Ryan Anderson

Health: 100/100

Stamina: 100/100

Mana: 100/100

Status:

Level: 3

Experience: 317/500

Rank: None

Title: None

Class: None

Role: None

Party: Unnamed

Alliances: None

Allegiances: None

Stats

Strength

10

Perception

10

Charisma

10

Endurance

10

Intelligence

15

Poise

10

Agility

10

Wisdom

15

Constitution

10

Dexterity

10

Fortitude

15

Luck

10

Skills:

Herbalist – Level 3

Herb Lore – Level 2

Hunting – Level 3

Butchering – Level 2

Skinning – Level 2

Looting – Level 4

Melee Weapons - Level 2

One-Handed Sword - Level 3

Ranged Weapons – Level 2

Archery – Level 3

Abilities:

Casting – Level 2

Spells:

Healing – Level 2

Enchantments: None

Attributes: None

Ryan wished they would hurry so that he could logout and get dinner started before his wife and kids got home. Once he’d mentioned their plans to spend the day gaming, she’d immediately suggested taking the kids to her parent’s house for the day while she ran errands.

On the other hand, he really wanted to stay. It’d been too long since they’d had this type of chance to just enjoy some time together, as a whole group, without the responsibilities of life getting in the way. The last time he could remember the group together like this had been his wedding, over a decade ago. Had it really been that long?

Instead, the other insisted on harvesting every plant, hunting every animal, and killing every monster they saw on the way back to the woodcutter’s hut before heading to town. There weren’t many of the latter, the death of the Alpha Wolf seemed to have cleared the area of immediate danger, or maybe the wolves had killed everything else and the death of the Alpha removed the wolves. Either way, they leveled up several more skills along the way, mostly the herbalist, hunting and the subskills of skinning and butchering, to level four.

At first glance, most people didn’t understand how the group existed, they were just too different. The group had given him the nickname Preacher when they were younger, claiming he always had a spiritual vibe about him. At the time, he thought it was just because he was a leader of his youth group and actively led a bible study. However, it turned out they had known him better than he’d known himself at the time because none of them had been surprised when he received his calling.

Ben, on the other hand, always rooted for villains in a story, claiming they were misunderstood, or the story was biased against them. Combined with his dark sense of humor and quick-witted sarcastic nature, Ben had always found it difficult to make many friends. Ryan always suspected some of it was to keep people at arm’s length, to ensure the only people that weren’t pushed away were those with the same sense of loyalty as Ben. And that was the thing most people didn’t know realize about him. Behind his coarse personality was one of the most loyal people he’d ever met.

Then there was Will. His personality tended towards the ‘work hard, party hard’ mentality. Will was an independent contractor in the film industry, though he tended to have various jobs depending on the contract. Since Ryan didn’t know the industry, he could only understand part of the titles, like electrical or lead. Words like busboy or grip might as well have been Greek to him, less so since he’d taken a couple Greek classes during seminary. Will also partied hard. He claimed it was a part of the adventure web series he produced regularly. While it included visiting the mom and pop restaurant down the street, it also included things like scuba diving for lost treasure or racing vintage cars. In his opinion, Will was trying to be a real-life Dirk Pitt. Then again, he watched every single one of them, enjoyed every second of it, and regularly used them as visual aids in his sermons. So, he couldn’t hold too much against Will for being an adrenaline junkie.

Dean was the philosopher of the group, always had his head in a book or was trying to learn a new thing. Ryan knew that Dean had researched the entire history of dive gear and everything he could about the game, though that was probably limited considering the developers had kept a tight lid on leaks. He had looked it up himself out of curiosity but hadn’t really found much since the developers had tried to keep a tight lid on it. If anyone had found something, it was Dean, who could somehow piece together various articles and developer quotes to discover some hidden truth.

They arrived back at the woodcutter’s lodge, and the men stood as the group approached.

“We took care of the Alpha Wolf.” Will said. The woodsmen visibly relaxed as their leader stepped forward. He eyed them warily as he nodded.

“Will you be wanting coin then, or did you mean what you said?” He asked.

Ben grimaced at Ryan, letting him know that Ben was still pissed at the choice not to accept coin for the quest, but Ryan had spent too many days only eating a can of soup or instant ramen, bought in bulk because it was cheaper, while working his way through seminary to forget the feeling of gnawing hunger when he could barely pay his rent. Game or not, he couldn’t do it. He levelled a hard glare at Ben in return. Ben rolled his eyes, sighed, “We meant it.”

“Thank you,” The man said as he offered his hand. “I wasn’t sure I could trust you to do it, to be honest. The name’s Moore.”

Will shook it, “Completely understand. Glad we could change your opinion.”

Moore laughed, “Most o’ your kind demand coin before helping out or just cause trouble.”

Dean leaned over and whispered, “Do they seem different to you?” Ryan studied the group. They weren’t doing anything strange, as far as he could tell. He looked questioningly back at Dean. Dean was also studying them, a pensive look on his face before his eyes shot up and he whispered, “They’re acting normal. Real.”

Ryan glanced back at the woodcutters as realization dawned on him. They weren’t staring off into oblivion. They weren’t waiting for specific cues to talk. The woodcutters were watching the conversation between their leader and Will. Their leader wasn’t waiting for some specific word or phrase before responding, wasn’t freezing between comments. “You’re right. What do you think it means?”

Dean shrugged, “I read somewhere that the developers were trying to make the game learn from players, maybe that’s what’s happening here.”

A notification popped up, declaring the quest closed.

Ryan followed the others as they walked back to town. All the flowers close to town were already picked clean, probably from other players, so they didn’t have any reason to stop. They emerged from the forest several hundred paces from where they entered. They headed towards the stone bridge, passing through the small cluster of farmhouses, and worked their way up towards the city walls.

The fields had cleared out, all the players frolicking in it either logged out or exploring the nearby countryside. Despite his hurry to reach the town, Ryan dragged his feet, not wanting to leave the pastural picture surrounding him.

He would have to mention this in one of his sermons. A few people had mentioned the debauchery going on in dive games, how being there and feeling the experience led to sex, orgies, and other sinful acts, but right then and there, he saw the real potential that dive games offered. A new world, full of life and hope, that could serve as a reminder mankind to take care of the real world. Maybe more than one sermon. A whole series on the subject. That would widen a few eyes. He chuckled softly at the thought, causing Will to glance questioningly at him.

“A funny thought crossed my mind,” He explained as they stepped onto the drawbridge.

“Care to share?” Will asked.

“Don’t worry about it.” He said, “Now, I think I’m going to head straight to the inn to logout.”

“I think I’m going to keep exploring for a bit longer.” Dean asked, “Anyone else game?”

“I can stick around a bit longer.” Will said as Ben nodded.

“Just don’t get too far ahead of me,” Ryan asked, “I don’t want to get left behind. Speaking of which, when’s the next time all of you are free?”

They agreed on a date and time after discussing various conflicting schedules. After that, Ryan said his goodbyes before heading towards the inn. He ignored the notification about finishing the Tainted Fields quest and the next stating he’d leveled up, figuring he’d allocate the points when he logged back in.

The inn was the largest buildings on the main road, with brick walls and clay tile roof. The sign on the front had a large pig head on it.

He paused at the front door to read the sign, The Boar’s Head Inn. So, he’d been mistaken about the pig, not that it really mattered. Granted, he definitely preferred the name Boar’s Head over Pig Sty any day, though he doubted either would work well for a motel in the real world, but maybe a bar.

And that’s exactly what he walked into after opening the door. The main floor had a tall roof, with wood rafters every dozen paces and large lanterns hanging from them. The floor was covered in a thin layer of sawdust to soak up any spills that had been packed down from foot traffic. A roaring fire burned in two different fireplaces to keep the place warm against the crisp evening breeze blowing from the North, but created a smoky haze to the entire room and the soft smell of woodsmoke that combated the reek of old beer, sweat, and vomit. He wrinkled his nose at the smell and headed towards the bar running the entire length of one wall.

“Greetings, sir,” The barkeep said as he approached, “Can I offer you a drink or a room for the night?”

“A room, please.” Ryan confirmed.

“It’s ten gold pieces for the night.” The barkeep answered.

Ryan counted out the coins and handed them over. The barkeep handed him an old key and gave him the room number. Ryan worked his way over to the stairs, dodging a few drunk players along the way.

He wondered why they were bothering to spend money on drinks. Not that he didn’t drink, he planned to open a cold one while he cooked dinner. Then again, he stopped and looked around, the beer in game was cheaper than the real world, and he wouldn’t feel the effects of drinking once he logged out. Not tonight, though. He needed to start dinner in the real world.

He headed up to his room. It was a third-floor room facing the main road. The room itself was small, about the size of his old dorm room, with a single trundle bed against one corner, a wooden chest at the foot of the bed, and a small nightstand with a wash basin and mirror against the other wall. The thick wood door blocked out all but the loudest exclamations and shouts that filtered up every few minutes.

He thought about unequipping his gear and crawling into bed before logging out, but decided against it because it didn’t seem necessary and he didn’t want to waste the time re-equipping everything when he logged back in.

He pulled up his status page, scrolled down to the bottom, and clicked the logout button. A notification popped up in front of him.

Are you sure you want to logout? Yes/No

He pressed yes and waited. Nothing happened.

He pressed it again without anything happening. He pressed it several times in a hurry, tried holding it down, even smashed his finger at the control as hard as he could, before giving up and staring at it.

He stood numb for several minutes before his thoughts kicked back into gear. The logout button wasn’t working. He couldn’t log out. Was he doing something wrong? He didn’t think so, since pressing the logout button made the most sense.

Just in case, he laid down on the bed and pressed the button several more times. He tried unequipping everything to the same effect.

After exhausting every idea he had, he gave up. He headed back downstairs and looked around for his friends. Instead, he caught snatches of conversation that he’d ignored before. Several conversations were about how being unable to log out.

He walked to the nearest empty table and sat down heavily. A waitress approached his table shortly afterwards, her beaming smile fading after seeing his face. “Can I get something for you, sugar?”

He ordered a beer. She laid it in front of him after collecting a gold coin. He stared blankly at it, losing himself in thought, before a familiar voice broke him out of it. He looked up to see the others heading towards him with confused looks on their faces.

“I thought you were going to logout?” Dean asked.

“I tried.” He answered, “It doesn’t work.”

“What doesn’t work?” Will asked absently as he looked for the waitress.

“The logout button,” Ryan said, “Listen to everyone else in the room.”

Will jerked around in surprise. “The logout button isn’t working?”

Ryan nodded. The others tried to log out.

Ben whistled, “Someone’s going to get fired.”

“Doesn’t change the issue right now.” Dean countered.

“True,” Ben shrugged, “But it’s still a major screwup.”

“It’s got to be a bug.” Will said.

“You think?” Ben shot back.

“Hey,” Will warned, “Don’t get mad at me. I’m not the one who screwed this up.”

Ben growled but didn’t say anything. Instead, Ryan asked, “Is there a different way to logout?”

Dean said, “Wait, there’s the manual override.”

“The what?” Ben asked.

“Like this,” Dean reached up to the sides of his head. He then lifted his hands in a gesture to remove an invisible helmet from his head. He grunted when nothing happened and tried again. “The manual said something about trying to remove the headgear in game is a manual backup.”

Ben rolled his eyes, “You actually read the manual? And besides, you look like you’re trying to remove a helmet, not your headgear.”

“What’s the difference?” Dean argued.

“The difference is that the headgear doesn’t sit on your head like that.” Ben explained.

“Yes, it does. At least, mine does.” Dean countered.

“That’s the helmet you put on. The actual dive gear is the two visual stimulators in front of your eyes.” Ben reached up like he was flipping a pair of glasses onto his forehead. “Like this.” He demonstrated before glancing around, “It doesn’t work. You sure you read that?”

“Of course, I’m sure.” Dean said, “I read the whole thing while setting it up.”

“Newb.” Ben muttered, though it didn’t sound like his heart was really in it.

All four of them made various gestures as though they were trying to remove something invisible from their heads, but nothing worked.

“Think they know about it?” Dean asked.

“Of course, they do,” Will argued, “Someone’s had to complain about this already.”

“Is there a way to lodge a help ticket?” Dean asked.

“Uh,” Ben said, “Yeah, but only if you’re logged out of the game.”

Will argued, “They have to know. Someone’s family has had to complain about this already.”

Ryan didn’t bother saying anything to the three of them. They always argued when upset or confused about something. More than the usual, Ryan amended. It was really just a way to buy time until they had processed the actual issue at hand. It was a coping mechanism.

He could already predict how his friends would react to the whole thing. Ben would start cursing the programmers, and it looked like Ben was already saying a few choice words under his breath. Will would spend the night drinking his worries away. Ryan watched him finish his first drink before everyone else and order a second. Then there was Dean. He tended to internalize things more so than the others. If he had to bet on it, Ryan guessed that Dean would become more focused, almost to the point of obsession, on figuring out how to beat the game.

He blinked.

His friends were gone. Rather, Will and Ben were gone, and Dean now sat in a different seat.

“What happened?” Ryan asked.

Dean jerked his head around in surprise. He saw Ryan and relaxed. “You’ve been frozen for almost an hour. It’s happened to several people.” He gestured at another player, a short blonde guy, a few tables down from them. He just sat there, not moving or even blinking. A statue.

“All I did was blink.” He licked his lips as he looked at each of them. “I don’t understand. What happened?”

He jerked backwards in his chair as a semi-transparent announcement window popped up in the middle of his vision.

Public Announcement from the Developers

Subject: Technical Difficulties

Players,

It has come to our attention that players are experiencing an issue with logging out at this time. Obviously, this is a major issue and we are working to address it immediately. We want to assure you that this issue is our top priority and will work diligently until it is fixed.

Attempts by players to manually override the dive gear have proven ineffectual and removing the gear by family and friends outside the game have failed to wake up players. Instead, they remain in a stable coma.

We have already made a public announcement in the real world in an effort to contact the friends and family of in-game players concerning the issue, and not to remove the gear except as necessary to transfer your bodies to a medical facility. We will continue to keep them, and you informed of any updates in correcting this issue.

We are also working with local authorities to have every player transferred to a local medical facility at this time and ask that every player remain in a safe location until they have been transferred.

We want to apologize for any inconvenience or issue that this may cause our players and are dedicated to ensuring that your gaming experience is the best that we provide.

Thank you,

The Development Team

“Just get the notification?” Dean asked, “It came out about fifteen minutes after you froze.”

“So, I was transferred to a medical facility?” Ryan mused aloud as he reread the announcement.

“That’s what we think.” Dean replied.

“Where are the others?” The comment reminded him about Will and Ben.

“They made some new friends.” Dean pointed to a group of players. Ryan spotted them among the group singing something too garbled and off key to tell what song it was supposed to be.

“Have you been transferred?” Ryan asked.

“Not yet.” Dean said, “The others haven’t either. At this point, they’re just partying as they wait for it to happen.”

Over the next several hours, they watched as player after player completely froze at random before starting to move again. Some took less than twenty minutes before unfreezing, while others took a little over an hour. They ignored any frozen player, except for the unfortunate ones that froze while in the middle of a drink only to come back spluttering as they spilled beer everywhere. Those were met with raucous laughter and applause.

Until the player that froze with his pants down in the outhouse. A few of those waiting in line discovered him and decided it would be hilarious to move him to the front courtyard. He stood there for half an hour with his junk hanging out before unfreezing. At first, he was pissed, but laughed it off once the pranksters agreed to buy him each a beer.

After that, people started pranking the frozen players. At first, it started with players removing the chair from underneath the player so that they’d fall back once they unfroze. It quickly escalated to frozen players being placed on the bar, so they’d tumble off. The barkeep and waitresses mostly ignored the antics as best they could, but every once in a while, they’d look wide eyed at the row lined up on the bar.

When Ben froze, Ryan watched as Will and a few others in the group lined him up with the rest. He fell back, like the rest, and laughed as he rubbed his backside, swearing he’d get Will back for it.

An hour later, Will froze. The same group tried to line him up, but Ben pulled them in a different direction. Ryan watched as Dean, still sitting beside him gave Ben a confused look, who waved it away with a wicked grin on his face. They returned a few minutes later, stifling laughs as he sat back down at the table. Ryan gave him a puzzled look.

“Just wait.” Ben said, “It’s going to be hilarious.”

An hour later, Will banged through the front door dripping water all over the floor. He yelled, “Assholes.”

The room went quiet as everyone turned to look at him.

Someone called out, “What happened?”

“They put me on the edge of the fountain so I’d fall in.” He fumed.

The room burst into laughter and a few people raced to grab their frozen friends off the bar before it was too late to reach the fountain.

Will stalked over to the table and stared daggers at Ben, “I know it was your idea, Ben. I will get you back for this. I swear it.”

Ben laughed even harder, but he waved down a waitress to order a round for the table. Will wrung out his shirt before sitting down, creating a puddle of water on the sawdust. The waitress didn’t look at Will as she returned with a mug of ale, and deftly avoided the puddle without looking at it either.

“I hate you guys.” He enunciated each word, dripping venom. He plopped into his chair.

By midnight, Dean still hadn’t frozen. Will and Ben had wandered off again. Dean hadn’t spoken in some time, so Ryan leaned over the table to speak quietly to him. “Are you worried?” Dean didn’t immediately respond. He stared down at the table, drawing circles with the condensation from the mug. “The announcement said they were working with local authorities to get everyone to a medical facility. I’m sure they just haven’t reached your account yet.”

“Maybe.”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” Ryan tried to reassure him, “It’ll happen any minute.”

Dean suddenly stood up, slamming his empty mug on the table, “I’m going to bed.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ryan said cautiously, knowing his friend’s anger was born out of frustration and not wanting to elicit a bigger reaction. “We won’t know if you’ve been transferred during the night.”

“So what?” Dean said, “If I am, then no big deal. And if not, then they freeze me when they get to me.”

“And if we’re in the middle of a dungeon?” Ryan asked.

“Then leave me to die.” Dean growled, “I’ll respawn anyway.”

Dean walked up to the barkeep and bought himself a room for the night. Ryan watched him leave, not sure if this had to do with not being transferred yet or being stuck in game. Either way, he resolved to watch Dean and try to help any way he could.