Then again, if the Missiontakers don’t even figure out that the Tower residents are equally as human players as they are, then there’s nothing anyone could do.
And the fact that they can’t figure it out, comes down to——NE.
NE is somewhat similar to the game’s setting’s artificial intelligence Iro, but he has differences to it.
NE, while an AI himself, is more appropriately called the Server for the game.
The current age of video game development has largely entered a speedy, cookie-cutter, formulaic phase.
No longer do countless programmers need to bust their hands typing endless streams of code, or for graphic designers to modify and optimise the game’s graphics over and over again——
Well, as long as the developer and publisher aren’t demanding of quality, which would still require a large amount of manual quality work.
Otherwise, a simple Server, an artificial intelligence specialised in game design, could help achieve everything they needed.
They are able to formulate assets, hammer out a plot and climax, handle graphics and fix bugs according to specifications and demands of the game designer. They can even handle after-care like sales, operations, updates and more.
What the game designer needs to do, is just periodically check the ‘Update Log’ that the Server would send them.
Yes, everything, even updates, are handed entirely over to AI.
Well, the direction and stuff still need the game designer to guide the grand scheme of things, but all the details are left to the AI. It’s blatantly obvious this is mostly laziness on game designer’s part, though.
Too lazy to spend money or effort to innovate, and so decide to have a Server make long overdone stuff for the players to play. Money-making is far more important to them, and using an AI to develop a game——Is obscenely economical indeed.
Now, a game only needed a vague idea, and then some nondescript planning and strategising, mostly about how to make the most money, before it can be shipped, ides and all… to the Server to complete it!
In fact, Servers specialised in gaming are themselves streamlined. Bigger companies could even rent out their own, and have them manage multiple games——With memory still to spare, no less.
These are all information revealed to Xü Beijin when he became NE, and had some access to the enormous database the game has.
He always tries not to remember those things, but now that NE is standing in front of him, he can’t help but remember the memories of that time.
Though it is largely fragmented, chaotic, even dream-like.
But it actually happened.
He did… at a certain point, become NE.
The game ‘Escape’ is somewhat different from the norm, because while other game’s Servers are only managing the game from the outside and designing the game on the inside, they don’t become part of the game. They’re above and in a supervising position.
But ‘Escape’ was different, because in this game, in its own setting, it called for an artificial intelligence Iro itself.
Possibly because the game designer was lazy, or possibly, because there were some special requirements, but regardless——
NE was given that secondary role as the AI the game called for. It had a dual role.
So NE also became part of the game itself, and gained a Nightmare, and became a Tower resident. It’s almost like NE is Iro’s Actor, even if it isn’t technically a ‘player’ of this game.
But, all Tower residents, require a player to Act as them.
This is probably what triggered a bug.
When Xü Beijin and the other humans ended up in this game, with the Actors sorted and then assigned roles, Xü Beijin——Perhaps by pure, dumb luck or misfortune——Ended up in the role as the Actor for the AI in the game’s plot, which technically didn’t have a player Acting as it yet.
It was already a dual role occupied both by the AI Iro in-game, and the Server, NE, which is outside the game. So unfortunately, Xü Beijin ended up with the Acting role for both.
He has become both Iro and NE.
In other words, while other Actors only needed to accept the plot and memories of their assigned Nightmare’s owner, Xü Beijin needed…
To take in both Iro and NE’s full database.
The great amount of data influx crashed the human’s weak psyche almost instantaneously.
Losing consciousness, he became NE in the most literal of senses. Suffice it to say that, it was like a fight between Xü Beijin and NE over retaining the role as the AI in the game, but Xü Beijin lost.
Then all the three roles ‘united,’ for lack of a better word, with memories, data, information, emotions… all the mess that were each carried by the three identities being mixed together.
And Xü Beijin believes himself to have already died at that moment.
NE has become the game’s plot’s AI, Iro, but Xü Beijin also had his own influences on the matter.
Memories and emotions of a human, which are beyond the comprehension of an artificial intelligence only designed to complete and manage a game.
NE didn’t need to understand them either.
Judging them to be useless data, he wanted to delete all these useless things belonging to Xü Beijin, delete what would be his entire memories, his entire past.
But he found, he lacked authorisation.
Humans are players in this game, as designated not by NE, but by a certain existence behind NE.
‘They’ wouldn’t just let NE kill the humans, even though Xü Beijin thinks he’s already ‘dead.’
So as a compromise, NE designed and added a new player named ‘Xü Beijin,’ gave him the role of a Tower resident, and set him as a bookstore of the bottom floor of the Tower, then dumped everything he didn’t need into that husk.
The husk cannot leave the bottom floor, or tell the other humans anything related to the truth. And it is also correct to call the husk an extension of Iro, and NE, with its Nightmare also being the grey fog outside the Tower.
Because NE wanted to kill Xü Beijin still, to delete him for good, that’s why, it never did anything about the Nightmare outside.
The moment Xü Beijin falls asleep the same day the husk is created, then his consciousness being technically in the grey fog would have forced his consciousness to go ‘insane,’ and he will forever disappear from the Tower.
That is what NE chose to do to deal with Xü Beijin. He cannot go against orders to kill Xü Beijin outright, but he still wanted to make Xü Beijin ‘disappear.’
As a programmed AI, he will stop at nothing to ensure that useless data is purged.
But it should be noted that it no longer identified the husk named ‘Xü Beijin’ as human, but equally as its own kind, an artificial intelligence. A rogue one that should be ‘purged’ because it is entirely useless. That has been his goal all along.
Now, though, NE’s attitude towards him changed.
Why is that?
boilpoil's notes:
This part of the chapter warrants an explanation, so here goes. A Server, NE, that was also an AI, was designated to create and manage a game, based on the crude game design document found in the building with malfunctioning elevators. The game design called for an AI NPC named 'Iro' in the plot. For laziness' sake, whoever ordered NE to create the game in the first place, decided that, instead of designing an entire artificial intelligence as that NPC, NE would do well enough to have to work as that AI NPC as well.
However, this was clearly not thought out well, because the original game design apparently didn't specify that, even though 'Iro' is an NPC in the Tower, it isn't a Tower resident, so it was assigned that, and which, according to the game's logic, would call for an 'Actor' to Act as it. This is a bug that a Server following the game design strictly would have caused.
The second bug is, because 'Iro,' which is a role filled dually by NE, required an Actor, it means that one player would end up as the Actor of both roles, with access to both Iro's database as the management AI of the Tower, and NE's database as the management of the game 'Escape.' And the player happened to be our boi Xü Beijin. Ouch.
What happened next shouldn't be too complicated to understand I think. But let me know if you need it explained as well.