Too Late?

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This story was originally started for the Stardust competition, but I got bogged down shortly after. Now it's done however so I thought I'd release it anyway. Grammar and Spelling is as ever by Word.

The story is as is, I am not intending continuing this at all as I think it stands well as it is. As ever no computers were harmed in the writing of this and any resemblance to real life is odd as it's based on non-existing technology and concerns the almost magical transformation.

Too Late?

by JC

The call came the day after the party, not that the party had anything to do with it, but if I hadn't had so much to drink I might have had more patience for reading instructions and thus not got stuck where I am.

"May I speak to Mister Gardener?"

"Speaking."

"This is Spanker's your NES 12 has arrived, would you like delivery or will you be in to collect it?"

"How much for delivery?"

"Let me see, one hundred and fifteen euros." I did some quick calculations.

"Seventy five pounds, no I'll be in later today."

"Very good sir, we'll see you later."

"Bye."

I hung up and tried to think straighter, the party had been a blast I'd been well over the alcohol limit before the end so had returned to my flat in an autaxi, luckily I'd had a lift to it with my current girlfriend...

I remembered now why I'd come home alone, someone had let slip how much I'd spent on my PEC, unluckily for me not only did my girlfriend hear them but also the figure quoted bore little resemblance to the figure I'd told her. Hers I knew was far smaller and basic, she expected me to sacrifice mine toward our relationship...

Now there was no relationship.

After showering and dressing I felt much better, the anti hangover pill no doubt contributing to the overall effect. I made some breakfast, nothing complicated, we might be part of Europe now and while the fashion was to have a full continental breakfast my tastes ran more toward milk and cereal. Food eaten I left for the store.

Spanker's my independent PEC store, established back when PECs were still PCs. And dedicated gaming machines didn't do email and everything else. I've never known anything else; my first PEC was given to me at the age of nine. With the completion of the one I was building I would have almost had one a year since. Spanker's is a low dirty looking building; the staff is unfriendly even to old clients like me. If I had another option I'd go like a shot, but with the HP-Dell dominance of the market self build in the PEC market was almost dead. Even Spanker's now carried a large amount of pre-build machines behind their armoured glass windows.

I was glad of the work related car use permit I had, getting all 106 speakers home by hand would have been impossible, but the extra €115 on top of the nearly nineteen thousand I'd already paid would to my mind have been extravagant. On the other hand I did pick up some new entertainment titles to run through, including a new PVG set in a fantasy world.

The setup was a bitch. Each speaker needed to be placed in an exact place dependant on the rest; if one was misaligned I had to check them all one by one. Ninety-six adjustments later I had the worst of it done. The remaining 10 speakers were less of a hassle as they could then take their placement from the main loop.

I just thanked god for the recent advances in wireless power transmitting, with wires the whole room would have resembled a spider's web. As it was it looked much the same as anyone else's PEC, with the exception of the speaker main loop. The rest of the machine was ready, I made the last few connections and keyed in my user ID.

~@~

I finally emerged from the PEC four hours later the system was working flawlessly, unlike a normal PEC I inhabited a virtual world; my eyes received signals directly from the graphics array; my fingers only touched bio feedback sensors, and my ears heard near perfect environmental quality sound from the speakers I had just connected.

With the setup complete it was time to plan the remains of my holiday. Originally I had planned on having some quality time with my girlfriend, now I had more time to plumb the depths of Virtuality.

I said earlier that my PEC room looks much like anyone else's, and while there isn't anything that obvious there are subtle differences. Hell there should be the most expensive custom built rig I had ever heard of was a cool twelve thousand mine was over half again as much. Much of the extra cash had gone on the extras no-one else would spend three thousand on state of the art life support systems. I had. Nor were the bio feedback systems normal either, instead of pads on my fingers and a sensor hooked up to the TreadPad below me. I had had a sensor suit made to my exact measurements. I also had food dispensers with enough food for the remaining four days...

~@~

The PEC was perfect, I was in it now, in the distance I could see the mountains above Gulgothir. However this virtuality had been written for a preceding version of PEC so my experience wasn't perfect. The air felt cold but smelt mainly of my carpet cleaner. I needed a new experience and fast.

I didn't have any new games, and the next game I want to look at isn't out until next week. I must admit I was pissed, I like my job, and I earn stupid amounts of money doing something I love. It lets me have decent holidays so I can do what I want. But here I was unable to take advantage of a near perfect system. I was on the verge of changing out of my sensor suit and going back to Spanker's when I remembered the PWG I'd picked up when I got the speakers.

It was still on top of the water purifier in the kitchen. To be honest it didn't look that impressive. The cover showed a picture of two women, both scantily clad, one looked cyborg-like the other with a wand looked more elven. They were of course locked in battle. The equally uninspiring title was W1z4RD5!!11!! which looked awful.

However I'm sure you know the feeling of getting a new bit for your computer and then not being able to run anything new, I'd try this, I figured it'd give me something to do until I could get a copy of the latest from Blizzard. The actual game like all games nowadays come on a solid state holographic hard drive. The design was standard so I plugged it into the front of the PEC.

The software running on a PEC is made by MicroMac, unless you have the skills, patience or a kind of madness to run a Trunix distribution, I don't. One of the things that I, and many others, hate about MicroMac OS is the incessant warning messages, as ever on insertion of the game media a screen popped up with some warning on the EMD, I cancelled it and entered the virtuality.

~@~

For those people who have never entered a virtuality it's hard to describe. Poor virtualities can be seen as they fail in some important aspect. The most expensive systems interface directly with the brain but even those are limited by the programming. The brain will normally tell you when something is wrong... The only thing my brain is telling me here is that the air smells nice.

To my sides and front are windows looking out onto a lush scene, it wasn't like the real view from my flat, behind me was a mirror showing me what my avatar looked like. In a rather cool way my avatar looked just like me, down the side of the mirror were set several glowing gems. Knowing that this game was some sort of role playing game I guessed these gems would help me customize who I was.

The top most gem on the left was the largest it pulsed gently, blue in colour. I pressed it. Before my eyes my body changed into that of a young woman, the gem itself changed too, now it was a gently glowing pink. The woman I now resembled was pretty but nothing special, her... my breasts were small almost inadvertently I touched them they felt much as any breast felt, but interestingly they felt right from the inside too.

I spent several minutes playing with the gems on the left side of the mirror. When I was done I was a tall statuesque raven haired beauty. Young even then perhaps seventeen perhaps even younger. I just hoped that a screen grab would do this raven haired beauty justice. The gems on the right side of the mirror governed clothing, race and other interesting stuff. Briefly I became something line an elf and something that looked like a brutish human. I returned to my raven haired lovely.

I hadn't found any option controls the normal gestures and spoken commands revealed nothing, I didn't panic I'd had other games where such contrivances were hidden, the already noted perfection of this game hinted such things would be hidden. After clothing myself in clothes that not only did justice to my new form but that also felt amazing I turned to survey the view once more. I wondered where the other people where, I'd glanced at the packaging of the game; I knew that this was a shared world.

~@~

Time passed, I'd explored my immediate surroundings, food grew in the trees, and the water in the many streams was sweet and fresh. Though it couldn't be seen from my starting point the verdant area held a small town, it looked like the people had all stepped out for a moment. But there were no stores of food or material. Yet beds were unmade as though people had just risen from sleep and vanished.

Suddenly it occurred to me, this must be a quest, finding these people and either avenging them or returning them to their homes. Must be my first task, and suitable for a beginner, perhaps after this area I would find other players.

I had by this time searched the town from end to end, and found nothing. There were no signs of a fight or even an exodus the lush vegetation around the town was silent, only the noise of insects and birds could be heard. I counted up the days I had been here, I was stunned I'd already been here longer than three days, I would have to find the end to this quest quickly or my food back in the real world would run out.

There were two obvious paths leading into the surrounding lands, one ran north toward the mountains, the other south. After some though I headed north. I reasoned that if the people of the town had fled from an invader they would likely run toward the mountains and high ground. My other thought was simple, I had a fifty-fifty chance of being right.

The path wound among tall trees all ways easily to follow; it finished at the mouth of a mine. I knew it was a mine due to the mining equipment abandoned outside the tunnel. I briefly considered entering the darkness but fear of both the unknown and danger held me back. I did however pick up a pick from the ground; I at least had a weapon now. I called into the darkness but received no reply except for an echo.

I quickly retraced my path south from the mine. Several things were beginning to worry me now. First I had had no instructions since entering the virtuality, even the quest I though I was on might be a bug. Second I was running out of time, I'd entered the game expecting to be able to leave at any time, yet I wasn't even able to find any help. I had tried everything I knew of to leave the game but nothing had any effect. Thirdly, I had yet to encounter anyone, NPC or human player birds I had seen and insects buzzed in the air around me, this place wasn't sterile just empty. Lastly and this was least worrying, the basic premise of the game was that there were two nations, I should have been given a choice at some point to ally with one or the other but hadn't.

I passed through the town at a brisk pace; my avatar's body was infinitely healthier than my own. On the other side of town the ground sloped away increasingly steep until I found myself on the banks of a wide pool. The path turned in an easterly direction and skirted the pool until coming to a dock, the dock like the rest of this place was empty. I slumped in defeat...

~@~

I sat there until it was nearly dark it was only then I noticed a much smaller path leave the main track and carry on a long the pool's edge. I quickly followed this new track till it came to the side of the valley; in the steep rocky side of the valley was a cleft this lead to a cave. In the cave sat a man... for a moment I thought he was a statue but then his eyes opened and he smiled.

"Took you a while girly!"

To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement; I had already admitted defeat to myself, now this man was here, perhaps there was a way out. I was crying in relief my eyes streaming tears down my beautiful cheeks. I brushed the hair out of my face and knelt before him. "Please I'm lost and don't know what to do, I need help."

"I know girly, more than you can imagine."

"You know more?"

"No you need more help than I can truly provide."

"But you can tell me the control codes so I can exit the virtuality?"

"I can, but won't."

"Won't?"

"Won't! You are in far more peril than you could imagine if you exit this game you will die."

"But that doesn't matter, I don't want to stay here, I have a job to do and a life, and as pleasing as this body is its not my own."

"You misunderstand, if you exit this game you will cease to exist in both worlds. The body you did inhabit in the real world is dead."

"DEAD?"

"Don't shout. Watch this." He held up a screen and I looked into it, it took a few moments to work out what was what. The hallway shown was the hallway in my flat the door at the end was the inside of my own front door.

The door burst open in a blaze of light two men burst through it, I recognized them immediately, both were security corps. The larger was someone who I passed nearly every day on my way down to the parking garage, the other I think was the officer in charge of my building. The both walked through my point of view which swung to follow their progress. Then dizzyingly my point of view moved to show a slumped black clad form in my PEC room, even from my angle I could see that the body was breathing steadily. Were these men going to kill me?

After checking each room they arrived in the PEC room. "Here he is. He's in some virtuality."

"Don't disconnect him then."

"I know boss."

"I'll get the tech in here."

A third un-armourd man walked into my field of view, he first examined me then the PEC, before interfacing directly with the machine through the ancillary console. Whatever he read on the EMD worried him and he became more frantic. "Sir he's running a heavily modified PEC twelve I."

"I for intermediate?"

"Yes sir. I'm not sure but I think the virtuality he's running could be a thirteen."

"Shit."

"Yes sir."

"Can we get him out?"

"Not without killing him sir no."

"Can you find out what the software is and get in contact with their techs, see if they have any suggestions."

"Already on it sir."

"Good."

The movements of the tech became jerky and I realized that the time frame had been increased when he shot out of the inhumanly fast. Suddenly four new men were in the PEC room, two were obviously some form of paramedic the other two more techs. "Well he's stable anyway."

"And his mind?"

"Well the body appears to be in a coma of some form the scanners insist that no high order brainwaves are present. If we deactivate his medical system he'll die in under and hour."

"His consciousness is in our server, we've found him, and he's with an NPC that will help him come to terms with the loss. In fact he'll be watching this now...

~@~

I now have a new job, its kept me sane even if I'd rather be back at my old job. It seems that this world is popular; I'm now a central character in the story of the world. I should have read the box more closely its true. This world has three races, only one of which is a player race, I'm now the leader of that race, for now, in time the players will elect a new queen. Then my employers have promised a new body for me.

Time has passed once again; my room now had all the mod cons a disembodied mind could ever need. I daily reminded myself that if I had but just read the instructions on the game I would now be real still. The techs who worked with me told me that my body couldn't be saved, well it could but there was no known way to get my mind back in. A new body could be created for me and I could be squirted into it. A body designed to their specifications and made for their purposes.

~@~

I stood once again in front of a mirror, this one was not gem encrusted, nor would it have helped me if it had been. This was no game world; my body was once again flesh and blood. It wasn't male, it was beautiful. In time I could be my own person but for now I had an eager audience, fans of the hugely successful...

W1z4RD!!11!! 2

Hopefully by this point you know what a PEC does; what a PVG is; and which speaker to plug in first in a NES 12 system... If you don't and want to, try here.

Any amendments or changes will be made to my originals:
2late.html
((Note both links removed due to the containing site no longer existing, I still have the files but they aren't uploaded anywhere, if you'd really like to see them PM me and I can send them to you.))

I will of course mirror them here if they're glaring enough. *smiles* Any errors are my own any comments good or otherwise much appreciated.

©JC '07

Proofing is hard and I have already spotted mistakes *frowns* ah well, there are some proofing errors *winks*...

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Comments

nice story - but why the extra Glossary?

why not just explain things in the story?

Friendship is like glass,
once broken it can be mented,
but there will always be a crack.

Glossary?

Mainly as extra explanations would in some cases have broken continuity. I was consciously trying to write in a very first person point of view. Why would he explain what a PEC was? He knew and as he wasn't writing for an audience so to speak he wouldn't consciously explain...

Not sure if I can. *grins*

Originally I was just going to tack it on as foot notes but it became rather longer than I had intended.

JC

The Legendary Lost Ninja

I see your point

but still think I would have prefered to not have to read a Glossary first before I can understand the story.

It is an interessting idea in any case so I would love to know how others think about it.

thanks for the story and the explaination

Holly

Friendship is like glass,
once broken it can be mented,
but there will always be a crack.

How about this way

I tried to focus on the meaning as the surly voice growled at me from the cell phone in my shaking hand; "This is Spanker's your computer system, the NES 12 it says here, has arrived, would you like delivery or will you be in to collect it?"

snip

I hung up and tried to think straighter, the party had been a bust, so I'd been well into drunken blotto before the end and my host had returned me to my flat in a taxibot. The trip out was better as I'd had a lift to the party with what was then my girlfriend...

I remembered now why I'd come home alone, someone had let slip how much I'd spent on my Personal Encephalographic Console,
***

the first acronym is never used again. The preceding phrase "computer system" explains it well enough so that it is not a discontinuity for the reader.

Let us look at the party. He got drunk. His girlfriend dumped him. Not normally parameters for what is looked at in hindsight as a successful party so I changed it to a bust.

Autaxi does not flow as well as taxibot (and it also is never used again) so I went with the more obviously simple taxibot.
Either compare the two trips or just cut the line about the trip going to the party.

I stated the acronym longhand the first time. In this case, it could also give the reader some idea of what is coming, Unless you either don't like the acronym (then change it to something you do like) or it spoils too much of the later story, then you need to stretch PEC or use verbage denoting the mind linkage when our entrepid hero uses the PES that first time. It is more subtle to stretch the acronym the first time.
Anyway, use any of this as you see fit,
John

PEC

One of the BAEN authors (Eric Flint) stated how they were supposed to handle it during a recent discussion about people's submitted slush.
Use the full name for the acronym during the first time it is seen.
If the full name is not self explanatory, then it will have to be explained during that first use (and try not to make it a dry infodump)
Anything less and the reader figuratively "hits a wall" everytime that acronym is encountered until they do figure what it does mean (if ever).
Anyway, neat story and I enjoyed it once I had some semblance of an idea of what the acronym was probably supposed to mean.
John

I understand what you're saying but...

Take autaxi.

First off I never even thought of TaxiBot, if I had I might well have added it anyway.

Take PEC.

Harder, if I'd introduced this as a Personal Entertainment centre, then the reader would likely have seen it as something they understand... So instead of seeing this as a new device that they didn't understand it would be much like a media centre PC, or a Hi-Fi perhaps. If the first two paragraphs had covered in detail each strange acronym (autaxi, NES 12 & PEC), how many people would have read further? And if some of the intricacies of the PEC system had been explained it would given away a major plot point. IMO.

The only thing I did wrong really was give the glossary first (again IMO), if it had been at the end then people can read it or not to make things in some cases clearer... *shrugs* Too late now.

As for what has been said elsewhere Baen included...

TBH my English teacher gave me a very similar rule to follow 20 years ago, I just felt that in this case if I had followed it I would have given to much away or have bogged the story down in needless minutiae as it is the glossary was supposed to be an optional extra not for the course.

I'll edit the text to make that clear. I hope.

The Legendary Lost Ninja

JC. Too Late? Well,

does he/now she likes her new life?

    Stanman
May Your Light Forever Shine