Chapter 7
When she got up to her apartment, her mom was still asleep. Matilda usually slept late on Saturdays, waking up in time to fix dinner with Lynn. That particular Saturday, Lynn was profoundly grateful for this fact. If her mom saw her walk in the door in her disheveled state, she would probably think Lynn had been attacked and raped or something. It was no wonder Mr. Thomas had seemed worried when he’d first seen her.
She slipped on comfy shorts and a T-shirt and went to flop down on her bed.
It was the work of a moment to get her old LINC back up and connected to her TD Hunter issue earbuds. She tried to ignore the knots in her stomach as she pulled up the game’s website and selected “contact technical support” from their menu.
“TD Hunter technical support. This is James, how can I help you?”
Lynn had needed to call tech support a few times for other games in the past and was used to dealing with a service AI or going through a huge wait before she talked to an actual person. Getting straight through surprised her.
“Umm…This is Lynn Raven,” she said after a second’s confusion. “I’m one of the beta testers.”
“Hey, Lynn! Thanks for giving us a call,” James said. “It looks like the new LINC we sent you has gone completely dark. I see you were engaged with an unknown when it disconnected. Was your LINC damaged during that encounter?”
“Sort of…?” Lynn said. “I, uh, kind of ran into a tree and fell. Maybe my hand accidentally hit something? But that wasn’t the weird thing, because right after I fell, my baton started going nuts. Like, nearly blew up nuts. It was sparking and smoking and it almost caught the leaves on fire. I had a friend with me and he can vouch for it. He had to stomp out the fire. I mean, I’m not gonna lie, I think I might have fallen on it and broken it before it started going haywire. But just breaking it in half shouldn’t have made it catch on fire, should it?”
“Not as far as I know,” James said. “But there is precedent for a beta tester’s LINC malfunctioning after a piece of game equipment is damaged, so I’m going to list it all as ‘potential game damage’ with the comment that there was suspected impact damage first. But we’ll replace them both free of charge anyway. Your Hunter scores are quite high but we’d like to see more beta reports. Not just glitch reports but comments on fighting methods and such.”
There was a brief pause, then James whistled.
“Wow, you really racked up some kills before you encountered that unknown. You’re taking on Delta Class-3s and 4s already? You need to talk to Tactical Support, not a tech guy like me. I’ve already put in an order for a duplicate LINC to be printed and we’ll include a new baton when it ships. It’ll be sent via overnight delivery, so you should get it pretty quickly. Now, mind if I transfer you? I’ve got a ping from Tactical Support. They’d like to talk to you.”
“Okay…?” Lynn said hesitantly. “But there are lots of people doing better than I am.”
“Who?” James asked.
“Well, there’s a guy in New York who’s up to Level 20, isn’t there?” Lynn said, thinking about the people she’d seen commenting on the community boards.
“KillBot,” James said. “He’s been going through Oneg like it’s water and he’s been killed plenty of times. Just buys up his inventory and goes back to hunting. Which isn’t how you’re supposed to play the game. Additionally, he’s a bicycle messenger so he’s all over the place all the time and you gain health at bicycle movement rates. Don’t compare yourself to that. You’ve currently got one of the highest kills to damage ratios in beta. How in the world did you manage to kill seven demons with almost no damage? That’s what Tactical is screaming at me about.”
“Oh, that,” Lynn said, grinning. “I roll under them.”
“You what?” James said. “Hang on, I’m bringing in Steve on the tactical side. You mind?”
“No, that’s fine.” Lynn replied.
“Steve, this is Lynn Raven, BetaTester124,” James said. “Lynn, this is Steve, AlphaTester9.”
Lynn’s ears perked. An alpha tester? It seemed her guess about alpha testers being employees had been correct.
“Pleasure to finally talk to you, Lynn,” Steve said. He had a sharp staccato delivery that was very militaryesque, sort of like First Sergeant Kane Bryce from the opening cinematic for the game, or like some of the elites in WarMonger she talked to from time to time. She’d tried to copy the way they talked when she was playing Larry, since it made him sound more authentic.
“I have to say,” Steve continued, “I’ve been hoping you’d call Tactical sometime soon, ‘Larry Coughlin.’ We’ve battled before. As allies and enemies. FallujahSevenNiner. You copy?”
“Fallu,” Lynn said, grinning. “Yeah! Roger that, Fallu! I thought your voice sounded familiar.”
“They gave us a look at the potential beta testers and their gaming background before we started recruiting,” Steve said. “I spit a mouthful of bourbon on my screen when I found out the ‘Boss Snake’ who kept putting me in the ground in WarMonger was some teenager. You got mad skills. If you were male you’d be a natural operator.”
“Um…” Lynn said with a grimace. She hadn’t expected to get the “girls got no game” thing from a guy like Fallu.
“Lynn, James again,” the tech guy put in hastily. “What he meant was as a member of a SEAL team or Delta or something. Steve is…He used to be in the Army. He means in the real soldier stuff. Not gaming.”
“Oooh,” Lynn said, feeling relieved. “Well, thanks, I guess. But even this game is killing me.”
“You’ve got zero PT experience,” Steve said. “Not surprising. To work, though. Seven demons. Ten percent total health loss. Twenty percent armor loss. How? I’ve fought demons and I take five times that damage.”
“Roll under,” Lynn said. “For some reason they never bend over to reach you with their claws when they strike and they’re not real, so no reason you can’t go through them. The feet talons do no damage. Get them in an open area, equip a melee weapon and roll under them to attack from underneath and behind. Just get up on a knee, hit them as they turn, then roll under again. Confuses the heck out of the game AI.”
“Roll under,” Steve said. “Jeez. Obvious now that I think about it. But like I said: mad skills, girl. Tough on concrete, though. You’d want some padding.”
“I got covered in dirt and leaves from fighting them in the woods,” Lynn admitted. “And I collected a lot of bramble scratches. This outdoors stuff is kind of fun now that I’m getting used to it, plus the fresh air is nice. But I still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing in the woods.”
“Check for ticks, yet?” Steve asked.
“Ticks?” Lynn squealed. “No!”
“Take a shower, if you haven’t already,” Steve said. “Do as good a check on yourself as you can. Parent? Mom according to the file.”
“Yeah,” Lynn said, a bit confused by the “file” reference. Maybe the gamer background he’d been talking about?
“Get your mom to check where you can’t,” Steve said. “Scalp. Back of the neck. Ears.”
“Ugh! This is why I always hated the outdoors. Can’t you AR game developers take a break from designing games to invent an anti-bug force field or something?”
“Comes with the territory, Hunter,” Steve said with a chuckle. “No pain, no gain. Okay, next. You’re also lower than average damage on Ghasts and ghosts.”
“Well, ghosts you just spin when you hear them come up and you can take them down with a single strike from a Nano Blade,” Lynn said. “Ghasts are tougher. I hate them. Best I’ve found so far is to just run through them and spin to attack from behind, same as with demons. They’re more vulnerable on the rear. You do take damage when you run through, though. Tentacles and stuff. It makes me a little dizzy because I’m not used to all that spinning but it’s better than trying to fight them head on.”
“Hmm,” said Steve and there was a pause, as if he were considering his words. “Taking damage to achieve a tactically superior position isn’t always a bad idea. But when there’s millions of players, every percentage point of your battle score will matter. Suggestion: Hit them with your pistol, then run. Back away, go in again. Keep going and you’ll eventually take them out. That way you avoid the damage entirely.”
“They move faster than I run,” Lynn admitted.
“Learn to run faster,” Steve said, a grin obvious in his voice. “You started doing any of the training simulations in the app yet?”
“No, though I did see them. They look pretty cool. I’ve just…well, I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Start doing them today. Or at least some kind of training regime. You’ve got a natural talent for this. Born fighter, I’d say. But that won’t get you far if you don’t treat your body like the weapon it is.”
Lynn groaned.
“More you sweat, less you bleed.” Steve chuckled. “But the way you’re going, if you commit to this game like you’ve committed to others in the past, you’ll see a world of difference before you know it. Now, that unknown you tangled with today. Anything you can tell us about it that wasn’t clear in game?”
It took Lynn a moment for her mind to switch gears and she thought about it.
“Its detection range seemed bigger than mine. It hit me even after I could no longer see it.”
“Yup,” Steve said. “We got that much of the data on upload. Anything else?”
“Well, it didn’t attack until I shot first,” Lynn said.
“We got that on the first approach but then on the second attack we only got that you’d gone in and then LOS, loss of signal,” Steve said. “You’re saying that when you approached, again, it didn’t attack till you’d attacked?”
“Roger,” Lynn said, mimicking Steve’s military lingo. It was how she normally talked in WarMonger anyway.
“That we didn’t get,” Steve said. “Anything else?”
“The bolts looked pretty identical to my Plasma Pistol’s shots.” Lynn said. “At least, they looked the same in game except for the color.”
“Practically identical including damage,” Steve responded. “That we also got. I’m going to do a WAG.”
“What’s that?” Lynn asked.
“A wild guess?” Steve said.
“I mean, what is the WAG,” Lynn replied.
“Oh. It’s probably related to the…” Steve seemed to search his notes, “to the Lecta you found.”
“Er, how so?”
Steve paused and there was absolute silence for a few moments. Had he muted himself? Then his voice was back.
“The following information is part of the NDA you and your mom signed. The AI our programmers created to run the game is…a little opaque. When we say these entities, these TDMs, are unknown, we mean we don’t even know what they are. The data is encrypted and how the AI assigns them is also unknown.
“But, in general, when you run into two unknowns with similarities in the same area, they tend to be upgrades from one to the other. Therefore, this is probably a higher-class version of the Lecta. Why it’s out in the woods instead of around electricity…unknown. Based on that WAG, stay away for now. Rankings in each class correspond roughly two to one from hunter to monster, so if you’re Level 1 or 2, you can handle Delta Class-1s, Level 3 or 4, Delta Class-2s. You’re taking on way tougher monsters than most beta testers do starting out. I can respect that. You’re good. Real good. But sometimes you just gotta grind for a while. Spread out from where you’ve been. Build up your inventory, build up your experience, then tackle some bigger stuff.”
“But I thought, once I was high enough level to detect a monster, then it was fair game? Doesn’t the system prevent Hunters from showing up to TDMs too high class for them to handle?”
“In theory,” Steve said slowly. “Like I said, we don’t exactly control how the AI assigns the entities. It’s a closed system. Sorry I can’t give you more but I’m just here to game. I don’t do the techie stuff. If you want a better explanation, you’ll have to drag the programmers out of their lair. If I had to make another WAG, though, I’d say the AI is adapting to meet demand. Revealing higher-class monsters sooner than it would for other players because of your aggression and high scores.”
Lynn thought about that. It was actually kinda cool. Also, slightly unfair, since it stacked the deck against her in terms of keeping her scores high.
“I’ll think about it,” she finally said. “The only way to really build up experience is to go for the big guys and unknowns and I’ve barely got two weeks before beta phase is over.”
“Printing a new LINC every few days for the same beta tester will get noticed pretty quick,” Steve said, chuckling. “Look, I’ve been doing this for a while and I had the same approach at the beginning. Let’s just say, I was pushing the game AI’s buttons on purpose. Painful experience convinced me that, as you hit certain levels, you’ve just got to spend some time grinding. That is, unless you want to end up very dead.”
The way he said it made it sound like there were worse consequences to dying beyond the one hour “chill of death” debuff. Lynn made a mental note to do some additional research on it. She didn’t want to nuke her player ranking on accident.
“Okay,” Lynn said. “I’ll take your advice under serious advisement.”
“Bullheaded, just like me,” Steve said with an obvious grin in his voice. “You’ll learn. You going to play WarMonger in the meantime?”
“Not much else to do until my new LINC comes in,” Lynn said. “Unless I can download the app on my old LINC and use that for now?”
“If the game was live, you could do that,” Steve said. “But since it’s still in beta, they need you to use our equipment to make sure we get all the right error code and bug reports to get things shipshape.”
“Oh, okay. WarMonger it is, then, I guess.”
“Roger that. Out here,” Steve said, “unless I see you later in battle, of course.”
“Don’t blow my cover,” Lynn said, suddenly worried.
“And get my a—my butt handed to me for breaking my NDA?” Steve said. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t anyway. I don’t want you turning those mad skills on me. Good hunting, Lynn. Tactical Support, out.”
“Lynn, this is James again,” James said as Steve’s connection went dead. “Before you go, please remember we need the damaged LINC and baton back so we can diagnose their malfunction. You’ll get a prepaid addressed package; all you have to do is pop them in it and schedule a drone pickup. Please don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” Lynn said. “Thanks for the help.”
“You’re doing great,” James said. “Glad to help. Anything else?”
“Nope,” Lynn said. “Bye.”
“Goodbye.”
After the agent disconnected, Lynn rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, thinking.
She felt good. More than good, really, she felt great. Yes, her muscles were sore and tired. Yes, she was covered in scratches. She thought she might have even twisted something doing all the rolling and stuff. But under it all was a sort of bone deep satisfaction that made it all worth it. She felt better than she had in a long while, both mentally and physically. Being outside all day and hanging out with Edgar had been refreshing in a way she hadn’t even known she needed. Of course, the phone call with tech support had helped with the mental side. She wasn’t sure how high up in the company Steve and James were but neither was worried about her little malfunction and Steve, a former operator, had complimented her skills in both WarMonger and TD Hunter.
It was getting near the time when her mom usually got up, so Lynn rolled off her bed and went to clean up her dirty clothes and equipment from the bathroom. The backpack only needed a little wipe down but when she inspected her clothes, she just laughed. They were going straight into the washer. The shirt might even be a lost cause, with two substantial tears in it. She did a quick web search for “how to deal with ticks on your clothes,” then threw her dirty laundry in the wash on hot with an extra rinse cycle. Then she fixed coffee, grabbed two apples and a protein bar to take an edge off her hunger until dinner and settled down to wait for her mom to appear. She knew better than to burst into the bedroom yelling “Mom, can you check me for ticks?” even though that’s what she wanted to do.
To pass the time, Lynn poked around the TD Hunter main website. To her delight, she found that she could log in with her Hunter credentials and access the same forum that was inside the game app.
At the top of the “Tips and Techniques” category was pinned a new “Tactical Recommendation.” She’d read such recommendations before and used them. She was shocked, however, to see that this new one outlined her demon roll attack technique. They even gave her credit for the idea.
Whaaat?
All games had embedded tricks and techniques that players learned as they advanced or picked up by word of mouth from other players. There were whole sites devoted to them, things like easter eggs, cheat codes and the like. But typically it was not the game companies themselves handing out the tips and tricks, especially not a company that involved competitive scores. Lynn thought about it, trying to find the sense in it all. Then she remembered something Fallu had said: We don’t exactly control how the AI assigns the entities. It’s a closed system.
So, maybe it all had to do with their new, never-done-before, closed system game AI. Maybe, there was a bit of “us versus it” going on. Maybe they’d decided to balance out the difficulty by making special tips public.
Lynn’s thoughts drifted back to how she’d felt when that Varg had attacked her and her resultant nightmare. Plus, how the darned thing had hung around the entrance to her apartment afterwards, as if it knew where her “scent” had disappeared when she’d exited combat mode and it was waiting for her to reappear.
She shivered.
Those weren’t the actions of a normal game monster. Those were the actions of an intelligent game designed to “have it out” for the players fighting against it. Was that what Mr. Krator had meant when he’d said that TD Hunter was different from anything he’d developed before? That he’d created an intelligent, adaptive game specifically to heighten the realism of playing and coupled it with an augmented reality platform so powerful it took “stepping into the real” to a whole other level?
Wow. That was sooo cool.
No wonder they’d set up their tactical recommendations the way they had, considering the game was all about a global paramilitary of volunteer Hunters uniting to save humanity. She still wasn’t happy about her newly discovered technique being shared but supposed it was only fair. After all, most of what she knew about fighting the game monsters had come from the tactical support forum. It was still up to each individual to apply the available knowledge against the game’s algorithms to kill the most monsters with the least damage possible.
And that was just what she intended to do.
The faint sound of her mother’s alarm intruded on her thoughts and a few minutes later, Matilda shuffled into the kitchen blinking against the light. Lynn held out a steaming mug of liquid energizer, which her mother took to the counter to heap with sugar and creamer before coming to sit down at the table.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Lynn replied, tamping down on her impatience.
It took her mother a few sips before her eyes seemed to open fully and she finally registered her daughter’s appearance.
“Why is your face all scratched and bruised?” she asked, tone going from confused to alarmed. “What happened? Were you attacked?”
“No, Mom, nothing like that,” Lynn hurried to reassure her. “Remember, we talked about me playing TD Hunter today with Edgar tagging along? I had a great time, the game just got…a little physical.”
“Physical?” Matilda asked, eyes narrowing. “What do you mean, ‘physical’? Don’t tell me you and another player got into a fight?”
“Oh my gosh, Mom, no. That’s not how this game works. We’re fighting monsters, not each other. Edgar and I went into the greenway, you know those woods between us and the Heathers complex? Well, the monsters I have to fight aren’t physical so they don’t exactly care about stuff like thick brush. I rolled through a thorn bush or two, that’s all. Oh, and I might have possibly run into a tree at one point. But other than that, I’m fine.”
Matilda gave a startled laugh.
“Every time I start worrying about you, Lynn, I find out I’m worrying about exactly the wrong thing. Which doesn’t reassure me, I’ll have you know. Should I be afraid you’re going to walk off a bridge trying to beat some imaginary monster boss or something?”
Lynn rolled her eyes.
“Give me at least a little credit, Mom. I’d never engage a monster somewhere unsafe like on top of a bridge. You know I never go out in the woods. I just need time to adjust to the new terrain, that’s all.”
Her mother sighed and rubbed her forehead.
“Um, also I need a tick check,” Lynn admitted, figuring she might as well get it all out at once.
“Well, of course, if you’ve been traipsing around in the woods,” her mom said, seeming unfazed.
“And I broke the gaming equipment they sent me to beta test with.”
“What!?”
“It was when I ran into the tree,” Lynn hurried to explain. “I fell down and I guess I must have landed on my baton, because it broke and there was some sort of glitch. It sort of caught on fire. Edgar stomped it out though and I’ve already called the game’s tech support. They’re going to replace everything for free.”
“Good grief,” Matilda said, leaning back in her chair and taking a long swig of her coffee. “You sure do know how to keep life interesting, O daughter of mine.”
“Er, one more thing?”
Her mom raised an eyebrow in trepidation.
“Mind if I game tonight? In virtual, of course. There’s some stuff I need to catch up on, since TD Hunter took up all day.”
Matilda sighed. “Well, since it’s officially summer now, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Besides, it means I can binge on the latest political debates instead of having my brain melted by your usual action flick stream.” Matilda winked at her daughter and Lynn shook her head.
“I don’t understand how you can stand to watch that political stuff, Mom. It gives me a headache just thinking about it.”
“Oh, it gives me a headache too, believe me. But somebody has to stay informed. Enjoy your innocent youth while it lasts, my dear.”
“On that note, I’m gonna go kill some people in virtual,” Lynn said and got up.
Matilda chuckled.
“Have fun honey. I’ll call you when supper is ready.”
It felt sooo good to melt into her body-mold chair and she was reminded why she’d never been tempted to play an AR game before this. Well, there was a first time for everything.
She checked her messages, noting with satisfaction that she’d heard back from YodaMaster on the request she’d sent him that morning. She pinged her regular client in WarMonger who had wanted her to join a game earlier, then opened up a second screen and hopped onto social media while she waited for a reply. She had some accounting to balance up and she couldn’t exactly go to a reputable firm without disclosing her under-age status. To handle things, she went to a closed group on the site and put up a post calling for “off the books advice.” The people who normally helped her out would see it and get things rolling.
By that time she’d heard from her client and she headed over to join his game. The timing would be a little tight but she was confident she could mop things up in time to link up with Yoda. She had some unresolved business to take care of.
Todd Kim was having a good week. His team was winning matches left and right. The only time he’d needed help he’d gotten that merc to come in and clean things up. Pity the merc never got paid.
This match they had their enemy on the run. Some of the other team were about to spawn but Delbert was spawn camped covering two of the spawn points. They didn’t have a chance.
There was a spawn at a point Delbert wasn’t covering, so Todd moved that way to find the player. Odd, it was a new guy, not part of the original team. Then Todd saw his rank marks and blanched. The new guy was a freaking Tier Two. Todd’s team was mostly Tier Nines. Delbert’s link suddenly disappeared.
“Delbert, what the heck?” Todd snarled over the team coms as more Tier Twos dropped into the spawn points, then a Tier One. Practically the entire opposing team they’d been playing had been replaced.
“I never even saw what hit me!” Delbert snapped as he respawned in their own team area. “What are all these elite tiers doing here? What the holy f—”
First Delbert, then Joden, then Rickey dropped off. Delbert spawned back in and died again before he’d even made it out of the corridor. Everyone on Todd’s team was swearing up a storm at the new players but the elite tiers were playing in an eerie silence that was downright frightening. If they were coordinating between themselves, it was on a separate channel.
“Don’t bother turning around, douchebag,” one of the elite players finally announced. “I’ve got a gauss gun two inches from the back of your skull. Everyone drop out of the match except PredatorElite919.”
Delbert swore.
“Yeah? And what if we don’t?”
“If you don’t, you’ll get the same thing as your friend here,” another voice said as YodaMaster strode into view.
“Let’s get the hell out,” Joden said. “Sorry, man, we’re leaving.”
“You bastards!” Todd yelled. “Cowards!” But his teammates ignored him and one by one disappeared.
“PredatorElite?” YodaMaster asked once Todd was all alone. “Seriously.”
“You call yourself Yoda and you’re making fun of my name?” Todd spat.
The knife flashed faster than the blink of an eye and was at the throat of his avatar.
“I understand that you are in failure of payment to Larry Coughlin,” Yoda said.
“You’re full of it,” Todd said. “I don’t even know anybody by that name.”
“Funny,” Yoda replied. “He has records of your chat conversation on the matter and claims you failed to transfer payment, that is one Sonya Sasson Mk-276 Gauss Gun, approximate market value one thousand five hundred dollars. Did you transfer the Gauss gun or not?”
“I’m not taking this crap,” Todd said, hitting the command to leave the match. He’d give up before putting up with that kind of abuse. Freaking merc elites. Acting like they owned the game.
“What was that all about,” Joden said, opening up a voice chat.
“No idea,” Todd said. “Let’s go find a better room.”
They found a group of other Tier Nines and some Tier Ten noobs and set out to teach them a lesson. But each time they killed one, a Tier Two would appear instead of the Tier Ten or Nine respawning.
“What the…” Delbert said. There was a brief pause then he came up again. “Not again! You can’t even see them before they—”
“Delbert’s dead,” Joden said.
“We can do this all night,” Yoda’s voice said, eerily creepy in its total lack of emotion.
“What the—it’s just a stupid Gauss gun!” Todd shouted. “Why do you even care?”
“Contract assurance,” Yoda said, deadpan. “When you screw one top tier merc, you screw us all, noob.”
“Who you calling a noob?” Todd shouted again. “I’m no noob!”
“You’re clearly a noob to think you can screw a Tier One and get away with it,” Yoda said. “We stick together. Not in battle but certainly in commerce. Now, you can transfer the item and the hit comes off…or you might as well never log in to WarMonger again, because every time you turn up, you’ll find us there, waiting. Hell, we’ll be waiting in other games. From here on out, you’ll die. And, yes, we’ll teabag you. We’ll gangbang you. We’ll screw you over, until you transfer the item. You do have the item, correct?”
“You said it yourself!” Todd whined, starting to feel desperate. “It’s worth fifteen hundred dollars!”
“I don’t care if it’s worth a million dollars,” a gravelly baritone replied.
Todd hadn’t been watching the board and so hadn’t noticed who had just arrived. He groaned as he saw the latest newcomer in the match.
“Look, Larry…” he said, sweating. He thought he might puke.
“You hire a merc, you pay the merc,” Larry said, walking up to Todd’s avatar. The merc was in his custom Alice The Strange armor. It was one of only three sets in the game. There were various stories about how he’d gotten his hands on it. Most of them involved dead bodies. Actual dead bodies. In the real.
“Idiots like you are a dime a dozen,” Larry continued. “I’ve seen them from Bosnia to Baghdad. You think you can send us out to die and then walk away with the money. Not happening, Todd.”
“How do you know my name?” Todd asked, almost choking on his words. How did this guy know who he was in the real?
“I not only know your name, I know your address,” Larry whispered. “And right now, there’s a laser spotter pointed at your head. You have about three seconds to hand over my rifle!” the merc finished in a terrifying bellow.
Todd nearly broke his fingers selecting the Gauss Rifle and transferring it to the mercenary.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“You’re banned as a client for a year,” Yoda said, stepping back into the conversation. “Not that you’re going to be able to afford to be one any time soon. We’re done here.”
“Look…” Todd said.
“What part of ‘done’ was unclear?” Larry asked. The shining muzzle of the Gauss rifle he’d just transferred to the merc came up like a lightning bolt and the last thing Todd saw was the muzzle flash.
X Team Galveston Victory Has Failed!
“Thanks,” Lynn said over her modulator headset. “Sorry I took so long to turn up. I had a client who was hot to have me in a match.”
“Good match?” Yoda asked.
“Too many Tier Threes,” Lynn admitted. “Felt like kicking puppies. Cash client, though, so I’ll hold my nose. And I needed the dough. I agreed to beta a new game and it’s taking up a lot of my time.”
“TD Hunter,” Yoda said. “Heard that from Fallu. Said he talked to you in the real.”
Lynn suppressed a sigh. Gamers gossiped worse than cheerleaders. Apparently that even applied to former Army guys.
“There’s supposed to be an NDA on that,” Lynn said, letting her voice get even lower and more gravelly. “He shouldn’t be running his mouth.”
“He just said he’d met you, nothing else,” Yoda said, tone as calm as ever. “What’s TD Hunter like?”
“Weird,” Lynn said. “Like ‘the VC own the night’ weird. I haven’t played a lot of AR games but the whole ‘step into the real’ thing sucks. Gimme a controller any day. Heck, gimme an M16. I keep getting my ass handed to me.”
“You?” Yoda said. “By a game AI?”
“A really freaky game AI,” Lynn said. “First warning if you play it: when they warn you to armor up and stealth up, do it. I got caught with my pants down right as I leveled by this mutant wolf thing called a Varg. Thing wiped the floor with me. I ended up running like a little girl, I’ll admit it. Got inside, looked out my back window and the bastard was right freaking there, circling like some kind of alien shark just waiting for me to step foot outside again.”
“Sure it was the same bogey?” Yoda asked.
“Same or another, doesn’t matter. How did the cursed thing know where I was?” Lynn said. “I had the stupid app turned off. But there it was, lurking, like it had nothing better to do than stake out my house. Usually game monsters have a set territory, or once their target leaves the game they reset. But this thing hung around all night long. Creepy as all get out.”
“You ever kill it?” Yoda asked.
“Yup. Went back to where I’d seen it before and it was playing all hard to get, so I danced around unstealthed like a stripper in a bar full of sailors. Lured it right out and then I kicked its teeth in.” Lynn said. “Took rolling around on the ground like a pig, though. Been a while since I’ve rolled around in the dirt. Felt like old times. Well, time to go make the man his money. We good?”
“Scratch my back some time,” Yoda said and disappeared.
“Merc up,” Lynn said to herself and headed out to find another client.
On Sunday, Lynn’s mom took them out for a VR movie and ice cream. They always did movie first and ice cream after because the VR experience was intense, more so for Matilda than Lynn—Matilda still remembered when 2-D movies in big old-fashioned theaters were the norm. But crowded theaters had become a thing of the past after the shift to virtual put the big chains out of business and VR cafes became a thing. VR movies were a much more individualized experience, though you could do them in multiplayer mode so you could still see and talk to whoever you were with. With three hundred and sixty degree 3-D imaging, haptic input and little additions like smells and the feel of sun or wind on your skin, it could take a bit to come down from that kind of high.
When they got back to the apartment, Lynn was surprised to find a package waiting for her in their delivery dock.
“Did you order something recently, Mom?” she asked.
“Nope. Could it be the replacement equipment for your beta game?”
Lynn picked up the package and opened it as her mom hung up her purse. James the tech guy had said they would overnight it but Lynn had assumed that meant after they’d printed the new LINC and surely that would take a day or two, right?
Apparently not.
“I guess they really want you playing more TD Hunter, huh?” Matilda laughed when Lynn pulled out a brand new baton and a smooth black ring from the box.
“I guess so…” Lynn muttered.
“Well, they’ll have to wait till tomorrow at least, because tonight is taco night and it’s your turn to cook.”
Lynn felt a stab of disappointment but quashed it resolutely.
“Yeah, well, what game could possibly be more important than tacos?”
“Exactly,” Matilda said with a sage nod.
After Lynn had packaged up the broken baton and LINC in the provided shipping box, set it out in the delivery dock and scheduled a drone pickup, she got to work on dinner. As usual when it was her turn to cook, her mom hung around in the kitchen too, helping here and there while they talked. The conversation was usually dominated by whatever crazy news currently trended on the stream channels and Lynn and Matilda traded conspiracy theories about a recent spate of livestock deaths around the country. Lynn insisted it could only be a new strain of virus, while her mother thought it was more likely to be a batch of contaminated feed, pointing out the corner-cutting practices of the handful of mega corporations that controlled the agricultural sector.
The tacos were as delicious as they were messy and Lynn pitched in to help with the cleanup. After dinner Matilda pulled out an old-fashioned deck of cards and they settled in to battle it out at Bridge and then Spades, playing modified versions that worked with two players. After that they moved on to Rummy, two-player Hearts and Lynn’s personal favorite: Go Fish. They could have both put on AR glasses and played with cool graphics and sound effects but Lynn’s mom had always emphasized to her how important it was to unplug every now and then and be present in the physical world. Lynn wasn’t sure she agreed but she did enjoy the strategy and competition of the games and she knew her mom needed time to do something completely removed from the stress of her nursing job. Plus, they were all each other had left.
When you’d lost something precious, it had a way of putting what you still had into perspective.
After cards, Lynn excused herself to her room. Her mom would spend the night watching stream vids and generally relaxing. During the school year, Lynn got up early enough for them to have breakfast together before her mom went to sleep for the day but during the summer all bets were off. After all, what was the point of being a teenager in the summer if not to sleep obscenely long hours?
This summer, though, things might just be different. Ever since her conversation with Steve from tactical support, she’d been giving TD Hunter some serious thought. Now that her new LINC had arrived, she could finally put her thoughts into action.
Draped across her bed in the privacy of her room, Lynn donned her glasses, earbuds and LINC and booted up the TD Hunter app.
“Welcome back, Miss Lynn.”
“Hey, Hugo,” she said, a grin spreading across her face. “Nice to hear your voice again. I never thought I’d miss a service AI but I guess you’ve kinda grown on me. Like a fungus, you know?”
“I shall take that comment in the spirit I am sure it was offered,” Hugo said, his cheerful tone undiminished. “That was quite the adventure you had in the woods, by the way. I trust you and Mr. Johnston emerged from it unscathed?”
“Yeah, it all worked out. I’ll be more careful about taking on unknowns though, at least unknowns in thick brush.” As she spoke she popped into her inventory, ensuring all her loot, items and weapons were accounted for.
“An undoubtedly wise decision.”
“Glad you agree. Hey, so, is there any setup stuff I need to do? It looks like everything is where I left it.”
“Indeed it is, Miss Lynn. Since the entire game runs off real time connection to the cloud, all of your data and battle history is quite safe from equipment malfunction in the real.”
“Awesome.” Lynn fell silent as she poked around a bit more, reminding herself of her status when everything had gone dark yesterday. After she finished, she hesitated, steeling herself to say what she wanted to say.
“So, um, Hugo.”
“Yes, Miss Lynn?”
“I need your…advice.”
“I am by no means all-knowing but I shall certainly do my best to provide you accurate information. With what may I be of service?”
“Well…I kind of want to, um…get into shape,” Lynn mumbled, as if the very idea was somehow embarrassing. It shouldn’t be, of course. Why should she be ashamed of wanting to be healthy and fit? But she couldn’t help imagining the reaction of the pop-girl group at school to her making such a statement. Her—dumpy, piggy, fatty Lynn. She winced as the familiar epithets echoed in her head.
“Why, what a splendid idea, Miss Lynn! Seeking the betterment of one’s health is among the worthiest of goals. Your body is, after all, your most important weapon in our global resistance against the TransDimensional invasion.”
“You know…you’re right, Hugo,” Lynn said slowly. She sat up on her bed and squared her shoulders. She’d spent countless hours honing her battle skills in WarMonger, collecting the most powerful weapons and armor and rooting out every tactical edge she could find. Why would she do any less in TD Hunter? The fact that it was augmented reality, making her own body an integral part of her arsenal, shouldn’t make any difference at all.
Elena and the rest of those shallow attention-seekers could go suck it.
“So, where would you like to start, Miss Lynn?”
“Well, I definitely need to check out the TD Hunter training simulations, since those will be the most useful right away. But I also need to up my speed and stamina and strengthen whatever muscle I keep pulling. I doubt the TDMs will stop ambushing me from behind any time soon and I can’t play if I injure something. Can you, I don’t know, search the mesh web for an exercise plan that incorporates all that? I don’t really know what to look for.”
“I can do better than that, Miss Lynn. Our training simulations are not limited to TDM combat-specific weapons and moves. The best physical trainers and health experts from around the globe have crafted an array of fitness regimes exclusively for our brave volunteers. TD Counterforce is dedicated to providing the best resources possible to our Hunters.”
Lynn couldn’t help chuckling.
“I guess that solves that problem, then. So, what are you waiting for? Show me what you got.”
“With pleasure, Miss Lynn.”
Her inventory disappeared from the display to be replaced by a cut-scene vid. The title “Tactical and Training Simulator” appeared for a moment, before being replaced by the now-familiar face of First Sergeant Kane Bryce. He wore his signature combat fatigues and stern expression and Lynn wondered if his face was stuck like that.
“Congratulations, Hunter. By watching this video, you’ve already proven you have twice the drive and gumption of your average volunteer. You might have noticed the Hunter rankings by now and figured out you can earn rewards for outstanding performance. Just because we’re fighting hordes of monsters to ensure humanity’s survival doesn’t mean we can’t have fun while we’re at it. If you take the time to go through the tactical simulations and take advantage of our training regimes, I promise you’ll see a marked improvement in your performance. Use all the tools at your disposal, including our highly advanced service AI, who can provide real-time feedback and instruction. We’re counting on you, Hunter. Train hard, put your best foot forward and go kill some monsters!”
First Sergeant Bryce disappeared to be replaced by the TD Counterforce logo, which in turn faded away to reveal two versions of herself. The first was dressed in full armor—her space Viking armor—and was executing a series of attack maneuvers with a blade in one hand and a pistol in the other. It was labeled “Tactics and Combat.” The second was dressed in sweats and going through a variety of exercises, everything from jump rope to push-ups to yoga. It was labeled “Training and Exercise.”
Shrugging, Lynn tapped on the armored version of herself, which revealed another menu that offered “Weapon Tactics,” “Monster Tactics,” and “Combat Simulator.” She backed out of that menu and selected the sweats-clad avatar, revealing “Weapons Training,” “Combat Exercises,” and “Physical Fitness.” Lynn hesitated, finger hovering over the “Physical Fitness” option but the siren call of “Weapons Training” won out.
After selecting it, she was presented a double row of what looked like every class of weapon in the game, melee weapons on the left, ranged weapons on the right. To her disappointment, only her current weapons and what looked like the next class up were selectable. The rest were grayed out. But still, she took a moment to scroll through the columns, fairly salivating at the awesomeness of what she’d eventually get to use to mow down unsuspecting TDMs. Once she’d finally torn herself away from the tempting display, she returned to the top of the list and selected the Plasma Blade. But the image of the weapon only flashed orange and Hugo’s voice informed her:
“If you would like to enter the training simulation for the Plasma Blade, please first pick up your Hunter baton and stand at the ready.”
Oh, duh. Lynn rose from her bed and picked up the new baton—the second of her original pair was still safely stashed away in her TD Counterforce backpack. She pushed her body-mold chair against the wall and kicked a few other things out of the way so her floor was clear, then tapped the Plasma Blade icon again. The handle of her baton warmed as her Plasma Blade formed with fluid grace. She almost jumped when she looked up and saw her own image standing six feet in front of her, as large as life and as real-looking as the CGI images of the monsters she fought.
“Uh, Hugo? What’s going on? That’s just a little bit creepy.”
“Fear not, Miss Lynn. Your avatar is simply there to demonstrate the various moves and techniques which will be covered in this training session. If at any point you wish to change your training partner, you can find a selection of generic training avatars to replace your own.”
Lynn relaxed. That made sense. In fact, now that she thought about it, it was pretty cool. She’d much rather train with “herself” then some buff drill-sergeant type or an old dude in a robe.
“Furthermore,” Hugo continued as the Lynn avatar stood there in a relaxed stance, “you may always switch your training session from interactive mode, as you see before you, to screen observation, so that you might watch the demonstrations in vid format. I will be your guide throughout your training and you may interrupt my presentation at your pleasure with any questions you might have.”
“Are you customizable, Hugo?” Lynn asked, curious.
“Why yes, Miss Lynn. As your service AI, my voice is one hundred percent customizable. This is my default setting but you may choose from a list of hundreds of languages and regional accents if you so wish.”
Interesting. If she’d thought to ask that at the beginning, she might have had some fun looking through the accent options and picking something different. But now it was too late. Hugo was…Hugo and she couldn’t imagine him any other way. “I think I’ll stick with the default for now, thanks.”
“I’m so glad you approve, Miss Lynn.”
Lynn grinned and wondered if AIs were capable of having preferences.
“Now, if you are ready, shall I begin the training?”
Turning her attention back to her avatar, Lynn took a deep breath and nodded.
It was almost midnight before she was tired enough to notice what time it was and call it quits. The training simulations were beyond amazing. While Hugo narrated and explained, her avatar demonstrated every exercise, from proper handling of each weapon, to basic stances and strikes for melee attack and different shooting techniques for ranged attacks. At any point Lynn could stop the exercise to ask questions, repeat a section, or even skip forward. She could also change her avatar’s position from facing her to standing side by side so she could get different views of the exercises and follow along better. During the practical application portion, she could not only use her avatar as a target, she could also up the difficulty settings to have her avatar dodge or block, making the exercise harder.
Though she never got around to trying any of the simulations in the “Tactics and Combat” menu, Hugo’s brief description made her eager to try it out. She did take a few minutes to explore the “Physical Fitness” options and found that the app offered all kinds of training regimes from kickfit, to yoga, to interval HIITs and everything in between. Though she felt considerably less enthusiastic about the physical fitness part, it was clear everything she needed to become an elite TD Hunter player was right at her fingertips. She certainly had plenty to keep her busy on rainy days or when it was too hot or too late to go hunting.
More than anything else, her evening made one thing abundantly clear: training was fun. Yes, she had completely worn herself out and she groaned in relief as she collapsed into bed. But for the first time in a long time, she felt…inspired. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t look forward to sleep as simply a dreamless escape from the alternating monotony or anxieties of life. She’d earned her rest and tomorrow she would get up and do it all over again.
And enjoy the heck out of it.