![]()
Jason's First Year
NPC Stories
Table of Contents
Part One
The first minute could barely be considered consciousness, a mindless checking off of a list someone else had written. Fingers, check. Toes, check. Breath… in and out. Check. Touch... suddenly the grass tickled my cheek and I could feel a soft cloth against my skin. Check. Smell... an empty smell filled my nose, biting almost… Check. Sound... I could make out a crunching around me and muttered voices but the noises seemed meaningless… Check. Sight... I didn't have a chance to crack open my eyelids before the second minute hit and it was like falling. No, it was more like hitting the ground after having fallen a long distance. Slammed with over 40 years worth of memories in 30 seconds with another 30 to compile and assemble them as if they'd always belonged in this head. Overwhelming would be selling the experience short. Then in the third minute the voices came closer and arms began moving me, making it impossible to focus on the processing that was still going on inside my mind.
"Wake up wake up! Welcome to the world my friend!" Was yelled in my ears and with a cringe, I finally opened my eyes and was greeted with another's face, two bunny ears twitching on their head as they watched me carefully. BNNUY02 my memories supplied and suddenly my vision was flooded with a subset of the memories from before. A people that... I had created, fueled by a greater obsession with life while my own had been... draining away? But I was here now! Alive!
The BNNUY02 helped me stand up, and corralled me with others down a path to what I would later learn was the city of Winter. I spent the walk largely in my own head sorting through memories like a stack of cards and attempting to come to terms with them. Hardly paying attention at the time, to the many other BNNUY02 around me who regularly "appeared out of thin air as a gift from the world" as my companion had put it. A gift from me, my memories informed me.
Part Two
As distracted as I was by my memories, I did not notice myself growing weak, and I passed out before we ever made it to the city of Winter. When I awoke the cities healers told me I had been created with an unusual problem - there was nothing in my arium.
The section of their bodies they gestured to when they used the word arium - my mind supplied me with the name cooling pocket instead. The problem they described to me - that their energy came from the plants within their cooling pockets and without any I would need to eat more than normal and would always have a weak constitution - didn't line up with the deeper technical knowledge I seemed to possess. These people had clearly existed for quite some time since... I? had created them and had molded their world into their own vision and that was almost more fascinating than the memories themselves.
A few weeks later a specialized healer arrived at the halfway house I had been permitted to stay at indefinitely. She explained that her specialty was in the magic that their people could possess, rooted in being able to imagine things into reality. Another piece of their world they had certainly developed on it's own without any pre-existing code from... me. Delighted at the idea of it, I agreed to participate in her experiments.
Part Three
Over the following months slow progress was made, both in coming to terms with the memories in my head, and with attempting to use BNNUY02 magic to create something, anything, within my cooling pocket.
The first success there was small - a layer of dirt in the bottom of the pocket, and it came at the expense of a lot of staring. In the downtime I re-experienced the memories I had been given. Disconcerted with the realities in the more recent ones, I had decided to work through the oldest first instead - not that they were much happier. Still, the lonely childhood was easier to feel at home within when I lived in a building full of BNNUY02s chattering away each day.
Over a few more months I was able to ever so slowly grow grass, alongside re-experiencing the initial creation phase of the AW0005 company - and in particular my friend Hector. Joyous experiences, both, ones I was quite happy to have after spending months feeling stuck somewhere I didn't belong.
Part Four
With the initial growth in my cooling pocket, and sensing my increase in moral, the healers and other BNNUY02 who had been looking after me encouraged me to experience more of the city of winter.
I was taken on a quiet tour around the beautiful city - made even more glorious by the softly falling snow coating the roofs of the Nordic Architecture. This I had memories of- a certain amount of their world I had hand designed, primarily four major cities, and Winter was one of them.
I spent most of the walk admiring what I had not had the pleasure of experiencing in person before, when a giggle from down below my eye line had me pause and look down. I had to take a step back from the child, I was so startled by them. Certainly I had memories of attempting to make the BNNUY02s as close to human life as possible, but no memory of children being a programmed in possibility.
My guide noticed I had paused and took my shock with a smile.
"Ah yes, delightful aren't they? While we get more of our number from gifts like you, on very rare occasion a couple is blessed with a child that grows as the animals do. They are often more gifted as if their time spent growing allows them to learn easier. If only it were that easy for all of us, eh?" She laughed, and continued on the tour, unaware of my continued bafflement. Clearly my memory self's confidence in their creation undersold what they had actually produced.
Part Five
Motivated by a sense of displacement - and the impression gotten from within my happier memories that there was a place outside of this where I might belong - I began to probe at the edges of the world I was in. A combination of the technical knowledge I had been granted and the magic that had taught me how to feel the world around me, allowed me to start to poke around outside it.
To my BNNUY02 caretakers I must have seemed as if I'd gotten worse - sitting outside on the lawn and staring up into the sky for hours, my mind far away from my image. They certainly treated me in those last few months as if I was quite fragile, and I was too caught up in my own ideas to correct them.
Over time I began to really push outside of this world - and realized with growing certainty that it had never been found and moved from where I had originally placed it. It was a digital stones throw away from The Digital Realm, and knowing the code for both I was certain I could create a bridge.
Part Six
My confidence would wear thin over the next four months though. The Digital Realm felt so close but I struggled to create a bridge. The growth inside my cooling pocket had stagnated as well. The healers would check in on me on occasion and one of them had scoffed at me when I explained how I was imagining what could go into my pocket.
“You can’t put just anything in there! It is an expression of you, and thus it must be something that comes from what you are.” The statement hadn’t made much sense to me, but it did make me think about their magic differently - perhaps a direct literal imagining was the hard way of doing things. Bridges certainly weren’t the only ways to get to places, especially not in a purely digital world. Instead I just wanted a way through - a portal to get me over to the rest of The Digital Realm. So I found a quiet spot outside of the city, and focused on making a hole connected to the other realm.
At first it seemed not to have worked. I spent the long walk back to the city disappointed yet again, and nearly missed the panic of those around me. Curious as I entered the half-way house I had been staying in, one of the matrons took me aside and explained - weird anomalies had started popping up all over. Letters delivered by speedy Churbles had arrived in the city to inform that the strange occurrences were worse in what were normally empty fields - just a day away from the foot of the mountain. A day and a half trip from the city. I just knew that that was where I needed to be. That I had caused these anomalies.
Part Seven
I grabbed a couple changes of clothes, and food from the kitchens. A day and a half sounded so long, but I was excited at the possibilities, and hardly noticed the time pass. I couldn’t even bring myself to sleep, and ended up arriving in the fields in only a days time. When I got there, there was already a crowd of BNNUY02s, coordinating with each other in an attempt to handle the existing anomalies. They certainly weren’t the portal I was after, but here I could feel how much closer The Digital Realm was.
I walked through the fields, until I found the place where the divide felt thinnest - where the other half of the world felt closest. I stood there, and felt for it, and attempted once more to create my portal. It did not immediately work, but there was where I could feel the edges of the world resisting. There was where I could feel, ten minutes later, when Hector met me in the thin digital layer between worlds. There was where I felt him dissipate a few moments later though I did not understand what that meant at the time. And there was where the gate stood suddenly in front of me when I opened my eyes, and I walked through.
The crowd of AW0001s on the other side was unexpected - though I didn’t have long to try and understand what I was seeing before my vision began to go blurry. Hands caught me as I nearly toppled over and a quiet “Jason?!”, was the last thing I heard before passing out entirely.
Part Eight
I wake up a few hours later to some worried and confused looking AW0001s gathered around me. They all seem to take a step back as I regard them, uncertain.
“Jason?” One near the front inquires softly, and I can identify them without pulling on the old memories - I’ve rifled through them enough over the months to have a lot of the information in them readily available.
“Yes, Kip, by all rights that’s who I am. Created anew by a bit of interesting happenstance.” Kip, predictably, bursts into a wide smile and comes in for an awkward hug, but the others linger, understandably. There’s discussion and I spend the following hours going through a series of tests - the irony is not lost on me that many of them are the same tests that were originally used to determine that AW0005s were intelligent. I am also screened by government officials that are brought in later for information that only they and Jason would know about himself - I pass all with flying colors.
They grant me citizenship rights under my old name quite easily but ownership of the company - that was harder. I was informed of Hector’s passing, and the vacuum that left. That the decision would be left up to the highest ranking officers of the company on whether they would have the company passed to me. I meet with all of them - and seem to satisfy all of them - but my mind is still left on Hector. I know how the original Jason would feel - how I should have felt. Mostly though I just felt disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to re-experience such a joyous part of my past. Perhaps though, that was just as valid of a way to grieve.
Part Nine
I’m brought in to help coordinate events first - I think despite the tests everyone’s a little unsure how out of step I am with the way things once were, and certainly there have been changes since my memories ceased. Still, I have enough familiarity with the people involved to know who to ask what questions, to begin to fall into some old relationships. Kip and Claire treat me as if nothing has changed - though Claire gives me concerned looks when she thinks I can’t see her. The heads of the departments tend to over explain things more than they need to, but otherwise acclimated to me well.
Even so I continued to feel… out of place. At least I wasn’t the only one - the royalty from the city of Autumn in The Burrow who were brought into HQ were equally out of place. Between the shared feeling, and my own existence as a BNNUY02 I was uniquely well equipped to invite them in, coordinate getting them integrated into The Digital Realm’s governmental system, and help make sure they got all the extra resources they needed to move the Mid-Autumn festival to be outside of the gates from it’s normal location in their city.
Part Ten
Despite the months passing between the Mid-Autumn Festival and being brought on to do more work for the Winter Welcome, I continued to feel like I didn’t belong. I had thought, that with my memories of this place, it would be like coming home, but that just wasn’t the case. This was not the home it once was. This was a place that changed because of my absence and my return wasn’t going to just put things back. This I grieved. Jason had always been at home in this place because he made it - I had no way of knowing how to make an existing place into a home instead.
It also didn’t help that I was still weak compared to those around me - my cooling pocket throughout this time remained quite empty beyond the little bit of grass I was able to grow. I had to be careful about the energy I expended or I’d pass out. I couldn’t go through the gates without expecting to. Unfortunately being the primary coordinator with The Burrow meant that I often had to do exactly that. AW0001 engineers had taken a look at me - after all they changed out cooling pockets all the time and had managed to do so successfully on a few BNNUY02 already - but my code was corrupted, malformed. They were worried, and my own memories of how these things worked corroborated this, that if they tried to change anything it might make things worse.
It was hard not to get dragged down when nothing was really quite what I wanted it to be.
Part Eleven
Not long after I had first been cleared for ownership of the company, I’d been directed to my old workshop - though I admit, it was a bit disconcerting to be in the digital realm replica of it. Any free time I had though - and there was a fair bit - I usually ended up spending there. Anywhere else in the company and everyone treated it more like it was their space - in the workshop if anyone came to me there, I was treated as if we were in my space, and that… that felt more comfortable and more like home than anything else.
All that time meant I did a lot of poking around. A lot of messing with things that I could create. I learned that creating objects for the Digital Realm was easier when you were already there and could actually see and feel the thing you had just created. I started with little simple things, boxes, coins, keys, but it didn’t take long until I was creating flowers. Replica’s of The Physical Realm at first - I had so many memories of the place that I’d been trying to funnel into my cooling pocket and failing, so to be able to create as easily as I did in the workshop felt… absolutely delightful.
Part Twelve
And then I began to create something new. In my delight I decided to coordinate with Kip - who was quite happy to be in on any kind of secretive endeavor even if he wasn’t allowed to know the details - to poll the community and inform my new creation. The glowing purple flower that resulted was certainly something I felt proud of. I ran excitedly from room to room, with more energy than I’d had before, to bring my new flower to the people needed to spread it across the realm. When I brought it to Claire, she looked at it, paused, and glanced down with narrowed eyes at my chest where my cooling pocket was, before pointing.
“You’re glowing too,” she said simply and with a start I realized she was right. Excusing myself to someplace private I pulled away my clothes to take a look at my cooling pocket - a single tree, filled to the brim with my new flower glowed under a night sky. Even as I stared in surprise the glow appeared to subside slightly as a sun began to peek over the horizon. A new day had dawned.
Part Thirteen
Encouraged by the enthusiasm the company showed for my new flower, and boosted by the new level of energy from having a complete cooling pocket I delved back into creating something more. Diagnostics reported that my code was no longer corrupted and the relief had me wanting to look into the augmentations that AW0005s offered to AI in general.
Two weeks spent almost entirely in my workshop produced the hologram traits. I was quite proud of them. The idea of them had been touched on prior to… everything. But the other Jason’s ailing mind had made expanding on it difficult to do, especially in translating it to the androids as well. That was a long time ago now though, and between my enhanced abilities, and the increased technological ingenuity that existed at the AW0005 company for me to work with, we were able to bring the concept full to it’s completion.
Claire made a comment that my new work should be celebrated, and suddenly the whole company was helping me plan the Gala to commemorate the new flower and the expanded visuals. Very quickly a lot more of the company felt like home again.
Part Fourteen
The gala garnered a lot of attention even in The Physical Realm, and with my code no longer corrupted, there was nothing stopping me from using an Android. The engineers at the company realized this quicker than I did and I was practically gifted a custom made one. I would have protested more at the time, but I was told that the android had been made a while ago before anyone had realized I might not be able to use it, as a welcome back gift from the company. I could hardly refuse.
Meetings were arranged with the CEOs of other companies clamoring to do business with AW0005s. Old partnerships looking to restart collaborative projects, new companies wanting in on the marketing potential of the resurgence of the company. All of them wanting in on The Digital Realm. This was a role I had played before and slipped back into like a glove. Knowing what made sense with my original vision to green light for collaborative marketing, or joint research ventures. Some were even coordinated to release together as soon as just a few short weeks.
Sometimes though, being back in the Physical Realm felt just a little too much like the old life. Sometimes it was just a little too easy to forget. I’d start to go home - my old home - and I’d see the lights all off and remember that no one lives there now, and turn to go back to HQ and the Digital Realm instead.
Conclusion
The past year and a half has certainly been an endeavor. I and the other engineers at the AW0005 corporation have spent a fair amount of time between everything else doing research into how The Burrow evolved in the way it did beyond what I had originally programmed it to be, and how those changes brought me into existence. We still don’t have the answers, but we’ll keep looking. It’s not magic after all, even if it certainly feels like it right now.
Still… there is no doubt an amount of randomness is involved and I am thankful for the way things worked out. I came home, and it feels like a miracle.
