Edward Lerner - A Time for Heroes

And yet…

He remembered enough to know he was no mere game character. Who would fill a bot with the names of kindergarten classmates, and the capitals of the fifty states, and the smell of freshly baked bread? His memories, however incomplete, were his.

Scripted bots. Randomized bots. Artificially intelligent bots. He was none of those things. What came next? No question: Naturally intelligent bots. Uploads.

Me.

Target for an ever-growing legion of players who would seek to kill him. Again, and again, and again.

In a flash of light and sound, a mortar round found him.

Rocks. Bullets. The roar of mortar rounds. Deep in thought, Travis ignored them all.

He had been copied into this game.

The real Travis would know the goal of the game. He would remember getting into a VR tank and know how to open it.

Would an uploaded copy know? Apparently not. Or rather, for the copy there was no tank. He was only bits inside a computer, the ghost within the machine. There was no door for him to open.

The mortar rounds crept closer.

For what it was worth, Travis knew when the copy—he—had been made. Personal calibration? Ha!

Was he a bootleg upload? No way. Flesh-and-blood Travis might log onto this game any time, recognize himself, and sue the company for everything it was worth. Why risk it?

No, Real Travis had agreed to this. That Travis didn’t remember the discussion only meant Cavanaugh brought it up after the copying process. Real Travis would have jumped at the chance to star in a virt—and happily collected his royalties.

Because I would have, Travis thought sadly. And I’d have been wrong.

Blam!

Clods of dirt rained down. Travis’s ears rang. His nose bled. That was close . In another round or two, inevitably, the enemy would find the range. In a few scant seconds…

He didn’t feel much like Batman, Zorro, or Frodo. He didn’t feel inspired by them. He didn’t feel like fighting, or even like moving.

Travis remembered wishing life had—even once—dealt him a real challenge. A worthy challenge. A seminal moment. The type of defining moment that forged true heroes.

Real Travis, yielding to vanity or cash, had had his seminal moment. In dooming his own upload to purgatory, Real Travis had shown himself unworthy.

And me, Travis thought. What about me? This is a seminal moment. My seminal moment. I choose to fight no more.

My hero now is Gandhi.

As the whistle of an incoming mortar shell swelled, Travis wondered how many times, and in how many uninteresting ways, he must die before the game masters ended the slaughter.

(With thanks and apologies to Jeremy.)