Chapter 9: Meddling Gods
Returning to the System, Niya Talur, née Raine Ikent, felt utterly out of place as they went through the rote requirements of slaughtering their way to Silver yet again. Only a few days had passed in base reality, but she and Leese – under the guise of Karis Eili – had spent five years living among a virtual Ikent community. It wasn’t even a System community, but rather a place where they could pursue their other hobbies and interests, the ones they’d discovered only after leaving the System.
There were good reasons for it. First and foremost, it was awfully difficult to adopt a new identity when they were doing the same thing they had always done, returning to a life of ranking up and getting stronger. To really immerse themselves, she and Leese had needed a full break from their original lives and identities.
The second good reason was that there were all kinds of skills that would still be useful in Cato’s vendetta against the System. Leese had pursued her biology interests, while Raine had spent a lot of time in the pilot’s seat of various craft, as well as commanding war games and troop simulations. It was odd for the two of them to be doing different things for once, but without the pressure of the System forcing them down a single path, they actually had room to move.
Of course it wasn’t like they never saw each other or worked together, or for that matter never saw Cato. Though he, oddly enough, spent most of his time in the simulation gardening — when he wasn’t running simulations, at least. Within deep time he was merely their neighbor, not their patron. They hadn’t even up come up for air or breaks from the deep time, just because what they were doing, what they could do now that they had the option, was just so utterly engrossing it never seemed necessary.
Now that entire life had vanished like a dream. A dream that had lasted longer than their entire new life, one where the Cato they knew was a friendly neighbor who gave them vegetables, and not the distant god who sought to bring down the System. They had been bird-people for long enough that the feathers and the half-size stature felt natural rather than some bizarre fevered imagining.
The mnemonic tools and combat algorithms that Cato had provided meant they hadn’t lost any of their edge but, now that she was back in the System, Raine found she didn’t like any of it at all. In fact, a part of her didn’t even want to deal with it, would rather have returned to her beloved speedcraft even if they were virtual.
Cato had warned them about this problem, but she didn’t understand it until she actually experienced it. It was the real world that felt false, because it was like the entire thing had been on pause while she lived her life. No situation had changed, no developments had been made. No new threats had appeared. It was like loading up one of the saved games she had played in deep time, where everything waited for her to interact with it.
But it wasn’t a game.
“I don’t think we can ever do that again,” she told Leese, even as they went through the laughably easy task of ranking their surface frames up to Silver. “It makes all of this seem so unreal. Not worth bothering with.”