Survival Quest (The Way of the Shaman: Book #1) (2 page)

I worked without trying to cover my tracks, so finding me did not present much of a challenge. I really did not try to hide: as soon as I became aware of the consequences and of the fact that the police were looking for the culprit, I confessed and gave myself up. I did not believe that my punishment would be very severe - I might get reprimanded or fined. No more than that.

How wrong I was! The police had gathered so much material that I could only shake my head in astonishment as I read it. Someone became ill from the smell and filed a suit against the city. Someone didn't like the appearance of the lake that I 'updated', and decided to sue the city. Some others simply sued the city not to seem out of touch with the general sentiment. On the whole, the losses that the city suffered amounted to no less than 100 million, which was laid at my feet in its entirety. I tried to defend myself with the piece of paper that said that I was hired to do this, but the sewage works lawyers dashed all my hopes, asserting that the paper was signed by someone who lacked sufficient authority to hire external specialists and was thus invalid. This meant that, in effect, I carried out a hacking attack with all that it entailed. And it really entailed quite a lot. In general, all the damages were hung on me. And they threw in hacking charges on top of it too. During the investigation I, as someone who gave himself up, stayed at home with a signed undertaking not to abscond. I kept myself busy by taking an in-depth look into how I could help myself in Barliona. But the more I read, the more I understood that there was nothing I could do that would help me. Nothing at all.

It so happened that the upkeep of prisons became extremely expensive for the Government. Yes, that's just the one Government I'm talking about, since at a certain point the territorial fragmentation on our world had come to an end. I didn't witness these events myself. The unification happened before I was born and the history lessons stated that this was the common will of all the fellow citizens of the world. Yeah right, the will of the fellow citizens. More likely the heads of governments came to an arrangement between themselves and presented the people with the fact. But, never mind. This is not important. So, as soon as the imitators became an established feature of our world, increasing the number of the unemployed, prisons began to get filled up at a catastrophic rate. The Government faced a global question: how to solve the problems with public disorder and the increase in the number of criminals? There was a need for a 'carrot'.

And then, Peter Johnson went before the Government with his proposal. He was the owner of the factory that made capsules for virtual reality games, including the game named Barliona. It was an ordinary game, designed in the 'Sword & Sorcery' style, with a medieval setting, no firearms or combustion engines, featuring magic, orcs, dwarves, elves, dragons and many other things that did not exist on the real world. Like all similar games, the gameplay in Barliona involved full immersion, which was ensured by the virtual reality capsule. And these were the capsules that the Johnson factory made. Inside the capsule the player became inseparable from his character and felt everything that the character in the game would feel, including taste, shape of the objects, pleasure, tiredness and pain. Although the regulating authorities demanded that all the senses that the player could feel in Barliona were blocked by default. In order to turn on the sense perception it was necessary to go through psychological evaluation of mental capacity and get tested for the degree of sensitivity. This would determine the extent to which the senses could be turned on in the capsule. The corporation looked after its players. The capsules were calibrated individually for each person and supplied him or her with every necessity for a long time: from food to physical training through stimulation of muscles with electrical impulses. People could spend months and even years inside a capsule without feeling any physical discomfort on leaving it.

What was Mr. Johnson's proposal? For a modest fee he proposed to put all the prisoners inside his capsules and send them to special locations within Barliona, where they would spend their time in useful activities, like resource gathering. The Government liked the idea and a year-long experiment involving such a virtual prison led to them buying all the rights to Barliona and appointing Johnson General Director of a new state corporation. All the necessary laws were passed for securing the status of a state-run game for Barliona and the Government itself acted as a guarantor of the game currency, facilitating its free exchange for real money. This was followed by an advertising campaign and funds started to flow into the game. Virtually anyone who was dissatisfied with his life ran to Barliona in order to cheat the government and earn money on quests, resource gathering and killing mobs, and so live without a care. Such naive little children. The completed quests produced game money, which could be easily exchanged for real money — that was clear enough. However, any action within the game also demanded some sort of payment, however little. If you wanted to stop in an inn, you paid, if you wanted to get something, you paid, and so on. One of the most important inventions for draining money out of the players were the Banks.

One of the core rules in Barliona states that when a character dies the player loses fifty percent of all the cash he had on him. At the next death he lost another fifty, and so on. Of course, if a character was killed by a mob, after reviving in a couple of hours he could always go to his place of death and pick up the lost money, which would be lying on the ground. Unless it was picked up by another player first. But usually players did not die from mobs, but at the hands of other players, who made it their goal to make money on such kills. Such players had many penalties imposed on them: it was permitted to kill them for eight hours after they themselves had attempted to make a kill; killing a PK (player killer) came with a reward, which could be collected from any representative of the authorities; a PK gained no experience for eight hours after the killing and so on; but nevertheless there existed players who liked killing others, even if only inside a virtual world. This is why the Banks emerged. If a player gained some money, he could put it in a Bank for storage. A one-off payment gave you a card to be used with an account that no-one else was able to access. Keeping such an account cost 0.1% of the total money deposited, which was paid to the Bank on a monthly basis. It might not seem like much, but even one thousandth of Barliona's total turnover is an enormous amount of money, which is why the Corporation would never close down the PvP (Player versus Player) mode of play.

The Corporation's next step for making profit was selling off the results of the prisoner's work to the main game world. Arbitrary generation of resources by the Corporation was prosecuted under the law and special committees kept a close watch to ensure it didn't happen. However the sale of resources obtained by people serving a sentence was a totally different story: such resources were validated by real work. In general everyone has been happy and satisfied with this arrangement for the past fifteen years, ever since Barliona was officially given the status of a state game. The gamers enjoyed a high quality game, the Corporation received unthinkable amounts of money while continuously improving their creation, and the prisoners stayed in special locations and gathered resources. At the present time about 25% of total Earth's population over 14 years of age plays Barliona and this number increases every year. The only limitation imposed on the characters was that until a player turned 18 he or she had no way of using the PvP mode - either as a victim or as a hunter. The Game was very strict in enforcing this.

One more fact about the prisoners serving time in Barliona should be brought to light. It is a fact of some importance. Around seven years after the launch of Barliona a gang of delinquents beat up and raped a girl by the name of Elena. Her surname was Johnson and her father's name Peter. She was the daughter of the Corporation's director. She and her friends had the poor judgment to go for a ride in one of the rough areas of the city, which still housed those who disagreed with the introduction of imitators and who had no intention of logging into Barliona. As it always happens in such cases, they suddenly ran out of gas.

Naturally, the perpetrators were found almost immediately and Johnson himself intervened in the trial. No, he did not even bother to arrange a capsule accident. He did something else. Following the trial a law was passed that regulated the turning on of the prisoners' sensory stimulators. The capsules initially came with special filters that regulated the level of sensations, but these were completely removed for those who attacked Johnson's daughter. I don't know what the observed results of this were, but in about a year's time the law was extended and now all prisoners served their sentences with their sensory filters disabled. The rate of crime fell sharply and there were hardly any repeat offenders. The prospect of having to gather resources with disabled sensory filters was a very effective crime deterrent.

So there you have it. I will now tell you a little about what I was given.

Character race: Human. It was the first race created in the game and the only race that has no additional bonuses except faster reputation gain with the NPCs (Non-Player-Characters). They don't have the ability to generate a stone skin, like the dwarves, nor do they have sharp vision and extra proficiencies with bows, like the elves. Only reputation. The Shaman class was also one of the weakest classes in Barliona. It is universal, allowing you both to do damage and to heal, but in one-on-one combat it lost out to virtually all other classes. The summoning of the Spirits just took too long. My skill specialization of Jeweler also had little going for it: in Barliona only the richest people could afford to spend time on perfecting this skill. All the things made by Jewelers — adornments, rings, necklaces, decorative objects — could be easily bought from NPC traders. The Jeweler's main useful skill, the cutting of precious stones, was not worth the effort that had to be spent on it. Precious stones are worth a lot, but in order to obtain the materials to make them, you had to spend months mining and processing ores. And even if some were obtained, the chance that the stone would spoil during the cutting process was very high. Of course it was possible to train in other skills, which were virtually endless in number, but it came with a serious restriction: none of the additional professions could exceed the primary one by more than ten points. It was a stupid limitation, but nothing could be done about it.

Another downside was that my Hunter, whom I had spent several years building, and in whom I invested quite a lot of money, was to be deleted, because only one character at a time was permitted in Barliona. After you were set free you could keep the character played during imprisonment and to continue playing it, but many could not find the strength to do this. It was psychologically difficult. As far as the Hunter was concerned, all the items and money that he earned would either be handed over to me after eight years of swinging the pick, or, should some miracle happen, after I am permitted to leave the mines for the main gameworld. Sometimes criminals are released, most probably by mistake, from resource gathering to spend the rest of their sentence in the main game, after they hand over 30% of the money that they earned to the Government. Otherwise there are no limitations – you can develop, level up and get to know people as you like. The only sign that a player is a prisoner is a red headband, which various quest-giving NPCs tend to dislike and which could only be removed if you pay one million gold to the Treasury. In other words – it cannot be removed.

And the worst thing of all was that Marina never appeared. She didn’t turn up at the trial or at my home, while I waited for the conclusion of the investigation. It was as if she vanished. Was the eight years of my sentence worth such a frivolous girl?  I think not.

“Well, in you jump!" laughed the technician as he put me into the capsule. Everyone’s a comedian. With one voice all the newspapers in the city called me ‘Sewage System Killer’, probably the mildest nickname I was given during this time. The main thing was for this name not to stick with me while in prison. Lightning flashed before my eyes and for a while I was unconscious.

“Attention! Barliona entry through prison capsule TK3.687PZ-13008/LT12 in progress.” The cold metallic voice, whose message was repeated with a running line of unpleasant white text, sent a chill down my spine and I immediately came to myself. The voice, devoid of any emotion, made you feel uncomfortable. This was done on purpose: I knew that a voice could be soft and have a calming effect. “The initial parameters have been set and cannot be changed. Gender: Male. Race: Human. Class: Shaman. Appearance: identical to the subject. The scanning of the subject has been completed. The synchronization of the physical data with the features of the chosen race has been implemented. Physical data has been set. Starting location has been chosen. Place of confinement – the Pryke Copper Mine. Purpose of confinement: the harvesting of Copper Ore. Character generation has commenced.”

In the initial loading window I was looking at myself wearing a striped robe with number 193 753 482.  It would appear that quite a few prisoners have gone through Barliona in the last 15 years.  The robe was supplemented with prisoner’s trousers and boots, whose total value could be seen in their striped pattern. Even the boots were stripy, at which I couldn’t help smiling. I looked like some sort of a zebra. One could say that I was dressed at the height of fashion. The pick in my hand completed the bleak picture of ‘Myself’, making it clear what I would be doing in the coming years.  Only the pick wasn’t stripy, something to be thankful for, at least.

“Enter a name. Attention: a prisoner’s name cannot be composite.”