When the white blur cleared I was standing in front of a rustic looking village gate “manned” by two women just as muscular as myself.
“Hold!” The warrior woman on the left shouted, “State your name!”
The other guard was an older woman, greying hair and skin tanned like leather from long exposure to the sun, but still quite fit, down to the exposed six pack abs. She shrugged apologetically at me, gesturing at her companion with her chin, as if to say, “she’s new and overeager, please play along.”
A blue window appeared in front of me, it had my character’s basic information:
Sarah Longshot, Level 1 Arcanist (#Amazon ID enabled)
Health; 100%, Mana; 100%, Stamina; 100% Condition: Normal
“Sarah Longshot,” I told the younger guard, deciding to use the name my previous self had come up with; it was a tangible connection to my past self, whom I knew next to nothing about, other than I had been (and still was) attracted to muscular women.
“You may pass!” The younger guard said, then moved out of my way as the older guard pulled a lever that operated whatever mechanism opened the gate.
I nodded in thanks, and started to walk in, when the older guard coughed and said, “You know your way around or are you a first time player?” She asked me quietly.
I turned to look at the older guard in surprise. She knew I was a player? I had no idea how this world worked, but I had assumed that everyone would think I was just an ordinary amazon.
At my surprised look, the older woman chuckled, “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow to the knee…” she paused expectantly, but I stared at her blankly.
“Really, I know that joke is pretty old… but nothing? Erm, nevermind. Let me start over again.” She cleared her throat, “Hi, my name is Emily, and I am a volunteer player, I’m working as a new player guide. You, me, one other guide, and about a dozen new players are only other “real” people in this village.” She told me, pulling me into the village. The other guard seemed to completely forget our existence and continued to stare straight ahead blankly.
“Ah, so everyone else is a what, a non player character?” I asked. Using that phrase with no memory of where I’d learned it felt odd, like reaching for a web of knowledge and finding only isolated nuggets.
“Yeah, it’s more complicated than that,” Emily explained, falling in beside me, “This world has three types of people, players, actors, and extras. Players come from the real world, like you and me. Actors are built by the game’s AI and are just as smart as a real person, but don’t know they live in a game. Trying to convince an actor that you are a player will just make them think that you are nuts. It's a common illness, called “player madness”, that’s what actors will accuse you of having if you try to convince them that this world isn’t real. Then there’s extras, like my fellow gate guard. Actors are coded never to notice extras are a bit odd, and extras are coded to basically never notice anything they aren’t supposed to notice and are quite stupid.” Emily laughed.
“So everyone here is an extra?” I asked, gesturing at the villagers. We’d been walking while talking, and the village was surprisingly normal; men, women and children going about their daily routines and a bustling market lined the main street, with shopkeepers yelling out what they were selling as we walked. We might as well be invisible, despite being two armed well muscled warrior women, no one even gave us a second glance.
“Pretty much,” Emily agreed, “If you look at them for a while, the name will pop up over their heads, and it will say, “villager”, or “shopkeeper”, rather than a proper name. Most enemies you will fight are also extras, so you don’t have to feel bad about killing them. Only bosses and important characters are actors. Actors will disappear forever if killed, they will be replaced by some new actor who remembers nothing but has the same role. That’s the price they pay, because the system refuses to let them remember dying over and over, unlike players.” Emily said with a chuckle, “Well unless you are a ghost, of course.”
I had been listening to Emily’s explanation with half my brain while I looked around at the village. But at hearing the term, I paused, “A ghost?” I asked, hadn’t the moderator woman, Chyrel, called me a ghost?
“Yeah, player ghosts are different. When a player dies, they wake up in the real world with a 24 hour cooldown before they can play again, after which, their character is brought back into the world. The system uses player death as a way to force players to log out, which gives it a chance to upload all the memories a player has accumulated during their play time back into the physical brain, then when they log back in, it downloads all the memories back into the game again. Death and logging out are how the memories get saved in that lump of flesh in your skull. But if the person who downloaded the character isn’t available to receive the memories, then the memories are just lost. That’s what a ghost is, a player who’s real body isn’t ready to receive, due to some glitch or sometimes, very rarely, because their real body is gone. If you are a player ghost, you can only die once.”
I shuddered, but Emily was distracted and didn’t seem to notice my reaction. I was currently a ghost, so I’d best be careful, I thought to myself. I wouldn’t really die in the real world if my character died, but every memory and thought I’d had since I’d appeared in this virtual world would be gone. No one would remember me, the distinct entity who lived out a brief existence inside a computer. My real body would wake up with the impression that he or she got into a pod, closed the lid, and then maybe the lid just opened up again, with no recollection of what had happened. It was kind of like death, to disappear completely like a dream? Or was I being too philosophical? I decided to try not to think about it as I noticed what had distracted Emily.
It was another player, and she was naked. “Hey!” Emily yelled, “What are you doing wandering around like that? There’s children here.”
It was odd, but as soon as Emily said that, suddenly the villagers started to notice the naked amazon, a hot young bodybuilder type who’d been strutting around with an oversized bosom that seemed to defy gravity, in that it didn’t seem likely that such a heavy load wouldn’t cause the player to trip with each bounce. Mothers hurried to move their children away or cover their eyes, while unaccompanied boys and not a few men just stopped to stare.
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“Oh, sorry, just did some body mod on the boobs so my clothes won't fit, I was off to buy a new shirt.” The player explained.
“For the love of,” Emily started to swear, then paused, remembering she was talking to a new player who probably didn’t know any better. “Clothing always fits, it adjusts whenever you make changes. Everything adjusts, just go home and put something on, you’ll see.”
“Ah, ok, I’ll go do that,” the player said, sheepishly. I could tell that now that everyone was staring at her, she was embarrassed, even though she knew they were extras, and this was a game, the player couldn’t avoid feeling exposed. That’s because everything felt so real, I realized, our brains were fooled. There wasn’t any difference between this and what reality I’d come from, everything I’d seen, smelt and heard so far, felt completely real. Well, maybe the village was surprisingly fresh and pleasant smelling for a place without sewers. Maybe the game had edited out the need to use the bathroom and the need for deodorant, because all I could smell was the various foods on display on the market. It was the only unrealistic thing I’d noticed so far. The way that player’s ass swayed back and forth as she hurried back into the inn she’d just left was pretty convincing. I decided I must be a gay woman or a strait man in the real world, because, damn, that ass was hypnotic. Emily and I watched it flee back into the inn.
“Yeah, that’s a fine ass.” Emily said, as if she could read my mind.
Surprised I turned to look at her, “that's an inappropriate thing for two women to say to each other,” I pointed out.
Emily snorted, “Let’s just say that amazon culture is pretty accepting of lesbians and leave it at that. If you do decide you want to shag another player or an actor, that’s fine, but respect those who are busy trying to play the game, keep the private stuff private, there’s plenty of virtual whorehouses out there where you can be a nudist. It’s frowned upon to break character here, the game even rewards you “RP points” if it thinks you are doing your best to role play in the way your character’s culture expects, but it’s only concerned with how you treat actors, not extras like these villagers. There’s even rumors that the game will curse you with terrible luck if you deliberately abuse actors too, so again, if hurting actors is your kink, go play “S&M Life” or some other adult game.” Emily frowned at me as she explained, and I wondered if there was a real problem with players abusing actors.
“Not my style, but you sound like you're speaking from experience?” I asked, concerned.
Emily’s face cleared, “Nah, well… maybe I expect too much from other people, but I like to treat actors like they are people. They pass any Turing test you throw at them with ease, and I don’t agree that just because they are digital they can’t feel pain. They are programmed to feel it, so it’s real to them. After all, until we get uploaded back into our real brains, there’s not much difference between us and actors, we’re just zeroes and ones ourselves until we get saved. The game doesn’t rely on constant input from our real brains. It downloads a copy of our personality and memories, lets that copy play the game, then uploads the copy’s memory back into our brains. Since our memories and personality stay the same, you never notice the downloading and uploading process, and the illusion that you are the same person inside and outside of the game is preserved. That’s why it works.”
“So what are our real brains doing right now?” I ask, interested in how the full dive system worked. I suspected most players would have wanted to just get to the action by now, but due to my circumstances, I was acutely interested in this topic.
“Not much, they put our bodies in suspended animation while they wait for us to finish playing. That’s so you can’t wake up, If you did wake up in the real world, you’d become a ghost in the game.”
I nodded, wondering if my real body was still safely asleep. “What stops IFG, the company, from just erasing a player ghost or putting the ghost in storage or something?” I asked Emily.
Emily shrugged, “A downloaded personality has some legal rights they can’t ignore, even if from their point of view player ghosts do nothing but drain computer resources. The compromise is, ghosts can’t just be deleted, but any ghosts who die in game get erased. They also can’t treat ghosts differently than normal players, so they have to die for the same reasons any other player would; they have to choose to risk their lives. Or at least they get treated like normal players until they become wraiths, but I don’t want to talk about that. Let’s focus on what we should be talking about, getting you started as an amazon,” Emily said with forced cheerfulness. Gesturing to the same door the nude amazon had retreated to, “let me show you your first home,” Emily said.
Inside, the building proved to look something like the lobby of a very expensive hotel, vast marble floor, fluted column, fine red velvet carpet, and a receptionist behind a black oak desk that dwarfed her. The lobby was far larger on the inside than the small building I’d seen on the outside, additionally the door we’d just entered had changed from a simple wooden one to a heavy double golden door.
“This is Aida,” Emily explained, as we reached the front desk, “That’s short for Artificial Intelligence Dimensional Assistant.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” the oddly metallic, calm, and musical voice of Aida seemed too big to come from such a small woman, it filled the whole space, yet wasn’t particularly loud. I cocked my head in puzzlement.
“Sorry about that, let me switch off my voice effect,” Aida said, in a more normal voice, “Not everyone wants to hear the voice of Portal´s AI when they speak to me,” she said with a laugh.
“Portal?” I asked puzzled.
“It was considered fitting,” Aida explained, “to give me that voice, because of what I do, I make portals. I am in charge of this game’s fast travel options as well as storage and making spaces that are larger in the inside than the outside. Every town has at least one door that links here, and from here, you can travel to any such door you’ve already entered once. You also can reach your house from here, so wherever you go, your house will be waiting for you, just upstairs.”
“Cool,” I said, taking the key Aida offered.
Aida nodded, “Indeed, additionally, I also serve as a help desk, since I am not an actor or a player, but rather the voice of this server’s core AI, I can usually answer any technical questions you may have. Come back later when you have a chance, if you wish to discuss any private issues related to your player account.”
Emily nodded, “By law, Aida is not allowed to discuss private information while I’m here, but if you walk in with someone, you can invite them to your room, just put that key into that door over there,” Emily gestured at a smaller door marked with an “up” button, “to reach it. Any upgrades to your home can also be bought here through Aida, right?”
“Yes, thank you Emily, you are a good new player guide.” Aida said with a soft smile.
Emily actually blushed. “Aida is the best, she offers free psych counseling too, for anyone who asks. She can pay attention to thousands of conversations at once, because she’s an AI, and has so many millions of hours of service as a psychologist that a lot of people just come talk to her rather than pay for a real world psychologist.”
“I live to serve,” Aida said with a polite chuckle, “But I can’t gossip, which is a real shame, considering all the amazing stories people have shared with me. But I think your story will be more interesting than most, Sarah, please don’t forget to come talk to me later,” She reminded me, reaching out to grab my hand with both of hers and giving me a strange look.
“I will,” I said, puzzled.
Emily pulled me away with an apologetic grin, “Later,” she said, “I got to get you settled in and show up back at the gate for the next player in a few minutes, then in a couple hours, we’ll have today's New Amazon Player Introductory Lunch.”