by Isaac Stone
WOLVES OF THE LOST CITY: A litRPG Novel
Adventure Online Book 2
By Isaac Stone and Timothy Mayer
Copyright 2017 by Isaac Stone
CHAPTER ONE
“I don’t know if I should take the job,” I told Howard.
He was an older man who’d seen a lot of the world, or at least the character he represented had seen a lot. He was also a computer simulation. Wasn't he? I suppose the fact that I'm not sure is a big part of why we're here.
“Your decision,” he told me. “Remember what I told you. If you don’t take it, this whole reality ceases to exist.” He swept his hand across the expanse behind us.
The mountains of Western Pennsylvania never looked as real as they did that very moment. I sat in an abandoned campsite with a man who was the product of a virtual reality simulation that recreated the pulp adventure world of the 1920’s. The air smelled of pine oils and leaves. It astounded me how real the team made this game. It would be hard to tell the difference unless you grew up here and, even then, it would fool you a bit.
Oh, there were things a little off. I saw a zebra stick its head out of the forest and stare at us before it moved on. Yeah, a zebra, proof that the working stiffs coding this game had a sense of humor, as much as it was the sort of thing that could get them fired if their star beta-tester (that's me, believe it or not) talked too much about it.
I was back inside the Wolf Mountain game. I’d agreed to be a tester for a decent amount of money, but I had no idea what I was in for when I entered the VR chamber. The VR system was located in the bowels of Sandstone Gems, the company who built it.
I’d spent days outrunning bootleggers, leading a team of treasure hunters through underground caverns and found victory on top of an abandoned mental asylum. I’d accomplished more in three days inside the VR world than I’d done since leaving college with a useless degree years ago. Ok I'd accomplished more in those three days than my entire life. There. Happy?
There was no way I could ever go back to the job I used to have answering the phone.
And I’d found a wife. Me. Wife. Let that sink in for a minute. The tribal leader of the cave dwellers married me to Chamita the wolf girl whom I didn’t want to leave. She was resourceful, a wild child, and ultimately the ideal woman for me. But she was also a computer simulation and not real. Goddamit.
Now a rival company wanted me to test their VR system for even more money. According to Howard, it was the only way to keep Sandstone Gems, who build the initial VR system, from wiping clean the entire scenario from their systems. They wanted to create another one. Should they do that, I would never be able to see Chamita, Howard, Ted, or Bonnie again. And even if they weren’t real, I couldn’t allow it to happen. This is your life buddy, and you've got just the one, so let's roll with it shall we?
Once again, I was back on the mountain.
Except I was supposed to be home in my apartment outside Philadelphia. I was supposed to consider an offer from the new company, Ruby Realizations. Their head of VR development, Heath Mint, wanted me to come to work for them. So why was I back on the mountain with Howard?
Because I wasn’t sure what constituted reality any longer. That's VR PTSD for ya, or so we have discovered. There are certain risks inherent in being a beta-tester. Apparently.
Ever since I came home from the job, I’d shifted in and out of the game world and I didn’t know why. I’d seen Chamita in the park, although she ran away before I could catch up with her. I still didn’t know if it was Chamita or someone who resembled her. I returned from the park to find a letter from Chamita warning me about the new company. To make her point, she’d left me a box with a blank game logbook, the same kind I’d used while inside the VR world.
“I’m going back, Howard,” I told him. “I have to do this. Back in the real world, I’m an average millienial slacker with no future and no prospects. Here, they gave me a Jeff Chandler body and a wolf girl for a wife. This might not be real, but I can’t let it go.” I turned and watched a wasp fly by us, in search of some prey.
“Who’s Jeff Chandler?” Howard asked me.
"An old school Brendan Fraser type," I said, "Whatever, chisled, strong, you know, manly as hell."
"If you say so..."
At which point everything went black.
I returned to the real world in my bedroom. It wasn’t much of a sleeping quarter, given that I couldn’t afford much in the way of rent. My parents helped me get the place after they retired and moved down to Florida. They even helped me with the bills until I had a steady job. Prospects were never that good for a bachelor’s degree level archaeologist. There weren’t many improvements in the field over the last three years. I tired of freezing in the winter with my feet in six inches of water on a dig site for this construction company or that, so I chose another path.
I went to work at a call center.
Big damn hero.
At least I did until I told an irate client what to do with herself. I was explicit with the details, lavish even, some might say. The offer from Sandstone Gems was in my email when I returned home. I was anxious to get another job, so I never asked about the connection. I’m sure someone tipped them off when I was fired. But who and for the thousandth time why? I'm nobody special, at least as far as I know.
I staggered out of bed and looked at the clock: 9 AM. By now, my contact would be up and at work in the Ruby Realizations corporate center. My head didn’t hurt this time, as it did before when I’d phase-shifted from this world to the mountain. I assumed it was to do with my being asleep. Perhaps I didn’t shift this time, but dreamed everything. It didn’t matter; the mountain felt real to me just the same.
However, it was the first time I’d witnessed a zebra on the mountain. Wolf Mountain was running wild with giant scorpions, so I figured why not zebras right?
I made it to the bathroom and looked in the mirror as I splashed water in my face. Nope, not Jeff Chandler, who was the model they used for Race Bannon in the old Johnny Quest show. Just Vince Richards, the unemployable college graduate. I really needed to make that phone call.
“Can I please speak to Mr. Heath Mint?” I asked the receptionist when I got her on the phone. It only took three tries to get a human voice once I was inside the phone tree.
“Mr. Mint is in a busy meeting and….” She started to say.
“Tell him that Vince Richards is on the phone about the job,” I told her.
There was a pause. “Just a minute,” she told me and I was put on hold. She’d been told to expect me.
I knew they wanted me for their beta testing. It wasn’t the same kind of system their rival, Sandstone Gems, used, but it couldn’t be that much different. Maybe I would be of some use to them and make some decent money. Most of all I just wanted back in. No, I needed back in.
There were supposed to be all kinds of restrictions on me working for another company in the same field. I had my copies of the documents I signed when I went to work for Sandstone. I’d never had a lawyer go over them, but, from my limited legal knowledge, they could cut off any medical treatment I received if I went to work for a rival company. As the phase transitions could take place at any moment, I still received regular psychiatric care and pills to stabilize my moods. All that was paid for by Sandstone Gems.
I hadn’t needed to take many of the pills lately. The phase-shifts weren’t as bad as they were when they began. I still wasn’t supposed to drive, as a shift could occur anytime. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death shoul
d I be behind the wheel of my old beater when one hit.
The doctors still didn’t know what caused them and I was the only person who’d experienced the condition after being inside the VR game world. Sandstone kept all of the data from my trips to the clinic. They seemed to be worried if the phase-shifts could happen to me, it might happen to another player. The last thing they wanted was a mountain of lawsuits from injuries sustained while someone was inside the VR game world.
“Vince?” the voice of Heath said to me. “Are you ready to take us up on the offer?”
I waited a few seconds to make my response.
“I’m good with it,” I told him. “I can start to work whenever you need me.”
There, I’d said it. No going back now. I am Leeroy Jenkins.
“The sooner the better,” he told me. “We’ll want you to come in for testing in advance. Can’t have the something bad happen inside our system. However, we feel it’s different enough to prevent these reality bumps you talked about. Do you know where our VR center is located?”
“No.” He gave me an impressive address. Had their own street and everything.
“Plan on being here at least a week, maybe more. Do you need anything taken care of in your absence?”
“I’ve got a guy who watched the place for me before,” I told him. “He can watch it for me again. No pets or plants that need watering, just making sure nobody breaks in because they think nobody is home.” I’d put a call in to Lane, who owned a game store. I would need to repay him with another favor.
“Okay, I’ll transfer you to our human resources department and you can make the arrangements with them.”
Because the Ruby Realizations office was so close to where I lived, I was able to take an Uber to it. First, I phoned Lane and asked him to check the mail every other day for me. Only bill collectors bothered with paper mail anymore, so if it came it was either trash or of the upmost importance, nothing in between. I told him I might be gone two weeks, but would check in with him at his store whenever I had the chance. I wasn’t too worried about my family. Most of them were no longer in the area and I’d managed to confer with my parents after I returned from the Sandstone Gems experience. All they knew was that I no longer answered phones for a living and had a job more aligned to my college major. In addition, I made a lot more money. I promised my mother I’d stay in touch with her. I did let them know I would not be reachable for days at a time.
The Uber let me out in front of the Ruby building. I gave the guy a five star review after he took my luggage out of the car. See? I'm a nice guy after all. After he drove off, I went up to the security door and buzzed the main gate.
Protection at this place was several orders of magnitude higher than the laboratories of Sandstone Gems. There were boulders all around the office compound that were disguised as decorations. Each boulder had to weigh 6 tons and could stop a speeding truck. Barbed wire lined the fence around the building, although it was made to appear as a decorative vine. Pretty, but they still could slice you open if you tried to go over the fence. The building was designed to look normal, but whoever paid the bills for this VR center didn’t want anyone inside it unless they were vetted.
No security guard buzzed me through. I was under surveillance from a multitude of remote cameras the moment I stepped onto their property. I made my way through the outer door when it opened and walked into an inner room. There was no voice communication at all from the time I buzzed the building to the moment I entered the building. Once again, they were waiting for me.
It was a small room with no chairs. I heard the latch click on the door behind and the one in front of me popped open. The doorway swung forward and I stepped through it into the foyer.
“Heath Mint,” a man of no more than thirty said to me as he extended his hand. I shook it and sat my luggage down. Yeah now I was feeling really inadequate. Too close in age for me to be comfortable with his level of success. I needed to work on that.
“Vince Richards,” I responded. “Pretty tight operation you have around here.”
Heath was no more than five foot seven and had sandy hair. He was on the pale, undernourished side and sported a pair of designer glasses. He wore a tailored suit. I could tell he liked to make a good first impression. The man had one of those undistinguished faces you walked past every day in the mall.
“We can’t take any chances,” he explained to me. “Everything is done on the inside. You don’t have to worry about where you’ll sleep; we have a whole suite of rooms at the VR research center, or the VRRC, as we like to call it. There are several doctors on the staff and we have our own medical clinic. Food and people come in and leave every, but everything produced inside this place stays here.”
We walked to a small office and sat down at a conference table. Once again, an HR department left a pile of documents for me to sign. The paperwork absolved Ruby Realizations of any wrongdoing should anything whatsoever go wrong with the VR game scenario they wanted to test. Of course, I signed all of them.
What else was I supposed to do? According to Howard, even though he was a computer simulation, the entire world of Wolf Mountain was about to be erased and him with it. With Chamita. For some reason, I was the only person who stood a chance to keep it alive.
After I’d finished signing each one, I slid the documents across to Heath. I pocketed my copies. The paperwork I’d filled out included the bank account where my fee was supposed to be deposited. None of these people had my interests in mind. Something was very wrong about this whole operation. How do I know? Nobody gives a guy like me that much money up front.
There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Heath said and it opened.
“I wanted to welcome you on board,” Rhonda said to me. She was dressed a little bit more flamboyant this time.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. “I thought you worked for Sandstone Gems.”
“I might ask you the same question,” she replied with a smile. “Aren’t you supposed to be an exclusive property for our old company?”
“They made me an offer I couldn’t turn down,” I replied.
“Same here. See you in the next world.” Rhonda turned and walked back out the door with a whirl of her 5th Avenue skirt. Guess she did get a salary bump.
“You need to know about the scenario we plan on running,” Heath told me. “I’ll introduce you to the rest of our people in a few minutes, but I wanted to brief you on the objectives of our VR game world.”
“I figured there had to be changes,” I told him.
“Not as much as you might think,” he continued. “We’re using a pulp adventure format from 1942. I know that Sandstone used one from the 20’s. We’ve advanced the time line by more than a decade. Other than that, every rule and objective remains the same. You still have to locate something. Once again, you will use the plot cache containers to locate it.”
“Aren’t there some kind of copyright and trademark issues involved here? I’m not a lawyer, but it sounds as if you’ve lifted another company’s idea.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he told me, as he waved a hand. “The overall adventure type is public domain and they can’t copyright it. Trust me; we have a team of high-power lawyers on this.”
“Are you sure about that?” I asked him. “It seems the other company spent a lot of time and money on their little project and won’t want to see it used by someone else.” I looked down at the table and noticed it was a little bit classier than the one in the Sandstone office where I’d with Jack, the man who handled me at the other company.
“It’s what the legal team swears,” he claimed. “But this doesn’t concern you and I wouldn’t worry about it.” I could tell he wasn’t ready to talk any more about the topic, so I decided to move on to the next one.
“So will I be given a logbook and a way to communicate with the VR team?” I asked him. “This was how Sandstone ran things. I was given status sheets on all the characters as I en
countered them.”
“We have the same structure,” he responded. “Ours is a far superior network. I don’t have all the details on how the designers make it happen, but you’ll be the only player insider the game. Just like the last time. At least I think you were the only one, weren’t you?”
I started to say something about proprietary information. However, I remembered this was supposed to be the only way I could save the Wolf Mountain game world.
“I was the only player in the game, at least as far as I knew. They gave me information as I progressed. Is this some kind of VR system you share with other companies?”
Heath frowned. “I’m not at liberty to give that information out. I can promise you that we have full control of the VR world where you’ll be sent.”
“Am I going back to the mountain?”
“Can’t say right now, because I don’t know myself.”
“Ok, that's a lot of vague answers in a row, but hey, you're paying me, so let's do this thing. Does this involve same kind of interface pod? I was shoved into one and hooked up to the life supports.”
“No. We use a completely different way to get you inside the VR world. No nerve inductions or anything like that. Once you sit down in the chair we designed, it’s a simple matter to hook you up to the computer system. It monitors everything. So if you’re worried about an attack of claustrophobia, don’t worry. We tested those pod things in the beginning and they scared people. No one wants to go into a tomb to play a game. One too many panic attacks caused by them, so don’t worry. I’ll have someone explain it to you when we get to that part of the test.”
I told him I was relieved to hear it. I didn’t look forward to a return to the pod. In truth, I didn’t understand how they expected to sell the game system if it involved a burial chamber.
Heath took me to the visitor’s suite and checked me into a room. It was better than most hotel rooms and had plenty of accommodations. I noted the window looked across the landscape, but faced the undeveloped forest. Just the sort of place you’d want to put someone so they couldn’t signal to the ground for help.
