I guess the laptops were a good investment. Sure, I use mine enough, but Tsu'na has really taken to hers. She researches words, concepts, recipes, culture, chemical composition, and I don't know what-all else. Sometimes she's glued to it reading books or comics. I have yet to introduce her to social media; no idea how it'll color her reality.

She said she wanted agency...or at least she agreed with my use of the word. I want her to have it. I want her to be able to be her own person in this world. Not that I ever want to live without her, but I also don't want her to be some sort of sidekick who only knows to follow my lead. We're good together, and the more each of us is the more there is of us together.

And it means life is more full of surprises. And surprise is good, right? Keeps things fresh and all.

So we were in the workshop, with her on her laptop and me working on the ultralight controller, when I got a surprise.

"Do you understand computers, Husband?"

"Yeah, I've worked with them for a long time."

"I want to know how they are different. The computer at the library and the computer in Tulsa where we played the game look different from my laptop, but the things on the screen are similar. What is the difference between them?"

"Well, the Tulsa machine is bigger and more powerful, so it can run bigger things and run them better. The library computer is bigger than your laptop, but it's probably older and can't do as much."

"I do not understand. If it is bigger, can you not put more things inside of it?"

"Yes and no. The bigness of a computer is determined by the mechanical parts in it. All things being equal, bigger parts might hold more than smaller parts, but if a smaller part is that much better it might hold more than a bigger part. And newer parts tend to be both better and smaller than older parts."

She blinked at me. It's been a while since I had to explain this stuff to anyone.

"Okay, a computer is kind of like a brain. Stuff you use in it, like Chrome and Notepad and FF14, are like knowledge that goes into the brain. The mechanical parts in the physical box are what make up the brain. A brain doesn't have to be physically bigger to hold more knowledge if it's...just that much better of a brain."

That started to click for her. "And the library computer is not as good a brain as my laptop. Even though it is bigger."

"Right. And the Tulsa computer is a much better one. And some of that does come from its size."

"And the game is knowledge that is in the Tulsa computer but not in mine?"

"Correct. Chrome and Notepad and FF14 are all programs, which are things that tell a computer what to do. You can add programs to a computer."

"Could the game be added to my computer?"

"Eh...it's pretty big. These laptops were cheap. I don't know if FF14 would fit on them, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't run well." Things started to click for me too. "Why do you ask?"

She looked away from me.

"You want to play the game. Final Fantasy Fourteen."

"...Yes."

"The game you told me not to play."

"...Yes."

She had a look I've come to think of as her "we need to talk" face.

"You've been playing the game."

"...Yes."

"In Tulsa. You've been taking the bus out to Tulsa to play."

"Yes. That is why I want to use my laptop."

She still wasn't looking at me. I set down my tools, went around the workbench and put my arms around her. She rested her head against my chest.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"There are things you do not tell me."

"Yeah, for testing things and not biasing you. Not because of...what, embarrassment?"

"Embarrassment, yes."

I stroked her ear with my thumb. "We're in this together, my love. If it's something we have to deal with, we deal with it together. If it's something we can laugh about, we laugh about it together."

"I was so upset with you about the game. Now I am playing it."

"Yes, my love. Isn't it funny?"

I felt her chuckle. "So can we buy a computer that would run the game?"

"Well, I haven't looked into hardware prices for a while, but I suspect a decent machine with a good screen and a supportive chair would run about fifteen hundred dollars."

"We do not have fifteen hundred dollars."

"No, we don't. Maybe after some more pig culling. Wish you'd mentioned this before we bought the engine."

"You wanted the engine."

"I want my wife happy. So how far have you gotten?'

"Rika has met Thancred and has fought an ascian. I thought she would meet Y'shtola."

"Y'shtola's in La Noscea. Yda and Papalymo are in the Shroud. If you start in Thanalan you get Thancred."

She pulled back to peer at me. "But Papalymo..."

"Everyone gets their own storyline. From the beginning."

"...Yes. Of course. Everyone saves the world. As we did."

I suppose I hesitated. She studied me. I guess I have a "there's something I'm not telling you" look.

"There is something you are not telling me."

"Well...technically no one saves the world in the game."

"The primals, the Garlean invasion, the calamity...these things do not happen?"

"Oh, they do, yeah, but people have quests to stop them."

"And once they do the quest the world is saved, yes?"

"Yeah, but, see...you've got a primal that's about to be summoned and cause death and havoc and suck all the life out of the land, and you've got a quest to keep that from happening. And if you do the quest it doesn't happen. But it also doesn't happen before you do the quest. So, if you never do the quest, it doesn't happen. So, technically no one saves the world because the world was never going to end."

Tsu'na blinked slowly as she absorbed this. "What does happen, then? If one does not do the quest?"

"The story doesn't progress. The world stays the same. You don't get the cheers and adulation you'd get from having vanquished your foe."

"So...if I do not do the quest...if I simply do something else, like..."

"Class quests, fishing, relic weapons, airship construction?"

"...Yes, if I stop to do those things, then...the ending of the world will wait for me?"

"Pretty much, yeah. I've done it in other games, focused on doing everything but the main story questline to experience it all. Often makes me stronger for saving the world."

She nodded. "I will think about this..." She gave me a rueful smile. "...the next time I am in Tulsa."

"Cool. Let me know how it goes." I left her to her laptop and went back to work on the controller.

I thought I had dodged a bullet. There was a conversation we probably should have had in Eorzea that we never did, and it looked like we wouldn't be having it right then either, not before I thought we were ready to. Because she hadn't made the connection.

"Husband."

"Yes, my love."

"What about in Eorzea?"

Or maybe she had.

"What about it?"

"We had quests in Eorzea to prevent those disasters. Had we not done those quests, would the disasters never have happened?"

"It's...possible."

"You never said this to me in Eorzea."

"...I mean, it was just a theory. We're talking about potentially catastrophic events. I couldn't afford to be wrong."

"Yet when Krile told us our friends were still trapped in Norvrandt you were so confident that freeing them could wait while we did other things."

"I...wanted us to be better prepared to help them."

"By mining in the Diadem? To earn pets?"

I didn't have an intelligent response to that. She glared at me.

"You knew what would happen. Because you had played the game."

"I didn't know it would all be exactly the same. Plus I never finished the post-Shadowbringers content."

"The...?"

"The stuff that happened after the final fight in The Tempest."

"Yet you had a theory. That the primals would never ruin the land. That the Garleans would never conquer Eorzea. That the final calamity would not happen."

"...I had that theory, yes."

"Then why did we do all that fighting???"

I sighed. "To further the story. To fulfill destiny. To bring the world from a point where a disaster could happen to a point where the disaster was passed."

"People died when we furthered that story!"

There was a line from Sherlock that came to mind: That's what people do. I didn't think that would help this conversation.

"Yes they did. And they wouldn't have if we didn't further the story. Except it's more that they wouldn't have died yet. The story was fate. It was going to happen. Because if it didn't, nothing else new would happen either. Ever. Would you want that?"

She blinked a couple times as she stared at me. "I...do not know."

"People died in Ishgard. But the war ended. People died in The Peaks. But the battle was won."

"Could we not have saved them?"

"Can you think of a point where we could have?"

She studied me. "You are saying they would have done the same things, that they would have been in the same places. Because it was fate. Because it was...the story."

"For each of us, yeah. That's what I think."

"Did you ever try to change the story?"

"Sure. Remember all those times I tried talking to Cid and Nero? I was hoping I could engage them as scientists and try to figure the world out."

"They did not seem to want to talk to you."

"Yeah, I could never break them out of their scripting."

"Their scripting. You mean what the story told them to say. What they were fated to say."

"...Yeah."

"You called them NPCs. Non-prolific conversationalists."

She remembered that. "That's not actually what it stands for. It stands for non-player character. Your character in the game...you said her name was Rika? She's a player character, she's controlled by you. Any character who isn't controlled by a player is a non-player character."

"They are part of the game. The story. The...program."

"Right."

"And part of my world. Which is a story."

"That's...what it seemed like, yeah."

"How could I not know this?"

"Well, you had nothing to compare it to. You had no reason to think things could be different from what they were."

"Until you arrived."

On the one hand I had discovered her world. On the other, I had changed it. Or I was changing it here while talking with her.

"And this world?" she asked. "Does it have a story?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"So people are not fated to actions? Disasters and calamities are not part of stories that cannot be changed?"

"As far as I know."

"Will disasters and calamities wait for quests to be completed before happening?"

"I don't think so, no."

She studied me for a long moment. Then she closed her laptop and stowed it. "I will gather corn."

"Corn?"

"The greenhouse we talked about will need a lot of plastic. I will gather a lot of corn."

"You okay?"

"I will tell you after I think."

She left without looking at me. She was gone all afternoon and through dinner time. Since it's the middle of the week I could handle the diner by myself. After I closed up I checked her position in the journal map; she was out at the corn node, not moving. She'd said she needed time, and I knew she could take care of herself, so I let her be.

Maybe I should have gone with her and been supportive at her. We didn't have existential crises like this in Eorzea; her reaction to it and my response to said reaction are new territory for us.

I think I just heard her come in. Guess we'll blaze a trail or something.