by Tom Germann
We head into the complex.
Analyzing data. The section has successfully covered the open distance and dealt with eight armoured vehicles and a medium infantry company. If mission were to be extended to full planetary invasion, local forces would be reinforced with heavy infantry, armour and armoured vehicles, along with air and artillery support.
Assembling suggested changes for upgrading of grading/evaluation system.
Set decision tree. Complete mission or do not.
Additional heavy enemy forces are unrealistic within the facility. Carry on with assessment.
We are moving at a run down the corridors and there are very few booby traps or anything else really. The few security guards are all heavily armed and armoured, but no one expected to have the enemy breaking in here, obviously.
The only heavy weapons we have seen brought out have been lasers, and they are quickly and poorly set up.
We caught them napping here. They have had enough time to get ready for us, but not enough to actually bring in any heavy military gear that would stop a heavy raid like we’re carrying out.
The comm link clicks in our helmets, which is surprising. They really upped the game if the computer can judge when to call in and change something on us. I just hope whatever the changes are, we can deal with them, as we have used most of our heavy-hitting ammo up.
The woman’s voice comes over the internal headset. “Three section, we have been able to scan the power generation building. There are three potential targets that, if destroyed, would render the plant ineffective and drop the available power for defence.”
The heads-up display map resolves into much more detail and we are only a short distance from one of those points that we could destroy. Two of them are in what appears to be a large room.
That large room is in the centre of the facility, and it takes up most of the building. What’s in there?
She continues. “After taking out the power centre, continue tying up local forces until the landing force is on the ground and then connect with them to resupply and carry on operations. Do you understand?”
Tina’s voice is the first one to respond. “Message understood; we will comply.”
Again the woman’s voice comes over the link. “Good luck, and survive; we are going to need you all.”
Then the link clicks off.
There is no time to worry about what is going on or why the detailed changes have been made. This mission is over when we take out the defence facility. Then, we carry on to the next game, or have to reboot if we get killed and there is still time.
We move down the hall and come to a large doorway. When the lead goes through, we pick up enemy combatants in the room. Fire starts immediately and more of us rush in to take them out.
They are all down fast. They are dressed like the civilians and have tool belts. I guess that they were engineers running the room.
The last three that stepped in turn around and step back out to cover our rear. I look around.
This room is massive!
There is some sort of huge power generator in the centre of the room and the place is covered in what are probably danger symbols for the aliens.
The room itself is only about twenty feet high, but the machinery looks like it goes down a few hundred feet. There are steam clouds everywhere and the main generator is pulsing light and making some sort of low-pitched grumbling noise.
I have the feeling that if we are not careful, the explosion from destroying this will take us out, as well as everyone else, maybe in the whole city.
The timer in the one corner of the HUD is small, but we still have almost five minutes left to figure this out and maybe start another scenario. But I can’t think like that. I have to keep my head in the game now or I’ll get taken out by a guy with a hammer or something stupid like that.
How do we take out the generator facility so that no power is generated, and at the same time, escape the complex before the whole thing goes sky high?
We have no timed explosives. Grenades are kind of fast, and if one person fired off an entire load, they may start an overload and take out the generator. Or not.
Tina still has her one missile pod on her shoulder, as she dumped the other, and she makes the call while we are all standing around figuring it all out. Her missile pods twitch and move, which means that she is aiming.
The radio clicks on. “Everybody out. I can give you fifteen seconds before I launch, then I’m running like there is no tomorrow. GO!”
As soon as she started talking, the first of us were heading out the door. By the time she is done I am the last out and moving down that boring grey hall at a run.
It’s getting hard with all the running. I am wearing a lot of weight and it is anchored to the ceiling in the real world, so it’s just a bulky mass that doesn’t really weigh anything on me cause all that weight is supported by the ceiling harness. But it is still banging around on me when I move. And this weird treadmill we are on means we don’t just lean and move like some of those other cheap games. This game means that you RUN to get where you want.
My breath is burning in my legs and I can feel the acid build up in my joints. I don’t know how much longer I can keep going like this.
We hit the final corridor and see the two guys we left behind shooting at the aliens out there. Just as we start pulling up to them, they take off. The timer that Tina set is at three seconds and ticking down. I throw myself through the hole in the wall and take off at top speed.
When the timer hits zero, nothing happens, and then there is a rumbling noise and everything starts shaking. I am hoping that the building holds the explosion, but I’m thinking it won’t. Tina really did a good job there. We are still running across the open area when the explosion happens and everything goes black.
Literally black. The helmet has shut down but it is still humming so I am in gameplay still.
Then the lights come back on, but everything is grey and ghostlike. I’m dead, but there are still survivors that are in game. As a “ghost” you can follow the others at an easy walk and pan around no problem. You can’t communicate with anyone, but you can watch. All the structures go see-through as well, so you can see what is coming. You can see and interact with other “ghosts,” but not with those in gameplay.
I look around and see that there are seven of us total. There is Tina. I wave and she nods back at me.
The survivors are three badly beaten-up suits of armour. When the generator went up, it must have been a small atomic explosion. There is wreckage everywhere and it looks like the enemy soldiers are all dead.
This is the first time in a while that I am able to really take the time to look at them. They all look alike, with two legs, four arms, and short and squat. They stand just up to my chest, but can carry more than you would believe. Security wears reddish uniforms while military wears purple. Their rank is visible based on the size of the polka dot on their sleeve. That’s the way I always viewed it as, the polka-dot army. The bigger the dot, the higher the rank.
Their weapons are generic-looking and everything looks fake when I look at the body. Almost like it’s two-dimensional. Most of that is the “ghost” view.
I click the line open to talk to Tina. “Hey, Tina, what happened?”
Everyone else is listening in. This is going to be the best gamer update ever, and we are all going to want to know what happened in there.
She grunts and sounds exhausted. “I fired the missiles at the far target and thought I would have time to escape. I was wrong. This was some sort of really nasty, poorly assembled nuclear reactor that was falling apart. The missiles caused everything to go up before I even left the room.” She shrugs and points at the three survivors, who are starting to move away from the building. “But at least some of you survived and the invasion fleet should be inbound now. Yay, we won�
� Too bad most of us died.”
Analyzing data. Subject members of section worked well together. It was not until end of the mission that the section stopped functioning well and ran without thinking options through. Subject Tina could have waited, which would have allowed the other members to gain distance and survive the blast.
Tactically, subjects made good decisions. Recommend changes to command to facilitate the program.
Recommend subject Tina to be evaluated for further analysis and have her entered into the program. Recommend missions be continued from save point or in a campaign mode in future to gain more effective data on personal performance and to balance a “good” day against “bad” days that gamers may experience.
Continuing mission now. Preparing final upload now for further analysis.
We watch the three survivors move out slowly. They make it back through the building and head for the assault shuttle, but it’s wrecked, like most of the neighbourhood. They know they are tying the game up, but the mission is the mission and you have to play it to the end or destruction.
At least we have time to plan for what comes next as we have comms up and running.
None of us can believe that the game is still running. We finished the mission. The system should have done a quick reboot and loaded us onto a shuttle or lander for the next mission we had agreed to before we started. It hasn’t done that yet.
The three survivors are moving to the new pick-up point that is sending off a recall signal. It isn’t that far and they aren’t keeping an eye out, but are they looking up?
Everyone else is looking up and I check it out too. It doesn’t look as impressive in “ghost” view, but it’s still got some “wow” factor going for it. There are several large troop landers coming in, with smaller fighters and assault landers leading the way. An assault lander is coming in nearby.
Some defensive fire is coming from the surrounding areas, but it is light and not directed at all. Individual weapons fire from a few armoured vehicles; heavy weapon teams and even some defence centres will not stop the invasion. Accurate fire has to be directed by multiple AIs working together to slice the incoming landers one at a time based on the evaluated strengths and threats of each one. Some landers will usually get through, but they won’t do much good if they are support troops or just the armoured elements of the invasion force.
Now? The aliens are going to kill some soldiers. But most are going to hit the ground, and this has increased the chances of success for the entire invasion.
Everything blacks out again and the red letters come up. “Game Over. Mission Successful.”
We only have like two minutes left, but the next scenario starts loading automatically, and then everything stops.
We’re all on an assault shuttle heading for the space station, and about to dock and blow a hole in the super-huge, evil alien base for a doomsday weapon.
We’re on the shuttle, but everything freezes. I can move and everyone else can, but their movements are jerky. The system is lagging so badly, it’s like the old Internet used to be, according to my grandpa.
The radios aren’t working, either, so we can gesture to each other but can’t do anything else. I can hear voices muffled in the background, but that’s Tina calling out in the real-world room we are in. I am getting pissed. We spent money and booked this in advance, and are getting scammed out of what we paid for. We won’t be able to get back in to the game zone for almost a month. I start yelling with lots of profanity.
Analyzing data. Section has done well. Synergy of a full ten-person section has allowed the group to win the scenario in less time than normal for untrained personnel.
These personnel are in the top five hundred ranked subjects across the Earth. The criteria for evaluation will need to be revisited and fine-tuned, as most of the section does not meet the level that new recruits need to be operating at.
Subject Tina is a perfect match for corporate testing. More data would be necessary to confirm, but subject will be passed on for dedicated AI evaluation. Shutting down current test game for resetting. Corporate will issue a full credit to the subjects.
We were stuck in the lagging sucky game for over a minute and then it shut down. It turned out that there had been a glitch that popped up in the program because we did so well and were so fast completing the mission. The current computer connections were having difficulty with all the rapid decisions that needed to be made.
We were issued a free gamer pass with three full games on it, so I couldn’t complain as we only had like two minutes left in game. We were able to get ahold of the rest of the guys we gamed with and sent them messages. We would play again in the future, when we could all get in again.
We had just gone for a drink in the food court when Tina got another message on her phone.
You know, I’m sixteen now, and she has been fiLling out and looks good.
Hardcore gamers have to work out now so their cardio is good enough for the current generation of virtual games.
Unfortunately, everyone at school is noticing how good she looks too, and she gets tons of attention. But she’s not really into it. She blows most of it off, but that’s okay with me ‘cause we game together. Hormones are bad, though, and she is pretty cool, if still cold in a lot of ways.
I can tell we are all feeling it, though. The game requires you to move a lot with all that gear, and by the end of a game, anyone who is really playing is soaked in sweat. It’s an awesome workout all on its own. So getting a lot more liquid in after the game is important if you don’t want to collapse.
And that last game was the most intense ever.
I was only halfway through my energy drink (it really is a “meal in a bottle”) when Tina suddenly stood up and looked at me. “I’ve gotta go, Tim. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
I was still waiting for my mom to show and she was going to give both of us a lift, but I didn’t mind. She probably had to run off to go to her Dad’s work or something. I nodded at her and she was off and running like a shot. I couldn’t help checking her out.
We started gaming together three years ago, and playing and it had been weird. Tina wasn’t as well-off as we were, with both her parents working lots, but we lived in the same neighbourhood and had played together since we were kids. Her house was a bit more run-down than the others, and when they had renovated, they didn’t put the latest high-tech gadgets in for monitoring homes like everyone else had. But they were really nice people and had barbecues in the summer for the neighbourhood kids. Those of us that were around, anyway.
I think they would have let Tina come and play once in awhile but they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on silly things like that. They had her playing musical instruments and studying all the time.
My parents chose a different path. Dad was gone a lot and Mom “managed the home fires,” like she used to say. As long as my grades were good, I got to come to the gaming centre regularly. She hadn’t liked the VR game until she really looked at it and did some online research. I worked out at home, ran, played tennis, and the gaming was allowed because of the physical fitness side and the hand-eye coordination that was improved on.
Tina’s mom helped out with the local community groups and at church. She was always helping someone somewhere and knew the rest of the local moms pretty well. Everyone worked together. My mom liked Tina and liked having a “smart young woman like that” studying with me. She said it kept me on my toes and I worked harder and did better.
The first time we all came to the centre, Tina sort of tagged along and then went in with us. One hundred dollars is not that much anymore, at least according to my parents and grandparents, compared to back in the day. Today, to play ten minutes of a VR game like that, it was cheap. To go once a week and then hang out after was okay. But that day, Tina grumbled and got angry when she found out that my mom had paid for her to ge
t in. Tina made her own way in the world and didn’t like charity.
My mom looked at her and me. She asked us both to sit down in the living room for a chat. It was kind of scary to realize how short both of them were, even though Tina was just about as tall as my mom at age twelve. My mom pulled my reports up on the living room screen and I was embarrassed, but mom pointed out how my grades were higher when Tina and I worked together. When they dropped after Grandmamma died, Tina had helped me get through it and my grades came back up. The school had told my mom to drug me and expect a bad year.
It was a bad year, but I had recovered way faster than I should have, and my mom was not a big fan of drugging kids to make them feel better.
I could never forget my mom sitting there talking to Tina like she was an adult and waving a finger at her. “You helped Tim get through all that and more, and help keep his grades up. That gaming is actually better for you, and look how everyone is getting so much exercise now! It keeps you out of trouble, and really, I am not worried about treating you, so suck it up, Tina!”
Tina tried to grumble, but my mom is way too cool for that. Tina ended up giggling and saying thanks and that was it. We were a team. Jeff and Steve were old friends and we fit together just fine.
We just kept going. A few weeks ago, Tina’s father had a heart attack and was recovering, but didn’t have the best insurance package out there. The new nannite strengthening that was out was top-notch and did great things, but it was expensive. They couldn’t afford it, but were working through it.
Mom did everything she could to help Tina and her family out. Tina had an open invitation to sleep over at my place (in the guest bedroom, with my mom glaring at both of us as reminders of house rules). She had taken us up on that a few times, and we had the barbecue at their place two weeks ago, with everyone bringing stuff and making it a bigger party than ever.
Her dad was getting better, but it was hard on Tina and she was pushing herself to do well in school and everywhere else.
Years later I looked back at this and thought that my mom was also setting me and Tina up, as she really liked her and so did I. My last memory of Tina was of her walking away from me in the food court, and I couldn’t stop checking her out. She never noticed ‘cause she was glaring at her phone and I wondered who had sent her a message that was that much of a problem.
