Chapter One

I inspected the battlefield, the catchy victory music that announced the end of combat was fading, leaving the clearing silent, save for the occasional twitter of the small birds that hid in the trees and shrubs. I saw several fallen robed figures and two piles of ash, Laurel was nowhere to be seen and Nathan lay on the ground, clutching the intricate dagger that had felled him with a terrified look in his eyes. Above him his death timer was running out, giving him at best another ten minutes of life.

“Don't let me die, Joe. Not like this. Not in a fricken video game.” He gasped.

I searched my bags over and over, knowing full well that Laurel had all of the healing potions.

“I-I'm sorry Nate. Spaz had all the healing...”

The immediate feeling that every ounce of blood just rushed out of me, caused me to sway a bit, but I fought it down, knowing that If I were to save him, I'd need to focus. The battle had ended, and the cultists that snatched Laurel got away, I rummaged through the pockets of the fallen, hoping that one of them would have a healing item.

AHA! A low/mid-level bandage. This might stabilize him!

Rushing back to Nathan, I cut away his clothes to inspect the damage, and my heart sunk again. The dagger was serrated. If I pulled it out, it would finish his death timer.

(I think I might have a solution.)

Jerking my head up, hope swelled in my chest as the voice spoke directly into his mind.

“Chen! What you got?”

(Mister Stone is going to die. I can’t stop that, but I've been researching the code alterations, and where I see stubs for resurrection, I get an encrypted mess of code. I got it mostly decrypted, but all I found was this one audio file, which said: “To find life anew, seek you the Goddess, and you will find clarity”)

“What the fuck, Chen. How is that going to help?”

(I'm going to hack the resurrection code and bring it back online. His body is OK, the pods you're all in really are repurposed stasis pods. As soon as he passes, I'm going to turn the stasis feature back on.)

“You can do that? Why not do it now?”

(Because if he dies here, you get a body to resurrect. If I turn it on, he's logged out and he'll die in the real world. Ain't no rez here. We gotta keep this on the down-low, though, lest my hi-jinx be discovered. That might cause a system-wide security issue. Trust me, you don't want that.)

“What would happen?”

(First thing, would be a reaction to sever all connections to the world...)

Ah. How stupid of me.

Connections.

Like me.

“Yeah. OK. I get it. Down-low.”

I admit that I cried as I held him in my arms. Nathan was (is!) my best buddy. We grew up together, faced all of the same troubles together, and overcame them together. As his last breath passed, he uttered one final message to me.

“You better bring me back, asshole.”

I smiled bitterly, the tears and snot flowing freely. I held him tight for a moment, then lay him flat once more.

“I will. I promise.”

***

I should have known something was wrong when Laurel's physical therapist was the one to get us into the Infinita launch event. I mean every gamer worth his salt in Cascadia, hell, The United States of North America, or pretty much any country on this planet of ours would have sold a kidney to get into.

Jumping onto the opportunity, my buddy Nate and I met Laurel at her PT's office. Let's just say when we woke up from our surprise surgeries, we were beyond the point of no return.

On one hand, we were medically violated, having had illegal implants put into our freaking brains!

(Yeah, yeah. Those implants are needed for you to perform your job. Just because your nation considers them to be illicit hacking tools, doesn't mean they're not useful for other things, like keeping you alive, or Miss Pendergrass's therapy.)

So that disembodied voice is Chen. He's our handler, he works for ******* and they...

(Sorry Mr. Garcia, I'm going to have to censor you. Company policy.)

Dammit ...sorry about that.

On the other hand, we now had access to the net 24/7 as if we were wearing Castgoggles. Then again, on the other other hand –that's three now, right? – there's a Chinese guy in our heads now, giving us direction and advice. I suppose that's a good thing, considering the circumstances.

(And considering your atrocious math skills, I'd guess you were 'Murican)

…In hindsight, I should have realized that things were going a bit pear-shaped when CLARA, the Artificial Intelligence that controls, well, basically the entirety of the Democratic process in our small country went missing.

(That wasn't us, by the way.)

For a cloud-based, AI of her complexity to simply vanish without a trace seemed impossible. The immediate result of the void she left behind, was that the daily local and weekly provincial votes could no longer be done live via the Castnet, and forced the powers that be to scramble to find a solution and keep the populous from losing it.

They weren't very successful. OK, the voting system was saved by bringing back CLARA version C. She was quirky, and not nearly as intelligent as the version we had. but she got the job done. But keeping the citizenry calm didn't go so well. It was a pretty hairy time for a while there.

Looking back, it seems an obvious distraction tactic. When the four thousand players were taken into The Facility, a huge unmarked cement building tucked away in the Cascades and inserted into the game, the press was too busy to give more than token coverage. And when people started dying –a lot of people– there was near silence about it. ...Well, not page one stuff, anyway.

Now, when I say inserted, I mean inserted. The details had been held secret to the public, All except the phrase “Deep Dive”. It seems the technology for complete mental transference into a game had finally been realized. We had each been met by three technical bots, who ushered us into small cubicles, and with such speed and efficiency that we had no real chance to object, stripped and prepared us for insertion into what appeared to me, old prewar medical stasis pods that they used to rescue the injured during the Second War of Independence.

At that point, I found myself in a vast room, empty of decor save for a line of large arched wooden doors along one wall, wearing a simple outfit consisting of a roughspun tunic, pants, belt and sandals of varying shades of bleh. The other players, similarly equipped, milled around excitedly chatting among each other.

Jose? Nate? Where are you? Laurel's voice spoke through the implant.

I spun around, scanning for my lovely girl, and although she was taller than most, and her springy ginger locks normally stuck out, the crowd was simply too large.

Here, babe. Meet you guys at the furthest left door.

Roger that, Joe. Nathan's voice piped in smugly.

As I made my way through the crowd, I noticed that I could smell the room, it's occupants perspiring in excitement and the lack of deodorants made for quite a spicy scent. No doubt it would become quite funky after a few hours. I finally reached my destination, quite impressed with the details the game designers have gone through to ensure complete immersion.

***

A booming voice broadcast out of thin air, immediately causing the room to quiet, and look for its source.

“Welcome to the opening event of Infinita, and we here at InfiniCorp are very pleased to have you here!”

The crowd cheered and clapped with enthusiasm for the disembodied voice.

“We ask that everyone invoke their console now.”

The light dimmed and soon a sea of holographic windows popped up, casting neon blue light throughout the room, followed by a susurrus of whispers.

“You may have noticed that your appearances aren't the avatars you pre-designed. We have, in accordance with the Honesty in Internet Activity act, disabled avatars, and provided your legal persona in its place.”

A grumbling from the crowd rose momentarily then silenced as the voice spoke again.

“If you're going to participate as a party, please be sure to add your friends before entering the game, as the doors you see here send individuals to random locations in game, but parties go as a group. Once in game, you'll find a starter kit nearby. One final thing before we open the gates: Everything is real, anything is possible. Welcome to Infinita!”

The doors creaked and groaned, opening wide to reveal swirling energy filling their frames.

A shiver of excitement passed through the room, as people started passing through the gates both solo and in groups.

Joe. You group us, I want you to be the leader, Nathan urged.

I pulled open the menu again and found the grouping menu. Tapping the appropriate icons, I sent Laurel and Nate group requests, both of which were immediately accepted.

As I approached the door, I saw them standing there grinning.

“You kids excited yet?” I grinned back at them, and pulled Laurel into my arms, delivering a quick buss on the lips.

Laurel's face twitched, pulling into a brief grimace, which she quickly got under control. “Woo! I can't believe how realistic that felt.”

“That's my Spaz.” I goosed her and spun her around towards the door. “Let's become legends.”