Nova hadn’t eaten breakfast cereal in years, but she’d persuaded her mum

to buy the box on the kitchen table because of the tie-in with Solarversia. It was

corporate sponsorship deals like this that had enabled The Game to be offered for

free. Companies had been given the opportunity to sponsor Gameworld quests, at

a price determined by the quest’s size, location and importance.

When asked in a poll, the majority of players had confirmed that the corporate

sponsorship model was the preferred form of monetisation, over alternatives like

‘pay-to-play’. Some companies had even won plaudits for the creative way in which

they’d showcased their products and services in VR, and had plans to replicate

them in the real world.

The company that made Flakeroonies had sponsored a large quest aboard the

International Space Station, and their cereal boxes had reflected a space theme for

the last few months. Prodding at the soggy flakes with her spoon, one leg hugged

to her chest, Nova found her mind was still occupied with thoughts of the night

before.

How would she find enough time for revision? She should breeze psychology,

her best subject by far. But sociology and English? Not so much. She’d probably

do what she always did — wing it — and without trying too hard, scrape into Hull

University. But she never felt she’d had much chance of getting into Nottingham,

where Burner was hoping to join his brother, Jono, and it was looking even less

likely now The Game had begun. The truth was, revision held very little appeal

compared to the excitement of the virtual world.

She flicked her Booners down and looked at the cereal packet. Flakes started

to rise out of it as if magically unbound from gravity. When she touched them with

her spoon they floated across the kitchen toward the fridge. If she flicked them they

popped. Those she didn’t jab, flick, poke or in some manner interfere with landed

on the kitchen table, which, to Nova, looked like the cratered surface of the Moon.

An arkwini in a spacesuit poked his helmet round the side of the packet,

twitched his little chimp nose a couple of times like he was sniffing out danger, and

then scampered out from behind it, followed by several others. Each arkwini held

a garden implement of sorts — a rake, hoe or mechanical blower — that they used

to gather the fallen flakes into piles.

When the piles had grown large enough, another arkwini appeared, pushing

a wheelbarrow, which he used to transport the flakes to the futuristic conveyor

belt illustrated on the side on the box. He emptied the flakes onto the belt, which

transported them to a fish tank where they were devoured by a twelve-armed

octopus. Her goggles had transformed the kitchen table, and the objects on it,

into a moving, living scene. This was augmented reality, a halfway house between

boring, everyday consensual reality and the wild, anything-goes virtual kind.

Mr Negrahnu stood in the doorway, paper in hand, shaking his head while he

observed his daughter prodding thin air and muttering to herself. “You do realise,

love, that you’re sitting there, talking to a box of cereal?”

Nova volleyed an eye back to the kitchen. “Morning, Dad. Floating Flakeroonies.

I’m helping the arkwinis feed Banjax, the dodectopus. He gets hungry.”

“Right. Course he does. Sorry to have interrupted you hard at work.”

She flashed him a snarky smile. People who stuck with consensual reality

through choice were either weird or old. Usually both.

“Feeding this Tampax creature, it counts towards your grades, does it?”

She had to force herself not to snap back at him. “We agreed that I could do

what I want this weekend. My birthday, the start of Solarversia, remember? You

just wait ’til Monday. My books won’t know what hit ’em.”

“You’ve seen this lot, I expect?” He gestured towards the TV. “That’s what

happens when people lose their jobs.”

On the news, clips released by a terrorist organisation known as the Holy Order

were playing. Footage of workers on assembly lines was spliced with scenes of

robots doing similar work. Graphs displayed exponential increases in computing

power, electronic memory, data transmission speeds, and a whole host of other

variables over the last fifty years.

An image of a book entitled The Sacred Singularity appeared on the screen.

Released by the Order a few months ago, it detailed their beliefs about artificial

superintelligence: that it was on its way, that an ‘unfriendly’ version would spell

the end of humanity and that the ‘friendly’ version they were working to develop

would change everything for the better. Their manifesto made clear that everyone

needed to join them in their endeavour, or face the consequences. No other method

of evangelism was as compelling as bombs or guns, they claimed.

“You’re not suggesting they’re right?”

“I’m not suggesting anything. People lose jobs to robots and artificial whatnots,

which means they can’t support their families, so they get angry. As for this

lot, God knows what they’re harping on about with their ‘singularity’. All this

change is driving people mad. They don’t know who they are any more. Without

work to do they’re losing their identities. That’s all I’m saying.”

After working for twenty-three years at the local medical centre, Mr Negrahnu

had been made redundant. In all that time he’d never called in sick, and had only

been off twice for compassionate leave, a day each for his parents’ funerals. He’d

been looking forward to the carriage clock employees got after twenty-five years.

Not so much for the clock itself, but rather what it represented — his years of loyal

service. Instead, he’d received fifteen minutes in a room with a new area head, half

his age, and a stern-looking woman from HR. His job — to analyse scan results and

medical images — could now be performed by an artificially intelligent program at

a third of the cost.

“You know they’re threatening to blow entire companies sky-high?” Nova asked.

“I don’t agree with terrorism. I’m just saying that this is a direct consequence of

millions of jobs being flushed down the bog.” He shook his head, put his newspaper

down on the table and ruffled her hair.

“Ugh, Dad, mind my barnet.” She smoothed her hair back down and jabbed at

another Flakeroony, which began to drift lazily, like a snowflake, onto the table.

She watched it melt into the surface of the newspaper, which was open on the

jobs’ page. One or two ads had been circled in red pen; others had asterisks next to

them. She read down the list. These were jobs way beneath her dad’s abilities, jobs

he never would have applied for earlier in his life.

The salaries advertised here didn’t come close to what he’d been earning as a

medical researcher. And he was a proud man. Everything he did, he did for the

family, for her. And what did she know, at her age, having never had a proper job,

not one that needed to support a family, nor one that had been replaced by a few

lines of code? She averted her gaze, feeling like a spoilt child.

Her headset flashed with a message from Burner, “At Fragging Hell, where are

you? Already rammed. Not many spaces left.”

She flipped her Booners up and took her bowl of cereal to the sink. Now that

was a better thought than these real-world concerns. Solarversia was calling.

***

“Are you ready, furball? Fragging Hell, here we come.”

The furball was stowed in the passenger footwell of Nova’s car, playing with

the discarded plastic shell of a Kinder Surprise toy. He looked at Nova and made

a clicking sound with his tongue. His name was Zhang, and her parents had

given him to her on her 17th birthday. The tag on his ear identified him as a first

generation Electropet, one modelled on the ring-tailed lemur.

Electropets were animatronic toys, designed to provide companionship to

adults and children alike. Their features and movements were so realistic that it

was hard to tell them apart from the real thing. At least, it was from a distance. Up

close their mechanical joints were visible through their coats, as were their orange

eyes, which doubled as cameras, and the tags on their ears.

Zhang had arrived with the standard factory settings. New owners were

supposed to tinker around until they found a temperament that complemented

their own. On day one Nova had ramped up his ‘playful’ setting to maximum and,

deciding that he was perfect like that, hadn’t changed him since.

Her Booners guided her all the way to a reserved space on the third floor

of the Medway Street car park, then, with Zhang parked on her shoulder, she

walked through town. When they arrived at Fragging Hell he hopped onto the

side rail to join some other Electropets — a sloth he knew and two monkeys

he hadn’t met before. A couple approached the rail and took a selfie with him,

before he took one with them. Nova loved getting home to find crazy pictures

of him posing with random people. It was further proof that he lived his own

little life.

She scanned the cafe for familiar faces. This place was her second home, always

heaving with excitable gamers swapping war stories. Horrible paisley carpet and

strips of fluorescent spot lighting separated banks of monitors and VR headsets.

Not a single space was free, worse even than the usual midday Saturday crush

because The Game had begun. The people she was here to see were likely to be

found at the bar. She caught Jockey’s eye and went over.

“Miss Negrahnu, a pleasure as always. Congratulations on the big one-eight

for yesterday.” Jockey wore one of his trademark vests, a knitted number with

a diamond pattern that fitted snugly round his potbelly. He often stood with his

hands on his stomach, as if he was subconsciously pulling it inward, though the

effect actually made him look even more like Humpty Dumpty.

“Thanks, Jockey. I see my score still stands.” She motioned to one of the

overhead monthly leaderboard screens. Three weeks ago, on a wintry Monday

night, she’d thrown the dart of her life, smashing the Kent bullseye record by 40

centimetres, and placing top in the ‘Bullseye of the Month’ competition.

“Bloody good throw it was, too.”

“Do I get my prize today?”

“It’s highly unlikely that anyone will beat it before the day’s out, but no. I can’t

give that to you until February has officially come to end, including the cheeky leap

day. But I do have something else for you; hang on a sec.”

Jockey ducked behind the bar into the back, and Nova felt a hand clap her hard

on the back.

“Happy birthday, punk. Bumped into any more lavadiles?” Burner said,

trying to suppress a smile. With his plug ears and bulbous eyes, Nova was always

astounded at his success with girls. He held a load of roasted peanuts in one hand,

flicked them, one by one, into the air with the other, caught them in his mouth,

sucked the roasting clean off and spat the naked nuts into the bin at the side of the

bar.

“That, as I tell you every time I see you do it, is a disgusting habit. And no, I

haven’t bumped into any more lavadiles. Why, have you bumped into any more

Krazy Karting finalists?”

Along with thousands of other games, Krazy Karting had been ported across

to VR, enabling its inclusion in Solarversia as one of its many sub-games. It was

Nova’s favourite racing game and her rank in the top few hundred players in the

world had meant automatic qualification in one of ten preliminary rounds.

After a shaky start in her heat last month, when her main rival, Dutch sensation

Jools van der Star, had mashed her into the hoardings at the side of the track, she’d

made an inspired comeback, racing her way through the pack to qualify in tenth place.

Although her time had been poor, placing her in 77th out of the hundred finalists, she’d

done it, and was in with a chance of winning the hundred grand first prize.

“Tell it to my hundred health points.”

“Yeah, I don’t know how you managed that. And as for Sushi, well, I can’t even.”

“Believe it, Scotia. Plenty more where that came from.”

She grimaced as Burner upended the packet of peanuts, tipped the remnants

into his mouth, and then licked the packet clean. She’d spent an increasing amount

of time with him since Sushi’s move to Seattle and had become good mates with

him. He was funny, dependable and loyal, but also way more gross than Sushi ever

was. Jockey returned with his hands behind his back. “I have not one, but two

presents for you.”

“Two presents?”

“First of all, here’s a coupon for a drink on the house. You can use it whenever

you like.”

“Thanks, Jockey. Much appreciated.”

“And then there’s this.”

She opened the card that he handed her and read the note inside. “Sorry I

couldn’t be there for your big day, have fun without me. Sushi, aka your Solarversia

Sister.”

Nova twitched her nose a couple of times before turning to Burner. “Awesome.

Ten hours of prepaid time on the deluxe gaming chairs. Wanna watch the Queen

of Darts on her throne?”

Fragging Hell’s side room had been kitted out by Spiralwerks, which was

affiliated with gaming cafes and sports centres all over the world. It now had five

state-of-the-art gaming simulators, deluxe models known as ‘the chairs’, available

for hire at triple the rate of a standard rig.

Burner wiped the peanut dust from his hands, gave her the finger, and followed

her there.

****************************************************

Full book available on Amazon here:

https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B00ZFF6NVK

Chapter 6 coming soon!

p.s. I'm on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/tobydownton

and Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/solarversia