Walking along the path for many minutes, Denise Healy decided that none of these characters were for him. Oh, he did try logging in as a few of them, but they were all strange experiences. They were set. They were not created from his mind… nothing about them was able to be personalized to his liking, and that felt very… limited.
Instead, Denise sat in his computer chair which had been rolled over in front of his twenty-seven inch high-def television at the end of his bed. He had on his headset and was playing a few rounds of Lone Wolves in Halo 3's Matchmaking. It was only a few minutes into his tenth match when he received a chat-invite from Shoot@Me.
"Unhealer, what's up little man?" Shoot asked him over Live. "I didn't think I'd see you on today what with your Immersion Suit going on. Glad I caught you, though. I wanted to see if you wanted to share your Global for The Kingdom and maybe cause a little mayhem. I've got a nice merc group going on with one character you might like."
Denise sighed as he backed out of the lobby he was waiting inside of. "Thanks for the Rebirth Token to bring my account back online, but I just… I don't feel it. I mean, I feel it, but it's not quite what I wanted. None of those characters are mine, and all are a little strange," the young boy admitted, leaning back in his comfy chair.
"Make a new Account," Sam said over the connection. "That's what I did… how do you think I ended up with a mercenary I wanted to play so easy right now?" he asked. "New accounts get to make new characters."
"But what about all your old characters?" Denise wondered… "And what about the game time I was going to get you by renewing?" he asked as he got up and went over to the suit to pick it up and look at it.
"Both accounts are under my name," Sam explained. "When they fix all this in the next few weeks, I'll pay the ten bucks to transfer this character back to my main account if I feel like keeping them. You can do that with any accounts that share your name," he said. "They might fix this tonight or it could be two months… whatever the case, I'm with you. I don't want to play a character that isn't mine, so I made this new guy. If I like him, I'll pay to keep him," he said, and Denise could almost see Sam shrug. "Besides, you haven't played in months, right? What's to keep you from just starting completely over? I'll send you a Free Trial key, you make an account with that, use it for ten days. If it goes on for longer, paying for the account will get me a month still. If this all gets fixed, you'll not have spent any month to get a second account."
"Alright, alright," Denise said, reaching over to his computer and tapping on the keyboard, bringing open the text file with his parent's credit cards. "You have any suggestions on what I might play?" he wondered. "I had basically given up on making something fresh."
"Man, anything. We need a lot of people and I'm taking friends into making new accounts to hang with these mercs. Some are using their borrowed characters. Right now we need a scout and a tracker… maybe someone who could get into small places, sniff out trouble… maybe night vision, etcetera," Same chuckled. "You could play a sexy playboy bunny for all I care?"
"A girl? Why would I play a girl?" Denise asked confused.
"Don't knock it. Can be fun. I had one female character and man was that a trip," Same laughed. "Try new things, man… this Game is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing right now."
Denise frowned a bit and scratched his head. He glanced at the TV screen and asked, "You can play anything?" he wondered.
"Well… many things. And there's lots of things you don't start with the ability to be until you get higher level. Superhero, for example. Some things require expansions… but humans, basic fantasy creations, machine-people, animals--"
"Animals?" Denise asked. "Hey, wait… like a dog? Small, able to scout, see at night, and track. I could be a dog, right? That would be kind of neat," his little boy mind thought. "Like a police dog. A doberman or something," he offered.
"Kiddo, that is a spiffy idea. Good racial bonuses, though not having thumbs is a bitch," Sam offered. "I say go for it… I've never played an animal myself, but I hear it's wicked real. I can even pick you up a little comm unit to translate from dog to English so we can understand you In-Character," Sam offered. "Hey, I'll get right on that if you give me your Global so I can friend you. That way, I'll see you when you get on, and can find my way to you. We work in the Region of Amarnia just west of Vector City… hope of the Neo Hong Kong Megaplex and a range of superheroes."
"How do you become a super-hero?" Denise wondered as he started pulling off his pants to begin getting undressed. "Radioactive Spiders or something?"
"Well, commonly you make the concept as part of your origin… and generally right around levels five through ten, the Game makes your powers manifest… wether that's an accident or something that's an experiment, it just depends. You can even give the Game general guides for what you want and have it extrapolate from that," Sam explained.
Denise blinked. "Come again?" he asked. He opened up the E-Mail that Sam had already sent him and began to set up his second account.
"Well, say you wanted super-strength but couldn't think of an origin story for it. The Game may set up a chance to get radiation on you, sure, or maybe bitten by an animal, or captured by a lab, or finding a mystical amulet or whatever the hell. You can even have the mood set… like it feels good, hurts, no feeling, makes you happy, scares you, and so on," Same detailed. "That way, you get what you want, but the Game makes it seem more real to you."
Denise was undressed and slipping on the Suit again. "My Global chat Handle will be 'Unhealing Redux'. I'll make something and meet you in… where was it? America?"
"Amarnia… it's America-like. I'll send you a Tell when you get on. No rush, I'll be on all night. Take your time looking over your options and make sure to pick what you want, dog or no," Sam explained. "This is Shoot At Me, signing off," he laughed.
'Sam' was the closest that Denise had ever had to a real friend, so hopefully he could 'meet' him inside the Game. The question was, what would he play… Dog seemed different, but a super-villain would be entertaining. He really wanted to hurt some people in the long-run. Choices, Choices.