Kingdom Hearts fic: Use of Resources

[mistressofmuses]

Summary: No one really understands the key masters, and how they do what they can do. Everyone interacts with Builds, the customizable Virtual Reality overlays responsible for most of the sensory input that people receive, from the furnishings of an apartment, to experiential entertainment. But for the key masters, it's different; they have the ability to create Builds entirely in their own minds, and even to alter the Builds around them.
Kairi agrees to answer a researcher's questions about her and her partners' abilities. But they are not interested in being anyone's experiment.

Day 22 of AU-gust: Futuristic AU.
This is actually an opening chapter (roughly) for an otherwise unwritten Cyberpunk AU that I started thinking about way back when KH2 had just come out, and revisited after Days (and a couple more times on and off when inspiration strikes, haha). This is one that I don't want to say I'll *never* write, because I actually still think it would be fun to... but I used a lot of the themes and plot elements I'd originally intended for the Cyberpunk AU in my Superhero fic Potentials. I also feel like there'd be a lot of thematically relevant information in BBS and DDD, which I never had an opportunity to play, so it's on a nebulous hold for that reason as well.

---

“What do you know about Builds?” Kairi asked. She kept her expression neutral, and watched the man’s reactions.

It was subtle, but Xehanort still telegraphed his annoyance at the question. A small turn down at the corners of his mouth, a narrowing between his eyebrows. But he did answer.

“We interact with builds almost constantly. They are the part of the datascape that overlays the world, creating most of what we see in our homes and public spaces. VR Builds allow us to experience things in three dimensions even as we remain stationary, expanding the variety of recreation and entertainment available to us. This”—he gestured at the beach around them—“is clearly a VR Build.”

“Clearly,” she agreed. “We don’t actually have a small island in our apartment, it’s true. So you understand Builds in the most basic sense; they’re what gives the probably blank walls of your apartment an attractive overlay, nice lighting, and a view of whatever you want to see out your window. And how do you interact with them?”

This time Xehanort let out a small sigh, and his tone was more clipped. “With your senses. They provide sensory information to your brain, which it interprets in the way the Build intends. Your walls become yellow, your view changes from a mountain range to a nebula, the restaurant’s tables appear to be made of polished hardwood. Our bodies remain stationary while we experience walking along a beach. What are you getting at?”

“I mean, how does the Build know what sensory information to provide?” This time she answered for him. “Generally there’s an interface. So, as you said, you can change the view from your apartment from a mountain to a nebula, or change your walls and furniture from a rustic rough-hewn theme to something out of the European Renaissance. But you use the Build’s interface to tell it what you want it to show you. Someone programmed the Build’s capabilities, and you customize them to your liking.

“There are some high-end Builds being tested that will react to unconscious commands. They analyze your body chemistry and neural activity in order to make changes: cheery themes to compliment good moods, an ocean view and scents of lavender to combat stress, things like that. But even those will be pre-programmed and merely attuned to the primary user, so it still requires some level of manual input and interface.”

“Miss Kairi, I appreciate that you were willing to speak to me about the questions I have,” he said, though his tone was decidedly not appreciative. “But I am not interested in a lesson regarding the basics of the datascape. I am here to learn about—”

She cut him off, and let her own voice cool. “You’re here because you work in my father’s lab. As a scientist, I hoped you would understand the necessity of a basic understanding of your subject.”

He was certainly dressed the part of the lab researcher, the pristine white lab coat starkly out of place on the sunny island beach they seemed to be standing on. Sora could have Built him something more fitting for the scene, but none of them were especially thrilled that he was here.

There was a moment of silence, other than the gentle hush of the waves lapping at the shore.

His lips pressed together in a thin line as he choked out, “Of course. My apologies.”

Kairi nodded curtly. “I know you’re here to learn about the key masters. I also know that I can’t give you any concrete answers as to how or why we do what we do; it simply comes down to ‘we can.’ I know that you were warned of that. We can show you the ‘what.’ If you can draw more conclusions from that to aid in your research, then you have our blessing.”

He gave one sharp nod.

She continued, “The main difference is what Builds are to us. That’s why I was talking about the interface before. You understand that is how Builds are controlled, yes?”

“Yes.”

“For us, there is no interface.”

“I’m not certain that I understand what you mean.”

“For us, we control and alter the Build simply by telling it to do so. No interface. No programming. We do not have some infinitely complex series of signals to make it do what we ask. We ask; it responds.”

To illustrate her point, she waved a hand out at the water, and the gentle motion of the waves changed, a huge tidal wave rising up. She gestured again, and it died down before crashing to the shore. She glanced down at the sand by their feet, and the entire beach was replaced with seashells. Xehanort stumbled a little as the more forgiving footing vanished. Smiling, she changed the salt water to orange juice, the bright citrus scent unmistakable. Then she shrugged, and the beach and seawater were back.

Xehanort recovered his composure quickly and cleared his throat. “Very interesting indeed. However, not conclusive evidence of your claims. It’s possible you could in fact have a system of signals that the Build is programmed to respond to. Or one of your… friends… could be controlling it remotely.”

Her mouth quirked up in amusement as he stumbled over what to call Riku and Sora. She could almost hear the air quotes.

“Sora and Riku are in the Build too,” she said. “Over there.” She gestured to a small hut at one end of the beach, which led up to a wooden bridge out to a smaller island. And indeed, the two young men were sitting together on the horizontal trunk of a crooked palm tree.

“I do understand your skepticism,” she said. “Would you like to ask me to perform feats to your specifications? Surely you don’t believe we have secretly programmed a Build with truly every variation imaginable?”

He took her up on her offer, writing each thing he wanted on his clipboard, so there was no chance that the Build was reacting to spoken directions.

She turned the sky black, then turquoise, then candy-striped; she summoned a swarm of bees, before turning them to moths; she created a double of Xehanort himself; she gave the double an elaborate suit of armor, then crumbled it to sand; she brought the apparent temperature down to a winter chill; she gave their shadows personified shapes, allowing them to move independently before returning everything to normal.

At the end, he actually looked surprised. “If you have a system of fakery, it is truly an impressive one. I can’t imagine how a confederate could react and program so quickly.”

She smiled.

Now he actually sounded interested. “What do these modifications do to the programming? Does it change the Build’s code? Does the Build rewrite its own program?”

She shrugged. “We’ve tested it, as much as we can. If we’re in a pre-existing Build, like a restaurant, our modifications do alter the programming of the Build, and could be found by someone analyzing the program itself. Unless or until we tell the Build to remove our changes, at which point they will no longer be discernable in the code.” She allowed a little pride to creep into her voice. “And we have altered extant Builds in ways they weren’t designed to allow.”

“Really? That’s fascinating. You can alter a Build you didn’t originate…” he trailed off, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. Then he fixed her with a sharp look. “You mentioned ‘pre-existing’ or ‘extant’ Builds. Am I to infer a Build of your own creation is yet different?”

Her smile grew wider. “Very perceptive.”

The downward turn of his mouth returned. He didn’t seem to like that she refused to cede authority to him. She enjoyed that, a bit. But she continued without making him prompt her. “Our Builds are unique, but that is the part that we can’t explain. There is no interface at all. There is no program. These Builds are entirely mental.”

He stared at her. “Impossible.”

She kept her expression pleasantly neutral.

“A mental Build? But there has to be a program.”

“I suppose there is.” She shrugged. “It’s just in our heads, rather than a computer. And there are admittedly restrictions we’ve encountered. The space must be ready for a Build, for one. We can’t make our island seem real in the middle of a crowded store; the Build already in place interferes.”

“So this entire island exists only… in your mind?” He actually looked concerned, glancing side to side around them.

She shook her head. “Well, no.”

Before he could interrupt, probably to accuse her of misleading him, she gave a guileless smile. “It exists almost entirely in Sora’s head. This is his Build.”

Xehanort frowned. “But you made alterations. Was that a lie? He was actually doing so?”

“I already told you I can’t fully explain why or how. We interact with and alter each others’ Builds. Maybe they’re in a shared consciousness of some kind. A… wetware network. But they remain mostly under the control of whoever Built it in the first place.”

Xehanort was silent for a moment, before letting out an almost defeated sounding, “How?” Another moment and he continued, “How did you discover any of this? How did you realize what you were capable of?”

“Trial and error. Practice. We pushed and tested each other. There is no manual, no three-week mastery course, no tutorial website. We’ve figured it out for ourselves, as I imagine anyone who discovered they had this gift would do.”

“Tested? How?”

“We test the coherency of each others’ Builds. The detail work. We push the limits so that an errant thought doesn’t create something we didn’t intend. The island has improved drastically since Sora first conceived of it. The water, the sand, the breeze: they’re all constant and consistent, unless we consciously choose to alter it. Space connects in logical, coherent ways. If I pick up a coconut from under one of the trees and place it by the boat dock, it will stay by the dock. It’s infinitely complex, and getting more so all the time.”

“This kind of thing… it could alter everything we know about the human brain! And yet you’re using it for— for— a vacation spot.” Scorn dripped from the words.

Kairi cooled her tone back down, showing equal contempt. “We have no interest in having anyone else capitalizing on our abilities. There are other key masters out there, I’m sure. Maybe some of them are happy to be studied, or have their decisions guided by someone who believes they know what the most proper use of the ability would be. We use this ability in our jobs, in our daily lives, and we are constantly getting better at what we do.”

Xehanort blinked dazedly as the island vanished completely between one second and the next, leaving them surrounded by the plain white of an interior apartment room.

“Our interview is over. Perhaps you’ll be granted another, but I wouldn’t count on it. I think I’ve satisfied my father’s request. I’ll show you out.”

---

Kairi returned to the island as soon as the door had shut behind Xehanort. She stepped back into the Build, arriving on the smaller island with the paopu tree.

The tree was something silly from a fairytale that Sora recalled, but he’d wanted to add it to his Build. She adored it.

They all had more than one Build they’d created, but each of them had the one that was really theirs, with the greatest amount of detail and personal emotion invested in it. The island was Sora’s.

Kairi’s was a library, with a maze of shelves spread over two floors, and marvelous stained glass windows.

Riku’s was an impossible landscape that defied conventional physics, with areas of inverted gravity, and warped space that allowed doors to lead to areas they shouldn’t. He was a showoff, that way.

Sora looked over his shoulder and smiled at her as she approached. “I see you kicked the scientist.”

“He was an asshole,” she said.

“We know,” Riku agreed. “We were eavesdropping.”

Kairi smiled. She’d assumed as much; Sora could control anything in his Build, including how sound carried. “I wouldn’t have even spoken to him if my father hadn’t asked me to. For a researcher, he wasn’t especially interested in observing.”

“Forget about him,” Sora said.

Kairi hopped up onto the trunk of the tree beside them and looked over the waves. The breeze ruffled her hair, and she sighed. It was peaceful and relaxing. She wasn’t sure that any place like this existed anymore outside of a Build, but she certainly loved it.

She tried to let it ease the tension away, but Xehanort’s dismissive attitude had bothered her.

The complexity of something like this was staggering in a way she struggled to articulate. Every single detail, the underside of every leaf, every shell on the beach, the texture of the paopu tree and how it differed from the wood of the dock, the steady waves that were each distinct instead of repeating on a loop… all of it had to be held in Sora’s mind at every second. And he managed it effortlessly.

The same went for the books in her library, which she kept in consistent places on the shelves, each filled with unique, readable text. Or the broken physics of Riku’s landscape, which nevertheless played by its own consistent internal rules that he created and maintained.

Implying that these things were a simplistic use of their gifts was frustrating.

Not that she expected anyone else to truly get it. They understood each other and that was part of why they were so close. No one else could know what it was like, having a world like that inside your head. No one else knew what it was like to have the ability to alter the Builds that everyone lived their lives in, and to do so as automatically as breathing. To have to learn to rein it in to avoid upsetting other people.

So even if this had been a purely fanciful use of the gift, what did it matter?

“All right!” Sora announced, jumping down from his seat. He spun around and grabbed Kairi’s hands, pulling her gently down. “No more brooding about jerks. Let’s have fun, okay?”

She laughed, her annoyance dissolving away. Sora kept hold of one of her hands, and reached the other out to Riku. When he took it, Sora pulled them both along behind him as he ran down to the lower beach.

He dragged them into the waves, where he started a splash fight, and then a race, and then a contest diving for shells. Finally, they were all exhausted, the physical exertion quite real, despite the illusory nature of the setting.

They sprawled in a pile on the soft sand of the beach, Sora pillowing his head on Riku’s stomach, Kairi resting hers on Riku’s shoulder. With nothing more than a thought, Sora turned the afternoon into a spectacular sunset, fading into a clear evening.

The three watched as the sky turned from brilliant red and orange to a deep indigo, pricked with silver stars. Perhaps it wasn’t as amazing for Sora, since he was the one actually creating it. Then again, maybe it was, because he was creating it for them. They all did things like that when it was within their power, and knowing she could do something that delighted the other two always delighted her in turn.

And whatever anyone else said, that was the most worthwhile use of these abilities that she could imagine.