The Starfighter Invitation

17 bio break

Waking to the familiar chime of the cowl’s alarm clock, I remembered the Drowned Earth, and thought sleep would never be the same. I would always be leaving a world behind.

At least I felt rested, even after putting in a full day’s worth of world discovery, adventure, blue mist manipulation, and socialising. It felt like it had all happened yesterday, though: a clear memory, but with a night’s respite to smooth the edges. A ten minute night, but apparently enough.

And there were cooking smells. My parents must be back from town.

Standing up, I felt off, cludgy, and it wasn’t until I’d freshened up and headed for the main part of the house that I realised I was missing the spring of my fit virtual self—and perhaps the longer legs. Waking up would mean always leaving me behind as well, and Dream Speed’s five to one ratio on life was really going to mess up who I felt was me.

"Heya." My mother smiled at me from the couch, muting the news. "Tired of it already?"

"Managing the five-hour shutout. You can break it into bits, rather than having to do five hours in, five hours out."

"Excellent!" my father said, gesturing with a spatula. "We decided on country hours for dinner because we wanted to dive in as soon as possible, but being able to jump in and out without penalty makes future plans much simpler."

"And how was it?" my mother said. "As good as we hoped?"

"Better. I’m not even going to try to describe it. You should go in cold, if you can."

"Too late for that," my father said. "Everything has lit up with the news, and pictures of those ridiculous cities, and grabs of mecha fighting. I didn’t even realise this was a mecha fighting game."

"That’s…" I shook my head helplessly. "The mecha fighting is a sidequest. The tiniest bit of DS. The thing’s enormous. But, no, I’m not going to tell you more. I don’t want to spoil what it feels like to wake up there."

"Okay, okay. Set the table, then. Greek tonight."

I obeyed, just in time for my father to bring out plates of lamb skewers and fried halloumi.

"You’re going to love the food rewards," I said, squeezing a lemon wedge. "Vast arrays of Earth food, and I heard that the higher tiers have other-planet food, and right now I’m totally ready to believe that it’ll taste like it’s from other planets too."

"What starter city did you say you chose? Is it the one with the skyscraper trees?"

"No, mine’s the rollercoaster over islands. Skyscraper trees?"

I snagged the tablet my mother was browsing, and synced it with the big TV, then brought up images of Dream Speed’s starter cities. There was Vessa. Kivion looked like a rollercoaster that had contracted into a bird’s nest whirl, all set on poles above open water. The skyscraper trees were at Anefta: great white columns rising out of the breakers of an endlessly long beach, with the columns' upper reaches dividing and sub-dividing like the branches of a tree—and all decorated with the compact pill-shapes of thousands upon thousands of Snugs.

Unable to resist, I began browsing more images, scenes from countless stories. The mecha were Art Nouveau-inspired, which made me far more inclined to try that Challenge out. One of the starter cities had the Snugs attached to petal-shaped loops surrounding underwater domes. There were a lot of videos of the mass suspension on Vessa Major, and another of a crowd transforming the ubiquitous coveralls into an excuse for an impromptu rendition of the Ghostbusters theme song.

And then I made the mistake of following a link to "Medusa-Bro".

"Ach, I did not want to see that," my mother said.

My father, unfazed, said: "Python-Bro seems more appropriate."

"I guess when people are given sliders for every body part, this is inevitable," I said, shuddering.

"Is—is it moving?" my mother asked.

I turned off the screen, and we laughed at the ridiculousness of it all, and then cleared the table.

"Taia, why don’t you go up to your Oma’s house and show her how to play?" my mother asked, stacking the dishwasher.

"So she can tell me again that she has better things to do than silly TV-picture games?"

"She promised to try it at least once," my mother said. "Though what she would make of new-style medusas I don’t know."

"The game’s code of conduct includes no full nudity in public places. And Ryzonart seems serious about enforcing courtesy standards. Okay, I’ll talk to her."

"While we try to decide whether to go with our guild’s starter city or another," my father said. "I’m leaning toward an underwater one."

"Skyscraper trees," my mother replied.

I left them still debating, and snagged a light jacket, since evening in the Lowlands in September brought a touch of chill. It would be quicker to grab a bike from the collection outside the door, of course, but I was missing my running days, and it would only take ten minutes to walk down the twilit road.

The opportunity to buy a house so close to my grandmother’s was one of the reasons my parents had given up their nomad lifestyle to return to the Netherlands. I hadn’t been happy at the time, since it had been a wrench to move from a Malaysian beach town to the most rural part of the Lowlands, and my Oma’s opinion of me had always involved long silences, or corrections of my pronunciation. Until we’d moved here permanently, I’d spent more time in New Zealand, South Korea and Malaysia than I had in the country of my birth, and my accent showed it.

Walking in blissful solitude toward the lighted windows of her house, I already knew that I would see my Oma in silhouette through the kitchen window: tall, determinedly upright, her arthritis-clawed hands hidden by the sill. Washing dishes, because she always kept country hours, and ate her dinner as soon as it grew dark. She would watch the news before going to bed, and then be up at the dawn, out doing chores on the single acre left of the once-expansive farm.

The door was only locked when my Oma went to bed, so it was simple enough to know and walk in. My mother might believe Oma had promised to try Dream Speed, but I wasn’t at all surprised to see the cowl my mother had bought still sitting unopened on the sideboard.

"Hi Oma," I said. "How was your day?"

My Oma glanced at me, then said: "Close the door, girl. The night is cold."

"Yes, Oma," I said, wiping my shoes carefully on the wiry mat just inside the door. Oma did not like dirt tracked through her house. I took my coat off before she could remind me of that as well.

"And have you found a proper way to spend your time?" Oma asked. "Or do you intend to stay the whole of your life a child in the house of your parents?"

"Not the whole of my life, no," I said, keeping an upbeat note to my voice. "It depends on how long it takes for my business to grow a steady income stream. I have a small advantage because I can create web pages supporting multiple languages, but I still need to build a reputation."

"You cannot work in the company of someone established, to build this reputation?"

Two different shouty bosses had more than made clear to me that if I wanted a career in design, it wouldn’t be working for someone else. I still had unreasonable clients to deal with, but at least—while living with my parents—I could refuse the worst commissions.

The question of how long I was willing to try this while not making anything resembling a living wage was not one I wanted to thrash out with my Oma, so I firmly changed the subject.

"Moe sent me down to set up your guided dream game cowl. The game she told you about released today and I think you’d—"

I paused, not because my Oma had sniffed, but just wondering what she’d make of The Synergis, and waking up naked in a Snug, and having her own personal Cycog assigned. She was so fiercely independent that I couldn’t see her enjoying playing Chocobo. I wasn’t even certain she’d like to rebuild herself according to her self-image. I did think that in The Synergis she’d be free of the arthritis that made the simplest task a matter of grit and endurance, and found that I really wanted to convince her to try it out.

Talking about her hands wouldn’t get me far, though. Oma did not admit to weakness, and pointedly ignored specially-made utensils, heat lamps, rubs, magnetic bracelets, and any other piece of science or quackery designed to offer relief.

"I spent a lot of today in a forest," I said instead. "All moss and meadow clearings, and small animals everywhere. And then on an island—a place with lots of islands. Dream Speed lets you travel, go all over the world, in all different eras, and doesn’t have to take up any of your waking day at all. I’m called Leveret in the game, and I, uh, is it okay for me to go in your bedroom to set up the cowl?"

The sound Oma made could—just—be interpreted as permission, so I scooped up the box and went into the Spartan bedroom that still had not fully acknowledged the death of my Opa.

My mother had set up a wireless environment for Oma years ago, so it was simple enough to plug in the micro-console, set it to downloading Dream Speed, and feed in the details of the account we’d prepared for Oma. Like all MMOs, an internet connection was mandatory, though Ryzonart had claimed there’d be no issues with ping or slow speeds when in the game.

I was unfolding the cowl when I noticed Oma had come to watch me from the doorway.

"All you need to do is put it on when you’re about to get into bed," I said, demonstrating by dropping the loosely shaped headpiece over my hair. Light cloth settled over my shoulders, and I fastened the Velcro that would keep it from slipping off. "Then press the big button on your console. That’s all."

My Oma just looked at me. Feeling foolish, I pulled the cowl off and smoothed it onto the bed.

"You can also use it as an alarm clock, if you want. GDG helps people to sleep deeply, and they respond to the in-built alarm best. That’s what these buttons are for, as well. One’s so that you can easily wake someone up without having to shake them out of the dream. The other’s a smoke detector—they did some tests, back when the cowls came out, and people wearing cowls actually woke up in response to their cowl every time, while some normal sleepers didn’t hear ceiling smoke alarms."

I was rattling on, and made myself stop and take a long breath. "Any questions Oma? Or messages for Moe?"

My Oma shook her head, so I escaped, slipping past her and heading back to the kitchen. I was used to my Oma’s stern silences, but I still didn’t manage them very well. I’d been terrified of her as a child: she’d been so tall, grim as flint, and never—so far as I could tell—happy to see me. Today she simply nodded when I made my goodbyes, and turned to putting away the dishes.

"Well, I tried, Moe," I muttered, heading back out to the starlight. Perhaps my mother would manage to convince Oma to try the game out. If not, well, there’d be no problem at all reselling the cowl. I should probably sell my old one, for that matter.

No, wait. What I should be doing was taking advantage of a brief window of time.

Ever since Demo 1, there had naturally been plenty of fan-made Dream Speed product, and I’d even contributed myself, but with so little known about the game, it had all been focused on the same few points. The information flood-gates might have opened today, but most players wouldn’t even have hit their first play session limit.

I started to trot, already thinking through possibilities. I didn’t want to miss my next training session, but before then I could surely manage one simple design which would work for T-shirts, stickers, mugs, phone and tablet skins.

I set my phone to warn me of the time to log back in, then settled in front of my computer and began working. A blue world, a swathe of star-specked black, an uneven ring for the moon, all as background to the cockpit section of a Snug, with a coverall clad figure partly visible through the window. I could use the image as the basis of numerous variations, with or without text. I began doodling options to go with it.

My alarm went off as I was staring at this last one, and I grimaced, then rubbed the back of my neck. I’d been unable to resist spending time on detail work, and not only hadn’t uploaded anything, I didn’t have anything finished.

Torn, I hesitated, but then decided to stick with the plan of logging in to work on my rank. Then, well, I guess I could log right back out again. The five hour restriction made it not so bad, since I had to spend as much time out of the game as in it. It’s a pity I couldn’t take my computer with me, and do the work in-game.

Could I?