Hope Engine

by Andrew Lynch

  I rolled onto my back and focused on breathing. The after images sticking to my eyelids every time I blinked began to fade. They were definitely fading! The N-plague hadn’t hit. Evac’ing sucked, but I wasn’t currently slipping into brain death, so I’d take today as a win.

  The lights on my pod turned off as it began its purge. I rolled out of the pod and slumped to the ground in a heap. I did not manage to avoid my… stomach evacuation.

  I groaned. The jolt of the fall had finished the after images for me. Good. According to my teacher bots, getting disconnected from the pod in time wasn’t a guarantee you’d avoided N-plague. It’s all about the after images. They weren’t like looking at the sun for too long. They were files still stuck in the neural connectors at my temples, and they could be infected. Effectively, malicious hackers hijack your pod, infect your neural connectors, and force a wireless signal into your brain. If the infected file makes the transfer, then unplugging doesn’t stop it. After that, in all medical analysis, disconnecting had killed the test subject.

  The infection takes hold, and the N-plague victim lives in the game until their physical body passes away. Sounded fine, I lived in the game anyway, but the added wireless information that began passing between the game and the player overloaded their brain. Their mind degraded rapidly until… you have a choice. Physical death, or brain death. No one had survived N-plague for more than six months.

  We also didn’t know where it came from. Malicious hackers was the assumption, but no ransom had ever been asked for, and anyone that had ever claimed they were the progenitor of the virus had been debunked by authorities. They had also mysteriously gone silent a few weeks later, all their accounts being deactivated. Shockingly, people didn’t take kindly to someone claiming they created a virus that had killed millions. Odd that. Maybe, people shouldn’t be dicks.

  I pushed and pulled and struggled into an upright position. The evac sickness would wear off in a few minutes, and the after images had gone, so I was safe. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Time to shower, as that was the done thing after rolling in your own vomit, and then I’d… well, I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. If I came to it – my pod might be back up and running after a shower.

  All government apartments came with a real aqua shower. They hadn’t spared any expense, I was living in the lap of luxury – it was part of their “too many orphans, so let’s make them attractive so they procreate” stance. Most places, my pod included, had antibac dust showers – cleansing and abrasive. Cheaper in every possible sense, and its effectiveness relied far less on the user’s ability to wash themselves. Also, completely machine friendly, leaving no residue after a few minutes, allowing for showering while still in VR. Water was outdated technology.

  But as I turned the heat on the shower up, and felt the burn begin, I felt oddly alive. It was like someone had cast a fireball on me and I was incinerating. Bloody lovely.

  I held my hand to my side and turned it again, easing the heat off just a touch. I hadn’t needed to touch the tap… oh, damn it, I still had my receptor gloves on and was using their interactive function. These stupid things, now I’d got them all wet! Sure, the electronics were insulated, but now the fabric was soaked. I pulled the gloves off and chucked them on the floor of the shower room.

  Now that I was out of Tulgatha, I had plenty of time to get some serious shower thinking done. Entirely about Tulgatha. Had that shadow spreading across me been a visual representation of the N-plague? Had it been part of the Light Parasite’s attack? Were they actually connected? I mean, all of the Eastern Shadow seemed like a giant bug with them not rendering shadows. Was there a link? No studies I’d heard of had ever linked anything in-game to N-plague, so it seemed a long shot. If I had rolled a fire mage, I’d definitely have called myself “InSINerator”. Who or what were those two people doing in my village? Had I been invaded? Why did I find anthropomorphised water kind of cute? Many thoughts to be had, all of them worrying on some level.

  The shower changed to cyclone mode, drying me in a few seconds, and I pulled out a new podsuit. I went with beige and blue this time, instead of the blue and beige. I didn’t want my look to get stale, and it was good to mix things up.

  I returned to the main room and my pod was still dark. Hmm. What to do, what to do? My eyes drifted to the exit. I could go outside. If it was light. What was the time? I looked around the apartment for a clock. Normally I’d check my pod, but it was stubbornly refusing to turn on.

  On the plus side, while I’d been gone, the hydrophobic floor coating and cleaner bot had done their jobs. A spotless floor.

  I wasn’t hungry, so no need to cook anything, which meant no need to buy anything other than my supps. I looked to the exit, the ceramic white finish of the door lying flush with everything else. The government gave me everything I needed, and so there was nothing to live for. Odd that. I walked to the door, thinking that I’d go for a walk. There wouldn’t be much to see apart from row upon row of identical apartments, but maybe there would be some sun on the upper walkways.

  I moved to the door and swiped my glove to open it. It didn’t move. Right, I’d taken my gloves off. I retrieved them from the shower floor, they’d been dried in the cyclone, and I returned them to their rightful throne – my hands. Back to the main room, and again I moved within range of the door, raising my hand to swipe it open.

  “HOPE has arrived” blared from the speakers hidden around my apartment. The lights on my pod turned on, and it opened the player chamber.

  That was close. I almost had to go outside!

  Before I strapped in, I brought up the console screen and used my gloves to air-type a text to Daniel.

  “Just got a real life N-plague evac! You okay over there? What are you up to now? How many planets have you destroyed?”

  The feedback pads slipped into place and tightened around my limbs and chest, their slight restriction a comfort. The headset extended towards me, and the small jolt of electricity thrilled me as my temple connectors engaged.

  Chapter 17: Friends

  I was lying face down on the ground. I spit some dirt out of my mouth and pushed myself up. I was in my hut, lying on my Altar, which was now just a bed roll, slightly too small to fit the whole of me on it. Whoever had put me here decided it was more important to get my feet on the bed and had left my head hanging over the edge.

  I pushed myself to my feet and decided to face these things head on. I had potential invaders in my village, so I couldn’t waste any more time. They could have already subverted what little influence I held over my minions! They’d have had to kill Horace, of course, no one could turn him. Oh, poor Horace. I’d avenge him!

  As part of my aggressive, head-on charge tactic, I sat down on my Altar and went into the overhead building mode. I was ready to take back what was mine, not be an idiot. Reconnaissance first!

  My viewpoint flew into the air and I surveyed the ransacked village surrounding me. Oh, nope, that’s just how my village always looked. Couldn’t wait to upgrade from debris level buildings. Strangely, in fact, my village looked rather… healthy. Considering it was in the middle of a death forest that was probably actually called “death forest”.

  Changes had taken place. Now, there were the changes that I expected, as I had left orders for multiple buildings and fences to be built. The fence that surrounded and quartered my village, the lumber yard on the right, the dorms in the bottom left living quarter, and the training ground in the top left military quarter: all good and exactly where they should be.

  Something rather odd had happened in the other two quarters, and to the death forest that ran on the left side of my village. The top right corner was now… lush. It was covered in green grass, saplings, and bushes twirling around the fences I’d had built. There was also a small pond that was literally glowing, and a bunch of people that were not my minions walking around. I zoomed in on them to get a closer look and there were two distinct types. One was
half human, half deer - a Fawn - and the others I wouldn’t have even noticed if nameplates weren’t a thing. They looked like twisted, vine infested trees. Spriggans, apparently. They walked around for a bit, picked a spot, and then froze, perfectly imitating a scary looking tree. Well, not as scary as the death forest, but it was no picturesque cherry tree.

  And the bottom right quarter of my village was now a swamp, with boggy patches and reeds, and what would probably become some rather eerie looking trees in a few dozen years. In stark contrast to how the land had been transformed, there was also a large structure that I could only describe as an ancient temple. It wasn’t huge, about the same size as my lumber yard, but it was made out of white marble slabs. In this quarter, again, there were two types of denizens that had to be the dragonkin of the game, officially called Steggar. One type was a small, smooth skinned gecko kind of thing, some were blue, some were yellow, green, red, black – name a colour and one of them sported it – and their skin had a slimy sheen to it. They ran around frantically with no noticeable direction, and they hopped in and out of the watery pathways leading me to deduce they were amphibious. Their counterparts were larger – where the geckos were half the size of a man, these brutes were a head taller than any human I’d seen in the game yet. They had hard scales and ridged crests and horns on their heads. They were all the same colour, a dull brownish yellow, and they moved around in packs of three or four. They were slow and plodding and looked they could bench press a mountain. Oh, and they all had midnight black swords and armour.

  I had an invasion force inside my village! My first thought was that I had been overrun, but the whole left half of my village was entirely intact. In fact, I could actually see Horace in the very centre, giving a speech to a small mixed group of my minions, the deer people, and the Steggar.

  That was all a big complication that was clearly going to require some interesting negotiations. What the Eyes was going on? However, there was another interesting new feature, and that was the death forest just outside my fenced off village. It was gone. Well, no, a part of it was gone, and had been replaced by a road. It was only a dirt track with the occasional lantern, but it was still definitely a road.

  People were walking along it, and when they reached the point where the road connected to the fence of my village, they stopped and turned in, where they were confronted by one scary looking tree spirit, two sinister cloaked minions, and three immovable, armoured Steggar.

  Most of these travellers turned away immediately, some spoke briefly with the guards before being turned away, and occasionally some were let past the fence.

  Had… had my village construction and real time strategy game become a theme park builder?

  I heard a low growl next to me, and the sound of someone clearing their throat in a weirdly croaky way. Like a frog, maybe. Oh shit! I jumped out of my top-down view as fast as I could, and when I had returned to my Altar, I saw a giant white Steggar – I wasn’t sure exactly how he got through the door – and the more normal sized, kind of cute looking, vaguely human shaped bubbling water – aka, a water elemental.

  I peeked above their heads and their nameplates immediately marked them as players. The water elemental was a druid called Briar of Bark, and the Steggar was a bard by the name of Ixlyanoth Xi Kilnep.

  On the off chance they didn’t immediately kill me, I’d call them Bri and Ixly. For now, I was surrounded by the enemy, and anything could happen. They were level 21 and 44 respectively. They also seemed to be a lot better geared than I was, so unless I got a Shadowbolt crit to the eye, I didn’t hold out much hope. I was going to have to talk my way out of this. Keep it smooth, don’t let them know I’m panicking, and remain in control of the situation.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?!’

  Objective one, two, and three, failed. Super. Could have used some bullet time to think that response over, damn.

  Bri raised her hands and cringed. ‘Stay calm, we’re just here to explain.’

  At the same time, Ixly shouted, ‘Be calm small man!’ and brought a meaty fist down on a drum at his waist, which boomed in the tiny hut. It was so loud, I felt dizzy, and my vision swam for a few seconds. Bri staggered and steadied herself with a hand on the wall.

  Once my vision was back to normal, Ixly said in a much softer voice, ‘A warshouter’s song of calming never fails. You have questions.’

  I cleared my throat to try and get my voice back to a less terrified state. ‘A few pertinent questions spring to mind, yes. First, are you going to kill me and annex my village?’

  Bri answered. ‘No to the first, yes to the second. In a sense.’

  ‘Well… before I jump to a foul-mouthed defence of my village, why are you annexing it?’

  Ixly said to Bri, ‘Annex is a strong word. I prefer to say that we have combined.’

  ‘Combined, yes. Combined, in a no longer negotiable way,’ Bri agreed.

  Ixly scratched his chin. ‘That is fair, yes.’

  ‘Excuse me, guys. Talking to me, please.’

  They turned back to me.

  ‘You saw the road, I’m sure,’ Bri started. ‘I was travelling along after a minor upset with a local warlord, and I came across your village. At the time, you were under attack by a few bandits, and I offered the help of me and my followers to your designated minion, Horace. Under the circumstances, he was rather happy to agree.’

  ‘Negotiation under duress, sometimes called blackmail, sure, makes sense. So Horace promised you a quarter of my village?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all. Simply a place to stay for the night.’

  I nodded, feeling rather out of my depth. ‘And how did you come to terraform that quarter into something completely other?’

  Bri waved her hand in the air. ‘Terraforming is an awfully big word. You really are making things seem far worse than they are, Akuma.’

  ‘I prefer Severo. Go ahead, convince me.’

  ‘Probably shouldn’t have made your first name Akuma, then, hmm?’ Her glowing watery eyes brightened for a moment in what I took as a condescending glare. ‘The next morning, after I’d provided some freshly grown fruit for everyone, a local warlord turned up and attacked. Then I exchanged a permanent spot in your village for mutual protection.’

  ‘To clarify, the same local warlord that had chased you off your original land?’

  ‘One and the same. He was rather persistent.’

  ‘Right. So, my nineteen cultists joined the fight, and you managed to fend him off?’

  She hummed. ‘In a sense, yes.’

  Ixly shuffled awkwardly. ‘They were outnumbered and about to lose when I arrived. After months of travel on the road, my warband decided it was time to rest for a while. We pincered the warlord between our two armies and crushed him.

  ‘And Horace, curse his name, decided to give you a quarter of my village out of the goodness of his cold, black, dark-lord loving heart?’

  Ixly tapped his great clawed hand on the drum skin. ‘There may have been more steps to the negotiation, but yes, basically that.’

  ‘Blackmail?’

  Ixly nodded.

  ‘Jolly good. So, in summary, I’ve lost half my village to invaders? I mean, once all is said and done, when I left my village I basically forgot to uncheck a box that said “Allow minions to negotiate with hostiles”, right?’

  ‘Such a glib view of the world, Severo. Look on the bright side, why don’t you?’ Bri said.

  Ixly nodded enthusiastically. ‘She’s right. A positive outlook leads to a positive life. Perhaps a song will lift your spirits?’

  I raised a hand as I saw he was repositioning his drum for better skull pounding access. ‘No, that’s fine for now, Ixly. At least, not indoors. Or within a hundred metres of me, thanks. What is this silver lining, huh?’

  ‘Friends,’ Ixly said with a sagely demeanor.

  ‘I had friends. Angie didn’t like me much, but she was coming around. Where is the little scamp, anyway?’

  ‘T
he girl?’ Bri asked. ‘She left the night after the attack. Something about needing to raise an army again. Oh, and she said we should tell you this. “Wake up”. She didn’t explain it any further, so I’m sure that’s really helpful for you.’

  Huh. Angie had gone. That made me feel unexpectedly sad. She’d been a good little helper and exposition bot. She was also really good at talking down to me despite being a little girl. And “wake up”? Presumably that was some motivating words to wake up from the N-plague? A touch mistimed. Where was I going to find that kind of companion again, one vital to keeping my ego in check and to give nonsensical, cryptic suggestions?

  ‘Come on, Severo,’ Bri said. ‘Stop moping, and let’s go over the updates. No point moaning over things you can’t change.’

  Oh right. Literally any other person.

  ‘I’m going to need a second to collect my thoughts. Could you send in Horace, please.’

  Bri was about to argue, but Ixly shook his head and they both left.

  Right. Two random players now owned half my village. I needed to ask some serious questions, like, “If they kill me, can they forcefully take the rest of my village?” and “If that’s the case, why haven’t they already?”.

  Horace entered the hut, shuffling forward on his knees, prostrate on the floor, chanting a little ditty under his breath. ‘Master, it is so good to see you well.’

  ‘Well? You think I’m well, Horace?’

  Horace’s hood lifted enough that I guessed he was actually looking at me. ‘You seem in good health, master, yes.’

  ‘Physically, yes. But look deeper. Have a think about what happened while I was gone.’

  ‘Of course, master.’ He continued his chanting for a few seconds as the answer seemed to elude him. ‘Oh, master, really, I can’t take credit for it. No thanks are necessary from the most evil and benevolent dark lord Severo.’

  The little shit.

  ‘Actually, Horace, I’m a touch fucked off because I go away to level up, and when I return, I’ve lost half my shit! Now stop being creepy with the chanting and stand up!’