Gamer Army

by Trent Reedy

  The gamers exchanged confused looks. Why would they have to change clothes just to play video games?

  After they’d changed and come back together, their confusion hadn’t cleared up much. The outfits were zip-up, form-fitting, one-piece jumpsuits, complete with boots and gloves, the Atomic Frontiers atom globe logo over their hearts and each gamer’s name on the back. Hidden between the layers of fabric was some kind of slightly firmer material.

  “What’s this all about?” Takashi asked when the gamers had reassembled. He pulled at his long sleeve.

  Shaylyn tugged the fabric on her arm. “It’s, like, all crunchy or something.”

  “All of that will be explained,” X said. “For now, just remember that you’ll be expected to wear these suits every time you play. You’ll see why in a moment. Follow me.”

  The five gamers were led out of the dorms, through a confusing labyrinth of hallways, and past the Sun Station One model in the atrium. Atomic Frontiers world headquarters looked large from the outside, but Rogan felt as if the place was like the TARDIS from Doctor Who, even bigger on the inside.

  Finally, Mr. Culum greeted them before a set of double doors, hands in the pockets of his gray cardigan. “Welcome, gamers! Congratulations on making it into the Laser Viper Final Challenge! Behind these doors you will truly ride technology into the future with the most sophisticated, realistic, immersive gaming experience in the world. You will, to the greatest extent possible, become your own laser viper, all of you on the same fireteam in a series of short gaming sessions consisting of one mission each. Takashi Endo, you are the squad’s Healer.”

  Takashi smiled with pride and offered a little wave to the others.

  Mr. Culum went on, each gamer offering a nod or some other acknowledgement when mentioned. “Beckett Ewell, the Tank. Jacqueline Sharpe, Engineer. Shaylyn Spero, Flyer. Rogan Webber, Ranger. Tonight, you will all have exactly thirty minutes with which to familiarize yourselves with the control of your viper. Have fun, but use this time well, because the first round of the tournament will take place tomorrow.”

  Rogan looked at the others, sizing up his competition, even as each of them did the same. As much as Shay drove him crazy, only a fool would think she wasn’t a good gamer. Takashi seemed friendly enough, smiling and bouncing around a little in excitement. Would he take the game seriously? Rogan figured he might be the first one eliminated. Beckett glared at everyone else, trying to appear tough. Rogan would have to see how the Tank rolled in the game. He wasn’t sure how to read Jacqueline just yet. She might be a serious threat.

  The doors opened and Mr. Culum stepped aside to allow everyone else to enter.

  “Whoa!” Takashi said. “This is incredible.” The reaction was shared by just about everyone on the fireteam, except for Beckett, who watched impassively with his arms folded. Beckett had to be acting unimpressed, Rogan thought, because this was … wow.

  A few years ago, Rogan’s friend Booker had an extra ticket to a Seattle Seahawks game. That football stadium was not quite as large as the room they’d all just stepped into, except this giant, empty, black-walled space had no stadium seating and had a ceiling high above them. Five technicians had been waiting a few paces inside the door holding five shiny black helmets and standing near five harnesses, each of which dangled from steel cables suspended from rigs way up in the ceiling.

  “All of you are experienced gamers who have grown up with virtual reality gaming,” called Mr. Culum. “But while VR has far surpassed old push-button-controller gaming, it does still have its limits. Home gamers are restricted by the size of the real-life room in which they play. Someone in a smaller room takes only a few steps before he sees the blue-green LOA lines warning him that he’s approaching a real-life barrier. So if his character has farther to travel in the game, he must run or walk in place, a subtle but important reminder that his otherwise realistic game environment is artificial.”

  Mr. Culum motioned to Shaylyn and pointed at one of the harnesses.

  “Your viper mod is the flyer. You’re very familiar with an airborne viper, but flying, jumping, and climbing are more functions that provide another disconnect from the fictive dream of the game. Gamers can’t feel the movement, the acceleration and deceleration of fast flight, the change in altitude. Gamers can’t feel a handshake or when they bump into an obstacle. They can’t feel weapons contact, the impact when they punch someone, or the sensation of changes in weight when lifting different items. Here!” Mr. Culum’s voice echoed and he spread his arms wide above him. “You five will be among the first to enjoy the gaming experience of a lifetime! Here in the Atomic Frontiers gaming arena you will come closer to living your digital experience than anyone in the history of video games. Xavier will explain it all. For now, get ready. Please put on your VR helmets and allow the techs to secure your suits to the flight sim cables.”

  Rogan walked over to the technican beckoning him and slid his helmet on. To his disappointment, the view inside was the same as the view without, a real-time projection of the Atomic Frontiers people and the other gamers in the arena. He’d hoped to look down to find himself transformed into the Ranger.

  When all the gamers were wearing helmets and connected, X put on a headset and positioned the microphone near his mouth. “Can you all hear and see me OK?”

  The gamers didn’t answer right away. It was just like that weird time before any old game when the players weren’t sure if they were connected. Finally, they all confirmed they were on.

  “Good,” said X. “I’ll be the voice of Viper CentCom throughout each round of competition. I’ll offer you some guidance on mission objectives and warnings about dangers to look out for, kind of like Cortana in Halo. I’m going to step out to the control room, and then we’ll get started.”

  “This is so cool,” Takashi breathed.

  “So we’re going to, like, really fly around on these cables?” Shaylyn asked.

  “Maybe if you just shut up and wait, he’ll tell us,” said Beckett.

  “Whoa,” Jacqueline said. “Calm down, Ace.”

  Shay and Takashi laughed.

  Rogan laughed too. He admired the way Jacqueline could come up with quick, funny things to say IRL.

  Beckett put his hands on his hips. “I’m going to crush you all.”

  This was too much. “Why don’t you save the tough guy act for the game?” Rogan cut in.

  Beckett pointed at him. “OK, you can die first.”

  “Come on, everybody,” said Takashi. “We need to work together.”

  “Quiet down, please, gamers.” X’s voice came over the channel. “Your game suits are not just uniforms. They’re enhanced with hundreds of micromotors between layers of fabric. These will help adjust your speed, mainly reducing speed for slower vipers. Beckett might be a fast runner in the real world, but in the game, he’ll be slowed down just like his Tank. Your suits are also equipped with many environment simulators, to give you a sense of heat, cold, or even impact. If your viper walks through fire, you won’t be burned, but the appropriate areas will heat up to let you feel what is happening in the game. If your viper is hit by a bullet or punched by an enemy, you’ll also feel that. But don’t worry, the suits have been tested for safety dozens of times. No force will be sufficient to really hurt or injure you. Trust me. Keeping you safe is my top priority.”

  “What about the wires?” Shaylyn asked.

  “Good question, Flyer,” said X. “The harnesses will allow quite a lot of vertical movement to give you all a feel for a change in altitude. Everything from climbing to falling to flying will be simulated in the most realistic way possible, short of strapping functional rockets on your back.”

  Shaylyn looked around at the giant arena, full of possibility. “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Instructions will come up on each of your heads-up displays about how to fire your primary, secondary, and tertiary weapons. So watch your HUDs,” X continued evenly. “In general,
you’ll operate your weapons through a series of hand gestures. To fire your NonLethal Energy Pulse weapons, most of you will make a tight fist, a tight fist while extending your index finger to fire your Compact High-Energy Lasers, and so on. Most of the controls are the same as the home system you’re used to, but there are a few differences. In a moment, I’ll activate the training simulator, and you’ll all have the chance to acclimate to the system. I suggest you carefully focus on familiarizing yourselves with the different functions of your suit and capabilities of your vipers. This is not playtime. It’s practice time. Go get ’em, gamers.”

  The giant black arena pixel-blurred, and the gamers felt themselves being pulled up into the air in their harnesses. It was a frightening sensation at first, but their uncertainty was soon replaced by wonder and excitement as their world rematerialized around them. They were standing in the familiar, dimly red-lit confines of the SR-73 StarScreamer jump-ship cargo bay where so many stages of the game began. The gamers with their helmets and wires were replaced by their laser vipers, their suits keeping them stable even though they’d been hoisted up hundreds of feet in the arena.

  Beckett as Tank stood with a wide stance, raising his large arms like he was flexing his biceps. “I’m a giant! Look at me! Unstoppable!”

  Shay, appearing as her usual compact flyer mod, looked the big guy over. “Went with the purple, huh? Doing your best Barney impression?”

  Tank tilted his head. “Who?”

  In Laser Viper players could customize the color schemes of their robots, allowing for individuality among the five different mods, and helping players tell one another apart on the battlefield.

  “You’d be amazed at how many gamers underestimate my Tank just because it’s purple.” Tank gave Flyer a little shove.

  “Watch it,” Flyer said.

  “Yeah, try to take this seriously.” Jacqueline had chosen gold for her Engineer.

  Tank laughed. “Oh, calm down, babies. I’m just messing around!”

  “Gamers, listen up.” X’s voice came over the channel. “We want you to get a feel for the combat drop, but this one will be a little different from those you will have in the tournament. We’re going to control your fall a little so you all disperse and land separate from one another to get some time practicing on your own. For now, stand in drop position.”

  Red glowing circles lit up on the floor, and each gamer hurried to stand on one, Tank making a show of elbowing Ranger and Healer to take his place. Rogan pushed him back.

  “Ego sum maximus!” Ranger shouted.

  Shay wanted to make fun of Ranger’s stupid line, but had no time. The relative calm inside the supersonic jet vanished.

  Chaos. Howling wind. Falling.

  Really falling.

  The fireteam shot away from the SR-73, the sleek black arrowhead with its long, narrow forward fuselage. The jet appeared to shrink as it blasted away at Mach 5, over 3,300 miles per hour, vanishing from view in seconds. At 85,000 feet, the vipers had enough elevation to see the black expanse of space above them, the blue curvature of the world below, but that would change fast as they plummeted toward Earth.

  Shay had logged thousands of hours playing Laser Viper, been on hundreds of combat drops, and it had always looked so real, but she had never felt it, never truly experienced a drop until now. Her stomach twisted into that cold-hollow free-fall feeling, more intense than the awesome sickening rush when the cars first dove down the hill on a roller coaster.

  It wasn’t completely realistic. They weren’t literally falling 85,000 feet. Shay figured the cables gave them an initial fast drop, and then slowed their descent through the arena, but even that movement, coupled with the suit’s motors simulating wind resistance and the view in her VR helmet, made it much more realistic than the home version.

  As the altimeter in her HUD ticked off hundreds of feet per second, she laughed, tucking her legs, grabbing her knees, and rolling for a while as she fell. Somersaults in free fall. That was never possible when playing at home. She flattened out, spreading her arms and legs skydiver style. Soon her fireteam began drifting apart the way X said they would.

  The light, green-colored armor of Shaylyn’s Flyer was more sleek and aerodynamic than on any other viper mod, designed for speed and, with the advanced modifications she’d earned for her robot, for flight. The trade-off with every unit of the flyer mod was that their lighter weight meant lighter weapons. Shaylyn’s Flyer was as leveled up as Rogan’s Ranger, but her only armaments were a standard NonLethal Energy Pulse (NLEP) and a limited capacity, heavy Directed Electromagnetic Pulse (DEMP) for disabling vehicles, robots, or computer systems, both emitted from a single weapon on her right forearm. She could only fire about ten of these DEMPs before she exhausted her fourth-gen quadithium battery. But while all vipers had limited rocket capability—for braking thrusters so they didn’t slam into the ground on these drops, for jump assist, and for finally soaring up into the sky to be picked up by their jump ship for exfil after missions—advanced flyer vipers could soar around indefinitely. Flyers were great for recon, rescues, accessing higher areas, or combat air support.

  Instructions rolled across Shay’s HUD, telling her how to fly, but the controls in this version of the game were very similar to those at home. Flying was mostly automatic. When she spread her index and middle fingers into the old peace sign, she activated Flyer’s thrusters. So if she pointed both hands straight down and made the gesture, she shot straight up in the air. If she were flying forward and then shoved her hands out in front of her, she’d fly to a halt. Basically, she flew in the opposite direction of wherever she pointed peace signs, moving faster, with more thrust, the farther she spread her fingers.

  Shay laughed as she moved through the air, felt the change in direction and momentum as she controlled her flight. There was a minor tug on her game suit where her harness connected to the cables, but other than that, the illusion was complete. She had the wide-open sky to practice flying, and soon found herself in total control. After a while, it was so easy, so fun. More than fun—it felt like her very best dream come to life. Her power level percentage was holding and she was steady in the sky. “You guys! This is—” She threw herself into a tight flying somersault and then came out of it to soar straight ahead. “Woo!” She laughed. “I can fly!”

  “No kidding,” Tank answered. She couldn’t even see him anymore. He’d fallen away from her, vanishing in seconds like a rock plunging into a dark pond. “You’re the Flyer.”

  Shaylyn laughed. “No, you don’t get it. I mean …” How could she describe it? They couldn’t be feeling quite the same thing on their combat drops as she was flying. “I’m, like, actually moving around, instead of standing on the floor at home in my basement. I mean, I am flying! Me. I can feel it. I’m actually … Woooo!!”

  Following the instructions on her HUD, she kept her left hand pointed behind her, fingers spread to keep up her flight, and she reached ahead with her right hand. Squeezing her hand into a tight fist, she felt the buzz in her arm as she fired a blue-white electric NLEP off into the distance. “Look out, everybody. I am Flyer!”

  Like the other gamers in her fireteam, Jacqueline Sharpe had activated braking thrusters to slow the combat drop hundreds of times, but this was the first time she was actually scared. She felt the increased g-force pulling on her body as she slowed down, buildings and streets below rushing up at her at a menacing pace. Engineer landed on her feet, and she felt the ground beneath her, heard the gravel crunch.

  A dull gray sky hung heavy over a city of ruins, the rubble of collapsed skyscrapers, steel I-beam frames of buildings with the walls blasted away, and abandoned cars and trucks—some of them twisted, burned-out hulks. Total destruction. “It’s like something out of Fallout 10,” Jacqueline said. “This town needs an Engineer.”

  Engineer vipers were another lightly armed mod. Fully upgraded, they only carried nonlethals and a single limited Compact High-Energy Laser (CHEL). The engineer
’s job was solving technical problems in any environment viper robots might face. Engineers were equipped with advanced processors for infiltrating enemy computers and several automated algorithms for taking over whatever systems they encountered. They carried specialized cutting tools and a supply of advanced, extremely high explosive compound, which could be used for everything from cutting through doors to taking down buildings. For hot-wiring cars or even enemy vipers, for rendering roads impassable, for secretly downloading classified intel, and for many other technical situations, the engineer mod was best.

  Unlike the experience for Flyer, Jacqueline’s gaming situation wasn’t greatly changed. The drop was very different, and she had more control over her viper’s body position, but her weapons still fired with the same hand gestures, and Engineer’s technical abilities were still accessed by holomenus that projected in the air in front of her. She activated the holomenu by crossing her fingers, then flipped and tapped through them the same as she would on any website on her phone, opening up all kinds of different tools, hacking programs, and preprogrammed repair sequences. As soon as she uncrossed her fingers, the floating holomenu vanished.

  Jacqueline raised the hood on a salvageable-looking car, her computer identifying it as an older model Ford Fusion. Just as quickly, her systems began scanning to identify problem areas. Dirty spark plugs. Dead battery. She knew how to fix those problems before her computer presented solutions. She quickly fixed and hot-wired the car. Laser vipers had no faces, but featured wide V-shaped lines where eyes might otherwise be, glowing the same color as their bodies. Jacqueline’s glowed yellow. As she thought about all the great technical tricks Engineer could pull off, all the complex physical problems she could work out for herself and for her fireteam, the robot did not reveal her smile.