Matthew Nesheim
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Chapter 5: Calista - Orientation
🕑 Added 2023-10-20 02:40:30 +0000 UTCCalista came to lying on her back while a slight breeze blew through the grass around her. The sun was bright overhead, its bright rays nearly blinding. Where am I? Shielding her eyes, she sat up to look out over the green stalks and found she was sitting atop a small rise in an open field. To her left sat a forest, to her right, hills. She glanced again at the sun and saw it to be about mid-morning.
Out of the corner of her eye, something moved. It began as the top of a feathered head that bobbed above the grass. Up and down, up and down went the head until a broad beak and a long neck appeared. A bird, she realized as she watched the strange creature bob up and down, up and down until finally the entire animal came into view. It was a moa, a tall, flightless bird, she recognized from … Wait. Aren’t Moas extinct? She stared as the strange, flightless bird passed her by without so much as blink in her direction.
What is going on?
Then she looked down and things got even weirder. Her body was translucent with a faint blue outline. As she sat looking at her limbs, her body shimmered like a hologram. Am I dead? What is this? She vaguely remembered a burning doorway and a sword. There had also been a voice, someone who had explained things that may or may not have made a lot of sense at the time.
She was in the middle of trying to remember what those things had been when a disembodied female voice fell down on her, “Greetings traveler and welcome to the world of Sable Unlimited.”
Wait. Am I in character creation?
She turned to see a blonde, spectral woman in a stewardess uniform appear before her, like a hologram that had just been turned on. “Good morning to you, miss. I hope your arrival was not too uncomfortable?”
“Errr …” Calista stared.
“Ah, I see you’re having some trouble adjusting. This is probably because we’ve been having some difficulty with memory uploads all morning. I assure you we’ll have this fixed shortly …” The blonde stewardess then looked off camera. “… What was that? Okay, thank you Frank.” She then faced back to Calista. “I’m told your memories should be uploading now. You may feel some slight discomfort …”
The world began to spin as a torrent of information flooded into her mind. There had been a dungeon. A dungeon full of trolls, kobolds, invisible monsters, talking paintings, dragons, treasure, e some strange ghoulish looking woman, and a black robed arch-mage that, for reasons she seemed to have forgotten, she had passionately hated.
A mysterious and hooded figure had met her at a tavern in Hilltop, one of the beginner areas of the game. He had sent here there to retrieve a sword and a ring, both of which she had found before ending up … here.
She remembered she had been a delver. She remembered she had been an experienced player. A very good player. In fact, she remembered being one of the best players in the entire game.
Her mind returned to the dungeon she had faced. There had been a voice at the end of it. A voice that sounded a little like the one belonging to the woman before her. She remembered then what that voice had explained.
“Am I … am I dead?” She asked.
“Good, you remember your initial orientation.” The stewardess nodded as she pulled out a clipboard. “That should save us some time, which is good because I’m still a bit behind this morning … ”
Calista looked over the woman before her. She was shapely and dressed in a red skirt with a red button up blouse all with gold trim and she was sitting there in mid-air as if seated on an invisible chair. Reading her notes, the blonde woman held a silver pen that tapped against the clipboard like a metronome.
“… Ah … there … that’s where I put you.” The stewardess looked back at her and smiled. “You may refer to me as the Attendant as my purpose here is to guide new arrivals through their orientation. Now, I am sure you have a ton of questions just swirling around inside you, but if you allow me to walk you through a few things first, I’m sure you’ll find many of those questions answered shortly.” The Attendant then glanced down at her clipboard. “So, first things first. Let’s start by reviewing your controls, abilities, and the different features contained in your Head-Up Display.”
The Attendant then began rattling off the different controls and how to use them. Listening, Calista realized she already knew everything being explained. Oh, that’s right, I had the night off and I was about to play this game. I’m still logged in to Sable Unlimited. I don’t remember wanting to make a new character though. Why am I making a new character? And just who is this Attendant? I don’t ever remember there being an Attendant before. I need to log out and … Calista stopped as a breeze blew through her hair. Wait this doesn’t feel right …
As the Attendant finished explaining the last of the controls, she sat down on something invisible and crossed her legs. “… but I’m sure you’re already quite familiar with our controls as you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t already a highly successful member of a beta test on one of our newly germinated candidate worlds.”
What?
The Attendant smiled brightly, “So as the ambassador for your new reality, I want to not only welcome you to the full release of this newest season of Sable Unlimited, I want to congratulate you on your full V.I.P status.”
Oh no.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet, your consciousness has been transferred here to the official, very real world of Wraath where you are about to become a very real person in a very real world with very real life and death consequences. Exciting! Isn’t it? In a moment, I will begin your walk through of character selection so that you can customize your avatar’s class, race, abilities, and skills to suit your personal preferences. However, before I begin, do you have any questions?”
“Errr …” She felt her brain begin to melt.
“Good!” Robin said in a cheery voice. “Now, on to your character …”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!” She frantically waved her hands in the air.
Robin dutifully paused and folded her hands in her lap.
“So … what you’re telling me is that I’ve been somehow teleported to another planet to play Sable Unlimited in real life?”
“Ah, I see that there’s been some memory loss. This should have been explained during your initial orientation.” The Attendant frowned and studied her clipboard for a moment. She flipped a page. “Yes, well … I guess we might as well review.” The Attendant took on the tone and posture of a friend exchanging lively gossip, “You see, back on Earth, you died of a stroke while playing Sable Unlimited. This had nothing to do with any unhealthy behavior on your part. It was simply your time to go. It was at this point that our company, Concept, stepped in, transferred your consciousness here, which has no enabled us to provide you with the opportunity for a new life here on Wraath.”
“So like … you just stole my consciousness from my body?”
“Correct.”
She stared at the holographic woman in shock and amazement.
The Attendant gave her a secretive smile, “Let me explain. When we place a beta test of Sable Unlimited on one of our candidate worlds, we are looking for candidates who are likely to reach an end state within the allotted time period. This forms our candidate pool. Then, as the beta test nears its end, we look through our candidate pool and sort them by skill, ability, and potential entertainment value. We then run a few test samples through some carefully selected target audiences, gauge whether you garner the proper amount of engagement within our selected demographics, and carefully select the best possible candidates. You just so happened to have fit our optimal profile.”
A stunned silence followed. “So … you’re telling me that I … was going to die anyway and so you brought me here to grant me a second life?”
The Attendant nodded. “And to play our game.”
“This is insane.” She looked up at the sky. Clouds were blowing high overhead. A flock of geese were flying in the distance. She could see trees, grass, and even a pair of what looked like green furred deer standing near the tree line. “I have to be hallucinating.”
“You will find out shortly how this is not true.” Robin’s voice was flat as she folded her hands in her lap. “Do you have any further questions?”
“You said you were having trouble with my memories? What do you mean? I don’t remember anything about my past life. Only that I used to play this game.”
“And you won’t. Memory transfer is different from consciousness transfer. Not only is it harder to transfer memories themselves, we’ve found over centuries of managing player populations that in order to optimize the survival rate of our player base that it’s best just to wipe out any and all memories of your past life. Saves you the grieving process of leaving your loved ones and saves us a great deal on what the guys in the high rises call ‘player churn.’”
“I feel like you weren’t supposed to tell me that last part,” Calista said.
“It’s my last day,” the Attendant whispered, “and you just happen to be my last V.I.P of the morning.”
“You said that before. What do you mean by V.I.P?” Calista asked. “How can I be a V.I.P if I didn’t ask to come here?”
The Attendant answered, “Because out of all of our candidates, you scored among the highest of all candidates with our test audience. Because of that, you’ve been given certain advantages that other players here have not.”
“Like what?”
“For one, you’re going to be provided with the opportunity to remake your character. Although you’re starting out at level one, you’ll find that the new Calista will have access to stats, boons, and abilities that the previous incarnation of you did not. Second, once you’ve recreated yourself, you’ll be placed in a challenging but rewarding situation in which you’ll be given the opportunity to retrieve some of the most valuable gear you earned in your previous Sable Unlimited life. We do this because we’ve found that these items are central to the identity of your character within the game and add the kind of immediate story depth that our viewers enjoy. Third, because you’ve been marked as a Very Important Player within the world of Wraath, you’ll find that your viewer count is much, much higher than that of most other players. This will lead to … benefits and encounters that you’ll learn more about as the game goes along.”
“I have a viewer count?” Calista asked.
“Yes,” the Attendant explained. “When you arrive on Wraath, you are coded with an individual broadcasting code that allows customers to subscribe to your player character journey. Also, everything you do is recorded by Concept so they can put together highlight reels, promotional material, and anything else they need. Everything you do here is basically the intellectual property of Concept. It’s moderated, of course. No one can see you when you’re dressing or bathing and whatnot. We also had to stop players from seeing their viewer count prior to level three.”
“Why did you have to do that?”
“It was recent fix to a safety issue. With the influx of Earthling males, I guess the moderators found that restricting players from seeing their viewer count had a positive corelation with player survival, particularly at the lower levels. So you won’t be able to see your viewer count until you reach level three.”
“Oh.”
It was quiet then as Calista tried to think of another question. Her mind was swirling and she felt a bit overwhelmed, so after a moment, she finally asked, “And if I have any more questions after this, what do I do?”
The Attendant looked pleased, “Excellent question. You’ll find that, just like the Earth version of the game, there are game masters located in all major cities and many of the major landmarks located throughout Wraath. These are Concept employees who will take any question you might have for them and, to a fault, give you an answer that completely in line with company policy. Also, if you achieve certain milestones, you may be graced with another visit from my successor.”
“You’re quitting?”
The Attendant’s face was emotionless. “No, I’m being retired.”
“What does that …?”
“Good!” The Attendant said cheerfully. “Now, since you have no further questions, we’ll move on to character creation.”
