Chapter 50

50 Dev Chat

Hundreds of thousands of people in both universes watched the Ravens’ trailer video. Some enjoyed it, some didn’t. A number of people certainly engaged with it, and left all sorts of interesting, funny, and entertaining comments.

In Eva’s universe, the comments were mostly positive. She and Miko got a kick out of some of them.

—

Quarkystar99: OMG you’re both awesome and cute!

BigBetaBobby: Thanks for showing me how to use streamer! I got to talk to my lil’ bro again!

PickyPickle: lolol d-ranked mecha noobs lolol

Quarkystar99: So what pickle? You realize they didn’t even take any damage at all, right?!

Fentonade: Ragnarok Arms LR90 Sniper Cannons are superb weapons. You have excellent taste.

WetEggplant: show us ur boobs

.....

—

On the other hand however, the comments on Earth were much more mixed. Not many were very positive, and Mack was a little disheartened by some of them.

—

SuperVegemiteBlu: yayay thanks i was able to talk to my brother again thanks 2 u

ReapersEDGE: Fake. All of that is fake fake fake

GibNaoNao: It looks real as hell wtf is ur problem?

ReapersEDGE: Yea superhero movies also look real BUT THERE NOT

SuperVegemiteBlu: stfu edgelord my bro isn’t fake!

xoMiMox: show us ur boobs

—

Mack hated all of the comments that said the videos were fake. If he could take them down, he would. But Eva convinced him to leave them alone. Their existence brought the channel attention.

More attention meant more views. More views meant more income.

Like she said, he thought. Every view counts. It doesn’t matter what they actually believe, as long as they keep watching.

Still, he would have preferred to have more positive comments than negative ones. More about people connecting with their friends and family again.

Although the comments section depressed him, his email inbox did the exact opposite. Among the various messages in there, one was from Jackson Stone, the legendary lead designer of Bellum Aeterna.

It was his vision that drove the game to what it had become.

Everything began for him back in the early 80s, when he was much younger. He loved to play the superbly pixelated games of his childhood, and played all sorts of games, from adventure to puzzle to arcade. Most of all, he loved all kinds of space games.

His absolute favorite was a space simulation game where one could pilot around between solar systems. It was relatively crude and simple, and nothing like modern day video games.

But it had made such an impression on him that he became obsessed with making his own.

He began to design and write and code all sorts of stuff from then on. He went to school to better understand computer hardware and software. He went to coding clubs and made friends with all sorts of others like him.

By the time he was in high school, he and his friends had already made their first PC game. It was a relatively simple point and click adventure game, but still ridiculously fun.

The player controlled a knight and around the countryside doing simple quests for villagers. The knight scored points for every completed quest, and lost points if they were bungled instead.

Because they released it as freeware, the game ended up getting installed on many harddrives all over the United States. It even got to the computers of very prominent developers and publishers at the time.

Before Stone and his friends could even think about college, they were already sniped by the various up-and-coming game companies. They were all offered a great deal of compensation for their skills.

Since they were wide-eyed kids, they didn’t know what else to do but accept. Most of them split up and went to different companies, and ultimately ended up competing against each other in the early video game industry.

Over the course of a decade, Stone developed a number of space simulator games. Almost all of them were met with critical success, and they all sold very well. His most popular game at the time was almost always sold out in stores.

And although his games were great, he was never fully satisfied with them.

He had wanted people to be able to exist within a completely simulated universe, where they could live and grow and fight and build to their hearts’ content. But at the time, the technology just wasn’t there.

They could never fully express his true vision.

It was only decades later that VR technology had evolved to a point where its immersiveness was at an acceptable level. People could finally interact directly with the virtual world around them, and manipulate it.

The technology had finally hit a point where he could actually create the simulation of his dreams. The one he had carried since childhood.

And so, he began work on Bellum Aeterna, his magnum opus.

He wanted people to be able to live and breathe in his game. He and his team of thousands built an entire galaxy and filled it with all manner of beauty, danger, and rewards. Gamers salivated at Bellum Aeterna’s potential. They couldn’t wait to get in and play.

Though it took many painstaking years, the game eventually launched. By then, there were a million people all waiting to get in and play. And play they did. Those early adopters played the shit out of it, and sunk countless hours and money and love into it.

Over time the subscribers grew to multiple millions, and became the number one best-selling game of all time.

They couldn’t help but fall in love with it. After all, the players could get everything they wanted from it. Their characters had wealth, status, power, and influence. It was as though they lived in an alternate reality altogether, one where they called the shots.

The universe bent to their will, not the other way around.

There were many just like Eva who had literally lived within the game, day after day. And just like her, they were addicted to the core.

Jackson Stone himself had played the game.

Strangely, he didn’t get “killed” like his players. In fact, none of his own staff were. That confused them greatly. After all, they were the first ones to even log into the game. It stood to reason that they should have disappeared as well.

At times, Stone lamented that they didn’t disappear like the others. It certainly would have shielded him from the shame of what happened next.

After millions of people vanished without a trace, the game went dead. A game without players was little more than a graveyard.

On top of that, the game was demonized as some sort of paranormal digital “killer”. Few would have willingly played a game where its players disappeared. He and his software studio were even hit with a number of baseless lawsuits that blamed them for those millions of deaths.

Without players, and with looming financial problems, Stone had no choice but to shut the game down. For the most part, anyway.

He was in a deep depression in the months after that. His dream was wrecked, and his game was buried. He felt as though he had nothing left.

He descended into a personal hell filled with bottomless whiskey and heartache.

The third bottle of the day was right at his lips the very moment he came upon Eva’s video. But for once, he put it down.

As he watched, a host of emotions flooded him, from envy to awe to pride.

His vision had been truly realized. People were actually living in his creation!

He put the video on repeat and watched every moment as it went by, and scoured the footage pixel by pixel. Over and over. For hours and hours.

It was to the point where he blacked out. Perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from the alcohol.

Then again, what was the difference?

By the time he awoke, it was morning, there was a crick in his neck, and his head throbbed with pain.

Stone didn’t care, pushed everything aside, and immediately got back to the video.

After his head cleared up a little, he composed a long email with a whole host of questions. But he realized that it was too much, and deleted a great deal before he rewrote it. Then he felt it was too overbearing, so he scrapped it, and simply sent, “Let’s talk asap.”

This left Mack wide-eyed and in an absolute frenzy. Was Stone a fan? Or did he hate what they had? Did he think it was fake? Was he going to yell at them? Was he going to demand they take it down?

He told Eva, who simply told him to schedule a video call.

“No use getting worked up over nothing,” she said. “But we do need to talk to him, so make it happen.”

“Ok.”

~

Eva, Miko, Mack, and Stone got into a video call in record time. Both sides were incredibly eager to talk to each other, so they easily made the time.

Stone had sobered up as best he could, but was clearly still sloppy around the edges.

To Eva and Miko, he had become a haggard old man in his 60s. His bleach-white hair was a ragged mess. Not like a brilliant scientist sort of mess, but more like a raging alcoholic mess.

Though he was rather energetic while the game was still around, it was clear that recent events had greatly aged him through stress and depression.

He looked at the two youthful and beautiful women, and sighed.

How come I didn’t get ported?

“So look,” he began, “I’ve got a lotta questions. Mostly about how real you are. About how real all of that is.”

“We’ve got questions too,” said Eva. “Specifically, what sorta demons you’ve got hidden in your code.”

Stone blinked. Demons?

“We have met up with Bellum Aeterna NPCs,” said Miko. “They are real here. Living, breathing humans. They have lives. Families. Pets. We have specifically had dealings with the NPC Toymaker, who is a fearsome entity in this universe.”

“If these kinds of NPCs got ported over,” Eva said, “then it stands to reason that other, more seriously dangerous shit is out there. We need to know about ’em, before they become a problem.”

Stone went dark and nodded at the three. There was some seriously dangerous shit in the code. He designed many of them himself.

.....

And so, over the next few hours, he spoke about all of them.