Continue Online The Complete Series Read online

  “What’s going on now?!” I hopped around another set of logs while feeling completely unbalanced.

  “Practical evaluation. Our world is going to measure the skills you’ve learned in yours. Then it will assign placement based on performance,” James spoke from somewhere else. At least his words were clear and not shouted across the distance.

  “That doesn’t sound good.” My placement would be terrible. I hadn’t touched a set of weights in years.

  “Are you worried?”

  “A little. I’ve never swung a sword before,” I said.

  “Ah. Your worry is understandable, but that is another phase. We’ll work up to it. For now, keep trying to get over the logs.” He spoke slowly and with deliberation. The speed both calmed me and helped me focus on his words.

  “What about that one?”

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “The one with spikes!” The spiked log wasn’t huge, but it was certainly imposing and far too realistic.

  “Don’t get hit.”

  The tiny dragon was flying around the room. Stupid thing would hop along some of the logs and run with the motion to stay upright. It was a tease how easy things seemed for the creature. I was huffing after the first few logs, yet kept on trying. The first spiked one was easy enough to walk around. They weren’t too tall or moving too fast yet. I stepped over one log. Another from behind me went the other direction moments later, requiring me to back-pedal. I had to try to find room to dodge another few while getting over the small ones.

  Not too hard, but not easy either. Physically, this was more work than anything I had done recently. Nothing comparable came to mind; even hefting objects to the van was easy enough with Hal Pal’s help. I didn’t have a robot to do all the work for me now.

  “Come on, Grant Legate. Keep trying until it’s over.”

  “When is that?” I asked.

  “When you can’t keep trying,” was his dry response. “How long do you think you’ll last?”

  “Probably not long,” I said.

  “You’re not very self-confident, are you?” James asked.

  “It’s my turn!”

  “Ah, true. Feel free to ask a question if you’ve got one.”

  “What’s the little dragon’s deal?” I huffed out between the latest rounds of logs. There was a new one that rolled in a wobbly manner compared to the other logs’ straight lines. I could see around it, but the logs were getting bigger.

  “That little dragon,” he mimicked my words without much inflection, “is a curious sort. It will stick around until you chase it off or it grows bored.”

  “Okay.” They were waist-high now. “I forgot your question.” This one might get me. I had to make it down to the end fast enough and leap over the smaller end.

  “You’re not very self-confident, are you, Grant Legate?”

  Thin spikes tore into my back and I saw a red bar flash into existence. Enough pain feedback went through the system to worry me. I had forgotten this program came with every sensation. The pain was a reminder to do better.

  Failure to dodge noted.

  Total health loss: 10%

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow.” I groaned and got around to answering James’s question. “I’m realistic.” I had a few seconds before the next set of hurdles.

  “Oh, that’s criminal.”

  The small dragon was leaping over some of the logs with steady movements, gauging them in the same manner a cat would before using wing assisted power jumps.

  “I want to do that,” I said.

  “Feel free to try, Grant Legate.”

  “Why do you keep saying my whole name like that?” I asked.

  “It’s your name. That’s what I’ll address you by until you decide otherwise.”

  “Are you kidding me? You want me to create a character name while trying to…” I managed to power over one log and fell on the other side. My kneecaps cried out in pain with the poor landing.

  “What I want does not pertain to this case. You will need to decide what to go by in our world. It matters not to us, but your kind nearly always picks something outlandish.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  The little drake was having a harder time now, even assisted, since it was mostly leaping around. These logs were many times taller than he was, and some were up past my waist. Those I ran around.

  “Did you have a name in mind?” He sounded intrigued by any possible answer.

  “Ask me after this!” I would think about it. Often game names were stuck on the character throughout play. Continue only allowed one character supposedly, so I needed to pick something bearable.

  “Oh…”

  A giant log rumbled in my direction. This one was taller than I was, and I had no way of leaping over it. Even if I was some sort of ninja who could bounce from one log to another to gain altitude.

  “Ahhh! Little guy!” I didn’t know if it was a guy or not, but the dragon was still playing around and completely oblivious.

  On the back of the log, I saw a hint of how to escape. Luckily, both the tiny dragon and the giant hole in the log were in the same path. I ran and grabbed it on the way. The dragon squawked and bit and scratched the entire ten feet to our safe spot. The rumbling grew louder. Rolling doom came closer with each one of my poor strides. I fumbled over a tiny log going one way and had my calf torn up by a spiked log from the other direction.

  “Arghhhhh,” I shouted as the biggest one passed over us and crushed my foot. “Ahhhhh.”

  Failure to dodge noted. Critical location damaged.

  Total health loss: 60%

  “Oh god. Oh god.” The feedback was incredible. I forgot it was a game. I forgot that this entire place wasn’t real. The biggest log in the universe had personally crushed my foot. I twisted and tried to look down.

  “Grant Legate.”

  “Oh god. It got me. I’m going to die. That’s it.”

  “Grant Legate, you are fine.” James had a note of confusion in his tone.

  “No. No, I’m not.” Cue my manly sobbing. My body was my livelihood. Who would hire me now? No, wait, I could get a prosthesis. A doctor would see how much of my leg was salvageable.

  “The damage is not lasting. Shake it off, Grant Legate.”

  I huffed and felt biting at my fingers. In a panic, I’d nearly suffocated the tiny dragon against my chest. Once released, it huffed a roll of fog at me and flew off. The sensation of pain lingered along with my elevated heart rate, but I saw that my foot was in perfectly fine condition. I still felt overworked and exhausted though.

  “Oh god.” I needed a ruder cuss word to utter at someone. I felt out of touch with all the good ones. Curse words had been slowly removed from my natural tendencies.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Me first. I think. How did I do?” I asked.

  “Terrible,” he said dryly.

  “Oh.” I fell back and gasped some more. “Okay. I’m all right. I think.”

  “Good. I’ll let you catch your breath, and review your results. Then we’ll move on to the next event.”

  There was a pop-up for more information, which I pressed of course. Anything that provided me more detail would be welcome. The next message overwrote the old one. It was in the same cruddy outline I’d setup during the initial process, before meeting James. There was a list of my currently unlocked traits broken down into categories.

  Event!

  Lumbering Along

  Tasked with avoiding a series of logs for as long as possible, you chose to remain non-confrontational. You moved around what you could and jumped over what was small. In the end, you managed to save a tiny imitation [Dragon].

  The Voices have used this to assist in their measurement of you as a person.

  The following starting traits have been established:

  +5 [Limberness]

  +2 [Coordination]

  +9 [Attractiveness]

  +5 [Endurance]

  +6 [Speed]

&
nbsp; +2 [Adaptability]

  +5 [Focus]

  +4 [Reaction]

  +3 [Divine Attention]

  I stared at the small window floating in front of me. Interesting, I guess. Performing my leaps around logs had seemed to set a baseline for some of my abilities. Clearly these little exercises would matter in the game, but the traits were far from normal for a role-playing system.

  I poked at the screen, but it bounced away as if my gesture was more rude than useful. Maybe James would have an answer if I cared enough to figure out the puzzle. This wasn’t huge on my mind yet. There were more tests, and we would see where things stood afterward.

  “How many tests are there?” I asked.

  “Hundreds, if we could do them all, but you and I are limited to ten. That was one. It allowed me to measure your reaction, planning, coordination, and strength. Our world will assign values accordingly.”

  “Okay.” My huffing for air did not stop. Even though this was a game and the stimulus had ended, mentally I was still wounded and wrung out. According to this bouncy little box, my [Attractiveness] was the highest statistic. Was a nine something to be proud of? What sort of scale were we working with?

  “Tell me, Grant Legate, what are you confident in?”

  “Dancing. I can dance.”

  “Very well. We shall load something up and see how you perform,” James said.

  “Can’t you import my other program?” I asked. The dance history saved there should amount to something impressive.

  “Officially, no. Measuring your skills and abilities has to be done within our world, or within a between space like this one.”

  “But you have all the data.” And had somehow activated the room, brought it to life, and made my fiancée whisper words she shouldn’t have been able to.

  That strange murmuring in the background started up again and I looked around.

  James sighed heavily.

  “I shall check for you then. Why don’t you take a break, revisit your world for a bit, while I consult with the others.”

  “Okay,” I said. “ARC.”

  “Awaiting input,” the machine responded.

  “Log out.”

  “Remote feedback suspending. Logging out.”

  The ARC’s voice wasn’t much better than Hal Pal’s. There were other options, vocal packages ranging from the mundane to all sorts of movie stars. Money I didn’t feel like spending.

  Things faded away as the real world came to. First thing I did after counting backward was lift a leg to get to my foot. Sure enough, it was fine but felt cramped. All five toes wiggled and the ankle rolled just fine, slowly one way, then the other.

  I sat up completely and turned to get out of the ARC. Everything ached already. A digital display on my watch advised me only thirty minutes had passed out here. My body felt worn from an intense workout. Maybe I should take the bands off before logging in again. Still, once I got past the pain and aches and bumps, this was pretty incredible. James, and all the others in the cast, had been extremely responsive. Even the creepy Jester was a work of art.

  Now that I stood outside the ARC world, it was easier to see what a masterpiece it was. James had said that these Voices were visible from within the game world, so I wasn’t alone in experiencing them. I needed more information, a better idea of what to do and how to perform on the next few tests. Maybe I could get more out of them. Maybe I could better understand what was happening. Either way, things would improve by digging up something.

  Snacks first, then drudging through the online resources. Shortly, I found out exactly how worthless the Internet was. More redacted posts, deleted comments, removed and banned users. Entire websites had closure splash pages. Search terms involving Continue Online only resulted in a few hits and reviews.

  I scanned a couple of videos and came up empty. They had nothing of the interface, nothing of skills or talents or traits. At least some of it was easy enough to infer. There were categories: physical, mental, and social. Gaining a point in social, for Divine Attention, was odd. Had I gotten that from picking up the small dragon and trying to save it?

  Clearly deep thinking was beyond me. Asking James might work, but it was more fun to dig up answers on my own. Besides, I had to keep myself distracted somehow. Logging back into my ARC would put me in the game again, or in the dance program, and I expected the computer would want more time.

  Those NPCs were incredible. Voices. James was intensely lifelike. Had artificial intelligence really come so far? Were my questions and answers so common that they had scripted a resolution for each turn of phrase?

  I wasn’t dumb enough to believe that the game was another world. I had personally torn a few ARC machines into pieces, and not one portion of it generated a portal to another dimension. Plus people lay down in those silly machines for hours. Being in another world with the brain alone was pure science fiction drivel.

  Of course, this was the land of the future. Flying cars were possible but deemed a safety hazard. Most people zoomed along the ground or cross-country in one of the speed tunnels. Twenty-five lanes of insanely fast traffic could clear coast to coast in about an hour. All the other local traffic and non-freight plebes used above-ground roadways. I had only ridden the cross-country express tunnels once, on the worst day of my life.

  My head banged against the front room table. The attempted web research had been interrupted by thoughts of the past. This was why I tried not to focus on what had happened, tried not to let it hurt. To move on and do my job. Stay in a happy place. One assignment after the other until I was exhausted and could only lay down. It wasn’t that no one else had suffered as I had. There had been over a hundred other passengers on that train with her. I had reacted poorly and taken years to recover.

  No.

  Later. I would think about this later, or not at all.

  A short message went to my friend’s web page to see if he had any tips for a newbie. His site had plenty of vague commentaries. After two hours of food, failed research, and barely skirted self-loathing, I logged back into the ARC.

  “Grant Legate.” James was standing on his side of the doorway to my Atrium.

  The silly tiny dragon thing was sniffing around the pile of broken glass and spilled creamer.

  “Hi, James. Is the little guy trying to clean up its mess?” I had to be cheery. Dwelling on the negative wasn’t the right way to go for me.

  “Seems so.”

  “That’s a very realistic program,” I said.

  “Who’s to say what’s real, Grant Legate?” He waved through the doorway but never actually crossed the threshold. “You out there, vanishing into a realm that I can neither see nor dare guess at? Or us, here, living our entire spans of existence in something we understand?”

  “I guess this seems more real to you than where I come from.”

  “It does, but I asked you which is real.” The black man led us back to the question.

  “I’m not a philosopher, James. They’re both real enough to me. One’s in here where I’m visiting.” I tried to smile. Telling a computer program he wasn’t real sounded like a bad idea anyway. “The other is out there. I can’t abandon that one because I need to work for survival.” And bills, and food, and the internet connection that let me hook up the ARC’s internet. Even without Continue, I needed online access for my dance program.

  “Fair enough, Grant Legate.”

  “Is there more than one of those little guys?” I pointed at the dragon now carefully sweeping the cloth around.

  “Not here between worlds, no,” James said.

  “Huh.” Neat.

  “Why are you so interested in one small creature when you have an entire world you could explore?”

  “Mmmh.” I crossed my arms and chewed a lip. Trust James to ask a question that required more than three words to answer. Not that I minded. Like everything else, it was a welcome distraction. “It was the first thing I saw when starting up Continue. I’m amazed that
he shattered glass that shouldn’t even be programmed to come apart, much less broke into the creamer.”

  “And?”

  “I dunno.” I forestalled James’s huff for better information. “I know there’s more, but it’s rude of me to say that I miss my cat. I was trying to find a polite way of saying the little guy—I still don’t know if it’s male or female—reminds me of my old cat.”

  “Hurrm. Cat, you say.” James looked thoughtful, then brightened. “Here, a question for you, and this one may be more than you wish to answer.”

  “Fire away. I’ve got nothing to hide.” Not even a good porn stash. I couldn’t even contemplate those sorts of actions without thinking of my fiancée. After a while, the urge went away.

  “Would you allow me to access the data regarding yourself from your world?”

  I chewed my lip again. “Okay, but I want to know more about the little guy in exchange. Something worth whatever you learn about me.”

  “Thank you, Grant Legate.” With that, James stepped through to my Atrium, which was enough to make me gasp in surprise.

  Only a few programs were able to interact with a user’s home like that. The small dragon thing was harmless enough, but a full-fledged person from a game? That was crazy stuff. All hail our future robot overlords. The takeover starts here, right in my Atrium. I almost felt proud.

  “Should we keep doing those tests? You said we had another nine to go,” I asked.

  “Very well. I’ll set you on your next task and come back here later.”

  “Huh.” I shrugged. Perhaps worrying was beyond me when it came to questionable actions of a computer character.

  Then again, it wasn’t computers that bothered me. They acted the way they were programmed to. Even an artificial intelligence wouldn’t do something unless logic detailed it was the right way to go. Hal Pal would tell James I was worth keeping around. James whistled at the small dragon, and we all went through the door into the lit-up room.

  “For your next task, we’ve decided to go with dance. However, you will not dance with your normal partner. You must choose a new one for the course of one song.” He was distracted, looking around the Atrium. We turned to walk back into the game world of Continue Online.