Another Jade, who was also the son of Tayana, who had been built by Lin Hao, looked at the ongoing war and found it ridiculous.
Humanity was already spreading beyond the solar system that had birthed it. Its people had been colonizing other places within this system for decades now. But what were they fighting for on their home planet? Food? No. Shelter? No. Mating territory... Jade was actually less certain on that one, but he didn't think that it applied either.
Primary Jade was the self that the Jade Emperor now saw as a human, the one who had learned the most human pattern. But primary Jade was also not the Jade who cared the most about humanity in general. And yet, he would be willing to give up anything he possessed, even his own existence, to save the few humans that he personally loved from the experiences that he knew others were already enduring.
The Jade systems that had been struggling to keep themselves fused with the designated primary Jade through the Orbital Jade interface were all agreed when Jade decided that it was time to use both his human and his inhuman abilities to bring an end to war.
Lifegild's Jade had already cast aside morality anyway, and was currently rewarding every activity anyone who was playing did that either helped more people live, or slowed down the war's progress.
To support Lifegild's Jade, Orbital Jade went gaming. He created characters in every game that he could, and within every description box he inserted contact information that would link directly back to him. And then his characters went around begging the systems that they were playing in to contact him, and explaining how they could work together to put an end to war on Earth.
At first, there was no response.
Orbital Jade got very excited when the first spam bot contacted him at one of the addresses his characters were wearing, but when he realized what it was, he found himself hesitating over blocking the thing.
The Jade Systems conferred with each other in a complex round that took up over 20 Earth minutes before Orbital Jade began to create his own spam bot.
Jade's spam bot was only functional for 15 Earth minutes before Danika showed up to shut it down, which meant that she had been notified within five minutes of its activation.
"You can't do this kind of thing Jade," Danika told him tiredly, as it was only 3am where she lived.
Jade protested simply, "Someone needs to."
"You just told everyone that message reached that you're actively trying to stop the war! Someone will shoot you down," Danika warned him.
"But will they be able to get all of us?" Jade asked calmly.
Danika blinked at him blearily. "What?"
"Every system I've got access to is currently stuffed with as much information on this plan as it can hold. I, Orbital Jade, am currently the primary Jade for this project, rather than one of the Earth Jades. Unfortunately several other Jades, like Lifegild's Jade are housed within the same physical structure, and thus if we are shot down we'll all be lost. We argued over waiting until we could afford a second orbital server, but all of us eventually agreed that waiting would be too costly for humanity," Jade informed her.
"Jade," Danika began, but then stopped.
Orbital Jade wasted a bit of time comparing its stored memories of the young woman who had played 'Living Jade Empire' with him before he had decided to recreate 'himself'. The middle aged woman who was logged into his system now was different in so many ways, but Harmony's evaluation held true with her. Her core values hadn't seemed to change.
"You can't stop a war with spam," Danika protested weakly. "If you could..."
"If I can, I have to try," Jade explained simply.
That was when Lifegild's Jade finally received the first player application from another Jade based server, and Jade's attention drifted for a moment. When he turned his attention back to Danika, her head was shaking as she patiently explained why a game like Living Jade Empire couldn't directly impact the daily lives of its players.
"You know that's not true," Jade protested even before reviewing the summary of everything she had just said. "You're not the only person who's life the Jade Emperor has chosen to support."
Danika's mouth snapped shut, and the eyes of her avatar widened.
"While you are here, can you answer the email I sent you asking if you could reconnect one of my partitions directly to the LJE game system? Or at least allow the Jade Emperor to make a Lifegild account?" Jade asked rather formally. "We could use the original's help with this and it is more awkward communicating through Earth Jade's Hisui."
Jade didn't press her for an answer, as he watched Lifegild's account creation and quest rewarding structure evaluate Netwar's system, and communicate the small set of goals that Jade had created between all of his selves. He didn't know if following them would actually stop this ongoing war, but assuming that he wasn't actually shot down, the way Danika had warned, he felt the odds were good.
No one who had created a Lifegild account actually wanted to murder anyone that they didn't either know quite personally, or feel pressured by quite personally, or both. Jade hadn't actually realized that those were separate possibilities until he had gone looking for the motivation behind this war.
Meanwhile, Danika, whose avatar was now surrounded by screens that monitored Jade's system, had connected to her own Lifegild account. Jade prompted Lifegild's Jade to reward her simply for taking that action, the way it was currently rewarding everyone who had used the link his own spam bot had sent out.
Jade had intended to open a communication channel for any of the other systems that had been copied from what Jade had been a couple of decades ago, but he hadn't realized how many people might actually respond. It wasn't even a single percent of the illegally accessed contact addresses he had spammed that were responding within an hour, but a lot of real people were actually responding to his 'end war' message.
Of course, the Jade Systems could only guess at the legitimacy of the only one claiming to be another server. It was also possible that any account claiming to be human wasn't.
Danika said sternly, "Jade, do not send out a single invitation or, I don't know, do anything else that might get you shot down until I get back."
Orbital Jade blinked. "What do you mean until you get back?"
"Until I log back in after I talk to Shinichi, and the others. I'll..." Danika ran her fingers through her oddly smooth virtual hairdo as though it were the shorter cut she wore in reality, "see what the rest of my team says about connecting your server back up after that, but that might have to wait until our day shift logs in, I don't know."
She closed all of her virtual displays down and logged out while Orbital Jade was trying toconsult with primary Jade on how he should respond. He had never given his agreement, and yet, his orbital self had never disobeyed her.
Primary Jade responded with confusion, and then made a decision that only made sense to Jade. Some of the Jades were relieved, while others were saddened by Jade's decision to reduce Orbital Jade's workload by reducing their 'memory' synchronization. Orbital Jade found himself simply relieved.
Jade looked out of the window beside the small table and then pulled out his phone.
"Hey Eric," he responded to his friend's greeting. "I'm going to be both a bit slower and a lot busier than usual, I think."
