Chapter 391: 34: Age of Questions

"I don't know if boring is the correct description, but I still can't see anything," Jade complained.

Danika was puzzled. She examined the screen displaying Jade's character and his immediate surroundings again. "It looks normal to me," she told him. "What do you want to see?" 

Lin Hao and the others became curious enough to move over and look after Jade explained, "I can only see the mobile interface. I can give my character simple instructions, and see the responses to those, but I can't see any of the surroundings that should be there. I can't see the Empire." 

Danika turned and asked Lin Hao, "Do you think that there's a problem with the connections? Like the app is displaying the scene for us, but is showing him a blank screen?"

"That shouldn't be possible," Lin Hao objected. "He is basically the one creating these images for us from what the app sends out. If he couldn't process that, then we couldn't see anything."

"I am receiving what the app sends," Jade confirmed. "But I can't see the Empire through it." 

Lin Hao asked Jade a series of questions about the image on his screen, and had him take various actions and report the responses to those as he understood them. Jade could obviously understand all of the text, and use all of the menu controls with none of the coordination errors that humans occasionally experienced. However, he couldn't seem to target anything with an attack that wasn't available through the auto targeting.

Danika thought about the way that her assistant dragon could only perform a simple series of actions in the mobile version for her on its own. There was also the way it had complained that it couldn't see through her camera, even though it had access. 

"Can Jade interpret flat pictures apart from food?" she asked suddenly. The traveling merchant and other NPCs gave out maps, but she couldn't remember a single time that one had interpreted a player drawn map. 

"Of course he can, otherwise he couldn't even read the dialogue, right?" Paul responded first.

Lin Hao, on the other hand, hesitated for a long time before responding.  

Jade volunteered, "I can access the food identification system that assistants can use with their app, and can also interpret a wide variety of handwriting from flat images." 

"Can you point to one of the trees showing on your game screen?" Danika asked him. 

"There are trees?" Jade asked with interest. "You can see them?" 

"Yeah," Danika affirmed. 

"He never needed to," Lin Hao said suddenly. 

"NPCs can create paintings and tapestries," Devon objected.

"Yes, flat images are presented to players all the time," Lin Hao agreed. "Jade, create a high quality painting showing five random trees, and a low quality sketch of the same kinds of trees," he instructed. 

Jade held out a pretty painting with five different kinds of trees, and a sketch of rough trees awkwardly spaced, an instant later. 

"Can you point to one of the trees?" Lin Hao questioned. 

Jade went still for a long time, finally he pointed to one of the trees on the sketch. "That must be one of the trees, since it is not a recognizable letter and there are five unrecognizable letters on this image where there should be five trees." 

"You're not sure? But you just created the images!" Paul objected.

Danika suggested, "But he didn't really did he? He just entered the requested item list into some kind of painting calculator didn't he?" 

"Yes, that describes the process pretty well," Lin Hao agreed. 

"I feel guilty for helping create a world in which I can see, while never realizing that the game itself was actually blind," Devon murmured. 

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"How is that even possible?" Paul asked doubtfully. "If the game can create images for so many kinds of devices, how can it not be able to interpret images?" 

"Everything visual is output. It's like you're asking why the sun can't see light," Devon explained after glancing at Lin Hao's conflicted expression. 

Danika grinned at that, and Paul complained, "It's not that funny." 

"Isn't it?" she asked without remorse. "Now that he's no longer the sun, he needs to learn to see." 

Even Takahashi didn't seem to understand. "No longer the sun?" he questioned. 

"It's one of those euphemisms for Emperor right?" Danika asked. When she had to explain it, it didn't sound as funny, and she started to get nervous. 

"Ha!" Devon gave a short laugh and shook his head. 

Lin Hao also shook his head and said, "No, he doesn't need to learn to see."

Jade looked at him with such disappointment that Danika was actually a little amazed. Jade really portrayed a wide range of emotions, and seemed to actually have desires of his own, compared to the Jade Emperor and the Traveling Merchant. 

"What if…" Jade began.

"If we don't succeed in keeping this server, it won't matter if you can see images," Lin Hao told him firmly. "And if we do, there will be plenty of time to try to figure out how on Earth to let you see things like a human does."

"Hey, if Jade can play the game this well without being able to see, does that mean that even blind people can play?" Dalma asked suddenly.

Danika couldn't help it, she glanced at Devon Yu. He grinned back at her and then told Dalma, "Unfortunately, only in VR. We really tried to make the mobile and console games as accessible to as many people as possible, but we couldn't manage that one." 

"What about people who can't see because that part of their brain doesn't work, instead of their eyes?" Danika asked suddenly.

"Is that how I am?" Jade asked in return.

Devon shook his head regretfully, "In VR they can hear and touch the world we created, but that's all. There are also people whose brains are incompatible with the VR systems. People whose hemispheres are isolated for instance." He looked at Jade and his face brightened as he added, "That is not how you are. You simply need to learn to see, the way a baby does." 

"Babies can see as soon as their eyes open," Paul objected. 

"Really?" Lin Hao asked with amusement. "How do you know? Lee assures me that it takes a couple of years for them to learn enough words to communicate."

Paul hesitated, and Devon laughed and suggested, "We taught our baby to talk very well didn't we?" 

"I am not a baby," Jade complained. "I know more words than any of you."

"Maybe so, but aren't you still only about five years old?" Danika asked with a grin. 

Jade wasn't actually as easy to tease about his age as MatchlessMinion though, because he simply agreed, "Yes." And he didn't seem to be at all offended. 

Danika was tempted to stick her tongue out at him, but decided that it would only prove how childish she could be. Instead, she asked, "Speaking of ages, are there any VR children's games? Should we consider using one of the demo spaces for one?"

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