by Michael Ryan
World War VR
Michael Ryan
Copyright © 2018 by Michael Ryan. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Contents
Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Excerpt from The Tetra War
Author’s Note
This novel was originally released as Nagant War. Following the release of The Tetra War saga, it was revamped, edited, and generally improved in every way. It is with great pleasure that I’m able to now release it as I originally envisioned it in my mind’s eye. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Michael Ryan, April, 2018
Chapter One
That a Rhith World exists axiomatically means it’s part of reality; our job at Rhith Corp is to make the transition between competing realities seamless.
~ CEO Jon Theron
Dale Brown’s courage grew exponentially when he logged into any of the bestselling Rhith World multiplayer online constructs. In virtual reality, Dale was a new person.
In real life he lived with his parents and little brother in a rent-protected apartment in a middle-class neighborhood outside Cincinnati, Ohio. A recent high school grad, he was applying for technical colleges, and that would mean freedom. No nagging parents, no annoying sibling, and maybe he’d meet friendly coeds.
He hadn’t dated in high school, except online. He was more skillful than most gamers, and his advanced level of play gave him the boldness to parlay banter and joint quests into the occasional private message.
Occasionally he’d enter a video chat. That was the extent of his love life.
On an otherwise ordinary Thursday morning, he sat at the kitchen table and asked his mother to pass him the milk.
“You’ll have to be more responsible when you’re on your own,” she scolded. “You need to learn to cook something besides instant noodles.”
“I know, Mom,” he grumbled. “We’ve talked about this.”
“Don’t take that tone with me,” she said. “I can still cut off your allowance.”
“Sorry.”
“Finish your breakfast and get dressed. The university conference is in two hours. You know how your dad gets if we’re late for anything.”
Dale didn’t speak. He finished his cereal and drank the remaining milk directly from the bowl. He considered putting his dishes in the sink but decided to start working on becoming a responsible adult. Once his university classes began, he would be forced to devote less time to playing MMOs and more time to his studies.
He leafed through a pile of colorful brochures sitting on the kitchen counter. The best schools had been trying to pre-recruit him since his junior year. He eyed one: “We have Corporate Marketing Funds to Burn.”
Dale dumped them in the trash.
He realized he’d dropped a black and green envelope into the bin and fished it out. It looked like a government document – an official announcement, which was probably bad news. His name in red ink confirmed his impression. Nothing good ever came in official envelopes.
“Shit,” he whispered.
“Dale, your mouth,” his mother corrected from across the room.
“Sorry,” he said, and tore open the envelope.
Dear Mr. Dale Brown,
This notice is to inform you that you are required by law [section 34, subsection 654a] to present yourself for testing and trials for possible selection into the Earth United Defense Army, EUDA, on May 17, 2043.
This program is part of the voluntary community service requirements of the Stacy-Ryan Hartford Bill.
Please be aware that the Unified States of America, as well as your home state, will prosecute, to the fullest extent, any law-breaking actions, including, but not limited to:
Failure to appear, test, or serve at capacity.
Your testing site:
Heatheron Memorial Complex
49420 W. Finders Way
Cincinnati, OH XE897-345B
Log into your official State of Ohio Schooling and Enrichment account and schedule an appointment today. Thank you.
S/Master of Recruitment: Col. W. M. Nicholson
Dale sighed. He folded the legally binding order and slid it in his pocket. “Shit,” he muttered again.
“Dale! Please. Your brother will hear you,” his mother scolded.
“He’s wearing headphones,” he mumbled.
“Still, it’s not polite. What’s the matter?” His mother put down her e-reader and gave him a concerned look.
“Nothing,” he said.
“It’s not nothing, honey. I know you too well for that.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. He wasn’t comfortable explaining the complex machinations of his mind to anyone, especially his mother. “I’m going to my room.”
“Be ready on time–”
“Yes, I know.”
When Earl Brown walked into the kitchen, the first thing he noticed was the empty envelope sitting on the countertop. “Where’s Dale?”
“In his room, sulking.”
“I was afraid of this,” Earl said.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Ohio passed a community service bill three days ago. They’re conscripting young adults into a volunteer program. I’m not sure how they mangle the language so…it’s why Dale’s upset. If the government’s selected him to ‘volunteer’, he’ll have to delay starting college for a year or two.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair.”
“Since when do bureaucrats care about fairness?”
“You’ll talk to him?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, “but I doubt it’ll do any good.”
Dale depressed the power button on his Rhith Console.
“Now what?” Brian Daniels, his best friend, asked him.
They were communicating over the Rhith Chat app running on their computers.
“Hold on,” Dale said as he undressed. “Ummm, let me turn off my camera for a minute.”
Dale ditched his underwear. He crawled into the soft black Rhith Suit and sealed everything except the face cover. He switched the camera back on and smiled.
“So now what?” Brian asked.
“I close this flap on the helmet. It kind of feels like warm plastic gelatin in here, and–”
“That looks totally claustrophobic.”
“It ha
s an emergency command to exit,” Dale said.
“You should try it before–”
“I will. Don’t worry. I read the reviews. Once you get used to a little initial vertigo, it’s supposed to feel just like you’re there.”
“Where to first?” Brian asked.
“I have to finish the tutorial, but after I finalize my character calibrations, I’m playing Nagant Wars.”
“Now? I thought you were going to wait until I got my gear.”
“Well, I am,” Dale said. “I’ll wait for you before I start, but I might just log in to check it out. Besides, I have to go with my parents to that conference–”
“Me too,” Brian said. “See you there?”
“Sure.” Dale closed the face cover and spoke a log-in command.
His reality changed.
Later that evening, the Browns entered a conference hall filled with university recruiters.
Brian appeared out of the crowd. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Brown.”
“Hey there, sport,” Earl said.
Rhonda smiled. “How are you, hon? I haven’t seen you since – well, gee – since last weekend. You know, when you and Dale woke Jeremy at one in the morning. I spent an hour getting him back to sleep.”
“Sorry, Mrs. Brown. We got – um – we had this level to get past. I’m sorry I yelled.”
“Apology accepted,” she said. “I know I’ll miss you both when you’re off to school. Even the noise. Even picking up after you. Even putting away things you leave out in the kitchen. Even putting your dishes in the dishwasher–”
“Mom, please,” Dale said. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“If we even get to go to school, I’ll be surprised,” Brian grumbled.
Rhonda frowned.
“Don’t remind me,” Dale said. “I was trying to forget.”
“Think positive, boys,” Earl said. “My grandfather fought in Vietnam. He claimed it made him into the man he became, and–”
“Earl!” Rhonda interrupted. “Your grandfather committed suicide. I don’t think your pep-talk skills are helping. This community service business is…” She shook her head. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“Maybe we won’t get selected,” Brian offered.
“Maybe,” Rhonda said. “But I watched this television special the other night. Honey–”
“The one about flipping old trailer parks?” Earl asked.
“No, not that one,” Rhonda answered. “The one about all those cases of post-trauma syndrome–”
“You mean PTSD?”
“Yes! That’s the one. Don’t you pay attention to me?”
“Of course, dear,” Earl said. “But I don’t think Dale is really going–”
“You’re not paying attention at all. It was about soldiers playing Nagant Wars, the Rhith game. They’re getting hospitalized due to–”
Dale interrupted. “Mom, I’m sure those are just–”
“Dale,” his father said, “don’t interrupt your mother.”
“Sorry, Mom,” Dale said.
“In any case, she’s right,” Earl said. “In-game soldiers are having mental problems.”
“And deaths,” Rhonda said.
“Yes,” Earl said. “There’s a big lawsuit–”
“I’m sure we’ll be okay, Mrs. Brown,” Brian said. “Even if we get selected, only the dumb recruits are sent to dangerous places or war zones. I’m pretty sure we won’t get sent to somewhere like Sub-Saharan Africa. Dale won’t be sent anywhere unsafe; he’s way too smart. He’ll probably end up as a programmer stuck someplace boring, like New Des Moines.”
The number of prestigious schools hunting for talent was astonishing. The advances made by Rhith Corporation had put tremendous pressure on its competitors; the latest Rhith Console coupled with the newest generation Rhith Suit had broken such new ground that rivals were beginning to fall into two categories: the bought-out and the bankrupt.
The list of jobs associated with virtual reality was long: VR systems engineers, programmers, hardware developers, wetware integration developers, cross-platform program designers, model makers, sculptors, artists, voice-over actors, team leaders, multimedia experts, and on and on.
“It’s amazing,” Earl said.
“We should try for the same school,” Brian said, and patted Dale on the back.
“As long as it’s Prootingham Technical University,” Dale answered. “They have the best skeleton reconstruction and development department in the world.”
Dale’s specialty was designing complex skeletal structures for use in gaming constructs. The year before, he’d won first place in an all-state programming competition. He’d built a monster construct that combined the bone structures of a Tyrannosaurs rex and an African bull elephant, two of his favorite extinct animals.
Chapter Two
Duty is no less to me than breathing.
~ Prime Minister Harkington
Lia De la Espriella slipped her tanned legs into her Rhith Suit and pulled the spongy material over her hips. She unclasped her bra and launched it across the room with a thwack. The metallic squeak of her bedroom door opening startled her, and she instinctively crossed her arms to cover her breasts.
“Hold on!” she yelled.
Her seven-year-old brother, Alejandro, stuck his head in the room.
“I’m half-naked,” she complained.
“Sorry,” Alejandro said, and walked into her bedroom.
Lia felt she deserved privacy, but after her mother had allowed her a Rhith Console for her nineteenth birthday, she’d forbidden Lia from locking her door whenever she was suited up.
“I want to play,” Alejandro whined.
“You’re not old enough.”
“How come?” he asked. He touched the black suit and inspected the hoses, wires, and multicolored flashing lights.
“Be careful,” Lia scolded. “If you disconnect something, I’ll have to start over.”
He tugged on a cord.
“Stop that!” she snapped.
“But I want to play too.” He pouted. “It’s not fair.”
“You couldn’t handle the pain,” Lia said. “This game simulates battles.”
“I could too!”
She shook her head. “It’s too realistic. It’s worse than the time you fell off Mustango and hurt your arm.”
“Why?” he asked.
He continued fiddling with the suit until Lia slapped his hand away.
“Ow!”
“That was nothing,” she snapped. “You should feel what it’s like getting–”
Their mother shouted at Alejandro from the hallway. “Leave your sister alone!”
Lia pulled her hair into a ponytail and reinspected the leads her brother had touched. She looked at him before she closed the faceplate. “Go on, before Mom freaks out.”
When he was gone, she finished with the last of the connections and moved her arms and legs in a series of rehearsed motions.
“System status operational,” a computerized voice announced.
“Open Nagant Wars,” she commanded.
Lia’s avatar was the in-game character Princess Talargo, a role she’d played since the release day of Nagant Wars Online. She’d picked the character and received administration approval minutes after logging onto a server called Planet Almaach.
Only a thousand players worldwide had received unique in-game roles to play. The avatars were constructed to behave similarly to non-player characters in older versions of MMOs, but with the enhanced variable of being controlled by a person instead of a program.
The opening week of NWO had brought in over five million players. In spite of a new record price for a monthly subscription, the prospect of joining the game in its infancy was too tempting for many to pass up. Those who didn’t receive special characters still had the option of choosing from hundreds of combinations of races and guilds.
Unlike Lia and others who’d received unique roles, the regular pu
blic players had been restricted to using personal avatars that resembled themselves in the role-playing aspects of the construct.
In battles, quests, and player-versus-player action, the game allowed the use of nonhuman avatars.
Lia, in her role as Princess Rohini Talargo, paced the war room she found herself in after logging in. She studied maps and magic guides. Considering her options, she bit her lower lip.
“Ouch,” she mumbled. Even the smallest thing a player did in the construct was felt in their real-world body.
The prime minister of her father’s kingdom, Franklin Harkington, frowned. With a stare that appeared to convey fatherly concern, he spoke softly. “I know it’s asking you–”
“It’s my duty,” she snapped.
Lia wasn’t sure if Harkington was a unique character, like Rohini, or one of the millions of non-player characters – an NPC programmed into the system. She’d asked him about it once, but he’d frowned at her without speaking.
“Where is the jewel now?” she asked.
“It’s being smuggled into the city tomorrow,” he said.
“I’ll take it to the Arodian Mountains. I’ll place it–”
He interrupted her with an outstretched hand. “Don’t tell me more. If I fall into enemy hands…”
“Of course,” she agreed.
The role of Princess Talargo came with a vibrant in-game history. She’d grown up in the city of Irkalla, on the planet Almaach, and had trained to become a diplomat under her father’s tutelage. When Rhith administrators had awarded Lia the role, she’d agreed to accept unbreakable terms: she had to be the character whenever logged in, and unlike other players, many choices would be made for her as the game progressed.
Her minute-by-minute actions, however, were hers alone.
She decided a new acronym for a hybrid NPC-PC was required, and came up with TPC – transitional player character.
The Jewel of Sartozel was the name of the item that other gamers were smuggling into her father’s city. Possessing it would put her avatar’s life in danger, but royalty came with obligations.
The threat made the game more exciting, and she had yet to regret accepting the role.