Everyone stood around in awkward silence for a few moments before Hugh took charge by saying, "You should log in first, Doc. We'll have a quick talk with your people to let them know you're okay, then I need to get on and update my feed. I'm pretty sure the people in the real world are wondering what it's like in here. I might actually break my record for all-time views."
"You don't need to call your family first?" Frankie asked.
Hugh carefully kept his expression from changing. "Nah, there's no one worth calling. I do need to send out a group message to my friends to let them know I made it okay, but that won't take more than a minute. I doubt any of them will reach the city for a while. If I know them, they'll want to build up a stable home base before they venture here."
"If you're sure," he replied dubiously as he headed for the room's main computer terminal. He didn't bother sitting down and neither did anyone else. Once he placed his hand on the terminal's attached scanner, he was linked directly to his home cloud on the Net. With a few clicks of the mouse, he had a video call initiated and sent to the room's main screen—a sixty inch clear panel monitor mounted on the wall.
Thirty seconds and a dozen rings later, the screen filled with the face of a brunet doctor in his twenties, his only defining feature a nano insertion port on the side of his throat.
"Doctor Jones?" he nearly screamed, his hands reaching out to grab the sides of the screen. The view bounced as the young doctor picked it up and carried it into another room of whatever place he was in. There was a shout of, "Everyone, I have Doc Jones on the line! Someone go get Wen and Mackenroy. Quick!"
The screen kept bouncing for several seconds, then steadied as he placed the monitor on a desk, then stepped back so several people were in frame—two men, three women, and a non-binary. All of them wore matching white lab coats.
"Doctor Jones, it's so great to hear from you. Are you alright? The World Council liaison wouldn't tell us anything other than you'd entered Thrive successfully and your body was remanded for long-term storage."
"I'm fine, Marco," Frankie said, his voice taking on a strangely soothing tone full of confidence. "It was a little rough making the initial twenty-something mile run to the Gateway, and let's not mention my clothes at the moment, but as you can see from the skyline behind me—I've arrived in Nexus. This young man is Hugh and beside him is his Navigator Dex. They've been an immense help in procuring clinic space for us. I've taken it upon myself to hire them both as consultants and scouts on behalf of VB5I Medical Group. You'll understand why when he explains some of the things possible in this digital frontier."
"Hi," Hugh said dumbly when their attention turned to him in fascination. "I'm just as new at this game as everyone else, but you can count on me to bring you information on anything interesting I find while I'm out exploring. If the price is cheap enough, I'll be bringing you samples to study, as well. I hope all of you are looking forward to being busy in the future. From what my Navigator has told me, using the system's Glamour function to change race, gender, and physical features will require players experienced in cosmetic surgery. None of you will ever have to worry about undoing bad work, either, because the system page for Glamours allows players to revert at will once an operation is complete. Do I have that right, Dex?"
"Close," Dex said, stepping forward to explain. "Any player can potentially get the Medical Achievements, but it will take significant study to reach a level where operations always end with a ninety-nine percent success rate. Naturally, cosmetic surgeons in the real world will achieve this faster than other players, since they'll have experience in the field and will adapt more easily to performing cosmetic operations. Don't worry about medical licensing within Thrive, either, as permanent death or disfiguration is impossible. However, I should warn you performing operations on non-consenting players is considered a form of torture and is a punishable offense according to World Council law. If you want to practice, I suggest using your own NPCs."
"What kind of punishment could they possibly use as a deterrent within a game?" one of the women asked.
"That depends on the seriousness of the offense and whether you have a good lawyer to plead your case. It could be monetary fines, house arrest on your personal world, imprisonment in a World Council rehabilitation facility or, in the event of willful malice toward others, the World Council will authorize Cryosleep for an extended period of time. In other words, they can sever your link to Thrive for the next ten, fifty—a hundred years or more. It would depend on how many lifetimes they deem your offense warrants."
"That's terrifying," she replied, her face paling at the thought.
"It's not as harsh as it seems," Dex said with a careless shrug. "Sadists have the option of satisfying their needs on the NPC populaces of their own worlds without punishment. The only punishable offenses within Thrive are those that cause lasting mental trauma to fellow players. That includes stalking, rape, extended confinement, and torture. Murder with the intention of terrorizing another player is treated as torture but, outside of Nexus, murder is acceptable gameplay, as is theft and temporary confinement with the intention of expelling a visiting player from your world."
"In other words," Hugh interrupted, "Play nice and stick to Nexus unless you're willing to experience the grittier side of humanity. You guys are doctors. As long as you don't try to act like mad scientists and kidnap players to experiment on them, you have nothing to worry about."
"How hard is it to get to Nexus?" a new doctor asked, joining the group in frame with a smug smile on his face. "Hello there, Doctor Jones. You're looking a little rough."
Hugh's gaze narrowed on the newcomer, instinctively disliking him. Before Frankie could reply, Hugh did. "He looks rough because this isn't an easy game for people coming in blind. I doubt you'd look much better without the tutorial he's hired me to provide to make your journey a little easier. I know I'm an experienced gamer and he reached here at the same time I did, which is weeks and months ahead of a lot of other players. But if you think you could do better, you're welcome to leave while I tell everyone else what to expect. We'll see what condition you're in when you get here. What do you say? You up for it?"
The other doctors grinned and laughed behind their hands as the newcomer spluttered. When Hugh looked over at Frankie to see if he'd overstepped himself, he found the Doc struggling to keep from laughing himself. Hugh gave him a wink before turning back to face the screen.
"I'm actually not giving the tutorial right now, so you have time to decide," he said. "It's been a long-ass day and I'm sure this call was unexpected, so not everyone is present who needs to be. If you're willing to have your people convene around nine tomorrow morning, we'll call back and I'll let you pick my brain as long as you need. Trust me. You'll want to hear what I have to say. With my help, all of you will have an easy journey lasting less than an hour. Doc? You have anything else you want to say?"
"I'll be sending some pictures along shortly," he said to the assembled group. "Many of them are of the clinic I purchased. I don't want anyone to be alarmed at how small it seems. I can upgrade as much as funding permits. The rest of the pictures are from the walk between the clinic and this Communications Hub. I tried my best to get some wide shots of Nexus, so you can have an idea of where you'll be living in the future.
I also want to say, don't force yourself to log in yet if you're not feeling up to the task of building the clinic up from scratch. Right now, Thrive is still in its infancy. There's not enough players in Nexus for there to be a real economy and everyone is so busy trying to learn their way around, there won't be steady work for some time. If you come, you should consider yourself pioneers entering the Wild West. Opportunity is abundant, but so is hardship."
Hugh found himself butting in again. "If you want to support the Doc from the outside, it'll be a huge help if you use the Handiscanners linked to his account and scan as much of your office equipment as possible—everything from the smallest paperclip to the biggest X-Ray machine. And bundle things so one scan encompasses a whole bag of implements. I'll explain the reason for bundling tomorrow, but just know it's important and the more scans you send him, the less work he'll have to do to obtain copies for the clinic here."
"And how much is your consultation costing VB5I?" the irritating doctor asked in an attempt to reclaim his dignity.
Hugh snapped back, saying, "That's between Doc and me since my contract is with him and not the entire group. And the only person he needs to justify himself to is the person holding the Medical Group's purse strings. Is that you? If so, I'd like to know your opinion on what it's worth to have your clinic up and running in less than a week at minimal cost. Just know if you offer a number bigger than his, I'm going to be demanding a raise."
The smarmy jerk coughed and backed down again. "Let me say this once to make it clear," Hugh said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I accepted sponsorship from Doc because contracting with him gives me freedom. I'm a gamer and I make no apologies for that. You should actually be grateful Doc had the sense to recognize me and hire me. Furthermore, Doc has my respect for his determination in reaching Nexus. None of you have earned that from me yet, so all you're getting is what the Doc asks me to give. Nothing more and nothing less.
If you don't like that, feel free to hire your own gamer consultant. But good luck finding any that's left. I'm sure by now, anyone with a wit of gaming knowledge has been snapped up. This is the future of the entire world, after all, and one thing hasn't changed—knowledge is power. And, just for the record, you should know I always make it a point to be the most powerful in any game I play. If you want proof, check my Net feed under the gaming alias EXP Honey. You'll learn everything you truly need to know about me, including the fact I've logged sixty hours a week religiously for the past ten years and I've played over five hundred and forty different games. I might have taken a day job to make ends meet, but I've always considered gaming to be my actual career. Can any of you say the same?"
There was a moment of silence as the group digested his sudden rant, then the non-binary stepped forward to ask, "You're EXP Honey? I think I've actually heard of you. My daughter watches your feed sometimes. If I remember right, there was something about a miracle you performed in some Sand game. It was all she could talk about for weeks, but none of it really made sense to me."
"Sands of Kormin," Hugh said with a slight smile. "Yeah, I pulled that one out of my ass. Ironically, I played a healer in that game. The raid was going really badly and everyone was disorganized because no one's skills seemed to be doing damage to the Raid Boss. I accidentally hit him with my resurrect skill instead of a fallen teammate. It downed him instantly because he was an undead. You should have heard the reaction when it happened. There was silence, then everyone exploded when they read how much damage my resurrect spell caused. I think I sat in front of my computer for twenty minutes before I realized what I'd done. Hell, the loot from that Raid still has pride of place in my GameNet Vault. For those of you who aren't gamers, that's a program where you can store Legendary Goods from any game and use them in other games."
As soon as he said the words, he had to wonder— "Dex, can I access my Vault in Thrive?"
Dex's smile seemed almost feral. "I thought you'd never ask. Page 63."