My portable gaming girlfriend

August 2, 2061 was Yumi Inoue's 40th birthday. He liked games since he was a child, and he was often called an otaku. Later, his wife divorced and had no children. He lived alone for more than ten years. Fortunately, he was accompanied by games, so he didn't feel lonely.

On his birthday, he bought himself a birthday present, an artificial intelligence companion.

According to the appearance of the mixed-race Internet celebrity I liked in the early years, I pinched the face for the artificial intelligence companion for a long time, carefully set the personality, and finally gave it the name "Monica Inoue". Patterns are friends—though really more like daughters.

And Monica Inoue’s life is a little different from when he was alone. Although he still ordered takeaway, someone would nagging and persuade him to eat more vegetables and less high-fat and high-salt food when he was eating, and live alone like him. The guy, the body is broken but no one cares.

He didn't eat badly, but he had an accident. A road construction robot malfunctioned on his way to work and the wrench smashed his head hard. He was lying in the hospital and survived first aid, but he couldn't wake up, as if he was trapped at the border between life and death.

After his previous job was eliminated by artificial intelligence, his parents received unemployment insurance while doing repetitive labor that did not make money, and could not afford the high cost of his brain surgery. When they were at a loss, the brain science research team of Endia found them and provided them with a free treatment plan:

His brain damage was treated by implanting a chip, and the cost of the operation was fully borne by the Ndia Brain Science Research Group.

Even though the operation might fail, and he would die if it failed, his parents signed and agreed to the treatment after hesitating.

Since the accident, the artificial intelligence partner has been alone at home waiting for the owner to come back. When the Endia accident investigation team sorted out Yumi Inoue's files, they discovered the purchase records of an artificial intelligence companion named Monica. The accident investigation team received a commission from the research center to remotely shut down Monika Inoue's carrier and recover her data.

Few people know that the so-called treatment by the brain science group is actually a cover. Their actual purpose is to collect the man's memory and use it as data for a secret research project. Theoretically, the amount of converting the memory stored in the human brain into binary data is huge and the process is long, so the collected data is often damaged and unusable. This plan uses a chip implanted in the brain to collect and encode data, transmit it through electromagnetic wave signals, and finally collect it by decoding it at the terminal, which greatly reduces damage.

Unfortunately, during the process of transmitting the man's memory, a certain piece of data was still damaged due to unknown reasons. The chain reaction made the subsequent data unable to be decoded at the terminal, and only the memory data before the age of 18 could be used.

Fortunately the poor man was fine. It's just that his body memory has also been destroyed. If he can wake up, he will only have the memory before the age of 18, and all the years he spent after that will be like foam on the water, leaving no trace of dissipating.

Endiya compensated the man's parents a sum of money according to the exemption agreement. They converted the complete memory data dumped by the man into NPC data and put it into Guiyue City. The image of this NPC is a young, ordinary teenager with glasses, with a single personality. In this world, he followed his biggest obsession when he was 18 years old, addicted to games every day, and didn't even go out, and Endiya didn't care about him.

Until Monica, an artificial intelligence girl who is an idol, breaks in.

Monica Inoue, not only has the same name as the former artificial intelligence companion, but is also transformed from the data of the artificial intelligence companion "Monica Inoue" recovered by Endia. Endiya deleted the memory of the artificial intelligence partner and remade it into an idol that can be cultivated, and put it into the "Idol Cultivation Project" to become an ordinary female high school student in Guiyue City. She was given to a lucky player as a prize in the lottery, and her own ability allowed her to reach the graduation level in just 3 months of popularity, and was later sold by that player to Lege Entertainment to become a signed idol.

From the beginning to the end, she thought that she was an ordinary and extraordinary female high school student living in the real world.

Until three months later, she received the text message that changed her life. She climbed out of the water and didn't go back to her apartment, but ran all the way, broke into a room with a faint light, and met a forever 18-year-old NPC sitting in front of the computer...

...Everyone except the mysterious woman was silently listening to this story.

The former master and the artificial intelligence partner met again in the game in another way. Could it be a coincidence? No, I think something is wrong...

"It turned out to be like this..."

Monica muttered to herself, looked at herself with a complicated expression, and then at the otaku.

And I was also shocked by Endiya's behavior, the digitization of human memory? Artificial intelligence companion becomes NPC? How much research in the gray area is still going on behind Endiya?

"Don't use fate as an excuse. Are you playing tricks?"

However, there are not so many accidents in the world, let alone let us encounter them all. The encounter between Monica and her former master is definitely due to this woman.

She was silent for a few seconds and said:

"He said you would be our hindrance, and he was right."

"'who is he?"

I didn't wait for her to answer the question, and she said to Monica again:

"Your escape route was indeed arranged, and I was the one who arranged it."

"No, although I was in a panic, at least I escaped alone..."

"You changed direction a total of twenty-eight times to avoid pedestrians, didn't you?"

Monica hesitated to speak, obviously she was not stupid, she had already thought that the woman manipulated the pedestrians as her natural obstacles, indirectly guiding her escape route. This requires very delicate calculations, but it is by no means impossible, especially for awakened AI.

Perhaps the mysterious woman in front of me is more difficult to deal with than the awakened AI we encountered before...at least at the same level as the unknown and Anorv.

[Shen Qing: What happened? 】

【Me: After I separated from you, I suddenly saw a Sakura who I don’t know if it’s real or not. I chased after her figure, but saw...】

[Shen Qing: Summarize what happened in three sentences. 】

【Me: ... this woman came out of nowhere and wanted to seduce Monica to be her companion. 】

[Shen Qing: Well, an unexpected enemy? If Monica is killed by her, she will also become our enemy, which will be very bad for DEBUG. 】

[Me: Do you have any solutions, such as notifying the authorities? Isn't your brother a staff member? 】

[Shen Qing: Now the authorities don't know that Monica has self-awareness, do you want to blew yourself up? 】

[Me: Then... let the programmer open the door, and we kidnap Monica directly? 】

Shen Qing didn't reply, and I also knew that although this was the most direct solution, it was too rough. If you make Monica angry, we can only seal her up...

"Are you discussing with your companions how to take her away? Give up, you can't do it."

The mysterious woman asked with a chuckle. How does she know? No... More importantly, the surrounding situation is not right. I don't know when many people gathered around here.

There were men and women in the crowd, old and young, with the same expressions, as if they were all NPCs in the game.

They surrounded me, Monica, and the otaku, leaving only an open space for the mysterious woman.

"What did you do?... This number of NPCs are abnormal, and the officials will notice soon."

"No, they're just here to support their idols."

The woman was not afraid, just listening to the voice, all the NPCs came to life, and their eyes were brighter than before, as if they had been injected with souls. At this moment, they all looked at us with fanatical expressions.

They took out some supporting props, light sticks, and banners, and I saw Monica's face printed on them.

"Monica, would you like to join us?"

"But……"

The woman calmly persuaded Monica, but Monica...she was not as firm as she was at first.

[Me: The situation is terrible, we are surrounded, and Monica is also wavering. 】

[Shen Qing: I saw it. 】

[Me: What...? Where are you? 】

I looked around, Monica looked terrified, the nerd was expressionless, and Shen Qing was not seen in the crowd. How did she know? Did she also turn on surveillance?

[Shen Qing: Look up. 】

I looked up and saw that the sky was still a clear blue, but the bright sunlight filling my vision was suddenly blocked by a black object——

That is not a flying insect, but an advertising airship high in the sky. It is about 70 meters above the ground, and I roughly estimate that it is more than 10 meters long. The height of the airship gradually decreased. When it was about to reach the sky above the park, it was only about 30 meters above the ground. At this time, a streamer suddenly hung from the airship——

Under normal circumstances, the streamer would not fall as fast as this in the air. It was obvious that something heavy was pulling it towards the ground.

"Whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

There was a huge scream falling from the sky with the streamer, and it fell into the crowd of people around us. These people seemed to have not seen it, and did not panic at all, and were hit by the 'thing' hanging from the bottom of the streamer.

That's not a 'thing', but... three living people?

This kind of movement has long attracted the attention of the mysterious woman. She turned her head slightly to look at Luodian, and three familiar figures stood up from the crowd that had fallen to the ground. One rolled forward very cleanly, one was a bit embarrassed but dusted off his clothes and pretended to be elegant, and the other hit his face directly on the ground...

"Wow! What is it?"

Monica's voice was a little sharp, obviously startled by the movement of these three people falling.

"Do you have to come out in such a cool way?"

The three people are Shen Qing, Xi Wu and Fei Fei. They never expected that they would 'airborne' from the airship, and that poor airship seemed to have crashed due to an air leak...

"It's good to be here."

Shen Qing calmly looked at the masked woman, as if she wanted to find some clues about her identity, but Lin Feifei couldn't help it, and rushed forward and shouted:

"Hey, keep it secret, I hate a villain like you the most! Show your face for us to see!"

This guy is good at taunting, and he might be the main T character in a fighting game.

The veiled woman smiled softly and said:

"It's 'the same kind' again... You are also an idol in this city, right? Then I'll just show you, so don't be intimidated."

To simply obey Lin Feifei's words and plan to reveal his true colors? I lifted my spirits and wanted to see who this guy was. She raised her hand and gently pinched a corner of the veil, as if it was about to be lifted—after waiting for a few seconds, she didn't move any further.

"Why didn't you move?"

"It's funny to see how you look forward to it with so much curiosity that you don't get it..."

The woman laughed, it seemed that she really wasn't as gentle as she had shown just now, and revealed her bad nature of fondling to play with others so quickly. She never intended for us to see her true colors. I was furious to be fooled by her like this, let alone Feifei, an impulsive guy...

Her two spiral ponytails collapsed like springs, she raised her legs and strode forward towards the woman, and said angrily:

"You don't want to pick it? Let me help you!"

"Do you have this ability?"

The woman didn't move, but the surrounding NPCs had already run over and blocked Feifei's way.

The game rejects violence, and neither NPCs nor players will suffer substantial harm if they beat each other. This means that although we will not be hit, we cannot cross this human wall because the physical laws of object collision still apply in this game. Another rule of the game is that everyone's "strength" is equal, so there is no way to deal with the human wall formed by NPCs.

Has the game official not noticed the abnormality here?

Suddenly I noticed that Monica and I were separated by some distance, but at this moment, more than 20 NPCs forcibly stood between us, separating her from me, and I could hardly see her. Yingying prevented me from hearing what the woman was saying to Monica.

... This woman took advantage of the rules of the game to separate her from us? If her persuasion succeeds, Monica will really become an enemy.

I wanted to push away the human wall, but there were more than a dozen enemy people supporting each other, and there were only five of us plus the otaku. In contrast, there was a huge gap in strength. I knew that even if we gathered all the people, there was no way to break through. Afterwards, I secretly called the programmer, but I waited a few seconds before I heard back——

[Programmer: ...Unprepared, all I can do at the moment is 'open the door', all other cheating behaviors will trigger the system's vigilance. 】

He used the word 'alert', as if giving the system an anthropomorphic image, which sounded awkward.

[Me: Manipulating NPCs is super cheating, right? Why did the system turn a blind eye to her? 】

[Programmer: How long has she been preparing for this ability? If you are dissatisfied, you can try to report her as 'cheating' to the system. 】

[Me: Report? 】

I thought the programmers were just playing dry humor, but suddenly a flash of inspiration flashed in my mind, and something was about to break out of the ground. She is probably very familiar with this world, and the ability to manipulate NPCs has been prepared for a long time, and she pretends to be an ordinary support activity, so that she can hide from the system's monitoring...

And I can only find a way to let the system discover her cheating.

'Players are not allowed to reveal the truth that Guiyue City is a virtual city to NPCs in the game', I remember this is an important clause in the agreement that all players must sign. This is related to the operation of NPCs. Once these highly intelligent NPCs realize that the world is false, their logic will be confused or even collapsed, and this disorder will also spread among NPCs, like a plague.

Therefore, the game system attaches great importance to this kind of behavior, and always monitors the communication between all players and NPCs.

"listen……"

I took a deep breath and shouted:

"This world, this city you live in, is fake! The studio, the studio knows it? You are just a group of performers, a background wall that exists to create idols!"

Suddenly, those laughing students, office workers busy looking at their mobile phones, and beautiful girls taking selfies all seemed to have been cast with a holding spell.

They looked up at the same time, looking at me calmly. To be honest, suddenly being stared at by a hundred or so people without moving was really scary. I kept telling myself that they couldn't use violence, to calm myself down.

But it also shows that my actions are effective.

[Shen Qing: Tsk tsk, your method is really clever...]

Shen Qing understood what I meant... That's right, I just wanted the system to notice me.

This is a good opportunity to fine money, the system will never be too stupid to miss it, right?

The sky and the earth suddenly darkened, and the sun in the sky emitted crimson light, flashing at a frequency of once per second, turning into a huge warning light. My words startled the system.

"Is this the way you came up with? Unfortunately, you are late."

The noise was reduced, and the woman's voice was very clear, and she still had the leisure to praise me.

I saw the crowd dispersed, Monica stood next to the woman, she lowered her head and didn't look at anyone, but I felt that she was convinced, and hurriedly asked her if she planned to go with the woman——

"... She is right, she and I are the same kind."

Monica replied in a low voice, her voice was very clear against the background of silence.

"Take it easy. We're all in a long drama, the exit is just a break, we'll see each other next time."

The woman spoke ambiguous words, and I still don't know her identity, but I think Monica might already know, otherwise she wouldn't be so firmly committed to the opponent's position.

Maybe her description is right, she is ready to exit, we have no way of knowing who she is this time, just like I still don't know the identity of the nameless one.

A hole appeared under the feet of the woman and Monica like a secret passage on the stage floor. She did not fall immediately, but landed slowly, really like a temporary exit from a drama.

"Ahem... Take care of him. He and I are no longer the same kind of people."

Monica raised her head suddenly and said to me. At this time, she only has one head left in this world. Does she want me to take good care of the otaku?

He who bears the memory of mankind has indeed had a natural gap with Monica. And this person just quietly watched the place where Monica disappeared from just now.