We're All Human

>Re: Glass

Author's Note: I find it important that this be read in Courier. Fixedsys would be better but we don't have that option.

RE:Glass??

Message from Wareware [REPLY]

>boys gone
>i mean
>what else is there to say?
>not everyone likes the same 90s anime their whole life
>lets be real
>even blondie quit if you don't remember

The room seemed so much emptier without him. It was one name absent from the contents-- one omission in the chatlog. The staff of BASMUSH sat in silence, the chatroom weighed down by his ghost.

"Where the hell is he?" Vlad asked again, breaking the silence.

"Repeating the question doesn't yield more answers." That was Nadeshiko.

"It's better than sitting around and doing nothing!"

"He was young," Tall Mud said. A moment of idleness. New line.

"This sort of thing happens to the best of groups, believe me."

"But Glass?" Atai asked. Her emotions grappled with her, but she tried her best to ignore them, to understand.

"Even Glass," Tall Mud replied. "He's been worming his way away from us for a while now."

"It's not like him at all!" 

"He's a teenaged boy, Atai." Mud was trying to be gentle.

"I'm just worried something must have happened to him," Atai said.

"We all miss him, Atai," Nadeshiko said.

"Obviously," Vlad added.

"But if he's not going to log in, what can we do?" Tall Mud said. His edict had an air of finality to it.

Atai struggled for a moment, and then replied.

"I have his address."

"That changes things..." Nadeshiko added. "So go see him, I guess?"

"I can't," Atai said. "Remember?"

"Right,you're like, a hikikomori, right? Or a shut-in, at least." MMori said, breaking his previous silence.

"I'm not a shut in, Mori! More like 'crippled' ," Atai said. "G_d, how long have we been friends?"

"Lord's name in vain," Tall Mud said, by rote.

"Sorry, Mud," Atai said. "And, obviously, I need someone to help me out here. Please?"

There were long, hollow minutes of silence. Atai checked and rechecked the game client to no avail.

"Okay, why not?"

"Vlad and I are still in France," Nadeshiko said. "We'll help when we get back, I guess?"

"I definitely will," Vlad said. "Whether or not Nade comes with me."

"And everyone else?" Atai said.

There was another one of those long, hollow silences. Atai thought this must be where Glass would have spoken up, when he was there.

"Not my place," MMori said.

"I agree," Tall Mud said. "As much as it pains me to put it that way. He has to be allowed to follow his own path."

"Maybe get Panpan to do it when she decides to rear her head again? Does Panpan even live like vaguely close to y'all?" Vlad wondered.

"I'll do it," said Saint Ringo. Atai started.

"When did you get here?" Tall Mud asked.

"I've been here the whole time. It just didn't seem right to interrupt."

"I hadn't noticed. Apologies."

"I have a bad feeling about this," MMori said. "I mean, you can't just interfere with people's lives like this?"

A few seconds of pause.

"Yeah, that was kinda dumb," MMori added. "Obviously. He's our friend. Go help out."

Atai sent Ringo her contact information and turned her attention away from the MUSH for a while.

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Glass. It had to have been about Glass. She utterly refused to abandon him. She turned to the thread she'd made on the CASH site asking about him and scowled. Who did this "Wareware" think they were? Glass wasn't like that-- not the way Wareware or Tall Mud or MMori acted like he was. He was good. He wouldn't want to hurt her like this.

She didn't understand why everyone else was being so callous about it. Since she woke up all those years before, the Internet was all she had, her one connection to the outside world. Everyone else could log off, maybe, or they had other groups-- but for her it was where she lived.

The old, familiar guilt wracked her again. Why wouldn't she tell them?

The old familiar response. "They won't believe me."

How the hell could she be an AI? What would the first Strong AI to have ever come into being be doing on a roleplaying game about a Japanese cartoon from the 1990's?

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