To Kill Gods or Die Trying

Chapter 02-House Arrest

January 1st, 2300

"Another great year for us," Ally sighs happily. Quitting modeling after her pregnancy, she's now a stay-at-home soon-to-be mom. I grin and rub her swollen belly.

"I'll clean up some stuff, say ten minutes, and I'll be back. For all three of you," I assure climbing into the tube.

"Don't be late, I love you lots," she says turning off the lights.

Something crosses my mind. "Ally," I call out. She turns and gazes into my eyes with her beautiful soul.

"I promise you, I'll do better for them," I say guiltily.

She rolls her eyes. "Ben, we've all made mistakes. The past is the past and you're not that same person you once were. You've got to move on," she advises. She's right. I'm just nervous of having kids. Me? A father? Wow.

"I love you," she repeats walking out. "Say it back."

"I'm a mirror and whatever you say is reflected onto you," I reply laying down.

"Dude, you're so immature," she scoffs with a giggle. "Isn't that why you married me?" I reply with a smirk.

"Don't take too long... Benny," she jeers. God, I hate when she calls me Benny. I shake my head with a grin and shoo her off.

The glass panel closes, and I wriggle my head into the helmet. Approaching the game's release, beta-testers were allowed to keep the RealVision equipment in our homes from professional facilities. I've done it thousands of times, yet it always feels unnatural. With a push of the red button, my consciousness rapidly fades. I can see dream fragments, like getting knocked unconscious, and then I'm staring at a worried Sess.

"Broski, good thing you're here," he cries panicked. I look around to see other people panicked as well.

"What the hell's going on?" I ask. Something isn't right. The whole aura of this place went from party to worried silence. No one is cheering, no one is drinking, no one is laughing.

"No one can log out," Sess whispers hoarsely with a look of serious concern on his young face.

I mentally open up my game menu, displayed on my Heads-Up Display. I look down at the bottom.

It can't be! There's no way! NonononoNO!

My logout is gone. And I know it's not a bug. This game was crafted carefully, and we played with a few glitches here and there, but they would be patched within the day, and were never a menu problem. How could there be a bug on the release date?

"It's probably a bug," I lie, trying to comfort myself. Sess somberly looks me dead in the eyes. "Ben..."

"I said it's a bug!" I snap frustrated. I have too much to lose! Being trapped in this world. My wife... My twins.

"The dev team will be on it and everything will go back," I lie. Sess slumps on the table.

The rest of the groups logs on within the hour and we all have the same problem.

"This is no bug," Margot says. "This is an attack."

"Whoa, slow down there, Miss Conspiracy Theory," Havanna says. "OMG, like, that is not happening. Don't make up shit, Margot!"

Rachel snaps obviously panicked.

"Think about it, though. Why the hell would there be a brand-new bug on the day of the official release?" Alo asks somberly.

There is silence. We all know this is not a bug.

"We have no way to communicate with the real world. We have no way to warn people not to log on!" Pranav realizes in shock. More and more people are going to keep coming in and there's nothing we can do! "The best thing to do is to stay calm, not make up any conspiracies and wait. Have faith," Cecelia says not even phased a little bit by what's going on.

"Cece's right. This is all happening too fast. We need to wait for shit to cool down," Mack agrees, relaxed at Cecelia's suggestion.

"The way I see it," Essej begins, "is that this is a cyber-terrorist attack."

"What did I just say?" Mack snaps.

"Let him speak. He knows the most about this stuff," Sess beckons. "There are many, many, and when I say many, I really, really, really, freaking mean there is basically literally, like, infinite numbers of procedures and levels of complexity it takes to hack a game like this. This isn't just 1s and 0s. This is a game with infinite possibilities, scenarios, and environmental interactions, not including PvP and PvE interactions. Every landscape, weapon, armor, AI, NPC, monster building, tree, from the biggest sandstorm in the Wildlands all the way down to the thinnest piece of grass, all of it needs to be programmed for infinite possibilities. And that's just the environmental stuff. The addition of 100,000 players means that every individual needs to be programmed for infinite possibilities as wheel including interactions with 99,999 players and every infinite environmental possibility in the game."

"Quit the nerd talk what are you trying to say?" Havanna asks skeptically.

"I'm saying that it was a team of wizard-level hackers who knew the game programming—an inside job. All they would have to do is break through the security and delete the file allowing us to log out. It's really that simple since it's just a menu item, but since it's one needle in a haystack of infinite to the power of infinite possibilities, any other wizard-level hacker would give up immediately realizing how inhumanly complex an operation like that is. Someone who worked on the game turned." There is silence. Essej slumps on the table. "I'm sorry guys..."

***

January 5th, 2300

It's been five days. The plot is clear now—to everyone.

All of the players have camped out in the various inns spread across the Capital. Some sleep in the streets with no money to buy rooms or due to overcrowding. It's been miserable five days. Players are turning on each other. Players are getting bodily notifications of dehydration. Some players have become severely depressed and have abandoned hope.

Cecelia has kept us all together and well. She's only optimistic; it gives us faith.

"Goddammit!" Sess screams. Cece frowns.

"Sorry, sorry. I just... I just never got to tell my parents how sorry I am for the things I've done. I've been a shitty son, and I guess I'm taking it to my grave. I live alone guys. It's only a matter of time until I die of not eating, drinking, and shitting on myself. The rest of you are probably hooked up on life support. I just wanna say that you guys are like my fami-"

"Shut up," Margot says bluntly.

"W-what?" Sess asks taken aback. "I said shut up," Margot repeats. "I second that. Shut up," I say.

"As I. Shut up. Don't talk nonsense Sess. Someone will come for you," Cecelia assures, "do you think we're the only people that care about you?"

Sess is shocked. "My parents moved to Canada. I live alone in the family ranch passed down to me, in the middle of the Outback desert like an Australian stereotype. No neighbors, no close friends. Guys, I appreciate the support... but no one is coming for me."

"Doesn't matter," Alo says angrily. "I don't care how many health potions I have to force feed you, how many healing spells I have to cast on you, I'm not letting you die dammit!"

We find ourselves amongst thousands of others, shoulder-to-shoulder, on a grassy field outside.

"Whoa! What the-" Mack screams.

"What just happened! What the hell just happened!" Pranav cries. Thousands of others are screaming and crying as well. Weren't we just in an inn room?

"QUIET!"

Complete silence falls upon the 100,000 players assembled. "Who the hell?" I begin.