Frozen Soul, and other works: Epilogue

(Virtual Room in NERV HQ)

“What is the status of Coldera?”

“X’thari drones are swarming the planet. The fighting is going street to street. Consortium Marines, local garrisons and law enforcement, and civilians are all pitching in. They are trying to bleed the Swarm as much as possible before the Harvester gets there.”

Isaac nodded to the gamemaster. “Work with the main AI, see if there’s some way we can record their actions in-game so that if someone comes to Coldana after the Harvester leaves, they’ll be able to know what happened. Morgan would kill me if I didn’t at least try to give her that kind of marketing material.”

“You’re damn right I would!”

Isaac smiled as he turned and looked over to Morgan as she entered the virtual room. “Hey babe. Didn’t expect you over here so soon. Something come up?”

Morgan gave him a kiss on the cheek, all that they could really get away with at work, with everyone watching, and said, “Yeah, the Marketing department really wants copies of the space battles around Coldana for promotional materials. They got some very good mileage out of the Imperial Civil War battles, and this could build interest in the Consortium. Which would be good, since the Consortium is currently ‘underutilized’, according to the analytics department, along with the Ihm Imperium.”

Isaac scoffed. “Yeah, I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that both those factions are so heavily weighted toward being single-species groups, just like the Terran Empire is human-weighted. And the fact that the majority of the player base is going with Human avatars means that trying to play in the Consortium or the Imperium makes them basically second-class citizens, at best, though they’re more likely to wind up as slaves, like some of the players who’ve started there have already found out.”

Morgan shrugged dismissively. “You know that isn’t how market analysts think. They don’t have statistics for how things feel, and they want to try and have equal ‘engagement’ across all faction lines, otherwise things skew their precious numbers.”

“Fair enough. They don’t believe anything that isn’t in their spreadsheets, even if it is immediately obvious to the rest of us. Fortunately, the way the game is set up, they can’t badger the front office to try and make us ‘rebalance’ things to make Gauz or Ihm more powerful to try and attract interest from powergamers and even out the ‘engagement’ numbers. Dreams Amongst the Stars is designed and built as a ‘hardcore virtual reality massively multiplayer online roleplaying game’. People are starting to get that it means hardcore on the roleplaying elements. Everyone who has had the biggest success in game have dived head first into the roleplaying aspects, and that’s opened up everything else for them.”

Morgan nodded. “I know the theory, but how is it working out in practice?”

“Well, ever since our Black Star friend went and shared some of his secrets to success on the forums, we’ve seen a dramatic uptick in people treating the game world like a living world, and they’ve been getting advancements in a lot of different areas because of it. We have more Nomad ship captains now than at any time previously, and there are Nomads working their way up through several different organizations.”

“Good, I can run with that the next time the jackals try and show me numbers that say we need to boost one group or another to encourage casuals and powergamers to increase engagement. Now, I know there’s in game and out of game footage of the last stand of the Consortium Navy above Coldara, but is there any way we can get some kind of in game record of what is happening on the ground?”

“Isaac, the AI just came back with a report! Looks like in-game elements have already thought of a way to make a final record of what happens on the planet!”

Isaac whirled to look at his subordinate, a grin on his face. “Excellent! I love it when problems are solved for me, before I even have to ask. Now, what did they do, and how will it work?”

“Well, the entire population of the planet was stranded for a few weeks, knowing they were cut off from everyone. They decided to make a data bunker near the capitol, just in case something bad happened. They got all the mining equipment on the planet together, and drilled until they hit bedrock, and built themselves a datacenter, with hardwired connections leading to the surface. Kind of a black box, in case the worst happened. Indications are that they mainly did it as a way to keep a lot of workers busy with a massive technical project that had to be completed fast, meaning they were too busy to worry. But the datacenter is complete.”

“Brilliant! And are those fighting the X’thari sending reports to the datacenter?”

“The ones capable of doing so are. They’re recording everything, so that there is a record of how the planet fought to the last. When a position gets overrun, the last thing they are transmitting is ‘Remember us.’ That’s going on all over the planet.”

Morgan whistled appreciatively. “Damn, that’s a good marketing campaign. ‘Remember Coldara’. Has a ‘Remember the Alamo’ kind of feel to it.”

Isaac nodded. “It should. This is going to be one of those famous last stands, where the objective is just to slow the enemy down long enough for everyone else to get ready for the true battle. Same with the space fights. There’s some really inspirational stuff there, pulls on the heartstrings if you play it right.”

“Right, that will be perfect for a rallying cry, especially when someone finds out where the X’thari are coming from. What else are people doing in game for this?”

“Well, every faction is putting together an allied fleet, aiming to take on the Swarm. They’re going to take a while to get organized, but this is going to be the largest space battle anyone has ever tried to put into a game before. We’re talking levels that put the Star Wars movies to shame, even if you roll them all up into one huge battle.”

“So, how long do they have to prepare before the Harvester moves on?”

“Well, looking at the data from the Consortium’s last attack, you can see that the Harvester has been…”

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Frozen Soul series (Sci-Fi Supervillain story):
Frozen Soul https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071R125QT
Tales of the Void Traveler https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06ZZ52G37

Rules-Free VRMMO Life (Dark Fantasy GameLit):
Volume 1 - Tutorial
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Omnibus 1 - Volumes 1-4

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