NOVEL WEB Chapter Three: Dungeons & Dorks
My alarm went off, playing the opening bars of some 20th century rock song that had seen a resurgence in popularity a few years back. The singer went on about hell and its bells for some time before I sleepily pawed at the alarm button, and switched off the music. I lay in bed for a short period of time, and stared at the moulded plastic roof above my inset bunk. It was Saturday morning, and on any other day, given that I didn’t have anything to occupy me all day, I could safely lie in bed for the next two hours. However, I had an imminent visit from Sarah Collins, my social services guardian, and she would be very cranky if my apartment wasn’t neat and tidy.
Getting out of bed took some effort, but soon enough I was nursing a cup of hideous coffee, and attempting to consume a substance my food dispenser only identified as “porridge”. This was not porridge. It was more like a thin liquid that vaguely tasted like oats, but had a distinctly chemical aftertaste akin to burnt rubber mixed with window cleaner. I resolved to bring up my dispenser’s quirks with Sarah when she showed up at eleven.
Finishing my coffee, and dumping my unfinished “porridge” into the waste chute, I began the arduous task of cleaning my tiny apartment. Despite it being a single room, this seemed to take longer and longer every week. I picked up the clothing strewn across the floor, and dumped them in the pull-out washer that was installed next to the bathroom. I made my bed for the first time all week, even going as far as to neatly tuck the edges of the sheets underneath the thin plastic mattress. I fluffed up the pillows on the bed. I made sure my beanbag wasn’t too shabby. And I even wiped down my countertop with some cleaning gel and a small cloth from the drawer.
The only thing I couldn’t do was dust or vacuum, as I neither had a vacuum cleaner or anything to dust with. I did half-heartedly wipe down the dustiest surfaces with another cloth, but couldn’t quite get the dust to stop clinging to the plastic that most of my room was comprised of. Finally, I collapsed into my beanbag, pulled on my AR glasses, and opened up an eBook to read for a while.
After about half an hour, the doorbell buzzed to let me know I had a visitor waiting outside. After confirming it was Sarah on the crappy camera display, I unlocked the door and swung it open. Sarah stepped into the room, and looked around, her lips pursed.
“Hmm. At least the room is tidier than it was last week,” she said curtly, walking around the room, her square-framed glasses glinting in the bluish light from outside the window. “You still need to vacuum and dust, but at least you don’t have your breakfast things strewn everywhere.”
I shuffled nervously, and closed the door. Sarah opened up my closet, and frowned.
“I see you haven’t regularly been washing your clothes, judging by the number of empty hangers and the fact that the washing machine is clearly on right now. Demerit.”
I stayed perfectly silent, and continued staring straight ahead at the wall. The more silent I stayed, the happier Sarah would be, and the better everything would go. She inspected my kitchen, checking in the cupboards to make sure all of the plates and kitchenware was in good shape.
“Alright, everything else seems to be in order. How’s your health?”
I swallowed. “Good, ma’am. No complaints.”
She smiled thinly. “Well, you seem to be looking after yourself. Your school says everything’s been going fine, although a Mrs. Carter says you’ve been having altercations with a…with another girl in her class. Is this accurate?”
I remained silent, thinking over how best to phrase things. Finally, I spoke. “Yes, Ma’am. However, she and another girl have been-”
She raised a finger, and looked me right in the eyes.
“I couldn’t care less about why it’s happening,” she said, slowly and sternly. “Only that it stops. If there’s a matter that need resolving, talk to your tutor. Otherwise, suck it up and take it on the chin. You’re lucky that your grades have been good enough that you’re still on track. Otherwise we’d have to talk about slashing your welfare budget for the next month. No demerits, for now. Unless we have a problem?”
I nodded, and looked down. “No, ma’am. I’ll do as you ask.”
She smiled again, her eyes not quite smiling with the rest of her face. “Excellent. Now, unless you have any other complaints, I have fifteen other clients to attend to in this building, so I’ll be going. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Without allowing me to so much as respond, she strode over to the door, swung it open, and closed it sharply behind her. I didn’t even have a chance to tell her about the malfunctioning food dispenser. But, then again, I never did.
Later that day, I was working on my homework when I received a text message from Alice. Eagerly, I opened my AR chat application, and read the message.
Alice: Hey, are you good to talk?
I pulled up a keyboard, and typed out a reply, my fingers dancing through the empty air. If I had the money, I could have bought some haptic gloves to make it feel as if there was actually a physical keyboard floating in the air in front of me. Unfortunately, I had no money to spare. So, it was a luxury beyond me until I got enough money to afford the nanite treatments that would fix my body. So far, that was also a far off goal. I only got a measly stipend for personal spending through welfare, and Sarah often slashed it for various offences (like leaving the toilet seat unpolished, or failing to pass a non-graded test in class). So, for now, I clawed at the virtual keyboard, very carefully typing out my message.
Kara: Yeah, I’m good. You still on for that D&D game tonight? Mike said he’d help you create a character. If he hasn’t, I’ll kick his scrawny ass.
Alice: Lol. Yes, he helped. It’s a very interesting game, but I didn’t realise I needed a custom avatar skin?
Kara: Yeah, we play the game with our avatars resembling our characters. Sometimes we also do some LARPing during roleplaying scenes. Mike’s a fantastic programmer, the sim he set up for us to play in is better than half the commercial-grade virtual tabletop simulations out there. You’ll see when we play tonight. Remember, game starts at six pm.
Alice: I remember. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about though.
Kara: Oh?
Alice: I’d like to invite you over to my place tomorrow afternoon to meet my family. They’re very interested to meet my new friend, and we’d love to have you, whether it’s in person or via remoting.
I froze up, my fingers hovering above the keyboard. I’d never been invited to another person’s home before, not even when I was living with my parents. It wasn’t something that happened often these days, due to the limited space that even large families enjoyed in the densely packed city that was Sydney. Also, if I accepted, I’d either be revealing who I was in real life, or continuing to proliferate a lie to someone I cared about. Finally, I swallowed my doubts, and resumed typing.
Kara: Sorry about the delay, I had to go get some water. I’d be happy to remote in to talk with you and your family. I assume this means you have your home set up for telepresencing?
Alice: Yeah, my Dad works from home, and so a lot of his meetings are done remotely. He has the whole place set up with cameras and sensors. Plus, there’s even a full holographic projector and directional speaker setup, so you don’t even have to be wearing AR glasses to see and hear guests. I’ll text you the address and password for our hub around four pm tomorrow, hop on when you’re ready and I’ll introduce you. Love you, ghost girl.
Kara: …ghost girl?
Alice: Nickname doesn’t work? I wanted to have something I could call you. You know, as a term of endearment?
Kara: No, it’s fine. I like it. See you tonight, ghost-friend.
Alice: 😊
I leaned back in my beanbag, and stared up at the billboard, the very top of it barely visible from my seated position close to the floor. Was…Alice interested in me? I didn’t quite know what to think, but the idea of her being into me made my heart flutter again. My life had taken an unexpected turn this week, and I was pretty sure that things would only get more complicated from here on out.
At six, I logged into our D&D application, and activated my Dynamix headset. In a flash of white, I was suddenly in a large wood-panelled room, lit by torches running along the wall. At both ends of the room, a pair of open fireplaces crackled and spat, embers dancing through the dimly lit room. Dominating the centre of the room was a long felt-covered table, surrounded by plush armchairs, and stacked with dice, drinks, food, and various rulebooks and character sheets.
My friends sat around the table, although they looked rather different than they usually did. Mike sat at the head of the table, a DM screen sitting in front of him, and a steaming mug of some sort of tea sitting on a small wooden table to his right. His avatar was clad in black wizard robes, with a T-shirt with the phrase “I am the DM: when I smile, it’s already too late” written across the front in flowing script covering his chest.
Sitting before him, to the right of the long rectangular table, was Jaime, in the body of her character, a muscly half-orc barbarian with grey skin and braided dreadlocks flowing down her back. Due to the size limitations of avatars in AR, however, she was not nearly as tall as her character actually was in the game. A large, long-handled axe leaned against her chair, as she sipped from a mug of what I assumed to be some sort of soft drink.
VR simulations like this one, where everything in the simulation was digital, were capable of properly rendering all of the standard human sensory inputs. Mike had gone a step further that most other simulation programmers, and managed to code in the taste and texture of several varieties of snack foods, many of them brands which promised that the snack was comprised of actual wheat, cheese, or other luxury ingredients. It wouldn’t actually provide any calories, being digital in nature, but the sensation was the objective, not the nutrition (or lack thereof).
In front of me, and to the left of Mike sat Becky, wearing the skin of her elven spellcaster. Her character was graceful and lithe, with golden-brown skin and pointed ears. She wore simple silk robes, and her head was shaven bald. Unlike Jaime, Becky had elected to shrink her character to reflect the size differences between elves and humans. Instead of her usual height of 5’6”, her avatar was closer to five feet tall. She was currently playing a Cleric of Littenae, a worshipper of the Elven god of healing in the Greygloom setting.
In VR, at least outside of school, I preferred to use the form of a raven-haired girl around my height. My hair was short and spikey, and came down to just below my ears. My body was very slender, with pale skin, and an athletic build. This was the form in VR that felt the best to me, a form as far from my broad-shouldered and lumbering form as I could get without having much in the way of money. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use this at school because I didn’t have the money to pay the price of uploading a custom-made avatar to the school servers, forcing me to use a generic default avatar that the school provided for free.
My current character was a human rogue, and therefore my avatar was dressed in leather armour with daggers sheathed at my belt. I sat down in my chair, my leather armour creaking as I did so. Everyone looked up at me and grinned.
“Ayy, Kara, you finally showed!” exclaimed Jaime, pumping a muscled arm and grinning with a mouth of sharp teeth. “Now we only need Alice to start the game!”
Becky smiled, and patted me on the shoulder with a dainty hand. “Don’t listen to her, you’re right on time. Mike hasn’t even gotten all the prep work finished yet.”
I looked over at Mike, who had nodded at me before going back to writing in a notebook with a pen. Even though this was simulated, Mike enforced strict rules about the veracity of the simulation. Everything had to be done as if we were sitting in a real room around a real table. You couldn’t just bring up a menu to update your character sheet or roll dice. You actually had to use simulated pens to write on simulated paper, and roll simulated dice across a simulated table. Everything was meticulously programmed by Mike, and he even made sure to have the music tied to a simulated MP3 player rather than being selected from a menu or some sort of pop-up window.
“I’ll be done in a minute,” he said, scribbling down notes like a madman. “I’m just trying to get everything we need for Alice’s introduction re-speak of the devil!”
He looked up, and grinned towards the far wall. We all looked over towards the wall, and found ourselves looking at Alice’s character, who resembled her school avatar (and, presumably, her real self). The only difference was that, rather than a school uniform, she wore the travelling gear that Mike had imported from an asset library for the simulation. The gear was simple, consisting of a leather jerkin and linen pants with a pair of leather travelling boots. Across her chest was the strap of a satchel, the bag hanging off somewhere behind her back. She wore a rapier at her hip, and a feathered cap atop her head. In her hands, she carried a lute, made from polished brown wood.
“How do I look?” she asked, grinning sheepishly. “Apparently this is what Bards wear?”
I smiled. “You look fantastic. Welcome to the party!”
Fortunately, Mike did allow us to query names and AR profiles while in the simulation, so there was no need to sort out who was who. We quickly got ourselves sorted, and began the game. We were currently working our way through The Depths of the Dungeon of Dark Despair, a premade adventure for D&D 24th Edition. The adventure’s premise was simple enough: we, as intrepid adventurers, had been tasked with retrieving the Sword of Andraste from the depths of a dungeon known only as the Doom Spire, better known as the Dungeon of Dark Despair. So far, we had only made it through five of the fifteen levels, having reached the Lair of the Spider Queen, through which we had to pass to reach the Chamber of Certain Peril.
Our party, minus Alice’s new character- who was yet to be introduced- passed cautiously through one of the many massive stone tunnels that made up the lair. As we moved, my character, Selena of Ravenwater, swept the tunnel for traps, with Kora Bloodaxe and Qeteshae Dorana- Jaime and Becky’s characters respectively- following behind me. As Mike narrated what our characters saw, a map sitting on the table filled itself out, mapping out where we had been, and giving us a clear picture of where we were in the level. Eventually, our characters came to a massive stone archway, a thick wad of web blocking our path.
“Everyone roll perception,” Mike announced, after describing the scene before us. “Becky, you have advantage with your superior elven hearing.”
We rolled our dice, the simulated physics accurately reflecting how a real object would interact with the table. In the past, digital dice rolls would have been generated with a random number generator. However, the processing power available to us allowed for a 1:1 recreation of real world physics, and full collision and material physics for the objects involved. This wasn’t even the best physics engine available, as higher-end software went as far as to simulate interactions at the most granular of levels, accounting for the effects of the four fundamental forces on objects within the VR world. Some research labs allegedly even simulated subatomic quanta in their own simulation environments, although I didn’t know much about that area of simulation science.
“I got a six,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m guessing I don’t hear anything.”
Jaime shook her head. “Nothing here either. I got a two.”
Becky smiled, and pointed to the dice. “Who needs advantage when you rolled two natural twenties?”
I clapped her on the back, and turned to Mike. He cleared his throat, and stared very seriously at Becky.
“Qeteshae twitches her ears as she hears a faint scream from the next room. Nobody else in the party seems to have heard, and it sounds like someone is in trouble. Whoever it is, they might not have long, as you can also hear the clicking of spider mandibles, and something very large moving through the room.”
Becky frowned, her brow furrowing in concentration. Eventually, she looked back at Mike. “Alright. I cast the flaming bolt cantrip, and burn a hole in the web in front of us. While I ready the spell, I tell the party to get ready, and that there’s someone trapped in the next room.”
Mike nodded, and turned to the rest of us. “OK, do you all prepare yourselves to enter the room?”
Both me and Jaime nodded. Alice sipped her tea, but gave no response. With a theatrical wave of his hand, Mike caused the map in the centre of the table to vanish in a puff of smoke, replaced by a miniature diorama of the cave beyond the arch. The floor was a spider web, hanging over a massive chasm, the table surface beneath the diorama crumbling away to form a deep, dark hole that led to unknown depths. The cave walls were covered in web-encrusted egg sacs, nursed by many of the gigantic spiders we had fought in previous sessions. In the centre was the Spider Queen, Arachne, towering over a small humanoid bound with webbing. Our party, in miniature form, stood at the entrance, their weapons raised, and their postures guarded.
“Alright, gang,” said Mike, cackling. “Roll for initiative!”
“Welp,” said Mike, closing his simulated DM screen, and standing up. “That was a good session. Thanks for everyone showing up in a reasonably timely fashion.”
It had been a couple of hours, and we had successfully defeated Arachne. The battle had been tough, with Becky barely managing to keep us up, and my character being downed twice while trying to find a good position to snipe the queen with my shortbow. The battle had finally turned in our favour when Alice’s character, yet to be formally introduced to our party, had managed to get free of her bonds, and cast a fireball spell onto the web directly underneath Arachne. The spider queen, and many of her surviving minions, had plunged into the dark pit, while our party escaped safely to a tunnel mouth on the far side of the chasm.
“I’m sorry I was slightly late,” Alice apologised, smiling at Mike. “Dinner went on slightly longer than I expected, and I had to rush back to my bedroom as soon as I was done with the dishes. I hope I didn’t hold anyone up too much.”
I smiled. “Nah, you were all good. Anyway, we can hardly be mad at our MVP! I’m looking forward to meeting your character outside of combat next session!”
Jaime pouted mockingly. “Oh? No love for Kora Bloodaxe, the one who freed the wayward bard and held the queen in place?”
Becky reached across the table and swatted her on the arm. “Oh, so what am I, fresh meat? I kept you lot up and about while you were slashing through the forces of evil.”
Jaime grinned, and slapped her hand away. “Aw, admit it, you wouldn’t have done that if you were only in it for the glory and the experience.”
“And the loot,” I added. “Don’t forget the lovely, lovely treasure.”
Alice laughed. “Is this what it’s like every session?”
“It’s often worse,” Mike groaned, his head in his hands. “You should have been here for the Othronus incident.”
I looked at the clock, ticking away up on the wall. It was ten on the dot.
“Sorry to run, guys, but I’m meeting up with Alice tomorrow, and I’d like to get some sleep in before then. See you on Monday.”
Becky gasped. “Wait, you’re meeting in person??? You won’t even do that with me!”
I laughed. “Nah, remoting in. You know how I am with physical appearances.”
“The most illusive person at school,” Jaime quipped, her eyes gleaming. “And yet she still has more friends than Jessica. No wonder that bitch has it out for you.”
“Oh, speaking of which,” Mike said, his tone flat. “She ambushed me outside school yesterday afternoon. She was going on about “exposing how ugly that troll you call a friend really is” and how I should tell you to confess before she does it for you.”
“Wait, seriously?” Jaime asked, looking worried. “She actually said that?”
Becky shook her head and frowned. “She couldn’t possibly do something like that. Nobody knows Kara’s home address. She hasn’t even told us; let alone anyone Jessica is friends with. Plus, Jessica’s mother would hardly do something illegal like give her access to Kara’s file.”
Mike nodded. “I didn’t think it was a serious threat. If I had, I would have messaged Kara immediately. But I still think you should be cautious, Kara. I…I would prefer not to have to find someone else to play with us.”
Alice reached over and squeezed my hand. “If you need help, my parents have some connections. They might be able to get a good lawyer to represent you if that bitch does something illegal. I don’t know her very well, but I know her type. Those people will go to any length over petty bullshit, no matter how wrong they are.”
I squeezed her hand back, and stood up. “Thanks, everyone, but I think I’ll be fine. As Becky said, she hardly knows where I live, and it’s not like she’d actually go that far over little old me. I’ll be careful, but I think her threat is hollow.”
With that, I tore myself from the dream state I was in, and opened my eyes back in the real world. I was lucky to have the friends that I did. Standing up, and hanging my headset back up on its hook, I pulled on my pyjamas, put my clothes into the wash drawer, and climbed into bed. Within minutes, I was fast asleep.