Ludere online

April 13, 2023, 20 years in the past

Dave groaned as he lowered himself onto the log, his hot sweat-soaked skin cooling markedly in the shade. The heat was like a wet blanket thrown over you while you stood in the mouth of an oven and it wasn’t even what was considered to be the hottest part of the day. He toed the dirt with his shoes, frowning at the fact that despite his best efforts the soles of his shoes still existed. He was not the nature sort, something that neither his family nor the camp counselors could seem to understand. Dave would have preferred to be back in his room reading or playing a video game. He had been hoping to get to participate in the events for Phoenix Rising and Shattered Kingdoms so that he could take advantage of the double exp and loot drops. He would have finally brought his Paladin in Shattered Kingdoms to level 100 or finally gotten all the materials in Phoenix Rising to make the legendary greaves his Templar needed to complete the set but it looked like he'd be stuck farming for who knows how long.

Dave leaned back on the log as he slid off his pack, resting it on the ground between his legs in front of him. Laughter bubbled up from the group farther down the trail where the rest of the boys ate their lunches, no doubt laughing at Ryan’s lame jokes again. Dave scowled at the thought of Ryan as he pulled out his lunch bag and canteen. Ryan Carson was considered by all others to be an all around great guy. They took one look at his perfectly combed strawberry blonde hair, his bright blue eyes and his dimples and suddenly he was a good guy in their eyes even if his personality was garbage. No doubt the fact he was from a relatively well off family helped to stoke the urge to ingratiate themselves to him. The fact they all jumped so willingly at his beck and call was bad enough but he was a sadistic prick and it all made him sick beyond words.

Ryan was the type of guy who liked to watch others in pain, this fact was abundantly clear to Dave as he was often the focus of Ryan’s schemes. The first day of camp Dave had come across Ryan casually leaning against a railing, his back to the midday sun and taking in the view of the valley below. Dave had approached to get a better look at the glittering lake and the stream that fed it when one of the boards of the balcony shifted his left leg had crashed through up to his knee. The hot wet pain that shot along his leg immediately told him he had at least one cut that likely needed stitches.

When Dave had looked up, thinking to ask for help, he had frozen at the barely suppressed look of pure excitement that shone in Ryan's eyes as he looked down on him from over his shoulder. Then he noticed the shape of the screwdriver shoved into Ryan's back pocket barely hidden beneath his shirt. A chill had run down his spine despite the midday summer heat as he looked up into the other boy's face. Dave had needed no less than twelve stitches and since then there had been a number of accidents that Ryan just so happened to witness, always with that same expression.

Dave shook his head, clearing the memory away, and took a long swig from his canteen. The water was warm and had a distinct metallic taste but felt refreshing on his parched throat nonetheless. Dave capped it back off and dropped it into his pack before unwrapping a granola bar.

The counselors had assured them all that they would have a great time at the park, that once they had hiked some of the trails they could do some digging. Meanwhile Ryan had joked quietly about how they would all be dragged to the woods where some redneck could kidnap or kill them eliciting some laughter from the other boys. Though it would take seven hours to arrive at the Crater of Diamonds in Murfreesboro Arkansas from their camp outside of Kansas City the counselors had insisted that none of them bring any hand held games, phones or mp3 players.

Dave leaned farther back on the log, looking up at the canopy of leaves and the light filtering through it, a sigh slipping through his lips as the ghost of a breeze brushed him, cooling the sweat on his skin. He looked out to the east where the towering piles of thunderhead clouds hung heavy on the horizon, a streak of lightning arcing from one cloud to the next, and a roll of thunder muttered out over the park. The heat was tolerable but with the high humidity it felt as if there was a wet wool blanket over your face as you stared into an open oven.

He shifted trying to get comfortable and catch more of the thin breeze when the soft wood of the log gave way beneath his weight then and Dave threw a hand out behind himself, where it sank deep into the leaves and detritus of the forest stopping when he was wrist deep. A sharp, cold rock bit into the palm of his hand sending pain like an electric current all the way up to his shoulder.

Dave let loose a string of curses and closed his hand around the rock, rising to his knees and winding back to hurl the rock away. Light gleamed off of it and he stopped, bringing it closer to look at while brushing dirt from it. The rock was a web of porous cold metal that when the light hit it just right lit up. His breath caught in his throat as he registered the sight of a Pallasite Meteorite that seemed to hold a black crystal in its depths. He turned the golf ball sized rock in his hand and the light filtering through it shifted from a pale yellow to a rich carnelian as the light struck the crystal which now clearly held veins of a deep red. It reminded him of the time his father had taken him to a museum the week before he had been hit head on by a semi being driven by a sleep deprived trucker.

Voices called up the trail and he jumped, shoving the meteorite into his bag as Ryan and a counselor approached, his heart sank at their expressions. Ryan’s glee glimmered in his eyes and the counselor's face was plainly painted with pity. His brother Daniel had called and his aunt was on her way to pick him up. Dave’s heartbeat rushed in his ears, his mind reeling and tuning out as it replayed those words endlessly. His mother and sister. A head on collision. Coma. Just like his father. It was happening again.

April 13, 2028. Fifteen Years in the past.

The Georgia heat pressed down like a suffocating blanket, heavy and stifling. Dave tugged at his collar, wishing for a cool breeze, for anything to alleviate the sweltering discomfort that clung to him like a second skin. He wasn't cut out for this—for forced marches through overgrown trails, for the relentless buzz of insects, for the forced camaraderie of his fellow campers. He had tried to tell his foster parents, to no avail. He also tried to play up on the trauma from what had happened last time he had gone to a camp. That didnt work either

He longed for the cool sanctuary of his room, for the glow of his computer screen, for the escape offered by the digital worlds he so easily navigated.

He kicked at a loose rock, frustration simmering within him. This forced "bonding experience"—a week-long camping trip orchestrated by his foster parents—was supposed to be about building memories, about forging connections. But all Dave felt was a growing sense of isolation, a gnawing emptiness that even the vastness of the Georgia wilderness couldn't fill.

He lagged behind the group, his gaze fixed on the dusty path ahead. His mind, however, was a whirlwind of thoughts, a chaotic tapestry woven from anxieties about the future, regrets about the past, and a desperate longing for an escape from the suffocating reality of his present.

A mere five years ago he hadd been looking forward to the release of Phoenix Rising, a new MMORPG promising a level of immersion unlike anything he’d experienced before. He’d spent weeks researching character classes, strategizing builds, and devouring every scrap of information he could find online. It was supposed to be his escape, his chance to step into a world of magic and adventure, to leave behind the mundane realities of his life.

And then… the accident.

A chilling wave of grief washed over him, the memory still raw, still too painful to confront. He'd lost his parents, his younger sister, all in an instant, a cruel twist of fate that shattered his world. He remembered the sterile silence of the hospital, the hushed whispers of doctors and nurses, the crushing weight of grief that threatened to drown him.

They called it a medical marvel, a tragic anomaly. His family’s bodies clung to life, kept functioning by machines and tubes, but their minds… their minds were lost, adrift in a sea of silence.

Dave shoved the memory away, his jaw clenched, his fists tight. He refused to accept their fate, refused to believe that the light in their eyes, the warmth of their laughter, was gone forever. He’d find a way. He had to.

Current day.

Dave contemplated that long past day as he sat in his darkened office, fingers drumming on the solid wood of his rich oaken desk staring down at it on his desk, small facets of light weakly dancing from within the gem. Dave gave a deep sigh shaking his head.

“Look buddy, I’m trying to help but I can't do that if you get us shut down. You can't keep doing this, remember when we talked about moderation? You need to regulate the flow of energy, synchronize. We aren't built like you guys were. Otherwise what's the point of all of this? If we keep losing them like this we won't even make it out of beta testing then we'll have to do it without all the funding. We'll be back in the garage with salvaged parts.” His voice was hard and quiet but not harsh. The light flickered and pulled back at some of his words.

“I’m not mad, I get it. You’re trying but we have to be careful and do this in a very specific way or we will be shut down. I don't know if it's just that we are so physically different from you guys or if there's just some other aspect that we're missing. If we don't sort it out then we’ll be back to square one. None of us want that, or at least I hope you don't want that, especially after all the work we've put in.”

Dave said as he poked at the gem, smiling at it as it flashed in stuttering pale yellow stream of morse code. “Absolutely not, there's no way I'm trying one of the others yet, we only have one compatible Dive unit right now and you're first. That was the deal and I'm sticking to it. We're getting a new batch of testers on Monday and then on Thursday we're getting another three compatible units but they will need to be synchronized with the system before we can start using them. Rest some, think about what you did. Look at it from every angle, use that mind of yours. Then we’ll try again, you were close last time. You can do it. You only caused a mild stroke this time so we were getting there. I'll try my end too, talk to the boys some and get some fresh ideas.”

Another flash of light met his words and he laughed before closing the case and slipping it back into his pocket. Dave knew that they were close to achieving complete synchronicity, the pod unit was finally perfect and it was simply just a matter of getting the Genesis Rocks he had managed to collect since he had found his first that day in Murfreesboro all those years ago.

Genesis Rocks had fallen to the earth, embedded deep within Pallasite meteorites, in August of 2020. Those that were found were hoarded by collectors and he had been lucky to find an undiscovered one when he was 15 on a camp field trip. He had paid his cousins to use a bandsaw to open the meteorite cracked open to have the crystal inside extracted so that he could have its composition tested. It wasn't entirely unremarkable however upon placing the crystal itself on his laptop the previously dormant AI stored inside awoke and contact was made with the first alien mind. Or at least the first he knew of outside of his own fumbling attempts with morse code and technological contraptions

No one around him that knew his goals, at least not the deeper ones. looking at the surface ones they all believed that it was impossible to sync up the resonance of the Genesis Rocks he had collected to a human mind thereby creating the most perfectly stable permanent link to server man had ever seen even while not using any technology.

If you present a science advanced enough and it tended to look like magic but he knew it was possible, the cores had each shown detailed schematics from their home worlds that showed that it was something that, among countless other wonders, had already been achieved centuries ago.

The Genesis Rocks themselves were proof of this, they had all once been living creatures that gave up their physical forms for the betterment of their species and society. Thus far their primary issue had been that they lacked the unique power cells that allowed for the frequencies to align properly, electricity just didn’t work the same as whatever the hell the people from the TRAPPIST 1 system had used and none of the minds locked within the cores could figure out how to mimic the necessary energy or why it wasn't readily available here.

At night the rhythmic hum of the servers was a lullaby, a constant reassurance in the cool, sterile silence of the server room and the deep seated knowledge he was drawing closer to his goal. He was missing just one piece. He just didnt know what the piece was. Dave ran a hand over the smooth surface of a Genesis Rock, its depths swirling with a nebula of colors, a kaleidoscope of trapped light and energy. It pulsed with a life he couldn’t comprehend, a consciousness vast and alien, whispering promises of a future he was desperate to grasp.

“Soon,” he thought, his chest tight with a familiar ache. “Soon, we'll be together again. I won't let them keep you from me any longer.”

He'd spent years, poured his lifeblood and every ounce of his being into this project. Ludere Online wasn't just a game, wasn't just a groundbreaking leap in immersive technology; it was the key. The Genesis Rocks, with their ability to house human consciousness, held the potential to unlock the secrets of the human mind, to bridge the chasm between life and… whatever lay beyond.

His gaze drifted to the photo tucked beside the monitor, a faded and worn dog eared image of a laughing family, their faces blurred with time and grief that bit at his eyes, clawing at his chest. He could almost hear their voices, feel the warmth of their embrace, a phantom limb of an ache in his chest.

The accidents had ripped them away, leaving behind only empty shells, their minds trapped in a labyrinth of silence. Doctors called it a medical marvel, a freak occurrence that defied explanation. They spoke in hushed whispers of miracles and tragedies, of a cruel twist of fate that left their bodies functioning, but their minds… gone.

But Dave refused to accept that. He’d seen the potential of the Genesis Rocks, the way they resonated with human consciousness. He’d felt the faint flicker of his family's presence within their digital depths. He just needed to find the right frequency, the right algorithm to unlock their prison and bring them back.

"They think I'm obsessed," he muttered, his voice a low growl. "They don't understand. This isn't just about profits, about market share. This is about hope. About redemption."

He straightened, pushing away the wave of grief and determination hardening his resolve. He wouldn't fail. He couldn't. The future, his family's future, depended on it.