by Grim Martin
As if I didn’t have enough reasons to sweat already.
“Welcome, Mr…?” she purrs.
“Harvey. Just Harvey.”
I don’t have to tell them my full name or personal details, and I have no intention of doing so. I have looked it up.
“Mr Harvey,” she purrs, her eyes lingering on my token as I slip it back into my pocket. “I’m Nicolette.”
She places her slender pale hand on my lower back and firmly pushes me along, guiding me towards the back of the building. Her entire body language is smug now, as if I am her precious property. The other assistants mutter, and side-eye us as we pass.
At the back of the GameCenter foyer is an elevator. We get inside and she presses the down button and fixes a beaming smile at me. An artificial glimmer in her eyes makes me hastily look away. A SimBot? She can’t be. I swallow hard. We go down for what seems like a very long time.
The inside panels of the elevator are mirrored holo-screens projecting live images from inside the AngelRealm in brief tantalizing flashes. Armored knights wielding clashing swords in the medieval era, a strobe-lit nightclub with sinuously dancing neon-winged fairy-girls in the current era.
When we finally reach what feels like the bowels of the earth, we go along endless corridors and doors until I have thoroughly lost my sense of direction. Finally we arrive at a secured private area. Along one wall are rows of huge circular steel doors that look like they belong in a high-end bank. These are the private GamePod vaults.
My mouth drops open as Nicolette begins to spin open one of the huge circular vault locks. These vaults are for top ranked players. Or people with more money than game-sense.
“Er…A normal pod will do for me,” I mutter.
I don’t want to be marked out as a special player. I want the anonymity of being in one of the thousands of pods that they have in their main warehouse pod-stacks.
“Not for you,” she purrs. “We’ve never had a token like yours before.”
And then her hand pauses on the vault lock.
“Unless…” She puts her pretty little hand on my arm. “Unless you want to exchange your token for a different one?”
Her fingers are soft and cool. They feel real. They slide down my bare forearm meaningfully. She can’t be a SimBot. Why on earth would a SimBot be here?
She is looking at me with those big eyes of hers. I see no artificial glint now. Just a girl who wants something from a guy.
“I have a pretty spectacular purple haze token a boy like you could make good use of,” she croons.
Flipping heck. A purple haze. The fact that she is talking about one to me makes me flush. Purple haze tokens are rare. They gift players an ability to emit a purple mist inside the game whenever they feel like. The mist is an intoxicant. You can imagine the effect it has on the ladies.
The idea of it is tempting. A purple haze could be perfect. All I need to do is find someone who knows where David Stony is, switch on the haze, and ask them to take me to him. They’d do whatever I asked.
David Stony is my entire plan for saving Riverhaven. His father was Anthony Stony, the original GameMaker. More importantly, Anthony Stony founded STONY.Corp. His three sons run it now, led by Reese Stony, the eldest, the cold-hearted bastard who wants to build the dam.
David, the youngest, is the good-for-nothing. The one who spends most of his life drinking and whoring inside the AngelRealm. But he is good for one thing. It’s well known that he is close to his middle brother Malcolm, the recluse and the true brains out of the brothers. Malcolm the philanthropist, who spends all of his time trying to save the real world. Malcolm would take one look at Riverhaven and know it has to be preserved. I know he would. And David is the key to bringing Malcolm there.
“Mr Harvey?”
Nicolette’s soft voice brings me back to earth. The purple haze token is in her hand. She is holding it up for me to examine. She is gazing at me, her eyes two limpid and alluring pools that I could happily drown in.
My stomach suddenly feels watery. She is standing so close to me. She wants my token badly. There is the promise of a kiss in her eyes. If I give her my token, she might kiss me with her perfect pink lips.
Perspiration breaks out all over my body. And it is not just because of her proximity.
I should take the purple haze while I have the chance. After all, my green token could be big fake. Or it could be Gift-less, which would be almost as bad. I will only find out when I slide it into the slot to begin my game. If my GamePod rejects it, I will have to leave here empty-handed, and go back home like a loser to face Frank.
Nicolette’s offer of the purple haze might be my only chance.
I am about to nod, but at the last second I find myself shaking my head, more to make myself start thinking clearly than to tell her no. The green cannot be a fake. It can’t be.
Nicolette looks disappointed. She takes her hand off my forearm and her purple haze token disappears into her breast pocket. She swings open the vault door.
I swallow hard. This is the right choice. Judging by the trick she just tried to pull on me, she thinks as much as I do that my token is worth far more than a purple haze.
Once I am inside the vault, she opens up a safe for me to put my belongings in. I sling my backpack inside, safe in the knowledge there is nothing in it that could identify me. Then I immediately stride towards the already open GamePod to take a seat inside it. Finally I am here. It feels like a moment to savor.
I cannot help but stroke my hands along the pod’s gleaming sides. It is made of a white frosty glass, and is molded into a shape suitable for me to sit in. When I am ready to begin play, the shape will flow into an oval coffin and the sides will seal so that immersion fluid can fill it.
Towards the front of the pod, right between my knees, is a circular hollow where I must place my token.
When I see it my heart starts beating so fast that I barely hear as Nicolette reads out a long list of terms and conditions. I already know what they are. The main clause that interests me is that the GameMakers guarantee the anonymity of my physical location in the real world for the duration I am in play. During that time even they won’t know where my body is. I don’t want them pulling me out if I do something they don’t like.
“Remember, one life is all you get each play,” says Nicolette. “Then you die and lose any Gifts that came with your first-life token. If you want to buy your way back inside, only currency you’ve earned yourself inside the game can buy a re-entry. Die without enough, and you never get to go back inside.”
I already know this. I have to earn a minimum of 500 XP to get a basic re-entry token, or more for a better one.
Basics are shittier than any freebie first-life token. That’s why so many people with no skills, or just plain bad luck, resort to using real-world money to buy up first-life tokens from others. They use them to upgrade their basics. It’s crappy really, because only the poorest people would ever give up their first-life tokens. Give that up, and you never ever get to go into the AngelRealm. Ever.
Replay tokens, including basics, are imprinted to each person’s own DNA and neural networks. You need to earn your own. Replays can’t be bought.
Nicolette is still going on about the one-life rule. “Everyone only gets a certain amount of time in the game, just like in real life. The GodAngel knows when you will die. She broadcasts it on a hologram above your avatar’s head. Make sure you have 500 XP banked by your Day Zero, okay?”
Born to die. It is one of the main cruelties or thrills of the AngelRealm, depending on whether you’re doing the dying or the killing. Many players enter just for the thrill of killing Day Zero-ers and levelling up. It’s gruesome, but I’d rather go at the hands of another player than an angel.
Day Zero comes for everyone. You don’t get to choose when or how. You play the game in the hopes of winning big, knowing full well what is coming for you in the end.
I nod. “Sure.”
“An
d one year in the game equates to–”
“One week of time in real life. I’ve got it.”
Two weeks until they drown Rivertun is what I have. Which equates to two years in the game. But I need to give Malcolm Stony at least a week of real-world time to visit Riverhaven, if not more. So I need to find David Stony, do whatever it takes to get his trust, and persuade him to help me save Rivertun as quick as I can.
And after that I am free to do whatever I like, and what I really want to do is earn XP for cashing into real currency. You can earn an unlimited amount of XP in the game, and I hope to use whatever Gift my green token bestows on me to do exactly that.
What could go wrong? Avoid the angels and I’ll be fine.
“Any questions?” says Nicolette.
“None thanks, Nicolette. I’m ready to play now.”
“What era are you going to?” she asks.
“Early twenty-first century.”
I bite my lip and discreetly cross my fingers as she taps it into her tablet. You can make your choice, but some tokens will send you to whenever and wherever they want. I really hope mine is not one of those.
The early twenty-first century was the age of prosperity and indulgence. It’s where David Stony will undoubtedly be. And it’s the one I’ve studied endlessly because it’s the one place I’d dreamed of visiting, a time when life on Earth was good.
Nicolette’s tablet does not object to my era choice, but that’s not to say my token won’t.
Nicolette puts her tablet aside. She puts her hands on my knees and slides them slowly upwards. My breath hitches in my lungs and she notices. Her big hazel eyes gleam. I see a chink of that odd luminescent light in them again.
“Last chance,” she murmurs. “Are you sure you don’t want to exchange tokens?”
I nod firmly.
She pouts at me. She traces a swirling motif on my thigh with her index finger. “Well, don’t forget me, baby, if you happen to find the lost GodThrone, okay?”
I almost laugh out loud. Find the lost GodThrone. Ha! Avoiding angels is my game, not incurring the wrath of their God. But if I tell her that, she’ll think I’m a coward.
She plants a feather-light kiss on my cheek and then winks at me. Then she takes my hand and presses my palm and fingertips onto her tablet. This completes my sign-off on the terms and conditions.
It is time.
I take my token out of my pocket with shaking hands. My fingers are so slippery it almost falls. I catch it hastily. Had it rolled across the floor, I have the feeling she would have snatched it away. She eyes it regretfully.
Her eyes follow it as I place it carefully in the circular hollow in the GamePod seat.
“Ready or not, here you come,” she coos.
For a long moment nothing happens. Long enough for me to sweat buckets. And then the green center of the token begins to gleam brighter and brighter, enveloping me in dazzling light. The pod walls rise up and close around me.
4. Born to Die
I drown, the immersion fluid rising to engulf me. I melt away into nothing. And then I reform into something.
The first thing that I become aware of is a blinding green light peeking in through my barely open eyes. And then a whole life flashes before me.
I am a baby cuddled in my mother’s arms, the smell of milk and the reassuring thud of her heartbeat anchoring me to my place in the world.
But this image is fading from memory already as I become a toddler fighting it out with all the other toddlers for a toy truck at nursery, and winning my prize, a big toy truck. It surprises me to win, but the moment is already gone. I am a teenager, kissing a girl who likes me more than any girl has ever liked me in the real world. A girl whose heart I will break.
The memories overwhelm me beyond anything I imagined, even though I thought I had been prepared for it. The game is giving me my own history, making me into a real person in this artificial world. This is how they make the AngelRealm fully immersive, and the time you are given in it so precious that you fight for it when your Day Zero comes.
The memories rush by in my head, catching me up to all that has happened to me in the AngelRealm up until the age I am now.
When it finishes I feel like I have fallen a great distance and jerked to a sudden stop. Adrenaline is pounding through my veins. It takes a moment for me to catch my breath.
I find myself standing in the hallway of a building, right outside an apartment. No one else is around. The hallway is empty. The walls are brown, the paint patchy and peeling, and even though I am seeing it for the first time, I remember it like I have seen it a hundred times before. This is my apartment. My fingers are digging for my keys in the back pocket of my jeans.
I am inhabiting this moment as if I was in it all along. It is the bizarre-est thing. I feel like I belong here. The sync is so good that I can only feel being here, and not the presence of my body elsewhere. It is disconcerting.
The ground is solid beneath my feet, the air a bit stale as I breathe it in. I try to find the edges of sensation that tell me I am in two worlds, but I cannot find them.
Everything here seems hyper-real. Even this unimpressive corridor. It doesn’t bother me that I am in a crappy place, obviously living a crappy life thus far. There is a whole remarkable world out there for me to conquer, and I can’t wait to go out and see it. In the Game of AngelThrones anything can happen, and I plan on living life here to the full.
My heart pounds as words pop into existence at the top right hand side of my field of vision. It is my player bio that is visible only to me. This is start of the sequence of messages that will tell me my core vital info. I stare at the information, eager to find out what Gift my token has granted me.
Everything I’d read said the welcome notice is supposed to be giving me a randomly assigned username with a one-time only option to change it. But I am not seeing what I expect to see. The text says:
Welcome, AngelTaker.
But there is no option to change the name. This is frustrating, and I can see no way of resolving the issue.
I hadn’t even decided what my user name would be yet, but now I feel disjointed and a little cheated.
The welcome text fades and my player bio appears.
AngelTaker
Gift: AngelTaker
XP: 0
A Gift! I have a Gift!
My heartbeat rockets. I don’t even know what the heck AngelTaker means. I’ve never heard of it. But it sounds goddamn awesome, even if the word Angel in it freaks me out a bit. I’m not one of those adrenaline junkies that wants to join the Angel Wars.
“AngelTaker,” I say out loud, testing the word, and immediately regretting it. What if some goddamn angel appears? What would I do then?
Fortunately nothing happens.
AngelTaker! I think it loudly in my mind, hoping that the power will spring into action. Again nothing.
And yet I am exhilarated. AngelTaker has got to be as awesome as it sounds. And I’m bound to unlock what it can do sooner or later. Worst case scenario, I have to find David Stony without it, but I can ask him when I find him. His dad was a GameMaker. If anyone knows, he would.
I don’t know if it is the rush of being in here but suddenly I feel invincible. My time here is going to be spectacular. I can feel it.
I look up over my head, trying to get a glimpse of my life-remaining hologram. All I see up above is an indistinct glowing white blur. It’s taking its time forming. That hologram is more for other people to see than me, and when the information is set I will see it on my player bio.
I am hoping for around three years this first time around. After I’m done with my Save-Riverhaven mission, I want at least a year in-game to make some big money and at least a year to enjoy some of it in here. Anything up to six years would be cool, because six weeks is probably the maximum I could be away from home in real life before mom goes absolutely mental.
My player bio stays flashing, waiting for my life-remaining info
. It’s taking its sweet time. If I hadn’t been in a top-end GameCenter, I’d be worried by now that my GamePod was glitchy.
I run my fingers through my head as I wait, and then I yawn and take a long stretch, more out of inertia than tiredness. My avatar feels remarkably fresh and strong. Other games have health points and things to tell you how you’re doing, but this game doesn’t need it. I can feel exactly what my avatar body is feeling.
My worst nightmare would be having to spend decades in the game. It would suck to have to grow old in here, and a whole year of my real life would pass before I got out. Imagine if those fifty years sucked. I’d probably end up being depressed in the real world. And mom would be hopping mad. It’s not like I’ve told her which GameCenter I’ve put my body in. She can’t even come to visit.