I did not know what the word terraforming meant. I was sure that I had heard this term once, and from what Echo had just told me, I got a general idea of what it meant. Still, I decided to have him clarify this for me nevertheless.
“Terraforming? What is that?”
“Terraforming is an engineering process of altering the environment of a planet, moon, or any other celestial body in order to make it capable of sustaining life. In other words, terraforming a planet is modifying its environment to make it similar to that of Earth so it can sustain Earth-like life.”
So this was actually a term from Science Fiction. In 2020, the year I was from, there were no such engineering techniques, because, well, people had not exactly mastered space travel yet. Sure, we could travel to the ISS and had even visited the Moon a few times, but it was the extent of it.
“So your organization’s helping colonists,” I said.
“That’s correct.”
“What exactly are you doing for them?”
“Colonists living on distant planets, far away from civilization, do not receive much support from their governments. Colonists face a wide range of various problems. One of them is that they have to constantly deal with bandits. There being no representatives of authorities on distant planets makes colonists an easy target for bandits. So our organization fights bandits who give colonists a hard time.”
“I don’t suppose your organization’s doing it for free?”
“Of course, not,” Echo replied. “The Weaponized charges colonists a fair price for dealing with criminals who give them a hard time.”
“The Weaponized?” I muttered, perplexed by what I had just heard.
“Yes,” Echo said. “It is the name of our organization.”
And also the name of the VR video game that somehow brought me here, I thought.
I took another deep breath. It was time to ask the most important question. I was kind of nervous. I really wanted to know how I had gotten to this place, but at the same time, I was reluctant to ask Echo this question because I was afraid that I might not like his answer. Which was why I had been delaying asking this hard question for so long.
But I could not put it off for any longer.
My heart pounding against my ribs, I began speaking, “Do you know how I got to this place?”
“Yes,” Echo replied calmly. “I have access to such information.”
I waited for the AI to continue, but he went silent. It was obvious that he was not going to say anything until asked a direct question, so I inquired, “How did I get to this space station?”
“You got here by teleport,” Echo replied.
“By teleport?”
“Yes. You were teleported here in a teleportation chamber.”
Suddenly I realized something. I glanced over my shoulder at the pod I had woken up in and asked, “So this thing is a teleportation chamber and not a cryogenic one?”
“That’s correct,” Echo replied. “What you are looking at right now is a teleportation pod.”
“What about the other three?” I asked. “Are they empty?”
“Yes, they are currently inactive and unoccupied.”
“Okay,” I said. “So where I was teleported from?”
“You entered a teleportation chamber on the main space station called the WSS, which is the headquarters of The Weaponized. You were teleported here, to the SS-29, which is one of the secondary space stations owned by The Weaponized.”
Only now did I realize that the number 29 in the name of this space station—the SS-29—was likely indicating that there were at least twenty-eight other similar space stations. Until now, I had not given it much thought, because I had other, more important, things on my mind to worry about.
“There’s the main space station somewhere?” I asked.
“Yes,” Echo said. “The WSS is the headquarters of The Weaponized. Tens of thousands of people who work for our organization live on the main space station. The SS-29, as well as all the other secondary space stations, were designed specifically for warriors like yourself. Each secondary space station can house four warriors at once.”
“You mean there’s nobody except for me on this space station now?” I asked.
“That’s correct,” Echo replied. “You are currently the only occupant of the SS-29.”
“If there can only be four people on this space station at the same time, then it must be pretty small,” I said.
Echo did not reply. More often than not he began speaking only when asked a direct question.
And by the way, though Echo was obviously not a living person but an AI, I had come to think of it as “he” because it had a male voice.
“Okay,” I said. “I was teleported here from the main space station. But how did I get to the WSS in the first place?”
“You were selected to become a warrior for The Weaponized,” Echo replied. “So you now work for our organization.”
“I don’t remember applying for a job at your organization,” I said.
Since I had not posed a direct question, Echo said nothing.
“Did I apply for a job at The Weaponized?” I asked.
“No,” Echo replied. “Rather, you were selected by the leaders of our organizations to become a warrior.”
A thought struck me. What if when I put on my Macro Envision headset and started the game, my body had somehow been transferred to this place? Could something like this be possible? In Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction books, something like that happened all the time.
The problem was that it was real life, not a story of a fiction book. Duh.
“What does it mean?” I said. “How exactly did the leaders of your organization select me?”
Echo was silent for a moment for some reason. Then he started to say something, then shut up again and a second later, said a single word, “Error.”
“Error?” I said, dumbfounded. “What error?”
“I am so sorry, warrior,” Echo said. “I tried to answer your question but experienced an error that prevented me from doing so.”
It was weird. I did not like it. I did not like it one bit.
I tried to ask the question again. “So do you know why the leaders of The Weaponized selected me?”
There was a short pause, then Echo said, “Error. I am sorry, warrior. Your question keeps causing me to experience this error. I can try to fix it if you want me to.”
“Do it.”
Echo was silent for half a minute or so. Then he said, “I tried to fix the error but was unsuccessful. I am sorry.”
Damn.
I thought for a moment. I needed to find a way around this error. I had to know how I had ended up in this place.
“What year it is?” I asked after a minute of thinking.
“2235.”
Great. I was in a very distant future then.
“What do you know about me?” I asked.
“Your name is David Tanner,” Echo replied. “You are American. You are twenty-two years old.”
Echo went silent.
I waited for a moment. When it became obvious that he was no going to add anything else, I asked, “That’s all? You really know so little about me, huh?”
Echo was silent for a second, then he added almost reluctantly, “You are male.”
“That’s a great observation,” I muttered. “I wouldn’t even have noticed that I was male if you hadn’t pointed it out.”
My sarcasm fell short, of course. And of course, he did not say anything since I had not asked him anything.
“Do you know anything else about me?” I asked.
“No,” Echo replied.
It did not add up. I had memories of living in 2020, but Echo did not seem to be aware of my past life.
“You must know something else about me, Echo,” I said. “You may be able to get such information. I’m especially interested in finding out how I ended up here.
Can you do it?”
He did not say anything for a beat. Then he said, “Error. I am sorry, warrior. Each time I try to get access to the database to learn more about you, I experience this error.”
Well, at least Echo seemed to be genuinely eager to help me.
“What causes this error?” I asked.
“To learn more about you, I need to get access to the database on the hard drives on the WSS,” Echo replied. “However, they seem to have been damaged, which resulted in some of the information stored on them having been corrupted. Unfortunately, the hard drives that contained the information about you were among those that got damaged or completely destroyed.”
“How come the hard drives were damaged?” I asked.
“There were riots on the WSS,” Echo said.
“Really?”
“Yes. There were riots on the main space station.”
“Who was rioting and why?” I inquired.
“Unfortunately, I do not have much information on this,” Echo said. “All I know is that some people opposed the leaders of The Weaponized. The armed rioters tried to take control over the main space station. Clashes between the rioters and the guards lasted for several days. Many people died on both sides. Collateral damage was excessive, too. Those parts of the space station where the gunfights took place were severely damaged. Many of the control rooms took some serious damage, hence the destroyed hard drives.”
The rioters destroying the hard drives that had contained the information about me was very convenient if someone wanted to keep the truth about me secret. I began to wonder what if it was actually a video game and not real life as I had thought in the beginning. If it was actually the case, then it would explain why the riots had taken place on the main station. It was just a method to hide the truth about me from Echo because Echo was an NPC and NPCs were not supposed to know such things.
I took a deep breath and said, “Echo.”
“Yes, warrior?”
“Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Am I inside a video game?” I asked. I was more than sure that if it was actually the case, then Echo would not be able to answer my question. But I wanted to give it a try anyway.
The question gave Echo a pause.
“I am sorry, warrior,” the AI finally said. “I am afraid that I do not understand what you mean.”
I swept my arm around the room and asked, “Is all of this even real? Or am I inside an exceptionally realistic-looking virtual reality video game?”
And again, Echo did not immediately reply as if he was still confused by my question.
“If I understand you correctly,” he began, “you think that everything you see around you might not be real. I can assure you that it is not the case. Everything you see here is concrete and made up of various materials, which is why you can see it and even touch it.”
I opened my mouth to say that he had not really answered my question but decided against it. It was obvious that Echo was having trouble understanding me correctly. But it did not really matter. I was pretty much sure that I was in the real world because I had never played a video game that was so realistic-looking.
However, if I was actually inside a video game, Echo would not know anything about it anyway. NPCs in video games were not usually aware that they were not real persons but characters living in a fictional world for the player’s amusement only.
So I decided to drop the matter and ask something else.
“You keep calling me a warrior,” I said. “Why?”
“Because that’s what you are,” Echo replied. “As I said, you were selected to be a warrior. The Weaponized is a privately held military organization, whose main purpose is dealing with bandits who harass colonists on remote planets where there is no law.”
“So I am going to fight criminals?” I asked.
“That’s correct.”
“But I’ve never dealt with weapons before,” I said. “I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”
While it was not a problem to acquire a firearm in my country, I had never owned a gun. I had never really felt the need or desire to.
“It does not matter,” Echo said. “The nanotrites in your system will take care of it. Thanks to them, you have muscle memory of how to use various firearms. You also know how to drive a wide range of different kinds of vehicles. Long story short, the nanotrites give you all the survival and combat skills a good soldier should have.”
“Nanotrites? What the heck are those?”
I remembered seeing a message telling me that nanotrites had been implanted in my body when in the teleportation chamber. However, it had not been explained to me what those were.
“In simple terms, nanotrites are small computers,” Echo said. “There are hundreds of thousands of them coursing through your veins.”
“So many?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes. They are very small. Each one is the size of a molecule.”
“How did I get them in my body?”
“You must have had them implanted in your body after your arrival at the main space station. Every warrior working for The Weaponized has nanotrites in his or her body.”
“How or when did I arrive at the main space station?” I asked, knowing beforehand what kind of answer I would receive but still hoping for the best.
After a brief pause, the AI said, “Error. I am sorry, warrior. I experienced this error again when I tried to get access to the database.”
“Do I really need those nanotrites?” I asked, wondering if I should be scared by what I had just learned about my body.
“Yes, you do,” Echo answered. “Besides the aforementioned knowledge and skills they give you, the nanotrites make you stronger, more enduring, and more resilient than other people. Thanks to them, your senses are more astute than that of other humans. Your wounds heal much faster as well.”
“That’s nice, I guess,” I said as I looked at my hands and forearms. Sure enough, they looked like they always did and had no indication whatsoever that deep inside my veins I had gazillions of microcomputers coursing through my veins.
“Most important of all, the nanotrites allow you to use dark energy,” Echo added.
“Dark energy? What is that?”
I was sure that I had once heard such terms as dark matter and dark energy but never been interested enough to find out what those were.
“Dark energy is the force that makes the Universe become larger,” Echo said. “Galaxies have been moving away from one another at high speed all the time. The energy that causes them to move and the whole Universe to expand is called dark energy. This is an extremely powerful force, one of the most powerful ones in the whole Universe. Though humans cannot see it with naked eyes, dark energy exists everywhere. The Weaponized has invented an extremely complex technology called nanotrites that allows users like yourself to use dark energy.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, still not quite understanding what dark energy was. “So I can use it, right?”
“That’s right,” Echo said but did not elaborate.
“So what exactly can I do with it?” I inquired.
“In simple terms, you can get dark energy to create various powerful effects.”
“Like what?”
“For example, you can create an energy shield that will protect you from all incoming gunfire. Or you can use dark energy to teleport short distances. Or heal your wounds real fast. The possibilities are endless.”
“Sounds like magic,” I said.
“‘Every sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’,” Echo stated. “That’s what a famous Science-Fiction author Arthur Clarke once said. And yes, I am more than sure that people from, like, the early twenty-first century would call nanotrites and what they are capable of magic.”
“So, roughly speaking, I can cast spells like a mage?” I asked, getting excited.
“In si
mple terms, you are correct.”
I looked at my hands again, then held them out and yelled, “Fireball!”
Nothing happened.
“That’s not how it works,” Echo said.
“How does it work then?” I asked.
“First, you don’t need to pronounce any words to use dark energy,” Echo said. “And second, before you are able to use dark energy, you need to select a class. Then you will be receiving so-called experience points for completing battle missions. When you gain enough experience points—or EXP for short—you will level up and receive a skill point, which you can use to unlock one of the available skills.”
Okay, I thought. It’s really starting to look like a role-playing video game. Maybe I am inside a video game after all.
“It may sound a bit complicated,” Echo said. “But you will eventually learn how all this stuff works.”
No, I thought. This stuff isn’t all that complicated. At least, not for a person who played role-playing video games before.
“Anyway, if you’re having trouble understanding any of this, I am always here to help you,” Echo added.
“How do I pick a class?” I asked.
“To do so, you need to use the Control Panel,” Echo replied.
“The Control Panel?” I asked as I looked around the room. “Where the heck is it?”
“It is situated at the center of the Control Room.”
“The Control Room?” I said. “Where is it?”
“You are currently in the Control Room,” Echo said.
My gaze stopped on the table in the middle of the room. “Is that thing the Control Panel?”
“You are right, warrior,” Echo said. “It is currently showing the map of the Universe.”
I walked to the table. I looked it over but did not notice any buttons, touchpads, or anything else that could be used to operate the Control Panel.
“How do I get it to show me the class selection menu?” I asked.
“You can get it to do so with a voice command,” Echo replied. “And your choice of words does not really matter. The Control Panel will understand what you want.”
“Okay,” I said. “Um, show me the class selection menu.”
The Weaponized: The Complete LitRPG Series Page 2
