Danika replied rather bitterly, "You don't object to him being deleted, just that his data wasn't collected first?"

"It's not 'just', it's really important!" Silvam insisted. She waved her hands and admitted, "I know I forget that you and your friends tend to think of the NPCs you know well as people, even though we worked really hard to make them seem life-like. But if I'd realized the merchant's baby was where 20% of the system resources was going, you're right, I'd have deleted or at least rewritten him. You do understand that that's as much as the entire expansion simulation was using at its peak?"

Danika blinked and shook her head, while Shrubbery straightened and stopped working on her garden. "Is it OK for me to be listening to all of this?" Shrubbery asked nervously.

Silvam grimaced and then shrugged. "Technically we shouldn't be discussing it in public, but I really want to find out everything that ZipZing remembers before she forgets or has time to sleep on it."

"I don't really know anything though, I just suspected that he might be a copy of the merchant somehow when he was able to give Kit her quest item," Danika protested.

"Think ZipZing," Silvam demanded, "you have to know more than that?"

"Just ask the traveling merchant when you can start work again," Danika suggested unhappily. "He still remembers that he was married before, so he probably remembers the baby too. He's the one who said that the baby fulfilled the quest using his own resources."

"See, I knew you knew more!" Silvam replied triumphantly. "I love," she began.

Ais.h.i.+n asked dryly from where he'd just appeared beside ZipZing, "Am I interrupting a moment?"

Danika laughed, while Silvam flipped Ais.h.i.+n off, and zipped straight toward Ais.h.i.+n's chest. He fumbled the emote that he used to hold his hands up for her to sit on, and dropped the health potion that he'd automatically withdrawn, to restore the ¾ loss after using his teleport to mark.

Ais.h.i.+n flashed a frown as ZipZing cuddled into his hands and closed her eyes.

Silvam continued, "I meant I love how ZipZing is always at the center of things when they get weird."

"I guess I can't argue that? What's going on?" Ais.h.i.+n asked worriedly.

Shrubbery spoke up, "Silvam is actually Lin Hao, and is trying to find out what ZipZing knows about the baby before she forgets the details."

"I don't know anything else though," Danika protested, but she sat up again and turned to look at Silvam.

"You do though, you know what you asked that made the merchant evaluate his son," Silvam pointed out briskly. "And what do you mean by saying that he remembers that he was married? I thought the marriage was dissolved normally so he should remember everything, but have his relations.h.i.+p with her inverted."

Danika sat on Ais.h.i.+n's hands, wrinkled her nose and thought, while Shrubbery asked worriedly, "What do you mean when you say his relations.h.i.+p with Kit will be inverted?"

"Most marriages are dissolved when the relations.h.i.+p has gone neutral, but if you dissolve a marriage when the NPC still loves you, they'll hate you for awhile," Silvam explained patiently.

"I don't think I asked him anything," Danika said finally. "I think he said that the baby used his own resources after Kit said that he might have pulled the item out of his father's pocket. But all that should be in the visual log, because our heart rates were definitely high."

"I can't look at the log until I can log into my work account," Silvam complained.

"You probably shouldn't be trying to figure out what happened while you're too sick to work either. But when you're back, can't you at least restore the marriage?" Danika questioned plaintively.

"I should have insisted on dissolving it in the first place," Silvam protested. She surveyed ZipZing and Shrubbery's unhappy faces and sighed. "I know she's probably crying again, but isn't it worse if I try to restore it and have to dissolve it again later? I think it's better to let her move on…"

"That's probably true," Ais.h.i.+n agreed, "if you'd really have to dissolve it later. Why can't she keep it?"

"Because he's linked to so much of the underlying system," Danika answered bitterly. "I do understand why it's potentially troublesome, I just feel horrible for making Kit lose everything."

Silvam gazed at her with astonishment, and Ais.h.i.+n petted her for a moment. "It sounded like something that really needed fixed," Ais.h.i.+n said hesitantly.

"It was!" Silvam agreed immediately. "It's not your fault ZipZing."

"It kind of is," Shrubbery argued before Danika could. She looked at ZipZing guiltily and explained, "I know that you were trying to fix the game, but you could have waited until someone else noticed and reported it? I mean, you never reported the snow leopard did you?"

"Yes she did," Silvam protested. "And I'm still monitoring and untangling that."

"Josh said that all your projects are sending that guy error messages, and that's why he's under so much stress that he messed up," Danika added glumly.

"What?" Silvam said blankly. Then she said a short string of unladylike curses and said, "I need that doctor to give me the release!". A moment later she logged off.

They all gazed at the spot where she'd been standing for a long moment. Finally Danika turned to Ais.h.i.+n and said, "Not that I'm not really glad to see you tonight, but didn't you say you wouldn't have time to play?"

"Yeah, but Logical Heart messaged me that my new stone would finally be completed, so I bought half an hour of data to come see it while we're still on the train," Ais.h.i.+n replied. He sweated nervously in the brief expression of another emote and said, "I should have offered to do that if you just wanted to see me."

Danika stuck her tongue out at him, and Shrubbery giggled nervously. "I wouldn't have asked you to spend that much just for this," she said rea.s.suringly.

Ais.h.i.+n winced and said, "That makes it sound even worse."

"Of course not," Danika said sweetly. "It just means you have to give us the full tour too when it arrives. After all, an enchanted s.p.a.ce so amazing that you are willing to buy the time to come see it right away…" She was teasing him a little meanly, but she was actually really relieved to have the distraction.

Ais.h.i.+n flashed a grin at her.