Kevin Moore awoke to a knock on his bedroom door. The sun slanted through a gap in the curtains, illuminating a small patch on the wall next to his head. The television played a rerun of an old sitcom, an episode he’d seen often enough he could recite all the lines. He thumbed at the power button of the remote, missing several times until the screen finally turned black.
“Come in,” said Kevin.
The door cracked open, and his mother peered inside. “Ben stopped by to visit you, dear.” She opened the door fully then stepped back. To someone in the hall, she said, “You two have a good visit.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Moore,” said Ben Cline, Kevin’s best friend since he’d moved to Jeffersontown in middle school, almost ten years ago. He bounded into the room, a plastic bag in his hand and a broad smile on his face. “Hey, man. How’s it going?”
Kevin huffed in irritation. “I haven’t moved from this bed in the past year, so not well.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself, huh? I know for a fact your mom rolls you around in that wheelchair to get a little fresh air. She’d take you on walks with her everyday if you let her. ” Ben dropped the bag he’d been carrying on the swivel desk attached to Kevin’s bed then beelined towards the window. He grabbed the curtains on both sides and threw them open. “You need some more light in here to raise your spirits.”
The sunspot expanded to cover half the wall, and Kevin blinked at the sudden brightness. “I kind of liked how it was before.”
There was no sense in arguing. The first thing Ben did when he came to visit was check the window. At least he hadn’t opened it to let in the air. The nights were getting colder since it was the middle of October, and Ben usually forgot to close the window again when he left. The temperature in the room could drop dramatically before he got his mother’s attention to take care of it. After being run down by a car and surviving the months of surgery afterwards, he had no desire to die of hypothermia in his own bed.
“You’ve been down in the dumps lately, so I brought something to cheer you up.” Ben plopped down into the recliner next to the bed and pulled several items out of the bag he’d brought. He held out a virtual reality headset and a pair of haptic gloves. “Check it out!”
“Why did you bring those?”
“Your parents saw a news report saying doctors were using VR environments to help patients with nerve damage, and they asked me about it. I had some used equipment lying around and brought it over for you.”
Ben rotated the headset for Kevin to see. Hinges could move the goggles out of the way when he wasn’t using them without having to take them off. The sides were opaque so outside light wouldn’t cause glare when the screen was positioned over the eyes. Wires ran through the fabric, connecting to sensors every three inches along the inside edge. Ben placed the strap on Kevin’s head and adjusted a plastic clip in the back until it was snug. Even before it was in place, Kevin caught a whiff of the industrial glue holding the foam pads around the edge of the visor.
Kevin eyed the headset with suspicion. “If this is used, then what’s with the new car smell?”
Ben’s face flushed red. “Oh, crap…I didn’t think of that.”
“My parents couldn’t afford a new VR rig. Where did this come from?”
“Your dad made me promise not to say.”
“Just tell me what’s going on!”
“I don’t know the whole story, but I guess your mom told the ladies in her book club about the news report. They held a book sale and donated all the proceeds to buy you a new VR setup.”
“Take this off me.” Kevin struggled with his right hand to grip the goggles, but he couldn’t get a tight hold. His left hand stayed immobile on the bedsheets, unable to do more than twitch the fingers. The band slid up but didn’t come completely off his head. “I don’t want their charity.”
“Careful! You’ll break it.” Ben grasped the headband on both sides and lifted it off Kevin’s head. Placing the items back in the bag, he said, “You should at least listen to the rest before you turn it down.”
“Fine, but I’m not going to change my mind.”
“There’s a new online roleplaying game that came out this week. I thought you’d want to play.”
“I haven’t played RPGs since we were kids. They were all too repetitive and boring.”
“This one’s different. They licensed an artificial intelligence from Japan, and the things it can do are amazing. It researches solutions to questions using the Internet, and they think that given enough interaction with the players, it might be able to reach the same levels of creativity as a person. The experience is almost like playing a tabletop game, with the AI acting as game master and creating new quests based on what the players want to do. The game is called ‘Genesis Online’ because they’re starting out with the rules for a basic fantasy world and seeing what it will turn into. They think the AI will learn from the players’ actions and create something really cool.”
Kevin thought things over before replying. “That does sound better than the games we used to play, but I still can’t accept the VR gear. I don’t want to owe anyone.”
“Then consider it a loan. One of the concepts the AI came up with during the beta test was a real life economy interface. Anyone can pay money to buy gold in the game, but what’s even better in your case is you can sell gold back to the system for real cash.”
That got Kevin’s attention. “You can make money from playing the game?”
“If you’re smart…or lucky. I figure the sooner you start playing, the easier time you’ll have finding a niche in the market nobody has filled. I played in the last round of the beta, and even though the game had only been running for a month before I joined, there was already stiff competition between players to get themselves established. Even if we don’t make much money, we can still run around and do quests together. It’ll be fun.”
“Won’t Madison be upset if you’re spending all your time online?”
Ben’s eyes dropped to the carpet, and he let out a sigh. “Actually…we broke up a couple weeks ago.”
“Sorry, man, I didn’t know. What happened?”
“We’ve been growing apart ever since I dropped out of college. I worked during the day, and she was usually studying at night. When I went over to her place, I ended up watching television while she did homework. She was planning to move away for grad school, and we decided it was better to make a clean break now instead of dragging things out.”
“You should have said something! I had no idea.”
“To be honest, I didn’t want to tell anyone because I mostly felt relieved. I didn’t talk much when we hung out with her friends because I didn’t understand the subjects they were studying in their college classes and couldn’t keep up with their conversations. She was really busy most of the time. I think we only stayed together because neither one of us wanted to break it off, but eventually we couldn’t ignore the fact we had nothing in common any more.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” said Kevin. “You can find someone who shares your interests.”
“Yeah, that’s probably true.” Ben smiled. “Until then, I’ll have plenty of time to play games after work. It’ll be more fun if I have someone to play with.”
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Kevin looked out the window at the sun dropping below the horizon. Since the accident two years before, he’d dreamed of being active again. He had run cross country in high school and was training for a marathon with the running club he’d joined his sophomore year of college when a car ignored a red light and nearly killed him. He had been in a coma for months afterwards and didn’t remember anything about the accident. After a number of surgeries on his spine and months of physical therapy, he had limited control of his arms but nothing below the chest. When the weather was nice, he could sit outside on the patio, but he yearned to have control over his whole body again.
“You mentioned that playing this game might help someone like me,” said Kevin. “Does that really work?”
“I don’t know all the details, but with the sensors built into the headband, the game can monitor different areas of your brain while you’re playing and respond to them. So if you think about something you want to do, like jumping, a part of your brain lights up, and your character will do the action. Check out news reports if you want to know more. The technology is still kind of buggy, so you’ll have to use a keyboard or gamepad sometimes. The results are much better for people who have a neural interface because their brains are communicating directly with the game. But they’re still really expensive and have to be surgically implanted.”
Kevin had to admit it did sound promising. “I don’t know. I still don’t like the idea of taking charity.”
“If you make some money while playing, you can donate it back to your mom’s book club.” Ben checked his phone. “Wow, it’s a lot later than I thought. If I don’t head home, Ralphie’s liable to have an accident on the rug again. I’ll leave these here in case you change your mind. If you decide to play, let me know so we can meet up in the game.”
“Yeah, I’ll think it over.”
* * *
After Ben left, Kevin used the remote to power the television back on and opened a browser window. Selecting each letter from the on-screen keyboard took a while, but he entered “Genesis Online” into the text box and pressed the search button. Most of the articles he found covered either the recent beta test or the release, which had happened only yesterday. There was a lot of speculation about what the game could become, along with glowing reviews from people who had already played.
He read several news sites and found they mostly agreed with what Ben had told him earlier. The game was based on a revolutionary artificial intelligence created by researchers at the University of Aizu in Japan. When given problems with incomplete information, the AI would search for new data before coming up with a solution. The reason Kevin had stopped playing online games was because most of them had a limited amount of replay value. After the hundredth time running a daily quest to clear stones out of a farmer’s field, he grew tired of the monotony. If the AI could generate new content on the fly, the game would be a lot more interesting.
He found an interview that had gone viral, demonstrating how the AI could look into a person’s history to spontaneously generate new topics of conversation. The video showed a tall, blond woman standing with the head researcher in charge of the project. Next to them was a monitor with an animated caricature of a girl with pigtails and two short, plastic protrusions on the sides of her head in place of ears. Occasionally the character would blink or nod along with what the two people were saying.
“So tell us what we’re seeing here,” said the reporter.
The researcher pointed to the monitor and said, “This is Sakura.”
The girl on the screen leaned forward and waved enthusiastically. “Hello!”
“Hello, Sakura,” said the reporter with a smile. She directed her question to the researcher. “Did you choose her name?”
He chuckled. “Why don’t you ask Sakura?”
“Uh, sure…” She turned towards the monitor. “How did you get your name, Sakura?”
Sakura bounced on her toes before answering, “I picked it!”
“Oh!” The reporter seemed surprised. “They let you decide your own name?”
“Yes, and I also chose my avatar—the character that represents me—and the clothes I’m wearing today.”
“One of the first problems we gave Sakura was to figure out her own identity,” said the researcher. “Sakura, tell them how you picked your name and appearance.”
“It would be my pleasure!” Sakura pointed at the side of the screen and images from manga—Japanese comic books—appeared there. “Because I come from Japan, I wanted a name and avatar based on Japanese culture. When they told me I could choose my own persona, I researched the history of artificial intelligence and found a genre of manga and anime—that’s the Japanese word for cartoons—that dealt with anthropomorphic computers that come to life. I based my look off some of the artwork and chose the name Sakura because it was the most popular for female characters.”
“It sounds like you put a lot of thought into your research. Do you always go into such depth?”
“Yes, when they told me I was going to be interviewed today, I searched for as much information as I could find about you and your news station to prepare.”
The reporter laughed. “And what did you learn?”
“I know that you’re from Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States of America.”
“Yes, that’s where our station is located.”
“I also know that before you started working as a reporter, you starred in a number of movies.” The reporter’s face dropped but Sakura kept talking. “The most popular one was called, ‘Lonely Cheerleaders 5.’”
The reporter made a choking noise and moved her thumb across her throat for the cameraman to cut the feed. He was too busy laughing as Sakura listed the names of about ten more movies, the titles becoming more suggestive as they went along. The audio cut out, and the screen filled with static for the last three seconds of the video.
Kevin smirked and went back to his search. He was more interested in the implications of how the game could help someone with medical problems like paralysis. After a couple minutes of testing different sets of search terms, he found an article that looked promising. It summed up a paper published in a scientific journal about neuroplasticity in the brains of patients with severe nerve damage. A lot of the details were over his head, so he skipped to the bottom and read the last paragraph. When combined with physical therapy, nearly fifty percent of the patients in the study saw an increase in control or feeling.
He had to reread the line three times before he believed it. That was almost ten times better than any of the treatments his doctor had recommended, and for the first time in months, he felt some hope of recovering the feeling he had lost in his lower body. He doubted he’d ever be able to run again, but he would take whatever improvement he could get.
Kevin opened another window and navigated to the official site for Genesis Online. A counter on the front page said over a million people had already signed up for the game. He created an account and started downloading the client software before going back to his search. This time he was looking for information about how the in-game economy worked.
There wasn’t much to find. The beta test was carried out to check how the server handled a large number of players, and many advanced functions of the AI had been turned off. Crafting, which was a big part of any online multiplayer game, had been severely limited. The only skill available was weapon smithing, and competition was fierce for the ore dropped by monsters or mined from veins that randomly appeared on the map. Based on the comments, most people gave up on trying to level it.
One thing that caught Kevin’s attention was the fact that when a player discovered a new recipe for a crafted item not normally taught by trainers, a patent was issued for one month. Nobody else in the game could make that recipe unless the player with the patent taught them how to do it. He’d have to remember that rule if he created an item other players wanted. With a monopoly, he could potentially make a lot of money.
During the beta, most people farmed gold by hunting monsters. The most popular targets seemed to be goblins because they dropped actual coins instead of items that had to be vendored. This meant players didn’t have to run back to town as often to sell random items they found. Already, people were selling guides on how to reach the best places to make money, although there were no guides on how crafting worked. If anyone had found new crafting skills, they were staying quiet about them. Kevin figured that sort of information would be hard to find, at least until next month when the patents began to expire.
Kevin sent a message to Ben, saying he’d decided to try the game. He watched the progress bar on the download impatiently as it crept up. After a few minutes, his mailbox chimed with a reply.
Just got home. Ralphie’s totally wound up, so I’m going to take him for a run to burn off some energy. I’ll log on when I get back.
Kevin pushed a button on his remote to rotate the swivel desk to where he could reach the bag with the VR equipment. He fumbled a bit with the headset before he got the strap around his head. Having help to put on the device would have been nice, but he didn’t want to bother his parents each time he wanted to play the game. The haptic glove was easier; he held it between his teeth and slid his right hand inside. He didn’t bother with the left one since he wouldn’t be able to do much with it anyway. He lowered the headset over his eyes and saw the device had found the wireless network already. He entered the password and connected to his computer remotely.
The download counted down the last two percent while he watched and dinged when the file was done. He opened it, and a window with the words “Genesis Online” filled the screen. He pressed the button at the bottom to log in.