Computer City
an excerpt

Computer City

Chapter 00 -- Waking

A beeping noise filled her apartment, groaning coming from her mouth as she slowly moved herself out of bed. Half asleep, she trudged over to her computer, and turned it on, the fan inside the tower whirring to keep the system cool. Naomi slowly opens her eyes to the room around her, and soon enough, the computer was ready. Typing in her password, she came to her desktop; which had a picture of one of her favorite Anime characters on it, and out of habit, opened her e-mail. Nothing, as usual, had come over night. She was just a librarian, and she tended to explore the internet world alone, or with an NPC at least.

Naomi barely spoke to people in this internet realm; only to find out which book she would have to get for them. Her vision slowly widening as her eyes opened and she woke up, she focused on the light-weight goggles that would bring her, and everyone else in the world, to the internet world; where they were free of limitations, and could be anyone they wanted. So to speak anyways. Sliding the goggles over her head; the headband that held them in place pushing weight onto the top of her head, she slowly entered her half-home, Net Life.

The screen flickered with life, her eyes forced to squint, resisting the bright light that shined directly into her eyes. Naomi’s glasses only magnified the light, though not by much, it made it harder for her eyes to adjust. Soon enough, she noticed her eyes were no longer bothered by the bright light that resonated from the goggles’ thin screen inside. She saw out of her character’s eyes now, instead of her own, and was taken to the new world that was almost reality in the eyes of society. Though it may seem ridiculous to refer to an online game as reality, a lot of people did. The game itself was realistic, and allowed interactions with people everywhere. On top of that, any one person could be halfway across the world in the blink of an eye, and later that night be back in their own home, asleep in bed.

Naomi’s eyes adjusted to the scene in front of her, the town she was now in resembled Tokyo to an extent. Buildings surrounded her, and the path in the city was a maze of confusion to new players. However, the maze of building and sakura trees all stuffed into a small area of computer-generated images and codes had become Naomi’s home-within-her-home. Naomi decided to take a step back from her character’s point of view, and look at her character she had developed and grown over many years.

Naomi’s character, named with her first name, was decked out in crimson red and shining gold. Her outfit was rather Chinese-styled, having a high collar with a golden trim that followed down the middle of the outfit to the ribbon used as a waistband, which lead to a split-skirt, with pink ruffles in-between the triangle-shaped slit in the skirt’s front. The edges of each flap of the skirt was, of course, trimmed in gold. The dress was sleeveless, which was made up for by the sleeves that were detached from the outfit. They opened up wide at the top, with yet another gold trim, and were pulled in by golden rings that had spheres shaped to look like flowers on the edges, only to flare out making bell shapes around her wrists. Again, the bottoms of the sleeves were trimmed with gold. Her shoes consisted of loose-sock look-alikes, light tan in color. The loose-socks had a visible hem on the side, with which each had a flower made of circles attached to, and two small threads with a bead on the end dangling from the flowers. Underneath the loose-socks Naomi had crimson red boots, which had a slight heel. Her character’s hair was long, about waist length, and was somewhere between navy blue and black in color. Held up in a ponytail by a large pink ring, it made her character seem a bit childish. Her character also had bright blue eyes, which were close to her own eye color. Upon her shoulders were small pink tattoos.

Her character having stood there for quite some time, had gone to moving slightly into a different pose, waiting for the player to input something commanding the character model to move. Soon enough, Naomi returned to her character’s viewpoint, and got her moving via moving the controller stick. Her character ran through the maze of buildings, Naomi’s knowledge of where to go was only out of habit, having crossed the path over and over every day for so long. She finally reached the building she was in search of, and began to open the gate to her library. This required her to insert yet another password, which she was able to do quickly. The library was then open for the day, with Naomi behind the counter. She only held a small shift in the morning, and had the rest of the day off, now that the girl who she had been training had finally caught onto things. There weren’t many people awake at this hour, so Naomi was free to skim the virtual books in the library, reading whatever she wanted. Working here had it perks, she could read whatever without having to be bothered in the morning, and she got discounts on the game’s books for learning the Mage class’s spells.

Naomi’s character was among the many that were apart of the Mage class. She had made it to her second level job, Black Mage, a few months ago, which allowed her to specialize in fighting magic, with a large arsenal of elemental magic that would pulverize her enemies. Anyone in her class was essential to a lot of quests and the like, as the elemental attacks gave the upper hand to the mage and their party. Also, there’s the White Mage class that heals their party and others, would place curses on opponents, and destroy boosting spells the opponents had cast. The Mage class was a necessary one, and was also very popular. The only way to learn spells, though, was to buy books from the library in the towns. The books would introduce the spell with a lot of mumbo-jumbo that really had nothing to do with learning it, and then it would have a bar that would fill up. Each spell required another spell or spells to be used a certain amount of times and be at a certain level before the spell could be learned. After that, the book was merely a waste of inventory space. Because of this, a lot of Mages who had Mage friends would give their friends the books afterwards, as the books did get rather expensive. Other classes could learn spells as well, but they were insanely limited in the spells department, and it was harder to learn the spells.

Naomi grew bored quickly, and soon enough pulled out the next volume of the Manga she had been reading the morning before, and zoned out from her work. She had nothing better to do now anyways, no one was awake at this hour, at least in Tokyo that is.

She read panel after panel, the story’s plot getting thicker and thicker as the pages turned. Ding. She turned the page as Rinako, the Manga’s heroine, rushed into battle, undergoing the usual Magical Girl transformation that occurred. Ding. Rinako was now Mahou Nako, her alter ego she fought crime as. Ding. Mahou Nako shouted out words as she pulled out a sparkling wand, which would serve as her weapon. Ding. Shouting out “Magical Bubbles!” caused bubbles to be emitted from the sparkly wand, each bubble striking the misshapen monster she was fighting with an intense force that was unrealistic for real bubbles. Ding. Naomi finally registered the bell being rung, and shouted “What do you want!?” The boy in front of the desk recoiled from the loudness of her shout, and Naomi blushed furiously. “Oh God, I’m sorry!” She said, hoping to calm the boy down.

She looked at his character, noticing at the start it was not a Mage. His features were somewhat child-like, and his character was a little short of average height. His hair was bleach blonde, with electric blue streaks in his somewhat scruffy hair. His eyes were a golden orange color, matching the tattoos upon his character’s cheeks. His clothes consisted of a turtleneck blue shirt, which had one sleeve orange, and a strip down the main part of the shirt that was the same orange. Around his neck was a piece of armor, which was triple-pointed in the front, one point in the middle, and two out by his shoulders. In each point was a small blue gem, which shined strong along with the silver the armor was to seem to have been made of. Around his arms were, well, arm guards. They were the same silver color that the neckpiece was, and stopped at his knuckles. The top of the arm guards were pointed, with an orange gem by it, and a blue gem by the character’s knuckles. He wore a pair of dark jeans, with a gray leg band on his right leg, which hung down on the outside of his leg. He shoes were orange slip-ons that had little to no raise for his character’s height.

Naomi’s eyes focused back upon the character’s striking hair color. It was brightly colored, and stood out against the dimly lit city and library. She noticed his character’s lips move, however she heard nothing, so focused upon his hair. “…book.” She had heard the last of his sentence. “Huh… what?” She mumbled, confused as to what had happened as she examined his character. He looked back at her, his golden eyes staring her down.

“I’m looking for a spell book.” He repeated.
“Oh, You’re a Blade class, right? What book then?” Naomi questioned.
“Oh, no. I’m looking for a Mage book, it’s a present for a friend.” He replied.
“Ah! No problem, what level is your friend?”
“Um… I’m not sure.”
“Is she a second job level?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure a Black Mage.” He said, looking closely at her character.
“Oh, Then I suggest the Burning Inferno book then.”
“I think she already learned that spell.” He replied, still staring at different aspects of Naomi’s character. “I think she’s might be around you level…” He mumbled.
“Then, she could learn the Holy Arrow spell.”
“Alright then.”

As it was her job, Naomi completed the transaction, and received the large sum of virtual Yen from the character. She watched as the boy left the library, and noted the username underneath him, Eizan. He walked away, with a book he couldn’t use, and skipped over to the warp gate, and headed out. She didn’t care anymore, and began reading the Manga again, hoping to be left undisturbed for the rest of her shift.