Nova stared at the textbook and stifled another yawn with the back of her
hand. She was only three days into her month’s worth of detentions, but already
they were taking their toll. She was getting home late every day, and the constant
exhaustion was impacting her schoolwork and revision. Worse still, it was affecting
her gameplay. Her Booners sounded the Solarversia jingle. Yet another message
from Sushi.
“Either do your homework later, or tell Mrs Woodward to take a hike. We both
know Solarversia is far more important. If you crash out of The Game through
negligence, you’re going to have to wait four whole years for the next one. Your
choice, girlfriend.”
Sushi knew how to push her buttons, that was for sure. Although Spiralwerks
had a host of other games lined up for the intervening period, every Solo knew
that the quadrennial Year-Long Games were the ones that mattered most. Nova
confirmed that her parents were busy watching TV with the volume turned up and
quietly shut her bedroom door.
She crept over to her wardrobe and leafed through her many Solarversiathemed
T-shirts. Although she didn’t truly believe they brought her good luck, she
preferred to wear one while playing. Most of her shirts — like the one she grabbed
and quickly put on — featured creative transformations of her player number.
This shirt displayed the characters Ken and Ryu from the classic arcade game
Street Fighter, facing one another in a sparring pose. Ken, who was standing on
the left, had been drawn with the head of a guy called ‘Duncarelli’, who happened
to be Thailand’s most famous ladyboy — and also number 515 in the Player’s Grid.
Ryu on the other hand, had been replaced by ‘Alexander Lazaar’, a techno DJ from
Detroit, and player number 740.
Most people looked at the T-shirt and saw a couple of guys from a computer
game. Some could even name them. But most Solos knew the characters well
enough to know that they’d been redrawn, and instantly knew the shirt contained
a puzzle to be solved — one whose answer revealed the wearer’s player number.
Solos competed to outdo one another in terms of their creativity, and examples
went viral all the time.
She patted the shirt down, put her headset on, and sent a quick message back
to her friend.
“Twenty minutes max. Then I really do need to get back to my books.”
“That’s the spirit. See you there.”
Nova left her Corona Cube in Staten Island, New York. She’d met Sushi there
the previous day to attend a virtual punk rock concert, and they’d promised to hang
out in the Gameworld for a day or two before going their own ways. Her Route
Planner informed her that the nearest Solarversia Simulator was a two-minute run
from the cube. She locked on.
Like Corona Cubes and Tweels of Fate, Simulators were absolutely everywhere
in the Gameworld. They were in phased zones, but ones that players had basic
control over so that they could train with friends, if they wanted. Simulators were
modelled on old school photo booths, the kind that charged an arm and a leg to
provide you with a strip of passport photos. The small entrance way consisted of a
piece of hanging curtain, below which a round swivel chair could be seen.
Next to the curtain was a control panel that allowed the Solo to program the type
of simulation they wanted to experience. There were four categories of simulation:
Knowledge, Puzzles, Combinations and Combat. Spiralwerks had promised that a
thorough mastery of each would be a prerequisite for success in The Game.
Although there was an element of luck in Solarversia, it only went so far. Good
luck could help in the short term, but it couldn’t be relied on to get you through
the year. Likewise, bad luck could darken your day, but it would never kill you
outright. Skill was a far more important component of a serious gamer’s strategy.
And it could only be acquired in the way it’s always acquired: through lots and lots
of hard work. Mastery of the four categories had come to be known as the Science
of Solarversia or, more simply, the Science.
“Here she is,” Sushi said, hand up for a high five as Nova arrived at the booth.
“Combinations, yeah?”
“What happened to sticking to a balanced diet?”
“Come on, they’re fun.”
In the same way that conscientious governments urged their citizens to
consume their ‘five-a-day’ fruit and veg, Spiralwerks urged their citizens to train
regularly and stick to a balanced simulation diet, where an equal amount of time
was spent on each category, give or take a percentage point. Billboards containing
user generated artwork, much of it parodying government propaganda from the
early 20th century, gently reminded people of the virtue of living a balanced life.
Solos were able to display the number of hours they’d spent training in the
Simulators on their bios, but Nova and Sushi had both opted to keep their stats
private — Nova knew her parents would go ape if they ever knew the amount of
time she’d spent playing. Burner and Jono both showed their stats, hoping that
their ranks within the top 10% would intimidate some people.
Each of the four categories contained tens of thousands of modules within it.
These were the individual simulations, or sims, which lasted anywhere from two
to twenty minutes. There wasn’t nearly enough time in the year for a single person
to complete every single module, so players were forced to pick and choose, an
exercise that had itself become part of the Science, as Solos speculated on the best
order in which to structure their training.
Miniature Tweels of Fate, the size of a large orange, were affixed to the control
panels of Simulator booths and could be spun whenever the player was having
difficulty choosing a module. Sushi typed in their player numbers, restricted the
outcome to Combinations, then rested her finger against one of the Tweel’s little
tentacles and gave it a good spin. When it came to a standstill, the topmost tentacle
squirmed into life, grew several times larger and turned to face the girls.
“The Tweel of Fate has picked Asteroid Shower combinations. There are seven
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in total and each one takes two minutes. Remember that a balanced simulation
diet is good for your health. The Science Says So.”
Having delivered its message, the tentacle shrivelled down to its previous
size and the machine loaded the Asteroid Shower simulation. Sims in the
Combinations and Combat categories transformed the booth into a dark grey grid
that stretched in every direction all the way to the horizon, where it met a light grey
sky, unremarkable in its uniformity. The only distinguishing feature of the room
— other than the avatars themselves — was the pleated red curtain, which was
programmed to follow you around so that you could always find the exit.
In multistage modules such as this one, Combinations always increased in
difficulty. The instructions overlaid at the bottom of Nova’s display told her that
‘Asteroid One’ would require four moves. As ever, she’d need to execute them in a
flowing sequence. If she missed a move, performed it in the wrong place or took too
long, she’d flunk out. That didn’t matter in the Simulator; it was what training was
all about. In the Gameworld, however, a flunked Combo could mean the difference
between life and death.
When a large timer appeared in the sky in front of them, counting down from
three, the girls fistbumped and adopted their chosen stances. Nova, who had
climbed onto her bed to perform the Combos, adjusted her Booners one last time.
The electrodes in the skullcap were capable of translating her thoughts into the
kind of movements required within the Gameworld, both in normal play and in
the simulations, but she preferred to act out the combinations for real, whenever
space — and social etiquette — permitted.
The pair of asteroids roared towards them, seeming to grow from the size of
marbles to the size of footballs in the space of about five seconds. Nova dipped
her right shoulder forward, then her left, performed a clockwise rotation of her
hips, and then an anticlockwise rotation. Next to hers, Sushi’s avatar performed
the same sequence of moves in perfect synchronicity. A message flashed in the sky,
confirming two successful combinations, and the sim took control of their avatars
for a split second, making them jump into the air, knees pulled to chests as the icy
comets hurtled past.
“Can I get a woop woop?” Sushi sang, gyrating her hips in a celebratory dance.
Nova looked over her shoulder to see the curtain fluttering in the wind — an
excellent little touch by the module’s designers, she thought.
They cleared the second asteroid — using a seven-move sequence — by ducking
as it whizzed overhead, and the third — that demanded a ten-move sequence —
by diving to the side. When Sushi burst into a celebratory dance this time, Nova
joined in. They’d cleared the fourth, fifth and sixth combinations in similar style,
and Nova readied herself for the last one, a beast at twenty-two moves. Successfully
completing all seven asteroids would win them an additional teleport token.
She shimmied, spun round on the spot, dipped her shoulders, wiggled her hips
and arched her back without trouble. But twelve moves in, when she was required
to transition from a star jump into a caterpillar on the floor, one of her feet missed
the edge of her bed and she tumbled to the ground in a heap. Cursing her stupidity
as she watched the asteroid annihilate her avatar, she suffered a wave of panic —
somebody was coming up the stairs. She snatched the Booners off her head, threw
them on her bed and leapt into her seat.
“Everything OK up here, love? Your father thought he heard something.”
“Everything’s fine, just finishing my homework,” she said, putting as much
effort into shielding the blank page of her notepad from her mum’s view as she did
trying to conceal her panting breath.
“Alright, I’ll let you get on with it.”
It was another little lie and she wasn’t proud of it. But as soon as she heard her
mum go back downstairs, she couldn’t resist having one last quick peek. After all,
Sushi would be wondering what happened to her. She found her friend standing
back outside the booth, retrieving her printout. Nova loved little touches like
that. Although training time was automatically added to your bio, booths spat out
printed receipts.
Nova explained her mishap to Sushi and grabbed her receipt. Fourteen more
minutes, taking her up to a total of 47 hours for the year, one month into The
Game. Not bad for someone revising for their A-levels. A teleport token would have
been good though. She crumpled the receipt up and chucked it at the nearest patch
of grass. The ground into which it dissolved immediately sprouted a new flower.
Her headset dinged as a company donated ten pence to a charity supporting
sustainable horticulture.
“What’s next?”
“Combat, obviously, now we’ve got those combos out the way. You’ll need to
bring your A-game though, no slipping off the bed like a doofus.”
Nova smiled uneasily. There was no way she could resist another quick sim.
Why couldn’t all of life be as fun as Solarversia?
****************************************************
Full book available on Amazon here:
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Chapter 11 coming soon!