by Evan Klein
“That’s right. Me and my frying pan will be coming along, don’t ya know?” she replied, amusement in her voice.
“But,” I spluttered, “I don’t think a frying pan is going to be much help in a fight” (that was a sentence I never thought I would say in my life).
“Don’t worry about Mother,” Danna said matter of fact. “She is tougher than she looks.”
Mother flexed her muscles and chuckled. Who was she? I activated my True Sight perk and stared at her. All I saw was Name: Mother, Level ***, Class ***. “That shouldn’t be possible,” I heard Angelica state in my head. I think she was going to say more but my stubbornness took over and I tried to see through the asterisks. Extreme pain assaulted my mind. Worse than a migraine. A hundred dwarfs pounding their hammers on the anvil that was now my brain. My eyes burned with pain. I think I lost consciousness for a minute.
“Ahhh!” Angelica whimpered in my head. “She is hurting me.”
“Please stop!” I pled through clenched teeth. The pain finally ceased as quickly as it came.
“If you wanted to see me naked, you should have just asked,” she quipped. “It is rude to look at a lady that way without first asking. How would you like if I did that to you?” Then she leered at me and I felt a tingle in my skull followed by a paranoid sense I was being watched – every secret exposed – every dark and dirty thought brought to the light. The feeling passed and Mother said, “Don’t ya believe the posh the designers tell ya. Your perks as they call them have their limitations, don’t ya know? I wouldn’t ever count on them. If you’re planning to survive here, yee better use what the great designer of the Starborn gave yee. Well, I’m off now. Gonna take a nap and then polish my pan before we’re off.” With that, she walked off into the heart of the village.
How did she know about the game designers? I wondered. And by great designer was she referencing God? It was giving me a headache. However, these thoughts would have to wait as it was time to log off for a few hours before the big battle brewing for tonight. With that I exited the game for the first time.
The transition from village center in full sunlight to my dim living room was startling at first. Next time I needed to leave a window shade open or a lamp on. Several sensations assaulted me at once. My body was stiff from not having moved for the last five hours. I couldn’t imagine how it would feel after twelve straight hours. My clothing was sticking to the chair; my stomach was growling from hunger; and my bladder was about to explode. I got up, took care of my bodily needs, and then ordered some lunch. The vegetable burger and small salad arrived half an hour later thanks to a food delivery drone. The burger tasted like dirt but the doctor had warned me that if didn’t give up the red meat it was just a matter of time before I had another cardiac episode. As I got up from the table to recycle the remnants of my lunch, my knees creaked and my back spasmed. Just my age creeping up on me. Immersed in the game I felt strong and rigorous – now, the return to reality reminded me of the frailty of the human body. I could begin to see the reason players might choose it over the real world.
A moment later the vid screen chimed and Haggerty appeared.
“Hey Hags,” I said.
“So,” he said, “you had a very interesting morning. I watched everything from a view screen from my office. The one named Cali is right. The largest battle The Great Realm has ever seen is scheduled to start in about six months. That cave entrance isn’t supposed to be opened till that time as it is central to the quest. The event is going to be so massive that it will even keep the maxed out characters and the great leagues engaged. Some of them were starting to lose interest because the game didn’t really hold a challenge to them anymore. Fighting a war against demons and other beasts from the old world that are as powerful or if not more so than they are will re-engage them. And high level characters will be offered a one of a kind quest – defeat the Demon King in single combat and be allowed to raise your character above the level one hundred cap – but be defeated by him and lose twenty levels. Many of the great player characters will accept that challenge while others will not risk the twenty levels. Besides them gaining from this war, apothecaries will get rich selling their healing and cure disease spells. The alchemists from their elixirs. Meanwhile the game will collect its percentage.”
“I get it, it is all about the money. As usual. Anyway, so why is the cave open when it is not supposed to be?”
“We aren’t sure. And Shannon was pissed when I told her. Pissed might be too mild. Incensed might sound better. She threatened to fire the entire programming team if they didn’t find out what happened. And now that Starborn and Realmborn alike have seen the cave and heard about it, we can’t simply just close it. At least until we figured out what happened? Shannon is placing a ton of faith in you to deal with the skelters and figure a way to close that cave from the inside.”
“Are you giving me a quest?” I laughed.
“It is what you were hired for,” he said to the point. “And Shannon told me she would be watching, so don’t fuck it up.”
“Thanks for the extra stress there buddy.”
“She also needs you to convince Cali and her siblings to stay quiet about the cave. Offer them incentives if needed – a few extra levels or a magic item – whatever it takes. I will take care of the logistics.”
“Was there a crime committed? The server hacked?” I asked with some concern.
“There might have been,” he replied in all seriousness.
“This isn’t the only glitch you encountered this morning. Mother is,” he hesitated, gathering his thoughts, “an anomaly as well. A ghost in the machine. To be honest, we are not sure what she is or why she is in Freehold?”
“What do you mean? Don’t the designers know?”
“A few months before the game went into beta testing, there was glitch of some kind. The programmers still aren’t sure what happened. One morning the entire mainframe that contains coding for the game shut down and rebooted itself. The programmers and designers were frantic. They thought the coding had been fried and scrambled. Years of work gone. You don’t simply reboot a trillion lines of coding. Anyway, when the system came back on line several days later the game seemed fine. They sent some in house test players into the game to check on in from the inside so to say. They reported that everything seemed normal there as a well. Shannon was furious. This is the culmination of her life’s work and she wanted answer. After several weeks, a programmer did uncover something. There was extra coding in the game – coding they hadn’t written or hadn’t been self-replicating.”
“Self-replicating?” I queried.
“Like I have told you before, Shannon’s Realmborn are real characters. I think you have seen that already from the short time you have been there. Many were created with stock characteristics – the merchant with an inclination towards bartering, a housewife with a husband away fighting in King Trilling’s War, a poor guardsman who is on the take but is basically a decent guy, etc…They were created with a basic back story – memories so to say – and basic traits. However, once they were created they evolved, influenced by their environment. Nurture over nature.
“Evolved?” I mused”
“Like I said, they think they are real. But the self-awareness of artificial intelligence is a philosophical discourse for another day and over a few beers and a cigar.”
“We need to do that one night – a few beers and a cigar. Just don’t tell Amber.”
“Never,” he promised. “Anyway, something was born when the system came back on. Or rather, five things were created – self born – if that makes sense. Five new beings – entities – now existed in The Great Realm that didn’t before the shutdown. Our programmers, after several months, found code buried deep inside other code that showed their existence. Code that couldn’t simply be removed without eradicating a billion or so lines of code. The game would have been set back years. And to make things worse, the code seems to be sentient – or at leas
t has a sense of survival. The programmers couldn’t remove the code but thought that maybe they could poison it so to say.
“A virus?” I asked.
“A virus. A nasty one. Created by former hackers and federal agents who could hack any machine in the world and could let a virus loose anywhere in the Nexus. The virus would only attack the unknown code. Well the code got pissed is the best way to say it. The virus began to work and destroy the unknown code…but it fought back. It sent out its own virus that started eating away at game code. Hundreds of thousands of lines of codes, then a million. It stopped at a million lines exactly as though it had made its points. We had barely done any damage to the unknown code. Eventually our virus would have worked but not without it destroying large swaths of digital code. One hundred square miles of land in the southern continent of The Great Realm simply vanished off the map. Shannon ordered us to stop before irreparable damage was done. So a simple detente has set in. We leave the code alone and it leaves the rest of the game alone. It didn’t seem like it would do anything unless it was attacked so to say. What we were able to do, however, is track where this code was manifesting itself inside the game. And let me tell you what we discovered.”
“Let me guess, Mother,” I said assuredly.
“Mother! And she has four sisters we think.”
“You think?”
“Well we sent spies into the game to track down and observe these woman. There seems to be five of them: Mother, who you already met; Auntie, Daughter, Cousin, and Rose.”
“Rose?” I questioned. “She calls herself Rose. And this Rose if full of thorns that will prick you and spill blood – lots of blood. They are all extremely powerful – their levels can’t even being ascertained as you found out. In fact, you are lucky it was Mother you tried to probe with your perk and not Rose. One spy, and she was a hundredth level mind you, was left blind after she tried to probe Rose’s information. And a permanent blind. No priest or talisman in game could restore the eyesight. Every time our coders tried to fix the hundred or so lines in the game that needed to be overwritten to repair the eye sight, the new code would vanish. They couldn’t restore her avatar’s eyesight. You can’t mess around with a hundredth level character like that. The hell they had to deal with. Anyway, after that they we pretty much left them alone. And the programmers lost track of them. They simply vanished. They couldn’t track them anymore through the coding. However, stories of them pop of from time to time.”
“Are they good or bad?” I asked, concerned about having Mother along with us.
“We aren’t sure,” Haggerty responded. “They created a mythology as you might have heard – May the Five Sister protect us. As far as the Realmborn are concerned the sisters have been around for hundreds of years, protecting The Great Realm, punishing the wicked – some programmers are sure they have influenced some of the great rulers—whispering in their ears. A type of deep state if you are familiar with the concept.”
“I understand. I will be careful around Mother,” I said.
“You need to be,” he responded, “but if the chance comes to get some information about them, we can use it. I fear that a war may need to be engaged against all or some of them and knowledge is power.”
“I will see what I can find out. One last question, and then I have to get ready to log back in. Do the villages of Freehold know who she is? They referred to the sisters several times yet Mother is not treated in any awe from what I can glean.”
“I don’t think they do. Or more likely Mother is preventing them from knowing who she is. They think she is a hedge witch of some kind. It seems like she has been among them for years and they see her as one of their own…just a bit eccentric. But they also know she is very powerful and dangerous. Then again, there are many powerful and dangerous beings and entities in The Great Realm. And it is good to have one on your side! It is good she is coming with you. Just be careful. And make sure you figure out a way to wipe out the skelters, close the cave entrance, and keep the three siblings quiet.”
“Is that it?” I retorted, wondering for a moment what had I gotten myself into.
Chapter 9: Warband
When I logged back into the game, I stood by a small stone pool in the middle of Freehold. The residents seemed unfazed by Starborn suddenly materializing in front of them from some other planet, or plane of existence, or other place – whatever they considered our world to be. Immortal or not, they certainly did not see the Starborn as gods or goddesses. The village was hopping with the residents erecting additional defensive measure should our plan fail and the skelters attack them. Other villagers, under the keen eyes of Hearn, were carefully loading two pack horses with the special treat that I had planned for our undead adversaries.
The Realmborn must have some sort of sixth sense, because ten seconds after I spawned, Danna made her way out of the inn and walked towards me with a group of four young men and a woman following. Three of them had the blondest hair I had ever seen: One with a mane of thick blond hair pulled back in a ponytail; another with blond tresses hanging down to the butt; and the final one with short, cropped blond hair.
“As agreed upon, Freehold will provide your raid party with a group of warriors and archers from the town militia. Hearn and Mother will also accompany yee. Giving yee seven members in total. A fateful number. I fear to give yee more lest we keep Freehold undermanned, especially since some of our kinfolk are still recovering from wounds from this morning’s attack. But Hearn and Mother are more than formidable. And the three Starborn, Cali, Flora and Jarrell have proven to be trustworthy allies as well. Aye, along with the raid party of the orcs and yee plan yee just might win the night.”
None of the five volunteers were of all that high level – and they were all below the level of the skelters that we faced. Of course, at a mere level three, I was lower level than all of them so who was I to speak. The simple problem was that Freehold was considered a starter village – and as such the villagers and beasts around it would be of similar strength as they were. The skelter force was never expected to be taken on by low level Realmborn and Starborn, but by an experienced group of adventurers. Nevertheless, we would have to work with who we had – my low level, noob self included. And I hoped my plan would help to even the odds. Hearn and the three siblings – Cali, Flora and Jarrell – would definitely help for certain, especially since they provided some fire power. I had tried to convince Cali to invite some other Starborn to join in. But her “Hell no! We aint telling no one about this!” put the kibosh on that plan. She really wanted to keep the cave hidden as long as possible. Which was actually good since Haggerty had given me the mission to have the siblings keep knowledge of the cave a secret. They planned to adventure just in Wilderbrook for now and to hone their powers, and I was certain I could persuade them to take the gifts (sounded so much better than bribes) that the corporation was offering for their silence.
Danna was also hesitant to provide anymore forces in case the orcs conducted a surprise attack when they knew the village would be undermanned. I couldn’t argue with her logic.
I took a cursory look at the stats of my new companions:
Fenil, Human, Archer, Level 7
Tenil, Human, Archer, Level 7
Gemil, Human, Militia Guard, Level 8
Febus, Human, Militia Guard, Level 8
Young Lucious, Sentinel, Level 9
The five introduced themselves. The three blonds – Fenil, Tenil and Gemil – were fraternal triplets of all things. I spent the next several minutes trying to dissuade all three of them from coming on this expedition. I kept remembering war stories of old when five or six brothers went off to France or some such place to fight in War World II and none of them ever returned home. I didn’t like the idea that a family’s lineage could be wiped out in one battle. I was really starting to see the Realmborn as flesh and blood beings and not just advanced binary code. All three were dressed similarly, in light leather armor; two carried large com
pound bows while a long sword hung from the hip of the last. The one named Gemil just said quite simply, “There are twelve of us. Our lineage will endure.” The two other just nodded in agreement and thus ended the argument.
“And mother and father are planning on another twelve,” the one named Tenil chimed in.
Febus appeared more like a librarian than part of a militia. He was short and slight of build. He wore heavy leather armor. A kite shield hung from his back and a short sword hung from a scabbard on his hip. Rumor was he was quite deadly with the short sword.
The last of our five compatriots was Young Lucious whom Danna had spoken about earlier. The pale outline of a scar ran along his cheek which just seemed to add character to his countenance. And he was handsome. Chiseled arms. Perfect nose. Not one strand of his raven black hair stood out of place. He must have placed a large number of his attribute points (if the Realmborn did such a thing) into his Allure. I could see why the girls fawned over him. Gleaming chain mail hung down over his torso. He had no shield but instead a long dagger hung down one hip and a long sword down the other. He had not joined the four others but hung back with two of the town girls who hung on him like adoring groupies.
“I whilst return once the foul beasts that dost threaten our humble village are hewed down like the oaks for the winter wood,” he said with power in his voice.
“You are so brave,” one of the town girls cooed.
“Save us from this wickedness,” a different girl said “and you can have any reward you desire.”
“My stout companions and I will set forth upon these dark roads plagued with monsters from nightmare. Our hearts and courage shall not waiver but shall endure like the steadfast mountain peaks that have endured a millennia of storms. Our swords and magics will smite down these demons and once more the fair ladies of Freehold will be able to sleep peacefully with dreams of Lucious on their minds.” He placed a single gentle kiss, first on one of the maiden’s lips and then the other, and then the young man sauntered off towards us. The other four companions just shook their heads. Tenil, not only shook her head, but audibly huffed in indignation.