Magical After: Dark World Book 1 Part 1

by David Gunter

  The games Hellen played were seriously maddening, and if it wasn’t for the dedication to the ideals the Carls lived by, he would have long left the company. In fact, he had tried to leave the company, and even in this, he had failed.

  It had occurred after a very poor attempt to acquire a Japanese investor. He had traveled to Japan and spent 200K in business expenses to wine and dine his way into the hearts of the investors, and then, in the end, they had backed out.

  Then during a board meeting, while he was explaining to a board room full of shocked board members how his failure had actually been a success because of his astounding presence and charisma, which he felt would establish their presence in the region, Hellen had interrupted the meeting, called the Japanese investors on her cell phone, putting the whole conversation on speaker for everyone to hear, and then had gotten the investments on the spot with just a few words. To top it off, the board members had strongly recommended that he seek to work with the senior members in the company instead of “playing cowboy” and going around the world like “James Bond” whenever it suited him. That day Carl the 3rd had called in a few debts and had gotten on the phone with some very well-known business owners who had all agreed to meet with him within the span of a week. Yet, after a few hours, they had all called him back and had given him a singular message. They had all informed him that they could not move forward while he had unfinished business with Hellen Gosling.

  “Unfinished Business!!!” he had shouted out in the semi-privacy of his office. Even now, the memory threatened to pull him out of his reverie. It had been the most infuriating day of his life, and he had decided then to find a way to sue this woman for defamation of character or harassment or something. He had stormed out of his office after receiving the calls and had gotten in his car, determining to be done with the day, but had been stopped short when the guards that checked everyone coming in and out of the company had told him to take care of his “business” with Hellen Gosling before leaving for the day.

  Of course, hearing that he was being stopped from leaving due to some business with Hellen had driven him mad. He had thoroughly impaled the guard with vicious slurs and cursing. This, unfortunately, had earned him a drawn weapon with a detainment at the gate to follow.

  He had then been forced to march into Hellen’s office, where she had politely asked him to sit down and speak only when allowed to speak. Then she had proceeded to inform him of the state of things and the level of her involvement with world events and partnerships with both large and small governments and businesses alike.

  Nothing had prepared Carl the 3rd for this level of adversary. Hellen had completely disarmed him in a manner-of-speak. She had put him in a sandbox and had informed him that unless he was wanting to retire, he would have to play within the sandbox she had created for him, and with the toys she was bored with.

  Thankfully the humiliation of being dragged into her office and being forced to listen had given him enough pause to consider his adversary. This, he realized, was dominance. It was everything he aspired to be in order to fulfill the purpose behind the legacy of the Carls.

  Hellen had played her hand, and he could, therefore, see her cards and devise a counter. But first, he decided to play along and really get to know her sandbox and toys. He would meet this challenger with the counter tension required and ultimately earn his dominance. This way, he knew that eventually, he would build a sandbox for her and put her in it, and she would know her place in his world.

  That encounter had ended cordially, and in the weeks that followed, all seemed calm and uneventful. Privately and through intermediaries, he had started some research into a number of technologies related to things the company had produced and spent the time needed to find out all the research projects currently ongoing in her department. Then he had invited some ambitious people, some old and some young, to join the company in various areas to be his eyes and ears.

  Hellen had fallen into his traps perfectly unaware of his involvements. He had from a distance introduced the idea of beginning a VR world and had encouraged the researchers to push the boundaries into neural cloning, and with almost no effort, the sandbox of his design had been fully realized.

  Of course, pulling strings from afar is never perfect, and many safe guards and controls were added by Hellen and others to prevent abuses. He hadn’t foreseen everything, but the canvas was set and ready for his work of art to be realized, and now he held the brush in his hand ready to paint.

  In truth, some of the things he hadn’t planned had been the most brilliant parts. He hadn’t planned that Hellen would take such initiative and interest in the VR research. But seeing it unfold, he had encouraged his minions to introduce the idea of uploading a person’s psyche into the experience. She, in-tern, had fully realized his vision and had even uploaded her own psyche a number of times. He had, however, planned the fatal accident that had ended her life in this world and had confined her to the VR world.

  ‘Perfectly executed,’ he thought with a smile as he reached for one of the folders on his desk. Opening the folder, he looked within at the dossier of a trained killer. It was a soon-to-be former UK special forces guy that had volunteered for the VR trials in order to realize military applications in the VR world. The dossier was of John Taney, age 42, an accomplished marine of several wars and countless missions in Asia, the middle east, Africa, and Russia. This soldier possessed a number of useful skill sets, including combat, strategic planning, and many survivalist skills.

  When John had been briefed, he had been told that he was part of an experiment and would be loaded into the VR world. He would be given directions on entry and would simply execute the mission and find the nearest town or city and await additional instructions or wait for extraction. Of course, the actual plan was simply to record the former bootneck’s mind in order to easily allow for repeated reentry. And since the recording happened right before his first entry, the soldier would simply assume that it was his first entry every single time the game started his consciousness.

  There could actually have been numerous copies of this soldier in the VR world at any single point in time if not for one of the safety features Hellen had introduced deep into the system. So even though Carl could send in multiple minions into the game, they could not be multiplied within the system. She had said that it was an intrinsic performance and security aspect to the system that would ensure the game could not be hacked from within or from the outside as well. But he had bested her in this as he had found a way around this limitation that was perfect for his purposes.

  Carl picked up another folder from his desk and examined the dossier of a former Gurkha soldier named Tommy Cruise. Carl thought the Gurkha soldier’s photograph really didn’t scream a ‘Tommy Cruise,’ but he supposed one name was just as good as another. The reputation of this Gurkha soldier was well known, so the name just added a kind of humor to a very clearly serious and borderline scary man.

  Carl lay the folders of the two soldiers side by side and thought about what made these men killers. He wondered if once in the game, these men would perform their mission well or simply be caught and kicked out by the ever-vigilant game AI. What these men could do for him was all that mattered to him. Whatever it took, he would show Hellen real dominance, and she would know that he had bested her.

  It was late, but he picked up the phone and dialed the number to his inside man and one who worked conveniently in the VR entry lab.

  “It’s time to try a new approach,” Carl said.

  “Oh! It’s you, I mean, yes? What approach?” Other voice.

  “Remember those two soldiers your team tested last year?” said Carl.

  “Yes? But you know our deal with the military ended a while…” Other voice

  Carl cut the other voice off, “Shut up! And listen. We are going to load them in from the cache we recorded. We own that, right?”

 
“Yes? But that’s an ethical grey area, and we’re bound to have legal issues.” Other Voice.

  “No, we won’t have any issues, and you know why? It’s because you are going to load them into the game as NPCs and then use the original copies and not the military-owned modifications. There’s nothing preventing a person from being loaded in more than once so long as all are NPCs except one, right?” said Carl.

  “Well, it’s possible, but even if this works, what if the person runs into a copy of themselves in the game?” Other voice. And there are other differences as well…”

  “We can explain that it is a quest or something like that and give them rewards for completing it that make it believable. And besides, we are going to send these copies into areas of the game that will alter their avatars a lot more to the point where they won’t be easily recognized by themselves or others. To that end, I want you to send one of them into the deadlands so they can become Undead assassins and another into the holy lands so they can become holy aligned. Can you do that?” Said, Carl.

  The other voice paused. “Well… we can indicate which starting point they would prefer to start from, but ultimately, the game decides to either ignore or honor those based on a whole lot of other factors. When do you want me to load them in, anyway?!.. Sir”

  “I want them loaded thirty-one minutes apart on the day of the launch, and I want to give them instructions personally. Can you make that happen?” said Carl.

  “I’ll get on it, sir. When I’ve created their accounts, I’ll send you their in-game handles. You can then use these to send them instructions. I think I might be able to rig their accounts so that they think they are just getting quests, and I may also be able to give them rewards for completing your instructions. It should feel just like completing a quest if I do this right.” Said the other voice.

  “Well done! And based on this, we’ll have to see if you’re really ready for that promotion.” With that, Carl hung up the phone, not really wanting to wait for that response. He needed to keep the person on the other line at his beck and call and eager to receive his next instructions.

  With everything in place, Carl would be ready to spring his trap. He would confirm that his assets were in place and ready, and then he would load David into the VR world. He was certain that this would lure Hellen into the trap and cause her to reveal herself.

  Then he would have his sweet, sweet revenge.

  CHAPTER V

  End of the Road, Start of the Journey

  David landed on the last stone and, with that last step, completed the end of the melody. How he had gotten some of those faster notes, he didn’t know, but he rolled it up to feeling younger and stronger than he’d ever felt.

  The night seemed so quiet now, and looking back, he saw that the lights on the stones behind him now were white in color, reflecting plain and simple moonlight, and not the multihued reflecting stones he had seen a moment before. What had he done?

  David had jumped, leaped, and danced down the path that led from the cave to this intersection in the road. But what had gotten into him? He had felt pretty good, even happy, but this he knew was a feeling foreign to him. Gone were all thoughts of sadness and of missing Hellen. In its stead was a sense of hope and a dream that could come true. And why shouldn’t he feel happy, he told himself. In this place, he could find his beloved Hellen, after all.

  Then a deep-sounding voice split the night sky and broke his thoughts.

  “You have played for the night sky, and the night sky has taken notice of you. Now when your creativity and playfulness are seen by the night sky, you will receive greater rewards, and the works of your hands will cause great delight in others. The moonlight has also taken notice of your musicality and originality, and for this, you will see rewards in the moonlight that others do not. Where others see dirt and stone, you will see the diamonds and gold.” - The Old Man in the Night Sky.

  “He wants everybody to like him, so he grows out his beard to look warm and cuddly, but he’s really just a tired ol’ fool. - Narrator

  “Wait, what!” - The Old Man in the Night Sky

  The voice David heard was as delightful as its meaning even though he had no idea what it meant, really. The voice had a kind of ‘Santa Claus’ quality to it, and he felt that even if it had announced his impending doom, he would have come away feeling happy and warm all over.

  As he thought again about the meaning of the words ‘creativity’ and ‘works of your hands,’ other ideas started to flood his mind; ideas, like how he could create magical weapons covered in powerful spells, with gems emitting radiant energy, or how he could make armor which glowed in the moonlight and burned away death and decay while making growing things grow in the night. He imagined that if he had a place to work, a kind of workshop, he could make many wondrous things.

  Where David stood, however, was in the middle of nowhere with nothing on his person except a flimsy gown and nothing else. The realization of his current state stood in contrast to the flood of ideas, like a sudden cold shower after a warm, blissful nap. He didn’t like the feeling, not at all.

  Now David didn’t know if the ideas flowing through his mind were always his or if the game was giving him inspiration, but it didn’t matter. Either way, he had to travel in the dark to some tower far away in the distance, and he wasn’t sure which way to go to get there. He was sure it would be a long, long night of walking, but beyond this, anything could happen. Thoughts of creativity and possibilities therein would just have to wait.

  He took a look around and noticed a shabby-looking signpost ahead. In the moonlight, he could tell that there were two signs on it, so he walked up to the post to take a closer look.

  Coming close enough to read the signs, he noticed that they indicated that he could either travel to one place called the ‘Opal City’ or to another place called the ‘City of the Dead.’

  The sign leading to the ‘City of the Dead’ seemed to be a very fitting sign as it looked to be nearly falling apart from rot in the wood. In fact, it had been a bit hard to read the words on the sign, but the words ‘City’ and ‘Dead’ seemed to be clear enough to assume that this was what the sign was meant to read.

  Fortunately, the clear and sturdy sign was pointing him in the direction of the first blinking light he had spotted earlier at the mouth of the cave. This city of opals certainly sounded better than a city full of dead people, he reasoned.

  He took a step closer to the sign and noticed that a pulsating and glowing hue appeared around the sign for the Opal City. This hue reminded him of the many-colored lights that had covered the stones coming from the cave earlier. Would the VR world be guiding him this way? He would have to keep an eye on this oddity. He remembered the voice had also said something about seeing diamonds from dirt, so that could also be what he was now observing on the sign.

  His mind made up; David turned and started walking towards the Opal City and soon was humming cheerfully once more as he put one foot in front of the other towards his destination.

  CHAPTER VI

  An Eye for an Eye

  Tommy entered the game like he had entered the world, kicking and screaming. Or at least that’s what his parents had said.

  Once he’d landed, he saw that the game had decided to drop him into a dark cave in the dead of night. Before he had landed, he could have sworn that he had been floating in outer space and falling down to a planet that was surrounded by glowing organisms. He had, surprisingly, been able to kick away a few of the creatures though it had had no effect on them and instead had caused him pain.

  The site of these creatures had caused Tommy quite the scare, but he had regained his bearings as he fell and had managed to correctly orient himself for the drop just in time to land crouched, but on both feet. Oddly enough, his body was fully intact after the experience, and he more or less surmised that it had all been for effect and guessed it to be jus
t one of the ways the game would try to test his mind.

  As he stood in the dark cave, he was also very keen on the sounds and smells within the cave. He carefully walked toward the opening of the cave, listening for any signs that he might not be alone in this place. Just as he would’ve done back in the real world, he placed his feet carefully, one foot in front of the other until he was about to put his foot on the moonlit-covered entrance of the cave, and then stopped dead in his tracks.

  Something wasn’t right about this moonlight. It was changing colors and moving. Tommy went down low to the ground in a low pushup and watched the dancing light from the edge of the darkness and marveled at the sight he beheld in the light.

  Anyone else would’ve missed this, he knew. The lights were clear reflections of something high above the planet but not just something but rather many moving things that must be swimming in the void of space above. He then thought about the strange organisms he had attempted to battle high above the planet. It certainly could be these creatures that were causing this phenomenon, but how? As he watched these reflections, they seemed to interact with the darkness as if they were both high above the planet but also here below in the microcosm.

  Tommy took a small stone he spotted in the cave near to the spot where he was sprawled, and he decided to test his theory. He picked it up and gently flicked the stone into the light. To his amazement, the shadows of the cave seemed to reach out with hundreds of small hands to try to grasp the small stone, and the light reflections seemed to move away to avoid the stone. Once the stone hit the entrance and was fully engulfed in the light, he saw the light reflections move over the stone as if to claim it as one of their own and shadows inversely retreat as if to say the stone was no longer one of theirs. He observed in wonder at these interactions and thought the connection between light and darkness must be of great significance.