| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash |
Ronan and Mayumi are at the entrance, waiting for the elevator to lift up to
the surface of their first dome. He’s staring at the screen, which is
playing footage of the Nordome Network, as if they’ve not already bought
into the adventure. He’s not paying attention to the video itself, but the
fact that it’s on a screen. They weren’t invented until the 19th or 20th
centuries. That seems like so long ago, and they’re jumping so much further
into the past than that. But he’s not really thinking about that either.
He’s thinking about that screen; about how it’s the last one he’ll ever see
for decades. His character is 29 years old, and Mayumi was made to look
about 18. Historically, she probably would have been younger, but there are
limits to how authentic they’re going to be. This is wild west of the
Charter Cloud. Castlebourne’s laws don’t care how old someone appears to be,
as long as the totality of their experiences make them an adult. He’s never
heard of any substrate-play which—he doesn’t want to think about it. They’re
both adults. Their characters have been married for a year. She’s pregnant.
That screen.
They’re sitting here with a couple dozen other people who are entering the
simulation at the same time. The walls are gray and metallic in a very
rustic way, almost like their means of bridging the gap between the modern
era, and the Viking Age. Or maybe it’s just a cheap way to build since all
this thing has to do is take you up to a forest that’s meant to look like
one you would find in Danmörk on Earth. As he’s still watching that screen,
getting a little bit of cold feet, Ronan starts to realize that the only
reason the metaphor is creeping into his mind is because of what’s actually
happening to his feet. At first, he thinks someone spilled their water, but
then he sees that there’s way too much of it. The walls are leaking, and the
pod is filling up fast. Others have noticed as well, and start to get
worried. There are rules about what your substrate has to be. You can’t come
in here as a condor, or have advanced physical traits, like the kind of
strength a true Norsemen wouldn’t have ever been physically capable of
achieving. And you can’t have gills. His and Mayumi’s consciousnesses are
still streaming to the remote servers, and he suspects everyone else’s is
too, but they still don’t want to die.
They’re floating now, the water is so deep. People are trying to find some
kind of emergency hatch, or a way to contact help. Ronan looks over. The
display is still showing the hype video, but it’s starting to shutter and
shake. The lights are flickering, they’re about to die. Something bad must
be happening on the surface, like a simulated hurricane so powerful that
it’s breaking the fourth wall, and literally leaking into the infrastructure
of the dome. All four walls suddenly separate from each other and fall away.
The rest of the water rushes in so they’re fully submerged. He finds Mayumi,
and holds her close to his chest as he looks up. There’s a light, filtering
through the water, showing their way to escape. They kick their legs and
breach. Ah, their supplies. Some of it is floating around, but some of it
isn’t buoyant. The ocean floor isn’t too far away. He might still be able to
reach it. “I’m going down for the tools!”
“Okay!” She yells. It is storming, though it’s probably not a
hurricane. Splintered slabs of wood are scattered about, which weren’t in
the elevator. It’s a shipwreck.
Ronan takes a deep breath, and dives back down. As he’s searching for their
tool basket, he spots the elevator pod. The walls are coming back together
as it’s dropping back down into the shaft. This is obviously not anywhere
close to being an accident. The Custodians set up an elaborate way to
introduce them to the world of the Norsemen, and they did it in
spectacularly terrible fashion. He absolutely loves it, but that doesn’t
mean he’s going to go back up there with nothing. He spots the basket, so he
adjusts his heading, and goes for it. Someone else reaches it first. The
stranger starts picking up the tools that fell out, and putting them back.
Ronan is about to fight him for it, because that’s what a Viking would do,
but then he sees something else. A young man is drifting around. His eyes
are closed. He’s clean-shaven, wearing farmer’s clothing.
Ronan can’t vie for the tools and save the boy too. He doesn’t know who this
is, but if he’s half as enthusiastic about this simulation as Ronan and
Mayumi is, he wouldn’t want to die on his first day. Would they let him back
in? Is there a waiting period for screwing up this badly this early? Plus,
Ronan isn’t even sure that he’ll survive at all. You do not have to be
immortal to come here. You have to sign a bunch of waivers, just like Mayumi
did with baby Talus, but they will let you in if you really want to test
your mettle. Yeah, he has to save this guy. He adjusts his heading slightly
once more, and reaches the kid. He takes him by the underarms, and swims
them both up.
“Ronan!” he hears Mayumi call. “Ronan, over here!” She’s holding onto a big
wooden door. The guy who stole their tools is trying to find refuge on it
too. “Get the hell off!” she demands, physically pushing him away. She
wasn’t even there when he stole from them, but she has ver good instincts.
Ronan drags the victim over to the door, and together, they lift him onto
it. Okay, back then, no one in the world had any clue how to perform CPR,
but Ronan has his own rules and limits. He’s not going to compromise his
integrity for what essentially boils down to a game. He went down there, and
pulled this guy up, so he’s going to get the water out of his lungs, and
make him breathe again, even if it’s not historically accurate. While Mayumi
steadies the door, Ronan presses on the victim’s chest, and provides rescue
breaths. He only does it for a few minutes, and never needs to take a break.
The boy lives. He instinctively turns to his side, and spits the water up.
He coughs and breathes erratically as he fully returns to the land of the
living, or rather the sea of the living. “Thank you!” he says when he gets
the chance. “I’m an idiot.”
“It’s quite all right, son,” Ronan says. “Are you here with anyone?”
The boy shakes his head. “My character is an orphan who just escaped
indentured servitude in search of a better life in Danmörk.”
Ronan smiles, and slaps him on the back, incidentally causing more water to
spill out of his mouth. “Well, you’re gonna find it.” He looks over at the
thief, who is trying to grab onto a skjöldr. It keeps flipping around, and
as the storm starts growing even worse, he ultimately loses the tools to the
deep. “Stop!” Ronan orders. “It’s gone! If we’re going to make it to that
shore, we have to do it together!”
He continues to lead the participants. He figures out how to bring them all
together, so no one gets pulled away by the waves. They make their way
towards the land mass, which started out about a kilometer away. Man, these
people really know how to make life interesting. He didn’t sign up to start
this whole thing with practically nothing, but it’s the best thing that
could have happened to him, and is only invigorating him. Now they have to
really build something here. Now they have to fight for survival. The first
step in their long journey is over, and it’s probably the easiest one
they’ll run up against. They’ve made it. They start climbing up the beach.
And so it begins.
