Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

The Drowned Earth. The previews had made clear that there were no land masses larger than the UK, and so I’d expected islands. This…it was a chain of islands stretching as far as I could see. Most green, but a few of a dark, jutting rock. Otherwise sandbars, seashores, and a tiny scattering of buildings and boats.

The city, however—Vessa, the starting city my guild had chosen—was nothing like what I’d expected. If, that is, this…string was the city.

A rollercoaster track. That’s the best description I could come up with. A pearly flattened rail of metal or stone, looping lazily beneath a vivid sky, touching down on the larger islands, disappearing beneath the surface of the butterfly-blue water, and rising to circle one of the craggier isles, before spooling off into the distance.

All along it were beads. Pods. Train-carriages like mine, jutting horizontally out from either side of the rail. That put the size of the rail into perspective, since a stack of three pods on top of each other was still not as tall as the rail.

The pods themselves were all identical—a little paler than the rail, and almost featureless, barring their sole window protruding like a gunnery cockpit from the bottom of the outer end of each bead. Glass—or some other crystal clear substance—it offered incomparable views.

An overlarge chair was positioned on a little jetty sticking out into the glass bubble, but there were no controls in sight. My possibly-longer legs had developed a wobble, so I plopped down, and a small configuration menu popped up. Chair options to change the tilt or raise leg support.

The menu disappeared when I simply gaped past it. Was this really a city? Or—or the world’s oddest car park? Seeing all the other pods definitely made mine feel more like a caravan. And even as that occurred to me, movement outside drew my eye, and I watched a flat disk, glowing blue, rising to settle beneath one of the pods. The pod moved, slowly at first, and then with increasing speed, shooting into the distance.

"So we start with a ship?"

I peered along the seemingly endless line of pods, and then remembered I was naked. But since I couldn’t see into the nearest cockpits, not even the one that belonged to the pod directly above mine—jutting slightly further out thanks to the curve of the rail—I figured my glass must be one-way too, and just sat, reverentially staring. I had never seen anything so beautiful, so alien and yet…Earth.

Tutorial:

Heads-up Display

[Activate]?

The words, like the chair menu, had appeared directly in front of me, not projected onto the glass. A built-in HUD. That was a huge thing in itself. A computer in my head, and my head in a computer.

And it responded to mental commands! Thinking activate produced an immediate response: a tiny star appeared, spun briefly and settled into the lower right of my view.

Use commands

[Hide Display]

and

[Show Display]

to toggle HUD

"Hide Display," I murmured, and the star obediently vanished. I tried thinking [Show Display] without saying it out loud, and that was equally effective. The star then returned to the centre of the screen, and expanded with explanations:

[Game]

[Activity]

[Location]

[Status]

[Players]

The [Game] menu was a light green, while the other four options were greyed out, so I wasn’t surprised when Game expanded to give me new selections.

[Begin]

[Capture]

[Logout]

I had no intention of using [Capture] until I had some clothes on, while [Logout] informed me that it would be necessary to return to a home location (or Storage , as the game termed it) before logging out, which was relatively unusual.

Glancing at the first option produced a long chunk of text.

Selecting [Begin] will formally begin your

experience in Dream Speed .

You will be awarded to a Cybercognate,

who will direct your participation in the

challenges and games enjoyed by

the Bios of The Synergis.

While your personally assigned Cycog will

understand that you are participating in

Dream Speed , others you interact

with in The Synergis may not.

You may suffer penalties if you draw suspicion to yourself.

Roleplaying required, in other words. That was going to be an interesting proposition. MMOs had originally been known as MMORPGs, but the majority of players never made any real attempt to live in the fictional worlds. My parents were an exception to this, but it usually wasn’t my style. I would have to adapt.

Use command

[Begin]

to progress

I really wasn’t sure I liked the sound of the role I’d be playing, either. Awarded to a Cycog? Direct your participation ? I like to play MMOs at my own pace. Would I be stuck in a perma-party with some random playing a Cycog? Or was it simply a tutorial program?

Whatever. I’d try it out, and leave the overthinking until later.

[Begin]

Across the vivid blue landscape, a star fell.

It took me two blinks to realise that the star was not another HUD display, but an object inside the curving viewing glass. A tiny point of glimmering light, moving very slowly.

"Well, hello Tinkerbell."

[[Is that what you wish to call me?]]

I’d said the first thing to come into my head, mostly to cover surprise, but paused before responding to the curiously doubled voice. The Cybercognates were supposedly in control of The Synergis, and I’d been assigned to this…Cycog to be trained. Would there be consequences for not treating it with some basic courtesy?

"You don’t have a name already?"

[[Of course I do.]] The words were light, amused, and showed no hint of the poor pacing and dubious pronunciation of a computer-generated voice. The only strangeness was a sense of duplication, of the words being layered—though only two or maybe three times, instead of the multiplicity used for the introduction scene.

"I can’t call you by your actual name?"

[[You’re welcome to try. My name is ___+++___+++.]]

The sound the Cycog produced would fit a synthesiser, or some New Age instrument. Not made for human throats.

"Okay, that’s definitely beyond me. But it seems odd to me that you don’t have a name I can pronounce. What do other people…other hu…Bios call you?"

[[I’ve been called any number of things.]] The tiny orb of light drifted closer to my face. [['Dio' will work as a use-name.]]

"I’m Taia," I replied promptly. "If it’s not impolite to ask, how does a Cybercognate differ from an AI?"

[[By not being artificial.]] The point of light shimmered between blue and yellow as it spoke. [[The first Cybercognate formed spontaneously within the computing and power networks of the planet Szelen. We are not a manufactured species.]]

"Do you…are you similar to AIs in other ways? Vastly intelligent, able to twist computer systems around your virtual fingers, humans are but ants to you, that sort of thing?"

[[Oh, certainly.]] The Cycog’s colours changed again, flickering to blue and then purple. [[Less than ants, to the greatest of us. Specks. Motes.]]

I couldn’t guess if my expression revealed the combination of fascination and dismay I was feeling. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a game, that I wasn’t really sitting naked above a tropical paradise talking to a more-than-AI. Maybe because Dream Speed itself truly was such a leap forward that part of me wanted to believe that at least part of it was more than particularly clever programmers who had mastered stealth development.