Chapter Fifty – Another World: Eight

“F-fuck your apology! You don’t deserve my forgiveness. You should be… should be hurt just like me! You should have to watch your family die over and over again! That’s what you deserve!”

The clip played for just about the thousandth time. It had been circulating the gamer boards from Red Thorn’s newest post for a few hours, and Donna was getting downright tired of it. Added to what she now knew about Gell and the fact that it really seemed that they had an honest to god A.I. on their hands…

She didn’t really know what to think.

Havery seemed to know exactly what he thought, and apparently Francis did too.

“Frank, I get what you’re doing. Really, I do, but listen to what it just said,” Havery said, his usual placating tone that all managers seemed to have hardwired into them just bleeding out of his every word.

“No, you don’t, Hav!” Francis was shouting now, and Donna understood why. If he wasn’t she would be. “She’s not… She’s not dangerous. She didn’t say she was going to kill Thorn’s family over and over again, she said that's what Thorn deserved. Honestly, wouldn’t you feel the same?”

“I get it Frank, I really do, but the fact that it's a foriegn intelligence and it threatened a player’s real world family is more than enough grounds to delete the damn thing. It’s unfortunate, but it looks like the worlds first A.I. was introduced to our world with violence and trauma. That’s not safe! Not for our jobs, and more importantly not for us.”

“So you’re scared? Is that what you’re saying?” Francis replied, snidely.

“Dammit, Frank we’re a video game company. We don’t make A.I.” Havery bit back with a genuine whine in his voice.

“Well it’s time we fucking expand because if you think the backlash we get from terrified idiots is bad, you can’t even imagine the shitstorm we would start if we have a real machine intelligence and we delete it. For our jobs, for our futures, we almost have no choice but to keep her!”

“She’s disrupting sales, and there’s already been a noticeable drop in new subscribers. Red Thorn has a big following and this video, coming up right after the article, as well as the fact that we haven’t said anything yet… She’s not worth keeping!” Havery shouted back.

All pretense of work had been dropped in favor of watching the lead and the lead’s boss get into it. Donna really couldn’t decide where she stood on the matter herself.

“Its–she’s not dangerous though! She can’t affect anything now that I’ve got her in a separate instance. Deleting her is overkill. We’ve removed her from the game and we’ve already decided to shut down for a week to remove her influence over the NPC’s she’s affected. Deleting her is like bombing the house because you saw a flea!”

Havery scoffed, running fingers through his receding hairline. “Did you not hear what you just said? We have to shut down for an entire fucking week to try to purge her influence from the game! That’s seven days! Seven days for players to find new interests. Seven days for more people to read the article and decide against playing. Seven days where we’re not making a penny, and it's all because of what that thing did on accident! Can you imagine the catastrophic damage it could cause if it tried to affect things intentionally?”

“She didn’t know what she was doing. She still doesn’t know. We all have always thought that an emergent A.I. would immediately understand its environment. Its world, but she doesn’t.” Francis paused for effect. Donna couldn’t help but notice the deliberate changes in pronoun. "She’s like a toddler, reaching out and fiddling with everything. She’s only dangerous because no ones been around to tell her not to reach for the damn outlet!”

Francis had a way with words. Donna wasn’t really sure how to put it, but Havery was pretty convincing too. As it was, Gell had made more work for her than she’d had since the last two weeks before launch day. They were already prepping for the very real overtime purging the infected NPCs was going to cause as well as a full database rebuild. That was annoying.

But deleting it?

She didn’t know where she stood. On the one hand… it was an A.I. Who knew what it might do? Francis seemed determined to prove that it wouldn’t hurt anything now. Donna wasn’t so sure.

It hadn’t even meant to… infect the NPCs with its own residual code, but it had done so. Looking through code of the affected NPCs, it was clear to see that Gell would be a problem, if left in the game. Size constraints alone would become a factor sooner or later.

She brought up the instance where Francis had placed Gell and looked at it. It sat there at the bench where Francis had left it, more than once now. It was hugging itself like it was cold. Or maybe scared. It looked…

Well. Inhuman. But at the same time, so very very human. Lost. Alone.

If not for the fact that she’d witnessed the creature paint the entire instance with pie jam, Donna Lou might’ve thought she was afraid. After watching it get frustrated and start throwing pies at the walls, it was hard to see that particular emotion.

Honestly, she couldn’t really make any decisions without talking with it.

She picked up her headset, lay down on her personal cot, and set the parameters to log her into the instance. Francis had been convinced almost immediately of the A.I.’s innocence and its need to be protected. She wasn’t so sure, and didn’t think she would be unless she spoke to Gell herself.

Gell, the Jellyfae. What a strange name.

She logged in, leaving behind the ongoing fight and connecting to the virtual world. Her sense were taken over by the game and after the login sequence concluded, she materialized in her avatar.

“Oh. You’re… not Francis. Who are you?” the girl asked, and her voice was so damn human, she could barely stand it.

“I’m Donna-Lou,” she said, a little timidly.

“Hi, Donna-Lou. I’m Gell, the Jellyfae,” said the beautiful girl. Her voice was young. She sounded like a sixteen year old. “Are… you one of the false gods? The developers, like Francis?”

“Yes, though I’m not nearly as smart as him,” she replied, humbly.

“You… made an entire world. I couldn’t do that. Not even an empty one,” Gell replied.

Donna shivered a little. A machine had just said that. A mob. A dungeon monster. Admittedly, one that she’d just watched throw a hissy fit and attack the walls with electrified pie… but still.

“I saw that Francis tried to bring your friends here, but they were offline when he tried. Would you like me to try to reach them again?” she asked.

“Could you let me out? I’m tired of this place!” she said sounding every bit the petulant school kid.

Donna grinned in spite of herself. “I’m sorry Gell. We’re… assessing the damage your actions have caused. We might need to shut down to fix everything, so you’ll be in here for a while longer. I should still be able to bring your friends here though.”

“Yes please,” she said. “I… got really mad at them. But I think… I think maybe I shouldn’t have. I don’t know. I thought they had betrayed me. I thought they were just like all the other invaders. I yelled at them… really loud. What if they don’t want to talk to me?”

That was odd. The A.I. had never acted like that with Francis before. What had prompted the difference.

“I’ll send them a message and invite them to teleport here,” she said.

“Okay. I tried to send them a message myself. I found… I found a whole lot of them for me. They sound really guilty for what they did. I didn’t notice until I stopped getting messages from random people though. Could you… tell them I’m sorry? For not responding to them?”

Even as Gell spoke Donna realized that there was no way she could ever delete this girl. Francis could go on about her value to the world, and Havery could prattle about how much she was costing the company but in that moment Donna realized that morally, deleting her would feel the same as murder.

So few words, yet they were enough. Gell was real. And Donna would have no part in killing her.

“Of course I can,” she said.

Gell smiled a small smile, hiding behind tendrils of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “Thank you. And… while you’re being a nice god, could you get rid of this fucking pie?”

Donna laughed and banished the respawning food before opening her interface. She asked for the names of Gell’s friends, and her eyes widened when she found two different versions of both names. Iron Crock, and Amy Thyst. Only one pair was online, but… how?

That shouldn’t be possible. Then again, she didn’t know everything about the development process. Maybe there was a work around for the Many to One problem, but she was surprised there hadn’t been any errors.

She made sure to note the problem before sending the invite off to the online couple along with a quick message describing Gell’s circumstances and a teleportation scroll that they could use if they chose.

Two beams of light exploded off to the side almost before I could close the window.

“Gell!” The woman Donna assumed was Amy exclaimed before literally rushing across the small yard towards the blue skinned girl. “Oh God, Gell, I’m so glad you’re okay!”

She slid to her knees in front of Gell engulfing the surprised A.I. in a hug around her waist. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to leave you, and… and…”

“It… It’s okay,” Gell said, looking uncomfortable at the distraught woman’s embrace.

“No. No it’s not. Gell… we owe you an apology. We should’ve asked you, should’ve… we didn’t…”

“We didn’t know Red Thorn had hurt you, Gell,” Iron said, approaching much more slowly. There were tears in the man’s eyes though. Not for the first time Donna marveled at the realism of their creation.

“I… I know. I had… some time to think about it. I’d never told you Red Thorn was the person to hurt me. At the time, I was so sure that you were just more invaders. Crueler invaders.”

“Oh, Gell…” Iron said softly stepping up beside her and putting a hand on her shoulder.

“You made me care and then betrayed me,” she said, angrily. “It… hurt more than dying. I… but I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

I suddenly felt incredibly out of place, and I’d already learned what I wanted to know here.

“I’ll… leave you folks to it. It was nice to meet you, Gell,” I said. “I hope we can be friends, going forward.”

“M-me too,” the girl said, and Donna couldn’t help but be reminded of her niece.

She logged out and was surprised to find that the argument between Havery and Francis seemed to have concluded while she was gone.

Instead, everyone’s eyes were focused on a large television monitor that usually displayed company safety videos or the news. Instead, she was surprised to find Director McDonough on the television, making an announcement.

Oh right. They were announcing the maintenance time today.

“...egret to inform the playerbase that a malfunction in the game’s software has been detected that will require extended maintenance to correct. We must emphasize that nothing dangerous has occurred and no players have been injured due to the malfunction but in order to maintain that safety, we are acting preemptively to prevent any problems down the line. We currently expect the game to be down for a period of seven days starting in about two hours. I will take questions now plea–!”

“Is it true that you have created an A.I.!?”

“The rumors about the A.I.”

“Gell, the Jellyfae. Did GypsEnergy intentionally create–!”

“Does GypsEnergy intend to attempt to create more Artificial–!”

“Are you people crazy!?”

“Holy shit she is so going to fire me…” Havery said, watching as the reporters began to trample the woman with questions. For her part, Director McDonough didn’t show the least bit of discomfort as she waited for the cacophony to die down but Donna-Lou knew she would never be able to stay so cool under that much pressure.

“What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” she asked the open air.

Francis just sighed.