Chapter Three: Arrival

Roslyn looked around the observation deck as she emerged into the First Realm, the Realm they later spoke of disparagingly as The Tutorial. So much wasted potential in that dismissive attitude. She looked up at the achingly familiar ringed gas giant hanging perpetually in the sky to the west.

The glass dome was faceted like a huge gem made of triangular panels set in some clear framework. It was breathtaking.The glass, the landscape, the sweeping lines of the observation dome staircases, all of it breathtaking. The enameled metal stairs were the same dark brown color as the corridors and floors. It felt odd to hear her sneakers squeak on the polished concrete, nearly the same color as the enamel, with very subtle inclusions of gravel the exact same color.

Every last detail was exactly the same as she remembered, the same as when she dreamed about the First Realm. She’d dreamed about all the realms after she’d left each one.

The enamel shone slightly and the concrete was polished to a near mirror surface on the raised donut shaped floor, but somehow it also wasn’t smooth or slippery.

All over the First Realm the same scene was being enacted in all ten observation decks at every one of the thousand mining stations that made up this hothouse world. Every aspect of the moon was constructed into a carefully curated training ground for humans. Later realms would not be quite so perfectly manicured and manipulated.

This was the Fourth Wave. There would be a thousand people at each glass dome this time, ten thousand next time; a hundred thousand in two years and two days… Although the sixth wave would not arrive here in this room. The sixth wave was too large for the station and would arrive in a cramped set of rooms which did not yet exist. The doors would appear shortly before the people did.

If everything was the same, most of the hundred and eleven people who had already come through at this location were still here. Many had died. A few people had joined from other groups. A few had defected to other groups. A very few had ventured into the hyper loop train and braved the weeks of constant spawns to go to the mostly empty city.

Some places were the opposite, all previous waves had gone through to the city. The city was still mostly empty at the beginning of the Fourth Wave and prime real estate was there for the wresting from whatever beasts occupied it. Those empty stations made good hunting grounds for the adventurous, and the train platforms gave good demographic information, allowing hunters to choose a good site without wasting weeks of their time on a crowded station filled with messy local politics.

Roslyn stepped away from the gate and into the huge room. She glanced back and saw her gate had gone pale and rigid and was slowly getting darker again from the center.

There were ten blue gates on the raised platform around the lounge. There were four sets of stairs that went from the lounge floor to the ring and then up the side of the glass dome to the lookout deck at the top. From where she stood the stairs didn’t cut across the view of the planet that their moon orbited, tidally locked to face the same way all the time.

Roslyn had been to other stations and seen the gas giant from different angles. It was fascinating enough that she always visited a local observation deck at least once when she went to a new station. Each station had a station number and ten sections lettered A-J.

The planet spun in place, only dancing a little as it turned, or so it seemed from the vantage point of a person on the tidally locked moon. Always in the same place, never exactly the same. The swirls and lines of the stormy atmosphere changed over time, slowly, inexorably.

Ros looked away from the majestic scene towards the more mundane one around her.

There were two people at the top of each little rise of stairs into the lounge. The elevator was in the center of the deck, guarded. It wasn’t immediately obvious that it was an elevator, the stairs that spiraled around the lift shaft were a lot more obvious, also guarded. The last flight of stairs led from the level deck to a small platform overlooking the large room. Harry Ibsen and his followers used it as a speech platform, even though it was over the heads of the crowd and probably meant more for overlooking a party or something. Some people said the platform should be a sports arena because it was level 30 and all the multiples of 5 were some kind of gym.

“Welcome to Station 387B,” one of the armed and armored guards at the top of the stairs said to Ros and the three other people who had approached them at much the same time. Same people, same station. Ros even knew some of the names of the people around her. Not all. It had been a long time.

“We’re the Ibsen Group. Our First Wave guy was Harry Ibsen, and he’s still here. The rest of us are essentially his guests.” He gestured vaguely and Ros looked towards the dias. Harry was there with several people she remembered as important to the organization.

The man on the right leered at Ros just as much as he had last time she showed up. Maybe it was him, not the skimpy uniform. Calvin? Connor? No need to guess, he interrupted his partner. “I’m Carter, this is Mike. We know it’s disorienting, go have a seat and when the gates stop letting new people in we’ll have a welcome orientation. It gets dangerous around here quick, so don’t wander off before you hear what they have to say. There are restrooms around the edge of the room.”

That’s right. It had been so long since she left the First Realm that she’d half forgotten that the edges of the room sunk further in concentric circular stairs and the platform around the base of the dome was the ceiling for unmanned concession stands, restrooms and private lounges.

Ros looked around at the rest of the people who had just arrived. They were dressed in all kinds of clothes from all kinds of cultures; from business suits to uniforms to casual clothes like hers. There were even several people in armor already. One boy was in a full 60,000 point enameled plate armor set. He looked maybe 18, and only that old because there wasn’t anyone younger than that in the fourth wave, the fifth wave was younger, 12-30. The Fourth Wave all the people were adults, 18-65.

Ros remembered hearing at the second group meeting that the new arrivals were from 14 American States and 42 different countries. 1000 people would come through the gates, one by ten, and the Third Wave would look a bit alarmed by the time the crowd finished emerging. There had only been a hundred of them, after all.

By a quick estimate, and by her memory of waiting more than three hours until everyone arrived, the gates had opened maybe four times before she came through. Each gate cycled in about two minutes and each one had to open a hundred times.

There were four guys with heavy looking stun guns stationed at the only obvious exits to the area: The lift and the stairs.

There were also two airlock doors into the surrounding environment and a hundred or more access points into the maintenance and ventilation system. The locals couldn’t possibly be guarding all of them. Of course, they didn’t need to really. Airlocks required an environment suit, the atmosphere was thin and had very little oxygen.

There were other exits. For example, Ros could go into the restroom, any of them, and climb on the back of the toilet in the third stall. From there she could pull herself into the air duct system and she could climb down to any of the lower levels. There were back routes to everywhere.

Ros went towards one of the many couches. There were not enough couches to let 1111 people sit all at once, not that there would be that many people in the room. If she remembered, the Ibsen Group was only 96 people when the Fourth Wave arrived, but some of them would be preparing the feast and checking the rooms they would assign the newcomers.

“What’s even going on?” A Japanese girl in an actual Lolita style street outfit, hair, makeup and everything, asked as Ros drifted past a clutch of people standing near the foot of the stairs, at the top of the concentric risers.

Miko, Ros remembered. The girl had taken to life in the harem. She skillfully played all the players against each other until she got someone to take her to the city, and Ros never heard about her after that. It wouldn’t be a week before she was slinking around in elegant gowns, teasing and selling her affection, but not her body, not yet.

“We’re the disappeared.” The dark skinned man in the traditional Indian outfit said, without a trace of accent. “The new disappeared.”

“You speak Japanese?” Miko said in surprise. “I’m Miko.”

“I’m Vaidik.” He said. “And I’m pretty sure I’m speaking Hindu.”

“We’re all speaking Common or maybe we might call it Standard.” Ros said, slowing. “The Gates we just came through put a universal translator in our heads. It’s so we can talk to each other clearly. We won’t even remember our original languages.” She paused a moment and then she moved away, choosing a couch where nobody else was sitting yet. Unlike the floors, and stairs and walls up to the start of the glass, the couches were not brown, they were a mix of rust red and dull blue with the occasional stark white chair. The other furniture was likewise colored to match or contrast the group of seating where it was placed. The environment created by each couch group was cozy and intimate, even though the space was grand, expansive and intimidating.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Roslyn pulled out one of her fifty new sketchbooks and started drawing the scenery before anyone else started up a conversation where she would probably say too much. She felt like she’d already said too much and she felt like she couldn’t say enough quickly enough.

On the other hand, she’d prefer to say it all anonymously in the broadest, most public way possible: the global message boards.

While she drew slowly, one hatch mark at a time, Roslyn also began her Qui Cultivation over from nothing. She mentally traced the outlines of where her meridians should be, not pushing anything, not expecting anything, just inviting the energy to investigate her newly opened, very narrow channels and pools. Her nodes were barely visible bumps around where her meridians crossed: belly, heart, brain and groin.

Ros had met practitioners of similarly conceptualized cultivation techniques from Earth and they all said that the Qui Meridians and Nodes were not the same as the ones they had been taught to visualize in their traditions.

The Qui Cultivation Meridians all began in the belly, each went up and down the spine, around the organs and through the brain. One looped and spiraled down each leg, into each toe. Similarly they looped down the arms to each finger.

When everything was working properly the energy never stopped spiraling. In higher tiers there were more and more channels, as many as capillaries in the circulatory system, as many as individual nerve pathways.

At the novice level there were only five routes to concentrate on. They were weak, shallow, clogged, and they were still separated, crossing at the nodes, not entering and leaving a pool there. They would be separate through the entire Apprentice Tier and most of the Adept Tier. Integration of the five loops into one loop marked Peak Adept.

By the time the meeting was called to order, Ros could feel the energy moving sluggishly through all five of her major meridians.

Her pencil never stopped sketching and she had little trouble shifting to sit on one of the end tables when the couch got crowded. There was still plenty of room to stand.

“Gather round, gather round.” Carl Bennet called, “all on one side, please, so everyone can see.” He looked jovial, a grey haired old man, weak and paunchy. He waved his arms to indicate which way they would be addressing the crowd. Her memory had served her. They stood with the planet behind them. Ros had an excellent view of the lectern someone suddenly set on the dias from their inventory ring. It was a good choice, 7,000 coin in the Realm shop, available at any replicator in any room where residents were likely to be. Very few things were actually free from the replicator, even the most basic edible rations were a coin or two. Jumpsuits were free, twin sized sheets were free…

The guards on the perimeter platform came down and stood quiet sentinel as the group formed, quietly rounding them up like cattle or maybe sheeple.

The guards were less intimidating than Ros remembered. They all wore a forest green uniform with a Sam Browne belt around their waist and over their right shoulder. Just above the buckle on the chest there was round insignia, a white heron standing on blue water with green grass on both sides. It looked pretty and very official.

The insignias were cheap to make and easy to design. The bird image was actually one of the stock images. Serious groups in the city had someone design something custom.

The guards were each holding an identical stun rifle, which was more intimidating than dangerous. At the highest setting it would knock a human out for a few minutes. It didn’t even hurt like a taser. It had no effect on the many monsters of the realm.

Their armor on the other hand, was not standardized. It was a hodgepodge of the best protection the individual could manage. There were a lot of pieces of the suit most often found in the red gym.

She glanced at her status screen while the crowd shifted around her.

Roslyn Atwood

Physique: Human- F Ranked

Qui Apprentice - Early Mortal

Strength: 5 -> 6

Endurance: 10 -> 12

Recovery: 4 -> 7

Soul: 27

Warrior’s Ease(N/A)

Blink(F)

Her stats were increasing quickly, just how they should as soon as she began cultivating. The most surprising was the shift from base human to graded human, that seemed unexpected. She hadn’t noted when she made that shift last time. Possibly the first quest reward. There were other improvements that would do that, most notably a single dose of physique improvement medicine, even an unrefined Rui Fruit.

Technically Humans were an Ungraded Species, any improvement, no matter how small, allowed the individual to achieve graded status. That was still a little known bit of trivia at this point.

She knew from reports that choosing Apprentice Tier Qui Practitioner to begin with would multiply all initial stats by three and put the practitioner at Peak Apprentice instantly, but that most people who started at novice doubled those numbers again before crossing into the Adept Tier, so she could expect to slowly raise her stats as her Qui Cultivation increased.

She breathed slowly and happily, letting her excitement ease out of her quietly as she looked at Harry Ibsen, who was still thanking Carl Bennet who had just introduced him as their First Wave occupant.

Harry was once an elderly English professor, overdue to retire from Princeton. Now he was the leader and patriarch of mining station 387, section B. His stated goal would be protecting his citizens from the dangers of the First Realm.

Harry took his perceived status and power seriously, calling himself First Citizen. He somehow believed he owned the section just because he came through first. He was, however, not the strongest member of the welcoming committee. That would be the man who simply called himself Mac. There he was by the stairs, chest bare under the belt strap, hands empty. He looked like he’d been working out all day for decades. Chiseled like Arnold in his prime.

“My dear friends.” Harry said, spreading his palms like that Jesus Statue in Rio. “Welcome to Station 387B and the Ibsen Group. We are a simple alliance of survivors. Our most important rule is this: Everybody works and everybody eats. There are more than enough empty quarters to host us all.” He cleared his throat. “I understand that a thousand people came through the portals this time. That’s a major influx of people; Ten times what our population was before. It will take us a while to interview everyone, to find out what you can do and what you want to do. For now, rest assured that we will be patrolling all the corridors we’re using. You will be safe. Monster incursions are very rare in inhabited areas.” He cleared his throat again and looked nervously behind himself. Interesting. Who would be up there, Ronald Braithe? Geneva Tamm? John Wang? and was Harry actually a puppet on a string? Didn’t matter, she wasn’t staying to deal with this paternalistic organization. Things had settled quite quickly into a tense controlling sort of dictatorship built on difficult to fully discharge debts to the collective.

“It may interest you to know that the ten sections of Station 387 are labeled A through J and are laid out exactly the same way as section B. There’s no need to go exploring, the layout is the same. Nothing new to see.” Except the mine, the train station and more than half the quests in the main chain.

Ros tried hard not to show the distain she was feeling. The only way to make the whole section permanently safe was for every resident to complete the quest chain. Seemed like nobody knew that until the Fifth Wave had arrived, suddenly making safe sections unsafe again.

“In particular, don’t go to Section H, which is where the Franklin Privateers live. They’re pirates. If we leave them alone they mostly leave us alone. At least they’ve never bothered us in the residential area. If you end up in corridors that have no green stripe, turn back, you have left the residential area.” Oh so untrue, the residential suites got better the more dangerous the zones. “Monsters prowl the orange and yellow corridors, but they spawn down in the Red.” Not quite accurate. They spawned on yellow and orange too, just the less dangerous ones though.

“Our hunters regularly sweep through the green and yellow corridors, keeping us all safe. After everyone has an entry interview, we’ll start training a few of you at a time to become hunters and maybe start a more formal patrol or guard. Yes. With so many we definitely need guards.” He looked pleased with himself. The guard had devolved rather quickly into a bully force.

Roslyn didn’t remember how extemporaneous all this seemed. Regardless of how things seemed in a month or so, Harry’s current intentions seemed rather noble. Keep the group together, keep them safe. Work together, train to fight.

“What if we want to go off on our own?” Someone in the crowd called. The boy in the armor. Ros focused on the back of his blonde head, Jimmy Royce. She didn’t remember him in the armor though. She remembered seeing separate pieces of that same armor on four of the guys currently holding stunners. She remembered Jimmy as an angry, frustrated, weak kid in a jumpsuit with a cheap spear in his hand; always hanging around the pretty girls and never getting any attention.

“I want to fight. What’s there to fight?”

Ros smiled at the agreement she was hearing, the Fourth Wave was ready to start kicking ass. She craned her neck to see if she could tell who had spoken so loudly. Ah, Carlos, he joined the guard, a bully’s bully.

“We don’t honestly care to prevent you from leaving, but in reality it’s a very bad idea. There are more dangers in this world than the one we left. Just… just get along with everyone and do your part to contribute. If you want to fight we’ll get you trained to fight. Monsters drop coin and sometimes gear, a portion of everything the hunters bring in goes to the community larder to feed us all. As we organize you new people there will be more than enough opportunities to fight monsters and get coin of your own.”

Harry looked very relieved when Sondra, one of the C Ranked Second Wavers came up the lift, armed to the teeth, and nodded at him.

“For now, let’s all go down the stairs two levels to where we have a feast laid out.”

Ros smiled, she’d forgotten about the trek down the stairs. A thousand pairs of feet stomping down two flights of stairs echoed very loudly. Just to sit at a hundred quickly replicated cafeteria tables in what was more often a recreational room with basketball nets. All the rooms off the central lift were community rooms, gyms, recreational rooms, gardens, libraries, bars, restaurants…

She smiled remembering how the tables were stored folded and brought out for breakfast and dinner. Really Harry and his advisors were doing as well as they could, for now. Inside the limited parameters of what they expected of themselves.

The dinner was identifiable as 4 coins worth of food per person. Noodles in broth(1coin), vegetables(1coin) and about a quarter of an 8 coin serving of steak, sliced thin. Insensitive, there were vegetarians and other people who couldn’t eat cow in the group. On the other hand, someone had thought creatively to put this together.

It looked good and smelled good.

She inched the cost of the meal down by half a coin for each bowl. They had split the servings to lower the cost. The vegetables were half of a 1 coin serving per bowl. However, if she remembered correctly, they were charged 4 coins for the bowl and 1 per night for the lodgings they would be issued in just a moment. The debt grew coin by coin, and it was a few days later that the debt was first mentioned and recorded.

In a few days the group would also begin paying the cooks a small wage to cook with even cheaper ingredients.

Ros held back, letting herself ease into the corner of the crowded room. Time to extract herself from the mess. That was a pun. Before long this rec room would be known as The Mess.

Time to try something.

Ros slipped into the rest room on the side of the rec room. Nobody was watching the restroom, there wasn’t supposed to be an exit.

She hadn’t been anywhere yet, but she still remembered hundreds of places in 387B. She closed her eyes, centered herself and tried to jump to residential unit 2711, bunk C, the room she’d been assigned after dinner.

She felt the jerk to her gut and the pull as shewatched herself go down one deck and over three bulkheads.