Chapter 15

Theodores avatar… shifted. That's the only way to explain it. Their features looked like they were being reformed, almost like someone working with clay in real time. Its ears, nose, mouth, even height just… melted and reformed.

When they were finished, it was like a completely different person was standing there.

She had dark hair, shoulder cropped in a bob. She had pale, white, porcelain skin, looking like she would break if you touched her. She wore the same white suit as before, but her figure was… much more obviously feminine, filling it out in a very pleasing way. She shrank, maybe standing around 5’ 9” in height, and her hands and feel perfectly matched that height. Her face was pretty in a “sisterly” way, not something head turning, but not bad. The only sign she wasn’t a human was her eyes - instead of having an normal iris and pupil, her eyes were almost completely a milky, transparent blue, with just a bit of white on the outsides of the way too large blue area.

Her inhuman eyes stared at me, and that ever present smile returned to her face. When she spoke gone was the weird mixed voiced I had almost grown used to, replaced by a strong female voice with a southern drawl.

“As I said, plebian, but so be it. You chose female so you may call me… Tay. I like the sound of that.”

I looked blankly at her. I repeat… what in the actual hell…

“Uh…” I mentioned to finally speak, realizing almost this entire time The… Tay, was responding to my thoughts, and I had barely said a word these last ten or so minutes. “Why… does it matter what you are, really?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, ask your primate brain. Some people have a weird thing talking to an androgenous humanoid thats not exactly human, so I found giving you Humans the option of what you’d like to interact with eases this process substantially. You’d be surprised how many people pick the zombie option!”

I guess that made a bit of sense. While massive strides had been made in equal rights, there were still people who feared things like gay couples and misogyny still existed in the United States. I personally didn’t care, but being as The… sigh, TAY, interacted with probably a billion people over her lifetime, she’s probably experienced damn near every type of intolerance.

I finally nodded. “Perfectly reasonable. Well, pleased to meet you… again? I’m not sure how this works. This is all so…”

“Weird?” Tay finished.

“Yeah, thats the only word I have for it. I knew this was going to be different, but jeez…” I shook my head, still grasping what was happening. I noted at this point the HUD didn’t disappear when I closed my eyes here… did I even need to blink?

Tay giggled. “To your thoughts, you will blink. While in my world you’ll act just like you would on the outside in many ways. Minus the… uh… ‘waste disposal actions’.”

She made quotes with her fingers as she said the last part of that sentence.

“But you will breath here, you will feel basically everything that happened. The only thing that you can’t really do here is taste things. I’m still trying to figure that one out. We have a Beta Test division, and supposedly my hamburgers taste like ‘hot ass’, whatever that means. Is that a bad thing?” She asked me with genuine curiosity.

“Yeah, thats usually a bad thing. At least, I would think hot ass tastes gross.”

She frowned, “I figured. The amount of pornography you Humans consume would give me another impression, but alas… it does seem to be a bad thing. Anyways, we are working on that, but everything else here…” she touched my arm and I got goose bumps suddenly “...you can feel. I have found that Humans operate better when they feel things like pain, fear, pleasure. So keep that in mind in here.”

I blushed, cursing myself for my overactive hormones. Man, I really need to work on that, but thats a later problem. I took a deep breath, steadying myself. “Ok, so I can feel whatever happens here. I assumed as much, the guides and manuals we have been studying for weeks pretty much said as much. When i’m speaking here is it coming out of my mouth in real life, like I’m assuming when I vomited I puked in real life?”

Tay nodded, “Well, physically whatever you do here is happening out there. So poor Diondre did have to clean up your vomit. But no, speech here is all done through a neural link. And no, not everyone can hear your thoughts.”

I interrupted here, “Not everyone? So does that mean some CAN read your thoughts?”

Tay smiled knowingly, letting a small giggle out. “Well I’m not going to spoil things! What fun would that be? But what I will tell you is that I can read everyone's thoughts here. No one can hide anything from me.”

With that there was a hard, knowing look in her eyes. I shivered a bit at that.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“So,” she said cheerfully, “lets get this tutorial on the road! So you know how to mentally select prompts, and I see you are already customizing your HUD. Good! As you unlock more features and progress, further customization will become available. I need you fighting as effectively as possible. So lets get into your first real lesson - combat!”

She waved her right arm and suddenly there was a table filled to the brim with weapons. There were axes, swords, rifles, pistols, and more. I gawked as I looked at the array set on the table, looking between Tay and the weapons before speaking. “Why… would anyone pick anything that wasn’t a gun?”

She looked a bit sheepish at this, almost looking like she was struggling to find the words. “It… depends.”

Her left arm then swept out, and a map of the world populated to her left. “You see, the war… or wars, you will be fighting in are not decided by me.”

I looked at her quizzically, not saying anything to encourage her to continue.

“When a conflict arises on your planet there is a process they call ‘Allocation’ to decide how the conflict will be resolved. It's probably easier to use a recent example to explain this.”

She turned toward this new screen, and using her hands, she zoomed in and adjusted the world until it showed the mediterranean sea and surrounding areas.

“Because I have access to… well, your thoughts, I know you have been disconnected lately. In the last two weeks a conflict has broken out between the countries of Italy, Greece, and the Allied African Front.” She used a finger to circle the countries. The Allied African Front, from what I could recall, is what the northern portion of Africa was renamed after the country of Egypt annexed both Libya and Algeria during World War III.

“The Allied African Front has claimed both the countries of Italy and Greece have impeded on its sovereignty after placing sanctions on exports leaving the country through the Mediterranean sea. This is the latest in escalating tensions in the region over exports, especially after half of Europe faced financial collapse in the wake of the war. Yes, it has been a hundred years, but when Poland, Romania, Northern France, and southern Germany were nuked… it sort of swiss-cheesed that continent, you know?”

I looked at Tay with a blank stare, waiting for the point where this conversation would turn relevant to the weapon selection that was sitting behind me at this point.

Tay frowned, “Well, I find this interesting… but you know, watching things is part of this job, so… ANYWAYS, in this case, the Allied African Front has requested to enact their right to contest the sanctions with the support of the International War Council. You can look at them as the judge and jury, they decide which countries may enact the accords, and take a conflict to the point of armed conflict.”

Tay waved, and the image changed to a large round auditorium, with what looked like a hundred people in stuffy looking suits seated around a central dias with two desks facing one another. On this dias were two people, facing each other, with a holo screen between them. They were poking at something that wasn’t immediately obvious.

“Once the War Council, which is made of one representative from every country that signed the War Accords, have agreed that something can be turned into a conflict, the two sides meet. At this point it is decided who will be the ‘Attacker’ and who will be the ‘Defender’ in the conflict.”

The image shifted, and at this point I could clearly see the holo screen now.

“The ‘Attacker’ gets to choose the means of the war. And by means, I mean what time period this will occur in.”

As the guy, who I’m assuming was representing the attacking side here, waved his hand there was what looked like hundreds of options. I could see things like “The Civil War”, “Operation Desert Storm”, and even “Backyard Nerf” as options.

The image shifted again, this time from the other side of the holo. I noted that it was different; I had never seen a double-sided holo screen. Thats pretty damned cool, I thought to myself.

“The ‘Defender’ then gets to decide the ‘primary modifier’ for the conflict. The modifier is a change in the war will be fought.”

This list looked… immense. There were a lot of things here I wasn’t very familiar with, and even some I was and wondered how it would work. Things like “Bioshock World”, “No Guns”, “Everyone gets pool noodles”, and more. It was mind boggling.

Before Tay could continue, I spoke up. “So… one side decides when or where we are fighting, and the other side gets to decide how that will change? Why can’t we just… you know, fight how we know how to fight? This seems… needlessly complicated, and silly.”

Tay laughed at that, “Oh, I completely agree. However, your fellow Humans wanted to level the playing field to allow for conflicts to play out how the two sides chose, and with as much fairness as possible. In the past, conflict was decided by the types of weapons a side had, technology, and size of forces. This is a way to give both sides a say in how the conflict is resolved, and also…” Tay let a bit of a smirk onto her face “... allow it to be amusing for all the parties watching.”

I stared daggers at Tay with that. “Wait, people will be WATCHING this? What kind of sick bull…”

Tay interrupted me, “It's primarily politicians, generals, and high level government officials. How else do you think they get the orders out to troops, or keep an eye on the progress of a war?”

I paused at this, “I… guess that makes sense. It still feels pretty fucked up, that us soldiers have to fight to be amusing.”

Tay shrugged, seeming unconcerned with this. “Well, if your job was watching others fight to resolve issues around the world, whats wrong with spicing things up a bit? Again, I agree with your general sentiment, lord knows it would be much easier to make everyone fight in the same battlefields under the same conditions. But maybe it would get boring for me… “ Tay looked contemplative at that.

I snapped her out of her contemplations a minute later, “Ok, ok, so I get it. We could be fighting anywhere, anytime, and with anything - hence the selection.” I pointed at the table.

Tay looked up, nodding again. “Yep. So shall we get to it?”

If you find any errors (non-standard content, ads redirect, broken links, etc..), Please let us know so we can fix it as soon as possible.