“That would be true,” the A.I. replied, “but there was something Aldous may not have been aware of.” He turned to the Kali avatar, sitting aimlessly, staring straight forward into the dim light of the restaurant.
“Kali?” Thel responded, not seeing the A.I.’s point. “Aldous knew about…wait a second, are you saying he knew about the Kali avatar, but he might not have known about the entity that spoke to us?”
“The entity helped us,” the A.I. confirmed for Thel, “and it may have shown us the way out.”
“She healed both the A.I. and me,” James injected. “That means she had the ability to manipulate the code within the sim.”
“And she or it also exited the sim, which means the entity was able to circumvent the trapdoor,” the A.I. added.
Thel closed her eyes. “That’s why you brought her with us,” she realized. “And why you didn’t say anything about it while Aldous was monitoring us.”
“Precisely,” the A.I. confirmed. “What the entity may have provided us with is an avatar that was both capable of manipulating code in the sim, and capable of cracking the trapdoor.”
“Nice work,” James said to the A.I. with a grin. “If we can gain access to the coding of the avatar, and if your theory is correct, then we can circumvent the trapdoor and send a message.”
“To whom?” Thel asked.
“Old-timer,” James replied. “If Aldous really is trying to keep us trapped, then Old-timer may be our only way out. He’s the only one who can access the hard drive.”
“Speaking of access,” Thel returned, “how the hell do you access the code of an NPC?”
The A.I. held up his de-patternizing gun. “This should suffice,” he replied.
Thel’s eyes narrowed. “What now?”
The A.I. grabbed the Kali NPC’s wrist and put her hand, palm-first, on the table. Then he aimed the weapon and fired.
Kali’s hand, like everything shot by the de-patternizer, dematerialized, briefly revealing the golden coding that evaporated into nothingness like wisps of smoke. The NPC hardly reacted as the A.I. released its wrist.
James’s eyes widened. “I see it,” he said, peering into the stump. He grabbed the wrist and examined it before gouging into it with his fingers, an action that caused Thel to nearly gag.
“No!” she reacted, repulsed.
“There’s no blood.” James smiled reassuringly, like a kid enthusiastically dissecting a frog in biology class as he pulled out more of the golden dust, sinewy, spider-like threads holding the codes together. “This is it—this is the code. We can work with this.”
“Indeed we can,” the A.I. agreed as they began to unfurl the code excitedly upon the table.
Thel’s face continued to contort due to the unpleasant autopsy of the avatar’s innards being removed until she caught a glimpse of something odd in the corner of her eye, and turned her head.
The candidate was standing alone, about a half-dozen meters away, his face almost pressed to the glass of the revolving restaurant as he looked down at the rain-drenched city below.
“Okay, you boys work on, uh…that. In the meantime, I’ll take the candidate down to the lobby to help me reinforce the building. We don’t want any wayward NPCs stumbling upon us.”
“Okay,” James replied, his eyes fascinated as they pored over the lines of code that endlessly emptied from the Kali avatar with no discernible change to her exterior. “But be careful.”
“I promise,” Thel replied as she crossed to the candidate and stood behind him, watching him for a moment. “Hey.”
He turned to her. “Yes?”
“Little help?” she said as she motioned for him to follow her out of the revolving restaurant.
“Of course,” he replied as he followed close behind her.
They entered the elevator, and Thel hit the button for the second floor. “Riding down the center of a building in a box with pulleys attached to it,” she said with a sigh. “Ridiculous. I never want to be trapped by gravity again. I can’t wait to get out of this sim.”
“I think we should count ourselves lucky that the sim is set in this era. If the NPCs could fly, we’d surely be dead by now,” the candidate retorted.
“Mr. Silver-Lining,” Thel quipped. “Maybe that should be your nickname.”
They arrived on their floor, and Thel marched out into the hallway and, almost immediately, she de-patternized the door of a supply closet.
“What are we doing?” the candidate asked.
“Looking for anything we can use to block the lobby and make sure the NPCs can’t get in.”