Esil,
Stop by my office in the morning. There is something we need to discuss.
-Benjamin
My stomach drops. No message about orientation and Benjamin wants to meet with me. This can’t be good. There’s no way they would kick me off the beta team, is there? I’ve done everything they’ve asked of me.
I quickly glance over the message from Aleesia saying she’d be happy to join us. I’m too rattled to focus on anything at the moment, so I throw on some clothes and rush toward the main building.
Benjamin’s door is closed when I arrive. I knock and the door opens with a whoosh. He places his tablet on the desk and motions for me to take a seat.
“Good morning, Esil.” His voice gives nothing away.
“Good morning.” The words come out as a croak as I take a seat in the polished leather chair. My hands are sweaty as I grip the armrests, leaving a trail of moisture every time I move.
I don’t know what I could have possibly done to make them take me off the project. Too friendly with the NPCs perhaps, but wasn’t that the whole point?
He stares at me for a moment, and then flashes me a smile. “I heard through the grapevine that you’re entering the Pro-Am Tournament.”
I nod. “You heard right.” Is that why they don’t want me around anymore? Did agreeing to mentor Dean cost me my job?
“With a kid from The Boxes as your apprentice, no less. The public is going to love it. You really know how to set yourself up for the spotlight, don’t you?”
I almost snap at him, but I rein my temper in. “I never asked to be in the spotlight. Not then, and not now. No one else was going to take a chance on him, so I felt it was my responsibility. Who else is going to look out for those in The Boxes?”
Benjamin raises his hands in defense. “Easy. I’m not criticizing. I think it’s a great thing that you’re doing. The reason I asked to meet with you is so that I could tell you this in person. We’re going to have to take you off the beta team while you’re in the tournament.”
“Why? I can train for the tournament and still help with the Broken Lands.”
He frowns. “I don’t doubt that you could. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be possible. There’s not much I can say on the matter, just know it’s nothing personal and it has nothing to do with your abilities. You have been a valuable asset for our full-immersion testing and we will be happy to have you back once the tournament is over. Let’s just say that we can’t have you having a conflict of interest.”
“Conflict of interest?” I scrunch my eyes. Does that mean that the Broken Lands will play a part in the tournament?
“I think you can put the pieces together yourself. I’ll be rooting for you during the tournament, Esil. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a lot of work to get done.”
I leave Benjamin’s office and walk down to the laboratory. My mind is full of questions. About the tournament and the Broken Lands. Does this mean there will be a full-immersion stage, or are the Broken Lands being added to Pangea?
Even though it’s only been a couple of weeks since they shut the program down, the laboratory looks completely different. The giant vats we used to submerge ourselves in are gone, replaced by dozens of much smaller units, each one about the size of a coffin. They’re polished and sleek, with a transparent top.
No one is down in the lab. The viewing deck, however, is packed with people in lab-coats. I spot Aleesia’s messy bun as she stands on the far side taking notes. How much has she known about all of this?
She’s already agreed to hang out tonight, so I’ll fish for information then.
I have most of the day to kill until Dean is finished with school, so I wander aimlessly around the headquarters, drifting through the various parks and botanical gardens.
When I finally return home, I start researching some of the more skill-based worlds across Pangea. If the tournament is discounting our levels and current abilities, then we’d get the most benefit from exploring worlds where everyone is on the same page.
Personally, I like worlds where I can witness my avatar grow and level over time, but some people like the challenge of beating level after level.
I get so caught up in my research that before I know it, I have a message from Aleesia telling me to meet her in her home portal.
I strap into my haptic suit, toss Fenrir a few treats in my own portal, and go to meet Aleesia. After entering the code, I find her inside, sprawled out on a luxurious leather couch in the center of the room. I haven’t been in many people’s home portals, but I have a feeling that hers would put most of them to shame.
A spiral staircase leads to a loft that overlooks the main room. I can barely see the top of her four-poster bed up above. A crystal chandelier casts sparkles across the room. Mannequins span the perimeter, displaying copies of her best pieces of clothing, armor, and accessories. A symphony plays quietly in the background, and a display on the wall follows her unicorn as it prances in an open field. Everything in here screams royalty.
“How long have you known that the Broken Lands were part of the new tournament?”
She grimaces. “Sorry, I’ve known for a while now, but I was bound to secrecy. I wasn’t even sure if you would be competing and I didn’t want anything I said to influence you. I’m surprised they waited so long to tell you, though. I guess they wanted to wait until you officially entered.”
I cross the room and give her a kiss on the cheek. “It seems a little soon to be taking full-immersion mainstream, don’t you think?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. While we were perfecting the AI in the Broken Lands, another team was working on a more portable form of full-immersion. This is going to be big, Esil. Once this goes public, Pangea will never be the same.”
“What do you mean?”
Aleesia sits up off the couch, her eyes wide with excitement. “They’ve found a way to experience full-immersion with nothing but a helmet.”
“Wait, what? I was at the lab and I saw dozens of pods.”
She grins. “Here’s the best part. Those are for extended play. There’s a nanobot gel that can keep the body functioning for days without having to eject. But the helmets by themselves are rated for up to six hours of immersion at a time.”
I’m frozen for a moment as I take it all in. “So you mean to tell me that full-immersion is almost ready to come to all of Pangea?”
“In time. There’s a lot of coding to get all the game worlds up to par, so it’ll take time. But this tournament will be the big reveal.”
I take a seat on the couch beside her. Any chance I had of keeping a low profile is over. With this kind of announcement, everyone across Pangea will be tuning into the tournament.
The loud gong of church bells announces a visitor, and a hologram appears in the center of the table. Dean looks around nervously in his cowboy outfit.
“Let him in,” she says, and a door opens, allowing Dean to enter.
He gawks at the lavish accessories before walking over to us.
“Nice to meet you. This place is amazing.”
Aleesia offers him a warm smile. “Thanks. I don’t spend as much time here as I used to, but it was my sanctuary for a time.”
We engage in small talk for a bit before I get down to business.
“If we’re going to have a shot at this tournament, we need lots of practice in different worlds. We want to be as well-versed as possible so that we can handle any challenge they throw at us.”
Dean nods along as I speak. “So where are we going first?”
“Street Brawl. It’s a two-dimensional world where we fight our way through levels, clear bosses, and try to reach the center of town.”
We open an exit portal to Pangea’s game worlds, and an endless expanse of destinations floats before us.
Welcome to Street Brawl! The city of Greendale has descended into anarchy. Thugs have taken over the streets and neighborhoods throughout the city. Fight your way downtown and resc
ue the Mayor so that he may call in reinforcements and bring safety to the city once again.
The world before me is full of flat surfaces and bright colors. Tall buildings stretch on each side of the road, forcing us down the path before us. The spaces between buildings ends with a walled-off alley. This is a far cry from the open worlds I’m used to. The street we stand on is littered with trash, broken-down vehicles, and burning dumpsters. In the distance, hooded individuals wearing ski masks walk back and forth holding chains, tire irons, and pieces of wood with nails in them.
My own body is two-dimensional and flat, like an animated version of me, but when I twist my arm, it’s like I’m a piece of paper. Every time I take a step there’s a barely audible beep. Techno-inspired music plays quietly in the background.
Dean and Aleesia have gone through the same transformation, each of them cardboard cutouts of their avatars.
“Whoa!” Dean flips his two-dimensional hand back and forth, amazed by the physics. “This is crazy. I’m moving like normal, but it feels different. I can’t quite explain it.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Aleesia tests out her own movement. “It’s just your mind trying to make sense of everything. You’ll get used to it shortly.”
“So what do we do?” Dean looks to me for answers.
“We need to pick our weapons, and then make our way to the center of town.” I point to a collection of potential weapons scattered on the street before us. A slingshot. A baseball bat. A yo-yo.
“Ladies first.” I motion for Aleesia to choose her weapon.
“Hmm. I think I’ll take the yo-yo.” She picks it up and places the string around her finger. Then she flicks her wrist, and the yo-yo shoots out and retracts. She tries a few different tricks, spinning the yo-yo straight in front of her, and then doing an around-the-world where it goes in a complete circle over her body.
“Dean, you’re next.”
“Definitely the slingshot.” He holds it out in front of him and pulls back on the sling, taking aim down the street. “Nice.”
If his slingshot skills are anything like his darts, it’ll be the perfect weapon for him.
“I guess that leaves me with the bat.” I pick it up and take a few swings. It moves effortlessly in my hands. “Follow me. This first level should be pretty easy. The enemies get stronger as we progress, so it’s important to get a hang of things early on.”
The thugs pace back and forth as we approach. Even after passing where a normal human would see us, they don’t look in our direction. Once we’re about ten feet out, the closest two grunt and charge toward us.
Dean fires a pellet from his slingshot and the first thug shatters into pixels. A gold coin hovers in the area where he fell. Aleesia swings her yo-yo, knocking the second one out. Another gold coin appears.
The three thugs behind them continue to pace, oblivious to what just happened. Once we’re close enough, they turn on us. I rush in and clobber the thug wearing a bright orange vest with my bat. Two coins sprout up from him as the avatar dissipates into hundreds of pixels. Aleesia and Dean finish off the other two.
A chain-link fence that was blocking the road now opens, allowing us to pass to the next level. I collect the coins from the enemies I downed. Most are worth five coins, but one is worth ten. There’s a cha-ching with each one I pick up, along with a counter in the top right of my vision.
“That was easy.” Aleesia reaches for one of the gold coins, and it vanishes as soon as she touches it. “What are these for?”
I read a brief summary of the world, so I know some of the basics. “We’ll be able to upgrade our weapons once we find a shop.”
The second level is more difficult, with each thug taking two hits to kill. Dean shoots each thug once before moving on to the next one so that when they get close enough, it only takes one hit from Aleesia or me to finish them off.
Things get more interesting once we reach level three. New enemies appear. This time, there are women throwing rocks at us in addition to the thugs.
The rocks travel slow enough that we can dodge them, but once multiple rocks come sailing in, we’re forced to choose between dodging their attacks and fighting.
I swing my bat at one of the incoming rocks and it explodes into pixels.
“If we hit the rocks, then they vanish.”
“Good to know,” says Aleesia as she hits one with her yo-yo.
Dean attempts to hit the women with his ranged attack, but their rocks block his shots, disintegrating both projectiles.
“Let’s take out the thugs first, then we’ll deal with the others.” I move forward and a rock barrage comes barreling in my direction. I smack the first one, but two more hit me before I’m ready to attack again. Techno chimes echo around me with each hit, and my health bar drops by a third.
I take a few steps back and the rocks spread evenly between us once again.
Aleesia hits one with her yo-yo. “They focus on whoever is closest. Looks like we’ll need to press at the same time to keep them from focusing on one of us.”
We push as a team, and the projectiles come at us at an even rate, allowing us to destroy them as we push. Once we are close enough, the thugs rush us. A few feet separate each attacker, giving me an idea.
“If we attack them at the same time, we should be able to kill them faster. We’ll take some damage, but less than if we fought them individually.”
As the first thug lunges at us with his tire iron, Aleesia hits him with her yo-yo. I quickly follow up with a swing of my bat, dropping the thug. Aleesia has enough time to block the rock thrown at her, but I’m not so lucky. My vision flashes red and I lose another chunk of my health bar.
“You hit them first next time so that you can block the rock,” Aleesia orders. “I’ll take the damage.”
Dean continues to fire from a distance. His long range gives him time to shoot and then step aside, avoiding the rocks entirely. He manages to take out a thug on his own in the same time as Aleesia and me.
Aleesia and I are down to half health by the time we clear the thugs. Three women in the back continue to throw rocks in a steady stream.
We press on them at the same time. As we block each rock, I notice that our attacks are slightly faster than the women’s. Once we’re close enough to attack them, it gives us a slight edge. I block the rock, and just as the woman winds up to toss another, my bat explodes her into pixel dust. Dean and Aleesia both receive gold coins, but an orange soda hovers in front of me.
Orange Soda. Restores 50HP.
I down the soda and my health bar shoots up to seventy-five percent.
“Well done!” I congratulate the others. A new fence opens, revealing a street with a dumpster in the middle. This one isn’t on fire like the others. The word “shop” hovers in the air above the dumpster.
“Nice, we can finally spend our coins!” Dean runs past me.
I focus on the dumpster and a screen appears in my vision. There’s a picture of me, my health, and my weapon on one side. On the other are the items and upgrades.
Orange Soda. Restores 50HP. 5 coins.
Roasted Turkey. Restores full HP. 20 coins.
Weapon Upgrade. “Nailbiter.” Doubles damage of baseball bat. 50 coins.
Extra Life. Respawn at the beginning of the previous level. 100 coins.
It’s a pretty simple setup. We buy items to heal and upgrade our weapons to deal more damage. I confirm with Aleesia and Dean that they have the same options.
“How many coins do you have?”
“One-fifteen,” says Dean.
“One-twenty,” says Aleesia.
“I have one hundred and ten myself. I say we definitely go for the weapon upgrades. The extra life won’t mean much if we can’t deal damage.” I focus on “Nailbiter” and as soon as I accept, my weapon transforms. Long nails jut through the tip of the bat, making it a destructive force.
“Nice, now I have two yo-yos.” Aleesia flicks both wrists and a yo-yo dangles fr
om each.
“What about you, Dean?” I ask.
“I got bigger pellets for my slingshot. They deal double damage.” He grins.
I buy two turkeys and spend the rest of my coins on sodas. It’s more likely I’ll need to top my health off gradually than refill it all at once.
Once we’ve spent all our coins, we step into the next level.
There’s a loud screech, and the fence on the far end bursts off of its hinges. A red truck rams through, with two men standing in the bed of the truck. One swings a chain and the other holds a Molotov cocktail in his hand.
They zoom up and down the street before spinning out in the middle of the road. The man holding the Molotov cocktail tosses it in our direction. It explodes on the pavement in front of us and a wall of flame erupts. It lasts for five seconds before fading away.
The man raises a fist at us. “You may have made it past the lackeys, but good luck getting past us.”
The dialogue is nothing to write home about, but I guess some people enjoy this more classic adventure.
Tires screech and the truck comes barreling down the street. The other man swings his chain in a circle on the left side of the truck. I’m not quick enough to move and it hits me in the shoulder, taking out a quarter of my health.
Dean shoots the truck with his slingshot, and its health bar drops a smidge. “I think we have to destroy the truck, and then we fight the thugs.”
I chug one of the orange sodas to replenish my health just as another Molotov cocktail explodes behind us. The truck makes another loop, but the fire wall blocks our retreat. I smash the truck with my bat at the same time as the chain hits me. Aleesia and Dean are able to get in a hit as well, and we come out slightly ahead on the encounter. Even so, the truck has way more health than we do, and I don’t know if we have enough items to outlast them.
“Try to hit the Molotov as he throws it next time.” If we can disrupt it, then it’ll at least give us enough room to dodge the chain when the truck drives by.
The thug winds up, and Dean lets his pellet fly. It hits the Molotov just as it releases. Instead of vanishing, the Molotov explodes in the back of the truck, setting both thugs on fire. Unable to escape, they die in the flames.
Pangea Online 3: Vials and Tribulations Page 10
