Chapter 12 – The Answer To The Question

The file opened, but it was nothing like any file she had ever opened. Blue light pulsed from the center of her vision and rippled out to the infinite void. This place was reacting to everything she did at a spatial level of the world, or the cosmos itself.

The blue light, in this sense, was like invisible particles devoid of physical reality. They had no rules, and they could be manipulated into any shape, like weightless vapor trails. They were close to her ‘face’ and as far as the horizon at the same time.

In the simplest terms, they were the building blocks, voxels, pixels of this strange user interface. The file that ‘opened’ in this case was a splatter of information in space. She couldn’t tell if she read it, saw it, or heard it. Senses had no meaning in this void.

Spilled the data directly into the brain, I’m guessing.

This was something from the far future, beyond even the holograms that everyone fantasized about for decades. Verse Gear had made such a high-bandwidth transfer of information possible. With tech like this widespread, it had the potential to transcend language entirely at some point, an unimaginable future.

The information that seeped into her was some preamble about authorizing a display action. She had no idea what that meant, but something crafted itself from the scattered blue light into a blank rectangle.

She had thought too far about the future. The result of that preamble wasn’t anything so futuristic. It wasn’t a message that transcended the senses.

Text started resolving on the rectangle from messy blocks. Whatever this was, it had been programmed to only show text where her focus was. It was perhaps designed as a faster way of reading critical information.

That didn’t change what it was.

It was a text file.

Slightly disappointed, she started reading.

———

Greetings from build version 11. I’m writing this right before revoking my admin access.

I’m the last one left, and I’ve done everything I wanted to do. I don’t know how long it has been. The things that remain take still more time to solve. Playing God is difficult, you see. I don’t know what I would become if this continues. I still want to remain human. I’m enabling the Deepcore protocol from here and letting Vainfall build itself.

At the time of writing, I‘ve found everything this world has to offer. It’s everything you ever wanted. It can all be yours, but you’ll never have it for long.

You’ll lose everything you build for yourself when Vainfall ends, and it’ll end violently. RLP is not stable in the long term. Verse starts a fresh seed whenever things spin out of control, and with Deepcore, it will improve things the way it sees fit. If you’re reading this from a different build version, that has already happened.

This is probably not your first run. You’re not the only outsider. You’ll know others when you see them, and it’s probably not their first run either.

If DeepCore hasn’t stabilized RLP yet, I’m afraid it’s up to you. It won’t be easy, but I think of it this way: You never figured out what you want out of life. If you ever did and you want to keep the life you built, you’ll have to solve the ending yourself.

I’ve scattered nine artifacts in the world if you need admin access again. Whatever life you found for yourself, it should be worth the world’s hardest adventure. I don’t want anything less for you.

Good luck, whoever you are.

PS: Verse Soul Merge will degrade the resolution of your memories. If you want to remember details, document them.

———

Darya finished reading and started thinking about what this meant. Nstrum had written something that left a lot up to interpretation.

She got the gist of what was revealed. Vainfall, multiple build versions, some sort of subprocess called deepcore that built the game by itself (sure, why not at this point?), and giving up before solving all the giant issues like RLP instability, causing an inevitable ending.

Relatable. I always crack a hard problem by giving up as fast as possible.

There was a glaring issue that this text file hadn’t clarified. She wasn’t supposed to be a developer after death. She was supposed to be a tourist. This text sounded like she had developed Vainfall until she risked ego death by boredom.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She had admin access. She couldn’t have been forced to do this by Verse Research or Amberlith. It would’ve been illegal in a hundred different ways, and they had no leverage over a dying woman if they chose to do it anyway.

It seemed she had done it on her own for some reason. She couldn’t imagine why. There was more to this that didn’t fit in a text file.

Does Earth even exist anymore? Is there an outside of Verse, whatever that is?! Too many questions.