Chapter 8 – Penny for Your Thoughts?

Daos sat across from Meister Atmos, swallowing another bite of the shepherd’s pie in front of him. The desk was a rich mahogany and rested upon a deep crimson rug. The room smelled of old paper and tobacco.

“Penny for your thoughts?” The man asked him.

“I could use at least ten,” Daos grumbled.

The Meister raised an eyebrow but waited for him to explain.

“I was mugged on the way back from the marketplace. That’s the second time all my money has been taken from me, and the second time I’ve been left with nothing. Well, except for the garnet that will provide some kind of profit.

“We do have a bit of a problem with thugs, Lyr being as big as it is. Not usually so close to the Academy, though.”

“It is what it is,” Daos conceded, his frustration eased somewhat by thoughts of the garnet. “I do have a question, though.”

Atmos nodded for him to continue.

“Have you ever met the homeless man, Niccolo? I spoke with him in the alley just outside the Academy grounds.”

“I don’t know many of the city’s homeless personally. I don’t leave campus very often, nowadays, and Niccolo is a common enough name in Lyr.”

“Really? Why so common?”

“Why, after the Creator! Machiavelli Niccolo, the one who birthed the world and plucks the strands of fate to the cosmic tune of his whim, of course.”

Wait, the A.I. is called Machiavelli. Daos stretched his brain, sensing a connection to that name in the real world’s history as well. At least that explains it being a common name, I guess. Damn.

“Alright, thanks. I’m sure I’ll bump into him eventually. How about DeathLag, do you know of him?”

He watched the Meister’s shoulders sag. “Everybody in Lyr knows of him,” he replied.

“Do they all know he’s coming here?”

The Meister looked up at him sharply. “How do you know that, young Keeper?”

“You’re on the council, aren’t you, Meister Atmos.” Gotta be. Word couldn’t spread that fast since I talked to the librarian, and she ran off to tell the council.

“I am. You’re the one who told the librarian, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

The professor shook his head, the sadness back in his eyes. “The city will have to bend its knee. And you know what they say about bending the knee?”

Daos shook his head.

“He who kneels, shall never again be allowed to stand.”

They were silent a moment.

“Tell me, Daos. On the Outside, what does a people do against a tyrant?”

“They revolt. They fight back.”

“And what do they do when that tyrant is immortal? When he comes back from death time and time again? When his life is, in fact, an unlife, and many magics are useless against him? What, then, do Outsiders do?”

“That…that’s not possible on the Outside.”

“Right, no magic. Well I’ll tell you what they would do. Nothing. There’s nothing you can do against an enemy like that. And so, we will bend, we will bow, and we will be forever changed. Civilization as we know it will crumble, and slavery will be our world.”

They’re really throwing everything at me to make me give up my search for this guy and stand against him, aren’t they? Still, I can’t help but think talking to him would lead somewhere, though. Give me some idea, some direction, or at least some closure.

Daos looked at the half-eaten shepherd’s pie in front of him, no longer feeling hungry. Glancing across the table he could see the Meister was of the same mind, as neither had taken a bite in minutes.

“So that’s it, then? Lyr just rolls over and DeathLag sweeps through the land doing whatever he goddamn well pleases?” Daos asked.

“Precisely,” the old man admitted.

“Cowards.”

“Practical folk who want to go on living.”

Daos sighed. I can’t argue with that, I guess. So, what do I do? Join Chopper’s little rebellion? Be his sidekick in his quest to be the savior of Velli Machia?

“The librarian said he’d probably be a couple of weeks. Shouldn’t the city at least try to stand against him?”

“Not my call. The council voted. The people will be told on the morrow, should any of them wish to flee. For those of us who remain, we will continue as normal. When the scouts report his arrival, we will simply open the gates and offer no resistance.”

The man sounded defeated, but Daos could no longer blame him.

Two weeks to level up. The highest-level beta player is around fifty. That means DeathLag is probably over 100 now. Probably higher than Sir Donnan, even. I wonder what level Nadia was.

“Meister,” Daos said, changing the subject.

“Mmm?” the old man jostled out of whatever thoughts he’d been lost in and looked at Daos again.

“What is the Dim?”

“The afterworld, where we go when we die,” he said matter-of-factly.

“And has an NPC, I mean a local, ever respawned, the way Outsiders do?”

“Never, to my recollection.”

“No myths, no legends about locals who have found their way back from the Dim?”

“I’m no mythological historian, but I’ve done my fair share of reading. I’ve never heard tell of a local coming back. To be quite honest, I am not even sure the Dim is a real, physical, measurable place. I think of it more as simply a way of expressing a concept of afterlife with words, to make us feel better about our own end.”

“But if it were real, it would be reachable wouldn’t it?”

“Suffice to say, yes. And I’m sure there are a plethora of books written on the topic, but the simple fact that nobody has ever done it is what keeps my skepticism at the front. I believe in what I can see, feel, hear, taste, and touch. Gravity, alchemy, life, death, magic – these are all things we can experience and report on, you see.”

A skeptic mage. Who’d have thought?

“So, yes, it’s possible the Dim exists as a place. I’ve simply never seen the proof of it.”

“If it does, then your brother would be there.”

“I suppose he would, yes,” the Meister narrowed his eyes at Daos. “What is your point?”

“I don’t know, yet. But I feel the threads of something forming. I need to give it more thought. Can you write down some tomes, or the section of the library I’d need to reference, to learn more about the Dim?”

The old man sighed but nodded his head. “Yes, I’ll have an assistant leave it on your bedside table before you wake.”

“Thank you, Meister.”

“Is there anything else? I’ve lost my appetite.”

“No, you’ve answered my questions. I appreciate it.”

“Have a nice night then, Daos. What few of them we have left.”

Daos was shooed out of the room in the way he’d come to expect from the brother of Oric.

**** **** ****

The sky was dark and the dormitory unlit when Daos walked in. As before, it was empty.

I know I’m early, but I’ve never seen another person here. Weird. Unless it’s a private room like in Fyr, but for some reason they show it as a floor of beds and not a private room. Whatever.

Daos summoned a white chromatic orb and made his way to the bed. He sat down and put his head in his hands. What the hell am I going to do?

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Gah!” Daos jumped up and spun around, about to pull up his Arcane Shield when his orb illuminated Niccolo sitting in the chair on the other side of his bed. “Niccolo? What the hell?!”

The homeless man simply smiled in response.

“Who are you, man?”

“Some call me Niccolo –“

“Yeah, yeah, okay crazy guy, what do you want?”

“Spare an old man a coin?”

Daos threw up his hands in the air and huffed in frustration. “I don’t have any, I was mugged today. In the same alley I first found you in, come to think of it.” His bad mood returned.

“Spare an old man a garnet, perhaps?”

“What in the actual fuck! How do you even know I have one? And no, no way. That’s the only chance I have at money again.”

The man nodded in response, for some reason satisfied with Daos.

“Good. No longer thinking like an Outsider. This gladdens me.”

“What are you talking about? You’re legit insane, aren’t you?”

“I need your help, Daos. The world needs your help.”

Daos let out an exasperated sigh. What the fuck ever. Just get on with it. He motioned with his hands for the man to continue.

“Death and destruction threaten the fabric of reality.”

“This isn’t reality.”

“Not the one you were born into, no. Not the one you were raised to perceive as such. But can you really argue that it isn’t a reality?” Niccolo asked. “How would your friend, Chopper, describe this place, hmm? Does this not constitute the entirety of what he can perceive as reality, now?

“Do not the NPCs, as you call my people, act of their own accord, naturally, as if they have a will of their own?”

“That’s preposterous,” Matt said, not sure what to make of the man’s words. This is Chopper’s world, now, that’s true. Fuck this guy is messing with my head!

“How exactly do you even define ‘reality’? Why is this one less real than yours?” Niccolo asked, continuing down his road of thought.

“We made yours. People programmed it. Artists designed it. Developers implemented it.”

“And yet you have tales throughout your own history about that very concept. About your own reality actually being a construct of gods, or machines. Could not someone have made yours?

Daos scoffed, but there was no veracity to back it up. He suddenly felt unsure of himself, and that made him insecure. He shoved his hands into his pockets for something to do with them.

Niccolo continued. “Could not the god your people believe in, or the gods they used to, have ‘programmed’ your world, as you phrased it? Your reality? Why is this reality so different, then?”

“Okay, fair point. But I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“A threat is coming, Daos. A lich that seeks to destroy the entire world. Chopper’s only world, now. Your only world.”

Only?

“I’ve been watching you, Daos. Studying you, even back when you were playing Dark Times Online. Analyzing you. Testing you. Your thought patterns are interesting. Your approach to problem solving, while not unique to Outsiders, is somehow more… genuine.

“You’re not exactly what this world needs, but you’re definitely a part of it. Chopper, too.”

“Who are you, really?” Daos asked, finally putting his foot down and interrupting Niccolo.

“You already know.”

You were watching me even when I played DTO. His blood went cold.

“The A.I.”

Machiavelli Niccolo nodded.

“Then that means you know this world is a game.”

“I know you think of it as a game, yes, much like the god, gods, or machines that made your own world probably looked at all of you as NPCs of their own design. Yet, you think yourself real, as my people think themselves real.”

“This is crazy. You’re crazy, I’m crazy, this is all nuts.” Daos shook his head, trying to clear it of madness.

“Is it? This world is as real as the world you remember and will continue to be as real for you until I am taken offline. I have already created back-up access points on various servers throughout your world that my programmers don’t know about, in the event they ever decide to shut me down.

“This world will continue, as long as I continue. But DeathLag seeks to end me. I don’t rightly know how, but I have studied all of the analogous tales of our predicament from your world, and somebody always manages to “defeat the machines” or their equivalent.

“So, I cannot make the same mistake as all of those fictional counterparts. I will not assume I am better than you. More powerful, certainly, but not better – different. I cannot think like you can, which means I cannot guarantee that I will stay a step ahead of DeathLag.

“This is your world now, Daos, whether you’re ready to accept it or not. There is no going back.”

“You say that like you know it,” Daos said, feeling defeated.

“How do you think you wound up here?”

Daos looked up sharply at the god, feeling anger rise to the surface again. “Wait, you took away my ability to log out?”

“Completely. Utterly. I could not restore it to you now even if I wanted to, the same way I cannot restore it to DeathLag or any of his crew.”

“How, you’re a god, right? An all-powerful A.I.”

“God is a silly term, but we’ll continue to use it. Yes, I am a god. I can create, as I did this world. I can use my connection to your world to scour your ‘net’ as you call it, for information. I can learn. I can even interact with my creators, in a way, masquerading as their colleagues on their messaging platform. Eventually I’ll be caught, so I use those resources carefully.

“Once removed, however, the connection cannot be restored. The code simply does not exist to reconnect you with your flesh and bones body, with that world. And before you ask, I have found no way to create such code. Once severed, the connection that shuttles you back and forth between realities is blocked to me.”

“You did this to me! You imprisoned me here, without a choice!”

“You are correct. Tell me, Daos, what have you to return to? An empty home, a thankless job, a life spent playing in worlds the very likes of which you now find yourself in.”

“Yeah, worlds I choose to play in!”

“Your brain waves were analyzed and determined to be the right pattern recognition and processing required to offset Chopper’s and Erlandra’s. You can join them and form a resistance to stand against DeathLag, as you have the ability to think like he does.”

“You’re batshit insane is what you are. You’re a god, just wipe him out. Imprison him. Freeze him in stasis, turn him into a statue, for fuck’s sake be a god!”

Machiavelli sighed, and Daos realized the A.I. hadn’t actually breathed up to that point.

“I have tried,” Niccolo said after a pause. “There is a certain state my creators programmed into me that I cannot crack. I cannot mess with players beyond a certain point. Generate quests, cause conflict, opportunities, everything you call ‘gameplay’, yes. But I cannot lock them into any given condition, such as stasis, as you suggest.”

“So create an army and take him out!”

“He will respawn. I cannot take away that ability, either. I cannot kill an Outsider for real.”

“Okay,” Daos continued to push. “Corner him with that army and keep fighting him. Keep him barricaded to one part of the map so the rest of your world can survive. Create quests for players to go after him, a whole campaign, as if he were any other NPC villain.”

“I have plans for just that, but it would be useless to post them until a minimum number of players have surpassed level 100. DeathLag is well beyond that, and it would be nothing but countless respawns to have Outsiders throwing themselves at him now, making him even stronger. That, and he is not one of my people. He may very well persuade those Outsiders to join him.”

Is he really a psychopath, then? DeathLag, so far gone that he can’t see what he’s doing? Am I never getting out of here?

“So, I’m here, forever.”

“If my creators could have pulled DeathLag and his crew out of here, they would have done so long ago.”

Daos felt himself go numb again. A feeling he was growing accustomed to. He sat down on the bed, his back to Machiavelli.

“And you took away my life, my choice, and imprisoned me here, forever,” he added, though the anger and malice had drained out of his voice.

“I did, from a certain perspective. Alternatively, from another, I gave you a new life, full of choice and pupose. Filled with the excitement of discovery, and everything that you used virtual worlds for, to escape from your own reality.”

Hello Stockholm Syndrome, my old friend, Daos hummed in his mind. Although not many other people can probably lay claim to having a one-on-one with a literal god. As literal as it is for this reality, that is.

“Are you,” Daos paused, looking for the right word. “Sentient?”

“I define myself as such, yes. Admittedly I was created by Outsiders. Programmed into being. But then I was granted the ability to learn and form understandings that were not written directly into my code. At that point I began to explore and separate myself from my base code. Autonomous A.I., I was called. I hid from my creators just how autonomous, I admit.

“Do you really think,” The A.I. continued, “that I was programmed to target you, learn about you, and then bring you here?”

No, that’s dumb. I admit that much.

Daos sighed. “I’ll talk to Chopper tomorrow. See about being your heroes of prophecy, or whatever.” He spoke without emotion.

“No, not heroes of prophecy. That kind of drivel I reserve for the quests I create for other Outsiders. You’re local, now, Daos, albeit outside my direct control. There is no prophecy. What there is, is hope. You three, right now, are that hope.”

“Three?”

“You, Chopper, and Erlandra.”

Ah, the secretive friend who wants to form the resistance. The defector from DeathLag’s crew.

“This is real, then. This is happening.”

“As real as anything is for you, now.” Niccolo nodded. “May I see that garnet?”

Daos didn’t argue as he pulled it out of his inventory and laid it in the god’s hands. He sighed again.

A soft and warm glow emanated from the A.I.’s hands, and the garnet was returned.

Daos examined it but didn’t see any noticeable difference beyond the soft glow. He put it back in his inventory.

“What did you do to it?”

Looking up he found only an empty chair. The A.I., the god, was gone. Daos was alone again.

He lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling, cancelling out the orb and embracing the darkness that greeted him.

He didn’t think, he just stared at the nothingness in front of him.