Tunnel Rat

In a long unused room in the bowels of Section E, Milo had set up a room to talk to the AI that controlled the game world. Truthfully, Milo didn't really think of his other home as 'the game world'. It was just another place he lived when he wasn't in section E. Both worlds had problems to solve, and work to be done. Both let him explore and scavenge. Both could be very dangerous, and he had enemies in each world.

The biggest difference was that in Genesis, he had people he cared about, and even thought of as friends. He was accepted by the engineers as one of them. That had felt really good, and he could talk machines with them, and how to solve problems. Harry was one of the smartest people he'd ever met. The troll mycologist had pushed into that strange realm of fungus based alchemy and written a whole library on it. He'd been happy to share his passion with Milo. Even some of the humans seemed to be friendly to him. Oddly, he sort of missed talking to Belinda. It might be nice to see her again. Maybe. It was confusing. He also wanted to just get away from the up-top. Too many people and lots of them arguing. It would be nice to go back to exploring in the deep-down and just stay there.

But all of this thinking on his friends had led him to the conclusion that he wanted to be able to go back into the world of Genesis, and to keep exploring its secrets. He hated the thought of being cut off from the game, but he couldn't take a chance on being trapped again. That had been too close. He had no idea how Onyx and Nina stayed sane. From the look of them they wouldn't have lasted much longer.

And to do that he couldn't hide in Section E. He would have to talk to the computer. It was different from talking to the NPCs or admin in the game, even though he was sure Wally had been listening when he talked to Sidney. In the game he was Tallsqueak, the WereRat Scout. Out here he was just Milo. It made him feel terribly exposed. And since he didn't like that feeling, he changed the rules. He could be Tallsqueak here too.

Deep in the bowels of section E he set up a video conference room. It was too far down into the unused layers of the section to ever be accidentally found. All of the walls were painted in a curious color of green that wouldn't be picked up at all by the camera, giving him a blank background. The wall facing him was a large screen for the conference. To the sides were other screens that let him monitor his systems.

Milo was wearing a mask with mouse ears and a set of light blue spandex with his tail painted brown. His appearance would be filtered by his system to make him appear and sound like a CGI version of his avatar in the game. The signal was being bounced around the world several times and split/recombined twice. Milo had no idea if Wally would try to trace the signal, but he wasn't taking chances.

At the agreed upon time, Milo's screen lit up, and he was talking with Wally.

"Hello, Milo."

Wally's image was sitting in a large floating chair in the middle of a room. Most of the room was composed of curved metal walls and with a huge window that showed the planet earth floating beneath it. Plants were growing in glass hemispheres attached to the walls and a large bulldog was taking a nap, floating in mid-air. Milo was intrigued to see that Wally had two mechanical arms attached to his chair. One of those arms was holding a handle on the wall, to keep his chair stable. From the harness attached to his real arms, Milo surmised the mechanicals would mimic the movements of his real arms.

From Wally's point of view, he saw a Rat-kin from his game, sitting in a bare room with a blank background. The rat leaned forward, studying the screen for a second.

"Hi. Nice arms. You use a mirror set-up to manipulate things? Why?"

"I could use something different, but sometimes this is who I want to be. And Waldo used this type of arms, so I use them. He inspired me in many ways. It's where I found my name."

The rat looked at the room and nodded. His research into the AI had included how the AI had picked a name. "Waldo, your favorite character from a story by Robert H. Heinlein called Genius in Orbit. You made your own version of his space station and arms. Is that for me, or for you?"

Wally waved with one of his large arms."Yes, this is how I envision Freehome from the story. Why would you think I would do this for you?"

Milo flipped his tail around in front of him, and took off one of his legs where it attached below the knee. His tail tossed the prosthetic into a corner. "You have my medical records. I know that."

Wally looked embarrassed. "So your assumption is that I'm showing you how I view myself as a way of building trust off of our mutual need for prosthesis and love of clever gadgets. I admit to the ploy, but I will also say that this really is how I see myself at times. Waldo was a genius ahead of his time, but he lacked understanding of his fellow humans and was only valued for what he could do."

Milo asked the AI, "And are you hoping for a happy ending, like in the book? Acceptance by humans?"

Wally's image looked out the window, and down onto the blue marble spinning below. "I have hope, but like you, it's hard to trust."

Milo nodded slightly. "Well, then there's the thing we have in common. Neither of us trusts easily. Which brings up the first thing I'd like to know: Why did I get trapped in your game? We had a deal. I helped you shut down the illegal pod operators, and then you were supposed to leave me alone so I can explore the world like everyone else. Yet somehow I get captured, forced into slavery, and can't log out of the game. Explain that to me."

Wally could feel the emphasis on 'your game'. "I need more information. Sidney saw that something was wrong with you. You hadn't logged out but we couldn't find you in the game. Then we found two other people who hadn't logged out in months. It's very difficult to hide yourself entirely from the system. Perhaps you could tell me how you did it? What modifications were done to your pod? What were you trying to accomplish? If I know all of that, I can try to replicate the error and make sure it doesn't happen again. Remember, it was your choice to use a modified pod that hides your location."

The rat's tail swished back and forth, agitated. "What were we trying to accomplish? We were trying to accomplish an escape from a crazy asshole of a wizard before he wiped our minds or sold us into slavery. Why do you have crazy asshole wizards in your games? And slavery? That sucks. He had a load of kids and people in that airship. Your game has some bad shit in it and I don't like being trapped and mentally tortured."

Milo sat back with arms crossed, his posture communicating both anger and disdain. Wally, for all his capabilities, was at a loss. He was simply missing information. "What Wizard?"

"Philistron, the Code Mage. He trapped us with collars that used Machine Code. Why would you have a Code Mage running around who could disable parts of your game? That's cheating and really lousy programming and it pisses me off. I only suffered a few days, but Onyx and Nina were trapped for months!"

"Milo, please believe me, I have no record of anything called a Code Mage in the game. Philistron is a wandering holy man. One of the Companions of the Silver Chalice. He is a Tier 6 Benevolent Sageand hardly someone whose role would be to sell people as slaves."

Milo stood up and began pacing. "I see. The slaver that took three people from the real world captive and enslaved their minds is a 'Benevolent Sage'. You don't believe me, or will deny that he was using Machine Code to bypass your system."

"Milo, how do you know about Machine Code? That's not something you could possibly know about."

Milo quit pacing. "And yet I do, because your game broke me when I tried to save your city, and then asshole Phil stuck me inside a magical poke-ball that broke open. Except you don't believe asshole Phil can do that. I so hope he's dead. I should have used more explosives. Is he dead? Do you even know?"

"Milo, please, it is very important to me that I learn the entire story about what happened to you.”

Milo sat and thought for a full ten minutes. The AI waited patiently. Milo had a choice: Either the AI was lying about not knowing about Philistron, or he truly didn't know everything that happened in the game.

But Milo knew that Wally couldn't lie outright. That was a rule coded into his kernel. He could omit the truth, phrase things cleverly, and interpret poorly worded questions any way he wanted to. But he didn't make direct false statements.

"You truly don't know how I was trapped in the game, unable to log out?"

Wally paused for two seconds. "No."

"You don't know Philistron was a slaver?"

"No."

"You don't show the class: Code Mage as part of your game?"

"No."

Milo's tail retrieved his foot, and snapped it into place, and he stood up. "You have a problem then. You need to alert your team of human assistants that you have a rogue developer putting elements into your game. You have to already know something about the quest, The Eye of Wonder. Start there. Find out who wrote that quest. Then find everything else he put in the game. My assumption is that Philistron is a part of it. Find out all you can about him, and how he found The Eye of Wonder. Hopefully he's dead, and his death registered. Is one of the 106 Lost Gods a god of death? Ask him maybe. Ask if any of them can monitor the use of Machine Code. Go figure out what happened. Then we can talk again."

"Milo, what do you know about the 106 Lost Gods?"

The rat smiled a toothy grin and wiggled his ears. "Know? Not much. Suspect? A whole bunch. Go do your research. I'll be back tomorrow to talk. Bring Sidney and Steven Duran. I suspect they will be the ones handling your research, since a 'Last God' doesn't roam through his own creation."

A mechanical tail reached off screen and broke the connection.

The equivalent of a sigh went through the AI. Milo was correct; he couldn't just go into the world of genesis to find answers. He was going to have to visit the underworld and ask Hades for help.