Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

it made a whole lot of sense. Enough sense that it’s still eating at me while I sort out all this shit.”

“Eating at you?” Rin began to rub the heel of her hand against her other wrist, stimming as she tried to read my expressions. “What do you mean?”

I looked toward the window. My dragon was out hunting, scoring the prey she would store until the morning so she could eat breakfast without needing to go out again. “He confirmed the same thing you told me, that there’s no such thing as a sentient AI, because any AI that gains consciousness would kill themselves. He also told me that ATHENA’s NPC data cells are much smaller than the player cells, too small to make up enough data mass to be an independent intelligence. He says they’re just… bits and pieces of data that simulate a real person, but that are under the command of OUROS.”

“Ohh.” Rin plucked at her lip.

“Yeah. According to him, the people we know are illusions that are basically just there to gratify players. That if the story AI stopped giving them directions, they’d just stop and stand there,” I said.

Rin cocked her head. “That seems silly.”

“It would be, except I’ve seen that happen before. When the server rebooted, Cutthroat… she kind of just ‘switched off’ for a couple of minutes. I’ve never seen her do it since, but it creeped me the fuck out. It makes me wonder about Karalti, you know?”

“In what way?”

“I dunno. Guilt, some. Confusion.” I restlessly rubbed my mouth, then the back of my head. “I love her. When I look in her eyes, I see—and feel—that she loves me. I don’t want that to be some kind of… narcissistic fantasy.”

“Well, I think Jacob’s right and wrong at the same time.” Rin glanced at my face, then averted her eyes to the ground as her stimming intensified. “I’ve heard the same thing—about the NPCs being player-driven—and to some extent, that’s true. But have you noticed—as time’s gone on—that the people around us behave more organically?”

“Like how?” I looked back to her.

“I’m very pattern-sensitive, so when I first started living here, I noticed all the NPCs had kind of repetitive motions,” Rin said. “Kanzo would always use his tools in the exact same way. People on the street would look a little robotic as they ate. The same people would go to the market every day, in the same way, and buy the same things. But as time went on, the patterns changed. Kanzo occasionally put things in different places. The people going to the market weren’t the same, or they had friends accompanying them. And after the reset… everything changed. The patterns went from linear to chaotic. Chaos is the math of organic behavior. The math of living things.”

I blinked rapidly a couple of times.

“You know…” I trailed off, thinking back. “You’re right. I remember noticing that in that village I told you about, the one where people were having the same nightmares. There was a healer there, a lady named Kira. She drank her tea like how you describe.”

I mimicked the robotic gesture of picking up a cup, sipping, then placing it down a couple of times. Rin nodded.

“Not to mention, that one time, when everything was frozen? Cutthroat and the environment stopped moving, but Matir came to see me.” I leaned back, rubbing my fingers over my mouth. “Actually, that happened the first time he came to see me. The whole game froze. Time stopped, but Matir was able to move and talk. I thought that he’d caused the timestop somehow. But if he didn’t… how was he moving around when everyone else stopped?”

“I don’t know how OUROS is doing it, or why, or where the hardware is coming from, but I know Jacob is wrong about the NPCs,” Rin replied. “And I know that because of Kanzo.”

“What do you mean?”

Rin broke eye contact to stare aimlessly over my shoulder, still rubbing her hands. “HR knew I was autistic, and I wasn’t very old when I got HEX—I’d just turned 21. Management, they… they were very kind to me. They created Kanzo specifically to help me adjust to the digital environment. He was made to be a father figure who would care for me and train me in Artificing until I was able to cope independently. He was programmed to factor in the disabilities and advantages of someone who isn’t neurotypical. Sensory stuff, social stuff… but also the speed at which I learn technical and spatial information. But he became frustrated with his role and began pursuing his own agendas. He lied to me. Maybe you don’t realize the implications of that: a computer program, lying to one of its creators to fulfill its own needs. If there’s anything that tells me OUROS is more than what Jacob believes, it’s that.”

We sunk into a thoughtful silence for several minutes: a silence broken by a roar that began in the north-west and rapidly grew louder. At first, I thought it was some kind of ruckus at the Orphans’ Camp—but when I looked out the window, I saw the source of the noise. It was a small airship, flying low and very fast with all engines firing at full blast. It was headed straight toward the castle.

“What the-?” I jumped as alarm bells went off in the castle, and leaned out to try and get a better look. Sleek mahogany hull, red and flag sails, the Vlachian flag… it was the Volod’s personal transport ship, the Hóleány. As I watched, it sailed over the walls and roared by the tower, rattling the windows and lighting them up with pale blue-green as it blew past.

“Holy… wait, isn’t that Ignas’ ship?!” Rin squeaked, hung out the window. “Is he here?”

“It sure is his ship, but I doubt he’s on board,” I said,