Chapter 3
They left the gym. As they walked back to their apartment, Vincent opened his hologram again. He noticed there was a new tab on the top. It was named ‘Vincent’. He turned to Ace, “After I purchased something a new tab appeared. It says my name.”
Ace raised his eyebrows in surprise, “Your name? What does it show?”
Vincent focused his eyes on the tab. He pushed down on the button. A new window appeared. There were two panels. On the left was himself. It was like someone took a 3d image of himself. It reminded him of a video game avatar. On the right were three statistics,
Strength
12
Agility
11
Intelligence
19
He turned to Ace, “It’s like a video game stat screen. There is an avatar of myself and three stats.”
Ace chuckled at the analogy Vincent used “A video game? What are your stats?”
Vincent informed him of all three values. Ace felt this to be accurate and nodded, “Your intelligence sure is high. To be expected of my buddy.”
Ace started running, “Come on, I can’t wait to see what my stats are!”
Vincent fell into deep thought as they ran home.
……
In their apartment, Ace was in the living room doing pushups. A mat was underneath him, absorbing all his sweat. Vincent was on the couch scrolling through the rewards and tasks.
“What are you thinking about, Vincent?” Ace asked. He could tell whenever his buddy was deep in thought after being together for so long.
Vincent turned off the hologram. He folded his arms as he looked at Ace, “This tattoo is dangerous.”
Ace’s brows furrowed as he did another push up, “We aren’t going to be doing those dangerous tasks though, right?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Vincent shook his head, “There is task that rewards you for killing another user.’”
“Another user?” Ace paused mid push up.
“Right. I assume ‘another user’ means there are others like us,” Vincent stood up and paced back and forth, “We can learn multiple things from this task. That there are other users than us, and that the tattoo encourages fighting.”
Ace did another push up as he said, “We just don’t have to fight anybody then.”
“It’s not that simple. Look at all the people in prison who have committed crimes without this tattoo. There are plenty of murderers and criminals out in the world. If people who have no qualms commiting a crime become a user like us, what do you think will happen?”
Ace imagined what a thief gaining the ability to turn invisible would do. One word came to mind, “Chaos!”
“Right.” Vincent nodded.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Ace started to perform push ups, except this time a little faster than before. Vincent continued, “I propose we do a few things.”
“Tell me.”
Vincent turned to Ace, “We need to find a way to hide this tattoo. We already know that users can see each other’s tattoo. I was thinking gloves, but it’s currently spring. We would look out of place.”
Ace’s eyes lit up as he recalled Alice, “How about makeup?”
Vincent clapped his hands, “Perfect! However, I don’t know anything about makeup.”
“No problem, Alice would happily answer any questions I have. I can ask to borrow some makeup from her.”
“Good!” Vincent continued, “Another thing is, don’t tell anybody about the tattoo.”
Ace paused his pushup as he chuckled nervously, “You know how bad I am at lying.”
He decided to give him a little scare, “What would happen if an evil user knew Alice was connected to you?”
Ace’s face became pale, “Okay… I understand.”
Vincent continued to pace back and forth. He frowned, “I’ve already made a mistake.”
“How so?”
Vincent shook his head, “The task near the top says to punch 10 strangers. I went into the middle of campus and punched 100 people. If a user saw me…”
Vincent mused aloud, “We should stick to tasks that don’t put us in the limelight.”
“Anything else?”
He shook his head, “No, that’s all I can think of right now.”
“Okay, I want to see what my stats are. I’ll focus on push ups for now.”
“Alright, I’ll explore the reward and task screens. I’ll also turn the TV on.” Vincent turned the TV to the news station. He was going to try and find anything related to the tattoo. The hours passed peacefully. It was now 6 p.m.
“Done!” Ace’s voice broke Vincent’s concentration. Vincent looked over as Ace stood up. He placed his hands on his hips and raised his chin as he laughed, “Hahaha. Finally, 10 points!”
Vincent smiled, “Congratulations. What are you going to purchase?”
Ace collapsed on the couch next to him as he opened his hologram, “Guess?”
“Strength,” Vincent answered immediately.
“Yep, yep.” Ace purchased the strength enhancement. As he felt his strength increase he clenched his hands, “All that work paid off. I finally increased my strength again after all these months.”
“What are your stats?” Vincent reminded him.
“Oh, right. I got distracted.” He opened the new tab that said ‘Ace’. He looked at the right panel and read the stats out loud,
Strength
18
Agility
16
Intelligence
10
Ace turned his head and gave a smug grin. Vincent rolled his eyes and compared their stats, “It looks like 10 should be around the average number.”
“That seems about right.”
Vincent recalled all of the information that he studied over the past few hours, “On the rewards list you can pretty much purchase anything. Clothes, laser guns, knowledge about history, information about technology humanity hasn’t figured out yet, etc. You can purchase powers and abilities you’d see in a supernatural comic book or novel. The list goes on and on, I don’t even know how many rewards there are.”
“Hm.” Ace rubbed his chin.
Vincent continued as he looked through the rewards list, “All of them have different prices. I think I figured out a good way of measuring their cost, though.”
“Oh?” Ace turned to look at him.
“For example, this infinite ammo pistol. It costs 1,000 points. A laser pistol costs 100,000 points. The difference between the two… is their destructive power. Even though a laser pistol doesn’t exist, I can imagine its power.”
“Hm,” Ace thought aloud as he imagined a laser gun from a movie he saw, “So the cost depends on how much the reward impacts the world?”
“Right,” Vincent snapped his finger, “That’s a good way of putting it. Look at this, ‘Learn how to travel at the speed of light’. The cost is 1 trillion points. However, this spaceship which can travel at the speed of light only costs 100 billion points.”
“Holy crap,” Ace’s eyes widened in surprise from the absurd number, “That’s a lot of points.”
“You’re right. The difference between these two things, though, is their impact on the world. If you buy a spaceship you can travel at the speed of light, but you don’t know how you’re traveling at the speed of light. Clearly, the knowledge on how to move at the speed of light is more important than the tool.”
“That makes sense.”
They both fell deep into thought. Ace spoke first, “So if we consider this a video game, and that we have to fight other people, we should get stronger first.”
“You would just get stronger in either case,” Vincent laughed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ace snorted, “What I mean is, we should consider our ‘build path’. Just like in a video game.”
Vincent nodded, “Right. Certain powers appeal to me more than others.”
Ace continued, “Which means we need… points!”
“Speaking of points,” Vincent spoke, “It seems the simpler tasks reward about 1 point per hour. Of course that’s just the average. It could be better or worse. For example, I can’t afford to punch people over and over.”
“1 point per hour…” Ace mused. He stood up and slapped his checks, “We’d best get started!”
“Okay,” Vincent stood up and prepared to leave, “I found a good task.”
1
Pick up 500 pieces of litter.
Vincent turned to walk out of the apartment. He noticed that Ace didn’t move, “What’s wrong?”
“Well,” Ace rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment, “If I want to increase my physical attributes, I feel that I have to do it by doing physical activities. Otherwise, it doesn’t feel right to me.”
Vincent laughed, “That sounds just like you. Well, I’ll be back before midnight.”
“Okay, I’ll continue to do exercises. See you later.” Ace sat down on the ground and prepared to continue exercising.
Vincent headed to the river next to their apartment. There was a lot of garbage there that people left on the pathway alongside the river.