[SD:M/H] What's In A Name? - Chapter 2 (Patreon)

The capsule had arrived, and the remote workbots had been controlled by the best in the field. After all, why buy such an expensive piece of tech if you’re afraid to shell out the money to get it hard-wired into your house? They had even paid a hefty sum to get the highest grade internet cables run to their neighborhood, just so things would be buttery smooth.

And now, here they are! They wanted to get up and dance! Except that would interrupt the capsules initialization. They needed to stay in the machine's bed and soon enough a whole new world would open up to them! Their face smiling so wide it looked more like a grimace, their eyes squeezed shut. 

Then they were standing up instead of lying down. They open their eyes and examine where they’ve ended up. It is almost a disappointment to be in a nearly blank white room. To one side, a circular metal gate that is irised shut and covered in blinking lights and rivets. On the other side is the trunk of a tree with a hole leading to a magical portal.

They had been tempted when the scifi game was first released, except they hadn’t been able to get the capsule at the time. Besides, fantasy is their jive! So, without a single look back, they run into the magic portal.

Only to run into a lady in a white dress on the other side. The lady doesn’t move, but it also doesn’t hurt, which is nice. They didn’t mind pain, but it sucked when unnecessary.

The lady rubs the bridge of her nose, “You’re one of those types of people. Anyway, I’m your SAI assistant for character generation. How do you want to do this? You’ve got nearly a hundred character designs saved on the SoulDive website. Are you going to use one of those?”

A bit curt! “Not even going to ask my name?”

The lady shrugs, “I must admit, I assumed you would go by your username, May/Hem.”

They shake their head, “Nah, it’s a good name, but it only causes problems. Besides, most people will assume I’m a lady with a name like May. In a chat, I love confusing people, but when interacting with people face to face, I prefer to just be asked if they aren’t sure.”

The lady nods, “Well, I guess if we’re doing names, I’m Samantha and this is the last time you’ll see if you keep playing SoulDive. This is just a job for me. If you ever decide to dive into science fiction, that’s where’d you find me. Now, how would you like to be referred to here?”

“Gem Paroxysm”, They declared.

Samantha raises an eyebrow, “A gem bursting with emotions?”

Gem shrugs, “I could spin some nonsense about my autism causing me to have a cold exterior, yada yada yada, but ‘Gem’ is short for Gemini.”

Samantha shakes her head, “Classic astrology or maybe the horoscope? Maybe you’re a twin soul?”

Gem laughs, “Except I shortened Gemini because I wanted to get away from the horoscope nonsense. Oh, and Paroxysm comes from throwing mayhem into the Internet and finding a cool sounding synonym. Mayhem is great, but not as a name. Well, I guess it could work as a name, but it feels like one of those ‘one namers’, like War. You aren’t War Smith, you’re just War.”

Samantha sighs, “Fine, I give up, where did your name come from?”

Gem slaps her knee and laughs some more. “That’s the fun part! It didn’t! I literally spent, like, a couple hours surfing the web, looking up unisex names on the various baby name websites. Gemini sounded great, except for the star nonsense and so Gem. And I already told you the origin of Paroxysm.

“I do have a name I usually go by in games, but it isn’t much better. I chopped some letters off my real name and added a bit to make it sound foreigny. Can you tell I made that name as a teen? Anyway, this seemed like a good place to make a clean break.”

Samantha’s face is slack from shock, though she soon recovers to yell at Gem, “Then what was the point of this all? Why didn’t you tell me the name didn’t mean anything?!”

Gem shrugs, “Well, it had all of that meaning to it? And now it has the connection to this interaction between us!”

Samantha sighs, “Sure honey, whatever you want to believe. Now, how about we move onto character creation? You’ve got so many min-maxed builds to either use directly or at least work off of. Like, I doubt most people even know they can get very specific with what region your character’s genetic heritage comes from and stack on top their cultural heritage and their family heritage!

“I don’t know what the designers were doing to go that deep. Like, why do you need to have a human who lives in a bread basket area, but their family is from a swamp, but their genetics come from a volcanic island?”

Gem smiles, “So you can have a character that can handle the heat while being great at growing swamp based herbs?”

Samantha squints at them, “We know what I meant. Now, how about you show me what broken nonsense you decided to go with?”

Gem shrugs, “I would have, but you’d be angry with me from wasting your time. While the person was annoying, someone in the chat for new players. Well, I guess, the old chat. An admin had to close it and open a new one.

“Anyway, an annoying gal pushed really hard for random and so I read up a bit on the subject. Even after that, I wasn’t going to, but I realized it would be a potential path to something I would want over an optimized background. Random gives me a chance of being some sort of dragon!”

Samantha rolls her eyes, “Yeah, yeah, everyone wants to be a dragon. So a few warnings I’m paid to tell you about. Random does not guarantee anything, including what you would consider a playable character. The character will be playable, mind you, just not constrained by your definition.

“Also, everyone gets a single chance at random. If you are forced to recreate your character, choosing random has a few possible results. Either you end up with the same result, it is that result with any irreversible changes you picked up, or you won’t be able to pick it at all.”

Gem shrugs, “Fair enough, wouldn’t want people constantly recreating their character to try and roll the perfect result. Though just as much, now I Have to pick random. Since it doesn’t change, I can check what it is and back out if it is untenable to continue.”

Samantha, “That isn’t advised. While nobody has confirmed it, there seems to be some anti-cheese going on. Sure, if you get stuck there isn’t a penalty for going back to character creation. However, whichever of the two games you play, if you reroll your character for the sake of rerolling, you’re in for a bad time.”

Gem glances around the area, “So, any reason we’re in a blank white room, except with trees randomly dotted about?”

Samantha shrugs, “Eh, I like trees. I’d have a more natural scene, but they limit how many objects we can place in here after someone crushed a player by filling the entire room with marbles. You’re not even supposed to be able to take damage or feel pain while here.”

Gem nods, “I guess there is only so much you can do when you’re simulating physics.”

Samantha, “Anyway, normally at this point I’d bring up a mirror and let you play around with how you’ll look, but random doesn’t give you that option. Are you ready to go?”

Gem flashes a wide smile, “Try and stop me!”

Samantha shakes her head, “No, I don’t think I will. Have fun in there. The devs put a lot of work into making a fun fantasy.”

And a trapdoor appears under Gem with an audible pop, then opens. They laugh as the air rushes past them. Clouds begin to fly past until they hit square in the middle one and it acts like you’d expect a cloud in a cartoon to act, like the softest cushion, and stops their fall.

Though before they can look around, Gem sinks through the cloud and they’re now standing. The change in position disorients them for a moment, before they drop an inch and their vision clears. They glance around and see a giant marble room.

Gem had appeared at the center of a decent sized tile and all around her are similar tiles with people popping into existence. Someone to their right tries to walk off, but a barrier prevents them, which causes a bit of distress to spread through the gathered people. It doesn’t last long though as a handy dandy System message appears in front of them all to explain. Though before reading it, Gem can’t help but notice that not only can they see the other’s screens, the content is visible.

{Welcome to SOUL DIVE!

At this very moment, you are located in the Hall of the Phoenix. Because of a recent surge in new players, we’ve had to streamline the onboarding process and put in a few safety rails. Once there are 50 new players or our algorithms predict there won’t be any new players that will fit your start location, you will be released. Please listen to the guides. They’re hired help for this amazing time of growth and we take their well-being seriously.

Sincerely,

The Dev Team}

Then a number appeared after Gem closed the window.

{37}

Though it quickly began to count upward. Gem shrugged, they’d had worse new player experiences in the past. Besides, they practically don’t have to wait at all as the number soon rolls over to 50. This is accompanied by a handful of people falling over having been leaning up against the invisible barriers.

Gem flashes a toothy grin at the closest guy who was sporting a green mohawk and now desperately trying to recover their cool. Not that Gem cared, their guide was more interesting. They were some sort of moss creature that looked like a lady wearing one of those old timey hoop skirts.

“My name is Dewdrop and I go by she/them. I will be your guide or rather, I will be telling most of you the basics before handling those of you who chose random.”

Someone closer to them raises their hand and tries to shout something. That doesn’t work.

Dewdrop shakes their head, “I don’t get it. Almost like clockwork, someone will raise their hand only to shout out what they want to say without waiting to be called on. Now, what do you want to ask?”

The minotaur coughs, “Can I go? I’ve got friends waiting for me and I’ve already watched a bunch of SD content. Not like there are controls to learn.”

On Dewdrop’s head, the lips pull back in a toothy smile, except instead of teeth, there are tightly packed thorns. “Be my guest! In fact, is there anyone else who feels my information is useless, that you can start playing without a worry? You know, despite the fact that the devs went through all the trouble to provide a guide for you? The fact that they felt you needed a guide?”

Gem covers their mouth and squashes a laugh, the “DM” had just asked if the players were sure about what they planned to do. And as is often the case, those it was targeted towards missed the red flag. The minotaur, an orangutan, two humans, and someone who looked human all decided they didn’t need Dewdrop’s guidance.

Dewdrop waits for them to leave and the door to fully close. She claps her hands and smiles, “Now that they’re out of here, I’ll warn you that you can’t stream or record this introduction to SoulDive and this city!

“We are in the City of a Thousand Fountains. That is literal, by the way. Not one more or less. If you damage a fountain, well, just don’t do that. More importantly, avoid the Watercrest family. They’re the noble family in charge around here and frequent every single fountain. You can recognize them by their blue robes.

“As new players, you will be prevented from using the teleport station for a week. Now, you can leave the area entirely like you could have left this room. However, I advise you to use the week to do simple quests around the city.

“You won’t be paid and it won’t be anything important, but that is why they’ll let you do the tasks in the first place. What you do get, is an opening to build their trust in you. Just as equally, don’t trust anyone who offers such a quest, but there is a money reward.

“Not all of them are scammers, but there will be a reason they can’t ask people to do their task for free. If you’re lucky, it will simply be too dangerous.”

Dewdrop continues on like that for another five to ten minutes, filling everyone in on the local drama. Then she used another five minutes to explain the basic functions of the status screen.

More than a few of the people around Gem had zoned out by the end, having already watched videos of people playing the game. Though their attention was recaptured right quick when Dewdrop suddenly clapped her hands. “Now that about covers it. Well, except for those of you who chose random.”

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