by S. W. Clarke
Five trials. So Amy and Galen had been back five times in the past year. They’d been through the preliminary at least six times. “Why?” Veda asked.
“Because he’s moody and a guy.”
“No, I mean why have you both been back five times this year?”
Amy paused, and then she laughed. It wasn’t her real laugh, though: Veda could tell it came forced, a cover for her real emotions. “Because it’s Sicora Online. It’s the best shit out there, even if it does put you through the wringer.”
The wringer. It sounded awfully close to ringer.
Veda had fallen asleep when they arrived. She’d dreamed of the line of Vedas, the hand on her shoulder, sitting to face the thump. Amy prodded her shoulder. “Hope you got your hair did, Sleeping Beaut.” The transport hummed as it slowed; she sensed they were on an incline. “We’re about to take our glamor shots.”
Veda realized she’d been leaning on Amy, sat up quickly. Around them, those other voices hit notes of excitement, awe. “Glamor shots?”
“It’s the final round before the MMO comes out,” Amy said. “We’re not really testers so much as marketing props.”
Veda still didn’t fully understand until they were let off the bus. As soon as she stepped down, the scent and sound of the ocean caught her. Salt and that massive sweep and pull she’d only heard a few times at the harbor in Columbia City. “This way, Powell,” said Jon, and one of his hands was on her arm, leading her down a stone walkway.
She would have objected to being led—Veda had the aural aids, after all—but it was all happening too fast. If she were a cat, she’d have found a dark corner to absorb it all from.
Instead, she allowed herself to be led under the heat of bright lights. They came into air conditioning, wood flooring. The others pressed around her, and before them, Jon launched into an introduction. “Welcome, group 15, to the Pyro campus.” One of the men let a whoop, and a few others clapped so that the frisson came up Veda’s spine, lifted the hairs right to neck. ”Those of you who have joined us before may recognize the house you’re standing inside now. This is where you’ll be staying for the ten days (or less, as it may be) that you’ll spend testing Sicora Online.”
Ten days. Whatever the outcome, Veda had ten days. And for as much as she dreaded what was to come, she also felt a thrill in her. It was a different life, a new life: one that would challenge her, force her to grow in ways her job as a service admin had never done.
Jon continued. “With me are Anya—who some of you already know—and Scarlet from the marketing team. We’ll be your three admin during your time here, though Mr. Mizuki may telestream in from time to time. Anya will be facilitating the ladies, and I’ll be the capsule admin for the men. Since this is our last trial before the game goes live, we’ve decided to punch things up a bit. Scarlet will be the voice of Pyro’s fans, relaying questions, comments, and conducting interviews with each of you. So don’t be surprised to find her sitting across from you at breakfast!”
“If Scarlet ever talks to you,” Amy whispered beside her, “be as boring as possible until she stops talking to you.”
Veda stood impassive, her face still turned to Jon. Amy was either distrustful of people, or Pyro had done a number on her; maybe the latter had led to the former. And she had a strong sense—between Prairie’s replacement, the note, Amy’s strange instructions—that she didn’t know even half of what was going on.
So when Jon told them that they would each receive a jersey for a photoshoot, she complied. Veda was exceptionally good at complying until she understood the situation well enough to make a critical judgment. That was why she received the nylon jersey with a smile—her fingers ran over the letters POWELL monogrammed onto the back—and slipped it over her head. It was why she allowed herself to be led by Anya to stand in the line they’d formed next to Scarlet.
Veda had never had her photo taken. She didn’t know what to do, how to stand, what configuration her face should take. People smiled for photographs, she knew, but what kind of smile?
She spent the ten minutes in line deliberating this until she was brought into a warm room—there must be extra lights—and instructed by Anya to stand at the spot she’d been led to. Veda stood with her hands at her sides.
“Oh, the clone! Wonderful,” Scarlet said, her smaller, pincer-like fingers positioning Veda’s body. Scarlet set two fingers to Veda’s chin, swiveled her head back and forth. “I like you. I like your look, bushy-browed pre-model. Keep doing the awkward stuff, but turn your face to the side. Give me all that red hair.”
Veda did. When she turned her face a rapid clicking sounded. “Take your hair out of that bun.”
Adrenaline came through her like a shot; she’d never worn her hair down except to sleep. Her hands went up slow, unwinding the bun until the hair came loose around her neck and shoulders.
And when Scarlet instructed her to sweep it over her shoulder, she did, her face taking on that configuration she had practiced so many times: sweet, impassive, invisible.
“Smile for me,” Scarlet said.
Veda did, parting her lips.
The camera clicked once, twice, and Scarlet shifted. “Uh, just go back to being solemn, Powell. You look like you just saw your ex who you dumped via text.”
She did as instructed. It seemed to work; the clicking came faster.
After the photoshoot, Jon called everyone to pile in. Twenty-three testers—most of whom were still strangers to Veda—pressed themselves into the shot. She, taller than most, ended up positioned near the back.
The shoot complete, Jon gave a quick tour of the house, backing down the hallways from room to room. Here was the mess where they would eat, and here was the common room, and here was the circle room (which he would explain later), and down those stairs were the capsules they would use to enter the game. Veda tried to map it all in her head: twenty feet from the mess to the common room, another ten feet to the circle room, five feet and a left to the capsule level.
They came into the basement single-file, filtered through a doorway. “These,” Jon said, his voice hushing to a note of reverence, “are the capsules. White polychrome, steel-carriaged bug carapaces, basically.” Jon’s knuckles tapped the smooth surface of the closest one, and she remembered the feel of the cold hood under her fingers when she sat up from the capsule. “You lie on the memory foam, and Anya and I will hook you in for the next eight hours—or less, if you get stomped. But let’s be optimistic for now and say eight.”
“What if we have to use the bathroom?” came a man’s voice.
“Rook’s got a question. It’s a good question. The question is: what if one of you has to use the bathroom? We’ve got methods for addressing that. Suffice it to say, go before you play. Otherwise your admin will know exactly how hydrated you are, and none of us want to know the color of your pee. Other questions?”
Deep silence fell, and something tugged at Veda. Her mouth opened before she had the thought to keep it shut. “Has anyone ever gotten stuck inside the game?”
She sensed attention shifting to her. “Stuck?” Jon said, as though Veda hadn’t picked the right word to describe it. “No. Never stuck.”
That was all. He carried on with the introduction.
Jon ended the tour at their dorms—two for the men, two for the women—and all at once Veda stood alone in a room with five women who claimed their bunks with a security admin’s speed. Amy entered after Veda. “No way,” she said, pushing past, “I’m not taking top again.”
When the frenzy ended, Veda still stood near the door with her thumbs notched under her backpack straps.
“You’ve got that one, Veda,” Amy said. “Three feet forward, six feet right.”
She followed Amy’s instructions, one hand out until she touched the wooden paneling of a bunk bed, her fingers sliding across the horizontal slat of a ladder. A voice sailed down from above: “Down there, dupe.”
“Come on, Waters,” Amy said.
/> “What?” The voice sounded young—maybe twenty-one—and carried such a breathy note of kindness that Veda hardly felt justified being hurt by the words. “That’s the clone bed. Always has been.”
“Veda, meet Sarai Waters,” Amy said. She sounded like she’d found an upturned bug. “We’ve been through four trials together.”
Veda misjudged the bed’s overhang as she sat, scraped the top of her head on the paneling. “Hi,” she said.
“She’s blind?” came Sarai’s voice. “Blind people can test?”
“Hell, Sarai,” said Amy.
Veda pulled her backpack off. “We can even hear, too.”
Amy and the other three laughed.
“I’ll bet you can,” Sarai said; she was unfazed. Beneath her voice came a clinking. “I’ll bet you’re a great listener. Listen for this sound when you’re in the game, Ve-da Powell.”
It sounded like metal on the wood paneling of the bunk above, as metronomic as the clock in Mother’s parlor. “Why?” Veda asked.
“That’s your handicap on account of your blindness. It’s the sound you’ll hear before Wilt and I come for you.”
“Ignore her, Veda,” Amy said. “She’s just testing you.”
Veda knew this kind of testing. She stood, turned her face full on Sarai. Her hands went up to grip the securing rail of the top bunk, and she could tell by how fast the clinking had stopped that Sarai was surprised by Veda’s green eyes on her. She had grown good at pretending she could actually see. “Tomorrow, look for these eyes,” she said, “because when you see them, they’ll be looking back at you.”
After that, Sarai wasn’t keen on talking to the dupe anymore.
Five
The morning came slow over the reclaimed west coast. Veda had woken at three, her hands folded behind her head, listening to the waves until she couldn’t lay still any longer. She snuck into the shower, and by the time she was done, the other testers were awake. They didn’t talk, not even Amy; it was all about the game.
She wondered what their worst fears were. She already felt a thread of kinship with all of them—even Sarai Waters—for having endured the preliminary. And she could feel it between them all in the air: competitiveness, sure—that came so natural and often among women that it was almost impossible to escape, even without a situation like this—but a certain quiet respect, too, in the way they shared the showers and bathroom sinks.
Breakfast had been left just inside the door, a basket of fruit and nuts and instructions that Sarai read aloud: “Meet in the circle room at 7.” That was all. They each grabbed their share, and Veda followed down the hallway behind the others, biting into an apple. She wasn’t ordinarily allowed breakfast; most of her life it had been only lunch at Big Stax and hydro-bars for dinner. They passed the other dorms, and she heard the lower tones of the men, wondered which of them was Galen. He had been Prairie’s closest companion that summer…could he possibly know who Veda was?
They poured into the circle room through double doors, Jon ushering them forward—“come on in, folks”—to armchairs that Veda’s aural aids indicated sat on a large radius, all faced inward. He stood at the center of their circle. “Eat your bananas, kiddos. It’s gonna feel like a long time before your next meal,” he said, as they took their seats around the room. Jon informed them—Veda knew that this could only be for her benefit—that Anya sat at the far end of the room, a tablet in her lap.
Veda sat near the doors, listening, listening: she heard jiggling feet. Nervousness. Sarai Waters spoke to someone in whispers. She caught the threads of other conversations around the circle. They were forming initial allegiances, or at least greasing the groove. Jon’s slapping footsteps passed around the room, closed the double doors. “All right—this will be quick. You all know the rules of Sicora: figure them out as you go. The mechanics won’t take you smarties long because we’ve kept them bare-bones in beta. More will be added when the game goes live, of course, but right now we’re focused on fine-tuning Sicora’s understanding of human behavior and motivations. Not much number-crunching for you humanistic folk,” he said, and his fingers snapped. “Beyond that, we’ve got two things to say.”
Some kind of projection had appeared at the center of the room: soft music played over forest crickets and frogs. “First, every day in Sicora is equivalent to one hour in the capsule. Veda, what we’re seeing right now is an animation of the sun and moon rising and setting over a wonderful and wild landscape. This means if you spend your whole eight hours in the capsule in a single level, you’ll have been in there a good long while. Best to beat the level sooner rather than later!”
Jon’s fingers snapped again. The music changed; now the tune sounded adventurous, thrilling, maybe a little tragic. “Second: if you die in Sicora, you’re out,” Jon said. “But we’re not totally heartless, so we’ll allow you to respawn once during The Sorting.”
The Sorting. Veda had heard about that first world, which would determine their class for the rest of the game, though she didn’t have any idea how that determination was made.
Jon was speaking again. “That’s about it—the rest is up to you to discover. Questions?” His words came so fast Veda had barely comprehended what he’d asked before he was talking again. “Is Pyro Games responsible for any of what happens to you in Sicora? Great question! And the answer—as you know from the forms you fingerprinted during the preliminary—is an absolute, unequivocal no. And since I don’t see any other raised hands”—Veda was sure by now that Jon had drawn the short straw to end up with this role—“let’s get to getting, shall we?”
The basement was a freezer. Veda stood next to her capsule, hugging herself while Anya directed all twelve of them to their companion capsules. After a minute, she reached out, her fingers skimming the smooth surface. Impossibly sleek and rounded; she placed both hands atop the capsule, inspecting the curve and sweep all the way down to where the lid sat ajar, waiting for her.
A coffin. A fancy, metallic coffin.
Amy’s memory foam gave a merry squelch as she sat in the capsule next to Veda, kicked her feet up on the padded surface. “Ready for a little immobilization?”
Veda managed the ghost of a smile. “Hey, this is nothing next to full integration.” She slipped off her shoes, sat with both hands beside her. She remembered this from before the preliminary.
“Full integration?”
“It’s what happens to dupes who are really bad, or really good. We become one with the AI.”
“Sounds less traumatic than getting into this game.”
Veda laughed. “Maybe.”
“Hey,” Amy said, “if you see me in there, come and say hi.”
“Will do.”
“I’m serious. Don’t die, Veda.” Amy’s voice bore a small tremor now, came throaty in a way that made Veda nervous. “No matter what you spawn into in there, no matter what you’re looking at, don’t die. Find me.”
Veda turned her face to Amy; people with sight seemed to appreciate that. “And I said I will.”
She closed her eyes. This was the part she would rather experience behind her eyelids, feeling rather than seeing it all. Her hand was in her pocket, thumb and forefinger on Prairie’s note. A few capsules down, one of the girls sucked air between her teeth as Anya administered the immobilizing drug. By the time Anya reached her, Veda was shivering. It wasn’t nervousness, she told herself, it was the cold. But of course, Anya didn’t know that.
“Calm,” Anya said, uncurling Veda’s hands as she placed the sensors. The drug went through her slow, obliterating every motion below her head. The last thing Veda heard before the connector went into her neck port was Anya, who seemed, strangely, to be speaking with something like sympathy. “Stay calm, Veda,” she said. “Stay calm.”
She experienced again the sensation of dissolving, her body separating to molecules inside the capsule. The air vent above her circulated louder and louder in her ears until it was all just white noise that faded, fade
d into a perfect, ringing silence.
A single bird called in staccato—brrp-brrp-brrp—and went silent.
Veda opened her eyes. Above her, a sky so achingly blue it stoppered her throat. Wisps of white eased from her periphery, and her eyes fell on a white orb that burned her, reflexively shut her eyes. The sun. Its likeness hung behind her eyelids, burning away. And she finally understood that it had all happened: the visual training module, the preliminary, the trip from one coast to another. It was all real.
When her eyes opened, she pushed red hair from her face—her own, she realized, twiddling it between her fingers. It shone gold under the sun. Her eyes focused beyond: she lay in a field of grass. And—her fingers reached out, touched a dime drop of red on one of the tufts—some person or creature had bled here.
A person swept by her, running through the tall grass Veda lay in. Her eyes followed, absorbing the stalks of green that spread far and further to the tiny upright pencils she realized were trees. She had just spotted the red on his tunic when an arrow caught him in the side of the neck and he spun to the ground, arterial blood spraying in his wake.
She didn’t have time to scream; her body processed the danger before she knew what happened, and she threw herself into the grass as another arrow sang above her head. Blue lettering blinked into the top left corner of her vision:
NAME: Veda Powell - CLASS: Unknown - LEVEL: 1 - HEALTH: 50/50 - MANA: 50/50
She flicked the interface away with her mind, crawled toward the spot where the player had fallen, spreading the tall grass with her hands. Her face was already hot with tears—she couldn’t unhear the arrow’s head separating his skin and muscle—and she pressed them impatiently from her eyes. Buck up, Powell. This is only the start.
When she found him, his eyes bore a distant, upward cast, his breath coming short. She pressed her fingers to the spot on his neck where the blood had spurted, now bubbled. And before her eyes, this person began slowly and then all at once to disintegrate into the ground, separating to pixels and dissolving like dust, leaving only the bloodied arrow on the grass.