Vasily
Mahanenko
SURVIVAL
QUEST
The Path of the Shaman.
Step 1: The Beginning.
Chapter
1. Introduction
"... to
find the defendant Daniel Mahan guilty of hacking the control program of the
city sewage network, resulting in total system shut-down, and sentence him to
confinement in a correctional capsule and resource-gathering labor for the term
of eight years, under Article 637, section 13 of the Penal Code. The place of
confinement will be automatically appointed for the defendant by the system.
Should the prisoner meet the conditions stipulated in Article 78 Section 24 of
the Penal Code, the defendant will be given the opportunity to transfer to the
main gameworld. The Court appoints the defendant the following specifications:
race — Human, class — Shaman, main profession —
Jeweler. The sensory filters are to be turned off for the entire term spent in
the capsule. Parole is possible if the defendant pays an amount totaling one
hundred million gold gaming coins. The sentence is final and cannot be
appealed."
They say that God
is Truth. I don't know, really. Maybe that's how it is - it's not something I
ever checked, so I'm not going to argue. But all arguments are evil and a great
evil at that. And that's a Truth against which there's no argument. A play on
words, if you like.
Let me introduce
myself - I am Daniel Mahan, as it has already been mentioned. I am a thirty
year-old specialist in IT security and everything that involves. I am a
freelancer, periodically hired by corporations for finding exploits in the
virtual game of Barliona. This game had filled the whole world with itself and
had become the entire world for some. I can’t say that I am
the best security specialist, but I’m in no way the worst either. Something
between a genius and totally useless. Fair to middling.
Each year all the
specialists officially involved in looking for exploits in the Game must go
through retraining. What it was we had to be retrained in remained a mystery to
us, because for many the search for exploits was the only source of income. But
the Corporation had strict demands: if you want to look for weaknesses without
breaking the law, you had to go through retraining. Moreover, the additional
training mainly meant the study of new laws that increased the punishment for
hacking and we were never shown any tools or methods for finding exploits. The
Corporation kept a stringent control over preventing any internal know-how from
being leaked to outsiders, especially to the likes of us. Today we might be
honest and rule-abiding and tomorrow any one of us could turn into a malicious
attacker and try to break into Barliona.
At one such
retraining session I ended up sharing a table with a fairly attractive girl and
striking up a conversation with her. Unfortunately she was, of course, also a
freelance artist, as all those engaged in finding exploits in the game called
themselves, whether they actually worked anywhere or not. I was all set to
start throwing around clever and obscure terminology, expecting the girl,
stunned by the brilliance of my mind, to fall into my arms. Far from it. Marina
turned out to be clever and sufficiently professionally experienced: her main
job was providing information security for the city sewage system, while the
search for game exploits was just a hobby.
Well, well. Never
tell a girl, especially a smart girl, that her place of employment is not
worthy of having a freelance artist working there. We started to argue. And
then, struggling to come up with anything better, I threw in my killer argument
of why you shouldn't work in a sewage system, which seemed a sure win to me:
"It stinks there!"
It would seem
that she had been irritated with this kind of comment once too often. So
irritated, in fact, that she left my table and put an end to our developing
acquaintance. What a pity. I had already started to make certain plans. Well,
never mind. I immersed myself fully into yet another report on how the new law
was increasing the punishment for the hacking and destruction of programs.
Heigh-ho! Now they give eight years for hacking. This is serious. In the break
between the seminars Marina sat next to me again.
"So you say
that a job like mine is only fit for amateurs?" she said in an irritated tone, and I noticed
how a crowd of onlookers started to gather around us.
"Listen, I
never said anything of the sort. I didn't say that you were an amateur: I said
that this kind of work can’t be worthy of a professional of your
caliber."
"It's the
same thing. If I am working there it means that I'm not good enough to work
somewhere else, which means that I'm a talentless idiot!" It's no use
arguing with a girl in a state of rage. You won’t prove anything
to her and you’ll end up looking like a fool to everyone else.
"Let's talk
about something else. It's my fault. I'm sorry for my poor choice of words. I
invite you for a truce over a cup of tea, coffee or whatever you prefer. I
don't want to quarrel with such a beautiful and enchanting lady," I made
an attempt to pull the carpet form under Marina's feet. Better for her to be
indignant because of my compliments than on account of her work.
"Tell me, do
you have a wife or a girlfriend?" I involuntarily shuddered at this
question and automatically shook my head. It seems Marina was going on the
offensive, pulling the carpet from under my feet instead. My thoughts were
confirmed when her next question virtually floored me:
"Would you
like to go out with me? Do you like me?" Damn, what is it with women these
days? Now they are the ones throwing themselves at men; although I admit that
such 'attacks' made me more than happy. Marina really was an attractive girl,
pretty, with a slightly upturned nose, so I thoughtlessly nodded to her.
"Listen up,
everyone!" Marina suddenly shouted. "If in a week's time Daniel
manages to break through the security system I installed on the city sewage
system Imitator, I solemnly promise to be his girl for at least a month!
Without showing in any way that I find any of it unpleasant. But if he fails,
then he’ll spend a month working as one of the waste collector cleaners. So —
ready to make this bet? A test server would be set up for you with a full copy
of the working system, and your hacking attempt would be officially recorded as
a test of our security. By tomorrow you’ll receive all
the necessary papers, ensuring that you remain clean in the eyes of the
law," said Marina and gave me her hand to shake on it.
Who forced me to
take this bet? I could have dismissed the whole thing as a joke and brushed the
whole conversation under the carpet. We would have gone for a pint of beer
together and parted our ways in peace. But no, Marina's eyes drilled me with
such force that I involuntarily shook the hand in front of me.
"Great!
Tomorrow you will get the scan of the request to check the security of our
system and its virtual address. In exactly a week's time I’ll be
here again — either with a job offer for you or fully prepared for a date. The
time is ticking, hero!"
A murmur of
approval went through the crowd around us and made me go into a total stupor.
Marina left and people I knew, as well as strangers, started to come up to me
and slap me on the back, shake my hand and offer their services in hacking. Of
course, if such a girl risks herself for a whole month, everyone should lend a
hand. And if I failed, it would mean a good laugh at my expense when I’d be
working the sewage waste collectors.
They are right
when they say that the rarest friendship in the world is a person's friendship
with his own common sense. Who stopped me from heeding it? But once I committed
myself there was no retreat. I spent two days gathering information about the
II of the city sewage system and about Marina, and then started to work.
Of course it
would be a bit much to call intellect imitation programs 'I.I.': everyone will
immediately starts thinking that this is real artificial intelligence and beating
themselves in the chest and screaming that in our world this cannot be done
and, even if it can, humanity can do without such a 'boon', because then the
machines will replace humans and we will all die out. One must not mix up
completely different concepts, or it would be like trying to compare 'soft' and
'green'. Imitation programs
have no personality matrices. Naturally, if you program them right, they will
show emotion, character and the rest. You could even get them to do it so well
that when interacting with them you would struggle to tell right away whether
you are even dealing with a program; but they lack the key component, which is
self-awareness. Thus a program would not ask questions like "Who am I? Why
am I here? How much will I get paid? When is my holiday?" It just wouldn't
— unless, of course, such a parameter had been included in it from
the start. And this means that it would not get anxious on account of its place
in the world and would carry out all of its functions to the letter. With time,
imitators, as such programs came to be called, started to be used in all
spheres of human life, fully replacing human beings. And not just human beings
- even pets (or rather robots that looked like pets) became a permanent feature
of our world, having replaced their real animal counterparts. Of course, some,
staunchly clinging to the old ways, still keep these balls of fur in their
homes, but each year the number of such people grows smaller. Do you want your
beloved pet to work as an alarm clock, a vacuum cleaner, an iron, a security
guard and so on and so forth, while not shedding fur, making a mess on your
carpet or ruining your furniture? Would you have something which, on top of all
that, in no way differed either in looks, behavior or touch to a familiar house
cat? Then give us a call... Damn, I think I'm getting side-tracked here.
They say that
with the creation of intellect imitators humanity was only one step away from
creating artificial intelligence, a full-fledged robotic mind, but this is
little more than speculation. After all, there are rumors that artificial
intelligence had been created some time ago somewhere deep in military
laboratories, that it is currently in operation and is making itself very
useful. In general, with the appearance of the imitators life became happy and
carefree. But the resulting unemployment brought little joy to anyone, so the
tension in society following the emergence of the imitators constantly
increased...
Right, I'm
getting carried away again. Backtracking.
I won the bet. In
two days I’ve gathered all the information available on the net on Marina's
education background and on the seminars and training sessions she attended. If
she did anything, it must have been based on something she already studied,
rather than inventing the wheel from scratch. Having bought myself new hardware
in order to keep my beloved notebook safe from the defense systems that
vigorously attack computers of hapless hackers, I started on the break-in. I
didn't even try to hide behind a chain of servers, as is usually done by the
break-in gurus. Why would I? I was working strictly as ordered and only one
person could track my activities on the test server, namely Marina. I was
convinced that she would spend the whole week stuck at work, waiting for my
attack. So there was little reason for me to encode anything. The actual
break-in only took me a few hours. I was right: a very rare but effective
defense system was used. Naive girl. The author of this defense system was one
of my acquaintances and when I contacted him and described the situation, I was
soon told how to circumvent it. Not even to circumvent it, but where to start
digging.
"The defense
is solid, but it depends on access settings," said my friend. "In
large cities this is an issue, especially if there is a bunch of idiotic
superiors with different demands. Everything might be fine during the initial
installation, but once it starts to operate there might be leaks – ‘dead
souls’ with rights of access to the setup. Here a simple administrator
would be of little help — leaks with access rights of such an
organization are beyond his level!"
In the end things
turned out exactly as he said. After just a couple of hours' work the analyzing
program produced several potential leaks that I could work with. Now I
regretted getting the new hardware, having erroneously thought that everything
was going to be very complicated and dangerous. I spent two days preparing the
password attack, so I had little doubt of my success.
A wise person
once said that the devil is in the detail. It turned out that several numbers
were confused in the extremely long test server number
(346.549.879.100011.011101.011011.110011.)
Who made the mistake - I, when I entered it, or Marina when she wrote me
the letter, still remains unclear. What in fact happened is that I was working
not with the test system, but none other than the real and functioning system,
which controlled the sewage system of the whole city.
This is why I am
currently in court listening to my sentence being read out.
I broke into the
server, in the process completely crashing the II of the city sewage works. And
it turned out that after the imitator went down, the large lake in the centre
of the city, just opposite the City Hall, was turned into a very foul-smelling
entity. The unforeseen had taken place - the II administrative perimeter was
turned off leading to a jump in pressure and the collector pipe under the city
bursting in several places. And if the underground breaches remained unnoticed
by the majority, the breach at the centre of the lake resulted in the crowds of
demonstrators, which usually gathered in front of the City Hall demanding the
ban of the imitators, suddenly remembering that they had urgent business
elsewhere. The same went for the people in the City Hall. And in general, the
whole city centre was suddenly gripped by a strong desire to visit their
relatives in the countryside, where the air was so clean and fresh.
This case
gathered a lot of publicity and everyone decided that this was a terrorist
attack. There was a protest demanding that a stop should be put to the
imitator-powered services and the investigators started digging around to find
the party responsible.
I worked without
trying to cover my tracks, so finding me did not present much of a challenge. I
really did not try to hide: as soon as I became aware of the consequences and
of the fact that the police were looking for the culprit, I confessed and gave
myself up. I did not believe that my punishment would be very severe - I might
get reprimanded or fined. No more than that.
How wrong I was!
The police had gathered so much material that I could only shake my head in
astonishment as I read it. Someone became ill from the smell and filed a suit
against the city. Someone didn't like the appearance of the lake that I
'updated', and decided to sue the city. Some others simply sued the city not to
seem out of touch with the general sentiment. On the whole, the losses that the
city suffered amounted to no less than 100 million, which was laid at my feet
in its entirety. I tried to defend myself with the piece of paper that said
that I was hired to do this, but the sewage works lawyers dashed all my hopes,
asserting that the paper was signed by someone who lacked sufficient authority
to hire external specialists and was thus invalid. This meant that, in effect,
I carried out a hacking attack with all that it entailed. And it really
entailed quite a lot. In general, all the damages were hung on me. And they
threw in hacking charges on top of it too. During the investigation I, as
someone who gave himself up, stayed at home with a signed undertaking not to
abscond. I kept myself busy by taking a good look into how I could help myself
in Barliona. But the more I read, the more I understood that there was nothing
I could do that would help me. Nothing at all.
It so happened
that the upkeep of prisons became extremely expensive for the Government. Yes,
that's just the one Government I'm talking about, since at a certain point the
territorial fragmentation on our world had come to an end. I did not witness
these events myself. The unification happened before I was born and the history
lessons stated that this was the common will of all the fellow citizens of the
world. Yeah right, the will of the fellow citizens. More likely the heads of
governments came to an arrangement between themselves and presented the people
with the fact. But, never mind. This is not important. So, as soon as the
imitators became an established feature of our world, increasing the number of
the unemployed, prisons began to get filled up at a catastrophic rate. The
Government faced a global question: how to solve the problems with public
disorder and the increase in the number of criminals? There was a need for a
'carrot'.
And then, Peter
Johnson went before the Government with his proposal. He was the owner of the
factory that made capsules for virtual reality games, including the game named
Barliona. It was an ordinary game, designed in the 'Sword & Sorcery' style,
with a medieval setting, no firearms or combustion engines, featuring magic,
orcs, dwarves, elves, dragons and many other things that did not exist on the
real world. Like all similar games, the gameplay in Barliona involved full
immersion, which was ensured by the virtual reality capsule. And these were the
capsules that the Johnson factory made. Inside the capsule the player became
inseparable from his character and felt everything that the character in the
game would feel, including taste, shape of the objects, pleasure, tiredness and
pain. Although the regulating authorities demanded that all the senses that the
player could feel in Barliona were blocked by default. In order to turn on the
sense perception it was necessary to go through psychological evaluation of
mental capacity and get tested for the degree of sensitivity, in order to
determine the extent to which the senses could be turned on in the capsule. The
corporation looked after its players. The capsules were calibrated individually
for each person and supplied him or her with every necessity for a long time:
from food to physical training through stimulation of muscles with electrical
impulses. People could spend months and even years inside a capsule without
feeling any physical discomfort on leaving it.
What was Mr.
Johnson's proposal? For a modest fee he proposed to put all the prisoners
inside his capsules and send them to special locations within Barliona, where
they would spend their time in useful activities, like resource gathering. The
Government liked the idea and a year-long experiment involving such a virtual
prison led to them buying all the rights to Barliona and appointing Johnson
General Director of a new state corporation. All the necessary laws were passed
for securing the status of a state-run game for Barliona and the Government
itself acted as a guarantor of the game currency, facilitating its free
exchange for real money. This was followed by an advertising campaign and funds
started to flow into the game. Virtually anyone who was dissatisfied with his
life ran to Barliona in order to cheat the government and earn money on quests,
resource gathering and killing mobs, and so live without a care. Such naive
little children. The completed quests produced game money, which could be
easily exchanged for real money — that was clear enough. However, any action
within the game also demanded some sort of payment, however little. If you
wanted to stop in an inn, you paid, if you wanted to get something, you paid,
and so on. One of the most important inventions for draining money out of the
players were the Banks.
One of the core
rules in Barliona states that when a character dies the player loses fifty
percent of all the cash he had on him. At the next death he lost another fifty,
and so on. Of course, if a character was killed by a mob, after reviving in a
couple of hours he could always go to his place of death and pick up the lost
money, which would be lying on the ground. Unless it was picked up by another
player first. But usually players did not die from mobs, but at the hands of
other players, who made it their goal to make money on such kills. Such players
had many penalties imposed on them: it was permitted to kill them for eight
hours after they themselves had attempted to make a kill; killing a PK (player
killer) came with a reward, which could be collected from any representative of
the authorities; a PK gained no experience for eight hours after the killing
and so on; but nevertheless there existed players who liked killing others,
even if only inside a virtual world. This is why the Banks emerged. If a player
gained some money, he could put it in a Bank for storage. A one-off payment
gave you a card to be used with an account that no-one else was able to access.
Keeping such an account cost 0.1% of the total money deposited, which was paid
to the Bank on a monthly basis. It might not seem like much, but even one
thousandth of Barliona's total turnover is an enormous amount of money, which
is why the Corporation would never close down the PvP (Player versus Player)
mode of play.
The Corporation's
next step for making profit was selling off the results of the prisoner's work
to the main game world. Arbitrary generation of resources by the Corporation
was prosecuted under the law and special committees kept a close watch to
ensure it didn't happen. However the sale of resources obtained by people
serving a sentence was a totally different story: such resources were validated
by real work. In general everyone has been happy and satisfied with this
arrangement for the past fifteen years, ever since Barliona was officially
given the status of a state game. The gamers enjoyed a high quality game, the
Corporation received unthinkable amounts of money while continuously improving
their creation, and the prisoners stayed in special locations and gathered
resources. At the present time about 25% of total Earth's population over 14
years of age plays Barliona and this number increases every year. The only
limitation imposed on the characters was that until a player turned 18 he or
she had no way of using the PvP mode - either as a victim or as a hunter. The
Game was very strict in enforcing this.
One more fact
about the prisoners serving time in Barliona should be brought to light. It is
a fact of some importance. Around seven years after the launch of Barliona a
gang of delinquents beat up and raped a girl by the name of Elena. Her surname
was Johnson and her father's name Peter. She was the daughter of the
Corporation's director. She and her friends had the poor judgment to go for a
ride in one of the rough areas of the city, which still housed those who
disagreed with the introduction of imitators and who had no intention of
logging into Barliona. As it always happens in such cases, they suddenly ran
out of gas.
Naturally, the
perpetrators were found almost immediately and Johnson himself intervened in
the trial. No, he did not even bother to arrange a capsule accident. He did
something else. Following the trial a law was passed that regulated the turning
on of the prisoners' sensory stimulators. The capsules initially came with
special filters that regulated the level of sensations, but these were
completely removed for those who attacked Johnson's daughter. I don't know what
the observed results of this were, but in about a year's time the law was
extended and now all prisoners served their sentences with their sensory
filters disabled. The rate of crime fell sharply and there were hardly any
repeat offenders. The prospect of having to gather resources with disabled
sensory filters was a very effective crime deterrent.
So there you have
it. I will now tell you a little about what I was given.
Character race:
Human. It was the first race created in the game and the only race that has no
additional bonuses except faster reputation gain with the NPCs
(Non-Player-Characters). They don't have the ability to generate a stone skin,
like the dwarves, nor do they have sharp vision and extra proficiencies with
bows, like the elves. Only reputation. The Shaman class was also one of the
weakest classes in Barliona. It is universal, allowing you both to do damage
and to heal, but in a one-on-one combat it lost out to virtually all other
classes. The summoning of the Spirits just took too long. My skill
specialization of Jeweler also had little going for it: in Barliona only the
richest people could afford to spend time on perfecting this skill. All the
things made by Jewelers — adornments, rings, necklaces, decorative
objects — could be easily bought from NPC traders. The Jeweler's main useful
skill, the cutting of precious stones, was not worth the effort that had to be
spent on it. Precious stones are worth a lot, but in order to obtain the
materials to make them, you had to spend months mining and processing ores. And
even if some were obtained, the chance that the stone would spoil during the
cutting process was very high. Of course it was possible to train in other
skills, which were virtually endless in number, but it came with a serious
restriction: none of the additional professions could exceed the primary one by
more than ten points. It was a stupid limitation, but nothing could be done
about it.
Another downside
was that my Hunter, whom I had spent several years building, and in whom I
invested quite a lot of money, was to be deleted, because only one character at
a time was permitted in Barliona. After you were set free it was possible to
keep the character played during imprisonment and to continue playing it, but
many could not find the strength to do this. It was psychologically difficult.
As far as the Hunter was concerned, all the items and money that he earned
would either be handed over to me after eight years of swinging the pick, or,
should some miracle happen, after I am permitted to leave the mines for the
main gameworld. Sometimes criminals are released, most probably by mistake,
from resource gathering to spend the rest of their sentence in the main game,
after they hand over 30% of the money that they earned to the Government.
Otherwise there are no limitations – you can develop, level up and get to know
people as you like. The only sign that a player is a prisoner is a red
headband, which various quest-giving NPCs tend to dislike and which could only
be removed if you pay one million gold to the Treasury. In other words – it
cannot be removed.
And the worst
thing of all was that Marina never appeared. She didn’t turn up at the
trial or at my home, while I waited for the conclusion of the investigation. It
was as if she vanished. Was the eight years of my sentence worth such a
frivolous girl? I think not.
“Well, in you jump!" laughed the
technician as he put me into the capsule. Everyone’s a comedian.
With one voice all the newspapers in the city called me “Sewage System Killer”, probably the
mildest nickname I was given during this time. The main thing was for this name
not to stick with me while in prison. Lightning flashed before my eyes and for
a while I was unconscious.
“Attention! Barliona entry through prison
capsule TK3.687PZ-13008/LT12 in progress.” The cold
metallic voice, whose message was repeated with a running line of unpleasant
white text, sent a chill down my spine and I immediately came to myself. The
voice, devoid of any emotion, made you feel uncomfortable. This was done on
purpose: I knew that a voice could be soft and have a calming effect. “The
initial parameters have been set and cannot be changed. Gender: Male.
Race: Human. Class: Shaman. Appearance: identical to the subject. The
scanning of the subject has been completed. The synchronization of the physical
data with the features of the chosen race has been implemented. Physical data
has been set. Starting location has been chosen. Place of confinement – the
Pryke Copper Mine. Purpose of confinement: the harvesting of Copper ore. Character
generation has commenced.”
In the initial
loading window I was looking at myself wearing a striped robe with number 193
753 482. It would appear that quite a
few prisoners have gone through Barliona in the last 15 years. The robe was supplemented with prisoner’s
trousers and boots, whose total value could be seen in their striped pattern.
Even the boots were stripy, at which I couldn’t help smiling.
I looked like some sort of a zebra. One could say that I was dressed at the
height of fashion. The pick in my hand completed the bleak picture of ‘Myself’ making
it clear what I would be doing in the coming years. Only the pick wasn’t stripy,
something to be thankful for, at least.
“Enter a name.
Attention: a prisoner’s name cannot be composite.”
Well, the
technician did cheer me up after all. He did that by giving me, for some
unknown reason, the opportunity to choose my own name. The gaming name in
Barliona was provisionally unique: in the same gaming environment you could
meet three hundred ‘Bunnys’, a hundred ‘Kitties’ and endless
numbers of ‘Pwners’, but the uniqueness was guaranteed by a composite word. For example you could easily see Pwner the
Great and Pwner the Charming next to each other, but there were no two Pwner
the Great's in Barliona. However, prisoners were not allowed to pick a
composite name for themselves, because usually these were generated
automatically. But if they deleted my
Hunter...
“Mahan,” I said, setting
all my hopes on the fact that the name of my Hunter, who was taken from me, was
already deleted from the system but not yet picked by anyone else. So what if I
liked to play with this name? That's what I've become use to, despite the fact
that it was just a surname. Moreover, my
hunter’s name had only one component, and I bought it from another player
for almost ten thousand gold and had no wish to see all that money go to waste.
“Choice accepted. Welcome to the world of
Barliona, Mahan. Users connecting from prison capsules have no access to the
introductory training area. You will be transferred directly to the Pryke
Copper Mine. We wish you a pleasant
game.”
There was a flash
of lightning and the world around me filled with colors. Though for some reason
among these colors grey predominated.
If you can`t wait to find out what happens next the full novel is available on Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VQRW14E
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