Forced Login

by R K Billiau

  So that was it then, I would take a vacation. I would stay here on this island paradise, learn as much as I could until I felt ready, and rest up.

  In the few VR games I’d tried, I could see and somewhat feel the environment, but this place took it to a whole other level, this may as well be reality for how, well real, it felt. Of course, I did have to be murdered and all my brains sucked out in order to get this level of reality, so I guess it kinda made sense.

  So that was that. I’d ignore the cube and take some much deserved me time and enjoy myself here on this tiny paradise.

  Congratulations! You have learned the Obstinance skill!

  Although I might have to change my mind if those pop-ups kept... popping up.

  Chapter 2

  My first few days I spent relaxing, eating, swimming and absolutely enjoying myself. I also had the pleasure of learning about all the natural biological things the devs did not skimp on in the programming. I don’t know how much they paid the guy who programmed the “I GOTTA PEE!” feeling into the game, but it probably wasn’t enough. He did a great job. Honestly it was kind of a drag having all the necessary biological functions in a digital world. I even felt tired when staying up too long, and at one point noticed my stamina draining just because I hadn’t slept in over a day.

  I also found that there was a maximum score I could raise my skills and attributes to when my Physique went to 10 on a jog around the island.

  You have achieved a milestone in your Physique attribute!

  Average Physique -Stamina now regenerates at a rate of 1 every 4 seconds while resting and 1 every 10 seconds while in use!

  You cannot gain more points in Physique while in the tutorial zone.

  It looked like they put a limit to how much you could do in this zone. “They.” I was starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but then, it was a “They” who built this world. I eyeballed my Stamina bar while sitting and noticed it seemed to go up faster than before, if only barely. I read the primer section on Physique;

  Physique - Physique determines your overall health. The higher your Physique, the more HP you have. Physique also determines how fast your Stamina regenerates.

  I had been experimenting with everything I could think of on my vacation and raised some of my attributes to almost the same level as my Physique. The game was divided into attributes and skills, with attributes being the representations of your personhood in all its physical... er... digital... glory, and skills being representations of things you could do. The amount of skills was that huge list I had looked at before, but they were all tied to a base attribute, or most times to several base attributes. Digging, for example, tied into both Strength and Physique.

  Attributes were broken down into four main segments; Body, Mind, Heart, and Soul. With each of those segments having three attributes and an expendable resource associated with it. There was Strength, Agility, and Physique for Body with Stamina being the expendable resource. Mind comprised; Conscious, Subconscious and Superconscious with Mana as the expendable, Heart was Empathy, Projection and Emotion with Zeal as the expendable, and Soul comprised; Self, Aura, and Connection with Spirit as the expendable resource.

  It looked like the expendable resources were pools equal to the amount of levels in the total of any segment, plus the base of 100. My Stamina, for instance, was 120 due to my 10 Physique, 7 Strength and 3 Agility and 100 just for existing. All very exciting stuff, I know.

  I worked towards getting a handful of other skills up to their tutorial zone max as well; Swimming, Running, Climbing, etc. I was feeling like I wasn’t a clumsy doofus by the end of the third day. Then I died.

  I had been out swimming trying to raise my Diving skill and checking out the awesome coral reef I had found. It was spectacular. The fish were an incredible array of so many colors and impossibly vivid. I had just gotten a level in my Breath Retention skill and was following a particularly interesting fish when my foot got caught between two rocks. I was already almost out of breath when the ‘Drowning’ meter showed up. I have to admit, I panicked. I could tell, because a debuff popped up called ‘Panic’. It was a blue box with a pictogram of a person with exclamation marks circling its head and an 80% in the corner. I didn’t have enough wherewithal to read the debuff as I struggled to dislodge myself. After using what little air I had left flailing around like a fish out of water, but, you know, a person in water, my foot wiggled free. Scrambling toward the surface and sweet, sweet air, my lungs gave out, filled with water, and I drowned. It sucked. I still wanted to know why the devs had made things hurt as much as they did. Pain free living would have been a-okay with me.

  So, I was dead. When I opened my eyes, I was in a tunnel made of a weird, inky blackness with a bright light at the end. Cliché, right? I stared at the light, feeling its brightness suffuse me with peace and bliss. I lost myself and all sense of time in the subtle pleasure of the light. As I got closer to the event horizon, the pleasure grew greater and greater until I found myself spawned at my original starting spot. That was odd. Maybe it was their way to relieve you of the pains your death had brought? There didn’t seem to be any permanent penalties for death, at least not in the tutorial zone, anyway.

  Congratulations! You have died!

  Death debuff: -1 to all attributes and skills for 1 minute.

  That was an easy debuff to deal with, but I was assuming it got worse later. “Deaths - 1” appeared on my character sheet. Wonderful.

  After dying I decided it was time to get more into the game and explore this island better. Plus, as good as the coconuts tasted, I was getting sick of them. There had to be other things to eat here! So off I went in search of adventure and a source of dietary breadth. I learned quickly that there were indeed other things here, things that did not, in fact, like me much at all.

  I was walking into the forest towards the large hill that made up the tallest part of the island. I wanted to see what I could see from the top and was enjoying this gentle hike. Deeper into the forest, or maybe it was a jungle? I don’t know, there were a lot of trees, a lot of trees. No vines or quicksand (is that a real thing?) though so I’ll call it a forest. Further into the forest than I had ever gone, the sun barely sneaking its way inside the full trees, there was a loud screeching followed by a sharp rock that suddenly assaulted me in the head.

  A Yowler Monkey has hit you with a rock for 7 bludgeoning damage!

  “Ow! What the he-” Another rock hit me. Covering my head, I spun around and saw a tree with several monkeys screeching and throwing rocks at me. These little twits were vicious and unrelenting, jumping from branch to branch throwing sticks and rocks and... other more disgusting things, all the while taunting me with their laugh-like screams. I tried throwing rocks back at them, but my Agility was just too low, and they dodged everything as if thrown in slow motion. A sad face icon appeared on my HUD with a countdown underneath it- a debuff called ‘Pain’. Expanding, it showed that it pulsed every three seconds and with each pulse my Strength, Physique, and Conscious attributes went down a point. That was quite a debuff.

  The monkey’s howls seemed to call another troop of them and soon they were joined by what must have been a whole tribe of the little turds, all of them throwing crap (literally) at me. Each individual throw didn’t do a lot of damage, but my health bar was being eaten away by the sheer number of attacks. I had to get out of there! I stumbled back the way I had come, only to find myself surrounded. I am not ashamed to say I ran like a coward, ducking and shoving my way past the furry little monsters. My health bar was plummeting now, down to less than 50%, when I saw my beach. I prayed it would bring safety.

  They dragged me to the ground as two monkeys pounced, landing on my head and shoving me down, their hands filled with rocks, beating me about the head and shoulders. I screamed as the rock wielding monkeys beat me to death.

  Congratulations! You have increased your Toughness skill!

  Stupid game. The Death Tunnel was the same as
last time, though the light seemed further away and it took a little longer to reach, or maybe I was just imagining it. The next time I went into the forest, I went from another direction, thinking maybe I had just stumbled into the monkey’s territory and I could avoid it if I came in from somewhere else. I found a fallen branch to use as a club and carried it with me. I doubted it would help since those monkeys were clearly out to kill, but I wouldn’t go down without a fight.

  I was feeling good about my progress this time, the lack of monkeys made me happy. I noticed, though that there were more and more spider webs this way through the forest. Like, a ridiculous amount of spider webs. Way more than the typical web to tree ratio. I wasn’t stupid, I had played games before, I knew spiders were a common enemy type. I didn’t think that I would have to face them this soon though.

  In my younger days I had once peeked into an old building while looking for my brother and didn’t notice the web carrying an almost-ready-to-burst egg sac at the top of the door. I’m not sure how but I jostled the web and hundreds of tiny black spiders cascaded down my head, like the most disgusting shower you could imagine. They climbed over my eyes, in my mouth, down my clothes. I spent weeks scratching at imaginary bugs crawling on me. It was a horrifying memory seared into my brain and it filled me with a dread of spiders ever since.

  These webs, while numerous, were small, and only had bugs in them, so I decided I could just be careful and still get the lay of the land in this zone. That was a bad decision. I felt a bite on my leg and looked down to see a spider about the size of my thumbnail, digging in. “Ahh!” I shrieked like a girl-scout getting robbed as I furiously brushed the spider off and hyperventilated... I performed a deep breathing technique to calm myself, but I could feel the terror at the edges of my mind. There was no Pain debuff from the bite, instead there was a Poison one. That was enough. I turned back; this zone could burn in Hell.

  I watched in slow motion terror as my elbow brushed against a web containing an egg sac and I relived my nightmare. In a matter of seconds, I was covered in hundreds of biting spiders. Thousands, maybe. Once again, the Panic debuff popped. So fun. I wanted to check it this time, but with each bite the Poison debuff icon changed color from bright green to darker and darker. I felt the burn of the venom, and got to experience death again, this time frothing at the mouth. At least death was better than spiders.

  Again, I respawned by the cube. I was determined to get there now. Screw the cube, and leaving the tutorial, I wanted to get to the center of this island. This time I would make it. With my trusty branch in hand, I made my way through yet another part of the forest.

  A Wild Boar has hit you with tusks for 33 slashing damage!

  Congratulations! You have increased your Toughness skill!

  Death was much quicker this time as the boar’s tusks ripped into me, gutting me and leaving me helpless while the huge creature trampled over me again and again. “DAMNIT! What the hell is going on with this place! Is everything designed to kill me?!” I screamed as the light carried me out, but no answer was forthcoming. At least my theory that lots of pain was what increased Toughness was proving to be true. Yay.

  I munched on some coconut and tried to give this scenario a good think. It seemed like there was an obstacle no matter which way I took to get to the center of the island. This was a game though, right? So that could only mean one thing, okay, two things; there had to be a way past all these creatures and creatures guarded loot! There was no way I was going to skip getting to the top of that hill now. But I would have to do it using my brain.

  I looked around until I found a small stick. I had always thought better visually, so I drew a map of the island and the areas I had explored in the sand with the stick. When Western California had been devastated by a massive earthquake, I had been the geographer for my scavenging team, charting maps of locations we had searched and where we needed to go next.

  Ever since, it was something I enjoyed doing When I drew out the island, it helped me get an idea of what it looked like, but also helped me think about the dangers within the forest in a more abstract way.

  I jogged around the island, mentally tracking the number of steps and basic geography. By my estimation the circumference was close to a mile and a half, maybe two miles. After this, I probed the forest to see if my hunch about the creatures was correct. Every quarter mile I would enter the forest much slower than before, attempting to be stealthy. I paid close attention to everything and only went in a few steps at a time to look for telltale signs of creatures. There were webs in the spider area, the area with the monkeys had lots of.... spoor... and remains of eaten coconuts, the boar territory was lined with trampled trails.

  It looked like my hunch was correct: each creature type had a zone of influence they stayed in. Now I knew I wouldn’t be facing a random assortment of things to be killed by, but I could strategically plan what would kill me! I had to find out what the other zones held. I walked past the zone with the monkeys into unknown territory. It didn’t take long to find out what lived there.

  The beautiful sounds of birdsong played out in my ears, and I was stunned by not just the tune, but the sheer volume! I walked through this area of the forest, my eyes up in the trees, watching in wonder at the flocks of birds living in them. There were birds of every color and variety, small, large, multi-hued and single, it was a sight I couldn’t have even imagined. I almost didn’t mind being sent back to spawn by the talons and sharp beaks ripping me apart to their beautiful song.

  The next zone seemed empty, which I found curious, and I tried to walk in a straight line, using the hill as a landmark. I had made it further than ever before thinking my destination was in reach. I could tell the forest cleared out before the hill and I was just about to break through the tree line when I felt the sharp pain of teeth puncturing my neck from behind. I didn’t have enough time to earn a Pain debuff before I felt my neck snap and I was greeted by the Death Tunnel. What the heck was that!?

  I ran back to the area where I mysteriously died. Once again, I made it almost to the tree line, but this time my cautious approach paid off. I noticed one tree had large claw marks on it, and they were in a familiar pattern.

  I recognized those kinds of marks from a roommate I once had who owned a cat. The damned thing would scratch all the door jambs in the apartment, and my ex-roommate ditched me with the repair bill when he moved out. I could tell that these were large claw scratches of the cat variety. I turned around just in time to see said big cat, a jaguar as black as night and almost as large as me pouncing, claws extended. This time I got to enjoy a little terror as it ripped into my throat before I died.

  The Death Tunnel. Again. And again, it took longer to get to the light. I guessed that each death seemed to add a minute to the time it took to spawn. Another form of debuff. The more deaths you have, the longer you take to get back to the action. Since we would be living in this world indefinitely, this could get terrible after a while. I shuddered to think about what being in this inky blackness for over a thousand minutes or more would be like. This was not a pleasant thought, and while I had little faith in them, I hoped the devs had put a cap on the time someone would have to spend in here.

  Since I was in here anyway, I tried moving somewhere other than the light; tried to resist the pull towards it to see what would happen. I was floating in a void, a dark tunnel of weightless space. I say it was a tunnel, but this isn’t wholly accurate. I couldn’t tell if there were walls, it was more like tunnel vision, where my perception was so focused on the light and the escape it would bring. With an immense amount of concentration, I pulled my attention away to observe what else was around me.

  It was dark. Not dark like, outside in the nighttime dark, but a cloying, heavy dark you could feel. Like hiding under a heavy blanket, as if the darkness itself had substance and pushed me on my trajectory towards respawn. I had a body though; I wasn’t a bodiless spirit floating in here. I realized this now, as if that knowledg
e had to be earned. I stretched out an arm, fingers spread towards the darkness that surrounded me like a birth canal and it felt smooth and soft, yet unyielding. Abruptly time was up, and the light enveloped me and I found myself back on my beach.

  Interesting. Going through the Death Tunnel was quite an experience. It seemed like you could just sit back and enjoy the ride, or you could take a more active role in it. Something else to think about and add into my list of things to study. It was time to get back to the exploration through. It would be dark soon and I wanted to find out what other fun horrors would maim or eat me.

  I didn’t have long to wait. While most of what I had been through had been well... natural... the plant life in the last section was unlike anything I had ever witnessed before. I walked through the unearthly plants, trying to make my way towards the hill while keeping a close eye out for any signs of danger. The plants were about as tall as a person, with a green, fleshy base, and a slender trunk ending in a flowered head. The base was not all the way on the ground but was held up by three appendages. These larger plants were also joined by small, almost round cactus-like shrubs with huge beautiful flowers. When I leaned in to get a closer look at one of the smaller ones, the flower burped pollen at me. I jerked back, but not fast enough and soon my world was black.

  My HUD displayed a purple closed eye.

  You have been blinded!

  There was a timer underneath it that showed one minute. It began counting down, and I fumbled around trying to find my way back. I heard a strange clicking noise and stopped in my tracks. The clicking continued and soon came from all directions. I flailed about, running wildly and smacked my face into something hard, probably a tree trunk. I felt sharp needles dig into me on my arms, legs, torso, followed by numbness radiating outwards from those points. For the eighth time I was in the Death Tunnel.