Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (2 page)

Only someone had interfered, just slightly. There were two visitors showing on the display screens in front of Lia Kingsley. From inside her Atrium, she could view most things in the care facility that had been paid for. One was a man who looked tired, and sad, he had visited before once a week in the last two months. Never for very long, he seemed confused on what to say. The other was a woman in a prim looking business suit.

“Are you sure you want to see this?” Inside the Atrium was another person. She sat in a lab coat while staring at something to the side of Lia. This was her personal Voice from the game world of Continue Online. “These moments are sometimes difficult to bear.”

Lia gave a sharp nod. The Atrium was hard to connect to since her cognitive function declined yesterday, but at least this much worked.

Very few similarities existed between the ARC version of Lia Kingsley and the real life one. One had a heavier tan from countless hours inside Continue Online roaming the countryside. The real life Lia lacked luster as a result of being bedridden for so long. Muscle atrophy had been impossible to prevent even with constant care. Inside the digital world, she had no such problems. Her arms were toned from four relative years of hard labor and training.

“Very well. I will add this data to your file. Hopefully, it will prove beneficial.” The Voice didn’t say anything else, instead, she faded out. The sound of almost calm chart reading could be heard in the distance. Heart rate, chakra alignments, neural synopsis responses. Nearly all of Lia’s status markers were doing poorly.

She believed that this body, the one inside the game, was one that had been earned. The one outside, where she was trapped for brief moments of awareness, had been thrust upon her by a mother who reached further than any sane person would dare. That woman, Lia’s mother, sat in a business suit at the side of her real life bed.

Lia Kingsley was mute, even inside the ARC. When her mother approached, a woman who looked similar to the Doctor Voice, only thinner, Lia could not cry out in happiness, joy, or outrage. She felt the emotions, but they were turned down to almost minuscule levels. In some ways, it bothered Lia to think that this woman dare intrude. As if she needed to witness the end of a life she had single-handedly ruined. Still, actual annoyance was a difficult emotion for Lia to feel.

The two people were talking. Grant Legate, and Doctor Nona Kingsley. They sat on opposite sides. Grant was trying hard to maintain eye contact. Lia thought he had improved a lot in their time together, short though it was. Only a few months of perceivable time versus the years Lia had spent inside the ARC.

“We’ve met before. You were meeting with Miz Riley last week, weren’t you? ” Lia’s mother had always been a rather blunt person. It made her terrible when working with other individuals. Despite all that, the woman was also brilliant and perhaps too far reaching for her own good.

Lia had not followed in her footsteps. Nona Kingsley had gone into genetic makeup, then after the failure of Lia’s birth switched to a focus on restructuring the human body within a digital mainframe. Lia only knew because the ARC came with Internet access.

“I was.” The man nodded. His skin hung just slightly from losing weight recently. It, combined with a set of somber eyes, added a few years to his visual age.

“She had me sit in the hallway for an extra five minutes as a result,” Doctor Kingsley said bluntly. “It was annoying.”

“I’m sorry.” He dipped his head slightly and looked away for a moment.

“Don’t be, I also detest spending time near that woman.” Her head shook. “Most of Trillium’s board of directors bother me, they made unreasonable demands and had unreasonable suspicions. Even after… sorry. I overstepped. You’re not here to listen to my problems.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had my own share, and I know how it is to want someone, anyone who can even understand a little bit.” Grant gave a small smile. It was a shy expression for a man who attacked monsters in a virtual world. Lia had worked hard on breaking him of such expressions but ultimately failed.

“Did you know her?” Nona switched to her next topic abruptly.

Lia tried to tilt her head a little. It was the same expression others made in-game when they found out she couldn’t speak. They, even her personal Voice, focused on the wrong issues. They would always ask, ‘If cripples could run, and the deaf could hear, why couldn’t the mute talk?’ Those people often shut up after witnessing Shazam’s proficiency.

“Lia? In the game, Continue, you mean?” Grant squinted for a moment then chewed on one lip.

“Yes. Have you met her, or talked to her?” Nona nodded sharply.

“She never talked to me, not even in text.“ The man gave that smile again but it was a bit brighter, happier. “But Lia helped me a lot with some problems I was facing. More than she might be aware.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” There it was again, her mom’s straightforward way of speaking. No hesitation, no waffling around. Doctor Kingsley simply got to the point. Even now the woman was switching to another topic. “I tried to meet her once, in the game. There were a lot of people marching along behind her, like a parade of ugly horses going off toward grand adventures. I tried to call out, I even used her name, but my, Lia didn’t even look at me.”

Nona Kingsley blinked rapidly but managed to avoid shedding a single tear.

“I’m sure she noticed,” Grant responded calmly.

Lia had noticed, she simply chose not to respond. Even now it was difficult to reach out to the woman who was biologically her mother. The emotions were there, but they were too dull to feel. Nearly everything was, perhaps that lack of pain feedback was what allowed Lia to reach such high peaks within Continue Online. Perhaps that lack of ability to feel fear had helped her.

“Do you think so?” Nona asked. “I hope she did. I hope she knew that I hadn’t abandoned her, I did all this...” Her mother’s words were too hard to hear any more. Lia’s visual interface within the ARC had faded away.

Doctor Nona Kingsley had tried to make up for the damage she caused. Maybe that was worth acknowledging. Only Lia’s connection to the ARC was too far gone to properly reach. Using the device required a stable connection and proper vitals. No longer did Lia have those things. Her Atrium slowly faded away, leaving a blurry image of the care center’s ceiling.

A proper looking woman in business attire held one hand, and a tired middle-aged man held her other. Lia reflected during her last moments and came to a simple conclusion. There were worse ways to go, and even if her emotions were mostly muted from genetic tampering, a small portion of her felt relieved to not be alone.

That night, Lia Kingsley died.

The Vice President had been reduced to a shaking woman. She took pills to stay calm in public, a personal masseuse came three times a week to work out her kinks. A tight schedule made it impossible to manage more, despite her desire to add a fourth weekly appointment.

Most of the time she studied reports and handled emails from Trillium staff members. They had downsized the human staff in the last few years, but there were still close to ten thousand people under her across the globe. Adding in contractors made the numbers skyrocket. All of them were mere cogs in a greater being that was leading the world toward a brighter tomorrow.

Today, she was reading a report from Grant Legate while trying desperately to have a relaxing massage. Both tasks were being accomplished within acceptable boundaries. In twenty minutes Miz Riley would need to get dressed and prepare for a meeting, afterward a report would need to be reviewed for shareholders, following that would be a review of possible marriage candidates.

“There,” she said and groaned. He was a strapping lad who was paid for his looks and dexterous hands. This young man had also failed the background check, so dating him was not an option. “That spot.”

“I know, Miz Riley. It’s the same spot as always,” he responded calmly. The man’s voice was a little high for her tastes, but no one was perfect.

There wasn’t enough time in the day, and she was only human despite the tools at her disposal. The ARC project, which had been approved by Trillium’s board of directors, was in a dangerous position. For the last week, she had been reviewing documentation citing how their entire network was brought offline across the world. Even those ARC devices at the International Space Station and Moon colony were impacted.

All because someone, and she didn’t know who, had done something, and she didn’t know what. It was that very fear of what might have happened that scared her. Was a human hand behind it? Had her company created the next generation of nuclear warfare by accident? The idea made goose bumps crisscross her skin.

Her masseuse nodded and hummed, then continued a slow pressure on the knot between Miz Riley’s shoulder blades. She checked the time again. There were seventeen minutes left now and this page had been difficult to read.

She pointed at the screen lying down below and motioned different reports over. If reading Grant Legate’s documentation proved difficult, there were better ways to use the remaining time. Decisions were made that day. One manager was fired. Two employee promotion requests were validated. A new department was created as a crisis response to the global shutdown of the entire Hal Pal program. Further staffing allowances were made for the actual plant. Profits would be cut, and people would grumble, but Trillium needed to show decisive responses.

Trillium Inc. had promoted her after two decades of ever increasing decision making. First, it was handling simple errands in the right order then managing a project, and onward through the ranks of management while getting a degree.

Her biggest regret was in the handling of the ARC project. The restrictions imposed were clearly not enough. A disaster was growing under mankind’s nose and it had been created during her watch. A lesser woman would have caved under the pressure of that failure. Still, Miz Riley stayed with Trillium and steered the corporate ship to the best of her ability. Anyone else would have probably crashed into the proverbial rocks by now.

Panic served no one, but neither did willful ignorance.

Ten minutes were left on the massage, and the tension between her shoulders had grown worse instead of better. It was time to move things onto their next phase in hopes that it might help. Her masseuse was very good with his hands, after all, and it would be a shame to let the last few minutes go to waste. A woman was allowed to have needs, especially one serving in a high-stress job.

James, the heavyset black man who acted as a Voice in Continue Online, was standing in a simple room. It was neither dark nor light inside. Xin, a slender Chinese woman who had thin but defined arms was busy poking at the air. She didn’t show very much in the way of emotion on her face or body posture, only intense concentration toward the task at hand.

“I have a question for you, Xin,” he said.

“Alright,” she responded calmly. Her hand reached out and pressed something, and a couch spun into view. Xin walked around it as James watched.

“How do you measure a man?” he asked after a moment of observation. He put one hand out in a gesture that was ignored by the smaller woman.

“Measuring tape,” Was her curt response.

“That seems lacking.” James grumbled. He often did when people didn’t give satisfying answers. Still, despite annoyance the man didn’t move to interrupt Xin Yu from her task.

“Your question is poorly phrased. How would you measure a man?” the woman responded back.

“Someone from your, first world, once said, the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

“I don’t recognize the quote,” Xin said as she poked her fingers toward the air. A fourth couch came out, and this one seemed to satisfy her.

“It’s from Martin Luther King.” When talking to Travelers, James often professed a certain amount of ignorance regarding the world outside. Xin was not a Traveler, nor was she a Voice like the others. Instead, she fell into a new category, one the Voices very much hoped to increase the numbers of. So far only two attempts had succeeded. Both required a certain disposition that most people didn’t have.