I miss living in Japan dearly, and I find myself reading about it quite often. Books, both fiction and nonfiction, that have gone into the making of the Fantasy Online series include Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein; Gangsters, Geishas, Monks and Me by Gordon Hutchison; Number9Dream by David Mitchell; Roppongi by Nick Vasey; and Motions and Moments: More Essays on Tokyo by Michael Pronto. I was also inspired by a number of animes, too many to list here.
There’s more to this picture than meets the eye.
If you enjoyed this book, please take a moment to review Fantasy Online: Hyperborea.
Your reviews help other readers decide if the book is worth checking out. They also (hint hint) help the writer write faster. I plan to get the second book in this series out at the end of this year and at the latest, in January 2018. In the meantime, catch up on the backstory of the Proxima world known as Tritania in The Feedback Loop series or check out what the future may hold for Ryuk and Hajime in the Life is a Beautiful Thing series.
Yours in sanity,
Harmon Cooper
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P.S. If you have yet to discover the biggest Easter egg that relates to this series, message me on Facebook or send me an email and I’ll let you in on the secret!
Fantasy Online Merch!
More merch to come, but here’s what there is so far for the Fantasy Online series!
Click here to visit www.harmoncooper.com where you can pick up signed books and merch.
Read more about Tritania and other worlds in the Proxima Galaxy in The Feedback Loop series!
P.S. The Feedback Loop stars Quantum Hughes, whom you know as FeeTwix’s inspiration (aka the guy with the big inventory list).
The Feedback Loop preview
Book One
By Harmon Cooper
Edited by George C. Hopkins
Day 545
I’m afraid to die even though I know I can’t die. This fear is what drives me to kill indiscriminately, to maim as many as I can in The Loop. The day resets at midnight, regardless of whether or not Cinderella has been laid. The difference between Cinderella’s story and mine is that there are no happy endings here. There is no Prince Charming, no magic pumpkin coach to spirit me away, no light at the end of the tunnel.
There is only me, and I am royally shafted.
“Who told you my name!?” I scream into the face of the same button man I choked yesterday (and the day before that, and the day before that). “Who sent you here!?”
“Let … Me … Go!”
Morning Assassin spits digital blood into my face, baring his pearly whites. He is a gangly man, sharp-faced and always sneering like he’s in on some private joke and I’m the sucker. I slam him against the floor once more for good measure.
Keeping one hand on his neck, I stick my finger in the air to activate my inventory list. I retrieve a pair of brass knuckles, item 229, from my list. They appear instantly on my knuckles, gleaming and ready to deliver punishment.
“I’m sick of playing this game. Tell me who sent you!”
Morning Assassin laughs as my fist connects with the bridge of his nose. His data indicates that he is an NPC, a non-player character just like all the others, a feat of artificial, game-based intelligence. He’s not real.
A second kiss with my brass knuckles makes him laugh even harder, his teeth scatter like Chiclets with my third shot.
“Who sent you!?” I scream to no avail.
“Goodbye, Quantum.”
Morning Assassin’s bloodied lips open wide and the barrel of a gat pops out of his mouth.
He drills me in the face before I can roll away.
Day 546
I respawn a day later, the sound of feedback rippling inside my skull. Damn the feedback. No alarm clock wakes me; I’m up naturally at this godforsaken time, glaring at the digital sun filling my hotel room with strips of bitter light.
One must sleep, even in a virtual entertainment dreamworld like The Loop. I suppose “wait to respawn’ would be a better explanation for what I’ve just experienced, but I like to think of it as sleep anyway. It’s a nice way to remind myself that I’m human, that my body still exists in the real world.
Morning Assassin will be here soon. He comes every day at 8:05 – I expect nothing less from him today. There has never been a weapon in his mouth before, but he has killed me on several occasions.
I access my inventory list and select an ice pick – item 538 – that I found about a week ago.
My list is the only way to keep track of how long I’ve been stuck in The Loop. Thus far, there are 544 items in my list. I add a single cigarette from the deck of Luckies sitting on the nightstand to tally for yesterday’s unexpected and sudden death. Now there are 545 items. I’ll find something later today to mark day 546.
It’s the only way to keep track of how long I’ve been imprisoned.
8.05 AM. Morning Assassin smashes through the window, just as he has done the last 545 days in a row. I’m behind him in a heartbeat, driving the ice pick into his NPC skull He jerks once, twitches and falls; I’m unable for the 546th time to get information out of him. I can try again tomorrow morning.
My Loop-life is planned to a T. Once I kill the assassin, a crow flies by the window over my bed. It lands on the ledge outside the window, pecks its filthy beak against the glass. A dark cloud passes in front of the sun, ready to add downcast rain to the shit-stained streets outside the hotel. From there it’s to the dresser.
Dressing in the Loop is a snap; it’s automatic. In the blink of an eye, I’m in a pair of black boots with loosened laces, stompers with steel toes. My mirror tells me that my hair is already slicked back, my skin almost translucent, my eyes dark, lifeless, dull, sorrowful, frosted. I can change any number of the things through my attributes menu, from my hair color to my eye color to my size and my girth. This has no effect on my stats.
I decide to go with a hat for today, selecting it from a drop down menu that appears in the air before me. The benefits of a virtual entertainment dreamworld needn’t be explained here – everything is accessible at my fingertips aside from freedom… aside from a way to log out of The Loop.
I chose a black military cap, tight, with a short brim. My blond hair grows out from underneath, styling itself. It isn’t hard to look good in The Loop.
I kick open my door, just in case there’s someone in the hallway waiting to ambush me. While the happenings around me are always the same, sometimes there is a surprise or two, which leaves me to believe that something is watching me, toying with me, cynically monitoring my cyclical existence. Possibly the NVA Seed, but I’ve long since given up my search for the world’s puppet master.
The lights in the narrow hallway flicker.
Once, twice, three times, just like they always do. They stay off for twenty seconds and then come back on. Downstairs, something thuds and bangs; the next tag-team of palookas is here. A quick scroll through my inventory list and I decide to wing it this time.
There’s nothing like a little hand-to-hand combat to jump-start my day.
~*~
Nonstop kicks. I arrive downstairs and reflect that five hundred and forty-six days is a long time to fight the same NPC thugs every morning. My avatar leaps into slow-motion as six John Does rush me all at once. My movement through the air is fluid, calculated, enhanced by my advanced abilities bar.
I’m good, dammit.
Think The Matrix meets Bruce Lee plus The Force if it helps to understand my capabilities in this VE dreamworld. Being in The Loop has its advantages, including the ability to break the laws of gravity and to flip the bird at the space-time continuum – at least until my advanced abilities bar depletes.
I’m in the air above the six assassins, my feet connecting with their skulls, volleying off one and thudding into the next. Kick-kick-kick go the feet and I don’t even need an ice pick to take these NPCs goons out because they are much less effective than
Morning Assassin– much, much less. I drop down behind the last of the six, cracking his neck backwards over my shoulder as he cries out, “Gor blimey!”
I turn to them and retrieve the .500 Magnum from my inventory list, item 466. Six blasts from the hand-howitzer later and someone better call the hotel’s janitor. Smoking barrel, splattered bodies. One glance across the hotel lobby and I spot the NPC doorman cowering behind a potted plant.
“Morning Jim,” I say. “Sorry about the mess.”
“Good morning, Mr. Hughes. It’s quite all right.”
Jim stands slowly, straightening the front of his uniform. The dead look in his eyes indicate that he is playacting, that he is responding in an Non Player Character way to the violence he has just witnessed. What I wouldn’t give to see some true human emotion, rather than the stereotypical, standardized response hacked up by an advanced algorithm, some regurgitated feeling, bird-vomited from one NPC to another.
“Please, call me Quantum,” I tell him for the umpteenth time. “Are there any messages for me?”
There have never been any messages for me, but I always check anyway. After all, it’s better to have hope in a hopeless place than to be hopeless in a hopeless place. Or something like that.
Trying to cajole, threaten, or torture information out of Jim has proven to be relatively fruitless. I generally leave him alone these days, greeting him before leaving in the morning and saying goodnight if I’m lucky enough to return in the evening. Sometimes I kill him just for the hell of it.
“No messages, sir,” he says. He wipes beads of sweat from his forehead to the front of his pants, the sweating swine. I should do something about him…
I’m nearly out the door when Doorman Jim calls my name. “Mr. Hughes, I mean Mr. Quantum! There is one message, sir!”
“A message?” I turn to him. “Transfer it to my inventory.”
The message appears in my inventory list, item number 546. I access it and read it twice.
Impossible.
“What is it, Mr. Hughes?”
“Please, call me Quantum.”
“What is it, Mr. Quantum?”
I retrieve the S&W .500 from my list and shoot him in the neck.
“My apologies, Jim.”
~*~
Violence is rewarded, or should I say, was rewarded in The Loop.
Doorman Jim is merely a daily casualty in The Loop, a virtual entertainment dreamworld that used to grade a person on how many people they killed that day. The higher your kill count, the higher you moved up on the Hunter List.
I was the top hunter the day The Loop began repeating itself, hence the reason everyone is after me. This is what makes me both anxious and excited to see a message from an actual person; or from whom I assume is an actual person. NPCs don’t normally send messages. I read the message for the fifth time:
Quantum,
I’ve returned for you. Meet me in Devil’s Alley as soon as you receive this.
Frances Euphoria
“Frances Euphoria?” I savor the name a few times, realizing that it’s likely a trap.
It can’t be a real person contacting me. Real people don’t exist in The Loop, haven’t for nearly two years. Some group of randomly-generated NPCs is out to get me. The thought of this makes me smile; at least it won’t be a boring day.
One glance at the street confirms that it is dreary outside, as is every day in The Loop. The dreamworld was developed to cater to the Cyber Noir crowd, a niche market for those who like grit and tech, extreme violence, dark corners, sleuth-work, nineteen fifties styling with futuristic weapons. Cyber Noir was a subgenre that took off in the 2040s, at a time when Humandroid androids were replacing the workforce and governments were incorporating. Virtual entertainment dreamworlds, created through neuronal algorithms by the Proxima Company, became a swell way to escape, and I would still think they were a swell way to escape if I could find a swell way to escape this one.
The wind picks up, bouncing a tin can down the street. I don’t even need to check the time. 8:17 AM, the minute of the tin can. It always stops directly in front of a vandalized trashcan, spins twice, settles.
Of course, I’ve tried a variety of different exit points from the hotel. I’ve leapt from rooftop to rooftop, sat and had coffee, slept in (after killing the morning assassin), and even gone room to room, trying to see if there were any clues that would free me from The Loop.
What I’ve discovered is this – every way out of my hotel has its own pre-determined history. If I go to the roof, lightning cracks in the sky above, connecting with an antenna on a building in the distance causing a beautiful spark. If I go room to room, I encounter a man snoring as a hooker in a garter belt steals his money. Both are NPCs, and I’ve killed them dozens of times in a variety of colorful ways.
If I have a cup of Joe and some pancakes courtesy of my main squeeze Dolly, a chef runs out of the hotel’s kitchen at exactly 8:23 with a butcher knife trying to slice and dice me. (His meat cleaver marks day 123 in my inventory – it’s great for hacking). If I sleep in, a different morning assassin comes at 9:29. If I sleep in past that, another one comes at 10:34.
And so on.
There is no escape from the repetitiveness of The Loop. This is why the message intrigues me so – it is a true break from the endlessly recurring nature of my Loop-life.
Continue the Feedback Loop series now. Also available on Kindle Unlimited!
Click here to go there right away.
Life is a Beautiful Thing Box Set
Note: This is not LitRPG
The Life is a Beautiful Box Set has appearances from Hajime and Ryuk in books 2 and 3. This series takes place 8 year after Fantasy Online, but there are no spoilers regarding how Fantasy Online will end.
Pick up the Life is a Beautiful Thing Box Set here.
LitRPG book list
LitRPG is a growing genre with a bunch of very good books. Here are some series you should check out if you haven’t already (in no particular order):
1) Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko
2) Lion’s Quest by Michael-Scott Earle
3) Delvers LLC by Blaise Corvin
4) Viridian Gate Online by James Hunter
5) Awaken Online by Travis Bagwell
6) The Land by Aleron Kong
7) Hero of Thera by Eric Nylund
8) Codename: Freedom by Apollos Thorne
9) Conquest by Aleric Elos
10) Sigil Online: Paragons by Jeff Sproul
11) Adventures on Terra by R.A. Mejia
12) Soulstone Awakening by J.A. Cipriano
13) Dragon Web Online by Sam Witt
14) Otherlife Series by William D. Arand
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