by Max Lagno
“But why did you kill your brother?”
“His core was damaged. He couldn’t move on his own. Better I get the experience from killing him than you.”
“Little early to celebrate. I’ll easily catch up to you, pipsqueak.”
“Good luck, Leonarm,” Fortunado continued. “I don’t know who put a price on your head. But since the client gave us a nuclear bomb, you can come to your own conclusions.” “A nuclear... What?”
A flash of white light filled the air. I had just enough time to notice a mushroom cloud rising behind my back, where the mechanodestructors’ frames had been left behind. Next I heard a mighty roar, and then darkness fell, with hundreds of scrolling lines:
Fortunado (Mechanodestructor Core) killed Leonarm (Human) using the 2.9 kiloton Big Pulowski atomic bomb.
The unfortunate facts followed:
Damage taken: -12,120,000.
Attention: you died in Rim Zero.
Penalties for dying in a low-level zone:
-50% to all achievements.
-75% capital.
Your new level: 161.
Not the end of the world. I could get back to level three hundred in two or three months. But a new message appeared:
Attention: the Big Pulowski nuclear bomb is a weapon of absolute destruction. You did not survive the explosion. All your achievements have been reset, all your skills have been reset, all your stats...
Little early to celebrate. I’d forgotten that the default Adam Online interface had an awful feature: it showed all messages, even those that had lost all meaning due to following messages.
“I got it, I got it!” I shouted helplessly into the darkness.
How would you rate your gaming experience?
(All data are processed and stored in accordance with the rule Processing Confidential Data in Virtual Reality Extranet Systems adopted by the UN in 2099. Article 3, Paragraph 14-2. Please contact support if you have any questions).
������
I pressed five stars just to get the message out of the way.
The darkness faded. The sensation of a weightless body returned. All the parts of the neural interface that Leonarm’s UniSuit generated had disappeared. Gravity kicked in, and I fell into the center of a bright square.
Another second and I stood on the dusty stones of Town Zero’s central square.
I wore a standard grey vest and jeans. I had a ten-shot Glock X5 in a holster and a knife at my belt. A lighter and a paper map in my left pocket. In my hands were three booklets: “Guidebook on Rim Zero of the Adam Online Universe”, an advert for the Tenshot weapon store, and “Adam Online Version 101.45 Update Information”.
I had a small uncomfortable bag on my shoulder. In it was a tablet, a flat box of rounds and a Small Medkit.
The standard set of the new character. But no: the tablet in my bag showed a series of new notifications. New characters don’t usually get anything like that.
Chapter 6. All and Nothing
I TOOK THE TABLET out of the bag. I also found the nametag of the bot I’d killed and the booklets that I’d received when I logged in to Adam Online. If things kept going like this, my bag would fill up with garbage.
A green indicator flashed on the tablet, and the dark screen showed a deliberately pixelated message: “New Achievement.” I pressed the on button and waited for Leonarm’s stats to load.
Using a tablet as the game interface was the heavy burden of every beginner. That was why those that wanted to level up a soldier made it their first concern to upgrade the interface. They at least upgraded from the tablet to augmented reality points. The end goal, of course, was to equip yourself with the same neurointerface that Leonarm had.
I read:
Achievement: All and Nothing.
You have lost everything. You are at absolute zero. You are nobody. You had the luck of being in the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, Leonarm. To ease your task of full suicide from Adam Online, you have been given a complimentary Glock. Your choice: a bullet in the head or a new fight for the top of the leaderboard.
Obtained:
Complimentary Glock X5 pistol.
Radiation Resistance skill (level 1).
“I was there first” vest.
500 g.
I dragged the icon of the vest onto myself. Instead of a simple grey vest bearing a small Adam Online logo, I saw myself wearing a black vest with an image of a nuclear explosion and the phrase “I was there first.” It gave no bonuses and was designed a “Collectible Rarity”. It wasn’t worth much, somewhere around three thousand five hundred gold.
I opened the Weaponry tab. The tablet did its job of loading the data painfully slowly. I’d have to get used to its built-in lag:
Complimentary Glock X5 pistol.
A pistol that everyone has.
Ammunition: 10 mm round.
Magazine: 15 shots.
Damage: 40.
Rate of fire: 0.6.
Scatter: 0.5.
Weight: 2.
Value: 8,000 g.
Attention: you received this weapon as an achievement reward. Selling or losing the weapon will lower your Reputation by 1.
A great starter weapon. Compared to the default Glock, it held five more rounds in its magazine. It had heightened accuracy due to its low scatter. I drew the weapon from my holster and examined it. The handle was engraved: “Leonarm, for insanity and courage.”
I could get a bunch of money for it, but selling it would lower my Reputation.
Alright, onto real problems. Or virtual ones. I was stilling standing in Town Zero’s central square. It was a clear midday. The sun burned down on my head. A short blue shadow fell from the respawn tower.
Characters kept appearing all around me: some had only just logged into the game, others were respawning after dying during missions.
Little mechanodestructor cores scurried around my feet. Beginner angels fluttered a few feet above the ground. They looked like translucent figurines of little naked humans with wings.
The level one bizoids just looked like big clumps of white slime. They moved slowly, like legless cripples, tentacle-shaped growths emerging from their bodies. I wondered which advantages the bizoid species offered for people to be willing to play them. The mere sight of them turned my stomach.
Androids began the game in the form of pale, thin creatures. Their long arms hung at their sides, and they wore no clothing. This caused no embarrassment: they were genderless creatures. They had identical rounded pubic mounds instead of genitals. The lack of sex and any sensation at all from narcotics or food was the race’s main disadvantage, and what drove most players away from it.
On the other hand, high-level androids could install a Humanity Chip in their heads that allowed them to experience all the joys available to humanity, but at half the strength. The Humanity Chip also unlocked the Transformation process. Artificial hair could be grown on the android’s bald head, and it could take on secondary sex characteristics: barely noticeable breasts or an even less noticeable penis. Androgynous nature allowed no choice between genders, so androids had to get breasts and a penis at the same time. Also, androids couldn’t kill anyone, neither directly nor indirectly, which many would see as too negative a quality. In exchange, androids had almost an instantaneous learning ability, which was reflected in the fact that all their achievements and points were doubled, and in some skills even tripled. All they had to do was complete a couple of missions in Rim Zero to level up to five and go to Rim One. The real game started there, at One.
Humans, men and women, appeared in identical grey vests, with identical bags on their shoulders. They grabbed their tablets and aimed them at each other, or at objects, reading their characteristics. Some focused on my expensive vest and nodded respectfully. Many moved to the side, sitting on stone benches arranged around the edge of the area in several rows, and immersed themselves in their tablets, distributing stat points.
Time for me to do
the same.
* * *
The system had already distributed all available points among my stats, all I had to do was press confirm. But the default values aren’t my style. I had to figure out my strategy. I reset all the points and thought:
Leonarm, Human.
Class: not chosen.
Level: 0.
I opened the list of classes and scrolled to Tracker. My task was to find the Mentors, right? And find Nelly Valeeva, find an answer to the question — how did they manage to escape informational entropy?
Class: Tracker.
Your step is swift, your gaze sharp, and your movements accurate. You are a tracker.
You are capable of seeing more details in the environment. To others, trampled grass may just be trampled grass, but to you, it is a clear track left by a person. But not you.
The tracker leaves no tracks.
Attention, this class requires: Strength of at least 3 (distributed automatically).
Perception of at least 5 (distributed automatically).
Agility of at least 4 (distributed automatically).
Knowledge of at least 2 (distributed automatically).
Rifles and Shotguns skill (selected automatically, 1 free skill remaining).
On the other hand, Stalker isn’t a bad class either. But best to be a Tracker at first. Most of the Stalker skills wouldn’t be available at low level. Although... Who knows what could have changed in all these years? I opened the Stalker sheet to check:
Class: Stalker.
You are the lone explorer of numerous zones. You heal radiation wounds with vodka and feed only on canned meat. Your backpack will hold a ton of one and a ton of the other. Unfussy and low-maintenance, you survive where the bizoid insects perish, the androids break down, and the mechanodestructors’ electronics fail to withstand the anomalies’ influence.
Your philosophy is simple: if it’s day, there’s food. What else do you need at night by the fire, when the crackle of the Geiger counter mixes with the crackle of burning logs? Except a guitar for a good song...
Attention, this class requires: Perception of at least 8 (distributed automatically).
Agility of at least 8 (distributed automatically).
Knowledge of at least 4 (distributed automatically).
Strength of at least 8 (not enough points! Need 28. You cannot select this class).
Ooh, stricter than it was. The Stalker class was probably still one of the ‘easy’ classes. Everyone wanted to pick it, messing up the game balance. After selecting Tracker, I had five points left, and Leonarm’s stats looked like this:
Strength: 3.
Perception: 5.
Agility: 4.
Knowledge: 2.
Health: 1.
Luck: 1.
Knowledge was a strange and undefined stat in Adam Online.
Olga, being a fanatic adamite, read materials on the history of its creation. I learned from Olga that a long time ago, when gyrorbs had just been released in the virtual world, this stat was called Intellect.
The invention of taharration changed the fundamentals of character control. You became the character. The game character’s Intellect stopped influencing anything.
After all, people in a virtual world have their own intellect. It could not be modified by anything in the virtual world. A character’s body could change as much as you wanted, changing the signals sent to the digitized brain. You couldn’t forcibly write the ability to shoot, play the violin or successfully perform all the Kama Sutra poses into the binary array of the human consciousness. All you could do was give the virtual body more strength to lower spread when firing. Or more agility to move the bow faster. Or more health to complete all the sexual poses in one sex act.
The control systems could change only what they created: the parameters of weaponry, zone physics and item characteristics. This created equality between players. If you were a crack shot in real life, then in Adam, your knowledge didn’t exactly disappear, but was corrected by the guns. You could aim as well as you liked, but your accuracy would be the same as that shown in your character sheet. The weapons behaved accordingly. Low skill meant fewer hits. The fact that you could wing a fly in real life didn’t matter.
Knowledge was the main stat for people who wanted to craft their own weapons, equipment and other items. I usually put a few points into Knowledge when starting a character. But now I doubted myself. Did I really need it in the low levels? Fast leveling seemed more important right now, and Knowledge leveled up more slowly than anything else.
But that didn’t mean I’d completely ignore the stat. Leveling it up unlocked complex armaments and UniSuit upgrades. Just right now, in the very beginning, Knowledge could be neglected.
I put all five points into Health, increasing it to six. I didn’t have to worry about the spiderbots at Mechanodestructor Heap killing me in the first few hits now.
I chose Automatic Weapons as my next skill, which included the Uzi machine pistol that I liked so much. I liked the fact that it had such a high rate of fire at a low level. It gave the enemy’s Armor no time to recover.
I got the Tenshot Weapons Store booklet out of my bag and found the Uzi. I didn’t delve into the upgrades yet. I made sure it was for sale in Rim Zero stores.
I decided that I’d limit Leonarm’s leveling to firearms. Energy weapons were expensive and slow. When I played for myself, that’s what I chose, but right now I didn’t have the time. I wasn’t playing for myself, I was playing for my country.
Actually, for all mankind.
I rose from the bench. I pressed Apply Changes on the tablet. The surrounding world froze for a couple of seconds, me along with it. Everything began to move again. I stopped feeling the weight of my bag and holster. My increased Strength was working.
“Shit! Shit Shiiit!” I heard next to me.
A girl appeared in the square. She wore a torn light armored vest on top of the standard vest. She held a Lefaucheux revolver, smoke still rising from the barrel.
“Shit fuck,” the girl summarized.
She opened the cylinder and shook out the smoking shells.
* * *
I didn’t have to look at her with the tablet to recognize Amy McDonald. I’d seen her from above when I was controlling the angel.
“You won’t survive a spiderbot ambush with gear like that,” I said.
“Fuck! How do you know where I was?”
“I guessed.”
“And what am I supposed to do, since you’re so clever, dickhead?”
“Stop swearing for one thing.”
“Fuck off, bitch.”
Amy haughtily walked by me. She stopped and turned:
“Sorry, I was an angel for so long that I really missed swearing.”
I looked at the girl. Like everyone in Rim Zero, she had a real appearance, slightly embellished by the control systems. For example, all blemishes like moles, pimples and scars had been removed from her skin. Changing your appearance completely was a perk reserved for players over level thirty. In the initial levels, only cosmetic corrections were possible: hair and eye color, skin tone. And three hairstyles to choose from. Long, short and bald. Everything else cost money. And not in-game gold, but real dollars and cents that had to be sent to the provider before immersion in the pod.
I didn’t know how bizoids could be changed. The number of tentacles, the color of the slime they left behind?
Amy had short hair dyed to a lilac color. Her face was round, with a sharp chin. She cast an appraising gaze on me as well:
“Awesome vest. That from the nuke mentioned on the radio?”
“Probably,” I answered evasively.
“Where’d you get it?”
“It’s second-hand.”
“Liar.”
“Of course I’m lying, Amy McDonald.”
“How do you know my name?” she sounded surprised as I hadn’t pointed a tablet at her.
She took her own tablet out of her bag
. It was already upgraded with Processing Speed, shown by the large fan in the casing, lit with a lilac LED, the same color as her hair. She aimed it at me:
“Uh, Leonarm. So many Leonarms now, damn.”
“Want to complete the Heap together?”
“There’ll be less experience that way.”
“I’m at level one, every little helps. And for you, it’s a chance to finally get to level five.”
She thought a little. “No, f-f-fu... Not worth it for me. I have an awesome revolver, armor, a tablet with an upgraded personal helper. I even have a backpack instead of a bag. I mean fuck, all you have is a cool vest. You’ll be killed at the entrance.”
I pointed to the graphic of the nuclear explosion on my vest. “Look, I was at the epicenter. I can deal with spiderbots.”
She twigged it right away. “A hidden achievement, right? Awesome. Which?”
“Not telling. So are we going or what?”
“Alright. But don’t expect me to sacrifice myself to protect you. Dickhead.”
Why did I invite her along?
“Sonny,” Makarov had said to me. “You’re a former champion in the game, right? So please, act like a normal player. Socialize, accept duels and join groups. Your behavior shouldn’t differ from that of other players.”
Of course, the Major General hadn’t given me any instructions on how to behave after losing a character. Such a scenario probably wasn’t even considered. Who could have known that top players would attack me? And in the sandbox, no less!
In other words, if I had to socialize, then why not start right away?
Chapter 7. Collapse Shmollapse