Witch

by Arty

"Why thank you kind sir."

"You're welcome."

"Are you waiting for someone?"

"Yes, but now you've arrived, so I'm not waiting any more."

She laughed; sometimes the sheer corniness of the obvious pick-up lines wins 'em over. "Perhaps I have, but I may not be what you want at all."

All this time other players were appearing and moving away. I looked around, feigning bewilderment.

"Is this your first time?"

"Yes." well it was my first time in this particular persona, so it wasn't a complete lie. "I'd better introduce myself, after that awful pick-up line it's the least I can do." I bowed formally, "I'm Mark, sometimes my friends call me Markie" I held my breath; would I get away with it? My penchant for playing personae with names based on David and Leigh Eddings' characters was well known, so this time I'd used a male character from their latest non-fantasy novel.

"Nice to meet you Mark, I'm Paula"

'... the Witch.' I said to myself.

"Would you like to see some more of the place?"

"That would be cool."

Paula made a complicated pass in the air in front of her and our surroundings faded to be replaced by darkness. I smiled to myself; it was kind of cute that she had forgotten that she had magical sight and that I hadn't. To her credit she realised her mistake almost straight away.

"Ooops, sorry." The blackness was banished and I gasped, this place never ceased to amaze me and seeing it suddenly revealed like that was quite a surprise. We were standing at one end of an enormous cavern. The ceiling far above us glittered, as the light was refracted from thousands of jewels embedded in it.

"Wow! This is fantastic! Say, how did we get here so fast? How did you do that?"

Paula laughed, "Magic."

"Gosh, you're a magic user. Is it hard?"

"Took me three attempts and thousands of hours, but I think it's going to be worth it." She frowned, "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Look we're not supposed to talk in game-terms. It's not a rule or anything, but it's considered good manners not to."

I nodded, "Thanks, this is all so new it's kind of embarrassing to get sucked in so easily."

She smiled, "Try to immerse yourself, this can be as real as you want it to be. The main thing though," she looked conspiratorial and whispered, "Is to have fun and lots of it!"

I smiled at her obvious enthusiasm and we walked towards the far end of the cavern. As we reached the halfway mark, it became apparent that we could go no further. A bottomless chasm bisected the cavern; formless mists rose from the chasm and a low moaning seemed to emanate from it also.

"It looks like this is the end of the line." I said.

Paula smiled at me, "You ain't seen nothing yet!" then she wrinkled her brow in concentration and muttered, "it should be around here somewhere." Her face cleared and she smiled in triumph. "Got it!" A rod with a rusty star on one end appeared in her hand and she waved it. I noticed that she had arranged for me to be in position to watch both her and the chasm at the same time. Full marks for artistry. Someone had been at the bridge-building routines and I watched in unsimulated awe as the crystal bridge manifested itself.

"Wow!" I said. Paula was also looking flabbergasted too, but she managed to hide it quite well, when she became aware that I was watching her again. With studied nonchalance she stepped onto the bridge. I coughed.

"Are you sure it's safe?"

"Oh yes it's quite …" she realised that she was still holding the rod with the rusty star. She recovered well, with only the smallest of blushes, as she returned the rod to its previous resting place. Carrying the rod over the crystal bridge was the sort of mistake one was only supposed to make once. "… safe."

I followed her onto the bridge. Pleased that I could be the tourist without having to playact for once, I examined the fine structure of the bridge; I could see that Richard had been playing again. The entire structure was constructed of thin filaments of diamond arranged as endlessly tessellated tetrahedra, had this been a real bridge, for all it's delicate, filigree nature, it would have stood loads of a hundred tons or more. I jumped up and down and the bridge rang and tinkled.

"Come on there's lots more for you to see."

She was a very good guide, she resisted the temptation to show off with her newly acquired Witch-hood and most of her magic was done with straightforward competence that was all the more impressive for it. She was also very conscientious; whenever she 'borrowed' something she always made sure to put it back and if she had to take it from someone else she always returned it and added a few gold coins for the hire also. This girl was one to watch.

Though we didn't broadcast it, one of us would always try out the newly promoted Witches and Wizards - we use the term Wiz as a gender-neutral term - to see if they would make the grade as it were. You see the promotion was automatic, but just because someone had worked at something didn't mean that he, or she, was the sort of person that we wanted running around with fairly extensive powers to cause havoc. Too many MUDs degenerated because the high-level magic users were allowed to cause mayhem unchecked and we weren't about to let it happen to our corner of the MPRPG universe. Anyway as the oldest of the MUDs we had a reputation to uphold; hence the final exam.

So far she was passing with flying colours; she was almost too good to be true. Though I had already checked her account status I initiated another check, just in case and the search showed nothing untoward; all my little agents returned empty-handed. Perhaps it was time for the second stage of my little test. A quick review of my previous responses confirmed to me that I hadn't said much beyond 'Wow!' for some time so I was fairly safe in assigning the Mark persona command stream to my little AI widget that I'd developed specifically for this purpose. It was an extension of Eliza but with a far greater set of premises - even so it was only safe for short periods of time, and extended conversation would pretty soon expose its limitations. So far, all science fiction apart, only humans were capable of passing the Turing test, and not even all of them.

The next bit taxed even my intellect; oh all right I'd probably be better if I had the fabled female ability to multi-task. I reattached my own command processor to the command stream of the killer persona that I had set up earlier. I'd left him sleeping behind a rock just up ahead. Feeling slightly disconnected as I walked into the location and saw Paula and Mark standing looking in awe at the waterfall. I picked up a loose rock and threw it at Mark.

I'd misjudged the AI, it may have been stupid as far as conversation was concerned, but there was absolutely nothing wrong with its reflexes. Shit! I'd forgotten to reset the skill set to match that of the persona I'd been using.

"What the …" Paula watched dumbfounded as Mark literally blazed toward me. Hurriedly I tried to rectify the damage. I triggered a 'Normal Service Will Be Resumed' sky sign - this was sufficiently unusual that Paula ignored me for a few seconds. With this respite I was able to reduce the skill settings on the AI and then switch command streams so that I was, once more, in control of Mark; this left the AI controlling the killer whom I'd called Ug after his caveman qualities. I switched off the sign. Paula eyed the killer with disquiet.

"What just happened?"

Paula turned to me, "I was going to ask you that."

I pretended to think for a bit, actually it wasn't pretence - it was just I was trying to think of something convincing to say to keep her off-guard. Ug came to my rescue metaphorically at least; he started to advance towards us. Without thinking I put myself between Paula and the killer.

"Excuse me." She gently shouldered me aside and pointed her finger at the killer. A bolt of lightning flashed from her fingertip and suddenly the killer was no more. Richard had been 'improving' things again, so my start of fright was not an act. Paula was almost as surprised, but she hid it well. My screw up had altered the parameters of the test, but she had still done pretty well all things considered and so it was time to see how she would do when presented with the ultimate temptation - in game terms that is.

"I'm sorry about that, it's been a strange few minutes altogether. Most people don't attack you for no reason, especially since you're not carrying anything valuable."

Unwittingly she had given me a perfect out for Ug's apparently unprovoked attack and wonderful opportunity to move to the next phase. "Ummm. Well I found this before you arrived, there was a hell of a fight going on just before you appeared and one of the combatants dropped something, maybe that was him and he wanted it back?." I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out a plain gold ring and gave it to her. Paula held it up to her eye and examined it closely. We had borrowed extensively from Tolkien and this was a 'One Ring' it enabled the wearer to act as a game developer (or God in game terms), there were only a few in circulation for obvious reasons and those players trusted with them would usually guard them with their lives, at least those were the rumours that circulated about them; the reality was somewhat different. In the commonly accepted scenario however accidents can happen and my story was not completely implausible. I waited for her to discover what the ring was.

"Oh my God!"

The penny had dropped; actually I was quite impressed, some people had failed this part of the test because they had failed to recognise the temptation. Paula looked at me in horror.

"Do you know what this is?"

"Well it's a ring. It didn't look particularly valuable but it was quite pretty so I thought I'd pick it up and see if I could sell it later."

"Don't you know your Tolkien?" she paused and then started to chant, "Ash nazg durbatulūk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulūk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul."

I looked purposefully blank, but gave her full marks for her accent.

"One ring to rule them all, One ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them."

I let realisation dawn. "Oh! Wow! So if you wear it you can do anything? That's so cool. Can I try it?"

"I don't think that's a good idea, you could do untold damage possibly even cause a reset." Paula shuddered; resets were unsettling to say the least.

"Well you seem to know what you are doing; I'm sure you could use it safely."

Paula looked at me coldly. "And what would you suggest?"

"I don't know, you must have some ideas; how about finding out how things are put together?" I shrugged my shoulders to indicate a complete failure of imagination.

Paula thought about this for a while; then she came to a decision. "I'm sorry Mark, but I can't do that sort of thing; I think we should give it back."

"How do we do that?"

"Well I've left messages before and had replies; but I think if I tell them about a 'One Ring' on the loose, we're likely to get a visit - prepare to be impressed."

"What are you talking about."

She grinned at me. "You'll see."

She held her arms aloft and started to pray. Okay this is one of the many things about fantasy role playing games that offends the religious extremists, but I don't see the problem; in my universe I have godlike powers so if you want to talk to me urgently then you pray, it's simple really. My back channel lit up with the substance of Paula's message:

"Dear Developer, a newbie has stumbled over a plain gold ring. I may be mistaken but it feels like a 'One Ring'. Please reply soonest as I don't want to have the responsibility any longer than necessary. Thanks Paula."

She had passed. So it was time to lower the boom.

"Oh, I think you can handle it Paula."

"Pardon?"

"I said I think you can handle the responsibility."

She stared at me open-mouthed.

I made a purposely, unimpressive pass with my right hand. The One Ring in her hand vibrated and tingled in her hand. She looked down in surprise.

"Unless you can feel the tingle they don't work, or at least not permanently. That one has just been keyed to your persona, so you can use it now."

She continued the open-mouthed stare. I smiled at her, "If you don't start talking to me soon, I may have to reconsider my previously good opinion of you."

"This was the 'Final Test'?" There were always rumours, of course, but we tried to ensure that they were our rumours; that way we were able to keep people off their guard.

"I'm sorry about the subterfuge and I'm sorry about the anticlimax of the visit; next time I'll arrange the whole clap of thunder, puff of purple smoke that sort of thing."

She was looking shell-shocked. "You mean this was all a set-up?"

"Yeah, sorry. Richard and I like to check out the newly promoted Wizzes. It's like the old oral examination for doctors."

"Ug too?"

I looked embarrassed. "I'd rather not talk about that."

She just stared.

I sighed, "I'm not that good at multi-tasking; in fact I hate controlling multiple personae, it's very distracting, seeing things from more than one point of view simultaneously. So I use a little widget I developed to handle the newbie persona while I control the killer. The trouble was I forgot to reset the AI so it was insanely fast acting - as you saw."

She grinned broadly and giggled, "the Gods have feet of clay after all."

"Ah shut up and put on your ring."

"Like I said it's too much responsibility. What if I lose it?"

"If you'd just wear it you'd see that it's not possible to lose it, but lets assume that an activated One Ring was somehow on the loose - possibly because the persona that it was activated for didn't put it on - if someone else found it and tried to wear it … let's just say the results would be permanently catastrophic, for them."

"Which finger do I wear it on?"

Women! I never had this sort of trouble with the Wizards, with exaggerated patience I replied, "Whichever one you find most comfortable; it will fit any of them."

With some trepidation she placed the ring on the third finger of her left hand. An unusual choice, but I made no comment and watched her confusion as the ring melted from view.

"What happened?"

"Ever read 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'?"

"No."

"Pity."

She glared at me; it was surprising how quickly someone could move from awe to annoyance.

"You really enjoy teasing the newbie Witch don't you?"

"It has its moments; anyhow now you're properly attired, we can go to the Control Room. Just a moment though." I was getting tired of Mark and switched him for my standard developer guise. Paula watched as, from her perspective, Mark was replaced by RT. There wasn't that much difference in looks as I have never felt the need to disguise my real face - I may be famous online - but not that many people know what I actually look like. But I did have an aura; I held out my hand and took Paula's, she gasped as I did so. This wasn't unexpected, as she would have felt the One Ring tingle only stronger. What was unexpected was that I felt the same thing myself. I made a note to ask Richard about it.

"Come with me." I cast about for the current location of the Control Room and then teleported in. Richard and I are insanely cautious about the security of the Control Room. He and I are the only ones that can enter in any of our persona; Wizzes must have been vetted by us - and given a One Ring of their own - even then they must be accompanied by one of us on their initial visit.

"Wow!" It was my turn to render her incoherent. I'm in it so frequently that it has ceased to register, but the Control Room is quite impressive. Virtual real estate is free, so the room was enormous; actually it was about 10,000 locations all joined together in a 100 x 100 grid with the visibility and sightlines arranged so that one could see from one side to the other. Most of it was just storage space; game objects were arranged in untidy heaps, while large neon signs floated in mid-air above each heap. Since I'd chose to materialise on the wrong side of the room from where I wanted to be, we had a bit of a trek to make to get to the other side.

"What is all this?"

"Window dressing mostly."

"Window dressing?"

I pointed to a heap that we were passing; the sign above it said 'Christmas', in the pile where snow-covered fir trees, Christmas decorations and a weird cloud like object. Santa Claus was just visible standing behind the pile. "We'll be needing this soon." I switched to the command stream of the immobile Santa standing off to one side. I blinked at the sudden change of viewpoint. Paula was still talking to a suddenly unresponsive RT. "Ho, ho, ho, and what do you want for Christmas little girl?"

Paula turned round to face the sound of this traditional, though unexpected, conversational gambit.

"I don't know Santa. Am I naughty or nice?" She spoke with exaggerated coquettishness and blinked her eyelashes at me in the same manner.

"Oh, I think you're naughty, but nice, so lets see what I have in my sack for you."

I swung the sack from my shoulder and peered inside, I reached in and pushed aside some very inappropriate gifts and extracted a small parcel. I handed it to Paula. She looked excited as she took the present from me, before she started to unwrap it she reached up and gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, "Thank you Santa." I switched back to RT and coughed.

"You're going to have to show me how you do that."

"Don't worry we'll get around to it. Aren't you going to open your present?"

"It's not long 'til Christmas, can I open it then?"

"Of course, I'll show you your locker and you can keep it there until we set up the Christmas tree, then you can put it under the tree." I had a thought, "Or if you like Santa can put it in your stocking."

Paula grinned. "You are utterly, utterly mad, you know that?"

"We aim to please."

"What's that?" she said pointing at the cloud.

"Pick it up and see."

She reached out and grasped the cloud. As she did so it expanded and moved to hover above her head. Snow began to fall on her, and only her; she giggled and looked up, she now had her own personal snowfall. The snowflakes fell and stuck to her nose and eyelashes, she looked adorable. She moved away and the cloud followed her, which started her laughing again. "How do you make it stop?"

"Teleport it back onto the heap."

With a little frown of concentration, the snowfall disappeared from above her head and appeared on the pile, once more looking like an innocuous cloudlike object. She looked at me accusingly, "You knew that was going to happen?"

"You know that you look adorable covered in snow?"

She blushed. "Stop teasing me and trying to change the subject."

"But you do, look adorable, I mean."

The sudden feel of snow falling caught me by surprise. Paula started to laugh, after a few seconds I joined her. I liked laughing; it had been too long. Then I stopped as the painful memories returned.

Paula, surprised by my sudden sadness, looked concerned. "All you all right?"

"Sorry, bad memories. Come on we haven't got all day." I put the weather back where it belonged and hurried toward towards the place we need to get to. "If I'd just told you, 'never pick up the weather, you'll only look silly and embarrass yourself' you wouldn't have known why and you might have forgotten. I don't like our Wizzes to look silly in front of mortals so I let you make mistakes where they don't matter."

The sudden change of subject disconcerted her and we walked together in silence. We were passing a pile of geographic features, streams, mountains that sort of thing. "As a general rule it usually safer to teleport things to where you need them." I stopped and turned to her. "Wink twice with your right eye quickly." She did so and gasped. "I can see that it worked, what you're seeing are the internal names and coordinates of what you are looking at, those are the names and coordinates that you should use as the source and destination for teleportation; if you stare for long enough you should see the detailed prop-lists pop up. When you get to that stage you can point at a property you may want to alter and see a list of alternate values. Select the one you want and the new value will replace the old value."

She turned to stare at me. I carried on talking. "With most people you would be able to change some of the properties, but when you bring up the prop-lists of Wizzes like yourself, Richard and me you will find that they're locked."

She looked sheepish.

"I do sometimes play a female persona, it's good practise to see things from the other side occasionally, but I'll choose when I change sex if you don't mind." I smiled to show that I wasn't really bothered. "I'm only pulling your chain, everyone tries that the first time they get a chance - I'll let you do it for real when we get to the Training Grounds."

"Training Grounds?"

"Somewhere for Wizzes to play. You know a sand box where what you do won't impact the rest of the system. It's also where you get to be the first to experience the enormous cock-ups we make in the new code." I laughed at that, remembering some of the more extreme mistakes.

Paula looked intrigued as her thoughts were filled with the possibilities. She also looked more than a little distracted. I realised what the problem was, but I didn't say anything; it's better if people find things out for themselves. I was pleased to see Paula blink her right eye twice again. Almost immediately she seemed to relax. "Well done. It does take a while to get used to all the extra detail and to be honest you shouldn't need it all that often."

"Are you telepathic, too?"

"No, but you're not the first Wiz that I've done this with." She grimaced deprecatingly. "But you're definitely one of the quickest." She smiled; it was nice to be praised. '… and the nicest in a long while.' I continued to myself.

As we ambled slowly towards the final destination, I carried on with my lecture; stopping occasionally to demonstrate some point or other with something from the heaps. She picked things up very quickly, never needing to be told things twice and sometimes making intuitive leaps that took my breath away and allowed me to short-circuit whole screeds of explanations. We had reached the Control Panel, our final destination and the real reason for the Control Room's name.

The panel was enormous. From here it was possible to gain an idea of the state of the world to any level of detail. All of this information was available as an individual head-up display, but we had found that it's easier to deal with when one's mind perceives it as an external display. If you've ever seen 'Minority Report' then you will get some idea of the capabilities of the panel. Paula noticed this similarity almost immediately.

"You stole this from 'Minority Report' didn't you?"

"Of course. This is the third skin we've used for this panel."

"Let me guess. Classic Star Trek, ST-TNG and now this one."

I grinned and clutched at my heart in mock anguish. "You got me!"

Paula giggled and punched my arm. "You're a nut you know that."

"I dunno, you induct someone into permanent Wizhood and next thing you know they're abusing you and hurling insults." I smiled broadly to ensure that she knew that I was joking. Then I grabbed her hand and led her to the part of the panel where we educated the control room to let people in. Once the system had done what it needed to I instructed Paula in the technique of getting back in, then we teleported back to a secluded clearing in the forest.

"Now it's your turn to get in on your own."

I watched as she vanished from view. I checked her current location and smiled to myself. Clever girl, but two could play at that game. I concentrated for a second and teleported in about two feet behind her.

"BOO!"

Oh yes! Mission accomplished! She must have leaped about six feet straight up.

"You ratbag! You scared me half to death."

"Serves you right, who's the one hiding behind the 'furniture'?" She had the grace to blush. I moved closer and gave her a hug. I'm sorry if I scared you, I'm not mad or anything. The whole point of this place is to have fun. She smiled and then, to my surprise, she kissed me. Now cybersex is an inherently unsatisfying affair usually but the tingle that I had received (and still did) whenever I held her hand was as nothing to the one that I received when I kissed her. We both jumped back in shock.

"From the way that you jumped too, that isn't something you expected?"

I looked at Paula. "I think Richard has been 'improving' things again; you'll have to get used to that; we both like to tinker. I'm not sure what the tingling is all about though." I teleported to the control panel and brought up Richard's change log. Paula shimmered into existence to my left. "Aha! Here's the culprit." We both read the entry:

20-Dec-2010 Richard Compatibility Tingle
Stole the Developer Tingle and hooked it to personal profile compatibility
checker. The greater the compatibility scores the greater the tingle.
Note: If you're reading this R - don't let this one get away!

Below this was a more detailed description of the heuristic that was used to determine the compatibility scores and another note to say that currently only I, and whomsoever I was interacting with were being checked.

I looked at Paula; she had duplicated the display and was now working her way through the code segment that was also attached to the change description. She turned to me with a serious look on her face. "I think we ought to meet."

I gaped at her.

"Seriously, we need to meet in RL. The code checks out as far as I can tell, though some of it's a little tricky."

"He's a genius, he does things in ways us lesser mortals wouldn't think of - but he's usually right, not always, but usually."

Paula waved my comment aside. "The tingle tells us that we're compatible, we should meet." She steamrollered over my attempt to interrupt her. "Look; I know about what happened to your wife - you may not be world famous, but you're well enough known in the community for that to be public knowledge. I'm only a few years younger than you are; from everything that's been said about her, I doubt that she would want you to live the rest of your life a hermit."

I thought about what she had said. We certainly seemed to get on; it had been over five years since the accident. It hadn't been anyone's fault: some bloke had a heart attack and veered across the road straight into her; both of them had been killed outright. My kids were always trying to set me up with dates. Perhaps Richard was right; perhaps I shouldn't let this one get away.

"I've never done this before how do we do it? You could be anywhere?"

It turned out that we could meet quite easily in a wine bar that we both knew. We arranged to meet in a couple of hours.

"Before you go to do whatever it is that women do before these things, will you open your present? Please?"

She started to pout, but then her curiosity got the better of her and she tore off the wrapping paper. As the final piece fell away a pair of diaphanous wings unfolded and attached themselves to her shoulders a small halo floated above her head and her original clothing was replaced with a shifting mist that swirled about her giving tantalising glimpses of arm and leg. She laughed, delightedly.

"How did you know?"

"I didn't, not really, I read something in your public profile how you'd dream that you could fly and that MUDs where the only place that you could make your dreams come true."

"They're wonderful!" She hugged me again.

"Merry Christmas, to my Christmas Angel."

It was time to be happy again.

-Fin-