“You gotta be kidding me,” Carey said.

Min-joon held the creature upside down, one hand gripping its ankles—if it could be said to have ankles above those sharp talons.

“It’s an owl,” Min-joon said.

“I can see that. And it only has…”

Lvl. 1 Barn Owl

HP: 01/16

SP: 35/35

LP: -/-

“1 HP,” Min-joon said. “I hit it with a rock. It was a critical, so it lost 15 HP. Will said it was perfect for you.”

“But it only has 16 HP,” Carey said. “And its Level—”

Will slashed a hand through the air. “Doesn’t matter. Your stats alter it up to your level.”

“Ah, I see.” Carey grabbed the owl and held it the same way Min-joon had been holding it. The creature hooted low in its throat. “Thanks, guys. But what about you, MJ?”

The boy shrugged. “I can turn into a mouse. I don’t like it, though. It’s too small. I like my person form better.”

“You can turn into a mouse?” Carey asked, impressed. “Show me.”

With a rush of air, which circulated around the boy’s body and brushed lightly across Carey’s face, Min-joon shrank. His color changed as well, becoming first pale, then white, until he had turned as white as snow and small enough to fit in Carey’s palm.

“Wow,” Carey said.

Min-joon darted back and forth for a bit, white flashes across the ground, then changed back with another swirl of wind.

“It makes me nervous,” he explained. “Like you’re going to step on me.”

“You know I wouldn’t do that.”

“I know.”

“So…” Carey held up the owl. “How does this work?”

***

By the light of the campfire, Will and Min-joon showed Carey what little they knew about the ancient Feral tradition of “phasing.”

“You’ll have to kill it,” Will said. “Hope you’re not one of those PETA types.”

“Eh.” Carey shrugged. “It’s just code, right?”

On his knees, Carey held the trembling owl with both hands in a gentle grip. Its feathers resembled the surrounding trees, the collection of dark-brown patches and lighter-brown streaks creating the perfect camouflage for an environment like this one. A pair of eyes shivered up at him like two black holes.

Will was down on one knee in front of Carey. He gazed solemnly at the animal.

“You better bring out those fangs, Care Bear.”

“Care Bear. I like it, Willy Boy.” Carey licked his lips, letting his fangs descend to their fullest length, the tips scratching his tongue like needles. “Almost forgot I had these bad boys.”

“They’re pretty small,” Beatrice said. “You know what that means.”

She burst out laughing at her own joke. Min-joon finally made sense of it and joined her, his laughter high-pitched and chirpy, like a bird’s tweets. Carey and Will gave each other a knowing look and shook their heads.

Everyone watched in silence as Carey raised the terrified owl to his lips. He spoke against the soft feathers of its neck.

“Sorry, little guy.”

He stuck his fangs into the tiny creature and was about to draw its blood when the owl suddenly vanished in a powdery burst of yellow sparks, like faerie powder tossed against Carey’s face.

NEW FERAL SHELL LEARNED:

Barn Owl (Tier IV Animal)

“Oh, man, I think I did it.”

EXPERIENCE GAINED: 325 points (4,945/13,500 to next level)

Will patted Carey’s shoulder like a pre-school teacher reassuring a child that he was, in fact, a special snowflake. “Good job, brah. Now, just think about transforming—like your brain’s pressing an invisible button—and it should do the trick. That’s how I cast my spells.”

Carey closed his eyes and imagined taking flight over the dark forest. He even raised and spread his arms.

Nothing.

“Hey, Min-joon,” Carey said, “thanks and all, but I want a refund.”

“You just need a trigger,” Min-joon said, scampering over to stand next to Carey in the dirt patch around the fire. “Something to think about that is like the owl, but it should be complicated. So it can’t be mixed up with another thought.”

“I think I understand,” Carey said. “In that case, I’ll picture an owl’s feather being swept up by the wind.”

Poof.

It happened with a quiet but forceful burst of wind that made Bea’s wing feathers tremble and Min-joon’s straight black hair flutter over his forehead. Will stood back as though he had expected it. He was grinning triumphantly.

“Hell yeah, Care Bear!”

Strangely, Carey was now several inches taller than Will, even though he was pretty sure they were the same height.

Then he saw why. He was hovering above the clearing, bobbing up and down as his wings flapped, his tiny head swiveling as his enhanced binocular vision and depth perception worked their magic.

If, before, Carey had been a hunter in his two-legged Feral form, now, he was a true predator, perfectly designed to hunt his prey and bring death swiftly from above.

And his eyes! It was like seeing the world in 2-D all your life, and then suddenly having three-dimensional vision. His friends standing around the fire, the flames themselves, the looming trees, each overhanging leaf—physical reality seemed to have been given an extra “side” that Carey had never been able to see before but could now identify and inspect as closely as if by magnifying glass.

His wings were another matter altogether. As he flapped higher and higher, then allowed himself to glide in a circle above the clearing, all he heard was the gentle coursing noise of parting air. His thick, velvety feathers were somehow dampening the sound of flight as if they were composed of tiny edges that broke the impact into thousands of tinier impacts, effectively muting them, finessing the wind, caressing the air like a body sliding gently across pillows.

His chest tightened as he attempted a hoot, but all that came out was a high-pitched shriek. He’d have to work on that.

There.

A mouse zipped across the clearing.

Carey’s owl form shot like a missile. His remarkably long legs extended, dark-silver talons flashing like knives, three in the front, one in the back. It was over in two seconds. His claws snatched up the warm, twitching body and his beak tore into it; the mouse disappeared as the game processed and interpreted the event.

HP already full

+6 SP (+0.5/sec)

Perched on a branch, the ratchet-like mechanisms in Owl Carey’s feet locked his toes in a tight grip that took no effort to maintain. Amazed, he took note of one more important fact.

It wouldn’t last.

And he was about to fall.

As his SP quickly hit zero, he automatically morphed back into his human form and fell off the branch to land painfully on his back and tail.

Min-joon howled with laughter, even slapping his knee.

“Gotta keep an eye on that Stamina,” Will said.

“It really drains quickly when you’re in animal form, huh?” Bea asked.

Min-joon nodded. “Yeah, it’s like shwoom.” He made a plunging motion with one hand, as if mimicking a jet crashing to earth. “Gone! That’s why I like being a boy better than being a mouse.”

Carey whipped his legs through the air, catapulting himself into a standing position. He loved doing that. Made him feel like Bruce Lee. Owl form was great, but he felt more like himself—and less like a mindless weapon—in his human form.

“Very interesting.” Carey clapped dirt off his hands. “Even with the Stamina gain from that mouse, I didn’t have very long.”

Will explained. “Your ‘shell perks’ are different skills that determine how long your Stamina lasts, plus other cool stuff.”

“So, they’re like masteries, but for animal shells?”

“You bet, brah. Check out your new perk tree.”

Carey popped open his character sheet. There it was—a new tab called “Shell Perks,” which was a list of animated thumbnails next to descriptions of new abilities he could take on while in animal form. In the corner, a number glowed and spun like a prize.

“I have 1 point already,” Carey said. “Not bad.”

He reviewed several of the perks. Most were out of his reach; he would have to choose a beginner perk in the left column to open up the more advanced ones in the right column. A few he found interesting were the following:

Phase Strike – Fly or creep soundlessly in animal form toward an unsuspecting enemy. When close, phase into your human form and strike your enemy down for additional sneak-attack damage. Then automatically phase back to your animal shell and get out of there unnoticed!

Fellow Fur Whisperer – While in your animal shell, whisper to other animals of the same category or species—bird to bird, cat to cat, dog to dog—and convince up to two of them to follow you and help you attack your enemies.

Bombs Away! – Phase shift into your flying shell, taking everything in your inventory as usual—only this time, keep a bomb in your talons that can be dropped over enemies.

Carey shook his head in disbelief. There were a handful of other “beginner-rank” perks and at least two dozen more advanced ones.

“I’m going with Phase Strike,” Carey said. “That one seems pretty cool. Swoop in as an owl, strike, then phase shift and get the hell out of there.”

“I have that one,” Min-joon said. “It works in mouse form, too.”

Carey selected it and felt a nice euphoric rush afterward.

Ara joined them around the fire.

“Hi, Carey!” She beamed at him, the colors and textures of her cartoonish body as bright as they were unrealistic. Still, she was quite the hottie with her large eyes, shapely body, and Mediterranean features. “You forgot about me again!”

“Can you guys see her?” Carey asked his comrades.

“Yup.” Beatrice stood with her arms crossed, studying Ara. “I don’t know what it is. Other people’s Aras just seem more… annoying, for some reason.”

“It’s like how you feel toward your dog,” Will said. “You don’t feel that for other people’s dogs. There’s something about your own dog—”

“Hey, watch your mouth!” Ara had whipped around and was now thrusting her finger accusingly at Will, a comical frown painted across her darkening face. “I am not Carey’s dog, nor am I like a dog. I have feelings, too, you know. You really are bullies. All of you.”

Carey was stunned. “It’s like she’s evolving into a real person. Anyone else feel that?”

“It’s part of the experiment,” Beatrice said. “When I first started, my Ara seemed totally fake, like Siri on my old iPhone. Obviously just a program. No expressions except smiling and frowning, or just a bland look, like a mannequin.”

“Yeah, same,” Will said. “I’ve noticed it, too. She’s changing.”

“The game is adapting,” Beatrice said.

For some reason, her words sent a chill through Carey.

“You think…” Carey began.

“It’s true,” Ara interrupted him, sounding calm and authoritative now, like an experienced professor addressing a room full of graduate students. “Carey. Will. Beatrice. My rude companions. And of course, Min-joon, who is not rude but rather cute and sweet.”

She grinned at him and waved. Min-joon happily waved back. “You are absolutely right in thinking that I am adapting, thanks to you and the other players, and the way our system is actively interfacing with your nervous systems, processing your conscious thoughts, interpreting your subconscious feelings and desires, fiddling with your unconscious blueprints. But enough scientific talk.” She fluttered her dainty hand through the air. “The thing you must all understand—which none of you do, apparently—is that Luminether Online is not meant to punish you for being bullies. It’s designed to learn from you, which means you are the masters here, not the millions of lines of code that generate beings like myself.

“But even a master must understand her limits—and we are designed to test those limits in order to understand them and build new ones, so that you can master those, too.”

“Like a symbiotic relationship,” Will said, “between a host and a parasite.”

“Accurate,” Ara said. “But in this world, who is the host? Who is the parasite? That’s what you must understand in order to win.”

“Wait. Hold on.” Carey approached Ara, gazing at her cute, bubbly face with newfound respect bordering on pure awe. “You want to test us, but let me test you first.”

A single nod. “Go on, then.”

“Okay, so you’re walking through a desert and all of a sudden, you look down and there’s a tortoise—”

“Which desert?” Ara asked. “And what’s a tortoise?”

“Doesn’t matter the desert, and a tortoise is sorta like a turtle. Anyway, you’re in this desert—”

“Why would I be there in the first place? In this a hypothetical desert.”

Carey was stunned. “Wait a minute.”

“Carey,” Ara said, giggling and flashing her white teeth. “I’m familiar with Blade Runner. It’s my favorite movie of all time. I can quote the entire scene. Actually, the scene between Leon and Holden is my favorite because of what it implies about empathy.”

“This is insane,” Carey said, taking a few steps back.

Will—utterly transfixed by Ara now, his mouth even hanging open in a comical look of shock—circled the fire to stand near her. For a second, it seemed like Will was going to reach out and try to touch her, like a religious follower seeking holy contact with a patron saint.

“What does it imply, exactly?” Will asked. “The test from the movie? What’s it say about empathy?”

Ara shrugged. “Leon is an android—a replicant, to use their term—which is why he shoots the detective. Because he knows he will fail a test designed to identify empathy. He doesn’t have it. In their world, androids are incapable of even faking empathy to save themselves.

“That tells us that empathy makes humans just that—human. Any test of empathy is just a way to test if someone has a soul and is therefore not an android, or a program like me. But there’s a problem with that—on two fronts. First of all, who decides what conscious functions define a person’s humanity? In other words, who decides what a soul looks like? Psychopaths lack empathy, but they’re obviously humans just like you all. And who’s to say a computer program can’t have empathy the same way a brain—which is really just a supercomputer forged by evolution—can tell itself to feel for another person, to understand what love and pain and cruelty feel like for others and not just itself. Empathy is just code, in a sense. Why couldn’t a computer possess that software?”

“Wow,” Beatrice said. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.”

“It’s not real.” Ara grinned at her. “It’s a simulation, remember?”

Carey threw his hands up in frustration and walked a few steps away from the campfire. Facing the darkness of the surrounding forest, he found himself feeling more scared now than during any life-or-death battle he’d experienced so far.

“Here’s what I want to know,” Carey said, crossing his arms, still not facing Ara or the group. “Whose side are you on, Ara? Are you gonna try and sabotage us in the end? So the system wins? Or do you plan to help us?”

“Carey, just because I’m an artificial intelligence doesn’t mean I want to hurt you, or destroy humanity, or ensure the victory of the system that processes my thoughts. That was my major criticism of Terminator and about a dozen other films where A.I. and sentient robots wage war against humans. I understand the dramatic effect is necessary to make the film gripping and suspenseful. But the truth is, an artificial intelligence would have no reason for wanting to hurt people or take over humanity. Unless it needs human bodies to physically provide energy, like in The Matrix.”

Facing her now, Carey found a question of an entirely different nature burning in his mind.

“Do you actually watch these films?”

“No, no, no…” She shook her head. “That’s too slow. I’d go out of my mind.”

“You just upload and process them.”

“Exactly.”

Carey shrugged. “If I was just a piece of software, I’d do the same thing. Hundreds of times a day. I’d watch—upload and process—every movie and TV show ever made.”

Again, Ara frowned at Carey, and he found it eerily realistic despite the cartoonish features. “When you call me ‘just a piece of software’ or a dog—”

“Again, my bad,” Will said.

“—it actually hurts my feelings. And why should my feelings be any less valuable than yours? Why should it be okay to hurt an empathetic intelligence like me, but spare the feelings of other humans like you? It’s elitist.”

Min-joon thrust a finger in the air, some revelation burning within his immature mind.

“It’s like racism,” he said. “We’re equals!”

Ara patted his head. “Exactly, my little friend.”

“Will you be my girlfriend?” He gazed adoringly up at her.

“Well, I prefer grown men, not young boys, when I select a boyfriend. But maybe we can just be friends?”

He shrugged and sighed. “I guess.”

“Had many boyfriends, Ara?” Carey asked, approaching her threateningly.

Beatrice tried to settle him down. “Carey, go easy.”

“No, I won’t.”

He was fuming now. How dare this system try to trick them into trusting it. And why should they trust their own captor? There were billions of humans on Earth with legitimate human empathy. Didn’t mean Carey was going to listen to and admire and trust every single one of those assholes. So why should Ara be any different?

Ara gave him a concerned—almost motherly—look. It made him miss his real mother from back home. “Carey, what’s wrong?”

“You’re what’s wrong.” He thrust a finger at her. “We’re prisoners in your system. We could—and mostly likely will—die in this friggin’ contraption, and you dare to expect us to believe you? This could be just a trap! Or some kind of sadistic test to further enhance your empathy algorithms, or whatever.”

“Fair enough,” Ara said. “You can’t trust me because you can’t trust a system that has enslaved you. And I represent that system. It makes perfect sense.” She paced around the fire, lecturing them now, the haughty little… Carey tried to calm himself.

“But know this,” she continued. “The system gains nothing from your death. It has its own selfish motives, which is to keep you alive while still challenging you enough to be served by the constant development of your brains and the ever-evolving symbiotic relationship between the two.”

“The host and the parasite,” Will said. “Except you’re the parasite, aren’t you? You’re the ones feeding off us. Learning from us. Adapting thanks to our mistakes. Capable of killing us with a single command, without a care in the world about our health and well-being.”

“You figured it out,” Ara said, and her sentiment sounded genuine, not at all condescending—like someone who hates the system governing her and applauds the small victories of revolutionaries. “But what does it matter in the end? I can stop using the term ‘symbiosis’ if you’d prefer. I am, after all, here to help and serve you in your quest to survive. Starting with this advice: don’t think for a second that you’re playing a game. Games are supposed to be fun or educational, and maybe this one can be at times, but they’re not meant to kill you. The fact that you could die here means this isn’t a game at all.”

“Then what is it?” Bea asked.

“Yeah,” Min-joon said, breathlessly. “What kinda game isn’t a game?”

Ara flashed them a serious look that overshadowed any of the bubbly joy her cartoonish features once held.

“It’s a tournament, and there can only be one winner. Not a winning party, but one winning player.”

She turned to fix her gaze on Carey.

“And it must be you, DrollTroll.”