Spacebound Chronicles

Chapter 2: Jake Nebula

“Alright, so how does this work?” Scott asked his high school friend, holding the Virtual Reality headset on his lap and already wearing the gloves. They were in Joey’s car, a few blocks away from the pub where all of his coworkers still drank themselves into the weekend.

“It’s really intuitive, just put on the rig and I’ll set you up with one of my characters. You’ll get the hang of it,” Joey was typing on a transparent tablet where a few avatars stood side by side. Two aliens, one brown skinned human man who insanely resembled Joey and a fair skinned human woman.

“Okay,” Scott tested the straps and placed the helmetlike console on his head, the eyepieces obstructing his vision completely. “Just one question, do you always carry one of these in your glove compartment?”

“Always, now hold tight!”

And as soon as Joey’s last word faded in the distance, Scott’s surroundings melted into a cascade of green and purple glitter which eventually dimmed out to reveal an impeccably tidy lounge, comprised of three couches and a table with ghostly planet holograms so colorful it seemed like a rainbow had just been exploded into a thousand little spheres. Over the table there was a half-eaten cookie and a half-empty cup of milk. Better yet, around the cookies there were crumbs, perfect little crumbs Scott couldn’t help but pick up on his now dark-skinned fingers.

“Scotty, do you hear me?” Joey’s voice echoed through the dimly lit virtual room as if he were all over the place.

“Yeah, I do, but man, this is…” Scott said, still mesmerized by the cookie crumb on his virtual finger, just now realizing the detail on his fingerprints.

“Amazing?”

“So amazing! So real!”

“Yeah, just don’t say that with anyone around you,” Joey’s ominous voice replied. “I don’t need folks thinking my character was hacked by a noob who’s still awestruck by crumbs.”

“You can see what I’m doing?” Scott asked, looking around only to find himself alone in that cozy room. He also just now realized a discreet Jazz track on the background.

“Sure, I’m getting your feed on the tablet,” Joey answered. “You’re now Jake Nebula, infamous space wanderer and the best pilot to not own a ship of his own! Now put the crumb down and go explore something outside the apartment, will you?”

Scott dropped the crumb immediately, realizing how he must’ve been looking like a baby, and stood up only to freeze as soon as he was on his feet. He felt cold.

How?!

That was a game, he was meant to see and hear. Not feel.

And yet…

Feeling cold also made him notice he wore nothing but boxers. And looking down to verify that fact made him realize he was, to put it simply, ripped.

“Joey, Jake’s naked!” Scott spoke to his bare legs.

“No, he isn’t, he is wearing boxers!”

“Wait, I can take the boxers out?”

“Yes, but please don’t.”

“Okay!” Scott said pulling the boxer’s waistband with a thumb, only to verify it was indeed just as real as any boxer he ever wore, and not a default part of the character to keep the game family friendly. “So how do I open the inventory?”

Joey laughed.

“There is no inventory dummy, just look around for his clothes.”

Scott did, finding two pairs of jeans, a blouse and a leather jacket under a kitchen counter two rooms away, all crumpled up as if they had been tossed there. Closer inspection revealed that indeed not all of them were meant for male characters, although Scott was starting to believe that if it were physically possible, the game wouldn’t discriminate. He later found a bra, under the leather jacket with a big JAKE written in the back.

“Joey…” Scott asked as he put on the jeans he assumed to be Jake Nebula’s.

“Yes?”

“What exactly happened here the last time you played?”

“Exactly what you’re thinking!” Joey answered cackling. “Now please get out of there before she logs back in, please.”

“I didn’t take you for that type, Joe,” Scott said putting on the jacket and shivering at the contact of leather directly on his skin.

“It’s not me, it’s Jake Nebula! A free soul only attached to the spirit of adventure and the solar winds on his back! Now go!”

Scott obeyed, clumsily patting the front door up and down before realizing there was a motion sensor on the doorframe. He waved at it, and the door slid up with a screech to blow Scott’s mind.

For that brief second after the metallic door went up, he was no longer Scott Williams in a car during Happy Hour. He was Jake Nebula standing in a street cramped by aliens he couldn’t begin trying to comprehend. Bright advertisement boards that took up whole buildings showed wanted fugitives just before shifting to promote sports drinks and weapons upgrade shops.

On the sidewalks, humans and monsters performed musical numbers and traded goods, one of the musicians even taking a moment between songs to wave a tentacle at Jake, who retributed shyly. Friend of Joey’s, maybe. But the most impressive part was the sky. Oh, the sky! Even with dozens of ships and flying car crowing the openings between the rocky skyscrapers, the sight of a setting red sun and two gigantic moons was enough to keep his jaw dropped forever.

“You like the moons?” Joey’s voice asked muffling the chatter, street music and marketing jingles. “If you start playing, we can go there, but right now the pirates in that area would kick your butt.”

Of course. He should’ve guessed the moons weren’t just decorative.

“Hey, speaking of kicking butts, are you sure you’re okay with me playing? What if I get your guy killed?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll lose some experience points, but nothing I can’t recover. That’s why I gave you Jake, actually,” Joey said.

“What do you mean?” Scott asked reaching out to feel the texture of a particularly big purple alien without arms.

“Don’t do that! How would you feel if strangers touched your face?” so that was the thing’s face? Cool… Disgusting and cool! “Anyways, I mean that Jake’s my character for shenanigans. He doesn’t impact the game greatly, so his death doesn’t impact the game greatly…”

“So if he dies and respawns it’s no big deal…” Scott concluded stopping now to watch two players dueling with flaming swords.

“You got it! Higher level characters or characters that play key roles can get permanently killed, depending on how important and powerful they are, where they’re killed and by whom. The algorithm is a mystery to be honest, but you get a warning if you’re currently susceptible to permadeath. If that happens, which it shouldn’t, log out immediately,” Joey’s voice had suddenly grown darker, sending a shiver down Jake Nebula’s spine. “Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Now look for the Valhalla Club! It should be about to start.”

“What should?” Scott asked.

“You’ll see, now ask around.”

He was about to ask who he should ask for directions. He stopped himself guessing that was exactly what Joey wanted him to do so he could be surprised by the revelation that any character, no matter how apparently useless, would answer properly.

“Excuse me, sir?” Jake Nebula poked the wing of a human sized bird enjoying a player sword duel.

“Ma’am, actually,” the bird answered in a voice that mixed melodical singing and polite speech.

“Sorry. Would you know where the Valhalla club is?”

The bird lady laid out the directions in detail, and still added that she had heard today’s password was Loki’s Eyes. But throughout all the interaction, there was something Scott could not figure out.

“Just one more question,” he asked as she returned her attention to the sparring men. “Are you a player or an NPC?”

Her beak clicked a few times, the fiery green eagle eyes stared daggers at him, and she turned away to watch the last blow as one player stabbed the other’s heart. Then the stabber bathed his victim’s body in bright light, and the dead man was back standing as if nothing happened.

“You made me miss the finale, human,” the bird spat before taking off in flight and fading into the cars that flew overhead.

A mystery that would never be answered.

Probably as it should be.

***

If he ignored a handful of patrons in neon-bright armor and their laser guns, and, of course, the eventual alien, Jake Nebula could almost forget he was in another planet littered by spaceships and holographic billboards. The second he stepped past the double wooden doors of Valhalla Club and the humongous bodyguard to whom he whispered “Loki’s Eyes”, the only lights came from torches, candles and firepits, and the predominantly metallic structures were now all rustic wood.

Jake Nebula leaned over the counter where a bearded human in a fur vest and a typical Viking horned helmet ran breathless to deliver horns filled with beer.

“Hey, Nebula!” the bartender greeted with a smile that wiggled his beard, not bothering to stop his labor. As soon as he freed his hands, he raised the helmet in a polite greeting. The horns were not raised along with it. Jake Nebula blinked in surprised confusion. Of course, the horns were part of the guy’s head… how predictable.

And yet it surprised him.

“Hey, good night! I would like…”

“What in Odin’s name happened to you, Nebula?” the horned bartender pushed an unasked-for horn of beer into Jake’s hands. “Since when do you speak all polite?”

“I mean…”

“Snarky or laid back, man, that’s the character,” Joey’s voice came again.

“Will you give me another dose, or will I have to rip one of those horns from your head and fill it myself?” Jake Nebula said before chugging back the entire drink.

Both Joey and the Viking barman laughed and complimented the comeback, the later readily delivering another horn of beer. That virtual drink tasted better than the cheap beer from the boring twenty-first century Happy Hour of hours ago.

Wait… he tasted?

Before he could start thinking about how that was possible, his new corpulent bartending friend jumped over the counter beaming.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” he screamed. “It is time! Remember, no lethal weapons or long-range powers. Five! Four!”

Jake jumped to his feet, all the patrons cheering and joining in the countdown.

“Three!”

The tables in the center of the salon were lowering into the ground, the wooden surfaces of each mashing perfectly.

“Two!”

The chairs and benches were still there, and people were grabbing hold of them.

“One!”

“Let our blood run in rivers to Valhalla!” horned barman declared as the words ‘PVP Enabled’ flashed before Jake’s eyes.