-Joshua at home-
Joshua had only purchased Limitless Futures as a concession to Brandon. He would never admit that, but in truth Life's grassroots-only ad campaign hadn't hooked him. However, playing games with the same friends for a long time caused him to start playing games he might otherwise have skipped. Joshua would have passed on Life but for Brandon.
He chose the fantasy genre more than any other, it didn't matter whether it was action, strategy, or role-playing. The world settings were always his preference. The problem he had with Life was that nothing about it stood out to him. The details were sparse, the press had been blacked out, and the devs had never made their own game before. But what was available didn’t distinguish itself to him.
Tumbling Towers, the developers of Limitless Futures, were well known for their robust AI toolsets. Other developers even used those toolsets as selling points for their own games. But developing a tool isn’t the same thing as crafting a compelling and complete game. There is more to a game than just the parts, a certain necessary experiential cohesion was required to be satisfying and immersive. Lacking that cohesion, a game just wouldn't hold his attention. The press' skeptical commentary had all but sold Joshua that it was a glorified tech demo, but Brandon had insisted it would be an entirely new experience. Joshua doubted that very much.
Tumbling Towers had hinted at things while carefully promising nothing. Every new game claimed to be revolutionary, yet TT blocked the press and just floated insinuations. Possibilities didn't sell copies to a jaded market. It left the developers virtually unaccountable, and the only leverage a gamer had was their wallet.
All of which brought him to his present state.
A glance at the time told him he'd missed the official launch time by three hours, but that was expected. He didn’t take time off for those few hours, even though Brandon had. Once it had been his habit, but now he endured some nostalgic emptiness carved out of him from continual disenchantment. Vestigial urges to take the day off and celebrate the launch still itched in the back of his mind. But he had willed himself more numb these last few launches.
Once home, he wolfed down a rather disappointing burrito, the product of an impulse buy on the way home after work. He wasn't anxious to login, but Brandon was surely waiting for him. He didn't want to leave him waiting further. Yet, everything new had been done, there was no magic left for the experienced. The loss of flavor happened ever more rapidly as of late. He paused in the little kitchen, debating an undefined struggle.
Loyalty pitted against apathy.
Relaxing into his gaming recliner brought familiar sensations. The feel of the chair's synthetic skin against his, how it surrendered to the shape of him, triggered a passivity in his conscious mind. Joshua loved the fade. A moment of separation from the self. Total tranquility. Inside that drift the initialized merger achieved lock as his ports synchronized to the ISR. Registering the synchronicity, the ISR roused his mind once more into sync.
Fully conscious again, he made his way through the virtual deluge of start-up logos. In the background the system murmured boot status updates at the edges of his perception. A shaped breath formed words on the peripheral of his awareness that were heard without ears. On reaching the other side of the logo-splashes he floated in the system booter, drifting in a virtual starscape above an unknown planet. ISR’s default theme.
No new messages.
Brandon must be deep in it if he hadn't sent instructions on how to meet. They'd figure it out eventually, there was a bout of chaos with the start of every new game. This was nothing new. By his will he sought Limitless Futures and called it forth to load.
Life answered with utter darkness.
-Life loaded-
He came into being, wholly formed but without sensation. As an awareness lacking input. Sound came first into his new nothingness, internal bodily functions pulsating for a few beats before being drowned out by the onrush of the external world. An aural wash of wind and grass gating the competing choirs of insects. In the distance a single bird stopped and started its lonely arpeggios.
Smell and taste arrived next with a sudden pop. There was no subtlety to it, just a crashing wave of flavors. The taste of summer, full of grasses and other pollen, flooded his mouth and nose. Light poured in next as his eyes began to function. It started as a patchwork of inchoate luminosities, but the shapes and shades quickly melded into a unified field. He found himself in a rolling expanse of thigh-high grasses bespeckled with wild flowers. The mounds seemed to stretch endlessly, like swells in an open ocean.
Ahead of him, upon the crest of an otherwise unremarkable hill, stood a single tree. It was as grand in scale as it was solitary in number. Its branches swayed and creaked with the stronger gusts of unfelt breezes, the susurration of its thick mass of green leaves apathetic to his digital birth.
Beneath the tree, with his back to the trunk, sat a man wrapped in thin robes of neon yellow. The robes were worn tightly pulled across him and bound at the waist. The man himself appeared to be in his fifties and thin, not malnourished just slight in build.
Lacking directive, he walked forward.
He realized that somewhere along the walk he had started to feel. Unlike everything else so far, this change had been a subtle development. As he moved the sensations grew until everything felt uncomfortably natural. The movement seemed to cause mild irritation, though he thought it likely just unfamiliarity. Possibly chafing. He had never moved in this body before, it was as alien as the landscape.
The place was simultaneously real and surreal.
Once he was at the base of the tree's mound, he called out, "Hello?" He had meant it to be a greeting but it sounded like a question. He winced. Bad habits follow you into other worlds, a truism he knew well but always hoped to evade.
The old man nodded back and smiled, but made no other response.
He climbed the rise until he was within a couple yards of the man. The moment he stopped moving, the old man spoke before he could repeat himself. "Hello Harding, I hope this day finds you well."
He wondered if he had somehow missed the character creation.
As if reading his mind, the man added, "Here you are known, where and to whom you are known, as Harding Hill. As for me, I am your intrepid host Lon Kioski. A monk of the System."
"Intrepid?"
Joshua had questions already, but the snarky response was as reflexive in action as it was dubious in tone.
"You wouldn't believe the things I've seen this day alone," was the man's faintly traumatized reply. The man, Lon, stared off into the distance dramatically for several seconds, before looking back to him with a soft sigh. “And yet, here I am once more, in this spot and ready to be of service.”
"Are you the tutorial?"
The monk ran a collecting hand over and down his black and silver beard, which matched his hair color though not in its thinning. "I am a tutor, tutoring is my trade," confirmed Kioski with smiling eyes.
Before he could respond, the monk continued. "I am allowed to answer three questions about the System before my time here closes. Make your questions count, for knowledge comes easy but understanding is rare."
The guy seemed a bit dramatic, but that fit within his expectations of a tutorial NPC. In a way, the conformity to expectation offered a comfortingly familiar disappointment.
"How do I change my name?"
"You don't," answered Lon. "You have been assigned a name at birth. Just as you were in your world, and like there it falls upon you to make it mean something here."
"That seems… restrictive."
Lon made a flourish with his hands before he held them palms up. A video began to play as though it were a physical object in space and being held up by him. Small, sparkling motes of light fell from its edges for an exaggeratedly dramatic effect.
Within the magic display was a scene from some kind of butcher shop. The portly butcher behind the shop counter turned to the purchaser, white paper wrap in hand and said, "That'll be three eighths, Mister Ex-Ex-Sniper God Elite Four-Twenty Ex-Ex."
A man in line behind the customer snorted in derision which subsequently caused him to start to choke. The hologram scene ended with a closeup on the choking player's watering eyes, before fading to black and winking out of existence.
"That was just once, and it was just a joke," he protested defensively.
Kioski smiled knowingly and nodded. "Also, the game uses your name as a part of its security screen. You haven't used it elsewhere. Your name, bodies and Fate are generated only after analysis of your online profile."
"My fate?"
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He consciously chose to skip over the idea of his online profiles having been scanned by the game to make determinations about him. The thought was too uncomfortably invasive for him to deal with right now.
"Are you now asking me about Fate," inquired Kioski with the same ambiguity as a flashing confirmation prompt.
He reasoned that was fair. If questions were limited then an inquisitive mind might burn through them before realizing it. Fate, apparently a game mechanic, seemed too impactful to ignore. How could he make good long term choices with something like that hanging over him?
"What is Fate?"
Kioski's delayed answer seemed contemplative instead of pre-determined, "Fate is not what you must do, but rather the direction of that which is what you are becoming. It is the ever-changing thread of your most probable outcomes. Predicative, not productive."
Joshua was still chewing on that idea when Kioski added, "Mind you, external entities can intentionally bend that path… push a little here or change a variable there." The old man shrugged as though the concept was self-evident and hardly needed uttering.
They were silent together for a while.
Jousha digested the implications of Fate while Kioski sought the remnants of something stuck in his teeth. If he understood it correctly they were basically altering the game around him by what he was doing. Perhaps, he considered, it was like a dynamic questing system. Instead of artificial goals and success, he wondered if it might be an effort at a more dynamic and organic version of storytelling and questing.
"Fate seems to be a system where the game will bend rules or chance to get me to walk the path it wants," Joshua clarified his thoughts as a statement to avoid asking a question while watching Kioski's reaction for any clues.
The monk stared back without reaction.
Perhaps seeking or trusting facial cues in a game was a foolish notion, but real world habits are terribly pernicious. NPCs wouldn't respond with such tells unless programmed to do so. Just because a few other games, and TT's own tools, had previously done that didn't mean it was true here. Joshua sighed and caught a quirk of a smile from the monk. It irritated him as he now had to consider the possibility he was being played.
"I have one question left?"
Kioski smiled and stated, "That is not your third question." The old man paused, looked up and then rolled his eyes. He was seemingly distracted by something else before sighing wearily. "I have been instructed to prolong this encounter as, remarkably, your ante is still in question."
He wittingly replied, "Uhm, ante? As in gambling?"
Kioski curled his lower lip and looked up again. The monk oozed exasperation. Whether it was at him or whatever communication he was having though was unclear. Through the silent pause, his sense was that the question wasn't allowed. Doubt ended when the monk finally spoke. "Not gambling, no. Ante as in bidding. They haggle for your Soul.” He paused, “The Auction of Souls would be a worthy third question."
Perhaps it was just him stalling, but Kioski looked him dead in the eyes and arched an expectant eyebrow. "Do you want your third question to be on the Auction of Souls," asked the monk.
"No."
Joshua did, in fact, want to know. He wanted to know everything. But he was not remotely sure it should be his last question. Auctioning the souls of the players during the tutorial seemed far too juicy to just ignore. And the monk had seemingly needed permission to even explain that much, suggesting it was rare or restricted information. Which made it feel like a trap.
Information generally grants advantages, but the rarity wasn't always indicative of usefulness. Truthfully, he was just inquisitive by nature. Most games provided in-depth documentation while these devs were artificially limiting questions. With only one question left, he needed to focus on something that would impact his actual play and not just satisfy his curiosity.
A multitude of possible questions popped into his head, such as how combat worked, how classes were structured, and how to contact his friends. Also, while character creation seemed non-existent from the dubiously named monk’s previous statements, the mechanics and requirements of leveling were still open to discovery.
He took a moment to carefully construct his question.
"How do stats interact with me?"
The old man responded with a flat affect, "Automatically."
He rolled his eyes. "I didn't mean how to engage them, I meant…"
He tried to linguistically construct a refined structure to his question. "How do they affect me?"
The monk smiled with a disturbing display of all of his teeth. The grin was the first thing in Life that felt inhuman, or perhaps too predatorily human. If it was intentional, and not part of the classic tradition of launch-day animation errors, it hinted at unexpressed and disturbing depths to a seemingly simple tutorial character.
Kioski stood without effort and brushed dirt and grass off his backside furiously. He looked up to him and complained, "This yellow really shows dirt, terrible color choice don’t you think?"
Attempting to endure the man's antics, he huffed.
Why limit questions when the answers were of limited use? Despite his irritation, he couldn't help but notice that the monk was small. Or maybe he was big. Scale being relative he wasn't sure which was true yet. It was off putting to realize the ambiguity of something so seemingly concrete. In this encounter the human habit of gauging one’s surroundings from the scale of self was being thwarted.
He questioned if it was by design.
The monk turned up his stiff face and they inadvertently looked into each other's eyes. It was oddly personal considering the eyes looking back were just art assets assigned to a data construct. But as their direct gaze held, the monk's countenance softened. "Upon review of your clarification, the answer is dependent on what you consider to be yourself," Lon allowed. Holding out one hand he asked, "Are you the flesh on the other end of the connection?" Then extending the other hand, he continued, "Or are you the avatar before me?"
Joshua hesitated.
Most likely, as the tutorial, the monk meant the distinction of self to direct his question on stats. Game stats governed game characters, meaning the answer was that he was the avatar. But if it was so simple, he wondered why the two were being differentiated. The machine was hooked up to him after all, could the game have stats that related to, and affected, him and not the avatar?
"I think I'm both?"
Once more it had been meant to be a statement, but it still came out sounding like a question. He wasn't overly cocky, but it irritated him that it seemed as though he was always indecisive. Kioski's bright mirth at his response just piqued his irritation further.
"The totality of you is not a singular entity," Kioski agreed. "The self-narrative is indeed a work of fiction. Instead, you are represented by a collection of selves bound loosely together and guided by a subroutine that uses delusion to round the jagged edges."
He wondered if the system was truly speaking about his in-game self.
While Joshua attempted to unpack the explanation, Kioski continued to expound as though the topic was of great personal interest, "Each self has rules, roles, and methods of exchange. And yes, each has stats but some stats, like selves, are determined whereas others are determinant."
Joshua’s eyes blinked rapidly as he continued to decompress Kioski's exposition. His previous irritation was abandoned in the struggle to keep up.
"Your intelligence, knowledge, focus and such is determined from who you are in your world and are not constructs within this world," explained Kioski with creeping excitement in his voice.
Waving away imagined concerns with his hand, the monk admitted, "While there is some minor smoothing for a better interface, there is in no way a substitution of your intrinsic limitations. The stats in those instances are just a quick check for the system to use on certain occasions to speed non-critical processes. They do not serve as limiting equations."
He suspected that the monk did not need to breathe.
"So, you can't be smarter in game than you are in real life?"
“Mostly correct. However, commonly, people are dumber."
"Than me?"
"Than themselves."
He chuckled until he realized Kioski wasn't joking. Nor was he being excluded. It wasn't anything he didn't truthfully know but the reminder was always sombering when taken seriously. He rarely acted as smart as he knew he was capable of being.
Kioski continued in yet more animated fashion than he had yet been, "What point is there to pretending a player becomes smarter when they play an RPG? Of all the attributes the mind is the most determinant. Players bring their own strengths and weaknesses, just as they bring their own fears and neuroses. We cannot make them what they are not, only provide the structure for them to become what they will. The System just needs to know, from time to time, the general limits of their limitations."
Joshua nodded out of habit.
He thought he had mostly followed the monk's argument, but he wasn't currently in any position to make intelligent commentary. And while it was an interesting view into the Devs' thoughts, or perhaps just this AI's, it wasn't furthering his immediate goal of helping his future game play.
"What about the other layers of me?"
"I'll skip over the more esoteric ones," a much calmer Kioski commented after a pause, dismissing them with another wave of his bony hand. "They're mostly there for interfacing with the various systems whose existence you have no knowledge of. The other end of the spectrum is, afterall, what you're really asking about. The physical body."
From his emphasis, the term "physical" seemed official.
The old monk vaguely gestured at him, "It's what collides with the boundaries of this world, is acted upon by forces, and limits your ability to generate force. Within it are stats that determine how much you can push, how fast you can sprint, and the results of chemicals being introduced into you."
Outside of the multiple layers structure, it seemed a fairly normal RPG system. The lack of artificial boosts to knowledge or intelligence was more of an action game approach than that of an RPG, but he didn't expect it to be a big deal beyond the early game. People who actually knew how to fight would definitely stand out until others learned.
"How do I see these stats?"
"That's a different question, Mister Hill," Kioski answered politely before stretching. "Your question was how the System numbers affect you," Kioski replied through that all-teeth smile again.
"Shit."
“You need to already?"
"No... Wait. We have to do that in the game too?"
"I'm sure you can work it out."
He rolled his eyes.
"That concludes your introduction. We hope you have an enjoyable time in our world. If you have further questions, find me in the game."
"How do I find you?"
Laughing, the monk pulled wide the sides of his robes. "I'm hard to miss." Putting his hand on the tree, he continued, "Touch the tree to exit this loader."
And then the monk was gone.
He looked around, checking to see if he had missed any opportunities for other interactions or loot. The world was serene, just a warm summer day without cause for concern. Safe.
He didn't trust it.
Who knew what lurked in the grass. The game seemed too keen on being challenging to just have this space as an empty render. Belatedly, he realized asking if there was anything hidden here he could take with him would have been a better question than how to change his name. He picked up a couple small rocks and tossed them casually into the grass. Nothing happened, but it provided good physical feedback as he continued to acclimate to his new body. His aim was terrible, just as it was in real life.
Realism, he realized, kind of sucked.
"No point in delaying," he said out loud to himself and anything that might possibly be watching. He turned and with a couple steps, placed his hand on the tree.
Everything left. Or, maybe, it was that darkness that had come again. All in a blink of the mind's eye. A mental flinch. An intermission in the theater of consciousness. A dream like transition.
Reality was an artificial construct and it had just dropped a few frames.