Full Dive | Chapter One

I live! 

Well, sort of. I don't want to bum anyone out with my problems so I won't delay on it, but it's been a battle. I've been this close to a full out burnout this week and I hadn't been able to write at all this whole month or even had the time/strength to reply people, and I'm really sorry for that. I didn't mean for it to happen, guys. 😔

On brighter news! I finally managed to write a little something tonight, just a very short story on an idea I'd been toying with for a while now but never put it in writing (seriously, this is all I have written down for it). It's unlikely I'll turn this into interactive fiction, but if inspiration strikes me again, I might just turn this into a series. I have an ending in mind, but we'll see how that goes. Will I stick to this title? Who knows. Naming things is hard.

I have >NOT< given up on AoS either, the latest update is still very much half done and I WILL get back to as soon as I'm able to. I love Ace of Spades and all its characters, and I truly can't wait to share more of it with you all. It's just been.......hard. I'm hoping I can get back to it soon, honestly. I miss it.

The next episode of A6 is also on its way to you soon. And I'm determined to make up for the whole month of content absence in this upcoming week. I already have ideas and will push myself to get them done for you all!

I won't blab much longer here. All I can say is thank you for the support and I'm sorry for my absence. I just had to take care of me for a bit.

Hope you enjoy this story! I had fun writing it! And forgive me, it's likely a bit rough after a whole month not writing a word kjsdhfkjsfhs

***

It was just another day. Just another job; a plain, boring job. All I had to do was escort a client on his way to a meeting in that world.

What world? Well, plainly speaking it is something between a dreamscape and a virtual reality.

People who enter it are not quite asleep nor are you logged into a game or anything of the sort, it’s more like we disconnect ourselves from reality and teleport into an artificial world guided by highly advanced artificial intelligence to do things that would be trickier in the real world. Like meditation, physical training, meeting with people from another continent or simply holding meetings like the one my client had to attend.

We were supposed to be in and out in less than an hour. It wasn’t any big deal, there were no stakeouts required, no need to pay anyone off. This meeting was scheduled on a whim, probably because they wanted to test how far along this system had come over the years and millions invested on it.

The job went fine, to no one’s surprise. A standard business meeting with an old associate, I didn’t even have time to nod off while I waited outside.

Shit only went to hell when it was time to leave, to go back to reality.

Now? Now it’s been three years. Three whole years since we’ve been stuck in that world.

That world swiftly and suddenly became this world.

The artificial avatars we used to come and go here are long past being simply data. It is now who we are, and we have to care for it almost as if it’s our real body.

We have no way of knowing how the outside world fars. We don’t know when we’ll be able to leave. We don’t even know why we’re stuck here.

And worst of all, we don’t know if we’ll ever get the chance to leave.

Sure, people have adapted. The humans trapped here have mostly accepted this as reality now, and I get it. How are we supposed to fight A.I.? You can’t shoot data.

… Okay, technically you can. But it’s pretty pointless. It won’t magically open a door for us to leave, and trust me, we tried.

No one can come or go. Death is very possible, and if what the system informed us when we first got stuck here is true, dying here equals dying out there; something most of us are not willing to put to test.

With time, it came to our attention that life is also possible. Couples started having children, which gave way to a whole new level of discussion. Those kids are data. But they feel real, they smell real, they act just as real as any other damn thing in this world…

This world is fucking us up. Big time.

But that’s a problem for the settlers. And I’m not one of them.

I’m a data miner, or dami as people have grown used to calling us. Which means I’m part of the front lines of exploration, something that we hope will eventually lead us to a way out.

Have I accepted this world as my current reality? Yes. Do I want to be stuck here forever? No. Do I consider the time I’m spending here as a complete waste? Am I willing to put behind all the experiences I’ve lived here if--once we manage to leave? Am I happier here?

I don’t know.

And what I know even less is how the hell this man in front of me came into this world three whole years after the break happened.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know how I ended up here,” the young man in front of me sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Shit, I thought this place was impossible to access from outside.”

“I don’t know, Asuna,” the man next to me says. “It doesn’t look like he’s lying.”

“Of course I’m not lying, who the fuck would want to come into this place after all that crap?”

With that short outburst, the strange man we’d just run into starts pacing and cursing under his breath, with a desperate look in his eyes.

The man next to me, Levi, who’s been my friend and companion for the better part of the past three years, turns to me with his arms crossed in front of his chest and a look in his dark green eyes that all but screams “now what?”.

Hell if I know. All I know is that it’s quite a funny sight seeing Levi next to this newcomer.

Levi is all dark shades and soft lines. His short, wavy, black hair is always neatly brushed back, with gentle eyes that are more expressive than my most well-articulate speech. Not even his absurd 190 cm height and big muscles can beat the dimples from his cheeks, in all honesty.

This stranger, on the other hand, can be summarized in light shades and sharp angles. His hair is so pale it’s pretty much white under the sunlight, and it’s a mess around his head. Maybe because he can’t seem to stop running his hands through it ever since I kicked him awake, but it’s still… wild. And while he is by no means short or scrawny, he is definitely not a 4x4 man like Levi. In a straightforward fight, he could definitely kick my ass.

It’s his eyes that force you to stare, though. A blue so bright it seems almost unreal, and a shine to them that can only be defined as cold. I don’t think I could read those eyes even if I spent the next thousand years staring into them.

Still, Levi has never made the wrong call up until now. He does always put the final decision on me, but it’s like he’s been trained by some freaky government entity to be able to read people. No lie escapes that man, so I guess that’s that.

“Fine,” I sigh. “It’s not like Levi would let me leave you to fend for yourself now that we found you.”

“And it would be a bad idea to let him walk around telling everyone he just got here.” Levi rubs the back of his neck. “People would lose their minds, it’d be chaos.”

The man stops on his tracks, glancing at Levi before locking his eyes on mine.

“Come with us, then. We’ll get you situated and you’ll tell us what’s been going on outside.”

“And what if I don’t?” He asks. “What if you two are just data and decide to kill me for barging into this freakshow?”

“What if you’re data?” I ask. Levi chuckles under his breath, and I raise a sharp eyebrow at the boldness from his words. “If you don’t want to join us, you can walk around on your own and drop dead for all I care or something, I don’t know. It’s your problem, not mine.”

I check the time on the upper left corner of my vision field. “Regardless, we don’t have time to chit chat here. If you’re coming, come. Otherwise, good luck out there,” I say as I start walking away. “You’ll need it.”

I don’t dare look back, but I can sense Levi’s hesitation. Soon enough though, his familiar warmth is next to me and I relax slightly. It’s not like we have a contract binding us to walk these lands together, but still. It’s reassuring to have a solid companion like him.

“Fine!” The man calls out behind us. Levi and I turn back around, watching as the blue eyed man makes his way towards us with his hands shoved deep inside his pockets and a strange look in his eyes.

He stops a couple of feet away and clears his throat. “So, it’s Levi and… Asuna?” We nod. “Are those your real names?”

“Yes,” I say before Levi can get a word in. “But you shouldn’t discuss the past around here with strangers. It’s sort of a touchy subject for some people.”

His jaw muscle twitches lightly, as if he had to swallow a snarky reply much like I usually do, and he rolls back his shoulders.

“Fair enough,” he says, stepping up to stand next to me.

A chill runs down my spine when he looks down at me with a slightly smug look on his face, as if being that much taller than me was some sort of win for him. It’s not like I’m not used to it when I walk around with Levi all the time.

All I know is I can’t tell if it’s his fault or if the weather forecast was right and the winds are getting colder as nightfall approaches.

“I’m Corvin.”