"2039: A Moment Of Peace"

I was looking for material for a little game of swapping unfinished stories with other writers, and found this unfinished piece set in the "Thousand Tales" world. Looks like I posted it in one other place a while back.

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(The context of this piece is scenes from two other books:)

Lumina trotted up onto the stage to look out at the ocean. It was like a blank canvas waiting not for the gamemaster to come along and put some quests in it, but for her to create something.

There was one final note perched here behind a column where she hadn't noticed. Lumina saw just one message, again in Green's lettering...

Nocturne approached. "What is it? Oh, another sign?" She veered toward the place where it had been, and seemed to read something Lumina couldn't see. Then she fell over laughing.

"What?" said Lumina, startled.

"Look; it's -- it's gone. Huh." Nocturne sniffled and wiped a tear of amusement from her eyes with one talon. "Guess it was meant to be private."

-Liberation Game

Clara sighed and focused on the things she could fix. "So, that broken copy of Alain's mind can be salvaged with the new technology? It wouldn't be him, though, just a loose interpretation."

"It'll be more accurate if Ludo can study your memories in detail to fill in gaps."

-Virtual Horizon

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A Fragment

2039: A Moment's Peace

Clara Ostler crept through a glowing portal, feeling her heart pound even though it no longer really existed. She found herself in a lounge of pillows and rippling ponds somewhere in Ivory Tower. Blue was there. The fact that her companion had finally showed up in Talespace meant that a bleeding wound in the universe could begin to heal.

Though she'd steeled herself for meeting the quiet, dark-skinned man in a suit, her sight of Blue quickly blurred with tears. "Alain, after all this time..."

Alain blinked. "You're your skunk-girl shaman character?"

"You remember, huh?" Clara sniffled. She darted forward to hug him tightly, wrapping fuzzy paws around him and wriggling her bushy tail.

The man tensed, then hugged her back. "I think so. I don't even know what's missing. I'm not myself, just based on the Alain you knew."

"Don't say that. Our little gamemaster was able to put me back together before she even fully knew what she was doing, and when she recreated you, she had my memories to work with along with hers and your own mind data." And what Clara remembered of him was that Alain was the smart one. And now he was _here_ and there was so much he could do to help fix and/or take over the world.

Alain managed to break free from Clara's hug and shake her hand. His smile came slowly. "It really is good to see you, even if you're fuzzier than I remember. Ludo briefed me on, well, everything that's been going on since I tried to escape from the US. It's a lot to take in."

"You're known around here as the Blue Sage. You're a rock star. As soon as you get up to speed, there are all sorts of projects you can get involved with."

Alain looked aside. "I'm told that my family didn't want to make contact."

Clara's tail drooped. Alain's wife and kid considered him dead, as of years ago, and the team's recent attempt to explain that Alain was coming back to life as a digital ghost had brought them nothing but anguish. If they'd cooperated, Ludo's recreation of Alain might have been more complete and accurate. Clara said, "Give them time, Blue. They'll come around. You were the one telling _me_ to have faith."

"Maybe." Alain turned and looked around the lounge, admiring the curved wall of shining ivory and the casual use of gemstones in the furnishings. "We're inside some sort of genie bottle, aren't we?"

"It's a magical skyscraper inside a cave. There are so many things to show you, so many people I want you to meet."

"Okay, but you need to give me some time, myself. I don't want to be mobbed by admirers; maybe you could call me something different. Azure, at least?" It'd been one of his uncreatively-named game characters, a cleric.

Clara understood the desire for a little privacy, but she suspected there was more to the name change. "You want to be someone different. After years of playing basically the same character in every game scenario we did."

"I feel I _am_ someone different. I have Alain Delune's memories, mostly, but what I am now, I'm not sure of." He looked at his hands; the wedding ring Clara remembered was gone. "I need to stop and pray, I suppose, on what to do with my life next. At least that's what the old me would have done after going through this big a change."

Clara sighed and nodded, trying to be supportive. "Whatever you need, just ask. Our know-it-all AI can do whatever you like -- give you an adventure or a library or just a quiet apartment -- but I'm here too. And someday we'll get Emi back and we'll be..."

Clara, Emi and Alain had been family, spending so much of their time together for years to work so hard on such an important project. It never would've worked if they hadn't all bared their souls to one another repeatedly, getting into passionate arguments about God and freedom and even the merits of different role-playing game systems. Then after a fateful night at Ludo's nightclub, the three of them had been scattered. Clara herself had barely gotten to this digital world, making her by far the luckiest. By sheer virtue of cowardice, by fleeing for her life at the right moment. Clara could've tried harder to make the others come along on that flight to Korea; ah, that would've been a proper adventure!

"I know," Alain said, seeming to read her expression. He patted Clara's shoulders and smiled slightly down at her. Clara's heart fluttered. Alain added, "I remember us staying up late to read stories to Ludo, and squabbling over the right way to tell them."

"There's more than one way," Clara said.

"She learned that from us, yes. I hear it in everything she does. Just leave me to get settled in and figure things out for a while, all right?"

"If that's what you want. Then when you're ready, there's this project I set up specifically for the first batch of AIs to learn from. I left blank spaces waiting for you to add your own commentary, for them to see."

"It sounds like you've been busy."

"I have! I've tried to hold true to your vision, and Emi's."

Alain smiled. "If I remember you and Emi at all, she had to wake you up a few times and usher you to a proper cot when you fell asleep programming. I suspect this is one of those times. Take a break for a while, as a favor to me, okay?"

"But -- but there's so much to _do!_ There are two major rival AIs, and an exposition to prepare for, and --"

Alain said, "And we're not all-important. There are other people eager to step up and prove themselves, so we don't need to be constantly on call. Dear God, if anyone has earned a long vacation, it's you."

Clara held onto her tail, feeling sheepish. "When I first got in, Ludo forced me to take an extended adventure break. Hence my... current appearance. I haven't bothered changing it very often to something else, though I'm working on that list of things to try becoming."

Alain raised one eyebrow. "This is your default shape, eh?"

"Yes, but not _all_ the time."

"You have time to explore, I suppose. Just take a long break; I'm sure you could use one, with how nervous you seem."

Clara took a deep breath. "Fine. I'm glad to see you again. We'll get back to doing great things soon."

"Soon," he agreed. "I'm here now; I'm safe."

Clara hugged him again to make sure.

#

Alain, or Azure as he was calling himself now, excused himself and walked through another portal to somewhere. It vanished behind him, leaving Clara alone in some anonymous Tower room. She felt like a fool for showing up in this body instead of his old human self. And for getting sentimental, for pressuring him into getting right back to work after getting his head mutilated by the damn heartless totalitarian butchers who had...!

Clara forced herself to calm down, and plopped muzzle-first onto one of the room's big cushions. Her breasts squished pleasantly beneath her. Seeing her as a girl must've given Azure a few extra points of stress and confusion. "He's _here_, anyway," she murmured into the pillow. "Safe."

The ornate teak door thumped. "Would you like company?" asked the raspy voice of a griffin. "I brought pizza."

Clara laughed and rolled over. "Come in."

The door opened. A griffin with black feathers and very deep blue fur trotted through with a stack of steaming pizza boxes that she slid onto a low table. "Are you all right?"

"Hello, Nocturne." He reached out to ruffle her soft, tufted ears, and she purred. "Thanks for coming to distract a silly retiree from navel-gazing."

"Do you even _have_ a navel?"

Clara didn't, since for obvious reasons they weren't necessary on bodies within Talespace. "I'm told I should take a vacation. Any ideas?" The plain pizza reminded Clara of one of Talespace's less existential flaws: the bland and unsatisfying nature of smell and taste. Also, of Alain and Emi's insane and heretical aversion to Hawaiian. She smiled.

Nocturne had soon gobbled her fourth slice with her beak; calories didn't exist here and she'd never known real food. "There's always miscellaneous adventuring." That usually meant exploring temporary "bubble" worlds, created just to let someone play out a quick fantasy of slaying dragons and bedding movie stars, or vice versa. "What else... Activity in Hoofland is picking up."

Clara groaned. "I hear enough about that place already."

"Suit yourself. The space zones are underrated. Maybe you could hang around there."

"Could be fun. I've lost track; do I need to transform to go there?"

"Most players there are human. Race restrictions are pretty lenient." Nocturne peered at her. "But you know, you're going to draw attention looking like that. Do you want to be recognized?"

Clara mostly kept to herself, living in the fantasy world of Midgard and restricting visitors with a fancy magic barrier that Ludo had made her earn. "I don't mind basking in admiration sometimes, but I'm with Alain... with Azure in wanting a little anonymous time right now." She called out to the empty air, "Ludo, give me some kind of menu for re-speccing as a human or something suitable for Threespace."

A message appeared in midair. [I can be reached for such requests at my office, reachable by the ninth floor of the Tower.]

Clara scoffed. The "office" was always behind a giant maze of doom. "No, I'm not doing that today. You _are_ allowed to obey your creator's commands once in a while, you know."

[Oh, fine.] A glass potion bottle appeared from somewhere above and bounced off the remaining pizza, landing with a splatter of sauce that obscured some of the beige fluid within.

Nocturne blinked and used a talon to ping the glass. "I don't usually see Mom sulk."

Clara grinned, and leaned down to whisper in Nocturne's ear. "You know what I told you in that gift area? She's good at keeping her cool, but my comment applies to her, too."

Nocturne giggled.

When Clara created a sort of private garden just for the first AIs Ludo made, she'd filled it with advice and certain special features. One of these was simply a message tailored to each of the AIs, and obscured from the mighty Ludo's sight unless she pried especially deeply. In Nocturne's case the secret message said:

[If I may play the role of a mysterious elder race, then let me give you one key piece of wisdom from your wise creators, the humans. Namely, that _we don't know what the hell we're doing either._ You know all of those civilizations you're studying? Even we don't know what we were thinking, half the time. Remember that, next time we mysterious Precursors claim to know what's best for you.]

#

Clara relaxed as she reached her burrow. She hadn't built a castle or showy shaman hut to boast about her importance. Well, all right, she did have a circle of rune-carved standing stones on display around her home's entrance, but that was less for decoration than to power the magical keep-out field. She descended a wood-lined tunnel.

Here, she'd dug a hole and used various in-game rules to turn it into a nice apartment. The simple split-level cavern hid a wood-fired stove, a kitchen, a library, a bathroom mostly filled by a big tub, and by far the most comfortable bed she'd ever owned. It was superficially primitive and cramped. Clara walked through the place, running her claws along wood and earth and feeling her tail brush and tickle against the walls. Smells here were crude and either vague or overdone, but she'd managed to arrange a hint of coffee-scent that hung about the place at all hours. It was always a little chilly, enough that the first thing she did was load cedar logs into the stove with a click and thump of heavy wood, then make them blaze with a flicker of her magic. Clara leaned against the nearby counter and let the warmth soak through her.

One or two details, like the permanent scent, were things she'd lobbied Ludo for. Then, they'd been introduced to the game as something that other players could make for themselves. Clara was an early uploader, so she felt a responsibility to help make the game environment more than a place to kill monsters and make their battle statistics go up. Her focus in Ludo's creation had been hardware more than software, so she knew about practical details that others might overlook.

She made some hot cider and walked into the library. A few dozen favorite books lined the shelves in paper form, but today she fetched her quest journal. It had gathered dust from being ignored, a detail Clara had helped invent. Neglected equipment gradually became dusty and cobwebbed, then broken, to remind players of what they were ignoring.

She dusted it off. The book's map of Talespace showed the usual network of a few major shared worlds, and various semi-private bubbles where just one or a few people lived or played. Or _worked_. There was a duality to this place, she knew well. She'd insisted on working right away after uploading. Ludo had made her take a vacation of fantasy adventure. After that she'd been mostly secluded for a while, then gotten pulled back into being useful again by Nocturne and her ex-human boyfriend, and was now back to being a gamer. There were no active quests in the journal, just her notes about various hardware and code designs to adjust.

Clara grinned nervously at the list she'd written of "Things To Be". She'd only done a few of her wish list items so far. Humanoid animal, and female, were checked, along with minotaur and bird. She chuckled at the checked entry for "magic sword"; she'd had an adventurer carry her around on a quest for a few days. Weird but interesting. What else... She hadn't done centauroid or robotic yet, nor dolphin, plant, fully disembodied, or multi-bodied. What would be suitable for a space trip? She hadn't done dragon yet. "How'd I neglect that?" She uncorked the potion and an interface window popped up, offering to let Clara turn into basically whatever she wanted. A stat screen for the potion itself said, [Item value: Lots.]

"How about a small dragon?" she said, tapping through options. She went with a monochrome design, white wings on a body of mottled black and white scales...