01

The contract

Day 1

Default 0

It began in a stark parking lot. The ground was asphalt for as far as you could see, there were no lines on the ground, no cars. There wasn’t even a shopping center to visit… So it wasn’t really a parking lot. But one could see mountains far in the distance.

And they sat at a dining table, just two of them, sitting at a fine polished dark wood dinner table. They sat in wooden chairs, those hard cushioned Victorian style chairs that you’d find a grandma’s. He wore the matching attire, she wore jeans and a white tank top.

The man in a full three piece suit sat at the table across from her, “Thank you very much for the signed documents,” he said. “You will be happy to know that your initiation as a player in Default is very close… Just after you have been fully downloaded.” He added.

She nodded.

“Your body is in a very deep stasis, and your mind, self, spirit, conscious, or whatever else you might call it, is with us, being digitalized at this moment. The fact that we are having this meeting is a sign that immersion has been successful, and that you’ve begun the uploading process.”

He held those documents and slid them over the table for her to keep. She kept them on the table, wondering what to do with valuable documents while in a full-immersion game; she’s not back at the office now, and no filing cabinets were to be seen nearby.

“When you’re done examining those document can leave them on the table. An exact duplicate, put into book form is available to anyone in Default.”

There wasn’t much else to do so she started to peruse the documents. The memory of having read and signed them before was vaguely familiar.

“If you don’t remember reading those properly, that’s only because the upload is still happening. Feel free to enjoy yourself until the upload is complete.”

She did, continuing to bore herself with the legal documents, and though it would be a shame to bore you with them as well, it’ll have to be explained to you that she had signed her life away to be part of a fully immersive game, a little like Inception and a lot like an MMORPG.

But reader, don’t worry too much, she’s done a few of these before, but none on this scale though. This game, Default, they call it, has no genre, and no time limit like the others, just a real life simulation to keep them “bored people” and little less bored.

The selling point on this was how free-range everything was, more stats to build, more skills, infinite playing time, but at the same time, it wasn’t pick and choose. The only stats you started with were the ones you were born with, ie. IRL, translated to VR with state of the art personality evaluator and AIs.

But apparently, in this game those stats and traits of one’s personality could represent things a little more surreal: an Olympic athlete could run a mile in less than a minute, with a few enhancements, a gym junkie might bulk up to be the size of the hulk, and a D&D addict absolutely be able to cast a spell, hypothetical roll a twenty, and kill you. But normal boring people like Rebecca, sitting at the dining table in the parking lot… I’m not sure what would happen. Sure, she was smart, somewhat attractive, given up on real life problems, and started to crave some excitement… with less people involved.

But, the real catch on this one was that there was no exiting, and no leaving. You heard me, that’s what those documents were all about, you’re stuck in the game until you find the one and only exit portal, guarded by the toughest monster, at the end of the highest level dungeon, under the Omnicorp inc. tower. It was in the contract, something most people who read it had to read twice. But most people don’t read the contract. The hype was mainly because kids get such a hard-on about knowing that their mother can’t tell them to go to bed or wash the dishes.

And, in case you were wondering, what happens when you die in such a game? Dying in the game was the subject described in the title: back to zero, default… Default. So it was a tough game, only in the aspect that one could die so easily fighting other godlike players and have to start all over again… Default.

The obvious logic was that if you wanted to be good you had to stay good and not die at the final challenge. If you did die, all that work is gone. All gone.

But then again, with such an intriguing game, who wants to leave? There’s magic, guns, fighting, PvP, melee, karate, racing, and best of all, no having to go take a shower and hit the hay.

About an hour after she had finished the documents and got bored looking at the asphalt scenery waiting for herself to upload, a cup of tea had arrived. Her view had been infiltrated with an HUD. There was HP, XP and current level, stamina, mana, a map that told her nothing, and a number of open slots in her peripherals that hinted at being able to store items or abilities for quick use.

She opened up the setting to find the basic views and alteration of reality. Scrolling through she found Scope Vision, which put a scope’s hairs in one’s vision; alterations that turned the world pink or blue, and changed contrast and brightness; all the usual photoshop junk. Being an experienced gamer and someone not so intrigued by bright colors, she kept it to the normal and slightly more practical setting: wide peripheral, a little brighter than normal, and a slightly higher contrast.

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The countdown was still going, but right as she had checked on it, something chimed, sounding like dinner was ready.

A mini game had appeared. It was really just a test, but you know how one gets with a mini-game test. They’re just so much fun.

It began with walking in a straight line. After a few seconds of that, she was made to run as fast as she could and jump over obstacles. Then a few boxes were set in front of her, appearing out of nowhere, and she was made to lift them to the point were she couldn’t lift any longer. But she had to hold it there until her muscles gave up. There were more tests for planking, deadlifting, sit ups, push-ups, and squats. All of them being done until she could no longer. But somehow, after each test, she felt suddenly refreshed and able to start the next one with out a physical protest. The final set of physical tests included a sword, swinging it around and hitting targets that were either placed on the ground, on a box, or floating overhead.

She was told to do some stretches and follow the instructions, twisting back and forth, stretching up and down… all the usual stretches. It was good for her flexibility and what would come next.

When that was over, there was yet more, consisting of small puzzles, starting very easy, but done as fast as she could. The final set of coordination drills were with a gun and a bow, lining up the sights to shoot a target that went further and further away.

The surroundings went dark and she had to sneak over to random objects, being as silent as possible. She apparently passed the test after a few minutes.

Another set of tests came in front of her eyes. She was given a spell, a simple one consisting of basic magic. She was given an incantation and told to hit the targets with her spell; after the few practice shots, she tried again and did alright, missing a few, but ended with an eight out of ten. Then the spell changed to a beam of energy, doing much the same practice. Then another type of spell that shot particles instead of a ball or a beam. The whole point of these were to aim well and do it fast. Each spell had to be cast again with the one word incantation.

There were a few more spells she had to cast, doing who knows what, but she did it, including casting them on a mannequin.

She was told that she could go back and talk to the man sitting at the table. She did, and he asked a few questions, which she answered to the best of her knowledge. Afterwards he set a few items on the table, an apple, a set of clothes, and a small box with something apparently very valuable inside. She was told that she could buy them but had limited funds. She asked the price, got an answer, then had to bargain for it. She eventually got all three items. The small box contained an offer for a free item in the appearances menu. She took note, and kept it.

After she had stowed it away, the man in front of her asked her a question, “What do you think about killing other players? They’re still alive, right?”

She argued with him, giving her statements precisely and trying to stay true to her statements after they had been twisted and thrown back at her. After a few minutes of that, the man just sat back and seemed to think it over for a second.

The next thing he did was slide over some more papers. They were simple answer-the-question type, a few multiple-choices and a few diagrams of tactical maneuvers in basic team games, and solo tactics. All of the questions were designed around tactics, strategy, and varied between attacking, defending, saving hostages, or simply not dying in an overwhelming apocalypse.

She had no idea how she did on the test, but she handed it back and was given the next one.

This paper had questions about history of the country, weapons, magic, games and all sorts of apparently known and unknown facts about games. What the point of that was, she had no clue. There didn’t seem to be a right answer for any of them, even though she did know a lot about games, Magic, and weapons. Some of them she couldn’t answer as any references she thought of conflicted each other, so she had choose her favorite lore.

The next was a simple math test, very simple. But the whole time she was nearly getting distracted by noises, light going dark and brightening suddenly, even though she was apparently outside. Animals and children ran around, until finally someone came around with a grenade and blew up the table.

She was happy after that, suffering no real damage, but at least the tests were gone.

The ringing in her ears went away, and she opened her eyes after being thrown back a few feet, the man was standing in front of her calling her name. “Rebecca. Rebecca.” He was waving his hands in front of her face. “You’re done with the tests. You can resume waiting and customize your avatar.”

She opened the settings screen again, something new was there, the beginning of nearly every game, the one thing that makes a game wait for hours before you can actually play, whether download is complete or not… character design.

First was name. She went through her options, nearly every game she had a different tag. Rebo, Leer, RSL. Those were for the simple games. For the online games she went with names like, DaisyDuke499, RebeleeEcho, GirlwithaGun, or Badass8itch. But she had to, as of tradition, pick a different name. She came up with one that didn’t have too much to do with any genre of game. KillPrinsX. Princess just didn’t seem appropriate, had to spunk it up a bit, and the X fit it quite well at the end. The meaning of it wasn’t a beacon call to anyone who wanted to kill a princess. It was more on the order of, “I’m a chick that racks up the kills. And I’m hot.”

Next was the body customization, she had to be happy with the way her size and shape was, being able to alter nearly everything else but that. Her character looked just as she did in revealing white underwear, same size, same height.

So she changed everything else she could. She settled with fire red hair cut to shoulder length and wide bangs. She put on dark thick eye liner, made her eyes bigger, sculpting her face the way she always wanted it to be, but not too sharp.

The other categories of jewelry and tattoos were costly. But she had a free coupon! She gave herself a swirling fiery tattoo up her right arm and called it a day.

In the end she thought she didn’t look too bad. Better than other game’s limited options.

She looked at the countdown timer, plenty of time to do nothing. She kept going, another hour of scrolling through options.

And now being quite familiar with the settings, she got a final countdown in the center of her vision. It would have been exciting except that it started at 59:59, and blocked her view of her cup of tea. She settled with staring at the clock for 58 minutes.

The countdown was dreadfully slow, and even after going through random options and changing her hair from blue, to black, to white and neon green, she eventually set it back to flame red. And after doing that another three times, the countdown had gotten to 3:49.

Now the game was about to begin! She began doing more stretches. She was really getting excited, yet wondering if she was actually ready or not, if this choice was really something she would put her heart into. Maybe the documents could be unsigned?

Too bad, she’s already started Default.