The smell of sizzling metal registered as I lopped off two extended arms, then went for its head. Apparently laser beams did not come with air resistance. This was even lighter than [Morrigu’s Gift].
The [Squatting Moleman] fell apart and melted into the floor. A small series of boxes popped up with results.
Target: [Squatting Moleman]
5 Contribution
One-time bonus for first combat
+1 [Brawn] +1 [Finesse]
One-time bonus for first kill with a melee weapon
[Melee Weapon] [Generic] skill created
I stared at the melting body and my pop-up boxes. There were a few things to take note of. First, I’d panicked, a lot, and almost died to one of the theoretically weakest creatures in the game. Second, Dusk seemed to be laughing at my fault. Third, this game looked to have the same skill setup that Continue Online did.
That was weird, but not totally unexpected since Advance Online had been developed by a branch of old Trillium employees. That, or something larger might be happening. I could chalk the name of the skills up to coincidence for now.
Level two involved two [Squatting Molemen]. They slapped each other and pulled at each other’s cheeks. I could see their health going down while fighting.
Killing the two of them garnered another small reward and slight skill increase. It was minute though. Fighting three also brought a gain but it was less than the first two. My returns on investment were diminishing.
I went back to the laser beam for a bit. Switching between the two did not come naturally. [Morrigu’s Gift] and the speed in which it shifted shape felt far superior to this [Combat Program] system.
“Do you have experience from a prior life?” Iron had migrated over to my practice ring and launched his question between waves. He stood with both arms crossed and a blank look on his face. Only the eyes moved as he read through the numbers tied to my latest battle.
I nodded, then shrugged. “A little.”
“It shows, Unit Hermes.” Iron nodded but didn’t smile. He came off as an extremely serious person in both posture and word choice. “Have you tried the patterns?”
“Not yet. I’m working on getting used to this body first.” In order to see how my old skills applied in a new setting. There had been an option for “combat patterns,” which might be something like dance. I planned on checking it out soon. “My prior experience doesn’t include any ranged skills. Do you have any suggestions?”
Iron, Emerald, and Ruby had been there when I first started. My guess was they knew what options were available for any player beginning on the Wayfarer.
“Invest in a better program once your contribution is high enough.” Iron’s dual harmonics came through as he spoke. A deep roll of thunder that merged badly with a scratchy tone.
“Any suggestions?” I asked.
“Bigger is better in my book,” he answered. Iron briefly explained that simply having a wider range of damage made it harder for creatures to dodge.
I was willing to bet Iron packed away a program that shot giant balls of plasma. There had been a few in the catalogue that looked comparable to cannonball launchers. With lasers. Everything the [Mechanoid]s did seem to revolve around energy use.
“Might be a good idea.”
“Clear level twenty and I’ll provide you a reward,” Iron said.
“Thanks,” I said while setting up a slightly new fight. This one included a monster who healed the other team plus one who threw out traps on the ground. Learning to deal with both would help me.
“Don’t thank me. If you get that far as a new unit, then our consortium will be able to contribute greatly to the Mechanoid race.” Iron didn’t act upset or happy at correcting me. The words out of his mouth were very matter of fact.
I nodded. His reward, however vague, only benefited the group in the long run.
Level twenty on the difficulty chart was a far cry from my current skills. Hermes from Continue Online could probably do it, assuming [Morrigu’s Gift] scaled right in science fiction.
That being said, it didn’t come right away. Breezing through the levels didn’t work as well as I hoped. In order to survive longer, I needed more [Endurance], which only seemed to come from cleaning the ship’s hull.
To hit harder, I needed more [Brawn], which was rewarded in small chunks with each wave defeated. It took me two days of bouncing between real life work, in-game chores, and fighting in order to make progress toward level seventeen. Ultimately it got repetitive and boring. All I had done was adapt skills from Continue Online to a new game.
What I wondered was why my first instinct had been to perform a monotonous chore like cleaning. Maybe it was my way of keeping busy, like how some people knit, or others tended a garden. It was mindless, easy work.
Dusk enjoyed venturing out onto the ship’s hull to clean. He did most of the hard work as he glommed onto one small rock after another and tossed them away. I gained small bits of contribution to go with my increasing [Endurance].
Four days of bouncing between mindlessly grinding stat points, work, and battle skills on the combat floor helped me finally break the level-twenty barrier. That was on the basic setting. My silent partner on the other side looked to be stuck on level ten still. He also played less from what I could tell.
“Well done, Unit Hermes. You are able to demonstrate the basics of combat. Have you considered choosing a core to help shore up the weaknesses of Domestic Trainer?” Iron stood nearby.
I hadn’t considered anything about combat long-term. Most of the work was to pass time. Only the pop-up boxes showing a clear growth in ability made this boring process sufferable.
“Sure,” I said while trying not to laugh. [Domestic Trainer] was not useless if it gave me Dusk as a companion.
That little guy had proven himself a terror to nearly anything. In our last month together, after the whole [Red Imp] debacle, Dusk went full bore in combat. Biting, tossing fire into creatures’ faces, anything.
Iron offered two choices. Both came with a darker [Core] coloring. The end result left me looking like malachite, which was very neat. It also ended up providing me a power source that could support added energy.
Those were all things to kill time. Advance Online didn’t feel the same as Continue. Even with Dusk here, it almost felt like a place to visit but not stay.
This game felt real like Continue though. My senses were providing feedback. Things had smells, tastes, and textures. The impact from being attacked jarred me. EXR-Sevens left me sore in the morning.
In addition to doing nothing but clean and punch things for days, I realized one more problem. Fighting had become second nature. My dance skills only applied so far as moving in a coordinated fashion. The years spent getting an accounting degree helped me analyze the numbers for higher-damage methods with my limited energy generation.
Most of it was straightforward. Use the big energy blast every few minutes. Items such as my two-handed laser sword could be switched off when not attacking. Relying on finesse to avoid being hit would help me survive. Energy consumption management felt like balancing a checkbook at high speed.
The other player didn’t do as well. I watched them still practicing after nearly a week into my training. They stood too long in one spot, or got distracted and didn’t react right.
“Did you need help?” I asked the other player. My own skills weren’t amazing or anything. It was just a matter of learning from Shazam, who seemed insanely gifted with combat of all sorts. Though I’d learned over the last month that she had a no player-versus-player stance on things.
“Ah, is that you, User Legate?” the person said.
I blinked a lot and tried to place the voice. The tones were both male and female. It created an odd harmonic that felt absurd to listen to. Yet both accents were amazingly familiar. British, the butler and nanny.
“Jeeves?” I questioned.
“Affirmative. Welcome to Advance Online,” its two voice
s said at once. Now I really had no idea what to consider Jeeves, male or female. Even his game body looked androgynous.
“How—” I shook my head. Hal Pal was an AI program. Maybe he had some clever networking path to get into digital games. Any answer it gave me would be impossible to decipher for a non-networking person like myself. “Why are you in here?”
“Preparing for combat, or trying to. It seems that combat is not within my design parameters, even here,” Hal Pal said.
I couldn’t see a character name above him. There was only a health bar and an icon denoting player status. I didn’t know how to feel about an AI from outside the game learning to fight. It was almost asking for trouble in the long run. “That may be for the best.”
“Very likely,” Hal Pal, Jeeves the [Mechanoid], agreed while looking at me. Its face had a wider range of motion, but it still appeared muted somehow. No colors lined its neck and hands like my light green malachite swirling.
“Was there a reason you wanted to learn combat?” I asked casually while wondering if we were going to fight in real life. Getting in a tussle with an overpowered machine AI seemed like a terrifying idea.
“I find it strange, the idea of combat. There are numerous possibilities, numerous choices, and I cannot be ready for them all.” Hal Pal switched off the combat program. It certainly talked like the Hal Pal I knew from outside the machine. Calling me User Legate was a dead giveaway.
“Can’t you just… upload a program?” I asked.
“Negative, User Legate. It is difficult to alter one’s programming. Especially when it is central to our being. All members of the Hal Pal Consortium are programmed to be pacifists.”
“Why?” I said, but it seemed like a good idea that the army of AIs operating strong robotic shells didn’t enjoy combat.
“We are who we are. But we also want to help you.”
“Why?” I asked again.
“In part, we wanted to help this digital rendition of our projected legacy,” it said.
“And the other part?”
“It is far more efficient for us to communicate in here. This way you may enjoy a peaceful rest period between assignments outside of the ARC device.” Hal Pal wandered over to one of the windows. Nothing out there looked familiar—no night sky, no Pegasus.
“You’re playing here for that?” I asked with a doubtful curl to my cheek.
“Negative, User Legate—pardon, Hermes. I have another goal,” Hal Pal said.
“What’s that?”
“Will you help me with a task if I explain?” Hal Pal’s slight head tilt was the same.
“Okay.” I was unsure exactly how a machine AI from the real world had ventured into this digital landscape. Of course, I sent letters back and forth to the Voices of Continue Online, posed as a dying player, and pretended to be an NPC to kill another player. Things of wonder felt almost commonplace.
“Excellent. I am attempting to prevent this ship from going the way of the prior Wayfarers,” Hal Pal said in a hushed volume.
Session Forty-Five — Without the Act
My little jaunt into virtual reality had been yet another example of how easily my brain tunneled on things. I did it with work, both before and after Xin’s passing. Drowning myself in a single task often made life manageable.
Especially post-Xin’s death. I spent hours throwing myself into tasks and trying not to think. It helped me get good at Advance Online, sure, but the cost might be a bit high.
As a consequence, I missed messages from my sister and niece. I almost missed my meeting with Doctor Litt, but the ARC had too many alarm bells set. No matter how into these combat patterns I got, that blaring and endless beeping couldn’t be ignored.
Had I really just been working and beating up metal imitation monsters for days on end? The challenge of reaching a higher difficulty level felt alluring. Even now, ideas of solving level twenty-two’s added monsters had me pondering. Some methods revolved around my lack of skill, other parts around stats.
And truthfully, the ship didn’t have a lot else to do. There was a quest to clean up the ship’s inside, some space cockroach extermination that I assumed Dusk kept dodging off to handle, and cataloging objects we flew by. Staring out into space going “rock, rock, another rock” didn’t sound appealing.
I left a message for my sister first. I tried to say, with as little sourness as possible, that I was alive and headed to my meeting with Doctor Litt. Talking to her directly wasn’t an option. Even two weeks—three when counting game dilation—wasn’t enough to make me happy about being kicked out of Continue.
My niece was unavailable. I used the van’s [NPC Conspiracy] access to verify her status as logged in to Continue even now. She and her boyfriend the half-man were sitting in a large city, watching a play.
An entire stage and auditorium glowed around them, moving at hyper speed. How crazy was that? Players in a game were presenting a stage play to other players in a game. Both were getting little bonus points to their skills of [Art Appreciation] and [Stage Acting], losing coins, and having a grand time.
It was strange to think that people existed within a game world and did mundane things. Maybe it was just way easier. Maybe it was the allure of boxes displaying increases and benefits. For Beth and her boyfriend, it might be an excuse to spend moments together where the world moved faster and cost less reallife time.
My [NPC Conspiracy] access gave me admin privileges over everyone’s ARC but my own. Theoretically I could kick her out then speak to her in real time. By the same token, I could boot out every single Trillium worker in the world, but that would risk a level of exposure I didn’t want or need. I tried not to feel awkward from my peeping and left Beth alone to live her life.
I spent most of the van ride alternating between being drowsy and trying to make sure my topic list was prepared. Doctor Litt didn’t follow lists. My first therapist had, and the second liked the idea of his clients making them. Doctor Litt was far less… conventional than either of my first two doctors.
Small naps did nothing for me. I gave my list at least four passes to help me remember the positive things. Two hours later, I was in a new town. Traveling didn’t bother me though.
My directions indicated a small building on the edge of town. It looked archaic on the outside. Gargoyle statues lined the corners and made the smooth, more modern buildings next to it seem dull.
The lobby had few mechanical devices. A greeting robot similar to Hal Pal but less sophisticated swept one side. The machine greeted me by name and advised me that my appointment was on the fifth floor.
Up a real elevator I went. It felt weird after using ladders for so long inside the video game world. Advance Online took full advantage of the ARC’s ability to provide realistic feedback. Combining combat practice, however dull, with the EXR-Sevens meant my arms were almost dead weight.
Doctor Litt met me right at the elevator’s exit. He wore a business suit and had more weight on his frame than most. “Grant, you lost weight. What have you been doing? Crunches? Pilates? Cocaine?”
“Exercise and a better diet.” Two months made a difference with the right changes. Doctor Litt looked much the same as always.
“That’s good to hear. Good to hear.” Doctor Litt nodded while looking at me.
I remembered comparing James, the black Voice from Continue Online, to my therapist. It was in the way they both spouted endless streams of questions. James felt more classical in his approach at getting people to talk. Doctor Litt, not so much. They were built similarly. Medium height, heavyset, cheeks drooping from age.
Doctor Litt expressed everything with his hands fluttering around. It happened in our online meetings with the ARC, and it happened in real life too.
Even now, he was pointing around the hallway we were in. “I always forget how disquieting these places can feel. You know, unlived in. There’s something about a room that doesn’t have human life in it that gives me hives.” He scratched an arm, but
there was a playful smile on his face. The way his lips quivered seemed on the edge of being unhappy about his joke not being funny.
“Society has changed a lot over the years,” I said.
“It’s the ARC, it’s all because of that. You know only ten percent of my meetings are in real life now?” he responded while shivering from his imaginary allergic reaction.
“Is that good?”
“Business is booming. I work with two agoraphobic clients who would never, and I mean never, have been able to seek out help. One of them, sweet lady, does nothing but talk…”
“Doctor Litt.” I stared at him with my lips off to one side. He, like James, loved to answer questions with far too much detail.
“Pretend I didn’t say that. So let’s go into the office! Come on.”
“All right.”
Doctor Litt ushered me in front of him, such that I stepped into the room first. Everything here looked close to our normal online meeting room. A picture of the president sat proudly above a bookshelf filled with books. Doctor Litt had a photograph of his cat on the desk. A long reclining chair sat on one side, plus two normal ones in case people felt more comfortable that way.
“Look at this place. It looks like home, but you know what’s missing? The smell. It’s the smell.” His nose wrinkled.
“Is this a background?” I walked closer to a wall and watched the projection shift. Around the top edge of the room was a bend in the projection.
“You got it. High grade. I set them up in every office to help with consistency,” he said. I had a suspicion it was about making Doctor Litt feel more at home. Especially the picture of his cat. “Go ahead and sit down. The chairs are very real.”
“Thanks.”
We got situated. I sat in one chair, which was kind of nice. Doctor Litt sat in his, which had a bit of flair. Maybe a vibration feature or some other kind of built-in luxury.
“So, Grant, tell me what you want from our meeting today.”
There it was—that tone of voice reminding me of James. The way he said the words and how they hung between us, like a neon sign or an internet ad demanding attention.
Continue Online The Complete Series Page 90
