HIDEOUT
When we get back to our hideout, I tend to my usual ritual. I kick off my boots and push them up against my bunk with one foot, as I balance my weight on the other and sling my backpack down onto the mattress. I reach over and tug the large zipper backward, opening the sack.
The hideout was exactly what you would expect from a ‘post-apocalyptic’ setting. It was dingy, and the lighting wasn’t the best. It had a very distinct smell to it. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t exactly a breath of fresh air either. The walls were off green and peeling in some places, while the floor was a cold concrete slab. We completed roughly 60% of the upgrades available, and the modules that were left to upgrade were mostly comfort level stuff. Nicer toilets, high end theater equipment, softer sofas, things of that nature.
We didn’t make those a priority, as we didn’t spend too much time in our hideout. However, some people did, and those who did were the type of people that spent 90% of their time on The Net. While the attractiveness of going anywhere and doing anything at a whim was nice, Taylor and I preferred to spend more time in the real world. We enjoyed sailing the expanse with our ship, and seeing just what the universe had to offer whenever we could.
“Other than that Super Rare CC chip I saw you pocket from the Toyz store, what else did you snag?” Taylor asked from the other side of the room, doing his usual routine of sorting his loot into the bins he stores under his bed.
I yanked out the deep black AK-105 from my sack and looked it over. The combat sight on top was pricey and could fetch a decent amount of credits on the market. It also happened to be one of my favorites as well because it boosted the accuracy stat on any weapon it was attached to. I turned the rifle over and took note of the laser pointer mod attached to the side. I slid it off and tossed it up in my hand. “Easy money,” I responded and tossed the small gun attachment over onto Taylor’s bed.
He picked it up with one hand while wiping his brow with the other. “Hell ya man. The MACH2 goes for what, 96k right now?” He said rhetorically. Even from across the room I could see the laser interface etched over his retina. For Taylor, his interface was more red based in color than mine, and I could see it burning like an ember in his eye. I preferred a solid royal blue, it stood out from the background of the world and didn’t give off as much of an ambient light as the red seemed to do in most cases. But everyone has their own preference, and with the ability to customize everything, some went as far as to have complete headsets render to represent their time messing with the main Net overlay.
No matter what game you were playing, this menu was accessible and gave you access to all the important information and tools you needed while on The Net. Friend list, global inventory, Clan access, and a whole lot more, especially if you were a power user who ran your own shard. That wasn’t something many in the universe had access to, as even with the relatively low cost to run one, coding it and keeping up with that code was a different beast. Good shard coders were not easy to find, and if you were going to invest into a personal shard, then you had better have a plan to make it unique, or else it would sit, barren and desolate, in the sea of oversaturation of shards. Good coders weren’t going to waste their talents on an empty shard, there was too much money to be made from providing a unique experience that could go viral at any moment.
Right now, Escape was actually experiencing its own sort of viral expansion. Thanks to a global event that spanned somewhere upwards of 125 different game shards, the developers had their hands full with a massive influx of players. For guys like us though, it just meant more people to deal with when it came to the looting hot spots. Newer players tended to spend a lot less time in a raid due to the high probability of dying and losing all the shit they just found. So adjusting our normal routes through the raids and compensating for the fact that a decent percentage of the enemy players could be lootin’ and scootin’, was something we were still getting used to.
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“Yup, there’s a couple on there for 92k, but most are just under 100. Put it up for 96-97 and it’ll sell before you finish packing up for the night.” While we waited for our extract team to meet us in the sewer, we decided we would call it a night after this one. We had a good amount of loot and it would help sustain us for quite a while. We would be able to pick up some decent grub for our ship, recharge our storage batteries, and pay for the next Net access bill just off of this singular raid alone.
In the real world Taylor and I shared a ship, the Amnesty. She was a class S Euclorian. Euclorian’s were a sort of, sentient organic being merged with a ship. Well not sort of, that’s exactly what they were. But I’ll explain that a little later. Friends since the age of 14, and a plan of setting out to explore the universe together, investing in a ship we could share was always the best option. So, when the time came to set sail, we both agreed we wanted a living ship. We didn’t want to get ours from the auction house, since Euclorian ships on the AH tended to be unhappy with their life. So we went the slightly more expensive route and invested in an Euclorian egg.
The chances of the egg being an elite class ship was relatively low thanks to the vendor we purchased it from, but we just wanted a sentient ship, so we figured we would roll the dice. Either way, we would be happy with the purchase. This was going to kickstart our journey into the stars! Imagine our surprise when Amnesty was born and upon her birth scan, she was identified as an S class ship. She was our getaway, our guide to a better existence, the one who would take us on an adventure that we would call life. From the day she came into the world, our lives had been enriched. The relationship you build with your ship thanks to the vast amounts of time you spend inside of them, (literally) was unlike any other.
Due to Amnesty being a Euclorian, maintenance costs were low due to the lack of constant repairs having to be done when compared to traditional ships. Euclorian’s simply needed sustenance, and thankfully that was easy to provide as their diet was basically anything, except metal components. Now, if you got into a combat situation and your ship was damaged, that was a different story. You would need to get your ship to a medical space station as soon as possible and the ship would need to see a healer while there. Being mostly organic, they required being ‘repaired’ as such. While most, like Amnesty, were equipped with some sort of shielding, even the experience of combat may need to be addressed with a doctor due to the mental stress it puts on the ships with little to no combat experience. Thankfully, we hadn’t had any run ins with pirates or anything to this point, but that didn’t mean the threat of them wasn’t out there.
Speaking of shields and things. Let me explain how Euclorian ships work.
During the early months of a Euclorian’s life, they’re almost a blob with no definitive form. And during this time, they can absorb metal components. Those components then influenced what the Euclorian would become upon adulthood after incorporating the technology into their bodies. For example, a common practice was to “feed” a Euclorian specific technology modules that were designed to integrate them into interstellar transport.Thus giving them additional abilities such as a shield component or energy storage units. However, this absorption process is so detrimental to their life, that once we realized what was happening, we immediately agreed as a race to never feed an adolescent Euclorian anything it does not want to ingest. In fact, should you force an Euclorian to absorb anything against their will, it could be considered torture.
This did cause some issues when you incubated an egg for a specific purpose and that particular Euclorian wasn’t very interested. Typically the Euclorian eggs were bred to be predisposed to certain interests, but ultimately, they still made the final decision on what would be absorbed and integrated into themselves. The breeding did allow for at least some direction towards specific uses of the eggs, but they always came with a disclaimer. Worse case, there was a global trade market for ships that would rather be traded to a human who was aligned with their interests than an alternative like being an exploration ship when one truly wanted to be a miner.
Thankfully, Amnesty was interested in exploring the galaxy as much as she was interested in ensuring she was ready for anything that same entity decided to throw at us. During her absorption months, we fed her all types of fun gadgets and gizmos, including a PAL transmission module. The nice, and not so nice, thing about Euclorian ships was that instead of dealing with an AI PAL, you could connect your internal comms unit to your ship instead. While AI was advanced enough to be sentient, there was still a different feel to communicating with an actual organic intelligent being. Eventually, Amnesty made the choice to have one absorbed and later on admitted it was due in part to being envious of the dedication that Taylor and I have for our friendship.
“One day, I hope to earn both of your dedication as you have earned of each other.” She told us the day she presented the PAL unit for absorption. “You’re already part of the team Am. You’ve had our dedication from the day we set your egg into the incubator,” Taylor warmly responded. The investment we made nearly 10 years ago in that ship was the best either of us made in our entire lives. She made our time outside of The Net just as enjoyable as our time spent in it.