Massively Multiplayer (9 page)

Even thinking about it made him dizzy with vertigo, and he had to fight for a moment to regain his equilibrium. The only way that immersive netvironments could work was by the suspension of the knowledge that your body was, in fact, lying back on a virtualounge in a small room in the suburbs. Consciousness of the programmatic functions which made up the room, his clothing, and even his self-perception could eventually arouse him from the self-hypnosis necessary for immersion. Willing his breath to slow, he placed his hands on the small dressing table. This was real.

And how very real it was. He realized that he could see a complex pattern of wood-grain in the table which he had never noticed before, probably because he had very carefully avoided noticing that it wasn’t there. It was an amazing illusion, and his admiration came close to toppling him out of the program again. If this was typical of the new version of Crucible, he imagined there were going to be a lot of players waking up suddenly with severe headaches.

The next half-hour was spent in preparation. He and Uriah and Wisefellow had used few of the supplies set aside for their assault on the sea-trolls’ lair, and he had only to pick and choose which belongings he would need to bring on the journey. Torches, tinder-box, extra knives, darts, poison and anti-venom, rope, and a folding grapple fit snugly into his traveling pack. In truth, he knew, the interior-dimensions of the pack were limitless, and he was only restrained by his character’s strength rating, a modest number originally based on his own physique but mildly improved over time as he advanced through the circles of experience in the game. This degree of awareness was not enough to cause him discomfort, though he knew some players felt that even such admissions ruined the game’s immersion. He had never cared that much, and besides, he would need to think in such terms to familiarize Gil’s new clients with the mechanics of Crucible -- if those, too, had not changed with the rollover to the new version. Gil would probably be less than pleased if Druin’s instructions got his new clients killed on their first day.

As he passed through the common room of the Grinning Pumpkin, he was amazed all over again at the scents, the sounds, the subtle textures on clothing and walls. He wasn’t alone. Most of the patrons were babbling excitedly over the new textures and sounds, sniffing excitedly at every surface and exclaiming at each new sensation. Yet, over the course of his trek up to Gil’s manse, he gradually became less and less surprised by the newly clarified world in which he found himself. This environment was, after all, and like every advance in computers for the past several decades, merely trying to approximate the real world as closely as possible. What more natural than that he should eventually tune out its complexity, just as one did in reality? The true triumph of technology, like the old dream of art, was self-transparency. By the time he reached Gil’s the transition was complete. At least for the moment, this was the real world.

“Ho, Gil.”

“Ho, Druin. Well met this day. Come, your charges await.”

Boy is he laying it on thick, Druin thought as he trudged through the mud towards the side-door of the manse, where four figures waited. Someone must have been paying thousands for the ever-practical Gil to act like that. Did these guys demand it, for the authenticity, or was Archimago going to pay Gil a bonus if he stayed in character the whole time?

Gil was talking again to the small band by the door: a woman, two men, and a fourth which Druin initially identified as a teenage boy. “This worthy is Druin Reaver,” Gil was saying, “and he will accompany you on your quest through the Drear Forest and introduce you to our land.”

“What quest?” the woman interrupted. “I thought we were going to a town or something.” She was tall and thin, a scarecrow with a bushy haircut. Her plain gray robes hung from her gaunt frame oddly, and Druin realized that she had it on backwards. She had a snapping, challenging voice, and the nervous hands of someone who looked like she was hunting for a cigarette. “Why are we going to that town if there’s a town right down there?”

Gil’s smile was strained. “Yes, Lady Jenna, as I have explained, it is important that you learn some of the geography of the region, and that you see what our land has to offer.” The words had the sound of a formula he had repeated many times. “Druin, this is Lady Jenna-“

“Ms.
Jenna,” the scarecrow interrupted.

“-Hearst.” Gil finished lamely. “
Lady
Jenna is new to our-fair-land and is eager to view-”

“I’m a damned conscript,” Ms. Jenna Hearst insisted, sticking out her hand to shake Druin’s. “My boss said I was going mental and the company psych. prescribed no less than two hours a day, for four weeks, in this program. Well, a bunch of programs, but all the rest of them looked like the kind of shows they give the post-trauma patients to calm them down. At least this one said I could do something in here. Don’t call me Lady.” This last she spat over her shoulder at Gil, who seemed weakly thankful to be moving on in his introductions.

He gestured to the man on the right, a short, dark fellow in gray leather, carrying a crossbow as though he knew how it worked. “This is Killian.”

Killian nodded politely, but silently. Druin guessed he was a regular gamer on other networks who had signed on to try Crucible after hearing the news of the update. If the entire netvironment were made over as convincingly as he’d seen this morning, there were going to be a lot of such converts showing up on familiar servers.

Gil was already moving on to the next man, who sported a thick moustache under a gray hood. “Rud the, uh, Magnificent.”

“
Almost
Magnificent,” Rud corrected, with a gleam in his eye. He too stuck out his hand. “Pleased to meet you. I’m actually an old hack at this, from back around version two-point-one. I saw the press releases about the new update and thought I’d give it a try again.”

Druin couldn’t resist the question. “
Almost
Magnificent?”

Rud nodded. “I was Magnificent when I used to play, years ago. But since I’m starting over, I had to log in under a new name, and I’m at the bottom of the heap again.” He gestured towards his own gray cloak, and the others’ similarly drab clothing. “I see they still make the newbies wear dirt. You always used to be able to tell how high up someone was by their clothes.”

Druin nodded. “That’s still the same. The higher the circle, the more flash the armor. But a lot of the system has changed. They totally revamped the combat for three-point-oh, and there’s a new content-manager for version four we’re just seeing today…”

“Yes, I noticed. Nice trees. Nice wall.”

“Ahem!” Gil coughed loudly, trying hard to glare at Druin while smiling politely at the other players. “If we might return to the preparations for the quest? Time grows short.”

Oh yeah, Druin thought, they are
definitely
paying him. Gil the shill, playing icy. Wisefellow would love this.

“Last, but not least,” Gil went on, indicating the teen, “Sir Malcolm. I am sure you shall get along particularly well, Druin.” For the first time, his eyes held sincere pleasure. The sight sent a chill up Druin’s spine.

“Sir…?”

“Malcolm!” A hand was stuck out. Tentatively, Druin shook it.

“Sir” Malcolm was taller than he had appeared from a distance, and Druin mentally revised his estimate to twenty or so -- near his own age, certainly. But Druin suspected that his own eyes had never held the righteous zeal that glittered beneath Sir Malcom’s shaggy bangs.

He pumped Druin’s arm with ferocious enthusiasm. He wore the same dull clothing of all new players, in his case a mild tan, but somewhere he had found the resources for a simple steel breastplate, which gave him the look of a gangly-legged beetle. There was a long sword strapped on his hip, a fifth limb which added to the illusion.

“Hi,” Druin said, recovering his hand. “Uh...you’re a newb. Where did you get the money for the armor?”

“There is no mystery, good Master Druin,” Malcolm declaimed, one hand upon his breast. “Yon hamlet is a den of iniquity, but e’en so may the righteous be rewarded in time of need. Verily, this very morn didst I announce unto the populace my intention to go a-questing, to right wrongs and slay evil, and received the blessings of the populace in coin, and fairer than coin, in the well wishes of those worthies.”

“You….what?”

“He begged for it,” Gil translated. “On the fountain, in the middle of town.” Druin noticed that Gil’s pseudo-medieval cant had vanished, swept aside by the torrent from Sir Malcolm, or merely drowned in his malicious glee at Druin’s discomfort. “He went down to the square in front of the armory and made a speech. A by-god proclamation. Sir Malcolm is a knight-errant, Dru, and he’s gonna’ right wrongs. He was very public about that.”

Gil’s grin was now wide enough that Druin could count his teeth. “Not by the fountain. On the fountain. He climbed it. Right. To. The. Top.”

“Indeed, good Master Druin!” Malcolm declared proudly. “In truth, I was most humbled, by the delight of the crowd, who made merry of the time, no doubt inspired by my pledge to rid them of the evils that plague them so!”

Druin gawked. “I’ll just bet you did. Gil, can I talk to you for a sec’?”

He pulled the older man aside, hissing into his ear. “What the hell is up with this llama? I’m not getting saddled with-”

“Oh no, Dru’, he’s all yours. Bought and paid for. And he just gets better with time. He’s not just acting icy, either. He never comes down off that cloud. Not once, all yesterday, or all this morning. I tried to get him to spill his RL address, where he went to school or something, and he looked at me like I was crazy, started in on being raised by a holy order as a squire, and the mighty sword of justice. All that righteous knight crap, I figure he’s right up your alley.”

“But…damn, is he just one of those heavy roleplayers, or is he schizo?”

Gil shrugged. “Not my problem, is it? He’s all yours.” He pulled away and began handing out backpacks.

Druin’s mind raced. Computer-induced schizophrenia was not a terribly common occurrence -- he’d never known, even indirectly, someone who suffered a full-blown case. But it was a hazard known to every user of netvironments. The semi-lucid state necessary to immersive computing meant that the traditional division between the ego and the imagination was already on shaky ground. The additional risk posed by taking on a character that was radically different from your real-life self meant increased the danger that, some day, the lines might blur without your conscious control.

There were weekly newscasts about some engineer, player, or other victim who had slipped into a permanent fantasy state with more or less disastrous results. There were stories of shootings and suicides, statistics detailing the number of hours of safe consecutive computing time, editorials and an annual warning issued by the university to limit gaming and other “hazardous” activities. It was the reason that Crucible, like every other immersive netvironment, limited the users’ ability to alter their physical characteristics. Druin looked, physically, almost exactly like Andrew did, and even the name was a close cognate of his real one.

To be in the presence of someone who apparently openly courted CI-schizophrenia was probably not, in itself, dangerous. It wasn’t as though it were contagious. He thought. But it was off-putting, at the least, and even potentially risky if he began picking up Malcolm’s mannerisms. It would be better to give the young man as wide a berth as possible.

Druin returned to the group to find his charges ready to march. Rud and Sir Malcolm looked enthusiastic, Jenna Hearst vaguely impatient, and Killian, bringing up the rear with his crossbow at the ready, decidedly twitchy. Druin looked at the way the point of the crossbow bolt swung nervously back and forth, covering various firing arcs, and pursed his lips. Killian was going in front.

“Alright. We’d better get moving. We’re going to go north, skirting the edge of the Drear Forest, and then follow the trail inland…uh, east…until we get to Heron Rock. That’s the next nearest town. And then…what?”

“My agents will contact you when you reach Heron Rock,” Gill announced. “You, ah, brave adventurers will then be sent on to your quest by my friends there. You,” he indicated Druin, “will go on to that investigation we talked about.” He leaned in, hissing almost inaudibly. “you blow this and I’ll tell Uriah which way you went. Then I’ll send Mad-Harp after you. Got it?”

“Got it,” Druin nodded glumly. “Well, let’s go. Road’s that way.” He tucked the map Gill had given him into his belt-pouch. “It’s a long walk.”

The mist soon closed behind them as they made their way through the gate in the northern wall of Up-Hill, following the cliff-road high above the port-town of Bitter Edge. The obsidian gleam of the Binders’ Guild Tower was the last thing they saw, shining blackly above the mid-morning fog like a knife.

“Log out.”

Gill de Wraithmorte. Circle: 14. Wealth: 167,992.

You have been logged in for 112 minutes.

Thank you for playing Crucible v4.0.

Gilbert Morton stretched aching muscles, groaning quietly then glancing around to make certain no one had heard. He wasn’t even supposed to be in this wing of the hospital at this hour. He had enough notes on his employee file already, and if the night-nurse caught him again…

Damn her anyway. She thought she was so much better than everybody, and she just had to prove it whenever she could, making little tick marks on her god-damned note pad to download later into his personnel file, so he’d have to sit through another damn lecture from the Head of Staff about use of facilities. Stuck-up bitch.

Calm, calm. He breathed deeply. He had nothing to worry about tonight, anyway. The nurses were busy over in the west wing with the really mental patients, the ones who cried all night long. It was a lucky break, giving him the time to slip in here, to the staff computer room, to take care of business.

God but it felt good to stick it to Druin for once! He’d been aching for a chance to get a little something back ever since the disaster in the swamp, and this was just too perfect. His agents needed to know if the blank quest area was a safe target for their newbie clients, and he got to saddle Druin with that retard Malcolm at the same time.