….
…..
INITIALIZING…
SYNCING…
READY
My Horizon corneal implant displayed simple text that seemed to float in the air. It was a bit jarring, though, because when I tried to focus on the words on the left side of my vision, the whole image would fly around like a bat stuck in a kitchen. Coupled with the tightness under my skin from whatever had been injected there, I felt like a stranger in my own body. It would take some getting used to. It didn’t help that I was bare-ass naked and completely shaven for some unknown reason.
I shielded myself from view as best I could and peaked up over the edge of my pod. Eight other people sat up groggily and looked around gauging the situation. We had been placed in a sterile white recovery room, completely empty save for a smooth cylindrical table in the center that seemed to be built right into the floor. Everyone else – just as naked and hairless - looked similarly uneasy, save for one.
A huge man glanced around rapidly, hungry, the unmistakable eyes of a hunter. Before most of us even had our bearings, he vaulted out of his pod and launched himself at his neighbor, a smaller middle-aged woman. She didn’t even have time to yell in surprise before one colossal hand gripped her neck and slammed her flailing down into her pod. Over and over, he bashed her against the hard inner shell, all while maintaining a passive just-another-Tuesday look on his face.
“HEY! Motherfucker, get off her!” Before I knew it, I was barreling towards him. To do what, I have no idea as he was easily twice my size. I just charged; arms outstretched towards the guy. He easily knocked me aside with his free hand and sent me careening in to the side of his pod. I caught myself quickly enough and sprung on to his back and started wailing, fruitlessly.
PLEASE CALIBRATE YOUR DEVICE
AT THE CENTRAL TERMINAL
By now everyone else had fully sobered up and realized what was happening. Two more people ran over to help while the rest scrambled to crouch behind their own pods. One of the new defenders, a tall younger man ripped as hell, wrapped up the attacker’s free arm and did his best to keep it controlled. The other, a guy who looked like every sitcom dad ever, grabbed at his other hand and tried to pry his fingers away from the woman’s neck. Her eyes had now shut, the flailing stopped, and blood began to appear from somewhere out of sight.
“Fuck off me!” The giant growled, not letting go. He hooked his elbow into the pod for leverage and started kicking at the man grabbing his arm. Three kicks in and a wretched pop echoed around the space. I could see the defender’s knee had buckled 45 degrees in the wrong direction before he crumpled. He screamed and released the arm which came grabbing at me.
I latched my legs around his waist and clawed at his face while his giant fist slugged blindly into my shoulder. I found his eyes and jammed my fingertips into the soft spot as hard as I could, burying my face in his neck opposite his free arm. He managed to grab one of my hands away, but not the other. It was enough he released the woman who rag dolled down into her pod so he could get my other hand out of his eye socket.
Now with both hands in his grip, he was able to fling me straight up over his head and across the room towards the center table. I hit the corner with the middle of my back and folded backwards before slumping on to the floor. His face was bloody and furious, and intent on killing me.
As he started to lumber in my direction, the dad-man whipped around the pod and shoulder-checked his back. The huge man lurched forward, tripped over the guy on the floor, and stumbled uncontrollably towards me. I curled up in the fetal position and protected my head. His arms swung wildly trying for balance or something to hold on to, but to no avail. He sailed headfirst into the console with a crack and collapsed on top of me.
The man who could still walk ran over to pull me out from under him, and kicked the oaf twice in the face for good measure. I got to my feet and we made our way to the two downed people.
The man on the ground was clutching at his thigh above his destroyed knee, bawling. I knelt next to him and reached for his hand to give him something to squeeze. He ignored it and mashed his forehead into my thigh. I just put a hand on his shoulder, there wasn’t really anything I could do to help here.
The other man leaned over the woman’s pod and reached in, first with one hand then with two. I couldn’t make out what he was doing, but it looked like he was trying to wake her up or turn her head.
After a short while he stood up and looked at me. “She’s dead.” There was less anger and more sorrow in his voice. He glared at the hulk on the floor. “Piece of shit.” His hands were balled up in tight fists, his upper body tensed. He forced himself to relax and asked “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I'll have some nice bruises later, but otherwise I’m good. This guy needs help quick though.” I answered.
“We need to get out of this room and find him a med-station. The rest of you can come out now. Cowards.” He said to the center of the room.
PLEASE CALIBRATE YOUR DEVICE
AT THE CENTRAL TERMINAL
The orientation room was supposed to be a safe place. I guess that’s why were naked, as it made everyone more defensive and gave us less opportunity to hurt each other. But that doesn’t mean it never happened. Some people are just assholes that see this is having a license to kill or commit heinous crimes they’ve always dreamed of. It’s more common than people like to admit. But we had gotten past that, at least for now, and could set up our devices. I propped up the man against a pod, trying to move his leg as little as possible, before moving to the terminal. Dad-man took a quick detour to place a few more kicks in to the large man’s nose and teeth before standing to my right.
The central terminal was divided into 12 slices each with a simple keyboard, touchpad, and stylus. Placing my hand on the pad prompted my Horizon implant to start its calibration routine. There were countless customization options, but I skipped most of them to work on later. I wanted to spend as little time in here as possible, and the terminal was only necessary to confirm that my neural inputs were correct and properly calibrated. Once I set my overlay tracking, opacity, and made the image on the right almost invisible I backed away from the terminal and returned to my pod. The door remained closed with no handle on the inside, so I took the time to go over my device a little.
I brought up my stats page:
____________________....................................................................................._________________________
LEVEL - 0
INTELLECT - 10 .....................................................................................................................................................PRIMARY EQUIPMENT:
CHARM - 10 ............................................................................................................................................................._________________
BODY - 10..................................................................................................................................................................________________
AGILITY - 10.............................................................................................................................................................________________
DURABILITY - +2...................................................................................................................................................
HEALTH - 10/10......................................................................................................................................................CURRENCY
UNASSIGNED POINTS - 0.................................................................................................................................REV - 600
EXPERIENCE REQUIRED - 20...........................................................................................................................
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU ARE LEVEL 1!
REST TO COMPLETE LEVEL-UP
A cursor blinked in the blank spot at the top. If I focused on it, I could enter a name. No visual keyboard appeared, but letters would materialize as I thought about them. I left it blank for now while I got familiar with everything. The other blank didn’t have the same cursor, but I knew it was for my chosen profession. I didn’t need to pick one before I left the room, but another screen indicated it may be a good idea, plus I was already mostly made up on that before coming in to this.
OBJECTIVES:
-
COMPLETE INITIAL SETUP
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
- INPUT NAME
- SELECT PROFESSION
-
RENDEZVOUS WITH YOUR MENTOR
Several people seemed to be taking their time with setup. Or they were faking it to keep an eye on everyone else. It occurred to me that the crying man on the ground would need to complete the process as well. The two dead people were probably exempt from today’s homework assignment.
“Hey man, I’m really sorry but I have to move you.” I said, squatting next to the guy. He was still clutching his leg, rocking back and forth. “I don’t think the door will open until you set up your Horizon.” He gave me a stiff nod and I could see his jaw clench. I grabbed him under his armpits and scooted him backwards on the ground until he could reach the table. He reached up with his right hand, and I placed it on the pad for him. We worked together to get his Horizon calibrated, with him mostly communicating with nods and head shakes while I managed the manual inputs. When he was able to work without the console I left him to it.
By that point, everyone else had started milling around. Most of them were trying not to look in the direction of the fracas, either through shame or because of weak stomachs. A woman about my age, short and a little heavy, asked the guy next to here, “What all do we need to do to get out of here?”
“Just your name. You can pick your profession, too, which should finish the first objective in your quest-log and level you up, but if you aren’t sure what you want, I wouldn’t do that yet. Its stupid expensive to change later.” The skinny kid said.
“Okay, thanks.” She answered and started to turn away. She stopped and looked back at him before asking, “Just our normal name? Or are we supposed to make one up?”
“Up to you. Some people use their birth name, but if it matches someone else’s name, you’ll probably have to put some numbers on the end of it to make it unique.” He said.
“What are you putting?” she asked.
He looked her in the eye for a long few seconds in a way that said, “I’m definitely not looking at your tits” before he responded in all sincerity, “I’m thinking something like ‘Blaze Hotman’ if it isn’t already taken.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Was all she said back before staring off in to the middle-distance to fill out her name.
I brought my own stats page back up. I wasn’t aware that names had to be unique, though I guess that wasn’t unusual. I checked my birth name, and it returned a list of alternate options.
Casey412
Casey222
Casey223
I really didn’t like the numbers added on the end. The more I thought about it, though, they wouldn’t be the worst thing. It’d be easier for people to confuse me with someone else if I were to find myself in some kind of trouble. And people wouldn’t call me by the numbers part. I’m sure they’d just say “Casey.” Still, I didn’t like it. It was my identity. I tried several other options based on my real name. “Kasey,” “KC,” “CM,” “CMo,” with and without my surname, but they all returned the same kind of list. Finally, I found one that didn’t return any alternatives.
Roane Morizu
ARE YOU SURE? THIS CAN NOT BE CHANGED.
I considered it for a moment and confirmed. I also made sure to uncheck the box for displaying my surname before I forgot about it. I liked the idea of using my middle name. My mom gave it to me, and she was the reason I’m doing this. She told me middle names weren’t really a thing anymore, but our family had held on to the tradition. It always made me feel like I had a connection to my heritage, and it made me feel special and unique because I got to have two names while most people only got one. There was almost nothing in that world I could say I had more of than someone else, but this I could, and no one could take it away from me.
Looking around the room I could see most everyone had entered their name. They were displayed as little bold and outlined white floating letters over the left shoulder of everyone. I could see “Blaze Firestalker” (did someone else seriously already take Blaze Hotman?), “Junebug720,” “Oryx,” and “Chodely Whipplespurt,” which was on the shoulder of a man with a dumb grin looking around to see who noticed his name. Dad-man’s name was “Gary” because of course it was. His last name must be hidden like mine. We were just waiting for the guy with the busted knee. No one rushed him.
While we waited, I played around with my stats a bit. I had points I could assign before I took my rest and solidified them with my level up. Focusing on any one stat would bring up a massive list of sub-skills. The organization seemed to be from most to least popular or useful and it was extensive. While I had 5 primary stat points I could assign, if I placed one of them on a specific sub-skill it would be boosted by a full 10. I guess if I really wanted to be good at chemistry, I could just jam a bunch of points in to that specific thing at the expense of the overarching stat and whatever other sub-skills I’d be ignoring.
INTELLECT: 10
MEMORY - 1..............................LANGUAGE - 1
READING - 1...............................CHEMISTRY - 1
LORE - 1.......................................RESEARCH - 1
LEARNING - 1.........................MATHEMATICS -1
REASONING -1 ...............................PHYSICS - 1
MEDICINE - 1...............................HISTORY - 1
The list went on and on, and it was the same for each of the primary skills. Adding a point to Intellect bumped some of the sub-skills up by 1, but not all of them. Adding a second point increased some of them by a second point, and others by an initial point. But it also increased my Charm and Agility stats by 1, as well as some of the associated skills on that side. Increasing Body increased Health and Charm every second point, while increasing agility also affected Intellect and didn’t seem to impact Body right away. It didn’t feel like there was much rhyme or reason to it. I could sort of intuit what might be impacted, but just when I thought I had the pattern figured out it wouldn’t repeat. For the time, I reset everything back to default so I could focus on my temporary companions.
ping. A faint notification sound played in my mind, and I could see a tiny green light in the corner of my vision. I clicked on it.
ALLY REQUEST: BLAZE FIRESTALKER
ACCEPT REJECT
Man, this kid worked fast. I accepted his request. Didn’t seem to be any harm in it. I looked his way to give him the half smile of acknowledgement and noticed his name now appeared green on his shoulder. Everyone else’s still appeared white.
“I highly suggest everyone ally with everyone else. You can’t attack an ally without first breaking the alliance. And if you break the alliance, your ally gets a ping and something like 30 minutes heads up.” Blaze Firestalker told everyone. It was a solid idea. It might let everyone relax a little bit.
By the time everyone had pinged everyone else and established their alliances, there remained only one white name in the group, “Morrighan Ravenscar.” She held her hands up and pled her case. “Nothing personal. I’m here to join up with a PvP crew. I’d rather be up front about it now rather than be accused of betrayal as soon as we get outa here. Not that I’m going to attack y’all once we leave, I’m just gonna terminate alliances when we do.”
“Fine,” Gary said. “Just please stand behind your pod. Nothing personal.” Morrighan agreed.
“How do you know all this stuff?” Junebug720 asked Blaze Firestalker. “Are you some kind of plant?”
"No! I just follow Galaxion really closely.” He said.
“Yeah a lot of people do, but they don’t tell you this stuff as a spectator.” She said.
“I’m a tier 2 mod on the Galaxion forums. I also have a podcast for it, and I’ve read all of the player journals. The NDA keeps us from sharing mechanical stuff, but things leak and other times guys on the forums piece together clues.” He seemed supremely confident. Blaze Firestalker was in his element.
“Huh. So why come in at all? You have a good job, you have a following, you don’t seem bored or anything. Are you just such a fan you couldn’t stay away?” She challenged.
“Kind of. I definitely have an advantage over the rest of you. I know every profession and what their abilities are, and I know every PvP crew and I know all the best places to get deals. But Gale Axion from ‘Player vs Poser’ called me out on her podcast, and we agreed to go in together. First one to make 100,000 rev wins, and the other has to shut down their show.” Blaze Firestalker was talking a mile a minute. He was worked up about the whole thing, clearly. But he caught his breath and added, “You can stick with me if you want. Partying up is the best way to go and I can hook you up.” Game respect game.
“Ok, yeah. I guess that’s okay for the start. I could use a tour guide.” She said, taking the wind out of his sail a bit. “What about you? What are you doing in here?” she asked Oryx.
"Same as most people I guess. Something new. Better opportunities." Oryx said while several of us, myself included, nodded in agreement. Most people didn't come to the Galaxion to slay dragons or go on epic adventures. Most of us were here because it was the only way to have some semblance of a life that wasn't preordained.
Ping! A slightly louder alert sounded. I needed to see if I can’t customize that. It seemed the guy on the ground, Kade apparently, had finished his setup.
ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO PROCEED
WITHOUT A PROFESSION?
I thought “no.” So many distractions, I’d forgotten to assign my profession. I brought up the list of hundreds of potential professions and scrolled through them. The selection process was less daunting than it seemed. It was one of the few things I had really come prepared for, and the sense of control over my own destiny was incredibly reassuring. With my target in mind, I still scrolled through the list to see what some of the other options looked like.
ACADEMIC
Type: Adventure --- Prerequisite: None
Lore hounds and information junkies often become academics. You are able to find useful knowledge where others cannot. On taking this class your mind works faster than others. You can identify points of interest with minimal knowledge. Pre-tech items gain 20% effectiveness. At high enough level, may convert to Professor for free.
I scrolled down to find Professor.
PRO
Type: Career --- Prerequisite: None
Professional sex worker. Upon taking this class you are granted 3 body-mod vouchers to be used however you wish. You have naturally high charisma and are adept at negotiation and social engineering. at higher levels you may retire as a Madam.
Nope, next one down. Though that did sound pretty lucrative and fun.
PROFESSOR
Type: Career --- Prerequisite: Academic Level 40
The natural evolution of the Academic. Once enough knowledge is gained, you can transition into professor. Able to impart your knowledge to others who may otherwise not have been able to use it (usually for a steep price). Native ability - Tenure - Immunity to control effects.
The Professor goal seemed like one of those professions people chose when they intended to stay in Galaxion forever. Plenty of people went that route. But it wasn’t for me. I kept hopping around.
STREET WITCH
Type: Adventure --- Prerequisite: None
A street witch uses their innate magical abilities and mastery of chemistry to cure or curse people around them. Typically associate with high-end hallucinogens, though their abilities are countless and they can often be a boon to groups and communities. You have a natural bonus to chemistry, and can identify most poisons or cut product by sight.
THIEF
Type: Adventure --- Prerequisite: Negative Alignment
Exactly what it sounds like. Naturally negative aligned. On assigning this class, you have the ability to steal Rev from players and non-players using your in-built skimmer. The longer you keep it in range, the more you can take. At higher levels you are able to appear as a friendly contact to anyone you are not actively enemies with.
Well that was concerning. A green name didn’t necessarily guarantee a friendly person. I’d have to find a way to double check at a glance if I managed to get enough green contacts. I did a search for similar abilities and found more than a few. Null, Janitor, Cleaner, and a bunch of others could appear as friendly, neutral, or sometimes with no name at all. Even Magical Girl and Vigilante could be troublesome with multiple aliases, each with their own abilities.
I scrolled back up until I found my profession. It’s one my sister had recommended. She thought it would keep me safe without being super boring like Shopkeep or Accountant. It didn't hurt that I'd be able to send back photos and stories to feed her zoology obsession.
ANIMAL CONTROL SPECIALIST
ACCEPT