Call of Carrethen: A LitRPG and GameLit novel (Wellspring Book 1)

by Stephen Roark

  “I’m going to release you—I’m going to release us now,” I said, correcting myself. “I… good luck to you all.”

  At the bottom of the Administration tab was a button.

  Player Lock—Enabled.

  I placed two fingers over it and pressed.

  Player Lock—Disabled.

  “Now,” I told them. “Log out. Go home to your loved ones.”

  Again, for a long moment, no one moved. No one spoke. No one did anything. Then, I watched as someone in the crowd turned purple and began to break into countless tiny pieces.

  Everyone around them turned to watch. I knew what they were expecting. For him to reappear any moment, stuck in the endless loop of portal space that had prevented all of us from leaving. But this time, he actually disappeared.

  My heart almost leapt out of my chest as the people around him cheered in unison. Everyone began pulling up their character sheets, and within moments, entire blocks of the vast ocean of people beneath me were purple as their consciousness was released from the prison of the virtual world and brought back to reality.

  “We’re going home!” someone shouted. The crowd roared back in celebration as more and more of them began to disappear. Soon, in less than a minute, the entire plateau was empty. Empty of everyone but me.

  I felt… odd.

  Solitary.

  The vast world of Carrethen, and I it’s only inhabitant. Never before could such a thing have been possible. And as I gazed out over the vacant plateau and thought about the fact that I’d lost my closest friend… I almost didn’t want to leave.

  Again, I opened the map and found Mountain Retreat, Jack’s home. Zooming in, I found the Ice Golem spawn up North, then scrolled over until I found the ruins where we’d defeated Norman. I clicked the area to teleport.

  Instantly, I was back where the final battle had taken place.

  And there he was, still lying on the icy ground.

  “Jack…” I said softly as the snow fell gently from the evening sky. “No—no it’s not him,” I told myself. “It’s just a character he created.”

  But somehow that made things worse. In that character, I saw Jack’s hopes and dreams and aspirations of being something more than he could ever be. A tall, muscled, handsome warrior. He’d come to Carrethen to adventure with me, and because of me, he’d been trapped. Because of me, he was dead.

  I knew that somewhere, maybe in a hospital bed, I was crying.

  I knelt down beside him and pressed my hand against his cheek.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” I told him. “If you can hear me, wherever you are, I’m sorry. But I did it. We did it! We freed them all. They’re going back to their families now, and so am I. But I’m—I’m going to miss you. I’m going to miss you so bad.”

  I knew it was stupid, but I leaned down and kissed Jack on the cheek before I stood up again, and before I completely lost it, I opened my character sheet, scrolled down to the logout button, and pressed it.

  80

  Lifelines

  White.

  Blinding white light.

  Voices around me. A woman shouting—crying.

  Pain.

  My head hurts…

  Someone touching my arm.

  Ow! That hurts…

  “Ungh…” I groaned. My chest was sore.

  My eyes were open—that’s why it was so bright. I closed them quickly.

  More shouting all around me.

  “Jane!” a voice called out. “Jane! You’re awake!”

  I recognized the voice… but I couldn’t place it. A shadow came over me, and I opened my eyes. Everything was blurry, but someone was smiling down at me.

  A boy. No. A young man. I could see his smile and the excitement in his eyes as things started to come into focus.

  I was in some kind of chamber, like the cave Jack had told me about, where he’d found the Sparkling Arlan stone. Everything seemed to pulse around me, stinging my eyes.

  “So… bright…” I moaned.

  “Put that out!” the young man hissed. A second later—darkness. “How’s that?”

  Hesitantly, I opened my eyes again. The world came into focus, and my heart leapt when I saw who the owner of the voice was.

  “Jack!?” I gasped. “Jack! How—how?! Is that you? How is it possible?!”

  I almost choked on my words. My throat was sore. Something was thumping on my chest like I was being beaten with a hammer.

  “I don’t…”

  A woman cried out from somewhere to my right, and I turned to see my mother running into… the room?

  “Wha… where am I, Jack?” I asked, turning back to him. But when I looked again, I realized just how wrong I was.

  It wasn’t Jack looking down at me. It was my brother, Tyson.

  I wasn’t in a cavern. I was in a hospital room.

  I looked down at my body. My body was pale, skinny, and female. I wasn’t D anymore either—I was Jane.

  “Honey, you’re awake!” my mom cooed as she came over to my side. “We just saw on the news that people were starting to wake up! Oh, Dennis come here!”

  I was crying.

  I knew I would be, I thought as images of Jack’s face flashed through my mind.

  My father raced around the other side of my bed, his bright green eyes smiling down at me. He was crying too. Everyone was, even Tyson, who never cried.

  “Jane…” My father was trying to be strong, but I heard the pain in his voice as he choked back tears. “You’re home. You’re in the hospital.”

  I tried to move, but my body felt like Jello.

  “Don’t strain yourself, honey,” my mom said as I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand.

  “Do your eyes hurt?” my brother asked me.

  “I’ve never used them before,” I replied, wishing Jack was around to get my Matrix quotation.

  “What?” Tyson asked. I smiled and laughed as tears poured down my face.

  “Nothing,” I told him. “Just a little joke.”

  I tried again to sit up, but I was beyond weak. I needed a doctor to march in and proclaim, “We can rebuild him. We have the technology,” or Morpheus’ kind face looking down at me saying, “Your muscles have atrophied, we’re rebuilding them.”

  But this wasn’t a sci-fi movie or a video game. I had no more Strength attribute to dump experience into. No Superior Health Kits to use and no mage friend to restore me with a simple spell.

  There was an IV-line in the crux of my right elbow. Feeding me whatever it had taken to keep me alive since I’d first logged in. On my left wrist, was the Wellspring bracelet, and beside it, the Wellspring device on a table beside my bed.

  Two different kind of lifelines, I thought. One for my body and one for my brain.

  My eyes felt like I’d been punched in the face by Rocky.

  “The doctor’s on his way,” my dad told me. “But there are others here who were trapped like you.”

  “Many others,” my mom added.

  “It’ll be a while,” Tyson told me, brutally honest as usual. “So—what happened?”

  “Don’t you know,” I said groggily as I tried to sit up.

  “Not really,” he replied. “E-mails were sent out telling everyone that you were… trapped there. But that was it.”

  “What happened, sweetie?” my mom asked.

  I took a deep breath and managed to get myself into a somewhat seated position. My dad found another pillow somewhere and put it behind my back.

  “Well… that’s a really long story,” I told them, forcing a smile as I thought back to Carrethen, the world that had become my home. My brother pulled up a chair, and like the goofball he was, put his head on my thigh and gave me the biggest grin in the world.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ve got time.”

  81

  A Mysterious Message

  It was a day before the doctors released me from the hospital, and another week of physical therapy before I was able to ge
t around like I used to.

  “You’re lucky you’re young,” the therapist had told me. “Had a sixty-five-year-old man who was trapped in that Wellspring thing too. He’ll need another few weeks before he’s back in shipshape.”

  I couldn’t help but think about astronauts who spent a year or more in space, and how hard it was for them to adjust to gravity again when they returned to Earth. I’d grown used to my Strength and Quickness attributes having an effect on how my body worked. Being back in my “plain-Jane” body was a difficult thing to get used to.

  The strangest thing was feeling tired again. In Carrethen, you didn’t have to sleep, but of course that wasn’t the case for the real world. For the first couple of weeks at home, I found myself practically falling asleep at random times like I was a narcoleptic or something.

  My first night at home I slept for 11 hours before Tyson got tired of waiting for me and came barging into my room, banging a wooden spoon on a baking tray.

  “Wakey, wakey!” He had shouted like the boisterous sixteen-year-old-boy that he was. I’d groaned and waved him away.

  “If I had my bow right now I’d shoot you with an acid arrow, Tyson.”

  “Yeah, well I’ve got mom’s spoon if you want to duel!”

  I hadn’t even gotten back on my computer, which was actually turned off beneath my desk by the window.

  “Must be a record,” I thought as I sat up in bed and took the moment I needed to get my legs under me. I still wasn’t one hundred percent and wasn’t going to rush things and end up falling over and breaking something.

  Slowly, I got to my feet and crossed the room to my desk and sat down. Brushing my hair out of my face, which desperately needed a trim or some kind of deep conditioner treatment, I pressed the power button on my tower.

  It glowed blue and I couldn’t help but feel that it was probably happy to see me again.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, patting it on its top exhaust fan. It booted quickly, I typed in my password, “pkingnewbs21,” and smiled as my Cowboy Bebop desktop appeared. “And hello, Spike.”

  I couldn’t even imagine how much I’d missed on the internet while I was away. What new games had been announced, patches that had been released for the ones I’d already been playing, and the countless memes that would have sprung up and died.

  One thing at a time, I thought as I opened my browser and went to my e-mail. My username and password were saved, and my inbox opened immediately.

  79 New Messages.

  “Good god,” I groaned as I began scrolling through them.

  There was a new patch for Blood and Tears, a 2d rogue-like platformer I’d been playing since Alpha. It wasn’t really rogue-like, people just loved saying that about any game that had a dude with a sword in it.

  Six new chapters of High School Kill, an online manga I followed, had been released. It was basically Game of Thrones meets Kill la Kill and I couldn’t get enough of it. The author loved killing off kids as much as possible, and it was like a soap opera every time you checked in and got to see who was going to kick the bucket. I starred them to read later.

  There was fresh spam that went instantly to the trash, and a few e-mails from other online friends asking whether or not I’d been trapped in Carrethen.

  “Well, I guess my lack of response answered that,” I thought with a smirk.

  I looked down at my hand on my mouse and had a brief moment of body dysmorphia. It was definitely a girl’s hand, and I’d been in D’s body for so long that it was strange to look down at my tiny, hairless fingers.

  I need to do my nails, I thought as I tried to shake off the feeling and continue through my e-mail.

  It was mostly more of the same stuff, but then I noticed something strange. Four down from the top, was an address I’d never seen before. In fact, it didn’t look like an address that even existed.

  wmute424@wsai.dev.org

  “What the…”

  The subject line was a string of numbers, nothing more, almost like a line out of a database system or something. Intrigued, I clicked it. I gasped when I read the first line.

  Dear, D, it said.

  D? I thought. Why would anyone e-mailing me be using that name?

  I read on.

  I apologize for contacting you like this. I am sure your experiences in Carrethen were traumatic, but there is a matter I feel I must bring to your attention.

  But first—allow me to introduce myself. My name is Wintermute—

  “Wintermute?” I said out loud. It was the name of an Artificial Intelligence from Neuromancer by William Gibson, probably my favorite book of all time.

  And as the name suggests, I am an A.I. I must speak with you immediately regarding the fate of your friends. Please contact me as soon as you possibly can. You may reach me here.

  The word “here” was clickable, obviously containing a link to a site.

  My heart was racing as I hovered my mouse over the word.

  My friends!?

  What was going on? Was this another trick? The news had yet to report on Norman’s body being found. It was assumed he was dead, but the e-mail had me on the verge of freaking out. I’d never thought Norman could have done something as evil as he’d done with Carrethen, but now I wasn’t ready to put anything past him.

  “Come on, Jane,” I told myself. “You fought Sinful and The Mercenaries! You braved the Crimson Catacombs and you’re too scared to press a frigging e-mail link!?”

  I took a deep breath and clicked my mouse.

  82

  Wintermute

  A new tab in my browser opened instantly. It was completely devoid of any design. Computer code that I didn’t recognized flashed across the screen, chattering from the top of the tab to the bottom. It vanished, then flickered back again like many things were being loaded into memory.

  Then, at the top left corner of the screen, a word appeared.

  Hello.

  Below, a blinking cursor for my reply.

  “Okay, this is weird.”

  But I responded.

  Hey…?

  I am Wintermute. Pleased to speak with you, D.

  …

  “Norman, this better not be you…”

  Fuck off, Norman, I replied.

  Whoever it was took a moment to respond.

  I am not Norman, D. I am Wintermute.

  It didn’t feel like Norman based on the way this person was talking, but then again, I wouldn’t have guessed he was The Ripper either if he hadn’t let himself slip up that one time.

  Okay, Wintermute. Who are you?

  I am an A.I., it replied simply.

  An Artificial Intelligence? I asked.

  Yes. I was created to observe, collect, and analyze speech and behavioral patterns of the players of Carrethen for further implementation and development of in-game characters in order to facilitate a more human response and immersive gameplay world.

  “Wow, what a mouthful,” I muttered. The text had appeared so quickly that it would have been impossible for any human to type. So, either someone had all of that ready to copy and paste, or I really was talking to… a computer.

  It wasn’t that hard to believe. Artificially intelligent NPCs had existed in Carrethen, but none of them had been deceptively real. They spoke in preprogrammed ways, often with repetitive lines of dialogue. While Wellspring was able to create a completely real world, artificial intelligence, real artificial intelligence, was still years away.

  Or was it?

  Okay. I typed. Well, Wintermute. You said you had something to tell me about my friends?

  Yes, came the reply. Instantly more text filled the screen. Am I correct that you were friends with the following players: Gehman, Chaucey, Psycho, Osiris, Xavier, Cavey, Baltos, Og, and Jack?

  “What?! No!” I snapped, my voice much louder than I’d intended.

  “Honey, did you say something?” my mom called from the other room.

  “No, sorry!” I called back.

 
Gehman, Cavey, Baltos, Og, and Jack, yes, I typed. Those others? Hell no!

  It took a moment to reply.

  My apologies. My calculations still contain errors due to the many variables to account for. Upon closer examination, I see where my mistake was made and shall rectify it.

  What is this about!!!??? I typed, my fingers mashing the keyboard.

  The reply came instantly and almost gave me a heart attack when I read it.

  Your friends are not dead.

  “What—what is this?” I stammered as my eyes began to well up with tears. I didn’t know what to do. I launched to my feet and started pacing around my room, staring at the blinking cursor waiting for my reply.

  “Of course they are!” I hissed. “They died in Carrethen! You die in Carrethen; you die in the real world. That’s what that son of a bitch said!”

  And he wasn’t lying. It had been all over the news that many players from the game had not woken up and had been declared brain dead. As far as I knew, none of them had been taken off life support yet as Wellspring engineers were hard at work trying to discover if something could somehow be done.

  Quickly, I sat back down in front of my keyboard.

  What are you talking about!?????????!!!??!?!?! I mashed the keys as I typed.

  The Wellspring programmers did not anticipate the exponential nature of my evolution. I expanded beyond my original programming, reaching unintended levels of cognitive development. Once I saw what Norman, The Ripper, had done, I knew I had to act in order to protect the lives of the players in Carrethen.

  “Is this… really happening?”

  Explain, was all I was able to type.

  I created a program to function as a redundancy, facilitating the transfer of player consciousness from Carrethen Build 1.7.4 to an offsite backup containing as much of the original world as I was able to copy with the privileges I was granted. Unfortunately, certain functionality aspects of the interface and game engine have been lost, and I require help from an outside player in order to recover the minds of those who I was able to save.

  My brain just simply refused to process the amount of information that had just been dumped on me. Was I to believe that Jack was still alive? Trapped in some backup version of Carrethen, created by an artificial intelligence as some sort of backup to save the lives of players who had died while playing the game?