Reeve looked back. The twins appeared deep in conversation. She looked forward. Leaf was still a dozen paces ahead of her, Walter, and the pony. Nyx and the honey badger were flanking the fallen elf as she lead them through grassland toward a tree-line that was beginning to resolve from a dark band to a jagged crenelation.

“It’s the stupid naming thing that’s causing the problem,” Reeve said quietly to her father. “I’m ‘Reavyr’ and you chose ‘Reavyr’ also, and somehow that’s causing problems with the game, having two instances of the same player name.”

Walter looked at Reeve as he rocked gently side-to-side in time with the pony’s cadence. “Surely people end up with the same name? You said a lot of people play this game. Seems like that kind of problem should have gone the way of the Y2K bug.”

“The Y2 what?”

Reeve watched the honey badger’s goofy, lopsided gait for a while, then contrasted it with Nyx’s lanky amble then Leaf’s light steps which, despite their grace compared to that of a human, appeared inefficient next to the two animal companions. Sensing that Walter was finishing his explanation of the Y2-whatever-bug, Reeve tuned back in.

“…at least that’s my understand of it,” Walter said.

“OK, Millennial,” Reeve said. “But this is still only in early access, and they built this game from the ground up. Most games these days are based on pre-existing gaming engines, so a game might be new but its guts have probably already seen billions of playing hours. But here, everything behind the scenes is totally new, so it’s possible that no one has ever set up the story mode and then given two players logged into the same system identical player names. I mean, who’d do that?” Reeve looked at her father. “Yeah, anyway, the DevNote indicated that Viv identified an issue with duplicate player instances that caused an error in the less advanced AIs controlling the NPCs.” Reeve tilted her head back toward the twins.

“I’m going to need you to walk me through that a little slower,” Walter said.

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

Reeve resettled her bow on her shoulder and walked in silence for two slow breaths. “Sure, OK. The MMO version of the game—the one that’s an open world where lots of people play at the same time, the one that I usually play—is managed by a really smart Artificial Intelligence, AI. Her name is Viv—“

“It’s a her, not an it?”

“Yes, she’s the real deal. Personality, preferred gender, passed the Turing Test with flying colors. Makes a lot of humans seem artificial by comparison. Or at least boring. She’s one of the reasons strong AIs have won civil rights. She’s salaried by the company and everything.”

Walter’s expression of confusion brought back memories of their first few days in the game, memories that Reeve did not want to revisit.

“What does an AI do with money?” Walter said.

“Focus, Dad. The AI’s name is Viv, and she manages the MMO version, but the story mode—“

“You keep talking about this story…”

“It’s this version of the game we’re playing now, where we need to accomplish something specific. Remember what the twins told us after the kobold camp? Their mother left not long after they were born to join up with other elves defending their homeland from an ice-orc tribe, and the twins never saw her again; their human farmer dad couldn’t support them all so apprenticed the twins to an old mage; the mage was abducted and taken to Fellgrave; they needed our help saving him, yadda, yadda, yadda?”

“That story?”

“That’s part of it, at least it was our next objective. The story mode is more scripted than the MMO, and Viv usually doesn’t need to deal with it, she just lets less advanced AIs run the NPCs and story dynamics…unless a problem comes up that she needs to take a look at. Apparently,” Reeve’s eyes were alight and Walter could see his little girl in their glint, despite the half-orcish packaging, “the analytics being sent in from my VR setup tipped Viv off to some of the problems the duplicate names are causing.”

“Us not being able to log out?”

“I don’t think that’s one she’s aware of yet, but when the twins heard that we’re both called Reavyr and couldn’t handle it, that threw a big enough exception that it was elevated to Viv’s attention.”

“So, she’ll get us out of here?”

Reeve’s smile fell slightly. “No, at least not yet. I don’t think she knows there’s a problem as big as us not being able to log out, so she’s just made a change to address the issues she’s aware of. But, it’s a start.”

“What change?”

“The NPCs are…,” Reeve fell silent as she noticed Leaf motion to both Nyx and the honey badger to hold.

The fallen elf turned to Reeve and Walter as they slowed and came to a stop next to her.

“Problem?” Reeve said, scanning the tree-line that was still distant but in which she could now make out individual trees. The twins arrived to stand on the side of the pony opposite Reeve.

“Nae,” Leaf said. “But we’d be wise to use more care once we pass the rise ahead. Our approach of the last hours will have been easily observed by anyone in the cover of the trees. As we near, I advise watchful eyes, to let any who be there find us an alert and unappealing mark.”