Selecting the screen with the fighters, I pressed the LOAD SAVED MODEL icon. Before me unfolded the small 3D model of the fighter I’d spent so much time assembling, going over the available options that best matched my intentions. I had to study all of the shop’s manuals describing frames and systems of various ship models.
What I particularly liked about this game was its absence of artificial limits. If you wanted to assemble your own ship using fragments of available models, you were free to do so. Didn’t want to bother yourself with that? Then you had the choice of choosing between more than twelve ready options, starting with the fast, agile fighters and ending with the heavy carriers.
“This one.” I handed the 3D model to the shop assistant.
“One million credits,” he voiced what I already knew; the ship’s price was displayed instantly. “Delivery to your hangar?” he asked when I touched the payment terminal with my finger.
“Yes, please,” I said, watching the model vanish from his hands.
“Thank you for your purchase. Have a nice day,” he said with a polite smile as I left the shop.
Chapter 13
Despite how much I wanted to see my new purchase, my heart longing to examine every corner of the ship, my account balance of 4,500 credits instantly reminded me of what I should do right now. I had already deviated slightly from my plan, buying the De Luxe instead of a standard, so now I had to start working to restore my account balance. Once I reach the quest giver zone, I’ll start with quests with x10 coefficients.
Getting into a taxi, I hurried to the familiar spot, completely unsurprised that the number of available quest panels increased automatically just like the starting square had when approached by more players than it could previously accommodate.
The teleportation screens had virtually no queues; five or six people in a line, quickly vanishing into the flashing portal, were the max.
Standing behind a fair-haired man, I reached the panel in just a minute. The menu had over twenty quests, but only five with x10. I appeared to have missed all those with 2h duration, dawdling over my purchases. All those available for infantry were four hours at least. I clicked on one of those, spotting a change in the menu itself: now it showed the optimal party size for completing each quest. For instance, a few quests relying on armored vehicles, now highlighted with gray, required at least five vehicles and thirty infantrymen. The quest I selected was half-filled; I had to hurry before all of the vacant spots were taken by players.
The game appeared to be constantly developing and improving even between the global patches. During my past visit, that feature had not yet been enabled. You could only guess how many people were already at the location and how much more they needed. In a nutshell, you accepted a quest without knowing if you would possibly be able to win or if the total force would appear to be insufficient.
Developers are cool. I was about to teleport when the weird figures in the mission info caught my attention.
Level 1 quest accepted: NB65XZ Planet
Duration: 4h
First attempt bonus: x10
Reward: 500 credits
Fine for leaving the position early: -1,000 credits; -1 reputation with the Wargs
Load the location map?
WHAT? What the fuck? 500 credits for an x10? For the second time in one day, I was beside myself, now with anger. Just 500 credits? Are you crazy or what?
Dropping the quest instantly, I selected the next one, without the x10 bonus.
Level 1 quest accepted: The Crystal Forest
Duration: 2h
Reward: 20 credits
Fine for leaving the position early: -50 credits; -1 reputation with the Wargs
Load the location map?
“Holy shit.” That was all I could say at seeing such a reward.
While I was overcoming my shock, a displeased voice speaking my native tongue came from behind: “Hey, man! Can you hurry up? Others are waiting.”
“I don’t care,” I snapped. “There are many other points. Use them.”
He cursed. I spotted his foot move, but did not feel a kick. Instead, a red pop-up message flashed: You’ve been attacked out of battle. Please accept our apologies and 10 credits as a compensation.
I had never encountered anything like that in this game before, but I was too tired for any further astonishment.
“Hey, you. Please excuse me.”
Dumbfounded, I turned to the man behind me. He was clumsily trying to apologize while removing a grimace of loathing from his face.
“Or what? Will you get fined?” I didn’t really care about his well-being. What interested me were the consequences of engaging in out-of-battle violence.
“Why am I even bothering…?” he replied angrily but then froze for a moment and added: “They fined me twenty credits for violence. Now they say that they’ll remove ten more if you don’t accept my apology.”
“Well, I accept it,” I answered, returning to the screen and wondering why they needed to introduce this game feature.
Did you notice that slip of the tongue in the system message? A thought, or maybe a guess, came from the depths of my mind, making me read the message again. I was not really happy at seeing the phrase out of battle.
So you can attack the members of your own fraction in battle? That was not something I had encountered during the testing stage either. We all wanted to win in order to complete a quest. No one ever tried to attack another player; the very idea of doing that probably never crossed anyone’s mind.
My astonishment over the full-release game modifications was overwhelming, but I had to get back to the quests. Tapping on several ones, I realized my free and easy life was over. The x10 quest could now bring you only a tenth of what we had earned during testing. The no-bonus missions paid no more than 2,000 credits each, depending on their duration. Those involving fighters and heavy machines paid much better than infantry-only ones, but still, the rewards were ten times smaller.
How much time would I have spent earning a million and a half if these prices had been applied from the start? Recalling my recent spending, I felt horrified. What will I live on now? All I have left is 4,500 credits. How long can I survive on that?
“…more time to take a quest? Should I join a different queue?” a polite voice came from behind. Looking back, I saw a black guy. The beginning of his first sentence was apparently said in a language different than Russian, but the rest of it was as clear as if his speech were translated to me.
I recalled the street seafood vendor who had started speaking to me in Chinese but finished in Russian, and then it all came together.
Since the last patch, I hadn’t heard any English, Spanish, or Chinese, being only addressed in Russian. It was as simple as that: a universal translator built into the game to instantly convert any automatically detected language into another.
That’s rather odd. When did the automatic speech recognition achieve such progress? As far as I know, no one has yet been able to machine-translate human speech into all available languages synchronously.
“Sorry. I’ll choose now,” I apologized, tapping on a random quest.
The shock from all the discoveries I had made in just half an hour of gaming was too great; I needed some distraction before I was to sort it all out, starting with the remaining skill slots and points from my old account that had suddenly appeared on the new one and ending with the fighter I had rushed to buy in fear that prices might soar as it had already happened to the armored vehicles and tanks once more people started to use them. I had been unaware that quest rewards would just crash.
Reflecting on all these matters required a calmer environment than the ongoing race for x10 missions, so I put all of my ideas and questions aside while I focused on completing the quest.
***
“Viktor! Viktor!” Home’s voice came through the noise in my ears.
“Yeah?” I was lying in the capsule, unable to move, my body so exhausted that I
probably would have fallen asleep right there if I closed my eyes.
“You have missed calls from Mariya and from your mother. Both asked you to call them back once you exit the game.”
“Is it urgent?” I couldn’t stand. I just couldn’t.
“No. But you’ve been unavailable for the past 72 hours.”
I had only vague memories of my three-day gaming marathon interrupted by no more than two hour long breaks to take a nap and rest my brain a bit. The x10 chase seemed endless at first, but on the second day all, absolutely all quests for infantry levels 1 and 2 were without a bonus. Higher-level quests were unavailable to me as I lacked either the skills or equipment for them, so I made use of what I had by taking ordinary two hours long quests in hopes that the list would update and feature new bonus quests once I was done with those.
I left the game only because I realized that the chance of getting any x10 quest in the near future was zero. The number of players rose exponentially, the starting square expanding on and on as did the whole city that immediately became crowded with lots of players, although I remembered strolling its streets alone only not so long ago.
“What should I tell them?” the AI distracted.
My flow of thoughts was so slow that coming up with a response to this very simple question seemed to take an hour.
“That I’ll call back once I get enough sleep,” I replied firmly. “Keep holding my calls. I’m going to bed.”
“Should I make dinner?”
“No.” Barely moving my tongue, I dragged myself to the bed and collapsed onto it without even taking a shower despite the distinct BO.
Chapter 14
Opening my eyes, I struggled to fathom where I was. Only when I looked to the left and saw Masha’s belongings, did I realize that I was at home, in my own bed.
My head was humming. My body refused to stand up or even to move, forcing me to lie on my back. The memories of the past few days during which I’ve been playing to the point exhaustion seemed alien. I couldn’t believe that I had been running round like a hamster in a cage all that time. It must have been someone else fighting there for money, experience, and reputation.
“Never again,” I groaned, turning to the side and trying to stand up.
“Good morning, Viktor,” the AI greeted cheerfully.
“Hush! Hush!” I waved my hand as its voice resonated within my skull like a tolling bell.
“What would you like for breakfast?” it asked, reducing the volume.
“Anything light,” I waved, plodding to the bathroom. I needed to take a shower and brush my teeth. Like, really bad. I totally forgot about that while I was home alone and gaming non-stop.
The shower brought me to. Drying myself ff with the towel, I walked into the living room and my spirits soared steeply due to the delicious smells coming from the food tray. Even my bodily weakness seemed like something I could tolerate.
“What’s on the news?” Failing to find my bathrobe, I plumped down onto the sofa, pulling closer the plates with the mushroom and greens omelet and two buns with cherry jam.
The video wall was activated at once.
“…the game’s popularity has exceeded all forecasts and expectations. In Russia alone, more than five million players logged in on the first day. The number of users worldwide is estimated at fifty million, and it continues to increase. The game’s unique feature of allowing players to earn real money, combined with eliminated micropayments, attracted the well-deserved attention of gaming audiences. The majority of current players are from China, India, Mexico and other countries with large populations, high unemployment, and not particularly high living standards. Not only does Galaxy provide everything you need to play it—the capsule—but it also allows immense space for development. All you need to join the game and start making money is a web connection speed of at least one gigabyte per second, which is nothing for present-day networks.”
I switched to the first channel—whose anchor was briskly discussing the game and everything related to it—while having my breakfast. I was so hungry that my food vanished from the plates with lightning speed.
Today, a thought flashed through my mind, I will be able to sort out everything, undisturbed. If there are no good quests available, that is.
“…live from the web is a renowned astronomer, corresponding member of RAS, Mikhail Okhlopjev. Mikhail, how would you comment on your recent posts on social media that the game is too life-like? Your messages have received thousands of likes and millions of views, rising a wave of debate in the academic community.”
The other man, who looked like a typical scientist, had a screen behind his back featuring photos of a starry sky. “Good afternoon, Alexei. Yes, you are absolutely right about that. I’m a bit of a video game geek myself, with a particular interest in space games, so I never miss a worthy project. Galaxy attracted my attention right away due to its apparent incompatibilities with the current scientific view of stars. In the game preview videos, I spotted a couple of very weird things. When I entered the game yesterday, my suspicions received a strong confirmation. To my immense regret, I could not record any gameplay because of the in-game restrictions, but those who log in will be able to see that I’m telling truth. That includes my colleagues who labelled my theory as pseudoscientific nonsense. The screen behind me is showing the photos of stars as they look when observed from Earth. Now let me show the sketches I made by memory of the night quests I took in the game.”
Next to the first photo appeared a professional-looking pencil sketch.
I was so curious that I increased the volume, pushing away the remnants of my breakfast. Judging by the sound, the robot rolled out of the niche, collected the dirty dishes and took them to the kitchen to load into the dishwasher.
“Please look at this, Alexei.” The astronomer presented two more sketches, comparing each to a photo. “I’d rather not overload you with scientific jargon, but how do these pairs of sky images look to you?”
The anchor squinted. “Sure I’m no pro, but they…they look absolutely different.”
“Exactly!” the other man exclaimed triumphantly. “These stars are absolutely different from ours. I’ll tell you more: that’s not our sky at all.”
“Um…What do you mean?” The anchor was confused, just like myself.
“As you know, we live in a galaxy called the Milky Way. We know of many other galaxies, remote or close, that have been detected by our telescopes and satellites to date. And here comes my discovery: the stars I’ve observed in the game form an absolutely unique pattern. It looks like nothing I’ve seen before.”
“But that’s a video game, Mikhail,” the anchor made a sound objection. “Its creators could have invented a starry universe of their own. Actually, that’s exactly what most of your opponents are saying.”
The scientist was not the tiniest bit embarrassed. “They are. But what would you say to this?” He retrieved a sketch and a photo that had not appeared on the screen before, and showed them side by side.
“The photo’s too blurry to see what it portrays,” the anchor noted instantly.
“It is. Because it’s the farthest corner of the universe we’ve been able to explore to date. This picture lacks several millions of stars that are hidden from us by the radiation of the supermassive black hole surrounded by other galaxies.”
“And?” The anchor was still struggling to understand.
“How could I have possibly been able to see this then?” Triumphantly, he showed a sketch where some of the star groups actually resembled those on the photo. But the sketch was far more detailed. “How could the game creators come to have more precise data than all of the astrophysicists in the world?”
“Maybe they just invented it?” the anchor shrugged. “Human fantasy could partially overlap with reality.”
“I agree. You do have a point. That’s the main argument my colleagues made, too. But still, I don’t understand why the starry sky in the game chang
es so much with each mission. It looks like I’m jumping from one star system to another. And sometimes I seem to be galloping through galaxies that no one has seen before.”
“That’s another proof that Galaxy’s level of precision and attention to detail is superior to any other game,” the anchor said. “Thank you for the interview, Mikhail, and for an opportunity to learn so much.”
“Thank you, too.” Apparently displeased by the change of topic, the astronomer disconnected.
“We’ll be continuing our broadcast. Now it’s time to talk of the economy. The stock price of Sberbank went up when…”
Uninterested in that, I switched to another channel.
Actually, I was more inclined to agree with the anchor than with the astronomer. Of all those global conspiracy theories, none has ever received any reasonable proof. This new theory advanced by a man obsessed with his job sounded even more absurd than all those discussed before.
“More nonsense,” I shook my head. “I’d rather go play.”
“I have to remind you, Viktor, you haven’t called back either Mariya or your mother yet,” the AI said once I headed for the bedroom.
Cursing, I dialed the number. The talk with mom was brief; all she wanted to hear was why I hadn’t been answering. As for Masha, I failed to reach her; her phone was temporarily unavailable. A prick of anxiety prevented me from lying down into the capsule.
“Home. Project the ongoing Starry Sky professional tournaments onto the wall.”
Finding the one I needed, I scrolled through the roster and saw that the current match was between Drones and EVE, the American team.
“Show me the match.”
In a moment, I saw the reason why my girlfriend’s phone was off. She couldn’t be distracted as the teams were engaged in a really fierce fight. Judging by the Drones’ positions, their situation was bad; the opponent had cornered them, threatening their core.
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