Seamus stood up as she came to the desk and extended his hand. “The pleasure is mine Miss, but you do seem to have the advantage of me. Can I get you to tell me your name?”
A delightful soft laugh filled the air, “My name is Victoria, but you can call me Vicky if you would like. I hope you are feeling well today?” She took his hand in her soft grip giving it a firm shake before taking a seat in her chair.
Blinking, Seamus sat back down when she released his hand. “Vicky, where am I?”
“Oh, sorry I thought they told you about me. I’m the AI that will be doing your psych evaluation. In fact I started a few minutes ago when you spoke with Moorehead. I find that very interesting indeed. Did you find me using your memories to build a scenario wrong?” Victoria asked sitting forward slightly, her eyes intense on him.
“Wait, what? That talk I just had with my attorney wasn’t real? I’m really in the pod already?” Seamus asked rapidly, his eyes widening slightly. “It all seemed so real, though.”
“That was the point, to get a real truthful answer from you and to judge your reactions to it. I want to do more scenarios during the evaluation, but I’ve been told if you object I have to stop. So I am going to do it the easy way and ask up front, can we do more of those? It really helps me better gauge things.”
“How?” Seamus asked bluntly, still reeling from what he was being told.
“I can pick up your surface thoughts during this evaluation. So, as you react to things I can see what you are thinking as you react. You clearly thought about hitting Moore to make him shut up. You dismissed that idea and asked him to stop with quite a lot of intensity instead. I know the topic bothers you a great deal now, so I will try to avoid touching it so directly for now.”
“I really didn’t care for that at all, Vicky. If you stay away from my crime and why it happened we can do another scenario or two. I want to know if this evaluation can be used against me in any way?”
“No Seamus, it can’t be used against you, think of this as doctor confidentiality. Once you go in game your pod will have a live video feed of your character so they can see what is going on in case something triggers a medical crisis. Until you log in, there will be no record. I am just here to get a good idea of how you react to things. Do you know anything about Alpha World?” Vicky asked, settling back in her chair and crossing her legs.
Seamus resisted the urge to look down as she did so while he shook his head. “The basics, it's a FIVR MMORPG with a fantasy setting. Mindblown has been working on it for the last two years and it goes live in a week or so. Standard elf, dwarf and human as the races available and the class system I think is roughly the same standard thing fantasy settings have used for decades.”
“Okay, so a very rough idea then of the basics,” Vicky replied. “Let’s further your understanding, shall we? The races available also include the Lunari, or cat-people, in the starting choices. There will be chances for people to change races in the game thanks to various quests or items they can find. A Lunari Vampire, as an example, is entirely possible.” She chuckled as Seamus raised an eyebrow. “Also, the classes are very diverse. Elementalist, Necromancer, Summoner, Shadow Dancer, Trap Smith, Priest, Shaman, Paladin, Berserker, Defender and several other classes are available to starting players. At each level, except every fifth, every class gains a spell or spell-like action that do not require visiting a trainer to learn. At each fifth level you are given options for abilities by your trainer to help specialize you. This system helps make each person playing, an Elementalist for instance, different than the others.”
Chuckling, Seamus considered the possibilities. “Are the choices limitless or is there a set number to choose from? Are all options available right away or do you get more and more choices at each fifth level?”
“Two choices every fifth level, along with the option of taking one that you passed by previously. Statistics are a given value at the start based on class, and each level you get a number of points to distribute as you see fit. So a strength heavy Elementalist is possible, but it would be a really bad idea. The idea is to allow people to play the way they want to, even if it means they have a really weak character. That is enough about the game for now, though. Alpha World is not here yet and you have the chance at increased stats for taking this test. So, shall we continue with the scenarios?” Vicky asked as she recrossed her legs while leaning forward eagerly.
“Let’s see what you have in store for me before we commit to more than this one,” Seamus replied, again forcing himself to not follow the motion of her legs.
The room vanished, replaced by a frozen scene. A small kitten was in a tree twenty feet up, directly below it was a large hornet nest with hornets all about it. The tree was in the front of a house with an open garage door. Inside the garage was a lot of junk to Seamus’s eyes as he took in the whole picture.
“All I want you to do Seamus,” Vicky’s voice said from all around him, “is save the kitten from the hornets. You have ten minutes to figure out your plan. The hornets are extremely aggressive and the kitten’s pitiful meows are upsetting them more. In ten minutes they will swarm the kitten unless you can stop them. Also, if you approach they will attack you and the kitten, and the pain sensors for the pod are set to max. Good luck.”
A small red clock appeared in the lower right of his peripheral vision, counting down. The sound kicked on as the scene came to life with the kitten meowing piteously as it clung to its branch. Seamus went to the garage and started looking through all the stuff piled up inside of it. He noted the hose with an obvious hole in it and set it aside for the moment. Water alone wouldn’t ground the hornets fast enough to save him or the kitten.
The time ticked away as he went through the stuff as quickly as he could. He smiled when he found a garden feeder attachment for the hose and set it next to the hose. He found some heavy duty tape and tossed it next to the hose. No fucking bug spray in the whole pile of junk, but he did find a bottle of liquid soap. Taking the hose, he patched the hole thoroughly with the tape. It wouldn’t last long, but it would hold for the time he needed it for. He placed soap into the garden feeder attachment and hooked up to the hose before hooking the hose to the spigot one the side of the house. Seamus faced away from the hornets and turned the water on to test if he was getting enough suds. Sure enough the water going through the feeder picked up enough soap and agitation to create suds.
Seamus turned the water off, pulling the feeder off to top up the soap off before hooking everything back up. Getting the hose pointed above the nest slightly, Seamus nodded as he turned the water on full blast. Soapy water came out in a wide spray, knocking the hornets in the air around the kitten down first. The soap coating their wings dropped them from the air. The nest exploded with activity as hornets came pouring out, only to also get soaped and collapse to the ground. The kitten, getting wet, meowed loudly and climbed further out onto the branch. Seamus didn’t turn the hose off until no more hornets came out. Once they had stopped he cocked the hose so the stream continued to arc over the mass of them on the ground. He got the small ladder from the garage and carried it to the tree. A minute later he had a very upset, soapy kitten out of the tree along with a few deep scratches on his arms for his trouble.
The scene paused, the kitten vanished and Seamus was dry again, after getting wet when he grabbed the kitten. “Very well done, Seamus. Very creative use of the items in the pile. Did you spot any other options?”
“A few, but none of them would have been as effective or as quick to really reduce the threat to me and the kitten. This scenario was actually a little fun, I love problem solving. How do you guys make it all seem so real?”
“We feed your brain the stimuli needed for you to be able to smell, feel, taste, hear, and otherwise perceive sensation. You know how a cat sounds or how hornets buzz, so we give you the raw input and let your brain filter it for you to experience. That is a very rough and crude way of explaining a complicated process. Are
you okay with doing another one?” Vicky asked, to which Seamus consented.
The rest of the day flew by in a blur as best Seamus could recall it. The scenarios were all over the board, testing his determination to break through a door to help a screaming child on the other side or jumping into a freezing pond to save a puppy. It also touched on how he dealt with different aggressors, from women who wanted him in bed to three guys who wanted to kill him. All Seamus could clearly remember was Victoria’s smile as each scenario concluded with her sitting across from him.
Eventually, she shook her head, “Time certainly does fly, as the saying goes. You should rest for a bit. You’ll find that you still need to do things like sleep and eat. The designers decided that most biological functions did not need representation, so for most players food simply provides buffs. Anyone logged in for more than twelve hours at a time though, will find a starvation debuff waiting for them, so remember to eat and stay hydrated. Did you have any other questions before you rest?”
“We’re doing this again tomorrow, right?” Seamus asked.
Shaking her head as if sad, Victoria replied, ‘We’ve already spent twenty four hours together, Seamus.” Seamus blinked at her statement but she continued on, “After you rest you will be given the chance to make your avatar and then just wait for early access to launch. It has been a pleasure meeting and speaking with you. I will see you again in a year to do this all over again to see how you have changed, or not. Sleep well and good luck.”
She started to fade and Seamus called out quickly, “Wait.” She came back into focus, a questioning smile on her lips with her head cocked to one side. “Um, just curious. Do you have any contact with the game itself?”
Her eyes sparkled briefly and her lips twitched up very slightly, “Of course not.” It seemed like an obvious lie to Seamus. “Was that all, Seamus?”
“Do you ever speak to Alvin Brouch at Mindblown Entertainment?”
“I do speak with Alvin at times,” she replied.
“Next time you do, tell him thanks for this chance please. I know he had a hand in making sure I was the one selected.”
Victoria’s smile could have lit the sky, “How sweet of you, Seamus. I shall indeed pass along your words to him. I am going, but I will leave you with one last question of my own. Who else at Mindblown could have heard about you and helped tip the scales in your favor?” With that cryptic question, she vanished as did the study.
Seamus sat in still blackness considering her words, trying to think if he had met any friend of Alvin’s who could have helped him. His mind chugged along for a bit before sleep claimed him, dragging him off to dreams of Victoria’s smile as he completed each scenario.
Character Creation
Seamus found himself floating in blackness, well floating was wrong as he didn’t feel weightless, but with nothing to give perspective and no feeling on any of his limbs he couldn’t find another way to describe it. The blackness flashed white for a second all but blinding him, then he was spiraling down towards a green-blue world. It wasn’t earth, not with the continents shaped as they were, but it seemed to be earth like. He smiled as a title image appeared over the planet, ‘Alpha World’. He felt anticipation grow as the world faded away leaving him in a blank room looking at an avatar of the average human male.
“Okay character creation time,” Seamus whispered to himself as he walked around the nude character. “Let's see what the other races look like as well.”
Seamus switched the race option to dwarf and did a walk around the small fireplug, adjusting the height to the maximum five foot and shook his head. “Too short, good shoulders though. Not for me this time.”
Going to elf next Seamus laughed out loud at the pointedly thin figure. “Hell I could attack with the cheek and chin of this character.” Seamus played with the face creation for a time before shaking his head as each face still seemed too feminine to him.
Finally he ended up with the Lunari, cat-people, to find them mostly human looking. The difference was the tail, the coating of downy fur, cat ears on top of the head and the retractable razor sharp claws on their hands. “Feisty kitty,” Seamus muttered before switching back to human. “Let's go with the basic human.”
“Average, just like me. Let’s get the features a little more in line with how I looked when I passed the academy all those years ago.” He left the height alone at the five foot seven inch mark, he toned the muscles and slimmed them down to that of a martial artist, rather than the more heavily muscled form it had been. He shifted the hair to a light brown and made it a buzz cut as was his preferred style. He gave the avatar a neatly trimmed beard and mustache along with a small scar on the right side of his forehead going from hairline to temple. A pair of misty grey eyes that were unnerving to look at, he had always wanted those over the blue eyes he had been born with, so why not take them here? He did another walk around, approving of what he saw. He paused as he considered the mature rating of the game. Shaking his head, he left the more adult parts alone figuring since he was born average he might as well keep the game avatar the same, at least he knew how to use what he had.
Touching a green button floating just in his peripheral vision opened a window before him with a keyboard asking him to name his avatar. Seamus considered it then smiled, using the name he had in a previous game, Alburet. As he hit accept on the name he felt his awareness shift to the avatar. The room around him shifted as well to show lockers with all sorts of different equipment, each one labeled to a different class. Nodding at how the class choice section was laid out, he went locker to locker to check the starting gear and the tag in each that described the class. Elementalist, a mage who focused on fire, earth, air and water magics for offense but with little defense, a pure damage dealing class. Seamus skipped that one, knowing he would probably end up solo more than most as he wouldn’t have time limitations like others. Being solo meant that he would have to be much more self-sufficient than a glass cannon could be.
He bypassed the Berserker, knowing it was going to be the melee equivalent of the Elementalist, heavy on damage but no healing or mitigation. Necromancer, now that could be fun, but if the game really did bring over all the senses then smelling the dead all the time was not going to work. Which was too bad, really, as pet classes were traditionally better at solo game play but not as useful in big group content. Defender was the pure tank class based around holding the attention of monsters while mitigating the damage the monsters did. Downside there being that they really needed a healer to keep them going. Sighing, Seamus moved on, dismissing the classes one by one as he did. He paused at the Assassin class though, a master of stealth and fast kills would be useful indeed. However, they were not good in any multi-enemy combat or against any big mobs in a solo game style. Sure, you could basically one-shot things around your level if you built the character right, but after that first shot they ended up like cloth wearers, too damned squishy to live long. Seamus marked it as his first back up if the other classes failed to deliver him real viability.
Two classes were all that was left for him to check, with only the Assassin having given him any real interest so far. Paladin… Seamus hated the lawful stupid class that Paladin ended up being in most role playing games. So self-righteous, with a need to right every wrong they came across while upholding the law. But as he looked at the class description he grinned, Paladins here could serve any god of the world, not just the good gods. The restriction to the class was you had to obey the edicts of your god or lose your abilities until you atoned. They were plate wearing tanks slightly less reliable than the Defender, but they made up for it with some healing and utility abilities. Seamus considered it as he leafed through the pamphlet in the locker about all the different gods. There seemed to be a god for almost everything, which was nice for players. Seamus predicted a whole lot of people playing Paladin at least to start with, until they violated the dogma of their chosen god and had to atone to get their abilities back.
Seamus put the class pamphlet back in the locker and turned to look at the Paladin and Assassin again. After a few minutes he decided against the Assassin, too reliant on the first big hit and as he didn’t want to do player killing, he set the option aside. So Paladin or Summoner were the two options he liked the most for his foray into Alpha World. Plate wearing tank in service to a god, or a man who summoned demons to do his bidding. It really wasn't much of a choice, after all he had never been a god fearing man. Walking back to the Summoner locker, he picked up the pamphlet and pressed his palm into the area for it on the last page. A green floating button appeared asking him to confirm his choice, which he promptly did.
Alpha World Book One: Gamer for Life Page 3