The Elias Anomaly

Seven

If you enjoy this serial and would like to see more please consider visiting patreon.com/leostableford. Subcriptions start from $1 a month. There are many advantages to being a subscriber such as exclusive content and membership of a growing community.

"You do realise that this completely shatters my immersion in the experience? I saved up for eight months to pay for this holiday," Captain Silverblade said. He sat at the desk in his quarters, arms folded, bottom lip pouting forward.

"On behalf of Endoverse Incorporated," Dulcie sighed, "I can only apologise. We deeply regret the inconvenience caused by this small technical glitch, Mr Berrow."

"Um, I prefer Captain Silverblade," the miserable Mr Berrow cut in. Players always got a bit funny about how they were addressed in game. Dulcie could understand it, she hated anything that broke immersion herself. She tried to put on her most accommodating smile, she didn't know how it looked to Berrow because she was using a male avatar for this job. It was just a little thing. Pirate players could be real sexist jerks sometimes so why make an irritating job even more unpleasant.

Dulcie was beginning to regret outfitting her avatar with a healthy moustache. The whiskers were tickling her lower lip in a very distracting manner.

"I have been authorised to offer you an electronic credit that will save you up to 15% off another experience. As long as that experience is booked within the next two calendar years," she said. She hoped that this would soothe the irate Mr Berrow.

"That's all very well," Berrow said, not mollified to any significant degree by this offer. "But once a campaign's spoiled there's no getting those memories back, is there."

"Well, the sooner I can get a handle on the anomaly," Dulcie said. "The sooner I can be out of your way. You're saying you don't know where it went."

"It?" Berrow asked. "You're telling me that was a bot? It didn't seem like a bot. We had a conversation. I thought it was another player, not a proper one, not a professional either. I heard something on Plexfan.net about a possibility for specialist peeves. Like, people given a small single task agenda being sent to infiltrate other people's games. It did seem a bit odd that this guy was wearing a suit."

"A suit?" Dulcie asked.

Berrow confirmed that the bot had worn a business suit, or at least the remains of one following a soaking in the ocean.

Dulcie ran a quick check for the morning's glitches in Westwick, to see if there were any significant bot problems there. Nothing caught her eye. Dulcie made a note to raise the question of experimental bot AI causing cluster slippage. She would have to raise the matter with Hopper, her Architect Mentor, at debrief.

"And you put this bot in the brig?" Dulcie asked.

"I already told you," Berrow replied waspishly. "I went to get him out this morning, I was going to make him walk the plank, he was gone."

"Maybe he reset," Dulcie said.

"If that was a bot I'd like to meet the architect that built him," Berrow said. "He had me believing he was a player."

Berrow's manner struck Dulcie as belonging to a particular type of player. The type who secretly believed that shanty town whore bots were real people who just liked a seedy thrill. For that reason she did not accept on face value that this rogue bot had any special kind of AI. Dulcie was pretty sure she would have heard about any recent innovation in AI parsing and response behaviours.

"Well, let's find out if it did just go back wherever it came from," Dulcie said, her tone maintaining a forced brightness. "If you could just take me down to the brig, I'll run a couple of scans and then I'll be on my way."