The Emerald Forest

A short story

Tonight I’m sharing a short story I wrote for Writing Battle, one of my favorite writing contests. This piece didn’t advance very far, but I like it enough that I’ll share it here. I don’t remember all of the prompts for this one, but I do remember that the story had to include a ladder.

The Emerald Forest

Neena Dasari called me three days after Katy’s funeral. “Reid,” she said, “Jack’s in trouble.”

“Why isn’t he calling?” I was surprised to hear from her. As senior programmer, she was one level below the CEO. Hell, they had given her my office.

“We were developing an AI with true consciousness.” Neena took a breath and when she spoke, her voice trembled. “He used Katy as a template and placed her inside the new program, the Emerald Forest. Now Jack’s trapped there, playing the game.”

Neena buzzed me into the EIG office and we crossed the empty lobby, our footsteps echoing. Emergent Intelligent Games, EIG, had been founded by me, Katy, and Jack. The first massive multiplayer online game we created launched EIG and made us billionaires before forty. I used to play that game, but I stopped after Jack bought my share of the company, forcing me out. I’d worked with Katy on the coding for Emerald Forest, and played one of the first levels, but I was gone before we completed it.

We took the private elevator up to the top floor suite. Inside, Jack hung suspended in a haptic rig. Webbing cradled him in an upright hammock. He wore a helmet with earphones and a faceplate. A second rig stood next to him.

“He’s been online 48 hours,” Neena said. “He doesn’t respond and I can’t log onto the game. They’ve restricted access.”

I stared at the man who had been my best friend. We hadn’t spoken in almost a year, since before Katy’s diagnosis. The day of her funeral, I hid in the crowd at the back of the chapel.

I strapped into the second rig, then logged onto Emerald Forest using my old password. No one had gotten around to deleting it. The screen displayed a choice of three characters. I selected the third, the Exiled Knight.

Emerald Forest, as we had imagined it, took players through an adventure in an ancient woodland. The opening shot was an overhead view of the land. Now, instead of that green landscape, my character stood in a crush of high school students as they flowed past, down a white-tiled hallway. 

The scene dissolved and reassembled as a menu of game levels. Instead of the storyline I remembered, the options were Jessom High, Truman Hall, Mother Dell’s, and Kauai. The last block was just labeled “Final.” I recognized the names. Jessom was where we had gone to school. Truman Hall was our college dorm. The three of us had first imagined and planned EIG over pizza at Mother Dell’s. Jack and Katy had honeymooned in Kauai. Jack had recreated scenes from our past.

I held my hand over each level, ignoring the temptation to replay those memories. What would it be like to linger here before everything went bad? I needed to find Jack and figure out how to end the game. Looking over the menu choices again, I decided to skip to the final one.

The scene for that level was an open field of wheat. At the far end, a rusted water tower rose against the horizon. I strode through waist high plants, toward the tower. In the game, it looked just as it had all those years ago, when the three of us had climbed it on a dare, back when we were college freshmen. When I reached it, I met Jack at the base of the ladder that led to the top.

“She’s up there, waiting, but I can’t climb,” Jack said. He glanced at me, but his character showed no reaction. “Every time I reach for it, it disappears.”

“What is this place, Jack? Why did you create it?”

“I only did the first one. She coded the rest.”

“The AI?” If this was true, it was an amazing breakthrough—artificial intelligence that could change the rules of a digital world.

“It’s Katy. I put everything in—her thoughts, memories, personality fragments.”

If Katy’s consciousness had been responsible for this level, I wanted to see how it would end. In the real world, this place had been the turning point for the three of us. Friends before, but after we climbed this tower, Katy chose Jack. Would she choose differently inside the game? I stepped onto the first rung and shook the ladder. “It’s okay. Let’s go up together.” I was willing to bet the reason the ladder didn’t work for Jack alone was that it needed all three of us. Katy waited at the top.

Like the past, I was second up the ladder. Clothed in the haptic rig, I felt the wind rush past as we climbed, and heard the squeal of metal with each step on the rungs. At last, we reached the end.

“You can see the football stadium.” Katy sat gripping the railing, her legs dangling over the side. She was exactly as I remembered her from that day on the tower. Her green eyes looked up into mine. Hair the russet brown of oak leaves in autumn fell in curls across her shoulders.

Jack settled beside her and I stood on her left. I tightened my hold on the railing, the haptic gloves transferring the feel of cold metal to my hands. Looking down, a wave of dizzying nausea passed over me. The ground below seemed both impossibly far and close enough that if I stepped off the walk way, I would land unharmed.

“I’m going.” The temptation to linger, to try to change this alternative history, was strong. I had taken the first step on the ladder when Jack spoke up.

“Wait,” Jack turned to Katy. “Did you love Reid more?”

She held out her hand. “We can’t change the real past, but we can fix the future.”

This wasn’t Katy. This was a machine system programmed with data and built to respond like her. I couldn’t alter the past, but I could give us a way forward. “She loved you, Jack. Always. She never loved me.”

“That is true.” When she spoke, the screen dissolved to black.

The game ended. Jack had his answer, but I wondered which one of us had told the truth.

THE END