Universe Online - Enter the Game: Complete Edition

by Ryan 'Viken' Henning

  Karren hadn't ever been into playing herself, but she liked to watch me do it and would even cheer me on during fights or when I was in a tight spot.

  It made simply living somewhat more bearable.

  Still, she helps me up out of the Pod and into an old fashioned wheelchair. It could have been one of those ultra-modern ones that'd move all by itself, but I like the look of the classics. It's like those guys who still want to use old fashioned barbers chair instead of the modern ones, ya know?

  Karren wheels me to the small table and sets out the food and medicine for me to eat and take. Or rather, she feeds it to me, given that I cannot really move any of my muscles. I can still chew a bit though, so long as the food is soft.

  The doctors keep telling me to move as much as I can to help slow the muscle decay, but besides a bit of motion in my neck, jaw and eyes, the rest of me looks more like a stick figure. It’s depressing.

  I definitely wouldn't be called handsome. I look more like a starving victim.

  But I eat and chat with Karren some more, mostly gossip about the other nurses. Like any other place, gossip makes the world go round on a personal level. Even I try to keep up to date with what's going on.

  “Oh, your latest scores came in, Allec.” Karren suddenly says, having forgotten. I at least try to raise my brow at her.

  She still catches the slight eye twitch that comes with the look though, and chuckles a bit wryly.

  “I know, sorry. Anyway, want to take a look?”

  'Yes, please.'

  She gets up and leaves only to come back with a large envelope, before pulling out the oddly thick stack of papers. Real, honest to god paper and not the 3D-film that's mostly used today. With my growing lack of fine muscle control in my eyes, I have a really hard time reading those.

  “In summary, you passed. Passed with flying colors, actually. With perfect scores across the board. MIT's Online College is offering you a full eight-year scholarship along with special disposition. They're wanting you to test out their VR Learning technology using the Type 2 VR Helmet by Japan's Core Corp.”

  Karren summarizes it for me, and for a moment I remain silent and think about it.

  Online colleges have been around since the early 2000's, but using full Virtual Reality tech for them is a rather new idea. Especially with all the options that are available. How VR's translate data from skills and knowledge into a format that seamlessly integrates into the user's mind is like receiving a constant download from the servers.

  But the information is stored as real memories in the brain. Skills learned in VR games and the like -can- be used in the real world. The only problem is is that games are purposefully simplified to keep things fun. Real life isn't like that. It requires more effort and work.

  'I'll write up a draft later. I'd rather see if we can use the Dive Pod instead. It doesn't have the same limitations that the VR helmets or goggles have. More costly, but with how popular Universe Online is, just about everyone will end up with a Dive Pod sooner or later.'

  Of course, that's assuming that Solar Dynamics allows it. But I'm not too worried.

  “Heh. Aren't you a smart one. Well, congratulations anyway. Lets get you cleaned up and back to your game.”

  Part nurse, part secretary; gods I love this woman.

  I only end up spending about an hour in the real world before I lay back down in the Dive Pod and close my eyes.

  -Dive Begin-

  -|- -|- -|-

  I wake up and immediately notice that something is wrong. The lights are out and the soft vibrations of the escape capsule is gone. I'm also floating about an inch off the seat I'd laid back in.

  The power has gone out.

  I control myself with a breath though, and look down at the opened floor. My HUD only takes a moment or two to update with what I'm seeing. The power generator is out of fuel and the batteries are completely drained.

  “Well, damn...”

  Now I have a new problem to worry about.

  -|- -|- -|-

  Fun Fact #4: Astronauts sometime train in pitch black rooms with only a single light in order to learn how to suppress their natural instinct to fear the dark. Working in space is not for the faint of heart.

  Chapter 4 – We need more Power, Scotty!

  Well, the power core has given me all it’s got. There isn't an iota of power left in the batteries, either. They've all been ran dry. And it takes me a few moments to realize what had happened.

  I'd logged out for an hour. In-game, six hours has passed. The constantly running atmospheric processors had sucked up every bit of power they could. Along with the emergency lights and the gravity generators.

  Well, damn.

  “Of all the fucking shit… I thought there was still fuel in the tanks.”

  Okay, so maybe I'm not in that good of a frame of mind at the moment.

  It’s just so damned frustrating.

  Like, really. I'm out here by myself. There's no working infrastructure. No life support. No gravity. No light. No food. I'll basically have to do everything by hand. It is like the start of that old game ‘Minecroft’, where you gotta go around and punch trees for starting materials.

  Okay, breath in, breath out. There's no reason to lose my cool. I just gotta think about it logically.

  I need power, but there isn't any fuel. I haven't been able to find any fuel in the station yet either, assuming there is any. Power isn't generated by itself, after all. The next logical thing would be an alternative power source. Burning something perhaps. Or solar power.

  Wait... solar power. That rings a bell.

  I open up my inventory and spot what I'm looking for. A solar cell. It is part of the basic survival package I received. It’s a small thing though, basically a two feet by two feet square.

  Its efficiency rating isn't that high either. But it’s a nifty thing all the same; basically a folded piece of cloth with the solar cell imprinted into the material.

  I pull it out and unfold it to take a good look.

  Simply thinking about it pulls up the schematic of it, along with how much power it can produce based on available solar light and radiation. It’s basically a trickle compared to what the power core of the capsule produced, but I need power NOW.

  So I put it away, and shimmy myself out of the capsule through the hatch and look around while heading around the crashed capsule. Toward the hole that the rough entry had made in the hull that leads out into space.

  The magnet rope is still wrapped around my waist, so I slowly adjust it as I go, tying off one end to my suit in preparation to taking a real look outside. I'm going to end up leaving the Space Station before my second day had even started.

  Finally at the hole, I attach the other end securely to the wall and take a breath. Outside, the slowly spinning stars are quite the dazzling sight. Without the attenuation of an atmosphere to obscure them, the stars appear as pinpricks of thousands of colors. Some of clear, while others are cloudy and distant. But they are all magnificent.

  I take another breath and gently push off the floor and float out into the true void.

  There is no transition. No notion that the 'space' outside is any different from the environment inside. Only the lack of surroundings. It is like stepping out of a large warehouse into the open air on a planet. Natural and connected. There's no lag or any other notion that something had happened.

  The power of the Dive Pod is really cool. Even with the other VR games, there was oftentimes a noticeable lag between large zones or areas. But here there isn't. None whatsoever. From station to space was as smooth as a babies bottom, and several times more beautiful, to boot.

  Still, I keep my wits about me and slowly work out my short length of magnetic rope until I pull taut with a slight jerk around my waist. Finally out in space itself, I can feel the slight suction that space has on matter. Remember those old bulky marshmallow-men like spacesuits where the astronauts ended up spread eagle? That's because space has a forc
e all its own.

  But my space suit is powered just enough to resist it, so I can continue to move freely in this environment. I can still feel it though, which is a bit funky. There's only a very thin bit of material between my bare skin and space, after all. It would make anyone nervous.

  But I have a job to do. This trek into space is basically just recon. So I pull my gaze from the spinning wheel of stars around me and turn back to look at the station itself.

  I get a bloody big surprise.

  And when I say big, I mean BIG. I'm forced to swallow, simply looking at it. The station is huge. Easily twice or three times the size of the mining station from the Beta Test.

  And it’s beat all to hell.

  And freaking fracking huge.

  Holy shit. Just where did they send me?!

  From my limited vantage point, the station looks to be the size of a bunch of mountains shoved carelessly together. And I am very, very small. Like a flea on the carcass of some sort of massive dead beast. Like a dinosaur.

  And I cannot even see it -all-. The hold my 'home' is in is on the outer concentric ring; connected to the rest of the station via support slats and corridors. Working inward, the station's structure bulges out and broadens, gaining mass and height as it works inward toward the center. Which is a tower structure that extends both above and below the rest of the station.

  But unlike blocky, cube-based stations, this one is oddly sleek and curved in most cases. It is rather easy on the eyes in that way. It also seems to have been built in a single go, instead of patched together with additions as it grows.

  It’s serious business. This wasn't some small station that grew in a chaotic manner as it grew like a city. This was built like a fortress; meticulously planned out from the get-go.

  And given that there's a big ass gun 'up' on the top of the outer ring from where I'm hanging, it seems to support that theory. It was a military station.

  I'm simply amazed. I'm amazed that the place wasn't ransacked by whoever it was that battled it and obviously won.

  The signs of battle are obvious. Laser and mass driver damage can be easily seen; along with big blasted holes that look to have been made from missiles or torpedoes. Or plasma weaponry. Most of the really big weapons have been trashed as well.

  Including the one standing over me. Half of it is melted and crumpled in against itself. It was once a turret of some kind, but now it is a ruin.

  With a bit more looking, I can see where shield generators had been blown the fuck up too. The shield projectors or emitters are slagged on the outside of the station like popped pimples. There is even what seems to be half a ship lodged into the inner structure of the station, to boot. Like someone had rammed the station but failed to explode. It is fairly close to the core tower, too.

  It makes me gulp all over again.

  But the fact that the station is still here, and can even be repaired is an obvious sign of just how strong the damned thing is. It was built to withstand just about anything it came across. And still survived to this day.

  “Fuck... This is going to take a long time to repair.”

  Yep. There's definitely that. A lot of fucking time. And effort. And materials. I don't even know where I am in the starting galaxy. If I'm even in the starting galaxy. I have no idea where my closest neighbor is, either.

  I sigh. It is somewhat of a depressing thought. While I'm not a paragon of social virtues, I do like being able to interact with others given my inability to in real life.

  But I have work to do, so I better get back to it.

  Only now do I realize that my HUD's mapping feature has been running non-stop while I was floating there staring. Huh. Its range is quite long out here. I never noticed it inside. It’s already building up a picture of the surrounding external structure of the station, overlapping the interior rooms I've already explored and then expanding beyond that.

  Cool.

  At least now I'll have some way of keeping track of where I am inside and get more information at the same time.

  But that isn't all that catches my attention about the map either. It’s also started marking distant objects that take me a minute to recognize.

  An asteroid belt. So far out that I cannot even see them with the naked eye, but still very much there. Large ones, at that. And what appears to be wreckage. Hm. Probably scrapped ships from the battle that was fought here, perhaps?

  That's interesting. But I have no way of going so far.

  Next up though is the local star, or sun.

  It’s a glowing yellow ball of fiery plasma and gas.

  From what I can tell, it should be a standard earth-like star. It is close enough to see, or rather big enough to see. It’s still some distance away, but I can clearly see the shadows it cast on the station.

  'Down' and to the 'left' would be its rough position, as aligned with the station. Good. That means there isn't impediment from receiving direct sunlight. Actually, I can already feel my space suit starting to heat up a little simply by being outside in the light.

  Oops! My radiation meter is starting to tick up.

  That in itself is both a good thing, and a bad thing. Better power generation from the solar cell, sure, but not so good to be out in for any extended period of time!

  But I've seen about as much as I can from this vantage point, so I start pulling myself back into the station using the rope. It’s slow going, cause I don't want to throw myself inside and be unable to come to a stop until I hit something.

  Collisions in zero-g are bad. Remember that!

  Once inside, I unhook myself from the ruptured bulkhead and then start looking around. In fact, I use my Searching and Scavenging abilities, and start opening up every crate in the hold. Their inventory contents start popping up as saved message windows in my HUD.

  And damn, there's a bunch of shit!

  Spools of wiring. Pipes of all shapes and sizes. Fabrics. Metal parts. Electronic parts . Mechanical parts. Crates full of refined metals . Guns and ammo, including laser rifles and battery packs.

  Several of the larger crates also have metal struts, braces, bulkhead and hull materials. Basically patches for damage.

  Shit. Maybe I should have inventoried the hold before exploring the station.

  And emergency rations and full air tanks! They even work with my suit! Hell yes!

  Apparently this hold was used to store emergency and repair supplies. Freaking awesome!

  Tens, hundreds of thousands worth of E-Credits worth of goods!

  And none of it was marked claimed, either.

  It all counts as salvage. So I mark every crate I check.

  But I don't find any tools. Which means I'm stuck using my starting tools to do the work for now. Damnit.

  There also isn't any fuel, or power supply systems. No processing machines either. Oh well, I don't have any power to use them right now anyway.

  And time is ticking down again.

  This time from my suit. Because of the joint space-suit/mechanical brace suit, I use up quite a bit of power simply moving around. The battery alert just popped up when it hit 50% power while I was still looking around.

  Damn. Now I have to recharge my suit as well as provide enough power to keep me in air for a while.

  I let out a sigh and slurp my way through another ration in my suit. I'm really dreading having to face the fact that I have a 90% reduction in my physical stats without the mechanical suit.

  I shake off the depression though and instead move to where I found the metal struts. They're stacked in a long crate, and are so heavy that even in zero-g I have to move them one at a time. The have quite the mass, after all. Doing more than that would be a problem. I bring over three more of the struts, and put them end-to-end.

  Close to the hole in the outer hull, I finally pull out my multi-tool. It has a small laser emitter head used to make welds. I set it to the highest setting, hook it up to my suits power supply, and go to work.

  The visor i
n my helmet goes opaque as I bring the laser into contact with the metal struts, but a 3D grid pops up showing me the position of the materials I'm crafting. The system had automatically brought up the Assembly Aptitude and Mechanical Aptitude along with their connected Aspects. It really is useful.

  It takes me more than thirty minutes to join the first two struts to each other though, and I have to make sure to make the weld as clean and neat as I can. I don't expect it to have to hold a whole lot of weight or mass, but I don't want to risk losing my only solar cell, should something go bad.