Dro-vine is the wood and steel of the present day. Why waste resources and labor to build a house when you can grow one from seed? If you want to get fancy about it, build some synthetic stairs and some basic skeletal framing. The dro-vine will happily grow over your scaffolding; however, don’t expect this plant to do exactly what you planned! Because of its variability, dro-vine is not for the control freak, but rather for those who want a cheap yet comfortable place to live. To grow a house, just find some land and plant one-that is, if this ubiquitous organism hasn’t already colonized the area on its own.
Thanks to hyper-photosynthesis during the growing season, dro-vine goes from seed to a small cocoon large enough to sleep in within two weeks. Within a month, you’ll have yourself a small home, complete with several chambers. What makes dro-vine brilliant is how it naturally forms cavities in itself, which tend to connect with one another.
To make a door from one cavity to another, you simply cut out a rectangular hole in the wall and place a hinged door in the opening. The dro-vine, in an attempt to fill the hole, will grow over the hinges, but it won’t grow over the door itself since such doors are coated with chemi suppression enzymes suspended in a tough polymer. However, if you really want to be lazy, don’t even bother with a door. Just cut an upside down “T” slit (like an old camping tent) and treat the edges of the wound with the suppression enzyme to keep the wound from healing.
Cutting windows is even easier than doors, but why bother? In our minds, SkinWare can adorn the chamber walls, ceiling, and floor with any vista we desire-from faraway canyons, to the ocean, to a rainforest, to the Martian landscape-all in real time (with a little over a three-minute delay in the case of the Mars scenery)…
In summary, I’m afraid that for those of us who enjoy the building games, we had better forget about the mass market and focus our play on the distinctive but often unpredictable tastes of the rich.
D_Light heard the familiar whistling noise as he jacked into NeverWorld. The hallway that connected the apartments of this floor was brightly lit in real life, with subdued shades of green and brown Van Gogh swirls for walls and a bright green mossy floor, but as his nervous system plunged into the game, the light dimmed and the hallway turned to rough-hewn stone. Torches spaced at regular intervals materialized to light the way. In the distance he heard someone screaming. A woman, he thought, being tortured. Or perhaps it was just a lure set by some clever fiend, patiently waiting for a hero to fall for the ruse.
There were the sounds of other creatures too-faint groaning, the occasional snarl, the familiar distant clang of metal against metal signaling combat underway. And there were more ordinary sounds, like the subtle cacophony of dripping water from a thousand sources. This labyrinth, its hallways and chambers filled to the brim with terrors and treasures, was leaky, dank, and in great need of repair.
The smell of rotting flesh-faint, but unpleasant just the same-permeated everything. Olfactory input in NeverWorld was not as sophisticated as auditory or visual, being less important for game play, but the game did have a few scents in its inventory. Unfortunately, most of them were foul. Rotting was particularly popular. The rotten stench of death left by carcasses in the battlefield, the pungent aroma of moldy food abandoned by the long since ambushed caravan, and the ogre’s breath (who lived on an assortment of Soul knew what).
D_Light had barely acclimated to his surroundings when the sound of heavy footsteps caught his attention. They were close by and growing louder. Without hesitation, he summoned an invisibility spell. Waving one hand while tracing a symbol in the air with the other, he murmured an arcane phrase. As his spell completed, D_Light was relieved to discover that he could no longer see his own hand. That was a good thing, as he sometimes made mistakes, especially when rushed.
The spell took effect none too soon, for only a few seconds later, a lumbering beast of a creature turned the corner and headed in his direction. A maltoc, as the creature was called, resembled a man only in its general shape, having two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. This was fitting, given that maltocs were human before their corruption by Salem, the son of Pheobah, the Dark Queen. But the maltoc’s general shape and size was the end of the similarities between these nasties and men. Bristling, greasy hair covered mounds of muscles and other more irregular and freakish lumps. Through the amorphous face peered beady, pink eyes, which glistened slightly in the torchlight of the hall. Around the eyes were crimson red sockets that excreted thin trickles of blood down its wrinkly face-a face that most closely resembled raw hamburger. The creature did not breathe as it stalked, for it had no nose or mouth; only its footfalls betrayed its passing. Maltocs, incidentally, were only lesser devils, but nonetheless, they were not something to be trifled with.
Having played NeverWorld for countless hours in the past, D_Light’s gaming habits were nearly hardwired. He had to fight the urge to blast this nasty in the back as it passed by him. “Nasties” was the term spankers used for computer-generated enemies in the game, and destroying them was one way to get points in NeverWorld and build up the power of the character one played. He had to remind himself of his purpose here-he was not here for treasure or glory in battle, but to look for doors or the absence thereof. For D_Light, this was a sort of agony, akin to sending a gambler into a casino just to count men with brown hair. It was a numbingly mundane task in an exciting world.
Two ghosts stood nearby, one to his left and another just behind. They looked like human-shaped jellyfish with only the very edges of their bodies highlighted by thin, translucent lines, while the fill of the form was nearly transparent. D_Light supposed the ghosts to be Lyra and Djoser, but he could not ascertain which was which because NeverWorld rarely skinned objects or people as they looked in the real world. In fact, one could never predict how the game’s artificial intelligence would skin non-game objects and creatures. From the game’s perspective, it was only important to make clear who was a spanker and who was not. Skinning non-spankers as benign ghosts enabled those submerged in the game to identify the non-players without losing the continuity of the game.
Both ghosts had the appearance of being men. One was an old man with an unrelenting crooked smile, wearing only wisps of rags. The other was younger, although D_Light could barely tell because the man’s face-his entire head, actually-was split down the middle to the root of the nose, much like a log of wood cleaved on the edge by an ax. This ghost was naked, and one of his arms twitched.
No sooner had D_Light focused in on the ghosts than a pop-up sign appeared over each one declaring, “Not in play. Do not interact with this agent.” It really was an incredible use of space, when D_Light thought about it. All of these alternate dimensions occupying the same physical area, dimensions facilitated by software. Consequently, NeverWorld was not the only game available in this ghetto. There was Mission Flipp’n Ridiculous (a spy game), Samurai on Top (a samurai death match), Golden Age (a twenty-first-century war game), Grokstania (a social networking game), and several other less popular options. One would think that with so many people playing so many different games it would be chaos, but unless two spankers were in the same game, they were skinned as a “sideliner prop” to one another-just like the two ghosts appeared to D_Light.
Although spankers avoided running into sideliner props, they otherwise ignored them because the props typically had no real importance to the game they were in. D_Light now found himself in the unique position of caring about the props, at least the ones that represented Lyra and Djoser. How else would he coordinate with them on finding the demon? In response to this, Smorgeous verified that the old man was, in fact, Lyra, and the lumberjack accident was Djoser.
Returning his attention back to NeverWorld, D_Light breathed a sigh of regret as he watched the thicket-dense hairy back of the maltoc continue down the hall. It was uncommon to find one of these devils by itself, and D_Light had the advantage of full surprise. He felt a twinge of frustration as his opportunity for easy experience points disappeared around the corner, but he reminded himself that he was playing a much bigger and more important game this evening.
“Smorgeous, watch for doors that appear in the material world but not in the game. When you see one, go sit next to it,” D_Light stated out loud so that Lyra and Djoser could hear. Because D_Light was now playing a fantasy game in a quasi-medieval setting, he was supposed to role-play using fantaspeech, which included words like thee, thou, nay, and so on. However, he was not going to embarrass himself by speaking this way to the nobles. His score flashed red as NeverWorld exacted a minor penalty.
His familiar pinged confirmation of his master’s verbal command.
Although Smorgeous was not as intelligent as most humans or human-based products, he did have the advantage of being able to process multiple inputs at once. Smorgeous could monitor the game D_Light was jacked into while seeing the real world. However, D_Light had to be personally spanking in order to give Smorgeous access to the game. Spank games like NeverWorld did not allow familiars or other software to access it without a human sponsor being jacked in. Otherwise, spankers could use software to scout out the game before jacking in, which was cheating.
It was a while before they found a private door. D_Light watched the Lyra ghost knock on it. Just as D_Light had expected, the door upon which she was knocking appeared to him as a solid wall. There was some muffled talking, but D_Light could scarcely make out any of it, for real sounds were always somewhat muted while jacked in. Unable to hear much, he did manage to catch Lyra saying the phrases “interested in” and “thank you.” Her voice, husky but silky feminine, sounded surreal as it emanated from the old man’s ghostly mouth.
Additional doors were discovered as the night wore on, and the team soon dropped into an efficient routine. Fortunately, it was getting late and most residents had retired to their apartments. Unbeknownst to the residents, Lyra was having her familiar take images of them as they came to the door and then compare them to images in the demon database. After doing this for a while, Lyra even dropped the ruse of being a salesperson and simply told the often groggy-eyed occupant that she had the wrong apartment. Such a terse exchange was adequate, as it only took a second or two for PeePee to grok the suspect.
Meanwhile, D_Light spent most of his energy on avoiding being seen by the nasties. As his invisibility spell began to wear off, he had to renew it, and his spell manna was dwindling. Worse yet, some of the creatures lurking about could see him, despite the invisibility. He tried especially hard to avoid these, often doubling back down the hall, which confused Djoser and Lyra as they tried to stick with him.
Where the flip are you going? Lyra asked over a blink.
Uh, can’t talk. There’s a goo coming. D_Light sent his mental reply as he ran. The gelatinous mass of undulating slime that slithered after him was not fooled by D_Light’s invisibility, having no eyes anyway.
A what? Lyra’s thought signature was irritated. For Soul’s sake, this is stupid! I can’t believe I agreed to this…this…whatever it is we’re doing.
D_Light streamed as he ran. Look, I don’t want to get fragged. If I die, I get tossed out, and it’ll be a half hour before I can re-spawn.
What? returned Lyra. We didn’t take you along to do any spawning, okay? You want to do that, get a concubine and a room!
D_Light sprinted down a flight of stairs and out onto a grassy courtyard. He had lost the goo, but maltocs were now chasing him. Numbering at least four-more than a match for D_Light-they too could see through his invisibility. Perhaps something, maybe the goo, had cast a spell on the maltocs which enabled them to pierce through his invisibility illusion. Whatever the case, he could hear them storming down the stairs, and he had only a moment to hide. With one forceful leap, he hurled himself onto the ground and took cover behind some virtual rubble.
D_Light could have chosen a peaceful game like Grockstania where virtual death was not a problem; however, D_Light was not adept at social networking games. Other players would expect him to mingle with them. He would either have to waste his time chatting and flirting with these ghetto residents, or blow them off. Being antisocial in a social networking game would get you voted out quick, which would be no better than death in NeverWorld. Worse yet, bad manners tended to attract attention. Even if the demon wasn’t a player, he or she might have friends who were. The last thing D_Light wanted was for his plan to actually tip the demon off. He would never be invited to a MetaGame again.
Lyra followed, Djoser trailing behind her. She looked around furtively to confirm no one was watching and then glowered down at D_Light, who was lying motionless, all curled up like a possum playing dead. Lyra blinked D_Light, knowing he could not properly hear her audible voice. Are you insane? Why are you lying on the ground?
I’m hiding. I’m behind some rocks and stuff, D_Light blinked back. You’d understand if you were jacked in. D_Light’s blink was faint, as though he was trying to whisper with his mind.
Well, I understand you need to spank, but we feel like idiots following you around like this-not to mention it might look conspicuous to the demon if it were to observe us. From now on, Djoser and I will just chill somewhere while you ping us on the map where the private doors are, and we’ll follow up.
Djoser trotted up alongside Lyra. He was slightly winded. Yeah, why don’t you take care of the legwork? You know, you be the brawn and we’ll be the brains.
Sounds reasonable, D_Light pinged back. He wondered why they hadn’t done it that way from the start, them being the brains and all, but he was careful not to send the thought.
Having been left to his own devices, D_Light continued seeking out private doors. As soon as he and Smorgeous identified a door, Smorgeous forwarded the coordinates to Djoser and Lyra. And then, without waiting to see the results, D_Light moved on. So far he had not found many private doors, even fewer than he had expected-only thirty-six private doors, compared to over a thousand residences open to the public.
The small number of private doors made Djoser and Lyra’s job easy, but it did nothing for D_Light as he struggled to keep his bearings in the massive apartment mounds. The mounds went several stories above the ground, and the tunnels that connected them were like fat, mossy dikes with narrow paved roads on top. And worse than the scope of mounds was the unpredictability of the layout.
Because dro-vine dwellings had no real floor plans, no reliable maps existed. Indeed, even if they did, they would not remain accurate for long as existing walls and chambers shifted and new ones formed. Consequently, D_Light found it extremely challenging to find all the hidden hallways and chambers, many of which presented themselves awkwardly. Trapdoors in the floor, knotted rope ladders going upward, hidden crawl holes connecting adjoining chambers-it was anarchy. Spankers were usually too busy to put much energy into sweating the details of elegant interior design. Indeed, D_Light imagined they fancied their ad hoc architecture, believing it added variety and a tinge of surprise to the games played here.
Several hours passed before D_Light finally got fragged. He had wandered into an arch devil’s lair. Gold coins, jewelry, fine armor and weapons, books of lore, and magic items of various sorts gaudily adorned the walls and tables in the resplendent room. The devil prince was not in his lair, but his dog was. And it was not just a run-of-the-mill canine-it was a hellhound, and worse yet, it had been super buffed-up by some dark magic. D_Light barely got a look at the treasure before the hound came out of nowhere and ripped out his throat.