Well then, seems like a good start I think? We will see if I can keep that up, hehe~
_____________________________________________________________
With a ping another complaint arrived in the GM′s message box. As always at this time of the night he was all alone in the GM headquarters main lounge. The sudden ringtone never even fazed him, despite the fact that he was half asleep. He lazily opened his eyes with a yawn and blinked a few times. As his blurry vision cleared up he took in his surroundings. A bleak room with a small wooden table surrounded by five matching chairs and the small green couch he was resting on entered his view. There were neither windows nor doors in this boring white-walled room. The GM lounge was after all one of the places the games players would never get to see. There was no need for fancy decoration and thus the room was kept practical.
This room was part of one of the less popular virtual reality games on the market. These games which allowed the players to experience an entire world filled with sights, sounds, tastes, smells and even touch as if they were real had become standard about twenty years prior. Now there were countless games of various genres on the market. This particular game was like any run of the mill fantasy massive multiplayer online roll playing game out there. There were monsters to slay, castles to build and dungeons to explore. The only thing that made the game stand out at all was the fact that it had a somewhat superior artificial intelligence managing the NPCs actions, which would allow slow but gradual advancement in the game world. There were new technologies developed at all times and the game world which had launched in a medieval setting had reached the point of an industrial revolution not too long ago.
With a groan the GM halfheartedly swiped his hand over the scroll shaped icon that indicated he had mail. In front of him the message spread out and he read quietly fighting the urge to go back to sleep.
"Hello GM =)
Should I order pizza or Chinese takeout?
~Monkayman"
"Hello Monkayman,
Thank you for your ticket.
Chinese. Pizza is overrated.
~GM"
"Alright I′ll take pizza then ;P.
~Monkayman"
With a sigh the GM closed the chat box. Due to firm policy he wasn′t allowed to be impolite to the players. Even if they bothered him with useless things. This one for example already knew from the start that he would take pizza and just spammed for the heck of it. The GM was used to this treatment. If there was one thing he had learned within the past 5 years in this line of work it was that playing along made the attention needy spammers stop the fastest.
Before the GM had the chance to turn around and continue sleeping another ping heralded the next ticket. The GM routinely browsed the new message and slowly got up, shaking his limbs to get the sleepiness out of them.
"Hello GM,
my guild just killed the boss "Venzalos the Dark" but there were no drops. Can you help us?
~Irth"
This was the actual reason the company still bothered with game masters. A real bug. Finally something to fix. The GM smiled and teleported towards the player Irth while joining the guilds chat room just to be sure they didn′t try to cheat him. He browsed their latest chats and deemed the request real. With a thought he left the invisible mode and illuminated the dungeon with his GM robes. Those robes were always surrounded by ones and zeros in a neon colour of the GM′s choosing. They made him easily recognizable for the players who called him. Currently there were only 5 GMs employed by the game company. Their game wasn′t the most popular so it couldn′t be helped. Among the five this GM was the only one who never took of the robes hood. He was also the only GM to choose the colour neon green for his robe. Long term players were already familiar with him. This time however a relatively new guild called him so they didn′t know him yet.
"There he is."
"It′s a GM cool, it′s my first time seeing one!"
"That gear looks awesome. Can I get that too?
"Nah I think it′s some kind of GM uniform, the last one I saw wore that too, just in red."
"More importantly, do you think he will give us the loot?"
"I really want that staff~"
"No the shield! It has to be the shield."
While the guild chat buzzed with activity the GM calmly looked through the raid group's battle log and confirmed the fact that there was no loot distributed. As the experience wasn′t awarded either the GM already knew how to solve this particular bug and began to hack away at a summoned keyboard. After looking at the monsters code his suspicions were confirmed and he easily fixed the problem.
GM:"Alright, I confirmed the fact that this boss was bugged and fixed it. This is the loot that was supposed to be dropped, oh and the experience too."
Irth:"Wow that was fast, thank you GM!"
With a smile the raid leader took the loot. The entire party was momentarily engulfed in blue light as the experience was distributed equally to all participants.
GM:"If that was all I will take my leave now. Good luck with the dungeon."
Irth:"Yes, thanks again. bye bye!"
"Yay my bow dropped!!!<3"
"NOOOOO. It took ages to kill that one! Where is my stafffff?"
"Haha get over it."
"Easy for you to say! You weren′t mana drained and used as a fricking melee mage!"
At that point the GM left the guild chat and teleported back to the lounge. There was no need to linger after all. The GM wasn′t a gamer himself so while the terms were familiar and he had seen people play enough to understand how raids worked in general, he simply didn′t care about the technicalities of DPS measurement and optimized damage, heal and aggro output.
The GM walked towards the couch and was just about to return to his job of waiting for tickets when something changed. It was a slight change. A shift in the way the virtual game felt, no maybe it was a lag. With a frown the GM sat at the table instead and summoned his keyboard to search for the reason. Within a short amount of time he was able to determine that it was a server wide lag. Fixing that sadly wasn′t within his capacity so he tried calling his superior to report the lag and have the IT team handle it. However, there was no connection.
After all the capsule he used to access the game needed the internet to connect to the server itself in order to play. If there was no internet... how was he still here? Maybe his capsule didn′t process it yet...he was about to be disconnected. For sure. But capsules are state of the art technological equipment. How could it still not have processed that? Was it broken? Damn those things are expensive. Surely any second he would be disconnected. Surely. But what if...
Before dangerous thoughts could fully enter his head he started to log out. The familiar timer counted down from 10. Once the timer hit zero he would contact headquarters.
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
...
The GM opened his eyes to the same scene as before. There was an ugly green couch, a table and a bunch of chairs in a doorless room.
He rubbed his eyes and called his menu up. Nothing strange...
Not one to give up fast the GM tried again. However, when he pushed the icon of an open door he received a message instead.
"You are not logged in therefore you cannot log out. Please log in to log out."
The GM tried again. The same message appeared. He closed it impatiently and tried again. Same message. He didn′t close the window and just kept hitting the open door icon. And of course the only change was that his surroundings were gradually filling up with the same joke of a message. After five minutes of hammering at the icon in increasing panic he spent another 10 clearing out the message windows and calming himself down as much as possible.
Thoughts about certain anti-VR activists and their unreal fears of being stuck in a game echoed in the GM′s head.
In his panic the GM hadn′t even noticed the flood of tickets that arrived one after the other in his ticket box. With dread he looked at the counter. "262...263...264..." With shaking hand he pushed the scroll icon.
"Help me I can′t log out!!!!! :((((((" ~ Flagraiser
"This is so creepy. I think I can′t log out...." ~ Gorger
"What is going on? Is this an april′s fool? But it′s august! Please let me log out!!!"~KittenoftheDark
"What do you think about cheese?"~ TrueRebel
"Did you notice that lag just now or was it just my capsule?"~Freddiefred
"Why can′t I log out? Something is strange with my menu, I just keep getting some joke message...Did I break it? Please! I have insurance so let me log out for now!!!! I can pay you back!!!!"~Cyberninja
"I will totally sue you for not letting me log out. I will be rich!"~AnotherChaos
Somewhat overwhelmed the GM scrolled through the tickets and saw his fears come true.
With a prayer that he would be able to keep his job after this the GM made an announcement.
GM Announcement:"Dear customers some of you might have noticed that the logout function has a slight problem right now. Do not worry. The game companies employees are searching for a solution to the problem right now. It probably won′t take too long. It is advised that you do not try to logout for now as the burden on the logout server might be too much if everyone tries to logout at once."
After the announcement the GM sighed in relief. Talking in front of lots of people simply wasn′t his forte.
As a GM his job was customer service. As such it was his job to calm them yet he never expected this sort of situation to pop up.
The GM leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes while rubbing his temple. After remaining in this position for at least five minutes, the GM glanced at the ticket box's counter to see that it had risen once more. 2450 complaints awaited answers.
Deciding that he could contemplate this question if he lost his job because of his choices, the GM once more searched for a way to fix the problem.
___________________
Hours passed as the ticket box's counter reached new heights. The GM didn′t give up. Where was the problem? Where was the solution. He didn′t even have a hunch as to what could have gone wrong.
Honestly speaking, the GM′s efforts were futile. He knew that from the start. A bug that could affect the logout function had to be deeply rooted in the system. Out of reach of the GM′s area of influence. After three hours of searching he had found nothing out of the ordinary and his coworkers of the IT team had obviously not solved the problem either. The frightening part however was that there was no contact. Why were they unable to contact him?
As the GM got up to once more pace the room like a caged animal he came to the conclusion that he had to assemble the players and properly calm them. A few lies would do. The GM hated to lie.
With a thought he teleported to the city of Grauling. It was the centermost city of the continent and thus would allow the players to travel back to their original locations the fastest. He walked the streets of Grauling taking in the scenery of an industrial town. Plumes of smoke escaped high furnaces and the noises of the street and some machines mixed to a generally unpleasant sound.
People crowded the streets and passed through the GM, unseeing. Most of them were NPCs. An ashen faced, dirty worker carried a crate, then a young boy came up to him and handed over a basket filled with bread and meat. There was a pickpocket skillfully bumping into people and a seasoned city guard flirting with a pretty lady.
As the GM passed by these scenes, he didn′t even take them in properly. His mind was on the task at hand. What he couldn′t help but spot was an armored player sitting in an alley with a vacant look, more players screaming and shouting in the plaza up ahead, unbeknownst of the surrounding NPCs, and the pinging of his ticket box.
Ping ping ping ping ping. Once the sound effect had died out it was immediately followed by the next. At this point the GM couldn′t muster the courage to look at the counter. The number was immense. That much was sure.
Once the GM reached the plaza, a beautiful place, void of all the garbage the city streets usually sported, he climbed on top of the pedestal of the marble statue of this city′s founder.
Content with his choice of location the GM teleported all the players into the plaza below him.
Shouts grew loud as the people arrived, each more confused than ever. Before the mass hysteria could grow even more the GM switched to visible mode and silently waited for the players to take note of him. They did and the screaming and shouting of 3000 players was exchanged for whispering and pointing towards him.
The GM felt awful. He hated being in the spotlight like this but didn′t see another way. He mustered his courage and began to speak in a calm and sonorous voice that reverberated throughout the entire city.
"Please calm down. There is no need for panic, nor will panic help anyone. I know what you are thinking. The anti-VR faction was right. We actually ended up trapped in a game and are doomed to stay here. I brought all of you here in order to assure you, that is not true! We may be unable to log out for now but a team of highly skilled programmers is in the process of fixing this bug. Give them a few more hours and they will free us."
The GM took a deep breath and continued his speech after looking at the uneasy crowd.
"I would like to apologize to all of you in the name of the game company. This mistake should never have happened in the first place. The least we can do is fix the problem and pay you an adequate sum in apology."
The players grew rowdy at that. Some became cheerful at the prospect of easy money, others shouted questions in hopes of being heard. The noise was overwhelming.
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The GM, long since drenched in cold sweat from being stared at by roughly 3000 people, easily outmatched the noise the crowd made.
"For now we will need to be patient until the experts solve the problem. I cannot answer all of your tickets at this time as there are too many. I am sure this matter won′t take too long. I will gather you up like this again once I have hopefully better news."
With these words the GM disappeared, leaving behind a crowd of frightened people. Unbeknownst to them he remained standing on the statues pedestal, watching them try to calm down. There were some interesting scenes playing out as every person reacted differently to the news.
Some simply walked away in relief, others fell to their knees, crying. There were some reunions as the members of guilds that had been spread around the continent met up for the first time in a while. Some were cheerful and happy. Some didn′t believe a word the GM had said. There was a man who just kept blankly staring at the spot the GM had been in. Beside those varied albeit peaceful reactions there were also some who threatened with violence or purposefully bumped into others to provoke a fight. As so many people with different thoughts and feelings about the matter were gathered in one spot, pandemonium ensued.
A few fights broke out and were immediately stopped by the NPC guards that patrolled the area. This however did nothing to quench the explosive atmosphere. The smart people had already left the plaza. Now only the most emotional ones, those who couldn′t convince themselves to believe the GM and those looking to vent their frustration remained.
As he watched the GM gritted his teeth. There was only so much he could do. He told himself over and over again. He needed to leave the problem to his colleagues. There was nothing he could do but idle about. He didn′t understand the code behind the virtual reality in the first place. It was classified.
Even before this event he had tried to get access to various functions. All in vain. Five years of working for this company had not brought him even a step closer to his original goal. The reason he became a GM in the first place. Growing up with virtual reality he was so fascinated by it. He wanted to know the how and whys behind it. He studied programming and he was good at what he did but he never penetrated even the first layer of security of a virtual reality game. It was too formidable.
Thus becoming a GM gave him access to more information about the game. He learned a lot in those five years. However, no matter how much he learned, he never got close to the core information he wanted so badly. His dream was out of reach so the GM gradually lost his drive and became...contend. There were more important things in life after all, right?
Instead of focusing on this dream he could have a serious relationship with a person he loved. Maybe he would build a family with that person in the future. Being a GM was a means to gain information in the beginning. However, gradually, in a process that took at least 3 years from start to finish, the GM accepted it as a mere job. A means to earn money, which would then be used to finance the truly important things in life. His dream became a memory of youthful foolishness.
Even now the thoughts of how different things could be now if the GM had succeeded in his quest for knowledge, frustrated him to no end. He wanted to leave this game but he found himself unable to. He wanted to help those players leave and was again too incompetent to be of any real help.
With a last look at the scene of chaos in front of his eyes, where people had arguments and an occasional fistfight, the GM teleported himself back to the lounge and took a seat at the table. A green keyboard materialized in front of him and one after the other various holographic screens lit up.
___________________________________________________
What felt like an eternity could not have been more than two days. The ticket box was gradually reaching its limit, as did the GM′s nerves. He felt like he was close to discovering something new about the familiar coding but there was no real progress if he thought about it. The feeling of being close to something vanished completely not long after it first appeared and the GM let his head slide down towards the tables surface.
"Why am I so useless?" he whispered so silently that even he had trouble hearing it.
Two days had passed without any change. He and exactly 3012 people were trapped in this game and he was seriously worried for his real body by now. Suddenly the GM′s powerless depression changed into pure blissful rage. He got up in a rush of anger and threw the table and three of the chairs to the ground.
"I can′t fix it. I just can′t. I CAN`T FIX IT!!! USELESS!!! I tried it all but won′t even come close."
He paced the room, periodically approaching a wall just to hit it and kick it. He summoned his menu and kept hitting the logout icon, blinding himself as an assault of messages built a cage around him.
He felt more trapped than ever. The messages, the doorless room, the game. It was just too much. With a thought he teleported himself up into the air, to the upper limit of the game world. He furiously hit each and every one of the windows surrounding him as gravity did it′s work and he plunged towards the planet below. The sight, the rush of air and the speed would have fascinated him had he not done this hundreds of times before. Now, however, the GM was simply angry. Not at the players who kept bugging him, the game that caged him in and kept him away from his beloved, or even the idiot programmers who had still not managed to get him out of this mess. His anger was directed at himself. And as he cleared away the last of the window cage he met face first with the forest below.
An explosion resounded, in the GM′s head. It was not pain, however, as GMs were considered indestructible objects in this game. The sound was merely the result of the GM′s imagination. To other living beings the scene of a man falling from the sky and landing on his head without any sound or indentation, just to get up and slowly walk away from the location would have been strange. There were no living beings around though, only NPCs and the occasional monster. On top of that the GM was still invisible, so nobody should have seen this little escapade.
The GM felt better. Venting really was important. His head felt so empty, no, clear. He actually felt good. There was something wrong with him, he decided, and slowly walked through the calming scenery of an autumn forest with little animals and some monsters pacing around. It was in this peaceful scene and state of clear-headedness that the GM finally had an idea, that really should have been obvious from the start.
As he put his palm to his face the GM laughed like a person who had been stranded at sea, finally seeing the coast.
There was nothing happy about this laughter.
______________________________________
Not even fifteen minutes after his discovery the GM had once more assembled the players in Grauling′s main square. This time around the rowdy crowd wasn′t as obedient as before. They were undeniably filled with justifiable aversion towards the GM who had not only promised them their freedom but also had not responded to their tickets. The GM had lied to them.
There was no sign of progress and just like him, their main concerns were their real bodies which had been left behind. Two days without water were enough for a human to die. Even if they could return now, wouldn′t they just die of dehydration?
A nagging fear and inability to do anything relevant forced many of them into a similar state of anger or depression as the GM had just gone through. Once the players had oriented themselves enough to realize that the GM had gathered them again they instantly began insulting him, cursing him and threatening him. Some even went as far as to claim that their imprisonment was the GM′s plan all along.
Their tirades were interrupted by the person in question. In the same sonorous voice, which seemed to reach even the farthest reaches of the city the GM spoke.
"I will be honest with you. I lied to you. From the very beginning until now I was unable to establish contact with the outside world-"
The GM hesitated to continue as the shouts became louder. He swallowed hard and continued.
"Sorry for ignoring you guys for the past two day. I was looking into ways to get all of us out of here."
The crowd abruptly quieted down at this. A hopeful smile graced his lips, not that anyone saw, clad in his hood as he was.
"I have an idea. But to do this I need your help. As a GM, one of my tasks is to kick troublemaker, who break the game′s rules, out. Your character will be deleted, but you will also be logged out. All you need to do is to commit one of the major offenses. The system will then allow me to throw you out of here."
As he finished his explanation the crowd had gone completely quiet. So when a voice was raised the GM was able to hear it clearly.
"You already lied once. How can we trust you? Won′t this kill us?" a man with a glorious moustache asked.
"I don′t see another way. Sure, there is the possibility that the IT team will get us out of here... but it′s been two days. Anymore than this could be critical for some..." The GM answered.
In moments the crowd was again too noisy to filter out individual questions. The GM simply waited, but even that felt difficult. The pressure was immense. What if something went wrong? Maybe he should have tried it on somebody before gathering all of them.
"Anyway, everyone of you can decide on their own whether they want to do this or not. I will be automatically notified if one of you commits an offense and I will take that as a sign that you want to be kicked out." The GM switch into his invisible mode again and sighed in relief. Finally there would be no more speeches in front of huge crowds.
Not even two minutes later a red window appeared in front of him with a deeper sound than the friendly ping of his message box.
"Player PotatoDisciple has committed the major offense: attempted hacking"
Pleased with this fast reaction the GM proceeded with the plan and threw the player out. He then checked the system and searched all the player databases for this user. There was no trace of him left. The GM finally had his confirmation. They had a way out of this trap! Finally!
In good cheer the GM watched as more and more players committed offenses. There really were all kinds. Sexual harassment, trying to tell the NPCs that they were not real people and spamming the common chat with nonsense. Normally a GM wouldn′t pursue most of these offenses as they were comparatively minor. The hacking one would have been ignored too. Actually only the sexual harassment would be troublesome, due to the fact that other players were inconvenienced by this.
It was somewhat stressful to throw all these players out one at the time. Only then did the GM actually start to understand what logging 3000 players one by one meant. After one hour, he had only thrown 70 people out. The GM quickly calculated the amount of time he would need to remove all of them from the game and gulped. About 43 hours if he didn′t take a break?!
With a sigh the GM released another announcement.
GM Announcement:"People, this entire log out business will take a long time as my current speed is 70 people per hour. Please don′t get too impatient while you wait, I′m doing my best here."
The only reason why he was so slow was that he had to wait for a countdown with every person he threw out and couldn′t work on more than one case simultaneously.
In this way the long process of throwing people out of the game began.
_______________________________
With bags under his eyes the GM regarded the empty space in front of him. He waited for a few second before stretching his sore muscles. Well they weren′t sore in the physical sense. This was a game and nobody got sore muscles in a game. No, he felt sore because he had spent days logging people out. He hadn′t slept a wink ever since he had been trapped in the game and felt like he had been ran over by a truck.
There were no more offense reports before his eyes. With mild cheer, the intensity being dampened by sheer fatigue, he congratulated himself.
Freedom! He would now free himself! The players had enough time to decide their fates and he would definitely not share the fate of those who chose to stay behind. In anticipation which overwhelmed his tiredness and filled him with a rush of adrenaline he began hacking into the system itself. He made a mistake on purpose to make the system detect and remove him.
A message sprang up in front of his eyes and his heart fell as he read it.
"Nice try GM, but you will have to improve your abilities to enter the main system. Your superiors have been notified and will deal with this offense in due time."
The system wouldn′t kick him out. It wouldn′t kick him out? He wouldn′t get out. He couldn′t leave. He was trapped. Trapped. Trapped. TRAPPED!!!!!
"LET ME OUT YOU SHITTY SYSTEM!!!!! LET ME OUTLETMEOUTLETMEOUT!!!! This isn′t fair! Just let me out!"
As the GM raged on nothing changed. No matter how badly he pleaded the system for his release, the program remained unyielding. Even when he tried the other offenses the result remained the same.
There was no way out.
He was trapped.
Everybody could leave. Everybody but him?
Unable to think clearly the GM teleported to the lounge and lied down on the green couch. Before he could even completely close his eyes he had already drifted into a deep dreamless sleep.
________________
When he awoke he felt groggy. As if he had slept too much and had become tired from sleeping more than necessary. For a while the GM felt unable to get up but pulled himself together when he took a look at his message box counter. There were 7809 messages to be read. Without a thought the GM deleted all of them in one go. Those people weren′t here anymore. No need to read their messages.
As he thought about the people who were able to leave the GM was filled with envy. His heart felt frozen due to the shock and he still couldn′t properly place what he thought about all of this...mess.
What would he do now? He was literally trapped at work. And if there was one thing he knew it was the fact that he wouldn′t work.
Maybe he should just hole up in the lounge and spend his days searching for a way out. On the other hand he could just play the game until whatever life-support his real body enjoyed was stopped and he met a predictable end.
There was a problem with the second option though. As a GM all the mobs were oblivious towards him and wouldn′t attack even if he tried to start a fight. This too was one of the features he had no access to, so there was no way for him to change it.
The GM stopped thinking about his own future and started to examine the player count. There were exactly 290 players left.
There were a few familiar names among this group, even an entire guild with only a few people missing. The GM shook his head, thinking they were nuts. Perhaps they were?
"Well after that working marathon I definitely need a vacation." the GM said and at the same time took note of the fact that he shouldn′t talk to himself.
He shrugged it off and simply attributed it to his groggy self, then teleported to a tropical island in the westernmost region of the continent. It was an uninhabited island which would allow him to rest as much as he wanted.
___________