Page 4 of Control

“Of course I did,” I said to him, automatically lowering the music I heard in the club by thinking it which also displayed the music volume on my HUD. “If I didn’t you’d eventually come for me!”

Z nodded his head and smiled, taking me into his arms, the scent of sweat coming from him as he’d obviously been online and dancing for some time. He introduced me to his friends, many of whom were surprised that he knew me. Being the social butterfly that he is, I wasn’t familiar with this particular circle of friends and had never seen them around before. Chances are I had actually met some of them, but seeing and talking to as many people as I do in a given night I’d probably forgotten about them.

I was causing a distraction on the dance floor so after chatting for a moment, I excused myself and headed off in the direction of one of the spawn points. As I did, a distressed individual caught my eye. A younger woman, maybe 24 or so, her hair a bit of a mess and her makeup not looking quite right, was stranding alone by a spawn point. Her outfit looked messy and thrown together as if she wasn’t sure how to properly use the game’s wardrobe system.

As I walked closer to her, I could easily tell she was confused. She turned her head from side to side as if she’d never been in a club before neither here or in the real world. Like a deer in headlights, she appeared as easy prey for the cretins that can often skulk around the game looking for people to take advantage of. While moderation is swiftly enforced in most cases, some things do go unnoticed and unpunished and so I did what I felt I needed to do.

“You seem a little lost,” I said as I walked up to her. I was already bringing up her profile in my HUD when her eyes darted over to meet mine. As I suspected, she was a new player and this was the first place she’d ever been inside Aurora. She would have been easy pickings for hyenas.

“What?” she blurted out, apparently unsure of what to say to me. “I was just…I mean I’m, you know, just looking around.” She was screaming for some reason. The poor girl was out of her element, but was trying like mad to make herself look cool.

“I noticed,” I said back to her as she looked up and saw my name which appeared to other players in semi fluorescent purple light that occasionally alternated between dark blue and blood red. I looked her up and down, sizing her up. “You seem out of sorts. Did you need some help?”

“Um,” was all she could muster. I could see in her eyes that she was dealing with a serious case of sensory overload. Her eyes continued to dart left and right as if she couldn’t quite figure out what to focus on. I notice her lower lip begin to quiver and her hands were constantly balling into fists and releasing over and over. I needed to get her out of there to settle her down before her mind began to panic. Keeping my cool as to not cause her any addition stress, I scanned around the club looking past all the people looking me over, trying to find a spot where I could take her.

“Come on,” I said to her. “I think you need a minute to get adjusted to all this.” I took her by the hand without her putting up a fight and led her across the club to a small corner with an unoccupied booth. I pulled her close to me, wrapping my arm around her, so we could get by those that were still looking my way and sat her down, sweeping away some empty beer bottles that were still there and had yet to despawn.

Looking over her profile in my HUD, I could see all she wanted others to know about her which wasn’t much. Many new people were so excited to simply get to play that they ignored filling out their player profiles which could greatly enhance their experiences, and keep the cretins away. She was slightly younger than I’d thought, marking down that she was 22 years old which in this world could be dangerous unless you get lucky and fall in with a decent group of mindful players. My instinct which I’d followed since I had first started playing in Aurora was to help her in any way I could and to ensure her safety.

“You’re getting overloaded,” I said as I moved closer to her in the booth. “I need you to breathe for me in a steady rhythm.” She quickly turned her head toward me and I noticed her eyes starting to get bigger.

“What?” she said in return. I could tell she was only getting worse. I brought up an old Escort app I’d used in the past in my HUD which helped me monitor brain activity as well as real life vitals. Only vetted and licensed escorts in the game were granted access to it since it provided some personal information on other players. I’d not done escorting in sometime, but my license was still up to date and active. She put her hand to her forehead and wiped a line of sweat that had formed on it. “Oh, God! I’m sweating here. How is this…how am I sweating? Why can I feel this?”

I brought up her vitals. Her blood pressure was spiking and her heart rate was through the roof. I knew I had to calm her down or she’d become overloaded and would have to be kicked from the game. While getting kicked isn’t and never has been the worst thing that can happen to someone, when a player is kicked while in this condition it can trigger a real life panic attack and cause them to become disoriented and possibly lead to other real life consequences. I’d had it happen before with friends while I was offline and they ended up having a full blown meltdowns or becoming so confused on what was real and what was a game that they ended up needing professional assistance afterward. A crowd started to form around the table not only because of me but because of this young woman that I’d decided to care for and her worsening condition. I took her face into my hands and spoke the first words I could think of.

“Clover,” I said, having picked up her name from her profile and nameplate. “Clover Leaf, look at me. Look at me and do not look away.” I spoke to her in a lower tone when it finally hit me: the music!

I dropped my hands from her face and turned her left wrist over in my hands so I could pair with her. Accessing another app no one knew I had I forced a pairing with her and within a second I was in her HUD and checking what she was seeing and hearing. I immediately thought of the music which is generally very loud in places like this. As I’d suspected, she had her music volume set at its default value of 100%. I dropped it down to 5% and looked through her other settings. I also adjusted the ambient noise for the time being down to 20% as well as distant voices which lowers the voices of other players more than 20 feet away from you. I looked past the HUD I was seeing and back to her.

“Clover,” I said again in my lower tone. “Look at my eyes. Just look at them.” Realizing she could hear me much more clearly, she listened and held my gaze. “Keep your eyes on mine and just take some deep breaths. Can you do that for me?” She nodded. “OK. Breathe with me, in and out. Slowly.” Clover took my lead and matched my breathing. In and out she breathed, holding each breath for a second before letting it out just as I did. After about a minute of this, I could see her vitals returning to normal and the dilation of her pupils lessening. I dropped my hands from her face, but held her gaze. I’d managed to calm her down and avoided her getting kicked, or worse.

“Doing better now?” I asked in that same soft and reassuring tone. “I thought I was gonna to lose you there.” I smiled at her as she unexpectedly reached out and grabbed my arm. Given what she’d just been through, I didn’t push her hand away as I would if anyone else I didn’t know tried to touch or grab me. Instead, I took her free hand in mine, looking to offer her more comfort.

“How?” she said as if wanting to say more but was unable to. “How’d you do that? How’d you…what happened?”

“You were becoming overloaded,” I said as I looked away from her and out to the rather large crowd that had gathered near the table, including Z and his friends. Making eye contact with several of them, I said “Can we get some room guys? Please?” Z, knowing what I was doing, turned and directed the crowd to disperse which they did, although some of them continued to keep an eye on us from a short distance away.

“That was so intense,” Clover said to me while her hand was still clasping my arm. “It was like…the music. It was so loud and then I saw you and….” Clover’s voice trailed off as I turned back to face her.

“I turned down your music for you,” I said. “You had it at the default of 100%. That’s usually not a great idea for new players. I really wish the devs would change that.”

“Wait,” Clover said, her head tilting to the left. “You can do that? People here can just change other player’s settings?”

“No,” I said to her while shaking my head. “Not normally. If you pair with someone, it grants some access to your HUD and controls though. And I have a special app that allowed me to force pair with you so I could have access. It’s not something normally done, but I saw you were in trouble.” Clover looked at me for a few seconds, obviously confused by at least half of what I’d said to her. “Clover, did you happen to read the book than came with your headband?” Her senses beginning to return to her, Clover let out a simple answer.

“Oh,” she said, her eyes getting larger. “We were meant to read that whole thing? Like, all of it?”

“Yes,” I said as I let out a sigh. “It’s very important that you not just flip through it, but actually read that book. I know it’s pretty long but it’s one of those things you really should do. It has all the info you’d need on the game and it also tells you about certain dangers when using the headband and playing. It really is something you should read, dear. This whole thing could have been avoided.”

“Oh,” she said again as she looked down. “I thought it was just one of those really long instruction manuals that talked about tech stuff and warranties.”

“No,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s a bit more than that. What just happened to you can happen to new players if they’re not careful. Some people just create their account, slap on the headband and roll in completely unaware of the dangers. You got lucky.”

“Because you were here,” she said cracking a smile. I grabbed a napkin from the table and thought of a bottle of water which then appeared before me as 2 gold was deducted from my player account. Clover saw the bottle appear out of nowhere and asked “How did you…did you just do that?”

“Yes,” I said, using the napkin to dab sweat from her brow. I pulled the water over to us and cracked the top off of it and handed it to her. “Drink this. Just some spring water.” Clover grabbed the bottle from me and took two large gulps. “If you get really good at the game and you want something simple like a drink, you can just think of it and it will appear. You still have to pay the room owner for it, but it will appear for you.”

“How long did it take you to learn how to do that?” Clover asked, setting the water on the table.

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