Focus on image of fire. Focus on image of fire. Focus on image of fire. Focus on image of fire. Focus on image of fire. Complete. Focus on image of water…
Cast Flame Jet. Cast Flame Jet. Cast Flame Jet.
Something about that... something was...
And then, with a rush, I was there, rising to meet the dream as though breaking the surface of a pool. One moment I was somewhere... outside, and the next? I had come awake inside… inside whatever it was. Impenetrable darkness surrounded me.
A lucid dream! I thought excitedly. Of all the mystical mumbo-jumbo I’d attempted, this had been the only one to actually work. No, I hadn’t met spirit guides or talked to dead relatives by coming awake within my dreams, but I had been able to manipulate those dreams. It was always a thrill to push the limits and see what you could pull off.
Looking side to side, I was immediately staggered by a wave of vertigo that sent me crashing to the ground.
Cast Flame Jet.
The white letters hung patiently in front of me, now oriented perpendicular to whatever I was laying on. I moved to get up, but my stomach lurched in protest, so I rolled onto my back and took a few deep breaths. I’d never had such a visceral experience within a dream.
Cast Flame Jet.
The letters now loomed over me, insistent. I blinked. They flickered. I closed my eyes and slowly lifted my head. No vertigo, no nausea.
Cautiously regaining my feet, I opened my eyes again, making sure to hold very still.
Cast Flame Jet.
I moved my head by degrees, noting that the text followed my gaze. The problem dawned on me; with only the text as a guide, I had no reference point for keeping my balance. And I do mean no reference point. Stretching out to either side of me was… nothing.
Stretching probably wasn’t the right word anyway, since I couldn’t sense anything about the space I was in. My voice didn’t echo, and I didn’t get a sense of close walls or a vast space. There was just… nothing. I raised my hand. It was lit as though I was standing in full sun, but there was something strange about it that I couldn’t quite place. Still, with my hand up, I felt more stable, and as I slowly, slowly looked down at the rest of myself, my brain worked to acclimate.
I was standing on nothing as well, though the “floor” felt solid. Carefully tapping my right foot on the ground produced no sound, but it did alleviate my concerns about its solidity. I bent down to look but was still unable to see a thing. It was as if the floor didn’t exist. I moved my hand close, thinking the light from my body might illuminate the surface or reflect off it. Nothing.
Wait.
Shadows! That was what was wrong with my hand—it had no shadows! I looked the rest of myself over: no shadows. It was almost like… like I was being rendered. 3D objects don’t just naturally have light on them. They don’t naturally have shadows. The computers displaying them have to add “light,” and they can either do it by calculating how a programmed light source should interact with the object, or they can just have the object display with its own light that doesn’t interact with anything else around it. I didn’t have shadows because I was being rendered—and the text! Memory struck me all at once.
This was it: the day of my grand escape!
After getting off the bus at school, I had loitered in front of the building until everyone was inside, and then made my way downtown to hitch a very different ride. ADACorp had arranged for vans to pick us up, security being a real concern. We were it, after all. We were the founding citizens of this new world. What had previously been a proof of concept had been fleshed out into an entire reality, and that reality was ready to accept the outcasts of this one.
We were the first of those outcasts, twenty thousand of us from across the country, all being shuttled to a secret location in Utah. That proximity had been the deciding factor for me. I hadn’t been entirely sure upon receiving the invitation email, but news that Utah, with its already extant glut of data centers, had been chosen as the location for a beta convinced me. If I’d had to spring for air travel I never would have managed it—especially considering the requirement of a preliminary screening exam to ensure none of us would keel over.
The facility itself had been nothing more than an enormous, nondescript warehouse in an industrial park. Security through anonymity. As we filed off the van, several passengers in my group brought our attention to a similar process happening across the lot, only those passengers were disembarking from a white van labeled “Corrections.” The orange jumpsuits were hard to miss, but we’d all seen the news.
There had been an extensive orientation, with some folks needing information on exactly how a VRMMORPG worked—and even an explanation of the acronym. For a moment I’d wondered how such individuals even made it into the beta, but tuned that all out to dive through the information on building a character. As any character I made would, for all intents and purposes, be me, I had wanted to make sure I took my time.
Then would have come the surgery—though, of course, I didn’t remember it—and the installation of The Jack, the vehicle through which a delicate mesh of gold filament would be implanted, enabling a neural link.
That was what had brought me here, and that must be why my grip on the dream felt so stable. Normally a lucid dream will slip away after a few seconds, and you’ll wake up or fall back asleep within the dream. This wasn’t quite a normal dream though. I didn’t feel I could lose it at any second. Now that I was there, it felt solid.
It was clear what was happening as well. They were calibrating the neural interface for the game, so input from my brain could be processed by the company’s computers, and vice versa.
Cast Flame Jet.
The text insisted, never wavering in its demand. They were calibrating for spellcasting, I realized, and the thrill of that must have jarred me into consciousness when I should have remained asleep.
Ecstatic, I lowered myself into a sitting position. How many times had I tried this in the past? This time was something altogether different though. This hocus pocus was real! Well, virtually real.
Willing myself calm, I focused. I had read so many different ways of casting spells, I didn’t know how to start. Did I need a spellbook? I didn’t have one. Did I need to draw something? No, that would be too complex for a calibration. I held my hand out in front of me. “Flame Jet,” I said. Nothing. Standing up, I once again shoved my hand forward. “Flame Jet!” I shouted, and instinctively looked behind me, feeling sheepish even though I was alone. Still nothing.
It can’t be this hard, I thought. They’re just calibrating!
I sorted back through the previous paces they’d put me through, before I’d “come awake.” I had to assume they’d be running the calibrations in order, building on successive mappings, and that had to be the key. They’d had me looking at pictures of fire, looking at rendered fire. They must be wanting to correlate my brain’s neural pathways relating to the concept of fire with…
I held out my hand again and concentrated on fire: tongues of flame licking and snapping in a fire pit, a tiny flame growing as it slid up a piece of paper, a candle flame dancing, and a forest fire raging and roaring. All were scenes I’d been shown. Holding these images in my mind, I raised my hand again. “Flame Jet!”
The surprise as a burst of flame sprouted from my hand and disappeared into the dark stunned me into silent disbelief before being overwhelmed by exhilaration! I stared at my palm in wonder. I’d felt the heat on my fingers and across my face! How could it have… My mind traced back through the previous calibrations I had undergone unknowingly. Heat calibration. Complete. I’d stood there, in that void, feeling heat move across every part of my body. They had mapped my neural response to it, and to cold, and to pressure, and to pain. They could make me feel whatever they wanted.
And now the text read Complete. I’d cast a spell!
I’d had similar experiences before—semi-lucid dreams in which I hadn’t quite realized I was dreaming. Those
would inspire similar bursts of excitement and anticipation, only to disappoint me on waking. The knowledge that this time would outlast the dream sent my excitement climbing out of control in a way I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid.
Wonder. That’s what I was feeling. Pure, unadulterated wonder. I had forgotten the emotion even existed, except as an abstract concept.
I wasn’t left long to sit with the experience, with surprise quickly reasserting itself over wonder in the form of a creature that popped into existence directly in front of me. It was small and humanoid with purple skin, and lit without shadows in the same way I was. Wary for a moment, I realized that the creature was simply standing with a rest animation, seemingly unaware of my presence. Imp? Brownie? Homunculus? Whatever it was, I welcomed the creature into the void. At the very least, having it as a reference point further eased my stomach.
Cast Bind.
The text wasn’t going to wait while I celebrated.
I considered what I knew. I’d just used a Fire spell, so there were likely to be spells based on the other standard fantasy “elements.” Bind sounded a lot like the D&D “Root” spell, and that suggested Earth. Visualizing roots digging into the ground, I held my hand out, expecting that same surge of energy as I said, “Bind!” Nothing happened. It took me three tries visualizing roots to get the spell to work. It was only when I thought back to previous calibrations that I realized the game designers wanted me to incorporate more thoughts about dirt, of all things. I felt another surge and the accompanying excitement as mounds of dirt materialized out of the dark and swiftly grew to harden around the imp-thing’s little legs, hardening with an audible rumble. The word Complete. flashed in front of me again, and the dirt faded from view.
Cast Heal.
I brushed my hands off in anticipation, immediately thinking back to previous calibrations. There had been grisly images of breached skin and gushing blood, and then 3D renderings of red blood cells flowing and platelets gathering to close CGI wounds. I held my hand out. “Heal!”
This one took me two tries; I hadn’t focused strongly enough on the imp during my first attempt. I was getting the hang of it though. Complete.
Cast Haste.
The imp disappeared, leaving me to cast the spell on myself, and leading me to realize the calibrations were moving me through every casting “type.” Spells with no target. Targeted attacks. Targeted buffs. Spells targeting myself. They needed to map the pathways.
It was then that the thought first struck me. Could I game this? Could I manipulate the calibration into accepting input that was only similar to what it was looking for? Every brain is different, after all, and if I could trick the software mapping my responses…
I held my hand up, focused on images of clocks speeding up, people running more quickly, time-lapse videos of plants sprouting. You know, fast things. Then I thought, Haste, instead of voicing it. No effect.
I thought through the neural pathways that had to be involved. Ten tries. Fifteen. I considered giving up and just saying the word out loud, but figured I only had one chance at tricking the game.
I’d lost track of my attempts by the time I hit upon the right bundle of thoughts. I had to hold the word in my mind, with all the “haste” imagery and—at the moment of casting—the word had to be on the tip of my tongue. I had to literally feel the word in my mouth.
Haste, I thought.
My hand blurred momentarily as I dropped it, but by the time it had fallen to my side the effect had faded. Complete.
I was elated for all of two seconds before the stubbornness set in. I had waited so long for something like this to happen. If I was going to be able to use spells in the game, I wanted the experience to be perfect.
Channel Life Drain.
The little imp popped back into existence to serve as a target. The text told me to “channel,” which meant I would have to keep the spell active over a certain amount of time, but what was the best way to do it? Ideally, if I wasn’t using my voice, I also wouldn’t need to use my hands or even be standing. Ideally, I could cast a spell without even moving.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and gave it a try. Focused on the imp. Compiled the images in my brain. It was less pleasant to imagine the Heal spell in reverse, but now I was getting a sense of how I had to “hold” my brain. Skin pulling apart. Blood flowing. I reached to the imp and cast.
This round lasted longer—a lot longer. In the end, I discovered I had to target both myself and the imp while imagining the degradation of its body and the healing of mine. I had to imagine a beam, anchored to my sternum, drawing energy from the imp’s body and into mine. And there was a moment. There was a moment right on the cusp of action where I had to hold my mind. A limen, I realized, remembering the arcane word from my Psychology class. A threshold between two states. It felt similar to surfing, which I had only ever tried once. It was there, right on the point of no return, that the green beam sputtered to life before immediately dying away. I tried again, but I couldn’t find the right moment.
It felt like days before I’d learned how to balance on that particular moment and focus in just the right way. Following through on the action was just my natural response. It was something akin to pausing midway during a swallow or a sneeze. I was able to hold the moment longer and longer until, suddenly, Complete.
Were the developers crazy? How could they have expected anyone to get that? Was it somehow easier when the players stayed unconscious? How would they be able to move a player through such an exercise?
Still, I had done it. I felt a rush of pride, quickly followed by doubt. Was it taking so long because I was doing something wrong?
Channel Blizzard.
The imp multiplied, becoming five identical copies of itself. It was an area of effect—AoE—spell, and channeled. This time it was easier, but not by much. Holding the target area in my mind was easy enough, as was maintaining the thoughts of ice and snow, but that damned channeling! On my first try I reached nearly three seconds of channeling the blizzard, but it took dozens of attempts before I could hit the exact right mental cue again, and dozens more to hold it long enough. Every extra moment was hard-fought, although “fought” was the wrong word. It didn’t take effort, per se, and perhaps that was the problem. In order to channel, I was required to hold myself… open, and then push, but without pushing.
At last the spell took, and the imps disappeared. I nearly collapsed, exhausted. My mind was spent. I had to be doing it wrong.
Complete.
Cast Body Double.
Exhausted, I glared at the floating letters. They were my only companions, now that the imps were gone.
Screw this spell!
My body felt fresh, but all I wanted to do was sleep. It was pure stubbornness that kept me going; there was no way I was going to let the opportunity to influence the calibration pass! I began channeling, holding the concept of “me” in my mind. Not just the image of myself from the outside, but me. I mentally checked my body, felt each piece of it, as if I were meditating. I became aware of every part of me, of my thoughts, of my mind, of my self. And then, with the words on my tongue, I stepped forward.
Like one bubble separating into two, I felt myself pushed out of the dream. A threshold had been reached, and I could no longer stay. Part of me panicked, wanting to claw its way back, but the larger part by far just couldn’t rouse itself to care. As my awareness faded and I fell back to sleep, I saw two forms, one standing in front of the other, and then they both swiftly faded from view.
Chapter 3
As I opened my eyes a surge of loss overwhelmed me, a surge so strong that I tucked my knees to my chest and groaned. That was the curse of the flying dream, the telekinesis dream, and the magic dream: the disappointment on waking when you realize it was all just a bunch of wild hairs your brain had tricked itself into believing. Your reality testing was back in gear, and it was time to go to school. I’d been there before.
Sighing, I pus
hed myself up.
Grass? I struggled to get my bearings as I brushed residual blades off my cheek. Had I fallen asleep outside? Was it a lunch break? I stood and looked around, discombobulated.
A tree I didn’t recognize.
On a low hill I didn’t know.
In a field I’d never seen.
And then, more trees, an encircling wall of deciduous giants that obscured anything that might lie beyond. Cold sweat broke out across my body. Had I been abducted?
I scanned the horizon, frantic but too bewildered to panic, and searched for anything familiar. Outside the meadow in which I stood was forest as far as the eye could see, and singularly visible above the trees was a snow-capped mountain. Only one? There should be at least… three times that many. In fact, there should have been mountains all around. I’d have to have left the state to even find a spot with no mountains in the distance!
Trying to calm myself, I sorted back through what had brought me there. The last thing I remembered was that crazy calibration dream, and before that, orientation and paperwork... I looked up.
Sunlight dappled its way through the branches above me, scattered by the shifting layers of leaves—by the shivering of each individual leaf. It can’t be, I thought. There’s too much detail. No way this isn’t real.
That’s what they had promised though, that The Boundless would be indistinguishable from real life. Even so, I had been fully prepared for something shy of that mark. Games were marketed with outsized claims all the time. And yet, this wasn’t really a game, was it? This was the life I had chosen. No more pencils, no more books, no more parents’ dirty looks. It was just so unsettling, shifting between two—no, three, including the calibration—equally real realities.
Well, if this really was The Boundless, there was one way to find out.
“Flame Jet!” I shouted into the tranquil meadow, only having the good grace to be embarrassed after having made a spectacle of myself.
I came to in a heap, arms and legs spasming autonomously. Red letters flashed angrily in the darkness clouding my vision.
Auger & Augment Page 2
