Ready Player None

Chapter 3.1 - Alex "New Frontier"

The breakfast table was tense, with no sounds other than the dull clink of polycarbonate drinking glasses and tableware. Kate wasn't talking to me, and she was making sure I knew that she wanted nothing to do with me for the foreseeable future. If I had asked her to pass something, she would have pretended she didn't hear me, so I made sure I had everything I needed on my side of the table. She ate her cereal without any soy milk, just because the carton was closer to me. Her eyes were closed, apparently so that even light wasn't allowed to bounce off of me and touch her retinas. She was really mad.

This might last a while.

Checking our messages on House gave me no respite. There were no friendly notes from neighbors, no video clips from distant relations. I probably wouldn't understand anything I got from a family relation anyway, even if any such folks existed. Our messages were the same as always; a short announcement of the current balance for our family account, our added weekly credit allowance, and a detailed listing of the charges that would be applied over the next seven days. We paid directly for our food, our necessities, the protection of living in a Community, and our OASIS accounts, with everything adjusted for the fact that the family now only had two members who needed those things.

Just as for everyone in the Communities, and possibly the entire world, OASIS credits were the only currency that had any value. You could earn them yourself, in either the real world or the simulation. In reality, credits came from working for the Community, as our parents had done, and as we would do once we because young adults. In the simulation, you could avoid all that sacrifice and earn credits through your play, if you had enough already to pay for the simulated equipment and connections you'd need to accomplish anything worthwhile. Or you could spend your online life begging from rich people, and doing everything they asked for scraps of their wealth. I faced a constant battle with Kate to keep her from going that route; not only did it bring shame on our family, it was dangerous. Some people wanted things in return.

While authorizing the listed charges through my OASIS account, I added in a request for some supplies to fix the downstairs bathroom. That expense would mean fewer trips for levelling our characters this month, but it needed to be done. When our parents left, I became the only one responsible for keeping the House going. Mom had never paid a bill even a day late since moving in, and I was certainly not going to make the first mistake after taking up her role. Screwing up payments to the Community was a great way to get kicked out of our House, but mostly, I just didn't want her to show up one day, look at the House payment history, and give me a disapproving look.

I signed into class exactly as the session started, and signed out immediately after it ended. I mean, the curricula were all individualized anyway, and students proceeded through it at their own pace. There was no particular reason why we had to gather in one virtual classroom; it was all just the communities' attempt at forcing us to socialize. "Be friendly!" "Meet people!" "Conform!!!"

I shan't.

Most of my classmates had plans to do things online together after class, but I had never tried to make those kinds of friends, either. In fact, I avoided the very possibility. Second generation immigrants just didn't socialize with any of the early families. I didn't have the OASIS credits necessary to travel in their circles, and I was determined to make sure that no one knew that we were scraping by. This way, it looked like it was my choice.

My sister was still trudging her way through basic algebra and science courses. Anything connected to school was a chore for her, though she was quite smart, and had no trouble with the work itself. I think it was mostly rebellion. If they had required her to play video games in school, she probably would have spent her off-hours listening to Mozart and solving differential equations.