by Dante Doom
“Whew!” Sang said as she looked back at the jungle opening behind them. “I can’t believe we made it! We survived that whole stupid jungle!”
“Yeah, that was crazy,” Van replied as he knelt down to tie his boots back up.
“So, next stop, the Cave of Visions, right?” Sang asked.
Van nodded. “Sleep Time’s coming up. After we take a break, we’ll go there.”
Chapter Nineteen
Van could barely hear Sang’s words over the mass of humanity that filled the streets of the kingdom. Verrata was a large, beautiful city full of people, Elves, and treasure. It was the hub of most of the game’s urban adventures, and as Van struggled to avoid getting run over by an excited crowd, he wondered what was going on at this moment. They had reached Verrata without anymore incidents, but judging from the sheer amount of people who were around, something big was going down in the area. It couldn’t possibly be an event, though, as there would have been some kind of a big message to greet players as they entered into the area, and he’d seen nothing of the sort.
The sights were gorgeous, though. The spiraling towers glistened in the sunlight, and the jewels that adorned the towers sparkled in brilliant blues, greens, and reds as the sun continued to move higher into the sky. The city was huge, as it had a NPC population of nearly 20,000, and there were over 2,000 player-owned shops, taverns, and homes. It was the biggest urban location in Dragon Kings of the New World. Van didn’t particularly care for the city, however—primarily because there weren’t that many good, old fashioned, violent adventures. There was a lot of intrigue, which was less his style—political quests and interaction-based quests. The city also had the highest concentration of pro gamers, mainly because politics needed more than an AI in order to be interesting.
“What is all of this nonsense?” Sang asked as she pushed her way through the masses to get to Van. They had been separated by a wave of people pushing through. Again.
“No idea!” Van said. He grabbed one of the players—a tall mage with blonde hair and a droopy blue hat.
“Yo, hey, what’s all this racket about?” Van asked the mage. She giggled and pointed toward the northeast.
“The Cave of Visions has been nuts lately! Players are saying it’s some kind of hidden event, like a secret introduction to the new expansion! They closed the cave down with some kind of barrier, but everyone’s rushing to scour the entire area anyway and find an entrance! Rumor has it that whoever gets in first is going to unlock a special title!” the mage said as she pulled loose from Van’s grasp. “I’m gonna be the first to find it!” she laughed before running back into the crowd.
“Well, crap,” Van said as he looked at the sheer number of people in the midst of the streets. With this much of a player load, there would be zero chance of doing any kind of investigation in secret.
“This isn’t good,” Sang said. “We’re going to have to plan to go in during Sleep Time. No one will be around.”
“We also won’t be around, remember? We’ll have been kicked out,” Van said.
“Did you forget what I do for a living?” Sang asked. “We’ll be in there in no time. Just need to wait for everyone else to go to sleep and then we can scour those caves without a problem.”
Van grimaced. He didn’t particularly like the idea of going into the game during Sleep Time. First off, there was a danger that they’d get caught and then banned from the game, jeopardizing the entire mission. The second danger was if Draco somehow figured out that Van was actually Sivlander playing another character—then, they would ban Sivlander’s account, as well.
“You look worried,” Sang said. “Don’t be. I haven’t been caught yet, and I do it every few days or so. Just to check for glitches at night.”
“Alright, fine,” Van said, sighing heavily as he felt the throngs of people begin to push him backwards due to their sheer mass. A fight had begun to break out between a few players, and they were all busy punching each other in an impromptu melee.
“Okay, we log out, wait for Sleep Time, and log back in,” Van said as he narrowly dodged a player’s dead corpse as it was thrown right at his head. It seemed the City Guard had arrived and was trying to put down what was turning into a full-scale riot.
“Perfect!” Sang said with a grin as she pulled up her menu. “You are going to love the peace and quiet!”
Everything was silent. Van shivered a little as they walked down the empty roads of Verrata. He could see that things were somewhat off. There was a Dwarf walking in the street, yet half of his head was floating a few inches above the rest of him. NPCs were glitching back and forth, blinking in and out of existence. Even the sky itself seemed to be a strange and hazy combination of barcodes, stars, and error messages. Being in the game during Sleep Time was too strange for him. There wasn’t even any kind of background noise, and his own interface barely did anything other than tell him the time.
“Follow me!” Sang said as she continued walking through the streets of the empty city. “The cave isn’t too far away, which is why people have been flocking to it. From what I can tell, it’s actually located in the Royal Park.”
“The Royal Park?” Van repeated, shaking his head. “That’s less than ideal.”
“Why?”
“Well, the park is located in the epicenter of the town, and it tends to be visited by Dragons.”
“So?” Sang scoffed. “The game is closed right now, so we’ll be fine. No Dragons, no players. Just us and the cave.”
Van nodded. His heart rate was a little higher lately, making him more jumpy—he wasn’t sure why, but he felt so nervous about being inside during Sleep Time. He had never broken a game system’s rules before; he wasn’t that kind of a guy, and while it was part of a somewhat noble cause, it still felt a little sketchy to him.
They walked through the still and silent town until they reached the center of the city. There was the big lush park known as the Royal Park, temporary home to many a visiting Dragon dignitary or ambassador. Much to Van’s amusement, he realized that there were no smells, nor was there any feeling of temperature. The game had to reduce all haptic feedback systems during the downtime. It made sense, after all; why use the processing power if no one was around to enjoy it?
“There!” Sang said, pointing to a massive cave. The flickering and spastic words CAVE OF VISIONS were hovering above it. There was a large stone blocking its entrance, however.
“We’re gonna have to figure out a way in there,” Van said as he followed Sang cautiously into the park. There were no Dragons to be found, which was a good thing. It would have been a terrible situation if a Dragon were to show up. It would either report them or devour them, and if a player ever died in Sleep Time, the character they were using would be deleted since there was no legal reason for being inside during Sleep Time. That meant they would have to restart the game all the way from the very beginning, and that would be torture at this point.
“Don’t worry about it!” Sang said as she reached her hands out and waved them around for a moment.
“What are you doing?” Van asked.
“Cheating,” she replied. Her skin suddenly took on a translucent tone. She walked toward the boulder and simply moved right through it, disappearing from sight.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Van called out as he walked up to the stone. He put his hand on it, but felt his fingers go right through. He looked down at his body then, and saw that he was also translucent. “Oh, noclip, I get it,” he mumbled as he floated through the big stone.
Van emerged from the other side of the stone and gasped at what he saw. The cave was sizeable, and there were thousands of bright crystals sticking out of the walls. They were all differently colored and shined in brilliant hues that gave him pause. He stared intently as the lights danced against the cavern walls. One crystal, about eight feet tall, was in the center.
“This is incredible,” he whispered as he watched, nearly hypnotized by the display. He could f
eel a moist, damp air within the cave, and realized that the haptic systems were still functioning at full levels here.
“It is beautiful,” Sang said as she pushed at Van’s shoulder, distracting him from the gloriously brilliant display. “But we’re not here to look at little green crystals; we’re here to find little green men, remember?”
“Oh right, I forgot-, sorry, Scully,” Van replied.
“Why do I have to be Scully? Mulder was the real star,” Sang replied as she poked around, investigating the area. “I mean, Scully literally saw evidence of the supernatural and the strange every single week, and she was still too dumb to figure it out.”
“Wow, so you do watch TV!” Van excitedly cried.
“Yeah, well, how do you think I decided to join the CIA? Originally, I wanted to be in the FBI, but I—” Sang’s words were cut off midsentence as one of the crystals began to shift and move. They both stopped and stared as the large crystal in the center of the room started to warp and contort. It was the same, strange kind of shifting that had happened with the boulder back near the sheriff’s castle. Next, the crystal began to flicker rapidly.
“Someone break the light switch on that thing?” Van asked as the brightness of the illumination overpowered him for a second. It was randomly blinking, dozens upon dozens of times. He put a hand up to shield himself from the overwhelming flickering; this central crystal seemed to be so bright that it was overpowering all of the other crystals.
“Interesting pattern,” Sang said. “I… I think it’s… no, that’s not right.”
“What?”
Sang glanced at Van and then back at the rapidly blinking crystal. “Well, judging from the patterns, um… it’s Morse code. There’s space between some of the blinks, meaning that those are patterns. Definitely Morse code.”
“Can you read it?” Van asked.
“Yeah, just give me a minute,” Sang said as she stared intensely at the blinking lights. “E-A-R-T-H,” she said aloud as she read it. “D-A-N-G-E-R.”
“Of course it would say that,” Van muttered under his breath.
Sang continued watching the lights, reading, and then shook her head. “It’s just repeating those words over and over again.”
Van shrugged. “Well, it’s weird, yeah, but probably just an Easter egg. Not a glitch. I meant, if this was alien contact, wouldn’t they have some other way of communicating?”
“I have no idea,” Sang said. “But let me try something.” She walked over to the crystal and began to tap on it rapidly.
“What are you saying? Tell them we have nukes!” Van joked, leaning back against the cave wall. It was starting to become apparent that this was probably just part of the next expansion, and had nothing to do with aliens. It wasn’t like he’d fully believed in the possibility anyway, but he was open to the idea.
“I’m just spelling out ‘hello.’ Let’s see if it works,” she muttered.
There was a brief moment when all of the lights in the cave went out at once, all of the crystals quitting their glowing, but then all of them began blinking rapidly in the exact same pattern as the big crystal in the middle. Van could also hear that strange shifting noise that he had heard when he’d first seen the glitch a few days ago,
“They’re spelling out… D-R-A-C-O,” Sang said. “Wait! There’s a question mark. They don’t know who we are.”
“Tell them we’re friendly and that we can help them phone home,” Van said, chuckling a little to himself to fight off his nerves; this was as terrifying as it was interesting.
“Friends,” Sang mumbled as she tapped on the crystal. It began to light up rapidly again. She spelled out the meaning again as she read: “K-I-L-L... Wait, that can’t be right.”
“Great, we got the murderous aliens, not the cancer healing kind,” Van said, gripping the darts at his side. He felt really nervous now. It was almost like being in a horror movie—they had just made contact with something, and now it was only a matter of time before that something showed up, angry and violent.
“No, friends,” Sang said, tapping on the crystal again. There was a longer delay this time and then the lights began to flash, now seeming a little more frantic. “Draco… kill,” Sang said. “What?”
“It’s trying to tell us that Draco kills,” Van said. “Which leads me to believe this is probably some kind of stupid Easter egg. It’s probably some kind of joke. There’s that old trope—you die in the game, you die in the real world, and this is probably some kind of trick to scare players or something.
Sang’s face grew dark as she watched more lights flicker. Her eyes darted left and right as if she were getting a large amount of information at once. “What’s it saying?” Van asked.
“Shh,” Sang shushed him as she stared at the flickering patterns of light. She shook her head a few times. “Something’s… something’s not right.”
“Come on, don’t hold back on me, Mulder!” Van said. He could tell that Sang’s face was growing more concerned as she read the message, and he wanted to know what was going on.
“They… they’re watching us, Van,” she said quietly as she turned to look at him. There was a strange mixture of fear and excitement on her face. “They’ve been watching us specifically for all this time. They have a message. We have to bring it back to the CIA.”
“What’s the message?” Van asked.
“It’s encoded—they’re worried about letting Draco know.”
“Wait, so these aliens or whatever don’t like Draco? Why would they be trying to talk through this game then?”
“I’m not sure,” Sang said as she looked at the rapidly blinking lights again. “But it seems that Draco isn’t what it seems. They’re saying a lot more than just a few letters, but some of them don’t make sense. I don’t think these aliens know our language very well.”
“Look, rapidly blinking lights doesn’t mean that these things are aliens,” Van said. “It just means it could be some clever programming having a bit of fun with a secret.”
“No,” Sang said, a few tears showing on her face. She continued to stare at the lights, which themselves continued to blink so quickly. “They’re real. They’re real. I can hear them. In my head.”
“Wait, what?” Van asked, taking a step back from Sang. He had heard that sometimes madness could be a byproduct of using haptic pods too much, but he had always thought that that was just a rumor.
“This pattern—it’s like… I can read the code, but I get this feeling, in my head. Like a voice that isn’t mine. It’s not making a lot of sense, but it… it’s speaking,” Sang said. “I feel it, Van! I feel it!” She staggered backwards a half step.
“Uh, are you okay?” Van asked.
“I don’t… feel…” Sang broke off, collapsing on the floor in a heap.
“Sang! Sang!” Van said as he rushed up to her unconscious body. There was no health bar above her, nor any kind of health indications at all around her. And the lights of the crystals had all stopped flickering immediately, leaving Van in total darkness.
“What’s going on?” Van asked himself as he pulled out his lantern and activated it. The light shone around him, illuminating the cave enough for him to see that Sang was suddenly gone. Had she logged out? He hoped that she had.
Van glanced around the dark room and pondered what he should do. Aliens might or might not exist, and Sang might or might not be nuts, but he was definitely going to get in trouble if he was caught screwing around in the game during Sleep Time.
As he pulled up his log-out bar, a suddenly explosion threw him to the ground. The wall that he had been close to had completely collapsed, and standing in the newly formed hole was a man wearing full plate armor and holding a flaming longsword.
“Hacker!” said a voice that seemed awfully familiar to Van. “I have come so that I may exact vengeance on you for your crimes of infiltrating this game during the sacred hours of rest!”
Van slowly stood up and held his lantern higher. He
could see that it was actually one of his old friends, Trefor. He shuddered once he remembered that, the last time he’d seen Trefor, the paladin had just leveled up to Level 79. This was going to be a quick fight.
“Do you have anything to say to defend yourself?” Trefor asked.
“Uhhhh, yeah. It’s… I’m here… because… crap. Damn it! Trefor, it’s me, Van. Don’t stab me, bro,” Van said in a rush.
He’d panicked and blown his own cover. Great.
“Van? Really? I thought you were in the hospital. Also, why aren’t you Sivlander? And why are you here in Sleep Time?”
“I got out of the hospital because I couldn’t pay for it. I’m not Sivlander because I was hired to escort some snot-nosed brat and she insisted on making new characters... and, uh, she demanded we investigate this area during Sleep Time, and I’m already way behind on my rent, so I figured… You know, what’s the harm?” Van offered. He knew the best way to lie was to mix some truth in. He hoped it was enough to keep the real reason concealed.
“I see,” Trefor said as he sheathed his sword. “Players have been crawling all over this stupid place; I’m killing at least 10 to 15 players during Sleep Time a week, it seems like. I blame the Developers for not just removing this area until it’s patched.”
“Yeah, definitely,” Van said as he glanced at his logout status. For some strange reason, it appeared to be greyed out; there was no way for him to leave the game.
“Well, come on, bozo, let’s get out of here. You’re lucky I’ve been assigned to this area—any other pro player and you’d be skewered immediately.”
“Yeah, and hey, thanks!” Van said as he followed after his friend. Trefor was a pro player, meaning that he’d be reporting to Draco. As long as Van kept his cool, however, he wouldn’t blow his cover. They couldn’t know that the CIA was busy poking around; that would compromise the entire mission. Van checked his message log, hoping to see there was some kind of activity from Sang, but there was nothing. He really hoped that she was okay.