Unexplored - Into the Wilderwood: A LitRPG Virtual Fantasy Adventure, page 1
Unexplored: Into the Wilderwood
Alara Branwen
Copyright © 2017
All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
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ONE
Clint ran a hand through his dark auburn hair as his brown eyes blearily focused on the portly man leading their department meeting. He downed two Awesome Energy shots that morning before the meeting, but was still fighting the invisible weights on his eyelids.
His eyes glazed over as the large man in a brown suit loudly exclaimed their sales were up from last quarter. This did little to excite the nodding people sitting hunched over the long brown plastic table in the eggshell white meeting room.
Clint’s eyes followed the speaker’s sausage like finger as he traced a line along an upward moving red arrow on a hologram beside him. Clint was the one that put that chart together. In fact, he handled all of the analytical detail of the marketing department. It was a position he obtained a little over a year ago after receiving his master’s degree in mathematics.
When he was first hired, he took a great deal of pride in his job. Each morning he woke and rushed to get to work. But after a couple of months, the newness of his position had worn off. Now when he woke up, all he felt was dread.
The speaker, his boss, turned to him and asked for his input on the statistical information on the chart. Clint gave a quick and watered down explanation of the numbers and the other board members nodded mechanically. His boss went on for a few more minutes extolling the company’s performance and the need for every employee to give it their best. The employees half-heartedly cheered and were released.
Clint dragged himself back to his cubicle and plopped in his seat. Several floating holograms hovered over his desk, requests from his fellow employees to look over financial information or fix some technical error they had with sales data.
“Computer on,” Clint said.
A large, translucent holoscreen blinked to life in front of him. The company’s orange logo, “Madaline’s” flashed across the top of the screen with a message beneath that proclaimed it was “The Best Grocery Experience in the Southeast.”
A long list of emails trailed down the screen, all asking for help with some problem or another. There was a loud beeping. Clint pressed a flashing button on the phone imbedded in his desk and put on a headset.
Martha, one of his coworkers, was having a problem with a spreadsheet. The issue was urgent and it had to be fixed right away, just like all of the other help requests floating around on his desk.
She sent Clint an email with a spreadsheet and he worked through the information. His eyes slowly moved across the screen while he listened to her complain about a template he sent her that wasn’t working correctly. After five minutes of listening to her exasperations, he put in a missing decimal place and corrected the error. Martha said a quick “thanks” and hung up the phone.
He got an email from top management. The company was undergoing some cutbacks because of the “rough economy,” despite increasing sales. He sighed when he read his salary was being cut by ten percent. It was his second pay cut in the last nine months.
Clint slowly pushed through all of his help requests while more popped up over his desk and in his email. Each stated they needed his immediate attention and were vital to the company. His phone blared throughout the day. All conversations were with employees irritated with small problems with data he somehow caused.
He pushed through the heavy stream of requests until seven, two hours after he was supposed to go home. An email from his boss came through requesting a private meeting.
Clint ponderously rose from his seat and trudged to his boss’s office. He made it in front of a faded oak door with a polish brass plaque that read “Roger Whittaker,” and knocked on the door.
Roger called him in and he took a seat in front of a large cherry wood desk decorated with several pictures of the man’s family.
Mr. Whittaker exchanged pleasantries with him for a moment before telling Clint he was worried about his job performance. He said many of his coworkers complained about his apathetic attitude toward their problems and that his lack of empathy was affecting their job performance when they worked with him.
Clint did his best to appear shocked. “I wasn’t aware of this Mr. Whittaker. I do everything I can to help my coworkers.”
“I’m not questioning your work ethic, but your low quality performance and negative attitude is affecting the ethos of our company,” Roger said as he straightened his jacket.
“Is it because my coworkers think I’m taking too long to get to their requests? Ever since we lost the rest of our analytics department, there’ve been more duties I’ve had to attend to.”
“Are you telling me this has led to your poor attitude and job performance?”
“No sir, I’m just saying I’ve had more to do. I’ve also been getting off work very late. I’m sorry if that has been perceived as me having a negative attitude. I’m also sorry if my coworkers thought I sounded grouchy today. The email some of us received about the cutbacks got me down a bit.”
Roger shook his balding head. “Those are horrible excuses Clint. All of us are suffering through this difficult time. Many of your coworkers are putting in several hours of overtime each week and making other sacrifices for their work. Some of them have stayed overnight. Do you see them taking their situation out on their fellow employees?”
Clint remembered the conversations of several ranting coworkers as he helped them throughout the day. “No, sir.”
“Madeline’s needs all members of its team to be committed to their work in order for it to succeed, that includes staying positive, even when things are getting tough. We’re facing difficult times, and we can’t have an employee dragging down the rest of the team.”
“I’ll make sure my attitude is more positive and pay closer attention to my work to make sure it’s right.”
“See that you do. You fill a vital role. If your appalling behavior and lackluster work quality continues, we’ll have no other choice but to separate you from this company. I don’t think either of us wants that.”
“No, sir.”
“Good. This weekend, I want you to rest up and prepare yourself for the new week. Go for a walk or do some meditation. A calm mind is better able to tackle challenges. Take care and have a good weekend.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Clint rose to leave, but Roger lifted a hand to stop him.
“Make sure you keep up with your company email this weekend,” Roger said. “You still have a large number of requests you haven’t fulfilled and you’ll need to have those done by Monday.”
Clint turned his head and grimaced. “Yes, sir.”
Clint left his boss’s office and grabbed his things from his cubicle. He quietly exited the building’s gleaming glass doors and walked toward his car. He didn’t look back. If he did, it would make it more difficult to imagine the office building being engulfed in a searing blaze.
TWO
Clint’s blood boiled as he drove down the highway. He had to put up with crap for the entire work week, and now he had to deal with it over the weekend, like he did every other weekend. He derisively laughed to himself when his boss told him to take it easy. How was he supposed to take it easy? He had at least 100 emails still unanswered and would probably have more before the day ended.
Work was supposed to suck, it was a generally held truth. But there were supposed to be a few things that made it worthwhile. He remembered when he was first hired. He was part of a four person analytics team that took all of the company’s sales statistics and performed analysis to help the top brass formulate the company’s strategy.
It was exciting putting all of the advanced mathematics to use to help a business grow. Clint was praised by Roger for his enthusiasm, and was given more important duties. He handled all of his assignments with great ease. Soon, he was regarded as the “go to guy” for his team.
Four months into his job, he received a meeting request from Roger. He came in and was congratulated for completing his last assignment one month ahead of schedule. Clint beamed. He worked nearly one hundred sixty hours the two weeks before, to make sure the project was perfect. He was told that because of his performance, he would receive responsibilities that were vital to the company.
Clint was excited. Just four months in and he was getting major projects. He thought if things continued, he could get a promotion. The next day he did, in a sense. He found himself in the boss’s office that following morning to find out the rest of the analytics team was fired, and he’d be taking over all of their responsibilities.
Clint thought he’d receive a raise, but he actually received his first pay cut. He was told the company was going through difficult times and they needed to institute cutb acks. Clint created a chart showing how the company’s profits were ballooning to his boss, and Roger responded with a sharp reprimand.
Clint did his best to keep up with all of the department’s work, but it soon became too much to handle. He regularly spent ten to twelve hours a day on weekdays and weekends trying to take care of the ever increasing burden of his position. Even then, he still wasn’t able to stay caught up.
Stress ate at his stomach, but he managed to put up with it. He wanted to walk away, but the economy was bad, and there was no guarantee he’d find a job.
He sighed and made a left turn into a small strip mall on the side of the road. He drove up to a store on the far right end. “Virtuality: The Game Experience” a flashing, floating holo sign said above the derelict storefront.
He walked through the electronic door. In contrast to the building outside, the store was meticulously clean with several displays for the various holo and VR games on the market. He looked over several of them before coming to the counter. A bored looking young woman with shoulder length brown hair was staring out into space.
“Hey Mary. You look like you’re having fun.” Clint said, taking off his black suit jacket and tossing it over his shoulder.
Mary shook her head. She blinked and focused her grey eyes on Clint. “I’m having a blast. You should join me,” she said.
“No thanks, I just got off work.”
“Lucky you, they’ve got me pulling a double.”
“Again? What happened to Rick?”
The young woman blew a raspberry. “What do you think? He got blitzed last night and couldn’t make it into work.”
“How does that guy stay employed?”
Mary looked left and right and leaned in. “He’s boning the boss. The District Manager was going to let him go last week, but Cathy stuck up for him and now they're considering making him a Team Leader.”
Clint’s eyebrows went up. “That’s bullshit. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Sorry. I meant to call you, but life and work is keeping me busy. How are things at Madeline’s?”
Clint told Mary about his work day and his meeting with his boss.
“You tell him pay cuts and shitty coworkers are leading causes for employee discontent?”
“No. I hate my job, but I don’t want to lose it.”
“Fair enough. So, what are you gonna do this weekend? Gonna go for a nice relaxing walk and meditate while they work you to death from home?”
“Yeah, mostly. I was hoping we could hit the VRcade sometime this weekend.”
“No, a lot of my coworkers called off this weekend and Cathy stuck me with all their shifts.”
“Glad I don’t work here anymore. I’d go bonkers.”
“I know. I’m already nuts,” Mary gave Clint a lopsided smile and he chuckled.
“Oh hey,” Mary said, “I wanted to show you something.”
“What’s up?”
Mary reached beneath the counter and pulled out a glossy blue box. Two characters were on the cover. A muscular minotaur wearing nothing but a loincloth, posed with a huge axe slung over his shoulder. A scantily clad catgirl, with her black tail wrapped around her waist, looked over her shoulder and winked. Her ass was pointed seductively in the air. The word “UNEXPLORED” was emblazoned in gold letters across the top.”
“Is that the new game people are going nuts over?”
Mary grinned. “Yup, sure is. We just got it in this week.”
“I thought it was sold out everywhere.”
“Not quite. We really didn’t get the rush the other stores in our area did. When the game was released, we had a bunch of people from the local chapter of the United Decency Alliance come out here and protest. Nobody wanted to risk getting beat up by a bunch of decency fanatics, so they just went to other stores to pick up their copy.”
“Or they just got it online.”
Mary shook her head. “There isn’t a digital release. Virtuality got an exclusive contract that said only we would sell them in our physical stores.”
“Interesting marketing tactic.”
“And crazy. You should’ve seen all of the lines at our other stores. One location sold out in minutes.”
“Damn. So what’s the big deal?”
Mary smirked. “You haven’t read any of the reviews?”
“This week, I haven’t really felt like reading anything, other than help requests from my coworkers.”
“It’s your typical fantasy VRMMO, but there’s one difference, it’s a complete immersion MMO.”
“All MMOs are immersive.”
“This one is very different. You can do whatever you want.”
“Like?”
“Like build villages, set up trade caravans and businesses, and, the thing that caused all those protests, have sex.”
“You can do that in New Life.”
“All of the stuff in New Life is tame compared to this. That’s what the reviews say anyway.”
“I take it you haven’t tried it.”
Mary shook her head. “No time.”
“Well, it does sound interesting.”
“Want it?”
Clint’s face twisted into a grimace. “Not really. I haven’t really been into MMOs since I started working at Madeline’s. They take up too much time.”
“They say you can program it to kick you out if certain conditions are met, like if you want to stop playing after a set amount of time or someone walks into the room.”
“Why would they do that?”
“They say it’s because they’re trying to make the game more accessible to busier people, but I think it’s to protect you from being seen getting it on with others in cyberspace.”
Clint laughed. “Yeah, that can be pretty embarrassing. How much is it?”
“Sixty.”
“That’s pretty cheap.”
“We have a bunch of copies left because of the protests, and we’re trying to move them as fast as we can.”
“It would probably help if you had them on display.”
“I know, but the local UDA is making us keep them under the counter. You want one?”
Clint bit his lips. When he played MMOs a few years ago, he was really addicted to them. He didn’t want to get into anything that might be detrimental to his work life. He was already skating on thin ice.
“Eh, I don’t know. I’m not really interested. I don’t need a time waster, and if I need something to get me off, there’s porn all over the net.”
“There’s way more to it than getting laid. The game is mostly run by the players.”
“That sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”
“It’s mostly player run. There’s supposed to be safeguards in place. The gaming industry learned from its mistake of having a completely player run world years ago.”
Clint stroked his chin. “I’m not sure.”
“If you get the game, I can upgrade it to the deluxe pack. You don’t get anything extra in the game, but you get a cool statue and a player’s guide.”
Clint laughed. “I can do without more crap cluttering up my apartment.”
Mary looked down and spoke in a whisper. “Look, I don’t like to beg, but Cathy is really pushing me to get rid of these. “She told me if I’m not able to sell all of them by the end of the weekend, she said she’d -”
Mary drew her forefinger across her throat surreptitiously.
“What?” Clint shook his head. “How many do you have left?”
“Quite a few.”
Clint drummed his fingers on the counter. He didn’t really want to get it, but if Mary lost her job, it would be financially devastating for her.
“Fine, I’ll get it.”
Mary grinned. “You will? Awesome. I’ll get everything for you.”
Clint was already having second thoughts, but when he saw the bright, pearly smile on Mary’s face, they dissolved.
Mary straightened her red apron and bounced behind the counter as she gathered his items. When she bent to get his statue, a miniature nude cat girl covering her unmentionable regions with an arm and her tail, he saw Mary’s shapely butt against her tight blue jeans.
Clint’s member uncomfortably hardened in his work pants. He gripped his white, button up shirt as images of what her nude ass might look like flashed across his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut and pushed those thoughts out of his mind. He tried to go down that path before, more than once. Each time, he’d been met with rejection.
