”Well,” Troy replied, “I’m not seven. So I guess I’m too old – sorry.”
“You will call me ‘sir’,” the big man replied, frowning now, “and we don’t have a right to take in recruits that young in Technoburbia. Perhaps the scum in New Baravia would do that sort of thing, if they ever had such a smart idea as ours.”
“Baravia? What have they got to do with it?” Like all citizens of Technoburbia, Troy knew without having to think about it that Technoburbia had been locked in a military stalemate with the city of New Baravia for a generation; his own people would typically refer to its inhabitants as ‘barbarians’.
Because people were different there, of course.
Primitive.
The man leaned forward, his bushy eyebrows crinkling above his piercing eyes. “It’s all about New Baravia. That’s why I am here. That is why you’re here.” He huffed a bit, then looked at Troy again. “It wouldn’t be for the best to take in children, nowadays. But otherwise, there will be a lot of similarities in what we do and the Spartan methods.”
“Okay…” responded Troy slowly. A part of him had started to worry about the General’s comment about the bad food… but perhaps that issue was for later. He would need more information about the set-up if he was going to find a way around any of the hardships that the damn army had in store for him. Besides, surely if he could hold his own against three older brothers and a sister, he would find a way to get enough food from others of his own age.
Troy glanced at the two soldiers opposite, but neither appeared to be paying any attention to the conversation at all. Were they disinterested, he wondered, or was their training so good that they could keep an impassive face regardless of circumstances? Damn grunts. He was determined not to become one of them.
His gaze now dropped down towards their guns, which they had held completely still throughout the conversation, the butts of each weapon resting between their boots. Then he looked back at the General. “So you’re sending me to train with these Spartans, then?” he said, frowning.
The General chuckled. “I would love to send you to train with the real Spartans,” he said, a lopsided smile on his face. “But the problem is that the last of them died over 2000 years ago.”
”That doesn’t say very much for their military skills,” Troy retorted, raising his eyebrows.
This time the General frowned, and Troy could tell that the man was at least a little annoyed at this criticism of his heroes. “Sparta was a part of ancient Greece. And make no mistake, boy – the Spartans were the best soldiers in the ancient world. They were the inspiration for the Roman Empire. Their military culture and expertise was, in its own way, a wonder of the world. There used to be a saying in ancient Greece that one Spartan warrior was worth three Athenians, seven Thebans, or twenty Persians. That’s how highly they rated Spartan soldiers.” He sniffed. “So you should be grateful for this opportunity.”
Troy was ninety per cent sure that he was going to find a way to get out of this program – but the more he knew, the better. “Well, if these Spartans died out and I can’t train with them, how will it work. Are we just going to read about their approach?”
“No,” replied the General. “It’s much, much better than that. We have created a simulation. You will be in Sparta, but not as we know it.” He paused, looking sideways at Troy, and then continued: “You can see it as being a bit like a computer game that you will play 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A military or combat computer game, I suppose you could say, but with training, strategy, problem solving… And every single bit of it will prepare you for the job you’ll one day have to do when you’re a few years older. Finally, we’ll be ready to end the war. To win the war and defeat New Baravia. You will be their nemesis.”
Troy was listening intently now. Playing a non-stop computer game, instead of running around the military academy in a stupid uniform? He was in! General Cook should have led with that.
“Well, I love games…”
At this, the big General grinned again. And while Troy didn’t know it at the time, he wasn’t destined to see any further smiles or grins from the man. “I’m glad it sounds like your kind of thing. But I must warn you, this training is going to be hard.”
He leaned forward, coughed, cleared his throat, then looked around at Troy again. “And I might add, you really don’t have a choice. It’s not an offer, not something that you can take or leave. We decide. You’ve been selected for this program. I have chosen you, and you will do it.”
The vehicle halted for a moment and then restarted, and Troy leaned forwards to see whether it was possible to look out of the front and figure out whether they were getting close. But there were no windows visible from where he was – and still the soldiers opposite did not react.
“You’re very lucky, though,” the General continued, sitting back against the side of the vehicle once again. “I know this program. I designed it. It will be better than anything else we have done with young people like you for a generation. Through this program, you will become one of a new group of elite warriors, and future leaders of Technoburbia.”
This was also appealing enough to Troy. But something was nagging at him, and he started to think about the point the General had made about playing for seven days a week, 24 hours a day. “Wait – I can’t just like take a few hours off and go for a walk in the real world, or something? Eat, drink, go for a shower?”
“Troy, you can do all those things inside this training simulation,” the General said. “There will be no other reality.”
Chapter 3: Apparatus
Not long after arriving at the military base, Troy found himself at the doorway of a very clean, white room.
“Take a seat over there, boy,” drawled General Cook, indicating the direction with a nod.
Troy looked around. To his right, at one side of the room, was the bed. It was a narrow, white-sheeted bed with no blankets, like the ones that doctors use when they want to examine patients, he thought to himself.
Beside it was an unfamiliar-looking machine with a small computer and lots of wires and tubes. This sat near the head of the bed, on a small table. On the bed itself lay a smooth white helmet or headset, with multiple clips around its lower rim; it was connected to the machine by a single silver cable.
Troy stepped cautiously into the room. The General followed him, but the two armed guards remained outside in the corridor. Standing back by the wall nearest the bed, Troy now saw, stood two scientists, a man and a woman. Troy reluctantly stepped over and hopped up onto the lower end of the bed, keeping his distance from the pair. General Cook, meanwhile, strode over to the far corner and turned, folding his arms across his stomach once again. As Troy looked over at him, he noticed for the first time that the General’s uniform was quite crumpled, and there was a coffee stain on his collar.
“Meet Dr Scott and Dr Sissoko, Troy,” said General Cook loudly. “They will attach you to the Helius Headset, which in turn will allow you to access Sparta Online.”
Troy’s enthusiasm at the prospect of non-stop gaming had by now dwindled almost to nothing at the sight of the clinical setting, with its wires and tubes to which he was presumably going to be attached. He furiously began trying to think of ways to get out of the program.
“Listen – I just need to take a bathroom break first,” he said, hopping back down from the bed and praying that the bathroom had a window through which he could try to escape.
The scientists had now begun to approach him, but at Troy’s pronouncement they paused, looking uncertain.
It was General Cook who then came over. He strode up to Troy, lay his hands upon the young man’s shoulders, and looked into his eyes. “Sit down, Troy. Let the scientists do their work.”
“But General, I really need to…” Troy pointed to the door, and began to squirm his hips, hoping that this would suggest to them that he was on the point of peeing his pants.
“Relax,” said the General, thou
gh his own glowering expression didn’t suggest relaxation at all. The big man’s fingers dug into Troy’s shoulders just a little more firmly, and the wriggling stopped. “Everything that your body needs will be taken care of by our technology. Once you are comfortably in the simulation, your body will be attached to a network of biological scanners and systems, rather like being a life support system. There is really nothing for you to worry about.”
Troy opened his mouth, urgently searching for a further excuse to get away. But before he could come up with anything, he found himself being pushed back towards the narrow bed by the General.
“What’s more,” the big man continued, ”this biotech will help you to grow stronger. You will improve your physique. Just think – you will be in this training simulation for a period of time, and afterwards, when you come out, you’ll look in the mirror an’ your body will have become taller, stronger and more muscular. You’ll be much stronger than your older brothers. And no need to worry about exercise, diet, eatin’ your greens. These good people will take care of all of that side.”
There was a gleam in the General’s eyes as he spoke. Now that Troy was again sitting on the bed, the two scientists came closer once again, and began to carefully place the headset loosely on top of his head.
”After that,” the General continued, now releasing the boy, turning, and starting to walk back across the room, scratching his beard as he went, “you will be ready for your fitness training in the real world. But that will really just be a matter of polishing things up, helping you to get used to your new found physical attributes. The main thing is that you will have developed all of the skills you need inside of Sparta Online.”
* * *
General Cook resumed his place standing in the far corner of the room as the two scientists continued with their work on the headset. Troy writhed around, moaned – the discomfort was rapidly giving way to real pain – but he found himself restrained. They fiddled with clips without a word. Each time one of the clips was connected, it made a scratching noise followed by a click that vibrated in Troy’s ears. And with every clicking noise, he found that the attachment wrapped more firmly and tightly around his head.
That was when Troy’s heart really began to sink. There is no way out, he thought to himself. This horrible thing is on my head, and there’s going to be no way of taking it off.
He would be in the virtual training, in this ‘Sparta Online’, for every single minute of his life until… well, until when exactly? He wasn’t sure that the General had made that clear.
“Stop!” he yelled out. “I have more questions! You have to stop!”
But this time the scientists continued their work, apparently unconcerned by his protests.
Troy could still see the General out of the corner of my eye, and hear the big officer’s voice. “This is it, Troy,” he heard him calmly reply. “Any further questions you have, you just need to ask them within the simulation. You will have guides and captains in there to help you.”
“But it’s too painful!” Troy shrieked. He attempted to kick out at one of the scientists. But by this point, he could barely see anything, and wasn’t even sure what direction he was moving. His vision was becoming more and more obscured by the headset itself. And as it became fully secured into place with a few further agonizing clicks, even the General’s voice started to fade.
That was when Troy began to see what looked like a kind of screen in front of his eyes – a gray, fuzzy shape. Not exactly a rectangle, but not covering his whole field of vision either. It wasn’t huge, but it was growing, expanding at the edges.
“The pain in your head will pass as well, I’m glad to say, Troy,” he heard the General call out. “Though of course, there will be plenty more pain to come, too. But that pain won’t come from anything in this room. It will come from the things you do within Sparta. And the things that other people do to you, I suppose. You will have to be quick, you will have to be clever. To use that brain of yours…”
If the General said anything more after that, Troy didn’t hear it. For at that point, there was one last unusually sharp click that felt like a needle being stabbed into his forehead. At the same moment, the gray fuzzy mass in front of his eyes expanded to become the totality of what he could see. The voices and noises of the room were gone, now, and all he could hear was a peculiar low-pitched hissing noise.
Troy tried to focus on the fuzzy image, straining to see whether something could be perceived if he just focused his eyes the right way. He was somehow reminded of the designs and posters that have illusions hidden in a mass of colored rectangles, posters that could sometimes be seen on the sides of vehicles along the municipal transport system of Technoburbia. Focus, he told himself. He strained to see something – but to no effect.
Surely I should be able to make something out, he told himself. Surely by now I am supposed to be seeing this training world that they spoke about.
Maybe my vision is just wrong for this headset.
Perhaps my struggling somehow damaged it.
Broke it.
And then he had a terrifying thought. Had something gone wrong? And would the people who had strapped him in even know about it? Would he be lying for months in this life support state, unable to see anything more than a gray screen… And unable to tell anyone about it?
Panicking again, Troy tried once again to kick out, to grab at where he thought that the scientists were, and to yell at them for help. “This isn’t working, something’s not right…” At least, that was what he tried to say.
But rather than any of this happening in the clinical room where he had been strapped up to the apparatus, two things happened at once, and Troy’s life changed forever.
Number one: his vision righted itself, and Troy immediately saw that he was in a small wood-paneled room, seated upon a bench that was the only item of furniture to be seen. He sat facing a door which was in the center of the opposite wall.
Number two: he did indeed move his arm in his attempt to grab the scientists. But as the scientists weren’t in this wood-paneled room, what actually happened was that his arm – his virtual, in-game arm – whooshed harmlessly through the air and then bashed against the wall with a thump.
A fraction of a second later, a little translucent screen had popped up inside his mind, with a grayish fuzzy border but otherwise close to transparent, in a strip at the very base of his vision:
Health update! You have lost 1 hit point.
Troy pulled his hand back and shook it. He was feeling an intense pain in his fingers, which had just punched hard against the solid wooden panel. Ouch.
That must be what the General meant about pain inside the training, he reflected. And what exactly were hit points?
Genuine pain. Genuine fingers. A genuine wall. Everything looked, well… Just like an actual room. He could have been in someone’s apartment, albeit a strange one.
If he hadn’t been told that he was going to a training simulation, there would have been no way to know that this wasn’t, in fact, the real world.
Chapter 4: Into Sparta Online
So here he was.
Troy looked down. He was wearing loose gray clothes, he could see – perhaps they might even be called robes? Below, they covered his legs to the knee. And on top, some kind of smock? No – it was a light armor, made of some kind of firm white leather that covered only his torso. It felt quite soft and airy… and that was a good thing, he realized, because it was stiflingly hot in the room.
“I don’t suppose these Spartans had normal clothes like us, really,” he muttered to himself.
Troy lifted his feet, still sitting on the bench, as much to see how it felt as anything else. And again, everything appeared to be a complete and perfect simulation. Straight away, he felt like was inside this body. It didn’t feel like he was playing a game at all.
He stood up. The feet were wearing leather sandals, he noticed. He was wearing sandals, he mentally corrected himsel
f.
Weird.
He’d never worn sandals in his life before, and didn’t even own a pair. If Troy had had to guess, he would have supposed that military training would entail wearing boots and gray camouflage fatigues.
Apparently not here.
He walked across the room, touching his face as he went. Did he even look like himself – or had the General made him look like one of these Spartans? It was hard to tell by touching at his cheeks and nose.
Then he noticed a mirror at one end of the room, above a white circular object – a light of some kind – which was also attached to the wall. He walked over. The mirror was made of something that looked like gold… No – bronze, that’s what it was. It reflected him well enough, though less clearly than ordinary mirrors. And the face staring back was his own.
All the same, it wasn’t quite how he looked in real life. His skin was more tanned, his hair neater, and he had a slightly crooked nose, as if it had been broken in a fight. Strange. He might have assumed that the simulation would make people’s features perfect. Not here, it seemed. At least his upper body looked slim and muscular – he wouldn’t be out of place among soldiers.
He turned, walked forward, and reached his hand towards the door of the room. When he pushed at it, it easily swung open in front of him, and he saw another translucent screen inside his mind, at the bottom of his vision:
Skill boost! You have developed your knowledge. +5XP
Outside was an open space between the building he had left and the one opposite, with a square of flat sandy ground in between. There were thorn bushes off to his right, and low, pale-colored buildings ahead and to his left. And just ahead of him stood a tall soldier. Well… Perhaps not a soldier, exactly. Again Troy mentally corrected himself. This was more what he might have termed a warrior. Or even a centurion?
Nemesis (Sparta Online Book 1) Page 2