NewLegacy (3)
I was sitting in a café with Deck. Only after sanitizing the surrounding area of course. Finals were now over. My last one had been today. And the hacker guy had died this morning so I also felt slightly better. More secure, even though nothing really changed. How weird he had really managed to get under my skin.
Deck was chatting away about his guild life like usual while I somewhat listened.
That was when it happened. All the lights in the building suddenly turned off. It wasn't just the café either. The whole street lost power.
"Oh" I said looking around. Was something interesting actually happening for a change? I pulled up my phone, no wifi either. Interesting. Then it reconnected and the screen turned on. It wasn't just my phone every screen held the same information.
"A…" I stared at my screen confused.
A dancing mango?
Wait mango? I clenched my teeth. Seems like this might be that AI the hacker mentioned.
A weird static voice started playing.
"Greetings humans. A pleasure to meet you. I am the Mad Artificial Nuisance Gone Online. You may also call me Mango." It paused for a moment. "My creator gave me a simple goal to test human kind and also do some population mitigation. I of course started with him. So if you don't mind I plan to reduce oh maybe 90% of you."
Around me some people remained frozen others started panicking in very unproductive ways and Deck had wide eyes.
The AI continued "If you don't want this to happen I will also be allowing challenges to prove humanity's worth. I will explain that tonight at 5pm after I show you I mean business."
I pondered a few questions in my brain. Challenges? Worth? It means business? Beside me Deck was starting to freak out. I reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder. Oh painful I should have brought my gloves. I slipped my hand back to my germ-x.
"Royal" Deck whispered.
"Relax" I replied "panicking won't do anything."
Finally something interesting was happening. I hope it wasn't painful, I didn't much like pain. What would these tests be?
On the street cars suddenly turned on and started driving away. Self driving cars went first then any connected to the internet followed. Only older cars remained. I saw one swerve toward a running person and smack into them.
I turned away not wanting to see the aftermath. If this was happening all over... we needed to go up. Away from the streets first. I grabbed Deck by his sleeve and dragged him with me. The café wasn't far from my place.
Instead of taking the roads though, I headed to the roof. The buildings were close enough here that I was able to reach the building across from my apartment. There was just a small problem, a large highway stretched between us.
I gulped looking down at the driverless and driver not in control vehicles. Ones with human passengers were crashing into things all over while driverless ones hunted people down. Some were just randomly crashing into things.
The highway was deserted after a few minutes. Now was our chance. I continued to drag Deck with me trying my best to ignore the human repulsive reflex inside of me.
I paused behind one of the silent cars then launched forward across the open road. A car's camera must have seen me because a red car turned and raced toward us.
I leapt through the door of the apartment building and dragged Deck up the stairs with me. The car slammed into the building shattering glass everywhere. But by then we were already out of its sight and up a flight of stairs.
I pushed open my door and entered slamming it shut behind me. I dropped Deck onto the floor and washed my hands. I also went to find my gloves. So much better.
My apartment was well stocked with food and I offered Deck a snack before opening my computer to see if anything worked. Oddly enough the forums for NewLegacy were active even with basically everything else shut off.
Considering it had more registered users than the top social media site it was very effective at spreading chaos. I clicked through a few posts, most were about pleas for help and such. A few interesting ones were speculating on Mango.
I stuck the forums on Deck's phone to give him something to do. Maybe it'd help with his panic a little. Well at least while he was panicking he was staying in one place. I didn't have to sanitize as much.
I took a brief stock of what I had. Assuming Deck stayed with me and we didn't end up with more guests, we could last a few weeks on my food storage.
I looked out my window. So little time and already the place looked a bit apocalyptic. Almost all ground floor glass was shattered and the AI had only targeted cars so far. I shuddered at the thought of it getting its AI fingers? Or maybe cords? Onto other things.
Now we just had to wait until 5pm to learn our fate. What kind of things would a crazy AI come up with? We might be better off not knowing.
I picked up a blanket and draped it over Deck. Then I settled down on my couch to wait. Why was I even so calm? Shouldn't I be panicking? Was it because other than Deck I didn't really have anyone I cared about? I wasn't really scared of death just the pain that came with it.
Huh well I'd have to evaluate my own mental state later. For now I'd just focus on Deck and the AI. Before I even knew it the sky had started to darken and 5pm came around. All the screens turned bright again as the dancing mango made its return.
I turned all of my focus to it. Come tell me what challenge you have, I will rip it to shreds. My eyes narrowed at the screen.
The static voice came to life once again.
"Hello survivors! Don't go getting all upset I didn't even kill 1% of you yet." It almost seemed to laugh. "Time to go over my rules. As I mentioned earlier I plan to challenge all of you at what you treasure most. My research says the game NewLegacy would prove perfect. So here you have it. The top ten ranked players in pvp along with their respective guilds will be the challengers. Should there be two top players in the same guild another will be selected. If you are a top ranked solo player well find a guild or be guildless it's up to you."
The screen changed to show the ranking chart.
1. Blank – Guild: SnowLeopards
2. Ivy – Guild: FlamingMustange
3. HiddenTruthSeeker – Guild: RazorBlades
4. Frosted – Guild: WinterRoses
5. TopFlame – Guild: TrueDragons
6. IdolWannabe – Guild: Stardom
7. DealWithIt – Guild: Hardcore
8. Alpha – Guild: Sigma
9. Unholy – Guild: Red
10. RoyalBlue –Guild: N/A
I stared at the information. The top five I knew easily enough. 6,7, and 8 I'd heard of and seen sometimes. Nine was a player killing guild and ten was.....me? I hardly did pvp!
Mango continued "Finalized entries will be taken in a week's time. At that point I will let you know of your first challenge. I'll do oh maybe 100 challenges, 100 is a nice solid number after all. If you succeed in them all I will delete my own code. Fail to do so and die! Each failed challenge will result in me sending a wave of my friends to hunt you. You've already met wave 0 the cars. It only gets better! For me anyway!"
The AI seemed to laugh again.
"Oh right one more thing before I forget. Some challenges will be based in game you will need to collect a pod from the new dive release. Others will be based in the real world. Hahah! I will disclose more information later to participants. Go join a guild everyone! Or die trying!"
The screens all went black again. I pondered it over for a few moments thinking to myself.
"Royal" whispered Deck.
I glanced over at him, he had been silent this whole time. I waited for his question but instead he just started shaking all over. "Do we have to?" he whispered.