44

Looking uncharacteristically taxed, Grimm excused himself and left. He told Hunter to contact him again if anything came up, but both men knew he probably wouldn’t. It had been obvious that Grimm couldn’t give Hunter either the answers he was looking for or the empty satisfaction of a good spat. Or wouldn’t. In the end, it made no difference.

He sat there for a long time, thinking. He finished his drink and Mortimer made him another. He was really good at blending in with the background, the bartender. During his talk with Grimm, Hunter had barely registered him being there. Even now that Grimm was gone, Mortimer’s presence was somehow so subtle and non-intrusive Hunter could feel as if he was in the bar alone, should he allow himself to.

“Hey, Mortimer”, he said. “There’s an old saying on my side of things about bartenders being the best therapists.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that, sir”, said the bartender. “Though I can say that the bartender’s role as an accidental, informal counsellor and first line of advice and support for troubled late-night drinkers has long been recognized by actual mental health professionals.”

“Yeah, well, got any sage advice for me?”

“Concerning what, sir?”

That was a good question. What did Hunter need sage advice about? Grimm had given him the all-clear to do whatever the fuck he wanted–but what did he want, in this case? Following Fawkes around meant diving headfirst into mortal danger, that much had been established. In the beginning, she’d dragged him along by force. Then he’d chosen to follow her out of perceived necessity. And then he’d chosen to put his ass on the line to get her out of trouble, not once, but twice. Why had he done that?

Cause it was the right thing to do. The logical, the rational thing to do.

Was it, though?

Was it rational, after all?

“Are you real, Mortimer?”

“I’m not really sure how to answer that, sir. Master Grimm’s take on the topic earlier was the implication that if the observer can’t tell the difference, it does not really matter.”

“No, I’m not asking if you’re real to me. I mean… Are you real to you? Do you feel real?”

“A most curious question, sir. No more or less real than you feel real yourself, I would reckon. I am aware of my nature and how it differs from yours and Master Grimm’s, yes, and I do not know how being real feels to you. I am conscious. In fact, I am self-aware.”

Hunter’s brow furrowed as he tried to make heads or tails of what the bartender was saying.

“I’m not sure I understand the difference between the two, Mortimer. I’m just a college dropout, remember?”

“Very well, sir, I shall elaborate. Be aware that I will be quoting and paraphrasing external sources. Is that acceptable?”

“Yeah, sure, as long as it helps.”

“The qualities of consciousness and self-awareness as well as the distinction between the two have been a long-standing matter of debate for scientist on, as you say, your side of things” explained Mortimer. “Consciousness is often defined as one’s awareness of one’s body and one’s surroundings. Self-awareness is often defined as the recognition of that consciousness. To put it in another way; to be conscious is to think. To be self-aware is to recognize and realize that you are a being able of thought, and to think about your own thoughts.”

“I see” said Hunter, though hearing an explanation that esoteric was not nearly enough for him to truly comprehend it.

“May I speak freely, sir?”

“You’re the accidental, informal counsellor and first line of advice and support for troubled late-night drinkers, Mortimer. You do what you have to do.”

“I will go on and hypothesize that what troubles you is of a practical rather than of an academic nature. Sharing the nature and details of your predicament is likely to allow me to be of more substantial assistance.”

The nature and details of his predicament…

“To put it simply”, Hunter said, “I’ve made friends with some people in Elderpyre. These friends are in trouble, and I can help them. Or at least try to. Point is, if they die, that’s it for them. I will simply return to the last Place of Power I visited.”

“I suspect it is not that simple”, Mortimer said. “But please, do go on.”

“Right. Getting killed in Elderpyre, you see, won’t actually kill me, but it still is a very shitty experience. Traumatic, as in ‘mental trauma I will have to carry and live with on my side of things, too’ traumatic.”

“I see. So you are faced with a moral dilemma; whether you should take real risks for non-real people, or ignore them and abstain from danger.”

“Exactly”, said Hunter, happy to hear his own troubled thoughts being spoken aloud by another person.

“I’m afraid I cannot provide you with insight into such a question; morality is, by its nature, personal and subjective. Arbitrary, even. I will point out, though, that you yourself refer to these simulated entities as ‘people’. This suggests that they feel real to you, even if you are aware of their simulated nature and you are anthropomorphizing.”

For an NPC that couldn’t provide insight into moral dilemmas, Mortimer had made things very cut-and-dried for him. If Fawkes and the Brethren felt real, and they felt real to himself, then, for all intents and purposes, they were real. That took the parameter of being real or not out of the equation, and made the dilemma more manageable: should he take risks for other people, or ignore them and abstain from danger?

He shared that with Mortimer and, predictably, the bartender couldn’t provide him with a straight answer to that either.

“As master Grimm put it, sir, you are free to do what you want–although you cannot expect your choices not to have any consequences. What you have to do now is figure out what those consequences are, and whether you are able and willing to live with them.”

Consequences, huh.

Realistically speaking, leaving Fawkes and the Brethren fend for themselves wasn’t going to have any severe ones. They wouldn’t take action against him. They wouldn’t even blame him.

He, however, would blame himself. The risks those people had taken for him were real enough for them. Would he be the kind of man he wanted himself to be if he couldn’t respond in kind? Would he be up to the standards he wanted to set for himself if he chickened out for fear of the possibility of trauma?

No, he wouldn’t–and there was more to it.

Hunter–Alex–had been running from stuff his whole life. Growing up in as shitty a place as the inner city, he had to be extra cautious if we wanted to keep his nose clean. Even as a grown man, taking as few and as little risks as possible had become second nature to him. And where had that gotten him? He’d spent some of the best years of his life toeing the poverty threshold, and he’d still somehow managed to land in jail for being brazen enough to want to eat a goddamn pizza for dinner after a fucked-up day. He’d reached a point when enough was enough. Things had to change.

He, however, couldn’t become a risk-taker overnight, just because he gave himself a pep talk. No, choosing the right risks to take was a skill, and as any skill it took practice. Hunter had access to a simulated world so realistic he couldn’t tell it apart from the real one, a place where the consequences of his actions were serious enough to be worth pondering over, but not as serious as to get him really, honest-to-god killed. If that wasn’t the perfect training ground for practicing how to be a risk-taker, he didn’t know what was.

He drained the last drops of liquor from his glass, got up, and headed for the door.

“I take it sir has reached some kind of decision, then?” asked the bartender.

“He did, Mort”, said Hunter. “It took a while, but he finally fucking did.”