Continue Online (Book 1, Memories) (36 page)

The
other woman waved one hand and vanished, a perplexed and worried look
on her face. Had I worn the same look when talking to James? Moments
later, I too logged out, leaving William Carver to go about the town
on autopilot. This game was messing with my head, making me act
weird, and I needed a break.

Session Ten -
Pride's Precipice

Continue
was a strange sensation.

There
were other virtual games and programs. I’d even tried some.
Most felt like rehashes of already existing games but more
interactive. Revamps of prior releases were a popular way to go.
Asians had entire swaths of crazy themes that hadn’t quite hit
America proper.
Continue won by sheer name power. Trillium, the
company that made the ARC, designed a game that launched the only
virtual reality system.

That
was a lie. There were tons of others at first. Trillium and the ARC
won. Thousands logged in upon release. Millions played by the end of
the first six months. Hundreds of millions had accounts a year later.
Trillium hid much of the game from the public, but subscription
counts were made public knowledge. Continue won. The average player
spent twenty hours a week logged into their ARC. The average player
had been playing for a year. The average player voted Continue as the
most impressive game worldwide.

William
Carver was proof that the number was growing. The basic information
that Trillium hadn’t throttled lead me to believe Continue had
dozens of starting points. Were their guides also older players?

”
You’re
Carver, right?”

So
my daily grind began again. Another new player and another exchange
while they asked for help. This map had been a Voice sent blessing
for so many reasons. Hours could pass while I read the little
details. Plus it responded well when I asked for specific talents or
skills.

“
I
am. You must be new around here.” Carver’s journals were
almost gone. I’d spent two more days reading them.

“
My
friend said you helped her.” The person was male, young, and
still had a slightly childish quality to his voice.

“
Might
have. What’s it to you?” Gnarled fingers turned to the
next page.

“
I
have to catch up. She started yesterday and I had homework.”

“
Good.
Work hard.” This adventure was a page turner so most of my
responses were half baked. The entries were a little smutty too.

Part of me feels strange about this. Here I
am, on one adventure after another. The rewards are usually
negligible, but the women...

Last week there was this case with a half
serpent creature. It seemed familiar from my childhood, but this
place didn’t have any similar lore. You’d think snakes
spit venom, but not so much this go around.

He was extremely violent.

She was equally rewarding. Turned out her
venom had positive effects, and true to snake form, she squeezed me
dry.

I could have said no, but that long dead
Captain of The Stars would have frowned at my actions. Long live
childhood heroes.

“
Can
you help me, Carver?” There was a shuffle of feet as the new
player grew closer. My eyes stayed glued to the journal.

“
I’ll
bet your direct attitude does your parents proud.” He’d
all but said ‘Quest now, old man’. Carver accepted no
rudeness and only gave it out! I looked at him finally.

“
My
parents?” The young man, a scrawny looking teen with the user
name Awesome Jr., lost focus in confusion before shaking his head.

“
What
do you want, Awesome?” I asked him. He looked fourteen but had
to at least be eighteen to play this game.

“
Awesome’s
my father.”

I
sighed. I’d walked right into that stupid joke.

“
And?”
Players thought they were so clever with their names. I’d met
people with gibberish names. I’d met people named after famous
actors. Flowers, book characters, television heroes, or strange
handles that they’d be stuck with for as long as Continue was
out. Pie Master had been the funniest one. He asked for a bakery and
I happily sent him and the
[Messenger's
Pet]
forth.

Awesome
Jr. swallowed and hastily tried to explain something that didn’t
sink in. Something about a girl who’d passed through before and
he was trying to meet up with her in the game.

“
Who
is she to you?”

“
A
friend.”

“
Girlfriend?”
I said dryly.

“
No.
Not that, no.” He was flustered. The boy was socially awkward,
a common problem with the latest generation. Everyone was so plugged
into the computer that interaction, face to face like this game did,
was hard.

“
So
meet her. I know well enough that people from your world have ways of
communicating.” Carver’s next journal entry was about a
whale that devoured ships. So far he’d recounted five boring
days of nothing where he sailed with a crew in search of the beast.

Day Six: If this whale isn’t white,
I’m going to punch that man in the face and kick her metal box.
Not that she’ll even notice. Maybe I’ll scrawl some nasty
notes on walls nearby.

“
Well.
Uhhh…” Awesome Jr. said with his standard eloquence.

“
Not
that easy?” Slowly, because today was a bad hip day, I pulled
the bookmark cord into place and closed my journal. The book was set
down and both my hands clasped together.

“
Well.
No.” The young man had a flush to his face that reached to his
ear tips.

“
Okay.
Awesome, Junior, what exactly do you want from me?”

“
A
quest?” He sounded confused.

“
A
quest. To do what?”

“
I
don’t know. Something? Don’t you-” he trailed off
for a moment “give me something to do? Then show me where
something is?”

Oh,
joy. He was one of those Travelers. A fresh-faced boy with no clue
what he wanted to do and had joined just to follow someone else. It
made my own confusion about this game seem annoyingly commonplace.
This was still less annoying than the type who screamed ‘I’m
going to be a great adventurer’.

“
No.”
My head shook slowly and both hands felt tired from where I'd been
holding the book.

“
Uhhh…”

“
Here’s
a quest. Take this map. Visit the people on it, ask how other
Travelers are doing. Then come back here and tell me what you learn.”

I
watch the pop-up display my newly formed quest. I’d learned
enough of Carver's desires over the last few days to get a feel for
where I’d missed opportunities. He’d want to know how the
new players were doing in this world. If they were still around, the
NPCs I’d sent them to would have an answer. Soon the journal
was open again so my perusal of Carver's past could continue.

Day
Seventeen: The whale wasn’t actually a whale. It was a
squid-looking creature. Not that it was called a squid; everything in
here looks a bit off. They’ve gone down different evolutionary
paths.

It
was white and a few hundred feet long. The creature had seven arms
instead of eight and a hammer-like shape to its head that was
probably useless for swimming. That was something else.

Oh,
and it killed most of the crew before we vanquished it. Boat's a
mess, taking on water in places we shouldn’t be. People are
downstairs fixing it. I lived. The Captain, a fine woman who filled a
corset to bursting, was pleased with the results. She looked even
better with the corset off, but we both decided to keep the boots on.

This
kind of thing can’t be good for my heart. It does assist my
will to live, though, and the medics say I need as much of that as I
can muster.

Goodness.
Carver was single-minded. Dragon to be slain, ladies to be laid, for
great justice! I doubt he was the only one in Continue who went about
with such focused desires.

Awesome
Jr. would be getting distracted by everything that moved. His path
would probably go right by the brothel, which had lured at least two
new players over the last few days. Either way he’d be busy so
I could skim through the last of William Carver's Journals.

Plus,
and this was the real reason, walking hurt. A nosy sort of boredom
had overtaken me recently to boot. Plenty of reasons existed to send
a new player out to find other newbies.

He
might not find the kid I’d sent to moo at a cow, though. Hah. I
hoped this new player, Awesome Jr., did find that would be assassin.
I’d like to hear how the first week in Continue had treated
him.

After
Awesome Jr. wandered off, I poked at the hood to Carver's robe. This
thing was ugly, bland and felt scratchy, but the hood did well in the
rain.

It
also occasionally housed a sleeping
[Messenger's Pet]
. The
tiny creature had started napping there a few days ago, after
cracking the fifty percent marker. It turned out two of Old Man
Carver's traits included
[Relaxing Presence]
and
[Monster
Tamer]
.

[Monster
Tamer]
had likely triggered after he hunted down the horse thing
described in one of the earlier journals. Those were some of the less
odd traits too. Carver had one squirreled away in his list of
abilities called
[Point Man]
, which, from the text, had less
to do about being in charge of a group or scouting, and more to do
with scoring points with the ladies.

Peg
had been right. This old body had touched more women than desired if
the journals were to be believed. I’d walked him home early
after one of the less savory encounters and left myself on autopilot
in a hot tub. I didn’t know if the old man’s writing
should be praised or reviled for the descriptive terms.

Repeated
hood tapping finally woke the creature up. A head popped out of folds
in the hood and a yawn of jaws snapped together with a click.

“H
elp
that poor boy out. Make sure he doesn’t get lost.”

The
tiny creature growled in displeasure.

“
We
can stop at the bakery on the way home. How’s that?”
Paying for goods in-game was cheaper than adding items into my ARC
and far less messy.

Sure
enough, the greedy little fellow flew off.

Almost
two weeks and I still haven’t found a name he responds to. A
few people had stopped to ask what he was, I told them a baby dragon.
They found it funny since Old Man Carver had a title called
[Dragon
Slayer]
tucked away in his character sheet.

I’d
read the description. That trait should have made any dragon or
dragon related creature instantly dislike the body I was in. Yet the
[Messenger's Pet]
seemed completely indifferent. Guess it
wasn’t a dragon, or didn’t care about William Carver.

That
made him the only creature for miles that showed little interest in
this body I inhabited. The whole thing was a weird contradiction that
sat on the back burner of my problems.