So there it was: Fayroll. It had a ton of players, swords, magic, and a bunch of races, specializations, and crafting. There were four enormous—absolutely gigantic—player zones with lots of locations on a single-player continent. A newly discovered second continent was still being developed and wasn't as densely populated. There were extensive quests, a fully nonlinear process, and myriad NPCs (non-player characters) built into the game to give players quests, help them, hurt them, or simply create a fully immersive atmosphere and ambiance. The main thing that had changed since my gaming days was that, instead of a monitor (and later a neuro-helmet) and third-person view (or sometimes first-person), the game featured 100 percent immersion. In other words, the only difference between it and the real world was that it wasn't real.
I glanced at the clock and shook my head. Already three o'clock, and still nobody. Maybe they won't come? I thought. What then? Maybe everything had changed, the certificate had been canceled, and I was off the hook? And, of course, just when I started to hope for the best, the doorbell rang. I opened the door, and two glowering, uniformed men tramped into my apartment, one older than the other.
"Is something wrong?" I asked gloomily. They didn't cheer me up.
"Of course there is," answered the older one. "You live on the seventh floor, and your elevator doesn't work. We had to carry this monster up here ourselves, and it's a beast."
And with that, they carried in a box about five feet tall in which, it appeared, a fairy-tale steed waited to rush me off into a magical world of swords, magic, fatal beauties, and daring adventure. My only comfort was that it wouldn't be for long.
An hour later, the furniture had been moved around (it turns out that the capsule had to be set up just so in a certain area), swear words had flowed freely, and the capsule was in place. My new friends left, and I circled the novel object that had taken over my apartment.
A few turns, and I had a grasp of what, from the outside, looked something like a bathtub and something like a small boat with wires and other attachments sticking out of it.
"Well, waiting won't change anything. Let's see what this guy can do."
And I sat down at my computer.
Before the installers left, they explained what I needed to do and press. According to them, during the first launch, the machine read your subcortex, aligning the equipment to maximize player comfort. I asked them if it was possible to get overly engrossed in the game, and they told me it had a feature that disabled player activity when the system detected that the player's brain was at its limit. The player was forced into a dream state where his vision was blurry and he lacked coordination. Basically, it made it impossible to play the game. I thought that was a smart way to do things. I remembered friends back when I used to play games who would get so involved that they went for 12 to 16 hours without eating or drinking. I've seen junkies who looked better...
The whole monstrosity (the installers called it a "neural bath," though I stuck with "capsule") was hooked up to my computer, where I first registered and created an account. My first surprise was that I could only play one character. Back in the good old days, I could have five accounts per server, and many more characters, and there were almost unlimited servers.
But not here. Pick something and play. Level-up; develop skills; and accumulate things, friends, and enemies. And if I didn't like the result or got tired of it, I could delete it—with everything I had accumulated and my entire backstory—and get a new one. Those were my only choices.
Here we go.
The first thing the program asked was if I wanted to select a name. I could either pick one from the list or think up a new one myself, though I was too lazy for the latter.
I knew finding a good name was important. It's something I needed to be smart about. And what was funny was that, while you could take all the time you needed for the game, when you were born, you had no choice but to accept what you were given. Sometimes, as in my case, that left you with a less than ideal moniker. I have no idea if it was alcohol, atmospheric pressure, shock and happiness that I was born, or what, but my father named me Harriton. He named me and never gave it a second thought; I was the one who had to live with it. All through school, college, and especially the army, I was just happy when people called me Harry (which means ugly enforcer in Russian). The alternatives were much worse.
I entered the first letter of my real name, and the program pulled up a list of prepared usernames. One, in particular, caught my eye: Hagen. There was something about it that I liked, and as someone who tends to trust his intuition, I decided to go with it. Much better than my real name, anyway.
Race: human. I had decided that back when I was a young gamer before anyone had ever heard of Fayroll. Elves were too watery, dwarves were ugly, and halflings had hairy legs. And forget about orcs, trolls, and goblins—they were just evil. I mean, sure, lots of people enjoyed playing them, and that's fine; some people like lollipops and others prefer pickles. But I stuck with humans, seeing as how that's what I was most used to.
And that was pretty much it. Fayroll was different from the games I'd played since you picked your class and specialization after the tutorial—a starting location without aggressive monsters, where players can't kill each other. This area was called Noobland (some developers have a sense of humor).
Now, I had to decide who I wanted to be by choosing an instructor and getting a class quest from him. For instance, if I wanted to be a mage, I had to find the mage instructor and get a quest. If I wanted to be a thief, I would have gotten my assignment, and head off to steal something, grab a drink, and land in prison. Want to be a hero? Go for it!
Attribute points were assigned more or less how they always were: players distributed them themselves with each new level. One important difference was that Fayroll didn't have any multiclasses; everyone picked a specialization for themselves, and that was it. That specialization would be the only one you'd work on. No archetypes like mage/thieves or warrior/clerics.
I agreed to let the program base my physical appearance on my actual appearance and decided not to read all the digital garbage they threw at me. And with that, I was treated to solemnly drawn-out music reminiscent of a drunken bagpipe band. I grunted. On the screen, a message let me know that the character Hagen had been created.
"Thank God. We'll start with a prayer," I said as I lay down in the bathtub/capsule, manipulated what the installers told me to manipulate, and saw a light at the end of a tunnel that led my new character into a whole new world.
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