by Deck Davis
“If this is your idea of a joke…” he said, approaching me. When he reached the counter, he stopped. He spread his hands on it, and I saw that the backs of his hands were heavily tattooed with a series of numbers. He stared at me. Then he grinned. “Foster Wollenstein’s son. What a pleasure.”
I almost stepped back in surprise. “You remember me?”
“Let’s see… You came here with Foster in eighty-two, correct?”
“That’s...uh...yeah. Sounds right. How do you know that?”
“I learned the ancient memory methods of the east. Spent years studying them.”
“Really?”
O’Reilly laughed. He tapped his head, and I saw a tiny square piece of metal on his temple. “Mnemonic chip,” he said. “Listen, I got a joke for ya. How can you tell if someone is labotarian?” Labotarian was a new fad. It was the word for people who would only eat lab-grown food. Anything that came from an animal or the ground was a no-no for them. I agreed with parts of their stance, in a moral sense. After all, it had been found time and time again that the meat industry caused a lot of damage to the environment, but knowing something and following it through were two different things. Could I live without steak—a new, juicy rib-eye with butter lightly drizzled across it? No chance.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t need to tell…because they’ll tell you!”
He watched me, waiting to see if I laughed. You’re going to have to work harder than that for your laughs, I thought. Labotarian jokes were easy pickings.
“No?” said O’Reilly. “Fine, stone-face. What can I do you for?” O’Reilly had a rough edge to his voice. It sounded eastern, maybe from Blackstorp or Genter where they mined for viscus under the ground. Viscus was a vital ingredient in gel tech, and easterners prided themselves on the efficiency of the way they dredged it from the ground in a completely eco-friendly way. He wore blue overalls which covered a white T-shirt. Globs of gel clung to his clothes. His fingers, as tattooed as the back of his hands, were scratched and calloused. He looked like a guy who prided himself on hard work.
“I need an avatar,” I told him.
He shrugged. “Plenty of them behind you,” he said. Then, he gave me a wink. “Unless you’re looking for something more exotic, a pleasure avatar or the like?”
“Err, no. Not my thing.”
“Then have a look on the shelves and call me when you’ve picked the fruit that tickles your tongue.”
“I want something that’s not hot,” I said.
“Hot?”
“Stolen.”
“I assure you, Wollenstein, nothing here is stolen.”
“I think you got the words ‘nothing’ and ‘everything’ mixed up. C’mon, O’Reilly. You know as well as I do that there’s probably half of the New Eden PD out there looking for the inventory in your shop.”
“We had a visit from the police a year back, and they searched my shop just like they did the rest. They found no cause for complaint.”
“The cops came here?” I said. “How’d they even know about it?”
He leaned in toward me. “Black Gull ain’t what it used to be. Think a place like this could stay secret forever? C’mon, Wollenstein, think about it! All a man has to do is walk down the cliff and hire a boat. It isn’t exactly a secret fortress.”
“Then how the hell are you still in business? There’s no way anything in here is legal. You’re selling avatars at a fraction of the price. So, unless you’re making them from scratch yourself, there’s no way you could afford to sell them that cheap. They must be stolen.”
“You’re just like your dad, you know,” said O’Reilly. “How’s he doing?”
I breathed in. “He’s dead.” He’s dead. What a way to describe the present situation of your father. When he first died, I used to say, ‘he passed,’ but that didn’t sound right. Neither did ‘he’s no longer with us.’ Oh, he’s no longer with you? Where is he, then? No, I’d learned to be direct about it.
O’Reilly gave a slight nod. “Sorry to hear it. You taking over from him, then? Designing VBR maps?”
“Not exactly. I’m looking to enter the New Eden VBR, and my avatar is screwed. I need something cheap.”
“What’ve ya got?”
“1600 bits,” I said.
He shrugged. “Most of the stuff on the shelf is in your price range.”
“I told you. I need something legit.”
“Look, Wollenstein. Nothing here can be traced. I won’t play games with you, ‘cos you seem to have your Dad’s shrewd mind. But, trust me, everything here is free to be registered to a new player. No traces, no traps. Just pick what you want, and I’ll even give you a Wollenstein discount, on account of how much I liked your Dad.”
I thought about it. After Sera and Vorm’s visit, there was nothing I wanted more than to qualify for the New Eden VBR solo battle. I wanted them to see me place in the top five on my own. I didn’t really know why, exactly. Maybe I thought it’d somehow show them that they were wrong to take Lucas’s offer rather than just trusting me. No matter how much I wanted to do it and how much I needed an avatar, I wouldn’t screw over some poor bastard whose avatar was stolen from him. Each avatar in this shop had belonged to someone who was reluctant to part with it; O’Reilly had confirmed as much. What if they belonged to some teenager who’d saved up for years for his own avatar so he could follow his VBR dream? Some kid like Dylan, who was too trusting for his own good? I wouldn’t add to the problem of avatar theft.
“Looks like I better go,” I said.
I turned to leave. I heard O’Reilly laughing behind me. When I turned around, his face was creased in laughter lines.
“Something funny?”
“You’re just so much like your bloody Dad that I can’t believe it. Okay, Wollenstein. I might have something for you.” With that, he left the counter, walked down the hallway, and went to his workbench. He picked something up and walked back before tossing an avatar onto the counter. It was a little smaller than usual but still looked compatible with my mainnet slot. It was dark and looked a little like a pebble.
“I’ve been restoring this as a hobby,” said O’Reilly. “Completely legit. I swear on me life. A guy pawned in a load of stuff to me last week, and this was among it. I’ve just about fixed it up.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A bard. Level one.”
“How much?”
“Well it’s a bit of a coincidence, you tellin’ me you have 1600 bits to spend. ‘Cos this costs 1600. My mother always said that coincidence was the brother of fate.”
I stared at the pebble-like avatar on the counter. I wasn’t impressed. Not only was it level one (so didn’t even have a rune slot unlocked), but it was a bard. That made it next to useless in a solo royale. Maybe it would have been good in a team battle since bards could boost the strength and morale of their teammates using songs. But on my own? What was I going to do, hit my enemies with a lute?
And yet, behind me, on the shelves, were rows upon rows of affordable avatars, all with combat-heavy classes. Ones that could actually do damage. It would have been so easy to buy one, and then just to pretend I didn’t know how O’Reilly had come by them. All I had to do was trick myself into thinking that avatar robbery didn’t happen, that men like O’Reilly didn’t spend their time hacking into avatars and removing their previous, unfortunate, owner’s registrations. If I did that, I’d be able to buy an avatar that could really help me. It would be so easy. Sometimes, you’ve got to be a rebel. Maybe this was one of those times.
No. I couldn’t do it. Who was I trying to kid? This wasn’t me; I didn’t buy stolen avatars just to get ahead. “Damn it,” I said. I scooped up the pebble avatar from the counter and put it in my pocket.
“1600,” he said.
“You must have misheard. I said I had 1300 with me.”
O’Reilly gave me a grin. He tapped his mnemonic chip. “1600.”
I held
up my wrist. “Think your chip is faulty. I’d show you the feed of our conversation, but I had to turn it off. Guess you better just take my word for it.”
O’Reilly smiled. “If I ever see a Wollenstein again… Fine,” he said. He acted annoyed, but the humor in his voice made me think that he’d enjoyed our conversation.
He lifted his wrist to show his mainnet connection, and I pressed mine against it.
“Need a receipt?” he said.
“I’m good. Don’t suppose you have a lute?”
Chapter Eight
There are battles out there for everyone, even a bard. The trick was finding ones that I could try and win. The New Eden VBR qualifiers were still thirty-eight days away, which gave me a little time. The problem was that I needed to get to the bronze ladder. Right now, I wasn’t even coal-rated.
I spent the first morning after Black Gull in front of a gel screen with a coffee in one hand and toast in the other, getting to grips with the bard. It had been a while since I’d used a new class, but getting to know its limits was key. After syncing up my new avatar with the mainnet, I went on the search. First, there were the bard’s basic stats. These were the same for every bard at the beginning of a VBR, with the only variations coming with what runes a person had:
Bard – Level 0
Rune slots: 0
HP: 98 / 98
Stamina: 70 / 70
Mana: 189 / 189
Attack: 1/5
Defence: 2/5
Weapons available for use: Swords, daggers, rapiers, crossbows, lute [default]
Skill 1 – Whistle of Fire – Your cruel lyrics turn to literal fire when you direct them at enemies in this low-level attack [Cost: 11 mana]
Skill 2 – Bardic Dread – Inspire a feeling of dread in your enemies, lowering their defense, nullifying active runes. [Cost: 29 mana]
Skill 3 – Tune of Vitality – Heal yourself and your team [Cost: 17 mana]
Skill 4 – Song of Thunder and Fury – Sing a song so terrible that the heavens rain thunder on your enemies [Cost: 54 mana]
This wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. Sure, all things being equal, a bard would lose to almost every combat class. I’d start with lower HP and a measly 1/5 attack which the boost in defense didn’t really make up for. Added to that, my skills weren’t exactly devastating.
The thing was, most VBR avatar classes were made with balance in mind. That meant that whoever designed the bard had thought of a way it could be used for success in a battle. I just had to find out how. My first thought was that runes would help. If I could unlock two, or even three, rune slots before the New Eden qualifying trials, I’d be able to purchase ones that would give a little bite to my attacks and bolster my defense. That would even things just a little. The problem was that to unlock rune slots, I needed to level up my bard, and the only way to do that was to compete in VBRs.
The problem here was that my best runes – Copy Cat, Wind Dash, Hear Evil, Speak Evil – were locked into my Storm Knight avatar, and I couldn’t get them out unless I healed it. This left me with only the runes I had stored away in the studio; a couple of mana regenerations runes, a sneak bonus rune, and my Rune of Lesser Healing, which had belonged to Dad and was fairly useless. The only time I equipped it in battle was when nostalgia about my parents turned me into a sentimental goon.
Next, I had to think about my skills carefully, and not how they looked on paper because they looked like crap. Rather, I had to think about how they’d be used in battle. A big plus point was that each of my skills had a low mana cost. Take Bardic Dread: If I wanted to, I could cast it 6 times at level one. During a VBR, I would level up my bard, which would increase my mana further. If I came face to face with, say, a warrior, I just needed to sing the song of dread and bam, my opponent’s defense would lower. That mitigated my offensive puniness.
I spent hours combing the mainnet to find every bard strategy out there. I viewed forums and chat rooms, watched holo-vids, reamed through battle footage of other people using the bard class. After watching a bard named Lennon Pauellon place third in a silver-tier solo match, I started to think that I had a chance. After all, for now, all I needed to do was qualify for the New Eden VBR. I could worry about placing highly after that.
With a renewed fire inside me, I spent the next week and a half in low-level VBRs. I competed on maps so shoddy that, sometimes, you’d have to actually wait for the terrain to load around you as you walked on it. On others, my avatar would mysteriously sink into the ground, before being flung out again. It was ridiculous. Despite that, I managed to make progress. Armed with my lute and by playing an extremely cautious game of staying out of sight of other players until I’d leveled up enough and looted decent armor, I managed to work my way into the coal solo ladder.
You see, in these backwater sub-coal VBRs, I was competing against people who weren’t on my level. Everyone has to start somewhere, but I’d already done my time in those kinds of leagues. I had such an experience advantage that, even with a bard, I was able to outmaneuver the more combat-focused classes.
Some people called this ‘smurfing.’ Smurfing was the act of entering a lower level game to prey upon those who were still building their skill levels and gaining knowledge of how the game worked. Me? I called it ‘necessity.’ I really had no other choice. There were times when I was on a map that was smaller than my ranch, and I’d long for the days of being a Storm Knight. I won’t lie to you; strumming a lute to instill fear in a fellow competitor didn’t feel half as good as summoning a gale of wind, but I made do with what I had.
After finally placing in the coal-ladder, I entered three semi-large VBRs over the next ten days.
VBR Journal
[User: Harry Wollenstein]
[Sort entries by date]
1) Kinohelm
Ladder: Coal - Solo
User notes:
Kinohelm. City of neon lights, sushi bars, massage parlors. The openly-proud home of the new-wave movie industry, and the secretive home of the adult one. When I walked from the s-bus station to Kinohelm’s VBR center, it was hard not to get dazzled by the maze of neon lights. They were ramped up so bright that they emitted a blast of warmth.
Of course, the Kinohelm officials always bragged that the energy used to light them was completely renewable. But then, everyone said that, didn’t they? Government inspectors can’t test every single light. As long as the inspectors were guided by Kinohelm officials to the right lights to test, then it was no surprise they’d all come out clean. I seriously doubted that a place as flashy as this was as green as it bragged.
Beneath the glamor of Kinohelm was a grimy underbelly, where an entire substratum of the poor and homeless lived. Some only emerged into the neon jungle to beg for enough money to get something to eat, and it usually wasn’t long before the Kinohelm Peace Force chased them away with their zap cudgels raised.
My first solo coal-ladder VBR didn’t go so well. I was still a little rusty when it came to fighting alone and using my new class. When you’ve been in a team so long, you adapt to a particular way of battling. You come to expect a teammate to give you advance warning of enemies approaching your blind spots. It was easy to get stuck in a rut.
In Kinohelm, I fell prey to this when I happened upon a hunter in a house. He was crouched by the living room window with his bow raised, looking out onto the concrete streets of the neighborhood. Outside, the streets lamps flashed gold, red, pink, and green in a display that ran on a loop. As I snuck up to the hunter, I saw the red neon light flash on his face, coating his skin like blood.
By this point I’d looted a level-two curved short sword. I raised it above my head and got ready for my third kill of the game when a wound appeared on my waist. It was so big, so deep, that my torso almost fell from my legs like a train uncoupling. There was no feeling and no pain because Kinohelm’s sensitivity sliders were set to almost zero, but my avatar’s death was instant. When I reviewed the battle footage, I saw that a rouge ass
assin had snuck up behind me.
Placed: 26/100
Reward: -45 bits
Yeah…placing 26/100 doesn’t buy you a mansion. In fact, it cost me bits, since I didn’t make enough to pay back my entry fee. If I’d finished in the top quarter, maybe I would have made a small profit.
Experience gained: 39% [61% to Level 1]
2) Lushen VBR
Ladder: Coal-Solo
User notes:
Lushen was a small town out west, around eighteen miles from Duisben. I decided against catching a bus and instead rode the s-bike that I’d rented from Bernli and still hadn’t returned.
I’d been to Lushen before. Dad had been summoned there to help with some emergency coding on their VBR map after it had crashed midway through a gold-league match. The resulting compensation claims from players, gamblers, and bookmakers had nearly crippled the small town’s economy. Pulling up at the s-bike rack, the place seemed familiar to me. I didn’t have fully-fledged memories of it; it was more like seeing a film that reminded me of something else.