“This is a Psi Controller, more specifically a console controller. Just like the False Speakers from earlier, the design is based on a real electronic device,” he said, conjuring several of them and floating them to the group’s fronts. “There are various buttons and nobs. They each correspond to a specific action, go ahead, fiddle with them.”
The group needed no invitation as they were already examining the contraption with eager hands and excited eyes. Less agitated due to his familiarity, Lane pointed the controller to his front and pushed the ‘ON’ button. However, unlike what he was familiar with, no Psi interface popped up. His confused gaze moved to Ralf, who returned a smile and explained.
“The controllers are currently inactive, well except mine. Charlotte, connect us, I’ll give everyone a little tutorial.”
The Onic Master happily obliged and everyone was telepathically connected. The first thing the group saw was a black Netflix-inspired profile screen display. Their mind’s eyes flickered as they took in the simple but elegant design, and the various profiles present.
Ralf was at the centre, his box glowing red. A white chess king piece was his icon. On either side of him, Ray and Silver, both with identical icons, only in different colours, black and silver, respectively.
These three weren’t alone. Further out, other profiles could be seen, one for each person present, bearing their name and an icon Ralf had chosen. Yuki got a snowball, Skye got a tornado, Charlotte got a money pouch, Violet got a lightning bolt, and Lane got a red scarf.
“Babel,” Charlotte uttered, reading the word written in bold at the top of the screen.
“The library that contains all, Babel,” Ralf followed up. “The Mental Space version falls short of the original, but I’m sure you won’t be disappointed at what you find within.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Charlotte said, echoing the group’s feelings. They were already quite impressed.
Ralf smiled and continued. “ What you’re currently seeing is the profile screen. This will be the first thing you always see when you access Babel. Everyone has a profile. Using the controller toggle, I can move between them…like this,” he said as he shifted from profile to profile, causing the boxes to slightly expand and light up one after the other. The effects didn’t end there though. Lingering on a profile for three seconds caused its unique animation to begin playing.
Yuki’s snowball rolled about adorably, Violet’s lightning flashed with lightning bolts, Lane’s scarf wiggled, Charlotte’s money pouch jiggled and her gold coins flashed every now and then, and Skye’s tornado swirled. Ralf moved through all the profile animations, wowing the group further and further.
To a modern person in Ray’s world, such a display was mundane, but to residents of Ralf’s world like the group, it was mind-blowing. Also, heartwarming. Yuki and the others greatly appreciated the personalised details Ralf had incorporated into the setup.
Ralf noted their feelings with a smile before continuing. “To access Babel’s vast multimedia library, you must enter through a profile. Importantly, you are to only use your own profile.” Ralf followed by example and returned to his profile. “Instructions and guides can be seen in the bottom right corner, this is a commonality, so if you’re unsure about something, just glance over. Following the instruction, we have to press ‘x’ to proceed.”
Ralf pressed the button, the group carefully observing his every action not with their eyes, but with their Psi Scans.
The window changed to another black display, showing a single box, asking for a password.
“This step is to prevent others from using my profile. I’ll be setting up passwords for everyone, so start thinking of them already. Okay, now what to do here, first, change the controller type. The console controller is one of many types of controllers you can use, but it isn't appropriate at this step. To make the change, you press this button at the centre…as you can see, they give a list of suitable controllers. In this case, only a keyboard is accessible. We’ll pick that,” Ralf pressed ‘x’, and a second later, his Psi reshaped itself into a keyboard.
“This is a keyboard, an advanced version of a typewriter if you will. You should get used to the key configuration, it will make navigating Babel and using its features much easier. Now, let’s enter the password.” Ralf speedily typed the eight-word password, ‘password’.
“It’s all stars?” Yuki pointed out, confused.
“That’s just how it appears, Snowball.” Ralf shifted back to the console controller. “Okay, I’m entering in three two one…and now we’re in.”
The group’s mind’s eyes settled on two boxes this time, the former labelled ‘Media Library’ and the latter labelled ‘Games’.
Ralf toggled between the options, his action no different than waving a juicy steak before a starving beast, at least that’s what the group’s expressions seemed to indicate. Delighting in his teasing for a few seconds more, he finally settled on one option.
“We’ll do games last, for reasons you’ll come to understand later. Now, everyone ready?”
Getting serious nods, Ralf did the honours. Pressing ‘x’, the window changed to show a vast and stylish catalogue of content, again Netflix- inspired. The group let out awestruck murmurs and utterances, totally entranced by the sharp and colourful visuals on display.
Ralf’s lips quirked up at their reactions. “Anime, songs, videos, even regular series and movies; the Media Library has it all. In terms of volume of content, Enviso has got it beat by some distance. Still, Babel is far superior. Unlike Enviso, there’s no need to request anything, here, the controller is everything you need.” Ralf navigated through the pages and tabs, demonstrating his claim. “Furthermore,” he picked a random movie and clicked on it.
The movie began playing through everyone’s heads. “Using the controller, you can play it, pause it, skip scenes, and adjust the light and sounds settings with ease.” Saying this, Ralf proceeded to showcase all of said features. “Also,” he clicked out of the movie, then went back in, “the system automatically saves your progress. So if you click out for whatever reason, you don’t have to wonder where you were at. This is why using your own profile is so important. Okay, let’s get out of here.”
Ralf exited the movies section, toggled up and clicked on the anime section, much to the delight of the group. Upon taking in the collection, the group froze. It wasn’t as vast as the movies and series sections, but it was far more plentiful than Enviso’s anime section, which made sense, but still…
“Anime not yet released to the public, Ralf…”
The Transmigrator read the princess’s desire and grinned. “Of course, you can watch them,” he said, causing the group to break out into jubilation.
“Brother, you’re the best,” Skye said.
“Of course, I am. Now, a word of warning. What you experience in Babel, must stay in Babel. If I catch wind of anything leaking out…I’ll spank you all,” Ralf said, radiating a deadly seriousness.
“We won’t leak anything, we promise,” Skye responded with equal seriousness, the others following up with similar sentiments.
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“Good, I’ll hold you to that then. Next, and probably most importantly is the library-library section,” Ralf said, clicking into it. A vast array of book covers were displayed. “The books are organised by subject matter, so if you want books on history, you go to that section, if you want a book on science, you go to that section, etc,” Ralf said, moving from headline to headline.
“This is the basic way to navigate, but if you’re trying to locate a specific book or term, you head to the search bar up top. Here, a console controller won’t do.” Ralf traded his console controller for a keyboard, then typed in a book title and pushed ‘Enter’, bringing up the book he desired. “You don’t need to know the whole book title, just a snippet or word is enough. Babel will give you a list of closely related titles to choose from. You can also do an advanced search, in which you look for terms, like this.”
Ralf would continue talking to himself for a while, as the group struggled to process the reality before them. They would trade glances with each other, only to see their bafflement and incredulity mirrored in others.
“...so when you type in a term, Babel will bring up all the books that mention them by percentage, and the locations they appear in. This will make life much easier and best of all, you can do it yourself. Now, for the reading experience. There are plenty of settings to choose from,” Ralf clicked into a random book.
Unlike before, the pages were digitised. The duo had developed an advanced recognition program to scan every page and convert it to text, and then automatically compile them into books.
“Using these buttons, you can adjust the text size, change the font, change the colour, change the lighting, and if you don’t feel like reading, you can have Babel read the book for you. Currently, there are seven voices, but more can be added on request. I’ll play one.”
Ralf highlighted a passage and sent the request, causing a robotic voice to begin reading the lines. After listening to it for a few seconds, he moved to another voice until letting up ten seconds later.
“Okay, that concludes the library section. All the books for the upcoming history test are here and are already pinned in your favourites, so if you want, you can use this to study. Right now, there are only a few thousand books present, but that’ll change quickly. In the coming days or perhaps weeks, millions of books of all kinds will be added. Feel free to use these features as you please. Okay,” Ralf clapped his hands, “enough of the boring stuff, let’s move on to the reason why you all came here in the first place,” he said, backtracking all the way to the ‘Media Libray’ and ‘Games’ display window.
The group pulled themselves together at the Pather’s words, their blood heating up in their veins.
Ralf let his thumb hover over the ‘x’ button for a few seconds more before finally pressing down. A click and flash later, the group finally bore witness to the Psi games they had been promised.
“Even more games,” the former assassin muttered as his mind’s eye landed on dozens of unfamiliar titles. The sight overwhelmed the young man and the Psi Controller in his mitts suffered because of it, crackling in several places.
“Ah…Ralf, sorry.”
“Ahaha, no apologies needed, friend. Breaking controllers already, you have the genes of a true gamer in you,” Ralf flashed a grin at the former assassin and moved to restore his Psi Controller.
While the pair had this exchange, the others’ mind’s eyes continued to roam over the various titles and accompanying covers.
“Chess, checkers, mahjong, blackjack, roulette; I recognize quite a few games,” Charlotte said, breaking from her reverie.
“Yeah, but what are those? Shadows Die, Iron Fist, Heaven’s Rim, May Devil’s Cry, Duty’s Call, Doomed Eternally, Stranger Among Us,” Skye followed up, reciting the titles with fascination echoing from his voice.
“Blobguys…they look adorable,” Yuki said.
“Dead by Dawnlight, that looks pretty interesting,” Violet said, smitten with the bloody cover.
Ralf left the group to their own devices while he indulged in snacks and drinks. Ten seconds later, he took his last sip and addressed the group and their impatient gazes.
“These are the games, the real Psi games I mentioned. There are currently one hundred and fifty of them in total and can be divided into three major categories: multiplayer games, co-op games and single-player games,” Ralf explained as he moved over the headlines. “All except three of the games you see are imitations of real purely electronic games. Ray and I copied the core concepts of these games and made our own versions. Some are nearly identical, while others are very different.“
“Which versions are superior?” Lane questioned at once.
“I’d say our versions are superior…at least on a technical level. The Mental Space’s processing power and memory are far above any purely electronic-based device. It’ll take decades, if not centuries for pure tech to catch up, so consider yourselves lucky.”
“We do,” Skye said, voicing everyone’s feelings.
Ralf nodded in approval before continuing.
“Anyway, back to the categories. Multiplayer games are, as the name suggests, games that require multiple people to play. Co-op games also require multiple people to play, but instead of competing against each other as multiplayer games force players to, co-op games are all about cooperation and working together to accomplish a task. Lastly, there are single-player games. These are games you play by yourself. There are only twelve of them at the moment, the reason being, they take the longest to make. The average playtime of those twelve is around forty hours…well for Ray and me, for you lot, it’ll take ten times longer…if that. Right now, you’re babies straight out of the womb, so forget enjoy, you’ll do well to endure those games, especially Shadows Die, just stay away from that,” he warned seriously.
Their imitation was several times harder than the original, and that had experienced gamers losing their minds. Ralf wanted to make friends, not lifelong enemies, so made sure to caution the group.
“Single-player games will be touched on, but we’ll mainly be playing multiple-player and co-op games, in that order. We’ll slowly build up everyone’s gamer competency and literacy, bit by bit. Any questions? No, then let’s start. Charlotte, please.”
Called upon, the Onic Master moved at once. She split the telepathic link connecting her and Ralf into five separate pathways, keeping one for herself and directing the other four to the rest of the group. Once everyone was connected, Ralf activated the Psi Controllers in the group’s hands, causing visual and audio information to travel down the relevant pathways.
The drizzle had become a storm yet at that moment, nothing could drown out the sound of their collective heartbeats thumping in their chests. In just two minutes, everyone was brought on the same page, the gaming one, and as the clock struck nine, the group officially began their gaming journey together.
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