Otherlife Dreams: The Selfless Hero Trilogy Read online

  Contents

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chp.1 (Soup Bowl)

  Chp.2 (Blackjack)

  Chp.3 (Memories)

  Chp.4(Train Incoming)

  Chp.5(Sword and Board)

  Chp.6(King of Cliches)

  Chp.7(Problem Solving)

  Chp.8(Man Puppet)

  Chp.9(Conscience)

  Chp.10(Idiot plan)

  Chp.11(Turning Point)

  Chp.12(Price of a Life)

  Chp.13(Soup Sandwich)

  Chp.14(Deception)

  Chp.15(Sardine Wagon)

  Chp.16(The Prelude)

  Chp.17(Clash)

  Chp.18(Judgement)

  Epilogue

  Dedicated:

  To my wife Kristin, who encouraged me in all things.

  To my son Harrison, who decided that I didn’t need to sleep anyways and should write.

  To my family, who always told me I could write a book if I sat down and tried.

  To my friend Nick, who has too much patience with my insanity.

  Otherlife

  Dreams

  ~The Selfless Hero trilogy~

  By William D. Arand

  Copyright © 2016 William D. Arand

  Cover design © 2016 William D. Arand

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews - without written permission from its publisher.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2016 William D. Arand

  All rights reserved.

  Chapter 1 - Soup Bowl -

  Runner stared at the login screen for Otherlife Dreams as the text rotated slowly. His fingers drummed against his thigh idly. He considered the virtual window like a beast that hunkered down before him. There was nothing but inky darkness that expanded unendingly in every direction otherwise. Nothing was here except Runner, the window, and piano music playing from nowhere and everywhere.

  With a flick of his hand he accessed the window again for perhaps the fiftieth time. It transitioned from the logo to the login screen. It only held two pieces of information but it told him more than enough.

  Username: NorRun001

  Password: ***********

  WARNING: This game is intended for an adult audience. N-18

  Without any actual proof he knew his user name was correct. That little name was a mutilated IT version of Runner Norwood. Unfortunately he couldn’t begin to guess at the password. Being that it was already entered gave him the clue that he’d clearly logged in at some point previously. A game of this nature shouldn’t be on a military vessel, it could only have been installed permission. On top of that he had apparently allowed the program to save his password. Yet he had no memory of logging in or even approving saving his password. He had no memory of anything. At all. In fact to him his mind felt a lot like the place in which he found himself. Devoid of everything other than a few pieces of information and a general feeling of who he was.

  Frowning, he executed the replay message command line once more. It had been waiting for him when he appeared here in this virtual lobby. The duration slider reverted to the starting position and began playing the message once more.

  Static cut over everything as the music was paused. With a crackle the distorted message started, the loud buzzing that garbled much of the audio and filled gaps between what he could make out taunted him, “…and no time -bzzzz- damaged the bridge -bzzzz- bleeding -bzzzz- atmosphere. You won’t -bzzzz- everyone’s brain waves into -bzzzz- database since the main server died -bzzzz- didn’t lose -bzzzz- not rea -bzzzz- hap -bzzzz- no chance.

  I -bzzzz- diced up the crew’s memories into level brackets -bzzzz- they won’t know anything about themselves -bzzzz- level up. Here’s -bzzzz- if you die, it’ll delete your character -bzzzz- No biggie, right? Big deal actually -bzzzz- your avatar is deleted, and a new one is created based on its default settings -bzzzz- you go brain dea -bzzzz- become an NPC. Like an empty PC -bzzzz- Ha, an MTC rather than an NPC.

  Sorry -bzzzz- dark here in -bzzzz- died a while ago -bzzzz- pretty sure we’re -bzzzz-.” An explosion is heard distantly followed by a muffled klaxon. “Fuck, long story short, don’t die! Level up and get your memories -bzzzz-.”

  With that the message ended and the music resumed.

  “Options. Audio. Set music levels to ten percent.”

  The verbal control picked up his command and suddenly the music was nearly muted. It was pretty enough, but he could only listen to it looping endlessly for so long before he began to question his sanity.

  Thinking things through, he had to order his mind, and come to a decision about what to do.

  “The message is for me, there is no doubt of that. Who sent it, I don’t know since the video was missing and the audio is…well…bad at best. He mentioned not knowing who you are and that’s certainly true for me. I can’t even tell if talking to myself is normal for me. Damn. How long have I been sitting here contemplating all this? Minutes? Hours? Days?”

  Sighing, Runner hung his head and stared at the darkness below him. “I know there are others with me. It’s only a vague recollection, but quite a few are with me. I think. Hundreds. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, it feels like. Did they all get the message? Am I the only one who got it?”

  Runner pulled down the developer console with a glance upward. He contemplated it, mentally thrashing at his mind to drum up any memory he had about the ship’s console, before typing in a number of requests.

  /Status

  User: NorRun001 logged in

  /Time

  09/01/43 10:13am Sovereign Earth time

  /Current active Users

  499,928

  /Permissions

  Admin

  Systems Administrator-All systems access

  Restrictions in place due to emergency conditions

  /System Status

  █L █O █A █D █ I █N█G█

  System is unresponsive

  Abort, Retry, Quit?

  /Abort

  Request Aborted

  /Current active Admin

  1

  /Active Process Status

  █L █O █A █D █ I █N█G█

  Milwin.exe

  TGDB.exe

  Life Support-Emergency

  Power Plant-Emergency

  Runner minimized the console with a frustrated grunt and stared into the login window once more. They were a military ship and military ships served contracts based in years. Judging from the plotted course in the navigation system, the journey had been expected to take three years. From the time indicator it had only been around a single year since departure, which would put them somewhere in between the two planets. “Sit in limbo until help arrives, if ever, or play a video game where it’s permanent hardcore mode. What a shitty game. I bet the damn things learn by death too with cheap ass tricks.”

  With a sudden burst of courage he stabbed his finger into the login button. Before him the window went dark and was no more, taking with it what little light there had been in the void.

  Snapping back into focus the bleak world of darkness was replaced by an open field with a human avatar at its center. Posed in a casual sort of way the naked man looked around but made no reaction to Runner’s sudden appearance. Angling himself forward Runner found he was staring at a computer generated version of himself. Standing five foot nine
he looked like a typical nobody to himself. He couldn’t recall being referred to as attractive much in the past, but with a brain like swiss cheese, that didn’t amount to much certainty. Fair skinned and a decent complexion didn’t hurt with that judgment, he supposed. Leaning in he concentrated on his eyes, just to assure himself of their color. Bright blue. Eyes that popped out with their vibrancy and a shock of dark black hair finished his look. Staring at himself naked was a surprise.

  “Well, at least I know everyone will look like themselves, if nothing else,” he said dejectedly. He tapped the flashing indicator in the corner, blinking steadily, begging for attention. Listed simply as “Create” it could only be the character creation screen.

  With a click the window maximized and presented him with a character sheet. Expecting to find a table that showed him stats, like Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence, he was surprised when he received none of that. With a tilt of his head he leaned in closer to get a good look at the jumbled mess of characters and grayed out arrows. Most of the information displayed was actually glitched and resembled punctuation and symbols rather than English. On top of everything else, only one selector responded to any interaction.

  Sighing disappointedly he took the singular option available to him. He pushed the one arrow that was selectable. Eventually even that failed and there was nothing else he could do but push the “Complete” button near the bottom of the page.

  “Let’s hope it’s at least a decent attribute. Not like I had a choice if it wasn’t.”

  The circle began to spin clockwise. “If it even loads,” he mumbled. “Sure is taking its sweet time. I mean, really now what centu…”

  Amid a loud chorus of chimes Runner found himself in a field, staring at a copse of trees. “……ry. Nice trees, good foliage. What a lovely place to load into…… that is clearly not the starting area. Good times,” he muttered.

  Glancing around at his surroundings, Runner couldn’t help but blow out a breath of frustrated air. Whatever was wrong with his ability to create a character was causing problems within the game. It wasn’t as if he could restart the game client and see if that would fix it either, it was already done.

  “I can’t even bitch about it to a game admin, because apparently I’m the only one.”

  Grumbling to himself Runner started to work over his heads up display and went about rearranging it to his liking while giving verbal commands to modify his game settings. No self respecting gamer would ever leave the default options on or the startup HUD. He thought to himself.

  “Options, game options, name plates on, health bars as numbers and percentages, enemy health bars on, enemy health bars as numbers and percentages, casting bars on, decline all friend requests, decline all trade requests, decline all duel requests, anonymous mode on, auto attack upon selecting enemy off, miscellaneous sound at fifty percent, ambient sound at seventy percent, distance indicators on, d-”

  Runner was rocketed forward, his knees striking the dirt before he tumbled forward in an impromptu roll. Tucking into himself tightly, Runner tried to reorient himself as he came to a stop. Rolling to his feet quickly he turned to face his attacker. A quick analysis provided him with fur,fangs, and a sizable skull. It was the best view he could manage given the circumstances. Taking a few desperate steps backwards he managed to gain some distance. Runner had gained his footing, but didn’t stop backpedaling from the very large wolf chasing him.

  “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me. Fuck you, dog! I’ll put you down like old yeller and use your skull as a-FUCK!” In seeming disagreement with him, Yeller bit deep into his forearm.

  Runner’s health bar was already in the final ten percent, in the red zone, and only a hair’s breadth from being a corpse. Yeller was clearly a higher level than he, when he himself couldn’t have been anything other than level one. Dying minutes after having entered wasn’t exactly a great start or end to his glorious career as a hero. As soon as the wolf released his arm he punched it in the throat and activated whatever ability was loaded up first in his quick slot loadout. He turned without waiting to find out what it did, and sprinted for the trees.

  Knowing that he couldn’t run faster than his character’s preset speed didn’t stop him from feeling as if he were running a dead sprint. Heart thumping in his chest, he didn’t so much as climb as fly up the first tree he came to. Runner hadn’t stopped to consider what would happen if he couldn’t get up the tree fast enough. Or if he could climb it at all.

  Looking down he found Yeller staring up at him unerringly with lifeless eyes. Resting his forehead on a branch in front of him, Runner took slow breaths to calm himself. With his health not regenerating he could only assume he was still in combat. That and the fact that Yeller wasn’t leaving. He let his eyes close and rested a few moments before lifting his head and began taking stock of his situation.

  Alternating from a dark red color to a bright red, his health bar showed he had eight hit points left. Mana and stamina were both at one hundred, well and full, but those weren’t as life and death important as his hit points. Literally.

  Calling up his inventory window, he grunted at the sheer amount of items. Pulling up his character sheet for more information he worked his way through the information available to him. Tapping each item and description one by one for a pop-up tip, he went through the definitions to figure out what he had to work with.

  Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him from the attributes, they were all pretty standard traits to be expected of any role playing game. Strength, dexterity, agility, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and finally charisma. As he went through each to check the value he grew more depressed until he reached the bottom and felt his stomach clench then drop, his head swimming at the number that stared back at him. Charisma, it just had to be a non-combat attribute. All his points, unrecoverable and giving him the ability to fight, to actually become dangerous, had all been wasted on charisma.

  “Charisma, sixty-four. Every single attribute is at one, but charisma. What am I supposed to do about you with charisma Yeller?” he asked the wolf staring up at him. “I don’t think asking you out for dinner and a holomovie will work. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a handsome animal but I just don’t swing that way.”

  Laying his chin in his palm, he closed the character window and started sorting through his inventory. There were a number of tools, weapons, armor and clothing items, and a truly healthy amount of food. It made no sense just how much was stuffed into his inventory and it was far more than a starting character should have. Bulging to the very limit of what he could hold in the starter backpack. From skinning knife, to smiths hammer, to a frying pan. It was as if he had equipment for every class possible in there.

  Wrenching open his skill window, he could only stare. Every skill was already listed and set to level one, from 1-Handed swords, and alcohol tolerance, to fishing. Runner could vaguely remember that Otherlife Dreams, in their marketing campaigns, boasted hundreds of pre-built skills and that, given enough server allocation, the game could generate more based on the players. The problem here was that they would need to be unlocked and that many of those skills were classified as “hidden” until unlocked. Which meant no one would really know if it was a valid skill until investing time into it. Scrolling through the list he was able to actually see hidden skills since they literally had an “H” in front of the name.

  “Need to sort these,” Runner muttered.

  Closing his skill window he re-opened his character window. There, under his name and level, was his class. While he had not been able to select one he had just assumed he could play whatever was given to him and make it work. Instead it seemed he had no class. In fact the entry where it should have been was just blank. It appeared as though he had a very glitched out character, and he truly didn’t know why. Or if he could fix it.

  Selecting Yeller, its basic information popped up in a small box. Runner confirmed its level as thirteen, full health, and full stamina. Level
one versus thirteen didn’t really sound like a prize fight to him. Not one he’d bet on at least.

  Placing his palms together in the “call console” gesture, he reached up and expanded the window when the indicator presented itself.

  /Status

  Game Master: NorRun001 logged in

  /Active Process Status

  Permission Denied

  /Permissions

  Please enter Password: ***********

  Invalid Password

  /Permissions

  Please enter Password: ***********

  Invalid Password

  /Permissions

  Please enter Password: ***********

  Invalid Password

  /Permissions

  Please enter Password: ***********

  Invalid Password

  User Locked

  Please contact System Administrator

  /System Status

  Permission Denied

  He angrily stabbed his index finger into the X in the top right. Rubbing his eyes, he was faced with the horrible realization that he could probably end this entire problem if he could just remember his password. If the message was true, the only way he would only get those memories back was by leveling up. He opened his eyes and found another console in place of the one he had just closed. The last response from the system in this new console differed from the one he had just entered. It was the ships system console he had interacted with back in the lobby. He brought up the main console again, and set them up side by side. He closed both again after confirming the other one was the console for the game itself. It should have been obvious they were two separate consoles, as the new one had listed him as a Game Master rather than a User. Pulling open the action logs from his social pane he went to the start, and low and behold, everything made a lot more sense.