Danika felt like her evening in 'Living Jade Empire' was a very social one somehow. Aside from being cuddled up with Shinichi in real life, ZipZing interacted with a lot of different people.

She used up her transformations while attempting to pass the skill on to Quicksilver's daughter. Penname couldn't play long because she had homework, but Quicksilver stayed longer. She used up her time as a cat through her purrfection skill when SaltySiamese and Kit were ready to travel the shadow path that they'd finally located.

After they obtained the gilded feather, she and ShinZing met up again in Tianxia at the request of Tundo, Icieth and Melodious, who had been busy lately. Their fourth member, Tacet, was still in the beginner's vale. They were ready to set a time for their first performance in Living Jade Empire.

Shrubbery and MatchlessMinion were already waiting at the portal platform with the three musicians, when ZipZing and ShinZing arrived. Icieth bounced over and announced, "We need all three big seas to approve Keeper Kin to hire extra NPCs on concert days!"

"Three big seas?" Danika asked with confusion.

"She means the letter, and us," Shrubbery explained. "Captain, Conductor, and Coordinator."

Danika approved the expenditure without question, although she was a little curious about whether existing NPCs would be hired or temporary ones would be created for those days, the way Song Solvin and Keeper Kin had been generated by the position they held. ShinZing and Shrubbery didn't say anything about her carelessness, but they added an expense limit before giving their own approval.

ZipZing and ShinZing finished up the evening on a quest with Nao1 and Ryullusion. Danika felt like it was a relaxing little adventure. The party composition of Bard, Witch, and Mercenary combined with ZipZing felt very much like a standard RPG adventure grouping. The quest itself was basically a mission to steal something from someone's underground fortress, and felt very traditional too. It also probably added another notorious verse to 'The Little Dragon's Notorious Tale'.

--

Danika started the next day feeling refreshed, but Shinichi was wheezing a little. He crawled back into bed when she started her shift.

Unfortunately, even with so many advances in technology, the common cold had yet to be defeated. Even a medi pod couldn't do much for it besides diagnose it. It might have the ability to feed oxygen into your blood if you were dying of pneumonia or something, but it still couldn't do anything about a simple runny nose.

When she logged in, Jade didn't space her like he had the day before. He stood calmly in the center of the group workspace. His celestial robes looked a little silly with the mobile game screen floating beside him. His little chibi-style human character was moving on the screen, despite the fact that he didn't appear to be interacting with the screen directly. He wasn't watching it with his avatar's eyes either, but in theory he could always see everything everywhere, especially now that he was the core of the game.

"You don't need to touch the screen to interact with your character?" Danika asked.

"No, do you want me to?" Jade replied cheerfully.

"No, it's alright," she told him quickly.

Neither Devon Yu nor Lin Hao were on, but Danika was the last to arrive aside from them. Takahashi asked, "Since we decided to limit ships to 90% of the speed of light, and make the players cooperate to build the massive space folding system portals, should we begin designing the planets within potential exploration range? There won't be very many at first."

Danika eyed Jade and asked, "Can we start with him instead? Let's design his look and make our work environment match it? I thought that it sounded like Jade was going to be designing or at least mapping planets to match the spiral arm map that Devon was going to be uploading today?"

"We can also set up the tutorial areas," Paul agreed.

Takahashi agreed after a moment of thought. "Yes, that's actually a good way to get us all onto the same page, so to speak, about what will be 'typical' before we start working on what will be exotic."

Myles suggested, "If you make those areas space based, it will also show us what kinds of data Jade is still missing better than working with a planet would."

Lin Hao logged in mid-morning, and he seemed to approve of their efforts, despite the grimace he showed them when they had Jade give him the list of problem areas that they'd already found.

Jade himself was still wearing a human form, despite much argument for android, or even an energy based lifeform. Paul had argued that an android would actually be a more realistic representation of what Jade really was. Danika thought that the energy form was actually closer, since Jade lacked the physical body that an android could explore the real world with.

Takahashi was the one who pointed out, "The reason that the first AIs you meet in 'Living Jade Empire' are human, is because humans generally feel like they can relate to other humans. We tested it some early on, and people were far more likely to admit their difficulties to a human, or nearly human character."

The "space suit" that had replaced Jade's imperial robes was nearly as improbable in its simplicity, as his robes had been in their elaborate cleanliness. The immediate advantage of this was that their work outfits got to share the same styling. In the beginning of the game, characters would "wake" from the low energy hibernation that they had been suspended in for long distance travel, allowing them to take Earth (as it currently existed) neatly out of the picture.

Devon joined them finally during the afternoon. He looked around for a bit and then complained, "Isn't the starter area too high-tech?"

Danika objected immediately, "I don't think you can expect to safely wake people from forced hibernation without a stable environment. We did keep the fictional gravity technology out of the 'nest' station."

"I do like how you've linked that to the possibility of intersystem portals. Gravity is still not very well understood, and it seems entirely plausible that it could be related to folding space, although a lot of people are still going to declare it to be ridiculous," Devon said approvingly.

After awhile Jade complained, "When will I be able to see the Empire?"

Danika turned toward his avatar and Jade pointed to the mobile game screen beside him. "You can see it now?" she pointed out questioningly.

"No I can't," Jade protested.

"After you leave the beginner's vale," Paul suggested with surprise.

Danika blinked. If Jade had all of the daily records of the Jade Emperor before he was copied, as he seemed to, he should know more than them about how a character started the game. She moved over to where she could see the screen of the mobile application. Jade obligingly made it larger and tilted it toward her.

"You've already left the vale?" she asked with surprise.

"Yes," Jade agreed. "It was easy to gather the skills despite lacking a complete record of the combinations and characters available. 'The Traveling Merchant' part of my history contains many records of interactions in that section."

"Isn't the game going to be really boring for you when you already know everything?" Danika asked with surprise.

She only now realized that this was basically a case of the game master who had designed an adventure module sitting down to run through it as a player. 'Living Jade Empire' contained more than a human could keep straight, but Jade wasn't human. Nobody could possibly know more about the game than he could, except the Empire's Jade Emperor.