it looked like a festival night. Even the physical immersives along the walls were over half full. The multipurpose tables spread across the floor were full of students and players alike, some focused on group games, others chatting quietly or lost in solo trips. Surely the games were the same from pod to pod, but still the subtle differences in layout left him off center.
Marcelle and Ruby apparently didn’t suffer the same imbalance, since they plunged into the room. Onor took a deep breath and followed.
The Adiamo players were young. Five kids around one console. Two standing nearly mute in front of the other one, using input boards.
The five played the advanced version of the game, glassed and wrapped, their every move creating change. Their only communication would be through the game interface, unavailable to watchers.
The two were younger, maybe five years old, and still fat fingered. They wouldn’t be allowed to immerse yet. If they did, they’d probably pee their pants and scream at the scary parts.
His hands itched to try it again. He’d beat Adiamo as early as most people and hadn’t played since he was eight years old. Now, he’d have a new eye for the game.
The new information made him fidget.
Onor yearned to see a planet. Always had, ever since The Jackman first told him that the park was designed to look like someplace where people didn’t have to live inside a metal shell and do whatever the reds told them.
Ruby wandered the room, peering at various games. Onor and Marcelle stood behind the two boys with Adiamo input pads and watched them play. Since they were too young for immersion, it was easy to see what crops and animals and weapons and transportation they chose. Players did better against each other if they cooperated. But that was a late lesson, one of the ones you really understood just before you won the game. They only had to wait a half hour for the boys to starve each other out. When they were done, they walked off, chattering about what game to play next.
He and Ruby and Marcelle claimed the game chairs. They strapped in, goggled, gloved, and switched on communication.
The opening sequence played.
Adiamo spun up in front of them, tiny so that the whole system showed. A single brilliant sun, two gas giants. Cradled between, two inhabited planets. Game play took place on Lym, the planet with the most ground and the least water. Enough water for fish and birds and large mammals and humans, and air that didn’t have to be scrubbed and rescrubbed inside a closed system.
On Lym, the breath of humans was no inconvenience at all.
The planet spun brown and busy in front of him, scattered with colonists and farms. Factories waited for players to gain control and grow them into cities and industrial bases, into centers of art and math, and—if you were winning—into active spaceports.
Onor paid so much attention to his own lakes and cities that he forgot strategy until he realized that he had less land than Marcelle and that three of his farms had lost crops because he forgot to check his water allocation for shrinkage.
Ruby was ahead of them both, but she had an instinct for the politics of games. She seldom played, but when she did, he no longer expected to beat her. He hadn’t beaten her since they were eleven.
The game moved faster than he remembered. Ruby won twice before it was time to go to common. Even though they arrived fifteen minutes early, common was already almost full.
Hugh and Lya showed up right after them with Owl Paulie in a wheelchair, surrounded by a small crowd. Most everyone greeted the old man, who smiled at them and offered a bony hand to most. There had not been any one person that popular at home.
The promised time came and went.
An old woman on a seat near Onor began to cry. Three children raced through the few empty spaces, giggling. Their parents called them down with sharp tones and they obeyed for a few minutes before they went back to
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