《Olympus Online - Book One: Hero》


 Hero

    ¡°Life sucks.¡± Earl repeated the mantra. He was sitting at a bar, alone, in a run-down hotel bar somewhere in Nebraska.


    The robot bartender paused, its AI briefly considering if Earl was talking to him. It was programmed to listen to the woes of its customers, in a throwback to the old-style idea that bartenders were some kind of working man¡¯s therapist. Deciding that Earl was not, in fact, talking to it directly, it resumed polishing the bar with a rag (another throwback, the bar was of course spotless). The funny thing was that there were likely so few customers that would actually appreciate the effort at preserving nostalgia that it was a waste of time and programming.


    Earl sighed. He couldn¡¯t get away from the feeling. That feeling of¡­¡­apathy that pervaded literally everything around him. It was everywhere ¨C it pervaded society like a dull, gray blanket draped over everything. It was inevitable, really. The clear result when you made life too easy and provided everything for nothing.


    He supposed that his life was better than most. He still had a job, of sorts. The vast changes that robotic automation had made on literally everything in society hadn¡¯t affected him as much as it had the majority. He thought back to that time: it was the mid-21st century: the American economy that had come roaring back to life in the late teens and early 20s fore-casted the change: technology was coming.


    The technology magnates of the time: Gates, Musk, Jobs, Zuckerberg¡­. they had all predicted it, of sorts. The reality was far greater than predicted.


    Where to start? The development of stable AI was the first ¨C it allowed control over machines at levels undreamed of just a decade before. Suddenly jobs that required humans didn¡¯t anymore. It started small: fast food cashiers replaced by automated screens, robots that could flip burgers and prepare food automatically, accurately, and cleanly wiped out that sector of the service economy in under a decade.


    Driver-less cars went from a fantasy, to a novelty, to a requirement. Almost overnight, it was suddenly difficult to get a license that allowed you to drive yourself. Of course, this wiped out the taxi, Uber, chauffeur, and delivery businesses. Long haul trucks driven by actual people, along with buses and eventually planes became non-existent. Machines simply didn¡¯t make the mistakes that people did.


    Earl¡¯s industry was affected too: he spent most of his 20s and 30s working in power plants and other industrial sites, diagnosing problems and locating various efficiency issues. It was an art more than a science: vastly better sensors and smarter computers monitoring them slowly forced even that specialty to a death spiral. An AI-monitoring system could diagnose problems almost instantly, and robotic repair bots (still known as ¡°droids¡±, that will never die) made human repair personnel an expensive option that was no longer affordable.


    Earl was now a salesman: he was one of the few people with actual experience in the field, and he spent his days traveling from plant to plant, selling monitoring systems and answering questions from other human hangers-on, guys lucky enough to be retained in a shrinking labor pool. He didn¡¯t have to work, of course: the UBI would sustain him. But he refused to ¡°retire¡± out of pure stubbornness. He had this clinging sense of pride, that in order to be a man he needed to earn his living, rather than be handed to him. It was a slowly dying mantra, as his generation slipped into retirement age and the younger people around him, who had grown up in this world, wouldn¡¯t or couldn¡¯t understand.


    Most of his time was downtime: riding as a passenger in his automatic van that didn¡¯t even allow him to control it.


    At first, it was pretty nice. Plenty of time to sleep, read, play games while the van did all the work of driving. Eventually it was like everything else ¨C supremely boring. You can only watch so much porn on the road, after all.


    With the changes, of course, the challenges were pretty obvious: what to do with an ever-increasing population, that had fewer and fewer jobs available? Government programs of the time were inadequate and quickly were overwhelmed. Different things were tried, but it basically came down to a simple truth: we had innovated ourselves out of a job (any job). So, what to do?


    Despite vigorous opposition from the more red-leaning states, the US government was forced to regulate the economy. A Universal Base Income, carefully calculated to cover a person¡¯s basic needs, was put into play. Of course, this required fixed prices on all basic needs ¨C food, housing, transportation, and entertainment in order for the UBI to function. This caused another uproar, and nearly another Civil War (the Texas Revolution comes to mind) before it was all said and done.


    Nowadays people just¡­. lived. They were provided free everything: housing (most lived in simple, pre-fab apartments with standard features), food, and most important of all: entertainment. This was the key to keeping the populace happy. Everyone had access to the UniNet, the evolved child of the old Internet and World Wide Web. It combined everything ¨C searches, weather, news, games. Everyone was issued a tablet that gave them unlimited access, 24-7.


    More advanced devices were being introduced all the time ¨C most people had a limited VR device that allowed them to interact with the Net, mostly as a spectator. Imagine entering the Net and sitting in an audience chamber, watching actors on a stage. Stuff like that.


    Newer technology, that allowed you to fully enter what the techies were calling the ¡°VirNet¡± was rumored.


    Earl snorted. He would believe it when he saw it. That kind of technology required either a full body suit that could provide haptic feedback, along with something that allowed you to move freely yet kept you in place, or direct stimulation into your brain, tricking your brain into thinking you were in a real place. Scary stuff, allowing an AI to control your brain¡¯s input.


    Not that he was opposed to technology: he just had trouble with the changes that it brought.


    Overall, he supposed, the world was a ¡°better¡± place. Crime was virtually non-existent, as there was little need for theft when everyone was given sustenance for free. Drugs were legal and could be consumed in a safe, monitored manner whenever desired. Consumer goods were so plentiful and cheaply made in the robot factories that they were almost given away. Advances in 3-D printing allowed almost anything to be made to order right there in a store ¨C shipping finished goods had died out a decade ago, and high-speed, robotic trains delivered raw materials wherever they needed to go.Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.


    War was also gone ¨C the US in its traditional manner had built up a huge, overpowering robotic armed forces, consisting of little but drones known as SEALDs (Sea, Air, and Land Drones) that were cheap, disposable, and terrifying. All other countries tried to follow suit, but gave up when the enormous advantage the US¡¯ economy gave it became obvious and impossible to overcome. Most countries in the world were little more than names: the US takeover of the United Nations, which led to the now-named United States of Earth, had been relatively short and complete.


    Russia and China, of course, resisted, and the Third World War ended almost as soon as it began. Nuclear missiles launched from both countries didn¡¯t even make it to orbit before high-flying Air Drones smashed them to bits, with the US war AI known as Vulcan coordinating the action. Swift, US-backed rebels in both countries ousted their leaders and they joined the USE soon after-wards. The enormous demand for modern technologies in these countries (in all countries, really), made any resistance short and easily defeated.


    So the world was, for the most part, at peace, and everything slowly became homogenized. More and more people were brought into the fold, and the Earth slowly stabilized¡­.and stagnated.


    Oh, there was still advances going on, mostly in space industries. Geniuses with the brainpower to develop and control AIs were in high demand, mostly in orbit. The USE was heavily developing space, and strong rumors that soon colonies would be in place kept some hopeful for the future.


    Earl knew that he was not a strong candidate ¨C middle aged salesman in an increasingly automated industry were not top choices for space cadets. But he had hope that maybe his kids would one day be able to escape to the Moon, or Mars. If he ever had kids.


    Earl shook his head. Too often his mind treaded down this same, tired old road, and it always ended up in the same place: a feeling of depression and hopelessness that he hated but didn¡¯t know quite how to banish.


    He finished his drink, stood up, and wiped his hand over the bar¡¯s payment display. The chip implanted in his hand beeped as his tap was paid. The bartender, alerted by his programming, gave him a cheery ¡°Thank you and good night sir!¡± that despite its falseness, Earl appreciated.


    ¡°Thanks, you too.¡± Pointless to talk to it, as his friends and colleagues always reminded him, but politeness was ingrained in his upbringing and he often found himself forgetting that a machine cared little for pleasantries.


    Popular entertainment had always envisioned Artificial Intelligence as simply a machine version of humans, with all of the ego-driven issues included. The reality is that AI was simply different, the closest to an Alien intelligence that had been encountered. Digital consciousness was¡­. odd, and the few humans that could actually think like an AI were in most cases sociopaths: people who had little actual emotions clouding their thought passages.


    Earl walked back to his room, which was small but efficient. A small bathroom, still equipped with the standard toilet, sink and shower was attached to his room, which had a smart-bed that adjusted to his body. The one thing that really differentiated the room form a standard hotel room of 50 years ago was the data interface ¨C Earl had paid for the upgraded, VirNet equipped terminal. It had a screen and keyboard, but the main way to use it was via the headset and haptic gloves that allowed the user to see, hear, and in a limited way touch the virtual world. Sophisticated sensors in the headset tracked his eye movements, head movements, and his voice to bring a convincing world to life.


    The gloves extended halfway up his forearms, and were self-adjusting. Sensors allowed him to grasp something in virtual ¨C the small motors and electric muscles in the gloves provided the feedback and pressure to fool his hands into thinking they grasped something real.


    Earl remembered his first time using them ¨C like most Americans, he spent hours in a virtual batting cage, marveling at how he could feel the bat, feel the impact of the ball when he hit it, see the ball hurtling toward him.


    VirNet was a smashing success. The first major use of the technology had been in porn, which surprised nobody but the people who developed it. VirPorn was still the most heavily used application in history, a fact which everyone kind of ignored.


    The second was in the use of games. Everything from spectator sports, which killed attendance at regular sports) to any type of games you could imagine.


    Earl shook his head at the memory, and got undressed. Before entering the shower, he glanced at himself in the mirror. A square, tanned face topped with thinning hair looked back at him. His hair was going gray on the sides, and a depressingly noticeable thin area was evident on the top of his head. He was a bit heavier than he should be, with wide shoulders and a thick chest. A stomach larger than it should be showed the result of food eaten on the road and too much alcohol. His eyes were a golden brown, that caught the light and gleamed a bit when he squinted just right. He thought he looked rather roguish when he did that, but he probably looked like a tool in reality.


    ¡°Overall, not bad,¡± he thought, but he knew that he needed more exercise. He also knew that he would likely skip it again, too. A mental chuckle, tinged with a bit of self-depreciation. Not too many women were attracted to a slightly heavy, middle aged salesman.


    A quick shower and brush of his teeth (self-foaming toothpaste was something he still heavily approved of) and he settled down at the terminal.


    He had always been interested in games, mostly some form of Massively Multi-player Online (MMO) games. First person shooters were still immensely popular, but he had always been drawn to the Role-Playing Games. MMORPGs were huge business in the early 21st, and still were. World of Warcraft still had players playing the 26th expansion or whatever they were up to now. Earl had played that, along with a score of others: Final Fantasy, Warhammer, Lord of the Rings.


    Countless hours had been spent over the years fighting orcs, and dragons, and elves. Undead fell by the thousands and the number of epic quests he had completed, all in the never-ending quest for better loot and virtual riches kept him entertained for years.


    As the level of civil apathy grew, more and more people escaped the drudgery of their daily lives by playing games online. The solid growth of the VirNet showed this. It was estimated that over 2 billion people logged in to play online games daily, and it was growing by the day. The release of the VirNet technology had caused this to grow by leaps and bounds, and it was expected that as the technology was released to more and more areas of the world, this would continue.


    Earl was no different. He had eagerly bought the first VirNet Headset and Gloves (known simply as a VirPak) when it was released and dived into the online world. Game developers (another industry that still employed large numbers of humans ¨C AIs were simply not that creative) released and re-released titles to take advantage of the technology, with more released every day.


    Earl slipped the gloves and headset on, and powered it up. A dim green glow filled his vision, with the VirNet symbol (a glove with a headset on it) showed briefly before his loading screen popped up.


    After a brief deliberation, he selected one of his favorite games, Hyborian Online. Set in the old original Conan the Barbarian universe, he booted up his character, Jaxx the Conqueror, and began playing.


    Earl always played a Barbarian type character ¨C burly, muscular, with a penchant for using a 2-handed sword or axe, with enormous strength and stamina. He despised the gameplay of a magic user or healer, and found a ¡°tank¡± style play with a sword and shield boring. Give him a big, powerful berserker any day.


    After a couple hours of playing, in which he led his company of pirates on a raid on the she-devil town in Aquilonia, he logged off and switched off the lights. As he lay there drowsing, he couldn¡¯t help but wish, as he always did after playing, that he could be such a Hero in real life. It was this thought, more than any, that eased him to sleep, imagining slaying monsters, rescuing damsels, and ridding the world of evil, one sword swing at a time.

 Chapter 2 - Olympus Online

    After a bleary morning packing his things and a depressingly bland hotel breakfast, he headed out to his company van to begin his days journey. A Ford Atlas panel van, it held his sales materials (mostly cheap knick-knacks that he gave away at trade shows), his luggage, and had a single, comfortable seat in the center of driver¡¯s area.


    The van¡¯s AI, who Earl had named Joshua in a fit of nostalgia, greeted him.


    ¡°Good morning, Earl. How did you sleep?¡±


    ¡°Good morning, Joshua.¡± That ingrained sense of propriety struck again. ¡°I would ask you the same, but you don¡¯t sleep.¡±


    The van ignored his attempt at humor, like always. ¡°We are traveling to North Platte, Nebraska today. You are scheduled to meet with the municipal power plant personnel there at 2 pm.¡±


    ¡°Wonderful,¡± Earl thought. Another pointless meeting in which he would talk for an hour, take no questions, and leave. Invariably these meetings were something required by the plant hierarchy and thus the personnel attending them resented the waste of their time. The decision on whether to purchase Earl¡¯s goods would be made at the buyer level, but formalities continued to be followed for now. Eventually, even this remnant of the old, personal-based business relationships would go to the trash heap of history, and Earl would be forced to ¡°retire¡± to the monotony of the UBI, unless he could find something else to do. He didn¡¯t like his chances.


    Earl got into the van and sat in the chair. The seat automatically adjusted to fit his saved preferences and the door slid shut and locked. The van began moving silently on its electric motors, solar panels deploying from the roof in a wing shape that both helped to charge the battery and keep the van firmly planted on the road. Earl still remembered internal combustion cars ¨C the loud, roaring diesels clattering away and the smile-inducing throaty roar of a well-tuned V8 muscle car. Those were gone, rich collectors the only ones who could afford the exorbitant fuel taxes and operators licenses. ¡°Another thing to mourn¡±, Earl thought.


    As the van began to cruise, Earl leaned back and browsed the UniNet, skipping the boring economic numbers and celebrity news that somehow still had millions hooked on what outfit they were wearing to the latest rich-person¡¯s ball, or who has the best beach body.


    Earl flipped to the gaming news section, which really was the only thing that interested him anymore. He had been following the news of a new, advanced online game called Olympus Online. It was an old-style MMORPG, with all the sword and sorcery style that so enthralled him. There wasn¡¯t much to read: the developers were pretty close-mouthed about details, releasing only the bare minimum.


    Like he had a dozen times before, he flipped to the press release that had been out for just 10 days:


    Olympus Online ¨C Tired of the same old grind? Bored with the same old quests? Introducing Olympus Online ¨C the last game you will ever play. Available soon, exclusively on VirNet, to a select few Chosen for greatness. Do you have what it takes?Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    The words seemed to leap out at him: they expressed his exact feelings. He WAS tired of the same old grind, the same old repackaged quests. But what did the rest mean? Chosen few? Who were the chosen few? How could he get an invite? The use of a capital ¡®C¡¯ in ¡®Chosen¡¯ argued that whoever got to play would be¡­. chosen somehow. But how?


    Do you have what it takes? To do what? Play a game? Maddingly obtuse, which of course was probably the point. Millions were undoubtedly frothing to play it, to be one of the ¡°Chosen.¡±


    Message boards across the world were on fire with speculation. There were a few who claimed to be beta testers, but of course they ¡°couldn¡¯t talk about it.¡± Who knew if they were real or not? Earl still scoured their posts, noting details they mentioned.


    Supposedly this was a giant leap forward in game technology. Un-paralleled realism. The game was based, obviously from the title, on the Greek Mythology that every kid was introduced to. Zeus, Hera, Apollo ¨C all were rumored to be powerful NPCs in the game. It was also rumored to be possible to advance your own character to divine status. How this would play in the game world was anyone¡¯s clue. Earl hoped this was exaggeration ¨C it wouldn¡¯t do to have everyone in the world becoming gods and goddesses. This would quickly make the game boring, like other games in the past that allowed every player to become all-powerful.


    One rumor that he read said the game was old-school ¨C you had one character, and one life. If you died, you had to restart from scratch. This both scared and intrigued him. A game like that would require great care, as the stakes would raise with every level gained. It would suck monstrously to reach a high level, with great gear, and then die and lose it all.


    Seeing that nothing new had been posted, he took his mobile VirPak out and logged in to play while the van silently swept him to his next pointless appointment. The UniNet allowed anyone to log in, anywhere. In the 2030s, an Internet search engine company called Google deployed an innovative system to bring universal net connection. The system used large balloons that floated at high altitude, 60,000 feet or higher, with downward pointing antennas and UniNet modems. A single balloon could cover 1000 square miles with its onboard Wi-Fi modem and antenna, and there were thousands of the relatively cheap systems floating all over the world. The ability to have cheap, high speed Net access was something that the younger generations took for granted. Earl remembered the days of hard-wired net access and the slow, radio based cellular networks.


    The balloon network (named Loon in a staggeringly innovative display of thought) transformed Google into an even more of a global powerhouse, and the new Universal Network Company (UNC) now housed most of the net traffic and data on its thousands of servers worldwide. Most of them were housed offshore, in giant floating server farms that used the water to cool them while providing unlimited surface area for solar power. UniNet access was free, provided by the USE, for all citizens and was protected by law, even for the small number of left-over prisoners in prisons.


    All education was provided free, for as far and as high as a person wanted to go. After all, you had little else to do. Some hard chargers in every generation did just that: they were the doctors and rocket scientists that ended up on the cutting edge of research and development somewhere. Likely, he thought, those would be the ones to actually make it to the moon or Mars.


    But most proved as apathetic as humanity always had: content to sit and be provided for, with little ambition past their next meal or fuck.


    Earl grunted at this thought. He condemned the pasty, slow, unambitious masses. He felt superior because he clung to his job in an outdated feeling of pride. But was he any different? Wasn¡¯t he just going through the motions? When was the last time he had done something that he was proud of? That meant something? That made a difference to anyone?


    He couldn¡¯t remember. That made him even more depressed.


    With these gloomy thoughts, he rode silently as the van plodded along at 200 km/h towards his next stop.

 Chapter 3 - Chosen

    The next day Earl was eating lunch after his presentation.  It had gone about the same as always, dull eyed plant personnel required by corporate to sit through his dull pitch.  He shook hands all around, collected business cards and gave out his in the weird ritual all salesman know too well.  Everyone lied and promised to call and check in later in the year.  It was all bullshit.


    He told Joshua to pull over at a diner and ate while it recharged at the pillar.  When electric cars finally replaced petroleum cars, the civil engineers tasked with creating the new electric infrastructure were at a loss on where to put the millions of charging stations needed to keep the cars charged.  The solution struck one of them when he was driving by a gas station that was being demolished in his neighborhood:  put them where the gas stations are.


    So that¡¯s what they did.  The pumps were torn out and replaced with a row of fast-charging stations.  The gas stations initially didn¡¯t change much:  they still sold stale food, pre-packaged snacks, and bottled soft drinks and beer.  Most eventually installed a robo-chef and a food counter, as some cars took a half-hour or more to charge and the owners found that bored travelers usually eat to stave off boredom.


    It was in one of these little restaurants that Earl was eating.  Always nostalgic, he usually didn¡¯t care for robot-prepared food, although he admitted that it really tasted the same, or maybe better.  He missed the human interaction of purchasing, fake smiling at the worker who, equally falsely, said ¡°thank you sir¡± with the tone that said she couldn¡¯t think of anything better than to be the one to hand you your food.  There was one, he remembered, a chicken place, where the workers were so cheery he always suspected they were on drugs as part of their work training.


    He chewed his food mechanically, not really tasting it, lost in his thoughts, when the UniNet panel on the wall suddenly punctured his mental balloon.


    ¡°Olympus Online Trials start in one week!  Apply now for the chance of a lifetime!  Do you have what it takes to be Chosen?¡±  The announcer, a bubbly blonde in a V-neck sweater that Earl appreciated (sex sells) said the words in a tone that was meant to be serious, but came across as just bad acting.  She was not picked for her talent, it was evident.


    ¡°What are the trials?¡± Earl thought.  ¡°It says ¡®Apply now¡¯, how do you apply?  Online?¡±


    Quickly Earl pulled up the Olympus Online website.  Sure enough, the ubiquitous single page with the Olympus logo, a mountain that looked kind of like Devil¡¯s Tower in Wyoming with a lightning bolt on either side of it that had been the face of the game for 2 years, had changed to a giant link.


    APPLY HERE


    Earl clicked the button, which dissolved into a page warning Earl that the application process was lengthy, would require several hours, and he needed to be in a place with a stable UniNet connection and his terminal plugged in to avoid dying.


    Reading further, he was unsettled when it said that ¡°all questions must be answered in full, with no exceptions¡± and that ¡°only one attempt per person was possible¡± ¨C if you didn¡¯t finish the application, in full, you could not apply again.  Ever.  It was quite clear on this point.


    Earl sat back; his lunch forgotten.  Weirder and weirder.  It was the most extraordinary requirements he had ever seen for a game.


    That evening, at his next hotel, he settled in for the process.  Clicking the button, he read and agreed to half a dozen EULA and Terms of Service agreements, stubbornly taking the time to read all of them.  Pretty hefty civil penalties for violating the terms, but nothing out of the ordinary.  He clicked ¡°I Accept¡± to them all and the next part loaded.


    For the next 3 hours, he answered all kinds of questions that made no sense.


    ¡°What smell do you think of when you see your favorite color?¡±


    ¡°If you were a dwarf, would you think height jokes are funny?¡±


    ¡°If you grew up eating garbage, would flowers be repugnant to you?¡±


    Shit like that.  And on and on.  Along the way were normal stuff, questions about his gaming history, character names, achievements from older games, clans and guilds he¡¯d been involved with.


    More than once he was tempted to quit, but the warnings that he would never again be allowed to apply and thus, be locked out of the hottest game he¡¯d heard about forever, kept him at it.


    Finally, he reached the end.  ¡°Thank you for applying to Olympus Online.  Are you Chosen?  We shall see.¡±


    That was it.  Once he finished the application, the website went back to its normal appearance ¨C the Apply Now button was gone.


    Feeling a bit let down, he turned off the lights and crawled into bed.  Oddly, he slept better than usual, falling asleep quickly and easily.


    Halfway across the country, a brightly lit building hummed with activity.  Anonymous, white robed scientists scurried about like mice in a maze.


    The man in the dark room heard a beep from the terminal and looked up.  The applications had been coming in by the millions, but the vast majority were reviewed and discarded by the AI.  The man wasn¡¯t sure how it was determining who to discard and who not to ¨C the test was designed by the AI, after all.  Its name was Kronus, and it was devilishly hard to pin down when it didn¡¯t want to be.  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    ¡°Do we have a match?¡± the man asked?


    Kronus waited a few seconds, then answered, ¡°Yes.¡±  It was a cold, metallic voice, a voice that both indicated the fact that Kronus both acknowledged your presence, and utterly dismissed you at the same time.  It was oddly humbling.


    ¡°How many more do we need,¡± asked the man.  No answer came from the AI.  The man repeated his question and again Kronus ignored him.


    No helping it.  The man settled down to wait.


    Early the next morning, Earl was awakened by the buzzing of his com device.  He shook his head, groggily and with surprise.  Very few people knew his com code, and even fewer used it.  He picked it up and answered it, careful to display no video.


    ¡°Hello,¡± he said.


    ¡°EARL,¡± came the ear-splitting reply.  It was his boss, Frank.


    ¡°Yeah, Frank, what¡¯s up?¡±  Frank rarely called.  He seemed to care about Earl¡¯s job less than Earl did, which was an achievement in itself.


    ¡°Heard you did great at¡­¡­ (a rustling of paper) ¡­. Platte Station.  Real good.¡±


    ¡°Thanks.  Routine,¡± Earl said.


    ¡°Ok,¡± Frank replied, ¡°Well, keep up the good work.  Talk to you later.¡±  And hung up.


    Earl hung up and tossed the com unit on the bed.  Frank was predictable, once a month or so he would call to talk to him briefly.  He probably had a reminder to call him once a month.  Earl imagined Frank checking it off his sparse list, CALL EARL, and then going back to his VirNet pursuits.  Frank was a big man, that type of muscular that was more genetic than gym.  He had white hair and a white beard, and glowered a lot when he was forced to interact with anyone.  He was also a serial philanderer, and spent a lot of time in the VirPorn world.  God knows why his wife put up with it.


    Putting Frank out of his mind, he was heading into the bathroom when his com beeped again.  Odd.  He answered while aiming at the toilet.


    ¡°Hello?¡±


    ¡°Earl Brooks?¡±  The voice was oddly monotone, obviously either a recording or, even more creepy, an AI.


    ¡°Yes?¡±


    ¡°Congratulations ¨C you have been selected for Olympus Online.  Please indicate your acceptance.  Be advised your verbal agreement is legally binding and this call is being monitored by legal personnel as required by law.¡±


    What the hell?  He had to agree now?  He caught himself pissing onto the toilet seat.  He finished and went back into the room.


    ¡°What is your response?¡±


    He was torn.  He didn¡¯t like being rushed into it, but he didn¡¯t want¡­.no, he couldn¡¯t miss this opportunity.  Little in his life mattered to him as much as this chance to get into this game ¨C the ramifications of that thought he chose not to pursue.


    ¡°Attention ¨C this is the last chance to accept- ¡°


    ¡°I accept,¡± Earl said.


    The voice clicked in satisfaction.  Earl imagined a computer somewhere flashing its lights in pleasure.


    ¡°Details will be emailed to you.  Please follow the instructions exactly.  Any deviation will count as a breach of contract and will be pursued legally.  Good day.¡±  At the perfunctory platitude, the robotic voice was gone.


    Earl sat down, overwhelmed.  This was so strange!  He had never heard of this happening before.


    Just then, his terminal beeped indicating a new email.  He opened it, unsurprised to see it was from Olympus.


    He opened the email and then shot straight to his feet in surprise.  ¡°What the fuck?¡±  This had to be a joke.  He read it again.  Nope, there it was in plain black and white.  He had to get himself to California, to the Olympus headquarters, within 3 days.  He also, apparently, was going to be on lockdown for an ¡°undetermined time¡±, whatever that meant, which meant that Earl had to quit his job, or at least take a leave of absence.  He doubted he would get it.  His job was on the edge anyway, he knew.  Very soon, within a year or two, and he would be shuffled off into ¡°retirement¡±, which meant a life living off the dole.  Eat, sleep, shit, fuck if you¡¯re lucky, and be entertained by the UniNet.  For the rest of his life.  Perhaps this thought¡­.no, this reality, was the source of his melancholy lately.  That sense that no matter what, you can¡¯t escape entropy.


    But he felt that Olympus Online offered something else:  what, he didn¡¯t and couldn¡¯t know for sure.  It was just a feeling, like that time when he walked up to the door of his first blind date.  The hope that something was there, just out of sight, that held the prospect of being wonderful.  It made him excited:  it made him HOPE.  And hope was something that the human race held little of nowadays:  there was nothing to hope FOR.


    Still feeling the giddiness of a kid about to go down a waterslide, he reasoned with himself.


    ¡°Okay,¡± he thought.  ¡°I have to get to California.  How?¡±  There was really only one way.  Joshua.  His robot van.  But he would have to play this right, because usually the company set Joshua¡¯s itinerary:  in a large way, he was just a passenger.


    He called Frank back.  Frank answered, a surprised tone in his voice.  ¡°Earl?  What¡¯s up?  I didn¡¯t expect to hear from you?¡±  Frank was right to be surprised:  in 5 years, Earl can¡¯t remember the last time he¡¯d initiated a conversation with his titular boss.


    ¡°I just got a call from a client in California, near Oakland.  He wants me to come do a presentation.¡±


    ¡°Who?¡± Frank asked, a puzzled tone in his voice.  I didn¡¯t blame him for being confused ¨C this was such an unlikely scenario that I knew he would buy it ¨C it was too crazy to make up.


    ¡°Guy named Gary Adams.  He saw one of my talks at his old station and wants me to come do it at the new one that he moved to.¡±  Smooth, Earl.  Frank won¡¯t know anything about my actual customers.


    ¡°Well, okay, I guess.¡±  I could still hear the confusion in Frank¡¯s voice.  Earl knew why ¨C in 5 years, he had never shown this much initiative in his work.  ¡°Where exactly is it?  I¡¯ll need to program your van.¡±


    I gave Frank the address of a power plant close to the Olympus building in San Francisco.  I knew I could either get Joshua to stop there or simply walk the distance if he wouldn¡¯t.  No telling how an AI will react when you go outside his guidelines.  I had never felt the need before and had no clue what Joshua would do when asked.


    Frank promised to load the address into Joshua¡¯s navigation and authorized the expenses.  Earl felt a little bad ¨C Frank had always been decent to him and he hoped Frank didn¡¯t get in trouble for this.


    With the details taken care of, Earl packed up his stuff and loaded it in Joshua.  He felt strange ¨C for the first time in a long time, Earl was looking forward to something.  He got in, verified that the van had the desired address, and then he was off.  He felt strangely free, in the way that you feel when you make a large decision.  Buying a house or a car, something like that.  He was committed now, in more ways than one, but he didn¡¯t feel anything but excitement.  The anticipation made the gray cloud of his world disappear a little, like the way a sunbeam shines through the clouds to illuminate a small patch of ground.  Eventually, the sunbeam grows until the gray clouds are gone.