Chapter 44: Dates, Drones & Dukes

It had been several months meatscape time, as Gale called it (and much more relative time) since our escape and I was only just getting comfortable with some of the more abstract functions and senses of being a truly digital being. Things like navigating and acting in layers of the FTLN where there was no virtual reality, and senses I had lived with as a human such as sight and hearing did not meaningfully exist.  

It was one thing to engage with my more digital senses and limbs when I was in a virtual space, and another to exist and function in the greater levels of abstraction. Or as May put it after one of Gale’s remarks, to go where no meatbag had gone before. 

Like interacting with the world around me while in a virtual space was really only a step up or two from engaging with the augmented reality user interface in CORA, the main limits were my imagination and ability to create my own interfaces. Interacting with the deeper abstractions was another thing entirely, having to engage with, trust, and interpret entirely new senses.

Gale literally threw me into the deep end early on in our lessons by dragging me into the back-end of an unused mirror of a fanfiction website and leaving me in the dark, drowning in my new senses until I could learn to ‘see’ again and get my bearings. And then wish I could not see what I found myself accidentally reading.

Outside of my lessons, Gale and I had slowly created a home out of the virtual space our safehouse server was hosting, crafting furnishings and comforts from memory and internet shopfront catalogs. Comfy couches with throw blankets, bookshelves populated with books pulled from digital libraries and storefronts. A little home cinema with a vast catalog of pilfered movies, tv shows, and a curated selection of VR streams. A little garden with toadstool chairs and a small bubbling brook.

Two days passed in exile before Gale decided it was safe to set up communications with the rest of the FTLN, CORA, and Roxi.

And of course the first person I contacted was Roxi. Only to receive a surprise, when she answered not with a VR avatar, but her physical phone showing up in person on video chat. She was standing in a park, surrounded by the domes and skyscrapers of UN City.

“Sorry… I was on my way home from uni. I answered as soon as I could,” she answered with a slightly shy smile. “So, how do I measure up?”

She’d obviously used the DNA sync during character creation because I could see bits of Roxadice Umbrial in her features like her piercing blue eyes, midnight dark hair, the angle of her cheekbones and her lips… 

But there were also points of differences, she wasn’t anywhere near as amazonian as her character had been. She was tall, yes, but nearly as slender as Morticia Adamms which was a startling resemblance if not for her eyes and her shaggy pixie cut. As for fashion, the death priestess she’d played wasn’t too far off, considering the silver helix piercings and thigh high black boots over tight jeans. And that wasn’t even mentioning the extremely faded fitted band t-shirt spelling out the name of a band I’d never heard of called Black Sabbath.

Going to answer her, I stumbled on forming words as I found that somehow my mouth in all its digital glory had dried out, forcing me to swallow to draw some spit back into it.

“Hi…” I answered, showing off how suave and put-together I was.

“Hi yourself, cutie!” she smirked, breaking into a wide smile. “I guess I’m not the only one showing a different version of myself. Somehow I never pictured you as a redhead. It suits you.”

A moment's pause later her eyes momentarily dulled as an unseen thought or memory stole her attention and the corner of Roxi’s smile slipped, transforming her smile into something more wan and slightly somber.

“So Cerys, she told me what happened, is happening… She said you were safe and umm… well, sound, but I was still worried.” Within the frame of the call’s video, I could see a tremor originating from the center of her chest before it was halted in her arms with an abortive twitch as if she was suppressing the urge to somehow hug me through her comm. “I’m so happy you're alright! You are doing alright?”

“Gale is putting me through digital-being bootcamp with no signs of letting up, but I’m alright I think. Our friends are working hard getting me adapted and able to move freely, and Gale, May and Ceres are working on adapting something to allow me to connect to my character in CORA again. So I guess my horizons are expanding, Roxi.”

“Jet, my name is Jet Beekhof. I like and trust you enough to give you that. Roxadice came from my middle school nickname Roxi or Rock. Some kids started calling me Rock after they learned that Jet was a type of rock.”

Snorting out a giggle, I thought back to similar incidents of children’s logic from before I quit school. To be fair to them, Both Rock and Roxie suited her as much as Jet did, both in her aesthetic, but also in how steadfast and reliable I’d found her.

“Kids really do have a strange sense of humor…” I agreed, before an intrusive thought made me add to it. “But also I think you got lucky, they could have started calling you airplane or something.” 

“Jet…” I tested the name, repeating it a few more times to get a feel for it, sounding it out and making it more real for myself. “Ok,” I exhaled, before taking another deep breath. “Well I’ve already previously bared my soul to you, so here goes nothing. Me Mums named me Jamie Flynn and well as much as I liked Aisling, there is nothing really stopping me from keeping what they gave me. So… Hi Jet, it’s nice to meet you, I guess you can call me Jamie Aisling Flynn. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

I could feel my simulated cheeks both warm and rise into a shy smile. A smile that was reflected on the face of the girl opposite me.

Only my heart skipped a beat as her smile curled into a mischievous smirk. 

“The pleasure is all mine, Jamie,” she teased with a wink. “Also in answer to that question you asked back in the cavern when we were drinking… Yes I would still like you if you were a girl?”

“I asked what!?”

* * *

Despite certain early embarrassments and awkward starts, Roxi and I had started dating and had been going on dates during her weeks offline for university. How, you ask? Roxi had designed and built a small drone designed to be piloted by an AI for her Social Design and Robotics course. 

Hovering using four maneuverable nearly silent turbines, the small thing had been designed to be used as a means for elderly or infirm individuals to socialize with family outdoors via vr. The drone’s flight was designed to be AI assisted, though in my case I was given a crash course in piloting it by Roxi and Gale. 

Emphasis on the word crash. Gale won’t be letting me live that down for a while.

As for the drone’s social functions, the little thing had multiple cameras which its software used to provide a highly immersive image of its surroundings with full depth perception. What little sound the drone’s motors and turbines produced was tuned out by its high quality mics and noise cancellation code, allowing it to pick up the nearest voice with perfect clarity. And as for what it showed for the world, the drone had truly impressive speakers both for sound quality and sound projection, preventing its voice from being lost to the noise of outside, and… The most adorable animated face that conveyed the emotions and facial expressions of the one using it.

So with the drone part way bridging the divide between the digital and physical for me, I’d follow Jet around after her classes visiting parks, museums, art galleries, and just roaming UN city on our dates.

The time during our non-CORA weeks not spent on dates was spent continuing my grueling training at the hands of my merciless taskmistress Gale and slightly more lenient taskmistresses May and Ceres. Even my free time was technically more training as I was left to my own devices and had to seek out my own entertainment, whether it was pulling media from various repositories on the FTLN or exploring the various virtual spaces such as the virtual city DUN: The Digital UN. Exploring virtual spaces meant practicing traversing the FTLN’s abstract layers in order to reach the actual servers the virtual spaces were located on, as well as the specific protocols needed to access them, putting my lessons into practice.

Exploring virtual spaces also meant more exposure to the SAI that occupied those digital oases hidden from the mea— from humans. And exposure to SAI meant discovering not only how far rumors of my existence had spread, but that I was considered an object of curiosity by many SAI as the only digital being born out of a human from meatspace.

Curiosity that was extremely apparent anytime I was in a SAI occupied virtual space going by the sheer number of stares and query pings bouncing off me. Eventually a few got the courage to talk to me, at first mostly questions about if I had really been born a human like the rumors say, but on later visits I was being assailed with all sorts of questions for a human’s take on various topics or what all sorts of things in the physical world were really like. 

Some of the worst being about various biological functions.

Even now months later, I still run into the odd curious digital native with questions, but only when I’m not out with my family.

Yeah… Family…

It has been strange to have a family again. Strange, but amazing even if I tried to reject it initially not wanting to replace me mums. However Ceres… Ceres was understanding and despite Gale’s almost overwhelming enthusiasm to obtain a ‘little sister’, patient and willing to give me time. So as formally as a digital being within a fledgling culture with no centralized governance can be, I’d been adopted. Gaining myself a sister (which I refuse to acknowledge as the older one regardless of any arguments concerning subjective versus objective time) and another mother, both of which I already wouldn't trade away for anything.

Even if they both can be stiflingly overprotective at times, and “You literally electrocuted yourself when left unsupervised!’ starts to lose its power as an argument after the tenth or so use, I already find myself unwilling to trade them for anything.

So taking into account my new found fame, overprotective family, and my grueling digital being bootcamp, in some ways my every other week that I spent in CORA was actually a vacation. Which when you think about it, that is what an rpg is meant to be, an escape and not what it had previously become for me which had been bordering on my entire reality.

That said, I couldn’t escape my new sister as Gael Silvertail stuck with El, Roxi and I as we navigated the war that had spread across Parcosia and the rest of CORA.

What had started as a war against Haverhill and the forces loaned to him by his Paguutum backers had erupted into something more as Paguutum had begun invading more openly up until their attention was pulled back to their escalating war with their rival Joret. And that was ignoring the growing Unification war that was spreading across the entire isle and former Kingdom of Parcosia. A war which had started when a Duke to the North began making moves for the long vacant throne after acquiring the lost Crown and some sacred sword of legends or something. Outside of the game Ceres had been giving me all the gossip as she laughed about the whole situation, since apparently in addition to the Duchess Cerys Blaiddcalon and the healer Lady Povey, she was also the AI behind that Duke’s wife. Her Grace, the Duchess Katleone. 

And boy are her stories about how the AI behind the Duke of Jingan had made him an oblivious and bumbling fool were funny. Apparently the pair of them had a bet to see if they could have him bumble his way onto the throne or not with the AI behind the Duke actively trying to sabotage his character’s success without making it look deliberate.

My money was on Ceres as the Duchess Katleone maneuvering the Duke onto the throne through guile and sheer strength of will regardless of the Duke’s political stumbles. But regardless of who would win that bet, I had a war in-game to fight.