Data Entry 000

Seven Years Prior

Server 6

Synthetic Storm

Waiting for their trusted partner in crime, Synthetic Storm tapped her plated boots and let out a long sigh. Checking her reflection in a nearby puddle, she could see a woman with thick straight blue locks staring back at her. Her sky blue eyes made her stand out, as she couldn’t recall many who designed avatars using the more neon range of eye colors, most stuck to more “natural” colors with a few exceptions, the rest often designed their avatar to look like some kind of celebrity, if she had a credit for every player who looked like a magazine model she had seen at the supermarket back in the real world, she could retire.

Storm instead focused on making a character that she felt would really match her role as a tech. Looking down at the powered gauntlet on her right hand, she noticed that it was rare to see any players select a tech if they favored their left hand, she surmised it had to do with the class requiring lots of mathematic skills and calculations, and she had read somewhere online that those who favored the other side of their brain were often more creative, that or just strange individuals.

Making a holographic display come up in front of herself, Storm leaned back on the old stack of metal crates she had made into a makeshift seat and checked her messages once more. Sure enough, her friend had seen her message over six minutes ago. She quickly re-read their conversation.

Synthetic Storm: We’re going to check out the Abandoned Tech Lab, today, right?
Starr: Naturally. I wonder why they haven’t finished this area, I rarely see anyone talk about it, and I am fairly certain it’s been in the game since launch.
Synthetic Storm: Not sure, but you are definitely right. Every changelog, patch note, and bug report I’ve read suggests the area has always been there, it’s just never updated.
Starr: Why do you think it is accessible now? Prior to a week ago, there was always an invisible barrier blocking it.
Synthetic Storm: Didn’t you read the forum?
Starr: Oh, please. Don’t tell me you actually believe that nonsense about a hacker, surely you of all people know that’s just not feasible.

Storm had to admit she couldn’t think of a single player capable of hacking the game. The encryption was next-level stuff, as the game like most games in the city was funded by and thus controlled by the government, and they kept strict tabs on that kind of thing. Hacking into government-owned property was a serious offense, and there wouldn’t be many out there dumb enough to even try.

The skilled programmers at the EG corporation weren’t stupid either, they had rolled out new tech left and right to catch cheaters in the game, and while occasionally you would hear about someone exploiting a bug or finding a small hole in the game to execute custom code, it never really amounted to much and usually was fixed within the hour, a reward system to players who reported nefarious activity ensured speedy fixes rolled out.

She read the remainder of the conversation and added another message to stress the urgency.

Synthetic Storm: I mean, they’d have to be the biggest coding genius to ever live, so I guess you’re right… Still, we can see for ourselves, after all!
Starr: I suppose so, but I wouldn’t get too excited, this’ll probably be just like when we found that bug that let us go under the Security Stronghold, just ended up being a duplicate area that didn’t even have collision built in yet.
Synthetic Storm: Should still be fun though.
Starr: You and your fun. Alright, I’ll be there in five.
Synthetic Storm: It’s been at least ten minutes since you said that, where are you?

As if she was reading the girl’s mind, the clearing of another woman’s throat caused Storm to look up from her messenger and met eyes with a pair of large crystal blue eyes. A smile played her thick lips, and Storm watched as her white neck-length hair moved freely from the building’s cooling system still running. She had her arms crossed over her average-sized bust, and Storm noted she had swapped in a black utility belt that sat over her white dress.

On one side of the belt, a pistol, probably around level twenty rested, on the other side, a powered shield which protected her from damage sat, causing the belt to lean to one side, it was a good look and went well with her tall heeled boots.

Storm rolled her eyes. “What took you so long? You said five minutes…”

Stepping past her, Starr placed a hand on Storm’s shoulder and smirked playfully as she replied. “My sister wouldn’t stop bothering me. She kept demanding I help her with her homework.”

“She has homework at six years old?” Storm blinked in astonishment.

Letting out a sigh, Starr shook her head. “School is just getting to that point where it’s going to rob all of us of our childhood, I think. I keep hearing my parents say they want to go down to the school and tell them that the workload is too much. I doubt they will though.”

Storm shrugged. “Never bothered me any…”

Starr just rolled her eyes. “Naturally.” Placing her hands on her hips, she leaned to one side and grinned. “So, are we ready for this adventure? Did you stock up? After all, in the off chance that there is something incredible here, we would be wise to be prepared, right?”

Coming to a stand, Storm clenched her fist in the air, showing off her newly upgraded gauntlet to her friend. “Check it out, just unlocked it this morning! Take a look at these stats!”

Leaning in to examine it, Starr made an audible “hmmm” as she pulled up a hologram window to check the specs of the item in question. She pulled back and smirked. “I would have thought the stats would be higher for how much work you put in to get it… Are you sure that you can protect us if something happens?”

Starr just loved teasing her, both in-game and out-of-game. The girl lived to get a rise out of Storm, and it drove her insane sometimes. This time though, she tried to keep her composure as she flaunted her achievement. “I don’t see you grinding out any boss loot…”

“I’m a medic, I don’t grind, I collect a fee as others grind out for me…” Starr reminded with her finger extended. Her matter-of-a-fact tone just made Storm more exasperated with her, she was certainly a handful, a part of Storm wondered what it would be like when she started dating in only a few years; could a guy put up with such a tiring girl?

“You have a comeback to everything, don’t you?” Storm grumbled as she gestured for the two of them to get moving.

Starr followed closely with her hands behind her back and a smirk on her giddy face as she leaned toward Storm. “Well, I may not be as good as you in class, but I’m definitely the quicker one, aren’t I? I suppose I just matured faster than you…” She continued to tease Storm.

Waving a dismissive hand, Storm found herself rolling her eyes once more. “You’re only like 8 months older than me…”

“And 8 months wiser.” Starr winked.

The two found themselves chuckling before coming to a fork in the corridor. The steel-plated walls were rusted toward one pathway, with several pieces of abandoned medical equipment lying there. It was as if the area had been used as some kind of makeshift medical ward. Right away, it made Storm question what kind of questline would have been associated with this area.

Starr poked her head around Storm’s shoulder and eyeballed the two options for paths. Focusing on the dilapidated one, she pointed in that direction before speaking. “I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that’s the way we’re going?”

Without answering, Storm just started walking in that direction, her mouth unable to form words. The two girls remained silent for a brief few minutes while they traversed the abandoned corridor. The further they got in, they noticed skeletons resting in the area, many of them so decomposed they looked like they would turn to dust at the slightest touch.

Stopping in her tracks, Storm reached down to touch one, and sure enough, it began to disintegrate right in front of her. Coming back to a proper stand she looked around them and felt uneasy. Something about the area they were in made her feel tense like they were being watched.

“There certainly was a lot of work put into this area if they were just going to abandon it and leave it forgotten… Why bother even making it? So much of this place is already programmed… Even interactable objects…” Storm thought out loud, her hand already finding its way to her chin.

Retrieving her pistol from her belt, Starr brandished the weapon and let off a few rounds at the wall, which stopped the energy shots dead in their tracks, dissipating them. Storm flinched at the sudden noise and turned to her grumbling. “What did you do that for!?”

Starr shrugged. “I wanted to see if the environment had collision, evidently it does, even for weapons. So I think you’re right, this place definitely had a lot of work put into it already, I wonder why it was scrapped…”

“Normally for something like this, they are just waiting for a future update to make the area relevant, but instead, they’ve gone out of their way to keep this area closed off to players… Even expanded the invisible wall around it…” Storm commented.

“An awful lot of work to keep something you put time and effort into hidden…” Starr pointed out.

She had a point. It only made Storm more curious, too.

The two’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps in the distance. They both blinked and glanced in the direction of the sound, not seeing much in the darkness, Storm squinted to get a better look, shining the light from her weapon in that direction. “Did you see anything?” She asked her friend.

Starr pointed. “Something at the end of the hallway went right… I think it was another player?”

Nodding, Storm began to head in that direction, and Starr followed without a second thought. The two kept close, both keeping their weapons drawn. With an area like this one, where it was mostly unfinished, they couldn’t be certain if there were any player vs. player restrictions imposed, so they had to assume players trying to take them out were on the table.

In her mind, Storm questioned what kind of player would come to a place like this besides them. Were they here out of curiosity like they were, or did they have other ideas in their head?

While walking carefully, Storm began a scan ability to try and detect nearby players and their stats, but was surprised to find that her scans returned nothing, even though she was certain they had to be in range. Knowing there was a chance it could be a glitch caused by the area they were in, she ran it again and got the same results. Sighing, she realized they might not be able to rely on conventional gameplay in a place like this.

“Guess scanning is out of the question then?” Starr asked.

“You guessed right. I think they’re just up ahead though…” Storm pointed.

Focusing her light, Storm could make out the faint appearance of another player, about a head taller than herself, with a black hood over them. The armor they had on looked intricate and finely crafted, nothing like Storm had ever seen before, not even on the game’s Wiki. She surmised it might have been end-game gear, but she didn’t recall anything about it.

Judging by the impressive blade on their back though, Storm was able to determine they were a light blade class, a melee specialist that focused on short and medium range, another DPS class. They used swords made of energy and could increase their damage output by equipping augments to their weapons. Usually, light blades focused on dexterity for maximizing critical hits and increasing the odds of dodging attacks.

The weapon on their back, however, was one that Storm was familiar with, but the color scheme was off. It was a higher-tiered blade, usually something players within level 70 or higher used, but traditionally it was a blade blade with a white edge, this one was a light blue with a red edge.

Their hand reached up and touched a wall, and Storm took note of their armored gauntlet which began to glow red as a series of numbers appeared before them.

Stepping closer, Storm grabbed her friend and the two raced toward the player in question. She called out to them to get their attention, and the hooded player glanced in their direction with silver eyes widening as they did. Storm found herself frozen upon seeing those eyes, they were fierce, piercing.

The number that had appeared above the cloaked figure’s hand began to rearrange into a sequence and suddenly a loud buzzing noise could be heard by all of them.

Storm and Starr fell to their knees, Starr only being saved from hitting the floor by Storm who caught her friend’s fall. The other figure in the room managed to keep his footing as the ground itself began to dissipate, turning into a blank white space.

It only took a few seconds before the room rearranged itself and soon the group found themselves in what appeared to be a meadow basked in the moonlight.

Bringing herself back to her feet, Storm assisted Starr in getting back up and the two looked around in awe at what they were seeing. The world around them had become so vibrant and detailed, aurora shined through the night sky to create a fantastic scene, something that despite being a simulation, made actual nature look less majestic by comparison. The two girls blinked a few times before Starr broke the silence.

“Where are we?”

Storm wanted to know the same thing, and she wondered if the man who had brought them there knew what was going on. She stepped forward to get his attention and spoke up. “Hey, what is going on? What did you do?”

The figure ignored her as he extended his hand and opened his palm, making more numbers like before appear which he focused his attention on.

Getting annoyed on her behalf, Starr stepped forward and asserted herself. “Hey, my friend asked you a question.”

The man glanced at her before returning his attention to the numbers before him. “You shouldn’t have come here… This isn’t a place for newbies…” He spoke with a deep voice.

Starr placed her hands on her hips indignantly and growled. “How rude! You bring us here and then act like this? We are not newbies, I’ll have you know! We’re level 22, thank you very much!”

He didn’t seem interested in what she had to say, as he tried to ignore her, but when he heard her growl once more, he gave her an answer. “You sound like a kid, this is stuff far beyond your understanding. It would be wise to forget any of this ever happened if you know what’s good for you, kid.”

“How rude!” Starr crossed her arms and looked away.

Storm was about to interject, but numbers above the man’s hand became scrambled, and suddenly a warning displayed in their place. “Shit!” He exclaimed. Looking at the two girls, he held out his other hand. “You two have to get out of here! Now!”

Instead of arguing with him, for some reason, Storm had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t just giving them a hard time this time, something about his demeanor seemed more serious now, and less condescending. She reached forward to take his hand, but at that moment everything went black, everything stopped.

When Storm closed her eyes and re-opened them she couldn’t see anything, not even her own hand in front of herself. It took a few seconds to realize what was really happening.

Twilight Sparkle

After a few seconds of trying to figure out what was going on, Twilight realized that her neural link had ceased functioning. Blinking, the girl placed her hand upon her face, feeling glasses sitting atop of her nose, and no hologram was being projected from the neural link resting on her right ear. She felt the device and tried to determine if it was still on. The girl looked at her computer before her and checked the status of the device, finding that there were no errors on her end.

Looking at her screen, she could see a message from her friend waiting for her. Bringing her fingers to her keyboard, she began to reply.

Starr: Wow, that was weird, wasn’t it!? What do you think just happened?
Synthetic Storm: I’m not sure, I think the game crashed?
Starr: I’m looking at the forum right now, it’s not just us! I’m gonna send you a link right now!
Starr: [link]

After browsing through the post, Twilight leaned back in her chair, her mind stuck on the fact that the post in question mentioned a player with hacked gear. She tapped her chin and thought it over.

“Could that be the guy we saw…?” She thought out loud.

In all of her time playing, she had never heard of anyone able to take the entire game offline via hacking, after all, Everfree was a fairly robust game, that would require an exceptionally skilled programmer to take offline.

At only 13 years old, Twilight knew her way around a system better than most, but nowhere to the level that she could even imagine hacking a program as sophisticated as Everfree, let alone taking the entire game offline, there had to be more at work, she knew it.

Twilight skimmed the forum a bit more and found numerous other posts talking about the game being offline, and a handful more referring to this supposed “hacker”, but when she came across one that mentioned the odd color scheme of their blade, asking if there was some kind of cosmetic in-game that charged the blade’s colors, she knew it had to be the same person.

Pulling her chat with Starr back up, Twilight began responding once more.

Synthetic Storm: Yeah, something weird is going on. People are saying that guy is a hacker or something…
Starr: Yeah, I saw that. I thought you said a hacker wouldn’t even be able to do something like that? The server is pretty big, I mean it’s the most played game in all of Q City after all! There’s no way a single user has a machine powerful enough to do that, the government wouldn’t even allow an end user to have something like that.
Synthetic Storm: True, but what if they’re not a typical end user?
Starr: What do you mean?
Starr: Are you suggesting it’s someone from the government? There’s no way. My father works for the government, and they keep those machines pretty tightly monitored. There’s no way someone could do something like that, not to mention they’d figure out who almost instantly! Hacking is a felony, after all, especially considering the game is partially government property.
Synthetic Storm: If not them, then who?
Starr: Not sure. Might be a developer?
Synthetic Storm: Doubt it.
Starr: I did find something that might be of interest though.
Synthetic Storm: What is it?
Starr: I think I got the name of that guy. A few people one the forums are mentioning it. I am pretty sure he goes by FallenBlade in-game.
Starr: Not sure about anything else though.

Twilight leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. The girl removed her glasses and set them aside on her desk. She repeated the username to herself out loud. “FallenBlade… I wonder what kind of person you are…”

/End of Entry/

Author's Note

I know it's been a VERY long time since I've posted anything, but this is a little project I was working with on the side. I can't say for certain how frequent updates will happen, or how long it'll be, but I wanted to put it out there and see what people thought. The links are supplementary material, and I will try to keep them to where they aren't "necessary" to read, but just extra info and easter eggs.

I am open to any questions though.