Chapter Two - Finally Getting Good

“Mesh Sex is the best, no worries about birth control, there’s always someone willing, and no matter the kink, you will find a group of enthusiastic weirdos to talk to about it!”

--An Enthusiastic Meshizen, 2039

***

I wasn’t about to go gallivanting in the matrix while in the kiddie pool. Nah, I was going to do that on the bed. I laid down, fiddled with my augs until I found my Full-Dive System, and I flicked it on. There was that weird sensation of sneezing backwards as I dove in.

One of these days I’ll convince you to buy better neural augmentations. Then you won’t need to set up all of these extraneous things.

“I told you, I’m not super fond of having my brain messed with. Also, where am I loading into?” I asked. For the moment, I was a shapeless nothing in a void, which... while not exactly unpleasant, wasn’t nice either.

Then the world turned on, as it were, and I found myself in a room with cement walls all around. There were a few tables to one side, then a couple of booths overlooking a long, long room with some holographic targets floating at the end. They looked like glowing orange model threes, though these were entirely stationary, and a bit cartoonish.

“Is this the place Grasshopper wanted me to see?” I asked.

This is a training facility. The tablet to your right allows you to pick and choose a weapon, as well as attachments and equipment. The range is to your left. You shoot things from there. Time is slightly dilated here, so that three hour’s training in Mesh will count for one outside of it.

“Uh-huh,” I said as I walked over to the little panel and picked it up. Then I stared at my hand. It was... a hand. My hand. Mostly. I squinted and noticed that the texture of the skin wasn’t quite right. “Right, VR bullshittery,” I said. Outside of the Mesh that arm was cybernetic. I glanced down at myself, just to be sure. I looked... like me, but in a dull grey jumpsuit. The only hint of personalization was the nametag CAT over my left breast.

You can hardly train with a weapon if you’re not in your own skin.

“Yeah, I suppose,” I said before tapping the panel. It lit up and I found myself with a dozen options. “Assault rifles, DMRs? Bolt-Action, Handguns, Shotguns, Exotics, I’m guessing these are the bigger categories for guns? How many guns are on here?”

All of them.

“When you say that,” I said.

A large number of gun enthusiasts have recreated nearly every weapon ever made by humanity as faithfully as they could, including many prototypes and otherwise lost weapons. The latter were designed off of existing photographs and records. All of these are available for you to play with.

“Wow, what a bunch of nerds,” I said.

I also took the liberty of adding digital versions of the weapons available to you through your current catalogues. All seven-hundred thousand of them.

“Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

I don’t think anyone expects you to memorise all of them. This space should let you try things out on your own, though.

I tapped on the shotguns list, because I happened to be fond of those, then frowned as it sub-divided itself some more. Automatic, semi, pump, heavy. I didn’t know what heavy was, so I pressed on that, and was greeted by a long, long list of guns. Each had a little thumbnail next to its name and some information that went over my head. I guessed that ROF was Rate of Fire and the weight and ammo count was self-explanatory, but a lot of it was clearly meant for nerdier nerds than me.

Heavy, as it turned out, meant the kind of gun that required two normal humans to operate, or that were loaded onto a vehicle. I could probably manage them with my power armour on. I scrolled down, then stopped on one in particular that looked cool enough to try.

“Okay, how do I get this one?” I asked while pointing to a HMSG-m49. The name wasn’t as sexy as the gun itself.

Tap the selection, then configure the weapon as you please. Afterwards, press the Ready button on the bottom right and the weapon will appear on the range bench.

I tapped on the thumbnail, which brought up a 3D version of the gun with little lines pointing to all the things I could modify. There were drop-down menus. The drop-downs had their own drop-downs. “Oh shit, this is getting complicated,” I said as I got lost in barrel-length options.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Perhaps keep the weapon stock for now and modify it as you find things you dislike?

“Right, right,” I agreed. This was giving me a whole new appreciation for the crap Myalis did. I asked for a gun, and she just gave me one with the bells and whistles all set up the way I liked.

The heavy shotgun appeared at one of the waist-high tables in the range and I walked over to it. It was bigger than I’d imagined from the picture, a metre-long gun with a barrel as big around as my forearm with sleek heatsinks covered by polished steel.

The box below the bench will contain ammunition for whichever gun you summon. They will not--with some exceptions--appear pre-loaded.

“Makes sense,” I said. If this was meant to be training of some sort, it made sense to have reloading be part of the simulation. I fiddled with the box magazine that went into the gun for a bit before it fit into place, then I pulled back on the bolt and leaned into the stock. This gun had a cheap ironsight mounted on it instead of all the fancy holographic stuff I was used to. Still, I held my breath and placed the crosshair over the distant form of the model three target.

The kick was... wrong.

My body moved back, but the sensation of it didn’t make any sense. I supposed that I’d run into one of the limitations of the Mesh. Sensations in here were a little muted already, so it tracked that recoil wouldn’t work the same.

A smaller copy of the target appeared on the table next to me, with pinpoints showing me where I’d hit it.

“Hey, that’s... nearly a bullseye,” I said.

You have been improving. Though your accuracy against moving targets is still lacking.

“Look, I spent most of my life with just one eye. I’m not tripping over myself now that I’ve got working depth perception, but it’s still hard to tell where something is moving to.”

Understandable. With time the discomfort will pass and you’ll grow more accustomed to tracking and firing upon moving targets. Practice will, of course, help.

“That’s what we’re here for,” I said. “Uh, I’m not feeling this gun. It’s too... big? Chunky? Maybe it’ll feel better with power armour on, but right now, eh.”

I understand. The gun is limited by being a model entirely designed by humans with limited crafting capabilities. There are some very potent weapons available to you from your various catalogues.

“I’ll definitely be needing something more potent,” I said. The last little while had me running into a lot of bigger, meaner aliens. My current level of firepower wasn’t keeping up with the amount of resistance the bastards I met could put up.

Fighting the antithesis was something of an arms race, one that I definitely wanted to be on the winning side of.

“So, what do the Sunwatchers have that’s decent?”

This one might interest you. It’s actually a relatively common medium-to-short range gun. It is technically a shotgun because it fires shells and it’s a smoothbore gun, but I think most modern classifications would consider it a PDW or sub-machine gun based on weight and ergonomics alone.

The big gun on the table disappeared, replaced by a much smaller, much sleeker weapon. Not to say that this was any less lethal. I picked up the gun and checked it out. Bullpup, with the opening for the magazine just under the stock, and with a set of holographic sights at the front and middle. The barrel was a bit bigger than the joint on my thumb, which I imagined let it pack a punch.

“What’s this called?” I asked. “And what does it fire?”

Its actual name is a single word whose meaning has no equal in English. It roughly translates to “the captivating way a beam of light travels across the ground.” As for its ammunition, this can use a number of fifteen millimetre shells. Mostly fin-stabilised discarding sabot seeking rounds with miniaturised warheads.

“Oh, neat.” The gun had fire-modes too, and seemed compatible with my eye’s software. “Yeah, I’ll try this out. Got all day to figure out how to shoot straight, right?”

***