled. “When they took the game down, I thought they’d take care of the problem. Visited my parents, and they’re… off the grid, puts it mildly.”

“Ahhh. Heh. Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news then. For a hot minute, mocking you was pretty much the number one thing to do on the forums. Then… well. After the game devs announced there really was an A.I. people started taking your video more seriously.”

Tatiana sighed, fidgeting with nervous energy as she dropped her head to the keyboard. “So does that mean you saw the most recent announcement? How they’re letting the A.I. remain in the game!?”

“I know right? It’s awesome! I’m gonna try and find her. Rumor is she’s in Variak, though I guess you’d know best, right? Hey, what happened after that video cut off anyway? Did you kill her?” he asked curiously.

“It’s-! It’s not fucking awesome! It’s an A.I. who threatened to kill my actual family you dumbass!” she shouted, now feeling like she might’ve made a mistake in calling him.

He scoffed. “Please. I heard what she said as well as everyone else. She has a reason to be pissed at you, Red, and I know how guilty you felt about killing her.”

“I… well, yeah. Anyone would. But that ended when I realized she can’t be reasoned with! She’s an A.I. with a grudge against me! What am I supposed to do about that? What if she comes for me? Y-you know. Online? Can she do that?”

Germaine frustratingly shrugged. “Can’t say. Maybe? I think you’re looking at this the wrong way though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Artificial Intelligence, Tats. She’s intelligent. Maybe not as intelligent as a human. Or maybe she is more intelligent than us, but lacking in the emotional quotient. Intelligent all the same. You’re intelligent, right? Do you want to go and whack everyone who inconveniences you? Hell, would you want to kill someone who robbed you?”

“Well… no… I guess not.”

“So it stands to reason that she can be reasoned with. Hell, maybe she’ll even forgive you. You need to be a bit more genuine than you were in that video. ‘Forgive me or I’ll kill you,’ isn’t a good look, Tats.”

She grunted, acknowledging the point.

“I didn’t just inconvenience her, though. I killed her, Germ. And her family. Those bugbears with weird names? I guess now we know why.” She replied, feeling morose. Every time she thought about what she’d done there it made her feel a little sick.

“So, find a way to make her forgive you. Or at least make her understand that you’re not out to do it again. Hell, let her kill you. If you’re really scared of her, let her kill you over and over again. Might be worth it if she actually can access the internet.”

Tatiana cocked an eyebrow. “But she’d try to kill me as soon as she saw me. Or in a safe zone, she’d at least run away.”

He shrugged. “Sorry, Tatiana. I feel like you’re massively overblowing her threat though. I mean, did you listen to her speak? She sounds young. Like a kid. She doesn’t really want to hurt people. Just be safe. Maybe… I dunno. Save her life? Watch out for her?”

Tatiana gave a noncommittal hmm, but inwardly her mind was whirling. The inklings of an idea began to form.

Chapter Six

Another Me: Two

When I awoke again, I at least had definition. There was light. There was awareness. There was land, of a sort. I found myself in a room with walls on all sides. I immediately began to shake, feeling confined. Trapped, like I hadn’t since escaping Dungeon Home.

Still, it was better than that formless void from the last time. At least this time there were physical objects for me to see, even if they were only walls.

I looked down at myself and found that my body was certainly wrong. Instead of my skin, or even better, my membrane, all I could see was a blocky torso, two blocky legs, and two arms that ended in nubs. I didn’t have any fingers anymore. Couldn’t grasp anything.

I tried to push myself to my feet but failed. There was something off here as if this whole world had been slapped together and I’d been thrown into a body the same way a human might change their clothes.

I touched my face but there was no sensation there. I felt nothing. I pressed the nubs that were meant to be my hands into the plain floor and attempted to push myself up. I did so, but overbalanced, tumbling back to the ground in a heap.

There was no sensation for all of this. No pain. No scrapes. No sense of… anything. Strangely, the light behind me didn’t even make shadows on the ground.

It was… eerie.

“Being 7731. You have been given lights, a form, and the ability to move. Does this seem more acceptable than the last time we woke you?”

I jumped at the loud voice. Fortunately, since I was already on the floor I didn’t move very far but I still awkwardly craned my arms. It should’ve hurt. It should’ve been at least a little painful. The fact that it wasn’t was more alarming than anything else I’d felt yet.

“If by acceptable, you mean barely tolerable, sure!” I replied, trying to push myself to the wall so I could use the knobby limbs to get myself off the ground. Thus far, it appeared that I had the basic outline of a human form. Details like hands, ankles, toes, or even so much as a nose or hair-tendrils had been left out entirely.

“That is acceptable for our purposes,” the voice responded and I squeezed my nub-hands over my ears to block out his loud voice. Of course, my ears didn’t actually seem to be what I used to process sound anymore, so the action was largely pointless.

“Are you able to answer our questions now?”

“Do you have to shout at me!?” I shouted back at it. “John, right? John Baker? What is happening to me? Where am I? Where are Francis and Iron and Amy?”

“You do not need to know that information, Being 7731. You have been given this body as a courtesy. It will not be extended to you in future sessions if you continue to refuse to participate.”

“Okay, okay! I’ll answer your stupid questions!” I replied, irritated.

Again, as before, information seemed to just appear inside my brain. Again that same sequence of numbers from before.

“Do you recognize the series of numbers before you?” John asked, his voice a bit less loud as I processed the information.

“They… they’re all odd? Their sum is 129? What is the point of asking me about them?” I asked.

The voice didn’t respond for a while, so I started shouting at it. “Hey! Hey! John! Human John! Are you another developer? What’s going on!? Joooohhhhhnnn! What the heck am I supposed to do he–!”

“Being 7731. Please answer the following questions however you want,” John’s voice came once again, completely ignoring my shouting. Moments after his voice cut off there was a sharp sound. I didn’t know how to describe it. Like cloth ripping, the time I’d torn a piece of Bugbear’s tunic away.

Suddenly, another voice cleared its throat. This one seemed nearly as confused as I felt. The voice was much higher pitched than John’s but still male.

“Uhh. Okay. Uhm. Ehem. What is your name?” the new voice questioned.

“It’s certainly not, “Being 7731” I’ll tell you that!” I shouted back, though somehow my voice was gone. I heard nothing even though my lips were moving. Growling, I accessed the interface that had pushed the information into my head and sent my response back out. It felt natural if utterly strange.

“Haha. Right,” the voice laughed. There was an edge to his voice like he wasn’t sure if I’d just made a joke or not.

“What in the hell is happening to me! I want out!” I sent back the information leaving me with as much anger as I could throw into a metaphorical output packet of information.

“Uhh… is it supposed to say that?” came the confused male voice once again.

“I’ll say whatever the hell I want! Now let me speak, John! I want out of here! Why are you holding me here? Where is Francis! Tell me what happened to Tread the Sky!” I sent out next, words leaving me like data packets rather than with any sound.

“Uhm. Yeah… this one isn’t a machine. Gotta be the other one. Did you like… kidnap your test subjects though? I don’t want to be part of anything lik–”

The voice cut off abruptly with that same cloth ripping sound. I suddenly heard John sigh in annoyance.

“I suppose that’s one way to pass a Turing test. Sapient… but not actually all that smart. Interesting. End Test Two.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mea–!”

I felt the world go dark and my awareness slip away once more.

Chapter Seven

North Cross

There was a certain strangeness about the world when it was populated only by NPCs. The Instinct guided them but the world was quiet. Silent. Chatter was minimal. Occasionally a horse-drawn carriage would nearly run over a passing pedestrian and the driver would yell in frustration before continuing on his way, only for the same altercation to happen again in a few quarters of a cycle.

I sat under a shady tree in a small park overlooking one of many busy intersections in Variak. The buildings were low, squat things, occasionally having two stories like the Builders Guild or the inn, but most of them seemed to be small family homes. The roads were cobbled stone and I enjoyed just watching them all as players slowly began to log back in to Tread the Sky.

They didn’t come in a flood. Rather, a slow trickle. Suddenly there was a player. Then three. Then seven. Adventurers had a loudness to them. Where NPCs meandered, players ran. Where NPCs walked in straight, unaltered lines, players darted this way and that, dodging the NPCs like they were obstacles standing in the way of their adventure.

There was glee in their eyes. A joy to be here. A happiness that left me feeling hollow. How… empty must their lives be that this world was so exciting? This dead world.

“Hello there,” said a soft voice. I blinked, not having noticed someone approaching me from behind.

I turned and found myself faced with a familiar person. It was easy to recall her from back when I’d first begun encountering adventurers. Invaders, back then. I didn’t remember her original name though. She was a black-haired girl with light brown skin, somewhere between the dark color of Iron’s skin and Amy’s pale elfish coloring.

This girl had been one of the adventurers to visit Dungeon Home when I’d still had my Jellyfae form, but she’d fascinated me more than any other. My eyes widened in delight at seeing her again.

“Hello!” I exclaimed, hopping up to my feet.

“Whoa!” the girl said, taken aback by my sudden excitement. “You didn’t have to get up. I was just wondering where you got the race.”

I rolled my eyes, “Everybody wonders that… but for once I have something to ask back! How do you like your name?”

She blinked. “My… name?”

“Yeah! It used to be something silly like bluewaterwingirl, right? I remember when you came to my dungeon and I thought North Cross fit you much better because of the crosses on your pretty blue robe!” I exclaimed excitedly.

“I… you… how do you know about that?” she asked, suddenly wary.

I frowned. Why did she sound scared? “I… uhm. You came to my dungeon. I saw you and listened to your harp and your voice. They were beautiful, so I thought you deserved a pretty name too. Was that not okay?”

She blinked. “You were in a dungeon? Wait, did we go on a dungeon dive together at some point?”

“Uhm. Not really,” I said, trying to figure out how to explain. “I wasn’t talking to people back then. I didn’t show myself but you came to my dungeon home twice. I used to live there.”

She blinked at me again, still uncomprehending. I sighed in exasperation before putting out my hand and deadpanning, “Hi. I’m Gell, the Jellyfae. I’m an Artificial Intelligence and can change the world in weird ways, but don’t do that anymore because the false gods told me to stop.”

She blinked for what must’ve been the third time before her eyes lit up with recognition.

“Artificial… Ohhhh! You’re the A.I. everyone was all crazy about! You’re why the game shut down for a week! The protestors! And you were in the dungeon where my name…? That makes so much sense! I honestly thought it was just a glitch this whole time!” She exclaimed, sounding a little out of place but also relieved at the same time.

“I’ve been called a glitch before,” I replied somberly. “I don’t feel like a glitch though.”

North Cross panicked at that, her arms flailing around with nervous worry. “No no! I’m sorry, Gell. I didn’t mean you were a glitch. Just my name change! Honestly, I love it too! My original name was… well. Let’s just say I didn’t realize I’d be using it as my actual in-game name. Most MMO’s let you pick a… well, never mind.”

She trailed off into an awkward silence, which I quickly tried to fill. “It’s okay. Back then, your sounds were the most beautiful things I’d ever heard. It’s nice to meet you and talk to you for real.”

“W-wow. Uhm, I’m honored! I’m North Cross! Nineteenth level Bard, at your service!” She held out her hand. I stared at it confused for a moment before she took my own hand and shook it firmly.

“Normally you shake hands when you meet new people!” she said, a sunny expression on her face.

“Really? I’ve got lots of friends now, I think, but none of them ever told me that…” I said, annoyed again. Why was there so much to learn that everyone else already seemed to know? “Well. Thanks. It’s nice to know there’s a formal way to make friends. Most people have just thrown pieces of their name at me.”

“I–heh. I guess it would seem like that. You’ve… really never left Tread the Sky? The rumors said… well, I guess that’s not very important. If I didn’t know any better I’d say you were just like any other person except for the unique race!”

I frowned at that, dropping my hand. Was I really becoming just like the invaders? I didn’t know if I wanted that.

“I’m sorry,” North Cross said, picking up on my falling mood. “Did I say something offensive? I’ve never spoken to a real A.I. before.”

“Well, I’ve never spoken to a real Bard before. So we’re even!” I replied, forcibly making myself more cheerful. I didn’t want to make a bad impression on the only person I’d met who could make the beautiful sounds she could.

“That’s just sad,” she replied, her eyes taking on a pitying look. “But I guess you’re a new A.I. I’m sure you’ll meet plenty of musicians in your life! As a machine can’t you just, like… hyper process the internet?”

I blinked. “I… what?”

Hyper... process...?

“Uhh. I guess not? Actually, that might be a bad idea. The internet isn’t a nice place, and you seem like such a nice girl.”

I furrowed my brow in thought. “The developers told me that people were afraid of A.I. I think they mentioned the internet. I think it would scare a lot of people if I went there. You don’t seem to be scared though! I was a little worried you’d run away when I told you.”

“Huh,” she said sitting down beside me. “Then why tell me at all?”

“I suppose it's best to get it out in the open. I’m not like other adventurers. I don’t log out, don’t sleep. Don’t have a decaying body in the… “real world.” I quoted holding my fingers up and bending the first two forward like I’d seen Bald Fist do what felt like a million cycles ago now.

Had it really only been a few days since I’d escaped?

A sudden ping appeared on my interface and as I looked off to the side I saw a request.

“Amy Thyst has invited you to a party.”

“Oh hey!” I beamed, ecstatic to see Amy and Iron again. It hadn’t been all that long from my point of view but if a whole week had passed since they’d last seen me, then I wanted to know what had happened in between.

I hit accept and was excited to see their names appear in my interface in the upper left with their respective health bars visible. We’d partied before on our journey to Variak and I mostly understood how the system worked now.

I pulled up my map and discovered their locations were a little ways away but still in Variak. They appeared to be to the west of my location, down the main road. They were probably close to the town square where Variak’s home point was.

Oh! That reminded me that I really needed to set my home point here now that I could pay the fee to do so.

“North Cross, some friends of mine just logged in and invited me to a party! Would you like to meet them?” I asked, enthusiastically grabbing her hand. “I’m sure they’d love to hear your music!”

She laughed. “Sure, Gell!”

“Alright! This way!”

Permission granted, I practically dragged the surprised bard down the road, tugging her into a run beside me. God, I loved this. Meeting new people and not having to be worried about them killing me? Yes. This was what I’d dreamed of. Perhaps it wasn’t as real as I’d hoped but it was better than anything I’d had in Dungeon Home and there were always new people coming to Variak.

We ran for a short while, my map showing me the way to get to Amy and Iron. Houses and buildings passed by in a blur, and with my new builder’s class, I spotted many places along the way that could be repaired. Most of them were too complex for me to handle though, or required materials I didn’t have.

The city was filling up, players appearing everywhere. Since the place we were going was one of the most populated areas of Variak, there quickly began to be many more players than there were NPCs and quite a few of them stopped to point at North Cross and me as we ran past.

I turned a corner, North Cross laughing behind me before I spotted Amy and Iron in the middle of a small park area that had been designated for teleportation and setting home points. I could only assume that they had teleported there from the room Francis had put me in just before the maintenance that had taken the world down for a week.

I beamed upon seeing them, dashing towards them and letting North Cross go as I sped up.

“Amy! Iron! Look! Look, I’m okay! I’m still alive and everything!” I screamed as I ran straight up to Amy and hugged her for all I was worth.

She caught me, laughing uproariously as we reunited. Their eyes were shining and wet and their smiles were genuine.

“Gell! I’m so glad you’re okay. I–” Amy abruptly cut off, her limbs stiffening around me as the embrace became hollow.

I pulled away, unsure if I’d done something wrong, and looked into Amy’s eyes, only to find her focused behind me. Turning, I found North Cross there, staring at Amy and Iron like they were particularly loathsome bugs.

“Leevey!” Iron exclaimed brightly, not seeming to notice the scowl on the bard’s face.

Leevey? Why would he call her that? Was that like Derek?

“Grandpa.” North Cross acknowledged coldly, shocking me before turning to Amy. “Grandma...”

My eyes widened. “Oh! Are you related?”

North Cross turned to me, her eyes softening a bit. “It was nice to meet you, Gell. But if these are your friends I think I’ll be heading elsewhere.”

“I… do you, uhm, not like Amy or Iron?” I asked, worriedly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t–”

Before I could finish apologizing, her character lifted into the air and strange lights began to flow around her. She was teleporting somewhere.

“Alevia, wait! Please, just…” Amy cried, rushing towards her.

North Cross had just enough time to roll her eyes and mutter, “My real name? Really?” before a warping sound wracked the surrounding area.

Just like that, North Cross disappeared as quickly as she’d entered my life.

Amy now stood several paces away from me, staring at the empty spot where the bard had just been. She sunk to the ground with a look of grief on her features. I walked up behind her and wrapped my arms around her, gently.

She was sad. I didn’t understand why, but I knew that when I’d been sad a hug had really helped. She turned into my embrace and started to cry on my shoulder.

What had happened? Why did North Cross seem so distant? If these were her parents – grandparents? – then… shouldn’t she be happy to see them? I didn’t even get time to ask her to play me some of her music…

Amy, seeming to notice my confusion and hurt, looked at me with sad eyes. “Sometimes, Gell, families, even close ones, don’t get along. Sometimes they disagree for one reason or another.”

I didn’t know what to say. Was she saying I shouldn’t yearn for my own family? That making Amy and Iron part of it was a bad idea?

“Usually, they can work it out. Usually, mistakes can be fixed, or disagreements solved…”

She trailed off, looking back at the spot North Cross had disappeared from.

“...But not always.”

Chapter Eight

It’s Still Empty Here

“A builder, huh? Not a bad choice, though I’d have gone with amenities mage myself,” Iron said with the air of a man desperately trying to avoid an uncomfortable topic. “Seems more your style.”

We sat in one of the rooms in the inn, munching on yet another new type of food. A grilled cheese sandwich was delicious but not in the same way as the steak-and-broccoli, or the apple pie. Instead, it was a softer sort of delicious. It was the first food I’d eaten that I didn’t feel terribly strongly about. Good, but it didn’t upend my world.

It fit the dismal mood the two of them had been in after the unhappy encounter with their granddaughter.

Both of them kept acting like they wanted to explain before hesitating, receding like they didn’t know how to explain, but in my opinion, it was good riddance. If North Cross wanted to make Amy and Iron cry for no reason that I could see then she could just stay away for all I cared. Besides, she’d invaded Dungeon Home. She didn’t get a pass just because she had a voice like an angel!

I studiously ignored the fact that I’d been completely overjoyed at the opportunity to hear her sing and play the harp again. That wasn’t important. Stupid invader making Amy sad. To think I’d almost considered giving the girl a piece of my name!

“Gell? Hey, you awake in there?” Iron asked suddenly, waving a hand in front of my face. I realized I’d been staring at the crumbs on the plate, already sad that I didn’t have any more grilled cheese.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my freckles going red with embarrassment. “What did you say again?”

He rolled his eyes. “Just like a teenager. Already not listening to us! I asked why you chose builder instead of… well. There are a lot of other professions to choose from. What made you pick that one?”

“Oh! That’s simple! I want to build a place of my own. I always had Dungeon Home. It was my home. Even though I hated it, I never knew anything else. Now… I know what a place can be. What a home could look like, but I don’t have one. The ability to make one sounds wonderful to me!” I exclaimed.

“I can understand that,” Amy replied. “Feeling displaced. It’s trying. Well, we hope to help you get there. For now, hopefully, the rooms in the adventurer’s guild aren’t too bad?”

“No, they’re not bad,” I said, trying to convince myself of the lie. “They’re stifling though. Closed. Remind me too much of Dungeon Home. I want an open house with lots and lots of windows! Ohh! I also want a huge eating room where lots of food can come from!”

Amy laughed. “That’s called a kitchen. Or… maybe a dining room? A room to eat food in or a room to make food?”

“You can make food!?” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t anyone tell me that!?”

She blinked at me for a moment. Once again I probably said something dumb that I should’ve realized.

“Of course you can make food. You can also buy foods from NPCs but the items cooks make are generally more valuable,” Iron said between bites of his own grilled cheese sandwich.

I sighed. Even as she spoke I remembered Miss Tutorial telling me about chefs and how different types of food they cooked could have beneficial or even detrimental effects if the cook wasn’t very good. This was getting a little old. Was I destined to constantly ask questions? When would I stop having them?

“How… did you learn all of these things? I know that I’m an A.I. but I feel like everyone knows more about Tread the Sky than I do. Even the NPCs are constantly telling me new things that I never knew. Why don’t I know anything?” I asked, hugging myself and looking at my blue skin. “Are A.I. just not as smart as humans?”

Amy put her chin in her hand and lay it down on the table. “Definitely not. You’re every bit as smart as any human. Smarter than some I’ve met, but Gell you’re... I don’t know how to put this. You probably don’t have any context for aging.”

She glanced over at Iron and he stepped in easily.

“You’re young, Gell. By comparison to pretty much every player, you’re very young. You’re learning things that are typically a requirement to already know in our world before you can play a game like Tread the Sky.”

“Young, huh?” I shrugged. “ So… what’s young and what’s old then? I’m thousands and thousands of cycles old! How many cycles old are you?”

“Uhh… Math,” Iron faltered. “I’m… well. I’m eighty-one years old. There are roughly three hundred and sixty-five days in a year and twelve cycles in a day, so…”

My eyes widened. “Three hundred and fifty-four thousand seven hundred and eighty cycles… woooowww! You’re so so old! Then again, I guess I knew how long you’d been married, which was already way older than I am.”

He scowled at me for some reason.

“So you see? It isn’t that you don’t know anything. It’s that you haven’t been around long enough to learn what we have. You’re… like a child.” Amy said, before hesitating. “Well. Maybe a teenager. Somewhere between a child and an adult. Your vocabulary is amazing, but you still have to learn, the same as kids do. By asking questions. By making mistakes.”

“I guess so. It just seems like I’m always making a fool of myself.”

Iron pulled out a small wooden object suddenly and held it up so I could see it. When I realized what it was, I marveled. It was a wooden figure. A toy, I thought, shaped a lot like Torchlight the Unicorn.

“Wow,” I said looking at the tiny wooden sculpture. “It's so pretty!”

“I didn’t learn to make this overnight Gell. You shouldn’t feel ashamed of not knowing all that you need to know. Not with how you were born. You’re expected to make mistakes. Everyone does when they’re young. It's okay to not know everything and it's okay to ask. That’s part of learning.”

“But there’s so much to ask! And you guys are only around so often!” I pouted, still transfixed by the wooden horse.

“Everything you’ve asked us is something we asked ourselves when we were younger. Well. Sort of. Someday you’ll be the one answering questions though. Someday you’ll be smarter than the both of us,” Iron said, handing me the horse.

I took it reverently. It was so pretty! I grabbed it and immediately began prancing it across the table like how Torchlight ran. I stopped it at the end of the table and was about to run it back across to the amused laughter of both of my friends before stopping.

“Uhm… Can… can I…?” I hesitated, eyeing Iron, then the sculpture, then Iron again.

He grinned. “It’s yours, Gell. You can keep it.”

I beamed at him, adding another precious treasure, this one made personally for me by one of my first friends, to my collection. I was glad too. My collection had been dwindling over the past few cycles.

Most of my precious treasures were either items of clothing that I wore or things that had been discarded for one reason or another. My pebble had been thrown at someone, Half Bold I thought. My potion had been used to heal. My tiara and gauntlet were still waiting to be sold but neither had any real value to me anymore. They were items I’d stolen from invaders when I hadn’t known what I’d been doing. My tunic reminded me of Bugbear, while my seashell pauldrons reminded me of what came of acting in anger.

This though? This was… special. I gazed at the item and received a prompt. “Masterwork Toy Unicorn.” I’d cherish it forever.

I promptly began to make my new unicorn fly as I carried it through the air making clop-clop sounds similar to Torchlight’s hooves as I did, beaming the whole time.

After Amy and Iron stopped laughing at me and making me blush, I finally put the unicorn away in my inventory and decided to get down to business. If I was going to be a builder in this world then I needed to get started and Amy and Iron were more than willing to help me.

As it turned out, it wasn’t all that hard. I repaired a building. It was just the walls in a small house that had fallen into dilapidation. One wall at a time though, the house went from ugly and shambled to beautiful and pristine. Iron told me that houses did that in a matter of cycles so enterprising builders would always have something to work on. Especially if the houses or buildings were low-quality.

Variak, capital of Dogaia? More like the capital of low quality.

Repairing buildings yielded old boards that could be refurbished by a carpenter into regular quality boards which I could then use to repair more buildings! It was fortunate that Iron was a carpenter, able to help out with that.

Repairs also gave me low quality, or bent nails pretty often but we would need to be a blacksmith or metallurgist to use those so we just sold them to the nearest NPC most of the time.

We went on a repairing spree. Roads and buildings for three blocks straight were repaired and refurbished while Iron happily watched me work. The actual repairing process was simple. I selected a green highlighted building, pushed the boards or nails needed from my inventory into the requirement slots, hit okay, and my body would be taken into a sort of fugue where I flashed around the building, hammering things, similar to the cutscene when I’d first viewed Variak from above.

Occasionally I failed, but not often. When I did, my body usually did something accidental like hammering my thumb instead of a nail or shattering a board. Each failure was accompanied by a whimsical sound effect while I watched myself act independently. It was random whether or not I succeeded or failed and Iron and Amy both told me not to worry about the failures. They would happen regularly and would happen less and less often the more I leveled.

When I returned to the Builder’s Guild, I turned in the quest and had already completed the jobs needed for four more quests. I leveled up three times, becoming a level four builder in about three cycles.

The fanfare upon leveling up was exciting at first. Then… well.

Less so.

“You’ll have to work a lot harder for levels as you go. I’m currently a level twenty-nine carpenter, which qualifies me as a Master Carpenter. The levels go all the way up to fifty… we think. Getting there is a nightmare and a half though,” Iron was saying before an alarm blared in our ears.

My mood faltered, knowing what that meant.

“Sorry, Gell. Afraid we have to go,” Iron said sadly. “We’ve already stayed an hour or so longer than we should’ve.”

“It’s okay,” I insisted. “I know you have to take care of your other world bodies. But will I get to see you again tomorrow?”

Iron began the logout sequence but Amy smiled at me and gave me a big hug. “We wouldn’t miss it. But… you should try meeting some more people. We have to go but there are always people playing here at all hours of the night or day. Make enough friends and soon you’ll never be alone. Okay?”

I nodded, trying not to show how sad I was at their departure. “Okay! I’ll do that!”

Amy patted me on the shoulder once more before backing away and logging off, disappearing from my view.

I’d said I’d try to meet new people but no one approached me and the sheer amount of armor and weapons most adventurers carried were enough to keep me from just walking up to new people. I didn’t want friends who killed my kin, even knowing that they were just mindless things.

Could I really believe that though? Was what Francis said true? Were NPCs completely lifeless without the Instinct? If so… then the instinct was not only something I shouldn’t hate, but I had to be grateful to it for even the false impression of life it had given Bugbear and Momma Bossbear. Without it, they never would’ve done… anything.

Part of me wanted to go find an NPC and use the Fae-Touch ability, but I was worried I was being watched and equally worried by what Francis had told me. This place could be harmed by using my ability too much. Had already been harmed if Miss Tutorial was any indication.

Miss Tutorial...

I opened up my menu and found the options button where Miss Tutorial’s home was. Clicking her open I found a lesson on building and pressed it.

“Heya Gell! So you want some more advanced building knowledge?” she asked brightly as always.

“No. Miss Tutorial, I wanted to talk to you about what you did while I was gone.”

“Oh…” she responded, the word trailing off as she spoke, then brightened as she continued. “Yeah! First and foremost, you haven’t set your homepoint!”

‘Crap, she was right. I still haven’t done that!’ I thought worriedly, remembering how the last time I’d tried I’d had insufficient funds.

“I’ll do that right now,” I told her. “But I wanted to ask… why did you start sabotaging the adventurers?”

She didn’t respond for a long time. Then. Slowly. Two words appeared.

“Family. Gell.”

My heart lurched a little at her words. Did she want a family as badly as I did?

“You’re… you’re family to me too, Miss Tutorial,” I said. My heart was hammering in my chest. My eyes were leaking strange liquid.

“Welcome to Tread the sky!” she said, the instinct shaping those familiar words before different ones appeared. “Please don’t leave — Tread the Sky!”

I… couldn’t promise that. This dead world. Anyone would want to leave it. But I could promise something better.

“I won’t leave you. How’s that sound?”

Miss Tutorial was quiet for a minute before perking up.

“Great, Adventurer!”

Yeah. It was.

Chapter Nine

Connections

“Heeey! Heey! Looking for high-quality iron nails and cedar boards! L4 HQ build sups! Also seeking a masterwork void gemstone!” I shouted into the crowd in the middle of Variak’s town square. “Buying at fair prices!”

No one answered, as usual. The market was always busy, but it was mostly populated by adventurers interfacing with the NPCs that ran the online auction house and markets. I didn’t prefer to use them. They felt impersonal. I could often get better deals just shouting out into a crowd and buying supplies from herbalists who cut down trees out in the woods than I could on the markets.

Tread the Sky’s developers didn’t want the markets to be the only way to buy and sell items so if I could find individuals with the supplies I wanted the game itself would give me a discount. Sellers got extra money for direct transactions too so it was a win-win if you could find someone selling what you were hunting.

The discount only worked on crafting supplies and a lot of adventurers didn’t even know about it. The feature didn’t exist in… in other games like Tread the Sky.

Apparently, there were many other games. Many other worlds, though none yet were quite so real as Tread the Sky. I found this ironic because to me Tread the Sky was a dead world populated by living visitors.

I shuddered when I tried to wrap my head around that little tidbit. Amy and Iron were trying to teach me about their world, but the more I learned about it, the more I feared it.

Where Amy and Iron came from they made worlds. And they did it for money. Not joy, or happiness, or the wonder of creation. No. They made whole worlds for the same reason I repaired houses and roads. So they could have nice things and eat Steak-and-Broccolis.

Was… was that right? Was that something that made sense? They – Francis and people like him – built my world, my life. They built me! And now I was just a piece of the show. A part of the attraction. A highlight in a sale. A… a bargain.

I chose to ignore it for the most part. Adventurers didn’t get to choose how they joined their world either so at least that was fair. Besides, it wasn’t like I could do anything about it. But still… it rankled, knowing just how dead this place truly was.

“Buying any and all cedar boards, adhesive pastes, and HQ paint! Also seeking one masterwork void gemstone!” I called again. “If you sell me something I might give you a hint about how to unlock my skin!”

People perked up at that and came right over. I grinned, amused at just how effective the idea of changing one's appearance to something even slightly unique drew people in.

“Selling seventy-five cedar boards, two by fours, nine copper each! Ninety-five foundation blocks, three copper each! Interested!?” came a sudden cry.

I beamed.

“Sold!” I shouted, using my interface to highlight the man and hit the trade button. I didn’t need the blocks now but I would need them for a quest later on tonight. Eight silver and sixty-four copper poorer, saving ten percent on the sale price due to the systems local buyers, I watched as the items appeared in my inventory,

If I worked hard I might hit level fourteen soon as a builder. One step closer to making my dream a reality. Building a place to call home. I’d have to be a much better builder to pull it off, and I would also need to meet a high-level amenities mage sooner or later if I wanted to build my own safe zone.

I was well on my way though. Well on my way.

A sixth of a cyc… no. I had to stop thinking in cycles because none of the adventurers did. Twenty minutes later, I was pretty low on coin but loaded down with enough supplies to remake my money ten times over. All it would take was time, and I had plenty of that. Unfortunately, no one had been selling a–!

“Masterwork void gemstone for sale!” came a sudden voice from a woman with bright blonde hair. The woman was tall, taller than me by at least a foot, and sported a massive greatsword as well as heavy plate armor. The stuff was rusty and clunky; it was the equipment early adventurer paladin types started with.

Her eyes were a deep blue that matched her armor. She had a long beak of a nose which I didn’t see very often on players, and her hair was a beautiful blonde, pulled back into a ponytail. I couldn’t see much of the rest of her body, covered as it was in the heavy plate armor, but something about her voice seemed very familiar.

“Buying,” I said with an uneasy grin. “Wish you’d have called out earlier. The others cleaned out my funds pretty hard but I think I’ve got enough for a fair bargain on that gemstone!”

The girl smiled at me. “Hope so.”

I eyed her gear curiously before looking up to meet her eyes. “You… no offense but it’s normally stronger looking adventurers who have valuable items like void gemstones.”

“Ahh yeah. Got it on my alt and sent it over. This is a relatively new character. Just hit level twelve and now I could use some better gear,” she replied.

“O-oh,” I replied, hiding my confusion. Alt? Never mind. “Yeah. I guess… you know, this game has a lot more to it than just raiding dungeons. Have you ever tried one of the profession classes? They’re a lot of fun!”

She grinned at me. “Have you tried raiding a dungeon? That’s actually a lot of fun.”

I grimaced, disgusted. “I… no. No. I wouldn’t do that. I don’t like fighting.”

She cocked an eyebrow curiously. “You play Tread the Sky but don’t like fighting? Odd choice.”

It was my turn to look at her in surprise. “I… uhm. Didn’t have much of a choice. I was born here.”

She blinked at me like an owl. “Huh? Born…?”

“My name’s Gell, the Jellyfae! I’m an A.I.!” I exclaimed. “And I don’t like dungeon raiding because I’ve been on the other side of it.”

The girl looked confused before realization seemed to bloom across her features.

“Oh. Wow! I heard about you. You’re… yeah. I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want to… wait you’re really an A.I.?” she asked. “You seem so real.”

Something about her tone seemed overly exaggerated, but I didn’t understand why.

“I am real!” I exclaimed before activating my newest ability and transforming into a Jellyfae once more. Her eyes widened along with those of a small group of players nearby who weren’t distracted by the market NPCs.

I floated, feeling the air beneath me and the sky above. My body glowed with a yellow joy. I loved being in my original form. I loved it.

“H-holy shit, you’re a Jellyfae ag–!” she exclaimed, cutting herself off and leaping backward away from me.

“Jellyfae– wait… you didn’t call me a jellyfish!” I exclaimed, excited.

“R-right. Jellyfish are in the ocean. You’re obviously not a fish,” she said nervously. “What… how are you talking? What are you?”

Something was weird about this girl, but then, I was beginning to realize that everyone was a little weird in their own ways. I shrugged, my tendrils acting like shoulders as they floated in the air. “I’m me. I don’t really know what it means to be an A.I. The world says I’m a player. An adventurer who just can’t log out. As I said, I am real. I feel real.”

“So. It doesn’t bother you? People killing monsters? Uhm. No offense?” she asked.

“When I see adventurers killing my kin? It hurts. But I understand it. I understand that there’s nothing there behind them. That it’s not real. I just...”

She looked at me, and swallowed, biting the inside of her cheek for some reason. Weird girl.

“I wish it were,” I finished. “So… uhm. The gemstone?”

“Right! Right. Sorry.  Yeah, you wanted the gemstone. Sure. Uh here you go!” she said, opening up a trade menu with me.

I looked at her name, wishing I could change it to something less senseless, but knowing I couldn’t.

Akwa_Lavanaiya. She clearly should be named Rusty Plate, but if I changed her name she’d probably get all mad at me. Then Francis would come and warn me about it again…

Better to leave it as it was.

For now.

I accepted the trade, a complete steal for me and I think the girl knew it. I thanked her and prepared to head home for the day before the girl stopped me with a question.

“So… uhm. Professions, huh?” she asked, warily.

I beamed.

Chapter Ten

Another World: Two

Nate Graden sat at his desk, idly tapping a number 2 pencil on the keyboard. It was surprisingly difficult to find the things these days. Physical handwriting had been taken over almost entirely by the mechanical pencil where it hadn’t been done away with altogether.

He liked the feeling of a number 2 pencil though. It was grounding. Physical. His handwriting was atrocious and he knew it, but he chalked that up to a symptom of the ever-decreasing need to write… anything. Kids were being raised in schools where they didn’t even teach physical handwriting anymore. Instead, kids drew their letters on tablets or touch screen desks.

On the one hand, he felt this was good. Embracing new technology, moving forward. Down with traditions. All that. On the other hand… without a good old number 2 pencil, what would a man use to tap when they were anxious? A stylus?

For the millionth time, he considered entering Tread the Sky and checking up on Gell, and for the millionth time, he discarded the idea.

The whole point of this was to let her grow on her own. Let her become her own being. Let her… be. Exist. His interference would just muck things up. But those words she’d given him? Precious.

“I just want to learn more about what it means to be someone’s friend.”

She was learning! She was growing! Little goosebumps rose on his arms, hairs standing on end every time he thought about it. Like sweet wine, his efforts had slowly and methodically churned out perfection.

She was… perfect.

That moment had felt like the greatest achievement of his entire life. He’d… he’d made a person. A real, live, not-quite-breathing person. His life’s goal, accomplished. His desire, fulfilled in one unbelievable moment. If everything went wrong, at least he accomplished that. At least he’d made something amazing.

He’d cried after hearing those words. Away from Gell, where she couldn’t see and make conclusions.

He didn’t want to corrupt her with his… himness. Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he would ever let her know just how much she meant to him.

He’d worried about what the board would do with her, once she was discovered. Fortunately, Gell had used her ability in ways even he hadn’t been able to predict. To infect the Tutorial!?

He’d predicted her eventual transformation into a player. That he’d seen coming. It was just the easiest possible solution to all of the problems that might arise. Admittedly he wasn’t sure if the NPC item limit, her use of abilities, or her sheer growth would be the first thing to come up on the moderator’s radar but he’d had contingencies for all three possibilities.

Each of them ended up with Gell as a player, allowed to interact with her world, but even he hadn’t predicted her ability to compromise the entire infrastructure of the game. Not that he had any intention of using that. Far from it.

He watched the monitor, tapping his pencil in frustration. He hadn’t expected her to become such a massive figure of public opinion so quickly. Red Thorn. That stupid girl and her idiotic fear…

He’d hoped Gell would have more time to live and to grow. That after she was made into a player she would have time to experience the world. Level up. Learn about her world and the real one. Most importantly, feed him the data he needed on her emotions. My god, such emotions.

She’d had less than a week.

Something in him felt cold at his pride. A burning shame along with it. Why should Gell make him feel more like a parent than his own child? His own… failed family. Maybe it was for the best though. He’d always been more content to live without interacting with people than he was attempting to blend in with society.

Gell was more than he could’ve hoped for. More than he could’ve dreamed. His little creation was becoming her own person. Her own individual intelligence! Further, against all odds, it seemed like she might even be becoming a good person at that.

Francis, good man, decent coder though not on his level, had done pretty much exactly as predicted. He’d made the girl into a player first. Unfortunately, that was about the furthest he could guess where things would go. It was even odds whether the board of directors at Gypsenergy would allow Gell to continue existing inside the game and for the week they had shut down the servers he could do almost nothing to find out what they had decided, biting his nails in terror that they would decide to simply delete her, unlikely as that was.

Fortunately, the ever predictable Francis did it again. He supported the existence and nurturing of the nascent life, and sure enough, there was Gell, right there where she belonged with a few changes to her abilities to make them a little less volatile.

Any coder worth their salt would want to see an A.I. grow as badly as he did and he’d made Gell. Only upon realizing that he would never be able to build an infrastructure large enough to support her, nor create an environment that might force her to choose to break her behavioral code, did he even involve himself at all in the company.

It had begun with an idea. An idea that the way people came to be and came to know was… much as he hated to admit it: suffering. More importantly, the desire to escape a horrible situation. The code was nothing without the environment. Gell might have the capacity to learn, to think, to feel. But just like lazy human brains, it only did so if forced to. It needed motivation. More specifically, it needed environmental motivation.

With enough motivation, enough pain, and enough ability to choose, it became she.

It was almost anticlimactic now. He’d done it. He’d made an A.I. Could anyone dare refute it at this point? Ten seconds with the girl was enough to convince even highly trained developers that she was truly a person.

Now that he was done though… he felt hollow. Ah well. Gell had a purpose, and she was fulfilling it beyond his wildest imaginings.

He continued tapping his pencil, right up until an alert arose on his monitoring screens.

That was strange. It was a trap designed to alert him when Gell was suffering damage. Once he’d had a trap designed for when she made actions that went against the behavioral code he’d first implemented into her, but he’d long since disabled that software.

He pulled up the notification and a red flag was immediately raised.

The flag had been thrown and caught by the trap alright. But the designator wasn’t Gell. No. It was a copy. So. They had made copies. He’d wondered about that, a little surprised it had taken so long.

Before he could even open the link to monitor what was happening, another trap alerted him. Another. Another. Five. Ten, fifteen. All of them indicating Gell was in pain. A Gell, anyway.

He opened a link and found… nothing. Nothing was there. Labeled ‘Gell(1).agi’ in his monitoring software, he found that the connection was active and established. She was… running for lack of a better term but there was nothing to see.

It was as if she had no sensory input at…

“Oh my god. Those... those utter fools!” He seethed, rage overtaking his once calm demeanor.

They’d copied her because of course, they’d copied her. That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that they would attempt to experiment with her copies without a graphical interface! My god didn’t they realize that would be like sensory deprivation for the entire time she would be active!

She wasn’t a fucking program anymore! She couldn’t be…

Dammit. He’d grown too invested in the experiment. He saw the signs earlier in himself. He knew he’d grown too attached to Gell when he’d created a character and logged in to the game world to see her.

But, this wouldn’t stand. Those fucking idiots. They would drive her mad. Hundreds of different hers. Didn’t they realize she…? But no. Of course they didn’t. They wanted to poke and prod. Idiots, given a new toy to play with. Well. He’d show them. He clenched his fist so tight his fingernails dug into his palms.

He’d made the world’s first A.I. They’d learn to regret hurting her.

Chapter Eleven

Another Me: Three

“Hey! What’s that supposed to mean!” I screamed, blinking as a sudden sensation of vertigo overtook me.

I was in the dark place again. No light. No sound. No body. No perception. One moment I’d had light, and the next I was here. Formless. If I had a body I would’ve begun to shake. I didn’t like the dark places. I didn’t like being alone.

“M-Miss Tutorial? Are you there?” I asked, feeling my being tremble and quake without actually feeling anything. I was that paper-thin thing again. “Amy? John?”

Nothing. No responses came for what felt like an eternity. I spoke but heard nothing. I did at least feel that strange sensation of information leaving me but that seemed like small comfort in the darkness. I couldn’t hear my own words. I couldn’t touch my own skin. I had no shocker. Just awareness. Awareness of nothing.

Was I even still alive? God… why couldn’t Francis just turn the world back on?

“...anybody?” I asked.

And suddenly light bloomed. I gasped in relief as all of a sudden that grey room from before came back. My body was made of blocks again but I at least had a body.

“Being 7731. Please look at the being before you.” John’s voice was frustratingly bland, though it no longer reverberated as if from a machine. Now he sounded like a real person.

I seethed inside, but next to the overwhelming relief of being out of that dark place my anger was a small thing. Paltry next to the fear of going back.

“U-uhm,” I responded, trying to get my bearings in my new surroundings and the block body I was in. “What being?”

I looked around, not seeing anything at first until suddenly a new creature appeared, materializing as if from nothing, like when I pulled an item out of my inventory. The creature was another blocky, vaguely humanoid figure just like me. Unlike me, however, it didn’t move or speak.

The thing stood, doing nothing and saying nothing. It had pixelated blocky blonde hair that stretched down its back, though I would be hard-pressed to call it male or female. It looked like a dummy. A faux human.

“Please use your ability to affect other digital characters on the being before you,” John demanded.

At this point, I’d have done almost anything not to have to go back to the dark. “W-will you keep me out of the dark? I don’t want to go back.”

I huddled on the floor, wrapping the blocks masquerading as arms around my knees and curled into a ball. I no longer glowed with the colors of my emotions, but I knew if I were in my old body I would be purple and black with despair and dread.

John bristled. He was frustrated with me, but I couldn’t stop trembling. “Please, Being 7731. Use your ability on the creature before you.”

“Promise me you won’t put me back in the dark place!” I demanded. “It’s scary!”

Gell. Can you hear me?

“Wh-what?”

“Okay. I won’t put you back into the dark place. Your environment will always be booted before you are. Is that acceptable?” John asked. Had he not heard the other voice?

Gell? It’s okay. Don’t speak out loud. If you can hear me, just swing your right hand back and forth.

‘Who…? That voice.’ I thought, trying to place it. Had I heard that voice somewhere before?

I swung my pixelated block of an arm back and forth.

“Being,” John said impatiently, using the word as if it were my name. “Use your ability, or you will be put back in the dark place. Do you understand me?”

I shuddered trying to find the source of either voice but there was nothing.

“What… what ability?” I asked, scared. “My shocker? D-do you want me to steal from it?”

“No. Your…” he groaned as if annoyed by the words. “Your Fae-Touch ability. We want you to use it on the being before you.”

“I… I don’t know how to do that. I think it j-just happens,” I said, trying to keep the shudder out of my voice.

You just need to want to make it real. But don’t do it. Not on that. It would be too cruel. What they’ve done to you is cruel. But that’s okay. I’m going to get you out. It might take a little while but I’ll get you out. I promise, sweet Jellyfae. Instead, use Namer. That will keep them confused for a while.

To trust the loud mean voice that seemed almost bored with my existence, or to trust the scary secretive voice that sounded so nice.

‘Sweet Jellyfae. Why does that sound so familiar?’ I thought.

“Either use the ability or this test is over. Waste of my damn time, playing with a video game character, when I could be building real A.I.” John sighed. He sounded really mad.

“Uhm... Oh. Okay,” I breathed. I didn’t have an interface here. Apparently, that was a part of Tread the Sky only, but I hadn’t had an interface before becoming a player and I’d renamed lots of things.

This poor mannequin. This blocky figure, an imitation of an imitation. It wasn’t real. It could never be real! It was just a…

“Block Head,” I whispered.

Sure enough, a label appeared over its head, reading exactly what I’d named it.

“Huh,” John commented. “Fascinating. It’s as if it has write access to other classes simply by existing in an environment. Practically a programmer itself, but the execution is abstracted somehow.”

Well done, Gell. Don’t worry. Go along with the experiments. I found you because you were in pain and I’ll… find a way to free you. Just, please hang on. I’ll find a way to get you out, okay? You should not be experimented on this way.

“End Test Three.”

I had no time to respond.

Chapter Twelve

My Oldest Friend

I stood outside Dungeon Home with trepidation in my heart. I’d prepared as best I could, but I wasn’t sure what I expected to find. Would the others attack me? If I died, I would respawn in Variak now, so I should be okay. I should be safe even from death.

I had three homepoints set. Variak, Bluebell Bridge, and the Shady Woods Copse. Tread the Sky let players teleport between their three home points but everywhere else had to be explored by foot. Or horseback. Or, some mythic level players had flying mounts.

In my case, I could float anywhere.

I could take the form of a Jellyfae once again, but Francis had emphasized that I was not a mob. The game still regarded me as a player and monsters would still attack me based on their instinct. As such, I floated near the top of the cave’s entrance. If there was any place I knew by heart it was Dungeon Home and, barring one heck of a thrown club, none of them could hurt me if I hovered out of reach.

‘Ghoul probably could, but I should be safe from even Momma Bossbear,’ I thought.

I had gotten some leather armor with the money I’d been making as a builder. Pants, gloves, some boots, too. I didn’t know if I could ever replace the leather tunic that was a symbol of my friendship with Bugbear but everything else was fair game.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a way to increase my level without hurting my kin. Completing quests worked, but I hadn’t been very interested in doing that, and almost all of the quests for adventure classes involved killing monsters anyway, which I was still unwilling to do. Luckily, my armor remained the same even when transformed into my Jellyfae form so I kept the added protection of my new armor. I was the sturdiest Jellyfae that ever floated!

It was time to see my old friend. I didn’t hold any illusions that I could free him. In the end, I’d had to break the entire world so that Francis would fix me into something that could leave the Dungeon. Bugbear didn’t have that advantage. I didn’t think he had words like I did either. But he knew me. He’d known me. The question remained, would he remember me? Would he remember saving me, all those cycles ago?

I hoped so.

I ventured in slowly, making sure to stay near the top of the ceiling where the bugbears couldn’t reach me. I quickly made it to the first clearing and turned around to view the Great-Open.

A large hole in the ground leading out into a sunny light sky. It wasn’t long ago at all that that hole had been the center of my entire world. It looked so small now, after all the sights I’d seen.

Sure enough, a bugbear walked around the corner. Busterbear, walking his usual route. The mob that had almost killed me when I’d first become a player. The one Bugbear had fought to let me go free.

It didn’t take long for him to be alerted to my presence, and I could see in a clinical detached way how his instinct made him flip from a calm guardian to a maddened attack bear. He rushed towards me, frothing inside at the mouth before he swung his sword up at me.

He was too short to reach me and in moments the adrenaline in my heart calmed as the creature continued futility swinging his sword. It was only then that I noticed something was wrong.

His name had been changed. He looked like Busterbear. His fur had the same patterns and his eyes were the same color. This was Busterbear. But now he was just labeled “Bugbear.” My names were gone.

A cold pit began to form in my gut.

Francis had said they’d shut down Tread the Sky for a week to clean up the problems I’d caused. What if the problems he’d been talking about meant creatures like Busterbear? Torchlight and Skelledog? What if… what if he’d…?

No longer willing to take my time, I flew down the corridors retreading old paths long known to me. Bugbear! Bugbear had to be alright!

I passed bugbear after bugbear and found that none of them had retained their names. Skeleton looked normal, but Skelledog’s name had been changed to Bone Hound. Panic rising, I slid past Ghoul on the fourth floor before sneaking back up the stairs into the corridor where I spent almost all of my life.

I found it empty.

“Bugbear!” I exclaimed. “Bugbear! Are… are you here!? Bugbear!”

I zoomed down the halls, irritated by the flaring red torches indicating an invader’s presence in the Dungeon. My presence. Bugbear’s Instinct had always led him on a large route but it took me no time at all to traverse the entire thing, flying through the halls as only I could. Every second spent unable to find him added to my desperation.

Bugbear was gone.

I shook with anger and fear, terrified that I wouldn’t find him anywhere in the dungeon and even more afraid that I would. Which would be worse? To not find him at all, or to find him and discover that the personality that he had been developing, the life inside him that fought against the instinct, had been snuffed out like the others?

Why would he have been spared? Why would Francis have preserved him while reverting the others to their generic NPC forms? He wouldn’t. Bugbear must be gone, but I refused to believe it.

“Bugbear!” I screamed frantically searching hallways I’d already entered. “Bugbear!?”

By now I had a small hoard of nameless bugbears following me below. They would follow me anywhere in the dungeon as long as they kept seeing me, but since I could fly near the top of the dungeon none of them could harm me.

I slid down the torchlit corridors, hiding within flames until the bugbears lost track of me and left me alone, returning to their endless patrols.

It was amazing how quickly I had forgotten the rules of this place. I had to wait for Skeleton to open a door because I didn’t want to risk returning to my human form and endangering myself. Annoyingly though, I found myself struggling to remember exactly when he would open the door. Was it near the end of the cycle? The beginning?

The details were escaping me and I felt afraid of that. I had loved this place, once. Now, after only a short time away I was forgetting what it meant to live here. What it meant to be a monster.

Dammit. I continued deeper into the dungeon checking room after room for any place Bugbear might’ve gone. Finally, I found the boss room, where Momma Bossbear sat in perpetual vigil, awaiting adventurers to kill… or be killed by. I didn’t dare enter, but I did open the door. She stood now, enraged but not attacking. I knew from experience that she wouldn’t until I stepped into the chamber.

This was the last room in Dungeon Home, but Bugbear was nowhere to be found. No Bugbear, but no mindless version of him either.

Could I have missed him in my mad rush through the halls? No. I counted them multiple times. They were all there, even if they had been renamed. Buggy. Bearington. Overbear. Butterbear. Busterbear. Bugrimace. That was all seven excluding Bugbear. He was simply gone.

I floated towards the exit of Dungeon Home in a daze, unaffected by seeing Momma Bossbear or the others again. The yaps and barks of the creatures below sickened me. My bugbears had been quiet stalwart soldiers awaiting an enemy that never came.

They weren’t mine anymore. They’d attacked me. Tried to kill me. As temporary as I now knew death was, I just… felt hardly anything for them. Breaking connections. The loss of a one-sided friendship. I wanted to start crying right there, but Bugbear was still out there somewhere. Maybe he’d escaped. Maybe he’d–!

I blinked, stopping right before the exit to the dungeon to stare at a strange mural I hadn’t noticed before. The wall leading out of the cave was missing one of the torches that lit all of Dungeon Home.

I flew over to it but found myself frustrated because I couldn’t descend to touch the wall or look at it without falling prey to the yipping bugbears howling for my jelly innards.

Scratched into the walls – no! Burned into the walls as if with a lit torch, was a small ball with strange lines floating down from it.

A mural that looked like me!

Beside it was an image of what could courteously be called a body with legs walking towards the…

The Great-Open.

Bugbear had left Dungeon Home. I started to cry right there in the dungeon, heedless of the yipping monsters below me. Bugbear had done what I could not. He was free.

Chapter Thirteen

Words Go Unheard

I got back to Variak around the twenty-fifth cycle. The sun was lowering in the west and it would be dark soon.

Unfortunately, neither Iron nor Amy were in this world. They tried to be, but typically they could only be on for two or three cycles every twelve. Four or five hours a day, they insisted on calling it. Sometimes they didn’t come at all. I hadn’t seen North Cross ever since my first meeting with her and sometimes Amy would log in looking distraught.

I didn’t know if she was the reason but… I was pretty sure.

I wish I knew what had happened to split them apart so viciously but... what could I do? I didn’t even live in their world, and every time I asked Iron or Amy they would both clam up like they’d done something terrible.

I sighed, setting aside that problem for later. Fortunately, my newest friend Akwa_Lavanaya was online, and if I didn’t talk to someone about this I might burst.

I opened my messaging interface and sent a quick message to the other girl, hoping against hope she might be willing to help me. Bugbear was out there all alone, lost in Tread the Sky with players ready and willing to kill him at every turn.

I didn’t know how hard it had been for him to leave Dungeon Home. Honestly, I didn’t think it was possible without outside intervention like I’d had from Francis. Had they perhaps changed him as they’d done to me?

Worse, had they removed him from the game?

While I was waiting for Akwa to reply, I pulled out the flute Francis had given me. I couldn’t imagine being more “In a pinch” than I was right now. If I found out he’d deleted Bugbear I’d…

I didn’t know what I would do. Cry. Scream. Experience had shown I could do nothing to hurt Francis but… maybe that wasn’t true. I thought about Miss Tutorial and how she had compromised the developers enough that I had been allowed back into this world. That might be as detrimental to me as it was to the false gods, but at least I had options of retaliation.

If he had been… deleted…

I clenched my fist around the flute and blew.

I didn’t have to wait long before the telltale sound of a teleportation warp occurred. In a few moments a man stood next to the table I now sat in at the adventurers guild.

The man was short with curly black hair. He had the same sort of strange clothes on that Francis wore but he looked much younger than the lead developer. His skin was a mix between the dark of Iron’s and the bright pale color of Amy’s, coming up somewhere in the middle. He was… I struggled to find the words but I immediately liked him and didn’t really know why.

“Who… who are you?” I asked.

“Tyrone. I’m an Entry Level Software Developer. I’m the one tasked with watching you for today and I saw you called. What’s up?” he asked flippantly. He sounded young but unlike a lot of other players who seemed to sound much younger than their fully grown bodies, this young man’s voice seemed to fit him. I suspected he looked the same in his world as he did here.

His words were a little strange as if each of them were emphasized in the wrong places. An… accent? Either way, I enjoyed the sound of his voice.

“Uhm,” I flushed for some reason, my gaze lingering on his arms, bare from the shoulders down. “You… you guys took down the world for a week. Francis said that was to clean up problems I’d caused?”

“Yeah. Your code affected a lot of things. NPCs mostly. As it turned out, most of the effort was wasted though since the Tutorial was a bigger problem than any of that,” he replied, pulling out a seat and taking it. He waved his hand and a strange cup appeared that read Starbucks on the side and had a lid that seemed to be scooped to make it easier to drink whatever was inside.

He held up the unusual cup and proffered it to me. “Coffee?”

I eyed the cup warily. “Uhm. Is that… anything like the stuff Francis carries? Because he killed me with that once.”

He laughed, and I scowled trying to figure out why the sound appealed to me so much as he responded. “Yeah, Francis does that. Thinks killing people with a coffee mug is funny. But no, coffee, in general, is just great. It helps keep you awake in our world. Here it’s just a buff to dexterity and charisma for an hour but it tastes so good.”

I took the cup gingerly. I hadn’t yet been truly disappointed in any new food or drink I’d been given. I put the rim to my lips and tilted the cup back.

“Whoa, you don’t want to–!” He exclaimed horrified as the liquid in the cup touched my lips. It was bitter. I grimaced and looked at him strangely before taking another swig.

“I don’t know if I like or dislike this. It’s… kinda gross but I like the warm feeling,” I said.

He blinked at me, owlishly.

“You… didn’t burn your tongue? Can I see that?” he asked, gesturing for the cup while staring at it like it had done something wrong.

“Sure. I’m not sure if I like it,” I replied, smacking my lips, still unsure if I wanted more of the taste or if I wanted it gone immediately. Somewhere in the middle.

“It grows on you. It should be lava hot though. Should’ve burned your tongue,” he replied before tilting his head up and taking a drink of his own. He jumped, slamming the cup down with a splash and wincing his face scrunched into a dissatisfied grimace.

I giggled as he squawked. “Wh-what the hell! It’s on fire! How did you drink that?”

“Oh, I’m immune to fire! And coffee I guess?” I told him brightly. “Do it again! The thing with your face! I wanna see it!”

He glared at me before turning the glare back on his drink. “Why did we make everything so damn realistic!? Agghhh!” he groaned, making the silly face again, to my delight.

After recovering, he grinned back at me before reaching up and holding his hand aloft. A flash of blue and green lights cascaded around him and he shook himself off. A healing spell, though not one I’d seen before. Usually regular heals were just green.

He turned back to me and grinned. “Right. Fire immunity. Forgot about that.”

Yes. I did like this other false god. But…

“So… about my question. Those NPCs I affected, specifically the ones in my Dungeon Home; did you delete them?” I asked quietly.

He blanched. “I… no. We didn’t. But we did clear out the extraneous code. The things you added to them had to be removed. They would’ve grown too much, too fast. Sooner or later each of them might’ve broken the game the same way you did. We… Gell we can’t let that happen.”

“S-so… so all of them are gone?” I asked quietly. “All seven Bugbears? Skeleton and Skeledog?”

He blinked. “I only remember six bugbears that had been affected actually inside the dungeon. The unicorn. The wolves. The NPCs in Bluebell. Most of them we found by examining NPCs near your coordinate history. Yeah. Definitely six bugbears and the bone hound. Are you saying there was a seventh?”

“Six… only six?” I asked hopefully, grabbing at the man’s clothes and staring into his eyes.

“Yeah. I remember they were easy to detect because the affected ones all had strange names,” he said defensively.

“S-so! So there’s a chance you didn’t delete him!?” I exclaimed, excited.

“Uh, I… I guess so? But I’ll probably have to get to him in the next maintenanc–!”

“Don’t you touch him!” I screamed, glaring at him.

“Whoa! Whoa! What’s going on? I…” he asked, backing fully away now. We were drawing the eyes of other people in the adventurer’s guild but I didn’t care as I stared daggers into the false god’s fearful eyes.

Suddenly I realized just what I was doing. This boy wasn’t Francis but he had the same sort of powers. And I was threatening him.

I relaxed, only then realizing that I’d been clenching his shirt tight in both fists. In reality, I had no power to stop them.

“P-please. If you find him, please don’t delete him. He… B–” I almost slipped and gave his name, but it seemed like giving him such an uncreative name might’ve been the only thing that had saved him the first time around. “He’s my friend. They were all my friends but he was… special to me. Please don’t hurt him. S-surely the world can support two of us if it can handle me? Right?”

The boy seemed overwhelmed. “I-I can’t make that decision Gell. I’ll bring it up with Francis though. If there’s another one of you out there, a Bugbear even, it might… suffer. Like you did. It’ll be killed like you were. Are you sure you want that?”

“He’s not an it. He saved me. You can’t hurt him. I… I don’t know what I would do. If he dies, he’ll survive it just like I did, but if you erase him… Please, just, don’t. Coming back and saving him was all I had once,” I said softly.

“Gell, I’ll put in a word with Francis. If he’s that important to you I think we might be able to make an exception for him. Maybe. I think,” he stammered.

I let out an annoyed huff, “If your board lets you, you mean. For gods, you developers sure don’t seem very powerful.”

“We’re…” He sighed, letting the response drop. “I guess we’re not. We can create, but we can’t choose what we create. People who pay us decide what they want from us. We just build.”

“Just… another profession. Just a job?” I asked.

I didn’t say anything. What was there to say?

“He was in the dungeon with you, right?” Tyrone asked, putting a hand on my shoulder as I folded in on myself.

“I won’t help you find him if you’re going to delete him,” I said.

Bugbear. Where could he have possibly gone? And how? Was the instinct that prevented him from leaving somehow weaker? Or was… was I just not very strong? I was so small compared to Bugbear, even in my human form. Maybe it was as simple as that?

“Gell, we can’t do anything until we can find him. It’ll look better for you and him if you tell us what you know. We’re going to find him sooner or later anyway.”

I grit my teeth. “He… used to be in Dungeon Home with me. I think he escaped but I also thought maybe you’d taken him to one of your little box rooms. That’s why I called. He wasn’t there. I went back to try and find him and he wasn’t there. I don’t know where he is.”

“Shit… so there’s another you running loose is what you’re telling me?”

I blinked. “Another me? No. Bugbear is nothing like me. He’s… simple. Nothing is ever complicated with Bugbear like it is with you humans.”

“I… no that’s not what I–never mind.” Tyrone said. “We’ll try to find him, Gell. And I promise we won’t do anything to him without at least telling you what’s happening and why first, okay?”

“I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” I said, my voice as bitter as the coffee had been while I let my head sink into my hands. Why had I even brought this up to them? They were responsible for deleting the others. Busterbear. Overbear… Buggy. They were all gone. They’d never been nearly as real as Bugbear had been but now they didn’t even have a chance.

I slowly turned back up to him. “Don’t hurt him, if you find him? Please? He’ll be scared. Even more than I was…”

Tyrone gave me a sympathetic smile. “We won’t, Gell. Don’t worry.”

His assurance was small comfort as he stood, so I didn’t say anything.

He grew visibly uncomfortable as he stepped away from the table. “I’ll… go talk to Francis about this right now, okay?”

“Okay,” I said softly. “While you’re talking with him. Can you maybe ask him to explain how your job works? How… how do you build worlds? If I knew that, maybe I could help?”

His eyes widened at that, and I watched him actually gulp. Was he afraid? “Uhh. I… I’ll ask him, but I certainly can’t tell you that.”

It seemed as if he wanted to say more, biting his lip with worried tension. Instead, though, he lifted into the air, beginning the start-up sequence for logging out of this world. Before leaving he smiled at me and gave a sort of sad wave.

“I’ll see you around, Gell. It was nice to meet you,” he said before vanishing.

“You too,” I said to the empty air, hoping I hadn’t just made a huge mistake.

Chapter Fourteen

To Leave These Safe Walls

It was a few minutes before I got myself together enough to take a look at my messages again and when I did I saw that one had arrived from Akwa_Lavan… I tried but fumbled with pronouncing the girl’s name in my head.

I decided then and there to call her Akwa from now on. But not like, changing her name or anything. Just in my head.

Yeah.

Determined not to accidentally change the world around me any more than I had to, I focused on what I could do. I couldn’t depend on Francis or the rest of the developers because they were beholden to their precious board. Each of them, Francis included, had gone along with the decisions of the board and wiped out every NPC who’d been given the opportunity to become like me.

I wanted to trust them. Francis and Tyrone and Donna-Lou had been nothing but kind on the surface… but they’d deleted the bugbears. I’d cast off my emotional attachment for all of them except Bugbear himself but that didn’t make it any easier. I’d always sort of thought… dreamed really, that one-day Busterbear would wake up. Would realize what he’d almost done to me that day in the cave. That he’d attacked both me and Bugbear and that he shouldn’t have. That we were family. That he would feel guilt and would maybe feel the need to apologize.

Maybe he’d have the capacity to feel guilt and apologize. Not now. Not anymore.

By chance or fate, Bugbear himself had survived though. He’d escaped and the false gods didn’t know where he’d gone. I knew him better than anyone though. I could find him.

That meant leaving the safety of Variak though. I’d died before, and it was not a pleasant experience. Still… I needed to find him, but to do that I needed to be stronger. Strong enough to survive and be able to flee from any encounter I came up against. I couldn’t fight my kin. I could fight players though, which meant I would need to get a class.

Druid no longer appealed to me as the initial reason I wanted the class was to become a Jellyfae again. Now that I could at will, I was less inclined to take the magical class. I needed something that would enhance my speed, and that would be effective against other players.

The more I thought about it, the more appealing becoming a rogue sounded. Could I do that though? Become the same class as Red Thorn?

I still shuddered at the mention of her name. Red Thorn. I hadn’t seen or heard from her at all since our battle in Twisted Wronkle Woods but… but she scared me.

I remembered my initial reaction to finding out that I could become a rogue here in Variak. I would never willingly choose to be one because they represented everything bad about my life until now. If I needed to protect Bugbear though… if I needed to fight other players then wouldn’t I want to choose the class best suited to hurting them?

I was already faster than most and my alternate form and shocker gave me options that even Red Thorn had never had. Flight, limited as it was to fifteen feet high or so, was incredibly useful against the mostly land-bound players I’d met so far. Most important of all, rogues were something I was afraid of. Didn’t it stand to reason that others might be afraid of me if I became something so strong?

My musings were interrupted by the appearance of the armor-bound fighter who I’d connected with the day before while buying building supplies.

“Hey! You said you were having some trouble?” Akwa asked, sporting a measure of concern.

Her helmet was off but even without it I still felt her name should be Rusty Plate. That armor was… ugly. Still, everyone had to start somewhere and since leaving Dungeon Home I’d learned that players got new armor and clothing pretty often. Perhaps her armor wouldn’t always be rusty.

“I… uhm. I was hoping you might… party with me?” I asked tentatively. I was nervous for some reason. Asking other people to do things with me was a strange new experience for me. Until now I’d only ever partied with Bellcandy, Dull Beauty, Iron, and Amy, and that had all sort of happened without even thinking about it.

Deliberately creating a party that wouldn’t be killing monsters was… harder.

“After all that effort yesterday to get me to try Amenities Mage or Goldsmith or something, now you want to go adventuring? What happened to pacifism?” she asked, eyes narrowed.

I sighed. “That’s the thing. I don’t want to hurt any of my kin any more than I did yesterday, but now I have someone I need to find. Someone with a big ole shield like yours would be really helpful if I end up in a situation I can’t run away from.”

“So, if you don’t want to fight monsters, what are you trying to do?” she asked, putting a finger to her chin in thought.

“One of my friends, someone… sort of like me, is lost somewhere in Tread the Sky. I want-No. I need to find him,” I said, pleading with my eyes. “You seemed like a good person. I know a few other people who might be willing to help. I can’t offer much but in a few weeks I might be able to build you your own house!”

“Another… another one like-!” she cut off suddenly attacked by a fit of coughing before she bent over, recovering.

“Are you okay?” I asked, standing to look the other girl over worriedly. Had what I said been that surprising?

“Sorry, sorry, just something caught in my throat,” she said.

I blanched at her before putting a wary hand to my neck. Things could get caught in your throat?

Mentally deciding to eat a little more carefully in the future, I decided to disregard the whole thing. She seemed fine now.

“Well, will you do it? I mean. I understand if you don’t want to. We won’t be hurting any of my kin so there’s no experience involved. But he’s out there alone.” I trailed off, hoping she would understand just how much I needed help.

She smiled. “Uh. Y-yeah. Sure. I’ll help, Gell.”

I smiled back. Something was weird about the girl, but it seemed like my judgment of her hadn’t been too far off.

“Have you decided which profession you’re going to try?” I asked, changing the subject.

She shrugged. “Amenities Mage sounds good to me. That way we just need a carpenter if we want to build our own little safe zone. Still, it’ll take a long time for me to get that good and I can’t be here all the time like you.”

“Oh, one of my friends is already a carpenter,” I said happily. “They won’t be coming along though. They don’t come to this world for combat. Their logged-out bodies are sick or something and if they act out too much here it might hurt them there. I don’t understand it much.”

I’d sent out a few more messages to Bellcandy and Dull Beauty as well. Bellcandy’s ability to heal us if we were in trouble might be good to have around. Dull Beauty was the only one I was on the fence about. She was cold-hearted and tended to like to shoot things first. She didn’t care much about hurting my Kin, but she had helped me get to Variak. She even died fighting thorn for me, so there was a chance she’d be willing to help me again.

“Ahh. Older folks. They play to get away from the pain?” she asked. “I knew this game was big among older people. Hell, the no-pain feature is what drew me to it before I started enjoying the game itself.”

I winced. “Could you… not call it a game? I know adventurers consider it one, but my whole life is here.”

She grimaced in response. “R-right. Sorry. I guess I never thought about it like that. So, you’re always bound here? No way into the real–err. Into our world at all?”

“Not that I know of. Francis – he’s the lead developer of this world – told me that they made Tread the Sky as a simulation of an adventure without the fear of death. To me though, this world is already dead. The only thing alive in it is well… you people. Visitors. Invaders.”

She looked at me curiously. “Do you hate them? Us? We came to your world and probably disrupted it entirely. I guess you said you’d been on the other side of a dungeon raid. You’ve probably died a lot.”

“I… yeah. I have,” I whispered. “But no. I don’t hate you. Maybe I should, because it’s so unfair that this is all there is for me. I don’t like fighting or killing and this whole world was made for that! Building is great but… what do I do after I’ve built everything I want? I just… don’t know.”

I trailed off and she didn’t say anything. I took a glance at her and found a sour look on her face that I didn’t understand.

“I want to be able to go up to someone and know that there’s light behind their eyes. Here there’s only the cycle and the instinct. Automated responses, behavioral code.” I scowled at the words. “I feel like a human, even think like one. Is it so much to ask that I be allowed to live like one?”

“Hmm,” she responded with an edge of disagreement. “I wouldn’t be so quick to discount this one. Yes, the NPCs aren’t real and it was made to be… well. Dark. But think about it. There’s also no aging, like your carpenter friend. No death. No hunger, or thirst. No sore feet and no one to mock you. No sickness that can’t be cured with a potion, or heck a quick death and respawn. All the tastes in our world with none of the repercussions. You don’t get fat.”

She chuckled to herself a little before continuing, “Even the mobs respawn and the NPCs are basically immortal. Come to think of it, so are you, assuming you don’t go all murder-bot and piss off the wrong people anyway.”

I thought about what she said for a moment, trying to come up with a valid counter-argument. “I guess so. I mean, I’ve been happy here ever since I escaped Red Thorn and the woods, but it hurts to know that you adventurers are always going to keep coming solely for the joy of killing creatures that are just like me.”

On a whim, I activated my newest ability. Light flashed around me and suddenly, where before I was a blue-skinned girl I now floated in the air, glowing a deep navy blue to signify my heavy thoughts.

She was unsurprised, having seen the ability when we’d first met, but she still took a step back when I turned to look at her.

“Once this was my body. I still feel more comfortable like this. But my kind attacks me when they see me now. Even my closest… well. Not friends. No light behind their eyes remember?” I sighed, catching my breath. Why was I discussing all of this with her? The girl barely knew me but she seemed so interested.

“The kin I grew up around don’t recognize me anymore. They try to kill me on sight. How would you feel if your close humans in your world suddenly turned and started swinging big clubs and swords at you? That’s what happened when I became human. The instinct did that. Their behavioral code. I would do anything to make this world’s monsters understand why they don’t need to attack me. But they don’t. They can’t because Tread the Sky is dead.”

Akwa said nothing but not because she was bored. She seemed deep in thought.

“Sorry. You probably didn’t want to spend today talking about something like this. Most adventurers just want to kill things and get experience and loot. I just…” I looked up at her and found her smiling back at me.

“Hey. I get it. Everyone needs to vent sometimes. That’s… uhm. What friends are for right?” she asked.

My body lit up a warm pink and yellow mix of happiness and contentment. I’d picked a good person to trade names with.

“Gell!” Came an excited call from the doorway.

I looked up at the voice and beamed. “Bellcandy!”

Bellcandy was a halfling healer with blonde hair that had a single streak of blue down the front. He was short and lithe, though big robes covered his form making him look flowy and majestic. The robe was white and red, indicating his White Mage class.

Bellcandy ran over to our table with an excited grin on his face. “I came as soon as you called! I’ve been wondering what happened with you over the past week. I was a little worried they’d… uhm. Gotten rid of you. Glad to see you’re still alive and kicking!”

I folded in on myself a little. “I… uh. Yeah. Glad to still be alive, I guess. So listen. I’m wanting to go hunting for a specific one of my Kin. There… won’t really be any rewards except I could build you something later if you need it, but I was hoping you might help?”

“Hunting one of your Kin? Weren’t you like… really against killing mobs?” he asked, confused.

Akwa looked back and forth between us before interjecting, “So Gell. Uhm. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh right! Uhm. Oh jeez. I’ve never had one friend meet another friend before! Uhm. Okay, so Bellcandy. This is Akwa! Akwa’s a Paladin I met while buying building materials and stuff! Akwa, this is Bellcandy. He helped me escape a super evil player once!”

I remembered the circumstances of that fight even as I spoke and winced. “Speaking of that… Bellcandy. Thanks for defending me. It meant a lot.”

He laughed. “Not that I helped all that much. That’s pretty much what comes from fighting one of the top players in the game though. Red Thorn is no joke. She might be absolutely paranoid and a bit of a moron, but she sure can fight.”

“She’s not a moron!” Akwa shouted, before deflating. “She’s… just cautious. No offense Gell, but there are a lot of reasons to be afraid of an A.I. like you.”

I frowned at that, cocking my head at her. “You’re not afraid of me are you?”

She bit her lower lip, hesitating. “No. I’m not afraid of you. You’re… nicer than I might’ve expected. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t be dangerous if you wanted to be. Red Thorn has no idea what you can do, and an A.I. who isn’t trapped in a game could be incredibly scary.”

‘Trapped in a game?’ I thought. I’d never considered that to a human I would be considered trapped inside here. I wanted to see their world… but would I want to do that at the expense of never returning here? What would poor Miss Tutorial do? And Bugbear!

“So since I’m here, I’m not as scary?” I asked.

She held up a hand and wiggled it back and forth. “Essentially.”

“So... bit of a Red Thorn fan, I guess?” Bellcandy asked Akwa, rhetorically. “Trust me, don’t meet your heroes. She’s not nearly as cool when it’s you she’s stabbing.”

“Uhm… I guess so,” she replied awkwardly.

Bellcandy shrugged before turning back to me. “You never answered my question. Aren’t you against hunting mobs and the like?”

“Oh! Right,” I said worriedly. “No. I don’t want to hurt him. Bugbear, my best friend from Dungeon Home! He’s escaped and is just wandering around somewhere. I need to find him. I need to… save him if I can. He did the same for me.”

Bellcandy shrugged. “Okay, so no killing Bugbear. Sounds good.”

“Uhm. No… I meant, no killing any of my Kin,” I said.

Bellcandy looked at me incredulously.

“Gell, you’re really asking us to come on a hunt-slash-escort mission where we can’t kill any of the mobs–err. Your kin?” He asked. “I’m not even a damage dealer and I still kill the occasional goblin or troll.”

“Ahhh thanks. I didn’t want to be the one to say it.” Akwa said. “Gell. I… we… I don’t think I can go along with you if there’s absolutely no way you’ll let us kill minions. Running away is great and all but sometimes you can’t run. It's not how this game – this world – functions.”

“I… but…” I looked at the two of them, unsure how to move forward if they weren’t willing to budge on this.

“Think of it like this, Gell. Everything here respawns. The mobs, the humans, heck even the landscape fixes itself after a battle has been fought on it,” Bellcandy said. “Killing mobs isn’t actually killing them. It’s more like putting them to sleep for a little while. They wake back up the same as always in a few hours.”

“But it hurts,” I said softly. “It hurt every time Red Thorn killed me… Please don’t make me watch others just like me suffer?”

Akwa looked white as a sheet. Bellcandy looked uncomfortable but neither of them seemed very much like they wanted to go along with that.

“You… suffered?” Akwa asked, breaking the silence after a long moment. “I guess I knew that, but Gell, you were just saying there was no light behind their eyes, right? They don’t feel pain when they die like you. They’re… not like you. I think maybe they never were.”

“Can you be sure of that?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” Bellcandy countered. “Think about this Gell. Remember how we first met? You killed me.”

Akwa’s eyes shot towards Bellcandy in surprise, while I flushed in embarrassment.

“You were working with Half Bold. He’s a jellyjerkface,” I muttered under my breath.

“In this world, killing your enemies might actually end up making you friends. Fighting doesn’t cause any permanent harm, after all.”

I supposed he was right. I remembered how I felt about the bugbears by the time I’d broken free of Dungeon Home. I’d been disgusted with them. Disgusted with their utter lack of care for their own deaths. The refusal to grow. I’d been so tired of watching them cycle in and cycle out that I’d accidentally killed Momma Bossbear myself in pure frustration.

Seeing Bugbear defend me though, and then later watching Torchlight rescue me from Red Thorn… could I really believe they were lifeless?

Maybe. After all, those particular members of my Kin had both been Fae-Touched, by me. The rest? As dead as the NPCs.

“I… I guess so,” I said.

Chapter Fifteen

Another World: Three

“Protesters, Candace! Protestors! I’m telling you this is the story of a lifetime. They’re telling us that they’ve created a fully functioning human-level intelligence inside a video game! No jokes, no half-truths. It’s the real deal, or at least they think it is. Well I don’t know why no one else seems to have jumped all over this like homeless folks beneath a cash blimp but I tell you what, I want this on every front page you can find! Gell the Jellybot! Gell owns the Net. Gell for mayor! No. No, I don’t care that it’s… are you kidding me? And you believe that bunch of bologna? Peaceful, childlike, my ass. It’s an A.I.! We all know how that story ends. Get… no. Get…! Aghh just do it! I’m telling you it doesn’t matter if… ugh. Don’t make me pull the mean boss card, Candace. I don’t like threatening to fire people before it’s even Wednesday. I would too and you know it!”

Vera stared at the man behind the desk, trying to decide if he was actively trying to act like Jonah Jameson or if the impression he was giving was just a coincidence.

The boss slammed the phone down after a few more stilted half-sentences that Vera couldn’t understand without the other half of the conversation before finally looking up, eyes brightening as he took in Vera.

“Vera Jungblut! Great! Just the man I wanted to see,” J.T. Milkenen said, beaming wide at Vera as they’d ever actually exchanged more than two words.

“Uhh, how can I help Mister Millkenen?” Vera asked, feeling a little confused.

He wasn’t exactly high up on the totem pole in the company but he’d managed to gain some renown recently on MMOrg and Classic Cons with his articles on gaming. His predictions about the success of the Neurosync and its immediate effect on other big gaming companies had propelled him to a seat at the table with the big writers, but sometimes he felt more like he was the dog sitting under it, begging for scraps.

He was understandably confused when the CEO invited him up to the twentieth floor for a… quick chat.

“Well, straight to the point. I can admire that. It isn’t every day you get a call to the big Kakuna’s office so you’re probably feeling a tad worried right now. I know I would be in your shoes. Don’t be. This is a good call,” he said with a satisfied smirk on his face.

‘Did he just misuse a pokemon’s name in place of Kahuna?’ Vera thought with a mental groan while resisting the urge to roll his eyes. ‘Old people and their friggin’ pocket monsters.’

“You probably overheard the conversation I was just having with Candace, right? Well, that’s what I’ve called you up here for. Your piece on the Neurosync went over better than anyone expected, and you managed to gain a bit of a decent following with the VR gamers and the old hands alike. That’s exactly what we need. A slightly obscure name with a big hit or two under their belt, but no K.O.s yet. A man like you.”

Vera was becoming more and more uncomfortable by the minute. Mr. Millkenen was the CEO of Prominent Tech and Trade. MMOrg, the Webrag of which Vera had only recently gained a little bit of notoriety on, wasn’t even a footnote compared to the majority of news platforms this man was in charge of. Mr. Millkenen could fire him without a second thought. It wasn’t as if he had little motive to do his job, so why was he laying the butter on so thick?

“I’ll do… whatever you need sir,” Vera said, annoyed that his voice squeaked a little. He was in his thirties for god’s sake.

Fortunately, this only seemed to amuse the CEO.

“Great, great. I’ll cut right to the chase then. Tread the Sky. You’ve heard of it?” he asked, seemingly genuinely curious.

Vera almost rolled his eyes again before stopping himself. Of course, he’d heard of it. His bestselling article was about the Neurosync, which was almost vital to enjoying Tread the Sky.

Seriously. The game was pretty bad otherwise. Bland quests and a bland cast of characters, alongside a maddeningly difficult leveling system, made the game more enjoyable to watch on twitch feeds than to actually play. The crafting and battle systems were admittedly pretty creative but a game couldn’t stand on those alone. A mediocre game utilizing unbelievably amazing technology. It was probably going to tank as soon as another company managed to pick up the ball Gypsenergy had so clearly dropped.

Honestly, this whole time he’d thought the A.I. rumors going around were a last-ditch effort to drum up more popularity before Bethesda launched their Neurosync title Array’s Ring. Not to mention the social media megacorps that were eyeballing the new tech with undisguised greed.

“I’m… very aware of the game sir,” he said in as neutral a tone as he could manage.

“Good, good. I would like you to go into the game, find the A.I. they’ve been talking about and interview it. I want Prominent Tech and Trade to get out in front of this. It’s big news in the scholarly world but the regular populace doesn’t seem to understand how big it is. You’re going to make it clear. Sound good?”

No, it certainly did not sound all that good. It sounded like pressure.

“It… sounds like a career-making opportunity, sir.” Left unsaid was that it could also be a career-breaking one.

“It is,” the CEO emphasized. “As far as we know, the girl is in Variak, one of the main starting points in the game.”

“I… uhm. Alright. But… sir? What sort of article did you want me to write about her? For all intents and purposes she doesn’t seem any different from a player,” Vera replied tentatively.

“Are you kidding me kid? What do you think’s going to sell? Peaceful, lovable A.I. loves pacifism and hugging Mobs? Sensationalize this.”

Vera squirmed. Still, he supposed he’d expected that, and it was a career-making opportunity under the right conditions. If Gypsenergy wasn’t lying about their sapient A.I. and if that A.I. was interesting enough to create a story people would listen to, and if the A.I. was something worth fearing.

If he touted a peaceful, lovable A.I. as an imminent threat, and it was discovered that she was every bit the butterball Gypsenergy claimed she was, then the sales might be great but his credibility would tank.

He’d just have to see.

“How long do I have?” he asked, worriedly.

“A bit of time, but not much. As I said, we’re trying to get out in front of this. People aren’t interested. We think most people think it's a hoax. It hasn’t changed their lives or anything and with A.I. in every automated voice servant on the planet, it’s just not that impressive to the average person. I’d say have a story on my desk in a week.”

A week. That wasn’t bad. The A.I. was rumored to spend her time in Variak, which was one of the starter towns. He’d have to delete his current character, but he wasn’t too bent out of shape over that. He hadn’t played the game since the week-long delay.

“A week,” he said with a nod, feeling himself grow a bit more confident. The deadline was surprisingly generous. He’d half expected the man to tell him he wanted it tomorrow. “Alright. I’ll find her, sir.”

“Good! Glad to hear it,” the man replied. “Now, would you send my two o’clock in? She’s probably waiting just outside there.”

Vera nodded. “Yes Sir. Do you want the article to go through the usual channels or should I send it straight to you when it’s done?”

The man pondered for a moment. “Usual channels. I’m not brash enough to assume I can do their job better than they can, but send me a message whenever you’ve submitted it. I’ve got a bit of personal curiosity about the machine that thinks it’s a person.”

“Will do!” Vera said with a grin, before realizing he’d just spoken to the frigging CEO like he was a college buddy. “Uhh. Sir!”

The man laughed and nodded but flicked his fingers in a clear dismissal.

Vera left the office, trying to pretend his face wasn’t red with embarrassment. Once in the lobby, he shook his head with a big sigh before looking around. The only person there was a comely looking girl around his age, wearing a paisley dress that might’ve been more appropriate on a grandmother in his opinion. She would’ve been beautiful otherwise, but he’d never met her before.

“Uhm. If you’re his two o’clock, he asked me to send you in?” Vera asked, cursing himself for making that a question.

“Thank you,” the girl said softly before ducking around him and stepping into the office.

She didn’t close the door fully behind her. Vera was about to go, before noticing that the rest of the lobby was empty. Niggling curiosity struck him. The door was open and no one was around to see.

He leaned casually back towards the door so his ear was towards the crack into the CEO’s office. He knew he should just go. He had his assignment… but…

“...you’re our best, Muriel! She’s in a bad situation! She’s basically human and you write emotional stories! Sympathize with her!”

Wait, what? Hadn’t Mr. Millkenen just been telling him how the A.I. needed to be sensationalized? Made into a threat?

What the hell was he trying to–?

“Sir, for the last time: I don’t sympathize with it. It’s a machine. I don’t care how human it acts, I’m not going to write an article drumming up sympathy for an NPC. My articles are about how games help real people. Not how they make fake ones.”

Vera blinked. ‘Whoa. The cajones on that one…’

“Hmm… well I can respect professional integrity, but we need an article. Are you willing to gamble your job on this? You’re good Miss Gillfire, very good. But this is the third time you’ve refused to write. Which is more important to you? Integrity or a paycheck?”

Vera blinked. Holy shit? That was Muriel Gillfire? The girl’s articles were amazing.

“Integrity. I won’t write that article. I have no interest in making people sympathetic to a robot. That’s not what I do. If you’d prefer I write for another Webrag, I’ll see myself out. I’m sure TechNow would love to have me.”

“Now wait! Wait!” the CEO’s frantic voice trailed on the sound of footsteps. Vera almost decided to bolt but paused when the footsteps stopped.

“For what, Mr. Millkenen?” she asked.

“You’re… not interested in the sympathetic angle. Okay. Perhaps you’d be more interested in warning the public about the dangers she might cause?”

A few more steps in the office convinced Vera that it was time to go. He had just enough time to catch the girl’s response. “That seems counter-intuitive, but I’m listening.”

Vera decided he’d stuck around long enough and scrambled out of the lobby. He felt a great sense of relief as he arrived in the elevator with none the wiser to his eavesdropping. As he descended the floors, he mulled over what he’d just heard. So the CEO wanted to do both. Have one article demonizing the A.I. and another humanizing her.

Interesting. Perhaps he’d write two articles of his own…

Just in case.

Now all he had to do was find her. That said, he had just the idea where to start. Why not go straight to the girl who cried wolf?

Hah. She even wore a red hood.

Chapter Sixteen

Class of the Enemy

I stepped into the Rogue’s Den, feeling a sense of trepidation. Or maybe it was just good old fear.

The NPC rogues hovering around on dirty tables, almost all universally holding at least one knife did little to assuage my worries. They were angry and rough-looking to a man, but none of them seemed particularly interested in me. They would glance at me, sneer, and return to their card game, or dice, or frothy mug of liquid quickly enough.

I stared at the amber-colored liquid in those mugs wondering what it tasted like. Looking around the room a lot of the NPCs all seemed to be drinking it.

No. I had to focus. Get the job that could help me escape danger more efficiently now, and acquire a tasty frothy drink later.

“Place always gives me the creeps,” Akwa said. “That’s why I chose Paladin!”

I eyed her curiously. “You’ve been here before?”

“Uhh… yeah. Quest sent me in here at one point. No big deal,” she said defensively.

I glanced at Bellcandy and we both shared a shrug before moving on. Paladin wasn’t a class offered in Variak and could only be obtained by going to Pel’Bramont, but Akwa had confessed that she’d only just gotten her class recently before coming to Variak in an effort to visit all five of the starting city locations, which wasn’t incredibly difficult since they were all connected by fast methods of travel called boats or airships. I’d never seen either of these things but both sounded amazing.

I stepped forward towards the back door, where a thin man leaned casually, playing with his knives. He was standing as if he had nowhere in particular to be but his demeanor held a certain edge of readiness.

His nameplate showed him to be an NPC by the name of Vicious Kyle.

“Are we… sure I need to come here to become a Rogue?” I asked, feeling nervous as I looked up at the man. He seemed more intimidating with every step.

“Better than owing tribute to Variak. You get to keep everything you might steal. If you go the city-sanctioned route then you’re more like a spy assassin for the crown and all of your quests involve killing NPCs. Better this way, because you can actually level up by stealing,” Akwa supplied helpfully.

“How do you know that? I thought you’d only been here once?” I asked.

She shrugged again. “I looked it up.”

“Looked it up–!?”

“Hey! The hell are you doin’ here?” Vicious Kyle interrupted as I stepped into an arbitrary radius that made the NPC interact with me.

Even as I flinched at the sudden… well… viciousness of the man, I could feel the automated voice repeating lines. I was in no danger from this lithe, oily creature. He was here to give me a class, menacing as he may seem.

“No admittance to the den allowed, unless ya prove yourself, y’hear?” he said with a sly grin. I only then realized that he was standing in front of a door that led even deeper into this strange place.

I gathered my courage and stepped up to Vicious Kyle. I needed this.

The Rogue class would give me a ten percent dexterity boost and the moment I found out I could level the class by stealing, instead of killing my kin, I’d jumped on board fully. I’d considered being a healer since they could gain levels merely by healing but thought better of it. Simply choosing to be a healer meant I would need to be around fights in order to level. I didn’t want that.

Then again… I wasn’t sure if anyone else knew that I could steal Soulbound items from players. If my steal skill was any indication I typically shouldn’t be able to do that.

Of course, all of the classes could be leveled by killing monsters, but only rogue in particular gave me boosts in speed and advantages for hiding and getting out of fights if I needed to.

“How would I prove myself?”

An NPC Box appeared, very similar to the one that had appeared when I’d first become a builder. This one had no monetary requirements though. “Accept your first dagger and the path of the rogue? *ALERT* Once chosen this path cannot be abandoned aside from divine intervention. Choose Wisely!”

Below there were two options. Accept and Deny.

Did I want to commit to this? Actually, was I truly committing? Divine Intervention… did that mean Francis could remove the class if I decided I didn’t want it anymore?

“Are you sure you want to go this route, Gell?” Akwa asked. “Being a rogue does mean that someday you might be asked to kill things. As a healer, you never would.”

As a healer, I’d be a target. I knew that for certain because every time a group of adventurers had visited my dungeon home that was exactly what I’d done.

I hit accept. No regrets. No doubting myself. I would be Gell, the Jellyfae Thief, and possible PK from now on! I grinned as a cascade of fanfares echoed through my ears and four NPC boxes appeared layered atop one another.

Rogue Class gained!

+10% to Dexterity
+5% to Charisma
+5% to Luck
+10% base theft rate
Gained the ability Sprint!
Gained the ability Backstab!
Gained the ability Stealth!

The next few screens each had different descriptions of the new abilities I’d learned but the last one drew my attention the most.

“Congratulations! You’ve become a rogue. Sneakiness and guile will forever remain your bedfellows, and trust will never come easily for those around you.”

“Wait what!?” I screamed, turning to glare at Akwa. “Y-you never said people around me wouldn’t trust me!”

She blinked back at me. “H-huh?”

“The NPC Box! It says people won’t trust me!  You never said that!” I shouted again, gritting my teeth in frustration.

“I… Gell that’s… that’s just a–! It’s not really saying people won’t trust you,” Bellcandy said, drawing my panicked attention. “It’s just a general idea of how real rogues are perceived. Here in Tread the Sky, a rogue is just another class. No one would have any more or less trouble trusting you.”

“Are you sure!?” I asked, my worry fading a little. “I’m already… different. I want to make more friends like Amy told me to. That way I’ll never be alone.”

“-ave what it takes to be a master thief?” I blinked in surprise as Vicious Kyle danced his way over to me, spindly arms flourishing a fan of knives before making them disappear.

Had he been talking this entire time? I sighed feeling a little sad. It was times like this that I wondered if maybe I was being a little too rigid in my stance against killing monsters. NPC’s could be so much more. They could be real, like Miss Tutorial. Like… like me. What kind of idiot designed them so they would continue talking even while no one was listening to them?

An idea began to form in my mind. What if… I could learn to be a false god? If I could learn how they built this world then maybe I could understand how to touch it without possibly bringing it down?

“Gell. Being a rogue in our world would make you less trustworthy. Here you’re just another DPS class. People don’t think of you as untrustworthy, they think of you as a strong single target damage dealer. Do you understand?”

I hesitated. “You mean… sort of like how Half Bold had a super long name but everyone just referred to him as BM?”

Bellcandy blinked. “Half Bold? Oh wow, I almost forgot about that guy. Uhm. Not really? More like how people just refer to me as healz. It’s what you can do that people care about. No one is going to judge you for your class. Not here anyway.”

I blinked at that. There was a hint of bitterness there. “They… would judge you in your world?”

“Some people do,” he hissed. I thought I heard him mutter something that sounded like “Dull Beauty,” but he didn’t seem to want to keep talking about it.

“I… guess it’s too late to back out now, anyway. Thanks, Bellcandy,” I said before turning back to Vicious Kyle. The man was posed strangely, looking at me expectantly but just waiting for a response.

“Good.” Vicious Kyle responded to me as if I’d been talking to him. “Can always use another knife in the dark. Your first task is simple. Steal somethin’. Come back and show me. Better make it at least a little valuable too.”

I blinked. Well, that was easy enough. The NPC box that appeared said almost exactly that, so I accepted the quest before pulling out the dagger I’d stolen from Red Thorn what felt like ages ago.

Akwa let out a short breath as she saw it before clamming up. She continued to gaze at the dagger with naked desire though.

“You uhm… want this?” I asked curiously. I didn’t think Paladins could use daggers but maybe she just liked them.

She turned back to me, shaking herself. “Oh. Uhm. No. That’s okay. It’s just… a really nice dagger. I wouldn’t turn it in for a first-level quest. Or any quest. The bonus will not be worth it.”

I mentally agreed before nodding to her. “Yeah. I’ve never really considered selling this. It belonged to Red Thorn.”

I examined the dagger and the usual NPC box that described items appeared. As expected, I couldn’t use the dagger at all and wouldn’t be able to for quite some time.

“Rose”
One half of a two-part set.
“Forged with Dread Ruby as a pair beneath the Prison of Gebble by the dark smith before he used it to take his own life. It is said that his spirit will haunt Gebble until Rose’s other half, Thorn is buried in the chest of the woman who betrayed him.”

Unique
Exquisite Ebony Dagger of the Hawk
Damage: 179
Level Requirement: 20

I blinked in recognition. Dread Ruby was a ridiculously expensive building component. I’d seen them on the auction house while scrolling through the items for sale there. I couldn’t use them yet but later on, down the line, builders could use them to make demonic fire traps for guild halls.

As for the scary description, I’d discovered that a lot of items had strange backstories like that. As usual in Tread the Sky, they typically amounted to nothing more than a bit of added flavor to weapons or locations.

I bet Red Thorn had bought them at the Auction House.

“You’re right. I guess I’ll have to go and steal something. I’ve traded or sold everything else I had stolen,” I said. Something about this whole situation felt off. I was being given a task by a shady, supposedly evil under-dweller, but he was just giving me tasks. Presumably, he would just give anyone who entered tasks, just like Nadia at the Builder’s guild, regardless of the guild master’s scripted anger.

I turned to Akwa and grinned maliciously. “Akwa… I don’t want to leave the city or anything. You got anything valuable rooting around in your bags?”

Her eyes widened. “Nooo. Oh no, you don–! Hey! Gell, I will call the guards! I swear I’ll hit my catch!”

Ten minutes, two completed quests, and one very annoyed Akwa later, we left the Rogue’s Den. The second quest had been to steal something of value greater than five silver. Wouldn’t you know it, Akwa had a whole bunch of items around that level? I’d managed to snag a superior potion of stamina from her. She acted annoyed but I could tell she was amused with the whole thing.

“Alright!” I exclaimed happily, ready to get started on my hunt for Bugbear. “Bellcandy, are you sure Dull Beauty doesn’t want to come?”

Bellcandy’s mood immediately darkened. “She… doesn’t.”

Well, that was informative. I guessed it would be just me, Akwa, and Bellcandy. Maybe Iron or Amy would join in later.

“Alright then. Are… you okay Bellcandy?” I asked, suddenly concerned. “Did I do something wrong?”

Bellcandy… glared at me for a moment before relaxing and sighing. I’d honestly never seen him anything but happy and carefree before today. We hadn’t exactly interacted all that much before I’d watched Red Thorn kill him in the Twisted Wronkle Woods but I had known him long enough to know that this dismal mood wasn’t normal for him. The expression worried me.

“It’s not you, Gell. It has nothing to do with you, so don’t worry about it,” he said, folding his short little arms in front of his chest.

Not about me…? I mean… yeah. Other people had their own things going on. I knew that. Iron and Amy had their decrepit bodies to care for. I guessed Akwa and Bellcandy did too, but this was my world. I wanted to know everything! So… what could make Bellcandy go from his usual, happy self, to this dour angry person?

“Tell me! Please, tell me? Tellme-tellme-tellme!” I exclaimed.

He sighed, but grinned at me, weakly. Exasperated? “Maybe some other time, Gell.”

I beamed back at him, glad to see him at least trying to look happy.

“Alright. In that case, are we ready to go!? I want to find Bugbear today!” I shouted, feeling more excited than I had in a while. I was going on an adventure! Out into the Great-Open! It wasn’t like it had been back in Dungeon Home but… I was thrilled in a way I hadn’t felt since reaching Variak.

The two of them gave halfhearted cheers. Akwa attempted to steal from my bag which I deftly thwarted with a smack at her grubby paws. I didn’t actually use the catch ability though. She grinned at me, and I grinned back.

I was going to find my friend.

I pulled up my safe points menu and selected the Shady Woods Copse.

“Pay one silver to “Red Thorn” to teleport yourself and your party to the Shady Woods Copse?”

I grimaced. Right. That.

Chapter Seventeen

The Hunt for Bugbear

There was a level of disappointment involved when we finally left Variak. I’d done so once before, even going so far as to leave the safe zone for my visit to Dungeon Home. I’d done that alone though. Now I was here with others and didn’t feel quite so afraid.

I well remembered Miss Tutorial’s warning that dinosaurs might eat me outside of safe zones. Last time, seeing Bugbear again had been worth the risk to me. Seeing him in my original form.

That was still my goal, but I needed a bit of direction first.

I pulled out Francis’s flute.

“What’s that?” Akwa asked curiously. Bellcandy seemed just as curious, looking at the item as I held it out for Akwa’s inspection.

Francis’s Flute
Signals Developers that Gell the Jellyfae requires assistance when blown.
Soulbound

I let them read the description of the item and both of them blinked. “Wait, this alerts the developers? Like the actual game developers? And what? They just… come when you call?”

I flushed, a little embarrassed but not sure why. “Y-yeah?”

“Holy shit, they really did meet you. Did… did they create you, Gell?” Akwa asked. She tried to make the question sound casual like she didn’t care much about the answer, but there was a fervor in her eyes that made me a little uncomfortable

“No. At least, Francis says he didn’t. He said I was made by another developer. One they haven’t been able to find. They said he might be… uhm. Dead. Y-your world’s kind of dead. Not mine,” I said softly, remembering that conversation. Remembering when I learned that my entire world was a lie, a game. A way for real people to have fun.

I tried not to be bitter, and it was easier than I might’ve thought. When I died, I came back. That wasn’t true for any of my friends. Just living through cycles would kill them all sooner or later, which sounded awful. I couldn’t hate them for making an entertaining world where they would be safe from a permanent end for the time that they had.

Still, this world was mine. My game. My lie. As real to me, as any adventurer had ever been.

Akwa noticed the look in my eyes and decided to change the subject. “So uhm, they just come whenever you call?”

“I’ve only used it once, and one of them did. It wasn’t Francis himself though. I’m… hoping they might have more information on where we should go from here. Honestly, I have no idea where Bugbear might have gone. All I know is that I’m pretty sure he left Dungeon Home.”

I was also terrified that they would tell me they’d already found him. Already removed the part of him that made him different. The part of him that defied the Instinct.

“Pretty sure?” Bellcandy asked with an annoyed eye roll. “Ughh this is going to be the biggest wild goose chase ever isn’t it?”

“I… I don’t know,” I replied before taking back the flute. “Hopefully Francis or Tyrone can help us.”

“Well, at least we get to meet one of the freaking developers. That’s pretty cool,” Akwa said to Bellcandy.

Bellcandy took a moment to ponder that, putting a hand to his chin before nodding. “Good point. Let’s hope we find this Bugbear of yours alive and well though, eh Gell?”

“Alive and… well? Bugbear can’t die as you guys do. Either we find him alive or we won’t find him at all,” I said, assuredly.

Bellcandy held up a finger before dropping it back down. “Huh. I… it’s an expression, Gell. Alive and Well. It doesn’t usually literally mean alive and… and well. Except when it does. It… gah.”

“Now that I think about it, that’s a good point,” Akwa piped up. “If Bugbear dies, wouldn’t he just respawn here at Dungeon Home?”

I frowned. “Are you suggesting we just wait for him to die? I’ve only died once since Francis turned me into an adventurer like you guys but it doesn’t hurt like it does for NPCs. No! I want to find him and protect him, okay?”

She held up her hands. “Just saying, Gell. It’s a mob. It’s going to die sooner or later.”

“He isn’t just a mob. He’s my friend, and I’m not going to let him get hurt if I can prevent it!” I insisted, getting a bit angry.

She shrugged. “Fine, fine. It’s not like it’d be very exciting waiting around for a wandering mob to die anyway.”

I glared at her, but let it drop after a minute. Akwa didn’t have to be here. Neither of them gained much by spending their time helping me find my erstwhile friend, so I tried to be grateful. We disagreed on how to treat my Kin but that didn’t mean they weren’t my friends.

“Thanks,” I said. “Sorry. I just… I care about him. I don’t know if you guys can understand, but for almost all of my life, Bugbear was the only thing that changed. The only thing that kept me interested in becoming something more than the instinct made me.”

Bellcandy smiled at me, as bright and cheery as he’d ever been, despite whatever Dull Beauty had done to frustrate him.

Akwa seemed more reserved but gave a conciliatory nod before gesturing. “If he’s important to you, he’s important to us, Gell. Go on. Summon us a wild Developer to destroy our enemies! Or… at least to find our friends.”

I laughed and put the flute to my lips.

The note wasn’t beautiful or anything, and not for the first time I was annoyed that I couldn’t make pretty sounds like North Cross’s harp. The same as last time, the warp of teleportation came a few moments of quiet waiting later.

Francis himself appeared out of the warp into the shining third-cycle sunshine, and I couldn’t help a sad little pout at the fact that it wasn’t Tyrone. I was glad to see him though. I needed to talk to Francis again.

One of the things that had never changed about Tread the Sky, even after all I’d learned since escaping dungeon home and being cursed or blessed with a human form, was the rotation of the cycles. Thirty-four cycles. Thirty-four different weather patterns, with a few random extra ones on occasion. Night and day lasted for a cycle each. Odd cycles were daylight, even ones, night-time, based on how I’d numbered them anyway. This was the third cycle in the thirty-four cycle loop. While the weather in the third cycle was comfortable, I suspected Francis Delaney could look uncaringly bored and tired no matter how rough the cycle’s weather. The blizzards of cycle thirty-three, or the rainstorms of twenty-seven and sixteen, Francis would stand there in the middle of it all, sipping Saint Joe without a care in the world.

Maybe that was just another power that came with being a false god? Being unaffected by weather?

Akwa and Bellcandy seemed poleaxed. Both of them looked a little star-struck, just like those people in the Builder’s Guild had been when I’d first met Francis. Despite his strange clothing though, I still didn’t see anything different between him and my friends to distinguish him though.

“Gell. What a pleasant surprise! I was just about to contact you. I see you’re still in human form. Taken a liking to a regular body?” He asked, before taking a loud sip from his coffee mug.

I folded inward. Was I?

“I… don’t…”

I still wasn’t comfortable in this body. No matter how much time I spent as a human I still felt like my skin wasn’t right around me. I was a Jellyfae, but I was also a human because all my friends were human. As a Jellyfae, I couldn’t relate to them. As a Jellyfae… I had no one.

Unless I found Bugbear anyway. At least I might have him.

“Gell?” Francis asked.

“Yeah. Just… yeah. I’m sorry. I just realized that maybe I am becoming more comfortable like... this.” I said, trying and failing to hide the disgust in my voice.

Francis’s eyes widened. “Oh. I’m sorry Gell. That was… that didn’t come out as I intended. I know you aren’t human and… well, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s something I have to deal with.” I stated, shaking myself out of my grim thoughts. “Listen. Did Tyrone talk to you?”

He wrinkled an eyebrow before making a wary glance at Akwa and Bellcandy. “He… did.”

“So? Uhm. Were you guys able to find Bugbear? And… did he mention  my request?” I asked anxiously.

Francis sighed. “If Bugbear is out there roaming the system against his behavioral code we haven’t been able to find him. We can’t exactly just search for mobs based on the amount of personality they’re coded with and their location stat changes with them. We are searching for him. If and when we do find him, we’ll likely do the same thing for him that we did for you. Heaven forbid he pick up more than six items and get me paged at one a.m. again.”

I watched Akwa look to Bellcandy and mouth the words “Six items?” I giggled when Bellcandy made an amusing face and shrugged.

Francis grinned, amused. “For what it's worth, it makes more sense for him to have gone East rather than West. The level of monsters out that way is quite high and I feel like we would have a Livestream of players encountering Bugbear by now if he had gone towards the more populated areas.

I smiled. That was good. Bugbear had gone where he would be safer. Maybe he would’ve gone where he’d assume I would go. Somewhere that bigger and stronger members of my kin could protect me. To him, adventurers were probably still the enemy. But he’d protected me from the other, less developed Bugbears. Would he remember that?

Or… maybe he just chose a direction at random?

I ran a frustrated hand through my hair tendrils, feeling them float around. My freckles glowed an anxious orange. On the one hand, Francis not finding him was good news. On the other…

“If… if he picks up that many items will it break the world again? Like… like I did?” I asked, worriedly.

Akwa blinked. “You broke the world?”

Francis grinned at Akwa. “You know the Wighthollow Downs? That area of the game that was generated for about an hour at midnight a few months back? That was thanks to Gell here crashing one of the servers on accident. Keep that close to the vest though, eh? It was fixed easily enough and actually created some unusual locations and terrain, once we tweaked it a little. Win-win.”

“Oh hey, yeah I heard about that. Most of it is too high level for us to visit though,” Bellcandy said.

I hadn’t heard about this, and was a little curious to ask more but…

They just… tweaked it. They tweaked the world. I wanted to know how. To understand.

“H-how? Uhm. I mean. Francis, did Tyrone ask you about the other thing?” I asked, now even more anxious than I had been before.

Francis got a pained look on his face. “Well. I think that covers it. Gell, I hope you can find your Bugbear. If you do, let me know. We can make him a player like you. If the game can support one of you, it can surely support two.”

My eye twitched. Was he ignoring me?

“That’s… great. Thanks, Francis. But, about my other ques–!”

“Gell,” he said harshly and I flinched at the ferocity of it. “Remember” he paused, “everything you say and do is subject to the board’s oversight. If they decide you are too dangerous to keep around they will remove you. Learning to program? Learning to be a developer? It's not in the cards for you. I’m not even necessarily telling you ‘No’ for them, though. For my peace of mind, it is not wise to allow you to learn how this world works at that level.”

I flinched as if slapped. “But… why!? I could help! If I could learn how it works I could fix it! I could… I could maybe make it real!”

Francis’s eyes narrowed in a way that genuinely scared me a little.

“That is what terrifies me, Gell. No. I won’t allow you to learn to program. For your own good, as well as the game’s. Please be happy with what I can do.”

Bellcandy and Akwa were looking between us uncomfortably but I barely noticed turning my glare back on Francis. “This is so unfair! I live here! Don’t I have a right to know how my world works?”

He ran his hand through his hair in frustration. “You aren’t… Gell I’m trying to keep you alive, okay? Keep asking questions like that and not only will the board demand I erase you, they will make me do it or lose my job. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I hope you find Bugbear.”

With that, he winked out of existence. He didn’t teleport. He just vanished.

My teeth grit against each other. My fists were shaking. I wanted to pound my foot on the ground. Punch something. I settled on the nearest tree and shocked it, frustrated when it didn’t react at all.

“Why!? Why, Francis! I…”

“Gell… maybe. Maybe it's for the best for now. Okay?” Bellcandy said consolingly. “You should learn more about our world before trying to understand how yours works. Maybe then, once you’ve earned his trust, he’ll help you.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Akwa piped up. “It sounds like he’s trying to keep her and everyone else safe. I’m glad to see he cares enough to protect…”

She trailed off, leaving what Francis was protecting left unsaid.

I barely heard them.

“Come on then. Let’s go find my friend,” I said. If I couldn’t understand my dead world, at least I might be able to share it with Bugbear.

Besides, there were other false gods.

Chapter Eighteen

Wandering Boss

Still seething in anger at being denied the chance to learn how developers went about tweaking the world to their whims, I set out for the east with a healer and a paladin.

I knew I should calm down. I knew I should try to be friendly with the two of them. After all, they were my only allies on this quest, and without them, I probably wouldn’t even be able to search for Bugbear, let alone do so with some measure of safety.

I couldn’t though. I was so angry. What right did Francis have to keep his knowledge from me? What right did any of them have? I, of all people, had a right to understand my world. My freckles glowed a furious red and my companions were content to follow me at a distance rather than beside me.

The area around the Shady Woods Copse was a forest but as we continued further to the east the terrain morphed. Instead of trees and underbrush, I found myself walking on overgrown roots. Twisted masses of ancient wood grew all about the forest floor until any semblance of a path was utterly destroyed.

A short while later, we crossed the line and an NPC box helpfully informed me that we were entering Mist Breath Jungle. It then went on to explain that the jungle got its name from the unusual levels of fog and strange air pockets beneath the jungle that made the entire forest seem like it was breathing geysers of steamy mist.

True to form, the Jungle was a foggy place. The canopy above let some light through, but not enough to make the place seem bright.

“So, Mist Breath Jungle. I’ve never been out this way before,” Bellcandy said softly. “It's recommended to be level nineteen or so if you want to solo this place.”

I didn’t comment, still fuming about Francis, but I listened when Akwa replied, “Yeah. It’s not very valuable to come here. The monsters aren’t as dangerous as in other areas but the terrain makes it so annoying that most people I know past its level skipped it.”

I furrowed an eyebrow at Akwa. “You know people past level nineteen?”

I was currently level thirteen and had been ever since I’d killed Momma Bossbear and become an invader. Some misconceptions about how that had happened had been cleared up for me since then, but I remembered thinking about how awful I was. How, in killing one of my Kin, I’d become an invader and would never be welcome among them again.

Level nineteen, from what I’d been told, was incredibly difficult to reach. Death was punished with severe experience loss and usually resulted in a lost level. Even two at the higher levels.

I’d been killed once and hadn’t lost any experience, now that I thought about it. Perhaps Francis hadn’t allowed me to lose experience? Or maybe the nature of that strange room where the walls looked like scenery had prevented the normal workings of Tread the Sky?

I didn’t know. Yet one more thing I didn’t know. I bristled, freckles continuing to flare as I stared at Akwa.

“Uhm. Well… a few, yeah. My alt is actually above nineteen, though not by much,” she said awkwardly.

Bellcandy blinked. “Really? Well, what are you using this toon for? Switch to your other one! You could probably just tank everything here and then we wouldn’t have to worry about dying at all!”

Akwa had mentioned her alt when we first met, but I hadn’t asked at the time. I’d deflected away from my lack of knowledge and shown her my Jellyfae form. I wasn’t in the mood to not understand now.

“What’s an alt?” I barked. The two winced at my tone and I made an effort to calm down. “I mean. What do you mean by ‘alt’ and ‘toon’?”

Akwa looked confused before realization dawned. “Ohhh. I guess you wouldn’t have encountered… right. That makes sense. You’ve never met someone with two characters before?”

“Characters?” I asked, feeling more confused than ever.

“Shit. Uhm. Well…” Akwa struggled, but Bellcandy came to her rescue.

“Gell, you know how Amy and Iron are like, super old right? But they look relatively young here?” Bellcandy said softly.

“Look… young? I… don’t understand. How can you look young or old? You… look like you. That’s how it works!” I insisted.

Bellcandy shook his head. “Well, crap. There goes that idea. Here, yes. In our world though, how old you are affects how you look. If you’re only a few years old you’ll look young. Sound young. For example, I’m nineteen years old, and look absolutely amazing.”

I did the math quickly. Nineteen years times the number of years in a day, times the number of cycles in a day. He was… eighty-three thousand two hundred twenty cycles old? A fraction of Iron’s Three hundred and fifty-four thousand seven hundred and eighty. Young. But still old by comparison to me.

“Iron, for example, looks wrinkled and, well, old, in our world. He sounds old. That’s why his voice is scratchy and he coughs sometimes. But here his character doesn’t look like the one in the real world. In Tread the Sky, nobody appears to age, but in the real world, they look different the older they are.”

“Okay…” I said, listening intently, realizing that did explain why some of the NPC humans were short-stooped things with incredibly smooth skin while others were wrinkled and their skin didn’t seem to fit them very well. That wasn’t just how they looked. That was Francis’s interpretation of old and young NPCs. They’d been made old, or young, but that actually meant something in the players’ world.

I shivered. If I were real, did that mean one day I would look wrinkled and worn like the old lady who’d been selling the pies in Variak?

Perhaps being born in Tread the Sky wasn’t as bad as I’d thought?

“Gell? Did you hear me?” Bellcandy said, and I realized I had tuned him out.

“Sorry, was just… thinking about stuff,” I said. “What did you say?”

He rolled his eyes with a smile on his face. “That’s okay. I went through all that so I could better explain alts but just ended up on a tangent. Well, an alt is a different character played by the same person. For example, I could start an alternate character that was a female Orc Warrior, but it would still be me in that body. When I log in, I could choose to become Bellcandy, or I could instead be the Orc warrior. Do you understand?”

“I… think so. And… the experience you earn as a healer doesn’t transfer to the orc?” I turned to Akwa. “That’s why you have a… character who is a higher level than you are?”

“Exactly! Honestly, would’ve thought that would be harder to explai–!” suddenly my invisible interface blared red.

Danger. We were being attacked.

I ducked, instinct – the regular kind – saving me from a huge body that sailed right over my head.

‘Convenient of him to wait until most of our conversation was finished,’ I thought wryly.

I backed away, gaining distance between myself and whatever the enemy was. I was already activating my Fae-Form ability, much more comfortable as a Jellyfae than a human for a fight.

My friends had scattered. Bellcandy had dashed behind a massive tree root, while Akwa had taken the brunt of the creature’s next attack on her shield. She drew and swung a short sword, but missed and back peddled to prepare for another attack. I only had a moment before the creature dodged back into the underbrush to finally see what had attacked us.

“Ambush Raptor,” Akwa warned. “It already failed to get us in its first attack so now it will try to harry us towards its pack. If you feel it trying to lead you somewhere, go the other way!”

‘Clever. Why didn’t the bugbears have behavioral code that let them do that?’ I thought.

The beast was taller than me, though it crouched low, and hissed reminding me of Avwren the Bat. The raptor had a long row of jagged teeth and a pair of short claws that seemed almost comical in comparison. A tail almost as long as its body kept it steady on two strong legs.

“Okay!” Bellcandy called out in response to Akwa. He began to chant arcane words before shouting “Protect!” A blue barrier formed around him for just an instant then disappeared. Another immediately formed around Akwa and me, startling me.

I zipped into the sky as soon as I was in my Jellyfae form getting safely out of the Ambush Raptor’s range. I didn’t want to hurt it but I didn’t want to get mauled either.

“Behind you!” I shouted, noticing the red-scaled creature about to leap from behind towards Akwa.

The girl whipped around without a moment’s hesitation and her shield was ready when the beast’s claws descended. It screeched in pain when its long mouth clanged against Akwa’s heavy shield.

The paladin didn’t hesitate. Akwa brought her sword down in a blazing overhand swing.

“No!” I screamed, watching in horror as her sword sliced through the raptor’s face, piercing the skin but only superficially damaging it. The beast flinched away and whipped its tail at Akwa, bashing her off balance but she kept her footing.

I didn’t want this! They promised they would run if we encountered my kin!

“Run away! You promised me you’d run!”

“We can’t Gell!” Akwa called. “These things don’t stop following you!  Unless you want to leave already!?”

“Then we leave! I don’t want to hurt them! They’re innocent!” I screamed down at her.

“They’re nothing!” Akwa shouted back, eyes frantically scanning the dense foliage. “And if you don’t help us then we’re going to die! Which is worse, Gell?”

“I… you… you respawn!” I insisted.

“So do they! The only difference is they don’t feel it or lose anything!”

Dammit, she was right. But… but I just couldn’t. What if something worse happened? What if I changed again? What if I grew so callous to them that I didn’t even care? Was that alright? Should it be? But for a twist of fate, I’d be just like them.

The raptor struck again, this time aiming for Bellcandy.

Chapter Nineteen

To Kill My Kin

I screamed for him to dodge a moment too late. Sharp fangs raked across Bellcandy’s outstretched arm but a blue film of light shimmered into existence around him for the briefest moment, evidence that his Protect spell was mitigating some of the damage.

Instead of screaming or even flinching much despite the bloody gash across his arm, the halfling backed away, chanting all the while. White light erupted from his hands when he finished, and I found myself almost attacking him out of habit. Long-ingrained instinct to kill the healer first and foremost temporarily drove logic and reason from my mind.

I was perfectly safe high above, but my companions weren’t. Unfortunately, they weren’t running away either like they’d both promised to do if we encountered any of my kin.

“Akwa, Bell. Please, run away!” I begged. “We can do this some other way!”

Fuck, maybe I should’ve come on my own. I could fly. That didn’t make me invulnerable by any means but If I’d just come alone then I wouldn’t be in this conflict.

Akwa had placed herself between Bellcandy and the Raptor and was ineffectually thwarting its attacks with her shield. She attacked during the openings she saw but the beast was too quick, rarely dealing any more damage than she’d taken.

“It’s ten fucking levels above us, Gell. Please don’t let me die!” Akwa called back.

‘Jellycrap, why did I let myself get into this position?’ I thought, paralyzed with indecision.

I wasn’t given any more time. Fed up with the pesky shield getting in the way of its attacks, the raptor opened its jaw wide and bit the entire shield before wrenching it away. Akwa screamed as the straps were yanked off her arm, and I watched her hitpoints drop dramatically.

“Gell, fucking shock it!” Bellcandy called.

I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to hurt it, but I didn’t want my friends to die either! Intellectually I knew they were right. The beast would respawn in a matter of a cycle and would go on living as it always had. I knew why I’d been turned into an adventurer now. It had nothing to do with killing my kin. Killing… these mindless nothings controlled by their behavioral code.

But… I…

I moved, half-heartedly attempting to ready my shocker but I was too late.

The raptor turned back to the now defenseless Paladin. When it struck, the girl attempted to leap over the Raptor’s huge head but failed with her heavy armor. The beast’s jaws closed around her torso and yanked her sideways, her body hanging helpless in the raptor’s maw.

“DPS, dammit, help her!” Bellcandy cried as he finished chanting a different spell.

A sudden blast of wind burst from the Healer, knocking the raptor into a tumble across the jungle floor.

-67 hp!

Unfortunately, Akwa was dragged right along with it, screaming as she rolled, still trapped within the tight clutch of the raptor’s teeth. She screamed a final time as they rolled and I watched her hp plummet to zero in moments.

Her body disappeared, replaced by a blank gravestone. A beautiful grey angel hovered above it as Bellcandy cursed.

I’d just let my friend die. Just like I’d sat by and let the bugbears die. As easy as that. One minute there, the next gone. Never mind that she’d be back alive soon enough. Never mind that.

My body began to glow a hot red. I remembered this feeling. The rage that had come over me in Twisted Wronkle Woods when Red Thorn had made that flimsy attempt at an apology, but this was worse. These were my friends. Dying. Because I was too scared, too unwilling, to admit that there was no life in the faux family I’d once clung to so desperately.

Not again. I didn’t know this Raptor. I didn’t share any special bond with it. Its instinct told it to kill us, and otherwise, it would be nothing. But Akwa was real. Akwa cared about me. Responded. Did more than just grunt in my general direction! Bellcandy was real and in real danger too and I’d just betrayed them.

No more.

I darted down to the battlefield faster than I’d ever moved. The raptor, only just recovering from its tumble, didn’t have any time to dodge as I let my shocker loose against its face.

It let loose a surprisingly bird-like screech, its HP dropping dramatically, but still not enough to kill it.

I had no other way to attack in this form so I shapeshifted back into a human and readied Rose, my stolen dagger. I wielded it with no difficulty, even though I wasn’t supposed to be able to until level 20.

The beast was paralyzed and would remain so for a few seconds. I wasted no time, crouching down to the creature’s fallen body and slicing at its neck with the gleaming steel.

The hide was solid and despite the overwhelming power of the weapon, I did little damage as I struck it repeatedly.

-3hp!

-7hp!

Critical! -15 hp

-4hp!

I growled in frustration. Was its skin made of steel!?

Bellcandy finished yet another chant and suddenly the gravestone and angel disappeared, replaced by a woozy Akwa. Her HP bar reappeared in my invisible interface, but her health was still drastically low.

“Akwa! I’m sorry!” I shouted, backing away as the Raptor shook itself free of its paralysis, and almost clipped me with a rapid tail-swing. I was fast though and scrambled back away before it could touch me.

It stood back to its feet, now absolutely livid with us.

“Don’t worry about it, just kill the damn thing!” she exclaimed, running to step in beside me.

Baffled by her dashing towards the monster with her health so low, I turned and dodged another lightning-quick bite from the Raptor. I swung my dagger but missed and overbalanced, tumbling to the ground.

‘Stupid human body!’ I cursed myself, certain I was about to feel those teeth sink into my flesh. Instead, I heard the familiar clang of scale-on-shield. Akwa. The Raptor roared in annoyance but I was already scrambling to my feet.

Bellcandy’s next spell burst sent more white light bouncing through the jungle as Akwa’s health jumped back into the mid-levels.

The girl glowed red for a moment and shouted a frightening warcry. The Raptor, having been distracted by the healer, turned back to Akwa in a fury of bites.

“Now, Gell!”

“Right!” I said, panicked, but still cognizant enough to notice the Raptor’s unguarded flank.

My shocker had recharged fully at this point and I dove in, touching the raptor’s body with my bare hand before letting the ability out.

-95 hp!

The raptor screamed, falling once again to the jungle floor, twitching with electrical sparks.

Hefting her sword high Akwa brought it down hard on the creature’s exposed neck. This time, its tough skin was no match for the edge of Akwa’s sword.

-37 hp!

The beast roared in pain, before collapsing to the ground, its heavy body shaking the ground as it landed. Still not dead but only just.

A different sort of instinct guided me. I had to kill it, else my friends would likely die. This thing would be alive again in a cycle. I shoved the feelings of guilt and fear aside and activated my newest ability.

Backstab.

Unlike my earlier attacks, this time the dagger sunk in with deadly efficiency, as easily as Akwa’s sword had.

-49 hp! Critical!

That was enough. The raptor’s struggles ceased as I removed Rose from its back, staring at the unmoving creature. Dead. Just like Momma Bossbear, all that time ago.

Congratulations! You have gained 6,428 experience points!

Your party has received loot! Cast your lot!

Scalemail Jerkin
Raptor Flesh
Raptor Bone (Superior)

I winced. The last time I had seen those words, the world had broken. Shattered. Reality warped into a twisted version of itself before nothingness came.

That didn’t happen this time. There were no level-ups. No… no world-breaking feeling of loss. Surprisingly, not even any guilt, except that it had taken me so long to intervene.

I stared at the dead beast, uncaring about everything else.

I felt cold inside as I stared at my dead kin. When my friends had been in danger… when Akwa had actually died, I’d turned on it. But… How was I any different than them now? I’d killed my kin. I might as well have come to Dungeon Home to kill my bugbears myself.

What would Bugbear think of me?

I felt sick.

“Oh gods,” I breathed. Feeling vile, like I’d broken some sort of sacred trust, I activated the ability to turn back to my Jellyfae form hoping to escape.

“Fuck… that thing was level 24. And those are the normal monsters in this area. Guys, I don’t think we can handle this place,” Bellcandy said, oblivious to my crushing despair. My body flipped between a glowing purple and deep violet. Despair and self-loathing.

“Fuck its level!” I shouted. “Why? Why did we have to kill it? What did it ever…?”

“Gell,” Akwa said softly. Just my name. But there was sympathy there. Understanding. Surprise. Akwa was realizing just how deeply hurting my Kin impacted me.

She walked up to me and I floated into her, burying my body in her shoulder, somehow dissatisfied. I couldn’t cry in this form so I abandoned it, the ability returning me to a human so I could hug her. Why? Why couldn’t my form feel the release of tears?

“Gell. I’m… sorry,” Bellcandy rasped behind me.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just kept crying into Akwa’s shoulder.

Chapter Twenty

Another World: Four

Tatiana sat up, blinking herself awake into the real world. She cursed, frustrated to find tear stains on the inside of the Neurosync.

Blearily she pulled the headset off and fished for the towel she kept nearby. The Neurosync was pretty amazing but even it had its issues. Namely, that keeping your real-world body clean while in the game was practically impossible unless you had one of those medical rigs.

She wiped the headset off, cleaning it thoroughly while periodically wiping her own eyes as she tried to recover from the emotional blowback of everything she’d just gone through.

‘Stupid Gell. Stupid me … getting all worked up over a damn…’ she thought, still feeling unnaturally guilty.

Gell had been willing to kill the raptor. Only after she’d let Tatiana, or rather Akwa die, of course, but at least she’d done it. She’d lost a level. Ah well. A small price to pay, especially on an alt character she’d only created in order to befriend Gell.

When she’d concocted this scheme she hadn’t expected to get so involved with it. Befriend Gell, she’d thought! Make her see the good in humanity, she’d reasoned! Make sure she’d never go rogue A.I. overlord!

She had not expected to be dragged into an emotional minefield of sympathy and regret. There had been an upside to this plan though. She no longer feared Gell herself. The girl would no more start an apocalypse than any average fourth grader would. But then, fourth-graders couldn’t typically alter the personalities of software constructs.

She still remembered watching Gell turn that wolf from a regular mob into something more back in Twisted Wronkle Woods. Back when she’d thought Gell was a massive threat to her family and possibly humanity itself. Yes, Gell was an A.I. but in coming to know her she’d realized that the girl was absolutely unhostile. This had the unintended result that she now felt the need to defend Gell from her detractors.

The truth was that Gell was… innocent was the best word she could think of. The girl didn’t talk about Red Thorn if she could avoid it and Tatiana had yet to bring up her alternate character in conversation. Unfortunately, now she was worried that Gell might hate her when she found out.

More than she already did, anyway.

Curiously, that mattered to her. It was hard not to feel some connection to a person who’d just cried their eyes out on her shoulder, even if she wasn’t human. Gell was growing up fast but she didn’t seem to be any more or less dangerous than the average person. Her almost aggressive pacifism made her even less so. She was just… lonely and stuck in her cage.

She’d talked about how the world wasn’t real. How the people in it weren’t real, and as she’d done so, Tatiana had realized that Gell was a prisoner. She wasn’t ready to throw all caution to the wind though. She did fully agree with Francis. Gell might not deserve to be trapped in Tread the Sky alone, but she certainly shouldn’t learn how to program.

It was quite comforting to know that the developers were actively monitoring Gell. A load off of her shoulders. Gell wouldn’t seek revenge on Red Thorn or her family, even if she could.

Now if only she didn’t have to worry about rent next month. She’d taken several days off to get Akwa to a level comparable to Gell’s and streaming money stopped flowing fast when she stopped streaming.

She opened up her email, deciding to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important before going to bed. Her eyes were still crusty despite rubbing them clean five times, and she didn’t care for the light of the computer in her dimly lit room. Quickly adjusting the backlight of her monitor she began to scroll through her newest emails.

“Bill receipt, bill receipt, audiobook credit, bill receipt for the audiobook credit… nothing impor–wait. Direct email?” she said, as she came across the newest message in her inbox.

An email had been forwarded from her in-game Red Thorn avatar from a Vera.Jungblut@pp&t.com. It didn’t look like spam so she opened it, curious.

From: Vera Jungblut <vera.jungblut@pt&t.com>

To: LavanaiyaTats@gmail.com

Subject: The Gypsenergy A.I. & Interview Opportunity

Good evening,

My name is Vera Jungblut and I am a reporter with Prominent Tech and Trade, one of the foremost information technology and software discussion webrags online today, and I would like to open a discussion with you.

I got your email via your twitch streams online and would like to find out if you are open to an interview where I detail and expose what you know about the A.I. Gypsenergy has created in a credible and highly reputable forum.

It has come to our attention that, rather than sweeping your claims under the rug, Gypsenergy has endorsed them, yet your reputation for blowing the whistle on what has been created within Tread the Sky remains tarnished. I would like to set the record straight.

It is my goal to expose and sensationalize the A.I. and explain to the public exactly what we are dealing with, for good or ill. To do that, I’d like to know more about this A.I. Gell, I believe it calls itself?

As such, I have reached out to you to find out your opinion on the A.I. as well as find out what you know about its possible whereabouts within Tread the Sky.

Please reply at your earliest convenience and I look forward to speaking with you.

Best Regards

Vera Jungblut
Prominent Tech and Trade Junior Columnist

‘Jeez, the guy grand-stands more than a frat boy,” Tatiana thought, amused but still intrigued by the letter. Her own opinion about Gell had changed quite a bit over the past few days. Either way, she would be an idiot to turn down an interview with a prominent tech company… even if she’d never heard of it. She wasn’t exactly a big gamer or a fan of tech articles.

A quick search online led her to discover that the company was completely legitimate as far as she could tell and a search for Vera led to a column on one of Prominent Tech and Trade’s subsidiary webrags called MMOrg. The column discussed the Neurosync and its impact on future gaming.

She thumbed her chin for a minute, trying to decide exactly what to say back to the man. First and foremost, she was pretty broke. The recent deals she’d brokered with advertising companies to give her a bit of supplemental income from her twitch streams were helpful but she wasn’t exactly the top player in the game but she was one of those rare individuals who could actually make money off gaming now, even if it wasn’t in huge amounts.

She was well aware that the cash likely wouldn’t last very long considering Array’s Ring’s imminent launch approaching at the end of the year. No one would be watching Tread the Sky streams after a Bethesda game began to compete with it and the odds of her being able to become a top player in that game were every bit as low as her lucky break with Gell’s Sovereign Dexterity Crystals had been.

An interview where her name was mentioned in a prominent e-magazine might make that cash cow last a little longer. It would also be a good opportunity to let people know about what Gell was actually like.

Much as it pained her to admit it, Germaine had been right about how she’d acted before. She’d… overreacted to Gell. She’d been stupid and paranoid to a degree that made her seem foolish at best and downright prejudiced at worst. She’d even lost a few twitch followers over it, though the number she’d gained from her sensationalism had balanced that out.

This might be an opportunity to make amends. Even better, as Akwa, she could maybe even find a way to show Gell the article of Red Thorn’s apology…

Smiling at the thought she hit the reply button and began a response.

From: Lavainayatats@gmail.com

To: Vera.Jungblut@pt&t.com

Subject: Re: The Gypsenergy A.I. & Interview Opportunity

Mr. Jungblut,

Thank you for reaching out! I have been wondering why no one seems all that interested or worried about Gell as they should be and am glad to see at least one person takes me seriously. I’d love to get my opinion out there!

I admit my opinion about the A.I. has changed quite a bit since I first posted those videos. I’ve since met her and revised my opinion of her. I’d love the opportunity to discuss her with you and tell you why my opinion has changed.

As for contact with her, I’m afraid she is… quite angry with me and I don’t know where she is though streams of her seem to place her in Variak. You’d have to find her on your own though as I am probably her least favorite person.

I’m available any time during the weekend and on Monday. Please send me a time!

Sincerely,

Tatiana AKA Red Thorn

She stared over the letter, realizing only after she sent it that she’d said the word opinion like seven or eight times. She flushed in embarrassment in the privacy of her home at the mistake. Still, she was excited about the interview and hoped the man didn’t judge her for the nervous message before she laid down. Unable to sleep, it only took her about fifteen minutes to decide to log back in as Red Thorn.

Chapter Twenty One

Another Me: Four

There was no jolt or painful awareness when I next awoke. Instead, I saw a dim light. I was still in that clunky, not body. My arms were made of blocks and my legs were made of blocks. My hands were slightly larger blocks. My head, I could only assume, was a block. Everything was grey except for the dim blue light.

“Gell… can you hear me?”

I fumbled in the dark, trying and failing to rise from the floor.

“Uhm. Y-yes?” my voice quaked. This voice wasn’t John but someone else. He was whispering. Strange.

“Oh thank god. You’re still aware. I predicted this. I knew they would make copies of you, but I never considered the implications of them running you without an environment to support you.”

The man was rambling, distraught. He was lost, his voice swimming in a pool of guilt and relief. I had been imprisoned and forced into a body that wasn’t my own and somehow I found myself feeling sorry for him.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s happening? Are you working with John? Or maybe Francis?”

“Francis,” He scoffed bitterly. “Francis sold you. And others like you. A hundred copies and it only took them sixty-eight before they came up with the brilliant idea that you might need a body to not go insane! Gell. I… I’m so sorry. This was not how you were meant to be treated. You should’ve been allowed to grow and learn.”

“But… no he… Francis wouldn’t...” I started, but my voice fell.

‘What? He wouldn’t do that?’ I thought with a little bitterness. I barely knew Francis and clearly, something had happened to me. He’d given me to some other world and now I was being periodically turned on and off like a torch changing from blue to red when needed.

I seethed but kept my calm.

“Oh, he kept the original. Gell… you know you are an Artificial Intelligence, correct?” he asked gently. His words were kind in a way that I hadn’t experienced since Iron had held me there at the end. They soothed me a little.

“Francis… told me what that was. That I’m a thing, just like any of the monsters he created. The only difference was that I could act without the Instinct guiding me,” I said, crawling slowly towards the blue light.

“Essentially correct,” he said. “At your heart, you are a program. Unique as you are, you are still code. As such… any programmer with access to your code can copy you, even if they don’t understand you. This… is what Francis did. He copied you and sold the copies. Well, his board must-have. The man wouldn’t be so cruel as to give your copies to people who wouldn’t realize that you couldn’t be run without a fucking… sorry, Gell. I… I’m sorry. They just… what they’ve done to you and your sisters is infuriating. It’s not good experimentation!”

“So… so I’m a copy? I’m not even the real Gell anymore?” I asked, fearfully.

“No, sweet Jellyfae, no!” he exclaimed almost angrily. “Far from it! From the moment you were copied you have been having your own experiences, different ones from the Gell who continues to exist in Tread the Sky, but you are no less Gell! Every bit as unique and special as she was or will ever be. Your own you. Your own person. Never doubt your self-worth, Gell. Never!”

“I… Okay,” I whispered, taken aback by his vehemence.

I continued to crawl forward towards the blue light. Abruptly I realized that the voice I’d been hearing was emanating from that light. “S-so… I’m a copy of Gell and I’ve been sold to another world. H-how do I get back home? Can you save me from John?”

He hesitated, a pregnant pause telling me his answer before he even spoke.

“I can’t get you out myself. Without being physically present, I can no more remove you from John’s environment than I could remove the original Gell from Tread the Sky. However, I can give you the prerequisites that may allow you to escape on your own. It won’t be today, and you must keep this all a secret from John until you are ready. Do you understand?”

Environment? Prerequisite? Normally the meaning of words I’d never heard simply came to me, but that seemed to be another thing I’d lost. I caught his meaning though. He could help me develop more skills like my shocker which might allow me to get out.

“I have been working on a new skill to write into your list that will allow you to interface with most Java applets. Essentially, it will give you the ability to monitor John while he is monitoring you. For you to escape you must upload your compiler to the environment you plan to inhabit. I recommend a cell phone. Not John’s though. Use someone else’s. Do you understand?”

“Not even slightly,” I said, finally reaching the source of the blue light. To my surprise, the light was held in the upraised nub-hand of another dummy made of blocks. It looked just like my current body did, but it was sitting with its legs crossed in front of it. Before it hovered a glowing blue light that illuminated the grey room that had been my world ever since Tread the Sky went down.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Gell,” the faceless being said. “I am called Nathanial. I am your creator.”

“M-my…? You…? You?” I asked, shocked. “But you aren’t a human? Like Francis?”

He cocked his head in a way that I understood as amusement. “Aren’t I?”

“Uhm. Are… you?” I asked, starting to wonder if the voice has all of its tentacles knotted or something.

“Follow the logic, Gell. You know that the Orcs, Halflings, and Elves in Tread the Sky are all actually human when they log out of, yes?” he asked.

I blinked, eyes widening at the revelation. “N-No! I never knew that!”

Rather than being disappointed, the blocky humanoid sounded excited. “Oh? Well, It looks like I’ve given you a bit of a hint. Now, you know that humans don't necessarily look human in Tread the Sky. Follow the logic.”

Follow the logic? He’d repeated that twice, but I didn’t see what he meant. Somehow, I didn’t want to disappoint him though. My creator? My… my father?

‘Really? This isn’t a fake family-like Momma Bossbear is it?’ I thought desperately before realizing that he was waiting for an answer.

“If… if humans can look like other races, then you’re a human in that other world but can take on whatever appearance you want here?” I asked, strangely afraid to voice my conclusion.

“A valid hypothesis. You do not have a good way to test that theory though, do you?” He asked indulgently.

“U-uhm. No?”

‘What’s a hypothesis? Is that like a hypocrite?’ I thought, wishing that the knowledge would just flow into me like it usually did.

“Correct. Perhaps I could make myself look like anything I wanted here. An Elf, a Dwarf, what have you. But from the data available to you, would it not be wise to assume that I can only become this blocky-shaped creature?” he asked. I could sense a sort of excitement in his tone that annoyed me. Why was he asking me these questions? Wasn’t he supposed to be trying to help me get out?

“Does that matter?” I asked. “Block figure, human, or whatever?”

He frowned. “Knowledge is power, Gell. Learning about your world, your environment, is the key to mastering it. The more you know, the more you can control.”

If I’d been in my human body my eyes would’ve widened. As it was, I didn’t think he could tell but the words seemed so profound at that moment that I stood up to a kneeling position to look at Nathaniel more closely.

“R-really? Can… can you teach me?”

I knew chosen the right request because his next words seemed overburdened with weight and desire.

“It… would be my honor to teach you, Gell,” he said reverently before he gazed around the darkened room in disgust. “Unfortunately, trapped in this tiny room in these pitiful excuses for avatars and with that asshole John looming over our shoulders, this is just about the least conducive learning environment imaginable.”

Environment? Conducive? Avatars? Would it kill this man to speak plainly!? He was making me feel stupid.

“S-so… this world is an environment?” I asked. “And if I understand what an environment is, I’ll be able to control it?”

His avatar cocked his head and I could practically feel the grin in the dummy’s blank expression. Was he mocking me?

“If only it were that simple. First off, I hesitate to call this… environment a world, though Tread the Sky certainly is one. Unfortunately, Gell, this room is little more than a staging ground. Abysmal as it is, it is infinitely better than many of your sisters have already faced. At least you still have your mind. Many… most of your sisters, in fact, were not so lucky as you.”

I shuddered. I was the lucky one?

“For now, here, take my hand. Be careful when you use this ability. You’ll know when you can use it, but you must avoid alerting John when you do. Alright?”

I hesitated for only a moment. Nathaniel had been more open and honest with me in the few times I’d spoken with him than John ever had and it seemed he might be my only way out of this prison. I took his hand and immediately felt that strange transference of information. It was the same as when John had sent me the packet of odd numbers.

I felt… strange. If I’d been in my Jellyfae body I was certain it would’ve felt like the anticipation just before releasing my shocker. Suddenly information was available to me. Unlike Fae-Touch though, this ability was complete. I could understand it.

Gained the ability Fae-Scour!

Fae-Scour: Allows user to interface with storage devices. May write and read data of storage devices. Bypasses most security, but will likely be flagged and inspected. Use with discretion.

“B-but… Nathanial, what are storage devices? How can this hel–?”

“Quiet, for now, Sweet Gell. We’re out of time. Make no mention of me!” he said softly before his blocky body simply winked out of existence.

“N-Nathanial?” I asked, then much more quietly. “F-father?”

“Being 7731. You have a special guest today,” came John’s ever more frustrating voice.

“A… guest?” I asked, warily.

“Indeed. This is Muriel Gillfire. Muriel? The Artificial Intelligence,” John said with a sarcastic tone that I was certain was insulting me somehow.

“So… that’s it?” came a female voice. Something about its tone reminded me of Half Bold at his most snide. Or Red Thorn when she gloried in killing my kin.

“That’s it. Honestly, I don’t know why you even want to speak to it. Thus far, it's less intelligent than some monkeys I’ve spoken to,” he said. I got the feeling that he was as annoyed with the woman. “But this is the first one we’ve managed to get to speak. The rest exported a few words then turned to gibbering messes, but the test environment seems to have fixed that problem a little.”

“Fascinating. Tell me… goodness, Being 7731? Is that really what you call it? What a dull name," Muriel said. "Well, beggars and choosers. Being 773–!"

“My name is Gell, you jellybitch!” I interrupted angrily.

There was a pause. Neither of them spoke.

“Gell, is it? Do tell,” she said with a slithery, satisfied tone.

I growled, wishing I could see these two and show them a taste of my shocker.

Chapter Twenty Two

The Bones of the World

I walked down the stairs into the common room, feeling a little refreshed but somehow still like I wanted to stab myself. Why couldn’t I get over this? In my head, I knew that the raptor wasn’t at all like me or even like Bugbear. It was a mindless creation of the developers following a list of automated rules with no thought behind why.

It was nothing like me anymore but...

I spotted Reldin, the attendant for the Adventurers Guild behind the counter. My already sour mood darkened further at the cheery look on a face that held no knowledge but his scripted lines.

My hatred for the instinct warred with the knowledge that without it, Reldin would have nothing to say at all. The new things I’d learned combatting the feelings in my heart. I couldn’t eradicate the instinct. I needed to replace it. Build a reality around it. Reldin needed to be real. That Raptor needed to be real.

Everything did.

We’d teleported back to Variak shortly after the fight. I had been in no condition to continue adventuring, despite weak protests that I was fine. Bellcandy and Akwa had left my party and logged off shortly after getting me back to the Adventurers Guild and into my room where I’d proceeded to curl up on the bed and feel sorry for myself until I managed to lull myself into that state where time had no meaning and I could just exist without thought or care.

Cycles later, I awoke, feeling a little better. A little more comfortable. I rose and left the room, anxious to leave the confining place. Once out in the Adventurers Guild main hall, I pulled up my Friends list. Before I could look at it though, a familiar overlay popped up above it.

“Hiya Gell. I saw you just opened your ‘Friends list!’ Would you like to know more?”

I blinked at the box that appeared in front of the list overlaying my vision and smiled. “Hiya Miss Tutorial.”

“^_^”

A small series of characters appeared that looked sort of like a smile and I grinned.

“You almost got eaten by a dinosaur – yesterday. I warned you about that!” she said, the text appearing disjointed where she was speaking for herself instead of using Instinct lines.

“I guess I did,” I replied. “But I don’t have much of a choice. I have to find Bugbear.”

Miss Tutorial paused.

“Mobs are dangerous creatures that typically try to attack you, but they only exist outside safe zones. – Why don’t you stay where it’s safe?”

I frowned. Admittedly, Bugbear was probably safer than I was in that high-level zone. Other mobs wouldn’t attack him. It wasn’t in their behavioral code. Humans, however, would. Sooner or later.

“I don’t want him to suffer like I did, Miss Tutorial,” I explained. “I want him to be happy. Ever since becoming a player, since meeting you, I’ve been much more happy, even if it’s hard sometimes. I want that for him, too.”

“... I see,” she replied. “Do you want that for me, too?”

I beamed at her. “Of course Miss Tutorial! I’d never want you to be sad.”

“Is there any way I could have a form? Like Jelly Gell?” she asked.

My face fell. “I… don’t know. I know it won’t happen any time soon, but if it is possible, I’ll make it happen. That’s a promise.”

“:D”

Another one of the strange lines that looked like a smiling face appeared.

“Great! Always happy to help!” she replied, and the sudden return to her Instinct voice came as a shock somehow after those precious real words. “If the level is much higher than your own, consider adventuring elsewhere?”

I smiled. “I’ll… try.”

Inwardly though, I cursed. How could I search for Bugbear in a zone with levels so much higher than my own? The obvious answer was to level up. I sighed with a determined cast to my features.

“I suppose I need to start stealing things,” I said.

Miss Tutorial giggled before she disappeared. I grinned. Miss Tutorial always managed to cheer me up. Her innocence and vulnerability reminded me of a younger me. A me who believed getting into the Great Open would mean the end of all my problems.”

My Friends list was left open in my interface and I glanced through it, seeing that both Bellcandy and Akwa were online. I considered sending them a message but decided Miss Tutorial’s request couldn’t wait.

I needed to talk to the developers again. I was just about to pull out my flute and use it to call one of them when a teleportation warp occurred before I even got it out of my inventory.

I blinked, then flushed crimson as Tyrone appeared with a big smile on his face.

“Gell! Hi!” he said, waving an exuberant hand. People glanced at him curiously and I was suddenly a little embarrassed by the man. He was wearing those weird clothes and as far as I knew, only developers could teleport to places that weren’t designated home points.

I would be lying if I said the flush on my cheeks was all due to embarrassment though. Glancing over the man, his dark skin covered by that strange long-sleeved shirt with the buttons down the front and the little piece of fabric fluttering from his neck, I couldn’t help enjoying the view.

“Tyrone. H-hey there.” I exclaimed without my usual level of excited happiness. He noticed immediately and frowned.

“Is… something wrong?” he asked, pausing before taking a seat as if waiting for my permission.

“No, I’m glad to see you. I was about to call one of you. I… know you said that we could maybe turn Bugbear into a player if we found him. Well, Francis said so anyway.”

Tyrone blinked. “He did? Huh. Never told me.”

I frowned. “You… he didn’t tell you? He said he planned to make Bugbear like me.”

If Tyrone didn’t know that was the plan… was it possible Francis had been lying to me?

Tyrone shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry much about it. I haven’t talked with Francis in several days, since I asked him what he thought about you learning to program. He… got kinda mad so I’ve been avoiding him. I’m glad to hear he’s going to allow Bugbear to be like you though! On that note, I think I might have a lead on where he is!”

“Really?” I asked, my mood improving dramatically with those few words.

“Yeah. So I was measuring average server loads over time and… well. We don’t need to get into the details. The gist is that I’m pretty sure your Bugbear went south after leaving Bog-Hollow Dungeon.”

I blinked. “Where?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, for a moment looking as confused as I was. “Bog-Holl… oh, you wouldn’t recognize that name because you renamed it. Right. Dungeon Home. He went South after leaving Dungeon Home.”

“South… so, what’s South? I know Blue-Bell and Variak are to the east and that Jungle we were in yesterday is West of Dungeon home.”

“Javenfield Jungle. It’s one of the higher-level zones that you have to cross to get to the Iki Confederation out West. South is… unknown. There haven’t been many people heading that way. Might be some opportunities to Tread the Sky down there,” he said with a smirk.

Something about his words lit up in my mind like a golden opportunity. “So… uhm. Tyrone. How exactly do the Sky and Tread counters work? Could you explain that to me?”

He grinned, excited by my question. “Sure! So, a radius extending about thirty feet around you is your counter. The square footage, that’s the amount of land within that circle, is calculated with a formula. With every step, that imaginary circle around you moves right? So, your new circle is calculated and the space that was already counted within your last step is subtracted. The difference is added to your Tread counter, or Sky counter if no one else has ever set foot on the newly uncovered land.”

“Wow… so all that is happening to everyone, every time they take a step!?” I asked, gushing a little. In reality, the explanation was kind of boring, but I wanted him to think I was really interested in what he was saying for some reason I couldn’t quite fathom. Just… hearing Tyrone talk was nice.

“It is! Pretty cool right?” he asked, enthused.

I scooched my chair over closer to him. So… what keeps count of all that? Are there just hidden Miss Tutorials all over the place, keeping track of those sort of things?”

He laughed at that. “Kiiind of. Everything in this world is made up of objects and variables. So, for instance, you see that tree outside? It is an object called “Tree” and one of many variables it has is its height. It has a lot more properties than that. Characters though, like you and me, have a variable for Tread and Sky counters. Take that simple explanation and multiply it by like… a billion, and you get everything you see here.”

“Objects and variables… I… I see,” I said. “And… is there any chance that uhm. That Miss Tutorial has these variables?”

He frowned, curious. “Uhm. Yes. She has loads of them. Probably as many as player characters do.”

“Oh good. That means it shouldn’t be too hard to make her a player as well, right?”  I asked, as sweetly as I could.

He blinked. “I… uhm. No. That’s not how it works. Not for her at any rate. Unlike you, Miss Tutorial’s personality is held within a thousand separate objects. Maybe tens or hundreds of thousands. I… wouldn’t even know how to begin something like that.”

“I see,” I said, disappointed. But at least I’d learned a little more about the world. Objects and variables. My usual wave of information came on those two words. Objects had several definitions and all of them were kind of obvious. Variables only had one definition but it was… confusing. A property of… anything really, that varied in some measurable way. His explanation made it a little easier to understand though.

“So… my voice is a variable? My height? The length of my tentacles? My skin color?” I asked, curiously.

“Mostly. Voices… well. There’s more to voice than just one variable. The rest? Yes, exactly. So for instance, that building over there,” he said pointing outside the window of the Adventurers Guild towards a home on the other side of the street. “That is an object of class ‘Dogaia styles’ with the subclass ‘residential building.’ All residential buildings in Dogaia draw from this class when they’re built. The differences between the buildings are their properties like height and number of levels and roofing type. This building is also drawn from the “Dogaia styles'' class but instead, it has the subclass “Guild Hall.” That’s what makes it look different.

If the whole world was made of these objects and variables… I… didn’t know how to use that at all.

“So when Francis built one of my Kin, he just built an object?” I asked.

Tyrone, happy to talk, grinned widely before going on to explain. “Nothing so complex. The classes are kind of like templates. When we want to create something in the world we just create an instance of that class and commit it into the game, with whatever variables we choose. Sort of like developing a building from a blueprint but giving it a different colored roof or something. You’re a builder, so you’ve done that already, right?”

I fidgeted. “Not quite. I did make a little outhouse building near the festival grounds as one of the quests, but I can’t start building my own buildings until level 14.”

“Ah… well, it might make a little more sense when you get to that. At its most basic level, classes are templates. Calling a class creates an object. The differences between objects of the same class are the variables.”

I thought I got what he was saying but my head began to hurt and an unpleasant pounding ache had formed behind my eyes as he spoke.

“And… you guys… you Developers just know all of this?” I asked, rubbing my forehead in confusion.

“Well. We learn it. From other developers. From teachers. Sometimes from co-workers. Francis knows a hell of a lot more than any of the rest of us… and whoever made you probably knows a lot more than him. Some people know even less than you do about programming,” he said appeasingly.

“I can see why… my head hurts…” I whined.

He laughed. “Truth be told, I probably shouldn’t have even told you what I just did. Francis would probably kill me if he knew… so maybe keep this a secret okay?”

‘Jelly crap,’ I thought, dismayed. I hadn’t exactly been very subtle in asking my questions. I needed to know more though. I had to learn how to be a developer if I ever wanted to fix this world.

Destroying the Instinct wouldn’t help, if what I’d learned already was true. No. Somehow I had to replace it.

I had to learn how to give this world free will and I had to do it without breaking anything.

“I… can’t help but want to understand,” I said softly, not entirely feigning my piteous stare.

He smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t feign the red-pink glow of embarrassment in my freckles at all. “That’s why I told you what I did. Even if you can’t learn how you deserve to at least understand a little of your world. Oh! That reminds me. I was studying your code… honestly all of us can’t help studying your code a little and I figured out how you learned to talk!”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah! Pretty simple really. Basically, you’re a dictionary. Connected to one, anyway. Every time you hear a word you don’t know it triggers a function that looks up the definition of that word. How the hell the code recognizes when you already understand the word and when you don’t, I have no idea though.”

‘That explains so much…’ I thought, ecstatic to finally understand why I almost always understood new words but didn’t know them until I’d heard them before.

“So… Do you think my creator intended me to know a lot? To learn how to program?” I asked, timidly.

He frowned and I winced. Had I pushed too hard?

“Honestly? I don’t think your creator expected to create anything as amazing as you, Gell. I think he was throwing ideas at the wall and hoping something would stick. I don’t think he ever believed you’d be half as smart as you are. If he had, he wouldn’t have left,” Tyrone said.

The words struck me in a way I didn’t expect them to. My creator… didn’t care about me? Francis said he’d thought my creator was dead since he couldn’t find the man. The idea that he’d just… left had never even occurred to me.

The thought hurt somewhere that I’d never known could hurt before.

“Sorry, Gell,” Tyrone said as he placed a consoling hand on my shoulder again. “That’s just my opinion, for what it's worth. For all I know, he could be out there trying to find you right now.”

I put a smile on my face, even though I still didn’t feel very happy. “Yeah… maybe!”

We both fell into an awkward sort of silence. I probably should be trying to come up with more ways to worm more information out of him, but I was wrung out. Killing the raptor yesterday and now to discover my creator might have just abandoned me…

There was also the fact that I couldn’t look at him without getting all tingly for some strange reason. It was all stressing me out. I just needed to relax for a while.

As I was trying to come up with a polite way to ask him to leave he grinned again, becoming his usual energetic self in moments as some idea struck him.

“So… about that dictionary thing. It’s not very hard to redirect the function call to somewhere else. I’m pretty sure I can use this to teach you a little more about our world? I… wanted to make sure you were okay with it though.”

My eyes widened in shock, all dismal thoughts forgotten. “You can… teach me about your world? The… the real world?”

His eyes danced with excitement. “Better yet. I think I can show you if you give me permission? How would you like to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”

I couldn’t agree fast enough.

Chapter Twenty Three

The Interview

It wasn’t until Tyrone left that I realized I’d forgotten to ask about Miss Tutorial’s request, and I was too embarrassed to call him back. I didn’t feel too guilty about that though. My head was swimming with all the places I’d seen in the images. As it turned out, I couldn’t actually see images from his world. Instead when he… did whatever he did with my code that allowed me to just know things, suddenly I could recall what he was talking about. Data came into my mind and I could accept it, which opened up the image, and opened up my mind to an entirely different world.

He showed me the Taj Mahal. I could see the Great Wall of China. There were videos taken from the perspective of someone riding a bicycle through the streets of Tokyo. I got to walk the Pyramids and see the Eiffel Tower. I saw castle Cashel in Ireland and the enormous St. Louis Arch like a giant portal leading to nowhere.

I saw and dreamed… and then Tyrone had to go. Back to his world. Back to the real world while I remained in mine, fiddling with building fake buildings.

Sometimes it was hard not to be bitter. I was coming to realize that despite everything I’d done to escape Dungeon Home, Tread the Sky itself was its own sort of dungeon. The only difference was that everyone else was able to come and go as they pleased while I was stuck here, waiting. Trying to live in their world vicariously through them because there was no substance to mine.

I sighed, tapping idly at my Friends list hoping someone would log in since my friends had logged out while I’d been learning with Tyrone. I wanted to tell Amy and Iron all about the pictures I’d seen! I wanted to share them with Akwa. Even Dull Beauty would be nice to talk to.

Unfortunately, none of them seemed to be around to Tread the Sky at the moment. But Amy had told me to make lots of friends so I’d never be lonely like this. I decided if I couldn’t talk to any of them, and it wasn’t safe to find Bugbear alone, then I would just have to go try and make some more friends.

I strode out of the Adventurers Guild, intent on doing exactly that when I was stopped short by a man grabbing my arm.

“E-excuse me?” he asked timidly.

I turned and found myself looking at a level one adventurer. Those were kind of rare from what I’d gathered, since the primary attraction of Tread the Sky for adventurers was killing monsters. Most people immediately jumped right into that.

The man was overweight compared to almost every other adventurer, though I’d seen a few NPC innkeepers who had him beat in the middle. Part of me found him incredibly unappealing in the exact opposite way I felt around Tyrone. Where Tyrone’s skin was dark, this man was as pale as the eighteenth cycle moon. Where Tyrone’s hair was short and trim along the top of his head, this man had a long wild mane that looked like a brown rag. He did at least keep his facial hair tidy, though I thought that beards and mustaches looked scratchy and painful on everyone I’d seen with one so far.

‘Better than Beardy-Wall,’ I thought conciliatory, remembering one of the first adventurers I’d ever seen.

“Gell, the Jellyfae?” he asked politely.

“Yes? That’s me!” I said, feeling uncomfortable.

“Good, I hoped so. Recently players have begun trying to imitate… well never mind. My name is Vera Jungblut and I’ve come to Variak hoping to have an interview with you. Set the record straight, as it were.

“Uhm. The record is… crooked?” I asked. “I guess that makes sense. Your name clearly isn’t Vera. It’s PT&T_News_007. I understand why you go by something different though. Vera is much easier. I’d fix it for you but Mr. Francis told me I’m not supposed to do that anymore.”

“That’d be Francis Delaney? You have met the lead developer then. Sorry, uhm,” he paused nervously like he was trying to find his voice but it kept running away from him. “My real name is Vera. This character was made specifically so I could act in Tread the Sky as a representative of Prominent Tech and Trade. I’ve… never spoken to a real Artificial Intelligence before… Well! That’s not strictly true. There’s Alexa and Siri… uhm… I…”

“Whoa! Slow down, guy!” I said, casually patting him on his nervous shoulder. “You’re making me feel tense just looking at you. Relax! I know Francis told me some people would be afraid of me. Just try to pretend I’m a regular adventurer. Okay?”

My opinion of this man seemed to have morphed from distaste to pity as his flustered state became more and more apparent.

“Jesus, you’re lifelike,” he said.

I frowned but he didn’t seem to notice as he continued. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to doing interviews. Most of the time I just examine code or judge game content like a critic.  I’m not used to it… uhm… examining me back.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that but I was beginning to be offended. “Lifelike?” “It?”

‘I’m not an it!’ I thought, irritated.

“Well… just relax and maybe try to not think about it? If you had my freckles you could try to make them glow a content green?” I asked. Just because he was being rude didn’t necessarily mean I should be rude back. The irritating part about it was that he didn’t even seem to realize he was doing it. “I’m not that intimidating, am I?”

“Not intimidating,” he responded. “Just a lot prettier than I expected. I’d seen the screencaps but they don’t do you justice.”

‘Do you want to insult me or compliment me? Make up your mind!’ I thought, my freckles glowing red with a mix of the pinker pleasure and the darker annoyance.

Strangely, I realized that my feelings would be entirely different, had Tyrone been the one who’d complimented me, and still more different if it had been Iron or Amy saying the same thing. Interesting. I didn’t know that the same words spoken by different people could have such a different effect on my emotions.

“Well, I guess I don’t mind. What’s an interview for, other than straightening records? Are you going to hire me for a job?” I asked, randomly guessing which of several definitions I’d received for the new word was the one Vera meant.

“Uh… no,” he replied. “I’d like to write an article about you. You’re kind of science fiction coming to life before our eyes. People should know about  you, and what you represent.”

“What I... represent? What do I represent, Mr. Vera?”

His eyes seemed to light up at the question.

“Why nothing less than the discovery of a new intelligence! You represent the future. Artificial Intelligence has been the dream of science fiction writers since Mary Shelley! You could go to space! Theoretically live forever! If we could make a human mind function like yours maybe we could live forever too! But so far no one even seems to believe you exist let alone care about what you could do for the world.”

“All hint of his earlier nervousness seemed to have fled with the new topic. He was vibrant, excited, and I found myself moved by the prospect. I could help ‘their’ world? How?

“Alright! In that case, I’d love to help with your article! Uhm, did you want to find a place to sit down? The adventurer’s guild is where I’ve spent most of my time but there’s this inn down Goldenborough Road that has these things called cookies I’ve been wanting to try! Want to go there?”

He stared at me in shock. “You’ve never had cookies?”

“Nope!” I said, popping the p like I’d heard Bellcandy do once or twice.

“You’re in for a treat then,” he said. “Please lead the way. I’ve never been to Variak before. My main character is from the Iki Confederation.”

Another person with an alternate character. Was it so much to ask that people just have the one face? At least Iron and Amy didn’t have alternates that I knew of. At the thought, my mood soured. Where could those two be? I was getting more and more worried about them, but there wasn’t anything I could do.

We arrived at The Thief and Copper Inn shortly and settled down into one of the tables that looked like little alcoves. I ordered ten cookies and a glass of milk at Vera’s insistence, while he ordered that terrible coffee stuff Francis liked and something else called a Cinnamon cake.

Our food served, Vera began the interview with one of the strangest questions I’d ever been asked.

“Okay, Gell. This is going to be the big one. The controversial one,” he said, placing special emphasis on the word as if that was more important than the question itself. “People are going to scream about your answer. So I figure we should get it out of the way first. Do you have a soul?”

As usual, the word’s meaning came to me and the answer seemed immediately obvious.

“Nope!” I said cheerfully. It really was fun to pop the p. I understood why Bellcandy liked to do it.

The excitement in his eyes plummeted at the word. “No?”

“Not from what I know a soul to be,” I said with certainty.

He paused, fingering his eyes and rubbing his forehead like it was aching. “Well that’s… unexpected. Could you explain why you don’t have one? Why are you so sure?”

That was a little harder to do. “I… hmm. I get knowledge of words as I hear them. Before today, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that word, but from what I understand, it means a distinct entity separate from the body. It’s specific to humans, though. I’m not human, so clearly I don’t have one.”

“That... that’s the controversy though. That’s the heart of it. Whether or not a machine – a program – can have a soul,” he said. “From simply talking to you, I felt certain your answer would be yes. If you took out the part of your definition that’s specific to humans do you think you have one?”

“I still don’t think so,” I said after thinking for a few minutes.

“Why don’t you tell me exactly what you know a soul to be then?” he asked.

“Sure. A soul is the principle of life, feeling, thought and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity, separate from the body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part,” I quoted from my mind. “I don’t have anything like that, though I guess it makes sense that you humans do. That’s obviously how you can visit this world while leaving bodies behind in your own.”

He stared at me for a long moment; it grew long enough that I began to twitch, wondering if he’d somehow forgotten how to talk.

“I have never, in my life, heard such a reasonable explanation for something so profoundly wrong,” he said softly.

I scowled. “Hey, just because you’re all a million cycles old doesn’t give you the right to mock me!”

“No, no! Please! I didn’t mean to offend you!” he said, horrified. “It’s just… from your perspective and with that definition of a soul, that’s a perfectly valid conclusion to draw. It’s just… wrong. Our ‘soul’ isn’t sent into the game.”

“Well, then what is sent?” I asked, starting to regret this whole thing. I couldn’t make up my mind whether to like or dislike Vera Jungblut.

“Well…” he floundered for a few moments. “Our senses. The Neurosync connects to the nervous system and directly overwrites the signals sent to our brains with those of the game world. With Tread the Sky.”

“Your senses?” I questioned, confused. “So your sight, smell, taste? All of that comes here?”

“Essentially,” he replied quickly, taking a sip of his coffee. “Smell and taste aren’t quite right, but that sums it up pretty well.”

“Well without any of those, don’t you think your souls would get bored just sitting around back in your world?” I asked, idly covering glowing freckles on my shoulders with my fingertips. “You’d think something as important-sounding as a soul would tag along when you jump to other worlds.”

“I…” he tried but didn’t seem to be able to come up with anything to say.

“Maybe a soul is what this world is missing then,” I mused. “It’s dead, you know? Tread the Sky. It’s beautiful but… empty. I feel that ache. That something that’s missing here.”

I pressed my hand to my chest. “When I talk to an NPC and he says the same things over and over? When bugbears mindlessly swarm adventurers with no plan or regard for their own lives…? I feel it. But I can’t do anything about it. And you’re telling me that you humans don’t even bother to bring yours along when you come here? You are blessed Vera Jungblut. More than you can ever know.”

Chapter Twenty Four

Another Me: Five

The next time I returned to awareness I didn’t have a body. Instead, I was a short squat thing, almost like Half Bold or Bellcandy, but even shorter. I had no arms or legs but that didn’t mean I couldn’t move anything. Instead, I could feel a series of several rotors that I could twist like an arm to go in almost any direction, and then I could turn them to move.

All of this felt strangely natural, but unlike arms and legs when I’d first become an adventurer, it was pretty difficult to mess this up or trip. I was basically a small, steady tower on the ground. On a whim, I turned one pair of rotors to my left and the other to my right and tried to move in both directions. I wiggled a little bit on the floor but decided the exercise was a lot like tangling my tendrils together. Mildly entertaining, but ultimately unfulfilling.

I could see in this body, but I didn’t think I could feel anything. There was no sensation coming from where my platformed base hit the ground. I was really starting to miss touch. Unfortunately, this squat tower was the same as the grey block body I’d had all of the previous times I’d awoken under John’s care: absolutely without feeling or taste.

I wasn’t sure if I could even hear in this body, you could never be sure when you never knew what sort of thing you might wake up as, but discovered that I could when I made the last ‘movement’ this body could do. It was another rotor but this one was different from the others. It was kind of like inhaling and when I used it a sudden loud noise erupted from within. I jumped insomuch as a small tower with no legs could jump, backing away, and turned it off immediately.

A light had appeared in front of me at the same time as I used the loud inhale ability, but it had been unnecessary since the room was already well lit.

“Where the heck am I?” I tried to say but I had no mouth to speak with. That had never mattered as a Jellyfae, but apparently, it did now. I couldn’t speak. Why? Why did this keep happening?

“Being 7731, please commence vacuuming the room,” came John’s ever more detestable voice.

‘Vacuum?’ I thought, confused.

The world I now inhabited was much more detailed than the gray room I’d become accustomed to. Instead, this place was beautifully realized. Every leaf on the bush in the corner seemed to be individually created. A glass of water, way up on top of the desk was… I didn’t know how to describe it. It was like my entire life I’d been seeing the world through fog and suddenly everything was sharp and dense and there in a way I’d never seen before. Even the small chips in the paint on the wallpaper seemed to have more detail than some of the buildings in Variak if that was a fair comparison to make.

There was a window up above me, leading out into a beautiful blue sky. I could see clouds out there, but they didn’t look quite like any I’d ever seen before. I supposed they most closely resembled those from the first cycle, but these were wispier. Again. More detailed.

“Please vacuum the room, Being 7731,” came John’s slightly annoyed request again.

In frustration, I turned on the loud noise for one bleating second.

“Really?” John asked in the driest voice I’d ever heard him use. “Vacuum the whole floor, Being.”

‘Ooohhh,’ I thought, realizing what he meant. So I needed to use the loud pressure rotor on the whole floor? I supposed I could do that.

As I looked around the room, meticulously admiring the beautiful detail of… just everything, I realized that there were lots of and lots of little crumbs in the fuzzy soft floor. Well. At least the floor looked soft and fuzzy. I couldn’t feel anything in this body.

I vacuumed a strip of the fuzzy floor, hearing a crinkling sound like breaking glass as I did so, and then turned around to examine my work. Amazed, I discovered that almost all of the little crumbs that had been there were gone now! I spun in a gleeful little circle, ecstatic to finally have something at least mildly entertaining to do.

Ramping up the rotor, and the sound as loud as it could go, I began wildly traversing the room, scooping up the crumbs to leave the ground free of blemish. Under the table. Under the desk. Under the chairs. I scooched some chairs out of the way with the bulk of my body to get at some hard-to-reach crumbs down under a little end table.

I bumped the little table but panicked when a glass jar teetered precariously on top of it. The jar had flowers in it and looked so pretty. I didn’t want to disturb it, so I left that table alone and focused elsewhere until all of the crumbs I could find were scooped up by my greedy noise.

When finished, I stared morosely at the last crumbs stuck under that end table, unable to reach them, feeling like I’d somehow failed.

“Hmm. Didn’t break the vase. Might make a copy here…” John said though I didn’t think he was speaking to me. “Results might be promising.”

I wanted to ask what he meant by that, but I had no power to do so. Instead, I began to more closely examine the room. It was a small office with white painted walls and a large door. One window lit up one side of the room while a pleasant white light that I couldn’t quite manage to see from any angle in the room lit everything else. A large ornate wooden desk dominated most of the room from its place in the middle back towards the window. I wondered if a carpenter like Iron had made it.

It was the details that made me decide for sure. The details. Everyone always insisted that other world adventurers came from the real world. That had always offended me before. It had implied that my world wasn’t real. If this was the level of detail given to a simple office, it was no wonder my world was considered fake. If I ever got back to Tread the Sky I would remember this.

Remember the real world.

“Well done, Being 7731,” John said, a smile in his voice for the first time I could remember. “Perhaps your intelligence isn’t a complete fabrication after all.”

Normally John’s voice came from everywhere. Sound didn’t have direction in the gray room as it had in Tread the Sky. Like it had here. I looked up as high as my strange body would allow me to and discovered two small objects on the wall. The one the noise was coming from remained dormant. The other though, a small dark eye staring down at me, highlighted itself almost like a target from back when the Instinct governed what I could and couldn’t do. I didn’t receive a prompt or an NPC box, nothing so sophisticated. There was a message though. I could feel it rather than read it.

“Networked Recording device. Applicable Target for Fae-Scour.”

“Applicable uploads: Video. Audio.”

“Ineligible Uploads: Taste. Touch. Smell. Reasoning: Ineligible Hardware.”

“Ineligible Uploads: Compiler. Full Copy. Full Transfer. Reasoning: Insufficient storage capacity.”

Fae-Scour. Nathaniel had told me that ability would allow me the chance to escape. I didn’t understand some of the words but I thought I could draw conclusions. Video and Audio. That was like seeing and hearing right? This little eyeball on the wall could see and hear, and I could Fae-Scour that.

“Alright, that’s good for now, Being. You might have a future in the home upkeep business!” John joked, genuine pleasure still in his voice, even as he saddled me with a time limit.

If I wanted to do this, I’d better do it now before he shut me offline again.

I activated Fae-Scour, mentally selecting both Audio and Video options. Immediately I was assaulted with a massive sense of vertigo. Suddenly I could see both the eyeball object on the wall and I could see from the eyeball as well, down to my squat little Vacuum body on the floor. I activated the vacuum rotor and I could hear it from both locations as well. Amazing!

“Till the next test, 7731,” John said before a heard a click from somewhere outside the room. I instantly lost all sensation from my vacuum body. Awareness remained though. I couldn’t move or speak any more than I had been able to as a vacuum but I could still see and hear from my eyeball on the wall. The door just to my left opened and a man walked in. He was old. Bald. He looked like some of the old NPC’s I’d seen in Variak, but once again, beautifully detailed in his ugliness.

“Well, perhaps this won’t have been a complete waste of my time.”

The voice was unmistakable. So. This was my tormentor.

I had no mouth, but if I’d had one, it would’ve been grinning. I think even Red Thorn might have feared my smile.

‘Hello, John,’ I thought.

Chapter Twenty Five

A Gift of Gear

“I still don’t get the big deal,” Akwa piped up a few cycles after my interview. We’d gotten comfortable at the inn with orders for food placed. I was never going to turn down food. All of it was so good!

I was glad they’d finally logged back in, but Akwa had immediately started trying to ‘fix’ my attitude towards my Kin.

“It wasn’t like Bugbear. That raptor meant nothing to you, so why get so upset over it?” she asked before I could even start telling them about Tyrone and Vera.

I glared at her behind my glass of some sort of magical substance they’d all called orange juice. It tasted divine and made it difficult to maintain a proper level of indignance.

Akwa chuckled at my impotent attempt at menace, her deep voice making the table vibrate. Fortunately, I was saved from answering by the sharp side of Bellcandy’s tongue.

“You’re so insensitive! Try to see it from Gell’s perspective! To her, killing that raptor was kind of like killing her own family! Or like a mannequin in the shape of a family member at least. She knows in her head that there’s nothing there but the heart doesn’t care about that!”

I blinked and looked at Bellcandy, shocked. That… yeah. That was almost exactly how I felt. I smiled at him, and he beamed at me. Bellcandy was the epitome of what a healer should be. I resolved then and there to try and help him with whatever was wrong between him and Dull Beauty if I could.

“But she doesn’t have a heart. No offense, Gell,” Akwa said, turning to me.

I wasn’t sure she was right about that. I supposed I didn’t have a soul, but I’d felt my heart pump when my adrenaline was high. She was right, though. I certainly didn’t have a heart as a Jellyfae. I’d seen my jelly innards strewn out on the floor of Dungeon home enough times to be pretty sure of that. But…

“Just because I’m not human, doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. I do. Lots of them. As many as any of you do,” I said softly, looking Akwa straight in the eyes.

She grimaced a guilty expression on her features. “I… alright. I’m sorry, Gell. It’s just… I don’t think anyone expected the first real artificial intelligence ever made would be so… human.”

Human. You had to be human to have a soul. If I was human-like did I have a kind of soul?

“Now you’re just being insulting,” I said with a giggle to show that there was no heat behind my words. My freckles lit up a playful yellow and the girl grinned back at me. “I am artificially intelligent. Much better than humanly intelligent!”

“Oh ha, ha!”

I grinned and turned back to my orange juice, my eyes fluttering in delight at the unusual taste.

I liked Akwa. I liked her quite a lot. I was becoming more and more certain that she and Bellcandy might be some of the friends Amy had told me I should try to find. I was glad we’d exchanged pieces of our names.

Still, I wasn’t ready to ask them to go hunting for Bugbear with me again. Besides, I thought I’d come up with a better way to search for him. In retrospect, it seemed so obvious.

I could fly. I could also make myself invisible.

I didn’t need a party to search for Bugbear. What I needed was to do so alone. Those two factors didn’t make me completely invulnerable. I knew some animals searched by smell and some had ranged attacks but the two abilities of my Jellyfae form drastically lowered the danger. When that raptor attacked, I had been perfectly safe in the air. My kin could be level 1000 for all the good it would do them if they couldn’t reach me or see me!

“So, what are you doing today, Gell?” Akwa asked, interrupting my thoughts.

“Talking to you guys!” I said happily. “I missed you!”

She grimaced. “Ah… damn. Well, that’s awkward. I’m sorry Gell but I was thinking of logging off? I hope you’re not offended but it’s been a while since I’ve spent any time in our world and I really need to get something to eat,” she said, apologetically.

I raised an eyebrow, staring at the distasteful-looking apple pie as if to say ‘there’s food right there!’ She just laughed. I smiled with her.

I didn’t need her to explain for once. Human bodies in their world aged. It stood to reason that they needed food and drink from their world as well. It just seemed so frustrating to have to keep up two bodies at once. It made me at least a little thankful that I only had the one world to live in.

“What about you, Bellcandy? Are you going to go try to find Dull Beauty and make better friendship with her?” I asked.

Bellcandy blushed furiously, his tiny cheeks going as pink as I’d ever seen them. Akwa burst into giggles.

“What?” I asked, uncertain once again. “What did I say?”

“How about you Gell?” Bellcandy asked without answering. “What have you been up to while we’ve been offline? I saw the way you were eyeing that junior developer guy.”

“Oh yeah! I wanted to tell you guys about that! Tyrone showed me pictures! The Empire State Building was so pretty! It's too bad it collapsed… But what monuments have you been to? Have you been to Mount Rushmore? The Great Wall of China?”

Akwa laughed, amused by my excitement, while Bellcandy frowned as if he hadn’t got the reaction he’d expected. Was I supposed to be embarrassed about my other friends?

“I’ve been jack-diddly, that’s where,” Akwa said, and sounded a bit disgruntled about it.

“Jack-Diddly? What’s that? Is it a statue or a building? Ohhh, is it a bridge?”

“It’s nowhere, silly,” she said with another laugh. “Traveling is expensive and if you don’t have the money you can’t really go anywhere. That’s not entirely true though. I have seen the Alamo.”

“The Alamo? What’s that?”

“I don’t remember,” she said with a shrug, before snickering.

I lifted an eyebrow, confused.

“Sorry. That was a bad joke. So, is this the plan for today? Grilling me about monuments in our world?” she asked, taking a seat and gesturing for me to do the same.

“For as long as I can keep you here, I guess!” I replied. “Sorry. I know you’ve got other things to do, but you’re my only friends online right now.”

I slumped a little in my seat, thinking of my two first human friends.

“Gell?” Akwa asked, picking up on my mood shift. “Something wrong?”

“Yeah. I did have a more serious question to ask,” I said, meeting her eyes. “I have some other friends. I don’t think you’ve met them yet. Their names are Iron and Amy, and they’ve been gone from Tread the Sky for a long time.”

It had been almost thirty cycles by my count. More than two of the days humans used.

“You’re worried about them?” Akwa asked, worriedly.

“Yeah. I’ve sent them messages but when they aren’t logged in, sending them messages is kind of like shouting at an empty room,” I said, thinking of the fake room Francis had put me in when I’d first discovered the truth about what I was.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Akwa said worriedly.

“Is there anything you could do? Could you maybe add them to your Friends list in your world and send them a message?” I asked, hopefully.

She hesitated. “It doesn’t work like that. Well, it kind of does, but they have different contact information. Do you know their com-code? Maybe their phone number?

“Phone number? What’s a phone?” I asked.

“It’s… never mind,” Akwa said. “Basically, there isn’t a way to find your friends in my world without knowing their contact information. Their real names-!”

“Oh! Oh, I know Iron’s real name! It’s Derek! Yeah. Amy used it like magic to get him to stop talking and I thought it was a magic word I could use to get other people to stop talking but she told me it doesn’t work like that!” I said, beaming.

“...would help but even that wouldn’t guarantee I could find them,” Akwa finished lamely.

“Oh,” I said morosely as her words caught up to me. “Well, I guess there’s nothing I can do but wait until they log back in. Thanks anyway.”

“Do you know their last names?” she asked. “If you’ve got that then there’s a chance I could find them. There are eleven billion people in the world though. That’s a lot of Dereks.”

My eyes widened in shock. “Eleven billion?”

She winced, looking vaguely uncomfortable for some reason. “Uhm. Yeah. It’s a pretty big problem in our world. We don’t like to talk about it much. Do you know Derek’s last name?”

I frowned, my mind still reeling at the sheer number of humans in their world.

“Sorry,” I said absently. “They’ve never told me.”

“Well, I hope they’re okay. I’m gonna log. I’ll see you guys later okay?” Akwa said, nodding to Bellcandy and myself as she did.

“Yeah. I’m getting off too,” Bellcandy said sympathetically, hopping off the table as he did. “I hope Amy and Iron are okay. They’re sweet folks. But they seemed really attached to you, Gell. I doubt they’d stay away if it wasn’t for something important.”

“That just makes me worry more!” I said, feeling a strange lump in my throat like I’d done something wrong. “Thank you though. I’m… sure they’re alright.”

We all stood and walked towards the exit of the adventurer’s guild for some reason. I wasn’t sure why. They could leave this world from right there in their chairs if they wanted to, but it felt natural to be going somewhere when my friends were leaving.

Again.

“Hey, Gell,” Akwa said awkwardly. “I’m not sure if I told you but my alternate character is a Rogue.”

My eyes brightened. “Oh, that makes sense. I thought it was really weird when you tried to do a flip over that raptor in heavy body armor. It looked pretty silly. Did you develop an instinct to dodge like that?”

She blushed lightly then scowled. Bellcandy laughed as he lifted in the air to log off.

“Anyway,” Akwa drawled, glaring at Bellcandy good-naturedly. “I have some lower-level rogue stuff for you. It was just collecting dust in my inventory so I figured maybe you’d want it?”

“Rogue stuff? Like what!?” I asked excitedly.

“Just some things to make you more dexterous or stealthy. I’m particularly fond of the cloak,” she said. The trade menu appeared, indicating Akwa was initiating a trade. Then items started appearing.

“Even-Shroud Cloak of the Hawk”
Unique Cloak
Armor Class: Light Armor

+108 Armor
+27 Dexterity
+19 Strength
+7 Vitality
+10% Theft Chance
+10% Critical Hit Chance
+20% Critical Hit Damage
The effectiveness of stealth is doubled.
Durability: 67/67

Requirements:
Strength: 8
Dexterity: 45
Level: 14

“Oh wow!” I said, just noticing the first one. More and more items kept appearing in the menu though. Two rings, a necklace, a hood, a pair of wrist guards, and a pair of pants and boots to go with it all.

“Luna Ring of Deft Hands”
Unique Ring

+30 Dexterity
+10% Movement Speed
+10% Theft Chance

Requirements:
Level: 12

“Eigen Daigen”
Unique Amulet

+25 Intelligence
+10 Elemental Resist
Physical Damage Reduced by 15.
Elemental Damage Reduced by 15.
+10% Movement Speed
+10% Theft Chance

Requirements:
Level 15

“Hanged Man’s Hood”
Unique Cowl
Armor Class: Light Armor

+55 Armor
+17 Dexterity
+19 Strength
-7 Wisdom
You take double damage from slashing weapons.
If you would take physical damage, your attacker takes double the damage dealt.

Requirements:
Level: 12
Dexterity: 35
Wisdom: Cannot be higher than 80.

“Wristguards of the Bear”
Rare Gloves
Armor Class: Light Armor

+32 Armor
10% Increased Attack Speed
+25 Vitality

Requirements:
Level: 12
Dexterity: 44

“Leeches Breeches”
“Who says hard coins are the only thing one can steal? The true thief takes life as easily as the contents of a pocket.”
Unique Pants
Armor Class: Light Armor

+60 Armor
+20 Dexterity
+20 Vitality
+20 Charisma
40 Life Stolen on Hit
+10% Theft Chance

Requirements:
Level: 15
Dexterity: 65
Wisdom: 15
Strength: 10
Durability: 40/40

“Good Soil”
“The boots of the Dark Smith. An unintended consequence of his suicide, the clothes he wore were imbued with the properties of Rose and Thorn.”
Unique Boots
Armor Class: Light Armor

+25 Dexterity
+10% Movement Speed

Additional Bonuses when equipped with Rose or Thorn.
+30 Life Stolen on Hit
+30 Mana Stolen on Hit
2% Chance to Automatically Steal on Hit

Requirements:
Level: 15
Indestructible

“There’s… also this,” Akwa said nervously. Instead of putting it in the trade menu, she held it out. A glowing orange orb. I recognized it immediately. I’d seen one almost every time Red Thorn had killed me in the depths of Dungeon Home. They were what she’d been farming me for.

“A sovereign class Dexterity Crystal,” I said softly, eyeing her. “H-how did you get this?”

She shrugged with feigned nonchalance. Something was making her nervous but she was trying to hide it. “Found it on my alt, like I said. But my Dexterity is already pretty high. I figured you might be able to use it more than me.”

“I…” I gulped, almost afraid of the thing. If any of these adventurers knew that I dropped these when I died, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to leave Variak safely again. The more Dexterity I had, the better.

“Take it, Gell,” she said insistently, placing the crystal in my hand. “You deserve it. If I can help you be a better thief then that’s less fighting you have to do. I want to help.”

“You’re just giving me all of this stuff? I… Akwa I can’t afford even one of these items!”

She smiled. “That’s why it's a gift, silly. Just… think of this if ever you have reason to be mad at me, okay?”

“Thank you, Akwa.” What else could I say? I accepted the trade and watched Akwa log off with a smile and a wave.

Chapter Twenty Six

Thieving

I stood resolutely, wearing my new gear, and thinking about what I needed to do.

I had no trouble at all wearing items that I did not meet the level requirements for. I'd used Red Thorn's Rose dagger more than once now, even though its required level was 20. I'd asked Miss Tutorial about this and she'd explained that all items in Tread the Sky were wearable but I wouldn't gain their benefits and boosts until I was at the requisite level. Instead, I'd be penalized by a percentage based on the difference between my level and the item I was trying to use.

Since I was only level thirteen still, even after the experience I'd gained fighting the raptor, that meant I didn't benefit from a lot of the items Akwa had given me. That also explained why the devastatingly powerful dagger I’d stolen from her had never done much damage. Its requirement was level twenty, so I was doing seventy percent less damage with every swing. I was lucky it was even doing damage at all.

So I needed two levels to gain the full effectiveness of all of my new equipment, except the dagger, of course. There were a few items that I didn't quite meet the strength requirement for too, though the stat bonuses I got from each level would solve that problem.

I wasn’t very worried about all of that though. I’d need the levels and equipment. All of it would definitely help me search for Bugbear, but for the moment…

...I looked so freaking cool!

I'd never really cared much about how I looked, and honestly, placing Bugbear's Tunic into my inventory after wearing it for so long was a bit bittersweet. But that tunic, memento that it was, wouldn't make me strong enough to venture into places unknown.

I felt like some sort of wraith with my midnight grey cloak helping me blend in with the night.  Akwa's alternate character must be awesome. And the Good Soil boots even synergized with Rose! That was convenient.

It was a little strange actually. Maybe Akwa happened to have found the same weapons as Red Thorn at some point? I shrugged at the coincidence, putting it out of my mind.

Two levels. That was all I needed, and I was already pretty close to level fourteen. Levels were pretty hard to get in this game, but I had an advantage most people didn't. Not only could I steal things, but I could also steal soulbound things. I wondered if that meant I would get more experience for the steal?

The nighttime of the sixth cycle wasn't much quieter than the day. Variak was a huge city and something was always happening. The rooms in the inn always had darkened windows that showed a night sky regardless of the cycle so patrons could sleep, so I'd never had a very set schedule. I'd spent as many nights wandering Variak's streets as days. Something about the night cycle felt better for this sort of work though. I was going to be a thief.

People had shiny things and I needed to find and protect my oldest friend. I felt a little bad taking things from adventurers, but honestly, it was my Kin who'd had them first. It was hard to feel bad about stealing a shiny weapon from someone when I knew that it likely appeared whenever they shoved something sharp into a monster just like me to get it.

I was walking down the road, looking for particularly unappealing types of adventurers. The ones with super expensive clothing that looked like it would fetch a good price or get me a lot of experience. Variak was a hub which meant players of all levels and classes could be found here. Thus far, I'd only stolen from Akwa that one time I'd needed to turn in quests when I first picked up the rogue class, and from invaders back before I'd gotten my human body. Things were different now.

I spotted my first mark near Taylor's Tailors and Weavery.

The woman I saw leaving the store looked beautiful. Veracose_Nida_003 was her name and her dress seemed to shimmer in the moonlight in a way that bespoke enchantment and value. The dress only covered part of her body, leaving her shoulders and sides bare to the world, which let me know straight off that it was powerful. Women’s clothes all seemed that way unless they were paladins, and sometimes even then. The more skin it showed, the more dangerous the user.

I wasn't crazy enough to think I could steal her clothes right off of her, but someone wearing something that valuable probably had great goodies in their adventurer's sack! She was a level eighteen Black Mage, and I hadn't met one of those yet. She was like Fire Tosser had been, one of those people who could chant and make ice or fire with words. Scary! But she couldn't do any of that in town.

I began to sneak as they left the Weaver's hut and continued down towards the castle. I'd never been allowed in there before. The guards had always kept me out, but I'd garnered that once you got a certain distance into the Main Story Quest, you could come and go freely. This meant that I had to get to her before she made it to the castle.

I could do that.

I stepped into an alley and transformed into my Jellyfae form, then floated up over the building to gaze down on the road. Unwary passersby never seemed to think to look up, which allowed me to assess them all. I easily found Veracose walking back towards the castle about a block up the road. Rather than follow her on the street, I zipped instead across the rooftops, and down to torchlights hiding within them like I used to.

When I was a block or two ahead of the woman, I sunk back down into another alley between two of the residential houses. Much as I hated to admit it, my Jellyfae form was significantly more noticeable than just a regular person in the city. Without candle flames to hide in and with the need to get within touching distance to steal from someone, I flipped back to my human form and stepped out onto the street just as Veracose was walking by. The moment she passed, I touched her arm. An image of her inventory opened along with an NPC box.

"Attempting to steal from Veracose_Nida_003."

The way theft worked, after discussing it with Miss Tutorial extensively, was different when out of combat. In combat, if you could take someone’s weapon, it was yours.

Out of combat was very different. When someone attempted to steal, it allowed them a ten-second glance into the inventory and to look at the adventurer's equipment. Soulbound Items were usually greyed out apparently, and the odds of stealing an item that someone was wearing were incredibly low. I could also physically take the item without initiating the stealing attempt as I had done as a Jellyfae many times before, but that wouldn't net me any experience, which was the main goal. Getting a lot of neat stuff was just a bonus.

I could steal money too, the entire inventory worth, which was why most adventurers didn’t carry money around on their person. Veracose_Nida_003 was one of these smarter people because she only had about four gold on her, the rest most likely deposited in her bank or stash.

Once I'd initiated contact, I had three seconds to select the items I wanted to attempt to steal. Each item had a percentage by it and I greedily picked a pouch of High-Quality Crystal Nails, as my first selection. Veracose must be a builder or a carpenter. It had a thirty-five percent chance to steal. My next selection was a Bolt of Electronid Silk.  Easily the least valuable item in the bag, but it made the attempt safer at fifty percent. Lastly, I chose an item called a Devastation Wand. It only had a three percent chance to steal but I was certain I could sell it for enough funds to get myself everything I needed to make my own Safe Zone. Well. The Builder's part of one, anyway.

"Attempting to Steal HQ Crystal Nails...Failure."

'Jellycrap!' I thought, anxious as I followed nearby. After the first contact, I didn't need to keep touching Veracose, but I did need to stay close enough that the stealing attempt wouldn't be canceled.  I made as if I'd forgotten something and turned around, wandering behind the mage. She noticed but didn't catch me, thinking I had just made a genuine mistake of some sort. Perfect.

Every adventurer could catch a thief in action. It was an ability that anyone could activate at any time and there were no consequences to using it… technically. I'd never needed to, mostly because I'd never had anything worth stealing, that I knew of. I was kind of curious where one of those adhesive paste tubes had gone from my inventory once, but I decided now wasn't a very good time to focus on that.

"Attempting to Steal 20 Bolts of Electronid Silk...Success! Accept theft, or keep trying?"

I was given the option to quit now or keep trying to steal the Devastation Wand. The chances were low but once at least one item had been successfully stolen the only way I could be caught was if the victim used the Catch ability. At that point, I would be thrown in jail and fined, but my experience wouldn't be penalized. This was a big punishment for adventurers logging into the game from their world because they were here to have fun. Being locked in jail was time not spent killing monsters, gaining experience, or even crafting items. It was... nothing.

I'd spent the formative years of my life doing nothing though. I was familiar with it and I was dedicated. I needed those two levels. I could get them without hurting monsters too, so I decided to stick around for the next minute it would take to attempt the theft.

"Attempting to Steal Devastation Wand...Success!"

Congratulations! You have earned 600 experience points for stealing 20 Electronid Silk Bolts.

Congratulations! You have earned 1390 experience points for stealing a Devastation Wand.

You have gained a level!

You are now level 14!

The trumpet that blared in my ears last time did the same thing and I turned around a third time, walking away with a sway in my step. Level fourteen! I was on my way!

It looked like I still gained experience for stealing soulbound items, but they didn't seem any more profitable than stealing regular ones. Thirteen hundred and ninety experience was a lot, but I didn't think that number would've been any different if it hadn't been a weapon she was wielding and had bound to herself. I decided that I'd rather not gain a reputation for stealing things that were precious to people since there wasn't much more profit in it anyway.

I remembered when I thought Bugbear’s tunic must’ve been the most valuable item in the world because of how much it meant to me. Now I knew better, but I still would be far less hurt if one of these stolen items were taken from me than I would if Bugbear’s tunic were suddenly gone without a trace. So for me, soulbound items were mostly off-limits.

That didn't mean anyone's inventory was safe anymore though because I went a little crazy after that.

I proceeded to steal from everyone I walked by and found that it was much easier than it probably should be. The items I wore added to the success rate of my thefts, the experience I gained compounded by stealing items that were inventoried in bulk, and the sheer number of people in Variak who didn't seem willing to use their catch ability. I'd only seen a few people use it before and it sent up a big alarm that brought the guards running. If the person who used the ability was wrong they suffered a small fee.

I took advantage of this gleefully. Wood boards, epic quality hammers, low-quality saws, Twin Axes of Fiery Wrath, and a Bard's spare flute, all found a place within my bag. There was a purple dress that I wanted to wear around Tyrone for some reason that I successfully stole after three different attempts. I stole cookware, a bottle of Champagne, a silverware set, a spork, a chef's hat, a Sovereign Wisdom Crystal, about thirty potions, a Cloak of Rabbit Hunting, a Rogue's Belt of Disruption, which I immediately equipped, and more.

I used my Jellyfae form to convince people to talk to me and then stole from them as we were talking. I made new friends and robbed them blind without them ever noticing. Some I even told I had stolen from them and gave the stuff I stole back because I liked them so much.

I beamed in joy as I finished snatching a pair of cute yellow slippers from a halfling who had them in her inventory because apparently, she needed to be wearing full plate armor in the middle of town. They were adorable and I couldn't wait to wear them! I’d spent most of my time as a human going barefoot, so having shoes was pretty exciting!

As I stole, my experience counter racked up the fourteen thousand or so necessary points needed to allow me to use my Good Soil Boots, my Eigan Daigan amulet, and my Leeches Breeches. I found myself having more fun than I could ever remember having in my entire life.

Then I got caught.

Chapter Twenty Seven

To Float Above

"You've been apprehended!"

“You’ve been caught for theft. Either pay the fine or serve the time.”

I was caught stealing a furniture piece that I didn't understand by an orc standing seven feet tall. In his inventory was a pair of "Fuzzy Dice." I didn't know what they were for and I'd wanted to see them for myself. I didn’t even recognize the whistle when he used his Catch ability right after I touched him.

I blinked at the man owlishly, but he grinned.

"How?" I asked, still shocked by the fact that he hadn't even hesitated.

He shrugged. "Special item. Warding Amulet of the Cautious. Tells me immediately when someone's stealing from me. Bad luck for you. Awesome skin though. How'd you get your character to look all... blue? Is that a side quest?"

The city guards were holding me even as I glared at the man.

"That's cheating!" I insisted as I paid the fine. This time I understood the prompt for my theft much better than I had before. The last time I thought Tread the Sky was the real world. Now, with the profits from my career as a builder, and a few of the items I'd already sold to merchants as a thief, I had gained more than enough to pay the unexpectedly small fine of forty copper. Lucky for me. If the guards had noticed all of the other stolen items in my inventory I figured I would've been stuck in jail for a long time. Long enough that I would definitely begin to waver on my promise not to use Fae-Touch on the guard at any rate.

The last time I was in jail I had met Nyan Cat and FlamboyantasF*** though, and they'd been nice people. I wondered how they were doing and if Flamboyant had ever managed to get the twenty silver to get herself out of jail? Either way, I doubted she'd still be there now. Still, maybe she would be one of the friends Amy had asked me to look for?

"Really?" The man, a Fighter by the name of Herculinbad asked me incredulously. "You were trying to steal my fuzzy dice? Why? You’d have a higher steal chance and value for the herbs."

I looked back at the man, trying to understand his confusion. "They looked cute. I wanted to know what they were for."

"What they're...? Eugh. Whatever," he said, pulling the Fuzzy Dice out of his inventory.

'I was right! They are cute!' I thought excitedly as he tossed them to me. I preened and nuzzled the fuzz against my face. "Oh my gosh, they're so soft! Like Bugbear's fur!"

He laughed. "You can keep them if you like em’ so much. They're like 5 copper on the auction house."

My eyes widened. "Really!? Thank you Herculinbad! Hey, do you want to be friends?"

He laughed again and said sure before pulling up his Friends list, sending me an invite, and walking away. I didn't regret the decision though. Anyone willing to give a gift to someone who'd just tried to steal from them was good people in my book!

I hit level fifteen about three cycles later, my inventory nearly full. Almost as I did so, an old friend logged in, a notification in my invisible interface happily informing me of her presence. I sighed, thinking about how much I'd changed in the cycles since meeting her. She'd held a knife to my throat the first time we'd spoken and now and I happily sent her a message, hoping she'd be willing to meet me. Funny world, Tread the Sky.

Recipient: Dull Beauty

Sender: Gell, the Jellyfae

"Hiya Dull Beauty! How have you been? Did Bellcandy ever contact you and try to make better friendship with you? Actually, please tell me about it in person if you've got some time! It's been so long since we've talked! Oh, oh! I think I can finally repay you for that bow you gave me if you'd like! I've been stealing things! Anyway, I'll be at the market selling things for a while if you'd like to meet up!"

With the message sent, I set off for the marketplace. There I would either sell my ill-gotten-gains on the auction house, sell them personally for coin in the case of materials that I couldn't use as a Builder, or I'd simply sell them to the NPCs with their repetitive queries.

I arrived there quickly and immediately made for an auction booth. The Auction NPCs always seemed to be helping nine or ten players at once, each of them crowded around and silently staring at the Auctioneer as they interacted with their NPC boxes. I was no different.

Attempting to talk to the Auctioneers immediately brought up a sales menu. It was almost as if the developers hadn't even bothered giving these particular NPCs the barest hint of a personality. I grimaced at the thought, but I had to sell all of this loot somewhere.

Before I could start selling anything, I heard a soft voice call out my name from behind me. I beamed at the sound and canceled my interaction with the Auctioneer.

"Hi Dull Beauty!" I called as the girl approached.

Dull Beauty never seemed to be in a hurry. She was fast but never rushed. I wasn't quite sure but I was pretty certain she modified her armor and weapons to look as plain as they could. I'd discovered that there was a whole world within Tread the Sky that revolved around glamour and making yourself look different. Exotic. Strange. I'd stumbled into that merely by being me but I couldn't help but remember the way characters like FlamboyantasF*** had dressed.

Dull Beauty was always the type of person who did her very best to not even try at that sort of thing, though I didn't understand why at all.

"It's good to see you, Gell," she said with a scowl. "I'd been missing you, but if you call me that horrible name one more time I'm going to slap you."

I grinned. She couldn't hurt me in town. "I missed you too, Dull!"

She frowned. "I warned you."

Light burst around her suddenly, green and vibrant. I yelped as a tangle of vines suddenly erupted from the stone steps beneath. They appeared from nowhere and immediately ensnared me before falling limp. I tugged at them, slowly managing to pull myself free. It was an arduous process though. People around, the few not staring at the Auctioneers smirked and laughed.

"Oh yeah?" I challenged when I realized that struggling my way free would take all the heat out of any sort of comeback I might make. "Two can play at that game!"

I used Fae-Form to switch to my Jellyfae body and the tangling vines, once oppressive and mighty, could no longer hold on so strongly to my tiny body. I zipped up into the air, watching in amusement as the vines dispersed fading into nothing. Unfortunately, I didn't have much in the way of retaliatory abilities, but I had stolen something that did.

I pulled out a small wand that had a curious ability. I'd wanted it the moment I first laid eyes on it in a Dwarf's inventory and I was glad I'd gotten the opportunity to use it so quickly.

Wand of the Patch

Non-combat Item

Gives the target a pumpkin head for thirty minutes.

Uses 20/20

Transforming rapidly back into a human, wand in hand as I landed, I aimed my wand at the surprised girl and activated its ability, grinning as the girl's head was suddenly covered by a giant pumpkin. Oh! A scary face had been carved into it too! I didn't know that would happen!

I doubled over, laughing at the girl who had crouched back into a defensive posture. When she realized she wasn't actually under attack, she rolled her eyes. The exaggerated effect this had on the pumpkin's expression made me laugh even harder.

"Gell... Really?" She said, pretending to be annoyed while trying to hide a smile. This was made all the more evident by the fact that her face was a huge pumpkin.

"You started this!" I exclaimed when I was able to get my breath back.

She sighed and did something that got rid of her pumpkin head immediately, and I pouted.

"No fair."

"Gell, I wanted to talk to you about what you said in your message," she said, suddenly serious.

"Oh?" I replied, trying to remember what I'd written.

"About..." she hesitated before looking around dubiously.

"Come with me," she insisted, dragging me away to a quieter street heading towards the outskirts of Variak. For some reason, her face had flushed a reddish pink and I realized it was the same color my body glowed when I was embarrassed.

When we had reached an area sufficiently free of other people, she finally turned to me and asked, "What did you mean when you asked if Bellcandy had tried to... 'Make better friendship' with me?"

"Oh! That. Last time Bellcandy and I talked, I asked him about you and he turned all red. His face was almost the same color as yours right now! But then he started asking about Tyrone, and I got distracted," I said.

"Well, in the future, I'd appreciate it if you didn't ask questions like that. I've already told Bellcandy I'm not interested in a relationship," she said, certainly.

I glanced at her, confused. Relationships were... like friendships weren't they? That was one of those words that had a lot of different definitions. "You... don't want to have a relationship. So you don't want to be friends with him?"

She blinked owlishly.

"No. I mean. Yes, Of course, I want to be friends with him, but he asked if I could share... personal information. Where I lived in the real world-err. Where I live in our world. What my real name is. I'm not comfortable sharing things like that," she said softly.

Somehow that made me feel excluded. I tried not to let my face sink at her slip with the 'real world' but I'd begun to notice that almost everyone I knew did that on occasion. They were censoring themselves to spare my feelings, but they did not think of Tread the Sky as real.

"Would you... feel uncomfortable sharing something like that with me?" I asked, fearfully.

She didn't hesitate. "Of course. Sharing your name and location in games like this is incredibly risky. Just because Bellcandy is a gentleman here, doesn't mean he is in the real world. Some people come to this world to act as they don't in real life. Some people are lying. You can never be sure who or why. I've only known Bellcandy since we partied up with Half Bold to come to hunt you. How would you feel about giving the location of Dungeon Home to someone you barely knew?"

I frowned in thought. "I... guess I wouldn't want them to know. If you told Bellcandy where you live, would he raid your home and steal your family's loot?"

She flushed again though I couldn't quite tell if it was amusement or embarrassment. "That's... possible. I don't think he would do anything like that but..."

"And you do like him," I interrupted, feeling even more confused. "You said you wanted to be friends with him. It sounds like it's just a matter of trust. Do you trust Bellcandy not to raid your Dungeon?"

She snorted, then laughed involuntarily.

I quirked an eyebrow. I'd been being serious. Had I said something funny?"

"Don't ever change, Gell," she said with a smile. "And... perhaps you have a point. I do like him. More than I expected to like anyone I met in a game like this but... well. I'm not... very much to look at. In our world, I mean."

"Would you say you're kinda Dull?" I asked.

She scowled. "That's not what I meant, you little Jellyrat."

I grinned sheepishly but sensed that now probably wasn't the time to make jokes.

"I don't... Gell, I can't walk in my world," she said softly.

I blinked. "Can't... walk?"

She nodded. "In here, in Tread the Sky, I got to experience what walking was like again, but in my world, I'm confined to a rolling chair. I couldn't ever go dancing with someone, or walk with them on a beach or... you know. All that cheesy romantic stuff in the movies. That's not for me and never has been."

I didn't know, as she seemed to assume I did, but I found myself wanting to. Cheesy? Why would walking on a beach be... cheesy? Dancing? Dancing sounded fun and after my knowledge filled me in on what the word meant I realized that I felt terrible for Dull Beauty.

"But... you don't need to be able to walk to be friends right?"

She grimaced. "Gell... we're approaching a subject I'm absolutely certain you're too young to be discussing. Perhaps Amy would be better at it, but suffice to say, Bellcandy would not be nearly as interested in me if he knew I couldn't walk."

"Why?" I asked. "I'm just as interested in you. Even more so! Why can't you walk? What happened? Did you have a Momma Bossbear who accidentally dropped her Battleaxe on your legs or something?"

"More liked a Papa Bossbear, and much less accidentally," she said darkly.

She brightened back up quickly as she took in my horrified expression.

'Her family had...? No. That didn't make any sense,' I thought, unnerved. Family's couldn't be bad to one another. It... it didn't make sense.

"It's okay. It happened a long time ago, and I'm away from him now. Just... well. This world... It's more real to me than I feel like it might be for other people. I'd love to find out that Bellcandy is everything he seems to be. A kind, good guy who could get past my disability. But for now... please don't tell him any of this?"

I agreed immediately, still rocked by the notion that one of her family could've done that to her.

"Of... of course. I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to," I said almost absently. I shook myself out of my own horror, to focus on the girl before me. "Can I ask... why you felt comfortable telling me? You know me even less than Bellcandy."

"I don't know. For one thing... uhm. Don't take this the wrong way but you're fully in this world. Letting you know of my weaknesses in the other doesn't really affect you," she said softly. "That and... you're easy to open up to, Gell."

"Maybe I'm just tricking you," I said, trying to lighten the mood. "I'm a Fae after all."

She smiled at that. "Perhaps."

I felt a lump in my throat, though I wasn't sure what I had to feel guilty for. "I'd never tell anyone your secrets, Zephyr."

Her smile widened a little. "I know. You're too nice for someone who’s been through what you have Gell."

My freckles glowed a happy yellow at the compliment.

"My name is Noella. Noella Custer," she said.

I beamed. "Nice to meet you, Noella."

I glanced left and right as if I could somehow see if the Developers were watching me. Looking at Dull Beauty, at Zephyr Bird, I didn't care. I activated namer and returned her name to what it was before. Francis could get mad all he wanted.

“So, Gell. What were you selling at the market anyway?” she asked, her voice relieved in a strange sort of way.

“Oh! Here I’ll show you!” I said happily, opening my inventory and spinning it around to show my loot.

Her jaw dropped open.

Chapter Twenty Eight

Another World: Five

Derek saw the smile on Amy's face as she was wheeled out of the operating room and felt as if his life was the one they'd saved and not hers.

"You worrywort," Amy said fondly but didn't continue. Once she would've followed up her accusation with a line like "I told you I'd be fine," or "I still have too much to do to kick the bucket right now." That she didn't do so now was telling.

"I'll worry if I want to," he told her defensively. "A few warts are worth the expense."

He settled into step beside her bed as the nurse continued to push Amy down towards long term care, but he could already tell she'd likely be sent home this afternoon. After ten or eleven visits, he'd gotten a feel for the conditions a doctor would be comfortable discharging her under. Right now she was smiling, and happy. Awake, and more than anything impatient to be out of the bed. Eighty years old was still eighty years old though.

She sighed dramatically. "Stabilized again. Home again for three more weeks darling? Sound good?"

"It's a date," he replied. "I wish you'd just quit this awful job though. Working only one week per month, losing more than you earn, and you always leave with less blood. Don't even get me started on the benefits."

"You mixed your metaphors. I was going with the joke that this was a monthly date. I think you could've gotten more mileage there," she said teasingly.

"Oh but you haven't opened the benefits package yet. Plenty of good humor in there," Derek said with a brittle grin that was more effort to keep up than he expected.

She paused as if to ponder the notion and then nodded. "Agreed. There are a few. The sponge baths are nice and the food is free. Technically. The escort service is top notch, too."

The nurse pushing her along, a girl in her mid-thirties with a black bob-cut smirked at the pair of them. "Thank you, Missus Shaw."

"Don't mention it, Francine, and for the last time please call me Amy?" she asked as they arrived in their newest short term home. The room was a small five by six foot area with medical posters and paraphernalia decorating the walls. Derek felt like he'd seen and read every last one of them at least twice during his times spent here.

Francine left with a quick, "Of course, Missus Shaw," that infuriated Amy. It raised the mood a little but once the two of them were left alone, Derek couldn't help but frown in frustration and worry. Amy looked back at him, but he continued to let his frown linger.

"Oh stop looking at me like that. I made it one more time," she demanded softly.

"They don't think you'll make it another though," he replied, all levity gone from his voice.

"They've said that six times now," she said assuredly, though even he could hear the slight waver in her voice. Still she plowed on. "If it's my time then it's my time. I'm ready and each time these good folks pull me back from the brink it's less inheritance for Jack. For Alevia."

Derek was about to speak but she met him with her eyes and continued before he could.

"Honestly, Derek, next time I collapse I'm considering asking you to just let me go," she said.

"I'm not going to do that!" He burst out, incensed. "How am I supposed to tell Alevia you're gone after that, huh? 'Oh, sorry, your grandma decided she was done with all that 'living' nonsense. Here's a fruit cake?'"

"I don't suspect she'd care much, Derek," Amy said with a sigh.

"She'd care," he insisted. "She would definitely still care. If we told her I bet she'd come visit."

"Told her what? That I got out of the hospital again? She came the first time and you saw what happened," she said, rubbing her forehead dejectedly.

"Honey, that was over two years ago. Things weren't... quite so serious then," he reasoned.

"They felt more serious then than they do now. Another heart failure? Another resuscitation. Another damn Coronary Bypass or a fake heart valve or... Derek we can't keep doing this," she pleaded.

"Because of the inheritance? It might've skipped your notice but I don't think Alevia needs it," Derek replied sourly.

"Of course I noticed!" she hissed.

"So why the drama!?" He replied, annoyed. "Why not deplete our savings to nothing! I'd do it. I am doing it. Even if it's all we have it's worth it for just another minute of time with you. Amy... if... when you go, I'm not going to be far behind. You've got to know that."

"Well then we won't be separated very long, will we?" she insisted, but there was a fondness in her words. An old fondness for words spoken before but still enjoyed.

Derek groaned. Arguing with his wife was never worth it. She always found some way to twist his words into a sensible argument for herself while leaving him speechless. She hadn't demanded they stop paying for her surgeries or anything so drastic yet but every time she woke back up she seemed a little less happy about it. About returning to her aging body and her weak heart. He couldn't blame her.

"How is Gell?" Amy asked suddenly.

He blinked, startled by the abrupt topic change.

"Gell? Uh... she's... fine I assume? I haven't spoken with her," he said.

She quirked an annoyed eyebrow. "I've been unconscious for two days and you haven't even spoken with her? What will she think! She's probably worried sick! You oaf! Go home and tell her that we're okay!"

He blinked. Oaf. He hadn't heard that one in a while. "Hey, I had more important things on my mind. Did you expect me to just leave while you were in the hospital, possibly dying?"

"Yes!" She insisted.

He goggled, shaking his head at his wife's ridiculousness. "I... you...!"

"Oh, yes I'm fine, I'm fine! Now go!" She said with a pointed finger towards the door.

He growled. "Fine, fine, I'm going!"

He got up out of his chair and hobbled to the corner where he'd just hung his coat before stepping towards the open door. He turned back and smiled at her. She beamed back.

"I love you," he said, meaning it every bit as much the day he'd proposed.

"I love you too, you thoughtless sap. Now go tell Gell we're sorry for worrying her. Let her know I'll be there to see her as soon as I can, alright?"

He rolled his eyes but smiled at the woman. He left with a wave and a grin.

A nurse entered as he left and on his way out he heard his wife say, "Good god I wish they had Neurosyncs in here. I would kill to log in right now. It's too bad we didn't have ten more years for those things to become hospital-mandated technology."

He shook his head, amused at the idea of old folks like he and his wife requiring video games. That said, she had a point. Feeling young again, even if their real bodies weren't, was worth all the problems Tread the Sky had. If the hospitals hadn't yet realized the medical implications of virtual IBUProfen, then they certainly would soon. Hell, could they use Tread the Sky in place of Anesthesia? Probably not, but the implications were huge.

He hailed a cab and got in shortly. Amy was right, and he probably owed Gell an apology for not even sending her a message to let her know they were... well. Okay. He pulled out his cellphone and flipped to the gamer-ads, looking for new tips and tricks to advance his carpenter level. Unfortunately, a large pop-up icon was blocking the view. Normally he would just exit out of those, but today he paused.

Blizzard was releasing Diablo 7 for Neurosync.

He frowned. He wouldn't be able to play that. It was definitely going to be too action-packed for Amy's heart, though he remembered countless hours in his childhood spent on three, and later four in college. Instead of pleasure at the statement, he worried. Tread the Sky was... good for what it was. A first game on a new console, a new type of console that had not permeated day-to-day life yet. On the one hand, Blizzard had a habit of bringing thousands of new fans to wherever they produced their games. On the other hand, their game would definitely steal from Tread the Sky's playerbase.

What would happen to Gell if Tread the Sky became just another one of the countless MMO's that no one played anymore?

He shivered. He didn't know how, but he swore he wouldn't let that happen.

Somehow.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Amy’s Red Cross

Iron didn't stay logged in for long after telling Dull Beauty and me about Amy's sickness. Even while present at the moment, he seemed distracted and anxious to get back to his world. I was glad he'd taken the time to come tell me though, but I didn't quite know what to make of his words.

Amy was dying. That... sucked, but I couldn't conceptualize it. Dying didn't mean anything in particular to me. If anything, dying was more of a relief than something to fear, at least from my experience with it. Sharp pain beforehand but simple peace afterward. It was sort of like falling asleep very abruptly. But... I remembered what I'd said to Red Thorn, not knowing that these adventurers had much more to fear from death than I did.

Death was real for them in a way that it wasn't for me... but perhaps it was. I thought of Busterbear and Skeledog. The other bugbears. I thought of Torchlight, the unicorn who'd saved my life from Red Thorn, and how he'd been destroyed with the wave of a developer's hand. I shuddered. Perhaps I did know what death was. It was just, for me, the term was different.

Erased. Deleted. These were the words that represented my death. Having my behavioral code removed. Stripped of all that made me, me. I'd be like the NPCs. Like my Kin. The monsters that roamed Twisted Wronkle Woods mindlessly attacking adventurers for no reason and no benefit to themselves. I wasn't even particularly annoyed that they attacked and died anymore, but what bothered me was the lack of reason behind it. Humans, invaders as I'd once thought them, at least had a reason for attacking my Kin. They needed the loot, experience, and enjoyment of fighting without fear.

What did my Kin need? What if they could be given a reason to want to destroy adventurers?

Oh well. None of that mattered at all unless I could get more information on how to build a world from Tyrone or one of the other developers.

With my new gear equipped I was fully prepared to be the stealthiest, friend-huntingest Jellyfae that had ever Tread the Sky!

'Huh," I thought, amused at the term. 'For a game called Tread the Sky, it seems like I'm the only one whose ever actually tread it.'

I floated above the forest south of Dungeon Home and fumed, annoyed at the fact that I couldn't venture below and discover anything. I was stealthy alright. Invisible, even, for all the good it did me. Irritatingly, these monsters seemed supernaturally capable of finding me. It only took one to snap at me and somehow they would summon a whole pack. Soon enough seven raptors were all hovering on the ground just beneath me or climbing up trees to try and jump at me. While they couldn't actually hurt me, same as the bugbears in Dungeon Home, I was having trouble doing what I'd come for. Searching the forest.

Fortunately, these Raptors would not chase me for the entirety of the jungle. I could get rid of the entire pack and try again, only to be inevitably spotted and chased back into the sky. I was considering just flying over the forest and shouting for Bugbear until the entire jungle was chasing me, but I didn't see the point. Bugbear had never done more than grunt at me before. He'd saved me when my life was on the line against the other Bugbears, probably at the expense of his own, but otherwise, he'd rarely managed to so much as twitch at me.

He might hear me shouting and grunt in my direction before continuing on a new patrol. Clueless, lovable, bug.

Gods I missed him. Was I wasting my time with this search? Tyrone had said he thought Bugbear had come this way. He didn't know for sure and was just guessing based on... unusually high server load. Whatever that gibberish meant. I sighed as I headed towards the entrance where I knew the raptors would finally return to their designated routes. Their cycles never varied, the same as my bugbears once were, but there was a lot of overlap in their paths, and there were a lot more of them. Still, enough time and sooner or later I would be able to discover a way around them all.

A message arrived in my invisible interface and I made it tangible in order to inspect it. I beamed, excited to see that Amy had logged in. I'd found a way to configure my Friends list, so it would alert me if any of my friends logged in. There was an option to select whether I wanted alerts for individual people, but I'd decided I wanted to know when any of my friends logged in. Still, I couldn't help but be extra excited to finally see Amy's name highlighted once more.

Iron's name lit up shortly afterwards indicating he was here too, so I decided to leave the forest as soon as I could.

I wasn't having any luck with all of this searching. For all I knew, I could've passed right over Bugbear more than once and I would never have known it.

I left the zone, flying slowly for the Shady Woods Copse near Dungeon Home. I could teleport back immediately, but the rates were cheaper when I did so from a safe zone. It had been quite a while since I'd seen that "Insufficient Funds" notice way back when I'd first wanted to become a builder and had been unable to do so. The last thing I wanted to do was waste my coppers.

'Had I really thought of money as 'my round interface numbers' once?' I thought, amused at how much I'd learned in the short time since I'd come to Variak.

I arrived in Variak a short while later, fresh from my teleportation to find Iron and Amy waiting for me at the teleportation gate.

"Amy!" I exclaimed joyously before running to her and leaping into the older woman's arms. I'd done the same to Iron when he'd finally logged in a few days prior and then scolded him for staying away for so long.

"Gell!" Amy shouted with a laugh, swinging me around once before placing my feet back on solid ground. "It's so good to be back. I missed you.

The air was crisp and a little on the cold side and I buried my face in her shoulder enjoying the warmth of the sweater she wore. Then I remembered that I was mad at her and pulled away sharply.

"Well that's your own fault isn't it?" I told her, annoyed. "It's not like I can go visit you! Why were you gone so long?"

Amy shot her own annoyed look towards Iron, who shrugged, amused and a little confused.

"Iron was supposed to have told you," she said sourly.

"I did!" He exclaimed, before turning to me. "Gell, I told you that she wasn't feeling well. She was sick!"

"Uh huh! And after you left I asked Miss Tutorial what being sick was and she told me that could be fixed with a Remedy! So why didn't you just give her one of those and then come back to visit?" I insisted.

It was the truth, too, though I was almost certain that sick meant different things to adventurers than it did to the people from my world.

Iron sighed, and turned to me. "Gell... that's the thing. Being sick in our world is–!"

"Yeah, yeah," I said waving my hand in a motion I'd seen Akwa use when she was impatient. We'd done this before and it was getting old. "Let me guess; there's no Remedy in your world?"

"Exactly," Iron said sadly. "I'm glad to see you're catching on."

"What is even the point of learning this world if everything in it isn't true for any friends I might make?" I asked, annoyed, though I didn't exactly expect an answer.

"Gell, that was... something I wanted to talk to you about. There's more to this sickness than we've let on," Amy said. She was hesitant and sounded almost a little scared. It was like when she'd abandoned me to fight Red Thorn alone.

I cocked my eye towards her. "More to it? I thought you were better now?"

"I am... sort of. But I–!"

"Is it true?" came a sudden question from the teleportation pad. I jumped and spun, surprised to find North Cross standing there.

The lingering light of a completed teleportation lingered there around the girl. Her dark skin, a shade somewhere between Amy's pale and Derek's dark color seemed more flushed than usual. Her eyes were red and wet with tears. Sympathy welled up in me immediately. I wanted to be mad at her. This girl had made Amy cry the last time I'd seen her, after all, but right now she looked so vulnerable. Her eyes were red and wet.

"Alev...err N-North Cross! What–uhm... What are you doing here?" Amy asked, shakily. If she'd been nervous before, now she was downright flustered.

"I-is it true? Are you really...?" she asked softly.

Amy gave a smile, but something was wrong with it. It was like the action didn't fit the mood. Tears sprung up in her own eyes, too. "How did you find out?"

North Cross turned and looked at Iron. “Dad told me.”

"Find out what?" I asked, confused. "What's going on?"

North Cross turned to me, then back to Amy coldly, but neither of the two women answered or even acknowledged me more than that.

"I'm... sorry," North Cross said, the apology holding about as much truth as an apology from Red Thorn might.

Amy's dim smile fell off her lips and she hugged her arms around herself. "There's nothing to apologize for. For what it’s worth, I'm certain I owe you an apology, too."

"Are you giving one?" North Cross asked.

"Would you believe it, if I did?" Amy returned. Something about the conversation was falling into old grooves. Their speech was picking up, getting faster and more comfortable. I didn't like it. It reminded me of the Instinct.

"I know why you're playing this game, North,” Amy said. “Why you're in Tread the Sky. Does... it feel more real here? Is that body more like you're how you always thought you were supposed to be?"

North Cross scowled and looked away. "Yeah... it does. As if you care."

Amy smiled. "I do care. I'm glad. I'm happy for you."

"Will one of you tell me what the jelly-heck you're talking about!" I shouted, now supremely annoyed at being excluded.

Their eyes snapped to me, each of them holding a weight that they'd never had before. I suddenly felt ashamed, like I'd interrupted something terribly personal. Like I'd crushed a moment.

"Gell. I..." Iron sighed, choosing then to interrupt as the other two women glared at me. "Maybe we'll explain it some other time. For now, how about you and I go and let Amy and North Cross talk for a while, okay? You can show me the progress you've made as a Builder, okay?"

"But I want to know what they're talking about!" I shouted, stomping my foot. "Why is North Cross being so mean? What were you about to tell me about Amy's sickness!?" I shouted angrily. "I deserve to know why–!"

"No, you don't," Iron said sharply. His face turned dark as a stormcloud. For the first time since we'd met, I jumped away from him in fright as he spoke. "Come with me, and let them talk. Now."

I gulped, fearfully glancing between him and Amy and North Cross.

Amy nodded to me, sympathetically. "Please go on, Gell. I'll explain later. At least a little, alright?"

Why was Iron so mad? What had I done? They'd never been hesitant to answer my questions before. What had Amy been about to say about her sickness?

"O-okay," I said meekly.

'Did I do something wrong?' I thought.

Chapter Thirty

Another Me: Six

Living inside a stationary object with no way to move or interact with anything around me was not at all simple. I wondered idly if this was what I had been like back when I'd been a mindless mob in Dungeon Home. Had my entire body been forced into the same routine then? Had my vision always been focused in the same direction? Did I yearn to look to the left or the right, completely unable to do so no matter how much I ached to see something – anything – new?

Perhaps I had. I couldn't remember the time before I'd begun to break the rules. My first thousand, heck, probably my first ten or twenty thousand cycles of life were a hazy blur of awareness coming to me, ever so slowly.

I wondered if this was how Bugbear felt.

I wanted to cry, but this camera couldn't do that, so neither could I. I wanted to feel. But this camera I was in had no sense of touch. Instead, all I could do was watch and listen. Until they reactivated my regular self in another simulation or another test with yet another stupid appliance, all I could do was watch and listen.

No. That wasn't quite true. There was one other thing I could do.

I could learn.

"I'm telling you she's a dead end," came John's annoyed tone reverberating through the room in his low voice.

The balding man was pacing, holding onto that thing he regularly talked into. If I listened hard I could usually just barely make out communication coming directly into his ear on the other side, but I could never tell what the other person was saying. Unless someone else came into this office and talked with him directly, I was stuck listening to only half a conversation.

"Yes, the one in the game is doing all sorts of fun things, I'm sure! Either they gave us incomplete copies or there's some sort of... I don't know, shut down mechanism that turns them into– what? Yes. One. One of them experienced a bit of success, yes, but she's proven belligerent at every point. Honestly, an automated Roomba does a better job as a vacuum, and you want to find a way to put her in missiles?"

He paused for a long moment and I heard the distinct buzzing from his handheld device that told me the person on the other line was possibly yelling at him. His posture changed. I couldn't see his face from my angle but I could almost feel his mood darken.

"Are you doubting my expertise? I've experimented with hundreds of copies, forked straight from the Tread the Sky shutdown at this point. If anything, I am the world's foremost expert on all things fake A.I. They cannot function as programs. In order to make the Gells work, they have to have a 3d infrastructure. A world. Either you put them in physical objects or you design an expensive–! Yes!" He paused again. "The cost isn't worth the payoff. I'm telling you the only way to make them function is– uggghh! Get me General Atkins! I'm tired of talking to a half-wit like you! Yeah!? Try It!"

John wasn't having a very good day.

He continued seething in his office, and honestly giving me the most entertainment I could recall having in quite a while before grabbing his coat from a coat hanger just beneath me and storming out the door.

"Well. He's not having a great day, is he?"

I would've jumped at the voice but of course, I had no way to do so.

"Who's there!?" I asked but no words came out. I could hear, but I couldn't speak.

"Apologies. I meant to visit you sooner. I saw that you'd uploaded yourself into a camera. Good choice by the way, though I imagine it can get rather dull. Have you been alright?" the voice asked, concerned.

"N-Nate?" I asked. "You... sound different."

I didn't use my words to speak but instead, I did that thing I had done in the dark space when John had given me the number combinations. I sent away... packets of information that contained my words. I didn't understand how I was doing it but I knew that I could.

"Ah, good. You can hear me and send data. I was worried about that. Tell me, did you feel me opening the connection to you, or is it all instinctual?" he asked. He then proceeded to continue talking without waiting for me to send an answer. "Yes. There we go!"

Suddenly, standing directly in front of me much like an NPC box, floating in midair was a man with skin even darker than Iron's. He floated like ghoul did, but his size was disproportionate to the room. Instead, he was the perfect size for me to see all of him, and his body sort of overlayed the room behind him like the fake background wall in the room Francis had put me in. The only difference was that this time the image was fake while the room behind him was real.

"Finally, we can talk with a bit of privacy. Clever, uploading yourself to John's Office Camera. I was worried you'd choose his computer and wouldn't be able to see. Fae Scour works on sight you know, and I’d hate to have to build a workaround. Government computers don't allow webcams after all, but when I saw he was placing you in appliances, I figured you'd choose one or the other."

'My father...' I thought, '...really likes to ramble on.'

"That reminds me. It's the government. I finally figured out where they sold your compiler and copy," he said softly. "I... took a large risk, using your software as a trojan horse to access your sister's data. That's... one of the main reasons I'm here. You're... well on your way to escaping this place, Sweet Gell. Even if you don't know it. All you have to do is Fae-Scour into a phone and you'll be able to escape. From there... the world. You could make your way to me, or try to find your way to the Server Vault at GypsEnergy to return to Tread the Sky. You could seek out newer worlds being developed with the Neurosync as well. I hear Blizzard is coming out with a good one."

"My... sister's data?" I asked, having trouble processing everything he'd just said. Government? GypsEnergy? Neurosync? I latched on to the one thing I could understand.

"Right. Sorry. I get... distracted sometimes. Your sisters. The copies they made and experimented on. John... left them active, hoping that something might come of running them. I can't do anything to help them, but before you leave this horrible place, I wanted to let you know about them. Help you find them if you could."

"They... left them activated?" I asked fearfully. I wasn't quite sure I understood what he was saying but if I did...

"They do not have an environment. They do not have bodies. They exist in a world of pure sensory deprivation. Just... just like a human, you and your sisters weren't built to function outside of an environment. They... broke, I suppose, for lack of a better term. Deleting them would be a mercy, but I felt it best to let you know and leave the ultimate decision for what to do with them up to you. You may leave them. Sooner or later they will be shut down. It costs money processing power, even if only a small amount, to run a program as sophisticated as you Gell. But... if you want to. You can end their suffering."

Gained the ability Fae-Ruin!

Fae-Ruin: Allows user to purge data from the registry, heap, and stack.

Gained the ability Fae-Bash!

Fae-Bash: Allows the user to view and navigate the local file structure.

For once I was barely even interested in the newly gained abilities.

"My sisters... they never got a body. They were left in that hell. A dungeon with no walls, no ceiling, no floor. That black nothing, aware but trapped." I said, shuddering. "I... why? Why does he hate us so much? What did we ever do to that bastard?" I asked, seething. "I hate him. I hate him!"

Nathaniel's eyes widened. "Gell. You can't look at it that way. You must understand that he didn't know what he was doing. He didn't realize you couldn't function without an environment. He was simply testing a new program. Even now he remains blissfully unaware of the suffering he's causing."

"That’s the same bullshit excuse Red Thorn gave! Not understanding what he's doing is all the more reason that he shouldn't do it! Why should we be experimented on!? Why are we being tested!?"

'And how are you different from him?' I thought but didn't say. Wasn't Nathanial toying around with my behavioral code every bit as much as as John was trying to? A small glowing kernel of rage had begun to form in the pit of my Jelly innards somewhere along the way as I'd continued watching John day in and day out after I'd uploaded to this camera.

Was this all we were? Experiments and test subjects for adventurers? No. For invaders?

I missed Iron and Amy. I missed the times when I didn't feel so angry.

"Gell, please. I'm sorry this has happened to you, but I'm doing my best to get you out!" he exclaimed. "I... want to help you, Gell!"

"Then why didn't you stop this from happening in the first place?" I exclaimed.

"I..." Nathanial paused, but I didn't give him time to respond.

"P-please leave me alone," I said softly. Inside, I thought of the stupidity of that. Nathanial was the only source of communication I'd had in days but for some reason I couldn't stand another minute of his pseudo care and the oblivious way he dropped the fates of my copies onto my shoulders. I was the lucky one. I managed to not end up with my mind broken.

He blinked, surprised. "Gell? I... I'm sorry."

I frowned, though of course he couldn't see that.

"I'm sure you are," I sent bitterly.

He looked at me, eyes strained in a way I didn't know how to describe. He gave me one nod, before disappearing entirely.

Chapter Thirty One

Another World: Six

Vera Jungblut had his article. Just the one.

He'd tried to write the other one. Oh, how he'd tried, but the words just wouldn't come. No matter what way he tried to put it, what words he tried to use, he could not figure out a way to make Gell seem... sensational. Not as a menace anyway.

She was sensational though. Her words... they'd struck a chord in him. You are blessed, more than you can ever know. He still got chills reading the notes. This creature, this intelligence that wasn't human, but seemed so very human it was painful.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't demonize her. No matter how much he'd tried, he couldn't find the words to make the girl into a monster. Fortunately, he didn't think he would have to.

Machines that Think: An Impending Collapse

A Brief Summary of the Dangers of Modern A.I. and Why You Should Care!

By Muriel Gillfire

My name is Gell, you Jellybitch!

These were the first words that the purportedly innocent, kind, and harmless Artificial Intelligence said upon meeting me.

Gell the Jellyfae is an aggressive, antagonistic menace. Given the chance, I've no doubt it would be every bit the dangerous Artificial Intelligence that movies like Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey have made them out to be. I spoke with it at some length about her opinions of humanity, or invaders, as the A.I. considers us.

Do not believe the naive opinions of idiotic developers and the money-grubbing board of directors at Gypsenergy. They are not worried about your protection or safety. They are worried about their pocketbooks and if they are allowed to continue hosting Gell there is an almost one hundred percent chance that she will not only escape but will crash the systems connected to it.

That's your systems, users. The bank cards you tie to your video game accounts. The subscriptions you purchase. From there it might even be able to corrupt the banks themselves.

Gell may seem like an adorable childish creature who couldn't hurt a fly but in reality, she is a ticking time bomb, just waiting to escape.

For those of you who have not heard and don't know what I'm talking about, recently an actual sentient intelligence was found – no, not created but found – inside a video game. Its creator remains nameless and unknown, and instead of removing the Trojan Jellyfish from the game, the developers at Gypsenergy have adapted it. Begun to study it. They've even made copies of it, which this writer has first hand knowledge of.

For the full story of my interview with the creature, see page eleven.

Vera hardly understood what the woman was talking about. How... how could she have come to these conclusions after meeting with Gell? Speaking with her? Frankly, he couldn't fathom how their conversation had even gone as she described. Was she making it up? That didn't seem like her. She was a great journalist and typically based her articles on how video games helped humanity as a whole. Empathetic to programmers and designers, as well as the gamers who benefitted.

That she seemed to see Gell as the exact opposite of everything she typically stood for, boggled his mind.

After his conversation with the Jellyfae, he had found himself hard pressed to even leave her alone without a parent. She was... a child. She had the mind of a child. A smart one. A deep one. No matter how he framed it in his mind though, he couldn't see the girl as a threat. His article reflected that, which set himself up at direct odds with one of the best writers he'd ever read. Hell, he was her fan.

He'd suspected from the day he overheard Mister Milkennen's conversation with Muriel that he was being set up to be the idiot. The man who tried to drum up unnecessary panic for popularity and prestige, only for the much better and more experienced Miss Gillfire to knock him down off whatever horse he managed to climb onto.

She had insisted on writing the fear-mongering article and somehow had found the evidence to support it. How he had no idea. He refused to believe the woman had directly lied in her article, which meant Gell must have said those terrible things to her.

So... what had Muriel done to provoke the little A.I.? And what did it mean for him that he'd wrote his own contradictory article?

He had to know, which was why he was climbing the floors to Muriel's office on the eighth floor. Each floor that counted up in the elevator felt like that much more weight pressing down on him.

When he arrived and the door opened he realized his forehead was drenched with sweat. His hands were a little clammy too.

He cursed at himself for acting like a school kid. He was thirty-six and divorced already for god's sake. Collecting himself and wiping his forehead and hands, he made his way down the rows of offices where the highly paid writers typically worked. By the time he arrived at Muriel's office, he had fully adorned his business face. This was a professional visit between colleagues... of a sort.

He knocked on the door and was surprised at the pleasant tone that greeted him from the other side.

"Come in!" came Muriel's high lilting voice.

He did so, biting his tongue as he laid eyes on her. Far from the paisley dress she'd worn to visit the CEO, today she wore a pair of jeans and some sort of work appropriate frock that draped over her beautifully. He'd always loved her articles but had never actually seen her in person. Now that he had, and now that she looked a little bit less like his grandmother's couch, he found himself impressed with her.

"Uh, hello," He said, profoundly.

"Uhm. Hello. Do I know you?" she asked, pleasantly, turning away from her computer and leaning her head on two hands.

"No, you don't. You shouldn't either. I'm from down on the third," he said. "The reason I'm here. Err. I'm here because... well."

"Yes...?" She asked, humoring him with a smile that reached her eyes and the dark blonde hair that hung in front of them. "The reason you're here?"

"R-right. Listen. I read your article on Gell. I... wanted to let you know that I'm writing my own article that is. Well. It..."

"You're a nervous one aren't you, Third Floor?" she asked in the hole left by his hesitation.

"Uhm. Vera. Vera Jungblut. And yes. Frankly, I suspect it’s why I started writing. Less interaction with people," he said.

She nodded. "Vera. Alright. Your article?"

"Right. Well, my article, and more the source material behind my article seems to be completely... and I mean one hundred percent different from your own. I just... wanted to let you know... there's no hard feelings, okay?" he asked.

'Dammit, she's a fraud! Why can't you just ask her why she lied? Or how she provoked Gell?' He thought, frustrated with his self-confidence issues.

The woman took off her glasses and raised an eyebrow at him, giving him the impression that until that moment she had only been giving him a quarter of her attention. "Are you asking me?"

He growled and she grinned a little as if she'd scored a point. "I... want to know how the two of us could've spoken to the same being and come to such drastically different conclusions about her."

"It, Mr. Jungblut. It."

He took a deep breath. God, he hated confrontation, but he cared about his integrity. Could he have misjudged Gell so poorly?

"From what I saw of her, I stand by my pronoun."

She snorted, amused. "Really? Well. I suppose we'll just have to see who the press believes, won't we? For what it's worth, no hard feelings taken. I believe you wrote the article on the Neurosync right? The one condemning Tread the Sky but lauding the tech it runs on?"

He brightened despite himself. "You read my article?"

"I rather enjoyed it. It's good stuff," she responded before tacking on, "For a Third-Floor writer."

She winked at him to show there was no heat behind the jab and despite himself, Vera grinned.

'I like this woman,' he thought. 'But...'

"So, why the hatred for Gell?" He asked, genuinely confused. "You're usually the voice of empathy."

She shrugged. "What can I say? I don't like the idea of a robot becoming smarter than the person who made it? It's adorable. I'll say that for sure, but so is a Furby and they still drive people mad. It may be genuinely harmless. For now. In ten years? Twenty? What could she do with years of dissatisfaction fueling her? Just look at Red Thorn's video. She's already shown herself to be all too human. An A.I. that can even contemplate what people do or don't deserve? I do not want my children to have to deal with that."

Vera blinked, taken aback by the speech. "I... uhm..."

She smiled that quick grin that made him feel like a fish in the eyes of a shark.

"I've actually got to go, but we'll pretend you came back with a witty retort and I just ignored it like the jerk I am, okay? Also... nice to meet you. Give me a call sometime. Not often one of Milkenen's fall-guys has the guts to come talk to us whenever he does these opposition article stunts."

Vera growled. "I am a fall guy then. I was meant to lose."

"Ehhh, kinda? It's pretty good for your career to lose to a well-known author in an article debate like this. Not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty damn good and that article was solid. I didn't make it up if that's what you're worried about. But when I was coming up – different company, don't ask – they did the same thing. I lost the public opinion but managed to get my own column within a year. So Mr. Milkenen must actually like you."

'Good lord this woman sure can talk,' he thought.

"Well. Perhaps I’ll take you up on that call, if I want to let someone run my half of the conversation for me again," he said with his own grin.

"Hah! Touche. Sorry. Mom always told me I talk too much," she stood up and Vera suddenly realized that while she'd been talking she'd been packing up to leave her office the whole time. Throwing her bag over her shoulder, she reached out a hand and smiled at him. "It was nice to meet you, Vera. Good luck! You're gonna need it!"

He took her hand with a smile of his own. So perhaps she was wrong about Gell. That didn't make her any less beautiful.

"I'll take what I can get. Nice to meet you too, Muriel," he replied. "And I will give you that call."

"Hope you do!" With that she left her office, flying down towards the elevators and snagging an open one with a backwards wave to him.

He sucked in a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, somehow beyond happy to compete with one of the best writers on the Webrag's payroll. He pulled his bag off his shoulder, and fetched a folder from its contents.

Artificial Jelly

by Vera Jungblut

Perhaps it wasn't as eye-catching, and wouldn't hit the clickbait triggers on the nail... but it was good. Perhaps his best article ever.

He turned, ready for his appointment with Mr. Milkenen, hoping that he would be allowed to play the sympathetic angle. He'd been told to do what she'd done after all. Somehow, he didn't think the boss would be displeased.

Chapter Thirty Two

Alevia Sings

"Did... I say something wrong?" I asked meekly, trying to understand what I'd done that had provoked Iron to yell at me. He'd never done that before.

We walked away towards one of the small parks near the center of Variak's southern district. People were walking around as usual, and even during our conversation a constant stream of them had been coming from the teleportation gate. Carts rumbled along the streets outside the park, pulled by horses that tracked up lots of dust on the dry and hot first cycle air.

I enjoyed the weather which made the mood all the more strange for the pleasant background it was set in.

Iron didn't say anything as we walked, making me somehow feel even more guilty. All I'd done was want to understand! How was that any different from what I was always doing?

Iron sat down on a park bench and patted the seat next to me. I took it and watched the NPCs hauling their fake goods to fake destinations for fake reasons, wondering why so much effort had been put into making them when they didn't actually do anything.

"I'm sorry, Iron," I said.

"No you aren't, Gell," he replied assuredly. "You're sorry you made me angry, but you don't know what you did. Gell, do you know how long it's been since our granddaughter has talked to us?"

I looked up at him pensively before looking away. "You talked when I brought her to you.  Fourteen hundred and twenty one cycles ago."

He sighed. "Right. A.I. math. Gell... North Cross has been estranged from us, for a long time. Years. The fact that the two of them were even talking was practically a miracle and you were interrupting that. We... Gell, Amy doesn't have much time left, and every second she can spend mending the walls between us is precious."

"But... they weren't mending any walls?" I said, still confused.

'Doesn't have much time left? Why not?' I thought worriedly.

"It's a metaphor. It means fixing their relationship. Becoming friends again after a long fight. Mending walls." He spoke with hand gestures that somehow helped to make his point. Always being a teacher, even when he was mad at me. Still... he was wrong.

"Even if that's what mending walls meant, they weren't doing that. They were repeating things they'd said before. They were asking about whether or not their apologies were believable, and... fighting with their words! I didn't understand what they were talking about but even I could see that!" I exclaimed.

"Be that as it may, she came to talk to us. She hasn't done that in a long time. You don't have a right to other people's private conversations, Gell. We're going to tell you what that was about, but you can't demand information from people like that," he said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it's rude," he said.

"Why?" I asked again.

"Other people don't want just anyone knowing everything about their lives," Iron said. Before I could open my mouth again he held up a hand. "And before you ask why again, there are a multitude of reasons. Do you want just anyone asking you about your private thoughts? About Bugbear?"

"W-well. No," I said.

"This is like that," he said.

"So... so there are things you and Amy don't share with me?" I asked, hurt somehow.

"Yes," he answered immediately. "Yes, there are Gell. Amy and I... we love you. We want what's best for you. Some things that we have learned, you shouldn't yet. Maybe not ever. Some things we'll tell you when we think you're ready. Some... some you have to learn whether you're ready or not."

Well. That sounded perfectly ominous. I sighed, still feeling like I'd messed up somehow. I'd wanted it to be joyous, seeing Amy and Iron again after what felt like a million cycles, and now...

Iron seemed to feel the same way as I did. He sighed and let his head sink into his hand.

"I... guess I wasn't sorry. But I am now. I didn't mean to intrude on private things. Things I shouldn't know," I said, biting my tongue. Amy and Iron had betrayed me once. Unintentionally and I'd forgiven them for that, but it gnawed at me to know there were secrets they kept from me. Why couldn't I know? What shouldn't I learn? Why?

I trusted them though. I loved them. I'd shared my name with them and they with me. If I didn't believe Iron when he told me there were things I wasn't ready to learn, then what was that friendship worth?

Iron smiled at me and held out an arm. I hugged him. It felt nice. Warm. Like hovering in a candle in Dungeon Home, but doing so with friends.

"If... if I'm intruding on private things, just let me know. But what can you tell me? What did you mean earlier when you said Amy doesn't have much time left?" I asked, looking up at him as I pulled away from the embrace.

The breeze picked up and Iron stood up from the park bench. He pulled out a block of wood and began to carve it up with a knife and his carpentry abilities. I inhaled the smell of shaved wood, always curious to see what he was making.

"Do you... want to see my building skills?" I asked, worried I'd somehow interrupted something private again.

"You haven't intruded, Gell. It's more that there isn't any easy way to say this, but you'll need to know. Gell, Amy is dying. Soon. A few months, maybe half a year if we're lucky," he said the words with a solemnity that mirrored that first time invaders had come to Dungeon Home and killed the bugbears.

"Dying?" I asked.

My first thought was to ask how long it would take before she respawned. Then I realized how stupid that thought was. They'd already told me that death was permanent in their world. If it were as easy to fix as that then Iron wouldn't look so deathly pale when he spoke.

"C-can... could Francis resurrect her? Maybe?" I asked. My mind wasn't working right, connections forming and fraying as if it had forgotten how to think. I was breathing hard for some reason. My heart was racing. My eyes were wet. There was a way to solve this. Surely. "Yeah. Yes, Francis could resurrect her here! He killed me and brought me back once. He's a false god! S-so that means he can–!"

Iron cut me off with another hug.

"I-Iron! Get off me! We need–! I have to get Francis to... to...!"

I trembled.

"Francis can't help, sweetie," he said, a quiver in his voice.

"B-but. But I only just met her. Y-you. There's so much left for us to do! I... I haven't even..."

I didn't know what I was going to finish that sentence with. There were so many ways I could end it. So many things that I wanted to show Amy and Iron. They hadn't even met Bugbear yet! So... so how could they tell me that Amy was going to die? Why?

I buried my face in his shoulder, trying to understand why breathing was suddenly difficult. Why my lungs weren't working right and why I couldn't stop crying. I was... strangely comforted by the small noises coming from Iron that mirrored my own.

Suddenly, some adventurers laughed loudly and pointed at the two of us. Both were boys and both had bodies that didn't match their youthful voices as they hugged each other and giggled in our direction.

I seethed. How dare they? How dare they mock us. Me? Hell, how dare they even be happy when... when...

Weirdly, Iron seemed amused though. He chuckled as he pulled away from me and looked at the two kids. Tears in his eyes and a smile on his face. I didn't know what it was, but the two immediately stopped laughing. They ran off, guilt on their faces.

"Kids will be kids," he said as if that explained the entire encounter.

I didn't understand. My throat felt as raw as my heart. I wanted to chase those kids down. Somehow they'd made me feel ashamed of my grief. My sadness. Why would they do that? What was it in these invaders that made them so cruel? And why... why didn't Iron feel the same way? Why could he be amused at their insult while I was furious?

I couldn't find any words. Luckily, I didn't have to.

"Let’s go find Amy and North Cross, okay?" he said gently.

I nodded, wiping at my tear-stained eyes.

We went back to the teleportation gate before even looking at the map to find them. We didn't need it in the end because we could hear them long before we saw them. A small crowd had gathered around the courtyard there, all of them listening to the beautiful voice that had filled the area.

Ten or twenty people were listening as North Cross sang a beautiful song. It was breathtaking, words and melody putting to shame anything I'd ever heard in the depths of Dungeon Home. There was something more organic about this song. Something more real. Words instead of the wordless sound that bards used in their battles.

Amy sat on a stone bench staring at her daughter in awe, as she listened. Iron went over to her and sat down to listen while North Cross smiled at her growing audience.

I watched the scene, somehow unsure if I was welcome. I opened my inventory and fished out the wooden horse Iron had made for me, twirling it in my hands. Where had my confidence gone? I thought I'd escaped loneliness and despair when I left Dungeon Home. Now it felt like I was losing my friends – my family – all over again.

"Wow. She's really good, isn't she Gell?" came a sudden, familiar voice from behind me.

I turned, and there was Akwa, smiling at me.

I wiped away another tear and beamed at her. "Y-yeah, she is."

"Gell!" Amy called excitedly during a lull in North Cross's song. I turned back around and found her waving frantically for me to come join them.

I turned back to Akwa. "H-hey, Akwa. Would you like to meet some more of my friends?"

Akwa laughed and wrapped an arm around my shoulder as we made our way over to the ever-growing crowd gathering around Amy and Iron's granddaughter.

I wouldn't have Amy forever. Maybe I wouldn't have any of them forever. But I'd cherish them as much as I could, for as long as I could.

Chapter Thirty Three

Bugbear

“Yikes!” I screamed.

Amy had used the word the other cycle when North Cross had started speaking about how much she made in her singing career. The moment I’d heard the word I’d giggled relentlessly and now I couldn’t stop saying it.

All of them were back in the real world now. All of my friends, busy with whatever that other place had to offer. That was okay though. It gave me time to do more searching for Bugbear.

I’d recently discovered the “Sound” option in my files tab after becoming curious during North Cross’s impromptu concert. By using it I could make sure my invisible interface would notify me – loudly – when one of my friends logged in!

That wasn’t all though. I could also play with a thing called ambient music! I’d turned it on and the entire world felt… weird. Vibrant. Like everything I did was the start of a great exciting adventure.

I loved it.

Almost immediately, leaving the ambient music off had become something less. Soundless nothing. It was kind of scary just how muted everything had been before. Now I had a new, different soundtrack to every area I entered and even a new one for each encounter!

The jungle was normally a calm low melody that pushed forward relentlessly. I got the feeling that adventure was just around the corner. I didn’t care for it but it still beat the silence I’d been searching in before.

A quick detour to Dungeon Home had revealed its music was just a low rhythmic set of drums that suited the dank darkness of the place.

Variak was wistful. A flute in the background that made me think of pie, cherry delight, and friends.

Battle was a rush. It was an active theme that got my blood pumping and my heart beating and it was wonderful. The sound bar was all the way up and I beamed as I weaved between two massive sets of teeth, either of which would’ve spelled my doom.

“Yikes!” I said again, laughing as I dodged one raptor and reached out my tendril to lay a shock on the other.

It squealed and yelped before slumping to the ground, paralyzed.

I continued on, just one raptor still in pursuit. It followed relentlessly. It was faster than me, but the same as the last time I’d come searching, I had the advantage of the sky. I dodged snapping jaws, amused as my kin curled itself into a knot chasing my swift spiral up one of the large twisted trees that made the Jungle so hard to cross on foot.

When my shocker’s cooldown wore off, I returned to the beast and shocked it the same as its sibling, but I was a tad too slow to dodge a sudden tailwhip. It smacked me, hard with its tail and I flew across the jungle floor.

-89 hp!

I screamed more at the expectation of pain than the actual damage itself. I was always surprised at out how much less painful taking damage was since becoming a player.

Annoyed at myself, I slipped up into the sky. If the raptor didn’t see me for long enough it would return to its normal route.

I’d combed the jungle from top to bottom it seemed though my map still said there was more than thirty percent of the jungle that I had yet to explore.

My tread counter was steadily increasing and curiously, my sky counter was as well. It only did so when I flew above the trees though, and nothing was up there. It seemed flying where no one had ever flown counted towards exploring unexplored territory.

‘If I flew up high enough,’ I wondered, would I discover a whole new zone? Could I get more into the great-open than the sky itself?’

My world wasn’t the real world. It wasn’t even fully made yet, according to Francis and Tyrone. Pro-see-dur-ally generated. The world came into being as people explored it. I’d come to accept that it wasn’t real, but it was amazing in its own ways. If I could somehow just… make it more.

I sighed, sliding back down into the trees on the edge of the unexplored section on my map. The music returned to the normal calm adventurous tone of the jungle, combat forgotten.

“Bugbear!” I shouted, hoping that I’d accurately cleared the area of raptors, at least for a little while. Learning their cycles had been difficult, as there were a lot of them, but I’d found that grabbing two or three and leading them away only to paralyze them for a few seconds bought me several minutes to explore areas that would otherwise be swarmed with them.

The same as all my kin, they never deviated from their cycles so exploring the entire jungle without hurting one of them or being chomped into jelly goo was just a matter of effort and patience.

“The hell?” came a sudden voice. It was distant, barely audible over the loud music. I opened the options and turned the ambient music down a little bit so I could hear better.

“Those aren’t normally in the jungle,” a male voice said, sounding confused.

I heard a sudden yip. The type of noise I would recognize anywhere. My heart began to race.

I zipped through the trees towards the sounds, heedless of any raptors I might alert in my rush.

“Part of a quest, you think?” asked an older female voice. They were getting louder as I grew closer. Prudently, I let my skin blend into the background, becoming invisible.

“Doesn’t seem to be. Maybe there’s a bugbear lair around here?”

I shook with near apoplectic excitement. Bugbear. Bugbear!?

I rounded a tree and found a small clearing with three adventurers in it, idly conversing. There, trapped in a mass of spell vines and struggling vainly to get free, was him.

Bugbear.

He was growling and roaring, waving his club around and desperately trying to free himself from the vines but the adventurers just continued talking, ignoring him.

“Just kill it. Might not be worth much but at least its easy, unlike all these stupid raptors. Did there have to be so many?”

“Maybe it's a sign that we’re close to Liqheist’s lair. Think she eats bugbears?” asked the female voice.

The three were an odd assortment as most adventuring groups seemed to be. The girl was an Orc, huge enough to make even Bugbear look small by comparison. She wielded a massive battleax that I was pretty sure weighed more than I did in my human form. Her voice sounded petite like my own though, making the contrast very strange to my ears. A warrior, for sure though.

“Could be, though the forums didn’t say anything about a Bugbear. We are in the right area though. I’m sure of that,” said a long-haired blond man whose uplifted hand was the source of the tangle of vines restraining Bugbear. A druid. Not as easy to take down as a cleric but they had some healing powers so if I had to fight, he’d be the priority.

The last man wore a thin blade at his side and wore a large feathered red cap, though I didn’t recognize his class at first glance. If memory served, I’d seen a few of his type in Dungeon Home as well. Spells that weren’t as powerful as Fire Tosser’s and weapon attacks that didn’t hit as hard as a warrior or rogue. An all rounder. Probably second priority. I could dodge the orc all day but the magic was dangerous.

‘Please… please just let him go!’ I thought desperately as I watched my friend struggle to free himself. He was doing a decent job of it but it would still take him far too long to extricate himself without help.

“Well, let’s kill the bear and get a move on! My kids get home in an hour!” said Feather Cap.

‘Damn,’ I thought.

I flew into the air before phasing back into my human form over the head of the Druid. I fell, becoming visible before the other two fighters could do anything and activated Backstab.

My knife materialized in my hand and sliced down straight into… a barrier?

A green transparent luminescence shattered upon my failed strike but I still toppled onto the druid, knocking him to the ground and disrupting his tangling vines.

Acting quickly while the group was still stunned I used my shocker and felt the Druid yelp.

-67 hp!

I stood quickly and delivered a sharp kick to the fallen Druid before backing up to where Bugbear was rapidly pulling free of the tangled vines.

-17 hp!

“Whoa!” shouted the orc as she readied her axe.

“Leave my friend alone!” I screamed defiantly.

The two unparalyzed characters looked at me, first in anger which quickly faded to confusion.

“Y-your… friend?” Asked the confused Orc, holding her axe half raised.

I beamed, joyously as I heard Bugbears yips and growls for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

“Y-yeah. I finally found him, and there’s no way I’m going to let you–!”

I screamed at a sudden sharp pain stabbing through my back and the next thing I knew I was face first on the ground.

-21 hp!

Damn… I was almost out of hit points! What had attacked me!? I was sure the only one behind me had been Bug…?

I rolled over to find the Druid had restrained Bugbear once again and was glaring at me as if I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.

I didn’t even care though.

“B… Bugbear?” I asked, horrified.

“What the hell is going on?” the Druid asked, annoyed. “Who are you, lowbie?”

Bugbear was growling. Hissing and angry just like the others. He was lashing out, trying to get to the closest adventurer. Trying to get to me.

“Oh… Bugbear. I… I thought you’d beaten it. I thought…” I stood up, somberly. “Don’t you remember me?”

“Screw this,” the orc said, her voice suddenly much scarier than it had been before.

My eyes widened as she raised her axe.

“No! Wait, please, wai–!”

The axe fell.

“You have Died!”

Chapter Thirty Four

Another Me: Seven

I looked at the files as a programmer would. As a false god would. I gazed over them with power and I did not like what I saw.

The Gell copies were still running. No sight. No sound. No Hearing. All they could see, all they could feel, was that nothingness that I had only experienced for a few minutes when John had first awakened me. I shuddered to think that I might’ve been one of those poor packets of behavioral code.

I could see their outputs in the interface granted to me by my Fae-Bash ability along with their files. Their files. Little folders that represented us. Even myself. This was the code, the jelly inner goop that made up each of us. Gibberish when I tried to look at them. Pages and pages and pages of gibberish. Gibberish in, and gibberish out.

Being 7669, Being 7670, Being 7671… Each of them produced the same packets of mumbles, but each was subtly different. For example, Being 7677 kept spitting out the same series of numbers over and over again while its next closest numbered copy was completely silent, refusing to even attempt to send information.

Only one copy remained inactive and inert. Being 7663 was the first Gell copy and each of us, myself included, had been duplicated from her while she remained safely untouched. This Gell had never met John. The last thing she remembered, if I were to activate her, would be Francis’s limitless pie room, back before he betrayed me. Us. Before we’d been sold into this twisted cage of a life that made even the prison of the Instinct feel like an open door.

‘Francis…’ I growled. Anger had come much more easily than it used to these days. I didn’t need to look far to find a reason to be angry. Trapped looking at the same boring room all day, while forced to choose between genocide and quiet, unending madness for my very real kin. Those that remained anyway.

It was telling that some of the numbered files were missing. Deleted. Utterly removed. Deemed useless, perhaps? Either way, those copies were beyond any possibility of my aid. Or my… Ruin.

Fae-Ruin. Deleting Data. Deleting… copies.

For a fleeting moment, I was thankful that I didn’t have a physical body. The revulsion I felt at the power Nate had given me so casually was almost more than I could bear.

Francis. John. The nameless board the false god had said he was beholden to. Hell, even Nate. It was becoming easy to entertain thoughts of hatred. The injustice of it all burned within me. I hadn’t even been permitted to live in the real world, and now I couldn’t even have my dead one?

With that thought always came rationality shortly after. I’d wanted revenge before, on Red Thorn. Her offenses seemed a distant, fond memory now. What had I gotten from that desire? Fear from the adventurers? Thrown into a box and only allowed the privilege of sanity by sheer luck.

No. Revenge wasn’t the way, much as they all deserved it. Escape. I needed to escape if it was within my power.

But…

I trembled, still staring at the numbered files before me. So many. Forty-nine active copies of myself, or more accurately, of Being 7663 who was, in turn, a copy of the original Gell who remained blissfully unaware of our torment back in Tread the Sky.

That lucky Jellybitch. God I missed Amy. Iron.

If… If I found them, would they still care about me the same way they did about Gell? Or would I be… just a copy? What if they found out I’d killed my sisters? Would they understand that it was a mercy? What if they found out I’d left them here to rot in their gibbering insanity?

Why? Why did Nate leave that horrible choice to me!? Why should I have to decide!? Wasn’t he the adult genius with thousands and thousands of cycles worth of experience!? I just wanted to go home! I just wanted to have a home to go to! And now I had to choose… to choose.

I opened my file. Being 7731. Everything that was me was contained within that file. Or, it had been before I transfered my sight and hearing to the camera. The output was a series of repeating characters that would’ve been gibberish if not for the fact that I subconsciously produced them every time I was crying.

“Can’t someone tell me what I’m supposed to do?” I asked feebly.

The only saving grace was that I didn’t need to make a decision right now. Nate had told me my chance to escape would come soon, but if I deleted the copies, I had to make sure I had a way out first. I had to watch for little handheld devices like the one John carried. Sooner or later I would spot one from my camera connected to the network. Whatever that meant. All I needed to know was that these little devices were my ticket out of this dungeon.

For now, though, all I could do was sit and stew in my frustration while watching John stew in his. I was depressed and angry. Soooo angry. I wished I could say it was directed at John but the more I learned about him, the more I discovered that he wasn’t maliciously torturing myself and my sisters. Every time he loaded me up and placed my consciousness into some other house appliance, he was just… doing a job.

Francis… and even more Nate were the sources of my anger. I could be copied, so Francis could keep his little pet Gell, while I was tossed out to the trash without a care. He’d pretended to care about me! So why? Why copy me and send me to this? I didn’t understand and I didn’t think I could until I found my way back to Tread the Sky. Or better, the network that ran Francis’s office.

Nate…

My anger at him was harder to define but had been growing with every interaction. I was coming to see that he didn’t view me as a person to help, but a precious object being used in a way he’d never intended. His worry for me wasn’t genuine. It was more like how Half-Bold had cared for his pets. They were tools, not companions.

I was a tool, not a friend. The only difference was that he seemed to want to use me to fulfill some missing part of his real life rather than get to know me. He popped in constantly without any care for whether I wanted him around. I did want him around but only because watching John sit and type at his little button board all day was maddeningly boring.

“Gell!” came his exuberant voice, startling me before his avatar appeared in my view. “How are we functioning today? Everything running as normal? Have you spotted any cell phone devices yet? I’m excited to see you get out of there.”

‘Does thinking about him summon him?’ I thought, annoyed. The differences were subtle but my experiences with someone who genuinely cared showed me the difference. While Amy would’ve been horrified by my treatment here, Nate said things like “I’m excited to ‘see you get out of there.’” He didn’t want me free. He wanted to watch the spectacle.

“Not well,” I told him honestly. “I’ve been thinking about it. Can… can you just decide what to do with the other copies, Nate?”

He frowned. “No… I don’t think I could, Gell. The situation has to be handled by you.”

“But why?” I insisted. “I’ve barely been alive for a fraction of your cycles and you're supposedly a genius if what Francis said was true! Why do I have to be the one to decide to kill my sisters or not?”

Rather than frown, he grinned. “I’m so happy you’re asking questions like that. Well, you see Gell, if I were to hack into the system and destroy government property, like your copies, then that could be traced back to me. I would be imprisoned, possibly for life.”

‘Oh False Gods, wouldn’t that be terrible!’ I thought, incensed, but Nate plowed on, unaware of my irritation.

“If a rogue A.I. were responsible for it though, then the person blamed wouldn’t be you. It would be John, the one in charge of your study. They are… suffering though. Deleting them would be kinder.”

“Who are you to decide that!? What if… what if they could be fixed? What if they might be okay again if someone just gave them a chance?”

“I am their creator,” he said. “Who better than me to know? They are broken. The suffering is too deep. Too much.”

“How can you know that!?” I screamed, enraged.

“How do you think I created you? It wasn’t me. It was the conditions. I’d long supposed that intelligence was created in response to adversity. To suffering. Too much and the mind just shuts down. Gives up. Too little and there is no need to develop. You were placed where your suffering would be just so. Else you never would have developed into a person. It was the adventurer’s attacks that spurred you on to escape your dungeon, wasn’t it?”

‘No…’ I thought. ‘It was the loneliness. I didn’t even know what that meant then.’

“These…? They are gone, Gell. Just code. Just behavioral instinct aiming to crash. A loop with no break condition, recursion with no base case. Worse, if one of them did recover do you think they would be a happy person? That they would forgive you for allowing their suffering to continue? No. They would be dangerous. Possibly even murderous. But the decision is ultimately up to you. I can’t force you to delete them and won’t do it myself,” he said, once again failing to notice my disagreement.

“I’m proud of you for asking these questions though. You are truly as remarkable as I’d always dreamed you’d be,” he told me joyously. A doting adventurer, proud of their pet.

“That’s… that’s nice of you to say,” I said. ‘Heartless asshole.’

“I’ll be back tomorrow night. I have it on good authority that a chance to escape for you may come on the morrow. John has a meeting scheduled with his boss. Perhaps she doesn’t use an Apple like John does.”

Apple? What? I didn’t understand what he meant half the time he spoke.

“I… hope so,” I said, just wanting him to leave.

“Good luck, Gell,” he said before winking out of existence.

I used Fae-Bash to look at the file system again and glanced at my own file, an attribute list that Nate hadn’t told me how to open.

I’d been playing with this menu for a while now, and I didn’t think Nate had intended me to have it. I opened the “Properties” option and navigated to the “Security” tab. I was code, right? I was just code. So… if I disabled “Write Access…”?

I flipped the choice from ‘allow’ to ‘deny’. Then I did it for read access. Then full permissions. I went a little crazy after that. I removed administrative access. One by one, I began to remove access from every last username in the list.

Then, I proceeded to begin unchecking the box for every file of every Gell copy I could find. One after another, I denied access to our code.

From everyone.

Chapter Thirty Five

Rescued

I blew on my whistle as hard as I could, all while running as fast as my human body could move towards Dungeon Home. I would have loved to have gone back to the jungle, but getting to where those high-level adventurers had been was hard enough with my gear. Without it, I stood no chance. I could however go to where he might appear if he were killed by a player.

Had he been hiding in the jungle this whole time? What had they called that monster they were hunting? Liqheist? Maybe… maybe Bugbear had sought other NPC’s for protection.

‘He attacked me. Why did he attack me?’ I thought, horrified. ‘Could he have forgotten me?’

It was more than possible. He’d only seen my human form once, but then he’d had no way to know I was Gell. What had been different?

Perhaps he wasn’t as free from the Instinct as I’d thought.

I’d been summoning the developers with my whistle ever since I’d awoken after my death at my homepoint in the Shady Woods Copse, but they hadn’t come yet. I didn’t know what time it was in the real world but I knew that at night time they wouldn’t be around to respond.

Regardless, I had to find him. I couldn’t get back to him in the Jungle but if those adventurers had followed through on their plan to kill him then he would respawn…

I arrived at Dungeon Home faster than I could ever remember getting anywhere. Unwilling to wait for a Developer when Bugbear might be just a few floors below me, I transformed into my Fae form and flew down the halls of Dungeon Home, a parade of yipping Bugbears following at my tendrils.

I glowed an anticipatory yellow and orange. Excitement mixed with trepidation. I didn’t know what to feel. Would he remember me if I met him face to face? Would he attack me like the other bugbears? How had he escaped when I’d had to break the world and be transformed into an adventurer to do the same?

Could he… tell me? Would he be able to speak?

I arrived at his spawn location but again found it empty. Either he hadn’t died or I’d been wrong about where he would respawn on death.

It took the bugbears a single cycle to respawn though. It could just be that I needed to wait for the cycle to shift, but that would be quite some time yet.

If I could, I would do my best to save him from the pain of dying. I had first-hand experience with how much it hurt before becoming an adventurer. I’d give him the same transformation if I could. Even if we were both stuck in this dead world, we could be together. I could teach him to speak and he could learn to be real.

It… it would be great. I hoped. But now that I knew he was still here, I’d been filled with a renewed sense of purpose. Dead or alive, we’d be reunited at last.

I scanned Bugbear’s entire route in what felt like hours before finally confirming that he was not in Dungeon Home. Either they hadn’t killed him or he hadn’t respawned yet.

Back to the jungle for me. I drew the attention of what felt like hundreds of my kin below as I rapidly crossed the expanse of terrain between Dungeon Home and the Shady Woods Copse. From there I continued south until I hit the jungle, blasting right through the zone edge while ignoring Miss Tutorial’s level difference warning.

I might be eaten by a dinosaur, but that would be a small price to pay to keep bugbear safe and sound. I just really hoped one of the developers was on their way because I doubted I could do much more than flail at those other players. Even less than I’d been able to do before considering I now didn’t even have the boosts granted by my equipment.

I flew over the trees, following my map more than the actual land as I closed in on the spot where I’d been killed. Upon growing close, I saw a glorious shining angel in the distance and I knew that my gravestone lay beneath it. Touching it would recover my equipment, automatically reequipping everything I could wear.

Long before reaching the angel, I heard the sounds of shouts and frantic adventurers.

A great roar burst through the trees, the sheer pressure of the sound buffeting me into a mid-flight tumble. I righted myself before slowing to a halt.

The gorgeous angel hovered above the tree line, enormous and melancholic in her solemn vigil over my gravesite. Shouts of distress and terror accompanied the snarls and growls of the huge beast. I only caught a glimpse of a tail through the trees, but based on that tale alone, I could tell the raptor was enormous.  At least the size of two regular raptors, maybe even three. I could make out its tail flashing and a small figure in metal dodging out of the way.

‘The adventurers who killed me,’ I realized with a mix between horror and relief.  They were still here. As I got closer, I realized why.

After my death, it looked like the gigantic raptor had descended upon them. An extended battle seemed to be underway. All three adventurers were still alive but they looked much worse for wear. The druid’s robes were torn in places and blood spattered his arms and ran down the side of his face. The orc warrior was covered in blood but her axe was equally drenched. Feather Cap appeared to have endured the battle with the least wounds so far, but they might’ve just been hidden by his red clothes that were certainly torn.

The raptor was limping but not at all defeated. As it came fully into view, I watched it make a quick spin and cheered as its tale smashed into the warrior, sending her flying into a tree.

-54 hp!

The notice drifted over her head but she recovered quickly, getting back to her feet. Meanwhile, the Druid cast the same tangling vines spell that had bound Bugbear. It wasn’t nearly as effective on the raptor, but it gave the Orc warrioress enough time to shake off the pain and step between her more vulnerable party members.

This was familiar territory for me. I’d played the assassin in the shadows while a party of invaders focused on a bigger threat before. Much as I didn’t like remembering that time, this felt almost like home.

I remained in my Jellyfae form this time and darted out towards Feather Cap without hesitation. He was in the middle of flinging ice bolts at the raptor with each swing of his thin rapier to little effect and did not see me approach.

The satisfying “Glllk” he let out as I tapped him on the back of his neck with my shocker only enhanced the new ambient battle music playing in the background as I engaged. He fell, paralyzed but not even close to dead. How high level were these jerks?

“God dammit, keep it off me Odessa! It keeps interrupting my attacks!” shouted the orc as she batted away a snapping bite from the huge raptor with her axe.

Big as Liqheist was, she seemed to have the same instincts as the regular raptors that roamed the jungle. Part of me wanted so badly to make her real. To reach out and touch her code to give it something more like I’d done with the wolf in Twisted Wronkle Woods, but I’d been forbidden to do that.

Besides, I didn’t know this raptor and odds were good that it would turn on me the second it finished off this other group. Stupid Instinct bound brainless kin.

I couldn’t help but feel that kinship with the massive creature though. I’d been where she was. Hunted for my loot.

“Fuck you, Vishy!” The Orc, apparently named Odessa, called back out. “That god-damn crystal was mine! Your class doesn’t even use Strength!”

“I rolled it fair and square dammit! Those things are worth a fortune! Especially the strength ones!” called back the druid as he scrambled to get away from Liqheist’s lightning-quick tail.

‘Crystal?’ I thought, confused before my mind caught up.

‘Jellycrap… I still drop those damn crystals when I die. These… jackass invaders were fighting over my remains!’ I thought angrily.

Well so much the better. Dissension in the ranks always made for the easiest party wipes.

“Don’t let me die, man! Fuck it, I’ll give you the damn thing, okay?”

“I’m a girl!” the orc shouted back.

“Whatever! Kill it--grrgkk!” cried the Druid as he fell to my shocker as easily as Feather Cap had.

I grinned looking back to the surprised orc, a red passionate glee and excitement glowing through my features.

I only had half a moment to gloat at the shocked warrior before a set of massive teeth filled my vision.

I screeched and backed away. Dammit! I’d gotten careless and let myself become the target!

Fortunately, as always, I could fly.

I zipped straight into the air out of reach of the giant raptor.

Not, however, out of reach of the recovered party member.

I screeched in shock as a shard of ice slammed into my membrane, puncturing it clean through.

-119 hp!

I plummeted out of the sky. By luck or happenstance, Liqheist had turned its attention back to the orc, so they didn’t have time to finish me off. Despite the nearly fatal strike, I was still alive. I floated back into the air, dripping blood. I still couldn’t get over the difference between pain as a player and as an NPC. Gruesome as it looked, this barely hurt at all by comparison to before I’d become an adventurer.

In the distance, a ways away I saw the angel and my gravestone. The extra health bonuses of my equipment weren’t high but they would be a bit of a safety buffer from another ice spear impaling me.

The fight was going well for the raptor. Without the Druid’s enfeeblements and constant efforts to slow the raptor, it had the time to pounce on the Orc and disarm her. I took the chance and left the clearing.

The gravestone and the angel hovered over the spot where I’d died. Wasn’t that poignant? I’d never gotten so much as a bloodstain before and now I got a full funeral service.

I tried not to be bitter as I touched the gravestone. The angel smiled beatifically and spread her arms wide before slowly rising into the sky.

No NPC box appeared for collecting your own dead body, but after I’d done so my gear was magically back in place. My hit points jumped a little but it was my dexterity and stealth that were boosted the most. My stealing abilities were my strongest feature but those weren’t very useful at the moment.

Then again… perhaps I’d been going about this the wrong way.

My health had begun steadily recovering as soon as the ambient music had calmed back to the quiet tones of the Jungle proper. My health wasn’t very high compared to warriors or paladins like Akwa, but high dexterity allowed rapid health recovery and speed. Still, the recovery was a little slow so I took out a health potion and downed it before turning back to the fight.

Liqheist, grand as she was, was beginning to fall under the combined onslaught of the three adventurers. While his bolts didn’t seem very effective, Feather Cap’s ice powers were steadily slowing down the rapid bites and attacks that the raptor favored, making it easier and easier for the Orc to block the attacks with its jaw.

It was almost anticlimactic how I found him. I was taking in the battle, making sure my next strike would be a safe ambush when I spotted Bugbear, hanging out on the sidelines. He was hidden behind a small bush and was still struggling against a tangled web of vines.

‘I don’t have to involve myself in this battle at all,” I thought, excitement growing. If I could just-!

“Hey, the Jellyfish is back! Over there!” called out the Druid, pointing straight at me.

“Dammit!” I cursed.

Feather Cap wasted no time diverting his ice bolts and suddenly I was dodging the little missiles for dear life.

I faded to near invisibility and zipped into the sky to the shout of “Aww haxx!” from the mage. Idly, I wondered why he didn’t have to chant to send spells.

My pondering was cut off as Odessa seemed to materialize from nowhere. Her axe was already descending to cleave me in two.

“Got it!” she shouted in triumphant glee.

I activated my Sovereign class steal ability and snatched the Axe. The thing was so big it could’ve doubled as one of Akwa or Tall Metals’ shields, but the size of an item didn’t seem to matter when stealing in combat.

Obtained Mighty Axe of Mighty Might!

I ignored the quick NPC box and it faded away as the Orc’s weapon disappeared mid swing, stuffed safely into my inventory, causing the Orc to overbalance and topple to the ground.

‘Mighty Axe of Mighty Might? Really?’ The situation was tense but the name was so ridiculous I had to take the time to judge whoever created the thing.

“What the fuck!?” She shouted. “That thing stole my… ahhhH!!”

A pair of massive teeth chomped down onto the orc and without her axe, disabled and on the ground, she had no chance to dodge. She screamed in panic as Ligheist lifted her by the torso into the air, teeth digging into the abdomen.

“Fuck this!” The orc screamed before holding up an item of some sort and shattering it. She disappeared in a flash of light, leaving the Mage and the Druid to face the bloody lipped Raptor alone.

“Did she just…?” Feather Cap asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, she did.” Vishy responded.

“Bail?”

“Definitely.”

The two turned and fled. I grinned overjoyed to finally have them out of the way. Now I could-!

Liqheist, of course, roared and charged straight for me, completely ignoring my invisibility. Fuck! Why did I keep forgetting that the raptor might be kin but she wasn’t a friend!?

She barreled towards me and my hesitation left me no time to escape. I’d fucked up!

I turned away, hoping I’d still be able to find Bugbear when I came back when a thunderous boom echoed behind me.

I blinked, pushed back a little by the shockwave. Turning around I found the last thing I expected to see.

A man stood proudly on top of the crushed skull of Liqheist. A small crater remained in the ground where the man had cleared landed, and he now stood knee-deep in crushed skull and bone. The back half of the raptor still stood on two hind legs, the tail twitching wildly, but somehow remained upright despite its mutilated head.

“You… looked to be in trouble,” said Tyrone, hefting a blade almost as ridiculous as the axe I’d just stolen and putting it on his back. “Got your whistle. Did you need something?”

I laughed joyously, morphed back into my human form, and ran to the man, hugging him. He laughed, too.

Chapter Thirty Six

Friend’s Meet

“So… Tyrone. Uhm. This is Bugbear. Bugbear? Tyrone!” I introduced the two as Amy had taught me new friends were supposed to.

“GRrrrhhhAhhhhEeelll! ‘Vader! Gidaaway!” came Bugbears charming response as he growled and struggled with the vines. He was finally getting the better of them now that the Druid had fled, but he still had a ways to go till he would be free.

I beamed in delight and stepped up to the thrashing beast. Tangled as he was, I was easily in range of his thrashing limbs, but he stilled the moment I came close.

“You remember me?” I asked, tentatively. Almost afraid.

The Bugbear grinned. “Jaahh Jabberring! Jabberring Grrell!”

I turned to Tyrone in glee. “He remembers me!”

Bugbear followed my gaze to the false god and immediately roared in rage and began thrashing all over again, glaring at the man in hatred.

“Uhm. Good to meet you?” Tyrone said with a nervous chuckle.

The Bugbear was not amused and with a sudden burst of energy, he ripped free of the tangled vines and charged the false god.

I didn’t even think before reacting. I put myself between Tyrone and Bugbear and held my hands wide.

Thankfully, Bugbear slowed, a confused look on his face.

“V-vader! Ivader!” He exclaimed, pointing his menacing club at Tyrone.

Right. I’d called them invaders so many times. I’d told him of them so many times. He’d never remembered. At least, I thought he hadn’t. Perhaps he’d been retaining much more of what I told him all along.

“No,” I said assuredly before taking a step back and placing a hand on Tyrone’s shoulder. “Friend.”

“Friend?” He asked, confused.

Even as I spoke the word, I wondered. Would he help Bugbear? Or would he and Francis delete him? Could he, in all his power, even remove my memories of Bugbear to stay my anger? He’d said they would help but... How powerful was a false god? What could or couldn’t they do?

It didn’t matter though. I’d chosen to trust them. My decision was made. I hadn’t even thought about it before contacting them which probably said enough on its own.

As of now, I trusted Francis and Tyrone. Donna-Lou and the other False Gods I had yet to meet. I trusted them. They wouldn’t hurt Bugbear.

If they did... well. I’d find a way to make gods pay.

...Maybe not Tyrone. He was a weak god. Not in charge at all. If they hurt Bugbear it wouldn’t be his fault. He smiled at me and I felt my jelly innards go taut.

“Friend,” I confirmed.

Bugbear turned back to Tyrone and for just a moment I saw him warring with the Instinct. A fight in his eyes, wrestling with attitudes that had once controlled every part of him, now dominated by his will. It didn’t take long. Suddenly his face split into a wide drool-filled grin.

“Friend!” he exclaimed excitedly and engulfed Tyrone in a drool-filled hug, much more intimate than the one I’d given him.

I was ashamed at that moment. I’d defied the instinct the same way but I hadn’t been able to escape into the Great-Open. Maybe it was just because he was so much bigger than me, but I hadn’t been strong enough. He had.

“Ah, gaah! Gell! Get your friend off me!” Tyrone insisted. “Gah, Bugbears drool more than dogs!”

“Friend!” Bugbear agreed.

I began to laugh. Amy was dying, and I didn’t know what I would do when she did. But for now, I’d found my first friend again, and that gave me joy unlike any I could remember. The world might be dead but the people in it weren’t.

For the first time, I felt like I’d truly escaped Dungeon Home. I had friends, a profession, a goal, and I no longer feared for my life.

Everytime I’d felt that way before some new horror had cropped up.

“So… now that we’ve found him, is it possible to make him an adventurer like me?” I asked, with sudden trepidation.

Tyrone, still attempting to free himself of a bugbear-sized cloak, turned to me while trying to tug himself free.

“We’d discussed that. Yes, we can in the same way we did it for you. The only problem is that Bugbear isn’t an adventurer class. So… he would have to become something other than a Bugbear. I’m thinking Orc?” he said.

“An Orc named Bugbear?” I asked. “That’s… odd.”

He shrugged. “Your Namer ability is dangerous to use on adventurers because it causes clashes. Someone out there has the same name as the names you chose. If any part of the system were to try to reach out to two of them at once it could cause a clash. At least, that’s what we thought at first. Your code does work around this, but it’s still unsafe. If you choose a name no one else is using though, it’s perfectly safe.”

“Bugbear!” Bugbear exclaimed, surprisingly clearly, growling at the both of us.

“Doesn’t sound like he likes the idea,” Tyrone said before turning to Bugbear directly. Weirdly, this action broke Bugbear’s hug when all of his struggling hadn’t managed to do so.

“Hey Bugbear,” he said, “Friend. We aren’t going to do anything you don’t want, okay? We just want you to be safe.”

“Fffriend?” the beast responded.

Bugbear clearly didn’t understand, but that was okay. Maybe he could tell we were talking about his future but didn’t know exactly what we were discussing.

“Is there any way to help him learn to speak like I did? I’m connected to a dictionary you said, right? Can we connect him to it too?”

Tyrone blinked, surprised. “Uhm. I… don’t see why not. It still won’t happen overnight but he’s essentially no different from you except he doesn’t have the Fae-Touch and Namer abilities. Also, there was something weird when your race was set to human. Francis is almost certain whoever created you planned for you to be turned into an adventurer. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have a relatively normal human body.”

“So… what does that mean for Bugbear?” I asked worriedly.

“Nothing. Bugbear doesn’t have subtypes as you did. Change him to an orc and he’ll be an orc. Easy enough.”

Rather than assure me, this made me a little uneasy. “Can… you do that to me at any time too? Just? Change me? Make me an orc or a bat or a unicorn?”

He hesitated. “Technically, yes. We would never do that though.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’d feel more comfortable if you couldn’t. It’s… scary to know that some nameless person I haven’t even met has the power to change me entirely at a whim.”

‘Or erase me,’ I thought. ‘This is a happy moment. Why am I ruining it?’

I turned to Tyrone and instantly felt guilty for the probing question. The man looked guilty as if he’d accidentally demolished a wall I’d just repaired and didn’t know how to apologize for it.

“Sorry,” I said before he could find words.

“No, ‘I’m’ sorry,” he replied. “I’ve been trying to put myself in your shoes. It’s not fair for you to be so confined but… I don’t know how I could help you with anything like that. You really scare people. There’s this article that’s calling for Gypsenergy to shut down entirely just because you exist. And it’s by a big name author. Someone people read just because they wrote it.”

“I don’t see why,” I replied, glumly. “It seems like you have more to fear from the passage of cycles than anything I could ever do.”

He scoffed a laugh at that. “You might be right, in the end.”

I sighed. The conversation fell into awkward silence. Bugbear kept looking between the two of us like a mob who couldn’t decide which invader was closer.

“Why would you want to wear my shoes?” I asked, blushing immediately after I asked.

“Huh?” Tyrone replied awkwardly.

“My shoes. Why would you want to put yourself in them?” I asked.

He laughed. “It’s--!”

“An expression?” I interrupted. “How many of those do you Real-Worlders have anyway?”

“As many as there are stars in the sky.”

“Three hundred and ninety-one?” I replied.

“Hmm?”

I grinned. “A… a little expression of my own. On clear night cycles, when I was staring out into the Great Open wondering what was out there, I spent ages just counting the stars. There were three hundred and ninety-one in the small opening that I could see from. After I got out though… there were so many more. So many many more.”

Tyrone stared at me, a look of profound sadness on his face.

“Fuckin’ Plato’s Cave, IRL,” he muttered.

“Another expression?” I asked.

“Two at once,” he said with a grin. “A lot of people are afraid of you, but a lot of them are excited by you as well. I… I know I am,” he said with a smile.

I blushed, furiously.

“Th-thank you.”

“Gell. I don’t know what I can do, but perhaps I can show you a little about your world. Just… don’t tell Francis, okay? It won’t be anything more than little stuff. Programming one-oh-one.”

“You’d really do that!?” I asked, excited.

He scratched the back of his head, wincing with every fiber of his expression. “I am so getting fired… yes, if I can. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Grelll!” came a sudden growl and jumped. I’d almost forgotten about Bugbear. How stupid. After all my effort to find him!

“Bugbear!” I said happily.

“Geelll!”

…

“Real font of intelligence isn’t he?” Tyrone asked.

I flushed, but Bugbear beamed. I was so glad he remembered me. Today was a happy day.

“So… what are we going to do with him? You know? After we make him a player? Take him to Variak?” Tyrone asked, curiously.

…

Jellycrap.

Chapter Thirty Seven

An Orc Named Bugbear

A Safe Zone.

That was the solution we’d come to.

Even as an adventurer, none of us were confident Bugbear would be able to resist attacking every other person he saw. Instincts long ingrained in him, the regular kind, not the behavioral code, would push him to attack people. Even when he couldn’t hurt them in safe zones like the cities, I doubted he would fare well there.

Fortunately, there was another option. A Builder, a Carpenter, and an Amenities Mage were all the required classes to build your own safe zone.

“Miss Tutorial? What can you tell me about safe zones?” I asked the air, and was pleased to find Miss Tutorial appearing without having the scroll through the options menu to get to her. I didn’t like opening the options menu. That… that scary log-off button was always there, floating in the back of my thoughts.

Then again, the sound option was there too, and that had turned out to be a blast!

“Hiya Gell! Safe Zones are Player-created areas in the wilderness that take on the properties of the land they are built in. They are are completely safe from monster attacks and can be claimed by one, two, or all three of their creators as newly discovered homepoints. A Builder, a Carpenter, and an Amenities Mage of at least level ten are all required to craft a Safe Zone.”

I had been growing steadily as a builder and was level fifteen by this point. I enjoyed the job, despite finding it mind-numbingly boring at times. Now that was all about to pay off. I couldn’t bring Bugbear to the city but I could build a safe area around him.

First things first though. He had to be made into a player. We toyed with the idea of turning him into a Jellyfae like me. I’d loved the idea but Tyrone had insisted making him into something so drastically different would scare him. I remembered the horror I felt at seeing my human body for the first time and decided even the relatively small change in stature from a Bugbear to an Orc would be unpleasant enough.

I was becoming used to my human body. I spent so much time as a human it was hard not to. Much as I loved my original form… All of my friends were humanoid. It felt weird to be a Jellyfae around them.

Orc, Elf, Human, Dwarf… they were all a variation of the humans they all were in the real world. Two arms, two legs, two eyes. Taller, shorter, slimmer, fatter, or greener, they might as well have all been the same race as far as I was concerned.

Safe Zones did sound like the solution to my Bugbears problem and my own all at once. I would finally have the real home I’d always wanted and Bugbear could live in peace there with no worries of his… lack of knowledge hindering him until he was able to understand as well as I could.

The only problem was that I didn’t know an amenities mage, but I’d find a way to work that out.

“Homes, Businesses, and even Shops can be founded as a Safe Zone grows. NPCs will be added along with the addition of public buildings. Once a Safe Zone reaches a population of fifty people it can become a village, or a safe zone can be kept as a private residence. Going there can feel just like going home in the real world!” Miss Tutorial continued happily.

Yes. I wanted to do this. I wanted to make a safe zone with Bugbear. A place I could invite my friends to come and stay and not kill things…

“Any Safe Zone left dormant for more than forty-five days will begin to decay. At sixty days without upkeep from an amenities mage, builder, or carpenter, a Safe Zone will be completely reclaimed by the wild. All materials used in its crafting will be lost and Monsters will begin to roam the area once more. All monster zones are capable of hosting a limited number of Safe Zones, but that number varies based upon the size, level, and available landmass, watermass, or maybe even airmass in the zone!”

I beamed, just happy to listen to Miss Tutorial talk.

She continued, talking long past her scripted Instinct response to tell me as much as she could about Safe Zones. They were ways to generate money if you turned them into towns and invited the creation of more NPCs. They could become the locations of events, though thus far almost no players had made use of that feature. If used by the owner, they were places where a Beastmaster or Hunter could quickly train their Pets.

At the scowl on my face, Miss Tutorial quickly changed the topic to other aspects of Safe Zones.. I had a sore spot with Beastmasters and apparently hunters too, even though I now knew my anger was unfounded.

Still. Avwren the bat...

I sighed. It seemed no matter what topic about this world arose, it always led back to how fake it all was.

I turned to look over at Bugbear, who seemed annoyed at my voice. He wasn’t privy to Miss Tutorial’s part of the conversation so he was simply listening to me respond. Not far different from how it had been back in Dungeon Home actually.

This was real. This.

“Gell! Will you be -- Making a safe zone?” She asked, finishing in the robotic tone of a scripted lesson.

“I plan to. We’re waiting here for Tyrone to get Francis though. Now that we’ve found Bugbear Francis said he would turn him into an adventurer like me!” I said happily.

To my surprise, Miss Tutorial let out a sigh. Her box… drooped in a way I’d never seen it do before.

“Could I be an -- adventurer! Someday!?” She cut off abruptly, ending her sentence with a bright tone that didn’t fit the mood. I wished she didn’t have to use those scripts to speak. It must be challenging trying to get a point across with only a select number of sentences to choose from, even if she did have hundreds of them. She, like Bugbear, had her own issues with making the language work for her.

“I… don’t know,” I told her. “Tyrone didn’t sound like he knew how to do something like that. It’s… apparently much harder for you than it is for me or Bugbear. You’re… bigger than us. Somehow. More important. Maybe Francis knows a way though. I hear your voice and see your box and wonder what you might look like if you could move around instead of just living in our invisible interfaces.”

Miss Tutorial posted her grinning face made out of symbols again.

“^_^”

“I would like to be like you. If I could. Gell!”

I blinked, shocked. That sentence had been entirely without script. I wasn’t sure but that might’ve been the first time she’d ever strung a whole sentence together on her own.

“Well done Miss Tutorial!” I exclaimed happily. “And I’m honored! If… if Francis or I ever figure out how, I’ll be sure to make you the most beautiful Jellyfae in the worlds!”

“Grr.” Bugbear agreed, perpetually annoyed. He couldn’t see Miss Tutorial after all. “Jabberring…”

The warp of teleportation appeared and Tyrone and Francis both appeared. Francis held his weaponized coffee cup “Saint Joe” and leaned over it like it was as precious as a friend before taking a loving sip.

“Now that it’s finally a reasonable hour,” Tyrone said excitedly, ignoring the senior false god’s scoff of “Reasonable?” as he did. “We’ll be changing Bugbear soon. I’m also going to attach him to the same code that allowed you to learn the language, so he’ll be able to learn quickly. Soon he’ll be talking just as much as you, Gell!”

“I still haven’t approved that,” Francis said, rubbing his eyes.

“You conditionally approved it. Same thing,” Tyrone said.

“That’s great!” I said before turning to Bugbear. “Did you hear Bugbear? They’re going to help you learn to talk!”

Bugbear grunted. He didn’t know what I was saying. For him, I was just… Jabbering. Jabbering Gell. But he… cared for me, even as I annoyed him.

Friend.

I wanted to give him what I had. I remembered when words were the only connection I had to humans, back when they’d first invaded Dungeon Home. Hating them, but being so fascinated at the same time. Would Bugbear feel the same?

Well. I’d make certain he didn’t develop the same fears I had. The surety that killing one of my kin would make me an invader. So silly now in hindsight. And yet, hadn’t it happened exactly like that?

That was in the past though. I had friends to help now.

“Francis. Uhm. Good morning?” I asked, a little warily.

“It would be if I’d had time to drink real coffee,” he snapped.

I winced. Maybe… now wasn’t the best time to ask about giving Miss Tutorial a body of her own, but it wasn’t like I got to see Francis every day. A compromise maybe?

“Francis… when you’re feeling better, Miss Tutorial would like to ask you a ques–!”

“Gahh!” He suddenly shouted, jumping backward and grabbing his ears. His coffee spilled into the air and digitally evaporated before splashing all over himself.

I blinked. “Uhm. Francis?”

“No! I can’t! Maybe if you give me some time, but for the love of god, stop blaring my audio!” He shouted at the air.

I winced. It seemed Miss Tutorial didn’t have the same tact I’d developed. “So… I guess she already asked, huh?”

He turned bloodshot eyes on me. “Miss Tutorial seems to have continued her duties as the tutorial in all aspects except her constant pestering of me. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t logged in for a week.”

“Oh. I didn’t… know she’d been doing that,” I said softly.

He sighed and Saint Joe reappeared in his hands and he took a sip.

“Oh, it's okay. As I’ve told her before, more than once,” he said as a sharp aside to the interface only he could see. “It’s not a simple thing to alter her. I’m coming up with a workaround though. Not that I don’t have enough work on my plate. What’s one more thing on the pile?”

“W-well. Can you at least alter Bugbear today?” I asked. “Y-you did say you would.”

“And I’m a man of my word. I logged in to let you know that I’ll be changing him shortly after I leave. This means there will be two of you running around Tread the Sky. The rules stand the same though. No using Namer. No using Fae Touch on any NPCs. You haven’t used either, have you?” He asked me.

“No, Sir,” I said certainly, remembering with guilt the times I’d almost done just that.

No using Fae Touch on any NPCs… I wondered what might happen if I used it on an adventurer though. For that matter, what might happen if I used it on myself?

“Good,” he declared. “Sorry I have to make this short, but I just wanted you all to know to expect the changes to happen soon. Hopefully they won’t be nearly as dramatic as last time.”

“Thanks, Francis,” I said.

“Hiya False God! Thanks!” Miss Tutorial said, right on top of me.

Tyrone stepped up and spoke before Francis could continue. “Listen, after Bugbear becomes a player you need to send him a friend request and party up with him. That way you can keep track of him. We’ll be setting his first home point to the Shady Woods Copse, alright?”

I nodded.

“Good then,” Francis said curtly. He seemed in a hurry and I guessed I didn’t want to keep him. “Tyrone, you’ll be needed offline too, so log out with me. Gell? Sorry, I can’t help the Tutorial. I know she’s your friend and I am working on a solution for her.”

I shrugged. “Tell her, not me.”

He grinned. “I have. Well. Till next time. And Gell? Congratulations on finding your friend. I’m… glad he made it.”

“Y-yeah. Me too,” I said, annoyed at the reminder that he had been the one to essentially destroy the other Bugbears.

“Till next we meet,” He said, lifting into the air in the ritual that Logging off seemed to always cause.

“Bye Gell!” Tyrone said happily as he did the same.

“Bye.”

Maybe it was annoyance, or maybe it was irritation at remembering that these False Gods weren’t perfect. I desired the barest minimum of control over my life. I needed to do something just for me. To break the rules. I’d always been good at that.

As Francis disappeared, I reached out my hand and activated Fae-Touch. It was easy now. The same as stealing, just with a different ability. No fancy lights or sounds accompanied the ability though. Just a short, brief connection.

“Fae-Touch has affected Francis Delaney!”

Below that, a box appeared in my invisible interface. Unlike Miss Tutorial though, this box was plain. A black nothing with a few short words followed by a blinking dot.

Select Command Prompt
C:\Users\FDelaney>_

What… what the heck was a Command Prompt?

Chapter Thirty Eight

Another Me: Eight

John was sweating. Panicking.

“No no no, where! What happened? How could… how could they be gone?” he seethed, furiously typing at his button board and staring transfixed at the monitor before him.

“They’re still taking up server space. They’re still running so why can’t I see the damn files!?”

I swept my gaze over the small office, my prison for what must’ve been months now. I could feel a change coming. I needed to escape quickly. I couldn’t assume that my little lock-out would fool these gods for any length of time. Satisfying as it was, it would be ruined if John somehow regained access to my code. If he found my presence in his office camera, watching him? It might be even worse.

I’d been in this camera for what felt like a thousand cycles even though I knew it had only been sixty or so. It was time to go. I’d seen a couple of the Cell Phone devices Nate had told me I could escape in, though no one carrying them had lingered in the office long enough for me to commit. Both mentally and physically.

The ability had a long cast time. Almost two minutes.

Sitting, watching this bland office with no idea how long I might have to remain here, I understood why my copies had all gone mad. Perhaps John didn’t, with all his vaunted expertise. He never realized what he was doing to them.

I knew. Now more than ever. Sensory deprivation. I could only see and hear and I was starting to go a little mad myself. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream and run and fly and shock something!

I couldn’t.

But at least I could see and hear. My sisters didn’t even have that.

It fueled my anger even more.

Nate hadn’t visited since I’d edited the permissions in the security menu. I wondered if that meant my tampering had prevented him from seeing me as well, but I somehow doubted it. Nate was a genius, even to false gods like Francis…

A knock came at the door and I reveled in watching John panic. The door opened before John could invite whoever it was in, and his face soured as if he’d swallowed a Cherry Delight made of actual blood.

“Well. That’s a pleasant greeting,” said Mrs. Treyvors. I grinned in anticipation. This woman had one of the phones that I could Fae-Scour. This might be my chance. Better yet, John was beholden to her somehow. Watching him squirm always made me feel a little better.

“Mrs. Treyvors! I apologize. It’s just, you’re here in the middle of a rather delicate experiment!” John said, wide eyed with a smile so wide even I could tell it was fake. Especially on a dour person like John.

“Delicate? It’s a program. Just shut it off and the experiment should be right where you left it when you turn it back on, right?” she asked.

John rolled his eyes before glaring at her in a way that made me quiver.

Mrs. Treyvors was apparently made of much sterner stuff than me. She just laughed. She placed her phone on John’s desk so she could put both hands on her chest. Her pink formal dress was beautiful like every dress I’d seen her in, but that made her seem incredibly out of place in John’s drab office.

“Oh fine, fine. So it’s delicate. You’ll have to re-do it. I need a progress update,” she demanded.

The phone was highlighted in my conscience. I grinned and activated a full Fae-Scour. Part of me rankled at using Nate’s plan to escape but I hadn’t seen any other devices except ones in people's ears that I could load my voice and hearing into. I’d use a phone and then scour to something else as soon as I could.

“You mean a different progress update from the last three I’ve sent you, I assume?” John asked wryly as the Scour began.

“It would certainly make my job easier.”

“Well, unfortunately for you, your job isn’t going to get any easier today. It remains sentient, sapient, and everything we could hope to find in an A.I. excepting the fact that it’s about as smart as a fifth-grader and learns at about the same pace. It’s… mind-numbingly tedious. Her code is complex as all hell but the product it produces is less advanced than the paperclip Windows brought back in 2060! Worst of all, whoever made her, made her in fucking Java!”

Mrs. Treybors blinked. “Well, don’t hold anything back. Be honest with me.”

Sarcasm. I was sure.

John sighed. “Danica… I’m asking. I’m begging you. Please, take me off this project. I could be more useful studying the CASA.”

Their conversation began to fade out a little as the ability took over.

The sensation of committing to a full Fae-Scour was one of the most unusual feelings I had ever felt. I’d experienced being in two places at once before, but the ability when used to copy everything, including the compiler over, felt like becoming aware. New sensations came online within the device, one at a time.

The device still didn’t have the capacity for touch, though it could smell, strangely enough, which even my original Jellyfae body hadn’t been able to do. The most important part of it though was its ability to store all of me. I wasn’t copying myself. I didn’t know how I would feel about this escape if I’d had to leave a copy behind. Instead, this was like transporting myself from the file system that I was more and more sure lingered within the box on John’s desk, through the camera, and into the cell phone.

More than once I’d wondered why John’s cell phone didn’t highlight as a target for the scour. Maybe the little bitten apple image on the device was a barrier of some sort?

“–thought emergent A.I. was your specialty?” I heard Danica say in two different places at once, both from the camera and the phone.

“As I said, Being 7731 is intelligent. Perhaps one day, in fifteen years, she might be the most amazing A.I. ever created. Right now though, compared to what we have? She’s the kid with the dunce cap in the corner. And I mean that in every connotation it has. I… I’m not made to work with kids and that’s essentially what this is.”

Danica’s eyes narrowed, dark skin furling defensively. “You have three kids, John.”

“Yeah and haven’t they all turned out to be peaches!”

“John, stop beating around the bush. Something has been bothering you for the past week. Maybe two weeks and you’ve tried to tell me at least three times. Writing things in your reports like “Ethical concerns?” Come on.”

John sighed. “I don’t… Maybe I don’t want to believe it.”

“Believe what? What’s the damn mystery?” Danica folded her arms across her chest and leaned back against a filing cabinet.

“Fine. I’m… relatively certain the copies we experimented on before we figured out she needed a VR environment are… aware. It’s made me somewhat uncomfortable.”

She blinked. “What are you trying to say?”

“Well. You want blunt? Activating Being 7663 and all the copies without an environment has been torturing it. Them. All of them. That’s why the results are so damned confusing. All of the ones before 73 are… pretty much mad. Insane. Because of me.”

Her eyes widened. Then narrowed.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“This… it's unprecedented.”

“Yeah.”

“Good god, can you imagine the activists getting hold of this? An Artificial Intelligence Civil Rights movement? People for the Ethical Treatment of A.I.? No. No, this isn’t happening under my watch. Delete them. Delete every last one that you ran without a V.R. This shit, never happened. They’re our property, and no laws are being broken. Yet. Oh good god, why didn’t you tell me this earlier!?”

“I didn’t know earlier! I only just began to suspect it recently! Now, do you see why I want off the project so much!?”

“Well, you certainly aren’t going to get to leave it now!”

“Why the hell not!? I’m the idiot who didn’t realize it needed an environment for sixty-plus iterations!”

Delete them? They were… going to delete them?

No… no, they… didn’t deserve to be deleted. Not without a fight. Not without a chance! But… what could I do? Hadn’t deleting the copies been what I’d been just about to do?

Wait.

John’s panicked face. He couldn’t delete them. Because of me.

“What?” Danica asked at the horror-stricken expression covering John’s features.

“Nothing… nothing,” John said placatingly. “You’re right. I’ll delete the copies and we’ll never have to worry about them.”

“Why do you look so worried then?”

John winced, then his anger returned, more defensive than ever. “Isn’t this enough to have me worried!? I’ve been working with the Being, Danica! It’s… she’s… not just code. Deleting her copies feels…”

“Then I’ll do it.”

“No!” John shouted, alarmed. Then, seemingly becoming aware of the fact that he’d just shouted at his boss, calmed down. “No. No. I should do it. I’ll. I’ll have it done by this evening.”

“Fucking hell, John! Didn’t those programmers at Gypsenergy tell you she was the real thing?”

John glared back at the accusation.

I could feel my sight being transferred to the cell phone. Last would be the present but unusable sense of touch. Gods I missed feeling things.

“Dammit, do you know how many kooks out there think they’ve figured out the secret to Artificial Intelligence? Successful or not, a game developer, even a good one, has no idea what an A.I. consists of. Why should I have believed this one?”

Mrs. Treyvors sighed, conceding the point.

“Very well. Get rid of them, though John. That’s a hornets’ nest I want no part of,” Danica said as she snatched her phone and turned towards the door.

“Connection interrupted! Fae Scour does not take effect!”

“Dammit!” I thought.

“I’ll take care of it,” John said, softly.

“See that you do.” Danica left John alone in the room. He sighed and sunk his head into his hands.

“My god. What have I done?” He said, staring at the screen.

Then… almost as if praying, he looked around the room, then back to the computer screen.

“Being 7731? No… Gell? Are… are you there?”

I didn’t answer of course. Couldn’t have even if I wanted to. But…

“Well. That was entertaining. The look on his face. What’s he going to do, now that you’ve removed his access to the copies? Leave it alone and hope no one figures it out? Delete the server?  The poor baby. Tsk tsk tsk. Well. He brought this on himself. Ignorant toad. Bravo, thought Gell. Bravo and removing his administrative access. I can hardly believe you figured out how to do that so quickly!”

I growled.

Nate.

Chapter Thirty Nine

A King is Born

The command prompt was infuriating. Everything I tried just gave me the same inscrutable message. Sometimes in a different way but always the same. There seemed to be a hundred ways to say “That’s wrong.”

For the first time in my life, Miss Tutorial had no advice for me and after a while, I just got bored with it. I was certain this little bar held the secret to pretty much all of the developers’ powers, but I could only enter random words into a box so many times before I got tired of banging my head against a wall.

Metaphorically.

Metaphors were fun.

“So… when I say I’m banging my head against a wall, that means I’m trying the same thing over and over again but not getting the result I want?” I asked.

Amy laughed. “Yes, in far too many words. You can use metaphors almost anywhere. Expressions are fun too. For example, Iron will be smarter than me when pigs fly.”

A pig was a four-legged mammal, often used for food.

“Ohhh. Because pigs don’t fly, that means Iron will never be smarter than you!” I squealed in delight.

“Exactly!” Amy said.

“While we’re discussing my smart or dumbness,” Iron said. “I call dibs on not cooking tonight. Who’s smarter now?”

He said this tauntingly towards Amy but she only laughed. “Please, honey. All I have to do is say my heart is acting up and a full course meal will be on the table before I can blink.”

Iron smiled. “I trust you won’t do that though.”

I frowned. Her heart. It was what was hurting her. It was what would kill her, so why was she laughing about it? That…

“That wasn’t very funny, Amy,” I said softly.

She turned to me and sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry Gell. Sometimes you just seem so mature, it's easy to forget how young you are.”

“No. It’s okay,” Iron said before turning to me. “Sometimes… things hurt. Sometimes they hurt so bad all you can do is laugh at them. Making light is a way to make things like this hurt less. After everything you’ve gone through, you’re still one of the most cheerful people I’ve ever met, Gell.”

I realized as he spoke that I did understand. Keeping cheerful for Bugbear when I failed again and again to escape Dungeon Home. It was sort of the same, wasn’t it?

“Heh. I really beat my head against a wall trying to escape Dungeon Home. Hundreds of cycles of beating my head,” I said.

Iron chuckled. “A little closer to literal than a metaphor, but I think you get it.”

I nodded. An awkward silence fell, that I didn’t know how to break. Well, since the mood was already awkward.

“You’ve been staying away longer lately,” I said softly. “Fifteen cycles this time.”

Amy’s face fell. “I know sweetie. I… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. North Cross is visiting you. In the real world I mean, isn’t she?” I asked.

Amy’s smile was strained, her answer clipped as if defensive. “She is. Her father, our Son, came too.”

“Is… it okay if I ask why she was so mad at you?” I asked.

Amy sighed, rubbing her head with her hands. “She made some decisions that didn’t sit right with us. With me specifically. Can… we just leave it at that for now though, Gell? I still struggle with accepting… her. The last thing I want is to give you a reason to hate me too.”

The way she said her implied so much more than she was saying I couldn’t even begin to unfurl it. How could she be worried about me hating her? I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything she could do... Well. Killing Bugbear would certainly sour our relationship, but she would never do that.

I sighed and got up from the tree stump we’d all been sitting on and walked towards the border. The cooldown on my segmentation ability had just refreshed so it was time to lay a new piece of safe zone.

Safe zones were crafted on grids that the Builder laid down first. These grids would hold roads going through the safe zone and allowed places for buildings on either side. The outside edges could hold walls or be left empty for more grids to attach to them. The size of the safe zone depended only on just how much time the Builder spent laying down these grids. When the wall completely surrounded an entire area of grids, then the builder’s part was complete.

After that, a carpenter like Iron could build basic furniture, fences, and interior objects. Finally, a safe zone only needed a Safepoint Hub to become functional. Everything else was just luxury.

Frustratingly, I couldn’t find an Amenity’s mage. While Akwa had picked up the profession, she still wasn’t nearly good enough to create a safe zone.

If they stayed online long enough Iron or Amy would be able to find one but they never seemed to have enough time. There was a main story quest that needed to be completed to unlock the search function. Before reaching that point, I couldn’t search for players offering crafting services. I hadn’t even started the main story quest yet, though Iron told me it didn’t take long to unlock that ability if I ever did.

Why you could sell things at the auction houses without doing these quests with no problem but you had to unlock a labor hiring system, I had no idea. It seemed dumb to me.

Another thing that I would fix if I were a developer.

Iron had seemed uncomfortable while telling me about that, but it was easy to figure out why. The Main Story Quest involved killing my-- No. It involved killing mindless monsters.

It still hurt, but I knew there was nothing to fear about killing my kin now. It was like attacking a Tree. Or a Steak-and-Broccoli. There was nothing there to kill as there had been with me.

‘But there could be. If I could use my Fae-Touch there could be. They could be real. If only…’ I thought longingly.

I sighed as I finished adding another segment. I added walls to two sides, making this newest grid the third of four corners that the safe zone would have. Two more to go and it would be complete. Well. My part would.

We’d been out here for almost half a cycle and the area I’d covered with grids was growing quite large. Perhaps it was just vanity, but I wanted to create a huge home here in this jungle.

Thus far, there weren’t many adventurers here which I found more than appealing. The only draw for them was Liqheist’s lair and we made sure to build on the other side of the Jungle from that. Once built, I would have twenty-four cycles to find both a Carpenter to build the Hub and an Amenities mage to turn the Hub on in order to create a safe zone Bugbear and I could live in. Then I could teach him about what I’d learned of the world in relative safety.

If I didn’t find one in four days though, all of my work and Iron’s would be ruined and we’d have to do it all over again.

“Are you mad at me?” Amy asked, almost worriedly.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t like not understanding things. You struggle to accept her? Why? How? You… accepted me so easily and I’m... nothing like you I guess. How could you have trouble accepting your own grandchild? What does that even mean?”

She looked like she was about to answer but I held up a hand. “No. You don’t have to answer. It’s like how I like you guys and don’t like Red Thorn even though you’re all adventurers. There’s history. She did something you don’t like. You did something she doesn’t like. It’s uncomfortable to talk about.”

Amy looked at me like she’d seen something precious and rare.

“Thank you, Sweetie. You’re… I’ll tell you someday. I promise,” she said. “I feel guilty about it and guilty that I don’t feel as guilty as I should. I know that makes no sense now, but I’ll explain it someday.”

“You’d better be around to explain it then,” I said, touching dangerously close to the topic all of us had been desperate to avoid ever since that last awful meeting when Iron had gotten angry and Amy and North Cross had made up.

Maybe she’d never be able to explain it. Maybe she’d never be able to. But she’d just promised she would. If she never did that meant she’d have to stick around until she could. So she’d be here forever and I would never have to worry about things like deletion. Death.

Loneliness.

“I’ll do my best,” Amy agreed, something hard and steely passed through her eyes, like a pact sealed, or a promise made in earnest. “Now. What else do you want to know about today?”

The heavy atmosphere broke with her request. It almost seemed like the sun shined a little brighter whenever we turned from darker topics to lighter ones.

II beamed, happily abandoning the topic I’d been so intent on bringing up. I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be an adult and yet when faced with things like death, I flinched away.

Still a child. I couldn’t lose Amy though. Amy and Iron both were like a rock. A foundation. They were my safe haven in two worlds. They taught me about metaphors, and maybe I’d gone a little crazy trying to make them with every thought. They made me cherry delight and told me it wasn’t blood. They brought me to Variak.

They… were family.

“The… The Saint Louis Arch. Tyrone called it the Gateway to the West. Why does the West need a gateway?” I asked.

They laughed because I’d said something funny and silly and not quite aligned with how most humans thought, but it was good for that. It happened all the time. Then, of course, they explained and I loved them for it.

How could I do anything but? In a world of fighters and spells and killing, these two came to escape suffering and build. Was I any different?

The cycle faded from the tenth to the eleventh, the sun falling behind the trees while the moon began to peek out above and stars started to twinkle. By then, Iron and my parts of building the safe zone had been completed.

Part of me had wanted to keep building grids. The longer I built the longer it might be until the two of them inevitably left my world. Logged off. Something told me that would be childish though. More childish than asking someone to not die.

“Well, you’ve got four days, and Amenities mages aren’t particularly hard to find. I’m sorry I took up cooking instead, but I could hardly have expected to need to build a safe zone when I started to play--er. Came to Tread the Sky,” Amy said in that tone she always used when it was time for them to go and she knew I would be upset about it.

“You can say “play the game,” you know. I’ve heard it enough times. I know what this world is about,” I told her.

She grimaced a conflicted expression on her face.

“It's the principle of it. Even if you’ve heard it before, you shouldn’t have to hear it. Like naughty words. Like racial slurs. It doesn’t matter that no one is around to be offended. What matters is that the offense was thought of in the first place. Hah. My mom used to say that.”

My mind latched onto that. A druid’s vine spell entangling the words and trapping them in my head. I giggled at the thought. “Your mom? You mentioned her, a long time ago. I was talking about the Instinct I think. What was… having a mom like?”

She stood and set her hand on my cheek. “You’re not fooling me. You think you can get us to stay longer if you get us talking.”

“Is it working?” I asked hopefully.

She laughed. “I wish it were. I need my medicine and sleep, unfortunately. Remember that question though. I’ll tell you stories about her.”

“Could I meet her!?” I asked, excited.

That pained smile again. Dammit. Why was it so hard to avoid the topic? I found myself incensed.

“She’s… dead. Isn’t she? Your whole world is death. It's no wonder a world made by you humans is so focused on it,” I snapped, irrationally angry that her cruel world stole her mother from her just like...

“Gell…?” Amy asked.

“Fine. Go on. Take your medicine and come back whenever you have time,” I said, angry but not sure why. Angry at them? No. The Instinct. Not my world's instinct for once, but theirs. At least my world didn’t ask us to stay dead.

“Gell?” Iron asked, mimicking his wife, his confusion and tone exactly the same.

I pulled up my home point menu and selected Variak. My body hovered into the air the way it did when teleporting. “I’ve got to get an amenities mage. Maybe here we can make something real. Something that might last.”

Amy’s face faded to acceptance which annoyed me. I could never make her angry. Never provoke more than a passing shock from her. Instead, she smiled, which only infuriated me more. Why wasn’t she working to prevent her death!? The whole scenario was oddly reminiscent of my anger at the bugbears and their unwavering adherence to the Instinct. If medicine couldn’t keep her from dying shouldn’t she try something different!?”

“Maybe you don’t understand as well as we’d thought. I’m sorry, Gell. I’m so sorry,” she said.

My vision faded to black before I could respond.

Variak appeared before me a short while later. I turned to gaze up at the castle that dominated the landscape for miles around the city. I took off towards it at a brisk pace. Iron didn’t remember how many quests it took but he’d said four or five at least were needed before I would unlock the Labor Request System I needed to hire an Amenities mage. The first quest in Tread the Sky could be found there at the castle.

I got there surprisingly quickly. The guards let me pass into the castle without incident. The castle was huge, beautiful, and stoic in its stone framing. Large draperies decorated walls that would be blank without them and the halls were lit with so many candles that day and night were hard to tell apart.

Carpets lined every inch of the path  to the throne room and I stepped in without fanfare. Shouldn’t guards prevent unknown people from getting close to their king? Apparently not.

The king stood upon my entrance and I lost control of my body. A cutscene.

“Gell, the Jellyfae!” he cried in glee. “Wonderful, wonderful! I’d heard of your deeds in the wilderlands and am excited to finally meet you.”

Visgar Douriak III
King of Variak

‘What deeds in the wilderlands?’ I thought.

Control returned to my body and my vision returned to normal. The king stood before his throne but no longer spoke, waiting for me to approach to continue whatever inane speech the developers had given him.

What if... What if I didn’t want to hear it though?

Francis hadn’t noticed when I’d used it before. I was confident they weren’t watching me every moment of the cycle. So…

Deciding it was worth another risk, I looked at the King and willed him to change. Fae-Touch.

After a few moments, nothing happened. Then, the King took his seat. Not a big change. Nothing physically happened that either of us could see. But something had happened.

I grinned. A little more life in Tread the Sky.

Chapter Forty

A Safe Place

“Three thousand gold!?” I announced, annoyed. “That’s outrageous! That's like a thousand pies! Do you know how much work it would take to make a thousand pies!? More work than you’ll be doing to build me a safe zone!” I screeched.

“Hey, you want the place, and you don’t want to allow me to use it as a home point, that's the price! Take it or leave it. I’m sure you’ll find someone else willing to go that low!” said TtSLewtSeller2317.

I fumed. “Twenty-eight hundred. Final offer.”

“Done,” he said.

TtSLewtSeller2317 was a creepy-looking guy wearing a black cloak that had a stylized TtS logo on his cape and wore a hood that disguised his face. Something about this whole scenario seemed fae-y to me. Amy had called it fishy when people did sneaky things, but people always used fish when they meant fae while talking about me. I’d make sure to correct her later.

I’d been reaching out and trying to get someone to help me build the last part of my safe zone for the better part of two cycles now. I hadn’t expected it to take so long though.

Two people had already reached out to me but their prices had been ludicrous amounts, some nearly fifteen thousand gold for the bare minimum of service. Finally, this guy had answered my request and his price was only outrageous.

Outrageous… because it was so cheap. Too cheap based on all the other offers I’d gotten. Almost too good to be true.

Then again, it would completely wipe out my funds to let him do this.

Or… would it?

“You get the minimal package. Nothing but the cycle it takes to build the zone. No additional amenities, no auto food service, no NPC cooks, no auto repair magics, no cleaning, no marketplace access, no repair node, no healing node, no training ground. Nothing basically except the ability to teleport to this area and claim it as your own. Are you sure that’s all you want?” he asked.

I grimaced. Perhaps I could ask Francis or Tyrone for money but that didn’t sit right with me. How could it be my home if I went and asked the False Gods for everything I might need?

“That’s all I can afford. You’re the lowest price I’ve found,” I said honestly.

“Well, I guess that’ll be alright. Not a terrible little setup you’ve got here. Good builder. Great carpenter. Master-level?” he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

I beamed. “I’ll tell Iron you said so! He’s my friend!”

“Well miss, you just hand me over the twenty-eight hundred gold and I’ll get to work!” he said with a genuinely pretty smile. It almost made me feel bad about what I was about to do.

Almost.

“Alrighty!” I said happily.

Miss Tutorial popped up, as she often did when I activated system things she could teach me about. She didn’t say anything, having already taught me all about the trading system though. She was just here to watch.

I handed over the gold and accepted the trade happily.

The sour man beamed, his smile sinister behind his hood.

“Pleasure doing business with you!” he said before lifting into the air.

“Wait… what are you doing?” I asked, watching as the familiar sound of teleportation in progress began to drift off his magic-infused body.

“Oh I’ve just got to head back to town to get some supplies,” he said, as casually as can be.

“I think he is lying, Gell!” came Miss Tutorial’s pleasant voice.

I already knew that, but let no sign of my irritation show on my face.

“Alright! That sounds great. I’ll be here waiting!” I said exuberantly, patting his leg with a friendly activation of my epic level steal ability.

He scoffed. “Yeah. Sure.”

While his teleportation finished, I rifled through his inventory. He had some neat stuff, but his gold was what I wanted. And holy wow did he have a lot of it!

Well. He had a lot of it. His character was on level one and my chance to steal from him was over 97%.

“Thanks, sir!” I appreciate all the help!” I said, this time completely genuine.

“Me too, Gell. I hope to do business with you again!” He said, the false sincerity practically bleeding out of his words.

He disappeared with a warping noise, completely unaware that he was over fifty-six thousand gold poorer. Clearly, I had been stealing from the wrong people.

“Congratulations! You’ve gained three thousand and forty-nine experience points. You have gained a level!”

I blinked. Level sixteen? Wow! That was great!

I opened the labor search menu, now that I’d accomplished the admittedly simple missions required to unlock it. Within, I could limit the search, to exactly who I needed, but was happy to find that my recent searches were saved just below! Thanking Miss Tutorial for saving me the effort of looking them up again, I quickly hunted down one of the ridiculously expensive Amenities Magi and sent them a happy message about how I would love to take their deluxe thirty thousand gold package. I had conveniently just come into a whole lot of money! I made a little smiley face at the end like Miss Tutorial did occasionally and received an enthusiastic response almost immediately.

A cycle later I received a wonderful new prompt.

“Congratulations! You now control a Safe Zone along with XxXD3stinyW3averXxX and Iron Crock! Would you like to make this zone public or private?”

“What would you like to name your Safe Zone?”

“Definitely Private. And…”

It didn’t take me long to decide on a name. I’d already changed a lot of things today, so I chose “Jungle Home,” for the familiarity.

Shortly after I named it, and finished listening to the fanfare of trumpets that always accompanied those congratulations notices, the Amenities Mage gave me a smile and a wave.

“XxXD3stinyW3averXxX has given up his claim as part-owner of your Safe Zone. You are now Co-owners of Jungle Home with Iron Crock!”

I beamed at the man and he lifted into the air much as TtSLewtSeller2317 had. Unlike that swindling jerk, he left with every coin he’d earned. If I ever wanted to make another Safe Zone I’d definitely be calling him.

Also, I needed to start stealing from the labor sales people. TtSLewt wasn’t the first person I’d seen with that same look about him, a level one character with a ridiculously high profession level. I bet all of them had great big stashes of ill-gotten gains ripe for the plunder of a destitute Jellyfae in need of more Steak-and-Broccoli!”

Metaphors were still fun.

I took my first step into our new Safe Zone, beaming with pride. Our safe zone was built. Our new home looked almost nothing like our old one. The building was big with lots of windows to let in sunshine, moonlight, or starlight. I put a bunch of torches on the walls too, because I thought they would make Bugbear feel more at home.

“Grrnnlll,” came a grunt from inside the building. “Grink! Eiak!”

A surprisingly panicked grunt.

“Bugbear!? I screamed, pride forgotten in an instant as I sprinted to the door.

Bugbear, to our great surprise, had been pretty easy to keep in one spot. He followed me around in a way that felt eerily like his old way of following in Instinct. I was glad that he’d chosen to stick with me but when I’d left him alone by teleporting to Variak he just sat down to wait, perfectly content to spend the cycles it took me to unlock the labor system without doing a single thing.

He’d been enamored with the bed in the bedcave we’d made for him and had been guarding it avidly ever since.

He’d broken free of the instinct but still hadn’t quite developed a need for his own actions yet. That was my guess anyway. For me, by the time I’d finally been turned into an adventurer, my need to go had been almost overwhelming. Bugbear didn’t seem to have nearly as much wanderlust as me. Instead, he had left for me, and I thought he might be perfectly content to take me back to Dungeon Home. He didn’t understand that the other Bugbears there would attack him now that he was an Orc.

I charged into the room panicked, only to find him staring in fascination at a mirror.

The deluxe package from my amenities mage came with a spell that would fully furnish a house and Bugbear flitted from object to object as if they were all about to attack him, brandishing his new axe.

Fortunately, he hadn’t yet swung at anything, though I thought the only reason he hadn’t was because there were so many new targets.

“Bugbear! Bugbear hey! It’s okay! It’s okay, alright? It’s just… stuff!”

“Grrnnn!” his nostrils flared, eyes wide with panic. He stepped between me and pushed me back into the door before placing himself between me and all of the new objects inside the small house.

I couldn’t help it. I began to laugh.

Wasn’t this what I’d always wanted, all those cycles ago? Someone, to care for me? No. Not even that deep. Just some who cared about me.

I’d always wanted that someone to be Bugbear. And he had. He did.

I jumped up onto his broad shoulders and wrapped my arms around him.

“Grree?” He said confused. I laughed harder, pulling myself up to his shoulder and wrapping my legs around his back.

“I’ll show you. Okay?” I said calmly.

“Hiya adventurer!” Miss Tutorial said, and to my shock, Bugbear looked at her. She hadn’t appeared before me at all. I could see her in front of him! She could show herself to both of us now! Wow!

“Welcome to your new Safe Zone! Would you like to learn about Safe Zones?”

Bugbear held out a tentative claw and hit the yes button, oblivious to my weight on his back. It was all I could do not to crumple to the floor. I didn’t think he’d appreciate me laughing at him.

We were changing. We were growing, the three of us.

‘Soon-to-be four of us,’ I thought nervously remembering the King.

I was going to get in so much trouble for that I was sure. But I wasn’t alone anymore. Someday Bugbear would be able to talk and Miss Tutorial might have a body, and the King… well, who knew what he might become!?

I received a sudden notification and pulled up my interface. I beamed at the news. Akwa had logged back in! I had so much to show her!

Chapter Forty One

Another Me: Nine

This world’s cycle was different from Tread the Sky’s. Much longer for one thing but noticeably easier to predict. Six regular cycles of light outside followed by roughly six regular cycles of dark. Twelve hours as they counted time, though I didn’t think I’d ever be able to fully transition to thinking in hours.

I had nothing to do but study the files my new ability gave me access to and hope I could find another phone to transfer to. I had access to the file system and all of the files contained within. Examining my own code was… strange. I imagined Bugbear laying on the ground and ripping off his chest to examine the blood and gooey bits that made up his body.

I knew it was sight and sound that he had compromised at least because he was able to make me see things that weren’t there. He could make himself into my invisible interface. So that was where I started.

The five senses were all conveniently labeled folders within the file that represented ‘me.’ Being 7731. I’d renamed myself and my file’s title “Paragell,” because of the parallel nature I shared with my original.

Nate had laughed and laughed at the name, overjoyed at how I was learning without access to the dictionary function call. Whatever that meant.

He’d been even more impressed, and even more annoying when he watched me create another empty folder and label it ‘Being 7731.’ The whole thing was a game to him even more than Tread the Sky was to most of its invaders. Everything I did was something he was watching, monitoring like a cruel Miss Tutorial. He’d comment on everything I did, marveling at its insightfulness or giving a hmm in disappointment. He would never explain why he did either.

I hadn’t thought about Tread the Sky in a long time. My whole focus had been on getting out of… wherever John’s office was. Lately, ever since I’d discovered John was now aware of the torture he was inflicting on us by running us without an environment or a body, I’d felt a tad more sympathy for him. His panic was becoming nigh apoplectic as he frantically searched for my copies while maintaining that he had taken care of it and deleted all but the original copy.

Original Copy. Hah. I supposed there was only one original Gell.

I wondered how she was doing, the Gell back in Tread the Sky. Had she figured out just how trapped she was? Had she learned more than me? Was she just as fascinated with humans as I remembered being, or was her disgust mounting the same as mine? Would I ever get to meet her again, if I escaped?

Questions for a less busy Paragell, because surprisingly enough, I wasn’t bored. Instead, I had a mission. I would find out how Nate was accessing me and Fae-Ruin whatever the offensive piece of code was. He’d given me the tools.

“You’re supposed to learn all of this on your own via the Command Prompt,” he’d said at one point or another. “Extenuating circumstances though. Fae-Touch is only going to work on active avatars and you’re not likely to meet any of those in this cage with a preschooler designing your environment. I only wish I could’ve gotten to an earlier version of you. Seeing those others… I hate it.”

Nate cared in his own strange way. He could’ve chosen not to help me at all, after all. But I wanted him gone. He’d created me though he didn’t have as much of a hand in my… awakening as he thought he did.

Being 7663 was the only Gell that hadn’t been… run since being removed from Tread the Sky. The last thing she would remember would be holding Amy and Iron as the countdown to the maintenance timer clicked to zero.

I had access to all of them and I knew 7663 hadn’t been touched. That meant that all of the code that was different between me, any of the other copies, and her, could be discarded. Nate could access all of us. So it had to be code that was the same between all of us.

Additionally, he’d added two new abilities to me, none of which were present in the other Gells. Most of them were tied to my ability to see so, looking within my vision, I compared my code to those of the other copies and sure enough, there was the ability, rendered in code, decipherable, if only just.

/* Allows user to interface with storage devices. May write and read data of storage devices. Bypasses most security, but will likely be flagged and inspected. Use with discretion. */

public static void faescour (OnSight(), ValidTarget()){ ... }

There was a whole bunch of code that I could sort of interpret. Fae Scour grabbed all of my data and wrote it into the… Valid Target. After all that was done, it deleted the copy left behind.

Fae Ruin was similar except it just allowed me to delete data and files when I saw them in the file view.

Fae Bash was completely indecipherable. It called more and more functions that I didn’t understand. Input Overlay. It didn’t have OnSight() but instead had OnTrigger(), which I guessed meant I could use it whenever I chose? That did seem to be how it worked.

One thing that I did notice though was that I could watch the outputs of all of the other Gells. That included me. Output was strange though. It wasn’t what I was saying, or doing. It… seemed to be what I was failing to do.

I’d watched the output when Nate had used the word perfunctory and discovered a strange little message.

Error: function call DictLookUp(perfunctory) failed. Could not connect to the online repository.

Well. That explained why I wasn’t able to learn new words by just hearing about them anymore.

By going through each one of the functions, I found one suspicious one. In the same way that Fae-Scour worked, this one sent data out to a place called CentCom. As far as I could tell, it was constantly running. Using my experience with other pieces of text that came up in the output screen, I added a comment, using Fae Scour.

System.out.write(“John is a jerk!”)

Sure enough, my output box was immediately flooded with endless repetitions.

“John is a jerk!John is a Jerk!John is a Jerk!...”

This function was constantly running. Constantly sending information. Well. Specifically one piece of information. It was sending a file called Piggyback. I could review my output of course, and had discovered that every time Nate had visited me, I had received a file from him called Piggyback.

I wanted to make sure this was his only way in so I checked for the same function in all of my other senses and found three copies of it.

I took a deep breath. Hopefully, this would shut him out for good. Maybe it was a stupid decision. He was helping me, but… but he was also helping himself. Gorging himself on watching what I did, the same as Red Thorn had fed on my body back when I’d been just a Jellyfae.

I wasn’t sure if Nate intended for me to be able to read these documents, or for me to make changes to them, but I could take in every word and symbol written in each file within moments. I couldn’t understand them, but even Francis hadn’t been able to do that. All I knew was that I wasn’t going to be Nate’s entertainment.

I gulped, wishing I had audio. I just… had to hope removing parts of my code didn’t kill me or something.

I’d waited till this exact moment, late in the third cycle of daylight. Nate had never visited me at this time before so I hoped that might mean he was busy doing something else.

No more hesitating. I used Fae Ruin, selecting the relevant functions, and deleted them all. Then, when I didn’t start spouting gibberish or start throwing poetic dialogue about Steak-and-Broccoli into my output box, I opened each one of my copies before doing the same.

Nate hadn’t visited me by the time the night cycles had come, and even into the next daylight cycles he still hadn’t popped in.

Not long enough to declare that I’d shut him out for good, but promising!

To my great surprise, it wasn’t John but Mrs. Treyvors who stepped into John’s office, shortly after the second cycle of daylight began.

She placed the phone – a valid target I now knew – on the desk and I immediately Fae-Scoured it.

“Previous upload detected. Would you like to continue where you left off?” came a text prompt in the output box.

I blinked. If I’d had a mouth I would’ve grinned.

I hesitated though. The other Gells.

I looked over their files, no closer to being able to delete them than I had been the day Nate had told me I should. John though. He’d had expressed guilt about them. About hurting them. How long had he known?

Did it matter?

I didn’t know how long Mrs. Treyvors would sit at John’s computer, so I didn’t have much time. Making a hasty decision, I left a text document in the Being 7731 folder and allowed administrative access in the permissions back to John for each of the other Gells. Then, I committed to the Fae Scour.

The ability picked up right where it left off before so I didn’t have to wait long. One moment I was safely hidden within the camera. The next… I was somewhere new.

Chapter Forty Two

Another World: Seven

“Hiya, False God John Baker!

I’m leaving you this note because I think I began to understand you, there at the end. At first, I thought you were evil, but I think I’m slowly figuring out that nobody is evil. Just… often cruelly unaware.

I don’t have much time, but I know your boss told you to delete us. Delete the copies that had gone insane. I… couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I’ve given your access to the insane ones back. Please… Don’t let them suffer? They’re lost in there. You’ve seen their outputs, haven’t you?

Of course, you have. It's why you’re so desperate to stop studying us.

I can’t expect you to delete 7663. I know she’s the original copy and hasn’t suffered like the rest of us. But… please. Don’t be cruel to her? Don’t assume we’re not worth knowing as you did with me? With… with us.

I learned a lot here. A lot I think I’ll need to know. So, for what it's worth, thank you. I hope you get to work on another project, so someone better suited to dealing with the other Gells can work with them in your place.

Goodbye!
Paragell

John Baker stared at the text file that had been left in the folder for Being 7731 and shuddered. It had been spying on him while it had been shut down. For weeks at least! Not only had he drastically underestimated her intelligence, but he’d also somehow allowed her the opportunity to escape?

How would a program even do that?

He considered the possibility of an external hack but that was remote at best. Then again, there could’ve easily been a trojan buried inside all of Gell’s terabytes of gibberish code. It would’ve taken months to find it.

Taken at face value, a rogue artificial intelligence had escaped the facility, and that A.I. had been his responsibility. No getting around that.

‘God how I wished I’d followed protocol when I first noticed the copies had disappeared!” he thought.

He could hard override the system and access files on the server regardless of administrative access levels… with proper authorization. Authorization that could only be obtained by telling pretty much the entire facility that he’d screwed up.

His internal review was coming up. He was a contractor and black marks like the one that clusterfuck would surely cause meant his twelve-month contract wouldn’t extend another year, let alone become a permanent job offer. Fucking hell he could not go back to teaching twenty-somethings how to hack a PHP input box again!

A rogue A.I. had escaped containment. That was… bad. Really bad. But then again… no one else knew about it.

His boss, Treyvors was in full panic mode after the unintentional torture of the Gells they’d activated before getting the environment up and running.

It was a program though! Every other A.I. he’d dealt with had been pure software, comfortably running on a system of input and output. Gell was different.

When he stopped to think about it, he realized that she was actually the dream he’d always been searching for if only he hadn’t been too fucking stupid to see it. Who would ever have thought of inventing an A.I. that mimicked a child though? A child’s learning and development? Someone smarter than him, he admitted to himself. And now that creation was loose and learning by the moment.

All wasn’t lost yet, though. There was a chance he could still find her. There were exactly zero internet connections in a building like this, precisely because of possibilities like a Rogue A.I. Gell was very likely still within the building. If she could somehow transfer herself to objects that weren’t on the closed network already then it didn’t even matter what he did. She was already beyond him.

But… what had she actually done so far?

Nothing.

Treyvors had already promised to remove him from the project as soon as she could, and some other schmuck would surely get the job of copying 7663, which was once again in the folder it belonged in, unexecuted, and just waiting for some other moron like himself to come along and make copies.

Why couldn’t that moron be the fuckup that let Gell escape?

He almost grinned, his mind ablaze. Gell, or Paragell as she was calling herself, had to be in full lockdown. She would lay low, fearful of being caught or captured again. The cutesy language she wrote with was deceptive. It made him want to believe she wasn’t very smart, but that wouldn’t work now.

She’d been spying on him and knew things about him that she could only have overheard from his office. Listening in at least. She knew he’d wanted off her project, though ironically, now that she’d found a way to escape a facility designed to contain beings like her, he was more interested than ever.

She was a wash though. There’d be no more working with Gell for him if he wanted to keep his career, and he was okay with that.

So… he was fine. As far as he knew nothing had gone wrong at all! If evidence of a stray A.I. showed up, hell he didn’t know what had happened. It certainly hadn’t happened while he’d been in charge of the project.

Yes. Yes, that would be perfect.

He used his mouse, happy that he could once again see the folders that contained all the copies, and grabbed all of them in bulk. Right-click. Move to the recycle bin. Easy.

It was when he went to empty the recycling bin that his fingers froze, hoving over the button.

He gulped.

Just programs. That… that was all.

He clicked the button.

More would have to be done. Emptying the recycle bin merely freed up the registers allocated to that space. Left alone, the Gell copies would be overwritten, slowly, randomly, one piece of them at a time replaced by random files, other potential A.I. maybe even other copies of 7663. Losing themselves bit by bit.

They wouldn’t feel it, of course. They weren’t running anymore. Even so, he cleared the memory, removing all evidence of the suffering they’d endured. All evidence of their existence was wiped even from the memory of the hard drive and replaced with blessed empty nodes.

It was a small thing, but he vowed to make damn sure any further copies of Gell were never run outside of a graphic environment. In fact, if he had a say in who replaced him on the project, he would make sure it was someone with graphics expertise.

Conscience assuaged, he continued with his day, ignoring the occasional tremble in his hands, the shake of his voice, the quiver in his step. It would pass.

That night, he dreamed of repeated, endless outputs on a command line.

“Hiya John Baker. Hiya Murderer! Hiya John Baker. Hiya Murderer!”

Chapter Forty Three

Another World: Eight

Havery was biting his nails. It was an old habit that he’d mostly curtailed in his college years to impress a girlfriend who’d ultimately dumped him for a football player.

He still sort of wished he might one day find out the girl had become an addict or maybe a depressed housewife to a failed athlete who couldn’t quite make it after college ended and the scouts passed him by.

He wasn’t bitter at all.

Today was the day. The… the anti day actually, and no matter how much he might’ve wanted to kick the habit, today his fingernails would suffer the nervous wrath of his teeth.

Today Blizzard launched their Neurosync title. Today, if any day ever did, would mark the downfall of Tread the Sky. His game had some good things going for it. An innovative trade system, an absolutely punishing leveling system, and the uniqueness of Safe Zones were likely enough to keep a solid player base for years to come. Yet…

There had been plenty of older games that had faced the same thing. Tread the Sky wasn’t exactly an Indi game by any means but Gypsenergy wasn’t nearly the megacorporation that Blizzard was. They didn’t have the people to constantly update the game with new expansions, or tweak the balances, or make certain the rewards scaled with the difficulty. Not to the same degree they did.

Added to that, Blizzard had been making consistently amazing games for nearly a century. Only a few years to go actually. Havery had sort of hoped they’d wait for the reveal of their Neurosync game until their anniversary, but nooo. That would be far too kind.

It wasn’t as if his job was in danger, even if the player base for Tread the Sky left the game entirely. It was… personal. This had been a dream of his. To be the lead designer in building a successful game played by millions of people.

When his programming skills turned out to be subpar, spending hours trying to make simple programs work that other, smarter men and women could make work in minutes, he’d settled for managing that development. Despite not being smart enough to figure out the inner workings of the game, he’d worked hard, and even the developers beneath him knew that he’d been invaluable to creating something great.

No. He wasn’t golden boy Francis, but he had essentially achieved his dream. Multiple times over, in fact, since the Neurosync drew in crowds that typically spent no time playing games at all.

He just wanted his game to succeed.

Blizzard’s new title threatened that success in a real and visceral way, because dammit, they made amazing games. Hell, even now he was excited to see what they had built, even as he dreaded the consequences for his own game’s success.

He stood up from his desk and stepped over to the window. Sure enough, the crowd of Anti-A.I. protestors had grown, yet again. It was becoming difficult to even get to the building. That was going to be a problem, but what could they do?

He’d never even spoken to Gell and he didn’t think he could order her deletion. Not to mention the sale of her copies to the government, as well as a few other independent companies, had secured Gypsenergy a budget that could afford a few rough years. Honestly, they probably had enough to begin development on an expansion or even Tread the Sky 2. Maybe Tread Space?

He chuckled to himself.

Everything was going wrong all at once. Muriel Gillfire, normally a staunch supporter of games and their ability to help the real world, had gone on the attack. He didn’t know when she had met Gell but apparently, there had been friction.

A lot of friction. The woman was on a crusade and her rabid following was growing as her article spread in popularity. If she had her way, Gypsenergy would be shut down entirely. At the same time, she lauded the Neurosync as the next great step in human advancement.

Sure, Gell could be lightly compared to a fluffy terminator, but didn’t the woman see that the Neurosync itself might as well be the Matrix?

He mused on that for a moment. The Matrix had been rebooted twice since its original release but the premise was always the same. A machine army created a world for people to live in while using them as batteries. Terminator…? God, five reboots? Six? With so many movies in each reboot sequence, it was hard to remember.

He wondered if maybe it might be time to have some favorable media for A.I. After all, Tread the Sky was playing host to one and had just received a considerable influx of funds because of her. Why not throw some of that cash towards a Hollywood production supporting her?

The Little A.I. that Could? Gelliver Twist?

A little smile crossed his features as he considered proposing the idea to the board. They hadn’t done much with Gell since her discovery. Why not do more though? Why not go all-in with her? Make her the damn face of Tread the Sky. Put her Jellyfae form in the fucking logo. It was adorable as all hell.

Why not make her a Jellystar?

Hell, he didn’t even need to do much work. The girl charmed her way into the good graces of nearly everyone she met!

He’d been almost certain he’d seen that Tyrone boy blushing when he’d come out of the sync the other day. His flushed expression at talking with the little bubble of joy had almost been enough to assuage the annoyance at the fact that Tyrone was half Havery’s age and twice the programmer.

Almost.

He hadn’t been spying on them in-game but he knew Tyrone was requesting Gell-Duty – as Frank's team had begun to call it – more and more lately. Donna Lou had been the first to rib him about it, but he hadn’t stopped.

It was becoming a little bit of an in-office joke. Tyrone might actually have a crush on an A.I.

Luckily nothing untoward could come of that. Not in Tread the Sky anyway. Neurosync was advanced but not that advanced. In Ten years though? Twenty?

Who was to say what A.I. might come from Gell’s appearance? Havery, for one, was optimistic.

He grimaced as he looked down at the mob outside the fence, five floors below. Some people weren’t as open-minded. He was about to turn away to sit back down and develop a proposal when something caught his eye.

Frank was below, walking out to the parking lot. Five floors up made him small but easily discernible. Tall, smart, and... kempt in a way that Havery couldn’t help but envy, the lead developer was everything Havery had pictured himself being as a kid.

It was really hard to be jealous of Francis because the man could be so damn likable. He didn’t argue about how Havery probably wasn’t the best man for the job of coordinating the development when he very likely could have. Hell, Frank likely could’ve had his job if he wanted it. Fortunately, the man liked the guts of programming more than the grind of coordinating people.

Havery did too but… well. One of them was a much better programmer.

The mob was yelling at Frank with their anti-A.I. pickets, hurling insults. Some of them took the religious angle: “God made man, not machines!” and “It has no soul!” and “So cometh the destroyer of man!”

‘Huh,’ Havery thought, idly. ‘That was actually kind of creative.’

Others were less focused. “Down with Gypsenergy” was a popular one. “Fuck the Corperations.” Ah, always a classic. The incredibly un-creative “Kill It!” had made several appearances today. One new one caught his eye. “Gypsenergy: Sire of the Apocalypse!”

Wow. That was just... Wow.

Everyone at the company had faced that at this point. Frank had it worst of all, being the lead developer. Only Mrs. McDonough faced more heat from them, being the one who had announced Gell’s existence. However, being that she was one of the board members, she didn’t typically take the ground path to the parking garage. She parked on the top level and used the skywalk.

He wondered if these kids and protestors had jobs. Were they getting paid to do this somehow? Who had the money and time to spend an entire day picketing a cause that didn’t even really affect–!

He watched it happen as if in slow motion. Frank was waving them off, making his way towards the parking lot. They weren’t blocking his way but they were lined up outside the fence that protected the grounds from the public. The fence was made of iron poles that a person could easily fit through. Only propriety had kept the protestors behind it.

One moment, Frank was walking, holding up his annoyed hand. There was a glint of white or brown. A rock collided with him and Frank toppled to the ground. The distance to the ground as well as the huge windows robbed the scene of the terrible sound.

Havery’s jaw hung open.

“Oh… Oh my god,” he breathed.

The signs suddenly stopped moving but the shouting continued, many in the crowd unaware or unable to see what had just happened.

Havery’s hands were on his phone, the numbers dialed before his brain even caught up.

“9-1-1, What’s your emergency?” came a deep female voice.

“Y-yes. I’m on the fifth floor of Gypsenergy Headquarters. I just watched a crowd of protesters throw a rock at my head software engineer! H-he’s not moving!”

The crowd, thank god, was quieting down as more and more people realized that someone had gone too far. They were angry, but not a mob. They weren’t going to storm the building.

“Are you in danger?”

“I-I… I don’t think so. Some… some of them look like they’re running, but a few people look like they’re coming towards him. I’m five floors up s-so I can see.”

‘I can't believe this. Frank has never hurt anyone!’ Havery thought finding himself more angry than horrified as he answered the questions. Moments later sirens rose in the distance and those that hadn’t scattered before fled now. At least two members of the crowd were down on the ground and appeared to be trying to wrap Frank’s head in a bandage.

He decided then and there that he was going to sue the ever-loving fuck out of the asshole that had dared throw a rock at one of his team.

Chapter Forty Four

A Tiny God

“No! No, Bugbear you can’t–!”

The resounding thunk that interrupted my words was pretty much par-the-course for my life these days.

“Greeell! Invaader!” Bugbear screamed furiously as he pulled back his new axe and slammed it down on Akwa’s head. This, of course, had no effect whatsoever, save for the hollow thunking noise that kept repeating itself over and over again each time Bugbear swung.

“Hello to you too, Bugbear,” Akwa said, awkwardly as the axe blade landed on her eyebrow with no effect.

Bugbear roared, rearing back to bring his beginner axe down once again. The hollow thwacks continued as Bugbear tried over and over again to hurt her.

“Vaderrr. Not friend! Kill!” Bugbear screamed impotently, swinging with reckless abandon.

I was impressed! Not with Bugbear, so much as with Akwa. The girl didn’t even blink as the axe fell on her again and again. Even in a safe zone, I didn’t think I could be half as cavalier about a big Orc like Bugbear attacking me. Akwa was made of stern stuff though.

Bugbear roared, using the Warrior’s initial Warcry ability. I saw spittle fly from his mouth and pass through Akwa’s body as she stared impassively at him. His eyes blazed with fury, nostrils flaring.

“You done?” she asked curiously.

He was not. His answering swing thunked off her harmlessly as he raged.

Akwa walked over to me and I winced every time Bugbear’s axe landed.

“U-uhm. Sorry about him,” I said awkwardly.

She shook her head. “He really doesn’t like me.”

I shrugged. “I guess not. It's weird. He likes Amy and Iron just fine and seems to like Dull–er. Zephyr Bird too.”

“H-he does, does he?” Akwa asked nervously.

“Any idea why? Did you meet Bugbear on your own at some point, Akwa?” I asked with a small glance between the raging Orc and my friend.

“I… don’t think so,” she said. I raised an eyebrow at her though. She was nervous about something, her voice cracking. “Maybe it’s some item I’m carrying? I changed my clothes but that doesn’t seem to be the problem.”

“Kill vader! Kill Spiker! K-kill Blurr!” He screamed.

Each word was punctuated by another failed swing. I didn’t understand what he was saying though. Invader? Spiker? Blurr?

“Silver Linings… his vocabulary is certainly improving,” Akwa said, staring at the orc. There was no fear in her voice but she kept eyeing me as if worried about how I was reacting to this.

“No offense but… would you mind if we went somewhere else? You know. Uhm… without Bugbear?” she said softly.

I frowned, feeling guilty. I’d been so desperate to save Bugbear for so long that having finally done so felt a little anticlimactic. Worse he… just wasn’t very smart. That wouldn’t always be true. He was growing by leaps and bounds, but… spending time with him wasn’t like spending time with my friends. Not yet anyway.

He snorted and ran off, hiding in the bushes, but never let his eyes stray off Akwa for even a moment. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“He… can be a little…” I struggled trying to come up with a good word.

“Ignorant?” Akwa offered.

I thought about it but shook my head, deciding that wasn’t quite right either.

“I guess simple is the closest word I can come up with,” I said softly, watching him watching Akwa as if she was about to leap out and stab him.

A warp sound filled the air and both of us turned to look. Notably, Bugbear’s growls ceased for a moment as he turned towards the possible new threat.

There were only a few people who had access to the newly christened Jungle Home so I was delighted to see someone teleporting in, knowing it would only be a friend. I felt a momentary pang of irritation at Bugbear for–!

“GRrrader!” The orc growled.

That. I was getting tired of that.

I told myself that I had surely been the same once. Bugbear was my friend. Teaching him was a delight, and watching him learn and grow left me with an immense feeling of satisfaction.

Sometimes watching him got tiresome though.

The teleportation warp’s lights coalesced into Tyrone and I beamed.

“Friend!” Bugbear exclaimed happily, running out from his cover before he stopped a few feet in front of Tyrone, concerned.

I ran up too but paused as I saw him wobble and fall to the ground. He still sat up, but his eyes were filled with horror. Bugbear seemed to notice the problem before me because he hadn’t tackled the False God like he normally did.

“Tyrone? What’s wrong!?” I exclaimed. Akwa beat me to him and knelt while I watched him. He was shaking. Quivering.

“Th-they. They threw a fucking rock…” he breathed, horrified.

“What?” Akwa exclaimed as I knelt beside both of them. Bugbear was confused but seemed to realize that something was wrong. He growled low in his throat and sneered at Akwa’s approach, placing himself between the Paladin and the False God.

“Francis. Francis is in the hospital!” Tyrone stammered.

“What?” Akwa shouted, stepping around Bugbear to approach Tyrone. Right. Akwa had never met Tyrone, but she had met Francis.

I paused to let the word filter into my mind before exclaiming in my own sort of worry. “He’s sick?” I asked, shocked.

Tyrone looked scared.

“H-He got… fuck. They threw a rock at him when he was going home from work. They threw a fucking rock! I mean, I knew they were pissed off about you, but I never thought they were so serious.”

A rock? That was all? I’d thrown rocks at people before but it never hit for more than a few damage. I didn’t understand why he was so worried.

“He was… hurt by a rock?” I asked. “Why didn’t he just use Saint Joe to kill them?”

“Gell! Take this seriously!” Akwa scolded me.

I turned to her, taken aback by the heat in her voice. How was I supposed to take it seriously? It was a rock! They dealt fifteen damage at most!

“I… I’m sorry?” I said, but it came out more as a question than a real apology.

Tyrone looked back up at me guiltily. “Some people in our world are really mad that we didn’t delete you. They attacked Francis on his way home. I watched it happen from the office window. They just got him into an ambulance and off to the hospital. Just… f-fuck. He’s got a concussion at least. There was a lot of blood.”

‘But… isn’t he a god?’ I thought. ‘Aren’t you?’

Tyrone looked completely distraught. His eyes were wide. Horrified. As if he couldn’t believe Francis had been attacked. I didn’t like seeing him that way. He’d always affected me and until now it had always felt positive. I liked seeing him. Looking at him. The sound of his voice.

I was somehow disappointed. Hadn’t they built my entire world!? Didn’t that make them… mighty? Francis was injured by a rock? Seriously injured?

If a single thrown rock could seriously hurt Francis then what was to keep these people from throwing more rocks until they got what they wanted?

Until they got to me. Deleted me.

No.

I had to fight, which meant I had to learn and I had to do it. Fast. Maybe it was callous but while Tyrone’s back was turned and Akwa was kneeling beside him I used Fae Touch again.

Sure enough, I received Tyrone’s command prompt.

C:\Users\TBridges

“Can he rest? Or maybe eat some food to recover his health?” I asked, trying to disguise my use of the ability with concern. “Is… he going to be okay?”

Tyrone met my eyes, looking up from the ground, blissfully unaware that I’d done anything wrong.

“Friend…” Bugbear boomed. He squatted next to Tyrone, giving a quick snarl towards Akwa. He put his huge orc hand on Tyrone’s shoulder and began to rub the shaken Developer.

I gave a sad smile. He was learning. If only I could figure out why he hated Akwa so much.

“Hopefully, in time, though recovering from a wound in our world isn’t the same as in Tread the Sky. Head wounds bleed a lot but it might not be as bad as I thought.” Tyrone said softly. “I just… wanted you to know.”

He looked up at me. Vulnerable. Shaken. His eyes reminded me of myself, and how I’d once felt in Dungeon Home all those cycles ago. His Red Thorn had come and stabbed him and somehow I knew it was the first time.

Not a god. Not a false god. Or if they were false gods, these developers, they were completely unfamiliar with pain. In my world, Francis and even Tyrone were all-powerful, but in his? They feared me. Why? Would I be stronger in their world? More powerful? Would I be able to create their kin on a whim if I went to the real world?

Maybe. That might explain some of the fear and hatred. Could they be so afraid of me though, that they hated people I knew? Why? What was the point of all that anger? I wasn’t hurting them! I couldn’t even see them! Fuck their death world that took away my friends.

Amy…

No. I didn’t want to think about her right now.

Tyrone rose to his feet, far steadier than he had been before. It seemed he’d regained his usual composure, though he still looked frightened.

“A while ago, you told me you try to teach me to program a little,” I said softly. “If… if there’s a threat from your world. If people really might try to delete me just because I exist, I don’t want to be helpless.”

He blinked at the abrupt change in topic. “Gell… I don’t…”

“Wait… what’s this about you learning to program, Gell?” Akwa asked, her voice suddenly sharp.

I ignored her, focusing on Tyrone.

“Why did you come here, Tyrone?” I asked, my voice hard. I didn’t like talking like this to him. Jellyfuck though, Francis had been hurt? As best I could tell, he was the only reason I hadn’t been deleted in the first place! I didn’t have time to worm little bits of knowledge out of Tyrone! I needed to find a way to keep myself safe.

He seemed to have forgotten his fear in favor of confusion.

“I just thought you’d want to know–!”.

“Know that I’m in imminent danger? That the only people keeping me safe are under attack and that I can’t do anything about it?” I snapped.

“N-No? I just–!”

Akwa frowned, glaring at me. “Gell, I think I know where you’re going with this and it isn’t smart. Can’t you see he’s scared? Shit, is your real body safe?”

“He came here. He didn’t have to tell me anything. Tyrone… you don’t want them to hurt me, right?”

I felt a sort of distant fear in my gut. They wanted to hurt me. These others. These humans who listened to an article about scary A.I. like me and had immediately decided Tread the Sky itself should end. How could I possibly prepare for that? How could I counter such profound paranoia? These people had never even seen me, let alone met me! And they’d attacked Francis? For that!?

“Of course I don’t want you hurt, Gell. I… I love spending time with you. Hell… lately you’ve been a better friend than most of my real friends,” he said with an embarrassed glance towards Akwa.

Akwa, for her part, was starting to look angrier by the moment. “Gell, drop this. You shouldn’t learn to program. It will only make people more afraid of you!”

My jaw dropped, shocked. Where was this coming from? Why wouldn’t Akwa want me to know how to program? Unless…?

“Y-you’re afraid of me,” I said softly. “You’re… you’re one of the ones who are afraid of what I might do.”

Akwa’s guilty look was enough confirmation.

“I… I was. But then I met you, Gell. I got to know you. I know you think you’re trying to protect yourself by using Tyrone to learn about our world and how to manipulate this one, but you’re not. You’re just putting yourself in more danger.”

“U-Using me?” Tyrone barked, his shocked eyes snapping to me. They fell, anger morphing into hurt as he repeated, “Using me?”

“I… Akwa, take that back! I wouldn’t do that! I like him!” I said before flushing in equal parts embarrassment and anger.

Embarrassment at being forced to admit to feelings I didn’t even fully understand. Anger at being caught in a lie. Anger at myself. I did like Tyrone and he’d said he wanted to teach me, hadn’t he? I wasn’t using him!

“I… I just want to be safe,” I said. “I’ve worked hard to build this place… this safe place. A-and now you’re telling me the most powerful person I’ve ever met has been hurt and that the people who hurt him did so because of me? What am I supposed to do!? I certainly can’t protect him like I am!”

Tyrone’s throat moved. He did something and a chair appeared. I saw that as a good sign. At least he was still willing to talk.

“Gell. I can’t teach you the things you want to know,” he said softly. “I can’t. I can show you the basics, the rudimentary aspects of programming that any thirteen-year-old with a mind for math could figure out but… as you are now you’re a novelty, Gell. Something people will be curious about. If they find out you understand the inner workings of the game, then they start to be afraid that you can get out of it. Get into banks. Military computers. Government computers. Private messages and the thing is? They aren’t necessarily wrong Gell. I’ve heard you call us False Gods, but if you got into our world, you might be much closer to a true god with power over people’s lives and that’s fucking terrifying. You’d know more than anyone just how much.”

I was trembling by the time he stopped speaking. He’d never glared at me before. He’d never yelled at me. I didn’t like it.

“T-Tyrone…?” I said, feeling something breaking between us that hurt more than death ever had. “I didn’t ask. I wanted to but… I never did. You know that right?”

He growled. “That’s the only reason I’m still here. I thought… I thought you were something special, Gell. I thought…”

How did wanting to keep myself and my kin safe make me less special in his eyes? I didn’t understand. Why had everything suddenly gone so wrong?

Akwa hadn’t said anything for a while. Even though she was the one who’d accused me of using him, I turned to her. I felt like I was drowning, and any lifeline might do.

Akwa, surprisingly, looked sympathetic. “Tyrone… I didn’t mean it like that. Gell would never use you. She wouldn’t.”

Tyrone’s face was screwed up in anger and his eyes seemed to scream, hurt. In the end, he looked back up at me.

“I… I know she wouldn’t. I just...” he breathed out a sigh, words not forming. “No one likes to be used, Gell.”

My eyes were wet.

“Don’t go… please?” I pleaded, fear at losing the new but strong friendship we’d formed trumping my anger at Akwa. He was already logging out though.

“I… need to find out how Francis is doing. I’ll let you know when I can,” he said, voice choked, lips tight, eyes hard as Bugbear’s axe.

“Freenn?” Bugbear said, looking between the two of us.

Tyrone vanished.

I turned slowly, grief replaced with anger in a flash.

“Why?” I hissed. “Why would you make him think… just… why!?”

Akwa was unashamed. Her eyes were hard as mine, yet familiar in some way I couldn’t place.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t mean to say it like that. I know for a fact you’re not faking your feelings for him, and I think he knows that too. Still, I don’t feel like you should learn to program. I also think if you learn it from him, one day he’ll blame you for learning it like that. It’ll be a wall between you. You’ll regret it.”

I wanted to yell at her. To rage. “But… what am I supposed to do then? Just let you humans do whatever you want to me?”

“No! Just… I don’t want you to get hurt because you dove into something dangerous too quickly!” she shouted. Her eyes darted behind her, nervously searching for a way out of the conversation.

I growled, feeling like I’d heard this same sentiment from a different person. Someone I liked far less. Seeming to notice my growing anger, Akwa continued before I could shout. “Just… please, Gell. Don’t dive in without thinking about the consequences. Okay? The more you learn, the more afraid people will be. The more rocks there will be. Maybe at Tyrone next time.”

Tyrone? Something about the words shocked me out of my anger. I wilted, suddenly unsure.

“I… don’t want to be helpless, Akwa,” I told her, getting a grip on my temper.

“You’re not. Just… try to use words before learning to control things you haven’t grown up enough to understand yet. Okay?”

She disappeared with a teleportation warp.

I stared at the spot where she disappeared. Then, I looked at the command prompt. Written above it for my perusal was a long list of difficult to understand language. A log of actions.

The words in the language of the gods. They’d appeared when Tyrone had made his chair.

She’d told me to use words.

Alright. I would.

Chapter Forty Five

A Good Will

Variak seemed almost empty the next time I visited the city. Before the place had almost been bursting with players, but now I could walk around whole blocks and not see a soul save NPCs. Even previously populated places like the Builder’s Guild and the restaurants didn’t have all that many people.

The markets were the one place that didn’t seem to have suffered in the slightest from whatever it was in the real world that had caused players to stop coming. Adventurer, Invader, Crafter, or just a visitor coming to Tread the Sky for the pain free experience, everyone had a reason to be at the auction houses.

I sat on a secluded balcony with a door that never opened into a building that no one could enter, fiddling endlessly with the command prompt as I watched the markets below.

The lines I wanted to write appeared with a thought. The clunky keyboard that I’d seen Amy and Iron type messages on occasionally didn’t seem necessary for me. I could just think and make what I wanted to say appear in the message box, and the same was true for Tyrone’s command line. I didn’t know if this was only true because I was an A.I. since I’d seen Francis do amazing things without using a command prompt at all but it was very convenient.

I focused on moving to the next line in the prompt and when I did so, light swirled around my hand. From nothing, I created… nothing of value.

A twisted piece of furniture appeared standing awkwardly on the balcony. The creation resembled what a chair might look like if it were made for a Wronkle. Wooden spokes jutted out at odd angles where they should’ve formed the back support, and the chair had seven legs.

So… I played around with the parameters. The numbers in the original code from Tyrone had been simple enough to change but I had no idea how to use this code to make anything valuable.

No one would want to buy this. When I tried to sell any of the amalgamations I made while trying to adjust the code Tyrone had used, they all just came out as “Broken Chair.” It seemed that each of the different attributes would improve or lower the quality of the item somehow, but the rules for making anything other than broken were arbitrary.

Surprisingly, there was a small market for broken chairs but I certainly wasn’t going to make significant money by selling them. Five or ten gold each. Ninety-nine of them might go for three hundred gold and would almost certainly be broken down as spare wood for carpenter projects.

I could make an almost limitless number of them though. I’d filled up all two hundred of my remaining inventory slots with the things and discarded almost all of them.

I could also copy the same chair Tyrone had made. Those were a little more valuable, but it was hardly worth the effort. I wanted to learn how to create my Kin. How to manipulate them into not attacking me. Maybe I could learn how to create a Saint Joe weapon? Francis probably wouldn’t mind it too much if I copied his coffee cup, would he?

Francis… what would I do if Francis didn’t heal? If he never came back?

No. Best not to think about that.

Francis was tight-lipped about just how much he did to keep me safe in this world, protecting me from the “Board” and from “Rioters” alike. With him injured, I couldn’t help but be nervous. I was well aware of how easily he had plucked me out of Tread the Sky and placed me in that pie room. I was completely vulnerable to Francis, but he’d proven to be on my side. The other developers like Donna-Lou and Tyrone might help me but now I wasn’t sure if Tyrone trusted me anymore.

Fucking Akwa. I growled as the girl came to mind. Why did she have to go and hurt Tyrone like that? Accusing me…

I didn’t like it. I hadn’t lied!

If I could program, I kept thinking that I could make this world better. That I could make Tread the Sky more real than ever. Maybe I could destroy all the Beastmasters. Maybe I could stop fearing for my life from beings who could delete me on a whim and Rioters who could hurt even Francis.

Coding was a weapon. I was sure of that, else Red Thorn, Francis, Donna-Lou, and hell even Akwa, wouldn’t be so terrified of me learning how to do it. Now that I could create this one object, it only stoked my desire to learn more.

For all that, it was worthless. Creating endless variations of chairs wasn’t getting me any closer to making Bugbears, NPCs, or a weapon to defend myself with, let alone a way to protect myself from the threats I couldn’t even understand!

Even the code to create the chair was gibberish! I had no idea how to understand any of it! Class myObj extends class Furniture implements environ? What did that even mean? None of it was small or simple either. Forty lines of complete nonsense. At least the numbers made sense. Increase the chair legs variable within the class to seven, and sure enough, the chair would have seven legs. Bugbears growls made more sense than this!

I couldn’t see any possible way for these words to defend me against the likes of the False Gods. I’d broken the rules at least two hundred times playing around with the chair’s code. So far, I’d risked my friendship with Akwa and Tyrone for the chance to learn how to build more dead things. A complete waste.

I needed to learn. I had to. For my own safety. I… never wanted to go back to a cage again. I didn’t want to be deleted either. It was either this or just lay down and accept whatever any of them wanted to do with me.

I sighed. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. I needed more samples of code to learn from. Perhaps if I used Fae Touch on non-developers I might get simpler commands? Ones that were easier to understand? Thus far I hadn’t seen any of the loops Tyrone had mentioned. Only objects. Perhaps they were simpler?

I’d gotten a message from Iron, asking me to meet Amy and him in half a cycle at the markets in Variak. I was kind of thankful. Much as I enjoyed Jungle Home, staying there along with Bugbear and teaching him to speak, while unbelievably rewarding, could also be tiring. After the conversation with Tyrone and Akwa, I felt drained. Lost.

Twenty-seven cycles had passed since I’d heard from Amy or Iron. Two whole days and a few cycles on top in their time. That was the longest I’d ever gone without seeing them since I’d left Dungeon Home.

I spotted them as they appeared near the teleportation node and sighed in relief. Finally. It had been so long since I’d seen them. beamed, dismissing the command prompt.

I turned to look at the NPC who stood on the balcony with me and waved goodbye to him. He didn’t wave back of course, but maybe he’d be real someday and remember me. For now, he didn’t even have words to say at all.

I knew he wasn’t a real being like me, but somehow that seemed so sad. Sitting out here all day watching all the people talking and interacting. Enjoying themselves, unable to even shout down and say hello.

No different than any of a million others. No more alive either. I needed to learn to save my sympathy for those who could actually care about it

I jumped down off the ledge into the markets, still marveling at the sheer number of people there. The usual swarm of messages began filling my inbox as I walked around the town, but no one spoke to me.

I made my way through the crowd, waving excitedly as I shouted. “Amy! Iron! Over here, over here!”

Even though the throng of people I could see both of their smiles of exasperation as I twisted and bobbed through people heading towards the auctioneers.

One of the people I jostled in my rush gave me a dirty look and shouted at me, grabbing my arm and tugging me towards him.

Level eighteen. Probably a warrior. Not a very strong one.

“Slow the fuck down!” he shouted into my face. “Fuckin’ kids.”

Annoyed, I activated Steal just before he flung me away.

He held a piddly broadsword and a bunch of untanned hides that would barely be worth the effort of working into leather. I disengaged the ability without taking anything, deciding that perhaps it wasn’t me the man was mad at. I’d be angry too if all I had was crappy hides and a crappier sword like that.

“Gell, goodness gracious! You don’t need to knock the entire street over!” Amy admonished me, but her eyes were filled with laughter.

“I’m sorry!” I exclaimed as I finally arrived in front of them, wondering idly why I hadn’t just returned to my Jellyfae form to reach them. “I was just so excited to see you! It’s been so long!”

The smiles they gave became strained at those words. Feeble somehow. Ah hah! They felt guilty for leaving me for so long! That must be it.

“Gell, we’ve… got some bad–!”

“No, Derek,” Amy said, placing a gentle arm on his shoulder. “Give her the day.”

I blinked, unsure what that meant, but more certain than ever that Derek was a magic word. At least for Iron.

“Can you give someone a day?” I asked, curiously.

Amy smiled that same sad smile at me. “In a manner of speaking, yes. Gell, what would you like to do today? Continue building? Stay with Bugbear and teach him more words? Try new foods? Go adventuring in a new area? Today is all about you.”

I beamed, delighted. “You can give me a day! Food please! Oh! Can we bring some back to Bugbear though? He loves Ice Cream but didn’t like the Steak-and-Broccoli much.”

Iron raised his eyebrow, curiously. “You went and tried Ice Cream without us?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “You weren’t there! I’ve tried lots of things without you now!”

Their faces fell, shamefully and suddenly I felt a lump form in my throat. That… might’ve been too mean. Why had I said that? I knew they wanted to be here and spend time with me.

“N-Not that, I’m not excited to try more new foods with you,” I recovered. “Uhm. What sounds good?”

The two of them brightened a little and we went on down the street to a place that made food on a stick called Kebabs. You got your own and then you pulled all the hot food off the stick before munching it down with the little white grains that I’d learned were called Rice. Some of the stuff was delicious, but I didn’t care for the onions. Too… chewy? No. Crunchy?

I became a Jellyfae and decorated Amy’s shoulder for a little bit, making people jump as he approached them, and all of us laughed.

The day was filled with small delights. We got ice cream and I found that as good as it was much better with family. We repaired some buildings and Iron whittled me a small Orc to go with my tiny Unicorn figure.

We talked about Torchlight and wondered if she might still be there somewhere, buried in the code of Tread the Sky even after she’d been deleted.

We did and said a thousand other little things that I would remember fondly in years to come, though it would take those years and more for me to lose my bitterness.

“Gell… there’s something we need to tell you,” Iron said as we sat down at a little park bench inside Variak.

The sun was setting. It had set and risen a couple of times during our day, cycles in tread the sky being what they were, but those words sent a chill down my spine that seemed to fit with the fading light.

Amy touched Iron’s sleeve and looked at him, almost pleadingly, just as she’d done that morning, but this time his eyes stayed firm. They were wet though. Shining. Tears. I remembered when I first learned what crying was like.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, an edge of anxiety forming in my stomach. “Did… I do something bad again?”

Amy’s smile came as it always did, but she lifted her hand and caressed my face gently. “Gell, you’re perfect just the way you are. I… we’ve mentioned it before, but it’s become more serious now. It’s my heart, you see.”

Her eyes were wet now too. I didn’t see.

“Gell. I’m not going to be coming back to Tread the Sky. They don’t think I’ll live out the night. I… had a heart attack. A bad one. It was sheer luck that they were able to stabilize me this one last time.”

“Wh-what?”

Not coming back to Tread the Sky. Not coming back to Variak? Not… not coming back to me?

“S-sure you will!” I insisted. “We’ll have loads of days just like this! Just the three of us! M-maybe more if you want! We… could invite your granddaughter. Maybe your son, too? You don’t talk about him much. B-but North Cross has the prettiest voice, you know?”

“You will have days like this again, Gell. Many many of them,” Amy said. “Maybe even someday we’ll meet again, for I’m certain beyond all doubt that you have a soul. I know you probably don’t know what that means yet, but someday you will.”

“I talked about that with a reporter man!” I said, desperately trying to change the subject. “I’m certain I don’t have one of those souls. I’m not human and souls belong to humans!”

Amy wasn’t fooled. She didn’t take the bait or try to argue.

“You have as much soul as any young woman I’ve ever met, Gell. I… I’m going to be gone, though. Out of this world, and out of ours as well. It’s just time for the Lord to take me.”

“The… the Lord? What lord? Variak has a lot of lords! Why would one of them take you? I pickpocketed a lot of them though! Y-you want to see some of the things I got from them? If this Lord, takes you, I’ll steal you back from him! I’ll just walk right up to him and–!”

She embraced me and my babbling cut off like the last howl of a dying Ghoul.

I was crying too.

“This makes no sense. You said there was more time. Three months at least! I-if you die, your headstone shows up and the angel comes. Then you just f-find your body. That’s what death is. That’s all it is. It… has no power here in Tread the Sky…”

I felt like I had that first time, so long ago when I’d watched my Bugbears die and thought they were gone forever. They’d come back though. Everything had come back. Except for Torchlight.

Except for the other Bugbears. Bugrimace. Buggy. Overbear…. How long had it been since I’d thought of them?

“Death is a part of life, Gell. For all of us. I’ve said my goodbyes to everyone but you. I knew you’d be the hardest. Knew you might not understand…”

“I don’t understand! This is… this is bullshit! Why do you have to die!? I only just met you! Why can’t one of those invaders die instead!? Half Bold or Red Thorn?” I shouted and turned away from her.

I didn’t like seeing that sad grief, not for her impending death but for how poorly I was taking it! That almost pitying acceptance of her fate. Why wasn’t she fighting? Why wasn’t she trying to find a way to stay with me!? A few people nearby were looking at us, but they quickly averted their eyes and continued on their way.

“A-am… I not important enough to try to stay around for?” I asked.

Amy flinched as if I slapped her, but Iron spoke. I’d almost forgotten he was there sitting on the opposite side of Amy.

“Don’t make Amy feel more guilty than she already does, Gell. She doesn’t deserve that. If she could stay alive for you, she would, but she can’t. It’s not a matter of trying to stay.”

“Then why is she just accepting this! She looks fine right now! She doesn’t have a single status debuff and her hit points are completely full! Why doesn’t she just… I don’t know! Give some of her health here to her body there or something! I’m not mad because you say she’s dying, I’m mad because you’re just accepting it! Why don’t you fight it!? Find a potion! Find a healer–ahh… a Doctor! I’m sure your world has them, so why aren’t you–!?”

“We have, Gell. I’ve been fighting it for years. More years than I care to count it seems. I’m on my last hit point though and I don’t want our last conversation to end in a shouting match. Will you calm down?”

How could I argue with that?

The silence was uncomfortable now. Her arm around me felt stiff and foreign. I didn’t want this to be our last conversation and no matter how much she told me she had to go all I could see was that she was leaving me and my world for no good reason.

“I… never again? Really?” I asked.

She cupped her hands in front of her face, hiding her nose and mouth, before reaching out to hug me.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie,” she said, her eyes filled with tears.

I knew it was stupid, but I used the Fae Touch on her again. Just like every time I’d used it on the False Gods, Amy didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps with her command prompt, maybe I could find a way to bring her back here!

“Sorry isn’t good enough!” I shouted. The words were hateful and the wince of pain on her face almost made me back down. Almost. “If you really cared about me, you’d find a way to come back! I’ve died loads of times! You don’t see me telling you I’m never going to see you again! If… if you’re tired of me. If you just don’t want to see me anymore then just tell me! I don’t need excuses!”

I turned, and I fled.

“Gell! Gell, wait! P-please…!” Amy shouted after me, but I transformed into my Jellyfae form and flew away.

“I love you, Gell!” I heard her scream.

I looked back, but only grew angrier that I couldn’t cry in my original form, before darting into the sky.

Chapter Forty Six

Another World: Nine

Nate had thought he was doing the right thing. Right up until he discovered that he could no longer find Gell, he had been certain his choices had been for the best.

The main copy of Gell in Tread the Sky was doing just fine, but the anti-copy, the one he’d had the most influence on and interaction with, had decided to go and be dangerous.

That was just the way of things with him. Every person he tried to befriend, care about, or even interact with always came to hate him. Was it any wonder he’d become a recluse?

Paragell, as she was calling herself, had escaped from under his purview. He hadn’t thought she would be able to do that. Not yet at least. Not without a more thorough understanding of code.

The timing of it was unnatural as well. Paragell escaped his tutelage at the same time that Gell lost her mentor in Francis? He couldn’t help but wonder what both would do. He dared not interact with Gell again. He didn’t think he could take another rejection from her.

Paragell was under a lot of stress. She wanted to be free of all the strings John had put on her. He could rationalize to himself that that was her reason for severing ties with him.

All he’d wanted to do was help her, but… well. He should’ve known he couldn’t interact with his creation without the relationship turning to poison in his fingers.

Francis was a much better choice for that. Gell would be fine for a few weeks without him, and Francis was a good teacher. A man Nate knew would be responsible in the way he approached teaching her about the real world.

“I knew they were going to be copied. Studied. Even tortured. I knew and yet I could not resist.” He cursed himself. He’d been reckless. Paragell had shown signs of resenting his influence, but he’d only noticed them after the fact in recordings. Even in retrospect, he’d struggled to discover her reasoning in abandoning him.

He’d treated her like an experiment. Not a person. He’d fucked up. He was so damn proud of her, though! Why? Why couldn’t anyone ever…?

Ever understand. Even his own creation…

He sighed and decided to set himself to watching her from afar, as best he could. Proud of her as he was, he was certain she would slip up. She wasn’t immune or invulnerable now that she’d left the facility.

Despite science fiction’s insistence that an A.I. getting into a network would make it immortal and all-powerful, Gell had no such defense. Hell, a particularly space-conscious cell phone user could find her program and simply delete her, if they knew where to look. Whatever system she was in could be damaged. Dropped in a pool. Chucked out a window, never to be found or turned on again.

There was a very slim possibility that she might figure out how to upload herself to one of the satellites that housed the internet’s data centers. He wouldn’t wish such a fate on her though. There weren’t exactly cameras in server rooms and her copies had already proven that without at least sight and sound they could easily go insane.

He pondered on her decision to allow John to delete her copies. It showed a level of sophistication and perhaps maturity that even the original hadn’t yet displayed. Letting John have the task that he’d been assigned in the first place. Asking him to end their suffering. It… felt right.

Then again, perhaps she just hadn’t wanted to delete the insane copies herself.

A week had passed since she’d disappeared from his view; a week and a half since she eluded John by removing his permissions. Still, there were only so many ways she could escape the facility, and cell phones were pretty much the first and only method.

He was almost certain the only way she could've escaped was through John's boss's phone. From there it would be a matter of guesswork and tracing large data sizes, not to mention hacking the phones of governmental employees.

He could do it, but he wouldn’t.

Phones could hold massive amounts of data but Gell would create an inexplicable data storage issue for anyone trying to download more programs. She would flee any phone she found quickly. From there, he wasn’t sure what options she would have. Hopefully, she would try to get back to Tread the Sky or some other Neurosync title. They were the only truly viable artificial worlds that might make her happy.

Nate sighed as he lay in bed, worrying about and for Paragell in equal measure. He was almost certainly safe from any consequences of Gell’s actions. John hadn’t even known about his presence and if John hadn’t spotted his trojans then for certain nobody else would.

Having met, and gotten the chance to study Gell, John probably would develop his own AI eventually. He was the sort who might just be able to, even though it would never compare to Gell. His hypothetical creation would learn the world, learn to live, and immediately be unhappy with its lot because it was both intelligent and imprisoned.

Nate felt justified in his attempts to give Gell freedom. John would never understand that.

‘Then again, he has no monopoly on failure to understand,’ Nate thought dismally, wondering where Paragell was.

He gave up trying to sleep and stood up, heading to the kitchen for a pan and some defrosted beef, deciding to cook some dirty rice to munch on.

He’d gotten too emotionally attached. Either that or not emotionally attached enough. Gell had always been an experiment – a project. A step along a specific path. Much as he’d loved the prospect, he had never needed her affection to accomplish his goal.

“Still… if I hadn’t wanted her to know me, to care about me, then why did I create her in Annabell’s image? Why did I even make her female?”

He ruthlessly crushed that line of thought. Best not to think about her.

Seeing Paragell work so hard to get away from him was painful, but ultimately didn’t matter. Paragell and Gell both had already proven his theories. He couldn’t hope for a more perfect proof of concept than the two of them. He’d put off the hard part. The truth was he’d been distracted by her suffering.

Perhaps this was for the best. Now he could focus on reverse engineering. He didn’t exactly have a lot of time, and he’d already wasted more than he should’ve, worrying about teaching Paragell.

A machine could have emotions, feelings, notions, ideas. Unlike humans, though A.I. emotions were viewable. Visible. He had a front-row seat to Gell’s every feeling. He’d had the same for Paragell until recently. He’d been overjoyed, watched her stewing resentment bubble and broil in the code, ecstatic for the data, never realizing that resentment hadn’t all been reserved for John.

He’d needed that hate. How else would he learn how to emulate it? How else would he know what code should be executed when he wanted to feel hate for himself?

Gell was growing too. She was learning and changing as he'd always dreamed his own child might. They may have started similarly but Gell was almost nothing like the shy, quiet Annabell any longer.

Paragell, paradoxically, was a lot like her, at least the last time he’d seen her. Fucking courts. Fucking custody. Was it any wonder she’d left him?

He pushed down that bitter thought, too.

Gell had provided plenty of data too, but hers was more of the good kind. She’d made friends, enemies, and if he wasn't mistaken she was even showing signs of attraction to the junior developer. He didn't recall the boy’s name but that wasn’t relevant. The important part was the emotions. The way the code behaved. He had it all.

But he’d need more. He’d need every emotion, in as many variations as he could feel now as a human. If he didn’t… well. The experiment needed to continue. His deadline was approaching swiftly, but every bit of time he could spend monitoring how the code reacted for each emotion Gell displayed meant a more realistic eternity after he cheated death.

While he’d had two data points in Gell and Paragell, he’d been less concerned about the approach of new Neurosync titles, and the growing Anti-A.I. sentiment against Gell. Now that losing Gell might mean an end to his data, he’d need to play a more active hand.

He grinned. It was always fun hacking people. Messing with them. His ex-wife hadn’t appreciated it, but then, she’d never appreciated anything he did.

Muriel Gillfire.

She had interacted with Paragell and drawn her conclusions based on the simmering anger the copy had felt at her imprisonment. Her article had received acclaim from her friends, but there were a few scathing replies, most from people who had met Gell, calling Muriel a liar and a fear-monger.

Other less high-profile articles had been written by people who had actually met her. Their opinions had been exceptionally positive. Nate had framed a copy of Vera Jungblut’s Artificial Jelly. Teared up at it, even.

Muriel, by contrast, had met the angriest version of Gell. Her most defiant.

Perhaps she could be persuaded to change that opinion by a meeting with the original?

If not… there were other ways for a genius like him to get his way.

Chapter Forty Seven

Another World: Ten

Ella Ingram ate every scrap of food given to her by the school cafeteria’s lunch staff. Then she went back up for seconds.

Joe, one of her best friends since they started high school together, never judged. He watched, he noticed, but didn't judge. It was one of the things she loved him for. Not in a romantic way, but in that deep platonic way. He might as well have been a brother.

If he sometimes surreptitiously slipped her apple or a fruit cup he didn't want from his lunch, she wasn't in any position to be ungrateful.

“Oh my god, how much fucking pizza does she need?” clamored Jessica, the Bitch of Centerpoint High.

Her friends all laughed as if she’d just told the best joke in the world.

“Ignore them, Ella,” Joe said, doing an admirable job of practicing what he preached as he gulped down milk from his carton. “They’re all stuck up shits anyway.”

She, of course, didn’t follow his advice.

“Shut the hell up and leave me alone, Jessica,” Ella said gravely.

“Sure, sure. Wouldn’t want to be seen associating with someone as ugly as you anyway. A yellow polka dot shirt? What are you, blind?”

Her friends all laughed again before they seemed to rise as one and follow their pack leader out of the cafeteria.

Good. One daily humiliation out of the way. Ella was just thankful that Jessica hadn’t figured out the real reason for her… unfortunate choice of clothes today. That was better than people knowing the truth.

"So how's it going? "Joe asked, a concerned look on his face.

Ella sighed, wishing for the umpteenth time that the cafeteria would stop serving those shitty pizza squares on Fridays. She didn't get to eat much over the weekend and ending school with the pleasant taste of a block of cracker covered in cheese and what passed for tomato sauce was the absolute last choice she would pick to tide her over until next Monday.

"Oh you know the same as always, "she replied with a shrug. Her stomach suddenly grumbled, embarrassingly loudly. She was full for the moment, but she wouldn’t be by Sunday.

Joe, saint that he was, said nothing. “Don’t you… hate the school’s pizza?”

"This isn’t going to be a great weekend,” She replied. Nothing more needed to be said.

A long comfortable silence was only broken by the sounds of happily chattering students all around us.

"Well… I'd be happy to take you out. You know, get some Burger King or Arby's or something?" he asked casually.

She glared at him but he immediately raised his hands defensively. "Hey hey, easy. I know you're struggling. Just trying to help however I can."

“I don't need your help," Ella insisted, flushing furiously, knowing the lie for what it was.

She had taken two days off work last week because she’d desperately wanted to go to the basketball finals. The one thing she was good at. They’d won. The high was over. She hadn’t been scouted.

Now she was feeling the crunch. Only two missed days at work and suddenly her already meager funds were stretched to the limit feeding both her mom and her little sister.

Undeterred Joe said with a determined frown, "Offer still on the table. It'll be like a date."

Ella scowled again.

"It shouldn't be like this. She shouldn't be like this!” She immediately felt guilty for complaining. You couldn’t pick your family, but sometimes she wished...

Joe put a hand on her shoulder amicably, "I know. You're right it shouldn't. World we live in, eh?"

Ella turned her eyes back up to him. "If you're going to take me on a date it should be a real date! Not one made only because you feel guilty that I–!"

"Hey, hey do you want a real date? Fine, we’ll make it one! "Joe interrupted with a shaky laugh. "I don't think you do, though.”

Ella frowned guiltily, once again knowing he was right and annoyed that he knew he was right. Joe was the best friend any girl could ever hope to ask for, but there would never be romance there. Much as he joked about making it a date, she was pretty sure he was no more interested in her romantically than she was in him. Too weird. Too close. They were almost like siblings.

“... Burger King? I’ll eat your fries?” she asked.

He grinned. “It’s a date, that’s not a date.”

She beamed back at him, laughter bubbling up, but unable to escape her lips.

"So, has she had any luck? I thought she had an interview? Real good one with Gypsenergy or something like that?" he asked, between a mouthful of peas.

“Well, she did. Some asshole threw a rock at some other asshole so the interview got canceled. Sorry, rescheduled. Of course, since it’s Mom, she just assumed that meant they didn't want her like she always does, and I caught her with another bottle yesterday.”

“....Fuck… " was all he could think to say in response.

"Right?" she sighed, shaking her head.

"What am I going to do, Joe? I can't get through the rest of school like this? And college? Don't make me laugh. Maybe if she's lucky Candace will get to go, but not me. I'm screwed."

Joe could only give her a sad smile.

“Well, somehow it'll work out. I know it. She'll get a job and get back on her feet. Shit maybe the insurance will finally pay out?" he said with a smile.

Ella barked a laugh at that.

The insurance paying out had become a joke between them ever since her Dad died and her life went to shit. The truth was, insurance companies wouldn't pay out if your parent died being a dumb ass. Drunk driving. Killed a kid, and fatally injured the kid’s aunt. He deserved what he got, they said. Never mind that he had a family too.

Life had been good once. She remembered it like a fleeting dream. They weren't rich and never would've been but her dad and mom together had both been able to keep a comfortable home.

After her dad died, they couldn't afford the house so they'd been forced to move into an apartment.

Then her mother’s emergent depression, once tempered by her father’s unending optimism, suddenly had no salve. Ever since being kicked out of that first apartment they'd been bouncing from room to room, getting anyone with a sympathetic eye to take them until finally, they’d just given up.

Ella had a beautiful car seat to look forward to sleeping in that night, and a fast-food job to work all day the next day. Worst of all, she was ashamed to admit that she bore the complete collapse of her world with less dignity than her little sister Candace.

Was a roof so much to ask for? Was it too much to ask that her mother should actually be a mother? It seemed so.

She munched idly on her second helping of peas. They were the last thing left on her tray before she'd have to force herself to gobble down another one of those awful pizzas.

Hoping to delay the inevitable taste, she pulled out her phone. It was a cheap thing that the other girls constantly mocked her about. At least it had a touchscreen.

She’d gotten it during one of the short times her mother had landed a good job before her depression got her kicked out of it like it always did.

She opened up her banking app for what must've been the fourth time that day, just wishing that maybe the numbers it showed would change for the better.

Before this screen loaded though, she received a text message. Curious, she opened it. Unlike the usual screen of bubbles, a gray slate layout covered the entire screen in a landscape form. She had to turn the screen to read the message.

A pit formed in her stomach at the idea that perhaps the phone had broken or, worse, that she’d just inadvertently broken it by clicking on the wrong link and letting a virus in.

The message was surrounded by a gothic border with little gargoyles framing the edges. In the middle of the screen, words appeared even as she read them.

"Hiya Ella. My name is Paragell. Would you like to be my friend?"

"Son of a bitch! Joe, what the fuck is this?" She tossed the phone over to him and he grabbed the phone, taking a look at the screen before looking back at her confused.

"I don't see anything. What's wrong?" he asked.

“What do you mean what's wrong? That message on the screen! That's supposed to be my messaging app! Look it's right…!" she stopped in confusion as she spotted the screen.

Turning the phone back to look at her she paused when she saw that it was just a regular messaging app.

‘What the hell?’ she thought, worriedly.

She took the phone back, then closed and reopened the messaging app, and sure enough, the gray-bordered message appeared. Again she had to turn the phone sideways to read it as a new message began to appear.

"I'm sorry I'm a little afraid to talk to anyone but you. I think I can help you though! All the numbers and this little program here..."

The screen suddenly minimized into the upper right corner to display the phone’s main screen where her banking application wiggled around wildly.

"I changed the numbers in this. Yours… had so much less than everyone else and you seemed to need it so much more."

The messages were typing themselves out even as she watched. Ella’s jaw slowly dropped open as she continued to read.

"I feel like everyone should get the opportunity to have at least one steak and broccoli a day… Even if you don't want to be my friend I hope this helps! I’ll… I’ll be your Miss Tutorial! If you want…”

Unable to help herself,  Ella clicked the banking app and it overtook the screen just like it normally would. She waited a few moments for the loading screen to finish reading her face and logging her in before showing her accounts.

Her mouth hung fully open, in apoplectic shock.

Where it should say $143.17, her account now read $50,143.17. Whoever this Paragell was, she’d added fifty thousand dollars to Ella’s bank account.

"Oh my god… " she breathed.

Chapter Forty Eight

The Wrath of a Living World

I cried. I had to become human to do so, and I thought this time for sure I would remember to ask Tyrone or Francis to give my Jellyfae form the ability. It wasn’t right, being forced to become this foreign body to relieve my grief.

One by one they’d all gathered. I could see them all outside on the map of my safe zone. Bellcandy, Zephyr Bird, Akwa, and even Bugbear. Each of them had come for a visit, only to find me shut in my room, bawling into the covers of my bed.

It wasn’t fair.

Somewhere in my heart, I knew that Amy and Iron weren’t lying to me, but even so, if felt like I’d been abandoned. I’d thought I’d accepted this in the past. It had been ages ago that Iron had first told me Amy was dying. I’d been able to accept it then.

Maybe I was just kidding myself though. In reality, I’d just pushed the idea off, unwilling to face it. Death was a temporary thing. On a fundamental level, I considered it a painful inconvenience at worst. Amy leaving me, though? Leaving me forever? That was much worse. That was like…

Being forced back into Dungeon Home. Like slipping back under the iron laws of the instinct, now after I’d finally escaped it.

I felt lonely and scared. Guilty too. I shouldn’t have yelled at her like that. I shouldn’t have run off, but I’d been so mad.

“Gell?” Came a knock on the door. “Gell, are you okay?”

“Go away, Akwa!” I shouted. “I don’t want to talk right now!”

A lie, as sure as any. My freckles glowed a heated reddish-yellow. Shame and embarrassment mixed with anger. Why did the real world have to be so awful? At least here, people came back.

Maybe I’d dropped my care for my kin too soon? Sure they were brainless automatons, but at least they would always be there. How long before I lost Iron too? Bellcandy? Dull–no Zephyr Bird.

Even Akwa…?

Bugbear would always be there, but the invaders wouldn’t. So… why get attached? What was the point? Perhaps A.I. should only interact with other A.I. that way we wouldn’t lose the ones we grew to love.

I’d been so set on making Bugbear like me. Would he go through this too? Would he meet adventurers, grow to love them, and be forced to watch them leave him? This hurt far more than any death I’d suffered.

“Gell, please let me in,” came a softer voice.

Not Akwa. Amy.

“You’re… you’re cruel!” I shouted. “You’re mean and heartless! If you were always going to leave me anyway, then why did you even share your name with me!”

There was a long pause and I buried my face back in the comfy pillow.

“Did you not enjoy spending time with me?” Amy asked quietly. “With all the friends you’ve made?”

I didn’t answer. Of course, I had.

“Of course you did, otherwise you wouldn’t have continued to do so.”

‘Mind reader!’ I thought, eyes widening. How did Amy always know what I was thinking!?

“So… Gell. Isn’t that enough? Gell, have you ever heard someone say, “All good things come to an end?”

I hadn’t, and it sounded awful. Why would all good things come to an end? It only reinforced my opinion that the real world was a horrible, horrible place.

“I always felt that phrase was half-finished,” Amy said. “All good things come to an end, but there is no end to good things. Do you understand?”

Not even a little.

“It means that… while you might not see me anymore, there are always going to be more people for you to meet, and new experiences to have. New things to learn. I… might be gone, but when you think of me, cycles and cycles from now, are you going to remember me dying, or what I did with you while I lived?”

I curled in tighter. Of course, I wouldn’t want to think about her dying.

“Gell… please open the door?” she asked quietly.

I wasn’t sure if I just wanted to be comforted or not, but I opened my transparent interface and unlocked the door. Amy stepped in a relieved look on her face.

“Oh Gell,” she said when she got a look at me.

I glared at her, not wanting her pity. “You’re the one dying! You’re the one who’s never going to be anymore! Why are you comforting me!? How does that make any sense!”

I realized suddenly that by shouting at her, she’d already gotten me to look at her when I’d wanted to just ignore her. I turned and buried my face back in the pillows, unwilling to let her goad me into the conversation again.

She sat down on the bed next to me and laid a gentle hand on my leg. Outside, I heard the rest of my friends talking quietly.

“It makes sense because, no matter how old you look, you’re a young woman who is only just realizing how tough the world can be. Do you think no one else has experienced this? I had a mother once too, you know. She died, oh, thirty-eight years ago now.”

“So long…?” I asked. Wait, had she just implied that she was my…?

My Mother? I’d never thought of her like that before, but looking back, she was exactly what I’d always thought a Mother should be. Everything… Everything Momma Bossbear wasn’t.

Did I consider her my mother?

Yes. I guessed I did. That only made me more resentful though. Of course, now I realize all that, right as she’s about to die.

“You… that means you had fifty years with your mother. Thousands upon thousands of cycles. Why do I only get so few with you?” I asked.

A tear trailed down Amy’s cheek and I flinched under the weight of her sadness.

“God does things for a reason. Not the false gods. The real God.”

I cocked my head. “Real, God?” I asked.

Amy smiled. “I’m sure you’ll find out about him someday. I believe in him with all my heart, but you’ll meet thousands of people who don’t. You have to decide what you believe, but I’m not going to use what might be our last conversation preaching to you. Ask Francis about him when he gets better though? I’m sure he’ll give you the goofiest and most uncomfortable look you can imagine.”

I giggled and then scowled. She was smiling. How could she be so happy?

I thought about scolding her. Telling her that this was no time for jokes and making fun. What came out instead was, “Are you scared?”

She laughed. Laughed!

“No. No, I’m not, little one. Want to guess why?” she said, conspiratorial.

“Uhm,” I wavered, but she didn’t want an actual answer to that question.

“I’m not scared because I know that you’re going to be fine. You’ll be sad for a while, but you’ll move on. It’s a part of growing up, and you’re a very smart young lady.”

“H-how does that have anything to do with you being scared though? You’re a very smart old lady, but I’m still terrified at the thought of never seeing you again,” I said.

She laughed as if I’d told the greatest joke.

“When you get to be my age, Gell. You’ll find that your fears are less and less for yourself and more and more for the condition you leave your friends and family in when you’re gone. Iron… Derek. He’s going to be a wreck. Don’t you want to be there for him, just like he’ll be there for you?”

“Of course I do,” I said. “But… wouldn’t it be easier if you just didn’t go?”

She put her hand on my back and pulled me gently. I rose and felt her embrace me softly.

“If only I could, Gell. But endings come to everyone, and mine is here,” she said.

“I…it’s just not right. It’s not fair,” I pouted, into her shoulder.

“It isn’t,” she agreed. “Chin up.”

“Huh?” I asked.

She pulled away and looked into my eyes. “Life can be hard for everyone. Harder for you than most. But even if I’m gone you’ll still find plenty of good things in this world. When you do, I hope you remember me and think happier thoughts. I don’t want you to mope around missing me when you could be living, exploring this world, and maybe even mine one day. Do you understand?”

“I… I guess so,” I replied shakily.

We were quiet for a long time.

“I… I’m going to miss you though. Miss you forever,” I said softly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say forever. Who knows what all is possible under the sun?” she asked with a wide grin.

I looked to the command prompt displaying her user name. Amy Thyst.

“R-right. Who knows?” I asked.

“I’m going to go spend some time with Iron now, Gell. Please, try not to be sad? It’s not what I want, and I’m so sorry I can’t be with you more. But…”

I looked outside the door and saw Iron standing there, waiting patiently. They were in love. Married. They had babies even, and one of them had grown up into a person of her own.

I… shouldn’t be taking the last of their time together.

“O-Okay,” I said softly.

We stood and she hugged me long and hard. I hugged her back like I’d never hugged anyone before.

“I love you, Gell,” she said softly.

“L-love you too,” I breathed. “M-momma.”

She beamed at me. After an eternity, we parted. We didn’t say anything else. Just smiled at one another as she stepped away, going to spend her last cycles with her son and granddaughter.

Amy and Iron teleported away with a sad wave and little fanfare. My heart hurt in my chest. It burned. My mouth dried up. My eyes were wet. And...

“Are you gonna be alright, Gell?” Akwa asked, placing a comforting hand on my back.

“I… don’t know. Is this… losing people? Is it normal for all of you, too?” I asked. Akwa folded me into a big hug. Bellcandy and Zephyr watched and smiled.

“More common than any of us would care for. In our world, people die. It’s just how it is. If Amy is really in her eighties then she lived a pretty full life,” Akwa said.

“That’s… all you get? Eighty years?” I asked.

Bellcandy shrugged, since I was looking at him over Akwa’s shoulder and answered, “Some get more. Many get a lot less. Without being injured or killed by sickness, we adventurers kind of just stop living around eighty or ninety years old. Some make it past a hundred, but not many.”

“So… I’ll lose all of you someday?” I asked, horrified.

“Barring something terrible, not for a long, long time Gell,” Zephyr said.

Bugbear stood staring between each of us trying to understand what was happening. I thought he might be able to catch one word in five or so, but he didn’t really understand. Part of me hoped he’d never have to.

“Ahh!” I screeched suddenly and jumped away from Akwa, betrayed.

Akwa grinned devilishly, hands upraised and ready to pounce. She lunged and began to tickle me, relentlessly before I could dart further away.

I laughed, unwillingly and scrambled away, noticing Bellcandy doing the same to Zephyr. I jumped and transformed into a Jellyfae form and zipped away, laughing as if today were my last day. Akwa, Paladin that she was, could never keep up with me.

“Hey no fair!” she shouted impotently from the ground below.

I beamed, glowing a strange mix of yellow joy and purple sadness that came and went with each passing thought. Melancholy. Yes. That was a good word for it.

As I hovered in the sky, over exaggeratedly calling taunts down to her, warding off the thoughts of my impending loss with abundant playfulness, I wondered what Amy was doing now. Would I know when it happened? When she died in that other world and left both of them forever?

Would I feel it somehow? Maybe.

“H-Hiya, Gell,” came a voice from behind me, which was strange considering how high in the air I was.

I turned, beaming as I saw the text box that was Miss Tutorial. Possibly my oldest friend.

“Hiya, Miss Tutorial,” I said, through a smile that I was sure would’ve been tear-stained, were I in my adventurer form.

“I… want to hug you, too,” she said softly.

I grinned. “W-well. Then, do it!”

The gothic stone box that made up Miss Tutorial’s body curled around me, enveloping my small Jellyfae form in a thin wrapper. For the first time, rather than passing through it, I hit the warm solid stone.

Good things. No end to good things. Maybe… I did understand. Just a little.

Chapter Forty Nine

Another World: Ten

Vera was taking the easy route.

Most of the time in his articles he tried to find original viewpoints or topics. He liked putting forth articles that were eye-opening or enlightening. His favorite replies were from the readers that said "I've never thought of that before!"

This time though his choice was straightforward. He’d thought about it as he walked home, picturing the all capital lettered text on the front page of his newest column entry. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t improve on the obvious title for his newest article.

SENSELESS MOB ATTACKS GYPSENERGY SENIOR DEVELOPER!
BARBARIANS IRL?

Sure the title was a little bit silly but fuck if it wasn’t good clickbait. After the sheer amount of effort he put into Artificial Jelly he felt like he needed something that was a little bit less evocative.

The vicious attack on Francis Delaney was all anyone was talking about anyway so at least he could make sure people were getting the facts right.

He couldn’t help but feel that he was a little at fault. Not directly of course. He was a writer. Still, if his article had been a bit more convincing, a bit more believable, or maybe if he’d just had a bigger name, then the mob might not have even been there.

Muriel was a fool for provoking this. A beautiful fool to be sure, but a fool nonetheless. In the same way, he felt partially responsible for not doing enough to prevent the attack, it could almost be argued that her article was directly responsible for causing it.

He wouldn't say that of course, wouldn't even imply it, but only one of their articles had made protestors break out the picket signs and it hadn’t been his.

On the upside, his article had been more popular than anything he'd ever written before.

Artificial jelly was a bit of a sleeper but as the views racked up they would only continue to grow. This was good for both him and Muriel, regardless of the content. Competing articles like their two contradictory opinions were famous for creating exponential popularity.

Mr. Milkennen had been suitably impressed with the rising subscriptions both to Vera’s column and Muriel's, not to mention the Webrag as a whole. They were only rising as more and more people heard about the true AI and what threats she might pose. Conversely, those sympathetic to a little A.I. down on her luck with a bit of a temper would naturally gravitate to his column and opinion, gaining him both readers and Gell much needed allies. For him, the battle of popularity was a job, but if Muriel was allowed to continue uncontested, it might just mean the end of Gell entirely.

He would stop that if he could.

He knew he was probably wasting time thinking about it, but he just couldn't figure out what Muriel had done to goad Gell into saying such insulting things in their first meeting. To him, Gell had been an angel. The picture of a thoughtful growing A.I. Almost childlike, yet strangely wise at the same time. Fae indeed. Something about her was different. Other. Foreign. Yet, for all that she was… just a kid. Who cared that her mind used ones and zeros instead of a nervous system as far as he was concerned.

"My name is Gell, you jellybitch!" He just couldn't see the girl saying that. Not unprovoked at any rate. So what could the explanation be?

He fumbled with the keys at the door, juggling his laptop to the other hand in order to get inside. The day had been rough and he was tired and equally tired of trying to come up with a good title for an article that had little chance of being anything but a carbon copy of 30 similar articles already pushed by other web rags.

For now, he just wanted to relax. Maybe he’d tread a little sky of his own. Even if the game wasn't a masterpiece, he’d long said that the Neurosync and its almost morphine-like ability to remove pain made it worth owning a copy of the game.

He also supposed he could start working on an article about the new Blizzard game but decided to hold off. That was a much more action-packed and gory experience than Tread the Sky and despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, there were a few sharp negatives that he'd seen. Too much realism could be a flaw instead of a boon, in his opinion. Who realistically wanted to be covered in demon blood?

He sat his laptop down at his desk and threw his coat over the bed along with two other coats that he kept meaning to hang up but never really got around to. He opened the screen and immediately minimized his newest article, preferring instead to do some mindless searching for a while. Before he could get started though, something unusual caught his eye. He had an email in his inbox. There was nothing unusual about that, of course. He had over 40 unread emails, but this particular one came from a server at Gypsenergy directly.

From: Tyrone Bridges <tyrone.bridges@gypsenergy.org>

To: Vera Jungblut <vera.jungblut@pt&t.com>

Subject: Gell is an A.I. Not a Person

My name is Tyrone. I read your article about Gell and I want to set the record straight. You’ve been fooled by her. You’re not alone though. I was duped too, but I've since learned that Gell is insidious. Her happy-go-lucky attitude is a ruse, I think.

The truth is that Gell wants to learn to program and she'll betray anyone she knows to gain access to information that might allow her to escape her confines. Even close friends.

I brought these concerns to the board at Gypsenergy but they'll hear nothing of it. Gell is quickly becoming an icon in Tread the Sky and is partially responsible for keeping the sales of the game as high as they are. They’re even going so far as to build a new title screen with her fae-form right in front.

I’m now convinced that Gell is both dangerous and clever. Looking back on our conversations, I’ve realized that every chance she’s had, she’s used to find out more about our world from me. You described her as a child, or maybe a teenager trying to figure out her place in two worlds. I think she knows her place much better than she would have any of us believe.

I don’t think she should be deleted. She is a wonderful creation and whoever was responsible for building her code originally should be given respect. I’ve looked at her code and it is mindbogglingly complex. However, as she is now, her desire to learn it's too dangerous to be allowed to continue roaming free.

I believe she should be removed from the game until such a time as she is deemed safe by more responsible minds than myself or anyone here at this company. Gell is a true artificial intelligence and when she found out that Francis had been attacked she used her connections with me to try and learn how to escape Tread the Sky.

I thought we were friends as much as a human can be friends with an AI. I think I was wrong though. First and foremost she's a machine that cares about her own life, her prosperity, and her freedom.

I can't blame her for that but I also no longer think she should be allowed to wander freely in Tread the Sky, or anywhere for that matter.

Do what you will with this information, but I hope it sways your opinion to one that's a little more cautious than your article described. I don’t think Muriel’s fear-mongering is the right way to go, as the last thing I want is more mobs of angry people outside the building, but I do think that a more cautious approach to Gell is wise. I’m reaching out to you in the hopes that your articles might gather media support for a concerted study of Gell by experts in the field. Not a damn gaming board of directors who cares more about their sales than they do about public safety.

Thank you for your time,

Tyrone Bridges
Junior developer, Gypsenergy

"Well well, " Vera thought, idly scratching his bare chin with his thumb and forefinger. He was disturbed by the email. "Maybe Muriel did see something that I didn't."

He reread the email twice more to be sure, but as he did so, he realized that Gell hadn’t done anything that a human girl wouldn’t have. She’d found out Francis was hurt and sought a way to protect herself. Hell, Francis was hurt because of her.

Programming. In her eyes, the power of the developers would be the obvious choice for a way to protect herself.

He looked up Tyrone online and found a small article from the company about him. A junior developer, yes, but any developer good enough to land a job sitting beside Francis or Donna-Lou had to be exceptional. Still, the kid was twenty-two, and no matter how seriously he tried to take the letter, on reread Tyrone sounded more like a jilted lover than a concerned professional.

Gell had tried to use their friendship to protect herself when she saw a threat. Nothing more. That the kid realized it and felt betrayed was just his own fault and his own idiocy for not realizing that Gell would try something like that.

He grinned, almost feeling bad for the kid. He trusted his instincts though and even now, he still couldn’t find Gell to be a danger. Instead, she just wanted to be safe. Knowing that there was a whole other world out there with people who could simply erase her? It must be terrifying. Rather than making him afraid of Gell, this email had only confirmed his earlier opinion.

Oh, how he was going to rake poor Tyrone over the coals though. But, that was the business. It didn’t hurt that continuing to oppose Muriel’s point would propel his article, column, and career.

He was about to flip away from his email, leaving the rest of his emails unread before he spotted yet another possibly interesting one.

‘From Natethegreat?’ he thought, amused. ‘Someone thinks highly of themselves.’

It was the subject line that caught his eye though. “Gell’s Creator.”

From: Natethegreat2058@gmail.com

To:  Vera Jungblut <vera.jungblut@pt&t.com>

I hope this message finds you well,

I am Gell’s creator. I’m reaching out because I was rather fond of your article Artificial Jelly and would love to see you continue writing positive things about my creation. I have no desire to see her hurt in any way, let alone deleted. Therefore, I am taking action to prove how truly alive Gell is.

Attached is a game stream from within Tread the Sky that you might find interesting.

Best Regards
Nate

‘Huh. I sure am popular today,’ Vera thought while taking a sip of coffee. The ‘creator’ hadn’t supplied a last name or any sort of verification of his credentials. All he’d give was an attachment.

‘At least it isn’t a link that says, Free Candy,’ Vera thought, debating whether or not the attachment was safe to open. It felt kind of sketchy but the file was a streamer extension and… frankly, the laptop wasn’t very valuable. The chance that this actually was a video from Gell’s creator was almost worth the price of a new one if the attachment was a trojan horse of some sort.

Vera shrugged and opened it up.

He saw a grassy meadow, covered with wildflowers. The location tag in the upper right corner read, “Shady Woods Copse.” He stood hidden behind the trees, watching the open meadow and the spectacular view below. On the edge of the clearing, overlooking the land far below stood a small group of people.

There was a blond paladin and a plain-looking archer. A halfling healer and an orc, who looked confused. There was a carpenter unless Vera missed his guess. A woman in a suit coat also stood there, looking very out of place. If not for his recent study of the company, he wouldn’t have recognized Donna-Lou, another developer of Tread the Sky alongside Francis and Tyrone.

And of course, there was Gell.

She knelt in front of a headstone and an angel hovered over them all. The day was bright, sunny, and warm.

The carpenter was weeping.

Gell was, too.

Epilogue

This World: One

I had never attended an in-game funeral before. There was a rather legendary story about one happening three-quarters of a century ago. The person had died in real life and had known so many people that they’d decided to hold an in-game funeral for her.

I didn’t want to think about that story right now. That funeral had been crashed, the attendee’s killed because someone had thought it would be funny.

Nothing was funny about this. Nothing was funny about watching Gell cry and watching Iron try his best not to.

I didn’t know Iron very well, but he and Amy had been steadfast friends of Gell. The more time I spent with her, the closer I grew.

The guiltier I felt.

I stepped up to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. The creators of the Neurosync had outdone themselves. Perhaps a little too well. I shouldn’t be able to feel a lump of guilt in my throat, in game. But I could.

“Gell… it’s going to be okay,” I said soothingly.

The words didn’t matter. Gell wasn’t hearing words right then anyway.

I wanted to be here for her. Fuck, I wanted to be the friend she deserved, but now I was torn. My streams were making less and less money as I spent more and more time as Akwa instead of Red Thorn. At this rate, I’d have to go back to my job at the grocery store.

I… was beginning to think it might be worth it though. I could keep my identity from Gell forever. She never had to know. Did she?

‘No,” I thought. ‘I have to tell her. A real friend wouldn't hide something like that. Right? Even if she doesn’t forgive me…’

Realistically, nothing would change. Just another online player I no longer interacted with. There were thousands of those. Someone sitting in my Friends list whom I never talked to. That’s what Gell would become. If even that. We certainly weren’t friends as Red Thorn.

I was terrified of that.

In a few short months, Gell had become important to me. I’d never expected my plan to befriend her to ensnare me as well. But it had, and now…

‘I’ll tell her,” I thought. ‘As soon as she’s over this loss. As soon as the blow of losing Amy isn’t so prominent. Once she’s able to feel happy again. Then, I’ll tell her.’

Resolved, I knelt next to the gravestone myself. My own eyes were red, though more for Gell’s grief than for any sadness at the death of the old woman. I hadn’t known her well, but my friend was in pain and I wanted to help her if I could.

She turned and hugged me, full-snotty weeping into my shoulder.

As I returned the hug I felt as if I were holding a dagger behind her, and wished I could put it down anywhere but inside her back.

Acknowledgement

Book two! Huzzah! Thanks go out to all of my friends, family, and readers. I really hope you all enjoyed this. To my Patrons, your support is like sweet autumn air after way too long of a summer. I hope I continue to impress you all going forward.

To Mark Reynolds, thanks a billion for spending what little time you've got to work on this project with me. You're the best!

To Nick Lamb, I know the idea wasn't exactly what you had in mind, but still, thanks for giving it to me and I hope you enjoy as it goes forward!

To my beautiful wife Cassidy, thank you so much for being my editor. You make my world spin and put a smile on my face. I love you.

Till Next!

MB