Event Finished Regret [Solo]

The simulation had been intended to be fun. A way to open him up to new experience, to meet new people. It had intended to be a social event, a vacation.

Instead it felt like a nightmare.

It wasn't even the simulation that had done it. The simulation had certainly been exciting - he'd gone off to die after all, oblivious of the fact that doing so would only wake him up - but it wasn't what had bothered him. Not really.

It was Gask.

He'd gone to the Fire Eaters to beg for mercy expecting nothing. A madman. The sort of man who would lead a gang is miscreants and cannibals. A monster.

Instead he'd found a man who quoted Lawrence of Arabia, who spent the night discussing books he'd never get to read, trapped in an awful, awful world. But even so, it had felt good. It had felt like an oasis in the wasteland, a chance to talk to a like mind, even though they had so little in common. Gask was a warrior, a warlord, and yet he'd been as much of a scholar as possible in his situation.

He had said it was good fortune that brought Valli to the camp, but all Valli could feel was pain and regret.

He should never have entered the simulator. He should have realized it would be a bad idea, should have considered the psychological consequences. Only minutes away from the simulation room Valli found he could no longer maintain a straight face, ducking into a corner and burying his face in his hands.

It wasn't what had happened. It was what wouldn't. It was the reality of it, the reality of it not being real. Like spending a dozen years in a dream with a happy life and waking up alone.

He wasn't alone, not really, but he didn't truly have anyone to lean on either. There was no one to call or talk to. No one he could pour his heart out to except his therapist. But he didn't want to tell her.

Stupid.

He felt scattered and confused, taking his time to try and pull it together. A memento would help. A memento of the things he did. Because even if it wasn't real - even if it was all gone, and everyone - if Gask was gone - hadn't he changed things?

He tried to focus on that as he started back towards Galactica's office, but it was harder than it should have been. It didn't really matter. Not really. None of it had been real, even if it felt real.

"What can you offer, exactly? Someone said they got... they got tapes or something of the event."

The event. Not the world. Not the life.

Valli felt ill.

"Plenty of things," the woman behind the counter said, as chipper as ever. She looked like a native, a human brought up to bring a familiar face to human clients. "We offer recordings of the simulation in digital or blu-ray formats. We also offer written summaries of events-"

"How many non-player characters are there in a sim?"

He'd never have been so rude before, but he didn't have the focus to be polite.

The woman paused, clearly taken aback.

"That would depend on the sim itself. Generally we have three or less major plot-important NPCs, and everything else is procedurally generated. Only the most important characters are custom designed with by our staff."

"How many in this session, exactly?"

There was a slight pause as she leaned over, checking the computer.

"Just one, sir."

It was a snap judgement, the sort made when emotionally compromised and desperate, and Valli was both.

"Could someone buy one of those NPCs? As an AI?"

It really should have been harder. He was creating life, and yet everything that was needed amounted to a piece of paper that was shorter than the paper he'd filled out to get his apartment.

Of course there was an interview, but it was brief, and the young man interviewing him didn't seem terribly concerned. The only thing that was even vaguely an issue was when Valli admitted that the bed--the one for the room that had once been his office but was now a second bedroom--wasn't there yet.

"Not an issue," the interviewer had said. "As long as it arrives before you complete the process."

"Tomorrow," Valli said. "It'll arrive tomorrow and I'm going to set it up in the afternoon after an appointment I have."

"That'll be just fine," the man had said, moving the conversation onward.

He should have felt horrified. Instead he simply felt giddy, working through all the finer details. There was a room to be furnished--bare, so that it could be customized later--food to pick up. Details to look into. How much did robots eat? Did they eat at all? He knew precious little about robots in general, but a robot seemed like the best solution.

A robot would let him customize as he saw fit. He could have put the AI in anything, but instead he settled on something as close to his old self as possible. The same short stature. The same intense expressions. The scars were a separate issue, and Valli had some very real concerns about how people would respond to him. Scars were nothing special on Manta Carlos (precious few people arrived without some of their own), but while the radiation burns Gask had been covered with were normal enough in the wasteland, on Manta Carlos they were something else. People might think he was diseased or dangerous, and so Valli had decided to remove them.

But the others he left. The scars that meant something--that were achievements or marks of battles won and lost--he left. People wouldn't mind those so much. People wouldn't react. And Gask... well, Gask might miss their presence all the more.

He just had to wait, and everything would be ready in record time.