Book 7: Chapter 2:

The ride back to William’s home was not a short one, nor was it a comfortable one. Everybody ended up being crammed into the same two vehicles. The maids all followed behind William’s vehicle in the second one that they brought which also had all of the luggage in it, though, so they were definitely more cramped than those squeezing together in William’s autocar.

“I must admit, as happy as I may be to live with all of you now, driving past all this classic architecture reminds me of how drab the homes in our area are,” Alice said, her eyes watching out the window the entire time.

“Yeah,” Ryouta agreed. “All the houses back in the States are kind of copy-paste looking. Especially any of them made within the past couple of decades. You have to go live out in the middle of nowhere or in dead towns to get houses that actually look unique. But even then… they don’t look as good as the ones here.”

“There is a charm to what you said,” William spoke up. “The houses you are used to may lack personality, but they promote unity in a way, do they not? Furthermore, they are built to look so similar because it is a model of home that satisfies every need that a family could have. The houses here may look nice from the outside, but I assure you that the inside quality of them is nowhere near the same as what you have across the pond.”

“Yeah, I guess. But I still wish they made the houses look at least a little bit distinct.”

“As one should! Perhaps you should invest in some paint? Or decorate the yard? Such things will help differentiate your house from the others surrounding it. Furthermore, that is kind of romantic, is it not? While all the homes may start off looking the exact same, it is not against the law to personalize them to look more indivualistic. Everybody is given the exact same starting position in the race, but their finish lines may vary.”

“Father, please do not bore them with the architecture talk,” Alice said.

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Cassandra jumped in, defending William.

“I – I may have done that, but I forgot it would lead to my father rambling on about it!”

“Don’t you ramble on about things all the time?”

“I—… oh. Oh, no. I… I am turning into my father.”

“How fortunate for all your partners!” William teased.

Alice brought her hands up to cover her face. “I always told myself that I would never become like him, but… I am only just now realizing that I am far more similar to him than I realized.”

Cassandra “What’s so bad about being like him? Your dad is cool.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” William said, “but worry not! This is how Alice and I play. She acts as if turning into somebody like me is a horrible thing all the time. Meanwhile, she is too unoriginal to come up with her own personality traits, so she steals them from me!”

“That is not true!” Alice whined. “Well, the last part is not true. It is true that I tease him like this for our fun. Though, perhaps it looks a bit mean-spirited from an outside perspective. Well, in that case, there is no need for concern. My relationship with my father is great, and I would not mind adopting some of his personality!”

“So, you’re a pervert around us and a bully around him?” Ryouta asked.

“I – I am not a pervert around any—”

William’s laughter interrupted her. “I suppose that means she is still obsessed with her depraved fantasies!”

“Father!”

Ryouta wasn’t sure what to make of this, but he still asked to confirm, “He knows about them?”

“Of course I do!” William answered for Alice. “I often caught her discussing them with the maids. Before she got into video games, the maids were always there to listen to anything that she felt like rambling on about. Whether she was rambling about her fantasies, how tired she was of me wanting to have tacos for dinner all the time, or even boys in movies and shows—”

“Father! You – you do not have to bring that up!” Alice shouted with red cheeks.

“The part about you fawning over boys in movies?”

“Yes!”

“What is the harm in that? You were a teenager. Such a thing is only natural for teenage girls to do.”

“It is still embarrassing!”

“I want to hear this,” Ryouta said. “I’m curious what kind of actors you were into.”

“You – you do not need to know, Ryouta! Besides, I was only a teenager at the time!”

“But I want to be insecure and worry about how I don’t live up to the unrealistic expectations of your teenage self.”

“Don’t you just want to bully her about it?” Cassandra asked.

“Basically.”

William laughed again. Fortunately, the vehicle was driving on its own or else he likely would have crashed from how often he was laughing with his eyes closed. “Her tastes were certainly unconventional. I remember there was this one lad whose name escapes me. He was a shorter boy who was bald on the top of his head but he still had a few strings of hair on the sides of it. Wore glasses, had a scrunched-up face, and had quite the gut on him!”

Ryouta tilted his head. “He sounds more like a middle-aged man than a boy.”

“I believe he was in his forties or so at the time?”

“O-oh. The way you kept on saying boy, I thought he’d be younger.”

“Ah, no. She liked men who were older, balding, and with plenty of extra weight on their frames.”

Ryouta and Cassandra both looked at Alice who was busy hiding her face behind her hands. Even so, they could tell that she was blushing while making various, incoherent whining noises.

As far as Ryouta was concerned, teenage Alice’s type was the real-life version of “ugly fat bastards.” Of course, he wasn’t going to bring up a hentai trope like that in front of her father. Though, the more that he thought about it, the more that it made sense. Given just what sort of fantasies that Alice had… if anything, she was still into that type of man.

“Alright. I understand what I have to do,” Ryouta said.

“What?” Cassandra asked. “Wait, don’t answer that. I have a feeling that I know where this is go—”

“I have to put on a few hundred pounds, go bald, and make myself as ugly as possible.”

“Yep. Knew it.”

“No!” Alice shouted. “You are perfect the way that you are, my hero – I – I mean, Ryouta!”

“Hero?” William asked.

Alice went back to hiding her face.

“I do not think I have ever heard of that being used as a nickname before.”

“It’s a long story,” Ryouta answered. “Kind of.”

“Well, we still have quite some time before we get there, so I would love to hear it!”

Ryouta looked over to Alice to see whether she was fine or not with him sharing the story. Though, she was too busy hiding her face and mumbling to actually say anything. It took him asking her whether he should tell it or not to get her to answer with a mumbled, “Do what you want.”

That left him in an unsure position. Her father wanted to know the story and looked like he was looking forward to it. However, she looked and sounded like she would really rather him not, but she also gave permission to.

It was only after a few moments of internal debate that Alice spoke once more to say, “Go ahead and get it over with. Once he is curious about something, he will never let it go until he knows the truth, so there is no point in trying to hide it.”

“Are you sure?” Ryouta asked.

Alice sighed and nodded her head. “I am. Besides… I am thinking of the future. I would like to know how my children meet their partners, so it would not be fair to deny my father of such knowledge.”

“In that case… I don’t know how to tell this without starting from the beginning, so I guess I’ll start there.”

And that was exactly what Ryouta did.

He covered everything from when he first saw her aboard Ull’s ship coming into Port Tugator to the fishing tournament and freeing her from Ull. The entire time that Ryouta was telling the story, William looked utterly entranced by it and was perhaps the most eager listener that Ryouta had ever met before. Of course, Cassandra and Alice occasionally chimed in with various tidbits of their own to add to the story.

As for Serra, following a conversation when in a car where she couldn’t easily read everybody’s lips was out of the question for her, so she decided to look out the window the entire time. At one point, during the middle of the story, she even decided to roll the window down to get some fresh air and to feel it blowing against her face.

Serra had no idea just how loud it was when driving with a window down. However, William was invested enough into the story to not even notice it, and the others simply spoke louder to make sure that he could still hear them. They didn’t want to take away what little thing Serra decided to do for herself to help pass the time during the trip.

Then there were the maids. The vehicle that they were in pulled up alongside William’s, allowing Serra to see that the deaf maid also had her window down with her head leaning against the window’s pillar. They apparently had the exact same idea. Though, Serra didn’t get to look at the maid for long as the maid’s autocar shot past theirs.

“I wonder…. They must have used the emergency function to go so fast,” Alice said.

“It should not be more than five minutes until we arrive, so I am not sure why they would have used that now,” William said. “I suppose we will have to ask them once we get there!”

As soon as Ryouta and Cassandra heard that they were less than five minutes away, they each perked up and started to pay more attention to looking out the front window. Neither of them had any idea what to expect other than a pretty large and royal-esque place. So far, though, all they could see was nothing but green countryside. They really went beyond all the cities and suburbs that were all around until now.

“Also, I must say,” William said, “that was a wonderful story! Hearing her call you her hero makes sense now. That was certainly a heroic feat that you accomplished! Perhaps I should let the maids know that we have a hero staying with us and to prepare a mighty feast for him!”

A nervous chuckle left Ryouta’s lips. “I – I don’t think that’s necessary. A normal meal will be good enough for me.”

“You are quite the humble hero. I must also say that now it makes sense for why she became so obsessed with that game! I had no idea that she was of such importance in it! Games really are something these days.”

“Did you play any? Or do you?”

“Ah, when I was younger, yes. Back in the final days of the controller. I even played competitively for some time! Of course, I was no good and never won any tournaments, but I did try my best! Ah, what was that game called… I cannot believe I have forgotten. It about some soldier in space in green armor fighting aliens. The series kept on being handed over to new companies after every trilogy was completed so that they could continue profiting off of it for as long as possible.”

“Not sure. That doesn’t sound familiar to me.”

“The series did lose much of its popolarity the longer that it went on for. They even remastered the old games, for a second time, in an attempt to restore some of their image, but it was too little too late. Ah, it is going to drive me insane not remembering the name of it. I know that there were large structures in space in the shape of rings. They were like massive halos floating in space. And there was one gamemode that featured swinging a mighty hammer around to knock a ball into the opponent’s goal.”

“No idea. But I do know that I can’t imagine playing shooters on controllers or with a mouse and keyboard. I’ve played some in VR before and they were fun… but I can’t imagine tolerating them outside of VR.”

“Hah! Well, VR was rather expensive back then and hardly anybody had the good headsets. When they did come out with the first quality headsets that everybody wanted, nobody could afford them, so nobody made games for them! Hmm. Perhaps I should try giving it a shot sometime. Perhaps I could even play with all of you in that game you play!”

“I – I do not think you would like it,” Alice said.

“Is that so, or do you simply believe you would not be able to handle me embarrassing you while we play together?”

“Both. It is most certainly both.”

“At least you are honest! Truth to be told, I am not sure I would enjoy it either. I much prefer science fiction and firearms over fantasy and bows.”

“A new VR game like that just came out a few months ago. You could always try that.”

“Oh? Perhaps I shall! Being, admittedly, out of shape will not have a negative impact on trying to play the game, will it? Realistic virtual reality used to be rather intensive. Physically, that is.”

“It won’t have any effect on your real body, and your experience won’t be affected by your real body. But if you have any experience shooting actual guns or playing earlier VR gun games, you might have a bit of an advantage when it comes to working the guns and aiming and all that.”

“I will most certainly consider it. Now, it looks like we have finally arrived!”

Cassandra poked Serra to grab her attention and pointed forward. Now, the three of them looked through the front window to see what sort of home Alice grew up in and where they would be staying.

They finally saw it.

It was – well, not exactly what they were expecting to see. There was what looked like a marble fence surrounding the property… but most of it was ruined. Some sections of the fence were complete destroyed, others were missing chunks from them, and there was no gate where it looked like there was supposed to be one. Though, beyond that, their expectations were satisfied. There was a massive, green yard with local flowers blooming amidst the tall grass. Beyond the yard was a large manor several storeys high that, while it might not have looked too royal, definitely looked like the kind of place that only the former elite would have lived in.

“Is the fence damage from the protests?” Cassandra asked.

“Ah, yes,” William answered.

“And you never got it repaired?”

“The point of breaking them down and destroying the gate was to give the rest of the world access to us – to prove that we could not hide behind an expensive gate to protect us. I very much prefer the world we live in now over the one that we once lived in, and I see the destruction of the fence as a sign of the transition into that world. I am happy to leave it in its current state. This property is no longer walled off from the rest of the world. It is as easy to access as anywhere else now.”

“I like that. It’s way better than all the bastards who put their walls right back up after the protests were over.”

“Well, I cannot blame them too much for that from a security standpoint. The ones who did that did so because they very well might have been killed otherwise.”

“Then they shouldn’t have done anything to make people want to kill them in the first place.”

“Isn’t that kind of victim blaming?” Ryouta asked.

“Oh no. The poor billionaire oil tycoons who are responsible for destroying the environment, killing animals to the point of extinction, and who sabotaged clean energy companies from reaching success are scared of the billions of people who they fucked over. I feel so bad for them. Those poor victims.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sound that sarcastic before. Also, you’re really into this stuff, aren’t you?”

“Somebody has to be. Everybody getting complacent is how the world went to shit before. I’d rather us not make that same mistake twice seeing as how civilization barely survived that.”

“I completely agree!” William said. “After all, how are we going to explore and colonize space if civilization collapses on us? Ah, I hope that all the debris gets cleaned up enough for sightseeing flights to return. I would love to visit space at least once before I die.

“Father,” Alice spoke up, “you could always visit it in virtual reality. It is essentially the same thing.”

“No matter how realistic the technology may become, it will never be capable of replacing the real thing. There will always be a clear distinction between what is real and what is not. If there came a time where there was not, I would be concerned for humanity.”

“Why’s that?” Ryouta asked.

“Well, think about it. If people believed that the virtual world was just as real and as legitimate as our own, what would become of those of us who disagreed? What about us who choose to live in the real world rather than the virtual one? We would see the bodies of those we care about rot all around us as they have replaced the living world with one of programmed code. What would happen to the ingenuinity of the human spirit if everybody was busy inside of virtual worlds rather than the real one? I fear most would rather live in such virtual universes where they can be who they want to be, do what they want to do, and visit wherever they want to visit rather than live in our world. It even sounds tempting to me, but I would never be able to bring myself to live in such a reality. That is part of the reason for why this whole ‘artificial intelligence’ situation is terrifying to me. Perhaps I am simply too old to understand the younger generations’ ideals, but I do not believe we should be striving to create something that is smarter than we are. If we do… what use would there be for us?”

William sighed, seemingly done with his rambling beliefs, before saying, “Oh! One more thing. Imagine if people began to believe the virtual world is as legitimate as the real one. What happens to history? If it is just as real, then what of the history of these virtual worlds? If it is real, then so too is their history. If their history is real, it will override our own history. Children would be taught of fictional battles in video games rather than learn of ancient civilizations that actually existed!”

And now it was Alice’s turn to sigh. “Father, you are being not only incredibly silly with your paranoid delusions and your gatekeeping of history, but you are keeping us from getting out of the car and going inside. May we please consider your rambling over so that we may get out?”

“Ah, right, that would be a good idea. My apologies. It is a topic that I am very interested in which brings me no short amount of worries for our future. I simply wish for a future where humans continue to prioritize the real world and humanity as a whole rather than whatever we create in video games.”

“I don’t think anybody is going to replace real history with the lore from video games, so I don’t think you have to worry too much,” Ryouta said.

“I personally believe that it is a romantic idea,” Alice said. “For virtual worlds to become so realistic and deep in their existences that they are indistinguishable from the real world – well, I will leave it at that as I have no interest in spurring my father on.”

“Splendid idea,” William said, causing Ryouta to cringe once again. “Now, let us head on inside to get all of you situated!”