Kai felt his neck hair standing up as an ice-cold shiver ran down his spine at Topher’s words. It felt absolutely real. Way more real than anything he had ever experienced in VR until now.
“What is out there?”
Topher grinned.
“Patience, young Padawan. You’ll learn that soon enough. We don’t want to scare the crap out of you on your first day,” he added with a wink after remaining silent for a moment.
Before Kai could ask any more questions, the door opened and five young people entered.
The team lead waved his hand. “Here they come. Meet your Cyber Squad, Kai. Guys, this is our new Level One.”
Four young men and one young woman approached him. They all were dressed in identical black combat suits. Those were not the VR suits every one of them was wearing on their real bodies but originated from the game they just had exited. All of them looked extremely badass.
“Hey Kai, what’s up?” the young man walking in front of the others greeted him. “I’m Marco, DPS.”
He extended his hand in a fist bump and Kai responded. Marco was an athletic guy with brown skin and fire-red hair that hung over his left eye.
“And those are: Josh, tank,” he pointed at a guy who looked way too lanky to be a tank. “Then there’s Francois, healer – don’t mind him, he’s Canadian.”
“And you’re an asshole,” the other answered with fake offense and a slight French accent.
Marco ignored him and instead introduced the only girl in the team. “The lady is Claudia, also DPS.”
Claudia smiled, sitting down on a couch facing Kai.
“Nice to meet you!”
She had curly, brown hair bound into a ponytail and lively hazel-colored eyes.
“And last but not least, Viktor, our tech,” Marco finished the introduction.
Viktor, a pale guy with black hair and piercing eyes, lifted his palm into a minimalistic greeting while his mouth twitched into an even more minimalistic smile.
“Oh, and you’ve already met Topher,” Marco added after they all had sat down. “Our master and commander.”
“Damn right,” Topher answered with a grin, then turned serious. “Ok, now that we’re all here, let’s get to business. You guys know we’re on a tight schedule. How’s it going out there?”
“The game runs surprisingly smoothly so far,” Marco replied. “We only ran into some minor issues and made tickets for them.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Claudia said, rolling her eyes.
“Our squads are the external QA, the testers that investigate the shippable game for security risks,” Topher turned his attention back to Kai. “Game devs have their own QAs that check the games for bugs while in development. We’re the first ones who actually play them.”
“Yep, we’re the cool guys,” Marco nodded.
“But that’s only half of the services Helltek provides,” Topher said, ignoring Marco’s interruption. “The way more glamorous – and dangerous – half is in-game intervention. The name Cyber Squad is no coincidence. We’re like virtual special unit squads. If the shit hits the fan somewhere in one of the countless online worlds frequented by hundreds of millions of players each day, they call us. In times where any bug or glitch can easily turn into a deadly menace, special elite forces are needed to clean up.”
An expression of pride and excitement spread over everyone’s face as he spoke. Kai could feel the enthusiasm spreading over to him. The skin on his neck prickled, as it always did when he got excited. Only later would he fully realize that when plugged into the Helltek system, he experienced everything exactly as he did in his real body, down to the tiniest detail.
“However, they won’t deploy you on such missions until you reach Level Five,” Topher said after a short moment of silence had passed, and the others nodded knowingly.
“Our teams usually consist of six players. Three damage dealers, who we call DPSs, one tank, one healer and one techie. Just in case you’re wondering what that is, it’s nothing other than a coder. A programmer who can influence the game code on the run if necessary.”
Kai nodded. “I’ve seen one in action. It was impressive.”
“Gang, our newbie here has had the pleasure of encountering a Level Ten Cyber Squad in-game,” the team lead said.
All heads turned to Kai in surprise.
“Ah man, I would love to see those guys in action some day!” Josh said dreamingly.
“Which team did you encounter?” Claudia asked.
Kai shrugged. “I have no idea –”
“I think it was Alpha,” Topher interrupted.
“What?!” Josh cried out. “How cool is that!”
“You have to tell us how it was,” Claudia begged.
“Later,” Topher said. “I want to brief him with the basics and then have a quick test-run in-game.”
“I assume I’ll be DPS?” Kai asked.
“According to your gamer profile, that’s your preferred class and what you’re best at,” Topher answered. “Besides, it’s the role that has become vacant in our team.”
Suddenly, an uncomfortable silence spread in the room like an unpleasant smell, and everyone looked downcast.
“We mostly use the classic roles when testing RPGs,” Topher said quickly, noticing his team’s reaction. “Right now, we’re testing a co-op shooter, so everyone basically functions as DPS. But I believe it’ll be easier to show you everything than trying to explain it. I just wanted you to meet the family before we continue.”
Topher rose from his chair. “You guys can go on with the map you started. If everything runs smoothly, Kai will be able to join you after lunch.”
“Aye, Captain,” Marco said.
Kai watched as they all got up from their seats. Then, one after another, they performed a gesture with their hands, as if activating something on an invisible screen in front of them. With one blink after another, the squad had vanished.
“You’re lucky – this is a great team,” Topher said with a smile and pride in his voice once they were gone.
“I bet!” Kai answered genuinely. Manners were often rude among gamers, and he hadn’t expected such a warm welcome as he had just received.
Topher, too, now began moving his fingers in the air as if using an invisible touch screen.
A blue HUD appeared in Kai’s field of view.
“This is your personal tester UI[15],” the team lead explained. “It doesn’t look much different to any game HUD but has some special features.”
Curious, Kai took a closer look.
Name: Kai
Level: 1
100/100
Team: 76B
Team Lead: Topher B.
Game: n.a.
Progression: 0/1000
Available Features: Dev mode, Console, God mode
“What does progression mean?” Kai asked.
“That’s your progression to Level Two,” Topher explained.
“How do I progress?”
“Mostly through grinding, really. You get points for every day you’re here, for every level played, every bug you report, et cetera. But, of course, there’s more. You get extra points for certain stuff, and those are what will make you rise like a rocket through the ranks.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“If you open your menu in the left bottom corner, you’ll find the Q&A button there. It contains files with hundreds of pages of intel about your job, Helltek, Cyber Squad, game testing in general, and the ranks and how you climb them. Basically, whenever you do something extraordinary, the system will notice and record it.”
“Such as?”
Topher shrugged.
“Stick your neck out for a teammate. Discover unique issues and document them. That kind of stuff. And, of course, there are also the tournaments that can boost your score.”
“What kind of tournaments?”
The lead chuckled. “You’ll see soon enough.”
“Ok,” Kai was pumped and r
eady to jump into any adventure waiting for him. Then he remembered one more question that had interested him since the beginning. “How long does it usually take to reach Level Two?”
“You can’t wait to get all the benefits, eh? I can’t blame you,” Topher said. “Usually about a year. But some overachievers make it in a few months. Some never.”
Kai’s face fell, and Topher smiled.
“But I have full faith in you, to be honest. Ok, let’s jump into the game. I’ll explain the really important features of your HUD on the run. You can open and close it by thinking, by the way. There are only very few functions that have to be activated ‘manually’ by using a gesture. Try thinking HUD OFF.”
HUD OFF, Kai thought, and the HUD vanished from his view.
“Splendid! Now switch it back on again. I’m logging us into the game.”
HUD ON, Kai thought, and the HUD was back in his FOV.
A message appeared in his vision, blinking:
Logging you into game_secure_dev-mode. 3… 2… 1…
Chapter Eleven
The room around Kai dissolved into pixels and bits, and for a second he was in complete, white emptiness. Then countless fragments rushed toward him, like a jagged wave of confetti, and began forming an environment, the millions of pieces clicking together to create a piece of art of seemingly impossible complexity. Kai blinked as he stood in a completely different, virtual world than the one he had been in only a moment ago.
He looked around in awe. The graphics were 100% photo-realistic. Everything around him seemed as real as it could be. Even if Topher hadn’t mentioned it before, Kai would have known that this game could only be a shooter.
It was a tradition going back decades, all the way back to the early years of gaming, which demanded that shooters were always required to use groundbreaking technology, at least the AAA ones.
Kai didn’t know what game this was, but it looked absolutely stunning.
He stood in the middle of a street in a beautiful, futuristic city. The skyscrapers were of unusual architecture and were much higher than the highest in the real world, almost defying gravity. Less than a mile away, a spectacular building loomed amidst the skyscrapers: a gigantic black pyramid, seemingly of glass.
Yet one thing was unusual and like nothing he had ever seen before or expected when entering a virtual world.
Everything around him was frozen. Futuristic cars stood completely still. High above, a shimmering monorail seemed frozen in time. It took him a second to realize that there was also no air movement whatsoever. It felt more like a sterile lab than a city – a gigantic open-air lab.
But the most curious sight was the people.
The pedestrians on the sidewalks stood still. Not just frozen in time or like machines cut off from electricity. They stood unnaturally upright, with their arms spread, forming a T.
Kai had heard of that but had never seen it before. It was the so-called T-pose, the state game NPCs remained in when in dev mode. The realization struck him all of a sudden and filled him with excitement: he was in the game engine editor!
The times when game engine editors had been open-sourced to users to create mods were long gone. Nowadays, every game studio kept its editor locked up like Fort Knox.
Nevertheless, rumors existed that there were virtual worlds on the Dark Web that had been created with illegally obtained sandboxes. Those were dark and extremely violent places, where no rules applied, if any of the stories circling around in the gaming community could be trusted.
“Cool, huh?” Topher said, suddenly right next to him, ripping him out of his chain of thought.
“Yes!” Kai said. “It looks amazing. Are we in dev mode?”
Topher nodded.
“That’s exactly where we are. I assume you’ve never entered a game this way before?” Kai shook his head. “The reason we do that is because it’s the safest way to enter a game that hasn’t been thoroughly tested yet. If something is really off, it will often show in dev mode. Take a look!”
He pointed behind them, and Kai saw an NPC that was very different to the others. The male figure, dressed in a futuristic business suit, was flickering. Upon closer inspection, Kai noticed that the figure wasn’t just flickering. His arms were moving up and down from his T-pose into a casual one, as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
“Congrats!” Topher said. “Not even a minute in the game and you can report your first bug. Using your UI, open the menu and select ‘report’. It will give you an option to take a screenshot. Try to capture it as closely as possible. It will display your exact position automatically when the report is sent to the game studio. This looks like a minor issue to me, and the answer we get will probably be: Close. Known, shippable.”
“Known, shippable?” Kai asked, focusing his HUD on the hummingbird man to take a picture.
Topher laughed.
“The dreaded ‘known, shippable’ is the reason why games are almost always buggy as fuck when they’re released. Such little issues as this one will most likely never be fixed, no matter if they release a patch or not. But we report them anyway. It’s our job – and good for your progression score.”
“Got the pic,” Kai said.
“Awesome, now open ‘description’ and describe in a few precise words exactly what you encountered. Once you’ve opened the description field, you can simply think what you want to write in there. Pro tip: try to keep your dirty thoughts out of your mind when doing so.”
He winked, then laughed on seeing Kai’s startled face.
“Happens to the best of us at times. Anyway, in this case, an appropriate description would be something like: NPC breaks T-pose. Once you’ve filled it out, you can assign a priority to the issue. In this case, it should be the lowest, priority 1. It’s the green field.”
Kai did everything as instructed and was amazed at how smoothly it went. It seemed like an easy enough job so far.
“Ok, now, don’t select ‘send’ yet. It’s absolutely imperative that we test every issue that we encounter in the sandbox in-game as well before we send the ticket off. Sometimes things look like a trifle in the editor and are a major issue in the game. That’s one of the reasons why massive bugs can stay unnoticed by the dev teams. Simply select ‘save draft’ for now.”
“Got it.”
“Good. Ready to jump into the game?”
Kai smiled. “So ready.”
Topher walked onto the sidewalk, then grinned. “Little advice. You might want to get off the road first.”
Kai did as he was told and quickly moved to the side. Just in time.
Suddenly, everything around him came to life. Not slowly but from one blink to another.
Warm sun rays fell on his face, and the airstream from the cars rushing by hit his skin. Topher had been right. If Kai had stayed on the street, he would have been run over by a couple of vehicles, which sped down the virtual street much faster than they were allowed in real life. He most likely would have died or at least taken heavy damage, depending on how the mechanics of this game worked.
Kai lifted his head, amazed by the incredible details of this world. Someone bumped into him and cussed him out. The pedestrians were in as much of a hurry as the cars.
He noticed that he now had another HUD that overlay his tester UI, the actual game HUD. It was a typical shooter HUD, showing his health and ammo stats as well as the weapon he had equipped, a pistol. But there were also some abilities displayed which seemed to be game-specific, such as ‘scanner’, ‘rush’, ‘drone’, and a few others.
Turning his head, he saw Topher watching him attentively. The team lead was now wearing the same black combat suit as the others from his squad had when he had met them. Somehow its design seemed familiar to Kai, but he couldn’t recall where he had seen it before.
Topher pointed his finger behind them and Kai saw the flawed NPC. It showed similarly erratic behavior in-game. It was moving more like a broken robot than a human being, whereas the ot
her NPCs appeared 100% human.
“Take another screenshot, attach it to the report with the comment that the NPC is broken in-game, too, then send it off.”
“Done,” Kai said a few seconds later.
At the same moment, he saw numbers on his tester HUD move as his progression ticked up.
Name: Kai
Level: 1
100/100
Team: 76B
Team Lead: Topher B.
Game: Behind Blue Eyes 3
Progression: 1/1000
Available Features: Dev mode, Console, God mode
Ugh, he thought. It would take a long time to advance to the next level indeed.
“Don’t worry,” Topher said, almost as if reading Kai’s thoughts. “It’ll go quicker than you think.”
“This world looks fantastic,” Kai said. “What game is it?”
“It should show up on your UI, doesn’t it?”
Kai checked his UI, which was partially covered by the game HUD.
“You can adjust its size in the menu to fit your field of vision better.”
Kai did and now saw the information better. The tester UI showed he was teamed up with Topher and also the title of the game.
“Behind Blue Eyes 3?”
“Yeah, it’s brand-new. Due for release in the fall,” Topher said.
Kai could hardly hide his excitement. “I played the first two and loved them!”
Topher grinned. “We know. Why do you think they assigned you to my team?”
“That’s awesome!”
“Well, you’ll notice that testing a game isn’t actually the same as playing it for fun. I know testers who got so fed up with shooters that they can only work on RPGs now. And vice versa. Others have been assigned to V-Life.”
“I knew I’d seen the suits before,” Kai said.
“They’re awesome, aren’t they? Everyone looks like a badass wearing them,” Topher agreed.
For a moment, both of them had turned into nerdy gamer fanboys.
“Alright, now I’ll show you the most important thing you’re gonna learn today. Actually, it’s the most important thing for any tester in any game.”
Cyber Squad - Level 1: A Gamelit/LitRPG Lite Cyberpunk Adventure Page 11