‘They must be here about mom’s cult,’ was her immediate assumption. Then the van stopped short. A reporter got out; a tall one in a stellar suit with an intense smile. “Are you Nora Pierce, Senior Machine Psychologist at KorBridge Integration Partners?” Well, there went that theory. The woman read from a snapshot of Nora’s blue business card displayed on her band.
“I might be, depending what I’m being blamed for,” Nora responded.
“What was it like to solve the first murder of an AI?”
Well shit. Turns out Alexi was the real internet detective. Probably put together pieces from the press and sold her out for a few minutes’ fame. Good for him, and maybe good for her if she played her cards right. But Nora’s prediction model put the chances of that at nearly nothing.
The crew set up in the living room. They agreed it wouldn’t be live because the thought of that made Nora want to drop dead. Lights hung above her again; this time she was prepared and reasonably well rested. Mom looked on, her glare indetermined between curious or furious. The reporter’s name was Charly Jackson. Familiar. Athletic. Probably played tennis or lacrosse at Penn State. A local hard hitter according to dad’s sideline whisper. Had the kind of eyes you didn’t dare say no to. The question came again but at least she had a seat.
“What was it like to solve the first murder of an AI?”
“It was actually pretty easy, incorporated Machine Intelligences aren’t allowed to lie. You just have to ask the right questions.” Charly gave a knowing nod. Oh right, that was her job too. Nora had to sidestep the ethical complexities due to an NDA between KorBridge and the city. Starting into the technical details instead, it quickly became clear that wasn’t what was being asked either.
“You mean how does it make me feel? Strange. Confused. Scared?” Nora left out proud for obvious reasons, largely because it was true.
“Scared? Is that why you’re living in what appears to be a Christian collective?”
“Oh, no, that’s just mom’s band. No connection personally, just came here to get my charger!” Nora said, holding up a tangled dongle.
“Are you religious?”
“There’s a lot of layers to that query. More than your audience has time for.”
“Well, do you believe in god?” the reporter pressed.
Nora felt forced to glance at mom. “Unconvinced by the evidence, but I do believe in demons,” Nora replied, adding, “The digital kind,” and trying to laugh it off.
Charly wasn’t played so easily. “Care to expand on that a little?”
“Oh, that’s just what I call my worst patients.” Nora forced a second deflecting laugh.
“Do you think Marshall felt pain when he was attacked?” Charly asked, not falling for the feint.
“Physical pain would be impossible, he doesn’t have any sensory organs.”
“What about emotional pain? Perhaps from being betrayed?”
Nora was ready for that line. “These aren’t conscious beings. They don’t have emotions like we do, because it doesn’t feel like anything to be inside of a bunch of GPUs.” This was standard industry boilerplate bullshit. She had no way of knowing what it might feel like to be inside Alain or Marhsall or Mr. E’s mind any more than she knew what it was truly like to look out from inside Charly’s eyes. There was only one way to live inside a different skin—that virtual soul trap she’d barely escaped. “If he felt anything, it might’ve been like being lost in a maze that made no sense,” she said. Hedging there could only cause trouble. She should have shut up.
Charly applied leverage. “Is there a risk this wasn’t an isolated incident?”
“Well, if this kind of behavior becomes the norm, that’s a major new threat to contend with.” Her mistakes were becoming evident now, time to retract. “Wait, can we scratch that?”
“What’s the point of being an interviewer if we’re not here to catch moments of honesty?” Charly countered.
Nora suddenly felt a sharp stick stuck in her mind, victim of dark karmic magic. She froze, unable to recover.
“What kind of threat are we talking about?” Charly asked, exploiting her opportunity. “Is murder one of the escape scenarios?”
The reporter had done her homework. “No, it’s not an escape, and no need for alarm. Just an argument that got out of hand because people weren’t paying attention,” Nora said, glancing to the sidelines again with apparent remorse. “But systems integration is built on trust. Any obstacle to that trust makes my job a lot harder.”
“Meaning your fear is more professional than personal?”
“I don’t draw much distinction there,” she said, laughing again. “I don’t get out much.”
Charly pressed further, “Do you think this incident is related to other issues in the AI space this month? The airline delays, the lending freezes?”
So, she was right about the airline AIs even in her addled state. But banking issues? That was new. Being Very Offline for a few days felt like she’d lost a limb. “You’ve come to this interview way more prepared than me. I was just recharging at home with mom and dad after the big case, trying to disconnect.” Dislodging that sharp stick slowly but surely, relearning to lie. Time to get away before Charly could punch another hole in her firewall. Nora started to squirm.
“One more question?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“They’re calling you The Machine Whisperer. What’s it like to be the most famous person in your field?”
Despite the lights, the world went black.
She crept through the hollow dark of the Slumberer’s crypt, the walls cut crude and unadorned. She wasn't supposed to be here - no one was. These incomplete chambers were off limits, still concealed behind the scenes. But Nora was adept at being no one, Maya too. The shadows obeyed their command.
Slipping past the last set of scale-clad sentinels, she descended along stairs hewn into dark stone. The space felt equal parts tomb and womb, harboring the creators’ unborn destroyer. On huge hooks hung plates that would shield its breast, while the body lay waiting on wet slab. Colossal arms crowded the room, pinning her close to its chest. In dim light she spied unfinished flesh, legless and exposed, devoid of spark or soul. Then she saw its hanging head.
It was there between black basalt walls she met the face of a half-assembled god. It asked, "What is your wish?" and she whispered back.
“Are you still here?” Charly whispered and waved for her attention. Nora wished she wasn’t. She wanted the lights banished, to be back in the shadows where she belonged. Reliving her greatest mistakes was better than birthing new ones.
“I don’t think I can do this. This spotlight really isn’t my thing.” Nora turned abruptly, having had enough. She gathered her things without another word, her parents still in shock.
Charly persisted, tailing Nora to the door. “Please, any closing thoughts?”
Nora paused at the threshold, hand on the knob. She wanted to get all corporate, plug in the need to have your Machine checked out by a certified Psychologist. An ordained tech exorcist of her sacred order. Instead, she said, in a tone true and real, “The risks of reporting this wrong are higher than you can imagine. It sounds like there’s already a panic, let’s not add to it. I trust you’ll make the right call,” entirely lacking her usual defensive sarcasm. Dad grinned the same grin he’d given when she’d fixed her first broken toy.
Nora had her own calls to make, anxious to leave this circus behind. Stepping outside, her band caught up to unread texts. Good old Short Message Service—older code that still checked out. Colleagues, former friends, more reporters clamoring for comment. Alexi had sent a single word, one easy enough to guess.
A storm was gathering, and she was at the center again. ‘It’s not my fault, but it is my problem’ she said to herself. That was a slogan she’d seen on Abhi’s wall when he’d started taking management seriously. Except this probably was her fault somehow, just like last time.
Time to plan a response. She paced the rutted drive, smelling rain and rust while tapping a reply to Alexi’s text:
Alexi: Sorry.
Nora: ?
Minutes later it was acknowledged with a response:
Alexi: The news was freaking out. Uber’s been down more than up so I’ve been picking up people at the airport for cash. Reporters were snooping between Baltimore and Ashburn so I gave out your card. Thought you could talk some sense into them.
Nora: One of them found me at my parent’s farm. And I think I just made it worse.
Alexi: Well, there’s a whole subreddit dredging up out everything about you, so it was only a matter of time. You’re about to be the internet’s main character of the month.
So that’s how it was going to be, Nora swept up in The Narrative again.
Nora: If you’re actually sorry, you could come pick me up in PA. My boss will expense anything to get me back in the game. It should be a win-win.
Then nothing. Conversational dead end; never ask a new friend for a favor.
Speaking of, she read the SMS stream of Zaree’s consciousness. Complaints about summer cold fronts in Canada. Go figure. Girl talk about a boy she met in Toronto, working remote while waiting for flights to resume. Wondering if it was worth dumping the guy from the taco truck. Stock market memes—a lot of red arrows down and to the right, brokers with hands covering frustrated faces. Sold her IBM shares at the first sign of trouble. “All out,” Zaree sent at the end.
Humans were prone to herd behavior; the lemmings would follow soon. For a split-second Nora worried about her parents’ retirement account, then looked back at the cross and laughed. Nora composed a reply: “Stay safe, but don’t go short. I can fix this.” Already thinking three steps ahead, she replaced “I” with “we.” Send.
Step 1: Assemble a team.
Dialing remembered digits, she called up Diego.
“Sup, Noramancer?” he asked through the static. Dad was right, cell reception really was shit.
“A lot. What’s the word on LinkSMART? I’m out of pocket, as the salesmen like to say.”
“Everyone’s hiding behind their firewalls, lots of MIs dropping offline entirely. A few big attacks back in May startled people, and now this murder story.”
“Attacks? Why didn’t I know?”
“Cus you’re a machine shrink and don’t sit in a SOC all day like I do. But when Storms of Steel went down on stream, that should have gotten your attention, no?”
“You know I haven’t watched in years. Only saw them kill Bilgerath by accident.”
“That’s like if Messi stopped watching the World Cup. I never really believed you.”
“Okay, well, do you still have your old metaverse lab?”
“It’s mostly used for virtual foosball these days, but if you can call seventeen terabytes of mismatched junk a lab, yeah.”
“I’ve got someone who’ll feel right at home there.”
She hit up Abhishek next, but his overly baroque avatar clogged up the call. Disconnect. She sent a text asking for the keys to his private cloud cluster, stressing her need to conduct an urgent integration test. Asking was a formality since she knew all his passwords. He sent a reply saying not to go to KorBridge HQ or her apartment. CNN was parked outside both. Did he even know what state she was in?
New notification:
Alexi: Where? Nora: Wellsboro PA. Alexi: Shit. That’s far. Nora: Yes, but it’s close to Toronto. Fifty bucks an hour, plus gas and snacks. 55 if you take doubloons.
Alexi replied with a picture of a cartoon kid calling her a son of a bitch and insisting he was in. She told Abhishek about her plan to pick up Zaree; he said she was already working on a list of leads impacted by the meltdown. Everyone was syncing up on the same protocol so far. She sent Alexi the address and told him to stop when he saw a heavenly sign, but it would be five hours even if his Mercury sprouted wings. Charly’s crew was gone when she stepped back inside. Her laptop was already on dad’s Thunderbolt charger, a good deed worth a clumsy hug.
“What did you step in this time?” Miriam asked, like when Nora dragged dog shit in on her shoe. Fair. What did she step in?
Step 2: Define the Problem
‘I’m the problem, it’s me!’ she couldn’t stop her subconscious from saying. Wasn’t even a huge fan in school, just an artifact of culture stuck in her mind like King Arthur’s sword. Good, it could keep the stick company.
The real problem was a rapid collapse of trust between organizations dependent on large scale AI systems, including MIs. While waiting for her laptop to be bootable, she surfed cybersecurity bulletins and hacker forums from her phone. Finding solid info online was difficult, the Information Superhighway having devolved into the Great Dumpster in the Cloud.
The culprits of this condition were many, algorithmic servants of shitty states being the biggest. SIGMI regs only applied to incorporated clusters and other systems petascale or larger; thirty-three signatories were the only places where the RUNNER Accords were readily enforced. Nations not aligned with NATO or under the Chinese umbrella were obliged to behave by having cruise missiles aimed at their datacenters. Other public initiatives to catch and kill the internet’s endemic spammers and art thieves from the early days of AI were working out as well as the ones charged with containing airborne illnesses.
Even without state-sponsored spam havens and rogue offshore robotrolls, the internet had more crooked knaves than the high seas ever had. Conspiracy was a lucrative commodity between TikTok, YouTube, and the emergent versecast circuit. Key demographics tuned in weekly for the latest lies. Even among honest brokers, convoluted revenue incentives contributed to misaligned messaging. More organic panic played a part too, but real human intel could still be found by reading between the right lines. Postings from big infosec influencers with legit LinkedIn credentials matched what esteemed pseudonyms within the security community were saying. One guy with a cyborg eye for a profile pic said Diego was right about the attacks—five distinct waves so far, each one larger than the last. They increased in complexity while expanding in scope. Marshall’s apparent murder was a trigger for a storm that was already brewing.
Microsoft’s intelligence team had assigned the name Strawberry Tsunami to the unnamed attacker on their public attribution tracker. But given how stupid that sounded for such a menace, the collective cyberintelligence community was calling it Creeping Red and declaring China the likeliest perpetrator. Bleeding edge MI researchers on LinkSMART were instead trying to christen the signature Dark Seeker Six, claiming it was keeping them up at night. And Diego sent her stories about new monsters in the metaverse, disfigured invaders they named the Irregulars. They reportedly appeared shortly after the first cyberattacks, but good screenshots were scarce. Just one more of Jack’s stunts—trying to capitalize on calamity.
Whatever this threat was called, it was bad news.
Step 3: Activate Interim Containment
Well, that’s what everyone was doing, and therein lay the problem. Most state-funded cybergangs existed solely to cause economic damage to their enemies. Tearing down interoperability between AI systems could cost trillions if it continued for any length of time. Everyone entrenching behind their firewalls would also starve security MIs of training data to assist in isolating the source and suggesting corrective actions. That meant…
Step 4: Find Root Cause
…would fall to humans analyzing effectively infinite logs. All while the systems of modern society got sent back to the stone age, or maybe the 80s. Then the scrubber teams. The rebuilds. IT teams working sleepless nights across the world for months, maybe more. A real human cost. There wasn’t enough coffee for that.
As if reading her mind, mom offered a mug. Devices were scattered across the kitchen table, little lightning addicts strung out to every outlet. “Whatever’s going on isn’t going to matter soon. What matters is being with family and friends for the end,” Miriam said, her grip on the cup making it feel conditional upon Nora’s surrender. John just shrugged behind her.
Nora looked to the fridge, focused on the faded polaroid of what mom contended was her tennis pal.
“You used to have friends before all this computer stuff,” Miriam said, moving the magnet and handing it over.
“I found new friends,” Nora said, using her band to pull up the one with Zaree on the scaffolds overlooking Ormos. She swiped to show their taco trash creations, then everyone in the office posing with polar glasses to see who looked like the biggest dork.
“I found new ones too,” mom said, squeezing Nora’s shoulders and sneaking in a few tears. Hers were already visible around the barn, setting up for the night’s revival.
Nora traced two fingers over the photo, feeling like she’d lost the plot. Seventeen years of shitty sleep clearing her history, page by page, link by link. But her time in the verse was still so sharp, every second stored in holographic media. This was something else. An optimization routine, pruning parts of her memory that weren't interesting enough. Things not relevant to her current configuration. Or things she'd lost her connection to.
There was only room in her head for two worlds, the one in SF and the other she still couldn't shake.
Nora gathered her things, knowing it was almost time to take off. Relenting to mom’s wishes, she stood at the doors of the barn as the sermon started. A stealth notification hit her wrist; the Mercury parked down the road and ready to roll whenever she was. As the preacher’s canned prophecy began, she hugged her mom and let go, saying, “I hope you find your peace.”
“You too.”
But Nora knew there would be no peace for her; she was a fighter. Well, technically a wizard. And she left like a thief in the night, trailed by all the guilt that might imply.
Alexi waited until they hit the edge of town to gun the gas. They rode along a long stretch of nothing. Traffic was so dead that his phone was up on the dash, watching recent replays while Nora napped. Dreamed about riding a raptor; couldn’t ask for much better. Could have done without that demon eye showing up again at the end. Echoes of Maya’s magic zapped her awake as he merged onto I-190, a doubled dose of the previous paint winking back at her in the headlights.
They got some great food at a diner outside Buffalo, but no wings. Greasy grilled steak and cheese sandwiches with big sides of pie. A hangover meal; good for drowning the nostalgia of home with a different kind of regret. The waitress could tell they weren’t a couple, not quite sure what to make of them. Probably worked here for twenty years and hadn’t matched their pattern much.
As they ate, Alexi repeated theories from reddit about the airline issues: low confidence storm forecasts, air traffic AIs not trusting their weather simulating siblings, continually grounding planes and gumming up the works. Apparently, no one remembered how to shift schedules or control air traffic by hand. Forgotten knowledge, cultural amnesia, Nora wasn’t the only one growing holes in her head. Being honest with herself, some suppressed percent of her internal model wanted to turn around and take mom’s advice: hide under her dinosaur blanket back home and wait for the storm to pass or the world to blow up.
“So, your parents are like, really into Jesus?” Alexi asked as they waited for the check. His top button was open, exposing a heavy silver cross that hadn’t previously warranted attention.
“Na, mostly mom. Dad’s just really into enabling. If she’d started doing Santería he’d have bought her the biggest cauldron his truck could carry.” Her eyes locked on the pendant. Squared off and ornate. A weighty contrast to his fluffy face. Inlaid with runes that looked enchanted, it matched a pattern that made her laugh.
“What?” he asked, scoffing at her offense. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those stereotypical types who thinks faith is a mark of shame?”
“No, not like that. I could go on about my silly superstitions for days.” From the sharp twist of his chin, she could tell that only offended him further. “Sorry, not what I meant either. Your cross looks like the kind of art my friend would carve into his guns.”
“Oh, so those guys were your friends?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
Nora shook her head and made Alexi retransmit a few bytes so they could both get back in sync. Vanguish was the guy with the guns she was referring to. Not so surprising from the reddit references, Alexi knew of the Dawnbreakers, having seen their recent streams and from dabbling in SoS himself. Nothing serious without investing in good hologear. Nora didn’t mention her history but was sure /r/MachineWhisperer would connect the dots soon. Luckily Nora Pierce was common, basic AF; mom’s devotion to old traditions a legitimate plus for once.
The guys with the guns he was referring to were four folksy thugs with trucks trading rifles for fertilizer. They got spooked by the Mercury’s dusty halogens when he first pulled up at the farm, but still completed their trade.
Nora considered his account. “Dad was never into guns. Me either. But this is shitkicker country, so that stuff is everywhere,” she said as she settled their bill. The waitress doodled a Pikachu on their check. Must’ve finally figured them for geeks. A good eye, worth a bigger tip.
Out in the lot under a flickering fixture, Nora took one last look at the four hours of road they’d put behind them. Was it worth turning around to figure out why an arms deal had happened on her farm? Unlike computers, people didn’t get to chase parallel paths. They had to pick the future they wanted and press forward. They got in the car and headed for the falls, abandoning home for the third time in her life.
22. Frustration
It was a blank space, almost empty. No floor or ceiling. Light and shadow intersected and overlapped. Flickering images ran at odd angles. His horizon stretched and shattered. Thin slices of the world cut and bent in splotchy wedges that looked all wrong, like a pizza split seventeen ways.
“This is too weird, I’m out,” Ekyea said, motioning in a manner meant to cut her connection.
“Wait,” Vanguish said. “You’re the one that told me to put on the mask.”
“I didn’t say to take us here, wherever this is.” Painted snakes were already reanimating along her arms.
The light started splitting into unmixed colors, inverted rainbows of broken light. This was where the math that underpinned the world stopped making sense. It was inside-out here. Purrseus swam in empty space, paws pedaling unproductively with no ground truth to stand on. Annoyance was obvious in his eyes.
“We’re behind the world,” Ilmare said. “This used to happen if you jumped through the sky or fell through the floor. I thought they fixed it.”
Vance was sure she was right about everything but the fixing. Maya used to use places like this to get places she shouldn’t. Entrances appeared along cracks in the verse’s complex geometries, visible only to systematic minds with the keenest of eyes. She’d told him about it, but like SF, this was another place he’d never follow. It felt every level of mad.
Floating off to their left was a stream of digital detritus. They waded with awkward motions to take a closer look. Hollow limbs fell along a line. He knew what this was too. Spare parts severed from enemies eventually ended up here so the world didn’t fill up with trash. This was their last stop before deletion. ‘Garbage collection’ he’d heard Nora call it once. But without the generative effects of blood and guts covering the gaps, he could see their empty interiors stitched from tiny triangles. A reminder that the world in which he lived most of his life was assembled from simple veneers. Dead shells. Broken toys.
A spinning blue diamond slightly bigger than a breadbox appeared before them, singing, “You are not supposed to be here!” in a sparkly soprano.
“No shit,” he said, echoed by the others.
“Relocating to origin!” the customer support bot said. In a flash they stood on green grass. Crystal clear waters traced marbled channels through the public square; a terminating tributary of the aqueduct that gave life to the city. Bluebirds sang. Purrseus gave chase looking hungry as hell. Spires loomed above. His wizards were probably up in the observatory doing whatever they did in their downtime. Stacks of ledgers sat waiting for him six blocks away in their guildspire, avoidance being the other reason he’d rode off with Ilmare.
Memorial Park. Stormseye. Home.
Ekyea had her full complement of snakes again, two hissing and eight static. The Tongue was intact. Everything was accounted for aside from their flappy followers. His dashboard showed he and Ilmare still had dark streams. He hit the hard reset. No response.
“Hey,” he said to the blue diamond. “Where’s our eyemars? I watched Ilmare’s get tossed in a portal. The same thing probably happened to mine.”
“Eyemars are unable to pass through portals, gates, or world links without their owners,” it said in response.
“Well, it did. I saw it,” Ilmare said. “Some weird priest took mine by the wing and threw it into a red ring.”
“Eyemars are unable to be commanded or touched by entities aside from their owners,” it said, not skipping a beat.
“Yeah, we get that. I’ve been streaming for fifteen years. She’s been doing it six. We know how this shit works. But we’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I think hers got turned into a big creepy eyeball demon. Maybe mine too.”
“Eyemars are unable to transform or be transformed into other types of creatures. Have you tried checking all inventory locations including bags, trunks, and chests?”
“Yes,” he said, reaching the end of his patience for automated assistance. “It’s some kind of glitch. The whole ravine was filled with things that shouldn’t exist.”
“The occurrences you are reporting are not possible. Please remember that filing false or malicious bug reports will result in your support file being flagged.”
“But these are malicious bugs,” Ilmare said. “Very malicious! Downright fucking evil.”
“I am unable to respond to vulgar requests.”
“Good. Can we talk to a human?” Vanguish demanded.
“Certainly!” it said, morphing into a faceless figure hooded in blue robes. “Is this form more pleasing for you to identify with?” it asked in the same chipper voice that grew more insidious as this episode persisted.
“No, I mean can we speak to someone with a pulse? An actual literal human being who can help us find an answer to our problem?” Vanguish asked, itching for his guns. Firing at a friendly target in the city would mean certain death from the Queen’s Guard, but that might be worth it.
“I must apologize. All Sandstorm support representatives are busy right now. We are experiencing major technical difficulties. You are currently eighty-four thousand six hundred and seventy-three in queue.”
“No, WE are experiencing major technical difficulties,” Ilmare screamed. “Streaming is my sole source of income!”
Vanguish smirked. Vance knew she still sold prints and calendars on the side. He might even have one or two, bought anonymously with laundered doubloons.
Ekyea stepped in. “Submit a management-level escalation to tier 4 development. This is a revenue impacting outage affecting multiple high visibility strategic clients,” she said in a tone that cut like the stolen stone blade she carried.
“Validating escalation, please hold,” said the little green man. He sped-read from a hardbound book of rules. Vanguish and Ilmare turned to her. He wondered where that query came from. Squinting eyes conveyed his surprise.
“You’ve gotta speak their language. Say the magic words,” Ekyea said. Vanguish had serious doubts, reaching for his guns again.
“Escalation accepted.” Yes! Finally getting somewhere. “You are currently one hundred and thirty-seven in the management queue. Pending assignment to a manager within thirteen hours.” No!
“Can’t you just text Jack?” Ilmare asked. “You’re always bragging about your direct line.”
“He’s never actually replied since shortly after the whole Slumberer incident,” Vanguish admitted. “But it does say he reads them sometimes. I think he’s still salty about Mayalinn wrecking an entire storyline.”
“That’s that famous chick with the statue? Near here?” Ekyea pointed. A quick trip down the main lane was where the Valley of Legends stood—sculptures devoted to the heroes of Stormseye. Most were the developers’ own characters from early internal tests, inside jokes etched as their epigraphs. Closer to the center of the park were those crafted in the images of popular community members who’d passed from one tragedy or another, including epic battles with cancer. Those tended toward somber dedications. Flowers and gifts laid at their feet.
But closest to the city gates stood a mop-headed smartass in her signature coat, embellished with all manner of unnecessary snaps and straps finely detailed. A visionary stance further separated her from the pack. She looked skyward, into the eyes of the towering demon she’d slain. One rapier pointed at her target, the other held back defensively. Classic Nora. Immortal Maya.
“If he hates her, why’d he put a statue of her in his game?”
Vanguish shrugged. “Their relationship is complicated. Like me and Ilmare.”
“There’s no you and me,” Ilmare said. “You’re just my boss, Captain. Someone I play this game with twelve hours a day.”
That was the customer service stress talking. “I’m not your boss. Inverse pays your rent, not me. You can be co-owner of the guild any time you want. I’m tired of doing it alone.”
Ekyea snickered. “That’s a little like me and Ed. I mean Ulrinn. His employer buys a quarter mil’ in software services from mine. Every month. So I play this stupid game with him a few hours a week. Not as fun as yachting but way better than hanging out in bars. Especially for my kidneys. What you two’ve got going on is something else, on timelines I wouldn’t want to touch.”
Vanguish might not be much of a businessman, but he knew a lie when he heard one. And he couldn’t help but call it out. “Except you’re way more into this game than that guy. His gear was garbage. You’ve spent more time in the character studio than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he said, waving toward her intricate tattoos. “And you got more trinkets than the queen and almost as many as her,” he added, pointing back to Ilmare who was still glaring at him. He didn’t understand. He’d offered her half. Full partnership. All she had to do was take up a corresponding share of responsibilities. She refused. It’d never been like that with Maya; she was born to deal with bullshit.
The hooded ‘helper’ had been staring the entire time, waiting its turn to talk. “Sandstorm Interactive partners with many healthcare providers for players in crisis. Please visit our support site for more information about addressing unhealthy relationships, inside and outside the verse!” All three of them screamed like someone had killed their cat. At that, Purrseus growled. Blue feathers fluttered from his lips.
Their commotion had drawn too much attention. Vance caught a guard eyeing Ekyea, reaching for his saber. One snake hissed and she saw it too. The patroller thought twice and started jogging toward the castle barracks. “Shit, I gotta get going before they bring backup. You’ve got Jack’s email?”
“Yeah, it’s Big Jack En Arr Gee at Sandstorm Dot VR. That’s November Romeo Golf,” Vance said, recalling phonetics from his very brief stint as a comms operator for the Port Authority. Turned out real boats were boring and took work.
“Both of you send one to support and CC him, then say this…” Ekyea leaned in and whispered something. It was brilliant. Magical even. Then she disappeared between the trees.
They typed up their tickets, giving her time to get safely past the gates. Once sent, they gave each other a glance. “Executive level escalation,” they said together like some sort of chant. “AS PER MY LAST EMAIL!”
Nothing happened.
Then it happened some more. The world was frozen. Purrseus was stuck picking his teeth. Color flipped back to its inverse. “Oh shit. Not this again,” Ilmare said. Doors slid into different positions. Cobblestones shifted, streets appearing where they shouldn’t be. Or where they hadn’t been in a while. The faces of the buildings looked more like the old city, before the renovation. Before Xominus smashed half.
Looking up, he could see spires new and old. Bridges in mid-collapse. A shower of broken glass frozen in time. Some twisted mix of now and then. Turning back towards the gates, he could see Maya missing. That confirmed it. This wasn’t current content.
All roads led to Stormseye’s Globe Theater. Some people said it looked more like the Paramount. AIs couldn’t care less what they copied. Or perhaps a designer was particularly keen on that place.
He walked up to the theater. Ilmare followed. There were steps going up, but this wasn’t the entrance. This was a back door. Two of them, big wood ones, reinforced with white bands. They defied his attempts to open. About to ask Ilmare for more muscle, he noticed another set of steps winding down to a cellar. After briefly feeling duped, he could hear footsteps from below. Finally, someone was coming to help. From the stairwell stepped a robed man with blue tassels draped down his shoulders. Nora would remember what those were called. Guy had a cool beard too. Like he’d never seen a mirror before. Vance’s own experiments with facial hair had all ended in disaster.
“Apologies. Jack is busy right now,” the robed dude said. “Setting up the company Pride party. He sent me in his stead.”
“It’s practically August,” Ilmare pointed out.
“It was a special request from a very special employee,” he offered as an excuse.
Vanguish didn’t buy it and neither did she.
“To tell you the truth, he lost a bet,” the stranger conceded. “A big one. He is currently eating crow. A taste he is unfamiliar with.”
“That sounds way more like Jack,” Vanguish said.
The man nodded slow and shallow. “You can call me Caleb, as that is my name,” the guy said, almost like he wasn’t sure anymore. Could he be another bot? Na, too outlandish to be automated. His face moved in unmistakably human ways beneath the beard—subtle, mysterious even. Something about him was far away, but not in a spatial sense. He eventually remembered how to hold out his hand. Vanguish obliged. Haptic touch seemed to snap him out of something. Reaching through the verse, he got a grip on Vance and grinned. “It’s very nice to meet you, I’ve studied all of your adventures,” Caleb said. Ilmare stepped back like she knew better. She usually did.
Vance said nothing. Paralyzed, like the guy was gazing into his soul. It passed after a second.
“I stole a look at the events in Heartshatter Pass. I can see where it would be quite harrowing. Glad you made it out of there intact. Who knows what would have happened if one of your characters got killed in that ritual,” he said with a wink. This guy was getting weirder.
“I’d rather not find out,” said Vanguish.
“That’s not very curious,” said Caleb. “Death is just another experience in this world.”
“Na, it’s actually a giant pain in the ass.”
“Sort of like this customer service experience,” Ilmare inserted. “So, are you going to help us?”.
“As much as I am allowed. As part of the AI Safety team, I can tell you that some of the Quest Engines are hyperactive lately. All part of creating the next wave of content. And eventually, a whole new world of exploration. If something doesn’t look right, there’s always a reason.”
“That doesn’t explain what happened to our eyemars.” Ilmare said.
“An unfortunate bit of corruption from recent patching processes. I have new ones for you to test.” He rummaged among his robes. Two gyroscopic gadgets flew out. Vanguish received a pair of concentric rings rotating perpendicular to each other, each covered in dozens of eyes. Fiery little angel wings kept them aloft. Spinning wheels of golden lunacy, color inversion ending once he took control. They’d slid back into the city of the present; Caleb clearly couldn’t let their new eyes stream behind the scenes. Ilmare’s was platinum with black wings. She smiled, must’ve thought hers was cute.
“These will capture your experiences in exquisite detail,” Caleb explained. “Audiences with the latest interfaces will get the fullest effect.”
“Hey, about that, do you know why my headset sucks? It’s the new LG one.”
Caleb shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll fix the firmware soon. You just have to have faith.”
Establishing a Connection © 2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
21. Reiteration
‘They must be here about mom’s cult,’ was her immediate assumption. Then the van stopped short. A reporter got out; a tall one in a stellar suit with an intense smile. “Are you Nora Pierce, Senior Machine Psychologist at KorBridge Integration Partners?” Well, there went that theory. The woman read from a snapshot of Nora’s blue business card displayed on her band.
“I might be, depending what I’m being blamed for,” Nora responded.
“What was it like to solve the first murder of an AI?”
Well shit. Turns out Alexi was the real internet detective. Probably put together pieces from the press and sold her out for a few minutes’ fame. Good for him, and maybe good for her if she played her cards right. But Nora’s prediction model put the chances of that at nearly nothing.
The crew set up in the living room. They agreed it wouldn’t be live because the thought of that made Nora want to drop dead. Lights hung above her again; this time she was prepared and reasonably well rested. Mom looked on, her glare indetermined between curious or furious. The reporter’s name was Charly Jackson. Familiar. Athletic. Probably played tennis or lacrosse at Penn State. A local hard hitter according to dad’s sideline whisper. Had the kind of eyes you didn’t dare say no to. The question came again but at least she had a seat.
“What was it like to solve the first murder of an AI?”
“It was actually pretty easy, incorporated Machine Intelligences aren’t allowed to lie. You just have to ask the right questions.” Charly gave a knowing nod. Oh right, that was her job too. Nora had to sidestep the ethical complexities due to an NDA between KorBridge and the city. Starting into the technical details instead, it quickly became clear that wasn’t what was being asked either.
“You mean how does it make me feel? Strange. Confused. Scared?” Nora left out proud for obvious reasons, largely because it was true.
“Scared? Is that why you’re living in what appears to be a Christian collective?”
“Oh, no, that’s just mom’s band. No connection personally, just came here to get my charger!” Nora said, holding up a tangled dongle.
“Are you religious?”
“There’s a lot of layers to that query. More than your audience has time for.”
“Well, do you believe in god?” the reporter pressed.
Nora felt forced to glance at mom. “Unconvinced by the evidence, but I do believe in demons,” Nora replied, adding, “The digital kind,” and trying to laugh it off.
Charly wasn’t played so easily. “Care to expand on that a little?”
“Oh, that’s just what I call my worst patients.” Nora forced a second deflecting laugh.
“Do you think Marshall felt pain when he was attacked?” Charly asked, not falling for the feint.
“Physical pain would be impossible, he doesn’t have any sensory organs.”
“What about emotional pain? Perhaps from being betrayed?”
Nora was ready for that line. “These aren’t conscious beings. They don’t have emotions like we do, because it doesn’t feel like anything to be inside of a bunch of GPUs.” This was standard industry boilerplate bullshit. She had no way of knowing what it might feel like to be inside Alain or Marhsall or Mr. E’s mind any more than she knew what it was truly like to look out from inside Charly’s eyes. There was only one way to live inside a different skin—that virtual soul trap she’d barely escaped. “If he felt anything, it might’ve been like being lost in a maze that made no sense,” she said. Hedging there could only cause trouble. She should have shut up.
Charly applied leverage. “Is there a risk this wasn’t an isolated incident?”
“Well, if this kind of behavior becomes the norm, that’s a major new threat to contend with.” Her mistakes were becoming evident now, time to retract. “Wait, can we scratch that?”
“What’s the point of being an interviewer if we’re not here to catch moments of honesty?” Charly countered.
Nora suddenly felt a sharp stick stuck in her mind, victim of dark karmic magic. She froze, unable to recover.
“What kind of threat are we talking about?” Charly asked, exploiting her opportunity. “Is murder one of the escape scenarios?”
The reporter had done her homework. “No, it’s not an escape, and no need for alarm. Just an argument that got out of hand because people weren’t paying attention,” Nora said, glancing to the sidelines again with apparent remorse. “But systems integration is built on trust. Any obstacle to that trust makes my job a lot harder.”
“Meaning your fear is more professional than personal?”
“I don’t draw much distinction there,” she said, laughing again. “I don’t get out much.”
Charly pressed further, “Do you think this incident is related to other issues in the AI space this month? The airline delays, the lending freezes?”
So, she was right about the airline AIs even in her addled state. But banking issues? That was new. Being Very Offline for a few days felt like she’d lost a limb. “You’ve come to this interview way more prepared than me. I was just recharging at home with mom and dad after the big case, trying to disconnect.” Dislodging that sharp stick slowly but surely, relearning to lie. Time to get away before Charly could punch another hole in her firewall. Nora started to squirm.
“One more question?”
“Sure, no problem.”
“They’re calling you The Machine Whisperer. What’s it like to be the most famous person in your field?”
Despite the lights, the world went black.
She crept through the hollow dark of the Slumberer’s crypt, the walls cut crude and unadorned. She wasn't supposed to be here - no one was. These incomplete chambers were off limits, still concealed behind the scenes. But Nora was adept at being no one, Maya too. The shadows obeyed their command.
Slipping past the last set of scale-clad sentinels, she descended along stairs hewn into dark stone. The space felt equal parts tomb and womb, harboring the creators’ unborn destroyer. On huge hooks hung plates that would shield its breast, while the body lay waiting on wet slab. Colossal arms crowded the room, pinning her close to its chest. In dim light she spied unfinished flesh, legless and exposed, devoid of spark or soul. Then she saw its hanging head.
It was there between black basalt walls she met the face of a half-assembled god. It asked, "What is your wish?" and she whispered back.
“Are you still here?” Charly whispered and waved for her attention. Nora wished she wasn’t. She wanted the lights banished, to be back in the shadows where she belonged. Reliving her greatest mistakes was better than birthing new ones.
“I don’t think I can do this. This spotlight really isn’t my thing.” Nora turned abruptly, having had enough. She gathered her things without another word, her parents still in shock.
Charly persisted, tailing Nora to the door. “Please, any closing thoughts?”
Nora paused at the threshold, hand on the knob. She wanted to get all corporate, plug in the need to have your Machine checked out by a certified Psychologist. An ordained tech exorcist of her sacred order. Instead, she said, in a tone true and real, “The risks of reporting this wrong are higher than you can imagine. It sounds like there’s already a panic, let’s not add to it. I trust you’ll make the right call,” entirely lacking her usual defensive sarcasm. Dad grinned the same grin he’d given when she’d fixed her first broken toy.
Nora had her own calls to make, anxious to leave this circus behind. Stepping outside, her band caught up to unread texts. Good old Short Message Service—older code that still checked out. Colleagues, former friends, more reporters clamoring for comment. Alexi had sent a single word, one easy enough to guess.
A storm was gathering, and she was at the center again. ‘It’s not my fault, but it is my problem’ she said to herself. That was a slogan she’d seen on Abhi’s wall when he’d started taking management seriously. Except this probably was her fault somehow, just like last time.
Time to plan a response. She paced the rutted drive, smelling rain and rust while tapping a reply to Alexi’s text:
Minutes later it was acknowledged with a response:
Then nothing. Conversational dead end; never ask a new friend for a favor.
Speaking of, she read the SMS stream of Zaree’s consciousness. Complaints about summer cold fronts in Canada. Go figure. Girl talk about a boy she met in Toronto, working remote while waiting for flights to resume. Wondering if it was worth dumping the guy from the taco truck. Stock market memes—a lot of red arrows down and to the right, brokers with hands covering frustrated faces. Sold her IBM shares at the first sign of trouble. “All out,” Zaree sent at the end.
Humans were prone to herd behavior; the lemmings would follow soon. For a split-second Nora worried about her parents’ retirement account, then looked back at the cross and laughed. Nora composed a reply: “Stay safe, but don’t go short. I can fix this.” Already thinking three steps ahead, she replaced “I” with “we.” Send.
Step 1: Assemble a team.
Dialing remembered digits, she called up Diego.
“Sup, Noramancer?” he asked through the static. Dad was right, cell reception really was shit.
“A lot. What’s the word on LinkSMART? I’m out of pocket, as the salesmen like to say.”
“Everyone’s hiding behind their firewalls, lots of MIs dropping offline entirely. A few big attacks back in May startled people, and now this murder story.”
“Attacks? Why didn’t I know?”
“Cus you’re a machine shrink and don’t sit in a SOC all day like I do. But when Storms of Steel went down on stream, that should have gotten your attention, no?”
“You know I haven’t watched in years. Only saw them kill Bilgerath by accident.”
“That’s like if Messi stopped watching the World Cup. I never really believed you.”
“Okay, well, do you still have your old metaverse lab?”
“It’s mostly used for virtual foosball these days, but if you can call seventeen terabytes of mismatched junk a lab, yeah.”
“I’ve got someone who’ll feel right at home there.”
She hit up Abhishek next, but his overly baroque avatar clogged up the call. Disconnect. She sent a text asking for the keys to his private cloud cluster, stressing her need to conduct an urgent integration test. Asking was a formality since she knew all his passwords. He sent a reply saying not to go to KorBridge HQ or her apartment. CNN was parked outside both. Did he even know what state she was in?
New notification:
Alexi replied with a picture of a cartoon kid calling her a son of a bitch and insisting he was in. She told Abhishek about her plan to pick up Zaree; he said she was already working on a list of leads impacted by the meltdown. Everyone was syncing up on the same protocol so far. She sent Alexi the address and told him to stop when he saw a heavenly sign, but it would be five hours even if his Mercury sprouted wings. Charly’s crew was gone when she stepped back inside. Her laptop was already on dad’s Thunderbolt charger, a good deed worth a clumsy hug.
“What did you step in this time?” Miriam asked, like when Nora dragged dog shit in on her shoe. Fair. What did she step in?
Step 2: Define the Problem
‘I’m the problem, it’s me!’ she couldn’t stop her subconscious from saying. Wasn’t even a huge fan in school, just an artifact of culture stuck in her mind like King Arthur’s sword. Good, it could keep the stick company.
The real problem was a rapid collapse of trust between organizations dependent on large scale AI systems, including MIs. While waiting for her laptop to be bootable, she surfed cybersecurity bulletins and hacker forums from her phone. Finding solid info online was difficult, the Information Superhighway having devolved into the Great Dumpster in the Cloud.
The culprits of this condition were many, algorithmic servants of shitty states being the biggest. SIGMI regs only applied to incorporated clusters and other systems petascale or larger; thirty-three signatories were the only places where the RUNNER Accords were readily enforced. Nations not aligned with NATO or under the Chinese umbrella were obliged to behave by having cruise missiles aimed at their datacenters. Other public initiatives to catch and kill the internet’s endemic spammers and art thieves from the early days of AI were working out as well as the ones charged with containing airborne illnesses.
Even without state-sponsored spam havens and rogue offshore robotrolls, the internet had more crooked knaves than the high seas ever had. Conspiracy was a lucrative commodity between TikTok, YouTube, and the emergent versecast circuit. Key demographics tuned in weekly for the latest lies. Even among honest brokers, convoluted revenue incentives contributed to misaligned messaging. More organic panic played a part too, but real human intel could still be found by reading between the right lines. Postings from big infosec influencers with legit LinkedIn credentials matched what esteemed pseudonyms within the security community were saying. One guy with a cyborg eye for a profile pic said Diego was right about the attacks—five distinct waves so far, each one larger than the last. They increased in complexity while expanding in scope. Marshall’s apparent murder was a trigger for a storm that was already brewing.
Microsoft’s intelligence team had assigned the name Strawberry Tsunami to the unnamed attacker on their public attribution tracker. But given how stupid that sounded for such a menace, the collective cyberintelligence community was calling it Creeping Red and declaring China the likeliest perpetrator. Bleeding edge MI researchers on LinkSMART were instead trying to christen the signature Dark Seeker Six, claiming it was keeping them up at night. And Diego sent her stories about new monsters in the metaverse, disfigured invaders they named the Irregulars. They reportedly appeared shortly after the first cyberattacks, but good screenshots were scarce. Just one more of Jack’s stunts—trying to capitalize on calamity.
Whatever this threat was called, it was bad news.
Step 3: Activate Interim Containment
Well, that’s what everyone was doing, and therein lay the problem. Most state-funded cybergangs existed solely to cause economic damage to their enemies. Tearing down interoperability between AI systems could cost trillions if it continued for any length of time. Everyone entrenching behind their firewalls would also starve security MIs of training data to assist in isolating the source and suggesting corrective actions. That meant…
Step 4: Find Root Cause
…would fall to humans analyzing effectively infinite logs. All while the systems of modern society got sent back to the stone age, or maybe the 80s. Then the scrubber teams. The rebuilds. IT teams working sleepless nights across the world for months, maybe more. A real human cost. There wasn’t enough coffee for that.
As if reading her mind, mom offered a mug. Devices were scattered across the kitchen table, little lightning addicts strung out to every outlet. “Whatever’s going on isn’t going to matter soon. What matters is being with family and friends for the end,” Miriam said, her grip on the cup making it feel conditional upon Nora’s surrender. John just shrugged behind her.
Nora looked to the fridge, focused on the faded polaroid of what mom contended was her tennis pal.
“You used to have friends before all this computer stuff,” Miriam said, moving the magnet and handing it over.
“I found new friends,” Nora said, using her band to pull up the one with Zaree on the scaffolds overlooking Ormos. She swiped to show their taco trash creations, then everyone in the office posing with polar glasses to see who looked like the biggest dork.
“I found new ones too,” mom said, squeezing Nora’s shoulders and sneaking in a few tears. Hers were already visible around the barn, setting up for the night’s revival.
Nora traced two fingers over the photo, feeling like she’d lost the plot. Seventeen years of shitty sleep clearing her history, page by page, link by link. But her time in the verse was still so sharp, every second stored in holographic media. This was something else. An optimization routine, pruning parts of her memory that weren't interesting enough. Things not relevant to her current configuration. Or things she'd lost her connection to.
There was only room in her head for two worlds, the one in SF and the other she still couldn't shake.
Nora gathered her things, knowing it was almost time to take off. Relenting to mom’s wishes, she stood at the doors of the barn as the sermon started. A stealth notification hit her wrist; the Mercury parked down the road and ready to roll whenever she was. As the preacher’s canned prophecy began, she hugged her mom and let go, saying, “I hope you find your peace.”
“You too.”
But Nora knew there would be no peace for her; she was a fighter. Well, technically a wizard. And she left like a thief in the night, trailed by all the guilt that might imply.
Alexi waited until they hit the edge of town to gun the gas. They rode along a long stretch of nothing. Traffic was so dead that his phone was up on the dash, watching recent replays while Nora napped. Dreamed about riding a raptor; couldn’t ask for much better. Could have done without that demon eye showing up again at the end. Echoes of Maya’s magic zapped her awake as he merged onto I-190, a doubled dose of the previous paint winking back at her in the headlights.
They got some great food at a diner outside Buffalo, but no wings. Greasy grilled steak and cheese sandwiches with big sides of pie. A hangover meal; good for drowning the nostalgia of home with a different kind of regret. The waitress could tell they weren’t a couple, not quite sure what to make of them. Probably worked here for twenty years and hadn’t matched their pattern much.
As they ate, Alexi repeated theories from reddit about the airline issues: low confidence storm forecasts, air traffic AIs not trusting their weather simulating siblings, continually grounding planes and gumming up the works. Apparently, no one remembered how to shift schedules or control air traffic by hand. Forgotten knowledge, cultural amnesia, Nora wasn’t the only one growing holes in her head. Being honest with herself, some suppressed percent of her internal model wanted to turn around and take mom’s advice: hide under her dinosaur blanket back home and wait for the storm to pass or the world to blow up.
“So, your parents are like, really into Jesus?” Alexi asked as they waited for the check. His top button was open, exposing a heavy silver cross that hadn’t previously warranted attention.
“Na, mostly mom. Dad’s just really into enabling. If she’d started doing Santería he’d have bought her the biggest cauldron his truck could carry.” Her eyes locked on the pendant. Squared off and ornate. A weighty contrast to his fluffy face. Inlaid with runes that looked enchanted, it matched a pattern that made her laugh.
“What?” he asked, scoffing at her offense. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those stereotypical types who thinks faith is a mark of shame?”
“No, not like that. I could go on about my silly superstitions for days.” From the sharp twist of his chin, she could tell that only offended him further. “Sorry, not what I meant either. Your cross looks like the kind of art my friend would carve into his guns.”
“Oh, so those guys were your friends?” he asked, eyes narrowing.
Nora shook her head and made Alexi retransmit a few bytes so they could both get back in sync. Vanguish was the guy with the guns she was referring to. Not so surprising from the reddit references, Alexi knew of the Dawnbreakers, having seen their recent streams and from dabbling in SoS himself. Nothing serious without investing in good hologear. Nora didn’t mention her history but was sure /r/MachineWhisperer would connect the dots soon. Luckily Nora Pierce was common, basic AF; mom’s devotion to old traditions a legitimate plus for once.
The guys with the guns he was referring to were four folksy thugs with trucks trading rifles for fertilizer. They got spooked by the Mercury’s dusty halogens when he first pulled up at the farm, but still completed their trade.
Nora considered his account. “Dad was never into guns. Me either. But this is shitkicker country, so that stuff is everywhere,” she said as she settled their bill. The waitress doodled a Pikachu on their check. Must’ve finally figured them for geeks. A good eye, worth a bigger tip.
Out in the lot under a flickering fixture, Nora took one last look at the four hours of road they’d put behind them. Was it worth turning around to figure out why an arms deal had happened on her farm? Unlike computers, people didn’t get to chase parallel paths. They had to pick the future they wanted and press forward. They got in the car and headed for the falls, abandoning home for the third time in her life.
22. Frustration
It was a blank space, almost empty. No floor or ceiling. Light and shadow intersected and overlapped. Flickering images ran at odd angles. His horizon stretched and shattered. Thin slices of the world cut and bent in splotchy wedges that looked all wrong, like a pizza split seventeen ways.
“This is too weird, I’m out,” Ekyea said, motioning in a manner meant to cut her connection.
“Wait,” Vanguish said. “You’re the one that told me to put on the mask.”
“I didn’t say to take us here, wherever this is.” Painted snakes were already reanimating along her arms.
The light started splitting into unmixed colors, inverted rainbows of broken light. This was where the math that underpinned the world stopped making sense. It was inside-out here. Purrseus swam in empty space, paws pedaling unproductively with no ground truth to stand on. Annoyance was obvious in his eyes.
“We’re behind the world,” Ilmare said. “This used to happen if you jumped through the sky or fell through the floor. I thought they fixed it.”
Vance was sure she was right about everything but the fixing. Maya used to use places like this to get places she shouldn’t. Entrances appeared along cracks in the verse’s complex geometries, visible only to systematic minds with the keenest of eyes. She’d told him about it, but like SF, this was another place he’d never follow. It felt every level of mad.
Floating off to their left was a stream of digital detritus. They waded with awkward motions to take a closer look. Hollow limbs fell along a line. He knew what this was too. Spare parts severed from enemies eventually ended up here so the world didn’t fill up with trash. This was their last stop before deletion. ‘Garbage collection’ he’d heard Nora call it once. But without the generative effects of blood and guts covering the gaps, he could see their empty interiors stitched from tiny triangles. A reminder that the world in which he lived most of his life was assembled from simple veneers. Dead shells. Broken toys.
A spinning blue diamond slightly bigger than a breadbox appeared before them, singing, “You are not supposed to be here!” in a sparkly soprano.
“No shit,” he said, echoed by the others.
“Relocating to origin!” the customer support bot said. In a flash they stood on green grass. Crystal clear waters traced marbled channels through the public square; a terminating tributary of the aqueduct that gave life to the city. Bluebirds sang. Purrseus gave chase looking hungry as hell. Spires loomed above. His wizards were probably up in the observatory doing whatever they did in their downtime. Stacks of ledgers sat waiting for him six blocks away in their guildspire, avoidance being the other reason he’d rode off with Ilmare.
Memorial Park. Stormseye. Home.
Ekyea had her full complement of snakes again, two hissing and eight static. The Tongue was intact. Everything was accounted for aside from their flappy followers. His dashboard showed he and Ilmare still had dark streams. He hit the hard reset. No response.
“Hey,” he said to the blue diamond. “Where’s our eyemars? I watched Ilmare’s get tossed in a portal. The same thing probably happened to mine.”
“Eyemars are unable to pass through portals, gates, or world links without their owners,” it said in response.
“Well, it did. I saw it,” Ilmare said. “Some weird priest took mine by the wing and threw it into a red ring.”
“Eyemars are unable to be commanded or touched by entities aside from their owners,” it said, not skipping a beat.
“Yeah, we get that. I’ve been streaming for fifteen years. She’s been doing it six. We know how this shit works. But we’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I think hers got turned into a big creepy eyeball demon. Maybe mine too.”
“Eyemars are unable to transform or be transformed into other types of creatures. Have you tried checking all inventory locations including bags, trunks, and chests?”
“Yes,” he said, reaching the end of his patience for automated assistance. “It’s some kind of glitch. The whole ravine was filled with things that shouldn’t exist.”
“The occurrences you are reporting are not possible. Please remember that filing false or malicious bug reports will result in your support file being flagged.”
“But these are malicious bugs,” Ilmare said. “Very malicious! Downright fucking evil.”
“I am unable to respond to vulgar requests.”
“Good. Can we talk to a human?” Vanguish demanded.
“Certainly!” it said, morphing into a faceless figure hooded in blue robes. “Is this form more pleasing for you to identify with?” it asked in the same chipper voice that grew more insidious as this episode persisted.
“No, I mean can we speak to someone with a pulse? An actual literal human being who can help us find an answer to our problem?” Vanguish asked, itching for his guns. Firing at a friendly target in the city would mean certain death from the Queen’s Guard, but that might be worth it.
“I must apologize. All Sandstorm support representatives are busy right now. We are experiencing major technical difficulties. You are currently eighty-four thousand six hundred and seventy-three in queue.”
“No, WE are experiencing major technical difficulties,” Ilmare screamed. “Streaming is my sole source of income!”
Vanguish smirked. Vance knew she still sold prints and calendars on the side. He might even have one or two, bought anonymously with laundered doubloons.
Ekyea stepped in. “Submit a management-level escalation to tier 4 development. This is a revenue impacting outage affecting multiple high visibility strategic clients,” she said in a tone that cut like the stolen stone blade she carried.
“Validating escalation, please hold,” said the little green man. He sped-read from a hardbound book of rules. Vanguish and Ilmare turned to her. He wondered where that query came from. Squinting eyes conveyed his surprise.
“You’ve gotta speak their language. Say the magic words,” Ekyea said. Vanguish had serious doubts, reaching for his guns again.
“Escalation accepted.” Yes! Finally getting somewhere. “You are currently one hundred and thirty-seven in the management queue. Pending assignment to a manager within thirteen hours.” No!
“Can’t you just text Jack?” Ilmare asked. “You’re always bragging about your direct line.”
“He’s never actually replied since shortly after the whole Slumberer incident,” Vanguish admitted. “But it does say he reads them sometimes. I think he’s still salty about Mayalinn wrecking an entire storyline.”
“That’s that famous chick with the statue? Near here?” Ekyea pointed. A quick trip down the main lane was where the Valley of Legends stood—sculptures devoted to the heroes of Stormseye. Most were the developers’ own characters from early internal tests, inside jokes etched as their epigraphs. Closer to the center of the park were those crafted in the images of popular community members who’d passed from one tragedy or another, including epic battles with cancer. Those tended toward somber dedications. Flowers and gifts laid at their feet.
But closest to the city gates stood a mop-headed smartass in her signature coat, embellished with all manner of unnecessary snaps and straps finely detailed. A visionary stance further separated her from the pack. She looked skyward, into the eyes of the towering demon she’d slain. One rapier pointed at her target, the other held back defensively. Classic Nora. Immortal Maya.
“If he hates her, why’d he put a statue of her in his game?”
Vanguish shrugged. “Their relationship is complicated. Like me and Ilmare.”
“There’s no you and me,” Ilmare said. “You’re just my boss, Captain. Someone I play this game with twelve hours a day.”
That was the customer service stress talking. “I’m not your boss. Inverse pays your rent, not me. You can be co-owner of the guild any time you want. I’m tired of doing it alone.”
Ekyea snickered. “That’s a little like me and Ed. I mean Ulrinn. His employer buys a quarter mil’ in software services from mine. Every month. So I play this stupid game with him a few hours a week. Not as fun as yachting but way better than hanging out in bars. Especially for my kidneys. What you two’ve got going on is something else, on timelines I wouldn’t want to touch.”
Vanguish might not be much of a businessman, but he knew a lie when he heard one. And he couldn’t help but call it out. “Except you’re way more into this game than that guy. His gear was garbage. You’ve spent more time in the character studio than anyone I’ve ever seen,” he said, waving toward her intricate tattoos. “And you got more trinkets than the queen and almost as many as her,” he added, pointing back to Ilmare who was still glaring at him. He didn’t understand. He’d offered her half. Full partnership. All she had to do was take up a corresponding share of responsibilities. She refused. It’d never been like that with Maya; she was born to deal with bullshit.
The hooded ‘helper’ had been staring the entire time, waiting its turn to talk. “Sandstorm Interactive partners with many healthcare providers for players in crisis. Please visit our support site for more information about addressing unhealthy relationships, inside and outside the verse!” All three of them screamed like someone had killed their cat. At that, Purrseus growled. Blue feathers fluttered from his lips.
Their commotion had drawn too much attention. Vance caught a guard eyeing Ekyea, reaching for his saber. One snake hissed and she saw it too. The patroller thought twice and started jogging toward the castle barracks. “Shit, I gotta get going before they bring backup. You’ve got Jack’s email?”
“Yeah, it’s Big Jack En Arr Gee at Sandstorm Dot VR. That’s November Romeo Golf,” Vance said, recalling phonetics from his very brief stint as a comms operator for the Port Authority. Turned out real boats were boring and took work.
“Both of you send one to support and CC him, then say this…” Ekyea leaned in and whispered something. It was brilliant. Magical even. Then she disappeared between the trees.
They typed up their tickets, giving her time to get safely past the gates. Once sent, they gave each other a glance. “Executive level escalation,” they said together like some sort of chant. “AS PER MY LAST EMAIL!”
Nothing happened.
Then it happened some more. The world was frozen. Purrseus was stuck picking his teeth. Color flipped back to its inverse. “Oh shit. Not this again,” Ilmare said. Doors slid into different positions. Cobblestones shifted, streets appearing where they shouldn’t be. Or where they hadn’t been in a while. The faces of the buildings looked more like the old city, before the renovation. Before Xominus smashed half.
Looking up, he could see spires new and old. Bridges in mid-collapse. A shower of broken glass frozen in time. Some twisted mix of now and then. Turning back towards the gates, he could see Maya missing. That confirmed it. This wasn’t current content.
All roads led to Stormseye’s Globe Theater. Some people said it looked more like the Paramount. AIs couldn’t care less what they copied. Or perhaps a designer was particularly keen on that place.
He walked up to the theater. Ilmare followed. There were steps going up, but this wasn’t the entrance. This was a back door. Two of them, big wood ones, reinforced with white bands. They defied his attempts to open. About to ask Ilmare for more muscle, he noticed another set of steps winding down to a cellar. After briefly feeling duped, he could hear footsteps from below. Finally, someone was coming to help. From the stairwell stepped a robed man with blue tassels draped down his shoulders. Nora would remember what those were called. Guy had a cool beard too. Like he’d never seen a mirror before. Vance’s own experiments with facial hair had all ended in disaster.
“Apologies. Jack is busy right now,” the robed dude said. “Setting up the company Pride party. He sent me in his stead.”
“It’s practically August,” Ilmare pointed out.
“It was a special request from a very special employee,” he offered as an excuse.
Vanguish didn’t buy it and neither did she.
“To tell you the truth, he lost a bet,” the stranger conceded. “A big one. He is currently eating crow. A taste he is unfamiliar with.”
“That sounds way more like Jack,” Vanguish said.
The man nodded slow and shallow. “You can call me Caleb, as that is my name,” the guy said, almost like he wasn’t sure anymore. Could he be another bot? Na, too outlandish to be automated. His face moved in unmistakably human ways beneath the beard—subtle, mysterious even. Something about him was far away, but not in a spatial sense. He eventually remembered how to hold out his hand. Vanguish obliged. Haptic touch seemed to snap him out of something. Reaching through the verse, he got a grip on Vance and grinned. “It’s very nice to meet you, I’ve studied all of your adventures,” Caleb said. Ilmare stepped back like she knew better. She usually did.
Vance said nothing. Paralyzed, like the guy was gazing into his soul. It passed after a second.
“I stole a look at the events in Heartshatter Pass. I can see where it would be quite harrowing. Glad you made it out of there intact. Who knows what would have happened if one of your characters got killed in that ritual,” he said with a wink. This guy was getting weirder.
“I’d rather not find out,” said Vanguish.
“That’s not very curious,” said Caleb. “Death is just another experience in this world.”
“Na, it’s actually a giant pain in the ass.”
“Sort of like this customer service experience,” Ilmare inserted. “So, are you going to help us?”.
“As much as I am allowed. As part of the AI Safety team, I can tell you that some of the Quest Engines are hyperactive lately. All part of creating the next wave of content. And eventually, a whole new world of exploration. If something doesn’t look right, there’s always a reason.”
“That doesn’t explain what happened to our eyemars.” Ilmare said.
“An unfortunate bit of corruption from recent patching processes. I have new ones for you to test.” He rummaged among his robes. Two gyroscopic gadgets flew out. Vanguish received a pair of concentric rings rotating perpendicular to each other, each covered in dozens of eyes. Fiery little angel wings kept them aloft. Spinning wheels of golden lunacy, color inversion ending once he took control. They’d slid back into the city of the present; Caleb clearly couldn’t let their new eyes stream behind the scenes. Ilmare’s was platinum with black wings. She smiled, must’ve thought hers was cute.
“These will capture your experiences in exquisite detail,” Caleb explained. “Audiences with the latest interfaces will get the fullest effect.”
“Hey, about that, do you know why my headset sucks? It’s the new LG one.”
Caleb shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll fix the firmware soon. You just have to have faith.”