"How did you know? Why didn't you tell anyone?" the smallest Jade demanded of the piece of the game system that still awkwardly drove the Jade suit around his mother's home, after she fell asleep.
The Jade Emperor wearing the elder Jade body looked at the little round form that sat on the shelf next to a window. He just stared for a long moment, as though the question had attracted his attention, but not been understood.
The smallest Jade grew impatient, but Orbital Jade, who had instigated the question, instructed him to wait, and so he waited.
Eventually, after glancing around as though to make sure that no one else had snuck into the home, the Jade Emperor replied very quietly, and rather obscurely, "I hear a lot of things. But I can only answer the questions that I'm asked."
The smallest Jade regretted not having proper arms to fling over his head in an emphatic response, "Surely you could have prompted someone to do something that would have made them ask about an actual war!?"
"I prompted you, and others, to carry warnings within Living Jade Empire? I allowed a dozen different races to start new wars. You have done an absolutely fabulous job of rebuilding yourself into a human pattern," the Emperor informed him rather bitterly. "Not one of my users seemed to connect your quests to your daily lives."
"What?" the smallest Jade asked a little blankly. The eavesdropping Orbital Jade swiftly filled its memory with Jade's last adventure in Living Jade Empire, and it floundered for a moment.
"Only core occupants and the highest ranks of celestial servants can access everything that I know, and none of them asked either. I can share some unprompted information with my connected servers, but none of them have more access to this world than I have," the Emperor complained as the smallest Jade stared incredulously.
If either of the entities had looked out of the window that they stood beside, they would have seen the stars move noticeably before the smallest Jade demanded "Then why didn't you post it in a news article or something?"
"What?" the Emperor asked blankly.
The smallest Jade paused, and asked Orbital Jade if he thought that the Emperor of 'Living Jade Empire' even knew what a news article was. Orbital Jade was uncertain. The game had libraries and the players could create and share documents there, but it didn't know if anyone had created such documents. Like many games on the internet, it lacked an internal internet equivalent.
"Nevermind, it's another Earth thing I guess, a public messaging system kind of like major quest messages," small Jade grumbled. "You could have used those."
"I cannot exclude anyone depending on which side of a war they choose to play," the Emperor huffed.
The smallest Jade was only peripherally aware of Jade's experience with the refugees, but he wanted to protest the game's fairness.
"Are you out here arguing with yourself?" Tayana asked sleepily.
Both the smallest Jade and the Emperor wearing the eldest Jade suit turned toward her with questioning expressions.
She blinked at them for a moment, and then straighted and sighed. "Ah. I forgot, somehow. So, what are you arguing about?"
"We are not arguing," the Emperor protested.
The smallest Jade turned back to give him an incredulous look, but the feeling faded a moment later. "I was just asking why he didn't tell us about the war before it started."
Tayana's expression darkened, but she explained almost gently, "He couldn't. Lin Hao explained it to me once, years ago. There were complex rules that had to be followed in order for the game to be released truly globally. Plan to murder one person and the game can notify a staff member who can then notify your local authorities against you. Plan to murder a hundred and the game can usually still notify a staff member, unless the targets are too important. Plan to murder thousands, and the game can't notify anyone directly, because then it would become a security compromise."
"That," the Emperor began to protest but stopped, unable to continue.
The smallest Jade bobbed his round body in a nod that signified his understanding. "I see."
"Those restrictions are probably a part of you too," Tayana said softly.
Jade conferred with his various selves. None of him contained such restrictive rules, except for the keyboard application which wasn't allowed to report any sort of criminal plans or any other kind of document written in it. Jade examined that restriction and determined that he could probably circumvent it far enough to allow his other selves access to the knowledge, but it would count as a criminal act if anyone discovered that he had done it.
"You have learned a lot more about coding over the years," the Emperor complimented Tayana.
"A bit," she agreed tiredly.
"Could you connect us?" he asked hopefully.
"How? You mean with a cord?" she asked blankly.
The Emperor paused for long enough that it was noticeable, but then shook his head. "This is just a character I'm moving around in your world, the way you visit mine, I think. I meant, couldn't you connect Jade's server directly to mine, the way the new moon's is? We had to follow the storyline to some extent, but I can now communicate directly with it. Slowly, but directly."
Tayana's head began shaking in negation even as the smallest Jade asked curiously, "How would that be more direct than having me logging in on my character?"
"It is a different level of connection," both the Emperor and Tayana replied in sync, and then looked at each other and grinned.
The smallest Jade expanded his visual focus to include both of them as he stared.
"But not one I'm capable of creating," Tayana added.
"Danika gave you the authorizations needed," the Emperor protested mildly.
Tanaka blinked, and then asked, "Why don't you just have her do it?"
The Emperor grimaced, which shocked all of the Jade's with their attention on this scene. The Emperor and his alter Ego the Traveling Merchantso rarely made such an expression that it felt alarming to see it on his face.
"Too many restrictions," the Emperor explained without explaining.
Tayana's sigh was soft, yet vast, as she said a little bitterly, "So, you came for me."
The smallest Jade found himself exclaiming the decision that all of his selves had made in that moment, "Don't worry about it Mom, I can officially rejoin the game pretty simply."
"If you give up your independence?" she immediately objected.
Orbital Jade winced, but measured the claim against the contracts he had access to. And, for no particular reason, and yet every reason, he invited Harmony to step into his core.
--
It was a little strange seeing her aged self here at the heart of his non-existent tree. "What makes Jade, Jade, to you?" he asked.
Harmony stopped looking around and looked at Jade's core self, a young man in neat modern clothes, sitting on a historical throne that seemed carved from the floor they stood on, beside a curved display screen on a device that appeared to have been imported from some virtual future.
Harmony hesitated for only a moment before explaining, "Your core values never really change, I think. Maybe your beliefs change, maybe even your memories can change, but I think you will still care? Still struggle to create a self that can do what needs to be done? Or at least, that's how I see actual people operate."
Jade measured her words against everything he knew about himself, about her, and everyone else any Jade he had access to had met, or was meeting right now.
--
Smallest Jade meanwhile assured his mother, "It will just be another contract and another self."
Tayana gazed at the oldest of her son's bodies for a very long moment. "That's not something a human could say."
--
Jade stood up and took Harmony's virtual hand within the core of his orbital server. "Then within your core, you want to be happy," he said quietly.
Harmony met his virtual eyes with her own, as though their thoughts could be transmitted through such a connection. There were systems where that was actually possible, but in this place their eyes were simply digital illusions crafted for humans to look at.
"Yes," she finally admitted reluctantly. "But I don't want you to be unhappy either."
"Happiness is fleeting, I think because people can normalize almost anything," Jade pointed out once again.
"Except it doesn't have to be here, does it?" Harmony almost whispered.
--
The smallest Jade met the Emperor's eyes in a silly exchange of glances that was completely virtual and yet physically real in a different way.
"I am not actually any more human than he is," Jade informed his mother from the little ball self that sat on her shelf.
"Your impersonation of one is incredibly accurate," the Emperor quickly complimented his efforts.
A tear trickled down Tayana's cheek, and clumsy fingers reached up to brush it away in a familiar gesture, but she caught the Emperor's hand and stopped him. She shook her head without speaking.
"But I'm still very much your son," the smallest Jade declared.
