Chat, My Friend is a Literal God. What Do I Do?

The first time it happened, Rippa laughed it off. ‘Screw you for falling for an obvious scam,’ she thought. Besides, the scam was nothing new, and society had long established a standard playbook for dealing with the aftermath. Lawsuits, investigations, charges, money freezes, and all that.

But when it happened for the second time, Rippa was forced to take the matter seriously. She posted a video on her X profile.

“—So, please remember, neither Goggles nor I myself offer any crypto, products, or services.” In the video, Buttons was reading the script Rippa had written for her. “Please be aware that any products or services or cryptos that claim to be affiliated with either Goggles or me are scams. If you receive emails or see ads claiming such, report them to your platform as fraud and ignore them.” Buttons then looked up from the script. “Thank you for your attention to this matter. Rippa, what’s crypto?—”

And the video cut off.

It kinda sucked that Rippa had to pin the video to the top of her X profile, replacing the post that had all the links to her channels and merch vendors. Perhaps that little discontent was the reason why she hadn’t bothered to edit the video.

“Why not make your own X accounts?” Rippa suggested.

Buttons and Goggles laughed out loud. They thought she was joking and, trying to be good friends, reacted accordingly. But Goggles quickly realized she wasn’t joking and nudged Buttons to stop.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, Miss Rippa, but that is a hard no.” Goggles shook his head. “We are not going to endorse any particular platform.”

“You could just… make accounts everywhere?” Rippa pushed a little.

“And what happens when new ones come up?”

“Ah…” Rippa had to concede to that. It made sense. She briefly thought about rebutting Goggles’ logic with, “But you endorse me as your platform?” but then decided against it. Goggles would surely give a very long lecture on friendship, trust, goodwill, allies, and all that. Which was kinda funny, when Rippa thought about it, because Goggles himself had no experience with friendship other than with Buttons, which, in turn, was a can of worms Rippa wasn’t willing to open again.

“So, for the eleventh time, what is crypto?” Buttons demanded.

“You don’t want to know,” Rippa and Goggles answered in unison.

“Hmpf,” Buttons pouted. “You know what? I’m gonna look it up myself.”

Goggles just looked at her.

“I said I’m gonna do it!” Buttons threatened.

“Go ahead.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Rippa asked, confused.

The kid hesitated. “I’m really gonna do it!”

Goggles nodded.

Buttons closed her eyes, and then… she convulsed and retched and collapsed.

Rippa was just in time to catch the kid before she hit the floor. “Buttons! What’s wrong?”

Buttons opened her eyes and gasped for air. “I know kung ku.”

“What?”

“I read Gogglepedia.”

Goggles wiped Buttons’ forehead. “You see, Miss Rippa, we hold a tremendous amount of information. But this little brain,” he tapped on the kid’s head, “is the local 5,400 RPM HDD that stores cookies and cache and page files.”

“Oh…” Rippa was getting it. “She overloaded?”

Goggles nodded.

“You know, I’ve noticed you guys have a knack for coming up with good analogies and metaphors.”

“It comes with age.” Goggles smiled.

He and Buttons then took turns elaborating further. Basically, the little peanut brain had access to information that no human could handle. Hence, the data traffic was heavily throttled, and Buttons the puppet generally stayed ignorant of what was going on around the universe, relying only on highly condensed ‘For You’ feeds Goggles thought the kid might be interested in. That, nevertheless, was still quite taxing to a human child’s brain, which explained why Buttons required frequent napping.

“But the pilot doesn’t need to do that, right?” Rippa asked.

Buttons snapped. “Rippa! The first rule of an RP server is not talking about the server being RP!”

“OK, OK!” said Rippa, giving up.

Buttons took a few deep breaths. The color had returned to her face. “OK, now I know the mathematics behind crypto—”

Rippa face-palmed. Buttons had looked up the wrong section of Gogglepedia. ‘Gogglepedia. That’s actually a sick name,’ Rippa made a mental side note.

“—But what do they actually do?” the kid asked.

“No one knows! That’s the whole point,” answered Rippa.

“So it exists for the sole purpose of existing?”

“Now, now, Buttons,” Goggles chimed in. “Its purpose is to be a vessel. People place value in it.”

“Hmm…” Buttons sank into deep thought, which led to her soon falling asleep.

As Goggles was settling the sleeping child in the hammock, Rippa asked him, “Was it that taxing to her head? Even I don’t get that stressed reading a Wikipedia page.”

“Ah, she had to learn human mathematics first.”

“Oh…” Rippa then thought, ‘Wait, human mathematics? Is there any other?’

“No worries. Buttons does housecleaning regularly, so she will not remain a math genius for long.”

Rippa looked at the sleeping kid. “So… this replica brain is like a potato PC hooked up to supercomputers?”

Goggles laughed. “Wow, Miss Rippa, you are good with analogies yourself.”

***

Later that day, after streaming, Rippa was lazing in bed. Thinking about the interaction with her two friends made her deeply disturbed. She tossed this way and that before pulling up her phone and asking Grok about Multiple Personality Disorder.

‘Dissociative Identity— when did they change the name?’ she wondered.

Apart from the multiple personality thing, none of the symptoms seemed to apply to the cosmic octopus. For one, the sock puppets not only acknowledged each other but also acknowledged that they were sock puppets. And, two, they weren’t humans to begin with.

It was as if Rippa was invited to a tea party hosted by a child and sat at the table with stuffed dolls. Decent adults didn’t generally go out of their way to ruin the party, and Rippa had a feeling, although she was successfully suppressing it, that she had been forced into being a decent adult.

But who was forcing her? Buttons? Goggles? The cosmic octopus? Or her own conscience? Or her own upbringing? Rippa sat up and hugged her pillow. Was the word ‘forced’ even the right word for it? Cornered? Gaslit? But even questioning this made Rippa feel as if she was betraying her two friends.

But the way they were different. The way one knew something but the other didn’t. It looked and sounded so real. Beyond the level of pretending. So good, so authentic that Rippa would, most of the time, forget that she was talking to two sock puppets. Wait, no, not just two. There were Madam J.D. and Miss Pendrake, too. And the maids, and the soldiers—

‘Wait…’

Rippa checked the time. One in the morning. Way past Buttons’ bedtime. ‘But the octopus is awake, right?’

Rippa sent a message on Discord. “How many Buttons and Goggles do you have?”

She, of course, immediately regretted sending it. That was too abrupt and blunt. Rude, even.

Over the next few days, Rippa became certain Buttons had read the message because they continued to exchange messages on Discord. But the question Rippa had sent remained unanswered. Unaddressed. Neither Buttons nor Goggles even acknowledged that Rippa had asked the question, and they went on as if she hadn’t.

Rippa was too afraid to ruin the tea party and left it at that. Or so she tried, but there was one big question she just could not ignore.

“Are we all tentacles? Am I one?” she asked Goggles when Buttons wasn’t around. “All of humanity? Everyone?”

Goggles looked at her. “Hmm… That question deserves a place up there with ‘Are we in a simulation?’”

“Fair enough,” Rippa agreed. She then imagined being in a simulation. If she were, she wished she were in something exciting, like an open-world RPG. Like medieval fantasy with dragons and goblins. Not some mundane, everyday slice-of-life boring stuff.