Eden's Gate: The Reborn: A LitRPG Adventure Read online

  Eden’s Gate

  Book 1: The Reborn

  Edward Brody

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Author’s Notes

  Copyright © 2017 by Edward Brody

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Chapter One

  Release Day, Earth

  “You’re on in 5 minutes,” a petite woman dressed in a sleek black skirt suit said.

  “Thanks, Kendra,” Dr. Rupert Winston replied. He waved a dismissive hand, and she disappeared behind his dressing room door.

  He let out an audible sigh as he savored the last few minutes that he would enjoy inside the tiny room—one of the last few minutes that he’d enjoy on this world even—if everything went to plan.

  He stood from his dressing room chair and combed back what was left of his thinning, gray hair. He straightened his black turtleneck and made sure that it was neatly tucked deep inside his matching black slacks.

  If Steve Jobs could see him now, he wondered. If the Bitcoin inventors, smartphone giants, and VR pioneers had any idea how far things would come in a few short decades.

  He swallowed hard as he stared at himself in the mirror, and for a brief moment, he wrestled with the decision he was about to make. He could still turn back. A part of him told him that it was wrong, immoral, maybe even sinister to do what he was about to do, but another part of him danced with joy at the gift that he was about to unleash.

  He shook his head from side to side and smiled, brushing away his fleeting doubts. It was a gift, indeed. A world. A new world that was far superior to the one that he was standing in. No one would understand it now, but eventually, they’d come around and see why he had to do things this way.

  His watch beeped a high-pitched sound a few times, signaling that his time was up, and he reached for the door and stepped outside. Production staff lined the hallway leading to the stage, all staring hard at him, waiting for any last-minute instructions.

  None came as he passed them without saying a word.

  His assistant VP, Aaron, a small man wearing a white dress shirt and glasses was already standing at the center of his stage with his hands behind his back. “Please welcome the CEO and founder of Nexicon Inc., Dr. Rupert Winston!”

  Dr. Winston raised his hand high in the air as he stepped onto the brightly lit stage, and the crowd of thousands stood from their seats and cheered. The spotlights followed Rupert’s every move as he crossed to take the other man’s position, and behind him was a large glass monitor that covered the entire wall. In the center of the display was the Nexicon logo—a pear with a cute worm dangling out of its side.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” he said as he waved his hand in a downward motion, trying to get everyone to settle down and sit back in their chairs. He smiled and repeated it a few times until the room grew silent and everyone gave their full attention.

  Rupert folded his hands together and pushed his knuckles up under his chin. He frowned and looked to the ground before asking, “What is life?” His words caught his hidden mic and echoed through the venue. He let go of his hands and pinched himself. “If you can feel pain, is that life? If you can love, hate, smell and taste, is that life? If you can see, hear, feel and even kill, is that life?” He tilted his head to the side, smirked, and nodded lightly. “I think so.”

  The crowd was wide-eyed and glued to his every word.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you life! I give you Eden’s Gate!” Dr. Winston stepped sideways and motioned his hand toward the monitor.

  The Nexicon logo disappeared, and adventurous music roared through the building. The screen flashed to the bird’s-eye image of a lush land with dense foliage, tall hills, and a raging river. The camera panned forward then spun around, revealing a pale, human-like creature running out of the jungle and jumping off a cliff and into a pool of water below. The image flashed to a man standing in a dark room, pounding a hammer across the hot iron of a blade.

  “Be anyone. Do anything,” Rupert said, his voice deep, harsh.

  The image switched to a barren desert view, then to an image of a large wooden ship lumbering through the ocean, then to a land frozen over by ice, burly wolves running through the snow. A creature flew by on what appeared to be a giant eagle.

  “Go anywhere.”

  The screen went black, and the sound of steel piercing flesh rippled through the speakers. An image of a hand pulling a sword from a fallen body appeared. The hand twisted the sword as if the person holding it off-screen was inspecting the blood, but then there was rattling explosion, and the body of the hand flew forward and erupted in strange, blue-hued flames. And slowly so did the rest of the image. In the middle of the flames the words “Eden’s Gate” appeared, and the music faded off into silence.

  “Carve your destiny. Kick some ass. Live a new life however you see fit!”

  The crowd practically leapt out of their chairs as they started clapping and cheering at the display.

  Dr. Winston raised his fist and spoke loudly over the cheers. “Today we celebrate the launch of the first fully-immersive, full-world, virtual MMO! This is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before.” He walked across the stage and gestured with his hands as he spoke. “You will feel everything you touch, taste everything you eat. You’ll grow in expertise, gather loot and experience magic like you’ve only dreamed. Your full consciousness will actually live inside of Eden’s Gate!”

  The cheering started to die down as people listened, many of them practically salivating at the mouth for more. Dr. Winston waved his hand back to the display, and the burning image was replaced with a large 5,300,670 on a black background that was increasing each second—5,300,788—5,300,801.

  “This is only day one, and already we have over 5 million people logged in, starting their journey in this new, incredible world.” Rupert smirked. “I expect after today, that number will only increase.”

  If they only knew.

  “How big is the game exactly?!” a reporter near the front yelled out at him.

  Dr. Winston seemed startled by the sudden question but let the interruption slide, since he was about to begin the Q&A segment anyway.

  “Eden’s Gate is roughly 10 times the size of Earth. There’s so much content that it would take multiple lifetimes to explore the entire…’game’.” He was hesitant to call his creation a game. It was far, far more than that.

  “This technology which… takes over your consciousness. How do we know it’s safe?” another reporter asked.

  “I guess you’ll have to trust me on that one.” He s
wallowed hard and smiled. Game? Safe? Maybe a Q&A segment wasn’t the best idea. “I think we should just go ahead and get to the demonstration.”

  One of the production staff wheeled out a rolling bed, and resting on top of the bed was one of Nexicon’s patented VR machines, designed to work exclusively with Eden’s Gate. Dr. Winston’s assistant VP came back on stage and started up a laptop that he placed on a nearby pedestal and sat down on a stool.

  The doctor lifted the VR machine—a thick white and gold front visor with a black strap to wrap around the back of the head. “There are no screens inside our machine. When you place the Nexicon VR system on your head, a gentle laser is beamed into your retina, and pulse-neuro waves send and receive data from your brain. Once inside, you will be fully immersed. Fully,” he stressed.

  He took a deep breath and raised his finger to Aaron. He had trusted him with more knowledge about Nexicon’s properties than anyone else, but not even he knew what was about to happen. Aaron had only been instructed to launch the demo mode of the game so everyone could watch Dr. Winston play his character in Eden’s Gate, but he had no idea that Dr. Winston had programmed ‘demo mode’ to kill off everyone currently logged into the game, along with Dr. Winston himself.

  It had been Dr. Winston’s life work to create a true virtual reality, and after decades of laboring, he had finally realized his dream when he completed Eden’s Gate. But Eden’s Gate exceeded his expectations, turned out so lifelike, so much realer than he ever imagined—he couldn’t just let it be a game. It should be respected as a real world, he thought—a place that people could go and truly live their lives. And the only way to keep the game as real as possible was to close any and all exit paths. If people could just log in and log out it would always be a simple escape fantasy.

  The 5,000,000+ people who were already logged in weren’t really dying, he thought. They were just coming over to another plane of existence—a better one even. Immortalized. And with that many people consciously living in Eden’s Gate, who would ever dare to try turning it off? Essentially, it would go on forever. He would go on forever.

  Dr. Winston climbed onto the bed and placed the machine on his head. “Now I’m going to log in,” he said loudly to the crowd. His heart was racing. He was sure that he would be safe once his consciousness was transported to Eden’s Gate, but his body hadn’t ever died before—at least not on Earth. The idea that something could go wrong was a bit frightening even to him. There was always the possibility he’d made a miscalculation. He lowered his head on the pillow, took a deep breath and swallowed his worries before powering the VR headset on.

  A red light flashed across the top of the visor, and the laser shot into Dr. Winston’s eye. Immediately, he felt disconnected from his frame of existence.

  His body lay immobile.

  Aaron glanced over to the bed, and when the red light flashing across the top of Dr. Winston’s visor turned green, he looked up at the crowd. “Looks like he’s already in,” he said stridently. “Since the Nexicon VR is designed solely to work with Eden’s gate, the transfer into the virtual world is extremely quick!”

  He looked back down at his computer and keyed in the sequence to launch demo mode.

  There was a loud “Zrrrrrrp!” noise that buzzed out of the doctor’s visor, and his body flinched violently. Suddenly, the visor powered down, and Dr. Winston’s body lay there with his arm dangling like a wet noodle.

  “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!” Aaron said and his stool tipped over as he shot to his feet. His face twisted in confusion as he looked back to the monitor behind him—It was completely black. And despite the visor being off, Dr. Winston wasn’t moving at all.

  Two of the production assistants rushed out on the stage while Aaron pulled the visor off and started testing Dr. Winston’s vitals. The crowd was standing wide-eyed, whispering, some grabbing their chest in panic.

  “Medic! We need a medic!” Aaron yelled.

  Before anything else could happen, the panel on the wall suddenly lit up, and standing there on the screen was Dr. Winston himself. He wasn’t wearing a turtleneck anymore, but instead wore a long, brown robe. He was standing on the balcony of what may have been a castle, and behind him were two large double doors and a room filled with a desk and bookshelves filled with hundreds, if not thousands of books. His face was practically the same, but he looked a little younger and his hair was thicker and had lost most of its gray.

  The whole venue immediately went silent and stared at the inconceivable visage.

  “Well, there you have it,” Dr. Winston said. “I suppose today marks me as the biggest mass murderer in Earth’s history.” He sighed nonchalantly. “To cut a long story short, everyone who was plugged into Eden’s Gate is now, or should be dead—at least in the traditional sense, they’re dead. Their consciousness lives on in Eden’s Gate, and in many ways, I have made them immortal.”

  There was a pause of a few seconds in which the venue erupted in chatter, some chuckling, assuming it was a silly launch day gimmick and some audibly holding their breath, but everyone quieted again when the doctor spoke.

  “More than 5 million people didn’t have a choice, but now you do. Throw on a Nexicon VR, and you too can live your life in Eden’s Gate—No more 9 to 5s and overpriced mortgages. No more Democrats and Republicans. No more bullshit. A new, magical world where your life has an unlimited number of paths. A world larger and more exciting than Earth could ever be. But just be aware that you can’t turn back.” The doctor smiled one last time. “Good luck.”

  The screen went blank, and Dr. Rupert Winston’s body still lay there on the bed, unmoving.

  “Is this some sort of publicity stunt?” one of the reporters yelled out.

  Aaron just shook his head in confusion and turned back towards his computer, trying to figure out what was going on.

  One of the production staffers dialed 911 while Kendra, second only to Aaron at Nexicon, rushed to Aaron’s side. “What the fuck is this? Millions of people around the world are watching this keynote.”

  “I… I don’t know?” he replied.

  Kendra looked up to the guests. People had their phones out and were making calls. Some were taking videos of the scene. The chatter was growing almost deafening.

  “Well, can you fix it? Whatever this is… I mean… He’s not really in there, right?”

  Aaron shook his head as he pulled up the Eden’s Gate code. A dizzying string of letters, numbers, and symbols fell across his screen. “It looks like he’s encrypted all the source code without telling anyone. I can’t do anything. I wouldn’t even know what to do if I could.”

  “You’re telling me you can’t do anything?”

  Aaron launched the administration terminal and was prompted for a passcode. “No one can do anything without Dr. Winston’s password.” Aaron swallowed and pulled up the server stats. 5,312,372 people were shown as logged in, and that number wasn’t changing anymore.

  “Oh my god…” Kendra muttered and stared at the number with a slack jaw. “What in the hell has he done?”

  Chapter Two

  Release Day, Earth

  “Oh my god!” I screamed. “Are you fucking kidding me?!” I tore my headphones off and rubbed my fingers through my short, tangled brown hair as I looked at the giant “DEFEAT” staring back at me on my computer screen. I had been playing Battle League, a multiplayer online battle arena, and finished the game with 20 kills and 2 deaths, yet my team of 5 other random people still managed to make me lose.

  GG, one my teammates wrote in the after-battle chat.

  I leaned over towards my mic. “Yeah, good fucking game, deadweights. I couldn’t carry you if I tried.”

  I heard the scuffle of someone else’s mic. “Fuck you, asshole! We lost because you were too busy trying to solo the whole fucking match.”

  Knock, knock, knock.

  I shook my head and quickly closed out of Battle League. Idiots. I had enough of dealing with the toxic players in that ga
me for a day even if someone hadn’t just knocked on my door. “Just a minute!” I yelled.

  I grabbed the crutch leaning against my computer desk and snugged it up under my left armpit as I stood from my chair. It had been about a week since Matt Finley, my co-worker at BestFoods decided that it would be a good idea to drop a tall pallet of canned food on my foot while I was stocking the end of an aisle. He claimed he didn’t see me, of course.

  An entire 5’10” and 155-pound human being gone unseen in a brightly lit supermarket.

  I don’t know how that could happen, but then again, I was used to going unnoticed. My dad bounced when I was young—who knows where that asshole went—and my Mom was in and out of drug rehab, leaving me to be raised by my widowed grandma. Grans was already in the early stages of dementia when I moved in with her, and shortly after my 18th birthday, she had to be moved into a caretaking facility and couldn’t even recognize me anymore.

  School—same story. I had a pretty decent run right up until High School, but those last 4 years I could have been a ghost. I was never invited to parties, never asked to hang out after class, and when there was a group assignment, my anxiety ran high because I was most likely to be the one left without a group.

  If invisibility were a skill, I was pretty damn good at it.

  But hey, no big deal. I didn’t spend my nights crying myself to sleep over the shitty hand I was dealt. After high school, I buckled down, got my own place and a job at the local food store where I had been working for the past 3 years. It paid the bills, and I made a few acquaintances who were good for a nice talk during our lunch break. I wouldn’t consider them ‘friends’, but for the most part, I liked keeping to myself anyway. Gaming was my passion, and I would rather stay at home going on a dungeon crawl or working on my rank in arena-based games.

  I reached for the doorknob of my tiny studio apartment, thinking that it was probably my annoying landlord stopping by as he did every week to ‘check to make sure the fire detector was working,’ when in reality, he just wanted to make sure I hadn’t damaged anything inside his property.