Logout of Cthulhu Read online

  Log Out of Cthulhu

  T.K. Kato

  LOG OUT OF CTHULHU

  Book One of Cthulhu World

  T.K. Kato

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2017 T.K. Kato

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Published by Incandescent Phoenix Books

  Contents

  Stage 1

  Interlude

  Stage 2

  Stage 3

  Stage 4

  Stage 5

  Stage 6

  Stage 7

  Author’s Note

  Stage 1

  The bus rattled and bumped along down the sorry excuse for a road. Either the company hadn’t yet repaved this desolate final stretch, or else they left it like that in the name of authenticity. The latter, I suspected, though even that might have been nothing more than an excuse to cut costs. Staring out the window, I hadn’t seen much other than sedge-grass and sand for several minutes.

  They really knew how to choose an out-of-the-way location.

  I’d heard once that when Walt Disney wanted to open his park in Florida, he’d bought the land in secret. Maybe this company thought to do the same. All the more appropriate this time, given the macabre subject matter of this park. How they expected to make a profit here, I had no clue.

  It wasn’t as if parents would flock from around the world to bring their kids to see Cthulhu or to drown in nihilism. But that wasn’t really my problem. As long as I got paid, the park could spend the next twenty years in the red.

  Besides, these days, the drab scenery was almost a relief. I don’t think I could have stomached the bright and hopeful cheer of any other amusement park.

  Another pothole jarred the bus and sent my teeth clanking together. Too authentic, maybe.

  Working my jaw a little, I turned to the plastic box beside me. Drab gray, like the sky here, and unlabeled save for a circular insignia in the shape of Cthulhu’s head. She’d told me not to mess with it until we arrived, but …

  I flipped open the lid. Inside lay a headset that looked like a slimmer version of the 3D rigs I had for my Playstation and Xbox. There was no clear earpiece, but the tiny holes on the frame must act as speakers. Certainly, the headset was sleeker than any VR gaming equipment I’d ever tried. Lightweight, though it felt durable.

  As I started to fit it over my head, Elise pushed her way into the seat beside me. “Just wait, all right? We’re almost there.”

  She’d been considerate enough to give me space ever since the bus picked me up at Ipswich. Too much to hope that would have lasted. Ever since she’d come back into my life, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to ask her to leave. But then, I’m not sure having her around made things easier, either.

  I favored her with what I knew had to be a pathetic smile. It was still the best I could come up with. “How does this thing even work?” I stopped myself from pointing out that paying for a VR park and skimping on the VR set was just pissing money away. I wasn’t here to analyze their financial blunders.

  “Well, I mean …” She shrugged. “It’s an augmented reality display. So it … um … augments your reality. You know, I’m not really a techie.” She glanced down at a clipboard in her lap.

  “More paperwork?” In case ten thousand confidentiality agreements weren’t enough.

  “Just a few last forms. Waivers and stuff. Christ, Bobby, you know how these things work. Cthulhu World isn’t responsible if you walk into a phone pole or something while wearing the headset.”

  Phone pole? They were playing up the last-century vibe hard then.

  I scribbled my name on a half-dozen more forms and handed back the clipboard a little more forcefully than necessary. Of course, I knew she didn’t deserve the cold treatment. It was just the only treatment I had left for anyone.

  “Um, right,” Elise said. “So we’ll be arriving in a few. Once you get checked into the hotel, you can start the game. Until then, hang tight. There’s no AR interface out here so you wouldn’t see shit anyway.” She stood up, then hesitated. “Bobby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just try to enjoy yourself, okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  The bus lurched over a rickety wooden bridge as Elise made her way back up front to sit behind the driver. Almost there. I kept trying to care, I really did. I used to love this stuff.

  Games, and hell, Lovecraft too, back in high school. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember many details from those stories, though. The general sense of dread, sure, and the cosmic horror underlying reality. Well, and obviously Cthulhu himself. These days he was almost like a pop culture icon.

  Hence Cthulhu World.

  Except the park wasn’t even focused on that story. They’d modeled it on Innsmouth, and I couldn’t seem to remember that one. Everything ran together into a general blur of gothic and cosmic horror.

  The bus climbed a steep incline until I was looking down over cliffs to the sea below. On a precipice stood an old-fashioned lighthouse. Below that spread out a town as drab as the scenery. Everything was browns and grays, no decorations and almost no signs of life. Like a damn ghost town out in the middle of nowhere.

  Innsmouth, named after Lovecraft’s fictional town.

  No billboard to announce we were entering Cthulhu World. No markers of any kind, really, save for a few old street signs as we entered the town proper.

  So I admit, it was kind of creepy. I was never too fond of crowds, never much of a people person. But to see the trappings of civilization spread all over without any actual civilization, it creates this vague unease in most people—myself included.

  I suppose that was the intent.

  As the bus pushed on, the sound of falling water greeted me, growing louder and louder. We drove through a covered bridge that crossed a small gorge. Looking over my shoulder after we passed, I spotted a series of falls down below us.

  We passed by a railway, though grass sprang up from the tracks, so it obviously wasn’t in use. Maybe eventually the park would bring guests in by train. The bus turned down another main street and swung along beside the wharves and the waterfront, an area even more uninviting than the rest of this new Innsmouth, if that was possible.

  Yeah, they’d really captured the Lovecraftian mood. Kudos on that, I suppose. I still wasn’t sure there’d be enough people willing to pay hundreds of dollars to come and be depressed.

  Beyond the wharves, out on the sea, rose a small island, stretching like a thin black line.

  Maybe Elise had told the driver to take me this route just to show off the park. And admittedly, seeing the effort they’d put into building this town, I did want to go ahead and flip on the headset and see what the game was all about.

  In the heart of town, the road circled a green. Across the street stood a couple of churches, with a hall nestled between them in what looked like the colonial style. Not that I’m an expert on architecture, mind. On the opposite side stood the only inviting building I’d seen in the whole damn town: a yellow-painted hotel. Out front, a sign swung on a post: The Gilman House.

  The bus rumbled to a stop.

  Elise glanced back at me. “We’re here.”

  Inside the hotel, I found a barren lobby, occupied only by a smiling woman standing behind the counter.

  “Welcome to Innsmouth!” The woman was probably in her mid-twenties and had brown hair cropped a little too short, though it worked with her relaxed manner. She wore a yellow suit I suppose was intended as a uniform, though no name tag. “Just drop your bag her
e and we’ll have it taken up to your room. That way you can get right to the park!”

  I felt rather than heard Elise come up behind me. The desk clerk’s face fell so swiftly I had to glance back to see why.

  Elise was scowling at the other woman like she’d just dinged her car. “Mia. What did we talk about?”

  Mia lowered her head a little. “Sorry.” She looked at me, now almost expressionless. “Thank you for choosing the Gilman House.” All life had drained from her voice. “I will see your bags taken to your room.”

  Huh. No smiles allowed in Cthulhu World. Good to know.

  Probably wouldn’t be an issue for me.

  I dropped my backpack and shoulder bag in front of the desk, then turned to Elise. I didn’t have to try too hard to replicate Mia’s brooding expression. “You ready to get this started?”

  “Yeah, of course. The system can be voice-controlled for on/off or the menu. Otherwise, the AR interface is intuitive, so just go out there and ease into it.”

  So maybe I wanted to touch her. To feel something. Maybe I did want that, but the few inches between us seemed much too far to close the gap. Instead, I went outside and put on the headset.

  “System on.”

  There was this faint flicker before my eyes. After that, it took me a moment to even realize things were running. Everything was the same, just a little different. The fresh paint over the buildings was now chipped and faded. The wood frames showed signs of rot and decay. The AR view took the already creepy town and reskinned it into a desolate ruin.

  And it looked absolutely fucking real.

  So real I couldn’t make out where the AR was at work and what was already there. I pulled the headset up so I could stare at the hotel wall for a second. Without them, the yellow paint was fresh. I let the glasses slip back over my eyes. The paint aged about ten years. All perfectly integrated.

  Damn.

  I’d been wrong before. People would pay for this. Not only for the admittedly creepy pseudo-gothic atmosphere. But just for the graphics. I’d never seen anything this real, and I’d played a lot of video games.

  With the glasses on, even the sky became more overcast. A perfect Lovecraftian vibe.

  I wandered around the traffic circle. I still didn’t see any other people here, but a few of the houses beyond had plumes of smoke wafting from their chimneys. So the town had some fictional inhabitants. NPCs who I might interact with. Would they be half as real as the scenery?

  Idly, I strolled across the green and over toward the building situated between the two churches. Unlike most of the town, those three buildings seemed maintained, even if they were in an older style than most of Innsmouth. The hall bore a sign near the roof, black paint and gold trim that read “Esoteric Order of Dagon.”

  Dagon … that sign hadn’t been there in the real world, but I recognized the name from reading Lovecraft’s work all those years ago. Some fish-god monster. Hadn’t he been the monster in this story? So whatever the goal of this game was, I was willing to bet good money I’d have to explore that hall … It was a Masonic hall. That’s what it looked like.

  All right then. Elise had been excessively tight-lipped about the nature of the game, other than that it recreated the Lovecraftian feel. And I’d give her this—it pulled that off in spades. But what was I playing? An FPS? Probably not. Some kind of mystery RPG, maybe.

  “Access menu.”

  A semi-translucent black panel suddenly filled my frontal view, obscuring most of the hall.

  Stats:

  HP20/20

  Dex 20

  Might 20

  Cha 20

  Stealth 20

  Sanity 80

  Lore 0

  Currency 20

  In another game, I’d have expected to be able to select each of those and get an explanation. I tried sticking my finger into the menu, but that only caused it to vanish.

  So HP was obviously my in-game health. The other stats might represent percentiles or maybe merely arbitrary numbers. Either way, this was obviously some kind of RPG. In a good one, every stat would be useful, so the ones the designers chose told me about the nature of the game. Dex had to be dexterity, probably affecting my chance to attack or dodge things. Might must be strength. So if I had those, the game obviously incorporated some kind of combat.

  Cha was charisma, so the game should reward interaction with NPCs. Stealth meant I ought to be able to bypass obstacles that way—though I truly hoped there wouldn’t be any mandatory stealth missions. I hated when designers jammed that shit into a game of an otherwise different genre. It ought to be an option, not a requirement.

  Well, whatever.

  I wandered out beyond the circle, to where some of the houses were more rundown. I still hadn’t seen any people or really anything else to interact with. So, yeah, I was getting antsy to test out the actual mechanics. How did the designers meld RPG stats with AR anyway?

  I passed by a house where the fence had broken away, leaving jagged edges. The windows were all boarded up and no sign anyone lurked within. Another abandoned house. Probably just background scenery really, since there was no way the designers could have made every single building in this town interactive. That would have taken years of coding.

  But …

  I slipped the glasses up to check. In the real world, the house was normal and the fence was intact. So …

  Glasses on, I poked my hand at a jagged piece of the fence jutting out.

  -1 HP

  The message scrolled up in front of my eyes and quickly faded. What faded less quickly was the sudden sharp pain in my hand.

  “What the … ?”

  My hand was bleeding where I’d poked it. Headset off, no sign of blood. Headset on, a small dribble of red dripped from my palm.

  I pulled up the glasses.

  That the interface could impose blood on my hand was impressive. That it could make me feel like I’d actually cut myself was … almost unbelievable.

  I rubbed my thumb over my palm. It was still hurting.

  “What the hell?” I repeated.

  Flustered and, yes, maybe intrigued despite myself, I made my way back to the hotel. The bus had already left, enhancing the loneliness of the town. Before I reached the Gilman House, Elise swung the door open and stepped out.

  She jolted slightly at the sight of me, or perhaps of my expression. “Bobby. I thought you’d be … you know, playing the game.”

  “I hurt myself.”

  She shrugged. “Well, yeah. Games have to have stakes, you know?”

  “No, I mean I hurt myself and it actually hurt. I felt it.”

  She nodded like I was dense. “Right … Biofeedback. It’s like nerve stimulation or something. It’s in the contract, Bobby.”

  The contract I hadn’t really read. I had assumed it was the same boilerplate NDS crap I had to sign for every company I tested for. I hadn’t considered I was agreeing to play a game that could actually hurt me.

  “Nerve stimulation? How the hell does that even work?” The glasses did touch my temples, but the tech to do what she was talking about sounded a helluva lot more sci-fi than anything a game company ought to have.

  Elise chuckled and shook her head. “Do I look like a scientist?”

  I folded my arms. I seemed to recall her continually messing up the math on her character when we played D&D way back when.

  She rolled her eyes. “Look. You’re here to test the boundaries of the game, not delve into trade secrets. Push some boundaries. Try to solve the game, spot flaws. Do your stuff, all right? Challenge the game. We’ll talk about everything once you’ve finished, win or lose. Now. We plan the game to take most gamers a couple of days to solve, but maybe you can do it faster.”

  Yeah. I played a lot of games. I used to. “How about you tell me the rules and objective then?”

  “Bobby, when was the last time you bought a game that came with an actual rule book? You’re meant to figure it out as you go
along. Get out there and—”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  These days, figuring shit out felt like work. Like climbing a mountain with no real reward at the top. And yeah, I knew that was my ennui talking, trying to suck me back down and keep me locked in the hole. Elise was trying to do me a favor by selecting me for this. They could have had plenty of other testers for this, but she’d come to me. I suppose I owed it to her … or myself … or … maybe to Zoe and Grace.

  I hesitated. “I could probably use something to eat.”

  “Sure.” She pointed down one of the exits from the traffic circle. “There’s a canteen just around the corner. I mean, in real life it’s a canteen. In the game, it’s more of … Well, that doesn’t matter unless you put the headset back on.”

  “Thanks.” I left her and made my way down the street she’d indicated.

  As she said, I found a canteen around the corner. Inside I saw only a single employee, a teenager. I generally don’t like people and I can’t say teenagers give me any warm fuzzies. But given the perpetual emptiness of the rest of the town, it was kind of a relief to see any other person. Come to think of it, if that desolation was part of the experience, how’d they expect to maintain it with a park full of guests?

  Whatever. Not my problem. I just had to test the damn game. Just test the game, and leave.

  “Afternoon,” the boy said. “Anything you’d like, mate?” The boy had a hint of a British accent, either intentionally suppressed or just faded after several years in the U.S.

  I shrugged. “A sandwich. Beef, if you have it.”

  “We’ve got fish and chips. The baskets are normally $15 but they told me you eat free while you’re here.”

  “Sure.”

  The boy pulled a shallow plastic basket out from under a heat lamp. On top of wax paper lay some fried fish and french fries I almost dared to hope were fresh. Tasting one disabused me of that idea. Still, a little ketchup and it would tide me over.

  “It is Mr. Walmore, right?” the boy asked.

  “Bobby is fine.”

  “Right, mate. I’m Thomas. See, once everything is up and running, there’ll be a bar in the hotel, room service and such. But right now, this place has the best food in the park.”