《Sigurd Morrison’s Bug Hunt》 Prologue - Abandonware Steam closed it doors to independent developers on July 17, 2020. One of the final games published before this deadline was a truVR first-person shooter called Sigurd Morrison¡¯s Bug Hunt. No one knew who Sigurd Morrison was before the game¡¯s release, and afterward no one cared. Bug Hunt was met with mixed to negative reviews and was generally regarded as a symbol of the Steam platform¡¯s failure to properly curate anything vaguely resembling a playable end product. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. A month after its release, everyone had forgotten about Bug Hunt. It lived on only in a few privately-hosted servers, where a small, insular, and fanatical community soon rose. They were a strange bunch. Chapter One - The Accident David¡¯s accident came as quite a shock. We played CoD every weekend, and he and I had just completed our competitive placement matches the previous night. We played a damn good game, too, each placing in the top ten thousand players worldwide. David was a few years older than me, and remembered cutting his gaming teeth on old VR shooters like Halo Dive and Battlefield 6. He was my cousin, but a pretty distant one. We met at a family reunion one year and just sort of clicked over our mutual love of shooters. I had accepted truVR as a matter of course, having grown up with it, and was puzzled how anyone could have found a game fun where you couldn¡¯t actually feel the sun¡¯s heat and smell the gunpowder as the wind carried it past. Apparently people played games like that for decades, though. Gaming was even popular before regular VR became consumer available. According to David (and of course old books and movies) people used to play AAA games on screens. Can you imagine? I mean, I enjoy the odd mobile game, but back then phones didn¡¯t even have hologram projection¡­ Anyway, I¡¯m sure you¡¯ve heard the same from some older brother or friend. The reason I bring it up is to show how into games and gaming history David was. Whenever he learned something new (Hey, apparently in 2015 Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro almost made a Silent Hill game together. How cool would that have been?) I¡¯d be the first to hear about it, and likewise whenever David played a new MMO or shooter I¡¯d be the first person asked to join his newest (and always short-lived) guild. I never heard about Bug Hunt from David. By the time I found out, it was too late to do anything. On May 3rd, 2036, Aunt Luci called to inform me in a voice barely comprehensible through sobs that David was in an accident which had rendered him comatose. Not a traffic or workplace accident, but one which happened while my cousin was playing a video game.
***
I hugged Aunt Luci as I stepped into her house, tilting my head to plant a kiss on her gray-haired head. I had grown quite a bit in my teen years, and I now towered over the old lady I¡¯d used to think of as a severe giant. Now I couldn¡¯t see her as anything more than a grieving mother. ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± I said. ¡°Anything I can do, just say the word.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she whispered, embracing me even more tightly. ¡°I¡¯ve never understood the appeal of these things, but I didn¡¯t know they were dangerous.¡± They weren¡¯t supposed to be, of course. Aside from some old, crappy anime and books involving getting killed by your video games, nothing of the sort had ever happened in real life. Early in truVR¡¯s life-cycle there was a lot of debate as to the safety of a signal which could directly stimulate a player¡¯s nerves. Eventually it was decided the FCC would regulate a specific data service which game servers could tap to stream prefabricated nervous responses to truVR clients. It was very costly, but very safe. Client-side nervous responses were strictly illegal, and even when server-driven some things like sexual stimulation were never made available to developers at all. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. In short: truVR games were designed in the platform¡¯s infancy to be as safe as could be. If David¡¯s ¡°accident¡± had occurred while he was playing one, something was very wrong. Aunt Luci showed me David¡¯s room. Despite being 26, four years older than myself, David hadn¡¯t moved out of home yet. His father had died some years ago, and he was the closest family his mother had left. Well, emotionally. Myself and a couple other cousins lived within a half-hour¡¯s drive, but it¡¯s not as though we were particularly close with Aunt Luci. I¡¯d been gradually adopted into the close family as David and I did all our online adventuring together, but that was about the extent of it. That Aunt Luci had called me instead of a relationally closer relative said a lot. David¡¯s PC was a small, black, matte-finished cube with a pair of blue LEDs signifying upload and download speeds were normal. The rest of his room was very tidy, unlike mine¡ªHis bed was made neatly, a pair of cedar bookshelves housed a smart lineup of scifi and fantasy classics, and a single shelf above his desk held an assortment of gaming collectibles. The only things out of place were the desk chair fallen onto its side and the wireless truVR headset and electrode bubbles scattered across the floor. I knelt and picked up the headset, noting the crack in its slick exterior where it had collided with one of my cousin¡¯s bedposts. ¡°How long ago was the... accident?¡± I asked, turning to my aunt. ¡°Six hours ago,¡± she said quietly. She hung back in the doorway, hand covering her mouth. The poor woman hadn¡¯t even picked up the fallen furniture and gear. She was a mess. I carefully righted the fallen chair and returned David¡¯s headset and electrodes to their charging cradle, then picked up the small PC and carried it with me as I approached the doorway. ¡°Is it all right if I take a look at this?¡± I asked gently. Aunt Luci nodded and looked away as I led her down the hall, quietly closing the door to David¡¯s room as we left. ¡°You can stay with me tonight,¡± I continued. ¡°And then tomorrow I¡¯ll drive you over to the hospital. Does that sound okay?¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± she said again, and I smiled as I led her outside to the car. Or, at least, I smiled on the outside. Inwardly I was reeling. David¡¯s truVR headset was still on when I picked it up. One of their most basic safety features disconnected a fuse if the headset was ever forcibly removed. That was a safety feature I had thought built into the OS. Either there was some physical flaw in David¡¯s truVR hardware, or my cousin had been tampering with the basic functionality of a tool capable of interfacing with the human brain. A device capable of transmitting sight, and smell, and pain. What were you doing? I asked my comatose cousin lying motionless in a hospital twenty miles away. And why didn¡¯t you tell me about it? Chapter Two - Black Forest Cake It may be a cliche, but I hate hospitals. They¡¯re too quiet, they stink, and everyone is so stressed the tension makes me feel like I¡¯m swimming through mud. I glanced into the hallway as a tousled-haired doctor stormed silently by, his mouth a thin line and a tablet held white-knuckled in his hand. I moved a step away from the door. ¡°David,¡± Aunt Luci whispered. She rubbed her son¡¯s hand in both her own, that weird smile on her face people get when they don¡¯t want to break out in heavy sobbing. For his part, David said nothing. He looked for all the world as though he were taking a nap. His eyes were peacefully closed, and his chest rose and fell softly. Of course, those breaths were helped along by the hose and mask strapped to his face and snaked down his throat. A monitor above his head registered a regular heartbeat, but no brain activity. Two days had passed since the accident, and I was my aunt¡¯s ride to and from my apartment on each of them as she spent all her time visiting with her comatose son. I touched her on the arm and smiled apologetically to the nurse standing by David¡¯s bed. ¡°Come on,¡± I said to Aunt Luci. ¡°They¡¯ll take good care of him. Let¡¯s go get some dinner.¡± An hour and a half later we sat at my dining table, a bucket of KFC between us, using tiny plastic sporks to eat the delicious crap they called mashed potatoes. My aunt seemed to have recovered her sense of self a bit, and we talked about the news and my mother¡¯s (her sister¡¯s) new litter of bulldog puppies. Eventually the food was gone and the puppies¡¯ adorable qualities were exhausted and there only remained the elephant in the room. I took a deep breath. ¡°Aunt Luci,¡± I said carefully, ¡°have you thought about going back to work?¡± She cast her face down, but thankfully didn¡¯t protest. ¡°I know I should,¡± she said. ¡°I don¡¯t want to, but I should.¡± Smiling, I nodded. ¡°Maybe you could give it another day and then try for Friday? That¡¯ll give you the weekend after to adjust and you can be ready by Monday to go back in full force.¡± I smiled as kindly as I knew how. Aunt Luci worked for a small debt-collection agency where she put her chilling, headmistress-like demeanor to good use. She wouldn¡¯t do much in a state of mourning, but maybe the old habit of aggressive, wolfhoundish harassment would help her feel more in control of the situation. Aunt Luci smiled, and it was happier now than it had been in the hospital. ¡°Thank you so much, Nathan. For everything.¡± Well, I preferred to be called Nate, but didn¡¯t correct her. Instead I patted my aunt¡¯s arm and returned her smile. ¡°You¡¯re more than welcome. You¡¯ve put up with me enough over the years. I more than owe it to you.¡± I stood. ¡°Let me get us some dessert; you sit right here.¡± I breathed a sigh of relief as I entered the kitchenette and cut us each a slice of Aunt Luci¡¯s favorite, Black Forest Cake. Thank goodness she¡¯d be working again. She lived in precisely the wrong direction for it to make sense for her to return to my apartment after work, so I¡¯d be free to delve into the oddity of my cousin¡¯s accident in the evenings, something I felt was a bad idea with Aunt Luci in the same building. I didn¡¯t want her to see me unresponsive in a truVR dive and freak out. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. We ate the cake when I returned to the dining room, and then Aunt Luci watched a soap opera on the TV while I read an old G.R.R. Martin book. At ten my aunt retired to the guest bedroom (come to think of it, she was the first person to ever use it in the two years I¡¯d lived in that apartment¡­) and I closed my book. I couldn¡¯t take it any longer; I needed to see something of what David had been up to. Placing my cousin¡¯s PC on my desk¡¯s induction charger, I began to reach for my truVR gear, but hesitated. I had no idea what was going on. Better to be safe than sorry. Rolling my eyes, I hauled an old physical keyboard from under my bed and paired it with David¡¯s PC. The computer hummed for a moment before projecting to the nearest screen, the desktop monitor I use for watching sports. Thankfully it only took me three tries to guess David¡¯s password (nothing you need to know!) and arrive on my cousin¡¯s desktop, three windows minimized to the task bar. I reached into the holographic layer hovering above my monitor¡¯s glassy surface and flicked all three windows to an active position. The first window was Google Chrome, the active page a Russian gaming forum. Weird. The second was a chat client which locked me out after four attempts at cracking David¡¯s password. He¡¯s smarter than I am; I use the same password for everything. Finally was what I had come to see, the truVR client. A textbox overlaid the array of games and software:
Disconnected from server ¡®9120350078154024e00f¡¯
¡­Weird. I pressed my finger onto the textbox and held it there until the box ¡°popped¡± and returned to its normal size, flicking the cloned image into the clipboard icon on the taskbar, and then hit escape to return to the truVR library. I scrolled through ¡°recently played,¡± wondering how David managed to get almost double the number of hours I played on most of our games despite his job forcing him to work ten hours more a week than myself. Maybe my cousin just never slept, and his coma was the inevitable consequence of a life driven by adrenaline-pumping shooters and stimulant-packed energy drinks with no respite. Of course, had that been the case, David probably would have suffered a heart attack, not simply fallen unconscious, and the doctor had told Aunt Luci that David¡¯s heartbeat was perfectly stable. I was musing on that when I scrolled past the app bearing a red ¡°Last Played¡± badge, Sigurd Morrison¡¯s Bug Hunt. It looked so generic I almost scrolled past it. My eyes narrowed as I saw the playtime. One hundred and thirty-four hours. A lot of time for a game David had never mentioned, and which looked from the game tile¡¯s artwork to have been published something like fifty years ago. I double-tapped on Bug Hunt¡¯s game tile, sending me to the game¡¯s Steam store page. I¡¯m not sure what I was expecting. Maybe embarrassing, like a puzzle game about insectoid monster girls. Certainly not the garbage fire that lay before me then. Chapter Three - Poorly Made Equipment
Go into a world full of monsters and injuries! Explore the post-apocalyptic wasteland, create weapons and combine objects, communicate with friends, create guilds, create your own base with protection and, of course, hunt for a lot of bugs with reliable modern and realistic weapons! Changes log¡­ 1.02 Fixed a problem where monsters fled through fences and buildings to attack players. I''m sorry! 1.2 There are better effects and performance for poorly made equipment 1.3 Now the game has something else, yes, you can build a MACHINE GUN to attach to the base and protect your friends throughout the night!
That was Steam¡¯s store page description of Sigurd Morrison¡¯s Bug Hunt. It was puzzling, to say the least. The publisher was only listed as ¡°SM Productions,¡± and they had published no other games since Bug Hunt¡¯s release in¡­ Yeesh, 2020! Not exactly fifty years old, but the terrible quality of the preview screenshots and videos piled on years like an old man¡¯s liver spots. Low-polygon models were framed by an ugly puke-green GUI that looked like it was trying to emulate some kind of night vision goggle HUD. Overenthusiastic particle effects sprayed terribly fake-looking blood from the neck of one ghillie-suited wasteland survivor as another stabbed him in the neck with the handle of a spoon. Three guys with assault rifles rode through a barren desert on a land speeder which looked like it came from some other, better game. None of the screenshots or videos actually seemed to show the ¡°bugs¡± mentioned in the title. Maybe it referred to the game being an unplayable mess, which is what the comments complained of. ¡°The devs told us they fixed bugs walking through walls,¡± one review whined, ¡°but it just takes them longer now. What¡¯s the point of trying to run away? You might as well just log off.¡± Another was an angry, slur-filled rant about the intelligence of your average Russian developer (I suppose that explained the weird wording in the description) and how if you were going to shut down servers a year after release you owed it to the userbase to refund everyone¡¯s money. I checked the price of the game. Whatever ¡°StormFeight101¡± had paid for the Bug Hunt, it was the price of a sandwich now. In short, I saw nothing that seemed to justify David having spent over a hundred hours in the game. I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my tired eyes. I¡¯d forgotten how shitty Steam reviewers could be. Well, tomorrow Aunt Luci would be gone and I could get actual research done. *** ¡°Nothing¡¯s wrong with it,¡± Sadie said with a shrug. She stepped into the hallway leading to her apartment and returned the cardboard box with David¡¯s truVR gear I¡¯d asked her to look at. Sadie printed circuit boards and built retro game controllers as a hobby, so I figured if anyone could quickly help me it¡¯d be her. ¡°You sure? It¡¯s cracked on the side, that could have done something.¡± Sadie rolled her eyes. ¡°No, it couldn¡¯t have. There¡¯s a gel pad right here¡­¡± She tapped me hard on the side of the head. ¡°¡­and here and here.¡± Each word was punctuated by another painful prod. ¡°Because those internals are expensive, yo. Your cousin wouldn¡¯t have been the first person to crack his head and knock himself out without harming the internals.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Shit happens.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I shook my head. ¡°No, that¡¯s what we thought at first too, but the doctor said David showed no injuries bad enough to knock him into a coma, and based on the angle of the injury he thinks David was unconscious before he hit the floor.¡± I shifted uncomfortably. ¡°Besides, like I said, the gear was still on when I cleaned it up six hours later.¡± ¡°Yeah, I don¡¯t get that at all. I tested it out, and the fuse disconnected every time I pulled it off my head.¡± Sadie wrinkled her nose. ¡°Tell your cousin to brush his teeth more. The inside of that thing stinks.¡± If he ever wakes up, she didn¡¯t say. It got a grin out of me. ¡°I know, right? Pretty sure he uses garlic and onion toothpaste.¡± I looked down into the box. The long crack on the headgear¡¯s side shimmered sickly in the hallway¡¯s dim fluorescent lighting. ¡°Well¡­ thanks anyway, Sadie. I owe you one.¡± ¡°Maybe you¡¯ll finally take me out to dinner one of these nights,¡± she said with a smug grin. She really was cute, and super smart, but I¡¯d had enough trouble in the past dating coworkers from the same department, so I regrettably had to turn her down again. ¡°The minute you get that promotion to the upstairs office, well¡­¡± I tried to return the smile, but I don¡¯t do coy very well. I probably looked like a constipated emu. ¡°You can treat me to dinner to celebrate!¡± Sadie punched me in the arm and began to close her door, but froze with a contemplative look on her face before completely dismissing me. ¡°You know, if what you¡¯re describing wasn¡¯t just some freak hardware accident, you could be dealing with something like a virus.¡± ¡°Yeah right.¡± Viruses just didn¡¯t exist any more, not for over ten years. Computers were fantastic at second-guessing things which tried to exploit them. They had gotten to that point because of software engineers like Sadie and myself. Well, not really us, but people like the last generation of engineers. ¡°Whatever, it was just a thought. Hope your cousin feels better.¡± She was clearly pissed at my dismissal of her idea, which worried me. She hadn¡¯t meant it as a joke. Sadie was the best software engineer I knew. If she thought a virus was possible, maybe it was. *** An hour later I sat in my room again, staring at David¡¯s PC. Sadie had me worried. Better safe than sorry, I guess. I booted up David¡¯s PC in safe mode, copied down the address of that Russian forum he¡¯d had open, and shut the PC down again. I then booted up my own, larger computer and pulled up the Russian forum in my browser. Unfortunately, I couldn¡¯t read a single one of the runes (I think they¡¯re called Cyrillic?) making up the text of the forum, so I allowed my browser¡¯s auto-translate take a shot. Apparently I was looking at the ¡°Triage Gaming Forum.¡± Not the most inviting name, but whatever. Maybe the translation was off. The thread I was reading, which David had pulled open, seemed to concern trading in-game skins in some MOBA. Hundreds at a time. For quite a lot of money. For the fiftieth time, I suspected something was amiss. Chapter Four - Small Size Monster Pet Capes Thankfully, David¡¯s forum account was still logged in on his PC. I scrolled through his recent post history. Most of his posts were in threads similar to the one about MOBA skins, talking about trading ¡°red fox ears shackles¡± and ¡°small sized monster pet capes¡± and other oddly-named items in exchange for ¡°swords¡± used by a character named Limbo. Either my browser¡¯s translator function wasn¡¯t quite up to the task, or there was something going on more than trading in-game items for some MOBA I¡¯d never heard of.David¡¯s posts seemed worded oddly differently than most of the rest of the people chiming in on the threads, and I wondered if he was just translating from English to Russian. Or maybe he actually spoke Russian, and that was just another thing I¡¯d never known about my ever-stranger cousin. Besides the trading threads, I found what I was looking for in a few threads asking about Bug Hunt¡¯s features and mechanics. David never liked to read beginner¡¯s guides or anything like that, so I figured Bug Hunt must be particularly obtuse. Nothing seemed odd about the posts, though. I¡¯d been expecting¡­ To tell the truth, I don¡¯t really know. Deranged ranting, maybe? Some kind of Jekyll/Hyde dimorphic personality that would come some small way to explaining what all this business was about? Then I noticed the private message icon in the upper right corner of the screen. The site was so poorly designed the icon was barely visible against the forum¡¯s background, but overlaid on a stylized envelope was the numeral ¡°1.¡± A new message since my cousin last logged on. I reached out and tapped on the hologram hovering over my monitor¡¯s surface, calling the PM inbox to load. The newest message sprang onto the screen. Three Roman alphabet letters.
RIP
The fuck? I stared at the message for a moment. Maybe Sadie was right about the virus. This had to be connected. Could a virus tap into a truVR headset¡¯s stimulus function and¡­ kill the user? Why would someone want to even do that? My hand was reaching for my phone to call the police when I realized how bad this looked for David. The weird behavior, the sketchy posts on a foreign message board, the technology breaking its basic rules of functionality. In another situation it might have sounded like a bad cyberpunk gang story. Hell, maybe that¡¯s what it was. Either way, my cousin was at the heart of it. Even if he had never told me about this corner of his life, David was like a brother to me. I owed it to him to sort things out before involving the cops. Out of force of habit I clicked ¡°inbox¡± to back out of the ominous message. Two more, older messages sat in David¡¯s Triage Gaming Forum inbox, the oldest a bit older than two months. They were both titled in English. I clicked on the oldest message.
>Just Desserts >>Hi deathclaw thx again for ur service >>A deals a deal here u go >>9120350078154024e00f >>Were on 1800PETT usually >>Obviously some on more lol but u cant make that yet >>Keep the faith brother only a couple more years right? >>CY(k)A (blyat) >>>haha (a joke)
I read the message a few times through. DeathClaw2015 was the username David used for everything. That was the easy part. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. ¡°thx again for ur service¡± David was doing something for this guy¡­ I checked the sender. RedExPatriot. That made sense, sort of. The guy had been writing (a bastardized form of) English, the kind laced with shortcuts born of actually knowing the goddamn language. A quick Google search told me PETT referenced the Kamchatka Time of Russia¡¯s east coast. Nineteen hours ahead of our own British Columbian Pacific Time. Six PM (if that¡¯s what 1800 meant) PETT would mean Eleven at night for David. That was later than he and I gamed together, allowing for time to play with RedExPatriot and his posse before work in the morning. Assuming David, like, didn¡¯t sleep. I wouldn¡¯t be surprised, concerning the way things were panning out. I looked at the next line of the message again. ¡°A deals a deal here u go¡± And then ¡°9120350078154024e00f¡± There was that string of characters that was apparently a server address, though it didn¡¯t look like any standard protocol I knew of. I dragged the address into Google, but nothing relevant came up. Maybe it was encrypted. In any event, David had received this address for in exchange for something, likely ¡°ur service.¡± Whatever that was, I doubted it actually involved trading hundreds of MOBA skins for ¡°Limbo swords.¡± The next part of the message puzzled me. ¡°Obviously some on more lol but u cant make that yet¡± And then ¡°Keep the faith bro only a couple more years right?¡± I had no idea what this meant. A few more years? Was David planning to go to some gaming convention with these people? Was there an MLG team he was forming I didn¡¯t know about? If RedExPatriot expected David would be part of a guild for any meaningful length of time, he would find himself disappointed soon. I tabbed over to the other message in David¡¯s inbox I hadn¡¯t read. This one was shorter, but again from RedExPatriot.
>Kick It Up A Notch Spicy Style >>Hi deathclaw u did REAL GOOD in the raid >>I said be patient now it pays off brother have a gander at this >>real good shit >>Just drag and drop the new RTP it unpacks itself >>CYU in the rillist world!!
The underlined text hyperlinked to a P2P file sharing site. The file in reference was an 800 GB archive, nothing too out of the ordinary for a AAA game. I checked David¡¯s Downloads folder, but it was clean, unlike my own. I swear everything I¡¯ve downloaded over the past five years is still sitting right where it fell. Well, the file sharing site had no description of the file, but I figured it was some kind of mod that made the ugly game look prettier. David always was a sucker for visual fidelity. Even if gameplay was most important to him, he¡¯d spend hours configuring a new game to get it looking as beautiful as he possibly could. I cared nowhere near that much. Games are all about responsiveness and a great core gameplay loop to me. As long as there¡¯s good sensory feedback, a game could look like it came out in 2000 for all I care. So I exited out of the browser and shut down David¡¯s PC. I sat on my bed for a long while, digesting the things I¡¯d just read. Russians, skins, encrypted servers, modded runtime packages. I was at too high a level to understand what was going on. A bird in the sky might as well try to scope out an individual ant crawling in a forest teeming with life. It was getting late, but before retiring I made an account on the Triage Gaming Forum, introduced myself as Danger2Close, and began to download Sigurd Morisson¡¯s Bug Hunt from Steam. I lay in bed for a long while, thinking of some creepy ex-pat sitting in a Russian basement a thousand miles away, before sleep finally claimed me. Chapter Five - Peaceful Diorama I don¡¯t know if I was more excited or anxious to leave work the next day. Here I was, finally following in David¡¯s virtual footsteps. Whatever had lured him to spend so many hours in this game I would hopefully soon learn. I hadn''t used my truVR gear since David¡¯s accident. The headset and electrodes lay on their charging cradle, a thin layer of dust staticked to their glossy black surfaces. I wiped away the dust and attached the soft electrode pads to their places over my heart and carotid artery, confirming they gave vital signatures before lying on my bed and donning the helmet. The familiar sensation of a truVR dive came upon me, starting with a tingling at my extremities that quickly spread across my whole body. Then, nothing. I couldn''t feel myself, and was surrounded by dark. I always hated this moment, brief as it was. It felt like being buried alive in a coffin so tight there was no room to move. But the moment passed, and my virtual desktop quickly assembled itself around me. I stood on a loamy hill covered with soft green grass. The sun shone overhead but the broad leaves of the ancient beech tree at my back shielded me from the beating heat. Clouds drifted in a sky bluer than any you¡¯d see in nature. At the base of the hill wildflowers grew in white and yellow and red, stretching as far as the eye could see in every direction. I''d visited a place like this when I was younger, and it had moved me enough that I forged my virtual desktop in its memory¡¯s image so I could visit it whenever I wanted. The floating icons like possessed CRT TVs hadn¡¯t been there in my original visit. These represented the games and software I could use while immersed in a truVR dive. Most of them bore thick gray borders, but one of them was bounded by a band of red signifying newly installed software. I approached Sigurd Morrison¡¯s Bug Hunt and the icon expanded into a gaping doorway leading into a lightless void. With not a little trepidation I left behind the peaceful diorama of my virtual desktop and stepped into the dark unknown. ***
No public servers found! Searching again... No public servers found! Join private server or Exit?
I blinked, and then called up my clipboard and dragged what I hoped was an encrypted server address into the window.
Server found. You have joined ''9120350078154024e00f'' Message of the day: ''§¥§à§Ò§â§à §á§à§Ø§Ñ§Ý§à§Ó§Ñ§ä§î §Ó §ß§à§Ó§í§Û §Þ§Ú§â''
Before I had time to tell the computer to translate the MotD everything disappeared. The moment of unfeeling, unseeing dark came and passed once more, but my new surroundings were not so quick to load this time. A minute passed, and then a small platform appeared beneath my feet. I had the sudden perception I had been falling down a bottomless pit before the ground appeared, but pushed the feeling aside. After the platform loaded, a text window maybe two feet long and one tall appeared before my face.
Welcome to game! You are new, so here is ¡°up to speed¡±: In birth, you become gift three determined ¡°perks.¡± These last in life. These reassigned in dead. Stay alive for nights get more perks in choice of three and get more features like sending private messaging to players! For now: get food, get housing, hunt bug, (if you are an ASS-HOLE) hunt player. Survive the night!
After I finished reading it the window disappeared an a new one popped up in its place, a table describing three of the perks described by the introduction message. I wondered if they were random or if they were the same for every new player, and if I could reselect them.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
WAYFINDER Nearest town and any close treasure boxes appear on the map.
SANDMAN Sleep gives double healing.
FRIENDLY PHEROMONE Bugs will not attack unless you run near.
The perk descriptions seemed more coherent than the initial message had been. I was at least pretty sure I could understand what they meant, though I wasn¡¯t sure of their significance. Was sleep the only way to heal? Did double speed healing actually mean anything? Were maps plentiful in the game already? I doubted a survival game like Bug Hunt appeared wouldn¡¯t leave its players without any way to navigate the world. Now, Friendly Pheromone sounded useful, and Sandman sounded promising, but I wasn¡¯t so sure about Wayfinder. I tried tapping its box to see if I could reselect the perk, but instead it closed out the window and a new message shoved itself into my face.
We. Are. OFF!!! Enjoy your stay in the heartthrobbing fast paced world of BUG HUNT.
Before I could react the platform of ground beneath my feet seemed to fuzz and then expand, stretching out in every direction and sprouting plants and stones and trees and hills. A white sun manifested up above, casting my shadow harsh and long before being obscured by a sickly gray cloud cover that dulled the colors of the world sprouting up around me. Trees grew sharp branches, and tiny shoots of grass wriggled from the soil to nestle the weeds and flowers and bushes that had already rendered. Within moments I stood alone in a field of yellow-gray grass, surrounded by thin fog and skeletal trees and bushes. Hills and mountains rose in the close and far distances, and there was not a living creature in sight. Something was very off, but it took me a moment to realize it. I could barely feel anything. There were sounds, to be sure, and while the world was poor quality (textures looked very much like textures, if that makes any sense. Not photorealistic at all) the visuals definitely existed. But the sensations I should have been experiencing were just¡­ missing. I felt a basic pressure on my skin (looking down, by the way, I saw myself dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, with a backpack¡¯s straps over my shoulders) where it was exposed that matched the dull animation shared by all the tree branches and grass as a half-assed wind script moved them to and fro. Dull heat warmed me when I stepped into the odd patch of bright sunlight, but it was more a feeling of general warmth like you¡¯d feel from wearing a too-thick jacket than the caress of sunlight on a chilly day. I couldn¡¯t smell anything at all, nor taste the blade of grass I plucked and raised to my lips. This game wasn¡¯t properly synced with the sensory servers that literally every major game used. I¡¯d only been there a moment, and Bug Hunt sucked already. Crashing and peripheral movement caught my attention, and instinctively I turned, crouched, and drew my weapon. Luckily the game responded to that nervous command the same way most standard shooters did. I would have hated to have to spend a half hour trying to figure out where all my gear and commands were located in the ease-of-access queue. Sure, manually pulling off my backpack and sorting out its contents could work in a pinch, but it¡¯s so much more convenient to feel the presence of your ammo in your mind, reach back, grab it, and reload without wasting precious active thought processing on it. In any event, I drew a worn-looking Makarov pistol from my hip holster and aimed it at the source of the noise to my left. Or at least, I tried to. My aim was off, artificially sped up and wobbly. As I saw the slavering jaws of a timber wolf closing in, I doubted I could correct my aim in time to save my new-found life. Chapter Six - Keeps You Moist and Fresh Three sharp reports sliced through the air of the grassy field even as my bullets cut through the charging wolf. Well, two of the rounds did, and even then just barely. One bullet narrowly missed the beast while the second grazed its shoulder. My third and final round punctured the creature¡¯s upper leg, and then it was upon me. Razor-sharp fangs tore through my shirt and into my unarmored chest, and a stylized overlay of red blood spatters cluttered my vision. I hammed the timber wolf¡¯s face with my pistol, kicking at the creature¡¯s heavy body as I did so. Finally I struck the wolf in the eye, and with a yelp it backed away. My vision was completely obscured by blood splatters, but I wasted no time in leveling my gun and emptying my remaining six rounds at the source of my assailant¡¯s whining. When the echoes faded, there was only silence. I stood still, breathing hard, waiting as the blood marks faded from my vision. The timber wolf lay dead a few feet away. Instinctively I reached back into my backpack to grab a new new magazine of ammunition, but a notification flashed in the corner of my vision.
None ammo! Scavenge, buy, or craft more.
That was disappointing. I tried a few gestures and mental impulses before my inventory screen opened in front of my face, a simple table of names and descriptions.
Makarov [old] One starting gun. Takes 9mm ammo. 12-24 piercing damage [6-18 old]
Shiv [old] One starting knife. 10-12 piercing damage [8-10 old]
Shirt [scraps] Keeps you warm. 1 armor [0 scraps]
Trousers Hides your dong. 1 armor
Candy Bar Full of energy. +2 hunger
Bottle Water Keeps you moist and fresh. +5 hunger
Flare Light for short time or start fire. 20 fire damage
Well then. Aside from the trouser description, nothing really out of the ordinary. At least I knew I didn¡¯t need to manage hunger and thirst. It was too bad they didn¡¯t give me any more ammunition or a healing item¡­ I started as I realized that I was gravely injured, but felt no pain. I fumbled with gestures until I found my status screen.
Health 8/50
Body Injury
Arms Good
Legs Good
Hunger 49/50
Dry 50/50
Weight 2 kg [fast]
My health was very low. In any other game, my injured body parts would be pulsing with a recurring but manageable stab of pain every few seconds. Here, I felt¡­ nothing. It was preferable to being in agony, but added to the game¡¯s lack of atmosphere. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Oh, there was also an orange envelope icon blinking next to my status. I tapped it, and a private message unfolded before me. A block of Russian runes filled the window at first, but scrolled down to see English beneath. I hoped they were the same message, because my OS¡¯ translator didn¡¯t function in truVR.
Welcome, new player! The world of Kieva is harsh. Animals, bugs, other players, weather, and hunger can all easily kill a new player like you. Our guild is ¡°Salvage,¡± and we help new players to get their start in this life. Supplies and weapons can be yours (we have ammo!) in exchange for a few short quests. Our base is marked on your map for convenience. See you!
I called up my minimap (the game seemed to use fairly standard commands, if not the most ergonomic ones) and saw there was a pulsing white dot about eleven miles to the north. Even better, the closest town seemed to be only about six and a half miles to the northeast. I should be able to camp out in civilization for the night and then get a fresh start in the morning. I could even ask about this ¡°Salvage¡± guild and see if their reputation was any good. Unfortunately, I saw none of the treasure spots mentioned by the Wayfinder perk, but I kept my eyes open as I walked. The environment remained more or less the same as I journeyed, but I didn¡¯t mind. I liked the swishing grass. It was¡­ peaceful. I needed a bit of relaxation after all the recent worry and stress. The cloud cover moved lazily overhead, and it looked as though it might rain soon. As I wondered if I¡¯d make it to the town on my map before the weather changed, it occurred to me I had no idea what the day-night cycle was like here. If it were real-time, I¡¯d have lucked out. I only game in the evenings, and I¡¯d be happy to be always playing during in-game day. I doubted Bug Hunt had a real-time cycle, though. It seemed like it¡¯d be more annoying than anything. The only way it could be fun for a player is if they were online twenty-four hours a day, and I certainly didn¡¯t plan on that. However, with the very slow rate at which the sunlight was dimming, it might be something as slow as a twelve-hour cycle. If that were the case, I might not make it to town before night fell. Trees became denser as I journeyed, and the grass became sparse. Eventually I came upon a very broken asphalt road, and I traveled along that. I seemed to get a small walking speed boost from traveling along it. After about hour of traveling along the road (and almost two hours of walking in total) I heard the noise of human chatter in the distance. I had fallen into a daze (in real life, after all, I¡¯d had a mentally exhausting day at work, and Bug Hunt wasn¡¯t providing much stimulation) but the sudden presence of others pulled me out of it. Gathering my wits around me, I stepped off the road and into a stand of trees a few yards from the road¡¯s edge. I lay prone and waited as three other players walked by. The tallest among them wore some kind of sports protection fashioned into body armor, and carried a machete loose in one hand. The other two wore military camo and didn¡¯t carry anything openly, though they wore handguns on their hips. They chatted loudly among themselves in a language I didn¡¯t understand. I decided it¡¯d be better to keep it safe and not engage three well-armed strangers, and held my breath as they approached. The trio walked past the outcropping a short ways, but one of the camouflaged players stopped and turned to look right at me. He grinned and reached for his handgun, and I took off running. Chapter Seven - Little Gloved Hands I guess I wasn''t as well-hidden as I''d thought. Sounds of screaming came from behind me as I raced along the road toward the town. It couldn''t be much further now. Less than half a mile, for sure. Bullets cut the air around me, but I wasn''t hit. Not that I¡¯d have felt it, but the red splatters of blood didn''t appear around my vision again, so I must have been good. I looked over my shoulder after a few moments and noticed in amusement that we all seemed to be running at the same pace. My legs weren''t wounded, and apparently neither were theirs. As long as I could outrun their bullets, I would be fine. A notification appeared in the corner of my vision.
RUNNING DEPLETES HUNGER! Hunger 38/50
Shit. I needed to keep an eye on that. All my walking had drained my hunger far more than my starting supplies could account for. I hopes running didn''t take too much more out of me. It''d be a shame to outrun my pursuers and then die of hunger in the wilderness. It began to rain, and I hoped that would impair the aim of my pursuers. Though, now that I thought about it, they didn''t seem to be doing much shooting. They could probably have had by me by then, but their leader must have told them not to waste bullets. Maybe they just wanted to talk. I wasn''t going to risk it, and so kept right on going until I saw the town ahead. I leaned into my run as much as I could, hoping there was some kind of super running speed in the game. Maybe I was going faster, but it was probably just a trick of perception. As the rains pounded ever harder around me (I felt mildly cold and wet, but it was a disconnected feeling) I staggered past the first buildings of the town and started yelling for help. There were no answers, nor anyone on the streets at all. I stopped and caught my breath out of habit, thought I really didn''t feel that winded, as I looked around and saw not a single light in any of the houses. The stores appeared decrepit, their windows boarded up or shattered. Mud ran underfoot and the asphalt of the road appeared heavily broken in places. I walked through an alleyway and came upon an old concrete lot filled with broken-down, rusty cars. This was a ghost town. I realized I was no longer being chased, and spun with my back to the brick wall of the alley. Why had they stopped? I needed to pay much more attention to my surroundings. The lack of stimulus in this game would be the death of me. I opened my status screen. My Dry was completely depleted, and my Hunger was down to thirty-eight. That didn''t look good. I pulled my knife out and after a moment''s thought wielded my empty Makarov in the other hand. My pursuers didn''t know I was out of bullets, after all. If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it. Fatigue washed over my body. It didn¡¯t feel natural. Every muscle ached dully, like I needed a good stretch. That must be the game''s half-assed representation of exhaustion. I staggered through a different alley than the one I had used to approach the car lot, looking for a building without a boarded-up windows I or door I look look in. There, across the street. It looked like a squat, two-floored apartment. I checked to make sure my pursuers weren''t following, and dashed across. The door opened with a cracking sound. I searched the ground floor, but there was nothing of value anywhere. Not that I''d expected anything, but it was worth a short. After that I crawled carefully up the stairs. The second floor was less damaged than the first. Some old furniture sat around, somewhat moldy but in a game like this I really didn¡¯t care. I sat down on a bed and opened my status menu, watching my Dry rating slowly crawl up. I still couldn''t do anything about food beyond eating what I already had. The chocolate bar and water were tasteless, but they increased my Hunger meter, so it was all good. I stood and edged close to the window of the small bedroom, peeking out. There was movement in the street below, and I held my breath. Maybe it was why the others hadn''t followed me. A monstrous insect stalked lazily down the street. It was longer than a greyhound bus and at least as tall. Its abdomen was black and bloated and covered with rain-sodden coarse fur. Its many legs rasped the ground as it passed, loud enough for me to hear from yards away and through glass. Mandibles underneath its head twitched incessantly, looking like little gloved hands scooping air into a lamprey¡¯s maw. The head made me cover my mouth for fear I''d vomit. It looked like the bulbous head of a bald man covered in blotchy boils, but with something like a metal mesh frame digging out from under his skin underneath one eye. The head was much smaller than the rest of the creature. Its lower jaw had dislocated and torn away, and hung by a strip of rotting flesh from one cheek. A barbed tongue snaked out from the mouth and twitched like a snake''s. The bug¡ªit could only be that¡ªmoved without purpose , but I felt that at any moment it would turn and see me, and that there would then be no escape. Remember the pheromones, I thought to myself. I have that perk. It won''t touch me so long as I stay far away and remain still. Just be calm. And it didn''t attack me. It remained outdoors, turning and grabbing onto a building face with one of its spongy feet. The weight of its abdomen cracked a glass window as it bounced along the face of the building, crawling higher and higher. Finally it hauled itself to the building¡¯s upper lip. The bug spread a pair of leathery wings that seemed to peel from its body like a scab from an infected wound, and then the creature was flying away in the rain. I remained where I was for a long time, and didn¡¯t move. Chapter Eight - Vomiting and Loss of All Hunger I slept well after logging off. The smells of recycled air and now-cold dinner leftovers filled my scent-deprived nose, and I trailed my hands along the gritty drywall for a few minutes just to feel something again. The water I drank after brushing my teeth tasted slightly of minerals. It was good to be back in the land of the living. My sheets were warm, and soft, and helped me forget the poorly-simulated rain. My dreams were filled with bugs. *** Sadie cornered me in the cafeteria the next day. ¡°Any luck?¡± she asked, sipping one of those soy-based lattes I thought tasted like dish soap. ¡°Your cousin any better?¡± ¡°No and no,¡± I replied, setting down my cold slice of pizza. ¡°He''s not moved a muscle. I looked into the game he was playing during the accident, but there doesn''t seem to be anything out of the ordinary going on.¡± ¡°Hmm.¡± She tapped the counter top with one finger and took another sip of her drink. ¡°I had a thought.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± ¡°Bring your cousin¡¯s PC tomorrow, if you don''t mind. I want to check something.¡± I swallowed my bite of pizza. ¡°Uh, if you like. What are you looking for?¡± ¡°More a hunch than anything.¡± ¡°You planning on searching the SSD for that phantom virus of yours?¡± Her cheeks colored. ¡°Oh, lay off. We ruled out physical malfunction of the headgear, but I wonder if there might have been something wrong with one of the hardware components of the PC.¡± I felt bad for teasing her, and gave what I hoped was a warm smile. ¡°Sorry. Do you repair computers in addition to building controllers?¡± ¡°Not really, but I¡¯d like to branch out.¡± ¡°All right, I¡¯ll bring it in tomorrow. What made you think it was an issue on the PC end?¡± Sadie looked away too quickly. Odd. ¡°Uh¡­ All right then. See ya.¡± I finished my pizza and left her alone in the cafeteria. Back to work. It was nice to have a job so mentally engaging it could pull me away from the things I didn¡¯t want to think about. My first ever job had been in paintbrush manufacturing, and in the dull repetition I almost killed myself when my first girlfriend dumped me. Having nothing to do for hours on end but stew in your troubles isn¡¯t very healthy, as it turns out. I can¡¯t imagine what would have happened if I¡¯d had to deal with this whole David situation while still working at the factory. *** I wanted to play CoD when I got home that night. The new game had released less than a month ago. David and I had completed out competitive placement matches earlier, and I was itching to get some great competitive play in. Of course, I''d be without the other half of my normal duo. The thought of playing without David was depressing, so I looked at the headset and sighed. On the positive side, I forced myself to make dinner from scratch that night instead of eating out. I''d been skipping the gym too much lately and didn''t need the worse food to top off my ever-thickening waist. I chopped onions and peppers, heated oil in a pan, and tossed everything together over high heat with cracked pepper and soy sauce. Nothing fancy, and it had way too much oil to be called "healthy," but thrown on top of a bed of steamed brown rice the fragrant dish was a sight healthier than anything Id eaten for a couple weeks. That I was getting up and coking instead of worrying or moping showed I was on the road to recovery, I guess. I wondered if that was a good thing. Mourning was supposed to last a while for normal people, wasn''t it? David wasn¡¯t dead yet, of course. I felt terrible for even thinking of him in that light. Still, the doctors hadn''t had any hopeful news. Well... I looked at my PC again. I didn''t want to play any CoD without my cousin, but maybe I needed to give Bug Hunt another go. It wasn''t as if I''d experienced much of the game. A couple hours of walking wasn''t the greatest indication of the game''s quality, I supposed. I must have just had a shitty spawn. The players and bug I''d seen might have made or some interesting encounters once I''d gotten settled in, I guessed. So I put on the helmet, attached the electrodes, lay in bed, and dove back into the encrypted server. I sat up on the floor of the same building I ''d logged off in. My dryness and hunger bars were the same as when I''d left them, but my health had returned to full. Thank God. I''d played in some survival games where your character remained persistent event when logged off, and that would have been a real pain in the ass here. Of course, I wasn''t exactly in a great position. At least the weather outside looked pretty sunny. I pushed open the window to the room and looked out, expecting to feel sunlight and breeze on my face, forgetting this game had no sensory feedback. I couldn''t tell if th weather was supposed to be warm or not, but I wasn''t taking any damage despite being pretty damp, so I decided it must be intended to be a warm sort of sunny. In addition, there didn¡¯t seem to be any appearance of life outside. No bugs, and no crazed players with pistols. I checked my mini map. Looked like the guild that had contacted me was only about a mile and a half away. I could get there within an hour so, and with any luck they''d be able to supply me with food and better equipment. I thought about taking more time to check some of the buildings for supplies which others might have left but which would be upgrades to my current state of... Well, nothing, but decided against it. My hunger meter really was low, and I didn''t know what would happen when it reached empty. I didn''t want to spend hours more walking in the wilderness after a respawn. I set off down the road, but kept watch for any approaching players or monsters. It was a trade off, using the more convenient manner of travel, but being more likely to encounter dangerous players. I walked and ran intermittently, trying to break up the pace and stave off boredom. I''d spent most of the previous night''s play just traveling, and didn''t enjoy the prospect of continuing on in that vein. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! Nothing of interest occurred for a long while. I stopped once or twice to approach what looked like a point of interest, but in only one case did it turn out to be anything. That one case was a small spring nestled against some rocks which I used to refill my water bottle. I drank the bottle''s contents and filled it again twice before a notification popped into my vision.
Drinking too much in short time will cause vomiting and loss of all hunger!
Dammit. I filled my bottle and put it into my inventory again, wishing there was some indication that would tell me when it was safe to drink again. Then I was at the guild''s camp. A pair of players walked back and forth in front of a large structure of dirt and stones. Their movements were so clean I figured they must have had scripts on. I approached and waved, but neither of them responded. I stood in their paths but their character models just clipped right through me. Some guards. Finally I targeted one of them and gestured a few times until a context menu appeared. I selected "message target" and typed a short greeting before sending it off. A window popped up in front of my face, and I groaned.
You must survive for three nights to unlock private messaging directly! You can reply to messages in the mean time though.
It would have been nice for the game to have told me before I composed the message. Oh well. I walked right past the guards. If someone wanted to keep me out, they couldn''t say I hadn''t tried to go through proper channels. There didn''t seem to be anyone inside the compound. The camp itself seemed to be formed of a bunch of identical buildings of mud and stone, some with corrugated metal roofs. A single large brick building rose in the middle of it all, and I approached it. There were few sounds in the compound, mostly the ambiance of birds in far-off trees and some cricket-like insects in the grass. I entered the building through the unlocked door, stepping in and looking around. The floor was of wooden planks, and a bare light bulb hung from the ceiling in front of me. The inside of the building wasn''t partitioned at all into rooms, but chests of wood lined the walls and a variety of animal skins covered the floor. It looked like an adventurer''s guild, all right. However, there was no one around. I felt annoyed. Was this a completely empty server aside from the murder-hungry trio on the road and the two brain dead bots "guarding" the door? My shooter instincts wouldn''t let me cross a wide building without ammo or armor, so I walked along the wall. Thankfully no gun-toting enemies popped out to frag me me. I tried opening the chests, but they were locked. At least these guys weren''t complete idiots. I walked across one of the skins of the floor and an exaggerated clanking sound rang out. I knelt and pulled aside the bearskin to reveal a trapdoor embedded into the floor. Interesting. It was unlocked, so I opened it. Blackness down below. There was always my flare, but wasn''t sure I wanted to waste it on something so soon after finding the base. What the hell. I doubted I''d last much longer around here with nothing to stave off hunger or exposure. I equipped the flare, lit it, and dropped the sparking stick of light down the hole. There didn''t appear to be any traps below, so I climbed down the wooden ladder propped against one wall and jumped the last few feet to the ground. I picked up the flare, crouched down, and continued on my way. The tunnel was narrow. I had barely enough room to continue while crouched. In real life, the flare would likely have blinded me from its proximity. Here, it was merely a bright light source. So long as I kept it out of my field of vision, I was good to go. I noticed the tunnel widening and the ceiling rising as I continued. I could stand, and walk faster. My hunger was almost completely depleted by this point, so I rested to drink my bottle of water. My hunger was only at twelve by this point. If I didn''t get food soon, I''d probably die. With no sensory feedback to reinforce this, though, I didn''t care. The hunger meter meant nothing until it was gone. The tunnel opened into a cavern lit by tiny candles on stakes. I gaped at the sudden feedback after almost twenty minutes of dark tunnel. My flare ran out, and I dropped it at my feet, my way now lit by candlelight. The cavern was filled with still water, but a dock or bridge led to a small island in the center of the cavern. Upon that island rested a stone pedestal, and moonlight lit it from above. I glanced up as I walked along the dock, looking at the moon through the hole in the ceiling above. I approached the pedestal. There was nothing on it. Had something been here before? Had it not been placed there yet? A sound came from above. I looked and jerked back as I saw another player peering over the edge of the hole. I waved and yelled, but was probably too far away for him to hear me. He dropped a rope over the lip of the hole, and I sighed in relief at the prospect of meeting another player. He slid down the rope and came to a halt in front of me. The newcomer wore a suit of rough animal hides and had an AK-47 strapped across his back. Hi s face was obscured by a gas mask, but he waved as he approached. I smiled and returned the gesture, and noticed too late he held a hypodermic needle in his other hand. I fell to the ground, unable to move, watching as the player rifled through my backpack. Dissatisfied, he kicked me a few times and giggled as my health meter dropped. I felt no pain, but it was frustrating nonetheless. He tied my hands behind my back with something and hoisted me over his shoulder. The player seemed to have no trouble carrying me as he hauled himself back up the rope, taking us to whatever lay above. Apparently everyone in the game was an asshole.