Mine... She’s close, but different enough that no one would look at the avatar and me and think we’re the same person. Not that it really matters, anyway. I have a Glitch stream—you can see my face on video. Not much to hide.
“Sorry, you guys!” I shout over the wind, which dies down a little bit, then picks up again, shifting back and forth in loud blasts, sweeping bits of snow and frost with it. Players and their avatars are sliding across the white ground, bodies pressing against their ships. I turn to look up at the mountains and notice bits of green hidden among the white and beige. Maybe all the life on this planet isn’t just underwater.
I glance over at the other players and give them an encouraging wave, one of the few physical gestures you can do in this game. All of them wave back simultaneously, the movements identical, and unintentionally hilarious coming from a hundred-plus people at once. I hear a bunch of people laughing in my headset, including Rebekah, who is currently walking right next to me.
I’m not sure it’ll ever not be weird, having her as a second camera. It’s not like her in-game character can carry an actual video camera or something, so she walks facing me, to pick me up for the second video from her character’s perspective, which is streaming off her actual screen. It’s like having a friend who won’t stop staring at you the entire time you’re out together, no matter what you’re doing. Watching a movie? Looking at you. Walking down the street? Eyes all on you.
“Can you like, get some video of the mountains?” I ask, turning to look at her.
She wiggles her body right to left, like that’s a good way of saying no instead of talking to me through her headset, and keeps her eyes on me. We could just use the in-game recording system to capture stuff, but Rebekah insists it looks better like this. More like an action movie.
“You’re so weird,” I say, looking back at the Armada. A few ships are still landing, but if we waited for absolutely everyone, the streams would take several hours instead of just one or two, and we’d never get anywhere.
“Let’s go see what’s hidden in those—”
The loud thundering of ship engines interrupts me as several vessels tear across the sky from behind the mountains, slowing to hover above me and the rest of the Armada. Rebekah directs her gaze away from me and up at them, and then her voice chimes into my headset.
“Whoa, these guys aren’t registered in the Armada. What are the chances of someone else showing up on this planet at the exact same time?” she asks excitedly. “This is good footage. Really good. We can send this to the blogs. You should try to connect to them, see where they’re from.”
Behind me, I hear the members of our Armada talking among themselves, voices from all over the world trying to figure out who our guests are, and echoing Rebekah’s words about how weird it is for them to be here, right now, out of all the trillions of planets across the digital galaxy.
“Hey!” I shout into my headset, waving at the ships. I offer to open a channel with them, sending a request over. “Open a private channel!”
There’s a soft buzzing sound, followed by a number of sharp clicks, like something snapping into place.
I know that sound.
“Oh.” I hear Rebekah in my headset. “Oh no.”
Blaster fire hammers down on the planet’s surface, lighting up the ground, taking out ships and avatars all around me. An explosion erupts just a few feet away, and I throw myself to the side, the flying debris missing me by mere inches.
The bastards are firing on us.
Rage wars with disbelief as I climb shakily to my feet. The rest of the Armada is scattering all around me, clamoring back to their ships.
“What the hell is this?!” I shout, sprinting toward my ship, joining the rest of my Armada in the scramble for safety. The blasters of the dozen or so ships above us pummel the icy terrain, breaking holes in the ice. I suck in an angry breath as several of my people are vaporized by the blasts, while still more flail about in the frozen ocean. Rebekah is still running by my side, though at least she’s looking ahead and not at me, her avatar capturing the carnage all around us.
“Rebekah, who—” Blaster fire takes out more of the ice around me, and I’m forced to veer off course to avoid plunging into the freezing water.
“The social fee—are explo—over —ere!” Rebekah shouts, the latency making her voice break up. There’s way too much going on, too much incoming and outgoing data for her crappy Internet connection to handle. I spare a glance at her video feed in the corner of my screen. The image is choppy, but I can make out her face, harried and stressed, as she looks from the game to a tablet she’s now got propped up next to her.
“It’s some o—the trolls —ave been going off on—”
She cuts out completely. Her avatar comes to a standstill on the ice and is promptly blasted away, along with the ship she’s worked so hard on.
People are screaming as they run by me, intent on reaching their ships, but for a moment, I find myself unable to move.
Rebekah is gone. I’m alone.
Because when you die in Reclaim the Sun, you die in real life—
Okay, no, that doesn’t happen, just kidding. This isn’t Tron or something.
But when you die in the game, you do lose all your stuff. Which is almost as bad. You’ll respawn someplace in the universe with a basic ship and blank avatar. Your former body and the ship you likely spent however many hours customizing and upgrading are left behind, potentially across the cosmos, waiting to be collected and scavenged by anyone lucky enough to stumble on the wreckage first...or by the jerks who shot you down.
And as the people in my Armada fall around me, I can practically hear the cackling of the people shooting at us, eager to reap their spoils.
Actually.
I do hear it.
They are laughing.
I want to scream at them, curse, shoot at them with the little blaster in my inventory bag. But my small gun won’t do anything against an entire fleet of ships, and probably wouldn’t even damage one in all this madness.
So I flee with the others, intent on reaching my ship. It’s there, just up ahead. If I can get inside, I can jettison off, maybe get away, maybe save my vessel. Otherwise, I’ll be starting all over again.
The paint. The small upgrades that make it pilot a bit better. The scanners that help me detect faraway planets. And all the stuff in my inventory—the weapons and the gadgets that help me navigate on the ground. The boosters that make running across terrain easier, giving me a little extra speed. And there’s the mini jets in my pack that help me jump just a tiny bit higher. Not a huge advantage. But just enough.
And hopefully just enough to get away.