System Jazz

"So which server are you on? A handler could party up with you to help."

Baldie asks, and even if help sounds good, the question makes no sense.

The expression triggers a long sigh from him.

"How long does a day take in the world?"

"Ugh, nothing crazy. I wasn't paying attention, though they were faster than normal."

It was hard to keep track of it between getting murdered and chopping down trees with bare hands.

He's not satisfied with this answer though.

"Couldn't select anything like that at the start."

"No, there had to be a choice." He claims, turning on his old laptop.

It's such an ancient piece, much newer models end up in the scrapyard worn out completely.

"There's fast, normal, slow, and real-time. Once you enter one, you're stuck there."

"Well, for me, it was to put on the headset, CineMraft launched, pick an avatar, and go."

The shrugging won't convince him.

His laptop takes a while to boot, whatever he tries to achieve.

"Isn't it a Premium thing? They skipped a lot after a popup about it."

"No, it should be available for everyone."

He turns the old machine this way, still showing the loading screen, and walks around his desk.

His laptop could compete against the salvaged PC in a snail's race.

And he doesn't look poor at all, with the yard full of high-tech gadgets too.

"Right after entering the name, it threw me into the starter village."

This makes Baldie giggle before raising his eyes, and if he has seen the logs, he must know it already.

"It was an accident, by the way, is there a way to change it?"

"No, Arnim, you'll stay Noob in the foreseeable future,"

He claims, and his laptop finally loads.

His background is a macro shot of a grass field, the screen is dirty, and icons cover most of it.

He clicks on a folder, looking for something.

"Don't say they didn't warn you."

"Fuck. The system said you can change before finishing, and it wasn't done yet."

The blood rushes into my face from the embarrassment.

"It wouldn't let me click next, to check the rest of the stuff before giving it a working name. All other tries failed."

"What rest?"

He is searching and won't even look up.

It's a folder full of junk, images, and text files, all in different formats, with no sense of organization.

It's not like the PC at home or even the container is an example of order, but this mess triggers my OCD.

"Like attributes or classes."

It takes a lot of work to answer him while looking at what he does.

And while navigating that chaos, he has the energy to talk like it's nothing.

If the first experience with the Deep Dive headset was nauseating, this is sickening.

"Yeah, it handles those once you reach level ten."

He notes without taking his eyes away. And that's the problem exactly.

Why didn't they list the steps or warn you so you'd know what to expect?

I'm too focused on what he does to say it though.

"They never mentioned that."

That is all that comes out until he slows down.

"In other RPGs, these are the most important at the start. You min-max the stats for the best build and it matters more than your looks, name, or whatever. CineMraft had none of that."

"It does, but later. This game is an experimental port for Deep Dive, and the devs wanted the users to feel their avatar better."

He says, whatever that means.

"They will give you stats that match your real body. It takes until the tenth level for them to calculate it or something."

"And if you don't like it, pay nine-ninety-nine to change it..."

It's meant to be sarcastic, yet it's closer to the truth than expected.

He corrects the guess without looking, opening another folder with charts and diagrams.

"It's nineteen-ninety-nine. And you can't change your name even after that." He says as he clicks each image one by one.

"We disabled multi-boxing or creating extra alts. You could have up to three, and delete or make new ones outside the program."

"Yes, the system said the same. Why?"

"Abuse prevention." Baldie shrugs.

"It was possible to log in more characters, that messed up our tracking. They clocked in five hundred hours a week while failing every quest."

That means they made ninety credits for nothing, that's genius.

He finds an image showing numbers and a crazy amount of small prints, and there is no way I'm reading all that.

"Okay, here's the server chart."

It seems irrelevant since the controller skipped that choice.

The main difference is in the day's length and they have four options.

On the fast server, one minute in real life equals an hour in-game, so a full cycle is twenty-four minutes.

The avatar must be in normal mode with hour-long days.

There's a slow server where a week passes in twenty-four hours and the real-time one's the slowest.

"So why does it matter how long a day is?"

"It affects skill training and travel time. And monsters respawn at midnight."

He explains and those might be relevant after the tenth level.

"You can only select one at the start and can't change it. The same's true for the handlers."

"Well, there was no such option, but let's say it's the normal server."

After confirming, he zooms in on the picture, expecting to read it.

There is no way, it's like a novel in itself.

"So enemies respawn faster on the fast one? That's it?"

"It blew up in popularity recently, so most handlers moved over there."

He says, which feels like he's contradicting his previous statement.

"Annie's avatar is on the normal server though, so she could still help. Did they bake in the settings without letting us know?"

"Oh, so that's why it's important? It doesn't help to reach the tenth level faster."

It's too bad she got pissed, and the clock's ticking.

Is she even my handler? What does that mean?

"So we should play together, or something?"

"Don't expect her to do the heavy lifting for you, but she could give you a little push."

He says, yet before the hopes go up, he facepalms and retracts it.

"No, scratch that, she's still in training. The earliest she'd take over her post is next week."

"Are there no others?"

"No, it was me, and they moved my character to closed beta testing."

He says, so now it makes no sense he spent so much explaining all this crap.

"You're on your own. You should still apologize to her. She'll be in charge of your reports."

"Uh, oh, yeah, that's right."

Playing with her does sound nice, except not while she's pissed.

Also, there won't be next time if this quest fails.

It's almost noon and he kept here for so long.

"So any tips on how to get to the tenth level without Premium?"

"Heh, yes. Do the God-damned tutorial, Arnim!"