The Laptop - Ch.51 - Not Too Late (Patreon)

My eyebrows crept up as I stared across the table at Annie. "There's a dev team? As in, developers? And you've been promoted to join them?"

"Yep," she smiled. That became a grimace a moment later as she admitted, "Ok not so much."

My girlfriends and all just frowned quietly at her until she began to explain.

"There's no team, or at least not anymore. Obviously there used to be developers, back when the whole thing was first brought online. And from what I've found in my research, they remained active for some time after the digitization process was completed."

Our guest continued, "Some of them would have been digitized early, to work on the system from the inside. And to verify the simulated tools all worked correctly. The rest were probably among the last of the bio-population to be inducted into the system."

"Same for SysAdmins," she added. "There used to be thousands of them. I'm sure it varied, but every realm probably had an admin, or at least a couple moderators taking care of things right from the start. Developers and admins would all be working hard to track down and iron out any errors or problems that cropped up as more and more of Enðedd's population was added to the system."

I asked, "So I've got a SysAdmin laptop, and you have some sort of developer's toolkit? That's why yours is invisible?"

Annie smiled and shook her head, "No not at all. The tools are basically the same for both devs and admins, the main difference is my privileges are higher than yours. The reason my interface looks and works differently is mine's based on tech from a much more advanced realm."

"You could upgrade your interface too," she added. "Have you looked at the localizations app at all?"

I shook my head, "Not really. I had a quick look at the documentation, but when I realized it was for messing with the laptop itself I didn't want to risk it."

Our guest nodded, "Good choice. Especially if you were doing that here on Daearen. That app lets you disguise your interface so it blends in with the current realm, but that means it can't make the device look any more advanced than the average tech wherever you are. So back on Earth-742 the best you could get would be a slim laptop or a tablet. Or a smartphone, if you wanted something smaller. Here you'd either get a thick leather-bound book, or maybe an antique precursor datapad."

"So if I wanted something more advanced than the little pink laptop I'd have to go to a sci-fi realm first?" I asked. "And if yours isn't invisible then what is it, how's it work?"

Annie replied, "My interface is a neuro-optical implant. Its output is projected directly onto one of my optic nerves, and I can interact with it by making various gestures with my hands. There's even a few macros I can initiate with nothing more than some specific eye movements."

Chelsea and Gwen both looked impressed. Then our mage and I exchanged a glance before she asked our guest, "So your interface can never be lost or stolen? What about running out of power?"

"There's some hand-wavy explanation for how it powers itself from my body's bio-electrical field," the bard explained with a shrug, "But the bottom line is I never need to worry about recharging it. Or losing it, or breaking it."

She looked at me again and offered, "If you want something similar Lisa, I can take you to a sufficiently advanced realm and teach you how to upgrade your kit."

"For now though I'd like to continue our conversation from last night," she added. "If the three of you don't mind?"

I grimaced but shook my head, "I don't mind. I don't really know what to do about that stuff though? I mean, even if you're a dev and I'm an admin, we're still just two people. Five including Chels and Gwen and Frank. How can we possibly change the whole world?"

Our guest shook her head as she corrected me, "We're not just going to fix your world. There's other realms that need our help too. Ultimately, you and I are going to fix the whole damn system. But we're starting with your realm, because it's the one that needs the most help right now."

Gwen made a face as she grumbled, "Damn. It sounds like we really do live in the worst timeline."

From the look on Chelsea's face she was obviously thinking the same thing as Gwyneth. I was too. It was kind of sobering to think that out of over three thousand active realms, our world was the worst of the worst.

Except Annie hadn't actually answered my question, so I repeated myself. "How are we going to fix one world, let alone a bunch of them? I hope you aren't expecting me to start messing with people's minds, or doing mass-rewrites of the population's character sheets?"

"Don't worry," the bard replied calmly. "I won't be asking you to do any bulk edits. There'll likely be some specific individuals I'll need you to deal with, but we can worry about those details when the time comes. If it makes you feel better, I won't ask you to do anything much worse than the changes you made to Edward Durand's sheet."

I sighed, "That was a special situation, it was personal. Ed killed both my and Chelsea's mothers. I don't know that I'd feel comfortable doing anything like that to complete strangers."

Annie's voice remained calm and level as she stated, "The sorts of people I'd need you to target are all far worse than Edward. I'm talking about people who would happily see you and your girlfriends arrested, imprisoned, or killed, just for being queer. People who'd let the disabled or disadvantaged starve to death without a second thought, rather than lend them a hand. And people who've already done both of those things, and a whole lot more."

"You'll also be able to continue the work you already started," she added, perhaps to try and get me more on board with the whole thing. "There's plenty more people like Kinsley, Zach, and Pearl on Earth-742. You'll be able to help them directly, while also helping everyone indirectly as you work with me."

After a brief pause she added, "I want to help your world, and other worlds like it. I want to fix things so people can be happy, so they can live their best lives without fear or oppression. But we can't do that while the people with power and money are actively trying to make things worse for those folks who are the weakest and least able to defend themselves."

"Yeah I get it," I sighed again. "You still haven't really explained how this is going to work though. Other than by having me mess with bad guys' character sheets, I guess."

She nodded, "Alright Lisa. Here's the big picture, here's how it's going to work. And why I need your help."

Her voice was sort of quiet and a bit intense as she began, "I'm sure you've noticed by now that the 'realm editor' app doesn't actually let you edit anything? It's a font of information about whatever realm you're in, with endless sub-pages and drill-downs, but no matter how deep you dig you won't be able to make any changes. Even though you have root access, that function has been disabled. Or at least, it's disabled for admins."

"That's why I spent the last fifty years searching for a way to elevate my privileges," she continued. "That's why I needed to get myself developer credentials. The only way to edit realm parameters is from a dev console, and to access one of those I needed to be part of the dev team."

After a brief pause she went on, "The next challenge I ran into was dev consoles can't be accessed from within the realms. They only work in a special restricted sim that's outside the normal system. And that's why I need your help. I need a SysAdmin on the inside, someone who can be in the realm while I'm working on it. Someone to provide feedback, who can squash any bugs that arise, and take care of any threats or hazards that crop up."

My girlfriends and I were quiet for the next several seconds as all that slowly sank in. Then I asked, "What sort of realm-level edits are you talking about? What do you envision changing? And how will that manifest in the realm?"

"Will people notice it?" Chelsea added. "Like will the population know something strange is happening, or that their reality is being edited?"

Annie answered the catgirl's question first, "If we do this right, nobody will notice anything like that. They'll know their world is getting better, but the general population shouldn't have any reality-breaking experiences."

Then she replied to me, "You've seen the 'realm summaries' in the editor, right? There's the general configuration field, and the subjective experiences field? In normal operation those fields are updated automatically. It happens slowly, over the course of years, to reflect the way the realm is developing and what sort of path it's taking. Sort of like a feedback loop, the summaries are updated from the realm, but they also guide the direction the realm is going."

After a beat she stated, "Except I can edit those fields directly from a dev console. The realm won't change overnight, but whatever modifications I make will trickle out gradually, over the span of weeks or months."

"For example," she continued, "If I change it from 'capitalist hellhole' to 'friendly functional cooperative socialism' it might take a few months, maybe even a year or two, but there would be a grassroots change. Elections will start to swing the other way, people will start coming together to support each other instead of tearing each other down."

Gwen's eyebrows crept up and she asked, "What if you changed it from 'no magic' to something like this world, so magic's common? Would that actually work?"

The bard smiled, "It would, yes. It'd take some time, but magic would gradually become more prevalent. People would start to notice, there'd be some surprising discoveries, and eventually it'd be all over the news. Maybe in a couple years schools would start offering courses in witchcraft or sorcery or something."

"That might be cool," Chelsea commented. She sounded wary though, and her ears were folded back as she added, "Except the rich and powerful would probably find some way to cash in on it, while making it so only they and their supporters had access to it."

Annie's smile faded and her expression became serious again. "That's exactly why I need Lisa to be my boots on the ground inside the realm, while I'm making changes at the macro level. Because whatever those changes are, there's going to be some individuals who resist. Like you just said Chelsea, the wealthy and those currently in power are the ones who benefit the most from things as they are now. And they're the ones who stand to lose if the world starts to become a fairer and more equitable place."

"Until that grassroots shift has gained enough momentum," she warned, "Those in power could potentially stop our improvements in their tracks. They control the money, the armies, the weapons, and the laws. And if they try and use all those advantages to ruin things for everyone else, then we'll need Lisa to use her advantages to thwart them."

The little catgirl nodded slowly, "Alright, I get it now. And I can definitely see some of those sorts of people fighting tooth and nail to keep the world broken, specifically because it benefits them personally."

"Yeah," Gwen scowled. "I'm sure we could all name a few rich powerful assholes who're profiting off other people's suffering. And we all know they'd want to keep it that way."

I stayed quiet as I slowly thought about everything I'd just learned, all the stuff Annie just explained along with everything she told us last night. It took me a minute or two to fully process all of it, and in the end I still had some questions.

"How'd you learn all this stuff in the first place?" I asked her. "You said you started out on a world like ours, that you were given the laptop the same way you passed it on to me. So how'd you learn about Enðedd and the whole digitization thing? And how'd you find all these other realms?"

Annie shrugged, "Like I said Lisa, I've been at this for about a century. I was like you at first, figuring stuff out bit by bit. There was a lot of trial and error, and it took me a long time before I really understood things like how the realms are organized."

"I don't expect you to figure everything out on your own the way I did," she added. "I might not give you all the answers for free, I believe you're the kind of person who learns better when she figures things out for herself. But I'm not going to make you struggle for decades the way I did. And if you do make mistakes or get yourself into trouble along the way, I'll be there to help you out."

She continued, "As for the information about Enðedd, that's a special case. I stumbled onto a realm that's basically set up as a memorial to the civilization that started it all. It's like they made a complete static copy of the original homeworld, a snapshot of what the place was like after the population was gone. Nobody lives there, but we can visit. And there's a functional library in there, where you can find just about anything in Enðedd's archives. That's how I learned the pre-digitization history I shared with you last night."

"I don't know about you Lisa, but I'd love to see that," Chelsea commented.

Gwen agreed, "Me too. I mean, it sounds kind of spooky? But it'd be cool to see it."

It only took me another second or two to decide I wanted to see it as well. "Same here. After all it's part of our heritage, right? I mean we're all citizens of Enðedd, even if we don't remember it anymore."

"That's right," Annie nodded. "All of us were originally Enðeddian citizens. We were digitized a thousand years go, along with everyone else we've ever known. And since then we've all lived multiple digital lifetimes."

That left both my girlfriends quiet again, as they sort of digested that bit of information. That we all once had lives on a futuristic alien world, but that was all forgotten at some point after we'd been digitized.

Meanwhile our guest looked to me and asked, "Do you have any more questions?"

"Yeah," I replied. "About your home realm, you've mentioned a few times that it's similar to ours. Does that mean it's on the list of worlds that need our help?"

The half-elf's expression fell, and she let out a long sigh as she slowly shook her head. "Not anymore. My world destroyed itself a long time ago."

There was a sad, distant look on her face as she explained, "Our WMD of choice was biological rather than nuclear. The last war was fought with purpose-built diseases and engineered viruses, but the end result was the same. That's how I know your realm's in jeopardy. I can see all the same warning signs, I recognize the pattern."

"It's too late for my home," she added softly, "But it's not too late to save yours."