Dream Drive Ch. 01

At the base of the giant's trunk, there was a city, nestled in a ring around nature's leviathan. The buildings looked like toy houses at this distance. He could see the pointed roofs of church belfries, the crenellations of watchtowers.

"This is my world. Isis."

Jackson turned. Standing next to him, wearing the navy robes of some sort of wizard, was none other than Emil Mohammed himself. The man's ink black hair was splayed down his head. He had a salt-and-pepper beard. He looked at Jackson with grey eyes.

"Let me show you."

Emil raised a hand. A pale green orb formed around himself and Jackson. It floated them up and off the ground, and they soared down the hill. The water in the river was tossed back as they rushed forward.

Their bubble blasted through the gates of the city and down a brick road. People jumped out of the way as they flew by. A horse reared up, stopping the carriage it was pulling. The townsfolk pointed and shouted.

They flew up to the fortress that ringed the very base of the tree trunk, and then over the wall, and up, up the tree. He could feel the pressure on his cheeks as their bubble accelerated. He glanced over his shoulder. The ground was rapidly shrinking behind them.

"Let me show you!" Emil shouted.

They punctured the cloudline. White fog blocked Jackson's sight. Water collected on his skin. He closed his eyes and wiped his face.

And then, Jackson was above the clouds, floating, drifting in a blinding blue sky. Branches like roads twined around him. Huge leaves stood out from the branches like ferns.

He drifted down and settled onto his feet. Thick rivulets of bark jutted up into his shoes. A lone wind made the giant leaf next to him creak and shift. Emil was gone.

Jackson heard metal sliding on metal. He looked in the direction of the sound.

An angel was hovering nearby. It had no mouth. A red halo floated above its head. It was wearing shining armor. It had two great, feathered wings, but they didn't flap to keep it aloft.

It had just drawn its sword.

Its words resounded inside Jackson's head. [You should not have come here.]

The angel exploded forward, sword ready. Jackson flung his hands up.

He reeled back and sat down on asphalt, breathing. He was back in the Hub, back in the city. A little prompt asked him if he wanted to replay the trailer.

Jackson stood. He felt like a live wire. He clenched his fists. "Holy shit!"

He smacked the replay button.

###

"Hey, Jack! Jacky!"

Jackson's eyes popped open. He'd fallen asleep at his desk, head propped on his Dream Drive helmet. He'd drooled on it a bit. He peeled his cheek off the plastic and sat straight.

He glanced out his window. He had a marvelous view of a cement apartment block two feet away, but a dim hint of sunlight told him that at least a few hours had gone by. The tiny alley out his window wasn't attractive, but it was good enough as an improvised clock.

The doorbell rang. His mother yelled again. "Jacky! The doorbell! Jacky! Are you wearing that fucking helmet again?!"

Jackson hated the nickname 'Jacky'. His mother seemed to have this odd and insistent idea that using it offered her some sort of parental advantage over him. She tended to grasp for it whenever she wanted him to do something.

He got up from his chair, walked into the hall, careful to lock his room behind him. He didn't used to lock his room, but his mother started baiting him out so she could snag and pawn off his computer equipment. She would do anything to feed her addiction, even steal from her own son. So, now he locked his room.

The hallway was dusty. One of the lights had burned out. The hardwood floor was marked and scraped in places. There was a crumpled up newspaper where the hall met the living room.

The living room itself was in a lot worse shape. Plates with half-eaten food were lying here and there. The scent of stale beer leaked from a collection of open containers. Clothes were tossed here and there.

His mother was lying on the couch, rubbing her face. Her hair blonde hair was frazzled from being ground into the cushions. Somewhere behind the stress lines and the crow's feet was a rather pretty woman determined to ruin herself with cigarettes and alcohol.

"Jacky!"

"Mom. I'm right here."

"Jesus." She cracked her eyes open. "Get the fuckin' door."

The doorbell rang again, a blaring, droning sound. Jackson walked the ten feet and opened the door. A uniformed man, wearing an expression that said I-Don't-Want-To-Be-Here was waiting for him with a brown package. "Delivery for...Vedalt."

"That's me."

"Hey, what if it's for me?!" his mother shouted. "What is it?"

"It's just a video game, mom."

"Let me see it."

The man raised an eyebrow and offered Jackson a flat pad. "I need a signature."

"Yep." Jackson tucked the package under his arm and scrawled out his name. "Have a good one."

"You too." The man shut the door behind him.

"Let me see it!"

Jackson bit his tongue and went to the kitchen. The closet-sized space reeked, mostly from the sink. It was piled high with dishes, most of which were still coated with crusty food. He was glad he'd replaced the vent filters leading to his room with higher-quality stuff. He didn't want to be breathing that.

He slit the package open with a knife. A small white paper was folded outside of some bubble wrap. He opened it up.

Jackson Vedalt,

Thank you for competing in the Crux: Top Gamer Championship! For making it into the quarterfinals, you've won an early-release copy of our new game, Isis, on the day before the beta goes live! The servers are already up and running, so feel free to hop right in. I hope you enjoy the world I've created!

Sincerely,

Emil Mohammed

Under the man's printed name was his signature. Jackson licked his finger and slid it across the ink. It smeared. Emil Mohammed had signed this personally.

Jackson decided he'd probably frame the letter.

The Top Gamer Championship had been alright, but Jackson had quit after making the quarterfinals. He was only interested in Isis. He'd gotten a tidal wave of disappointed messages from his Hub Followers. He did what he usually did-deleted all of them.

"Jacky, are you deaf?!"

"I'm coming." Jackson went back to the living room. His mother hadn't moved. He took off some of the bubble wrap and showed his mother the package. "It's the special edition of Isis. It's a MMORPG for the computer. You go into a fantasy world and fight people with swords and magic. The rumor is that the magic isn't anything like it is in other games, though. In most games, it's just pushing buttons, and then you have to wait a while until you can cast again-this game is different. I was on a forum the other day, and apparently some people think-"

"Alright, alright." His mother waved him off. "I get the point. By the way, the kitchen reeks."

"I noticed."

"You gonna clean it?"

"No."

"You're 18. You think I can't kick you out? Clean the sink."

"You won't kick me out."

"I will if you don't listen to me."

"It's your turn," Jack said. "I told you that three months ago. I'll help with the chores, but we're taking turns. If you want things clean, then clean them. I'll do it the time after that."

Jackson turned and walked away. He heard her turn on the television.

He used to be afraid of his mother, but as he got older-and bigger-his fear turned into apathy. That, and she couldn't hit him without getting a harder hit back.

He could probably move out. He had the cash. But he was afraid of leaving her alone. She hadn't always been like this. She changed when dad died. She buried the grief in alcohol and sex.

He'd tried to snap her out of it. He tried to ignore the stream of men that stayed over on weekends, and increasingly, weekdays. He encouraged her to drink in the Dream Drive, rather than reality. She just told him it wasn't the same.

Jackson decided that he could either spend his life worrying about her, or stop caring. So he stopped caring. Maybe that made him a bad person. He wasn't sure.

On the return trip to his room, he noticed a used condom on the floor. That was beyond disgusting. He gave it a wide berth and retreated into his sanctuary.

He shut the door and locked it behind him. He felt human again. Fresh, filtered air. Everything neat and tidy. Well, his desk could use some work, but the rest of the room was done up.

Seven days until high school started again. Seven days with nothing to do but play Isis.

The two short trailers were the only thing that had been released to preview Isis in five years. The online community had analyzed them to hell and back, hunting for clues. People had come up with wild theories about the plot, the world, and the angel with the red halo. Another major camp-which Jackson was a part of-had decided that speculation was entertaining, but relatively pointless. The trailers were just a demonstration of the game, and they'd been released in year two of development, so things had probably changed since then anyway.

The massive team working on the game had remained conspicuously silent. It wasn't unusual for leaks to emerge about video games in progress-both planned, and unplanned-but the dead silence from Crux was very odd. Everyone figured that Emil had them sign ironclad legal agreements, but no one could confirm or deny, so it was all speculation.

Jackson brought his helmet over to the bed. The fiber-optic cable to his computer plenty long enough to reach. He extracted the game's case from the bubble wrap. The cover art was from the trailer, an image of the massive tree. A tiny stamp in the corner marked the game as AO-Adults Only.

He began the battle that every video game enthusiast knows well: getting the game out of the damn case. His fingernails scraped and picked uselessly at the plastic wrapping. Eventually, he had to resort to using his teeth. He tore the wrapper off, removed the strips of factory tape, and popped it open.

There was no insert. His special edition goodies, still back in the package, took the place of that. All that rested within the hard plastic was a single black data chip. The chip was marked by an inverted red pentagram. Beneath that, spelled in cursive, was the word Isis.

Jackson pressed a button on his Drive. A small port on the top slid open. He inserted the chip and pushed the port closed. The game wasn't on the chip itself-he'd need an optical memory block the size of the entire apartment block for that. His chip was an encrypted access code to the Crux servers, and it doubled as a backup for his personal information in the case of any problems.

He'd started spouting to his mother about inane details on Isis's magic system on purpose. When he was little, he'd tell her about his video games, and she'd stop listening to him and do something else. That hurt, at first, but it became a way to fend her off when he was too small to do much else. Much more powerful than love or hate was the raw force of apathy.

But the pentagram had him wondering. There was a rumor that magic in the game would rely on runes powered through certain collectables. The symbol on the chip definitely fit that theory.

He'd find out for himself soon enough.

He slid the helmet on his head and lay back on his pillow. It was actually a size big-they all were. Actuated pistons locked the helmet into place on his skull, forming a soft inner sheath that conformed to his personal dimensions. A confirmation message asked if he wanted to enter the Dream Drive.

Jackson spoke one word. "Yes."

His world went dark, and then lit up. He was standing on a pure white field once more, on the main menu of the Dream. Normally, there was a single square in front of him, the image of the hyper-city known as the Hub. Now, there were two squares. The second option was the silhouette of a tree on a red background. A red pentagram was etched into the tree trunk. Black words above the small portrait stated the name of the game.

Jackson punched the word, Isis.

The world went black again. A glowing red sentence lit the darkness.

Connecting to Cruz Game server...

Connected.

Welcome, Jackson Vedalt.

He was back in whitespace. Only, now, Emil Mohammed, dressed in his robes, was standing in front of him.

"Hello there, Jackson."

"...uh..." Jackson wasn't sure what to do. "Hi."

"Thanks for competing in the tournament. I'm a prerecorded message from Emil Mohammed."

"...oh."

The hologram of Emil continued to speak. "I wanted to personally introduce the quarterfinalists to the game. By the way, I was surprised you quit. I'd put money down on you. That doesn't matter to me much, but was looking forward to the game."

Jackson realized the message was customized for him, personally. That meant Emil Mohammed had taken time out of his schedule to address one Jackson Vedalt as a single individual. He wanted to jump for joy.

"I looked on your Hub profile out of curiosity. You've got a lot of Followers. Seeing your game history got me thinking-I realized you didn't care about the tournament. I have a feeling that you only cared about Isis."

Was he that obvious? Or was Emil just that insightful? His respect for the man was on the verge of jumping the gap from reverence to full idol-worship.

"Well," Emil continued, "that makes two of us. You see, reality kinda stinks. I mean, it's alright. But it's crappy. You know this, I know this, the world knows it. That's why we bothered making a Dream Drive. That's why we built the Hub for ourselves. It's an escape.

"But it's no escape at all, is it? The Hub isn't much better than reality. It's reality version 1.1. I had to go beyond the Hub, beyond normal games. I had to make an entirely new reality, a reality so good it was a sequel to the original. A reality so real, so encompassing, so much better, that you would watch the old one burn just to stay in the new. A reality that is powerful, gripping. Something that seizes your heart and never lets go. That's the kind of world I envision."

The hologram turned and looked straight at Jackson. "I have made that world. Or rather, I'm making it, still. All good things take time. But we're well on our way.

"Your avatar in the Hub probably doesn't look much like your real self. Let me ask you a favor. Don't be fake. Don't disrespect Isis like that. Put yourself in the game as you really are, and play the game as you want to play. Do you want to gain power, and become a warlord, a king? Do it. Do you want to become a knight that fights for truth, justice, and the American way? Do it. Go where your heart leads. This is a second chance. Take it. But be yourself."

He nodded. "Do that for me, and you'll be happy you did. I promise you that." He sighed. "The other players will get a similar message. Not just the finalists in the tournament, either, but every player will be asked to keep themselves as they are. Not by me, personally, but you get the idea. I'm trying to build something together with all of you. This is our second chance, our second wind. We've screwed up earth badly enough, right?"

This man...he got it. He understood. He was a visionary. Jackson felt ready to follow him wherever he would lead.

"Isis is not a fairy-tale world," Emil said. "It is not a typical online game. Prepare yourself. What you do can and will matter, but if you want to change things, you must change them. So go out and get to it. And who knows? We might see each other around." Emil gave him a jaunty wave. "Good luck."

Emil vanished. Jackson was greeted with a character creation screen. An image of himself floated in the air, slowly rotating. It wasn't much to look at. He was six feet, but scrawny, almost bone thin. His skin was as pale as the white background. His sand-colored hair was forever in a state of bed-headedness.

The default was to keep his real appearance. Alternatively, he could customize his avatar.

He immediately gestured toward the default option. A dialogue box asked him if he was sure he wanted to keep everything the same. Jackson nodded, and the box closed, locking in his decision.

The world went black.

###

"You are hereby sentenced to banishment at the base of the tower. Do you have any last words?"

Jackson opened his eyes.

Wind whipped past him. He was stripped naked. He clutched at himself.

He was standing on the end of a long wooden plank. The platform extended over a pit dug in the ground. The bottom of the pit held a rotating field of black light.

A man draped in a red tabard was standing at the edge of the platform-the part that led back to solid ground. A braod mustache dominated his face. His clothing was etched with an image of the giant tree. He was backed by several heavily-armored guards.

"...what is this? Where am I?"

The man cocked an eyebrow. His mustache bobbed as he spoke. "You're a star-marked slave. You're being banished. Do you have any last words?"

"I'm surprised you actually answered him," one of the guards muttered.

"They tend to panic when they're at the threshold," mustache replied. "Lose sense of themselves. I've seen it before."

"Still..."

"One last kindness before death. It costs me nothing." Mustache faced Jackson again. "You there, slave. I'll record your last words. Keep a straight spine. This is for the good of us all."

"What..." Jackson tried to think. "Why am I being banished?"

"You're star marked." The man raised his left hand and pointed at it. He repeated the words. "Star. Marked."

Jackson looked at his left hand. Inscribed on the back of his flesh was a pentagram. It wasn't a neat tatoo-it looked like it had been cut into his skin. It wasn't the normal pink sheen of scar tissue, either, but blackened, twisted, as if it was some sort of infection. It stretched from his knuckles to his wrist.

"So...I have to be banished because I'm marked? Why?"

"Because it is written," mustache replied.

"How was I marked? Did someone do this to me?"

"You do it to yourselves, in your sleep," the man said. "And then it grows back with that black color. You're tainted. I'm sorry it has to be this way, but that's how it is. I'll give you a moment, boy."

"Wait a second! I'm being banished to the bottom of a tower? Where are we now? The top?"

One of the guards sighed. "Just tip him in."

"Let him be a man while he can," another said.

"I've got better things to do than officiate a funeral."

"Silence," mustache barked. All the guards immediately stiffened and snapped their mouths closed. "Boy. Make your jump."

Jackson looked down at the swirling black light. This was a game. It was just the intro to the game. The cold wind battering his body, on the other hand, felt extremely real.

He prepared himself to jump. He could jump, right?

Or he could do better. It was just a game. He could do anything.

He sprinted full-on down the platform. His bare feet slapped the wood as he ran as fast as he could. He wobbled once, almost fell, kept going.

"Sorry, kid. Don't hate us." One of the guards flipped a lever. The platform detached from the rim of the pit.

Jackson fell. The platform struck the side of the pit below him and entered swirling blackness. He followed a moment after.

###

Jackson woke to the sound of dripping water. He sat up.

It was dim. Moisture-slicked stone walls led off in either direction to his left and right. A pool of scummy water had collected a few feet away from him. As he watched it, another plink of water made it ripple. The air smelled like mold.

The cold of the stone was settling into his skin. He picked himself up off the tunnel floor. As he got to his feet, words flashed in front of him.

Welcome to Isis.

Your Health is displayed by a red bar in the upper right-hand corner.