Manuel wasn’t around when Rick arrived at Hector’s for his first real training session. Instead, Jerry wordlessly led him around the laundry machines, and back down the steps to the setup in the basement, then left him alone in the bright, empty simulation room.
“Hello?” he asked.
One set of the lighting array turned off, dimming the brightness.
“Take a seat. You can plug yourself in, right?” It was an unfamiliar female voice. Rick thought she sounded young.
“Uh, sure.” He approached the chair. “Where… uh”—he looked around the room for the source of the voice—“where are you?”
“Oh, right. Hector probably didn’t tell you. I’m Alex. I’m your trainer from this point on. You won’t find me in the room. I’ve logged in remotely.”
“Is that gonna—”
“It’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.” She didn’t sound annoyed, but not friendly, either. “Go ahead and sit. We’ll be game-side soon.”
Rick nodded, though it was likely she didn’t see him, unless there were cameras in the room. That made him chuckle. Of course there are cameras in the room. With this much expensive equipment? He reached for the cable to have it in hand as he sat. Self-plugging was just a matter of practice, and he’d had plenty. A tingle went down his spine as the cable slid into the connectors in his implant. “I’m plugged in, now wha—” The blackness took him before he could finish.
When the blackness faded, he’d expected the training room. In place of the grey walls with colored stripes of the unadorned room he’d experienced in his session with Manuel, now he stood at the mouth of a cave, looking outward. There was a small clearing in front of the cave, and a dirt path wound through a forest composed mainly of leafy green, deciduous trees.
Instead of his blue boxer’s trunks, he was dressed in loose-fitting grey pants and a matching shirt. He wore minimalistic dark grey boots with slim soles that transmitted every detail of the uneven surface beneath his feet. Pale yellow cotton strips wrapped his palms and wrists, leaving his fingers free.
Rick pulled his shoulders back to stretch his chest. A light breeze rippled his shirt, but it was neither cold, nor hot. He stepped forward, then stopped as something entirely unexpected made him smile. The trees. Not that they existed, but their scent in the air was distinct and uncanny, intermingled with the odor of other, unidentifiable wild plants—earthy and heady—the sort he’d experienced when he was a child at the park.
Her voice rose behind him. “Impressive, isn’t it?”
Rick gasped and spun. “Holy fuck! Where did you come from?”
She was tall for a woman, perhaps 5’9” or 5’10”—almost as tall as he was. Short black hair framed a narrow, graceful face. Rick’s heart thumped in his chest from the shock, both of her instantaneous appearance and her striking beauty.
She tilted her head and wore a confused look. “Where did I come from? Same place you did.” She leaned in as if inspecting a strange art piece or something similarly out of place. “You really are new to this, aren’t you?”
He blinked. “Are you—”
“Alex, yeah.” She extended her hand.
When he reached for it, she jerked him off his feet and sent him stumbling back into the cave, where he lost his footing and thudded against the sandy ground.
She ambled toward him until she stood over him “First lesson—your opponent is never your friend. Got it?”
She extended her arm again, as if to help him up.
He shook his head and rose without reaching for her hand.
“Good. You’re a quick study. I usually get people the second time, too.” She smiled and shifted back and forth.
Rick stepped back quickly and raised his arms.
She laughed. “Not yet. You got the lesson.” She turned and walked away, obviously unafraid he’d attack her from behind. As if she read his mind, she said, “Don’t bother. I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.”
He dusted the sand off his clothes, marveling at how lifelike it all felt. The training room had been one thing, but this was a level of verisimilitude beyond anything he’d experienced.
“You get used to it,” she said, not looking at him.
Anxiety gnawed at his guts. The woman before him wasn’t a wireframe representation of an enemy. What would happen when he had to fight? Her throw had come so quickly, it hadn’t activated his conditioning, but that wouldn’t be the case in an actual fight. He gazed at the cloudless sky and the tops of the trees where a flock of birds alighted, rustling the leaves and branches more than the wind would have.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Everything he’d learned about Ruckus Online informed him it was an “elimination” type of contest. The game had shown up in the mainstream press from time to time as its popularity had risen, so even though the idea of a simulated reality fighting game made him uneasy, it was hard to avoid learning at least something about it.
Like old, non-Deep-Sim games from decades ago, a ring of some sort slowly closed on a large map, forcing combatants to get closer and closer as time moved on. Different games handled it differently. In some, getting caught outside the ring in any capacity meant instead “death” or removal from the match. In others, being caught outside the ring gave you at least a small amount of time to get back inside the ring, but the damage to the health of the character was rapid.
Rick glanced around as he left the shallow cave again.
Alex waited for him, but after several seconds of his searching, she asked, “Dude, what are you looking for?”
“The ring. How do you know how far out it is, or if it’s about to overtake us, or—”
Her laughter cut him off. “This isn’t a real match, man. We wouldn’t show up at the same place if we were really opponents in an honest-to-God match. What are you, fresh off the truck, or—”
“Nobody explained shit to me, lady.” Rick had endured all the insults he would tolerate. “I don’t learn anything well this way, so if this is gonna be the way it is the whole time, I’m getting the fuck out of here right now.” He glared at her. “I’m just a courier. I never said I could do this. I’m already ahead two-hundred bucks and a bottle of pills, and I’m perfectly happy going back to running packages.”
She said nothing, but she seemed to be sizing him up.
“Do you fucking understand me?”
She nodded, then smiled. “Manuel was right.”
He shook his head. “What?”
“Manuel. He said you must’a been a shit-kicker once. Said he didn’t know what had happened to you, but it’s just the way you carry yourself.”
“What about the way I carry myself?” he asked.
She sighed. “You think Hector didn’t tell me anything about you?” She looked at him like she expected an answer, but when he didn’t oblige her, she continued. “You don’t hang out with the other couriers. You’re polite. You’re good at your job, all that shit.”
He shrugged. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Hector can’t put his finger on it, but I can.”
“That right?”
She nodded.
He leaned forward. “You gonna enlighten me?”
Alex looked at the sky like she was contemplating, then winked and said, “Nah.”
When Rick screwed up his face in frustration, she said, “But I’ll stop busting your balls. You’re right. You really don’t need to be here.”
“Thanks,” he said.
She spun on her heel and walked farther down the path. When she got a good distance away, he sighed and stomped after her. After all, she did promise not to bust his balls anymore.
*************************************
“Hold up,” she said.
He’d caught up to her quickly, following her out of the clearing and a good distance down the path, but she hadn’t said a word until then. He stopped and she pointed.
“I don’t—”
“Shhh!” She put her finger to her lip in the universal sign of shut the fuck up.
Rick shrugged, but lowered his voice. “Why are we stopping?”
She shook her head. “I’m gonna start making bets with Manuel about how many ambushes you’ll walk into before you learn to stay on your toes.”
He looked more closely. Ah, what’s that? The leaves of a bush in the distance rustled ever-so-slightly, and a patch of red fabric was visible for a moment before it disappeard again. “Ohhh…” Another brief rustling on the other side of the trail caught his attention. “How many?” he whispered.
“Keep looking,” she said.
“Are these other players?”
She frowned. “Bots. Duh.”
Bots. Non-player characters. “How good is their AI?” he asked.
“If you walk into an ambush, how good does it have to be? You haven’t even picked up an advanced move, or a training point, or booster.” She appeared to notice his uncomprehending frown and continued. “If you’re not a fighter, that’s fine, but aren’t you a gamer?”
Rick frowned. Once, a long time ago, he played fighting games—the old arcade type with specialized joysticks and flat screen televisions of all things. But then his life had been interrupted. “I haven’t really had time to play games, not for a long time.”
Alex squinted one eye and stared.
“I mean, I used to play fighting games—”
Her eyes lit up. “Good! Virtual reality, or—”
“Nope. Flat screen.”
She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Did they have special moves? A super meter or something like it?”
He nodded. “Yeah, there was some strategy involved, but mostly you had to”—he put his arms up like he was preparing to fight—“just know the strengths and weaknesses of your, I dunno, whatever—”
“Your main. Yeah, okay.” She smiled and nodded again. “It’s not perfect. Ideally, you’d have at least tried one of the VR MMOs to get an idea how to maneuver in this sort of space, but I think it’s something we can work with.” She shook her head quickly, in a tight arc. “How did you manage to not play Worlds of Discovery? I thought everyone played it—shit, my mom played it.”
“Uh…”
She sighed. “What the fuck do I care, right? I ain’t tryna be all up in your business. It’s just… weird.” She turned to gaze further up the trail where the ambushers awaited them. She muttered, as if talking to herself, “You’re just fuckin’ weird, is all. But I knew that. Right?”
Rick ignored her, gazing in the same direction she did. Slowly, he crept closer to his trainer, careful not to get too close.
She turned and laughed at him again. “What, are we at a Catholic middle-school dance? You’re gonna get seen, you doofus.” She pulled him close behind her, and because she was shorter than he was, he followed her line of sight by peering over her hair. It smelled like shampoo. Damn. She’s—
“Okay, so we could avoid them now that we know they’re there, but they’d make for a good starting fight. Outside training, you might never be part of a team. I guess it depends what sort of person you are.” She didn’t look back. “I’m guessing you’re not the social type.”
He grunted.
“They’re about fifty yards up. How fast can you run?” she asked.
“I’m a courier,” he said.
“I mean your—” She stopped herself. “You’ll see. Count of three?” She continued staring ahead.
He nodded.
“If you’re nodding, you know I can’t see you, right?”
Oops. “Count of three,” he said.
“One…”
Was he ready for this? Nothing about this environment seemed synthetic, and if those bots looked like the training dummy had the day before when he’d first had to fight, this training session would be brief.
“Two…”
His heart rate climbed, but he wasn’t dizzy yet. Maybe the bots wouldn’t present a challenge. Maybe he’d overcome the—
“Three!” Alex raced down the path toward the ambusher on the right.
Oh fuck. Here goes…