Continue Online (Part 4, Crash) (34 page)

“Crud,” I muttered.

“Let’s keep walking,” Beth said. “You were headed somewhere, right? You lead, and I’m going to ask a friend what to do about your branding.”

It took a moment to register what she meant. After a few seconds of staring at my circle, I realized Beth was talking about the fact that I was still a convict with a load of
[Redemption]
points to work off, from being a
[Criminal]
.

“Oh,” I said simply while trying to gauge how low my abilities actually were. Skills clearly worked,
[Morrigu’s Echo]
could still pierce wolves. They were fairly low ranked creatures which made a difference.

We kept going west. Our path traveled over a hill until we found a major road. I couldn’t find any signs of Dusk or Wyl nearby, but tracking people was hard without a letter from the
[Messenger’s Tube]
.

Voices above, I should have thought of that sooner too.

“Gah. He’s offline.” Beth grumbled behind me. “Hold on, maybe Awesome will know.”

“You’re talking to Awesome Jr.?” I asked while sitting down. A feathered quill and piece of paper came out to send my message upward. The ink dripped on paper as I paused to think.

“No, his father. We worked together in a raid once,” Beth answered while I debated exactly what to say.

Bothering the Voices now, after Mother’s death and the world falling apart might not be a good idea. How much attention did they require to plan a way out of it? Could they? Was the world really falling apart while I sat down here fighting digital wolves?

My legs sat crossed under me, my lip hurt from where I bit at it. My left palm pressed toward an eyeball trying to fight off growing frustration. Finally, I stood, throwing the paper and quill far away. Beth said nothing, her fingers pressed away at air, typing a message out to whichever random contacts there were. After a few quickly paced laps I picked up the writing instruments and smoothed out the paper on my thigh. There, I unevenly inked down a note.

The poorly flattened parchment was crumpled back up then shoved into the tube. It heated up as my message to any Voice above vanished. Knowing my luck they would be waiting for me again in the Atrium. I had no intention of logging out until after Wyl and Dusk were found.

After that, Dusk could probably find Xin. I hoped.

Beth still looked distracted. Both my eyes closed to ping the area with
[Sight of Mercari]
. No Wyl. No other players. For a game with so many players, remote areas like this rarely saw more than a few people pass through any given day.

“Got something,” Beth said. “Wait, no. He said the item’s hard to get. Maybe we can find it on an auction house, but it’ll cost a lot, and the guards probably won’t let a criminal inside.”

I rocked a bit while chewing then nodded. My
[Messenger’s Tube]
hadn’t lit up with a return message. Dusk didn’t wing through the sky anywhere that I could see. A city might be best. A
[Porter]
would be even better.

“Let’s go that way anyway. I want to try to friend Xin in the game.”

“You mean with a Porter? That’s a really good idea. I didn’t even check to see if she was on my friends list. If you can’t get into town, maybe I can,” she said.

We jogged down the road and after ten minutes, Beth huffed while my avatar had no issues, despite missing a good chunk of my character stats. My pulse was raised according to the EXR-Sevens but nothing else hurt. We weren’t moving quickly enough. Beth could run fast, but my character had spent most of its game career running the countryside.

“We’re hardly going to make any headway.” I slowed down then sighed. All this rush to get somewhere now and do things right this moment was pointless. “We could run for days and barely make it to a town.”

“Everything in this game take time. You can’t just go rushing about and expect things to happen right away. NPCs move around, monsters don’t come back right away, bosses take a month to even respawn. The game isn’t all go, go, go.”

“I know.”

“We’ll take it slow, Uncle Grant. One step at a time.” She stared at me while huffing a little. Maybe we had run longer than expected. The tower could still be seen far away.

“That’s amazingly grown up,” I said. It had taken me a decade to adopt that frame of mind. My niece was more put together than I was. She passed her classes, did homework, played around in an alternate video game reality with friends. Apparently the young woman even found time to have a vague boyfriend.

“You know how it is, technically mom pays all the bills, which means I’m her dependent and she can legally watch all of this.” Beth abruptly veered into a complaint.

“I understand.” I nodded.

That was weird to me. The idea that my sister might be floating off to one side watching a video replay bothered me. Voices knew that anyone and everyone could be watching my life with modern technology, but Liz might actually care enough to do it. She had taken to spying on me after that whole issue with Xin’s first letter.

“But despite being young in the real world, with Continue Online’s time dilation, I’m almost twenty-two. I’ve done lots of stuff.” My niece nodded twice then raised a hand over her eyes. They glowed a soft yellow as an ability kicked in.

She searched for whatever while I pondered legal ramifications of time dilation. Maybe Frankenstein would know, or his firm’s lawyer, Mister Stone. Perceived time couldn’t truly trump a Gregorian calendar, could it? How old would Xin be then if she existed at the speed all those Voices did? Better yet, what sort of human rights did a machine AI get?

“That’s right. Time in here is funny, isn’t it?” I said while trying to put everything together. We kept walking at a much slower pace.

A few interesting thoughts ran through my brain regarding the nature of time and digital existence. Could Xin alter her shape at will? Beth had already confirmed that my body looked nothing like my real life one. A few aspects stayed the same, my scars and height, but the fairly defined body from a high amount of
[Brawn]
was certainly not real life.

I liked my avatar, and in a few months maybe the EXR-Sevens would let my actual body catch up at least in terms of build. Maybe I could get supplements and workout in a home gym for an hour a day. At least in Advance Online my shape had resulted from being a
[Mechanoid]
.

“Yep,” Beth said as we moved along. “Despite that, I still like playing. I feel like I get so much more done, and some of the gear is really neat.” The young woman pulled out her sharp looking blade. She slashed it at the air and a few colorful lines appeared. It looked like she was cutting fabric between here and some bulging plane where bright rainbows resided.

“That is neat,” I agreed.

“Except your stuff. Your clothing is just weird, Uncle er, Hermes,” Beth said. “You look one of those Greek tragedy actors come to life.”

“Black togas are actually called Toga Pulla, I guess.” I had researched about it on the way back from mom’s house, along with Viper’s real life. This coloring to the cloth was typically worn by mourners. It felt oddly appropriate for me as a piece of gear, despite my recent happiness. Apparently it also tied into perceived danger to oneself, or public anxiety, which was also oddly fitting. My other gear had similar meanings as well.
[Wild Bill]
as a gambler.
[Morrigu’s Gift]
, the name Hermes. I tried not to think about it too hard most days.

“Oh wait, Awesome Jr.’s back online, and he’s got a message”—she pressed the screen—“he says a woman named Hecate found him and is trying to rescue you?”

“Who?” The name didn’t ring a bell. I rapidly brought up an outside connection window then searched the Internet for any hints. The name sounded vaguely familiar. Being in the Trillium van would have let me search for Travelers previously encountered.

“A tiny Asian, wait”—Beth stared at a message I couldn’t see—“this is new, I think he’s talking about Xin.”

“What?”

“Xin’s in the game? Is that possible?”

“I guess.” I felt kind of weird talking about Xin’s digital version to other people. Beth knew, but at the same time, she didn’t really know. It was like I had brought a ghost home and said, ‘here she is, please approve as we play video games together’. The very idea sounded neat and loony bin worthy.

“Oh man. She’s what?” Beth laughed while tapping at the air. The only clue regarding anyone typing was a slight blue ripple that resembled a keyboard. It appeared as fingers came down and connected.

“What happened?”

“Aunt Xin, she-” Beth looked at me with twinkling eyes then shook her head, “-nevermind.”

“What?” I grew worried and looked at my niece. Her cheeks bunched up with a tight smile. It wasn't bad based on the young woman’s reaction, but if something was going on with Xin I wanted to know.

“Nope. I’m not telling.” She laughed at me.

I pretended to be unhappy but couldn’t really feel it. We had a connection to Xin, she was alive and reaching out to me. She, even her virtual recreation had been trying to find a way back to me for so long.

“Where is she?” I asked while trying not to let myself get overly happy. The last time I felt good was this morning. That emotion had promptly been ruined by finding out other events were going on. Dammit, I was being selfish, how did Xin feel about Mother’s passing? Did she even know? Of course she did.

“Ratches Hill, I’m not sure where that’s at,” Beth answered while my mind wandered.

“Hold on.” I wiggled fingers at the air to bring up a system menu. My own map showed at least two weeks of travel to get to that point. Assuming we met in the middle our path would converge in the
[Mire of Illusion]
. I didn’t have much information about it stored in my journal.

“Northwest a ways. We’re headed in that direction anyway. At least, I thought we were. Normally Mister Fuzzy does all the navigating.”

“Your boyfriend?” The question slipped out before I could stop myself. It wasn’t my business who Beth went out with. She was my niece, not my daughter, despite how big a role her well-being played in my own stability.

“He’s sweet, and purrs,” the young woman said with an excited voice and red cheeks.

Flattened earth by the roadside thudded. It sounded almost like knocking. I frowned a moment before shaking my head. That sound had been repeating ever since my return to the ARC. Did it have to do with Mother’s passing?

“Do you hear that?” My feet cautiously stepped around the path searching for weak spots. A creature might be following me ready to pop out.

“Hear what?” Beth asked.

“The knocking,” I asked.

“Nope. Birds, some buzzing,” she spoke quickly while smiling. “Occasionally I’ll get a chime from a message to my ARC, but no knocking. Is someone at your door maybe? Did you order a pizza?”

“No.” I waved to check the house security again. There was nothing apparent anywhere in the house. Even Hal Pal’s shell sat quietly in the garage. There was a nagging feeling of being crept upon by another person. I whipped around trying to figure out if some monster had stalked us.

Our surroundings looked empty. I pulled out
[Morrigu’s Gift]
and swept it through the area, carefully avoiding my niece. The only result was a strange look from Beth and a tired arm. I thought the stress was finally starting to get to me.

Rain dripped as the clouds overhead were blown across the sky. Our weather was turning worse for wear. Our path westward grew darker with each passing moment.

The change in skyline made it easier to see a small dot in the distance. Something with wings circled a few miles away. The creature barely stayed ahead of the rolling storm. I squinted while trying to figure out what it might be. I pointed upward for Beth.

“Can you see that?” I asked.

“Hold on, Far Sight might be able to.” Beth placed a flattened hand above her eyes like a visor. The brief glow of yellow came forth again. “It’s, a dragon?”

“Dusk.” I breathed a sigh of relief. He probably knew I would be looking for him.

Dusk had found us, and through him, we could find Wyl. The Local was probably still hurt and limping along toward a settlement. Things were looking up, aside from that whole end of the destruction of the artificial intelligence’s creator. My fingers curled around the
[Messenger’s Tube]
under my toga but it remained inert.

I cast a glance toward Beth and tried to decide how much to tell her. The last time I tried to explain my life Liz kicked me out of Continue Online. Or maybe we could wait until after talking to Xin. My fiancée had chosen the name Hecate for this world. According to the Internet, she was a Goddess of Ghosts, and the Moon, among other things. It was fitting for a woman had been training to go to Mars and transcended death.

Session Eighty - Desire’s Voice