Unfortunately, Alan didn't have time to sightsee. He had things he needed to do, a trial to undertake. Looking at the time, Alan realized he only had about five hours to do the errand; it was 6 a.m. local time. To Alan, though, it felt around noon. He blinked again, gazing about; this was the crowd at 6 a.m.

“Um, alright, do we walk there?” Alan asked. The building seemed pretty far away.

“Sure, or we could jog. It’s a little over five miles, around a two hour walk, an hour if we run.”

Once again, Alan silently thanked the Game’s makers, as it automatically translated units of measure, sayings, and other small nuances.

“Um, are there any vehicles we could take? I need to make a deadline.”

Glancing at the map and quest marker, Alan saw the entrance to the Undercity was another two miles from the Administrative Center, in the north east quadrant of the plaza, closest to the private quadrant of Khersath. The military quadrant was in the north west, while the living and merchant quarters, the part he was now at the outskirts of, were to the south.

“Unfortunately, the Administrators banned most private vehicles from the public square after a group of Revenants tried to use a few to take the central command point in the Administrative Center. You knew this, right?” Red Death glanced at Alan. Or at least Alan thought he did, it was hard to tell with the mask.

“Uh, right, the…” Alan waited for Eve to supply him with an answer. She was oddly silent, with no calculations running that Alan could detect. He waited another second, then said, “Um, actually, I can’t recall.”

“You can’t recall the First Great Cyberwar? It’s when the Revenants made their first move, you’re wearing their armor for god’s sake!”

“Uh, right, I haven’t had the chance to learn much history. Why don’t you tell me about it as we jog along?”

“Alright, well, I’m no expert of course, but, well I guess it began with the New Technology Law, but you wouldn’t know about that either would you? Well, I guess it’s sort of like…”

They set off at a jog towards the Administrative Center, Alan half paying attention to Red Death as he thought about what Eve had been teaching him. Eve’s first lessons had been about the various types of classes and items in the Game. She had moved on to vehicles, and other things like military logistics. To be honest, almost none of what she was teaching him was at all about culture. It was all just information that might help in battle. Of course, that was useful, but was Eve really prioritizing the correct things in her lessons? Alan supposed so. He could always learn more when he had the time.

As they ran along, passing by thousands of players, Alan tried to spot people with different classes. If he focused on one person, and they were in the public database he had gotten from the Thought Emporium, their level and class would pop up momentarily. In the Game there were the traditional classes of an MMO: damage dealer, healer and tank, but there were a lot of specialized classes as well. Diplomats, pilots, engineers, scientists, merchants, laborers and such made up a lot of the players as well. His own dual-class, a Rogue Machine Lord, was a sort of combination damage dealer and jack of all trades, at least from what he could tell so far.