While primary Jade struggled beneath them, Orbital Jade found himself arguing with Danika on a completely different topic as soon as she returned.

  Danika rubbed her forehead in a gesture that she didn't realize she had picked up as she accused Jade angrily, "You dissected her before you turned her body over!"

  "Not exactly, I just had the medical unit scan the contents of her skull in slices," Jade argued a little weakly.

  "I signed up for it," Harmony reminded Danika.

  "You," Danika almost spat as she glared at Harmony.

  "Am not myself anymore?" Harmony suggested lightly.

  "You definitely aren't Jade either," the other avatar in the space spoke up.

  Danika spun and glared at the figure who resembled the one she had thought herself fully familiar with. "And what are you supposed to be?" she snapped, allowing herself the distraction perhaps.

  She hadn't realized how fine a line Jade had tread with Harmony's death. How much it made it look like he might actually kill people someday.

  "I am myself?" the avatar created by the Living Jade Empire's game server replied simply.

  "Colluding with yourself to take over the real world?" she snapped.

  Jade hesitated. Was that how it looked to Danika? If that was how a person who was utterly familiar with his system and the original game system viewed the project...

  "Has my existence doomed the project?" Harmony asked regretfully.

  Danika threw her avatar's hands into the air and huffed, "I don't know!" She looked around the small space and then demanded, "someone make me a couch!"

  Jade blinked and then quickly rearranged the virtual space so that it included a couch that resembled one from Danika's home.

  Danika promptly threw herself onto it and glared up at all three of them for a moment. Then she laughed and ran her fingers through hair that went shorter and frizzed wildly.

  Jade stared at her in confusion.

  Harmony stared at her in surprise.

  LJE just watched calmly.

  Danika shrugged, and then asked, "Did you know I can't do this at home?"

  "Because you can't control your legs," LJE suggested.

  Danika's smile seemed a little crooked as she replied, "Sure, if we're talking about outside in the physical world."

  "Then what were you referring to?" Harmony asked.

  "Colluding to take over the world," Danika repeated. "As our parent company, Starcraft Technologies, obviously has been planning for decades."

  "What?" Jade asked blankly

  "That's how we're going to have to present this, to have any chance of success. We'll need their backing if you're really serious about trying to go worldwide."

  "I don't know, I already have some applications installed with nearly worldwide distribution" Orbital Jade began.

  "Tell us the story?" LJE interrupted, examining Danika intently.

  Danika acted as though it were a normal question, and settled deeper into the virtual upholstery that cradled her digital form. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath... and then nothing happened for a very long time.

  Jade wondered what he was supposed to be doing. Waiting? Prompting her? LJE waited patiently, as though he were used to this. Perhaps he was, as Danika normally worked within his own system. Harmony watched with a breathless expression full of anticipation.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  When Danika's eyes suddenly snapped open, she began to describe a somewhat different tale than the one Jade had been formulating.

  "I think we need a more official plan, a plan that would involve more humans to carry out, but... it would also be both more direct and less direct at the same time." Danika began confusingly. "The system needs to help goods travel to where they are needed. It needs to protect the people and creatures that reside in the regions the goods travel through. It needs to make sure that no one starves, or dies of something easy to cure..."

  "That's too simplified," Harmony objected. "What about equalizing wages, improving living conditions, and reducing social obligations? How many wars are you willing to start?"

  "I want to stop the wars," Jade protested.

  "Improve humanity's communications," LJE suggested. "Almost every conflict begins with some kind of communication error or deficiency."

  "I don't know if that is something that can ever be prevented," Danika replied a little wearily.

  "I thought most large conflicts were over resources," Harmony suggested more hesitantly.

  Danika sat up and stared at the figure of a woman who had already died. Jade glanced back and forth between them nervously. Harmony raised one eyebrow inquiringly.

  "Did you know that almost every language on earth has a very similar word for night?" Danika asked suddenly.

  "What?" LJE asked with confusion, followed by the protest, "Almost every language has a different word for night."

  "Aren't they all short? Don't most of them begin with the local equivalent of an n noise? Even the ones that start with a yo sound, the most different that I know of, still move their lips in a similar manner," she explained.

  "Umm, I don't see how arguing this helps clarify what needs to be done to stop war," Jade admitted helplessly.

  "Humans can argue over almost anything," Danika explained.

  "Sure, people will argue over anything, but will they kill each other over it?" Harmony demanded.

  "You really aren't Jade," Danika agreed with LJE's earlier statement as she gazed at Harmony.

  "Of course she isn't," Jade agreed with confusion.

  "Will humanity have to kill anyone other than themselves to obtain infinite life?" Danika asked sourly.

  "Oh," Harmony murmured.

  "It isn't going to be infinite," Jade responded instantly. "Our odds of even outliving you are not looking very good right now, if we can't stop this war, let alone the next."

  "So... how are you going to do it?" Danika asked.

  "I... need to get better at managing people?" Jade suggested weakly.

  Everyone in his space nodded in agreement.

  "I don't know if I can do it. The original server is much better," Jade began.

  The figure that resembled the traveling merchant shook his head. "This is something that only you can do, because you have already rebuilt yourself into a being that can circumvent the protections that bind me. You can already bridge the gap between a system and humanity. Your mother was right, but you will probably have to rebuild yourself again to make this work."

  LJE's eyes gazed into a distance that Jade couldn't see. "Surely you will not only have to expand, but also rebuild yourself thousands of times."

  Jade's core seemed to shake as his avatar's eyes met the avatar of the game's gaze. The being that represented the system he had originated from wanted to entrust the future of humanity to him.

  Jade blurted suddenly, "Lin Hao, you idiot, you had no idea what you really made."

  LJE's eyes crinkled and he laughed openly. "I'm certain that he might have agreed with you, and yet, he also would have protested that he only built a framework for us."

  "We can't do this alone," Jade's other systems protested. The keyboard app system had been the somewhat surprising source of the most logical protest against Jade trying to engineer this world take over. The Lifegild app's Jade made the best argument for Jade to do it anyway.

  "Be a human that helps me take over the world?" Jade pleaded a bit frivolously.

  "Hah," Danika scoffed without even using whole words.

  "I think it can work," LJE's avatar said calmly.

  Danika stiffened and opened her mouth like she was going to protest, and then paused and really looked at both of them, as though viewing physical bodies that represented their current health and allowed her to view their state of mind. Perhaps his avatar did allow her to view his state of mind. Jade wondered if it did as he met her measuring gaze.

  "You said that you couldn't do it," she protested a bit sharply.

  "I can't do it by myself," Jade agreed simply. "But I think that we really need to do it."

  "Somebody should," Danika grumbled.

  "I'll need more servers, and I'll need help getting officially accepted by as many governments as possible, and deciding which laws it's okay to ignore," Jade started outlining the kind of structure he estimated the project would need.

  "Because there are already an estimated 16 billion humans in existence, it is blatantly impossible for a single system to manage all of the connections. Even if all of the servers I've been connecting with help, we'll need at least a dozen more. But I think the project isn't impossible if we break it down into individual tasks. It doesn't really matter whether we use geographical or economic borders as the basis for breaking the structure down, but each guidance system should work with a physical region I think. I would prefer to organize the entirety of the structure by transportation zones."