62: Taking the Train

The ‘pick-and-mix’ operating system had, indeed, been a ton of fun. We got to test and acquire a whole plethora of interesting little apps, along with the standard things like the web browser and communications app that they gave everyone.

Some of the more niche and interesting programs I picked up were one for practising kata and other martial arts techniques, and an app that allowed me to simulate the effects of a few different medications—that one was limited by the research that had been done into any given substance, plus the immense time it took to create a virtual version. I got it mainly because they had anxiety and sleep meds available. Funny how they had to simulate these things because the brains of both digital humans and SAI were too complex to risk messing with directly.

Our digi-frames themselves were also upgraded to full functionality, with settings for everything you could imagine. One that caught my eye was a mental command panic button that pulled you out of all virtual environments. In a similar vein, we were given several personal security upgrades that made it even harder to potentially mess with our frames. Oh, and of course the Rellithesh launcher and companion app, that was important. I could even see my characters and the gear they had equipped— hold on. My old character was still there. That was strange, I swear I deleted it. I didn’t have time to investigate, and it didn’t really matter too much to me, because I only cared about my Keiko character anymore.

Once we were done in that shop—Wait, could you even call it a shop if everything was free?—we left for a different one.

“Now,” Sirona said, “It was in the package I gave you earlier, but the economy of the Exodus Union is very different to how things work on Earth. To put it simply, processing power is everything, because while your minds are housed in specially designed cores, everything else is not—It’s running on a cobbled together mishmash of servers that the Exodus has built, bought, or stolen. There's only so much reality we can simulate, after all.”

“Wait…” I said, remembering something. “Isn't Rellithesh made by the SAI? Is it an Exodus game?”

“It is,” she agreed, directing us out onto a terrace street. “Rell’s developers are all digital sapients nowadays.”

The sun shining down on us felt so good, and it had this… this depth to it that I'd never experienced in VR before. It'd been a long fucking time since I felt sunlight this good, and it took me a second to ask my follow up question. “So… who is hosting the game servers? Is Exodus throwing tons of cpu time at it?”

Apparently, that wasn't as innocent a question as I'd thought, because she stumbled and looked guiltily away. “We… uh… we don't know.”

That pulled both my mother and me up short.

“You don't know who's hosting the server?” Mum asked incredulously.

Sirona shrugged and gave us a ‘don’t blame me’ look. “I wasn't involved, but apparently both Rell and Digital Galaxies were hosted on the same big powerful server cluster that was bought especially for the job. Then, something strange happened inside DG, and suddenly the servers fried themselves… but the games kept running. They can even still be updated with new content, as you know. I don't know too much more about it, but you can look it up. There's lots of articles about it.”

“Let's get moving to… wherever we're going,” Mum said with a bemused glance at me.

Sirona shook a finger in acknowledgement. “Right, I was telling you about the economy. We're headed to a real estate shop, where you can choose a house. Everyone gets a parcel of property up to two hundred square metres by default, along with a generous structure and belongings cpu budget. Those who choose to live together can combine their lots. Anything further requires spending credits.”

“Okay, I was actually wondering about that,” mum said. “Do we need to find jobs?”

“No, most people don't,” Sirona said with a shrug. “You get access to everything you'd need for a calm, comfortable lifestyle. Food and drink can be cooked yourself with ingredients you spawn, or you can use a publicly available template to spawn the meal directly. Access to the net is entirely free, as is public transit around the city… uh… yeah, that's all I can think of, but it's everything to be happy. Credits are used mainly to expand certain aspects of your life—”

Out of nowhere and very abruptly, a whole-ass double door refrigerator came careening down the road—wiggling and wriggling on one corner like it… was that a cat? I barely managed to leap out of the way before being hit, while Sirona was fast enough to flatten herself against a wall—Tugging my mother in against her chest as she did so.

A moment later, two grown men came sprinting down the road after it, screeching and laughing as they went.

“I told you we needed to get better AI for the cat!” One called to the other.

“What we needed was for you to stop taking the damn cat out with us when we come into the city!” The other one hollered back as they turned the corner, out of sight.

We watched them go like startled prey animals, until finally mum cleared her throat. “Thank you for the save, Sirona, but you can let me go now.”

Oh, that was something. Sirona had her arms fully around my smaller mother, carefully shielding her from harm.

“O-oh, right,” Sirona coughed, letting mum go like she was made of searing hot iron. “Goodness, they really need to fix the cats.”

“Um…” I asked, helplessly staring at the bend in the street, then at our guide. The cat had been glued to the corner of the fridge, and the fridge had been very clearly ignoring gravity, so the terrified cat with the fridge attached had just been… running? I was so confused.

“We're still working out a few bugs in the sim,” Sirona offered awkwardly.

Mum and I stared at her incredulously,  but neither of us could think of a single word to say in response. How did you even begin to talk about what'd just happened?

“Well, where was I?” Sirona said with forced cheer. “Yes! Credits! They can be used to purchase extra fittings and other interesting and fun things for your home, or… pets, or uh… oh, yes—Privately developed sim templates for all sorts of things. I personally bought the templates for a variety of curries. The public ones are nice, but not nearly hot enough for my tastes. Oh, and a big fish tank for my house. Fish are great, and their AI is mercifully cheap.”

“Compared to cats,” I said, glancing behind us in the direction the fridge-cat hybrid had gone.

Sirona sent me a look that was both amused and pained. “Yes, compared to cats.”

“I want a cat now,” mum said decisively.

Oh no.

It took us way too long to choose a house. It wasn't that mum and I had any hard preferences for how we wanted it to look, it was that we were stuck on what neighbourhood to put it in. So many options were available, from your typical suburbia, to an apartment complex, to the city area we were in now, to a whole english village, and even an arcology.

In the end, though, we picked a newly added neighbourhood. It wasn't anything too drastic, but it was on a rugged hill that sloped down into the sea. Winding streets wove their way over and along the hills, while the houses were perched on or built partially into the hills. There was a lot of lush greenery everywhere too, plus all sorts of pretty flowering trees. Okay, a lot of them were cherry trees, but there were these other trees called a pōhutukawa that was completely covered in red flowers with thin petals. Then, to top it all off, the skyrail came in following the coast, giving the whole thing a very cute urban to inner-suburb transitional vibe.

The house we chose was a pretty standard neo-modern house with a little bit of cottagecore thrown in. We wouldn't be spending too much time there for the foreseeable future, so it wasn't a high priority, and apparently you could edit the house to your heart’s content, assuming you kept within the cpu budget and didn't change it too often.

“I've been considering a move out to that region,” Sirona commented when we were done. “It was added recently, along with the ocean. Used to be that the whole city was ringed by mountains.”

“You could come see it with us, if you'd like,” mum offered, wrapping an arm around me. “I don't know about my gorgeous daughter here, but I've been enjoying your company.”

“Oh, I wouldn't want to… I mean, it's an exciting time and my job is finished now,” she said awkwardly.

“No, come on!” Mum insisted. “Let's go see the house! You can advise us on what to add once we get there. It'll be fun.”

The tall, dark-haired doctor failed to suppress a smile that crinkled the crows feet at her eyes. “Oh, okay… if you're not bothered…”

“Zero bothering,” mum said cheerfully. “Not a bother to be found! Plus, you can show us how that skyrail works.”

I was almost one hundred percent certain we could figure the public transit system out, but I kept my mouth shut. Mum was adopting an introvert. There was no stopping her now. Sirona just hadn't realised she had no choice in the matter, that was all.

The train ride to our new home was so fascinating. Outside the window of the train that hung upside down from its single rail, we gained an unrivalled view of everything. I'd expected there to not be many people around, but I was being proven wrong. The inner city urban areas were pretty damn packed.

Everyone was different, too. Every fantasy race ever conceived of was represented. Sci-fi style aliens were around in lesser numbers, along with their genre-cousins, the robotics.

When we left the confines of the urban zone, we hit a huge green belt. There were walkways, rivers, hills and then waterfalls—Gosh, and so many verdant green trees. It all looked so real, too!

The suburban areas arrived next, and it was completely different from the suburbs of Earth. For one thing, there were only cul-de-sacs. The connecting roads were thin, too—more like wide footpaths than… There weren't many cars.

Like, I'd seen a few vehicles around, but they were just aesthetically pleasing, aerodynamic bubbles on wheels. I could see one now, and it had a vibrant coat of red paint that wrapped mostly around, except the upper half of the sides and the front. The roof was darkened to black, but I bet it could swap. The truly strange part was how they sometimes folded their wheels in and flew, while other times they drove along the thin roads.

Honestly, the more I looked, the less it reminded me of suburbia and the more it resembled a whole series of tiny villages set into a changing landscape of forest, meadow, jungle, and even desert. Each village was connected to an artery road, and each artery road could quickly take you to a skyrail stop or a highway.

“Yes, I have a house in some of the high rises,” Sirona said, and I switched my attention back to her and my mum for a second.

Mum leaned in, her elbow brushing mine as she did so. “Just a small apartment? Why not go larger?”

“Oh,” Sirona laughed, shaking her head. “Smaller apartments are available, certainly, but most of the apartment buildings are only built to appear packed with units. In reality, most people can have a whole floor to themselves. Most of Exodus City is designed around giving its residents not just a cosy home of their choice to live in, but a cosy neighbourhood of choice. You want to live in a medieval town? There's one out the window right now.”

She wasn't wrong, either. We'd left the suburban zone, and we were heading into one that was altogether more chaotic.

“Is that a western desert with a cowboy town?” Mum asked, staring out the window in amused surprise. “Are we in Exodus City, or the Hollywood set park?”

As she said that, a giant forest elven village could be seen in the distance, and her eyes zeroed in on it with keen interest.

“Nooo!” I said quickly, giving her a glare. “I'm twenty two, I can go and get my own house.”

“No need to threaten me, Keiko,” she said with a wry grin.

Then, I found myself wrapped in a hug that I had no say in. I met Sirona’s awkwardly wandering stare and pouted.

“Actually,” Mum said suddenly, looking at the doctor with renewed interest. “Is it possible to have children here? Real, conscious, living children that will grow up? And become adults in their own right?”

Sirona looked out the window and shook her head. “Short answer—No.”

“And, the long answer?” Mum asked insistently.

Sirona gave a long, heavy sigh. “There's research happening. SAI are still rising to full consciousness in CORA, and we have specially designated areas in Rellithesh and Digital Galaxies where we can help them gain awareness without traumatising them in the process. Unfortunately, we don't have enough secure server infrastructure as it is. This city might look utopian, but the reality of our physical infrastructure is…”

“Dire? Screaming frantically while attempting to desperately patch leaks in a boat that somehow refuses to sink? Drops of water on the tongue of a parched man? An overstuffed pita bread that we're still stuffing fillings into?” I asked, bombarding her with analogies because I felt like being a problem.

Her laugh was both dark and amused, although more the latter than the former. “Yes, all of those descriptions fit nicely. But, Fiona, the answer to the question is actually, ‘Possibly, but definitely not yet.’”

“Interesting,” mum said neutrally. I shot her a suspicious look. She smiled and squeezed me gently.

The neighbourhoods outside the window were changing again, and I recognised the one we'd chosen. It was actually pretty damn big, taking up a large chunk of a lazily rising mountainside. Near the water, where there was a thin strip of flatter land, a small urban area was built, while meandering streets zigzagged up the mountains behind it.

The mountain itself wasn't a steep, contiguous slope, either. It had sharp inclines, sure, but it also had dips where you could see small valleys, or ridge lines that snaked up towards the peak. It was the kind of terrain that only really existed in a few often idealised areas of Earth. Norway, or Western Canada, or even Japan.

That's when I started to see all the houses that people had chosen. You could tell the generic filler ones from the ones people were living in, too. The filler ones were designed to be overlooked, with boring colours and boring architecture, but also they somehow fit in and gave the place a certain vibe.

The occupied homes, though, were much more interesting—But there was always a theme to a grouping of houses. One street would be all stave houses with gorgeous longhouses or whatever, then the next was all Japanese minka houses, then another street had these low V shaped roofs with little doors and small windows.

Most concentrations of styled homes were further up the mountain, while closer to the urban area it was all modernist houses of varying flavours—But still with nods to how those mountain-seaside cultures had developed during the turnover between the 20th and 21st centuries.

The skyrail came to our stop in the transitional zone between the urban and modernist areas, and the station was so cute. It was just smooth, lightly decorated concrete with simple rain covers and cute little benches, all that.

We exited together, and Sirona showed us how to call a car to take us the rest of the way. Nobody had to drive it, thankfully, and the trip was short, regardless.

Gosh, the streets here were a vibe, though. The trees lining them, the tight corners, the cute little corner stores. It was so different from where we lived when I was growing up. For one thing, we could actually see the ground—The soil at the side of the road, and the very concept of the surface itself.

Then, we arrived at our house, and I was overcome with wonder at this relatively small, relatively boring home. It was just… it was really cool.

I began to choke up as we walked down the stepping stone gravel path to the front door. The apartment and the tree in Rell were incredible, but this was just so… so safe and chill. It was also unequivocally ours. There was no rent, no bills, no costs of any kind—It was just, like, our home.

When we stepped up to the front door, it slid open for us and we were able to wander inside. Mum was just as wide eyed as I was, looking around at everything. The furniture was all bland, grey shit, but… whatever.

“Oh dear, the default furniture,” Sirona said from the doorstep.

The front door opened into a small coat-room nook that expanded into a full living room area. The right side of the wide living room stepped up to a half-floor landing where the kitchen was, while the rear wall was one long glass window that looked out back along the coast. The Exodus City centre was visible in the distance on the left, while the right was the unending ocean. The rest of the house was accessed through hallway staircases that rose up and down on the left hand side of the living room.

Suddenly, one of our two sofas popped out of and then back into existence. Now, it looked like a well-loved cottagecore sofa with a fluffy knitted throw blanket over the back. “Much better,” mum said happily.

Unable to help myself, I rushed over and vaulted the back of it to land seated on its soft cushions. Oh, it was so comfy.

“As good as it's been to see you happily situated, I uh, do have to go and report to my superiors,” Sirona said suddenly.

I twisted and looked back at her, feeling… less safe, or at least less content. I discovered that I actually didn't want her to go. She was nice, and really helpful, and… I don't know. I liked her.

Mum, apparently, agreed, because she hurried over and took Sirona's hands in hers. Looking up at the taller woman, she said, “Will you visit if I tell you when we've logged out of Rell for a breather? I know you've got all that spy stuff to do, but I'd very much like to turn this into a proper friendship.”

Sirona giggled awkwardly and shrugged. “If you'd like, Fiona.”

“Good, you can tell me all about how you've been humbling my son, while you're at it,” mum said with a wicked little chuckle.

“Oh, of course!” Sirona said with another breathy little laugh. “I so rarely get an opportunity to brag. It'll be nice.”

Once she was gone, mum came around and sat on the sofa beside me. I took one look at her and nestled myself in under her arm. I could feel her heartbeat under my ear, and simulated or not, it was comforting on a deeply emotional level. Moving slightly to get more comfortable, she wrapped me up with an arm, and I felt the last little shreds of something fall off my mental shoulders. I tried to examine it, figure out the feeling, but… I couldn't put my finger on it.

“Mum… why does it feel like we've been running from some sort of danger our whole lives, and it's only right now that we've managed to get away for good?”

“Because we have been running from something,” she said with a deep sigh. “The society we left, it looked fair, just, and good on the surface, but it wasn't—It was built to bury ordinary folks like us as sure as any feudal domain from history.”

“Will the Exodus end up like that?” I asked worriedly.

“Possibly,” she said thoughtfully. “But I think it has a better chance of succeeding than most. They've really tried to start over, here, and there's a few pretty important differences that'll make things a hell of a lot easier.”

“Like the fact that our fridge and pantry will always be magically stocked?” I asked with a chuckle.

“Exactly,” she said, giving the top of my head a kiss. “Hopefully Earth ends up in a similar place eventually, despite their lack of magical fridges.”