by Edward Brody
Kendra smirked and snorted. “Of course not, dummy. I was just about to sleep.”
Johnny winked. “Good. Don’t stay up all night glued to your computer and stressing over your job. My baby needs her beauty rest.”
“I won’t,” Kendra promised.
“Alright babe,” Johnny said. “Goodnight. I love you.”
“Thanks, Johnny. I love you too. Have a safe trip.”
Kendra pressed the ‘end call’ button and couldn’t wipe the grin off of her face. She set her phone down, turned the light back off, and returned to a sleeping position. Johnny, her husband, was the love of her life, and even after so long together, the spark somehow hadn’t died out.
Were they ready to have kids? she wondered. It was something that they had spoken about many times over the past few years but had yet to pull the trigger on. Her work and position at Nexicon had consumed so much time that raising kids seemed impossible. But that was before the launch of Eden’s Gate. Most of her working hours since the wild moment that changed the world had been less geared towards building games and software and more so towards defending her company, her colleagues, and herself.
Another pinging sound rang out, and this time Kendra rolled her eyes and groaned. She wasn’t going to leave her husband hanging, but she was getting groggy and starting to drift off.
She tossed the blanket off of her legs, turned on the light, and grabbed her phone, but this time, the screen was blank.
Confused, she pressed a button on the side of the phone to check for missed notifications, but another ping rang out at the same time. It was then that she realized the pings were coming from her laptop rather than her phone.
She used her computer primarily for work and considered ignoring the sound, but it was unusual to get a communication request from someone at work late at night. If someone was trying to contact her at that time, it could’ve been urgent.
She flipped open her laptop and on the center of the screen was a notice that read ‘Establishing Connection with Eden’s Gate... Click to Accept.’
Her heart nearly skipped a beat.
She immediately accepted the connection, and Dr. Winston appeared right in front of her. It was the first time she had seen him since their meeting with government officials—the one in which the decision had been made to let Eden’s Gate continue.
“Kendra,” Dr. Winston said with a smile. “I’m so glad you answered.”
“Um, hey, Rupert…” Kendra muttered, shaking her head. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you had agreed to contact Earth only every 6 months.”
“That was the plan,” Dr. Winston said. “But that plan was mainly aimed towards the routine government contact I caved to. I wanted to check on you specifically. Is everything going okay over there?”
Kendra exhaled and nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. Stressed out but okay.”
“What about Nexicon?” Dr. Winston asked. “I assume you’ve taken the helm?”
“Everything is still operational, but most of our development has been halted. We’re really just managing our current assets and the fallout from Eden’s Gate.” She shook her head. “Why do you want to know? It’s obvious you want nothing to do with this world now that you’ve escaped.”
“Just curious, I suppose.” Dr. Winston took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’m sure things have been difficult, Kendra. I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with whatever has come your way after launch day.”
“Sorry?” Kendra chuckled. “Just sorry? You turned my life upside down when you did what you did. My life has been hell since that day, Rupert.”
Dr. Winston looked down a bit and nodded slightly. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
Kendra shook her head. “I don’t even get why you’re contacting me, to be honest.”
Dr. Winston looked down and rubbed his fingers together. When he looked up, he asked, “Can you forgive me, Kendra?”
“No,” Kendra said, shaking her head. “I can’t just forgive you. You didn’t even tell me what you had planned to do. I wasn’t prepared for all of this bullshit.”
“If I had told you, what would you have done?” Dr. Winston asked.
Kendra’s eyes darted down as she thought about her actions. She bit her inner lip and turned away a bit. “I guess I would’ve gone to the police.”
“That’s why,” Dr. Winston said, nodding. “Even you, who knew so much about Eden’s Gate, wouldn’t have gone along with my plans.”
“I would have been an accomplice if I had.” Kendra sighed and shook her head. “You made a real world. And yeah, it’s amazing, but you went about populating it the wrong way.”
“It was the only way.”
“It wasn’t the only way.”
“It was the only way that would work.”
“Jesus.” Kendra glanced away. “You’re always so hard-headed.”
Dr. Winston snorted. “Yeah, I suppose I am.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe you can’t forgive me now, but can you just semi-forgive me? Just a bit? Just enough that we can stay on good terms?”
“Yeah, fine…” Kendra said with a groan. “I ‘semi-forgive’ you, whatever that means.”
“Thanks,” Dr. Winston said. “I appreciate that.”
“And how is life inside of Eden’s Gate?”
“Wonderful, of course,” Dr. Winston said with a smile. “It’s everything I imagined it would be.” He leaned forward. “When are you going to be joining us?”
“I won’t be.”
He creased his brow. “Why? You loved Eden’s Gate when it was in development.”
“Yeah, of course. I loved it, and I wouldn’t mind living there, but my husband doesn’t want to go.”
“So, you’ve talked to Johnny about it already?”
“Of course,” Kendra said. “He’s open to the idea of going there someday, but he’s just not sold on the idea of virtual worlds.” She grinned. “I think he’s scared, really.”
“Tell him that he’ll be immortal.”
“I did but he can’t conceptualize it and doesn’t really believe it.” Kendra shrugged. “To be honest, I’m not sure I believe it either after all the effort to shut things down.”
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Winston said. “I’m certain we won’t get shut down. Eden’s Gate will be around long after humanity on Earth has perished.”
Kendra rolled her eyes. “Well, Johnny and I are going to hang out here for a little while longer.”
“Stay alive, Kendra. Stay alive.”
“Don’t worry I will,” she said. “But even if I don’t become an immortal in Eden’s Gate, I’ve had a nice life.”
Dr. Winston leaned forward again. “Stay alive, Kendra—at least until you’ve entered Eden’s Gate.”
Kendra chuckled.
“I do wish to ask you a favor, though,” Dr. Winston said.
“What’s that?”
“We had an incident a while back. A player died. Not just a temporary death with an automatic resurrection as players are meant to have, but a permanent death. This normally wouldn’t be a cause for concern, as permadeath is built-in to the world under certain circumstances, but it happened shortly after the player entered, and in an area where that sort of death shouldn’t happen.”
“Okay, so what does that have to do with me?” she asked. “All your code is encrypted, so I can’t, like, review it or anything.”
“Don’t worry about that. I haven’t finished,” Dr. Winston said. “I spent weeks going over the data logs, trying to figure out how this occurred, and it seems that a player somehow logged into the game and didn’t immediately die on Earth.”
“What?” Kendra asked. “That can happen?”
“It’s only happened once, as far as I’m aware,” Dr. Winston explained. “But there is essentially a two-part process when crossing between worlds. First, you’re mentally connected to Eden’s Gate, and then your perception is routed to your in-game body. Once the connection is verified, in normal cir
cumstances, your perception is severed from your Earth body, causing you to essentially be ‘transferred over’ entirely, and your brain on Earth ceases to function.”
“We both know it’s more complicated than that,” Kendra said.
Dr. Winston smiled. “I’m simplifying things. But anyway, someone connected to the world, but when they transferred over, their perception seemed to have not been severed from their mortal being after verification.”
“Like in beta?” Kendra asked.
“Something similar,” Dr. Winston said. “The system is now programmed to remap your entire consciousness to a new in-game body if you die. Not ‘die’, die but a normal, non-permanent death. Unfortunately, the person in question remained connected with their Earth body, and when they were killed in-game, the system got confused and couldn’t handle the process properly. Invalid data was sent back to an active connection on Earth, and the invalid character profile immediately caused the character to lock up. He was not resurrected.”
Kendra tilted her head to the side and smirked. “See? Your world isn’t perfect.”
“Maybe not perfect. But…” He held his finger up and waited a few seconds. “There were probably six or seven permanent deaths in your world in those few seconds there.”
Kendra took a deep breath. “You always win, don’t you?”
“Facts are facts.”
“Well, what are you going to do?”
“I believe I’ve plugged the hole, but I can’t be certain,” he explained. “Will you just keep an eye out and make sure you don’t hear about anyone entering Eden’s Gate somehow without fully crossing over?”
“Not dying, you mean? You want me to report if someone survives?”
“Whatever you want to call it,” he said. “If someone enters Eden’s Gate, they don’t die. They simply pass over to a new world. Only their body on Earth dies. If they enter Eden’s Gate without fully passing over, they risk actual death, in which their consciousness no longer exists here or there. Something like that is dangerous.”
Kendra thought about the dilemma for a moment before giving a slight nod. “I guess I can keep an eye out for anything unusual.”
“Thanks,” Dr. Winston said. “It’s not urgent. Just give me an update next time we talk.”
“Okay,” she said. “No problem. But for now, I’ve got to get to bed. I have a big meeting tomorrow with some important people—another drilling about the ins and outs of Eden’s Gate.”
Dr. Winston chuckled. “What do they want to know?”
“Everything I can tell them, apparently,” she answered. “Game mechanics, magic systems, races, points of interest, etcetera.”
“That’s a bit of cheating, but I guess it doesn’t matter. A lot has changed since beta. There’s so much here for you to discover if you ever come to join us.”
“Is the spawn system still the same?” Kendra asked. “Does everyone still spawn in a random place somewhere across the ridiculously massive world?”
“That’s still the same.”
“Then don’t count on me coming there anytime soon. That may be the worst thing about Eden’s Gate—starting people apart.”
“It’s in place to make the world fair.”
She looked down and sighed. “It’s fair, but sometimes fair isn’t what’s right. I love my husband, and even if I enter Eden’s Gate and live another million years, I’d hate to spend years leveling up and circling the world to find him.”
“That’s a rather silly way of looking at things. You can’t compare a few years with immortality.”
“Even if only a year, it’s a year of fear,” Kendra said. “A year where we’d both be off doing our own thing, having fun, and growing without each other.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m more afraid that I’d go crazy that I might never find him again or more afraid that he’d find someone else. Hell, what if I did? Things can change a lot in a year, especially in a world like Eden’s Gate.”
Dr. Winston leaned back, swallowed hard, and his eyes shifted away. He muttered something and stared off into nothing as if he had a sudden revelation or was watching a story play out in front of his eyes. He took a deep breath, turned around, and threw Kendra a slight smile. “I’ll have to remember what you said.”
“What part?” Kendra asked.
“All of it,” he answered. “But I especially liked, ‘Sometimes fair isn’t what’s right.’ Actually, I wish we’d had this talk before I launched Eden’s Gate.”
Kendra shrugged off his words and looked at her clock on the nightstand. “Yeah well, I’m glad to see you’re doing well. I’m off to bed, okay?”
“Okay, take care, Kendra,” Dr. Winston said. “Say hello to your husband for me.”
“Sure. Goodnight.”
Kendra closed her laptop, set it on the floor beside her nightstand, and slid back under her blanket. Her mind drifted from Dr. Winston and their chat and then back to Johnny. The doctor’s immortality carrot was titillating no matter how much she dismissed it, and she missed the fun times she’d had in Eden’s Gate. When would she and her husband be ready for kids? And when, if ever, would they be ready to enter Eden’s Gate?
Chapter Twenty-Three
2/20/0001
There were no additional attacks during the night, and after a short celebration to welcome Trynzen to our group, the guild stayed up until sunrise, helping to discuss ways I could locate the baby’s father and get him into the right hands.
We went over everything from trying to find an invisibility potion to more nefarious tactics, like putting a knife near the baby and marching it up to the Wastelands entrance, demanding to meet with Rithnar.
Almost all of our ideas were quickly ruled out. Even if we could get our hands on an invisibility potion, the effect wouldn’t last long enough to find a specific orc who could be pretty much anywhere in the Wastelands. And Jax figured the orcs would just attack us if we threatened them with the child.
After numerous thoughts and ideas were put forth, the best idea we could come up with was just to approach a group of orcs who were invading the Freelands and see if they’d talk. We hoped that if they saw the baby and weren’t overly hostile, they’d help us reunite it with its father. An alternative, less desirable plan was to try to catch a live orc and simply force it to talk.
Jax thought both ideas were sketchy and insisted that orcs were brutes who could not be reasoned with. He had no better ideas, though, other than slashing the baby’s throat.
When I awoke for the day, I could tell that I had only slept a few hours. And though a little lack of sleep in Eden’s Gate was far less detrimental than it was back on Earth, it still made me feel less energetic than I would have been on a full night’s sleep.
From right outside of my home, I heard the repeated sound of banging and scraping. I typically slept deeply in Eden’s Gate, so the noise didn’t bother me much while I was in a dream state, but when I opened my eyes, it was annoying enough to keep me from falling back to sleep for more rest.
Beside me, the baby was resting silently in a makeshift cot Aaron had quickly thrown together, so I quietly gathered my gear and got ready to head out. I gave a lot of thought to leaving the kid alone inside to sleep—after all, we were in a village filled with people who hated orcs, so it couldn’t be any safer outside with supervision versus inside by itself. Ultimately, however, I decided that it was best to wake the baby and take it with me. I didn’t want to feel responsible for yet another innocent death, and definitely not because I neglected a child.
I was delighted that the little one remained asleep while picking him up and gently covered him with his blanket. I cradled him with a single arm and slipped out of my home to see Aaron alone, standing over his anvil, slamming a hammer into a piece of metal again and again, then alternating to rubbing it against rough stone nearby.
He was alone, so everyone else must’ve still been sleeping.
“Morning,” I said to Aaron as I approached h
im. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” he answered as he hammered furiously at the metal. He paused and held up the twisted, garbled mass that looked more like trash than anything of value.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Aaron sighed. “I was hoping to make a dagger, but it’s not quite shaping up the way I had hoped. I guess my skill with the Vorporite we mined just isn’t good enough yet. I can smelt the ore, but every time I try to use it, I just end up wasting it. I’ll have a better idea of how to work it once I have a Vorporite schematic.”
I looked towards some burn damage that remained on his house. “I thought you were busy repairing our homes. Why are you trying to make something without a schematic?”
Aaron rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Sometimes you can get lucky and recipes between metals are the same or similar, aside from the type of metal. Besides, I needed a break. Crafting is fun as hell but fixing burned wood all day gets old quick.”
“Fair enough,” I said.
“How’s the little booger?” Aaron asked, raising his chin to the bundle in my arms.
“Still sleeping, thankfully.” I held the baby up. “You want to take him? I’m going to get a couple of guys together and head out to try talking to orcs, I guess. Not sure how else I’m going to get this quest over with.”
Aaron snorted and shrugged. “You guys and your dumbass plans… Yeah, I guess I can take him ‘til you get back.”
“Thanks, man,” I said and held the baby out to him. “You’re always holding things down.”
“Wait. Don’t give him to me yet,” Aaron said.
“Why? Are you too busy?” I questioned. “I’ll be leaving soon, so if you want to keep crafting, I’ll just ask one of the other guild mates. No worries.”
“I’m not busy, but I need to show you something first.”
“Show me what?”
Aaron sat down his hammer and the garbled metal before reaching for a cloth dangling over a straight object leaning against his house. As he lifted the object, he pulled the cloth off from over it to reveal that it was actually a long, thin, slightly curved sword. The hilt was black with a sharp, shimmering silver-colored guard, and the blade was covered by a shiny red and silver sheathe.
