Solarversia: The Year Long Game

by Mr Toby Downton

  As well as appearing in profile squares, shortcodes were also the license plate numbers on each of a player's three vehicles: their car, boat and plane. There had been thousands of models to choose from, and millions of ways to customise them. Nova adored her vehicles — she’d modified them to look like something from the set of Tron — and loved the way they glistened and rotated in 3D on the left-hand side of her profile square.

  As she approached her square it turned transparent to reveal a cubic room with walls made of swirling yellow plasma, and a floor and ceiling as black as the night. This was her Corona Cube, the place that she would start in the world of Solarversia whenever she logged on from that moment forward, and her exit point whenever she wanted to log out.

  The black ceiling displayed two constellations: portals to parts of Solarversia. One was named ‘Castalia’ and led back the way she had come, into the Magisterial Chamber of the flying palace. The other was named ‘Solarversia’ and led to the Gameworld, which was modelled on the Solar System. Nova looked up to the Solarversia constellation and traced her finger over its constituent stars.

  As she touched the last one a harmonious jingle sounded, and three objects, recognised by people the world over, appeared floating in the centre of the room: a rock, some paper and a pair of scissors.

  A datafeed appeared in her display, informing her that she’d been matched against player number 38,043,551, JoLem from Poland. She was about to find out whether of hours of strategising were going to pay off. A fifteen second countdown began. Those who let it count down to zero would automatically forfeit the game. "Paper," she announced, annoyed by the doubt she could hear in her voice.

  She winced as the result flashed on the screen: “Scissors beats paper. Winner: JoLem.” Losing players were matched against each other after a twenty second delay. It took her five attempts in total, winning with scissors, against the paper of a Chinese player. She took her headset off, twitched her nose like a rabbit, and swept her long hair behind her ears.

  "Finally. Thought I was going to be here all night."

  “Told you scissors would win. Mum does know best occasionally.”

  Nova bit her tongue. Annoyingly, her mum had suggested scissors earlier in the evening, but there no point arguing about it now. She replaced the headset to find that her victory had caused the floor she was standing on to give way. She fell into a winding tunnel, illuminated by the occasional spotlight, until eventually she popped out of the end, her arms and legs flailing as she fell two storeys to a crash pad on the ground. Her headset flashed a message: "Welcome to Alpha Island. Population 543,286.”

  Looking up, she noticed hundreds of entwined tubes like the one she’d emerged from. Castalia seemed to have grown player-spitting dreadlocks. As she glanced around, datafeeds were overlaid on the objects she looked at. Castalia was revealed to be floating a kilometre overhead, and was still populated with several million people. When she looked at another player, a feed appeared above their head, displaying their profile information. She only needed to glance at a building or a landmark in the distance to be told how far away it was, and how long it would take her to reach it.

  For now, she wanted to get her bearings. Players seemed to be heading in the same direction — toward a signpost. She stared at it and said "Lock on to target: Run." The signpost was taller than a triple-decker bus and surrounded by scores of other players who were either babbling to each other about the various destinations, or taking selfies in front of it. Nailed to the post at head height was a sign that said ‘Out of Order’.

  “How can a signpost be out of order? Are the directions wrong?” her mum asked.

  “Nope. Signposts double as teleport machines, except they won’t start working until the Teleport Quest has been completed. It’s the machine that’s out of order, not the signs.”

  She tried to find a destination whose name she recognised. The Forest of Fun — 1 km, Conga World — 5 km, The Travelling Circus of Nakk-oo — 3,213 km. The closest location, only a hundred metres away, was the Fire Demon's Obstacle Course. She locked on.

  ***

  Nova had completed the Blazing Balls and the Scorching Skyscraper obstacles without incident. Now she stood motionless, eyes locked with a Luminous Lavadile. She exhaled slowly and edged forward. Still no movement from the beast. It opened its mouth and emitted a long, deep growl. Another step, this one bigger. Her eyes darted from the lavadile to the side of the fire pit it guarded. Could she make it?

  Three or so metres to go. Flames licked the side of the beast’s head and she could have sworn it just moved toward her. This was it. No more time for pussyfooting. She stepped onto her right foot and launched herself forward as far as possible. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the thing make its move. She landed on the bank inches from the molten lava and scrambled up the side as fast as she could. Behind her she heard a whooshing sound and then a snap.

  She rolled onto her back and saw that the powerful jaws had clamped round her left foot. A glistening globule of molten lava trickled down one of its teeth and landed on her leg. It made a gentle hiss as it burned through the fabric of her trousers. Damn thing, get off already. Her health score, displayed in the top right of her visor, ticked down a second time. The snap of the jaw had cost her eight points, the globule a further five. She was already down to 87 health points and The Game had only just begun.

  Not the start she'd hoped for. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a long piece of flint. She grabbed it, sat forward and rammed the sharp end into the creature’s eye. It released her leg in an instant and plunged back into the lava, powered by its strong tail.

  She made it to the top of the pit and turned to take in the scene. There were several hundred other players navigating the fiery assault course. To her left, less than thirty feet away, a guy was in serious trouble. A lavadile, longer than hers, had fastened its jaws around his legs. He thrashed around, trying to break free from its clutches as it pulled him ever closer to the red-hot bath. His arms spasmed with pain as it finally dragged him under. An even worse start than hers.

  She arrived at the last obstacle, Nico’s Nets, feeling out of breath, though she hadn’t moved from the sofa all night. Virtual worlds could do strange things to the brain. She pinged Burner and Sushi to compare notes. They were further ahead and had managed to retain perfect health scores. How did that happen? Although Sushi and Burner were respectable gamers in their own right, they weren’t in Nova’s league, not close. She gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate.

  Nico’s Nets were stretched across a path — all players needed to do was crawl beneath them to cross it. On the other side, a finishing line displayed a count of people who had completed the obstacle course — over forty thousand — and also a count of people who had lost a life tackling it — nearly three thousand. She did her best to put thoughts of death out of her mind and to remain calm.

  The netting was plumbed in to the lava pit. An old man dressed in rags stood at the side and worked a brass stopcock covered in valves. He pointed at Nova and laughed. “Dare ye cross Nico’s Nets? If ye’s feeling cold, Nico will warm ye up.” He scowled and turned one of the valves to release several gallons of lava into the front section of hollow netting. A Dutch guy, halfway through, turned and screamed. Nova saw his health score decrease from one hundred to zero in the space of a few seconds. His avatar flashed a few times before disappearing. “Nico warmed that gentleman up, though some might say a bit too much. Who’s next?”

  The mechanics of the game were obvious — when the nets were blue, they were safe to crawl under; when they were red, lava coursed through them. She watched a few more people attempt it, trying to discern any patterns or tricks. It took her a couple of minutes to work out a plan. She crawled halfway and paused. It looked safe — but she knew better than to continue. As expected, the old man turned the rusty valve on the far side of the stopcock. The netting in front of her turned red while Nico taunted some new arrivals behind her.
When the netting ahead changed back to blue she scrambled like mad, and got through unscathed.

  Just beyond the finishing line was a cube the size of her dad’s shed. The sides looked like they were on fire. It was a Corona Cube, like the one she had entered back in Castalia. Cubes like it were scattered all over Solarversia and acted as safe houses that avatars could stay in when players wanted to log out. While she was there, nobody could do her wrong.

  She stood in front of the cube and chewed on her lip. It had been such a long day, and after a couple of glasses of cider, she felt a bit dreamy. But it pained her to know that Burner and Sushi were further ahead than she was. And she wanted to pick up Flynn already. She volleyed her display back to the lounge for a second. Her mum had fallen asleep in her chair; her dad must have gone to bed.

  Volleying back to Solarversia, she walked up to the cube and passed straight through one of its faces as it turned transparent, content to have completed the obstacle course. This was a year-long game, not a piddly game of Monopoly. A marathon, not a sprint.

  Up in her room, Nova got into bed and lay awake for a while. Fragments of Solarversia were juxtaposed with pieces of reality. The gooey purple mess in the centre of the Magisterial Chamber was supposed to be the Emperor? She’d already lost a handful of health points? Images flickered in her mind: the flying palace, the lavadile snapping at her foot, her revision books.

  The last image wouldn’t budge. She only had three months until her exams, the ones that would determine the university she went to. If she made the grades she needed. They were exams that would affect the entire course her life, or so her teachers kept telling her. And now she knew something to be true, something she had hoped for, and dreaded, in equal measure. Solarversia was as addictive as she’d thought it would be.

  Chapter Five

  Nova hadn’t eaten breakfast cereal in years, but she’d persuaded her mum to buy the box on the kitchen table because of the tie-in with Solarversia. It was corporate sponsorship deals like this that had enabled The Game to be offered for free. Companies had been given the opportunity to sponsor Gameworld quests, at a price determined by the quest’s size, location and importance.

  When asked in a poll, the majority of players had confirmed that the corporate sponsorship model was the preferred form of monetisation, over alternatives like ‘pay-to-play’. Some companies had even won plaudits for the creative way in which they’d showcased their products and services in VR, and had plans to replicate them in the real world.

  The company that made Flakeroonies had sponsored a large quest aboard the International Space Station, and their cereal boxes had reflected a space theme for the last few months. Prodding at the soggy flakes with her spoon, one leg hugged to her chest, Nova found her mind was still occupied with thoughts of the night before.

  How would she find enough time for revision? She should breeze psychology, her best subject by far. But sociology and English? Not so much. She’d probably do what she always did — wing it — and without trying too hard, scrape into Hull University. But she never felt she’d had much chance of getting into Nottingham, where Burner was hoping to join his brother, Jono, and it was looking even less likely now The Game had begun. The truth was, revision held very little appeal compared to the excitement of the virtual world.

  She flicked her Booners down and looked at the cereal packet. Flakes started to rise out of it as if magically unbound from gravity. When she touched them with her spoon they floated across the kitchen toward the fridge. If she flicked them they popped. Those she didn’t jab, flick, poke or in some manner interfere with landed on the kitchen table, which, to Nova, looked like the cratered surface of the Moon.

  An arkwini in a spacesuit poked his helmet round the side of the packet, twitched his little chimp nose a couple of times like he was sniffing out danger, and then scampered out from behind it, followed by several others. Each arkwini held a garden implement of sorts — a rake, hoe or mechanical blower — that they used to gather the fallen flakes into piles.

  When the piles had grown large enough, another arkwini appeared, pushing a wheelbarrow, which he used to transport the flakes to the futuristic conveyor belt illustrated on the side on the box. He emptied the flakes onto the belt, which transported them to a fish tank where they were devoured by a twelve-armed octopus. Her goggles had transformed the kitchen table, and the objects on it, into a moving, living scene. This was augmented reality, a halfway house between boring, everyday consensual reality and the wild, anything-goes virtual kind.

  Mr Negrahnu stood in the doorway, paper in hand, shaking his head while he observed his daughter prodding thin air and muttering to herself. “You do realise, love, that you’re sitting there, talking to a box of cereal?”

  Nova volleyed an eye back to the kitchen. “Morning, Dad. Floating Flakeroonies. I’m helping the arkwinis feed Banjax, the dodectopus. He gets hungry.”

  “Right. Course he does. Sorry to have interrupted you hard at work.”

  She flashed him a snarky smile. People who stuck with consensual reality through choice were either weird or old. Usually both.

  “Feeding this Tampax creature, it counts towards your grades, does it?”

  She had to force herself not to snap back at him. “We agreed that I could do what I want this weekend. My birthday, the start of Solarversia, remember? You just wait ’til Monday. My books won’t know what hit ’em.”

  “You’ve seen this lot, I expect?” He gestured towards the TV. “That’s what happens when people lose their jobs.”

  On the news, clips released by a terrorist organisation known as the Holy Order were playing. Footage of workers on assembly lines was spliced with scenes of robots doing similar work. Graphs displayed exponential increases in computing power, electronic memory, data transmission speeds, and a whole host of other variables over the last fifty years.

  An image of a book entitled The Sacred Singularity appeared on the screen. Released by the Order a few months ago, it detailed their beliefs about artificial superintelligence: that it was on its way, that an ‘unfriendly’ version would spell the end of humanity and that the ‘friendly’ version they were working to develop would change everything for the better. Their manifesto made clear that everyone needed to join them in their endeavour, or face the consequences. No other method of evangelism was as compelling as bombs or guns, they claimed.

  “You’re not suggesting they’re right?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything. People lose jobs to robots and artificial what-nots, which means they can’t support their families, so they get angry. As for this lot, God knows what they’re harping on about with their ‘singularity’. All this change is driving people mad. They don’t know who they are any more. Without work to do they’re losing their identities. That’s all I’m saying.”

  After working for twenty-three years at the local medical centre, Mr Negrahnu had been made redundant. In all that time he’d never called in sick, and had only been off twice for compassionate leave, a day each for his parents’ funerals. He’d been looking forward to the carriage clock employees got after twenty-five years. Not so much for the clock itself, but rather what it represented — his years of loyal service. Instead, he’d received fifteen minutes in a room with a new area head, half his age, and a stern-looking woman from HR. His job — to analyse scan results and medical images — could now be performed by an artificially intelligent program at a third of the cost.

  “You know they’re threatening to blow entire companies sky-high?” Nova asked.

  “I don’t agree with terrorism. I’m just saying that this is a direct consequence of millions of jobs being flushed down the bog.” He shook his head, put his newspaper down on the table and ruffled her hair.

  “Ugh, Dad, mind my barnet.” She smoothed her hair back down and jabbed at another Flakeroony, which began to drift lazily, like a snowflake, onto the table. She watched it melt into the surface of the newspaper, which was open on the jobs
’ page. One or two ads had been circled in red pen; others had asterisks next to them. She read down the list. These were jobs way beneath her dad’s abilities, jobs he never would have applied for earlier in his life.

  The salaries advertised here didn’t come close to what he’d been earning as a medical researcher. And he was a proud man. Everything he did, he did for the family, for her. And what did she know, at her age, having never had a proper job, not one that needed to support a family, nor one that had been replaced by a few lines of code? She averted her gaze, feeling like a spoilt child.

  Her headset flashed with a message from Burner, “At Fragging Hell, where are you? Already rammed. Not many spaces left.”

  She flipped her Booners up and took her bowl of cereal to the sink. Now that was a better thought than these real-world concerns. Solarversia was calling.

  ***

  “Are you ready, furball? Fragging Hell, here we come.”

  The furball was stowed in the passenger footwell of Nova’s car, playing with the discarded plastic shell of a Kinder Surprise toy. He looked at Nova and made a clicking sound with his tongue. His name was Zhang, and her parents had given him to her on her 17th birthday. The tag on his ear identified him as a first generation Electropet, one modelled on the ring-tailed lemur.

  Electropets were animatronic toys, designed to provide companionship to adults and children alike. Their features and movements were so realistic that it was hard to tell them apart from the real thing. At least, it was from a distance. Up close their mechanical joints were visible through their coats, as were their orange eyes, which doubled as cameras, and the tags on their ears.