The Net Warriors

By Lindsey R Hall

Nic Granger didn't plan to save the world. He just wanted to play The Three Kings of Orr online and defeat the Deceiver. The Deceiver had other ideas. As the land of Orr's nastiest villain, he had escaped into the real world some weeks before when the man who invented inter reality chips actually made one work.

When Nic finds himself in Orr, an amazing journey begins through time, space, the Internet and the world of his own street. With the help his best friend Frog, younger sister Emily, the knight Riddith and Princess Rhea, The Net Warriors are born. They are joined by a host of other characters including Bruce, a dragon with appallingly smelly breath and Prefix, a mace with the character of a playful puppy. As for the hackers, who is black hat and who is white?

Follow their adventures to the End of Time as they are captured by the Hellriders, battle with the headless horsemen, and try to find the Deceiver before he finds them. Can they put the worlds of reality and inter-reality back to how they should be?

A review by Suzanne Coleburn, Reader To Reader Reviews

If you are a lover of virtual reality games you are going to love THE NET
WARRIORS. This enticing story begins when a Japanese man who designed Dec
chips for digital entertainment and home control centers with the latest
computer technology in the beginning of the 21st Century changed things in
the world one day when he decided to change things with his game "The Three
Kings of Orr." The game was complex, net based and linked to a web ring,
rather than DVD or disc based and what happens next is wild and wooly.
Katana assumed the part of the Wise King and while in the game he activated
his mortal enemy, the Deceiver who was a shrewd and unsavory character who
could change into human and animals at will. Before he knows it Katana is
dissolved into the game and disappears.

The special IR chip that Kantana designed was installed in a DEC set and
sent to the Granger family in a small country town in England where a young
14 year old boy named Nic who has a copy of "The Three Kings of Orr"
receives a special message of help on his monitor screen. Nic assumes the
persona of the Wise King of Orr and types the words in the message and finds
himself blending into the screen and into the game. What a blast. This fast
paced story rockets into the fantasy world of Orr and into the reality of
life in England, America and Australia as the good guys and the baddies come
together trying to save the world from the Deceiver.

Lindsey Hall does a bang up job of keeping his readers glued to the screen
finding out what is going to happen next. A jolly good story. Don't miss
it!

Suzanne Coleburn, Reader To Reader Reviews
www.readertoreader.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 27, 2006
• ISBN: 9781466944220

Lindsey R Hall

Lindsey Hall grew up in Kent and Hampshire just as the digital revolution was starting to happen. The original idea of Computecnic was sparked by playing Space Invaders as a teenager and wondering what would happen if the little yellow men could get out. He is married with two grown children and lives near Bristol in England.  He has just started working on the next book in the Net Warriors series. Although computers held his fascination, people were always more interesting, and he started an accidental career in nursing in 1981. However, he never forgot the idea. With the huge development of the internet at the turn of the century and a love of writing, he knew the time was right to commit the idea to paper. Unfortunately, at the time, no-one was interested, and it took another 15 years for the world to change enough.

Book preview

Chapter 1

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How the world changed

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Worlds change in seconds. The events that link our lives happen in a very short space of time, despite their sometimes tremendous and long lasting effects. Tonight was one of those nights and was a change brought about by one man. The change was intentional, as this man had dreams of power beyond the dreams of most. However, it did not happen in the way it was intended and the world would never be quite the same place again. This man invented Dec chips, an ordinary enough job in an ordinary enough business at the beginning of the 21st century. But this man had invented a chip that would challenge the fabric of our existence. This man was Katana Sen.

Katana was Japanese. He was hard and wiry with jet black ruffled hair and weasel-like eyes. He trained daily in martial arts and had a body as agile as a gazelle. He also had a mind as devious as a snake and was known as one by his colleagues by whom he was not generally liked. He slipped through the gates of the factory where he worked in an ordinary Japanese city. He flashed his pass to the security guard just inside the entrance to the square black glass office block that fronted the factory complex. It was late. Most other employees had gone home. Katana took the lift to the third and top floor. As the lift stopped, its doors slid open. Katana exited and walked to the right. He entered his office 20 yards along the spacious corridor and sat at his desk. He opened the top right hand drawer and took out a small wooden case, about 15cms long and 10cms deep. He reached into his pocket, took out a key and unlocked it. There were eight small square spaces, set into grey velvet padding. Seven of them were empty. The eighth contained the last and most advanced of the microchips that he had been secretly working on. It glowed slightly as if it was alive and in a strange way, it was. He moved the monitor of his Desktop PC, a P20 Superdec Design Centre, to one side and undid the screws of the casing, which he then removed. He took a small torch from his pocket and started scanning the intricate workings of his hard drive and motherboard. He located the socket he was looking for and inserted the glowing chip. He then replaced the case, placed the monitor back on top and switched on both unit and monitor. He exited to the operating system and typed;

D\irchip\install

The small speakers at the side of the monitor gave a waft of sound and a swirling green screen with the words installed glowed before Katana’s eyes. He talked and clicked his way through a series of programmes to a private file. He clicked on a small spider like icon, which brought a look-up table. There were two words, Files and Games. Katana clicked on Games. A further look-up table revealed a list of exotically named games. Katana scrolled the mouse to the words The Three Kings of Orr. He double clicked and instantly a rolling green landscape was before him.

The game was a complex one, net based and linked to a web ring, rather than DVD or disc based. It was an early version which you could log on to and either play alone or against a maximum of three other players who could be anywhere in the world. It had some rather nasty characters against whom battled three kings in a contest for supremacy over the land of Orr. The kings would catch you out, as they were each wise, foolish and evil. The idea was that the player should assume the character of the wise king and triumph over the others by a series of 3 dimensional physical battles, complex decisions and guesswork. It was a game Katana had played many times, having hacked into it some months before to isolate it so that only he could play without the rest of the world butting in. Katana effortlessly assumed the character of the Wise King and outwitted the foolish and evil kings. He had programmed out the other battles and contests as this was not really a game to Katana but something much more important. It was his testing ground for prototype IR chips. Only one thing stood between him and the power he sought. The Deceiver.

The Deceiver was a shrewd and unsavoury character, much to Katana’s taste and could change from his human image, who looked not unlike Katana but taller and with mad black angular hair, into a variety of animals. Katana walked the wise king around the last of his castles and into a wooded valley. Suddenly the Deceiver was in front of him in his human form. He was armed with a curved sword that projected out from a small handle. Katana’s normal move would have been to jump right with the joy stick and verbal commands enabling a look-up table of challenges giving him a couple of seconds to think. However this was no ordinary evening and no ordinary game. Katana jumped left and pressed Esc. In the top right hand corner a clock ticked away 10 seconds and flashed alarmingly. Underneath it a box with cursor flashing eagerly awaited. Katana was sweating. His heart pounded and he nervously flexed his fingers above the keyboard. In the period of 10 seconds he typed;

IR\ activate

What happened next, was not quite what Katana had in mind. In an animated and angular world changing second the Deceiver projected himself through Katana’s Dec screen and into his office. The Deceiver regarded Katana as the Wise King, his mortal enemy, and it was a swift leap that got Katana out of the way to the other side of his desk. Katana was not so lucky next time. In a subsequent world changing second the Deceiver had Katana pinned against the wall, sword drawn. In a third second, that sword pierced Katana’s stomach. In a fourth, he typed a brief phrase into the keyboard. In a fifth, the Deceiver picked up Katana and with his considerable strength, threw him towards his Dec. Instead of crashing into the monitor screen, Katana dissolved into a mass of digital information and disappeared. The Deceiver picked up his sword, turned and ran.

Katana’s colleagues had always regarded him with suspicion but even they were surprised at the state of his empty office at eight o’clock the following morning. There was evidence of a struggle, a few bloodstains but nothing missing. His Dec was on with the whirling samurai sword screen saver but there was no sign of Katana.

The police were eventually called and promptly placed Katana’s Dec and possessions into large plastic bags and took them away. A couple of weeks later when they had revealed nothing to a lot of police Dec phobics, other than a few fingerprints of Katana and his colleagues, they returned it to the factory. Nobody quite knew what to do with it, so it sat on a shelf at the back of what was now someone else’s office. Three weeks later, superstition got the better of some of the employees who thought it better off in a skip outside.

However, just before this, another employee entered the room in which the PC was stored and proceeded to tell the rest of the room that the factory had completely run out of what it termed D chips. It was the end of the day, production quotas were particularly tight and a Dec factory with no D chips was like a car factory with no wheels.

‘Is that spare?’ he asked. ‘Its Katana’s PC,’ came a reply

‘ Well if no one is using it, it must have a D chip, if not 3 or 4 knowing what Katana got up to.’ ‘You’re on your own mate,’ said the most superstitious of the gang of 5 more than ready to junk Katana’s PC. ‘You’ve got 10 minutes and that’s going in the skip.’ They walked out.

Yori Ono was about as far removed from Katana as you could get, an ordinary unassuming Japanese factoryworker. He was a big man for a Japanese and a little overweight but with a kind and friendly face. He shuffled in, dressed in the standard factory issue green overalls and proceeded to unscrew the desktop case and remove 4 D chips. The D Chips are installed in a row and next to the 4th was a chip that looked very similar to the others but glowed slightly. Yori removed that as well and returned to his workbench 2 minutes before his superstitious colleagues came back into the room, picked up Katana’s machine and junked it.

Yori’s workbench was like 150 other workbenches in the factory. In order to finish the last five jobs of his shift, he needed 5 D chips. He installed the four ordinary chips from Katana’s machine and quizzically looked at the fifth. He picked it up and on the last motherboard of the day attached the IR chip. At the start of the next shift, the board was taken and installed into a tower case of an S8 MiniDec, which was shipped halfway round the world to a store in a small country town in England. DECS (Digital Entertainment and (Home) Control (Centres)) were the latest in computer technology and were all the rage. They ran your house if it was new, or you installed them if it was not. As well as all the usual word processing, games, spreadsheets and Internet access packages, they channelled television and radio to screens, speakers and control units situated around your house. You could even programme them to heat your water.

This particular MiniDec was bought by the Granger family, who used it for the normal things families used Decs for. They wrote letters, they drew pictures, they played games and they surfed the net. They wired their stereo speakers into it as well as the upstairs television in Mr and Mrs Grangers bedroom. Their daughter Emily did her homework, and their son Nicholas avoided his. The Grangers were not aware they were part of the aftermath of world change but their son was about to find out something very extraordinary indeed.

Chapter 2

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Wednesday 4th August

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It is a well-known fact amongst boys of 14 years old, that accompanying your mother shopping is boring. It is even more boring on hot summer days when your mother has dragged you round 4 shops in order that she can buy a dress for a summer party. It is even more boring than that, when it is 3 days after your birthday and you have just spent £35 of a hard earned gift from Grandma on Net Games 21 and all you want to do is play. Nicholas liked to think of himself as cool. Having a mother who was into appearances, he could look cool. He was slightly less than average height with blonde hair though with a complexion a bit too pale for cool, as he resembled a strawbery after too much sun. But he had a cool pair of sunglasses, also bought with birthday money and a new robe for karate lessons. Nic was good at karate, which helped his popularity and coolness especially with an awakening interest in girls. But, at this precise moment, he was not cool. He was hot and bored and fidgeted relentlessly as his mother pranced around the shop parading herself in front of numerous shopkeepers, a mirror and Emily who prefered the blue one with the pink flowers from the previous shop.

Emily was Nic’s sister, two and a bit years younger, which made her not quite 12. Unfortunately for Nic, his awakening interest in girls had awakened the realisation that they grow much earlier than boys and he knew, though he would never admit it, that she was almost his equal and as sharp as his mother. She was also blonde with curls that she was desperately trying to grow out of surrounding a slightly angular face and piercing blue eyes. Like Nic, she was slightly shorter than she would have liked but not to be messed with because of it.

Nic fidgeted again on the imitation leather chairs that graced the shop entirely for the purpose of appearances and, Nic thought, were like sitting on a hot plastic floor.

‘Come on mum,’ he said impatiently, ‘that’s the 34th dress you have tried on this morning!’ It was actually the seventh but being a boy of 14 years old, Nic had lost count at 3 and was occasionally prone to gross exaggeration.

His stick like mother ruffled his blonde hair, something he always hated, brushed her own sharp curls behind her ears and took the plunge. Plastic money changed hands and she was at last the not so proud owner of 2 dresses, neither of which she liked and wouldsubsequently return when she bought a third in about 2 weeks time. Nic was just relieved to go. The short drive home was just as hot and horrible as any of the clothes shops but when at last they arrived, Nic leapt from the rear of the car and almost barged the front door downbefore his mother had opened it. It was a short bound upstairs to the Dec in the back bedroom.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ cried up his mother.

‘Can I play on the Dec please mum?’

‘Yes, but lunch will be 10 minutes so don’t get stuck intoanything,’ came the reply.

The Grangers lived at No 14 Hay Gardens. It was a nice house, in a nice road. It wasn’t new, but then it wasn’t particularly old either. It had all the things houses usually have and because it wasn’t new and hadn’t been built on an area of land the size of a stamp with five others, had a reasonable chunk of garden. Nic and Emily had their own bedrooms and of course their parents had theirs. The Dec, which did all the computer bits we’re used to today, was situated in the spare bedroom. It was this room into which Nic rushed and switched the console on. He then proceeded to rip open the packaging, taking out the shiny DVD that was Netgames 21. With console now ready to go, Nic put the disc in the DVD drive. It whirred into life and weird indecipherable graphics sprayed across the screen before settling to a lookup table. Nic clicked on list and up came a list of games. He scrolled up and down with the mouse deciding on what to choose, which one to play, which one looked the most enticing. ‘Try the Three Kings of Orr,’ said Emily who was standing beside him. Emily was into princesses and thought a game with kings might have a princess. ‘No, that looks boring,’ grunted Nic who was far more interested in Deathscape or Dragon Warrior at the bottom of the list.

‘Try the Three Kings, I want the Kings,’ insisted Emily whose knowledge of the new Dec and Decs in general Nic had to admit, was every bit as good as his, but whose taste in games was rather different.

Before he realised, she had leant over, put her hand on top of his and managed to double click on The Three Kings of Orr. It installed the game. Nick growled his annoyance at his sister and was just about to find a way to exit the game when a message flashed on the screen.

help! move to the bridge of angels, then j.u.m.p.

‘What does that mean?’ said Emily. ‘How do I know?’

‘Well you’ll have to play the game then.’ Nic scrolled to the top of the screen to find an exit command but couldn’t. He clicked the right mouse button in annoyance, once, then twice but nothing happened. There seemed to be no way to get out. Hehit the escape key. Nothing happened. The message faded but after a couple of seconds returned.

help! move to the bridge of angels, then j.u.m.p.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ he shouted to Emily but she was already running down the stairs to answer the call of her mother, who said that sandwiches were on the table.

Nic’s father who liked to think of himself as a technically minded man, had a way with technical things. His motto was that if all else fails read the instructions. Nic was of the same ilk. And as he could not make any combinations of keys or mouse buttons or verbal commands allow him to exit the game, he looked amongst the discarded packaging for some information. He found a leaflet that provided some very basic instructions for The Three Kings of Orr and despite his mothers persistent calling had a brief look. It appeared you switched on, you played the game or you got out. There were no messages about going to the Bridge of Angels and pressing j.u.m.p. Nic finally gave into his mother’s cries and went downstairs switching off the Dec console off as he left the room.

He ate his sandwich at a speed that was even quick for him and shot back upstairs again. He turned the Dec on expecting the scan disc eror message. Instead he was met by the same message flashing on and off the screen.

help! move to the bridge of angels, then j.u.m.p.

Another fruitless and random combination of keys and mouse button pressing failed to exit him so with nothing else left to do he clicked on play.

The message left the screen and he was in the game. He thought about exiting but decided to continue. He still could not have got out if he wanted to. Anyway, curiosity had got the better of him. There was a strange message on this game that wasn’t in the instructions and ‘help’-what did that mean? This was not the way of Dec games. Nic scanned the green landscape before him and made his choice from the Three Kings in front of him. He unknowingly assumed the persona of the foolish king and was soon defeated by a rabbit who sliced him neatly in two. The game ended but the same message returned to the screen. He had another look at the instruction leaflet and read the information about the game a little more slowly. There was still no mention of any message and puzzled, he decided to play again, not knowing that was his only option.

He assumed the persona of the Wise King this time and found himself in a castle. He was quickly besieged by aswarm of bats but having learnt a number of other skills on previous games, he managed to escape to a long path. He was approached by a serf with a three pointed coloured hat and red cloak who gave him choices. Bridge, valley, sea or sky. ‘Bridge of angels’ he thought. He chose Bridge.

He was allowed to pass but not before the serf had lopped the heads off three winged lions that jumped at him from the left. With 150 points he moved on. He proceeded