In the meantime, a knight armed with a two-handed sword attacked him from behind with a well-calculated combo, stunlocking him.
That was it. Now one last coup de grace...
The Harvester roared back to life, shaking himself out of his stupor and busting himself free from the vines’ embrace.
His virtually empty Life bar soared back up. The number 200 reappeared in his tag. With a shattering circular blow, he crumpled the knights’ steel shields, sweeping the fighters off their feet.
He didn’t stop there. Once again he raised his black two-handed sword, lower this time, and drew a humming arc through the air, splitting the upended stalls into cascades of wood chips and slicing clean through the knights’ legs as they struggled to get to their feet.
The five knights’ avatars rippled and turned dark, then disappeared.
He’d smoked them! Just like that, in two mighty attacks!
What had Enea’s father told me? I should have vacated the market square while I still could.
Slowly the Harvester turned round. His avatar had already stabilized. His eyes glowed with an ethereal light.
The air in front of him thickened, forming a translucent arch surging with fiery charges of energy. With a soft popping sound, a cloud of crimson haze filled the arch, swirling.
The Harvester stepped into it and disappeared.
* * *
The smashed crates were still smoldering. The market square resembled a deserted battlefield. Contrary to the rules, most of the players’ avatars hadn’t disappeared. Riddled with crossbow bolts, they remained lying on the cobblestones amid the scattered remains of market stalls and the vendors’ wares.
Scared horses whinnied softly by the tavern. The breeze had brought a whiff of burned flesh: the Chain of Lightning which had killed the crossbowmen on the wall had also set the roof of the parapet on fire, collapsing it on top of them.
White looked over the disastrous panorama. He picked up his helmet and sat on the city hall steps with his graying head hung low.
“Dad?” Enea came running up to him. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“But you saw me only a few days ago!” she said, uncomprehending.
“You’re wrong. Not days. Years.”
“That’s impossible!”
“He’s right, Enea,” I said.
She cast me a look of reproach, “Alex, please. We were in the library all this time, you and I. It’s only been a few days.”
“Enea, I can prove it.”
“Be my guest.”
“Not here. We need to get back to the castle.”
“He’s right,” White said grimly, staring at the humble cloth bundles left where his dark knights had once stood. “This place isn’t safe.”
“Your knights, will they be all right?”
“I haven’t noticed any blue haze. I don’t think they’ve lost any neurograms. Which means they should make it.”
“Do you want me to pick up their stuff?” I asked. “Or should we wait for them to respawn? Where’s their respawn point, anyway?”
“It’s far from here,” White leaned heavily on his sword, clambering to his feet. “In a nearby cluster. It’ll take them some time to get back. Leave the bundles. There’s nothing in them, anyway. Our gear is all no-drop. It’s also charmed against theft. We leave nothing behind. We’ve learned our lesson: you can’t imagine how hard it is to get items with these kinds of stats.”
The expression on Enea’s face was hard to describe. I could almost bet she’d never expected her father to be so well-versed in gaming slang.
“No point staying here, then,” I summed up. “Let’s port to the castle. Then we can talk.”
“Can we port from the tavern?” White asked. “I’d hate to leave the horses. Also, there’re some useful things in the saddle bags.”
“We can’t cast a portal in the square. The guards will be on us straight away.”
“Then I suggest we go to Dimian’s old shop,” Enea said. “I have the key to his back yard.”
* * *
The Resurrection Hall of Rion Castle met us with deep silence.
Holding two of the horses by their reins, I looked around, habitually taking in my surroundings.
Top-level NPC guards stood watch by the portal, impassive and silent.
The torchlight cast uneven shadows on the walls. The cold green glow of the respawn zone reflected in the precious stones decorating the ancient wall carvings.
My heart warmed to the familiar sight.
Sarah, the mountain lynx that Enea and I had brought back from our recent trip to the Azure Mountains, stepped softly out of the dancing shadows. Her green eyes betrayed an intense hope. The masterless pet had taken the habit of waiting by the portal, hoping that one day her beautiful Drow owner would step out of it.
No idea what could have happened to Liori and Kimberly, though. They had disappeared in a most mysterious way, complete with Master Jurg.
The lynx may have found a new home in our castle but she wasn’t in a hurry to show any signs of attachment to anyone. She was her own master walking by herself wherever she wanted. Even Lethmiel, my Blood Elf majordomo, couldn’t explain how she managed to cross the numerous magic barriers.
I could see that she’d been leveling up. No wonder: she spent every night prowling the moors, bringing her prey to the castle gate every morning. A couple of times she’d even brought us some very badly shaken goblins, which had complicated our already strained relationship with their local tribes.
“Oh hi, Sarah,” Enea stroked her back.
The lynx emitted a nervous growl, sniffed White all over, headbutted my knee by way of greeting, then ran and lay sprawled on the floor.
The protective magic seals flared. The tall doors swung open, flooding us with daylight.
The servants I’d hired took the horses away to the stables. Lethmiel was the next to arrive.
His eyes lit up with reserved curiosity. Lethmiel still remembered White: for him too, only a few days had elapsed since Enea’s father had been here.
“Any news?” I asked.
“Not good, I’m afraid. The Elves have returned, the ones you sent home to see their families. Their settlements have been pillaged. The forests have been stripped of everything that was alive.”
“Do you know the reason?”
“No. They’ve brought back some refugees but I haven’t spoken to them yet.”
“Make sure they’re comfortable. What about the Guards of Gloom?”
“They haven’t found a trace of their people, either. Only some long deserted camps.”
“I’ll speak to them later. Anything else?”
“There’s a Raven raid spotted by the approaches to the moors. Two hundred people at least.”
“Have they already entered the moors?”
“Not yet. They’ve set up camp about one day’s hike from Chaffinch Creek.”
“I want you to double the watch on the walls. Tell Archie to send out some scouts. Get on with it and don’t bother us until I call you.”
“Very well, Sir.”
I turned to White, “Would you like to get some rest?”
He shook his head, apparently not happy with the news. “Let’s set the record straight. I’m afraid, time is against us.”
* * *
The future.
I’d never wondered about it. Would it arrive unawares or would it just smolder without crossing the invisible line which separated us from new discoveries capable of changing the lives of billions of people?
And now it had arrived.
Who were we now? Digitized phantoms whose immobilized physical bodies were confined to their in-mode capsules, reliant solely on life support systems?
My eyes met Enea’s. Words just stuck in my throat. Would I ever be able to tell her?
She glanced at me, then at her father. “Please. Don’t try to spare my feelings,” s
he sat down in an easy chair.
Young, beautiful, smart — but pale and tense. I’d never seen her like that before.
“I want to know what’s going on. You tell me. Don’t keep anything back. I can take it.”
“Are you sure?” her father asked.
He meant it, too. He was stubborn enough to dig his heels in and refuse to say anything.
“Dad, look around you. The Crystal Sphere is my dream world. I have only two people whom I love more than anything in the world. It’s you and Alex. You’re both with me now. The rest we can manage. Don’t you think?”
White slumped into a chair. He removed his steel gauntlets and put them away into his inventory, then sat silent for a while with his hands locked.
“So you think you can take it? Very well...” he looked up at her and added in a low voice, “The Crystal Sphere has changed a lot. I’ll tell you more. The real world as you knew it is gone too.”
“You’re kidding?” Enea asked mechanically.
“You and Alex disappeared three years ago. When it happened, the admins sealed the Agrion cluster. No one could gain access to this place.”
“Wait,” she covered her face with her hands. “Wait a sec. What do you mean, we disappeared?”
“We had an agreement, remember? You were supposed to log out in a week’s time and join me for dinner. Remember that?”
“Of course I do! Why?”
“You stopped taking my calls. Your online status was Unspecified. The night we were supposed to have dinner I drove to your home. Your door wasn’t locked. The status panel next to it said, For Rent. I walked in. It was absolutely bare. Your in-mode capsule was gone, mountings and all. Everything was so clean and impersonal as if you’d never existed. Can you imagine what I felt?”
She didn’t say anything.
Of course. Desperate to find his daughter, White was quite capable of anything.
“I knew where to go and which door to kick open,” he said. “And that’s what I did. Only I didn’t find a single clue. Infosystems denied everything. The company which had installed your in-mode capsule seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. My assistants Ylien and Stephen were gone too. Someone had broken into our country house and taken all the Crystal Sphere equipment we’d used to log in. My neuroimplant had been disconnected. It became a dead trinket taped to my temple. I just couldn’t take it any longer. Me too, I had big problems. All of a sudden, my business began to sink. Then one day it started disintegrating under a very focused, well-coordinated attack. Despite our excellent safety margin, the company had to file for insolvency.”
“That’s impossible!” Enea cried out.
“That’s what I thought too. You wanted the truth, didn’t you? So there you have it. TransEnergy had three of the biggest buyers: Infosystems Corporation, the World Government and the Military Space Forces. All three of them filed complaints, returning huge shipments of our products. Our reputation was gone, our accounts frozen, our factories stopped. We suffered billions in claims. All this happened within a few days. A month later, I was on my own and penniless.”
“How did you manage to survive this?” she asked softly.
“I knew you were alive.”
“How?”
“I demanded answers from one of corporate technologists,” White replied reluctantly. “He refused to tell me anything at first. Still, I can be very persuasive when I have to be. Finally, he admitted that both you and Alex had experienced some side effects while testing neuroimplants. They said that both of you had suffered significant brain damage. Still, according to him, the data you’d received was extremely valuable for the corporation which was why they were going to do everything possible in order to save you and reclaim the Crystal Sphere.”
“Did you believe him?”
“He gave me what I needed: hope and purpose. Which was more than enough for me then.”
“But you had nothing left!” Enea exclaimed. “How did you live?”
White’s eyes warmed, losing their prickliness. “I don’t give up so easily, you know me. I had to spend some time in the gutter, sleeping in those downtrodden capsule shelters. I had to dispose of the implant so they couldn’t track me. Luckily, that particular model was easy to remove. All you had to do was pull the nano needles out.”
“So you were hiding from your creditors while waiting for the Corporation to unseal Agrion?”
“That would have been a signal that the two of you had been returned to the Crystal Sphere. Still, it didn’t quite work out like that. After a year, the cluster was still sealed. While the real world... I’m afraid it had fallen prey to some rapid and irreversible developments.”
Enea jumped to her feet, crumpling a fine lace napkin, and walked out onto the balcony. There she leaned over the low parapet and froze, staring in front of her.
I didn’t follow her. We all need to be alone sometimes, if only to come to grips with a sudden and terrible blow. We need to take a deep breath and listen to our own uneven heartbeats.
White and I exchanged glances.
“It’s all right, Alex,” he said. “She can manage.”
He didn’t shower me with accusations even though he could have.
Was it by accident that Enea and myself had decided to participate in this implant testing program?
I didn’t think so. My own fate had long been sealed. A cripple and a car crash victim, I was meant to die in the name of progress.
I’d never really believed in the corporation’s academic altruism. The data which they’d made us process under the guise of some unique quest had proved much more important for them than any amount of human lives.
Enea had fallen in love with me. She’d decided to be with me no matter what — and unwittingly shared my fate in the process. Even White had lost everything he had for the same reason.
“Cheer up, Alex,” he raised his wine goblet and took a swig. “We’ll make it. I still managed to buy a country estate in a nearby cluster and even hired an alchemist. But... I suppose it’s the Reapers who’re there now drinking my wine,” he fell silent, hearing his daughter’s light step.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said, sitting back at the table. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. What were you saying?”
* * *
“A year after your disappearance Infosystems made an absolutely inexplicable breakthrough in neural cybernetics,” White continued. “The company which traditionally created virtual worlds had now introduced the prototype of the first neural implant featuring an integrated mind expander. It was called Neuron.i At the same time, they started building so-called in-mode centers where anyone could hire a new-generation VR capsule complete with life support. Let me tell you that equipment of this caliber had never been used before outside of spaceship technologies.”
Enea gasped. “And now they put it on the mass market? By making it affordable?”
I couldn’t understand the cold revulsion in her voice. “Why not?” I asked. “If lots of people can experience full immersion VR, what’s wrong with that?”
“If life support cartridges are changed regularly, nothing prevents them from spending years in the in-mode without detriment to their health,” White replied. “Now try to look at it from a business prospective. All those game consoles, environment generators and high-density holograms have been around for decades. Their user spends a few hours a day online while remaining perfectly active in real life. Alex knows what I’m talking about. He used to live this kind of life for years. And in this case they should have left this system well alone. The mass introduction of the new technology has crippled the real-world economy.
Neuron was the first model of the neural implant. Synaps (which is mentioned in Phantom Server) was a later model which came in three modifications: Synaps A, Synaps B and the most advanced one Synaps Z which allowed for the possibility of connecting additional cyber modules.
The game developers have got us hooked on the incredible authenticity of t
he experience. But what have they achieved?”
“Earth has become deserted?” I offered.
He nodded. “Compared to the Crystal Sphere which is over-populated, yes. This so-called progress benefits no one. All it does is it rapidly brings our civilization to the brink of a complete collapse.”
“Then I don’t understand anything,” I said. “Why did they do it? With whose permission?”
“Nobody confronted them. On the contrary: the World Government actively lobbied Infosystems Corporation. This was all carefully planned with the full consent of the powers that be.”
“But why?” Enea demanded, uncomprehending. “I just don’t see the point of such rapid changes worldwide! There must be a reason!”
I couldn’t quite follow their logic. Unlike myself, neither Enea nor her father had lost their touch with the real world. I would never have paused to consider the consequences of these recent developments... but now White got me thinking.
Still, if we’d indeed become the Crystal Sphere’s permanent inhabitants, what was the point in searching for answers?
“Dad? Was there an official explanation? Not everybody likes playing computer games, you know. A lot of people would have required some powerful motivation in order to rent an in-mode and change their lives forever.”
“The toxic emissions,” White replied. “They were getting out of hand. The in-mode centers are located in secure bunkers deep underground. There were talks of the upcoming remodeling of the cities,” White took a large swig of his wine. “I personally think that’s BS. They used every trick in the book to coerce people to embrace virtual reality. You couldn’t even get a job without having a neural implant installed. The cities became deserted,” he paused, thinking. “The fact that the government and the Space Forces were in it together with Infosystems makes me believe there must be a certain threat to our existence. I’m just afraid that their best intentions might lead us directly to hell.”
The Reapers (The Neuro 3) Page 2