Ragnarok: Reloaded
Prologue: “Upgrade”
Gravity Headquarters
– Somewhere in Japan
It was raining – again. Even from inside the warm and dry walls of Gravity’s headquarters it could be heard beating on the windows the roof with an unrelenting force. Every heavy drop of liquid hit the building making its sound heard throughout the hallowed halls of the office building as if it had a mind of its own and wanted to go out with a bang before it became nothing more than just another drop of water in a torrent of the heaven’s tears.
It was dark outside, and the lack of lighting in the Board of Directors’ meeting room didn’t make it anymore luminous. Within this blanket of darkness these men were nothing more than shadowy figures no more human than a grain of sand or a speck of dust. They sat in their big cushioned chairs, the outlines of their perfectly pressed suits peeking out in the small bit of light that did exist in this quiet room surrounded by the thunderous storm outside.
Hung stood at the door feeling a bit more that slightly scared. He spent most of his time in his small apartment hacking into people’s computers and sending out computer viruses in his spare time. He’d never felt so intimidated in his life as he did right now standing before these men of great power. The men who owned the rights to one of most popular computer games in recent times – Ragnarok Online.
The lengthy table that they were sitting at was positoned longwise with six men sitting on each side, but the most ominous and menacing of them was the man who sat at the very end of the table facing the door, and consequently the terrified hacker, Hung. He was a large man with broad shoulders, and though Hung squinted to try and pierce the darkness, his face remained thoroughly hidden behind the night’s sheath. He sat smoking a fat cigar, and he took a few puffs of it, exhaling quite audibly afterwards, before he placed the roll of tobacco in a glass ashtray beside him.
For a long time, nobody spoke, or moved. Hung gulped loudly knowing that he was in pretty big trouble. He’d hacked into Gravity’s computers yesterday and had crashed their server, iRO. Then, this morning, two shady looking suits had appeared at his door and escorted him to this very building where he had sat in an empty waiting room until now, at night.
He was already forming some lame apology in his mind for what he had done, but figured that it would do no good. He’d never been caught before, and really didn’t know how he was going to worm his way out of this. Online, he was a confident and stuck up kind of guy because he knew what kind of power he had there, but in the real world he was just a stout and greasy Japanese citizen who worked at the grocery store stocking shelves from nine to five. He had no power here – and it scared him.
Finally, the man at the end of the table, the chairman of Gravity Corporation, exhaled loudly and spoke in a deep, slow, and drawling voice. Hung expected some kind of threat, or just a generally intimidating comment, but instead, the first words he heard from the mouth of the chairman, and the first word’s he’d heard since he’d arrived at Gravity this morning were-
“Who da fuck forgot to replace da fucking light bulbs up in this hizzy!?” the chairman demanded banging his fist on the table. “It be too fucking dark in here son! I’m the fucking head of this entire corporation – don’t tell me we can’t afford light bulbs god dammit! Y’all betta’ recognize!”
Hung, a big anime fan, imagined himself “sweatdropping” at the chairman’s words. There were frantic whispers among the other Board members while Hung watched the shadow of the chairman throw his hands up in the air as if he were an American gang banger, and he realized if this was all a joke until one of the Board members, a squeaky-voiced man spoke up.
“Um ... the janitor says that we blew a fuse earlier on,” he shrilled. “But I think they might have fixed the problem ...”
The chairman sucked his teeth.
“Den why da fuck are we sitting in the dark homeslice?” he said in his perfectly enunciated voice. “Turn on da lights before I gots to bust some caps in some asses, yo!”
There was a deluge of whispers among the Board members until there was a ‘click’ sound that sounded remarkably like the cocking of a gun, and someone got up from the table nearly tripping over himself frantically reaching for the light switch before racing back to his seat.
Hung tried not to laugh.
The portentous and spooky mood was immediately ruined as he saw the Board of Directors in the light. For one thing, all of the regular Board members had greasy and freckled faces making them look even more nerdy than Hung (which was saying something,) and the Chairman was as well built and professional looking as Hung had initially thought, only he was dressed in a red and white basketball jersey with “Thugged Out #69” on the front in graffiti-style lettering, baggy blue Fubu jeans, a black baseball cap that had “Incredibly Light-Skinned, but still black” written on it, a plethora of gold rings on his fingers, and was wearing a huge working circular clock hung around his neck by a rusty metal-link chain with the words “Y’all know what time it is!” written in the same graffiti-lettering around the clock where the numbers should have been.
Again, Hung imagined an anime-version of himself “sweatdropping.”
“Aight,” the chairman said. “Settle down, settle down y’all... now ‘den ... what it be Mr.... what the fuck is this guy’s name again?”
The nearest Board member whispered in his ear and the Chairman’s face lit up while Hung felt his face flush red.
“Hung Lo?” he laughed. “This cat’s name is HUNG LO!? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AW MAN! YOU JUST MADE MY DAY MY NIGGA’!”
The chairman continued to laugh, and the Board of Director’s laughed too – although their laughter seemed force and nervous. Hung found it funny that they were laughing at him while he was using every fiber in his body to try and restrain himself from laughing at them.
“Aight’ aight’,” the chairman said and the laughter stopped instantly making the hairs on Hung’s neck stand up. “Now den ... props to my nigga’ Dr. Sims for what I’m ‘bout to show ya young buck ... Dr. Sims? Go ‘head and represent son!”
Out of nowhere a slim and tall Vietnamese man with thick glasses and a long white lab coat walked over to a chalk board that also seemed to have come out of nowhere.
“Hey,” Hung said curiously. “Where’d you come from?”
Dr. Sims shrugged.
“I dunno.”
Hung squinted at him.
“I ... see...”
Dr. Sims shrugged again and pointed to a drawing of what looked like a visor from Star Trek that was on the chalk board.
“This is the A-316,” he said in a very dull monotone voice. “It connects to a computer’s USB port to stimulate the human mind with supersonic computer signals that interact with the corresponding A-Chip that Gravity has released that is installed in a Ragnarok Online player’s cerebal cortex. The result is an ultra-realistic virtual reality version of the game. Player’s minds no longer respond to things from the real world, but only to what’s going on in the game.
“In other words... to them, Ragnarok becomes reality. Rather than use the keyboard and mouse to control their characters in-game, they are able to control their character’s with their minds just as they would control their real bodies in real life. It is as if they BECOME their character. They feel what their character would feel, they have the strength, agility, dexterity, intellect, and luck of their characters, and they even feel pain when they are hurt in-game.”
Hung nodded with understanding. He was impressed.
“Impressive,” he said rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “How much are you charging for this new Virtual Reality version of the game?”
“It be nizzle my nigga!” the Chairman exclaimed. “Nizzle!”
“It’s free of charge,” Dr. Sims translated.
“The visors and the corresponding equipment are actually quite cheap to manufacture.
One is being sent to every household that owns a computer in several countries
in addition to
Dr. Sims stopped and smirked as did the entire Board of Directors. Hung knew something more was going on here from the look on their faces.
“But.. .you have more plans for this technology,” he murmured interrogatively. “Something more than just an upgrade to your program ...”
“Fo’ shizzle mah nizzle!” the chairman said throwing his hands up in the air again – this time flashing gang signs. “We be usin dis’ crunkness to get some change son!”
Hung blinked, and Dr. Sims translated again.
“For quite some time now we’ve been aware of several parties taking advantage of our program, and we’ve decided that we can use V-Ragnarok to take advantage of them ... and make ourselves considerably richer in the process. Inside every A-Chip is a hidden algorithm that will, after a while, tell people to shut off their illegal servers and join iRO. There is obviously a considerably large amount of money to be made here Mr. Lo ...”
Hung looked at Dr. Sims perplexed.
“So, why do you need me?” he asked cautiously.
“You’re a pretty good hacker Mr. Lo,” Dr. Sims said in a low voice. “Which is why we want you to hack into every illegal server and trigger the fail safe device.”
The Chairman smirked.
“You da’ catalyst, yo!”