Brent Roth - The Dragon's Wrath: A Virtual Dream Read online

  Having finished all of the prep work that was necessary to start assembling the log cabin I fell back on my ass and stared at what I had accomplished.

  I had been working with small breaks for the past sixteen or so hours… it was time to call it a day. Logging out of the game I quickly found myself starving and dehydrated, though it wasn't like it had taken me by surprise. The game had a warning system in place that was flashing in the corner of my screen for a while but I had been ignoring it.

  Once I set my mind to something and decide to finish, I tend to go until the work is done. Even though the work was physically demanding, since the game's concept of fatigue was reset after a short rest or nap, I was able to continue on with my work until my virtual body had developed a severe fatigue penalty.

  Basically, in the short term you could ignore fatigue… but sixteen hours straight and you would be penalized heavily. I figure it was the developer's way to prevent kids from playing for a few days straight and killing themselves in the process.

  I didn't mind it.

  Chapter 8: Alpha n' Beta Meeting

  (Saturday, January 9th Real Day)

  "Ahhhh!"

  Yawn.

  I overslept once again based off the amount of sunlight peeking through the blinds, but it didn't really matter as I didn't have anything really planned.

  "Oh Shit," I yelled under my breath, barely making a sound but vocalized in urgency nonetheless.

  I was running late.

  I had the AnB gamer's meeting today and it started in thirty minutes.

  I quickly jumped in the shower with a toothbrush and rinsed for as long as it took to brush my teeth, jumping back out with twenty-six minutes until the meeting started.

  Clothing was simple, blackish jeans and a dark gray V-neck T-shirt along with my black Citizen Eco-tech watch on my left wrist.

  I ran down the stairs as fast as a hobbled person could and threw on my black pair of Vans, grabbed the keys to my fastest and smallest two-seater and pulled out of the drive-way.

  I was down to twenty-two minutes but I was on the road, unfortunately I also had over thirty miles to drive. It was 10:38 on the clock as I turned up the music and let the bass massage my back through the chair.

  The light flashed green and in 4.6 seconds I pulled onto the freeway from a standstill doing sixty miles per hour and found myself tucked into my seat, with my lower back being sucked in from the sudden force of the overly-large turbo kicking in. Turning the corner of the on-ramp I found myself with open road, there was hardly a car on the freeway.

  I hit 7,200 RPMs on the tachometer and shifted into third and pushed it. As the speedometer climbed from 60 to 70 to 80-MPH in a matter of seconds I again was approaching redline and shifted into fourth. The speedo continued to climb as I hit a hundred miles per hour in roughly eleven seconds from zero. As I hit 110-MPH I was forced to shift into fifth gear, at this point I was running out of gears.

  The aggressive differential ratio of 4.3:1 increased my acceleration but limited my top end, I was basically capped out. As the tachometer reached the 7,300 RPM redline I was doing 143-MPH on the freeway, it wasn't that fast but it was certainly fast enough for a car I built from the ground up. I wanted to go faster but my other cars were larger and harder to park in the tight spaces of the city, those could easily do 200-MPH thanks to friendly gearing.

  Covering the 25-miles on the freeway in about eleven minutes, I checked the clock again as it ticked over to 10:50. I had 5 miles to go on city streets and had to find parking and walk, I was definitely cutting it close. I pulled off the freeway and came down the slight hill, seeing green I kept my speed just slightly over the limit. There were a lot of cops in this area after all.

  But if the speed limit is 45-MPH then 60-MPH was reasonable, right?

  I finally reached my destination and quickly pulled into an open parking spot as the clock ticked to 10:57. I pushed my car extremely hard but thankfully I installed a turbo-timer to keep the engine running after I left, to let the turbo cooldown properly before shutting off.

  It was a lot of work rebuilding the engine, lowering and altering the suspension, modifying the engine bay and the car's frame to accommodate a much larger turbo on a non-turbo car along with a full roll-cage, all of the custom piping for the intercooler and the exhaust that I had to fabricate and weld.

  That do-it-yourself ECU that took me forever to tune so the engine wouldn't explode. Making sure it received the right amount of fuel to air along with a lot of other miscellaneous features.

  Yeah, that car was a lot of man hours, a lot of money, and a lot of headaches. But it was all worth it to me, the adrenaline rush from racing on a track was worth every penny and minute. And this time, it paid off with getting me to a meeting on time.

  As my watch clocked 11:00am, I walked in through the doors.

  Making my way inside the building I noticed a tall brunette at the counter, she was wearing a pair of very dark sunglasses that seemed to cover a third of her face but there was something about her that drew my attention. It wasn't more than a half-second after noticing her that I saw the white cane folded up in her hand, on top of the counter.

  So, she was blind.

  As I walked by I gave a polite greeting, "Good afternoon," and nodded as I continued on. The blind girl turned her face towards me but didn't say a thing, but in that moment I was able to get a glimpse of her face.

  Pretty.

  She was a natural beauty.

  She wasn't a knockout nor did she exude sex appeal by any means. But she was certainly attractive with what little make-up she had on and the modest attire that she wore complimented her nicely.

  Oh well, it had nothing to do with me.

  I continued on and went into the meeting room, finding an open chair near the back and by the door. Not long after sitting down I decided to stretch my left leg out and put my right foot above my left knee; these chairs weren't all that comfortable. Soon I was crossing my arms as well, waiting for the meeting to start.

  The game had been officially out for two weeks now and we had held meetings every second and fourth Saturday to update our prior opinions, report on bugs or issues, and to express our general interest and happiness in the game.

  It wasn't a mandatory meeting but it was appreciated if we showed up and we were compensated with a free meal plus an opportunity to socialize with other gamers. We had been doing this routine for nearly a year now, but it wasn't all bad.

  While the minutes ticked down to the start, one of the speakers made her way to the stage. She was one of the researchers that worked specifically on visual reproduction within the mind and how it related to electrical signals that could be sent from an electronic device to the mind and back. Simply put, she was a member of the group of scientists that helped develop one of the most critical aspects of Virtual Reality, the visuals.

  Her lectures tended to be the best so I was already encouraged at the sight of her, but then I was distracted by the blind girl making her way to the aisle seat in the back row. The back row that was left solely for me… well, not really, but I was the only one in the row and had occupied the third seat from the aisle.

  She touched the chair and asked, "Excuse me, is anyone sitting here?" I instinctively gave a faint smile and looked her in the eyes, "Ah no, no one is sitting there."

  She turned her head towards me and it felt as if she was looking right back at me when she courteously replied, "Is that so? Thank you."

  At this point I was curious, could she slightly see or was she completely blind? Legal blindness has a range that includes those that have partial vision that is restricted to a certain degree, distance, or could be entirely unfocused and blurry. Then there were those that were entirely blind and couldn't see a thing.

  It wasn't something I was familiar with and I didn't know how to interact, honestly.

  When I lived in an apartment complex with its own underground gym beneath the club house, I used to run into a young b
lind girl that would go there every evening around 5 to 6 pm to use the treadmill.

  I once held the door open for her while forgetting she was blind, so I didn't say a word and she walked straight through the doorway without pausing once or changing her stride. She knew there was a door there from memory, but how she knew I opened it threw me off.

  She could operate all of the equipment in the gym and almost never had an issue. It got to a point where I thought she must be able to see a little bit. But then one night she walked straight into a treadmill machine, startling both her and me. I stopped running to see if she needed help, but she just got right back up and continued on as if nothing had happened.

  I didn't even have a chance to open my mouth.

  From that day on I realized that she most likely couldn't see anything at all, but her other senses were certainly developed quite well. She could hear which treadmills were occupied and was always able to find the empty one with a little patience.

  It was kind of amazing.

  She wasn't very confident when I first saw her, but after a year she had grown familiar with the location and you would see her walking with her guide dog or jogging down the side-walk at times.

  If you didn't look for the white cane you would never know she was blind. This girl to my left reminded me of her. She had confidence, she moved without issue, spoke well. I admit that when I was younger I had no concept of blindness, it wasn't something I understood. I don't claim to understand it now but I do have a better grasp of some of the difficulties they might face.

  But I also learned that even without their eyesight, some blind people weren't really noticeably different than any other person you might run into. I was a little intrigued, but I felt it would be rude to ask questions. I wouldn't enjoy it if someone asked me what it was like to be hobbled with bad legs, though I wouldn't take any exception to it either.

  In actuality, I have no problem discussing my problems with people, it's when people belittle my predicament with baseless assumptions like, "You just need to eat better," "You should stretch more," "Just push through the pain," "Just try harder," as if they knew exactly what I was going through. Every individual is different, and not all injuries are the same.

  It's impossible to truly know what the other person is going through without living in their body, and even then it still wouldn't be the same due to your own personal experiences and their own.

  Comparing pain is futile.

  My thought process was suddenly interrupted by multiple claps and as I was brought back to the present I realized that the meeting had started. The speech didn't last long though. As the researcher left the stage, Emily came out next.

  Emily was the presenter that typically led these meetings, and had been leading them since the start. It seems she had an interesting topic for today, too. Next was a presentation that provided us with some interesting facts that had been accumulated, mostly population graphs and player levels throughout the continent.

  It was a bit startling really.

  Less than one-percent of the population had started in the Northwestern "wastelands," roughly ten percent had started in the Northeastern High Elf regions, and around four percent in the North-Central Dwarven kingdom.

  In the Southeast was the Orc lands that had a rough population of six and a half percent, and the Southwest belonged to the Dark Elves at about eight percent.

  That was almost an identical split of 14.5% for the tips of the continent, kind of strange but it made sense when you considered the development of the areas. Mostly the fact that their starter zones weren't the highest rated.

  The Middle Kingdoms had the most developed starter zones and a mix of three races; needless to say it was the best place to start. In the Central-Western kingdoms, Humans ruled the majority of the land at roughly 34% of the server's population.

  The Central-Eastern kingdoms were split into two racial groups, the northern portion was the Wood Elf region and the southern portion belonged to the Animal-races. The Wood Elves were about 7% in population number, leaving the other 30% to be made up of a variety of Animal-races.

  Those Animal-races were humanoids with animal-ears and tails... and there were basically dozens of types from the popular cats, dogs, foxes, and rabbits to the less common cow, wolf, raccoon, sheep, and many more. Though it didn't fit the normal Medieval-fantasy theme it was pretty much ingrained in popular culture and was considered a must-have at this point.

  This was more Fantasy-medieval really.

  As I was thinking over the large discrepancy the speaker asked the crowd what their opinions on the matter were. Why weren't the Northern and Southern parts of the continent a popular destination?

  I had an opinion but kept it to myself as a few people voiced theirs.

  The conversation went on and everything was reasonable but it soon got stale. Seeing as the players were basically just reiterating what was already stated, the discussion had become circular in nature. The lack of intelligence in this room was rather astounding… and they considered themselves the cream of the crop.

  I just silently shook my head from side to side as other players voiced the same opinions with slightly different words.

  I couldn't help but sigh.

  "Is everything alright?" the girl to my right had turned and asked.

  Oh, oops.

  "Ah, sorry everything is fine. I was just thinking that they were all repeating each other."

  I needed to be a little more careful, but I was more surprised that she could hear me sighing; I could barely hear myself doing it after all. She let a small smile creep up on her face as she replied, "Ah, yes. I agree. What is your opinion on the matter?"

  She had a very nice, clear voice and a slight English accent; I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little more attracted to her because of it.

  And here I am starting the most boring conversation ever, way to score mate. I gave a second of pause to rethink my stance then said to myself, what the hell.

  I'll just speak my mind.

  "I think people are just afraid to think outside the box, honestly. As soon as areas were labeled as inferior by the figureheads and all of those streamers, everyone started to avoid them like a plague. They aren't as bad as people make them out to be… there are benefits."

  Having made my point, I secretly hoped that she would take to it well. There was nothing worse than starting a conversation with a girl you were attracted to, only for it to fail within the second reply, at least in my mind.

  She took a moment to reply but when she did I sighed with relief in my head so as not to disturb her, "Mm. And what are these benefits?" Ah… she had a smile on her face; I suppose this is her being coy.

  "I would probably rank the lack of competition as the number one thing. If I let myself get into any more detail though, I'm afraid you might fall asleep."

  She let out a light laugh and with that slight smile of hers replied in-kind, "Is that so? Maybe I would have found it interesting. That's a shame, but I'll trust your opinion of your opinions."

  Ah, that didn't go over so well.

  Read that situation wrong.

  Chapter 9: AnB Meeting Plus One

  (Saturday, January 9th Real Day)

  There was a long period of silence between the blind girl to my left and me, but it couldn't be helped as the conversation had suffered a swift death. So, without anything better to do I started to think of conversation topics to attempt a restart.

  But then the presenter on stage asked a question that I couldn't quite ignore, "Are there any opinions as to why the Northwestern region would be an unpopular destination?" On this subject I was basically the reigning expert, by my own admission.

  But I kept quiet.

  I disliked answering questions first and preferred to let others make an attempt at conjecture. If they're reasonably close I don't get involved but if they're all way off base then I'll usually try to rectify the situation.

  The first few people to rai
se their hands were all called on in order: "I believe the main issue is the distance between villages and society in general, it's sparsely populated as well.", "There are a lack of proficiency trainers in the far north, it's essentially void of all but poor hunter-gatherer type NPCs.", "The weather and environment are significantly worse than other locations.", "The economy is terrible.", "There aren't a lot of quests available.", "The landscape is almost like a frozen tundra for a quarter of the year.", "It's too far from the center of the continent, where all the important quest chains are."

  They were all sound arguments; I didn't necessarily disagree with any of it.

  The researcher continued, "Yes, those are all valid complaints. Now does anyone have an opinion on why you think the Northwest is a good destination?"

  Hah, crickets.

  If you were decent at reading people's body behavior and speech, you could tell that the presenter was disappointed by the negative opinions as they were all very common responses.

  They were all valid, but they had been repeated hundreds of times over by the Alpha and Beta testers over the past year, I'm sure she was tired of hearing it by now.

  "Is there really no positive to living in the Northwest? No one? Anyone?" …poor gal, I had no interest in sharing the positives, it was my domain!

  And then a hand was silently raised, all the way in the back. The back row, first seat from the door; the one occupied by a mysterious girl with sunglasses.

  The presenter was looking dejected until she finally saw the hand that was raised, then her mood suddenly chippered up as she excitedly said, "Yes, the miss all the way in the back."

  After being called on she had lowered her hand and waited a moment to be sure that no one else had started talking, in that moment I almost wanted to tell her it was her turn.

  But she was more than competent and I didn't want to take that away from her.

  A moment of silence had passed until she had come to the conclusion that it was her turn, "I feel one of the greatest attractions of the North lies in its isolation. There is beauty in the calmness of the forest, the flow of the rivers, the rising mountain peaks with their white caps that litter the land.