Continue Online (Book 1, Memories) (28 page)

“
Hhhhhrrr.”
The movement hurt again. I winced and tried to make out people.

There
were a few things that were extremely clear. Pop-up boxes had formed
nearby. Each one citing bits of information about the NPCs around me.
When one middle age woman came nearby she waved. A box spun into view
citing who she was, how long this body had known her, and other tiny
details. I grunted and lifted the cane a little. She smiled and kept
on walking. It gave me another moment to review my current situation.

A
meter? I squinted and looked around trying to bring something up.
Wait, there, a tiny percentage bar was hanging off to one side.

Was
that measured based on my single feeble cane wave? Or maybe sitting
here half asleep? What exact kind of NPC was Old Man Carver? There
were too many questions. I would have to make it up as I went along
to the best of my ability. Logging out would be counterproductive too
unless my progress reached far enough. With vacation time, there was
to finish this quest up and maybe settle my thoughts before going
back to work.

That
fuzzy sunset was impressive. I sat there and watched while time
passed in-game. Well, it was more like a background as I dug through
informational pop-ups. Plus, with focus, I could see what sort of
system windows other players were getting. The man on the beach
building a sand castle. Small bonuses to
[Coordination]
would
appear in front of him with city reputation boosts. Every so often
there would be another trickle to
[Focus]
.

Neat.

Once
I was really playing the game, as myself, I would know all sorts of
tricks. Was that intentional or a side effect of being an NPC? All
this assumed that I wouldn’t try to rip out my ARC’s hard
drive upon this big reveal.

Another
player was marching around with the guards, doing patrols. Her
strategy trait was going on along with endurance. There were other
notifications that didn’t display. They were all grayed out,
probably due to being traits or skills that I hadn’t unlocked.
This whole system, this game, was like nothing I played before and so
strange. At least these results made sense. Gaining points for doing
work and the points gained went together with what actions were
performed. Two hours passed in-game as I watched people go about
their actions.

“
Excuse
me, sir?” A female voice came from nearby. I groaned and turned
but couldn’t quite swivel my head enough to see.

“
Yes,”
I repeated myself three times before the word made it out.

“
Can
you help me? The guards over there said I needed to talk to you.”

“
Eh?”
The noise came out of me automatically.

“
I’m
trying to find a place to learn the cooking skill,” She said.

“
Eh?”
I said even louder. Why would I know anything about where to find a
skill? How much knowledge would a game NPC have of these kinds of
things? Two pop-up boxes flipped up as I chewed the inside of my
cheek.

System Help! Old Man Carver has been many things in his life, but in his twilight years he became a guide to new Travelers. In his pocket, there are maps that provide information from locations around [Haven Valley] . Most who visit him are sent on a task prior to being given a map. This task varies based on Old Man Carver's whims. In order to succeed while standing in for Old Man Carver, you must fulfill his duties.

Well,
crud. I had lost points already.

“
Cooking.
What good is cooking to you?” I had to stall and think of a
task. Who cooked in today’s world? Oh, besides my mother on
holidays. Wait. Right. Video game world. Cooking was probably fairly
common by necessity.

“
Mister
Carver, sir, I need cooking before I go out of the city.” She
was so soft-spoken and timid sounding. Not at all like the Voices I
dealt with before. They were each a heavy personality.

“
Fine.
What’s in it for me?” I came up blank on the questing
part. A system notification cropped up again in my face telling me of
the latest failure to perform.

“
Bah.
Never mind, you probably don’t know how to do anything useful.
You visitors are all the same.” My hasty attempt at back
peddling knocked my progress down another percentage point making me
wince. Wincing also hurt.

“
Go
clean up the beach for me. Pick up the litter your buddies left
behind. Maybe then I’ll get you a map to your precious cooking
instructor.”

That
little decision prompted another window refunding one of my failed
points. System notifications were going off like crazy as the game
tried to adapt me to this new role. I wondered how they had even
programmed something for a player preventing to be an NPC.

No.
I had to think of little tasks for players who decided to bother me.
This area was one of the starting cities. Slowly, painfully, while
trying not to groan and bellyache from the pain, I reached inside the
robe. I was wearing and dug out a rolled up parchment. Great. I
really did have a map, and from the brief feeling of sliding my hand
under this brown robe, there wasn’t much between me and a
breeze.

Old
Man Carver didn’t like putting on much in the way of clothing,
among all of his other features. With a lot of strength and
determination, I pushed up from the bench and wobbled a bit, trying
to get the ground under me.

“
Ooooh.”
Groan prevention was impossible.

I
managed to lift an arm to about chest level and unrolled the map. It
flopped downward and my eyes dropped with it. These words were far
easier to see. Continue Online had dubbed Old Man Carver as
nearsighted. There were dots all over the map, even some weird half
image ones. Notes were scribbled about. Focusing on specific dots
revealed a myriad of information. There were tasks on here, mysteries
of the area to send players out to, common items that needed to be
resolved.

Goodness,
this thing was a wealth of information for new players.

“
Where’s
cooking?” One of the dots lit up brighter than the others. Go
NPC powers!

“
Ah
ha.” A name, a face, almost a miniature dossier came into
being. Not only was the game showing me where cooking was, it showed
me details about who was involved.

Turned
out the person in question, a Chef working at one of the three Inns
in town, preferred those who were very clean and well kept. He hated
disorder and often fired people who couldn’t keep a kitchen
polished. The man also worked nights for hours prepping for the
following day.

“
Hah.”

The
girl who had spoken to me earlier was still out there cleaning things
up. She seemed to be looking at a progress bar, similar to the one
that I had. Hers, at least from this angle, looked to be tallying up
garbage collected. This character's eyesight officially reached
terrible. The Voices hadn't completely crippled me, though. The beach
and garbage were fuzzy, but the game windows were amazingly clear. I
felt a little dirty for peeping on her system text like this.

Sunset
would be ending soon. The long fading brightness was losing to
nighttime. A chill blew in across sand and sea then crawled inside my
skin down to the bone. There was a pop up telling me that Old Man
Carver didn’t like to stay out too far after sundown.

I
gained another percentage point for turning to watch the dying light.
Maybe William Carver had loved to watch sunsets. Maybe he liked the
ocean. Mysteries abounded for my temporary acting assignment. I stood
there, holding myself up against the wind. My job would only be
completed if the girl, young lady, finished her beach combing.
Hopefully, before I started taking a hit to my own progress bar.

She
was scrambling too, looking upset and tired as time went onward.
About halfway through, she stopped to pull some bread out of the
player bag at her waist and shoved it into her mouth. Moments
afterward a revitalized player stood up and kept picking at the
ground.

Was
there a hunger bar?

Probably.
This game was intended to be realistic and she asked for the cooking
skill trainer. I squinted my eyes and tried to focus on my
statistics. There was more information available now than there had
been in the trial room before.

There,
that had to be a hunger bar. I pointed one gnarled finger out and
slowly dragged the bar to one side. I learned, from watching other
players do their thing, that it was possible to lock status bars into
view. That way it was always present instead of only coming up when
something critical was happening.

A
game manual popped into existence, displaying information about all
interface methods, but there seemed to be a lot that was left
uncovered. Most things only showed up once I experienced it for
myself. Losing health to an evil, giant fantasy chicken thing had
rather clearly shown me what a health bar looked like.

I
sat on the bench again, cane still in my hands, fingers curled in
their death lock. To my side sat the map.

“
Mister
Carver.”

I
managed to work the kink out of my neck enough to turn and look. This
was a city guard, an NPC judging by all the information that came up.

“
Dayl,”
I said.

“
Yes,
sir. I’m glad you remember me, sir. Father says sometimes you
forget, sir.” He rushed his words together. Dayl had to be in
his younger years. There was no age on his information window. He
wore armor and had a helmet that covered most of his face. The body
under it was clearly trained and had worked out.

Apparently
Old Man Carver drifted off sometimes. A constant stream of
information was pelting me. Maybe it was a case of having too much
knowledge in your head and getting lost trying to sift through an
ocean. I read the messages regarding this new person. Turned out Dayl
would escort me home or sometimes wake me up if I passed out on the
bench. No, if Old Man Carver had fallen asleep. Not me. A yawn
escaped and both eyelids sank for a moment.