Treecy de Santos like most second-year college girls was slightly more concerned about having a perfect relationship than she was with having a perfect score on the standardized history exam which was why she only allocated 53% of her attention to the lecture being given by Facter (Fact Teller) IsRad. The rest of her attention was on her avi (avatar) in the game. The game was a blended reality world that all people were connected to at all times. In many ways, your status in the game was more important than your status outside of the game unless your talents were related to science, math, or law.
The game had many different types and styles of games. Puzzles, sports, adventures, role play, social gatherings, music, and art sharing. Popularity in the game came from the number of people who wanted to watch you and interact with you. Usually, your popularity came from how well you did, but in some odd cases from how poorly you did. The game was simply where you went to be entertained.
Facter IsRad was explaining how after the great war humanity no longer had to struggle with resources causing the value of these things to disappear and instead, identity became the new currency appreciated in the universe. Instead of trying to have the most money, you wanted to be the best at something. Or simply not statistically below average. The entire lecture was nothing but a review for Treecy, who was starting to get a lot of people in her stream asking about her boyfriend so she bumped down the lecture's priority to 44% and bumped up the game to 33% which was irresponsibly high during a class.
Treecy asked on stream, "Y all the Qs about b10 and me?"
"Girl b10 & WW9 R at the dance 2gether." One of Treecy's out-lyer friends commented.
Treecy quickly pulled up the dance, a part of the game where couples could go and virtually dance together. She quickly found her boyfriend Benten Googlememe who was dancing with another girl. The other girl was someone Treecy was very familiar with, Wonda Whipple a girl with a slightly higher Popski (Popularity Score). Every person was genetically modified before birth so things like beauty and genetic makeup were no longer the things men and women looked for in a partner. All that mattered anymore were your Popski in the game and your Realski (Real Statistics) outside of the game. Realski didn't mean anything until after you graduated from college and started your career.
"Treecy, sorry I was gonna send you a letter." Benten smiled moving in front of Wonda protectively. "Wonda and I will be moving forward with our relationship so I'm going to have to ask you to unlink."
"What the fuck, Ben... You told me you loved me just forty minutes ago!" Treecy exploded.
He shrugged and smiled, "Sorry, I know this is sudden, but Wonda is someone I have always had my eye on and it was only a freak accident that allowed for us to meet. The ancients call this kind of a meeting..." He looked at Wonda.
"Fate." She said, and then bashfully looked down and went on, "Treecy, Benten, and I have the same Popski, you can't really expect for him to continue to be in a relationship with a three when he is a four?" Wonda gently twisted one of her curls around her finger.
Treecy balled up her fists and stared Wonda in the eye, "My Popski is 3.99997. Your Popski is 4.0001 don't act like you have seven or eight."
Wonda snorted and shook her head, "Do you really not know the difference? Look, your Popski dropped by a lot after Benten stopped carrying you."
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Treecy looked at her score in the corner of her display and went white as a sheet as it was dropping in real-time from 3.99997 to 3.50001. She looked at Benten who shrugged his shoulders and said in a placating tone, "Wonda is right you know, your score was only that high because I was your boyfriend."
Treecy quickly logged out of the game and then stood up in Facter IsRad's class and ran out of the room. The Facter raised an eyebrow and asked, "Was it my lecture?"
A girl in the front row snorted and said, "No, she just got hard mode dumped and neg Popski'd."
Treecy ran to her car and jumped in barely getting in the seat before she had it accelerate into the air racing straight up. She didn't even know where she wanted to go, she just wanted to get away from anyone and everything.
Treecy's car flew into high orbit and approached the huge FTL gate. The ancient structure was built during the great war over five thousand years earlier. The giant gate was so old that in order to use it modern cars like hers needed to use a keyboard to input the coordinates instead of just using her neurolink like normal.
Treecy was crying and upset so she wasn't quite precise when she typed in the coordinates for her homeworld. She thought she had typed in [10.100.10.1000] and hit enter causing the massive structure to turn seven degrees and start the countdown sequence. Her car smoothly pulled up behind the giant gate on autodrive until the countdown sequence hit zero, then her car rapidly accelerated through the huge hoop-shaped gate. energy beams crisscrossed through the huge structure sending the little car shooting out the other side well beyond the speed of light.
Time for Treecy slowed to a crawl as a blink of her eyes took hours instead of milliseconds. A jump from her college world back home would normally take a week in real time. She would experience the time during that jump as nearly instantaneous thanks to the effects of relativity. Unfortunately, when she had thought she typed in [10.100.10.1000] she had actually typed in [10.100.10.10000].
When her little car appeared in real-time once again she found herself off the grid. Alarms started ringing in the car as error boxes started popping up all over her vision.
Network Connection Lost!
Treecy's eyes grew as big as saucers and she started to panic. Without her connection to the grid, she couldn't call for help. She couldn't find her way home. She couldn't even keep herself alive. Her car wasn't built for deep space travel. Her car was still traveling near the speed of light after leaving jump space but without the gate providing the car with the extra energy needed to pass the speed of light she couldn't even return to the college world's gate before her car's limited life support system gave up.
"No no no!" She balled her fists up and shook them screaming, "Screw you, Benten Googlememe!" She cried long and loud as the little car continued on for another five minutes still headed in the direction the gate had sent her.
Outside of the little car, a massive object approached. Nearly seventy times larger than Treecy's car. It silently matched her car's speed and direction. It tried sending communications to the car but no one was listening on any of the channels. Finally, it turned on giant spotlights lighting up the exterior of the car.
Inside the car, Treecy was nearly blinded as the object lit up her car with lights nearly as bright as any sun. She felt the car vibrate as something from the object clamped onto it. The car was then pulled inside the massive object. As the car entered the object her neurolink activated.
Network connection established. Please enter password: _______
A cursor blinked waiting for her to enter a password. Treecy had never needed a password to the network in her life. The only password she even knew was the one used by Federation ships during the great war. With a smirk, she entered the password as if a five-thousand-year-old password would work.
Suddenly her link was active. She found herself in a primitive version of the game. It had a waiting room and a few hundred people were all staring at her with looks like they were seeing the most frightening or the most beautiful person they had ever seen. These were all unmodified people so it was probably true that they had never seen a woman as beautiful as Treecy. It was also true that her suddenly appearing on the secure network was frightening on too many levels.
Treecy took a deep breath and then asked, "I'm sorry, but could you tell me where I am?"
A tall well-built man stepped forward and asked in a language Treecy couldn't understand, "Ferboquyuch Zchisherfingerstrant. Rewetrello domingrantlick feldersnatch freedtrern dfluifoodington."
She scrunched up her face and tried to access the translation AI in her neurolink before asking, "I'm sorry, I couldn't understand you, can you repeat that?"
"Oh that's interesting, I can understand you now. I said, you are aboard the Federation destroyer Nemo and this is our crew's entertainment grid. You shouldn't be able to access it. Which is why we are all looking at you right now."