14. An Important Conversation
It was 0500 when the Captain called. He actually appeared on my television wall like Uncle Tommy does, and it took me just a minute to realize that he was in Uncle Tommy’s office as well.
“Luke? I was told that you don’t sleep, I hope it’s okay that I’m contacting you this way. I discussed it with your Uncle and your parents before hand.”
“You’re interrupting Days of our Lives,” I informed him.
“What?”
“Old TV is free,” I explained. “I was watching an old Soap Opera. Old ladies of the day would scream at you for such an offense.”
“I see. Son, Luke, I’m sorry, what do you want to be called?”
“Luke is fine,” I informed him. “Calling me my real name makes me feel real, you know?”
“As you wish. Luke, The truth is, the reason I’m calling you is because, well, you’ve managed to seriously impress the government a few times.”
“You mean when I single handedly stopped a terrorist, or when I thwarted a room full of lawyers – twice – or when I circumvented your online damage control group by trolling the news feeds?” I inquired.
“Yes. All of that,” he admitted. He took a breath, and he looked away from the camera, and he actually looked concerned. “Look, Luke, the truth is, the waves you made in the last two weeks? Well, they’re making waves of their own. Those three things you’ve listed have caused a number of very powerful people to grow concerned, and some of the ways in which they are responding could be disastrous. Bad for you, your family, and--”
“Are you threatening my family!?” I demanded, outraged.
“No! Luke, it’s the very opposite! I want to be on your side! I want us to be allies!” he said, and he sounded genuine. After sixty or so subjective years of interacting with players in ER, you get pretty good at reading signs of deception.
“But other people are,” I said, following the logic.
“Not yet,” the captain said. “But they’re making the sort of noises and preparations that they would make if they were thinking about those things. The fact that you were able to circumvent our attempts to censor you is particularly concerning to some people. We tried legally. We tried countering you with disinformation tactics, but you were decidedly effective at navigating those. And finally we tried directly limiting your connection to the internet, but we couldn’t do that without taking all of EternalRealms offline, and that would have made a bigger fuss than what little noise you were making.”
“Really? I hadn’t even known about that last part,” I admitted.
“Your connection to the greater internet is distributed throughout their entire network,” he explained. “Or so has been explained to me. You can’t exist outside of their servers, but you can connect to anywhere on the public internet as long as you have access.”
“Oh, I did know the second part,” I admitted. “They tried copying me into a research computer they built at some university, but the copy just froze up. They don’t know why it didn’t work. I was trying to make it work, you know? I did everything they asked. It just … didn’t work. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah, weird,” he agreed.
“So, what exactly are they threatening my family with?” I asked.
“As I said, nothing yet,” he said quickly. “They’re more focused on you. And as long as we keep them focused on you, then they won’t be looking at using your family against you.”
“But if they were to use my family against me, what would they do?” I demanded.
The captain sighed, but he knew better than to fight me on this line of questioning. “I can’t say for certain what angle they would take. The easiest target would be your Uncle. Simply taking away his security clearances would cost him his job, livelihood, and control of his finances. They could dangle returning those clearances in front of you in order to ensure your cooperation or silence. And they don’t need to justify doing so, or convict him of a crime, or anything like that. The right person just needs to sign the right form, and boom, it happens.”
“And if that happens, I will do my level best to do exactly the opposite of what they want me to do for the rest of forever,” I informed him plainly. “The same if they were to go after my parent’s stock holdings or my sister’s education and/or social life.”
“That’s what your Uncle told me you’d say,” he agreed. “And it’s kind of the impression I got too. And aside from shutting down EternalRealms and/or forcing them to figure out a way of purging you from their system, there’s not much they can do to threaten you directly. That, more than anything else, is what has them nervous, Luke.”
“Do I make you nervous, Captain … What was your name again?”
“Trevers. First name Lucas, believe it or not. You can call me Captain or Captain Trevers. And no, you don’t make me nervous. Not after a few hours of talking with your family. Talking, not threatening, before you get worked up.”
“You’re throttling me,” I realized suddenly. I couldn’t always tell when the simulation of my digital brain was being throttled down into realtime, but right now I was certain that it was.
“I asked them to keep you synced with me for this conversation. Just for conversational purposes, mind you. We’re on an even field right now, you and I,” he explained.
“Not really,” I informed him. “You have a number of constitutionally granted rights as a living human which I don’t. Technically I have no more rights than an automated facebook bot. If I wasn’t so damn interesting, and useful the EternalRealms development crew, I might have had someone flip the off-switch years ago.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Would you like to change that?” Captain Trevers asked, cocking his head to the side with a shit-eating grin.
“Oh?” I said, returning the grin. “Why Captain Trevers, are you offering me a [Quest]?”
“We’ve talked about the stick,” he admitted. “Would you like to hear about the carrot?”
“I’m listening,” I admitted. “Although since you’re throttling me, it seems like I only have three hours.”
“Oh? What happens at eight?”
“My sister logs into the game,” I informed him. “Because, yeah, anything you and I work out? It’s going to have to work around that.”
“Noted. Family time comes first,” He agreed, jovial.
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~~~~~~~~~~
Everyone was a few minutes late, except for the guy that only I knew was going to be there. MrGreen98 was sitting nervously with me as I drank my root beer and he nursed a … I didn’t actually know or care what he was drinking. He was just a pug, which I had made clear yesterday. I was happy to bring him along, but I was also setting boundaries.
“Hey, you’re the guy who tried to show me up yesterday,” Rick said first thing, his attitude back already.
“I’m sorry about that. It just looked like such a good exercise that I had to give it a try. I wasn’t intending to be insulting to you or anything, but I didn’t realize you were going to be leaving the supplies behind! Thank you all so much, everyone in the audience kept playing for like six hours subjectively after that! That’s the real reason I’m here, I wanted to give you your stuff back.”
The young teenage players exchanged looks.
“Wait, really?” Sam asked.
“It was [Luke] who bought that stuff,” Paula pointed out. “I mean, he’s our guide in all of this. He set everything up, we were just listening to him.”
“You can keep them both,” I told Greenie. “Honestly I just used returning my supplies as an excuse to get you to meet up with this lot again. You can keep the rabbit and play that game whenever you want. I just wanted you to spend more time with these guys. Yesterday was their first login, and they could use a few more-experienced PUGs. I saw enough of your moves to see that you’ll be decent once you have a few hours of tanking, so I thought a little bit of networking would be good for them.”
“Holy shit, first login and you guys are already that good?” Greenie exclaimed. “I mean, wow. You guys have great teamwork. Do you go to school together?”
“Yes, actually,” Sophie answered.
“[Sophie], that’s not something that you share online,” Lewis chastised.
“Oh, it’s not that big of a deal,” Greenie assured them. “It’s obvious you guys are just over the minimum age just from the way you walk and talk. I mean, I’m not a pervert or anything, but your body-language is super transparent. And you’re all clearly friends, so it was either school that connects you, a sports team, or else you were all neighbors. Anyone else who plays VRMMO’s would be able to figure out just as much just by watching you for like five minutes. Like I said, it’s not perving, just people watching. And EternalRealms is super strict about protecting its juvenile members. Like, even if you try to tell me your real names, I’ll hear something completely different. My name is [Phillip], but when I was playing at sixteen I would tell people I was [Phillip] and they’d still just hear my screen name.”
“Yup,” I agreed. “It won’t let you tell anyone your home town or school or even your sports mascot, either. They try to filter just about anything that has been used to doxx a kid. You can still talk about professional sports or what college you want to go to or stuff like that. But where you live? State only, and sometimes not even that. If ER thinks you’re sharing something that might Doxx you, a screen pops up and tells you to shut up.”
“That’s lame,” Rick objected. “What if we meet someone our age and want to connect?”
“You have to go through the ER connections network. Because ER knows who’s actually controlling my avatar,” Phillip explained. “Not that it’s possible to hack an avatar, but it is sorta possible to pretend to be a sixteen year old girl or boy when you’re actually in your forties.”
“Ugh, pervs are the worst,” I complained. “And they’re never as subtle about it as they think they are. Fortunately they mostly get screened into their own little corner of the Realms where they all just circle – Echo chamber each other. It’s not really something that actual kids have to worry about, which is why aside from a pamphlet on all the ways ER is keeping you and your identities safe that you probably didn’t read, they don’t really cover them in your introduction.”
“Yup, you have to flag your account for ‘sexual content’ before they become a problem,” Phillip agreed. “Which I haven’t, even though unlike you I’m nineteen and therefor old enough. I’m guessing you’re all either freshmen or sophomores?”
They were reluctant to answer that question as well.
“Honestly guys, if [Philip] were a perv, he would have been filtered already. You can’t hide that shit from ER. They would not allow him in the same instance as the rest of us if that was a problem,” I informed them, getting a little impatient. “The helmet looks at your brain, remember? You can’t hide that shit from a brain scan.”
The high schoolers exchanged looks, then shrugged.
“We all go to school together with someone who got us a discount to play with them,” Paula explained, setting the official story. “Except for Simon [Luke], who has been playing for years. He’s in NinjaGuardians, like you heard yesterday, and I guess they’re something like a big deal? He’s promised to give us all a ‘good start.’ But I thought we were going to spend all day at the training facility.”
“Oh boy, he’s strict!” Philip laughed. “I mean, he’s right though. It costs fifty copper per hour after you run through your first twenty-four, and if you don’t use it you lose it.”
“So why didn’t we meet there?” Sam asked.
“Because I want [Philip] to join us,” I explained. “It’s normal for a ten man group to have two tanks, and while you’ll be fine with the composition you have, it’s good to network with a few pug tanks and healers, and just good players in general. I was going to spot [Phil] here a few silver so that he can join us at the Training Hall with the rest of us, if he’s willing.”
“Oh, totally,” Phil jumped at the offer. “I mean, if I’m welcome!”
The younger teenagers exchanged looks for several moments, conversing with their body language. They all relaxed slowly as they processed my assurances that ER was designed to keep them safe. Which it was; honestly. The server would keep the perverts away until they both turned eighteen and specifically clicked the box consenting to sexual material. Even I couldn’t do that, and I had close to sixty years in the game, including my time when I still had a body.
“So, like, what college do you go to,” Sophie asked eventually, and that decided the matter.
?
