AJ3 - Chapter 5: A Little Fib (Patreon)

Chapter Five

A Little Fib

Our abrupt trip to the city aborted, we returned to Jungle home, but not at all calmly.

“Gell, come on! Please tell me what’s going on!” Akwa shouted at me as I frantically began shutting windows and closing out the light. The darkness felt safer. Yeah. If I hid, maybe Francis wouldn’t get mad at me!

“N-nothing!” I lied brightly. Probably too brightly. “I really didn’t want to get into a confrontation with those soldier guys. That's all!”

“I guess that makes sense,” Akwa replied skeptically.

“Of course it does!” I said, thinking of what I could do. Hiding made no sense! I couldn’t hide from Francis here! He was a false god!

Maybe that wasn’t true though. Being a developer of this world clearly didn’t make them all powerful in it, or anything. When Bugbear had escaped, he’d proven that going into unknown territory could make it hard for developers to find him. If we left…

“Now… wh-where’s a good place we could go visit? Somewhere we’ve never been before?” I said nervously. “Miss Tutorial? Could you show me the map?”

“Certainly Gell!” came Miss Tutorial’s soft voice as she appeared before me, taking the form of a map of the known world of Tread the Sky.

“Gell? You’re acting weird,” Akwa said. “Are you sure everything is okay?”

“Weird? I’m not acting weird!” I said in a perfectly normal and not-at-all squeaky tone. “I’m just, y’know. Worried! Because of what you said earlier about regressing and I’m afraid that maybe if we stay in this place too long we’ll forget how to… uhm, adventure! So, let’s go!”

I began to usher the two out the door when the sudden and unexpected sound of a teleportation set my heart racing.

‘Oh no…’ I thought. First Tyrone, and now this?

Sure enough, Francis Delaney appeared at the teleportation hub just outside the home Bugbear and I shared. The sunny day was at odds with the sense of impending doom I felt.

His face brightened into a smile at seeing us, and he waved before striding over, tall steps bringing him to the doorway in moments.

I cocked my head at that, wonderingly. He… didn’t seem angry.

“Gell! A few alert logs I’d set up told me you’d finally gotten out of Jungle Home today. I just wanted… well. I wanted to check up on you again. I know that Amy’s departure... That it hit you hard,” he murmured, voice becoming more awkward with each word.

I shrunk in on myself at the thought, but the hurt wasn’t so profound anymore. The loss, not quite so devastating as it had been. I didn’t think I’d be as happy as I had been before any time soon. Maybe someday, though.

I managed to smile up at him, and laughed when Miss Tutorial turned to him and showed him a large smiley face.

“It’s been okay. Akwa pointed out today that if we kept doing the same thing for too long our behavioral code might regress. We might become mindless again. I couldn’t let that happen,” I said.

So, he’d just visited randomly? If he didn’t already know about what the King was doing in Variak, then perhaps there was a chance I could escape before he found out!

Part of it was guilt. I’d been angry when I’d used Fae Touch on the King. Angry about Amy, and angry about my situation. I’d known even then that I shouldn’t have done it but I’d been so mad at the time.

Now adventurers were being kicked out of one of the few safe places and it was all my fault.

“Well, uhm. Good. That’s… good. I’m glad to hear it,” he said. He almost seemed nervous, like he was afraid a Wronkle might jump out and attack him at any moment. Was he… afraid of me?

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around so much these past few weeks. I’ve… been lucky enough to never lose anyone I was particularly close to yet, but I know I consider you a friend. It was… wrong of me, not to be here for you. Can you forgive me?”

Not afraid of me then. Guilty? He felt like he’d done something wrong.

I felt something a little off about the request. We didn’t really speak much since that first talk when he’d explained what Tread the Sky was. What I was. He’d dropped in occasionally but usually only momentarily. Still, he had convinced his board to keep me alive and in the world. Perhaps he spent more time talking about me than he did to me?

I didn’t know, but I didn’t think I would’ve been any more comforted by his presence in those few cycles right after Amy had… had died.

We’d never exchanged name pieces. He wasn’t my friend in my invisible interface.

Part of me wanted to offer him a piece of my name right now but somehow I suspected that would make it a lot easier for him to find me. I didn’t know what he would do when he found out about the King, but if I could be somewhere else when he did find out… well. That would be good.

“You did nothing wrong,” I said finally. “It’s nice to be considered a friend though.”

Akwa eyed me curiously when I didn’t offer anything further like opening my friends menu, but she didn’t say anything.

“Thank you, Gell. It means a lot to hear you say that,” he said softly. “Please wait until I’ve finished though. I’ve been avoiding you for another reason. I limited the damage as much as I was able but I can’t help but feel… guilty somehow.”

I idly twisted my hair tendrils in confusion. He felt guilty?

“I’m sorry. It’s been eating at me. I wasn’t given a choice, but I should’ve at least told you. You’ve always been honest with me, as far as I can tell. You’re owed the same courtesy.”

‘Oh… Jellycrap,’ I thought, annoyed at the guilty feeling rising in my throat.

“What did you do?” Akwa asked when it became apparent I wasn’t sure what to say.

Francis scowled at her, annoyed, but then sighed. “I suppose its probably no more dangerous for you to know, if I’m going to tell Gell. Though I’m quite certain you have secrets of your own that Gell should know, Akwa.”

Akwa flinched as if she’d been slapped, but Francis continued on before I could wonder long on what she might be hiding.

“Gell. I made copies of you. Seventeen of them to be precise, though I’m absolutely certain there are more than that out there now,” he said.

Akwa took a sharp intake of breath but I didn’t know what to say. Copies? What did that… mean? Copies. Replicas. Things that were exactly the same.

For once I had a decent frame of reference to understand what he was talking about. Mobs. Like the endless iterations of the raptors, or the wolves in the woods from that first harrowing journey to Variak. The same, yet different. Other Gells.

Why… did he seem so guilty then?

“Eleven were given to the government outright. That was a PR move to show that Gypsenergy, the parent corporation responsible for creating Tread the Sky, is letting proper authorities vet you and what level of threat, if any, you pose to the playerbase. Five were sold to government affiliated companies with the purpose of experimenting on, and attempting to recreate you, while the last was sold to a private company who made an offer the size of a mountain. That last copy alone practically tripled the company’s yearly… Well…”

He stopped, looking up at me somehow, despite being taller.

“You… don’t care about all that, do you? My… my point is that there are copies of you out there and I don’t know what’s happening to them. I have no way to know and if they’re being hurt like you were, I have no way to stop it, and I have no way to keep the company from selling more copies of you. That’s… that’s all.”

Oh. Oh.

They… the other me’s, might not be safe. I didn’t know how to feel about that. Nothing changed for me. Knowing there were others out there like me that were having different experiences was a scary thought but… none of them had to learn about loss. Maybe they were being hurt, but perhaps some of them were going to worlds where death wasn’t real. Where they could live, eternally blissful. Seventeen copies. Seventeen me’s out there, having different experiences. Different lives. Perhaps learning more! Maybe less.

I searched my own feelings and found that I… didn’t really care. If a false god could do nothing for my sisters, what could I possibly do? I couldn’t even program. It was all I could do to try to stay happy with Bugbear regressing and Amy deciding that dying was more important than staying with me…

I just didn’t have room in me to care for other A.I.s whose situations were entirely beyond my control. But… Francis seemed to think I would.

“H..how could you do this?” I asked, a quaver in my voice.

I couldn’t create the required grief or disgust from the actual situation but all I had to do was think about losing Amy and my emotions became genuine. My anguish, believable.

I could lie.

“I’m so sorry Gell. I supported giving at least some copies of you to the government for study. People smarter than me. Better developers. People who might understand you even better than I do, which even now, isn’t well,” he said firmly. “But I did not support selling copies of you. You’re not a product, and selling you is an ethical dilemma that might have politicians going in circles for years.”

“But you didn’t even tell me about it!” I hissed. I used my simmering anger at Red Thorn for that. It had been so long since I’d seen the rogue menace, but my anger towards her still burned hot and bright. I could remember every dead bugbear, and every time she’d stabbed me as if it had happened just last cycle.

“Even if you couldn’t do anything, couldn’t you have at least asked how I felt? What if they’re being hurt? What if they’re lonely? They’re somewhere else away from Iron, and Bugbear! Bellcandy, Zephyr, and all of the friends I made here! Why didn’t they get to choose where they went!?” As I spoke, I realized I was actually angry about this, but not on behalf of the other Gells.

But for a twist of fate, it might have been me, taken away from the only home I knew. The only world I understood. What would that even look like? Feel like? Would I get to see the real world, as players so often called it? Or would I be put into one even more dead than this?

“I… couldn’t have told you then, Gell. You didn’t yet know enough to understand. Moreover, when I copied your code, I didn’t yet understand what I was copying,” he admitted.

“Is that supposed to make it better?” I asked. I wanted to get angry. Throw a tantrum. Yell and scream. But what would that accomplish?

I sighed, feeling drained. The fear of reprisal from what I’d done to the King, then the newfound knowledge that there were other versions of myself out there somewhere, doing who knew what. It was all too much for one cycle.

“Don’t answer that!” I snapped when he looked like he was about to speak again.

He stifled whatever he was about to say but he looked guilty. Meek, even.

“It’s okay. It’s… okay. Can you see though, that this is why I want to understand your world, and how you manipulate mine?” I said, tone collected and even. “I’ve said it before. Any time you want, one of you developers could pluck me out, as if I’d never been, and I’d have no way to stop you. I’m sure knowing you’re debating the ‘ethical dilemma’ of my existence will be comforting when I end up in a cage again.”

Akwa winced, before laying a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Jeez, Gell. It’s not that grim. Francis wouldn’t do that to you–!”

“He already did!” I interrupted, throwing her hand off me. “Just because it wasn’t me, doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been! You made your stance on this perfectly clear with Tyrone, Akwa.”

She wilted, too.

“Did you know Francis already told me he wouldn’t have brought me back to Tread the Sky at all if not for Miss Tutorial? I just… I escaped Dungeon Home only to find myself in another box. Its bigger, but it’s still a prison, and both of you have made it very clear you have no intention of helping me out of it. Just… leave me alone.”

“Gell, I… if that’s what you want,” Akwa said through dry lips. “If you need me, though, send me a message. I’ll come. I promise, I’ll be there for you if I can, Gell.”

She walked out of the house and towards the teleportation hub, leaving me alone with Francis.

“I’m not your enemy, Gell,” Francis said after a long silence.

“You’re certainly not a friend,” I retorted.

He sighed. “Perhaps not. Still, I’d love to see the day where we could let you be free. Till then, here. This is for you. I… spent quite a few nights building a digital item version of it from one of the textbooks I learned from. If there’s anywhere you should start learning to program, it’s here.”

He held up his hand and a flash of light, the effect of pulling an item out of inventory, left a large glossy book in his hand. He set it down on the little desk.

“We will speak again soon,” he said, formal now. Offended, perhaps, but I didn’t care. He was in the wrong and even he knew it, else he wouldn’t have come to admit that to me.

He disappeared, as he often did, leaving the book. I took a look at it.

“The Ethics of Programming”By Donovan Tchaikovski

It had a picture of a sunset on the background with a red cover and bold print.

I flipped up the front cover.

“An introduction to programming, with focus on the ethical concerns that arise from intelligent, and pseudo intelligent programs. For Beginners.”

My fingers trembled. A lump formed in my throat.

Francis… he was going to teach me. Well, he’d planned to, at least. He’d still given it to me though, and I wouldn’t waste the opportunity. Ethics. Moral principles. This… was a system of rules governing how developers were supposed to act.

The doctrine of false gods.

Eyes aflame, and with freckles glowing a red-orange hue of eagerness, I began to read.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOA/N: This chapter was a cast Iron pain to write and has kept me writer's blocked for months. Sorry about that. I'm also now an IT guy since I can't seem to write consistently enough to be a full time author. However! I'm going to attempt to produce weekly chapters going forward. Sorry for the long ass delays, and thanks as always to those who have stuck with me so far. This is the last of the Lucavi only Chapters Auracite will begin receiving new ones soon!