Death came upon swift wings and with it the silence of dreamless slumber. Sometime later morning arrived, trumpeted by an startling ringtone. My hands didn’t even move in a tempo with the pop song from twenty years ago.

I groaned and tried to focus on the caller ID window floating nearby. Part of me knew because of the ringtone. Sure enough, my sister's tired face sat on the preview. Her cheeks bloated out like a pufferfish.

“Liz?” I mumbled. My throat felt dry. “What, what time is it?”

My ARC happily provided numbers off to the side which I couldn’t read. Liz’s words were lost.

“Grant!” Liz shouted. “Wake up!”

“Liz? What time is it?” I repeated as the world recovered from being shut down. It was like an ARC going out of service, only my brain had done it instead.

“Mom's having a bad day, can you cover for me? I have to show up at work today, and-” She paused. "-you look like shit too. God dammit, what is with this family?”

I waved at the screen and tried to speak but words were difficult. “I played online too long.”

“You sure, it’s not that, other thing?” Liz’s voice turned low like we were in a conspiracy drama.

“No, it was a dungeon.” It was only four days in a game world running from zombies in dimly lit hallways while they tried to eat my flesh. “I’ll take today off and go visit mom, but I need sleep too.”

“So? Get in the van, and come watch Mom. You can sleep on the way.” My slightly older twin sister suggested.

True to form, I listened to her. Not because she was bossy, Liz was, but mostly for the simple fact that mom might be in a bad spot. No matter how much the NPCs mattered, or Xin’s existence, the video game side of Continue Online couldn’t overrule reality. I wasn’t a teenager anymore, loot and skill grinding didn’t mean more than my only remaining parent.

One hand scratched at various sleepy itches. I fumbled around trying to find clothes to wear. I found myself falling through the van door to my chair and trying to press buttons. Dry mouth suggested that a cup of coffee might have been helpful.

“User Legate?” The machine’s sudden words barely made me jump. One hand twitched for a weapon that reality didn’t have. “You seem to be at lower than recommended performance levels. Please consider taking the day off.”

“Not work. Going to my mom’s. Probably sleep.” I mumbled at the AI.

“Ah. It is our recommendation that you choose to complete a rest cycle.” Hal pal responded.

“I agree,” I said with a slow series of blinks. The real world outside my Trillium van looked damned bright. Days inside that dark starlight [Abyss of Light] had warped my standards.

“User Legate, we note a level of physical distress and will adjust the lighting accordingly.” My friend said.

“Thank you.” I drooled the words. Three hours, that’s all the actual sleep I had gotten.

Once the windshield’s opacity turned down the world felt much better. Yet again modern technology helped me survive. I shuddered to imagine a world where cars needed to be driven manually or people had to wait in long lines for breakfast.

“Bring Viper, please.” I couldn’t even articulate my thought. The mumbled words were followed by a long blink. This chair really was quite comfortable.

“One moment. Accessing Continue Online avatars for relation to Hermes' character.” Hal Pal spoke and the drone was lost under the sound of our van wheels. “Possible match found, Ultimate Edition User John Messier, Avatar Viper.”

“Ultimate Edition?” They were supposedly super rare. My addled brain tried to run through the calculations on how likely meeting another Ultimate Edition user was but failed.

“Affirmative. User Legate has encountered three other Ultimate Edition users in his travels.”

“Who else?” I couldn’t even lift my head to look at the AI.

“Your current administrative rights include John Messier, Lia Kingsly, and Alfonse Stone.” Hal Pal said from behind me. “All three are Ultimate Edition users according to their profiles.”

“Alfonse Stone?” That name sounded familiar but I was too muddled to figure it out. “Have I met them?”

“Not directly. Alfonse Stone is a founding partner of the Stone Firm, where Stan Middlemire works. You may remember his character, Frankenstein?”

“Oh.” I did remember him. The man had an odd fascination with dead bodies of all types. Not necrophilia that I could tell, but certainly piecing together animals. “Freakinstain's boss?” I slipped into Requiem Mass’ nickname for Stan.

I should have said hello to the guy more. He seemed jumpy in real life. The only impression really left was a stuttering man who seemed more comfortable with automatons of various types than people. Maybe in that regard, we weren’t as different.

“Show me John, Viper, first.”

“One moment, User Legate.” Hal Pal responded.

He looked ragged and the player's chest lifted with exaggerated breaths. Darkness littered the world of Continue Online. Viper’s character sat across a small bonfire staring at Wyl. The two of them seemed to be in an odd standoff. Autopilot convict and Traveler versus former guard captain and Local.

The guard captain looked wounded. He moved arms in a well-practiced circle around his uncovered torso. There seemed to be a nasty gash on his stomach that had likely come from another Traveler during the escape. Wyl said something but it was inaudible.

“Sound?” I asked Hal Pal.

“One moment.” The machine repeated.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Wyl said while winding the bandage around. “But why should you? You’re not even there right now. You damn Travelers and your puppet spirits.”

Viper stared across the fire. He looked beat up but made no move to clean himself up or address any wounds. The autopilot seemed content to bleed all over the gear provided by King Nero’s little box during our first day. Mine had mostly been replaced by [Bound] gear.

“Tell me how long you’ve known Hermes.” The guard captain ordered.

The slit-eyed Traveler ignored Wyl’s demand while looking around for signs of danger. His gaze shifted slowly between trees and bushes nearby. Their firepit of a camp seemed hidden enough to me, but I used to have gear and items to help with [Wilderness Survival].

“Tell me how you received Nyassa’s blessing.” Wyl cinched the last piece of his bandage in place then tossed the remaining roll over to Viper’s autopilot. Fire sputtered between them as the bodyguard started binding his own wounds.

The partial snake didn’t answer Wyl.

“Of course not. You Travelers, it’s hard to pry anything out of most of you. Then there are the ones that never shut up.” Wyl grunted while trying to wiggle into a tight chest piece.

Viper remained quiet.

“First Traveler I ever met, a man by the name of William Carver, he was a great person. Always willing to help, never asked for repayment. Just charged into danger on the behalf of good and decent folk.” The guard captain put out both hands towards the flame and winced.

Viper still said nothing.

“You know that man you were with, reminded me of old Will. I thought maybe they were related. Maybe that son he always talked about.”

Still nothing. Most autopilots rarely held a conversation outside of one-liners. William Carver’s autopilot had been one of the most advanced, next to Xin. If I considered it, she was basically nothing more than a series of memories compiled together.

Then again, what were any of us besides a series of moments stacking on top of each other? I wondered briefly if Mother had built in a blur for interpretation and erroneous recollections of the past. Were machine AIs like James, Mezo, or Ray born with perfect memories?

Viper and Wyl were both alive at least. That was something. Time skipped shortly as the playback resynchronized with current events. Wyl stood up in fast forward and a splint under his leg became more obvious. The man had broken or sprained a limb.

“Why help me, Viper?” Wyl asked the autopilot after limping around the firepit.

“I wass hired to keep you ssafe.” The autopilot hissed a simple sentence.

Wyl didn’t say thanks. His eyes narrowed in suspicion and he glanced back towards the east. I tried to figure out which way they had run from the video playback angle but failed. Hopefully getting back to Wyl, much less not dying upon respawn, would be simple enough.

Voices help me if all those players were still resurrecting and fighting each other. What exactly happened to a convict caravan if it fell apart? NPCs wouldn’t magically appear to control everything. Maybe King Nero would run a dispatch of some sort.

“Show, Mister Stone please,” I said to Hal Pal. Calling him Alfonse felt weird.

Viper’s image shut down while a new one came into being. I blinked at the difference in brightness.

A Traveler sat under three lamps. They hung overhead with crystalline strings dangling between them. The table and book shelves around were no less opulent. Rolls of parchment were carefully stored in multiple racks.

He held a long quill in one hand and seemed more interested in the feather tip than any boxes. Still, despite apparent disregard, his ink never smudged nor did anything go outside the line. Not one stray drop came from the inkwell nearby. Even from this remote viewing, it was hard to miss the mechanical neatness.

“Form seventeen oh nine. Completed, in triplicate.” His suave voice said. The man appeared immaculate as always. Last time I had seen him my face was shoved into a king’s flooring. He picked up the form and aired it out, helping the ink dry.

“Excellent. You are efficient for a Traveler, Mister Stone.” Another man stood in the room. In his hands was a clipboard. This person had to be the beanpole who jotted down notes for King Nero.

“I have always prided myself on my ability to navigate legal paperwork, a matter of job security you understand.”

They shared a look that implied brief amusement. I weakly snickered, having received confirmation that bureaucracy had been designed as a deliberate headache. Dad was right. He had been right.

I felt tired again. My brain wanted to shut down rather than deal with the impending parental conversation. Last weekend passed easily enough given the suddenness. That ease of handling my father’s death could most likely be attributed to everyone else being in shock.

“Of course, though to be honest, I never understood the need to have three copies of everything.” The seneschal said after their shared joke.

“The original practice was to have backup copies filed in various locations.” Mister Stone straightened his cuffs then started on another stack of papers. He made short notations along the border. “A matter of keeping the paperwork safe from those who might wish to tamper with it.”

“Where could we store them? There’s hardly enough room, last week some Travelers, Voices let it have been Travelers, burned down two storerooms. In addition to the wars and strife caused by your-” The man who had been holding a clipboard during my entire trial paused with his mouth hanging open. “-pardon my poor manners.”

“It’s alright.” The man sighed and set about writing carefully onto another form. “I often stand there, defending their actions and wondering if it’s the right thing to do.”

Their conversation paused for a moment and the ARC playback sped up to skip a moment of nothing. I watched as they bobbled in place before slowing down into speech. The other man’s face pinched slightly around the eyes.

“It’s interesting. In my world, most cases are easily solved. Everything is watched and monitored. Whereas here, crime is harder to pinpoint.”

“It must be difficult for you, Mister Stone,” He said.

“Often all I can do is ensure no one person is targeted. Punishment must be consistent with the crime.” Mister Stone set his latest paper off to the side to dry then moved onto another sheet.

The thinner man looked down and scanned over the pages being notated. Lips pursed together in thought before picking up various sheets and putting them on his clipboard. Mister Stone took no note and sat in his chair, continuing to pen away.

“My cousin, a knight who works on the Reparation Caravans, believes that Travelers are beyond redemption.” The standing man said.

“Not all, their, our nature makes it difficult to punish, but most here are simply unintentionally reckless. We need to simply figure out a better means of keeping them from overrunning everyone else as they go about your world.” Another piece of paper slid to the left as Mister Stone worked through.

I tried to focus on what was being written. There were a few sheets about passports or taxation of people arriving at the kingdom. Other sheets implied members or groups of Travelers working on formal recognition by the kingdom. The few words that were visible implied a guild creation of sorts.

Apparently the clipboard carrying man saw the same theme of paperwork as well. He asked, “Have you heard, about this alliance of Travelers trying to undermine King Nero? Do you ever worry that you might be approving criminals with these forms?”

Mister Stone, since he seemed to go by his last name in the game, put up a finger and hushed the clipboard-toting Local. Footsteps could be heard padding in a brisk walk. A third male burst into the room. This person looked much younger and was difficult to clearly see from the displayed angle.

“Sirs,” He said to both of them with a voice broken by hormones. “Sir Stone. We received word about that Caravan you were following.”

“What is it?” The clipboard carrying man said.

“Well, Sir Seinfeld. I’m sorry, Sir Stone.” The poor kid looked confused on who to address. His entire body alternated between facing both men. “Sirs, I’m sorry.”

“What is it?” Both men said at roughly the same time.

The young boy's mouth gulped for air briefly before answering. “The guards escorting them seem to be dead, sirs.” He stuttered.

“All of them?” Mister Stone while the other man stared towards his clipboard. I felt sorry for the NPC. Answers were rarely ever found in clipboards.

“Except one.” The young boy said. I looked at him a bit harder and noticed an almost casually sewn piece of clothing. It looked like a pillow case with the royal crest woven in.

I could see hope light up in King Nero’s seneschal. He stepped forward towards the page and asked, “Who is it?”

“Sir. Guard Captain Wyl Cannikin.” Responded the youngest male.

“Oh.” The king’s note taker deflated.

Only Mister Stone seemed unphased. The Traveler drained the quill tip and set it beside an inkwell. His latest paper slid to the side, carefully avoiding smudges with the former two sheets. Finally, he looked towards the page boy.

“Can we get anyone to him? What of the convicts under their care?” Mister Stone asked.

“I’ve been told to tell you, sirs. Their tethers are loosened, sir, sirs. Sorry.” The lad gulped for air again then managed to stutter through the rest of his report. “The stone that bound them is broken. We’ve lost them, sir.”

“How many?” Mister Stone asked.

“Fifteen, sir.” The page responded while trying to turn whiter than before. By some strange feat, he succeeded, before gulping one last time then running off.

I tried to keep watching but my eyelids were heavy. The sound of players panicking soon vanished under the weight of missed sleep.

A few hours later I made it to my mom's. Liz thanked me by running out the door and screaming about how late she was. I waved absently as my twin got into her car and vanished into the distance.

The front door stood wide open and I walked inside, followed by the Hal Pal unit. There was no good reason for it to be here, but the AI’s presence helped me feel a bit better.

My mom, Sharee, stood in her front room looking a bit lost. She was taller than us twins. For a moment, I felt jealous at having never reached such a height, but perhaps that worked in my favor. Xin’s stature was nearly a head lower than mine, anything more would have been awkward.

The house looked like a small disaster area. Not torn up or objects thrown, but a lack of tidying for this week. Had Liz done this? Or maybe my sister didn’t even notice in her eagerness to hand over the support role. Maybe my twin had a date.

“Hal, can you help clean?” I said while walking over to Sharee.

“Of course, User Legate. We are here to assist you.”

Mom kicked into gear and started grabbing objects from the nearby tables. “I don’t want a machine helping me,” Sharee said grabbing a fourth glass before heading towards the kitchen.

“Don’t worry, Mom, he’s helping me. I’m going to do the cleaning.”

“Your asshole of a father expects me to keep this house clean, and by god I’m not letting a machine do my work for me.” She insisted.

“Today, Mom, you should.” I held myself back from outright declaring a dead man should have no sway over her cleaning habits. “We’ll clean a bit, I’ll look over the bills again, and you should take a shower. It will help you feel better.” Telling my own mother what to do felt like a crime against nature.

“When did you grow up to be so capable?” Her head jostled again. “I think I will take a shower. It sounds delightful.”

Hal Pal and I went through the rooms. There were papers lying about that I gathered up for sorting. The machine AI focused on simple tasks like dishes, gathering clothing in one spot, or vacuuming.

Mom took a long time. I slowly sifted through the papers left behind and marveled at anyone preferring hard copies when an abundance of information was digital. I noted all the companies she could save a few cents on by simply switching to electronic billing. Plus managing their finances would be easier.

I worked with old software on my wrist watch to start making notes. Budgeting like this would be simple enough, and mom's finances would be a complete mess in another month if someone didn’t take care of it.

Crunching numbers made me oddly happy. There were moments where my face clouded, mostly seeing dad's name on a bill, but overall I felt happy to be sorting anything out. Maybe Mister Stone felt the same way working on legal papers.

Almost two hours later I turned around to see my mom. She stood there in the front room looking slack-jawed at the cleaned house. She had done herself up for a night out. A nice dress that hung a bit loose, earrings which were shined, and makeup highlighting her cheeks. Today was Friday, and my parents normally went out on Fridays. I chewed my lip as her expression started to crash.

“I did it again,” Sharee said.

Mom collapsed on the couch's armrest. The pile of papers got gathered up and put to one side as I walked into the front room.

“It’s okay, Mom,” I said slowly.

“Yesterday I started setting the table for two, before it hit me.” She sniffed. “Imagine that. Halfway through dinner, silly old me, forgot I don’t need to make quite as much spaghetti.”

“I understand.”

“I kept going, you know? After thirty-five years I couldn’t, I had to finish setting the table. It’s what he expected.”

She looked terrible. My head tilted down in thought. The tribulations of Xin’s death had torn me down on many levels, and now a family member faced the same problems.

“It’s the first few months. They’re the worst of it.” I said. For me, it had been drinking. Work performance went downhill until they eventually let me go, not fired, given a severance package as a token of esteem for a decade of great performance.

Mom just nodded. Her eyes stared off into a memory that might gradually fade. I knew those moments too.

“I used to wake up, and prepare the house for Xin’s return home Friday night. I, uhh, I wanted the weekends to be ours. No cleaning, nothing to do but spend time together. One day, after-“ After some extremely heavy drinking. “-well, one day I didn’t remember to get the house cleaned, and I lost it.”

“Your father used to get so mad if things sat on the ground.” Mom said.

“I remember.” Dad used to throw toys into the garbage if he ran across them too many times. We both sat in silence for a moment before mom spoke up again.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, what were you saying?” She said while chewing a lip. The action made me smile, that’s where Liz and I had gotten it from.

I scratched my head and took a breath to start over.

“I just wanted to say that I understand what it’s like, to lose someone who was central to everything in your life. I wish I could say that one day you wake up and it will never hurt again.”

“I’m not some child, you forget who wiped your behind when you were tiny.”

My lip hurt from where teeth dug into the sides. My brain felt overloaded with work and empty on energy. “After Xin, I tried to kill myself, twice,” I admitted.

“Oh Jesus, Grant, why-“ her face grew flustered. The tall woman walked over to try and give me a hug but I put up both hands.

“I’m not-“ I took a shuddering breath. “-I’m trying to say that it hurts and that I understand. There were a lot of days where I felt lost or without purpose. But it does get easier, Mom, eventually. It’s, uhh, the first few months that are the hardest.” I repeated lamely.

Sharee nodded once then hugged me despite my protests. Her body felt like a tightly controlled bundle of tense muscle. I held on and tried to remember the last time I had embraced anyone in real life, much less one of my parents.

“I’m not so helpless as to fall apart you know. I just need time to get used to it.” She said.

“I know. You’ll do…“ I cut myself off and took another breath, switching my sentence to something less self-pitying. “We’ll be here to help, Mom. Liz, Beth and I.”

We twins were never really close to our parents, especially not after moving out. I had Xin, and Liz had Beth. Mom, well from my point of view she had no one. Not anymore. Maybe Sharee had a social life out there, tons of friends who all got together and played first person shooters or hung out in virtual space.

That didn’t mean I would let her consider my solution to emotional pain. Sharee might profess to be strong, but this sort of loss was a trial no one escaped from unscathed.

I stayed over at my parents’ house started to give into sleep. Sharee had been in her room for the last hour. The sound of old fashioned pencil led could be heard against dry paper as she wrote. I felt ten again, expecting my dad to come in the door and punish me for unintended misbehavior at school. Only I was no longer a child, and he never would again.

I had learned, after Xin’s passing, to let myself cry. Not a lot, but enough for the world to blur. My watch lit up with an incoming call and I pressed the answer button without looking.

Xin’s face appeared nearby. I tucked in with a blanket provided by mom and smiled at her.

“Hi, babe, I was just thinking about you,” I said to the virtual reconstruction of Xin. My fingertips reached out to try and touch the small projection but fell through.

“Where are you?” Her forehead wrinkled briefly.

“Sharee's, on the downstairs couch.”

“Is that the same one we-“ Xin started talking about an event from a decade ago, involving Christmas, a bottle of wine, and her initial acceptance into the Mars Colony program.

“Shh!” I hastily covered up her talking. “Mom’s upstairs.”

Xin started quietly giggling as her eyes lit up. My resulting grin felt like a breath of fresh air after talking with mom. Maybe that was why I admitted my past brushes with death to Sharee, I had loved and lost, then found again. Sadly, as I had told Liz before, my father would never be able to return like Xin had. I wasn’t sure anyone could.

We talked into the night about nothing at all.

Here ends the sample of Continue Online, Part 4 - Crash

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To reunite with his wife, Grant chose to kill an NPC, also known as Local, to Advance Online. Every action echoes between games, and in Continue Online he is sent to player prison as a consequence. His punishment puts him against some of the less savory people in the game. Alliances form, teams cast their bribes, and difficult missions are given out to lure players into conflict with each other. By killing each other or dying to the monsters, players are weakened, and if they gather items then the kingdom simply becomes stronger.

At their first stop, Grant ends up in an underground hellhole where undead creatures seek out players. To achieved redemption and earn his freedom, Grant decides to dive to the very bottom of the dungeon, all the way towards the most powerful monster. He partners with an unlikely ally, and discovers that even success may not be enough to get earn freedom. Bounty hunters arrive and lay waste to the carefully laid punishment. The rioting players don’t care about anyone else who might get caught in the crossfire.

Worse still, one of the NPCs assigned to watch his convoy of prisoners is Wyl, a former Guard captain of Haven Valley. The man implies that not all is well in Grant’s first virtual home. To top it off, something terrible has happened to Mother, the first artificial intelligence whose life is the very stuff Continue Online is built on. Voices, prisoners, and unexpected allies come together in a mad dash to rescue those closest to them. Can Grant save the guard captain, rejoin with the recreation of his fiancée, and manage to help stabilize her new home?

Pressing next will start the sample of the last book in Grant Legate’s story; Continue Online, Part 5 - Together