We walked through an area that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Berlin Wall during WWII, through another area that had HOLOGRAPHIC LANDMINES (I was so freaked out when I saw that explosion hit Mike) before passing through another place with HOLOGRAPHIC MISSILES. They were really having a field day with the holograms, as the holographic guards with holographic AK-47s shooting holographic bullets at holographic escapees showed. It… just… I mean, when did they even develop this kind of thing? It was so bloody over the top that I wouldn’t be surprised if they released ARMOURED TYRANNOSAURUSES with LASER CANNONS.

It was strange. We appeared to be staring at just an ordinary part of the fence, but you could see the barbed wire and guard posts all around it and inside it. And on it. It… was somewhat menacing.
“Sorry about the bleakness of it. We’ve… had to gain a certain reputation to continue to be approved by the government,” Melissa loudly said, her eyes blaring with a fire in them I hadn’t seen before. I looked around, and realised there must have other buses with infectees on them - it was a Monday, after all. The people who came over the weekend must’ve had to wait until today - a Monday - before they could come. What surprised me the most was the number of familiar faces there - fortunately, no-one from my family, but assorted school…associates. What was surprising was how easily I recognized who they used to be, even when they had changed so much. I don’t really know how. The hair colour and basic body structure helped, but I kinda just knew who they were. Unsurprisingly, Gary Fletcher was among them, although he was now a sullen, thin girl. A few other classmates whose names I don’t remember, including the daisy guy, a couple of bullies I knew, four girls (well, guys now) who I didn’t really have much connection with. Also, there was one brunette girl there who puzzled me. She was scanning the other kids here, much like I was, but when she came to me, she actually did a double take before turning away hurriedly and blushing. It was odd, to say the least.
“Hey… Mike?” I asked, looking at my friend.
“Yeah?”
“See that brown-haired girl over there?” I said, pointing.
“Um, yeah. What about her?”
“I… think she somehow recognized me.”
“How the hell could she recognize you? I don’t even recognize you!”
“I dunno!” I said, “Maybe she saw that picture that Feaura put up on the guild site!”
“… you think so?”
“I don’t know!”
“Please - quiet down, children!” Melissa said, over the hubbub that had risen. “Just follow me through here.”
Melissa fumbled in her pocket for a while before pulling out a big, red, button on an exaggerated remote. It was actually kinda funny, to be honest. She pressed the button, and the fence… er, it KINDA exploded. It more just went up in flame and kinda disappeared.
“This is the student entrance. This part of the fence is actually a hologram - you can walk through it fine, but… it’s somewhat more entertaining to blow it up when you enter. I, er, personally use it as a bit of stress relief. The other students have already passed through here. Now, if you could continue to follow me…”
We walked through an area that wouldn’t have looked out of place at the Berlin Wall during WWII, through another area that had HOLOGRAPHIC LANDMINES (I was so freaked out when I saw that explosion hit Mike) before passing through another place with HOLOGRAPHIC MISSILES. They were really having a field day with the holograms, as the holographic guards with holographic AK-47s shooting holographic bullets at holographic escapees showed. It… just… I mean, when did they even develop this kind of thing? It was so bloody over the top that I wouldn’t be surprised if they released ARMOURED TYRANNOSAURUSES with LASER CANNONS.
Eventually we made it to a huge, metal door. Melissa pulled out the remote again, and this time the door shuddered slowly open. When the Star Wars droidy things rolled out and started shooting lasers, she hit the button again and they disappeared - this was a really diverse remote for only one button. More doors, more droidy things, more hologuards…
“This is the school.”
Okay. This room will take a bit of explaining, but this is what it looked like.
In one of the doctor who episodes, those weird cat-nun-nurse-people are running a hospital where they have cures for everything, which they learn from studying people who have been infected with every disease. There’s a huge room with a whole load of levels with pods that people go in.
Then think of The Matrix - with all the sleeping (dreaming? Matrixing?) people in THEIR pods, lying down, sleeping and with plugs sticking into them. Fortunately, there weren’t any plugs here, just little electrodes attached to their heads. Also, these people had clothes on, the pods had some kinda gel at the bottom which actually looked really comfy, the tops were open, and the people in them were smiling. It - in short - looked like a kinda human incubator.
“In co-operation with Xianking Studious in Korea, we are proud to present the latest in education technology. A coalition between scientists has found a way to direct the learning directly at long-term memory while the user is comatose, while keeping the conscious mind active and controlling an… er,” Melissa paused, rummaged in her pocket for a few moments, before pulling out some cue cards, “intuitive full-body interface allowing internet access and most PC-based games. We are currently working on Macintosh and Linux operating systems, as well as console games.”
Wait. What?
Xianking Studios was the aforementioned profit-crazy Netherworlds developer. This probably meant that while we were sleeping, we could…
“The gel pods are designed for perfect support of the body and the electrodes are self-attaching. As soon as you’re considered ‘comfortable’ by the machine, they will attach and you’ll become comatose. Your pods are on level 17. 1 through 15 are filled with the GDD animals capable of receiving this information, 16 is filled with the other base-human classes, 18-30 are currently vacant. Take any pod you want, the numbers don’t mean that much - you‘ll have to use the same one each time, though.”
Okay, so 16 flights of stairs in any direction is tiring. It’s a pity we had to go up. But once we get there, we finally got a closer look at the pods.
Each of them had a little logo on them - what was kinda weird is that must’ve them had little markings on it. I s’pose it was Xianking’s little marks, but each of them was the icon for one of the classes in Netherworlds. Shield for warriors, dagger for rogue, sword for fighter, one-hand mace for barbarian, burst of light for priest, burst of fire for mage, burst of shadow for summoner, a paw for druids, a leaf for naturalists, 2hand mace for justicar. And five I hadn’t seen before - a sword, dagger, bow and stave, each of which had a skull on the handle. And the last was a skulled crown.
There was only one pod each for the skull ones, while there were 10 of each of the others. I noticed Mike having a look at the justicar pod, but I pulled him, Brit, and Lisa over.
“C’mon, let’s go to those skull pods on the end,” I said.
“Huh? I thought she said it didn’t matter?” Brittany said.
“Exactly, so we may as well go to the unique ones.”
Mike shrugged, and he and Lisa followed. Brittany hesitated before following us up there.
I climbed into the dagger pod (rogues are so overpowered, so… why not?) - the gel moved a little under my feet but moved back when I pulled away. Mike was about to climb into the crown one when Melissa hurried over.
“Sorry, that one’s reserved…”
Again - what? I thought it didn’t matter, but… eh.
Anyways, I got into the rogue-y pod. Brittany took the staff, Lisa took the bow, and Mike took the sword. I lay down, adjusted myself quickly and blacked out.