The doctor smiled that professional smile at me. I’d been around them enough to know when they were actually happy to see me, or when they were just doing their job. Doc Spinelli was doing her job. Saw a bit of pain in her eyes, as always. One of the nurses filled me in, back when I started with the testing. I reminded her too much of her fiancé, back before the plague hit. They were supposed to get married the next month, already had a dress and everything.
I was used to looks like that. I’d grown up with it. Anyone who was old enough to have actual memories of the Plague had a story like that. A father, brother, son, lover, friend, whatever. One day everything was normal, and then they were gone, in one of the worst ways possible.
My dad told me once that the surviving men actually had it the worst. Sure, things had changed, but society still expected the man to be the breadwinner, the protector. Now, the man was an endangered species, to be coddled and swaddled in bubble wrap so that nothing bad happened to them. And eight in ten of the survivors were sterile.
The suicide rate following the Plague finally got the US to do something about gun control, though. The optics of the few men remaining in the country eating a shotgun finally broke through the ranks of ‘over my dead body’ gun nuts. The ones that were still alive, anyways.
“All right, Mr. Greene. I know you’re eager to get back into immersion, but we have a few tests we need to run, first.”
“I know, Doc. This is the last test round of testing before we go for the full year, right?”
“That’s right,” she nodded. “As you know, the grounds for the trial is the gradual extension of immersion time, to ensure that the pod’s systems properly combat muscle atrophy, and keep you properly supplied with oxygen and nutrients for the duration. This fifth test, the six month trial, was the last ‘work up’ test. Assuming everything looks good, we’ll be going into the full year trial immediately.”
“Good. Just in time for the live service of Shadowmen to start.”
“Hmph. Well, while I can’t say as I approve of the content of that game, I do have to admit that, given all the metrics I’ve seen, it has proven to keep you and the other testers properly engaged, mentally. I would have preferred if they made it a bit more hopeful, though.”
“C’mon, Doc. You know the answer to that. Just look at what happened to Flower Garden. They tried to make a game world that was literally pure sunshine and happiness, to give people an escape from the shitty way the world is, and people practically burnt it to the ground. Sure, living in Shadowmen’s Seattle isn’t a piece of cake, but the fact that you can have some level of control over the situation that you wouldn’t in real life? That is huge to a lot of people.”
Spinelli sighed. “I know, I know. We’ve gone over this every time you log out. And I admit, I went and checked those figures you brought up, last time. The neo-skinhead and radical religious groups have seen a decline in engagement on their publicly facing platforms, because their target audience has something else to occupy them.”
“Radicalization often comes from a feeling of helplessness and being unable to control anything. Especially when someone gives you someone to blame for everything, and tells you that they’ll make things like they used to be. All sounds like music to the ear for a desperate man. Honestly, if MetaTech hadn’t reached out to me after the accident, there’s a good chance I could have fallen down that road.”
The doctor took a breath, and said, “Really? You always seemed, well, as normal as any man is, these days. But then, I remember the mental health crisis right after the Plague.”
“It may be more socially acceptable for guys to open up about their feelings, now, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. One fun thing about living in a game world, though, is that I had easy access to therapists. That, and not having to see these stumps where my legs used to be? Actually being able to walk around? Did wonders, even if it wasn’t ‘real’.”
“Well, clearly you’re not suffering from any post-immersion mental disorders, which is good. The physical scans we’ve taken of you look fine, as well. Muscle function is good, heart and lungs all normal. And records indicate that the, um, reproductive system is fully functional.”
I chuckled at that. First test period, we found out some interesting side effects that people either hadn’t noticed, or hadn’t commented on. Just like combat in game spikes the heart rate and the brain waves, and causes the pod to activate your muscles so they don’t wither away on you, apparently getting laid in the game caused all the ‘bits’ to perform, as well. Now that I thought about it, people probably hadn’t noticed because most guys didn’t need to go into a game to get laid, so it just hadn’t come up.
“The mail I got said the company had an idea on that front?”
“Ahem. Yes.” The doctor blushed softly. “Obviously, with the population imbalance as it is, women who may want to have a child don’t always have access to an unrelated male who is willing and able to make the proper contribution. So, sperm banks have become big business.”
“They want permission to ‘harvest’ every time I get lucky in the game, I take it?”
“Basically, yes. Other than the unique means of collection, it would otherwise work just like any other deposit to one of MetaTech’s sperm banks. You would get paid a percentage of the sale price, naturally, which would be deposited to the same trust you are already using for the test work.”
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I had no reason to disagree. Wasn’t like I’d be doing anything else with the stuff, after all. Might as well make some money instead of just letting it go to waste. So, a quick vid conference with a corporate lawyer and a few digital signatures, and everything was set up, and I was reclining back into the pod as the lid closed.
“Link start.”
I was well used to the startup sequence by now. Blackness became multicolored lines of light that streamed past my view, before settling into the calming scenario of an aerial scene, overlooking a sprawl of a city. I knew from my time in the Beta that this was the Seattle Metroplex. Basically, what happens when Seattle eats all the smaller cities and towns around it like Redmond and shit.
Shadowmen was a cyberpunk setting that literally had the entire globe involved. Where you initially started in the game was your ‘home sprawl’ in real life. That gave a bit more familiarity to the setting than you’d normally find, and an extra level of immersion when you traveled, and had to get help finding your way around.
Technically, this was my first login, since I was transferring from the Beta servers to the live servers, so I had to go through the initial ‘worldbuilding’ screens again. Nothing deep, the average gamer didn’t have patience for that shit, but enough to give anyone a basic idea of the world, which they could then explore more in depth during character creation. I was a little upset that I didn’t get to bring my character from the Beta over, but I understood why that was the case. I had some high end gear on that bad boy, that would shred anyone just starting out.
The IBCDD and Permadeath rules had tweaked a lot of noses early on in the testing process. People didn’t like that they couldn’t just hop in and out of characters testing new things as they liked, and even if they never considered playing as the opposite sex, some people just didn’t like being told not to do something. Still, those concerns had died down as people actually got into things. Eventually, anyone who really didn’t like it just stopped logging in, and that was that.
Now, that was interesting. They hadn’t shown us these windows during the Beta. The actual rewards were cleverly done. The Prime Runner thing was a nice boost, since some things could be bought easier with BP than with Karma later on, but the truly broken things weren’t allowed in character creation, even with more points to spend. Same deal with the money limit. Normally, you couldn’t spend more than 250k NuCred at character creation, but you had to ‘buy’ NuCred with BP, and the really broken things were all unavailable at the start. Basically, it made people who were in the Beta and pre-ordered the game feel a bit more important without giving them too big a jump on the other players, since anyone who tried would catch up to them quickly enough.
Now, time to get started making my new life for the next year.
Frozen Soul -
Tales of the Void Traveler -
Memoirs of a Supervillain -
Volume 1 -
Omnibus 1 -
Complete 1-20 -
Book I - Game Start
Omnibus I - Books 1-4
Issue I - Origin Stories
Complete Edition - Omnibus
Book 1 - Welcome to the Apocalypse
Omnibus 1 - Books 1-4
Book 1 -
Book 1 -
Book 1 -
Book 1 -
Book 1 -
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