Dozens of ships are taking to the sky, the Armada blasting off. I watch two get shot down and explode in a massive fireball across the bright white sky, while others warp out, several sonic booms thundering in the wind. Elation at their escape wars with the soul-crushing disappointment and rage I feel for those who have not been so fortunate today.
All these players. All this effort. Wasted.
I wish logging out was as simple as just turning off the computer or console. Pulling the plug. But the developers thought of that when creating the game, kindly leaving you active for a few minutes in case it was an accidental disconnect.
Plenty of time for someone attacking you to finish the job. Like they did to Rebekah.
The cockpit window of my ship opens, the glass rising high as I get closer, another little upgrade I paid handsomely for. Well, paid for using in-game currency from running missions and discovering things. Not actual money. But paid for with something far more precious than funds.
My time.
The more you play, the more experience points you get, and the more stuff you can purchase with said points. But when those things are lost or destroyed...there’s no just buying them back. You have to go back to the grind, leveling up more and more to get that stuff all over again. Doing menial tasks, like fighting alien monsters or cataloging plants or discovering small planets.
Just as I move to hoist myself into my ship, the blaster fire begins to die down. And then I realize it’s not dying down just a little—the attack has ceased completely. I pause, turning to look at the enemy ships, the players that came to take out all my people. They’re just...sitting there, floating in the air, ominous and silent. No laughter, no talking. They must have switched to a private chat channel.
“Divya!” My headset explodes with Rebekah’s voice, and I see her reappear in the small video window on my screen. “I got disconnected. Lost all my stuff, damn it.”
I glare up at the sky, at our attackers. There are at least a dozen of them, all painted the same colors. All on the same team, the same clan. The ships are a solid white and would almost disappear against the clouded sky and snowcapped mountains if not for the angry red zigzag pattern tearing through the sides of the vessels, like claw marks across skin.
“Why don’t you come down here and face me?!” I shout, wondering where the hell my entire Armada went. There were hundreds of us making our way to that mountain. I get them running back to their ships, as one direct shot from a blaster would take you out. And trying to get away from the crumbling environment, sure. But now that there’s this odd cease-fire...why was no one coming back to help me?
What’s the point of all this if no one has my back?
“Man, fuck this bitch,” a voice suddenly shouts out. A guy, his voice masked by something that makes him sound like a deep-voiced robot.
“Dude, don’t!” another one yells, his voice unhidden, soft and young, like a kid in junior high, maybe. “We need her in the ship!”
“We need her off the streams,” the deeper voice growls. “It doesn’t matter how we do it.”
“It’ll look cooler if we—” Yet another new voice; another male.
“I’m not waiting any longer,” the masked voice says.
The blaster fire hammers down from a single ship, which swoops in low toward me, the plasma weapons battering the ground around me. I hear his blasters hitting my ship, loud against the steel chassis. Warning alarms sound in my headset as lights flash red, and I dash away before—
The ship explodes.
Flames of red and orange billow up from the snowy white ground, and a plume of black smoke pools into the clear sky. The explosion echoes across the frozen tundra, and the ice beneath me starts to crack and splinter. I glance down at my feet, wondering if I can make it back to the mountains, just as the ice splits open, giving way to an ocean of water tinted blue and green and purple.
I plunge in, my vision fading.
“Bye, bitch,” I hear the deep masked voice snarl, a thick chuckle following.
Then everything goes black, and the Reclaim the Sun title screen comes back up, inviting me to start all over again.
“Fuck!” I shout, slamming my hands against the keyboard.
“And...the stream is over,” Rebekah announces, her voice coming in crystal clear. She’s in her little video screen box, no chop or lag or anything holding her back now that the chaos is finished.
“What was that? Who was that?!” I demand, raking my hands through my hair in frustration. “My ship. All my upgrades. Where the hell was the rest of the Armada when I needed them? Goddamn it, that’s going to take me weeks to build back up.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Rebekah says, trying to calm me down. “But as for who... Some army of trolls calling themselves the Vox Populi, per the social feeds. They’re...” She clears her throat. “They’re celebrating. There’s already a GIF of your ship blowing up and you falling through the ice.”
“Do I want to see it?” I ask, dread already creeping up my spine at the very thought.
“I sure wouldn’t,” she counters. “I mean, it’s just a digital version of you, but still. It’ll hurt. But I know you’re going to look anyway, so why are we even having this conversation?” She sighs loudly into the headset. “I know this isn’t going to make it sting any less, but that stream, everything that happened... Once I’m done processing the live footage into a recap video to upload tonight... I mean, it’s going to be really gripping. Viral content on our hands here, Div.”
“Yeah, probably,” I say glumly.
I can think of a lot of other ways I’d like to see myself go viral, though. In a video for something I’m proud of. Some kind of grand accomplishment, instead of going down in pixelated flames, at the hands of a bunch of Internet trolls. A joke.
“A couple game sites are already posting about what happened on their socials, and a few microblogs are linking to some collected social posts,” she continues, and I can see her typing away furiously. “Damn, I gotta get ahead of this thing and finish compiling the video. Sucks, Div, I know, but we’re gonna get a lot of traffic here. And that does mean more revenue, potentially.”
“Right, right.” I know Rebekah’s trying to get me to see the silver lining, but all I can think about is the staggering amount of time it’ll take to level back up. To where I was, playing since launch? Weeks.
Will people stick around to watch me trying to rebuild? Will I lose subscribers?
I think about the rent check.
And I hate that being able to help my mom is so goddamn dependent on my subscriber count.
“Keep your head up,” she says. “And hey, it’s still early. You can probably dive in for a bit tonight and start upgrading.”