The Developer Reborn As Archmage

The file opened, but it was nothing like any file she had ever opened. Blue light pulsed from the center of her vision and rippled out to the infinite void. This place was reacting to everything she did at a spatial level of the world, or the cosmos itself.

The blue light, in this sense, was like invisible particles devoid of physical reality. They had no rules, and they could be manipulated into any shape, like weightless vapor trails. They were close to her ‘face’ and as far as the horizon at the same time.

In the simplest terms, they were the building blocks, voxels, pixels of this strange user interface. The file that ‘opened’ in this case was a splatter of information in space. She couldn’t tell if she read it, saw it, or heard it. Senses had no meaning in this void.

Spilled the data directly into the brain, I’m guessing.

This was something from the far future, beyond even the holograms that everyone fantasized about for decades. Verse Gear had made such a high-bandwidth transfer of information possible. With tech like this widespread, it had the potential to transcend language entirely at some point, an unimaginable future.

The information that seeped into her was some preamble about authorizing a display action. She had no idea what that meant, but something crafted itself from the scattered blue light into a blank rectangle.

She had thought too far about the future. The result of that preamble wasn’t anything so futuristic. It wasn’t a message that transcended the senses.

Text started resolving on the rectangle from messy blocks. Whatever this was, it had been programmed to only show text where her focus was. It was perhaps designed as a faster way of reading critical information.

That didn’t change what it was.

It was a text file.

Slightly disappointed, she started reading.

———

Greetings from build version 11. I’m writing this right before revoking my admin access.

I’m the last one left, and I’ve done everything I wanted to do. I don’t know how long it has been. The things that remain take still more time to solve. Playing God is difficult, you see. I don’t know what I would become if this continues. I still want to remain human. I’m enabling the Deepcore protocol from here and letting Vainfall build itself.

At the time of writing, I‘ve found everything this world has to offer. It’s everything you ever wanted. It can all be yours, but you’ll never have it for long.

You’ll lose everything you build for yourself when Vainfall ends, and it’ll end violently. RLP is not stable in the long term. Verse starts a fresh seed whenever things spin out of control, and with Deepcore, it will improve things the way it sees fit. If you’re reading this from a different build version, that has already happened.

This is probably not your first run. You're not the only outsider. You'll know others when you see them, and it’s probably not their first run either.

If DeepCore hasn’t stabilized RLP yet, I’m afraid it’s up to you. It won’t be easy, but I think of it this way: You never figured out what you want out of life. If you ever did and you want to keep the life you built, you’ll have to solve the ending yourself.

I’ve scattered nine artifacts in the world if you need admin access again. Whatever life you found for yourself, it should be worth the world’s hardest adventure. I don’t want anything less for you.

Good luck, whoever you are.

PS: Verse Soul Merge will degrade the resolution of your memories. If you want to remember details, document them.

———

Darya finished reading and started thinking about what this meant. Nstrum had written something that left a lot up to interpretation.

She got the gist of what was revealed. Vainfall, multiple build versions, some sort of subprocess called deepcore that built the game by itself (sure, why not at this point?), and giving up before solving all the giant issues like RLP instability, causing an inevitable ending.

Relatable. I always crack a hard problem by giving up as fast as possible.

There was a glaring issue that this text file hadn’t clarified. She wasn’t supposed to be a developer after death. She was supposed to be a tourist. This text sounded like she had developed Vainfall until she risked ego death by boredom.

She had admin access. She couldn’t have been forced to do this by Verse Research or Amberlith. It would’ve been illegal in a hundred different ways, and they had no leverage over a dying woman if they chose to do it anyway.

It seemed she had done it on her own for some reason. She couldn’t imagine why. There was more to this that didn’t fit in a text file.

Does Earth even exist anymore? Is there an outside of Verse, whatever that is?! Too many questions.

Looking at the words floating in the void, this text file could’ve been addressed to anybody. There was mention of others. It sounded like there had been more people like her working on Vainfall. She had been the last one with admin access. She had kept the target of this document ambiguous.

The lines that directly targeted her, like—you never figured out what you want out of life —could still be addressed to anybody. Surely, she wasn’t the only one struggling with that question.

Then there was a self-imposed quest about finding admin access artifacts to solve the ending, but only if the life you want to build is worth that trouble. Nstrum ‘didn’t want anything less’ for you, whoever that ‘you’ was supposed to be. It could very well be speaking to any of the others who revoked their admin access before her.

Pretty clever writing something for yourself and others at the same time. Bravo, me.

She crafted what wasn’t explicitly stated based on what she read. A team of developers had been developing Vainfall inside Verse for an indeterminate amount of time up to version 11. They had the option to revoke their access and presumably, become players in a future build version.

RLP Vainfall must have been a gargantuan undertaking. They had likely recognized the scope of the project at some point, which would’ve led to the creation of Deepcore. They had built a system that iterates on itself and builds itself. Another holy grail, and she could see millions of ways something like that could go wrong more than right. It was playing God with the highest level of mimicry.

Had that worked somehow?

She was in version 17. Vainfall had ended in some magnificent calamity and been rebooted six times already. This was another insignificant iteration. She didn’t know how many it would take for this deepcore thing to mimic physical reality 1:1. She didn’t even know how long the other iterations lasted.

Wait. It says the life I build for myself is always cut short. Does that mean I always spawn somewhere near the end in each build?

That was devious. Thinking about it, the developers could’ve been mixed into the build at any point. They could’ve been randomized to appear all the way back to Vainfall’s prehistory. It was year nine thousand something. There was a lot of time, civilizations, and places they could’ve enjoyed long, healthy lives without worrying about endings.

She had an important question now that she had this insight. Was it only her spawning near the end, or were all developers placed in this pressure cooker situation?

It said I’ll know them when I see them?!

What were the chances of two souls meeting in a sea of billions across time? It seemed highly likely that they all placed themselves in this specific slice of time where Vainfall cracks and fractures.

That was devious indeed. By all measures, it looked like the craziest way to align incentives to build Vainfall. Everyone had quit when they had had enough of developing. They were being spawned near the end to make the ending their problem to solve. This had to be a subtle fail-safe to prevent Deepcore from going fully off the rails without supervision forever.

The fail-safe counted on someone eventually building enough of a life for themselves to give a damn about fixing the ending themselves. This was the way to ensure someone came back to play God at some point in the future.

Unbelievable.

She was beyond being shocked and surprised. She was impressed that a solution could be so layered. This wasn’t game development anymore. This was more like long-term systems planning for a multi-generational colony ship looking for a habitable planet.

There was also a mention of Soul Merge and memory loss. She guessed this must have been the reason behind those strange text lines that Verse ran every time she questioned her identity. She wasn’t going to lose memories entirely; she was going to lose the details of her memories. This way, the soul integration could smooth out the rift between Darya Altazark and N. Strum.

She didn’t have any memories of working on Vainfall in the Verse. It seemed those memories were completely wiped when she became a player.

It would be bad if I forgot everything I know about Vainfall from version six!

She had to start writing things down. She hadn’t written things down in years except for a signature here and there. Her handwriting could itself be a layer of encryption at this point.

This was something to worry about later. She decided to focus on the other things. Thinking about everything that has happened so far, this second life in build seventeen had to be special. Not even a day had passed since Darya’s resurrection. She had already found this README file in the void and read a direct message from N. Strum.

All things considered, she had been incredibly fast to exploit the Terminate command to get here. It wouldn’t have happened without the survival pressure of Dreagans and Sarka. This was perhaps one of the fastest head-starts that she had ever had in any run.

Now she had one question to answer for herself. N. Strum had wanted her to find something worth the world’s hardest adventure. She didn’t want anything less. Was Darya Altazark’s life worth all this trouble? Is this what she wanted out of life?

She had the world’s prettiest luxury ship. She had a loyal old man with light saber katanas who could catch and cook anything she wanted. She had met an unfathomably pretty elf and seen her naked in a bathtub. She was already on an adventure.

Darya laughed again, sending tremors through the gray void around her.

This must’ve been one hell of a lucky roll. There’s no way I’m letting anything cut this short.

“The answer is yes,” she said to the void as if N. Strum was listening. She could mess around in this /dev void some time later.

It was time to finish the fight and start living her second life.

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