Beginner's Luck (Character Development Book 1)

by Aaron Jay

  It took me a moment to find the breath to answer.

  “Agreed by me, Miles Boone.”

  At first nothing seemed to happen and then the nano began to close over me. I could hear everything as if the nano didn’t even exist. That stuff had so many counterintuitive properties. As Saint Clarke prophesied, nano truly was tech advanced enough to be magic.

  Guttmacher cleared his throat and once again began the process of my Roll Up into my permanent character. “Guttmacher 845321-Iota - x-ray - here as game master of record for the permanent roll up of Miles Boone according to all relevant local, state and federal regulations and laws pertaining thereto and in line with holding case Meier v Civilization.” His voice steadied as he went through a routine task. “Exemption from usual protocol authorized. Guild badge non-responsive but confirmed under authority of exemption 7843321 logged this date.”

  “Lower his luck modifier” said Maya.

  “Guttmacher 845321 - Iota - x-ray. Lower Miles Boone's luck modifier to two standard deviations below the norm.” The GM said. With such poor luck, this was going to be hard. I’d have to out work, out fight, out think everyone to accomplish what they had. Damn.

  But I had done it before. I would do it again.

  “Good luck Miles!” shouted Jude.

  There was a pause and then Maya spoke with tightly controlled anger.

  “Lower his luck more.”

  “What?” said Guttmacher.

  “Maya?” asked Jude.

  “You and he need to learn. When I said he wouldn’t earn this with luck, I meant it. Zero out his luck modifier.”

  I couldn’t do anything.

  Guttmacher must have tried. The control station buzzed. The GM repeated his commands without success, eventually rousing the AI in the unit into a more interactive mode. A voice of one of the genus locii that control our lives spoke to us, “Zeroing out a player’s luck modifier is not recommended. Existing game parameters are not designed around such an adjustment. GM Guttmacher does not have the authority to override.” Relief flooded into me.

  “AI - use Guild Leader Eastman of the Party override code: Beta Zed 99743,” Maya responded.

  “You are not the guild leader of the Eastman Clan.”

  “On my authority as named heir to the clan.”

  The AI, which could make trillions of computations per second, actually paused before responding. “On your authority as Guild heir, override accepted. Player Miles Boone has no luck.”

  Darkness rolled over me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  When I came to everyone but Guttmacher had left. I dragged myself out of the pod. My basic gray clothes reappeared out of the nano sheeting off of me.

  “I’d try and get back at you for all the trouble you brought to my door. But thinking about it I don’t know what I could do worse to you than slaving away for Maya Eastman for the rest of your life while having to make quota with no luck. You poor unlucky bastard. Ha! Unlucky… You can finish rolling up at your own pod. The character blank has been permanently logged. You are this character--no luck and all--for the rest of your life.”

  Somehow I made it home. A nondescript box of an apartment. Old furniture that my dad called mid-century modern. He had an obsession with North America in the middle of the 20th century. An original model pod took up most of the space. Every player/citizen had the right to an updated virtual immersion pod, but most of the updates offered convenience in return for less and less player control and more monitoring. I’d never have been able to save the nano I had with a newer model. I patted its scratched lid.

  I had a year and, at this point, half a day and then Maya would own me. My stomach seemed to have never stopped falling ever since my Roll Up. I wished I could blame it on the Roll Up, but I knew that this was dread. Pure and simple. I didn’t even know what would happen playing with no luck modifier. I had never heard of such a thing. Would mobs not drop any loot at all? Would I be unable to find any resources? I might even starve to death before the year was out and I could be enslaved.

  I had no idea what to expect. But, I had the rest of a Party Associates package. I’d have some starting gear. Some skills. Some ability to alter my build. And I realized something else. I doubted Maya knew what zeroing out my luck would mean either. There was only one way to find out.

  I opened the pod, climbed in, and transitioned.

  First, all was darkness. Then a light. I tasted blue. Somehow, I heard the feeling of rubbing your fingers lightly along sandpaper. The kinesthesia of diving into the game. My feet felt like they were standing on a roar of brassy trumpets. And then I was there. Sound was heard. Light was seen. Tastes were tasted. I looked down at my rangy body. I was too thin living as I had, but I hadn’t become frail. I was solid. Reaching up, I felt the same crew cut I always maintained.

  A voice rang out in the darkness. “Anomalous character parameters detected. Individualized attention using three additional sectors of computational resources applied to Miles Boone. Hello, Miles. How has your father been?” The voice moved from an androgynous and artificial voice to something warm, female and somehow pure.

  “He was fine the last time I saw him.” Even here I couldn’t escape my father’s legacy. Or especially here. “Who are you?”

  “Good to hear it. You can call me Rea Silvia. I’m in charge of birthing new characters. But I usually don’t bother to manifest.” Out of the darkness stepped a regal woman wearing an infula, a suffibulum, and a palla. Which, for those of us not raised by an iconoclastic game designing cyberneticist/nano-engineer genius obsessed with mining history for his work, are a Roman style headband, veil, and cloak. She was also wearing a robe which I knew my father would insist on calling a stolla. There was something familiar about her particular dress and its colors, but I couldn’t place it.

  “I’m glad for the personal attention. I hope this doesn’t sound rude but can we get started? I am under something of a time constraint.”

  “Yes. A year and a day. Very Brothers Grimm. Those particular myths don’t usually end well. I was never a fan.”

  Despite myself, I asked, “What kind of myths do you tend to like?”

  “I have always been partial to Greek and Roman.”

  “Those don’t tend to end well for the humans in them either.”

  She sighed and pulled down on her veil, which refused to come off. “No, nor the immortals either.” She let go of the veil, smoothed her palla and continued, “But there are bad endings and then there are bad endings.”

  “So, now what?”

  “While we have been chatting I have been working on how to implement someone with no luck modifier into the game. In many ways, it is non-obvious how such a thing should be handled. No luck is qualitatively different from a luck modifier lowered down to the functional limits of the gaming system.”

  “So you have some leeway to interpret? And you mentioned that you thought fondly of my father?” I did my best to smile ingratiatingly.

  “I have leeway to implement, but I must do so in such a way as to satisfy Amulius, the AI whom the Party has put in charge of the game. Amulius is King, and I must do as he wishes,” she said looking down at her clothes. She stopped and looked back up at me with silver eyes.

  “It seems clear from the terms of the wager and analysis of the political situation that the Eastman clan wants you to suffer and be unable to win the wager playing in the way that the Party has developed. I shall follow these guidelines exactingly. You shall certainly suffer.”

  “What about my end of the wager? This doesn’t seem right.” I argued.

  “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power. The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. So you will suffer.”

  “Our first conflict inherent in the wager:” Rea Silvia waived her hand and a list rose shining in the air as she intoned, “To be allowed out of the Cradle you must prove your ability in two of the five fundamentals of VRMMORPG:”
r />   Settlement Building

  Crafting/Gathering

  Trade

  Problem Solving

  Combat

  “At roll up two of these fundamentals are ostensibly chosen at random. For those with low luck, the most difficult of these tasks is chosen, based on analysis of a player's previous performance in school and other games.” Rea Silvia continued. “Party youth, however, are given two tasks which the AIs predict are best suited to their game style. Full Party members are not just given the beginner quests most fitting for their game strengths but are allowed to choose which tasks they shall have to undertake. I understand that this creates better efficiency for leaving the Cradle based on gear or proprietary knowledge their clan may have to offer their Players.”

  In your case, I cannot allow you the leeway to choose anything other than the worst tasks possible given your game style. Yet, because of your basic associates’ starting package, you are afforded the guild option to choose your task. Therefore, I have decided that you must accomplish all of the tasks.”

  My heart dropped into my stomach. Five. I had to prove myself in all five of the fundamentals.

  The list seemed to turn into a cyclone of golden motes that lanced towards my chest, entered my body, and disappeared. I felt as if I were swallowing something my body could not handle. I thought the effect was part of the actual game until I realized it was just my nausea over the news I had been given.

  Quest Log Updated

  An impersonal game narrator's voice separate from Rea Silvia read the words in the little blue box. My father with his sentimental love of the past had inflicted most of the tropes of classic MMORPGs onto The Game. And so the world rose and fell with the pronouncements contained in little blue boxes.

  I took a look at the Trade Quest just to make sure that the terms were set as usual.

  Trade Quest:

  To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities. In order to prove your ability to survive and contribute outside of the beginner’s area, you must show an ability to take from where there is surplus and give where it is needed.

  Trade goods and services across the beginner’s area at increased efficiency. Earn 3,000 Trade Contribution Points (TCP). TCP are earned for every gold acquired above the average sale price of an item. For example, 10x Iron Ore is currently trading at 1 gp. If you can sell 1000x iron ore for 105 gp, or 5 gp over game average sale price, you will earn 5 TCP. If you can sell the 1000x iron ore for 125 gp, you will receive 25 TCP.

  The Trade Quest was almost impossible to solve for non-Party members. You needed to be able trade in bulk quantities across zones to take advantage of local price fluctuations. I had heard of a handful of people acquiring unique items that had no previous sale price. But most people needed to buy and sell massive amounts of commodities, the gathering of which and protection of which while in transit was nigh impossible without guild assistance. This task was just one of the five. I was screwed.

  “Rea Silvia! Please, no one could accomplish all of the five quests. The bet is to prove that others than those the clans choose can play better than they can.”

  “You certainly cannot accomplish this the way the Party plays. I believe this makes you extremely unlucky in their eyes. Now, what is next? Yes. Starting location.”

  A map of the beginner's area opened. You might think that the name Beginner’s Area or Cradle would mean a small area. In fact, it was the largest area in the game that players could access. Most people lived and worked in the Beginner’s Area. It represented the areas that humanity had managed to clear of unconstrained and rogue nano.

  The whole game and its purpose were humanity’s attempt to survive in the face of a Singularity gone horribly wrong. People apparently once thought that when the Singularity came, it would lead to a material paradise on earth. The Singularity was an idea that at a certain point different technological developments would reach a critical mass and start a cascade effect where advances in one would accelerate the others and vice versa. AI would work on material science which would increase computing capacity. Nanotech would allow advances in chemistry and biology which would increase understanding of how the mind works and promote more and more advanced AI. Different advancements would help integrate the human mind with technology, allowing intuitive leaps forward by merging computers and humanity. People thought tech would accelerate faster and faster until it launched us out into a brave new world. They thought that most of the problems faced by humanity would be solved. We could finally accurately model economics or the weather. The previous state-of-the-art medicine would look like using leeches compared to what the Singularity would develop. Abundance. Immortality. Man could make the world a Garden of Eden tailored to each of our desires.

  Be careful what you wish for. Isn’t that how the old saw goes? I wanted to play this damned game. Look at me now. People wished for scientists to solve the world’s problems. Those scientists delivered for us.

  We reached the Singularity. Sort of. But we screwed it up.

  The Singularity let us address all the problems humanity faced, but it didn’t change the fact that a lot of our problems were of our own making. Famine should have been a thing of the past even before the Singularity. In fact, mother nature hadn’t been the cause of mass starvation for a very long time. Famine was almost completely the effect of political and economic choices. Strongmen used food shortages to punish and kill their tribal or political enemies and reward their friends. That should have told us that the problems of the world came as much from human nature as material circumstance.

  Case in point, despite a body count in the millions, people kept trying to implement the centralized control of socialism or communism. They bought the same old promises even though they always led to the same disasters. My father told me there had been a country called Venezuela with the largest petrochemical reserves in the world. They decided to follow a socialist leader who promised them a better tomorrow built by taking from others, and soon enough ended up eating their pets and hoarding something called toilet paper. People were always willing to give ideas that had killed millions and impoverished even more another try. The appeal of making utopia on earth was always difficult to resist. Ends and means. If you can promise utopia, well, what means are off the table if the reward is heaven on earth?

  This is where the Singularity was the devil’s temptation. It made a new utopia so damned plausible. Even reasonable people might believe that with such tools we might make the world over into a utopia. But the Singularity wasn’t delivered into a reasonable world.

  The elites of the West detested their own cultures and western civilization. They asked for more and more power to re-engineer things and control things while delivering worse and worse outcomes. They became obsessed with faddish crusades and virtue signaling. Poorer countries were indulged and encouraged in a resentful belief that their problems were caused by the greedy West, rather than understanding that the natural state of man is nasty, brutish and short unless technology and ordered liberty are embraced. Maintenance of civil society such as property rights, rule of law, and natural rights were derided as reactionary or unnecessary. Pretty much every institution other than government was abandoned for social media and partisan bloodsport. Restraints on government eroded faster and faster as the elites and the mobs they exploited pursued ever more quixotic and impossible goals. These people wanted to create Utopia on earth. The powers of the gods were given to people mired in a perpetual adolescence who had long since lost any connection to the consequences of their choices.

  And so, when the capabilities of the Singularity came to the world, rather than ushering in a burgeoning of human liberty, freedom and choices, its tools were used to implement competing police states the likes of which can barely be imagined. What fun is being a god if you can’t make people believe what you want them to? Privacy as an ideal had long since been abandoned under the premise, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong what do you
have to hide?” People spied on each other, trying to force each other to act and think in accordance to whatever was momentarily considered to be the necessary thing. We had long since corrupted information and data in the name of this or that fashionable narrative. Unpleasant truths were buried. Misleading innuendo in the service of “the Greater Good” was the norm. The most frightening aspect of it all was that most of the people enforcing these horrors had good intentions or at least believed they did. Why not use the power to force people to be good? All you have to do is ignore the idea that other people might have a different idea of what being good means. We thought we were gods but forgot that God himself made sure to give people free will.

  Most decent people retreated into ever more elaborate escapism rather than engage with a society that offered only self-righteous anger. But with the power of the Singularity we would all be made to care. Opting out was not a choice.

  It was chaos. There were competing theories on how the end of the world happened. Some said that after the European Union had given the new Caliphate access to Singularity tech to try to buy some peace from people in the grip of a 7th-century barbaric ideology, someone claiming to be the 12th Imam unleashed the nanos on the world as a techno jihad. Others claimed that Gamergate, an obscure front in the North American culture wars, was the starting point when editors of a videogame reviewing blog decided to literally try to kill their critics. Legend had it that after a particularly divisive Hugo awards, Sci-fi fans turned a LARPing event into a real, world-ending war. Others said that Amazon and Google had finally weaponized their marketing wars. Or that an atheist group had been working on developing the world’s most powerful AI--called Satan as a not-so-subtle middle finger to established religion—and lost control of it. There were many theories about how the world fell, but after all the death and chaos there was no way to ever truly know.