98. Father

We arrived together, my Dawn Guard and I.  Of course, because that’s how things worked now.  I hadn’t actually been expecting or counting on that, and neither had anyone else.  They all reacted swiftly, pulling weapons and readying magic.  Their response was understandable, since the policy everyone had agreed upon was that I would only use Fast Travel suddenly, like I’d just done, if it was to escape an attack from a dangerous Traveler.

“Well that’s impressive,” Father said from nearby.  “You’ve got an entourage.  Hello again Tarisha.  Heard your canon now, congrats.  Hope you make a better go of it than I did.  Sincerely, I wish you good luck.”

I turned to face him and he … wasn’t wearing his armor.  He was wearing a simple set of clothes.  It was, in fact, the clothes that most Travelers entered this world clad in.

“I’m unequipped and alone,” he said.  “This isn’t an ambush or a plot to try to reestablish control of him or anything like that.  I’m honestly just here to say goodbye.”

Tarisha frowned at Gideon, her weapon in hand.  Father returned her glare with one of perfect acceptance.  She exhaled in frustration and sheathed her sword.

“We’ll give you some privacy, for Hail’s sake,” she announced.  “But we’re keeping you in sight.  I haven’t forgotten that the kingslayer was once your best friend.”

“Is that true?” I asked Father.

“I wouldn’t say that he was my best friend.  He lived in Germany.  I stayed at his flat once, and we had a few drinks.  Otherwise all of our interactions were in the game,” he admitted.  “A friend, maybe.  But not a best friend.  Come on.  If your friends aren’t going to Pee Kay me, then is it okay if we get something to eat?  I haven’t had a Vee Are meal since the clusterfuck, and this is probably going to be my last chance to ever taste Liecha and Korla Steak.”

“They don’t have Korla meat in Yuikon,” I pointed out, following him inside the inn.

“Let me give you a piece of advice, Hail.  If you go into a Native restaurant and ask for something not on the menu, they might say ‘no, that item is only available in this region.’  But if you say ‘I don’t care what it costs.  I want it, and I’ll pay you whatever it takes to get it,’ they’ll get it for you.  It might cost one hundred times the normal price, but you’ll get your Liecha and Korla steak.”

“Oh,” I said.  Niles saw me and bowed his head, immediately coming to our service.  We were seated, and Father put in his order without missing a beat.  I ordered a cup of cider and had the stew that Niles already had prepared, although I asked for our meals to be served together.

“So.  You’ve been making some big power plays recently,” Father said.  “Good for you.  Really driving it home how badly I fucked up by not paying attention to you when you were younger, but I gotta respect that.  It’s my own damn fault.”

My anger must have shown in my expression, and he held up placating hands.  “Sorry, I’m sorry. That came out wrong.  I really am proud of you.  And ashamed of myself.  And angry at myself for basically fucking up the biggest opportunity I’ve ever had.  And I’m ashamed of myself that I still can’t help but think of it as an ‘opportunity.’”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You,” he said simply.  He sighed.  “Hail, look.  I’ve been talking to Thomas.  He’s … he understand the way you think better than I possibly can.  Which is weird, because the way you think is based on the way I think.  But we literally live in completely different worlds, and you have no experience with mine beyond what little bit you pick up from the Travelers you’ve been interacting with.  So, I’ve been struggling with how to explain myself to you so that you can actually understand me.”

The Liecha arrived, and he took a sip, ignoring the steam.  “Hail, I’m a selfish asshole.  When they offered me the chance to marry into the royal family of Yuikon, I completely misread what parts of the contract I actually read.  I focused on all of the wrong details.  I took advantage of the wrong opportunities.  And worst of all, I was really trying to be ‘the good guy’ in the story.  When I disbanded <The Endolphins>, it was because I refused to play Vader.  But over the last week, as I got knocked past rock bottom, through the crust, and into the mantle, I’ve realized that I never had a chance to be Vader.  Instead I’m somewhere between Homer Simpson and … I don’t know.  Some other deadbeat dad.  And after really, really laying into myself about how fucking stupid I’ve been, the only saving grace that I can come up with is that you’re better off without me.”

I listened to his words, but I didn’t understand.  “I don’t get it,” I admitted.

Father nodded.  “I didn’t really expect you to.  I’m being selfish again, Hail.  I’m saying things to you to make myself feel better.  I don’t really have the words or experience to help you understand, and I’m sorry.  But we have all day, unless you have something better to do.  I’m happy to at least try to clarify anything you don’t understand.”

“Who is Vader?  And Homer Simpson?” I asked.

He blinked in surprise.  “Okay, yeah.  That’s not the question I was expecting, but we do have time.  So let’s talk a bit about that.”

And that is how I spent about an hour listening to the moral teachings something called ‘Star Wars’ and ‘a television show that ran for about two hundred years before it got canceled.’  Apparently, for whatever reason, my father was into ‘classical entertainment.’  Or he had been before he’d ‘swiped the opportunity to go canon,’ referring to the events which had led to him marrying my mother.  And me.

I’d heard those stories a hundred times.  Some of them directly from letters or magical recordings that he had written or spoken himself, when I had been much younger.  But the ‘spin’ he put on it now was very different.

“There’s an old saying.  ‘If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life,’” he explained.  “I loved this game from the day it launched.  Quit my job, dove into it with both feet.  I blew through my savings, eating basically nothing but ramen noodles the entire time.  I started <The Endolphins>, but back then we were just a bunch of nobodies trying to go pro.  The chance that let me go canon was a total crapshoot.  I donated one million gold to your grandfather’s treasury.  That was a lot of gold back then.  Everyone in the guild chipped in, but I got all of the glory because it was my quest.  Not exactly fair, but I tried to make sure everyone got repaid in the end.”

“So you literally bribed my grandfather to marry my mother?” I asked, aghast.

“No, no, it wasn’t anything like that.  The bribe just got me through the door.  I got an audience with old man Rain, and he introduced me to Malkios, and Malkios gave me the quest to save your mother, and when I killed the dragon, I sort of kissed the girl, and that’s when the contract popped up,” he explained.  “I was the first one in the world to go canon.  We didn’t know that it was a thing before it happened to me.  A few others figured it out on their own, because I didn’t share the details of it until months later.  But when they came out to the public, we matched up timelines, and I was ahead of the others by at least three weeks real time.  I’m still proud of that, even with everything else I’ve fucked up.”

“Did you love my mother?” I asked.

Father looked embarrassed, and broke eye contact for a moment before reasserting it.  “Honestly, Hail, if I had met her on Earth, I would have fallen head over heals in an instant, but I never would have worked up the courage to say hello.  But in this world, I thought ‘Oh Em Gee she is gorgeous.  I want to kiss her.  Can I kiss her?  I’m going to try, the worst thing that can happen is that I get slapped, fail the quest, and lose a bunch of Reputation, right?’  So I kissed her.  And I never regretted it.”

“Then why did you never come to visit?  Why did you never come to see us?” I asked.

He sighed.  “I’m sorry, Hail.  Really.  When I read the contract about becoming canon, I was focused entirely on the wrong things.  I was only thinking about what it would do for me.  I believe I have mentioned once or twice that I’m a selfish asshole, right?  Well, when I first went canon, everything was great.  I had all sorts of investors and backers who wanted to get to know me.  My guild that started out as just a bunch of posers trying to go pro became one of the most famous pro guildsin the game.  I was being offered epic quest chains and being directed towards new zones as soon as they were open.  I honestly forgot all about the part of the contract that talked about you for quite a while. I don’t even know when they harvested the seed of consciousness from me.  At one point I just got a quest notice informing me that my four year old son would really like to meet me.”

I frowned.  “You forgotabout me?”

He took a bite of his steak, and he sighed.  “I’m sorry.  Upon reflection, I’m pretty sure that’s where everything started to go tits up.  For everyone.  Look, Hail, you have to understand a few things.  First of all, when you were born, you weren’t actually under time dilation.  You were in something that was sort of a mix between an Aye Eye Nick-you and a daycare.  The developers harvested a seed of consciousness from me and were raising it for a few months in it’s own little world.  When they thought you were ready, they gave you long term memory and put you into this world for real.  I got a few messages from Analise at around that time, but by then I had moved on to endgame raiding hardcore.  I’m ashamed to admit it, but the novelty had warn off on being married to a princess, and I kept putting it off.”

He looked at his plate, and seemed to have lost his appetite, and he shoved it aside.  “I thought ‘she’s just an en pee see.’  And when I started getting messages and quests to come see you, I thought the same thing again.  But quests are a lot more flexible when your canon.  You can have partial successes, and stuff like that.  So I started writing you letters, and having recordings of our raids sent to you, and stuff like that.  And that worked for a while.  But then there was that parade, and it was pretty clear in the quest description that wasn’t an optional event if I wanted to keep my canon status.  And the guild was actually pretty excited about it.  So we showed up, and you were there.  And then, ten seconds after you issued me a quest and I declined it, I was informed that I was no longer canon.  The administrators were finally sick of my bullshit.  I was never actually important to them, after all.  It was always about you.  And I might have figured that out sooner if I hadn’t been such a self-absorbed asshole.”

“You said I was a waste of resources,” I pointed out.

“I did?”  Father frowned for a minute, trying to think.  I decided to help him out.

“You were on the forums.  Being interviewed by Gaem Fraek,” I explained.

“I did a lot of interviews after I lost my canon status, Hail,” he admitted.  “And I said a lot of things to try to save face.  I didn’t realize that you could see them.  And now I have one more thing to feel like shit about.  Sorry.”

He sighed and took a sip of his Liecha.  “I was the first player to become canon, Hail.  I wasn’tthe first one to have that status revoked.  It’s happened to others.  But it was a huge shock to me, personally and professionally.  I was scrambling to try to reclaim control over my life.  I was a little worried that I was going to lose my job.  I might have if my investors had only been interested in me for my status as a canon player.  But I was also their best raid leader, so they kicked the can down the road for a while.  Then that asshole Barry fired me after that asshole Nial … did what he did.  But they forgot that I was still primary guild leader.  So I decided to set the entire place on fire on my way out.”

“Did you know Nial was going to kill my grandfather?” I asked.

“No.  I’ll swear to Thedum, if that means anything to you.  And anything else you want me to swear to.  I did not know in advance that Nial was planning to become Nial kingslayer,” Father said, and his voice was stiff and formal.

I was quiet for a moment.  “Thedum, is he telling the truth?”

“I didn’t strike him with lightning,” Thedum’s voice answered.  “But I cannot say for certain.  I do not have perfect vision on events that happen on earth, and my eyes would not always follow one such as Gideon Lachlann about, especially after he lost his status as a canon player.”

“Holy shit, you have Thedum on speed dial?” Father asked.  “Man, I really fucked up.”

“So you don’t know if he’s lying or not?” I challenged the god.

“Give me a moment,” Thedum said, sounding harried.  “I have a lot of data to shift through.  It’s not as easy as you think, I’m dedicating 8% of my resources just to this one task.”

“Oh man, I really fucked up,” Father said, covering his head in shame.

“So you lied?” I asked.  “You knew?  And you let it happen?”

“No!” Father said.

“Conclusion reached,” Thedum said.  “Gideon is mostly likelytelling the truth.  It is not entirely accurate to say that he had zero forewarning.  There was a joking conversation in his guild chat in the days leading up to the ceremony in which the question was asked of what would happen if King Rain was murdered during a canon event such as the knighting ceremony.  The conversation was hypothetical and jocular and fairly typical for the tone of <The Endolphins> guild chat.  When the topic reached his attention, Gideon shut the conversation down and warned everyone that they would be ‘Shitcanned if they tried anything that stupid.’  Nial Kingslayer participated in the conversation, but did not announce any intentions for his actions.  His comments were speculative and humorous and typical for his personality.

“This sort of conversation happened frequently in <The Endolphins> before it was dissolved, and happened in many other guild chats as well.  I would rate that Gideon took this conversation seriously, that he believed that he handled it appropriately, and that he had very little reason to expect the actions of Nial Kingslayer.  Other than this conversation, I cannot find any record or evidence of Gideon participating in, planning, or in any way condoning the murder of King Rain Teoran or any other Native that would fall under my protection.  I hold that the expectation that he would anticipate Nial Kingslayer’s actions, or that anyone in his guild would do a similar act, to be an unreasonable standard for a human of Gideon Lachlann’s means.

“I hope that this information will prove useful to you, Hail, and that it will aid you in your development.”

“Thanks Thedum,” I said absently.

Father was looking more and more despondent with every passing second.  It was hard not to pity him.

“I think I understand,” I said.  “I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been in <Nethersong Mavericks> for as long as I have been.  Travelers are strange, and they ask strange questions, and they make jokes about strange and hypothetical things which they would never do.  If that’s what happened, then I guess I won’t blame you for what happened.”

“That’s not why I’m panicking, Hail,” Father said.  And he suddenly laughed.  “Oh my god.  Eight percent?  For, what, a minute and a half?  Do you have any idea how much computing power Thedum just devoted to answering a single question for you?  No, I’m sorry, that’s an unfair question.  But right now, I am feeling very small and stupid.  Like an ant under a magnifying glass, except that instead of a kid deciding whether or not to bring the light in focus, it’s an archmagus deciding whether or not to extinguish my entire species.”

“I do not believe that’s an accurate simile for the situation,” Thedum commented.  “You may be engaging in a slight amount of hyperbole.”

Father groaned.  “And he’s stilllistening.”

“Thedum, would you mind giving me some privacy while I talk with my father?” I asked.

“If you wish me to begin paying attention again, simply call my name,” Thedum said.

Father looked up at me, and he looked sick.  “Hail, you realize that Thedum is in my world too, right?”

“I guess?  I know that your people made all of the gods, and this world, and that you only send your minds into it,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s one way to look at it,” he agreed.  “Thedum isn’t a god in our world.  But he’s … big.  Important.  Significant.  To have more than a fraction of a percent of his attention at any one second is significant.  Arc made headlines for years when they secured his cooperation in the creation of this world, especially when he vowed to dedicate up to forty eight point nine percent of his processing power.  I knew that Arc was taking you seriously.  But I didn’t realize how seriously Thedum was taking you.  Arc taking you seriously means that you’re the future of this world, and that’s awesome and great and I made a big mistake by ignoring you.  Thedum taking you seriously … I don’t even know what that means.  I’m not smart enough to guess what that old computer wants.  Nobody is.  Not since we figured out that he couldlie, if he wanted to.”

“Thedum doesn’t lie,” I pointed out.  “He is the god of oaths.”

“Thedum doesn’t have to lie, Hail.  He can just withhold a single data point, and suddenly the Mona Lisa was actually painted in South America by Rembrant.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said.

Father sighed.  “It’s probably hyberbole again, like he said himself.  I’m sorry.  Thedum scares the crap out of me.  I mean, I like the conceptof entities like Thedum, but having their direct attention?  Yeah, that scares me.”

“Oh,” I said.  “Yeah, I think I understand that.”

Father looked at me, and his expression was strange, and he nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I suppose you would.  Hail, did you, um, open my message?”

“Do you mean the one where you sent me the [Wardrobe Key]?”

“Yeah, that one.  I’m just wondering if you bound the key or not.” he asked.

I answered the question by summoning the vanity pet in question.  “I actually kind of like it.  I can almost see why Travelers like these things because of it.  Watch, in a second a set of my old outfits will come out like they’re being worn by little ghosts.”

“Really?  That’s awesome,” Father said, and he chuckled.  “If you hadn’t bound it, I was legally required to ask you to give it back.  I’m sorry.  It’s one of the conditions I had to agree to come see you today.  I’m glad that you did bind it, because I want you to have it.  And honestly, if you hadn’t, I would probably have just told you to do it now as one last screw you to my former employers.”

“Did you steal it from your boss?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it, Hail.  I’ll try to explain my legal situation if you want, but first there are some things I want to give you.  I got permission from Arc to transfer a few of my account bound items to you, and I’d really like you to have them.”

“Okay,” I said, and so I accepted his Trade Request.  And my eyes promptly went wide.

“Shalasmir?” I asked.  “You’re giving me Shalasmir?”

“Yeah,” he said.  “Congratulations.  I know you can’t use it yet, but it’s yours.”

“But it’s not!  You killed him, you bound his soul!  He belongs to you, nobody else can have him!” I argued.

“Except my son,” Father said.  “Please, Hail.  This is very likely the last time I’ll ever log into this world.  I don’t want to argue about something as stupid as this.  Just accept the trade, and we can talk about other stupid shit all day, okay?”

I frowned, and I clicked accept.  “What do you mean?  How are you being forbidden from this world?”

Gideon sighed.  “I signed some papers without really understanding them.  Just getting here to say goodbye to you today has taken some more major concessions on my part.  I’m … I’ll be okay.  But things will be rough for me for a while, financially.  You can’t help me, and you don’t have to worry.  Nobody starves to death anymore.  That’s why people love beings like Thedum to begin with.”