Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

" Not often I feel like I won by coming second ," Silent said. " But, well, thank you all. "

" There’ll be other System Challenges ," Nina said. " The important thing is having a chance to take them on. "

With a wave to Arlen, I headed to the Delina , fielding multiple discussion threads with guildies until they became distracted by Nina officially joining Corpse Light . After dodging a handful of people loitering in one of the transport’s corridors, I found an empty compartment, and chatted with my parents until I reached Earth Gateway Station. Then I did some loitering of my own, waiting in the compartment until well after the rest of the returnees had departed, so I wouldn’t be faced with a crowd of interested onlookers.

It wasn’t until I’d settled back into the pilot seat of The Hare that I stopped feeling so strange, and started to relax. My Snug. I’d thought it an odd name, and it was a decidedly unexciting shape for a spaceship, but it was pleasantly solid and self-sufficient. The place where I could shut out everyone but Dio.

My inescapable alien overlord had clearly figured out I didn’t want to talk. Te had ridden back to The Hare without comment, and simply drifted up into the ceiling when I’d entered the airlock. I did want to talk to ter—I had questions—but not yet. Instead, I explored my piloting system until I was able to plot a course away from Earth Gateway Station. Just far enough to have a view of the Earth, the Station, stars and the lunar ring while contemplating my second death.

Dying was nothing but lost time, in every game I’d played up to Dream Speed . But I still could feel the knife that had finished Kazerin, and I knew I’d be dreaming about what had happened to my body on The Wreck, after I’d left it behind. Dio had been true to ter word, and our stream had shifted back to Silent, Imoenne and Nina as soon as I’d collapsed, but I couldn’t quite overcome my imagination.

The System Challenge had been exhilarating and awful, and I would need to decide if I wanted to face anything similar again. The guild had collected swathes of recommendations for far less realistic Challenges, where Bio-Synth modals could hang from cliffs by their fingertips, run forever without getting out of breath, and shrug off any injury through the application of first aid . A far more standard gaming experience. Or I could simply train on beaches and gaze at stars, because The Synergis gave countless comfortable options, and didn’t seem to mandate any of them. All the System Challenge really added to my Synergis-life was prestige.

And, perhaps, answers. I had missed out on the chance to use a Boon wisely. We had been so close to winning.

"Do you have a preference for what I do next, Dio?" I asked.

Te drifted into my field of view from a point behind and above me.

[[Ranking trials would be a good start,]] te said.

"I suppose so. After that?"

[[Ad astra.]]

To the stars. Yes. Perhaps I’d spend more of my mound of Lux points, and head off somewhere completely beyond the range of even Nina, just so I could stand beneath a distant sun and marvel. Grouping up would be a lot more difficult, since it would have to be with NPCs, but there was no rush to do anything that required more people.

I eyed Dio, wondering if te’s short responses were because this was the Construct version, rather than Ydionessel. Or if, possibly, te really was annoyed at me for failing to win the System Challenge. If winning at any cost really was the point of the game.

I’d prefer this to be a Construct than for Dio to think that way. Really, it should cheer me immensely to be able to play Dream Speed without an overly interested alien overlord treating me like a puzzle box. And yet I couldn’t dismiss the sense that I was a Chocobo that had failed to impress, no longer worth Ydionessel’s time.

Annoyed with myself, I said: "Well, I’m going to log before deciding any more."

[[Do you intend to return soon?]]

Had Dio asked me that before? "I’ll take an hour or two’s break out in the world," I said, seeing no reason to sidestep. "Then, well, to the stars sounds like a plan."

Now became yesterday as I woke, and in my post-sleep vagueness I couldn’t remember if Dio had responded to my decision. Despite the prospect of touring the stars, I felt flat, more depressed by failure than I had been in the immediate aftermath. I’d never expected to win the System Challenge, and had to admit we’d had a really charmed run, but it was painfully frustrating to have blazed the path only to have it wrecked in the final room.

Costing Imoenne and Silent the game would have felt worse, but that didn’t make failure easier to swallow. I’d lost a lot of races in my time, but never had I had such a distinct sense of opportunity missed. This wasn’t how the story was meant to go. The System Challenge should have culminated in my winning that Boon, and finally having some straight answers from Dio about Dream Speed .

Restless, I went for an early morning run, reminding myself all over again why I’d spent so much time on the track in school. I’d not won often there, either: it was the process I enjoyed. The way my mind cleared, and I seemed to move into a realm of my own, separate from everyone around me, but moving through the world at the same time.

But the joy of running failed to make me feel any better about losing the System Challenge, or banish the nagging sense that it had been important, that maybe there really was a secret true purpose to the game, and we’d just missed out on it.

I decided to skip reviewing the out-of-game reaction to the System Challenge, in part because I didn’t particularly want to see Cutters again, ever. There would, I am sure, be a debate raging over whether it had been right or wrong to turn back to save two of our group, but I’d settled that in my own mind, at least. And I would definitely take an exploring-the-galaxy approach to Dream Speed for a while. I’d indulge myself in some of the more fantastic Challenges, those that didn’t involve my Core Unit or any suggestion of risk, and concentrate on exercises or things like the Heart of Mars series, and see if I could get to one of the megastructures Dio kept hinting about.

But even though I had lost, I was still going to try my questions on Dio. Even if te lied, I wanted to hear what te had to say.

"Who drowned the Earth, Dio?"

[[That is what you are meant to tell me.]]

I looked up at the mote of light circling above my cockpit chair. Proper Dio this time, I decided, not a Construct.

" Dream Speed encourages us to get stronger, to win Challenges, to gain reputation, to head out into the galaxy and maybe steal a ship, or maybe decide The Synergis is fine, really, and so stick around the Chocobo stable. You’ve sprinkled what I think are meant to be clues around—things like that cat Challenge, where someone was clearly enslaving people and it didn’t seem to be Cycogs—but those hints are too widely scattered and contradictory to be put together into a picture. There’s so many lies that I don’t think you really can be intending for one of us to gather all the suspects into a drawing room, and prove it was Miss Scarlet with the candlestick."

[[Yes, it’s all just ominous foreshadowing, really.]]

"And then you say things like that." I sighed. "Who shattered the moon, then? Was it whoever controlled The Wreck?"

Dio dropped to hover quite close to my face, then receded to the edge of the viewport bubble. [[The moon is a lie. Doesn’t happen.]]