Chapter 10

Eve's Downfall

Eve was still the game they loved. They also played a dress up game called, in Chinese, as it was on the Chinese marketplace App Store and the market was all, or mostly rather, as some Chinese producers urged users to consider the alternatives, and used English characters as well, which might be American English or maybe not. They did not know any English. They used American English characters in class sometimes, but had not really been able to consider it as a community something to converse in all that often. Maybe it was not respectable to do so. Or respectful, as the community considered itself Chinese, and maybe in America, they would not have Eve if they did not respect the Chinese language. The dress up game was fun but they drank and ate the snacks they bought and were fine with the events now as they were, it seemed, as they were happy and relaxing at Xi's place, in his bed room. Which he was not allowed to have electronics in. But he snuck her out before his parents had any inkling of his trouncing of their rules. He returned her to her place and they watched TV in her parents living room. They were at home, but her father was in his easy chair and her mother was somewhere else. She cooked them all dinner and he went back to his place and got inside quite easily. He was in bed and back at school the next day. They were having an English lesson! They were in a final exam of sorts for their high school years. They got good, and some bad, grades, but no one felt it was a day they could be out of the community for. They returned to the world books they had grades in and learned about American history. The great general George Washington was of importance. And some other Chinese features of history as well. They explored the Japanese continent and also learned some of the world's features, but as a school community, did not actually go there, and stayed in China. Except on a field day when they went to Japan, and to Tokyo, a hotspot they enjoyed cooking in and making a toast to live there by themselves, as they went back home before it was dark. They would write of this time in a journaling contest for a school project, of a sorts, and in their community, there was no Zero_Nocturnal lurking about, killing people and having bodies laying everywhere, on the cold-looking flat snow ground near an ocean with crabs and other spectacles, like seaweed and seashells that looked like they were really to the community's upper management a necessary system. The foul sounds of the clinking entertainment swords clashing manifested in the ears as the players used the shop system. They could buy things like healing potions and things they termed mats. They were used to create other objects. If you died, you lost everything, but if you were surviving as a member of the world of the living, in the community, or as long as you were playing Eve and not at a place called the revival fountain, where you could not do anything but wait for a timer to count down or pay a price in a separate currency to resurrect immediately. You had two choices at the fountain of revival, a place that was called in Chinese characters the Treacherous Fountain of the Revival Probability. The community here was interested in the same things as everywhere else. Sometimes people were lying down, or selling items, which did not work here. They termed this with the communities' involvement gating the obvious. They called it a horrible act to commit. It was not something you should do. It was not something the community felt was, however, something that was good at all for the community, but still people did this and Xi was witnessing it right now. He got a trade window pop up that kept closing immediately. He knew nothing of this type of event. He tried to trade the person, but they were not about to be reasonable. They kept putting items into the trade box on their end, and money as well, and he was trying to figure out what was going on. They were expensive items, solely for the benefit of the community.

They were trying to get back to the what the community termed the regular game world. It was here that you could not do what the community termed much at all in Eve, like play the regular game. While this was considered a regular, and even wanted, feature, it was not at all right or good to be here at all, not once, not ever. Dying meant you had to wait a long time. And now Xi had to climb back up to the first rank once again. He needed to be there to go to PAX Eternal 2081, which was still coming up soon, next year, he had planned to be there. And he was in the clan Nocturnal, who were gunning for the big prize. It was millions of dollars. If they used that, they could be free of disbursement, pain and suffering, and even the Chinese community with which to be reactional to and disappear into amidst the cunning plans, like trees carrying a firm grasp of the intentions of the Chinese player base of Eve, who Xi was a part of, and loved to be, because he was here right now with them. Xi was waiting to be able to freely resurrect. He could pay the fee. But he did not want to do that. It was not what he was going to do, either, was the statement he made by lounging around, not destroying anything on his own turf. That is how the community would behave, he was a part of it, and this was how they wanted it to be.