Cassidy stared at him in disbelief before her face darkened with a deep frown. “That’s not funny,” she snapped with a hint of a snarl.

“Seriously CG,” Rowan made a soothing gesture at her, “I’m not joking. I think your parents could be alive. Well, sort of anyway.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Okay bear with me on this, it involves Athanasia and their immortality system.”

A growl began forming in her throat but Rowan held up a hand, forestalling her outburst. “This isn’t just my geek obsession. Hear me out, I have to start at the beginning,” he waited for her to nod before continuing, “I’m not sure if I ever explained how it works, but when Athanasia started development, they designed it to be a next generation online game, or massive multi-player online role-playing game. Like all MMORPGs at the time, players would log into the game to play, and log out of it when they’re done. The Athanasia game model was based on this, but wanted to take it a step further. They wanted it so that you would plug in and fall asleep in the real world, and your character appears in the game world. While you’re playing, it feels like you really exist in the game. When you’re done, you log out and wake up. Sounds simple, right?”

She nodded, but motioned him to speed it along.

“Well, they ran into a gigantic problem, namely the existing infrastructure couldn’t handle the data transfer. Quantum computing made the hardware capable of amazing feats, but the old optical fibre lines that connected everything couldn’t handle the complexity. Too much information going back and forth. It made the game all but unplayable. It’s like me interacting with this cup of coffee,” he took a very deliberate sip from his cup, emphasizing each movement. “See, I performed a very simple set of steps, my brain signaled my arm to pick up the cup and drink. But inside the game, those same simple steps take maybe half a second for the game to register the action, and another half second for the server to send the information back to my brain.”

“You’re talking about lag.”

“That’s right. There are some old game programming tricks to compensate for lag, but not to this degree, not when you’re trying to simulate someone in another world. Gamers want conflict, so if the lag was that bad just trying to drink from a cup, imagine how awful combat was,” Rowan mimed throwing a punch in slow, jerky motions, “it sucked big time, but someone had a brilliant idea. The technology already existed to make a digital copy of people’s brains, what they call a mind-copy, so that people who were dying could have more time to get their affairs in order.”

“Yeah, and it caused a mountain of legal paperwork. We had to learn about it in history class back in high-school. Didn’t they have to deal with massive ethics investigations?” She asked.

He nodded emphatically, “Yeah, that’s exactly right. The courts decided mind-copies don’t have any rights in the real world, but they take the wishes of the mind-copy into consideration when deciding on a case.”

“Okay, I’m guessing the brilliant idea was to incorporate that technology into Athanasia?”

“Absolutely,” he exclaimed with obvious excitement, “instead of a direct connection they copy the player’s mind and the resulting mind-copy lives in the game world. From that moment on, that mind-copy’s entire existence lies within a digital simulation. They don’t log out. Ever. And since they are simulations, they can’t die.”

Cassidy considered his explanation. “Okay, so the immortality hype is making more sense now.”

Rowan grew more animated in his explanation and started speaking faster. “You’re getting it! But, where’s the fun for the original person in the real world if they can’t experience the game, right?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but he plowed ahead without giving her a chance. “Trinios developed a way to upload the mind-copy memories to the original person. It was ridiculously slow, but it was possible to do it within a five-hour period on average, so they designed it to work while players in the real world slept. The player goes to sleep and wakes up with the memories of having lived in a fantasy world. And as a bonus, they figured out how to download the player’s memories to the mind-copy. So, the memory transfer goes both ways.”

“Wait, you mean like two versions of one person are living two different lives? One person in the real world and one in this fantasy world?”

“Exactly,” he said with a grin, “and since the mind-copies existed directly on the server it meant there was no interfering lag and they could experience everything just like they were living in the real world, except with magic and monsters. Meanwhile, the players in the real world go about their daily lives as usual, but when they go to sleep both their memories sync. A few hours later, both player and mind-copy remember everything the other one did.”

“Okay, what’s your point?” Cassidy wanted him to get back to her parents, although she understood his excitement over the game now.

“Sorry, I got a little sidetracked,” he cleared his throat, “okay, like I was saying, Athanasia makes mind-copies of players who live in the game. In most games, if a player dies, they just re-spawn. There are death penalties, but nothing permanent. This is also how it works for a mind-copy in Athanasia, making them immortal for all intents and purposes.”

“I can guess where you’re going with this, you think my parents are in the game?” She shook her head to her own question, “Not possible, Rowan. Athanasia’s been out what, five or six years? My parents died over ten years ago, way before Athanasia.”

Rowan leaned forward, the serious look firmly back in place. “Do you remember when we first met when we were both placed in the Bradley’s foster care?”

“How could I forget. You didn’t like my name because it didn’t sound cool enough for a ten-year-old, you’ve been calling me CG ever since.”

A hint of a smile appeared, but he shook his head. “I mean that first night where we stayed up all night swapping stories about each other’s parents. You told me that your dad was an engineer and your mom was a brain surgeon.”

“Mom was a neurologist, not a brain surgeon. Enormous difference.”

“Not important,” he waved his hand in the air dismissively, “the point is that after we spoke that night, I had this recurring nightmare that you were going to operate on my brain in the middle of the night. After a couple of days of waking up in a cold sweat, I devoted my spare time searching the internet to learn everything I could about you. I needed to make sure you weren’t in foster care because your parents were on death row as serial killers or something.”

“You never told me that,” she said with a small chuckle.

“Like I said, not important, but it is relevant. In searching about your parents, I found out they worked together for a company called Omega AI where they were developing cutting edge artificial intelligence. Not to make ten-year-old me sound too callous, but it was a big relief for me at the time and I slept better knowing you were just another orphan like me. I didn’t really give it a second thought until Athanasia came out a few years later. You know how obsessed I got with reading up on it, but I was a foster kid. I could never afford the fees even if I was old enough to play, not like the Bradley’s had any money to spare with four other foster kids either. When I found out Trinios employees get free access to the game, that’s when I decided to learn everything I could about Trinios to get a job there when I was old enough. One day while I was researching Trinios, I came across an article. Before they created Athanasia, Trinios had acquired a company working on artificial intelligence by a hostile takeover, and that company was Omega AI.”

Cassidy pursed her lips, “I can guess where you’re going with this."

“Let me finish before you start doubting me.” Rowan told her. “Over a decade ago, Omega AI had created an incredibly advanced artificial intelligence they called Gaia. Trinios came into the picture when they hired Omega to help with the memory sharing technology, and the employees of Omega even volunteered to create mind-copies for testing. But there was some kind of falling out between both companies and they broke ties. When Trinios eventually bought out Omega in their hostile takeover, they acquired the Gaia technology and integrated her and those original volunteer mind-copies into the game world.”

“I mean, it’s a sweet fantasy Rowan,” Cassidy’s face clouded with gloom, “but that’s all it is. The thought of my parents still existing in some form or another is…” she swallowed a lump that formed in her throat, “well, it’s something I’ve always wished. But they died a long time ago, I’m sure the company wipes inactive accounts or something.”

“That’s just it!” He said, his eyes shining. “They can’t. Mind-copies are protected by law, even the ones inside Athanasia. The only rights mind-copies have is to exist, and these rights are severely enforced by the courts. If Trinios ever tried to delete a mind-copy within the game, they’d be in litigation for decades. Not to mention they would lose billions as their stocks would plummet once word got out.”

Cassidy felt her heart thunder in her ears at his explanation but shook her head in denial. “No. It’s just not possible,” she said, opening her smart-ring display and skimming through documents, “they would have reached out to contact me. Someone would have told me. The life insurance lawyers, someone from the company…” she flicked back and forth through the pages of data on her display with increasing speed, her eyes darting across reams of information trying to locate a single sign of what Rowan just told her. Unable to find anything, her heart pounded in her ears as she slammed a fist down onto the table in frustration making the coffee cups jump. “Someone would have told me!”

Rowan reached out and cradled her hand, “Hey, I could be wrong. Your parents might not have gotten involved with the technology, or they might have never volunteered to have a mind-copy created either. But an engineer and a neurologist both working for the company that helped develop the technology and not volunteering?”

Using her free hand to rub her eyes before tears could form, Cassidy found herself almost scared to ask. “But they could be in there, right?”

He nodded solemnly, “I wouldn’t have said anything otherwise.”

Closing her holo-display, she stared down at the table for several minutes in silence, her mind awash in emotions and possibilities. When she spoke, she did so with a look of pure determination.

“I’m going with you to sign up for Athanasia,” she said. “We’re going to find my parents.”