The Player Blackout

by Lucas Flint

  “Agreed,” said Funky. “But don’t you think we should form a Team before we head any further? That way, we can split the experience and loot from mob battles, as well as have a way to communicate with each other over long distances.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “I’ll form one.”

  I quickly opened my Team menu and sent Funky a request to join Team Winter. As soon as Funky accepted, a few notifications appeared in my vision:

  Congratulations! You have formed your first Team. Although it’s just the two of you right now, you can add up to 98 more players to your Team before you will have to upgrade to a League! Check out the status of your Team under the [TEAM] tab in your menu.

  Hero FunkyFresh94 accepts your Team request! Total members: 2/100.

  Interesting. I checked my Team tab and saw this on the screen:

  NAME: Team Winter [Edit]

  MEMBERS: Winter [Team Leader], FunkyFresh94

  TOTAL MEMBERS: 2/100

  ALIGNMENT: Hero

  TEAM MISSIONS: N/A

  TEAM POWERS: N/A

  TEAM POINTS: 2

  TEAM REPUTATION: Unknown

  Puzzled, I looked at Funky and said, “What’s a Team Power?”

  “Powers that are usable only with a Team,” Funky explained. “Certain Powers are only available to Teams, such as Lightning Storm, which is a Power that requires a lightning-based Hero and a wind-based Hero to use. Group Heal Powers typically also work better in Teams than with Solo players.”

  “It says we have only two members,” I said. I glanced at Cy. “But isn’t Cy part of the Team, too?”

  “Sidekicks don’t count in the Team system,” said Funky, shaking his head. “Only Heroes and Villains can form Teams, although their Sidekicks will get the same benefits from being part of the Team, so it’s not an issue if you’re worried about leveling up Cy.”

  I nodded again. “Okay, that makes sense. And what’s a League?”

  “I’ll explain that later,” said Funky. “For now, we need to keep moving. Dark Kosmos probably knows we killed his spiders. Besides, we have a rendezvous that I don’t want to be late to.”

  “Rendezvous?” I said, looking at Funky curiously. “Exactly who are we meeting with?”

  “You’ll see,” Funky replied. “It isn’t far from here, so let’s keep going. The longer we stay here, the easier it becomes for Dark Kosmos to find us.”

  With that, Funky turned around and walked further down into the Sewers. Cy and I followed, but my thoughts were now on my new Team. I was very interested in learning more about Team mechanics and Powers and how it all worked together. I suspected, although did not know for sure, that Team Powers might be just what we needed in order to defeat Dark Kosmos.

  At the very least, there was probably safety in numbers, and if Funky happened to know some people who could join our Team, then I certainly couldn’t complain about that. Assuming, of course, Dark Kosmos could be defeated at all … which even I wasn’t sure was possible.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The rest of our journey through the Sewers was fairly simple. We did not run into any more of Dark Kosmos’ minions, but we did run into a few Sewer Rats. They weren’t as small as normal rats, however. They were as big as beagles and had teeth and claws as sharp as knives. Luckily, they weren’t very smart or tough, so it was easy to kill the Sewer Rats, which gave us some experience, but not nearly enough to level up. We also got some item drops, mostly bits of money and jewelry that wasn’t useful for anything other than reselling at some point, though I took it anyway so I could get some more money later on.

  Aside from that, however, the journey was uneventful, so I had a lot of time to think about my current predicament once again. My eyes kept drifting to the grayed out ‘HELP’ button at the bottom of my character screen. It was my only connection to the outside world, and now, it was disabled. That meant I couldn’t talk to anyone outside of the game, a fact I knew already, but which seemed to become more and more real with each passing second.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t a big fan of Chuck. But the fact was that Chuck was my only real-world contact. He might have been an annoyingly pedantic government bureaucrat who maybe liked his governmental authority a little too much, but as long as my ‘HELP’ button worked, it allowed me to speak with him. I was now facing the very real possibility that I might never get to speak to Chuck or anyone else outside of the game ever again. And that was a terrifying thought in itself.

  I had no doubt in my mind that Dark Kosmos had no intention of letting any of the players go. Even if every single player in the game, regardless of Alignment, Teamed up to get me and drop me on his front porch with a neat bow on top, Dark Kosmos would probably still keep everyone trapped. Generally speaking, people who talked about ‘punishing’ others for their ‘crimes’ rarely stopped when they said they would. I knew one cop back in the real world who got off on beating up criminals he thought ‘deserved’ it until he went a step too far and ended up losing both his badge and his freedom after beating the wrong person. Dark Kosmos struck me as being the same, despite being an NPC.

  And that was what was weird. How and why did an NPC apparently gain enough self-awareness to tell the difference between players and NPCs? And even worse, how did he realize that locking players into their GamePods was the best way to go about torturing us? True, it didn’t affect me and the other Project Second Life participants (whose identities I still didn’t know), but for the millions and millions of other players in the game, it was a death sentence.

  How was this even possible, anyway? What company would intentionally design a game that someone could get trapped in and potentially die? Granted, this was the first time that anything like this had ever happened as far as I knew, but the mere fact that SI Games programmed their GamePods with this potential was troubling in itself. I wondered if SI Games was less innocent than it first appeared.

  In any case, I knew that the only way we’d find out the truth was by reaching Dark Kosmos and taking him out. Whether he really was as invincible as some people claimed or he could be killed like any other boss, that was our only choice at this point.

  My thoughts were interrupted when Funky came to a stop in front of a nondescript section of the sewer and said, “Wait.”

  Cy and I—who had accidentally walked past Funky when he stopped—stopped and looked over our shoulders at Funky. Funky, however, was not looking at us. He was running his hands along the slimy, dirty sewer walls as if searching for something.

  “What is it?” I asked as Cy and I turned around to face Funky.

  “Looking for the—ah, here it is,” said Funky.

  Funky pressed one of the stones into the wall. An instant later, a portion of the wall swung inward like a door, showing yet another hallway—this one smaller and narrower than the one we were in—leading down into a dark corridor.

  “Come in,” said Funky, stepping aside and gesturing at the open doorway. “We’ll be safe in here.”

  Cy looked at it doubtfully. “What, exactly, is ‘in here’?”

  “This is my Base,” said Funky with a slight hint of irritation in his voice. “Don’t worry about entering. I added your names to the list of allowed visitors, so you should be able to go in without any difficulty. And we should enter quickly. It’s not safe to stand out here in the Sewers for long.”

  I was about to ask why, but then I heard a splash in the water behind me and looked over my shoulder into the wastewater below. I did not see anything in the waters, but I decided that I didn’t want to see whatever had splashed down there, so Cy and I entered the hallway with Funky following behind us. Funky closed the door shut behind us surprisingly quietly, briefly plunging all three of us into absolute darkness before Lennox’s eyes suddenly began glowing like a flashlight and Funky, as usual, took the lead.

  We didn’t have to walk far before we found yet another door, which Funky opened and stepped beyond. I went next and found my eyes blinking furiously, be
cause the lights in here were far brighter than the darkness behind us. It took my eyes a second to adjust to the sudden and abrupt change in lighting, but once they did, I was able to see the room into which we had emerged.

  It was a massive concrete room. Not quite as big as my Base, but a lot more spacious than you’d assume a room in a sewer would be. It was shaped somewhat like a college lecture hall, with a pit in the middle where what looked like an entertainment system, complete with massive hover screen and the latest video game system, stood. Doorways to individual rooms were spaced along the walls at about ten feet intervals, meaning this place was even bigger than I initially thought.

  Even weirder, however, was the disco ball hanging from the ceiling, while purple throw rugs were everywhere, and the entire place smelled faintly of what I was sure was marijuana. Soft jazz music was playing somewhere in the background, while the lights on the ceiling were twinkling slightly. It felt like I’d walked back into an old era, like the 1970s or something, which was practically ancient history at this point.

  “Whoa,” said Cy, looking around at the place. “This place is so cool! Is that a disco ball? Do you like disco?”

  Funky shrugged. “Yeah. They say disco is dead, but personally I think it never died. It was an under-appreciated art form that I still hope will one day make a comeback.”

  “Awesome,” said Cy. He looked at me. “Hey, boss, can we get a disco ball for the Base?”

  “No,” I said flatly. I looked around. “Where is everyone? I thought you said we were going to meet some people.”

  Just as I said that, one of the doors on the other side of the room opened and four very familiar people stepped out of it. I thought I caught a glimpse of a bunch of dinner plates and dishes behind them before the door closed, but I didn’t care because I knew exactly who those four people were and I was really happy to see them.

  “Dillo?” I said. “Recover? What are you guys doing here?”

  Dillo smiled and waved when he saw us. Hop, as usual, just glanced up from her phone before looking down at it again, which I suppose was all the hello we were going to get from her. As for Recover, she also waved, although in a way that reminded me of a politician on the campaign trail, while Brawn just smiled because he held Recover’s medical toolbox in his arms and didn’t have any hands free to wave. In any case, I was pleased to see the blue aura around their nametags, indicating that they wanted to defeat Dark Kosmos as well.

  The seven of us met in the middle of the room, right where the massive entertainment system was. While our Sidekicks all took seats on the sofas and couches set in the middle, I walked up to Dillo and gave him a high five, saying, “It’s great to see you again! Where have you been? I sent you a message after Dark Kosmos appeared, but you didn’t respond.”

  “Sorry about that,” said Dillo with a sheepish smile. “Funky contacted me first and asked me to come down here and wait while he went to get you. Said I didn’t need to respond to your messages.”

  I nodded and looked at Recover. “And why are you here?”

  Recover put her hands on her hips. “Because every Team needs a Healer. Plus, I owe Funky one. We know each other.”

  I glanced at Funky, but he did not elaborate on what she meant. He was busy pushing aside his video game systems and controllers, many of which looked pretty old. It occurred to me that it was possible to play normal video games in Capes Online, which meant you were essentially playing video games in a video game. That was both mind-blowing and mundane at the same time. I couldn’t decide if that was repetitive or really cool.

  Shaking my head, I looked art Dillo and Recover and I said, “Well, you guys might as well join my Team if we’re all going to be taking down Dark Kosmos together. Let me send you guys a couple of invites.”

  I sent Dillo and Recover Team invites, which the two of them accepted immediately. As soon as they did, a notification appeared in my sight:

  [Hero Dillo] and [Hero Recover] have joined your Team! You now have 4 Team Points. Total members: 4/100.

  “Huh?” I said, reading the notification again. “Why did I get Team Points just for you guys joining up?”

  “Because that’s how Teams level up,” said Funky without looking at me. “For every member who joins your Team, you get one Team Point you can use to level up Team Powers. Teams lack levels like individual players do, so this is the only way to make your Team stronger. Each Teammate is essentially a ‘level,’ so you can think of Team Winter as being Level Four at the moment.”

  “I see,” I said. “And what happens if I reach Level One Hundred? It said something about upgrading my Team to a ‘League’ when I first formed the Team.”

  “I’ll explain later,” said Funky again. He turned around to face me, apparently done doing whatever he was doing. “In any case, it looks like everyone is here. That means it’s time to discuss what we’re going to do next.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. I gestured at our glowing blue nametags. “Find Dark Kosmos. Kill him. That’s my simple, two-step plan for success.”

  “Simple is good,” said Cy, who was reclining on a particularly comfy-looking pink sofa. “I like simple. Any plan more complicated than three steps and you’ve lost me.”

  “It’s not going to be that simple,” said Recover, shaking her head. “And not just because Dark Kosmos is really powerful, either. We’re going to have to deal with other players.”

  “I knew that,” I said. “They want me, but as long as we stay in the sewers—”

  “I’m not referring to that,” said Recover. “I’m referring to the fact that some players are actually working for Dark Kosmos now. I saw them on my way here.”

  “Working with Dark Kosmos?” I said. “To do what?”

  Recover looked at me with a serious expression. “They’re kidnapping players … and torturing them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “Torturing players?” I repeated in shock. “You mean other players are torturing their fellow players?”

  “On Dark Kosmos’ orders,” said Recover. She folded her arms, a troubled frown on her face. “When Brawn and I were making our way here, we saw a fairly big Team of players attack and kidnap a relative newbie, a young girl who I didn’t recognize. We overheard them talking about how Dark Kosmos was going to pay ‘well’ for kidnapping her, as well as how they looked forward to hearing her screams once Dark Kosmos started torturing her.”

  A chill went down my spine. “But it’s just a game, right? Surely torture can’t be that bad.”

  “Depends on her pain level,” said Funky, scratching his chin. “If she’s set it high enough, it could be even worse than being tortured in real life.”

  “Pain level?” I repeated. “What do you mean?”

  Recover looked at me as if I was a bit slow. “When you started the game, didn’t it ask you to adjust your pain levels to your preference?”

  Quickly realizing my mistake, I scratched the back of my head and said, “Oh, yeah, uh, I just forgot. I just sort of glanced over that option when I started, though, so maybe one of you guys can explain it to me in detail.”

  “No problem,” said Funky, who did not seem as impatient with me as Recover was. “When you first begin playing Capes Online, you can adjust the Fully Immersive Pain Levels. This ranges from Easy—where you don’t feel pain except in the most extreme circumstances—to Real, where you feel every bit of pain you would feel in real life. For example, Easy means you won’t feel it if you stub your toe on furniture, whereas Real means you not only will feel it, but might even break your toe outright depending on how hard you stubbed it.”

  “Why would you want to feel Real pain?” I said. “Wouldn’t that make Capes Online, well, not fun?”

  “Different Pain Levels allow for different experience gains,” Funky explained. “Easy may mean you won’t feel much pain, but your experience growth will be quite slow. Real, by contrast, gives you maximum experience growth. As you can imagine, most of CO�
��s top players use the Real Pain option to maximize character growth.”

  I stroked my chin. “It still seems a little weird to me. Why would players be allowed to feel Real pain? Wouldn’t that have adverse psychological effects on a person’s mind after a while?”

  “You can only access the Real pain option if you are over 18 and get approval from a doctor and psychologist first,” Funky said quickly. “Some countries even require government approval before you can choose that option. The vast majority of CO players usually set their pain settings to one of the many levels in between Easy and Real. Also, you can’t change your pain settings once you start playing, although you can see your settings on your character screen anytime you want.”

  I quickly opened my character sheet and saw a tab that read ‘PAIN LEVEL.’ Opening it, I saw that my Pain Level was set to ‘REAL,’ which explained why pain felt so, well, real in this game. I wondered if Chuck had set my Pain Level or if it was automatic, because I certainly couldn’t remember setting it myself when I began playing.

  “In any case, Recover, can you tell us more about what you saw?” said Dillo. “Did you recognize any of the players who are working for Dark Kosmos?”

  Recover shook her head. “No, I didn’t. But the Team seemed to be mostly comprised of Villains and their leader was a guy calling himself Atmosfear.”

  “Atmosfear?” I repeated sharply. “Did you say Atmosfear?”

  Recover nodded and looked at me curiously. “Yes, why? Do you know him?”

  “I know his name, but I’ve never seen him myself before,” I said. “Remember when I got poisoned outside of Super Coffee and you healed me? That was due to an Assassin he hired named Miles, who told me that ‘Atmosfear says hi.’”