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In her haste to fling the door open, Emilie sent her standing lamp clattering to the ground. She paused in the door frame. On one hand, she had waited for so long, she couldn’t stand the thought of any further delays. On the other hand, what was another few seconds at that point?
Emilie decided to do the responsible thing and right the lamp. After all, she could hardly make a good impression with her room looking like a tornado had hit it.
She jumped at the sound of her roommate’s voice calling her name. Apparently, that was the difference a few seconds could make.
In the communal living space, she found her roommate struggling to drag a nondescript cardboard box across the floor. She breathed a sigh of relief; if there had even been a logo printed on the side–or, god forbid, a curious roommate had opened it–she didn’t know how she could justify herself.
Even she still had difficulty believing, much less understanding, the situation she had found herself swept up in, so she wouldn’t even know where to begin to explain. Thankfully, from a certain perspective, the numerous non-disclosure agreements she had been forced to sign made that a relative non-issue.
“Haha, merci beaucoup,” she chuckled, nervously. “I’ll just take that off your hands and–“ Emilie gasped as she tried to haul her package away and avoid any awkward conversations; it was far heavier than it looked.
Despite that, she laughed off her roommate’s attempts to help. She laughed even harder when the girl asked her if it was new equipment for those fancy video games she was so obsessed with. The guess hit a little too close to the truth, but if it would discourage anyone from intruding in on her, she could let the assumption stand.
Once she was safely back in her room with her cargo, she locked the door. She couldn’t keep her hands from trembling as she moved to slice the package open. Weeks of sleepless nights had built up to that very moment.
Inside, underneath the layers of plastic and polystyrene foam, was a rather peculiar-looking device. Emilie struggled to lift it from the box and to set it down without dropping it; it was deceptively heavy for its size. The base was black and hexagonal, roughly the size of a dinner plate, and sloped gently inward until it plateaued. One side bore the Instatainment logo, while another contained several legal disclaimers. She ignored those, though, in favor of the part on top.
A short tube protruded from the top of the base, on that tube a circular disk, and on that disk a series of lights, sensors, and cameras of various shapes and sizes, all pointed in different directions. It called to mind vague memories of a childhood trip to the planetarium, but on a much smaller scale. Might have been just as heavy, she thought, with a grunt, or maybe her friends were right and she really did need to get out more.
Emilie couldn’t afford to do that then, not when she was so close. The machine sat, inert, in the center of her rug. There were no visible control mechanisms, and neither was any literature provided in the package. She poked it with the tip of her shoe as she considered her next move.
While she was pondering which of the numbers in her phone directory might be appropriate to call, the machine sprang to life. Internal fans whirred, while one of the central projectors displayed the familiar face and torso of her primary Instatainment contact.
Sergey Asimov was looking a fair sight better than he had when she had first met him, not that she would ever tell him as much. The stress of having lost his good friends and coworkers, as well as taking on their programming workloads, had done little for his physical or mental health. He still wore the same dorky sweater and circular glasses he always had, but carried himself with more confidence than ever.
That might have been owing to his rapid ascent up the corporate ladder, which was part of the reason why he was projecting himself into Emilie’s bedroom to begin with.
“Sacré bleu!” she shrieked, startled by his sudden appearance.
“Hello to you as well,” Sergey responded, glibly.
Emilie was still clutching her heart, which felt like it might burst through her chest at any moment. “At least give me a warning, next time! What if I had been indecent?” she gasped.
Sergey fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I would sincerely hope that you wouldn’t greet the courier in your birthday suit,” he deadpanned.
The young woman blushed. She considered informing him that, no, she hadn’t even received the package to begin with, but knew that the only winning move with him was not to engage.
“Oh, I should also mention that the cameras haven’t turned on, yet,” he smirked.
Sergey might have been a nerd, but he had a serious mischievous streak once she got to know him. In a way, it was almost flattering that she had earned his trust so thoroughly. It might have been, had she not been on the receiving end of his so-called wit one too many times. One day, she swore, vengeance would be hers.
“A-anyway,” she stuttered, regaining her composure, “how did you even know when to call?”
Sergey shrugged. “I’ve simply been keeping an eye on the tracking service provided by the shipping company. It was nothing devious,” he assured.
Emilie could just imagine him sitting at his desk and refreshing the webpage repeatedly.
As if he had read her mind, the programmer continued. “I might be busier now than ever before, but I can afford to set aside some time every now and again. This is a big day, after all.”
On that, they could agree. It was a big day for lots of things: Instatainment, science, civil rights, and (most importantly, in her own, unbiased opinion), Emilie.
As different as the two of them were, they had one major, overlapping interest. Her name was Lea.
Lea was the result of Instatainment personnel and resources being swiped from under their noses. Since her entire existence as an artificial intelligence, known colloquially as an Evotar, was hosted on company servers, they found themselves saddled with a nightmare of legal and ethical issues.
Many of these were dumped onto Sergey, who shouldered the burden proudly. He did it for his friends, both old and new, to ensure that they would have a future.
Dubious origins aside, Evotars could no longer be swept under the rug. The question became precisely what to do with them in the long term. Being confined to a single video game for all of eternity was hardly a viable solution, especially since Instatainment wanted to pull the plug on those servers as soon as it became economically sensible to do so. The board of directors was not completely heartless, but they were an entertainment company; the sooner it became someone else’s problem, the better.
Sergey and the Sakai siblings had collaborated with some of the best minds the company had to offer. Although upper management was aware of the issue, by necessity, they refused to let it become public. Sergey agreed, if not for the same reasons. While he knew that the press would do their part to keep Instatainment accountable for their enormous responsibilities, he also knew that security was a serious concern. After all, if he could hack into the game, undetected, others could as well.
The result of their efforts was sitting directly beneath him. It took the programmer pulling a few strings, but he managed to convince the board that Emilie was already in deep enough that she could be trusted to field test the prototype. The number of favors she owed him was incalculable.
Truthfully, Sergey did it because he knew it would make Lea happy. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t cash in those favors at every available opportunity, however. His rise through the ranks had taught him the importance of taking advantage of what resources he could.
For Emilie’s part, she was Lea’s closest friend. She wanted to claim the title of “first friend”, but the logistics of her creation from the template of another human being and her subsequent incubation period still made her head hurt. For the time being, she could settle for “closest”.
As far as she knew, she was among the first people to meet true artificial sentience. That was cool, in concept, but not so much in reality. Lea was cool, undoubtedly, although it was hard to see her as anything other than a friend she had met online. Even with her broken speech module, she was still brave and smart and funny and cute.
Emilie blushed. Since Lea was essentially just code, she was, in a manner of speaking, her own avatar. She was nothing like Emilie, who had created a character to play as in the MMORPG CrossWorlds. Hopefully, the differences between her and her online persona weren’t enough to be jarring.
With the time rapidly approaching, she found it finally sinking in. It was such an abstract concept throughout the endless stream of emails, paperwork, and conference calls that she had almost lost sight of the end. In a few moments, Lea would be in, or as close as she could manage, her very own dorm room.
Whatever she was feeling, it must have shown on her face because Sergey cleared his throat. “Ready when you are, Miss de Belmond,” he prompted.
She hadn’t come so far to back down at the last second. “Allons y,” she declared.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” Sergey replied. “Please stand still while the program initializes.” He adjusted his glasses, then began to type, rapidly.
Several bulbs in the cluster of electronics flickered on at once. Beams of light projected themselves onto the perimeter of the room, starting from the baseboards. The tube that supported the apparatus was apparently telescopic, because it extended skyward, and the beams followed. Atop the tube, the disk rotated, allowing the cameras a panoramic view.
Emilie tried not to flinch as the wave of light swept over her. She wondered if this is what her essays felt like when she ran them through the scanner. At least that had never taken so long.
Eventually, the routine came to a halt. After a brief pause, the holographic form of Lea manifested beside Sergey. Unlike him, however, she was present in her entirety, with her feet planted on the floor.
Emilie had spent so long fretting over her appearance that she was almost jealous of how effortlessly perfect Lea was. Of course, she knew that the digital girl would likely have been happier even knowing that she had the option to look any other way, but no change she could make would make her any less perfect in the student’s eyes.
With that being said, however, the sci-fi getup clashed somewhat with her college dorm room. From the neck down, she supposed that the dress and leggings wouldn’t look too out of place for a pub crawl. The blue hair and horns, however, were harder to wave away. Maybe she could slip into a convention hall by pretending to be a CrossWorlds cosplayer. Emilie shook her head; it was far too soon to imagine taking Lea out for a night on the town.
“Good morning, Lea,” Sergey greeted, warmly.
For a moment, Lea stood, stock-still and unblinking. Before either Emilie or Sergey could voice their concern, she stirred, suddenly. Her first instinct was to study the room around her until she caught sight of Sergey.
“Hi!” she called, running up to where his hologram floated. “What?”
“Yes, I imagine you might be somewhat confused,” Sergey chuckled. “This is the big surprise I’ve been telling you about.”
“What?” Lea repeated. She made a movement as if she were reaching for something, only to pause. “Why!?” she demanded, miming a typing motion.
Sergey caught on immediately. “Ah yes, the infamous ‘Lea Board’,” he began.
The Lea Board was an invention of his, a source of great pride and embarrassment. It was a keyboard programmed with a wide lexicon in order to bypass the issue of Lea’s broken speech module. It was a clever workaround, in his opinion, soured only by the fact that it took him so long to come up with. Maybe if he wasn’t so sleep-deprived from hard-coding individual words into her character, the idea would have come sooner.
“Interesting story about that, really,” he continued. “You see, the Lea Board was actually based on a developer tool, normally inaccessible to players. Since we’re no longer in CrossWorlds, however–“
Lea cut him off. “Where!?” she shouted.
“Right, well, I was getting to that,” the programmer grumbled. “If you really want to know where you are, I think it would be easiest if you just turned around.”
Lea raised an eyebrow, but complied. Sergey had never steered her wrong before, at least not intentionally, so she had no reason to distrust him. Going somewhere new was always an exciting experience, especially as those opportunities dwindled. She turned, expecting fully to see Carla or Captain Jet, perhaps in a private residence outside of the Playground.
What she found, instead, was a stunned Emilie staring, wide-eyed, back at her. It was definitely her; the short, red hair and the freckles were a dead giveaway. She wasn’t dressed like a Pentafist, obviously, and she might have been an inch shorter, but it was definitely her.
For her part, Emilie was star-struck. She watched as Lea’s face cycled from confusion, to shock, to an unidentifiable emotion, and then split into a wide grin.
“Hi! Hi! Hi!” she cried as she launched herself towards her best friend.
“Lea, chérie!” Emilie instinctually braced for the impact that she, logically, knew would never come. When she opened her eyes, she found Lea pressed up against her, contoured perfectly into her chest. She tearfully watched as her arms drifted right through the girl. So close, and yet so far.
She glared at Sergey’s hologram. He had a lot of explaining to do if he wanted to make a futuristic Orpheus out of her.
Hoping to head off the tongue-lashing of a lifetime, Sergey waved his hands. “I think I had better explain exactly what is going on here.” Neither girl looked particularly pleased with him then, so he discarded his rehearsed spiel. “Just the basics!” he promised.
“Essentially, what we’ve done is scanned the environment to create a virtual replica, which we have loaded Lea into,” he began to lecture.
“Technically, ‘Lea’ is still safely stored in a CrossWorlds server and backed up externally. Well, we asked her to log out around now, just in case, you see, but the point is that we could theoretically run multiple instances of her if we had to.” He paused. “I think I might have gotten a little off-track, there.”
“Ah oui?” Emilie muttered. She would be lying if she said that the casual discussion of her friend as a series of ones and zeroes didn’t disturb her. Obviously, Sergey cared for Lea as much as she did, and he obviously knew more about the mechanics of it all, but it was still off-putting. It had the same effect, to her, as a surgeon intimately detailing his latest operation.
“Right, where was I?” Sergey flipped through a few documents outside of the view of his camera. “Ah, right. So, Lea should be able to interact with everything in the room as if it were solid, but, of course, cannot physically affect them. The sensors are constantly scanning, so if anything moves, then it should also move within her simulation. Things outside of the sensors’ reach are obviously not rendered, so feel free to experiment however you wish. Officially, that’s the point of this trial, you know. When you’re done, Lea, just log out like you normally would. Your memories from today should carry over the next time you log in to CrossWorlds.”
Never one to forget her manners, Emilie replied, “Merci, Monsieur Asimov. We will let you know if we require any assistance. Unless spying on girls is how you spend your working hours?”
Sergey was unimpressed. “No audio or video will be recorded. All I have access to is the error log, which is more than enough for me to do my job. It’s all right there in our recently updated privacy policy. You did read it before accepting, didn’t you?” he smirked.
Lea stuck her tongue out at him. “Bye!” she called.
That elicited a chuckle, at least. “I can see when I’m not wanted. Now, I really shouldn’t leave experimental technology unsupervised by a member of Instatainment,” he stared, pointedly, at Emilie, who fidgeted in place, “but in this case it should be fine. Have fun, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
The video feed cut out.
Emilie glanced down to see that Lea was still hugging her. Not that she particularly minded, but it was much easier to have a conversation with her face than the top of her head. At least she didn’t have to worry about holographic horns poking her eyes out.
She took a step backwards, causing Lea to stumble forward. “Pardon, it is just so, so good to see you again,” she gushed.
“Lea!” agreed Lea, meeting her enthusiasm. Her smile quickly faded, however. “Why meet Lea?” she asked.
Despite the Evotar’s verbal handicap, Emilie felt that she typically had a fairly good grasp on what her friend was trying to say. It helped that Lea was incredibly smart and expressive, but a lot of interpretation skill had come with experience. At that moment, however, she was stumped. The idea that Lea was disappointed to see her was too shattering to even consider, so she racked her mind for any other explanation for the change in tone.
“Uh, because I’m your friend?” she suggested. “If you were asking about why I was chosen for the trial, then…” she trailed off. That wasn’t something she really wanted to discuss, at least not yet.
Fortunately, Lea intervened by shaking her head. “Why wait meet Lea?” she clarified, crossing her arms.
That cleared things up. Emilie tried to exhale her relief and exhaustion. “Oh, you’re asking why I haven’t logged in much lately, non?” she asked. It was a reasonable question, the kind that any reasonable person would have expected. Thinking ahead was never really one of her strong suits, though. It was the reason she played brawlers in every video game. Still, she didn’t want Lea to think she had been avoiding her intentionally.
“Ah, you know how it is,” the student sighed, “I’ve just been real busy with…” She managed to catch herself before saying “real life”.
That was the sort of excuse she gave her online friends (that is to say, her friends that she had met online, not her friends that quite literally were online). In the technical sense, Lea was also real. The servers on which she was stored physically existed, and she thought she could recall a nerdy friend of hers saying once that encoded data actually had mass. Instatainment had built the Playground for CrossWorlds on an actual moon called the Raritan Gem, which she could, theoretically, visit someday.
None of that really mattered, though. Lea was real because she could think and feel, and there was nothing else to it. Calling her life fake, even if she spent all of her time in an artificial game world, was crossing a line. Emilie’s family might have been shocked to hear that level of consideration from their hyperactive little girl, but she had gone to college to broaden her horizons, and liked to think that she had.
“Stuff,” she finished, lamely. “You know: studying, drinking, hanging out with friends, drinking… job hunting, drinking, the usual. It’s my last year of college, so it’s been hectic.”
Lea’s face scrunched up at the mention of other friends, but Emilie mistook it for concern over her recreational habits.
“C’est bien, chérie, I know my limits,” she laughed. On a more serious note, she added, “I’ll have more time to play with you soon, I promise.”
Lea seemed satisfied by the response, for the time being. She took the lull in the conversation as an opportunity to investigate her surroundings.
“Ah,” Emilie’s heart skipped a beat. It occurred to her that she had technically brought a girl back to her room, even if it wasn’t in the traditional sense. Her roommates would have given her endless grief about that if she could legally tell them about it. They were always pushing her to spend less time gaming and more time dating, so she won, in the end. Kind of.
“You’re thinking about how to climb my furniture to get to the highest spot possible, aren’t you?” she challenged. “Honnêtement, sometimes I wonder if you are part mountain goat. You even have the horns for it!” she mimicked the Spheromancer’s iconic horns with her index fingers.
In a display of incredible eloquence and maturity, Lea blew a raspberry at her.
Emilie giggled. “Really, though, I understand. Sometimes, when I walk around the city after a marathon CrossWorlds session, I feel the same way. Unfortunately, I don’t think Sergey programmed any rare loot into my bedroom, though.” Inspiration struck her. “Hey, why don’t you take a look around, anyway? You can point at anything you’re curious about, and I can tell you all about it! It’ll be just like we’re still in the game,” she proposed.
Lea eagerly nodded, dashing around the room in search of the most interesting–or, knowing her, the most embarrassing–items. She soon settled on the CrossGear, the virtual reality device that made CrossWorlds possible to begin with.
“Why am I not surprised?” Emilie chuckled. “That’s my CrossGear, obviously. I had to save up for ages to buy that thing. It might look a little bit different than you’re used to, seeing as it’s a newer model, and all.”
The Evotar made a concerted effort to lift the helmet off the ground. The helmet, residing in another reality, entirely, did not budge.
Even if Lea was physically in the room, Emilie wasn’t sure what she was trying to accomplish. She already existed inside of CrossWorlds, presumably with an experience far more realistic than the average player’s. Was she wondering what it was like for everyone else? Emilie wasn’t sure it would work, even under more ideal circumstances.
If Sergey were around, he would definitely advise against trying, just in case it caused some kind of fatal error, burned down the dorm, fried the electrical grid, and deleted Lea. He had an almost paternal tendency to worry, but then, Lea almost warranted it. She was always getting into trouble of her own making. In that respect, she was much like Emilie, except her escapades were generally the result of too much thought, rather than too little.
Lea pouted, then moved on. She eventually stopped by the desk, pointing at a half-eaten croissant and grinning.
“I get enough jokes about being French as it is,” Emilie groaned. “Yes, we eat croissants. Are you happy, now?”
Lea’s eyes widened as she shook her head. “Sorry!” she apologized, pointing again to the pastry.
“Oh, not that?” Emilie considered what Lea might think about when she saw a croissant.
Realization struck. The Playground was a continent affectionately nicknamed “The Croissant” for its vague crescent shape. She also might have been thinking about the Cross Sandwich, which was represented by a croissant. Emilie stockpiled those because they were the best healing items in the game, and for no other reason. When she really thought about it, “CrossWorlds” almost sounded like “croissant”. That one might have been a bit of a stretch, though.
“Sorry for assuming the worst. Those kind of jokes got old really quickly, you know?” she sighed. She should have had more faith in her friend. It wasn’t the first time she had caused problems by lacking faith in others.
“You must have been talking about the Playground or Cross Sandwiches, right?” she confirmed.
To her surprise, though, Lea shook her head. After a moment’s thought, she pointed her fingers towards the sky alternatingly, a gesture that Emilie recognized as the sign for stars.
Even after all this time, she still had a lot to learn about her friend. It gave her warm feelings to know that she would get the opportunity to do just that. For now, she had a mystery to solve. “A croissant in space? Ah, la Lune!” she exclaimed.
Lea nodded emphatically. What about the moon would interest an Evotar so much? Emilie thought back to all of her time in the game. While she generally spent most of her time playing during the day, she could recall a few sessions that went longer than expected. It was always jarring to log out into total darkness after beating up mobs under the sun, like the opposite of exiting a movie theater during the day. The total lack of day and night cycle had never really crossed her mind. She suddenly sympathized for her friend, who must have settled in to sleep every night in broad daylight. Maybe she had effective curtains, or maybe she didn’t technically sleep so much as she logged out, but it was the principal of the matter.
There was a notable exception in Sapphire Ridge. It was where Lea had essentially been born and raised, so it had to have bitter and nostalgic memories in equal measure associated with it. The sky was perpetually an inky black, which made the lanterns and the fireflies stand out all the more. It was beautiful, and the only place in CrossWorlds where true night existed. Emilie tried to recall what the moon looked like, but her mind would only produce images of a–somewhat unrealistically large–full moon. She understood that it was pretty, as well as a functional light source in a dim area, even as it filled her with melancholy.
She understood the novelty of a crescent moon to Lea. The Evotar had only stories and old memories to rely on for information about the outside world. Had she been in that position, the idea of a celestial body seemingly transforming every day would have been exciting to her, too. Not to mention those days when the moon was visible alongside the sun; those still fascinated her.
“Hey, do you think you could see out the window if I moved the cameras closer?” Emilie asked. “Sergey did tell us to experiment.”
Lea smiled softly, but shook her head. She walked over to place a hand against the glass windowpane–at least, where the glass was. Somehow, she knew that nothing would change, even if the window was open.
“Oh.” Emilie frowned. The last thing she wanted was to tease Lea with the things she couldn’t have. A selfish part of her argued that Lea was doing the same thing by standing, intangibly, so close.
“Wait, cameras? Aha!” Emilie snapped her fingers. She raced over to a bookshelf and began to rifle through volumes.
“Mais oui!” she announced, holding up a weathered scrapbook. She crouched beside the device, flicking through the pages and presenting them to the sensors. “That should do it.”
She couldn’t show Lea all of the wonders of the world that she deserved to see, but she could show her pictures of them. She was proud of her quick thinking, although her mind was already advancing to emailing albums to Sergey, so that he could upload them directly to her, or whatever. Obviously, developers couldn’t stick whatever assets they wanted into the game, but maybe an exception existed for Evotars. Emilie’s heart raced at the idea of framing a picture of the two together in Lea’s virtual house.
Which reminded her: she totally needed to take a picture with Lea, even if she couldn’t post it anywhere.
Emilie hopped onto her bed, patting the space next to her. The scrapbook sat in her lap. Lea scooted up against her, presumably to get a better look.
“A-anyway,” the redhead stammered, fighting down her blush, “I can’t show you the night sky, but I have the next best thing. There are lots of pictures from my childhood here, including a few from my trip to the planetarium as une petite fille. I told you I grew up in a pretty rural area, so you know this was a big deal to me.”
Together, they flicked through the book. Emilie told stories about some of the more memorable pictures, while Lea pointed when she wanted more information. “Little Emilie was such a cutie, non?” she cooed.
Lea nodded into her shoulder, which she could see, if not feel. Eventually, they came across the page she was looking for. She and her family were in a few photos, but not nearly as many, and never as the focus.
As beautiful as the spiraling galaxies and nebula clouds were, Emilie had seen them all dozens of times before. Instead, she focused on Lea, whose eyes had lit up brighter than any star in the night sky.
To the best of her recollection, she tried to explain what was visible in the photographs. Every child went through an astronomy phase at some point; the universe was simply too brilliant not to capture the imagination.
“That,” she said, pointing to a wing of a particular galaxy, “is about where the Raritan Gem is… I think. Cut me some slack, it’s been a few years.”
Lea ran a finger over Emilie’s own. It awed her to think that they could be so far away, yet still connected.
They soon came to the end of the scrapbook. It was fun to browse through, every now and again, and much more so with a friend by her side. Emilie wondered if Lea had any childhood memories of her own.
It was a dicey subject, at best. The Evotar used the mind of Shizuka Sakai as a template, so there might have been some residual memories. Having met Shizuka, though, Emilie could confirm that they had little in common, save for their competitive natures.
The idea that two identical people could diverge so far over just a few months forced her to consider how all of her experiences had shaped her. Whatever had happened, it had led her to Lea, so she was grateful. Still, maybe it was for the best not to probe too deeply into the past; there was still a future to focus on.
“I’m glad you’re here, chérie,” Emilie whispered. The two of them remained together on the bed.
“Lea,” agreed Lea. After another protracted silence, she asked, “How meet Lea?”
Emilie paused. “That’s a bit of a long story. After the raid on the Vermillion Wasteland, you were gone for months. There was a whole big mess when Instatainment found out about the whole thing. Our guild and Monsieur Grasshead knew too much to be allowed to just walk away, so we had to attend a lot of boring meetings and sign a bunch of contracts,” she explained.
“We didn’t know when, or even if, you were coming back, so we all logged on just about every day, even if it was only for a few minutes. I was constantly pressing Monsieur Asimov for as much information as he was able to provide, not that it was ever much. I knew that he was probably getting frustrated, and that he was busy enough as it is, but you were more important to me,” she admitted.
“So imagine my surprise when, one day, I received a call from him. He told me that the Evotar issue had become bigger than he expected, which was really saying something, and that Instatainment would need to hire a lot more staff, soon.”
Lea gasped, already predicting where the story was headed.
“Oui, I’m getting there,” Emilie assured her. “Well, you can imagine that I told him that I would do whatever it took to be there when you were recovered. He told me that I didn’t have to be an employee, for that, but you know that I’m always going the extra mile,” she winked.
“I had to change my major to ethics, focused on artificial intelligence, of course, before I even had a chance at an interview. I was lucky that I was far enough from graduation, and that I had such good connections. It wasn’t all that long ago that I officially got the internship. Technically, this is my first assignment,” she shrugged. “Hanging out with my best friend, and getting paid for it!”
Lea squealed and latched onto her friend.
“Merci, chérie,” Emilie giggled. “This is only the beginning, though. I can’t even begin to tell you everything that we want to try! Imagine this, but in a pair of glasses, so that I could take you anywhere, to see anything!”
The excitement in the room was palpable, unlike certain other things.
“Alas,” she sighed, “I don’t think I’ll be able to touch you for a long time, yet.” To underscore her point, she ran a hand through Lea’s face.
Lea’s grin turned predatory. “Lea?” she taunted.
Emilie’s face reddened, brightly. “Non, not like that!” she swore. Well, maybe a little bit like that, but nothing so soon! “I’m just saying that we have a lot of work left to do; a lot of it we’ll be doing together.”
The Evotar relented in her teasing. She really had smugness down to a science. That was another trait she might have picked up from Shizuka.
That reminded Emilie of something. “Speaking of all that, I just remembered that I was looking into Instant Matter not too long ago,” she recalled.
Instant Matter was the namesake of Instatainment Ltd. It was a remarkably versatile, airborne particle that could (as the name suggested) be instantly rearranged into any shape with the smallest of signals. The avatars, enemies, and obstacles of CrossWorlds were made from Instant Matter, while the code of the game destroyed and reformed it at will.
When Emilie realized that maintenance crews existed on the Raritan Gem, it occurred to her that she, too, could book a flight to meet Lea in person. Unfortunately, access to the moon was restricted to employees only, a hurdle that she had not yet crossed. Getting the time off and scraping together the cost of a ticket was another matter entirely.
Her next idea was purchasing some Instant Matter for personal use. It had to have been tested planetside before flooding the atmosphere of a distant moon. Instatainment didn’t sell any, directly, as they were notoriously protective of their properties, but there were, apparently, other avenues.
Instant Matter needed to exist in certain quantities in order to function, so her first priority was finding a room that she could hermetically seal. That was easy enough to rent, as was the diving equipment that she required to not suffocate inside.
What stumped her was the price tag. She had asked a mutual friend of hers and Lea’s, a real nerd, to calculate the cost of filling a room with Instant Matter. He quickly worked it out, but Emilie lost track after the sixth zero. On a student’s budget, she was working hard enough, as it was, to afford instant noodles.
When she conveyed all of this to Lea, the Evotar immediately set about poking her wherever she could reach, as if to assert her superiority.
Emilie rolled her eyes. “Laugh all you want, but you’re only touching a digital reproduction of me. I can’t feel a thing,” she intoned.
This time, it was her turn to laugh at the distraught expression on Lea’s face. It was good to know that they were on the same page.
The sun was already starting to set; Emilie wondered if Lea could tell. As much fun as she was having, she had other responsibilities that demanded her attention. Graduation was just on the horizon, so she had a pile of exams to study for.
“I don’t want to get up, but I think we have to,” Emilie sighed.
“Wait!” Lea protested.
She would have been tempted to stay like that forever, had her responsibilities not been tied to directly improving the situation for the both of them.
“Désolé, chérie. There will be a next time, soon. I won’t ever make you wait for so long, again,” she promised.
In fairness, Lea had made her wait by being logged out while the corporate executives decided what to do with her. That was an unfair comparison, obviously. Emilie had been busy, but the real reason she hadn’t logged in so much was that she was afraid. She felt like she had blinked and an entire week had gone by without checking up on Lea or her other online friends. After that, every day was another weight on the scale against her soul and she couldn’t bear to face them. The longer she went without seeing anyone, the worse she knew they would make her feel when she finally did. Not that ignoring them forever was a solution for anyone, but it was the best she had.
Her spiraling thoughts were interrupted by a transparent finger swiping at her face, trying in vain to brush her tears away.
“Ah, sorry, chérie. You really shouldn’t have to see me like this. This is supposed to be a happy day,” Emilie said as she forced a watery smile.
“Lea!” Lea declared, in a tone that brokered no argument. She moved to hug Emilie once more, and this time the redhead saw, from the corner of her eye, a gentle kiss placed against her cheek.
She may not have been able to feel it, but her face burned, regardless.
“Bye!” Lea called, before blinking into empty space.
Emilie cradled her cheek in her palm. “Au revoir,” she managed, too late. Although Lea had gone, her smile remained, and likely would for the rest of the night.
Her rumbling stomach reminded her of the time. Lea never had to eat, she thought bitterly. It must have been nice to have an infinite pocket full of food that never expired, with no real need to consume it. Of course, she was only saying that because she was hungry. The slightly stale croissant would have to do, because the dining hall was probably closing up, soon.
She needed all the energy she could get if she wanted to hit the books, ace her exams, and make Lea proud. Studying was most effective with breaks, though, and she had read the literature to prove it. Maybe in the morning, she would message her boss, asking when she could give the device another test run. She snickered to herself; wasn’t she just the most dedicated employee?