The Slow Life of Henry Riddle: The Arcane Artificer

Seconds after selecting Login, I found myself floating in a void. Well, floating would be the wrong word. So would standing, I guess. I was just hanging out in a void. ​

”Hello, sir, and welcome to Heavens Gates, ” came a disembodied voice from somewhere within the void.

Honestly, it felt like everywhere in the void. It assaulted every inch of what passed for my body in the game. ​It was my avatar in FIVR: Full Immersion Virtual Reality.

In hindsight, other companies and games were half-assing the Full Immersion part of that. Goggles do not full immersion make. ​

Up till now, FIVR games just meant you could move your character with your body and see, hear, and sometimes even feel what your character felt.

The last part required haptic feedback suits designed for it. Of course, when you got hit with a sword, this was just some light pressure or something.

Heavens Gates was supposed to be the next level- sending and receiving signals wirelessly to connect directly to your brain through special pods.

Well, the pods were repurposed. Originally the pods were designed for deep space missions. Bueva Vista the parent company of Heavens Gates bought the pod company and repurposed them for long immersion gaming.

The FIVR pod was plugged into a wall socket, but also came with a backup generator. They also connect to the sewer to pipe out the door waste. If a player wanted to play long term they had to purchase nutrient packs that plug into the pods to nourish the body in-game so it didn atrophy.

​The voice phased in front of me. It was an older Englishman in a very bespoke suit. He gave the impression dignified man in a suit can look floating in the vast nothingness we presently were in. ​

”I wonder whats his name? ” Henry thought.

​ ”My name is not necessary. You won see me again after you create your character, ” the old man responded.

”Did you just read my mind, ” I asked starting to freak out?

”I can hear surface-level thoughts thanks to your connection to the system, so I felt it appropriate to respond. It is the ideal method of communicating when you need a Developer or Dev, ” ​he informed me.

”And you are? ” I asked, only freaking out slightly less than before. ​

”Your Guide, sir, ” he responded, clarifying absolutely nothing at all. ​

”Great! How about you guide me somewhere other than this abyss! ” exclaimed Henry

”Right away, sir, ” he replied in a far calmer manner than Id addressed him in. ​

Even as he spoke the void found shape and color at last. After a few moments of swirling and stretching, the visual nonsense settled into what I had to admit was a very cozy office. I was almost immediately put at ease as I took in the entire experience of the room. ​

”Now, sir, we shall create your character and begin your adventures in Heavens Gates? ” ​

Heavens Gate was designed and created solely by one Dr. Thomas McElvaney. Dr. McElvaney claimed hed created a digital world in which players could live with the help of specially designed FIVR pods.

Heavens Gates created breakthrough organic AI systems, sensory immersion, and world generation which ran on quantum computers. Dr. McElvaney also used his breakthroughs in AI to develop the most efficient, secure, and widely used cryptocurrency the world had ever seen The Standard Dollar.

You see, the currency was mined by, and in some ways from, the AI itself. This particular AI was generating strings of data that served as units of the currency, but each unit was imprinted with copies of a certain piece of dynamic code inherited from the parent AI.

This code couldn be faked or duplicated because it could only be created by AI.

The creation of new units of cryptocurrency was intrinsically a part of the game.

Owning one gold equally one thousand Standard Dollars. One silver was equivalent to 100 Standard Dollars. Copper equaled one Standard Dollar. Finally, one Standard Dollar equaled about 10,000 Euros.

The Standard Dollar was secure, absolutely uncrackable, and could be made traceable for legitimate business transactions.

After Dr. McElvaney ​announced he was using the blockchain of the currency inside the game to generate the games currency the global market nearly crashed.

I wouldn call my family rich. I was born in London, but my family moved to Virginia for my parents jobs. My father worked for a tech firm in Northern Virginia and my mother was the principal of a small private school that my sister and I attended for free.

Im currently a senior at the University of Richmond a small private college in the middle of the state. Im a Business and Computer Engineer double major. My father was a computer engineer and I guess I paid too much attention to his sermons and somehow became a decent coder.

”First things first, sir, ” the old gentleman cut in interrupting my daydream.

”You must decide on a race for your character. As you can see from the list before you, all classic races are represented, as well as a few less traditional ones, ” explained the man.

Sure enough, Humans, Elves of all kinds, Dwarves, Giants, Gnomes, and Orcs were all there, as well as a few I didn always see as often, like Cat-people, Lizard people, and some type of Fairy.

Further down were all manner of half-breed creatures mixing and matching the various races in as many ways as made sense (No lizard/cat people, for better or worse). ​

Henry usually played as a 2-meter-tall elemental high elf. This time he wanted to see what the other races had to offer.

After reviewing the races and skills, Henry decided to be a Gnome. Why? Because he planned on getting the Mercantile skill.

That meant his top choices were humans, dwarves, and gnomes.

Sure, Dwarves got a bonus for blacksmithing, but they also had a fighting secondary class.

Humans were boring but got a bonus for resourcefulness. Since human was the weakest starting race, humans got a racial bonus to drop goods, at least for the first 10 levels. Then the racial skill acquisition disappeared. They also started with 5 skills, unlike every other race that could only choose 3.

I looked long and hard at Gnomes since life would be easier if he wanted to be a Merchant. Gnomes had a plus +5 to Mercantile bonus and a bonus to all crafting. This meant Gnomes could level up the Mercantile skill tree much faster than a DPS class.

”Oh, I like the thought of that. Gnome it is! ” I emphatically confirmed.

”I