Chapter 11：The end is always another beginning.

"Jade!" his mother exclaimed as she entered his room. "You're finally awake!"

"What are you doing here Mom?" Jade asked with confusion.

His mother rushed forward and hugged him before crying, "and you're still calling me Mom, I'm so happy!"

Harmony smiled at them and said lightly, "I'll give you some time to talk."

"You don't have to leave," Jade and his mother protested in synch.

Harmony laughed and replied, "I'll see you soon Jade." She exited swiftly, but with a smile.

After a moment, Jade eyed his mother and asked, "why wouldn't I call you Mom?"

His mother turned back to him and asked worriedly, "didn't you restore all of your old memory data after your main quest completed?"

Jade nodded. "Yes, but you've still been my mother for almost my entire life, and I think you really are my mother in every way except biologically?"

His mother hugged him again, while sniffelling happily. Jade smiled and hugged her back, but then he asked, "but when I asked you if I was human, why didn't you tell me?"

His mother laughed through her tears and asked in return, "what I don't understand is why it took you so long to wonder. Shouldn't you have wondered that a lot the first few years when we were still getting your body design coordinated, and you hadn't really developed your own emotions yet? You've grown more and more human every year Jade!"

Jade shrugged and replied, "I had removed almost all my memory data, I had nothing to compare then."

"And you were right, doing that seemed to let you slowly develop emotional responses alongside the other children," she said proudly.

"It took me longer though," Jade pointed out.

"Nobody's perfect!" his mother declared.

The words reminded Jade of Eric and his smile faded.

"What's wrong?" his mother asked.

"My friend who watched me get hit by the car said that he can't deal with me not being human, he's the one who told me I'm not human…" Jade trailed off.

"I'm sorry Jade," she said unhappily.

--

Eric continued to ignore Jade, but he was showing up to class. In fact, Jade thought that Eric's attendance had probably improved.

Jade continued to work at the convenience store as usual, and Emily continued to take pride in her mostly electronic free lifestyle. With the full analysis of the system reintegrated into his core patterns, Jade could understand her a little better. But only a little.

Jade finally turned off the quest interface after a great deal of internal struggle. He now understood the reason for it, it had been his natural form of communication with humans, and he'd set up the guiding patterns of the separated portion of his system to interact with him as a human.

He also knew that the sudden return of small mini quests hadn't been that portion of the system exerting control, it had been him "cheating" the rules he'd designed for himself. He'd set things up so that if he ran out of Karma, the experiment would be deemed a failure and he'd return to the system.

Like all the living worlds, his program ran on one of the large computers that orbited Earth. Unlike thousands of science fiction stories, Jade's system hadn't been accessing the electronics around him illegally. The company that owned his computer and those of the other living worlds had been financing and acquiring all the needed permits for monitoring the experiment.

--

When Jade logged into "Living Jade Empire" again, he had a friend request waiting. It was from Appella and he accepted it eagerly. She wasn't online so he worked on his airship. The moon update was only another day away.

Being logged into the game felt reassuringly normal, despite now having memories of how terrible and strange this world that used to occupy the largest portion of his system had seemed through this interface the first time. Jade hadn't returned to it again until he had been "10 years old" and had lived as a human child for 5 years already.

Appella logged in while Jade was testing a modification to his ship. His pudgy little airship was launching itself toward the top of the sky when her message reached him. Jade leveled the ship out and read it hopefully.

It said: "Let's talk in Sky City."

Jade made his little ship curve impossibly sharply for a maneuver made on Earth, but after all, he and this living world had originally been patterned to fulfill human dreams.

--

Appella looked at Jade and then looked away when he arrived. Jade said quickly, "I thought you must have had to restart again! What's up? What happened?"

Appella covered her eyes and groaned.

Jade asked, "what's wrong?"

"You seriously still have no idea who I am do you?" Appella replied.

"My friend!" Jade declared. He added after a moment, "whether or not you're on the list here or not, you're always my friend."

Appella laughed bitterly. After a moment she took a deep breath and said, "I'm Eric, you idiot."

Jade stared at her and protested, "your voice isn't the same at all!"

Appella rolled her eyes and said, "of course not, that would be incredibly creepy, I bought the modification at character creation."

Jade swallowed and said quickly, "if you're really Eric, I should tell you… you were right. It turns out that I'm really not human, I'm sorry."

Appella or rather, Eric stared at him and then asked, "what do you mean it turns out? Didn't you know?"

Jade shrugged, and spent the next hour trying to explain everything to his friend.

When Jade finished answering Eric's last question, Eric said, "wow, and I thought I needed time to deal with it. I mean, I did, and I probably still do, and I can't promise that I can ever really get over it… but, we're still friends if nothing else, right?"

"Always," Jade agreed firmly. Appella smiled a little. After a moment Jade asked, "is whatever you and Harmony were doing together the other night still a secret?"

Eric finally laughed. "Actually, that's why I contacted you tonight. Here, we collected these for you." Eric/Appella handed Jade's dwarf three small spherical jewels.

Jade raised his eyebrows at her (or him).

Eric explained, "you probably already have enchantments on your airship so you can breathe while in space, but I thought these enchanted gems from the Owl and the Pussycat quest would help with exploring the moon. The air bubble was meant for underwater, but I don't see why it wouldn't work on the moon."

"Wow, the two of you managed to get one for each of us?" Jade asked with amazement.

Eric shrugged and explained, "I figured out the trick of getting one from each of the mice." A little sadly he added, "I thought it would be… a nice surprise."

"It's awesome!" Jade exclaimed reassuringly.

Eric/Appella slanted a look at Jade and asked, "you don't even wonder how we ended up attending the same trade school do you? Only someone this oblivious could manage to live without realizing that they weren't human when they've never even had a cold."

Jade asked curiously, "so how did it happen then?"

Eric/Appella grinned and replied, "you're way too careless aren't you? You told me all about applying there. It was easy."

--

Jade and Harmony were doing another cat quest on the moon. Harmony liked cats so the "Living Jade Empire" gave her a lot of cat themed adventures. Cats had already wandered through thousands of stories about space, so the game had included them among legendary races that had colonized the moon like the oriental rabbits.

Jade told her suddenly, "I really do love you. I wish you really could outlive me."

Harmony gave him a painful smile that stabbed him somewhere in the center of his existence. "I'm sorry Jade," she replied gently.

He replied, "it's ok. But I understand what you meant about love being greedy, even if I'm not really human."

Harmony laughed and covered her eyes. "No," she said softly, "it's much worse than that. It would be bad enough if you were only a human boy who loved an old lady, but no, you have to go and be potentially immortal."

"Doesn't that make it better?" he asked hopefully. "Doesn't it mean that the human age difference doesn't matter?"

Harmony lifted her hand from her eyes and gazed at him sadly. "Oh no Jade," she whispered. "It's so much worse. I might still live for another tenth of a human lifespan, but I won't live for a millionth of yours."

Jade's face brightened as he began to understand. "Why don't you try to live with me then," he suggested eagerly. "So much has been learned about the human brain since I started my quest. I know it would be possible to copy your memories, and while no one has done it yet, it's definitely theoretically possible to copy your patterns."

Harmony just stared at him.

A million calculations were running through Jade's system. He said doubtfully, "but if you don't want to, I'll understand. It might…" he hesitated, "it would change you eventually. And it might be really painful at first, because you'd have to learn to 'see' and 'hear' all over again, and all the data input might seem like pain while you learned how to understand it." The more he calculated the likely effects of a human pattern trying to learn to become a system, the more doubtful his idea sounded.

Harmony laughed, drawing Jade's focus back to her. "Do you really think that if you tell me it'll hurt, and that I'll change, that will stop me Jade?" she asked incredulously. Her eyes sparkled and there wasn't a trace of sadness left in her expression.

A grin spread across his face as he replied, "no, of course not."

--

The End

For now ;).

So many of you have read this far! I'm very thankful!