by K.A. Rose
Stage 03:
Say Something
"Well, you counted wrong."
"I didn't count wrong," Kite protested vehemently.
He was on the verge of continuing, but paused for a moment to let Sora
finish his sound effects. He was jumping around again. "I was up until
one checking and rechecking those hallways and I swear I'm right."
It was two days later, in a grassland. Sora didn't
like going into the towns when he still had a reputation. So, Kite sat
back on the edge of a well, and watched Sora hop and tumble between the
structures.
"And what if you are right?" Sora asked casually,
stabbing the air with a blade. He'd obtained some new equipment since giving
his signature blades to Kite. These were much better, even if a little
less stylish. "So it's just a glitch. You said the place was full of them."
"Even if user mapping was disabled, the dungeon
still processes itself off an internal map," the smaller Twin Blade persisted.
"There's no possible way that parallel y-axis distances to the same x-axis
destination can be different lengths. It's a mathematical impossibility."
"Say again with smaller words, couldya? Not all
of us are brainiacs."
"It's just what I've said before. The distances
by both paths should be the same, right to left. But the black hallway
lasts nearly two minutes, when it takes the normal one half that time.
It isn't speed reduction, either; I timed my steps to be sure."
"And?"
"And it's as I said. It's impossible."
"K1ss44h. Here we go. Am I gonna be the one to list
it now? I don't think I have enough fingers."
"Malfunctioning AI systems. Virus encryptions. Data-dump
fields. Items that transcend system logistics. Comatose players." Sora
missed a step in his jump and stumbled for a second. Kite pretended not
to notice. "Yeah, I know, we've had more than our share of so-called impossibility.
But for something like this, there has to be a critical programming flaw."
"Uh-huh?"
"Possibly, the interlacing of two fields."
"That's not so weird," Sora pointed out. "First-timers
to Net Slum get there through a platform dungeon, unless Helba sends a
gate."
"Okay, but Helba's Helba. Do you think the house
is her doing?"
"Not really. Why don't you go ask her yourself?"
"Didn't I tell you about this?" Kite sighed. He
stretched his arms awkwardly behind his head. "Helba's in jail right now.
Misdemeanor mp3 trafficking."
"What a dumbsh1t thing to get busted on."
"Anyway, she's out for the count for right now.
She'll probably be acquited --that's what the papers are saying-- but even
if she can get back to a computer fast she probably won't be accessing
for a while. She knows the line between a decent risk and plain stupidity.
So we're on our own."
"H3h, ch0tt0," Sora said, ceasing mid-slash and
looking over his shoulder. "What do you mean, 'we'?"
"Oh, come on!"
"No, I'm not coming on," the taller Twin
Blade replied, before somersaulting onto the top of a brick hut opposite
Kite. "Since when is this my problem? Where'd you get the idea I
was planning to help out?"
Kite's cheeks glowed red. "You told me once that
if I ever wanted, you'd sign yourself up as an Assist--"
"And you told me you maxed out recently,
so there 'isn't much of a point.' Isn't that right?"
"Sora!" It was meant to come out remanding,
but the inflection turned into pleading somewhere between Kite's throat
and the console mic.
"Nope. Sorry." His dark form blotted out the sun
for a moment as he leaped clear over Kite's head onto the peak of the windmill
behind him. Kite squinted to see his silhouette. "I'm going now. Past deals
aside, I don't like hanging out with people who like wasting my time."
Wasting your...?
No! That wasn't--
"Wait a sec. Sora!" Kite begged, standing up on
the edge of the well. "Please. Don't."
"Nuh-uh. If you thought that was going to appeal
to my better nature, you're off by a few yet."
"It's not. I just-- I don't-- Even twinks shouldn't
solo, you know? I don't know where the rest of this will lead if I'm alone
in there."
"So get one of your other friends. Aren't you Mister
Popular? Go call out that one Heavy Blade girl if you want some brute strength
for an Assist. BlackRose, wasn't it?"
Even from a distance, Sora must have seen the twinge
of a frown appear on Kite's face, right before the boy lowered his gaze.
"BlackRose... doesn't talk to me anymore."
Pause. "Well, what about the rest of your group?"
"I don't really have one now."
"Souuuuuu," Sora said, as this information sunk
in. He sounded indignant. "Is that why you've been hanging around me like
a lost puppy for this long. It's just 'cause I'm your last resort."
"No! I just--"
"Too late for defense, lost the save, points to
visitor!" Sora's eyes narrowed. "I hate your kind of people. You're all
pandering and sweet because you don't wanna own up you've got no one else
to talk to. You're so desperate you don't care you're patronizing, you
don't figure the other guy's gonna notice. You're pathetic."
You just don't have any friends at all, do you?
Kite felt the anger boiling up in him. The words
were not penetrating, past the vehemency of the accusation itself. I come
out here, I go everywhere for you, I hang out with you when no one else
will--
Through the searing hatred, something cut through,
cold and precise as a finely-sharpened blade. Kite flashed back unexpectantly,
without warning or consent, to his first meeting with Sora. Fresh from
Skeith's wand, glowing with a residue of aural light, eyes closed with
the first truly content and grateful smile Kite had ever seen in his life...
The words appearing in his head, too full of emotion to ever be fully verbalized...
"'Arigatou'... te."
It was a second before Kite realized he'd said it
aloud. Sora noticed a lot quicker.
"What?"
"That's what you said. When I freed you."
"Don't you--"
"No," said Kite, bowing his head to hide the start
of a tired smile, "I'm not going to call it some justification for a favor.
That'd be way too low. I just remembered it, is all."
There was a long, still moment. Far off, a cluster
of Mandragora buzzed, spurred on by the breeze.
Then Sora said, "So let's see this house,
huh?"
The hallway still stood where Kite had encountered
it before. This presented another concern for the Twin Blade even before
Sora and he had gotten around to investigating.
"The sysadmin hasn't locked this area, even amid
the BBS posts. That means anyone could walk into this place."
"I'd be more worried about this place's system-crashing
battles. How many goblins were there in that last one?"
"We wouldn't have had a problem if you hadn't used
a spell. You know those eat up the framerate like nothing."
"Kite-kun has no right to complaiiiin," Sora remarked,
in a sing-song tone. He had never said so explicitly, but Kite had guessed
that his console was more than a little outdated.
They stood on the edge of the shadow and peered
in. Hanging in space, the dead-end room waited beyond, the only distinguishable
feature.
"If I had to put it down as anything," Sora said
at length, "I'd say it's just your average glitch. It's not so hard. You
slip up on a single number somewhere and suddenly the Milky Grunty's upside-down.
Says something for the company's work ethic that we don't see this more,
actually."
"You got a watch handy?"
Sora hated references to physical reality. The reasons
for this Kite had never been able to discern in full. He wasn't like Piros,
of the belief that he became a different entity when he logged on to The
World; he just didn't like associations to things that existed outside
it.
"Yeah," the green-haired player said, after a moment
of hesitation.
"Time me."
"Yeah, okay."
Kite waited until Sora's character form went stiff,
a sign that he had at least half-removed his visor, and started down the
hallway. Making sure to keep a regular pace, he whistled a nursery school
song, letting the echoes clang all around him in unusual harmonics. He
ceased when he reached the other side.
"Time."
Back in the great hall, Sora unstiffened. "Two minutes,
ten seconds."
"Okay. Now you come over."
"What?" He sounded alarmed.
"It's okay. I'll time you. Keep an even pace."
"D3m0..." The steadiness in Sora's voice was cracking.
"It's all right," Kite said, overemphasizing the
assurance in his own tone, as if he were addressing a child or an animal.
"This is why we went as a party, remember? Just whistle something for the
headphones to pick up, and you'll be just fine."
"I don't like whistling." That was what he said,
but it was bashful, as if he were admitting that he couldn't.
"Humming's fine. Just go. Don't worry."
Sora took a breath to get his bearings-- and tried
to suppress the action from Kite's view. His ninja-soled shoes slid forward
past the realm of the great hall's light, into the darkness.
Struggling at first to emit the sound, Sora began
to hum as he walked. Kite realized, visor half-off while he watched the
clock, that it was a tune that he knew. Mentally, he started attaching
the lyrics to the melody.
"Two minutes, ten seconds," he said, when the humming
had stopped. He slid the visor back down and smiled at the reemerging visage
of his partymember. "It's one of the flaws of the system that all characters
of the same class have the same footfall distances, regardless of other
parameters.It's not so realistic."
He added, "So you watch that show too, huh?"
"What?"
"That song. It's the opening theme to that one really
popular anime, isn't it? My brother watches it a lot."
"I wouldn't know," Sora said flatly.
"But--"
"If it's popular, that means it's getting yammered
all over the place, doesn't it? So it's not really a surprise that I picked
it up."
Kite smirked. "Yeah, okay."
"So what was the point of that?" Sora asked, for
once the person between the two to bring them back on topic. He cradled
the back of his head with crossed arms, casually. "So what if it's a long
hallway?"
"Too long, that's my point. This way," Kite said,
indicating to the door to their left, that led through the normal hallways.
"Without getting too much into mathematical jargon, let's just say that
this hall leads at a right angle to the corridor running parallel to the
black chipset one. So basically, it should take the same time to walk that
one as this. I agree that with just one person doing it there's room for
error, but with two people, it should be decently convincing. It's the
only thing we can do save getting a big ball of string."
They started to walk, keeping pace with each other.
"Or hacking the field's internal map?" Sora suggested
idly.
"Could we?"
"With Helba's help, maybe. Or Mia, if we got desperate."
"Oh, Mia's account is frozen, didn't you hear?"
"I'm not surprised. Isn't that kinda dangerous for
someone like her, though?"
"Elk bullied an assurance out of the admins. She
should be fine."
"Kinda hard to imagine someone like Elk 'bullying'
anything..."
Reaching the parallel hallway, they conducted the
watch experiment again. Both PCs' times came out to 1:00 even.
"...That is kinda weird," Sora admitted, after a
little deliberation. "D'you know what's bothering me more, though?"
"What?"
"Mechanics of the thing aside, what's its purpose?
Why just that one space? Why connect those two rooms? All in all, it doesn't
add up to anything significant."
"You're getting into this now," Kite said with some
satisfaction.
"Shut up. Let's go back to the hallway."
They did. This time, Sora showed no apprehension
in approaching it. They made another two passes with each, trying different
running and walking speeds (Sora leaving the calculations to Kite to approximate
ratios), and regardless, the excess minute-and-some-seconds refused to
vanish. Neither did it extend or make more of itself evident, if anything
existed.
Finally exhausting themselves with the task, the
two players resigned to the dead-end room.
Sora leaned against the dark hall's door frame,
speculative.
"Another thing to consider," he said, in serious
tones Kite wasn't well accustomed to hearing, "is that this space manages
to bypass the loading rule. You know that PCs in a party can't be in separate
rooms, so really, I couldn't have been in the great hall when you were
over here. I didn't think of that 'til just now."
"I hadn't thought of it at all... That's a good
point. Weird."
"So there's another question. Is this dead-end room
really the same one you entered before? Or is it just an extension of the
great hall's map?"
"Jesus."
"That's scary to you?"
"Kind of. Isn't it to you? Suddenly we're not on
very firm ground with this thing."
"I guess." Sora peered into the dark corridor, seeming
in thought for a moment. It was a rare expression to see worn by such a
character. "Kite-kun's good at math, isn't he?"
"Er, yeah, I guess so..."
"Have you tried figuring out the real size of this
thing, compared to us?"
"If you figure our initial speed at about one-half
kilometer an hour, and it took one-thirtieth of an hour to cross it, that's
about sixteen or seventeen meters. Our other run counts back it up."
"Does that look like seventeen meters to you?"
Kite followed Sora's gaze, hanging onto the edge
of the doorway into the shadows. The rectangular view of the great hall
on the opposing side glowed in the darkness.
"...Strange."
"It's closer than what it was before."
"You think?"
"Let's check. I'll go."
"You sure?"
Sora nodded. "Got the watch ready?"
"Just a second..."
Keeping the tips of his fingers trained on the left
wall, Sora started the trek down the hallway. This time he sung the Oscar
Meyer Weiner song, just out of spite.
"Hey--" came the echo from the dead-end room, when
Sora had ceased upon reaching the other side, roughly eight meters premature.
"Solved the missing minute?"
"I don't get it... How?"
Sora switched arms so that his hand was again on
the wall to his left, as he started back, the bounce back in his step.
"Well, of course, you had the miracle-player Sora with you. Solver of anomalies,
crusader against malicious code."
"In other words, the bug fixed itself."
"Probably. Are you happy now? Go get Lios to block
the field if your humanitarian instincts aren't satisfied, but I think
this is one piece of data trash we won't have to worry about now." His
fingers trailed along the slick black surface.
"Yeesh, don't talk while you're in there. The harmonics
are awful."
...Upon closer inspection, Sora noticed as
he walked, it wasn't an all-black chipset. There were small flecks of gray
to be seen at irregular intervals, too much to call the stone obsidian,
not enough to call it granite...
"And he dodges! Points to visitor! I guess you're
not too buddy-buddy with Lios these days, are you?"
...Not that geology would have much of an influence
with a bunch of pixels...
"Eh, you could say that. It seems sometimes if he
had things his way, he'd overwrite the entire World with a Pong
game. He's the sysadmin equivalent of someone who becomes a teacher because
they hate students."
"Heh. So, you never got your homework done the other
night, didja--"
Sora stopped.
His fingers were touching air.
End Stage 03.