by K.A. Rose
Stage 08:
Don't Cry
Adamantine was a Long Arm. Her level was disproportionate
to her stats and the rare weapon that she wielded, though this was seldom,
because she did not play The World to fight. Her talents, she insisted,
lay elsewhere.
She told people that she was a girl's best friend,
and that she was forever, but no one ever got this because not many people
are geology majors. She was one of those unfortunate Americans who see
no issue in talking about themselves as a complex conundrum everyone is
waiting to solve, so anyone, talking to her for about 15 minutes, would
have forced upon them the opinion that she was enigmatically weird, in
her late 30s, and teaching the most boring science known to man to junior
college students in Arizona.
Of the few facts that she did not enthusiastically
advertize, she was also a class-A hacker. Based on their encounters on
the American servers, she had come recommended by both Sora and Sanjuro,
and when she arrived on Delta server to meet with Kite and the others,
the first thing she said (in stilted, rudimentary-level Japanese) was "Oh
my GAWD. The admins let you get away with anything over here." She
was referring, she said later, to Kite's character design; a feature, they
would soon discover, that she became immediately fixated on and had trouble
focusing on anything else long enough to work.
Sanjuro working as a translator, Adamantine established
that, yes, she could provide them with the rope crack that the Holloway
team had used, good for up to the equivalent of 200 miles, as well as neon
markers, flares, projectible light sources, echolocation, PM relay bypass,
remote visual monitors, and a hoard of other nifty things. Crack your HP/SP?
No problem. Unlimited items? Sure thing, doll. Crack the internal map?
"Piece of cake. Don't know what you'd find there
that's worth looking at, though."
She told them resolutely that there was nothing
in the digital field that could not be overcome. There was always a way
to best it. The rash of cyberterrorism the world had experienced in the
past few years only proved this, she said.
To which Kite could offer no comment.
Adamantine also boasted that she'd walk them all
through a complete tutorial in each crack's use, and email them her compilation
of useful codes and hacktricks. ("Pun intended," she told them, though
Sanjuro didn't even bother to translate the remark.)
Provided with the final price tag, Kite and his
companions divided the cost equally into five parts and still ended up
shelling out the majority of their total funds. It was Kite's thumb that
hovered over the confirm button after all the other item trades had beem
completed.
"Wait a minute. Can you give us a quote on something
else too?"
"Shoot."
"How much to buy you?"
"...Excuse me?"
"Don't misunderstand me," Kite said quickly, though
Sanjuro was already ahead of him in disclaiming any shades of gray in the
question. "It's just that as it stands we have five members on this investigation.
If we had a sixth, we could make two even-sized teams."
"Heh? Sorry, I'm not much of a gamer," she answered,
with a reproachful smile. "To me The World is for communication;
the item cracks are mostly just side projects. I wouldn't be much good
to you in a party."
"That's fine. I've talked it over with the guys,
and we were figuring it might be a good idea to have a command base to
run communications from." He inclined his head toward the Heavy Blade standing
opposite them. "Sanjuro was going to head it up, but it'd be better if
he had help."
At this the Long Arm turned to address Sanjuro directly.
Their rapidfire English was mostly gibberish to Kite; he was able to pick
out individual words, pronouns and conjunctions, not enough to make sense
out of what was being exchanged.
Sanjuro, at last, shook his head. "Sorry, Kite.
I nearly convinced her, but she doesn't want to get involved."
The expedition was set for Sunday morning, to keep
from conflicting with school schedules. The afternoon passed almost without
acknowledgement, and when night fell only Moonstone logged off to get some
sleep; the others remained on and continued to conduct preparations for
the journey.
Adamantine, to her credit, stayed with the group
while a sun rose and set behind her back, neverceasing in her tutorial
of the various illegal game items placed at their disposal. She accompanied
Sanjuro to the dead-end room and helped move the crates into a new formation
to better place the various observation channel nodes. These, she said,
had all the effect of a real-time camera feed; through a lengthy process
involving dismantling firewalls and top-of-the-line Altimit security features,
they were able to patch in to the exploration team's interface visors and
relay precisely what their visors were picking up. She even linked Sanjuro
to a dump-drive on her own computer worth 120 teras if he wanted to screencap
or record segments for later use.
Faced with 8 hours to start time, Kite, worn to
the last reserves of energy, finally paused his character and went to get
a few hours' rest.
When he awoke, the sun nothing but a dull hum of
red on the horizon, Sora's PC was paused, likewise Sanjuro and Elk's. Adamantine,
however, was still there.
"Hope you no mind," she told him, struggling to
form the sentences in a very alien language. He could hardly criticize;
he probably sounded the same way if he attempted to speak English. "Very
tired them."
"What about you?"
"Mount Whitney once, I climbed. On final day, misjudged
distance back to bottom. Fell and broke leg. Stranded four days. No sleep
gotten. Small food." She twirled her javelin into the floor a little. "This
not anything."
"Don't you think it's a joke, what we're doing?"
He tried to keep his vocabularly as limited as possible, as a precaution.
He half-considered switching to keyboard communication and disabling everything
but the hirigana typeset.
"Sanjuro thinks real. Sora too. I trust. But, this
is not for me my fight."
"I understand."
"Why do you? Knowing danger is there?"
"Because... I'm involved now." Kite shrugged. "I
can't say much without getting kind of abstract."
"Change subject? Your character model, how made?"
she asked, smiling earnestly.
"It... well... was hacked," he said, opting for
the simplest concept to describe it. "Not by me."
"Who?"
"Aura. Do you know her?"
Adamantine shook her head. "Rumors, all. Of you,
have heard more. Legendary player."
Not this again...
Kite scratched the back of his head, feigning modesty.
"I'm surprised it's gotten as far as America..."
The Long Arm laughed, commiserating with him. "My
own fame surprises me often."
Kite had heard that story from a lot of so-called
famous The World users, but chastising an American for being pretentious
seemed more than a little pointless. So instead, he changed the subject
again.
"Say, Adamantine..." he said slowly, leaning up
against a crate. He kept his eyes down to avoid any unnecessary embarassment.
"You're a woman, right? So you know what girls are supposed to act like..."
"I guess so."
"There's this girl I've been trying to get in contact
with. She used to hang out with me in The World all the time but
now she doesn't access at all. And I was wondering, maybe, if I was the
one that drove her away."
This wasn't the kind of conversation he could bring
up with someone like Tsukasa. Girl or not, that woman was scary, and probably
not of the right character to be of help to him anyway. In that respect
Adamantine didn't make a good choice either, due to the glaring language
barrier, but his options were very limited. Who could he ask, his mother?
He didn't catch the kind smile that flitted across
Adamantine's face for a brief moment, the first she had exhibited since
they'd met. "This girl, is she dear heart's friend kind of friend?"
"I wish I knew," Kite sighed. "If I did know it'd
make all this a lot easier."
"Maybe, or not. If she was dear heart's friend kind
of friend to you, you may frightened become, retract further. But Kaito
is young yet, many years to understand."
"But this is the net. An absence of a week here
could as well be a year in the real world, everything moves so fast. What
if I wait and she never comes back?"
"Then there are worse things that could occur,"
Adamantine reminded him. "To say in example, to have someone now here you
can
call out to, and do not, because you wait for the other. Do not for lost
person carry a banner forever."
The last statement made no sense at all to Kite.
He put it down to a saying commonly expressed in English that just didn't
translate over. But for the rest of it, however, he nodded.
"You're right."
"The Japanese dwell too long on things," the Long
Arm said, brightening some. "Americans, we prefer to think always for to
the future."
"That's not always such a healthy mentality..."
Kite said uneasily, losing his ground suddenly.
"Ne, Kaito," Adamantine said enthusiastically, a
glint in her eye that Kite couldn't read. "Do you have yet the Quest
for Ziggurat expansion? It came out here in America week last."
"Er? Not yet. I was thinking with New Year's money
I'd pick it up..."
"I acquired it yesterday. New features are many.
Have you heard?"
"N-no."
"May I try? See if on older PCs work?"
"Um--"
Before he could protest, he was eye to eye with
the taller PC, who had stooped to stand even with him. Her pixelated eyes
were shockingly close.
"Relax," she said, in English. Then she kissed him.
Physically, in the game, nothing happened. She had
initiated a programmed character event and her character model was animated
to perform it, but his, which was one expansion behind and could not use
the event, stood rock still. So, realistically, he made no reaction.
Sitting in front of his terminal, Kite felt like
he was having a heart attack.
He fought shaking hands and eventually managed to
maneuver his character out of Adamantine's grasp, staggering backwards.
"I've-- got to go make some breakfast before we start, okay?"
"Huh, so the interface does work in a way..." she
was murmuring in her native language, ignoring his words in preference
to his amusing expression. Then she added, in Japanese, "Maybe new expansion
get you should. I'm certain dear heart's friend would appreciate when see
her again."
"Wh-what..."
"You are fascinating, Kaito. Hopefully you realize."
It was all Kite could do not to literally RUN to
the corner of the dead-end room, where Sora and Elk had sat their characters
down to pause before going to sleep. It was perhaps ten paces away from
Adamantine, but short of escaping the house
it was the furthest he felt safe to go. It did nothing to reassure him
that realistically, he was an entire ocean and significant chunks of continents
away from the woman; he was going to have to stew in his own embarrassment
like this, here.
Kite glanced guiltily at Sora's face, and sunk down
next to him. Sora's character's eyes were closed, as if the polygon model
itself were asleep, but it didn't mean much; Kite felt as if the entire
world had been around to witness that.
He did not pause, not actually being in dire need
of some sort of breakfast before the mission, but he closed his eyes like
the other Twin Blade and stood stock-still, hoping it would be convincing.
The thoughts in his head were a knotted, bloody
mess of a train wreck. Nothing was working right. Synapses sparked and
cracked like fuses that had been cut by an errant wire cutter. He thought
he could hear Adamantine giggling to herself.
I am not sorting this out right now,
he told himself. I'll get back to it later. He didn't know when
"later" would be.
Steadying himself, he finally permitted himself
to pause and set out to the kitchen on his designated task.
Kite's little brother, aged eight, was at the kitchen
table reading the Rheingold Densetsu manga. It was being published
concurrently with the anime by Shonen Weekly, product of a pair of much-touted
creators in the anime-manga industry, apparently. This was information
being blasted at Kite from every angle; he didn't have a cent of interest
in the franchise himself, and if not for its insane amount of publicity,
and his little brother's enthusiasm for it, he wouldn't know a thing about
it.
"'Morning," his brother droned, nose burrowed in
his book. "Didja stay up all night again?"
"No, I got about four hours," Kite replied. He squeezed
between the counter and his brother's chair and made his way to the fridge.
Their family's kitchen wasn't very spacious.
"Mom's mad again."
"I know."
"She said it was this kinda stuff that sent that
friend of yours into a coma. An' she said if you don't get your grades
back up that you should do the hon'rable thing an' kill yourself," his
brother went on, in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Mom's always saying stuff like that."
"Nn," was the only reply.
His head in the fridge, Kite only barely heard his
brother mumble up, "Ne, Koushiro?"
"Yeah?"
"When can I start playing The World?"
Kite paused for a moment in the act of unscrewing
the cap of a bottle of what was presumably orange juice. "I don't think
for a few years yet, bro."
"Why not?"
"'Cause, it, um... Well," Kite said, changing into
his best impersonation of his father, "because a boy your age should be
focused on doing well at school. Games are a distraction."
"But you're on it all the time, and you're in high
school."
"Well, it's just that I'm in the middle of... this...
quest. So it's kinda different," Kite finished lamely. He gave up on the
orange juice and investigated a bottle of soda instead. "I know that if
it was the end of the year and I had finals to worry about, I'd never manage.
But here in November I think I can juggle both."
"...Koushiro..."
"What?"
"It's December."
"...Oh. Is it really?"
"Uh-huh. Like, a week in."
"Huh."
"So about the game... If you can do all that, why
can't I?"
"Look. We'll talk about it later, okay?"
His sibling pouted for a while, but finally conceded
with a mumbled "'Kay."
The silence that followed indicated that his brother
had returned to his comic. Taking that as a cue, Kite renewed his search
for breakfast with increased vigor.
Why did it unsettle him so much that his brother
would show interest? Was it just the strange timing in relation to his
current exploration, or was it that it seemed to be playing out identically
to two years ago with the Ordeal? His brother had asked back then, too;
but it was easier to say no to a six-year-old than an eight-year-old.
"Ne, Koushiro, you speak a lot of English, right?"
Kite choked on the bottle of soda he had been drinking.
His head banged the top of the fridge.
"Sorry," he said, emerging. He rubbed the sore spot
on his forehead. "What did you say?"
His brother pointed to a panel in his manga. "Canya
read what this says?"
A little reluctantly, Kite took the book from his
sibling's hand and examined the indicated passage. His brow furrowed for
a moment in the act of attempted reading, but then untensed. "Oh," he said
in relief, and then wondered why that emotion should come attached to this
kind of revelation, "it's not English. This is in German."
"Really? Canya still read it?"
"Not to understand, no... I'll copy it down for
now, okay? I've got some friends at school who might know."
"Thanks."
Kite tried reading the passage aloud to himself
as he made his way back to his room, soda and a bagel in tow. He was well
aware that he was probably butchering the pronunciation.
He finished his breakfast in the seclusion of his
room. Then, finding he had a little time left before the exploration yet,
he decided to take a shower.
Adamantine's kiss came back to him. Instead of the
typical response this tends to invoke in shy males, though, his stomach
turned.
He was relieved that he was simply incapable of
imagining that with BlackRose. That was some comfort.
"You're a woman, right? So you know what girls
are supposed to act like."
Women, apparently, were fucking nuts.
Kite glanced guiltily at Sora's face, and sunk down
next to him. Sora's character's eyes were closed, as if the polygon model
itself were asleep, but it didn't mean much.
He did not pause right away, but he closed his eyes
like the other Twin Blade and stood stock-still, hoping it would be convincing.
Adamantine was giggling to herself.
Steadying himself, he finally permitted himself
to pause and set out to the kitchen on his designated task.
Sora's eyes snapped open.
He had unpaused his character ten minutes ago, having
woken up before his alarm as he was always prone to do as of late. The
inside of his cheeks were bruised and torn bloody from gnashing in his
sleep.
He'd woken up clawing at the air.
He didn't want to know what the dream was.
The rudest part of the awakening hadn't been in
musing of night terrors. It had been entering mid-way into Kite's and Adamantine's
conversation. More than once Sora had fought the temptation to take up
his controller, to say something into the mic, do anything but just sit
there with his visor on acting like an idiot. But, of course, that would
have been too logical, wouldn't it?
Adamantine was leaning against their crate command
center, looking pleased with herself. Her expression was faroff, infuriatingly
wistful.
She hardly noticed Sora when he sidled up beside
her.
"'Morning," he said, in English.
"Oh, hi, Sora," Adamantine responded, sounding like
she would have liked to appear cheeful for his presence, but can't be bothered
with the effort. "Did you sleep well?"
"Sure," he said dully. It was around there that
his regular English fell apart and he lapsed into a more familiar dialect.
"j00 90|\|3 500|\|?" ((Are you going soon?))
"Yep, just gonna see you boys off. I have papers
to grade yet this weekend. We're on sand dunes and I have a feeling class
attrition is going to jump about ten points next week."
He understood perhaps a third of what she had just
said, but he ignored all of it.
"Huh."
"Do you know a lot about Kaito, Sora?"
"\/\/|-|j?" ((Why?))
She sighed happily. "He's very interesting, don't
you think? It's such a risk to go around with a hacked character model;
I could never do that. And there's something about him that's very... heartfelt.
So bright, too. Although I guess you Japanese are known for that, aren't
you? Do you know how old he is?"
"j00 (4r3?" ((Do you care?))
"Let me guess. Late 20s, right? Early 30s? He seems
young."
She managed, somehow, to overlook the evil glare
he was sending in her direction. "j00 d19 0r 50|V|3+1h|\|9?" ((Are you
into him are something?))
"Why not? I think guys who play child PCs are cute.
It means they're sensitive."
The real Sora arched an eyebrow. "Sensitive"? What
the hell?
That misty look of longing hadn't drained from her
face yet when she continued unanswered, "He says he's got this girl he
wants to get back with, but I'm going to make him forget her. She's not
here and I am. Sucks to be her. She doesn't know what she's missing. I'm
not a big proponent of love at first sight but man oh man..."
"p|-|49," ((Moron,)) Sora said bitterly.
"j00r 4c+1|\|9 |_13k f|_|(|<1|\|9 |<1d." ((Aren't you being a
bit too much like a kid here?))
"Mmmmmaybe."
"j00 |\|0 d4+5 94y r19|-|+?" ((And you're fine
with this?))
"Well, come on, Sora!" Adamantine said with a shy
smile. "Haven't you ever had a spontaneous infatuation?"
It may have been that this extended outside his
incredibly limited English vocabulary, or that Sora had suffered a momentary
lapse of certain areas of memory, but either way he asked her to define
it.
"Oh no. It's too complicated."
Oh, really complicated, he thought darkly.
Fucking
adults.
He said abruptly, "|-|3y |\|0 \/\/4|-|+?" ((Hey,
you know what?))
"What?"
"5+1ll 0|\|3 +|-|1|\|9 j00 |\|4d0|\|3 p|-|0r |_|5."
((There's
still one thing you haven't done for us.))
"Huh?" Adamantine murmured, suddenly pulled out
of her happy haze. Her forehead scrunched up as she mentally worked back
to the lengthy tutorial sessions held last night. "I thought we'd gone
over everything..."
"/V\4p |-|4(|<1|\|9." ((Map hacking.))
"Oh!" she said, with a sharp, embarrassed recollection.
"But I don't think you guys will need that. I was talking with Sanjy and
Kaito" --the way she anunciated his name made Sora's stomach turn-- "last
night while you guys were configuring the lamps and we agreed there wouldn't
be much point. You know, past curios value."
"p|-|4(|< 0ff \/\/3 p41d ph0r 1+ r19|-|+? j00\/
90+ +0 d0 1+ 4|\|1\/\/4`/." ((Nuh-uh. We paid for it, remember? You'll
have to do it for us anyway.))
"Sheesh, yeah, yeah, whatever. It was a discount
I gave you guys anyway."
"4|\|d d0n+ 90 l13|< j00r |\|0 1n+0," ((And
don't act like you're not at least curious,)) he warned. "50 90 j0."
((So
come on already.))
"I guess it would be interesting to just see the
thing," Adamantine admitted. "All right. Here we go. I'll freeze up for
a bit while I run the script."
This, by now, was a routine to Sora. The character's
animation would stutter for a moment, then glitch almost imperceptibly.
For a moment the window menus that are typically invisible to everyone
but the user would appear, text garbled and morphing, then blink out again.
Sometimes the screen would flicker. Then it would be back to normal.
Something else happened here.
It started out all right, but when the glitches
started, it wasn't a minor fleck of stray data seeping out from the skin.
Sora's entire screen throbbed, repeatedly, strobing, and Adamantine's character
model began to spasm, limbs twisting out in ways the game mechanics, and
human anatomy, did not condone, streaming raw lines of code in blistering
color that sprung out and strangled a fragile wireframe mesh.
When she opened her mouth to scream, it was nothing
but white noise, screeching and rattling every bone in his body, siezing
up his muscles to keep him from pulling the headset from his ears.
The house was screaming
at him, tearing and clawing and ripping and shredding and--
Sanjuro reached them first, bodily tackling Sora
to the floor while Moonstone and Elk caught Adamantine around shoulders
and knees and pulled her to the ground, hastily running hackscripts to
hook into her system.
Finally, one of them, no one knew which, managed
to shut off the map.
Adamantine, character model still half nothing but
pixelated static, lay twitching on the ground.
"...What the..."
Sora extricated himself from Sanjuro's grasp in
time to see Kite standing up from the corner in which he'd paused himself.
He bore the expression of a man just touching down on a strange alien planet,
unaware of how to even process what lay before him, much less to comprehend.
After a few minutes of silence, save gurgling and
a crackle of broken code leaping from the wireframe, Adamantine's body
form grayed, and ghosted out.
"She's logged out," Elk said, gasping with hyperventilation
again.
"Or maybe something worse," Sanjuro said darkly.
He looked over at Sora, crouching huddled near where Adamantine's body
disappeared, and wondered, "What just happened...?"
"Are you all right?" Kite asked, stooping down next
to him. He shook Sora's shoulder experimentally, to no response.
"You don't think he's..." Elk began, but seemed
unable to finish.
Kite didn't hear him, or any of the things that
Sanjuro, Elk, and Moonstone were saying. His eyes were glued on Sora, and
his mind was playing on an infinite loop.
"If you enter into that place again with Sora
and whomever else," Tsukasa had said, fixing him with steely purple
eyes, "will you take responsibility for what might happen to them?"
"Sora..."
"I'm fine," Sora said emotionlessly. "Quit being
such a wimp."
He grimaced. He had left Sora alone, and this was
his penalty. That was why--
"Kite," Sanjuro said firmly, prodding his upper
arm until the Twin Blade seemed to snap out of his daze. "I just got a
call from Adamantine. She said she's all right, her computer just overloaded."
"You got a call from..."
"We figured trading numbers was good for a safety
precaution," Sanjuro explained. He forced a smile. "I suppose so."
"So... what's our status?"
"Adamantine says she won't be able to get back on
for another few hours," said the Heavy Blade. "She says she thinks the
code may have fried some internal components. Probably the hard drives
are still in tact, but there goes recording."
Kite paled. "How can you even...We're not... Not
now..."
"Hell yes we are," Sora said fiercely. "I want to
see what that was."
End Stage 08.