The Monolith

by Stephen Roark

  Part of me still hung onto the notion—perhaps juvenile and immature, or maybe even completely delusional—that there was a purpose for me out there. Like a superhero before he becomes a superhero. I felt alone, even when I was around other people. But sometimes, on very rare occasions, I was able to convince myself that I was destined for something more. But more often than not, my life felt hopeless, like when you try to run in a dream.

  Life at school was tolerable on its best days, and pure torture on its worst. I knew no matter what I did, I’d never be accepted at South Farron. They all called me a “townie,” a derogatory term that basically encompassed anyone who wasn’t rich enough to pay for private school on their own, and seeing as how my single mother wasn’t a doctor, lawyer or C.E.O., but instead was a waitress who worked double shifts and was rarely home, she wasn’t going to be hobnobbing with the other parents at their fancy dinner parties any time soon.

  Thankfully, she wasn’t home when I got there, which meant she was either at P.J.’s working the afternoon shift, or was starting early at the Old Revival, a diner that constantly played all the worst music from the turn of the century, getting ready for the dinner rush. But that was fine with me. I wasn’t in the mood for any of her faux concern about my life. She had her own problems, like how to find a man that didn’t mind actually dating a working woman with a teenage son.

  I dropped my rain-soaked bag on the entry rug, kicked off my shoes and stepped through the living room. My phone buzzed. It was Rey.

  On my way home. Talk?

  I didn’t bother texting back. I just called. She answered before the first ring ended.

  “Betrayal? What the Hell is going on?” As always, Rey’s outrage had me starting to feel better immediately.

  “My friends defected,” I explained, booting open the door to my room. “Chose the senior douchebags over me.”

  “Ew, seriously?”

  “Guess they got tired of being associated with South Farron’s biggest outcast.”

  “To Hell with them,” Rey scoffed. “Bunch of Judases.”

  “Easy for you to say,” I groaned, thumbing on the switch to my Fount VR device. “You’re not the one who was sitting completely alone at your table at lunch.”

  “I’m sorry,” she replied. And she wasn’t just saying that. Rey’s empathy levels were second to none. It was one of the reasons we’d remained friends for so long. She genuinely cared about me, and vice versa. “But don’t let this stress you out too hard. I don’t want you having another seizure.”

  “I told you, Rey. They’re not psychological. I have epilepsy.”

  “Well, all I know is that when you get stressed out, you seem to have more of them.”

  “Probably because when I’m stressed I forget to take my medication.”

  “Okay, well don’t do that either!” Rey scolded me.

  “Thanks, mom,” I smirked, pretending to be annoyed. Honestly, it was nice to have someone who wasn’t related to me that actually cared about me.

  “Well, screw all that. We’ve got Blood Seekers to play!”

  I managed a smile as the familiar blue glow from the Fount appeared, casting its color across the peeling paint of my off-white ceiling. Video games had been more than a hobby for me since I was little—they were an escape. When Mom and Dad were fighting, I’d lock myself in my room and go questing, or pick up a huge plasma cannon and go blow away some demons as a space marine. Whatever it was, it was better than the alternative: real life.

  “Think it’ll be as hard as they say?” I asked her as I dug my Crown out of a pile of old ranch potato chip bags lying sprawled across my desk.

  “Have you ever known Mizaguchi to lie?”

  “That’s true…”

  Mizaguchi was the mad-genius, Japanese video game developer whose work on AI had driven the entire field ten, maybe twenty years into the future. He’d created the world’s first artificial therapist, Jane, that people could access online as someone to talk to. At first, Jane’s responses were pretty limited. But over time, as Jane became smarter and more self-aware, people began reporting back that their sessions with her were actually life changing. Overnight, Mizaguchi went from being relatively unknown to non-techies and non-gamers, to being a household name. And his work on AI was one of the major reasons we were so excited about Blood Seekers.

  According to Mizaguchi, who already had an impressive list of RPG titles under his belt, Blood Seekers’ NPCs were not simply programmed bots with stock responses and functionality, but were in fact fully sentient artificial intelligence characters with their own pasts, personalities, emotions and goals.

  Once the world was setup and launched, it would continue to change and grow, even without any player interaction. For those of us looking for an escape from the daily grind of our miserable lives, it sounded like a dream come true.

  On top of that, the crazed-genius developer was offering a new type of world for an MMO. This wasn’t your typical expansive world of green filled with goblins and orcs, dragons flying overhead and majestic castles sitting atop triumphant mountains. No, this was something else.

  Mizaguchi’s world was dark, gothic and swollen with all manner of Lovecraftian creatures. Only snippets of the game had been released online, and a few screenshots on the official website, but from I’d seen, I was pumped.

  It seemed to me like a twisted, haunted version of Victorian England. Greys, deep reds, dark purples and blues dominated the color palette. From the images I’d seen, I didn’t recognize a single monster. This was normal for a Mizaguchi game, which always came with an incredibly specific vision that no one had seen before, always dark and dangerous. The games were never easy, which led to a lot of speculation by gamers as to what kind of man Mizaguchi must be to consistently keep creating such tortured worlds.

  But I didn’t care what the reasons were. All I knew was that after playing clone after clone after clone of the typical fantasy MMO with all the same monsters, classes, items and quests, I was ready to dive in to something completely new and do some exploring.

  The list of the game’s features was more like a list of features not included: no global in-game chat, no rigid classes, no safe zones, no battlegrounds, no fast-travel, no NPC guards to help you out when you were about to die, no respec (meaning you could easily gimp your character if you weren’t careful), no build system for players (the world was how it was and you weren’t going to change that), no no-drop items and of course, no hand-holding. I was practically tingling with anticipation, wondering what I would find when I logged in.

  “Want to holo?” Rey asked.

  “One second,” I grunted as I tried to free my Crown’s lead from the knob of one of my drawers. “Lemme set you down a second.”

  I put my phone down on my bed, untwisted the line, shoved a pile of dirty laundry from my mattress and onto the floor and sat back down. I didn’t even have a chance to pick up again before the holo-call came in. A quick fingerprint to my screen was all it took to answer.

  Blue and purple filaments sprang into existence, crisscrossing each other, tendrils of silver and white spinning around them in a circular fashion. Within seconds, I was looking down at Rey’s face, projected in three dimensions from the screen of my phone.

  She had her hair up in a messy bun that I knew she’d just thrown up there after she got home. She wore a slouchy, oversized pink sweatshirt and some kind of silver necklace. Her hazel eyes weren’t on me, though. She was obviously reading something.

  “You will die!” she announced with a smile. “Gee, that’s cheery.”

  “He said Blood Seekers wasn’t for the faint hearted,” I reminded her. “Like the rest of his games.”

  Mizaguchi seemed to relish in creating games that were so hard, they sometimes verged on ridiculous—unbeatable. As such, he quickly built a devoted fan base of hardcore gamers who worshipped his work and utilized it as a sort of aptitude test for those they would accept as friends. Beat a Mizaguchi game a
nd you were in. You had respect. Give up and quit? Forget about being part of the crew. Rey and I were in the former group, and as such, were practically foaming at the mouth when he announced his first MMO. I knew it was a stupid thought, but I couldn’t help but smile when I pictured J.D. or his friends getting completely wrecked when trying their hand at even the easiest of Mizaguchi’s creations.

  Rey kept reading. “Time dilation six-hundred-%, so that’s six times slower in the game, full sensory interaction so you can feel pain in the game, fully sentient NPCs with the world’s foremost artificial intelligence—”

  “We already know this stuff, Rey,” I interrupted. “You just like hearing yourself talk or something?”

  “Skill-based combat,” she continued, raising her voice. “No tab-targeting, fully evadable melee and projectiles, and absolutely no hand-holding—so don’t ask!” Rey smirked, finally turned her eyes to me. “I love how these guys write.”

  “No hand-holding, huh? You surprised by that?” I joked as I set my Crown on my head. “Sure you don’t wanna go play Paula’s Puppy Pound or whatever that stupid game is on your phone?”

  “Deena’s Doggy Daycare?” she replied, correcting me. “First of all, I only play that game on the ride to and from school. And secondly, you keep up that smart talk, and I won’t save your ass when you get in trouble.”

  “All right, Wonder Woman. Can we choose a starter town so we can at least find each other when we get there?”

  I thumbed the holo switch on my Fount and used my index finger to scroll to the online store. There it was, listed under New Releases: Blood Seekers.

  Estimated Download Time, 48 seconds. I felt my mood improve by at least ten-% as I flicked the confirm icon.

  “Choose a start town how?” Rey asked me. “Haven’t you been reading Mizaguchi’s posts on the forum? No hand-holding!”

  “Block lost power last night,” I grumbled. “You can’t even choose a starter city?”

  “He said he wanted to completely change the mechanics of the MMO. I guess that includes the introduction to the world.”

  “So, how do I find you?” I asked. “There’s no tell system or chat interface, right?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “So what, then? I just run around screaming your name?”

  “Friends can party up before entering the game world and that should start us together,” she replied. I could tell she was scrolling through the forums on her end, looking for the post that explained how. “Let me see…”

  My Fount dinged as the download completed. A blue holo-icon pulsed softly.

  Install? I flicked it and watched as the progress bar appeared, moving quickly.

  “Ah! Here it is!” Rey said triumphantly. “Okay, so just invite me into a chat with your Fount, and when we enter the game, we should be close to each other.”

  “You sure?” I asked, opening the chat interface, finding her name and selecting it.

  “It says so right here.”

  “All right then,” I told her. “Accept my invite.”

  She did, and her name appeared next to mine. My progress bar finished and the Fount chimed happily.

  Install Complete.

  “Kay, I’m good to go,” I told her, excitedly eyeing the Initialize button that would yank me out of my miserable world and transport me into the one Mizaguchi had created. I lay back on my bed and glanced at Rey’s holo. She was putting on her Crown.

  “Me too.”

  “All right, girl,” I replied, flashing her a grin. “See you on the other side.”

  “See ya, boy.”

  I hung up the holo, took a deep breath, and hit the button.

  3

  No Hand-Holding

  “I do not like easy games. Satisfaction comes from struggle and success, triumph over great odds and adversity. If that makes my game less accessible, so be it. I make games for those who appreciate them.”

  —from a launch day interview with Kotaro Mizaguchi

  Darkness.

  A cool detachment as my consciousness left my body.

  Somewhere in that darkness, disembodied voices, soft, mostly unintelligible. I caught a word here and there.

  “If he chooses…will…chu…nu…but…this one…ss…ssss….the lady too…” An old hag’s cackle like ice shards dripping from my spine.

  A pearl of light emerged from the shadows before me. No, not quite light—but existence.

  More voices. Like a whispering choir of devils.

  “…interfere…w—w…the research!”

  The sound of something dying slowly.

  “Or completion! No…noooooo…” Fevered anger. A cry from somewhere as existence grew before me like the Big Bang captured in ultra-high resolution slow-mo.

  Pressure on my back.

  My bed back at home?

  No. Something hard. Unforgiving.

  Wood!

  A misshapen floor. I felt splinters and hard edges pressing uncomfortably into my body as the oily darkness parted like a sea above me to reveal a sunken ceiling of warped rafters and rotten beams. A flicker of weak, pale amber light came from somewhere. I pressed my palms against the scarred wood and pushed myself into a seating position and looked around the room.

  I was in some kind of workshop, the purpose of which was completely lost on me. Glass tankards lined one wall from floor to ceiling, filled with a thick blue fluid, in which sat countless fleshy pink globs, suspended as though untouched by gravity.

  Organs! I realized as I looked harder. My stomach turned at the sight, so I shifted my attention to the rest of the room.

  Rows and rows of wooden slab tables lined the opposite wall, covered in a thick red-brown substance, pooling at various places, sometimes still dripping to the floor.

  Blood…

  Tall glass windows lined the wall behind me, allowing streams of chilling moonlight to spill into the awful room, but the glass itself was fogged, caked with some unidentifiable mucilaginous grime, so that it was impossible to see outside. I got to my feet and glanced down at my body.

  My legs were wrapped in simple black trousers that stopped high on my ankle before a pair of tattered brown leather shoes. I was wearing some kind of brown leather vest over a grey shirt with an open neck and frayed ties. I held no weapons of any kind.

  “Huh…” I muttered, my low voice deafeningly loud against the complete silence of the workshop.

  Now, how do I open my inventory?

  There was no obvious interface, and no guide had appeared to explain how things worked to me, so I started with a few hand waves in front of my face. Some games used a gesture system to bring up menus, but nothing I did had any effect. Of course, even if Blood Seekers used such a system, not knowing the specific gestures would be a problem.

  Finally, I glanced to the bottom right hand corner of my vision, and a tiny blue dot appeared. I focused on it, and it quickly expanded and revealed my character sheet. But when I examined it, I only became more confused.

  Unknown Player—Unknown Level.

  There were armor slots. There was bag space. There was a spot for a rune and a necklace, a spot for a main-hand and off-hand weapon, but they were all empty. I didn’t have a single item on me.

  “What the Hell?” I muttered. A golden gesture indicator hung in front of me, indicating a downward swipe with the index and middle finger. I completed the gesture and my character sheet collapsed into itself and vanished into the corner of my vision. “Okay, that’s something…”

  No hand-holding!

  The phrase resonated within me with actual impact as I glanced around, completely lost. The sound of rusted hinges came from behind me, and I turned around to see a set of double doors, one of them swinging at an odd angle.

  I guess that’s where I should go, I thought. After all, there was no other way out of the room—at least not that I could see.

  I moved forward slowly, glancing at the rows of glass jars lining the wall beside me, and grimaced as
my eyes landed on what looked like a brain, a human brain, complete with the top third of a spinal column.

  As I pushed it aside, the door let out a maddening scream like you get when you pull open an ironing board. I paused before stepping into the other room. I felt vulnerable in a way I’d never felt when entering a game. Mizaguchi’s other creations had been challenging, sure, but at least you had a vague idea of what was going on. At that moment, I had no idea. And what was with my character sheet? Unknown Player? Unknown Level? Had I fallen victim to a launch-day glitch?

  Briefly, I debated logging out and holoing Rey, but if she was in game, she wouldn’t be able to answer my call, so I pressed on.

  The door opened into a barren room lit by low rows of candles lining the walls on my left and right. There were so many of them. Hideous pools of wax clung to the floor like dried snot. Struggling flames fought over the remaining wicks that hung like wilted flowers just before winter. I took a single step forward, and that was when I saw it.

  A creature stood at the center of the room with its back to me. It was humanoid, almost a man, but a twisted version of a man, like one drawn with an ink-pen by an artist losing his mind on hallucinogens. I focused on it, and a single line of ashen font appeared in the corner of my vision.

  Failed Experiment—Level 1

  The man swayed like a drunkard, staggered forward and flailed a rusty short sword through the air as though attempting to massacre an invisible foe.

  “Unfit…unfit…unfit…” he muttered. His voice was raspy and strained, as though his larynx had been scraped by steel wool. “Unfit…unfit!”