Aims and Games

The trip to Tiny Monkey’s studio was swift, and Mizlin spent the entirety of it explaining the concept of VR, and gaming, to Lena. She could barely fathom it. Why would people want to simulate their deaths?

Lena quickly decided that VR was not for her, and resolved herself to sit this one out. Mizlin didn’t argue with her decision.

Disappointingly, Tiny Monkey’s studio was not full of tiny monkeys. Instead, it held a tall glass elevator in the centre of a vast circular lobby, with various pathways branching off like a tree. Still no monkeys. Lena wondered if they were so tiny that no one could see them.

With her eyes closed, Lena followed the others onto the glass elevator and rose to the very top of the building. They entered a large hall, filled with strangers and massive strange white eggs.

Mizlin and Lena found a bench to sit on, while the other three went through some sort of induction.

In unison, the tops of all the eggs raised to reveal cushioned chairs of various colours. Zan was the first to jump into one of these odd pods, and snapped a headset over her eyes. Her body fell limp, and the egg closed. Exer and Hamish went through the same routine, not even batting an eye.

“Have they done this before?” Lena asked Mizlin, surprised by how effortless this weirdness was to them.

“I’m not sure.” Mizlin took a moment to decipher the real meaning of Lena’s question. “But I think most people have stepped into VR before.”

Lena took a moment to look over the various promotional images of the game, where people were brandishing swords and shooting lasers out of small dark tubes.

“Does everyone like fighting that much?”

Mizlin let out a slight huff of amusement. “No. When I say VR, I don’t just mean these kinds of games. There’s a lot of more practical uses for this technology, particularly in education. I remember as a child being shown what dinosaurs would have looked like, and it left me stunned for days.”

“Dinosaurs?” Lena racked her brain for the word but found nothing.

Mizlin patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll explain it to you later.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Various screens spurred to life around the room. There was one above each virtual reality egg, meant to highlight the specific player’s game, and few large screens which served to provide a more general overview. Of course, Lena wasn’t privy to the nuances of the screens, so glanced between them with great curiosity.

Then the screens became filled with character icons, a menu that Mizlin called ‘character selection’. Exer wasted no time in choosing their character; a person dressed head to toe in black and holding a sniper.

Zan was far less decisive, flicking through the characters slowly to admire their varying appearances and weapons. She spent a decent chunk of time considering their superficial qualities, before finally reading through all their special quirks and abilities. Even once she had fully familiarised herself with all of the characters, she still couldn’t decide.

Eventually, Zan settled on a character that Lena could only describe as an angel. Much like Zan herself, this character had beautiful long and golden hair. Unlike Zan, the angel had three different sets of wings, 5 eyes on their face, and a few extra eyes dotted about elsewhere for good measure.

Lena recalled from her rigorous religious studies that angels weren’t really male or female, and realised that Exer’s refusal to identify as either wasn’t so unfamiliar after all. She also had the misfortune of recalling some of the other lessons, and realised just how sacrilegious it was to be sitting here, looking at an approximation of an angel while being surrounded by technology that defied the natural order.

Some of the other spectators clapped and cheered for their respective friends. Lena joined in, clapping as Zan spawned into a white void.

“Woo, go Zan!” She cheered lamely.

Exer spawned in next to Zan, as did Hamish, who had chosen an avatar of a small girl with a sword at least twice her size. Other characters flittered into existence, but Lena focused solely on those three.

A countdown appeared floating in the virtual white void.

3…

2…

1…

All of the characters disappeared. The blank waiting room was replaced with a vast green meadow, surrounded by differing segments of nature. One was an archipelago, another a dense forest, the third an arid desert and the fourth a city like New Sol, except in ruins.

Lena was happy not to be in that virtual world, lest her brain turn to goo and leak from her ears.

After a brief moment of blissful silence, the map erupted into chaos. Bullets and lasers flew across many screens, with others being engulfed by large sword swings or strange magical auras and spells.

Lena’s attention shifted on to the angel, who had spawned in the ruined city. She immediately spread all three sets of her wings and took to the crystal blue skies. After a few moments in the air, she spotted another character on the remnants of a tall rooftop.

“Be prepared to face my wrath!” Zan yelled, her voice distorted and synthetic, and hard to hear through all the ruckus emanating from the other screens.

The angel outstretched one of her porcelain arms, fingers spread. A thread of light twisted down from her halo, wrapping around her arm and fingertips, where the light pulsed and twisted together into a blinding ball. A small smile creeped its way onto the angels face, as she prepared to unleash her deadly attack.

A single arrow pierced through the angel’s forehead. The halo splintered and lost its light, then her entire being faded from the world. The screen above Zan’s pod went dark, displaying only the word ‘DEFEATED’.

Lena felt strange, having watched an angel die. But it wasn’t a bad kind of strange.

Zan emerged from her pod very soon after, and wiped a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead.

“I almost had them!” She said, unperturbed by her loss or her death.

Lena didn’t know enough about VR or gaming to refute her claim, but it didn’t feel entirely true.

Zan sat with Lena and Mizlin to spectate. Over the course of a few minutes, other people got out of their eggs with varying levels of physical exhaustion. Lena wondered why they’d be so physically tired when they weren’t actually moving their bodies, but she didn’t ask anyone, assuming (correctly) that no one near her actually knew the answer.

Eventually, the battle reached its finale. The final two competitors? A shadowy sniper and a child with a big sword. All the screens in the room focused on their battle.

“You should just surrender!” Hamish said through the voice of a young girl. “You’re outmatched.”

She swung her sword just once, toppling multiple trees in the forest. Exer had to hop away from their hiding place, perching silently in a different tree. They peppered a few bullets in Hamish’s direction, but it was nothing Hamish couldn’t dodge or deflect.

“Coward!” The young girl shouted with another swipe of her sword. “Too afraid to fight me face to face?!”

This somehow served to rile up the usually calm and collected Exer. They hopped down from their hiding spot and aimed their gun straight at the child.

“I hope you’re ready to eat your words!” They yelled with uncharacteristic emotion.

The little girl swung her sword towards them with reckless abandon. Exer dodged backwards with ease, firing a few shots at point blank range to deal heavy damage.

But the wounds only served to spur on the girl. Her sword radiated a crimson red aura, as did her eyes. Her smile twisted to reveal sharp fangs, and Lena couldn’t help but see her as a demon.

With a primal roar, Hamish leapt forward again with a flurry of quick blows. Exer was unable to avoid all of them, though they also managed to land a few good shots. The fight was at a stalemate – both of their health bars were too low to continue being so reckless.

“You’re good, I’ll admit.” Hamish half grinned, half snarled and adjusted their grip on the sword. “Your blood will make a worthy addition to my collection.”

The sniper stayed silent and still, the barrel of their gun aimed at the girl, and their finger lingering on the trigger. Their silence provoked Hamish further.

Too quick for most to see, the girl lunged forward once again. She kept low, beneath the sniper’s sniper, and unleashed a vicious strike. Exer’s body turned into a black mist. Lena thought that meant Hamish had won, but the look on his character’s face said otherwise.

“You-!” The girl spun around with a growl.

A single bullet pierced her throat. The girl turned to dust and faded from the world in a dramatically slow and swirly fashion. Once the dust was gone, Exer was shown the greatly craved victory screen.

The two exited their pods to a swarm of strangers who had thoroughly enjoyed their fight. Hamish exchanged pleasantries with those around him, while Exer slinked away to join the bench trio. After a decent amount of chatting, Hamish finally returned to the rest of his PFP group.

Lena expected a level of tension between the two after the fight, and the… murder? But they didn’t say a word to each other. Their silence wasn’t in a ‘I hate you don’t speak to me’ way, but their normal apathetic way. Lena was relieved, though confused, that nothing had changed between them.

The wars continued throughout the rest of the afternoon, Exer or Hamish emerging as the victor in most of the matches. As much as Lena’s interest was piqued by the senseless violence, she still decided to not partake herself.

But when she went to bed that evening, her dreams were filled with angels being torn to asunder and she awoke the next morning feeling very refreshed.