The Starfighter Invitation

9 starter gear

"What did you call this place again?" I asked Dio, following the ball of light back into the main room. "My Snug?"

[[The Snug is the initial basis for your ship. Currently it can only move through the use of borrowed propulsion. Your immediate goals are to gain the permissions and upgrades necessary to leave the planet, and the strength to Skip.]]

"Are there different kinds of ships?" I asked, thinking of the sprawling hulk people had raced through during Demo 2.

[[Snugs can be modified considerably, including through connection to components kept in orbit. Though there is a limit to the size of ship the average Bio can Skip.]]

"Does Skip equate to hyperspace?"

[[Closer to threading space with temporary wormholes. The door to your left is your wet room—for all the revolting expulsions you Bios needs must suffer through. The door to your right is Storage. You will note your [Status] menu is now available.]]

I wasted no time checking it out:

Of these new options, only [Patterns] was green. I selected it without prompting.

The first three of these were green, so I immediately went into Apparel and saw the typical paper doll used by games to indicate equipped gear. Except the paper doll was me, a full-sized slightly improved Taia, equally as naked.

There was another range of options—[Feet], [Head], [Underwear], [Upper Body], [Lower Body], [Full Body], [Accessories]. Only [Full Body] had a (1) beside it, so I started with the only outfit available to me: [Basic Jumpsuit (Green-Grey)].

A jumpsuit appeared handily on the paper doll. A little reinforcement around the shoulders, a somewhat off-centre slit down the front, and a few pockets. It fit the paper doll loosely. A pair of chunky black boots finished the outfit.

Checking out the [Tools] option, I found a massive list ranging from construction to weapons, but only the topmost was green. "What’s a foci?"

[[Plural of focus. You use a focus to direct your lan—whether for combat or for Skipping.]]

There were two foci available to me, and I equipped them in turn. The first was a kind of hoodish helmet—halfway between Spider-Gwen and Magneto—producing an incognito look. The second took me a moment to even spot on the paper doll: a grey loop over one ear, with a forward-projecting section flat against my cheek, like a wireless microphone.

"Any stat difference on these?" I asked, and when Dio told me it was just a cosmetic choice, I went with the microphone.

Making my limited selection had not altered my nakedness, so I turned to the closet that filled the corner to the right of the hexagon-exit. More than large enough to be a walk-in-wardrobe, with a close-fit curving door facing the bed area. The handle was an indent set into the sloping corner, and when I tugged it lightly the thing swung open with a hiss and a lot of weight, like a heavy-duty refrigerator.

Inside was a mirror.

I blinked, because seeing a naked me in my HUD and seeing a naked me in a full-length mirror was quite a different experience. I critically considered my body, and felt pleased all over again. I had disliked my too-short legs for as long as I could remember. Leaning in, I examined my face, wondering why it looked so different when I’d hardly changed anything there, then realised it was my complexion. Perfect clarity, without acne scars, over-large pores, or even shininess.

Not quite uncanny valley, but I needed several second glances to decide to like it.

"What do I do to get the clothes actually on me?" I asked, looking at the edges of the mirror and then the back of the door for hangers or parcels or something.

[[Walk in.]]

I turned my head to stare up at the floating mote, and decided that that rainbow shift did signify amusement.

"Try not to enjoy yourself too much," I said, and won a sputter of musical notes to go with the colour change.

[[But the expressions Bios produce when they’re confused and trying to hide it are nigh-irresistible.]]

"Wouldn’t want to bore you," I said, before considering the mirror again.

A cautious touch produced a ripple, and a faint chill. Not glass, but some kind of reflective liquid?

"If this leads to a heart-themed queen after my head, I’ll be less than impressed," I said, then took a deep breath and walked forward.

It was not so much cold as tingly, like a bath of mint liqueur. I don’t recommend baths of mint liqueur because the shock makes it almost impossible not to gasp, and mint liqueur in your lungs is a moment of full-body ice cream headache.

I didn’t find myself choking, however, just very light and strange, in a place too bright to see. Unsure what to do, I tried stepping forward again, and emerged back into the main room, all turned around without even trying, and dressed in unexpectedly comfortable gear. The boots especially were light and so form-fitting that I almost felt barefoot.

"I didn’t even feel the change. What happens if I put on something like a corset?"

[[I expect you’d feel that. You were distracted by the Soup.]]

I glanced back at the mirror. "This reflective stuff is…soup?"

[[A common term for it. The substance that your equipment is made from. That your modals are made from. Any pattern you obtain can be fashioned using Soup.]]

"Matter conversion? Tea, Earl Grey, hot?"

[[If you want to think of it that way. True matter conversion takes an unreasonable amount of energy. This is closer to what you’d think of as 3D printing, but with the Soup giving flexibility to the print substance.]]

"Will I dissolve into a puddle of silver goo if I’m killed?" I asked, tugging at my new outfit to try to determine if I had any underwear.

[[No. Merely stiffen and stink.]]

I glanced up from my discovery of a tank top beneath my coverall. "Does…does this game use permadeath?"

In most MMOs, the consequences of death were mild. You died, you respawned nearby, with maybe a little temporary stat impairment, or a lighter bank balance. Games where you had to start over from scratch if you were killed were extremely rare.

[[You will not want to lose your Core Unit,]] Dio said. [[But The Synergis gives you many opportunities to postpone the various things that happen to Bios after they die.]]

"What happens to a Cybercognate when you die?"

[[We don’t technically die—not in the terms you’re thinking of. Or, at least, none of us have been confirmed to yet, though we have lost contact with a number. In certain circumstances we…diminish. And we merge or divide, which some regard as a kind of death.]]

Not certain if this counted as glowing ball sex, or whether it was impolite to pry, I let the subject drop. Dressed with all my non-edible possessions in this virtual world, I went into the [Capture] menu, and found I could take either screenshots or video, and did both, since it was a tradition with me to keep a record of all my characters in their starter gear.

This accomplished, I glanced briefly at the [Consumables] menu, decided I needed neither food nor any urgent investigation of the wet room, and said: "Ensign Taia, reporting for duty."