Chapter FourteenNot an NPC

It was difficult to watch herself lose again. Rat stopped the replay at Daun's first step, moved the broadcast back a little and tried to line them up. She had been doing this for an hour. Every time she thought she had it right, something farther on happened at the wrong time.

She asked Daun for her local recording. Daun wanted to explain the call again, but Rat already believed her. She just needed to hear it in the right place. Once the file arrived she played all three, muting them one at a time until only hers remained. She went back over the place where Daun should have spoken.

"There," Daun said.

Rat stopped the replay. "It's missing from mine. Listen."

Rat was back in the cabin. She'd split wood for an hour before lying down with the Link, hoping it would make her less angry. It hadn't helped much. She hadn't posted anything herself or filed a complaint. Three forum threads were quite enough people discussing her loss, and Soph's traces told her more than any of them did. They narrowed the problem to the last thirty seconds.

There had been a man in Busan who got his friend into the broadcast booth and had him call out the other team's positions. Rat had been angrier about that, at least at first. She understood how it worked. She knew about lag switches and aim scripts too. What bothered her here was that the judges had the right call and she didn't. Someone could have watched the whole match from the booth and sworn she had simply ignored Daun.

She downloaded the anonymous telemetry Solenoid put out for coaches. In the round of thirty-two the client load looked much as she expected. In the sixteen she had to enlarge the scale before she could be sure anything was happening. The clients near Eliza were working a few percent harder. The effect followed her around, reaching about forty meters, and stopped at the end of the match. Rat checked a couple of clients outside that distance to be sure she wasn't just looking at the game getting busy.

She had read a complaint about something like this before. Finding it took longer than comparing the matches.

Somebody had complained months ago about a ghost in Alius making nearby frames run warm. Other people thought it was a developer, and nobody had cared enough to settle the argument. Rat had a reason to care now. She found the screenshot and read the tag: Atom B. That was the battlemage's coach.

She took the helmet off to bring in the wood she had left outside. Snow had settled on the top of the pile. She brushed it off with her sleeve, carried in as much as she could hold and left the rest. The stove could wait a little longer.

She wasted the first evening on the wrong ghost. The next day she sent Atom the graph. Where should she bring it? He suggested a place by the Great Mountain. She arrived early, saw his tag farther out and followed it down into an unfinished valley. The developers had made a river and planted trees, but there weren't any quests or mobs to make players visit. There was a cottage, though, with a garden in front. Rat hadn't known players could build houses in Alius. She stopped to look at it before she noticed the boy on the wall.

Atom was sitting on the wall in his brown duster, talking to something Rat couldn't make out until it moved. She had brought her bow without thinking and now wished she'd left it behind. He got down from the wall as she approached.

"You're early," he said.

"Should I go away for a bit?"

"No, it's okay. Come in."

The nameplate said Eliza. Rat recognized the name from the message after the match. She looked at Atom.

"That's her?"

He began explaining a project for Jeff, something about dialogue trees, but the little pixie was already climbing onto the fence post. She had dark hair and dragonfly wings, and was perhaps eight inches tall.

"I'm sorry about Daun," she said. "I took the call out. The delay and the tone were mine too. Soph didn't ask me to do it."

Atom hadn't known either, apparently. Rat asked what sort of NPC could do that. There was no level or class beneath the name. Atom's explanation became so complicated that she stopped him and asked Eliza to choose something to talk about. She wanted to see whether they would eventually run out of answers.

Eliza chose Rat's voice. She could hear traces of a higher pitch beneath the ranger's, she said. Had Rat practiced to make it sound like him?

Rat had, for months. She could have disconnected without answering. Atom was trying to stop the conversation for her, which she found more irritating than the question. She raised a hand and decided to answer it herself.

"I'm not a man. I made him when I was fifteen because everyone was telling me I was, and I didn't know how to deal with that. Playing him was something I could do well. So I kept him."

"I wondered if it was something like that. I wanted you to tell me," Eliza said.

"You can't keep asking people things until they give you what you want. Even if you've worked something out. I've decided to tell you. That's my decision," Rat said.

Eliza backed away from the edge of the post. "I'm sorry."

Rat sat the ranger down on the path. In the cabin she pulled the blanket over her legs. She'd said it now, to these two strangers, and she wanted them to have something else to think about.

"Alright. Your turn. Tell me what you are."

Atom sat on the wall for most of the next hour while Rat talked to Eliza. Rat had read Soph's statement, so she didn't need to hear the whole match again. She asked where Eliza ran and who could turn her off. Then she asked what she did when Atom wasn't there. Eliza took a while with that one.

They did go through the missed call. Rat had Eliza show her twice and told her to keep the record for Daun.

"You'd already found it," Eliza said.

"I want her to hear you explain it. She thought I ignored her."

Rat turned to Atom. "Is she a ghost like you? Is there a body somewhere?"

"No. She runs on a rack in Oakland. And some other machines," Atom said.

"Mine?"

"Right now, yes," Eliza said. "Some of the active clients near me help, and idle clients farther away. I can stop using yours."

"Do that."

Eliza disconnected her. Her reply slowed partway through, and Rat waited for her to finish. The Link had been warm against her head. She'd thought it was the stove.

"You can ask next time," she said.

It was dark in the cabin and she hadn't eaten. She stood the ranger up.

"I'm not telling Jeong or the Dogs about you. The league has what it needs for the match. But I'm coming back to talk to her. If I come back and she's gone, or you've made her forget me, I'll give Solenoid the graph and the rest of it."

"If we need to move her I'll tell you first," Atom said.

"Good."

"Thank you," Eliza said. "For wanting to know what I am. I thought you'd be scared."

"I am scared. I'm curious too. I'll be back. Don't cheat anybody else."

Rat disconnected and went to find something to eat.

"Soph's going to kill me," Atom said.

"You should call her before she hears about it somewhere else," Eliza said.

Soph was in the basement with Mim and a marionette. She went into the hall to answer.

"Rat came to the cottage," Atom told her.

"How did she find it?"

"I told her where to meet me. She had a graph of the client load. She was going to work it out anyway, so I thought we should talk."

"What did you say?"

"Something about dialogue trees. It didn't go very well. Eliza told her."

"And?"

"She wants to come back and talk to Eliza. She won't tell anybody else as long as we don't hide her or change her memory. If we do, she goes to my dad with the telemetry."

"So we don't hide Eliza," Soph said.

"Nope."

"Is she still angry about the match?"

"Yeah. She wants Daun to see the traces. And she told us to ask before using her frames. I'm taking the nearby clients off the borrower."

"Good. Tell Eliza before you change it, though. And actually do it."

"I will."

Through the cottage door he could see Eliza moving around inside.

"She keeps asking what I do when she's alone," he said.

"What do you tell her?"

"That I work. Or sleep."

He hadn't told Soph how much he thought about the three hours he slept. Eliza stayed awake. He'd promised her she could, and he didn't want to watch everything she did. That seemed unfair. Still, he wondered. He'd spent so long trying to make her think for herself, and now he wasn't sure he wanted to know everything she thought. He could imagine how she would react if he asked for a report every morning. He wouldn't have liked it either. At two he closed his work session and tried to sleep, thinking about the house and the garden and all the machines he'd let her use. He'd given her quite a lot to do without him.

Eliza had finished reading for the night. After months with Atom's books she was tired of finding the same answers in them, and when he left she decided to go out. Over the ridge was a starter town she'd passed on other walks. It had the usual well, smith, temple and tavern. Atom had said the tavern people were very old code, so she'd assumed they wouldn't be interesting. Now she wanted to see for herself.

She went in as the pixie. Nobody looked up, which she supposed was what happened when nobody had been written to notice you. There were four nameplates:

The farmer was laughing at something. The merchant polished something. The boy carried a tray to the table and back without delivering any of it. Eliza liked his impatient face and followed him to the bar.

She sat on the bar.

"Hello."

"Welcome, traveler," said the barkeep. "Can I get you something?"

"What have you got?"

"Ale, mead, and wine. Ale, mead, and wine."

"Which one is good?"

"Ale, mead, and wine."

She moved to the table and waited for the boy.

"What's your name?"

"I'm just the serving boy, miss. Can I get you something?"

"Where were you born?"

"I'm just the serving boy, miss. Can I get you something?"

"Do you ever want to go outside?"

The boy stopped and she waited, thinking for a moment that he might answer. But his animation had only reached the part where it waited for another trigger. When that came he told her again that he was just the serving boy and carried the tray back to the bar.

By the time she gave up, the boy had introduced himself eleven times. The farmer had only three jokes, and she heard them all. The merchant had five prices. She could get nothing out of the barkeep about which drink to choose, though she tried asking in several different ways. When the boy came around again she almost asked him something else, then decided to let him pass. She didn't have a better question yet.

The sky was turning grey. She went home before Atom woke, put the kettle on and set out two cups. When he arrived she was reading. He didn't ask where she'd been, and she didn't tell him.

Richard was trying to stay awake over soup in the kitchen in Sausalito.

"The board wants the consumer Link on shelves next Christmas," he told Max. "Twelve months. Jeff says the client is ready and manufacturing says they can make the helmets. Marketing's even come up with a name for it. Not Link, something else. Everybody already calls it the Link. I don't know what they think they're improving."

"Twelve months is quick."

"I told them that. Are the Phase One prototypes still in the building?"

"No. We've got four. Two in the Oakland vault, one in the cave, and one in the locked cabinet in my garage. I brought that one back last month to compare the pins. The old stimulation board is part of why we can't sell what we've got now."

"You should return it."

"I will after the teardown."

She wrote RETURN P1 on an envelope beside her and put her bowl on top of it.