Adam Online: Absolute Zero

THE TWINS Grisha and Fortunado were humble citizens in real life. And not because they were anti-social jerks. Unsociability became the norm of reality, to compensate for excessive socialization in the virtual world.

Life was such that the majority of the planet's population had no employment in life. There was no work that demanded full attendance, or even real-life entertainment. Robots did all the work, and the wealthy people of the west had all the fun. They owned all the land that wasn't irradiated. They invented, did research, built factories where robots manufactured new robots. They sailed the oceans, flew into space. They risked their real lives to build a station on the Moon. It was them, the heirs of rich families, who died in the first landing on Mars. And the second, and the third, before attempts to colonize the planet were finally abandoned.

At least, that's what the news said.

The rest of the population had been forced to sit in grey apartments, first donning a virtual reality helmet and then stepping onto a gyroscopic sphere. Rotating under the user's feet, the gyrosphere imitated bodily movement across virtual worlds, conveying other information through the neuronet on the body. On gyrospheres, people felt real sensations in a virtual world: pain, o.r.g.a.s.m and a thirst to kill others.

Living in virtual reality had become the norm even then.

The invention of taharration didn't wipe out the border between reality and invented fantasy. On the contrary, the difference between grey, narrow reality and the beautiful, endless virtual worlds became even more glaring.

Integration into virtual reality began in school. Sometimes the schools themselves were virtual, accessible through a headset or a gyrosphere. It was called Klein-Method Distance Learning. It was used in regions with dangerous environmental factors. This tuition method was the only way onto the social elevator created by rich western society to add to their supply of lackeys.

Talented children were sent to special schools built after the manner of classical schools. There they wore a school uniform, took gym classes and read plenty of high-brow literature. There were also certain special classes about which little was known. The citizens that finished this special school were sent to universities that took up most of Australia — a continent that had completely avoided the ravages of nuclear war. None of them ever left Australia again. Fewer and fewer of them even maintained a connection to their parents, affording them only sparing messages.

The remainder of the young students had a choice to make after finishing school: continue their studies in a college or begin their 'a.d.u.l.t life'. Which means: get a certificate of a.d.u.l.thood, settle down in a grey new build and take on the millstone of debt to buy a standard Ocean-3S taharration pod connected to the municipal QCP mainframe. They paid off the debt using money earned in Adam Online. But although gold, the currency of Adam Online, had high purchasing power in the virtual world, when converted to dollars it turned into a paltry sum.

The system worked without fail. Ninety percent of graduates wanted one thing: to plunge into a taharration pod as soon as possible and leave the drab real world behind.

Grisha and Fortunado studied in an ordinary school in the city of Omsk. Siberia was considered a relatively safe region of the planet, so the students attended school in real life, not resorting to Klein's crippling methods. But all their studies were focused on preparing for a life in virtual reality.

Taharration had a detrimental effect on growth, so underage players entered Adam Online through a gyroscopic sphere. The user's movements were transformed into movements in the virtual world. The neural connection network provided a rough, but accessible method of conveying signals created in virtual reality to the human brain.

The twins Grisha and Fortunado, as so often happens, were very different in their characters. It wasn't that one was better than the other, or that they had a jealous rivalry. They added to their outward similarity with their internal contradictions.

The brothers became stars of virtual duels even as children, defeating opponents in gyrosphere games. With age, their differences shone through even stronger. Grisha preferred fast-paced shooters and beat-em-ups. Fortunado liked strategy games or worlds that had the player build competing virtual states, like Civilization.

When the twins united in a game that required both action and thoughtful strategy, then they had no equal. The Black Wave guild began back in the world of DotA 5, the most popular game among the underage.

* * *

The twins were fourteen when their dreams came true and they made it into the incredible and forbidden world of Adam Online, not through a gyrosphere, but through a taharration pod. Like a.d.u.l.ts.

After waiting for their mother and father to go on their rotation in Adam Online, Grisha and Fortunado fled the boarding school that housed the children of such parents. They converted their virtual funds earned in DotA 5 into dollars and bought a two-month pass from a landlord for a pod in one of the underground landings on the outskirts of Omsk. One for two.

Their rotation in the game was short, but the brothers not only reached level 90, they also earned enough money to cover the landlord's rent. Before leaving the pod, they transferred their capital to the control of a credit organization in Liberty City, the capital of Rim One. The organization lent money to players who wanted to buy expensive weaponry and equipment.

When they returned to the boarding school, the twins were met with punishment and a penalty from their parents, but glory among their peers. Along with sweet calculations that by the time they came of age, their investment would grow by six hundred percent.

Aside from the fruits of fate, they also took a blow. There was a reason that it was forbidden for the underage to enter a taharration pod. The dissociative electrolytes blocked the growth spurt that normally occurs in teenagers during puberty. The brothers stayed scrawny and small, and their skin was blue as if the dissociative material had stained it forever. They both likely experienced some other issues too, but neither spoken of it.

Grisha and Fortunado weren't unique cases. Many teenagers used black market landings. It was this that made the authorities step up their fight against the landlords. They forced them to move their pods from cities to radioactive zones, making it much harder for simple citizens to access the landings. And the landlords, for their part, had found a reason to raise their fee.

On the day they came of age, Grisha and Fortunado, like everyone, got apartments and Ocean-3S pods on loan. In their first rotation, the twins visited an organization in Liberty City and learned some sad news: the outfit was controlled by some NPC playing the role of a mafioso. Of course, as the years went on, this NPC had become a central figure of certain quests. Players regularly robbed his organization, fulfilling requests from the city authorities in the fight against bandits. The honest NPC sent investors regular notifications about the need to urgently withdraw funds, but since the brothers didn't log into the game anymore, they couldn't read them.

When they logged into Adam Online on the day they came of age, they found no increase on their investment, only mere remnants of their initial sum.

The brothers had to start from nothing. They worked their way up to the required level and created the Black Wave guild, recruiting some of their friends from the boarding school. Nika was among them.

Time went by, rotation after rotation. The guild grew significantly, got its own headquarters and moved it to Rim Four. Fortunado grew the economy in the town of Shoreline, enjoying his hobby of strategic construction and development. Grisha arranged the continuous completion of NPC quests. Neither of them was rushing anywhere. Both knew that after the dissociative material became part of their bodies, their place was here, in Adam Online. Exiting the pod was an inconvenience that had to be weathered.

In reality, the twins lived in different homes, in different parts of the city. Grisha worked as an operator on a production line for synthetic soy sausages, and Fortunado as a manager of some warehouse at a nuclear power plant. The roles were not difficult, as they consisted in regulating the operation of systems that worked just fine even without human regulation. Fortunado didn't even know what it was that the warehouse stored. But he remembered perfectly what was in the Black Wave guild vault.

Grisha used his real name in Adam, but Fortunado chose a nickname that ended up replacing his name even in real life. It was even on his ID papers: Fortunado Ivashin.

In real life, the brothers met only before their rotation began. They rented a special office in Omsk where they set up the very best taharration pods, controlled by the latest QCP technology. The money they earned in Adam was enough to buy medical droids that kept an eye on the twins while they were in stasis. They also bought the very best dissociative material, allowing them to spend eight thousand hours in Adam Online.

Nike logged into Adam Online in the same office. She was the best and only friend of both brothers.

* * *

They became an inseparable trio back in the boarding school. Nika helped the brothers find a black market landing. According to the plan, Nika was supposed to go with them to occupy the second pod, but after the winter exams, an unexpected message informed Nika that she was being sent to a special school. Even then, she was an outstanding student.

However, after a few months she was sent back from the special school to ordinary school. Even her parents weren't told why, and Nika herself was so full of obviously imagined stories that she was immediately dubbed a 'crazy girl'.

Nika spent all her years in Adam Online solo, on and off at least. She entered a guild to complete profitable quests, then left without explaining herself. This annoyed the brothers, but Nika was almost a sister to them.

Their crazy sister, to put it simply.

In addition, she was one of the most skilled manufacturers of handmade weapons, upgrades and add-ons. Always better to be friends with such people than enemies. Even if that friendship is accompanied with regular messages like "Player Nika has joined the Black Wave guild", followed by "Player Nika has left the Black Wave guild" the very next day.

Fortunado treated her with professionalism when she joined the guild, as if she were any other guild member, and with even greater professionalism when she left the Black Wave.

Grisha spoke to her with the same ease as he had in his school years. Even though Nika had returned from special school a little touched, it didn't change their friendship, which stood on a strong foundation of sarcasm and jokes.

In Adam Online, the path of Nika and the twins diverged because she permanently chose the path of the android. A creature completely independent of humanity. Mechanodestructors, oddly enough, experienced all the joys and sensations of life. According to Adam Online legend, they were a 'mechanical form of life' born in the depths of space as an alternative to biological life. Moreover, some mechanodestructor sensors allowed the human consciousness to experience feelings that cannot be experienced in the real world.

Instead of warring against other players, Nika leveled up boring skills like Armorer, Android Expert, Mechanomaster and others. Everything linked to crafting weaponry, items and upgrades. These crafts took up a great deal of time. Having chosen to level these skills, the player spent entire days creating weapon parts from components, then tediously attaching one piece to another. Success depended on the number of attempts. One could spend an entire game day (eight hours) assembling just the frame for a Plasmashock pistol attachment. The other ninety-six parts of the attachment took no less time. It took a long time of effort to level up Knowledge, too, the stat that allowed you to see exactly which parts had to be pieced together. It was the same story for Luck, which slightly reduced the number of fruitless attempts.

But all the same, even after finally assembling an item or upgrade, there was a chance that the item simply... wouldn't work. Strict though the limitations in the crafting process were, items crafted by players were also very powerful. This meant they demanded a high price.

Nika earned enough to buy her own zone in Rim Three. Using the Terraform skill, she created an unassailable territory surrounded by cliffs. Above it, she placed a magnetic anomaly that disabled all means of flight, except flying bizoids. For them, she had a flak cannon.

The zone became known as Dimension X.

Dimension X became a kind of challenge for adamites. Everyone tried to attack it, testing the fortress's defenses. The space around the zone was littered with the corpses of the permanently dead: Nika's turrets had a random chance of absolute annihilation. Although rare, there was a chance that an attacker would lose their character after death.

The graveyard of brave souls served as the best possible advertis.e.m.e.nt for Nika's weaponry.

Cutting herself off from the whole world, she continued to hammer together weapons and upgrades, outfitting entire guilds, not even giving a discount to Black Wave. She gave discounts to no one. There were few people in Adam Online willing to devote thousands of hours of play time to crafting.

Nika left the guild as soon as she sniffed out a big opportunity to sell upgrades to an enemy guild. Knowing this, the twins tried to buy up everything she produced before anyone else. Her weapons, add-ons and upgrades weren't the main reason for Black Wave's domination, but they made a significant contribution to maintaining the status quo.

Nika knew better than anyone that no known resource in Adam Online had in its description "required for the creation of a nuclear bomb."