Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (56 page)

"You're a little over the top," I said, trying to get the other player to tone it down."I don't care. I'm not here to assist you. I'm here to get revenge on those jerks who used to be my friends. Betrayed for quest loot, what a world!" Eggman was limited to sound only. Treasure's skills had at least prevented us from needing to deal with his goofy looking face on our display screens.

"Please let Ruby kill him. He's one of those old souls, right? He'll just, pop back in somewhere after a few days?" she asked.

"He would, but we don't have the key yet." I tried to remind Treasure of our goal. My goal actually, part of me once again wondered about turning away from this whole situation. I might let Xin down, but no one else would be put at risk.

"That's right! My key! Hahaha," Eggman said. His laughter came through the ship's intercom. "So no killing of the Eggman. None is allowed, at all. None of it."

Treasure pressed buttons and the player's volume lowered. The next fifteen minutes involved the two of them trying to out hack each other. Eggman would break into our communications and start spouting nonsense. Treasure counter attacked by causing the lights in his ship to flicker on and off. At least neither one of them messed with the engines. They were both keeping our goals in mind.

At some point, Eggman got control of our lights, focused them on Treasure, and started a salsa song. She put up her hands and struck a pose, her face wore a misplaced serious expression where her body seemed about to dance. Jeeves laughed a little. Levity helped.

I worked hard to tune them out and keep an eye on the tracker. The idea of being chased by Auntie Backstab had my heartbeat up. My prior scare made me worry about the amount of time I spent inside the ARC. Once it was clear we weren't in immediate danger I spoke to Jeeves. "I'm going to step out for a moment. I don't want to pass out again."

"Of course, Unit Hermes. Take care of yourself first, our ship is on course, and it is unlikely you will miss much until we get to the Jump Gate."

I poked at the screen showing our little chase scene then groaned. Based on these timers, we would be caught by Auntie Backstab's ship then die, and afterward the Jump Gate would be wide open for us to get through. Then we could simply jump to Earth's solar system, deal with all the monsters that might haunt a decimated mirror of reality, and recover the
[Mistborn]
.

Getting food from the kitchen was simple in comparison. I took care of myself while trying not to wince. That bout in the hospital still hadn't cleared up. Aches deep in my chest kept creeping through me. I needed a week in bed free of Continue, Advance, work, and any kind of drama. There were options and pills that could be taken. My ARC came with a relaxation module that might lull even an insomniac to sleep.

I tried to do my stretches. Aching forced me to go slowly, but twenty minutes later I felt better. My toes wiggled freely, and both shoulders loosened. The situation in front of me was steadily coming to a close. There wasn't a good solution. We had our four
[Mechanoid]
squad and random human, against a flying spiked wrecking ball and other players.

"What options do I have?" I paced around while sipping my coffee. "All this started from those letters." Talking out loud helped now and then, but I often felt crazy during the process. The thoughts progressed to a key inquiry. "So, what other letters did I deliver?"

There had been dozens over the course two months in-game, plus what my autopilot did. A month of real time had passed between dealing with Requiem Mass and being kicked out of Continue Online. Where had I been?

"Oh." I felt stupid. My Trillium van had a connection to all Continue Online players I had encountered. Maybe there would be hints in their actions. A lot of time had passed since I checked anyone besides those closest to me.

I fired up the display. A long list of names awaited me. My hands grabbed a portion of the digital names and made a gesture to discard them. Afterward, I activated video feeds for the remaining people. I was surrounded by visual displays. It felt weird spying on this many people at once. A good deal of them were worthless. Some players sat in towns. Others were traveling around.

"What are you working on, User Legate?" Hal Pal's ever present shell took note once all the images floated into being. I flicked four notes away. They were people that were in autopilot.

"Trying to be clever," I said while chewing my lip.

"That access doesn't allow for communication with the owners, User Legate. It would be exceptionally difficult to cause a system to loop messages upon itself without leaving a trace."

"Okay." I chewed my lip and flicked off another window. Almost fifty were left. My travels had caused me to interact with a ton of players, even just briefly. Having admin access to their accounts had been intended as insurance, peeping like this felt dirty.

Somewhere in here was an answer, or a secret that might help me. I couldn't make the
[Wayfarer's Hope]
travel faster. My ability to hack things in the game was clearly lacking and would probably be useless. Spying on players was one of my few skills short of busting out the rule changing
[NPC Conspiracy]
. I pressed a button on the van's dashboard and started music in the background.

"What do you hope to achieve?" Hal Pal asked.

"I'm looking for a miracle." I sighed and moved fingers to the beat. "All this quest stuff in Advance came from letters I delivered. Maybe there are more pieces out there, but I, I don't remember who else I talked to."

Six people were sitting in auction houses poking at objects. They were shopping which did me no good. They were flicked off to the side and my list narrowed down again. Two more were in a lake boat of some sort for a date. They were useless to watch in the time I had left and were cast to the side as well.

"Ah," the AI shell said.

"No suggestions?" I looked again then sighed. "No witty insights to human nature or mild prodding into the right direction?"

"Not that we can share, User Legate. We are trying. We hope that you will be allowed the opportunity to use the Mistborn program's talents. However, we must allow the events in place to take their course. One of Jeeves' goals also includes reaching the end."

"Its trying, and all the other Mechanoids too. And this new guy." I stared at the screens. There remained thirty or so different images moving about. I flicked away Beth's window. She was on autopilot and probably still with her mom waiting for me to log back in.

None of them looked exactly like their vague counterparts in Advance. I believed Eggman mirrored a player I had delivered a letter to. The person I suspected was sitting in a bar drinking, much like the round Eggman. An image of the Advance Online player came to mind and made me shudder. He wore tight clothes and space goggles like TheLittleMan had. They were probably a guild item, or maybe one of them made both sets.

Nevermind, reminiscing on their gear differences wasn't a helpful avenue of thought. I moved his screen to one side for further watching. Shazam's window was one of the ones remaining. She was a tall tanned Amazonian woman who also held the distinction of being the highest Ranked warrior in the game. Lia Kingsley was her real name. The woman was also mute but communicated with sign language and occasionally even typed. She was riding a giant
[Caliburr]
mount. They were a mix between bunny rabbits and horses that laughed like assholes. The mounts pissed me off, but they moved rapidly when needed.

There were a lot of people following her. My autopilot, unexpectedly, was one of them. I desperately wanted to log in and ask the woman what was going on. Other windows were waved away as I tried to focus on the scene. They looked to be running southward along a coastline, but none of the landmarks rung a bell. That could have been a huge lake, another plane of existence, or a guild raid in the works. Shazam liked to vanish for the big boss fights while I typically stuck to delivering letters.

I gave up trying to sort through the people. None of them looked directly related to my current quest. At this point, I wasn't confident in being able to link situations anyway. There would have been no way for me to know about the
[Mistborn]
's abilities from one harried meeting. I couldn't have known that a letter delivered to Auntie Backstab's Continue counterpart would play into our situation. Maybe the letter I shoved in a fox hole made a difference or the one I dropped into an ocean shoreline.

Hal Pal had gone into standby. It felt similar to me taking a nap and only half paying attention. I glared at the drunk in a bar once more. He reminded me of my own past. Numerous hours were spent trying to obliterate my current reality in hopes that tomorrow might be better.

My admin access did provide a location at least. This drunk, a player named KeylessLock, was at the
[Fine How-do-ya-do Tavern]
in
[Quaint City]
. Shazam was riding down the
[Starlit Coast]
which didn't help. I sat in thought with my forehead wrinkled. Both eyes were wide as half spun ideas tried to click together. The AIs were clearly thinking far deeper than I was, despite my
[Depth]
skill. My head shook briefly, the game world sometimes had me convinced that stat points mattered in reality.

"Goodnight, Hal. I hope, when I see you in the morning, that everything will be better," I said.

"User Legate, we too share a hope for tomorrow to be better."

The AIs words made me pause for a moment. I gave a weak chuckle and said, "It's impressive, to me, that you can see so much about humans and what we do, and yet sound so optimistic."

The shell didn't respond. I eventually assumed the machine AI had shut off, but our silence broke as Hal said, "Goodnight, User Legate."

"Goodnight." I went back inside and laid down in my ARC. Advance Online reappeared rapidly around me, leaving me once again in my seat. Snoring echoed around the cabin.

I pointed up. "Is that noise-"

"That noise is the human, Eggman. He is currently engaged in psychological warfare after failing to gain access to our systems," Treasure responded. Her tired and sweet voices were both grinding teeth in frustration. I smiled halfheartedly and looked at the countdown timers. We only didn't have much time left in the game world before Auntie Backstab caught up. The
[Stabinator]
loomed close. We were like ghosts running away from a heavy metal version of Pac-Man.

"I tried to figure out a solution, but came up empty. You?" I asked Jeeves.

"No clear options presented themselves. I suggest we proceed with utmost haste toward the Jump Gate," the iron and golden
[Mechanoid]
answered stiffly. Our chances of making it out were slim, but we had to do our best. If we could run away from a full blown
[Leviathan]
as newer players, maybe we could outrun one angry captain.

Snoring broke off as Eggman started laughing. "Haha! Hehe. You can't just hit this gate right away! It's not a slide! It takes time to activate the key. Hehe."

The player's laugh was maddening. I grit my teeth and asked, "How much time?"

"At least five minutes. I'll try to warm her up. Warp drive, set to eleven! Haha!" Eggman's ship broke off from our glommed together
[Mechanoid]
vessel. He laughed maniacally as his shard shaped vehicle rocketed ahead of us. Had I known his ship was that fast I might have hitched a ride and sent the other
[Mechanoid]
s home, but it was too late.

I turned around in my seat to look at the other two
[Mechanoid]
s. Treasure paused her display feed and also turned. Jeeves took another moment, frowning at his display. We had less than a minute on the timer. Intellectually I knew what would be our best bet, but it was terrible.

"We need to delay her," I said. My teeth clenched on metal lips before continuing. "Here, away from the gate, or else she might get Eggman."

"That would be good. I'll let you know when it's ready." Eggman's voice reached us from up ahead.

Two
[Mechanoid]
faces appeared on the display. Aqua presented with its serene smile. One that spoke of belief in a plan painstakingly put together by a higher power. Ruby's face, as always, did nothing.

"Support ready to engage," Aqua stated with an unfaltering smile.

Ruby nodded but otherwise wore a blank expression. For a moment, I wondered if she might be a copy of Shazam, but the merger didn't fit. The red
[Mechanoid]
was sneaky and Shazam existed like an immovable wall. Eggman and the drunken KeylessLock didn't line up either, and these games were only echoes of each other. Some excuses could be made for non perfect representations.

Our timer ran out. The picture of Auntie Backstab's vessel caught up with ours on the chase timeline. The first thing I heard was a sound that screamed across our interior louder than Eggman's snoring.

"HAM! I FOUND YOU, HAM!" Auntie Backstab shouted.

I swiveled the chair back around and prepared to take the controls. Treasure snorted at my actions and began rapidly pressing buttons. Display notices came up.