The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

3: Server

2004-11-03T20:08:00.000Z

Split seconds later, Dave blinked into life on a server many miles away. Binary Universe Server, American East Coast, had a new occupant.

“Eep,” said Dave, incapable of thinking of a coherent sentence to utter, which was understandable in the circumstances.

He blinked, gradually taking in his surroundings. He wasn’t in his bedroom, he wasn’t inside the Queen’s throne room… he wasn’t anywhere he recognised. Instead, he seemed to be in some sort of waiting room. It looked a bit like a bus station. There were cold, plastic, slightly uncomfortable seats, and the way the place was decorated could only be described as functional. It was all very, very grey.

He looked at himself, suddenly realising that he was wearing his character’s robes. Wandering over to a wall mounted advert for some product he’d never heard of, he studied his reflection in the scuffed plastic covering. He looked like Dark Saviour, not Dave Smedley. He’d lost his normal looking, not unattractive but nothing special physique, and he’d gained a black robe clad monkish body, with a striking face, the right side of which had metallic components showing through the skin.

He’d thought such a face would be cool, when he’d created Dark Saviour, but now he could see it might be a little inconvenient. Be a bit hard to shave around, for a start. Assuming that he still needed to shave. Which, if he was no longer human, he didn’t. Presumably.

But… that was just plain ridiculous. The logical explanation was that he’d fallen asleep and this was all just a dream. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d dreamt things like this. Probably something odd would happen in a moment, like Buffy would turn up. Yeah, that was probably what was going to happen.

He sighed. Dreams always seemed to be more fast moving than this. Maybe if he sat down then things would start happening.

Trying not to get caught up in his robes, he sat down in the cleanest looking of the tatty plastic seats. It felt like someone had designed it to be just the wrong shape, so that it was so nearly comfortable, with one tiny thing wrong to make everything feel so very, very bad.

Some dream, he thought.

His mind drifted back to The Queen. She’d been amazing. Unless he’d dreamt all that too. Either he had finished the game and then fallen asleep, which he felt was unlikely due to the adrenaline that normally filled the body at such times, or he’d never finished it and he’d made her up in his dreams. That was a logical conclusion, although strangely rational for a dream.

He looked up when he heard a noise. Someone had entered the room, and their arrival certainly brightened up the greyness of the place. The new guy was dressed in a Bermuda shirt and crazy surfer shorts. He had bleached hair, slicked back, and sunglasses with a bright purple finish on the lenses.

“Alright, man,” he said, “How’s it hangin’?”

Dave sprang to his feet. “Um…”

“Man,” said the newcomer, walking towards him, “You really went the other way ter me, eh? Dark, man, very dark.”

“What do you, er…” faltered Dave, before adding under his breath, “You are SO not Buffy…”

The new guy stuck out his hand, inviting Dave to shake it in greeting. “I’m Mickey Mungo, I’m doing yer orientation, as long as yer…”

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a clipboard. “Betta do the official stuff,” he said.

Dave watched him in amazement. This was very surreal. It was probably surreal enough to be a dream. Mickey appeared to have a weird cockney accent. It was definitely similar to something from along the Thames, either London or Essex. Although it had a bit of a Dick Van Dyke flavour to it. It wasn’t REAL.

“Okay, man,” Mickey said, holding his clipboard in a way that suggested he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the ‘official stuff’, “If ya could tell me yer name?”

“My name?” asked Dave, feeling fairly stunned.

“Yeah, yer name,” said Mickey, before rolling his eyes and adding, “Stone the crows, but we’ve gotta stupid one ‘ere.”

“You want to know my name?” repeated Dave.

“Yeah,” said Mickey, in a tone of mock annoyance, “If yer name’s not dahn you’re not coming in.”

Dave frowned, “But my name’s not Dan.”

“Not dan, daaaahn,” said Mickey.

“Oh,” said Dave, “Down.”

“Yeah,” said Mickey. “That’s what I said.”

“Right. Um, Dave Smedley?”

Mickey took a pencil from behind his ear, and carefully ticked something on his clipboard. Dave had never seen anyone concentrate so hard on ticking anything.

“Right,” said Mickey, “That was ‘ard.”

Dave looked a bit sheepish, “Well, you have a bit of an unusual accent,” he said. “Kind of reminds me of home.”

Mickey put his clipboard away and composed himself. He didn’t get to do orientations very often. He wasn’t usually given anything much to do, since the people in charge seemed to think he wasn’t capable. To them, it was a mystery how he’d made it to the end of the game. Either he was incredibly lucky, which in itself is not a bad thing to be, or there was more to him than met the eye. He wouldn’t be the first person to fool people with a daft exterior. I mean, look at Columbo. He was a detective everyone thought was stupid, and it worked for him.

“Yer mind,” started Mickey, “Has been converted into this ‘ere virtual form. From now on, yer livin’ ‘ere, workin’ ‘ere, and you dahn’t have ter worry about the real world.”

Mickey was oddly hard to follow for someone with a ‘cockney’ accent.

“So, basically, you’re saying the legend was true,” said Dave, “I’m no longer human? I exist in a virtual form?”

“Very good,” said Mickey, “Yer getting’ the ‘ang of it.”

Dave thought for a moment. This was odd. He was going to take some convincing.

“Prove it,” he said, crossing his arms. “Prove I’m not having some crazy nightmare.”

Mickey looked hurt, “As if I’d be in a nightmare, thanks a lot mate.” He looked sulky as he continued, “Look, this world can ‘urt you. You can die ‘ere. It’s not always a good place ter be. If I show you around, maybe you’ll get the ‘ang of it.”

“Sure,” said Dave, “Go ahead.”

Before he could react, Mickey punched him in the stomach. Dave doubled over, groaning. “Aaaaaah,” he said, “What did you do that for?”

“’Urts, doesn’t it?” said Mickey, “Would it really ‘urt so much if it was all a dream?”

“I’ve heard that one before,” groaned Dave, “Really, that was a lovely demonstration.”

“Believe me now?” asked Mickey, “I can ‘it you again, if yer like.”

“No, really, it was great,” said Dave, straightening up, “I think you could move onto something else.”

Dave figured he might as well go along for the ride, and see what else was in this dream. If indeed it WAS a dream. Things weren’t right. Or rather, they were TOO right. Dreams had a habit of turning into something you could recognise as a dream. Little odd things happened that weren’t right, like stairs bending left instead of right, but this was all very real. It wasn’t anything he recognised, but it had a certain aura of rightness about it.

“Righty ho,” said Mickey, “I reckon we could move on ter the next lesson. Movin’ around the place. Somethin’ you’ll ‘ave ter do a lot.”

Mickey opened the door that he’d came out of, revealing a swirling blue vortex.

“This, Dave, is a data stream. We ride it, we come out somewhere else. Simple,” explained Mickey.

“But how do you know where you’re going?” asked Dave.

“Yer figure out where yer wanna go and you head in that direction, mate,” said Mickey, “Keep movin’. If yer in the stream when somethin’ bad ‘appens, that could be it. The end. Finito.”

Dave raised an eyebrow, “You mean I could die?”

“Yup,” said Mickey, “Yer could.”

“Are you going to take me to, er, your leader?” asked Dave.

If this was a dream, Dave wanted to get to the good bit. If it wasn’t, he wanted to find out what was going on, as quickly as possible.

“I’m takin’ yer back ‘ome, yeah,” said Mickey, “Back ter the mainframe.”

“The mainframe?” asked Dave.

“Yeah, the MAINFRAME,” repeated Mickey. “And can yer stop repeatin’ everythin’ I say? It’s gettin’ really annoyin’”.

“It’s getting really annoyi….?” Dave trailed off as he saw Mickey getting ready to take another swing at him. “Sure, sorry,” he said, “This has been kind of a weird day.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mickey. “I remember the first time I was ‘ere, when I met that Queen woman and fell for it. I fell for the whole thing, hook, line and sinker, I never figured the legend was real. Just wanted to see what ‘appened if you said yes. Didn’t really want to end up inside computers forever. But yer can’t turn back the clock,” he sighed.

Interesting, thought Dave, the legend. It was going to take a lot to get to the bottom of all this.

“You’re another Binary Universe player?” Dave asked.

“Yeah,” said Mickey, “And believe me, ‘owever much you didn’t like life out there, it wasn’t worth comin’ ‘ere to escape it. Although some of ‘em like it. The nasty ones.”

“The nasty ones?” asked Dave, before realising he was repeating again, but Mickey didn’t seem to notice.

“You’ll meet ‘em soon enough,” he said, “But I’d better get yer back…”

“We’re going in there?” asked Dave, gesturing at the vortex.

“Yeah,” said Mickey, “Just dive in, and go with the flow, alright?” And then he jumped.

“What have I got to lose?” muttered Dave, before launching himself into the swirly blueness…

2: End Zone

2004-11-02T19:30:00.000Z

[I haven't had time to re-read this and check for mistakes!]

Dave sat at his PC. The room was dark apart from the light from his flat screen monitor, which lit everything around it with an eerie glow. His 5.1 surround sound speakers filled the room with ambient noise. He could hear the sound of the city below him as he stood on the hill, watching things go by.

He span the camera view around to look at his character more closely. His robes fell gracefully around his body, moving slightly in the breeze. He raised his hands and watched as light cracked over them. Absent mindedly he tabbed through nearby targets, all of which were much too low level to cause him any trouble, and then clicked the energy burst button.

The magical blast flew from his finger tips and hit the targeted beast, which fell like a rock from the sky. His powers were high level now, there was hardly anything left in the world that was a challenge to him. He had heard rumours of a dragon troubling the peasants to the east… perhaps it would be powerful enough to give him some more experience. Experience points meant your status grew within the world, and you became higher level, and had more powers. Killing easy things didn’t give you experience. Not that everything was about killing. Binary Universe was a little different since it wasn’t just pointless quests, but there were brain teasing puzzles too. And it seemed impossible to cheat, at least with higher level quests. Either they were unique, or people had worked so hard to complete them that they didn’t want to tell anyone else how they’d done it.

He returned the camera view to the normal one and rotated round, looking around the landscape. Then he saw something in the distance, something that looked like a huge black cloud. Tendrils wriggled out from the centre, filling the sky with inky darkness.

“What on earth…?” he muttered, scrolling in a little to try and get a better view. He clicked on the strange thing, trying to figure out what it was. It was approaching quickly. He reached out and grabbed a handful of peanuts, washing them down with some mostly cold coffee. To begin with he just stood there, figuring that it was nothing more than impressive weather effects, but then he grew nervous. It was coming right at him, and it looked evil. Maybe he should run, or teleport… but no. Whatever was going to happen would happen. And it would save him having to roam the world looking for things to do.

The cloud enveloped him, so that he could see nothing, and then a voice spoke. “You are ready,” it said, “Our Queen wishes to have an audience with you.”

“The queen?” typed Dave, his heart beating faster with the excitement of it all.

“She had been watching your progress. And now it is time,” said the cloud, which was forming into weird faces around him as it moved.

Then the cloud dissipated, and he could see again, but he wasn’t where he’d been before. The city had gone, and instead he stood in a carpeted room, a large, luxurious, carpeted room.

“Wow,” he typed into the broadcast channel, “Is there anyone else here?”

No-one replied. It looked like he was in a zone by himself. It had been created purely for things to happen to him. He wondered how many other players had seen this place. Probably not that many.

“Hello?” he typed again.

He walked forward, admiring the décor as he did so. This place was amazing. For the developers to have gone to so much trouble for a zone hardly anyone would see… this had to be it, it had to be the end zone.

He toggled ‘run’ and moved faster, wanting to discover where he was, and why. Dashing through the corridors, he emerged into a huge room with tapestries hanging on the walls; everywhere he looked was a treasure that players would do all sorts of things to acquire for their own in-game player housing.

And then he saw her. The Queen.

She was the most beautifully rendered, perfectly animated creature he’d ever seen in the game. Real love must have gone into her creation. He stared at the monitor with his mouth half open, amazed.

“Wow,” he said under his breath, moving his character forward to interact with her.

“You are here,” she said, her eyes seemingly looking out of the monitor straight at him. It was as if she was ignoring his player character and talking to the man in charge.

“I am here,” he typed, agreeing with her.

“You have been deemed worthy of visiting this place, of seeing what your destiny can be,” she said.

He looked at her gorgeous face, the way her hair fell, the way the jewels in her tiara glittered. Her robes rippled as she moved towards him.

“You are Dark Saviour,” she said, using his character’s name, “But we also know you as Dave Smedley.”

“Oh wow,” said Dave, to his empty room, “It’s totally personalised! This is incredible!”

“How do you know my name?” he typed, wanting to know how it was all done.

“You have told us it, and we have learned. Every word you have typed we have analysed. We feel we know you, Dave.”

He thought about the many, many words he must have uttered inside the game, whether to non-player characters or to other humans playing the game and he thought that was probably true. It would be possible to build up a lot of information if you looked at everything someone did online.

It was a bit creepy, mind you.

“What do you want from me?” typed Dave.

“I feel it is time for you to meet your destiny, Dave. We all do. You knew the game must come to an end. And you wanted to know whether the legend was true.”

“I did,” he typed, admitting he’d been as curious about the legend as all the other players working their way through the Binary Universe hierarchy. “Is it true, then?”

Typing random things without using the in game grammar shouldn’t work. You generally had to ask a question with enough of the right words in for the program to realise what you were asking. You had to follow the structure of the conversation. But Dave was gradually realising that this conversation was different. He shivered, and not from the cold. He had to try something.

“You’re amazingly beautiful,” he typed, thinking that he wouldn’t get a reply.

“I know,” said the Queen, smiling, “I was designed to be. In a way, all who reach here are perfect in their own way. You spent many hours making your Dark Saviour exactly how you wanted him to be. Your looks, your striking appearance, the way you react to the world around you, none of it happened by chance.”

Dave, ran his hand over his stubbly chin in a thoughtful way. “This is totally incredible,” he said to himself.

“What did you want as a reward for your hard work?” asked the Queen. “What did you think happened at the end?”

Dave thought for a moment, realising that this was a real conversation. Either he was talking to some sort of AI, or a real person was talking to him through the game. Maybe they employed people to control the Queen, as if she was another game character.

“I don’t know what I thought would happen, but it was fun getting here,” he typed.

“You went for a monk sort of look, didn’t you?” asked the Queen, “Black robes and magical powers. You’re a little dark and yet you do good in the world. You have shown that you have a brain, since you did not come here purely to hit things with swords. But all who reach this point are useful, in one way or another.”

Dave frowned, “Useful?” he typed.

“Yes, for you have done us a great service,” said the Queen. “If you choose to, you can continue to do us a great service. You can serve us forever. You can BECOME your character.”

“Oh yeah, right,” said Dave.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” asked the Queen.

Clever, thought Dave, she’s reacting without me typing anything.

“Not exactly,” typed Dave. “I suppose the only way I can find out is if I agree to your plan. I have to admit I’m curious.”

The Queen smiled again, and it was more than a little sinister. “It is not a choice you should make lightly,” she said.

Dave chuckled to himself. Maybe that thing about your character becoming a Non-Player Character was true. That was the only way he could see the legend being even part way true. Obviously your conscious mind couldn’t be sucked into your PC and become merged with your game character. That was both impossible and, well, stupid.

“Okay,” he said, “Do it.”

He couldn’t say no, he wanted to see what would happen. He would miss Dark Saviour, but the world was too small for him now. He had no choice.

The Queen raised her hands, flexing her delicate fingers, and said some words in a language Dave didn’t understand.

Strange lights pulsed from the monitor.

“Oh wow,” said Dave, “WOW.”

But he looked at the pulsing patterns a little too closely. I suppose they did something odd to his brain. Next thing he knew (or didn’t know) was unconsciousness and his head hitting his computer keyboard.

The peanuts fell to the floor with the impact. But Dave did not move.

No-one seemed to be home.

1: Geeks, an explanation

2004-11-01T19:40:00.000Z

Before I get to the interesting part, and tell you about my friend’s adventures, I thought I should explain a few things. A little bit of background might help. But don’t worry if this is all too techie for you. You don’t have to be a geek to read about a life and death adventure full of, oh, leather clad ninja goddesses and evil masterminds. Anyway, I tend to ramble, and I know that the story I want to tell you might feature things you don’t understand. Some of it’s about computer games, you see. Specifically the online sort.

Maybe it’s ironic that every moment I’m writing this, I’d rather be playing a MMPORG. My husband’s sitting in the other room, playing, and I wish I could be too. But I want to write my friend’s adventures down – they’ve been in my head for a while - and if I write everything down then I might have a bit of extra room for something else. And the story features MMORPG’s.

Massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games are, basically, a computer game where you’re joined up to a virtual world via the internet. There’s an environment, and you make a character with which to explore the environment, but the difference is that loads of other people are doing the same thing. You’re all online, you’re all playing with each other. You can team up, you can work together, or kill each other, depending on the type of game. It all takes place in an online world that doesn’t go away when you switch off your PC. Things are happening there without you.

I suppose that MMORPG’s are a fairly unplayed genre, compared to things like First Person Shooters. It used to be the case that in order to progress you had to spend huge quantities of your time playing. There are some games now that don’t consume time to such a great extent, although it’s still possible to become horribly obsessed. The genre is becoming more popular. If you think about it, gaming is becoming more and more mainstream. People reaching adulthood had computers (and consoles) when they were small. And games aren’t something that you grow out of. Not computer games. Maybe you move on, play different types of game, but you still play. And if you’re a grown up, maybe you have the time and money to become obsessed with a MMORPG. You can afford the monthly fee, and you don’t have a parent telling you to stop wasting your life.

And the internet, well, that started as a thing only really techie people could figure out, and now everyone uses it. Most people have access, and most people own a PC, even if they hate the thing and can’t figure out what’s going on in its inexplicable computer brain. Broadband has given online games a new lease of life. You can have amazingly detailed graphics – you no longer have to live in a text based world such as the old MUD’s and MOO’s. MMORPG’s are certainly not new. Maybe there isn’t as much imagination involved in these new worlds as there was with the old, but it’s amazing how things have progressed. They’ve certainly become more accessible.

I won’t bore you with in depth discussion of such things, because you probably don’t really care. And I’m no expert, so I probably couldn’t tell you anything you couldn’t look up on the internet.

The first time I tried an online game, I tried a text one. I suppose it was around 1998. You had to write a detailed character description, outlining your powers and background, and submit it for approval. And then you were off, free to interact with all those other people. Most of them were American (I’m English), which meant they were online at odd times, and it was more social than anything else. There were far fewer restrictions than with modern online games.

My husband introduced me to other online games, and I’m on my third one now. In my spare time I’m a superhero. My main character is Bride of Seth, who was an archaeologist killed by graverobbers. They stashed her body in a sarcophagus when she found out about their artefact stealing, but the sarcophagus had magical powers and it resurrected her. Now she uses slightly scary powers of the dark to hunt down evil people, always hoping that she’ll find the ones who killed her. (You see, there’s still a little imagination involved, if you want there to be.) You can be whatever you want online, you can hide behind another persona, but it’s still basically you. It’s what you might be, if you weren’t shy, or held back by things. Or if you were caught up in certain circumstances, like being an archaeologist who was murdered and stashed in a magical sarcophagus.

This is where the geek thing comes in. When you call someone a geek, chances are they’ll be offended. They shouldn’t be, though. There are lots of us who are proud to be geeks. We have a natural affinity with computers. They’re our friends. We’ve spent hours doing things with them. I always had this theory that if a geek wanted to, he could wreak havoc on the world. But mostly geeks aren’t like that. Mostly they’re shy people, who sit at their PC’s and interact with people online because it’s much less scary. You can be who you are inside without actually having to be face to face with them. You can talk about anything, argue, even date.

Perhaps I should add that your avatar, your created character, is not always who you are inside, but who you’d LIKE to be. If you don’t have a fantastic body, and you don’t wear clothes that hardly exist, and you don’t fight crime using amazing superpowers, the chance to lead such a life, even if it’s in a virtual environment, is… addictive. I mean, it’s an amazing escape from real life, an opportunity to put aside all the problems and just play.

I wouldn’t like to make it sound like I think all of the men who make scantily clad females would like to be scantily clad females, because I don’t think that’s why they do it. I think they might like to meet someone like that in order to engage in particular activities, and possibly they like looking at the scantily clad female they’ve created. But to project too much of this sceptical thought onto men is, I think, unfair. And it probably works both ways, too. Perhaps the women who make handsome, caring men, are creating their ideal partner in a virtual world.

There are a few geeks who make the headlines because they spread viruses, or hack into things, but most geeks just talk to other geeks, and surf the internet, and play games. You don’t have to be a geek to be an obsessive game player, but it helps.

Let’s face it, if you’re not a geek, you’d probably want to go outside all the time and interact with people without having to type. You’d probably go clubbing, that sort of thing. But a geek wouldn’t like that. To most geeks, clubbing would be a terrible nightmare. It would be much more fun to be sitting in front of your PC, playing games, or reading random things, or talking via some sort of messaging system. Not actually having the scariness of people being there, but not being alone, having something to take your mind off of things.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with the story I want to tell you. You might have guessed why I chose the title I did. If a geek wanted to, if a geek could overcome his inherent geekiness, his shyness, he could go a long way. But most geeks are content just to play. My friend was, until something happened to him that pushed him into a terrifying adventure. You could be sure that whenever you logged on he’d be online, spending time in the virtual environment that he loved more than the real world. In the game he was powerful, he’d worked hard to become someone important. In real life he’d never get that far.

I was never as obsessed as he was. I never even tried his game, because it demanded too much time. It was the ultimate in geeky online games. It was really, really hardcore. He seemed to play all night; I always wondered when he had time to sleep. I could never let a game take over to that extent. He played in the daytime, too, when he could. He had to work sometimes. But he told me the whole story, and I thought that one day it would be good to write it down.

The game he played was Binary Universe. You may have heard of it. It’s a strange blend of science fiction and fantasy, and a game that’s constantly evolving due to the actions of the players. It’s also famous within the gaming world for a rather strange legend. It was rumoured that when you hit a certain level, your conscious mind was sucked into the game and you got to be your character, forever. You actually ended up in the game. Which is ridiculous. Clearly nothing like that could ever happen.

But the legend persists.

I don’t know why the legend made so many geeks determined to reach that level, that point of alleged transformation. None of them could have believed that such a thing was possible. I suppose they thought that even if it didn’t happen, something pretty amazing had to take place. Mind you, most MMORPG’s don’t have such legends surrounding them, and people still play as much as possible in order to create high level characters. Some people even do it to make money. They create an account, play the character until he’s high level, then sell it. But Binary Universe’s mysterious legend made it special. Some of the people wandering around the world, NPC’s (Non-Player Characters, or characters that weren’t controlled by people logging into the game), were characters that had once been human controlled. That only reinforced the legend. Were the characters based on those geeks had created? Or was something else going on?

I doubt my friend ever thought about it too deeply. As far as he was concerned he was just having fun. Urban legends, like the person who microwaved their dog to dry its fur, may be fictional, or there may be something to them. Most of the time, people don’t really care whether things are true or not. It doesn’t really matter, after all. You can spread whatever lies you want on the internet, and chances are someone will believe them, and tell someone else, until it’s all over the place.

But sometimes, very rarely, the true story is something even stranger than the legend.

Na-Na-Blog-Mo

2004-10-28T21:14:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm going to try and write a novel in a month. If you're wondering what on earth this means then look here! My novel is about being a geek. I would try and describe it better but it's hard! It'll probably be fairly comedic, and yet serious. Hehe. I will have to try and post a better preview of it, but that will take thought. :D