Start the Game (Galactogon: Book #1)

by Vasily Mahanenko

“Stan—panic mode,” I uttered the code phrase that forced my smart home into emergency overdrive. Panic mode entailed the deletion of any online information that could lead someone back to my physical self. My name, my address, my description…I used to laugh about stuff like that, but then one day as I was coming home, I was rudely ambushed by a gang of imbeciles whom I had crossed in Runlustia. It seemed that they hadn’t liked the leading role I had played in a raid on their castle. I paid for that with fractured arms, legs, ribs and—as a result—having to relocate to a new apartment. That was when I set up the panic mode command. Better safe than sorry. If the beard was right, a billion pounds was a large enough sum of money to justify a visit to a competitor in real life. A visit during which you would make sure that your competitor wouldn’t want (or be able) to sign into the game for the next several years.

  Two hours later, I had refused two incoming video calls—truthfully pointing out that I was taking a bath. Like I had figured after my conversation with the leader of the Black Lightning, the representatives calling from the top two Qualian guilds quickly lost an interest in talking to me without having the opportunity to see (or record) what I looked like. Constantly citing internal guild regulations, they kept asking me when would be a better time to call me back and whether we could maybe simply meet in real life and talk about my proposal like grown adults. They even offered to buy me dinner! Well, no wonder—for a hundred thousand dollars, I’d buy myself dinner too. Having received the information I needed from the Black Lightning, I ordered Stan to delete my vidphone number and mail account. Maybe I was being too careful, but it was better than getting bitten a second time.

  When I finally delved into the beard’s leveling guide, I couldn’t help but crack a smile over having quit the game right away, before entering the allocation center. For, precisely in this lay the pivotal move that would give me a special reputation among the Training Sector’s instructors—and not a very good reputation at that.

  “What’s the holdup?” yelled the local motivational speaker and kicked the air where my body had just been. Except of course I was already gone…The scenario hinged on being able to control your body and wanting to beat the bully, earning thereby a trip to jail even before you got into allocation. Fighting earned the player a bad reputation, allowing him to access an underground tournament that was held every few weeks. The specifics of the tournament (there were actually three tournaments altogether) varied each time. One would involve dueling, another item gathering and the third mining. Even if the player lost, he would still get pretty good money for someone just starting out. In my situation, this was a blessing from on high. According to the game manual, the only way to get money in the training sector was by investing real money.

  Well…If I have to brawl a little, why not? Brawling can be fun…

  “Feisty one, eh?” the bozo exclaimed and, scurrying faster than I expected, went for me with his giant arms akimbo. The ship behind me prevented any retreat and a jump to the side would land me in the embrace of the onrushing rhino. So I decided to do the one thing that the NPC’s barebones AI would not anticipate—stepping back, I kicked off the ship’s fuselage and launched myself into the bozo. Let’s see who gets whom…

  What’s there to say about Galactogon’s physics engine? It’s almost perfect. What happens when a six-foot monster with a full head of steam meets an ordinary body? Jumping forward, I assumed that I’d at least stop him in his tracks. However, he didn’t even seem to realize that I was trying to hit him and simply tossed me a dozen or so feet aside—right onto the pavement.

  “What’s this?” came the smug laugh. “Tough as a rock, but light as a feather, eh?”

  The ground shook as the giant bozo vaulted from the gangway down to me. Strange, I wondered, where are the security guards? According to the guide, they should have already appeared to break us up and arrested me for fighting.

  “Who dares mock Drill?”

  Well, well, it turned out that this Frankenstein’s monster had a name! Though, I couldn’t figure out exactly when I had managed to mock him, but we could put that down to an oversight in the AI’s scripting.

  “Enjoy your stay in the medbay!” rhymed Drill, impressively managing to sound a little sinister. Raising his foot, he stomped it on the very place where my head had just been. Had he struck it, I would’ve lost a critical amount of health—maybe even been forced into resurrection. So I did something that the beard’s guide never mentioned—I responded.

  Rolling out of the way of the bozo’s boot (stuffed to its seams with his trunk of a leg), I aimed a sweep at his supporting leg. It felt like I had kicked a pole buried deep in the ground. My health fell again. I whimpered something about how I couldn’t care less about someone as insignificant as him—but my counterstrike had had its intended effect. Bellowing savagely the bozo began to keel over.

  Ignoring the pain in my leg, I continued my roll, springing to my feet through inertia and then jumping—my intention being to land on Drill. Pointing my elbow in front of me and aiming it at his head, I managed to hear the welcome phrase “Halt immediately!” just as…

  You have earned the “Murderer Rank I” Achievement. All weapons require 1% less experience to reach their next level.

  Your Rapport with the Qualian Empire has decreased. Current Rapport: -1.

  “Surgeon!” I found myself lifted into the air and confronted by a security guard. Where were these guys all this time? “You are under arrest for the murder of another recruit. Your punishment is three weeks in jail! Next time you’ll think twice before attacking our recruits!”

  Now what did the tutorial say about how it’s impossible to kill other players in the Training Sector? Well, well, well, this is interesting. If I’ve already met my main goal of getting into jail, why not have a little more fun? Hasn’t anyone ever tested this stuff before?

  The guard was a member of the wonderful Qualian race—who are distinguished by their gray colored skin, the third eye in their foreheads, the suction cups on their fingertips and their serpentine hair. He was so seductively close to me that it seemed a graver crime not to attack him. Since I was already a criminal, why not go on and break the law a little more?

  I was being held up in the air by means of a B-class pacifier wielded by the guard right beside me. This oddly-named rubber club emitted a bluish ray in my direction, forming some kind of force field which kept me suspended as if I weighed nothing at all. It did not, however, impair my ability to move—for example, my arms…

  I felt a jerk and began to float toward the allocation center. The guard manipulating my body pulled its poor suffering mass even closer to him, wishing to turn me around so that he could just push me ahead of him. The two other guards had already turned away, deeming the incident to be resolved. I attacked silently. I don’t know if Qualians have any weak points, but in Runlustia I got used to the fact that any NPC or local (as non-player characters are called in Galactogon) doesn’t feel so hot when you karate chop him in the throat. Considering the attentive implementation of this game’s physics, I had good reason to believe that guards here would be similarly affected…

  Once again, the physics engine didn’t let me down. The strike to the throat turned out a doozy. The guard didn’t even utter a groan but simply collapsed to the ground.

  Critical hit!

  You have earned the “Enemy of the Empire Rank I” Achievement. You have destroyed a subject of the Qualian Empire. All Qualian items require 10% more experience to reach next level.

  Your Rapport with the Qualian Empire has decreased. Current Rapport: -2.

  What can I say? The physics engine in this game is quite impressive. Even a security guard with a class-B item died from a simple blow to the throat. It follows that you can’t get very far in this game without a full set of armor—or, in my case, without a personal ship. By the way, the guide I bought seemed to mention that it’s impossible to have anything worse than -1 Rapport with the Empire, and yet I…W
ell, either way, my cell awaits me…

  “Halt!” yelled one of the guards, alerted by the sound of me landing on the ground. As soon as the Qualian met his demise, the beam holding me vanished, releasing me. The fall wasn’t a large one, but the sound it made was loud enough. To make matters worse, I landed right on the dead guard.

  Search corpse?

  The shout, the notification and my fall (which twisted my arm a little) had all happened so quickly that I didn’t think about the consequences when I clicked the “Yes” button. If you’re going to be a marauder then go about it properly.

  Acquired item: Pacifier. Item class: B-12. Weight: 2. Use: Lifts opponent of weight up to 2,000 lbs.

  Acquired item: Qualian Guard Breastplate. Weight: 4. Durability: 100. Item class: C-44. Piercing Resistance: 33.2. Slashing Resistance: 33.2. Radiation Resistance: 0. Fire Resistance…

  Acquired item: Qualian Guard Trousers. Weight: 3. Durability: 100. Item class: C-12…

  Acquired credits: 23 GC.

  Your Rapport with the Qualian Empire has decreased. Current Rapport: -3.

  Another Rapport malus for marauding…This is fun…Clicking the “Yes” button three times, equipping the clothes and the weapon, I grabbed onto the body and instantly flew up into the air with it: The guards had recovered from their initial shock and used their pacifiers to levitate me…Alright then, I’ve got nothing to lose now. According to our agreement with the betting Masters, I could restart from zero three times, deleting my character and making a new one. There were of course limitations: The new character started from scratch, lost all his equipment and money and reappeared in the same place where he started with the same exact occupation he had initially selected. So since I wasn’t really risking anything at the moment, besides maybe time, I turned on the pacifier and pointed it at the guard. Two can play the “lift your enemy in the air” game.

  Your Rapport with the Qualian Empire has decreased. Current Rapport: -7.

  You have earned the “Enemy of the Empire Rank II” Achievement. You have destroyed a subject of the Qualian Empire. All Qualian items require 20% more experience to reach next level.

  It was evident that the AI couldn’t much cope with human players. Having lifted me into the air, these two exemplars of the local fauna for some reason decided that they had triumphed and turned to go back to their allocation center. How naïve of them! Using my pacifier, I lifted the two guards just as effectively thirty feet into the air, after which I turned off the weapon. Two lifts—two bodies, enabling me to get some boots, gloves, two more pacifiers and a bit of cash. I guess the locals weren’t made for flying…While I was at it, I found out how long it took for a corpse to vanish: precisely one minute following death. By the time I finished robbing my latest victim, the first one had already disappeared.

  I wonder—should I restart a new character or stay and find out what my punishment will be? It’d be useful to know, after all!

  “Don’t move,” a menacing scream interrupted my contemplation of “to be or not to be,” so I decided to be a little more and turned my attention to this new Qualian approaching me. “Drop the pacifier!”

  I was now facing a giant metal machine which, the description informed me, was a B-class Infantry Combat Mech. My pacifier’s beam slipped harmlessly along its armor, after which my prize weapon beeped pitifully and disintegrated right in my hands. A notification popped up, helpfully informing me that the pacifier had been destroyed by the mech’s active resistance. Well, I was definitely done for now…

  “Remove your armor!” came the next command. Ignoring it was pointless. Even if I refused, this monster probably had some kind of special device that destroyed its opponent’s armor without even having to touch him. All I’d get is another Rapport malus and nothing more.

  “Now, march!” This third order was welcome. No one had remembered the 67 credits that I had had the pleasure of pocketing. Likewise, no one had checked my inventory, which contained the other two pacifiers. It had been too difficult to put the breastplate, boots and trousers in my inventory because all the items in Galactogon had three dimensions in addition to their weight. As a result I had only taken the pacifiers. One was already broken, but the other two were still on me…

  “Surgeon, in the name of the Qualian Empire, I find you guilty of the destruction of a recruit and three Training Sector guards. I therefore sentence you to twenty days of solitary confinement!”

  A brief trial took place as soon as I entered the allocation center. I was lifted into the air again to the surprise of several law-abiding players, who kept on popping up in the game, and literally a minute later found myself in a dark, windowless cell. The moist, stone walls and dripping water were already getting to me, so I instantly opened the main menu. Thanks everyone! I am indeed a bad person and have had enough fun in your lovely game for the moment.

  Sign out!

  “Stan, put me in touch with my bearded friend,” I said, getting comfy in my armchair. Getting out of the capsule, I did my daily exercises, washed up and even had a little tea before deciding that it was time to have a chat with the leader of the Black Lightning. Of course from a legal standpoint our deal had been fair—he offered me a product and I had bought it—but from an ethical perspective, I believe he owed me one. So, I’d squeeze him for some more information for the money I had already paid him…After all, it’s never good form to defraud a paladin, even if he’s already a retired paladin.

  The voicemail of the Black Lightning glibly informed me that the great leader was currently unavailable on account of being occupied with taking over the Universe and I was therefore welcome to tell him everything I thought after the beep—without of course any guarantee that the great leader would have any desire to listen to what the machine had recorded. That’s what his voicemail literally said: “Can’t promise that you’ll be heard, but you can try.” Suave guy, that one…

  The countdown on my sentence in solitary began as soon as I logged back into Galactogon. (It’s impossible to delete your character from outside of the game.) The same dark moist walls and the water dripping from the ceiling—nothing resembling the advanced game in which players rocket about the vast reaches of space. I felt like I had found myself behind the walls of one of Runlustia’s castles for yet another infraction. Not wishing to prolong my pleasure, I opened the main menu and clicked the “Delete Character” button. I had time to grin at the subsequent window asking me to confirm the deletion and provide a reason when suddenly…

  “Ta-ta-ta, taa-taa-taa, ta-ta-ta…”

  I froze inside. By that point I had already managed to describe my reason for deleting the character (“because refrigerator”), read two warnings about how all my items would be lost, agreed to these, battered my way through a cordon of confirmations and reached the “Delete” button and…

  “Ta-ta-ta, taa-taa-taa, ta-ta-ta…”

  The international SOS signal…An SOS signal in a computer game…A signal that could mean only one thing—either some player was goofing off in some nearby cell or…Instantly closing all the interface windows and returning to the game, I bated my breath waiting for the third signal. Considering that this is a game, then…

  “Ta-ta-ta, taa-taa-taa, ta-ta-ta…”

  The authorities in Runlustia were very fond of snapping up players for various infractions and throwing them into prison—besides being a punishment, this was an excellent opportunity to level up certain skills and stats. Some of the more gutsy players used prison to get several missions which, once completed, would open previously hidden opportunities—for example, membership offers from the shadowy powers in the game. However, Runlustia had one very unpleasant mechanic—a cell’s walls completely silenced a player’s voice. Even if you could see a person through your grate, you couldn’t talk to him—the game’s magic prohibited direct communication. This led everyone to remember Q-codes and Morse code. To Runlustia’s game magic, knock remained but a knock…

  I knew very few
Q-codes—only the most important ones. However, I knew where they were listed, structured and sorted by frequency of use. Switching out of the somatic interface to Third Person mode and thereby leaving the game (and noticing along the way that my solitary incarceration countdown paused), I ordered Stan to bring up the table of codes on my HUD. Let’s have a chat, shall we? It’s too bad I couldn’t link Stan directly into the game—he could’ve communicated with the stranger much more efficiently than me.

  I discounted the possibility that this was a human player immediately—you just couldn’t create a tone like that with a shoe or a fist. Something hard and metallic was required, like, for example, this pacifier! The court had not conducted a full investigation of my belongings and sent me simply and directly to solitary. Equipping my pacifier, I began to knock on the part of the wall where the SOS was coming through loudest:

  “Taa-taa-ta-taa ta-ta-ta ta-taa-ta-ta”

  This was the Q-code “QSL,” which in natural language meant: “I am acknowledging receipt.” I had just let my unknown companion know that he had been heard and understood. The question now was whether he’d understand me—that is, whether the developers programmed a knowledge of Q-codes into the locals.

  “Ta-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-taaaa-ta-ttaaaaaaa…”

  All of a sudden, such a torrent of knocks began coming through that I simply didn’t know what to do—any unprepared person would have had immense trouble understanding anything in this cacophony.

  “QRS (Send more slowly),” I knocked out another ubiquitous Q-code, admitting in the process that I wasn’t much of a radio operator.

  “W A R N…P R E C I A N S…D A N G E R”

  It turns out that it’s pretty hard to decipher Morse code by ear. My unknown companion wasn’t using codes, preferring plain text and pausing between the words.

  “QSP (I will relay to) P R E C I A N S,” I replied and then inquired, “W H O M…A N D…W H A T?”