Blue Pills Read online

  BLUE PILLS

  By Armand Vespertine

  Registered Copyright 2014

  Contents

  Chapter One – Don’t Mine at Night

  Chapter Two – It’s Dangerous To Go Alone

  Chapter Three – An Arrow to the Knee

  Chapter Four – You’ve Met With A Terrible Fate, Haven’t You?

  Afterword and Acknowledgements

  SCP Database – The Insomnia Labyrinth

  Chapter One – Don’t Mine at Night

  “Wake up Maverick!” Warren hollered from the kitchen.

  A sad smile spread across Maverick’s lips. No matter how many times he woke up here, he never forgot that he was only waking from one dream to another. He climbed out of his bed and shuffled over to his wardrobe. He selected an outfit from the menu, and it materialized upon his avatar instantly.

  His avatar was based upon his real body, although slightly more mesomorphic to reflect his in-game physique level. He had tan skin, hazel eyes and sandy brown hair in a parted bowel cut. He looked at himself in the mirror, and took a moment to reflect on the fact that it wasn’t really a mirror. No light was actually being reflected off of anything. He took a deep breath of air that wasn’t there, and the mere knowledge that the action was superfluous robbed it of any calming affect it might of otherwise have had.

  He walked into the kitchen to find his roommate eating breakfast with his latest conquest. Warren was leaner and tanner than Maverick, but shorter, and wore his black hair in the same haircut.

  “Good morning buddy. Saved you some breakfast,” Warren greeted as Maverick slumped down at the breakfast bar. He slid a plate of eggs and Canadian bacon in front of him, and effortlessly squeezed a full glass of juice out of a single orange, which earned him two experience points.

  “Thanks,” Maverick said listlessly. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “No can do. We agreed on no names,” Warren smiled.

  “Great. There’s nothing I like more than starting my day off next to a stranger in his underwear,” Maverick complained, taking a drink of his juice. The man next to him laughed awkwardly.

  “I’m Aaron,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Dude, we said no names,” Warren reprimanded.

  “You didn’t tell me you had a roommate. What was I supposed to do?” he asked.

  “You know what; you just lost your breakfast privileges,” Warren told him, taking away his plate.

  “Seriously?” Aaron asked.

  “Get out, don’t call, thank you,” Warren said succinctly. Aaron rolled his eyes and loaded his avatar back home.

  “You’re horrible,” Maverick said.

  “I have rules Maverick. I’m not looking for a relationship, and if I know his name then I can’t very well call it anonymous sex, now can I?” Warren asked.

  “I really don’t think you need to worry about any of your one night stands being the clingy type,” Maverick said.

  “It only takes one. Statistically it’s bound to happen eventually,” Warren claimed.

  “So is you contracting the Bay City virus, or whatever the computer virus equivalent of that is,” Maverick retorted.

  “My avatar can get a computer virus; I can’t,” Warren corrected him. “My brain stores information in neuronal pathways the same as yours. I can’t be infected with software.”

  “I make a homophobic BCV joke and what offends you is that it’s not neurologically accurate?” Maverick asked.

  “I’m only a gay man in Surreality. In the real world I’m a giant robot who could pulverize your atrophied ass, so watch your mouth around me,” Warren warned jestingly.

  “My body’s not atrophied, it’s in stasis.”

  “Whatever, I got to log out now. Have a good day quarrying, and remember that the only thing stopping me from crushing your hibernating body is a thin layer of transparent alumina and the first law of robotics. Arrivederci.”

  Warren’s avatar derezzed as he logged off, leaving Maverick alone in the empty kitchen.

  “Say hi to the atoms for me,” Maverick said forlornly, slowly pushing his imaginary food around its nonexistent plate.

  Maverick skillfully struck the ore rock in front of him with his pickaxe, shattering it with only a few blows. He knelt down and collected the several gemstones and nuggets of precious metal and placed them in his magic satchel, leaving the rest of the digilith to be collected by anyone who wanted it. Once he had what he needed he moved onto the next rock, and started the routine over again.

  The quarry had to be one of the dreariest landscapes Surreality had to offer. It was little more than a long, wide pit filled with rocks, the monotonous grey broken only by the occasional glimmer from veins of ore. The sky was mostly grey as well, the clouds seldom parting to allow a glimpse of the stylized sun. Rickety old carts on rusted rails ferried loads across the quarry, or underground to the Gnome Kingdom.

  This was where Maverick spent most of his days.

  The quarry was sparsely populated, as there wasn’t much there that was quest related. It was mostly just an ever-regenerating deposit of raw materials, and most people left after they had got what they needed for the game.

  Maverick wasn’t playing a game though, and while he no long walked in the waking world he was still bound by its necessities.

  For hours he broke rocks and sifted through the rubble under the cloudy sky. Though his avatar never tired, the work was tedious and disheartening. When at last he could endure no more he sat down and slumped up against a boulder. He hung his head dejectedly and sighed, the distant sounds of other miners barely registering in his mind. He would sit there until his fear of not acquiring enough gems and gold was stronger than his distaste for the work itself.

  It seemed like every day he was more burnt out than the last, and he was starting to fear that he wouldn’t be able to take it for much longer.

  “Excuse me?” a lilting voice said from above him.

  He raised his head and saw a young woman standing over him. She looked Asian with luminescent teal eyes and fluorescent turquoise hair in a choppy bob. He could tell her avatar wasn’t based on a real body, since her face was perfectly symmetrical. She was dressed in a silver-grey leather outfit that was comprised of long pants and a hooded jacket that was cropped to expose her firm abdominal muscles. She also wore a pair of fingerless gloves, high top sneakers and had a pair of tinted sunglasses on top of her head.

  “Hi! I’m Vega. Do you have a minute to talk? I’m on a quest and I need someone with high mining XP,” she explained.

  “What for?” Maverick asked.

  “Mythreal, which I’ll split with you,” she replied. Maverick laughed softly at the idea.

  “The only place to get Mythreal is in the Insomnia Labyrinth,” he told her.

  “I know that, but my mining skill is so low I can’t even free any ore before one of those creepy things finds me and kills me,” Vega said. “I don’t want to have to grind forever just to get my mining skill high enough. If you’ll mine for me I’ll watch your back, and then we can both take half of the Mythreal.”

  “You’ll watch my back? The Insomnia Labyrinth is a survival horror game. As soon as you go in there your Health drops to one, your Mana to zero, and your weapons are useless. All you can do is run and hide, and the sound of a pickaxe kind of gives your position away. I’ve been in the Labyrinth before. It doesn’t matter how fast I mine. I’m always killed before I can find the exit and I lose everything.”

  “But I have this,” Vega said, pulling out a wrist mounted gun from the hammerspace of her pocket. “It’s a Teleportal Caster. It’s not a weapon, and it doesn’t run on Mana, so it still works in the Labyrinth. I know; I’ve tried it already. It will
make portals on any surface, and I can set it so that it will automatically teleport us out of range of any hostiles. I can also use it to get us out of the Labyrinth once we’re done.

  “If we go in as a party then we both have to die to lose our haul. I’ll set it to automatically fire an escape portal if one of us dies, then the other one just jumps through it and we keep all the Mythreal. The only way we’ll lose it is if we die simultaneously.”

  “Won’t the hostiles just chase us through the portals?” Maverick asked.

  “I can set it so that mobs can’t go through,” Vega replied.

  Maverick looked her over critically, appraising her sincerity.

  “Can I look at your profile just to be sure you’re not a spambot?” he asked.

  “Be my guest,” she said.

  With a few quick gestures Maverick brought up her profile, and saw that she was indeed a real person. She was an Anthromimetic neural net running on nearly 100 giganodes of quantum perceptronium parallel processors. She had been certified self-aware by a Schrodinger test, which detected the quantum effects of conscious observation. A universal multi-spectral intelligence assessment had determined her sapience. As such she was a legal person and full citizen.

  Her in-game character was a level 99 Rogue Human Female. Maverick was impressed, since she would have had to been questing every day for many years to have achieved that rank. She had apparently never done much mining though, since that skill was only at level seven.

  “You’re a Rogue AI?” he asked with a smile.

  “No, I’m an AI Rogue,” she corrected him. “It’s a small but significant difference. So what do you say? Will you come to the Labyrinth with me?”

  “Well, your plan sounds good in theory, but I’ve been burned by get rich quick schemes before,” Maverick told her. “If something goes wrong then I will have wasted probably the whole afternoon, and I really can’t afford to do that.”

  “Okay, how about this; I’ll put up my Teleportal Caster as collateral,” she offered. “This is a Legendary Artifact. You can only get it by completing the entire ‘No Place like Gnome’ campaign, which only Elite level characters can do. It’s incredibly useful and extremely rare. It’s easily worth an afternoon of gold farming. If we come up empty today, it’s yours.”

  Her offer seemed to relieve him of any risk, but he was still hesitant. He had given up hoping for a better life. Hope only led to disappointment.

  He looked at her to say no, but when he saw her vibrant eyes and beaming smile, he could see that she was already filled with hope.

  He did not want to disappoint her.

  “I…I guess I don’t have anything to lose,” he said, reluctantly rising to his feet.

  “You mean it? You’ll do it?” Vega asked excitedly.

  “Might as well,” he replied. “I’m Maverick, by the way.”

  “Thank you thank you thank you!” she screamed, glomping him enthusiastically. “Thank you so much! The rest of my party’s given up on getting Mythreal, but we’re totally screwed without it. Can we go right now?”

  “Sure. Just add me to your party and load us to the Labyrinth.”

  No sooner had he said these words than the entire world around him derezzed. He was in a complete void; no air, no gravity, and no light. His entire sensory feed was cut off as his avatar was loaded to a new location in Surreality. For that moment he was in his real body again, lying dormant in his sterile pod, perceiving only the lack of sensation. He experienced this at least twice a day, whenever he loaded himself from one area to another. He could have quickly and freely installed a loading screen that would not break his immersion in the game world, but he liked to be reminded that it was all just an illusion.

  When the illusion returned they were standing in a sparse woodland of larch trees. The sky was still mostly overcast, and in front of them was a tall, crooked mountain of dark grey stone. There was a weathered black and white warning sign with the SCP logo on it, informing the reader that due to the mountains anomalous properties it had been chosen as a containment site for numerous Euclid and Keter class creatures and artifacts. There was also a disclaimer which essentially said ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’ in legalese.

  Carved into the side of the mountain was a tall engraved archway with a distressed nude woman lying across the top. Squatting on her chest was a sleep paralysis Incubus. The howling wind around them was not quite realistic, sounding more like the screams of a forsaken spirit than was actually possible.

  “I hate survival horror,” Vega said, staring nervously at the archway. “I like games where I can strike down hordes of enemies and feel like a badass. In there I’m basically helpless, almost like...,”

  “…like Reality?” Maverick asked.

  “Yeah,” she nodded with a sad smile.

  “Just remember that it’s not real. Nothing can hurt us, and we can log off at any time,” he said. Vega equipped her Teleportal Castor to her right arm, and a lantern to her left hand. Maverick equipped one of his least expensive pickaxes, since if he dropped it and they died it would be left in there for anyone to claim.

  “Hey, what happens if you hit one of the monsters in there with that thing?” Vega asked.

  “Nothing. It can cleave metal ore from rock but it’s useless against a half decomposed corpse,” he replied. “Game logic, right?”

  “Tell me about it,” she smirked. “I’m ready when you are.”

  He nodded, and they moved towards the archway. Once they were close enough the grotesque Incubus came to life with a yawn.

  “Hello again Vega. Here for another go, are we?” he asked with a smug smile. “And…Maverick? Haven’t seen you in a while. I’d thought you’d given up on getting any of my Mythreal. But maybe this time will be different, eh? After all, the two of you obviously make quite a team. A maxed out gold farmer with a teleportation gun? You may have me beat. Oh dear oh dear oh dear, whatever shall I do?”

  “Don’t listen to him. He’s got nothing,” Vega insisted confidently. “You have to play by the rules Aglet. We’re playing survival mode, so foes and pick-ups have to be spawned randomly, including ore. If you try to fix the game against us in any way I will report you.”

  “You wound me young miss. What sort of scoundrel do you take me for?” he asked with a toothy smile. “I care nothing for the Mythreal within my own tunnels. It is yours to take, if you can. Step out of the harsh sun and into the cool comfort of my dark labyrinth. Take care not to lose your way though. As with all paths, many of my tunnels only end in suffering.”

  Vega glowered at him resolutely, and boldly passed under the archway and into the darkness beyond. With a hesitant sigh, Maverick followed.

  As soon as they were through, the archway vanished. The only light came from Vega’s lantern. The deathly quiet was broken only by a slow, solitary drip in the distance. The tunnel they were in looked artificial, but long abandoned. The support beams were rotting and creaking under the weight of their load, ready to collapse at any minute. The stale air was tainted by the stench of the dead.

  “Keep an eye out for ore veins, and an ear open for hostiles,” Vega whispered. “We’ll hear them before we see them. Keep your voice to a whisper.”

  The two of them followed the tunnel down into the earth. Vega kept the lantern dim so as not to attract any hostiles. Large rodents often scurried past their feet. The tunnel forked many times as it meandered through the mountain, but they knew most of those destinations were only important for players in story mode. The ground and walls were often streaked with blood, and sometimes the whole labyrinth would rumble as if it were about to implode on itself. Men and women could be heard screaming in far off torture chambers, their pleas for mercy interrupted only by the clanking of medieval torture devices. There was also a barely audible white noise that might have been voices. They could never be sure.

  They were struck with panic at the sound of heavy breathing and shambling coming their way.

&nb
sp; “Hide! Hide!” Vega said. They hopped behind a three wheeled mine trolley and Vega turned off her lantern.

  The thing, whatever it was, slowly lumbered past them, grunting as it yanked its victim along with it. They could hear a man sobbing pitifully as his broken body was dragged over the rocky ground. Vega peaked over the side of the trolley to see a vague humanoid form shrouded in darkness, pulling a man with mangled limbs and a mutilated face by an iron chain shackled to his leg. The monster’s back was turned to her, but the man saw her.

  “Help me! Help me!” he cried desperately. The monster sharply turned around, and Vega ducked back behind the trolley just in time to avoid being seen. “Please! Please! Don’t let it take me!”

  The man screamed in agony, but the monster shook its head dismissively and continued down the tunnel.

  “No! No!” the man’s pleas for help gradually faded.

  “I hate this game,” Vega said, relighting her lantern. The two of them crept out and continued their search. The sound of running water caught their attention, and they followed it to a large cave. There was a small drain in the center, and all around it were piled naked, hairless bodies with bleached skin. The trickling water gently carried their blood out of the cave with it.

  “Jackpot!” Vega said, pointing to a stalactite rich with Mythreal ore. Maverick wasted no time and swung at it with his pickaxe. The sound was startling in the near dead quiet, and echoed loudly down the tunnel. Vega shot a portal on the wall, certain that hostiles were now headed their way. They both kept their eyes on the entrance, sure that any monsters would be coming from there. They paid no mind to the corpses behind them.

  As Maverick continued to mine, one of the bodies slowly raised its head, staring at him with blind eyes, yawning with its broken jaw.

  After a dozen or so strong strikes the stalactite shattered and Mythreal nuggets rained to the ground. A mere veneer of the stuff would render any armour practically invincible. It was so desirable and so rare that it was as valuable as any real world precious metal.