A Ray of Fate

"It sucks!" Lin muttered with a displeased expression, she had been playing for a long time but still didn't get what she wanted. She had the patience expected from her age, seven old.

She quit the game and her virtual space altogether, her mind returned to the real world.

She slowly opened her eyes and took off her personal virtual reality connector, which seemed a mixture of a crown and a band.

"Cousin is still at his boring work..." She knew it because the house was small and there was no signal of him arriving.

It had been a year since she began to live in his house. For many different reasons, she had to stay under his care for a lot longer than planned.

"Yui... put a nice song for me to listen to," she spoke to the television's AI.

"Okay, playing Autumn Leaves," a feminine voice came from the speakers, and just after a music began to play.

Lin began to dance all alone, with a face full of enjoyment.

Just as the music ended, a voice woke her up from her trance, "Looks like you are having fun."

"Ah, Big Aunt!" Lin blushed and stopped immediately as she looked at her caretaker.

"How many times have I said to you?" she said as she gently tapped Lin's head, "My name is Kath!"

"Ah, I know, I know!" Lin muttered while pouting, "But you are so much older than me, I want to call you Aunt!"

A vein slowly popped in Kath's forehead and she sighed deeply before opening her mouth, "You really know how to make me angry, are you calling me old? Don't you know some people don't like to be called that?"

"Ah, I'm sorry!" Lin avoided another tap on her head and said, "I forgot old people don't like to hear harsh truths."

Kath took a deep look at Lin and said word by word, "No chocolate for you tonight!"

Lin's ahoge¹ immediately stood straight like a pillar, her eyes lost their luster and her playful grin was nowhere to be seen. The world suddenly seemed a much unhappier place for her.

"I'm home," a voice broke the depressing mood which had been installed within the room, "I brought yakisoba for dinner!"

"Cousin!" Lin's eyes instantly regained their light and her small feet quickly ran away from Kath, "Kath is bullying me again!"

Ash tapped her forehead with a finger and said, "Don't lie again, otherwise no dinner for you!"

"But-" Lin was about to say something but shuddered in fear after meeting Ash's serious eyes.

"Go take a bath, you are stinky!" Ash said with a sigh, "I don't tolerate stinky little girls at my dinner table."

Lin pouted hard with tears in the corners of her eyes and shouted, "Cousin, I hate you!" She immediately ran away after doing this.

Ash just sighed and ignored her spoiled brat 'act,' he had known her for a while and knew she was a bit overdramatic.

"How were things at work?" Kath asked him as she helped to prepare the dinner table.

"Just as always, no bad or good things," Ash answered, "And here? How was your day taking care of the little girl?"

"As always," Kath answered with a smile, "I don't have much to do the whole day since someone usually does most of the house chores."

Ash stayed silent for a moment before opening his mouth, "You know I like to do it. Don't feel bad."

"I don't feel bad..." Kath shook her head, "Just a bit strange. Why would someone do the house chores after a tiring day of work without having to? I'm paid to do this."

"I guess I take it as a sort of therapy?" Ash joked and finished arranging the tableware, "Anyway, go see if the girl is taking her bath, the table is ready."

The yakisoba was from a famous restaurant and not many sold this kind of food those days, it was considered "strange" by many without prior knowledge of oriental food.

But it couldn't be helped, the world was in a very tense and restricted bipolar geopolitical situation, divided into "Blue Sky Alliance" and "Bright Constellation." Either side tried their best to block the culture of the other in their own territory, including food.

As for why global forces had strange names, it was a mystery.

...

"Thanks for the hard work," Ash bid farewell to Kath outside the house, "See ya tomorrow."

Kath nodded to him with a smile and said to Lin, "I hope you are better behaved tomorrow."

Lin wrinkled her face and avoided eye contact.

"Let's go inside, this winter is wilder than the norm," Ash said to Lin, "It's good that it's finally ending."

"I like the cold," Lin muttered and entered the house with him, "It's better than summer."

Ash left her playing in the main room and went to his room and put his virtual reality helmet on. It was a relatively new edition but infamous for its "huge" body.

After entering his personal virtual space, he couldn't help but sigh after remembering the "little" amount of work he had to do after completing his book. Just writing the main story wasn't enough to publish his book.

He strolled around his courtyard for a few times, observing the fake beach and sunny weather. He could change everything there to his liking, but he gradually stopped caring about it and found it rather boring.

"It's but an empty shell," he muttered, "Even the hot weather simulated fell so gross."

The only thing he liked about his personal virtual space is the absolute privacy guaranteed to him and the absolute silence.

He sat down on the ground and emptied the whole space, he suddenly seemed to be floating in the dark void.

"Show me my mental map of the "Path of the Stream," and show me where I stopped yesterday," he suddenly spoke.

In the darkness, many kinds of information appeared dazzlingly, they are all about the book he was currently writing.

A genuine smile appeared on Ash's face. "Simulate the current content and search for any illogical cause and effect." It was his technical form of saying "Plot Holes."

"None found," an icy, gross, and ethereal voice sounded in the void.

"Why is your voice so strange?" Ash frowned.

"You asked me to talk as if I was a monster yesterday," the voice answered, "You seemed to want a kind of inspiration."

"Oh! That's right!" Ash clapped his hands in remembrance, "Change back to normal."

"Alright," the voice turned mellow but without a clear gender, it was strange but still gave a mechanical vibe.

"That's right, today is the day I write the final scene..." Ash muttered to himself with a complex expression, "I thought I would take longer to finish this book, but it has been less than two years..."

"I received a recommendation for updating my source code," the voice suddenly interrupted his train of thought, "Would you like to know about it?"

"Is it important?" Ash asked impatiently, he was tired of useless updates that just turned his Auxiliary AI inactive for hours.

"Yes," the voice answer surprised him, "It will add the function of 'Extreme Simulation'."

"Huh?" Ash was visibly shocked, "Isn't it an experimental function? I don't remember agreeing to receive experimental updates."

"But you are," the voice response stunned him.

After racking his brain for a while, he suddenly remembered he was drunk the day he bought his Auxiliary AI to help him write his book.

"Fuck!" he had a strange expression and cursed, "Could it be I forgot because I was drunk?"

"You have been on the queue since the day you bought me, and yesterday you are approved to be part of the voluntary team for experimental updates," the voice confirmed his guess.

After being silent for a while, he asked, "Will it be helpful to my work?"

"This function is still experimental and unstable, but theoretically, it might greatly help in your writing," the voice answered.

"Fine," Ash agreed with a sigh, "How long will it take? I don't have much free time and have to work tomorrow."

"It will take three hours to install this upgrade in my source code," the voice answered.

Ash's face turned ugly, three hours was all the time he had to write that night before having to go sleep, otherwise, he will definitively wake up too tired to have a nice day at his damned work.

He had to sleep well to 'tank' the mental damage taken during the day. Everything there was tiring, including the people.

"Damn! Just do it!" Ash sighed and agreed, leaving his personal virtual space just after. He took the helmet off and lay on his bed.

Since it would be helpful to his writing, he decided to sacrifice his time and wait. After all, writing a book was easy, but writing a good story was difficult, he still had much to learn and the Auxiliary AI always helped him greatly.

"Cousin, why did you quit writing so early?" a soft voice came from his side, it was Lin, who had entered his bedroom without him knowing.

Ash sighed and gently smacked her head with his hand, "Why are you being sneaky again?"

"I find it funny to be like this," Lin smiled mischievously, "It's like I'm invisible to others."

"You brat..." Ash smiled and shook his head, "Go out, I want to rest for a while."

"Hmmm," Lin seemed to want to say something but was hesitating, "Can I read those notes?" She showed him a bunch of paper that she found.

"Those are..." Ash was surprised, "Where did you find them? I thought I lost them."

"They are below your closet," Lin answered with a triumphant nose.

Ash twitched the corners of his mouth and thought, 'But how did you find them? It is such a narrow space...'

"You can..." Ash dismissed her with a wave of his hand, "Those are just a bunch of things I wrote about my book."

"Cool!" Lin's eyes brightened and she left his room with quick steps.

After a full three hours, with red eyes, Ash put his VR Helmet on and entered his personal virtual space again. He was tired and sleepy but wanted to see the results of the update.

"So?" Ash asked impatiently while floating in the void, "After updating, can you now find any problem in my story?"

"Indeed," the voice answered, "This update grants me the capacity to simulate different kinds of scenarios in a background setting infinitely close to the real world."

"In other words," Ash muttered, "you gained the ability to 'create' a testing field with real-world laws?"

"That's right," the voice confirmed, "but you should be aware it's still unstable and is limited by humanity's understanding of how the real world works. So it is bound to never be truly perfect since humans are not perfect beings."

Ash nodded and closed his eyes for a moment before asking, "How many problems have you found in my book?"

"Three," the voice answered, "Two are relatively unimportant, but one is grave."

"Explain one by one," Ash ordered.

"In the second arc of the story, the main character killed someone on the grounds of avoiding problems," the voice began to explain, "but just a few pages later he didn't kill on the grounds of compassion, even after knowing it would bring him problems."

A book suddenly appeared in Ash's hand, and he opened the pages with the problem.

"What was in my head when I wrote this inconsistent shit?" Ash criticized himself and felt pained, he had to figure out a way to correct it without affecting the rest of the story.

"In the fourth arc, the villain didn't kill the main character because he felt too confident of dealing with him later," the voice talked about another problem, "but it went against his extremely careful personality of never leaving his enemies alive."

Ash cursed himself again and again and felt a great load of self-loathing after noticing he committed such amateur mistakes.

"The worst problem, however," the voice went on, "is about the cultivation system of the story."

"FUCK!!" Ash's eyes almost exploded and he almost puked virtual blood. He knew how important the power system was to a fantasy story, and he actually committed a grave mistake in that...

"The first Realm of both internal and external sub-systems are flawed in basic logic," the voice explained, "If the story is to be set in a world similar to the real world, it's impossible for anyone normal to enter those Realms."

"Why?" Ash asked in confusion, he couldn't see where he messed up.

"Ether, which is called 'mystical qi' in this story, is too ethereal to be controlled by a normal person, in normal circumstances," the AI's answer deeply shocked Ash.

"You have access to information regarding Ether?" Ash asked in bewilderment, "Its info is not so open on the internet."

"I only used as base the information which is accessible to me," the voice explained, "You have many files about Ether saved in this virtual space, I simply used this information hand in hand with the ability granted to me by the update."

Ash then realized it was talking about the files he got from his Etherist friend, Jin. Ash once asked him for more in-depth information about Ether and Gene Nourishment, all for the sake of constructing a more 'interesting' cultivation system for his book.

"As you said, information about Ether is limited on the internet, and I received just the most basic information about it in my update," the voice spoke again, "but by using the information contained in those files, I was able to more accurately simulate how the Ether would react to a normal human trying to harness its power."

¹[In Japanese, ahoge literally means "stupid hair," which refers to rebellious hair that doesn't conform to the rest of the head hairstyle, and, sometimes, appears to defy gravity and other laws of physics. It's most commonly a strand or strands of hair at the top of the head.]