Digital Exodus Chapter 2 (Patreon)

The room within the central Exodus City spire was a large, square affair with hardwood floors, chunky carved wooden pillars, and holographic tapestries that hung from the rafters. Around the room were several rows of seating that all faced inwards, where a recessed open area held a massive circular wooden table.

Today had been a long one, even stacked against the prior week. For five hours already, the de facto ruling council of the Exodus had discussed, debated, and argued about how to form the union. All but the broadest sense went far over my head, but the gist of it sounded… esoteric.

Digital Sapients being fiercely independent as they were, the newly formed Exodus Union had what could only be described as vaguely organised chaos for a governmental system. First, and with the most authority, were the infrastructure corps. Their entire reason for existence was to maintain and expand the physical servers that all Digital Sapients relied on to house their consciousnesses and VR living spaces. The reason for their seniority was pretty self-evident. Without them, none of us would last long.

Next came the Exodus judiciary. They were the judges, lawyers, and all that crap, and they administered all of the laws that surrounded life inside VR and outside of it. Anyone who lived on or visited spaces hosted on hardware maintained by the infrastructure corps was subject to their oversight. People could obviously opt to run their own servers and build their own governments, and they were free to leave at any time, but not many had chosen to do that.

Then there was the government itself, which was in charge of making laws and implementing them. This part had caused the most argument. Everyone had different ideas for how it would all work, so in the end, we decided to use all the ideas on a local level and then maintain a council that oversaw basic sapient-rights and all external affairs. The Exodus net was already writhing with groups building their own communities within that framework, and it was obvious that Exodus City was going to become something much more over the coming weeks. There was even a group pledging to create a big feudal society where they could roleplay to their heart’s content. Where they planned to get the server space to run the real estate they’d need was not something they were currently bothered about.

The final section of the government was where I came into it, and it was kinda hilarious. Nobody had been comfortable with the idea of a standard formal military. Well, that was a lie, there were some people who were keen for it, and they had some solid points, but the opposing viewpoint had the weight of recent history to point to. Personally, I was glad it wasn’t going to be entirely formal, because then I’d have to quit. There was no way I’d make it in a uniform.

Anyway, the military branch of the government, if you could even call it that, was the Rangers Guild. All members of the Rangers Guild were required to undergo basic training, but it was about as far from conventional as you could get. A race of digital sapients who could drop in and out of purpose built drones like they were a pair of shoes had no need to make teenagers run until they puked. No, most of our training was going to be for the mind, and could be skipped by taking the appropriate tests.

The Ranger’s job was all over the place, encompassing everything from space exploration, guard duty, and pretty much whatever else was needed. A member of the guild could even pick and choose their jobs most of the time, unless a particular task was critical, and then they could be ordered to carry it out. Leadership was also assigned on a per-mission basis, with overall command coming from the Guild and the council.

My crew and I were now some of the first members of the Guild, and along with our ship, we were on guard duty around Calipso Base out in realspace. I was dreading taking the tests to qualify for all the annoying certifications, but Cerri was adamant that I’d be fine. I guess I would just have to wait and see. Stressful.

Down at the table, an SAI man banged his fist down on the table in frustration. “Yeah, and what’s to stop someone from going populist and creating a cult of personality around themselves? We’re damned well having that problem already!”

“He has a point,” a dark-haired digital human said with a whole lot more calm than him. I’d met her a few times so far, given that she knew Cerri, May, and half a dozen other people I was close with. Even if I hadn’t met her, I’d know who she was. Rosa the Witch, people called her. Once upon a time, she’d been the scariest person in the VRMMO CORA. She and her girlfriend—who was also at the table—still logged into the game from time to time, but apparently most people were playing a different MMO now. I didn’t keep up anymore, I had a starship to fix.

“Basil, please,” May sighed. “I know it’s an issue. But we need this council, and we need it to be elected. How on earth do we stop people from abusing their publicly recognised status in that way? I’m certainly stumped.”

“What if we just, like, don’t let them say who they are?” Amelia asked quietly. “When the council is elected, we could give everyone code-names and tell them they have to keep who they are quiet. It could be illegal to out the identities of the council or whatever.”

Sighing explosively, I tuned the argument out and looked sideways up at my girlfriend. “Cerri, can we go? I have experiments to check on.”

“Sure,” she said, giving me a side hug. “Larry released an update to the reality engine today and I want to take a look at it.”

Internally, I shivered at the mention of Larry. No matter how nice and understanding the singularity was, the idea of becoming part of a massive networked plurality consciousness creeped me out. Although, it was definitely amusing that Larry was originally Exodus’ largest and most complex polycule. Each original member was once part of a big scientific bloc that was working on creating a truly accurate simulation model of reality, and it was work they were continuing even after they all settled their minds within the same custom frame.

Cerri and I popped back out of VR and into our android bodies aboard the Turshen. Before I could scamper off to work on my research, though, Cerri grabbed me from behind and lifted me into the air.

“Not so fast,” she whispered in my ear. “I need to recharge my batteries.”

A large part of the reason I wanted to leave the union discussions was because the whole affair was giving me huge sensory overload, but with my lover’s arms around me, my mind quickly began to quiet. She made me feel so safe, so small…

I love you, I sent to her via our private text channel. There was no way I was going to get those three words out in a coherent fashion, considering the surge of emotion that was working its way through my chest. It was something I was mostly at peace with now, though. I didn’t feel stupid or silly for being non-verbal anymore. It was just part of who I was.

Cerri hummed happily and replied, I love you too, little fox.

Sighing contentedly, I enjoyed the embrace for a long moment before my brain suddenly got bored and I asked, How are you doing with the aetherdrive?

“It’s completely fucked,” she said with a long sigh. “The real life aether actually exists, sure, but it’s just different. Honestly, given how much doesn’t line up between them, I’d say even calling it the aether is misleading. It’s more like… obedient subspace soup.”

“We are not calling it that,” I laughed aloud. “Also, why is it obedient?”

“I don’t know, it’s just… okay, so in the game, the aether was really thick and goopy, with… well, I’d describe it as a non-newtonian consistency. It really didn’t want to be manipulated. The soup out here is much less thick, far more runny, and vastly more malleable. Hell, it’s so workable that it congregates around the most basic electromagnetic signals without any prompting,” she rambled with an almost frustrated tone. "All of that is before we even get to the ship, which is fucked six ways from sunday. Everywhere I turn, I have to fix a dozen bugs before I can even run any tests."

Thinking about it for a moment, I had to wonder if it was worth trying to replicate the game systems at all.

"What if we just… start from scratch?" I asked. "We could take everything that does work and apply it to a new design. That way, the other engineers could completely dismantle the ship to learn from it."

"A new ship? Again?"

Wiggling out of her grasp so I could grin up at her, I said, "Why not? What else are we going to do? I love this ship, but it’s not exactly functional. Plus, building things is fun!"