METAVERSE GAMES: OMNIBUS by William Kurth

Author:William Kurth
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HighDesertWriter.com
Published: 2017-09-12T06:00:00+00:00

***

Jerry Lindel and his partner, Les Bowen, eyed the petite brunette strutting through the parking lot with the rest of her flight crew. It had taken a couple of days, first locating her car and then playing a waiting game for the airline captain to return. Fortunately, she flew for a dedicated cargo carrier. Those flights were easier to track as were the people who came off them, only crew members or airline employees. The cargo terminal also had far fewer people than the passenger one making their quarry easier to spot.

Lindel and Bowen operated in the Dead Zone together. There, Lindel was the man in charge just like he was here; making the much younger man aware of that at every opportunity. Operational discipline, he lectured over and over was even more critical now that they were operating “behind the Lines,” as both thought of their current roles IRL, or In Real Life.

While Lindel and Bowen used that shorthand often, they did not take the meaning literally. To each, IRL was the Dead Zone. That’s where they were accepted, excelled in their “lives’” and where they felt the most at home, in fact, it was home. IRL was a dimension that was ok to visit, but neither wanted to live there.

Despite all the time spent in the DZ, the two had never met in real life. When they did so, it was a bit of a culture shock for each. Bowen was surprised at how much older Lindel was as well as how diminutive he looked compared to the way he appeared in-world. Avatar was the technical term when someone used a different appearance. But that term was somewhat outdated. The avatars in-world were now as real as any physical being, human or otherwise.

For Lindel’s part, he was similarly surprised, even though both he and Bowen knew the other assumed different identities and appearances in the zone. Bowen’s appearance regarding age was about the same as in-world, late teens early twenties. But like Lindel, he was far from the hulking, confident thuggish Outfitter; in fact, quite the opposite.

Now back in the real world, the two felt a bit out of place. Both thin from the Nutrient. The precisely balanced food substitute allowed them to eat virtual food and not starve to death, while eliminating the need to leave the H-Pod to go to the bathroom. In the H-Pod, urination took care of all of that, allowing a person to be in-world 24/7. While the physical activity in the simulation certainly got them into excellent shape, the fact of the matter was that their physical bodies did not change all that much. Sure, the resistance training added some lean muscle, but nothing like what the sim added to their avatars for all the hours of hard work. Genes, age, and the limited caloric intake from the Nutrient saw to that.

Neither mentioned much about it, or that they both thought the other looked like they should be working in a library rather than as part of a savage outlaw organization.

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