Misbegotten Memories

Darius and Riley insisted the three of them have a breakfast the morning of Hector's departure. He was happy to oblige their request. It was only two days since they were reunited thanks to the timely advice of Evelyn. Darius, far from needing dragged home, had been paranoid after the announcement that the treasure hunt was over. The locals were beginning to get brave in expressing their disapproval of foreigners. It was like a hostile occupation was coming to an end.

Of course Darius insisted on being difficult about his extraction from Stein. In a sort of petty revenge, Hector didn't inform the eunuch that Riley was back. It only took fifteen minutes for Darius to discover the omission. He'd raised his fist like he was about to punch Hector, then simply gave a quick hug and thanked him for 'fixing the mess he made'. Which was fair. The situation should never have happened. Hector's frustrations with his less than stellar reception on a world where he possessed a measure of fame had led him to make a foolish decision. He wasn't anywhere near powerful enough to guarantee someone's safety on Tian.

Following breakfast, Hector intended to finish packing in his room. When he discovered Prince Siegfried waiting in the lobby, he understood those plans were delayed. "Hector! I require more resources from you!"

Hector sighed. The young man was currently level six with body enhancement to match. It was an insane rate of growth considering the prince was level four just a few weeks ago. Such was the miraculous power of the Mother Elixir. "I transferred a lot of credits to you, Siegfried. You should be able to afford whatever resources are available on this world."

"Nothing worthwhile is brought here. I need real resources to supplement the Mother Elixir. Zing pills, Amaratti elixirs, and high level meats."

After checking to make sure no one was within earshot, Hector spoke. "You have a million credits, Siegfried. That is enough for you to eat at the cafe every day and make frequent purchases from the Xian shop – just remember not to mention that you know me while there."

Siegfried folded his arms. "I need better than that. Every normal meal leeches energy from my reserves. I lose energy just by exhaling on this world."

"I will keep your needs in mind. I have to go pack now." He did as he'd said and returned to his room to load up a backpack with clothes.

Do you plan to subsidize Siegfried?

"Not really," he muttered.

Based on your past behavior, it seems likely you will.

"Are you telling me I'm a sucker?"

The accusations Darius makes of charity are more accurate.

"Maybe." Hector looked up at the ceiling as he paused his packing. For whatever reason, that felt like the most natural place to gaze while speaking to the omnipresent System. "I am responsible for him being on Union Central, so I do feel I have some responsibility for him."

You let him retain ownership of the brewed Mother Elixir. Surely that is sufficient exercise of your charity virtue. Otherwise, where do your obligations end? Must you some day fight the Lord Annihilator to assist him in reclaiming his kingdom?

"Obviously it doesn't go that far."

Then what is the scope of your obligation? How are you determining that?

Hector quirked his lips as he considered his answer. The System had taken a real interest in Hector's moral stances since they began interacting with each other. He knew that was largely because the System wanted to know how trustworthy Hector was, but the questions did provoke interesting introspection. Perhaps thinking about virtues might not be wasted time after all.

"I guess it depends partly on my means. Bringing resources back from Tian is something easy for me to do. It's something I will be doing anyway. So it isn't a huge loss if I earmark some of those resources for Siegfried. Risking my life for Siegfried is too much, losing a little bit of profit is not."

Yet you would risk your life for Riley. Presumably Darius as well.

"Don't tell me you're confused about the concept of friendship."

I am not a Jinn artificial intelligence, Hector. I understand emotions.

"Then it shouldn't be any great mystery that I am loyal to my friends."

Your loyalty virtue requires self sacrifice?

"Loyalty does not require self sacrifice."

What does it require?

"I do not have time to navel gaze at the moment. Let's worry about loyalty some other time."

That is reasonable. Before you report for duty, you should be aware that I misrepresented you to the recruitment office. They require soul reserves of fifty percent. They received a report indicating you met that requirement even though you are only at eleven percent.

Hector blinked a couple of times. He was sitting at eleven percent energy reserves at the moment. The aftermath of consuming the honey pills and then traveling to pick up Darius had left him a bit low. "Thank you for that."

I wonder if you would consider my deception a display of loyalty?

"Sure, I'll give you credit for that." Hector finished packing, assuming that the System was done with their talk. It wasn't until he threw the pack over his shoulder that the conversation resumed abruptly.

What virtue do you think most appropriate for an existence like myself to practice?

Hector's brows rose. "You intend to follow my example now? Most people are not impressed by my moral exercising analogy."

While your methods may be questionable, dedicating yourself to any practice of moral self-improvement is not something I would look down upon. Please humor me.

"Sure. Give me some time to think it over, though." He exited his room and began making his rounds. A lot of casual friendships had formed with his neighbors on this floor and he made sure to acknowledge the importance of those relationships with a few quick words of farewell. Respect. He'd been doing better with that lately. It was never a matter of him consciously deciding to disregard others, he'd just always been too busy to consider them. Now he paid attention to account for his natural inclinations.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He met up with Esther in the lobby and found a surprise. Mick stood beside her with a packed bag. Not ideal. Mick was the asshole who had flirted with Riley to get more resources from the cafe, then refused to take her on a date. It wasn't a huge thing. Probably nothing worth considering. But it had bruised Riley's ego and Hector didn't think much of the guy because of that.

"Are you joining us for the Reconquest, Mick?"

The plain-looking fellow smirked at Hector. "Can't get anything past you, can I?"

Not a great start. Hector put on a concerned expression. "I'm just surprised to see you volunteer for military action because of your weak body enhancement. People around here tend to think of you as a hollow spear."

Mick's self-satisfied smile faded away, suggesting he was self-conscious of his deficit. Level five soul but body enhancement lingering around three. Based on the one time Mick showed up for the periodic domain training sessions, the man's ability in other areas lagged to similar extent. "I have gone to Aes before. I can handle myself there."

"I'll keep an eye on you in case you run into trouble." The words were mostly intended by Hector as an insult, but they held a kernel of truth. He wouldn't abandon an ally in need – not even a disliked one.

Mick turned to Esther. "Is anyone interesting going to join us?"

Esther rolled her eyes. "Just a big love fest with you two, ain't it? Grant said he was interested in deploying with us, but he hasn't responded to my messages for the past three days. I think he got stuck in a bog somewhere."

When Hector frowned at her, Esther shrugged. "It's just an idiom from Eden. Grant isn't literally stuck in a bog. You literally just used the 'hollow spear' idiom yourself, so don't act like you can't understand context. I had Strigoi dreams, remember."

"I remember. Did I ever tell you I met a Strigoi?"

Esther winced. "Oh yeah? I feel sorry for you."

"She wasn't the terrifying existence people make them out to be."

Her snort showed what she thought of his assessment. "You met a farmer, then."

"Farmer?"

"There are two general classifications of Strigoi. Those who hunt and those who farm. The hunters are obviously bad news, chasing down and draining their victims. The farmers grow a community around them that they can harvest from on an ongoing basis. Because of their strategy, it's not immediately clear that they are hurting people.

"The smart ones target the sick and the elderly while taking care of the rest of their livestock." Esther grimaced. "Trust that I know how the 'good ones' think. You don't attune to human type life energy unless you see other people as a means to an end. Every Strigoi is the type of personality that would love to brew up some platinum elixirs if they were Xian."

Hector eyed the woman, wondering about her. She was certainly profit motivated. "What are your thoughts about platinum elixirs?"

Esther put her hands on her hips. "Oh, don't even dare think that of me, Hector. I refused to attune to life energy because I hated the woman in my dreams. Everyone who knows anything about the program agrees that the pattern matching of the Dream Engine was flawed. It matched entirely based on start conditions without any more sophisticated consideration of temperament. Me dreaming a Strigoi says nothing about me. It just so happened that my dreams started with a money making scheme at a time when I was starting my first business in the real world. That was how the almighty Dream Engine algorithm matched me with a psychopath."

Hector blinked as he took in the new information. He'd known from the last moments of Volithur that the Dream Engine somehow found 'cognitive matches' between living minds and the memories. That knowledge had just hung out in the back of his head, assumed by him to be beyond questioning because he heard it from one of the builders of the Engine. The fact that Hector successfully gained the insight into chaotic emergence had been all the proof he ever needed. His brain and life experiences were compatible with the insight and so that's the memories he received.

Except that didn't match the explanation afforded by Esther. Hector knew that a decent amount of dreamers failed to gain the insight presented to them. The rate was estimated to be approximately one in five. And if this theory was correct, then the flawed pattern matching was to blame. The dream of Volithur began just after the death of his parents. In the real world, Hector had been preemptively mourning the loss of his father. Both of them had been alone and grieving.

Was that the reason Hector received his particular memories? It felt cheap. He wanted to believe the Dream Engine saw potential in Hector and gave him something judged powerful.

There was only one problem with that belief. Did he really buy that a hybrid Jinn and Arahant device could look at a world of seven billion people and accurately assess every one of them for a best fit? No. He did not. Based on Hector's lifetime of professional experience, every procedure was designed to function good enough for its intended purpose. If fast and sloppy pattern matching got the job done in half the time, then it was a good solution. That let twice the number of worlds be targeted for a slight decrease in the quality of candidates. Those kinds of trade-offs made sense.

Hector faced the fact that he received Volithur's memories based on his orphan status. As much as it left a bad taste in his mouth, he couldn't deny it made far more sense than the Dream Engine making ideal decisions for billions of people at a time. Especially given that not everyone received dreams that were that great of a fit to them.

"Anyway," Esther said, "I want to get over to the staging grounds early. Are you two ready?"

They took a taxi to their destination, which was fortunately drier than the day Hector joined the task force going to Eden. Walking on packed dirt was far preferable to mud. They found their staging location and settled in to wait, sitting on top of their packs. They shared their space with no one else – apparently they were being segregated as Xian.

Mick began gossiping with Esther, sharing unflattering stories about various people in Tian Tower. People caught having sex in public areas. The time Wayne bought oil from Tian for the cafe and everyone who ate it got diarrhea. A balding woman whose wig never stayed on straight. Mick's nasty shtick continued, a minor annoyance to Hector until the man crossed a line.

"And there's nothing like the criticizer," Mick said. His voice pitched to a falsetto and he put on a pinched-face expression. "Why is there a line for the elevator? This should not be."

Had there not been enough clues from the pitch and the stiff disapproval, the fact that Mick mispronounced elevator so that it sounded more like 'levitate' with a belated -er tacked onto the end made it very clear just who he mocked. Esther hushed Mick to end the mockery, but not before Hector stood and walked away.

He knew first-hand just how tiresome Darius could be. The man deserved his fair share of criticism for his grating personality and his willful ignorance of technology. But never for the quality of his voice. Hector couldn't even admonish Mick for his insensitivity without potentially revealing that Darius had been castrated as a baby.

Beating Mick into submission seemed like an attractive proposition in the moment. Ultimately that wasn't something he could do. Not because of fear of consequences – being 'friends' with the System essentially made him immune to fines – but because he didn't punch down. He never had. If he was physically stronger than someone, he wouldn't intimidate them. If he had institutional power over someone through a position, he didn't abuse it. And now, as someone with superior cultivation, he would not take advantage.

He didn't need to formally declare a virtue to know something like that was wrong. Which, come to think of it, was an answer to a question asked of him earlier.

"System? You have immense power over the lives of humans, so the best virtue for you to practice would be restraint."

Interesting. You choose for me a virtue you embody. Meekness.

Hector made sure no one was looking in his direction before responding. "Meekness? Me? I'm not exactly afraid of a fight, System."

It appears our definitions of meekness are incompatible. The trait I speak of is the intentional restraint of one's strength. If you prefer, we can use the term magnanimity instead – generosity towards those weaker than oneself.

After a few moments, Hector nodded. "Yes. Magnanimity. I like that for both of us. The memories I inherited… they were lacking in generosity towards weaker people. I never had a word for it, but I knew that the kind of lord I want to be would be nothing like those beasts."

You are assuming your lifestyle will let you survive to level ten.

"If I prioritized my safety over the existence of humanity, I don't think I would deserve to get there. Anyway… farewell, System. I'm glad Evelyn put us in touch."

I remain ambivalent on that matter. Try to avoid excessive heroics.