Absolute Zero

by Max Lagno

  “Doesn’t the story of the world have to be the same for all players?”

  “The storyline is the same: we have to find the core and bring it to our employer, discovering on the way that the mechanodestructors are the descendants of an alien civilization. All the options invariably lead to that fact. The different options are added for variety. Instead of a locked door, we might have found a forcefield that we’d need to disable by finding a generator. Or we might need to find a way through the ventilation system, or another way through the ship’s sewage system. There are lots of variants.”

  “Alright, but how do we open this variant of the door?”

  I examined the huge space of the cargo department. There wasn’t enough light from the open airlock to show what hid in the dark corners. The nose of a small shuttle stuck out on our right. On the left were containers marked with alien text. I pointed at the containers with my pistol.

  “I bet there’s an alien corpse somewhere over there with the activation key on it. Come on, I’ll go right, you go left.”

  “What if there’s no corpse?”

  “Then the key will just be lying around somewhere. Trust me, all you have to do is show your willingness to understand the world. The CSes will put the key where it needs to be, you won’t miss it.”

  Amy walked into the darkness between the crates. I headed for the shuttle. I put my hand against the lock and the door lifted up silently. A red light blinked in the cabin, revealing a mess and signs of a fight. There were scratches on the walls and burns from a laser gun.

  If you believed the legend that the alien ship crashed a hundred years ago, you might wonder why the red light was still blinking. But I know that as soon as I asked myself that question and started to look for the reason that several of the ship’s systems still functioned, I’d find that the starship’s reactor was still working and powering them. Or some sort of quantum-positron tank. Or a Calabi-Yau space generator. Or some other pseudo-scientific sci-fi bullshit.

  A trail of dried blood led from the shuttle door to the door of the pilot’s cabin. It disappeared into the darkness beyond the red light. I checked a box on the wall. I’d hoped to find an alien flashlight in it. Those were useful for dungeons: they worked for a few days, then all they needed was half an hour to recover. But the box was empty.

  There was a time when I’d have celebrated increased difficulty, but right now I had no time for games. The CSes weren’t in a hurry. They could generate infinite plot branches. But I had no desire to wander through them.

  I even felt a desire to ignore the mysterious blood trail, but I hoped to find something...

  I took out my lighter and, stepping carefully, walked into the darkness. In the flickering light of the lighter I saw the twisted corpse of a humanoid on the floor. The remains of a torn spacesuit covered its fine bony limbs. The head looked at me: huge slanting eye sockets, a sharp chin, a small mouth. The CSes used all the dramatic touches and compositional flair they had to make it as creepy as possible.

  I carelessly moved the corpse with my foot, expecting some sort of parasite to crawl out of it and jump at my face. But nothing like that happened. Too predictable?

  I crouched down and pulled the heavy corpse closer. My intuition hadn’t let me down: the dried-out long fingers gripped a laser rifle. Just what I needed.

  * * *

  Amy and I got back to where we’d started our search at the same time. Amy held the arm of a humanoid with a bracelet on it.

  “I couldn’t take it off, I had to cut it... What did you find?”

  “An alien energy rifle. It’s weak, but it has infinite ammo. It takes energy from the air by transmuting nitrogen isotopes. Nonsense in real life, but it’ll do for Adam.”

  We reached the door.

  “Do you always live in the past?” Amy asked.

  “Meaning?”

  “Well, you’re always comparing reality and Adam Online as if it’s so different, or as if it’s important to you to point out that difference.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “The only difference is that you remember that you’re lying in a taharration pod. You remember that there’s some real reality. If the moment of moving to the virtual world wasn’t so clear, you wouldn’t notice any differences between the real world and this collective fantasy, as you call it.”

  “But I do remember, and I know about the differences.”

  “Don’t you see, dumbass? Reality is what other people have been telling us since childhood. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t know what’s real and what’s not. We wouldn’t split our lives into reality and virtual reality.”

  “I’m not convinced. There are so many flaws and mistakes in your logic that I don’t even know where to begin correcting you.”

  “You don’t have to correct me. The reality that exists beyond the pod is a deception that humanity hands down from generation to generation.”

  I looked at the girl in amazement. “What’s gotten you all philosophical?”

  Amy shook her head as if trying to snap herself out of something. “Nothing, it’s just... I’m afraid of the dark. So I started thinking while I was looking for the key.”

  “There are lots of dark corners in the spaceship’s corridors. You aren’t going to philosophize every time, are you?”

  Amy placed the cut-off arm on the door. It screeched and squeaked, then opened halfway and jammed.

  I crouched down and crawled to the other side first. Amy crouched down too, holding the arm with the bracelet between her knees.

  She looked at the spiderbots crowding the airlock entrance. “Are they not coming with us?”

  “As you can see, the spiderbots can’t come onto the ship.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “If you want to waste some time, you’ll find an explanation in some log on an alien computer. It’ll say that the ship’s security system stops all external mechanisms from functioning. Or we’ll run into another dead scientist that was supposedly researching the mystery of the spaceship before us and discovered that the spiderbots are remnants of the ship’s security system that rebelled against the central computer, took on a primitive consciousness and somehow managed to live in the Heap. It all depends on which story we’re most likely to believe. The CSes just want to weave our emotional investment into the storyline.”

  “See ya, Swirl the Second.” Amy waved the severed limb. “I’ll be back soon, don’t go anywhere.”

  She crawled to my side and we moved along the tubular corridor. Illuminated lines stretched out along the floor and ceiling. They often went out, plunging us into total darkness, then came back on again.

  I raised my alien rifle and pulled the lever on its side. A green stripe lit up on top of it, showing it was ready to fire.

  “Get ready, Amy. We’re going to have to shoot a lot.”

  “At who?”

  “We’re about to find out. Could be alien mutants, or people turned into monsters by some unknown pathogen, or any number of other things.”

  The corridor forked off to the right and left. Both branches led to locked doors. And on the wall hung the second alien corpse, nailed to it by something like a long, crooked claw.

  The dead humanoid had nothing valuable on it, but the claw itself was no simple object. I read the description on my tablet:

  Knowledge. The unusual claw of an alien creature, a rare collectible.

  Unknown property (requires Knowledge 10).

  I had to give this one to Amy too, increasing my Open Book.

  “I think you’ll get all the rare collectibles you need on this spaceship. Keep an eye out.”

  The light blinked again, interrupting my words. Both from the left and right, I heard a hard knocking sound... Claws scrabbling over metal! Both doors opened by themselves, revealing a dark emptiness. After a dramatic pause, several creatures rushed out of the darkness. Their short front legs ended in large claws. They reminded me of women in stiletto high-heels. Th
e creatures were somehow able to crawl along the smooth concave walls of the corridor, sticking to the ceiling. A couple had already climbed up and were preparing to attack us from above.

  Amy and I stood with our backs to each other. “Remember, when you see a creature with outstanding design features, those very features will be its weakness,” I warned her.

  “Meaning?”

  “Shoot off their legs, it’ll slow them down.”

  To confirm my words, I shot at the nearest monster. The rifle’s beam cut off a taloned leg. The creature itself fell from the ceiling and ran off into the darkness. A few more appeared to replace it.

  Amy and I got to work.

  * * *

  Since my rifle was more effective than Amy’s revolver, I had to turn from time to time to help the girl shoot the monsters emerging from the doors on her side. Then turn back to my own door, then back to hers again. I was fighting on two fronts.

  Amy herself shot more accurately than before. It was easier at close range. I even managed to shoot off two clawed legs in one shot. Deprived of its weapons, the monster rolled toward me on pure inertia, trying to grab me with the stubs of its legs. Paying it no attention, I continued to shoot the monsters coming out of the Darkness. Then, when things got a little easier, I finished off the one wriggling around at my feet.

  The attack lasted a long time, but we shot around a dozen monsters. The floor before us was covered in corpses and severed limbs. Some stirred weakly, scratching the floor with their claws.

  The doors closed and didn’t open again.

  “Ugh,” Amy said, emptying the shells from her revolver. “I need a rifle like yours.”

  “We need to search in small rooms like armories. Or root around in dark corners to find a humanoid corpse.”

  After reloading, we moved toward the door on the left. As I expected, both doors led into a large room. At the center was a bar of energy confined in a transparent column. The column first lit up, lighting the distant corners of the room, then went out, but never fully.

  I took out my tablet and aimed it at the light.

  Knowledge. An unknown construction of alien design. Maybe it’s for making food?

  Two more unknown properties (requires Knowledge 5).

  “Amy, I don’t have enough Knowledge.”

  The girl took out her tablet and read aloud. “A power core for performing hyperquantum jumps. Required for space travel. But as for how it works... I don’t know. You have to be a scientist. And have at least ten Knowledge.”

  “I thought so. We’re in the engine compartment. That means we need to go to the other end of the ship, to the bridge. The core is probably there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Life experience.”

  “Wait, don’t we need to look for something valuable here?”

  I moved toward the far door. “I wouldn’t waste the time. Do you want to be a scientist? Want to craft weapons or devices? Want to explore space?”

  “No. I want to be a super, you know that.”

  “The spaceship in the Heap is designed for people leveling up those skills. Like, decipher an alien language and find out how a fake hyperdrive works. There’s no point looking for anything here. There’s nothing useful for either of us. You might get some diagrams for assembling a primitive laser pistol. Or the coordinates of another crashed spaceship somewhere in Rim Zero. After searching for a long time, you’ll unlock some scenario which tells you there’s some infinite war going on in the universe, and these aliens came to Earth to share the secret of interstellar travel, but their enemies shot them down. A pointless story, in other words. If you level up Space Explorer, you’ll become the captain of an intergalactic cruiser and fight in a boring war and trade stuff. Only instead of stores, there’ll be planets with monotonous landscapes and monstrous aliens.”

  Amy hurried after me. “That’s right. I just remembered about Hyperion City in Rim Four. It has a spaceport and the Space Marine Academy.”

  “It still exists?” I asked in surprise.

  “Yes, but it isn’t very popular.”

  “It was the same in my day. Not many wanted to spend time learning how to build a spaceship and all its upgrades. Nobody likes space sims.”

  Amy nodded thoughtfully. “Hmm, you’re right, only one guy from my class wanted to be a space explorer. And he ended up becoming a space marine.”

  “The entry threshold is too high. And for anyone who wants to be a space marine and kill monsters on unknown planets, they can always do it without a bunch of boring physics study. To be honest, that would have been boring even to me, a former nerd.”

  We reached the door. Amy placed the severed hand against it. The door opened with a screech, revealing another round corridor. A shadow flickered along the wall, and I heard scratching and growling.

  Amy raised her pistol, but I stopped her. “If the corridor looks as if something is just about to attack you from around a corner, that means they won’t attack.”

  “When will they attack?”

  “When it looks quiet and peaceful. All these shadows and noises are psychological warfare.”

  “Fuck, Leonarm, you’ve told me so much about Adam Online that I’m not sure I’ll be able to ever come back.”

  “What do you do in real life?”

  Amy went quiet. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I understand. Reality is grey and dumb.”

  We walked to the end of the corridor. The rustling, growling and scratching of claws along the floor accompanied us to the next door. Behind it was an unexpectedly well-lit room. It was full of tables and sofas, their absurd shape showing their alien origins. Music was playing. Along the walls were screens with changing images of extraterrestrial landscapes. Some tables held unusually shaped glasses and pitchers.

  We stopped.

  “Hmm, it’s very quiet and peaceful here,” Amy said.

  Chapter 17. Non-Game Character

  THE FLOOR SHOOK. A bulge appeared in the wall from a hit from the other side — something big had struck it. The bulge got bigger, then broke. A monster flew into the room. It had the same clawed legs as the last monsters, but was twice the size. It opened its round mouth, roared and fired several spear-like claws toward us. We barely managed to take cover behind the nearest sofa. One crooked spear pierced the sofa, the point coming through between Amy and me.

  “Well, what are your orders, commander? It’s some kind of... Clawthrower!”

  “Let me think. While we’re in cover... We need to try and flank the clawthrower. Maybe this species’ weakness is in its back?”

  “Oh!” Amy screamed.

  She fell onto her back and shot into the air several times. It turned out that the clawthrower decided not to wait for my orders. It had crawled onto the ceiling and was firing at us. A stockade of crooked spears grew around our cover. But one of them still struck me in the left leg, pinning me to the floor. Why had I even bothered raising my Luck?

  I wrenched myself free, pressed a button on my rifle and held it until the green stripe turned blue. That showed that the next shot would be powerful, but then the weapon would take two minutes to recharge.

  As soon as I aimed, the clawthrower dropped from the ceiling and vanished into the hole in the wall. The blinding blue beam from my rifle hit the spot where he’d just been. A wave of hot air hit us. It crackled with electricity and smelled of heated metal. Drops of molten metal splattered the sofa, burning round even holes in it.

  “Oh!” Amy cried again. One of the drops had landed on her head and left a trail of scorched purple hair.

  The spot that my rifle’s beam hit sparked and burned for a few more seconds. Amy peeked out carefully.

  “It isn’t coming back.”

  “Smart bastard,” I said. “He hid to restore his supply of throwing claws.”

  I pulled the claw out of my leg. I felt no pain. I realized why: a loss of sensation was a sign of poison. I grabbed my tablet.
/>   Something has poisoned you.

  -1 to all stats.

  The effect of this unknown poison will increase by 10% every 30 minutes, continuing to reduce your Strength and Stamina.

  You must find an antidote as soon as possible.

  Under this was a previous message:

  Energy Weapons skill learned.

  Pew-pew-pew! Burn enemies with lasers, cook them with plasma, incinerate them with Tesla coils, blow them up with magnetron cannons. Discover the rich world of energy. But first, at least learn to keep your eyes open when you fire.

  After injecting myself and bandaging my wound, I rose, keeping hold of the claw that I’d pulled from my leg.

  Amy was already keeping watch on the hole in the wall. “How long do you think it’ll take the clawthrower to recover?”

  “Not long, I think. I’ve never seen that monster before, but there are similar creatures in the swamps of Rim Two.”

  I approached Amy, sensing that my Speed had reduced significantly. I moved as if underwater or as if I’d just left stasis: slowly and sluggishly. My body couldn’t keep up with my thoughts.

  Amy scratched the end of her nose with her revolver barrel. “What do we do now?”

  “If we go straight, the clawthrower will shoot us as if he’s playing a corridor shooter. He’s probably set up shop around a corner in the corridor.”

  “So we’ll find a way round?”

  “Yeah. But first, we need more firepower. Your revolver is completely useless in here.”

  Amy noticed that I was holding the claw. “Another rare collectible?”

  I put the claw in my backpack. “I need to synthesize an antidote, and for that I need to keep some source material.”

  “How do we synthesize it?”

  “In some lab on the ship... I hope.”

  “What if there isn’t one?”

  “There has to be.”