Underwater Suevival Station

“Capitalism killed me. No, really. It all started when I took a shitty job fishing for Pollock over the winter break before I got my master’s degree. I travelled to Alaska to work for the full month of my winter break. But my parents had just died 10 months ago, and it was my first Christmas without them. I wanted to be distracted, and I also really needed the money for my last semester. I’d already taken out so many loans, and desperately needed to make as much as possible in that short period. So, I took the job. I’m strong, and I had an Alaskan Dry Suit Certification from a bunch of classes my parents and I took on summer vacation when I was 16. Don’t ask me why they were hyperfixated on diving that year. It was something different every few months with them. It was mostly my mom’s ideas. My dad would do anything to make her happy, and she jumped all in from hobby to hobby every month… So, anyway, I’m on this boat, in the middle of Alaska, and our net gets stuck. “Probably just a little ice,” my boss tells me. “Go down there and clear it. Won’t take long. Take the oxygen tank with 30 minutes on it.” So, I took my trident with me in case it was a predator. I could jab a shark in the gills and swim away, and it was good for cutting the net if needed. It was not a predator, but the net was hopelessly tangled in kelp. So, I started cutting the kelp away with my trident. I made quick work of it, too, and got the huge net free in only 20 minutes! Unfortunately, in my haste to get it done, I had gotten my legs tangled in the kelp. Alright, that one’s my bad for rushing and not paying enough attention. But my boss, who knew he sent me under the ship with only 30 minutes of oxygen? He didn’t think to check on me for three hours. Capitalism, I tell you!” I realized I was pleading my case to no one in particular, that no God was listening, when a screen popped up from the blackness of death. SELECT GAMER TAG: “Gamer tag? What is this?” I asked it. It didn’t respond. SELECT GAMER TAG: Lovergirl89 CONFIRM? I pressed yes. Suddenly, everything became dizzy, no direction was up or down, until suddenly, THWUMP, I’m dropped into a…bubble? A letter symbol with a red number 1 in the corner hovers in my vision, and I touch it. WELCOME TO THE SERVER: Players, Welcome to Underwater Survival Station! Due to afterlife overpopulation, this is your test for entry. Survive here for 5 years, and you’ve earned yourself a spot in the permanent afterlife with everyone else who’s ever made it. Good luck! You’ve graciously been allowed to keep whatever you had on you when you died. Unfortunately for most of you, that’s just a hospital bed. Sorry ‘bout that. To be fair to all players, if you’re outside the ages of 18 and 45, your age has been randomized to a version of yourself at one of those ages. You also have the option to trade any previous chronic ailment for other attribute points. Choose carefully, though, the price is steep. By the way, this bubble you’re in? When the oxygen timer hits zero, your bubble will pop, and you’ll die. Even if you make it to the surface, the salt damage will kill you eventually, so by the grace of our server, if your bubble pops, we will initiate soul deletion immediately :) You’ll have to go collect oxygen bubbles from surfaces where they randomly spawn in the wild to survive. As a new player courtesy, PvP is disabled until the first player reaches the island. After that, all bets are off. Build your defenses and your combat power as much as you can during this time. For the first fortnight, there will be a starter crate drop each day, containing 1x water bottle, 1x dried seaweed chips, 1x burnt crab cake, 1x starter gear, 1x random blueprint, 2x oxygen bubble, and ?x random building material. The starter gear will be the same for all players, but the blueprint will be unique to you. The more days you survive to claim it, the better chance for rarer items. Have fun playing our game, Server Management Team What? The afterlife was all some sick game? Not only that, but it was specifically a game about surviving what I had just died from? Panic set in for a moment, but then was replaced by resolve. My parents could survive this, surely. With all their random certifications? 5 years was nothing. I could see them again. I would. At least if it was a game about how I just died, I have the advantage of equipment for this type of environment. I clicked out of the server message, and looked at the oxygen pool timer. 3:59:23 They only gave us four hours to start?!? Okay, this is okay. They probably want us to panic and lose our heads. I need to get my bearings on what’s happening first. I opened my beginner chest. OBTAINED: 1x water bottle 1x dried seaweed chips 1x burnt crab cake 1x common oxygen tank 1x common goggles blueprint 2x oxygen bubble 10x stone I already had an oxygen tank, and I didn’t think that this early in the game I had time to craft, so I left everything where it was in the beginner chest for now. The bubbles just sat there, and didn’t automatically add to the timer. I decided to save them in case I ran low later in the game. Next, I clicked on the oxygen pool timer. LVL 1 OXYGEN BUBBLE STATS: Oxygen timer: 3:59:06 Oxygen depletion speed -40% when off-station 10ft radius Transferable at a 1:1 ratio to refill oxygen tank (common) or above 1x oxygen bubble gives a 30-minute oxygen pool timer boost So, going out into the water required you to fill your tank with oxygen, and your station still depleted oxygen as well? It took 60% extra oxygen to leave my station? This game was already trying to kill us. Next, I checked my stats. Lovergirl89 stats: Strength: 6 (You top out around 75lbs) Agility: 8 (You’re pretty quick and nimble) Intelligence: 9 (You died before you finished your Master's degree. Bummer!) Constitution: 7 (You’re a bit sleep deprived) HP: 70 (Constitution x10) Hunger: 10/100 (You died right after lunch) Thirst: 15/100 (Swallowed enough water drowning, did ya?) Sanity: 100/100 (We’ll fix that!) Stamina: 60/100 (Hard work, but in the end you drifted off peacefully) Fatigue: 40/100 (That death took it out of you, huh?) Gear: Rare oxygen tank: +0.75 refill ratio, maximum oxygen time 8:00:00 Epic drysuit: -99% salt damage, -70% cold damage Rare trident: +10% damage, +10% attack speed Rare net: -50% encumberance (I wonder what this could hold…) I guess I shouldn’t have skipped leg day so often, but it’s a good thing I ran track. And my sanity was at 100? Even after dying? I certainly don’t feel that sane, but I guess dying didn’t freak me out too much. It was kind of peaceful as I drifted off. The oxygen tank I came in with has a serious refill buff; this could be exactly what I need to get ahead of the curve. I won’t be losing as much oxygen from going out to collect bubbles like the other players. And that 50% encumbrance boost in my net? That could make up for my low strength and help me haul stone. But the drysuit with -99% salt damage and -70% cold damage? That’s the real prize out here. I just might make it in this underwater survival game. I just might see my parents again someday. With renewed hope, I filled my oxygen tank with an hour of air from my oxygen pool to start with, and then headed out into the water. Oxygen bubbles weren’t hard to find. In fact, they seemed to spawn on most surfaces. The dense kelp forests surrounding my survival station were full of them. The tricky part was that my inventory only held 9 at a time. And the system didn’t let me use multiple slots for the same item, either. I only had six slots for my inventory, too. I had no idea how anyone was going to survive this game if we can only carry up to 9 quantity of 6 items. I tried to put an oxygen bubble in my tank, but I was met with an error message saying it could only be refilled at the station. I couldn’t even take any extra oxygen bubbles that way. It had taken me the better part of an hour just to collect those 9 bubbles in the first place. They weren’t hard to find, but swimming even 30 feet at this pressure and temperature? It was brutal. I can’t imagine how the other players are doing without a dry suit like this. 9 bubbles would only give me 4 and a half hours of air in my oxygen pool, and I’d have to take more of that to go back out to get more. I didn’t know how I’d even get far enough ahead to have enough to sleep tonight. This was going to take forever. I headed back to my station and deposited the 9 bubbles I had into my oxygen pool. The timer now read 6:56:28 I opened my activity page. Lovergirl89 activity stats: Stamina: 25/100 (Running low) Fatigue: 55/100 (Time for a nap?) Hunger: 35/100 (Have a snack) Thirst: 25/100 (Remember, you still sweat underwater) That collecting really took it out of me, but I couldn’t afford to not go back out. If I slept now, my soul would surely be deleted before I woke up. I sat down to rest for a few minutes to catch my breath. Then, I went over to my beginner chest, and took out the burnt crab cake and the water bottle. I rationed the water, only allowing myself to drink a quarter of the 16 ounce bottle as I ate my crab cake. I checked my activity stats again when I was done. Lovergirl89 activity stats: Stamina: 38/100 (On the lower side) Fatigue: 50/100 (You need more rest) Hunger: 5/100 (You’re full) Thirst: 10/100 (Staying hydrated) My stats had improved quite a bit from just a little meal, but I had limited supplies, and eventually, I was going to run out of energy. Maybe I could catch some fish in my net for food? But I hadn’t seen any near my camp yet. I decided to allow myself 30 minutes to rest before I had to push myself to get back out there and collect more oxygen to survive. I took a few minutes to calm down my breathing. I closed my eyes and started doing the breath exercises my mom taught me during her hyperfixation on meditation. She had the whole family do it for an hour before dinner every day. Who knew it’d ever come in handy? I could do this; it was all about planning and frame of mind. I could do anything I applied myself to. I wasn’t going to just lay down and die. I would fight with everything in me to survive. I took one last deep breath and opened my eyes. I checked the system clock. 15 more minutes of break time before I had to get back on that oxygen collecting grind. I opened the server chat to see what was going on with the other players. I couldn’t imagine they weren’t struggling just as much as I was. WELCOME TO THE SERVER CHAT. CURRENT SURVIVORS ON SERVER: 163,448 PLAYERS