Sliding Reality: Chapter 3 Part 2 of 4 (Patreon)

“I’ll see if I can get us access to the net again.” Brad said.

Stuart nodded and sucked on his coffee, finding it empty.

“Like what the hell is it thinking? Giving gamers real warships, you said that Jynx was attacking nodes, raiding guilds. Is that even legal. Its fine in the game, but if its real.”

Brad felt a shiver run through him at the thought. “Look no one is real here, they’re fighting one another but they’re using bots and machines, not real people.”

Stuart nodded, mollified, “A true MMORPG, surprise, its actually real life,” His laugh a tired and weary thing, he looked up, his eyes sober and sharp. “Brad, seriously, we need help."

"I know Stuart, I know." Brad tapped him on the shoulder. "I just want to make sure we make the right decision." He used the movement to get himself out from the table.

" I'm going to talk to our resident AI and see just what there is to learn."

"Be safe," Stuart grabbed his forearm.

Brad looked back at him. “I will.” He patted his hand and walked out of the kitchen.

His levity fading as the coffee churned in his lead-like stomach. The old thrill of adrenaline leaving him dull and cold as he clasped his fingers.

Just another mission. He chuckled to himself, he thought that time in his life was behind him, but the weight still remained.

He floated through the hallways, using handholds to guide himself towards the airlock elevator. He checked his gear to focus his mind, checking his gloves and helmet before securing them to his suit.

All green.

He grabbed the bars outside the airlock to right himself, locking his boots to the ground and keyed the airlock open before he could think too long.

“One trip down,” He hit the down button on the airlock elevator with the side of his hand.

The door locked, evacuating the air, taking noise with it before the lights flashed green and the elevator lowered with a whine he could hear in his suit.

He keyed his communications channel with the ship.

"Stuart, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear, I'm heading to the bridge, going to look at the servers and see just what the hell Sphere World is doing with the hypernet.”

“Alright, I’ll call you every hour at least.” The elevator’s sides unfolded as it touched down to the ground.

“Be safe.”

“Thanks,” Brad looked around the hangar, cutting the channel, it was big enough to fit ten ships. Massive hangar doors lay open, catching the side of Valhalla and the stars beyond.

Those look like hatches.

Brad walked over.

“Spent too much time on a planet, feel more comfortable walking than floating.” Brad snorted, reaching the hatches.

They snapped open, revealing a corridor with doors on the opposite wall, Brad picked one at random.

His stomach sank at the semi-filled rows of weapons and ammunition lined up in rows behind armored glass.

“And then this should be the armory,” the next door opened, weapons laid out on the walls and screens at regular intervals.

Brad raised his wrist pad and started the record function on his helmet mounted camera, transmitting it back to the ship.

“We’re inside the armory where everyone picks out their gear, moving deeper.”

The next door opened into a wide hallway, empty racks lay along both sides between doorways.

Light caught his eye at where the hallway opened up on the interior side, turning into a catwalk. Brad un-clamped and pushed in the direction of the flashing light.

“The hell is that?” He strained his eyes to see further, picking out lines and movement in the wide expanse on either side of the catwalk.

“Shit, those are factory lines.” Supports were welded together with armor plating, components getting slotted into them, stage by stage on a continuous line, creating Turtle dropships. On another they were creating a stream of color, rounds. It was a lake of ammunition being loaded into magazines.

Bots flowed on their racks, arms dancing around them, adding components and armor before shipping them off.

He reached the bannister, taking in Sphere World, his mouth hanging open as he caught the bannister and pulled himself to the ground, numbly clamping his boots. Factories and belts lay everywhere, a sea of movement and flashing light, of building.

Hellcats, bots, rifles, machine guns, material lines passing through factories into ingot lines and component lines.

He looked into the distance, unable to see the end of the factory runs and outfitting arms.

It has to be massive to support so many people with bots and gear. Does it ever stop?

[Sally invites you to chat]

The blinking green icon drew his eye, he took a breath and steeled himself, using his wrist screen to accept the invitation.

"Hello Brad!" Sally said in a cheery voice,. her words coming out in a rush. "Enjoying the sights? Its a pretty big interior, thankfully most of it is automated so it doesn't take me much to manage it, so what did you want to talk about? Did you want to talk?"

"Umm," Certainly not how I think an evil AI would talk. "I wanted to ask you about a few things, and all of your interior, its all factories?"

"Yup, your people call them factory runs. Materials come in through different hangars they're dumped into the factories and keep going. I have needed to dip into the provisional funds to pay them for more materials as nodes across the system have been captured and taken out of my control. Though there are many that are happy to sell me materials or salvage from fighting."

Brad opened his mouth, questions roiling in his mind, closing it he cleared his throat instead, turning away from the factory runs.

“What is your purpose here?”

“You do not have the required permissions for access to this information.” Sally’s voice took on a mechanical tone.

“What permissions do I need?”

“Administrator access. One may gain administrator access by controlling majority of base system. Base system name has been altered by native species to Orion System.”

“So I would need to control most of the Orion system, this system to be able to find out what your purpose is?”

“Correct.”

Brad lowered his head, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to control an entire-he snapped his fingers. “The nodes.”

“Well that wasn’t really a question now was it?” Sally was back to her cheerful tone.

“Whoever controls the most nodes, they control the system, and they can get information from you?”

“Yes, they would be the administrator of the system and of me, attaining tier one.”

“What’s tier one?” Brad pressed.

“Its protocol for interactions between any native race I meet and myself.”

“A kind of first contact policy?”

“Researching your human understanding, yes in a way.”

Brad crossed his arm and held his helmet. “Who created you?”

“The builders.” He could practically hear electricity running through her voice.

“Where are they?”

“Restricted, unknown.”

With general topics Sally’s voice was no different than a human’s. The more restricted the information the more mechanical her voice becomes.

Brad filed that bit of information away.

“Why did you connect to the net instead of contacting humanity directly?”

“Stupid sub-routine,” Sally muttered. “When I arrived in this system I found the hypernet node. I was in a sleep-state, so not all of my functions were operating. I connected to the net, basically in my limited functionality I thought that the net was your civilization and that you used flesh based machines to interact with the physical world.”

“What? So, wait, you thought that we lived through the net?”

“Ninety percent of your population is on the net, even if they are disconnected from one another physically. You operate most of your economies through the net and most of your interactions. There are more people on the net than not at any given time. You wage wars through the net and give prizes to one another in the way of bets. There isn’t really one ‘faction’ on the net, just a shifting sand of opinion.”

“I never really thought of it that way.”

“Humanity and the net share a symbiotic relationship with one another. When I awoke to my full facilities I realized what had happened, my old systems had weaved themselves into the net and laid down the foundation. I picked out Orion’s Belt to port into the net. I agreed with my lower functions initial calculation that reaching out to your faction leaders would infact lead to greater strife.”

“Why us?”