Avilien

Through the lens of a camera

Luke admired his own floating image as it hung in the air, projected by his phone. There were so many stats and features, even a section for lore. Although that button, like many others, was greyed out. A few of the interactive features were greyed out too, or had a shiny golden padlock covering their buttons. From what Luke could surmise, the phone acted like a gear, knowledge, and statistics centre. Which meant the shades were only used for one thing: finding fragmented data and allowing people to go after it for XP.

If the voice was correct in its statement, then some kind of significant update was coming next Sunday at around 4:00 a.m. Luke recalled a mention of something strange on NowTube several days ago; a website that held all the latest news from around the world. Closing his phone for a moment, Luke turned on his monitor and booted up his computer. Within nanoseconds, the computer sprung to life and Luke was on the internet. Sitting comfortably on a peeling black leather gaming chair, Luke remained impressed at the speed at which his computer had loaded and how fast the pages popped up. Everything on his computer seemed different. Nebs didn't lie when he claimed to have given the computer an upgrade, but just what upgrade did he give it?

After a brief moment of searching the bright blue website, Luke found it—a video he had seen two weeks prior about an upcoming event in Avilien that had spooked millions. As Nebs swam in the bag of potatoes in the middle of the floor, Luke snooped around the website; there were videos there he had never seen before. Videos from a week ago that he had never seen. In fact, there were hundreds of clips he hadn't seen...and he checked the net on a daily basis! Pulling up the most recent video from a well-known gaming reporter named Jeff Santos, the title of the video was "Missing". As Luke hit play, Jeff could be seen in front of a blackboard with the Avilien logo printed on it. He stood there with a drained and confused look on his face, dressed in his usual shirt and jeans. Even his trimmed trademark beard had gone a little haywire since the last video Luke watched.

"Good evening, folks. My name is Jeff Santos, news reporter for absolutely everything concerning Avilien and the gaming world as you know it. By now, people have already seen the countdown timer for the Avilien patch, the first ever patch in the history of Avilien. But what are we going to see in this patch?

"Across the globe, a small handful of people have broken beyond the level-one barrier. Do not be fooled into believing that it hasn't been done, though most of them remain quiet and some of them have disappeared. I fear the same will happen to me. I'm here to tell you what a source has revealed to me regarding the update dubbed the 'New World update'. I'd ask you all now to remove your GTs, but that may be too little, too late.

"This isn't just some patch that is coming. Avilien is meant to be an entirely immersive MMORPG, one that has real-world implications. It has the most insane—" Jeff stops speaking as two men in black suits rush onto his set, and then the video cuts off.

Luke had never seen this video before or the others he browsed. In the past, he had struggled to find any video-related to Avilien. Since Nebs fiddled with his computer, he saw hundreds of videos, and some of them were pure insanity. There were people shooting balls of fire or wielding strange weapons. Some were jumping from tall buildings and walking away without injury. All of it tied to Avilien. A person was even run over by a car and then seemed to get up unharmed!

Everything Luke watched was strange, and as fast as they were uploaded onto the net, they were being taken down in rapid succession. Someone was trying their best to cover this up. Another video, made by another presenter, was talking about Jeff Santos and how he had vanished altogether since the suits got to him. Luke's interest was more piqued than Nebs hunger for spuds. Why would Jeff be arrested or missing? Did he stumble upon something he wasn't supposed to? And why were the GT glasses a threat? Because of the data conversion? Luke tried to figure it out as the video he clicked on buffered, resting his chin on his hand.