It didn’t take me long to reach the research institute where Chelsea and her team worked. When I arrived, I was immediately able to notice that quite a few things had changed. For instance, there was now a reception area, and what appeared to be a transit hub outside of the main facility, with signs of frequent foot traffic.
When I entered the lobby, a lycan woman in a blue jacket smiled at me. “Greetings, sir Keeper. Chelsea said to tell you that she will be here momentarily.” She said, before typing a message at her terminal.
A few moments later, the door leading into the facility opened up, and Chelsea emerged with a grin. “There you are. Follow me, and I’ll give you the full update.” She gestured for me to follow her, and I did so with a small nod.
“You’ve expanded your staff?” I asked, glancing back towards the reception area.
“Yeah. We didn’t have enough people for all of the work that we needed to do, so we started hiring. The service staff like that receptionist are all from the ninjas, but our researchers themselves were handpicked from various different worlds. The senior team is just how you remember it, but now we have subordinates that help out with our projects.”
“Ninjas, huh?” That reminded me of the fact that Chelsea had taken in the ninjas and given them a home in this universe. “Did you have anything to do with the kitsune that appeared at Olympus?”
Chelsea blinked for a moment, having to recall. “Ah, Golden Shadow.” She nodded her head. “Well, that was her codename, at least. Does she have a proper name now?”
“She’s Lena. I figured you would have been responsible somehow…”
Chelsea simply chuckled at that. “I thought that you could use a dedicated spymaster. Terra’s more busy with the Heroic Spirit program, so she can’t keep an eye on absolutely everything like she used to. With Lena, you’ll be able to get information in real time from organizations that might be looking to cause trouble.”
“Right… Anyways, back to your report?” I asked, and she nodded her head in agreement.
“So, we have successfully managed to clone two worlds currently, being Lorek and Deckan. To be safe, we have made a second copy of Deckan, and it is this copy that the Metong’s Network has been moved to.”
“What’s wrong with the first one?” I asked curiously, and Chelsea paused to gather her thoughts.
“Nothing wrong, per se. Rather, we are working on a merger experiment. You should be familiar with how law mergers work in the system by now. According to our research, the mortal realm phenomena that accompanies this is that the energy cores of two or more worlds begin to resonate with one another, leading to their laws bleeding over. We are working on an experiment to see what would happen if Lorek and Deckan’s laws were merged in this manner.”
As we spoke, Chelsea led me down the halls, and occasionally we would pass by another researcher, who offered a nod of greeting to us. “You see, your system would normally ensure that the result is controlled, preventing the complete destruction of both worlds during the merger. Our goal with this experiment is to see if there is a way to safely do this without relying on the system’s guidance.”
“I think I understand. Is it fine to be talking about the Keeper system with an audience, though?” I asked, and Chelsea grinned up at me.
“Everyone here is already in the loop. A big part of the research here is deciphering the Keeper Code, so we needed to inform those working on it about what they would be doing.”
“Got it. I noticed that we haven’t increased in rank, yet. Are those new worlds properly up to the system standards?”
When I asked this, Chelsea gave a firm nod. “Our first cloned world had to be scrapped, because we didn’t add a time adjustment feature. Every world, upon first being created, is accelerated to the point where planets and galaxies have formed, to give a chance for life to take root.”
“However, the bigger reason for this acceleration is the stabilization of information. Once the information has fully stabilized, the world barrier becomes thicker and more solid. According to all observable data, the worlds that we have cloned are functionally no different from their base world.”
“The reason that we haven’t ranked up should be because of the fact that we are only copy-pasting, rather than creating our own world. You can’t be considered a proper programmer if you are only ever copying someone else’s work, right? Our team is working together to try to engineer a new world, without simply copying the base parameters. This merger experiment will help with that, as it will give us the chance to see the changes to the different cores.”
“Right…” I nodded my head, before pausing. “However… if you do this, and it fails, aren’t you worried about a karmic backlash? We saw what happened before when universes were destroyed, and it led to James having to isolate himself for years. If something similar happens to your team…”
Chelsea’s grin grew wider at that. “We’ve already taken this into account. During all tests, the team will be observing from a Null System zone. This zone is created to not only remove the game system of the world, but all special systems, including primal energies, divinity, and even karma. While in the Null zone, everyone only has the strength of their own bodies and minds to observe the world.”
Now that caused me to pause, remembering the Reset Protocol that Dana had made. “If you have something like that, can’t you use it in prisons to contain powerful inmates?”
“I mean, theoretically.” Chelsea shrugged her shoulders. “However, the cost to create just one of these zones is… frankly ludicrous. Nullifying the game system is easy, we’ve had tech to do that for ages. Nullifying all forms of supernatural phenomena, on the other hand…”
“To put it in comparison, I had to get Lifre and Lena to hunt down monsters from the void, and work together with Tubrock’s new golem race to get the information strands I needed. After converting that into a memetic script, I had to create an independent, nested world inside of the lab where that script could safely be applied as a world law, and modify the internal structure of that world to create the facilities that we would need to conduct our tests.”
“Granted, this nested world is still fragile, and it wouldn’t come close to meeting the system’s standards. But we didn’t need that much, only enough for our people to enter it and be safe within a null zone. Using nested worlds like that for prisoners is too extravagant, when the Reset Protocol is cheaper and doesn’t carry the same risks.”
“I suppose.” I nodded my head in understanding. “You mentioned the new golem race? How are they coming along?” I had briefly heard before that Tubrock had created a new race of golems that resided in the void, and I was worried that they might turn out the same way that Leowynn’s Guardian had, going on a violent rampage and even supporting other void beasts.
“No problems so far. Though… there was one interesting development among them.” Chelsea began to explain. “Tubrock created them with enough awareness and problem-solving capabilities to be able to selectively choose what information to absorb from other void monsters to complete themselves.”
“At the same time, they have the understanding that choosing harmful rules will lead to their eradication, either at the hands of Tubrock or someone else. Thus, they only acquire rules that will benefit themselves and others. These rules, and the information that they contain, gradually help to fully awaken a void golem to true sentience, at which point they gain the ability to reproduce, creating more template golems.”
“When these golems gain sentience, there is a null-point-one percent chance of them awakening as what we have identified as a Void God. These golems are able to freely establish their own rules.”
My eyes widened at this revelation, remembering just how much trouble the ‘Void God’ had caused. “That seems… like a rather high chance for something so dangerous, doesn’t it?” I asked, but Chelsea surprisingly shook her head.
“It might seem that way at first, but the reproduction time of the void golems is actually fairly slow. Given that they have to not only awaken themselves, but also gather the information necessary to create the new template, there have only been three Void Gods that have awakened during the last twenty years.”
“Currently, Tubrock and Leowynn have reached an agreement to have these golems serve as a defense force in the void, protecting against any particularly nasty enemies.”
That sounded good, at least. Chelsea turned a corner, holding her hand up against a panel next to a door, opening it and inviting me inside. “Right now, our biggest concerns are the merger experiment and deciphering more of the Keeper Code.”
Beyond the door, I could see a viewing room, overlooking more than fifty researchers sitting at their own terminals. Inside the viewing room was Treisha, who smiled and nodded at me as I entered. “Nothing new to report yet.” She said to Chelsea, who shrugged her shoulders.
“Just showing him around.” She said, before looking at me again. “This is where the main research happens. Here, the researchers are using the uncovered code to try to reverse engineer its meaning. To date, we have realized that the code itself uses a tier system, similar to magic and various other items found within the system.”
“The mutation of the code doesn’t simply occur randomly when new code is introduced, but rather is a result of the increase in complexity forcing the code to advance from one tier to the next. Before we understood this process, the change looked random, and we weren’t able to predict what would cause it. Unfortunately, the increase in code complexity can lead to unexpected problems when it interferes with other code, so we have to plan even more carefully to take this into account.”
“That’s right.” Treisha said with a long sigh. “In other words, we’re having to learn multiple programming languages on a universal scale, simply by reverse engineering what already exists. We should have the first tier cracked soon, and at that point we will be able to create a mundane world without any special characteristics. As for anything past that… we’re still trying out best to understand the higher levels.”
Hearing the code explained to me like this, I could understand why their progress had been so slow over the course of twenty years. Until now, the only code that Ashley or Chelsea had concerned themselves with were the codes found within the game system aspect of the world. Now, they had to look into codes which essentially represented the laws of physics, determining how to apply gravity, or simply defining what light was.
I definitely did not envy them for this work, and realized why they needed to hire so many extra personnel in order to get their work done. “How do you test to see if the code that they reverse-engineer is correct? Surely you can’t do it all at once, because you wouldn’t be able to understand which part of the code was faulty.”
Chelsea groaned, giving a small nod. “That’s right. We have a lifeless testing world that I got with the allowance you gave me. Whenever a new chunk of code is deciphered, we implement it there with Ashley’s help and measure the results. If the world is destroyed… well, that’s a few points down the drain and the knowledge that the code was wrong. If we get the desired effects, we save it in our database. Speaking of which, I’ll be needing a bit more for research funds before too long. I’m down to my last thousand.”
