Sliding Reality: Chapter 4 Part 1 of 3 (Patreon)

Chapter 4:

3/04/2242

Luke raised his eyes from his personal screen as he ate his breakfast bar from the pilot seat. The screens showed Tiankong Repair yard. Joey had jumped them in while he was asleep, showing how his parents believed in his skill to not wake everyone up for the transition.

The yard was located just outside the lagrange point, offering repair services to ships entering or leaving the system.

Dahlia was in the working lot, a parking area for ships that didn’t need the yards dedicated slips.

A limpet repair ship was locked to Dahlia’s hull, arms under its belly held the cold reactor, working on affecting repairs. His dad was down there but he couldn’t pick him out among the bright orange worksuits.

Nothing looked amiss other than the blinking message about the reactor being offline. He went back to checking the legion site as new videos appeared.

He chuckled, the new medium and the two small shipyards that had been brought online, commemorating the moment with laying down the first spine of their next builds.

Joey clomped into the room on his mag boots.

Luke put his screen away into a pocket, not wanting zero-g to take it.

“Smooth jump and dock didn’t feel a thing.”

“You sleep like the dead,” Joey said, a grin pulling at his mouth.

“Guess the scans showed something was wrong?” Luke gestured at the screen showing dad and the engineers working around the reactor.

“Yeah, we had a crack in the feed lines that was creating instability in the magnetic bottle, the yard can pull it out and we’ll have it fixed in no time.” Joey walked to the engineering station, its screens lighting up.

Luke folded up his wrapper and put it away into another zippered pocket.

He let out a yawn, stretching in his seat.

His phone vibrated, smacking his lips together and sniffing he pulled it out.

It vibrated again with another message.

Sphere World Hoax? Stuart Martin Reveal.

It opened up into a video.

Stuart was sitting on the bridge of a ship in a brand new space suit, he checked something off of the screen, tapping under the screen, he ran a hand through his hair and adjusting his glasses.

“Okay I think its recording.” He looked under the screen, taking in a deep breath.

“I guess I should start at the beginning,” He rubbed his face eyes flicking up to the camera and then away.

“My name is Stuart Martin I am the cofounder and owner of Orion's Belt Entertainment. Just over a month ago we were set to close down Orion’s Belt the game. When randomly a game appeared in our lobby, it was called Sphere World. We had never heard of it before, we had never worked on it.”

He sat back in his seat.

“We thought it was someone on our team who had made a game and then grafted it to our servers. No one on our team knew about it, we had that legal mess but throughout we were trying to find out just who created Sphere World and connected it to our game. We never took any funds from the game. With the legal stuff out of the way we tracked down where the game was being ported from.” Stuart snorted and shook his head.

“Well we found it!” There was a hysterical edge to his smile as he threw his hands up. “We took a ship and followed the trail.” A video spread across the screen showing a ship emerging from a wormhole, next to Sphere World. Sensors showed ships running across the system, to Valhalla.

That’s the ship that appeared three days ago.

The video sped up, showing Sphere World in all its gigantic glory.

“We don’t know where Sphere World comes from, we don’t know its true purpose, or why it connected to our lobby and acted like a game. I just know that I’m a game developer, I never meant for this to happen. I never knew that it was real. I’ve attached all of my scans and video to verify.”

The video ended with the ship landing in a hangar and Stuart reappeared once again.

“I’m calling on the leaders of the human race, on our factions to come together, to help us deal with Sphere World. Please.” He looked right at the camera, holding it with his eyes for a few seconds before reaching forward, the screen changed to a panel of three people.

“A hoax, it has to be, like come on Melanie, the Orion Belt Enterprises has already used the legal fight to increase their stock value, this is just another stunt.” One presenter said with a flip of their bejeweled neon green nails matching their hair and lips.

“Dervin, you heard him, calling on the factions. Who would do that? If it was a hoax you think that they would survive after this stunt?” Another reporter wearing a striking High cut suit of gold and red said.

“So your saying what, that someone built Sphere World. I am sorry, but look at the size of that thing!” Dervin said.

“I’m saying that we’ve run it through deepfake checkers, that is Stuart Martin and there has to be something to this.” She opened her hand and turned it with a shrug.

“If it is real then who made it?” The third presenter asked dusky blues of makeup, their suit black or metallic blue under the lights.

“Its an uninhabited system, only got a hypernet node a few months ago, no one has filed for building permits.” Dervin tittered their hand.

Silence fell between them all.

“You can’t be serious Melaine! Kirez?” Dervin sat up from their relaxed position.

“If we didn’t make it,” Melanie made a ‘it stands to reason’ gesture.

“Our first contact is a factory, video game? Oh please!” Dervin snorted rolling their eyes and sitting back in their seat.

Luke put his phone into sleep mode and looked up at the ceiling.

Sphere World, real?

“What’s wrong?” Joey’s voice pulled him back after several minutes.

“I uhh, well they just said that Sphere World is real.”

“No duh, you’ve been playing it for a month now.”

Luke turned his chair.

“No, like real real. They’re debating if aliens made it or humans.”

“Wait, what?”

“The guy who owns most of Orion’s Belt Enterprises put up a video.” Luke opened his phone and sent the video over to Joey.

He hear it play over Joey’s speakers, reliving just a few minutes ago.

Joey paused it as they got into the presenters first couple of arguments. Their eyes locked on one another.

“Well shit, really real.”

Luke nodded as Joey looked away, absorbing.

“Well what are you going to do? Like, aren’t you fighting there?”

“Yeah like-“ What the hell will that mean? We stole ships from other guilds, and destroyed their stuff. “They did the same to us.”

“Huh?”

“Like, I don’t know. We just sent two ships to other systems to scout them out and they’re building a network. How the.” Luke tried to connect Sphere World with reality, it was like two gears that were spinning next to one another without catching, out of sync.

“I'm not even sure what to believe. Sure, Sphere World is one hell of a game, the graphics are great and its realistic, but like, real I'm not sure. I don't think this is something that Jynx's Uncle is likely to fake."

Joey raised his eyebrow.

"Jynx my friend, her dad is Brad Lee and her Uncle is Stuart, not officially, but they are so close friends, anyway she said that her Uncle might be a strange one, but there's no way he would lie about something on this scale."

"Its certainly created a stir, asking all of the factions to help. What do you think they’ll do?”

“Depends on if it is real or not.”

Luke took in a deep breath.

“Really all I can think is that I'm going to have to cash out. There's no way that the factions are going to let a bunch of gamers keep the warships they've built. Did you know that we've been using nuclear missiles against one another?"

Joey coughed, his face going red as he waved Luke’s concerned look off, drinking from his bottle.

"I wish that there was a way to keep playing. Even if I have to sell everything I'm going to get a spot piloting those bots for whoever takes over. It won't be the same, but." Luke reached out trying to capture his thoughts. "I had a purpose I enjoyed doing it and I was good at it. At least I thought so."

Joey lowered his bottle. "Well if half of what he said is true, I think they're going to need you and your group. Legion is one of the premier groups in Sphere World.”

***