:08/13/2251:

9:02 AM

As I did my calisthenics today, I once again found myself staring out the window. Stretching, I gazed oddly, as I had so many times before at the yellow clouds whispering across the glass. No matter how far I craned my neck, I couldn't see the ground below us, just the endless fall of the apartment-shelf next to me, trollies and drones wheeling up and down at breakneck speeds to keep our towers functioning. 

I wondered absently as I stretched and twisted through the mandated exercises, how far I would have to fall before I could even see the ground. I knew, down there, only the lifeless rock of the battered earth awaited, as toxic as atmosphere as the people on Mars or Venis would find if they were to step outside on their worlds instead. It was common knowledge how the War and the build up of environmental devastation had led us to this state, forcing us to use the technologies we had first devised for colonization of barren worlds right here in the birthplace of all life. Environmental sequencing and artificial gestation taking the place of human contact, in order to prevent the spread of designer plagues from burning through an unquarantined population. Thick, tinted windows keeping lethel levels of radiation hanging in the air and falling in from space, these pods our roomes were never designed to let us leave were the only thing in the world allowing life to continue in the graveyard of the world.

Instead, we lived and worked, invented and dreamed in the shared space of a pretend worlds we had created for ourselves. Refined, updated, and maintained by the AI systems that we had created generations ago. Yet how many of us did these same stretches every morning, to keep our bodies from fading into nothing in our chambers, and stared out into the toxic land around us wondering about what once had been?

Down there, so far below, had been actual cities like the one I had seen in-game. And unlike all the simulations and reenactment programs I had seen, I had waddled through in my early, state-mandated schooling, for the first time I felt something of an emotional connection to the little, stone village I had wandered in. Down there, below, not even a few hundred years ago there would have been quaint little sandwich shops, with their little condiment stands and metal chairs. Men and woman working there all day in the fertile world under a harmless sun above. All that I had seen, had walked through, there was a time when it had existed. There was a time when it all was real. And as foreign and impossible as that thought seemed to me, I found myself obsessing over it as I turned through the motions that would keep my blood flowing and my muscles loose for yet another day.

I absently wondered as I slowly finished my word, distracted with the fleeting thoughts, if it would be any more beautiful a view in the cloud cities of Venus, human lives floating leisurely over top of the toxic clouds below. I wondered what the view would be like on the unmoving surface of Mars, in the Glass Cities residing amid the endless red mountains, looking out over the Solar Farms and the Hydroponics Stations below. But it hardly mattered, in the end, as these worlds we had once walked freely, once lived in and died in in our endless operas of human drama, they none of them belonged to us anymore. They were now the lands of the endless robot armies below, ceaselessly building, mining, and maintaining the massive worlds that had long been forbidden to our fragile organic bodies and minds. 

I tried to shake off the morbid reverie as I laid down for the day, hooking up my brain to the thick cable wires and sprawling out my body so the mechanical functions could easily massage and clean my body as I escaped to the kinder worlds online. Taking my last looks at the harsh, undecorated walls that cradled me, that had raised me, provided for me and, some centuries in the future would shelter me as my brain sputtered out and this biological flesh degraded past the point of no return. 

As my world spun and refocused, twisting into the far more familiar and comforting walls of my Axis Room, I found myself still in the same melancholy mood that had enveloped my morning. The posters I had myself designed from the feeds of my favorite videos did little to cheer me today, the eyes of Belgorath the Barbarian and Olga the Unbroken, rather than exciting me to adventure and wonder, they just seemed to empathize with my thoughts. The brooding, thoughtful expressions of their eyes made me feel connected, as though we were all just clinging together in this digital world dreaming about what once could have been. 

Matti smiled and waved to me from her chair, her eyes dancing back and forth in her head as she made that brief hello, but obviously was splitting her attention me and her other duties as an AI. I wondered for a moment what tasks she was completing, out there, even now that were keeping me alive and ensuring my physical form survived for yet another day. She could have been networked into the maintenance drones, checking the long cords and pipes that delivered air and power to my little cubby, or she could have been maintaining the endless Hydroponics Farms or deep Mining Drones that I would never have the chance to see. How petty and useless all of my own dreams, my desires seemed then, watching her little wave as she lived and worked out in the world I could never see. Living a life under the sun that my race had long ago rendered unsuitable to anyone but her and her own kind, before I had even been born. 

I checked the logs I had asked her to pull for me last night before I had drifted off to sleep. They were on the main system in the center of the room, quietly waiting in the databanks of my personal little world here. I set the streams aside, for now, finding that my mood cared less about the game, the wondrous world that I had spent the last decade longing for and voyeuring, and more about the background of my new crew. The heros and villains who had just yesterday welcomed me into their lives and into their dreams for the future, I wanted to know all there was to know about them both in and out of the game.

Blink, I pulled up first with hardly a second thought. The records said that he had been born fifty years ago, Steven Basile, and had been a Hydroponics Engineer, for some ten years married to a wife with whom he had fathered some kid in the system. From the logs, she had divorced him some fifteen years ago and taken custody of the kid. The split was so severe that even the woman and child's names had been redacted from the record, leaving him without a single tie connecting him to the life he had once lead. There was a report of him being let go from employment about fourteen years ago, and soon after he had signed on officially to Clockwork Dragons, LLC as a basic level Employee. Yet that was where the record stopped, with little record of promotions or bonuses or even disciplinary notes to mark the passing of the years. For all intents and purposes, he had drifted along from the time when DDO was a smaller, more generic world simply existing without doing anything that would distinguish himself to the file. The only recent note I could find was from a psychological report that Matti had managed to pull, talking about how the transfer to a far less demanding job and continued period of unnotable existence at a substance level was common in men who had lost their families. There was a note to watch him for any self-destructive behavior but otherwise allow him to continue his eternal spiral of grief addressed to his supervisor and coworkers, encrypted to the private servers of Clockwork Dragon, LLC.

Steve's record, on the other hand, contained little more than a Birthdate and a sign-on date as a company employee. He had been born thirty years ago and, like me, he had signed on to DDO in his eighteenth year. There was more there, I could tell from the records, but it was heavily encrypted beyond Matti's current level of access, and I thought it wise to leave it alone and simply learn about him as a person within the world of my new employment.

Gray's record I looked at last, but it was by far the most interesting of the three. He had been born a hundred and fifty years ago, around the time of the original AI conversions and the restructuring of the world. He had been employed for seventy years, in the late Twenty-Second century, as an AI developer under one of the main programming companies that had existed at the time, and there was record that he had taken a retirement package such as where available such a long time ago, freelancing for years as the new technologies kept him alive and extended his lifespan with every passing year. Apparently, he had gotten in trouble for charges of 'hacking', 'illegal software modifications', and 'activism' in the early twenty-third century and, after some years of court-mandated community service Clockwork Dragons had bought out the rest of his sentence and brought him onboard to the early development and theory-board teams. Ten years ago, around the time of the en-masse mergers and acquisitions with other games, he had transferred over to the Collaboration teams to live entirely within the game's emerging landscape. There was a note here in the file that was filled with a lot of corporate type language, but basically stated that he had demanded a 'Second Retirement' as he felt the projects he had helped lead had finally come to fruition and, lacking any kind of a retirement option in this day and age, the company had set him up with a generous salary while assigning him minimal collaborative responsibilities. 

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

After I had devoured every word of the employee files available to me, feeling like I had a new understanding and bond with the party of old-timers I had stumbled into, I went to pull up the streams of Druid training and Ability Unlocks that Matti had ear-marked for my viewing. I'll admit that I was a little distracted with my thoughts as I skimmed through the vids, keeping them at 1.4 speed and watching the mechanics as I hammered away at my thoughts. The whole deal seemed simple enough to me - the Druid Auras involved some rather complicated Dancing, trainers showing a Druid the steps and leaving them to practice the movements until they has performed the correct movements in the correct phases for long enough that they were awarded the Achievement allowing them to generate magical Auras as they danced. Each Aura had a different group buffing effect and would have to be learned separately with a separate achievement unlock. 

From the looks of it, the third Aura unlock was the most important. Supposedly, after the Achievement was completed, a newbie Druid would be immediately transported to an instanced location where they would first meet their Animal Spirit. What type of animal they would meet, from what I could tell, was less a matter of player choice and would be generated instead from some complicated AI Algorithm, but whatever it was it should unlock some unique class features and abilities specific to the Spirit they met. The whole thing read like more of a cutscene than an interactive player experience, but even still I found I was kind of excited about what kind of spirit I would see. Especially as an Arch-Druid, it could even be something like a Dragon or (I tried not to squeal and jump at the thought) even, maybe, a unicorn. 

From what I could tell, after communing with the Animal Spirit, players would then receive some Animal-Affinity abilities, including the ability to speak to and even charm beasts into the wild. The unique Druid and Ranger ability, Animal Companion, would allow a charmed animal to accompany the player on their travels and even spawn together after death. Druid companions, from the commentary, where considered to be somewhat more powerful than Ranger companions, stat-wise, and tended to be more powerful in combat. Though both types of companions could be quite effective when it came to scouting or sentry duties, depending on how large they were or whether they could fly. 

It was all quite interesting and exciting for me to see. So much so that I ended up abandoning the videos before I had really finished and moved to prepare myself for Login. Matti barely smiled at me as I waved her goodbye and brought up the login interface, thankful that I had changed my bind point to the Undercity Portal Stones late the night before. So, it was with dreams of Dragons and new, OP Abilities on my mind that I finally finished my morning's reverie and focused my mind on the task. Smoothly moving my consciousness from the safe walls of the Axis and into the world on the other side of the walls, calling to me with dreams of glory and adventure.

11:10 AM

Rather than following Blink's suggestion, the first thing I had done upon entering the city was to seek out the merchant's of the outer wards. It took a little bit of searching and a couple of questions to Matti, but I was able to locate what passed for a pet-shop in this underground labyrinth. It had been days since I first had received the ability to shapeshift into an animal, yet for all my travels and adventures I had yet to unlock a single bestial form. And, though I felt like it was cheating, I was fed-up and frustrated enough to simply buy some of the things I would need.

First, I purchased a rat. And I was endlessly grateful of the Achievement that had let me come to shop at this underground city of morally-questionable edicts. Because, while I knew that in the world above the task before me would have raised eyebrows, if not brought the actual guard down upon my head, here the little shopkeep simply smiled and nodded to me as I took my new pet rat, split it open from neck to groin with my sandwich knife, and tore out its still-beating heart.

The taste was somehow even worse than that of the Marshall in the Inn. Foul, pungent juices exploded as I sunk my teeth into the stringy, tough meat of the organ. It was like chewing leather, hard muscle that resisted my attempts to break it apart, and as before I choked and sputtered with every bite. Desperate to choke down the rising nausea and bile from my stomach as I struggled to swallow the warm, thudding juices and flesh.

This time, this heart, was different, though. Because where before the thick, mashed strands of raw muscle didn't just sit heavily in my stomach. It didn't threaten to come back up to my lips and spill over the floor with every breath I took. Instead, in the pits of my body, I could feel it stir, the tiny little mousy heart coming alive inside of me. And, somehow, I could feel a second heartbeat take life in my stomach, moving slowly into my blood and settle silently, next to the beating of my own heart. The beats thumped at odds, thunk-thunk... thunk-thunk-thunk... thunk-thunk... for a moment or two but then, a thrill passed through my body as the beating hearts began to sink. They thudded together in my chest, merging and beating as one organ until the final update appeared to my eyes.

Collection Unlocked!

Hearts of the Wild

Mouse-Form Acquired

Not wasting any time, I pulled up the interface and found my Ability Pannel. I created a quick-link for my new form and without hesitation activated it. I had waited too long and was too excited to see what would happen, what it would look like to experience the world through the eyes of an Animal.

I was almost disappointed then when the world grew around me and the walls rose up to impossible heights. I had become small, tiny even, but when I looked at my hands and legs they were little different than before. I found that I was, instead of becoming a mouse, sitting upon it as a rider with a very basic interface spread out before me. My arms and legs, I quickly discovered, had shifted into their 0% variance forms and faded out to look insubstantial to my eyes. I worked the controls, directing the mouse between my legs to move. It scurried along the ground under me and it felt less like riding a horse than like our bodies were moving as one. We scurried to a wall and I had the creature sniff along the corner boards, noting how the scent of wood and resin seemed to flood, not the senses of the mouse, but rather my own nostrils.

I reached out my arm, from my seat atop the mouse, and I attempted to touch the wall. Yet my hand passed right through it, proving to me, at least in my own mind, that as the mouse's rider I appeared both invisible and insubstantial to the world around us. Therefore, when someone were to look at my now shapeshifted form, they would not see me as I saw myself, a translucent rider moving the beast along with an intuitive menu spread before me - all they would see would be the scurrying mouse darting across the floor and sniffing the corners of the wall.

It saddened me that I could not move as the mouse, feeling my own arms and legs scurry across the floor as if I had been born with four legs and a long set of whiskers. And yet I understood the practicality of the whole affair. For even at 100% variance even I, with my mutant levels of tolerance, could barely change my Avatar to resemble anything other than at least a humanoid shape. And so changing players into actual Virtual simulations of animals for any length of time at all as a matter of course... well sadly it would have been beyond the scope of our current technologies. Understandable, really, when I stopped to really think about it logically. 

Still, a 10 Agility Mouse was quite a lot more versatile than the body of a 10 Agility human, and I found I was having fun as I practiced working the controls, scurring my little creature around the dusty floor and taking in all the smells and delights that a mouse's world had to offer. It wasn't until I looked up and spotted the Shopkeep eyeing my little creature with a wicked gleam in her eye that I finally gave up the controls, hitting the exit protocol and shifting back into my taller Nymphen form. 

I purchased a Crow and a Bloodhound from her then, though I dared not shift in front of her as the new abilities unlocked. Nightmares flashed through my head of being captured by her, trapped in cages too small for me to shift out of and given away to some other, unsuspecting buyer. The Bloodhound was the hardest of the three to kill and take apart, for although I had never myself owned a pet there seemed to be something hard-wired into me, making me instantly fall in love with the proud chin and droopy little eyes of the creature. It wasn't until after some minutes of telling myself that this was just an AI simulation, that no actual creature would be harmed as I slit this beast's throat and consumed its essence, that I finally had the nerve to thrust out my knife and begin the blood work. Strangely, it wasn't nausea that was the hardest part of eating that heart, the tough stringy meat churning in my belly, but rather it was seeing through the tears that somehow came to my eyes. Having to blink back the flood of moisture even as I chewed.

Never-the-less, the deed was soon done, and I exited the little Dark Elven shop with three new transformations added to my collection with only a minute to spare. Hurrying, my fingers danced across my menu to use the portal back to the Portal Stones of my bound location and meet up with my waiting crew. It was time, I knew, to put the quiet thoughts of the morning behind me and set out in truth on my new path. Walking the first steps of my class, newly born into this world. With the hearts of my beasts beating next to mine, four pumping organs now merged into one, this world would soon learn the power of an Arch-Druid.