Chapter 106: System Properties

  CROWN

  As usual when Orpheus came to visit, the perception filter kicked in. Her guest, however, had no such need, although I was surprised by the end result.

  “Wow, boss, you didn’t tell me Earth girls were so hot!”

  And of course Duck had to be the first one to speak, jabbing with that awful, awful joke. I ran a hand over my face and sighed.

  Ember looked at Duck, then back to me, hands on her hips. Just like I’d seen before, she was a feminine statue, a molded obsidian woman with the glow of heat leaking from within. What I had not seen in the meeting was her actual size, which if I had to estimate would border on two and a half meters, or eight feet. I’d imagined her as more petite, but her proportions were the same. She was just… bigger.

  “The Terminal you left with me was a lot less vivacious, Orpheus. Is this normal?” Ember chuckled and lifted an eyebrow at me. “What is she? She’s kind of adorable.”

  I grumbled and gestured to the giggling Duck. “This is Duck, my Terminal. She takes the form of an elf. I know they don’t look like we imagine elves, it’s a long story. She’s closer to a… ferret or pine marten base than a simian, and she’s a little snarky.” Fortunately for my sanity and embarrassment, Duck was not wearing anything ridiculous during the visit, having opted for a rather normal tunic of fine silk.

  Orpheus adjusted her glasses. She still had the slightly Victorian outfit that I’d been imagining her in, like that of a competent purple-haired woman. She still looked a little tired, too. “Duck is something of an unusual Terminal due to her origins, but it is possible to give your Terminals more personality than the ones that I use to watch over new Administrators.”

  Once again Ember looked at Orpheus, and then me. She smirked. “This is how you see Orpheus? That’s pretty funny. I imagined him as a glowing orb with an echoing voice. Yours is a lot more personable. Though it tells me a lot about the kind of girl you like.”

  That brought out another groan from me. She wasn’t entirely wrong, but I really wanted to explain to her how my view of Orpheus had evolved. Somehow, I wasn’t sure that would make me look any better. The irony that when I actually went down in a Proxy Avatar, I was kind of asexual these days, was not lost upon me. By this point I was fairly certain that my previous self had been a little uncontrolled in how he’d viewed the opposite sex. Even Tastka, after she’d gotten over her existential crisis of finding out what she was, had been very frisky for an elf, at least when she’d fully matured.

  It was embarrassing to see it caught so easily, though.

  “Can we focus?” I asked with a grumble. “We’re here about the invasion, not to deconstruct my Earth self’s embarrassing psyche.”

  Ember held her hands up in apology. “Sorry, I got a little carried away finally getting a chance to talk to someone else from Earth. I guess we’re both a lot different from when we started though, aren’t we? I also didn’t expect such a chatty Terminal.”

  Orpheus walked forward, heading into the projection of my world as she spoke. “Duck is unusual, but only in her origins. She was not intentionally crafted that way, but arose due to Crown’s need to have someone to push back. So she is… very good at doing that. Still, other than some slight anomalies in how she communicates with Crown, it would be possible for you to make something similar, Ember.”

  “No thanks,” the fiery ebon woman replied casually. “Maybe something more basic when I get that ability. Can keep watch on the other half of the universe- oh wow!”

  She’d just stepped into the ring that displayed my world, and spun around to look at the other half of the tube she was now standing within. “This room is great! I should make me one of these!”

  “You made a divided universe, too?” I asked that of Ember as I followed the other two into my projection. “Actually, why are you here?”

  Orpheus answered before Ember could. “Two Administrators from the same world, and the same time period? I thought she might learn something by observing you, now that the structure of her own world is distinct.”

  I shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I’m not sure what I can teach.” The view spun as I turned it toward the highest concentration of elves in Upside, then zoomed in to the major continent. “I did get a shocking amount of energy last cycle. I’m not sure exactly what I did to do that, but I made a lot of changes so it might just be everything having a good return on investment.”

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  “Hmm.” Orpheus gazed at my world for a few moments. “You should have some ability to narrow it down already, but next Rank you will gain the ability to do a full breakdown. I am not certain when you will reach that level, though. Ranks above seven are a little amorphous in requirements, and every Administrator seems to have a unique threshold. This is why I presume your unusual rank ups will self-correct at that level.”

  “You’ve gotten him… her… whichever on a tangent now,” Ember chuckled. “Yeah, I did a divided world, too. Orpheus started giving me advice while I was struggling and said I shouldn’t do it, because it would take forever for the two sides to interact. So I made one where they often interact but under limited circumstances.”

  That piqued my attention. “Really? What did you do?”

  She made a wide gesture with her arms. “I went with spherical even though they said not do, thought I’d try something weird within that. Creativity born of constraints, you know? So I gave it a central sun and the people walk along the inside, then there’s another shell around that, so people walk on the other side of the first shell. The inside is super hot and the outside frozen, with plumes that shoot between the two at regular intervals. Two different intelligent species on either side.”

  Ember tapped her chest. “I’m in a body of the one that lives on the hot side right now, obviously.”

  “Both of you have a terrible habit of taking bad ideas and twisting them into something that works.” Orpheus walked over to join us as she complained, letting out an annoyed huff. “You’re a horrible example on other Administrators, but though Ember hasn’t been nearly as successful as you, she is producing results.”

  I blinked as once again, I got the strange impression that Orpheus was acting much more emotional. Not just that, but emotional in a way I could understand and relate to. This gave me an uneasy feeling, despite my earlier frustration with her distant nature.

  Orpheus gestured, and a faint, filmy bubble surrounded myself, Ember, and the High Administrator. “We may speak freely, now. I investigated the issues that you reported with your Terminal, Crown. Ember, you may listen in because I fear you may do the same.”

  I fought my urge to glance down the hallway at Duck, who was somewhere in the projection of Upside observing something or other. A good distance from the three of us, at least. “Is there a problem after all?”

  “Not precisely, no…” Orpheus tapped a finger to her lip. “Duck is definitely a Terminal. A splinter of yourself, connected to you. Normally this is more like a second body that periodically syncs up with your own experiences, but Duck is different. She operates using whatever fragments were given to her and marked as the priority of her personality, and does so largely independent of your direction, unless you speak to her personally.”

  I started to ask about the scratchpad, but Orpheus shook her head and held up a finger.

  “I am not finished,” Orpheus added. “You see, Duck is independent because she was designed that way. Crown desired someone to argue with him, to push back at his ideas and find flaws with them. Because this was done without full conscious intent, Duck was created to match those parameters. In fact, this is not historically unknown. Others have constructed independent Terminals, sometimes for similar reasons, and once in a while a Terminal is created without full intent. Never those two together, but neither event is unprecedented by itself.”

  She gestured toward the projection. “You are a little different. Remember how I told you not to give your creations even indirect access to your interface? Your initial dream trick relied on this, but so does Duck. Duck is a part of you, your world is your soul, and therefore Duck is, however tenuously, linked to your world. This world has a method to touch the interface back, even under strict limitations, which allowed Duck to replicate pieces of your interface. Since she is meant to be independent, these pieces are not visible to you.”

  Ember’s playful smile had evaporated by now. “So Duck is like a second Administrator for Crown? She can do what he was meant to? What if she wants to replace him or decides debating him isn’t enough?”

  Orpheus shook her head. “No, that is not what I am seeing here. She is still intimately linked to Crown’s existence. He cannot see everything she does, but she does not have the ability to directly manipulate the world without first gaining Crown’s approval. She can set things up, but Crown would have to give permission for them to happen. And even if she did start to go wild, he can still unmake her should he so desire, though I doubt he has actually considered that.”

  “I can?” I blurted that dumbly, confirming what Orpheus had just said. “I mean… I guess I never considered it. She seems so much like a separate person it would be weird for me to just hit undo.”

  “As I said, I doubt he has even considered it.” The repeated statement had a wry smile with it… which was definitely strange for Orpheus. “In summary, while anomalous, Duck does not appear to extend her authority beyond what a Terminal can feasibly do. The only changes she can make without your direct approval are minor interface streamlining changes, such as when she added me to the communications with your Sub-Terminals.”

  I glanced at Ember to see if she was following this, but she was looking on with interest. “Did you follow that?” I asked her.

  The ebony woman shrugged. “Mostly. I’ve set up Sub-Terminals already, but they’re a little different than most, I guess. I’m not high enough up the rankings to make a full Terminal. We can’t all be prodigies, Mister Donut.”

  Playful as Ember seemed to be, I reminded myself that she’d gotten this far using a spherical world, and her setup did sound interesting. This woman wasn’t stupid, and I had to remind myself that a lot of my success was dumb luck. Ember might not call herself a prodigy, but she was successful without my weird risks.

  The privacy bubble vanished, and Orpheus clapped her hands. “Well! Let’s check up on these defenses of yours. Perhaps Ember will understand what it is you have done better than I have, but I am most curious to see what you have set up! Shall we look at these dungeons of yours?”

  I scratched the back of my head and frowned. “Yeah… yeah we can take a look. I have a few to go over with you right now.”

  Duck glanced over, as if just noticing we’d been talking, then went back to whatever she was doing.

  I had the strangest feeling I was forgetting something important, here.

  Loyalty to Chall