by L. E. Price
“What went wrong?” Jake asked.
“A cautionary tale never to be forgotten, embodied by one poor schlub from Texas named Ramona Holstein. Ramona was in love with her virtual boyfriend Larry, and between acrobatic sessions in the sack, their pillow talk revealed they both lived in Austin. Plans were made, and the star-crossed lovers met face to face in the real world.”
“I’m thinking ‘Larry’ didn’t live up to the fantasy,” Jake said.
“He was a little shorter than his in-game avatar. Mostly because he had just turned fourteen the week before.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, ouch,” Woody said. “And to her credit, Ramona was horrified. She reported it to the authorities, hoping to shine a light on what had happened and make sure the company started doing serious age-checks. And…she was arrested. Holstein v. The United States made it all the way to the Supreme Court, as lawyers debated a crucial question: if you have sex with someone in a full immersion sim — which is, for all intents and purposes beyond procreation, real sex — and you don’t know they’re a kid, are you still a child molester?”
“What was the verdict?”
“She’s eligible for parole in a couple of years, I think.” Woody shrugged. “YourWorld collapsed in the media storm, its creators went bankrupt, and SDS — which had their own game in preproduction — snapped up their assets. They didn’t make the same mistake. Not that they could, since the government raced to mandate content restrictions in full-immersion sims; the bill became law before the ink had time to dry.”
Jake filed the information away in the back of his mind. He hadn’t been planning on any carnal exploration in the virtual world, but this was good intel. Romantics claimed love made the world go around, but Jake knew better than that. He was paid to handle situations gone wrong, like a gardener in a field of rotten weeds. Most of those weeds, one way or another, had their twisted roots fertilized in a bed of sex. Frustrated desire pushed people to do bad, stupid things.
What happened in a virtual world where the ability was taken away, but not the desire? Where you could hunger but never be satisfied? Probably nothing to do with Trevor Kensington’s disappearance, but somebody out there wanted Trevor all to themselves. With no ransom demand on the table, Jake had to start considering other angles.
“Back to my first question.” Jake slipped the club from his belt-loop and tested the weight of the gnarled wood against his palm. Hickory, it felt like. Stout, solid, and ready to crack a skull or two. “Last time, I let you hit me. But if we went toe to toe for real — I mean, not saying this to put you down, but I’m pretty sure I could take you.”
“No argument there. In the real world, anyway, but in here I’ve got the stat advantage. For starters, your character level determines how much health you have. Second, your weapon skill adds to the damage you inflict when you land a hit. Notice how one swing from my hammer took you to death’s doorstep? You could step up right now and hit me ten, maybe fifteen times before I’d even have to think about gulping down a potion. Higher level means I can soak more hits, higher skill means I can dish out more damage.”
“So theoretically I could take on the best player in here—”
“Theoretically you could win the lottery,” Woody replied. “Yeah, sure, you could try, but you’d go down in a single hit and you’d need to whomp on ‘em all day long while dodging every single thing they can throw at you. Back when they were balancing the combat system, SDS brought in a gold-medal Olympic fencer. They had her run a week of trials, facing a string of opponents with steadily better stats while they tuned the mechanics.”
“How’d she do?”
“The sweet spot for a real-world fighting expert is ten levels or so. She could beat anyone at her own level, it got dicey with a five-level spread, and players ten levels above her could win seventy-five percent of the time. You hit a point where the sheer number difference is what beats you, not the actual skill.”
“That doesn’t sound fair,” Jake said.
Woody flashed his tombstone grin again. “Hey, this might be a simulation, but it’s a game first and foremost. People log in so they can feel like action heroes, even if they’ve got bad asthma and muscles like cottage cheese. Moral of the story, as far as you’re concerned, is to be careful who you pick a fight with. Which leads us to our next point of business.”
“Which is?”
“Let’s go pick a fight,” Woody said.
6.
Woody tugged a parchment map from a slender leather tube on his hip, unfurled it, and gave it a nod.
“This way,” he said. “We’re a short hike from one of the lower-level hunting zones. Not one of the better-known ones, so it should be pretty empty right now.”
Jake hiked along with him, his cracked and worn boots rustling in the dew-damp grass as they climbed a rolling hillside. He couldn’t take his eyes off the sky. Wispy clouds hovered in the blue like a living memory of an Earth that had died decades before he was born. He’d only known blue skies in pictures and video, and now here he was, breathing fresh valley air as a crisp wind washed over him. His heart told him it was a lie. His brain told him it was real. He let them fight it out as he walked in contemplative silence.
“The Kensington family came to you first,” Jake said. “You do any background on Trevor, beyond finding out which of your broadcasts he liked to watch?”
“Little bit. I’m no PI, but I asked around some. In-game, he goes by the name Trevanian Kess. He was level thirty-eight, gearing up for his next big specialization quest at forty. Solo player, kind of a lone wolf, but he did hang out with an ascension guild called the Crewe of Dreams.”
“Ascension guild?” Jake asked.
In the distance, a fluffy cloud rippled and boiled away. A long, sleek galleon broke through the white mist, skimming through the sky with its canvas sails billowing. A brass propeller with a gigantic screw churned the air at the ship’s stern. Jake blinked. It was an impossible sight, but then again, no more impossible than the grassy scent on the clean, breathable wind.
“If I’ve got the direction right,” Woody said, “that’s the airship from Dutton to Vangelis City. Fastest way to travel. Oh, little tip. People like to prank newbies by telling them there’s a force field on the ship’s rail, so it’s impossible to jump over the edge. That…is a lie.”
“You jumped over the edge, didn’t you?”
“In my defense, it was my first day. Okay, a guild is just a formal band of players. There are guilds for all kinds of things. Trade guilds for merchant players, gladiator guilds for people who are into player-versus-player combat, stuff like that. Then you’ve got weirdos like the Pinkie Armada. They’re a party guild. They throw parties. That’s their whole deal.”
“And an ascension guild is…?”
“Trying to win the game. As much as you can win, anyway. I’ll skip over a few movies’ worth of fictional backstory—”
“Thanks for that,” Jake said.
“Bottom line is, Gaia Prime — where we are now, and where most of the game takes place — is the battlefield of the gods. Each god rules from a fortress-dimension called a Paradise, and they’re all out to solidify their power and take the other gods down.”
“Hence the name ‘Paradise Clash.’”
Woody’s head bobbed. “Make it to level eighty, and you can start the trials of ascension. It’s a string of quests that are constantly changing, so you can’t trust any guides, and you’ve got to have absolute mastery of the game mechanics plus a top-tier guild at your back. Ace the trials and you become a god. Comes with a whole package of neat powers, plus you get limited gamemaster tools and permission to build your own custom Paradise.”
They started down the hill. Jake finally tore his eyes from the airship, its brass propeller churning as it wheeled into the distance, and to the fields below. The edge of a forest lay ahead, sparse, scattered with drooping trees and broken boughs.
“So, everybody wants to bec
ome a god,” he said.
“Nope. Not by a long shot. There’s some catches hidden in the fine print.” Woody held up a finger. “First, once you ascend, you don’t get to play the game anymore like everybody else. God-characters are stuck in their Paradises and can only interact with Gaia Prime through limited means, like visions and divine messengers. Only one person has ever gotten around that: Corinna, Goddess of the Harvest.”
“Got around it how?”
“Word is, the player accidentally found a glitch that let her slip back to Gaia. She reported it to the developers, and they thought it was a cool plot development so they made a compromise: they stripped her divine powers but kept her character otherwise intact, and wrote a story arc about how she became ‘Corinna the Wanderer.’ The player went into hiding, considering half the game would kill her character just for the bragging rights. That was two years ago, and nobody’s even sure if she’s still playing.”
So there were glitches. Big ones. Nothing on the level of trapping a player’s mind inside the game and then losing their location, but it wasn’t a perfect system. And an imperfect system could be exploited.
“You said there were catches, plural.”
Woody held up a second finger. “This is the big one. If you die as a god, or even during the trials of ascension, your character dies permanently. Wiped out. All your stuff, all your skills, everything you worked your ass off for, gone. You start over as a level one newbie with nothing but the clothes on your back. It can take a year of constant work to build a character to the point where you can even think about the trials, and if you make one false move, you lose it all.”
“Hell of a risk,” Jake said.
“Now you understand why most players don’t even want to try it. And among those who do, you can’t imagine the drama. People back-stabbing each other during the trials, seeding fake clues, sabotaging each other…”
“If I worked for a year or more on something,” Jake mused, “and some guy yanked it out from under me at the last second, I’d want to look him up in the real world and have a few words with him.”
“It has happened. SDS keeps account information locked down tighter than Fort Knox, but it has happened.”
Woody stopped at the foot of the hill, near the sparse forest’s edge. He held up a hand.
“Okay. From here on in, eyes open. Get that club ready.”
Jake drew his club. He thumped the business end against his open palm, letting the weight reassure him.
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“You’ll know when you see it.” Woody led the way, picking through the brambles. “Anyway, gods have followers, and the more followers they have, the stronger they become. You haven’t chosen a god yet, so you can expect people are going try to convert you left and right once we get to civilization.”
“Any advice?”
“Yeah. Hold out for a good offer. There’s no rule against bribing converts. See, the gods aren’t the only ones who benefit. Followers get a little stat bonus from their faith, and the more followers you personally recruit, the bigger that bonus gets.”
Jake scrunched up his brow. “Sounds like a pyramid scheme.”
“It is exactly a pyramid scheme, by design. And a god’s very first followers get a massive bonus, which is why ascension guilds work. Like, I might not want to take that kind of risk, but I’d be happy to help my buddy ascend. He gets the dangerous job, and I get the perks from being his right-hand man. Once a god’s following reaches critical mass, he can build up a—” Woody froze. “Wait. Hear that?”
The underbrush rustled off to Jake’s left. He followed the sound with his eyes. They’d made their way deeper into the forest, the soft loam dotted with stout spears of ashen gray and shadowed by a canopy of pine needles. The pines were sick. Their bark was rotten in spots, covered with blotches of yellow fungus. The earthy smell of the wood went sour in the back of Jake’s nose. One of his boots crunched on a fallen branch, the wood splintering under his heel.
Another rustle sounded to the right. He turned just in time to see something — something gray like a storm, low and lean and fast — dart out of sight.
“So,” Jake murmured out one side of his mouth. “Trevor. Ascension. Was he going for it, or just looking to help a buddy? Why would he pal around with an ascension guild but not join up with them?”
Woody turned as he walked, scanning the distance. He held his war-hammer in front of him like a talisman.
“Question one, no idea. Somebody in the Crewe of Dreams might know. Question two, plenty of possible reasons. It’s a social game, but ‘social’ means different things to different people. Lots of players like to adventure alone, then hang out with their buddies back in town.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Okay, any second now.”
He didn’t need to clarify. Jake knew they were being hunted. A branch snapped ten feet behind them. He turned, squeezing the cord-wrapped grip of his club tight as he spotted another gray streak loping into the bushes.
“How many?” he whispered back.
“Hopefully just one. Gotta admit, this isn’t exactly an area for level-one players. I figured you could handle the challenge.”
“One? They’re all around us. How could one animal—”
His answer came with a feral roar. The bushes to his left burst open, leaves and splintered wood flying, as their stalker lunged out with outstretched paws and its fanged muzzle open wide for the kill. Jake spun, club swinging, and smashed his weapon across the beast’s head. It yelped as it veered to one side, hitting the ground, rolling and clambering back to its feet.
Jake had seen footage of wolves in nature documentaries. This was almost a wolf.
Almost a wolf, with matted and stinking gray fur, standing four feet tall at the shoulder. Egg-yolk drool ran from its bared fangs as its scarlet eyes, softly glowing like radioactive rubies, focused on Jake. Its tails — three of them, joined at the root and snapping like leather whips — pointed barbed tips at his face. The beast growled, long and low.
“You’re on your own, buddy,” his guide murmured at his back, pitching his voice low. “I’m way over-leveled for this zone. I jump in, you don’t get any experience.”
Jake’s heart hammered as his veins flooded with adrenaline, offering him only two choices: fight or flight. He knew, rationally, that the monster was nothing but a computer AI. That this was a game, that even if it pounced and tore his throat out he’d be safe and sound in the real world. But he couldn’t make his body believe it. He squeezed his club hard, white-knuckled, to keep his hand from shaking.
“I was starting to like you, Woody.”
“Hey, no trial like a trial by fire. Just watch out for the—”
The wolf vanished. It disappeared in a puff of sulfurous smoke. As the smoke wafted away, it flickered back into existence – five feet to Jake’s left, already in motion and charging in fast. No time to swing. He threw himself to the forest loam, branches crackling as he rolled to escape the charge. One of the beast’s tails lashed across his cheek as it shot past him.
The edges of his vision turned pink. Just like when Woody had smacked him with the hammer, but nowhere near as blinding. Wounded, Jake thought. Not down, not out. He jumped to his feet as the wolf skidded to a stop, kicking up dirt. He tried to press the advantage, ran in and hauled his arm back for a swing. The wolf vanished, leaving him choking on a puff of rotten-egg smoke.
He couldn’t let himself get distracted. He charged through the gas, coughing it out, blinking back tears in his eyes. He felt like he’d just been chopping an onion, leaving the forest a blurry smear around him. A roar echoed at his back and he saw the shadow of the wolf as it leaped for him. This time, it wasn’t giving him a chance to escape.
7.
Jake had just enough time to spin on the ball of his foot as the wolf leaped for him. He swung the club up in both hands, holding it like a baton, as the creature’s paws slammed into his chest and brought him down hard
on his back on a blanket of rotting leaves. As it lunged in, maw wide and drooling and its eyes blazing with scarlet light, he shoved the club between its gnashing teeth.
It bit down, shaking its head, trying to dislodge the wood between its jaws. Stinking drool spattered Jake’s face and he squirmed under the creature’s bulk. The hickory began to splinter, coming apart with a hollow wooden crack. Jake struggled to find his options. No room to kick, no way to get out from under the beast’s paws. There had to be a way out. Woody’s words, when he first arrived, came back to him in a surge of desperation. You’ve got a cheap club, an even cheaper knife in your left boot…
A knife. And to get it, he’d have to let go of the club.
No choice. He struggled to keep hold of the club’s corded grip, rocking wild in the wolf’s jaws, and reached down to his boot as he curled his left knee under the beast’s matted fur. His fingers dug in, closing around a cold metal hilt.
The wolf spat out the hickory club, sending it bouncing across the leaves, and howled in hungry triumph.
That was all the time Jake needed to plunge the knife into its belly. He ripped the blade upward and spilled the beast’s hot, steaming guts onto the forest floor.
The wolf didn’t die. It howled again, higher-pitched and keening, lurching off of him. It skittered to one side as its whip-tails slashed the air in impotent rage. The air shimmered yellow as it prepared to vanish and escape. Jake shot after it, scrambling on his hands and knees, and made one last desperate lunge with the bloody knife.
The knife punched through the top of the monster’s skull. It pitched over and onto its side, gave one last twitching kick of its hind legs, and died. The scarlet light in its eyes faded, going dark as a burned-out coal.
Jake knelt beside the body. The knife fell from his grip. He took deep breaths, gulping down the forest air, feeling the ravages of adrenalin in his veins like he’d just taken the world’s deadliest roller-coaster ride. Before he could find his voice again, a flood of blue neon letters scrolled across his vision.