Chapter 37: Stairs, Stairs, And More Stairs

“I really wish the elevator was working,” said Bentley as we headed toward the stairs. “This is going to take a while.”

“It wasn’t working even when the electricity was on. At least we don’t have to use the elevator shaft anymore,” I said, but he had a point. Walking up twenty-five flights of stairs took some time. Might as well use it. “Marci, thoughts on the video?”

“Well, we know the attack centered on cities first. The nanobots came in from the road, which means from an urban center. They were probably using the roads to locate population centers before spreading out to rural areas. Also, it was very fast. I doubt the military had much time to respond. The individual people certainly didn’t have a chance.”

Reaching a landing, we walked around some unmoving bodies, and I was grateful, very, very grateful for their lack of movement, but they were as disturbing as possible. And likely starting to decompose. I forced myself to focus on her first point, “If we could find more videos, we might be able to figure out the location of the initial attack. Assuming the videos show the direction of the nanobots. Wherever they came from is probably where they set up their servers, since they’d want to do that immediately upon arrival. Damn, it’d be nice to know if they were centralized or whether different mainframes govern geographical areas.”

“Nanobot attacks like this one are usually driven by specialized swarms. The first attack sets up an area of control while a secondary class of bots builds their mainframes. As they expand outward, they continue in this fashion. So, we should expect localized computer farms every so often. If they don’t do that, their communication suffers lag the further they get from the central servers. But we know this attack took over an entire planet, so they must be decentralized.”

“That’s going to make it hard to take down. As they lose a communication hub, won’t they simply send out reinforcements to build another?”

“Yes, these systems are robust and difficult to defeat. We’d need coordinated teams to do so, plus EM jammers, EMPs would help. If we eliminate one, they just resend an attack to take it back. Or build around it, depending on their threat assessment.”

“On the other hand,” I said, “we really only need to take out one area to send a signal to the navy. But we’d need communications equipment, too. Even if we could capture or destroy their computers.”

“That might be a suicide mission, depending on the nanotech’s response.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bent. “It’s set up to produce a game. I think it’ll preserve the game system at all costs.”

Holding the wooden handrail and halting briefly, Marci looked back at him, “It might just turn us into mindless monsters, so we stop interfering with the game. That’s the same as death, really.”

We passed another landing. As our situation could get worse any minute, I increased the pace, “What about, I’m just brainstorming here, reprogramming a local hub? Maybe we can get the nanotech to fight itself.”

“Huh. It would work if they don’t have active combat protocols against nanotech, and we could program them into ours. If otherwise, we’d buy us some time, but we’d ultimately be overwhelmed.”

Bentley said, “So far, it doesn’t seem to have any combat protocols. Well, impossible to say against other nanotech, since we haven’t seen that, yet. For all we know, the military on this planet tried to fight the alien bots with their own and failed.”

“Yeah. We are going to have to locate video footage from a military base, if possible.” We continued up the lightless stairwell, flicking my flashlight away whenever it caught a piece of clothing or an arm or leg, the bleakness of the mission felt palpable. We didn’t have maps to guide us. Though even if we did, the landscape had drastically changed. How were we to find a military structure with intact security videos and power to run their computers? “Finding one is going to be a huge challenge. Among many.”

Marci said, “I wonder if there are any lucky holdouts in a Faraday cage somewhere.”

“Maybe. In a bunker or something.” I tried not to sigh, “If we had our lander, we could check up on the military status of this planet, where their main defenses are, pinpoint possible islands of safety. They might have had fission bomb capable bunkers for their government.”

“If we can find an army base,” said Bentley, “perhaps we can learn the information.”

“That the nanotech could put this hotel inside a cavern,” Marci moved her flashlight from corpse to corpse, “suggests they might have buried any safe bunkers.”

“Right.”

“Actually, River,” said the wizard, “maybe we should take on different dungeons. They might be built similarly to this one – putting the hotel in a cavern. It’s easier to use an existing structure than build dungeons from the ground up. Maybe we’ll find an army base next time.”

“I’d like to rely less on luck and more on strategy. I think we’re going to have to visit the nearby city next. Perhaps someone remembers and has information.”

Marci shone the light on her face briefly and it was gold against her hair, “And maybe maps or leftovers from the society. Clearly, the nanotech didn’t wipe out everything it conquered. I wonder if it has lost its drive to create monsters. We have our memories intact.”

“Good point. None of the locals seem to. Either it’s a game made for outsiders or the program is moving on from its initial parameters.”

“When we get to the city,” said Bent, “we really need to hire a healer. We aren’t looting enough pots.”

“Yeah.” We crossed up the next few flights in silence. We were in for the long haul here, it seemed. Our first mission and it wasn’t simple. Probably the most complex away mission in history. My mind wandered a bit but came back to the woman we’d killed. “You know, the necromancer said the mainframes weren’t here. That suggests she knew what they were. Bent, those spell ingredients you found, you said you got them from her room?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you find anything else? We should do a thorough search of the apartments. I was so tired last night, I only thought to check the altar room.” And, I thought to myself, I was oddly focused on magic items and treasure, not mission related info. I didn’t like that, not one bit.

“Ah, some coins. I don’t know, silver and gold. Some gemstones. And a dagger, and her robe. It’s got lots of pockets for all these spell components but doesn’t fit me unfortunately.”

“Are you sure?” asked Marci. “If it’s magical, it might resize to you. This armor did that.”

“Yeah, I tried. It just made me look silly.”

Even without seeing the elf, I could hear the smile in her voice, “Function over fashion sometimes, you know.”

“Not this time. Anyways, it doesn’t matter. She was a higher-level spell caster than I am, so I don’t need all those pockets yet.”

“And Fred took her out with a war hammer to the head.”

He was silent for a few moments, then said, “Well, she didn’t put enough thought into defense, I guess. She imagined those Frankenstein monsters would protect her.”

“I wonder.” Thinking about my lack of mission focus last night triggered these thoughts. “You think the game makes the baddies – the final bosses or whatever they’re called – make mistakes? Like, she could have positioned an entire army of zombies there, but she went with two of those Frankenstein creatures. We could therefore beat her and finish the quest.”

Marci said, with some amount of disgust in her voice, “You’d seriously want an army of undead in your apartment? Just in case you get attacked?”

“Yeah, you’re right. That wouldn’t be fun.”

“They were pretty close by,” said Bent. “Close enough to direct them up where needed. I think they were doing that when we got there. All these zombies were heading upstairs. And those ones in the hallway were definitely after us, they just couldn’t get through the doors fast enough.”

“Yeah, that’s likely,” she said.

“Right, right. So, Bent, what else did you find?

“Nothing else. Just the dagger, spell components, robe, some money. And her clothing and whatever else. You took her nightgown, right Marci?”

“Uhm, yeah.” Her blush was almost audible.

“Hey Bent, the first wizardess we killed had a spell book on her. Not this necromancer?”

“Maybe.” He paused on the steps for a moment, then caught up. “I don’t really know. I should probably search more closely.”

“Honestly, let’s just leave it be.” I shook off the thought of us fighting alongside the dead guys instead of against them. “Her kind of magic is disgusting and immoral.”

“Are you sure? You’d be upset if I had a zombie servant following me around, protecting us?”

“Gross. I don’t know, Bent, it seems really wrong. I guess the dead can’t be slaves, and I’m not sure I believe in souls or whatever, but magicking a corpse to do whatever you want seems morally wrong in ways I cannot even begin to describe.”

“Yeah, gross. Very, very gross,” Marci said, her light illuminating more corpses as we climbed even more stairs. “Anyways, back to the videos, the nanotech isn’t instantaneous. It needs material and it scrounges from its surroundings to get it. Some of the changes we watched were ongoing. Like that swimmer. He was changing as he was moving out of the pool. So, it takes time. I’d guess they were unmoving for up to thirty minutes, which is amazing on so many different levels. For one thing, the nanotech must have been supplying oxygen to that poor person’s cells, or he’d have died then and there. Second, their transformation continued after that, but I can’t say for how long, as the transformed humans left the picture before they were done changing. If we hadn’t lost power, maybe we’d have learned more. But we know, at minimum, we know our own transformations continue as we level. So, it’s an open-ended process.”

“It also didn’t offer most of those people a choice,” said Bent. “Like, I’m happy to be a wizard. And Fred and Ave seem pretty good with their green skin, but not a single person would choose to become monsters like those in the pool. Or those guests who then attacked the person who remained human. When the game first turned on, it needed monsters.”

“That’s horrific. It means the monsters we’re facing used to be our fellow citizens. But I guess we knew that.” My legs were getting quite the workout, going up all these stairs, and I found myself breathing heavier at the quick pace we were taking. It would have been a mere stroll for our fighters and barbarians, with their investment in the physical traits. Maybe I should put more into stamina. Yet it was difficult to know since mine was a strange, in-between class that needed all too many attributes. Regardless, I didn’t know and couldn’t plan, not with my broken interface.

Marci said from behind, “Not all of them. The giant centipedes were likely made from regular centipedes. It’d be easier to scale them up than build them from another species. And those little creatures outside the hotel, I think they’re offspring. Probably their, uhm, parents were human. Maybe those swimmers.”

“You think a person was transformed into a queen for those things?”

“That’s my guess. The only way to tell would be to find the queen. But I don’t want to go into their hive.”

“Neither do I.” I sighed. “This raises an interesting moral problem. If we kill monsters, we’re killing people.”

Bentley said, “I don’t see the issue. We’re defending ourselves.” Shining his light on the brass floor number, he took two quick breaths before saying, “Thank God, only three flights left.”

Looking back to him while speaking, I said, “I don’t like the idea of gaining experience points by killing our fellow citizens. It’s straight up benefiting from their unfortunate experience.”

His tone sounded disappointed, “No farming monsters then.”

Marci said, “It’s like, it’s like if someone got rabies and is trying to bite you. It’s not immoral to fight them off, even to the point of their death. It’s not their fault they’re rabid, but it’s not your fault either. And they’re actively trying to hurt you, with no holds barred.”

“That’s a better way to put it,” said Bentley. “If you ignore the XP and leveling bits, yeah.”

“It makes our mission all the more poignant. We have to learn more about the nanotech, about the attack, and somehow get this information to the navy. We have to hold whoever did this accountable.” And I somehow had to stay on mission, stay focused, leave the game as a secondary function. As frustrating as it was to not be fully connected to the system, it was a real blessing. Somehow, for reasons I didn’t understand, perhaps couldn’t, my thoughts and drives were my own. But if they weren’t, how would I know?

“River,” Marci touched my back, “I understand how you feel. We all feel the same. But there’s just six of us against a weapon that has taken over entire planets. I’m not sure . . . I mean, we’ll do everything we can, but it’s a big task.”

“It’s the only reason we are here, Marci. The only reason.”