Rewrite - Chapter 2

The week after getting my capsule had been a busy one.  On one hand, I wanted to get the few remaining work-projects done so I could jump into Road to Purgatory with both feed, on another hand I wanted to perfect my capsule home-space, on a third hand I wanted to watch the flame war a large part of the vocal gaming community had devolved into and, finally, on a fourth hand, I wanted to read everything Pantheon Entertainment had published on Road to Purgatory.

Sadly, with my limitation to two hands something had to give, or so I thought. What gave, was time. Or the capsule gave me time? However one wants to put it, there had been a little something that I had wondered about when reading that original blue box in the capsule, that part about a “time compression”-feature, I had only been distracted by that hell of eggshell. When using the capsule for the second time, I had asked Pica about it and learned that every human had a different "mental speed" and without our body to limit the mind, amazing things could happen.

The game itself would run at double the normal speed of time, making a day in the real-world last two subjective days ingame, which apparently was something every human would be able to cope with. There would be an option to slow down the speed, but it would mean that everything and everyone around you would be moving at double your speed making me think that playing like that would be nigh impossible.

But that maximum rate of double-speed was only necessary for Road to Purgatory, the home-space had no such hard restriction, it was only set to that as a default. After I set it to “floating”, the whole thing went wild. I spent multiple days inside the capsule, molding the Idols like I wanted and decorating the wings of my temple, including the addition of a training hall. I had no illusion that training in the home-space would give me any kind of mechanical benefit within Road to Purgatory but  I wanted to make sure that the virtual body I was using performed the same as my real body would.

I had some Wing Chun-Training, my mother had suggested it as a way to learn mental discipline, and I was curious if I would be able to use it within the Game. If so, I wanted to make the most of it, mostly because it was something I enjoyed quite a bit.

In addition to the training-hall, I added a library, complete with a desktop-computer that would link to my outside machine and tons of shelves holding my ebook collection, turned into virtual, physical objects. Just that idea gave me a good laugh, to take a physical object, a book in that case, turn it into a virtual one, an e-book, only to create a virtual space, to enjoy your virtual book in what felt like a physical library. It made me wonder about the human condition.

The third area became a living space with a huge couch, wall screen and popcorn, essentially a palatial home-theater. Yes, you could eat virtual food but it obviously would not keep you fed, whereas eating too much real food before getting into the capsule was a bad idea for obvious reasons. Nobody wanted to get the literal crap scared out of them.

Last but certainly not least, I added a meditation space, open to the virtual moon and the sweeping, icy gales of my mountaintop. The magic of virtual reality allowed me to create a relaxing incense smell that would not get blown away by the eternal wind. Somehow the feeling of the chilling wind without getting truly cold was incredibly relaxing.

When I was done, I felt a bit strange, my mind was telling me I had spent three or four days without food or drink but my body, at least the virtual one, was feeling just fine. A little thirsty, but not dehydrated to the point of danger. The manual had said that there would be a forced shut-down if the vital data of the body in the capsule got into a remotely critical condition.

Curious just how long I'd been in the capsule and at work, I asked Pica. The answer shocked me quite a bit, I had spent 4 days of virtual time with the floating time dilatation going from 8x when I was relaxed to a whopping 16x for short periods of time when I was intensely focused on something. Those four days capsule-time were just a bit more than nine hours in the real world. It felt unreal to the point that I logged out, simply to ascertain the truth to myself. The disconnect between what my mind was perceiving and what I had been told was simply too stark.

It turned out that, yes, the computer had been counting correctly, who would have thought. Feeling a little hungry, despite lying around all day, I made myself dinner and turned on my personal comedy channel, GNN, to watch the flamewar Tobiuno had kicked off last week. What surprised me was that I apparently had more fans than expected, especially expected by me. I had made few public appearances, none of which were focused on me personally, when streaming I always used an animated avatar which I also had used for the few endorsements I had given, never my actual face. I think there had been three interviews over the course of a twelve year career but I had never touched on personal stuff, always focusing on the team and the game we had been playing. Hell quite a few people claimed I was a guy cause in the beginning, before everyone got used to “Titania” the school friends who had been playing with me called me “Sam”.

Now, time for honesty, I had never made public appearances because I greatly dislike my looks. Mom, may her soul have found nirvana, was the one I inherited my looks from. In another culture and time, my mother would have been a great beauty, small, slender with lustrous hair flowing like silk. In our current culture, she looked like an eight grader wearing adult clothing. Jiang Ying Yue, as she was called prior to marriage, never topped 5' or a hundred pounds and only after pregnancy did she grow breasts that deserved that description. Me, well, as I said, I inherited her looks, I stopped growing at 4'8 which would make me rather short in let's say Indonesia, but in the west? Let's just not go there...

The two positive remarkable physical features I have are silky black hair that I have grown out, down to my butt and jade green eyes that seem to almost glow due to the contrast of very fair skin and their almost insane colour. It didn’t off-set my baby-face but then, nothing really would.

But back to my supporters, they were whipping themselves into a fervour, despite, or maybe because nobody had any real information. My departure was attributed to pretty much anything from aliens to international espionage, making me wonder if some people just wanted to be contrary. On the other side, the  Acrasia fans and Hailstorm-Loyalists were defending their idols with a holy conviction, creating a nice, burning dumpster-fire of internet-drama.

It was glorious, especially with popcorn, watching the GNN-Panelists trying to report on the message-boards with a straight face and while staying family-friendly, a challenge at the best of times, but now, it was outright hilarious.

Fed, showered and amused, I did some real stretches and yoga-forms, just to make sure I wouldn't get stiff or sore from lying in the capsule all day before connecting my desktop-system to the capsule, strictly following the manual, before returning to my coffin, wondering if I would start lusting for blood at some point.

“Pica, there should be a linked desktop-system, can you detect and access it?” I asked into thin air, after returning to my mountain-top.

“Desktop-System detected, beginning log-in.” reported the silver apparition that winked into being beside me.

“Place the virtual System at a suitable place, to complete log-in.” she continued and a computer, looking remarkably similar to  my normal system materialized next to me, only that there was a little floating screen to move, rotate and configure it. Grinning to myself,  I placed it into my library and entered my log-in information, after a relatively cursory check of the privacy-agreement. There was just no way I would read hundred-fifty pages of legalese, but then, nobody did. Placement of the computer within the home-space meant I could work with the time-compression feature offered by the capsule, allowing me to increase my already good work-efficiency even further. Not that I worked a lot.

Work, for me, was going over tons of financial data, looking for irregularities, tracing them and finding red flags and tying those to persons. In simple terms, I was an accountant. To most, my work was about as interesting as watching paint dry. I relished looking for patterns in the chaos and there were always patterns in the chaos of reality. Most people would call me insane for it and, well they would be right, at least if you wanted to call everyone with an irregular psychology 'insane'.

My special brand of insanity was a mix of obsessive compulsive disorder and autism. There were the usual parts, like the need to go about certain tasks in certain ways but after living with myself for twenty-eight years, I was able to control it. Well, cope with it.

Curiously, the formalised and highly precise movements inherent to some martial art and the meditation exercises had helped a lot to control both my mind and body in the chaos of society. But my condition also allowed me to recognise patterns a lot easier and organize those patterns and information in ways “normal” people were unable to.

As my mother used to say, I was not challenged, I was merely thinking in ways nobody else could. Sadly, thinking in ways nobody else could made it difficult to relate to people, or have people relate to me.

My wonky brain made me into an excellent forensic accountant, which I had added on by going to university to get a degree, and the necessary credentials to work in the field. It had always been my back-up plan, if the whole “play games for a living”-thing fell through, as it had with Craft of War.

For the last five years, since getting my degree, I had valiantly worked as little as possible, just enough to keep my certifications active and a modest company of one alive. That small scale of activity meant that, on paper, I had five years of experience in my field, I was lacking the contacts normally vital to actually getting work. There were a couple companies that had me do regular audits and a Judge that had known my father had given me work a few times, but nothing large-scale. After learning that I had been cut from my old team and before learning that I would be allowed to participate in the Road to Purgatory-Beta, I had planned to truly work full-time, even considered applying to larger companies. Somehow, the thought of pulling the rip-cord of my parachute had been incredibly scary, so the chance to soar again on the Road to Purgatory was one I gladly took.

After working a couple of hours in accelerated time, I sent one final mail to one of my clients, finishing off one of the projects I had been working on. With that accomplished, I  decided I had earned a break, if studying the released material about the game could be called that.

“Pica, can you show me the lore-material Pantheon has released for Road to Purgatory?” I asked the empty air.

“Yes, Jade, I can do that.”, the empty air replied and a small book materialized in front of me before Pica continued “Sadly, there is not that much of it. Most knowledge, the players will need to discover for themselves.”

Well, that was disappointing. The booklet had maybe 20 pages, mainly telling me about some kind of cataclysm that had fractured the world a couple of centuries prior to the setting. With the world fractured, the various races had settled down on different continents and sea-monsters made travel without watermages to hide the ships a challenging proposition. Large fleets appeared to be impossible, not even a group of water-mages was able to hide that many tasty snacks and fighting against the seamonsters was described as a futile struggle, even if you killed one, you only chummed the water for more, creating a frenzy of blood, death and destruction. What a wonderful image.

The limitations of see-travel made interracial wars pretty much impossible but intraracial wars were rather common, with border raids, sponsored banditry and similar practices common. That gave rise to the adventurer-profession, basically small-scale mercenaries, united by the powerful guilds that kept themselves independent from any one kingdom and worked together across oceans. While I wasn’t fully convinced that such a system would actually work, it was the setting Pantheon had decided on.

So, seven continents, the standard fantasy races, elves, humans, dwarves, orcs but also demons, valkyries, beastmen and a plethora of others. In opposition to the civilisation were a variety of monsters, from basic animals to magical monsters of epic proportions, like the sea-monsters mentioned above. There were even places where creatures from different realms manifested on a semi-regular basis, while bound to roughly the location they had appeared at. The description sounded a lot like a dungeon to me, making me chuckle, just a little.

Overall, the booklet gave only basic information, just enough for you to want to go out and get the game, better today than tomorrow, to find out more. But then, that was likely what the booklet was supposed to accomplish.