I hadn’t really realized what I had started back home in Breaker City. The landing pad at Bingham Square was crowded with people when I landed, all of them cheering and pumping their fists in the air. I recognized most of them from Anchors. The three Musketeers were there, of course, and I received man hugs from all of them. People crowded around me, shaking my shoulder or trying to give me a pat on the back.
“What is happening here?” I asked Rick when we tried to squeeze out of the landing area.
“You’re the idol of the jellies; the man of the people, the David of the ordinary man –
defeating the Goliath of the privileged. In short, a goddamn hero. We’ve been watching you down in Anchors nonstop. The shuttles to Windersmyr and Elatrion hasn’t been off the ground for days. When you won, Anchors exploded. The guys have been on a high ever since. You won’t be paying for your drinks tonight, buddy, even if you could damn well afford it!”
And I didn’t. Later down at Anchors, as soon as my drink was out, people almost fought to buy me a new one. I had been dead tired when flying out of the Clash, and had looked forward to just sleep for 24 hours straight, but I couldn’t fend off all this enthusiasm and I was pulled in.
They had me retell all the pivotal moments of the clash, clinging to my every word, which was kind of a wasted effort since the screen in Anchors had the highlight reels of my competition on full repeat. It was strange seeing the talking heads in the studio talking about me, about my decisions and picking my every move apart, praising me for my strategic thinking, attributing it to my military background. Well, wonder what they would’ve said if they knew the truth, that I was just winging it most of the time?
I don’t know for how long I was at Anchors but when Rick put me in a cab and gave the driver my address, I was properly drunk. I slept like in a coma for the whole night and when I woke up, my bedroom was flooded with sharp, stabbing light.
Oh, for fucks sake.
I pulled the duvet over my throbbing head. I wish there was a potion for hang overs in Breaker City, but unfortunately there wasn’t. The price for a night out was the same here as it was in the other world, a lighter wallet and a hurting head.
I stumbled out to the kitchen and drank water directly from the tap, wiped my mouth with the back of the hand and stumbled back to bed.
While lying there, feeling a bit more like a part of humanity again, I scrolled through my menus. I found a couple of odd things, and a completely new menu. The menu had a red border and was called:
Standing
What the…?
I opened the menu.
Standing: 78% positive.
Favourited: 783.932
Viewers: 27.935.071
I just stared at the numbers, remembering Sarah’s words and inwards smile from our talk at the Milanol.
People were watching us. The rumours were true.
What the actual fuck?
I opened a sub menu to the Standing menu, called history. It was a line diagram. A jagged yellow line was showing my views over time, even when I hadn’t known I was watched. My graph was flatlining until I met Sarah. It spiked after I entered the clash. It was the data from before the clash that drew my attention, though.
There were some noticeable bumps in the graph and when I corroborated them with my memory, they aligned with mine and Sarah’s intimate moments.
Christ, they really did see everything. Fucking perverts.
I was numb, just staring at the graph. Someone was watching and they counted in the millions. I had a hard time thinking I was here for entertainment only, even if peeking in on people having sex or killing each other never really went out of fashion. Doesn’t matter how much we evolve, we’re still those blood thirsty bastards in the Coliseum.
I tried to shake the uncomfortable feeling, but I knew it would stick with me from here on. Having a couple of million people at any given time peeking in when you were eating breakfast, having a dump or spending quality time with the missus, that wasn’t something you just got used to.
I had a missed communication from Sarah. I would call her back later. She if anyone could tell me what this was all about.
Next, I did a player search: Tristan Toth.
The search came up empty.
I didn’t know how I felt about that. I had warned Tristan to come back. Two Toths was bad enough, I didn’t need to deal with a third one. Hours had passed inside the game and that time equated to weeks in the other world.
Tristan wasn’t coming back. I wondered how broken a man had to be to turn his back to all this? Pretty goddamn broken was my guess, and it was me that had done the breaking. Being slowly choked to death, I couldn’t think of a more anguishing way to die. Guess Vinger was pretty pissed as well. Well, that was problems for another day.
I spent some tome browsing the real estate pages for housing in Area 8. I could afford it and as a level 20 plus, I was allowed. The difference between Area 8 and Area 9 wasn’t major, nothing like the jump from Area 10 to 9. I liked my place here, looking out over the bridge, so I decided to stay put. And maybe my newly risen fame with the “jellies” in Area 10 was better favoured of me living just north of them, rather than two borders north. I don’t know what to do with their dogged admiration but being liked had to be better than being disliked, I figured, so I would nurture that.
I went back to the other new additions to my menu. My profile was glowing a pulsing blue, indicating there was something there demanding my attention.
My race information had been changed. Before it had only said: Human. Now it said: Human / ---
That was all. When I clicked it the pulsing blue light died down, but I got no new information. Human slash what? Was I only part human now? How the hell did that happen?
I dialled Sarah up.
She squeaked with delight, hearing from me and showered me with praise and gratulations. Yeah, it’s good to be a hero. We talked for a while before deciding to meet at Leana’s Lounge for lunch. The place was in Area 8. Sarah thought I should at least check the Area out, and I guess she could be right about that.
I showered and sat on my balcony, just enjoying the heat from the sun, looking at the landmass on the other side of the bridge, wondering who lived there, and why we in Breaker City couldn’t go there. So many questions. I decided to focus on those I could get answers on, and at lunch time I sprang out of the cab, fresh as a daisy in my best pair of jeans and a new button downs shirt.
This part of town was made of old sandstone houses with tin roofs, looking very European. Leana’s Lounge was located in the courtyard of four of these houses built in a square. The courtyard was lush with trees and pavilions, the grandest one of them, next to a pond with a fountain, was Leana’s Lounge. Round tables were scattered around the pavilion and I saw Sarah at a table close to the pond, smoking. I drew glances when I walked over to her, people looking at me and then looking a bit harder, as if they recognized me, which they obviously did as I left hushed whispers in my wake. Even here in Area 8? I had thought the Jelly Clash was a thing mostly in Area 10, but obviously not.
Sarah rose with a smile as I approached and kissed me on the lips before sitting down again. Was this really the same woman that had hardly wanted to speak to me when we had first met, and that had sent me home in a cab when she was done with me? It was. I still wasn’t sure what I felt about this change. It had been less complicated before. Seeing her smile and glittering eyes turned something alight inside of me, something that had been put into darkness that day when I found Melissa and Thomas. That had been a different kind of pain, one that went deeper than stab wounds and fire burns. I didn’t need that in my life again.
“You were amazing in the Clash, Brad. I’ve been chewing my nails to stumps during the tournament. I knew you had something in you but the way you tore through that tournament. Eyes have been opened.”
And there it was, straight into it.
“Yeah, and I have the hard data to prove it as well.”
“I guess you do. I couldn’t tell you. I hope you understand that. And you can’t tell your jelly-friends either. It’s not allowed.”
“Says who?”
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“Says the almighty Terms of Agreement. You haven’t read through it, have you?”
I shook my head.
“The Standings menu is Level 1 Class Information, as indicated by the red border in the display. To share that information means an immediate permaban.
“Ah. But since I now know, what can you tell me about it? If there’s people watching, why do they want us to know about it?”
“If you’re hoping for straight answers,” she said, taking a drag on her cigarette, pluming smoke. “I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, but there’s theories.”
“As always.”
She smiled, angling her wrist slightly tapping the ashes of her cigarette.
“As always. Mine is that this is all some kind of gigantic Truman Show. People tap into it whenever they feel like, checking in on their favourite characters to see what they are up to, living vicariously through them since they probably have boring as hell lives themselves.”
“Truman Show? I don’t know what that means.”
“Sorry, I forget sometimes that you’re from the 80’s. Picture a big ass production where the whole world is a set, cameras everywhere filming your every move.”
“Well, that sounds about right, but this we already know, yes?”
“We do, but in Truman Show there are episodes, a weekly chat show about what went down in the show during the weeks and things like that. I think that is what is happening here as well. They stir the pot to make interesting things happen. There are plot threads, plans for future story development. You see what I mean?”
I saw what she meant. It sounded plausible but I couldn’t get away from the feeling there had to be more. There were actual friggin time rifts created by the game, or at least discovered and exploited by the game. It couldn’t all be just for fun and games. Or maybe it could. What the hell did I know about future earth? For us, this is the biggest thing since the lunar landing, but for future earth this might just be a passing thing before they suck the whole galaxy into a black hole before trying the interesting thing of turning the universe inside out. As Michael had said, the first rift we knew about was from 2071, but that didn’t mean the game was created then. It could’ve been created in 7021 for all we knew. I’ve never felt smaller or less important.
“So, what’s the numbers for then?”
“To let us know they see us and that they have opinions of us. If you have a low approval rate, you want to improve on it. If you have low views, you want to improve on that. That’s just human nature. For them, it means a better show when people are going out on a limb to try and do interesting stuff.”
“And are people? Trying to do interesting stuff, I mean.”
“At the beginning, maybe, but since there isn’t a clear-cut benefit for being interesting, people just fall back and play the game as they like.”
“Something tells me it isn’t that simple.”
She gave me a knowing smile.
“Of course it isn’t. Have you ever wondered why Raker Toth is so much higher level than his brother, even though they entered the game together?”
I’m ashamed so say, but I hadn’t. I did now, though. It was strange, one brother being twice the level of the other. Vinger didn’t strike me a as a person that just kicked back in the game.
“Raker was deemed an interesting character. His approval rate was abysmal, but his views was through the roof. He’s the highest ranked player because he won consecutive Battle Clashes and with that, numerous speed levelling trophies. He can’t even take a shit now without gaining XP. Things just seemed to go Rakers way for the longest time, but he was smart enough to understand that he was the villain of the show and that people get bored of hating the same guy. He had a strong feeling that things were about to turn south for him; everyone loves to see a king dethroned. So, he stopped taking risks. Stopped entering the clash. And now he just lives in debauchery which, I guess you’ll be surprised, gives him just as many views as in his hay days.”
“Heh, no. Not surprised, at all.”
I told her about my “discovery” of my previous viewer peaks and my theory about it.
“Yeah, most surely. For the longest time I was Raker’s girlfriend and I had some good things happening to me as well – Raker not being one of them – and people still remember me. I’m not surprised they popped in to take a look at the new guy.”
“The new… what the… You knew they were watching.”
She shrugged and gave me a blank stare.
“They are always watching. That’s the price you pay for the life in here, being an exotic in the zoo.”
“Fuck me…”
“Maybe later, hun, but really, you get used to it.”
“Do one, really?”
“One does,” she said, giving me a sad smile.
I wouldn’t get more than theories from Sarah, but as for what theories went, I thought she was spot on. I mentioned my race information that had changed, leaving a blank space, as to be filled in later.
“Really”, she said, taking a sip of her wine. “That’s interesting.”
“You know about it then?”
“I do. It’s rare, though. You are a dual race. That could be a big thing, or it could not. About 7% of the player base is dual race. Why, is unknown.”
“So, is it a good thing, then? And how do I activate it?”
“To be dual race is never a bad thing. It can grant you favours from other races, usually at the price of making your standing worse with others. It usually balances out. Then there are other races that grants much bigger advantages, while at the same time giving equally big disadvantages. Necro Lords, for example. They are immensely powerful beings, but only at night. During the day they live deep in the cave systems of Windersmyr, guarded by their summoned undead. Then there are the Arcanes who wields and unknown sort of magic that makes them more powerful than even regular mages. But being an Arcane also mean you will inherit one of the bloodiest and longest living conflicts in Windersmyr, the one between the Circle and the Tribe. Or, maybe you will turn out to be a Devote, a disciple of science, a class that excels in Elatrion and Windersmyr alike. There are others. You might be of elf blood, granting you weaker forms of elf abilities like enhanced seeing, hearing and perception, but will put you at odds with every orc you encounter.”
“Huh, it was a lot more to it than I thought.”
“It usually is in this place.”
“So, how do I activate it?”
She shrugged.
“Beats me. I’m of the other 93%. Usually it is a quest or something that you need to clear to unlock your other race.” She drank some more wine, looking at me over the rim of the glass. “But you see how this works now?”
“What?”
“Good things happening. Is it just a coincidence that you proved to be part of the 7%? Or did good things happening to you because the show runners liked what they saw in you? Nobody knows, but it can’t be ruled out.”
“Is Raker dual race?”
“He is. He’s an Arcane, affiliated with the Tribe, the “evil” part in the Arcane war.”
She made quotation marks with her fingers around evil, so I guess good and evil in that particular war, as in so many others, was a question of viewpoint.
“And Vinger?”
She took a drink, shaking her head as she placed the glass back on the table.
“No. If you plan to continue the feud, you at least have one up on him there.”
“I don’t think that’s my choice.”
“I don’t think it’s Vinger’s either. If you ask me, this feud between you, the rising star and the kid brother of the villain is too good for the show runners to pass up on. There are thousands of simultaneous story threads going on, but they will work this one. Believe me when I say they will make something happen.”
I hadn’t the slightest intention of disagreeing, because when I looked out through the arced entrance to Leonas Lounge, I saw Vinger coming at us. Sarah noticed as well. She tensed up visibly.
“Don’t let him gaud you into something stupid,” she whispered through the corner of her mouth. “He got more to lose than to win starting a fight here. Remember, people are watching.”
Vinger walked up to our table, face white, movements jerky and barely in control of his body. He slammed one of the white metal chairs into the table, cleaving his mouth in a mad man’s grin.
“Weeeell, look at the little love birds. Fuck, Sarah. This is how low you’ve stooped? From my brother to… this?” He indicated me with the palm of his hand, giving a disgusted frown.”
“He’s more the man than Raker ever was.”
Vinger bared his teeth, looking down at me. I didn’t like having him hovering over me, but I remained seated. In the best-case scenario, it gave the impression I was calm and collected, which I wasn’t. I didn’t want to trigger Vinger with any unnecessary movement. He was teetering on the brink, and it wouldn’t take much for him to lose the fragile grip he still had on his impulse control. I was level 21, he level 49. He could cave my head in with a single blow.
“What can I do for you Vinger?”
“You can fucking die and never show your face her again!”
“Sorry, can’t do that for you. Fought to hard to be here today.”
I was in the verge of saying something about his brother, but dropped it. This wasn’t the time.
“I hope you’re proud of yourself, soldier boy, killing a player half your age. A noble and righteous player just trying to make a name for himself. Cheating and foul tactics. Are you proud of that? Are you proud of choking the goddamn life out of him! Leaving him like an empty shell of himself, doing nothing than lye on the couch, looking between his feet?”
There were so many things wrong in this statement that I didn’t feel it was worth responding to.
“That shut you up, did it? Well, listen, soldier boy, what goes around comes around. The shoe is on the other foot now, and I’ll be the one doing the kicking. I put the Mark of Death on you.”
“You can’t do that!” Sarah blurted. “You’re more than twice his level!”
“I can!” Vinger roared stabbing himself in the sternum with his index finger. “That’s the whole fucking point of being connected, isn’t it! To make – shit – happen! All right!”
And with those words, he turned and went back out on stilted legs.
I exhaled, looking after him.
“What the hell just happened?”
Sarah put her fingers over her eyebrows and shook her head with closed eyes.
“The worst thing possible.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“They just decided to meddle and make things interesting. Open your inventory and tell me what you see.”
I did, and I saw a lot. My Standings menu was blinking. I opened it and the graph had gone about 89 degrees straight up, and was still climbing. Interesting, but hardly what Sarah had wanted me to look at. My objectives menu was also blinking. I pulled it down.
The Gauntlet is thrown
You’ve been challenged to step inside the Circle with Vinger Toth (level 46) two days counting from now. You are hereby under the debuff Mark for Death. You can remove the debuff by declining the Challenge. If you chose to accept, the debuff will be active until the challenge is completed.
I shared my display with Sarah, but she looked at it without much interest. She’d seen but before.
“There should be something in your inventory as well,” she said without much enthusiasm.
I looked, and she was right. A Platinum XP Box, giving north of 25 million XP. I huffed air through my nose.
“I guess that is the amount of XP needed to bring me into Vinger’s level bracket?”
“It is. It’ll bring you to level 35, but that doesn’t mean anything. To go from level 21 to level 35 with the snap of the fingers, that’s not a blessing – that’s a curse. That is 14 levels that you haven’t been grinding skills. It’s empty levels. There won’t be 14 levels separating you and Vinger, it will be years of hard work and grinding. If you accept his challenge, you will lose. I think so much of you, Brad, but this isn’t a fight you can win. Please trust me when I say that. Put your ego aside and use your brain. I nodded. I heard what she said, but all I could think of was – level 35.
“So, what does this Mark of Death debuff mean then?”
“No traders will do business with you. You can’t sell of your loot, and if you try to give it away to friends, it will be marked and it can never go back to your inventory. If you accept the challenge, you will have to put it all on the line. You understand?”
I nodded, because I did understand, but all I could think of was – level 35.
“If you get killed and re-enter the game, all your skills will be reset, and you can’t redo achievements that has already been cleared. You will literary start all over again, a bloated level 30 with no skills, no power and no loot. It isn’t worth it… Oh, for fuck’s sake. I see it in your eyes that you’re thinking about it.
“No, I’m not,” I lied, thinking of level 35.