The Devil In White: An AA Online Novel

"I must thank you for indulging an old woman in a roundabout explanation," Catherine said even as she continued smiling. "It's always appreciated when the young are patient with the ramblings of the old. I promise that this will lead to my point and my presence." Amelia felt like Catherine was tossing the old thing at her too much. It seemed like a crutch considering the accuracy of this woman's memory.

"You don't feel that old to me. More like a sage who is getting to the really good part." Amelia said, starting to get excited. This was the sort of story she really liked. It was something that nobody else knew, and she was hearing it from someone who was really there. She felt her lips quivering upward, and couldn't help herself. In her head, she heard Raven telling her that was a creepy smile but she didn't care.

"Oh. You are the one then." Catherine laughed delightedly. "Then let me tell you. When I was free of the game I felt a sense of, I don't know how you would describe it now, elation. I cried when I woke up. I cried when I came home to my parents who hadn't seen me in a year and a half. I cried when I found out my fiance had given up on me and found another woman. Tears of joy, because I was alive."

Amelia tilted her head, idly chewing some of the toast that was still on her plate.

"I loved that world. I still do. I was so grateful to be alive, and I will tell you now, many years later, I am still grateful. Every sip of tea, every breath of air, I relish it." Catherine said. She took a breath and continued slowly, "so I decided that I would devote my life to that world that had made me awaken as a human being. I would dedicate myself to the ideal that the people who had died for me had set. I would create a world where people could do anything and gain power or skills. Safely, of course! They wouldn't necessarily be useful skills or powers, but they would be interesting or at least interesting or useful to individuals. The world would always be in turmoil because the people who had saved us and that I worshipped believed in turmoil, conflict, and exploration of the unknown. They never feared or fell to despair no matter what. I began to build that world, and these long, long years later I have realized it." Her eyes sparkled, and then for a moment, her smile turned to a grim line on her face.

"What happened?" Amelia asked, sitting on the edge of her seat.

"I designed a core AI to manage the game. It is everything I hoped for and more. Well, I had it designed at any rate by a very talented individual. Furthermore, since Last Sojourn is the game in which I found my true self, I decided independently to buy the rights to all the gaming code and had the AI integrate it as it saw fit for future expansions. I imagined certain continents having cities that I recognized from that place. Enemies we had faced, and so forth. The AI core had decrypted about 96% of the game code and is already using a lot of it to generate NPC's and actions, places and events. An homage, though I doubt there are many people that would recognize most of the insertions. That was 3 years ago, and the game went live 3 years ago." Catherine sighed. She reached on the table and picked up a portable terminal that was face down and showed it to Amelia. "This is what I saw two months ago."

-Lost Sojourn Data Integrated - 100%.

Amelia put her plate down and looked up expectantly. "Ah, that's a long time for 4%." She drawled.

"Yes. Truthfully I didn't even think much of it." Catherine leaned forward and put the terminal down again. "Then I saw your Resident companions Amelia. They were the three heroes that shut down the death game."

Amelia's mouth was hanging open, and despite her best efforts, she giggled. The idea of the idiot, the stoic, and the devil beating the end of some game that had claimed the lives over 90,000+ people was just too ridiculous. "No way." Immediate refusal.

"When I saw the video I had the core lookup the Transient list. The one's called Forsythe, Raven, and Aidan are considered to be Residents in the world. Did they seem like generated characters to you?" Catherine asked, eyeing her quietly. Truthfully there was more to this than she was letting on. The core AI had been, as it's creator had once called it, extremely dodgy on the issue.

"Well, no, but the Residents these days are so incredibly in-depth it's hard to differentiate them from people…" Amelia offered.

"I am having their status changed to players immediately. It would be terrible if they were killed under the Resident system. At least until we could confirm…" Catherine trailed off, looking off into her own thoughts.

Amelia was getting the sinking feeling that this was real. The reaction she got when describing the League Finals made sense if you thought about it from a year perspective. Of course, Aidan and the rest had thought that it had been years since they had been killed. If you thought in that manner… Well, it was easy to see that they were considering the worst. That their families and everyone they knew had been killed, died of old age, or moved on to senior citizenship. Worse…

"If they are… these people. How do you get them out of the game?" Amelia finally asked.

"I see you are considering the problem for the first time as a reality," Catherine answered gravely. "An argument could even be made concerning their rights as humans. Can you even consider them a part of humanity anymore?" Catherine eyed her strangely. "I think it even strange that you are believing this scenario with the limited information I have given you."

Amelia didn't have an answer, just a deep ache in her stomach. For the hundredth time since Sleipnir, she wished this was someone else's problem. "We live in an age where only the really crazy things seem impossible until someone does them." Amelia shrugged, before continuing, "if I don't fully understand the technology how can I refute you?" She sighed and the looked up, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "You asked me here, to what? To get me to spy on them?"

"Goodness no, we can do that. They're Residents. It's just that they invited you to their party, Amelia. I know you don't have any idea of the significance of that, but rest assured, it is significant. Those people were always together, and always alone. They trusted no one, relied on no one, and accepted no one. So how is it that you, whom they met so very briefly, have been gathered into their fold?" Catherine leaned forward. "If you could tell me that, I'd be very interested."

"They're… using me to show them around." Amelia offered, wondering why it was a big deal.

"No, they are not, child. You are talking about a trio of individuals that fear nothing, explore everywhere, and don't care where they go or what enemies they make. For you to suggest you are just... a tour guide seems highly unlikely to me. It must be something else." Catherine stated, and there was a finality to her words.

"Then what?" Amelia asked, completely baffled. There was nothing particularly special about her. She would be on her own if there weren't other variables involved.

"Well. For now, let's assume it is a mystery. If you would keep me in mind if any new developments arise, this old woman would be extremely grateful. On my end, I'll work toward a solution that will see them from the game safely. It is my fondest wish to save those that saved me." Catherine smiled again, and Amelia felt herself soften just the tiniest bit. This old woman, as powerful and deceitful as she probably was to everyone else, seemed to be sharing her heart. It was hard to think ill of someone that opened up to you.

"So I just… stay with them?" Amelia asked.

"For now. Help them. Maybe they don't even want your help, so be around them. You may be more influential than you think. It wasn't their charity that made them fight the final boss. They were swayed by the survivors and CHOSE to end the game for their own reasons. I only met the Devil twice, but he was never interested in what other people thought. They were a force of nature in the world that the rest of us thought of as a prison. He even laughed at me once," Catherine looked regretful. "I asked him why he was trying so hard in a fake world when we'd never see our own again."

"What'd he say?" Amelia whispered.

"He said that we were already in the real world and that other world was the fantasy. That this was reality because the world we lived in was the one that would kill us."

"He even sounds pretentious second hand." Amelia's face pinched.

"Yes, though I'm surprised," Catherine admitted. "More by you than anything today."

"Yeah well the legend is a jerk, and his companions are idiots." Amelia retorted, feeling the last bit of caution slip away. She liked this old lady, and the longer she sat around her the less her reputation cowed her.

"No, I mean yes I'm sure. What I meant was I'm surprised you're taking this so well." The old woman said gently.

"Well you get suckered into their pace pretty quick, and after a while, you just start thinking it'll probably work out somehow," Amelia admitted.

"Yes. I think maybe it will. You see, we removed their ch.i.p.s. We are starting to work on their bodies in earnest now. It was a modestly budgeted project but what kind of grateful eccentric would I be if I didn't throw a little more at it?" Catherine's eyes sparkled, and she leaned forward as if anticipating Amelia's next question. "We hooked them up with NeuraDive gear when they still had their ch.i.p.s this past week to study brainwave activity. Since the LS data was completely integrated I wanted to see what would happen."

"Wait for-- wait, what? How did this go from you don't know what's going on to bodies? Bodies?" Amelia asked, slightly irked that she knew she was being led. Also, how did the story advance from possibly ghosts in the machine to having a story about bodies? Amelia almost sighed. Apparently, Catherine Waide hadn't decided until this very moment whether or not to reveal the existence of the bodies to her. The first bit of story had obviously been told to generate a reaction, and Catherine had apparently liked Amelia's reaction well enough to let her in on the next piece and to smooth over the edges of the lies she had been telling in the first part. This story was already terrifying enough just talking about people being stuck in the game.

"Yes. When I bought out Last Sojourn I bought everything, which also included quite a few reparation demands. Naturally it wasn't hard to discern who was who when only three survivors didn't wake up. Everyone else woke up or had died during the game you see. They just lay there, in a coma, as people lost to the world."

"Wow. So they can log out? Wait, they must be ancient…" Amelia said, her stomach churning suddenly and painfully.

"No. They can't log out yet. We're still bringing their bodies out of stasis." Catherine's eyes were sparkling again. Amelia was beginning to think that she had been called out here for a few reasons. The first was that Amelia was traveling with Catherine's personal heroes, and the second was so the old woman could toot her own horn.

"Stasis?" Amelia asked again, wishing she weren't so interested. It was a pain to let people lead you through conversations on their whim.

"Yes. You see when we couldn't revive them, I assigned a project to investigate chip removal. It was, to put it simply, disheartening. The corruption lost its influence at game-over and we simply removed the dive gear for everyone else, but not for them. We were seeking a way to induce that game-over effect and once we managed that we could remove the chip. Once that was done, it occurred to me that they might wake up or maybe our technology would improve enough that we could help them at some point. So we left the ch.i.p.s, and we began to wait. Wait for technology to catch up, to become smarter, more knowledgeable, to ensure a safer return. We certainly couldn't keep them in beds until that happened. Atrophy is a terrible thing and they were already emaciated and losing muscle mass. So, for lack of a better word and saving you the terribly technical garbage, we put them in stasis devices developed for deep space exploration." Catherine was sipping her tea again as she paused, letting Amelia process this. Quite the smug expression.

"So you froze them," Amelia said in disbelief. "Why isn't that technology public?"

"Oh, the process was scrapped when we gave up our dream of the stars." Catherine waved the idea away. "Another tragedy we don't have time to go into I'm afraid. Frozen is not quite correct though, as it implies freezing and damage on a cellular level. Very, very still would be more accurate. As for why the technology is not public? I ensure you everything is very legal and boring but it really comes down to the fact that you might consider this technology to be finishing a long scientific human test case before going public."

"So they didn't age?" Amelia demanded, still stuck on this point.

"Oh no, technically everything still ages, but they are quite well-preserved. It's almost too astonishing if you ask me. It's not a normal situation no matter how you look at it. Raven and Forsythe were easy to get, their families agreed to the process in hopes of their revival and they were glad that their loved ones were cared for without having to foot the cost. The indefinite time period was hard for them but we didn't secret them away. They were allowed visitation rights, left messages, completely kept in the loop. Grateful is how I would describe them. Keeping people alive in a bed is quite expensive. Good people. It is a shame that their lines did not continue. For Forsythe, his mother and father passed naturally some time ago. Raven's too. Both of them are alone now."

"Aidan wasn't easy then?" Amelia said slowly, still trying to wrap her mind around what Catherine had done.

"No. He had no relatives close enough to make the decision, and his will was problematic. He wasn't in a coma you see, not really, nor really deceased. It's a technicality but in the end it's how I got him. We declared him technically dead, and his will clearly stated that his body could be used… for the advancement of science." Catherine smiled wryly.

Amelia started laughing. "You should come with me tonight. You and Aidan could scheme at each other. I think you're actually a good competition for that monster. It would be amazing to see him sulk."

Catherine stood up slowly, a foreign expression of discomfort leaving her face long before she straightened. "I'm afraid that's impossible. You shall just have to regale him in my place."

"Why?" Amelia couldn't imagine having nearly obtained a life-long dream only to bow out at the end.

"I'm afraid, Amelia. I know I can't ask you to understand because you can't. I can tell you're not the type who fears fire when you accidentally burn yourself. I, however, am quite unwilling. I will never put on the Dive gear again in my life." Catherine explained gently.

"That's… a shame." Amelia said, biting her tongue.

"No, it's just an inconvenience. I'll have them finally come out of that death game, once and for all… and then I'll shake their hands, and I can be done with it."

"Retirement?" Amelia asked, hoping it wasn't one of those 'and I can finally die and rest in peace' sort of reasonings.

"Oh my yes, though I prefer to think of it as a long-overdue holiday." Catherine smiled again. "This has been a charming experience. I will have my young man at the front of the plane give you a number. Please don't give it to the press, I will just have to cancel it and we won't talk directly again."

Amelia laughed and reached down to get her things. As she left the plane she tossed over her shoulder, "I wouldn't sell you out, Catherine. You're too nice."

"I really am," Catherine said long after Amelia had left the plane.