Solarversia: The Year Long Game (5 page)

“Thanks, Jockey. I see my score still stands.” She motioned to one of the overhead monthly leaderboard screens. Three weeks ago, on a wintry Monday night, she’d thrown the dart of her life, smashing the Kent bullseye record by 40 centimetres, and placing top in the ‘Bullseye of the Month’ competition.

“Bloody good throw it was, too.”

“Do I get my prize today?”

“It’s highly unlikely that anyone will beat it before the day’s out, but no. I can’t give that to you until February has officially come to end, including the cheeky leap day. But I do have something else for you; hang on a sec.”

Jockey ducked behind the bar into the back, and Nova felt a hand clap her hard on the back.

“Happy birthday, punk. Bumped into any more lavadiles?” Burner said, trying to suppress a smile. With his plug ears and bulbous eyes, Nova was always astounded at his success with girls. He held a load of roasted peanuts in one hand, flicked them, one by one, into the air with the other, caught them in his mouth, sucked the roasting clean off and spat the naked nuts into the bin at the side of the bar.

“That, as I tell you every time I see you do it, is a disgusting habit. And no, I haven’t bumped into any more lavadiles. Why, have you bumped into any more Krazy Karting finalists?”

Along with thousands of other games, Krazy Karting had been ported across to VR, enabling its inclusion in Solarversia as one of its many sub-games. It was Nova’s favourite racing game and her rank in the top few hundred players in the world had meant automatic qualification in one of ten preliminary rounds.

After a shaky start in her heat last month, when her main rival, Dutch sensation Jools van der Star, had mashed her into the hoardings at the side of the track, she’d made an inspired comeback, racing her way through the pack to qualify in tenth place. Although her time had been poor, placing her in 77th out of the hundred finalists, she’d done it, and was in with a chance of winning the hundred grand first prize.

“Tell it to my hundred health points.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how you managed that. And as for Sushi, well, I can’t even.”

“Believe it, Scotia. Plenty more where that came from.”

She grimaced as Burner upended the packet of peanuts, tipped the remnants into his mouth, and then licked the packet clean. She’d spent an increasing amount of time with him since Sushi’s move to Seattle and had become good mates with him. He was funny, dependable and loyal, but also way more gross than Sushi ever was. Jockey returned with his hands behind his back. “I have not one, but two presents for you.”

“Two presents?”

“First of all, here’s a coupon for a drink on the house. You can use it whenever you like.”

“Thanks, Jockey. Much appreciated.”

“And then there’s this.”

She opened the card that he handed her and read the note inside. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for your big day, have fun without me. Sushi, aka your Solarversia Sister.”

Nova twitched her nose a couple of times before turning to Burner. “Awesome. Ten hours of prepaid time on the deluxe gaming chairs. Wanna watch the Queen of Darts on her throne?”

Fragging Hell’s side room had been kitted out by Spiralwerks, which was affiliated with gaming cafes and sports centres all over the world. It now had five state-of-the-art gaming simulators, deluxe models known as ‘the chairs’, available for hire at triple the rate of a standard rig.

Burner wiped the peanut dust from his hands, gave her the finger, and followed her there.

Chapter Six

Nova handed her jacket to Burner, took a deep breath, and patted her T-shirt down. Slightly faded due to the countless times she’d worn it, the T-shirt displayed the slogan SOLOS FTW. The word ‘Solo’ had been appropriated by fanatical players of Solarversia to describe themselves. Similar to the word ‘solar’, it also played on The Game’s tagline, There Can Be Only One. The second word, ‘FTW’, was the old internet acronym ‘For the Win’. The phrase communicated the common belief that while it was theoretically possible for anyone to win, it would most likely be a Solo, someone dedicated to studying the Gameworld and all it entailed.

The deluxe chairs were positioned on pneumatic arms capable of tilting thirty degrees in any direction. Joysticks were situated at the end of each armrest, and the footrest had pedals that made avatars run, jump, roll and drive. Nova climbed into the chair and flipped down the built-in headset, which had a technical spec that could induce drooling in the most hardened of gamers. In front of each chair was an industrial fan, which activated at pertinent moments.

She entered Solarversia for the second time. The Corona Cube was unchanged, though the resolution of the headset, which was even better than her new Booners, made the plasma effect on the walls look more real, and more mesmerising. She had to make a conscious effort to turn her attention to the constellations on the ceiling. As her finger touched the last star, the plasma walls turned transparent to reveal the very spot on Alpha Island she had left the previous night.

She exited the cube and checked the map. In order to properly explore the world, she’d need her vehicles, starting with Flynn. Cars were stored at the garage, on the other side of the Forest of Fun, just over a minute away at her current running speed of one percent. In other words, a snail’s pace. As soon as she completed some more quests her speed would shoot up. In the meantime she ambled toward the forest, her chair rocking in time as she moved. It sure beat sitting on the sofa at home.

Around her thousands of avatars were headed in the same direction, running, shouting and jostling for position. Some of them, like her, were using their Normal Avatars, the ones created by scanning the real-world head and body of the player with a camera. Nova had updated hers several times since her final sleepover at Sushi’s, most recently in December, after a rigorous month-long exercise regime.

The Normal Avatar transformed into the player’s Super Avatar as the year progressed. The player didn’t need to do anything to make the transformation happen — it occurred automatically, through a series of indistinguishable changes that were applied each day they were still in The Game.

Nova hadn’t done anything too radical with her Super Avatar. She’d added a couple of inches to her height, toned up here and there, and performed a spot of minor plastic surgery on her avatar’s neck and nose, but it was nothing compared to the people who would transform into cats, dogs, and all manner of weird and wonderful beings if they lived long enough.

Bobbing alongside the Normal Avatars were a smattering of Generic Avatars, ones players could switch on to hide their everyday appearance. These avatars, whose male and female versions had come to be known as ‘Marty’ and ‘Smarty’, looked like plastic Duplo figures, and were identical to one another.

Players were constantly speculating as to which celebrities were masquerading as Marties and Smarties, although they were also used by people who didn’t want to have to confront the realities of their body in their moments of escape, and also by people who simply fancied being anonymous for a while.

Nova pulled down the stats feed in her visor to check the latest figures. More than ten million people had now left Castalia and were somewhere within the confines of Solarversia. A guy from Chile appeared beside her as she ran and held out his hand for a high-five. “Hey, Nova, we’re both in ring 359.” Staring at his head for half a second caused his profile square to appear hovering above him, a feature that players could turn off and on at will. Scanning its contents, she saw that he was right: his grid shortcode was S359, meaning his square was located in the Spades quadrant in the top right of the Player’s Grid.

The high-five unlocked one of the items on her March Bucket List, a feature created by Spiralwerks to help ensure that The Game was fair. Each month had an associated list of actions players needed to perform. A life was automatically lost if the list wasn’t completed by the end of the month. It deterred people from spending the whole year hiding out in their Corona Cube. Any Bucket items ticked off on the Leap Day automatically rolled into the March list.

When she made it to the forest, her headset chimed again: another item ticked off the Bucket List. Despite the crowd of avatars, there was an eerie quiet in the woods, punctuated by the snapping of twigs, the rustling of trees in the wind, and the occasional sound of laughter. The leaves on the trees contained jokes that had been submitted by players.

She looked skyward, held out her palm, and caught one as it floated toward the ground. “I organised a threesome last night. There were a couple of no-shows, but I still had fun.”The ‘ta dum tss’ sound of a rimshot went off as she read the last word. She shared the joke on her feed, resulting in another tick on the Bucket List, and four additional points on her speed. All too easy.

She brushed past the last couple of ferns and found herself in a clearing. A large tyre, which bore the words ‘The Greasy Wrench’ around its circumference, was propped against three stacked cars. Behind it was a multistorey garage made of thousands of square bays, where cars were being jacked-up, spray-painted or waxed by a multitude of arkwinis. According to her datafeed, nearly sixteen thousand players were currently collecting their rides. That was a lot of grease.

An arkwini in dirty overalls and a matching cap waddled up to her. Speaking in a high-pitched voice, he said, “Hello, Nova, you must be here to collect Flynn. Follow me, please.” He bowed, and then toddled off without waiting for a reply. She caught up with him and joined him in a battered metal cage attached to the side of the building.

“Your player number, please,” he said, motioning toward a sturdy black box affixed to the front on the cage. As she went to punch in her digits, a disembodied voice chanted, “We really wanna see those fingers!”

She had Catchphrases switched on, which meant that specific movements, actions and behaviours were greeted by recorded phrases that The Game’s algorithms deemed relevant. Players could provide feedback on catchphrases, add them to their favourites or select them to sound at given moments. In this way they acted like an in-Game user-generated commentary. She punched her digits in and the cage shuddered into motion, climbing the side of the building. She leaned over the side to look down on Alpha Island, shaped like a capital ‘A’.

The track she’d raced in the Karting heats traced the shoreline. She could see the roundabout where she’d pulled off the Wall of Death stunt, the Fire Demon’s Obstacle Course, and the Forest of Fun. Above her, Castalia floated high in the sky. As far as her brain was concerned, she was here, in Solarversia, rather than a gaming cafe in the real world, a concept the VR geeks referred to as Presence, the illusion that a mediated experience was real. Whatever you called it, she was fully immersed and loving it.

The cage slowed to a halt beside a bay that matched her player number. She smiled at the gleaming car within, one she’d spent many hours customising. Although she’d used him for the Karting heats before The Game had even begun, and raced in him regularly, it was still exciting to officially collect him like this.

“Good to see you, Flynn, old buddy, this time for real. Kind of real, anyway.” She held out a hand and stroked his bonnet. Flynn was a dune buggy. A bare chassis exposed his motor, lots of wiring and some fat suspension. The flaming artwork that adorned each side proclaimed Doors Are for Bores. Holding onto the chassis, she swung herself into the driving seat and gripped the steering wheel tight, impatient to get going already. The arkwini toddled up to her, clipboard in hand.

“A few things before you get on your way. Speed. Although you only start with one point, for every ten miles you drive without incident, you’ll gain a point. Navigation. Once on the road it’s impossible to get lost, just consult your Route Planner. The exit. You’ve been credited with a Turbo Boost. Use it.” He kicked the front tyre and inspected the chassis. “OK, you’re good to go.”

As she grabbed the twin joysticks, a stereophonic collection of voices chanted, “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!”

Flynn growled into life. The wall in front of her swung down to create a ramp and the turbo boost icon started flashing. Accelerating from nought to sixty in half a second, she hit the ramp at speed, cruised through the air and landed on the open road of Alpha Island, calling “Yeeee-ha!” In Fragging Hell, the fan blasted her with air.

Within a few seconds the Route Planner menu appeared in her headset, exactly like the arkwini had said it would. She could input how much time she had available, and which Bucket List items she wanted to tick off. It would combine that information with her current speed score, and the items she owned, to suggest some optimal routes. She chose a route through Lotus Bay, the town that ran along the eastern edge of the island.

The seafront was lined with hundreds of exhibitions and mini-quests, enough entertainment for the entire year. The first exhibit on the route, Conga World, was dedicated to creating the world’s longest virtual conga line. It was a hectic flurry of confusing movement as members swerved one way, then the other, kicking their legs out to their sides as they congaed along the coast, their hovering profile squares jigging along in time. The exhibition’s datafeed was being constantly updated itself as new players joined the end, and others, somewhere in the middle, dropped out.

As she viewed Conga World’s billboard, the exhibition’s starting point and virtual homepage, it updated to display information relevant to her. It told her that GoodGert from Namibia — player 23,154,832, who held the record for longest time at the front of the line — was only seventeen squares from her on the Player’s Grid. The Russian guy who had just this second joined the back of the line? Only ten squares from Burner. It was a small world, the Solarverse; a frothing sea of happy coincidences and shared relationships.

Nova joined the line and tried to look as cool as possible while doing such an inherently stupid dance. When she left the line she was rewarded with topped-up speed and her first teleport token. Hearing the dinging sounds that accompanied these updates reminded her of the joy she used to feel as a young child, dropping coins into her piggy bank. Further progress. Sweet.