Paradise Clash: Bounty Hunter

by L. E. Price

  Cybele waved a graceful hand at the figure. “Does this please you? At this point you are free to make modifications, as you like. Anything from changing facial structure, to hairstyle and eye-color options.”

  “Nah,” Jake said. “This’ll do. This’ll do just fine.”

  A chime echoed through the cabaret. Jake’s vision went white as Cybele’s robe, swallowed in a blossom of all-consuming light.

  * * * *

  Jake wavered on his feet, disoriented, his sight returning as the pure light receded and split. It became the flickering flame of a half-dozen torches, illuminating a new room in shifting shades of yellow.

  He looked down. He was wearing his new body. He curled and uncurled his fingers, then rubbed his toes against the flagstone floor. He patted his bare chest. It was his body but…not. A little too broad, a little too tall, just a few millimeters here and there. It wasn’t him. His chest went tight and he felt trapped, squeezed inside a prison made from a stranger’s skin and bones.

  “Whoa, your heartbeat’s spiking,” Woody said. “Deep breaths, dude. Don’t worry, this is normal for a first-timer.”

  A warm hand settled upon his shoulder. Cybele peered at him from under her hood, motherly concern etched upon her face.

  “If you need to return to a bodiless state,” she said, “we can do that. We can go back and make adjustments to your avatar, as many times as you like. Or we can just sit together and talk for a while, until you feel ready to proceed. There is no hurry.”

  He closed his eyes. He explored his body by touch, breathing slow, patting his ribs and his cheekbones. The room stopped spinning.

  “I’m okay,” he said.

  “Many first-time arrivals experience a dysphoric reaction upon wearing their first avatar,” the priestess said. “This feeling is generally harmless and passes in time. That said, we want you to be happy with your choice, and advise you do not proceed until you are perfectly comfortable.”

  Jake opened his eyes. He rubbed his toes against the floor.

  “I’m good,” he said. “It’s just…different. What’s next?”

  Wide pedestals of polished brass ringed the room. The torches flared, and like a magic trick, duplicates of himself appeared upon each one. His copies were frozen in dynamic poses, like the covers of lurid pulp novels.

  “Now,” Cybele explained, “you choose your path.”

  Jake strolled along the pedestals. On one, he was almost unrecognizable under bulky armor of black iron plates, roaring defiance as he swung a massive sword with both hands. On another, he wore swirling robes of midnight blue and golden stars, and a frozen lance of lighting crackled down to ignite the gnarled staff in his upraised fist. Jake paused, grinning up at an image of himself dressed in a rough loincloth and a necklace of animal teeth, prowling through a jungle with a loping panther at his side.

  “Me Tarzan,” he grunted, “you Jane.”

  Standing at his side, the priestess lightly touched her chest with her fingertips. Her eyes twinkled as she feigned mild offense.

  “Jane? My name is Cybele, silly. Did you really forget, or are you just teasing me?”

  Something about her tone and the look in her eyes threw him off-balance. Is she…flirting with me? The NPC is flirting with me.

  “Okay,” Woody cut in, “your path is your job, basically. It determines what skills you can unlock and what special abilities you get. Wizards get magic, warriors hit things, it’s not complicated.”

  “Doesn’t matter, then. I’m not here to play the game, just pick something simple for me.”

  “Uh, that might not be what you’re here for, but you’re still going to have to come to grips with the game mechanics. You turned down the option to become a gamemaster god among mere mortals, remember? Now you’re going in like every other level-one newbie. There are places in this game where you’ll get chewed up and spat out in two seconds flat if you don’t know how to play.”

  And if the answers I need are in there… Jake’s thought trailed off, and he let out a sigh of surrender. Woody had a point. He needed to strike a balance between a path that would be effective and get him where he needed to go, and one that wouldn’t take too much time to master. Trevor’s clock was ticking.

  “Okay, so, if I get in a fight in the game, it’s just like real life, right?”

  “Sort of,” Woody replied. “It’s a mix of your actual, real-world abilities, and your character’s statistics. You’ll understand when you try it. You can go a long way on game stats alone, but most of the best players know how to throw down for real.”

  “Good. I’m qualified with most standard sidearms, percussive and sonic, and with tactical batons. I can box, I’ve got a little Judo and just enough Aikido to get by, with a focus on non-lethal takedowns. You’re the expert: any of these ‘paths’ line up with my real-world skill set?”

  “Hell to the yes. I got you covered, my man. Walk forward, third pedestal on your left.”

  Jake followed Woody’s guidance and stood before a new version of himself. This one was dressed in high boots, leather leggings and a brass-studded vest over a shirt of white linen. His double stood in a crouch, ready for a fight, with a stout baton of wood in his left hand and the curled folds of a woven net in his right. Manacles dangled from his belt. In the grass at his feet, the teeth of a bear trap nestled in concealment.

  “Bounty Hunter,” Woody said. “A warrior-type path focused on stun and capture moves. Lightly armored, fast, versatile. Not the easiest path to master, I’ll warn you up front, but if you’re looking for a balance between power and utility, this is your bag.”

  “I’ll take it,” Jake said.

  “Now, at level thirty, every path splits into one of two specializations, and each of those gets another two choices at level sixty. The Bounty Hunter can specialize into Manhunter or Beast Hunter, and your skills change to focus on—”

  “Woody, I’m not gonna be here that long.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry. You’re not the kind of person I usually play tour-guide for.”

  “You’re doing great, don’t worry about it.” He turned to Cybele. “I’d like to be a bounty hunter.”

  Her fingertip traced her bottom lip as she studied him, deep in thought.

  “A perilous path indeed. Our world is infested with bandits and outlaws who prey upon the weak; it takes a hearty and daring soul to go toe-to-toe with such villains.”

  “Trust me,” Jake said, “I’ve been doing it most of my life.”

  She closed the distance between them. He smelled the wispy musk of her perfume as she looked up at him, tilting her chin.

  “I have seen many adventurers pass through these halls, but you…there’s something special about you. I don’t say this to everyone, but I can see a spark inside of you. A spark that could be fanned into the fires of greatness.”

  Woody cleared his throat. “Don’t get a big head. She does say that to everyone. Cybele is programmed to make you like her.”

  It was working. Jake stared into her eyes.

  “Perhaps,” Cybele said, “you will conquer all the obstacles in your path and ascend to the mount of the gods. I will listen and pray to hear tales of your victory.”

  “I’ll give it my best shot,” Jake replied.

  “Be brave. Be strong.”

  She leaned in. Her warm breath washed across Jake’s earlobe as she dropped her voice to a whisper.

  “And do not trust the drumming man. He poses as an ally, but he means to see you fail. He will kill you if he can.”

  Before he could ask what she meant, she turned and kissed his cheek. It felt like a real kiss. Then a roar like a waterfall thundered in his ears. His vision blurred and faded to a whirlwind of white, as if he was standing in the heart of a blizzard.

  When the snowflakes scattered and he could see again, Jake Camden found himself in another world.

  5.

  The sky was blue.

  Jake squinted. He sprawled flat on his back,
senses coming back online one by one like a computer in the middle of a slow reboot. The sky filled his field of vision and the breath froze in his throat. No umber smog, no roiling clouds of toxic runoff, just white fluffy streaks painted across a canvas of summertime azure.

  When Jake was ten, his mother had taken him to the Philly Conservation Dome. They’d had real trees there, caged in wedges of potting soil and cordoned off, with hologram projectors simulating a pristine sky and pumped-in chemical aromas. It was the closest he’d ever come to understanding how the world used to be. All the same, it was cheap, tacky, fake.

  This was real.

  He stared up at the pure blue sky and his fingers rubbed against patches of dew-spotted grass. He sat up slow, head reeling. Gentle hills of green rolled out as far as his eyes could see, dotted with tall and proud oak trees in their full glory. Wildflowers bloomed on the gentle slopes, painting the landscape in shifting patches of yellow and scarlet. Jake wasn’t sure how long he sat there, staring in silence, breathing the crisp air while a breeze ruffled his hair and kissed his skin. He raised one slow hand to wipe the damp from his eyes.

  “You get it now,” Woody said, behind him.

  Jake turned his head. It was Woody’s voice, but he’d changed bodies along the way. The short man had gotten shorter, standing a squat four feet and almost as wide with a body made of chiseled muscle. An ash-gray beard, braided and plaited with strips of old leather, draped over the belly of his battered steel breastplate. He leaned on the knotted haft of a war-hammer, its sledge-shaped iron head digging into the grass, and gave Jake a wave.

  “Gnarl Grimguts,” Woody said, putting on a terrible attempt at a Scottish accent. “Slayer of giants, wooer of maidens fair. At yer service, kindly adventurer.”

  It took Jake a second to find his voice. He pointed to the sky.

  “I didn’t know,” was all he could manage.

  “Some people don’t even play the game.” Woody dropped the accent. He curled one stony hand over his brow to block the sun’s glare. “They just log in for…this, really. There are worse things you could spend your money on.”

  Jake pushed himself to his feet. He took stock of himself, getting used to his new body. He wore leggings and a coat of stiff leather, the material shot through with cracks and wear, laced tight at the sides with strands of sinew. A stout wooden club with a leather-wrapped grip dangled from a strap on his belt.

  “That’s your newbie gear,” Woody said, “which you’re going to want to upgrade as soon as humanly possible. It’s crap. You’ve got a cheap club, an even cheaper knife in your left boot, a couple of healing potions and that’s about it. Fortunately for you, you’ve also got a rich friend. And, just because I’m a nice guy, I set up your account with my friends-and-family bonus. You’ll gain XP twice as fast as normal, at least until you hit level twenty.”

  “XP?” Jake asked.

  “Experience points. You get XP for just about anything; half your XP goes toward improving your character level, and the rest feeds directly into the skill you’re using at the time. Swing a sword, you gain swordplay skill. Brew a potion, you gain alchemy skill. Whatever you practice, you get better at, just like real life.”

  “You know the word ‘experience’ doesn’t start with the letter ‘X’, right?”

  Woody hefted his iron-headed hammer and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Tradition,” he said. “The great-granddaddy of roleplaying games called it XP, and people have been doing it ever since. Anyway, you’ve got a virtual assistant, right?”

  Jake tapped the tiny disk of his Werther. Tried to, anyway. His fingertip rubbed against pristine, tender skin. No cybernetics in fantasy-land, apparently.

  “Yeah, just the basic Eva, it came installed with my implant.”

  “Cool. You access your stats and options the same way you control your Eva. Just subvocalize the command. Try ‘sheet’. Then when you’re done, you can say ‘cancel’ to get rid of it.”

  Jake murmured the word, and neon flooded his vision. Glowing words flared to life a few feet in front of his face, rattling off a stream of statistics. Alchemy: 1 (Terrible), Apothecary: 1 (Terrible), Archery: 1 (Terrible). The list of skills seemed endless, and he mouthed ‘cancel’ to make the words vanish in a flare of purple light.

  “Am I supposed to be awful at everything?”

  “You’re a level-one newbie, so yes,” Woody said. “Fortunately, skills pile up pretty quick, especially when you’re low-level. The better you get, the longer it takes to learn anything new. Again, pretty much like real life.”

  “That’s the part I don’t get.” Jake patted the club on his belt. “I can use this pretty well in the real world, but the game says otherwise. What’s to stop me from going to town on some level-twenty-billion kid who doesn’t know how to fight?”

  “Math.” Woody brandished his weapon. “Demonstration time. I’m going to hit you with this hammer.”

  “Like hell you are.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It won’t hurt. Which is another part of the lesson. Just stand still. It’ll be cool, okay? I promise.”

  Jake took a deep breath and let it out as a grumbling sigh. He stood straight, hands empty, offering himself up as a target.

  “Just remember,” he said, “you’re sitting in my office in the real world. I can always unplug myself and kick your ass.”

  Woody smirked. He gripped the long-hafted hammer in both fists, wound back like a batter going for a home run, and let it swing. The black iron head plowed into Jake’s left arm with bone-breaking velocity. The force sent him sprawling to the grass, knocking him down like a rag doll, and his vision flooded with streaks of red.

  Warning, a woman’s voice whispered in his inner ear. Critical damage. You are near death.

  He was right, though. It didn’t hurt. Jake was stunned, off-balance, but the actual impact had all the fury of a feather-stuffed pillow. He pushed himself up and squinted through the red fog. Woody ambled over and handed him a long, thin lab flask plugged with a cork stopper. The brew inside was as scarlet as the blood clouding his eyesight.

  “Chug this,” he said. “Potion of healing.”

  Jake tugged the cork out with his teeth and spat it onto the grass. Then he upended the flask and guzzled it down. His cheeks went tight as he swallowed, lips pursed and bitter.

  “Tastes like…cough syrup,” Jake said. “Cherry cough syrup.”

  The red fog billowed away. The voice whispered in his ear again: Health restored. Woody gave Jake a stony hand and hauled him back to his feet.

  “The cure is worse than the disease,” Woody replied. “And that’s pain limiters for you. You can feel just about anything in here — hot, cold, wet, dry — but pain is dialed down hardcore. How much do you know about the history of full-immersion sims?”

  “The first ones were military, right? Training simulators.”

  Woody wagged the head of his hammer at him, like a teacher acknowledging a right answer.

  “Bingo. And it was a good idea, in theory. Take green recruits and put them on a perfectly simulated battlefield. The ultimate proving ground.”

  “Sure,” Jake said. “Great idea, until they find out what real war is like.”

  “Bingo once again. Most soldiers never even see active combat. But now, you’ve got privates in boot camp getting a vivid first-hand experience of taking a bullet in the gut or stepping on a land mine and having their legs blown off, and feeling every second of it. They had a name for that sim; they called it the Nightmare Box. In the end, it was a total disaster. Thousands of green recruits with full-fledged PTSD, and at the same time, recruitment dropped to the lowest levels in history. The Department of Defense shit-canned the entire project. Trillions of dollars in development down the drain.”

  “Let me guess,” Jake said. “Then some clever private-sector entrepreneur — like Strategic Design Simulations — came along and said, ‘hey, we’d like to buy your tech.’”

  Woody sprea
d his arms wide and flashed a grin. The dwarf’s teeth were like fat tombstones lining his gums, flinty and chipped.

  “And here we are. Iteration five or six of the very same code that fueled the Nightmare Box. But turning down the pain levels was the first thing SDS did. Everybody wants to fight a dragon, but nobody wants to feel what it’s like to get roasted alive by one. You can fiddle with the pain limiter in your options menu, but it won’t go above five percent or so.”

  “I wouldn’t say nobody would want to experience that.” Jake rubbed his chin. It was a little narrower, a little bonier, than the real thing, but he was getting used to his new body now. Every breath settled him deeper into his simulated skin. “I mean, I’ve worked with some weird clients. Everything you can imagine is somebody’s fetish.”

  Woody snapped his fingers. “That’s the other set of physical sensations they turned down — well, shut off. There is no sex in the magical realm of Gaia Prime — which, for the record, is the name of the planet we’re standing on. The heart of Paradise Clash. Anyway, you can try to get frisky, but you won’t get anywhere.”

  “You kidding me? Anonymous, no consequences, no disease, perfect bodies…I figured people in here would be doing it twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  “Well, they did, originally.” Woody glanced away. He rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little red in the cheeks. “The first commercial sim was called YourWorld, and it was conceived as a giant social space for conversation, virtual sports, hobbies—”

  “Sex?”

  “Everywhere. All the time. On the furniture, hanging from the ceiling, scaring the pets, you name it. It pretty much became a red-light district overnight. Which, at first, was fine! I mean, people were signing up in droves, and the game became a license to print money. Sex sells.”