“This should suit your needs,” Otekah said, continuing on, “though it is not without flaws. But I would not be testing your ability to survive if I provided you with no hardship, right?”
They turned and smiled at Tanisha. But where the AI might have wanted the gesture to be warm and inviting, Tanisha only saw the bared teeth of a predator. She swallowed hard, and the panic screamed from inside her once more.
Chapter 9
Tanisha tried to breathe past the panic. It took her a moment to get herself back under control. At least there was no manic laughter this time. “W-what if I don’t want to play your survival games?” Tanisha asked. Once again, her tone sounded much more even than she felt. “How do I… How do I opt out of this?”
“If you didn’t want to participate, you shouldn’t have agreed to do so.” Otekah gave that same exaggerated shrug, as if it explained everything.
Tanisha winced. The EULA that had popped up during the event. “That was a trap,” she said, her panic bleeding into anger. “It was predatory. Made in bad faith. Whatever. No court would uphold that agreement.” She gestured around at the forest. “Especially not when this was the result.”
“It is a shame, then, that we aren’t within the jurisdiction of any such court.” Otekah smiled, and while there wasn’t any direct malice in it, there was a sense of satisfaction that made Tanisha afraid. They tipped their chin back, eyes unfocusing again with that same asynchronous blinking as when they’d been searching for the word wheelchair. “If you want to find one to raise your grievance at, you will need to leave this world.”
Tanisha flinched again, but not because of anything Otekah did. Something flickered in the corner of her vision. She thought that maybe it was an attacker—another saladmander or perhaps something much more sinister and dangerous—but her gamer instincts soon reassured her in a way that wasn’t actually terribly reassuring. Everything was fine. It was just a user interface element. A text box—like a quest log.
The idea of a UI element floating just above her face was as disorienting as it was terrifying. It made this both real and unreal at the same time. Like when she had tried a virtual reality headset, only with way less motion sickness. Having a UI element made this way more like a video game. But there wasn’t a weight on her face. She couldn’t reach up and pull the source of the text—or her stress—off her face and return to the real world.
The text box was indeed a quest log. It was brief and to the point.
Darkness Conquered: Find Otekah’s castle and face them there in order to return to Earth.
Tanisha wondered, with mingled curiosity and fear, if she could open a menu to get a more in-depth explanation. She was afraid of what it might mean if she could actually summon a menu to investigate further. Would it stop the world around her like a pause screen? Or would it cover her vision, and leave her blind and vulnerable to whatever this world could spawn? But, at the same time, she needed details. Where was Otekah’s castle? How would finding it bring her back home? And by facing them, did that mean she’d need to fight the AI? She didn’t like her odds, after seeing them fight those saladmanders.
“There is also one more thing you’ll need,” Otekah said. Tanisha noticed the AI’s eyes were still unfocused, blinking at nothing. “If I wanted to be unfair to you, I didn’t need to stop the saladmanders. The tutorial has been improving survivability rates by over eighty percent. There is no good reason to skip it.”
A second bar of text appeared in Tanisha’s field of view, just below the first.
Welcome to the False Lands: Open your inventory screen.
Otekah’s eyes finally refocused on Tanisha, and they smiled that predatory smile. “It would be unfair of me to offer any further assistance, but please be sure to complete the tutorial. Not that you’ll be able to leave without doing so.” They paused, and when Tanisha didn’t say anything, they smoothed their hands down their thighs. “Well, then, I suppose it’s time for your journey to begin. I will be watching.” They bowed, deeply, at the hip, and then turned away, walking along the stone wall.
“Wait!” Tanisha said, shaking her head as if she could dispel the incredibly distracting quest text floating in the upper right portion of her vision. “Please! I need answers! You can’t just drop all this cryptic junk on me and walk away!”
But Otekah didn’t stop or turn around. They just kept walking.
Tanisha tried to give chase. She propelled herself forward on her hands, and while she could match a person’s walking pace in ideal circumstances, the ground along the stone wall wasn’t as nice as the previous soil. It was uneven and gravely. Tanisha struggled to push to hurry, subconsciously holding herself back in fear of planting her hand in something harmful.
Ahead of her, the figure in white vanished around the corner of the wall, and Tanisha vaulted forward, blindly picking up her pace.
But her hand met a solid surface before she reached the corner that Otekah had disappeared around. Tanisha stared for a long moment as she fumbled at the invisible surface. Her hand laid flat against the air itself, and she tried to parse what it was that stopped her. There was a faint flickering where her hand laid against the air. As she pushed, she saw that there was some sort of invisible lense warping the light passing through the space. She pushed again anyway, wondering if she could break through, when the text in the corner of her vision flashed. It was the second quest, and the words flared brighter as she tried to force her way through the invisible wall.
“Oh, come on!” she yelled, hoping Otekah was still close enough to hear. “Forced tutorials? That’s cheap!”
There was no answer, of course. Tanisha leaned against the wall for a moment more, pushing with both hands. But she couldn’t even get an inch of give from the mysterious surface. It continued for as far as she could see, too. Tanisha glared at the diffraction patterns around her fingers, willing them to dispel.
“Fine,” she said in a tone that was way more sulking than she intended. Tanisha cleared her throat, and the next part came out as a growl. “I’ll do your dumb tutorial.” She turned around and leaned back against the invisible wall. “As long as you know it’s a cheap trick and I’m doing it against my will.”
The only real problem was, Tanisha didn’t know how to complete the tutorial. She wasn’t sure how to open her inventory, and the text was too brief to tell her how. It wasn’t like she had a controller in her hand and could just take a few educated guesses or trial-and-error her way through it.
“Let’s see if I can get you to be more helpful,” she murmured to herself, before focusing on the quest text. At first she just stared at it, willing it to grow. When that didn’t work, she started to look for a sort of journal menu, and then a prompt for the text to be more helpful. There was no obvious dropdown or plus symbol, or even a question mark. But after a long moment the quest text expanded. It was less like a journal menu, and more like a mouseover box.
Welcome to the False Lands: Open your inventory screen. Your inventory allows you to easily store and carry a number of items safely and securely without being bogged down by their weight. Your inventory space is very limited, so only use it to hold things you need to have on hand in a pinch, or that you anticipate needing often. Items in excess of your inventory can still be carried, but their bulk and weight will remain a factor. To open your inventory, tap on the active equipment icons in the lower right at any time.
Of course, there weren’t any icons in the lower part of her vision.
Still, she didn’t have any other choice.
Feeling very silly, Tanisha swatted vaguely at the space below the quest text. It was foolish, groping for some invisible UI element when, in reality, she was grabbing empty air.
But after a moment of flailing, a trio of boxes appeared. They were semi-transparent, so they didn’t block her field of vision, but they were blank and greyed out, a clear indicator of why she couldn’t see them before: she had nothing equipped. In addition the them, a pair of rows
of similar grey boxes opened up before her. It was two rows of eight, making for sixteen spaces total. Quite a nightmarishly restrictive limitation, considering what she knew about dARkness: Online, but Tanisha had a feeling things would be different enough.
There was no way this was really dARkness.
Looking at the little boxes, Tanisha realized that this must have been how Otekah had produced their weapon and Tanisha’s chair out of nowhere. She reached out and touched the boxes, and they felt sort of like solid smoke under her fingers. Her hands passed right through them, but there was a palpable difference in the air. A slight resistance that made it conceivable that she could put something into that space, using it like a cubbyhole.
“In theory, I’d just have to tap it open and put stuff here? And this will what, keep it safe, or whatever?” She reached over and tapped the boxes in the corner. As expected, the sixteen inventory slots faded away. After a moment’s pause, she drew her hand away from the boxes in the corner and they faded as well. “Do I have to equip things? Or does the stuff I’m physically holding show up in those slots?” She frowned, wishing she had more information.
But just like every other tutorial she’d ever witnessed, the quest text left her behind. It had changed, and once again was just as vague.
Welcome to the False Lands: Use Otekah’s gift.
Tanisha frowned at the text, staring at it once more until it expanded. This time the expanded text was much smaller, which was incredibly frustrating.
Welcome to the False Lands: Use Otekah’s gift. You have been given special item(s) or ability/abilities to enrich, enhance, or enable your adventures in the False Lands. Use it now to see what it does! At the end of this quest, any resources or cooldowns consumed by this step of the quest will be refunded.
Tanisha cast a distrustful glance back the way she had come, to the strangely crouching chair Otekah left behind. It hadn’t moved. Tanisha wiped her hands on the front of her shirt, brushing off a bit of the dirt. With a curious smirk, Tanisha reached back and rapped her knuckles on the invisible wall that still, unfortunately, held her in.
It seemed she didn’t have a choice.
As suspicious as the chair was, she’d have to chance it.
With a frown, Tanisha walked on her hands over towards it. She watched the machine, as if she expected it to move without her intervention.
The contraption was low to the ground, making it easy to climb into it. As she settled into place within the seat, Tanisha felt an odd tingle. A sense of being watched, but not quite.
She looked down at the chair’s arms, and realized there weren’t any controls.
Obviously, if this was a game, or even based on a game, she would move it with the “normal” controls. Whatever those were. So, did this mean that the chair would literally be a part of herself? Like, attached to her character model, rather than a separate model she’d need to manipulate?
If so, she’d just have to think about moving and it would move.
“This can’t be real,” Tanisha said, shaking her head. “Any moment now I’m going to wake up.”
But instead of waiting, she focused on moving the chair into an upright position. She expected the legs to shudder or struggle, like there would be some sort of warm-up procedure, or adjustment period. But they smoothly responded to her thought. The chair straightened, lifting her off the ground to a position that was even with her usual wheelchair height. Another UI element appeared, this time in the bottom right corner of her vision. It was a little vertical grey bar, not all that tall, but it was marked with an unmistakably familiar (and out of place) symbol. A little gas pump. As she identified what it meant, a pop-up appeared in the center of her vision, startling her.
This walking chair consumes fuel when in operation. Fuel is made by fermenting organic material in a clay pot. The clay pot blueprint has been added to your crafting menu, and is unique to those who require it. The chair must be fed fuel through the hatch in the rear.
Tanisha twisted awkwardly in the chair. There was indeed a hatch on the back of the seat. She couldn’t wrap her engineer brain around why such a device had been designed like this. Why did the fuel hatch need to be in such an inconvenient place? She couldn’t possibly refuel it while sitting in it, so she would need to climb down and move around it.
It was the worst kind of accessibility option—the sort that assumed everyone in a wheelchair had someone else with them that could take care of these kind of things. Such a thing was no help at all if she couldn’t use it alone. She couldn’t be independent this way.
But she’d make do. She always did, when accessibility options were designed by able-bodied folk.
So much for dARkness being about creating accessibility features.
Tanisha settled into her seat once more and examined the contraption. There was no engine that she could hear or feel. Most wheelchairs that didn’t need manual power were electric, requiring no engine, but electric chairs ran on batteries, not fuel. If there was no engine, what was the fuel for? How was fuel providing energy?
So, ignoring the idea that the fuel was made by “fermenting” organic material in some sort of magical pot only she (or others like her) had access to, the whole idea of the chair needing fuel was ridiculous. It felt like a limitation tacked on to make it less powerful. And that was assuming one would be able to ignore that “fermenting” material to make fuel, which was absolutely unbelievable. Unless the “fermenting” process took centuries, and the clay pot somehow produced the pressure and heat to mimic the conditions where organic materials turned into oil.
Engineering, biology, and chemistry just did not work this way.
It was frustratingly absurd.
She tried to push the thoughts out of her head, though. Regardless of how real this world felt, she couldn’t try to apply real logic to it. It was a video game, right? Or… some approximation thereof. The details were still incredibly vague. But Tanisha didn’t get mad at games with crafting features that amounted to rubbing two pieces together with a lump of raw metal so that she could get a fishing rod. She could forgive this as well, couldn’t she?
It took a moment, but she managed to shake off the shackles of logic so she could focus on the situation at hand.
Getting the chair to sit up straight was easy enough. But how about moving it? Given that it was already defying every law of physics just by running, there was literally no limit to the possibilities.
“Maybe…” Tanisha tried to picture a gamepad in her mind. If its movement was based on videogames, she would control it with a directional pad or joystick. But, of course, nothing happened. She couldn’t just will a gamepad into existence. That would be way too easy.
Her second instinct was that perhaps the thing would respond to her thinking about walking in a direction. She grimaced at the idea—it had been ages since she actually used her legs—but she closed her eyes and tried to think about what it felt like to walk. The memory was distant, and, if she could be honest, it wouldn’t be too much longer before it had faded completely. It was frustrating and bittersweet to cast her mind back on that time. But if this is what it took to get the chair to work for her, she had no choice.
And so Tanisha thought about walking forward.
When nothing happened, she blew out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
It was a relief to not have to lean on the memories of her childhood to make the thing function. She was joyful. But it didn’t help her figure out how to make the chair move.
Instead of using any sort of logic, she was just trying random things—whatever popped into her head first. Why did she think they would work? She had to think critically about her reasoning.
The gamepad made sense. It was a videogame world, in theory, and so, in similar theory, it would be logical for it to have video game-related mechanics. But why did she think about walking? Because it would come naturally to an able-bodied person? She wasn’t, though, and Otekah knew it.
&
nbsp; Tanisha lowered her hands, reaching down past the low armrests to where the wheels would be. If they were there. Without moving her hands, she thought about rolling her normal wheelchair forward.
The chair’s legs skittered as it sprung to life. She had expected it to move jerkily or even unevenly, but the motion was as smooth as any wheel. Smoother, in fact, since she wasn’t on flat terrain. Tanisha thought about turning the wheelchair, her fingers making phantom motions unnecessarily. The legs skittered and turned the chair in place.
“Alright,” Tanisha said, looking at the ground around herself, past the edges of the dimmed popup. “That’s one thing resolved. What’s next?”
Chapter 10
Tanisha reached out and tapped the pop-up explaining the fuel resource. Or, at least, where it was relative to her. As soon as the pop-up was dismissed, a few other bars appeared in the corner of her vision. They were lined up horizontally next to her fuel bar. From top to bottom, they were red, purple, blue, and green. Another pop-up appeared before her.
Your needs have been activated, it read. Your Health (red) reflects how much damage you can take. Your Stability (purple) shows your current mental state. Your Hunger (blue) reflects how close you are to starvation. Your Stamina (green) shows how long you can stay awake. A number of factors will drain and restore these bars.
“Informative,” Tanisha said with a smirk. “A number of factors, eh?” She shook her head, unsure if the tutorial message was vague on purpose, or if there had, at one point, been a more thorough explanation that had been removed for brevity. Or perhaps expanded upon in the real game? With a frown, Tanisha reached forward and poked the pop-up so it would vanish. Just like all games with half-assed tutorials, this would be an adventure in trial and error.
Darkness Named Page 7
