Earth

Unknown Location

August 18, 2019

14:27 EDT

We all ate while we waited for Mason to get out of the med chamber, and then sat around and chatted while he ate as well. He took a moment to jump up and down to see how his leg felt and found that it was good as new. The area where the bone had broken through his skin was a little lighter than the rest of his ebony skin, but there was no sign that he had been injured a little more than an hour beforehand. When he was done and everyone was gathered, my mom opened up a portal and beckoned us through. I wasn’t expecting what was on the other side.

We were in a massive room that contained row upon row of some sort machines as far as the eye could see. They looked similar to the med chambers, though there weren’t any small mechanical arms present. As I looked around the room, I could see hundreds of people were hard at work. Some were using forklifts to move the machines into place, while others immediately hooked them up.

“What is this place?” Ben asked.

“One of a few facilities containing simulators,” my mom answered. “We knew that we would need to train humans to man our ships so we could deal with Kaldrus Dhir, but we weren’t expecting to have so many ships at our disposal. We’ve been scrambling to get these facilities up and running in time.”

“So why are we here?” I asked, confused.

My mom turned to me, a smile on her face. “Well, video game technology is much further ahead on other planets, such that console and computer gaming is a thing of the past. Nowadays pods like this are the norm and are used to enter into a variety of virtual reality games.”

“VR? Really?”

“That’s right,” she said, looking at Ben. “The pods around us have been installed and tested. Each of you hop inside of one and we’ll get started.”

I turned to the pod closest to me and walked over to it. There was a canopy that was currently open, allowing me to see inside. There wasn’t much to it. The interior was smooth with a cushioned area on the bottom and a few holes scattered around, likely for air ventilation. After climbing inside and laying down, the canopy above slid into place, closing me inside. Nothing happened for a moment, but then I got drowsy quickly and everything went dark.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a bright white room. It was largely featureless, making it impossible to tell how large the room actually was. My mom, sisters and Tessa were all sitting on white couches nearby while they waited, so I moved over to join them. As I did, my friends popped into existence.

“Whoa!” Ben said from behind me. “This is a lobby, right?”

“It is. There are a large number of games available and they all connect back to Pygmaean space thanks to the transmitters that Abi had placed between here and there. That allows us to play with hundreds of billions of players of many different races in real time. How about we take a quick look at some games and you can pick what you would like to play?”

Ben quickly nodded and my mom reached up, snapping her fingers. As she did, the scene changed. It was no longer the endless white expanse. Instead, a village popped up around us, almost looking like a scene out of a fantasy novel. There were people of many different races coming and going, some dressed in armor and carrying weapons, while others were wearing regular everyday clothing. For the time period, at least. Looking around, it seemed that all the buildings were made out of wood; there wasn’t any stone in sight. Which was odd, considering the two large mountains that flanked the village.

“This is Everus Online, one of the most popular games.” my mom said. “It’s an MMORPG that offers a wide selection of races and classes to choose from. There are eight massive continents, and the one you start on is dependent on the race you choose. Alternatively, you can start in the ocean if you choose one of the aquatic races. It’s very similar to the real world, with the majority of the races being based on real ones.”

I thought it looked interesting, but Ben was already shaking his head. Seeing the reaction, my mom snapped her fingers again. We now stood in front of a large window that looked out into space. On the other side of the window, a massive space battle was going on, with ships firing back and forth as small fighters darted around them.

“Don’t let this one fool you, it’s not all space battles like you see before you. Battlestate is another MMORPG, though it is quite different from Everus Online. Rather than being stuck on one planet, in Battlestate you have a massive galaxy to explore. There also isn’t any magic in the game, but there are levels. As you level, you can spend attribute points to increase your stats, be that strength, agility or psionics, among others. Leveling up gives you access to better armor and weapons, as well as the ability to upgrade your ship or buy new ones.”

Now this one was cool. It would be weird going from a world where magic is a part of everyday life to one where it didn’t exist. Psionics sounded pretty interesting as well. I looked over to Mason to see a big smile on his face, and Ben was nodding as well. The twins didn’t seem very interested, however. Snapping her fingers again, we were transported again.

We stood atop a large skyscraper. Below us, there was a cordoned off area that spanned a few blocks. Inside, we could see a pitched battle going on, with explosions destroying buildings and tracer fire going back and forth.

“This is Warborne, and is probably something that you are more familiar with. It’s a first-person shooter with a bunch of different game modes. There are no spells or levels in this one. Instead, you need to rely on your skill and equipment to survive. It’s a pretty difficult game to play, and various militaries and navies often use it to develop tactics without the risk of loss of life.”

This one was pretty... meh. There were plenty of first person shooters around, having played many of them while I was growing up. While it would be cool to actually play the character, I didn’t have any training with firearms or tactics. It seemed like there would be a massive learning curve involved. Mason was the only one who seemed enthused about the game, so my mom snapped her fingers.

This time we stood in the middle of a virtual space. All around us were platforms that looked like boxing rings, though were a few times bigger. Each of them had two people inside who were locked in combat. There were various different fighting styles and not a weapon in sight. I knew that the twins were trained in martial arts growing up, so this would be a game they would be interested in. Sure enough, both of them had smiles on their faces and were looking around watching the different fights.

“This one is simply called ‘The Tournament’. Once a week, a massive tournament takes place where people fight in one-on-one contests until the winner is crowned. It’s all hand-to-hand combat, with weapons being unavailable outside of the rare special tournament. Each tournament has a buy-in of 100 credits, with payouts going to the top one hundred participants. It seems that we’re in the middle of a tournament, though that doesn’t stop people from challenging others to fights while they wait for the next one.”

The girls got even more excited as my mom explained the game to them, even hopping up and down at one point. I knew that they would definitely start spending some time playing the game whenever they could. Hell, they’d probably get their father involved as well, assuming each person could modify their character, somewhat.

After waiting for a moment, my mom snapped her fingers and the scene changed again. This time we weren’t standing somewhere watching. Instead, it was as if we were a camera following someone around. The person we were following was equipped in modern armor and carried an assault rifle in his hand. He was slowly walking through what looked like an abandoned building, scanning the room as if looking for something. Or someone.

He seemed to spot a chest in the corner of the room, so he cautiously made his way over. As he reached it, he turned and scanned the room. Satisfied he was alone, he released his weapon, letting it fall a few inches before being held up by the quick-release sling he had it fastened to. Bending down, he flipped the latch and opened up the chest. I could see his eyes go wide as he saw what was inside of it, and he quickly took his backpack off and spun it around until it was in front of him. After unzipping the backpack, he reached inside and grabbed the item. Just as he did, there was the sound of glass shattering before a series of impacts sent him falling backwards. He groaned in pain before remaining still, and I could have sworn I heard him say ‘Damn it!’ as his blood began to pool around him.

There was silence for a moment, before I heard footsteps a short distance away. Looking over, I saw a woman slowly walk inside the room, cautiously scanning her surroundings while making her way over to the man that she had presumably killed. She smiled as she saw the item that was in his hand, quickly kneeling down and removing her own backpack while reaching for it. After storing it inside, she quickly went through the man’s backpack and rig. She took everything of value, even going as far as removing the man’s vest and helmet and storing them as well, somehow.

Before she got back up, she grabbed the man’s assault rifle and attached it to the side of her backpack. When she had everything, she put the backpack back on and grabbed her own weapon. But not before giving the man a little salute. The camera then snapped over to her, following her as she cautiously made her way out of the building.

“This is one of the biggest games, having been released a few months ago. The Escape is a first-person shooter with survival and looting components. The goal is to get in, gather as much loot and equipment as possible, and get out. There are computer-generated enemies, as well as other players who are all trying to stop you from doing so. If you do manage to escape, you keep everything that you gathered to do with as you will. If you die, you lose all the equipment you were wearing and have to equip yourself before going back out.”

It sounded and looked like another cool game, but I didn’t have the proper skills to play it well. Maybe when I had some experience I’d come back and try it out. It seemed like a game right up Mason’s alley, but he seemed indifferent about it.

“There are many other games available, but I’ve shown you some of the more popular ones. You can take some time to look over some of the other games if you wish, or you can choose one of the ones you’ve seen. It’s up to you,” she said, looking at each of us.

“Do we need to pick the same game?” Anja asked.

My mom immediately shook her head. “You can choose whichever game you like. I assume the two of you would like to play The Tournament?”

“Definitely,” the twins replied.

My mom laughed, snapping her fingers causing a door to appear off to the side. Floating in the air above it was a sign that read ‘The Tournament’. “Head on through. Once you’re on the other side, there will be a computer-generated guide that will help you get started.”

Thanking her, the twins ran through the doorway which disappeared soon after.

“Now, what about the rest of you?” she asked.

“I don’t know about anyone else, but I think I’m going to check out Battlestate,” I said, with Mason and Ben choosing the same.

That left my sisters and Tessa, who decided to play Everus Online. My mom raised both hands up and snapped her fingers. Two doors appeared on either side of her, one leading to Battlestate while the other led to Everus Online. The girls quickly made their way through their door, while my friends did the same.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, staying behind for a moment.

“I think I’m going to go join up with the twins. I really want to see what they can do.”

Battlestate

14:40 EDT

I nodded and stepped through, joining my friends as they stood in front of a tall alien man, who seemed to be waiting for me. I walked over, noticing that the green skinned alien looked like he was a soldier, wearing a combat uniform and black combat boots. He was a bit taller than both Mason and I, though he was much more muscular than we were. He had dark hair and a few short tusks sprouting from his lower jaw, but other than that and the skin color, he didn’t look all that different from a human.

“Just you three?” the alien man asked.

“Yes,” Ben replied.

“Alright, let’s get started then,” he said, waving his hand in the air, causing the area behind him to change into a large screen. There wasn’t any sound, but he began explaining the game further as a sort of trailer played. “My name is Bazuth and I’ll be your guide. Battlestate is an MMORPG with ships and ship combat as the primary focus. Based on the current knowledge of the Milky Way Galaxy, Battlestate offers over a hundred different spacefaring species to choose from. The level of technology varies between them, though that will not prevent you from acquiring the most powerful ships; it might just take you longer than someone who chooses a more technologically advanced race when they make their character.”

“Each of you will start with five thousand credits, enough to buy the smallest of ships and still have credits left over, or you can pool your credits together to purchase a larger ship. Do keep in mind that only one of you will be the owner of the ship, so make sure you trust the person who you are giving your credits to. Though ships and ship combat is the primary focus, it isn’t the only option available to you. If you aren’t interested in owning a ship, you can get a job or start your own business. Are the three of you ready to start creating your characters?”

When we said yes, a hologram sprung up in front of us showing our current forms wearing only our underwear. There was floating text on the left hand side, with Race and Clothing being the only options. There was also a Form Crew button down a bit lower. I was about to raise my hand up and select Race when the Bazuth spoke up.

“If the three of you would like to play together, then you need to make sure to select races that are close enough together. If one of you selects a race that lives on one side of the galaxy and another selects one that lives on the other, then you will have a very long trip ahead of you. To make sure that you can play together right away, make sure to press the ‘Form Crew’ button. With your crew formed, once one person selects a race any that are too far away will be greyed out, signifying that it would take one week to reach you, at minimum. Anything that isn’t greyed out will signify that they will be able to join you immediately.”

Each of us hit the ‘Form Crew’ button, though it appeared that I was the fastest. The button disappeared and text replaced it, naming me as captain and saying that we had three out of a maximum of five crew members. I looked up and was about to ask Bazuth about it, but he beat me to it.

“At the beginning, you can only have a maximum of five crew aboard your ship. As you level up and get bigger ships, that number will increase. There are some clans who have dozens of ships with thousands of crew.”

I nodded and turned back to the hologram in front of me. After tapping on Race, another menu appeared on the right hand side. There were a bunch of different races, listed in alphabetical order. The majority of them were entirely alien to me, though there were a few that looked familiar. Dvergr looked exactly as I would expect a dwarf to look, with long hair and impressive beards. Kobaloi also looked very similar to goblins, though they had more even-toned skin and their eyes held intelligence that goblins didn’t possess.

Each race had various perks associated with them; Kobaloi had higher than average intelligence, which made them more powerful than many other races when it came to psionics. Dvergr had a bonus to crafting and working with metals, though I wasn’t sure how practical that would be when dealing with massive ships.

There were also a bunch of races that I was familiar with. Humans made it into the game, somehow, as did dragons, with players being able to customize both how their human form and dragon form looked. Scyftans retained both their shape shifting and Mindspeak, though I didn’t give them much more than a cursory glance. I’m a Scyftan in real life, so why would I want to play one in-game?

The species that caught my eye were called the Straesse. They were taller than most species, standing at around seven feet tall and had a very pale blue skin tone. They were also rather thin, and I saw that was because they originated on a planet with low gravity. They weren’t very strong as a result of the low gravity, but they made up for it in psionic ability, having much larger craniums than any other species. They looked somewhat similar to humans, though the large eyes and lack of hair made them look more like the little green men that apparently liked to abduct humans and probe them.

“This is a real species?” I asked, looking over to Bazuth.

He quickly nodded. “They are a rather new addition to the game, having been discovered recently on the opposite side of our galaxy. Keep in mind that there are very few species bordering the Straesse, if you decide to choose that race.”

I thanked him and then turned to my friends. I saw that both of them had only a couple options to choose from. Mason was checking out a species with midnight black skin. It was about his height, though quite a bit wider and sported some impressive muscles. There were white bone spurs of varying length that grew along his jaw, as well as a few more swept back ones that grew on the outside of his forearms.

Ben, on the other hand, was looking at something very similar to the kobolds that we had been facing a few days beforehand in the dungeon. Clearly reptilian, Ben was cycling through a variety of skin tones. There was everything from red to green to blue, though he ended up settling on a brownish-orange color. There were a ton of different other customization options, including being able to change the length and shape of the maw, horns and tail.

Seeing that both of them seemed to have chosen a race, I started customizing the Straesse I would be playing. There weren’t very many options to choose from and I wondered if that was because they were so new. There were only a few similar skin tones to choose from and the only other options were two sliders; one for height, and another for cranium size. When I was happy with how my character looked, I clicked on the Clothing button and the interface changed.

The amount of clothing available was staggering, with there being thousands of different kinds of shirts, pants, footwear and even socks. It was entirely cosmetic, so I just selected a matte black outfit with somewhat-matching boots, and then clicked on the Finish button that had appeared at the bottom.

With my character done, I turned to look back over to Mason and Ben and saw that they were both finalizing their characters. Ben had already selected a shirt, and was now in the process of selecting a pair of pants. It seemed like it would be a pain in the ass playing as an Issuron as all of his clothing would need to be modified so his tail would fit through. That would be up to him to deal with.

Mason, on the other hand, was pretty much done finalizing his Serover. He had elected to go with black clothing that was similar to my own, though he went with a short sleeve shirt, presumably to show off his bone spurs. He was just cycling through all the footwear and then it looked like we would all be finished.

It seemed that character creation wasn’t a very involved process, as the only things left to do were choose our names and select which space station we would be starting at. Each of us took some time to select our names and then Mason and Ben joined me as we looked at the starmap that had replaced my interface. It was zoomed out, initially, showing the entire galaxy. I was easily able to find the Earth thanks to Abi, and it only took me a few more seconds to find my real-life homeworld.

Zooming back out again, I saw that it was very far away from my character’s homeworld, indeed. Looking at the distance between Earth and Nedovis and knowing it takes around two weeks to get there, I figured that it would take about a month to get to this region of space at Abi’s top speed. Any other ships would take far, far longer to cross the same distance.

Zooming in on the space shared by our respective three races, I saw that there were six different space stations to choose from. There wasn’t really any noticeable difference between them and Bazuth wasn’t allowed to suggest one for us to start on, for some reason. We eventually chose one at random, selecting the space station that orbited the Straesse planet of Othora-4. As soon as I selected the planet and hit confirm, the hologram in front of me shut off and Bazuth began speaking.

“Character creation is now finished and your accounts have each been saved to your mana signature. Do you have any questions before you begin?”

We didn’t so everything went dark for a few seconds. When it got bright, we were all standing in front of another large window that showed hundreds of ships of various sizes coming and going, as well as the large blue planet below. We watched for a few minutes before turning to get started. Bazuth had given us a quick rundown, so we all took our credit chips out of our inventories, which worked exactly like our real ones. All they needed to do to transfer their credits to me was hold their credit chip to my own and choose how much they wanted to transfer.

As soon as the credits were transferred, we began searching for The Guild, which was the game’s version of the Adventurer’s Guild. We had to register ourselves when we arrived and were then given the opportunity to look at their selection of ships. The man who showed us each of the ships told us that they were all the base model, but they could be upgraded as we played.

The cheapest of the ships was a meagre thirty-six hundred credits, though it was a ship that could only carry one person. We were looking for something bigger that was also versatile, since we had no idea what we wanted to do just yet. We ended up choosing a ship that was an Awaga-Class Cargo ship, built by the Serover. It wasn’t the largest ship at only thirty-eight meters long, but it had decent speed and defensive systems, and could hold quite a bit of cargo. The weaponry wasn’t the greatest but that would be our first priority when we got enough credits to upgrade it or trade it in for something better.

It ended up running us eleven thousand two-hundred credits, which was fine with us as we still had a few more stops to make. One of The Guild’s employees piloted our new ship into a berth where we could pick it up later and we set off to buy some equipment. The armor and weapons stores were conveniently located right beside each other, so we stopped in and each picked out a set of weapons and armor, storing them in our inventories before heading to the last two we needed to visit.

Since we had purchased a cargo ship, Ben suggested that we look for shipping or mining contracts. The former would be easy enough, but for the latter we would need mining equipment. There were two options that were still in our price range. The first was a sort of exoskeleton suit that one of us could take out to mine asteroids, while the second was a small ship that would easily fit inside the cargo bay. It had two arms; one of them with a claw to grab onto things, while the other had a rotating drill head.

We ended up going with the latter, as it would allow us to mine faster and it was upgradeable, whereas the exoskeleton suit was not. The ship, called a mining pod, would be delivered to our ship in a few hours, so our last stop was for provisions. While it wouldn’t do anything for our real bodies, our characters still needed to eat and drink to survive. We got around a month’s worth of supplies, which was likely too much, but none of it would go bad so there wasn’t any possibility of having to throw a bunch of stuff out if we didn’t play over a long period of time. When everything was said and done, we were down to just under three hundred credits but at least we had everything we would need.

The man from The Guild had given us a brief tour of the ship before we bought it, but we decided to head back early to look over it some more and familiarize ourselves with it’s systems. Thanks to Abi essentially downloading knowledge into my brain, I knew how to fly the ship just by looking at the controls. The offensive and defensive systems took a bit more time to figure out, but there was one more thing that none of us had any knowledge about.

Grabbing the tablet that came with the ship, I walked over and handed it to Mason.

“What’s this?” he asked, looking down at the blank screen.

“Turn it on and find out.”

He did, quickly finding the button and then his face turned to one of disgust. “The manual? You want me to read the manual?”

“We’re all going to read it,” I shrugged. “I’ll be piloting the ship and Ben will work on finding a way for us to make some credits, so you might as well read through it first. By the time we’ve all read it, we should be able to fix any problems that come up. I think there will be a manual that comes with the mining pod too, so you’ve got that to look forward to as well.”

He groaned but started navigating through it while I went and sat back in the pilot’s seat. Ben was sitting in the navigator’s seat and was currently going through the list of public jobs.

“I think I’ve found something,” Ben said after fifteen minutes or so. “Someone just posted a job needing about twenty tons of cargo transported from here to the space station orbiting Zecciea. It’s relatively close, paying us two thousand credits, and an extra thousand if we get it there within twelve hours.”

“Twelve hours? How are we supposed to do something like that without staying up well past midnight?”

“Humans aren’t even close to developing virtual reality games like this, but you would have to speed up time while in the game, so one hour in real time would be multiple hours in-game. I don’t know what the ratio is in this game though… it might be one to two or one to three. I think we would need to exit the game or find another player to ask to find out.”

“Maybe we should’ve asked Bazuth about that. We probably should’ve asked him how we leave the game, because I have no idea how to do that, either,” I said.

I saw Ben breath in to respond, though there was a flash of light that drew all of our attention over to it. Standing there was Bazuth, looking exactly the same as we had seen him while we were creating our characters.

“You called?” he asked.

“Wait, so you appear if we say your name?”

He nodded. “I am a guide, as such my job is to help out new players. I believe you had two questions for me? One hour of your time is equal to four hours of time in-game. Whenever you are logged out, you can set tasks for your character to complete until you log back in. As for logging out, all you need do is imagine appearing back in the lobby. Once there, you will be able to exit your pod.”

“How exactly do we set tasks, and how does that work?” Ben asked.

“Once you’re back in the lobby, you can select your character and hit the ‘Tasks’ button. In that interface, you can select a number of different options. Most new players set their tasks to avoid other ships or hide until they log back on, while more experienced players will set their task to gather materials or hunt down enemy ships.”

“Huh,” Ben replied. A look of concentration appeared on his face before a blank look replaced it.

“Ben?” I asked, waving a hand in front of his face without any reaction.

“Your friend has logged out of the game. This is what happens to your character when you are not playing and haven’t given them a task,” Bazuth answered.

“They just stand there? Don’t they need to eat and sleep?”

“They do not. At least not while they aren’t assigned a task. As soon as they are assigned a task, normal functions will continue. Your characters will eat when they’re hungry and sleep when they’re tired.”

“Creepy.”

I didn’t notice that life had returned to Ben’s eyes. “What’s creepy?” he asked.

“You. Or your character,” Mason answered. “While you were logged out, your character had a blank look on his face and just stood there.”

“Oh. Well I tested it out. There are dozens of different tasks you can give your character while you’re gone and you can even schedule them so they’ll do one task for a certain amount of time before switching to another. Logging out was pretty easy, too. All I had to do was imagine the pod opening, and I was back in the real world.”

“If you have no further need of me?” Bazuth asked.

We didn’t need to ask anything else, so he disappeared as quickly as he had arrived.

“Alright, so are we going to take that job? I’ve got something else that we can do when we’re done,” Ben said, sitting back down in his chair. He typed something on the computer and the starmap zoomed out a little bit before closing in on another sector of space. “Apparently this sector here has an asteroid field in it that is rich with various rare metals and other materials that sell quite well. Since this area of space was recently fleshed out in the latest update, there aren’t any powerful clans around. We should be able to make quite the haul before one of them comes in and takes over the area.”

“What kind of materials are we talking about?”

“It’s a pretty big asteroid field, so lots of stuff. Titanium is the most common building material, and there is a hell of a lot of it that can be found there. Besides that, there is rarer stuff like gold, platinium, tungsten and uranium to name a few.”

“I think we’d better stay away from that last one,” I said. “At least until we get more money and can get a crate or something that can contain the radiation. Speaking of crates, shouldn’t we grab a few before we go mining? We’ll have to store raw ore on the cargo bay deck, otherwise.”

“We get paid when we deliver the cargo to its destination, so we can just pick up some there.”

“Alright, then--” I began before being interrupted by a chime.

Ben turned back around and typed on his console before he brought up one of the cameras on the exterior of the ship. “Looks like our mining pod is here. Do you two want to go and receive it while I accept that job offer?”

“Sure,” I nodded.

We didn’t have to do much to receive it. The berth the ship was currently in was pressurized, and the man who was delivering it seemed to have brought it in from the regular hallways. I was happy about that, because we wouldn’t have to go through the process of depressurizing the berth and then repressurize it. Though as I thought about it, there was a soft shield installed in the cargo bay that would have allowed us to depressurize the berth and let him fly it right in.

I watched to see how tight of a fit it would be, but there was plenty of room all around it as he piloted it in. I directed him to pilot it as far into the cargo bay as possible, as I had no idea how much room we would need to store the cargo we would soon be picking up.

After it was in place and shutdown, all I had to do was sign for it and we had a brand new mining pod. The man suggested that we get a few more drill heads if we plan on going out and doing a lot of mining, but I figured that we could do that at the same time we picked up the crates to store ore in.

With that sorted, the man left and Mason and I headed back up to the bridge.

“We’re good to go,” Ben said without turning around. “You’ll need to pilot the ship over to the other side of the station so we can pick up the cargo.”

I nodded and sat down in the pilot’s chair. It took thirty seconds or so to get clearance from flight control, but I was soon feathering the controls as I took the ship out of it’s berth. Once out an appropriate distance, I rotated the ship one hundred and eighty degrees before using the attitude thrusters to move us under the station. I throttled the ship forward for a few seconds before cutting the engines entirely as I spun us back around. The station wasn’t very big, but it was still pretty annoying piloting the ship around it. It made me wish that ships behaved like they did in Star Trek.

A few minutes later, we got clearance to enter the bay to receive our cargo. This time we had to wait for them to pressurize the bay before the cargo could be loaded, but it didn’t take as long as I thought it would. Ben stayed in the bridge to look and see if there were any other jobs we could do while Mason and I made our way down to the cargo bay to see if they needed any help.

There was less cargo than I was expecting, the total contents being four identical crates made out of titanium or some other metal that were bolted shut. They were pretty big crates, though, being perfect squares and being about ten feet tall. After all four crates were loaded and secured, the man operating the forklift walked over while tapping away on his tablet.

“Sign here,” he said, flipping it around and handing me a stylus.

I took it and signed, noticing that two counters had started counting down in the top right. One had displayed 12:00:00 while the other displayed 48:00:00.

“What’s the forty-eight hour counter for?”

“The customer wants their merchandise fast, so you’ve got forty-eight hours to get it there. If you fail, then we take the cargo back and you owe us the two thousand credits.”

“Makes sense. I guess we’d better get going then.”

He nodded, offering his hand. “Good luck, and remember that you’ll get a thousand credit bonus if you get it there within the next twelve hours.”

He left after shaking our hands, and Mason and I immediately made our way back to the bridge. I didn’t want to go bankrupt a few days after starting, so I wanted to get going as quickly as possible, just in case any issues arose.

It took no longer to get clearance than it did the first time, so I took us out. Fortunately there were no hazards between us and the space station we needed to go to, so I lined us up and took us into hyperspace as soon as we were out of the gravity well of Othora-4.

It turned out that those two timers had appeared on the viewscreen of the ship as soon as I signed for the cargo, as did one when I took us into hyperspace. It would take us around nine hours to get there, including one hour break in between so we wouldn’t overload the engines. I hoped that as we upgraded the ship, or bought a bigger one, that we wouldn’t have to stop in between, but I guess we’d have to wait and see.

“So what do we do for the next nine hours or so?” I asked, spinning my chair around so I could see the other two, after activating the autopilot, of course.

“Two options I can think of,” Ben replied. “The first is that we sleep while we travel. Obviously you’ll need to get back up to take us into hyperspace for the second part of the trip, but that isn’t really an issue. The second option is that we log out and give our characters tasks, and then try out a different game while we wait.”

“Eh, I’m not really a fan of option two. We don’t know how much time we’ll have to play this game let alone another one. Maybe we could spend some time playing on our way to drop off the dragons and on our way back, but we’ll probably be pretty busy between whatever training my parents have for us, and delving into dungeons.”

“That’s true,” Ben nodded. “So I guess someone stays up on watch duty while the other two sleep?”

“Probably the best way to do it. I think I’m going to make some food before taking a nap, though. I’m pretty hungry,” I said, seeing Mason’s head shoot up from the tablet when I mentioned food.

“Food? I’m fucking starving. You would figure that they would fill up the tank when we create a character, you know what I mean?”

Ben and I just burst out laughing.

“Damn, this is good,” Mason said as he took his first bite.

“Yeah, not bad for someone working with entirely alien foods,” Ben added.

“Thanks.”

While many of the foods were completely alien to me, there were a bunch that looked remarkably like foods I was used to. There was a grain-like food that was very similar to rice, as well as a bunch of vegetables that looked like peppers, and another one that looked like an onion. I put them all together, along with some kind of poultry and made a stir fry. It wasn’t as good as it would have been if I had the proper dishes and I let the meat marinate, but it was pretty good. Besides, it was one of the few dishes that I actually knew how to make.

When we were done, Ben washed the dishes while Mason and I made our way to our respective rooms. They weren’t very big, but at least we’d have a bit of privacy. Ben agreed to take the first watch and would wake me up so I could take us into hyperspace again. Or if something else happened.

It felt like I’d only just closed my eyes when there was banging on the door to my room. Quickly getting up, I moved over and waved my hand over the sensor to open it. Ben was standing there with a worried look on his face.

“Get Mason up!” I said as I ran past him, making my way to the bridge.

Sitting down, I saw that Ben had raised the shields before he came to get me. It was a good thing too, as there were five ships blocking our path. They were all the small one-man ships that the man from The Guild had shown us, which made it seem like another group of players had decided to go with a bunch of ships, rather than pool their money and buy a single, larger ship.

I recalled that the weapons and shields weren’t very impressive on the small ships, but they were quite nimble and our ship didn’t have the best offensive weaponry. That meant making a run for it.

I heard the heavy footfalls of Mason and Behind me, so I pointed over to the weapons station which was on the left-hand side of the bridge. “Get on the guns and shoot at anything that fires at us. I’m going to get us the hell out of here. Ben, get ready to transfer power away from weapons when I call for it.”

They both sat down and I pushed the throttle all the way forward. The ship shot off, pushing us into our seats before the inertial dampeners compensated. The lead enemy ship had to move out of the way, but the rest of the ships immediately started firing on us. The shields were easily dealing with the enemy fire that hit, but I wasn’t sure how long it would hold.

Before we shot past them, I saw a few blasts of energy impact one of the enemy ships, but it didn’t seem to do all that much. As soon as they were behind us, I had Ben transfer power away from the frontal shield emitters, hoping that it might buy us some additional time.

Looking up at the top-right corner of the viewscreen I saw a new countdown had appeared, this one in red.

00:56:48

We had a long way to go before we could enter hyperspace.