The Starfighter Invitation

49 respawn

Mint chill. Emerging from Soup, my legs felt distant and disconnected. I fumbled for the nearest wall, but the strangeness passed almost immediately, and then I was just not-really-me. Whole, not bruised, unsliced.

If this hadn’t been virtual, then this would be a new body, a copy of my Core Unit. Not necessarily exactly as it had been when the previous version died, but most likely from an imprint taken the last time I’d been in the Soup, or even a younger starting point. I had no memory whatsoever of being in the Renba.

"Is this the Delina, Dio?"

[[Wreck Observation Station. Ten minutes until the Delina departs.]]

Dio drifted through the ceiling above me, and I realised I’d felt the absence of these emergences. What difference did it make for my alien overlord to be present in glowing light form, rather than communicating over our Link?

"Imoenne, Silent, Nina—did they get out okay?"

[[They are still in the process of retrieval, but they are not in danger. The System Challenge has been completed, so we are able to assist the remaining competitors.]]

"That other team made it, huh?"

[[You provided an excellent distraction.]] Dio sounded lightly amused. [[Two of their group were killed, however, and had no Renba.]]

And so were locked out the game forever. Could any in-game prize be worth the cost?

"Which is more valued in The Synergis? Winning or protecting your team?"

[[In terms of our primary goal, it’s pointless to have all our strong lan talents die. We do find that Challenges such as this push some Bios to develop, which is why we organise them, but we are not going to complain about the preservation of others.]]

I couldn’t quite tell if Dio was dancing around the answer there, but shrugged and then sighed. "If we’d been ten minutes faster, we probably wouldn’t have met the Cutters at all."

[[True. But how satisfyingly dramatic it all became.]]

I paused, looking up at tem, then said: "And I’m only just realising that you might as well have called that wreck The Colosseum."

Dio produced a couple of notes in the Cycog language that I interpreted as a verbal shrug, and then said: [[You should decide soon whether you want to catch the Delina on this return trip, or wait for the next.]]

"How long—" I stopped as the door to the Soup chamber opened, and Arlen stepped out. "Most spectacular distraction ever, Arlen," I said.

"I was effective, was I not?" Arlen said, looking pleased. He reached up and touched his face, then ran his fingers down to his throat. "I have missed this voice. But the others? They are well?"

The party Channel made this easy to confirm, and we quickly caught each other up on current location and status.

"I’m going to take the Delina back," I told them. "And then probably log out for a while. That was a good run, everyone. I can’t believe how well we did."

"Not often I feel like I won by coming second," Silent said. "But, well, thank you all."

"There’ll be other System Challenges," Nina said. "The important thing is having a chance to take them on."

With a wave to Arlen, I headed to the Delina, fielding multiple discussion threads with guildies until they became distracted by Nina officially joining Corpse Light. After dodging a handful of people loitering in one of the transport’s corridors, I found an empty compartment, and chatted with my parents until I reached Earth Gateway Station. Then I did some loitering of my own, waiting in the compartment until well after the rest of the returnees had departed, so I wouldn’t be faced with a crowd of interested onlookers.

It wasn’t until I’d settled back into the pilot seat of The Hare that I stopped feeling so strange, and started to relax. My Snug. I’d thought it an odd name, and it was a decidedly unexciting shape for a spaceship, but it was pleasantly solid and self-sufficient. The place where I could shut out everyone but Dio.

My inescapable alien overlord had clearly figured out I didn’t want to talk. Te had ridden back to The Hare without comment, and simply drifted up into the ceiling when I’d entered the airlock. I did want to talk to ter—I had questions—but not yet. Instead, I explored my piloting system until I was able to plot a course away from Earth Gateway Station. Just far enough to have a view of the Earth, the Station, stars and the lunar ring while contemplating my second death.

Dying was nothing but lost time, in every game I’d played up to Dream Speed. But I still could feel the knife that had finished Kazerin, and I knew I’d be dreaming about what had happened to my body on The Wreck, after I’d left it behind. Dio had been true to ter word, and our stream had shifted back to Silent, Imoenne and Nina as soon as I’d collapsed, but I couldn’t quite overcome my imagination.

The System Challenge had been exhilarating and awful, and I would need to decide if I wanted to face anything similar again. The guild had collected swathes of recommendations for far less realistic Challenges, where Bio-Synth modals could hang from cliffs by their fingertips, run forever without getting out of breath, and shrug off any injury through the application of first aid. A far more standard gaming experience. Or I could simply train on beaches and gaze at stars, because The Synergis gave countless comfortable options, and didn’t seem to mandate any of them. All the System Challenge really added to my Synergis-life was prestige.

And, perhaps, answers. I had missed out on the chance to use a Boon wisely. We had been so close to winning.

"Do you have a preference for what I do next, Dio?" I asked.

Te drifted into my field of view from a point behind and above me.

[[Ranking trials would be a good start,]] te said.

"I suppose so. After that?"

[[Ad astra.]]

To the stars. Yes. Perhaps I’d spend more of my mound of Lux points, and head off somewhere completely beyond the range of even Nina, just so I could stand beneath a distant sun and marvel. Grouping up would be a lot more difficult, since it would have to be with NPCs, but there was no rush to do anything that required more people.

I eyed Dio, wondering if te’s short responses were because this was the Construct version, rather than Ydionessel. Or if, possibly, te really was annoyed at me for failing to win the System Challenge. If winning at any cost really was the point of the game.

I’d prefer this to be a Construct than for Dio to think that way. Really, it should cheer me immensely to be able to play Dream Speed without an overly interested alien overlord treating me like a puzzle box. And yet I couldn’t dismiss the sense that I was a Chocobo that had failed to impress, no longer worth Ydionessel’s time.

Annoyed with myself, I said: "Well, I’m going to log before deciding any more."

[[Do you intend to return soon?]]

Had Dio asked me that before? "I’ll take an hour or two’s break out in the world," I said, seeing no reason to sidestep. "Then, well, to the stars sounds like a plan."

Now became yesterday as I woke, and in my post-sleep vagueness I couldn’t remember if Dio had responded to my decision. Despite the prospect of touring the stars, I felt flat, more depressed by failure than I had been in the immediate aftermath. I’d never expected to win the System Challenge, and had to admit we’d had a really charmed run, but it was painfully frustrating to have blazed the path only to have it wrecked in the final room.

Costing Imoenne and Silent the game would have felt worse, but that didn’t make failure easier to swallow. I’d lost a lot of races in my time, but never had I had such a distinct sense of opportunity missed. This wasn’t how the story was meant to go. The System Challenge should have culminated in my winning that Boon, and finally having some straight answers from Dio about Dream Speed.

Restless, I went for an early morning run, reminding myself all over again why I’d spent so much time on the track in school. I’d not won often there, either: it was the process I enjoyed. The way my mind cleared, and I seemed to move into a realm of my own, separate from everyone around me, but moving through the world at the same time.

But the joy of running failed to make me feel any better about losing the System Challenge, or banish the nagging sense that it had been important, that maybe there really was a secret true purpose to the game, and we’d just missed out on it.

I decided to skip reviewing the out-of-game reaction to the System Challenge, in part because I didn’t particularly want to see Cutters again, ever. There would, I am sure, be a debate raging over whether it had been right or wrong to turn back to save two of our group, but I’d settled that in my own mind, at least. And I would definitely take an exploring-the-galaxy approach to Dream Speed for a while. I’d indulge myself in some of the more fantastic Challenges, those that didn’t involve my Core Unit or any suggestion of risk, and concentrate on exercises or things like the Heart of Mars series, and see if I could get to one of the megastructures Dio kept hinting about.

But even though I had lost, I was still going to try my questions on Dio. Even if te lied, I wanted to hear what te had to say.