In the previous episode...
1.1.1 An Unexpected Reunion
The year is 2045, and a group who first met 15 years earlier at university in London have reunited to play a new online game called “Soul Bound”.
Our protagonist, Nadine (game name “Kafana”) is a retired singer now running a cafe in a tiny mountain village in Bosnia.
Her best friend, Heather (game name “Alderney”) is an energetic engineer who works at an independent floating community currently somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea,
Alex (game name “Tomsk”) grew up in Finland and Russia, but now works in Los Angeles as a stunt coordinator for martial arts films.
Lewis (game name “Bulgaria”) used to be an inspirational university lecturer, whose course on “effective political activism” brought the others together. We don’t know what he’s been doing recently, nor where he is.
Richard (game name “Wellington”) is a designer of expert systems, which he uses to code privacy-protecting protocols and other things the powers-that-be would rather not disrupt their control over society. Originally from China, he’s put a great deal of effort into ensuring that nobody can track him or his finances.
...now read on!
1 Soul Bound
1.1 Finding her Feet
1.1.2 An Immersive Experience
1.1.2.1 Login
Nadine Sabanagic awoke, not with a bang but a whimper.
*Mew* *Mew* *Mew*
It sounded like a cat begging for food, but it was coming from the box under her bed. She pulled it out and opened the lid. The crown inside started purring, and waved two jeweled appendages like it wanted to be scritched.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Minion, end alarm.”
She picked the device up, put it on, and lay back down in bed.
“Enter orglife. Enable privacy morphs. Load Soul Bound.”
Today was the big day, when Soul Bound’s new adventure was launched. Over the past week her friends had been helping her prepare. Alderney had sent over some drones, and taught her to pilot them by engaging her in a game of flying lasertag. She’d taught them where her usual herb patches were, and where to hide if they heard anyone approaching. Alderney had also shown her some more of the crown’s custom features and orglife applications, such as the alarm clock.
Wellington had patiently taken her through the process of calibrating velife and setting up precautions such as proximity alarms, so nobody could creep up on her while the crown was neutralising the nerve signals her brain tried sending to the muscles in her arms and legs. He’d also explained the program used to subtly alter her appearance and voice when communicating outside her trust network, to make it harder for externals to trace back her arlife identity through biometrics. He emphasised at least three times that she must stop using the names “Heather” and “Alex”, even in her own thoughts. From now on, Womble names only.
Tomsk helped her set up a Soul Bound premium account and create a character. They were all picking the Etruscan region of Covob as their starting area. Each starting area had multiple introductory locations a distance from the region’s main city, and newcomers would normally be allocated to one of these at random. However they’d all start at the same one, because Tomsk had pre-registered them as a group. She’d gone for a body shape that was taller and thinner than her own and had spent ages designing her hair. The character “Kafana” had long, thick, wavy hair that fell to her waist. It used a variety of blues, ranging from nearly green to nearly purple, and it looked like a stormy ocean when she moved. She’d been shocked at how expensive premium was, compared to normal, and had asked Tomsk if it was really worth it. He’d said:
“Premium comes with several small things, like a pretty icon frame in group chats, a free mount at level 30 and pretty much limitless inventory space. But for us, the big advantage is the anti-grinding mechanic. Rather than encouraging you to stay logged in as much as possible, they let you accumulate up to six hours of ‘experience boost’ during logged out time, that increases your experience gain rate for the first 6 hours of play the next day.”
Nearly 5am, which in China would be noon. A small rainbow tinted sphere tagged “Soul Bound” faded into view in the corner of her vision. The portal showed a fish-eye view of a virtual world. As she kept looking at it, the portal centered itself in her vision and started to expand, growing more detailed as though she were rushing towards it.
[Entering velife.]
“Thank you Minion, remind me in 6 hours that I need to start cooking lunch.”
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