Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

Glancing at the bottom of the pill , I saw a faint glimmer of blue-green, but no other clue to what was allowing the thing to float about. I almost laughed at how hesitantly I stepped aboard, given that one of my favourite pastimes in MMOs is finding really tall things to jump off. Magic science meant I didn’t have to care about the physics, but I still felt too real to abandon it.

"Do these things have a name?" I asked as I sat, not bothering with the [Directed Thought] option since we were alone.

[[Pods.]]

We began to move, and I gripped my seat, trying not to gasp. Remembering the rollercoaster shape of the rail I’d seen from my Snug, I braced for a plunge-over-a-waterfall experience, but the pod remained horizontal as it shot through the blue ceiling stream. Sadly, there didn’t seem to be any part of the ride that involved views outside the city tube , though the pod moved so quickly and smoothly that it hardly mattered.

Achievement

First to reach Rank One

[Nina Stella]

Awarded: Custom [Apparel Pattern]

The announcement had been both audible, and blazoned in text across my field of view, and I jerked and flinched a little, then tried to pretend I hadn’t.

[[There are options for how system messages and other communications are handled,]] Dio told me, with just the faintest suggestion of Cycog laughter. [[By default they will be suppressed while you are in a Challenge, but you can also specify priority contacts, or any variation of what you’ll see and not see.]]

"How far am I off Rank One?"

[[It’s probable you will achieve it in your next training session. Your progress was solid.]]

While this Nina Stella must have reached Rank One in her first session. I worked out how to search for players, and found the player information fairly limited.

Nina Stella

[Artemis]

Rank: 1

Status: Online

Accepting: [Email], [Messages]

Location: [Orlangia]

I wondered what it would be like to instantly become the most famous player in Dream Speed , and had to admit to envy. But I shrugged off missed opportunity as my pod slowed, then stopped. My arrow led me back to the concourse level, and into a maze of doors.

This was frankly confusing to look at. They were not doors standing by themselves, but leading into small, free-standing block-shapes, as if someone had scattered the place with cut-down shipping containers. Script in at least two different alphabets was blazoned all over the containers, in no language I recognised.

My arrow led me through the maze to one of the containers and pointed right at the door, but I hesitated. "What’s the difference between virtual and physical Challenges, given I’m playing a virtual game?"

[[Physical Challenges take up space on the Drowned Earth, and in Dream Speed will be primarily lan-related. Virtual Challenges will place your Core Unit into Storage, and load you into the Challenge via the Link.]]

"So why did I need to travel here to join a virtual quest?"

[[There are some—the larger Challenges—where you will be able to place yourself into any Storage on the planet to join, but many virtual Challenges use a limited portal upload to restrict opportunities for interference, and to minimise any possibility of delayed communication. You would not believe the tedium of Bios insisting they lost a Challenge because of transmission lag. Besides, it makes a Challenge ever so slightly more of an event to oblige a Bio to walk here.]]

"But what happens if a whole bunch of people want to take the same Challenge?" I asked, considering the small size of the container dubiously. A fit for five people, perhaps.

[[A waiting list. Or the Bios, ever fickle, find something else they want to do.]]

My destination door slid open, revealing the mirror-shimmer of Soup . MMOs often used instances to handle complex quests, phasing players through a portal into different iterations of the same experience, but that had never involved parking a physical self at the entrance. I looked around at dozens of other doors, realising that behind them all would be the same silver shimmer.

"Are there empty people…Core Units…all around us?"

[[A mindless horde’s worth.]]

"Are they safe? From harm, I mean, not the prospect of them turning into a mind-controlled horde."

[[If this were a location where the city Cycog had some animus against me, then there are extra security precautions it would be wise to take. But I have no particular enemies here, and you are far too minor a Bio to be considered worth taking direct action against.]]

"Well, let’s change that," I said, and stepped into the shimmer.

Paws waving, I rolled on my back in the sun.

Then, with a dizzying jerk, I came more or less upright, blinking and twitching, processing sight, sensation. Sheer physical difference. Two extra inches of leg were nothing compared to fur, four paws, and this spine , long and endlessly flexible, stretching down to an awareness of tail, waving and twitching.

With a name like The Felinead , waking up Cat was hardly a surprise, but I’d underestimated how different Being Cat would be. Overwhelming. A kaleidoscope of scent, and crisp but oddly off colours, accompanied by a knife-sharp clarity of sound. The sense of being on my hands and knees, but so much more comfortable. Claws. Whiskers.

I was not by a valley waterfall, but in every other respect I followed the outline of the countless videos from Demo 1. I gawped at myself, stared around briefly—at a grassy clearing studded with flowers and surrounded by trees—and then went back to gawping at myself. Lacking a convenient reflecting pool, I couldn’t see all of myself, but I did seem to be a house cat, short-haired and featuring grey and white blotches. Skinny.

After several yoga moves to fully establish my Catness, I tried walking. Then I reached for my menu options, since I wanted a record of how much like a pantomime horse my attempts at four legs must look.

My HUD had become a single, barely noticeable icon, and the menu options were shortened to screenshots, streaming, and [Emergency Exit]. I considered this for a while, then went back to walking. That worked better when I wasn’t thinking about it, and soon I moved on to small bounces and pounces, with only occasional awkwardnesses when I forgot myself and tried to stand up.

Stretching felt enormously good.

Basic movement accomplished, my attention shifted to the idea of a plot, and what might be outside my sunny clearing. There was no floating mote in attendance, so I assumed Dio was off enjoying perversions , and it was up to me to work out what now.

I surveyed the trees around me, and was rewarded with a strange image when I looked in the direction of the thickest trees: a vision of a tumble of earth-packed rocks, and several other cats lolling before hollows and small caves. A cat colony.

About to be invaded?

Experimentally, I gazed in the opposite direction, and another image imposed itself into my line of sight. Rock-studded earth patched with grass, with an attentive red-brown dog sitting in the shade of a round-leafed tree. Did these visions serve the same function as a mini-map? But were the images the equivalent of memories for my cat, or actual visions of what lay in those directions at this moment? The former made more sense, but it’d be wise not to rule out other possibilities.

I had no idea what was going on, and that was delicious. I even wished I hadn’t read the bare-bones description of the Challenge, because now I was anticipating an invasion, and how much better would it be to simply be here, Cat, and have adventure happen?