Solo
Narrative, PVP, Prestige
Length: one to four hours, staged (1 of 7).
Virtual (94,234/100,000).
Custom suppression modal.
Then I selected the [Logout] option, and was given five seconds to put myself away.
I obediently stepped in, wondering if logging out of such a solid reality would be rough, and then my thoughts greyed out to sleep.
17
bio break
Waking to the familiar chime of the cowl’s alarm clock, I remembered the Drowned Earth, and thought sleep would never be the same. I would always be leaving a world behind.
At least I felt rested, even after putting in a full day’s worth of world discovery, adventure, blue mist manipulation, and socialising. It felt like it had all happened yesterday, though: a clear memory, but with a night’s respite to smooth the edges. A ten minute night, but apparently enough.
And there were cooking smells. My parents must be back from town.
Standing up, I felt off, cludgy, and it wasn’t until I’d freshened up and headed for the main part of the house that I realised I was missing the spring of my fit virtual self—and perhaps the longer legs. Waking up would mean always leaving me behind as well, and Dream Speed’s five to one ratio on life was really going to mess up who I felt was me.
"Heya." My mother smiled at me from the couch, muting the news. "Tired of it already?"
"Managing the five-hour shutout. You can break it into bits, rather than having to do five hours in, five hours out."
"Excellent!" my father said, gesturing with a spatula. "We decided on country hours for dinner because we wanted to dive in as soon as possible, but being able to jump in and out without penalty makes future plans much simpler."
"And how was it?" my mother said. "As good as we hoped?"
"Better. I’m not even going to try to describe it. You should go in cold, if you can."
"Too late for that," my father said. "Everything has lit up with the news, and pictures of those ridiculous cities, and grabs of mecha fighting. I didn’t even realise this was a mecha fighting game."
"That’s…" I shook my head helplessly. "The mecha fighting is a sidequest. The tiniest bit of DS. The thing’s enormous. But, no, I’m not going to tell you more. I don’t want to spoil what it feels like to wake up there."
"Okay, okay. Set the table, then. Greek tonight."
I obeyed, just in time for my father to bring out plates of lamb skewers and fried halloumi.
"You’re going to love the food rewards," I said, squeezing a lemon wedge. "Vast arrays of Earth food, and I heard that the higher tiers have other-planet food, and right now I’m totally ready to believe that it’ll taste like it’s from other planets too."
"What starter city did you say you chose? Is it the one with the skyscraper trees?"
"No, mine’s the rollercoaster over islands. Skyscraper trees?"
I snagged the tablet my mother was browsing, and synced it with the big TV, then brought up images of Dream Speed’s starter cities. There was Vessa. Kivion looked like a rollercoaster that had contracted into a bird’s nest whirl, all set on poles above open water. The skyscraper trees were at Anefta: great white columns rising out of the breakers of an endlessly long beach, with the columns' upper reaches dividing and sub-dividing like the branches of a tree—and all decorated with the compact pill-shapes of thousands upon thousands of Snugs.
Unable to resist, I began browsing more images, scenes from countless stories. The mecha were Art Nouveau-inspired, which made me far more inclined to try that Challenge out. One of the starter cities had the Snugs attached to petal-shaped loops surrounding underwater domes. There were a lot of videos of the mass suspension on Vessa Major, and another of a crowd transforming the ubiquitous coveralls into an excuse for an impromptu rendition of the Ghostbusters theme song.
And then I made the mistake of following a link to "Medusa-Bro".
"Ach, I did not want to see that," my mother said.
My father, unfazed, said: "Python-Bro seems more appropriate."
"I guess when people are given sliders for every body part, this is inevitable," I said, shuddering.
"Is—is it moving?" my mother asked.
I turned off the screen, and we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, and then cleared the table.
"Taia, why don’t you go up to your Oma’s house and show her how to play?" my mother asked, stacking the dishwasher.
"So she can tell me again that she has better things to do than silly TV-picture games?"
"She promised to try it at least once," my mother said. "Though what she would make of new-style medusas I don’t know."
"The game’s code of conduct includes no full nudity in public places. And Ryzonart seems serious about enforcing courtesy standards. Okay, I’ll talk to her."
"While we try to decide whether to go with our guild’s starter city or another," my father said. "I’m leaning toward an underwater one."
"Skyscraper trees," my mother replied.
I left them still debating, and snagged a light jacket, since evening in the Lowlands in September brought a touch of chill. It would be quicker to grab a bike from the collection outside the door, of course, but I was missing my running days, and it would only take ten minutes to walk down the twilit road.
The opportunity to buy a house so close to my grandmother’s was one of the reasons my parents had given up their nomad lifestyle to return to the Netherlands. I hadn’t been happy at the time, since it had been a wrench to move from a Malaysian beach town to the most rural part of the Lowlands, and my Oma’s opinion of me had always involved long silences, or corrections of my pronunciation. Until we’d moved here permanently, I’d spent more time in New Zealand, South Korea and Malaysia than I had in the country of my birth, and my accent showed it.
Walking in blissful solitude toward the lighted windows of her house, I already knew that I would see my Oma in silhouette through the kitchen window: tall, determinedly upright, her arthritis-clawed hands hidden by the sill. Washing dishes, because she always kept country hours, and ate her dinner as soon as it grew dark. She would watch the news before going to bed, and then be up at the dawn, out doing chores on the single acre left of the once-expansive farm.
The door was only locked when my Oma went to bed, so it was simple enough to know and walk in. My mother might believe Oma had promised to try Dream Speed, but I wasn’t at all surprised to see the cowl my mother had bought still sitting unopened on the sideboard.
"Hi Oma," I said. "How was your day?"
My Oma glanced at me, then said: "Close the door, girl. The night is cold."
"Yes, Oma," I said, wiping my shoes carefully on the wiry mat just inside the door. Oma did not like dirt tracked through her house. I took my coat off before she could remind me of that as well.
"And have you found a proper way to spend your time?" Oma asked. "Or do you intend to stay the whole of your life a child in the house of your parents?"
"Not the whole of my life, no," I said, keeping an upbeat note to my voice. "It depends on how long it takes for my business to grow a steady income stream. I have a small advantage because I can create web pages supporting multiple languages, but I still need to build a reputation."
"You cannot work in the company of someone established, to build this reputation?"
Two different shouty bosses had more than made clear to me that if I wanted a career in design, it wouldn’t be working for someone else. I still had unreasonable clients to deal with, but at least—while living with my parents—I could refuse the worst commissions.