Connection Unknown: Chapter 1 Part 4 of 9 (Patreon)

A door opposite from the rack opened and revealed a corridor.

“Please walk down the corridor.”

Luke didn’t hurry, checking his movements to get used to his action and the reaction of the bot, then he started going through the settings and loadout screens.

[Bot]

[Primary Weapon:__]

[Secondary Weapon:__]

[Upgrades:__]

[Misc.:__]

[Carrier:__]

“Alright, enough messing around, time to get this done. Gonna guess first thing is crouching.” Luke went through the door and down the corridor. That was half height a few meters deep.

The door closed behind him, but he didn’t slow.

“The bot has been manufactured to interface with human users. Please duck under the following obstruction and crawl under the next.”

Luke was already crouching and moved to his belly to crawl under a shorter barrier and into a larger room with several white crosses and black squares on the walls.

“Please adjust your peripheral vision and brightness. You should barely see the white lines in the black squares.”

Luke tweaked the settings, opening his vision out to a range he was comfortable with. He dialed the brightness so he could see the white crosses. Don’t want to miss things in a dark corner.

Luke went through some more calibration checks.

“Please continue to the next room.”

Luke walked through and found several other doors.

“You have completed the basic movement checks and integration. Currently, you are in the simulation. You can head into Sphere World actual with your own bot, or you can continue to further tutorials.”

Hatches appeared in a semi-circle with words above them: Mining, Building, Combat, Flying, Ground Transport, Space Flight.

Luke opened up his party chat and invited the others.

[Jynx has joined your party]

[Fin has joined your party]

“You going to do the tutorial or jump in?”

“Jump right in. Don’t know how long this is going to be up,” Fin said.

“I agree. This might be a leak, might not have realized it’s hooked up to Orion’s Belt. They’re going to figure it out sometime and then close it down,” Jynx said.

“You want to go into the actual game or the simulation? What’s the difference?” Luke asked.

“I asked Sphere World—she actually answers questions. This is one hell of a demo.” Fin laughed. “You can play out a scenario in the simulation but it’s sandbox—use whatever gear you want, whatever map you want, or create your own, but you don’t earn any plat.”

“Plat?”

“Platinum, it’s the in-game currency, its like two thousand platinum to one credit. Anyway, in the full game we get spawned into bots in Sphere World. Then we can do whatever we want there. Seems like it has one hundred percent persistence.”

“And persistence is?” Luke muttered.

“It means that if you, say, pick up a coffee cup from Sphere World station and you took it out to an asteroid and put it out there, then someone else could come along and pick it up,” Jynx said.

“So I can move stuff around?” Luke was confused.

“Say you mine an asteroid. The next person who comes along to that asteroid would find what you left behind.”

“Oh, so it’s like the real?”

“Yeah, but with robots and a huge megastructure over that planet!” Fin emphasized. “If you shot a rail gun across a system, you could hit a planet, or another ship. If you mine an asteroid, and harvest it all, then no one can mine that asteroid ever again. Not just persistence of objects always staying where they are, but there are limited resources.”

“We going to game, or talk about what the dev team are doing?” Jynx asked.

“I vote game!” Fin said.

“Same here. Gonna go spawn on Sphere World.” Luke exited the tutorial.

The room dulled and a blueprint of Sphere World appeared in front of him. Several points were highlighted on the map. He clicked in the docks. A shuttle, fighter, and troop transport could be selected, though each would cost creds.

Actual money? The hell? “Looks like you can buy gear with creds, or you can use plat to get it.”

Luke shook his head and went to the other points, selecting an area where he could spawn in a bot for free.

“Yeah, we get a free bot every day, if they have them,” Jynx said.

“If they have them?”

“Well, if there are finite resources in the system, they might have limited the resources that Sphere World itself has, to keep things balanced. So it can’t just pump out bots every time someone logs in,” Fin said.

He accepted and he appeared in a new rack. Identical to the one he had just been in.

“Huh, these feel different than the ones in the tutorial—like, more solid,” Luke said.

“Where did you spawn?” Jynx asked.

“Uh…” Luke looked around. He pulled out his map and winced. “I’m pretty far from both of you.”

“Meet at my position? I’m between you both, it looks like, and near the docks.” Jynx snorted. “And there’s like a hundred docks and hangars in this place.”

“Sounds good to me,” Fin said.

“Hey, move out of the way! You’re blocking the rack!” someone yelled behind Luke.

“Oh, sorry!” Luke toggled to local and moved. A large catwalk went left to right, branching off with ladders between levels.

Luke brought up his map and put a way point on Jynx; a route traced through the catwalks and ladders. That’s convenient.

“Hurry up!” Fin yelled.

“Coming.” Luke closed his map. His Heads Up Display showed a glowing line forward. He started to jog, then brought himself up to a run.

Holy shit.

“These things can crank up the speed!” Luke laughed as he raced down the corridor of racks. At the end of them, there was no wall, showing into the heart of Sphere World automated arms worked, welding, painting, printing and assembling gear, some recognizable as ships and others not far enough along the process to be identifiable.

Raw materials and components flowed like a river through the structure.

“We’re in low-g here, watch out that you don’t launch yourself into a catwalk or out into the factory spaces.” Jynx warned.

Areas lit up as Luke approached, he worked to slow himself. Slowing down in low-g was a careful process: your momentum would continue, and your feet remain planted to the ground, by your mag-boots. It was a quick way to turn forward momentum into angular momentum, breaking your ankles and slamming into the deck face first.

“These things are heavy,” Luke muttered as he fought momentum and inertia, slowing down to a stop.

“Well, guess they’re made of metal, right? Look like human sized, so that’s what—seven point eight, like eight times the weight?” Fin started.

“Please, no math,” Jynx begged.

“Fine, fine! Ignoramuses!”

Luke came to a stop. He grabbed onto the catwalk with his metal fingers and tapped his heels together, turning off his mag-boots.

“Oh yeah!” Luke whooped, looking “up” along the catwalk.

“That sounds like a Jynx hell-yeah,” Fin said cautiously. “And she just gave me the middle finger. Look—there’s an armory!”

Luke adjusted his grip and pulled and moved forward just inches above the catwalk. He grinned as he repeated the movement, gaining speed with each pull and release. He worked hard to keep himself within arm’s reach of the catwalk, careful to not veer off into the barriers on either side, or the space beyond.

Getting the feel for it, he increased his speed.

“Low-g express!” Luke laughed as he shot forward, several times his previous speed and without the jerkiness of mag-boots.

The map popped up to fill his vision, and he checked his route.

Luke returned, tilting his feet; jets activated. “Oh, okay…so maneuvering jets built-in.” He brought himself closer to the catwalk

“You see all this?” Jynx let out a low whistle. “You can get a dropship, a shuttle, even a fighter, and look, increased armor, machine guns, rifles, and sub-machine guns. But it’ll cost you a pretty credit.”

“Your dad say anything about this?”

“No, he’s been talking about how he and Uncle Stuart are looking forward to retirement, I know they wanted to build a new game, but I didn’t think they were this far along.”

Luke tried to slow his pace, hands on the catwalk like a dog running on a hardwood floor, trying to turn around a corner.

“Shit!” Luke dodged a bot coming the other way, just managing to turn himself. He collided with a banister and bounced off.

The other bot tripped and shot off into a spin, yelling on local: “Watch where you’re going, asshole!”

“Sorry!” Luke winced.

“What happened?” Fin asked.

“Bouncing down the halls!” Luke adjusted his feet on the banister and his hands on the catwalk. Reorienting, he increased his speed, eager to get away from the spinning and cursing bot.

He dove down an access hatch, taking the ladder, following the HUD’s arrows.

“Thinking about the shotgun,” Fin said.