Glitch Book Six Read online

  “It’s so nice to finally meet you and talk to you face to face,” she declared.

  “Don’t think we’re acquainted,” I observed. “Would you mind telling me who you are?”

  “My name is Jessica Brown,” she replied. “I’m a programmer. I’m one of the developers who are working on the game. I have a few close friends, who are also programmers. My friends and I like to call ourselves the Resistance. I’m the leader of our small group.”

  “The Resistance, huh?” I cut in.

  “Our goal is to defeat the developers and THEM in order to free all the humans,” she finished and went silent, awaiting my reaction to her words.

  All I could say was, “Eh, what?”

  “I know it’s so much to take in. My friends suggested I go easy telling you about all this. Probably I shoulda paid heed to their advice.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What the heck are you talking about?” I snapped. “The Resistance? Fighting the developers? And who the feck are THEY you keep mentioning?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. The woman looked sorrowful indeed. I even felt bad for her. “Guess I should start from the very beginning if you like.”

  “It’d be great if you could do this,” I replied.

  And she told me everything.

  There had been a devastating war between humans and bloodthirsty aliens in the real world in 2118. The aliens came from outer space and attacked the Earth for no reason at all. They killed most humans and left our blue planet in ruins. Only a handful of people survived.

  Then the aliens flew away. But not all of some. A small group of scientists preferred to stay to experiment upon the humans who had survived the war.

  Now I knew that when Jessica was talking about THEM, she was referring to the alien scientists living in the X-shaped space station. Jessica also told me that although the alien scientists referred to themselves in plural form, it was actually a single organism. This creature bore the genetic memory of all the other scientists who lived before it, which allowed the creature to have the vast collective knowledge of the previous generations. Jessica and her friends had this creature pegged as THEY or simply the Alien.

  So the alien scientists had been experimenting upon the survived humans. They created a so-called Virtual Reality Capsule, or VRC for short. The VRC was a sophisticated computer system maintaining a huge virtual world populated by the survived humans. Before the humans were inserted into the VRC, the Alien erased the humans’ memories of the war. The Alien then had them brain scanned, meaning the creature copied humans’ consciousness and personalities into a data format. After this was done, the Alien eliminated all the people having the physical bodies.

  Jessica, her friends, and all the other developers of the game were brain scans as well, but unlike all the other humans, they didn’t live in the virtual world inside the VRC. Instead, they existed in the computer system of the space station because the game was controlled from this place. However, the Alien had closely been watching the developers all the time in order to make sure that they behaved obediently. So the developers couldn’t do anything to free people living in the virtual reality inside Virtual Reality Capsule or even get in touch with them to tell them the truth about what was actually happening.

  Jessica and her friends, however, formed the Resistance, which goal was to defeat the Alien and free all the humans. They hadn’t achieved any success, though. They had to exercise extreme discretion so that not to pop up on the Alien’s radar. If THEY would learn about the Resistance, THEY would erase Jessica and her friends’ brain scans from the hard drives of the space station. In other words, THEY would kill them.

  So now the human species lived in the VRC as virtual representations. There were about 5 thousand people in there. They had knowledge neither about the war that had devastated the Earth nor about themselves being not real human beings but their brain scans living in the virtual reality.

  Then Jessica fell silent. I heard a hiss and saw a section of the wall in front of me slid open. A long platform slid out of the opening. It contained a metal box the size of a computer tower.

  “This is the Virtual Reality Capsule,” Jessica explained.

  I walked over to the platform to get a closer look at the VRC. It didn’t look like much. Just a metal box and nothing more.

  “So a few thousand people live inside this thing?” I asked skeptically.

  “Yes, you’re correct,” Jessica nodded.

  I fell silent for several minutes, staring at the VRC and reflecting on what the woman had just told me. I could hardly believe this story. Yet at the back of my mind was a thought that it was the truth. Jessica hadn’t made the whole thing up. She was dead serious and didn’t play tricks on me. Just one look at the grave and sincere expression on her face could tell you that.

  “But what about me?” I wanted to know. “And about the game––” Then it suddenly dawned on me. “Wait a minute,” I turned to face the big window to look at the enormous blue globe of the Earth. “If people live in the virtual reality inside this box––the VRC or whatever––wrongly taking it for the real world, then the game must be––”

  My voice trailed off as the full realization of what was happening sank in.

  “Yes, you guessed right,” Jessica answered. “The game ain’t taking place in the virtual world. Instead, the players play the game in the real, actual world. On the Earth.”

  “But how can this be possible?” I asked perplexed. “I mean I can see the HUD, the stats of various weapons, nicknames and levels of other players. It’s so much like a video game.”

  “I can explain it to you.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Look at your biochip.”

  I lifted my left hand. An emerald-shaped translucent thing giving off faint bluish glow sat just beneath my wrist on the opposite side of my hand.

  “You mean this thing, the crystal?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the woman answered. “What do you think it is?”

  I looked at the crystal and the Main Menu appeared before my eyes. The Quit button was still inactive.

  “I have no idea,” I replied. “What is it?”

  “It’s alien technology,” she replied. “The HUD, items’ stats, system messages, and all the other stuff that pop up before your eyes are created by this thing, the biochip. If you were to remove it, you wouldn’t be able to see the user interface. By allowing you to see the UI, the biochip makes you think that you’re inside a virtual reality. But in fact, you’re not.”

  I nodded reflecting on what I had just heard.

  “Moreover,” Jessica continued, “about the Resurrection Pods. What do you think about those things?”

  When a player got killed, he or she revived in the Resurrection Pod nearest to the place of their death. I remembered what my friend Flynn had once said to me. He wondered about the reason for the developers’ decision to make a player revive in one of the Resurrection Pods upon his or her death. Flynn told me that in his opinion, to make players revive in one of the pods instead of in some random place of the current location was pretty stupid. I came to agree with him. The two pissed-off player killers––Frozen and Croc––had once stiffed me and then reached the nearest pod where I revived, waiting for me to get out so that they could kill me again. And I couldn’t do jack do prevent them from doing so.

  Suddenly I realized why players revived in the pods upon their deaths.

  “It’s alien technology as well, right?” I asked.

  “Yep. Those things the players revive in called the Resurrection Pods in the game, but in reality, they have another name. Still, let’s continue to call them the Resurrection Pods for the sake of convenience. All the game data is stored on the computer systems of this space station. So when a player gets killed, his or her body almost instantly gets grown inside a Resurrection Pod as the player’s game data gets copied to him or her.”

&nbs
p; “Those pods create human beings in the blink of an eye, huh?” I said skeptically. “It sounds like magic to me.”

  “Not just human beings. Your body is way more sophisticated than that of a human being. That alien technology is so advanced that it does sound like magic to us, humans. Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. He was totally right.”

  I gave the woman a nod, contemplating on the matter.

  “By the way, all the monsters players kill are also created by the Alien,” Jessica added. “In fact, those monsters have gazillions of nanomachines cursing through their veins. When you deal damage to such a creature, it takes damage according to the Damage attribute of the weapon you use. Those nanomachines can do amazing things. They keep the creature alive, promoting rapid tissue growth, restarting organ functions, and so on. So the nanomachines don’t let the creature die too early. But when you deal damage to the creature, its Health attribute gets reduced and when it reaches zero the nanomachines disable the creature’s vital functions, causing the creature to die. Then the nanomachines explode, completely destroying the body of the dead creature with no evidence left behind.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would the Alien do this? What does it need this game for?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. But my guess is that THEY examine, study us. The game is some kind of experiment.”

  “So people live in there,” I pointed at the metal box called the Virtual Reality Capsule, “thinking that it’s the real world and they play the game, taking it for a mere virtual reality, right? But in fact, it’s the other way around. They live in the virtual reality and play the game that takes place in the real world, which is our planet devastated by the pissed-off aliens. And people didn’t have the slightest idea about all this.”

  “You’re correct,” Jessica answered.

  “Dang, that’s so messed up.”

  We fell silent for a few moments. Jessica was first to break the silence.

  “But I know something for sure,” she said, “The biochips, the Resurrection Pods, the nanomachines, and all the other stuff in the game are controlled from here, from the space station. Just imagine, what we could do if we had control over the space station. We could free all the humans and give then new bodies to start a new life on the Earth. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? This is our goal. This is why we created the Resistance. To free the humans and give them a new life by using alien technology. But we need to defeat THEM first.”

  “Wait a minute. I got another question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “How did I get into the future? I lived in 2018 and then suddenly found myself in the game. Who did it to me? Who’s responsible? And how do I get back? My life wasn’t perfect, but I kinda liked it, y’know.”

  The woman refused to talk for a few moments. Then she finally said, “It’s the most complicated part. Hope you’ll understand and won’t freak out.”

  Judging from the grave tone in her voice, I wasn’t going to like what Jessica was about to say. I prepared myself for the worse.

  “You never was transferred into the future,” she said. “In fact, you never lived in 2018. You just retain memories of the life of the guy named Max Morgan who lived in 2018.”

  It finally dawned on me.

  “How do you mean?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. “Am I a brain scan too? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Yes,” she answered quietly.

  “But how can this be possible? I don’t get it.”

  “Let me explain this to you. Way back when Max Morgan suffered from excruciating headaches so he decided to have his head X-rayed for any brain injuries.”

  “Yes, I remember that,” I said. “Then something happened in the clinic. I lay on the bed and patiently waited for the X-ray generator to kick in. Then there was a sudden burst of brilliant light and everything went dark. When I came to, I found myself in the game.”

  “Right,” she said. “After having his head X-rayed, Max Morgan left the clinic and headed home. He had no idea what had happened when the X-ray generator started working. Max Morgan saw a flash of bright light before his eyes and he seemed to lose consciousness for a second. However, the doctor who examined him didn’t say anything about the incident and Max Morgan soon totally forgot all about it.”

  Jessica made a pause and then continued, “So, in fact, the doctor was practicing as a doctor in the daytime. At night, he was a scientist. It was him who first invented the brain-scanning device. So when he brain scanned Max Morgan you were born with the memories that Max Morgan had up to that moment.”

  “The doctor brain scanned me without my permission?” I asked and instantly corrected myself. “I mean, without Max Morgan’s permission?”

  “Yes. He uploaded you into the memory of his computer and put you to sleep. But he woke you up and talked to you sometimes.”

  “Why don’t I remember any of this?”

  “Because he erased your memories of your conversations.”

  “Why would he do such a thing?”

  “Sorry I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Can you tell me how the heck I got farther into the future?”

  “A few years later several foreign scientists invented such a device as well. And after dozens of years more passed, brain scanning was as common as cell phones had been in 2018. But you––the brain scan of Max Morgan––was the first of its kind. You were something along the lines of an object of historical and scientific importance. After the doctor died, you were never woken up. You were stored on a computer in one scientific museum.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Then the aliens came and the war was waged, which was the most destructive in human history. Somehow you got through all the years of the war and then the Alien laid its paws on you. Yet the Alien took no interest in you so THEY just uploaded you into the hard drive of the space station and seemed to forget about you.”

  I pondered about what Jessica had just told me and then said, “So someone else must’ve woken me up and put me in the game then.”

  “You’re correct.”

  “Do you know who did it?”

  “Yes, I do,” she said simply. “It was me.”

  Chapter three

  “What for?” I wanted to know.

  “Like I told you, the Resistance wants to defeat the Alien and free the humans,” Jessica replied. “So we came up with a plan. We transferred you to the game and woke you up. As you played, we tried to find a way to get in touch with you. We couldn’t send you system messages for fear of being spotted by the other developers. Like I already said, the other developers are humans too, but they obey the Alien. They just don’t have any options other than to comply with the Alien’s orders. If they don’t obey, THEY’ll kill ‘em. So the Resistance then came up with the idea of adding a campaign––a series of main quests––to the game to communicate with you through the encrypted quest descriptions. This way, we figured that neither the developers nor THEY would be any wiser.”

  I thought about it for a few moments and then said, “Okay. You woke me up and put me in the game. I get it. But how come I feel pain in the game while all the other players don’t? Moreover, unlike the other players, I can interact with some game objects. Why is that? I always thought that I was some kind of a glitch.”

  A small smile touched Jessica’s lips.

  “You ain’t no glitch,” she said. “Since you were our secret weapon, our means of bringing down the Alien, we wanted to make your special so you had some advantage over the other players. Hence your ability to interact with some game objects. About your experiencing pain–– Well, it wasn’t done on purpose. Of course, we didn’t want to subject you to such experience. It happened accidentally. It was something like a side effect of your ability. Sorry about that.”

  “You mentioned something about my bringing down the Ali
en,” I observed. “What’d you mean?”

  “You’re gonna defeat the Alien,” The woman said deadpan.

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “No, I don’t,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’m dead serious.”

  “How in the world can I defeat THEM?” I asked loudly. “The aliens overwhelmed the humans and conquered the Earth. I’m just one person. And I ain’t no soldier. What could I do?”

  Then I realized that I had said it too loud.

  “Wait a minute,” I said lowering my voice. “You said the Alien lives in this space station, right? That means that the Alien can come in this room? What if it barges in the room and sees us?”

  Jessica looked offended.

  “Do you really think I would invite you to this place without taking appropriate measures?” She asked pouting her lips. “This room’s totally safe at the moment. You can talk openly and as loudly as you want. The Alien won’t either hear us or come here.”

  Still unconvinced, I asked quietly, “Do you really think I can defeat the Alien on my own? It sounds crazy.”

  “We have a plan,” Jessica said. “First of all, you don’t have to fight the Alien alone. You can have your friends lend you a hand. Second, you won’t fight the military aliens who defeated the humans. Like I said, the Alien is a scientist with the genetic memory of the previous generations. So it’s only one creature and it’s far weaker than the military aliens were. Third, using alien technology, my friends and me invented some device. We can now teleport the Alien into the game and turn it into a Raid Boss so it acts like any other mob in the game. It’d definitely work in your favor since you should be a very good player and know the game mechanics like the back of your hand by this point. However, the effect will last for a limited period of time. So I’ll put the Alien into the game only after you have leveled up to the max level, found the best armor and weapon possible, and rounded up your friends.”

  I simply clammed up for a few moments. There was so much to take in. And I still couldn’t get over what Jessica had told me. I wasn’t Max Morgan. Instead, I was just his brain scan. I just had his memories and personality. But–– But––