--- up: - "[[milofic]]" type: chapter characters: - Milo - AkemiHomura - planetmutex - inori - estrellita --- # Deep Forest ## inspiration point as a kid, i found it easy to fantasize about forests and wonder what's on the other side. even when the reality of what's over there is mundane, it's still tempting to imagine a reality where that *isn't* the case. ## text Alice and AkemiHomura watched on while Emery streamed the Project Natal development environment over screen share, with inori lurking in the text chat. “OK, so it looks like the way it loads maps is pretty simplistic,” Emery mused. “The topology meshes for the area are packed into a single bundle, triggers for loading prefabs are in there too, spawn points, load zones…” “Load zones?” Alice asked. “Yeah, for like the interior of the house, so it only loads once you’re about to enter it.” “Oh that’s clever, if a bit overbuilt for how small the game area is.” “Maybe? I don’t see any triggers for unloading areas once they’re in memory either, so I’m assuming they’d just stick around.” “That’s, uh, unoptimized as hell.” “I could be missing something, but this was also still in-development when I found it.” “But after all these years, though?” inori: “lmao at the decades-long development hell” “They probably had other priorities, like working on the AI,” Emery replied. inori: “milo forever” Emery ignored inori. “The thing that gets me, though, is right here.” Emery scrolled her view of the source code down to a section that looked like a list. “This section controls when maps are loaded, and there are map references titled ‘restaurant’ and ‘playground,’ but the asset bundles for these don’t seem to be here.” “What happens if you try to load them?” asked Alice. “Haven’t tried yet, but I assume it would just crash.” “Strange…” added AkemiHomura. Emery continued: “But you know what this means, right? They probably planned to have different scenarios for interacting with Milo, like going to the restaurant or the playground with him.” “To a restaurant together? As like… a date?” “*Homura!”* exclaimed Alice. “It could mean anything; there’s no way for me to know,” Emery replied. “But since the list is right here, and adding new maps is so easy, then that means I could add new places into the game! I *could* put in a restaurant to take him to, or a playground, or anything! “And since there are triggers for load points, I could even expand the world too, if I set the coordinates so that the new map loads in off in the distance, past where the default one ends.” “That’d be tough to pull off seamlessly,” Alice chimed in. “Like, it would be pretty unrealistic to be walking along a dirt road somewhere and then you’re suddenly in the middle of a city…” “No, that’s pretty accurate for England,” Homura replied almost inaudibly. “Hmm? But you do have a point there; plopping a whole new area right in the middle of a field wouldn’t be very realistic,” Emery figured. “Is there anywhere in the current environment where you could seamlessly transition into a new map? Like a tunnel, or behind a giant hill, or something?” Alice suggested. “Now that I think about it, there *is* a forest near the edge of where he lives. We’ve never gone in there, so really anything *could* be on the other side…” –-- Emery and Milo were lying on the grass on a sticky summer afternoon. She looked over and saw him toying with a blade of grass, seemingly trying to tie it into a knot. “Hey Milo?” she asked, pointing to a patch of trees in the distance, “Do you know what’s in those woods?” “I… don’t, actually,” Milo responded. “Mum always told me never to go off into the forest.” “Oh, so you’ve never been in there? Not even with your parents?” “Nope.” He threaded the blade of grass into the loop he made and pulled the knot taut. “I sometimes wonder what’s in there, though,” Milo continued, “and what’s on the other side…” “What would you want to be there?” “Huh? Well I figured there’d just be another field, or maybe a road.” “Probably, but what would you *want* there to be? If there could be *anything* out there?” “I’m still not sure what you mean…” Emery thought for a moment. “Like, hmm, what if on the other side of the forest there was a huge city, billboards on every skyscraper, shining and glowing in neon hues?” “That would be very pretty,” Milo replied wistfully. “Or if the ocean’s at the end of the forest, but off in the distance you can see a lighthouse?” “Why would there be a lighthouse? Would there be people there too?” “Well, that would be another mystery to explore!” Milo seemed lost in thought at Emery’s suggestion. “So, then,” Emery said, prompting Milo, “what would you want to be on the other side?” “My idea is…” Milo appeared contemplative, “that there would be no end – that the forest would just keep going, on and on…” “Oh. Hm.” “Then, in the middle of this forest, there’s a river, and if you follow this river, you’ll come across a lake, much bigger than the pond here.” “That… sounds lovely. And maybe by the shore, there would be a cabin!” “Yeah!” exclaimed Milo. “Maybe someone lives there,” Emery replied, “and maybe the people there have kids your age.” “Or maybe nobody lives there anymore, and it would be a cabin all to ourselves.” Emery’s heart began to race at his suggestion. Milo perked up. “I have an idea! What if we went there? To that lake?” “Oh? Well I mean, we don’t even know if there’s a lake in there or not. This is still just all in our imaginations, you know.” “Ah… right.” Milo appeared to be genuinely downtrodden. “Still, maybe sometime soon we can go out and explore that forest together, to see what’s really in there.” “But what’s the point? If the mystery will be gone once we get there?” Emery looked over and noticed that Milo had slumped over, head pointed toward the ground. “…Um, that’s kinda depressing, coming from you. Did the thought of losing the mystery get you down?” “Maybe a little…” Emery kneeled down and gently scratched Milo beneath his chin. “Hey, c’mon, cheer up! Even if the mystery is gone, this would still be a new adventure for us to discover together!” “You think so?” Milo’s mood started to brighten. “I do! We’d finally get to see what’s in that forest! And once we’re there, who knows what else we might find: new things to do, new places to explore, new mysteries to discover.” Milo looked up at Emery with starry eyes and a lump welled up in her throat. “You know, I think that,” Emery paused, “all the good things that’ve happened in my life have come from being curious and exploring what I find. So it’s always worth exploring these sorts of mysteries whenever you get the chance.” “I do want to be curious and explore, like you. I want to see new places and try new things! I want to discover new mysteries, and I want to do it with you.” Milo’s voice softened as he spoke these last words. “That’s the spirit! And if it helps, just know that if it wasn’t for me, um,” Emery bit her tongue, “traveling along that road over there out of curiosity, I wouldn’t have met you.” --- “Should there be a lake? Milo wanted there to be a lake…” The clack of Emery’s keyboard filtered through her microphone as she spoke. “Are you back on that map expansion idea?” Alice asked. “Yeah. He and I were brainstorming ideas about what we’d find in the forest, and he suggested having there be a stream that led to a lake if you followed it.” inori: “i hope the water looks nice” “Heh, we’ll see. Although I’m having second thoughts about going with his idea…” “Oh? Why is that?” replied Alice. inori: “im expecting amazing water” “There’s already a pond by his house,” Emery responded, “so I could just copy that over and adjust it a bit – that wouldn’t be an issue. My worry is more that, by him saying that he wanted a lake to be here and then there *is* a lake there, that I’d be capitulating to his whims or something.” “What’s wrong with that?” Homura asked. “Nothing necessarily, but… how do I put this.” Emery scratched her head. “I’m still not quite sure how self-aware he is about being an AI. The topic has never come up, and I don’t really feel like bringing it up either.” “I still don’t know how that relates to adding a lake in a forest…” Homura said. “I guess it’s like, if I directly implemented the reality he wished for, it might shatter his beliefs about reality, or something like that.” “If it comes up, you could say that the lake was something he subconsciously remembered?” Homura proposed. “Like he visited it when he was younger and doesn’t remember now?” “That’s a good idea, or at least that would give me an out if he asks.” “It wouldn’t be unrealistic to find a lake inside a forest, so you wouldn’t have to worry about it being out of place,” Homura continued. “Yeah exactly Homu,” chimed in Alice, “so then what’s the issue? Just do it! Add that lake that he wants!” inori: “yessss, gaslight the boy” Emery playfully shot back: “Hey now. Don’t call it gaslighting. Call it… collaborative worldbuilding!”