15th March 2052
Jake opened his eyes a slit. He had the memory of a crushing hangover, and expected pain, but nothing seemed to hurt, so he opened them fully. Nothing. Sitting up he swallowed a couple of times, anticipating the scratchy soreness he associated with singing too much and too loudly, but again there was nothing. Strange.
Still sleep befuddled, he looked around. He was in his tiny bedsit, surrounded by a comfortable mess, books, clothes, a half empty waxed cardboard noodle box, unopened post. There was an e-reader on the table next to his head, and a gaming headpiece on top of it. So why did he expect to be lying on the floor in a drunken stupor, hopefully not robbed and with his virtue intact? He poked at his sleep-muddled memories like a sore tooth, working his way around his most recent recollections.
“Holy crap!” he shouted, flinging himself off the bed. “The game!” Yesterday’s session came back to him in a flash; waking on the stagecoach, fighting goblins, the insane coach ride with him driving wildly (like a mutha, he thought, randomly). The mad dwarf, the bad-girl gambler, the old man with a dog. And being feted as a hero by the locals, with lots of drinking. And then more drinking. And finally passing out.
It all seemed so real. And not just the visuals; modern graphics were literally indistinguishable from Real Life, together with sound, smell and movement and Jake had experienced it a thousand times in other games. It was the utter panic of being trapped on top of a moving stagecoach whilst being shot at with arrows and having no idea what was going on. It was the unexpected behaviour of his companions, the real confusion about what to do next, and the overwhelming fear of dying, either stabbed by goblins, shot full of arrows or falling from the coach. He knew it was a simulation when he’d put on the headset, but somehow, he’d forgotten by the time he entered the game. He even had vague memories about his life as a scribe, recalling days spent copying letters, adding columns of figures, the utter boredom of his life in that world. They were still there, faint but just discernible in the back of his mind but he felt no need to examine them further.
There was something weird about this game, and Jake grabbed his e-reader from the bedside table. He madly flipped through it, searching for the manual Dr Stapleton had given him. There. An Introduction to Darkside. Two hundred pages. With a sigh he settled back to read it.
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“Holy crap!” he said again. He really should have read the manual before he started the game. It seemed that by just throwing himself into it without preparation (he blamed Jozef Stapleton’s vodka), he’d activated something called ‘self-actualization mode’. For this, the game analyzed your physical and mental state at the time and picked a role and rough story arc that would be of ‘optimum value’ to your personality, physiology and aims. Apparently, it was best to enter the game for the first time completely sober and focused. And after completing a whole raft of personality tests, statements of preferred roles and aims, not just plugging in and turning the game on. He suspected that by entering the game-world in a state of inebriation he may have triggered some kind of an in-game intercession; the supplementary title of the expansion kind of gave it away now he thought about it - ‘Optional Therapeutic Intervention System’. And by not picking a role or aim, he’d let the games AI pick a player character best suited for this intervention. Also, by signing all of the legal and medical release forms he suspected he may have agreed to some distinctly sketchy procedures. Worse still, there was no restart without a three-day cooling-off period.
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Jake read further. The game manual contained no details of stats, abilities or powers for the game, merely very loose descriptions of a few of them – you are very strong; you can cheat at cards and an old favourite hit-with-stick were some of the more memorable abilities. There was also something called a Party Card, a set of abilities and bonuses based around the players group. Groups were normally established by like-minded players – Holy Avengers was the example they gave, giving bonuses to wisdom and will power amongst other things. It was formed by a band of players who sought to ‘stamp out corruption and further the aims of their Deities’. Other groups could be formed by players on similar quests, and, disturbingly, by the game AI from players and NPCs with similar traits. These Parties could be hidden and would continue to affect the characters even when apart from the rest of the group; dissolution of such parties was difficult and could involve substantial penalties.
Finally, right at the end of the manual there was a small section titled “In-Game memory suppression”. Easily overlooked, this was no longer than a page and a half, written in a tiny font with no subtitles or diagrams. The game AI, it seemed, had the ability to obscure memories of the Real world when in ‘Therapeutic Intervention’ mode. As this was classified as a medical supplement, the beta expansion bypassed most of the draconian regulations on memory alteration and manipulation. The guide made clear that it did not remove memories entirely, that being illegal, but made them temporarily less immediate, less pressing; it could also alter a player’s time-sense. It did all this via the players subconscious mind, somehow stimulating the belief in the reality of the Darkside world and encouraging it to ignore memories that did not fit the milieu. No damage to players mental faculties had been found after extensive testing (what!), but the guide did refer the reader to the non-liability agreement signed before entering the game, as well as a host of other waivers and contracts that had to be signed before access to the Darkside beta could be granted.
This was a horse of an entirely different colour. Memory suppression and altering perception seemed a little extreme even for the top selling game in the world. But then again, Jake thought, looking at his tiny bedsit and remembering the exhilaration, fear, and excitement of his first game experience, what do I have to lose? I mean, how bad could it get? He settled the headset on his brow and triggered the game again.