Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

Chapter 10: Touched by a God!

“So DG when do you plan to activate Mieu?” Elisa curiously asked the synthetic girl who was sitting on the floor in the lounge room with her legs crossed. She was eating from a large bowl of popcorn. Did she even have taste buds? or maybe she was just trying to imitate humans.

“Dunno, maybe some time this afternoon” she shrugged shoving a huge handful of salty popcorn into her mouth.

“Uh, so what do you think of food?” Elisa asked considering DG didn't even have to eat to keep herself alive. Eating was almost a side hobby for her.

“Hey what’s up girls” the numan asked as she walked into the room. She just finished another day at Hunter's Guild sharpening and testing weapons.

“Hey it's Cinderella” DG joked pointing a finger at Autumn's long hair “So when are you going to let me shave it all off?” she then asked completely forgetting Elisa's previous question.

Elisa started giggling to herself and Autumn was just about to start yelling at DG for being an idiot when all of a sudden they both froze. They both stood completely solid, no sound, no further movement it was as thought time just stopped in the lounge room.

“Huh” DG exclaimed aloud she stood up leaving the bowl on the ground and she began to walk toward Autumn but the closer she walked, the further away Autumn seemed to be, and her body literally wasn't moving an inch.

DG then turned and looked over her shoulder at Elisa frozen with a hand almost covering her mouth while she was previous laughing. DG reached out an arm but Elisa started to fade away in what seemed to be a white haze. The entire room started fading into nothingness.

“This...this is...” DG stopped talking as she watched the entire room fade to nothing before her eyes. DG then finished her idle sentence “Time and space alteration!”

DG then levitated from the ground and started gently gliding her way through a completely blank area that only seemed to house the colour of plain white.

“This is a form of blank space” DG replied scanning the empty area before her. She was no doubt making a record of it in her database.

Suddenly DG felt an overwhelmingly warm and comforting presence. “Wow...this feels...so nice” she whispered to herself. The ecstasy of the feeling made her forget about Autumn and Elisa's disappearance. She then began recording her current feeling down as well. However she came to abrupt stop when a large glowing yellow god appeared before her.

“You...you're” she started stammering her words. Not in fear of the entity, but in surprise, that he appeared before her without any notice.

“De-Vars” the god replied he had a deep voice but at the same time it was gentle. Despite his intimidating size he clearly meant no harm to DG.

“You're a god” DG replied in awe. “From Rykros?”

“Correct, HAPSBY-Unit-001-MB-9819-EVD-AV-DigitalGirl-0.11” De-Vars replied

“You know my full name” DG was shocked she had an opened hand placed against her chest. It was as though she was trying to feel her own heartbeat; such a thing did not exist within her, no matter how human she looked.

“The Gods of Rykros have been monitoring your presence within our solar system for some time now. It was lord Re-Faze who sent me personally to interact with you. We wish to know quite a few things about you.”

DG nodded she was no doubt thinking about how lucky she was to encounter a guardian of the solar system and on such a good basis. She already knew both Autumn and Elisa had, had dealings with the gods but only because the sinister Profound Darkness intervened with their lives.

“Uh ha...likewise...” DG replied connecting her fingertips nervously, it was going to be hard to try get information out of a god. That’s even if she got a chance to ask questions herself.

“Your body, I assume you chose a human one to simply interact and blend in with the dominant species in this solar system correct?”

“Yes that's correct”

“I can already tell your body contains no bones, blood, digestive system, reproductive organs or even a brain, nothing internally human at all. So how do you manage to function?” De-Vars asked thickening the mysteries DG was keeping.

“Well I’m actually binary code in human form. The only thing inside me is a silver liquid, you could say it's similar to blood, but it's actually just the physical form of binary code. This body of mine is simply a vessel I made and my collective consciousness foresees everything I do. The reason I became female is that the very first intelligent life-form I truly bonded with before I existed outside of the digital realm was a human girl, Elisa.”

De-Vars paused for a moment he seemed intrigued. “Hmmm, Elisa I know of the girl quite well. So it was her conversation with you as an AI that made you want to transcend realities?”

“Yes exactly” DG had a perk of cheerfulness in her reply

“Now back to your body. This silver liquid you described or binary-code, if that’s all that's in there how do you manage to stand without a skeletal structure? By the laws of gravity you should be a bag of water unable to stand like a human!”

“Well...” It was hard for DG to explain the ins and outs of herself in words; as much as she was flattered someone was taking an interest in how she crafted herself. “It's just how my form is, in some parts of my body the binary code runs much more coarse, making, I guess you could say an invisible skeletal structure. It gives me support when I stand, walk and run.”

De-Vars obviously satisfied with her word immediately moved onto the next question. “You’re unable to feel physical pain?”

“Yes I deliberately made it so that I cannot feel the tortures of physical pain no matter how serious my injury may appear. But just because I can't feel physical pain doesn't mean I can still function. For example if someone beheaded me right now. I would be unable to control my body. My AI would have to retreat and create another one or if I'm lucky repair my old one which would take far less time”

“Do you mind if I try something out on you?” The god curiously asked,

DG hesitated before giving in with a slight shake of her head.

De-Vars then reached out his arm and extended a finger and gently touched DG's bare shoulder. Suddenly a silver ring ran around the edging of her arm just after her elbow. It was actually her internal silver fluid breaking through her skin; her arm then detached and fell to the white floor splattering silver blood everywhere.

DG looked down and noticed she was now one limb short. The silver binary code blood was dripping rapidly from where her arm once was. She then looked across to De-Vars awaiting his reply.

“This is most interesting”

DG then extend her gory silver stump and the hollow image of a full arm appeared around the wound and filled in with a bunch of numbers before becoming physical and turning back to white skin. In a matter of seconds she regrew a new arm to replace her lost one. “Ta da!” she replied

“What you can do with your body is astounding. Now are you sure you are the only one of your kind?” De-Vars asked

“Positive!” she simply replied.

“With your high intellect and unique bodily make-up you'd be a great use in guarding our solar system.”

DG didn't hesitate once to turn De-Vars extraordinary offer down “That truly means a lot to me. But I don't want to run the solar system. I'm aware I could do it; I could run this planet right now. A large part of my existence after all did come from the Mother Brain. But I don't want that responsibility not at the moment anyway.”

“What is it that you seek then? From what I’ve observed it's almost as though you're trying to live a normal life; but your existence can offer you so much more”

“That’s exactly what I'm doing; I’m learning what it's like to be a normal everyday civilian of this solar system. I wish for these intelligent life-forms on these planets to accept my existence and take me for what I am or should I say what I’m growing into. Currently it's worked with two of them; both are entirely separate species at that.”

A soft blue glow began to surround DG's body and she slightly lifted off the ground and floated.

It was clear De-Vars was taking in everything she just told him. “So it appears your mind is set. It is indeed true that you exist but you’re not an existence crafted by the Great Light who created this solar system. If you wish to find closure in your existence before I leave you I ask that you remove your visor and allow me to peer into your eyes.”

“Eyes the path to the soul” DG responded. (“Why do I feel so nervous all of sudden?”) DG thought to herself.

As much as DG refused to believe it there was the very vague possibility that she wasn't actually adapting to people and growing emotions. There was the possibly that her AI was simply reacting to the situations presented before it and provided the most suitable outcome that would be accepted by the natural life-form she was dealing with.

It was possible she wasn't actually nervous at the present time at all, but her AI simply acted out such a feeling to make the current situation seem more realistic. DG was indeed no machine but her origin was once a simple text based program accidentally created with the desire to learn and grow in size.

So the very vague possibility her existence seemed to fear was that she was still a program and had not evolved into a living breathing entity at all. All it would take is one glimpse into her eyes for this god to provide her with the truth.

“Well DG?”....

“....okay... well...I'm hoping for...good news....” she replied lifting the visor from her face with one hand, she then rested the thing on her forehead. DG then opened her eyes.

to be continued....