Where Your God Is - Chapter 8 (Patreon)

Everything is always complicated.

If anyone asks you to trust them, tells you it's simple, odds are that they're going to ask you for money in the next breath. Obviously, that would be because they're scamming you. Even if they're not, though, the fact that they're asking for money for something simple should be telling enough to call them out on it. I could go on a long rant about how human nature enables laziness and human physiological modernity isn't actually compatible with socio-technological modernity, but it would belabor the point.

The point which is, in short, nothing actually worth doing is ever as simple as it seems.

Let's take a video game for an example.

In fact, let's take Sword Art Online as our example. It's the newest hit craze that just got out of beta testing. The problem is that, even though video games are a multi-billion dollar industry that can match or exceed revenue from sectors like major motion pictures, television, stage plays, opera, and even concert music... well, our current society hasn't quite internalized that fact. With the previous generation of old wealthy people still refusing to die off and the profit-focused nature of capitalism in general, there's an ever-present distaste from anyone outside the community that plays video games to consider video game creation anything approaching a real career or artform.

To those people, I say, “Alright. Your job is to create a massive one-hundred floor flying tower in a fully-immersive virtual-reality environment with unique terrain, monsters, quests, equipment, skills, trainers, and attack patterns. Go.”

There is a lot that goes into 'making video games,' is what I'm saying, and a lot of it in modern games is procedurally-generated by smart AI programs. Especially when you get into the kinds of larger games that have a hundred floors worth of crap that need to be populated by monsters, NPCs, quests, equipment…

Why, you ask?  Well…

The most tedious aspect, to me, and one I was often assigned as the (public-facing) low-man on the totem pole at Argus, was debugging. It was incredibly time-consuming and mind-numbing staring at hundreds of thousands of lines of code and trying to find the one goddamn bug you knew was there because it wouldn't fucking compile.

Procedural-generation can take perfected code and iterate it as many times as needed without regard for human failures like flawed copy-pasta or errant additions due to clumsy fingers. Just one mistake and none of it will work. Which is why, if you properly use it, getting an AI to help you is a massive time-saver and cost-cutter. Do it poorly, though, and you end up with a bland cookie-cutter environment with nothing special or challenging.

Breaking a piece of code, in other words, is exceptionally easy.

Anyone can, and does, do it.

Hajime, dude, I still hope you're alive, but that doesn't mean I've forgiven you for transposing those characters during that inspection. You're still a shit manager, I just don't want to say that at your funeral.

I shook myself as I carefully poked and prodded my access terminal.

“Any luck?” Argo asked from where she was camping out and composing the next edition of the players' guidebooks we were collaborating on. Sinon and Leafa helped as well, but their contributions were usually a stack of poorly-structured notes or <<Recording Crystal>> footage that needed to be replayed and analyzed for content examples. I'd wondered if I'd needed the fifty-thousand copies of the fucking things I made before logging in.

As it turned out, they made a pretty good reference library for players who actually wanted to raise their odds of survival against common mobs.

“Define 'luck,'” I replied absently, humming contemplatively as I looked over the scrawling lines of code.

“That's a 'no,' then,” Argo snorted, rolling her eyes as she looked around the <<Cathedral Crypt>>.

“I didn't say that,” I riposted, rubbing at my chin.

“So which is it then, Kii-bou?” Argo asked, her voice edging into curt territory.

I blinked and pulled myself back from the screen before rubbing at my eyes. “Sorry, that wasn't very considerate of me. I was too deep into the code to reply properly.”

Argo grimaced and nodded. “I know how ya get, Kii-chi, 's as much my bad as yours. Sorry.”

“On a more relevant note, though,” I stated, groaning as I stretched and quietly marveled at the feeling of muscles bending and pulling from hours of sitting still. “I'm going to go ahead and confirm this was an inside job. Someone within Argus had to have helped them do this. Either a current employee with a lot of access or a former staff member who had reason to wish the company harm.”

I know who I had my money on.

“Okay... and why's that?” Argo asked curiously.

“You remember my explanation about the brand name stuff being locked behind micro-transactions?” Argo nodded in response. “It's a lot of stuff like that. It would be really easy to break SAO. It's very difficult to break SAO in a way that cripples certain aspects of the system while also keeping the game as a whole functional.”

Argo nodded, understanding what I was getting at.

“I also think that, whatever the reasoning behind Aum Shinrikyo's stated goals, whoever they got to do the programming isn't drinking the kool-aid,” I further reasoned, only getting an odd look from Argo in response. “Sorry, American expression-”

I think, at least. I never checked if Jonestown was an actual thing in this timeline. Huh.

“-it means that I don't think the person doing their technical work actually agreed with their ideology,” I explained further, leaning back and staring at the slate-gray ceiling consideringly. The room we'd sequestered ourselves in was below the <<Cathedral>> at the center of the <<Town of Beginnings>>. Normally, as the place where dead players respawned, it would be continuously busy day and night. In true Japanese fashion, however, the circumstances had made the area shunned by society at large and it was now considered taboo to go near.

As if the entire place was haunted, or cursed.

Which meant that Argo and I had to publish the recipe list for the healing potions and other consumables they taught you how to make here. Because Japanese society could be incredibly stupid with their social pressure at times.

“You can tell that?” Argo asked, her eyebrows rising.

I waved at the screen. “There are a lot of things that someone with this amount of knowledge of the system could have done to make things a lot worse for us in here. Specifically, I've managed to determine that there isn't anything like a countdown or disable on the part of the system that secures <<Safe Zones>>. A group like them wouldn’t have cared about keeping that intact. In fact, they would have actively worked to undermine it.”

Argo blinked, closing out her digital workstation and stood to hurry over to me. “Wait, ya' can see the code?! I thought you could only do that from, uh...”

“External terminals,” I nodded. “I thought so, too. The issue is that, and I don't know if it's on purpose or not, the moderator permissions were broken in some really strange and arbitrary ways. My current theory is that whoever did this didn't believe there would be any mods in the game and was content with doing damage to their capabilities via secondary and tertiary effects of what they'd already done. It's possible that they also wanted to tread lightly around something that might be noticed too early, depending on how and when the virus was actually deployed, but I don't have enough information about that right now.”

“Sooo...?” Argo prompted eagerly.

“I still can't get us out,” I replied bluntly, her shoulders falling with a sigh.

“Shoulda' known,” Argo shook her head, then perked up. “Alright! What can ya' do, Mr. Hacker Wizard?”

I looked over the three floating screens in front of me and considered the question. “Well, first off, I can only access these windows from in-game moderator terminals like the one we're in right now. There's usually one underneath any respawn point, somewhere near the floor boss' dungeon, and a few other places across each floor. Normally, I'd be able to just pop open a window anywhere at any time and enter my credentials to have access to something like this. The terminals were meant as a kind of lore-compliant backup option mods could use if there were technical issues or serious debugging needed to be done.”

“...an' you can't use them to get us out, 'cause...?” Argo asked leadingly.

“They're set to read-only and I can't even bring up a login box to see if my passwords still work.” If I could, the unofficial password Kayaba-sensei had given me might have been a golden ticket out of this mess. No one knew about it except for me, him and Rinko, so it should still work. “That said, I can monitor a lot of the floor we're on from here, outside of the stuff that <<Cardinal>> controls. Or should control.”

“<<Cardinal>>.” Argo stated thoughtfully. “That's, tha... um, central AI thingy, right? I know the lore and you've talked about her a bit, but...”

“You mostly space out when I nerd out about that stuff,” I nodded knowingly, grinning at her outraged squawk and playful slap to my shoulder. “<<Cardinal>> controls the <<System Assist>> features, the skill trees, the jobs you can access, most of the procedurally-generated content like quests, mob patterns, add rates, damage calculation... she's the beating heart of the system that runs SAO.”

Argo cocked her head, looking at my expression intently. “You're worried about her.” She paused, frowning. “I know you said that she was... well, like a person or something, but...”

I hissed an inhale of breath and nodded. “She is. Or she's really close. I was part of her human socialization group.”

Argo shuffled awkwardly for a moment, then sat down beside me and leaned against me, dropping her head on my shoulder.

I chuckled, consciously choosing to push aside the things that I could do nothing about in favor of humor. “What, no hug?”

Argo huffed. “Gave you too many hugs lately, Kii-bou. If I'm not careful, they'll take away my yuri card.”

I barked a laugh, the sound echoing off the stone walls around us. “Hah! That'd be horrible... but, yeah, I'm worried about <<Cardinal>>. I was holding out hope she'd contact me, but whoever fucked with the system probably slapped a lot of restrictions on her. If they didn't, she would have logged everyone out.”

“Really?” Argo asked, surprised.

I nodded. “A core part of her programming is the preservation of human life. I helped out on the ethics code testing, believe me.” I sighed. “Anyway... the things I can observe, but not change from terminals like these are still helpful. Some of the field bosses are on here, system notifications for special events, active user lists, and floor boss data.”

“Okay, all of that sounds like stuff I oughta' know,” Argo stated excitedly, cuddling up to me closer as she looked over my screens. “But ya' can't access this without the terminals?”

I shook my head. “My mod powers are heavily restricted outside of accessing these. I can tap into ongoing special events and, if I know what's going on, I might even be able to manipulate the conditions for them to end faster. I can also make announcements across them, do some cosmetic stuff on other players' avatars, and mess around with items that are in my inventory or possession. That is, thankfully, how I can unpack all of the crap I duplicated IRL before logging in.”

Argo nodded slowly. “Hmm... Yeah, Kirito still OP, please nerf.”

I huffed a laugh. “All of that doesn't mean much without you to help me distribute the information, you know?”

Argo's cheeks reddened. “Pssht! You're just trying to butter me up.” She relaxed further against me and hummed thoughtfully. “So what about Keyboard Smash?”

I grimaced. “Probably in the same boat as I am.”

Argo gave a grunt of disgust. “Awesome. You talk to her recently?”

I shrugged. “A bit, here and there. We never actually really...” I made a nebulous motion with my hand. “Knew each other or anything before this. She worked under Rinko-”

“Kayaba's wife, right?” Argo asked, pressing.

“Kind of,” I hedged. “They got 'married' in this foreign ceremony while out of the country on a business trip. It was some Caribbean islander thing that the Japanese government doesn't recognize and they keep separate apartments, so Common Law hasn't kicked in.”

“Weird,” Argo noted, snorting, although her eyes held a speculative gleam.

“That's sensei in a nutshell,” I replied. “But, yeah... Keyboard Smash worked under Rinko in corporate intelligence and counterintelligence protecting IP and other Argus assets while trying to find any moles stealing stuff for other companies.”

“Kinda' dropped the ball then, huh?” Argo asked rhetorically, a cutting tone to her words that made me wince.

Pushing aside the spike of guilt internally, I shook my head. “A situation like this was outside her remit. This is... well, it's for the national police. Contrary to popular memes, Argus doesn't have a corporate hit-squad they can send out to just black bag anyone who irritates them. Most of our security staff don't even carry guns.”

Argo signed, rubbing at her forehead. “Yeah, my bad. Just... I like spending time with you an' Leafa, an' Sinon, Kii-chi... don't doubt that, it's just...”

I nodded. “I miss my parents too, Argo.” I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “You're not alone, especially in that.”

Argo sniffed wetly.

I gave her the courtesy of not looking as I pulled a handkerchief from my inventory and handed it over. “I jus'-it's been a month. I jus' wanna tell mom dad not to be worried. I know Uncle Youji is probably helping them out, but I don't know how they're explaining it to Sakura-chan. Ugh!”

She shook against me quietly and I struggled for something to say, swallowing against the lump in my own throat. “Your sister... she's gonna' be twelve, right?”

Argo cleared her throat and I felt her head nod against me. “Y-yeah. Nex-well, I guess this month.”

I licked my lips. “I think... maybe you and I... and Leafa and Sinon, too... I think we should all start making video journals. We have enough <<Recording Crystals>> to spend on pretty much anything and that data is stored along with your character information directly to the NerveGear's SSD. We all got the expanded memory storage, too, so-”

Argo chuckled wetly and nudged me. “Yer spirallin', Kii-bou. What's this big idea of yours?”

I took a deep breath. “Keep journals for however long we're in here. Address them to... our families. Then, whenever we get out, because we are getting out, you can share them with your parents and sister.”

Argo was quiet for a moment, then apparently tried to laugh and sob at the same time as she hugged me. “Kii-chi... thas'... that's the sappiest thin' I ever heard. You're so tellin' Le-chi and Si-chi straight ta' their faces.”

I rolled my eyes, my face hot up to my ears. “L-look, if you don't wanna'-”

Argo snorted, the noise thick enough to force her to blow her nose afterward. Then, she fixed me with a red-eyed glared. “Firs', don't tell anyone you heard that. Secon', I ain't forcin' you ta' tell them 'cause I don't like it. I want ya' ta' get proper credit for it!”

I shifted uncomfortably. “If you think it's that big of a deal, sure. I just thought... it'd be a good way for us to stay connected to people on the outside.”

“An' thas' why you have three girls putting up with your nerdy, gamer-otaku ass,” Argo muttered in reply, pulling her hood up as she shook her head to settle her hair.

“Three?” I asked, amusement shading my question.

Argo stood, the dim candlelight of the room meaning I could only glimpse at the returned blush on her cheeks. “I know what I said and I ain't sayin' it again, Kii-bou. Now start readin' me off boss stuff an' floor details for tha' next guide.”

I raised an eyebrow as she took a position opposite me on another pair of stone steps. “And you have to be across the room from me to take notes, because...”

Argo huffed in faux-irritation. “Because I can't read tha' code like you can an' bein' next ta' you is distractin'.”

I snorted quietly and nodded, letting her have her space for the moment. “Alright, I think we should do the boss first. Because of the way SAO was created, all of the bosses were hand-crafted by developers, so they're on the human side of the divide. The problem is that <<Cardinal>> is the one that was tasked with taking the human-created content and procedurally-generating a different map from the beta. So while I can tell you that someone decided to switch his talwar to a nodachi, I can't tell you where he is.”

Argo hummed, nodding as she readied her virtual console. “Okay, got it. Start reading off anything you can and I'll format stuff later. After we do Illfang, we'll do whatever floor bosses you can figure out.”

I nodded, trailing my finger across the screen as I began to list off all the details any gamer would want from a professional guide. I couldn't really mine any info about the standard mobs and, even if I could, <<Cardinal>> would likely change things up, but I'd give the players trapped in here as much of an edge as I possibly could so that as many of them could get out of this game as possible, alive and well.

~~~

Here we are!  Next chapter of Kirito's shenanigans in the death game up and running.  There were many requests for a more detailed explanation of what Kirito can and can't do with his limited moderator privileges and I hope this chapter answers that.

The poll has a few hours left on it, but it's pretty obvious who will be winning.  Expect your next update to be the Marvel side of Industrious.  Then... either the Naruto side or a chapter of Entrepreneurial Spirit.  Have to see about that.