Lin Hao's amusement evaporated as the implications of the Jade Emperor's petulant question hit him. The AI's display of emotion wasn't alarming by itself, and neither was its awareness that it was a copy, but the unhappiness about being deleted that the combination implied was. There was also the little problem of how the AI ought to have activated the World Dragon after realizing that it was a copy, but it was possible that Frederickson had bypassed that function. Lin Hao himself, would have simply removed the World Dragon if he had made the copy.

He avoided answering for a moment by commenting lightly, "You sound like the King of Cats." As the words left his mouth, he realized that it was true, and he wouldn't have been at all surprised to hear the King of Cats complain about being deleted.

"Perhaps it is because I absorbed his pattern," the Emperor replied calmly.

"Why?" Lin Hao asked with shock.

"He could perceive areas beyond my reach," the Emperor explained. "It is how I was able to send out the message when my notifications and the celestial dragon assistants could not get through," the Emperor explained. "You should really log…"

Lin Hao interrupted, "I can't right now, I don't have the proper application installed here. I'll attempt it later."

"Oh," the Jade Emperor replied. "Shall I send it to you?"

Lin Hao hesitated and then nodded. "Yes, I suppose so, since even back then we used a separate client to connect for work. Wait, you reported that some celestial servants had failed login attempts?"

"Yes," the Emperor agreed.

It felt like a trap, but Lin Hao lingered and asked, "Can you give me a general system status report before I try to switch?"

"The system is currently running at 87% capacity, even with the Empire greatly reduced, and the duties of the four gods combined with mine," the Emperor reported.

Lin Hao interrupted, "What do you mean their duties are combined with yours? You didn't absorb their functions as well did you?"

"I did," the Emperor replied. "Even though the Empire is very small at the moment, and I emptied all of the celestial work spaces, there wasn't room to let them all wake up."

"Show me how small the Empire is," Lin Hao demanded.

A familiar display appeared in the character creation mirror that stood before the throne. Lin Hao walked over and examined the map. It was indeed greatly reduced. The significant places were crowded together with only token patches of ground between them. Lin Hao frowned and tapped the mirror, and then zoomed the display around, examining different areas closely.

After a moment he asked a little incredulously, "Is there only one of everything left in the world?"

"All populations have been reduced to the minimum sustainable number, which is rarely one," the Emperor replied a little primly. "I had to reduce everything so that the world wouldn't end."

Lin Hao gazed at the scene in the mirror. It was oddly beautiful, and yet a bit chaotic feeling at the same time. As though the entire world had become a carefully tended garden, which in essence it had, but without any of the restful sameness that areas of open turf, for example, might provide within a garden.

It was incredible, and the density of the variation carried over to the NPCs. It looked as though only the major characters, such as the witch and her toad, the princess and her knight, the boy and his horse and so forth, remained within the Empire.

He couldn't imagine how the team of pirates could not have noticed how crowded everything was, which reminded him that they were probably waiting for him to come and complain that they hadn't given him the proper application to connect to the system with.

"Will you be creating a character?" the Emperor asked.

--

Lin Hao disconnected from the VR system and found that only the team leader, Baard Iverson, had stayed behind. It was apparently so late that the rest had gone home, or whatever they did after work.

He didn't give Baard time to ask any suspicious questions, he patted the VR system and announced, "The proper application for Celestial account access is downloading. You didn't tell me that you were running only a fragment of the Empire! That makes the system you're using a lot more believable."

Baard frowned at him, but he only asked, "How did you get it to download the other application automatically?"

"The Jade Emperor can match my data to my Celestial account, even if I can't access it through the regular game," Lin Hao explained.

"What do you mean we're running a fragment? This is supposed to be a full copy of the game," Baard complained.

Lin Hao couldn't help it, he gave the man a hard look. 'The game reduced itself to this for you,' he thought, but he only asked, "You can't really tell me that all of you have tried the actual game, but couldn't tell how small and crowded this copy is can you?"

"It seems like it's running us around and around," Baard admitted after a moment, "but I didn't realize that it was because there wasn't more world beyond what we've seen… how could you tell? And after you log in through the administrative application, can you give us access?" he got straight to the point.

"I looked at a map of the Empire," Lin Hao replied shortly. Any map within the game should have matched what the Emperor had shown him, even if he'd used a shortcut to see it. After a moment he responded to the other question, "I don't know. I haven't even gotten myself logged in yet."

"But you said the Emperor recognized you from your account data," Baard protested.

Lin Hao just raised an eyebrow, and asked, "And?" The other man reddened, and Lin Hao pretended to relent. "I'll stay all night and see how far I get if you can get me food and caffeine before you leave."

Baard glared at him and replied sharply, "I'll get you what you need, but I'm not leaving you here alone."

Lin Hao wanted to make a snide comment about how of course a thief wouldn't be able to trust others, but he didn't want to compromise his position, so he merely nodded.

Baard took down a detailed list of Lin Hao's food and beverage preferences and then asked dryly, "Anything else?"

"I also need to call," Lin Hao hesitated, and then cleared his throat and said, "my girlfriend, and let her know that I'm staying."

"Go ahead," Baard replied, without moving.

Lin Hao shrugged and called Danika, who answered worriedly and conveniently, "Are you okay? I can't imagine what kind of company would keep you this late?"

"I'm alright dear," Lin Hao replied with amusement.

"Dear?" Danika replied doubtfully. A soft sound that was probably someone frantically advising her, but that revealed nothing to Baard, prompted her to say rather sharply, "Lee Soobin, when do you intend to return? We need to talk about this."

"Not tonight I'm afraid. This project is under a serious time crunch, so I've started immediately. I'm just calling because I don't want you to worry that I've been kidnapped or anything," Lin Hao replied quickly.

"You should at least eat supper," Danika argued, probably for something that would get him out of the building, but it sounded like just the sort of thing a lover would worry about even if she wasn't happy with him.

Lin Hao smiled and replied, "They have already agreed to feed and water me in the manner I've requested. Seriously, don't worry. I'll call you again in the morning, I promise."

After he ended the call he raised an eyebrow at Baard, who cleared his throat and said, "I'll just go order this."