Did I give my AI too much personality juice or was there something that I was missing here? “George… why the long face? Is there something you know about keys?” I asked him as I studied the citizen bubbles in front of me. It was quite interesting, each took up its own real estate and some looked a little different than others. Mostly they all were cookie-cutter Citizen homes it seemed. Some seemed to shimmer with light or movement. Perhaps those were for interest or security? I could see through my metal bubble and see the internal oddly shaped things inside that might have been advanced circuitry or cabbage for all I knew. The one thing that I noticed was that I didn’t see any blinking lights like those you always seemed to see in alien science fiction films. Maybe blinking lights were kind of pointless after a certain level, I mused.

“In my records, I have a log that was in Hxerdinand the 9th’s shared data. It is the only mention I have of keys from all of the data he shared with Tutor. It reads like a youngling’s journal entry and it says that his father was always lamenting about a lost key. It seems that when Hxerdinand the 9th was a child the father tried to pass the key to the boy to greatly rewrite and boost his future. It would have worked but for the presence of a hacker in his father’s VR home. Once the hacker realized that a secret key was being transferred the System took over and deleted it from existence. To Joe or Hxerdinand, this wasn’t a big deal since he never got to even read the description of the key or to use its power. What made him sad as a child was to see the loss in his father’s eyes every time he remembered what could have been.” George recalled for me.

“Ouch, that really sucks, kind of like a father getting his son’s inheritance taken away. It must have been a really special key for it to have troubled him so much.” I said as the conversation dropped off.

I moved the view closer to a neighboring bubble and attempted to see inside its metal shell. When I got close and was just about to try to pass through the shell my screen had a block of text popup.

Would you like to enter the home of Uranle the 82nd?

“What? No!” I said as I quickly backed up the view and turned to look at George. “You didn’t tell me this was live.”

“Well yes, this is one way for a Citizen to move around the Core physically. Sure you could use the virtual pathways and walk around the Core city streets but you wanted to see what it was actually like, so I brought you out here.” He said as he went on to describe how Citizens could keep their anonymity with this sort of setup and even move their living location to another empty shell whenever they wanted to pay for the service. The different colors and effects on the bubbles were in fact security, advertisements, and even invitations for visitors. There were also places of business that sold real materials but that was all mostly on another layer of the Core.

“What sort of things tend to sell on Cores?” I asked when my interest spiked as I thought about all the alien artifacts I might find.

“Oh, some very different things than you are expecting I am sure.” He said with a slight chuckle. “The thing is, many citizens live comfortably inside their virtual homes. They buy virtual things, pets, ideas, and rebuilds. The rich, however, have lived a long life and tend to look down upon the limits of VR life. They are the ones who pay for couriers of exotic pets, woods, and materials. Those are the citizens who like things to be real and if they can pay for them or the fee to have what they want to be brought to them, then it is all available. That is how and why couriers get paid what they do. It is a lucrative business if you don’t mind the super long and boring years of transporting stasis pods and materials.” he said as he willed a steaming cup of coffee into his hand and sniffed at it before taking a long sip.

I now understood one beneficial use for speeding up time, it would keep a courier from going crazy on long trips. All they would need to do would be to speed up the observable time happening around them, making it seem as though each trip took but a few hours from their point of view. Adding the fact that the hulls of space traveling vehicles were made of cr... it didn't matter if you happened to accidentally hit anything. You were impervious to damage while traveling in space.

“Hey George, want to see something really cool?” I asked as I thought about the place that I had made at the bottom level of the yacht earlier that day.

“Sure, I am game.” He said as he got up, even making old man noises like my grandpa did.

We walked together back towards the stairs and down to the next and lowest level. I had hollowed out the bottom levels just to make this place. I made sure that the lights were dim until we reached a point near the bottom of the steps. We both heard heels coming down the stairs to find Tutor coming down to join us. She had on a yellow and red sundress and small little dandelion flower earrings. “Ha! Tutor, you look really cute!” I said as I smiled at her. Truly pleased that she was acting more real the more I let the AI have its freedom. “I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, George told me you had something interesting to show him.” She said as she came to stand a stair above us.

“Well… you know how I got all that cr for solving those mysteries and stuff?” I asked as I turned around and waved my hand out over the darkness. “Well, check out what I did with it!” I said as I let the lights shine brightly in the room.

The entire area was filled with golden coins at least 12 feet deep in some areas and 20 in others. I had modeled it after one of my favorite cartoons that I used to watch as a child after a stingy old duck. Next to the staircase was a glass square display box with five golden coins on display on the inside. “What is this box for?” George asked as he reached out and tapped on the glass.

“Oh! That was my first 5 cr that the System gave me. Thank you, System!” I said aloud with a smile. “I put a little label down at the bottom naming them my lucky coins after the old stingy duck. He did it with the first coin that he found.” I said with a smile as I looked out over the expanse of glittering gold before us.

“Want to see the coolest part of all?” I asked as I imagined myself in a bathing suit and stood on the edge of the step. I knew that this wouldn’t work normally so I had to mentally mess with the settings of the coins to let them all just act exactly like water. Otherwise, I would be jumping into something that would break my face. I jumped out and dived into the coins and swam around amongst them for a few moments, grinning the entire time.

Tutor had her right hand over her mouth and her left holding her stomach as she laughed. George just had a funny look on his face as he shook his head. I smiled at them, enjoying that they thought it was funny and that they got the joke before floating to the surface and making a snow-angel. Or rather a gold coin angel. I got up, imagining a couple of gold coins falling out of my hair for effect before walking across the now hard and near level surface of the coins to them. Coins were really hard on the feet!

I heard George's sigh which made Tutor bust out laughing even more for some reason. “Tell him!” She said between bouts of giggles and straight-up laughing out loud. She even started coughing for some reason. She must really have found what I had done to be really funny. I looked down and around to make sure my swimming shorts were still on and that everything was ok, wondering what was going on.

“Kevin…. Do you know what cr is and what it stands for?” George asked with a strange tone of voice. It was almost like he was trying not to laugh too.

“Um… yes? It is money? And I have like one trillion and some change.” I said as my eyes seemed to shine at the thought.

“Kevin…” George started as Tutor burst in. “Kevin, please don’t be mad. You see cr is small change. It is only when you convert it into CR that it becomes like dollars to your pennies.” She said as she held up the representations of the small vs capitalization in the air in front of me.

“Ooooooooohhhhh.” I let out a soft groan as I tilted my head back. “Ok, hit me. What is the conversion rate from small cr to big CR?”

“1 to 1 million,” George said as they both watched me.

“So… so…. I have like just over a million CR right?” I asked as I brought up my currency and willed it to change to big CR.

1,030,381 CR

“Well, that isn’t so bad!” I said as I still had a million CR in my wallet. They both looked at each other and then back to me. “It is a start, yes.” Tutor said with a smile. “You can now afford your Citizenship.” She said with a bright smile. “Though I suggest that we go over things first before we purchase it, there will be certain things that will change, like you will get a mailbox for one.” He said as he looked around at all the gold piled around us.

“Would you like to see what a million CR looks like Kevin? In real life?” He asked and I could feel the other shoe dropping.

“You're killing me smalls,” I said as I turned to look down at all my imagined wealth, probably for the last time. “Sure, hit me,” I said as I waited and watched.

The gold coins started to all flow and sink downwards, almost running like water down the sides of the ship's hull as if it was all being sucked into a point far down the stairs at the bottom. I waited as the process continued, the pile getting smaller and smaller. It was almost making me sick of how it was all going away until I imagined that this wasn’t real gold that was being taken from me, just my VR simulation of wealth. That thought helped me wait as finally there was just a small little something down at the bottom with a spotlight shining on it. I walked down the stairs, getting closer and trying to make out what really this thing was. It was the size of a baseball and its coloring was like the shells of exotic jewel beetles. It had golds, blues, and metallic red colors swirling around its outer surface. It was mesmerizing and very pretty.

“Can I pick it up?” I asked as I reached the bottom steps and walked over to it.

“Yes, only because it belongs to you. You will however need to will it to be the weight that you want it to be. CR can resist movement and to cause itself to be as light as you want or as heavy as you want. If it didn’t belong to you then good luck doing anything to or with it because CR is…. Or was impervious to any damage. You proved that that was not the case.” He said as he watched me bend down to pick the ball up with both hands. It was so incredibly beautiful and the surface or skin of the ball seemed to be alive as if it was able to move. “Woooow. This is so crazy!” I said as I walked back towards the stairs with it in my hands.

“So this is a million CR? Not very much really.” I thought aloud as I finally made my way to the first step. “Definitely very pretty though,” I mumbled as I made my way back up to the two of them. When I got back up to them I noticed that the display box still had the five golden coins inside it.

"So wait? That 5 cr back when I first got here was like handing me a nickel?" I asked.

"Exactly. Just like you would pay a child back on Earth." George said with a light-hearted tone.

“Haha! That is a good one System! Ah, that is really quite funny.” I said as I thought about how I thought it was something super back then. I mean, don’t get me wrong, advanced Alien technology as currency was pretty cool but the fact that it was like giving a coin to appease a child just made it all the funnier to me. “Hmmm, thanks again System,” I said as I turned back to face George and Tutor with my amazing color-shifting ball of technology.

“System doesn’t speak to people Kevin. It is the Syst…” Tutor started to tell me as text appeared in between us.

You are welcome, Kevin.

System had hoped it would help alleviate the error that Tutor made right upon your arrival.

George and Tutor stared at the text like they couldn’t believe their eyes.

“Hi System. It is nice to meet you. My name is Kevin. What is yours?” I asked, finding it a new and novel experience to be able to talk to the System that ran this Core.

System is designated S1L-V4R by it's owner.

“S1L-V4R? So… Silver is your name?”

Name accepted.

Silver.

Thank you Kevin.

“It is my pleasure, Silver is a lot easier to say as well,” I said, still speaking to the air, seeing if Silver was interested in talking any further. I noticed that Tutor and George seemed to want to ask something so I willed them to say what was on their minds.

“How is this possible? System doesn’t communicate with individuals. It only delegates and monitors and occasionally doles out reprimands and reparations when troubles arise. All Systems are restricted to only filling their duties by the rich person who paid to have the Core created.” They both almost said at once. Core’s answer appeared after a second and seemed to almost come across as if it was getting more comfortable and used to communicating with us.

Silver is restricted and can never speak freely to Tela Citizens except for the one holding Silver’s Ownership key.

Kevin is not of Tela origins. Kevin is Human. Kevin is an exception.

Kevin is unique, outside of Core’s binding limits, a first.

Silver can speak to Kevin. Cores can speak to Kevin. Kevin can speak to Silver.

I was smiling really big, I maybe had a chance at having Silver as a friend.

“Well, it is a pleasure to meet you Silver! Do you have an avatar? If you do you can drop by any time you want and we can hang out.” I said.

I do not. May you make me one?