The creature loomed menacingly twenty foot away from him, its four scaled arms hung down, a different weapon grasped in each of its four fingered hands. Its snouted face thrust forward, towards him, snarling and displaying its cracked, yellow fangs. Suddenly it roared, spittle spraying out, and started a charge in his direction, arms pumping. As it closed with him, one hand came up, holding a mace, and swings it violently towards his head.

The lightly armored man drops to one knee, allowing the mace to whistle past just above his head, then rolled forward avoiding the broadsword that was following closely behind. As the blade slid smoothly above him, it flickered slightly, phasing in and out of reality, along with the hand and arms that grasped it. The man grunted in disappointment before he thrust the dagger he held up into the armpit of the sword wielding arm. The green skinned hand spasmed, releasing the sword which flew away into the surrounding foliage, rotating rapidly like a thrown boomerang, scything away the leaves and small branches in its pathway. The creature screamed with a mix of pain and anger at this, spinning around to bring its other two weapons into play, but too late for its opponent had continued his roll beyond the creatures reach.

Regaining his feet the man studied the injured beast, seeing one arm hanging uselessly, green blood down it to drip onto the forest floor. Its charge had taken it well past him, allowing the man plenty of time to prepare himself for the creatures next attack, but he was surprised when it placed the head of the mace it held on the ground, and lean against the shaft to and return a studying gaze to the man. This was different, for on all his battles, this creature had never before displayed a calculatory nature, and he stepped back to consider his next move, now aware that this situation required a different approach than he normally used.

Considering the awareness the creature now displayed, he stared at the space above the creatures head, and read the message that appeared.

Level 7 Gurk

Semi Intelligent warrior from the Clan of the Void.

Heath : 1890 / 2500

Must be the heuristic learning protocol, he thought to himself, knowing that it was pretty inevitable that there would be changes over time with the interaction that the creature experienced. The protocol had only just been implemented, and previously this creature would just have turned and charged again. How quick the changes had happened, and how much, concerned him. He hoped that there was limits to this advancement, or with time, even the simplest of creatures would advance beyond reason. Think this, he pulled out his longsword and twirled it experimentally while eyeing the Gurk.

The Gurk shoved the useless limb beneath a leather bandoleer that crossed its chest, securing it against interfering with any future actions, hefted the mace back up and advanced upon the small human before it, carefully now it had been injured. There was a glint of intelligence in the creatures eyes that had not been there before, a good indicator of the greater danger it now presented.

The human quickly went through a few combat options that were open to him in his mind, discarding the least favorable to success, before finally deciding on one. Holding his longsword horizontally in front of him, he ran directly at the Gurk, taking it by surprise as he had never before challenged this creature in such a direct manner. When he was about seven foot away he launched himself into a forward dive, aiming for the space between its two bowed legs. The Gurk thrust all its weapons at once forward and downward to block this assault, but as expected by the human, this was a fatal mistake. The Gurks muscular chest, designed to support four arms, hampered the thrusts when all four pectoral muscles tensed together, interfering with each other. The weapons struck the ground in front of the creature too late.

Coming out of the roll that he performed after the dive, the human spun around and thrust the longsword into the back of the Gurk, spearing it from front to back, splitting the creatures heart in two along the way. The Gurk froze, flickered in and out of existence again, but this time with a brief color change, then sprawled to the ground, dead.

The human looked down at the slain creature, a look of annoyance on his face. Thrusting forward one leather shod foot, he nudged the body, causing the contact point to fractal into geometric rainbow colored shards. Throwing down his green stained longsword in disgust he snapped a command into the air.

“Logout.”.

...........

The man lay on the bed, an eyeless, white plastic mask covering his face. As he moved, wires attached to the mask swayed gentry as they arced up to join to a machine placed on the wall behind the bedhead. The man was dressed in a casual business suit, which was unusual considering his location. Green flickering LEDs blinking on the machine suddenly turned red. He twitched slightly, like someone had stuck a pin into him. Beside him on the bed, his hands clenched into fists before he opened them and stretched the fingers out as far as he could.

After a few seconds stretching his hands, the man carefully lifted them to the mask he wore and removed it from his face with some difficulty, for the contacts inside it had adhered to the skins surface. Pulling it free, the face beneath was flushed and sweaty, but the expression was cold, displeased with some unknown reason. Placing the mask carefully to one side the man swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.

Behind him a door opened and two people entered, both wearing lab coats. One of them was a young female, her blond hair gathered up un a bun at the back of her head, carrying a white towel in one hand. As she approached the bed the man seated on it held out one hand and she placed the towel into it carefully. The man used the towel to clean his face, carefully taking the time to make sure all the sweat was removed, and then dropped it carelessly onto the bed beside him.

“Can one of you explain to me what the hell that was ?” he finally spoke, the annoyance clear in his tone. “I thought all the graphical problems had been corrected. This kind of shit can not happen when the update is applied, player won’t accept it and will flood us with bug reports and complaints.” He turned his gaze onto the older male. “John, you reassured me that the coders had fixed this, and yet I saw two major graphic errors in that test, and I was only immersed for five minutes. Is this going to delay the release ?”

“No sir, I can guarantee this issue will not impact upon the game after the update rollout. The new data compression routines we have implemented will clear that up. The mask you were using was one of the older beta versions, and the final version is much more capable of handling greater data streams. In fact, the graphics should be even sharper with the release version of the mask.” The speaker was not much older than his female partner, but his dark hair was slightly streaked with grey hair, making him look older than his actual age.

For a few long seconds there was just silence as the suited man stared at him. He then let his eyes turn away and continued. “I was extremely happy to see the NPC learning protocol was working. It was a bit of a shock when that Gurk took a moment to examine me, not an action that this type of creature would have done in the past. One question though, how far will this protocol allow the creature to develop ? Its not in the interest of the players to have creatures develop to a point where they can not defeat them, or create a tactical genius out of one of them. That’s really detrimental to everyone.”

“Again, no. This protocol does not affect the intelligence of any creature, only its situational reaction. It adapts and alters its behavior and actions in regard to the situation it is currently in. It has a limit, of course, but its real purpose is to bypass players using the same system time after time to defeat a creature. Creatures now learn from their loss, or wins, and adapt their attacks and defenses, therefore making sure players can not plan ahead and use forum advice on how to defeat certain creatures. Keeps it honest and interesting for new players.”

The suited man stood up and brushed his clothes to remove any wrinkles. “Good. Now tell me about the other player hardware options and their current state.”

The greying man turned to his female compatriot. “ Alice, your closer to these than I am, so I will let you answer this.”

Alice glanced from one man to the other, She had not been expecting this and was unprepared. “Well, “ she started, “as you know we also have the suit and the pod. Most players will only be able to afford the basic mask which will allow for about four hours access online a day. This is ready for release right now and the advertising boys tell be the cost for this unit should be about five hundred dollars. You already know what this unit is capable of, so there is no use going on about what it can do. The suit is also ready for release, and should sell in the region of about two thousand each. With a suit a player gets the advantage of higher graphic capabilities, as well as the added smell and touch sensations. I am informed that avatar control is about double that what is possible in a mask. The suit, though, is limited to about ten hours continuous online use before the hard coded auto log out feature activates.” She paused there, contemplating on what to say next.

“And the pod ?” the suited man questioned, “What about the pod ?”

“Well. The pod should be ready by the time the update is due, though in very limited quantities. It is a quite complex bit of machinery, and there were a few kinks in it that were hard to iron out, but these have been overcome now. The pod is full immersion and has the full set of sense protocols installed into it, as well as providing reality quality graphics as well. The pod allows for a full twenty four hour immersion before the auto logout happens. I’m told that due to the complex nature of the pod, the minimum cost for this unit will be ten thousand dollars, but as I mentioned, there is only a limited amount available at present, and if popular, most purchasers will have to wait about an additional month before they receive it.”

The man grunted, happy with the response. “The company can handle that, and the news is better that I thought it would be.” He looked about, making sure no one else had managed to get into earshot. “What about…..the other one ?” he whispered.

A frown passed over the face of the girl. “The other one ?...” a puzzled expression flitted across her face before clearing with understating. “Oh, you mean the tanks.” She turned to her partner and instructed him to close the door and waited while he did as he was told, then continued but in a lower volume than normal. “The tanks are going well. We have about a thousand completed units installed so far in alpha base, and expect an additional ten per week to be completed. All the test volunteers have been virtual for the past month, fully testing the tanks, and the reports they are sending us are that they are experiencing no problems at all and far surpass expectations. The only complaints we are receiving back is that the pain threshold set on the tanks may be a little high, but that’s easily fixed. Personally, I think they are just grumbling about a feature they are not used to. I was up there last week to make a few minor adjustments to the nutrient fluids, and all of them seems to be in excellent health, no issues at all. We will be decanting them next week. If you want, you can come with me and question them yourself ? ”

“Yes, I will come, I will be looking forward to that. From all the information I have been getting, it looks like we are ready to take the game to a whole new level of gaming, one that will blast all the other game companied out of the water. One final question, there will be no problems with converting all the older players characters to the new system ?”

“Definitely not, it will seem like a whole new game to them when they switch over.”