Guinea Pigs

Jeremy

The sounds of combat filled his headset. Jeremy turned his head to look behind him and the virtual landscape rotated around him. He noticed in the distance the digital smoke trail of a rocket propelled grenade streak from his left to right, and the tat tat tat staccato of an automatic rifle erupt from his right.

Two players were fighting each other, Jeremy was far enough away that hey probably wouldn't notice him unless he was stupid enough to start shooting in their direction. He wasn't of course. Jeremy glanced down at the bottom right corner of his UI and double checked his health and shield numbers. Both full. He turned and headed back in the direction he had been going, moving to the where he estimated that the center of the next safe area would be. A few moments later, two notices scrolled through the top left of his vision.

'xXx Kill Stealer 42 xXx' has defeated 'Basic Grandpa' with an RPG. 'Basic Grandpa' has defeated 'xXx Kill Stealer 42 xXx' with an AK-47.

With that, the player count dropped by two. Jeremy wondered if he would be able to win this attempt. The game had started 128 players at random locations on the map. Any time one died, there was no respawn, and the numbers were just whittling away smaller and smaller until there would be just one.

Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. Jeremy leaned forward in his chair and risked pulling his hand away from the game controller to swipe at the annoying moisture. He was living in two worlds, having to deal with sensation from both. One, he was in a cartoony animated world with digital firearms and other weapons. The other, he was sitting on the couch in his family's living room with a VR headset on his head and a controller in his hands. The headset was rather lightweight, as far as Virtual Reality technology would allow. It looked like a pair of welders goggles, completely blacked out lenses, with heavy bells cupped over his ears. While the goggles were dark on the exterior, the entire interior of them were screens depicting a virtual landscape. The gyroscope in them monitered his head movements and adjusted his in game point of view appropriately. The large headphones served two purposes being so large, first they helped cancel out any background noise or sound around him, then there were speakers all throughout the bell shape to help generate 8d omnidirectional sound to help immersion.

The maps the game put the players on were always large enough that all 128 of them were a generous distance away from each other when the round started. As players died, the outer borders of the map started to shrink, forcing the players to move in closer to each other. Despite the maps always being different and procedurally generated, and the map never shrinking in the exact same way twice, Jeremy had started to notice some patterns. He tried using what he noticed to his advantage. Certain things in the environment would clue Jeremy in to the map, letting him know where gear caches were or "safe" locations when the map would re-configure itself. Jeremy kept his eyes peeled. With the last two players having died, the map was close to its next threshold for reduction.

As Jeremy followed the signs he'd noticed to a small cocoon of safety, a line of text popped up in the top left of his vision and Jeremy's stomach dropped.

'Basic Granny' was defeated by 'Basic Granny's' grenade.

"You've got to be kidding me." Jeremy groaned.

Immediately, the pastoral bed music that had been the backdrop of the gentle landscape suddenly shrieked to life with a chord from an electric guitar and the land started to pixelate and fuzz. Jeremy hadn't found a safe spot for the terrain transition yet, he swiveled his head from side to side looking for something, anything that might help him.

There, just off to the right he saw what looked to be an old woodframe outhouse. It actually fit in nicely with the surrounding environment. Jeremy hit the sprint button on his controller as the pixilation pulsed larger and larger, foretelling an impending change. Jeremy reached the structure, swung open the door, and took a shotgun blast right in the face.

There was a momentary silence as the screen went white and the message:

'Gyokuran' has defeated 'JER1CH0' with a Shotgun.

You have placed 8th out of 128th.

The white started to dim as Jeremy's death scene played out. UI options appeared letting him scroll through different points of view, from his point of view, the view of his killer, over the shoulder of both him and his killer, and then a free roam. The death screen kept re-playing the last 10 seconds of his time in that round over and over in a muted monotone black and white. He could back up longer, all the way back to the beginning of the round, but he didn't need to. It looked like the player that fragged him had been camping out in that safe-spot for the last few minutes. Definitely through at least the last few terrain shifts.

Jeremy leapt from his chair, pulled off his headset and felt the urge to toss it across the room. He didn't, but his knuckle white grip of the device was ready to follow through with the instinct.

"No." He told himself, "I don't want to let this control me." Jeremy took a few deep breathes. He wasn't going to fault the other player for using that tactic. He'd used it himself on occasion. Best he could do was just chalk it up as a learning experience and move on. Take out some of that anger and aggression in the next round.

He dropped back down into the couch. He just sat there for a moment, keeping up the deep breaths, trying to figure out if they relaxed him as his therapist said they should. As he was about to put the headset back on, an alarm on his watch chirped. Glancing at it, Jeremy saw it was an e-mail. He slid the headset on, and navigated out of the game.

His avatar materialized in what was referred to as a White Room. Analogous to a 2D desktop or start screen in OS generations past. The White Room was essentially a small room that was the default starting point for the VROS. It could be customized easily, but started off as a three cubic meter room with the ceiling, walls, and flooring all in white. A single "Log Out" door would be present, along one wall.

Jeremy hadn't made many changes to his White Room. There was a second door, immediately across from the Exit, with a dial just to the right of it. The door held the same cartoony motif of the Battle Royale he'd just been playing. Along the wall to his left, Jeremy had put a mirror, where it reflected back his avatar's appearance. The wall to his right had floating in front of it a persistent Holo-User Interface. Jeremy thumbed the movement stick on his controller to the right.

From the Holo-UI, he pulled up his e-mail client and checked the message. It was addressed to both his real name and to his on-line alias. Two names he tried to keep as apart as much as he could. The from line said it was from a company, RMO Rex Mundi Operations. Skimming through it, it appeared to be a job offer. Contract work at best.

"Yeah, this looks too good to be true." Jeremy laughed at himself. But rather than ask for further information, the e-mail just asked him to review their website and show up at an interest meeting. He shrugged and saved tagged it to his follow up on file.