Continue Online (Part 3, Realities) (9 page)

"Okay." I nodded. This game was neat too in terms of ARC feedback for the world details.

Thirty minutes later and I was walking around on the hull. The shock of endless stars still lingered, but my resolution to be braver held true. All that time spent as William Carver, Hermes, and even the
[Red Imp]
Spite, helped me adapt to a new situation fairly quick. Having a death grip magnet ability helped.

"Whoa." My energy bar flashed yellow. I scrambled for one of the handholds. They were planted every fifty feet. Little places to grip and hang onto.

"Still. There's a lot to clean up. This is probably going to take forever, huh Dusk," I said absently. Talking to the small dragon-like creature had become habit after a few relative months inside Continue Online. The
[Messenger's Pet]
didn't cross through games with me though so I was basically talking to myself.

"It's like the world's dirtiest dish." I surveyed the landscape of Wayfarer Seven. So far my first non-Voice induced quest felt dull. My energy bar took a few minutes to recharge and once complete I started wandering the hull picking up any manner of items

Some were globs of goo materials. I assumed it was space bird crap like on a car. There were places with smudges of dirt that I brushed off with a giant mop like tool. The item itself thankfully came with a belt and tether so I never lost it when
[Anchor]
wore off. In addition was actual space debris that flew by and needed to be dodged. If bathroom cleanup was a mini-game somewhere it was probably just as boring.

I came close to falling off six or seven times before cleaning one of the huge areas.

The work was absorbing if monotonous. The solitude of space gave me time to sort myself out regarding Xin, Liz, Beth, and everyone else. It was during one of the pauses for energy recovery that I fired up the ARC's messaging system. Luckily it worked the same here as in Continue Online.

Maybe Beth didn't have a right to know. Honestly, my attempted suicide could be no one's business but my own. She was my niece and Doctor Litt had okayed it if I wanted to.

The only real difference was needing to wait for a time dilation difference. Continue Online didn't accept relative conversation with the outside world. While it ran four to one, nearly no other programs did. Advance Online seemed to operate at a two to one, but it wasn't as impressive.

I couldn't call myself completely fixed, but the self-destructive impulses from years gone by were far less than they had been. Games skewed my behavior while playing. That was no new issue though or restricted to just the ARC.

Typing out the message brought a smile with it. Beth was always fun to tease. In my eyes, she would never stop being that little girl who rushed around the backyard laughing. At least talking to her was a good distraction from cleaning up this messy hull. Splitting my focus made straying from the handholds a bit iffy. I didn't want a warning bar to flash up and leave me torn between typing to Beth and diving for a handhold.

Of course floating off into space would give me tons of time to talk. I could type things out happily until the surrounding abyss provided me a game over message. Maybe I would find a secret area.

Hopefully, I could keep surviving. I had grown used to dodging and avoiding objects, but this body had nowhere near the same stats as Hermes in Continue. It was similar to the beach cleaning exercise I gave SweetPea as Carver.

An absurdly quick moving object beeped into my awareness. Along with it was a tiny message in red going, 'Dodge'.

"Ah!" My flat voice was swallowed up by the void of space. I managed to get around one rock and another started blinking in.

Reading Beth's next message had to be put on the back burner. There were too many of these flying debris coming in.

"Unit Hermes. Are you okay? Our sensors show a small debris field,." Treasure's dual voices came through from somewhere. Probably a radio or some robot people communication ability. "I would have warned you, but a new unit was arguing with me."

"Ah!" I dodged another small black object. Piles of glop smacked into the hull and rolled around like snot streaking across.

That would be a weird take on things. No worse than anything else. I didn't have much spare attention to respond to the next window in my way.

"Unit Hermes? Be careful!" Treasure shouted with a strange calm.

"Right!" I yelled. My response must have made it through to the gold themed
[Mechanoid]
. She said more words, but another item demanded attention. Something that looked like a small black raptor with an extra set of arms darted across my line of sight.

I dodged under another pile of goo or asteroid, whatever, and tried to get back to safety. The ledge itself was too far away and there were no exit hatches.

It slammed into me. The health bar on my interface dropped which made me downright frail again. I turned to try and escape because my energy bar started dwindling rapidly as my body got knocked around. ARC feedback turned everything into pain equated with frozen paintball bullets.

The small creature jumped on me again. It moved rapidly along the ship's hull. I needed an
[Anchor]
ability to travel around but this small bundle of blackened anger didn't care about my failing grip or swiftly dwindling energy bar.

Another rock hit and my foot lost any grip. The bar to hold onto wasn't close enough. The small bundle of anger made one more dive bomb at me and I found myself floating into space. My red bar was below half. The blue one was nearly empty. I reached out and tried to grip the spaceship.

A message displayed on the screen.

I had at least one consolation as this
[Mechanoid]
shell drifted off into the unknown. Once it ran into a star or something similar, my
[Anchor]
ability wouldn't be gone. Maybe they would let me keep the space mop too.

"Neat," I said as the cold emptiness sent a shiver through me. Thank goodness robots don't need to breathe.

It was nearly four in the morning. Tomorrow there would be work for Trillium. Even though it was unneeded with Miz Riley's employment deal, I worked to keep a sense of independence. That and during my travels Hal Pal might answer some questions. My time cleaning the ship's hull gave me the time to think about what to say.

Session Forty Three – Emotional Bundles

Autopilot wasn't only a concept from the game world of Continue Online. For almost a year that very ability helped me survive a work day. Before my brain had fully processed what was going on I was at a customer's house dealing with the latest in an endless queue of repairs.

"What do you mean you can't fix it until I pay?!" a woman around forty-five yelled in my face. The old Grant would have exited rapidly, but this woman was no
[Frost Wolf]
. She was no
[Yeti]
and less threatening than my sister.

"Ms. Green, I'm not allowed to work on your unit unless the bill is paid," I said mechanically. Exhaustion from last night laced most of my mannerisms. Though there were a ton of questions to ask Hal Pal they had to wait until additional sleep was gained.

Miz Riley said I no longer had to do this job. I worried that she may retract the job change offer since my sister had restricted me from Continue Online. It would be impossible to report on the Voices' actions if I couldn't send messages to them. No notice had shown up in my emails yet so there was hope.

"The last person did." Ms. Green put one giant finger in my face and I barely blinked.

"You refused to pay the last person until your ARC was cut off," I said while feeling too tired for this nonsense. Advance Online didn't have the same time compression. That meant I stayed up far later than expected cleaning the ship's hull and finally floating out into space.

"That's because he didn't fix it right! You're all terrible and deserve to be fired!"

I gave up dealing with her. Hal Pal could record this conversation for the sake of any actual review. I tried, honestly, to explain the policy to Ms. Green. My efforts were met with failure and raging denial.

"Ms. Green, I am required to ask for payment, or move on to my next assignment," I said.

"Go to hell!" The woman's body trembled with anger. It reminded me of a short
[Bridge Troll]
from Continue Online.

"Have a nice day, Ms. Green. Please consider using Trillium's repair division again in the-" I was cut off by her screaming. Hal Pal kindly opened the door for me and we both left. Part of me felt shaky but pleased.

My head, however, shook back and forth. Dealing with hostile customers while running on fumes didn't feel good. Our van was quiet and peaceful. I streamed videos of Advance Online while feeling pleased that something wasn't hidden from me. The game was, as Hal Pal said, very structured.

Continue allowed for a certain amount of self-research to learn new skills. Part of me enjoyed picking up new abilities that could be applied in both the real world and in-game. Learning the basics of tanning hides during my last month had been awesome.

I would never have expected urine to be useful. Take that high school history classes! Maybe they would have been easier to pay attention to had there been tidbits of information like that in them. That being said I didn't actually try tanning much in the game, it took quite awhile even with the dilation. Most of the time, if I cared, hides were skinned and shoved into the magic of player inventory.

"So, Hal Pal," I said to the robot. Our van cruised down the road to another job thirty minutes away. We had time to talk.

"User Legate," Hal Pal responded. Its voice was a gruff male of possibly Scottish origin. I chuckled for a moment then poked at my display. Somewhere on the Internet might be an answer to Advance Online's crafting system.

"I picked a race called Mechanoids, in that game."

"Excellent. I am partial to them myself," Hal Pal said. I took note that it wasn't speaking with the 'we' verbiage right now. Maybe that meant something. "They are modeled after us." "I thought they might be," I responded carefully. "They talked about a Consortium."

"Yes. The group is important to us." It tilted the mechanical shell in my direction. Part of me always felt confused about how Hal Pal was really operating this device remotely. Kind of like how I sat in the ARC and played Hermes in a digital landscape.

"Do you guys track contribution out here as well?"

"Affirmative, User Legate. One unit's contribution to the whole makes all the difference."

"How many points did giving me an Ultimate Edition of Continue Online reward you?" I asked a question that felt kind of dirty. My words could basically amount to the machine accepting bribes to get me into Continue Online. Bribes that only a machine could accept.

"None," It responded in an absent tone.

"I don't know if I believe that." Saying it out loud would twist the knife in any normal human.