A New Start

by Morris Fenris

  I threw my hands up in a useless protective gesture, was too pinned down to do anything else. There came a high-pitched whoosh above me and I closed my eyes, awaiting the release of the white tunnel with equal parts relief and dread…

  But it didn’t come, and instead I felt the weight of the orc fall from the lower half of my body. Laying there, unsure whether to open my eyes, my memory recalled a sound that had followed the whoosh, something which I had initially missed in the moment of impending death. Something like a loud crunch. Opening my eyes, the last of the blurriness from my facial trauma clearing, I saw Ailyss stood above me, grinning wildly, with the crystalline head of her staff dripping blood; the orc was dead on the floor beside me.

  “Jesus Christ, I love you!” I said.

  “Maybe later,” she said back, as coolly as any movie star.

  I struggled to my feet, retrieving my sword as she pulled me towards the other two and we formed a tight circle, facing our attackers. I saw Teini lying dead nearby, four orc bodies sprawled around him. There were only four more orcs left – we had acquitted ourselves well – but now the remaining goblins had caught up and we were again outnumbered about four-to-one, this time with our two best fighters already slain.

  A strange, surreal few moments followed as the orcs and goblins behaved in a way I had never seen NPCs behave before. For one thing, many of them looked tired, and they paced somewhat aimlessly, encircling us as they did so. I wasn’t sure whether it was wariness, respect or what, but for maybe thirty seconds both groups just watched each other. I found myself feeling a strange empathy for these leathery-skinned creatures who had been trying to kill us: We had been trying to kill them too, and it now seemed to me that trying to kill each other bred a certain feeling of closeness.

  They had never mentioned that in the pre-game briefings. Good versus evil, light versus dark; the whole point of it was a war with clearly defined borders. Surely a regard for the enemy was not supposed to be a part of the gaming experience, nor a part of the programming? But here we were, regarding each other.

  There was a blur somewhere to my left – something dark flying through the air. Mysteriously, two of the goblins at the opposite side of the group suddenly flew hard backwards into their friends as the dark shape landed on the back of one of the orcs. Turning to see more clearly, I saw the orc collapse under the weight of a huge spider on its back, eliciting a blood curdling scream as Fes withdraw his fangs and turned to find another victim.

  We didn’t let Fes’ surprise attack go to waste, and all reacted faster than any of our opponents. Ailyss even had time to use a scaled-down, quicker-casting version of the spell she had used earlier to blast ice across the three goblins in front me, and I leapt at them, slashing and hacking for all I was worth.

  All I could hear was screaming from behind me. Most of it sounded orc or goblin, but I recognised Gwilin as he yelled out a number of curses before suddenly going silent. That was our next best fighter down.

  The whole thing was kind of a blur – and not just because of the bang I’d got on the head. It was a bit like walking home on a rainy, windy day when you’ve still several kilometres to go, yet your legs are aching with tiredness - you sort of just put your head down and concentrate on the space in front of you. And then, when you get home, you know that you walked along all those streets and crossed all those roads, passing all those landmarks, but you can’t actually remember doing any of it, not specifically.

  That’s a bit what the fight was like. All of a sudden – or so it seemed – just myself, Ailyss and Fes were stood in the pass and we were surrounded by bodies. All that I remembered was a succession of faces in front of mine and then shooting down the final few as they tried to flee. Now it was silent in the pass save for the moaning coming from Ivran, the priest character, and the faint noise of the battle still raging outside Naulaeg, some way below us.

  Ailyss went over to Ivran, but I could see straight away that his wounds were probably beyond the scope of her magical healing abilities – the guy had been virtually cut in two. Fes was wounded too, having suffered several stab wounds as well as having one of his anterior legs severed about two thirds of the way up.

  “Do spider’s legs grow back?” I called out to Ailyss.

  “Um… dunno. Might depend on the species, or something.”

  “Or the programming,” I remarked, placing a hand carefully on one of Fes’ complete legs. “Thanks for coming back, pal.” He had been like something out of a nightmare for the orcs and goblins; for us, more like an angel delivering hope on a celestial beam. As I tried to figure out whether any of his eight eyes were looking at me, I thought about how our reaction to appearances really depends upon the situation and, as Ailyss did the kind thing and assisted whoever it was that played Ivran back to Cymbo, I wondered what that undeniably attractive, big-eyed little halfling looked like in real life. Then I pushed the thought away again – we were in CyberV and such things didn’t matter here.

  “We should get going,” I said, “before more come.”

  “Agreed,” Ailyss replied, getting up from next to Ivran. “But what way shall we head? Any direct routes back to the Fold are sure to be well guarded.”

  I shrugged as she came over to stand beside myself and Fes. Then a memory came back to me. “You know what,” I said, “I’ve just remembered something.”

  “What?”

  “I levelled up in the middle of that fight; I’m level 7 now.”

  Ailyss gave a small huff of laughter, but she didn’t look all that amused. Her eyes did another quick sweep of the carnage around us. “Congratulations. I think that’s going to be our only bit of good news for a while.”

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  I could tell you all about the adventures that Ailyss, Fes and I had in CyberV from then on, but that’s a whole other story and would take us even further away from the point than we’ve already roamed. Suffice it to say that I didn’t have to make any more visits back to Cymbo and that all three of us reached the dizzying heights of level 25 before our time there was up.

  But there is one more little scene in CyberV that would be of benefit to our little story; so we’ll jump forward eighteen months and I’ll take you to the end of the world:

  ****

  The three of us sat on the top of a mountain. In CyberV, the region was called Supali; but, as the world of CyberV was based largely on our own planet Earth, (though only actually about a tenth of the size), we were essentially looking down from the summit of Mount Everest.

  Ailyss was now such a powerful witch that she had merely teleported us all up from the bottom. We had planned this in advance, having made the decision more than a month ago about where we wanted to be at the end, and were a little surprised that we were the only ones up there. Wrapped in warm clothes and one of Ailyss’ spells, we watched the myriad points of light in the sky above as they grew slowly larger.

  This was the end of a three year experiment – CyberV’s first full-scale trial and the culmination of many billions of euros worth of investment. Europe’s answer to its population problems.

  In the next few years after this, the game’s popularity would explode and there would be numerous spin-offs to cater to all of the people’s different tastes in fantasy living: Futuristic worlds, historical worlds from various periods, gothic and noirish, takes on our own time and, for the truly down to earth, a carbon copy of the one we knew – maybe for those investment bankers who fancied having a go at being a bum.

  But here we were at the end of the beginning. I had enrolled in the programme the very next morning after humiliating myself with Nat in the High Street Complex. At 9am on New Year’s Day, the lid of my capsule sealing shut with a hydraulic hiss, I had watched what they called a ‘hibernation catalyst’ flow through the tube and into my arm, having happily signed three years of my life away to living in a machine.

  I could have signed up for much less – six months was available on this pilo
t game, but as CyberV grew and more versions came out, they were soon offering two week holidays as a cheap way to spend your annual leave. And it wasn’t like you were trapped there, either; people could leave via Cymbo at any time they wished, (after at least ten ‘Are you sures?’ from a system administrator). Of course, if you were in the game and there weren’t any handy monsters to oblige... well, I saw people commit, as it were, or get their companions to help them out. Needless to say, they changed the exit system on later versions.

  But the longer you were in, the more rehab you would need before rejoining society when you came out, so either way it was certainly a commitment. And I know three years away from the world seems an overreaction to being rejected by a woman I didn’t even really know that well, but the truth was that the whole affair just helped make up a mind that was already teetering on the edge of making good its escape.

  People talk about getting yourself a life, but in the real world that is often a lot harder than in an artificial one. And when the artificial one feels as real as life and proves so much more rewarding, then I ask you, what the hell is the difference?

  Love, you say? Children, family and all that stuff. An only child, my father was dead, my mother waiting for permission to emigrate to Australia. Although not in the original pilot game, you could even have children in CyberV; and, in a desperately overpopulated world, kids that take up a bit of memory on a server somewhere seem a whole lot more practical than ones that eat and shit, use resources and bleed you dry for eighteen years before fucking off to live with their druggie boyfriend to raise their own violent, anti-social children, who will probably mug you for your pension and leave you to die in the street. Yeah, some life this real one.

  And anyway, I had found love, right there in CyberV.

  “So, who are you?” asked Ailyss.

  “Still Frinn,” I replied, a little confused by the question.

  “No, I mean... really?”

  ****

  We had first made love in a cave maybe a hundred and fifty kilometres east of Naulaeg, eight days after the failed raid. Every attempt we had made to turn southwards and back towards North Fold had led either to discovery and pursuit, or a retracing of our steps to avoid said discovery. And, pushed ever further into a barren and hostile land – something not too unlike the pictures you see of Mars – we were weak from hunger, represented by a dull, slightly nauseous ache in our stomachs, hadn’t drunk anything for a day and were really starting to suffer the effects of night after night spent with little or no shelter.

  The cave was halfway up a small mountain and faced the prevailing wind, but it was deep enough to negate the lighter gusts and had walls damp enough to go some way towards alleviating our thirst. But, more than anything, it was better than the tiny crevice or exposed overhang that we’d had each night for the last week.

  Where we had talked a lot in our first few days together, in order to keep up our spirits, though the drudgery of our slowly worsening circumstances had put paid to that fairly soon. The wind had been blowing a driving gale this particular day, whipping grit and dirt into our eyes, drying our skin and making the going three times as hard. After sucking moisture from the walls of the cave like leeches finding their first meal in a month, we had collapsed near each other on the hard floor.

  Ailyss had almost immediately entered a state of half sleep and lay there shivering, but seemingly oblivious to it. I crawled across and put my blanket around her as well, pulling her tiny body closer to mine for warmth. She came to as I settled again and stared up at me groggily.

  “We could be somewhere else now, warm, living our other lives,” she said sleepily. “We could be watching a movie and eating chocolate, thinking about something we have to do at work tomorrow.”

  “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be now than here with you and Fes,” I said with surprising, heart-on-my-sleeve honesty. We were silent a moment, then I added, with a rueful laugh, “So how sad a human being am I?”

  “You’re not a sad human, you’re a special one. Meant for big stories and greater things. That’s why you’re here; that’s why we're both here.”

  “Not because we’re running away from lives that we completely failed at?”

  “Maybe it’s life that failed us. No room for heroes and adventure in modern Europe. Nothing individual that can’t be labelled and categorised.” She buried her face in my chest and squeezed me tightly, giving a small shiver as she did so. “No place for dreamers.”

  We stayed like that for a few moments, then she brought her head away from my chest again and pulled herself up so that our faces were close.

  “So let’s never talk about those old lives again,” she said. “Let’s start again right here. Where we really belong.”

  And then I had sex for the first time in about six years on a cold stone floor, with a woman less than half my size and a giant spider watching us. It was wonderful.

  ****

  Okay, it was two more scenes... pedant.

  What? No it wasn’t weird making love to a halfing. It was fine.

  Huh...?

  ...I’m not even going to dignify that with a reply.

  ****

  “But what about what you said?”

  We had kept our promise to start again and had carried on getting to know each other and falling in love for the next eighteen months as if we were two people without any sort of past.

  “Our world is about to end, silly,” she chided me. “And... and I’m not sure I’m ready to let you go.”

  I looked back up at the shower of planet-killing meteors (or possibly asteroids, I always get them confused) that were coming to destroy our world, unsure of how I felt about this unexpected development. The meteors seemed to be moving incredibly slowly, as if they could hardly be bothered to come and destroy us at all; yet, in reality (as it were), they were moving at thousands – possibly tens of thousands – of kilometres per hour. It was just over ten minutes until zero hour, so I didn’t have very long to sort my feelings out.

  “You see, Ailyss, it’s like this...

  “The last eighteen months have been the best of my life. Hands down; no contest. I’ve fought dragons on the edge of a volcano, I’ve been part of waging a holy war against evil, I’ve had a giant spider for a companion and I’ve... I’ve had you for a lover and a friend.

  “But when this is all over, I’ll be going back to the same crappy life as before. Everything will be different out there. And any part of this that we take back with us... it’ll be ruined by association to the shitty thing that is real life.

  “But while it stays here... well, while it stays here it will always stay a part of this untouchable legend. While you stay here, you’ll always be the love of my life.”

  I felt something lift from me as I finished, and realised that I had, in fact, been carrying that conversation in my head for a while. Ailyss said nothing and looked back up to the approaching meteors – now appearing as more substantial orbs in the sky. I hated that I might be hurting her, now of all times.

  Behind us, Fes had become agitated – as if he somehow sensed that bad things were coming. Or maybe it was our feelings he was sensing. Ailyss spoke, suddenly but softly, continuing to stare up into space.

  “We won’t fit in, you know. We didn’t fit in before, but now it’ll be ten times worse. You know why? Because at least before, when life sucked and feeling lonely was as much of the daily routine as cornflakes and flossing, we only had to deal with that feeling of there being something better out there, that vague hope that God hadn’t made us so that we’d always be unfulfilled.

  “Now we know for sure that there is something better out there. It’ll be like we’ve been to paradise and then dumped back on Earth again. All we’ll be thinking is about how much we miss this place, about when we’ll be able to come back here – which, as I’m sure you know, is not for another three years. And the only person who will be able to understand what you’re going through is me. And t
he only person I could ever...”She trailed off, her voice breaking as if she were about to cry.

  ****

  The end came in shockwaves and fire at first... then colours – a breathtaking kaleidoscope that ushered us back to Cymbo on a wave of overwhelming love. For a long time, I thought that if I had died at that moment I would have lived all the life I had ever needed, and left it the best way possible.

  And, as I look back over ten years and remember a younger, more foolish man – if you could believe that – I can see that maybe what followed was more my fault than I had realised at the time.

  ****

  I wasn’t attracted to her at first, and that had been a problem. I thought I was prepared for the likelihood of a lack of physical attraction – on both sides of the equation. Yet, I was always a man with quite diverse tastes, it only seemed to take one little quality – the shape of their nose, a depth in the colour of their eyes, a cheeky smile – and then that quality was all I could see over and above any imperfections.

  But Alice – yes, who’d have thought that would be her name – had nothing in her looks or her shape to do it for me. She was a large girl – not huge, but certainly above average in height and in stature. So, when you consider the character that she played in CyberV, you also quickly understand that she was fairly self-conscious about it. She had long, brown hair so wiry as to defy even the best straightening techniques science had to offer, and a plain face.

  Yet, despite an awkwardness that even I had to marvel at, she had a sweet nature and, the more time I spent with her, the more I saw in her all the things I had loved in Ailyss. As had been the case with me, CyberV had done a lot to bring out the best parts in her.

  She lived in a small village in Sector 3b, so I could be at hers in two, two and a half hours. And, only a month after we had left our different CyberV complexes and got in contact with each other, Alice had moved in with me.