Absolute Zero

by Max Lagno

  The man from the past would probably be annoyed that we weren’t so different from him. We were even worse: we lived in grey cities and looked like zombies. He’d lament until he got to the first world. Now those were people living in the future. Surrounded by wonders, nanotechnology, total automation, with advanced medicine and space flight.

  I checked myself. I was procrastinating, putting off my decision: what to do next. What would the Leonarm of my youth do?

  I checked the journal on my tablet. There were two quests: Fair-Haired Beasts and All My Children.

  There was no point in even thinking about shooting tech-support bots. My Reputation was already catastrophically low. That same Reputation prevented me from taking the quest from the bus driver. He’d flat out refuse to talk to me.

  I could go to the Mercurian Planes, start looking for some crap, but... Leonarm wouldn’t have done that. He wasn’t interested in pointless farming, pointlessly finding and bringing and selling.

  I could wander the town, find NPCs, but their quests would be predictable, whereas the puzzle of the driver was something I hadn’t seen before. That quest had brought boosts, experience and valuable items over the course of a mile.

  Ah, yes, I could go and look for the First Mechanodestructor core again, but... the younger Leonarm wouldn’t have done that. Firstly, I’d already done it. Secondly, I had no money for equipment and ammunition. I’d get killed right at the gates, as soon as I got off the bus. And by other players, not even the spiderbots.

  I rose from the bench and headed toward the bus station. Even if the driver wouldn’t talk to me, I should try to fix the situation.

  * * *

  Along the way I felt all the charms of having a big minus to Reputation.

  I passed a Tenshot on the street, decided to go in. Maybe I’d find some minor quests. But the android salesman hurried out and stood in the doorway, showing that he wouldn’t let me in. Two cops appeared as if from nowhere. They waved their batons and followed me for a while, exchanging remarks.

  “Hey, G, you smell that stink?”

  “Yeah, Hugh, it reeks.”

  They laughed behind my back. Then they fell behind.

  A few steps later, a waterfall crashed down on my head. I looked up and saw some housewife laughing from an open window, holding a bucket.

  “Freshen up, you animal!”

  On the other hand, when I walked past some slums where the bandit character types hung around, a few called out to me.

  “Hey, I got a job for you, bro! Hey, waiiit!”

  I stubbornly walked on by. I didn’t want to get involved with that rabble. Of course, it would have helped for a little while. A few raids and robberies, I would have reached level five, got some Reputation in the criminal community, unlocked a few bandit classes, but in the long term it wouldn’t have served me well. I needed to have a good relationship with the authorities. And I had no desire to be a criminal. Not in life and not in the game.

  But the criminals thought differently. A bald one caught up to me. He wore sunglasses, heavy boots and leather jacket over his naked torso. Not a cheap outfit for Rim Zero. An ammunition belt hung across his bare chest, and at his sides were two holsters with Lefaucheux revolvers.

  “Hey, ‘sup with you? Didn’t hear us calling ya?”

  I put my hand into my bag to pull out my tablet, but the bald guy grabbed his revolver.

  “Hold it a sec. My name’s Offo. Who’re you?”

  So he wasn’t an NPC. Those don’t react when you aim your tablet at them to see their stats.

  “As if you don’t know,” I muttered. “I’m sure you read my stats already.”

  Baldy laughed. “Maybe, Leonarm, but don’t fret. I see your Reputation is in the shitter. You’re one of us.”

  “Well, that depends.”

  I regretted leaving my stats open for anyone to read. A frustrating mistake. What should I do? Get into a fight with a well-armed bandit?

  “Me and the brotherhood, we’re looking for more soldiers for the gang. We just so happen to need a tracker.”

  “Good luck to you,” I said.

  “What?” said Offo in surprise. “I don’t get it.”

  “I don’t want to join your gang.”

  “I don’t get it. Why not? You seem pretty determined to come over to the dark side so far. Let’s try one raid at least. I have a quest...” The fearsome Offo’s intonation suddenly became pleading. “I want to level up as a bandit, and to do that I need to complete a quest. I gotta form a gang of a blademaster, a martial artist, a tracker and me, a gunman. And rob some building all together.”

  “Why a tracker?”

  “How should I know? Quest says that. Maybe the tracker has to stand guard. You got good Perception, right?”

  I softened my stance a little. “Who’re you planning to raid?”

  “Whoever, man. We’re going to hit a We Fix It! workshop. Should be a few thousand gold, some gear, weapons.”

  I wanted to wish him luck and move on, but a plan began to form in my mind. It was clear, elegant, unexpected. Just like the Leonarm who was rightfully called a champion.

  “Alright. I have an idea about who we can hit.”

  “Who?”

  “The bus drivers that take players to the Heap.”

  Offo scratched his bald head and whistled. Two other guys joined us. Both were in standard grey vests and pants, only they had backpacks instead of shoulder bags. The first was a man around forty years old, with tired eyes drooping down at the corners as if he was constantly fighting sleep. The second was a woman around thirty, also bald, her face covered in tattoos. She obviously liked to break social norms.

  “My name’s Ghost,” the tired man introduced himself.

  “Banshee,” the woman said, playing with a huge knife. I saw the pommel of a short saber or katana over her shoulder. I didn’t need the tablet to tell me that she was the blademaster.

  “Leonarm thinks we should hit some driver on the route to the Heap.”

  Still twirling her knife, Banshee answered sharply without looking at me. “He’s talkin’ shit. Why would we? I don’t trust this Leonarm.”

  Ghost, whose build wasn’t close to that of a martial artist, agreed. “What do they have for us? Why the fuck would we want a bus?”

  “I’ll tell you,” I said confidently. “The drivers may be NPCs, but they’re very smart. I see you guys are seasoned adamites, true players. Tell me, you ever gone to some zone and found you didn’t have enough space in your backpack? Had to throw out some valuable items to make space for other valuable items?”

  “Sure. I once had to leave a fancy Kalashnikov in the Heap when I found a box of three Salingers.”

  “Right. Then you went back to pick it up and it was gone, right? Even though you hid it well?”

  “Yeah, that happens, but not always. I thought it was because the zone reloads for new players...”

  “Nope. Nothing disappears without a trace in Adam Online, just like in real life. The drivers pick up the stuff we drop.”

  “No way. Why would they?”

  “Why do you think? They resell them to the stores. I saw it myself, a driver who always had a cigar in his mouth, he kept a whole cache of weapons under his seat.”

  Ghost shrugged. “How ‘bout it, guys? Sounds good, low risk. All the workshop owners are armed, and the police patrol regular. We could die raiding them... Before we reach the safehouse...”

  Banshee span her knife even faster, probably leveling up some skill. “I don’t believe it. If the drivers had guns, everyone would know.”

  Piece of work, this girl. I frowned.

  “I didn’t get to the most important part. There’s a bug in this system. The drivers sell loot, but they don’t spend money. They’re NPCs, they don’t have to. They just fulfil two functions: cleaning up zones and putting lost items back into circulation. They keep the cash.

  Offo’s eyes lit up. “If that’s true, then... the drivers must
have saved up millions over all these years!”

  “Nah, bro, just a few hundred thousand,” I corrected him. “Their accounts are reset every time the local CS is updated. The last update was quite a while ago.”

  Offo and Ghost were convinced. They were already getting ready to run to the bus station, but Banshee leapt toward me suddenly, drawing the katana from behind her back. She placed a knife at my stomach and the katana at my throat at the same time. In other words, she was just as flashy and showy as I suspected.

  “Fine,” she said. “Let’s take a run at the driver.”

  “Gotta be a fast run to catch a bus,” Offo laughed.

  “But if you’re trying to trick us,” she pressed the blade harder into my throat, “I’ll cut off your head. Believe me, I’ll do it quick and without warning.”

  I widened my eyes, tried my hardest to look scared. “Why would I lie, Banshee? Look at my Reputation. I’m just like you guys.

  Banshee lowered her weapons and stepped back. “Then let’s go, guys,” I suggested. “I’ll explain the plan on the way.”

  Chapter 27. Three-Ring Circus

  A HUGE WHITE HORSE carried Jamilla along the edge of the bluff. The girl’s thick black hair streamed in the wind, tied up with a blue ribbon. This was the fallen angel skin that the real Jamilla Chang-Balyeva, a sixty-year-old woman from Chinese Kazakhstan, preferred. It had cost a small fortune.

  Even when nobody else was around, Jamilla liked to appear young, stately, beautiful. This skin was marked with Beauty Standard A+ Class, which meant that according to the control systems’ statistics, it was this exact combination of physical characteristics that matched the aesthetic preferences of fifty two percent of Adam Online users that appreciated feminine beauty.

  And fifty two percent was a great deal. After all, more and more adamites had gotten sick of both the opposite gender and their own, and had begun to practice sex with other creatures.

  The horse’s giant hooves knocked down stones, which soundlessly flew downwards. The bottom of the cliff was out of sight, covered in swirling yellow clouds. The heights of the other mountains were also shrouded, either in smoke or in clouds.

  There was no particular need to ride along such a dangerous precipice and risk slipping down, but Jamilla liked to live on the edge. In addition, all her game experience told her that if flying creatures attacked her, it would be easiest to detect their approach from the edge.

  Jamilla, Fallen Angel.

  Class: Blademaster, Healer, Wise One.

  Level: 342.

  The heavy sky, like the ceiling of a stone cave, almost touched Jamilla’s head. Sinister red lightning bolts flashed in breaks in the cloud cover. On occasion a distant roar broke in the distance, and the silhouette of a flying dragon was clearly outlined against a red flash.

  That dragon had been pursuing Jamilla since she entered the unexplored zone of Rim Five. A day ago, maybe? Or more precisely, twenty hours. But the reptile was in no hurry to attack. Perhaps it wasn’t scripted to attack at all, but to wait for the player that would tame it.

  Jamilla’s mighty white horse was covered in laminar armor forged by the master craftsmen of Rim Five. The steed was a unique pet given as a reward for a quest for the king of some country Jamilla found in the unexplored areas of Rim Five. He was fast, tireless and practically invincible. Which meant he could have saved Jamilla even after falling off the cliff. He would have died himself, but the rider would be barely wounded.

  He was called Tulpar.

  The path crossed a huge crack. Jamilla had to ride backwards and spur the horse. He gathered momentum and leapt over the abyss. Jamilla’s cloak flew open in the flight, revealing the black wings folded behind her back. Tulpar landed heavily, throwing up small stones and striking sparks off big ones.

  Of course, the horse’s rear legs had to dramatically begin to slide back into the gap. But he crawled out with his rider.

  Jamilla turned around and saw that the crack was three hundred feet long. Without Tulpar, she would have had to spend a long time finding a way round, or go in a different direction entirely. The unexplored zones were extremely hard to travel. Such flying leaps were one of Tulpar’s skills, but the skill cooldown was two whole hours.

  No sooner had she ridden away from the crack than a paper scroll unrolled before her face.

  Your stubbornness and endurance in overcoming obstacles knows no bounds!

  Pioneer skill increased to level 12: +100 XP.

  Jamilla reined in her horse. She ran her hand over the scroll, folding it. It crumpled and disappeared into thin air. She took a tube out of her shoulder bag and threw it out before her, unfolding it into a map of Adam Online. It looked hand-drawn, not printed or three-dimensional like in the mechanodestructor neurointerface or the human UniSuits.

  At the center of the map was the tiny dot of Rim Zero. Around it was Rim One, Rim Two... Each zone stretched out farther than the last until they reached the gigantic Rim Five, whose outer borders were blank on the map. At the unexplored edges were several zones highlighted green: those were the areas Jamilla had been the first to discover. Each discovery leveled up her Pioneer skill.

  Right now, the borders of a new area flashed with a question mark. Jamilla climbed off Tulpar, took the map hanging in the air and dragged it behind her.

  She sat on a stone and spoke to the horse, “Well, what shall we call these lands?”

  The horse just neighed in response and struck a heavy hoof on the ground, urging her to move on.

  “Call them Jamilla’s Tomb,” someone said.

  Jamilla threw away the map and jumped up, drawing her huge sword. It glowed with energy from damage enchantments. The clouds seemed to thicken. It grew even darker. The enchanted sword shined like a torch. But however much Jamilla looked around, she couldn’t see who had spoken.

  Tulpar neighed in alarm, reared up and then galloped off to the left. Then Jamilla could clearly see a big black cube floating above the ground. She read:

  Grisha, Mechanodestructor.

  Frame: LeCube.

  Guild: Black Wave.

  Level: 268.

  * * *

  Holding her sword in both hands, Jamilla slowly walked around the strange cube. Sparks occasionally fell from the blade. Multicolored lightning flashed in the sky: the cube threw off crooked shadows, first purple, then red, then green.

  Jamilla knew all about the Black Wave. And she’d heard the news that they’d begun an undeclared hunt against players that had decided to explore the undiscovered territories.

  She waved her sword. “So you dispute my right to name these lands?”

  Grisha’s image was projected on one side of the cube. He used his real face, not the head of his mechanodestructor core.

  “Nonsense. On the contrary, I want to help. Jamilla’s Tomb sounds beautiful.”

  “What is that thing on you? What’s this black box?”

  “You’re about to find out.”

  The cube shifted. The horse reacted with an alarmed neigh and tried to strike the cube with its hooves.

  “Calm, Tulpar,” Jamilla ordered. She’d never seen anything like the strange cube. As an experienced player, she knew that when encountering an unknown enemy, you had to give them the chance to attack first, to reveal their capabilities.

  The horse retreated at Jamilla’s order. But the cube, in the meantime, split into four smaller cubes. All displayed Grisha’s face, but now they were arranging themselves around Jamilla in a semicircle.

  “What’s this? Some surreal circus?”

  “The circus hasn’t begun yet,” Grisha answered. “To start, I want to invite you to join our guild.”

  “Firstly, I’ve already had three invites. I rejected them all. Secondly, ‘to start’ what?”

  “You get that I won’t let you go any further.”

  “Everyone gets that. The Black Wave wants to explore the distant lands of Rim Five on its own and move into Rim Six. You’re starting to get
on the wrong side of people. Keep on like this and all the explorers will rise up against you.”

  Grisha’s faces frowned. “So you refuse?”

  “What do you think?”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “Really?” Jamilla laughed. “Maybe you’re the one making a mistake by coming here at your level.”

  The surface of the cube on the extreme left opened up, and a furry bizoid emerged from it, a mix of a bear and a monkey. A strong DNA modification, but no danger to Jamilla.

  “Ta-da,” Grisha said. “The first trick in our show, a bear on a bicycle.”

  “Fine, you brought a friend, but he’s even weaker than you. And I still don’t know why I should be afraid of some dumb black cube. How did you level up at all? Concentrated really hard on being a geometric shape?”

  The surface of the next cube also opened like a bomb hatch, and a fallen angel emerged from it. He held a spear in one hand. Judging by the color, it was enchanted with poison. In his other hand he held a long transparent shield shaped like a droplet of water. The fallen angel spread his black wings, preparing for a fight in which those like him could flutter around, achieving greater freedom of movement.

  “So these are your clowns?” Jamilla asked.

  She saw that the Fallen Angel known as Crusher was just as low in level as the furry bizoid Most Ancient Evil. She’d deal with both of them. She’d have to try, of course, but there was no way she could lose.