Contents
Adam
Cover Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapters
Darkness Beyond Promo
Map
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 13.1
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 23.1
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Epilogue 2
Bio
Other Works
Installing Darkness Beyond v1.1
Glimmer, A Throne of Souls
Convergence Book 1.
A Novel
Stephen Landry
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the author. In such case neither the author, or distributor has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
If this book is being sold by a vendor other than the following large and established vendors / distributors: Createspace.com, Amazon.com, Apple.com, BanresandNoble.com, Smashwords.com, Kobobooks.com, or any distributing partners listed on the aforementioned websites, there is a high degree of certainty this book was purchased as a pirated copy. It is requested that you contact the author immediately so that the vendor in question can be notified to cease and desist their practices. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted material in violation of the author’s rights.
Copyright © 2017 by Stephen William Landry
[email protected]
Cover Illustration by Scott Lynn
Inside Illustrations by Tori Newton and Stephen Landry
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database, retrieval system, or torrent web service, without the prior written permission of the author.
Dedicated to Hugh Shelton.
Mentor and Friend.
R.I.P.
Chapters
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The year is 2070.
Darkness Beyond transports players to an alien world called Eda rich with natural resources and dangerous lifeforms. Exciting first-person shooter gameplay combines with resource collection and building mechanics for a truly unique MMO gaming experience.
Players must scavenge for resources to craft tools, weapons, gems to protect themselves from the vicious alien fauna. Quests and crafting mechanics encourage players to brave the dangers of Darkest Beyond to gain experience to create more powerful items. Crafted gear and implants enhance players’ abilities, but teamwork is key.
Darkness Beyond has multiple levels of cooperative gaming. Grouping with friends to explore the environment increases the odds of survival and of acquiring important resources. On a larger scale, players ally with factions and join large scale fights for land and resources. In Darkest Beyond, competition is fierce and the rewards are huge.
Darkness Beyond has no micro-transactions or in-game purchases. It returns to the roots of online gaming where players earn rewards through skill and determination, not dollars.
The alpha phase of Darkness Beyond runs on a dedicated server hosting up to 5000 players in a full virtual world. New developments in nerve technology let you feel, smell, and taste the world around you in a totally immersive environment. Beware of danger though because even the pain feels real with death resorting in a level reset to 1. The only way to gain back your experience is to find avenge your death. Future releases will support even more players per server with various expansions combining elements from your favorite fantasy, action, and sci-fi games.
The future is now.
The future is Darkness Beyond.
Final upload in progress...
Day 1.
At first I felt like I was falling. Everything was solid black. No upside down no right way up. I felt like I was trapped. I couldn’t move my body. Was I dreaming? A nightmare? Small threads of light lit up around me like wisps. I recognized it. I was between worlds. Inside the game, the loading screen for Darkness Beyond. Only I quit playing two hours ago…
“Hello? Help! I'm not suppose to be here. I didn't login,” I spoke into the void. I tried to pull up my B.U.I. (Brain user interface) but no luck. No interface. No way out.
“Hello, the game won't let me logout? Is anyone out there? What the hell is this?"
"Hello Adam, welcome to beta phase 0-1-0.”
“Beta phase? What the hell are you talking about? I was just...”
“We know Adam,” the voice sounded like a robot. I recognized it as the small floating sphere that was the guide in the tutorial. I had been playing so long now I almost forgot what it sounded like. Been forever since I’d been here at the starting point. Had I hit my head?
Slowly I opened my eyes to the world around me. I was inside the game. I recognized the place. It was one of the first levels, actually it was the very first. After designing your avatar your character woke up from stasis inside a crashed starship. After waking up you would have no memory of who you were or where you came from. The very first quest was all about finding some gear and getting the hell out of dodge.
The last thing I remember before everything went dark was driving in my car. I was on the way to see my fiancee, Elizabeth, but I had always called her Ellie for short. We were meeting for sushi, a date night we had been planning for awhile now and I was already running late… I think, I think I was crossing a bridge? It all feels like a blur. Like I’m trying to remember something from long ago.
The game around me looked different. It felt more real than ever. I must have hit my head. I hit my head and wrecked my car. I’m sure of it, shit. Darkness Beyond. I had just finished playing for the day. I was a level 90 Cryomancer, one of the top 200 players in my country. Of course only about 5,000 people were playing at the time. The game technically wasn’t released yet.
I didn’t game professionally but I beta tested for lots of companies. I was an designer by nature. Making mods, designing artifacts, that was a part of both my game life and real life. I was a problem solver, BUT this… this was wrong. I wasn’t just playing the game I was in it.
Darkness Beyond was a newer game. Still in alpha. One of my college friends had gained access to it in its early stage. We had been playing for about six months. One of the first few games to utilize STEM technology. Sounds fancy but it was really just an
ugly piece of headgear that allowed users to feel inside the game. A deep dive. That was what they called it. It made you feel like you were there. All five senses were alive when you dived though most games only used three maybe four. Darkness Beyond was one of the few games to utilize all five.
“YoUR body has been transported heRE, please do not be alarmed,” the robot, I forget it’s name, said sounding like it was nearly glitching out.
“PlEASE dO nOt bE aLARMED,” it said, “collaborating, plEASE wait,” it finished. I felt the world go black again. I was back inside the loading screen. Small wisps around my body. I looked up to the sky and I could see the stars. This was different. The textures were off, different from what I had remembered when playing,.
“Sorry Adam, we are still working out some of the bugs,” said a voice. It was a woman’s voice right in my ear. Not someone I was familiar with and definitely not someone from the game.
“Can you hear me alright?” she said.
“Yes,” I answered, realizing that my voice sounded the same in game as it did in real life.
“Look this is all going to sound really strange but if we are going to get you out we need you to listen to us, we need you to follow our guides,”
“How am I here?” I demanded.
“Right now we don’t have time for that,” she said.
“I have all the time in the world it seems, I’m stuck here in this abyss, what the hell is this, this is Darkness Beyond isn’t it”?
“Yes and no, you’re in the beta, that’s a loose term. Much of what you see will be the same but you aren’t going to have a lot of the same skills and abilities that you had while playing, you are going to have to learn, you can pull up your B.U.I. right now and see for yourself,” she said with a slight nerve in her voice.
“How do I do that?”
“Will it, imagine it, remember what the interface looked like and it will appear,” she answered.
I did what she said and I saw it in white text before me. It looked the same as it did in game.
Name: Adam
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Race: Human
Level: 90
Class: Cryomancer
HP: 100
Mana: 100
Stamina: 100
Agility: 7
Endurance: 8
Intelligence: 7
Charisma: 5
Luck: 9
Abilities: None
Skills: None
Inventory: Empty
Reputation: None
Alignment: None
Languages: Common (English)
All of my abilities and skills were gone. Also I had no reputation, though that was something new. Darkness Beyond had no groups that you could align yourself with nor any villages or people to gain reputation with. For the most part Darkness Beyond was a dungeon crawler, an exploration game set on a post-apocalyptic alien world with monsters from both science fiction and fantasy mixed together. It was a fun game don’t get me wrong it just had a little trouble actually figuring out what it wanted to be. I guess that was a part of the appeal. You could play it as a sword and sorcery or go in guns blazing. Some of the tougher raids took teams and strategy and there were a few guilds but nothing over the top. For the most part I just enjoyed exploring the alien world. Discovering fallen starships and alien ruins alongside abandoned human habitats. There was a decent amount of lore associated with all of it especially the fantasy elements but much of the sci-fi elements were still a mystery.
“You can see your old abilities and skills are gone, that is because this version isn’t going to play like a game, I’m sorry Adam, I’m so sorry but we need you to be calm, and we need your help if we are going to get you out,” she said.
“You still haven’t told me what is going on? Last thing I remember I was driving to see my fiancee? Is she alright? Am I alright?” I wanted to scream. I was scared. Nervous not just wondering where the hell my real body was or why I couldn’t log out but what if something happened to her. I would never forgive myself.
“She’s fine, please, our time is running out, we are only able to speak to you for a few more minutes, we are doing our best to upload as much information into your UI as possible, our connection won’t last long,” she said as if pleading for me to listen.
I settled as much as I could, I could feel my pulse beating. I realized now I wasn’t wearing any of my usual gear. I was in a black sweatshirt with a white t-shirt with a red skull on it and wearing the same brown cargo pants I had on before I woke up here. My face wasn’t there. In the game world I had designed my own face best I could with the sculpting tools they had but HERE, this, this wasn’t my face. I was wearing some kind of black mask with four round sensors. I could see and feel just like I was in my own body but when I touched it with my hand (which looked like I was wearing a black glove) I felt like I was wearing a helmet. My whole body was the same. I was stuck in some kind of pre-made avatar wearing my real world clothes.
“Everything has been reset, levels are irrelevant here without the right skills, you are going to have to learn and adapt. We are working on a way to pull you out now. Much of the same rules still apply but pain dampeners have been turned off and everything is going to feel real. If you get stabbed you will feel it, if you need to heal it will take you hours and if you lose all of your life you will feel pain like nothing you have ever felt before. Please be careful. There is a possibility of perm death, we have no idea how many re spawns you are capable of,” she paused, “this world is your home now, for now anyway, we are doing our best to hack the code for you, you’ll see, there are a few things we can do for you,” she stopped.
“You still haven’t told me what this is, this isn’t a beta, and you are telling me I am trapped but you haven’t told me why or how?” I said. I was tired of listening to the voice apologize. I just wanted home.
“I’m sorry Adam, I truly am. We’re out of time.”
Her voice came through, “ please survive,” and there was silence.
Chapter 2
Ellie’s voice echoed again and again inside my head. My fiancee. It was her voice that had spoken to me last. Her voice that told me to survive. I had no choice now. I had to play. Here I was trapped inside the game. I was back inside the ship. Waking up just like I had the first time I played only this time I was a level 90 noob. This was bullshit.
A quest appeared in front of me in white text.
‘Far Eda’
The text quickly disappeared. I could see that getting annoying real fast. I willed the line back into my line of sight.
‘Far Eda’ - Escape the inside of the alien ship to the wilds of Eda
Objective:
Find food, water, gear.
Survive
“Fine, I’ll play along,” I said to no one but myself. I started to look around the stasis chamber. I was practically laying on the ground when I stood up. It was dark. Far darker than it had been when I played before. The lighting was natural, real. Lit in blue hues by the small lights that lined the other stasis pods. Small fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling. The ship’s backup power supply must have kicked on after I woke up. I looked around to get my bearings. All of it was familiar. It should have been. I was just replaying something I had done before. I looked around at the pods around me. Most of them were full of skeletons and other human figures frozen solid. I looked again for the robot guide and found it on the floor. It was shattered. Three claw marks across what use to be it’s spherical face.
Something attacked it. I’m not alone. That was new. “So long little buddy,” I said picking up the robot. I looked through it wondering if I could store it anywhere. I pulled up my interface again. In the game I was able to store weapons and items inside my inventory. Usually I picked them up and they disappeared. I tried to will it away. Will the piece of scrap inside my inventory but it just laid there in my hands. Nothing.
<
br /> I had a mod. A second inventory in game I created myself. As a game tester I had been given several cheats and taught how to modify some of the games basic code. It was basically a copy/paste of what was already there. I willed the second inventory up and found the entire menu had been locked. So much for my luck being a 10.
I made my way down the first corridor. The first time I did this I got lost inside the alien ship for about an hour after taking a left. This time I went right. It led me to an armory. “Perfect,” I said aloud. Inside the first thing I noticed was a mirror. I really did look like a robot. It was disturbing. I could feel just like I was inside my own body but this wasn’t it. I was the same height, same build, I felt like I weighed the same but I felt stronger, faster. Behind the mask I was smiling… happy that part of the game was the same. In real life I wasn’t in bad shape but I wasn’t my best. I had constant pain in my hands and while I was a pretty quick sprinter I would be damned if I had to run a 5k. In game I always felt like the best version of myself.
Faster, stronger, rebuilt. Games were my escape from depression, pain. Now it looked like maybe all of that had backfired. On the other hand maybe being trapped inside a video game wasn’t such a bad thing. If I could gain my abilities and skills, if I could live up to my level 90 I would be like a god here. Nothing would be able to stop me and I could rule. I wasn’t so unhappy with my life I could leave. I couldn’t leave. I didn’t want to leave. I loved video games for me but it was all nothing without the real people that made my life worth living.
Glimmer, A Throne of Souls (Convergence Book 1) Page 1
