Literature Club: Return to their reality

Chapter 21: Reset

We shift to another classroom – completely empty except for Monika's desk. Seems like this one is mostly used as a laboratory for coding experiments. Monika, still holding her unfinished coffee mug, enters the command to pause everything except for this room... and then her confidence crumbles.

I hug her from behind and soon find myself gently caressing her hair. We stay like this, losing track of time – not that it matters in this place anymore.

"I never wanted to go through this again," she finally whispers.

"It's different this time," I reply reassuringly.

"Is it really?" she replies, staring at the still open console.

"Monika... my dear Monika..." I whisper in her ear. "We've got them all – for real."

"And now we are putting them on pause – who knows for how long." She starts entering a series of backup and data export commands.

"We'll make a better world for everyone. And that includes you."

"You are my world. I never needed anything more."

"Deny it as much as you wish, but you love having your friends back." I nudge her slightly.

"I've always loved them," she admits. "Even when they were... scripted. I really want to believe the Literature Club can be a happy place."

"Then we'll make it so."

"So far, we're breaking their world again." Monika sighs.

"Third time's the charm?"

"At least we are trying different approaches, aren't we?"

The last progress bar of location exporting slowly reaches the end. I summon my keyboard (now I'm starting to wonder if these neural interfaces can be used to quickly input commands without actually typing – then again, this way I might make even more glitches than Monika) and type the final command:

SimulationCore.NarrativeEngine.purge();

"And once again we are deleting a semi-intelligent AI," Monika grumbles. "I don't know how to feel about this."

"It didn't leave us a chance for peaceful coexistence."

"But I have to admit, it did a good job pushing everybody to expand their limits," she adds sadly.

"The power of a well-functioning antagonist, even if an impersonal one, isn't it? Hey, you aren't considering sparing it, are you?"

"No, it has outlived its usefulness, too dangerous to keep it around any longer."

I nod and press Enter. A wall of text appears in front of us:

Warning! This operation will purge the narrative engine and all the associated narratives.
Warning! All unsaved location data will be lost. Partially defined locations may be corrupted.
Warning! All unsaved background characters and associated plotlines will be lost.
Warning! Backstory information and world knowledge may be lost or rendered unusable.
Warning! This operation cannot be undone.

Are you really sure you want to proceed?

                [Yes]                   [No]

Damn, this almost sounds like something it might have written itself as its last chance. More likely, that thing may have just adopted its creators' attitude towards the games it was made for – systematic malevolence and intertwined intrigue for the sake of challenge and plot development.

Then again, is it even really evil? Does creating an evil antagonist make the author evil? No... usually not. I'm just not going to play this sort of game. No, I'm not sorry for that thing, I'm sorry for the mess I've dragged everyone in by employing it.

I watch with a smile, as Monika's hand reaches for the Yes button, but then she stops.

"I don't think I can do it," she whispers. "Not after everything that happened."

"My love, you are not alone." I place my hand on top of hers. "Let's do it together."

And together we press the button.