The lid of the pod shut with a hissing sound, which meant it had just cut off my only way back. It was the point of no return. I had thought everything over thoroughly and weighed all the pros and cons, finally arriving at this conclusion: there were simply no other options for me. I had to keep going forward, into a new, unknown life, without the ability to return to my old one. I found myself in complete darkness. I felt like I was in zero gravity, and at the same time, I couldn't feel my body at all. In the distance, on the edge of my consciousness, a dim light started twinkling. At first, there was only a tiny speck of light, but then it began to brighten gradually, with each and every second that passed. In a mere moment, it filled my entire consciousness.
"Welcome to the world of Alfarome!" I could hear a voice inside my head. "Collecting data from the pod ... Data collection complete. Medical pod number # ANV-734685-EK3573 does not have the clearance to terminate its operation... Error! A request is being sent to the server administration... An additional contract has been received. A brief excerpt from the contract:"
"Ignatenko Vladimir Alekseevich has signed an agreement with the Administration of the Alfarome project and has thereby agreed to be permanently transferred to the servers belonging to the Administration, without a twelve-hour limit on his presence in virtual reality, according to the Ministry of Health Decree No. 17554. The basis for the contract's signing is a medical report issued in the name of Ignatenko Vladimir Alekseevich regarding a critical state of health due to advanced age. For the right to transfer his consciousness to the servers of the project "Alfarome", Ignatenko Vladimir has waived the right to convert virtual currency from the game into real-world currency, get bonuses in the game in the form of real-world currency, and also payd twenty years in advance for the right to play the game. "
"Do you wish to confirm your choice?"
"Yes, 'Confirm'!"
Well, it wasn't like I had another way out! Despite a state-of-the-art health care system and advances in medicine, being107 years old makes you understand that it's not possible to live much longer than that. Doctors had told me that I could go on to live for two more years, or even five, possibly even ten years in the best-case scenario, but I'd have had to stay in a medical pod permanently. I had saved up quite a large amount of money, but, unfortunately, there was no one to whom I could bequeath this money. I was all alone. Well, it was wrong of me to think that; I had quite a big family.I had grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who were proud to have a relative like me, of course, but we didn't stay in touch and hardly even spoke on the phone.
My wife had died about twenty years before, and my children also passed away due to old age, but my grandchildren and great-grandchildren were alive and had their own families. That's why I cut my ties with them, so that they could live their lives, and not be disturbed by an old fogey living out his life in solitude. I decided to immerse myself in virtual reality in order to, so to speak, let my hair down one last time. It was then that I encountered a problem. According to the latest decrees from the Ministry of Health, staying in virtual reality was limited to only twelve hours, after which time you had to be disconnected for at least four hours.
Of course, it was possible to divide this period into smaller sections, according to your own wishes. It was necessary, however, to rest for twenty minutes in reality for every hour spent in the virtual world. I didn't like that option either, because I needed to be in a pod twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. After obtaining all the necessary medical certificates, court decisions, and concluding an agreement with a new but promising company, as well as receiving a number of game restrictions, I had finally acquired all the that I needed to accomplish what I intended. In the meantime, I had also set a precedent, according to which, from then on, terminally-ill patients could at least play games and enjoy themselves to the fullest. Okay, now that you have the backstory, let's move on.
"Do you want to configure your settings?"
"Yes, I do."
"Select the interaction mode with the system: by voice, thoughts, gestures, or choose another option. Attention: if you choose another option for your method of interaction, you will need to manually configure the standard list of interaction commands."
"Select interaction by means of voice and mental commands."
"Confirm the choice of interaction with the system by using voice and mental commands!"
"Confirm!"
"Confirm your choice one more time, mentally."
What an annoying, artificial brain it was! Why was it necessary to confirm everything a million times?!
"Yes, I wish to confirm my choice!" I mentally told the system.
"Thank you for your choice! Please choose how you would like to be notified by the system: by means of voice, text, light signals, or custom settings. Attention: if you select a custom option for your notifications, you will need to manually configure the notification options."
"Select notification by text!"
"Confirm your choice of being notified by the system through text-based messages."
"Confirm!"
A short message flashed into view:
Thank you for your choice! Select Your Character's Name…
Choosing a name required some thought, since it was going to be my name for quite a long time.
"Vladimir"
Name already in use
"Vova"
Name already in use
"Vovka"
Name already in use
"AlekseyiCH"
Name already in use
...
...
...
"Pissed-off"
Name already in use
"Is this one ALSO taken?"
Name already in use
...
...
...
"Stalker"
Name already in use
"Grandfather"
Name already in use
"Old man"
Name already in use
The game really made it difficult for me to settle on a name. Every time I came up with some damn thing, I got a message about how it's already taken. I finally had an idea…
"Volper"
This name is not taken! Would you like to choose this name for your character?
"Yeah, dammit, I want it bad!"
Congratulations, your character's name has been chosen and it's Volper! Do you want to change the character's age, or would you like to make it your real-life age?
I wanted to change my age for sure, but then I had a dilemma: how old was I supposed to be in the game? I could remember that I was in the prime of my life between the ages of 25 and 35. The average for that age range is 30. I never liked round figures though, so I made my character a bit younger and, as a result, this was my choice:
"Assign my character the age of twenty-eight years."
The character is now 28 years old!
I was now able to see a three-dimensional model of my character, which was surprisingly similar to me in my youth. He had dark, short hair, about a quarter of an inch long; dark, slightly curved and quite expressive eyebrows; gray eyes with a slight tinge of brown; a straight nose, slightly upturned at the tip; thin lips, curved into a smile, which depicted him as a person who often smiles, and a slightly protruding chin. He was a really muscular man, but not overly so, and he was almost six feet tall. There was nothing special about him; the new me looked like an average young man in his late twenties. While contemplating my youthful self, I was interrupted by a new message from the system that popped up in front of my eyes:
Choose the Character's Race:
1. A Human Being
2. A Cyborg (initial implants are installed)
3. A Latent Mutant (changes are configured by genotype)
4. A Mutant (changes are configured by phenotype)
At this point, I froze, just like a computer: the developers hadn't mentioned that there were different races available. How could they have concealed such important information? Of course, I agreed with their statement: "In our world, even a single piece of information is worth a lot of money". Still, they could have given me at least a little more to work with. I didn't spend too long reflecting on it. I had to make a choice. However, what was there to choose? I didn't want to be a mutant, that was certain. I was strongly disgusted by them. Being a Cyborg was not my cup of tea, either: I didn't want to install any chips or metal parts into my body. My choice was obvious!
Please, choose the Human Being.
Your choice has been accepted! Do you want to change the appearance of your character?
Then I found myself in the realm of bioscience engineering, the dream of each and every biologist– where everything was possible. Do you want to change the color of your skin, hair, eyes – or even have skin color that you can normally only wish for? Then this was the right place for you. The tools at your disposal allowed you to do it all yourself. You could change the shape of your eyes, face, or limbs. If you wanted, you could increase the number or change the appearance of limbs and body parts, as well as replace them with almost any biological or mechanical analogs. Yes, it was possible; you could change or adjust everything, from your looks to your nervous or cardiovascular system. For me, almost all of the settings were marked in an inactive, gray color, and when I looked at any of them, a message would pop up:
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
This option is not available for the Human Being
I finally left everything as it was. After all, I'd been alive for so many years. In the end, I would be in my own beloved body, without any changes. That's what was important to me – getting used to new oddities was not what I needed.
Finish configuration without any changes
Assign primary attributes:
Strength - 5
Agility - 5
Endurance - 5
Perception - 5
Intelligence - 5
Reasoning power - 5
Luck - 5
Charisma - 5
Free points available: 8
There were two buttons for each parameter: a plus and a minus (more or less). Clicking back and forth, I realized that you could not only increase, but also decrease your attributes, thus adding to or deducting from the free points in the game. The problem was that I didn't quite know how each of the features was related to which parameter in the game. I figured that choosing at random, relying on my own idea of what it all meant, would be the wrong thing to do. There had to be some sort of explanation, because if there was no information on their official website, then there had to be a way to get this precious information within the game itself. Then it occurred to me that I was being really dumb. Before the game started loading, I made sure that the game had a user-friendly interface. Highlighting the Strength attribute by looking at it, I sent a mental command to the interface:
"MORE INFORMATION"
Strength is directly tied to the development of your musculature and determines how much you can carry, the force of your blows in close combat and your ability to use heavy weaponry or heavy systems designed for your personal protection.
There really was a way to determine which attributes I needed, and which were less important. I only had to decide what my character would be like. I went on to study the theoretical part first:
Agility is directly tied to the flexibility of your body and determines the success of jumping, rolling, fine movements and your ability to perform various martial art techniques that require flexibility.
Endurance is directly tied to the ability of your body to go through prolonged periods of physical and mental stress and is responsible for how quickly you become exhausted, your resistance to pain, and the time you have to spend dealing with long-lasting negative effects.
Perception is directly tied to your mind's ability to process signals from external sources and is responsible for the quality of your eyesight, hearing, sensitivity to odors and sense of touch, as well as your ability to notice various small details in the world that surrounds you.
Intelligence is directly tied to the ability of your brain to perceive and memorize information and is responsible for the speed at which you learn different skills, the rate at which you lose previously acquired skills, as well as your ability to process various information.
I read the info on intelligence three times before I realized that I was concerned about one thing. It was the part about losing previously acquired skills that bothered me. You could actually lose some of your skills over the course of the game. I was just not sure about what could cause this loss, and how fast the skills would be lost. It wasn't even clear how the intellect would affect the rate of loss: would the rate of loss slow down or, on the contrary, increase with higher intellect. Figuring out this problem could have taken me hours to figure out, and even cause me to burn out. I had to stop torturing myself since there was no use scrambling my brains. I needed to read the description of my other attributes.
Reasoning power is directly tied to the ability of your brain to interact with the outside world and is responsible for determining the possible volume of interactions being performed, the strength of your resistance to attacks levied against you and the intensity of mutual interaction.
I had a question for those game developers… what kind of nerd could have written those brain-melting stuff? You had to read them many times, and then you still couldn't understand it, so you had to keep on reading until you do. Based on what I had read, the reasoning power appeared to be responsible for something related to the power of thought and gaining control over it. That could only mean that I would encounter either different telepaths with psychokinetic powers or a wider range of types called "psionics".
The Luck parameter is directly tied to how lucky you are!
That gave me quite a laugh… It was the most detailed description of the attributes. Well, after reading that, one thing was clear! I had the feeling that at least 90% of the players would be dissing the game developers.
Charisma is directly tied to your ability to engage others in communication and is responsible for your ability to quickly make everyone feel at ease while talking to you and your chances of getting more discounts in stores, getting rarer assignments or a higher reward for the completed tasks.
Finally, I came to the point where I had to choose. Almost all the attributes were important in the game. I didn't want to sacrifice anything, but I had to choose which attributes I would need in the beginning and which ones would I gain during the course of the game. As I went over everything, filled with doubt and reflecting on what I should choose, I carelessly clicked with the cursor, adding and deducting points from each of the attributes, making them go from one to ten, trying to arrive at the right decision. My mind kept telling me, time and time again, that I was making a mistake and that something was wrong, and that there was something extremely important that I was missing.
This is how I played around: first, I would leave five points for good luck and add three more into reasoning power. Then I'd reset all the attributes to the initial settings. Then, I'd fill four attributes up to the maximum, which is ten, and four of the other attributes would only get one point each. Why wasn't it possible to assign all the available points into just one attribute? I couldn't do that since ten was the maximum value for each category, but why was that the maximum? What could have been the reason for such a limit? I was going out of my mind trying to figure it all out. After all, there had to be a reason for that restriction… Although I have never seen such a thing in any other game.
The game developers did mention in one of their interviews that they'd resorted to non-standard solutions for many of the features of the game, which couldn't be found anywhere else. So it was highly possible that the attributes, or as most people call them, stats, couldn't be increased into new levels. Which meant that 10 was the maximum possible value for an attribute, and that pissed me off!
I figured that most players were likely to choose six points for all their attributes, which meant that they would all get an average character, without any clear distinctions and special features. My heart was pounding. I was certain the players would flood the forums with indignant messages within a day or two.
Realizing that it really was a problem, I almost immediately made a plan of action. Maybe it wasn't the best, but it was the most appropriate choice for the way I planned to play the game. In the end, I chose these attributes:
Strength - 5
Agility - 9
Endurance - 5
Perception - 9
Intelligence - 6
Reasoning power - 1
Luck - 8
Charisma - 5
Free points available: 0
After confirming my choice, the following message popped up in front of me:
Congratulations! You've created a new character! Our servers will boot up in…
1:17:23
1:17:22
1:17:21
1:17:20...
In just a little over an hour, my game would start. On the one hand, it wasn't a pleasant feeling to hover in this emptiness, with the timer ticking down in full view; on the other hand, there was time to get my thoughts together and solve the age-old question: 'what do I do next'? First, I needed to process the available information. In an hour, I was to embark on a long journey - a new game, accompanied by a crowd of frenzied gamers, and we would all be exploring a totally new world. This meant that there would be no guidelines, nor any tips from experienced players. It would probably be a race to experience everything and gather information about the virtual world surrounding us.
If my assumption about the attributes proved to be true, there would be no use trying to get as much experience as possible. Therefore, there were several primary tasks lying ahead of me. Firstly, I had to figure out what had to be done in order to successfully compete with other players. Secondly, I needed to gather information about the world around me, as wisdom dictates: "He who owns the information, owns the world". After reflecting on this for so long, I hadn't even noticed when I dozed off.
I regained consciousness when I heard the beeping of the timer, which was counting down the last seconds before the world booted up:
Attention! The servers are booting up in …
0:00:06 sec…
0:00:05
0:00:04
0:00:03
0:00:02
0:00:01
The bright flash hurt my eyes. I'd barely managed to blink when I saw the transparent spherical cover of the pod in front of me. With a quiet hissing sound, the lid moved forward a little and opened up.
Volper, welcome to Alfarome!
I moved to come out carefully, not yet accustomed to this new body of mine, which, unlike my old one, didn't ache every time I moved. I finally got out of the pod that looked like one of those cryogenic chambers in sci-fi films and rose to full height. I found myself in a rectangular-shaped room of about six by fourteen feet, decorated with something akin to tiles the color of the sea full of algae. It was a dirty greenish color with a slightly blue hue. My pod was in one corner of the room, and on the opposite side, I noticed a door.
"Well, hi to you too, Alfarome. Here I am!"
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