To Play a Game
I did a little searching online, hoping to actually play the thing, and that was how I learned about a piece of virtual-reality hardware they called a Connector.
The pictures showed a rounded sphere, hollowed out just enough for a single person to climb inside.
Technology from the future. Virtual reality research had existed in my old world, too, but fooling every one of the five senses had been impossible. The best you got was a headset that painted a different scene over your eyes. This was electronics packed with technology I had never touched—a machine that could actually render a virtual world.
I was starting to understand why the ads hammered so hard on realism, why people were losing their minds over it. If you could feel all five senses in there, what exactly was the difference between that and the real thing?
My heart was slamming against my ribs like it wanted out.
I could feel what I had felt as a mercenary again? Who the hell was supposed to sit still after hearing that?
For the first time since my body had changed, excitement climbed all the way into my throat. To hold a gun again. To cut across a battlefield. There was no sensation quite as electric as walking the line between living and dying. That was why people threw themselves at extreme sports. The adrenaline that came from knowing a single slip might kill you arrived as a savage kind of pleasure, and I was no different.
Honestly, how much satisfaction could a game really give me? Still, doing something beat sitting here having given up on everything.
And then, when I looked up the price of a Connector, it was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over my head.
The Connector was, in essence, a game console. The numbers I found when I went to place an order were not numbers I liked. The latest models started at twenty-five thousand dollars, and even the so-called value models sailed well past eight thousand. The cheapest still ran about sixty-five hundred—not exactly an impulse buy.
I've got eight thousand sitting in the account, so I could buy one, technically.
It did not feel like a wise choice. With no income whatsoever, I could not sink sixty-five hundred dollars into a game I wasn't even sure would satisfy me.
That did not mean I was ready to give up.
When the base price of a Connector ran into the thousands, there was no way the things were flying off shelves. No matter how fun a game was, people only piled in if they could actually afford it. A price tag like that was a wall. Who was supposed to play?
When I had searched the game, PC bangs had come up as a related term—which meant I might be able to use a Connector there. A PC bang was, ordinarily, a place you went to rent a computer. If the most popular game in the country couldn't be played in one, people would have no reason to keep showing up. And I did not believe for a second that everyone had gone out and bought a machine that cost more than sixty-five hundred dollars apiece. Someone, somewhere, had to be renting them out. That was the only way a price like that still generated this much heat.
A search confirmed what I had expected. There were PC bangs that rented Connectors, and the nearest one was not that far.
My eyes drifted to the window. The sun had gone down. Nothing out there but a thick wash of dark.
I had never much liked walking around after nightfall, but what did that matter now? This was the moment I had to start adapting to a new life. And night, as it turned out, was not nearly as dark as I had been picturing. Streetlights stood at every interval, and the buildings had their lamps on, so the whole neighborhood glowed. Stretch it a little and you could almost call it midday.
I was still wearing the clothes I had gone out in, which helped. If I decided to wait until tomorrow, I would have to wash my face and change all over again—and anyone who thinks washing is easy has never tried to work shampoo through a head of hair this long.
Once the decision was made, there was no reason to stall. I grabbed a decent coat against the chill and headed for the front door again.
People were passing on the street. Evening, so the sidewalks were thick with office workers in suits. Someone was on the phone with family. Someone else walked with a box of fried chicken in one hand. Quitting-time energy—every step looked lighter, and a faint smile sat on every face. I slipped into that current and pointed myself toward the PC bang.
"Is this even a guide...?"
I had looked it up on the way to the PC bang, thinking I should at least learn the basics. It had the most upvotes and it was relatively recent, so I read it—and it was less a guide than a warning shot fired at every newbie in range.
In the end, the only thing I actually learned about the game was that you were supposed to learn by getting hit. I was used to that, so it wasn't exactly a problem...
I was still turning it over when I realized I had already arrived.
It was a PC bang on a busy commercial strip, planted squarely in a high-rise. I had to crane my neck for a long time just to take in the height of the thing. Fortunately the place itself was on the first floor, so I was spared the indignity of getting lost in a tower.
The inside was quieter than I expected. It did not look empty, and yet nothing like real noise was happening.
The strange part was that there were no computers in sight. Instead, rounded pods just large enough for one person sat in neat rows, lined up like they were on parade. I had seen the pictures enough times that recognizing them as Connectors did not take long. Seeing one in person, though—they were bigger than I had thought. Most of the doors were shut, which meant they were occupied.
I had stopped in the middle of the floor to look around when a man who looked like the part-timer came over.
"Hi. Is this your first time at our PC bang?"
"Yes."
"Then I'll show you around."
"A corner seat, if you can."
I asked him for a spot out of the way, somewhere people wouldn't keep noticing me. Don't get the wrong idea. It wasn't that I liked sitting in corners. I just couldn't ignore the eyes I had been feeling since I walked in.
From the moment I stepped through the door, the part-timer and a handful of other people had been looking at me. I think you can guess why. You might say a little staring shouldn't matter. It wasn't even open staring, though. They kept cutting their eyes over, and that was so much worse.