by L. E. Price
Defeated level five displacer wolf.
1,800 General XP gained (adjusted for level-difference bonus).
1,800 Skill XP gained, divided between: light bladed weapons, light blunt weapons, parry, dodge.
Codex entry: Displacer Wolf unlocked (5% completion).
The words vanished as fast as he could read them, clearing his line of sight. Woody stood beside him, looking proud as a dad who just taught his kid how to ride a bike without training wheels.
“How do you feel?” Woody asked.
He wasn’t sure. He had to think about it, catching his breath. Then he broke into a grin.
“Like a hero straight out of a goddamn action movie,” Jake said.
Woody slapped him on the shoulder. “Now you get it. Okay, don’t forget to loot your kill. I mean, I can give you money, but it’s good to know how this stuff works. Also, it’s considered good etiquette to clean up after yourself. With a human opponent, or a human-ish one, you’d just pat ‘em down and take their stuff. With an animal or a monster like this, you’ve got to skin it.”
Jake gave Woody a sidelong glance. The dead wolf stank like week-old roadkill, its open belly festering.
“Don’t tell me I really have to skin this thing.”
“Nah,” Woody laughed. “They didn’t simulate it that deeply. The developers were worried that players would be too grossed out. Just take your knife and lightly scrape it across the fur.”
He followed Woody’s lead. Then he flinched back as the wolf’s body rippled like a heat mirage under his scraping blade. It burbled and broke, turning into liquid, melting into the forest floor like a bucket of spilled paint. A moment later, not even the stench remained.
Skinning XP gained, read the words in the corner of his eye. No valuables recovered.
“Aw, botched it,” Woody said. “No worries, that happens a lot. You’re still a newbie.”
Jake shoved himself back to his feet. The knife — its copper blade clean despite being coated with viscous blood just a minute ago — slid back into his boot-sheath with a whispering hiss. He spotted his fallen club, nestled in a bed of leaves, and scooped it back up. It was studded with tooth-marks now, glistening with wolf-spit, and a dangerous fracture ran along the shaft.
“What was that ‘codex entry’ thing I saw?” he asked.
“Basically, your personal monster manual,” Woody said. “The more you complete an entry, the more lore and back-story you can read about the critters you fight. Plus, if you hundred-percent an entry, you get a permanent bonus when you go up against that particular monster. You can read your codex the same way you open your stat page, just subvocalize it.”
Didn’t sound like anything that would help him find Trevor Kensington, but right now, any intel was good to have. This really was a strange new world. And with the shock of the clean sky and the airships and the monsters all slowly fading away, something else jogged Jake’s memory.
“Oh, and who’s the ‘drumming man’?” he asked.
Woody shook his head, not following. “Who?”
“Back in the temple. Right before I got here, the priestess told me to watch out for the ‘drumming man.’”
“Nah. You misheard her. Trust me, pal, I’ve walked a hundred newbies through there. Cybele might seem like a real person, but she’s just an AI running a script. She always gives you the spiel about how she sees a spark inside of you, be brave, be strong, then she bows and you’re out the door.”
Except that wasn’t what happened. And Jake knew he hadn’t misheard her. The memory of Cybele’s kiss was still fresh, tingling on Jake’s cheek.
“She ever give anybody a kiss for good luck?”
“Only in your dreams and in the fan-art,” Woody said, blurting out a laugh. Then he paused and held up a finger of caution. “Do not look up the fan-art. As Paradise Clash’s unofficial mascot, Cybele is much beloved among the, let us say, ‘Rule 34 community.’”
“Rule 34?”
“Just don’t look it up. What is seen cannot be unseen.”
Woody froze for a second, listening to something outside of Jake’s hearing. He tapped his earlobe.
“And that’s my virtual assistant, reminding me that I have to go earn a living today. Got a stream in another game scheduled in fifteen minutes. You free tonight? We can meet up in Dutton around six. I know the Crewe of Dreams makes their home base there, so we should be able to find somebody who knew Trevor. Knows him, I mean. I think a buddy of mine joined up with them last week.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Jake looked around. The sickly forest loomed over them from every direction. “And…how do I get there, exactly?”
Woody rummaged in one of his hip pouches. He passed a small lacquered box to Jake. It was teak, light and smooth, and its face bore a compass rose wrought from delicately filigreed silver. A slender needle pointed due north.
“Dutton’s a twenty-minute walk east of here,” Woody said. “Don’t die. If you do die, though, nearest resurrection point’s just south of town and there’s a sign to point the way, so you can’t really get lost either way.”
He remembered Woody’s tales of the ascension trials. “So, what happens if I do die?”
“As a newbie, not much. You’ll pop up at a rez point and you’ll lose some experience. The worst part is, any treasure you picked up in the last two hours stays with your dead body, and it’s free stuff for anyone who gets there first. Which for you is…nothing. Oh, and any loot flagged as ‘divine’ — certain kinds of dungeon treasure, quest tokens, that all goes poof, but you’re about twenty levels away from even seeing that kind of gear. Honestly, you can pretty much just kill yourself and save some time.”
Jake eyed the knife in his hand. Simulation or not, the idea didn’t sit well with him.
“I’ll take the walk,” he said.
“Suit yourself. I’ll catch you tonight. Look for me at the Dented Chalice, it’s the only tavern in town. And remember, most players come here to get away from the real world and live out a story. Roleplaying, right? If you walk up as Jake Camden, Philly PI, they won’t want to talk to you.”
Jake took that in. Good advice. “I have to play the game. Their way.”
“Like the saying goes, you can’t win if you don’t play. Try to blend in.”
Dancing motes of light, like a swarm of fireflies, glittered across Woody’s skin. They wrapped around him, glowing brighter and brighter…then vanished. Woody was gone. Jake stood alone in the woods. He kept his ears perked, listening for rustling in the brush.
Plenty of time. He could log out, do some real-world digging, see what kind of background he could muster up before tonight’s investigation.
Then again, he thought, might as well get the walking over with now, so I’m right where I need to be at six.
He wasn’t ready to leave the blue sky behind. And as he suddenly froze, pinned by the sound of something prowling through the wood, Jake realized he wasn’t quite ready to let go of that roller-coaster rush, either.
He grinned, wide as a wolf, and slapped his hickory club against his open palm as he turned to face the sound.
* * * *
Defeated level five displacer wolf, read the spidery script as it flowed across his field of view. 1,600 General XP gained (adjusted for level-difference bonus).
Jake had progressed to level two sometime in the last couple of hours, accompanied by an electronic horn fanfare and a burst of digital confetti. He thought it had been a couple of hours, anyway. The sickly forest canopy blotted out the sky. Here and there, the fading sun sent shimmering fingers down between the boughs to cast a golden glow across the fallen leaves, a spotlight for the battlefield.
After each fight, leaving him panting, spent, his muscles aching, Jake told himself it was time to get moving. Then he went straight back to the hunt. He’d managed to gain a couple of skill ranks — his dodge skill was now noted as Pathetic, which was at least better than Terrible — and he’d even successfully skin
ned a fallen beast. That had netted him an ossified wolf-eye, rough against his fingertips like the pitted stone of a cherry, and a perfectly preserved fang. No idea what they were for or what they were worth, but he’d tucked them away in his hip-pouch as souvenirs.
His adventure earned him something more valuable than stats and trinkets. He was learning how the game worked. It didn’t take long before he realized that for all their grotesque fury, the displacer wolves operated according to a simple, predictable script. They would always start a fight by teleporting to his left or right before launching an attack. Then they would vanish, re-positioning for a pounce from behind. If he stood anywhere within the front ninety degrees of the wolf, it would try to bite or claw at him; if he was in the rear ninety degrees he could expect a tail attack, always the left tail and then the right, even if the right tail was closer. The wolves were like the knife-wielding kid he’d faced in that Gullet hotel room, who had learned to fight from playing video games: they were fast, dangerous, but they had no ability to improvise.
It wasn’t quite enough to break the uncanny feeling of immersion — the lack of pain from his wounds aside, every vivid second felt as real as waking life — but it shifted the stakes. He wasn’t playing against the wolves. He was playing against the game’s developers. They’d engineered these monsters as challenges, programmed them to be puzzles, and spotting the designers’ fingerprints was the key to victory.
His club gave up before he did, the fractured hickory shattering into worthless kindling as it cracked against a wounded monster’s skull. The displacer wolf pitched to the dirt and its glowing eyes went dark. A blaring horn and another puff of shimmering confetti heralded his ascent to level three.
This time, something different happened. Three podiums of crystal rose from the forest floor with an electronic hum, each bearing a different trinket. The first offered a buckled leather gauntlet with what looked like a tiny bow mounted where his wrist would sit. The second, a coiled bullwhip. A pair of heavy leather-wrapped balls, joined by a length of hempen rope, nestled upon the third.
Congratulations, novice, said a soft voice in his inner ear. You have unlocked your first signature weapon as a bounty hunter. You may choose the wrist crossbow, the hunter’s whip, or the bolas. You may only select one; the others will be lost, left behind upon the road not taken. Choose wisely and boldly.
Jake cursed under his breath. Exactly the sort of thing he could have used Woody’s encyclopedic knowledge for, and his tour guide was off in a different game. It didn’t look like he could put it off, either. He took a step back, and the three pedestals moved to follow him.
Fine. He wasn’t here for the long haul anyway — if all went well, he’d be on his way to finding Trevor by the end of the night — and he didn’t imagine the game’s designers would have slipped any objectively bad choices into the mix. Jake left it up to chance. Eenie, meenie, miney, mo, he thought, sweeping his gaze from weapon to weapon.
His hand settled upon the bolas. He picked them up by the rope, stretching four feet from sphere to heavy sphere, the weighted ends surprisingly heavy. They clacked together like the balls of a physics toy. He was busy figuring out how he was even going to carry the thing when the pedestals vanished, sliding back under the skin of the world.
“Okay,” he said out loud. “No instruction manual, huh?”
The only response was a distant, rumbling growl…then the world froze. Everything went sepia-tone, leaves hovering in mid-fall on a breeze frozen solid.
Six hour limit, said the voice in his ear. Commencing mandatory one-hour logout. Strategic Design Simulations values you as a customer and wants you to be happy and healthy. Please take care of your body. Adventures await in the real world, too!
Then his vision went dark. Jake opened his eyes. He was slumped on the cracked vinyl of his real couch, in his real office, in the real world, dead wire cabled from the implant behind his ear to the softly whirring cube of the game deck.
8.
Jake didn’t move. Not at first. He squinted, taking in the familiar sights all around him. The silent flatscreen on the wall, the squeaky mini-fridge, his hotplate and coffee maker, the cluttered desk. Woody must have let himself out at some point; he’d taken his own deck and locked up when he left.
Jake unplugged the cable and got up, staring at his body like it wasn’t entirely his. Like it wasn’t right. He clenched and unclenched his fingers. His arm muscles, aching just a minute ago after another rough battle with the displacer wolves, were perfectly fine. His fingers brushed his cheek, where a wolf-tail had cut his avatar open. They rubbed against unbroken skin, thick with stubble.
This was reality. But it felt like the same “reality” he’d just woken up from. Moving from a dream into a second, different dream.
Jake strode over to his desk. He pulled open the top drawer and rummaged through old, rumpled receipts and carry-out menus until he found a ballpoint pen. He flicked the cap off and tugged back his shirt sleeve.
The tip of the pen jabbed into the meat of his arm, almost deep enough to draw blood. A short, sharp lance of pain burned all the way to his shoulder.
No pain in the simulated world. This was real life. That was his anchor. Jake rubbed his thumb along his arm and eyed the little dot of ink on his skin.
Woody left a present for him. A plastic bottle stood on the edge of the desk, bright green with the words Gamer Fuel sprawled in jagged, lightning-bolt text. He’d scribbled a note next to the bottle.
“DRINK ME,” it read. “No, seriously, Gamer Fuel has the nutrients and electrolytes that your body craves, and I’m not just paid to say that. Though I am paid to say that. Good for your muscles after you’ve been plugged in for a while. Remember: sim exercise feels like real exercise, but your body’s actually been paralyzed in a state just like extended REM sleep. Walk around. Do some push-ups. See you at 6.”
Jake uncapped the bottle, tossed it back, and scrunched up his face. The lukewarm solution went down his throat like a tidal wave of sugar and bitter lemon. He chugged half of it, as much as he could take, and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he muttered. “People drink this stuff? Willingly?”
He pitched the bottle into his wastebasket. Then he ambled across the office and put a fresh pot of coffee on.
While he waited for the brew to percolate, Jake turned his gaze to the three arched windows lining one cracked-plaster wall. They’d been treated with UV film, casting the outside world in shades of umber, but they couldn’t disguise the roiling, toxic clouds that blotted out the sun. He thought about the pristine skies of Paradise Clash, the clean air, the warm breezes. It was all a lie. A beautiful lie. And he wanted to be lied to a little more.
Now he understood the mandatory log-outs. How many people, offered a choice between the perfection of Gaia Prime and the reality of Earth, would spend every waking hour in a virtual dreamworld? He felt the pull himself, something he thought he’d be immune to. The game had found a crack in his armor.
Staring up at the windows, the weight of the choking clouds bore down on him, weights chained around his heart. He’d read a little history. He knew it was complicated, that he’d been born into a world formed from the countless choices of the countless generations who came before his. All the same, he only had one question.
“How did we screw up this badly?” he asked the poisoned sky.
No answer.
Jake had some time to kill, and he had some coffee. He sat down at his desk with a fresh cup and his battered old tablet computer. Ninety percent of Jake’s work was usually done out on the street, face to face, but this wasn’t a typical job.
“Eva,” he said, “find books by Woodrow Wendel.”
“Fifteen titles found,” his virtual assistant replied. “Titles include Going Pro Volume Four: Golden Temple, Surviving the Clash: An Expert’s Guide—”
“Buy any book relating to Paradise Clash.”
; “Three titles found, downloading to your bookshelf now.”
He opened one on the tablet with a tap of his finger and started to skim, flipping the digitized pages. The first few chapters offered a lot of sizzle and not much steak, mostly an exhaustive rundown of the game’s imaginary history. The war of the gods, the sentient and malevolent Void that threatened Gaia Prime’s existence…Jake figured it’d be catnip to people who were into the game, but none of this was helping him get any closer to finding Trevor. A sidebar on one page caught his eye.
Woody Sez: Save Those Key Fragments!
When a god dies, their realm becomes a Fallen Paradise. In game terms, the GMs remodel it as a dungeon, stocked with thematic (and tough as nails) monsters and some of the coolest-looking gear in the game. Every month, portals open to three Fallen Paradises (out of a possible forty-seven, as of Patch 13.2), and the GMs never announce which ones will open ahead of time. You need a realm key to get in, assembled from five fragment pieces.
Fragment drops are ultra-rare, but they can happen anywhere, anytime. Don’t trash them! Even if you’re too low-level to raid a Fallen Paradise, your fragments can sell for big bucks to veteran players. Or (my advice), stick ‘em in a storage locker and save them for later. Work hard and someday you’ll be doing Fallen Paradise runs with the pros! You can always spot a raider by their awesome gear.
Memo to raiders: that does not include the gold bikini from the Fallen Paradise of Amorea. The gold bikini is played out. Stop wearing it. Especially if you’re a dude.
Jake snickered into his coffee mug and kept skimming. A map of a starting province — there were four, besides the one he’d landed in — charted the forest his fictional counterpart had been exploring. ”Warning,” Woody had noted, “displacer wolves are not for newbies. Sharpen your skills and get some better equipment first.” The village of Dutton lay due east. Woody’s guide singled it out as the best hub for starting adventurers, complete with a blacksmith, an alchemist’s shop, and “a tavern with genuinely good lamb stew.”