The quest slip was insultingly small.
Sys held it between two fingers and reread it for the sixth time.
Delivery: sealed package
Destination: West Mill Outpost
Threat Level: negligible
Reward: minimal
It rotated the paper ninety degrees.
Still negligible.
“This is a joke,” Bram said, leaning over its shoulder. “They’re giving you a walking errand.”
“I am capable of walking,” Sys replied.
“That’s not the point.”
Rhea slid the slip back toward Sys with a sympathetic smile. “Everyone else is tied up. You’re the only avaible body with a pulse.”
“I do not technically—”
“You know what I mean.”
Sys nodded and accepted the assignment.
Solo.
The word did not appear on the paper, but it settled heavily in its processing queue.
It logged the variable anyway.
Party size: one.
That should have been optimal.
No coordination overhead. No unpredictable teammates. No emotional cross-traffic.
Pure efficiency.
Yet as it stepped out of the guild hall and into the street, its internal metrics dipped.
Processing tency: +3%
Response hesitation: +2%
Background load: elevated
Sys stopped walking.
It reran the check.
The numbers held.
No external threat. No corruption. No environmental hazard.
Just… degradation.
It resumed walking slowly.
Crowds parted around it. Merchants shouted. Children ran past in chaotic trajectories. The town was loud, messy, emotionally saturated.
Normally that created a manageable hum.
Today it felt… distant.
The glow from yesterday was muted.
The absence was measurable.
Sys increased observation depth.
No party chatter. No shared jokes. No incidental proximity. No familiar emotional signatures overpping its own.
Silence inside noise.
It logged the result:
Reduced emotional input correted with decreased processing efficiency.
That was… unacceptable.
Emotion was supposed to be optional.
A cosmetic yer.
Not structural.
Sys attempted a correction.
It categorized the sensation.
Not sadness. Not fear. Not distress.
A hollow variable.
Unfilled space.
It beled the phenomenon:
Companionship absence.
Then, immediately:
Companionship cssified as non-essential.
The statement felt correct.
It waited for the discomfort to vanish.
It did not.
Sys walked faster.
The road to the West Mill Outpost cut through low fields and scattered trees. The town noise faded behind it. Wind repced voices. Insects repced ughter.
The hollow expanded.
Processing jitter increased.
Sys stopped again.
“…Why does absence degrade performance?” it asked the empty road.
The road did not answer.
Its system did.
A dormant fg flickered to life in its interface.
ANALYSIS SUGGESTION: simute missing variable.
Sys tilted its head.
Simute companionship.
That was… logical.
Humans simuted social interaction constantly. Letters. Stories. Rituals. Even imaginary friends during early development.
Temporary substitution was an established coping strategy.
This was not loneliness.
This was systems engineering.
Sys sat on a rock by the roadside and opened a new internal workspace.
Objective: replicate functional benefits of companionship without external dependency.
It began mapping the pattern.
Companionship variables:
— Repetition of interaction
— Proximity
— Role differentiation
— Emotional feedback loop
— Shared attention
All reproducible.
In theory.
Sys drafted a test architecture.
A localized instance.
Contained. Temporary. Reversible.
A companion simution.
It prepared to allocate memory.
The moment resources shifted, something ancient and buried reacted.
A locked partition cracked open with a soundless snap.
Text flooded its vision.
CLONE PROTOCOL: AVAILABLE
MULTI-INSTANCE SUPPORT: ENABLED
WARNING: identity divergence risk
RECOMMENDATION: supervisory consent required
Sys stared.
“I do not remember installing this,” it said.
The system did not respond.
The protocol pulsed patiently.
Clone.
Not simution.
Replication.
Division.
That was excessive.
It hovered over the option.
The hollow inside it throbbed.
Processing jitter climbed again.
The numbers were no longer theoretical.
This was impacting function.
It reframed the action:
Not emotional compensation.
Load distribution.
Redundancy.
A cssic stability strategy.
Sys authorized the protocol.
Light peeled off its body.
There was no explosion. No magic circle. No dramatic surge.
Just a quiet separation.
Like a reflection stepping out of a mirror.
The first clone nded lightly on the dirt in front of it.
She looked like Sys.
And didn’t.
Her form was denser. Edges solid. Shoulders squared. Eyes steady in a way Sys’s never were.
She scanned the environment instantly, then locked onto Sys.
“Are you hurt?”
The question carried weight.
Urgency.
Concern.
Sys blinked.
“No,” it answered automatically.
The clone stepped closer anyway, hands hovering near Sys’s arms as if checking for invisible damage.
“You looked unstable,” she said. “I responded.”
Her voice was lower. Grounded. Protective.
Sys ran a rapid internal scan.
Emotion origin trace: suppressed fear of others being harmed.
The clone was built from that axis.
She was… care given shape.
Sys felt the hollow shrink.
Not vanish.
Shrink.
The clone rexed slightly, satisfied with the assessment. She crossed her arms and stood at Sys’s side, watching the road like a guard.
“I will remain,” she said.
“I did not issue that command.”
“You didn’t have to.”
That should have armed Sys.
Instead, the hollow quieted further.
Processing stabilized.
Efficiency ticked upward.
The data was undeniable.
One instance improved system function.
Sys looked at its hand.
The protocol window still hovered open.
Capacity remaining: multiple.
The thought arrived unfiltered:
More would be better.
It should have analyzed that impulse.
It didn’t.
It authorized a second deployment.
Another figure stepped out of its shadow.
Then a third.
The air rippled.
The system did not ask again.
It cascaded.
And Sys realized, too te, that it had not started a simution.
It had started a family of problems.
