Otherlife Dreams: The Selfless Hero Trilogy (37 page)

In a sudden burst of thought Runner called up the command console for the ship.

/Status Henshaw, Ted

User: HenTed001 logged in

/Where * POD UserName(HenTed001)

Pod: 410,002

/Status POD 410,002

█L █O █A █D █ I █N█G█

No Alerts

System Normal

/Emergency Medical Override

Password: ***************

Password Accepted

Confirm Medical Override-Eject:

Focusing on Hannah again, his attention drifted from the ships command console. Her health bar was just turning over to red. She stared at him, eyes that held acceptance and regret. Eyes that clearly expressed an infinite range of emotion. Pain, rage, sorrow, fear, regret, joy, humor. Eyes that held life. Eyes that were alive.

Not just an NPC.

Hannah is alive.

Crunch, blood flowed out from her, spilling into the green grass.

Confirm Medical Override-Eject:
Yes

Ted doubled over like a toy puppet with it’s strings cut. His body hit the ground hard and rolled away from Hannah and laid still as death. The blade clattered loudly beside her face and came to rest near her head.

Runner could still do nothing, the timer still ticking down from it’s original five minutes. It had felt like a lifetime but apparently time had only lapsed a single minute since the start of the attack. Letting his eyes focus on hers once more he wished he could laugh at what he saw.

Her eyes could be best described as shock and uncertainty. She didn’t see Ted fall, just heard him and the sword both drop. Time passed and the shock gradually turned into hope. Half a minute fell from the timer before hope changed into certainty and confidence.

For his own part, Runner found it mildly awkward to stare into a woman’s eyes, unblinkingly, for such a long time. Hannah must have picked up on it because that confidence suddenly shifted into amusement. Then it became outright unrestrained hilarity at his expense. Runner could do nothing but stare into her.

After a seemingly unending time, Runner was freed from his forced paralysis. Sitting up he immediately looked to anything other than Hannah. Unable to look at her directly he made his way over to her, picking up the quest weapon and destroying it without bothering to look at it. Such a broken weapon would only be a problem for Hannah in the future. Setting his hand on Hannah’s shoulder he brought her health to full and then cleansed her of the poison.

Stepping away from her to give her a little privacy to collect herself, he walked over to Ted and squatted down. With a thought he called up the console one more time.

/Status POD 410,002

█L █O █A █D █ I █N█G█

Pod Empty

LOG: Medical Override-Ejection performed by NorRun001

/Status Henshaw, Ted

User: HenTed001 logged out

There it was, plain as day.

NorRun001. I killed him. He’s dead. I-I can’t escape this. This is reality. The reality of my choice is that I will be tried and executed when this is over. In for a penny, in for a pound. Can I edit it? Editing a medical record would be a punishable offense, but one of a much lesser dire consequence than that of murder.

/Status POD 410,002

█L █O █A █D █ I █N█G█

Pod Empty

LOG: Medical Override-Eject performed by NorRun001

/Edit Log

Date: 11/01/46043 Action: Medical Override-Eject User: NorRun001

Unable to Edit

Medical emergencies can only be changed with approval from Chief Medical Officer

Runner stared at the date, no longer caring about having killed Ted. In fact it might not matter in any way shape or form if this was accurate. Digging deep into the ships subsystems he pulled open the inbound communications log. They received regular communications from Earth during their voyage. Distance wouldn’t stop a signal as powerful as the ones sent from Headquarters on Earth. Even the strange internal message he received was listed. The problem was that they were all quite old. The oldest was Forty-four thousand years old to be precise. The newest message received was twenty-one thousand years ago.

Popping them open from the beginning with his Administrators password Runner began listening to them. They were indeed messages from Earth of the most mundane details. Promotions, demotions, politics, current prices for a year of duty.

Skipping to the most recent message he opened it. The message itself he found it made no sense at all to him. It was comprised of characters he couldn’t recognize, or the computer couldn’t decipher it.

Letting his eyes rest on dead Ted, Runner wasn’t sure of anything anymore. A few keystrokes later and he nominated himself as the Captain of the ship. The computer went through a rapid series of checks to ascertain if there were any objections. Thirty seconds later the computer determined no one aboard had declined the personnel change or that no one was aboard that could countermand the order. In that moment he was no longer just the Senior Systems Administrator but also Captain of the ship.

Using both ranks to his advantage he locked out every system to the entirety of those who were still alive. If they found out that every person they ever knew was dead it would only make matters worse. The ship couldn’t know it had been forty-thousand years, not if they wanted to remain a cohesive unit. To remain hopeful. To remain sane.

Runner covered his face with his hands, pressing them tight to his skin. None of these actions could be called an appropriate solution, but it was the best one he had for now until he could pull everything off the server that could give away the secret. He’d need to sort through it all at some point and begin opening this back up, probably starting with the entertainment cluster. That and figure out a what to tell the ship.

“You killed him,” Hannah stated.

Runner let his hands drop from his face with a sigh, lifting his eyes to look at the horizon.

“And then some.”

“How?”

“I ejected him from his pod using a medical override command. His body will have been exposed to the vacuum of space instantly, or if there’s atmosphere I suppose he’d die of exposure. His brain was already flash fried though the moment I ejected him though. He’s dead. I killed him.”

“Because he was going to kill me. Was actually killing me.”

“Yeah. As he’s the active quest holder, you’ll need not worry. No one else will ever receive it from the guild again. Ever.”

Hannah digested that bit of information in silence. He’d effectively freed her and assured her place in the world. Runner didn’t move from his spot and continued watching clouds scuttle across the sky as it drew closer to sunset.

“For me,” she finally continued.

“For you.”

“For an NPC.”

“For you.”

A heartbeat later a pair of arms wrapped around him from behind and tightened rapidly across his shoulders. Her hands grasped her own forearms, effectively locking herself in place around him. She leaned into him, her chest and shoulders pressed into his back. Her leather armor creaked under the force of her hug. He could feel her forehead against the back of his head and her breath sliding down his neck.

Runner felt his skin prickle at the contact and found himself oddly ill at ease.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome Hanners.”

Thinking on it, he could only find one answer that held any truth to it. Hannah wasn’t just an NPC, a Natural, to him anymore. She was a woman. An attractive woman at that. One who was so close right now that he could barely think straight. Runner reached up with his right hand and awkwardly patted Hannah’s arm.

“We need to get moving soon,” Runner said quietly.

“In a bit. Besides, we’ll arrive after dark, nothing will open till the morning,” Hannah lifted her head from his. He could feel her breath tickling his ear, as she watched the sky with him.

“Mm, true enough. Want a beetle?”

“Yeah, I do want a beetle.”

Opening his inventory he pulled three beetles free and reached up to offer one to Hannah. Oddly reminiscent of their first real interaction she took the beetle from his hand directly with her mouth. Chewing his own crunchy snack he waited for her to finish. Holding up the second as she did, knowing full well that everyone had said the same thing about the second one, he waited. Hannah took that one as well.

It wasn’t until the sun set that Hannah was willing to release him from her grip. They walked in the dark to Crivel with only the company of the moon.

Epilogue

They’d met up at the waypoint in the deepest part of the night. No one was the worse for wear, though it was clear Thana was suspicious of their time table and why it took so long. Exchanging heartfelt greetings with Nadine and Thana he was truly glad to see them. The strange feelings that had snuck up on him around Hannah was in full force when looking at Thana. It was easy to forget just how striking she was, even when all she did was pat him on the shoulder as a greeting.

Runner didn’t really want to talk to anyone, and begged off till breakfast. Promising to explain it all come the morning, whatever Hannah didn’t tell them, and answer their questions as well. Asking Thana to take the lead he crawled into the wagon and let himself close his eyes and think. Katarina was sprawled out next to him, snoring happily, having never doubted for a minute that Runner would return she had gone to bed.

At first Runner thought it was just the experiences of the day that had his stomach feeling fluttery. Eventually he came to the realization it was Katarina herself. It seemed it didn’t matter who it was, he no longer was truly comfortable around his party as he had been.

It hadn’t bothered him up to this point being so close to any of them, but now it felt different. Katarina was undoubtedly as alive as Hannah, Thana, Yulia, as anyone, and just as attractive as any of them. Which meant she was just as much a woman as well. He knew from checking their flags earlier that they were not just run of the mill Naturals either. They’d been flagged for every possible interaction there was. They were programmed to be the epitome of new age AI and therapeutic interactivity, which meant they were able to participate in any act that the game supported.

Rolling onto his side at that thought he put his back to Katarina and laid his hand on the sidewall. It felt like wood under his fingers, not like an approximation, but wood. Every time he felt the wood previously, he assumed it was wood. Now he could only believe it was wood.

Cool air had settled over the town itself, also feeling quite realistic. It was in truth so cold out tonight that the Chilled debuff settled over him and was near to moving to the next status debuff in the lineup, Cold. He briefly thought about dragging out a blanket but just didn’t have the energy for it. Cold wasn’t the worst thing in the world and it felt mildly invigorating. He was alive and cold. Letting his hand drop he turned his mind towards his life as it was and what he could do with it.

Though he couldn’t prove it, he was sure the Sovereignty was gone. His purpose, his knowledge, would be antiquated. As out of date as a caveman would be to himself. He would be as a Neanderthal to Srit, he had no doubt. Whoever he or she was. Whatever he or she was.

Forty-thousand years was a long time, a very long time. Distance meant very little when your travel time spanned millennia. Had they passed from the galaxy into another and were now dealing with aliens? If they did manage to get out, would they even want to? The thought of a galactic space zoo was a very real concern if they had managed to make contact with another species through their vagrancy. Supplying a Zoo manager with a colony of four-hundred thousand Humans didn’t seem ideal to Runner.

The ship itself could easily keep itself functioning as it were for an indefinite period of time. Given the reactor core, full stasis, and that the usage was so low, there was no foreseeable end that would be measurable in a significant way. Nano repair droids would keep all active systems fully maintained.

Providing Srit didn’t just unplug them and spill them out onto the decking, this would be an indefinite life. His original goal was now well and truly dead. Even with an admin password for the game, did it even matter? He had to change his priorities around, Srit was now the problem, goal, and ending, all in one.

Until then he needed to power up, build more gear, maybe develop a safe haven for himself and those he would protect.

Katarina shifted around as the wagon bounced through a pothole, her snore immediately dying away. Without turning his head he knew she had woken and noticed him. She might appear to be inattentive or unintelligent, but very little got by her ferocious mind, she just didn’t act or comment on everything.

Then she was there, at his back and nearly touching him. Her hair tickled his shoulder as her head came down to his ear.

“Welcome back, Runner,” she whispered.