“That’s amazing! I bet if people outside could have such suits they’d be willing to spend a fortune on them.”
Topher grinned. “They’ll have them eventually. These are prototypes. CyberWear, the company that developed them for us, have been working on a model suitable for the public for years. It won’t take much longer now. But, pssst, you didn’t hear it from me!”
He pressed his index finger against his lips and winked.
“So, are you ready to take your gimp for a test ride?” he added.
“Hell yeah!”
“Ok. You need to strip out of everything. No underwear, no socks. There are some instructions right here.” He pressed his finger on a glass panel by the door of the locker and it sprang into action, showing a 3D hologram of the suit. “I’ll give you some privacy and wait outside.”
He clapped Kai’s shoulder and left.
***
Even following the instructions, it took Kai more than ten minutes to get the suit on. Topher had been right. It felt awkward at the beginning, especially since the ‘gimp’ was framed on the inside, which made Kai feel stiff when he walked. For some reason, Kai had hoped he would look sexy – like Batman – when wearing the suit, but instead he felt and looked rather clumsy.
When he opened the door and walked outside into the dimly lit hall, Topher was leaning against a wall, waiting for him, a cup of coffee in his hand. He, too, had changed and was now wearing an identical black suit to Kai’s.
The team lead looked Kai up and down and nodded.
“Well done, dude. You did everything right and it only took you ten minutes.” There was a slight air of mockery in his voice. “How does it feel?”
“A bit strange, to be honest…”
Topher stepped toward him and pushed a button on Kai’s shoulder.
A hissing noise came and Kai stiffened. The suit began tightening around him as the air stored inside was pressed out through a valve on his side. Kai looked down and watched in awe at what was happening. Just when it began to feel claustrophobic and the fear that the suit would suffocate him struck him, the shrinking stopped.
The high-tech clothing had adjusted to his body perfectly. To Kai’s surprise, it felt much better now, almost like a second skin.
However, this clearly had a downside. Inspecting himself, Kai felt embarrassed. Being skin-tight now, the suit showed off his body proportions all too clearly – in a not very flattering way.
Topher chuckled, noticing Kai’s dismay.
“Yep, that’s why the company has a gym on the premises, personal trainers included.”
He moved on, indicating for Kai to follow him. Taking a closer look at his new superior, Kai noticed that Topher’s body posture and way of moving revealed that he was in pretty good shape. He looked much better than him when wearing one of the suits.
“That’s only half the truth, of course,” the team lead said, turning the corner and walking down another hall. “Naturally, everyone wants to look acceptable when gimping up, but it’s even more imperative to have a good diet and do enough exercise. The healthier your body, the lower your probability of taking heavy damage. Visiting the gym three times a week is mandatory here.”
He looked at Kai.
“Let me guess, Rachel didn’t mention that either?”
“Nope.”
“Well, you know now,” he said, a slight irritation in his voice.
They approached a double door with a sign next to it that said Level 1-4 Medical Center, and it opened automatically for them. Kai squinted his eyes for a second because it was so bright in there compared with the rest of the underground part of Helltek HQ. In fact, it only came to Kai now that even after a short time down here, he had completely lost his sense of what time it was. It was probably still morning, but he couldn’t be sure. No wonder the employees called this part of the facility the Bowels.
Yet the sickbay looked completely different from the rest of the floor. It was brightly illuminated with walls painted in white and blue. A young nurse approached.
“What’s up, Topher?”
“I’m bringing you a rookie.”
The girl gave Kai a friendly smile. “Ah. You’re getting your ports?”
Kai shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Don’t worry, it sounds worse than it is. You won’t feel anything.”
She waved her finger, indicating for him to follow her. They entered a small room with an examination chair in its center. The nurse pointed at it, and Kai took a seat.
“Now place your hands in front of you on the markings. Make sure your fingers align with them,” the nurse said, and Kai did as asked. “Exactly. Perfect.”
She stepped to a control panel next to the chair and pressed some keys. Kai flinched as a mechanism sprang into action and two metallic tubes closed around his hands and wrists.
“No fear, it’ll be over in a second,” the nurse said in a soothing tone. “I’m Nell, by the way.”
“Nice to meet you, I’m Kai.”
“What a nice name!”
“Yeah, it’s a Viking name,” he said with a smile.
“Oh really?”
Kai flinched again. “Ouch!”
He couldn’t see what was happening under the tubes, but something had stung him – in both hands. Nell had moved to a screen mounted on the wall, where Kai saw a 3D model of some hands… his hands?
“That was just a little injection,” she said. “This way, you won’t feel anything from now on. Relax!”
Kai tried to. He leaned back and took a deep breath. He hated needles, and from the feel of it, that had been a pretty big one.
“What exactly are the ports?”
“Ugh,” Topher, who was standing in the doorway with crossed arms, chimed in. “Did the office drone not tell you that either? What are they even getting paid for?”
“Right?” the nurse said with a chuckle, then she looked at Kai to explain. “As we speak, the machine is injecting tiny polymer-carbon tubes into your wrist veins, which will be used as permanent, durable entrance ports to your body.”
Kai didn’t like the idea of tubes in his veins at all. “Like what you get in the hospital?”
“Kinda. Just better. You won’t feel them once they’re in and the entrance cannula is only three millimeters thick. You’ll hardly even see it.”
“It’s necessary to inject whatever your body might need at any time into your system. Remember what I told you earlier about Dune?” Topher added.
“Do you have those, too?” Kai asked, suddenly scared he would pass out, imagining how this machine that had his hands in a firm grip was inserting stuff into his veins.
“But of course!” Topher held his palms up, and Kai could see tiny plastic rings protruding from his wrists. They were transparent and so small that Kai hadn’t noticed them until now.
The machine hummed as it slowly released its grip and the tubes over his hands opened.
“All done!” Nell said with a bright smile. “See? Wasn’t bad at all, was it?”
“No, it was no problem,” Kai said, inspecting his hands. His skin was reddish around the little rings sticking out of his wrists, but otherwise he couldn’t feel anything.
“Ok, let’s go,” Topher said, clapping impatiently. “It’s time for you to meet the squad and then go for a test run.”
“Come and see us anytime if you need anything,” Nell said, waving as Kai left, following Topher.
Back in the seemingly endless corridors, they encountered two young women walking in the opposite direction, chatting cheerfully. Kai’s heart skipped a beat when looking at them. Both were wearing the same suits as him but with purple stripes on the shoulders and sides instead of red ones like his – and they looked breathtaking in them.
They interrupted their conversation and smiled.
“Hi Topher,” the taller one of them said. She was blonde and had a round, freckled face.
“What’s up, ladies,” he answered casually as the
y passed them.
“Those two are part of the V-Life crew,” the lead explained to Kai. “And they’re both Level Four, so don’t even start dreaming about it.”
“What?” Kai felt caught. “I–”
“Yeah, right,” Topher laughed. “You’ll get used to that sight. Girls in gimps are omnipresent here. Try not to act like such a nerd, ok? I mean, we’re all nerds here, but still.”
Kai wasn’t sure what to answer, so he just nodded. A moment later, they had arrived. Topher opened a door and they entered a spacious room.
It was long and dimly lit. Judging from its shape and size, it could have been an office space, big enough to accommodate a dozen desks and people working there.
Yet this workspace had no desks since the people working here didn’t require any.
Instead, eight chairs were positioned on both sides along the walls, facing each other. The furniture – if the word even applied to those things – was like nothing Kai had ever seen before.
Formed ergonomically, the metallic silver chairs were shaped in a way that allowed the person occupying them to lie down at an angle of 20 degrees instead of horizontally. The part where the head and shoulders were supposed to rest was integrated into an alcove.
Five of the chairs were occupied by people wearing the same kind of suits as Kai and Topher. Their bodies lay still and their eyes were closed. It was clear that those guys were connected to VR, but the way they were connected had hardly anything in common with how Kai and everyone else he knew entered the virtual world.
“Good morning, everyone,” Topher said, entering the room and spreading his arms theatrically. “Let me introduce Kai, your new squadmate!”
No one answered. Which was only natural since the people in the chairs couldn’t hear him when in VR.
“Ha, aren’t you the most hilarious guy in the world?” a sarcastic voice answered from the back of the room.
“You know I am,” Topher said with a grin.
“Oh yeah, everyone around these sacred halls knows.”
It was only now that Kai noticed that the VR stations weren’t the only equipment in the room. The sarcastic speaker emerged from behind a desk that was surrounded by screens and holograms and other high-tech stuff Kai had never seen before.
She was a woman in her early thirties, from the look of her, with wild, curly red hair standing in all directions as if she had been electrocuted. A strange pair of goggles was strapped to her forehead. Unlike the motionless figures in the chairs, she was dressed in normal clothes, although her style was rather… unique, to put it mildly. She wore camouflage cargo pants stuffed into lime-green Doc Martens boots. Fuck you, you fucking fuck was printed on her t-shirt, with a skeleton hand flipping off whoever dared to look at her. She had the vibe of an eccentric rock star, or a crazy scientist, although her white lab coat indicated the latter.
“So, you’re the noob?” she asked, squinting an eye while looking Kai up and down.
“Kai, that’s Lex, our squad operator,” Topher introduced them.
“Aka the person who keeps your skinny little ass alive,” she said, smirking.
“Hi,” Kai said, startled. Every time he thought his experience here couldn’t get more unreal, he was proven wrong.
“She’s a bit crazy but overall a doll,” Topher said with a wink.
“And you’re a jerk,” she answered, winking back, then turned to Kai. “Alright, kiddo, let’s plug you in, shall we?”
She grabbed something from her desk, which looked so messy it might have been the inspiration for chaos theory, and approached him. It looked like a portable scanner of some sort, but Kai wasn’t sure about that. Everything seemed to be different down here.
Lex turned his head to the side and held the device against his neuro-plant.
“Just to be certain that we have your exact signature,” she explained. “It can be scrambled at times when coming over the wire.”
Kai had no clue what she was talking about but tried to put a knowing expression on his face.
The device beeped softly. Lex pulled it away and nodded approvingly.
“Ok. I assume he’s getting Misha’s seat?” she asked Topher while pointing at an empty VR station to her left.
“Yep,” Topher answered.
“Make yourself comfortable, kiddo,” Lex said, walking to the chair. “You’re gonna spend more time here than anywhere else… well, at least your body will.”
She typed a code into a control panel located in the alcove part of the VR chair, and a bunch of displays and lights sprang into action. Kai felt his heart pounding as he approached the chair. For some reason, he was suddenly filled with the paralyzing fear that he would die in this seat. Or suffer whatever fate had happened to his predecessor, Misha.
Remember, you know what you’re signing up for, he thought, recalling Rachel’s words, coming out of her pretty, catlike face.
Do I really?
He saw Lex raising an eyebrow and gave himself a mental push.
Here goes nothing, he thought, sitting down clumsily.
The chair had special perforations for his arms and legs, and as soon as he placed his limbs there, the suit clicked into place, as if it had become one with the device. The magnetism, or whatever tech stood behind this, kept him in place, and it felt surprisingly comfortable. Almost like floating.
“This is so your muscles can relax and don’t cramp in longer sessions or under stress,” Lex said, then pointed at the lights, displays and diagrams above Kai’s head. “The system will constantly monitor your vital functions, and I keep an eye on all data back in my little she-cave. If anything goes wrong, we’ll know about it within seconds. You’re actually much safer here than in your home environment. Hold your hands still.”
Kai heard a click and felt a soft burn in his wrists as two metallic wires were plugged into the contact ports the friendly nurse had implanted less than an hour ago.
The headpiece wasn’t a pillow, rather it was designed to hold his head in place when he rested it there, and it had an opening for the back of his head and neck, where his neuro-plant access was.
“All right, you’re almost good to go, sweetie,” Lex said, petting Kai’s cheek nonchalantly. “The wire that will enter your neuro-plant in a moment and deliver you to the land of dreams is a tad bigger than what you’re used to, but don’t worry, it only hurts a little the first time.”
Topher, who had meanwhile walked over to the empty chair next to Kai, laughed, shaking his head. “I need to remember that one.”
“You’re welcome,” Lex grinned, then she turned her attention back to Kai.
“Ok, Kai, ready?”
“Ready.”
“What kind of name is Kai, anyway?” she asked, pressing some keys in the station above his head. “Is it Thai?”
“No,” he said quickly. “It’s–”
But he didn’t have time to finish his sentence as his life changed forever.
Chapter Ten
A sharp pain ran through Kai’s skull like a lightning bolt as the connector entered the neuro-plant port in his head.
For a millisecond, the world around him froze, then he felt like he was flying backward through a tunnel – at light speed. Just when he thought his consciousness would be ripped into shreds, he stopped.
To his surprise, he found himself back in the room he just had left. Kai furrowed his brow, looking around, but he quickly realized that this wasn’t the same room. It was a virtual version that had been designed to look similar. Its layout and coloring were the same, but instead of Lex’s she-cave, the rear part was equipped with comfy-looking lounge furniture. Colorful posters decorated the walls, most of them showing famous video games or superheroes.
“I know, the first couple of times, the entry might feel pretty rough to you,” Topher said, materializing in an armchair. “It’s because the test equipment runs on way more powerful machines than anything you can find outside. The processor power is insane, but nece
ssary. In ordinary environments an FPS rate drop is annoying, for us it can pose a serious threat. But you’ll learn that soon enough. Come on, take a seat.”
Kai sat down and Topher continued.
“I summoned the crew – they should be here any moment to meet you. Then we’ll proceed with your training. You’re an experienced VR user and gamer, so many things will come naturally to you. Other stuff will be new for you, and pretty exciting.”
Looking at the team lead, Kai noticed that his virtual appearance looked different to the guy he had met outside VR. Although a relatively handsome young man in real life, Topher had chosen an avatar that looked like an idealized version of himself. He was taller and leaner, with broad shoulders. His face was more symmetrical and smoother than his real one, and his eyes shone like black marbles. No doubt there were perfect abs hidden under the fashionable, form-fitting shirt he was wearing. Kai looked down at himself and found his own body to be rather boring.
Topher noticed Kai inspecting himself and chuckled.
“No worries, this is just a default avatar. You can customize yourself later. When testing a game environment, you will usually be assigned an appearance that is a default for the game, same as when you play an ego-shooter at home, for example. As you know, single-player and co-op games usually have default characters which are only marginally customizable. However, everyone at Helltek is encouraged to create a virtual persona and stick to it when outside a game or inside an environment that allows customization.”
Kai remembered the Cyber Squad that had entered TSOTA. How out of place they had appeared in the midst of the high fantasy-themed RPG. Had those been the virtual personas of those people?
“This here is a safe environment located on our internal servers with no access from the outside,” Topher said. “We usually test single-player games offline unless necessary. As soon as we enter the Net, things can get pretty rough at times.”
“Why?”
Topher’s overly handsome face turned very serious.
“Because there’s more shit out there than you can even imagine. In fact, no one would play virtual games online if they were aware of what is actually out there.”
Cyber Squad - Level 1: A Gamelit/LitRPG Lite Cyberpunk Adventure Page 10