Nymphania

By Jasmin Reed

Leanne Li prepares for a big day at DreamReal where she and her team are to test out their new virtual reality game: Nymphania - where fantasies are realized and adventure is guaranteed.

 

When the team go into Nymphania, things soon start to go wrong and they find themselves trapped in the game encountering a Warrior female race, dark elves, vicious wolven and monsters created by their own hand.

 

The race is on to escape the virtual dream world and confront their enemies; in Nymphania as well as a traitor from within their own company.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bonafide Media
• Release date: Jun 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201088682

Book preview

Chapter 1

Leanne always daydreamed like a schoolgirl in a maths class. This Monday morning was no exception. The sun sliced through Leanne’s blinds and warmed the bleak expression on her face.

The familiar chime sound disrupted her dream. She opened her eyes begrudgingly. On the screen of her laptop was yet another message, but this time it was from a new sender. Harry Wendel, 28 years old and looking for romance.

Hi Leanne,

Just spotted you on here and wanted to introduce myself.

Can we chat sometime? I’m free in the evenings from 7 – 10pm if you fancy it.

Thanks and take care.

Harry.

Leanne groaned when she saw his picture. He was balding and clearly overweight, not her type, just like every other guy who had been in touch so far. She had standards, not that her standards were high. Overweight men just didn’t do anything for her.

Maybe she had been too spoiled in her last relationship, she thought as she closed the message and scanned her inbox. There were several other new messages waiting to be read. She contemplated reading them but then quickly decided against it, she had wasted enough time already. Did she even want another relationship or was she simply on the rebound? Shaking her head, she leaned back in her chair, the hinges squeaking, causing her to wince in annoyance.

Leanne sighed again, of all the days why was she feeling like this today? Today would be the end result of three years of hard work. Cradling the warm mug of herbal tea in her hands, she breathed in the potent, fresh scent and smiled for a moment, enjoying the memories it stirred.

China was her mother’s country but Leanne still held it close to her heart. The scent of the Chinese herbs contained within the tea she drank three times daily always brought back those jasmine scented memories. It was a much-needed comfort to her as she took little sips and closed her eyes.

She remembered visiting Beijing as a little girl and being shocked at how crammed full of people the streets and roads were. She had cried at first, not used to such confined spaces, amidst the heaving masses seemingly content with never having more than a foot of breathing space to call their own.

Even at the fragile age of just 7 years old she was beginning to show the character traits her mother possessed in abundance and the tears hadn’t lasted. Those four weeks immersed in the heaving metropolis of Beijing had squeezed out the childish weakness and replaced it with an inner strength borne both out of necessity and her mother’s genes. Her mother had not just ‘moved’ to America, she had fled, fully pregnant with Leanne. She sipped the tea, savoring its bitter yet flavorsome quality.

She was glad that her mother had been forced to give birth to her in America and in awe of her mother’s ‘never-say-die’ attitude when it came to giving Leanne a chance at life. China’s one-child policy had dictated her future.

The phone began to ring. The electronic purr bringing her out of her thought playground momentarily. She glanced at the caller I.D and saw it was Mike and decided to ignore it. She would have to speak to him soon enough at work. Today was a big day at DreamReal Corp and she was one of the star players on the team, responsible for developing the characters, their behavior, emotions and human-like qualities.

DreamReal Corp’s latest gaming platform was about to be unleashed upon the world, that’s if it made it through this final set of testing. Virtual reality meets Second Life that was what Professor Blake had called it.

Yes, in part, it was just that, but this was far more ambitious and Leanne had put thousands of hours of blood, sweat and tears into the project. Not only would people play as a character in the world, they would ‘be’ the character in a realistic dreamlike environment. Fully plugged into the system and integrated in such a way as to be no longer aware of the ‘real’ world.

Leanne placed her mug on the DreamReal coaster that sat by her keyboard, exactly 10 inches to the left of it, everything was precision-like with Leanne – everything. It had to be, if her mother had taught her one thing, it was that the Chinese were extremely hard working, clinical, thorough and relentless in their pursuit of progress.

She was to be part of the next generation – the generation of American-Asians that were showing their true grit especially where technology was concerned. Leanne was no exception and constantly strived to perfect herself in every way, even her body was a well honed and oiled piece of machinery that was every bit a temple to her.

Looking at her watch, she saw that it was almost 8am, time to log off and get to work.

Leanne ignored the bleeping of another message and proceeded to sign out, before logging off her computer. To hell with the dating sites anyway! Who was she kidding? Did she really think a stranger with whom she had nothing in common would really add to her life anyway? No, she knew it was pointless, but still.

She gulped down the last of the tea, pushed herself off the huge leather recliner and headed for the kitchen. She sighed as she walked; the vestiges of her breakup with Mike still very much lingering at the forefront of her consciousness.

Dammit, get outta my head!

She washed the mug, dried it and placed it upon its own hook hanging over the breakfast bar with all the others. Nothing was out of place in her home. ‘A cluttered home is a cluttered mind,’ that was her motto. One of many…

Walking to the mirror in the hallway for one last check, she looked at herself just a little longer than usual. Her long ebony black hair was pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail that actually accentuated her long elegantly curved neck. She adjusted her crisp white blouse and black knee-length skirt as she always did, but this morning her gaze lingered on her face.

For someone on the threshold of thirty, Leanne had a pretty decent complexion with very few lines, however this morning, her forehead was worryingly creased and Leanne shook her head at the irony. Here she was worrying about worry lines, but it wasn’t the lines themselves that bothered her, it was the reason behind them – the cause.

Shrugging, she turned away from the mirror, gathered up her keys and kissed the picture of her mother she had placed on a little ornate table beside the front door not long after her death two years earlier. Whenever she left home and returned, she kissed the picture and remembered her, as she had been. The mother of Leanne’s youth, robust and steadfast, unremitting in the face of adversity. So much so that nothing kept her from having and raising Leanne to be the next torchbearer for the Li family.

The front door clicked firmly shut as she hopped down the three steps that lead up to her model 3 bed semi-detached house. All the houses here were neat tidy and identical. Her car alarm flashed a greeting as she pushed the button and swung elegantly on to the front seat, sighing softly as she contemplated the morning ahead. No doubt she would be forced to see ‘him’ and no doubt he would be his usual charming self, but she wouldn’t let him spoil it. Today was too important.

The streets were coming alive as other commuters from the neighborhood left their houses en-masse and climbed into their automobiles, heading for their various offices. She watched the ritual impatiently, waiting for a gap in the traffic then gunned the gas and pulled out quickly as a neighbour let her out, the latest album by The Foals blasting at full volume from her stereo.

As she sped down the highway, she thought ahead to the testing phase of the project and gave silent thanks that she would be able to lose herself in that. It was guaranteed that life was going to get a little more interesting for a while.

Leanne tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she approached the huge wire perimeter fence that surrounded the extensive DreamReal Corp building, its’ hulking silver presence glinting in the fierce Texan sun.

Chapter 2

Getting into work was never easy, to look a the place from the outside you’d think she was entering some military base, but then there was big money involved in the computer industry and the bosses liked to keep their secrets safe. Leanne flipped out her identification as she pulled up to the security gates and fixed a beam on her face as she lowered her window. It was the same practiced smile she delivered each morning.

Morning, Miss Li, how ya doin’ on this fine day? The security guard was in his late fifties with swept back gray hair and creases on his face that said he laughed too much.

Not bad, thanks Matt. Yourself? Leanne replied, handing over her I.D card at him for the ritual scan. The procedure had to be endured every morning.

Ah ya know, pretty good. Got a vacation coming up next week, he smirked barely hiding the smugness on his face. He had already activated the gate, which began to slowly rise upwards.

Lucky you! Leanne pouted, Go easy on the liquor won’t you? She drove off not giving him a chance to respond but heard his laugh disappear behind her as she drove through the gate.

Pulling into her parking space in the dimly lit underground parking lot of DreamReal Corp, Leanne switched off the engine and sat, unmoving for a moment.

She thought about taking a break. If all went well with the day’s final tests, it would be the opportune moment to request some leave. Leanne checked herself in the mirror, and was a little perturbed by the dark shadows under her eyes, exaggerated by the murky darkness within her car. It wasn’t just the lack of light though, she really was living on a knife-edge these days, and her break up with Mike had been the catalyst – she was sure of it.

She checked her watch, 08:23 – she was almost late. That was unlike her and she didn’t like it. Leanne Li was never late!

Maybe just this once … she thought as she gathered up her briefcase, locked her car and made her way to the elevator.

It was time to go to work. No more self-pity she told herself before pushing the button that would take her up into the heart of DreamReal Corp. The lift didn’t respond and then she cursed to herself, rummaging through her bag for a secondary security pass. The company took security very seriously. Corporate spies had been known to try and infiltrate their premises and the board had acted, bringing in extra measures in the previous few months.

She swiped the card and the evaluator doors sprang open with an affirmative electronic beep. A small voice welcomed her as she stepped through the doors:

Good morning, Miss Li and welcome to DreamReal Corp, the future supplier of humanity’s dreams. We hope you have a wonderful day!

Leanne mumbled a return greeting, Good morning, Sally. The floor numbers spun by at speed on the digital monitor before slowing down and stopping on the 33rd.

The doors opened silently and Leanne stepped out into the familiar reception area. Curvy green and red sofas along the left hand side, surrounded by large cardboard cut-outs of various strange creations, gave the whole room a fantasy feel. She smiled at Julie the receptionist, a bit too cute and a bit too blonde, and strolled along the center aisle. This was where the main body of the workers were, the code monkeys. Nodding and politely returning greetings from several colleagues busy tapping at keys she headed towards her office. Either side there was an expansively arranged sea of partitioned workstations, surrounded on each side by separate offices that had blinds drawn as if those on the outside weren’t privy to what went on in there. As the leader of the team responsible for developing character artificial intelligence and behavior, Leanne was grateful for her open quiet space this morning.

The office was pretty much already in full work-mode. DreamReal Corp was a highly reputable leader in the gaming and computer industry who only employed the very best.

Leanne stopped at the coffee machine and waited behind two men as they punched in their orders and waited, chatting as they did so, their voices animated. Leanne stood right behind them, listened intently.

… This is it, what we’ve been working toward for three long years, I can barely believe it.

Tell me about it, I can’t wait. I got a good feeling about this one.

Yeah, after the last debacle, surely they’ve ironed out the creases now.

Damn well better have. My buddies have been bugging me about when it’s gonna be released for two years now!

They laughed and moved on, and Leanne watched them, nodding. She too had been impatiently waiting to get the game to the next level. She pushed the button for a double espresso hoping the extra caffeine would bear her in good stead for the testing phase. She could hardly wait – she would finally get to venture into the game world that she had helped create, at least as far as the behavior traits of the characters and computer A.I went.

As much as possible, Leanne had programmed character traits that she found desirable in people. Traits that would make the world a better place, should they have been more in abundance. Traits like: ambition, creativity, courage, honor, discipline and then the softer more human traits like kindness, selflessness, moral fiber, and so on. Of course the game had to be balanced and some of the darker traits of human characteristics also had to be included, otherwise where was the conflict and the drama going to come from?

If all had gone well, the endless hours spent tweaking the A.I throughout the night most nights for the last three years had paid off. She would find out soon enough.

She took her coffee from the machine, cradling it against her chest and headed to her office at the end of the bustling room that sounded with the incessant tapping of keyboards. Huge monitors dominated the walls, displaying different areas of the game’s landscapes. There were several 3D scanners and printers all in use. Models of characters were still being scanned into the network even at this late stage, the computers analyzing the real-world objects and collecting data on its shape and appearance and storing it onto the vast servers that silently hummed a floor below. An endless cacophony of noise, almost like an orchestra as the world no doubt prepared itself for the emergence of one of the most anticipated user immersive games ever created.

Leanne reached the door to her office and pushed it open with her free hand, gently so as not to spill the drink. The sight that greeted her caused her to almost drop her coffee on the floor and she inhaled sharply.

Mike Lewin sat nonchalantly in Leanne’s chair, slouched in it like an arrogant teenager, a sly grin spread across his face. As always Mike’s appearance was immaculate, his Giorgio Armani shirt tight across his muscular frame, his square jaw giving him a George Clooney look, reeking of arrogant confidence. If anyone in DreamReal looked his or her part it was him. As the game coder and resident I.T brains behind the game development, he held quite an established, respected position. Leanne left the door open as she entered, hoping to avoid a discussion with him. Mike was the last person she wanted to see.

He leaned forward in the chair and placed his elbows on the desk top, his chin resting on his slender fingers as he watched her, eyes twinkling mischievously.

Leanne dropped her bag onto the leather sofa across from her huge mahogany desk, her pride and joy and a place in which she had spent many an hour, working hard. A place now being invaded by the man she had tried so hard to wipe from her memory for the last month, but he wouldn’t budge and she knew it.

Good morning Leanne, you ready for the big day? Mike asked her, a smile playing across his thick lips, she knew that look all too well. He was here to get under her skin.

I called this morning but you didn’t pick up, he said, as if suggesting she was a naughty girl.

Leanne sighed, and looked up to the heavens. Mike, what are you doing in my office?

Oh come on, Lea, he said raising his hands in a gesture that suggested innocence but she knew better. I know how important today is to you and I just wanted to wish you good luck. That’s all. The glint in his green eyes, told her otherwise. Mike always had been like a bad stain, he just wouldn’t budge even when he knew he was wrong; the stubbornness of the man was intolerable.

Breaking up with him hadn’t been easy but Leanne had endured his controlling ways for far too long. Once they had enjoyed something special,