:08/17/2251:

8:00 AM

My mind swirled through the vivid colors, meat-mind hurled through the Cloud to the familiar confines of my own little axis room. Home, sweet home, I sighed to myself as I saw Matti, waiting for me, and smiled at her. I could see from the holographic notifications that lined the walls and panels that I had stream updates, chat requests and new mail. I took a moment to bathe in the warmth and smile at my old friend as I took in all the activity. I'd never been what you would consider popular before, not by a long shot, and just having so much activity there to greet me was something I couldn't help but take a moment to bask in. Even if half the streaming notifications were probably just trolls trying to bait me and most the mail was probably just the spam starting to roll in now that I had a job and money to actually scam out of me for once.

The chats were from some of other kids I had used to talk to. I wouldn't have called them friends, really, but it's pretty much impossible not to try to reach out occasionally, hoping for a bit of human compassion, no matter how horrifyingly you're treated. And occasionally, I had to admit, someone would take pity on me and actually spare me a kindly sentence or two. It seemed like, of those few, some had actually taken a genuine interest in me and bothered to keep tabs on me after graduation. Nevertheless, I deleted them all without hesitation. New life, new me, and my world was now contained entirely within the bounds of Dragon's Dagger, as I had always dreamed it would be. If they wanted to catch up, my stream was public enough and I was easy enough to find in-game. But there was a heavy lump in my stomach when I considered the thought of talking to them outside the magical boundaries of my new life. And relating again to people who knew me as Magpie Serah, even for a moment, seemed to dredge up too many memories that I was hoping to put far behind me. For as weak as I was in the game still, as much pain and horror as I had witnessed, it still felt like a vacation from those cramped halls and cruel smiles that had been my life not a week before.

I had two emails that actually were worth paying attention to. First, Gray had sent me an encrypted file and a link to a Darknet site that I was... actually already fairly familiar with. The body of the email itself contained little in the way of explanation, not even bothering with your standard 'Good Morning' or 'Hey Mags'. Still, the contents of the attached file seemed pretty clear to me, given the encryption and the encoded file name 'DDOModAdminUNLKpsy.zip'. It was obviously some type of hacked power or ability available from some hack site, most likely one that would be fairly subtle considering he knew that I streamed and how easy it would be to get caught doing something vulgar. 

Hacks were fairly common, ranging from interface mods to aimbots to things that became truly twisted. There had been urban legends for as far back as I could remember about people who visited a hacker's Axis Room and found themselves stuck there for the rest of their lives, fines slowly piling up from missed Calisthenics sessions even as their bodies wasted away. It was common knowledge that the whole idea was rediculous, as your AI would just forcibly eject your meat from Hyperspace by the end of the second day, but even so, the rumors persisted. Like ghost stories, they lived in late night stories passed around with friends in front of simulated fires or told from sleeping bags propped in the corners of modded Axis Rooms. 

Still, I figured that, more than anything, I needed to learn to trust my new Crew. And, while it could very easily have been some geeky version of hazing, getting caught with unauthorized mods was more likely to get you banned for a couple of days than to get you permanently evicted. It would be a loss of income, maybe even a performance hit at work, but even if it was some kind of set up it would be something that I would be able to recover from. Eventually. 

While I was unzipping and installing the Admin file, I went ahead and checked my second email. It was from Alley, and was written far more professionally than the one I had just been looking at:

Magpie,

I regret to inform you that, due to the current state of emergency, I will be ending your acclimation period early. I will require you to spend two (2) hours a day performing the following task, as I believe you are uniquely suited to the fulfillment of this requirement. We will take advantage of both your status as a fresh face in the DDO streaming community, as well as your avatar's particular idiosyncracies, to undertake a goodwill campaign as directed by the company. Your stream shall be enabled while performing this task and you shall follow instructions during this period.

A set of 'Undercity Commoner' clothes has been delivered to you in-game. You shall, to initiate your working hours, dawn these garments while within the Undercity residential districts. You shall make your way to fruit cart, 13B, and sell fruit for a one (1) hour period. Additionally, you are tasked with interacting with local residents, to include NPCs and company RolePlayers (you shall not be informed which is which) who reside within the city during the remaining period of your activation. Upon completion of your daily allocated hours, you shall receive a notification, as well as additional in-game rewards as determined by your adherence to the spirit of this task.

Exceptional performance may allow for opportunities for promotion within the current, local meta-plot. Failure to perform in accordance with the spirit of this task may, likewise, result in in-game penalties or transfer to less desirable roles.

Good luck! I'm watching you,

Alley Bonowitz

It was both somewhat exciting and... somewhat concerning at the same time. It seemed like I was being activated as something of a RolePlayer, which I kind of was curious to try, but also given the chance to use it to boost my stream numbers from the comfort of my own avatar. I'd actually never heard of that happening before, though I'd be the first to admit that my actual experience was somewhat more limited than I though having been so long confined to the bits of streams that people felt worthwhile to bootleg. The whole idea of unlocking in-game rewards based on performance was novel to me too, considering I was literally working for room and board with little obligation to be given anything else. It seemed like the whole reward system would likely be set up to make my stream more interesting or me more relatable, I thought, considering DDO wasn't known for giving away a free lunch without some kind of strings attached at the very least. 

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Regardless, the completion of the installation on my new hack pulled me from my revelry. There were no instructions or text updates to go with it, just the little beep and the flashing 'complete' icon hanging off in front of the wall to my left. I was somewhat relieved, hoping the subtility of the update would be a continuing theme, but it was somewhat frustrating too to know that I still had absolutely no idea what the file even did. It was enough of a curiosity, all in all, that I lost any desire to continue mucking around in my Lobby and jump into the game. Maybe when I logged on there would be some indication of what exactly it was that had changed.

The dark, fluorescent-lit caverns spun into view as a couple quick flicks of my wrist initiated my transfer into the Game World. Still, there were no new status updates or windows flickering into view as my avatar loaded up and dumped me on the cold steps of the Portal Stones. Instead, I was left to absently work through my status panels as I located stall 13B on my map and leisurely started plotting a course out toward my new workplace. 

Equipment was the same, abilities were unchanged, all aspects of my UI seemed to flash in with the standard, DDO issued models. I grabbed my mail and pulled my new, gray 'Peasants Dress' into my inventory as I walked and fiddled with my different screens. Switching from the Corset and Skirt into the Dress using the interface, I signed as my little +6 Cha bonus faded away into the digital folds of my inventory. The dress itself was threadbare, made from some course linen that chafed against my hips as I walked, and lacked anything in the way of stats or modifiers to make up for the discomfort. There was a chance, I figured, that I would be given an upgrade, or maybe even item enhancements based on my performance, and I resolved quickly to do my very best to fulfill the 'spirit' of this task. Whatever the hell that even was.

It wasn't until I had made my way almost the entire way to my stall that I figured out what it was that had been changed. Like an idiot, I had failed to check over my hard list of stats during that entire time. And, pulling up the interface of my base awarded abilities, I was given a nice little suprise:

Magpie Frost

Strength 

Agility 

Stamina 

Intelligence 

Willpower 

Charisma 

Luck 

Psyche (Hidden; Unlocked)

Nymph Arch-Druid

2

6 +4

4

3

6

10

1

3

Down, at the bottom, was an unlocked, hidden stat called 'psyche'. There was no hover text and I couldn't find an explanation for it anywhere in the interface. I resolved to look up the stat next time I was on darknet, but for the time being, I didn't want to give myself away as having installed the hack, and looking it up using an unsecured or, worse, company owned reference seemed like it would have been kind of stupid. Even for me. Never the less, from what I could tell it was some kind of hidden system, built into the game, that had just been forcibly unlocked by Gray's little program. 

I was so enamored with the revelation, really, that a good part of the hour had passed before I had even stopped to look around me and truly take in my current situation. The little Fruit Cart was filled to the brim with Oranges, some of which obviously having already gone bad, and I found myself instinctually restraining myself from leaning on the rickety wooden boards of its counter. The whole thing leaned a bit off to a funny angle, and looking at it was enough to give you the impression that the first stout breeze to find its way into our deep underground world would be more than enough to topple it over.

The buildings around me were a strange combination of woodwork and clay, rounded corners, and rounded roofs giving the whole area the aesthetic impression that mushrooms had grown too big and sunk down into the stone floor of the gigantic chamber, leaving the residents to carve out little doors and windows from what remained of the mushroom heads. It was clear as well that no working sewer system had been implemented on this side of town, as trails of molding experiment seemed to drip down from the windows where the locals had, quite obviously, not thrown their refuse far enough out to miss hitting the sides of the buildings. The whole thing would have been, all in all, an affront to the senses in the best of circumstances, but given my 105% realism settings, I found it considerably harder to bear the more I became aware of where I was standing. And, especially, the more paranoid I became regarding what it was that I was standing in.

The people, however, seemed almost worse off even than the buildings around me. In a matter of moments, I became deeply aware of how out of place I would have looked had I failed to change clothing. Even the basic, low-level silk blouse and skirt would have stood out as much as if I had waltzed into town wearing a crown and jewels. The rough spun fabric of the linen I wore seemed, all in all, to be one of the higher quality outfits people were wearing. For despite the crudeness of the make and material, if nothing else it lacked any gaping holes or dark stains of no-one-wants-to-know-what. Delf or ork or troll or gnome, it made little difference which among the multitude of races each passerby claimed for ancestry - they were all united in a common heritage of dirty skin, plastered hair, and missing teeth that made them all look frighteningly similar. Like a strange, extended family of giants, midgets, and boiled skin, all milling along waiting for grand-pappy to bring out the good tobacky. 

In those long minutes spent taking in the sights and smells of the streets around me, I found my resolve flicker for the first time. I wasn't sure what the spirit of this exercise was, but I somehow figured that it had to do more with my own discomfort and unease than it did with anything I may or may not be expected to do. And in that hour of hocking putrid oranges for coppers to even more putrid customers, the foremost thought on my mind was How the hell much longer? and, more importantly, What demotion would possibly be worse than this?