After the adrenaline has worn off and all scrapes and cuts treated in the aftermath of Sasha's interrogation and escape attempt, Tracy returned to the guest room, where she sat in one of the chairs in silence for a bit - until the door chimed. "Come in," she muttered, loud enough for the security system to hear and open the door.
As the door slides open, Cadena pokes his head in, ears swiveling as he surveys the room and sniffs the air. He is still humanoid, still clad in robes (torn in spots) and Avatars-styled body armor ... and clutching a re-chilled energy drink in one hand. "You forgot your drink in the observation room," he says as he steps on in.
"Oh," Tracy says, pulling her legs up onto the chair. "Thanks for.. why would you even remember something like that with all that's happened?" she suddenly asks. "Is it.. because you're Brother Cadena now?"
Cadena's ears flush. "I'm still conscious of who I am. I've been trying to be like Brother Cadena, but absent the context of an obvious roleplaying environment, I'm not in immediate danger of lapsing into a lack of awareness of our actual surroundings." He brings the drink to Tracy. "Actually, I was tracking you by scent, and took a detour back to the observation room before I got a solid lead - and your drink was still there. Eventually I came to my senses and asked an attendant to just tell me where you were, but ... no sense in leaving the drink behind."
"Oh, so.. do I smell okay?" Tracy asks, taking the beverage. "I feel pretty burnt out right now. I guess you aren't used to asking for directions because.. well, you don't talk to just anyone when you're White Cadena in the real world, maybe."
Back in the Real World, humanoid Cadena looks a bit less impressive than he did in the virtual realms. There are no drifting animated chains, the blue "chain tattoo" patterns in his facial fur are nothing more than faint streaks now, and his overly wild "mane" is unruly, failing to hold conveniently in place what with gravity and air currents to contend with. He brushes back some stray tufts getting in the way of his eyes. "It wasn't really a problem once upon a time ... but I've had some trouble adapting and prioritizing. Speaking of ... do we still have three rifts in reality threatening to tear apart our world, in the heart of Avatars Headquarters? I'd just assumed that you, Jason, and Inari had somehow fixed all that ... but I realized that I'd never actually found out for certain whether we're out of the worst of it yet."
"Atlas shut down the Convergence," Tracy explains. "He sent us back to the real world, and then it was just the core room again. The AIs were all fighting, and had BLACK 'cornered' in one core, but his minions were destroying some of those and.. he'd converted a big chunk of the room into armor for himself. I.." Here Tracy chokes for a moment. "He had robots. There were a lot of robots to fight, and a mage with a giant spider.. and just some Empire guys.."
"Anyway, BLACK is gone," Tracy says. "It was an ugly battle."
"I'm ... I assumed you'd prevailed, since you're here, but I feel surprised that BLACK is just /gone/," Cadena says, giving up fussing with his mane/hair for a moment. He looks worried. "Did something go wrong, however? What about ... where did Fuseli go?"
"He.. took a bad hit, and when BLACK fell the last bits of Convergence faded out, and Fuseli went along with my Tracer overlay, and Mike started turning back into a human. But it was fading before then, too. I got lucky.. my armor still managed to stop two bullets from breaking my skin, but I have bruises," Tracy notes. "I shot one of the men," she adds somberly.
Cadena frowns at that last comment, walking over to Tracy, and putting a hand on her shoulder. "If you're concerned about that, please don't be hard on yourself. We've tried very hard to find peaceful resolution to these conflicts, but we've been facing life-and-death struggles against real dangers. We can only work with the tools that we have."
"Maybe," Tracy says, and smiles at the friendly gesture, at least for a moment. "And then there's Mark, who got pulled into this because of Sasha, who was following orders from an AI.. and all for nothing! Chasing me, causing all that damage and injury.. and I was worthless as a hostage because the data Mrs. Arcadia needs isn't even here anymore. I should call her and let her know."
Cadena nods. "I had considered writing a message to Ms. Arcadia, but I would want to run it past you or your mother first." He frowns. "Since we don't have the data - and I'm not clear how recent a development this was - I've been trying to ponder alternatives, but they're all long shots."
"I remember my parents talking about it back when they introduced us," Tracy says. "They were going to turn all the North Bend data over, but when they went to get it.. the core had been hacked. Mom thought Jason did it. But we also met Mike then, which means the kidnapping plan was already going into motion.."
Tracy finally pulls the cap on her drink and sips some of it.
Cadena puts a hand to his head. "So ... I should have already known the information wasn't there, before hitching a ride back to Avatars HQ with Sasha. I could have avoided some more headaches." He sighs, shaking his head. "I'm ... really not on top of things." He ponders this, and brushes hair out of his face. "You wouldn't happen to have a spare hair band or something similar on hand, would you? Reality is proving inconvenient for my new look."
"Reality is inconvenient in lots of ways," Tracy says, and just takes the band from her own hair and offers it to the canine. "I really thought confronting Sasha would feel better."
Cadena looks abashed, but then takes the hair-band, stretches it around, wrestles with his mane/hair, and finally forces a large amount of it into a sort of pony-tail arrangement flopping over his back, though some stray strands still dangle in front of his ears. "Thank you," he says, finally getting it into a semblance of order. "Ah yes. And about confronting Sasha. I went and confronted her some more. Your mother will no doubt be reviewing the details, eventually. I verified that ... yes, it was my fault that Moonlight got in. Moonlight was in the back of Margaret's hover-car, up on the back rise, so she wouldn't be depressing the upholstery. It's a wonder Sasha ever bothered pulling a gun on me. Moonlight could have easily gotten the drop on me, and that would've been the end; I had absolutely no idea we weren't alone in there."
"Hard to threaten someone with an invisible cat.. and it would have let you know about Moonlight rather than given the cat a chance to sneak in to the building," Tracy reasons.
"I wonder though.." the girl mutters. "Gotta ask the docbot to do a telomere scan or whatever on Sasha," she says more clearly. "If there's something wrong with Inari, then maybe Sasha is in the same condition."
"Ah yes," Cadena says. "A very good point. She didn't try to kill me immediately, after all," he adds, nodding. "Speaking of Moonlight, I don't think she's actually dead, and I hope you will not object to the fact that I've offered to use my finding abilities to recover her from the virtual realms ... in exchange for certain conditions from Sasha. Sasha hasn't promised anything yet, but she seemed to be amenable to the idea of making herself a little more useful, especially considering that the data she was after isn't even here. The details of that, of course, aren't for me to decide, since ... wait, something's wrong with Inari?"
"Remember, in the infirmary?" Tracy asks. "Before you let us know about Sasha," she reminds Cadena. "They put up the privacy screen so we couldn't eavesdrop.."
"I'd assumed that you were all in the infirmary because you'd been in a fight," Cadena says. "Your more recent statement regarding scans made me worry that there was something more substantial going on."
"Well, yeah, we had just been in a fight, but the docbot said something about Inari's telomeres being uneven - that some where shorter than others or something. Which would mean some of her cells were reproducing faster than others, or.. something was 'off' when she was separated from Akiko. I dunno, and I don't know how to ask her about it either. She intimidates me."
Cadena blinks. "Separated from Akiko...." He looks a bit distant. "Ah ... oh yes. I put in a request for something to be dropped by wherever you were recuperating, since I have no idea where I'm going to be anytime soon, and I was planning on visiting you. It's a prop for another one of my wild goose chases. A guitar, I think, or whatever they can find that closely approximates one." He paces, frowning.
"A guitar," Tracy says. "To see if you know how to play it? I haven't seen a real guitar in ages. What are you going to try and play though?" She sips from her drink again, but doesn't seem to be particularly enervated by it.
"Anything," Cadena says. "Black Cadena will probably want to strangle me for it, but I'll probably do an old Erasure tune first, followed by Margaret's favorite Kitten Fiasco number, and something from Fairy Punk." He blinks, shaking his head. "Black Cadena is not real. Sorry. I keep talking like it's a distinct entity. Very bad habit. It doesn't work that way. You can't just split an imaginary personality out into its own unique neural template."
"He's not independent." Cadena insists, sitting down on a chair and sighing. "Honestly, I didn't have this much trouble before. It's all this ... reality-bending that's going on that has been making me entertain these crazy ideas."
"Whoa, hold on a minute," Tracy says, blinking. "If you play this guitar, is it going to bring out a new personality we haven't seen before?"
Cadena shakes his head. "We're safe and sound back in the Real World. There's no good reason for that. The only real danger there'd be of that would be if you flat-out told me that my assigned role is 'Black Cadena,' and even then, it'd work a lot better if I actually looked like the role, or it fit the setting."
"I can command you to.. be someone different?" Tracy asks, looking horrified at the thought. "It's creepy enough that I can give you orders at all you know - especially when you're standing up and wearing pants and can play guitar.."
"Margaret did that all the time," Cadena says. "Whenever we played a new game, she assigned my character. Sometimes one of her friends would make suggestions. The 'personality profiles' I've described to you are just ... conglomerates of some of the recurring themes. The differences between White Cadena and Brother Cadena might seem fairly subtle to you, aside from the body, because, well, they're only variations on a theme, after all."
"I'd never be able to do something like that," Tracy claims, shaking her head. "That's fine for a robot or android, but.. not for a person."
"Well," Cadena says, "when I was introduced to the Arcadia household, it was with the cover story that I was just a prototype 'Real-Avatar' companion. I didn't flip out between different roles. I had my role, and I played it. It wasn't until Margaret died - or went into suspension - that I really frayed around the edges. I managed to get most of that back under control, and your mother thought I had recovered enough for another assignment. Then ... things started falling apart again, and my point of reference became confused. I'm afraid you've seen me at my worst I've been, for years."
"Well, that proves you're a person then," Tracy claims, raising her drink as if in toast. "It's not about self-awareness, but self-delusion. That's the real sign of person-ness, I think."
Cadena shakes his head. "The worst of it - and I'm trying to get a grip on this - is that I've been falling prey to a tendency to substitute wishful thinking for rational processes. It's been tempting, when it seemed that reality was malleable enough that maybe if I latched onto an idea and insisted upon it loudly enough - and people agreed - then it just might be true. And, really, that's kind of how things worked when roleplaying with Margaret."
"Yeah, that makes you pretty human," Tracy says. "It's how we cope with.. events that.." She ends up waving a hand. "I did it, to get me through all the bad times - but that bubble got popped while talking to Sasha."
Cadena blinks. "I ... I don't quite follow you. What do you mean by that?"
"Sasha.." Tracy mutters, then says, "See, when I was eleven, she had an affair with my dad, and my parents got divorced - and then Sasha just vanished. To me.. it was like that was her only aim; to turn my life upside down. I was a mess after that. It was like I was just in the way, or didn't matter to my parents. Then a couple years later, the first Convergence stuff goes down, and there's Sasha again - and my house got burned down, almost everything of sentimental value I had.. Anyway, I deluded myself to cope. To not just be a bystander, or collateral damage, I imagined Sasha was my nemesis - it was all personal for her, somehow. She was out to get me. Calling the Wild Hunt on me, the invasion of where I lived by monsters.. it all fed into that. But in the end, I really didn't matter at all. It wasn't personal, Sasha wasn't after me. It was just random stuff and my Mom's position all along."
"All the crap I went through, or put myself through - it just didn't mean anything at all," Tracy concludes.
Cadena sits back. "I see." He frowns. "Yes ... yes, I can see what you mean. That would feel like a real slap in the face. Even if terrible things are happening, there's a certain strength you can draw from the idea that you're resisting evil, rather than it just being random happenstance. But even so, you're not just a bystander anymore. I've been abashed at how little you've needed any 'protecting' from me. You strike me as quite the capable young lady, and I hope your mother appreciates just how well you've adapted to the crazy circumstances of these past few days."
Cadena grins. "In a way, I was a bit disappointed that Renard wasn't actually Black Cadena, my very own personal nemesis - so personal that it's most often inside my own head."
"Yeah, but in 'normal life' I'm just a wishy-washy easily depressed teenager with self-esteem issues like just about every other teenager on the planet," Tracy notes. "The crazy stuff is the exception."
"So what do we do now that we know better?" Tracy asks, seriously.
"Well," Cadena says, "there was something I wanted to share with you regarding my concerns about Inari."
The door chimes. "Package delivery from Product Prototype Department!" comes a robotic, cheery voice over the speaker. "Delivery by request of Cadena."
Cadena bolts up out of the chair. "I'm actually here!" he calls out. He regains his composure, and trots over to the door with a little less undue haste.
"Is that the guitar?" Tracy asks.
A moment later, and Tracy's question appears to be answered in the affirmative. Cadena stands there, holding a bizarre, Avatars-ified musical instrument that puts the "axe" back into ... well ... axe. He thanks the robot courier, then comes back in, holding the device gingerly. "Okay ... I'd say this prototype is a long way away from being appropriate for general consumption. I'm not about to find out if those edges are really sharp." He opens an accompanying container and pulls out a strap, and then digs out some picks.
"It looks like some sort of weapon, certainly," Tracy notes, her face betraying some trepidation at hearing Cadena try to play the thing.
"Hmm," Cadena says, as he checks over the components. "It looks like it has an onboard practice speaker, but the amp is pretty weak. Still, it should suffice for experimental purposes." He tries on the strap, then frowns. "Really, I'm not sure what this says about much of anything. Ah ... right. You wouldn't happen to have a stun gun, would you?"
"Yes," Tracy says, and retrieves her stunner. "Uh.. why did you ask?"
"Just in case Black Cadena acts up," Cadena says. "I mean, it's not going to happen. That's just imaginary and inside my head. But ... so many strange things have been happening lately that should just be imaginary. After all...." He holds up the pick and flexes his pinky finger. "I've got hands now, after my imaginary Brother Cadena acted up and took over from my imaginary White Cadena. Granted, that was in another universe, but ... okay, okay. No Erasure, no Fairy Punk, no Kitten Fiasco. I'll play some other sort of oldie that Black Cadena won't find offensive. That is, if Black Cadena were real, which it isn't."
The dog-humanoid takes a deep breath. "Just a few chords to start with. As a fair warning, I'm bound to be a bit rusty."
"You haven't been drinking any of my mom's coffee, have you?" Tracy asks, sounding a bit worried.
The dog-humanoid is rusty at first, yes. He struggles to reposition his fingers, and keeps snagging the wrong frets with his claws. He adjusts his fingers differently, and tries again. His ears flush. Then he manages a few simple chords. He nods faintly, and taps a foot.
"That wasn't too bad," Tracy says encouragingly.
"I think I need a beat," Cadena says. He pauses a moment, tucking the pick in between a couple of frets to free up a hand, as he activates his VR collar and conjures up a holographic display. He fiddles with the "tooth-link," which discovers the guitar's on-board processor, and then he searches through a few titles, restricting it to "Oldies." Under the "Aughts," he finds a title that catches his eye. "Right," he says. "When I saw Inari at the airport, for some reason I thought of this song." He cues it up. The on-board amp provides a drumbeat and some exotic, vaguely Indian-sounding accompaniment.
Tiny holo-lights pop up, then fizzle out at Cadena's first efforts. Once he gets a tune going, they linger and dance about the guitar, all colors of the rainbow.
Cadena mouths words, but doesn't bother singing. It seems to take enough of his concentration to stick to the song. It's a nice, easy riff, slow and catchy - no crazy guitar solos here, to be sure, but just a simple warm-up song.
Cadena finishes up his mini-performance, then ... hastily turns off the guitar, tucks away the pick, and slips off the strap, setting the instrument aside. He gasps. "Okay. I'm still me. No need to stun me or anything, praise the Light. No magical transformations or other craziness."
"So.. that was from a band-game you played with Margaret?" Tracy asks.
"Yes," Cadena says. "I might even still have the session log around somewhere. I ... I haven't done any data house-cleaning since then. Margaret played tambourine on pro. She had me play bass guitar, as 'White Knight,' but Daphne thought I was bringing down our score. See, it's a song-battle game, and it's not just about hitting the notes - it's about doing the moves, or, as Daphne put it, I needed more 'swagger.' My White Knight character definitely did not swagger, so she tried to come up with the antithesis of stick-in-the-mud boring White Cadena. That's really where Black Cadena started."
"Who is Daphne?" Tracy asks. "A human friend?"
"Daphne is one of Margaret's friends from Avatars," Cadena explains. "She played an Augment, Fire-Type, in-game, with the Phoenix Bow. She always played a fairy type, or whatever she could play that was as close to one as possible, whatever game she was in. She was a veteran of Galaxy Metal Epic ... actually, back when it was still just Galaxy Metal. I think she's a grandmother - though her apparent in-game age didn't reflect it."
"She can actually play electric violin," Cadena notes, "and always played Galaxy Metal on pro. I think her real-life husband is a musician as well, but we never saw him in-game. When I saw that sorceress and the vampire in the tower, my wishful thinking got the better of me, and when I heard the sorceress calling the vampire 'honey,' I did some logic leaps and thought for a bit that it was Daphne under another character. But, of course not - no fairy wings."
"A fairy? She didn't act like Cait did she?" Tracy asks, referring to her Gloaming friend. "Cait came through Atlas's gate with us, and fought against the BLACK until the Convergence effect faded too much."
Cadena shakes his head. "No, not quite like Cait. She always played a life-sized ... er, I mean, full-sized humanoid type, just with 'fairy' trappings of some sort. Not really the roguish type. Actually, fairies were pretty popular with several of Margaret's friends, come to think of it. Er ... oh, wait. The Convergence effect? What happened to them? Did they simply vanish, or did ... did they break down?" He looks horrified at the thought.
"The VR link broke and the.. character.. went into idle mode," Tracy notes. "So she wasn't linked up when it finally started to dissolve."
"No ... no, that's not good," Cadena says. "I don't know exactly why, but because of the object-oriented nature of the game, it might not be possible for her to sign into her character again. Even with direct mod help, there could be alterations to her character." He sighs, shaking his head. "What am I talking about? I should be grateful they didn't experience that sensation, and that it's just a game for them."
"Does that mean something might have happened to Tracer and Fuseli too?" Tracy asks, sounding worried. "They were.. independent of me since the first Convergence."
"I don't know," Cadena says. "I'm going to have to return to the virtual realm, one way or another, regardless. I need to fulfill my obligations to the Shadows for their help in rescuing Yap- er, I mean ... well, that and I need to do a search on Moonlight, and to find out if there's any link to the North Bend simulation that my 'finding' ability can trace through the networks. Of course, we can find out if Fuseli is all right ... and whether Tracer ..." He blinks, shaking his head. "I'm having trouble sorting out how that works, but I'll do what I can to help you put things back right."
"Finding the North Bend data is more important right now," Tracy notes. "Pretty sure Dantech has it.. unless Jason Zero is playing them too. We really need to find him and find out what's going on. But our Jason confirmed that Dantech owns most of the Zeus project."
Cadena nods. "For various reasons, you're quite right. I rather doubt that Dantech would make it that easy for me to be able to find it with my 'finding' ability ... but I suppose I should try at the next opportunity, just to cover all the bases." He stands back up from where he'd been putting the guitar and its accessories back away into the box (marked with "Prototype" and "Property of Avatars LLC" on it) that it had arrived in. "In addition to stopping whatever crazy schemes Jason Zero has in mind, and finding Ms. Penny Arcadia's genetic data, I might have an opportunity to investigate more into Inari's nature, insofar as it might help shed some light on why I am the way I am."
"You think there's a connection?" Tracy asks. "Between you and Inari that is?"
"For now, it is just another one of my wild, unsubstantiated, pulled-out-of-the-air theories," Cadena says. "At the time of the Fracture, when the region of Convergence retreated, and the clean-up operations began, there were several creatures left behind, who did not dissolve into black goo or smoke, or revert into other forms once left in the Real World proper. I was one of those creatures, born of the chaos, yet not returned to it once the madness ended. I know little of the other creatures; they were embodiments of Avatars, as I was in my original form. I heard only snippets about them - gossip shared unwittingly in my presence. They were, more or less, fairly unstable in mind, but stable in form."
"Do you think it's because you carried a.. piece.. of the WHITE?" Tracy asks. "Could those others also be pieces?"
"I can't rule it out," Cadena says, "but if it's the case, the SPARK hasn't shared that information with me, and seemed to give the impression that I was special in that regard. However, I must remind myself that it is the WHITE's nature to make every hero feel as if he or she is special. It might not be out of character for the SPARK to omit such a detail."
"Maybe you're the sane one because of the SPARK," Tracy notes. "Although, now that you know about the SPARK.. you seem a little less stable.."
"I'd like to think I'm getting better," Cadena says. "But then ... I'm hardly an unbiased observer. In any case, there is another possibility I can entertain as to why I might be 'high-resolution,' more or less. That would entail the involvement, however inadvertent, of Mr. Edwards."
"None of the people I know of that were caught in the 'upgrade' had a White Cadena Avatar though," Tracy notes. "I mean, you don't remember who your Link was in the game, right?"
Cadena shakes his head. "No, I do not. However, that is not really a concern, because there is no way that I could have truly been an Avatar. Just as Inari is not, and could not have been an Avatar."
"So.. someone created you just then?" Tracy asks. "It wasn't an accident or fallout or anything? But.. the WHITE must have been behind it, right?"
"It's hard to define just what is an 'accident," Cadena says. "After all, the behavior of the ADs has often been outside of their expected parameters - and anything they've been responsible for, from a certain point of view, is indeed an accident. In any case, I believe that the process cobbled together by Mr. Edwards - bereft of proper restrictive protocols (since, after all, he was doing a hack) - and left on the system (since there presumably was no time to scrub it all out) - was utilized by someone or something else."
"Well, we know Jason Zero - or someone - made a version that converts a virtual being into a material one," Tracy points out. "That's how the Empire of Stars was able to infiltrate Avatars."
"It could even have been more than one party," Cadena notes, nodding at the mention of Jason Zero. "For instance, perhaps the SPARK needed a ride into the Real World, and I was put together from a convenient jumble, and a bit of symbolism. The White Cadejo of myth - upon which White Cadena is based - is a protector of travelers. How appropriate it would be, therefore, for the SPARK to call upon a White Cadena to serve as the protector for its journey into the Real World."
"However, a White Cadena is not sapient, as far as AI processes go. It is only sentient at best," Cadena notes. "You cannot flip a flag or attach a process and suddenly grant speech and rationality to an Avatar. They are meant to have an empathic link to their masters, but there were specific design constraints put into them. They are not meant to be self-aware. You can't hold philosophical debates with them. They don't question their own existence or their purpose in life. They show concern when you're hurt, they express joy at your successes, they do funny, cute little things when it seems appropriate, and so forth, but they are not sapient."
"Ever wonder how those links work in the game?" Tracy asks. "I mean.. you have an 'observer' copy of Margaret's mind in your head. How do you simulate empathy without.. having a model of the person's mind you're trying to empathize with? I mean.. I'm pretty sure that's how humans relate to one another. So.. you could have been given the template of a player who had a White Cadena to use as your.. AI-seed? I don't know how they actually grow AIs. It's a big secret."
Cadena nods. "I've wondered at that possibility. What if there was a player who was logged in at the time of the Convergence? I've heard gossip and rumors at Avatars LLC, and hints of some debate regarding some of my fellow ... 'Real-Avatars' ... suggesting ideas that some of them might have 'imprints' of players who ... actually, I'm not sure, whether they went mysteriously missing, or died while connected to the game." He shudders. "My intellect, such as it is, I believe was created by drawing upon one or more human neural templates. I don't know who those persons might be. I have no 'memories' that might help me to pin that down. Apparently it's not as simple as just seeing how many White Cadenas there are, and who was signed on at the time. With Inari, at least, I think the source of the neural template isn't such a mystery."
"Died while.." Tracy begins to say, then stops and looks alarmed. "When we came through the portal from the Gloaming, I thought.. I maybe heard a scream. It was distant.."
Cadena nods, looking sober. "I have been trying to look through some records related to the time of that attack on your residential building. After speaking with Sasha, I fear that ... I may be responsible for one or more deaths of persons who thought they were just playing a game." His brow furrows. "I have ... concerns ... about the nature of this game." He blinks a few times.
"Mike was there, he shut off their connections," Tracy notes. "That's when they collapsed.. the security footage didn't show anyone dying though.. uh.."
Cadena shakes his head. "I haven't found anything on that incident. I've only found a few reports about the activities of Face Reality in general, and I've hardly had enough time to make much sense of it. Sasha wasn't ... well, I don't think she was interested in shedding light on that aspect of things. She seems to have a detached view of reality. I think she was numbed to her relationships with fellow human beings from her time in the North Bend simulation."
"She wasn't all warmth and cuddles before she met Blake," Tracy notes coldly. "She used people. If anything, she's upset that she got used herself."
Cadena shakes his head. "No, I don't mean that Sasha was innocent before running into Blake. She brought plenty into this. However, I think that she's having trouble adapting to the Real World. I can't say that she would do anyone any good if she could adapt fully to it, but I think she still bears mental wounds. I'm not saying this to try to prompt you to pity her. She's ... whatever she's been through, there are still certain lines you just shouldn't cross, and even if something pushed you to cross them, you had to have been inclined in that direction in the first place. Akiko went through the same travails - perhaps even worse - and yet she hasn't resorted to terrorism."
"I still worry about becoming Sasha myself sometimes," Tracy admits, screwing up her lips. "Akiko.. she works for Ms. Arcadia. Should be able to help us contact her, right?"
The dog-humanoid flinches. "I ... seem to have missed that connection. In any case, I don't expect much difficulty in contacting Ms. Arcadia. I am supposed to be here to get the North Bend data for her. She'll be expecting a progress report, and I expect her to be very interested. As for Akiko ... I ... right. My point. I had one, honest I did, somewhere in this mess."
"Well, can I talk to her when you call her?" Tracy asks. "I.. want to help. And maybe Ms. Arcadia can help us recover that data too, and find out what Dantech is up to with Zeus."
"I have every intention of your supervision when I contact her," Cadena says. "I am very concerned about balancing my priorities when dealing with matters that affect the Trudeaus as well as the Arcadias. My obligations to you come first and foremost."
"Now then, Akiko and Inari," Cadena says. "This is mere speculation on my part, but I think it is bolstered by my own knowledge, such as it is, of Avatar sentience. I don't think that Inari is really an Avatar given speech. I think that Inari is a sort of mental construct, a role, built from Akiko, in the course of the many iterations and brain-washing techniques employed by Blake Forester to try to force his 'test subjects' to play the roles he wished - drowning out actual memories with the 'noise' of repeated, slightly varied realities under his deliberate control."
"In other words, she was calved off of Akiko's mind?" Tracy asks. "I can see that. Even I.. well, Tracer and Treasa were my personas for.. being competent and fearless."
"That's what I suspect," Cadena says. "My certainty on this has been shaken by HECATE'S insistence that I am somehow holding Margaret's 'Observer Soul' with me. I do not know exactly what this means. However, I can imagine that Mr. Edwards could have provided a key with his unique ability to bypass all protocol restrictions and cobble together system functions as he saw fit. He created a process that was meant to 'separate' Inari from Akiko. Somehow, it created a new, separate entity, using Akiko's mind - in whole, or somehow in part - and did this according to Mr. Edwards's specifications."
"You make playing god sound scary and magical," Tracy points out.
"Yes, I suppose I do," Cadena says. "I think it is rather scary. I at least console myself with my supposition that the system was incapable of instantly putting together a fully-formed intelligence, fitting every specification perfectly, without having to take crib notes from Creation - or, that is, tracing off of an existing mental template. Even the entities within the game who seemed to come into self-awareness did so gradually, or so I gathered from RIU's records."
"The GREY broke itself up into individual minds in the game, instead of remotely controlling them all," Tracy says. "At least, that's what it seemed like, from RIU's recordings of beginnings of the Fracture. The WHITE did similar, at least with you and SPARK. And the people coming through from the Empire of Stars seem to have minds of their own.. if an inability to properly use makeup."
Cadena hmms. "Alas, I know very little of that. But ... where this might relate to Inari's current situation, I believe that RIU's records indicated that Akiko Summers had a peculiar body makeup. I don't know the proper term for it, but I got the gist that her cells contained 'redundant' DNA, if that means anything. There was the DNA that her body used to heal itself, but she also had additional code that served no purpose except to serve as a template for the system to use when reconstructing her body into her various forms - human, humanoid, large fox, or even larger fox. The system couldn't just 'swap' models, because Akiko was a living creature, with a real brain. However ... I have no idea what happened to that 'redundant' data after the process run by Mr. Edwards."
"After all," Cadena notes, "there was no reason to do another scan, or for RIU to take notes of it. But maybe there are bits of that 'redundant' genetic code floating around in Akiko's body - or Inari's."
"Speculation," Cadena quickly adds. "Nothing more."
"Inari can still change shape though," Tracy says, sitting up. "She was a giant fox form throughout the Fracture event. Then she changed into the humanoid one on her own, inside the Convergence zone. So.. what if Jason didn't really alter the DNA? I mean, it'd have been a lot easier to just set Akiko's epigenome to only use the human DNA, and Inari's to only use the fox-monster stuff, right?"
"I don't think it would be possible for the DNA to inherently provide the ability to change shape," Cadena says. "The sheer amount of energy required ... even if it were possible, the heat generated would burn flesh! At least, I've heard someone saying that proved that sci-fi shows with nanotech making shapeshifting possible were nonsense. But when there's magic involved ... who knows? Perhaps the code is still there, and exposure to an area of quantum uncertainty allows for shifting from one to the other. Perhaps, if Akiko were in an area of quantum uncertainty, she could change forms. I ..." Cadena clamps his mouth shut. "Well, I suppose that's at least one area of my wild speculation that could actually be tested, at least."
"Er ... speaking of shapes," Cadena says, "I suppose ... hmm. The SPARK seems to indicate that if I want to, I can return to my previous form. If I do so, I'm fairly certain it will alter my personality profile at least subtly. I'm also not certain whether I'd be able to shift back. However ... being humanoid does make things a little bit awkward if I'm to be your pet dog."
"Sasha still had her Link, even in the real world," Tracy notes quietly. "And after this is over.. assuming we succeed, wouldn't you go back to Margaret?"
Cadena mulls this over. "Sasha's Link is different, somehow. Moonlight was not unstable in the 'black goo' sense, yet was apparently unreal to a degree. Upon being significantly wounded, she simply vanished, and she left behind no trace - no blood, not even any hairs, and I couldn't even detect any of her smell on my person, despite wrestling her scant moments earlier. I, on the other hand ... well ..." He sniffs at his arm, testingly. "I seem to be quite real, for better or for worse. I don't think we're quite of the same sort. And ... really, my assignment, one way or another, depends upon your mother."
"I think maybe HECATE was keeping Moonlight stable," Tracy notes. "Why didn't the Face Reality attackers turn into goo immediately? It felt that happening when you opened the portal for Mike and I stepped through. Something had to be keeping them stable."
Cadena hmms and nods. "That's a very good point. I ... have a lot to learn about this yet, before I can be certain about any of my theories, honestly."
"Cadena, what is keeping you stable?" Tracy asks. "You just pointed out that real shape-changing can't work in the real world. When the Convergence faded, Mike turned back to normal, Jason's armor vanished and I became.. me. So what's keeping you like you are now?"
"That, I do not know," Cadena says. "I have been acting under the assumption that forces acted on me, resculpting my physical form into this one. The assertion by the SPARK that I can change back, here, in the Real World, is ... actually a bit disturbing to me. I suppose that nothing is truly 'permanent,' and that if something can be changed, it can theoretically be changed back. However, by what sort of force? I simply do not know, and I don't think I can phrase my questions in such a way that the SPARK could give a meaningful answer. What I do know is that I can bleed, I can be hungry, and I am definitely going to have to take a bath ... though while I was within the virtual realm, it seems that such details were greatly glossed over."
Cadena shudders as he looks over his hem. "I do hope that if I change back, and I don't have this robe with me, I won't find out that in my other form, this robe corresponds to my skin, or something else vital. Hmm. This staff came out of nowhere as well. I suppose I had best keep good care of these items."
"Maybe.. well, let's hold off on any experimenting in the real world," Tracy offers. "We'll probably have to reenter VR at some point to find Jason Zero, so.. save any tries at changing for then, or back at the Convergence zone in California, or.. well, HECATE might be able to help you.. if she's not already doing so. You're an ally of Ms. Arcadia as far as she knows, after all."
Cadena nods. "I should probably visit the on-site laundry facility and tend to my attire. I'll try not to get too distracted by all the fabric softeners. I ... just can't get enough of those. The smells." He shakes his head, snapping out of it. "I'll draft a message for Ms. Arcadia, but forward it to you for your approval before sending it. After that...." He looks uncertain.
"Alright," Tracy says. "Should see about dinner. I think I can keep something down now. And I'm sure I'm more tired than I feel at the moment.."
"Yes," Cadena says. "Food would be good. And then ... ah ... I think as long as I'm in my present form, I should see about requisitioning a separate room to stay in, at least until we get this sorted out. It would be awkward for me to try to sleep at the foot of the bed."
"You think that's awkward," Tracy says, standing up and stretching her back. "Just wait until you need to use the toilet.."
Cadena arcs an eyeridge, and gets up, gathering up the package holding the guitar prop. "Aha. I suppose I'll grab something in the cafeteria after laundry. Perhaps if I act normal, no one will think something's amiss." With that, he bows to Tracy. "I wish you a pleasant evening, master, and a good rest. I'll see you in the morning." He heads out.
"I never expected dogs to be so philosophical," Tracy notes after Cadena leaves. Then she sighs, and tries not to think about anything beyond dinner for now. Well, maybe dessert. She really could use a tub of ice-cream about now..