Jade held Hisui's ear against the tube that Apella held out for him, in a primitive, and yet utterly magical form of sound transmission that could only work within a game like Living Jade Empire. It let him listen to the sound Apella and Sky could now hear as the tree sang.
Sky stood closer to the edge of the branch, looking down at the traveling Augusmin. After a moment she commented, "There are players down there among the Augusmin."
Apella dropped the tube and stepped over to kneel beside Sky, so that she could peer over the edge too.
"They are probably doing this new quest too," Jade told them.
He sighed as he placed the hearing tube in his inventory. He enjoyed music more than most of his other physical senses, for inexplicable reasons. The patterns the sounds wove were closer to the patterns that he carried within himself perhaps. The patterns within the sounds that had been transmitted from Apella were... odd. From that small sample, he couldn't tell if it was anything like the song that Sky spoke of hearing or not.
"How do you know that's what they are doing?" Apella demanded.
Sky straightened up with a laugh. "You're the one who told us that others had already accepted it."
Apella sat back and argued, "He hasn't even looked."
Sky replied breathlessly, "I think he's probably right though..."
Apella gazed up at Sky with a puzzled expression that Jade couldn't interpret, and Sky took an unsteady step forward.
"Hey, are you..." Apella began.
Jade stepped toward Sky just as she fell. He heard Apella gasp even as his dwarven feet carried him over the edge of the branch.
Freefall was noticeably slower on the moon, just as it would have been on Earth's real moon, but Skyheart Snowsong dropped like a dead weight. She was just beyond his grasp... until all of a sudden, she wasn't. Harmony's character vanished before his eyes, leaving Hisui dropping rapidly toward the startled crowd traveling directly below.
Jade's dwarf skillfully maneuvered himself in mid-air, with a roll and kick that lit the jets on his boots. He could only envy the skillful coordination with which he could move within the game, despite the fact that he was the one initiating the movement.
Jade couldn't even see the spider silk string that his fingers caught, as his dwarven hands swiped through the space that he knew might contain the tail of the string that Sky had pulled her companions up into the tree with.
"She logged out!" Apella shouted down to him, as he swung toward the trunk.
Calculations from his orbital self completed, and Jade became certain that Harmony had been logged out, rather than choosing to log out. Every moment might count. Normally you couldn't log out when your character was in danger without waiting out a short warning about how it would remain to collect the consequences of your actions for the next few minutes.
"I'll get back to you," he promised as he logged himself out, hanging from a nearly invisible string suspended from the moon's tree.
--
Being able to literally split tasks with his other self was suddenly incredibly useful, as Jade disconnected and threw on the first clothes he could find.
At the same time, he tried to call Harmony.
When there was no reply, his orbital self contacted emergency services while his physical body rode the elevator that interfered with cellular calls.
By the time he was getting off the bus at the stop closest to her place, Eric was texting him questions.
Jade replied calmly with, 'I think she passed out. She sounded kind of faint right before she fell, and a safety override will log you out regardless of what your character was doing. I notified emergency services.'
The delay before Eric replied was long enough that Jade noticed it, despite being occupied by trying to navigate his way across a busy intersection.
'Wouldn't the game have already notified emergency services if she triggered a safety override?' Eric asked.
'Only if she was using a Starcraft Technologies device,' Jade replied, though a moment later another layer of himself argued that nearly all VR systems sold in this country would have that function these days.
Emergency services had promised to check on the registered citizen associated with the phone number Jade had given them, and ended the call a while ago. There were no emergency vehicles waiting in front of Harmony's little house. The key she had given him wasn't needed, since her door wasn't locked.
Jade hurried through the cluttered hallway, past the cozy kitchen where she had fed him some of her favorite foods, and opened the only door she hadn't ever opened for him.
The part of him that wasn't operating under emotional urgency was a little surprised by the high tech system in front of him. The part of him that was still clutching the doorknob was reeling with relief.
Harmony's irritated voice assured the entity on the other end of the call she was engaged in, "I took all of my new medicines, that's probably why I fainted! Yes, I will schedule another visit." A moment later she added rather sarcastically, "Thank you for scheduling my next visit."
Only a trace of surprise flashed across her face as Jade stepped forward and took her hand, his fingers against her wrist to measure her pulse the way his eyes were monitoring her breathing. She ended the call with no hesitation, and then raised an eyebrow.
"I called too," he pointed out.
She moved her hand only far enough to clasp his. "I haven't had time to look at my notifications."
"How long were you out?" he asked.
She huffed a breath of a laugh, and grumped, "Ask the pod."
"How long was she out?" Jade asked the VR pod she sat on the edge of.
It did not reply.
Harmony laughed for real, but her grip on his hand tightened as she steadied herself against the way she sagged to one side. Jade reached for her shoulders with his other arm, putting them face to face as he bent to hold her steady.
She patted his face, and then reached over to tap the screen display beside her, where a prompt blinked beneath several notifications. "Ask here."
The notifications objected to the overrides the system was operating under, and reminded its user that a subscription was needed for anything beyond basic monitoring services.
Jade's other self helpfully provided the prompts this particular system used when its verbal interface was disabled. After a moment he reluctantly released her shoulder so that he could type the queries he needed.
"You're familiar with this system?" she asked curiously. "It's nothing like the one you use."
"I'm looking at the instruction manual," he replied as he read the abbreviated report on the automatic disconnect.
"What are you taking to make your blood pressure so low?" he asked worriedly.
Harmony blinked at him, as though she didn't understand the question for a moment. "I still forget that you're not completely human."
Jade straightened and looked down at her with concern.
She met his gaze with a crooked grin. "It's what I'm not taking that's getting me. Won't you compliment me for following my instructions so well?"
Jade bent again and hugged her, even as he assured her, "Of course. I'm a little shocked, but I promise I'm absolutely amazed by your steadfast commitment to such mysterious instructions?"
Harmony hugged him back with more strength than he expected. Her laughter in his ear sounded more normal too.
"Can you look up drug interactions as easily as system manuals?" she asked.
"Of course," he assured her without hesitation.
When she gave him the list, he could see why she'd been instructed to avoid stimulants, but not why she might need to live off of them the way she seemed to have been doing before starting her treatment.
When he asked, she explained simply, "It's my genetics. This syndrome is part of why I don't have any kids. Thankfully it's incredibly rare."
"Is it? I knew a child who had something similar in my first school," Jade informed her.
Harmony looked so startled that he almost laughed as she pushed him away to stare at his face.
"My mother enrolled me in schooling for disabled children, because I was very slow in the beginning," he explained. "But you don't seem to share all of the same problems he had?"
"How is he doing now?" Harmony asked curiously.
Jade shrugged and asked, "Do you actually want me to look him up?"
"Why haven't you kept in touch with your old classmates?" she asked instead of answering.
"Speaking of classmates, I need to tell Eric that you're okay," Jade blurted. He could have called from the orbital system, but somehow it seemed more important to include his two best friends in the conversation together.
Eric picked up the call while Jade was still explaining, "...didn't have any contact information for anyone I knew at that age, and I thought that was normal? Harmony is alright."
"Good, I'm relieved to hear it." Eric replied. "And I'll make sure you have plenty of contact information on me when I graduate."
Harmony breathed a quiet huff of laughter. "I didn't expect to worry both of you so much?"
Eric replied while Jade was still struggling to put his own reasons into words, "You fell out of something like a twenty story tree, and vanished on the way down. Of course we'd worry."
