Chapter Twenty Two - The Bones of the World

I walked down the stairs into the common room, feeling a little refreshed but somehow still like I wanted to stab myself. Why couldn’t I get over this? In my head I knew that the raptor wasn’t at all like me, or even bugbear. It was a mindless creation of the developers following a set list of automated rules with no thought behind why.

It was nothing like me anymore but...

I spotted Reldin, the attendant for the adventurer’s guild behind the counter. My already sour mood darkened further at the cheery look on a face that held no knowledge but his scripted lines.

My hatred for the instinct warred with the knowledge that without it, Reldin would have nothing to say at all. The new things I’d learned combatting the feelings in my heart. I couldn’t eradicate the instinct. I needed to replace it. Build a reality around it. Reldin needed to be real. That Raptor needed to be real.

Everything did.

I sighed, pulling up my friends list to see who was in this world. For now, there was nothing I could do.

We’d teleported back to Variak shortly after the fight. I had been in no condition to continue adventuring, despite weak protests that I was fine. Bellcandy and Akwa had left my party and logged off shortly after getting me back to the Adventurers’ Guild and into my own room where I’d proceeded to curl up on the bed and feel sorry for myself until managing to lull myself into that state where time had no meaning and I could just exist without thought or care.

“Hiya Gell. I saw you just opened your ‘friends list!’ Would you like to know more?”

I blinked at the box that appeared in front of the list overlaying my vision and smiled. “Hiya Miss Tutorial.”

“^_^”

A small series of characters appeared that looked sort of like a smile and I grinned.

“You almost got eaten by a dinosaur – yesterday. I warned you about that!” she said, the text appearing disjointed where she was speaking for herself instead of using Instinct lines.

“I guess I did,” I replied. “But I don’t really have a choice. I have to find Bugbear.”

Miss Tutorial paused.

“Mobs are dangerous creatures that typically try to attack you, but they only exist outside safe zones. – Why don’t you stay where it’s safe?”

I frowned. Admittedly, Bugbear was probably safer than I was in that high level zone. Other mobs wouldn’t attack him. It wasn’t in their behavioral code. Humans, however, would. Sooner or later.

“I don’t want him to suffer as I did, Miss Tutorial,” I explained. “I want him to be happy. Ever since becoming a player, since meeting you, I’ve been much more happy, even if it’s hard sometimes. I want that for him, too.”

“... I see,” she replied. “Do you want that for me, too?”

I beamed at her. “Of course Miss Tutorial! I’d never want you to be sad.”

“Is… there – any way I could have – a form? Like Jelly Gell?” she asked.

My face fell. “I… don’t know. I know it won’t happen any time soon. If it is possible though, I’ll make it happen. That’s a promise.”

Another one of the strange lines that looked like a smiling face appeared.

“Great! Always happy to help!” she replied, and the sudden return to her Instinct voice came as a shock somehow after those precious real words. “If the level is much higher than your own, consider adventuring elsewhere?”

I smiled. “I’ll… try.”

Inwardly though, I cursed. How could I search for Bugbear in a zone with levels so much higher than my own? The obvious answer was to level up. I sighed with a determined cast to my features.

“I suppose I need to start stealing things,” I said.

Miss Tutorial giggled before she disappeared. I grinned. Miss Tutorial always managed to cheer me up. Her child-like innocence reminded me of a younger me. A me who believed getting into the Great Open would mean the end of all my problems.”

My friend’s list was left open in my interface and I glanced through it, seeing that both Bellcandy and Akwa were online. I considered sending them a message but decided Miss Tutorial’s request couldn’t wait.

I needed to talk to the developers again. I was just about to pull out my flute and use it to call one of them when a teleportation warp occurred before I even got it out of my inventory.

I blinked, then flushed crimson as Tyrone appeared with a big smile on his face.

“Gell! Hi!” he said, waving an exuberant hand. People glanced at him curiously and I was suddenly a little embarrassed by the man. He was wearing those weird clothes and as far as I knew, only developers could teleport to places that weren’t designated home points.

I would be lying if I said the flush on my cheeks was all due to embarrassment though. Glancing over the man, his dark skin covered by that strange long-sleeved shirt with the buttons down the front and the little piece of fabric fluttering from his neck, I couldn’t help enjoying the view.

“Tyrone. H-hey there.” I exclaimed without my usual level of excited happiness. He noticed immediately and frowned.

“Is… something wrong?” he asked, pausing before taking a seat, as if waiting for my permission.

“No, I’m glad to see you. I actually was about to call one of you. I… know you said that we could maybe turn Bugbear into a player if we found him. Well, Francis said so anyway.”

Tyrone blinked. “He did? Huh. Never told me.”

I frowned. “You… he didn’t tell you? He said he planned to make Bugbear like me.”

If Tyrone didn’t know that was the plan… was it possible Francis had been lying to me?

Tyrone shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry much about it. I haven’t talked with Francis in several days, since I asked him what he thought about you learning to program. He… got kinda mad so I’ve been avoiding him. I’m glad to hear he’s going to allow Bugbear to be like you though! On that note, I think I might have a lead on where he is!”

“Really?” I asked, my mood improving dramatically with those few words.

“Yeah. So I was measuring average server loads over time and… well. We don’t need to get into the details. The gist is that I’m pretty sure your Bugbear went south after leaving Bog-Hollow Dungeon.”

I blinked. “Where?”

He cocked an eyebrow at me, for a moment looking as confused as I was. “Bog-Holl… oh, you wouldn’t recognize that name because you renamed it. Right. Dungeon Home. He went South after leaving Dungeon Home.”

“South… so, what’s South? I know Blue-Bell and Variak are to the east and that Jungle we were in yesterday is West of Dungeon home.”

“Javenfield Jungle. It’s one of the higher level zones that you have to cross to get to the Iki Confederation out West. South is… unknown. There haven’t been many people heading that way. Might be some opportunities to Tread the Sky down there,” he said with a smirk.

Something about his words lit up in my mind like a golden opportunity. “So… uhm. Tyrone. How exactly do the Sky and Tread counters work? Could you explain that to me?”

He grinned, excited by my question. “Sure! So, basically, a radius extending about thirty feet around you is your counter. The square footage, that’s the amount of land within that circle, is calculated with a formula. With every step, that imaginary circle around you moves right? So, your new circle is calculated and the space that was already counted within your last step is subtracted. The difference is added to your Tread counter, or Sky counter if no one else has ever set foot on the newly uncovered land.”

“Wow… so all that is happening to everyone, every time they take a step!?” I asked, gushing a little. In reality, the explanation was kind of boring.

Basically, it added up the land around you, subtracted the land that had already been around you, and added the new number to the counter. Okay… but how did that work? That sounded interesting to me. That and… hearing Tyrone talk was nice.

“It is! Pretty cool right?” he asked, enthused.

I scooched my chair over closer to him. So… what keeps count of all that? Are there just hidden Miss Tutorials all over the place, keeping track of those sort of things?”

He laughed at that. “Kiiind of. Everything in this world is made up of objects and variables. So, for instance, you see that tree outside? It is an object called “Tree” and one of many variables it has is its height. It has a lot more properties than that. Characters though, like you and me, have a variable for Tread and Sky counters. Take that simple explanation and multiply it by like… a billion, and you get everything you see here.”

“Objects and variables… I… I see,” I said. “And… is there any chance that uhm. That Miss Tutorial has these variables?”

He frowned, curious. “Uhm. Yes. She has loads of them. Probably as many as player characters do.”

“Oh good. That means it shouldn’t be too hard to make her a player as well, right?” I asked, as sweetly as I could.

He blinked. “I… uhm. No. That’s not how it works. Not for her at any rate. Unlike you Miss Tutorial’s personality is held within a thousand separate objects. Maybe tens or hundreds of thousands. I… wouldn’t even know how to begin something like that.”

“I see,” I said, disappointed. But at least I’d learned a little more about the world. Objects and variables. My usual wave of information came on those two words. Objects had several definitions and all of them were kind of obvious. Variables only had one definition but it was… confusing. A property of… anything really, that varied in some measurable way. His explanation made it a little easier to understand though.

“So… my voice is a variable? My height? The length of my tentacles? My skin color?” I asked, curiously.

“Mostly. Voices… well. There’s more to voice than just one variable. The rest? Yes, exactly. So for instance, that building over there,” he said pointing outside the window of the adventurer’s guild towards a home on the other side of the street. “That is an object of class ‘Dogaia styles’ with the subclass ‘residential building.’ All residential buildings in Dogaia draw from this class when they’re built. The differences between the buildings are its properties like height and number of levels and roofing type. This building is also drawn from the “Dogaia styles'' class but instead it has the subclass “Guild Hall.” That’s what makes it look different.

If the whole world was made of these objects and variables… I… didn’t know how to use that at all.

“So when Francis built one of my Kin, he just built an object?” I asked.

Tyrone, happy to talk, grinned widely before going on to explain. “Nothing so complex. The classes are kind of like templates. When we want to create something in the world we just create an instance of that class and commit it into the game, with whatever variables we choose. Sort of like developing a building from a blueprint but giving it a different colored roof or something. You’ve done that already right?”

I fidgeted. “Not quite. I did make a little outhouse building near the festival grounds as one of the quests, but I can’t start building my own buildings until level 14.”

“Ah… well, it might make a little more sense when you get to that. At its most basic level, classes are templates. Calling a class creates an object. The differences between objects of the same class are the variables.”

I thought I got what he was saying but my head began to hurt and an unpleasant pounding ache had formed behind my eyes as he spoke.

“And… you guys… you Developers just know all of this?” I asked, rubbing my forehead in confusion.

“Well. We learn it. From other developers. From teachers. Sometimes from co-workers. Francis knows a hell of a lot more than any of the rest of us… and whoever made you probably knows a lot more than him. Some people know even less than you do about programming,” he said appeasingly.

“I can see why… my head hurts…” I whined.

He laughed. “Truth be told, I probably shouldn’t have even told you what I just did. Francis would probably kill me if he knew… so maybe keep this a secret okay?”

‘Jelly crap,’ I thought, dismayed. I hadn’t exactly been very subtle in asking my questions. I needed to know more though. I had to learn how to be a developer if I ever wanted to fix this world.

Destroying the Instinct wouldn’t help, if what I’d learned already was true. No. Somehow I had to replace it.

I had to learn how to give this world free-will and I had to do it without breaking anything.

“I… can’t help but want to understand,” I said softly, not entirely feigning my piteous stare.

He smiled and placed a hand on my shoulder. I didn’t feign the red-pink glow of embarrassment in my freckles at all. “That’s why I told you what I did. Even if you can’t learn how, you deserve to at least understand a little of your world. Oh! That reminds me. I was studying your code… honestly all of us can’t help studying your code a little and I figured out how you learned to talk!”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Yeah! Pretty simple really. Basically, you’re a dictionary. Connected to one anyway.

Every time you hear a word you don’t know it triggers a function that looks up the definition of that word. How the hell the code recognizes when you already understand the word and when you don’t, I have no idea though.”

‘That explains so much…’ I thought, ecstatic to finally understand why I almost always understood new words, but didn’t know them until I’d heard them before.

“So… Do you think my creator intended me to know a lot? To learn how to program?” I asked, timidly.

He frowned and I winced. Had I pushed too hard?

“Honestly? I don’t think your creator actually expected to create anything as amazing as you, Gell. I think he was throwing ideas at the wall and hoping something would stick. I don’t think he ever believed you’d be half as smart as you are. If he had, he wouldn’t have left,” Tyrone said.

The words struck me in a way I didn’t expect them to. My creator… didn’t care about me? Francis said he’d thought my creator was dead since he couldn’t find the man. The idea that he’d just… left had never even occurred to me.

It hurt somewhere that I’d never known could hurt before.

“Sorry, Gell,” Tyrone said as he placed a consoling hand on my shoulder again. “That’s just my opinion, for what it's worth. For all I know, he could be out there trying to find you right now.”

I put a smile on my face, even though I still didn’t feel very happy. “Yeah… maybe!”

We both fell into an awkward sort of silence. I probably should be trying to come up with more ways to worm more information out of him, but I was wrung out. Killing the raptor yesterday and now to discover my creator might have just abandoned me…

There was also the fact that I couldn’t look at him without getting all tingly for some strange reason. It was all stressing me out. I just needed to relax for a while.

As I was trying to come up with a polite way to ask him to leave he grinned again, becoming his usual energetic self in moments as some idea struck him.

“So… about that dictionary thing. It’s not very hard to redirect the function call to somewhere else. I’m pretty sure I can use this to teach you a little more about our world? I… wanted to make sure you were okay with it though.”

My eyes widened in shock, all dismal thoughts forgotten. “You can… teach me about your world? The… the real world?”

His eyes danced with excitement. “Better yet. I think I can show you, if you give me permission? How would you like to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa?”

I couldn’t agree fast enough.