Augmented Reality (Doors of the Dreamer, Chapter 1)
No good deed goes unrewarded
Author’s note: For the month of July I am challenging myself to write and post one chapter a day every two days with minimal planning and outlining. As such, the focus for this story is on speed and consistency rather than quality. I am also not allowing myself to edit chapters from previous days with the exception of correcting minor spelling or grammatical mistakes. Without further ado, please enjoy Doors of the Dreamer.
Update: If you are somehow stumbling upon this now, I should warn you that it has no ending and probably never will. I explain here.
David Godwin was lost in his own hometown.
“This way’s no good either.”
“Why not?” Oliver’s voice questioned in his earphones.
“Big fence with a No Trespassing sign.” David sighed. “How much time do I have?”
“Until the dungeon? Twenty minutes.”
David exited the alley. “If I just keep going south I eventually should be able to cut over and go around the construction zone. Right?”
“How would I know? Your city, not mine,” Oliver quipped.
“‘My city,’ like I built the place. Look, downtown is big, and you know how my sense of direction is.”
“Why don’t you just use your GPS app?”
David chuckled. “I am using a GPS app.”
“You know what I meant. The GPS functionality in the game kind of sucks.”
He stopped at a pedestrian crossing, pinching and swiping at his smartphone. His avatar walked in place, apparently eager to get somewhere. The featureless gray boxes surrounding him—meant to represent buildings—offered no help.
“I know, but if I switch to Maps then I can’t see where this stupid dungeon is,” David said.
“You have plenty of time. We should be able to find a party even a few minutes after the countdown ends. Just don’t get distracted by a stray kitten trying to cross the road or something.”
The signal changed and he continued his journey southward. It was a mild spring day with a clear sky and calm breeze, though David paid that little mind.
“After all this, it better be worth it.”
“Trust me, the loot is worth it,” Oliver said.
“You’re sure you and I can party up? I mean, doesn’t that kind of defeat the point of the game?”
“I told you, it’s an event dungeon. They let you play with anyone for these.”
David came to another intersection and looked down the street. One block west, neon traffic cones and yellow tape obstructed his path.
“Great,” he said, checking his phone. “You know, I don’t hear any trucks or machines or anything. Think I could just slip through?”
“Maybe.”
He considered it, frowning. “Didn’t somebody get killed while trespassing because they were playing this game?”
“That was a different game,” Oliver said.
“But it did happen.”
“Yes.”
David continued south for another block. This time, when he reached the intersection and looked right, the road was open. He let out a sigh of relief.
“Good news, Oliver. The package is moving west.”
“Package? Doesn’t that usually refer to an object? You need a cool call sign, like—‘the Eagle is moving west.’”
He didn’t respond to Oliver’s banter. There was a woman near the pedestrian crossing, well-dressed and wearing the most pitiful expression of confusion David had ever seen. The light changed but she didn’t move, instead looking around and absentmindedly rubbing at her watch.
“Excuse me ma’am, do you need any help?”
She turned, a little surprised. She was older, David guessed fifties, and at least two heads shorter than him. He smiled at her, which seemed to calm her somewhat.
“Actually,” she said hesitantly, “I’m looking for a place called Ember and Vine. Are you familiar with it? I know it’s around here but I’m afraid I’m a bit lost.”
David looked around. “That’s on Linwood, isn’t it? Which means…”
He stuck a finger in the air as if testing the wind.
“Thirteen minutes,” a voice chirped in his ear.
“Sorry Oliver, give me a few,” he said into his phone before pulling out his earphones and shoving them in his pocket. The woman started to apologize for interrupting, but David shook his head.
“I don’t know this part of the city as well, but I’m pretty sure Ember and Vine is two or three blocks over that way,” he said, pointing east. “I’ll walk with you, I’m headed that way anyway.”
He checked his phone as they walked, confirming what he already knew—he was moving in the opposite direction of the event dungeon. No matter, thirteen minutes was plenty of time. He exchanged pleasant small talk with the woman. Her name was Lisa. Lisa was in town to meet an old friend whom she had not seen in years. When she asked where David was going, he said, “I’m meeting up with an old friend too. Kind of.”
He glanced at his phone again, this time out of habit.
“What maps app is that?” Lisa asked.
“Oh. This is an AR game, actually.”
She blinked.
“Uh, augmented reality. It’s like…” David scratched his head. “It’s based on your real location. There are monsters and characters and events in the game that you have to go to a certain place to interact with. In the real world, I mean.”
Lisa’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Monster Quest Go!”
“Similar, yeah. This one’s called Doors of the Dreamer, but it’s the same idea.”
“My kids play those games. Always on their phones. They and my husband are way ahead of me when it comes to technology.” She rummaged in her purse and presented an old flip phone with an apologetic smile.
“I think I saw one of those in a museum once,” David said, and she laughed.
They ended up needing to walk another block south. Lisa spotted the restaurant further down the street and, after another round of apologies, thank-yous, and a good-bye, hurried off. David quickly grabbed his earphones.
“Remember what I said about stray kittens?” Oliver said.
“Sorry, thought I muted. How long do I have?”
“Six minutes.”
David smiled. “No good deed goes unrewarded, Oliver.”
“How’s that?”
“The bad news is there’s no way I would reach that dungeon in six minutes. The good news is another one just popped up a block away.”
“Hm. Well you better get moving, I want to check your gear before we start.”
Most dungeons in Doors of the Dreamer were intended to be challenged with a party of 2-4 people. The problem was finding players to party with, as all members needed to be in the same real-world location. As a result, many players simply learned to run dungeons solo. The developer’s solution was event dungeons. These were designed for parties of up to eight players, and allowed in-person and online participants to mix in one party. David, being relatively new to the game, had never tried one before, but Oliver assured him that he could get some respectable loot with minimal effort—the other five players would carry him through. The trouble was finding an entrance; event dungeons opened only once a week for a limited period of time, usually in populous areas.
This week’s dungeon was going to open in three minutes.
“Alright, everything looks good,” Oliver was saying. “We’ll get put into the matchmaking queue automatically when the timer hits zero, and then all you need to do is stay in the back and cast your spells. You know your rotations, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It shouldn’t matter too much but some people are weird about it.”
“Sure you aren’t you one of those people? Remember when we played World of Battlecraft?”
Oliver was quiet for a moment. “That was a long time ago.”
David laughed. “Yes it was. Hey, we’re doing a raid after this, right?”
Raids were the pinnacle of risk and reward in Doors of the Dreamer. They all but required a team of four players armed to the teeth with endgame equipment. Few had attempted one, and even fewer had succeeded.
“Tell you what, you get a legendary staff from this dungeon and I’ll drive over there tonight and we can run a raid,” Oliver said.
“Easy. What’s the drop rate, five percent?”
“Try 1 in 1000.”
“Like I said, easy.”
Oliver said nothing, and David laughed again. Two minutes left.
“I’m going to hit the restroom,” Oliver said.
“Good idea.”
“Don’t wander too far. If you leave the dungeon radius you’ll get kicked out of the party.”
“Wander? Me? Never.”
The dungeon was planted directly on top of Zenith Film Center—David couldn’t remember there being a movie theater in this area, so it must have been fairly new. He swung open the door and realized he was humming some tune. How long had it been since he last talked to Oliver? He was very much looking forward to playing games with him again and joking about old times.
Inside, there was a set of stairs leading to the lobby. The place was completely empty. No one at the counter, no one waiting in line for popcorn, no one at all. David stopped humming. His footsteps sounded suspiciously loud. Looking for the toilets, he ducked down a hallway that seemed promising.
There were two theaters on his right and restrooms on his left. Silence followed him, clung to him like thick snow. There was a ringing in his ears and a murmur in the back of his skull. He walked toward the men’s room, and as he did, he became aware that there was something in the theater behind him. The knowledge came to him unprompted, unwittingly, like a whisper on the wind. But there was no wind. The air was stale and heavy.
He pulled his phone close to his mouth and said softly, “Oliver, are you there?”
No response. David looked at the screen, and his eyes widened. There was no matchmaking queue, no party, no timer, and no event dungeon at all. His avatar ran in place inside the gray box that was Zenith Film Center—alone. He checked his call with Oliver. It was still ongoing, but there was no sound from the other side. How many minutes had passed? Shouldn’t he be back by now?
David turned. He felt he had no other choice. He had to know what was in there. Why? he wondered briefly, but his feet carried him nonetheless.
He peered inside. The lights were on, the projector was off, the seats were empty, and at the front of the room was a door.
It was a freestanding door, like a prop one might use in a play, though it had no visible base or supports at all, as if it was somehow embedded in the floor. It was painted a deep black. As David slowly walked down the steps, the ringing in his ears grew more violent.
He approached the door and touched it. It was slightly warm. His hand fell to the handle. It was a door to nowhere. He was confused by his own hesitation. It was a door to… nowhere. He turned the handle and pushed—
He spun around. There was a sound. A jingle of some kind. But no one was there. He ripped one earphone free and listened. Then, perhaps too late, he realized his mistake. The sound had not come from inside the room. He looked at his phone.
There was a monster inside Zenith Film Center.