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

“Your content was similar to what Sphere World offers, you were not bound to a corporation, you were both older, had married and had children, there were two of you and you were from different backgrounds. You have an education, have fought with real stakes, raised a company and managed it. And you were not easily intimidated.”

“Were you going to tell us that you were real?”

“Yes, though I thought it would not be for some time. Your coming here was one of those triggers.”

“What were the others?”

“If ships started to head in the direction of human occupied space, or other events came to pass.”

Brad was cold. “Head into human space?”

“Yes, though it looks like they are planning to head out into the other systems instead, there are a few adventurers looking to take hellcats to check out their home systems.”

“You need to stop them, if they showed up to their home system and didn’t know it was a game! They might shoot at ships without a care thinking its just a game!”

Brad’s mind turned bad scenarios worse.

“Do they have nukes?”

“Yes.”

“Why aren’t you scared by this?” Brad yelled.

“What humanity does is not my concern.”

“Can you shut this down, stop it right now?”

“I cannot.”

“Disconnect the bots!”

“I can only stop firearms created by myself from firing inside Sphere World itself.”

Nausea coiled in his stomach.

“Okay, okay, they don’t have wormhole projectors so it would take them decades to get to another system.”

“They gained access to wormhole projectors with your arrival.”

“What!?”

“You came in a ship that had wormhole projectors, whatever technology enters my system I can scan and if I have a version of it, I can release the design to the factories.”

“Gods, gamers with fully functional warships.”

"I take your response as anger, what angers you?"

"You can't just give people wormhole projectors and then tell them to take warships and start to expand into other systems!”

"It happens frequently in your media."

"That's media, it is make believe, none of it is real. This is. The net is just a place for people to hang out and play games, they aren't making moral choices, they're just playing!" Brad fought throwing his hands up, knowing it would only throw him around in the zero g.

"I do not see the problem. Your net connects nearly all human life. It is the largest society of humans.”

"The problem is that these gamers have access to warships and nuclear weapons that could be used as weapons of war against civilians or anyone that annoys them! What about the factions, the Federation, the Coalition, Sol even? Have you contacted them?"

"I haven’t, humans are connected by the net, their governing bodies could not be more different. I wonder if this is because of your tribal roots? The Builders created a society under one governing body, there were many parties and infighting, but I guess they were focused by war." Sally mused.

"You gave the power of warships to gamers! They haven't been trained, they don't know what they are doing!"

“I would point out that there has not been war between humans in several decades, certainly not one that reached all of them. People on the net have been fighting one another constantly for years, even without core training, information has filtered to them, they have gone through wars across space, over ground in every terrain. They have more combat experience than most.”

“But they don’t die, they don’t get hurt!”

“Of course, the bots act as their real-world avatars. I should point out that there are tutorials that can train anyone how to effectively operate any piece of technology I produce and the tactics around them in a few short hours.”

“Drone warfare, but why give us bots to control? You’re an AI couldn’t you control them? And why give us weapons of war?”

“I am not allowed to control so many items, I do not have enough processing power and it could cause my functionality to degrade and split off my operations.” Sally said.

“But why weapons of war?”

“You do not have the required permissions for access to this information.” Electric toaster voice was back again.

“Will I find out if we become tier one?”

“Yes.”

Brad lulled into silence, there were a million threads and each of them seemed to be escaping his grasp.

“Would you like to make any changes to my operation administrator?”

“Changes? And wait, administrator?”

“Yes, you are the first one to access me and you have passed the necessary checks, I name you as administrator.”

“What can I change?”

“You can change anything I can control, it might be easier if you went to the command post.”

“What do you control?”

“Sphere World, my remote collection shuttles and mining nodes and Orion’s net infrastructure.”

“Can I shut down production of Sphere World?”

“No. Though you can pick out what you want me to build instead.”

“And Orion’s net access, can you unlock it for myself and Stuart?”

“Confirm access to the net for yourself and Stuart.”

“Confirm.”

“It has been done.”

“Can I name him co-administrator.”

“Yes.”

“Give him the same rights as me.”

“Done.”

“Can I turn over control to anyone?”

“Yes.”

“Do you care what happens to the human race?”

“It is a complicated answer, somewhat? Like it wouldn’t be the best if you destroyed yourselves, but if you did then I would just continue on to another race. Though I really don’t want to be stuck in hibernation again, missing what’s happening in the universe, is, the closest human word is boring.”

“Could I give administration access to an animal?”

“Only a homosapien one.”

“What about the factions? Or just a random person.”

“Both are possible.”

“Isn’t that a bad idea?”

“Conflict is unavoidable and is indeed a test of human ability to understand and compensate for my arrival.”

Brad’s fists curled around the banister, a headache rising from the base of his skull and spreading through his head.

“Okay, so we can’t stop the factories from producing, what is the biggest thing you can build?”

“I can increase my own size, build another Sphere World or create a warpgate.”

“Put all of your work towards increasing your size then. At least that way we’re not building more warships and giving people more weapons.” Brad bit the inside of his mouth.

“Done.”

“Okay, so one problem side stepped.”

***