In the world of Parallax Gate, more commonly known as PG, humanity had transcended their physical bodies and could exist in the digital plane. Their conscious existence, called personalities, could be uploaded into temporary bodies to act on the physical world. If a person desired, or in the event of a body's death, these personalities would return to the digital plane. Supposedly, since the digital plane was a dull world where only senses were sight and sound, most people chose to remain in the physical plane and entered the digital only when necessary. Like the real plane, private property and private spaces also existed, creating digital lobbies, chat rooms, and forums.

Having the most durable ship, Aero was the last to return to the Temple Wraiths' lobby. The digital space manifested as a black cube with circuit patterns on all six interior surfaces releasing a cyan glow. Nine fluorescent sparks, each representing a personality, floated about in space within. As if emphasizing the digital nature of this space, voices and other sounds were given a synthetic quality. Now a white spark, Aero flew to the center of the room. I guess Legs and friends already logged off, he thought.

A lime green spark drifted along a lobby wall. “Aww, all my Viper upgrades, two hundred thousand in Viper upgrades gone...” Alf said.

A red spark, Jake, flashed in agitation.“Fuck, we were so close!”

“Close to what?” Guinea asked. His ash-gray spark rolled besides Jake's red. “We were still disadvantaged to the very end you know.”

“That went much better than I expected,” Mayto said. His personality spun in place with navy blue offshoots flying in all directions. “I thought we'd take down the first group of fighters at best.”

“Hey Ecks, I assume you've recorded the action?” Aero asked.

“Who do you think I am? Of course I got the whole thing.” The silver-gray spark bobbed in confirmation. “I'll drop a link on our boards once I've cut out the waiting bits.”

“Thanks Ecks. Stevie, can you access the org bank and distribute hull replacement funds for everyone?”

“Sinn isn't going to be happy,” The forest green spark shuddered. “That's like half of our liquid assets you know.”

“Let me do the explaining,” Aero said. “Besides, you invested far more non-liquid holdings anyways.”

“Well it's time for me to get my work done,” Paws said. “See you all later.”

“Later paws,” Aero said, watching the purple spark blink out of existence. “Hey Mayto, Nova, are you going to be around for a bit?”

“Nah, got dinner to prepare.” Mayto said.

“Yup, what do you need?” Nova asked.

“Okay, Sinn will probably call a meeting over this, so it would be nice if you could prepare an analysis once Ecks posts the vid. Don't spend too much time on it though.”

“Roger Aero.” The yellow spark flitted about. “There won't be much to criticize anyways.”

“Thanks Nova,” Aero said. “Well guys, I've got homework, so I'm gone for a bit.”

With his squad returning his farewells, Aero imagined closing his eyes to bring up the system command dialog. The vibrant lobby colors shifted to gray, a white silhouette of his body appeared, and a system menu materialized before him. With a touch of the 'Log Out' button, the world of Parallax Gate faded out.

Mark awoke on his reclining chair inside his dormitory room. Regardless of how it appeared, accessing virtual reality taxed the human mind and would never be a substitute for actual sleep. Darkness filled the room as the day's last light had long disappeared from the sky. As typical of a college dormitory, the only furnishings were a basic bed, desk, bookshelf, and chair. The only differences between this room and other rooms along the hall were the various astronomy posters on the wall and his eight-inch Dobsonian telescope pointing out the window. Mark stood up and stretched as if a bear waking up from hibernation. The digital clock on his desk read '6:34'.

Two and a half hours huh? Mark thought, I should probably finish my homework first next time. Well, I only have the differential equations assignment plus an hour of reading for English composition. Let's get diff-EQ done before dinner.

Sitting back down at the desk, he turned the light on and grabbed his tablet computer. Like most first year engineering students, his schedule was filled with basic science and mathematics classes rather than subjects strictly related to his major of aerospace engineering. While they formed a necessary foundation for his major coursework, most their lectures bored him. With his notes on the second display before him, Mark grabbed a stylus and embarked on a journey of tedium.

As Mark began the last assigned problem, nearly an hour later, his roommate Ivan burst through the door. Also known as Sinn Omon in Parallax Gate, the lean figure stood in the doorway, gasping for breath. “What the hell happened this afternoon?”

“Huh? Did something happen?” Last problem, let me finish this please, Mark thought.

“In Parallax! I was sitting and class and all of a sudden, my phone keeps buzzing telling me someone else applied to join the Wraiths. We got like twenty applicants within the last half hour! Then I check my PG app and see that Stevie's pulled enough credits to buy two frigates and that half our fleet got destroyed in a battle? Seriously, what the hell happened?”

“Oh that... yeah... Shade fed us some bad intel and we flew into a honeypot.” Mark turned back towards his tablet. “If you're getting lots of apps, maybe one of the PG news blogs picked up on the battle. We did pretty well for the circumstances.”

“I'll take a look.” Ivan sat at his desk with his own tablet, presumably to check the PG blogs.

Like many popular games, Parallax Gate had news sites dedicated to in-game happenings. Events such as large battles or trade wars between organizations frequently made headlines. However, unlike many VRMMOs, Parallax Gate was not a typical stat based RPG. Instead of training stats or skill levels to make their characters superhuman, PG players depended on their own smarts and skills developed through time and experience in game. While established veterans had an edge over new players, a nameless individual or group would often make a splash in the blogs through having the right skills and circumstances.

Now, where was I? Mark's thoughts on homework had derailed completely. Ugh, might as well start this problem from the beginning again.

“Mark? How the hell did you manage to take down five frigates against the Crimson Suns!?”

“Hahahaha, this is awesome,” Eckos's said. The silver-gray spark rolled about in laughter. “The boards are going crazy over us.”

Twenty-eight sparks buzzed about the Wraiths' lobby. Though not their preferred meeting location, over half the members lost their physical body, or personality container as it was termed in game, during the earlier action. The eight hour container replacement time served as a mild death penalty in PG. It was just before nine in the evening, the time of night when the Wraiths were most active. With rumors of a major event, all their members made an effort to attend the meeting. A dozen conversations filled the space with an upbeat pandemonium.

“Can someone fill me in on exactly what happened?” Paws asked.

“Remember the fleet we brawled with earlier?” Guinea said. “Those were Crimson Suns.”

“Aren't the Suns supposed to be good?” Paws asked.

The Crimson Suns was a large mercenary organization renowned for their near perfect record in task completion. They achieved this through their good pilot skills and an organization size in the hundreds. Though they charged more than typical mercenaries, the guarantee of success meant many players and organizations requested their services to attack rivals or suppress pirates.

“They are good,” Mayto said, “but I don't get it. How did we burn them so bad?”

“Check out this thread.” Eckos projected a browser window into the lobby space, displaying the official PG forums. “They're trying to figure out who we are, and they're totally off.”

In contrast to the Suns, the Temple Wraiths were an unknown, sometimes pirate, sometimes mercenary organization with merely a handful of prior mentions. By appearance, they differed little from any other small, combat focused group.

“This headline's a bit odd.” Another display materialized by Ice, their third flight lead and a cyan spark. 'Crimson Suns Humiliated in Pyrrhic Victory at Elaris' the title read.

“That's GNN, they hate on anyone that isn't S&B,” Eckos said.

“Settle down people. Let's get everyone updated first,” Sinn said. The org leader's orange spark circled the lobby center. With a split second, the lobby went silent. “So everyone here's seen or heard something, but I'd like us all to be on the same page because this event will really affect how our org operates in the future. Since Aero was FC for the uh… incident, so I'll have him discuss.”

“Okay,” Aero moved to center. “This battle occurred during our usual afternoon sweeps. One of our usual intel brokers sold us a tip saying a freighter made a habit of passing through the Elaris system with a light escort. Since this sector hasn't been very busy, it was the only target we had to hit, not counting the NPC trade convoys. Since most of us find NPC battles boring, those were ignored of course.

“Anyways, the target, a Wells freighter, did arrive, but an hour later than the tip said and with four escort Duvis instead of two. Given our forces, we went ahead with the operation and splashed their fighters. Things got interesting when Legs and crew boarded though.”

“Legius, was there anything you want to include?” Sinn asked.

“Not really,” Legs said. “Everything was as we expected until we reached the cargo hold. We got KO'ed after that.”

“The Wells was rigged to blow jamming chaff and kill the comms of whoever tripped it,” Aero said. “It's a classic pirate trap. By the time the comms cleared, we had one fleet bearing down on us and a second on its way. To make a long story short, I thought we'd escape with a few fighters at best and decided it'd be more interesting to fight it out.”

”How big were the other fleets?” Myles, the second officer, asked “And who was on our side?”

“I was commanding from Aoshima class frigate Celaeno,” Aero said. “We had two flights, Mayto, Nova, Alf, and Paws in Vipers, and Guinea, Jake, Stevie, and Ecks in Rattlers. I don't remember the exact enemy numbers to be honest. I was focused more on unit types and positioning at the time. Ecks or Nova, do you have the numbers?”

“I do,” Nova said. “The first fleet had four Wu-Jians, twelve Vipers, and four Wasps. The second fleet had another four Wu-Jians, six Fulcrums, six Wasps, and eight Duvis.”

Murmurs echoed through the audience. Even in hindsight, it was obviously suicidal, Aero thought.

“Settle down boys. We don't need to go into tactics until later,” Sinn said. “Probably tomorrow actually. Can you give us the battle results Stevie? Including credit damages?”

“Our side was a total loss, with a replacement cost of eleven point six million credits thanks to our various upgrades on the ships. Their side lost five Wu-Jians, all six Fulcrums, all twelve Vipers, eight Wasps, and seven Duvis. Total cost was forty-nine point three million according to the killboards. The combined damages were sixty point nine million, with credit damage fractions being eighty-one to nineteen in our favor.”

Someone whistled in admiration.

“What was the CDF record for a losing side?” Paws asked.

“Seventy-two point five,” Ice said, “from that time Noobswarm overran Black Hole Legion with starter ships.”

The action between the Crimson Suns and the Temple Wraiths first appeared on the automated PG battle reports alongside dozens of other simultaneous battles. In PG, cost and power were extremely well balanced, and the losing side typically suffered the lion's share of credit damages thanks to their being overwhelmed in power or their collapsing in retreat. While, on the surface, this action paralleled many others by the Crimson Suns, with the mercenaries suppressing a smaller group of targets for victory, the economic damage heavily favored the Wraiths. Having shattered the previous record for loser's CDF against an established org, news of this encounter echoed through PG networks.

“Anyways,” Sinn said, “now that everyone in Parallax knows about us, we have some good news, but also a few problems to deal with. The good news is that I've gotten several job offers with intel included, so we can keep busy for a while. Now the first problem, the usual trolls have put up a bounty on our members. The totals are about two mil per kill up to about ten kills it seems.”

“That's about average for bounty trolling,” Stevie said, “but if considering the Suns lost nearly fifty mil in exchange for nine kills, I doubt it would affect our ops.”

“I agree,” Sinn said. “The second problem is the big one. If anyone has checked our boards, we've been gotten about forty people applying to join our org, and I'm sure some of them are spies from the big orgs. Not sure what they expect to learn though.”

They might leak our position during sweeps, but these guys would actually like that, Aero thought.

“So, any idea on how we can filter through them all?” Sinn asked. “I'll still make the final call, but inviting them to hang out and raid won't cut it anymore.”

“My guild back in Twin Rose Chronicles had a pretty extensive application system,” Ice said. “We made applicants answer a bunch of written questions to test how serious they were on joining and also see if they might cause problems. People compared it to a job application, but if you throw up a wall like that, you can weed out those that the ones that won't ever contribute much to the org.”

Sounds like college applications. Don't remind me Ice...

“I think that'll work for us too,” Mayto said. “If you're serious about finding spies, you also should check a character's history on various accounts and killboards and such. It would also be good to confirm the guy's skill matches with their history.

“Not a bad idea, does anyone object to a formal application and skill trial for new members?” Sinn asked.

Silence answered Sinn's inquiry.

“Okay, how do we test an applicant's skill then?”

“Just throw them in a sim pod and see if they can last three minutes against Sinn or Nova,” Myles said.

“Does that mean we can kick you out Myles?” Eckos asked.

“Hey!” Myles's spark doubled in size. “Give me my frigate and I'll take you all on.”

“I like the sim pod idea,” Sinn said, “and I could judge the fighters. Myles, you can handle the ships, and Legius, you devise a skill trial for your crew.”

“With pleasure,” Myles said.

“You got it boss,” Legs said.

“Now for the big question,” Sinn said. “With all our applications, the org will be growing fast and soon. We can keep doing our raid sweeps and bounty hunting, but I think we'll have the option of claiming dominion soon, and I want to go for it.”

Dominion, or territorial control, gave player organizations with several benefits, depending on the size and development of their territory. While the smallest undeveloped dominion was at best a toll booth, large, well-developed dominions provided them with enormous incomes and the ability to construct super-capital ships. Naturally, such developments could be taken by force, with better-developed systems being more attractive targets. Thus, the limit of an org's dominion was defined by what they could protect.

“We'll be painting a target on ourselves, how big do you intend to go?” Aero asked.

“As big as we can handle,” Sinn said. His voice bled with bravado, and his spark outshone the sun. “We already have stories about us on the nets. We might as well turn those stories into legends. All in favor?”

Aero could only smile, as the result was obvious. First, you drag me into your merry band of pirates, and now you want to conquer the PG galaxy. Well, I guess you'll keep me busy even when school doesn't.

The 'aye's echoed through their lobby. All players in Parallax Gate dreamed of taking and holding a dominion, but few had the means to acquire or properly manage them. None of those present realized the distance their reach would extend. Having just proven themselves among the best, the Wraiths now sought to grasp the stars.