by Bruce Sentar
Sarah jumped up and gave him a hug. Pressing her soft chest against his, she started bouncing and did little victory hops mingled with squeals of joy. “Great, now I really need to log in with your PIU. Character creation opened tonight and I need to make sure I get the name I want.”
Ajax followed his bouncing friend to his room, where she was leaning over his PIU with a marker. She had already signed her name in flowery calligraphy with hearts and a smiley face blowing a kiss. “Take a picture for proof!” Sarah leaned over the PIU pressing her breasts up against the PIU and exaggerating her cleavage. Ajax snapped a picture with his iLids.
She pouted at Ajax. He had no idea why, but he never did understand girls. “I called my sponsors already and they said I could sell a PIU on my stream when we are allowed to stream again. We should be able to get you more with my branding.”
“Wait you can’t stream LR?” Ajax was caught off guard at that fact.
“Yeah you’ll have to play if you want to see it, something about the game should be unique for everyone. They don’t want people to try and mimic all of the streamers opening few days of the game. They are paying me NOT to stream so I might get some privacy to…” She cut herself short.
“Oh finally found a man that’ll put up with you?” Ajax’s comment yielded a deep frown and Sarah ignored him turning back to the machine.
“Hey, I’m sorry Sarah. That was uncalled for and I wasn’t so great earlier… Look if it means so much I’ll play for a month.” Ajax said.
She popped open the PIU with a big smile and hopped in. She waved excitedly grinning like she was going off on the Titanic’s maiden voyage. She disappeared as the hood slid close followed by a whir of it booting up.
Ajax looked at Reinhart “What’s she so happy about?”
His roommate shook his head and drew his fingers across his lips before miming turning a lock and tossing the key over his shoulder.
He wasn’t going to be any help.
CHAPTER 4
Sarah had only taken a few minutes to create her character and left like a whirlwind. She told Ajax that he should set up his character and to try the practice mode before she all but ran out the door.
Ajax found himself standing in front of the PIU hesitating to open it. He couldn’t help but daydream about becoming famous in Legendary Rule, leading a top guild and having a team of gamer girls by his side. Unfortunately, he doubted that it was in his future.
Yeah, right. Ajax focused himself back to reality. He had always been good at games but never dedicated or in the right circles to take advantage of it. Well, Sarah was in a position to get him introduced to a good guild, maybe even a sponsor. That thought didn’t seem too bad.
He felt like it would be taking advantage of their relationship though. On second thought, she did rope him into playing. Maybe she wouldn’t be upset about it if it kept him playing.
She had used her pouting face and he couldn’t say no to her plan. Well, he’d play for two weeks then quit till the month was over. If something happened and he could actually make money off it, then let it happen. But he wasn’t going to risk his job.
Ajax opened the machine with a hiss and jumped in. The inside still smelt like whatever floral perfume Sarah had been wearing, orchid maybe?
The chair frame was reclined with a leg rest like plush leather chair except the black material covering it wasn’t leather, it was more like rubber, it had a tacky feeling. The material lined the entire inside and Ajax knew it was the neural mesh that he’d read about, the whole thing was a massive network of sensors and transmitters. The PIU like everything else networked with his iLids. He connected with his iLids and the machine came to life. The black material swelled like he was surrounded by inflating balloons to envelop him.
There was a brief moment of panic that he was going to be smothered. It never came though. He was lifted off the chair floating horizontally in the mesh. It was like he was wrapped a soft cocoon. The part around his head was a bit firmer than the rest and it all pressed firmly against Ajax as it started to tingle. As the tingling built it felt like a deeper layer of darkness closed in.
Ajax suddenly landed onto the floor of a room. He stared at the floor of freshly cut lumber, the air even smelled faintly of sawdust. Both the floor and walls were poorly fitted. Gaps showing the land outside were everywhere. Ajax marveled as he ran his hands across the roughly cut wood, he could feel the grain and spots even threatened to give him splinters.
Amazed Ajax stood up to leave the shack, opening the door with care fearing that it might just fall if it was built to the standard of the rest of the shack. To Ajax’s amusement, the door swung unevenly and groaned but didn’t fall. Ajax swung the door back and forth listening to its hinges protest. It was so… real.
It was interactive in an amazing way. Something simple like being able to open a door instead of a simple interaction that changed it between two fixed states. Ajax wondered if he could actually take the shack apart and make something out of it. He bet the game would let him.
Walking into the field Ajax actually smelt like he was on a grassy field; previous VR could never simulate smells. There was not a whole lot of green left in Chicago. Concrete had dominated the landscape, and the parks were being sold for more housing complexes every year. The field offered its own escape.
Ajax enjoyed the calming sensation for a minute while taking in the rest of the area.
There was a large stone archway that looked like it belonged as the front doorway to a castle. Getting close he could see letters carved into each stone of the arch spelling out Legendary Rule. “So this is like a game lobby?” Ajax voiced his thoughts out loud.
“Welcome to your Personal Space. How may I address you?” A disembodied voice rang overhead.
He jolted at the sudden intruder.
“Ajax, and what may I call you?” It seemed like the polite thing to ask a disembodied voice. The voice paused for a moment before replying to Ajax.
“Call me System, welcome Ajax. Would you like to see the options for your Personal Space?” The voice seemed less robotic and becoming more feminine with each word. Even though it was running through its sentences like a prerecorded voice. “I am the AI within your PIU and will be assisting you with your adventures.”
“Uhh, sure please show me the options,” Ajax was adjusting to System as much as it was to him. He didn’t realize he got an AI out of the deal.
A square of dark leather popped up in Ajax’s vision. Glowing gold lettering on the leather menu showed options for training, character creation, the rest was written in grey ink showing it was unavailable at the time but it appeared to all be tied to managing the Personal Space.
As if reading his thoughts, System piped up with a voice that was becoming more bubbly by the word. “With achievements and items from the game, you can alter your personal space. Each player can have one active character. Creating a new one will delete the old one and lockout the option for one month. To train, just tell me what type of training partner you would like.”
Ajax decided to start with making his new virtual self. Unfortunately, character creation was limited. His avatar was a fully healthy version of himself. He wasn’t ripped but he had more muscle than he did in real life. There were options to play with your face to become anonymous. You could change hair/skin color. However, Ajax was disinclined to change anything preferring to go with what was natural.
There were some slide bars to adjust himself but even maxing out the height bar only gave him two inches. He decided to keep it to the healthy version of himself. At least his growing gut from cheap fatty food wasn’t present here.
In the end, he didn’t edit his avatar. He’d have another chance before the game started. First, he wanted to see what the combat in the game was like.
“I’d like to fight a basic soldier.” Ajax wanted to test out this training. He figured it would do good to start with something simple.
An armed soldier with an indif
ferent expression materialized in front of Ajax, the soldier wore a heavy leather coat over a chainmail shirt. Sticking out from the lower end of the coat were iron greaves. The sword belted at his hip looked well cared for if not horribly plain.
The sword reminded him that he needed a weapon to fight.
“Can I get a weapon,” Ajax asked System. Barehanded versus a sword seemed like a poor idea.
“Sorry Ajax, you have not earned a weapon in the game yet. I cannot provide you with one.” System didn’t seem to hold any sympathy for the issues that would cause.
The soldier stood staring into space not making a move. Ajax walked a circle around him, he didn’t even turn to face him.
With no better idea, Ajax held his hands up like a boxer and started bouncing on his feet.
There was still no reaction from the basic soldier. It continued to stare emptily into the distance.
Ajax rushed the training dummy the smirk on his face betraying his confidence. When Ajax got within striking distance the training dummy became alert and reacted by punching out with his gauntleted fist. Their knuckles collided in a meeting of fists.
The only problem was that the guard’s gloves were studded with metal and Ajax’s knuckles crunched with the impact. He pulled his hand back reeling in pain but the dummy was still going. It threw a wild haymaker to the side of Ajax’s face. Knocking the player to the ground face first.
Ajax was drooling out of what he thought must be a broken jaw. It was possibly the most pain Ajax had been in his life. Ajax lay flat for a second knowing he’d lost this round, bad.
When he heard the sound of steel scraping behind him. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
He started to panic and tried to stop the training fight “So ip I ‘ev uup”. His broken jaw making it hard to communicate.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” System responded.
Ajax scrambled, trying to get up. He was still disoriented on his hands and knees when fierce pain blossomed in his chest and he felt the soldier's weight press onto his back.
He didn’t fall down completely. He hovered three inches off the ground. Steel stuck through his chest and nailed him to the ground. The blade was holding him up as his arms and legs had lost their strength. He watched blood rivulets began streaming down the sword and pooling below him.
Holy shit, I’m dying. Those last thoughts lingered for a second as Ajax’s vision went dark.
He stood a few feet away watching the fight replay like a third party in a black and white world void of color. It was short thankfully, and Ajax’s body disappeared as he returned to the world of color standing where he had just watched the replay.
Coming back to his body he touched the spot on his chest which was now fully recovered, his shirt clean and whole. He had just gotten run through with a sword; he’d really died on his first fight.
It had hurt like hell, and he wondered just how close to the level of pain that was to a real death outside the game.
“Ah, Ajax, now might be a good time to introduce you to the pain and gore settings.” System’s cheerful voice was grating on Ajax’s nerves.
It would have been nice to cover this before the fight Ajax grumbled in his heart. Another floating leather scroll opens in front of him with slide bars for pain and gore. He kept gore at about eighty percent and the pain was dialed down to 40% so he’d feel all of the attacks, but they wouldn’t be THAT bad. Fighting the guard again would still probably really hurt, he’d just have to avoid getting run through the heart again.
Ajax was very specific for his next training dummy and the practice against an unarmed low-level bandit went much better than the soldier. He still lost the first few fights getting his face beat in.
He managed to start winning when he figured out how to sweep their legs and pummel them. From then on he figured out the key to a fistfight was knocking your opponent down then taking advantage of striking from above. It felt like poor sportsmanship to kick a man while he was down, but Ajax was just trying to win the fights.
After the fistfights, Ajax couldn’t help but think of wolves when he thought of low-level monsters in games. Ajax summoned a wolf and got a nasty surprise being dragged to the ground and having his throat ripped out.
Pure nightmare fuel, he knew he was going to have nightmares about being killed by wolves. After five or so deaths Ajax found you could actually beat a wolf barehanded, but it came at a cost. Either you had to bar it’s mouth open by keeping your arm in it and pin it that way. Which while might work, left the arm pretty destroyed by the time you pummeled it to death with your other fist. The other method he only got lucky enough to use once and managed to get his arms wrapped around its neck and choked it out. He was scratched up pretty bad but that was better than the alternative.
Ajax was rolling his shoulders thinking about what to fight next. Apparently, digital muscles could get tired too. System piped up “You have a friend request Ajax!”
“From who?” Ajax wasn’t sure who would be sending him a friend request.
“From MissyQ. Hi Ajax, congrats for winning the contest I hosted. I hope you enjoy Legendary Rule, lets swap secrets about the early game later. Semicolon, close parentheses. Huh, what was that at the end? some coded message?” System’s voice sounded out the emoji and Ajax facepalmed.
“Accept the friend request System.” Ajax’s voice shook with a mixture of nervousness and excitement.
“Congratulations on the achievement ‘You have a friend!’ to commemorate you not being an absolute loser you get a friend board in your personal space!” System shouted out and a square board covered in runes appeared to the side of his shack.
“Send a message back saying, thanks for the PIU. I look forward to swapping tips and tricks.” Ajax realized his digital palms were sweaty but he didn’t realize that all thoughts of selling his PIU had completely disappeared.
CHAPTER 5
Ajax had spent the day so far with only one customer. The man had wanted to look at some toilets. The man was always calling them anything but toilets, so in his words, Ajax spent thirty minutes looking through ‘crap castles’. In the end, he didn’t buy anything, it was like he just came in to make an appearance.
Ajax shrugged it off, at least the man was talkative. It was likely the fastest half an hour of his day. For that Ajax felt some gratitude and couldn’t begrudge the man’s varied terms for toilets.
As soon as the sliding doors closed behind Will on his way out Mr. Richards materialized in front of Ajax.
Ajax almost jumped out of his skin; where the hell had his supervisor come from? At least he hadn’t been eyes closed watching things on his iLids this time.
“Ajax Demos.” His plump supervisor stared him down like an interrogator waiting for a suspect to crack under the weight of the unspoken weight of silence.
He thought it was somewhat comical that for a man of his stature to try to be so imposing. Ajax almost laughed but held it in knowing it would make this conversation far worse. Still, it worked to a degree and his authority held back Ajax’s laugh. Yesterday he had given up the opportunity to lecture him, and now he was being just plain spooky.
“Mr. Richards, what can I do for you? That customer had me busy, but I don’t really think he was in here to buy. He seemed more of the browse the store then buy it online type.” Ajax could feel the strain of his forced smile. He was nervous, maybe that silent pressure approach was working for Mr. Richards. He held his tongue not wanting to keep rambling on. Mirroring Mr. Richard’s silent tactic Ajax waited.
It wasn’t long before Mr. Richards opened his mouth. “Failed another sale.”
He pulled out his tablet and his tapping on the screen seemed extra loud to Ajax today. Mr. Richard’s recent change started to make Ajax’s wheels turn in his head.
Before Ajax could get far on that train of thought his supervisor smiled, Ajax felt his heart plummet.
Flipping around the tablet for Ajax to read “Please
review this list of infractions. You may appeal any you believe are in error.”
Ajax looked through the list of ‘infractions’ that Mr. Richard had put together. His mind was going blank, why was this happening to him?
Clearing his head he took focus and tried to review the list for errors. He could save himself; he just had to find some of these that he could fight. He looked through them, they were all small things. Failed sale from just minutes before was at the top of the list. As he went down, they were all small petty things. The time he’d not been feeling well and was late from a break by a few minutes because of an unfortunate time in the bathroom. Another where he’d been caught flirting with a girlfriend who’d come in to see him.