“...nd here we have some video of one of the most anticipated upcoming games, Dreamland! An incredible marvel of modern technology, this new DMMORPG by Genesis Games is one of the first to use a quantum supercomputer for its physics engine! According to the developers, Dreamland could become like a second life, as nearly a one-to-one scale world...”
-Daniel Green, Media Reporter of Ar-Tech CorpCity A-5, 3030
On a living room TV screen, an animation of a stylized peacock can be seen crowing, before fading out to show a newscaster for City A-5 News. With his usual charming grin, Daniel, the usual newsman for the afternoon, got right into it, the space to his right soon showing various clips to help along.
“Heellllooo, City A-5, I’m Daniel Green with the afternoon news for you just like always! As I’m sure you all know by now, Dreamland, the hit new game out in stores, has skyrocketed to the number one spot for game sales in only a few months! Quite a relief for Genesis Games I’m sure, considering just how much money-”
Thunk, thunk-slam!
The living room is nice enough, a cozy looking couch and a low coffee table with an extra chair to the side, some shelving, the usual things, but it seems mostly bare, like it hasn’t quite become a home yet. Off to the side, a kitchenette with a marble island can be seen, afternoon sun filtering through the kitchen windows and making the odd, almost spidery-looking robot arms hanging from the ceiling stand out in even more contrast to the many small potted plants filling up the space. They seem to be, for whatever reason, making lunch.
“-is, as far as anyone can tell, a one-to-one simulation! Quite impressive by any measure, though it wouldn’t have been possible if not for Genesis Game’s secret weapon; a Quantum Supercomputer! With petabytes of qubits simulating things down to the atomic level, and several classic supercomputers helping along, Dreamland is being hailed as a second world! Ignoring, of course, the V.C.R, but Dreamland is definitely more accessible for the common man. Speaking of the V.C.R-”
Thud-thud, thud, smack!
Opposite the kitchenette, what is obviously a gym can be seen, mostly filled with basic equipment like a bench press, barbells, a squat rack, those kinds of things. The centerpiece though is obviously the weighted, if worn-looking punching bag right in the middle of the room, currently swinging slowly back to its center. In front of it, hair pulled back into a basic tail to keep it out of the way, someone bounces left and right on the balls of her feet, ducking under or leaning back from the blows of her mental enemy, shadow-boxing to the beat of the music droning in her ears. Catching her breath as she cools down, she takes off her MMA gloves and tosses them on top of her dumbbell shelves, walking back into the living room as she slowly downs a half of her water bottle.
“Zen, could you switch over to recommended movies?”
“Of course, dear! Lunch will be ready in just a few minutes.”
A gentle, if still somewhat robotic sounding voice sounds out through the living room speakers, Eveline merely rolling her eyes as the TV abruptly switches from the news to whatever nonsense Zen decided would peak her interest. After shaking out the soreness in her hands, she spends her time stretching her muscles to keep from getting any strains and keeps sipping at her bottle, eventually pulling her hair out of its ponytail and fanning it out to try and get some of the heat away.
Although Eveline is sure that the documentary on mushrooms on the screen would be quite thrilling under normal circumstances, she simply can’t keep her mind on the present, even with the smell of Zen’s admittedly excellent cooking gently filling the room. Instead, she finally gives in and opens up her AR rig, a UI flashing to life in her eyes as she begins scrolling through her S-Mail once again. Almost out of habit at this point, she looks up the message from her city’s community manager from a week ago.
From: [email protected] To: A-5_PublicAddress Topic: Dreamland Work Opportunity
Message:
Hello everyone! I’m glad to say that the last quarter’s productivity was up by 2.3% from our average. Wonderful job! Of course, as you can see, this is not our usual public address, and as such I’ll leave the details to that. What I’d like to talk about here is the whole hubbub around Dreamland, and a potential opportunity for those looking for it. For clarity's sake, Dreamland has developed a way to take advantage of REM sleep and stretch 8 hours of real life sleep into a full 4 days of activity in their game.
Thanks to this, and the quickly burgeoning trade market and money conversion between the game world and ours, we’d like to propose that you-yes, you!-trade through Argus Industries! This opportunity will allow you to trade valuable items made or discovered in game for credits, leisure days, and even luxuries like VIP meals at high-class restaurants! If you’d like to get in on the deal, make sure to tell the character creator guide that you’d like to wire all transactions through the Argus Guild framework.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
With that said, I hope you all have a wonderful day!
Obviously, it’s a big deal, especially for Eveline. Her little apartment is fine, and she was pretty much content to spend a few years here, slowly saving up her credits until she could start looking for her own little plot of land out in the country. Heck, she was even planning on getting the sleepset needed to play Dreamland in a few more months once she’d settled down some. But with the chance to use her time in the game to potentially get a ton of money? She’d begged and begged her parents to get her one, even promised to pay them back both for the sleep set and the year of rent they’d pre-paid for her too. Eventually, they caved, and now she’s been anxiously waiting for the day her sleepset would finally come in the mail. If only she could track it-
“Here you go dear!”
“Shit! Jeez, Zen, don’t startle me like that!”
Eveline cusses out the AI under her breath as the robotic arms set down the meal on the coffee table, turning off her AR rig to finally focus on the meal and documentary again. It’s mostly just an intro to mushrooms kind of thing, so nothing that she hasn’t seen before. One cool thing she hadn’t heard of before is that the biggest known mycelial mass, from a honey mushroom in old Oregon that died around 2050, has been revived from collected spore samples. Basically the children of that mushroom have been cultivated around the world, kind of a ‘nature will live on’ kind of thing. A pretty feel good subplot to the whole story, which helps spice it up and keep it from just being any old documentary.
The documentary does its job of drawing her attention, considering that she doesn’t notice the hour and a half go by until her doorbell rings and nearly startles her off the couch. Heart racing, she rushes over to open the door and tries her best to hide her disappointment when it’s just one of her neighbors, rather than a delivery person. She doesn’t seem to pull it off, since Stephen just raises his brow at her.
“You okay there?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m just waiting for a package is all.”
“Ah, right, you’re getting the sleepdrive and all that for Dreamland, eh?” He smirks a little, “You sure you’re ready to Dive? I know you’re a bit of a noob when it comes to full immersion games.”
“Do you want the basil or not?” You decidedly do not pout, you cross your arms and give the man a glare, but he merely laughs and holds his hands up placatingly.
“Whoa whoa, no need to turn me to stone! I’ll say no more.”
You huff and let him inside, stomping over to the kitchen as he wanders around to look at the various plants to be seen around the house. With some quiet snips, it doesn’t take long to prune your favorite, bushiest basil plant and push the basil leaves into a bag, tying it up and tossing it at Stephen like a soft ball. It smacks him in the back of the head, just making him chuckle again as he catches the basil before it falls. He turns to her, taps his temple, and after some darting eyes-an easy sign of someone working with their corneal UI-before a notice pops up in the corner of her own eye. Eveline opens it, sees it’s a bank deposit for the agreed amount, and gives him a thumbs up.
Stephen, smarmy as usual, just smirks again and gives her a bow before heading out, calling out just before he closes the door.
“Oh, yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw a delivery bot down in the lobby with your name on it, might want to check on that!”
Eveline freezes at that, before starting to rush to get her shoes on as fast as she can, Stephen laughing on his way out. You know, like an asshole. Eventually, she finally gets her shoes on and rushes out of her apartment and down the hall, jumping into one of the elevators and pushing the ground floor button multiple times. She paces as the elevator takes its time descending and speed-walk out as soon as the door opens up once more, looking around the lobby to find your bot.
Thankfully they’re made to be obvious, so it only takes a moment to walk over to the boxy, rover-like delivery drone, which beeps a happy tone as it recognizes its recipient. After a few moments to pay the delivery fee, it pops open its top hatch, allowing her to reach inside for the sleepdrive box. She gives it a pat in thanks before you walk away, with the bot giving another little happy beep before plugging into a nearby charger.
Eveline is excited. Well, maybe excited is an understatement. Everything she’s seen of what people have said about Dreamland and all the videos streamers and such have made point to it basically being completely free-form! Or at least, quite close to it, with some things taking more effort than others. She finally makes it back to her apartment to sit back down at the coffee table, and start working through the packaging and reading all the setup and rules. Of course, most of all this info she’s already read up on, but it always pays to double check. Her StemDrive is up to date and compatible with the sleepdrive Dreamland uses, she calibrates the sleepdrive to her GPS, address, Bioreccords, bank account, and link up Zen to double-verify that she is who she says she is.
With all the set-up done, she brings the sleepdrive, a kind of blocky motorcycle helmet-looking thing, into her bedroom. With some fumbling with the charging pack and the wires she needs to plug in, Eveline sets it up to charge, and now she’s got until 8:00 PM to try and fill the time before her timezone goes online. Well, working out is always a good way to get the nervous energy out of her system! She’s just glad that today is her day off, she wouldn’t be able to get anything done with this wait…
Although it feels slow like molasses, time does pass, and night time comes. Eveline dresses in her comfiest pajamas, even if she knows that she won’t be able to feel them in-game. She takes a deep breath in and out to steady her nerves, pushes her pillows out of the way, and settles the sleepdrive around her head as she lays down. The inside of the helmet has odd, gold-colored circuit board-like patterns inside, barely visible in the dark of her room, though thankfully it’s comfortable with all the auto-adjusting padding that inflates or relaxes around her head.
There’s a tiny whirring sound as a mechanism in the back of the helmet aligns itself with the silvery horizontal scar across the back of Eveline’s neck, calibrating itself before pressing against the scar to connect up with her StemDrive. She takes a few more relaxing breaths as the sleepdrive boots up, wriggling a little to get her body comfortable to try and make sure she doesn’t wake up sore tomorrow.
Breathe in...
Breathe out...
Breathe in...
Breathe out..
Darkness.