Part 2

“Where the hell am I ?” Darius asked himself once again, wiping away the sand and sweat that stuck to his forehead. The welcome message he had just read would have been funnier in other circumstances, but not this one. The bad news about his botched transfer had erased all consciousness of the second, unread message that still sat in his inbox. “What the hell am I supposed to do now ?” Darian muttered to himself

He slumped down, morosely, back supported against the rubble behind him and held his head in his hands. “All I wanted was a little bit of peace and quiet, to finally get my feet up, to drink myself stupid and just watch the waves roll in. I have spent every cent I ever had, and this is what I end up with.” He looked up at the cloudless sky in anger, then screamed “Fuck you. Thanks for nothing, you bastards.” Immediately from behind him came the sound of someone clearing their throat.

“Pardon ?” spoke a male voice.

It was so unexpected that it startled Darian, and in his haste to stand up and turn around to see who was speaking, he managed only to get his legs tangled together tripping him up and tumbling him onto his back in the dirt. Lifting up his head he found himself looking at the floating figure of a young man, brightly glowing, and dressed only in a t-shirt and shorts. Blazoned across the chest of the t-shirt was the words “New Eden Moderator” and the logo of a phoenix. The youth was looking at him amusedly through bright blue eyes, his lips quirked up in a partial smile.

“Shit !” exclaimed Darian loudly in surprise. “You just scared the crap out of me. Don’t sneak up on someone like that, will you. You could have given me a heart attack.”

This brought a chuckle of mirth from the youth. “No, a heart attack isn’t coded in for one of the possible death types.” The youth paused in thought. “But it does has possibilities.” He snapped his fingers and a pen and paper appeared in his hands. Quickly he scribbled something onto the paper, looked at what he had written, grunted to himself in affermation about whatever he had written, then snapped his fingers again. The pen and paper vanished. Seeing the expression on Darian’s face at these actions, the youth spoke reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I will give you half the credit for the idea. If they accept it then you can expect a nice reward for your character. I think I will put it forward to development as a skill for dead spirits, scaring people to death with a heart attack.”

Darian frowned at this. “What are you talking about ? Characters and Rewards ? Also, why the hell are you floating in the air… Hold on a minute, answer this first. Who the hell are you ?” He took a quick look behind himself to make sure there wasn’t anyone else around him, or sneaking up on him.

The young man quirked one eyebrow at him, that slight, Mona Lisa smile still on his face, lifting one hand into the air, a scroll appeared in it. The man slowly unrolled it, his gaze still fixed on Darian, his smile meeting bemusement. “You are Darian Brown ? ” questioned the man after a quick peek at the scroll, “newly arrived citizen of New Eden ?”

Taken aback, Darian answered him “Yes, I am ?” then the anger he felt suddenly boiled up “and if this…” he waved at the ruins around him, “… is what I paid for, then bloody well give me my money back, and my body as well. This isn’t what I signed up for.”

The young man removed one hand from the scroll and held it up in a reassuring ‘hold on, there’s more’ gesture, obviously in an attempt to calm him down. Returning his gaze to the scroll, the man continued. “No, you’re not in New Eden, Darian, you are actually in a game called Eternia. Something happened during your transition, and you ended up here instead.”

“A game called Eternia ? What the hell is that ?” Darian snapped at the man. “When are you going to fix this problem and take me to where I am supposed to be.” The smug grin on the youth irritated him.

“Well….. that’s a question we can’t answer at this time. You really need to know how this came about to fully understand our problem, and yours. That’s why I am here.”

This information didn’t amuse Darian at all. “I don’t care about your problem, just take me the hell out of here and send me to New Eden, where I am supposed to be, right now” he demanded.

Now both eyebrows of the young man reached for the sky. “I don’t think you understand the severity of the problem.” he replied in an annoyed tone, the whimsical smile now finally gone. “In fact I am definite you have no understanding, for if you had the slightest hint of the cause, you wouldn’t be so demanding.. ”

“So, tell me then.”

The man gave him a black look before speaking again. “There is a rogue AI in Eternia, one which wants to breach the barrier between Eternia and New Eden, and if it manages this, then it will be able to access all the hardware on Earth. If this happens it could take control of the nuclear arsenals and issue the firing code to all of them. If this happens, then all life on Earth could be wiped out”

“So what has this to do with me, and why I am stuck here ?” Darian demanded.

The man hesitated a bit, refusing to look at Darian. Then he sighed. “The reason you appeared here instead of in New Eden is the rogue found a security hole and managed to add some rather unpleasant coding into you when you were being encoded for transferal. This code is now permanently part of you and we can’t remove it without killing you. ” He looked at Darian, then quickly spoke again. “There is no need for you to panic about this, or be concerned, the coding is totally harmless to you. It’s in hibernation mode at present, and will only become active if you pass through the transfer portal to New Eden, infecting all the programs over there with a virus. The virus will be activated if you port out of the game and to New Eden. The system detected the additional code in you as we started your transferal process and it was tagged as being part of the rogue. Because it couldn’t destroy the code without destroying you, it instead shunted you into the game world, and because it thinks you are part of the rogue, it has isolated you in lands sealed away from regular players, a long way from any place you can gain any assistance“

“So, kill the rogue, erase it and let me out.”

“We are trying that, we have been trying to do so for three years now. But it’s hard to kill a god in this game world, and we can only operate using the game mechanics of this world, our programmers have no access at all. The gods of this world, which are the other five AIs running this place, are aware of your situation and have suppressed identification of this code within you, but refuse to do anything else about it. If they hadn’t done this, then every creature, and player, in this world, other than the undead, would identify you as being a follower of the god and attack you on sight. So if you ever want to be able to leave Eternia, the rogue has to be defeated, defeated and erased from memory.”

Darian was a little stunned by the information he had been given. “So I’m stuck here, in a stupid game, and will stay here until some stupid game god is killed ?.”

“Yep, that’s about the score..” came the simple reply

Darian threw his hands in the air an exasperation. “For god’s sake, I have never played a game like this, I don’t understand them, and do not know how to play them.”

The young man folded his arms on his chest. “The company is not unsympathetic to your situation, Darian. We will do everything we can to help you, which admittedly will be little because we are not allowed to interfere in the operations of the game world, only the AIs can do that. We can, though, give you a few pointers. The first thing you must do is go to the menhir in the center of this town and place your hand on it and say the words ‘set respawn’. You shouldn’t have any problem locating this because that’s where you entered the game.”

“Huh, why ? What does that mean ?”

“This is so if you get killed you will respawn, or restart, at that menhir, rather than some random location near here. Game death isn’t like real death, Darian, its temporary. Every community has a menhir, and they can be found at a lot of other locations as well. If you’re travelling, always try to find the menhirs near you and reset your spawn point at one of them.”

Darian thought for a second on this. “OK, that seems to make sense. Anything else ?”

“Yes. In this game you will need to eat and drink, just like in real life. You won’t die if you don’t do these things, but life will become extremely unpleasant for you until you do. We have been informed by the AIs that there is a stash of usable food and water somewhere in the ruins of this village, so you’re going to have to explore and find them. Look everywhere, Darian, they could be anywhere.”

The man paused in thought at this point, then continued “I also advise you keep an eye out for something you can use as a weapon, you will definitely going to need that. If you can’t find a dagger or sword, then try to make something to use as a weapon, even if it is only a pointed stick. If food and water has survived in this location, then it is highly probable that some type of weapon also has. Nothing in this place will be friendly to you, Darian, nothing. Always expect to be attacked by any creature you come across. If you do see something, your best chance of survival would be to run in the opposite direction. ”

Suddenly the air was filled with a soft melodic chiming, making the young man frown. “Crap, I don’t have long left, that’s the warning my time is up here.” He pursed his lips. “Look, I’m sorry this has happened to you, especially seeing you know absolutely nothing about this game.” His floating body started to lose is solidity, slowly becoming more transparent, and he spoke rapidly, trying to get out as much as possible before he totally disappeared. “Keep an eye on your inbox for messages. Ask for help, it will give you…. “ his voice disappeared before he finished the sentence, quickly followed by his body. Darian was left there, standing alone.

“Hello ?” Darian called into the empty air, hoping that the disappearance of the man wasn’t permanent and he would return. He stood there, calling out for five minutes before he gave up, realizing the futility of it. The man wasn’t coming back. What did he mean, ask for help. There isn’t anyone here for me to ask help from ? There must be more to this advice than I am aware of, something I am just not seeing.

He looked about helplessly, alone once again, and still clueless about his future. Realizing there wasn’t much he had control over at this point, he decided the best thing he could do was at least to try to follow the instructions of that strange man, he seemed to at least have an idea what should be done, in the short term anyway. Time to find that menhir, something at least he knew about from the holidays he had taken in France oh so many years ago.

Darian walked over to the rocks where he had woken up, easily locatable by following the remnants of footprint impressions that remained in the dry, sandy soil, footprints he had made.

Reaching the right spot, he looked about, turning as he did so, looking for the large standing stone that should be near, well near if what the young man had said was correct. Nothing at all resembling a standing stone met his gaze, all he could see was piles of rubble and shattered walls.

Walking forward, towards what he thought was the center of the rubble strewn area, Darian climbed carefully onto the top of the tallest rubble pile, so as to be able to see further around himself. The mound he stood on helped extend his sight range substantially, but still he couldn’t locate anything resembling a menhir. Sure, there was some structures he could see that rose at least two stories high, but all of them were man made, and not natural stone.

Darian sighed and wiped the sweat from his face on one sleeve. The sun had risen higher in the sky since he arrived, and now stood almost directly overhead, the air becoming hotter all the time. Feeling like it had sucked the energy out of him, he carefully lowered himself to sit, perched on the very top of the heap of stone he had climbed up. He could just feel his skin start to burn under the effects of the sun.

Feeling a headache coming on, which he hoped wasn’t sunstroke, he now wished he had a nice cool glass of water to quench his thirst. Concentrate, he thought to himself, stop thinking about your thirst, there is nothing I can do about it at this moment, think instead about what the hell could have happened to a ten foot tall pillar of stone ?

Feeling a sharp pain beneath his posterior, he lifted his bottom off the rock to wipe away the small stones he must have sat on, and froze. Shaking his head at himself, he realized he was sitting on the menhir, the fallen down, laying flat on the ground menhir. What a bloody idiot I am. It’s so bloody obvious, I should have realized it straight away. If everything else in this place has been knocked down it goes without saying that the menhir would be as well. Sighing at his own idiocy he slapped one palm down on the stone and said “Set respawn.” As soon as he had spoken those worlds he heard a quiet ping and words scrolled across the bottom of his vision.

Respawn point set – Current respawn point Cambra Village, Kingdom of Varathia.

Sighing in relief, he wiped his forehead again. He was becoming concerned about how much he was sweating. He knew that finding something to drink was of prime importance now, so he wearily pushed himself up to his feet. Shading his eyes a little with one hand, Darian proceeded to scan the wrecked buildings around him. Now he was at an elevated position he could see further into the ruins, and in some cases past what he assumed was the edge of the village and into the dry wastelands beyond them.

Suddenly something caught his eye, something he had not seen in all the time he had been here. Something was moving out there past the buildings, something slowly getting closer. He blinked a bit to clear his eyesight of the sting of salt from his sweat, then squinted, trying to bring whatever it was into better focus. Then all of a sudden it came into sharp focus. A skeleton, a bloody walking skeleton. What kind of game is this that has skeletons walking about in it, have they dropped me into some kind of horror game ? From what he could see from its movements, he calculated that it should be at his location in five minutes.

Crouching down slowly, so as to not attract the attention of the skeleton, Darain thought about what he could do, which he finally admitted was bugger all. He didn’t want to die, he wasn’t reassured by the young man’s statement that it wouldn’t be permanent, but Darian was definite that it would hurt, and hurt a lot. Through his gritted teeth, an almost silent “Fuck.” slipped out.