CHAPTER ONE

All the Holonews channels were full of it, and no matter how many times the young, dark haired man seated before the Holotable flipped the channel, the new channel constantly displayed the same news as the last one had. Skillmasters, the much anticipated, and long awaited virtual reality game world, was finally ready for release. Officially it was first announced ten years previously, and there had been many news reports regarding the world, released, as well as many advertising holovideo clips showing purported gameplay within it.

It was also unofficially well known that the games design had been started many decades ago, and had undergone numerous drastic redesigns as newer technology came into existence, prolonging the announcement of its existence.

But the wait was finally over. July 14th 2165 was the publicized opening of the gameworld to registered players and James Carter knew he wouldn’t be one of them. The game required a player to own one of Holobynes Virtual Pods to be able to access the gameworld, but these were priced at twenty five thousand dollars, well out of the reach of his meagre savings. His holotable had cost him all of the money he had managed to save from the government stipend he received each week, as well as the occasional daily job he was able to pick up. His parents wouldn’t help him, he knew, and he could just imagine what his father would say to him if he did ask. “If you can’t afford it, James, then you don’t need it. You know the government will always find paying work for you if you apply. Just because no-one needs to work anymore these days, that doesn’t mean there isn’t work that can, or needs, be done.”

James already knew that in the twenty second century no one needed to work anymore, unless they wanted to. The population of the planet was well above fifteen billion now, even with the implementation of worldwide birth control laws. With the creation of full automation and robotics, employment had become a luxury instead of a necessity, as all citizens received their weekly stipend from the government, but only enough to cover just the basic living needs. If you wanted something extra, or special, like the Holobyne Pods, you would need to apply for employment and earn the extra credits for it. Everyone knew that just because no one needed to work anymore it didn’t mean that there wasn’t work that couldn’t be done. But the waiting list for one of these jobs was long, very long, and James wasn’t prepared to wait for a year or more to have the opportunity to start earning the money he required to purchase a pod. It would also take him an additional two years working to earn the whole twenty five thousand.

Sitting back in his chair, he sighed, slowly flipping through the holochannels yet again. Suddenly sitting forward he flipped back to the last channel he had passed over, realizing that while he had been daydreaming he had missed a news clip that he hadn’t seen before.

The Holotable cleared to display a young woman, looking like she was aged somewhere in her twenties and dressed in a casual business suit, lounging back in a padded chair, and talking to the channels interviewer. Even though he had missed the beginning of this interview James recognized the woman, for anyone up to date with the news would know instantly who she was. It was Jill Norman, the current CEO of Holbyne Technolgies.

“So, Ms. Norman, your grandfathers dream has finally reached completion and will open next month.” The interviewer remarked.

“Yes, Skillmasters will open to the public in a month, Damien, but no, it isn’t complete. Skillmasters will never be complete because we will be constantly increasing and changing the content of the world, adding new items and features and expanding upon everything that is already there. The world, at this time, is fully capable of supporting anyone who wishes to enter it and that’s why we are opening it up to the public. Also, you just called it a game, we do not. We look upon it as an alternative lifestyle, an escape from this world to a new one where there are no boundaries, no limits to what you can do there or be.

“So it isn’t a game ?” the interviewer remarked, a confused expression on his face.

A look of exasperation passed across the face of the woman and she sighed. “Yes, you can call it a game if you wish, most people will. It was designed and operates on the theory of gameplay. All of this has previously been widely publicized. We have been promoting it as a game, and you explore and interact with it like a game, but it is much more than a game. I’m sorry, it is hard to explain this to someone who has not had any experience with the world. Play it and then tell me it is merely a game.”

The interviewer looks down as some notes he has on a tablet he holds in front of him. “In all of the released information on Skillmasters, there has been nothing released about the game world, and by that I mean its name and size.”

“When the world was first envisioned by my grandfather, he knew that the design of it would take the most time to create, so he took a small shortcut, he used information that was already freely available to him. It is based on the design of our own planet here, Earth. Most people will recognize maybe about fifty five percent of it, but there were changes made to coastlines, some land was removed, or just moved and new islands and continents added. The planet now has ten major continents. All subsurface resources have been completely reorganized, so don’t expect to find gold where it was here on Earth. To make the whole thing a little more interesting he also expanded the dimensions of the planet by a factor of three in both directions.”

“Three times the size of Earth ? “interjected the interviewer

“Yes. Three. It’s surface area is equal to nine Earths so far, so anyone who’s trying to explore this world is going to have a big task on their hands. We don’t expect any one person to personally explore more than ten percent of the surface if they spent fifty years at it. As time progresses and we make further additions, the available surface area will expand. Our aim is to add the equivalent of the earth’s surface to the virtual world every ten years.“

“And this world is named… what ?”

“Haven.”

“Now for the question many are wondering about, how much will it cost to play in your world ?”

“Twenty five thousand dollars, the cost of the Pod covers all fees. There will not be any additional fees at all. Of course there will still be the additional costs for special purchases. Do not ask me about those special purchases, for that is an area we are still working on.”

The interview sat back in his chair.

“Thank you for your time today, Ms Norman, and for allowing us the opportunity to talk to you.” The interviewer turned away from the woman. “And for those who may have missed the beginning of the interview, Holobyne Industries is running a raffle where one hundred lucky ticket holders can win a free Holobyne Virtual Pod for themselves. Tickets are available on the Holobyne Holosite for only five dollars a ticket.”

The tabletop faded to display the Holobyne Logo, a glowing world rotating in a sea of binary code before fading away as the table was switched off. James sat back in his chair, one hand absently rubbing the back of his head, fingers bent to allow the fingertips to scratch the skin beneath his curly hair. So, he thought to himself, they are giving away some pods. He then flicked the Holotable back on and started looking for the Holobyne Holosite. After a few minutes searching he finally located it and, already knowing what the main site looked like from his numerous visits previously, navigated to the competition page that had been added since his last visit there. Quickly scanning the information displayed upon it, he was amazed to see that there had already been about a half a million tickets sold. The interview had only finished five minutes previously, so this many sales showed his chances of purchasing a ticket, and winning, were diminishing rapidly each second, in fact in the ten seconds he had just spent on his ruminations the counter had showed an increase of at least one hundred thousand additional ticket sales.

Making up his mind James rapidly started to fill in his details into the appropriate fields, including his account details for payment, then moved to select the complete button at the bottom, but hesitated for a moment before selecting it, thinking about his purchase. He nodded his head to himself in agreement with his internal thoughts on this subject, then went back and changed the number of tickets he had chosen from one to ten. They were only five dollars each after all, and fifty dollars wouldn’t break his finances. The change made, he returned back to the complete button and selected it.

Your purchase of tickets in the Holobyne Biostas Pod lottery has been accepted. This lottery will be drawn at midnight, Hawaii Time, on the 13th of July 2165. If any of your purchased tickets are successful, your prize will be despatched immediately.

Please note that the purchase of multiple entries does not permit the chance of multiple wins. Once any entry allocated to you is drawn as a winning entry, all other entries purchased by you will be removed, automatically and immediately, from the lottery before the next winning entry is drawn.

You currently have ten entries in the lottery. You may purchase further entries up until 8pm, Hawaii Time, on July 7th 2165.

Thank You

Holobyne Technologies.

Leaving this message displayed on the table, he leaned back again and just sat there, watching at the glowing image. Across the top the number of entries rapidly changed, it was already displaying a number greater than one and a half million so far, changing so rapidly the last two display digits were just a blur. Two million now, he noticed a minute or so later, and wondered what the total would finally end up at before the lottery closed. Three weeks from now the chance to purchase tickets would be over, he realized, and considered purchasing another ten entries, but then decided against this. His extremely slim chance of winning wouldn’t be greatly improved by spending the rest of his free cash on entries. Three million entries clicked over, and it only seemed to be speeding up. This is going to be the biggest lottery in history, the thought, Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket search was going to look like a small village church bingo game next to this. Sighing, he decided it was time he went bed and flicked the table off.

.........

Four weeks later found James parked in the same seat, the holotable flipped to a channel that was streaming live the Holobyne lottery draw. Seven hundred and sixty three million lottery tickets in total had been sold and now was the time to find out who were the lucky winners. Three point eight billion dollars, James thought to himself, not a bad return for Holobyne. All of it tax free too. Holobyne had purchased outright the island nation of Aruba a century before and now operated out of it, so technically Holobyne was the countries government, for they had no elections and all the population of that country were now employees of Holobyne Technologies. Rumor has it that the citizens of this small indepentant country have the most affluent lifestyle on the planet. You never hear any Arubrians ever complaining. Suppose I shouldn’t call them Arubrians at all, as old Norman renamed the country Technis when he took over. Richest bloody country in the world as well.

Jill Norman appeared on the table, smiling out towards the viewers. She was dressed, as usual in her grey business suit, blond hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. Damn, she looks good. A walking advertisement for the BioStas Pods crossed through James mind. Jill Norman only looked to be in her mid twenties but everyone knew she was well into her fifties. A lifetime spent in and out of Biostas Pods had been good to her, delaying her aging process by up to ninety five percent for all the time she spent inside the pods. If she kept to this lifestyle she had adopted, she could expect to live for at least another 500 years, probably much more, health permitting. This kind of life expectancy had not been available previously, or even suspected, but with BioStas Pods becoming available to anyone who could afford them, it was expected that as long as a virtual interface was available, life expectancies of up to 1000 years were theoretically possible by using BioStas Pods.

“Welcome, “ she said, “welcome to the grand drawing of the BioStas Pod Lottery. Before we begin, let me offer the best of luck to all of you who have chosen to participate. Half of the money raised from the sale of the entries to this lottery are being donated to help reforest the African continent. “ She paused for a few seconds , then continued. “ and as a special thank you from Holobyne Technologies, the other half is going to be used as special bonus prizes within Haven. If anyone finds one of these rewards, their account will automatically be credited with five million dollars. For those of you now trying to work out how many of these major prizes there are, well, there will be exactly three hundred and eighty three of them spread across Haven. Three hundred and eighty three… five million dollar prizes, and there will be no limit to the number of these prizes that any one person can claim.” Again she paused to allow this news to sink in before continuing. “The requirements for finding each of these rewards are different, and will not be solely based on being the first one to reach the rewards location. Further to these main rewards, we will also place in the gameworld, over time, many lesser rewards of varying monetary values, all of them funded from a percentage of the purchased value of all past and future BioStassis Pods sales. To date, we have sold in excess of two and a half million Pods, leading us to add over three billion dollars in lesser prizes. Have fun finding them, for they can be gained from doing virtually anything.” She looked down at the watch on her wrist, then continued. “In exactly eight hours from now access will be granted to all of you who have purchased, or won, one of our game pods, and don’t worry all you prospective lottery winners, as soon as your name is drawn your pod will be dispatched immediately and should be delivered to you within one hour. Please ensure that you remain awake, if you are in a time zone where it is night, to allow our technicians access to install it for you. Also, to ensure that this lottery is fairly and legally drawn, we have ten legal representatives from ten different countries here who have examined the whole process and will observe the draw.”

The image on the table shrank to show ten people seated at a table behind her, then expanded until she was the only one displayed again. “All Pods won in this lottery will come supplied with a full Somnolene cartridge, which allows for one month of BioStassis before the cartridge is exhausted and needs to be replaced. Somnolene cartridges can be purchased from any medical facility for the price of ten dollars a cartridge. This limit of one month under BioStas has been set after much discussion with the legal departments of the worlds governments along with a seventy two hour inbuilt cooldown on the pods between cartridge exchanges. These set restrictions have been put in place for the health and safety of the pods users. Any concerns or complaints regarding these restrictions must be taken up with your local governments, for Holobyne Technologies has no control over these restrictions within each country.” Jane Norman ceased talking at this point and turned to the legal observers behind her. Receiving some sort of sign or acknowledgement she returned her gaze to the front. “In addition to the rewards and prizes that Holobyne Technologies have seeded the game with, we have also included an additional feature that may interest the people who join Haven. We claim no ownership over any monetary donations made for game credits or ingame purchases. These transactions will be credited to the players character in a special game currency called Creds. The only game currency that is permitted be transferred back out of the game into to a players account will be in this special currency. All other currencies in the game are locked into the game and can not be transferred out. I believe we have held up this lottery long enough, and some of you by now are no doubt yelling at your tables for me to just shut up and start the lottery, so…. let the lottery begin.”

As the speech by Jane Norman came to an end and the lottery began, James mind turned to the unexpected news about the monetary prizes, making him look around at the three room government issued residence he lived in. If he found on of those major prizes, he could afford to buy himself a decent place to live, and afford better food to eat, rather than the artificial tasteless junk that his stipend could only just cover. He almost drooled over the thought of real coffee, and not that flavored powder he currently had in his kitchen, for he remembered the one time he had managed to taste the real stuff.

James watched the lottery draw for two hours and every time an entry was drawn a surge of excitement rose in him, but each time it also rapidly receded when the name read out wasn’t his. Finally the last entry winning entry was drawn and read out by the announcer. “And the lucky last winner of a wonderful BioStas Pod is……… Marc Oliveira from Alicante in Spain. Congratulations Marc, you will be receiving your Pod sometime within the next hour.” The table suddenly went dark as James flipped it off, disappointed and no longer interested in the rest of the holocast. He hadn’t won a pod, so the rest of whatever they wanted to say was of no interest to him. It was late, being now after four in the morning, and he knew he had waited up for nothing. Feeling slightly depressed with the results of the lottery, James made his way upstairs and went to bed wondering how, and where, he would be able to get the money for a Pod now.