by Audrey Auden
Definitely.
She accepted a private projection request from prodigytal, and a moment later she was looking at an avatar that appeared to have been modeled on a samurai warrior: heavy leather armor covered in metal scales, an elaborate helmet with a crest that spread upward like the wings of a bird, a pair of crossed swords with gleaming rose and ebony sheaths strapped over the padded shoulders. Inside the helmet, instead of a face, there was only a shadow pierced by two blue points of light where the eyes should have been. It was a beautifully designed avatar, if a bit creepy, and clearly custom-made. Emmie was surprised. Coders were not generally known for their design taste.
“Um, hi,” Emmie said nervously, “So, you’ve cracked Eleusis authentication?”
There was a long pause, and Emmie thought perhaps the projection was lagging. Then prodigytal’s avatar shook with laughter.
“So Bealsio’s not just underage, but a girl!” The voice was a very good computerized modulation, just enough to disguise the underlying voice without interfering with the subtleties of inflection that distinguished real human speech.
Emmie frowned. She tended to use a male avatar for Bealsio, especially in gamer forums. At the moment, she was using a pretty generic twenty-something male with sandy hair and an ironic tee-shirt, but she had not thought to disguise her voice over her private audio channel with prodigytal.
“Does it matter?” she said scornfully.
prodigytal shrugged.
“I was just curious. I’ve been following you on Emergency for a long time.”
Emmie heard a hundred different alarms go off in her head, all in her mother’s voice, warning of alternet stalkers. Emmie was inclined to close the channel immediately, but prodigytal went on,
“But no, it doesn’t matter to me. Let’s talk about authentication. I’ve faked Eleusis creds before. I could do it again. So what’s it worth to you?”
Emmie was taken aback. For some reason, she had expected merely a friendly exchange of tips, as was typical in gamer forums. She hadn’t expected someone hacking for hire.
“I — guess I don’t know.”
prodigytal was silent for a moment before he said,
“I’ll do it for a thousand dollars.”
Emmie laughed in surprise.
“Whoa. There’s no way I can afford that.”
“Well?” prodigytal seemed undeterred, “What can you afford?”
Emmie shook her head,
“I was just looking for some advice. Sorry for wasting your time.”
She reached up for the end session control on her visual overlay.
“Hold on,” prodigytal said hurriedly, “Why can’t we negotiate something?”
“Look,” Emmie said sharply, “I don’t know you. It was stupid of me to even ask. Why don’t you just drop it?”
prodigytal suddenly switched out of avatar form, and now Emmie was looking through the projection at a live video feed of a tall, skinny boy about her own age, with white-blonde hair and piercing blue eyes.
“Fine,” he said, “Let’s drop the avatar bullshit. I’m Zeke Eckerd. I can get you your adult creds. And I need the money.”
Zeke looked strangely forlorn, and — Emmie realized with surprise — maybe even a little hungry. She felt a pang of sympathy for the boy.
“I’m sorry, but I really don’t have any money to spend on this. I’m — Well, obviously, I’m underage. I get some ad revenue from my design portfolio, but I’ve spent it all on software and gear this month already.”
Zeke nodded, frowning thoughtfully. After a moment, he said,
“Well, maybe we could barter for it.”
“Barter what?” Emmie said warily.
“I bet you’ve got some some pretty killer software, based on the work of yours that I’ve seen on Emergency.”
Emmie couldn’t help but feel a little flattered.
“You’ve been following me that closely, huh?”
Zeke nodded.
“I design stuff too,” he said, “Subcontracting, mostly. I could use some better tools, maybe up my rate.”
“Well …” Emmie couldn’t see how it would hurt to give this boy a software license or two, “I guess I could do that.”
Zeke smiled.
“Awesome. Done.”
The next morning, she received an email from Zeke with her fake adult credentials attached. He hadn’t even asked for payment up front, clearly a gesture of goodwill. In the message body, he wrote,
I’d love to show you the ropes in Eleusis sometime, if you want. — prodigytal
She re-read the message three times before sending him the key code for the environment modeling suite that she had just stopped using in favor of the latest release. In the message body, she wrote,
Okay. That would be cool. Thanks for the creds. — Bealsio
∞
With Zeke’s fake adult credentials in hand, Emmie logged on to Eleusis for the first time. She and Zeke met up in the avatar modeling entryway of the domain. Today, he had chosen an avatar of a tall young swordsman with a lean physique and shining golden armor. The avatar resembled the boy Emmie had seen previously on his live projection, although the avatar’s face was less pinched and pale than Zeke’s own.
“So,” said Emmie, checking out the in-game avatar modeling toolkit, considering what impression she wanted to make on her first foray into the battlegrounds, “Do you play Eleusis a lot?”
“I don’t have a lot of free time, but clients sometimes want knockoffs of Eleusis content, so I have to keep up with what’s going on in here.”
Emmie considered him thoughtfully.
“It sounds like you do a lot of paid work.”
“I do okay.”
Emmie smiled to herself at his obvious false modesty, then asked,
“Are you still in school, or do you work full-time?”
“Um —” Zeke looked away, “Yeah, I’m out of school now. Out on my own.”
Emmie nodded.
“That’s cool. That’s what I want to do, too — design full-time, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Zeke sounded enthusiastic, “It’s like the best thing. I love it.”
“I’d love to check out your work some time,” said Emmie.
Zeke smiled, the first time Emmie had seen him smile, she realized.
“Cool, yeah, that’d be great. Most of it’s incorporated into the domains of people I sub for, but I can definitely show you.”
Emmie quickly got up to speed on the avatar modeling tools available in Eleusis. They weren’t as extensive as her usual toolkit, since most Eleusis players had far less sophisticated immergers than she did and proportionately less interest in avatar quality, but she could make do. She decided to continue using her Bealsio username in Eleusis, and while Zeke waited she quickly crafted a burly, olive-skinned male avatar based on photographs of her Papou. They were old photographs — from back in the 1990’s — when Mom was about her age. Emmie even managed to create a convincing simulation of her grandfather’s voice using snippets of projection videos and birthday greetings from her personal files. She polished off her work with a fabulous suit of Grecian armor and a pair of short swords.
“How do I look?”
Zeke eyed her avatar appraisingly and said,
“That’ll do. So, next thing is we have to pick a server. The fastest servers are all in Asia, since there’s so many players there. But unless you speak Mandarin or Cantonese, it’s probably not worth it to deal with the latency issues. A local server makes the realtime gameplay smoother.”
Emmie scanned the map of server locations.
“What server do you usually use?”
“I’m on the East Coast, but I work late, so Pacific time’s fine with me.”
“San Jose, then?”
“Sure.”
She selected the server and followed Zeke through the game portal into the San Jose server recruitment grounds.
Emmie was a little disappointed by the recruitmen
t grounds — a nondescript field of sand, literally a sandbox environment. She soon realized that no one else in the recruitment grounds was interested in environment design quality, though. This was purely a business transaction area.
“We could just go in, but you’ll see more of what the game’s about if we start with an army,” said Zeke.
So Emmie stood waiting. Scouts for different armies combed the grounds for recruits. In the public chat channel, recruiters were posting requests for players with some demonstrated experience in other game domains. Since Emmie didn’t have any experience at all, she worried she’d be waiting a long time. But it turned out that keeping her Bealsio username had been smart. A few army recruiters recognized her name and came over to chat with her, willing to overlook her inexperience in light of her identity’s reputation in several respectable alternet design forums.
She and Zeke were chatting with the avatar of a grizzled bowman, an unlikely fan of Bealsio’s frolicking kitten simulations, when a youthful spearman approached. He wore golden armor not dissimilar from Zeke’s, as well as a large circular shield, which Emmie stared at in amazement.
“That’s incredible,” she said, pointing to the intricate battle scene worked into the golden shield, “Did you design that?”
“I did,” the spearman smiled, “Thanks!”
Zeke frowned and continued talking, more loudly now, to the bowman, but the golden spearsman went on,
“I did some tactile simulations on the shield.”
Emmie reached out eagerly and, through her immerger gloves, felt the cool surface of the delicate metalwork under her fingertips.
“Really great work.”
“I’m Otaku, by the way” the spearman extended his hand.
“Bealsio,” she replied, taking his hand. She felt his firm grip through her immerger glove.
“Yeah, I know. I’ve seen your work. It’s fantastic.”
The grizzled bowman passed on to another potential recruit, and Zeke stood by in silence as Emmie and Otaku kept up a long conversation about the finer points of immersive design. After a while, Zeke said,
“Hey, Bealsio, sorry, but I have to go. I’ve got a ton of work to do tomorrow morning. Maybe we’ll go into the battlegrounds some other time?”
Emmie glanced at the time on her visual overlay.
“OMG, I totally lost track of time,” she laughed, which sounded strange in Papou’s Greek accent, “I have to go too.”
“Oh, okay,” Otaku’s avatar flashed a disappointed expression, “Sure … Hey,” he laughed, returning to the ostensible point of their whole interaction, “So do you want to join my guild? You and your friend, I mean,” he smiled at Zeke, “We’re just starting up, but I think you’ll like the other guys.”
Zeke started to shake his head, but Emmie smiled. “Sure. What’s it called, again?”
“Amaranthian,” he said, sending her an invite, which popped up as a message on her visual overlay, “We practice Tuesday and Thursday nights Pacific time, starting at eight PM. See you!”
Otaku headed off toward a small group of avatars that had just entered the recruitment grounds.
“Well, that worked out well!” Emmie said brightly to Zeke.
“Yeah,” he said, looking away, “I guess. See you Tuesday.”
∞
Otaku turned out to be a gifted teacher and guild leader. Emmie liked the friendly team dynamic he cultivated in the guild. He took practices seriously and made everyone else do the same. He liked to win, too. She hadn’t expected how fun that could be. Under Otaku’s leadership, Amaranthian accumulated an impressive win-loss record and climbed the rankings on the San Jose server.
“You know, it’s good to sort of move around armies, to learn some different fighting techniques,” Zeke suggested after they won a few battles with Amaranthian, “Your player stats are pretty good now. I bet we could join a more established guild.”
“I’m having fun here,” said Emmie, “Why don’t we stay a little while longer?”
Zeke shrugged indifferently.
With all the extra hours she was spending playing Eleusis, Emmie had started to become active around the clock, working on additions to her design portfolio during daylight hours and immersing herself in the alternet through the night, catching a few hours of sleep at odd hours here and there. As long as she went upstairs for dinner and talked about her day with her parents, they didn’t seem to notice her new schedule.
She used Eleusis to let off steam after frustrating design sessions in the fishbowl. The clash of swords seemed to satisfy some primal appetite for mindless physical action, and she gained a lot of alternet cultural knowledge and entertainment listening to the perpetual banter on the public channel, which ranged from trending alternet memes and real-world news to the most indecipherable arcana of every imaginable subculture. Even in the absence of combat and public channel banter, though, Emmie would have returned to Eleusis daily just to talk to Zeke and Otaku.
A few months after she and Zeke joined the guild, Amaranthian was heading into battle against The Destroyers, competing for the number one ranking on the server.
“My roommate Shiva is The Destroyers’ guild leader,” Otaku told Amaranthian as they prepared for the battle, “Their guys are insane — I know most of them from my CS program. Every person in that guild has probably logged more hours in Eleusis this year than our entire guild combined. But they’re disorganized. They rely on mods to counter all the common army maneuvers. But we’re going to write a new playbook, and we’re going to crush them.”
The cheer that went up from the Amaranthian army was thrilling. Emmie started to understand how people could get hooked on this.
The battle with The Destroyers was a rush like none Emmie had ever experienced. Amaranthian, an army of men (and a few women) in gleaming gold and silver armor faced off against a shadowy, smoking, blazing army from hell. Members of both guilds put on their most elaborate avatars and pulled out their most impressive custom-coded combat effects. It was a close battle filled with screen-capture-worthy hand-to-hand combat sequences and heart-stopping turning points arrayed across the otherworldly landscape of Eleusis’ Elysium battlefield, but in the end, Amaranthian carried the win.
In the celebratory aftermath, Otaku invited members of both guilds who lived in the Bay Area to meet up in person and celebrate over a beer. The invitation, unfortunately, proved that alternet community did not usually translate well to the real world. Members of both guilds begged off, citing family commitments and work schedules. At last, Otaku turned to Bealsio.
“Come on, man. Don’t tell me you’re another one of these agoraphobes.”
“Sorry,” said Emmie, her battle high fading as she thought of the risk of revealing her minority status to anyone other than Zeke, “I can’t.”
“How about coffee some time? Whenever you’re free,” Otaku’s ribbing tone became more respectful, “I’d love to get your feedback in person on some alternet content I’ve been working on, if it’s not too much of an imposition.”
“Back off, man,” Zeke jumped in.
“Whoa,” said Otaku, looking from Zeke to Emmie in surprise, “No problem. I —”
“No,” Emmie interjected, “I’d be happy to.”
What r u doing? Zeke demanded in a hastily-written private message, He could report you to server gm. U could lose your adult creds.
Cmon he wouldn’t do that, Emmie wrote back, Chill out!
The blue eyes of Zeke’s avatar narrowed, and he looked at her in silence for a moment before suddenly logging off the server. Emmie tried to send him a projection request, but his status said he was away.
∞
Before Mom returned home from work the next day, Emmie headed out the door, tapping the smartcom on her belt to send her father, who also would not be home for hours, a quick projection.
“I’m going to meet some friends up in Berkeley. I should be back in time for dinner.”
“What friends?�
� Dad asked blankly, squinting to refocus his eyes on Emmie after emerging from a deep immersion session.
“Just some old friends from high school,” Emmie said briskly, “I’ll be back soon. Love you!”
Dad raised an eyebrow but nodded.
Emmie took the bus to Berkeley. In the designated coffee shop, she flicked on her visual overlay and skimmed the list of public identities checked in at the café. Otaku was there, among a dozen other usernames. She looked up and scanned the room, spotting him at a small table by the window: an athletic young man with short-cropped dark hair wearing a neatly-pressed collared shirt tucked into khaki slacks. She caught his attention and gave a little wave.
Otaku’s eyes widened, and he glanced quickly at his smartcom, whose display of café check-ins confirmed the identity of his coffee date. When he looked up again, Emmie was already making her way toward him through the clutter of tables. He scrambled up to greet her. She stopped a few feet away, gauging his embarrassment.
“Are you …?” Otaku began uncertainly, clearing his throat as his eyes ran along the form-fitting silver threads of her neck-to-ankle tactile immergers. It occurred to her belatedly that she might have thrown on one of her tunics to cover up a bit.
“How old are you?” he finished at last, revealing a trace of a Southern accent.
“Sixteen,” she said, daring him to make something of it.
He inhaled slowly, then chuckled,
“Sorry. I’m being rude. This is my fault.”
“So … what?” she shrugged, her voice cool, “Does that mean you’d rather not be friends outside Eleusis?”
The young man glanced around, considering the other café patrons, who appeared decidedly inattentive to them.
“Can we start over?” he said at last, extending his hand. “I’m Owen Cyrus. It’s great to finally meet you in person.”
“Nice to meet you, Owen,” said Emmie, shaking his hand. “I’m Emmie Bridges.”