More Than a Game

by Andrey Vasilyev

  The forest was beautiful, both reminiscent of a real forest and, at the same time, different. It was similar in how picturesque it was, with all the grass and clean air. A great spot, and completely unrealistic. In a real forest, you trip over dead wood, mosquitos eat you alive, and there’s litter everywhere. I found myself liking the virtual forest better—it was clean, neat, and cozy. And it was full of things I could use to get experience and money. A rabbit ran by with all its experience, fur, and meat. A hardworking badger rustled away while a wiggly snake slunk off. Well, fauna, meet Man, your destroyer. I felt bad for them, but I felt worse for myself. All I had was ragged pants, and I needed to level-up. Well, if Man is the king of nature, it is time for nature to pay its dues…or tribute, or whatever it is…

  I valiantly ravaged the animal world for four hours or so, twice leveling-up. My bag was packed with all my dead trophies, though by the end, I was pickier about what I kept. At first, I harvested everything I could from my unlucky victims. During the last hour, I only kept the skin, which I knew I could sell. Badger meat wasn’t exactly in high demand.

  Once I leveled-up the second time, I decided to stop and spend the points.

  Basic attributes:

  Strength: 10

  Intellect: 1

  Agility: 2

  Stamina: 7

  Wisdom: 1

  Available points: 10

  I decided to go with the obvious. As long as I was going for a tank, I’d go for a tank. Six points for strength, three for stamina, and one for agility.

  “Well, that was a nice little break. Time to get back to work,” I said, pulling out my club and dashing off after a rabbit that ran by me. Having expected more from life than what I gave him, he moaned almost sadly and died.

  I bent down to skin him and heard a villainous voice behind me, “That happened to be my pet rabbit. I remember when he was just a bunny—he even ate grass right out of my hands. And now you killed him. What to do, what to do…”

  Not only was the voice villainous, but it also had a mocking undertone. I slowly straightened up and turned around. A few steps away stood three goblins. Not just your ordinary ruffians; these were honest-to-goodness goblins, although, judging by their demeanor, they were ruffians, too. They were nasty-looking, with ugly green faces and teeth that stuck out at odd angles.

  Wait a second, maybe they were actually orcs? I wasn’t really sure what the whole difference was, but that didn’t matter. The first thing I noticed was their strange names (“Euiikh”…excuse me?) that glowed red above them. I had the unbelievable luck to meet people who killed other players, most often for fun and loot. That fact and their level (25-27) made it clear to me that there was no way I was getting out of the situation with what I had in my bag. And so it turned out that all I would get for the whole four hours I spent hunting was a little experience. How frustrating.

  “Would you look at this, boys? He doesn’t even care. But I think he should pay for killing my little fluffykins,” the one with the green mug spat mockingly. “My little bunny.”

  “M-m-m…bestiality. Aren’t you the little creeps?” I understood that my imminent death might be fairly unpleasant, as the orcs/goblins appeared to be looking for some fun. At least, I wouldn’t feel pain in the game, and I wouldn’t get any fountains of blood. Still, it wouldn’t be an enjoyable experience. I needed to rile them up and get everything over with, so I could respawn and start over. Although as I thought about it, I had no idea where I’d respawn.

  “I heard your kind…” I said with a contemptuous grin. “Wait, who are you? Orcs? Goblins? Either way, I heard all of you and your ugly green mugs are into that animal-loving. The good stuff. Although, wait a second, are you using the animals or are they using you? I guess it makes more sense if they’re using you, just judging by your bulging eyes and the way your teeth stick out like that. Yeah, I can see how that could happen after some bison took a good run at you…”

  I got them, for sure. Their leader’s face turned ash gray, and his eyes narrowed. Honestly, I might have overdone it a bit, though that was when a short (by their standards) orc screamed, “You little fart!”

  He swung the morning star he held in his stubby hand. My world shattered into something like a photo album. I saw stars…the angry, frustrated face of their leader…a spinning sky. A familiar haze settled in, and I found myself standing in an area near the city wall. No pants, no club—just in my underwear (Apparently, the game’s developers didn’t want to traumatize the young generation by making them look at naked bodies.) They sent freshly killed players to the nearest respawn point or to the last place they saved, and all cities and villages had respawn points. So the good news was that death wasn’t the end. On the other hand, I was resurrected without any of my belongings, which go to whoever killed you. They left me in my underwear, but other than that, nothing. At least until Level 10, you didn’t lose any experience, although, after that, you were screwed. If you croaked, you lost everything you had, as well as the experience you were working on.

  Just then, I heard my inbox ping. I looked around to see a mailbox that, thank God, wasn’t far away from where I respawned and went over. To my surprise, I saw that Euiikh, the green-faced leader, had written me.

  “You displeased me, my little white-faced friend. You killed my rabbit, said some unpleasant things, and died too easily. That last thing I find especially frustrating. And so, I just want you to know that this was only the first of many meetings, all of which will end in your death. However, you will not die so quickly in the future. See you soon.”

  Like a villain pulled straight from some opera, if the email had had audio to go with it, the last words would have been followed by an evil, booming “Wa-ha-ha-ha!” Although I had the urge to respond and suggest that he find a nice little donkey to make love to instead of his rabbit, I decided it wasn’t worth it. Those idiots would be trolling me as it was, and a reply like that would start World War III. Much better to keep building my character and get even with them later. I could find a big old mace and wreak havoc on them, though I needed to remember their names—at least in the blacklist. It was like in the old joke: I don’t remember evil, so I have to write it down. At least the game had a feature that let me know when they were nearby. I figured that would give me enough time to get away while my level was still low and I hadn’t found a super-mega-giga mace.

  “This sucks,” I complained as I sat down on a bench next to the respawn point. “I don’t have anything, no clothes, no weapons, no money. All I have now is a bunch of enemies and my underwear, and that won’t get me any further than a virtual church to beg for some change.” At one point, I even thought, “Maybe I can just forget the game? I’ve already seen enough to write an article, and players themselves won’t read it. They don’t subscribe to our newspaper, and nobody else really cares whether the article is written well from the perspective of the players or not. I can just add some filler, throw in a plug for Radeon, and call it a day.”

  On the other hand, what was I going to do for a whole month? There wasn’t any leaving the city since Mammoth could check to see if I ran off somewhere. And really, was I going to get chased off by a few ugly orc assholes? That wouldn’t do. But ramming their heads up where the sun doesn’t shine—that would make for a great story.

  And, it’s not bad here. Before everything happened, the game had been like a free and easy excursion. You know, it’s like winning a tour of somewhere in Rostov—it’s a nice city, and it’s free, so why not go? Although it’s not like you’d spend money on it. The city isn’t bad, it’s just that it doesn’t really matter to you. But if it’s free, why not? It was the same thing for me; I played because it was free, sort of my job, and not too stressful. But now, everything was different…and I still needed material for my series.

  But if the game was going from “Why not?” to “Let’s see who gets the last laugh,” I needed a plan. Right away, I needed two things: clothes and a weapon. Oh, and I desper
ately needed someone who knew the game inside and out to teach me the ropes.

  That was when I remembered Fat Willie.

  Fat Willie was a classmate of mine who cut a rather remarkable figure. Willie was short for William, and I have no idea why his parents gave him a name like that. Maybe they adored Shakespeare, or maybe they enjoyed Tokarev’s work and extravagance. Or maybe they’d had one too many drinks after he was born and before they took him to the passport office (that last one seemed most believable to me). Whatever the case, that was his name, and until he was about 12, everyone called him Wilka. It was around that time that he started to put on weight, and by the time he was 14, he weighed around 80 kilograms. That September 1, when we all got to school for the first day of ninth grade, Pashka Kapitanov, one of our class leaders, saw him and said, “Forget Wilka. You’re Willie now.”

  “He’s ‘Fat,’ not ‘Willie,’” contradicted Pashka Velikanov, another of our authorities.

  The two Pashkas sniffed and looked each other over (the two had vied for the role of top dog ever since first grade).

  “Come on, guys, lay off it. You’re fine,” I intruded, knowing they would soon mix it up if no one stepped in. “We’ll just call him Fat Willie.”

  And so it was decided.

  The only one who couldn’t care less about the whole situation was Fat Willie himself. The guy never let anything ruffle his feathers. He was as phlegmatic as it gets.

  But what he loved more than anything was computer games. When the conversation turned to them, he’d come alive and could chatter on for five or even ten minutes straight. He also had a kind of strange sense of humor. To be honest, I wasn’t always sure when exactly he was joking.

  So if there was anyone who could get me started, it was him—and I couldn’t imagine him missing out on a game like Fayroll. I left my alter ego sitting on the bench and exited the game.

  Chapter Four

  Fat Willie and His Joke

  For whatever reason, my life up to that point had taught me to follow through immediately on the decisions I made. That had something to do with KVN, then the army, and certainly my experience in journalism. After all, putting something off meant giving yourself the opportunity to change your mind, let laziness creep in, or have someone else beat you to the punch. That’s how we humans are: put something off once, and we’ll think of a thousand reasons why we shouldn’t do it at all.

  And so I immediately decided to get started on both of my ideas. I put some hot dogs on to boil and headed to the attic to look for the box I kept all my old papers, phone numbers, notebooks, and diaries in.

  “Where did it go?” I asked myself as I looked for Fat Willie’s phone number. “I know I wrote it down in a notebook. Nadya Mamedova was there, we were drinking, and she laughed so hard at me for using a notebook when we have phones, tablets, and virtual diaries. I remember telling her, ‘If the electricity ever goes out, and you lose all your gadgets, I’ll still have Fat Willie’s phone number.’ She said, ‘Why would you need his number when there isn’t any electricity? and I said, ‘I’ll use the paper to light a fire.’ Then, while we were chattering at each other, Willie up and walked out without saying a word. He couldn’t care less, and I was drunk off my rocker. Ah-ha!”

  I found Willie’s number and prayed that:

  1. Willie hadn’t changed his number

  2. Willie hadn’t gotten rid of his phone altogether

  3. Willie was in the real world

  4. Willie hadn’t found his way (we hadn’t seen each other for two years…maybe three) into the loony bin (for excessive gaming) or an obesity clinic (fast food is fast food, after all)

  5. Willie was still in the land of the living

  So imagine how happy I was when his phone rang three times and was picked up. That same old voice drawled into the line, “Hello?”

  “Willie!” I happily shouted into the phone. “You’re in the real world! What happened?”

  “Oh, Nikifor,” Willie responded in his usual hum-drum voice. (At school and even afterward, people called me Nikifor or just Kif.) “I’m at work, who’s going to let me play here?”

  “You got a job? But you’re a nonconformist, fight the system, all of that. Passive, sure. But what happened? Did you switch sides?”

  “I still fight the system, and it still fights me. I fight it online; it fights me in real life. I use programming, and it keeps me hungry, cold, and without tobacco. If you’re hungry, you’d better go find a job. And hey, go easy on the ‘passive’ thing. It’s a good word, but ‘passive warrior’…sounds kind of insulting. Anyway, what’s up? You must need something, it’s been three years since we last saw each other.”

  “Have you played Fayroll?” I cut to the chase.

  “I play now. I mean, not right now, of course, but every night.” He didn’t say anything for ten seconds or so, then continued. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m writing an article about it, so I’m in your gamer universe now, too. I played for a day or so, got to Level 5, and someone killed me. Willie, I don’t think there’s anyone in the world that could show me the ropes better than you can.”

  It might have just been me, but I thought I heard Willie exhale in relief.

  “Sure thing. Where are you now? I mean, in the game.”

  “In Aegan. At the respawn point.”

  “Okay, so by the western gate. Go into the city, and you’ll see a tavern called the Lonely Troll about three hundred meters on your left. It’s cheap, not a bad place. And they have rooms you can go into to chat quietly. Let’s meet at 7 tonight, Moscow time—I’ll come home from work, grab some food, and head there.”

  I agreed immediately.

  “How many times have you respawned?” Willie asked.

  “Once.”

  “That’s it? Phew boy! In the beginning, I practically never left—I must have respawned a hundred times. Okay, see you tonight!”

  Fat Willie hung up the phone. I did the same and jumped over to the cooktop, where my hot dogs were past ready. The game’s the game, but I was hungry.

  Sure, it’s humiliating, I thought to myself, though half the people out there are running around in their underwear. Plus, at least it isn’t the real world. I tried to make myself walk to the Lonely Troll. After all, it was just three hundred meters. But it wasn’t just any old city where you might have twenty players milling around. This was Aegan, the capital, and each meter there is like three in most of the places in Fayroll. And then I had to deal with the tavern, where I was sure to be the butt of any number of jokes.

  Still, I managed to walk through the gate to the city. Though when I did, the reaction I got was anything but the one I expected.

  “Hey bro, they got you, too?” asked a bearded archer walking by.

  “I’d give you some pants, but I don’t wear any,” a mage standing by a bookshelf remarked sympathetically.

  “Those damn idiots,” muttered a gloomy dwarf. “Open your exchange window.”

  I opened it and received 10 gold.

  “Buy some pants. And a shirt. Can’t be looking like that,” said the dwarf, who hopped away quickly on his short legs without even waiting to hear me thank him.

  “Wow,” I said with surprise. “It looks like most people are sympathetic around here.”

  I had almost gotten to the pub when I heard a laugh that was barely human.

  “Get your naked butt over here,” yelled a hefty barbarian dressed in iron with an enormous battle hammer strapped to his back. “I’ll sing you a lullaby!”

  I mentioned that Fat Willie had a very odd sense of humor. Well, there it was.

  “You got bigger,” I told him when I got closer. “I imagine you have to be careful where you sit down.”

  “You have to be realistic,” roared Willie. “It would be weird if my 140 kilograms decided to play some skinny elf, no? Open your exchange window.”

  He sent me five pairs of pants, the same number of shirts and coats, a sword, a club,
a mace, and a shield. All very cheap, without any upgrades.

  “Here’s a little handout for you. You’ll be killed again, and this way you’ll at least have something to wear when you respawn. Put one set on now, and leave the rest in a room.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Did you even read the manual?” Willie blinked in puzzlement.

  “Well, I read the guides about leveling-up and the history of the world.”

  “Wasn’t that clever of you?” My friend even let out a slow whistle. “Okay, look. You can go into any hotel, and they’ll give you a room. Not for free, of course, but you won’t go broke. That’s your personal space, so the only people who can go in are the ones you invite—and only when you’re there, too. The things you leave there never go missing, and you’re the only one who can go get them. Leave everything important and valuable there that you don’t need to keep on you.”

  “Live and learn,” I said in an ingratiating tone. k'1`2

  With pants and everything else on, I felt much surer of myself.

  “Willie, can I ask you some more questions?”

  “Let’s go find a room, and we’ll get you your answers. Or not, depending on the questions.”

  We walked into one of the separate rooms in the pub.

  “So what’s your question?” Willie started off, at the same time ordering from a pretty waitress. “Meat and beer. A lot of meat, and five times more beer than meat.”