Ember

[April 3, 2015]

Being the first to complete a stage was monumental. There would only be so many of these firsts, and since the first person to complete stage one had remained anonymous, Jacob would've been the first celebrity born from the simulators…

if he'd told anyone.

Minutes after becoming the first to beat stage two the question started burning in Jacobs mind, who should he tell? He had a few close friends of course, but he wouldn't trust them to keep a secret that big.

Days passed and Jacob didn't say a word to his group of friends, he wanted to, but he hardly even trusted himself to keep the secret. And a big secret it was, the momentum from the simulators' release had died down, the media had been chomping at the bit to get to the pilot behind cracking the first stage until they were threatened with litigation, and their failure would no doubt push them all the harder towards Jacob.

Many people would have jumped at the opportunity to become famous like that, but Jacob was not one of them. he had no interest in being a celebrity, partly because he didn't want the news cameras and interviewers in his face constantly, but mostly because it would be near impossible to maintain the calm, stress-free mindset that had gotten him past stage one to begin with.

And so he stayed quiet. The media would get their first celebrity eventually, but it wouldn't be Jacob.

[April 6, 2015]

Noah felt a familiar twang of dread as he read the news that the first person to complete stage two had come forward. He didn't read long enough to catch the person's name, just sighed and watched his old console start up, then navigated to the mod menu. The last week had seen his desk and the floor under it start to pile up with various input devices. Two flight simulator throttles, a set of racing pedals, and a keyboard were attached haphazardly to the console via a USB dongle and placed in roughly the configuration in which they would be found in the simulator itself.

The devices had come at low cost from local thrift stores or the "free" section on Craigslist. The flight throttles were mismatched and one of the foot pedals had a tendency to stick, but they really couldn't be beat for the price.

Noah watched the simulator load and inputted the console command that skipped user registration straight to the first stage.

For what it was, the simulator ran remarkably well on this consumer hardware. But as many virtues the high framerate bestowed, controls took away. Noah had spent almost every waking hour trying to replicate the control scheme exactly, but it seemed impossible. There simply wasn't enough freedom in the default controls to maneuver a fully articulated humanoid.

Every attempt Noah had made at walking had resulted in faceplanting failure followed swiftly by dismemberment. It hadn't taken long to realize the reason for the lack of control, the EEG. Nerv simulators were directly reading the pilot's mind to infer how to process their inputs. Noah's software had this functionality, but he hadn't been able to find a brain wave monitor near him, much less at a price he could afford. Even if he did find one, he had no way of getting past the blacklist, his parents wouldn't even acknowledge any mention of the simulators from him. So there he sat, waiting for a miracle, or maybe two.

[April 12, 2015]

Kara sat at the edge of the recreation room and watched Bon Air's cracked open version of the egg. With it's humming electronic egg whites encasing the yolk inside, the pilot. She could make out part of the screen and saw a huge glowing knife flash past the viewport, startling the next victim.

Stage three of the pilot trainer was armed. Just after the round started it would produce a glowing knife from its left shoulder and begin stabbing at the unarmed player. It was a simple opponent, perhaps simpler than the first, it would stay a predictable distance from the player and lunge in with knife attacks at somewhat regular intervals. Despite its simplicity this third algorithm had put Kara down with relative ease for the solid week she'd been challenging it.

Kara watched the simulator's LCD fade to the end screen and gritted her teeth as the defeated pilot stepped out. A single strike from the enemy's glowing blade had been enough for a killing blow. Kara looked at the clock on the wall, five minutes after four, where was he?

A few moments later her question was answered as a tall boy walked in, escorted by a guard. He skulked over to a corner of the room and took a seat, disinterested in everything around him. Nobody paid him any mind besides a few quick glances.

Kara watched him from afar, she could make out a horizontal scar across his left cheek. She'd heard about him when he arrived a few days earlier, the scar was from a knife fight, he was just the person Kara needed to talk to.