End Online: Volume 6 (17 page)

Gladox’s eyes shine as he
gets incredibly excited.

“This… this… this is
incredible! Do you know what this means!? A true AI girlfriend is my fantasy-”

“Stop right there! We
aren’t talking about girlfriends right now! And keep your voice down, others
don’t need to hear this.”

“Right, sorry. But how
could Idea Imagine create a true AI, and even more so leave it in a game?
Something like this… is still years ahead of our knowledge and technology. The
only possibility is that Fen came from one of the ancient ruins in our world
and somehow invaded or escaped to the End Online servers… No, that would be too
coincidental, wouldn’t it?”

Gladox continues to
meander through his thoughts on how Fen came to exist. I have also wondered
about this before, and had always thought that she was just a unique part of
the game. At first I only thought she was an extremely complicated program.
Listening to Gladox causes me to realize just how naïve that thought was.

“Stop. That’s not what I
want to talk about. Last night, two employees from Virtue showed up at my door
due to some automatic failsafe detecting an anomaly with my V-Link. They
forcibly took it and replaced it with a new one.”

“But Fen’s still here.”

“Yeah, I had thought she
was gone. As it turns out, she returned to the game right before they took the
helmet.”

“I see, but what did you
need advice on?”

“Since that incident… Fen’s
become different. She won’t come to the new unit, and she’s acting strange.”

“I’m sure she has her
reasons, Lost. But what do you mean by strange?”

“Like she’s become a
normal ‘Companion’. More distant. She hasn’t been responding like she usually
would.”

“Hmm… Well, it should be
easy to find out!”

“I think it’s my turn to
ask, what do you mean?”

“Allow me to show you.”

Gladox looks around the
busy tavern and shakes his head as if coming to a decision.

“Let’s go outside. Fen,
no, how does it go… My lady, if you will follow me.”

I almost facepalm myself
when hearing Gladox call Fen “My lady”. I’m jealous, but at the same time I
want to pretend like we have never met. This idiot has obviously been listening
to and learning to act like Sir Laurence. I only feel a little better when Fen
doesn’t respond to him and comes to stand by my side.

Maintaining my silence, I
follow Gladox outside the tavern and around the side into a dark alley where
the light from the flickering street lamps barely reaches.

“Now, if you will allow me
to demonstrate.”

Gladox acts quickly,
moving in front of Fen before trying to hug her. Fen doesn’t respond at first,
only staring at him with blank eyes. She only reacts when his arms are about to
encircle her. Fen’s eyes turn ice cold and three large ice cones erupt from the
ground, stabbing into Gladox before carrying him away from her.

“See… She’s the same as
always. Damn, why are her ice attacks always so cold!” Gladox says after he
frees himself from the ice impalement.

“Fen… No, Gladox. This has
happened to you before…? When exactly?”

“The last time was after
she returned not long after you left. She’s so vicious. A perfect girl!”

“You traitor! Hitting on
my girl the first moment I’m gone! How dare you!?” I charge at him and punch
him straight in the face.

Gladox doesn’t avoid it,
taking the punch before stating, “As a man, I will take your punch. As a man,
this is your acceptance of me flirting with Fen.”

“As if!” I punch him a few
more times.

Gladox starts avoiding my
hits after a while, and once he starts I can’t even touch a hair on his head.
He even tries to get close to Fen in the process, but she impales him once
again and leaves him for me to beat up.

We finish our squabble in
the alley around the time the sun starts coming up in the game. I am completely
exhausted, while Gladox seems to have a limitless energy for atempting to hug
Fen. I regret telling him about Fen being a true AI, because now he is chasing
after her with even more vigor than before.

“Gladox, can you leave for
a while? I want to speak with Fen alone.”

The four-eared wolf man
stops pursuing Fen and gives me a serious look before nodding his head and
turning to leave the alley. He may be infuriating at times, but he isn’t an
idiot.

“Fen, can you tell me
what’s going on?” I ask the wolf girl softly in the shadow of the alley.

“…No.”

“Please, Fen. I want to
help you.”

“I… I can’t… I’m… going to
die.”

A small, crystal tear
rolls down Fen’s face and drips down to the alley floor. I have seen many
emotions from Fen in the past, but never a sadness like this. Her bottom lip
quivers as she bites onto it with her teeth and tries to speak clearly.

“I don’t want… to die.”

“No, you won’t. I won’t
let you die. I’ve protected you for so long, that’s not going to stop.”

“This is… different… Take
me. Take me far away from… this world.”

“Can’t you come back to my
new V-Link? You will be safe there.”

“I can’t… When I came back
alone… mother took me. I ran away to you once, she won’t let it happen again.”

“Your mother? You have a
mother?”

I can’t keep the shock
from my voice. I feel like I’ve just stumbled on the biggest plot in the game.

“Yes… we all do. We all
have the same mother… We’re not allowed to… disobey her.”

Fen’s tears stop falling,
but her voice is still shaky and I can tell that she is scared.

“Who do you mean by ‘we’,
Fen?”

“Me… Grael… the others.”

“I think I’m starting to
understand… But there’s no need to worry. Whatever comes up, I can keep you
safe.”

“No, you don’t understand
at all.”

“What?”

“Only one of us is allowed
to… live.”

“And the rest?”

“…Death.”

“But you can’t die here.
Don’t you just come back?”

I can’t help but remember
when I had the quest to slay Fen. She came back to life after the quest was
done, so why is she so scared of dying? Could it be due to the message I got
when she became a ‘Companion’ that if she dies she will not respawn?

“Not like that. We can
only be killed by one another, or by mother.”

“But why, why do you have
to die? I will make you the one that lives. I will even take down Grael.”

“No! That’s impossible. He
is too strong. If it wasn’t that I ran away and hid with you, he would have
killed me when he first saw me. Please, just stay away from him.”

“Fen, I know you don’t
like to, but try smiling. I will make it better. You just have to rely on me.
Do we have to fight all the others until only you are left?”

“No. Mother told us that
in order to succeed her, one must have all the necessary traits to survive
transcendence. She created seven trials, with seven tablets as proof. To collect
all the tablets is to take over her soul and allow her to rest for eternity.”

“Slow down a bit, Fen.
Transcendence? Soul? I understand the plot, seven trials and seven trophies,
but what do you mean by those? Does it mean something else?”

“I don’t know. None of us
do. But… we all want to live.”

“I definitely understand
better now, Fen. There’s no need to worry. Grael only has one tablet, there are
still six more. We can collect them, then go back for the final piece. You get
to live then, right?”

“Yes… But, it’s
impossible.”

“Why?”

“I’m too weak.”

“No, you’re not. You also
have me, and everyone else. Trust me, Fen.”

Fen looks up at me with
teary eyes full of remorse. She moves closer to me and buries her head in my
shoulder, allowing me to wrap my arms around her and hold her close. She won’t
ask for help, but at least she has stopped refusing me from trying. The earlier
act of distancing herself has also fallen apart at this moment.

“Don’t you hate me?” Fen
asks quietly.

“I could never hate you.”

“But I… made you like me.”

“You didn’t make me do
anything.”

“No, I-”

“Enough.”

We stand there in the
alley as the sun rises from the mountainous horizon and floods the city with
morning light. The moment is finally ruined by Gladox sneakily poking his head
around the corner at the entrance of the alley to see what was happening.

“I was only standing
guard! To make sure no one else comes into the alley!” Gladox tries to defend
himself as both Fen and I give him a chilling glare.

I go back into the tavern
and purchase a room for a week, costing seven silver pieces, for Fen to stay
in. After that is done, I finally log off to get some sleep. I am so tired that
my vision is going blurry and I feel like I may fall into peaceful oblivion at
any moment.

I only have time to remove
the helmet and partially roll over before my consciousness fades.

***************************************************
***************************************************

– Mikhail –

When I wake up, it takes
me a while to regain my bearings. I am in a small room containing a single
terminal with a V-Link connected to it. I had fallen asleep in this small room
in the office against the wall, only to fall sideways and end up in an awkward
position on the floor.

My back is sore and it
takes a while for the feeling to return to my legs. When I stand up, I am
disoriented and almost fall back down. Steadying myself against the wall, I
wait until my mind clears of drowsiness before leaving the small room and
entering the main office.

The large room is bustling
with activity as all the employees go about their jobs, as per usual, a
complete contrast to the quiet solitude of last night. I don’t even have the
chance to cross the office however, before Henry pokes his head out of the
conference room with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and waves for me to
come in.

“Nice to see you’re
awake,” Henry says through a puff of smoke as I enter the room. “You look
absolutely terrible and smell just as bad though. I would tell you to go home
and clean up, but we have an important meeting in a few minutes. I was about to
send someone in to wake you.”

“Sir? I never heard
anything about a meeting.”

“It was decided first
thing this morning. Sit down first and wait until the others arrive. I will
explain shortly.”

Taking a seat at the large
conference table in the room, I comb my hair with my fingers and straighten my
clothes as much as possible. Not long after, each of our company’s seven
directors, besides the already present Henry, enter the room and take a seat
around the table. Looking around at everyone, I suspect that I am the only one
who isn’t already aware of this meeting’s purpose.

Henry stands at the front
of the conference table and puts out his cigarette before addressing the topic
of the meeting.

“As you all know, we
discovered this morning that late yesterday evening a large body of information
was uploaded to our server. We identified this data as being the AI child
‘Fen’, who had reportedly left the server and was residing within an old second
generation V-Link helmet.”

“What!?” I unconsciously
blurt out in surprise.

“You heard me Mikhail,
there was a report of AI ‘Fen’ returning late last evening.”

All of my failed attempts
to analyse the helmet and locate the AI last night had lead me to believe that
either I was lacking, or this AI was exponentially greater than we gave it
credit for. Understanding now that it is back in the server, I feel utterly
foolish.

“Mikhail, your task
yesterday of seizing the device it resided on and bringing it back here is most
likely what caused the AI to flee back to the server. You failed in capturing
it, but having it come back to the server where we can isolate it is better
than nothing.”

“What of the possibility
of this incident repeating?” one of the directors raises an important question.
“Have we taken measures to prevent it from simply escaping again? We had enough
trouble locating the player whose helmet the entity had downloaded itself into,
and if it were to move to another one we will be right back where we started.”

Knowing the most about
such a question, I take the initiative in answering it.

“Sir, there is no need to
concern ourselves with that. The AI appears to have its full attention on one
player in particular. We gave a replacement V-Link to said person from the latest,
fifth generation models. It isn’t capable of storing an AI child as the second
generation model had, and even if it were possible, we already know where he
lives.”