s.h.i.+nichi would be at Underneath's interview by now, and it might be days before they got to see each other again, but her mood was still bright. The awkward scene with the girls outside the theatre, and her fear that he was about to walk away afterward were like a faint memory. All the hours she'd gotten to spend cuddled against his side since then had rea.s.sured her more deeply than she'd imagined possible.

She looked at the job she'd selected again and smiled. The person who had reported it had probably cried in frustration, but at the moment Danika could only feel amused by the report on the missing Queen of the Night. It had been forwarded to design integration because the tech who had received it first had decided that the questline itself might be broken.

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She called up an instance of the Jade Emperor, since she'd just been waiting for a good excuse to try it. He appeared before her with an amused expression, as though he'd just been waiting for her call.

"Hi," she greeted him with a grin.

"How can I a.s.sist you today?" he inquired cheerfully.

"Can you answer everything from this instance of yourself that you would be able to answer from an instance of the traveling merchant?" she asked curiously.

"Yes, within this s.p.a.ce I am able to reply freely," he agreed.

She asked him laughingly, "Is the Queen of the Night this quest is asking for actually a person?"

She really suspected that it was a plant or an item that was only available at certain times, because the support tech from the third division had recorded a complaint that the quest target was 'unavailable at this time' when it was searched for. It sounded to her like it might be available at other times.

"It is a rare cactus flower that normally only grows in the crook of a tree's branches, and it only blooms at night, about once a year," the Jade Emperor responded obligingly.

That would make it a pretty easy quest for someone like ZipZing or Shrubbery, as long as they could get a seed, but the character who was seeking it didn't seem to have any plant growth skills. Danika thought for a moment. She could just send a reply that the quest wasn't broken, but it seemed like there should be some clever way to help the character out without really changing anything.

"I'd like to be able to give them a bit of a.s.sistance," Danika admitted. "Maybe let them run into someone who can describe what it is that they are really seeking?" she suggested conversationally.

"I could do that," the Emperor agreed.

Danika blinked and then asked, "You can just do that?"

"Of course," he replied. "Offering a bit of a.s.sistance with quests is one of my primary functions."

"Well, yes," she agreed. "You do that when you suggest which NPCs might be helpful and stuff, but can you send someone to them?"

"Yes," the Emperor replied simply.

"Could you always do that?" Danika asked.

He hesitated before answering, but didn't completely freeze. "I have been able to prompt residents to cross paths with players that might find their a.s.sistance helpful since update 0.048," he replied concisely.

Danika stared at him for a moment. She looked at the job that had originated with a bug report and then asked, "Couldn't an NPC have responded to this instead then?"

"Yes," the Emperor agreed, "but all bug reports are directed to celestial servants. If the player had complained to a resident instead, they would have been prompted to consult someone who could a.s.sist them."

--

As soon as Danika had an excuse to summon him again, she summoned the traveling merchant and put the question to him, "Can you answer everything from this instance of yourself that you would be able to answer from an instance of the Jade Emperor?"

The traveling merchant lifted an eyebrow at her but replied the same way, "Yes, within this s.p.a.ce I am able to reply freely from either ident.i.ty."

She thought about that a little more this time. It implied that outside of the celestial work s.p.a.ces he was actually restricted to responses appropriate to each ident.i.ty. She ignored the job for a moment and asked something else, "Are your memories of your days identical between ident.i.ties?"

"Yes, this is the proof that I am the same person isn't it?" the merchant replied logically.

"Yeah," she agreed. She felt surprised somehow, but she couldn't quite pinpoint what was odd. "What changed when you took the ident.i.ty of the Emperor?"

The merchant didn't hesitate, and she suspected that it indicated that someone else had asked already, as he replied calmly, "I optimized a number of my functions and gained direct access to the celestial dragons and their work s.p.a.ces."

"Can you do everything that my a.s.sistant can do now?" she asked curiously.

Her a.s.sistant popped up at the mention of itself and protested, "He can't! He cannot fly!"

The traveling merchant looked amused. "There are many things that your a.s.sistant can do that I cannot, but there are more things that I can do that it cannot," he explained.

"You mean like you can't access my phone through the LJECD app, and it can't create an object in the actual game," Danika suggested.

The traveling merchant nodded, but her a.s.sistant grumbled, "Many objects I have created have gone into the game. Very few of them are rejected."

"Yes, your a.s.sistant is very capable," the traveling merchant agreed, "but it does not have the ability to produce an item outside of the celestial work s.p.a.ces. The creation of objects was one of the keys to containing the empire."

"What on Earth are you doing Danika?" Devon Yu interrupted curiously.

Danika jumped, and spun to look at her department head guiltily.

"We are not on Earth," her a.s.sistant muttered quietly.

Devon Yu blinked at it, and then laughed. "Maybe I should just let you carry on," he remarked, "but I wanted to invite you to join us in brainstorming up a way to make steampunk gnomes less ridiculous."