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Another Story:
There were risks to everything. A paragraph on the back of each card before you loaded it. No one every read them, though. They all wanted the game, not the knowledge you could be put into a coma if you weren’t good at it.
The games were everywhere, gyms, malls, shopping centers, nurseries, and there were games being made everyday for a new purpose.
And then the amazing happened, the game over took real work. Even the creators were locked in, forgetting how to get out. They all had their job in the games, a life. Soon the save stone was the main goal, and the exits nearly always forgotten. The game was real now, and everyone was in it, playing with each other, interacting. Their minds were linked, their bodies actually moving with the other world, in the simulator no one remembered.
The game was called Gem, and everyone was obsessed.
Chapter One: Entering.
She wanted just to know the game, she wanted just an hour, but the second she was on, she was lost. The exit was gone, the point of the game to find it to be released. Level One was a dungeon, and she had to get out before the guards came back. She didn’t know why, but she was terrified. It must be part of the game, the part that makes you part of the experience, the way the electric pulses were in her mind, feeding her information.
Her name was a lost memory. Her user name in the game not picked just yet. Her craft was as of yet inexistent. Her life unmade. It was a scary thought, being the new member of the game. It made one want to create things as fast as one could.
“Well, you certainly make an entrance.” A voice said through the damp air of the prison. She looked up with a racing heart. It couldn’t be the guards already. The game couldn’t be over that fast. That wasn’t fair!
But it wasn’t a guard. It wasn’t even a particularly scary man. It was a young, lanky teen, dressed as rouge, standing just where the light from the cellar window, barred with iron, would hit him just right, making his look like a savior. She wasn’t impressed, as she saw right to what he was, five foot nine with no stubble and a big upper lip. He didn’t look very alarming. She relaxed against the chains that held her tight to the wall. He wasn’t going to hurt her.
“Hey!” The boy whined loudly. “Don’t go to sleep! I am the longest player in this dungeon! You’re supposed to be scared of me! I have the most power.” The last sentence was said with a pout, as the boy evened the look of his lips by sticking his bottom one out. She smiled, knowing she had already made a good impression.
“Sorry, Honey. I don’t have time to play your games. I have to get out of here.” She said, purposefully talking down to him as if he was a child. And he responded as expected, stomping an overweighed foot. People could choose their appearance in this game, why had he wanted to look like that? Too look harmless, no doubt. She smiled again; proud of how fast she was figuring it out. “Hey, you are a thief aren’t you? That would explain the nose.” She said, though there wasn’t anything particularly wrong with the nose he had chosen, even if it was slightly bigger than was popular at the moment.
The boy sniffed, as if to prove his nose worthy of its size. “Fine, you want to play it that way? I won’t help you out of those links there. I usually help the ladies in return for a favor, but you are rude, so I’ll just let you get eaten by the guards.” He said, talking down to her now. He didn’t like how she was smiling all the time. One shouldn’t smile when threatened with their life.
“Don’t be silly, lad. I don’t need your help.” The girl said, and the boy was amazed when she proved herself true. The chains at her wrists turned blue and with a smile, she easily broke them, the pieces the frozen metal lying in small, harmless, melting shards at her feet. The boy stood agape at that. He had never seen such magic on this level. He wasn’t even sure if it could be done. In fact, he was quite such it wasn’t. He was nearly out of this level, and he couldn’t do one spell, being of a thief job. None of the magic users got their spells till level five at least, to make things fair. How this mage kept her magic through leveling down to the beginning was unheard of, and he had been here a long time.
“What’s your name?” He asked, and took a step towards this already amazing player. She had long red hair pulled into a braid, pale blue eyes that were not very note worthy, and the normal skin tone. She didn’t look powerful, and not nearly as dramatic as the other females that came through here. The girls liked to gussy up, it was closer to goddess looking then normal, as no human can look that good without help. This girl, though, was average, which was unheard of for this game. Freckles, though light, speckled her face and drew attention. Usually girls didn’t like freckles, what was she doing? Her clothes were starting clothes that everyone came in with gray, itchy pants and shirt that was prisoner garb. In order to change this you had to escape the prison hold and go buy, find, or steal some others.
The female shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet. I’m still kind of new to this.” She admitted and walked to him, then past, to the cellar window, taking a hold of the bars and hoisting herself up to look out. That was pretty impressive too, but the boy had seen that many times, usually by men. If you couldn’t do that in real life, you couldn’t do it here. And if you don’t, you can learn. The games were originally used as a weight loss program. If you mind thinks you are doing real activities, and not just in a box moving on a rotating floor, you burn more fats. It was the best way to trick the body to doing what you wanted.
“Well,” He didn’t know whether to trust her or not. She could still really be a problem. “How do you plan to leave?” He challenged. “This is the hardest level.” This was a lie. “Most people die here.”
She was ignoring him. The boy didn’t like this. He was a thief, took leveled down people’s items, should they be able to hold them.
Finally he sighed and figured he would clue her in. As his self proclaimed job he gave all the new players the basic rules. No one ready the hand book, of course. “You need to find a Save Stone. If you die, even a minute after, you will go back to that save. You die ten times under the same save; you go back to the last save before that. Levels are different. You are level one right now, a prisoner.” He could see now the girl was paying attention to him. “You have to learn things to raise levels. That is, when you pick a craft to level. This is the basics. As many crafts you can think of, you can level. The designers are here, always expanding and changing. The designer for this level is the Master Guard; he’ll come with the others.”
She turned and smiled at him. “You’re main craft is thievery. You could be a great help to me, come with me.” She offered, gesturing to the bars. “You seem to know a lot about the game, you’ll keep me alive.”
“You are talking about a party; a group of warriors? If that, you’ll need muscle. We have you, whatever you are, thievery, and will need the rest of the main crafts to make a solid party. I am guessing you aren’t going to be a warrior, so we’ll need one of those.”
She sighed and picked up one of the seemingly normal rocks on the ground. “Where are the Save Stones?” She asked, tossing the rock to the side. “Do they look any different then normal rocks or do you come across them by chance? And how do you save?”
He grunted. “How do you expect to leave? I don’t even know how to get out of here, or I wouldn’t be here.” He lied easily. “You just barely got here, and despite your able to get out of the chains, you don’t have the power to get past the charm on the bars.”
 Exlla · Sat Aug 11, 2007 @ 08:07am · 0 Comments |
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