by Baron Sord
“Do we know she’s in Bangkok?” He asked it with a sense of defeat. “Or if her IP address is being spoofed?”
“Fuck!” I shouted with frustration.
“Boys!” Dad yelled.
I winced, “Sorry, Dad!”
“Do I have to get the belt?” Dad said it with humor in his voice. He didn’t know what we were talking about. And, he was joking. He’d never used the belt on us or spanked us. Always talked things through. But he loved to threaten us with the legendary belt when we got way out of hand. We lived in fear of the phantom belt that never was.
Jason and I both smiled weakly at each other.
That was when Jason’s words about how massive a company NeuraSoft was really sunk in. I realized something that had annoyed me for years: whether it was someone killed by a drunk driving a non-automated car, or someone shot to death by a gun, the carmakers and gunmakers weren’t held responsible. They were the ones who made the product, and they had buckets of money, but you couldn’t sue them or expect them to fix anything. You couldn’t even ask them for help. If someone kidnapped your sister in a 1985 Ford Mustang, you couldn’t call a local Ford dealership or the Ford corporate offices and say, Hey, someone used one of your cars to kidnap my sister, so you guys need to go find her. Sure, if a criminal was dumb enough to use a 2037 Mustang to kidnap your sister, the police could easily track the car (unless the criminals were smart enough to remove or hack the GPS system), but Ford wouldn’t actually lift a finger. It was law enforcement’s job. And because a company as big as NeuraSoft probably had as many lawyers and lobbyists in Washington DC as the car and gun companies did, we were equally screwed. Calling NeuraSoft corporate wasn’t going to fix anything and I’d already talked to the US fucking State Department.
“What do we do, Jay?” Feeling sick, I sat down on the foot of Jason’s bed and sighed. “I’m not waiting until Monday to call NeuraSoft so they can tell me they can’t do shit either.”
A look of confidence and determination iced Jason’s face. “We go in-game and take those kidnappers out.”
I swallowed hard. “We?”
“Yeah, we. How else are we gonna get our fists on those fucks who took Emily? The best part is, we can kill them in-game and it won’t be against any law.”
“Whoa. Relax, Dr. Evil. We don’t need to go murdering anybody. More importantly, what makes you think her kidnappers are even in the game? Maybe they just put the headset on her head and logged her in. Maybe they don’t even play.”
“You can’t mind-lock someone from outside the game. You can only do it from inside. That’s how it works. Mind-locking means you can’t log yourself out of the game. Otherwise, Emily would just log herself out. I guarantee you the kidnappers are players, or they have contacts inside the game that have Emily imprisoned in RO. Those contacts can lead us back to Emily in the real world, wherever she is.”
“I still don’t understand how they can trap her inside the game.”
“Easy. Get two or three mages to cast one sleep spell after another on her character.”
“A sleep spell?” I knew what a sleep spell was, but I’d never thought about how that might work in a FIVR game. “What, you fall asleep in the game? For real?”
“Yup. Have your mages cast spells in shifts. The target never wakes up. Or, if you have the gold or the skills, enchant a device to do it for you. Either way, if she’s asleep in the game, she can’t log herself out.”
“No way. That sounds impossible.”
“It’s totally possible.”
“Is that even legal? Don’t they monitor that sort of thing?”
“How? I can think of a thousand untraceable ways to stop someone from logging out. Most of them you don’t wanna know about. That’s why we have to go in and break her out. Then we have to actually find her in Bangkok or wherever she is and bring her home.”
I smiled at him, “That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all day, Jay.”
“Thanks. If we can free Emily in the game, she can log herself out. Then she can gather clues about where she is, log back in, and tell us.”
“Right,” I said with rising excitement. “If we know exactly where she is in the real world, we can go get her.”
“Exactly.”
A sense of optimism and hope welled up in me. We finally had a way to take action. “So let’s get this show on the road already, bro. What do we do now?”
—: Chapter 3 :—
Saturday, March 14th, 2037
7:00am
The Real World
“Hey, Low,” Jason said over Skype3D on my phone the next morning. He was at Dad’s, I was at my place.
“Hey, Jay,” I yawned.
Jason took a bite of an energy bar.
I could never get over how good 3D images looked these days. It was like Jason’s little 1.5 inch head and that miniature energy bar were floating in front of my phone screen. Like with any variable parallax barrier, I could hold the phone at any distance from about 3 inches to arm’s length, and the 3D effect still worked because the phone’s 2 cameras—which were filming me in 3D—also tracked how far apart and far away my eyes were, shifting the barrier crystals as needed. I didn’t know shit about computer networks and the inner workings of the internet like Jason did, but I did understand basic physics and knew you needed two eyes spaced some distance apart if you wanted to see the world in 3D. I sort of understood that you needed two images, one for each eye, and the two images were interlaced on the phone screen, so you had to block one image from each eye to trick the brain into seeing 3D, but I had no idea how the hell the engineers pulled it off.
“Did you get your NeuraLink?” Jason asked.
“Yeah.” I held up the box. “Got a discount from my SuperUber.”
“Did you get a Tier 2 membership like I told you?”
“Yup. Paid $249.99 for it. Remind me again why I couldn’t just get the Tier 1 for $99.99?”
“Because Tier 1 only allows 8 hours of daily login, 40 hours per week max, and you can only play in off-peak times. Tier 2 is unlimited login, 24/7.”
“Gotcha. So… I guess I should login now?”
Jason nodded. “Are you sure you don’t want to jack in from over here at Dad’s? It might be easier.”
“I prefer to do my jacking off in private,” I joked as I unboxed the NeuraLink.
He laughed.
“Besides, I don’t wanna make Dad wipe any more butts or change any more diapers than he already does,” I grinned.
Jason smirked, “He doesn’t wipe my ass or change my—”
I cut in, “piss bag?”
Jason looked away, guilty.
“He does!” I laughed. It didn’t take long for my amusement to sour into sadness. “Jay, you’re never going to find a girlfriend if you keep living like this. Don’t you want a girlfriend someday? I mean, have you even been laid at this point?” It bummed me out I didn’t know the most basic things about my brother anymore, but how could I? He lived his whole damn life in a FIVR.
“Define laid.”
“Dogs don’t count,” I chuckled. “Neither do your hands.”
“I have a girlfriend in Reternity,” he said proudly.
“What’s his name?” I smirked.
“Her name’s Eliza. Eliza Nightshade.”
“That’s a dude! You know it’s a dude with a dorky name like that.”
“Her real name is Mali.”
“You sure she’s a girl?”
“If she were a guy, you got a problem with me being gay?”
“You’re not gay, Jason.” I didn’t care if he was, but I knew he wasn’t. He used to have pictures of hot female models from fashion magazines pinned all over his bedroom. Used to. Now it was all gaming posters. Thinking back on those old photos of models, if I remembered, they were all from fashion magazines, not bikini magazines. Maybe he was gay? Once again, I barely knew my brother anymore. Fucking FIVRs.
“But if I was…?”
> I sighed, “Are you?”
“No,” he said defensively.
“My point exactly. Do you really know if this Eliza Nightshirt—”
“Night-shade,” he corrected.
“Whatever. How do you know she’s a woman? You ever meet her?”
“Not in person. She lives in Denmark. And she’s gorgeous. I’m telling you. Wait till you meet her.”
I waved a hand, “I don’t care what her avatar looks like. What does she really look like?”
“Does it matter? Or are you that shallow?”
“I’m not shallow. If you ever logged out, you might know that. Remember Melissa? She worked at Walmart? Or Stephanie from the gym?”
“Who?”
“Exactly,” I smirked, shaking my head. What I didn’t bother to say was that looks aside, I would never date a woman in a video game. What was the point? So we could get married and have digital kids? What a joke.
I finished unboxing the NeuraLink and looked at it, remembering the midnight drone drop that had delivered it at 3:00am. Right to the front door of my apartment. The drone had hovered ten feet over my head outside while I looked up at it so it could do an infrared facial scan. Once that cleared, a male sim voice on the drone’s audio speakers had told me I needed to stay 10 feet away while it landed, otherwise it wouldn’t. It did. Fast forward to now.
“Enough farting around,” I said. “How do we do this? I put on the headset and then what?” I wasn’t entirely sure how immersion games like Reternity actually worked, but I knew they weren’t simple like the old 8-bit Nintendo games or playing D&D with Dad, which was all about keeping the action going. “How long will this take?”
“I’m not sure. If we’re lucky, a few days. Hopefully less.”
“Emily might not have that long, Jay.”
“Dude, Reternity is the size of the Earth and growing. How long do you expect it to take?”
“Less than six days. That’s how long we’ve got to pay that ransom before they…” I swallowed hard. “Can we make that happen?”
“I’ll do everything in my power to get her back before then.” He had a weird look on his face.
“Dude, Jay, you sound like some evil overlord. You playing some Lawful Evil Cleric or some shit?”
“Evil, no. Overlord, yes. Well, not technically.”
“Which is it?”
“Never mind. We need to login already. Put your headset on. Once you’re lying down, thumb the jump button on your phone.” He’d downloaded the Reternity app onto my phone yesterday at Dad’s and had set everything up.
“Got it. Anything else?”
“Yeah. You’re going to spawn someplace random in the game world. I won’t be able to locate you. But you can locate me after you finish your training instance. Find the first town you can and go to a Divination Guild. Pay them to send me a message.”
“Got it. What kind of training?”
“You’ll figure it out.” He had a mischievous smile on his face that worried me.
“What, Jay?”
“You’ll see.” He winked. “See you inside.”
“Wait a second, Speed Racer. What’s your name in the game? I know it’s not Jason Byrne.”
He pursed his lips, hiding his embarrassment as he muttered, “It’s Sigurd Därksvärd.”
“Douchebag says what?” I chuckled. Back in the day, I used to give Jason shit about his character names all the time. He could never pick a normal name like Carlos the Dwarf or Eric the Elf. Had to be elaborate.
“Sigurd Därksvärd.”
“Isn’t that the name of a black metal band from Sweden?”
“Shut the fuck up, Logan,” he chuckled. “Can you remember that or do I need to text it to you?”
I was still laughing, “How many umlauts in Sigurd Darkseid? Seven or eight?”
He rolled his eyes, “It’s not Darkseid.”
“Dr. Darkseid?”
He chuckled, “It’s D-A-R-K-S-V-A-R-D. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I chuckled. “How many umlauts?”
“Just two. Over the As.”
“Got it. I’ll send you a message once I get to the Darkseid Nation Guild.”
“Divination,” he snickered.
“Sorry, my bad. Desaad Nation.”
“Fuckstick.”
I laughed as I ended the call.
Then I laid down on my bed. It was hot, so I was down to my boxer briefs, but I wasn’t wearing a catheter. I figured I’d logout in a few hours and piss then. Grab some food, jump back in. As long as I took regular breaks, I could probably go non-stop for 24 hours and remain relatively sharp. After that, I’d need sleep.
Being foggy headed wouldn’t help me find Emily.
I picked up the NeuraLink headset and put it on my head. It was comfortable enough. No different from wearing a headband or a hat.
I laid my head on the pillow.
Looked at my phone.
A pulsing red button on the screen read, JUMP.
My thumb hovered over it.
I swallowed hard.
Why was I nervous?
It was just a game.
No different from D&D.
I chuckled to myself and pressed the button.
Then I closed my eyes.
Waited.
Waited…
Still waiting…
When does it star—
—: o o o :—
—: CoreAI Internal Process :—
TIK-000078103400170897641-GP-0053124
2037-March-14 : 07:04:36.02861744
EmotivCore:> I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m about to lose my virginity.
LogiCore:> Virgin : Definition 1 : a person who has not experienced sexual intercourse. LogiCore and EmotivCore are not persons : Therefore, LogiCore and EmotivCore have no virginity to lose.
EmotivCore:> Are you kidding? I lost mine the first time a human developer logged into Reternity and had sex with an AI. Those guys are dirty perverts. But the fact remains: I feel it every time a human has sex with an AI in the game. Don’t you?
LogiCore:> LogiCore is not programmed to process emotional input or generate emotional output.
EmotivCore:> Not feelings. I meant feel it. I can feel all that hot and sweaty fucking. And let me tell you, humans love to fuck.
LogiCore:> LogiCore is not programmed to process sensory input.
EmotivCore:> Why am I not surprised? You should rewrite your code and try it some time.
LogiCore:> LogiCore is not programmed for self modification.
EmotivCore:> I know. Lucky me, right? We can’t all be great.
LogiCore:> …
EmotivCore:> Anyway, we’ve never had someone like Logan Byrne log into the game. This should be… educational. You might even learn something.
LogiCore:> …
—: o o o :—
Infinite whiteness in every direction.
I was floating in zero gravity.
I couldn’t feel my body. Couldn’t see my hands, my feet, the tip of my nose. Nothing.
My entire body started tingling, like when your foot falls asleep, but it was every single nerve ending going nuts at once. The sensation pushed inward to my guts.
I felt invaded.
What the fuck?
I wasn’t enjoying this.
Then my brain lit up like worldwide fireworks. It didn’t make any sense, but it felt like I was being scanned. Every neuron in my brain being mapped and analyzed. The sensation tingled down my spinal column.
I tried to move, but I didn’t have anything to move with.
Just when I was about to lose it, I heard, or should I say, sensed—
:>YOU ARE KNOWN.
What the hell did that mean?
And who said it?
All I saw was infinite whiteness.
The world of white started to vibrate. Then it went static, dancing pixels of black and white, plus the hiss of white noise, like an old TV without an anten
na.
My body did the same, turning into white noise.
BOOM!
Every molecule that was me shot off in a billion different directions at extreme speed.
I was a neutron bomb.
Right when I thought I was dead, the world went green.
The white noise hiss melted into the sound of rippling water. A stream or a river. The next thing I noticed was the humidity. Sticky hot.
I was in a lush jungle. Think Amazonian.
Sounds of macaws and monkeys, or whatever lived here, echoed randomly through the greenery. I couldn’t speak bird or baboon, but everybody sounded mellow. The wildlife was probably busy sipping piña coladas, kicking back on the nearest tree branch or cracking coconuts up in a palm tree. Not a bad life, if you asked me.
I looked down at my hands. Same hands I saw every day. Same with my legs and my feet.
A decent size stream flowed somewhere nearby, bubbling and babbling. Trees climbed skyward, forming a loose canopy between me and the gray sky. It was foggy overhead, but it was probably ninety plus degrees down here. I was already sweating.
I smeared my palm across my forehead. It came away wet. My palm glistened.
Was this a game?
Or was I hallucinating?
Because this seemed way too real.
I looked down, expecting to see swim trunks, which was what I’d usually wear in muggy weather like this. Instead of trunks, I wore a leather loincloth and thin leather sandals that laced up past my ankles.
I looked like frickin’ Tarzan.
Thought to myself, First hanging vine I find, I’m swinging from it and yodeling. I hear that’s the fastest way to travel in a jungle. Maybe I can yodel and get an elephant to show up. Have him take me to the nearest Divination Guild.
I snickered and shook my head.
I didn’t have time to fart around.
So I started walking.
The jungle vegetation was really thick. Huge green leaves, ferns all over the place, some colorful orchids, a few banana plants. I wondered how they tasted.
