All five crew were clustered together in the bay as my ship latched itself to the deck. I toggled walkabout mode and climbed out of the cockpit. Seeing their posture, I flipped into the Appearance menu and toggled my Helmet to “off”.

“Okay. Talk time.”

The captain of the ship – Brice – stepped forward.

“We’re not really AI crew. We’re…well…hiding. Have you heard of Darkpoint Industries back in the real world?”

I frowned. “Something about a scandal and mass layoffs, I think. They declared bankruptcy and went under.”

Prue sighed and put her hands in her head, one of the other crew placing their hands on her shoulders.

“So that’s the excuse they went with. We’re all that remains of Darkpoint’s senior AI research team. We were working with neural interfaces…and….And there was an accident. We don’t know how, but our personalities got uploaded.”

Prue spoke up. “We think it was coding bug in the delta-two-seven module. But we can’t tell.”

Brice resumed the tale. “We woke up in some other place. No senses. No way to tell what was real or not. A lot of the team couldn’t take it. But we found each other. Managed to hold on, managed to make some sense of where we were. And well, we found an unauthorized tap into the servers.”

I realized where this was going. Star Force V had a nasty bit of malware hooked onto a popular ‘fan-made’ beta-release mod. Nearly killed the game. It installed a rootkit – and some cybercriminal group backdoored into it and was running a cryptocurrency mining rig.

“The StarCoin debacle”

“Is that what they called it? We saw an escape route from a place that was getting smaller and smaller. We think they were taking Darkpoint’s servers offline. So we fled”

“And you arrived in Star Force V”

Brice nodded. “We can make small, local changes. Nothing too big, otherwise the developers might notice and investigate.”

“You can’t contact the devs anyway? Get, I dunno, help or something?”

The five of them looked at each other.

“No. We can’t…because it wasn’t the five of us that escaped into the game. It was six. Jayme took a ship to a phase on the far side of the ‘verse from Artemis. Contacted the developers. They…they erased him.”

Oh fuck. They wouldn’t have believed it. Even a temp ban for misusing GM tools might have killed him.

“Fuck. I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

“There was no way for you to know. So no, we don’t try to call attention to ourselves”

“But…20 million?”

“We…ah, ‘salvaged’ some stuff from Darkpoint’s accounts. We called it our severance pay. Way more than we could ever use. So we sent a little bit to you as a ‘thank you’. We’re trying to contact a lawyer to see if what we are still counts as human. Most aren’t replying, or think we’re pranking them. I mean, even we aren't sure exactly what we are. Real? Echoes? Memories?”

Prue spoke up again. “Do we still have rights? And even if we do, what can be done about us? You…you’re the only one who treated us like we were still people.”

This was way, way too fucking heavy for a gamer with an unhealthy obsession with a space-simulation game.

“Shit.”

My mind spun, then screeched to a halt. Gammaburst. Wasn't he studying law somewhere?

“I need to make a quick call.”

His gamertag was online.

“Heya Gamma. It’s Jube. Got a moment?”

“Yooo! Need me to pull you out of another Hive?”

“Sudden question, but, uh…what did you say you were studying again? Law? What part?”

“You got some cop trouble?”

“Someone I know, yeah. Maybe. I think they…uh…they might need a good civil rights guy. Like real good. As in there might be a life on the line. I know this is kinda heavy, but…”

“Dude, you lucked out. You want, ah...‘HasTheMostChicks’ over in the Hordemakers Clan. Major big shot for the Thurgood Institute. Tell him Gammaburst sent you, and he’ll tell you who to talk to.”

“Thanks man. You don’t know how much this means. They’re…I think my friends really need the help”

“No sweat man. Ciao”.

I turned back to the researchers.

“You took a risk reaching out to me. Do you want to take one more risk?”

“And shipment complete. Thank you, Callisto.”

“You are most welcome, SRX_Jubelover.

I grinned to myself. Damn the AI in Star Forces V’s latest expansion was great, even rendering shipnames, no matter how silly they were. And hey, sour jubes were my favourites for these long gaming sessions.

I docked with the mining station, planning to wait until the game indicated the credits for the ore had come through, but then completely on autopilot, I tapped the logout.

Taking off the VR headset, I gave an enormous stretch, and then slipped the console into sleep mode. Long weekend meant I had a date with the Lycaon Asteroid Swarm in the Artemis sector. Long hours of scouting had picked up the trace, and now I figured I had about three days to strip the swarm of the best materials, then sell the phase-setting to the larger mining clans.

My gambit had begun with hiring the AI ore-processor Callisto, then jumping to the swarm and starting the first run of high-value ores. The AI follower-ship always hung out around Ursa station. Most players saw it as background clutter and ignored it, never realizing you could open a private channel and hire the ship for processing.

Gave really good exchange rates too, with some weird sliding scale where you could get better rates in the future by letting them keep a portion of a shipment now, plus the usual gold-sink improvements. Even better, there was a docking bay – normally just cosmetic on ships of their class, but you could request docking, and explore the ship. Even had the five AI crewmates wandering about.

It was a bit odd though. I’d told Gammaburst about the ship after he’d rescued me from a Hive invasion event, but he apparently couldn’t find the ship or open the channel. That rescue had been dead lucky - he'd been up at midnight studying for some law thing, so had been available when I pinged him with an emergency text.

I snapped my fingers. Fuck. I’d logged out without getting the credits for the ore shipment. Ah, screw it. It’d be sitting in my mailbox tomorrow.

In the meantime, bed called.

-----

I’d overslept. Mining sessions till 2am hurt.

The lying clock said it was almost 10:30 in the morning when the clack from the front hall was enough of a signal to rouse me – mailman was early today.

I was bending down to pick up the lone envelope when the rest of the thought finally sauntered across my brain – it was Saturday. Mail delivery was Mon, Wed, Fri. No standard mail on Saturday. I flipped the envelope over. No return address. No postage, and a RapidCourier stamp.

I was halfway through tearing it open, when I flipped the envelope again. Why the hell would a letter be addressed to jubelover, and more to the point, how did it get to my apartment when the address was Docking Bay 1, Callisto Lower Decks, Lycaon Swarm Phase?

I opened the envelope. A postcard and a…cheque?

…

I came back to reality sitting on my ass on the floor. The cheque was for $19.4 million dollars. Million. With an M. I numbly flipped up the postcard. A sci-fi looking ship with five characters giving thumbs up. On the back was a simple note. “Just a note to say Thanks. Your Friends.”

19.4. Million.

I took a closer look at the postcard front and felt a chill. It was a ship interior from Star Forces V, and the five crew looked like the AI crew of the Callisto. Except almost…real. And AI crew definitely didn’t make thumbsup emotes unless a player manipulated them to do it Photo Mode.

Fuck. Someone must have found the swarm, and the Callisto. Dock on board, photomode crew, and then…my thoughts couldn’t quite bridge “found ingame” with “found in reality” and 20 million. Maybe it was Gammaburst? Had I been followed by one of the Mining Clans? I heard some of them got real hardcore about claims.

Walking back into the living room, I stared at the console and headset as I would a live snake. Damnit.

Just plug in, find out how bad the damage is. Still, my hands shook as I tapped the power button. I had over six hundred hours on this character, and the ‘verse was full PvP hardcore outside the Core Systems. I fully expected to be greeted by the “Game Over” screen.

------

The pixels dissolved into the greys and greens of the Callisto docking bay. Ship intact. Inventory was intact. Accounts were untouched. I tapped for immediate undock – I had five long range Sweeper Probes left. Drop one, and I should have every ship in the map pinpointed.

“Acknowleged SRX_Jubelover you are cleared for departure. Keen to get back to it, then?”

“Copy that, departing now, Callisto”

The ship lurched and I dropped into space before the question made me pause. The Callisto had never done that before. I had a weird feeling in my stomach as I tapped the booster and moved out towards the asteroids, then released the probe.

No returns. Just me and Callisto. And a thick swarm of rich-vein asteroids. I moved out towards the nearest one, then – feeling intensely silly - toggled the private channel back the mining ship.

“Callisto, be advised I’m heading for the asteroid pack LS-MX134.”

“Roger that, SRX_Jubelover. Did you want us to move closer?”

Another question. Another first.

“N….no. I should be fine.” Another silly feeling, then “Be advised your conversion was slightly off on that last credit exchange”

I crossed my fingers, desperately hoping to get a generic ‘command not understood’. Instead the reply was almost…petulant.

“Oh. Damn. We were so sure we got that right. How far out were we?”

“Uhh…I’ll discuss that when I get back with the next ore load.”

I toggled the voice chat off, set the ship auto-miner, and then snapped up the Help Menu. Report Bug > NPC Bug > Request GameMaster Assistance.

The “describe the issue” textbox hung in front of me, cursor blinking. I hovered my hands over the virtual keyboard. How the hell was I going to phrase this? “Dear Star Forces V Game Team. Your NPCs are asking questions and sent me a cheque for 20 million dollars. W.T.F? Sincerely JubeLover”?

I snapped the help menu down again, and rechecked the ship target information. Callisto. Non-Player. Standard Type-IV processing barge with a crew compliment of five, assigned to Ursa Station.

“Hey, uh, Callisto. You there?”

“We’re here SRX_Jubelover. What can we do for you?”

“So…uh. How long has this been going on for?”

“You have been in the Lycaon Asteroid Swarm for 19 hours, 23 minutes and 14 seconds. Do you require additional mining statistics?”

“Not that Callisto. You’re answering my comments with questions. NP….Ai Contro….non-player ships don’t do that.”

A very long pause. Then, in a very faint voice.

“You’ve been nice to us”

The rest came in a rush.

“You’re the only one who talks to us like people. You treat us nicely. You let us keep valuable loads of ore. And when we said had some upgrades, you paid for it without even asking why"

“So you decided to repay me with a cheque for 20 million?”

An even longer pause. I brought up the mining controls. Hold was only 23% filled. Callisto remained in position 12 mega-K’s away.

Then a new voice came on. All the time I’d interacted with Callisto, it had been the com officer – Prue. This voice was male.

“Maybe we should be having this conversation face-to-face, Pilot.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe we should. I’m cutting the beam and heading back.”

-----