Chapter 2

You Will Die!

“No, I’m not concerned about that. I am not concerned with making games that players have seen before. There are many companies doing that, and I wish them the best. What I am concerned with is creating something bold, challenging, satisfying and different, that challenges the player and expands their expectations.

* from a 2132 MMO Addict interview with Kotaro Mizaguchi.

That may have been a bit melodramatic, I thought as I gazed out at the Barracks, the rows and rows of identical, prefab “houses” commissioned by the government after the 2112 meltdown of the Mark VII reactor down in Bloomville, NY. It had been advertised as “safe Nuclear,” and for a while it lived up to his reputation. Then Cassandra hit.

The most terrifying hurricane we’ve seen in years!

That’s how it was advertised on the news. It tore through the coast like an electric egg beater, flooding half of Manhattan and causing devastation all across New England. It rained for weeks and the Mark VII just couldn’t handle the biblical style flood—catastrophe struck.

The fallout covered most of New York City and the surrounding areas, resulting in the largest displaced population to ever exist. The government scrambled for solutions, setting up tent cities in Vermont and New Hampshire, housing vouchers for people lucky enough to get them (aka. the rich and well connected), project housing buildings hastily built all around the outskirts of Boston, and then prefab units stacked together like you might stack boxes in a warehouse, like the ones making up the Barracks.

They were sort of like shipping container units, but printed at government facilities without lines or seams, so in a way, they almost looked organic—like a blob of polymers and plastics of blues reds and yellows had grown up from the ground organically, like clusters of mold or fatty tumors that wouldn’t respond to any known treatment.

Ladder-like staircases hung off the backs of some homes, leaning to the second, third, fourth and fifth ranks where the lucky folks lived. Those of us on living on ground level had to deal with the noise of course, but also whatever junk people felt like chucking out their windows, food that smelled just too bad to put in the trash, and sometimes…other things.

I kept my head down but was absolutely soaked by the time I reached the unit I shared with my mother. We’d lucked out and got a blue one— “not one of those lemons!” as my mother had said, but that was about where our luck had ended. I had to admit, I’d been feeling quite nihilistic since Rey moved away, leaving me with “friends” with whom I felt no real connection. Then, when my dad and mom split and he got a house in Florida, I honestly stopped caring about…most things.

Part of me still hung onto the notion—perhaps juvenile and immature, or maybe even completely delusional—that there was a purpose for me out there. Like a superhero before he becomes a superhero. I felt alone, even when I was around other people. But sometimes, on very rare occasions, I was able to convince myself that I was destined for something more. But more often than not, my life felt hopeless, like when you try to run in a dream.

Life at school was tolerable on its best days, and pure torture on its worst. I knew no matter what I did, I’d never be accepted at South Farron. They all called me a “townie,” a derogatory term that basically encompassed anyone who wasn’t rich enough to pay for private school on their own, and seeing as how my single-mother wasn’t a doctor, lawyer or C.E.O., but instead was a waitress who worked double shifts and was hardly rarely home, she wasn’t going to be hobnobbing with the other parents at their fancy dinner parties any time soon.

Thankfully, she wasn’t home when I got there, which meant she was either at P.J.’s working the afternoon shift, or was starting early at the Old Revival, a diner that constantly played all the worst music from the turn of the century, getting ready for the dinner rush. But that was fine with me. I wasn’t in the mood for any of her faux-concerns about my life. She had her own problems, like how to find a man that didn’t mind actually dating a working woman with a teenage son.

I dropped my rain-soaked bag on the entry rug, kicked off my shoes and stepped through the living room. My phone buzzed. It was Rey.

On my way home. Talk?

I didn’t bother texting back. I just called. She answered before the first ring had ended.

“Betrayal? What the Hell is going on?” As always, Rey’s outrage had me starting to feel better immediately.

“My friends defected,” I explained, booting open the door to my room. “Chose the senior douchebags over me.”

“Ew, seriously?”

“Guess they got tired of being associated with South Farron’s biggest outcast.”

“To Hell with them,” Rey scoffed. “Bunch of Judases.”

“Easy for you to say,” I groaned, thumbing on the switch to my Fount VR device. “You’re not the one who was sitting completely alone at your table at lunch.”

“I’m sorry,” she replied. And she wasn’t just saying that. Rey’s empathy levels were second to none. It was one of the reasons we’d remained friends for so long. She genuinely cared about me, and vice versa. “But don’t let this stress you out too hard. I don’t want you having another seizure.”

“I told you, Rey. They’re not psychological. I have Epilepsy.”

“Well, all I know is that when you get stressed out, you seem to have more of them.”

“Probably because when I’m stressed I forget to take my medication.”

“Okay, well don’t do that either!” Rey scolded me.

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“Thanks, mom,” I smirked, pretending to be annoyed. Honestly, it was nice to have someone who wasn’t related to me that actually cared about me.

“Well, screw all that. We’ve got Blood Seekers to play!”

I managed a smile as the familiar blue glow from the Fount appeared, casting its color across peeling paint of my off-white ceiling. Video games had been more than a hobby for me since I was little—they were an escape. When mom and dad were fighting, I’d lock myself in my room and go questing, or pickup a huge plasma cannon and go blow away some demons as a space marine. Whatever it was, it was better than the alternative; real life.

“Think it’ll be as hard as they say?” I asked her as I dug my Crown out of a pile of old ranch potato chip bags lying sprawled across my desk.

“Have you ever known Mizaguchi to lie?”

“That’s true…”

Mizaguchi, the mad-genius, Japanese video game developer whose work on A.I. had driven the entire field ten, maybe twenty years into the future. He’d created the world’s first artificial therapist, Jane, that people could access online as someone to talk to. At first, Jane’s responses were pretty limited. But over time, as Jane became smarter and more self aware, people began reporting back that their sessions with her were actually life changing. Overnight, Mizaguchi went from being relatively unknown to non-techies and non-gamers, to being a household name. And his work on A.I. was one of the major reasons we were so excited about Blood Seekers.

According to Mizaguchi, who already had an impressive list of RPG titles under his belt, Blood Seekers’s NPCs were not simply programmed bots with stock responses and functionality, but were in fact fully sentient artificial intelligence characters with their own pasts, personalities, emotions and goals.

Once the world was setup and launched, it would continue to change and grow, even without any player interaction. For those of us looking for an escape from the daily grind of our miserable lives, it sounded like a dream come true.

On top of that, the crazed-genius developer was offering a new type of world for an MMO. This wasn’t your typical expansive world of green filled with goblins and orcs, dragons flying overhead and majestic castles sitting atop triumphant mountains. No, this was something else.

Mizaguchi’s world was dark, gothic and swollen with all manner of Lovecraftian creatures. Only snippets of the game had been released online, and a few screenshots on the official website, but from I’d seen, I was pumped.

It seemed to me like a twisted, haunted version of Victorian England. Greys, crimson, dark purples and blues dominated the color palette. From the images I’d seen, I didn’t recognize a single monster. This was normal for a Mizaguchi game, which always came with an incredibly specific vision that no one had seen before, always dark and dangerous. The games were never easy, which led to a lot of speculation by gamers as to what kind of Man Mizaguchi must be to consistently keep creating such dark and tortured worlds.

But I didn’t care what the reasons were. All I knew was that after playing clone after clone after clone of the typical fantasy MMO with all the same monsters, classes, items and quests, I was ready to dive in to something completely new and do some exploring.

The list of the game’s features was more like a list of features not included; no in-game chat beyond speaking, no rigid classes, no safe zones, no battlegrounds, no fast-travel, no NPC guards to help you out when you were about to die, no respec (meaning you could easily gimp your character if you weren’t careful), no build system for players (the world was how it was and you weren’t going to change that), no no-drop items and of course, no hand-holding. I was practically tingling with anticipation, wondering what I would find when I logged in.

“Want to holo?” Rey asked.

“One second,” I grunted as I tried to free my Crown’s lead from the knob of one of my drawers. “Lemmie set you down a second.”

I put my phone down on my bed, untwisted the line, shoved a pile of dirty laundry from my mattress and onto the floor, and sat back down. I didn’t even have a chance to pickup again before the holo-call came in. A quick fingerprint to my screen was all it took to answer.

Blue and purple filaments sprang into existence, crisscrossing each other, tendrils of silver and white spinning around them in a circular fashion. Within seconds, I was looking down at Rey’s face, projected in three dimensions from the screen of my phone.

She had her hair up in a messy bun that I knew she’d just thrown up there after she got home. She wore a slouchy, oversized pink sweatshirt and some kind of silver necklace. Her hazel eyes weren’t on me though. She was obviously reading something.

“You will die!” she announced with a smile. “Gee, that’s cheery.”

“He said Blood Seekers wasn’t for the faint hearted.” I reminded her. “Like the rest of his games.”

Mizaguchi seemed to relish in creating games that were so hard, they sometimes verged on ridiculous—unbeatable. As such, he quickly built a devoted fan base of hardcore gamers who worshipped his work and utilized it as a sort of aptitude test for those they would accept as friends. Beat a Mizaguchi game and you were in. You had respect. Give up and quit? Forget about being part of the crew. Rey and me were in the former group, and as such, were practically foaming at the mouth when he announced his first MMO. I knew it was a stupid thought, but I couldn’t help but smile when I pictured J.D. or his friends getting completely wrecked when trying their hand at even the easiest of Mizaguchi’s creations.

Rey kept reading. “Time dilation six-hundred-percent (meaning time moved six times slower in the game), full sensory interaction (meaning you could feel pain in the game), fully sentient NPCs with the world’s foremost artificial intelligence—”

“We already know this stuff, Rey,” I interrupted. “You just like hearing yourself talk or something?”

“Skill based combat,” she continued, raising her voice. “No tab-targeting, fully evadable melee and projectiles, and absolutely no hand-holding—so don’t ask!” Rey smirked, finally turned her eyes to me. “I love how these guys write.”

“No hand-holding, huh? You surprised by that?” I joked as I set my Crown on my head. “Sure you don’t wanna go play Paula’s Puppy Pound or whatever that stupid game is on your phone?”

“Deena’s Doggy Daycare?” she replied, correcting me. “First of all, I only play that game on the ride to and from school. And secondly, you keep up that smart talk, and I won’t save your ass when you get in trouble.”

“All right, Wonder Woman. Can we choose a starter town so we can at least find each other when we get there?”

I thumbed the holo switch on my Fount and used my index finger to scroll to the online store. There it was, listed under New Releases: Blood Seekers.

Estimated Download Time, 48 seconds. I felt my mood improve by at least ten-percent as I flicked the confirm icon.

“Choose a start town how?” Rey asked me. “Haven’t you been reading Mizaguchi’s posts on the forum? No hand-holding!”

“Block lost power last night,” I grumbled. “You can’t even choose a starter city?”

“He said he wanted to completely change the mechanics of the MMO. I guess that includes the introduction to the world.”

“So, how do I find you?” I asked. “There’s no Tell system or chat interface right?”

“As far as I know.”

“So what, then? I just run around screaming your name?”

“Friends can party up before entering the game world and that should start us together,” she replied. I could tell she was scrolling through the forums on her end, looking for the post that explained how. “Let me see…”

My fount dinged as the download completed. A blue holo-icon pulsed softly.

Install? I flicked it and watched as the progress bar appeared, moving quickly.

“Ah! Here it is!” Rey said triumphantly. “Okay, so just invite me into a chat with your Fount, and when we enter the game, we should be close to each other.”

“You sure?” I asked, opening the chat interface, finding her name and selecting it.

“It says so right here.”

“All right then,” I told her. “Accept my invite.”

She did, and her name appeared next to mine. My progress bar finished and the Fount chimed happily.

Install Complete.

“Kay, I’m good to go,” I told her, excitedly eyeing the Initialize button that would yank me out of my miserable world and transport me into the one Mizaguchi had created. I lay back on my bed and glanced at Rey’s hollow. She was putting on her Crown.

“Me too.”

“All right, girl,” I replied, flashing her a grin. “See you on the other side.”

“See ya, boy.”

I hung up the holo, took a deep breath, and hit the button.