>Initializing… …

>Heart rate… BASELINE

>Blood pressure… BASELINE

>Body temperature… BASELINE

>Synchronized… 66%

>

"I've already made up my mind." From the mantle above the fireplace, Selma-Rey picked up the tiny envelope. "In fact," she added. "I'm leaving town tonight… I'd meant to leave before you came back."

Grandeur accepted the envelope. Grimacing, he glanced to see outside at the fading daylight.

"There is no changing your mind I suppose?" he asked. He shifted and the floorboards creaked under his weight. "You do understand I cannot - should not - take this."

Selma-Rey's eyes glinted in the firelight. She turned away. "We have no other choice."

He reached for her gently, but in his hesitation, she’d already found the door. She looked back at him, her eyes truly red then.

Lowering his hand, Grandeur frowned and nodded a silent good-bye. Though he held back his tears, his blue eyes became glassy in the warm glow of firelight.

The old oak door creaked open. Outside children laughed as they passed. Senechal Festival was still in full effect. Wiping her tears on her sleeve, she picked up her staff, a sheathed weapon, and traveling sack.

Looking back once more she tried to smile. Then, stepping out into the growing twilight, she shut the door and was gone.

"Selma…" He spoke too late.

Grandeur looked down at the envelope in his hand. Sighing, he ran a bony finger over the wax seal. He turned, picking up his old wide-brimmed hat from the chair.

Arama Kitano peered out from the bedroom where he watched. As the wizard's back was turned, she crossed the living room, stepping lightly as to avoid making the old floorboards creak.

"There's no need for that," Grandeur said. Turning, his tattered robes dusted the floor as he faced her. He slipped the envelope into a deep pocket. "You've been here the whole time."

"I’m sorry, but this scene has always been one of my favorites." Kitano shrugged. "Didn't mean to interrupt."

"Who are you?" His inspection of her took him a few strides closer. "And what sort of dress is this?" He tapped the lanyard around her neck, reading the ID card. “What is a Kitano Arrowroot Specialist?”

Kitano smiled. “Kitano’s my last name, but you can call me Kit.”

“Then you’re an adventurer?” He padded his pocket where the envelope waited. “Like Selma?”

"I'm not here to play today," Kitano explained. "Work invitation. Firechanter hired me to fix a glitch… Arrowroot is what the game is coded in. This system is a little easier to work on the game-side, you know?"

Grandeur arched an eyebrow. "I can't say that I do."

"There's gonna be some QA I’ll have to run once everything is put back to the public." Before her, a virtual screen displayed a running tab of in-world code. "I'm gonna have to shut down ports 17 through 21, the chatlog for 21, and--" she paused abruptly. "Underworld 30?"

"Underworld 30?"

Kitano smirked. She didn't have to chat with NPCs, but Grandeur's particular programming as a late-quest party member gave him limited AI that was rarely ambivalent.

"There's nothing in the underworlds except background code, and Underworld 30, in particular, should be closed down already." Frowning, Kitano drew in the air a simple square. The new display flashed into existence.

Grandeur crept past her, searching the air before him for the screens. The NPCs had no reason to see them as Kitano could, so the developers never coded it.

"Juice?" Kitano called. "You there? I got a question about the error code I need you to check out."

"Having trouble already?" The second screen glowed as it replied. "Reboot is gonna be in your blood-stream for another hour.... You can't abort because you forgot something."

"Nothing forgotten." Kitano sighed and adjusted her glasses. In the real world, she did not wear glasses, but here in Herald of Tomorrow, she liked the feeling of them. The weight. "There's an issue with the error code that you generated."

"I don't make mistakes."

Kitano didn't have time for sensitive AI, so she pressed on. "Underworld 30 is on the report."

"Underworld 30 is closed."

Grandeur tugged his beard, watching. "Who is it that you're talking with?"

Kitano ignored him. "So, why is it on the error report?"

"Because there is an error. It needs to be shut down," Juice said.

"Do you see the error in that?"

"Just make sure it's off." Satisfied by that instruction, Juice's screen disappeared.

Kitano exhaled bitterly. "I guess I'll check it out."

“There’s some sort of problem with our world, I take?” Grandeur sat down by the fire and began fishing around for his pipe. “I don’t know what errors you speak of, but there are much darker designs at work, dear Kitano.”

“Just Kit.”

"At any rate, you seem to be in some trouble." Grandeur puffed his pipe to life and stared into the fire as if lost in thought.

“It’s all fixable,” Kitano said. She began to type at her display. The duplication glitch causing issues with ports 17 through 21 would require all the players using them to be disconnected. Typing in a string of code onto the display, she prepared to send the disconnect ping to everyone. To prevent kicking herself off the port, she added a cause to her code that would make it impossible for her to log out until the disconnection ping was finished.

Kitano keyed in the script and watched as the player log dropped from the tens of thousands to just one.

“Something has changed,” Grandeur said.

Kitano looked up from her display to find the wizard’s gaze had turned to her. He watched her behind a meditative glare.

“Whelp,” Kitano said, looking up. “I’m the last player on this server. Maybe that’s what you sense.”

“There’s something else…” he whispered and contemplated on it.

“That’s just the easy part,” she breathed. What she would have given to be the only player online actually enjoying the game world rather than working on it. Now for the duplication glitch, she thought.

When Firechanter Gaming released Herald of Tomorrow, the Herald AI was designed to be an ever-expanding, pure, flexible, sprawling quest-machine. Every player had a personalized and unique entry into the game. By the end of the first month, it was said two-thirds of the Earth Empire was playing. Needless to say, the Herald AI’s attention was divided. Each player required a fraction of his total attention. To compensate for the massive player-base, Herald AI was upgraded and allowed to propagate slave AIs unregulated.

This kept him busy less than a percent of the time. So, given the opportunity, Firechanter began hooking Herald AI into more systems: player registrations, player moderation, and player banking information. Soon to follow came outside networks, such as the Firechanter HR databases, or Firechanter payroll accounts. Only a few systems had ever propagated so far to be considered artificially alive. The AI had made the jump from mere artificial intelligence to a media brand.

As a result, sometimes the Herald AI would error during the duplication process. Most times it was harmless; perhaps a player would find two copies of an item rather than one. The worst happened when NPCs began to be continually replicated, or worse yet when entire dimensions of buildings were spawned one upon another. Herald AI could be asked to fix the errors, but often it would turn a blind eye to its slaves' actions.

“Scrubbers are online now,” she said, waving the display away. “They’ll have the chatlog and all the other ports cleaned up for everyone to come back in no time.” She smiled at him. “Cheer up. I’ve just got to check out Underworld 30 for myself… See why it’s online and what’s going on with it.”

Grandeur got to his feet. “I think it would be wise, Ms. Kit, for you to have some company.”

Kitano considered it. “Sure, why not?”

“Then it’s settled.” He put away his pipe and grabbed the blue hat from the table next to him. Picking up an oak staff from its resting place against the hearth, he looked at her. “Lead the way to this Underworld.”

Stifling a laugh, Kitano reached over and tapped Grandeur on the shoulder. “We’re already there.”

Grandeur turned, almost slipping on the slick ground. Underworld 30, quite similar to many other hidden areas of the game, offered no true ground nor air. They stood over a black void that reached out as far as the eye could see in all directions. Above them came the trumpeting of loose sounds, the low rumble of electrical interference, and the skeletal free-form lines of abstract shapes suspended in various altitudes.

An errant wind ripped around them, flipping their hair.

“This is the pit!” Grandeur called, holding down his hat.

Kitano fixed a few loose strands of auburn hair back behind her ears. Well, Underworld 30 is indeed active… Now to figure out what’s wrong with it.

“Come with me.” She gestured for Grandeur to follow.

The wizard nodded. Snapping his fingers over the end of his oak staff, the pommel lit up in a brilliant flash of light. Blinding them for just a moment, the light stabilized into a glowing orb fit enough to see.

Leading him on, they crossed the blackened landscape. Though the void swallowed much of the light from Grandeur’s magic torch, it still glowed, giving them a shadowy glimpse at the slippery ground underfoot.

Soon they came to the edge of an invisible bridge over the void. From deep below they could almost hear the groans of monsters, the result of a monster-spawner misplaced by Herald AI code. By the light of Grandeur’s staff, they could just make out the hidden edges of the void.

“You don’t want to fall down there,” Kitano warned. She took him by the arm and started to cross.

“Truly this is an underworld… The magic and myth of this Arrowroot System is very old and powerful indeed,” Grandeur declared. “Do you have the components to close shut this place?”

“I’m a little overwhelmed by it,” Kitano answered. ‘The underworlds are meant to act as a recycling bin… Only, it doesn’t look like this one’s working at all... It really should already be shut down.”

“Ms. Kit,” Grandeur sounded grave. They stopped. Drawing up his staff, he angled the glowing orb close to her face. “My dear, are you quite alright?”

Kitano touched her face. “I just feel a little warm.”

“You seem quite more than that.”

“Let me check.” Tapping a spot on the base of her wrist, she recalled a virtual display.

>… …

>Heart rate… ELEVATED

>Blood pressure… HIGH

>Body temperature… HIGH

>Synchronized… 76%

>

Underfoot the ground began to quake. Grandeur fought to keep his balance. Kitano fell to her knees. The ground felt as hard as crystal and as hot as an oven. Her pants split over an unseen, razor edge.

“Something’s not right.” Kitano braced herself as the bridge swayed gently. “My synch is going up… And… I don’t feel well.”

Grandeur wrapped one arm around her, bringing her back up to her feet. “There’s no end in sight! We must press on to the other side!”

Kitano staggered, held straight by the wizard, she stepped forward. Every few steps, he pounded the ground, testing it as they moved. Quickly they found the other side of the chasm. As they stepped off the bridge, the quaking stopped.

“I think… We’re going to have to get out of here.” Kitano clapped her hands onto Grandeur’s shoulders. But when the world around them did not change, her heart sank. “It’s not working--”

The wizard pointed ahead. “Look there!” he called.

Kitano followed his gaze. Though she could not have seen it while she was on the bridge, now on the other side, they could both see a spectral light not far away. Wrapped in an iridescent glow stood a lean man. If not by the blonde hair resting on his shoulders, it was by the tasteful and casual attire that Kitano recognized him.

“The master of this realm,” Grandeur whispered. His hand padded his coat pocket. “I should not have brought such precious cargo… How could I have known we’d find an apparition such as this?”

“This is a good thing,” Kitano corrected him. “That’s Stephan Rose, one of the primary developers for the game.” She started toward him.

“Then you know this thing?”

“I’ve never met him, but he’s famous.” She gave his coat a tug in her direction. “Come on, if you’ve ever wanted to meet your maker, now is the time.”

“Tread carefully,” Grandeur warned.

The two entered into the mouth of a cave, of sorts, built up from the same rough ground below them. Though she didn’t see it happen, it appeared all around Stephan Rose like a barrier and forced them to approach slowly.

Stephan watched them patiently. “Did you turn off ports 17 through 21?” he asked when they came close. “A hundred thousand players were silenced.”

Kitano felt a pang of guilt. She immediately second-guessed herself. That’s what Juice said in his report, wasn’t it? There’s no way the work invitation was a hoax… was it?

“I’m sorry, sir.” She bowed her head. “I was asked by the company—"

“Which company?”

“… Firechanter, of course.” Kitano gulped down any fear and plugged on. “I’m a self-employed Arrowroot Specialist. They had an issue with duplication glitches bogging down the servers. So, I sent a disconnect ping to all of the players on those ports.”

Stephan made no indication he understood, or heard, for that matter.

Turning his attention to Grandeur, he wrinkled his nose. “Why is this thing here?”

Kitano could hear Grandeur’s grip tighten on his staff.

“I thought he could be of some help,” she looked up to him. “And you know what? He was actually.”

Raising his hand, Stephan reached out toward Grandeur. “You should not have brought him here.” The developer’s tone took on a wrathful growl. “Begone, elf.”

The light from Grandeur’s staff was snuffed out. A heat tickled Kitano’s palm, and when she looked over, the wizard was burning from head to toe. She tore her hand away too late, feeling heat blister her fingers. The wizard lifted, as though the fire burned away at the gravity around him. The NPC made no sound, for it all happened in an instant.

All that was left when the fire died out was an ashen envelope. The paper burned away, Kitano could see the Thornwood Gem within. The perfect, emerald marquise shot from the spot on the ground into Stephan’s hand.

Kitano fell to her hands and knees. Her vision swam.

>… …

>Heart rate… DANGER

>Blood pressure… DANGER

>Body temperature… DANGER

>Synchronized… 82%

>

82%? That can’t be… There’s got to be some mistake. Kitano coughed despite herself. She tried to tell herself the pain was not real. She pulled at the neck of her shirt and gasped for air. Her body, her real body, ached for water and cool air.

Stephan Rose loomed over her. “Poor girl,” he said simply. “I now know what you are… Your kind should not be here.”

Reaching up, she tried to grab him. “Please, help me. Mr. Rose?”

Stephan’s hand met her own. His touch was electric, sending forth an immense heat so intense that she screamed. The already blistered hand bubbled against his palm. He would not let go.

“Begone,” he warned. If his voice was not cruel before, it had finally taken that note.

All around Stephan the void filled with light. Brilliant white light filled her vision until she could almost see no more. His hand fell away and the pain ended at once. Stephan looked up, and that was the last thing she could see.

>… …

>Heart rate… ERROR

>Blood pressure… ERROR

>Body temperature… ERROR

>Synchronized… 92%

>