Deus Ex Machina

“Good evening, my lord!” The Master of Ceremonies greeted, with a head bow, “You must be the honored guest. Everyone’s been waiting for you.” Please state your name so that our guards can remain composed.”

      “Isaías Sánchez?”

      “Is that a question, my lord?”

      “No.”

      “Then state your name, my lord.”

      “I’m Isaías Sánchez,” said Isaias before swallowing an empty gulp of air watching as the guards behind him stood waiting with unsheathed blades.

      “Hmmm...do you perhaps have a more familiar pseudonym?”

      “Zaya.”

      “Delightful. And your house, my lord?”

      Isaias rubbed the dark circles around his eyes. He felt in a limbo between deep sleep and consciousness all while the herald pierced daggers at him. The herald finally ushered him with his eyes towards his right shoulder, hinting at the coat of arms he had been wearing. Isaias tugged at his clothes and nodded. “Lion,” he said.

      “Kingdom of León?”

      “Yes.”

      “May we confirm it for our guest?”

      “Yes!”

      “Ahem!” The herald cleared his throat and rang his brass handbell loud enough to interrupt the crowd muttering. “Here, here!” Even the pianist cut short of playing his sheet music. Isaias turned to the royal guards behind him, who stood illuminated by the bright stars in the sky, and then turned back to the large banquet hall filled with lavishly dressed aristocrats. “Herein, the palace opens the court of your majesties! All gentles and nobles gathered in our presence, mark the presence of the Grand Prince of Cádiz!, a patronage of the highest design! We welcome Don Zaya Sanchez to our magnificent palace!”

      Zaya wanted none of the attention and, with no proper way to react gracefully amongst them, he chose to slowly maneuver himself away from the larger groups. He was followed by a beautiful woman and was immediately captivated by her large, honey-brown eyes. She held his gaze as she walked closer.

      “They’re all staring at you like you’re bloody Jack the Ripper. She offered him her bent hand for a handshake and a kiss. “My lord, my name is Jamila. It’s a pleasure.”

      Zaya awkwardly shook her hand.

      Jamila was left smiling at his discomfort. Zaya observed her appealing well-fitted black gothic-style dress she wore. She had long and straight raven hair that matched her gorgeously distinctive ample eyebrows that defined her face. Zaya realized she stood almost at the center of the geometric patterns of the Egyptian red carpet. The lighting positioned itself so perfectly in the room, highlighting her as if beams of a lighthouse were directing Zaya to her presence. “Hi!” Zaya said.

      “Well, hi to you!” she said. “You’re quite toothsome as well.” She giggled, holding her gaze. Zaya nodded and was captivated by her beauty, but easily distracted by the interior of the palace.

      “This place is amazing.”

      “It’s fine.”

      “What do you mean, just fine?”

      “It’s far too extravagant for my taste. I quite prefer the more unique and bohemian aesthetics,” she added. “Much like yourself, I was not born for this world...May I fetch you a drink, my lord?”

      “Yes, please.” Zaya nodded. He wanted to get rid of her for a second while he explored the strange world he found himself in. He walked over to the congregation of people gossiping.

      “Lovely ball, isn’t it Lord Zaya” a man toasted his glass up. He chatted with a woman who also turned to him to greet him. She bent her wrist to him and smiled big.

      “It’s a fine day to have you around, Lord Zaya. The King is expected to come down any second now for a toast, best to stick around.”

      Zaya began to find it odd that every every stranger he came across within proximity all knew his name and always had a comment to share when they met his gaze. Zaya reached over to the velvet cape one of the guests had been wearing before abruptly walking away leaving him speaking. “Oh, this old thing? It’s made of velvet from the house of Daggers just forty Roman miles up....”

      He would continue to explore each room, wandering towards the golden corridors to find a never ending supply of rooms, each with groups of people entertained by an assortment of new activities such as a jester’s fire-breathing tricks or comedy quips against the kingdom.

      After Zaya ventured into a few more rooms, he headed to the courtyard to follow the sounds of a familiar song. It was a classical rendition of a song he knew.

      There was a drastic change on the weather from night to a piercing sunny blue sky. Zaya acted like a newborn discovering the world for the first time, crouching down to rip the blades of grass beneath him for a smell. It was the relaxing scent he enjoyed.

      Pacing quicker past a wooden staircase, Zaya then spotted a strange man lounging around at the top step by the rooftop, he looked conspicuously suspicious. Dressed in all-black tight clothing including a swashbuckling mask he had loosely tied.

      “Psst! You scoundrel down there. I know you. Get up here before they find us.”

      Zaya walked a few steps up. “Yes?”

      “So nice to see a friendly face around this pretentious place.” said the stranger walking further up to the rooftop balcony and trying to usher Zaya to walk alongside him.

      Zaya did not fall to his bait, instead, he went onwards to the large courtyard where there was a large green bush maze near a stage where the musicians played their peculiar songs.

      The masked stranger remained on the roof, annoyed of Zaya for ignoring him, he began throwing pebbles and bronze coins from the roof. Instead, Zaya enjoyed a soothing shade under an oak tree to listen the music for a few minutes.

      “Treason!” Palace guards shouted, “This music is an abomination! Not from this world!” Suddenly the musicians had all scattered. One of them oddly ran stationary against a solid wall until one of the guards caught him and dragged him awag.

      Zaya watched confused from the sidelines carelessly.

      He looked up to the roof to find the masked stranger still waving for him.

      “You!” one of the guards finally approached. “Lord Zaya, we need your help finding these traitors, if you’d climb on that rooftop over there, maybe you can let us know if they’re hiding in the maze nearby.”

      Zaya instead went back to the party to find the beautiful familiar woman he had met earlier to find her waiting by the door.

      “Found you!” Jamila said smiling. “Quite the curious one, are you? Seems you made a friend up there. I’m sure, you might find something worth talking about up in that rooftop!” she pointed.

      Zaya shrugged. “Why does everyone want me up there with that idiot. I was just enjoying good music until it went to shit. Then I saw someone glitching...This is going to sound strange to you, but I might be lucid dreaming, this isn’t real. None of this is real. It’s just my subconscious mind telling me, I am nervous about this interview coming up.”  

      “You speak strangely.” Jamila teased. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.  

      Zaya felt the warmth of her full lips and caressed the red blushing spot on his face. “That felt... real.”

      “What a strange thing to say. Of course, it was real!” Jamila closed her eyes and leaned closer.

      “Hey!” The masked man shouted from above. “Don’t ignore me! You're in danger!”

      He shot another arrow nearly striking the girl when Zaya turned away.

      Jamila flinched and clutched at Zaya's arm.

      The arrowhead ripped the fabric of her skirt. “Lord Zaya! Please, there’s a man up there! You must protect me! You’d better go up there and take this sword.”

      “Where’d you get a sword from?”

      “It was right here in this armory by the door.”

      “Very convenient.” he raised an eyebrow and scratched his chin.

      “If you’d prefer a large staff, a bow and arrow, or a heavier but less agile sword instead, those are options too.” Jamila waved her hands down to gesture to them. “Wooden shields you could wield as a substitute, but then your lighter steel would deal far less damage for his type of armor which means more attacks to drain his stamina and difficulty parrying his attacks. Would you like to learn more?”

      “What?” Zaya furrowed his eyebrow.

      He didn’t grab a thing and stomped his way up the stairway to confront the man antagonizing him. “What the fuck do you want, jackass?”

      The foreboding rain had begun the higher he climbed.

      “Finally!” he said, “It was probably best to have stayed with that Eastern jewel of a woman, amigo. You made a harsh mistake.”. He tossed a long and thin sword at his feet. “Now, you owe me a dual. No other way of going about it now. You’re stuck here with me. Now, pick. It. Up.”

      Zaya tried to return but an invisible force had been preventing him from walking down the stairs. He was indeed stuck and forced into a battle. He looked down to find Jamila had already returned to the party.

      “I’d do what he says if we were you.” Someone in the shadow of the corner said in a benevolent low baritone sounding voice. There were two silhouettes hidden in black shadows watching.

      “Here, pick up the sword with your hand. You swing it to and fro like this. Watch me. Block with this type of motion or select a shield of your choice if you wish. Then, as soon as you get the basics, you can learn to die a slow, painful death, amigo! Do you wish to learn more fighting techniques or continue?”

      Zaya picked it up, and the masked man came rushing.

      As their swords clashed, an orchestra began to play in the background, there were energetic violins and melodramatic pianos melodies. The stranger had been laughing maniacally as he overwhelmed Zaya with his strength. Zaya lost his footing and tumbled backward towards the stairway, but then an invisible force nudged him back again. The universe inclined him to continue.

      “What are you doing, coward? Trying to escape me, after what your father did to mine? I am the rightful ruler of Spain! You are locked in until death do us part, you dellusional fool!”

      “I don’t want to do this!” Zaya shouted.

      “What nonsense is spewing from your cowardly lips?”

      Zaya swung again for a kill, but the stranger parried his move, then came swinging downwards with full force, knocking the weapon from Zaya’s hand down to the bottom of the floor.

      The masked man jabbed the sword into Zaya’s stomach, Zaya hunched his shoulders and anticipated the sensation, but there was none. He opened his eyes to find the world had gone dark. There was a solar eclipse in the sky, and he stared directly at it with no discomfort. After the phenomenon passed, the sun came out again. He found the masked man had been frozen by the will of the men in the corner who waved their hands over to him controlling the masked man like a puppet. Finally, the two mysterious men launched the masked drifter into oblivion into the sky like a pair of merciless Gods.

      “Bravo!” they shouted. "Though we could use better dialogue on the wielding tutorial."

      Zaya trembled picking up the sword again.

      The two men revealed themselves from the shadows to shake his hand.

      "Hey, Isaias. You’re one of our most stubborn quality assurance testers."

      “My name, is John.” said one of them, he had been wearing an 8-bit game character T-shirt under a grey blazer. “I’m your soon-to-be manager.” he chuckled. You can put your sword down haha. This is Fernando, our lead designer for this project." Fernando appeared more laid-back, wearing jeans, flip-flops, and a band T-shirt. “It' just a very detailed simulation, don’t worry we didn’t do anything strange to get you here, nothing invasive at least just sedated you and placed you in an enclosed sensory device for a few hours.”

      “Sorry sir, of course. I thought I was dreaming. This is new VR?”

      “Yes, Isaias, call me John please. And nothing to worry about. Just means Fernando did a good job.”

      “What is up, bro? Nice to meet you.” Fernando shook his hand firmly. “What did you think of all this? It must have been just a total mind-fuck, right?! I remember my first time too, I know that look of both fear and excitement on your face.”

      “Seriously. My heartbeat is just going off the rails.” Isaia said touching his chest.

      “For the record, we are monitoring your vitals, so we would have disconnected you the second there was an excessive heart rate,” added John.

      “So, Isaias. While it’s still fresh in your head. Any thoughts on the girl character?”

      “Oh, yeah. She was perfect, I mean...I really liked her.” he shrugged. “And she kissed me.”

      “Ha. Yeah, I programmed her to be your love interest for the first half of the game. She is a model from Morocco that we hired to do a photogrammetry 3D scan. Her voice is a famous voice actor of course. For anything else that’s off-script or requires pitch corrections then our sound engineering team worked their magic and created an A.I. system to help generate it.”

      “Why did she look like every girl I follow on social media.” 

      “Do you remember that tedious checklist you completed for us when you applied? All of those strange questions we asked you? We made some slight tweaks in her appearance to cater her for you. Similarly, every one of the lucky testers who signed up for this project will have their personalized love interest based on those answers on the questionnaire. We can mod their genders, rig the appearances, and style her however we wish."

      “You did sign the NDA, Isaias, right?”

      “Yes. I remember that.”

      “This is your first time in this world that me and Fernando helped to create. If you’re OK with it, you’ll have plenty more chances to navigate it. We need detailed lists of any bugs and glitches you might find of course, it's all part of the process to deliver a truly immersive and gratifying VR experience. It's hard to fathom yet, but this is groundbreaking work.” said John.

      “I have so many questions.” 

      “We expected so,” 

      “Go ahead!” said Fernando. “I’m excited to hear them!”

      “Was there a main mission?” 

      “Dude! Yes, you were supposed to spend more time at the banquet, we had it so that the King would come down, there was a very dramatic scene where he gets poisoned and La dee la. Shit hits the fan and you’re the hero everyone needs, Jamila was supposed to keep you there, but since you left the palace there was a side mission to change the course of the story. It’s a wild turn of events!”

      “This is like a cinematic fantasy RPG with simulation elements,” John said.

      “You really fucked this up back there though.” Fernando pinched the skin on his forehead. 

      “I’m sorry. It was all just-“

      “No! Don’t be. This is exactly why we surprised you with the simulation, so we can monitor a natural gameplay, so if you broke the game we can tweak it to perfection. You did an incredible job.” John turned to his partner. "Fernando, we need to discuss why the announcer NPC character refused his name though. Was it not in the database?" 

      “Nah, it just made the system glitch a bit. Couldn’t get the vowels right, so it was programmed to ask for a nickname, usually they tend to be simpler. Anyways, Isaias, even indirectly your sanity testing is usable for us. We have a lot of little bugs to fix and we look forward for you to find out more in the next few months.”

      “So that means I’m hired?”

      “Of course.” John smiled. “If you’d have us, of course. If you feel differently, we will still reimburse you for the day’s work. This quality testing job can move at a very frenetic pace, so I know it’s not for everyone..”

      “Thank you!” Zaya felt relieved and took a deep breath. “I accept.”

      “I could not believe you just cold-shouldered that masked guy. We went from subtle to basically the AI was pushing you in other ways to the roof. And, we weren’t banking on him almost shooting Jamila...”

      “Maybe we can work that into the script?” asked John. “But no perma-death. Jamila is essential for the second act, plus she is responsible for the guild’s creation.”

      “It’s not a bad idea, it would get the main character to engage him faster and get the plot moving forward. We’ll note that for the AI programmers.”

      “The grass.. smelled so real. How did you incorporate smell into the simulator?” 

      “Easy,” said Fernando. “New tech we’re partnering on with an independent company. It uses A.I. to correlate with whatever action or item that’s programmed in the game and then it releases the scent into a diffuser. It’s state of the art but a no-shit tech, it was untapped in the industry. I should have created it first. Anyways.” Fernando conjured up a variety of unique items into his hand to show me, roses, pistol ammo, steamed fish, cigarette butts, peanut butter, and detergent amongst other things. “See, they all have a unique convincing smell.”

      “Anyway, Isaias,” said John, extending his arm for another handshake. “We want to thank you again for your hard work. You’ll be waking up in a few minutes now. Tomorrow we’ll schedule a meeting with all the testers to discuss any notes on the usual, programming bugs, potential copyright infringements, graphical hiccups, and the works! Lots of fun stuff!” 

      “Later, dude!” Fernando waved at him while he returned to his chair. “We have four more of these this week. Me and John have a long day ahead of us. Wait.” he returned. He typed on his phone to prompt a new formation of the sky, and he aligned the sun and the moon once again. “You were amazed by this earlier?" Fernando winked. "thought I’d give you another one... in this world, you don’t need to wait twenty years for another solar eclipse, Isaias. Think of the possibilities. We're the creators in this world. We're like Gods in this digital place. This is the kind of beauty that you get when you work with VR.”