The Starfighter Invitation

3 demo 2

"How’s the feed?"

My mother shrugged. "This host seems steady. Though the viewing numbers keep spiking. I’ve a few other options in case it drops out."

Cradling my laptop, I dropped on the couch and eyed the volume-muted wall screen. A presenter dressed as Thor was waving a hammer-shaped microphone.

"Why am I not there? Cologne’s so close—I could be there this afternoon."

"Do the math, Taia," my father said, carrying a laden tray into the room. "Five days. Twenty half hour session slots per day, most of them already reserved thanks to the pre-con lotteries. And Gamescom has three or four hundred thousand attendees on a normal year. You would be watching on the monitors like everyone else, all crammed up, and without the benefit of home-cooked snacks."

"I thought I smelled roti."

Roti was one of the major benefits of my parents' long ramble through Asia. I demolished the perfectly-crisped flatbread—when my Dad made it, I never had to worry about someone using a wheat-mix flour—and listened impatiently as the gamers for the special first session were announced and introduced. Obviously not a random selection, since the lucky pair were sisters: two teens in matching Chell costumes, each carrying a hula-hoop. That was a clever bit of cosplay—they weren’t quite identical, but close enough to produce an illusion of a single person entering a blue circle on one wall and simultaneously emerging from an orange circle on the other side of the stage. They demonstrated, bringing cheers from the assembled crowd, before being escorted through a pair of doors painted in a slick imitation of metal and circuitry.

"All that excitement, and now they’re expected to go to sleep." I sighed ostentatiously, though I knew it wouldn’t be more than a five to ten minute wait. GDG had grown out of tech designed to alleviate insomnia, and there were very few people who could withstand sleep-induction for long. "Have you decided whether you’re going to buy your own GDG cowls?"

"We do have one of the early models. We’ll probably try that first." My mother shrugged and grimaced at the ceiling. "Roof repairs before indulgences."

I checked my laptop, refreshing the Ryzonart site in hopes of an update. I’d registered and pre-ordered immediately after Demo 1, of course, but other than the online store, Ryzonart had only released the cowl specifications required to run the game, and a very vaguely-worded user agreement. They didn’t have forums. They didn’t even have an FAQ.

Of course, hordes of people were saying the whole thing was a hoax: there was no game, the demo participants had been actors, and DS was the biggest scam the gaming community had ever seen. After one net Sherlock had traced a direct financial link between Ryzonart and Advanced Somnetics, the company that had developed GDG cowls, the discussion had head directly to fraud prosecution territory.

I’d still thrown my money at the first opportunity.

The livestream switched from the excitable presenter at the booth to Ryzonart’s main feed, handily broadcasting the output of the sessions directly so the international audience no longer had to rely on shaky footage from monitors. The stream showed a shadowy, metallic door in an unlit room, which slid open to reveal the two girls framed by glare, now dressed in nondescript beige overalls.

"We’re still us!" the taller girl exclaimed in German, which isn’t one of my primary languages, though I can get by in it.

The other girl didn’t indulge in the usual gaping down at herself, instead gasping and taking a stumbling step forward. The camera obligingly swivelled so the audience could appreciate what she was seeing.

"Holy hell."

I’d dropped my roti, but didn’t care. I’d stopped wondering how much game there could possibly be, let alone what you did in it. I didn’t care about anything except the view.

Velvet black and diamonds, and a great, grand curving wash in a thesaurus of blue, a thousand shades from sapphire to ice, and, oh, I wanted it, that moment of looking down on a world made compassable by distance, and in its turn transforming the one who looked into the tiniest speck, a gnat, a mote in…

"Space! We’re in space! Sabine, we’re–!"

"Shut up."

The shorter sister barely whispered the words, advancing until her hands were against the clear surface that separated them from all that was without. And, after a quavering moment, her sister joined her and they stood silent. The light of the world turned the girls' ochre brown skin a sickly green, but did nothing to lessen the sheer joy the pair radiated.

"Roof can wait."

My mother had spoken, not quite under her breath. I let out my own, and we exchanged a glance, then gazed hungrily back at the screen.

"It’s not Earth," the shorter sister said, after she’d drunk deeply of awe and had moved on to curiosity. "There’s hardly any land."

[[[[It is the Drowned Earth.]]]]

The sisters whirled, taking up defensive stances until they spotted the source of the strange, multi-layered voice: a floating point of light.

"What are you supposed to be?" the taller sister asked.

[[[[I am the Concierge of Dream Speed. You may call me Ryzon.]]]]

I couldn’t identify the accent of the odd, rich voice, though Ryzon’s German was certainly better than mine.

"You’re a game master? This is so awesome. I love it already. Do we get our own ships? What are the classes? Can we be anything we like? Even the panther?"

"Give it—her?—a chance to answer, Petra."

But Ryzon responded with effortless calm:

[[[[In some ways. Thank you. Ships are one of the goals. Technically, there are no classes. There are a wide variety of modal units. The panther is one option.]]]]

The shorter sister, Sabine, reached a hand toward the floating light, but changed her mind. "What’s a modal unit?"

[[[[A physical avatar. You start with your own Core Unit, but as you progress through the game you might access, for instance, an underwater modal, or one designed for flight, or zero gravity. Some challenges can only be entered using a modal with specific traits.]]]]

The room’s lighting changed, brightening to a dim orange glow, the brilliant white of the corridor shifting to match. Words in a language I didn’t recognise, accompanied by a two-tone beep, began to blare, and the two girls gasped as they both drifted upward. The shorter reacted to the sudden absence of weight by kicking accidentally against the window, propelling herself toward the centre of the room. She flailed, turning in a circle.

[[[[Zero-G games are best entered with a modal optimised for the environment,]]]] Ryzon said, voice brimful of amusement and clearly audible over the noise. [[[[But this challenge has been simplified so that even the rawest of space-goers has a chance to succeed. Your goal is to find and press four deactivation buttons before the countdown runs out. I’ll make the first one easy.]]]]

The floating concierge vanished as a red flashing object, the size of a fist and labelled in squiggles, appeared on the ceiling above the stranded girl.

"Petra! Give me a hand! No, help me first!"

But the taller girl had already launched herself at the ceiling, managing a near trajectory. Bouncing off metal a half-foot to the right of the button, she tried to slap it on the rebound, and succeeded in sending herself hurtling into a corner of the room.

As the pair gave themselves a frantic lesson in zero-G manoeuvres, my mother picked up her tablet, and in a few short pecks at the screen began shopping for GDG cowls.

"Is yours still working, Taia?" my father asked, taking off his glasses and twisting them, as he did whenever he was excited.

"Yeah, I don’t need—wait, are those DS-branded?"

"Official Ryzonart cowls," my mother said, bringing up a larger image of a deep blue cowl specked with stars, the mandatory smoke detector and emergency wake button gleaming blue and gold, like a planet and its sun. "Ryzonart definitely has its product placement ready to go."

"Standard price, at least. Damn, I want one. I don’t really need one, but I want one. I…hey, why four?"

"One for your Oma."

"Oma and computers? Really?" My grandmother, very much an outdoorswoman despite the arthritis that plagued her, had little time for electronics.

"Your Oma and a virtual body."

"Good point."

I shook my head and watched two girls working their way along a spaceship corridor. Of course, people had already been saying that Dream Speed wouldn’t just upend the gaming world, that VR would change lives. And while I might dismiss theories of aliens and AIs in guild chat, if these demos weren’t some magnificent hoax, then…could we really do this with current tech?