Gamers and Gods: AES

by Matthew Kennedy

Aes had been out leveling. Even if there had been no need, he would have gone to Realm of Heroes (or anywhere the power worked) so he could Fly. He felt less a puppet in a game and more of a self-controlled entity when he could rise above the aggro radius and fly over areas without having to fight. He could pick his fights from a distance, fly near enough for his ranged attacks, and engage the hostile MOBs without coming within baton, punch, whip, or sword range. They could still shoot at him, but at such a distance they had less accuracy with their ranged pistols, shotguns, and Uzis.

  It was harder to hit a flying target. They were earthbound and Aes was not; airborne, he could survive larger groups, or just fly away if his health dropped dangerously. As long as he was careful, grinding like this was a guaranteed leveler, especially at lower levels. He had already leveled twice, to 19 now. He figured if he leveled one more time to 20 he would pick up 2 or 3 new powers. He kept going.

  He was getting close to leveling again. He could feel it. It was like his avatar generated energy. His head nearly felt like exploding when he realized that in the rendered existence of the Realm...you could create simulated energy in this simulated Reality by drawing it. Instantiating it. Weapons like guns, clubs and swords could materialize out of thin air. Guns never ran out of ammunition.

  Just draw it, whatever you wanted! His head tried to explode again. He had difficulty dealing with the power these people casually wielded, spinning world-stuff from nothingness. He felt as if an invisible waterfall was pouring energy into him; the excess glimmered out like sweat. Finite things were becoming effortless, as he groped toward trans-finite things. Infinity unfolded into transfinity.

  Another improvement: he had learned how to acquire missions or quests. There were NPCs you could find that offered missions. Once you accepted a mission you could enter its instance, a pocket universe created just for you and the hostiles of this mission. If a different team entered the cave, descended the staircase, or entered the dungeon, the lake, the vehicle or the building where the instance joined with common virtual reality – where door met zone – they would find a different instantiated version of the mission map; they would be alone in it with the mission hostiles of that copy and they would not see the first team that went in the door before them.

  If 100 teams entered the door, the game would spawn 100 copies of the mission map. During normal operation there was plenty of memory for all this in the spintronic matrix block of the Realm, because each instance only needed to track objects inside it, and the count of included objects was kept small.

  He had acquired his own low-level “farm” mission, a place he could go and return to time and again as long as he never finished it; because the system was so fanatical about reclaiming unused memory to avoid “memory leaks” (the hemorrhaging of resources that crashed systems), if you changed to a different mission without finishing the previous one you could force a mission reset. In other words, you wiped your mission progress up to the current moment. You could smash the same enemies over and over, grinding the XP and drops, and do it for a long time before you outgrew its level and had to take another mission.

  A purist would have said it was a species of cheating, what Aes did. Others might have just said he was missing out on all the other game content. A pragmatist would just accept that Aes was grinding. Whatever. In the memory-space of his current matrix, his metacosmic butterfly-flutter of Rorschach shadow treed out, extending his geometry, turning data into Aes as he grew.

  Floating above the street, he loosed a forcebolt that knocked a lounging mechomerc boss off his feet. Servos whined and pistons jerked; the merc bounced to his feet and charged. But he couldn't Fly, so he charged to the spot fifteen feet below Aes. Craning his neck angrily, the merc flailed about and fired off some slugs just in case he got lucky.

  Aes forcebolted him off his feet again and finished him off with a firebolt. As the merc dropped and faded. He felt that surge, that energetic crescendo that exploded like making love but left him tingling and increased rather than happy and spent. He had reached level 20. It was time to train.

  As he flew toward the Trainers, wrongness entered the Realm. There was no other word to describe it. Again, a purist might have said it was just awareness of the presence of a hostile Faction. But to Aes it was so different he could only perceive it as wrongness, a distortion of the local harmony.

  It was Am-heh, and Aes wasn't ready. He needed to find Darla and her friends, quickly. He would have to put off Training until he found them. Finder, he thought, take me back to Realm of Legends.

  FLASH.

  He ought to be shocked, he supposed, by the ease with which he had become accustomed to the convenience of programmable reality. When he was hungry, he could always find (summon?) game. When he was thirsty he pulled a spring out of nowhere, and when he wanted to sleep he manifested a cave, entered, and pulled the door in after him, leaving an unbroken wall behind. He did not sleep, of course; his spintronics could not create serotonin, that skillet-shaped molecule his old body had used to fall asleep. But he could reflect upon his experiences and process the memories, like a farmer gleaning, sifting maximum truth from the inflow.

  He was alone on Pelion. It was a familiar situation to him now, becoming as frequent (in his redrawn and rejuvenated old age) as it had been in his youth, on those times when Cheiron left him. Normally, it would have been pleasant to relax here if he weren't urgently seeking his teammates.

  Finder, he thought. Is Sherman online?

  Yes and no, said Finder.

  What's that supposed to mean? thought Aes. Let me talk to him!

  Sorry, Aes. That number is no longer in service. Sherman is gone. Am-heh just ate him. He's like the others now: can't wake up, can't log out.

  FLASH.

  Darla and a woman Aes hadn't seen before appeared in the fading light by the cave entrance. They were both ashen, numb.

  Aes caught them before they collapsed, and funneled their sagging avatars onto the old grinding boulder. He threw more wood on the rough hearth and torched it alight with a firebolt; green flames crackled and danced.

  He sat down with them, watching their faces. What was there to say? They were all thinking the same thing: we failed a teammate.

  No one said anything for a moment that lasted forever. Then, haltingly, the two women told him about Sherman.

  “I'm sorry I wasn't there,” said Aes. “I was grinding death-from-above to 20. You're saying he can appear out of thin air behind the opponent? How fair is that?” His shoulders slumped. “How can I fight smoke?”

  “It's not supposed to be fair, Aes,” said Rita. “It's supposed to be an unfair advantage for stalkers. It's to compensate for the fact that he's got no self-heal and weaker armor.”

  “Are you saying his powers are supposed to make it fair for evil, to give evil some misguided chance at destroying the good? Why?”

  “The stalker archetype was intended to balance the game for the absence of evil healers,” Rita told him. “Heroes got healers and villains got stalkers. Asymmetry did not guarantee fairness but it did improve unpredictability.

  “But eventually they decided to let some heroes have stalker powers and some villains have healer powers.” She sighed, and quoted: “Although considered deadly when sneak-attacking from concealment, the stalker (once uncloaked) is fragile and easily overwhelmed. His most effective tactic is sneak attacks on lone targets. In this mode he rules, with careful execution.”

  “But he can just disappear and appear,” said Aes.

  “At least it isn't teleportation,” said Rita. “It's Stygian Darkness, a stealth power. It cloaks them from ordinary levels of perception. If someone's focused they can see the hidden assassins, and attack them...especially with ranged weapons. From a safe distance. If we'd been boosted...”

  “How do you get that focus?”

  “Temporary boosts. Buffs that supercharge friendlies instead of hurting hostiles. Buffing our acuity would make us temporarily able to see th
e cloakers.”

  “That reminds me,” said Aes. “I've got a couple of powers to choose. I was on my way to the Trainers when I sensed Am-heh and came back here looking for you.”

  “You need to train somewhere else, not where he is expecting and lying in wait for you,” said Darla.

  “Where else?”

  “Realm of Heroes has a lot of zones,” she said. “Many cities. If we pick at random, he'll find us very soon...or never.”

  “Never, most likely. But I doubt he'll give up the hunt impatiently. The manifold of Realms is finite. We could elude for a long time but he could get lucky and crush us,” said Rita.

  “Go someplace you've never seen him,” Aes suggested. “If it seems safe I'll join you.”

  FLASH.

  Oops. He was alone. This lecture's duration will be proportional to the size of its audience.

  Aes walked into the cave and used it as a terminal. “Finder, can you show me where in ROH is the safest Trainer location?”

  The rough walls (and floor) went flat gray, then mirrored, then transparent as Finder overrode the local processing for purposes of communication.

  Realm of Heroes appeared, far below him. Low clouds blew in blocking the view for a second as the sprawl of the Realm hurtled at him. This is flying without the wind chill, he thought.

  Finder showed him where they'd trained before. Several alternate locations blinked. He picked one.

  FLASH.

  The trainer was right in front of him. Wasting no time, Aes bolted up the stairs to the plinth and said “I need to train.”

  “Welcome back, Aes. Time to pick a power.”

  “Display team accuracy buffs.”

  A short list of powers scrolled. He selected one.

  “You have selected ClearSight. You have two powers left to select.”

  “Display holds and immobilizes.”

  “Sorry! Your archetype is not allowed to choose from that power set. Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Display general team buffs.”

  A longer list appeared. He scrolled though it and selected one.

  “You have selected Brimming. You have one power left to select.”

  Let's surprise him. “Display exotic attacks.”

  A list appeared. He selected one.

  “You have selected ClearSight, Brimming, and Transvert. Have a nice day!”

  And just like that, he warped back to Legends, and sat down to practice and wait. Now, he thought, what gesture goes for Brimming?

  Chapter 61: Darla: “Shahka, when the walls fell”