by Harley Vex
"I'm sorry. I'm used to doing funny commentary," I say. Once she's done, I ask, "How are people going to afford this game? I can tell it needs a lot of space and equipment to run. I could never fit a Simulator in my living room."
"Salvos knows this, and it may be time to bring arcades back. They know people need an escape. Players just need to buy a Salvos Suit and a subscription to Salvosera. Gift cards will be available."
I gulp, thinking of how expensive the suits alone will be. "So, it'll start off being unaffordable for most people." Just testing this game—Salvosera—is a privilege that's among the stars, then.
Candi sighs. "That's the way of technology. But the price will come down."
I close my mouth, knowing I'm in no place to argue with a corporation's business model. Even if people have to travel to arcades to play this game, I know they won't be able to resist. "What about us live streamers? Those of us who make gaming videos?"
"Salvos is working on a plan to hire streamers to create additional buzz. They're going to want talent." She nods at me.
The room seems to expand. "I could eventually be—"
Candi's phone buzzes with a notification and she rises after looking at it. "The contract's here. Just rolled off the fax machine. Come on."
My head spins as she leads me to another room right across the hall, a meeting room complete with a shiny, dark table and leather chairs that mean business. Candi grabs the fax off the machine in the corner and puts it in front of me with a pen. "No rush. I'm sorry to put pressure on you like this. So take your time. I'm a night owl."
"So I can't take this home?" The small print is pale in places as if the machine needs some toner but I can at least read the print. The contract, to my relief, isn't very long, maybe ten pages or so. That's a shocker, considering it's got a non-disclosure agreement on the first page and conditions for my testing period on the rest.
"I'm afraid you can't. I'd let you but it's against corporate and I could get fired." Candi bites her lip. "But you can call a lawyer if you want. I know it's late."
An unspoken problem grows between us.
I'm poor. There's no way I can get a lawyer or find one willing to do pro bono, otherwise known as free, over a game. Or one willing to get mixed up with something top secret in an hours' notice without really good pay.
Candi and I stare at each other. Her green eyes offer a silent apology.
But she's done enough for me and pulled some strings, so I've got to give this an effort.
"I'll read every word of this slowly," I say, eyeing the clock on the wall. Despite this being a boring meeting room, the clock has bright green, neon-lit hands and numbers. Probably another one of Anton's touches. It's creeping up on midnight.
"I'll bring you some coffee," Candi says. "And no, that's not in my job description."
I read and sip on the awesome coffee she gets me from the lounge, and I'm not even a coffee guy. Non-Disclosure Agreement. Yes, it's basically shut up or get sued. Fair enough.
Section 2a.) Housing. All beta testers will receive a free apartment in the Salvos Corporation office at this address at which they must reside during the entire testing period, and during any extensions offered by Salvos Corporation, LLC. Housing is free of charge to the tenant during the testing period. That's probably part of the whole secrecy deal. Also fair enough.
I flip through the pages and slowly read the rest. Salvos needs to monitor my gaming activity for the purpose of improving the game, and I must play a minimum of twenty hours per week to remain as a beta tester and I have to offer my feedback each time I'm asked. All seems okay and I wonder why I was worrying so much. There's a bit of stuff about terminology and definitions and such.
But in short, I spot no monstrous loopholes between the lines.
One question burns. But Candi has left the room, likely to leave me to my thoughts and monitor the other players.
"Final page, then."
I flip to the last page of the contract.
Amendment 1a.) Mike Wattles shall receive a sum of $3,000 weekly, deposited into his bank account, from Salvos Corporation during the beta test period.
And below that, Anthony Anton, CEO of Salvos Corporation, already has his name stamped.
A blank line with my printed name underneath waits.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Almost feeling like a jerk with my good fortune, I get to work packing as soon as I'm back in my crap apartment. My roommates are gone but I'll leave a note and this month's rent so they have time to find another sardine.
Yeah, screw sleep.
TheWattleman is officially a closed beta tester for Salvosera.
"I can't believe this," I mutter, shoving some clothes into a garbage bag. Thankfully I don't have much and Candi even let me look at my new apartment already, which is already furnished. I can leave my leaking air mattress and crooked dresser behind. Salvos will send someone to clean out my heavy stuff for me tomorrow.
Natalie's probably sleeping at past one in the morning, so I can't drop the bomb yet. Apparently, I can tell her I'm beta testing a new game, but that I can't give anything else other than super vague details. That's fine. I'm not going to screw this up. The amended contract let me know that's not a good idea.
And Candi also let me know it's not a good idea to tell the other testers about my pay when I meet them. Don of course has a hint, but she promised me he'd stay quiet.
"It might sow, um, discontent," she said.
I pack for the next couple of hours, forcing my eyes to stay open. Just clothes, mostly, and my old gaming platform and laptop. It's not like I have anything else for entertainment. I don't want the moldy food in the fridge and Candi let me know I'll have some at the new place to hold me over until I get paid.
Once Don texts me with my fifteen-minute warning, I kick my boxes out the apartment door and scribble my note, then leave my payment. I wonder how my roommates will take this when they get in from their night shifts. Then I stand there and take one last look at the piles of papers, pizza boxes, and crumpled fast food bags.
"Whoever comes in here next, I pity you," I say, pure excitement flooding my chest.
Don and another guy show up just after three AM, trudging up the apartment steps. Don eyes the boxes and picks one up and the other guy, a youngish dude with a ponytail, gives me a fist bump.
"It's Matt," he says. "Fellow tester."
"Hey. Nice to meet you again. Don't you guys ever sleep?"
"Once in a while." Matt puts a box under each arm as I pick up a couple myself. "I hear you're the brain. I'm the guy who does builds. Not so good at the mob traps and the auto farms."
"Is that why they picked you?" A lot of Creationist players log in so they can build cities and palaces. Some classrooms even use the game to teach kids about architecture.
"Yeah. I built a whole Mayan city in Creationist. In survival mode," Matt says. "Did a video tour on GameTube, and I got nabbed two months ago just like you did, except they took me to a different office to make the offer. I'm from the sprawling corn fields of Iowa. Now I'm here in the city."
We move the boxes down to the waiting van. Don still doesn't say much. I wonder what his specialty is.
"I saw that video!" I say, loading my two boxes. "Awesome, man." I look at Don, waiting for him to speak.
"Explorer here," he says, thumping himself on the chest. "You ever seen the GameTube series about the guy who's trying to walk to the end of the Creationist world, to the Glitch Lands?"
"Dude. You're serious." Am I staring at Comma_Volt, the GameTuber who's been walking across a Creationist world for years, trying to find where the code starts breaking down? "I would have thought you'd talk more like in your videos."
"I do that all day," Don says, shutting the back of the black SUV they've used to pick me up this time. "We're loaded up. Let's get back to HQ so we can crash before tomorrow."
I'm not ready for bed yet. "What does Candi do in Salvosera?" I ask. "She says she's done s
ome testing, too."
Matt gets into the driver's seat. Me and Don get in as well, and I'm in the middle section, between them and my boxes. "She's out of everyone's league," Matt says as I click on my seat belt.
I breathe out my disappointment. "What do you mean?"
"She won't tell anyone what she does or why Salvos brought her on," Matt said. "Trust me, we all wonder about that. Salvos doesn't bring anyone onto the testing team unless they're capable of pushing the limits."
"Oh. Okay," I mutter.
I think of Natalie as we get rolling through Charlotte. She's a pretty good Creationist player and killer at combat and PVP, but like me, she's struggling with getting her channel off the ground. It's sheer luck Candi spotted my auto farm videos and followed me to Vox's castle map.
Matt picks up some late night drive-thru for us with a fancy-looking credit card. These two, I know, already make good money making Creationist videos. They've both got tons of subs and didn't need to ask for anything. I wonder if any of the other testers have sick family they're worried about.
Exhaustion hits me when we get back to the Salvos building. My apartment's on the third floor, and I have it all to myself. We set my boxes down in the spacious, white living room which has a leather couch and an entertainment system already set up. The kitchen is also big and not full of moldy food.
"Clean place smell," I say, inhaling and spreading my arms as I cross the threshold.
"Just try to keep it that way, okay?" Matt asks as he and Don leave, no doubt to get some sleep.
Someone's stocked the fridge with plenty of gamer fuel, AKA energy drinks, and actual food I can throw in the microwave. But I collapse on the bed in the attached bedroom and pass out.
When I wake to sunlight streaming through my huge window, I take a second to remember where I am and how lucky I just got. The sun pours through the closed blinds and I shoot out of bed, change my clothes, and call Natalie. It's Saturday and she's home at her own place, right?
"Hey, Matt."
"You'd never guess what happened." Instead of false hope, I can offer something real. A massive weight lifts off my chest. "I'm making three grand a week now, and I'm going to send you some to help out."
She's flabbergasted. Silence drags out. "What?"
Still in a dream state, I tell her I got drafted by Salvos to test a new game, but that I can't give it out the details. For all I know, this apartment's bugged, but I don't tell her that either. I do mention I'm working side by side with the Mayan city guy and the Glitch Lands guy. "I can't break my contract or I lose it all. I didn't want to tell you I got fired by Blob yesterday."
"Blob?"
"Landon's nickname. Officially just earned by me."
"Okay. You got hired on by Salvos Corporation. I'm jealous."
"I knew you'd be and I'm sorry. I'll put in a good word for you. I'd love to have you join us here. How you feeling?"
"Okay, mostly. My treatment starts next week and I'll have to take some time off. I'm probably going to suck at Creationist as well as at keeping my job."
"Look, Natalie. Just focus on getting better. Don't worry about that job. Yeah, they're trying to set you up, but I've got you covered if the worst happens and then you can find another job later. I won't be going out and blowing the cash because I'll be too busy playing this awesome game I can't wait for you to try. Just play Creationist. Keep making videos. You might get lucky."
"I've never been able to get anywhere. Nobody watches them."
"I had that same problem," I said. "Keep trying. People love PVP maps and those last man standing type games."
"Well, I suppose. Go have fun." Despite her disappointment, I can hear the incredible relief in Natalie's voice.
My mood's in the sky as I nuke a breakfast burrito, eat, and head down to the testing room. It's empty but the changing room is unlocked. I imagine the other testers are busy making Creationist videos and making their big money with ad revenue. They must come down here at night to play on their own time.
Well, no one will see me flailing around in the box, but how will I know how to exit the game? I never saw a menu on my two-hour trial. And since everything down here is open 24/7, I can imagine someone's monitoring my gameplay or is at least getting notifications about what I'm doing. Candi can't be expected to do that all the time.
I change into the Salvos suit and climb into the same Simulator I used the night before, not sure if it matters which one I use. The plastic pieces of the suit and the helmet tingle against my skin as the blue light hits them. Just as I wonder how the heck to log in, everything goes black as the process starts automatically.
I fall. I flail around like an idiot, waving my arms. The ground vanishes.
And then I land.
I'm lying on the floor of a now-sunlit, shallow cave and facing the ceiling. I blink as I study the smooth, but pixelated texture. My Common Leaves barrier still holds when I push myself up and look at the sparkling water of the Northern Swamp just a bit below my position. I'm back. I can no longer see the sun rising, so some time must have passed between when Candi logged me out and when I came back to Salvosera.
I equip my Flint Hatchet, which is in my six-slot hotbar. The Common Soil is gone since I used it all, but a piece of Pure Sand is still there. The hotbar must collect your most recently used items on top of accepting whatever I put in there. Cool.
Exiting the cave is uneventful. The mob drops from the Swamp Ghouls have despawned. No shocker. The pentagon sun is maybe at the ten o-clock position.
I find out I can keep my hotbar at the bottom of my vision by tapping it a couple of times, which is good.
Now I can cut down trees.
With the Flint Hatchet, breaking the Common Leaf barrier is easy and fast, though a green health bar appears for the tool, nestled inside its box. Durability. The bar's mostly still full by the time I collect all my Common Leaves and Sticks, so I should be able to cut some trees down.
My stomach rumbles as if I haven't eaten in two days.
"What?" I ask. "Seriously. I feel hunger here."
Duh. The Calories bar isn't there for nothing.
I pull up my status bars by hitting my chest. My health's stopped regenerating and is depleted by about an eighth, while my Calories bar is drained to half empty. Apparently, you don't heal unless your Calories bar is over half full.
"Thanks, Swamp Ghouls," I say. "Now I get to try the Salvosera cuisine."
I've got to find food, but more importantly, I've got to create a real shelter so I don't have a repeat of last night. I'll worry about my first mob trap after that.
I walk back uphill to the bright green, sparsely wooded area. When I tap the top of my head for the info pane, I see that this biome is just called a Scattered Forest, and the Hostility score is only thirty-three rather than seventy. I check again about fifty more steps in, and I see that the Hostility score has dropped to twenty-five. So the score changes constantly. Interesting. Then I walk towards the cliff I saw yesterday. Back up to forty-one. So the Hostility is not the same through an entire biome. It might even be random or partially dependent on the biome.
But first things first. I approach a tree and hack at it with my hatchet. The wood cracks quickly and then breaks, dropping a log with a pentagon-shaped border. The rest of the tree stays floating. Gravity: 0. And I've taken no more damage. When I pick up the Common Wood, I see that its Resistance is 2 and it's refinable.
I finish collecting the wood from the tree, ending up with eight Common Wood. Its Common Leaves break apart on their own, one by one, dropping sticks.
A shudder races up my spine as a sense of unease comes over me, and a second later I realize why. A sort of quiet slithering noise, almost like footsteps on grass but not quite, approaches from behind.
"Uh, oh."
I whirl, raising the Flint Hatchet.
I've been standing near a dark cave the whole time I've been massacring this tree, one almost invisible behind two other trees.
"What insane mind came up with this?"
The creature looks like a an orange-and-tan, bouncing coil with a square head, and a messed-up face at eye level set into a black, pained grimace. It's bouncing towards me, closing the measly ten-block gap between us.
A tiny voice in my mind speaks. This might be bad.
I swing my Flint Hatchet as it closes the last few feet between us and...stops.
I strike, and the creature bounces back a bit and emits a crackling sound as if it's burning inside. The sound intensifies as the coil trains its glare on me and slowly straightens up.
Before I can swing again, the creature erupts into bright orange, pixelated fire, which falls around me with a loud whoosh. Heat explodes over my body, intense and almost painful, as my vision flashes redder and redder. My rapidly shrinking health bar rises, and then a blob of final darkness expands across my vision.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Darkness rises around me. The ground is gone.
And with a thump, I land on my back.
"Well, crap."
I open my eyes to find myself lying on my back, at the same point where I spawned when trying out Salvosera for the first time. The blue sky stretches overhead and the hexagon sun, now almost at noon, creeps across the sky.
I just got killed by an orange coil that didn't even look happy about it. Great.
I get up and the first thing I do is feel my backpack. It's deflated and my inventory that pops in front of me is empty.
"Well, it happens to everybody," I grumble.
I've lost my items. No surprise. My hotbar's gone, too, and I know without checking that it'll be empty. The same happened in Creationist.
And then...panic.
My items might despawn, just like the Swamp Ghoul drops.
And I don't want to get behind and disappoint Salvos Corporation. They're paying me, after all.
I scan the Scattered Forest. Crap, where is my stuff? It should have dropped like it does in Creationist when you die.
There.
