Belt Station looked like my ship. At least in that it resembled a rust bucket. I had seen drawings of possible space stations in my real life. There were even 3 of them circling Earth’s orbit at the moment. But neither the real ones nor the ideas of artists had anything in common with what I saw before me.
This thing was built in and around an asteroid. I assumed it was hollowed out and most of the structure was at one point contained inside. Now however there was an assembly of flotsam and jetsam strewn all over its rocky outside. Everything was there - tubes, boxes that looked like old school shipping containers, dome-like structures that appeared to be made out of plastic wrap, old ship hulls, antennas in all shapes and forms and probably some kind of other junk that I didn’t see yet. Let’s just say the idea of landing or docking there didn’t fill me with a lot of confidence.
The autopilot however had no such dilemmas and followed its course to the end. The lights on the console changed from purple to yellow at some point and one of the monitors indicated that the steering of the ship had been handed over to station control and I was docking on tube 17.
On the final approach my tub shook and twisted to align with docking tube 17 or, as I called it in my head, junk protrusion 17. Brake and stabilization thrusters fired. Then I heard a clank and Rustbucket shuddered.
“Docking complete. Docking seal 97%. Welcome to Belt Station Epsilon Tau 7813” the computerized voice of my ship informed me. I took a deep breath and spun my chair around, this time successfully avoiding banging my knee on the console. I pushed myself out of my seat of captaincy and headed for the airlock.
“Galaxy, here I come!” I declared in my most theatrical voice.
For some reason I can’t say if that came out more hero or more villain but it sounded cool anyway. I guess we have to see where life takes me. GAME! Where this game takes me. I yelled at myself to remember that this was nothing but the beta test of a VRMMOG. I did not know why I had such trouble with this here. Fair enough, the game was much more immersive than any other I had ever played. Everything seemed so much more real. I guess that is what the first VR immersed people experienced. But they had also gone crazy and were unable to live in the real world. Not going to happen to me!
“Oh, by the way”, thinking about realism got me thinking of something else: “Computer, what are the atmospheric conditions on the other side of the airlock?”
“Current condition: 83% Nitrogen, 14% Oxygen, 1,5% Carbon Dioxide, less than 1% of several other gases. Atmospheric pressure 0.82 bar. No toxic substances detected. Temperature 18° Celsius.”
Ah, good. Wouldn’t do me any good walking out of my spaceship and ending up at the nearest graveyard for respawn. Talking of which.
“Personal Log. New Entry.”
New Entry: Malcolm Solo.
6) Figure out how the death and respawn system works in this game.
Yeah, I’d rather not run into any death by suffocation or exposure to vacuum experiences or something like that. As real as the pain felt I am sure I would not want to experience that. Plus I was finally starting to get the hang of things and did not want to reroll if death turned out to be a persistent thing.
I grabbed my jacket, which somehow looked eerily like my favorite motorcycle jacket IRL from my locker, flipped the switch on the airlock and took a step forward.
I don’t know if I expected some kind of heroic soundtrack playing like I had seen in the trailer or whatever but my first step into my first space station was ruined by my foot getting caught on the airlock frame. So my small step for this man ended up as a giant leap for “The Universe’s Funniest Home Videos”.
After regaining my balance and swearing for a moment I turned around, closed the airlock and swiped my right wrist in front of the sensor. The green light on the control panel switched to red and my Rustbucket was sealed.
That was actually something that I was more or less used to. IRL we had “watches” that contained all our bio data and information. As I had learned in my research over the last few days everybody in this game had a chip implanted in their right wrist that did pretty much the same thing.
Finally done I turned and headed into the station.
* * * * *
The inside of Belt Station Epsilon Tau 7813 was a reflection of what I had seen from the outside. Narrow corridors and junk everywhere. Either I had docked at the backdoor or public opinion did not matter to these people. A mix of red and yellow lights lit the brown walls and floor of the corridor. Everything looked… run down. Like really.
I decided to use another nifty technological advance that I had run across in my research. I tapped my wrist and a translucent interface showed up above it. I selected an option that projected a minimap in the upper right corner of my visual field and then checked the box that would show the route to my currently active mission.
Yeah yeah, I know, lazy. Bite me! I had no clue where I was or where I was going and I decided to make my life a little easier.
Following the route my HUD showed me I made it to Foreman Len-dren’s office. I knocked and the door promptly popped open and a gruff “Enter” greeted me. I rolled my eyes, swung the door open and entered.
The foreman's office had either seen better days or was designed with the same eye for comfort as my ship. Four walls, a chair and a table behind which Len-dren sat.
His beady eyes looked me up and down as I entered and then locked with mine expectantly. I had spent enough time as a cop to know that look. It was the one that my former police captain gave me whenever I entered his office and had done something to displease him.
“Uhm… Miner Solo as ordered… Sir.”
He nodded towards the empty chair. “Have a seat.”
“So, WA12ZL96. Solo, hm?” He paused a moment. “Strange name if you ask me but I guess you won’t.”
He barked a high pitched laugh. When I didn’t join him a frown slid over his face just to be replaced straight after by another blank expression.
“Well then, business. Your quota as amended by the council has been fulfilled. And in great time I might add. Not sure why you were not putting in a similar effort before but I guess once you had an incentive you got to it. The thing is, with that mindset you could have easily bought out your contract all on your own in relatively short order. But then the council stepped. Bunch of nonsense in my opinion. Would you know why they decided to cut your requirements? I have never seen something like that and I don’t know if I like it. Sets a bad example.”
I was not sure what to reply to that so I rather remained silent. Not sure what my character had done before I took control or what the backstory of that interaction was. He stared at me and I stared at him, the silence dragging on. At some point I let out a breath and decided I’ll be the better person: “Honestly, I have no clue as to what the council did or why. I never met them so I could not say anything about their motivations.”
After a moment he continued: “As your ship is paid off you can consider it your property.”
The center of my vision was suddenly filled with a system message:
Certificate of Ownership
Civilian Mining Vessel Type “Digger”
I-Tag: 3VW217AU4FM011666
You can change your ship’s identification tag once. It will then be registered by that name. Any further changes of I-Tags are not allowed. Please be advised that flying under a stolen or false identification tag is a crime in Federation space.
“Going forward you can continue mining or do whatever else you want to do. If you decide to do the former I must inform you that we can’t keep giving you the preferential rate reserved for company or contract miners. Your new rate will be 0.4 ICU per unit of Endrite. If you decide for the latter I hope you will not make any trouble on this station. Any questions?”
Great. In the middle of nowhere and getting fucked over by a greedy foreman that doesn’t like that I got out of my contract early. FML.
“Uhm, I guess. Is there a way to get more information about station services?”
He sighed. “Why was this not uploaded to your net when you first arrived in this system?”
Lucky for me I had already decided on a story when he was rambling about not becoming a trouble maker.
“No idea. I have a hard time remembering anything from that time. Honestly, it seems that my memory starts with sitting in a ship in an asteroid belt.”
Yeah, not exactly a lie. Not exactly the truth either. Something I had picked up during my time gaming. When dealing with NPCs that have apparently met your character before it was good to feign amnesia. That way you had an out when you said the wrong thing.
He harrumphed then touched a few buttons on the screen that was inlaid in his table and I received another system message:
Belt Station Systems Access Received
I decided against opening it right now and instead get this meeting over with and then check out what this station had to offer.
“Anything else?”
“What’s a good place here to grab something to eat and a drink?”
“I suggest the ‘Rambler’ for miners. Not too expensive, decent food and drink. If you want to go classy then hit the ‘Tower’. Only RealBeef in the system but you better bring the credits.”
“Thanks.”
“Mm-hmm.” He gave me another stern look. “Stay out of trouble on this station! Oh, and before I forget: Since your contract with the company is at an end and you are now a free captain, we can no longer provide protection services for free. You might not have noticed while you were under contract but there are unsavory elements out there that would not hesitate to take advantage of a young entrepreneur. If you want to buy the security services package, you can find information in the system.”
I nodded while rolling my eyes. Add extortion to the list of fun things I was encountering here.
“Now get out and let me get back to work.”
