by Baron Sord
Who was I kidding?
They probably tasted like pixels. In other words, nothing.
Two minutes later, I came to a clearing.
A huge fallen tree laid across a deep gorge. The tree was ten or more feet in diameter. A regular bridge. Tree that size had to be hundreds of years old. The huge roots were on my side of the gorge. I ran my hands over the nearest root. Rough in some places, smooth in others. Probably from where other people had grabbed it to climb up and walk across the trunk.
This was freaking me out.
I had to keep reminding myself this was all fake.
Virtual.
Not real.
A bunch of 1s and 0s talking to my brain.
But every sense in my body was saying otherwise.
I had a scary thought maybe I should go back and grab a few bananas before I forgot where the tree was, in case I got hungry.
No, that was stupid.
If I got hungry, all I had to do was logout.
Wait, how the fuck did I log out?
I looked all around and saw nothing but jungle.
No smart phone.
No Reternity App.
Nada.
My nerves started to creep.
I was in the middle of a huge jungle. I had no idea which way was north or south or which way was out. I was basically lost. If it got cold at night, I’d be freezing. Sooner or later, I’d need fresh water. And eventually food.
This was bad.
Wait, wait, wait.
This was a game.
Just a game.
All I had to do was pull the headset off.
I reached up to my head.
No NeuraLink.
Okay, time to panic.
“Calm yourself, adventurer!” The voice was a woman’s voice, somewhere on the other side of the tree bridge.
What a relief.
I grabbed roots and vaulted up onto the trunk.
On the far end stood a woman.
“Hey,” I hollered.
She was probably a hundred feet away but even from here, I could tell she was pretty damn hot. Long blonde hair bleached by the sun, tan skin, hourglass body. Unlike me, she was barefoot and wore a leather bikini. If this was work, I would’ve started flirting with her. But I needed to find Emily. And the jungle babe had a spear resting on one shoulder. More importantly, she was fake.
I hollered again, “Hey, uh, do you know where the Divination Guild is?”
“Join me, adventurer!” She called before turning and walking back into the jungle.
Join?
Wasn’t join an old biblical euphemism for boning? No, that couldn’t be right. Whatever. But, she knew more about this place than I did, so I may as well follow her and ask some questions.
I strolled across the bridge. The trunk was covered in slippery moss. After a few steps, I lost my footing and almost fell off the tree into the gorge, which plunged at least 150 feet straight down to a river. My body reacted by tightening my chest. My heart hammered too. I wasn’t a cliff diver, and besides, I could see rocks. I’d crack my skull open if I fell from here. Or land on my back and shatter my spine. Then me and Dad could both have artificial vertebrae in our backs.
I shook my head.
“It’s just a game,” I said out loud.
I didn’t sound convincing.
Where was that logout button?
I took a moment to calm myself and looked up and down the length of the gorge. It went on hundreds of yards in either direction.
“Are you coming?” the jungle babe asked from the end of the bridge. Was she flirting? Her face said yes. And I knew one thing, whoever came with this babe was one lucky dude.
Focus!
I needed to smack my own self upside the head.
“Yeah, sorry,” I called as I strolled toward her, keeping my eyes on the wide trunk. “Lost my footing. Maybe I should take these sandals off.”
“Are your feet as soft as the rest of you?”
“What?” I chuckled. I wasn’t soft. Not even close. Sure, I wasn’t an ab model, but I did cross-fit three times a week. “You call this soft?”
“Did you slip?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So I call that soft.” She smiled when she said it.
I was close enough now to see her in detail. Aside from the leather bikini, she had chunky bracelets on wrists and ankles. They looked carved from wood and twined with dried vines. Her necklace sported polished colorful rocks. Also, I got a really good look at her face for the first time. Somehow, she looked familiar. I couldn’t place her, but I couldn’t escape the feeling I’d met her someplace. Maybe I had. According to Jason, a tenth of the planet played this game, so maybe she was someone I knew.
Nah. She was probably some gamer girl who didn’t have a body anywhere close to this good. What did it matter? I was just here to find Emily.
I reached the end of the bridge and was about to hop down to the dirt.
“Do you need me to hold your hand?” she asked.
“What, to jump off this log?”
“Yes,” she grinned. Damn, she was sexy.
Suddenly feeling like a douche and a dweeb and a dork, I jumped off the tree bridge and landed confidently in the dirt. Stood up smoothly. I was showing off. Blame the hormones.
But why?
She was fake!
Fake, fake, fake!
“Shall we begin your training?” She waved an arm toward the jungle.
Okay, so I looked at her cleavage. She was busting out of that leather bikini. When I was a kid, I watched a torrent of this movie called One Million Years B.C. There was this total old school babe in that movie named Raquel Welch. That woman was a knockout in her day, and none of it was fake. It was 1967, so you knew every inch of her was deliciously real. And I could tell (Yeah, I’ve watched the movie a few times since). Anyway, in that movie, she wore a leather bikini. Let’s just say her bikini covered more than this jungle babe’s did, and both ladies were equally hot. So I looked at Jungle Babe here. More than once. A lot more than once. I couldn’t help it. She bounced just right whenever she moved her arms or walked or anything.
“See something you like?” She grinned. Perfect teeth. Luscious lips. Seductive eyes.
“No!” I laughed it off, maybe a bit too nervously.
She frowned. It was damn cute. “Calm yourself, adventurer.”
“Yeah. Anyway. Can we skip the training? I need to find a Divination Guild.”
“We could, but I might regret it.” Every word of hers dripped with innuendo.
She might? No wonder they said this place was heroin. I knew a few women in the real world who were this hot. They came into Opal all the time, but they rarely acted this way unless they were in the presence of male models, football players, or super rich guys, none of which I was.
“Shall we?” She smiled that smile again.
Shall we what? Man, I couldn’t say that. I cleared my throat, “What’s this training you’re talking about?”
“I’ll show you…”
Five minutes later, WHAM!
We were in the middle of a clearing and I was on my back in the dirt for the third time. This time, Jungle Babe had hip checked me so swiftly I didn’t see it coming. Sure, I was a few inches taller than her and outweighed her by at least 50 pounds, but she knew her way around a street fight.
At the moment, her spear tip rested on my loincloth. She grinned, loving this, “And you call yourself a man?”
“Maybe I should call you a man,” I smirked, standing and wiping away the damp dirt.
“More man than you,” she flirted, teasing me by turning her back and gazing at me over her shoulder.
Let me just say, looking at her back was as bad as looking at her front. That leather bikini was barely there. No wonder Jason never left this place. If there were more babes like this in Reternity, no man ever would.
That picture of Emily asleep on that bed flashed in my mind. For all I knew, she
was somewhere in Reternity with her own hot dude, having the time of her life. No, that seemed unlikely. More importantly, her real life was at stake. I needed to get her out.
I looked everywhere but at the jungle babe. “So, uh, what’s your name?”
“Layna.”
I snorted a laugh and mocked, “Lay-na?”
“What’s yours, Ass Baboon?”
I laughed even harder. “No, it’s Logan.”
“That’s almost the same as mine. And you laugh at me?”
“Never mind,” I grinned. Okay, I liked her. Who wouldn’t? “Can we finish the training? I need to get moving.”
“Are you sure you’re man enough to take me?”
“Damn, woman! Would you stop flirting with me already?” If I wasn’t so worried about Emily, I could hang with Layna all day.
“You love it,” she smiled.
I smiled back but I kept my mouth shut. If I said one more thing to Layna, it would lead to another and another and… Layna. Oh, man. This place was too much. “Hey, can we focus on the training?”
“If you insist.”
“Please, Layna.” I was begging but I was chuckling. It was fake, all fake. A computer game. Not real at all. Yeah, right.
“You are such a woman, but if you insist.” She walked several paces away (damn, that ass) and turned to face me. She twirled her spear gracefully around until the point was down. “Attack me.” They way she said it didn’t mean fighting.
Yes, I could do this all day, but Jason was probably wondering where the fuck I was. “Layna, look. You’re great. Any guy on this planet would love to ‘attack’ you, but I don’t have time. What do I need to do for you to tell me where the Divination thing is?”
She bent her knees slightly, turned slightly sideways, and pointed the butt of the spear at me. Her brows knit together. This time, her voice had an edge. “Attack me.”
“What, like punch you or knock you down?”
“Whatever you want.”
“I can’t do that.”
“A man could. But you’re not a man.” She wasn’t flirting. Well, maybe a little.
“Fine. You look like you can handle yourself. But I’m not gonna go 100%. Okay?”
“I don’t think you’re going to go at all, little boy.”
I wasn’t offended. Not in this situation. I sighed, “Okay. It’s your funeral.”
I started to circle the open dirt area, staying near the edge of the lush jungle leaves and ferns. You didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the monorail without learning how to fight on the street. Fighting was part of growing up.
Layna turned, tracking me with the butt of her spear.
There wasn’t room to get behind her. Not that I could shift fast enough to outpace her spinning. Worse, she had reach with that spear.
“Hey, don’t I get a spear?” I asked.
“You’re a man. Use your own.” She was smirking again.
We both knew which spear she meant.
I was wise to her game. She was trying to distract me. The other thing about street fighting was that I didn’t follow any rules. Lucky for me, the dirt here was really soft. I shuffled around toward Layna’s backside, forcing her to lift her lead foot to pivot. The moment she shifted her weight on her hips, I dug my sandal in the dirt and kicked a spray in her face.
It was just enough to distract her.
I grabbed the butt of the spear with my left hand. She clutched it hard and yanked. I grabbed the back of her elbow, intent on forcing her to the ground. Had she not let go of the spear, it would’ve worked.
Instead, she elbowed my ribs.
I hopped back just enough to soften the blow.
She wasn’t pulling her punches.
I danced farther back to give myself a moment to think of something else. She still held her spear.
Out of nowhere, a semi-transparent text window popped up in my face. It floated about two feet away and the text within read:
Ting! New skill: Fight Dirty. Level 1. Rules? Who needs rules. Do the unexpected and catch your opponent off guard. Increase your Intelligence and/or Creativity to improve your chance of success.
Ting! +1 to Creativity.
Ting! New skill: Grappling. Level 1. The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Unless you fall for them first. Apply leverage to use your opponent’s body against them. Increase your Strength, Speed, Endurance, and/or Creativity to improve your chance of success.
“What the hell is all this?” I barked.
WHACK!
Layna clocked the side of my head with her spear and I went down. Again. Unlike the first, second, or third time she threw me down, this hurt. The side of my head had disappeared. In about a minute, it would start throbbing and I’d probably have a welt the size of a grapefruit. I was on my back so I propped myself up on my elbows and glared at her. But the damn text alert was still in my way. Above it in the corner of my eye, a ghosted green bar appeared. I Immediately recognized it as a health bar. Even though I never played FIVR games, I did play games like Ultra Street Fighter II on my Nintendo Switch when I was little. So I knew what a health bar was. Mine was down to about 95%, but I noticed it inching back toward 100%. It hovered in the corner of my vision no matter where I looked. It wasn’t a distraction, but the alerts about the skills sure were.
I glared at Layna. “Did you do this?”
She smiled, “Knock you on your baboon ass? Yes I did.”
“No. Throw all this text up in my face because I kicked dirt in yours.”
“No, that’s a status update.”
“And you didn’t cause it?”
“No.” She giggled.
“Did you get one?”
“No. What does yours say?”
“It says I learned, uh, grappling.” I didn’t want to say fight dirty to her because I knew she’d make a sexual pun and we’d be back on that track.
“Oh no,” she said dismissively. “I learned to grapple when I was a little girl. Much like you are now.”
I smirked at her, “How do I turn it off?”
"The status update?”
“Yeah.”
“Tap the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth three times quickly.”
“What?”
“Like this,” she said. When she did it, it took about two hours (or so it seemed) and I couldn’t stop staring at her wet mouth and wet lips.
“Yeah, yeah.” I did it myself, but quickly.
The two status updates about the skills had been slowly fading for the last 30 seconds, but now they blinked out. A transparent menu appeared.
Stats
Gear
Settings
Help
Logout
“How do I—”
“Just touch the buttons you see in front of you.”
“Right.” For a moment, I considered logging out. This whole immersion thing was overwhelming. But I needed to find Jason. I was wasting time.
I tapped Settings.
There was a dozen different things which I ignored until I found Status Updates. There were sliders for transparency. There were also On/Off check boxes for Visual and Ting, which were on, and one for Auditory, which was off. I turned off the visuals and the ting noise, and turned on the audio. A volume control slider appeared.
Layna said, “Please slide the volume slider up or down to achieve the desired decibel level.” When she spoke, her lips weren’t moving.
I said, “Was that you?”
“Was what me?”
“Sorry. I thought I heard you talking.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You sure?”
“Are you stalling? Or have you had enough of me?”
I smirked, wanting to say I’d never get enough of a woman like her. “Please, Layna. I need to figure these menus out.”
“Take your time. You might want to examine your character sheet.”
“What’s that?”
“Press the Stats button and find out.”
I did.
A new text window popped up.
Please select a player name. It can be your real name.
A ghosted keyboard appeared in front of me.
Did I want to use my real name in the game? Not if I was tracking kidnappers. What the hell name was I going to use? For some reason, I thought back to StreetFighter.
I typed: Ken the Knight.
Ken the Knight is taken. Please select another.
Ryu the Ranger.
Ryu the Ranger is taken. Please select another.
Seriously? I typed various permutations of various names and numbers and they were all taken. I guess that’s what happened when you had a billion people signed up already. Okay, I could come up with something that wasn’t too obvious or lame.
I typed: King FarthurT
King FarthurT is available. Do you accept?
Yes/No
I chuckled. Why the fuck not? I wasn’t going to play this game after I found Emily. I punched Yes.
Please select your race:
Human
Elf
Dwarf
Gnome
Orken
Doggen
Elephantum
Catkin
Grimwit
Foxkin
Koboglin
Serpentaur
Bugbear
Fairy
…
There were about a hundred other fantasy races I’d never heard of. And what the fuck was a Grimwit? I went with the obvious and tapped Human.
Another alert:
Please select your gender:
Male/Female/Mixed/Other/None
No brainer on that one. Male. But wow, they sure had a lot of choices. I guess this game was pretty progressive. Nothing wrong with that.
You have 10 attribute points to distribute.
Use ’em or lose ’em.
