challenges and games enjoyed by
the Bios of The Synergis.
While your personally assigned Cycog will
understand that you are participating in
Dream Speed, others you interact
with in The Synergis may not.
You may suffer penalties if you draw suspicion to yourself.
Roleplaying required, in other words. That was going to be an interesting proposition. MMOs had originally been known as MMORPGs, but the majority of players never made any real attempt to live in the fictional worlds. My parents were an exception to this, but it usually wasn’t my style. I would have to adapt.
Use command
[Begin]
to progress
I really wasn’t sure I liked the sound of the role I’d be playing, either. Awarded to a Cycog? Direct your participation? I like to play MMOs at my own pace. Would I be stuck in a perma-party with some random playing a Cycog? Or was it simply a tutorial program?
Whatever. I’d try it out, and leave the overthinking until later.
[Begin]
8
tutorial
Across the vivid blue landscape, a star fell.
It took me two blinks to realise that the star was not another HUD display, but an object inside the curving viewing glass. A tiny point of glimmering light, moving very slowly.
"Well, hello Tinkerbell."
[[Is that what you wish to call me?]]
I’d said the first thing to come into my head, mostly to cover surprise, but paused before responding to the curiously doubled voice. The Cybercognates were supposedly in control of The Synergis, and I’d been assigned to this…Cycog to be trained. Would there be consequences for not treating it with some basic courtesy?
"You don’t have a name already?"
[[Of course I do.]] The words were light, amused, and showed no hint of the poor pacing and dubious pronunciation of a computer-generated voice. The only strangeness was a sense of duplication, of the words being layered—though only two or maybe three times, instead of the multiplicity used for the introduction scene.
"I can’t call you by your actual name?"
[[You’re welcome to try. My name is ___+++___+++.]]
The sound the Cycog produced would fit a synthesiser, or some New Age instrument. Not made for human throats.
"Okay, that’s definitely beyond me. But it seems odd to me that you don’t have a name I can pronounce. What do other people…other hu…Bios call you?"
[[I’ve been called any number of things.]] The tiny orb of light drifted closer to my face. [['Dio' will work as a use-name.]]
"I’m Taia," I replied promptly. "If it’s not impolite to ask, how does a Cybercognate differ from an AI?"
[[By not being artificial.]] The point of light shimmered between blue and yellow as it spoke. [[The first Cybercognate formed spontaneously within the computing and power networks of the planet Szelen. We are not a manufactured species.]]
"Do you…are you similar to AIs in other ways? Vastly intelligent, able to twist computer systems around your virtual fingers, humans are but ants to you, that sort of thing?"
[[Oh, certainly.]] The Cycog’s colours changed again, flickering to blue and then purple. [[Less than ants, to the greatest of us. Specks. Motes.]]
I couldn’t guess if my expression revealed the combination of fascination and dismay I was feeling. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a game, that I wasn’t really sitting naked above a tropical paradise talking to a more-than-AI. Maybe because Dream Speed itself truly was such a leap forward that part of me wanted to believe that at least part of it was more than particularly clever programmers who had mastered stealth development.
"So why would an advanced life form like you want to waste time shepherding some random human about?"
[[Would you like a philosophical discourse on the purposes and advantages of domestication? On a strictly practical level, Bios are our transport. Cycogs cannot generate the lan necessary for interstellar travel. But it is also a matter of our own standing in The Synergis. It is a status item to have is a Bio that performs well in the Trials and Challenges. Best of all would be to raise up the Bio who succeeds in crossing the galactic limit, and expanding The Synergis outside Helannan. Outside the Milky Way.]]
"You mean we’re…pets," I said. "No, mounts, which you ride and also put through competitions to advance your own reputation. We’re horses. We’re…we’re Chocobos."
I hadn’t been certain that the Cycog would even recognise the reference to the giant birds used as transport in the Final Fantasy series, but the glowing ball laughed immediately—a sound that was not only strangely doubled, but possessing an added set of sputtering notes that were in the inhuman true voice of the Cycogs, like an electric organ had giggled.
[[Yes, you are Chocobos. Carefully raised, kept well fed, and excessively useful for getting about. Tendency to squawk.]]
I didn’t know whether to laugh in return. Mainly I wanted to shudder, thankful this was only a game.
"What happens if I don’t do any of this? If instead of facing Trials and Challenges and whatnot, I just go down there and take a nice walk on the beach?"
[[Then you take a walk on the beach.]]
"Until what? I starve? I get kicked out of this room? You bring out the spurs?"
[[What for? All Bios who join The Synergis are guaranteed a base level of care. This room, your Snug, is yours alone. There is clothing, food, entertainments. Less variety than those who choose to participate, but nothing unpalatable. It is not uncommon for a Bio to compete in Challenges until they have unlocked sufficient patterns for their own satisfaction, and then to simply become observers, or find some personal preoccupation: an art or sport unrelated to The Synergis' great goal.]]
"Isn’t that boring for you? Or do you coax them back?"
[[Why would I waste my energy forcing one Chocobo to drink when I can always ask to be assigned another? Nor would I send you to the glue factory, but simply pass your care on to the general attention of the planet’s administrator, who will set a Construct, a…sub-routine, a corner of ter attention to monitor your well-being.]]
"Put out to pasture…" I murmured.
Dio laughed again, that splutter of musical notes over doubled voice. [[Yes. I do like this analogy. I shall add a yellow feathered head-dress to the available patterns, for the other Bios who make the connection.]]
"But…" I paused, because it didn’t seem a good idea to raise that opening incitement to espionage and stolen ships. "Don’t people hate it? Rebel? Try to bring down The Synergis?"
[[Of course. Or, at least, leave. Why do you think there are Enclaves? We often help Bios set them up, or locate a suitable world and transport them there, if enough of them want to go at once. But…]] The glowing mote changed colour again, an entire rainbow shift. [[The Synergis is a beneficial mutual arrangement, and most citizens—Bio or Cycog—treat the relationship as a symbiotic partnership, for that is how it is at its core, even though I have been speaking of it in extreme terms, for purposes of trolling and other mild entertainment.]]
"Oh, really?"
[[I thought you would enjoy it,]] Dio murmured.
This time I did laugh, despite myself. I didn’t find the idea of being someone’s Chocobo at all attractive, but it was an incredible conceit, and Dio almost managed to make it sound amusing.