by Matt Ryan
“What I need first is a piece of the Spider Queen’s heart.”
I looked up, thinking a quest would pop up, but it didn’t. “Is that all?”
“No, that is just the start of a long journey.”
Hearing that, I started to regret the fourteen dollars I gave that kid in the Slabs. It sounded as if I might be needing it. “Since we’re working together, can you tell me your name?”
“You can call me Sephorus.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Sephorus, but I sort of need money now, and going on a long journey makes me think I’m not going to get paid for a while. If I’m going to be working for you through the launch of this game, I’m going to need to be compensated, sooner rather than later. I see all the rich people out there, looking confused, I could be cleaning up right now.”
I saw his smile in the shadows of his hood.
“It’s good to be greedy here. Avarice Online, a game so made for greed, they named it as such. Don’t get fooled though, greed isn’t always about money. Greed comes in many forms. Greed for more, because enough is never enough.”
“I do want more. I think we all do.”
“I don’t want you thinking you aren’t going to be compensated for what you’re doing here, so I just wired a grand into your account. Bring me the heart of the Spider Queen, and I will give you another two grand. We will keep going up from there. Sound fair?”
“Are you serious?” My mouth hung open. I’d sold a million in gold for fifty bucks before, or an epic drop for maybe a hundred. Never in my days had I heard of anything such as this. “What could possibly be worth all this money to you?”
“I’m going to tell you a secret about this game. Did you wonder why the money in-game looks like real American money?”
“I just thought they were trying to be cute with it.”
“No, it’s because it is real. This whole game is an experiment for Adam. He’s learning from us.”
“If this is real money,” I pulled out a dollar from inventory, “then why aren’t these players going freaking nuts out there, collecting all the money they can?” Hell, why wasn’t I?
“Because no one knows yet. But in one month, when the game option for transferring all your game money into your real account becomes available, I imagine this place is going to become complete chaos. With money to be earned, it will become a business. The corporate players are going to come in and control this game from then on. I’m not sure what Adam will do at that point, but I know our tasks will be infinitely more difficult once this event takes place. We have to finish this before then.”
A month?
My heart pounded in my chest as my mind raced with the possibilities. The game money was real? I had made millions in other games . . .
“Magoton? You hear me?” Sephorus said.
“No, this is impossible. You’re playing me here.”
He sighed. “This is a game, sure, but it is as serious as any real-life situation you’ve ever put yourself in. If you don’t want to work for me, you can log out now, leave that room, and never look back. But if you stick with me, I can give you a good life—an extraordinary life. By the time we finish the ultimate task, you will be a very rich man.”
“What is the end game here?” I said. “What’s this ultimate task?”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the desk. “There is a central point to everything in this game, a place where they store more money than you could ever spend in a lifetime, and it just so happens to be right here, in this city, in Trinity Hall.”
“You want to rob Trinity Hall?”
“Yes, but they hold a lot more than money in there, something much more valuable.”
“Why aren’t you doing this yourself?”
“I can’t, for reasons I’m not going to get into.” He looked at the ceiling, then continued, a bit more rushed. “We don’t have much time in here. The longer you spend in here, the more likely she’ll notice.”
“Who?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sephorus said, moving to stand.
“No offense, Sephorus, but what’s to stop me from doing this on my own?”
“To truly break into that hall, you need to have both sides of the coin working at the same time. You can only ever see the one side. I can only ever see the other. This room, and other ones like it, are our only place to merge the two worlds. Without each other, we can’t complete the task. There are items in this game that you’re going to give me. With these, only I can create the keys for the locks to open the vaults in Trinity Hall. So, no matter how badass you get in this game, you will never get in there without my help.”
“I want twenty percent of the Trinity Hall money, and a grand a week until I complete this task.”
He laughed. “Agreed, under one condition. You must complete the tasks in the first thirty days, before the greenback apocalypse happens. And don’t tell a single player about the money or the mission. They have people listening at all times, and reporting back. Tell no one. If you need to speak with me again, I’ll be at Bill’s Bar. Use the code word bareback bears, and they will bring you to me.”
“Okay, thanks.” I made mental note of the location and password. “Oh, and how do I get to the Spider Queen?”
“She’s on Spider Island. Not a simple place to visit. You need a permission slip for the ferry from your clan master.”
“I don’t have a clan master,” I said, but Sephorus disappeared.
Should I have asked for more? A thousand a week seemed like a shit ton of money to pay me to play this game. What was in Trinity Hall? What the hell was Trinity Hall?
Alone in the room, the deal I’d just made fell on me like a sack of concrete. I bent over, putting my hands on the table to stop from passing out. I just secured a thousand dollars a week to play this game. He said he already wired a thousand into my account and I would get another two thousand for killing this Spider Queen boss.
Beyond that, there was a vault in this Trinity Hall place that held more money than I could ever spend. The idea overwhelmed me, as fantasies about how much I could spend consumed my brain.
Chapter Nine
I left the room with the heavy burden of knowing something the rest of the world didn’t. I found Gor and KILLian sitting at the bar. They rushed to me once I was spotted.
“Who did you meet? What did they say?” KILLian asked, almost frantic. “What was that about? Did you get a quest?”
“No,” I said.
“You look like you just walked in on your parents doing it,” Gor said. “What’s up?”
“We need to level, and fast.” I wanted to tell them more, as a big smile crept over my face.
“Okay, but what’s with the sudden urge?” KILLian said. “Don’t be holding back on us, Mago.”
“I think we should take a quick break,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m going to log out and put on some of my dope-ass replica armor from Days End, and see if it appears in this game,” Gor said.
“Replica armor?” KILLian said. “How rich are you?”
“Rich enough to be in tier one like you guys. How rich are you Mago? Looks like you just rolled out of a waste-yard this morning. Is that shirt a Voltan?” He smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “I have a friend that only wears that garbage line. Freaking hipsters, no offense.”
“At least he had pants on,” KILLian pointed out.
“Tommy, can we get a room?” I asked the big man.
“Sure, first night’s on me.” Tommy waved us over and we followed him up the stairs and to room 202. He opened the door and gave us a key for the lock.
I plopped down on the bed and started scrolling the menu for the log out option. “How’s one hour sound?” I asked.
“Okay,” Gor said.
“I’m going to look around some. Maybe I can find a killer quest chain while you guys are gone,” KILLian said.
“Okay, but don’t let your real-life body get soiled,” I warned.
“I’ve got that covered,” KILLian said looking at the door.
I wondered why she wasn’t logging out with us, because we’d been playing for hours now. Some games even required you to log out after so many hours, but this one didn’t seem to have any timers built in. I didn’t really need a break, but I had to check my bank account and see if Sephorus was full of shit or not.
“Okay, see you in an hour,” I said, then selected the log out option.
I found myself in my room, sitting on the immersion chair, facing the window. I could have sworn I was facing the wall when I’d logged in. I tore off the gear and ran to the room’s computer terminal to check my account.
Chapter Ten
A thousand dollars.
I stared at the number for a while, expecting it to disappear, but it never did. Sephorus hadn’t been lying. There it was. I finally had some of my own money. I was never going back to the wastes of Slab City. I could make it on my own. Yet, despite the proof in my account, I couldn’t fathom the idea of another thousand the following week—and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Two thousand for killing this Spider Queen. As much as I had in my account, I wanted more.
With money to spend, I rushed to the Gamer Fuel store I saw across the street.
The aisles were clean and stocked full of prepackaged food I’d never had the money to purchase before today. None of them even had government logos on them, or generic descriptions, like Beans or Rice. These were snacks for the well-off people who could afford a bag of Doritos for the hell of it. Food for them wasn’t about sustenance, but pleasure. I’d eaten a few of these delicacies over time, but had never tried most of them. I grabbed the few I didn’t know much about, then a few drinks as well, before I headed to the counter.
As I waited in line, I looked at the nice shirt the guy wore in front of me, and wondered if they sold clothes around here. The stupid rags I wore smelled of the wasteland. Strange, how smells lingered on fabric. I wanted to forget Slab City. Once I got a change of clothes, I planned on burning my current outfit.
Behind the counter stood a rack of shirts. Mostly displaying various games and such, but they looked clean and new. I had an urge to tear off my shirt and put one of those on. Then I felt a tap on my shoulder.
With my hands full and my heart beating with hope, I turned to see Trevor, glaring at me with a bruise under one of his eyes. I might have found some pleasure in the bruise on his face, but the shock of seeing him overwhelmed all the other emotions.
“What are you doing here?” I muttered.
“Me? I heard you went to the wasteland,” Trevor said with a furrowed brow. “What’s a homeless kid like you doing here?”
I tried to think of something on the spot, anything to cover up the fact I was making thousands playing a game. I had the feeling he’d go right to my apartment and take all my gear if he knew what I had. “I—I’m just getting snacks.”
“Snacks.” He eyed the various fancy items in my arms. Then he shook his head, nostrils flaring. “You got hired as well, didn’t you?”
“Hired?”
“Yeah, that dude. Sepho-something. He hired you as well, didn’t he?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb. I got the note in your package, with the crazy high-end BallzD gear in there. Led me straight here, then to that dude in the game.”
“That’s impossible,” I said, feeling the blood draining to my toes.
“I can see by your stupid face you know exactly what and who I’m talking about.”
“You’re in the game?”
“Yep, and if you think you’re going to take away my shot from getting out of Slab City, you better just stop now, because if you get in my way, I will end you, in-game or here.” He pointed at the floor. “That loot is mine. You got it?”
“I’m just playing the game.” The fear and shock of seeing Trevor faded, and my anger built, brick by brick. This scumbag, the one who’d stolen my stuff, the one who was a general asshole for the whole time I resided at Frank’s, was now infringing on my best chance at having a life out of Slab City.
“You know as well as I do the secret in that game. I’m sure you got the same speech from the man in the hood, right? About the money?”
Why didn’t Sephorus mention this? It would have been useful knowledge to know the person I hated more than anyone was playing the same game as me—on the same mission.
“Just stay out of my way,” I threatened, trying to make sure the anger didn’t crack my voice. Oh God, I felt tears building. The last thing in the world I wanted was to have this d-bag see me cry again.
“Me stay out of your way? Dude, you don’t get the stakes here. I will fucking kill you.”
“You can’t do that.”
He leaned in close and whispered, “You really think anyone is going to miss some homeless loser from the Slabs? Who would even come looking for you?”
He slapped the snacks from my hand, sending them to the floor. I swung at him, but missed. Then he slugged me hard, right in the stomach. I went down, just like the sack of potato chips next to me. I struggled to catch my breath and grabbed at my gut, hoping nothing was ruptured.
All I could do was watch as Trevor grabbed a case of Mountain Dew and Energy Jerky, skipped the whole line, and threw a few bills at the counter clerk as he left.
I hoisted myself onto my hands and knees, then slowly made it to my feet, just in time to see Trevor enter the same building I was staying in.
“You need any help, son?” The man in line asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine,” I tried to say, but it came out all husky, and I wasn’t sure if the man even heard me.
“You know, with guys like that, you just need to beat them once and they crumble. Hang in there, kid.” The guy went up and bought a pack of vapor tabs and a can of Volcano.
I got to the counter and placed my goods on it. “Let me get that shirt, the Day’s End one with the Reaper Girl,” I said, but I kept looking back at the door, expecting Trevor to try and finish what he started.
If he did, I already picked out three items near me that I could use to bash in his head. The idea stick would do nicely.
“You know, I can’t have fighting in my store, kid. If I see that kind of stuff again, I’m going to have to ban you.”
I tried to ignore the man behind the counter and paid with my new money. He offered to sell me a bag, but I declined and left the store, items gathered in my arms.
The first thing I did when I got back to my room was send my old shirt down the garbage chute and put on my new one. The fabric felt like nothing I’d ever touched before, and it gave me shivers.
God, I hated Trevor. And now I had to deal with him in-game. My game. He was stupid though. He didn’t know gaming like I did. I could get to Trinity Hall faster than him.
I resisted the urge to jump right back on the rig, and instead went to the computer terminal. I had to see what the rest of the world was saying about Avarice Online.
The forums were going nuts on the subject, and Avarice Online was breaking all kinds of bandwidth records. I searched for in-game videos, but somehow, the game wasn’t allowing it. A work around was surely being developed. Nothing made a coder more excited than a developer saying you couldn’t do something.
Out of all the forums, Realm One stuff was by far the scarcest. There were some discussions about the city, and a bunch of people giving a run down for a quest here or there, but so many of them didn’t line up, it was almost as if each quest was unique. There were a few standard ones, like the deer in trouble, and the gathering of stuff for people, but there were others that came up from people just offering help to NPCs.
The only thing everyone agreed on: the phenomenal depth of the NPCs. One player in Realm One mentioned getting invited to lunch with a family, who then had a picnic with them, talking about how horrible the Spider Queen was and how the price of flowers was getting so high, he couldn’t
even get his wife a decent bouquet for her birthday last week.
I scanned more and more threads, looking for anyone talking about the money. Many thought the game was stupid for choosing American money to represent the world market. They went on about how it would brainwash people into spending real money for in-game purchases they knew were coming. Some took a philosophical dislike, as the game was worldwide and why not use the common digital currency. But most didn’t seem to care one way or the other. It was just a currency you used in-game. One even commented he didn’t care if dicks were currency, causing the discussion to fall into arguments about dick inflation.
The thread devolved even further as it went on, but the result from it all was they had no clue it was real money in their hands. Once they learned this, things would get ugly quick. I killed two people and got $3.32 for the effort. I’m sure the town’s people held more, especially in the merchants’ cash registers. Money was everywhere in the game, and the greed would be rampant.
Maybe that was the reason for the name of the game then? Avarice meant greed. But whose greed, the AI’s or the player’s?
I checked the clock and saw I needed to get back on. I hopped in the chair and logged back in, feeling the bruises Trevor had inflicted just a bit more than before.
Chapter Eleven
The world of Avarice came to life and I realized how much better I felt in this place. It was as if all my senses were heightened. The smells were vibrant. The visuals were crisper. The sounds resonated a bit more in my ears. Maybe it was due to the gear feeding my mind directly, bypassing the barriers of my senses.
I got off the bed and saw KILLian and Gor talking in the corner of the room. “Hey, guys.”
“Hey, Magoton.” KILLian said, and Gor nodded in greeting. “I’ve done some looking around and found a training center. A place where we can pick out main specs.”
“Awesome, what are we waiting for?” I asked. “Oh, I see your clothes trick didn’t work,” I said to Gor, who was wearing pants now, but no armor.