Continue Online The Complete Series

by Stephan Morse

  It felt weird. Almost like the guard captain was extremely annoyed with Travelers. How exactly had he ended up as a convict caretaker? Dealing with people who committed crimes against people in his world might have only been the latest leg of a series of turns.

  “Yeah. I have another friend who follows a berserker path. At Rank Five, they get an aura, and at like twenty, it’ll light up a room when they start grinding their teeth,” Beth said while waving her hands.

  They conversed about game mechanics, and my mind continued to drift. Wyl looked as though he was lost watching the Travelers talk, then he walked over near me and conked out six feet away. I stared at the back of his head and sighed. Locals couldn’t keep up with Travelers in terms of energy. We could go for days in their view of things.

  Dusk had also fallen asleep at some point across my legs. He reminded me of Mister Sniffles, who used to sleep next to me in bed when I was small. I could have logged out, but I wanted to sit there and think.

  I held the blade in my hand and studied it. My gift from William Carver. The [Red Imp] inherited abilities of [Blink] and [Awareness Heightening]. My two skills from [Gait of Bowman]. Those tools were damned near perfect for the fighting style I had engaged in. A hand crept up to my throat and felt it. [Breath of Flame] was another strangely useful item. Did the online world adapt them to me, or did I learn to use the skills given? Had the Voices known what abilities to give me?

  What about [NPC Conspiracy]? They had given me an ability that might be truly broken and put limited uses on it. The reasons behind those actions didn’t make any sense.

  Xin wasn’t here, but we would meet soon. Wyl was okay. I lay back and tried not to doze off completely. Some players, like Requiem, could sleep while logged into the ARC. I always preferred to disconnect completely.

  Awesome Jr. was sitting near the fire, facing sideways. He had two vials of liquid out and shook them every few seconds.

  “Look, you told Beth that a player named Hecate was trying to rescue me. Do you have a way to get back to her?” I finally asked. Beth and Awesome Jr. had been sending messages back and forth regarding this before.

  “Yeah. We should be able to meet at the Mire in about a day or two,” Awesome Jr. confirmed.

  Walking more didn’t interest me. Especially not if I could pass out and meet my fiancée again upon waking. Work could be easily put off. Maybe I should finally quit and tell my boss it was his fault for getting me this game.

  “Can I autopilot? I need sleep,” I asked.

  “Sure. I know I’ve got to log back out before my mom catches me. I think I can get another few hours of rest. Uncle Grant, you stay safe okay?”

  “Of course, munchkin.”

  Beth’s face puffed up, and Awesome Jr. tightened his lips in a suppressed smile. A moment later, my niece’s face went slack as the autopilot kicked in. I wondered again what the difference was between William Carver’s version, which had spoken to me once, and player versions. They operated under the same principle, right?

  “We should be okay for the two days,” Awesome Jr. said while fiddling with potions. There was a small pop as gas shot into the air. Whatever it was made the teen pause to smile. “My classes are in the afternoon, so I’ll stay around and watch. I’m going to throw down a Potion of Safe Passage. The smell will drive away any monster spawns.”

  “Okay.” I looked at Dusk and genially scratched behind his ears.

  The small guy yawned without opening his eyes.

  “Cupcakes,” I whispered. “Cupcakesss.”

  He sniffed once, then lifted his head to appraise the situation. Tiny dragonish claws dug into my calf, which made me tense. The [Messenger’s Pet] stood and stretched before focusing on me.

  “Are you okay watching my autopilot?” I asked.

  He had never objected to keeping an eye on me, but asking felt polite. We had only reunited recently. The [Messenger’s Pet] rippled with an early morning shudder then chirped. Above his head floated the very clear picture of cupcakes and donuts.

  “There are some in my Atrium. Just try not to fall asleep this time, okay? And do you remember how to use the trash can?”

  He nodded slowly then blasted a ball of fire. We probably weren’t talking about the same method. Luckily, summoning him back should be easy enough since the skills tied to my companion had upgraded a few times.

  “That’s awesome,” he said.

  “No, awesome’s your father,” I responded and smiled.

  “You did that last time too. You know all these things even though we’ve only met a few times. Is it a skill, or are you stalking us?”

  “Sort of, and no. I don’t have time to stalk people.” My statement was misleading. I did have the admin access to all their ARC devices while in the Trillium van. It was possible to find out information regarding pretty much anyone I wanted to.

  But using it meant I wasn’t playing the game, and right now I needed to keep my life in order until I found Xin. Two days away, one night’s sleep. I could wake up and log in, then hopefully see her smiling face waiting for me.

  Awesome Jr. hesitated a moment before asking, “Can you explain more? I don’t want to pry, but it sounds like we’re missing something important. I thought maybe you just didn’t want to explain it in front of family.”

  “No. I try to be an open book, but I don’t really want to cover it more than once. It’s crazy enough, so let’s wait until we all meet up. Maybe being with Xin will help,” I said.

  Would the Voices stop me from talking about my insider knowledge? It didn’t make sense that they would. In theory, they would welcome all the help we could muster.

  “I guess that’s fair. They should be meeting with us in two days. Do you think we’ll see more of those monsters?”

  I tilted my head and listened for the knocking sound. There didn’t seem to be any noises. Dusk looked undisturbed. Wyl still slept, being worn out from the day’s travels. Sunrise wasn’t far away. The real world was near three in the morning, and I couldn’t last much longer myself.

  “No. I think we’re okay for a little while.” My words managed to remain stable.

  I felt as though we were going in circles. My thoughts sat on their small list of priorities. Help Wyl get home, find Xin. Enjoy the end of virtual reality together until we had an obvious way through this.

  I swallowed and tried not to miss the feeling of her in my arms. We could have been camping together if I hadn’t been made a damned prisoner. Yet becoming a [Convict] was what had allowed me to pass the Voice’s trial and allow her genesis in the first place. If it was needed and hadn’t been a test.

  “Autopilot it is. I’m taking a quick bio, then I’ll get back and watch over the herd of cats. See you on the other side.” Awesome Jr. waved once, then the Traveler’s body went sort of pastel. Life faded a bit from behind the avatar’s eyes, and it packed up items from around the campfire.

  I had been too lost in my thoughts to say good-bye in time.

  System Notice!

  Please be aware of the following. Due to not having an active quest or being in a dungeon, the autopilot will follow discussed goals. Your autopilot will attempt to complete these goals, giving priority to those items listed at the top. Actual results may vary.

  Current priorities are as follows:

  Protect Wyl until arrival at [Haven Valley]

  Reach travel destination with Awesome Jr.

  “Oh,” I muttered. This was the first time I’d had ever a series of goals pop up. All these months of playing, and normally my autopilot simply worked on getting to the next letter. Normally each letter gave me a quest.

  Wyl mumbled in his sleep but barely stirred. His face looked wet, and I pretended not to notice. We carried grief, and I was afraid his was far more fresh than mine.

  “Add finding Xin, keeping my niece safe, then stopping those game-destroying monsters,” I said. The goals were a bit far out for a virtual world.

  Still, Beth could feel
pain if monsters got her, and letting that happen wasn’t in my nature. While I wasn’t her father, no one came closer. Family meant more to me than anything. That especially included Xin.

  The list reformed slightly. Keeping Wyl safe remained pretty high on my priorities, and I felt satisfied that his life weighed above the other tasks. Though it felt weird to place priority on a digital existence that I had only known for a month. William Carver would have wanted it that way though, and his weapon had helped me thus far.

  I had fought that monster and survived. I thought the old man would have been proud of his choice to entrust me with his legacy. One hand slid over [Morrigu’s Gift] as I watched over Wyl for another few minutes before sleep won out.

  Session Eighty-Three — Fear’s Stage

  An alarm had been going off for a while before my body actually responded. It rang just loud enough to wake me, but drowsiness made getting up difficult. Virtual reality had screwed up my sleep schedule.

  One eye sat closed while the other tried to bring up an in-house digital display. All this technology, and the alarm off button still felt so far away. Projectors mounted in the room’s corners and ceiling aligned to cast out an image. A bright red cross sat there daring me to shut off the noise. My finger jabbed at least three times before finally shutting up the sound.

  On any normal day, I would have been getting out of bed, putting on my clothes, and walking toward the Trillium van. From there, I would choose a simple job that sat out of range of other repair employees and try to wake up from there. Coffee and breakfast would come from a drive-through on the way, and my teeth might be brushed while in the car.

  Since playing Continue Online, my routine of handling each day had been shattered. I took a few labored breaths, trying to figure out why my back felt tense. My head hurt, and my muscles ached from the EXR-Seven’s feedback. Apparently high heart rate and swinging at a digital giant counted as heavy exertion.

  Scenes from last night played through my brain again. A huge monster had crawled out of a pit after making knocking sounds that only the Voices and I were capable of hearing. Did [Altered Aura] have a part to play in that? The game text had recognized me as being too close to the Voices, and I was set aside from Travelers and Locals in that regard. [NPC Conspiracy] had made Locals treat me like one of their own anyway.

  When was the last time an NPC or virtual person had called me a Traveler? They acknowledged I was from another world while dancing around it like I had been there all along. AIs were with me at work. They were in my ARC, and in the end, Xin had joined their ranks.

  My feet finally moved, and I tried to work out the kinks. Ten minutes wouldn’t set me back much. Maybe I was nervous. Meeting her in person wasn’t the same as talking on a video call or passing notes back and forth. I shook my head; those were excuses designed to downplay my nervousness. It was time to log into the ARC and meet up with her. Well, and the others, but mostly Xin.

  I lay down and logged into the Atrium. There was a mess everywhere. Apparently Dusk had eaten more than cupcakes. Even now the culprit lay on a couch that I didn’t remember purchasing. He looked like a huge cat with wings, purring contentedly. I poked the back of his head. The [Messenger’s Pet] opened his eyes and yawned widely.

  “Did you even try to use the trash can?” I pointed at the garbage around us.

  My eyes scanned the mess again, and I recognized the couch after a while. It was the same one I had used as part of replicating the old house. It felt oddly fitting for Dusk to be resting on it. He stretched and claws tore into the siding a bit. I frowned at him.

  “I asked you to use the trash can.” My eyebrows lowered.

  His head shook and wings shivered. Dusk jumped up, completely ignoring me, and scampered through the doorway to Continue Online. His tail sat low to the ground the entire way.

  “You could at least do the other thing I asked about!” I shouted after him.

  Dusk had apparently forgotten about my grand plan. It wasn’t one I had discussed inside of Continue Online since the Voices might not approve of me using the [Messenger’s Pet] to transfer items from my Atrium down to the game world. Maybe they wouldn’t care. My chest heaved with a virtual sigh as I tried to find the box.

  “ARC!” I shouted at the machine.

  “Awaiting input.”

  “Where’s the ring?” I asked.

  “Clarification needed to formulate an answer,” the interface stated.

  “What do you mean clarification? How many other rings have I bought?” I was fed up with nearly everything. The alarm clock blaring had set me off poorly, and seeing my Atrium in complete disorder didn’t help. Dusk’s claw marks on the couch served as icing on the situation.

  “Clarification is needed.”

  “ARC”—I chewed on my lip for a moment—“please tell me where the ring I purchased a few days ago is.”

  Dusk’s head poked back in through the Continue Online doorway. Behind him sat darkness, and in his mouth was a small box with wrapping around it.

  “Ring located. It is currently in front of you.” The ARC placed a bobbing arrow over the box in Dusk’s mouth.

  The [Messenger’s Pet] appeared to be laughing. There were no thought bubbles above his head to assist while here in the Atrium, but I was willing to bet it would have had those silly question marks and a smile.

  “Thank you,” I directed my words at the ARC while walking to the doorway.

  The reason my ARC couldn’t find the ring was because my companion had run away with it. Dusk vanished again while I chased after him shaking my fist.

  “You better not lose that or no more cupcakes!” I said.

  The Atrium faded away as I logged straight into Hermes. I looked around. We stood near four stone pillars that towered over me. The only player in sight was Shadow.

  “We meet again, Hermes,” he said and gave me a slight nod. The teenager’s voice was gruffer than his face implied.

  I squinted and tried to make out more features, but something about his face looked indistinct. “Where are the others, or Xin? I thought we were meeting her.”

  “She’s already on the other side, getting ready. Thorny, Awesome Jr., and Wyl went through as well.”

  “Oh.” I frowned and wrinkled my forehead. “Why couldn’t my autopilot keep going?”

  “Autopilots can’t do this part. Not the first time.”

  “That’s new,” I said while trying to reevaluate what was going on. Awesome Jr. had mentioned something about a doorway or portal to [The Shadow Zone], but I had no idea what exactly it had entailed.

  “I’ll open the door, but first, I need to warn you, the path through is a bit of a mind fuck,” the older teen said. He didn’t smile and his eyes glanced to one side.

  “How so?”

  “It’s like a nightmare. One so real that separating the game from everything else is nearly impossible,” Shadow said. “And the longer you’ve played, the worse the visions are. Thorny will probably have a hard time.”

  “It’s just a game though. We have touchstones, right?” I had set one up myself.

  Touchstones were essentially items stored in reality that were used to help a player differentiate between in-depth horror and reality. Other ARC games could get disturbing or were designed to mess with people by replicating their house or neighborhood. I hadn’t run into that in Continue Online yet, but it sounded like this place would do the same thing. What kind of nightmares could be worse than the reality I’d lived? It was a thought I regretted immediately.

  “I’ve spoken to a lot of my people about it, and most refuse to talk about what happened. Those who do talk confirmed what I saw. It may include anything, people you’ve met in-game or sometimes stuff from reality—”

  I shrugged. My life had been through hell before. How much worse could it get?

  “All right.” Shadow fingered a blade tucked into one belt. “Last warning, if you go by a window, or glass, or anything reflective and hear a tappi
ng, don’t look over.”

  I raised my eyebrows in amazement. That kind of warning didn’t happen without cause. I remembered the knocking just prior to that giant shadow man breaking through. Were they related?

  “What happens?” I asked.

  Shadow swallowed and looked outright frightened. “You don’t want to know,” he said in a gruff voice. He sounded like a young man playing at being an adult.

  He held up one hand and marked a symbol above his head. Light flared, and behind the player, a doorway appeared. My mouth hung open. Even with all my travels and insider knowledge, there were still so many neat things in this game. I couldn’t tell what he had done, but it looked almost like how Thorny—I mean, Beth—marked spells with her sword.

  “That’s neat.” I nodded and smiled. Even with his warnings, this situation was exciting.

  “I hope you fare better than HotPants did. She tried to kill us all upon being booted out. The game got her mind so twisted around that she couldn’t tell we were her own party.”

  “That sounds like her.” I smiled a little upon remembering the woman and her red-tipped hair. She was a bundle of anger. The four of them had come a long way after [Haven Valley], and down a much different path than I.

  “Try to remember my warnings, but if you don’t, then hold on for as long as you can. If you don’t make it through the visions, you won’t be able to take this door for another game day.”

  “All right,” I responded, then walked up to the doorway. It sat between the rocks and looked out of place. The rocks looked archaic, and the door looked as though it belonged on any suburban house. It was a faded red that looked more like rust than any bright coloring.

  “Go quick,” Shadow said with a little less gruffness. “I’ll wait out here until the others tell me you made it.”

  The door swung outward with a creak. Inside sat blackness similar to my Continue Online entryway. I stepped through and felt something brush against my face. My hand came up into fabric instead of webbing, and for a moment, I was confused.

  Then my head felt heavy. Dusk was somewhere ahead of me. I could hear his chirping. When had he entered the doorway? I kept one arm out in front of me and pushed past the dense fabric. They felt like thick blankets. Weights dragged along their bottoms, keeping them steady.