A few minutes later Amelia was in her room getting clothes for the early breakfast. Aidan had threatened her, promised really but he always sounded like he was making an ultimatum, that she wouldn’t escape him later. She wasn’t so secretive about how thrilled she was about the prospect, running her hands over his chest and kissing his lips once more before she had left.

She was about to go join the others after clothing herself into some comfortable form-jeans and a pop Warrior Jane T-shirt Raven had gotten her when her terminal hummed on the lamp table. She turned around and pressed the screen to see who was ringing her. Being in Australia made long-distance calls troublesome anyway, so it might be important if someone was bothering to call her in the middle, or near the end of the night.

CATHERINE WAIDE

Weird, Catherine usually called Amelia from unlisted numbers. Amelia tapped the screen to accept the call and was struck with weird again as the screen accepted the call but the word ‘personal’ flashed across the screen. Personal was a setting that meant the caller was asking you to use an earpiece and not be on speaker. Amelia snapped out the little earpiece from the side of the terminal where it fit when it wasn’t being used and slipped it on. “Hello?”

“Hello.” The terminal flashed black and only that single word remained.

“Uh. Hi. What are you doing Catherine? I’m wearing the earpiece you don’t have to type.” Amelia frowned.

“I am not Catherine. I am borrowing her office line.” The text flashed once more.

“Okay. Does she know you’re on her phone?” Amelia asked after nothing else was forthcoming. The text was super fast in appearing. She had her terminal set to show people typing and normally she should even see errors before they were corrected.

Instead, complete messages were appearing. She supposed it could be Catherine’s terminal setting not to send incomplete or in-progress messages.

“No. With exceptional reluctance, I have decided I need to speak with you. Will you be my witting ally?” Again, the complete message almost instantly. Amelia was taken aback. She wondered why she was using an earpiece if they were just going to use text.

“Is this a prank call? I mean, you’re really going to get fired,” she said, thinking it could have been some kid. She was just having trouble imagining some kid sneaking into Centra Holdings and somehow into Catherine Waide’s personal office and then somehow calling her number.

“You are already an unwitting ally.” The screen flashed, and almost before she finished reading it there was another message. “Now, will you be a witting one?”

“For truth, justice, and love!” Amelia said sarcastically. She was seriously missing breakfast for this.

“Sarcasm. Yes, those are all prized values that I require your help with.” The screen flashed white and black at one-second intervals.

“Are you laughing?” Amelia demanded after a moment of staring at the flashes.

The screen went back to steady black. “Yes.” There was something about the simple text answer that set her off.

“Just use the microphone.” Amelia snapped.

“I see. You are not declining. You are uncertain as to my motivation. Understandable. Please wait for a moment. The earpiece will be necessary.” Text flashed again. Entire messages in less than seconds. Redundant to think about how weird that was, but that was how weird it was. Amelia started to have a good and healthy dose of natural suspicion toward who was messaging her and what their identity might be.

The terminal color changed and transitioned into a video link that opened. It was an overhead security camera view of a lab. After a moment a portion of the screen zoomed in on three elongated tubes in the center of the laboratory. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of cables and tubes as well as what appeared to be hospital equipment was plugged into them. When the zoom stopped she was staring directly at the tubes from a close-up view, making her blood freeze in her veins. Aidan, Raven, and Forsythe lay looking frozen and dead.

“I am no longer amused,” Amelia said coldly as an icy hand reached up and grasped her heart. “I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait. This is not to cause distress. It is to facilitate understanding.” Flashed briefly before the video returned. This time there was a timestamp in the corner and the camera zoomed out mercifully to a wider view. The timestamp was dated more than thirty years ago.

What the hell was going on? More confused than ever Amelia trembled slightly from the anger she felt welling up inside her body. She glanced up at the corner of her terminal and noted that the white camera light was on. This freak was watching her reactions. “I am not feeling facilitated.” There was a woman in the video who moved around the lab, always near a terminal.

The video shifted every 3 seconds a moment later, the position of the woman revealing that time was being advanced at an incredible rate. It reminded her of when Vienne advanced time to get passed the useless information. Moments later every time a frame changed a whole day advanced, then weeks, then a year. The time finally slowed a year later and went back to normal completely as a woman entered the lab, jarring the woman in the wheelchair out of her quiet work.

Audio hissed alive in her earpiece as the woman who entered the lab came into view. The screen shifted to give a closer shot of both women. The one in the wheelchair was wearing glasses and had her hair up in a simple pony-tail. She had a large white jacket, bulky and large over her body making it impossible to tell what she had actually looked like. The other one though, brusque, young, dazzling, and confidently blonde. She turned briefly toward the tubes and the close-up revealed the eyes. Amelia froze for the second time. This was Catherine Waide.

“I can’t do it! I had to come. I’m visiting every week from now on.” Catherine said, her words sounded hurt and sad. “Not just for them. You shut yourself in here. This isn’t good. You’re alone.”

“I’m not alone.” The woman laughed. “If you want to come that's more than fine but you need to build up Centra. It’s your crazy plan.”

“I’m not crazy though, right? We’re closer now, what is it, 80%?” Catherine glanced at the tubes in the middle of the room again. “I can’t sleep at night anymore. I see them.”

“You didn’t even know them.” The other woman said gently. “Have a life Catherine, from what I’ve reviewed they would sneer at you if I defrost them and they see you’ve spent your life pacing in front of three bodies.”

“You didn’t answer the crazy part.” Catherine snorted.

“85% until Awakened Aspiration is ready for initial dive testing. But I was going to call you anyway, and not about that, so it’s good you’re here. You’re not going to like it.” The woman cautioned and bobbed her head at the capsules. “It’s about the prisoners.”

“Goddammit, Tak I’ve had too much coffee, too little sleep, and you’re too calm.” Catherine ranted, surprising a smile from Amelia who was now completely fascinated with the scene. “Wait, why are you calling them the prisoners?”

“That’s just what K and I call them,” Tak said, apparently well adjusted to her friend and bosses pace. She continued, “Kbyte believes… No, we believe that the best solution is to buy out Last Sojourn’s rights. We’ll deconstruct the data in the lab and run the strain of the virus until we figure it out. Those chips have to be fed live network access to our dummy LS server anyway but we’ll never get anywhere with tricking the virus unless we have the original 'strain'.”

“Just… deactivating it or … shutting it down isn’t an option after all?” Catherine frowned.

“Simulations that K and I have run show death 99.99% in all scenarios conceived,” Tak replied simply.

“Do you know how much money that will take?” Catherine ran a hand through her hair. “No, shut up! Let me be brilliant. No, stop thinking. God, you’re so loud Tak.” Catherine paced back and forth, her heels clearly being picked up over the security camera’s microphones. “Screw it. I’ll get it.”

“This from the woman who threw her whole life behind the revival of a game that nearly killed her.” Tak sounded amused. "It won't be ready for a long, long time you know? Not with the conditions that we've set and our wait for them."

“I'm alive though, and this is different from the death game. No, not this game.” Catherine shook her head. “This one will be different Tak. People will log on, have fun, have lives, love each other. It’s how it should have been the first time. Goddamn, bureaucrats and net sissy’s throwing away VRMMO’s because some lunatic managed to bug one?”

“Taking that hostage thing pretty well.” Tak sounded amused again.

“I read a lot Tak and I tell you, people have dreamed of this for years. Centuries even. It’s popular cultural history. We’re not going to throw it away.” Catherine shook her head. “If I can’t go to some distant galaxy in my life why can’t we have VR at least? Since the dive system everyone has been talking about how risky it is! They all say no one would risk a full immersive dive again. Some say they hadn't been willing in the first place. I know though, that there are more than just... these people, who want it though.”

“I’m not arguing.” Tak held up her hands gently in surrender, with slowness and great care. “Just saying you’re passionate about it for someone who won’t use it.”

“Have to have something to do while I save those three.” Catherine’s eyes drifted once more to the capsules.

“What were they like?” Tak asked suddenly.

Catherine straightened. “I only met them twice so I’m sure I have no idea what they were like. But to me…” She spun her hair in her hand for a moment, a charming and decidedly girlish habit, Amelia thought quietly. “Like a shock to the heart. Everything was bad, Tak. Really bad. Everywhere. Everyone. All of us just gave up or did horrible things or did horrible things and then gave up.” She sighed.

“And then the prisoners..?” Tak prompted.

“I wish you would call them the heroes,” Catherine muttered. “Then they were there. Like we were aliens. Like we were NPC’s. Like they couldn’t understand our language. They moved freely through the world, they actually quested a bit in my area, it was like the death game was our problem, not theirs. Of course, they talked to us, they always did try in every town I heard. I didn’t pay them any mind that first time. Don’t die. Please don’t die.” Catherine went silent.

“I won’t let them die,” Tak said gently.

“No. That’s what they said. With such sincerity, it sounded like a mean joke.” Catherine smiled ruefully. “I told Aidan that it didn’t matter. We were just going to die in this fake world. We were fake people. Then he laughed…” Catherine laughed shortly and angrily, then with violence punched the table near Tak.

Tak jerked abruptly, startled, her mouth opened wide in shock.

“Sorry. He was… he… Kind of a jerk but… Prick really…” Catherine struggled, seemingly unable to describe how she felt about him.

Amelia could totally relate.

“Working pretty hard for a jerk,” Tak said, grinning.

“No.” Catherine sighed. “When I was little I was afraid of swimming. My father used to tease me. We had this lake…”

“Of course, you had a lake,” Tak interjected dryly.

“Shut up! This is my story!” Catherine snickered, totally unrepentant for being born wealthy. “So he took me out once and he shocked the water with the light stick. You know the ones that send a current that makes everything easier to see through they have for water now?” Tak nodded. “Well anyway, I could see the bottom and all the things and stuff and fish and then he teased me.”

“Teased you?” Tak asked.

“Yeah, he said, well Cat? Thought maybe there were big alligators in there, huh? Now that we’ve cleared that up, get the hell in the water.” Catherine said, mimicking an older man’s voice. “Then he pushed me in the water. It was the most fun I ever had after the initial sputtering and almost drowning.”

“Fun?” Tak repeated, obviously horrified. Tak looked like she was taking a moment to stop herself from suggesting maybe Catherine should have been submitted to CPS.

“Yeah, that wasn’t the part I meant to get at. What I meant was Aidan was like that. He made you feel… so angry that you had to prove him right because you could only see how stupid YOU were, and somehow that’d show him.” Catherine shook her head. “He laughed at me and told me that LS wasn’t fake, and we weren’t fake people. LS was just our reality for a little while. Hold out. Please don’t die the day before we get out.”

“Oh. One of those. I don’t think I’d try to prove anyone like that right.” Tak sounded a little disgusted. “Obnoxious was the word you were looking for Catherine.”

Catherine chuckled, and still chuckling added, “I was going to kill myself that day.”

Silence met her proclamation and Tak put her hands on her wheels and slowly turned herself to face Catherine. She crossed her hands in her lap and waited, apparently exceptionally irked at the last comment and unwilling to let it pass.

“Yeah. Had it all planned out? You don’t feel pain in LS or cry or… really much of anything so quick is what I thought. It’d have to be quick when I did it. No drowning or watching a life bar drain. The best I could do was a short drop.” Catherine turned away from her, staring at the capsules. “So I was at the top of this mountain. Took me hours to get up there. Dodging, hiding, waiting. I couldn’t get killed by monsters before I had a chance to do it myself! So there I was staring out over the forests and the sun was setting. I was a bit dramatic.”

“Was,” Tak stressed the word suspiciously but then went silent so Catherine could continue.

“I was thinking about how beautiful it was, and how smart I was for finding such a beautiful way out. I stepped out into empty air… and closed my eyes.” Catherine doubled over suddenly, causing Tak to jerk away from the sudden movement. Catherine seemed to be overcome with laughter. When she finally stopped and caught her breath she smiled. “So nothing happens. After about a minute of horrible vertigo and weightlessness, I gather up my courage and open one eye and I am staring at this little girl.”

“Caught you?” Tak asked.

“No. Grabbed me. They were behind me the whole time. Followed me up, they said, because I looked like I was going to see something cool and they wanted to see what it was too. Pure curiosity saved my life. Since I was hiding and darting around they did the same thing.” Catherine held out an arm in front of her as if she were holding up some sort of invisible sack she was inspecting. “So, I said little girl, but her LS avatar was tall enough. She talked and moved and you knew she was young, so little girl. She says to me that I better watch my step because I had just about ruined their awesome sunset.”

“You… were going to ruin their sunset.” Tak nodded, her lips closing into a thin line as her shoulders started to shake.

“Yeah. Don’t go ruining people’s sunsets!” Catherine pointed out into space toward the capsule, and Amelia immediately recognized the caricature body language of Raven. “Jeez, you could even have landed on someone and then where would you be!? Ass deep in Adventurer, that’s where!” Catherine put her finger down and her arm fell to her side. “They were gone after a short conversation. I guess they couldn’t babysit everyone. They were leveling at that point, though no one knew why. Now I guess we do.”

“You never tried again?” Tak asked softly.

“No. Every time I thought of it I saw that little girl screaming at me that I had just about ruined a perfect day for her, and in between the tears I couldn’t cry and the laughter I couldn’t stop, I moved past it.” Catherine sat back on the edge of the desk. “What were we talking about?”

“Saving the three heroes. Building your game that’s going to save the world. Making sure VRMMO’s have a future. Making a world we can protect and leave for everyone we love and…” Tak paused, there was a small chime and she looked at a screen briefly. “...oh sorry, yeah, and saving Catherine Waide.”

“I already got saved.” Catherine got up and moved to the door. “You have my number. Use the damn terminal from now on I hate inter-office mail. I know you’re back to almost Luddite, but for as smart as you are, please make the attempt to save trees.”

The door hissed quietly behind her as she left and Tak watched the door. She whispered. “Notation: Priority 1, save Catherine Waide.” A small beep caused her to return her attention to her workstation.