Volper Read online

  But the game developers did mention in one of their interviews that they’d resorted to non-standard solutions for many of the features of this game, which cannot be found anywhere else. So it’s highly possible that the attributes, or as most people call them, stats, cannot be increased with new levels. Which means that 10 is the maximum possible value for an attribute. Damn it! Fucking bullshit!

  I figure most players are likely to choose six points for all their attributes, which means they will get an average character, without any clear distinctions and special features. My heart was pounding. I imagine the players will flood the forums with indignant messages within a day or two.

  Realizing that there really was a problem, I almost immediately made a plan of action. Maybe it wasn’t the best, but it was the most appropriate choice for the way I planned to play the game. In the end, I chose these attributes:

  Strength - 5

  Agility - 9

  Endurance - 5

  Perception - 9

  Intelligence - 6

  Reasoning power - 1

  Luck - 8

  Charisma - 5

  Free points available: 0

  After confirming my choice, the following message popped up in front of me:

  Congratulations! You’ve created a new character! Our servers boot up in…

  1:17:23

  1:17:22

  1:17:21

  1:17:20...

  In just a little over an hour, my game would start. On the one hand, it’s not very pleasant to hover in this emptiness, with the timer ticking down in full view; on the other hand, there’s time to get my thoughts together and solve the perennial question: what do I do next? First, I need to process the information available to me. In an hour, I’m embarking on a long journey - a new game, accompanied by a crowd of frenzied gamers, and we’ll all be exploring a totally new world. Which means there are neither guidelines, nor any tips from experienced players. There will probably be a race to experience everything and gather information about the virtual world surrounding us.

  Should my assumption about the attributes prove to be true, there will be no use in trying to get as much experience as possible. Therefore, there are several primary tasks lying ahead of me. Firstly, I am to figure out what needs to be done in order to successfully compete with other players. Secondly, I should gather information about the world around me, because as wisdom dictates: "He who owns the information, owns the world". Reflecting on this for so long, I didn’t even notice when I gradually dozed off for a while.

  I regained consciousness when I heard the beeping of the timer, which was counting down the last seconds before the world booted up:

  Attention! The servers are booting up in …

  0:00:06 sec…

  0:00:05

  0:00:04

  0:00:03

  0:00:02

  0:00:01

  The bright flash hurt my eyes. I’d barely managed to blink when I saw the transparent spherical cover of the capsule in front of me. With a quiet hissing sound, the lid moved forward a little and opened up.

  Volper, welcome to Alfarome!

  I got out of my box carefully, not yet fully accustomed to this new body of mine, which, unlike my old one, didn’t ache every time I moved. I finally got out of the capsule that looked like one of those cryogenic pods in sci-fi films, standing upright. I found myself in a rectangular-shaped room of about two by four meters, decorated with something akin to tiles the color of a sea wave mixed with algae. It was a dirty greenish color with a slightly blue hue. My capsule was in one corner of the room, and opposite it, I noticed a rectangular door.

  "Well, hi to you too, Alfarome. Here I am!"

  CHAPTER II: WELCOME TO YOUR NEW REALITY

  Having looked around, I made sure I was relatively safe in here. The next thing I did was check how my new body “worked”. I was feeling excited after some warm-up exercises. There was no pain anymore, nothing hurt, and my new body obeyed my orders perfectly. Of course, I’m a little awkward now, but that could be justified by me still having to get used to my new body. A little time would pass and I’d fully adapt to this new body. Then, I think, everything will be perfect, from how I move, my muscles and so on and so forth. Okay, that’s sorted, and now – let’s check out my surroundings and whether I possess all five senses in this virtual world. I wonder whether they can be distinguished from real world senses. I have to check since I haven’t tasted anything edible so far and tactile sensations haven’t really been experienced, either. But that is just a matter of time. It’s necessary to be consistent so as not to screw up, for I have to live in this body for quite a while. But if I were to fail, then I’d have problems with progressing further.

  - CHARACTER STATUS

  There’s no response from the system. I don’t understand, how am I supposed to view my information? Damn, okay, what if we try this:

  - PROFESSIONS ... SKILLS ... INVENTORY ... CHARACTER INFO

  No matter what request I sent, there was no reply. It resembled reality so much. Well, I can only look around now - and I carefully started to do just that. I had on a light, silver T-shirt with long sleeves, pants of the same color and some moccasins, or maybe I would call them slippers with a thin sole, of the same silvery color. Pockets or bags weren’t found, and neither were other devices for storing and carrying things. I started thinking about three possible solutions: firstly, I can be a dumbass, lagging behind and not knowing some elementary things; secondly: the starter kit should be somewhere near the place where I appeared, and thirdly: I will be given a starter kit later.

  All three options looked plausible. I couldn’t check the extent of my idiocy at this time, but other stats were subject to detailed verification. After carefully inspecting the room one more time, I still couldn’t find anything. I even walked along the walls and touched all the suspicious tiles, but this, unfortunately, didn’t work out so well. Finally, I checked even the capsule, but found nothing: only the automatic cover and a bed made from a very soft material.

  Having spent about twenty minutes on checking my body and the room I was in, I finally headed for the door, which occupied almost the entire opposite side of the wall. On the right, there was a display with a palm-shaped indent on it. Now only a true dumbass would be puzzled about what to do. I’d never considered myself too stupid, so I boldly put my right hand up to the display. In response to my action, the door on the left softly opened. The cacophony I heard almost deafened me.

  - Damn, hey people, what the f***?

  - Let’s see: who’s here at the party?

  - HELLO?! WHERE CAN I SEE THE F***ING INFO???

  - ...

  - ...

  - ...

  - Where can I get quests?

  - Folks, what should I be doing here?

  I could hear others asking many different questions, shouting or suggesting something. Some of them were making up complicated, offensive and abusive words and sentences, showing their discontent. All this noise began to irritate me a lot. I was happy about only one thing: if I'm a dumbass or just plain stupid, I’m not the only one here. All the noise was made by crowds of new players running around or standing in the corridor, dressed in the same silver clothes as me. The corridor was four meters wide, painted the same dirty greenish color as my room.

  In contrast to the walls, the floor and the ceiling were of the same uniform material, which resembled coated concrete. There were dome-shaped lamp lights on the ceiling, mounted every three meters, giving off a soft light that was pleasant to look at. In the middle of the ceiling there were small, light-emitting diodes, along which ran a line of yellow light, from right to left. There were a lot of doors in the corridor, one after another, all of them just like mine.

  There was a sign with letters and numbers on the left-side jamb of each of those doors. The sign plates had only a few different symbols, which were apparently the numbers of the rooms. On the right jamb of each door there was a panel, one familiar to me,
with the palm-shaped indent in it. Looking at my door, I immediately noticed the number: "B - 3/27". I should remember it.

  Putting my palm on the panel, I closed the door to my room just in case, and then followed those yellow light-arrows. These LEDs were similar to an alarm system showing where the exit was. Such lights are usually used at military bases. But the lights on these walls weren’t the typical multi-colored LEDs, which military bases use to direct specific units to different places, using the multiple colors. I walked for fifty meters and then I understood everything.

  Although the corridor was long, there was a point in the ceiling were lights met from two opposite directions. At this point, there was a small arrow of LEDs pointing at the door, which was no different from all the others, except for the sign on it that said, "Lift".

  There was a crowd of players waiting for the lift, and they only entered it one by one. When the doors opened, I saw a place similar to a tiny room, about two by two meters. When a player entered the lift, you could see the line of an energy barrier flickering in the doorway.

  "Why on earth are we only going one at a time? There's enough space for three or even four people in there," - I asked the player who was standing next to me.

  - I haven’t the slightest idea!

  - “Most likely, it’s done to protect players from PCs,” - another player joined our dialogue. – “Also, we haven’t yet figured out whether it’s possible to give someone else permission to come into the lift with you.”

  - I see. Thanks for help.

  - No problem.

  After about three minutes, it was my turn to go into the lift. Inside, there was only a panel showing numbers for the floors, with two columns of touch-sensitive buttons, and you could scroll up and down the list of the floors. The right column was inactive, grayed out and marked "Hangar", the left column was numbered and active. At the very bottom, next to the number one, was the sign "Hall." I realized I had nothing to do on the other floors, so I chose the “Hall” button. The lift promptly went down, but it first moved horizontally, which I found odd.

  There was a slightly different feeling in the hall. Directly in front of the lift, there was a wide, glazed door, about twenty or twenty-five meters wide. There were several lines of players. In the middle of the exit stood a man in uniform, and from time to time, he would yell at players:

  - Before leaving the replication center, I strongly recommend that you consult with the specialists of our center. The green light above the door shows that the specialist is ready to see you.

  Some of the players, who had already run to the exit, stopped abruptly and began to look for the specialists. And the smartest were already running along the corridor to the right and left, looking for the doors that were highlighted with a green color. I went along one of the corridors, and at the same time noticed that there wasn’t just one lift on the first floor, but around 15. Each lift probably led to only some of the floors. Although if you consider that my lift first moved horizontally, then, most likely, it’s simply moved into an unoccupied, empty lift shaft, allowing the use of elevators to be much more effective than it had been in the past – each lift moves up and down in its shaft.

  Honestly, I couldn’t understand why I should rush along the corridors, as if I were an active-duty soldier in his first year, being taught by an experienced sergeant. Over the course of about twenty minutes, during which I’d tried to find a free consultant, I was nearly knocked off my feet hundreds of times, being called a “noob", a “high school kid", a “player of low skill", and some other things like that. After my long wandering, I finally got lucky. Right next to me, a door opened and one of the players quickly left the room.

  “Scram! You noobie!!!" - He shouted at me, pushing me aside, and rushed off in the direction of the exit.

  "Well, well ... the sun will shine into our yard, too," - I muttered to myself, going into the room from which this weirdo had rushed out. Just above the door, a green light was on.

  I was quite surprised when I came into the room. Unlike the annoying, gloomy colors of the corridors, everything here was in white tones, casting a blue light that was pleasing to the eye. A short distance away from me, near the wall, a young, dark-haired girl with emerald eyes was sitting at her desk. She was wearing a white blouse, a strict dark brown jacket, and had a smile on her face. She looked at me with exhaustion in her eyes, in which I could easily read: "I’m fed up with all of you!" The game developers had done their best, indeed. She looks like a real human being, though she is obviously a non-player character. There’s a very good slang word/abbreviation for it which gamers often use - "NPC".

  Emotions, shown in her facial expressions and eyes, small twitches of the face, a slight movement of her eyes from top to bottom and back – all this shows that she’s examining my physique and appearance very carefully. That’s very interesting! Let's see how well the game developers integrated interactive and emotional components into the game. After all, they promised that it would be impossible to tell NPCs apart from real human beings.

  "Welcome to ..." - she began, but I interrupted her immediately.

  - Good afternoon, Miss! Sorry to bother you, but I'm looking for a replication center specialist.

  "Err ... that’s me, actually ..."

  - “That can’t be true!” - I interrupted her again, without giving her any chance to get her thoughts together. - "Such a charming lady spending time advising us ordinary people; I cannot believe it.”

  - Well ...

  - Right! It’s so kind of you to help us, the common herd, learn about this world and give us the opportunity to enjoy your beauty...

  The girl was embarrassed and her cheeks flushed. This prompted me to realize that, although she was a little confused, the girl obviously enjoyed my words. I continued to express my admiration of her, so many compliments, very carefully choosing what to say, because, according to the history of the game, I am in a distant future. And who knows what words or actions, what manner of courtship, remained in use here. I sang like a nightingale for another three minutes. All that time, the girl was blushing and smiling. She was probably embarrassed. She lowered her eyes, running her fingers through her hair. When my courtship ritual was almost over, she jumped right out of her chair.

  - Oh, I should instruct you and activate the neurointerface!

  - Really?

  "It's very important!" - she came up to me and, grabbing my hand, dragged me over to the table, in front of which was a chair for visitors.

  - Sit down, please; now I'll show you everything and tell you all about it!

  When I sat down on the chair, she ran around the table and began looking for something in the top drawer, without even realizing that, in this position, she’d exposed the lower half of her body to me. She’s got an amazing ass and her barely-there skirt revealed this to me, along with her beautiful, slender legs and neat shoes with small, sharp heels. All this peeping made me feel like a young soldier who would bed any girl with a pulse. I was very surprised, because I was feeling something that I had forgotten about for a long time and I hadn’t really expected to ever feel again.

  Well, I was certainly surprised, shocked, even. After all, I had once more begun to feel the desire to have sexual relations, with all the ensuing consequences. In a word, I was horny. And this was happening at my old age! Ok, breathe in deeply, and exhale, and now, do it again. Phew! That’s better. I’d wanted to check how realistic the NPCs are in here, and in return, I’d gotten sexually excited. Although, given the level of realism in her reaction, they aren’t just NPCs, but fully-developed artificial personalities. Well, that means you should try to regard them as real people and treat them accordingly. Maybe this will turn out good for me. While I was pondering all this, the girl took out some kind of device, reminiscent of a swimming cap with soldered-on microchips.

  - Here you are! Put it on, please, and relax. I’m now going to activate the neurointerface for you, and then I'll start instructing you.


  Taking the small hat in my hand, I began to twist it, trying to figure out where the front and the back were. Smiling, the girl took the hat back and put it on my head, while almost burying her sexy breasts, incidentally, they were maybe a size two, in my face. Having put her device on me, she stepped back and began to make strange gestures with her hands in the air.

  I was dazzled for a little while, but I felt alright again fairly quickly. Only now, a lot of icons and panels had appeared in my view. In the upper left corner, there were multicolored stripes; the lower left one showed which weapons were available. Meanwhile, in the upper right corner, a small image of the map appeared, and the entire bottom right part was occupied by different icons. In the middle, overlapping half of the screen, a message popped up:

  Congratulations! You have completed the first task "Activating the neurointerface ". You activated your neural network from the official representative of the authority, and you are now registered in the government network.

  Reward: You can now use the interface