Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (35 page)

Commander Queenshand turned and marched right out. The movements of the troops following her were well paced and fluid. Without an
[Inspection]
skill, I had to guess at their actual abilities. Whatever classes they were programmed with must be high.

Nox turned to the crowd of
[Mechanoid]
s who stood watching. The mess of mechanical beings shared the same general passive expression. They seemed to be witnesses to our situation, but little more.

"Take note, members of the Wayfarer Seven Consortium. There will be trouble."

"There is always trouble." Treasure, Emerald, Ruby, and Iron somehow shared the sentence between them. After echoes of paired voices filled the stage.

Behind the rows of
[Mechanoid]
s sat the
[Wayfarer Seven]
's walls, giving a finite size to our stage. It looked like the five
[Mechanoid]
s standing in the first row were considered more important. Everyone behind them were a little less colorful. A blue lined
[Mechanoid]
stood in the same row as Treasure. A thin male shell that I had never interacted with.

"We share a hope that by having one of our own gain favor things might be different," they said again all at once.

A message popped up. Apparently another player wanted to talk to me through the game system while the NPCs spoke back and forth.

Beatdown
[The Red Leg]
was one of the players I had done practice rounds against. He used a supersonic chirping in addition to high-speed moves disorienting me. I didn't win any of our three rounds. The downside was a race that couldn't talk like normal.

It was kind of neat.

"All three of you have competed among yourselves for the right to stand here. I have witnessed these battles and approve of your opportunity to speak with the Mistborn," Nox spoke to us. I started paying attention to the
[Seraphic]
's words rather than looking at my list of system messages.

"We have witnessed this," the various
[Mechanoid]
representatives said. I looked at the other two players. They both sat there waiting for some sort of cue. I took a stance and waited as well.

"Very well."

We started moving. I could feel the pull of gentle inertia. What was happening? Beatdown didn't explain exactly what was going to happen, just that it would be neat and possibly psychedelic.

None of the other
[Mechanoid]
s moved except for Hal Pal. I could see it look around trying to take things in. Its eyes darted over to Treasure's stationary form. Maybe it was in my head, but it seemed like Jeeves swallowed briefly from nervousness before trying to stand like the other
[Mechanoid]
s.

Its confusion distracted me from my own. I felt sorry for Jeeves, the AI was trying so hard to be part of a crowd of other creatures. Ones that looked similar but weren't. Was this how it always felt while dealing with humanity? Or did Jeeves experience a certain disconnect since it was cut off from the Hal Pal Consortium while playing?

"Your friend will be alright, Unit Hermes." Nox had walked closer to me during the distraction. Everything moved under our feet. My player map on the side was rapidly shrinking, rooms and pathways vanished until we were left with a thick wall of metal around us.

"I hope so."

"I am surprised to see one such as you able to resist me so quickly," the
[Seraphic]
said.

I stared at the creature and wondered once again about the lack of a health bar. The name and title, this was clearly an NPC. They spoke of rules to this reality. In my mind, there was one other classification of creature that might act this way.

"You're not the first Voice I've crossed paths with." I took a stab at guessing this thing's identity and watched for a reaction.

Nothing came. I risked glancing at Nox as our room slid around. The pit of blackness might be smiling, but it was barely visible outside a curve silhouetting its face.

The entire ship jerked violently sending most of us swaying around. Beatdown's legs almost buckled. Something huge was settling into place. The map in my ARC display expanded and showed something being formed outside this room. The room was slowly elongating.

Jeeves was staring off in mild amazement and missed a silent cue. All the other
[Mechanoid]
s stepped to sides. Their precision was admirable. My AI friend tried to keep pace but looked out of place among the others. Something about its movements didn't line up correctly. Each NPC
[Mechanoid]
took a stance like suits of armor lining a walkway.

Color streams from the various
[Mechanoid]
s crawled along the floor. Rows of previously unseen channels bled together like a river from each robot's feet. I looked down and noticed none of my own colors bled off. Looking at Jeeves revealed the same thing, we weren't part of the crew's ritual.

The river of lights joined up under Nox's feet where they bent and were sucked in. A prism of colors merged through the
[Seraphic]
into one solid beam of white. Light spun out into the doorway we all originally entered from. Only the door itself didn't open, it shimmered with a brightness similar to the doorway used by Continue Online's Voices.

"Who was first?" Nox asked the three of us. Dusk sat on my shoulder and snapped forward to pay attention. Both Beatdown and my
[Messenger's Pet]
were paying close attention to the
[Seraphic]
's words. I should too.

Beatdown stepped forward and chirped. It sounded like a single cricket echoing at night.

"Very well. Beatdown the Red Leg, you may proceed." The
[Seraphic]
sounded pained at the light skill channeling through its core.

My eyes and ears barely registered Beatdown walking into the lit doorway. I watched a look of growing shakiness cross Jeeves' face. Wholly human, a perfect expression of sadness to ever be expressed by the AI in all our time together. Jeeves looked around and finally hung its head down. I saw the inactive player icon appear next to its name. A system message appeared telling me that Jeeves had logged out of Advance Online.

Now I was torn between logging off and talking to my friend, or trying to honor its wishes of helping the
[Wayfarer Seven]
consortium. I chewed one lip and made a mental note to talk about it later. Maybe this whole situation would result in good news to cancel out that wounded look.

Seven minutes went by where no one spoke. Louder versions of
[Cricket]
chirps came out from behind the door. Some hummed and built before violently cresting in pitch. Things occasionally crashed and our room shuddered. Not once did the light beneath any other
[Mechanoid]
falter. One final chirp echoed forth vibrating our bodies, then silence.

My teeth ached and one ear rang. A message came on my screen from the other player.

Ten seconds later Beatdown's dead body materialized nearby. I looked at a giant man-shaped cricket. Green and blue blood oozed out over a red tinted carapace. His shell had multiple cracks like a lobster.

"Alice, Lady of the Moon, you may proceed." Nox looked to the side at another person.

The third player was a woman named Alice. She was human and wore a leather jacket. Both eyes were lined with dark rings of exhaustion. Twitchy fingers kept inching toward the weapon at one hip, a gun blade merger. Her lips barely held onto a perpetually smoldering cigarette.

"Camped this quest for three days, nothing personal, dude, but I hope I get it." She stepped in through the light. It was the most we had spoken so far. Twenty minutes later she screamed, a sound of raw anger and frustration. Her deceased body appeared nearby.

"Rear Assaulter Hermes, you may proceed," Nox said, using my player title. I had thought it was disabled. "I wish you luck, Hermes, for the trials you may yet go through."

"Thanks," I responded while thinking about Commander Queenshand. She sounded like an impending trial. The exact how of it was beyond me.

I looked at the frozen in place
[Mechanoid]
s and two deceased bodies. Even in death the cigarette hung from Alice's lip. Whatever killed them didn't use lasers, but instead cut away at them.

Okay. If this failed I could log out and talk to Hal Pal about the Jeeves character. It logged out here, so Jeeves should be back with the rest of its consortium. The character here was only one copy among an army of digital program clones, sharing whatever reality they all lived in.

Blinding white and a system message were the only things visible at first. I blinked and tried to clear away the sensation. One hand came up and hovered in front of my face to reduce glare.

Slowly the room came into view. Forest and gold swirled together in a line. Dusty silver crawled along the distance. All six of the
[Mechanoid]
s I had worked with streamed across the walls and along a corridor. On the other side was a stain glass window.

"We will light a path in the darkness," the multitude of voices belonging to Treasure, Iron, and Emerald said. I looked down at my feet and saw that the colors still traveling onward were the same ones tied to each approving
[Mechanoid]
.

I tried to remember those words. They felt familiar.

"They've been kind enough so far," I muttered while stepping forth. There were unlit parts of the path, ones that would likely belong to Ruby or Aqua were I to have their approval as well.

Even so, getting across the corridor was easy. Too easy. Halfway across I expected a battle and got nothing. The ground beneath my feet crunched every so often but other than that it was hard to feel like this had been dangerous. What had Beatdown or Alice fought in here? Did they have harder trials because they weren't
[Mechanoid]
s? Did my consortium cheat to let me by?

Eventually, I stood at the glass pane. Under me was a dias large enough to house a spaceship. Around the outer edge the
[Wayfarer Seven]
latched in and formed a seal. I got it, this was a high-tech docking connection with
[Mechanoid]
s serving as security locks.

If I hadn't been approved, would a defense system have tried to attack me? Curiosity got the better of me, and one hand reached out to touch an unlit strand along the ground.

Low growling rumbled the passageway. I turned to see something rolling out of the ground, much like my combat practice under Iron's watch. This creature looked big, dark, and much more angry than even the final wave of monsters. My hand yanked back, and the growling stopped.

Touching the darkened portions clearly triggered a boss fight or something. I shrugged, fighting an optional boss held little reward in my mind. Not when Jeeves was outside the game being upset, or when two players had died to their challenges. A fight avoided was not something to be upset about.