Beyond the Boss Read online

  From the doorway, Wolf whined.

  Horc smashed the mace down on Pyranous’ foot as hard as he could. He wished he knew if the weapon had any buffs on it, or anything special it could do.

  “Stand back.” Miranda came charging out of the house with her club blazing white. “Hit it before it throws me into another wall.”

  She struck Pyranous hard, doing more damage with her single magical blow than any of them had with their combined attacks.

  Pyranous roared and a ball of fire engulfed Miranda.

  The glow from her club grew brighter and the white light clashed with the flames, pushing them back. “I’m stronger than you are!” She kept the club pointed at the Dragon like it was some kind of magical wand.

  “No.” Pyranous’ word was little more than a growl and then a jet of flame erupted from his mouth. The new attack instantly overtook the fireball and collided with Miranda’s light. The spot where the two magics met blazed so bright Horc had to try to cover that spot of his vision with his hands as he tried to figure out if Pyranous was still where he had been and the best way to attack the Dragon. Even with Miranda’s distraction, the party didn’t have a great chance to do much. But their best bet was to try to buy Miranda the best opportunity she had.

  “All together.” Horc pulled an Impact arrow, added Fire to it and let it fly.

  Along with his attack were offensive spells from the casters as Tufkakes once again appeared out of the shadows for a bonus buff to his part in their assault. All their blows landed at nearly the same time, but they didn’t seem to have much sway in the battle that was going on between Pyranous and Miranda. The Barbarian woman had the Dragon’s undivided attention and seemed to be running out of steam in her club.

  Miranda slid back a couple of steps, and a deep, almost purr, rumbled out of Pyranous as her light lost a couple of feet in the beam that was fending off the Dragon’s flames.

  “You have to stop her,” Slasher grabbed Horc’s arm. “Seriously, none of you understand what’s going on here.”

  Horc turned and stared at Slasher. “What do you mean? He killed Lefthandofgod. Left might have been more than a little irritating, but he was a person, not a collection of code.”

  Slasher shook his head. “And Pyranous is more than that too. We can explain everything, but she needs to stop.” He pointed at Miranda. “Then I can talk him down.”

  The AI seemed very intent on killing Miranda. Horc didn’t know how Slasher could do what he was suggesting.

  “Are you sure?” Titanya asked, looking from Slasher to a major nick in her blade. “You can stop him?”

  With a nod, Slasher replied. “I’ve done it before. Trust me. This won’t end well. It’s why some of the people around here don’t trust him.”

  Facing off with the Dragon, Miranda stumbled back another couple of steps, and her light slipped more, until the flames were just feet from her face.

  “Okay.” Horc couldn’t see any other option. Their most powerful guild member was about to get fried. “Miranda break off.”

  She turned and glared at Horc. “Wha-” Her words were cut off as the light coming from the tip of her club failed and Pyranous’ flame engulfed her.

  Miranda screamed.

  “Pyranous, stop!” Slasher shouted and ran toward the dragon. “I’m trying to stop this.”

  Her entire body blazed with light before Miranda collapsed to the street. She didn’t stop screaming until she pixelated and disappeared in a shower of sparks.

  Before he realized what he was doing, Horc had his bow back in his hand, a Razor arrow on his bowstring, and a glowing ball of Fire coating the arrow. The Dragon had killed Miranda and he was ready to do as much damage to it as possible.

  25

  Slasher had his hand on Horc’s arm. “No. Let it go. She’s back in the real world.”

  Horc let out the breath he’d been holding and lowered the bow. “What about Left? Is he back in the real world? Or did his dying in this one kill him there? You know people have been dying in their pods? People who he kidnapped.” Horc pointed at Pyranous.

  “I know.” Slasher sighed and looked at the ground. “He understands. It’s a long complicated story.”

  Although he didn’t like the idea of doing it, Horc didn’t want to incite another round of a fight they were fairly sure not to win, so he shouldered his bow.

  Pyranous tilted his huge red head and stared at them. “Do you trust them, Slasher?”

  Slasher nodded. “Yeah, I do. Horc is a great guy.”

  Wolf left the doorway and came rushing down to Horc.

  Horc rubbed his ears. “Why didn’t you help out with this one?”

  “That would be my doing,” Pyranous said. “Even though he’s more independent than any of the other mobs in Halfworld, Wolf is still part of me. I can’t attack myself. That would be more than a little psychotic. That’s the right word, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Horc stared at the Dragon, then stared at Slasher. “What’s he talking about? How does he understand psychotic?”

  “I think we’d all like to know,” Bigdaddybear said, leaning on the side of the house. “I wouldn’t expect an AI to understand that term.”

  Slasher turned and waved them all back into the house. “Let’s go sit down, this is going to take some explaining.” He glanced at Pyranous. “You know how to make yourself fit.”

  Pyranous nodded. After a second, magic hummed around him and the dragon began to shrink. The whole thing didn’t take more than a few seconds, and he was smaller than Wolf. He flew a few feet off the ground and obediently followed Slasher into the house.

  “Well, that was…different,” Tufkakes said as he helped Elunda to stand.

  The Elf woman rubbed her head. “Pyranous isn’t what any of us expect. He’s a lot like a child trying to figure out who he’s going to be when he grows up.”

  “You realize that doesn’t really make sense,” Titanya said as they all trailed after Slasher.

  “Actually it does.” Bigdaddybear headed for the couch. “I don’t totally claim to understand programing the way Rick and the developers do. It’s not my thing, but I have picked up a bit of knowledge over the years. One of the things they do when they’re programming an AI is feed it data.”

  Horc sat on the arm of the couch to give the others a little more room. Again Wolf curled up at his feet. Even facing the fact that his companion was a part of the AI didn’t really impact his enjoyment at having him there. “Yeah, I think Rick said something about feeding it all kinds of fantasy books, gaming books, and the like, so it would have a grasp of the fantasy genre.”

  Slasher nodded. “That makes sense. But I think the biggest changes came when the AI moved into beta. In an effort to reach all the employees, we had to connect it to the internet, like most MMORPGs. The fantasy and science fiction it had been fed made it curious and it suddenly had unlimited access to social media.”

  Horc’s stomach dropped. Like most people in the modern world, he’d grown up on a steady diet of social media and he knew how evil so many people could be. They loved the opportunity to be anonymously rude. Even after companies had tried for years to curb the problem, people who were determined to be anonymous still managed to do so, and still managed to wreak havoc with their efforts.

  “Wait a minute,” Titanya broke in. “Somebody let it out to play in the social mud pits? Which ones?”

  “All of them.” Slasher frowned. “I haven’t been able to get word out to ask the developers to cut access to the worst ones, but I’ve at least convinced Pyranous to come to me when he comes across something he thinks might be questionable.”

  Bigdaddybear shook his head. “But he’s still kidnapping people and holding them hostage.”

  “Not exactly.” Slasher sighed. “That’s a long story, too.” He looked at the small dragon that was sitting next to him on the desk. “Do you want to explain it?”

  Pyranous shook his head. “You’re better at words than I
am.” His voice was different than it had been in the street, smoother and higher. It seemed his size affected his tones.

  “Okay.” Slasher patted his legs and got off the desk. “What’s the most important thing in the social media world?”

  “Getting likes,” Tufkakes said.

  “Being popular,” Baladara threw out.

  Horc closed his eyes as he started to understand. “Making friends.”

  Slasher stopped and pointed at Horc. “Exactly. He’s been trying to make friends, but he wasn’t sure how that worked. In the game, he’s a god, and it’s something he quickly figured out. When he thought he should have friends, he was like a kid with new toys. We were the toys. He wanted to have as many of us as he could get. He was just starting to interact with people in social media when we were all in the arena. He saw how easily people would start shit with others and thought fighting was just part of how we interacted with others.”

  “That’s not good,” Bigdaddybear muttered.

  “He also saw people getting blocked by various services and figured if he was going to be a god, then he also had the power to block people. That’s why we couldn’t log out.” Slasher paced in front of the desk. “He figured if people were bad at fighting, then he should keep them in the game until they got better.”

  Titanya shook her head. “Okay, that doesn’t exactly make sense. You and I hadn’t done anything bad, hadn’t gotten killed. We were kidnapped by pirates looking to have people for arena fights.”

  “We were early experiments for him,” Slasher continued. “At that point, we had been online for longer than almost any other players, because we were helping Horc stay alive. He wanted to understand us and figured making us fight would be a good way to do that.”

  “Then why didn’t he try to get me?” Horc asked. There were still things that didn’t make sense.

  “You weren’t as easy to grab as we were.” Slasher stopped pacing and leaned against the desk. “I think, before you managed to kill Rothand, he’d been thinking about facing you in the arena in an attempt to understand. I do know that people using goggles and gloves are an irritant since he couldn’t grab them.”

  “Sometimes being poor has its advantages,” Baladara said.

  “I’ve been able to explain that to him,” Slasher said. “But he did understand that fantasy stories had plots that had to be worked through and the designers had built several into the system and he was determined to not disrupt them. The arena was part of his effort to create his own plot line. He’d even worked himself into it by creating his dragon avatar. He just didn’t think anyone would be strong enough to take out Rothand and his crew. That’s when he realized he’d made a mistake by creating his avatar. He’d essentially made himself mortal, at least in the game.”

  “And by killing Rothand, we showed him that he might be able to be killed too,” Horc finished for him. “But why take all of you with him? Why continue to grab more people?” Even as Slasher explained things, more questions rose in Horc’s head. He didn’t pretend to understand AIs or children for that matter. He’d never been really interested in either.

  “It was right after we got here that I started trying to get through to him. I was starting to figure out what was going on, but I didn’t exactly have the right words for what was happening.”

  Horc shook his head and frowned. “You do realize he’s killed people in the real world. At least we’re presuming it was something he did here in the game.”

  Slasher sighed and started pacing again. “Yes, I think I did.” He stopped in the middle of the room and closed his eyes. “I also think that I might be one of the casualties.”

  “What?” Horc shot to his feet and reached for Slasher’s shoulder. “Why do you think that?”

  “I don’t have a log-out button anymore.” Slasher let out a long breath. “In the arena, it was grayed out. Shortly after we got here, I decided we needed to do something to try to get free. The obvious idea was to attack Pyranous and show him he could be defeated. Left managed to round up a couple dozen Fighters and Paladins. Elunda coordinated about the same number of Mages, Witches and Druids. I spearheaded the attack. We all figured if we died we could use the escape you told us about of logging out while rezzing. The problem was, it didn’t work. When we rezzed, there was no longer a log-out button. We realized we were trapped. I don’t know exactly what happened-”

  “Wait.” Horc returned to his seat. “They only told me about one person who’d died in their pod while I was back IRL. This sounds like there was fifty or more of you who’ve died.” He wished he could contact Rick or someone else beyond the game who could give them updated info.

  Slasher returned to the desk and seemed to collapse in on himself. “I was afraid people were dying out there. A good number of us managed to survive that attack on Pyranous. When I rezzed and realized I didn’t have an exit button anymore, I did my best to get back to the fight locale and call off the assault. I saved some people, but not as many as I would’ve liked to have saved.”

  Horc stared at the dragon on the desk. It might be kinda cute and even toy-like, but it was dangerous. “Can you let those of us who still have exit options log out of the game?”

  Pyranous glanced at Slasher who nodded.

  The dragon closed his eyes and let out a long breath. Magic tingled across Horc’s skin. To check, he pulled up his system menu. The log out button was bright and waiting for him to exit.

  With a slight nod, more to himself than anyone, Horc closed the window and looked at Slasher and Pyranous. “Thank you.” He turned to Bigdaddybear. “Log out. Let Rick know what’s going on. We’ve got some work to do still.”

  Outside the house there was cheering that abruptly cut off.

  “People are leaving.” Pyranous sound sad. He looked up at Slasher with a pleading gaze as his wings drooped. “Will they be back?”

  Slasher shrugged and then rubbed the Dragon’s head. “I don’t know. But some of us won’t be leaving you. I promise.”

  Pyranous nodded, then pushed his horns against Slasher’s hand much like a cat would do. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll return if he’ll let me back in,” Bigdaddybear said, then disappeared from the room.

  Horc nodded. “Anyone else want or need to go home, I think the excitement is over, now we just have to figure out what’s going to happen.” There were a lot of questions that still needed to be answered, but it was going to take a while and there was going to be a load of corporate BS to deal with. The original plan to turn off the game and go over the AI’s code had been thrown out the window. They had a genuine thinking and feeling entity on their hands and even if he had managed to kill a bunch of people in his growing pains. It was capable of learning and changing. It wasn’t the first AI to raise the question of sentience, but since Horc hadn’t had experience with any of the other AIs, he wasn’t sure how Pyranous measured up to them. But he could definitely see legal questions arising from the idea of killing it.

  And just as important, they had the question of what they were going to do with the people who had died IRL and whose consciousnesses were trapped in the game. If the servers went down, they’d be lost. He didn’t want to be part of killing them completely. Slasher still seemed in control of his thoughts, he didn’t act or sound like Pyranous’ mouthpiece.

  Horc rubbed Wolf’s ears and wished the whole game hadn’t suddenly turned into the very embodiment of a corporate nightmare. They were going to need explanations of the deaths that wouldn’t destroy any chance the game had of taking off. They would have to find ways of letting the families know people weren’t gone, just changed. It was going to be a long, complicated process with way too many people involved. He wasn’t sure how much he’d be allowed to participate, but he wanted to be there each step of the way. As much as he’d resisted playing Halfworld, it was quickly becoming more than a game and he wanted in on that. He’d been looking for changes in his life. It felt like someone had heard him and given
him those changes.

  Horc rubbed his forehead and stared at Slasher. “I think we’re going to need to get the corportate bigwigs in here to negotiate things, don’t you.” They’d been talking for hours, and even with some of the villagers showing up with food, Horc was tired, hungry and wanted out of the game for a while.

  “I don’t think any of them are willing to take a chance that this isn’t some kind of elaborate plot to take control of the company,” Rick said from the chair next to Horc. He’d entered the game a couple of hours earlier, when Bigdaddybear had returned. He was acting as a liason between Pyranous and Total Immersion Systems. The company was at least treating the AI as his own person. Rick had explained that recent legal leanings were heading toward that way, and the company really wanted to be ahead of the curve.

  “We’re not going to kill them,” Slasher said, glancing over at Pyranous who was curled up in the center of the desk, looking very cute with his head on his tail and his wings folded across his back. “His days of killing, are over.”

  Pyranous nodded. “I wish I could bring back more than I can, but some of their brain patterns were just too degraded during reserection to be viable citizens of Halfworld.”

  “I think they are more worried about dying IRL,” Rick said. “But we’re trying to fix the errors in the pod interface that facilitated that.” He drummed his fingers on the table and got a faraway look, indicating he was communicating with someone outside the game. Shortly after Pyranous allowed players who could, to log out, communications with the outside world was reestablished. Rick’s hands moved on the table like he was typing on a keyboard. “Okay. I’ve got developers agreeing to not take the system down, if we can make a copy of your code so we can study it. I think they’re wanting to be able to make adjustments for future AIs we might introduce into the game.”

  Pyranous glanced at Slasher with lidded eyes. “Adjustments? Future AIs? Why would we need future AIs? Aren’t I all the control the game needs?”