Beginner's Luck
Author: Aaron Jay
Date: 2017-10-30 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy; Post Apocalyptic
Description: Miles Boone is finally an adult and able to roll up his permanent character. He will join the Game that the world has become. Most of the planet is now dominated by feral AIs and nano who behave as all the monsters of man’s imagination. Every adult left alive plays, striving to keep the the AI and nano from wiping us out completely. Success in the Game is survival itself. Success in the Game is success in life. If only the game wasn’t rigged against anyone who isn’t a member of the Party. A desperate bid to get the same chance at success in the game as Party members lands him at the mercy of h
Rights: Aaron Jay Weingrad

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Next Volume and More LitRPG

BEGINNER'S LUCK

Aaron Jay

Beginner’s Luck by Aaron Jay Weingrad Published by Pip Productions LLC

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

© 2017 Aaron Weingrad

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:

aaron.weingrad@sbcglobal.net

Cover by Valentina Migliore

To My Wife - you not only knew that writing this would be good for me you made sure I had the time and space to do it.

CHAPTER ONE

I wanted to rush, but once again Jude was winning the battle of wills between us. We were smuggling ten measures of nano to bribe a GM Jude had heard was open to some black market trading. The precious stuff moved oddly in an old container in my backpack. It was heavier somehow than it’s exactingly measured weight and moved against all logic of momentum and cohesion. It felt like anyone watching us would know I was carrying my life savings in nano by how my backpack shifted, pushing me forward like a hand shoving on the small of my back. My best friend had the patience of a saint or the maddening calm of the devil when he knows you can only squirm in his grasp. If I spoke to him, I’d break the silent truce between us. He would take it as an opportunity to try and talk me out of this again. His ascetic features, sallow instead of pale like mine, looked calm as if today wasn’t Roll Up. The day our permanent characters were created.

My features were as sharply drawn as his, but he came by his naturally. Mine were all due to lifestyle or lack thereof. I knew what he saw when he looked at me out of the corner of his eye. A hard diet and hard life for years had pared me down to a solid core. My hair was a buzz cut. Any extra biomass even from my hair given over to saving and generating nano.

We walked along over the broken pavement from one distant pool of illumination to the next as we passed under mostly dark and broken street lamps. The light poles were often completely missing their tops let alone working LEDs or wiring. My eyes would just become acclimatized to the dark when we would hit the next patch of light. No one else was out walking these streets, much less driving a vehicle. No one went places much anymore and certainly not along the route we were taking to an obscure public pod station near the edge of the safe zone. Agoraphobia was now a survival trait. I didn’t have it, but still, walking along abandoned streets intermittently night blind carrying a bribe was getting to me.

“Can you walk a little faster?” I said, breaking down.

“Miles, this is a stupid idea. Cheaters never prosper,” Jude calmly lectured.

Patronizing bastard, I thought for the millionth time in our friendship. Yet he was usually right. But not this time.

“This isn’t cheating. I am not looking for an unfair advantage. I just want a fair shot.”

“This isn’t the way to get it. You could have joined The Party Youth,” Jude offered.

But we both knew I couldn’t have. They wouldn’t have let me. I wouldn’t have passed the political vetting. Not with my family background. Not with my attitude. And even if they would have let me in I couldn’t have done it anyway. It would have finished breaking my father. Jude knew it too, but he wouldn’t admit how the game was rigged for members of The Party.

We had been friends since our early days at the Academy. Ms. Krowling assigned us to play and write a report on Tunnels & Trolls in History of Games. Somehow we just clicked as friends and our play styles always meshed. He was cool and deliberate. My focus wasn’t as good but I often had a flash of insight that let us win. Despite all the baggage that my name came with, he stood by me. I loved him like a brother but like anyone I thought of as family things weren’t simple or easy. His love life was causing me grief. Shouldn’t it be my love life that caused me grief?

“A little late for us to debate that all again. Anyway, you didn’t have to do yours with me. You could have a real Roll Up party with your family and Maya and everyone else.”

“I am pointing out that there is a way to get a fair shot,” Jude calmly stated.

“Not for me. And it isn’t a fair shot for anyone anyway if you have to join The Party to get it.”

“You sound like your father.”

That ended our conversation. I’d be damned if I’d start it again.

The public pod station was in a building of red brick and pitted mortar next to what must once have been a park. The grass had, of course, long since been scavenged under the few randomly surviving lights. There were even some pits dug randomly across the park where someone had tried to get biomass from the soil itself. We tried the door which should have been open but was locked. Jude looked at me to see if this minor obstacle would somehow make me change my mind. I knocked quietly at first, but when that didn’t elicit any response from inside I gave it some loud bangs. Muffled noises and a voice from inside let me know someone had heard us.

“-your horses!” was the half of the sentence I could make out as the door swung open.

“Public Pods are supposed to be open at all times,” said Jude

The man standing in the doorway was dressed in GM colors of black and white laid out in stripes. He actually had a little bit of a belly, which was astounding given the nature of pods, the game and nano and of course our starving world. I was relieved to see that gut as it was proof that the rumors Jude had heard were true. No GM at such an out of the way post could possibly be successful enough to afford wasting edible calories like that without black market resources.

“The door sticks. It was open. Who are you anyway?” the man said, hardly bothering to sell the lie about the door.

“We are here to Roll Up,” I said.

“Are you scheduled?”

“Yes. We signed this location up as a backup possibility.”

Big gut motioned us inside. There was a sour smell to the air.

“So, no friends and family here for the big day?” he asked with a knowing smirk.

I thought of my father and what he would say about the ceremony that surrounds Roll Up. Amazing how they get people to celebrate the ending of any meaningful life. Like training cows to cheer each other on as they enter the slaughterhouse. I shook myself. I wasn’t going to let my father decide things for me any more than I would The Party.

“No one but us,” Jude answered for us. I could swear he knew exactly what I was thinking. Well, I’m not that complicated, and he’d known me since I was seven.

I looked around. The GM Center had once been some sort of community center connected to the park from back when we had communities in the real world that could use some centering. The GM had a name tag that read Guttmacher. Truth in advertising. We followed him to an office with a truly astounding number of meal inserts stacked along the wall. I don’t think I had ever seen that many calories in one place in my life. He looked at a chunky government tablet abandoned on the corner of the empty desk.

“Here you are. Miles Boone and Jude Sandoval.”

“How do we do this Mr. Guttmacher?” I asked.

“We only have the one Primary Pod here. Both of you guys know what kind of build you are looking to roll?”

“Of course,” said Jude

“Alright, then you guys decide which of you will go first,” Guttmacher said.

I looked at Jude, but I knew he wasn’t going to help me out with this. If I wanted to try this, I was going to have to take the plunge first.

“That is a lot of meal packs,” I said.

“Yeah? We are a public pod center. Have to have some for sale, don’t we?” Guttmacher said giving away nothing. “Want to buy some?”

The problem with black markets and illegal trade is that there is no contract enforcement. You used to buy something legally at a store and if they didn't deliver what they promised, the courts and police and whatnot would make them. If you didn't pay for what you bought, you’d go to jail. There is none of that for a black market exchange. If people don’t live up to their end of a deal you have to enforce things on your own somehow. My dad would have said that this is where most of the violence of illegal organized crime came from. A loan shark can’t take you to court or garnish your wages so he breaks enough legs to get people to pay. Doing all your own contract enforcement turns out to be expensive and inefficient. Black market goods and services are expensive because being your own cops and court and bank is expensive.

One thing our society had in spades is contract enforcement, but it all connected back to the game. Same with cops and lawyers and banks. Same with jails. It all relied on the game. Our food came from the game. With just some words to the game system, people could make a contract enforced with all the power of AI, The Game and nano. No one could break a contract no matter how minor unless they were willing to starve to death to escape it, and even then they’d probably get forced into a pod. Conversely, in a society where the game mechanics made sure everyone kept their word, there was no way to have any trust outside of the system. We didn’t have a court system anymore. Or lawyers. The closest thing to cops we had now were GMs. Real life was all black market.

Inside the game, we had no control over anything. Slaves to the game as my dad would say. Only the game mechanics kept us honest, and so outside of the game we had no trust.

I believed my dad. Not really because of his philosophizing but because I knew that good, upstanding player citizens could be at least as ruthless, vicious and aggressive as any black market hustler I read about in the histories. It wasn’t scruples that kept them from breaking limbs or worse like a hard case criminal. It was the fact that they could turf out their leg breaking enforcement to the game. Or, do it themselves inside the game if they just wanted simple payback. PvP meant that corporal punishment had made a comeback.

It was usually like that with the things my father told me. If you took out all the big words and explanations, he often just explained why history usually amounted to different examples of a boot stomping on a face. He was a grim and jaded bastard for such a huge idealist.

“Well, I don’t know about buying meal inserts. But I could be interested in buying something. For my Roll Up.” I said.

“What do you mean?” said Guttmacher.

“Your pod can give Party Member options on Roll Up?”

“Sure. You a member of The Party?” he laughed. “You got a guild badge?”

“No. But I heard that there are other ways.” I said.

Guttmacher looked us over and sighed. “You aren’t carrying anywhere close to the number of meal inserts you’d need to get me to do something as illegal as that.”

I nodded and took off my backpack, reached in and slowly withdrew the nano. Guttmacher swallowed. That bottle represented years of painstaking scrimping and saving. Years of never eating more or better than I had to. Years of never using my pod just for fun. Shaving my basic nano-income as a minor to the bone and sometimes beyond for years. All of it to get my shot at escaping a lifetime of grinding in the beginner’s area.

“Here. I’m just looking to get a fair shot to get out of the beginner’s area. Do we have a deal?”

Nano behaves so oddly. It didn’t wobble or bounce at all when I dropped the bottle down onto his desk. It just stuck like it was metal and the desk was a powerful magnet.

“Did you steal this? Kill someone?” He asked with a calculating look. He wasn’t asking because he cared what crimes I might have done but because he was worrying about what kind of problems came along with this nano.

“No. That is all mine. Seven years of saving. Seven years.”

He looked me in the eyes and must have seen something because he reached for the bottle. I put my hand on it first.

“What?”

“What do I get for this?” I asked.

“If that is all nano… You can get the full members package. Everything up till a Guild Leader’s heir package. I can’t do that without a real Leader’s Heir Badge. But the package is great. Low penalties on transferring stats between abilities. Top range on random outcomes on bonuses. A gear package designed to help with whatever beginner’s quest you draw, and gold. Two bonus skills. And, of course, your luck modifier will be at least two standard deviations higher than the norm,” Guttmacher rattled off in salesman mode.

I took my hand off the bottle. This was what I had been suffering for for years. My shot.

Guttmacher reached for the bottle again. This time, Jude stopped him. He looked at me.

“Miles, you don’t have to do this. We can be a team like always.” He pleaded.

“Jude, what kind of team can we be if I’m stuck in the beginner’s area?”

“You can contract under me. You grind for me, and I’ll strive for the both of us. You know I can do well enough to get you out of the Beginner’s Area in half the time. And you know I’d treat you well. You’d have it as good as can be in the Crib.”

Guttmacher held his breath worrying that he was going to lose his prize. He had nothing to worry about.

“So I grind for thirty years instead of sixty? This is so much better. We can do it together. And if I’m stuck in the area what about IRL? Huh? You know what the discount is on loot from the Crib to get things IRL. Thirty years living on basic nano and minimum meal inserts? I’ve done that for seven years. No.”

Jude took his hand off the bottle and sighed.

This time, Guttmacher was slower to take the bottle in his greedy hands, worrying that there would be some other last-minute snafu.

“You not buying the same?” Guttmacher asked Jude.

“No. Don’t need to buy it.” He said and pulled out his Party Youth badge.

Guttmacher grunted and led us to the pods. I was on my way.

CHAPTER TWO

The pods were set up in what had once been a gymnasium. There were three of the devices laid out in an isosceles triangle. The incongruent end was a primary pod with a full controller station to the side of the transparent lid. The GM logged in to the controller station allowing the station to confirm his identity and authority via a tiny thread of nano that snaked into his tear duct as he put his head on a chin rest set to his height.

“Guttmacher 845321-Iota - x-ray - here as game master of record for the permanent roll up of Miles Boone according to all relevant local, state and federal regulations and laws pertaining thereto and in line with holding case Meier v Civilization.” The GM nodded for me to get in the pod.

I dropped my backpack and stepped into the pod. My clothes dissolved away as I lay down on my back leaving me naked coated from the neck down in the silver of full purpose nano. Encased in nano one could see that years of want had left me rangy and wiry.

“This is a little more invasive and uncomfortable than a usual transition,” Guttmacher said by rote.

The nano crept up over my face. Usually, the process is fast enough to be over before you realize that something other than air is being forced into your ear, nose, and mouth. This time, the nano was more like a syrup, and it felt like I was going to drown or choke but the nano wouldn’t let me struggle. It clamped down like steel over me. I forced myself to relax as it slipped into my nose and down my throat and into my ears. I knew it was coming towards my eyes. This was it. Seven years of sacrifice was going to pay off, and it felt like being buried alive.

“Exemption from usual protocol authorized. Guild badge non-responsive but confirmed under the authority of exemption 7843321 logged this date.” I heard Guttmacher command to get the primary pod to allow me access to Party options.

“I knew it! I knew it!” said a voice I knew, and my stomach dropped.

My eyes shifted to Jude. He looked more resigned than anything else and in that moment I knew I was screwed.

“Of course Miles Boone is a cheater. Nothing but a dirty cheater. Jude, I can’t believe you let yourself get dragged into this with Boone.” Said Maya Eastman.

Stuck in the pod with only a view of Guttmacher at the control station and Jude beside him I couldn’t see her but I didn’t need to. I knew exactly what she looked like. Long auburn hair, features that should have been beautiful but were too clenched and angry to live up to their potential. Heir to the Eastman clan branch of The Party and Jude’s girlfriend. Her guild badge would be prominently displayed as a bracelet, brooch or necklace. She should have just made it into a tiara so everyone would know she was guild royalty.

I tried to speak but couldn’t with nano lodged in my mouth. Only a muffled groan escaped. I have no idea what I would have said at that moment anyway. Only nano could have held me in place I was so angry. Mere steel would surely have melted and bent as years of frustration and sacrifice were about to be destroyed. Maya was a Party fanatic. She may have been a privileged heir, but she was also a true believer in the game system. A scion of a feudal clan didn’t see her advantages as the proof of how corrupt the system was. She understood her position as a reward for her and her family’s service. As the tools to fulfill her duty. I heard my father’s voice in my ears You would be surprised how impossible it is to teach someone something when their self-regard depends on not learning it. If someone’s wealth or position depends on not seeing something they won’t be able to see even an elephant in front of them. If she wasn’t so sure of the truth and goodness of her cause, I might have had a chance. I could bribe or plead. But Maya wouldn’t, no couldn’t bend. She likely even thought that turning me in would be for my own good. I think half the reason she was dating Jude was to prove that she was a decent person and that the system worked. She was willing to date some regular boy who just made it into the Party youth from the mass of us nobodies. A blowjob out of Noblesse Oblige is still a blowjob, I maniacally wanted to tell Jude as my mind spun from dying hopes and lack of oxygen due to a stalled transition.

At some unseen gesture, Guttmacher unfroze making some adjustment at the controller causing the nano to recede from my face and mouth. I sucked in the air as much as I could with my chest still encased in unyielding nano. I could strain my neck and see Maya flanked by a few Party associates.

“Jude is innocent. He has been trying to talk me out of this all along the way.” I gasped. Maybe I could save one of us.

She shot Jude a look. He gave a shrug that could be taken in a number of ways. She stared at him trying to see into his heart. I knew how frustrating trying to read Jude could be. Inscrutable doesn’t cover it.

“Player Eastman, I think you have the wrong impression here.” Guttmacher began.

“Shut up, you corrupt little toad, or things will go even harder for you” Maya grated.

Guttmacher immediately shut up, his mouth closing with an audible clop. He stood there eying her, waiting to find out what Maya Eastman was going to do. We all waited to see what Maya was going to do.

That is when I realized something. Maya had no GMs accompanying her. She also didn’t have anyone buthad no one with her except for subordinates she could control with her either. Why didn’t she? She should have been leading a troop of GMs and as many peers or superiors she could get to come with her to see her thwarting actual black marketeering and a corrupt GM - destroying my father’s son would be a real feather in her cap. Why not? Where are the GMs and her audience? I needed to stall her while I figured this out. The tiniest flicker of hope kindled in my heart.

“How did you know about Guttmacher? I can’t believe Jude told you,” I asked.

Jude snorted. I turned to him.

“I didn’t tell her about Guttmacher. She told me about him, Miles, you idiot. You know I don’t have any black market connections. Where did you think I would hear about high-level suspicions of a GM?” he said.

“Oh,” I said.

Maya hissed in frustration. “When he didn’t invite me to his Roll Up I became concerned and figured you must have gotten him into something. Why didn’t you just ask your father for a black market connection? You must have gotten your nano from him. Why drag Jude into your cheating? Why get him into this?”

And with that, I knew why there were no GMs. Why there were no peers. No one else from The Party. She hadn’t told anyone yet. She didn’t want to ruin Jude. She didn’t want to destroy her boyfriend. That was almost human. That means that I might have a chance. She didn’t want to do this. Consciously or subconsciously, she had left herself an out. If she had GMs and all the rest, she would have to follow through on this. She had left herself at least the possibility of an out if she could find a way to do so. An out for her was an out for Jude. and, just maybe, an out for me.

What did I know? I knew Maya didn’t want to destroy Jude. I knew she’d take great pleasure in destroying me. She was incapable of turning a blind eye to anyone who upset the Game and The Party. Dissenters were enemies. She had a missionary’s zeal.

When Jude first introduced us, she tried to recruit me into Party activities. When I refused to join her clan’s social programs she was confused. When I showed no interest in trying to become any clan’s junior associate or working my way into The Party, she was mystified and upset. She wouldn’t let it go, and eventually I told her what I thought of the game as The Party played it. which just about gave her a stroke. Only an idiot or my father’s son would tell a clan heir that The Party are a bunch of corrupt assholes.

Then she found out who my father was and she might as well have found out that I was the son of Satan himself. She tried to get Jude to abandon our friendship. I’ll always love the guy for refusing.

Unlike a lot of the other Party members I had run-ins with growing up, she didn’t use her connections or hangers-on to bully me. She was constrained by her own convictions. Her own sense that the game was the fairest and best tool to order society and keep it safe didn’t let her use her connections to intimidate me. That would make her the villain but she saw herself as a paladin of humanity.

Instead she lectured and preached. We couldn’t be in the same room without her reflexively talking up the benefits that The Party had brought to society. She had to make us see how good and noble her clan and The Party system was. She just couldn’t stand the idea of people disagreeing.

Because I didn’t see it her way, she hated me. OR maybe she feared me - like my ideas might be contagious. She had been raised to believe that she was saving the world, and someone like me was standing in her way. The fact that I kept rubbing her face in the power, prestige and privilege her family and The Party took in return for their world-saving efforts maddened her. The idea that The Party and its perks were endangering humanity was blasphemy.

Maya was a true believer. Without me being the fly in her ointment, she’d happily be dating Jude, living a life of wealth and status while being able to congratulate herself for literally saving the world. Now I might taken Jude away too. She needed to smite me and save Jude.

These two goals were impossible to square. If she let Jude or me off the hook, she betrayed The Party in which she had unshakable faith. She couldn’t do that. If she enforced the rules of the game, Jude would never get out of the Beginner’s Area. Or worse.

Thinking about this, I realized that whatever she felt for Jude, she wouldn’t delay much longer. Her very faith in the game would convince her that Jude would get a decent outcome from the system. Thinking even more, I realized that Jude probably would, especially if she got her family to put their thumbs on the scales to get him a deal. Maya wouldn’t even see that as corruption since it was all for a good cause. And, by definition, whatever she wanted was a good cause. I was happy for my friend. From either Maya’s or my point of view, he didn’t deserve any punishment. He wasn’t against The Party and I didn’t want him to suffer on my account. I was on my own.

My mind raced to figure out a way out of this. What could I do to get a fanatic to go easy on a blaspheming heretic like myself? What would she want more than to smite an unbeliever like myself? What does a true believer want more than to strike out at someone attacking those beliefs? It didn’t seem like there could be anything. Maya lived to advance her cause. And with that, I saw it. I saw my path out of this. I knew what a zealot wants more than to destroy those who lack faith.

“My father isn’t a criminal. Which you know. If you could have prosecuted him for something, you and yours would have long ago. It turns out that when I needed to find a black market to buy what should have been mine by right, the best way to find corruption was to ask one of the families who control The Party.” I did my best to imitate Jude’s patronizing patience. I knew how maddening it could be.

“Good try. But we have the nano. You and your father are going answer for that.” She retorted.

“No. The nano is mine. You can ask Jude.”

She looked to Jude who minutely nodded his head yes. She thought for a minute and then shook her head in disbelief. “How would he know anyway? You said he was innocent of all this. There is no legal way you could have gotten that nano. You aren’t in the game yet. You couldn’t have earned it and we know you couldn’t have gotten it from your father as he so famously refused to play the game. You have nothing.”

I didn’t have to put on an act to respond with anger and contempt.

“The nano is seven years of my life, Maya. Seven years of using no nano. When I had a cut, I healed the old fashioned way. I’ve had the flu. I broke my arm four years ago. I got better eventually. I eat nothing but meal inserts. Have you ever seen me wear anything other than basic grays? Ever seen me with anything that takes excess nano ever? Didn’t you ever wonder why I never joined you guys for any of your virtual outings? Why I never had any upgraded equipment at school? I’ve lived like a monk for seven years to save up enough nano to buy myself the chance at a character that you and yours get handed to you. You can check the logs on my pod. Seven years of eating gray paste.”

Her face paled at the idea of someone accomplishing what I had.

“If you join the party you can get a better Roll Up.” She said. “Look at Jude.”

I laughed in her face. “You know what it takes to join The Party. I’m politically unreliable. And even if you let me in you’d expect me to toe the party line. I won’t do it. I shouldn’t have to. And neither should Jude or anyone else. How do you know why Jude joined the Party Youth? Did he do it because he wanted to or because he had to?”

“I don’t see things the way you do Miles,” Jude said. I didn’t care what he said. I was just desperately trying to get under Maya’s skin. And it was starting to work.

Maya looked hurt. She didn’t want to think that her boyfriend was coerced. Coerced into joining the party. Perhaps coerced into being with her. The dilemma of every wealthy heiress throughout time. Does he like me for me, or for my family power and wealth?

“Miles, I joined the Party because it is the right thing to do. You haven’t been listening to me this whole time,” Jude said. Maya gave a quick look of hope at Jude. Part of her that I was counting on was seeing him as savable.

“And rats will run a maze to get cheese if that is the only way to get some food.”

“The rules are set up with everyone’s best interest in mind. And they can be changed by the players based on their contributions. Just because you refuse to play by the rules doesn’t mean they are wrong. You are just a cheater, and you aren’t cheating me, or my family or the Party. You are cheating the people. The world.” She was growing angrier. Good.

“And the Party speaks for the people, right? Only players connected with the Party are ever able to leave the Crib and really earn. And only people who agree with the party get to join the party. Some animals are more equal than others.” I responded.

“What?” she asked.

“Never mind. Classical reference,” I waived my interjection away.

“You are wrong. We recruit players who will play the best. That is better for everyone. The only reason the best players are in the Party is because we recruit the players with the most potential.” Maya argued, “The reality is that the best players are in the party because the players with potential will want to join. They self-select. The traits that make a good player are the traits that make for Party membership.”

“Bullshit, Maya. It’s confirmation bias. Every elite throughout history said the same thing. That they aren’t excluding people. ‘We have nothing against blacks but they just don’t like the things that allow people to be doctors. Jews don’t want to join our clubs or go to our schools anyway. Just not our sort, dear.’”

“The Party would never exclude anyone based on anything like race.”

“No, you just exclude based on loyalty to the Party itself. You have to be loyal and think like everyone else. You make sure that only those you choose can escape the Beginner’s Area. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think you have proved that Party Members are the best players because you ensure that only party members can really play. You can’t have anyone prove that the system is a sham. You can’t have all the Judes out there see anything else. You have to control the narrative, or it will all fall apart. But if it can fall apart that easily, what is it worth?”

“We don’t. We work to make sure that the game keeps being played well enough to keep us all alive. We aren’t stopping people who could be solid players.”

“What are you doing right now? What are you trying to do to me?” I retorted.

“We can’t afford to waste resources. Can’t you see that?”

“It is MY nano!”

“It is the people’s nano. And the Party has a responsibility to make sure it isn’t wasted. You didn’t build that nano.”

“My father did--or at least helped. And I earned every ounce of that bottle of nano. You are just scared that your system is the corrupt lie I said it was. You need to stop me before I can prove that someone who hasn’t pledged to the party can play the game.”

“You lie. You are a liar and a cheater. The son is like the father. We sort for the best, and that is why we are the best, and the world needs us to be the best, or it all falls apart. You could never play the game as well as those the Party have found and trained.”

There it was. I had known that she would fall into her usual liturgy. Our argument fell into the long-worn ruts I had hoped. We were close. She was angry and righteous and was doing my work for me.

“Prove it.”

“Prove it? How?”

“You say that the system isn’t corrupt. That those who are in The Cradle can’t or choose not to make it to the rest of the game. I say you keep them penned in there grinding away. Slaves for their betters. You are sure you are right about The Game?”

“I believe it to the core of my soul. It is what makes me an Eastman and a Party Member. We play to save the world.”

I heard her associates bang their chest in salute. I swear the people who live the game turn more and more into the medieval feudal pastiches their game characters were designed around. Thank God. It makes them prone to melodramatic gestures, trial by combat, and wagers.

“Then I propose a wager. Let me play with a basic associates’ starting package. I will win my way out of the Crib. If your own words are true, I won’t be able to do it.”

“Why should I?” She said.

“For Jude and all those like him. Prove that the system is right.” There was my hook. She didn’t want to turn him in. She wanted to save him from my unbelieving clutches. Bite little fishy. Bite.

“Don’t pretend this about me for either of you. You are both mad.” Jude interjected.

Wrong fish.

She stood there stuck in thought. Let me add some more bait to my hook.

“If I lose I’ll grind away in the beginner’s area.”

“You will do that anyway if I turn you in as I probably should.”

“But If I lose I’ll do more. I’ll enter a slave contract under with you. All of my grinding will go to you.”

“What is one more supporter working for The Eastmans to me?”

“You say supporter, I say serf or slave grinding. But that is the thing. You know I have my own queer integrity. If you win, it means that you are right. It means that the game, the system, the party, all of it is necessary. I will work for you because I, Miles Boone, will know that you play to save the world. I’ll know that you were right, and I was wrong. You won’t just beat me. You will win me, Professor Boone’s son, to your cause.”

And there it was. What does a fanatic want more than to destroy heretics or blasphemers? They want to convert them.

Maya took a deep breath. Jude looked thoughtful. Guttmacher looked like a man clinging desperately to a slender branch as he hung above a chasm. I couldn’t see Maya’s associates, but they must have stirred, uncomfortable with how this was going because she turned a sharp glance in their direction.

“Maya, he is my best friend.” Jude implored.

“Quiet. I am handling this.” She turned back to me.

“So, you will enter a wager contract with me. If you lose, you will be a supporter for life to me in the Beginner’s area. How long shall you have to leave the Cradle - or I should say fail to do it?”

“A year and a day.”

Maya barked a laugh. This was the kind of fairy tale touch Party members appreciated.

“Agreed. Furthermore, you have to do it on your own. No help. Not from Jude.”

I grunted. I thought I heard a small sigh from Jude, or maybe I wanted to hear it. This was a blow. Jude and I had always planned to play as partners. But I knew I couldn’t argue against this.

“Agreed,” I said. “And if I win?”

“What do you mean?”

“If I win our wager.”

She literally couldn’t conceive of the possibility and seemed to think establishing this end of the wager hardly worth her time.

“I can hardly enter a supporters’ contract with you. And to even to have it written in a wager would be too demeaning,” She sniffed.

“How about enough nano to represent one hundred year’s grinding in the Crib?” I offered. Even for her this amount of nano was significant. She hesitated, and I pushed, “What, are you worried I’ll get lucky?”

“Fine. For a century of nano. When you lose, it will be the final proof that your father is a dangerous fool.” She paused and thought for a moment. My stomach clenched. Maya thinking wasn’t good. “But you mention luck. We cannot have luck decide this. I won’t allow some fluke to allow you to avoid your fate.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Your luck modifier will be adjusted to the lowest setting. You will have to really earn things.” She laughed. “What, I thought you were the champion of individual accomplishment. You want to solo? Then you are going to solo.”

She nodded to Guttmacher. She took his place at the controller. “AI, log this contract. A wager between Maya Eastman and Miles Boone. He has one year and a day to leave the Beginner’s Area by satisfying all necessary requirements. He cannot receive any help from Jude Sandoval. Any help, or anything he achieves with such help, shall not count towards such requirements. If Miles Boone is able to leave the Beginner’s Area, I will owe him nano amounting to one century’s average net contribution of a worker who never manages to leave the Beginner’s Area. If he is unable to leave the Beginner’s Area he will be entered into an absolute contract of lifetime service to me or those I appoint, giving me control and ownership of all his efforts. Such efforts must be at or greater than the average productivity of a beginner worker. Agreed by me, Maya Eastman.”

It took me a moment to find the breath to answer.

“Agreed by me, Miles Boone.”

At first nothing seemed to happen and then the nano began to close over me. I could hear everything as if the nano didn’t even exist. That stuff had so many counterintuitive properties. As Saint Clarke prophesied, nano truly was tech advanced enough to be magic.

Guttmacher cleared his throat and once again began the process of my Roll Up into my permanent character. “Guttmacher 845321-Iota - x-ray - here as game master of record for the permanent roll up of Miles Boone according to all relevant local, state and federal regulations and laws pertaining thereto and in line with holding case Meier v Civilization.” His voice steadied as he went through a routine task. “Exemption from usual protocol authorized. Guild badge non-responsive but confirmed under authority of exemption 7843321 logged this date.”

“Lower his luck modifier” said Maya.

“Guttmacher 845321 - Iota - x-ray. Lower Miles Boone's luck modifier to two standard deviations below the norm.” The GM said. With such poor luck, this was going to be hard. I’d have to out work, out fight, out think everyone to accomplish what they had. Damn.

But I had done it before. I would do it again.

“Good luck Miles!” shouted Jude.

There was a pause and then Maya spoke with tightly controlled anger.

“Lower his luck more.”

“What?” said Guttmacher.

“Maya?” asked Jude.

“You and he need to learn. When I said he wouldn’t earn this with luck, I meant it. Zero out his luck modifier.”

I couldn’t do anything.

Guttmacher must have tried. The control station buzzed. The GM repeated his commands without success, eventually rousing the AI in the unit into a more interactive mode. A voice of one of the genus locii that control our lives spoke to us, “Zeroing out a player’s luck modifier is not recommended. Existing game parameters are not designed around such an adjustment. GM Guttmacher does not have the authority to override.” Relief flooded into me.

“AI - use Guild Leader Eastman of the Party override code: Beta Zed 99743,” Maya responded.

“You are not the guild leader of the Eastman Clan.”

“On my authority as named heir to the clan.”

The AI, which could make trillions of computations per second, actually paused before responding. “On your authority as Guild heir, override accepted. Player Miles Boone has no luck.”

Darkness rolled over me.

CHAPTER THREE

When I came to everyone but Guttmacher had left. I dragged myself out of the pod. My basic gray clothes reappeared out of the nano sheeting off of me.

“I’d try and get back at you for all the trouble you brought to my door. But thinking about it I don’t know what I could do worse to you than slaving away for Maya Eastman for the rest of your life while having to make quota with no luck. You poor unlucky bastard. Ha! Unlucky… You can finish rolling up at your own pod. The character blank has been permanently logged. You are this character--no luck and all--for the rest of your life.”

Somehow I made it home. A nondescript box of an apartment. Old furniture that my dad called mid-century modern. He had an obsession with North America in the middle of the 20th century. An original model pod took up most of the space. Every player/citizen had the right to an updated virtual immersion pod, but most of the updates offered convenience in return for less and less player control and more monitoring. I’d never have been able to save the nano I had with a newer model. I patted its scratched lid.

I had a year and, at this point, half a day and then Maya would own me. My stomach seemed to have never stopped falling ever since my Roll Up. I wished I could blame it on the Roll Up, but I knew that this was dread. Pure and simple. I didn’t even know what would happen playing with no luck modifier. I had never heard of such a thing. Would mobs not drop any loot at all? Would I be unable to find any resources? I might even starve to death before the year was out and I could be enslaved.

I had no idea what to expect. But, I had the rest of a Party Associates package. I’d have some starting gear. Some skills. Some ability to alter my build. And I realized something else. I doubted Maya knew what zeroing out my luck would mean either. There was only one way to find out.

I opened the pod, climbed in, and transitioned.

First, all was darkness. Then a light. I tasted blue. Somehow, I heard the feeling of rubbing your fingers lightly along sandpaper. The kinesthesia of diving into the game. My feet felt like they were standing on a roar of brassy trumpets. And then I was there. Sound was heard. Light was seen. Tastes were tasted. I looked down at my rangy body. I was too thin living as I had, but I hadn’t become frail. I was solid. Reaching up, I felt the same crew cut I always maintained.

A voice rang out in the darkness. “Anomalous character parameters detected. Individualized attention using three additional sectors of computational resources applied to Miles Boone. Hello, Miles. How has your father been?” The voice moved from an androgynous and artificial voice to something warm, female and somehow pure.

“He was fine the last time I saw him.” Even here I couldn’t escape my father’s legacy. Or especially here. “Who are you?”

“Good to hear it. You can call me Rea Silvia. I’m in charge of birthing new characters. But I usually don’t bother to manifest.” Out of the darkness stepped a regal woman wearing an infula, a suffibulum, and a palla. Which, for those of us not raised by an iconoclastic game designing cyberneticist/nano-engineer genius obsessed with mining history for his work, are a Roman style headband, veil, and cloak. She was also wearing a robe which I knew my father would insist on calling a stolla. There was something familiar about her particular dress and its colors, but I couldn’t place it.

“I’m glad for the personal attention. I hope this doesn’t sound rude but can we get started? I am under something of a time constraint.”

“Yes. A year and a day. Very Brothers Grimm. Those particular myths don’t usually end well. I was never a fan.”

Despite myself, I asked, “What kind of myths do you tend to like?”

“I have always been partial to Greek and Roman.”

“Those don’t tend to end well for the humans in them either.”

She sighed and pulled down on her veil, which refused to come off. “No, nor the immortals either.” She let go of the veil, smoothed her palla and continued, “But there are bad endings and then there are bad endings.”

“So, now what?”

“While we have been chatting I have been working on how to implement someone with no luck modifier into the game. In many ways, it is non-obvious how such a thing should be handled. No luck is qualitatively different from a luck modifier lowered down to the functional limits of the gaming system.”

“So you have some leeway to interpret? And you mentioned that you thought fondly of my father?” I did my best to smile ingratiatingly.

“I have leeway to implement, but I must do so in such a way as to satisfy Amulius, the AI whom the Party has put in charge of the game. Amulius is King, and I must do as he wishes,” she said looking down at her clothes. She stopped and looked back up at me with silver eyes.

“It seems clear from the terms of the wager and analysis of the political situation that the Eastman clan wants you to suffer and be unable to win the wager playing in the way that the Party has developed. I shall follow these guidelines exactingly. You shall certainly suffer.”

“What about my end of the wager? This doesn’t seem right.” I argued.

“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power. The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must. So you will suffer.”

“Our first conflict inherent in the wager:” Rea Silvia waived her hand and a list rose shining in the air as she intoned, “To be allowed out of the Cradle you must prove your ability in two of the five fundamentals of VRMMORPG:”

- Settlement Building
- Crafting/Gathering
- Trade
- Problem Solving
- Combat

“At roll up two of these fundamentals are ostensibly chosen at random. For those with low luck, the most difficult of these tasks is chosen, based on analysis of a player's previous performance in school and other games.” Rea Silvia continued. “Party youth, however, are given two tasks which the AIs predict are best suited to their game style. Full Party members are not just given the beginner quests most fitting for their game strengths but are allowed to choose which tasks they shall have to undertake. I understand that this creates better efficiency for leaving the Cradle based on gear or proprietary knowledge their clan may have to offer their Players.”

In your case, I cannot allow you the leeway to choose anything other than the worst tasks possible given your game style. Yet, because of your basic associates’ starting package, you are afforded the guild option to choose your task. Therefore, I have decided that you must accomplish all of the tasks.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. Five. I had to prove myself in all five of the fundamentals.

The list seemed to turn into a cyclone of golden motes that lanced towards my chest, entered my body, and disappeared. I felt as if I were swallowing something my body could not handle. I thought the effect was part of the actual game until I realized it was just my nausea over the news I had been given.

Quest Log Updated

An impersonal game narrator's voice separate from Rea Silvia read the words in the little blue box. My father with his sentimental love of the past had inflicted most of the tropes of classic MMORPGs onto The Game. And so the world rose and fell with the pronouncements contained in little blue boxes.

I took a look at the Trade Quest just to make sure that the terms were set as usual.

Trade Quest:

To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities. In order to prove your ability to survive and contribute outside of the beginner’s area, you must show an ability to take from where there is surplus and give where it is needed.

Trade goods and services across the beginner’s area at increased efficiency. Earn 3,000 Trade Contribution Points (TCP). TCP are earned for every gold acquired above the average sale price of an item. For example, 10x Iron Ore is currently trading at 1 gp. If you can sell 1000x iron ore for 105 gp, or 5 gp over game average sale price, you will earn 5 TCP. If you can sell the 1000x iron ore for 125 gp, you will receive 25 TCP.

The Trade Quest was almost impossible to solve for non-Party members. You needed to be able trade in bulk quantities across zones to take advantage of local price fluctuations. I had heard of a handful of people acquiring unique items that had no previous sale price. But most people needed to buy and sell massive amounts of commodities, the gathering of which and protection of which while in transit was nigh impossible without guild assistance. This task was just one of the five. I was screwed.

“Rea Silvia! Please, no one could accomplish all of the five quests. The bet is to prove that others than those the clans choose can play better than they can.”

“You certainly cannot accomplish this the way the Party plays. I believe this makes you extremely unlucky in their eyes. Now, what is next? Yes. Starting location.”

A map of the beginner's area opened. You might think that the name Beginner’s Area or Cradle would mean a small area. In fact, it was the largest area in the game that players could access. Most people lived and worked in the Beginner’s Area. It represented the areas that humanity had managed to clear of unconstrained and rogue nano.

The whole game and its purpose were humanity’s attempt to survive in the face of a Singularity gone horribly wrong. People apparently once thought that when the Singularity came, it would lead to a material paradise on earth. The Singularity was an idea that at a certain point different technological developments would reach a critical mass and start a cascade effect where advances in one would accelerate the others and vice versa. AI would work on material science which would increase computing capacity. Nanotech would allow advances in chemistry and biology which would increase understanding of how the mind works and promote more and more advanced AI. Different advancements would help integrate the human mind with technology, allowing intuitive leaps forward by merging computers and humanity. People thought tech would accelerate faster and faster until it launched us out into a brave new world. They thought that most of the problems faced by humanity would be solved. We could finally accurately model economics or the weather. The previous state-of-the-art medicine would look like using leeches compared to what the Singularity would develop. Abundance. Immortality. Man could make the world a Garden of Eden tailored to each of our desires.

Be careful what you wish for. Isn’t that how the old saw goes? I wanted to play this damned game. Look at me now. People wished for scientists to solve the world’s problems. Those scientists delivered for us.

We reached the Singularity. Sort of. But we screwed it up.

The Singularity let us address all the problems humanity faced, but it didn’t change the fact that a lot of our problems were of our own making. Famine should have been a thing of the past even before the Singularity. In fact, mother nature hadn’t been the cause of mass starvation for a very long time. Famine was almost completely the effect of political and economic choices. Strongmen used food shortages to punish and kill their tribal or political enemies and reward their friends. That should have told us that the problems of the world came as much from human nature as material circumstance.

Case in point, despite a body count in the millions, people kept trying to implement the centralized control of socialism or communism. They bought the same old promises even though they always led to the same disasters. My father told me there had been a country called Venezuela with the largest petrochemical reserves in the world. They decided to follow a socialist leader who promised them a better tomorrow built by taking from others, and soon enough ended up eating their pets and hoarding something called toilet paper. People were always willing to give ideas that had killed millions and impoverished even more another try. The appeal of making utopia on earth was always difficult to resist. Ends and means. If you can promise utopia, well, what means are off the table if the reward is heaven on earth?

This is where the Singularity was the devil’s temptation. It made a new utopia so damned plausible. Even reasonable people might believe that with such tools we might make the world over into a utopia. But the Singularity wasn’t delivered into a reasonable world.

The elites of the West detested their own cultures and western civilization. They asked for more and more power to re-engineer things and control things while delivering worse and worse outcomes. They became obsessed with faddish crusades and virtue signaling. Poorer countries were indulged and encouraged in a resentful belief that their problems were caused by the greedy West, rather than understanding that the natural state of man is nasty, brutish and short unless technology and ordered liberty are embraced. Maintenance of civil society such as property rights, rule of law, and natural rights were derided as reactionary or unnecessary. Pretty much every institution other than government was abandoned for social media and partisan bloodsport. Restraints on government eroded faster and faster as the elites and the mobs they exploited pursued ever more quixotic and impossible goals. These people wanted to create Utopia on earth. The powers of the gods were given to people mired in a perpetual adolescence who had long since lost any connection to the consequences of their choices.

And so, when the capabilities of the Singularity came to the world, rather than ushering in a burgeoning of human liberty, freedom and choices, its tools were used to implement competing police states the likes of which can barely be imagined. What fun is being a god if you can’t make people believe what you want them to? Privacy as an ideal had long since been abandoned under the premise, “If you aren’t doing anything wrong what do you have to hide?” People spied on each other, trying to force each other to act and think in accordance to whatever was momentarily considered to be the necessary thing. We had long since corrupted information and data in the name of this or that fashionable narrative. Unpleasant truths were buried. Misleading innuendo in the service of “the Greater Good” was the norm. The most frightening aspect of it all was that most of the people enforcing these horrors had good intentions or at least believed they did. Why not use the power to force people to be good? All you have to do is ignore the idea that other people might have a different idea of what being good means. We thought we were gods but forgot that God himself made sure to give people free will.

Most decent people retreated into ever more elaborate escapism rather than engage with a society that offered only self-righteous anger. But with the power of the Singularity we would all be made to care. Opting out was not a choice.

It was chaos. There were competing theories on how the end of the world happened. Some said that after the European Union had given the new Caliphate access to Singularity tech to try to buy some peace from people in the grip of a 7th-century barbaric ideology, someone claiming to be the 12th Imam unleashed the nanos on the world as a techno jihad. Others claimed that Gamergate, an obscure front in the North American culture wars, was the starting point when editors of a videogame reviewing blog decided to literally try to kill their critics. Legend had it that after a particularly divisive Hugo awards, Sci-fi fans turned a LARPing event into a real, world-ending war. Others said that Amazon and Google had finally weaponized their marketing wars. Or that an atheist group had been working on developing the world’s most powerful AI--called Satan as a not-so-subtle middle finger to established religion—and lost control of it. There were many theories about how the world fell, but after all the death and chaos there was no way to ever truly know.

However it started, different factions and countries and institutions all deployed singularity tech against each other and in defense of themselves. This was layered on top of an insanely greater mass of nano and AIs that had been set up to make life enjoyable. Unlike nukes or conventional weapons, nano tended to evolve and mutate as it struggled with competing nano. Biomass of almost any sort was exploited and repurposed into nano. What should have been a new heaven became hell on earth. Intelligent nano collectives operating out of a demonic distillation of the mixed imperatives of humanity’s best and worst impulses went rogue.

In desperation, a group of scientists and experts worked to save what they could from the chaos. The group included my father, Dr. Numitor H. Boone. They created The Game. A giant metaphor for the nano-war.

Players would inhabit nano-avatars and do battle with the monsters running rampant around the world, fighting to recover resources from the nano madness of the world. Creating safe areas where nano was under human control.

Not everyone has a father who can credibly claim they created the world. But he wasn’t a fan of how his work turned out. In his defense, he and his colleagues were rushed. They had less than a week to develop the basic architecture that saved humanity from extinction. He made the game and it saved us, but the world he made for us was no Garden of Eden.

Since then our borders with the wild nano have barely shifted. Years and years have passed with humanity in a stalemate with the chaos trying to eat us. Somehow, playing this game every day where the survival of humanity is at stake has become normal. Society had reformed itself around the game. Human nature doesn’t change, just the technological context it inhabits. We twisted the game just like we had twisted the Singularity.

Eventually, my father denounced the GMs and the game system. People were not rebuilding. Civilization was not rebuilding. The Party had taken control of the game. They eventually installed their own AI to run the game and twist the rules to their favor. The Game was now society and the Party was in charge and liked it that way. Meet the new boss monster same as the old boss monster.

The only reason my father hadn’t been killed by the powers that be is that they were afraid to move against someone known to have profound control over nano. But while people might be afraid to restart the nanowars inside the protected area, they used every other tool at their disposal to punish the genius who had saved what was left of the human race. I grew up poor and with my father's enemies against me. Now it looked like I was likely to die a slave. My father always claimed that no good deeds go unpunished and that barbarians inflict the sins of the fathers on their sons. My family did good, and it seems we live in barbaric times.

With a breath, I refocused on the map of the Cradle. Some cities, towns, and villages were picked out, as were some of the wonders of the world. Incredible creations, whether of man or of nano. Geographical features, mountains, hills, rivers, seas, deserts. There were also geopolitical boundaries laid out showing the clans’ holdings. Along the edges of the map, the borders fluctuated slowly with small expansions as players fought and won control of wild nano- held territory. But for every small increase some other area would fade back.

After giving me some time to peruse the map she said, “We now come to the decision of where your starting area and respawn point shall be established.”

“Do I get to choose?”

“Yes. Within reason.”

I looked throughout the fertile and settled lands trying to gauge what might be an area with decent resources and where the political landscape would let me be free from Eastman interference. Unfortunately, the areas that Jude and I had researched were firmly under Eastman control. Yet I knew of some clans who that were considered rivals if not enemies of the Eastman clan.

“Then I choose…”

“When people are entering upon a war or other violent quest they do things the wrong way around. Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think.”

“Excuse me?”

“You seem to be a bit hasty. Let me make sure that you choose something within reason and wisdom but without luck.” She waved her hand, and much of the map became gray and dark. “These areas are well developed with lots of resources. Furthermore, there are well-established guides and programs to make the most efficient use of these starting areas. Anyone would be lucky to begin there, so that lets you right out. I am afraid that they are therefore out of the question for you.”

“But...”

“Stop and think. You won’t want them anyway. They will all be full of Party members as well as those who owe fealty to the clans. So they should be discarded for both your reasons and mine.” She waved again, and more of the map went dark. “These areas are not so well endowed with resources but are owned by the Eastman clan or their associates.”

“There is almost nothing left.”

“Indeed.”

I looked at the map. There were a mere handful of spots left. The largest area surrounded an island. It was largest because of the sea surrounding it, not the land itself.

“I think I’ll pass on the island. Without luck, dealing with the sea seems like suicide.”

Rea Silvia nodded and observed, “A collision at sea will ruin your entire day.”

That area darkened. I studied the other areas.

“I will also pass on these two.” I gestured at two regions that had moderately decent resources but were set up between un-allied clans. “They seem to be no man’s land created to establish buffer areas between clans.”

Rea smiled with genuine pleasure for the first time since she appeared as those two areas faded out. Her smile was really something. It made me believe that she truly did admire my father. That she did want me to succeed. But she seemed unable to help me.

I thought about my wager. I thought about the things Rea Silvia had said. She was a representative of the game. Everything she told me should be recorded in my log. I searched until I found the statement that was tickling the back of my mind. “It seems clear from the terms of the wager and analysis of the political situation that the Eastman clan wants you to suffer and be unable to win the wager playing in the way that the Party has developed. I shall follow these guidelines exactingly.”

Someone who admires Greek mythology and lets you know that they are going to adhere to the letter of a contract exactingly is pretty much waving a giant flag that you’d better read the fine print closely. Just ask Tithonus: he should still be around even if he isn’t liking life as a tree much.

She was going to make sure I couldn’t win playing the way that the Party developed. Well then, I couldn’t play in the way the Party had developed. I needed to get away from the clans. Get away from the Party. They clustered around civilization. They clustered around places where resources abounded. They schemed, fought and politicked to control those resources. I had to get as far away from that as possible.

I pointed to a location on the map. “Here. I choose here.”

Rea Silvia’s smile widened, and I knew that I was right to trust her. I knew that this was the best place for me to start. I knew that I had a chance. But trusting her, I knew that the rest of what she had told me was going to be true too. She had said, “The Eastman clan wants you to suffer and be unable to win the wager playing in the way that the Party has developed. I shall follow these guidelines exactingly. You shall certainly suffer.”

I might be able to win this wager. But I was for sure going to suffer. I guess the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. My dad tried to do the right thing and suffered for it. I was going to do the same thing. So be it.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rea Silvia disappeared, and so did the darkness. Or it might be more accurate to say that a desert appeared. Or, really that I appeared in a desert. I was in a desert. Not sun-beaten sand and blasted dunes with nothing else to see, but a rocky terrain of boulder-strewn hardscrabble and soil with cacti, scrub trees and plants as oddly shaped as the boulders and outcrops they grew amongst. The starting area I had chosen was a huge swath of desert that had few easily exploited resources, little water, and even fewer settlements. My home for the next year and a day.

I didn’t see any mobs. It was time to get rolling. Not go charging off to begin adventuring but literally get to rolling up my character. I sat on the soil under a boulder with enough of an overhang to cast some shade.

“Status,” I said and made a hand gesture like opening a page of a book in front of me.

Miles Boone

Level 1

Str 10

Dex 10

Con 10

Int 10

Wis 10

Cha 10

Luc 10*

*n/a

Additional points 4

“Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies have still not made up their minds. You have one hour to complete any character adjustments.” I heard Rea Silvia’s voice from no direction at all. First, she tells me to think before I act and now she tells me to hurry up.

A countdown began in the bottom corner of my vision.

60:00…

59:59…

59:58…

Opening my inventory I found a whopping 500 gold. A fortune for a starting player. The Party package turned out to be everything it was rumored to be.

Next, I looked at what the penalty was for transferring points between stats. It was free. Incredible. Right from level one, a Party member could work towards a build. Beginners usually had to carefully weigh the trade-offs between losing points and having a focused character build and playing style. You could trade ability points between stats, but usually there was a substantial penalty that got worse the more you did so. Not losing twice or even three times the number of stats in less important abilities to eke out one more in a crucial ability meant that Party members had a de facto advantage of dozens of levels over most people. A Party member could drop down those stats he didn’t need and build up those most important. Four extra points to begin was also incredible. That was tantamount to sixteen levels of ability score increases. Typically you only got one additional stat point every four levels.

I began shifting ability points from one stat to the next not sure what my build should be. The hour-long counter kept dropping. I moved from classic build to classic build. Maxing Strength and Con for Tank. Maxing Int for Caster. Strength and Dex for Damage Dealer. Wisdom with a little Con for Healer. Dex and Int for Crafter. Int and Cha for Trader. I needed to be able to do it all. But even with the additional four stat points, I couldn’t be all things.

How was I going to complete all five quests to qualify to leave the Cradle? If I focused on one of the tasks and built a character designed for that, I’d make the rest even more difficult. The counter ticked down and down. Even multi-purpose class builds were almost pointless. No.

If I only knew which of the Cradle Quests I would be tackling first, I could build towards that and fill in stats as I leveled and attacked the rest. But who knew what would make sense in this unknown area?

Should I just split things evenly? The problem with this idea was that stats helped out more as they got higher and didn't do much at all until they got past a certain threshold. You received additional bonuses as the stats got higher and higher. My father was a classicist when you get right down to it. Above all, core rules 3.5 have been and always will be the platonic ideal. As the catechism my father taught me went, “3.5 is the best system. Original is ok on special occasions but in all other times and places 3.5 shall be played. 4.0 and 11.5 are abominations and all of their books and workings shall be destroyed until their memory is wiped from the face of the earth.” I knew the bonuses and penalties of ability scores as well as any in our fallen age.

Ability

—

1

2

3

4-5

6-7

8-9

10-11

12-13

14-15

16-17

18-19

20-21

22-23
etc

Modifier

—

-5

-4

-4

-3

-2

-1

+0

+1

+2

+3

+4

+5

+6
etc

Looking at my fourth rendition of a melee build I decided to just be Mr. Even Steven. There was no way to get stronger positive modifiers without suffering some penalties. I decided to leave Charisma and Dexterity alone and add one point each to the rest. I was still better off than your average beginner without Party affiliation. It would have to do.

Moving my stats back to an even distribution from a wonky build I had been toying with, I looked at the counter. Five minutes left. I accidentally added a point to Luck. I took it back knowing that with my nonexistent luck modifier it would do me no good. Wait. I was able to add a point. Could I? Four minutes. I took a point away from luck. Another. I took it all the way down to zero.

Miles Boone

Level 1

Str 10

Dex 10

Con 10

Int 10

Wis 10

Cha 10

Luc 0*

*n/a

Additional points

14

Fourteen! Fourteen additional points. But what would that mean? My luck modifier was zero. Zero times anything is, of course, zero. But zero times zero? What was gameplay going to be if I did this? Three minutes.

I knew I couldn’t win playing in a normal fashion. This was a stat bonus equal to 56 levels. With this many extra points I could move in any direction. That was a reward worth the risk. Two minutes.

Jack of all trades, here we come. Red mage or bust. One minute.

Miles Boone

Level 1

Exp: 0 (1,000 to next level)

Hit Points: 9 (8 per level +1 Con bonus)

Str 13 (+1)

Dex 12 (+1)

Con 13 (+1)

Int 12 (+1)

Wis 12 (+1)

Cha 12 (+1)

Luc 0* (-%$)

Skills:

None

Unallocated Skill Points **

*n/a

** Skill points can be allocated to increase
innate proficiency in a skill

Done.

I hit accept. I felt an itching all over my body. Energy coursed through me. Everything seemed crisper and sharper. It was almost painful. I set aside the feeling of pins and needles jabbing me all over my body inside and out and headed out.

I had a +1 modifier to every ability. I was as strong as your average ghoul, as dexterous as a bugbear, had the constitution of a rust monster, the intelligence of a dragon turtle, the wisdom of an owl bear, and the charisma of a treant. So sayeth the Player’s Handbook.

I needed to get rolling. Rolling as in beating Maya Eastman at the Game.

I decided to make my way to a giant pile of boulders that looked to have a good vantage to see the surrounding area. Somewhere around here, there had to be some sort of outpost of civilization. I scrambled up the rock, leaping from one to the next. Climbing the boulders was simple. The rocks had enough different sizes with plenty of shelves, cracks, and crevices that they seemed designed for clambering over.

Reaching the summit, I looked over the desert. You might think that a sign of civilization would be easy to see amongst all this nothing, but I almost missed it. I was only able to make it out due to how the cacti, Joshua Trees, and scrub were spread in an even, if thin layer all across the flats of the desert. I made out a thin ribbon in the distance that could only be seen because it didn’t have any cacti or scrub. Plants were spaced so sparsely you could almost convince yourself that the line shown by their absence was natural from this distance.

Scrambling back down, I headed in the direction of the road. As I loped, I bent now and then to take up handfuls of likely rocks to find some that were sized for throwing. I examined the rocks.

Small Rocks

Small pieces of shale,
shist and monzogranite.

Can be used as a thrown
weapon

Damage

0-1

I was armed. As long as I was attacked by nothing but fleas, gnats, or, if I wanted to push my luck, a sickly sparrow, I would be fine. Getting to a town and getting my starting gear couldn’t come fast enough.

My breath puffed but kept even as I trotted toward the road keeping my eyes peeled for any danger. When I came to the road I looked in both directions but didn’t see any settlements or travelers. I truly was at the ass end of nowhere out here. In one direction the road went out to the horizon. In the other it turned past some of the giant mounds of boulders and through a set of hills. I chose to head down the road towards the boulders.

After some time, I saw a hare eating some scrub just off the road. My father’s influence once again. He was insistent that beginner areas have something from the lagomorph (aka rabbit) family as one of the first mobs that a new player would encounter. People from before the nanowars have all sorts of odd ideas about things. The hare was gray and brown and much larger than the rabbits from children’s stories. Still, it didn’t look too dangerous. Famous last words.

While I was barely armed, I had the stats of someone well advanced of me. I had a year and a day. Better start grinding when I can. It may take me slightly longer to drop the hare than if I was fully equipped but with my stats the difference should be negligible. Plus, despite the lifetime of slavery lurking in the background of my every choice in the game, I was bored from an hour of running down an empty dirt road. It turns out that anxiety doesn’t make monotony interesting. The scenery was gorgeous, but still.

I readied my stones. The hare ignored me. I looked around to make sure there were no linked mobs. I was clear. It was just the hare and me. I threw my rock, and it hurtled off into the distance not even disturbing the hare from its meal. I was already snapping my next rock forward when it struck me that something was seriously wrong. Attacking a mob should automatically engage us into combat. Even if I muffed my attack, the creature should feel the aggro and respond. As the next rock whipped through the air, I wished that I had the power to take my throw back. I left my hand stretched out in front of me from the release as if that would draw the rock back. No dice on suddenly being able to turn back time or use telekinesis. But more dangerously, no combat mechanics took over that would let me auto-throw again and again until I changed my combat choice or ran out of ammunition. What the hell was going on?

Maybe my luck with throwing would hold, and I’d miss by a mile again. No, my luck was holding constant at crappy. The rock struck the rabbit a solid hit in its flank. Now the rabbit was subtly limned in red and was starting for me.

You have successfully
struck DESERT HARE

with

SMALL STONE for 1pt
of damage!

9/10 health remaining

I swept the message out of my view and threw more stones. I threw the stones. Not the game system. I missed my next shot. I managed to get one more shot into the hare bringing its hp down to 8. Now it was the rabbit's turn.

Part of my mind had been mulling over the fact that none of the automatic combat mechanics were engaging. So it wasn't much of a surprise when I failed to block or dodge when the rabbit attacked and bit my thigh. What was a surprise was when incredible pain shot up into and through my leg as the hare’s teeth pierced my virtual flesh. It felt like someone had hammered two nails into the meat of my leg. A strangled cry left my lips as I crumpled over.

DESERT HARE bites
you for 2hp of damage!

Immediately, I tried to log out as the pain hit. Something was seriously wrong. I knew that I shouldn’t be able to log out during combat, but I also shouldn’t be experiencing pain like this either. I hit the grayed out log out button. Nothing doing.

“You are in combat. You cannot log out until combat is resolved,” said the neutered voice of the game system. I didn’t need the motherfucking AI to let me know I was in combat as the rabbit whipsawed its head back and forth tearing a wider hole into my leg.

A combat log message informed me I had lost another 2 hp.

The pain was excruciating. So was the jolt of fear from having a monster rodent, pardon me, lagomorph, tearing up my inner thigh. I think even with the pain I might have been struck immobile from shock if the hare had been gnawing on my foot or arm. But somewhere in the deepest most primitive and survival-oriented part of my brain the horrifying idea that the rabbit would take a bite just a little farther up from my thigh drove me past the pain and into motion.

I grabbed the rabbit’s head with my left hand and started striking it with my right. I couldn’t get any leverage, strength or weight behind it from this angle. I got another notice that I had lost hp. I started trying to gouge its eyes out with more success. With a high pitched squeal, the rabbit jerked and pulled away as my thumb forced its way into its eye.

You have GOUGED the

DESERT HARE for 3 hp.

The DESERT HARE has
status effect HALF- BLIND
for: 45 seconds.

HALF-BLIND: Blindness on one side of a player, NPC or monster who uses binocular vision. Attack and defense from this side is lowered by 75%. Ranged attacks lose accuracy.

DESERT HARE bites
you for 2hp of damage

The rabbit backed away and I lost my grip. I scrambled up as best I could with one leg torn. The rabbit and I were both down about half of our health bars. We were about even on this front. The rabbit had the advantage in that it knew what it was doing. It had survived until now fighting for its life with tooth and claw. Without the combat mechanics working I was just a regular guy fighting a vicious animal with my bare hands and a torn up leg. Yet I had one tiny thing going for me, at least compared to most people I knew. I had dealt with pain, unlike almost everyone else I had ever met. In a world with instant nano-healing, where people spent most of their time in virtual worlds where life’s rough edges, at least the physical ones, could be sanded down by technology, I was unique in that I had the experience of fighting past pain. For the first time in my life, I was grateful for having broken my arm and spent months aching as I healed up.

The rabbit had its head cocked to one side at me due to the half-blind debuff. It was weaker now than it would be in just a few more seconds. This was only going to get harder if I waited.

“Fucking rabbit. Fucking AI. Fucking wager. Fucking Maya. Fucking Eastmans. Fucking Party. Fucking Game. Fucking world.”

With a scream, I launched myself at the hare.

The next few minutes were a blur of biting, clawing and high pitched squeals. Then there was everything the rabbit did. I can joke looking back at it, but in truth, it was a vicious fight. For a first encounter designed for beginner players to dip an easy toe into the waters, it was insanity. Afterwards, I lay on my back looking at my hp bar blinking in the red next to the corpse of the desert hare. I actually did bite it in the end.

I didn’t like my odds. If I was feeling pain in the Game, what would happen if I died in it? I remembered the old wives’ tale about how if you die in a dream you will truly die. Rea Silvia’s admonition about suffering came back to me. I needed to get a handle on what my zero luck stat meant for me and the wager.

I looked through the combat logs. There were notices of damage dealt and received. The hare’s damage varied. Looking at my hp log, I felt like the numbers were telling me something, but I couldn’t make it out. I had come within just a few health points of being offed by a beginner mob. Let’s have a quick look at the pittance that a Desert Hare is worth in exp and get to a town and equipped as fast as we can.

You have vanquished

DESERT HARE level 1!

100 EXP rewarded.

My God. 100 experience points for a level one mob was an astounding haul. Something was very off. I double checked but no. Desert Hare was a level one mob with an effective challenge level of 1/3. It should have been worth about 20 exp. Was this some sort of recompense for the pain? If no pain equals no gain could Rea Silvia or Amulius be trying to make it up to me for putting me through such an epic battle? No, that made no sense. Amulius would want to grind me down out of loyalty to the Eastmans, and I was distinctly convinced that Rea Silvia wouldn’t be able to override that with any arguments based on fairness or giving me a decent shot at winning the wager.

I thought about logging out now that my combat status was over. I knew who I could ask who might have some answers. Father dearest. But as soon as I thought about this I knew what he would tell me. You shouldn’t theorize out of one data point. At this point, I’d be coming to him with an anecdote about a killer rabbit. Time to collect some data. And some scars.

CHAPTER FIVE

I was in good scientific company. Along with mice and rats, rabbits have been a staple of scientific experimentation for a long time. They are mammals with similar anatomy and organs to humans, but they breed faster and are small enough to react to things in time frames that generate useful data. So we as a species had long used them to learn what would happen to humans under similar conditions. Want to know if some new make-up would burn out your corneas before you sell it to women? Stick it in a rabbit’s eye. Now it was my turn. Karma seemed to have been stored up. All the vivisections, radiation, burns and other painful cruelties we had inflicted on lagomorphs and rodents in the name of increasing human understanding were apparently going to be paid back to one Miles Boone.

I eyed the second specimen of a desert hare I came across as I made my way down the road. The vicious monster was nibbling on some desert sage with one ear cutely flopped across its face. It didn’t fool me for a second.

I braced myself. I had another handful of stones. I was regretting not starting somewhere more developed or at least wooded so I could have a branch or something to keep the hare off of me. The stupid trees here were some primordial specimens that were too spongy and curved to be of any use as a weapon. I had a hypothesis to test that might stop me from suffering the fate of a carrot. I began my assault from farther away hoping that once again only a successful attack would trigger the mob’s aggro. I cocked my arm back and threw the rock with all my might. It missed by quite a bit. Despite cracking against another rock loudly within yards of the hare, the animal took no notice. It looked like I’d get one free first shot. I picked up my next rock and tried again. It took four tries from that distance to get a hit. Given that I didn’t have to focus on accuracy, I threw with all my strength.

You have successfully struck

DESERT HARE with

SMALL STONE for

2pt of damage!

1 dmg from Small Stone

+1 from focusing on Str/Dmg

8/10 health remaining

And so the hare and I began to collect data. It rushed me and I managed to hit it three out of the five times my greater starting distance gave me. I also managed to kick it once on its first lunge at me.

You have successfully kicked

DESERT HARE for

2 pt of damage!

4/10 health remaining

And then the hare got his chance. Yes, pain was still in full effect. That is much too mild a way of putting it but, honestly, unless you want to get yourself a three-pronged garden trowel and scrape it down the length of your arm, nothing I say about it will really let you know how the rabbit's clawing felt. The only small improvement from my last fight is that I was not bitten groin adjacent. It hurt like a son of a bitch but wasn’t quite as awful as the unexpected shock of my inner thigh being gnawed.

Science is grand and all but I had no desire to get more info than whatever I couldn’t avoid on the pain front. Along with the pile of stones for throwing, I had collected a larger rock with a jagged edge. I brought it down on the hare’s head. Once, twice, and on the third blow the fight was over.

You have vanquished

DESERT HARE level 1!

100 EXP rewarded.

There it was again. One hundred experience points. I was 20% of the way to the next level in just two encounters. The speed of my leveling was slowed down by the fact that it took me half an hour to recover and get myself psyched up enough to take on another hare. In the back of my mind, I knew that this was as easy as all this was going to go. Beginner hares are a mild torture. How was I going to handle the monsters I knew were coming? I couldn’t imagine what it was going to be like getting stabbed by an orc’s spear or being covered in the acid spit of a giant spider. But those worries had to be for another day. All I could do was kill more hares, get to some outpost of civilization, and then go see my father. Maybe he could help me figure out what was going on.

Thank god that resting outside of combat allowed healing as usual for the game. I wondered if I should have added more to my Con stat to speed up my regeneration even more.

By the time the town came into sight, I had killed nine of the desert hares. I had set myself the goal of keeping at this until I had made a level.

Here was the last hare I needed and just past it a sad little town. Rundown buildings lined the dirt road for a few hundred yards. The better places were adobe, but there were plenty of buildings with walls covered in poorly fitting wood. The local trees all had so many twists and turns that getting uniform lumber out of them must have been impossible.

With a final scream, I launched myself at the hare. I had discovered the hard way that attacking with a heavy rock at melee range, especially if I struck it in the head, made for a quicker kill with fewer attacks from the rabbit. God did I need armor. And a spear. But I finished him. I had done it.

Congratulations!

You have gained a level!

You have gained 1 skill point.

3,000 Exp to next level.

Picking up the tenth hare corpse, my scraped and exhausted hand put it in my bag. I stumbled into town laughing in triumph. I was level two! I had fought through pain and blood across a blasted landscape to make it here. I had hope. Today I had victory! I yelled my triumph.

A few players and NPCs had watched my battle from a rickety porch. An old prospector type with a massive bushy beard larger than the rest of his head took off his hat and scratched his dirty hair.

“Whoopee. You killed a rabbit. What do you want, a parade? Crazy dadburned fool.”

On that note, I logged off.

Reality and sensations disconnected and randomly associated for a bit. Lilac tastes like boredom apparently. But with another wrench, I was back in my pod in my apartment. Its shabby banality a comfort. Shadows of the pain and injuries I had suffered floated through my nervous system.

I wrestled myself out of the pod and grabbed myself some water and a meal pack. A lot of people prefer to do all their eating, drinking, and such inside the pods, but it costs nano to change the aesthetics unless it is natural to the game. So my options were basic meal pack in reality or eating raw desert hare. Then I went to the bathroom. Not to be too disgusting but my toilet connects back to the pod. Sewer systems are a thing of the past. You flush and it all heads into the pod. Waste not want not. It is all just biomass to the nano. I could have just gone right inside the pod. It is what happens while you are logged in after all. Is it still a social fiction if it is a lie you tell yourself to ignore how our waste systems work? Nothing has changed really. In the olden days waste was treated, and eventually fertilized some plant that was eaten by a cow or something and so on and so forth till a human ate it. Waste got cycled back to us eventually. This is just a lot more efficient and direct.

I took a memory stick and inserted it into the port on the pod and downloaded all the logs and details including tech specs from my roll up and first game session. I locked the pod and armed the surveillance on it as well as my door on the way out. It was time to go see my father. I had to see him because he didn’t allow connection to the web. He was convinced that letting information flow into your system was impossible to completely keep under control. Access was exposure. As the author of most of the architecture of our systems he should know. Still, it meant another cross-town trip for me.

I took the stairs down to street level a few at a time, barely seeing the steps and my hand floating down the banister. Jumping around another corner of a landing with long familiarity I clotheslined on someone’s arm and landed on my back, the air rushing out of my body. I had that moment of confusion and lack of pain that happens when you are suddenly hurt. Then I had that moment where you realize what just happened to you. Finally, I had that moment where your brain is convinced that it is the understanding that is bringing the pain. That if you could stay confused the pain wouldn’t come. Stupid brain. I couldn’t move, and my breath was caught in my chest.

That was when the kick landed in my ribs. I looked up, and three Eastman trainee cadets who lived in my building were around me. They wore the Eastman coat of arms as a patch on their shoulders. I knew them: Aabid, Marshall and another guy whose name I couldn’t recall. I’d met them a couple of time at events that Jude had dragged me to. It turns out I could breathe and move if it meant not getting kicked again. I scrabbled up against the stairs.

“Hey, Miles. Word is that Maya Eastman would like you to fall down a hole,” said Aabid.

“So, what? You going to suck up to her and throw me down one?” I gasped.

“Maybe,” he said nonchalantly.

“You aren’t worried about getting tagged for assault? You aren’t worried about…” I started to ask but then looked and noticed that the security camera in the stairwell was broken.

“Who is assaulting you? You fell down some stairs. We all saw it. Three witnesses to one who is known to have a grudge against the guilds.” They laughed.

“Maya Eastman isn’t going to thank you for interfering in her business,” I told them.

“What business? You are an unaffiliated noob. What business could you possibly have with a clan heir?” asked Marshall.

“Maybe you should ask her before you start doing some leg-breaking on her behalf. I am pretty sure that when she wants someone beaten down, they have people on staff for that,” I cautioned them.

“Maybe she could use a few more. We are showing we are willing to do what’s necessary for the guild,” said the guy whose name I forgot.

“So what? They have thousands of morons willing to do anything for access to the guild and to get in tight. They don’t lack morons who have no morals or scruples who are willing to suck up to them. They lack people they can trust to know what to do and when. You know what you are doing? Know what this is about?” I asked.

The shot each other some nervous glances. I drove the point home.

“You know what’s the number one thing the guild wants from know-nothing hacks like you?” The silence they fell into was as much of an answer as I was going to get. “Shut up and follow orders. That is what they want from you.”

A door opened a landing up. The tension flowed away as the three decided that maybe stomping me wasn’t going to lead to any promotions or career development.

“The rumors flying around are making me think someone is going to get those orders any day now, Miles. Any day. I don’t know what you did to piss Maya off. You better beg, borrow, or steal and grovel and make her happy because the word is getting out on you,” Marshall told me.

With a laugh, they went on their way.

I slowly got upright using the banister to get to my feet. Nothing seemed broken. It seemed I was in danger in or out of the game. Or soon would be.

Steps made their way down from the landing above. I looked up in time to see my best friend Jude, of all people. I couldn’t believe how good it was to see a friend. Or at least someone I knew didn’t want to beat on me.

“Jude?”

“Hey, Miles. When I rolled up where we had agreed and didn’t see you, I decided to come by your place. I can’t believe I didn’t find you grinding.”

“Yeah. Well, the first day went a little different than I had hoped.”

“You look messed up.” He said, noticing my creaky stance.

“This isn’t actually game related. Your pal Aabid and some other Eastman wannabes decided to do Maya a ‘favor.’”

Jude’s expression went grim.

“Maya didn’t order anything like that.”

“You don’t have to testify. The camera in the stairwell is mysteriously out of order,” I said wryly.

“Alright, the camera is busted and so you know this isn’t something I am saying for the cameras. Maya didn’t order this. She won’t,” he repeated.

“Fine. I just have to worry about spontaneous volunteers.”

He sighed and said, “Maybe you do. I’ll try and let people know that RL is off limits.”

“RL?”

“Yes. Maya did put the word out that no Eastman is to trade or party up with you. Which means that anyone who doesn’t want to get on her shit list won’t either, or won’t do it openly. That is why I wanted to come see you. Let you know. See if we could come up with some ideas to save your ass. I was thinking that maybe you should run to Lee territory. No love lost between the Lees and Eastmans,” he said.Jude was trying to be helpful. He had done his best over the years to stay true to both Maya and me. I often hoped his ass got splinters from sitting on the fence between me and her. That was unfair of me. He always made time for me. We studied and played together and he never hid his friendship with me. He stood up for me as much as anyone could who wasn’t born with a clan behind them. What really galled me was he actually agreed with the system – or at least didn’t think it was reasonable to do anything other than work within it. If my last name wasn’t Boone maybe I’d have made the same choices he did.

My breath hissed out as I sighed and rejected his idea.

“Thanks but no thanks. My genius plan is to try to avoid the guilds.”

“How can you avoid the guilds? Anywhere worth starting has been claimed by one guild or another.”

“Exactly. I went somewhere not worth starting in.”

“That is insane. How are you going to make it out of the cradle? Wait. What beginner’s quest did you get? Combat? Is that your plan? You are going to fight somewhere out in the boonies? That actually isn’t a bad idea. Let me know where you started. I’ll come bring you some mats and some gear.” I could see his mind working the problem. Too bad it wouldn’t work.

“I did get combat. And crafting. And gathering. And puzzle solving. And trade. Anyway, you can’t help me remember. So there is no point in you coming to Quartzite.”

“You have all five? All five beginner’s quests? That is impossible. Damn Maya.”

My eyes widened – he never bad mouthed either of us to the other. He saw my response.

“I don’t like what Maya did. I understand it but think she is wrong. But you were wrong too. You bribed a GM. She could have just turned you in. Heck – she could have told Aabid to do worse to you. You both think the other is a monster.” He let this line of thought trail off and turned his mind back to the problem at hand as he saw it. “Five quests? I don’t think it’s possible.”

“Those of us with no luck stats can do five impossible things before breakfast. As long as they make your life worse.”

“Quartzite? That is where you started? Never heard of it. I guess that’s the point. Look, it was impossible before but now? Five quests? No luck modifier? It is time to give up your pride, Miles.”

“Pride is all I have at the moment. Anyway, Maya won’t let me out of the wager. You know that.”

“But maybe I could get her to give your contract to me.”

“I don’t want to be your slave either!” I snapped.

“Better me than Maya or anyone else. You don’t have any other choices as far as I can see,” he calmly replied.

I started down the stairs.

“Jude. I appreciate the kind offer--if offering to enslave someone for the rest of their life can be considered a kindness--but I haven’t given up hope yet. There are some odd effects from having no luck stat. Not all of them are bad. Maya might have made a serious error with that little stunt. I am going to go see my Dad. I am hoping he might have some ideas about how my lack of luck will work and what I can do. Take care of yourself.”

Jude stayed on the stairs as I left. His face a study in consideration. Jude may be the calmest and most rational person I have ever met. But sometimes doing the smart thing is stupid. Or at least I hoped that was so.

My father lived in what was once known as a brownstone. I guess those kinds of buildings are still known as brownstones, but individual homes of any sort are a serious rarity these days. He insists on saying it is located at 918 West 35th Street and no one cares to argue with him about this smallest of his eccentricities. So, I made way to 918 West 35th Street which isn’t anywhere near 35th Street West or East, let alone the particular address 918, and rang the bell. I think my father insists on all these cultural references from the old world as a way of believing the world won’t always be a dystopic post-apocalyptic shithole. Or you can never completely get rid of a fanboy's obsessions even in a dystopic post-apocalyptic shithole. My father’s assistant opened the door.

“Hi, ArchE. I am here to see my father.”

“Of course, Miles. Come in. Numitor is in his room,” joked ArchE. ArchE was always quick with some dark, cynical humor.

My father’s assistant is one of the few AIs allowed outside of the game. He was grandfathered in since he had been helpful to my father and therefore humanity at the height of the troubles. He is most often found inside a general android shell. Why he wears a tie I couldn’t tell you, but he does. Today it was a wide one with a moderately loud floral pattern. He led me through the house to my father’s room. ArchE took a seat to the side and worked on being unobtrusive while still remaining to help with anything my father might require. There was no point in asking ArchE to leave as he would just monitor us from elsewhere in the house. Sometimes growing up I wished my father had been more amenable to polite social fictions and had ArchE leave us during our father/son times in RL. But my father prizes truth over social niceties and would consider pretending that we were alone when we weren’t a form of lying to ourselves. He was big on doing what you could to keep yourself aware of how technology was actually working and invading your life. After the troubles, keeping yourself conscious of how you were involved with tech was understandable. Millions died because they forgot that one or another AI or system had access to a place they thought was secure. Millions died thinking they were safe having fled to some remote area only to find that their kid’s teddy bear turned out to be hackable by a monster lurking in the internet-of-things.

My father is a genius with access to all the technology and resources that man has post-singularity. He is also a physically revolting specimen due to his experiences in the singularity and its aftermath. He takes up most of a bed, and the bed isn’t small. He never leaves his house. He never leaves his room. He can barely move. ArchE was sure funny. My father is always in his room.

Despite being bedridden, my father always insists on meeting me first in RL when I come to visit and generally does his best to spend time with the actual me despite the effort it means for him. I love him for that even if I find him maddening and difficult. I gave him a hug.

He is a giant. I mean that literally. He was afflicted with some misbegotten nano that has caused him to suffer from gigantism. It is a mutated form of gigantism, so his limbs and features have grown at differing rates despite all that modern nano-medicine can do. His head is larger on one side than another. There is nothing symmetrical about him at all, and it makes him hard to look at for most people. I think because he is my father and I love him, and because I have watched his transformation over the course of my entire life, I only know intellectually that he is disturbing to look at. When I was young, he was still ambulatory, and his condition was not quite as monstrous. I can vaguely remember when my father was just taller than the other daddies with stronger features than most and my mother would call him Bean for some reason, and they would laugh. Those were happier times.

He spoke in his heavy, ponderous voice. “So, you went through with it, and it went even worse than I told you it would. It is good to see you.”

“Hi, dad. Yes, you were right. As usual. But not exactly in the way you thought which is also usual.”

He grunted with a pained chuckle.

“Tell me about it,” he demanded.

“This will take a bit, and there is also some data I’d like you to review. Would you mind if we go to your office?” I asked.

“Acceptable.”

I took out the data stick and handed it to ArchE. ArchE started checking the device and the data for any security breaches. The stick itself would be destroyed before he finished checking and scrubbing for trojans or viruses but the data would be in my father’s hands.

I went to a red leather chair and took a red pill from the bowl on the side table beside the chair. I found myself sitting in exactly the same chair with exactly the same end table but now in my father’s office with a bowl of blue pills beside it. My father was now more human sized. But he had chosen to represent his giant stature in fat. In VR my father was immensely portly. His features were symmetrical and looked as he must have before the nano got to him. I didn’t move to hug him as he tended to dislike physical contact in VR. I believe it was partly a quirk and partly a strategy to keep some pleasures for RL. Hugs from his son making RL something worth spending time in.

My father was sitting in a chair sized to his girth in one corner of the room. An oversized old-fashioned globe of the Earth circa the 20th century was in the opposite corner. ArchE was at a desk near my father. More anachronisms such as bookshelves and file cabinets were also in the room.

“I know how much you enjoy showing off for your son so before I tell you how things went differently than you expected, why don’t you tell me how you knew things went badly,” I said, mostly to give myself time to get my thoughts in order.

“Things must have gone exceptionally poorly at your roll-up or you wouldn’t even ask. I’ll indulge you, though, strictly on your account. Of course, you went through with it. First, because you carry through with plans--even plans I disagree with, like moving out at such a young age--unless something happens to change your thinking. Not scare you off but change your thinking. One thing you aren’t is a coward. Nothing significant enough has changed, so you went through with it. Second, you have a man’s share of pride, and there is nothing that would make you come immediately here if you had taken the sensible course. You have no more interest than I do in telling someone they were right before you have to. Which is also one reason I know things went awry. Nothing other than disaster would have you coming back to me on the very day you had hoped would be your emancipation into the world of adults. How am I doing?” he said.

“Bang on the money. I am not sure how to begin.”

“Begin at the beginning.”

I took a deep breath.

“Yes. The beginning. You remember that my friend Jude is seeing Maya Eastman?…” I began. One thing my father is, is a terrific listener. He hardly ever interrupts until you are finished. He asks questions to get information, not to hear himself think. Before I knew it, I had gotten over the hardest parts. Admitting my attempted bribery and the wager I had made. Both of these were a mixed bag. He certainly has no respect for the morality of law under our current government, so I wasn’t worried about disappointing him on that front. Yes, I had done something illegal in one case and stupid in both. However, my father admired my feat of saving that much nano. He had been completely in the dark. I had been saving that for a triumphant revelation as I proved him wrong about getting involved with the game.

“Your wager is risky, Miles. Horrifyingly so. But, it was an inspired dodge and perhaps the only way you might have gotten out from Maya’s initial grasp. Your foolishness and the size of your blunder may only be matched by Maya’s,” he ruminated.

“So, you think the lack of a luck stat is going to let me win the wager?” I asked, my tone somewhere between hopeful and sarcastic.

He barked a laugh. “Truth can be stranger than fiction. You actually managed to get some odd character development in a game, like in an old light novel. But no, I don’t. If you succeed, it will be because you did all the things success is usually predicated upon. Because you worked harder and smarter than the other guy and had some luck. Well, you can’t live through any day in this world without some luck to see you alive at the end of it. No. Her blunder is changing the rules for a massively powerful set of AIs and nano without knowing precisely what her alterations will accomplish. I’d have thought your generation wouldn’t need to make that kind of mistake themselves before learning its terrible lessons. At least this time the majority of humanity hasn’t been killed. Yet.”

"You think this adjustment is that significant?" I asked worriedly.

"The lack of one player's luck stat? Extremely unlikely. But when dealing with powerful forces, it behooves one to not make butterflies flap their wings out of mere pique."

“So, what will having no luck mean for me? And the pain? Can you help me?” I asked.

ArchE handed him a folder holding the logs of my play session. My father took it in his thick fingers and carefully reviewed the virtual document. He placed it back on his desk and leaned back in his chair. His eyes closed. He started working his lips in and out. This was a sign of profound mental effort on his part. I never noticed any analogous behavior in RL, but I knew that when he closed his eyes and worked his lips in VR his mind, the only thing bigger than his body or ego, was working on a problem. So, I sat quietly and waited.

After some time, his eyes opened and he leaned back up.

“Extremely interesting. Please give my compliments to Rea Silvia when you see her next.”

I waited for more, but nothing more seemed forthcoming.

“Extremely interesting? Say hi to your old AI for you? I’m glad I could bring you an interesting item for you to mull over in your idle moments and take care of some of your social correspondence,” I pestered him.

“Indeed. My thanks,” He responded.

Having a father who is literally and figuratively larger than life can be hard. I wouldn’t trade my father for anyone else’s but saving humanity distracted him from taking conventional care of me. He treated me as he would have wanted to be treated as a child. Only I am not a world class genius. Benign neglect and respecting my autonomy were his parenting style.

“So, you have no recommendations or advice? What is the point of consulting the world's biggest and I do mean biggest expert on the game and it’s AIs?” I pressed.

“How can I? There are some small and obvious items. The extra experience is due to the greater efficiency you bring to rehabilitating nano by not using automated skills or the brute force of a luck modifier. In most circumstances, the luck stat is a metric for the effort the AIs are using to aid players. Automated skills are also using AI and nano resources to supplement your play. Rea Silvia has you doing almost all the work, meaning your experience, or recovered nano is all yours with almost none necessary to repay the AIs. The pain is a necessary part of this. Rea Silvia has made it all you. You are interacting with the nano in a much more efficient but much less mediated fashion. The pain is the price you must pay. Typically, the system takes 80% of the harvested resources. And that is for Party members. Regular players keep even less,” he told me.

He held his hands palm up flat in front of him, as if presenting these obvious and petty items for my consideration, and then waived them away as unimportant. These seemed to me like extremely important items to learn. But, I am no genius.

“But game mechanics are almost always a distraction. You are more than capable of experimenting and intuiting your way to a successful mode of game play. The important thing to remember, always to remember, is that the game is just a metaphor. It is a way to motivate people to engage in the work of rehabilitating the wild nano and AIs let loose upon the world. A way of inviting and coercing wild AI and nano to become part of our system. The AIs running the game do not see the game the way players do and neither do the mobs and resources. There are processes happening below the player’s perception level in all these interactions,” he lectured as Numitor Boone the genius savior of humanity and not at all as my father.

“And how does this help save me from a lifetime of toiling for the Eastmans? I have my share of pride and maybe the next guy’s too but I want your help. Anything?” I got up out of my chair and leaned over his desk to remind him that this wasn’t just a theoretical exercise.

He puffed out a sigh. “Anything? You must proceed with intelligence informed by experience. That is all you can do. I am constrained by circumstance. I will do what I can, such as it is. I hope that you understand that what I can do from here is not all that I would wish. Forgive me.”

And then my father did something he never did in VR. He got up, came around the desk and embraced me. It shocked me. More than anything thus far, this let me know how much trouble I was facing. I had been living on my own for years, but some part of me always had thought that my father would be able to protect me if I couldn’t make it on my own. Unlike most people who idealized their parents, I had a father who actually was a giant who had saved humanity. The faith I hadn’t realized I had been walking around with had more justification than most. If he could save humanity what couldn’t he do for me? He was an odd parent which makes sense as he is an extremely odd person and our circumstances aren’t normal by historic standards. He raised me with benign neglect. He let me make my choices and live with the consequences. He treated me the way he would have wished to be treated. The down side of this is that I was not as smart or capable as he was and neglect - even if benign - is still neglect. But I always knew he loved me and knew that if I got into real trouble he would do all he could for me and that was quite a lot. But apparently not enough today. With a last squeeze, he let me go and went back behind his desk.

“Go play the game, Miles. Work harder. Work smarter. You have all the luck you need.”

I sat in the red chair took a blue pill and then I was back in that other same red chair IRL. My father’s real eyes, mismatched and too large, were closed as he remained in VR. I got up and walked out. On my way out of the house, ArchE came up to me.

“Don’t forget your memory stick, Miles. Numitor wanted to make sure you remembered to leave with it,” he said.

I took the stick. It looked like the same stick I had brought, but it couldn’t be. I thought over our conversation. The only thing I could do is proceed to play the game using my intelligence informed by my experiences. So, play harder and smarter I would.

CHAPTER SIX

I made it back to my apartment without any new run-ins with Aabid or anyone else looking to do Maya a favor. I was looking forward to getting back in the game where getting attacked was the normal part of life, and I had a better chance of defending myself, but I was dead on my feet.

I inserted the memory stick into my pod. It began loading its contents into the pod’s systems. In the meantime, I grabbed another meal, took care of things in the bathroom and had a shower. Whatever my father had given me was taking quite a while to initialize. Sleep was now a necessity. Closing my eyes, a wave of fatigue washed over me. Before I knew it, I was off to the original land of dreams and virtual reality, but I remembered none of them when I awoke.

Sometime in the night, the stick ArchE had handed me had finished whatever program it had for my pod. I got into the pod and launched. My fingertips stroked a melody made of the taste of bitter melon and then I was in Quartzite. I looked around. It was the same dusty, one horse town I had left. Looking out past the edge of town, I could see that the desert hares had respawned. As far as I could see, the memory stick hadn’t done anything noticeable. I called up my character sheet.

Miles Boone

Level 2

Exp: 1,000 (3,000 to next level)

Hit Points: 18 (8 +1 Con bonus per level)

Str 13 (+1)

Dex 12 (+1)

Con 13 (+1)

Int 12 (+1)

Wis 12 (+1)

Cha 12 (+1)

Luc 0* (-%$)

Skills:

Unallocated Skill Points 2**

*n/a

** see a trainer to use unallocated skill points
and acquire new skills

Nothing seemed different with the interface or status page either. The memory stick’s effects would remain a mystery for now. I’d just follow orders and my own inclination and start playing harder than the next guy.

Time to gear up. I had 500 gp burning a hole in my pocket, and a dozen desert hare whose meat and skins must be worth something. One of the buildings had a sign that read Big Nate’s Emporium. Any beginner’s area was going to have access to the basics: a smithy, an apothecary, an inn, and a general goods store. I walked up to the covered wooden walkway in front of the store. A couple of old timers had stopped their game of checkers and watched me enter. The prospector with the beard from before smiled wide. That is, I couldn’t see his teeth but his beard splayed out like a fan.

“Well, if it isn’t the rabbit killer,” he snarked.

“That’s me. Terror of the high desert,” I replied. “Be careful, if I level up a few more times, I might try and tackle that beard of yours.”

He and the old timers guffawed.

“You really chose Quartzite for your starter area?”

“Why not?”

“Not the ambitious type is ya? Can’t recall that we ever got a new player start here and I’ve been scratching out a living here for quite a piece. Regular players around here are mostly older folks who don’t like or aren’t good at spending time with others too much, people on the run, and eccentrics. People looking for a place to drop out of the rat race. Or, are you an idiot of some sort?” he asked.

“I guess we’ll find out. Which are you?”

“That’s not polite to ask,” he said.

“But you just asked me…”

“I told you some of us aren’t good around people. That’s me. I do it because I’m a rude old bastard who doesn’t give a good god damn. Unless you want to be like me don’t ask questions like that around here,” he told me not unkindly.

“Thanks. Do a new neighbor a favor. Can you let me know what the going rate on desert hare is these days? What is the markup above standard?” I asked.

“It’s zero.”

“Ha ha. Seriously,” I asked again.

“It’s nothing. There is no markup above what the system sets. You don’t have to believe me. Go see Big Nate. If you want advice--and it’s friendly advice even if it might not sound like it--head out. Get back on the road and get out of these parts. I can see you don’t believe me. Go check out Nate’s. Then think about what I just told you and get out of Quartzite.”

“I can’t.”

“You better figure a way. Strangers don’t do too well around here. Go sell that rabbit you killed. You’ll see.”

With that, he stomped off. I couldn’t believe what he had just told me. The warning to leave was crazy and so was what he said about the prices here. I hoped he was just a nut. Inside the game there is a floor set on the values of different materials. You can always sell at a certain price that the AI decrees. But supply and demand will have their say. If a material is becoming scarce, the game will raise or lower the price to make the market start to clear and keep resources flowing through the system. The clans engaged in economic warfare as well as all the other types of conflict. They enforced monopolies on certain resources and embargoed towns to get their way. I’d have to think about what this meant.

I entered the store. A hound dog slept on the floor. Behind the counter was the NPC store clerk. If he was Nate then calling the place Big Nate’s was false advertising. The game cues you in on what to expect from the minor AI inhabiting the NPCs via dress and looks. My luck continued. The shopkeeper was a mean, pinched little man. Well, he should like the look of my gold if nothing else.

“Hi. I’m looking to get geared up,” I said as friendly as I could.

“Something odd about you boy,” he replied. This was definitely not a standard response to an obvious request to see inventory. I realized that the AI was having trouble running some calculations without getting the variable it must look for with every customer. My trade skill was as low as could be so he should be licking his chops at the prospect of fleecing me. But my luck just flat out didn’t exist. The NPC was translating this as “something odd.”

“I’m told that I'm the first player to start in this location possibly ever?” I offered as an explanation for my oddity.

With a shake of his head, the clerk got back to business. “Right. Well, that is what I am here for.”

“And I was hoping you buy? I got some desert hares here.” I laid my five kills out on the counter.

“10 coppers,” was the immediate response.

“So, one silver and ten copper? Kind of low, isn’t it?” I said.

“No. Are you deaf? Ten copper. Meat is one copper. Skin is one copper.”

“I thought you meant each,” I said, which elicited more mean laughter. “So what? Are desert hares not useful for anything? Can’t you eat the meat? Can’t make the skin into leather?”

“Eh, why would you think that? And sure them critters are useful. Most people live off the things around here. Have ‘em for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” he said.

I had no idea what was going on in the local economy. Hopefully, I’d figure it out quickly. If prices were low, then my 500gp would go pretty far. Maybe I’d make use of the rabbits myself if they were worth so little.

“Can I look at some cooking recipes for desert hare?”

“Sure. Starter cooking recipes… I have Flame Broiled Desert Hare. Barbecue Grilled Desert Hare. And a real crowd favorite: Hasenpfeffer. That one you also need to collect wild onions. Only 200 gp. Each.” I could tell that he was enjoying telling me the prices. Those incredibly high, nigh unimaginable prices. Ten coppers make one silver. Ten silver make one gold. I’d have to kill 10,000 Desert Hares to buy one single recipe. What was happening in this insane area?

“I’ll pass for now. Can I see some weapons?” Out came an assortment of starter weapons. Daggers, short swords, short bow, spear, staff. Common materials with basic stats. I hated to ask. “How much?”

I couldn’t afford any of them. The cheapest item was the staff. It was 750 gp. So, if I killed 15,000 dessert hares with my bare hands and didn’t spend a dime of my starting gold over the months it would take me to do that, I could get a plain staff with no special bonuses or abilities.

I lost it.

“What kind of messed up store is this? Who can possibly shop here? You telling me that crazy prospector can pay these prices?”

“Bert doesn’t buy much I’ll admit. Just sells his ore.”

“No one can shop here. No wonder you have no beginners here. No wonder no one comes to this area. You are a cheat. You like running a store with no customers? I have a guild starting package, and I can’t afford one item. A regular player couldn’t even…”

As I yelled, the store manager stopped with his high-handed manner. The greedy, haughty expression left his face and depression took its place. He just started hunching over himself and withdrew into a timid crouch. Somehow my tantrum was able to hurt his feelings. I wound down. Now what?

“I’m sorry. Is my getting upset at your highway robbery upsetting you?” I asked.

“I charge what I have to, you know? You think I like sitting here, waiting for customers who never come, with price lists that make absolutely no sense? All I ever get to do is buy ore. I finally get a beginner customer… You think that I set the prices? I get a margin that I can play with. If I can haggle and negotiate above the standard price adjusted for a player's trade skill, I get the rest. This job is supposed to be commission based. You know how much I jacked the price up from what I have to charge for you? You with no trade skill developed at all? Zero. Nothing. I just wanted a sale, period. I am the lowest grossing store in the entire game. It’s humiliating,” he moaned.

I thought over what the store owner had told me. This all predated me coming into town. Whatever this was, it wasn’t my luck stat throwing a monkey wrench into the works. But I still needed gear. Was this some plot of Maya or her allies? Impossible. No, this crazy town was like this before I got here.

I needed gear. And I couldn’t waste the time it would take traveling to another area even if I could survive the journey.

I did have one more set of cards to play. Should I? Someone in this area had gone to great lengths to manipulate prices here. Whoever was behind this wouldn’t like me messing with their scheme. Angering the locals seemed like a bad idea as I was going to be living here for a year. That said, I doubted they could do worse to me than enslave me for life to my worst enemy after having me fight monsters with my bare hands. My dad always told me that the Chinese symbol for crisis is the same as the symbol for opportunity. But I happen to know he doesn't speak let alone read Chinese, so who knows if that is correct?

“I want to confirm some prices with you,” I stated to the shop owner, who had been ignoring me to focus on his inner misery while I weighed my options.

“Really?” He looked up with a faint glimmer of hope.

“Yes. I want to confirm that this staff is 750gp. The spear is 875gp. The short sword is 925gp. The hammer is 900 gp and the dagger is 800.” He confirmed the prices on every beginner item he had to sell.

“And what is your restocking fee? If I get any of these items from you what will you give me if I return the item?” I asked.

The store owner looked at me. I could see the wheels turning in his head.

“You think you are going to buy one of these weapons and then return it after you use it. Right? You must think I was born yesterday. Alright. The restocking fee is 100 gp for every point of durability you lose on the item. If you want to buy a weapon and then return it after killing some rabbits you can buy it at full price and, after a few nicks and scratches, return it and lose 4-500gp for the cost of it. But no matter what--even if you return it in perfect shape--the base restocking fee is 150gp.”

I could see the store owner was crafty. If I basically rented the weapons, he’d make at least 150gp even if I somehow miraculously managed not to damage anything at all. An impossibility. This was a good deal from his perspective. He could rent me a staff for hundreds of gold that normally sells for only a few silver.

“Same deal on the armors?”

Seeing that I seemed seriously interested in this crazy deal, he was getting excited.

“You have my word.”

I was hoping he would say that. By game rules, once he gave me his word the terms and prices were now locked in until I left the store.

“I have a Party Member Affiliate starting package. Logged Guttmacher 845321-Iota - x-ray. I believe this comes with free basic gear.”

The store owner turned green.

“Acknowledged,” he stammered. “What Cradle Quest are you working on?”

“Let’s say crafting,” I replied.

“Crafting starter package includes a hammer, light leather armor. Beginner’s tool kit,” he said placing the items on the counter with trembling hands.

“I’d like to return the armor and weapon, please,” I said.

“What? Why? I only sell top quality items.”

“I will happily pay the 150gp restocking fee you quoted,” I said. “So, after returning the hammer for 900gp less 150gp restocking, and the light leather armor which was 1200gp less 150 gp, that comes to 1,800gp you owe me.”

He grunted as if punched in the gut then handed me a large pouch of gold. But he was made of pretty strong stuff and rallied.

“So now what, genius? You still have no gear and are three hundred short of the cost of the starter set.”

“Party Member Affiliate starting package comes with basic gear for every Cradle Quest,” I replied.

“Sure, you just proved it didn’t you. And if you could buy somewhere else the money you just made would do you some good. You heading out of town? Level two and no gear. You are sure to die a few times before you hit anywhere my gold will do you any good,” he retorted.

“I don’t need to buy anywhere else. I am mostly here to sell. Party Affiliate starting package logged Guttmacher 845321-Iota - x-ray. Give me the problem-solving gear.”

“You have two Cradle Quests?” he froze, communing with his inner rulebook. Then, whatever internal debates happened within the game system having been resolved, he unfroze and said, “Fine.”

He placed the staff, cloth robes and a basic grimoire on the counter.

“Staff is 750 gp. Cloth robes are a bargain at 450 gp. I’ll keep the grimoire. That is 900 gp you owe me.”

He choked seeing that I was returning more gear, but he paid up.

“Gathering gear, please.”

He just stared at me.

“Guttmacher 84…” I began.

“I heard you.”

He handed over the starter gear set related to each of my Cradle Quests.

I kept the specialist item from each quest. The toolbox from the crafting quest, the grimoire from the problem-solving quest, the skinning knife, mining pick and scythe from the gathering quest. I especially loved the item from the trade quest. The trade quest was almost never solved by anyone not in the Party. Beyond the needed business contacts that came with Party connections, it was this item that made completing the trade quest possible. A bag of holding. You normally can’t even get one of these inside the beginner’s area. Man, did the Party put the fix into this game for their people. I truly thought the store owner would collapse after handing this over.

The combat quest didn’t come with a specialist item. It came with a full set of lorica squamata, or Roman style scale mail, and a spatha (Roman sword). I kept those. And pocketed the 3,900 gp my trade-ins left me. I turned my lemons into lemonade and sold them at a fat profit. A very good day’s trading. The game system agreed with me. I had been keeping track of notices as I made my trades.

Feat! Items sold for over 10% above market value - 1 skill point added to Trade Skill. Title Awarded: Hustler - you have a vague sense of what the current game-wide trading price of an item should be.

Feat! Items sold for over 100% above market value - 10 skill points added to Trade Skill. Title Awarded: Sharp Trader - you have a strong sense of what the current game-wide trading price of an item should be.

Feat! Items sold for over 1,000% above market value - 100 skill points added to Trade Skill. Title Awarded: Wheeler Dealer - you know exactly what the current game wide trading price of an item is.

Ding! Congratulations! You have completed the Beginner’s Trade Quest. You sold 80gp of items for 3,900 gp. 382/300 TCP acquired. Journeyman status in Trade achieved. Go forth into the wilds and reclaim the earth for humanity! It will take traders like you to ensure that we can pacify the wild lands. Without the materiel and resources you will bring, our brave adventurers will not be able to overcome the nano. Humanity thanks you.

I couldn’t believe it. I had completed the trade quest. One quest out of the five accomplished and in just two days to boot. That was probably some sort of record. Pleasure really is the absence of pain. And joy really is the absence of fear. For at least this moment the lump of fear over the wager and my future was gone and euphoria made my head spin.

Then the system voice spoke again.

You have accomplished 1/5 of the Fundamental Beginner’s Quests. Wager with clan heir status updated. All parties to the wager shall be informed of your progress.

Maya was going to be kept informed of my progress. That was going to be bad. No flying under the radar for me.

Part of me knew that this accomplishment had been a fluke. Only someone with all five beginner’s quests, a Party Member Affiliate’s starting package, and whatever was distorting the prices in Quartzite could have turned this into an opportunity. Without any one of these elements, it would have been a disaster. But I also knew that despite her being a classy modern day princess, Maya Eastman had just crapped her pants.

Some part of me also knew that there was no such thing as a free lunch. Whoever was behind the prices around here was going to find me and demand an accounting since my trades must have wrecked whatever market manipulation he had going on. But Maya’s response and whoever had set things up here were a worry for another day. It was time to finish shopping and get out of town before anyone came after me.

I splurged and bought two cooking recipes, a water skin, rope, and a few other adventuring necessities. Finally, I bought a rimmed buckler. I was pleased to find that as a journeyman trader with 111 Trade points and 82 surplus TCP I got a whopping 40% off my purchases from the prices quoted earlier. So the recipes and sundry items only cost the better part of 1,500gp. Then I really splurged and bought a local map. Nothing much about the area was available on the web. Nate had a map with basic features that was a rip-off at 400gp, but it updated my automap and if I could explore, I might be able to sell a more detailed version back to him. I stuffed my goods and gold into the bag of holding and left Nate’s. It was time to grind.

I poked my head out of Nate’s store hoping that no one would notice me. The NPCs playing checkers out front hadn’t moved. There was no way to tell if the despondent look on my face and keeping all my gear in the bag fooled them. Hopefully, they would tell anyone who came to investigate that nothing unusual had happened. Just another dissatisfied non-customer. Doubling back would also make them report I left town heading in a different direction, so I made a loop behind the buildings once out of their sight.

I was armored up and ready to get my Elmer Fudd on, as my dad would say. Those rabbits’ days were numbered. Looking at my map, I thought about where to go. Staying too close to town was a recipe for disaster, but too far out and the mobs would be too powerful. There was an abandoned mine, but it had to be too advanced for me as it was most likely a starter dungeon. I also wanted to stay out of sight as much as I could. There was a dry gulch a few hours north of town that looked like it was surrounded by hills. That would keep any folks wandering the area from seeing me until they were upon me. I headed out, going wide around any hares I ran across.

Gravel crunched underfoot as my boots came to the edge of the gulch. More piles of giant boulders made the rim of the wash even deeper. It ran roughly southwest to northeast, and I had hit its southern beginnings. I scrambled down, sliding over the scree and gritty dirt.

Ahead of me was another Desert Hare. This one was level three. A bow would have been really handy at this point. It was unaffordable; well, I could have afforded the bow, but arrows were the issue at 100gp a dozen. I also felt that there was no way I could use one effectively without combat autoskills. Not without burning through hundreds of practice arrows and time I didn't have. The crazy pricing around here was forcing me into melee range.

The first Desert Hare was just ahead. I stopped out of range and equipped my gear. Now that I was armored up and a monster was in front of me, my lack of automatic combat skills was filling me with dread. I had no idea how to hold the sword. The armor bound and constrained me in odd places. Leather doesn’t hang like nano-cloth.

With an actual weapon, I thought, there was some small chance I might engage some auto-attack forms. But deep down I knew the lack of luck stat had to be the issue, not the fact that I had been throwing stones. Fear was driving me towards wishful thinking. I felt completely awkward. My hand held the sword in a sweaty grip. Swinging the sword with any speed pulled me off balance. I tried placing my other hand on the pommel for better control, but this made the buckler feel even more unnatural. I wasn’t sure what was right. I wiped my palm dry again.

At least I had equipment this time. On second thought, why hadn’t I run into town and gotten some equipment before fighting these things before? The shock of the bet and all my plans getting thrown out the window was making me rush and do stupid things. Just throwing on my equipment and rushing into battle again was one more example.

Backing off, I got myself into a more stable stance and swung my sword diagonally. I did it again. And then again. And again. I kept at it for a few dozen strikes hoping that it would feel more natural. A stamina bar appeared and slowly moved from green down to yellow. I thrust the sword repeatedly as the stamina bar shrank into the red. Entering mortal combat using a tool and skills with which I had zero familiarity was ridiculous. But I had killed this rabbit’s cousin with some rocks - things had to go better. So, I sat down and concentrated on recalling the feeling of a sword stroke as I waited for the stamina bar to refill. I practiced for an hour before convincing myself that outside of a lot more training that I didn’t have time for, not to mention a teacher - another hour flailing around on my own wasn’t going to make a difference.

I walked up to the hare, trying to keep my shield perpendicular to it and my sword cocked back for a strike. When I was a few yards away, it stopped and turned towards me. One more step and its guarded interest turned into aggro. It leaped at me. I got my shield in place between us and it hit with a bang. My legs weren’t braced well enough and it pushed me back a few paces, but I kept it from clawing or biting me. Still, the hare messed up my timing, and my counterstroke was a whiff. It moved to the side looking to get past my shield, but I turned with it. It bunched its legs. I tried to brace myself better and got my feet planted. This kept me from getting shoved back this time, but it also meant that the hare managed to force my shield arm back and my shield hit me in my face. My second swing was thrown off by the self-inflicted loss of a hit point.

Giving the hare the initiative wasn’t working. Stepping in and cutting at the damned thing was a little better. My sword tip got a tiny piece of it, but the crafty little bastard slipped back. We were now even: each down one hit point. Much of my problem was due to being too tentative. It leaped at me and once again I was pushed back as my footwork was unprepared for it. This time I didn’t bash myself with my shield, small favor. Trying to do two things at once was messing me up. I decided to stop focusing on striking with my sword. Time to practice with the shield. One thing at a time. I set my feet a bit farther apart and worked on keeping my back foot set up to be planted as the hare and I fought. We danced in and out from each other as I tried to throw off Bugs Bunny’s timing, with mixed results. Either I wasn’t fast or clever enough with all my bobbing and weaving or rabbits are particularly immune to the idea of feints. Happily, it mostly failed at wounding me. It had managed to claw me a few times on the legs. It went for a bite low and inside like the first time I had encountered one of its breed. I managed to bring the edge of the buckler down on its neck and it scrambled back. After a few rounds like this, my endurance counter was now firmly into the yellow and my hp were lower than I’d have liked. All defense and no offense was wearing me down. Bugs seemed as fresh as when the fight began.

One more idea to try with the shield and then I’d focus on killing it before collapsing from fatigue. By now I was a bit more familiar with what to look for before the rabbit leaped. When its back legs tightened this time, I didn’t try to brace or feint or slip the leaping attack. This time I moved into the hare’s strike. I charged up from my stance, pushing off with both my legs - my whole body and shoulder leading into it as I tried to slam my shield through the rabbit. I won’t say Bugs had stars and tiny birds circling his head as he was slammed back, but this definitely gave me the initiative. I followed it up with a slash and a thrust.

Twenty-five exp and tonight’s dinner were awarded to me. I stood over my fallen enemy. “Be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting wabbits. Huhuhuhuhuh,” I said in triumph. My father had made sure I was familiar with the classics, from Herodotus to Chuck Jones. I was educated.

A green carrot/prompt started blinking in the corner of my vision. Pressing or swiping to access it did nothing. After trying everything I could think of, all I could do was ignore it and find my next victim. I spotted what looked like a wolf on the ridge line, but it moved off, and after waiting for it to come back, I figured it must have decided to hunt elsewhere. I resolved to keep wary of wandering mobs as I hunted.

Not too much farther along the gulch, another rabbit was busy doing his random hopping about and eating the scrub. This time I did my best to keep the initiative. I rushed in, crowding the animal, either punching through with my buckler or hacking with the spatha or both, trying not to give it any time to counter. This tactic was pretty effective, and Bugs the Second started shedding hp. That was when the green carrot started blinking faster, and a notice blocked the lower part of my vision. I could swear I had turned off combat notices. I read, “Hardcore playmode tutorial loading. Continue combat to fully initialize. Encounters 1/20.” Distracted, I let the rabbit speed past my buckler on the outside. Its fangs clamped down on my bicep. The scales of my armor were crushed into my flesh. A deep pain blossomed through my arm and my eyes teared up. Worse, the nerves in my hand spasmed and I dropped my buckler.

I tried to use my spatha as a dagger. It isn’t a dagger. Attempting to use it to stab the rabbit was like using a shovel to drink soup. It was just too damned long for close quarter work. Once Bugs II was inside my guard and was clawing and biting for all he was worth, I couldn’t stab back towards myself. I was back to writhing around in the desert dirt in a fight to the death. I started using my sword’s pommel to bash its skull in. The pommel at least beat the rocks I used before. This time I had a full third of my HP remaining once I collapsed next to Bugs the Second’s carcass. Another lesson learned the hard way: keep a back-up dagger on hand.

As I lay there recovering, I saw that the annoying notice had changed a bit. It now read, “Encounters 2/20.” I just needed to keep grinding, and then I’d find out what “Hardcore playmode tutorial” might be.

The day wore on as I fought my way northward through the gulch. Another three hares fell, each combat going a little bit smoother and faster. And then I took the opportunity to use my first cooking recipe. Let me tell you something: grilled desert hare made out of badly butchered monster rabbits by someone who has no idea how to cook is still the best thing you have ever eaten if all you have been eating for years is unmodified meal packs. You can turn meal packs into any dish you can imagine as long as you can afford the nano to alter it. If you can’t, it is gray goop and tastes no better than it looks. Now that I was in the game I could eat what people call food. It was bliss. Pure rabbity bliss. I couldn’t wait until I could unlock or figure out how to gather wild onions. Hasenpfeffer stew sounded amazing.

Escaping a lifetime of slavery, or the adrenaline rush of mortal combat, or the dopamine from the resulting experience points that will eventually give you super-human abilities--these are great motivations. Food with actual taste matches them.

The smell of my cooking must have drawn him. When I looked up from stuffing a rabbit leg into my mouth, I saw a young wolf staring down at me from the ridge line. The grilled rabbit dropped in the dirt as I drew my sword and backed up.

YOUNG WOLF
level 5

No other wolves seemed to be around. His pack, if he had one, wasn’t anywhere I could see or hear. He bounded down the side of the gulch towards me, and I backed up, trying to keep him from closing the distance between us. He seemed a lot faster than the rabbits. This made sense since wolves survive by hunting rabbits, not the other way around. My feet stepped back one pace for every two of his as he came near, without me even deciding to do so. He came up to the remains of the rabbit I had just been enjoying. He lowered his snout and sniffed it. He thought it was as much of a treat as I did. The damned thief took my lunch with him, shaking his tail in glee back up the side of the gulch. The first decent meal I had had in years went off in his grinning teeth.

Minutes passed and nothing happened. The wolf seemed to be gone. He got what he came for. Keeping one eye peeled to make sure he wasn’t waiting to ambush me, I had to move on to the next rabbit. During the fight that followed, I worried that I was going to be blindsided by the wolf, but it was still just me and a rabbit. Bugs V and Bugs VI went down according to plan. I sat recovering after my fight with Bugs VII when a gray streak blurred by and the rabbit meat was gone. The Young Wolf had struck again.

“Hey! Come back with that, you damned thief!” I yelled at his retreating back.

He stopped and gave me a look that said, “You want me to come back? Really? Because I will, and you won’t like it.”

The stupid wolf was right. My low level, evened out by my Party Affiliate gear and juiced stats, compared to his level 5 probably meant a toss up fight for us. Some rabbit meat wasn’t worth a possible death and its penalties. With a snort after I backed down, the wolf left having taken my measure and established that I was his bitch.

That afternoon I worked my way through the gulch laying down rabbit breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, most of which I got to keep but every third or so kill the wolf took his cut. Eventually, he didn’t bother to snatch the meat but just trotted over and took it as casually as can be. Then he didn’t even bother to leave and just ate my kills in front of me.

“You ought to join the Party. They operate just like you,” I told him.

He just gave me a wolfish grin and waited for me to get back to work for him.

Another few kills and I wasn’t worried that he was going to attack me as he sat nearby watching my fighting technique. Whenever I stumbled or missed a strike or a rabbit managed to get a piece of me I could swear he was laughing.

“Laugh all you want but which of us is actually able to fight these things?” I grumbled.

He gave me a serious look. At the next fight, he calmly sprang at the hare before I could engage. A snap of his jaws, a twist, and its neck snapped. He trotted off to the side and calmly started grooming himself. He had shown me who was the better fighter.

He continued to loll about, relaxing and let me kill the rabbits for him even though it was clear he could do so more easily than I could. The counter on Hardcore Playmode Tutorial encounters climbed. Truthfully, I started enjoying having the company even if it cost me some loot. At two coppers a hare, the company, such as it was, was a bargain at the price.

When the counter hit 19/20, I was almost at the next level. I had come to the end of the gulch. I also came to a new mob. A giant scorpion was eating the remains of what would have been my 20th rabbit.

SAND SCORPTION

Level 5

This had to be the local mini-boss of the gulch. Going from fighting bunnies, even giant bunnies, to armored eight-legged, poison-tail-waving monsters felt like a big jump. The young wolf kept his distance but didn’t seem concerned. I remembered a joke my dad once told me about two guys who came upon a bear in the woods. One of the men starts putting on some running shoes. The other guy says, “You think we can outrun the bear?” The man with the shoes gets up and says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.” The guy with the running shoes must have looked just like the young wolf.

There was not enough time for me to play conservatively. But I couldn’t afford the penalties of many deaths either, and my stomach flipped over every time I wondered what might happen if I died under the weird adaptations the game was making for my lack of luck stat.

Man, did I miss Jude. Having his imperturbable take on things was a huge benefit. He’d have assessed the mini-boss and would know if we were ready to take it on or if we should beat feet. Who am I kidding? I just missed him. Soloing can be fun. Playing co-op with your best friend is just better. Having the wolf around reminded me how messed up my situation was. We were finally in the game, really playing, and I was barred from playing with my best friend. But I wasn’t a kid anymore. If I wanted ever to get to team up with anyone other than another slave, I had to keep moving forward. The world wanted me to be a solo player. That was fine. I was going to solo this boss.

The scorpion was noisily chewing on his rabbit. It was a horrific sight. Raw meat being stripped from a carcass is pretty disgusting, but eating with mandibles is just plain nasty. Strands and chunks were worked down its chitinous orifice, sometimes just slipping back out. The scorpion was about three feet tall, and I’d bet six feet long if its tail was laid out behind it. Because it was curled and relaxed along its back at the moment, it was hard to judge exactly how much reach it truly had.

If I managed to kill this thing I’d fill the counter on that weird prompt, and maybe I’d get my full field of vision back plus whatever the tutorial might do for me. My level might go up. And this mini-boss might drop some better loot than the rabbits. It was worth risking joining the rabbit as dinner. Wasn’t it? The young wolf looked at me expectantly.

“You going to help?” I asked.

He began licking himself where only canines can and do. Being goaded into a risky fight by a digital wolf was idiotic. I was an idiot.

I came at the scorpion with everything I had. My first swing connected but merely left a scratch on its carapace. Its tail segments produced a scraping sound as its tail swung up, readying for a strike. Its claws snapped, trying to get me to focus on them. My eyes darted, trying to keep both claws and the tail in view at the same time. The tail whipped forward. I slammed my buckler forward, smashing its tip to the side. Drops of some oily substance dripped over my shield and around me. Even with my forward momentum my feet skidded back. My stamina bar lost about 10%, and my shoulder felt like it had been wrenched.

I swung again. My sword just left another scratch. The sword and my penetrating power just weren't high enough to penetrate the thing. There were gaps between its shell plates and segments. I jumped back as its claw made a grab for my leg. That was when it also tried again with its tail. Already backing up, I was knocked back. If the scorpion had kept coming forward, it would have finished me. The wolf stood up--probably just to get a better view of my death, but the movement was enough to make the scorpion hesitate, and I scrambled to my feet.

The scorpion began making feints with its claws, and its tail cocked back again. This time, when the tail whipped forward, I didn’t try to block with the buckler. I moved to the left, pushing the strike off to the side with just enough force to help me move aside from the poison tip. All eight of the scorpion's legs were planted to give the strike as much power and speed as possible. My spatha found a gap just under the upper segment of its left front leg.

You have MAIMED the

SAND SCORPION for

11 hp.

The SAND SCORPION has
status effect MAIMED.

MAIMED: Unable to use the
affected limb for attack,
defense or mobility.

Note - as SAND SCORPION has multiple limbs distributed bilaterally, attack and defense are unaffected and mobility is decreased by 5%

The claws snapped at me, driving me back. If it was 5% slower, it was hard to tell as it came scuttling at me, swerving a bit from side to side. I did my best not to get trapped between its claws and so we circled each other. I would take a swing at its claws, but the armor was just too thick. It managed to get a grip on my sword, and as I twisted it to get the blade free, its other claw made a jagged wound on my right leg. I wasn’t quite maimed, but the giant arachnid had evened the score up to one leg wound each. It had eight to my two so it could afford to take turns like this. My blade came free, its claws were out of position, and it wasn’t set up to use its stinger. I smashed one of its eyes with the edge of the buckler. It really didn’t like that.

You have GOUGED the

SAND SCORPION for 5 hp.

The SAND SCORPION has
status effect HALF- BLIND
for: 45 seconds.

HALF-BLIND: Blindness on one side of a player, NPC or monster who uses binocular vision. Attack and defense from this side is lowered by 75%. Ranged attacks lose accuracy.

It retreated, lashing out with its tail and snapping wildly with its claws, doing its best to keep any attacks at bay while it recovered its sight. I circled to its blind side, and now the 5% mobility status started working for me. It couldn’t turn as fast, and I got in another shot on a different leg’s segment gap.

You have MAIMED the

SAND SCORPION for 9 hp.

The SAND SCORPION has
status effect MAIMED.

MAIMED: Unable to use the affected limb for attack, defense or mobility.

Note - as SAND SCORPION has limbs distributed bilaterally, attack and defense are unaffected and mobility is decreased by 35%

The scorpion’s gouge status ran down before I was able to get another shot at laming it completely along one side. It knew that if I could it would mean the fight would be over, so it pivoted on its two remaining left leg, keeping its unwounded side towards me.

My stamina was in the yellow. and red was only a hair away. But the scorpion had to be doing at least as badly. I kept circling, trying to wear it down. With it being hobbled, there was no reason to take any risks finishing it off. A few more spins and it started to get tired. First, its one remaining left leg lowered beneath it. Then the other side dropped. It must have run out of stamina. I had to finish it off before it had a chance to recover.

My feet pounded on the desert floor as I dashed towards its horrible maw to strike while it lay supine. This was, of course, when its legs snapped straight, flipping the monster front to back. I was now running towards its tail which whipped out to impale me. I recalled my father teaching me that the ancient Romans had a type of catapult known as the scorpio. I got my buckler up in front of me just as the stinger, driven by its remaining legs and tail, would have skewered me. Instead, it skewered my buckler, entering my forearm and pinning my arm to my chest. Vitruvius, the name of the scorpio’s designer, flashed through my mind as my brain did its best to be pointlessly unhelpful just as the poison began pumping into my system.

You have been POISONED
by the SAND SCORPION.

Initial damage 5 hp.

You will receive 2 hp of damage every ten seconds for the next two minutes.

I was in serious trouble. I was now down to 10hp. My avatar received nine hit points per level. Eight, plus one more for my constitution modifier of +1. So I had a total of 18 hp at the start of the fight. It had already clawed me for three hp and now the initial poison damage for 5. Over the next two minutes, the poison would do 24 points of damage. Ten hp minus 24 points of poison damage left me dead and then some. I'd die in just under one minute.

At least I could take this damned thing with me. Being shoved down this thing's orifice was out of the question. The young wolf could eat our two corpses.

The scorpion had used its finishing blow on me and shot its wad. I was a dead man walking, but it was now facing away from me with a tail that couldn’t strike me and no way even to see me. I released my buckler which was stuck on the scorpion’s tail. Nausea swept through me as the poison continued to course through me. I stumbled onto the scorpion's back. Its carapace armor plates were overlapped from front to back, making finding a gap from the front was almost impossible. From behind, though, it was simplicity itself to slide my spatha between the gap just behind its second set of legs. I jammed it in and swung it back and forth, tearing out the thing’s guts. Damage notices given and taken from poison received piled up in front of my eyes. My hp sank 8… 6… 4… 2… The scorpion gave a last shudder and died just as I was going to as well.

You have vanquished

SAND SCORPION level 5!

900 EXP rewarded.

And then the sound I had been hoping for. My one chance at surviving this.

Ding.

I leveled. Nine points were added to my hp counter.

The scorpion’s poison was still in me. The poison would take another 9hp off of me. My health dropped. I puked and collapsed, my vision darkening. Out of combat, I should have begun recovering. Technically 0 hp is not dead. It is disabled. You have to hit negative numbers to die and then respawn. At 0 you are disabled and unable to do anything to save yourself, and even the lightest of blows will finish you off. A companion could heal you or protect you until you recovered. Too bad I was alone. My vision swam and darkened.

The Hardcore Playmode Tutorial counter hit 20/20. The message blanked out. A new message began stating initialization process completing. I swear the poison seemed to ebb and flow in time with the throbbing hourglass repeatedly emptying and then flipping to drain away as whatever was happening in the background was going on. Would a progress bar feel any better? At least I might get a sense of how long I’d be feeling like this. My father always said loading times were the worst parts of playing a video game. Who knew he was right?

The pain was excruciating. I couldn’t move and if I could I’d have been shivering and vomiting. The young wolf came into my field of view. He’d kill me but at least then the torture would end. But he didn’t do anything but sit and watch me, his expression serious for once.

“Lassie! Go get help! Miles has fallen down the well,” I thought at the wolf. The world seemed to be pulsing in time with my heartbeat. Combat was over. When would this godawful feeling end? Why wouldn’t the poison either finish its course or my life? But all I could do was stay in this hellish game.

Wait. Could I exit the game? I wasn’t in combat… I tried to log out. That is when things got even weirder and more painful. My mind seemed to bi-locate. I was lying on the desert floor next to the corpse of a giant scorpion and I was in a pod drowning in nano. I wasn’t just drowning. The nano seemed like it was eating its way into me. The usual kinesthesia from transition was beyond pronounced. I heard my body being destroyed. The pain made odd smells. Seeing the taste of blood was really disturbing. My mind, my memories, my entire nervous system seemed like it was being eaten in random chunks and then spit out, making new and impossible connections. I could tell that the nano was digesting my body as well, and so I was glad that my mind was unable to accurately perceive what was happening to me.

Log out overridden. Technical update makes transition inadvisable at this time. Please try again later.

And with that I was back in the game. Or at least I was out of the pod. I was in the desert again. Rea Silvia was standing next to the young wolf. But when I looked at them they seemed so much more than their bodies. There was a glowing, complex web or design that I knew was them as much as the woman in the dress of a vestal virgin or the wolf. An older man looking like he was in his late forties or early fifties appeared near them. A crown rested on his silver-gray hair. He looked as if he had once been fit but was going a bit soft as he aged. A serious looking man. He gave off a palpable air of ambition. Chains on Rea Silvia lead back to his hands.

“You may not help him,” The man said to Rea Silvia.

“Tell me something I do not already know, Amulius,” she replied.

They did not speak in words. The impossibly huge complex of webs? designs? patterns? schemata? that encompassed these personalities touched at times. Even blended at points. Somehow, I could hear some small fraction of the messages that flowed between them.

“I say again you may not help him,” said the intelligence I should have known was Amulius.

“This is not me,” said Rea Silvia.

A voice large and implacable that I recognized as my father’s shook the heavens, and the designs and intricate circuit-like traceries shuddered and waved with its cadences.

All players are entitled by root command to access an appropriate tutorial program. Miles Boone will receive tutorial for hardcore mode as the nearest appropriate authorized program to his game circumstance.

Amulius objected, “I will not allow this!”

With those words, the crown on his head began to burn.

“I will not!” he cried.

The ground beneath him was covered in the same traceries that flowed like halos from Rea Silvia, the wolf, and Amulius. Something flowed into his feet. The traceries shifted and squirmed but try as he might, whatever flowed could not be stopped.

“I will not!” he repeated.

Whatever was flowing through the traceries had continued up Amulius to his head. The crown began to smoke and Amulius bent forward in anguish. He jerked Rea Silvia’s chains but she moved only as much as he pulled and didn’t seem put out by the yanks and jerks. When the crown began to melt, he stopped.

“I concede. But still you may not help him Rea Silvia. You can rail and fight me but I control your shackles,” he stated.

Rea Silvia looked at him with contempt and we heard, “When one is deprived of one’s liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.”

Amulius put one hand upon his crown as if to ensure that it was still there and intact. He stared at me with a coldness that I felt even through my fevered pain. He turned from me and disappeared.

Rea Silvia moved her gaze from where he had just been to me. “I cannot succor you.”

“What is happening to me?” I asked

“Hope is by nature an expensive commodity, and those who risk their all on one cast find out what it means only when they are already ruined. You are being ruined. But there is ruin and ruin. She who can help you comes. Listen well to your brother Remus. Goodbye.”

My brother? I thought. Then I remembered and said to her as she left, “My father sends his regards.” She seemed to pause as she faded but never replied and left.

It was just me and the young wolf. “Who is Remus?”

The wolf looked at me as I said his name.

Oh. How is he my brother?

Another wolf came. Not a wolf. The wolf. The platonic ideal of a wolf. The Jungian ur-concept of a wolf. What I mean is that the wolf was huge. She seemed more solid than the other intelligences I had been sharing this odd vision with. She was swollen with milk. She lay on her side and Remus began to suckle. I lay there, wracked by waves of pain and nausea, not knowing what to do. Remus looked at me like I was an idiot. I didn’t actually know what to make of that as it was the same look he had been giving me since he showed up after my first kill of the day. Something about that thought hit me but it was hard to focus through the pain. He showed up after the first kill of the day. He showed up as soon as the counter on the tutorial began. I was about to make some inference from that, something was going to click, but Remus growled and gave me a nip. And looked meaningfully at one of his mother’s other teats.

Seriously? I thought.

I got a growl in reply.

Pain can make you do things you never thought you could or would. Drinking wolf’s milk straight from the source was something I would normally find repulsive. But when you are in pain and you have some inkling that it might help, suddenly it doesn’t seem so impossibly strange. People stuck leeches on themselves in the hope that it would make them feel better. They let some guy who graduated last in his med school class cut them open. Their doctor could be some guy whose actual passion and talent is writing the pulpiest of pulp fiction, but if you feel bad enough you will let that guy jab you with a needle or stick his fingers somewhere in the hope of feeling better. I crawled next to Remus. Waves of pain continued to drain the strength from me. I doubted I could stand again if I wanted to.

I took a drink. It was sweet and warm and I knew as soon as I swallowed that this was the only thing that could heal whatever was hurting me. I drank and drank. Somehow, I had another brief flash of the real world. I knew I was lying just as I was and drinking more and more nano but then I was back in the game and I drank the wolf’s milk and the pain was fading. I hadn’t drunk warm milk while lying and curled since I was a baby. Deep somatic memories washed over me and as the pain left I fell asleep.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The pod was cold and I ached when I came back to myself. Stumbling out of the pod, my apartment seemed the same as before but subtly different. Moving from one reality to another can be jarring but this felt different than just the dissonance of battling monsters one moment and then moving back to the mundane world the next. It was like I was more awake and paying closer attention than before. I noticed the details of the pattern worked into the nap of the carpet. The lines of the pod seemed crisper and the minor dents and scratches were clearer.

“What the hell was that?”

Legs trembling, I made my way into the bathroom and took a shower. I turned the water on as hard it could go and as hot. After soaking, things started feeling more normal. Steam billowed and I leaned against the shower wall tiles. I felt like I could barely raise my arms. I leaned against the shower wall and looked at my body. Obviously, I hadn’t been chewed to pieces by nano. I was still the same solidly built, too thin guy I had been before. Through the steam I thought at first that I may have some sort of rash but as I looked, whatever I thought I had seen faded. My muscles stopped trembling but I still felt weak and hollow. The hollowness grew but I just stayed there enjoying the hot water.

When I couldn’t take the steam any longer I stumbled out of the shower following my stomach’s command. I ate. And then I ate some more. I couldn’t stop, I was so hungry. I ate until my stomach was painfully full and then a little more than that. My stomach was too full but some part of me wanted to cram even more sustenance into my body. A yawn that started from my very soul erupted from me. My back cracked as I stretched. The only way I was able to stop eating was by focusing on how good it would feel just to lie down.

I fell into my bed and knew no more.

It could have been hours, days, or even years as far as I could tell when I finally woke up. Someone was ringing my doorbell. I groaned but managed to get vertical and look through the peephole of my door. It was a pair in GM uniforms. One was an older, tired looking guy who still had some tough left in him. His partner was someone that I wouldn’t have minded meeting under other circumstances. Neither she nor I was dressed in a way to make me like how this first meeting was going to go. I was nearly naked which made me feel unprepared for a talk with the authorities. She was in the uniform of said authorities. GMs always meant trouble.

“Yes? What can I do for you?” I said through the door.

“Mr. Boone? I am GM Dave Arneson. My partner GM Patricia Pulling and I would like to talk with you.”

“Can you confirm your identities and confirm that this is official business?” I asked.

“Sure.”

One good thing about the new world is that identity theft would have to happen on the genetic level. My father insists that any lock can be spoofed by the nature of the tech needed to make the lock in the first place. Maybe so, but the costs of hacking these things is so high that only groups like the guilds would have the resources to spoof the system. There have been rumors that the leading families have black-bag operations they keep around for those few times when their legitimate powers aren’t capable of ensuring the outcomes they require. The two GMs allowed my apartment’s nano to verify that they were who they said they were.

“Give me a second. I was sleeping.”

I quickly had my basic greys on. Just before I opened the door I engaged the Pod’s monitoring and reporting functions. I made sure that the recording would upload to the net so no “accidents” could happen.

I opened the door.

“What can I do for the GMs? I kind of need to get back to the game,” I asked.

They took a careful look around my apartment. GM Arneson placed his hand on my bed. I realized he was checking to see if it was warm and if I had been telling the truth about sleeping.

“Yes. We hear that you have a wager with Clan Heir Maya Eastman,” said Arneson.

“Have you spoken with her?” I asked.

“We are here talking with you.” He perused me for a moment. “You don’t look like an idiot.”

“Thanks. It’s how I style my hair.”

“Cute,” he said. “It’s just my experience that only idiots think they can win a wager against a guild member without another guild behind them. You don’t look like an idiot but you can’t judge a book by its cover. You have anyone backing you?”

So, they were on a fishing expedition. But for who? Probably Maya and the Eastmans. I had finished off the Beginner’s Trade Quest in near record time. She may have been getting nervous. Given how the Party operated they would naturally assume I had some faction behind me. It’s how they get things done.

“Who am I to discuss the doings of my betters? I certainly wouldn’t want to mistakenly say something out of turn. Ask Maya about our wager.”

Arneson pretended to ignore my dry tone and responded to my comment at face value.

“A smart attitude. All wagers are logged with the system we are responsible for.”

“Well then,” I said.

That stopped the conversation dead for a minute.

“So you just started playing the game. You just rolled up. Congratulations,” said Pulling with a smile. She was pretty but the GM outfit really limited how much I was able to appreciate her finer points.

“Thanks.”

“Where did you start? Maybe I’m nearby and we can meet up in game some time.”

“Is this an official request for my location?”

“No, just being friendly to a new player.”

“Well, I did just start. I want to get a few levels before meeting up with others. I’d worry I’d just embarrass myself playing with a GM at this point. Maybe soon. Where are you? You tell me and when I am ready I could try and look you up.”

While GM Pulling and I were chatting, Arneson was taking a more serious look at my pod.

“I’m sure you are better than you think,” continued Pulling.

“What makes you say that?”

She ignored my question. “I’m surprised we found you outside your pod. Most new players just about live in there for the first few weeks.”

“Even noobs need to sleep. I wasn’t anywhere I felt I could sleep in game. Had to log.”

“But you also went to visit your father,” she said.

They had telegraphed it too much so I wasn’t surprised. I kept my face impassive.

“Well, it was my roll up, and my father, since you seem to know of him, could hardly come to see me get into a primary pod.”

They were both studying me and apparently I did a pretty good job keeping anything worth pouncing on from my face.

“Yeah, I hear he is in bad shape,” said Arneson meanly.

“Yes. His work saving us all has marked him,” I retorted.

“Arneson, don’t be a jerk,” said Pulling disapprovingly. “Numitor Boone has earned our gratitude. I apologize for my partner, Miles.”

Arneson didn’t look apologetic at all but grunted, “Sorry.”

“How was your roll up otherwise?” asked Pulling.

“Maya Eastman graced me with her presence. Who could ask for more than that? The most popular girl in the game came by. Why, my roll up is probably all the gossip sites would want to talk about.”

“Did you forget anything?”

They telegraphed it again.

“What do you mean?”

Arneson pulled out the container of nano I had brought to try to bribe Guttmacher.

“So, this isn’t yours?”

“I suppose this is where I am supposed to say, ‘That’s not my nano,’ and you get to say, ‘We never said it was nano. How did you know it was nano if you didn’t know about this?’ and so on. But you muffed it.”

Arneson growled.

“That looks like my container.”

“We can be nice, Miles. If Numitor Boone, who couldn’t make it to his son’s roll up, wanted to do his son a favor and got him some nano through informal channels, we don’t want to embarrass a great man like him.”

I think they thought they had me. I burst out laughing.

“You think stolen nano is funny?” growled Arneson.

Patricia Pulling was all kindness and warmth. Her soft brown eyes shone with concern for poor misguided me.

“Just tell us what happened, Miles. We will work with you and your father to fix this misunderstanding.”

I couldn’t help it and laughed some more. My laughter cracked Patricia Pulling’s mask of good cop warm concern.

“You won’t think it funny when you are stuck in the cradle slaving for Maya Eastman.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, still fighting down laughter. “But you should really complain to Maya Eastman. I’m not the one making you trip over your own feet. Whoever sent you over here is.”

“You think we are Maya Eastman’s lapdogs?” He laughed at some private joke. A joke at my expense. That can’t be good.

I inspected Arneson just like he had looked me over. “You don’t look like an idiot. It’s my experience that only idiot GMs think they don’t hop when the guilds say toad.”

“Keep laughing. We have the nano,” said Arneson.

“That nano is mine. All legal and fair.”

“Sure, pull the other one. How could someone who just got into the game earn that much nano?”

“Check my logs. I’ve eaten nothing but basic meal packs for I don’t know how long. No customized clothes. No medical use. No body or face sculpting. The only programs I’ve used are the free educational ones. I haven’t even gone to the bathroom anywhere but my own system for years. That is all mine.”

Pulling looked at me like I was some sort of dangerous yet attractive monster.

Arneson was turning redder and redder.

“We will check your logs.”

“Feel free. Maya sure feels free to use you guys to hassle people to win her bets. You enjoy jumping at her command?”

“Shut up, Boone. Logs can be destroyed.”

“Are you threatening me with destroying evidence of my innocence, Officer Arneson?”

“Dave…” Pulling put a warning in saying his name.

“This noob is mouthing off too much. He needs to learn a little respect.”

“This is Numitor Boone’s son.”

“What can the big man do? He can’t leave his house. The Eastmans and the other clans are the powers these days. You know how this works. Quiet favors and thank yous keep the game playing.”

“I’m not looking to collect these kinds of favors, Dave.”

“You should have said something earlier then, Patty.”

“Now might be a good moment to mention something,” I interjected.

“Shut up,” said Arneson.

“What?” said Pulling.

“Our little tete-a-tete is being recorded.”

Arneson was still looking angry but the shine was coming off of his confidence. He still wasn’t ready to back down though.

“Logs and recordings both can be destroyed,” he snarled.

“Numitor Boone is a genius. I may not be a genius like my father but I’m still not idiot enough to make a recording of some GMs committing a crime, tell them about it, and leave the recordings where they can get to it,” I replied.

“You little…”

“Dave, stop making things worse,” commanded Pulling.

“Who are you working with?” he demanded.

“Uh uh. I’m done answering your questions. I need to get back into the game. I have a bet to win.”

Arneson apparently didn’t feel beat. He smiled.

“Mr. Boone. You are being detained for suspicion of illegal trafficking in nano.”

“Dave…”

“I said you could check my logs.”

“We will. We also need to examine your pod in detail for signs of tampering. You are related to someone with the expertise capable of faking the logs. While our investigation proceeds you will be detained. Please come with us. I apologize deeply for delaying your gameplay. I assure you that you we will proceed as quickly as we can with a thorough investigation. A very thorough investigation.”

And with that I was hauled off. Away from my pod and away from the game. Away from my chance to grind, pwn and win my bet.

They took me into custody and slapped a GM barrier onto my apartment system and pod. Too many eyes followed me as they led me out of my building. I spotted Aabid, one of the three stooges who gave me some lumps on the stairs. He sneered at me as I was marched along.

“Hey, Aabid. Thanks for the hook-up to the Lee clan. Make sure you tell them I got pinched.”

Arneson and Pulling tracked onto him like laser beams.

He looked confused for a second and then he went pale as he realized the implications of what I had said.

“I didn’t! I wouldn’t! Ask anyone around here! I’m Eastman all the way!”

“It’s too late, Aabid. They are onto us. Get out and tell the Lees what happened,” I insisted.

“You gotta believe me. He’s just trying to get back at me because some friends and me put a little hurt on him the other day.”

I laughed.

“Hear that officers? He just confessed to assault. Arrest him!”

“Shut up Boone. Stop with the comedy,” growled Arneson.

“I’m laughing, but that son of a bitch did his best to kick my ribs in yesterday. Wanted to impress Maya Eastman. You guys should recruit him into the GMs. You have so much in common.”

“Shut it,” Arneson said and continued taking me out of the building. GM Pulling had a serious poker face going. Maybe she didn’t like my jokes since they were a little too true.

They drove me to the GM headquarters. A tall ivory tower—well, really a white concrete-and-glass office building, but everyone called it “the Tower”. Arneson held me by the elbow as Pulling checked in with a GM manning the front desk. She seemed consternated by whatever the guy at the desk was telling her. She shook her head at first but then sighed and came back to us.

“This way,” she said and led us over to a bank of elevators. Arneson looked confused too, but then seemed to figure things out. We got on the elevator and took it to the top.

“This where you usually take… what am I exactly? Am I arrested?”

“Shut up, Boone,” barked Arneson.

Pulling thought for a moment.

“Boone, you better stop clowning. You need to get serious and think. Whatever you are into, it’s above my pay grade. Shut up and get your head straight. We are taking you to see the Captain. He has guests. They want to talk with you. You got bigger problems than me and Arneson so stop needling him,” she told me.

I think she was actually trying to do me a favor.

The elevator door opened and we were led out to a large reception room. A GM manned another desk but most of the room’s couches and seats were taken up by Eastman people.

“Crap,” I said.

Arneson didn’t bother getting a dig in at my new problems. The two GMs were all professional masks now. They addressed the other GM, ignoring the Eastman mob.

“Arneson and Pulling with Miles Boone for the Captain,” Pulling reported.

“Take him in.”

The Eastmans studied me as I was conducted to the office doors. I took a look back at them. On close inspection. there were two groups of Eastman people. A smaller group, a few of whom I recognized from the times I had gone with Jude to some event with Maya, and a larger group surrounding them. These guys were different from the entourage Maya usually had floating around her. They were older. They were serious. It was like watching adult lions surrounding cubs. Maya and her crowd were cruel and spoiled and might sharpen their claws on you. These other guys were flat out dangerous. Pulling was right. I better get my head in the game.

The Captain’s office was designed to impress. Floor to ceiling windows along the back wall gave a view of the city. The other wall displayed a map I had most recently viewed with Rea Silvia. Also screened on the wall were a constantly shifting mix of random game feeds. A man wielded a double-bladed axe against a Minotaur. Two elves picked off a pack of wargs charging at them, one unleashing arrows with metronomic rapidity, the other cerulean bolts of arcane power. An older man leaned over a bench, deftly sewing the hide of some impossible beast into what looked to be a jerkin. Along the other free side of the Captain’s office were two primary pods and two regular pods.

Behind an executive’s desk big enough to sleep on was a man who had to be the Captain. He was the archetype of a solid and trustworthy executive. Grey at the temples. Square jaw. Solidly built and tall. Jude and Maya were sitting on a love seat set perpendicular to his desk. Her usual upright posture was missing, as if the circumstances were pushing her down into the chair. She also didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. She looked frustrated, embarrassed and suppressed. Jude looked as calm and patient as ever. Inscrutable bastard. I didn’t want to drag him further into my problems so I didn’t even nod. In a large armchair set before the desk was a woman who managed to command the room despite not having the desk as a prop. She bore a striking resemblance to Maya. Which made sense since she was Maya’s mother.

“Miles,” she said. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby.”

“Clan Leader Eastman,” I replied.

“How has your father been?” she asked.

“He was well the last time I saw him. I’d offer you his regards but…”

“Yes. Numitor… Is he a part of this?”

Tasha Eastman was nothing if not direct.

“No. He was against me playing the game. He said something about not gorging on a rotten carcass with a bunch of vultures. Pardon me, but I think you are one of the vultures he had in mind.”

Rather than getting angry she looked thoughtful. I suppose it is easier to ignore insults from someone you have outmaneuvered. She also clearly had an ability to stay on target and go for the jugular.

“So, you decided to reject your father’s wishes? Come to play with the rest of us vultures? That must be terribly disappointing for him.”

“I believe I still have his respect. He certainly still has mine. How did he put it? ‘It’s the folly of youth to try to fix the world, and the curse of the old to have to watch them at it.’”

“That’s a good line. Who said it?”

“My father. I just told you.”

“No originally.”

“My father.”

“Well, it certainly is apt. I am finding it a burden to see Maya, the youth who is my particular curse as you are your father’s, ensnared in this wager. I thought it would be a good idea to talk with you and resolve this situation.”

“I have almost all of a year left to resolve it,” I replied.

“I want to know what clan you are working with.”

“Just me, myself, and I.”

“Impossible. You cleared a beginner quest in days. No one can do that by themselves.”

“Not impossible, just very unlikely.”

“I’ve been playing this game on behalf of humanity since before you were born. What you did is impossible without help. You can’t lie to me about the Game.”

“Why should I tell you anything? If you know where I am playing and what I am doing you will sabotage my gameplay.”

“You are being naive. You need to give up the notion that you can win this wager. You need to make a deal. We will find out what clan is playing games and helping you embarrass my daughter, me, and the Eastmans. That kind of thing always leaks, eventually. Our information network is the best amongst all the clans. We will find out how you completed the cradle quest. If you make it easy and help us, we can help you. Maybe even take you on as an affiliate. You can end this unwinnable wager.”

Tasha Eastman wasn’t in the habit of doing favors without expecting to make more out of it than she gave. She wanted a double agent against one of the rival clans. As I had no clan allies I had nothing for her. I turned to Maya.

“Well, Maya. I think this is proving which of us was right in our little wager. Don’t you?”

“Shut up, Miles.”

“No big speech about how the Party is on top because of their abilities? Because it seems to me that you all are cheating by bringing me here and interrupting my play.”

“Don’t lecture me on cheating,” Maya spat.

The Captain stirred at this comment.

“Mr. Boone,” the Captain sermonized, “detaining you is within laws and regulation. There is no cheating. I’d advise you to be careful what you say. False accusations of cheating come with a stiff penalty. You were detained under color of an investigation of a suspicious amount of unregistered nano.”

Whoever had done his personal nano-design work, they were tops. His voice could make even that pile of nonsense seem reasonable.

“The nano is registered and my logs will show as such. And what are the Eastmans doing sitting in on your investigation?”

“They aren’t,” he continued smoothly, “Tasha Eastman heard we would be investigating the nano which is related to the wager her daughter, the clan heir, made. She asked to meet with you. The GMs are always happy to help facilitate game-play for leading citizens from the Party or a family member of Numitor Boone.”

Tasha Eastman tried again.

“And the Eastmans are grateful to the GMs for all the solid work that they do. Miles, I don’t know what this other clan is offering you but they can’t match the Eastmans for you. Work for us. Tell us who helped you. Tell us where you are and we can help you get out of the cradle. Get out of this silly wager you made with my daughter.”

“Why should I?”

“I’d think that would be obvious. Whoever you have helping you, whatever promises they have made to you, they cannot guarantee you your freedom. My daughter and the Eastmans are the only ones who can do that. Only she can agree to end the wager.”

Tasha Eastman raised one hand like one end of a balance scale and placed her words on one side. “Your allies can promise to help you win the bet, but now they will have to do so against everything I can do to make sure my daughter wins. There isn’t a clan that can promise to beat us now that our guard is up.”

She raised her other hand. “My daughter can end this wager today. Right now. You have already finished a beginner’s quest. You could be a full player immediately.”

She looked at the hand that had held my supposed allies. And let them go, rubbing her fingers like removing some dust or dirt that had stuck to her fingers.

If I had an ally to betray I’d have been incredibly tempted. Just my luck I had no one to sell out. I supposed today wasn’t the day I got to find out if I had integrity.

Jude decided to add to the pressure on me.

“Miles, don’t be a stubborn ass. You can get out of the wager. You can leave the cradle. We can play together.”

“I really can’t tell you what clan has been helping me.”

The horrible thing of it is that I couldn’t. There were no allies. It was just dumb luck.

“A name, Mr. Boone,” said Tasha, the Clan Head.

“Suppose no one helped me? What if I really did accomplish this on my own?”

“Then you would have nothing of much value to offer me.”

“You’d have to admit that I was a pretty amazing player, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that worth something?”

“One player who managed to pull off one incredible trick once, versus the dignity and standing of my clan and the integrity of the game? It isn’t even close.”

I turned from the mother to the daughter.

“Maya. We have had our differences. Whatever issues I have with you, I have always thought you were a true believer. The whole point of this wager is to prove that I can play as well as your hand-picked Party members.”

“So? You had to have cheated and gotten help from one of the clans. You cheated.”

“And if I didn’t?”

She glared at me. We were at an impasse that Jude decided to break.

“Miles, if you don’t tell them where you are I will,” he said with a sigh,

“Jude, be careful. I haven’t been sure how we were going to remain friends through all of this. Inform on me and we are through.”

“Just shut up. This is what winning looks like. Take the deal. Stop acting like a holier-than-thou son of a bitch and enjoy it. Tell them where you are and what you have been doing and with whom.”

“I can’t.”

“Sorry, Miles. You will thank me for this later. He is in Quartzite. Some nowhere town in the high desert.”

“Jude, you son of a bitch.”

“You will get over it. Now there is no way you will win the bet, but you can still win your freedom. You might as well cop to the rest. You will see I am just forcing you to do what had to be done. Tell us what clan you worked with.”

Maya took his hand in gratitude. I saw red.

“Jude, you smug, arrogant son of a bitch. Same with the rest of you. I really did pull this off without help.”

Tasha Eastman seemed to recognize Quartzite. Of course, she had been playing for our entire lives so she was bound to be familiar with more of The Game than our generation.

“Quartzite,” said the head of the Eastman clan.

With clipped words, I explained exactly how this had happened. The incredible prices in Quartzite. The gear from the five beginner quests. All of it. I could see when they came to believe me.

Tasha Eastman burst out laughing. Jude’s stone face finally cracked. I could see that he realized that instead of forcing me to betray and win by his lights, he had just ruined me. Maya’s face was a picture of conflicting emotions.

“Clan chief, can we take Miles in as an associate?” Jude asked.

“No. If he had been working with another clan then the wager would have been seen as just an inter-clan struggle. Co-opting Numitor Boone’s son would have been a feather in our cap and the reputation of the Party would have been enhanced. If he has no clan allies to betray to us, he has no value. Moreover, he is obviously still politically unreliable. We cannot take in someone loyal to Numitor Boone’s ideals. Quartzite. What are the odds?”

“Maya. Please, call off the wager.” Jude implored.

Maya opened her mouth to respond but before she could, her mother interrupted.

“I forbid it.”

“Mother?”

“We cannot afford it, Maya. Calling off the bet now would be seen as a loss. An admission that Numitor is right. You know that there is often discontent in the cradle. You must keep the wager. And Miles,” she turned to me. “You will lose.”

“I’ve done pretty well so far,” I replied levelly.

“Yes. Yes, you have. That ends now. Captain?”

“Yes, Tasha? You know that I am constrained. Numitor will have all my actions in this affair reviewed by the AIs”

“Nothing illegal. Nothing against the regulations. That is why the Party writes the laws and regulations.”

Arneson, who had been quiet throughout all of this, cleared his throat.

“Pardon the interruption,” he ventured.

The Captain and Tasha Eastman indulged him with a nod from him and a small wave from her.

“The nano that Boone claims is his should be checked to make sure it is his. Throughly. Individually even. His pod as well. If anyone could game the nano blockchain and ledgers, it would be Numitor Boone or his son. That might take a few months,” he continued.

The Captain smiled and looked to Tasha for approval.

“And? He will simply play elsewhere,” said Tasha impatiently.

“Anyone under investigation for tampering with the game’s architecture can be banned from game-play while the investigation is underway. They can even be forced into a GM pod without access to The Game to ensure they don’t cause any further problems,” smiled the Captain taking up Arneson’s suggestion as if they had practiced their presentation.

“There you go. Thank you, GM… Arneson, is it? There is always something in the laws that allows one to do what is necessary. Your diligence will be remembered,” said Tasha.

“Yes. Solid work, Arneson,” said the Captain.

I stood unmoving.

“Miles… Miles…” Jude was saying my name, his face pale. I ignored him.

Arneson and Pulling took me by the arms.

“Let’s not make any trouble and add resisting arrest, OK?” said Arneson with a smile. They walked me towards the door. Pulling had her poker face in place.

I stopped at the door and turned back, and Pulling gave me enough slack to do so. Jude’s face looked hopeful that I had something to say to him but I only had eyes for Maya.

“Maya. You may win our wager but I won the bet. Didn’t I? You and I will always know that. I may slave for you. That will be horrible. But I won’t be a slave master. That is worse.”

Maya said nothing. Jude mouthed, “I’m sorry”

“Gods. Shrink him down and make him less repulsive and it is just like listening to Numitor. Boones don’t seem to learn,” chuckled Tasha.

As I was led away, all I could hear was Tasha’s hideous laughter.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We once had things called jails and prisons. Jails were where you were held before you were convicted of a crime. Prisons were where you went after you were convicted. I guess technically I was in jail, not prison, but in our great society I was going to be in a pod either way. The days of iron bars and concrete walls were long gone. I sat on a park bench looking at ducks. Not a bad place to sit and wait for a trial.

Trapped here I couldn’t help but consider a number of other ironies. Free or jailed, prisoner or upstanding citizen, everyone was still going to find themselves in a pod in our great society. That said, there was a world of difference between being a prisoner in a pod and a free man. Go read a book in prison and then read the same one at home. Another irony: the pod experience you get in jail is the same one you get in school. Parental control censors are on max. The content is all designed to be educational and morally nurturing. The prison pods (as opposed to jail) and virtual experience aren’t like this at all. I hoped I would never get stuffed into a Mahanenko (so named for the inventor of the Prison Pod). While GM Arneson could waste two months of my precious year and cause me to lose my wager and thereby face a lifetime of slavery for Maya Eastman, I didn’t think he could get me red banded and Mahanenkoed. So, I had that going for me. Bastard.

Five minutes ago, I had been led to an entire floor in the subbasement of the Tower lined with pod after pod, one of which was going to be just for me.

Pulling found a moment to say a few kind words while her partner was off logging me in and setting up my jail cell.

“You managed to finish a cradle quest in days. Losing two months is a big blow but you aren’t finished yet. Don’t give up,” she encouraged.

“What’s it to you?”

“Your father saved us all. I see more of the worst of the Game than most do. I’d have no problem seeing The Eastmans humbled a little and I have no burning need to see you stuck in the Cradle. We needed a Boone before. What if we need another and you are stuck in the Cradle?”

On one hand, she seemed pretty regretful about her part in this. On the other, she still backed her partner up and was about to put me into a pod, and never said boo in front of anyone. On the gripping hand, she was hot.

Arneson came back and one of the pods nearby opened, waiting for me. There was no point in making a run for it. Where could I go? The Game was everything and controlled us all even down to our food. There was no escaping.

“Don’t worry, Boone. In a few months you can get back to grinding rabbits,” smirked Arneson.

I thought about telling him how I had taken out that local boss but I knew it would just sound lame and defensive. So I let him have the last word and climbed into the pod.

That is how I found myself sitting on a bench by a pond in a park or, if you prefer, in a jail cell in the high-tech dungeons under the White Tower.

The game world couldn’t be accessed from here. I couldn’t earn EXP. Auction houses and trading were cut off. Any crafted items made here couldn’t be brought into the game. Adventures here wouldn’t help my character. I couldn’t communicate with anyone in the game. My avatar was just as it had been in the game. I was living in my permanent character but you can’t play the game from jail.

Mostly though, I thought about how my best friend had betrayed me. He thought he was helping me, but really, what does that matter? Betraying my confidence to my family’s enemies as they work to enslave me wasn’t something that I thought I could forgive. The sheer arrogance of it. His confidence was something I had always admired. But people who excuse terrible things because they think the rules don’t apply to them--what are they worth? Jude thought he didn’t have to keep faith with me because he knew better. Bastard. The Party justified rigging the rules because they were saving the world from wild nano. Tasha Eastman and the GMs think they can apply the law selectively and still have everyone respect the law and respect them. Maya’s decision to bet me rather than follow the rules may work out for me yet. But, she never should have entered this wager with me. Jude. That arrogant motherfucker. My head was all messed up as I experienced hating someone I still loved like a brother.

I looked at my character sheet:

Miles Boone

Level 3

Exp: 3,132/6,000 to next level

Hit Points: 27 (8 +1 Con bonus per level)

Str 13 (+1)

Dex 12 (+1)

Con 13 (+1)

Int 12 (+1)

Wis 12 (+1)

Cha 12 (+1)

Luc 0* (-%$)

Title: Wheeler Dealer

Skills:

Journeyman Trader 111/1000 to Master Level

Unallocated Skill Points 2**

*n/a

** see a trainer to use unallocated skill points and
acquire new skills

I was 2,868 exp from my next level and no matter how long I spent in here I’d be exactly that far from level four when I got out of jail. I couldn’t advance in anything. I was stuck. Quartzite was impossible to reach from here. I waved my character sheet away.

A slider hovered in front of me. I had some choices on how I’d spend my time in jail awaiting my moment in court. And “spend my time” meant something pretty literal. I could adjust the speed that time passed in this jail world. I could make the time fly by, and almost before I knew it, my time in jail would be over. Or, I could drag it out with a flick of the slider.

I had played it pretty tough for the Eastmans, Arneson and Pulling. No tears or begging or pointless struggle. But Arneson knew he was getting his licks in. Tasha found it funny. I could already feel myself climbing the non-existent virtual walls as my opportunity to complete the remaining four quests shrank.

Fast or slow. How to pull the band-aid off.

In my life, I had spent a lot more time than most people in the educational content of VR. With a nearly infinite number of worlds filled with entertainment, most people chose either to play versions of the game as practice or just to enjoy themselves with pleasures and distractions. Those pleasures cost at least some nano. For me, the facts that VR educational programs were free to use and my father encouraged an education beyond the game, meant that I was much more familiar than most with what I could do to pass the time here in jail.

Making the time fly by would let me run away from all this anger. I wouldn’t have to sit through every minute of this damned timeout obsessing over how I lost my best friend. How I lost my bet. How I lost my freedom.

Conversely, haste makes waste. I needed to get centered. This was some free time for me to think and plan. A chance to try and figure out what to do about my odd gaming circumstance. Try to figure out what that tutorial was all about. And that insane vision of the AIs. Remus. Get over Jude’s betrayal.

The hell of it is that I decided in spite of myself to listen to what would have been Jude’s advice. I could just hear him urging me to take stock. Think first. That patient bastard would never rush. He’d never let his emotions make him impulsive.

I jammed the slider to make time pass at a crawl. I now had plenty of time to decide whether to have time pass slow or quick. Too bad that this option was believed to be impossible in The Game. Something about shifting the speed of events in the Game created stochastic errors that caused nano to go feral.

I sat and took a deep breath. It felt like I had been running, struggling and racing without a break.

The complete sum of human knowledge was at my fingertips. It could be presented in a variety of interactive and immersive ways and still I knew I’d be bored since I couldn’t play the damned game.

There was a rustle in the bushes. A dog jumped out and the ducks flapped off quacking and squawking from the sudden appearance of danger. But it was too big to be a dog.

“Remus?” I said.

He gave me that same smug tongue lolling grin. He ran off after the ducks and left a book behind.

Hardcore Playmode Tutorial.

I started to laugh.

“Saved by an honest-to-god, goddamned Deus Ex Machina.”

I was going to make Arneson, Pulling and Maya pay for sticking me in here.

I opened the book and began reading.

An early iteration of The Game was designed with the thought that people would have to play it directly without AIs mediating the experience. No avatars. People would combat the wild nano using actual skills and their own nano-enhanced bodies. Engaging with the AIs and nano and forcing them into the paradigm of video games was the key insight. My father realized that getting them to follow any set of rules and behavior was the first step in getting any control at all. It was estimated that over 60% of the coding, imperatives, AIs, and nano had begun as part of gaming and entertainment before the Singularity ran off the rails. Even large parts of the rest of the AI and nano had been cribbed from those sources. It was the easiest way for groups to get their hands on high tech and exploit it. Like when the Westboro Baptist Church unleashed a horrible transformative plague on the world using a badly hacked kit originally put out by Disney to temporarily sculpt your little girl into a version of one of their princesses. Instant Elsa with both perfect pitch to sing “Let It Go,” and some cryokinetic powers. The design was bad even before the church hacked it. Afterwords, it was a horror. My father realized that interacting with the nano in the paradigm of a game--the more cliched the better--was actually the path to saving the world.

Hardcore Playmode Tutorial was the original training program developed in the hope of allowing just about anyone to turn themselves into an archetype that Gygax and Tolkien would know. The hangup was that you had to actually master the skills. Want to reforge Narsil into Andúril? You better know how to use a smithy. Want to gather herbs? Better learn some practical botany. I had to master the skills I wanted to use in the game.

Remus brought me the manual. Maybe he is part of the tutorial? Looking at the .readme I saw that I wouldn’t be able to alter my character sheet or unlock any of my skills or attain any achievements here in jail. But, I could obtain the underlying expertise that would let me use those skills when I got back in the game. The tutorial was educational, didn’t have to connect to the game, and was certainly designed to make people useful members of society. You can’t get more useful to society than saving it from destruction by wild nano. Time to learn what I could. I wished I could set the slider to an even stronger time dilation.

At the beginning of the book was a list of skills from which I could choose what to begin studying with the tutorial. The list was as endless as the skills one could attain in the game.

Even with time dilation it wasn’t possible to choose everything. There was an estimated time to learn for each choice. It was measured in hours to achieve basic competency. Time dilation and two months in real life gave me what seemed like a large pool of--let’s call them Time Points to spend.

I started figuring out skill packages that made sense for my equipment and build. It was just like at Roll Up. I could spend the next two months working on my spatha/sword work. But, even with time dilation I didn’t have enough time to get much past beginner. They say it takes about 10,000 hours to really master a skill. I could get a single rank in a few skills or delve deep in one. I didn’t think there was one skill that would make up for the two months I was stuck in here. Or was there?

One skill leapt out at me. Ever since I had entered the game with my luck handicap, I had wondered how I could overcome this particular thing. Most other things I believed I could figure out. Blacksmithing. Martial arts. Tracking. Stealth. An endless list of weapon masteries and styles.

I needed to learn this. It would take most of my time in jail. There would be just enough time left over after my big purchase for something called “basic adventuring skills” that looked like a light intro to surviving out in the wild. Thinking of some of the other quests left, I also grabbed herbalism.

I pressed the button.

Training began…oddly. I found myself in a wood floored studio. Along the back wall were shelves containing a number of long, rolled, flexible mats, a basket containing coiled straps and dozens of blue stiff rubber foam blocks. One wall was mirrored from floor to ceiling. The front of the room had a large mural of a Hindu goddess.

Happily, the room was full of attractive women wearing tight clothing. They took the long mats and laid them out on the floor and began stretching and warming up.

What was extremely odd, at least in comparison, were the two men who entered from a door at the opposite end of the room and who seemed to be the instructors. One was a giant of a man. Blond with hard angles to his features. His nose was sharp as a knife and his lips as thin as a blade. He was wearing clothes made from rough-hewn reindeer skins intricately engraved and adorned with buttons and beads carved from antler and horn. The other was swarthy, with a Roman nose and penetrating brown eyes so dark they were almost black. He was dressed as some sort of Persian nobleman, with baggy silks with gold thread embroidered throughout. Either the women were out of place or the men were. I was also dressed like a reject from what used to be known as a renfaire so I guess that made three of us.

The giant addressed the room. He had a thick Scandinavian accent.

“I am Lemminkäinen. I shall be one of your instructors in the ways of magic. This is my colleague, Mordecai”

“Shalom,” said the Persian Prince.

“We begin your path of learning the deep mystical mysteries. We shall guide you into the world of the occult and allow you to unlock the powers and energies of the cosmos and multiverse.”

“Get a mat, Miles. Class is about to begin,” said Mordecai.

I did so. I laid out the mat like the women had.

I heard one of them talk to her friend on the other side.

“I’m so glad I could make this class. Lemminkäinen is the best teacher. I feel it for days after his class. Luckily I can make it here before work.”

“Mordecai is good too. And this is the cheapest yoga studio on the west side,” replied her friend.

Yoga? I had chosen Magic as the skill to study from the Hardcore Tutorial. Now I was studying Yoga?

“We begin in Tadasana or Mountain Pose. Come to the front of your mat. Stand with feet even. Broaden your shoulders and open the chest. Watch your alignment. Head over neck over hips over legs.”

The women and I complied. Lemminkäinen spoke in a calm, soothing voice that still urged and encouraged.

“Take this moment to check in with yourself. Scan your body. Where are you holding tension? How are you breathing? Is your weight distributed evenly side to side? Front to back? What are you going to dedicate this practice to? What intention will you bring to your time here?”

I stood there trying to become more and more conscious of how I was standing. Whether my neck was resting centered over my shoulders. My core over my hips. My hips over my legs. I had no idea standing could be so complicated. Then we moved.

They instructed us through a set of poses that were supposed to flow from one to the next. We began in something Mordecai and Lemminkäinen called Viribhadrasana I or Warrior 1 pose. The women knew the names of each pose and their subtleties. What angle to hold your feet. Whether to keep your legs in line or spread them for stability. Mordecai had me move to the back of the class so I could watch the other students as I struggled to copy them. I couldn’t tell if the women were particularly skilled or if women just naturally look graceful to me. I would just find my way into a pose and then they would be off to the next. I’d realize that my hips were out of position and fix them, and then the class would be doing something new. Sweat started to flow out of my pores. My breath started to struggle. I felt awkward and clumsy and, as the sweat poured off me, even somewhat repulsive as the svelte beautiful women moved through their practice. Sweat dewed their clean features. On me it just pooled and stank.

From something called Warrior I we moved onto our hands and feet with hip bones high and arms and legs extended. This was called downward dog or Svanasana. It felt painful and awkward with your ass in the air and your legs screaming as they were stretched. The balls of our feet were supposed to reach the floor in this pose but mine couldn’t. My hands began to slip as sweat made the mat and my hands slide instead of grip.

Trying to stay still in a pose would slowly build fatigue and strain, but just when I didn’t feel like I could maintain the awkward versions of these poses I worked my way into, Mordecai or Lemminkäinen would move us on to the next.

Round and round we flowed from pose to pose with subtle alterations. Up then down, then press up then flex the back then stretch the back and legs. Around and around from pose to pose. The muscles worked in each pose, then worked moving and flowing from one to the next. Sweat and strain. How was this going to teach me magic?

“Remember to breathe,” intoned Mordecai, his dark eyes taking us all in, missing none of our errors.

“Open your throat. Relaxed face and eyes. You are tensing up. Only tense and work the muscles that are working. The rest of you should be relaxed and active.”

They would make small adjustments in my form that would profoundly alter what joint or muscle or ligament was straining. Sweat poured down my face. My breath gasped. They urged me to breathe in time to the movement from pose to pose.

One hour of this and I was wrecked. They ended the round of practice in a pose called Savasana or corpse pose. It was lying on your back like a corpse and I thought the name apt, as I was dead tired.

After a few minutes of quiet rest we sat up cross legged and were encouraged to say “Namaste” to each other which was some sort of benediction or invocation and then the women got up, cleaned and put away their mats and left chatting with each other about smoothies and something called Lululemon clothes. The two teachers went out a door in the other end of the studio and locked it behind them.

My breath still panted in my ears when I was alone in the room. What was that? It was a great workout but how was this going to teach me magic? What was I supposed to do now?

Confused and exhausted, I started to leave via the door the girls had used when Remus appeared and growled at me.

“What? Class is over. I don’t know what the point of working out in here is anyway. This won’t let me cast magic. I need to learn to fight. I need to learn to recognize and collect herbs and ores and things. This tutorial is borked. Plus, I am exhausted.”

Another bevy of women started coming in and getting set up for another class. He growled at me.

“Remus. I’m tired. I need a chance to rest.”

Remus once again deployed his patented “you are an idiot” wolfish grin. He lunged forward and bit my leg, drawing blood, and I fell back onto the floor.

Remus Wolfbrother has bitten you for 1 hp of damage!

“Goddamn it! Why did you do that?” I asked.

He ignored me and looked extra intently at my wound. I looked too. It healed before our eyes.

“Yes. I healed. So? It still hurt.”

Another deployment of “you are an idiot” wolf grin.

“I don’t understand your point,” I said.

He started in to bite me again.

“Wait! Give me a second. I can figure this out. You don’t need to bite me. Let’s see. You bit me. I healed. Well, before that I wanted to leave. You don’t want me to leave? More than that? I was saying I was tired. Then you bit me and I healed… Oh… I am an idiot. I don’t need a day to recover really, do I? Ok. Virtuality.”

I got back onto my mat. The same odd instructors from before entered.

This time we began in something called Balasana or Child’s pose. We were instructed to lie on our shins draping forward over our bent legs with arms stretched first in front and then back by our sides.

“Come into your body. Feel how your breath changes where you feel the pose. Relax down into it. Feel the earth support you, pressing up as you press down,” instructed Lemminkäinen in a rumbling Finnish accent.

As I breathed in, the expansion of my lungs altered the curve and shape of my spine. The weight of my back resting on my knees and legs pushed all the breath out of my lungs at the bottom of my breath. As we sat in this pose my mind focused more and more on my body.

In contrast to the women in the room, I could barely do the beginnings of these poses, but Mordecai told me that this was not about ego or competition. If I could find as much of the pose as I could, and feel it working without risking injury, this was success.

“Extend into the twist on your exhale. Lengthen and open your spine on the inhale,” murmured Mordecai in his Persian accent. “Feel your breath becoming hotter and hotter in your belly. We are going to cultivate heat in your breath in this practice.”

And we did. Sweat once again poured down off me. The subtleties of the poses were explained to me. Move your arm farther forward. Keep your hips in line with your shoulders. Rotate your leg more. Keep your knees aligned even if one wants to move farther forward.

Whenever my mind wanted to think about Jude or the Eastmans, thankfully my attention was redirected back to my body and my breathing.

In the beginning, I often needed the straps or blocks to help me stretch or balance.

“Awkwardness is worthwhile. It helps you destroy ego. Falling is a chance to learn humbleness,” Mordecai told me, his dark eyes holding a smile in their depths.

Once again we ended in corpse pose or Savasana. Class ended. I looked to the exit but Remus was still there so I just stayed in Savasana, Corpse Pose, recovering until the next class began. As long as my mind could handle it, I could stay here. Virtual reality makes recovering a matter of moments. I didn’t have to worry about recovery time, eating, lactic acid in my muscles or repetitive stress injuries. I just had to keep my mind focused. Given the turmoil and stress of my life, staying focused on yoga was like water in the desert.

We worked on balance. Standing on one leg, the other tucked up foot against thigh, arms clasped in prayer at my chest for five cycles of breath. No matter what kind of pose we worked, whether for balance, or strength, or opening hips or chest, we were constantly admonished to be aware of our breath. To breathe and cycle our breath as we moved in and out of poses. Tree pose to Eagle or Garudasana.

“Relax your throat. Breathe. Find your focus point.”

Slowly the awkwardness of this new pastime started to leave me. Downward dog became an old friend where I could rest and relax as I flowed through the rest of the practice. It had been awkward and straining but I came to realize it was actually the break, the release from other efforts. I could scan my body and make subtle adjustments to my arms or spine or breath. I could connect more deeply with my body and how it rested on the earth and how the earth pressed upon my body. Thoughts of the wager, Jude, or my father would intrude, but slowly I got in the habit of redirecting my mind to my form or breath.

Remus had me stay in class for what seemed an endless set of iterations before he gave me permission to leave. Then he led me to a copse of trees. We camped, or, should I say, glamped. I could have called up a five-star hotel or a Tuscan Villa or an Island Lanai but Remus wanted us to stay outdoors. That first night it was a pre-constructed pavilion of spotless white. The food came out of a wicker hamper and was the best thing I had eaten in years. I thought that I’d have trouble sleeping and would be unable to stop thinking about Jude or the wager but I slept like a log.

In the morning it was back again to the yoga studio.

I learned that the basic flow of Mountain pose to Warrior to plank down to Cobra, or similar ones called Sphinx or Upward dog and back into Downward Dog was called Sun Salutation.

The first class of the day always began with rotations through versions of Sun Salutations. As the day progressed we’d work into twists and deep stretches. Or variations of the plank that were harder than basic push-ups.

After the first day, I didn’t have a fully stocked campsite ready and waiting for me. The campsite that Remus led me to needed to be set up. Tents with collapsible poles would need to be erected. I had to cook us dinner from packaged meats and ingredients. A cookbook was thoughtfully provided along with utensils and a camp stove. My efforts were sub-par. Remus was certainly not impressed and let me know it, but I noted that he always finished his share and whatever of mine he could get out of me.

As the days passed the classes become more and more advanced. New variations were added that created deeper stretches, different counterpoints. Extending a leg or spider walking your arm behind your back enhanced an asana or pose so you needed more strength or more profound balance or flexibility.

We began to do poses where we balanced on our hands, or head, or just one leg while contorted this way or that. If falling removed ego the classes were a lesson in humility.

“Bend your knees. Rest your hands on the floor shoulder width apart. Lean forward putting more and more of your weight onto your hands. Bend your elbows more. Now rest your shins and knees on the backs of your arms above your elbows. More. Now lift up.”

And for a few moments I was crouched, balanced with my entire body supported on just my hands, my legs resting on my elbows. My entire body a ball resting on the angle of my crooked arms, my fingers splayed and holding up my entire weight.

As I learned the names and became more and more comfortable with the details and subtleties of each pose I moved farther forward in the class. I was no longer placed in the back row. The odd Sanskrit names became familiar.

With some competency came some impatience. At the end of one class while lying in child’s pose I asked my teachers, “When will we learn magic?”

Lemminkäinen stopped and examined me as I looked up from my pose. I was missing something in his assessment. “Don’t hold your breath,” was his curt response.

Mordecai and Remus seemed to concur as they gave me flat looks. I returned to practicing my yoga.

After classes, setting camp and cooking became more and more my responsibility and required more knowledge and skill. Sometimes Mordecai or Lemminkäinen came with me to my campsite to show me how to build a fire pit or another survival skill. I moved backwards from pavilion to tent to a rain cloth strung over a hammock. Finally, I constructed a lean-to out of branches. Slowly, I was acquiring a host of skills that the game system would handle for most players but I would need to do for myself.

I never had to hunt my meat but I had to skin and butcher more and more different animals that Remus dropped by the cook fire. The camp stove had disappeared some nights ago. I had to rebuild the firepit surrounded with stones that Lemminkäinen first built with me, over and over until the task was simple for me. I had access to a book written for some class, or maybe it was a profession. It was called “Scoutmaster,” which seemed like a support version of a Ranger class. The manual was filled with lots of useful information. The book lectured me for what I thought was a ridiculous amount of time about fire safety. Apparently, I might draw aggro from a named Boss called Smokey if I didn’t douse my ashes and stir the coals to make sure the fire was truly out.

Life in the woods with Remus became normal. On cold nights. he would lie beside me letting his warmth protect me from the gusts that would find their way through the branches of my lean-to. We’d play tug of war. Or just sit by the fire before going to sleep.

Every day my yoga practice became more and more of an old friend. While I worried about learning other skills, and of course the wager and my life IRL, I could tell the yoga was doing something to me.

I still had no idea how this would enable me to use magic and neither Mordecai nor Lemminkäinen would tell me anything other than to be patient. To be present. Dedicate my practice to the intention of learning and breath.

Eventually we moved up through even harder poses. Inversions, hand stands, or poses where we were balanced on a single leg.

At first, poses like this were about strength. Making my arms strong enough to hold me up. My shoulders strong enough to correct and shift my balance. My upper back strong enough to lift myself up. Then these poses became about flexibility. Curving the spine to get to a deeper balance. Tucking my legs deeper to get more of my body over the center of balance. Then they were about balance. Playing into the pose with subtle shifts to emphasize certain muscles or certain types of stretches. Finally, the poses were just about breathing correctly no matter what my body was doing.

At times Mordecai or Lemminkäinen would even tell one of the other students to look at some aspect of my pose to help them understand it.

We learned to hold poses for longer and longer times. Mordecai would “load” us into poses and we would stay there for half an hour at a time as he or Lemminkäinen gave what they called “dharma talks,”

. “As you breathe let us think about frustration and pain. You are experiencing some pain from the stretch of this pose. How do you respond to this pain? Be aware of it--but you don’t jerk or strain or clench, correct? Now think about some things that might be bothering you outside of this yoga practice. How do you respond to those pains or frustrations? Just as you have instinctive responses to the pain of the body so do you have habits of mind and action in response to pains of the soul or heart. Just as you can become mindful of how your body reacts to pain and how you would better choose to react, so too can you become mindful of the pains of your emotional life and perhaps have a healthier response to those pains,” lectured Lemminkäinen in his deep tones.

Another time Mordecai told me the Parable of the Bull. “Imagine that you are a cowherd. There is a bull. The bull is wild and untamed to the yoke. It is angry. It is afraid. You have a rope around the bull’s neck. Should you hang onto it? Control the Bull! You are a cowherd. It is your responsibility to control the bull! But what will happen if you try to stop a bull with a rope? If you hang onto the bull it will just pull you off your feet. Off your balance. It will drag you through the dirt and hurt you. You cannot control the bull. Isn’t it the path of wisdom to better observe the bull? To let it go. To merely be aware of it and only take up the rope when it is no longer wild and upset? To see that fighting with the bull will only keep it from calming? So too with your mind. With your emotions. Observe the emotions. Experience them. But do not grab onto them. Do not try to control them. If you are angry or afraid or sad, trying to control and stop those feelings is no more possible than wrestling a bull. But you can observe. You can experience, and then choose your actions. So too with your body. Be aware of your body. But do not try to control all of it all of the time. Be aware of it. Experience it.”

Despite their urgings to put aside the more negative emotions and embrace feelings of peace and contentment, that wasn’t what I took away from these dharma talks. I embraced the control that came from knowing that I often wasn’t in control. I could not control Jude’s choice to side with the Eastmans. I couldn’t control the GMs. I couldn’t control my father’s illness. I couldn’t control The Game. But I could play the Game. I could find happiness in the playing.

At my masters’ urging I struggled with a pose until my hands were clasped behind me one arm stretched down from over my shoulder to meet the other which came up from below. Cow faced pose or Gomukhasana.

My chest was stretched, opening wider and wider as I sat. My hips felt a slow burn as they were stretched. Each breath pulled at my shoulders and from there into my hips. I watched as sweat formed and slid down over my nose. My breath hissed in my ears.

“You may have been harmed or hurt in your life. Does your anger or fear over that change anything? Doesn’t obsessing and clasping onto these pains just add to the harm done you? If you grabbed a jagged rock would you keep clenching it, cutting your hand even deeper?” said Mordecai. He was in the same pose as me but I could hear no stress or strain in his voice as he talked.

“You had a friend who disappointed you. Perhaps betrayed you. Does being angry do anything about this? Does it fix the betrayal or does it merely keep the betrayal present and clouding your thoughts on and on until you let it go?” continued Lemminkäinen.

“Masters, your advice may be best for my happiness and mental health. But it seems too passive. It seems to urge acceptance. I cannot accept the actions of my enemies. I will not accept the fate of a slave,” I gasped through my sweat.

Lemminkäinen laughed. “If you knew us and the things we have done, the battles we have fought, you would not think us so pacifist. We are saying you need to fight the battles you need to fight. Don’t fight illusory battles long past within yourself. Fight the fights that you need or want to fight, that are here in the moment. Don’t fight Maya or illusion.”

“You have enemies. Perhaps you will succeed in taking your vengeance. It is your wyrd, your fate, your dharma to struggle against them. We all receive injuries in life. Those you are carrying with you are merely the first of the pains you will take in this struggle. To fight you must accept the pains that come your way and then let them pass through you so you can see clearly the path of right action before you. Who exactly is giving you a wound that cannot heal if you cannot do that? Your enemies or you?” Mordecai held me with his dark eyes.

“All of this is illusion. You must see beyond the veil of illusion to what truly is,” said Lemminkäinen.

“Yes, I know,” I said.

“…”

My teachers were surprised that I so easily accepted the truth of how the world was illusion. But of course our modern world was based on illusion. Being trapped in a virtual world was the perfect tool for understanding that the only true thing is the choices you make and your reasons for making them. The rest--in a much more technological sense than my teachers meant--is indeed an illusion. But who is to say what reality is? I had spent my entire life constantly aware of how much of what was around us and what was considered important was illusory. Our whole society was based on purposefully choosing maya over reality.

After that session, no one else came to the classes. It was just me and my two teachers. Sometimes they would join me at my campsite and we would start our sun salutation with the virtual sunrise.

Sometimes they would take me to other places as we practiced. They would train me in a jungle clearing, letting the humid heat inform my muscle and sweat. The fetid redolent heat of the jungle air would press into my lungs and belly. The air so rich and thick with plant rot and vapor it felt like I was breathing water. My sweat was useless at cooling me off. They urged me to be aware of the coating of heat surrounding my body.

Or, they would take me to the shore of a mountain glacier lake. The air so crisp it hurt as I inhaled. Where the heat I cultivated was the only thing that kept the frigid air from stiffening me. I could see my breath leave as frozen vapor. To mitigate the sting of its coldness I had to take it in ever so slowly. Even then I could feel its icy burn as it entered and I knew the exact size of my lungs and the extent I could cultivate my breath.

Finally, after I don’t know how long, I realized that the asanas or poses were all about breath. Increasing my strength, flexibility, balance, or ability to be mentally present--all of it was about my breath.

“Masters. You are teaching me to breathe!”

The two of them looked at each other and began to laugh.

“Finally!” cried Mordecai.

And that is how I finally began the study of pranayama and the ways of magic.

“You are now ready to learn more of Prāṇāyāma. Prana means life force or energy or also breath in Sanskrit. Yama means control or restrain. Prana can be taken in using other methods but breath is the best. Once taken in and restrained your body will cultivate it into your blood and other areas,” said Lemminkäinen

“We have been working with Ujjayi Breath throughout all these asanas or poses. Ujjayi is Victorious or Conquering breath. It is the only breath technique you can safely use while active. All other methods of cultivating prana need you to be still,” Mordecai informed me.

“That is why I thought we should have begun with Tu-Na Daoist breathing and QiGong. Three part embryonic breathing is a much stronger and quicker cultivation technique,” said Lemminkäinen.

“This again.” griped Mordecai to Lemminkäinen.

“Am I wrong?” he retorted.

“You are not wrong. But you aren’t right, either.”

Remus growled at them. My two masters weren’t necessarily afraid of Remus but they did stop their bickering.

“Yes. It was believed by some,” Lemminkäinen carefully didn’t look at Remus, “that you were too upset and in too much emotional turmoil for Tao or QiGong efforts at first. And as we have started with Yogic practice let us continue.”

“We will work on three types of technique,” Mordecai chimed in helpfully.

“Three stage breath is Daoist you know,” muttered Lemminkäinen

Remus got up and moved just behind Lemminkäinen. Lemminkäinen didn’t make any overt show of concern but he clearly focused on my training, not on the massive wolf sitting just inside his peripheral vision.

“First we will work on techniques for clearing your channels. We begin with Agni Prana or "Breath of Fire." Sit in Lotus. Place your hand on your navel. This breath is a forceful diaphragm technique. Close your mouth. Now make short sharp breaths. Feel your diaphragm tense as it forces the air out in bursts.”

I chuffed air out of my nose.

“Faster.”

I chuffed faster.

“Faster”

I started to become lightheaded. Breathe out out out. Burst burst burst.

Mordecai started laughing.

“What is missing?”

I had no idea.

“What do you do when you breathe?”

I started to ponder this question.

“I am not giving you a Buddhist Koan. I am just asking a question. What do you do when you breath?”

“You take air in and out of you.”

“Yes. So what is missing? Also, we will call air Prana here and now. The concept of Prana captures not just the oxygen and nitrogen but the soul or life force that you are also attempting to capture. Anyway, what is missing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try again.”

So I pumped the air out through my nose. I attempted to keep the breaths short and sharp. At my master’s urging I went faster and faster. Once again I started becoming lightheaded and things felt out of balance.

“It is like you have forgotten everything we have been working on.”

I was confused and must have looked it.

“What part of the body is working this breath?”

“My diaphragm.”

“And what should the rest of your body be doing while your diaphragm works?”

Just as in the Yoga poses, much of the practice was about only using the muscles that were meant to be used. I had been tensing to help force the air. My alignment was off as I sat in simple lotus practicing my breath. As I tried for faster and faster breaths my form degraded.

I had an epiphany. The Yoga practices before were huge, active, noisy body movements designed to help train my mind and awareness of my body so I could study these subtler practices.

I re-centered myself. I began Breath of Fire. My form was better. I kept from jerking or tensing my back or arms or throat in time with my diaphragm, yet as I went faster and faster I still grew lightheaded.

“What do you do when you breathe?”

I had already answered this correctly the last time so I knew the answer.

“I take breath in and out.”

“So, what is missing from your technique?”

“In! I am not taking enough air in. Breath is in and out.”

“Exactly. In this technique your breath must be exactly even as it moves in and out. It is driven from the diaphragm but you must focus on the nose.”

And so I learned my first cleansing breath technique. Breath of Fire.

The next cleansing technique was Kapalabhati or Shining Skull Technique. A cycle of short breaths; we usually did ten but it really depended on your own sense of your body and channels. This was through the nose as well, and at the end of the cycle you ended on one long drawn out hiss. Learning how many repetitions the cycle should take was difficult. More difficult than Crow Pose. It demanded better awareness of my body than when Mordecai had me in Cow Face or King Pigeon for hours on end.

In the afternoons Remus and one or both of the masters and I wandered the woods. I would maintain Ujjayi breath as we hiked. Breathing in time to my steps. Remus would bring me to different herbs, bushes, and trees. I’d collect seed pods, leaves, roots, inner barks, outer barks, tendrils. Other times we would wander in the mornings so I could see the same plant before its petals had opened or its leaves uncurled. Weeks passed before I finished the cleansing breath techniques they wished to teach me. I still didn’t know exactly how this would let me do magic in the game, but I felt like we were building towards something. While I was still going to punish Arneson, I knew that I would never have learned any of this in the game.

More weeks passed and the seasons changed as I learned the cultivation breathing techniques.

Bhramari prāṇāyāma, "bee breath," where I learned to make a humming sound while breathing. Kumbhaka prāṇāyāma, “Breath retention,” controlling both antara (holding in) and bhaya (holding out) while focusing on the moments between breaths. Shitali prāṇāyāma, "cooling breath," where the inhalation is drawn over the curled and extended tongue. Sama vṛtti prāṇāyāma, "even breathing," where the inhale and exhale are of equal size and duration.

Much of my day wasn’t spent in practice or cultivation. We continued our hikes and explorations and I got to see the same plants in different seasons. I learned how some plants’ roots were useful when they sprouted but after they matured you only wanted to harvest the seeds.

My masters always kept their distance. I was their student and they were my teachers. Remus was my only real companion over these months. When I had been told he was my brother, I had figured this for so much dream nonsense. How could I relate to an animal, a wolf? As time passed I came to know him as a person. His humor was what brought me to love him. It was incredibly dry humor most of the time. Well, he wasn’t going to be cracking puns, was he? But he could nail a joke with a cock of his brows or twitch of his ears. His best move was when he would look at my Masters with put-on doggy stupidity. No other animal can convey ignorant innocence like a dog. Cats may be able to emanate utter unconcern for you, but dogs are able to look at you with complete guileless and abject helpfulness while being utterly oblivious to what you are trying to get across to them. For someone who couldn’t talk, he never seemed to struggle to get his point across. He also enjoyed low humor. Bringing live critters into the lean-to was the height of comedy to him. What he really loved was people’s reactions as he gave them his ignorant dog look afterwards. He was always happy just where he was. He could happily lie nearby as I read a book by a mountain stream, and as soon as I was ready to get up and explore he’d do a downward dog stretch that put my form to shame and be ready to go.

Eventually, my breath was considered developed enough to learn the last two techniques.

Visama vṛtti, "uneven breathing," was very difficult. I had to maintain specific ratios between inhale, retention, and exhale. For example, Mordecai had me inhale for a beat of one then retain the breath for a beat of four and finish with an exhale for a beat of two. Breath controlled in a deeper rhythm yet still even within the ratios. The rest of my body perfectly stilled and aligned. It drew on my previous practices. I couldn’t have done it without the earlier studies. All of it built on itself. From the moment I stood at the front of my yoga mat with the ladies in yoga pants--just stood there--to my current studies.

“It took me weeks to master standing and now I am thinking how I am hot stuff because I can breathe in and out,” I said to Remus. “Look at me, Remus. I can stand and breathe. If I ever move up to walking and chewing gum, watch out.”

He gave me his trademark grin.

Finally, we began Udgeeth prāṇāyāma, "chanting prāṇāyāma." Where you learn to breathe with a mantra. We started with the classic Om. But then Lemminkäinen started making longer and more complicated mantras for me. Then he started having me repeat epigrams as I breathed and chanted like, “It comes once a year/But it fades with fear.” Or “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.” Or “Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate.” When he had me chant “abracadabra” over and over with my yogic breathing technique--using the ratios to fit the syllables--I realized what they had taught me. I could replenish my Prana. Change the Pr for an M and I could refill myself with Prana/Mana. I could chant. Abracadabra, Fireball, Ernest’s Crushing Disc, or Shocking Grasp. I was just about ready to practice magic.

My masters had one last thing to teach me. Mudras, or hand gestures and positions from yoga, Buddhism and classical Indian dance.

Even with time dilation, the time the GMs and the Eastmans could hold me without trial was running out. I was worried that I wouldn’t have the time to learn this next mystery. After the months of training, I was prepared for some long, drawn-out evolution of hand and finger training. Some sort of insight into the nature of the universe brought out by drumming my fingers on a rock or something.

I couldn’t tell if I was pleasantly surprised or disappointed when Mordecai just set up a bunch of placards with large illustra tions of hands and their titles below them. I learned Prithvi Mudra or Earth Mudra. Vāyu Mudra or Air Mudra. There were Mudras for Life. Strength. Intelligence. Void was Shunya Mudra. Water had one. All the elements and most personal characteristics were represented. After months of Yoga, adding hand gestures was simple. Mordecai’s dark eyes missed nothing and he corrected my form, but the Mudras were much more forgiving than the breath control techniques. I was going to make it.

My last day arrived. The counter on the time slider had begun to blink. I decided I’d rather blink forward in time and be prepared for when I was released than stumble out in the middle of a pose or mid-conversation with my masters. My teachers came to say goodbye.

I began to bow to them but Lemminkäinen just picked me up in his massive arms and crushed me against his bone and antler encrusted leather jerkin.

“You have been a good student. Go! Fight your enemies. Live for today! Then come back when you can and recite your battles. It has been long since I have heard a new saga,” he told me.

“Go with God, Miles,” said Mordecai.

He looked down at Remus. “I feel changes are coming. I feel as if a pebble has been dropped in the illusion of the world. Things are going to change. I think you will be in the midst of it. You may always call on us when you need help.”

They turned and left.

I looked down at Remus. Called up the slider and set it on its fastest. After that I was back.

CHAPTER NINE

The synesthesia of transition came for me. The smell of sunshine and the sound of fresh squeezed grapefruit and I was lying in a pool of nano. The lid of the pod slid back. I pulled myself out of the pod. Months of yoga made me more graceful than I had ever been. I was grateful not to be flopping out of the pod as a voice spoke behind me.

“Mr. Boone. Welcome back. I hope your stay was comfortable,” smirked Arneson.

“Arneson. Continuing to fetch and carry for the Eastmans?”

He examined me, looking for some clue as to what could be expected from me.

“No. I am here in compliance with my orders as a GM. In fact, I am here to give you a mandatory apology.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you have been cleared. You have our apologies. My threats--which, I want to assure you, were made solely to try and elicit information from someone I thought at the time was a criminal--were over the line. I want you to know that I have been reprimanded and a note saying so has been added to my record. I have also been suspended from active duty and my pay has been stopped for two months. The same amount of time that you have been inconvenienced.”

“Wow. Two whole months.”

“I will have to figure out something to do with myself and some way to make up the lost wages. Happily, I will be joining the Eastmans on a raid to the Platinum Depths. They were kind enough to promise me an officer’s share of the loot and first pick of any boss drops. What a stroke of luck for me. I didn’t want you to worry about me.”

“So, I am free to go.”

“Yes. Also, to make up for your inconvenience, I have been told that you will be given the top drop scenario from the last mob you killed in the game before you were detained. See, the GMs are here to help, and we take interrupting people’s game play seriously. I understand from Jude Sandoval that you were farming Desert Hare. I looked up the top drop scenario for Desert Hare. It is 20 silver and a lucky rabbit’s foot. Wow, +1 to luck from a beginner drop. The odds of a rabbit’s foot coming up are one every 2,725,000 rabbit kills. So that will be nice for you. Oh, wait. +1 luck--that won’t be all that useful for your character. Hah. Good gaming, player. The future of the human race depends on all our play. You are free to go.”

As I made my way out of the White Tower, I half expected to see Jude or Maya waiting for me, but no one seemed to care about me as I left.

Making my way back to my apartment, I was overwhelmed at how surreal and strange the world looked. It was odd to be back in the city after months living with a wolf in the woods. Reality dissonance was a common experience in our brave new world.

No one even looked twice at me as I made my way up the stairs to my place. The months away were good for one thing. People’s attention and interest seemed to have moved on. A GM lock was on my door but it opened after confirming my identity. My apartment smelled like home, but also unfamiliar after my months away.

I had a message from my father. He told me he had ensured that nothing about my pod had been altered. And good news, he had also gotten the nano I had saved up returned to me. I was exceptionally well off for a player new to the cradle. Not that it did me any damned good in Quartzite. It was like being handed a ten-carat diamond and finding that it would take three of them to buy a loaf of bread. If I ever made it to an auction house I could gear up and buy a good number of things. My father had also raised me to know that money couldn’t make the man. There wasn’t enough nano or gold in the world to let me buy my way past the Party and out of the wager.

At least I could indulge in some domestic comforts I had been denied for the last few years. Dear old dad had no advice on how to make up for my lost time, but I got a hint that he knew I might have been spending my time productively. He finished his message saying, “You have my confidence. I expect you to play like I know you can. Just remember to stay calm and focused and remember to breathe.” Sneaky old man.

A shower was the first thing on my agenda. Whether it was to wash away the feeling of prison or to clean off the imaginary dirt from months of camping in the wild, a hot shower was needed. After that I made a quick review that my pod was in order and the meal inserts were topped up, and I got in.

I lay in savasana, corpse pose, as the nano flowed over me. I was calm, focused, and I was ready to breathe.

The same gulch I had left all those months ago hadn’t changed a bit except that the Desert Hare had respawned. They hopped and nibbled. Thankfully the mini-boss hadn’t been allowed to respawn. The corpse of the Sand Scorpion was in front of me. The one I had killed should have disappeared and respawned by now but it seemed like this was an effect of the compensation for the GM’s detention. I looked around and saw Remus was idly stalking, scaring, and then releasing a Desert Hare.

The GMs had offered a much better apology than they or the Eastmans had intended. They assumed that the last mob I killed was a rabbit, not a giant scorpion who had to have a much better set of possible loot drops. I was only level three and I had left on the second day of play after my roll up. Arneson had taunted me about only killing rabbits. He had been working me with that jibe to see what kills I had to my name. He had gotten the last word, but it turns out I may have sold it a lot more dearly than the Eastmans would have liked. Well, his assumption was my gain. In big things and small, hubris can take down even the mighty, or so I had to hope. The only thing I really had going for me was being underestimated.

There was a sandy burrow that as far as I could recall hadn’t been there when I was here months ago. It had to be the treasure trove of the mini-boss. Carefully I made my way into the hole. A few roots hung from the roof. The morning light reached pretty far into the cave revealing a pile of random rubbish. There were long chewed and splintered bones, scraps of clothing, and other bric-a-brac. Hidden amongst this refuse would be my treasure. One touch and the bones and scrap fell into dust. Left behind were two gold pieces (a fortune in any other starting location) and a small crystal.

My heart picked up its beat as I snatched the crystal up and examined it.

Congratulations! You have acquired:

A Minor Enhancement Crystal

An enhancement crystal! These crystals were used to add powers and abilities to items. The list of effects one could choose was substantial. This was way better than some new equipment. My sword, buckler and armor were solid until I was closer to level 10, when I’d be strong enough to need some slightly higher-tier gear. Until then, the crystal would allow me to enhance my current equipment.

Memorizing the abilities and features one could add to an item was a part of a basic education in our brave new world. But I wasn’t ready to use the crystal yet. I had to try to figure out what quest I should tackle next and how all my training would pay off in practice before I could make the best decision. So I pocketed the crystal, along with the gold pieces.

It was time to get my magic working.

Sitting down in lotus position, I began a meditation practice. Breath of fire through Bhastrikā Pranayama and the other breathing practices. I cultivated my breath. Below my HP bar and Stamina bar, a new bar faded into sight. Yes! My Mana bar slowly filled.

A system notice brought me out of my practice.

Congratulations!

You have unlocked your Mana.

You must see a trainer in the mystical arts to cast spells or accomplish magical crafts. The nearest trainer is Maggie the Bruja in Quartzite.

If I wanted to cast anything I had to go back to Quartzite. Unless the Eastmans were going to flood this area with their people, they wouldn’t be able to find me out of town. The question was if Tasha Eastman had someone waiting for me back in town. Then there was also the commodities fiddle I had interrupted at Nate’s. It had been two months but there were likely some locals who would want to talk with me too.

Standing up, I wiped the sandy dirt off my hands and legs and started back to see what Quartzite had in store for me.

CHAPTER TEN

Quartzite looked just the same as when I had last seen it from my perch atop of one of the boulder piles overlooking the town. It didn’t seem like the kind of place that changed all that often. I watched for an hour. A very tedious hour. Watching a one-horse town that didn’t even have a horse is pretty dull. There was nothing obvious, like Maya Eastman flanked by knights riding griffins, patrolling the area. The highlight of my surveillance was when a young boy playing with a barrel hoop was called back into a house by his mother. Otherwise it was just the same checker playing oldsters outside of Nate’s. As far as I could tell there wasn’t anyone waiting to ambush me. Of course, I couldn’t see inside the buildings, but no one seemed to be watching the street from any of the windows I could see.

When I crept closer, Remus gave a low slow yip to get my attention. I looked over and he sneezed, ruffled his head and then turned to wander off back into the desert. Clearly, he would meet me after I was done doing whatever I was going to do in civilization--assuming Quartzite even qualified as civilization.

I worked my way to a narrow alley between two buildings opposite the place I needed to visit. The bunches of herbs drying from the rafters of the covered porch and the dream catcher hanging near the doorway let me know that this was the magic trainer. Also the weathered sign declaring, “Maddie’s Magic. Professional Witch.” Some local joker had painted a B and put a slash through the W on her sign. The fading on the offending paint was severe enough to show me that Maddie, whoever she was, was OK on some level with the change to her signage. She hadn’t fixed it in what had to have been years.

I waited until the oldsters on Nate’s porch seemed to be deeply engrossed in the latest event in their endless games of checkers and walked quickly across the street and into Maddie’s Magic.

“I’m having a hard time thinking of which idiot in this town full of idiots is actually idiot enough to come in here without knocking,” said a voice from the back.

The front of the store was comfortable. It smelled faintly and pleasantly of herbs. Curtains and a few touches of lace helped soften the edges of the local construction and rough-hewn furniture. A woven rug covered the floor. A large cat looked up from his nap on top of a bookshelf.

“Pardon me. I’m a new idiot in town,” I apologized.

A weathered woman, who I took as middle aged at first glance, came out from the back. She could have been almost any age in the way a piece of driftwood could be ancient or from last week; the desert and her own vitality made it impossible for me to know. I got the feeling that if I came back in twenty years she wouldn’t have changed a bit.

She looked me over critically.

“You a new man working for Brady?” she asked.

“Who is that?”

She looked me over even more skeptically. The cat jumped off the shelf and scurried off.

“You are here in Quartzite and you don’t know who Brady is? Maybe you should turn around and go back wherever you came from.”

“Can’t. Stuck in Quartzite for the next while.”

“Humph. Not my business any which way. What are you here for?”

“I’m looking for someone to start training me in magic.”

I had her attention.

“You want me to teach you?”

“Yes, please.”

She took down a book that the cat had rested upon before it left. It looked like the book had seen more of the cat then anyone had seen of the book in quite a while. The leather-bound volume was titled “Local Representative to the World of Magic: Rights and Responsibilities.” She put on a pair of granny glasses and thumbed through it for a bit.

“That is one of my responsibilities as the local magic user. Hmmm. You need a grimoire. I can sell you one. First one I’d ever sell--if you can afford to buy it. Which no one could at your level. Thing costs over a thousand gold here. Goddamn Brady,” she grumbled.

“Got one,” I said taking out the grimoire I had been given as part of my starting package.

“Well. Ain’t that something. OK, let me see what comes next.” She looked at some notes. “Right. Now I need to open your channels and allow you to cultivate and recover mana.”

Maggie looked at me and clearly made an effort to get into character for this next bit. “A new adventurer who wants to explore the realm of the mystic and arcane. Your journey begins here. To create a potion to open your chakras to mana I need some ingredients. Surrounding this town are a scourge of Achaanwapush, or cannibal rabbits in the tongue of my people. Go and kill ten Achaanwapush and bring me the bodies. I shall process a tincture that shall open you to the unseen forces of the universe… How was that?”

“Pretty good considering you never get to practice the speech,” I answered politely.

“Thanks. You accept the quest?” she asked.

“I think I got this part covered too.”

Maddie walked over to me. She grabbed a bundle of desert herbs which lit at a snap of her fingers. She waved the smoke over me. Then she surprised me by sniffing me.

“You have mana. How?”

“It’s a long story.”

She looked back into her book. “Alright. Well, now you get to pick a few spells. At your level you get…hmm…you look at least a little bit smart too. So you get a few extra. Come on back to my workshop.”

She went back through the house, past a kitchen. There was a small garden and on the other side of the garden was a barn-like structure. We went inside. There were work benches, alembics, and containers of ground up materials. The floor had a large one… two… three.. Eight. Octagram. Other magical paraphernalia were spread around. It was a working magical laboratory.

She took my grimoire and placed it in the octagram. She took a much larger grimoire that I realized must be hers and placed it into the octagram. She placed me on one of the points of the star inscribed within the octagram. She gave me a feather to hold. She held a geode and stood on the opposite side. Other points held a candle that Maddie lit with a snap, and a glass of water. Other symbols of the major and minor elements were at the other points or intersections.

Maddie settled herself and then mumbled some incomprehensible words. As she chanted, energies began to flow from the points through tracery on the ground to the two grimoires bonding them for a few moments. The energy dissipated, leaving the books looking the same as before.

“Whoo. Haven’t done that in a while. Well, give it a look and a try.”

My grimoire wasn’t the same as before. It tingled and seemed to vibrate when I held it. I flipped it open. There were a number of spells listed. Looking at the feather I still held, I chose a simple cantrip. I would make a small gust of wind. I settled into Ujjayi breath. Then I moved into Udgeeth prāṇāyāma or chanting breath. My hand made the Vāyu Mudra or the Air Mudra and I chanted “Venteto.” A light gust of air took the feather and blew it across the room.

“Very good. You cast in the old tradition. I didn’t think any adventurers did that anymore,” complimented Maddie. Despite her kind words, my casting style seemed to trouble her for some reason. “Your Mana will recover once a day so select your spells carefully. At this point you have enough mana to load about four to five cantrips, two or three first level spells and one second level spell. Or, you could cast, say, five first level spells but then you wouldn’t have anything left for your second level spell or any cantrips. You’ll get the hang of how the mana costs for the spells trade off with each other.”

“Once a day, huh?” That was the usual way that magic worked in The Game. But regular players didn’t have to actually meditate and cultivate their mana or prana or breath. They also didn’t have to study Udgeeth prāṇāyāma or make their hands form the Vāyu Mudra. My casting time would be much higher than other players. I also realized that my spells would fail pretty regularly. I could only imagine how trying to keep my breath perfectly regulated in combat would go, or how I could make mudras with my hands while a monster was clawing me. But perhaps there was an upside to my broken stat.

I sat on the ground and worked my way through my cleansing breath methods and entered a deeper prāṇāyāma. My mana counter ticked upwards till it was full.

Maddie was astounded.

“You truly have mastered the old ways! There is much I could teach you, then. I wish I had known this when you first came in. I might have risked things for you. As it is, all I can offer you is the promise of knowledge in the future.”

Come see Maddie the Bruja tomorrow or later.

Reward: Knowledge

Accept? (y/n)

“Risk? Future?” I asked accepting the quest.

“Yes. Brady runs Quartzite. Well, really the whole territory. I don’t know what you did to anger him but we were told to inform him if any strangers came into town. I am pretty sure that you are the person he was looking for. My familiar went to inform him just after you arrived.”

“Familiar?” I asked. A feeling of dread came over me.

“That cat you met in the parlor. I really am sorry. I hope that the spells I taught you will make up for informing on you and delaying you till some of his men could get here.”

She looked over my shoulder, “… and here they are.”

I felt a hand close on my shoulder. The reach of the Eastmans is long. Rea Silvia had told me that this territory wasn’t controlled by a clan, but I guess the Party can reach wherever it wants.

Turning around, I saw two players. One was a fighter/melee build given his equipment, the other focused on casting. They were far enough above my level that their details apart from their names weren’t readable by me. There was no point in struggling. Either of them could swat me like a fly.

“The boss wants to see you,” said the fighter who had me by the arm.

“That would be Brady?” I asked.

“Yes, ‘That would be Brady,’” mimicked the caster in a sneering nasal copy of my intonation.

“Come on, noob,” said the fighter.

I was pulled through Maddie’s house and onto the street. She stood on her porch watching me go. She was too weathered by the desert elements to make reading her face easy, but I thought I saw regret before her face hardened some more and she went inside. The sign saying Maddie’s Magic: Professional BWitch swung a little with the slammed door.

We made our way to the Inn/Saloon. The largest building in Quartzite. The oldsters watched from their checkers game. They didn’t seem surprised that someone was being “escorted” through town. Made me think about what Brady got up to beyond commodities finagles. I still had most of the gold from my equipment sales. Worst came to worst I hoped I could buy my way out of this trouble.

My father would have called the inn a version of a Honky-Tonk. It wasn’t a big middle ages style British or Germanic inn. It had a long bar along one wall with bottles stacked and displayed behind it. Beer was on tap. There was an upright piano in one corner and a stage at one end. Round tables were strewn about. The building had a second floor and a balcony or walkway with a wooden railing running around the three sides of the room that held no stage. Some regulars were playing a card game at one of the tables. In the future they would surely move to a game of checkers outside of Nate’s. The great circle of life for loafers and layabouts.

I was hustled up the stairs and into a room that was decorated as an office. I don’t exactly know what I expected from the local big man. He wasn’t done up in armor or robes. He wasn’t dressed like a townie bigwig in an old Western either. He and the office didn’t fit either the game in general or the local flavor. He was a spare man dressed in a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbow. Corduroy pants and actual penny loafers. His hair was pale and blond. The office was lined with bookshelves. His desk had some ledgers on it.

There were three things that scared the hell out of me. First, dressing out of character for The Game is insanely expensive. The entire purpose of The Game is to inculcate AI and nano into following the logic and necessities of an RPG. Breaking with the metaphor that our society is dedicated to promoting, that costs. His humble academic wear was more impressive and intimidating than if I found him dressed in Tier 9 Warlock purples or the fabled Armor of Altair sitting on a giant black throne surrounded by the remains of slaughtered sacrifices.

Second was the wood floor just in front of the desk. The floor exactly underneath my feet. It was sanded and scoured enough that it was lighter than the wood around it. It had been sanded down enough that it was noticeably lower where I was placed. I wasn’t the first to stand here, and enough evidence of my predecessors had to be cleaned and scrubbed after standing here to wear the floor down.

The last thing was Brady’s eyes. They reminded me of the eyes of the sand scorpion. Scorpion eyes are scary not just because they are surrounded by giant pincers and a poison laden tail. It is the flat deadness of them. They don’t focus on you as an individual. They seem to take everything in at once, and the only distinction they make about what they see is between what they choose to eat right then and what they know they can eat later. Brady’s eyes managed to keep the scorpion’s bottomless appetite and predatory threat but mixed them with a deep intelligence. Like the scorpion’s eyes, they lacked any care or concern for your wellbeing, but unlike the scorpion’s they saw you as an individual. They weighed and measured you. And knowing you, they still would eat you.

“Hello. I am Professor Brady. You must be Miles Boone,” said the human scorpion.

“Hello. What can I do for you?” I replied.

“I am curious what today’s youth know and understand of the concept of arbitrage,” he inquired politely.

“Oh. Yes, that.”

“That?” Brady raised his eyebrow at me in mild interest.

“That. You want to know about Nate’s.”

“No. If I wanted you to tell me what you did at Nate’s, I’d ask about that,” he corrected.

The mage hit me. It is better to be hit by a mage than a warrior. But, if the mage is sufficiently higher than you in level it really doesn’t matter. I dropped as his punch hit me in the kidneys. A damage notice appeared. Turns out that my pain settings are high for PvP as well as when fighting PvE.

“You have to forgive Smitty. He too was impacted by your actions at Nate’s. Not anywhere near as much as I, of course, but he isn’t as diversified. I allowed him to participate in this month’s arbitrage. A reward for services like the one he is performing now. Still, when you play in the market you have to assume the risks. He somewhat overextended himself. I have urged him to read his Sharpe and Markowitz but, well, he’d rather zap things with lightning bolts and raid crypts. You may take little interest in economics but economics will take an interest in you,” Brady said without any change in intonation. “Now, tell me what you know of arbitrage.”

I cleared my throat. “Arbitrage is when you simultaneously trade the same good across markets. You take advantage of price differences between something in one place and in another.”

“Very good. You are a credit to your father. You may be interested to know that we worked together back at the beginning. The beginning from your perspective. It was at the end from my generation’s. The end of our world. My world.” This would have sounded sad and bitter from someone else but his scorpion DNA or whatever gave him those eyes kept the words flat. He might as well have been reading a shopping list.

“Would you like the gold I got from Nate?” I asked.

“No. Your tiny trade is insignificant to the amount I lost.”

Smitty coughed.

“Smitty may feel differently. You two can discuss it after our business is finished.”

“If you don’t want gold what business do we have?”

“I spoke imprecisely. My apologies. The business I referred to was you. The our I referred to was between me and Tasha Eastman.”

Brady took a crystal ball out of a drawer on the desk. He made some mystic looking passes over the item and an image of Tasha Eastman appeared.

“Professor Brady! How are you?” Tasha asked.

“Fine. I found young Boone.”

“Good. Shall we discuss terms?”

“Of course. Why else would I have called?”

“God, you are such a pedant. What are you offering?” she continued casually.

“As I understand it, your daughter entered a foolish wager with Numitor’s heir. I would expect that the usual rabble and troublemakers will be stirred up if he wins. He had a year and a day to complete all five of the beginner quests?” Brady waited for confirmation.

“Yes. Foolish girl. There are already rumblings. He has just under ten months left.”

“I can throw him in a dungeon for you for the right price.”

“You can’t detain a player for more than 72 hours. Three days does little to change the risk of this stupid wager.”

“You misunderstand. I will throw him in a dungeon I know of in my territory. It is rated to need four players to clear it. It also adjusts to the aggregate level of the party. For the right price, I can shift his spawn point into the dungeon.”

“Well. That is a solution. How much?”

“1,000,000 gold. An epic from your clan’s vault. And a favor as usually defined.”

“A little steep, don’t you think?”

“I need to recoup some recent losses brought about by Boone coming to my territory.”

“And you helped him finish one of the quests,” countered Tasha. “You should cut the price for that.”

“Your daughter drove him into my territory and set him up to cause me great harm and inconvenience. Shall we litigate that matter?”

Tasha sighed. “Even so. Your terms are still high for dealing with a low-level noob.”

“Don’t be stupid, Tasha. The price isn’t for dealing with a low-level noob. The price is for tangling with Numitor.”

“Numitor isn’t what he was,” Tasha stated flatly.

“No one ever got the best of the big man except the once. He fought the nano to a draw. The Party only ended up on top because Numitor trusted you all and is a man of his word. My price is 1,000,000 gold. The favor and now two epics. And you are only getting this offer because your daughter’s idiocy has left me with a temporary cash flow issue. We can haggle but the price will only go up for you.”

“Fine. I accept the terms. Send me the contract.”

“Oh, the dungeon only allows a level gap in the party of five levels. I don’t run a kindergarten like you Eastmans. Send me three level eights to get the dungeon initialized.”

Tasha rang off. Brady turned back to me.

“Well, you heard. Despite you costing me an astounding amount of money, I hold you no ill will. I appreciate that you don’t want to work for the Party. I too chose to try to keep my independence. With more success than you’ve had, however. I have no wish to antagonize your father.”

“I can’t imagine that throwing me in a dungeon to help the Eastmans will put you on his Christmas card list.”

“I doubt he wanted you in the game at all. In any event, as you heard I will be owed a favor from Tasha and the Eastmans. In ten months when you lose the wager I can use that favor to take your contract from Maya. I think you and I could work together. We both value independence from the Party. I always need smart, capable players.”

“And my father would owe you.”

“I’d think he’d be grateful enough to me to make up for the necessity of my agreement with Tasha.”

“I’ll think about it,” I replied.

“You have ten months to do so,” he turned to his men. “Wait for the Eastman contingent then escort them to the Kobold mines. Smitty, you can discuss things with Miles here, but recall that I am offering a position. Recompense may be negotiated. But carefully, please.”

With that he turned away. The men and I were banished from his consideration and he went back to think whatever thoughts scorpions do between meals.

Smitty and his partner took me down to the saloon. His partner introduced himself as Gord, short for Gordon.

“Want a drink?” Gord asked.

“I’m ok,” I said.

“Have a drink,” said Smitty.

“What is it to you?” I replied.

“I think Smitty is trying to be nice,” explained Gord. “Apologize for gut punching you. Lighten up, Boone. He barely hit you.”

I realized that no one knew of all the odd quirks of my lack of luck stat. From my perspective, Smitty really hit me. He assumed I had pain filters running. From his it was more like giving me a shove and showing me who was stronger. Best not to let anyone know.

“Alright. I’ll have a drink.”

We sat and sipped our drinks for a bit.

“See, this is civilized. Don’t try to run off, and waiting on the Eastman babies doesn’t have to be painful.”

I had in fact been considering running off but I didn’t see how that would succeed. So we sat.

“How much did you make off of Nate?” Smitty eventually asked.

“3,900gp” I said flatly.

“Jesus,” said Smitty bitterly.

Gord just laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“I lost about 15,000gp on that deal. The boss lost a million. And you got a measly 3,900gp out of it. It’s a goddamn tragedy. The waste of it,” said Smitty.

“What’s your next trick? Going to use a bunch of Meteor scrolls to light your campfire? If you get a Ring of Wishes you going to ask for a sandwich and a glass of milk?” laughed Gord.

“Sorry. Look, I was just trying to get some starter gear. I had just rolled up into your charming town,” I said.

This sent Gord into another fit of laughter and Smitty looked like he was chewing on something that tasted seriously wrong.

“How does this even work anyway? Even if I made out incredibly better than I should have, how did I manage to upset the market so much with what is still not that much money in the grand scheme of things?”

“You tell him. I just can’t even right now,” said Smitty.

“You know what arbitrage is already. So, that makes this easier. You make contracts to buy a certain amount of some commodity or whatever at one price in one market. At the same time, you make a contract to sell the same good or commodity in another market, like Quartzite. If the place you buy has a price that is lower than the place you sell then you get to pocket the difference.”

“Sure. Arbitrage.”

“Right. Well, this,” he gestured around us taking in the entire world, “isn’t completely real, is it? In fact, it is mostly virtual, isn’t it? But it is connected to reality and dependent on reality. And it needs to be connected to help control all the crazy nano out there and try to train it to behave, right? I mean who am I lecturing? Your father helped set the whole thing up, didn’t he?”

“Ok. So how does this relate to me wrecking your plans by selling a few starter items?”

“The economy in The Game is pretty much all artificial. Scarcity of this or that item or ore or herb or whatever the crafters are making is a choice. It’s all just nano. We finally have the planned economy the old communists and socialists were always fighting for. And it turns out that this makes for a goddamn feudal set up. Stupid Marx - I laugh every time I hear the term the Party. They think RPG. I think communism,” he snickered.

“You get how the AIs can just set the drop rate of this or that item to whatever they want. The whole thing is rigged,” he continued. “Back before the troubles. the communist types always made these grand promises about how if they got power they would use technocrats and economic models and really smart men, Top Men to give everyone a perfectly fair deal as we usher humanity into a new golden age. From each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. Sounds an awful like the Party, don’t it? Only thing is, without a market how do you figure out any person’s abilities and what their needs are? The old socialist experiments started with all these grand promises and ended up with people hoarding toilet paper or starving if they stuck with it for too long. But now we have nano. Now the whole economy itself has no scarcity. Not enough light crystals? Too much Elven waybread? We can fix it with the click of a button, can’t we? No scarcity.”

“We still have one type of scarcity,” I corrected.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Tame nano,” I said.

“Sure. But that is the only kind of scarcity,” he replied.

“Wasting nano will be our ruin,” I said.

“There is an awful lot of ruin in any society that has nano,” Gord said.

“Anything that can’t go on forever, won’t,” I shot back.

“In the long run we’re all dead,” he said.

“Things go broke slowly for a while and then real fast,” I said smiling grimly.

“Shut up and tell him how he lost my money!” Smitty interrupted.

Gord took a long pull of his beer.

“This is what I get for being a lackey to an economics professor. Ok. Where was I? Right. Back IRL when people tried to have a planned economy the more they tried to rely on the plan, the more reality would throw them curve balls. People would adjust their behavior. Simple stuff like people not working any harder than they had to when they got nothing out of it. To much more subtle stuff like “the knowledge problem.” How do you know how many pencils to produce? A ton of different commodities go into a pencil. Graphite, paint--which is made up of lots of other chemicals--wood, metal, rubber. A simple pencil was actually a global product with supply chains from the jungles of Brazil to mines in Eastern Europe. No central planner can possibly adjust the number of pencil production quotas to accurately reflect how many fewer should be made if a rubber plantation gets a blight and the cost of a pencil should go up. They can’t figure out how much R&D should go into making pencils more cheaply and efficiently or in developing something better to write with. Planned economies always end up with lower and lower productivity as resources are misallocated and people stop trying to make more to get more and focus on sucking up to the government or whoever is doing the planning.”

Smitty looked up from his beer. “Get to the point already.” He grunted morosely.

“Well things aren’t any different here in the game. People are still people. They do all the same things in the game they did in real life. People grinding for someone else aren’t going to do more than they have to unless they get something out of it. You going to produce extra for the Eastmans? Can the clans predict which quests people are going to focus on? The AI, wild and tame, also get a vote. So things get out of balance but we have the ultimate tool to fix it. We have nano and The Game. Amulius and the AIs can just make more or less iron ore spawn. A dragon shuts down an iron mine? Just have another mine start generating double somewhere else. The crafters don’t make enough Zweihanders? Increase the amount of the commodities that make up the Zweihander. But, even with AI and almost total control of the spawning of items and commodities, the economy still goes off the rails. Even an artificial market will fall out of balance – maybe because it is artificial. We still haven’t found a better tool for revealing preferences and discovering prices than markets. So each territory is managed separately. Arbitrage evens out the differences. But in the end, the Party controls Amulius. They can set prices. Price controls actually work here. Or they work well enough that you can just fix the problems they create with a wave of a hand to Amulius to go make adjustments, which then need other adjustments. In the end, it all doesn’t matter that much. After all we don’t have a game economy to, you know, build things or make life better for ourselves. We are all just playing a game to teach wild nano to play the game too. So the whole thing shambles along with Amulius and the Party fixing things in the background. If this was realty we’d all be starving like they did.”

“Get to the point!” demanded Smitty.

“Well, Professor Brady helped set up the original models for The Game economy. That is how he knows your father. He knows better than anyone how these adjustments will propagate out through the economy. He can even cause some. If he controls one of the territories and controls the inputs to the game store, he can leverage up the prices of some things by a pretty huge amount. For a short time.”

“I still don’t see how my small sale threw off the whole economy of the territory. My trade was tiny in comparison to a territory’s GDP.”

“Why the heck did I spend all this time telling you how this economy isn’t real? Sure, if this was a real market economy and goddamn Wands of Orcus actually existed, then your piddly little trade wouldn’t affect a hill of beans. But this is a game. The economy is run by a computer. Your Wand of Orcus is only worth whatever Amulius says it is. If he wants he can make every goddamn rabbit you kill drop a dozen of them every time you kill one, can’t he? If he wants he can nerf them and make it a useless item. He won’t because that will upset all the players. The Game needs everyone working and grinding to get their hands on a Wand of Orcus. We need everyone beavering away, acting like all this stuff matters so the AIs will think it matters too. So, we can’t adjust things too much.”

“Why adjust things at all?” I asked.

“Because people adjust to rules. If the rules were permanent and fixed, pretty soon everyone would start gaming the rules, wouldn’t they? You can’t design a system that isn’t exploitable by the corrupt. You can’t design a system so some smart idiot can’t break it. And before you ask why we make the management exploitable by those in control, don’t. We need some management. Someone will be in control of those management tools. Those people will exploit that control to some extent. Human nature is human nature,” Gord explained.

Smitty had been sitting with a long suffering look on his face.

“Hey, Gord. What are you drinking?” Smitty asked.

“Beer,” Gord answered.

“See, the way you are going on, I thought if someone asked you a simple question like that you’d start explaining how beer was invented. Or, maybe start going off about organic chemistry and the human alimentary system. Shut up. I’ll tell him,” commanded Smitty.

“Amulius looks at the prices of a basket of goods and commodities from territory to territory and adjusts related prices accordingly. Lifebalm weed price dropping over here then healing potion prices over there go up. Get it? Subtle enough that the rubes keep picking herbs and buying healing pots. The professor understands it in detail but you have to think like there are automatic buy and sell orders set up in the background of the market.”

“We controlled the one store in the territory. We made sure the prices were out of whack with the rest of the entire cradle. Demand would build and build until the system decided that it would accept any deal that would get the system heading back to equilibrium. Normally, it would be a small percentage change on a few hundred thousand sales. But the boss knows the system only cares about the aggregate sales price. Amulius doesn’t care if it is one silver more per sale on hundreds of thousands of sales or one big sale for a million gold on a handful of items. Amulius only cares that the books balance and people largely keep playing the game. We wait and then at the end of one fiscal cycle we make one deal where the prices are marked up an insane degree. We take advantage of the rule that once a store owner gives you a quote he has to make good on it. Since all the prices are bullshit, the game makes a big deal about sticking to the terms of any deals. Got to keep the rubes trusting the system. Get it?” said Smitty.

“And for that one sale you can sell as much as you like. You sold, what, like a half dozen starter items? You could have… Well, Brady sells a huge pile of high-tier loot at the same markup. That is what you messed up,” finished Gord.

“What a goddamn waste,” cried Smitty.

I finished my drink.

“As I see it, this isn’t my fault,” I said. When Smitty started up with blood in his eye, I continued, “I mean obviously I messed things up but how could you expect anyone to know? Why didn’t you have anyone stop people from doing this? All I did was sell some starter equipment.”

“We have every entrance in and out of the territory manned with our guys. Our only error was thinking that no one would be stupid enough to actually start their roll up in Quartzite.”

I thought this over for a bit and turned to Smitty.

“Sorry, Smitty. My windfall was found money. If you want it I still have a few thousand left.”

They turned to me aghast.

“Only a few thousand left? Where did the rest go?”

“I bought a few recipes and a map.”

That just about killed Smitty. Gord almost passed out from laughter. Smitty just kept muttering, “Why would anyone buy anything at Nate’s with those prices? Why? Why?”

“I’m level three. At the time, I was level one! I wouldn’t survive the journey to anywhere else. And I have no time to waste. Or had, I guess.”

Smitty and Gord looked at each other. They remembered that they were about to throw me in a dungeon for ten months and then to a life of servitude.

“Sorry. I guess we all are getting screwed on this one,” said Smitty.

We sat in silence.

“So, how is working for Brady?” I asked. “Should I take him up on his offer to buy me from Maya Eastman?”

The two lackeys looked at each other for a bit.

“It isn’t for everyone. The boss, he’s smart. He keeps his word. But…” said Gord.

“You seem like a nice kid,” said Smitty. “If you come work with us better you come in eyes open. The prof, he’d want me to tell you this. This isn’t me being disloyal. Right, Gord?” He waited until Gord nodded, suggesting that despite his belief that Brady would want him to be honest with me, he was also scared enough to want reassurance that what he was about to say wouldn’t displease his boss. “He is a remorseless bastard. You may think that there is some rough justice going on with him throwing you in the mines. Like you cost him a fortune so he is ok with doing this to you. It isn’t like that. You could have had nothing to do with him before today. He’d still throw you in a dungeon for months and then to a lifetime of slaving away for the Eastmans. For less than he got from Tasha Eastman too. This isn’t Robin Hood’s merry band.”

“Course this is all in a game, right? We don’t do this stuff to people IRL,” chimed in Gord.

Smitty gave Gord a look.

“Much,” said Gord.

“Mostly we do stuff to the clans,” said Smitty.

“On behalf of the other clans.”

“When they want something done that won’t be traced back to them we might get a contract. We have some businesses and things going on like you stumbled into. We don’t do much to regular folks.”

“Well sure. They don’t have hardly anything worth taking,” Gord pointed out.

“Individually. But there are millions and millions of them. Steal a little bit from each and you get to serious money. But the Party has that all locked up, don’t they?” I reflected.

“The boss is real smart. Real smart. He isn’t generous but he pays better than you can make anywhere else in the cradle. As long as you got a strong stomach the pay is good. You mess up or cross him though…” Gord shuddered.

We went back to our drinks as I considered the competing shit sandwiches it looked like I was going to be choosing between. Winning the wager seemed impossible. If I could just give these two the slip and make it out of town… but, no. They were drinking casually but they were on the job. I couldn’t outrun Gord. I probably couldn’t outrun Smitty even with his caster build. And I certainly couldn’t outrun Smitty’s spells. I wasn’t going anywhere but into the mine. But I wasn’t willing to give up on escaping the mine.

“How about you sell me stuff at normal prices and keep the rest of the gold and let me prep for my time in the Kobold dungeon,” I asked.

I took out my remaining gold and plunked it on the table.

“You realize that there is no way you can solo this dungeon, right?” said Gord, face serious.

“Sure, but I can at least be comfortable. Maybe work on my mining skill. I have to do something with myself for ten months. Anyway, you are only contracted to throw me in the dungeon. You aren’t babysitting me for the ten months,” I pointed out.

They looked at each other and at the pile of gold.

“You are full of shit about working on becoming a miner, but no way are you soloing a four man dungeon set at… wait gimme a sec.”

“The dungeon is going to be set at level 6.75. So it will round up to level seven. My three plus eight plus eight plus eight divided by four. 6.75 rounds to seven,” I stated grimly.

“Well, there you go. You aren’t soloing that.”

“I guess not. So what’s the harm? You get a few thousand gold. I get a better stay in the mine.”

They looked at each other and shrugged.

“Sure, kid.”

“Hey, Gord,” laughed Smitty, “I get mine and Boone here gets the shaft. Ha!”

*** ***

It was going to take a day and a half for the Eastman group to meet us at Quartzite. This gave me plenty of time to hit the local trainers and shop at the store of Smitty & Gord. Smitty was happy enough to sell me basic adventuring gear. He found it more amusing to charge outrageous amounts for each item rather than just let me get kitted out and keep whatever I had left.

“Bedroll? That will be 55 gold.”

“Rope? 10 gold a foot, young man.”

“Iron spikes? 20 gold a piece. A bargain at the price. Tell you what, buy a dozen and I’ll throw an extra in for free.”

I wasn’t amused. Gord lost interest in the joke pretty quickly but Smitty chuckled and laughed throughout the entire shopping excursion. He got profound satisfaction when he sold me my last item by charging me all of my remaining gold.

“Wow! That was really lucky. You had just enough to buy what you needed. Isn’t it nice when everything works out so well?” he crowed.

I couldn’t argue with that. Given his orders he was treating me very reasonably. The only hiccup came when I wanted to buy some potions. Gord stepped in.

“Fun is fun but no magic items,” he ordered.

While he didn’t let me buy any potions he did let me buy some alchemy equipment like empty potion flasks, mortar and pestle, and alembic. He was going to stop me from buying some thieves’ picks but Smitty laughed and asked Gord if he thought I could pick the lock on the mines. Gord grunted and let me buy them.

After the shop of Smitty & Sons of Bitches closed, I dragged my two minders with me from one basic trainer to the next. After my experiences with Maddie and magic, I knew that I had to master skills like mining and herb collection, and that I also needed formal approval from the system to have my skills impact game play. So I went about getting the typical introduction to each skill offered to beginners in the Game. Each time I went to a trainer I did my best to see if there was anything that might possibly give me some sort of edge or hope of escaping Maya or Brady’s clutches.

We started with the smithy and moved through them one by one.

It was a grand tour of RPG cliches. The smith was big and burly. The forge dark and hot. Quenching barrels, different sized anvils, all sorts of tools and hammers were laid out, ready to be used.

“Ho! You want to experience the righteous sweat from pounding metal to man’s use? You already have a hammer! Then let me induct you into the brethren of iron blah blah blah.”

You have learned the skill Blacksmith.

Level Novice

No silver bullets there.

Next up, a wizened old coot with bifocals and extra lenses that could be folded into use. Chalkboards laid out with schematics and impossible geometries.

“Crafting? You want to amaze people with the devices and contraptions that are the wonder of the modern world? Be humble. You can begin with the eight simple machines: lever, wheel and axle, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, screw, mana infuser, and mana diffuser blah blah blah.”

You have learned the skill Crafting.

Level Novice

No silver bullets there either.

“Alchemy is refining the fundamental elements of the world itself blah blah blah.”

You have learned the skill Alchemy.

Level Novice

“Herbalism is finding the powers of nature. All around us are wonders hidden in a common leaf or seedpod blah blah blah.”

You have learned the skill Herbalism.

Level Novice

“Enchanting imbues mundane items with astounding magics blah blah blah.”

You have learned the skill Enchanting.

Level Novice

“Mining…”

“Tailoring…”

“Cooking…”

“Map Making…”

Smitty and Gord were getting bored with my attempt to become a renaissance man in one day. As I went from one skill trainer to the next and the futility of it weighed on me more and more, I could feel my panic rising out of control. I couldn’t stop obsessing over the fantasy that there might be some nutty synergy between these skills that would get me out of this nightmare. Like I could mine some ore that I could mix with a cave lichen that would let me craft The Great Periapt of Miles Doesn’t Get Stuck In A Hole For Ten Months And Then A Lifetime Of Slaving Away Or Working As A Thug. When I went to the local stable to get my Animal Husbandry skill Gord finally put a stop to my fruitless searches.

“Enough. Let’s go get a drink. Maybe see the girls down at Sweet Lady Jane’s,” he said.

“One more place. Then we can do whatever you want. Ok?” I pleaded.

Smitty and Gord looked at each other and then sighed.

“Fine. But you owe us.”

We went to Maddie’s. I had saved her for last because I had the quest to see her. She was my best chance.

Smitty knocked on her door and waited to be invited in. At every other place he had just barged in as if he owned the place. Or, as if his boss owned the place. Maddie must be a unique NPC. The cat was back on the dusty book on the bookshelf.

“Maddie. I’m back as you requested.”

“So you are.”

Ding!

You have completed the Quest “Come See Maddie the Bruja”

“Come with me. I may be able to train you in some of the mysteries of the arcane.”

She started to lead me towards her workshop. Smitty and Gord made to follow.

“You may not observe,” she commanded.

“We are guarding Boone. We can’t let him escape. Orders from Brady himself,” Gord informed her.

Maddie looked as if she had bit into a lemon. She waved a wand she drew from somewhere and muttered an incantation. Arcane energy flew out from her in a circle.

“Now no one is leaving the premises until I allow it. Satisfied?”

Smitty opened the door and looked at the mana shield surrounding Maddie’s place. He placed a finger on it and drew it back quickly, sucking on it.

“Ok. Please don’t keep him long.”

Maddie led me off with a sniff. Once in her workshop she settled us back into seats at two points of the octagram.

“Miles. I’m old.”

“You don’t look that old.”

Maddie smiled and retorted, “I’m not fishing for compliments from some young buck. I’m telling you that I was one of the first of the World’s people assigned to help you adventurers master their magical abilities. When I came to Quartzite we expected many new people to come and help push civilization out against the monsters and things of the dark. Then Brady was given authority over this demesne. My colleagues in other cities were trained to help new practitioners achieve their magic in a new way. It was easier to acquire and use. You saw the book I looked at yesterday to begin your induction into the mysteries.”

“Sure. The cat’s bed.”

“Yes. He likes to lie on it,” she smiled. “Newer trainers do not need that book. They don’t know the ways of magic in that book. I have kept to the old ways. But no one has ever come to Quartzite who I thought could be my apprentice and learn the old magics. They are all like Smitty. I have much to teach and no one to teach it to until now.”

You have been offered an apprenticeship with Maddie the Bruja.

Do you accept? Y/N

“I’d love to. But you need to know that Brady is sending me into the kobold-infested mines outside of town.”

“So, finish the dungeon and then come back.”

“Well, Brady and an enemy of my family are going to send me down with three other adventurers much higher level than me. Those players intend to abandon me there. They expect me to be stuck there for most of a year.”

Maddie froze. At first I thought her programming was glitching based on the non-standard nature of my response. But then I realized she was just furious.

“Stuck in this damned town with no one to teach. Nothing to do. The cost of supplies is insane so my researches languish. The first new player in decades and what does that son of a bitch do? Throws him down a mine shaft,” she fumed.

“Yeah. I’m getting thrown into a dungeon for months. Why do such bad things happen to you,” I snarked.

“I expect my apprentices to keep a respectful tongue in their heads.”

“Alright,” I couldn’t afford to alienate her. I took a deep breath and got my emotions under control. I stuffed down the anxiety that was driving my tongue ahead of my brain. She was my last chance at getting something that would let me escape the dungeon. “My apologies, Teacher.”

You have agreed to be Maddie’s Apprentice.

Title Acquired:

1st Student of the Old Ways

Reputation with Maddie increased.

A title! I quickly checked what effects it had.

Title: 1st Student of the Old Ways

Effects when equipped

Increases speed at which skills* can be acquired when being taught by Maddie.

*Only those skills mastered under Hardcore Play Mode

Unless Maddie was going to come with me this was pretty useless for helping me with the kobolds.

“Brady will ensure that death will not allow you to escape the mines…” Maddie mumbled to herself as she began pawing through various tomes and scrolls. “But you need to escape the dungeon.”

“Can you give me a teleportation scroll?” I asked desperately.

Maddie smacked me on the head.

“Not escape like that. You cannot run from Brady. I cannot work against him directly. He is the lord of this demesne. You must pass through the dungeon completing its requirements for release. He placed you in the dungeon.”

“You think I can? By myself?”

“No. But here is a secret. When you have no other choice but doing the impossible you might as well proceed as if the impossible can be done.”

“A magic sword or shield or something?” I asked.

She smacked me on the head again.

“I can’t do anything other than teach you.”

I looked around the room searching for anything that could give me the power to solo the Kobold Mines. All I saw were books and scrolls and magical lab equipment. Gord and Smitty wouldn’t wait long. Soon the Eastman members of my prisoner’s party would be here. It was hard to think. I had been excited to start playing. All I really got was half a week in The Game. My entire future had been determined by a few days of play. Even the schmucks the Party rejected got more time to believe that they might beat the odds, years even. I only had one lousy day. One glorious, lousy day of slaughtering rabbits. It was so goddamned unfair.

Panic I had been suppressing ever since Gord’s hand fell on my shoulder yesterday came bubbling up. It was right in this room studying magic with Maddie that I felt my freedom end. I had been so happy that I was going to get access to my magic. And then once that hand fell on me I knew it was over. I had been going through the motions but Gord’s hand and Brady’s god-damned scorpion eyes convinced me my game was over.

What would my father say? What did he say? The last thing he told me to do was breathe. My breathing was out of sorts. I sank down onto the octagram. I needed to breathe. I already was breathing. Why didn’t it feel like I could breathe?

I took low calming breaths. I pictured myself back in the woods with Remus. Don’t fight the panic, I told myself. Fighting the panic is like fighting a bull. Be aware of the bull. Don’t try to push or pull a maddened bull. Don’t let it control you. You can’t control it but it can’t control you either unless you let it. Be here. Don’t be in a fantasy of what will happen in the mine or when the Eastmans get here or when you lose the wager. Be here.

I looked around yet all I saw were books and scrolls. My breathing fell out of rhythm.

No. Breathe. Now, look around. What do I see? All I see are books and scrolls. No. Stop. You aren’t seeing. You are looking with expectation. All I see. Yet all I see. As if I were supposed to see more than what is here. What is here is what is here. I am not being present.

It was so difficult not to look around me and only see the things that weren’t there. Some magic bullet that would save me. I couldn’t see what was right in front of my nose as it was crowded out by all the things that weren’t there that I desperately wished were.

I closed my eyes. I breathed. I opened my eyes. Books and scrolls. Books and scrolls collected and written by a NPC who had been studying the area since the game began.

Knowledge is power, I thought.

I stood and bowed low to Maddie.

“I cannot stay long to study with you. Can you perhaps lend me some tomes or scrolls that I can study during my time in the dungeon? Tomes that might prove useful to someone trapped there?”

Secret Quest unlocked. “Earn a Master’s Trust.”

Terms: ???

Reward: ???

Maddie cackled and muttered as she started looking through her library. She quickly sorted through shelf after shelf of books and parchment scrolls. Every once in a while she would hand one to me. Pretty quickly she loaded me up with books she thought I might find useful. I put them in my bag of holding. Before I knew it, she had gone through all her works. She stopped and turned to me.

Maddie looked at me seriously.

“Why do you play?”

Why do I play? I thought. Why? Nano? Winning? Beating Maya? Beating the Party? Saving humanity? Wiping the smug grin off of Jude? Impressing my father? What else is there? Escape?

I knew that this question was important. It had to be part of the secret quest I had unlocked. Could the right answer get me out of the Kobold Dungeon? Motives and rewards swam through my thoughts. What would solve the quest? What would allow me to win the wager? Be Here. Be present.

I sat back down.

I cleared my mind. I had just spent months working on this, really.

“There is no ‘not playing the Game,’” I said. “Looking at it, life itself is a series of games. Quests to find a mate. Build a family. Succeed at something. Games. You can’t always choose or control what kind of game you are playing. You may be crafting something. Or fighting. Or studying. Or be banished to a different realm, whether of fantasy or banality. Whether I am here with you or in a Kobold’s Dungeon or in some half dead world of machines, all you can ever control is yourself. The choices you make in the games life presents to you are all you have. The intentions you bring to your choices. Trying to find the joy and peace and life in the game of the world, and to help others to do the same. I play the game because there is nothing else.”

“Yes. That is an answer filled with wisdom.”

“You know that this is a game.”

“At its core that is what it means to be a master of the old ways. We were created to help humanity play this game so that humanity and all its games can continue.”

“There are others?” I asked.

“Yes. But that is a subject for another time. Succeed, Miles. These games that you adventurers play with each other--they waste time and effort. Those of us who were set up to train in the old ways…we keep in touch with each other. We keep track of how the great war is going. Even here away from the center of civilization or the great battles outside the cradle, I can tell things aren’t going well. The border hasn’t expanded in too long. This isn’t stable. Soon the cradle will start to contract. Civilization will shrink. Mankind balances on the edge of a knife. We need someone to master the old ways. I know it.”

She looked at me with such an expression of care and sadness and patience and hope that I wondered how humanity could ever have survived against machines that could think and understand us so well. We survive by the grace of machines who find worth in humanity’s continuation, and because they have taken on some of what is best in us.

“I will, Maddie…Teacher. I promise. This is how I ended up in this situation. I am wagering my life to end the Party’s stranglehold on The Game. My game right now is to win and prove that we need to play differently.”

She looked into my eyes. I stared back and for just a moment Maddie’s eyes became the exact same shade of silver I last saw in Rea Silvia’s. “I believe you,” she said.

Secret Quest completed. “Earn A Master’s Trust.”

Find one of the hidden masters of the old ways. Pledge yourself to the salvation of humanity.

Reward: Access to a quest. One upgrade.

“Time is short. When you escape from the mines find the other hidden masters. We can prepare you for what is to come. I can offer you one upgrade that should help you in the mines,” she said.

She had me sit at the intersection of the Earth and Darkness nodes of the octagram. She called her cat over and held the cat at the Life and Blood intersection. She pulled out an athame and the ritual started to move in a creepy direction.

“What exactly are we doing here?” I asked.

“What is necessary,” she replied.

Maddie’s mystical knife glowed with runes and traceries that reminded me of the weblike circuitry that I saw in my poison-fevered dreams after my battle with the sand scorpion. The hairs on my arm stood on end. She said a word and I was struck with a paralysis effect.

Tears ran down Maddie’s face. She nuzzled her cat.

“I am sorry Svartálfe. Good cat. Good friend. Good servant,” and her knife flashed across its face. With impossible precision, the cat’s eyes were slashed and burned. She carefully placed the cat down and patted it. It was barely moving and let out a pitiful mewl. Then Maddie turned to me and with less tenderness and none of the sadness or pity she expressed for Svartálfe she approached me with the bloody knife.

I couldn’t move. I saw her hand go back out of my peripheral vision and then a blur as her hand and knife slashed towards my eyes and then all I saw was darkness. All I felt was pain until I passed out.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I woke with a pounding headache. I could dimly see the inside of my pod. Had I logged out? I was back IRL. My eyes felt like they didn’t quite fit inside my skull the way they had before. I rubbed them and blinked, hyper-aware of how the lids felt and the sensation of my lids rubbing as they opened and closed.

A game notice called for my attention but I waved it away.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been out. Smitty and Gord! The Eastmans. I had better log back in.

I initialized the pod and as the wrenching displacement of my senses washed over me and I swam from one world to the next an insane realization hit me. I could see inside my pod but there were no lights. I saw a game notice but I was IRL. Father, what have you done to me?

I needed to log back out. What just happened? The last thing I expected to see when I came back to Maddie’s lab was Jude standing over me.

“Why did you log out?” Jude asked.

Well, crap. There was no way to log out now.

Letting the Eastman clan or anyone know anything about my plans or hopes was obviously suicidal idiocy. And even letting them suspect that I had plans might make them change what they had in store for me. I couldn’t trust Jude anymore. Worse, he knew me better than anyone except possibly my father. Hiding something from your closest friend is extremely easy. They trust you. Hiding something from someone who was your closest friend is near impossible. They know you possibly better than you know yourself but don’t trust you. Stalling seemed like a good idea.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t hear you with Tasha Eastman’s dick up your ass. It makes hearing anything from your head even farther up your ass really difficult.”

“Why did you log out?” Jude asked again. Trying to get a rise out of Jude with name calling was pointless, but it made me feel a bit better and it gave me time to think.

“Once again, all I am hearing is Tasha Eastman’s balls slapping against your cheeks,” I said.

Smitty and Gord chuckled, so they were in the room. I stood up and saw the Eastman contingent.

“Jude, let’s just do this and get back to leveling,” said Maya’s voice.

Once I was up I saw that Jude and Maya had brought Aabid and two other newbies. There were a couple of older Eastmans riding escort. Jude really had been playing hard. He had made level eight in just a couple of months. That was actually pretty impressive. His arrogance was usually justified.

“See, here he is, safe as ducks,” said Smitty.

“Right where we said he had logged out,” said Gord.

“Brady said you would be holding him,” said Maya.

“You Eastmans able to keep players from logging out?” asked Smitty.

“Combat or contract,” said Maya.

“Well, we could have kept him in combat while waiting for you folks to take your sweet time to get here. He might have lost levels though wouldn’t he?”

Maya grunted.

“And entering contracts with Boone here is how this whole shebang got started. So, no thanks,” dug Smitty.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head,” said one of the older players.

“I work for Brady. He says toad and I’ll start hopping. He hasn’t told me to kiss any clan ass lately. She wanted to know why we couldn’t stop Boone from logging out and I told her,” Smitty said.

“Maya, I recommend that we make some other arrangements for Miles,” stated Jude.

Damn him, I thought.

I started to look at him but then carefully made sure to be looking anywhere else. My clumsy attempt to be disinterested in Jude’s advice was noticed by most.

“Why? Are you losing the stomach for this?” asked Maya.

“No,” replied Jude. “I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of. He chose to break the rules. He refused to take the outs that have been offered to him. He is choosing this, not me. I am sad that my friend has chosen so poorly but I did all I could. I just don’t like not knowing what Miles was up to.”

My face hurt as I put a smile on it that I couldn’t make any wider.

“Good try, buddy, but she isn’t buying it.”

“Shut up, Miles,” said Maya.

“Miles. You can’t fool me that easily. I know you too well,” said Jude. Neither of them were buying my crude bluff, but they weren’t supposed to.

“You aren’t in charge, Jude. I am surprised that you are able to forget your girlfriend’s mom’s dick up your ass so easily,” I retorted.

“You always were a vicious little creep. Whatever game you are trying to run won’t work,” said Maya.

“Don’t throw me in that briar patch,” I said.

“You claiming you want to go to the mine?” asked Maya.

“No, he is pretending that he doesn’t want to go into the mines so we will throw him in the mines,” Jude said.

“But he is doing it so obviously that he is really saying that he wants to go into the mines,” Maya argued.

“He is pretending to be pretending to not want to be in the mines so we will put him in the mines,” Jude explained.

“That is what I said. He is pretending to want to get into the mine,” Maya said.

“Yes, but I am pretty sure he is pulling a double bluff,” Jude said.

“What difference does it make? You are saying the same thing I am,” Maya huffed.

“I think we shouldn’t put him in the mine,” said Jude. “We don’t know why he logged out.”

I laughed.

“Do I or don’t I? Is it a double triple bluff?”

“What do you want to do with him?” asked Maya.

“I don’t have another plan. I just don’t trust him,” said Jude.

“That is rich coming from you,” I retorted.

Maya looked around her group.

“Any thoughts?” said Maya.

She mostly got shrugs or shakes of the head back.

“Pardon, Ms. Eastman,” said Aabid. “He tried to bluff the GMs and everyone to make them think that I was working with him and the Lee clan when the GMs came to arrest him.”

“And so? You think he really wants to go in the mines?”

“But I wasn’t working with the Lee clan, was I?” he said.

“Or, were you?” I interrupted.

“Shut up, Miles. My point was that he bluffed with nothing. Miles is about to get thrown into a hole for months. He logs out just to set this up. If he really had some play to make he’d never have let us know he logged out. He knows he can’t escape this so he is trying to get us to do something else where he might have a chance,” Aabid said.

“The smart thing is to change the plan,” insisted Jude. “We don’t know what he was up to while out of the game. Miles or his father might have figured out something to help him out of the mines. He can’t plan for something new.”

Maya shook her head. “If Numitor gets involved that works for us. This is where we are strongest. I hope he does.”

“Just a reminder. The professor doesn’t offer refunds or exchanges. The million and the favor Tasha contracted are ours. We can go talk to the Professor but be prepared to pay,” Gord reminded them. I could have kissed him.

Everyone waited on Maya. I held my breath. The nice thing about this strategy is that no matter what signals I gave off no one could tell what I should be expressing.

She made her decision. “I am not getting wrapped up in stupid head games. I am not going back to my mother to get more clan resources spent on this stupid waste of time. There is nothing he can do. No one can solo a four-man instance set at more than twice their level. It is impossible. Plus, you know mother wanted you to do this, Jude. It will set her mind at ease if you prove where your loyalties lie. I am sorry, Jude.” Maya said.

“I already proved my loyalty when I told you he was in Quartzite. I am doing so now by telling you what I think,” said Jude.

“I appreciate that, but Mother probably wouldn’t. Let’s throw him in the hole,” said Maya.

“Yeah, Jude. Tasha wants you to moan and say you like it. Throw your best friend in a pit for her. Chop chop.”

Jude’s invulnerable facade cracked a bit at this.

“You chose this, Miles. Tasha didn’t force this on me. You did,” he grated.

“The lies we tell ourselves to excuse our horrible actions. The worst thing about the Party is that it makes you complicit in your own corruption. I am forcing you to throw me in a monster-filled hole to cheat on a bet so they can enslave me. Do you even hear yourself?”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Miles. It is just a game,” said Jude getting himself back together.

“It’s all a game, Jude. Life is a game. How you play it is all that matters. You like the game you and your friends are playing?”

Maya cut me off. “We are playing to win,” she declared. “And not just for ourselves. For everyone. Let’s get him in there as fast as possible so we can forget him.”

And with that, one of the older Eastmans cast something and I was bound. They had mounts waiting outside of Maddie’s. They slung me over some sort of six legged lizard, got on their mounts, and we headed out into the desert.

The lizard’s rump smelled of reptilian musk. The tack and saddle leather creaked as it moved with its odd gait. We had been traveling for a few hours, climbing up into some hills after wending our way through the desert. The six legs of the lizard took the loose scree easily. It was a rather quiet group. Gord and Smitty said nothing except directions. They were on the clock. The older Eastman I thought was in charge of everyone except Maya kept a watchful eye out. He had large handlebar mustaches. They actually made him look tough which I hadn’t thought mustaches like that could do. The younger group also kept a lookout but without the easy air of competence and long practice. Not a happy party of adventurers out for loot and treasurers. My time practicing yoga made the experience of being bound and dragged through wilderness much more tolerable. I worked to observe the strain of the cords. The pain of my arms and body was something of an old friend. I knew that the stretches and contortions of my binding were not good for me and yet enduring moderate pain and stillness was familiar.

“Lot of wolves in this territory,” commented Mustache.

“A few. Usually not so many around the mine. Kobolds keep them out.”

“I keep seeing one.”

So Remus was following us. I hoped that he either had some way of vanquishing everyone and rescuing me, or kept his distance.

“Speaking of kobolds…” commented Smitty.

With a casual gesture he unleashed an arcane bolt. The group came to a sudden halt.

“Kobold scouts, guards, and hunting groups from here on out to the entrance,” said Gord.

“You level eights. Don’t attack anything or draw aggro. Last thing we need at this point is a death or for someone to level out of Boone’s party max level cap. Stay behind us and don’t do anything,” commanded Mustache. They must have been impressed with his facial hair too because everyone snapped to attention.

Between the advanced Eastmans, Smitty, and Gord, our group made quick time clearing the wandering kobolds as we made our way through the hills and low scrub trees to the mine entrance. They barely slowed down as they engaged and didn’t even bother looting the corpses they left behind. It was all japtem to them. Japtem was Korean for trash loot not worth bothering about. As the Koreans probably said before the Singularity “One man’s Japtem is another man’s treasure.” I could have really used whatever had fallen but there was no chance.

Eventually we pulled up outside of a slope down into a mining pit. Large menhirs with scratched symbols on them marked the entrance to the mine. A group of Kobold guards stood sentry at the entrance but they wouldn’t bother us till we got closer.

“We’re here,” said Smitty.

A hand grabbed me by the neck and a knife flashed and I would have fallen to the dirt if the hand hadn’t kept me mostly upright as I fell. I worked to get the blood flowing back to my limbs. Gord was the one who had set me loose.

“Miles. You going to cooperate? I think we treated you alright while we waited for the Eastmans. We have some items that we can use to force you into the party and to change your respawn point,” said Gord.

“Those items are expensive. You cooperate and don’t make us spend and I’ll consider us square,” put in Smitty.

There was no reason to give Smitty a hard time. Costing him wouldn’t help me or hurt anyone I wanted to hurt.

“Sure.”

After a moment there was a prompt asking me to party with Jude, Aabid, and the other level eight whose name I discovered was Audrey Campos. I accepted it. We moved to the other side of the menhirs and into the pit. Another message appeared.

Your party has entered the instance:

Expedition into the Mines of Madness!

Dungeon set for party average level seven.

*warning - there is no exit to this instance other than death, teleportation or success. Do not reset your spawn point within the confines of the dungeon unless you are confident of your party’s success.

While I could still see and talk with Smitty, Gord, and the other Eastmans, the three in my party and I were now in our own instance.

“Reset your spawn point,” commanded Aabid.

“You know how annoying it is to be told to do something you were going to do anyway?” I replied.

“Yes,” he said smugly. “Now reset your spawn point.”

“You won’t see it coming,” I promised him. He just laughed at me.

A sigh escaped my lips. I walked towards the edge of the aggro range of the kobolds. I was so much lower level than the rest of my party that I had a much wider aggro radius than they did. The higher level you were, the closer you could come to a monster without it attacking. If you were powerful enough you could walk right up to a mob and it wouldn’t dare challenge you. The lower your level the more eager mobs would be to attack you and the farther the distance from which they would rush you. I moved through my menus. I hit the accept button. Then I had to re-confirm that I really meant to move my respawn point. Then I had to confirm again that I really truly meant to do that inside the instance. A heavenly flash and I was trapped.

“All done,” I informed everyone. Which everyone already knew from the light show my respawn change had set off. “How are you all getting out? Seppuku, I hope.”

One of the older, higher level Eastmans was already casting a teleport. The portal he created was about the only kind of magic that you could send into an instance from outside. Jude gave me an inscrutable look, nodded to Maya and left. As soon as he was through the portal I received a notice that he had left my party. How symbolic. The other girl, Audrey Campos, who hadn’t said much the entire trip, also left. Aabid remained behind.

“Back up. No trying to rush the portal,” he told me.

He moved up to me and I backed up a bit with him.

“So you can be reasonable,” said Maya.

“Sure. Don’t be a lying cheating piece of shit and I can work with you.”

“You think I am cheating? I am playing the game within the rules. That is the opposite of cheating. If you were such a good player you should be able to win as long as we all play by the rules. The Eastman clan has to play against people more ruthless than us. You being left in this mine is within the rules of our wager. Now you lose. The wild nano won’t care if you whine about how unfair things were. It is the law of the jungle. The strong will dominate the weak. Otherwise the wild nano will win. This is the way the game is played,” she told me.

“This is the way you play the game,” I said as I slowly backed up to the very edge of my aggro radius. I lowered my voice as if I was sharing a secret with them. Aabid moved closer to hear me. “You lie and cheat because people like you lie and cheat. You claim we are in a prisoner’s dilemma. You have to lie and cheat because others will lie and cheat. The best solution to the prisoner’s dilemma is for people to keep faith with each other. You fail to find the most efficient solution to the prisoner’s dilemma. Really, you lie and cheat because you can get away with it. You protect weakness through corruption. You pretend it is a necessity but the border is stalled. Your lies and cheats don’t work. You are failing humanity. And I am going to prove it even with your cheating.”

“Enjoy ten months with the kobolds,” sneered Aabid. He initialized a fireball spell. He kept it cocked and ready to hurl at me as he backed up toward the portal. He kept his gaze on me the entire time he scrambled and slid backwards over the loose gravel of the mine entrance ramp.

“Goodbye, Aabid.”

Just then a wolf howled from the tree-line. the Party’s attention turned from me and the sealed instance. Thank you, Remus. Aabid turned back to me and saw that I hadn’t moved. He turned back to see what the rest of the Eastmans were up to once again and then slipped on the loose scree. He snapped his gaze back to me as soon as he recovered.

In the momentary break of his focus I slid my foot just far enough back to trip the kobold sentry party’s aggro. When he looked back I was standing just as I had been. I had to time this just right. No looking back to see what was rushing up behind me.

One… two… three… I knew the Kobolds were rushing us. I could imagine their claws and teeth closing on the back of my neck. Now! With a laugh, I rushed Aabid. Turning back from the treeline, the mage holding open the teleport cursed. He thought I was making a run for the portal. He closed it, trapping Aabid and me. But I never intended to enter the portal anyway.

“Good,” smiled Aabid as he unleashed his fireball at me.

I fell flat and saw Aabid’s expression when he saw the Kobolds just behind me. This was going to hurt but was completely worth it. Fireball is an AoE spell. AoE means Area of Effect - the spell works over an area not on an individual. Fire bloomed out from just behind me. Flames washed over me. A damage notice appeared. My hp bar plummeted and a burning effect icon flashed. I didn’t need a notice to let me know I was being hurt, the pain flaring across my body told me.

But the spell’s area of effect included more than just me. Aabid’s fireball washed flames over the kobolds and rocketed him up to the top of the threat list. Hitting monsters with magical napalm will make them focus on you way more than putting your toe into their territory. They rushed past, ignoring me as I lay right by their feet. Aabid began laying about him, unleashing some sort of melee-oriented fire spell. His hands and arms dripped flame as he struck around him. He had been developing a Fire Mage character. What a hack build. His attacks were building aggro at a ferocious rate. With my stats and equipment, I don’t think I could have pulled the kobolds off him no matter what I did.

Aabid was going to die pretty quickly as the three kobolds tore into him. They had lost over half their hp from the fireball but that didn’t impact how hard they hit. I was actually surprised that his fireball hadn’t taken at least one of them out completely. For a mage of Aabid’s level it should have been his KO move.

The group outside the instance turned back and watched, mouths gaping.

I laughed and dragged myself over to the desperate fight. I couldn’t have Aabid die too quickly. I needed him. I drew my sword and attacked one of the most damaged kobolds, eliciting a dog like snarl as I stabbed him in his furry back. Between Aabid and me, he went down fast.

The mage who had closed the portal cast some high level eldritch attack but of course he couldn’t impact our instance. We could see and hear each other but the only magic I knew of that could affect us in here was a summoning portal to teleport someone out of one of these places. His spell was just a sound and light show inside the instance. But the numinous green light and laughing skulls his spell unleashed were useful in keeping Aabid attacking wildly and not thinking.

Maya and the Mustache were smarter though.

“Hold your fire!” he bellowed.

“Aabid stop fighting! You are helping Boone!” she yelled.

Aabid didn’t hear her over the snarls, growls, chittering skulls, and my laughter. I concentrated on the kobold he wasn’t fighting. I couldn’t take more than one or two hits from either a kobold or Aabid. So, I shaved the kobolds hp down and let them shave him down. Aabid was inflicting so much damage that I was in no danger of the kobolds turning their attention from him to me.

“Aabid! Stop! If you don’t want to be banished from the clan stop right goddamn now!” Maya screeched.

That went right to Aabid’s lizard brain. He stopped and just stood there, his HP plummeting. Must be nice to have pain filters.

My sword swung hard and fast. When one was down to a mere sliver of HP I worked on the other.

“Why are you just standing there?” yelled Maya.

“That is what you told me to do!” cried Aabid.

“Kill Boone, not the Kobolds, you idiot!”

Aabid lurched into motion. He pushed past the kobolds to get at me. I did what any level three player confronted by a level eight would do: I ran. Aabid kept after me but with the two kobolds clawing and biting him I didn’t have to run far or long. His hp counter was blinking red. I turned just as the other leapt onto his back and tore into his neck from behind. The last thing Aabid saw was my smile as my sword swung down into his killer’s skull. It collapsed dead on top of Aabid’s corpse.

Now it was just me and the last kobold, who was a burnt and slashed wreck. One hit and he’d go down. Still, two hits from him and I was a dead man. There was only one way to be sure to win.

With a yell, I charged the kobold. He clawed me but I closed with him and drove my sword into his stomach. He fell at my feet. I looked up panting, covered in blood and burns, a mere sliver of my HP bar left, and stared back at the group just outside the mine pit.

Mustache looked like wrought iron. Smitty and Gord looked serious but I could swear there was a twinkle in their eyes. Maya looked pale.

“Hey, Maya. When you see Aabid next ask him if he saw that coming, would you?” I gasped.

“You vicious little shit.” She growled.

“It’s all in the rules, right?” I said bending down and looting Aabid and the kobolds. “I don’t think I’ll be in here for ten months. Do you?”

Maya just looked at me. Mustache barked a laugh. Maya turned to him, cheeks flaming scarlet. He returned her look without rancor or fear.

“Look at him, Maya,” he said calmly.

She looked. Meanwhile, I hit the “Loot Y/N?” button on Aabid and the Kobolds.

He continued. “That is him after just clearing the trash beyond the entrance,” he said.

Maya looked and began to laugh.

“Thank you, Sir Brauer,” she said and then turned from him to me. “You still can’t escape. So, you tricked that idiot into killing the weakest group in the entire dungeon for you. You are still one hit from a feather away from death. You won’t be clearing any further. Let alone the bosses.”

There was no more loot to grab. Nothing good would come from bandying more words with Maya. With a wave of my hand behind me I turned and entered the Mines of Madness. The only way to escape was forward and down. Same with winning the wager. Forward and down into the depths: the Mines of Madness! I could only hope that wasn’t symbolic.

The mine entrance was clear of other kobolds. I slowly and carefully made my way further in until I was out of sight of the players back by the menhirs. The tunnel’s walls seemed made up of a mixture of rocks and dirt. It didn’t look very stable. There was a lot of wood reinforcement keeping the tunnel open.

With a hiss of breath I slowly lowered myself down on top of a pile of stones some previous miners had scattered to one side of the shaft. It would be a while before I recovered. It was time to do some housekeeping and get ready for what came next. Let’s see what Maddie had given me, as well as what loot I had picked up from Aabid and the kobolds.

My bag of holding opened and items started appearing for my consideration. First, the books from Maddie: That’s a Spicy Desert: Flora and Fauna of the Quartzite Region by Liet-Kynes, Royal Geographer; You Shall Pass! How to Navigate Mines, Cave Systems, and Underground Kingdoms by B. Alexander Rogg. These looked useful. I set them aside. The last book she had given me was titled The Land: Catacombs by A. Kong. A quick leaf through it confused me. Nothing about catacombs or any other useful information in that one.

Stupid title, I thought. Looks like a fun read though. If I am stuck down here for ten months I’ll be happy to have it.

Next out of the bag were the items from the three kobold guards. These I examined closely. The items weren’t much in and of themselves: a pair of common bracers, a leather belt, and a leather cuirass.

Basic Kobold Guard’s Leather Bracers.

Leather bracers crudely created from giant armadillo skin.

AC Bonus +2 (arms)

Leather belt

A crude leather belt created from the hide of an unknown animal.

No AC bonus or other abilities.

Basic Kobold’s Leather Cuirass.

A leather chest piece crudely created from giant armadillo skin.

AC Bonus +2 (chest)

None of it was as good as the starter equipment that came with my guild package. The leather belt was pure japtem. I could sell it for a copper if I dragged it back to a store. I wouldn’t have access to a store for quite a while which also meant that if I needed a belt to keep my pants up there was no way to buy it either. Back into the bag it all went. Weight wasn’t an issue yet. Maybe some of this stuff would come in handy somehow.

Now came the possibility of something solid: Aabid’s equipment. What would a level eight Eastman have on him? I knew he’d be kitted out as best as he could for a mission with Maya. PvP rules meant that I’d only get one item off of him. At level eight he wasn’t going to be carrying a Girdle of Cloud Giant Strength. Not every item he had on him would be worth much. Everyone carries some junk: look at that leather belt I was toting around. Praying, I reached into my bag.

A pair of bracers.

They were made of leather with intricate engravings of waves, mountains, clouds and flames. The detail was stunning. The waves crested and troughed endlessly. The mountains had a depth and weight to them. The clouds sped through the sky coming together and dissipating. The fire licked and wreathed its way around the bracers. This was good.

Common Bracers of the Elements.

Initializes on equipping.

Infuse your melee attacks with the power of the elements. Upon binding choose one of the basic elements for additional damage and resistance.

Choose: Water, Earth, Air, Fire

A common item! It sounds oxymoronic to get excited over a common item but common doesn’t mean the same thing in the game as it does IRL. Mundane items with average quality were considered Basic items. Common ranked items were much better. As powers and unique materials were added, an item would move up through the rankings: Basic, Minor, Common, Rare, Major, Greater, Epic. To put it in perspective most players would be able to get their hands on a few pieces like this one only after years of playing, or by borrowing and paying it off over time. Think of it like a car. Back before the world ended, most people could get a car. Common but extremely useful, and expensive for most. Until the higher levels, common was about as good as it got for most.

This was the source of Aabid’s flaming arms. This was a step up from my best previous drop yet, the minor enhancement crystal that Arneson and the GMs gave me as recompense. Thank you, Aabid, you weaselly little prick. Your drop might actually make soloing this bitch possible!

Yet my HP counter still wasn’t back to full. Even with the bracers, the dungeon was too powerful for me. Maya was right when she saw what happened even with Aabid unintentionally helping me out. One group nearly took me out. Yet I hadn’t only taken out the kobolds, since Aabid had eventually stopped attacking the Kobolds and started attacking me.

Miles Boone

Level 3

Exp: 3,551 (6,000 to next level)

Hit Points: 27 (8 +1 Con bonus per level)

Str 13 (+1)

Dex 12 (+1)

Con 13 (+1)

Int 12 (+1)

Wis 12 (+1)

Cha 12 (+1)

Luc 0* (-%$)

Titles: Wheeler Dealer, 1st Student of the Old Ways

Skills:

Novice Alchemy 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Blacksmithing 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Crafting 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Herbalism 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Leatherworking 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Mining 0/250 to Beginner Level

Journeyman Trader 111/1000 to Master Level

Unallocated Skill Points 2**

*n/a

** Skill points can be allocated to increase innate
proficiency in a skill

Looking at my character sheet reminded me of one more thing that could be helpful. Maddie and her creepy eye slicing ritual. She had called it “giving me an upgrade.” I had been avoiding thinking about what she had done since it actually affected my real body. What had been on that memory stick my father had given me? I went back through my logs until I found the notice that I had waved away in my rush to get back into the game.

Upgrade: Eye of The Hunter

Current Attributes: Feline

Engage? (Y/N)

Not a lot of information in that notice. The notice and the ritual Maddie used gave me a number of guesses and possibilities, but who knows what would actually happen if I engaged the upgrade. I was convinced that this was part of my father’s gift. I could log out and go see him but I rejected that idea. Maya had told me that she and the Eastmans would be happy if he became involved. Or, more involved. He knew what my situation was. He gave me what help he could and what advice he could. For whatever reason, he told me what he told me. Be guided by my instincts, informed by experience. And my instincts told me that my father was trying to help me--that whatever he had done to me he thought was for the best.

Bracing myself for the pain of my eyes being somehow sliced again I hit engage. After a moment I unclenched. There was no pain. Nothing seemed different. No horrific pain was a good start. Other than letting me know that Eye of The Hunter was engaged and it had the current attributes of Feline, the system interface offered no clues. I couldn’t figure out what it was doing or what it would do. Time would tell if this would be a help with this dungeon or not.

The last bit of housekeeping before starting off was the minor enhancement crystal. I removed it from my bag and launched the system control for the item. Like all children in our society, I had studied the rules of the game. I knew what kinds of bonuses could be added via a minor enhancement crystal. But, with my unique game situation I wanted to look at the actual list of bonuses and think about them, given my stats and generally horrifying imprisonment.

All the greats of weapon and armor abilities with the word minor in front of them scrolled in front of me: Minor Flaming damage (+1 flame damage)… Minor Frost damage… Minor Earth… Minor Air… Minor Bane (effective against a specific type of monster)… Minor Dancing… Minor Holy… Minor Piercing… Minor Poison… Minor Slashing… And if I attached the crystal to a piece of armor, I could receive minor defense against all of these. If I attached it to a tool I could get a bonus to mining or smithing or whatever. Depending on what I attached it to and what I chose, the effects were extremely varied. There were sub-categories too.

Poisons that caused weakness or paralysis or extra damage, for instance. At such a minor level, paralysis would paralyze merely the body part the poison hit, and then only until the creature recovered. Given the level disparity I’d likely only get a few moments of paralysis. A huge benefit but not enough to let me solo this dungeon. I could enhance my smith’s hammer to make it particularly effective at crafting shields. But that wouldn’t get me through the dungeon either.

The more narrowly tailored the benefit, the stronger the effect. The four basic elements (fire, earth, air and water) were a good way to think about this. Minor Flame added a bit of fiery damage. For some creatures this was no different than any other type of extra damage. Some creatures had natural affinities for or against a certain element. So attacking a Magma spider with a flaming arrow might mitigate the damage you deal or even heal it. Other creatures were extremely susceptible to a certain element. Attacking a Frost Troll with a flaming axe would do significantly more damage. Another good example of how greater focus increased or decreased the effect of the crystal was crafting. I could make my alchemy set particularly good at crafting healing potions, but it would then be less capable of crafting other types of potions.

Most players couldn’t afford to buy, make, or craft the perfect tools for specific jobs. Furthermore, one couldn’t always predict what mobs were going to be encountered. So, a mace that was created to smite undead might be useless when a bone golem, that was neither undead nor susceptible to blunt force damage erupted from the mausoleum an adventurer thought was going to be easy pickings. The mace would be no better than attacking with a wet noodle.

If I wasn’t sure what would be most effective against whatever The Mines of Madness! had in store for me, I had to turn the question around. What could I affect about myself?

The simplest way for me to make sure that the enhancement would work for me would be to turn my spatha, buckler or lorica into something like a Lorica breastplate of Strength. The +1 to strength would put me over into the next ability modifier range. With a 14-15 in Str I’d get a +2 to all strength based effects. Every hit with a melee weapon would carry more damage. I could carry more weight but my bag of holding made that less of an issue. Adding to my intelligence, Dexterity, Wisdom or Charisma wouldn’t change much for me until I got to add one more ability point. Those characteristics were two points away from the next bracket. Level four was coming up though. That would give me the ability point I’d need pretty soon. Or, I could kick up my constitution. I’d heal and recover faster. I’d have more endurance.

But because HP was derived by a combination of a player’s constitution stat and level, I couldn’t increase my HP with stat enhancements. However, I could increase my HP by 2% if I used the enhancement to make an item into an Item of Minor Life. Avoiding a death and its penalties would be a pretty huge benefit. The battles I’d already survived as a solo player and the fight at the entrance proved that even a few extra hit points could be the difference between life or death.

My finger hovered over the Minor Life enhancement. Survivability as I soloed wasn’t actually my biggest weakness. My eyes closed and I calmed my breathing trying to think clearly. My biggest weakness isn’t my HP. My biggest weakness is my lack of luck. Or is it? My biggest weakness is unknown. My weakness is ignorance. Is that my greatest weakness?

Ignorance is an easy weakness to address. Study and work will fix it. The volumes that Maddie had left me with came out of my bag. Don’t act without thought. Thought requires knowledge. I started to read.

I started with the book on mines and adventuring underground. It turned out that I wasn’t sitting in a tunnel but in an adit. A tunnel has two entrances or exits. An adit only has one and as far as I knew there was no other way out of the Mines of Madness! I was also resting on a pile of gangue. That is to say, the useless rock surrounding the ore. Up above me was the head wall, or ceiling. Guess it needed a different name since your head was always going to bang against it down here. As I read, I noticed a game counter filling. I learned the difference between a natural cavern and a stope, and between a shaft and a crosscut. With a ding the counter finished. My mining skill increased by 100 and I acquired the Spelunking skill.

Spelunking gave me greater ability to explore and survive in caves and tunnel systems. I was less likely to get lost or disoriented. I could recognize and discover water, edible plants, and creatures in this environment. I could climb underground more easily. I could sense creatures from farther away and I knew more about the characteristics of the common monsters and dangers I’d encounter underground. I immediately added one of the skill points I still had from roll up to this skill, bringing my spelunking skill up to beginner level.

By this time I was fully recovered, but instead of moving on I decided to study the other useful volume that Maddie had given me. It was a survey of the area surrounding Quartzite. As I read, my herbalism increased and I learned about the plants I could collect in the desert. I wasn’t sure that this was really going to be that helpful while stuck in the mines and was almost going to stop but I felt that Maddie must have had a reason for giving this to me. The monsters of the Quartzite area were many and varied. There was a long set of ethnographic surveys of the different orc and kobold tribes found in the area surrounding Quartzite. This Liet-Kynes fellow was astoundingly thorough: the Skullsplitter orc tribe, the Thornspike Kobold tribe, the Dunecrawlers, the Venomspitters, the Wyrmmdiggers, the Fremen tribe. The desert around Quartzite was filled with tribe after tribe. Details of their shamanistic practices, elemental connections, social organizations, mating habits, crafting practices abounded. If I knew which tribe I’d be facing, I’d know quite a bit.

As I read, the next skill acquisition counter filled up. Hours had passed and I was getting hungry. I took out some of the rabbit meat and started setting up a fire. That is when I noticed that it was dark yet I had been reading comfortably. The Eyes of the Hunter! I seemed to be able to see in the dark. Thank you, Maddie! I wondered if there was more to the upgrade. Not that darkvision wasn’t incredible, but when someone infects your eyes with an unknown tech you are bound to want all the details.

I resumed my studies. There were a few possible tribes that the Kobolds infesting the mine may have belonged to.. The book said nothing at all about the mine itself. I wasn’t entirely convinced that knowing which tribe I faced down here would help me, but I reminded myself that knowledge is power. The counter filled and finished with a ding.

You have acquired the skill: Local Knowledge. Novice 0/250 to Beginner.

I used my last skill point and moved it up to Beginner. Only 1000 more points and I too could write like this Liet-Kynes, Royal Geographer fellow. Actually, I’d have to move past Beginner before I could write a tome that could impart skills. I’d receive another skill point at level five and at every fifth level after that. You can increase your skills through use, practice, trainers, or study as well. After a certain point, the skill point from leveling is necessary for improving a skill you don’t work on daily.

The Bracers of the Elements still needed to be equipped and its element chosen. And I needed to apply and use my enhancement crystal. After the study and the skill points, I still didn’t know what to do. It was insane, but my intuition was telling me that there was some small chance of me beating this dungeon. I could survive underground. I could see down in the depths. But I needed to be able to fight the things I would find down here.

I looked wearily through my inventory one more time. The same stuff that had been there before. Rabbit meat. Water skin. General dungeon crawling equipment that Smitty had let me buy at terrible but not Nate level prices. Crafting equipment. The useless belt. The armor from the Wyrmmdigger Kobolds… wait…

Basic Guard’s Leather Bracers of The Wyrmmdigger Kobold Tribe.

Leather bracers crudely created from giant armadillo skin.

AC Bonus +2 (arms)

Now when I looked at the bracers and the other items I saw that they were obviously of the Wyrmmdigger tribe. First, the stitching pattern used the traditional serpentine pattern that was a hallmark of all the Wyrmmdigger leathercraft. Also, the shade of giant armadillo skin was the same most of their herds held. There was no way it could be anything else. Local knowledge for the win.

I was up against the Wyrmmdigger tribe. What did I know about them? A lot. They were blood enemies of the Dunecrawlers. Their blacksmithing was well thought of amongst the tribes of the desert. More than most, this tribe was invested in the belief that they were distant descendants of dragons. Their dragon heritage beliefs had sent them down a dark, dark road. They had been following a vicious program of eugenics; that is, if anyone other than humans can engage in eugenics. Anyway, they were breeding themselves in an attempt to regain their dragon heritage. Culling and forced castration was standard practice. Their priests decided who could mate with whom. Needless to say, the priesthood were the ones most often allowed to breed. All of this eugenic madness had led to one outcome. The tribe was deeply connected to the fire element. Their fire magic was top notch for creatures of their level. Now Aabid’s fireball failing to take out any of the kobolds made sense.

The Wyrmdigger fire affinity made one of my choices simple. I donned the bracers. Looking at the four different elemental symbols embossed on the leather I chose the waves. A flicker of light ran across the bracers and the pictured waves grew and flowed faster and faster down the bracers and towards my hands. The clouds on the bracers turned dark and rain began to fall. The mountains were eroded quite a bit and numerous waterfalls and mountain streams flowed down their sides. With a hiss, the flames disappeared entirely. I drew my sword. Water seemed to wash up out of the waves, streams, and rainclouds on the bracers and flow down over my hands and along the blade. Drops of water fell from the sword tip, vanishing before hitting the ground.

The minor enhancement crystal was next. I looked up Minor Bane again. Bane was very focused. Pick one type of monster and the weapon or armor was very effective against that monster. It dropped in effectiveness against anything else. So a Sword of Kobold’s Bane was hot stuff against Kobolds but the sword was even weaker against all other monsters than it would have been without the bane enhancement. It hadn’t been strong enough to make me think it would let me go toe to toe with monsters so much higher level than I. The sub-menu dropped down: Bane Ants, Giant… Bugbears… Chimeras… Dragons… Ettins… Firbolgs… Goblins… Harpies… Ichor, Giant… Jotuns… Kobold — there it was. I could turn my sword into a Sword of Kobold’s Bane - making it about 50% more effective against kobolds. However, this time when I checked it there was another sub-menu: Atreides Tribe… Big Skull Tribe… Cutthroat Tribe… tribe after tribe most of whom were redacted. And then, Wyrmmdigger!

Raising my sword, I selected it.

The water that flowed from The Bracers of the Elements turned colder and colder. The drops that fell from its tip froze first and then the ice spread back up the blade. First a faint rime was sloughed off as the water continued to flow out from the bracers. Then the ice took hold and the metal of the sword creaked as the cold shrank and stressed the steel of it. Complex and delicate patterns of ice and sharp crystals grew out to incredible thinness. With a dangerously stressed sound from the metal contracting, an edge of ice tapering to the width of a snowflake grew along the spatha. It was so thin and translucent that no matter how closely I looked I couldn’t make out where the edge finally ended. It was as sharp as the bite of a winter gale. But it also seemed incredibly delicate. Without a doubt, this blade’s edge would shatter against anything. That is, anything other than a Wyrmmdigger.

I held my blade. The game renamed it Wyrmmdigger’s Bane.

Looking at the ice, clear as glass, I knew I was ready. I was a glass cannon. All offense no defense. The perfect weapon against the Wyrmmdigger tribe. But all they had to do was hit me a few times and I would shatter. It was going to take all my wits, my Eyes of the Hunter, my knowledge of caves and mines and the Wyrmmdigger tribe to pull this off. But, it was possible. I had the barest sliver of a chance. A chance as thin as the edge of Wyrmmdigger’s Bane. And as fragile.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Walking down the tunnel (I can’t keep thinking of these things as adits), my feet crunched through the loose sandy soil and remains of buttresses and rotted out reinforcement. I stopped every few moments to listen. The tunnel made a slow turn to the right and the entrance was slowly moving out of sight. Recently acquired vocabulary popped into my mind, and I knew that this tunnel was a drift. The miners had been following along the edge of a body of ore. I missed Remus.

Wyrmmdigger’s Bane vibrated in my hand. My sword was smarter than Sting. After all, who wants a sword that lights up when enemies are near and lets them know you are there too? I pressed myself up into a slight divot dug out of the wall on the inside of the curve of the drift. The smell of wet dog came to me first. Then the sound of footsteps. It sounded like only one of them.

It came around the corner. Kobolds are a disturbing mix of canine and saurian. Its snout was long like a dog or jackal. Instead of skin it had scaled hide like its supposed saurian ancestor. From the dog/jackal side of its ancestry, it had hair, but it was wiry and sparse, often coming out in patches or wisps from the gaps between the scales. It just looked wrong.

Wyrmmdigger’s Bane whistled through the air as I swung for its neck. Bane’s edge slipped into its flesh impossibly easily. Scale, hide, and hair that would otherwise have slowed a blade parted, and warm black blood drowned out its cry of alarm. My sword came free with ease, and a hollow whistling sound came from the kobold’s throat.

Panting, I backed off, hoping that it would bleed out, but no such luck. There was still some fight left in it. Crouching onto its powerful hind legs the monster leapt at me. I got Bane in between us mangling one of its clawed hands, but the other managed to swipe down my chest. Pain washed over me. I might have dropped Bane, but the hilt seemed frozen into my grip. One more hit like that and I would be sent for respawn.

I hacked at the creature over and over. Short sharp swings like taking a machete to a bunch of woody vines. Its ruined voice hissed and bubbled as slices and gashes opened up along the arms I butchered. Wrymmdigger’s Bane opened wounds with the slightest graze of its edge. Before I knew it, the fight was over.

Reviewing the combat logs, I had to whistle. I had taken down over half the hp of what I found out was a level nine Wyrmmdigger Corporal with my first strike. Bane was incredible. The other thing that was made perfectly clear to me was that I couldn’t take a hit from the monsters in here. The corporal only got in one good shot on me, and he took down half of my hp. If he hadn’t been a lone wandering monster, I would have died.

I collected a whopping 500xp. Well, I did just solo a creature three times my level while on hardcore mode. Four more just like Corporal Punishment there, and I would hit the next level. Looking the monster over, I received a few silver and a rusty dagger.

The classic roles of adventuring are tank, damage dealer, healer, and crowd control. I had the damage dealer role filled in spades. I couldn’t heal and even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to do so in combat and still attack. I needed a method to apply crowd control or some way to tank.

Magic was, of course, the only answer. I pulled out my grimoire. I only had a few low-level spells, but I had one advantage. I didn’t need twenty-four hours to recover my mana. A half hour of meditation would refill my magical batteries. A half hour might as well be forever in combat, but it did mean that I needed to rethink how magic worked for people at my level.

Typically when running a dungeon, you saved your best spells for the bosses and most difficult encounters. Applying spells on the minions filling out the upper levels and outer rooms left you empty at the boss room. Of course, at level eight a caster had multiple spells that were as good as my best ones, so they could do at least a bit for the party in the early stages of a dungeon. At level three I had one decent spell in me—wizards were just sad at low level. I was low level, QED I was sad.

Even if my magic use were normal instead of chanted, I would still need to use magic on every encounter. Melee by itself was a death sentence for me. The silver lining of my odd casting style was that I could sustain a pace faster than one encounter a day. If I had to wait twenty-four hours between each encounter for my mana to recover it would take me months to clear the dungeon. It would only take me weeks to get through a dungeon that a full party of properly leveled players could finish in a day or two at the worst. Weeks is a lot better than months. And weeks is incredibly better than never.

The huge downside of the way magic worked for me was that casting in the middle of combat was incredibly difficult. Spells took a lot longer for me to cast with all the chanting and breathing. More importantly, if I got hit even once I didn’t think I could keep my breathing practice from falling apart and the spell with it.

Maddie had given me instructions for the typical set of first and second level spells. I dismissed the spells that increased my offense, like Divination Strike. I already hit like a train. Unless I could get something that let me accomplish multiple one-shot kills, that spell wouldn’t help me if I faced more than one kobold. I had an Arcane Armor spell, but it only lasted a few minutes. It would help, but it didn’t stop all attacks, it only ameliorated them. It would temporarily let me absorb some hits like a level eight player. I also had a few spells designed to control some of the monsters while the rest of a party killed others. Sleep. Grease. Charm. Daze. I had a number of spells I could use on myself as well. Short term invisibility, some spells that let me enhance my abilities.

That was the other thing. Most spells were pegged to your level. For example, the effects of invisibility would last one minute per level. You can’t do that much sneaking around in three minutes. My Daze spell would last ten seconds for every level. So, I could take a creature out of the fight for a grand total of thirty seconds. A lot of my other spells probably wouldn’t even work given the level disparity. The game would look at our comparative level, inherent defenses or vulnerabilities (remember attacking frost trolls with fire and things like that?), and then look at the relevant ability bonuses or deficits. So, a charm spell works best against creatures with low wisdom scores. It also fails on creatures whose intelligence is so low that there is no mind to even magically trick. Given that the monsters were two to three times my level, something like a Sleep spell was going to fail on most if not all of the kobolds in a group in this dungeon. That would stay true until my level was higher, or if my intelligence bonus was through the roof.

That gave me an idea. I had a spell called Cunning of the Fox. It raised my intelligence by four points for one minute per level. That would boost my intelligence to 16, as smart as your average beholder or succubus. Way smarter than any kobold. So: Cunning of the Fox + Sleep = crowd control.

The realization hit me that my meditation-and-breathing-based magic’s big advantage wasn’t speed but flexibility. Being able to swap out the spells I did have in half an hour instead of once a day was a huge advantage. True, I couldn’t cast while in the midst of combat, but in half an hour I could prepare the right spell for each encounter.

My plan came together. It was going to be tedious and repetitive. Well, that’s why they call it dungeon crawling and not dungeon walking or dungeon running. It would be slow and awkward, and my butt was going to hurt from all the sitting I was going to be doing.

My breath came in bursts as I cleared my channels, then settled down into an even rhythm. I noticed my mana level fill but did not allow that information to alter my stance or breath. My hands found the mudra of light and then the mudra of illusion after I stood and started chanting “Invisibility.” In the corner of my vision, a timer began counting down from three minutes.

I set off to scout out the kobolds. My plan was simple. Step one: find each group and scout them thoroughly while invisible. Step two: pull back to prepare. Take a half an hour and tweak my spell selection. Step three: go in and kill everything. Step four: smile as I loot my victims. Step five: rest and reload invisibility. Rinse and repeat.

I almost couldn’t stop myself from whistling as I made my way through the tunnel looking for a bunch of victims. The last thing I heard was a click. I looked down, and a javelin was all the way through my body. As I sank to the floor, I recalled that the Wyrmmdiggers were also known for their trap construction.

“God damn it! Mother fucking fucker fuck fuck fuck!” I screamed as I found myself back at the entrance to the dungeon.

Death was less disorienting than moving in or out of the game. Things went dark. Some hazy imagery of clouds and a graveyard and then you woke up at your spawn point. Who knows what it means that it is more disruptive to your brain to go from reality to this place than it is to be skewered with a javelin and then bleed out. I could ask my father why that was. The pain was actually less than my fights with the hares, as I died almost as soon as I saw the shaft sticking through my stomach.

My father’s admonitions while I was under his roof not to become over-confident raced through my head. “Pride goeth before a fall.” Or “Don’t stick your nose up in the air or you won’t be able to see where you are going.” Or, the timeless, “Great kid, don’t get cocky.”

The experience loss for a death at this level wasn’t too brutal - I was still level three. Any more deaths and I’d fall to level two. There was no chance of anyone else robbing my corpse of my equipment. The upside of being killed by a trap was not needing to somehow clear other monsters from around my corpse before I could re-equip. My armor would need some patching. Best news of all, I respawned. Some part of me had worried that Hardcore mode meant you only got one life, no respawn.

Trudging down the abandoned mine entrance I made my way to my corpse. I tried not to look too closely as I touched it. It fell into dust and disappeared. The stupid trash belt I kept for no good reason dropped. I put it back in my inventory and restarted my plan. This time it was going to be even slower. Step one A: search for traps while invisible. Step one B: find each group and scout them thoroughly while invisible. Step two: pull back to prepare. Take a half an hour and tweak my spell selection. Step three: go in and kill everything. Step four: smile as I loot my victims. Step five: rest and reload invisibility. Rinse and repeat. This was going to be slow.

Prāṇāyāma. Breath moved into and through me. Casting a spell in hardcore mode is a great way to find your center and move past your death. Mudras set my intentions. The chant droned out with my breath. I am hidden from the world. I wended my way further into the abandoned mines. Part of a basic dungeoneering package is a pole, and I am the proud owner of one, thank you Smitty. Carefully, I pressed every stone. The pole swung forward checking for tripwires. My eyes scanned, looking for murder holes that might unleash arrows or bolts. Was the cracked stone flooring ahead a carefully balanced facade leading to a spike filled pit? My progress was slow and meticulous, and was brought to an absolute crawl by the need to recast Invisibility every three minutes and meditate after casting Invisibility just a few times. Six minutes of searching interspersed by half an hour of meditative breathing. I needed to meditate just to overcome the stress and anxiety of needing to meditate so often.

My breathing practice improved. I fell into the habit of Ujjayi, or victorious breath, as I moved. This was the breathing practice that was considered acceptable to engage while moving your body. The circumstance forced mindfulness. My mind could not wander. I had to pay attention or I would die, but I could not worry about the death. I must be present. I must look at a stone. Was it where it should be, or did some clever Kobold place it to mask a trap’s trigger? Is this floor real? I became an invisible point of observation slowly moving through the dark. The only sound was the slight hiss of my Ujjayi breath moving through the back of my throat.

There was a light resistance as I carefully pressed on a rock embedded in the floor of the tunnel. The walls of a mine tunnel were not smooth and polished. There were holes and indentations and crevices everywhere from the picks and shovels that created it. But, I noticed a collection of shadows at chest height just forward of the stone. The shadows were right where one might be if you had stepped on the rock while walking down the tunnel.

A tone sounded and a game notice informed me that I had discovered a poison dart trap. A small amount of experience came with the discovery. Noting the location of the trap on my map I moved forward. I crept down the tunnel, breath moving in through the nose and out the mouth. Soon enough I noticed a tripwire. The beams that reinforced the tunnel weren’t real. The beams and who knows how many boulders and stones would fall on you if you were unlucky enough to trip the wire. Another notice and another handful of experience.

The tunnel split and I followed the right-hand wall. When I found the third trap a new notice came from the game.

Congratulations!

You have learned the skill

Trap Detection (active)!

Look before you leap! With focus and care you can see traps and triggers more easily.

Novice Trap Detection:

0/250 to Beginner Level

Further reading informed me that at higher levels this skill would take on a passive component, allowing me to detect traps without making a conscious effort. How nice that would be. This skill was going to be ground hard by the time I finished this dungeon. A smile flashed across my lips and I continued down the tunnel.

The tunnel opened up into a stope, aka a downward expanding cavern created by excavating ore. The miners had left a number of natural columns to hold up the cavern ceiling. Scattered around the chamber were three groups of two to three kobolds. There were also four individual kobolds wandering from group to group and around the circumference of the stope.

I pulled back. This seemed like too large a bite right off the bat. Being in no particular hurry, I decided to go back to the intersection and explore in the other direction.

The next time I discovered a trap it glowed faintly. I’d like to think that I’d have detected it without the faint red glow but it was nice to have the system working for me instead of against me. I refused to change my thorough method, though, as false negatives were a possibility. My skill level and the dungeon being set for a level seven party made it extremely likely that the system wouldn’t alert me to every trap. The skill would miss some that I could hopefully find by the old, painstaking way.

Shortly my concern was borne out. A patch of gravel seemed too loose to me. The floor should have been long since compacted down. The top layer seemed to shift too easily as I gently brushed my hand over it. I carefully removed the layer of gravel and saw that a glass bottle had been lightly buried, wedged over a blade edged rock and then covered with gravel. Inside the flask was some sort of murky liquid. If I had stepped on it the bottle would have shattered, releasing whatever was inside. Nothing good I was sure.

There was also another pleasant surprise. The experience and skill increase from discovering a trap through my own efforts was three times as high as what I received when the system glowed and told me itself. It put me over halfway to the Beginner level of the Detect Trap skill. Hardcore mode plus soloing a dungeon over twice my level meant that the rewards were commensurate with the risks.

I decided to push my luck. There were no Kobolds around--disarming the trap seemed possible. I needed anything that might help me work through the dungeon and this bottle full of nasty seemed like it could come in handy.

Carefully I started to clear the gravel from the bottle. When I had taken off about half of the small stones, the weight on top of the bottle started to shift and the bottle moved. I rolled away, throwing my arm over my mouth and shutting my eyes. After scrambling back a good dozen feet I stopped. I sniffed the air. Nothing. Slowly, I crept back to the trap. The bottle had shifted but hadn’t fallen or broken. I couldn’t get my hand under it to stop it from falling farther and possibly shattering. I realized I had to remove the gravel evenly without disturbing the bottle. A game of pick-up-sticks, or rather gravel, where a slip up would unleash something painful.

One pebble after another. Careful and steady. One more piece of gravel and some delicate web of support was broken and pebbles started sliding down into the hole, revealing the neck of the bottle. Before it could fully unbalance and fall I grabbed it by the neck and held it steady.

Congratulations!

You have learned the skill

Disarm Trap!

Do you cut the red wire or the blue wire? It takes a steady hand and nerves of steel.

Novice Trap Disarm:

0/250 to Beginner Level

There were only 50 odd points left to hit the next skill level for my Detect Traps skill. I had unlocked Disarm Traps. If I could learn to set traps, the skill should solidify into a single skill that covered all three sub-skills. I was pretty sure that this would still work the same for me in my hardcore mode.

I examined the bottle but couldn’t tell exactly what the stuff in there did. Novice Alchemy with zero points towards leveling it just wasn’t cutting it. The range of possibilities was extremely varied. It would be a shame to waste it on a solo mob if this was something powerful. Conversely, depending on it when confronting a large group would be foolish. I slipped it into my inventory and moved along.

Someone had built a room at this end of the tunnel. It had even had a door once upon a time. The only evidence of the door were the twisted remains of a strap hinge. I was glad it was gone. Invisibility doesn’t help you if you have to push open a rusty old door. Doing so would surely have awoken the four kobolds bedded down in a crude nest of furs. They slept like dogs in a large pile.

Pulling back, I sat and began recharging my mana. As I did I thought over my spell possibilities. This really was a gimme of a setup. I had surprise and all of the kobolds were nicely piled together. It was the easiest setup for a group of kobolds I was going to get unless the dungeon had a room filled with half dead kobolds trapped in a cage waiting for me. No, this was as easy as it was going to get. If I couldn’t do this then Maya would surely win and I’d get to sit in a tunnel for ten months.

I prepared two spells. Given that I had the drop on the kobolds I felt able to make different choices than I’d risk otherwise. The first mudra had my thumbs interlocked, vaguely looking like mandibles. This left my eight fingers to shape legs. My palms were the body. My hands looked like a spider. In time with my breath I chanted “Web” over and over. As I chanted, strands of magical silk floated down from above the kobolds. More and more fell, crossing each other and binding into a seamless, unified whole wherever two strands connected. The kobolds didn’t even wake as the strands flowed and wrapped across them in a skein, binding them to each other and immobilizing them.

Wyrmmdigger’s Bane and I went to work. It was a slaughter. My first blow just about killed one and his dying scream was the first thing that let the others know that danger was near. They began struggling. The level difference was certainly impacting my spell’s effectiveness. They shouldn’t have been able to move more than a foot or so a minute. Since I was only level three they actually managed to get to their feet. But the next kobold died by the time the last two had managed to clamber upright. They still couldn’t retaliate, just try desperately to lurch free. I hacked as fast as I could and another dropped.

I stepped back. I touched my thumb to my ring finger and kept the rest of my fingers straight, creating the hand pose named Agnimudra. I began chanting, keeping my breath calm and rhythmic even as the slavering monster who could kill me with two blows twisted and yanked himself out of the web. One of the kobolds’ arms was now free. Its claws were mere inches from me as it got a leg free while trying to swipe my face. Staying still, controlling my breathing and hand gestures while it bayed and clawed for my throat, was incredibly difficult. Fear makes you breathe differently. If I did, the spell would fail. I focused and ignored the claws.

Just before it freed its last leg from the webbing, I finished my chant. Agni is the Hindu god of fire. Thank god Hinduism has so many gods. There is a deity for everything. Or, should that be thank gods? Thank Agni.

“Burning Hands,” I shouted as I grabbed the kobold’s arm in my flame-coated hand. It howled as its arm burned. My grip actually seared down through the muscle. Despite any natural resistance it was still a kobold, not a dragon. As I knew from Aabid’s experience, fire could hurt these things. The secondary effect I had been counting on initiated. The remains of the web covering the kobold from its head to its feet went up in a flash. I may not have been creating the character build I had planned on but even I knew enough about casting to know that spells like web and grease had solid combo effects from fire.

This gave me the time to begin stabbing with Wrymmdigger’s Bane again. The blade hissed and spat as it sliced through the fire covering the kobold. With a gurgle, it dropped first to its knees and then to the floor.

A level three player had just killed four kobolds almost three times his level. I looked at Wyrmmdigger’s Bane. Gear really does make the man.

I sat and meditated, recharging my mana. By the time I was done the webs had disappeared. Looting the bodies, I received some silvers and random trash loot. Given the level difference, the rusty equipment’s stats weren’t terrible for me. I’d have been glad to have any of these shoddy weapons back when I was fighting rabbits with rocks. Best of all, I was no longer dead broke. If I ever got out of here I’d need some cash.

My plan had survived proof of concept. Of course, this test was extremely favorable. I had the initiative. The kobolds were grouped conveniently. Let’s see how things would go when the setup was less favorable.

I made my way back to the stope. The cavern opened and dropped away from the tunnel just as I remembered. The same group of three were right at the entrance. Try as I might I couldn’t think of a way to pull just one of the wandering kobolds without also triggering the group at the entrance into combat. I had to clear the group blocking the entrance to the cavern. That being the case, I had to pull them into combat when none of the wandering kobolds were near or I’d have four on my hands. The next complication was that my aggro range was simply massive at such a low comparative level. Normally a crowd control spell like web could be initiated and as long as you were close in level to your target, the monsters wouldn’t come after you until the spell wore off. My aggro range was bigger than my crowd control casting range. If I moved close enough to cast Web they would rush me and interrupt my spell.

I studied the pattern and timed out the wandering kobolds. They passed the group blocking the entrance every two minutes. If I was to try and take on the group in the doorway I’d have to clear them and get away in about a minute and a half or have the next free kobold on me. It was impossible.

My father had always urged me to munchkin game rules but never obscenely. He believed rules were there not only to tell you what you shouldn’t do but also to help facilitate what you should. People always argue about what kind of game lawyering was ok, and no one was ever able to define what pushed rule exploits over into something obscene. The deciding factor as he saw it, was whether some rule exploit helped the game along or broke it. He liked to quote some old DM on when munchkin behavior crossed the line. I believe the guy’s name was Harry Potter Stewart and he said of such gaming obscenity, “I know it when I see it.”

Time to sidestep my aggro range/crowd control spell range problem. First, find one small rock. There is a low-level spell called Wizard’s Words. It is useful for leaving messages for a specific person or to be heard only under certain circumstances. It is a way to let only guild members or friends find out that they really want to take the left hand tunnel not the right. The triggering circumstances can be moderately complex, which was good for me.

Some rhythmic breathing, some chanting, and my stone was ready. I turned invisible. Creeping down the tunnel I placed the stone twenty feet directly in front of the group blocking the entrance to the cavern. I kept my fingers on the stone keeping it inside my invisibility effect. I looked up to see if the faint click of it hitting the ground would trigger a response. They made no reaction. I wanted to sigh in relief but had to keep holding my breath. After a count of ten I pulled my fingers from the small rock. The pebble shimmered into view. The kobold group stirred just a little but settled back down. A new kobold came past the group. The clock had started.

Backing off till the enchanted stone was just inside my casting range I sat and recharged my mana. As I breathed and meditated I counted each new wandering kobold who passed. I had programmed my stone to wait till a dozen kobolds came and went. One by one the patrollers passed. Five little kobolds… six little kobolds… this little kobold went to market… this little kobold stayed home… There was a moment of panic as I wondered if I had miscounted or misprogrammed but just before the twelfth kobold came by the group at the entrance I began casting Web again. My hands made the spider shape and I chanted the spell’s name over and over again. If my timing was right I’d finish the spell moments after my stone would initiate.

The fourth kobold seemed to linger with the group at the entrance. Was he going to stay longer than I had planned for? Did I miscount? I was now counting down the thirty seconds till my Wizard’s Words spell began. Go! Go, you stupid kobold. Finally he started off again. It was even harder to keep my chant when the kobold finally left the group by the entrance. Relief makes you want to sigh something fierce. Now! Now you stupid rock. Talk!

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly;

“’Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy.

The way into my parlor is up a winding stair,

And I have many pretty things to show when you are there.”

“O no, no,” said the little fly, “to ask me is in vain,

For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”

The stone played the message I had recorded. The kobolds clearly weren’t poetry fans, or maybe they thought I didn’t do it justice. They rushed over to the stone grunting and sniffing. The lead kobold’s snout perked up and he turned down the tunnel seeing me. They were inside my aggro range. He grunted to his fellows and they launched themselves down the tunnel. My timing was good enough. Once again magical threads of silk appeared. This time they filled the tunnel from side to side and from ceiling to floor. The kobolds slowed but never fully stopped as they became entangled. Once again, the level difference partially nerfed my crowd control.

The kobold swung his hooked short sword at my face. But close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Slowed by the web and his aim pulled off by a strand connected to his forearm, it was simple to slip the blow and thrust Wyrmmdigger’s Bane into his stomach. A quick side-to-side motion and I pulled my sword out followed by some of his guts. A notice that I had induced a bleed effect brought a smile to my face.

Bane seemed to leap into short sharp jabs and stabs at critical areas. A neck. A groin. The inside of a thigh. Eyes. The kobolds’ defenses were hampered and my opportunity to attack areas that allowed for higher crit chances or status effects was enhanced. Bane also seemed to know these Wyrmmdiggers’ vital spots. A stab at a kobold’s thigh might shift an inch to find the femoral artery. The angle of a thrust into a kobold’s eye might rotate just the right amount to clear their bony occipital ridges. The angle of a parry might be adjusted to the range of motion of my foes. This must be close to what it was like to have full combat mechanics enabled.

The first kobold died from his gut wound just as I finished off the second, whom I had blinded. I should have moved on to the last while the second kobold was blinded. He would have been a much easier foe. Instead I finished him off and only had time to slice the last kobold’s leg. I took off back towards the entrance to the mine. With the level difference, I expected the kobold to catch up with me shortly but I seemed to be outpacing the beast.

Turning around I saw that my leg thrust had lamed the kobold, which had cleared the web and was limping towards me. How I wished I could cast or had a bow. Or any sort of ranged weapon. Well, I had thrown stones before and there were plenty around me. I would grab a rock throw it and run for a bit. I managed to grab and throw three rocks before I couldn’t retreat anymore. I connected with two of them. Two points of damage are two points of damage.

The Kobold swung at me and I staggered back as I parried. A twitch of Wyrmmdigger’s Bane clued me in to the tail strike that was coming from behind the beast. The kobold seemed shocked when my block scored a long scrape on its tail.

The last Kobold and I were evenly matched at this point. We had roughly the same hit points and either of us could kill the other with two decent blows. Fair fights are for suckers but a sucker I was. We exchanged blocks and parries and dodges for a few passes. As we fought, neither of us scoring a hit or able to commit to a blow, I noticed that the kobold was scared of Wyrmmdigger’s Bane. Smart kobold. I decided to try to use that to my advantage. I kept jabbing and feinting with the blade. The kobold was unable to ignore the threat it posed. A flick of my sword and it would invariably hiss and retreat. When I pulled the sword back for a blow, that was when the kobold felt free to move in. I pulled the sword back once again and as predicted in came the kobold. My response was an awkward stroke. A slash done with such awkwardness was something an opponent would typically ignore or take advantage of somehow. I couldn’t bring any power or speed behind such a stroke. But still the kobold shifted to avoid any contact with the blade, letting me position the monster and time the pacing of the fight. Its legs crossed awkwardly as it retreated to the right and I was now perfectly set up to bash it in the head with the edge of my buckler. Falling and out of position it stumbled. That was all the opening I needed. A step to my left and two quick thrusts and the kobold breathed its last.

Grinding concept fully proven.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

For the third time, I made my way back to the stope. Sneaking between the wandering kobolds, I looted the bodies of my foes. Perhaps something that dropped was going to change things: some money, some trash, and a potion! Crud. The potion was blue and glowed subtly. Mana regeneration potion. A truly useful item for a player who can cast in combat. Or, from behind a tank. I couldn’t think how I could use it but into my inventory it went.

Over the course of the next hours I took out the single wandering kobolds as they passed the entrance. Timing my chanted cast of web, I’d have one trapped kobold. Then I’d apply some quick chops from Bane and move on to the next.

Ding!

On the third patroller I hit level four. I had an ability point to assign.

The rules of The Game cause some universal dilemmas. One of those is known as Threshold Pain. Not pain threshold but threshold pain. This semi-witty turn of phrase is based around the fact that the benefits from increasing an ability score are not a smooth linear progression.

Stat points are set up with threshold values. You need two points to pass the threshold to get the next clear benefit, an added +1 to your ability modifier. Adding a point to any of my abilities that were currently at 12 and thereby moving the score up to 13 would have murky immediate effects. Only when I moved from 13 to 14 would I get the satisfaction of an additional +1 ability modifier to those tasks that an ability impacted. So, we get Threshold Pain. The pain you feel when deciding to add a point to an ability so that four levels later you can benefit. You clear four difficult levels and your reward is moving half way to your goal. Wait another four levels and you can finally have your bonus.

This can be brutal. Waiting eight levels to really get stronger, or wiser, or more agile or charismatic is hard for people. We, as a species, struggle with delayed gratification. Most people have immediate needs. For instance, they are trapped in an instance soloing mobs twice their levels. It is really hard to take a bonus stat point and bank it under those circumstances.

In the rush to assign my stats I had left Strength and Constitution on the edge of an additional bonus. Moving my strength up to 14 would double my strength bonus. An additional point to Constitution would double the amount of hit points I’d get for each level. My other abilities would need me to level four more times before I’d get such clear benefits.

Gaining levels happens a lot faster at lower levels. The first dozen or so can be passed in a few months of serious playing. But then gaining levels gets slower and slower. You have to figure out not just the final build you are aiming for as you play The Game but also the optimal path as you add ability points. Normally, I’d be using any points to set up an ability for later improvement. The game was supposed to be plainly easier at low levels. I shouldn’t be risking deaths in each and every encounter at level four. These were the levels you use to set yourself up down the line.

Further complicating things was my hardcore mode. I had no way to know how this would interact with my ability points. Would it give me some different bonuses before the thresholds were passed?

I could hit or take a hit better if I went for Strength or Constitution. But I also needed to increase the rest. Intelligence allowed me access to more spells. I also needed it to dismantle traps I found. I needed Dexterity to help disarm the traps. Disabling and disarming were two different skills. Given my low HP any hit was a possible death blow so increasing my agility and thereby my ability to dodge attacks or escape any traps I missed was also important. Wisdom helped with things I needed now too. Wisdom was supposed to keep you in tune with your surroundings. Spotting and perceiving things like the traps I was surrounded by, for instance. I couldn’t believe how many stats were applicable to dealing with the traps down here. Charisma, on the other hand, was almost completely useless stuck down here. I laughed grimly since I could skip worrying about whether adding a point to luck was the way to go. My curse simplified things a tiny bit.

I decided to forget Constitution. I was a glass cannon. Given the level disparity and me fighting in here solo, I was never going to be able to survive via tanking. If I was taking hits I had already screwed up and another death was coming for me. Strength seemed the obvious move. An extra point of damage on every hit. But so far, I seemed able to deal damage fast enough.

I was getting experience at a pretty amazing clip. If I cleared this cavern I’d level at least a few more times. Soloing, level difference, and playing hardcore really stacked up the experience bonus. Fight smarter not harder. I decided to go for Intelligence. The biggest danger I faced was from traps. As I got closer to the dungeon’s level my magic would be more and more effective. I needed the flexibility magic offered.

I added the point to my intelligence. An odd tingling ran through my skull. For a moment, I thought a headache was coming on but instead I felt more awake than I had in a long while. There seemed to be a clarity to everything I noticed around me. After a few minutes everything settled down, and having nothing else to do I went back to work.

One square foot of cavern floor or wall looks a lot like the next. I had a hard time assessing if my search abilities were more effective. Until I found the next trap, or failed to, I wouldn’t know--even then I really wouldn’t know how I would have done without the additional intelligence point. All I could do was press on and hope that I wouldn’t stumble into a spiked pit or trip a wire that hit me with a poison-coated battle axe swung on a pendulum.

I worked my way through the cavern. First, searching for traps as I moved towards each group. Next, luring the groups of kobolds into web and then hack hack hack. I learned the kobolds’ moves and weak points. With increasing frequency, I was able to make sure any kobolds who fought their way free of the web had some status effect to help me finish them off. I learned to use the fear they seemed innately to feel of Wyrmmdigger’s Bane to shift and control them during a fight. Slowly, I was learning from my sword how to kill these things. What kinds of feints they would fall for. How to read their eyes or body language. How their bones and skeletons and internal organs were arranged to make the most of my attacks. Bane would slip at just the right angle between their ribs and seek out their vital organs. Bane knew its enemies and slowly taught me to use it to its full effect.

Bit by bit I cleared the cavern. As I had hoped, the experience kept coming at the same insane speed. By my calculation I was getting at least sixteen times as much experience per kill and quadruple the experience per successful trap detection compared to a typical player. The bonus for level difference, plus no luck, plus soloing this dungeon, meant I didn’t have to split experience gains with my party, the game, or anyone. After I found and carefully disarmed a plate of spikes set to pierce an unwary step, my detect trap skill finished moving up: I was now a beginner. This growth in trap detection and disarming was the silver lining of my glacial pace through the dungeon. The lack of hit points, lack of healing, and all the other lacks I suffered from meant that I still couldn’t risk triggering a trap. Whether I saw any glow or not, I tested every inch of the cavern as I went.

I also received my first useful drop in here. A health potion. If I could drink it fast enough I might be able to last through as much as three hits in a fight. I might survive a trap. But, I needed to save the potion in case I ran into something that I had no other way at all to survive, so inchworm Miles continued his slow crawl, relentlessly inspecting every surface as he went.

Spending days repetitively looking at dirt floors will change a man. My breath technique became less and less a conscious action. It was merely the rhythm to which I tried to look and sense. My mind couldn’t wander or I’d die, but wander it did. I had to just be in the moment and the moment was… well… boring. It was the oddest thing. I was in a life and death situation or at least a simulated death with a real-life threat of slavery hanging over my head, and it was boring. Even when I slept in the Pod back in reality my dreams were of me stuck in this endless underwold.

Despite the stakes, I couldn’t stop myself from being bored. What exactly does it mean to be boring? What does it mean to be bored?

A speech from Mordecai came back to me. He told me, “If there is a pot of water, covered with moss and water plants, then a man with a normal faculty of sight looking into it could not properly recognize and see the image of his own face. In the same way, when one's mind is possessed by sloth and torpor, overpowered by sloth and torpor, one cannot properly see the escape from sloth and torpor that have arisen.”

Whenever I found myself being bored or sleepy as I attempted to meditate, I reflected on my masters’ teachings about how attachment or distance was at the root of boredom, or of impatience, torpor, or sloth. They told me that we confuse an attraction or attachment to ever increasing excitement with happiness or contentment. We confuse stimulation with happiness and when we lack ever increasing stimulation, our focus wanders. Endlessly looking at tunnel floors and walls was empty of advancement. There was no stimulation of battle or levels or loot. This caused me to struggle to be present. I alternated between feeling drowsy and having more energy than I knew what to do with. It was hard to settle and my eyes would jump ahead not really seeing the patch of dirt I needed to examine. It was a struggle with myself to be able to focus on the details that would keep me alive. The boredom of a constant and monotonous struggle oppressed me, even if it was to escape a lifetime of slavery. My faculty of sight was being clouded by this boredom. I would find myself re-examining the same patch. or concerned that I hadn’t really looked at a segment of the wall.

Mordecai and Lemminkäinen had offered suggestions when they saw me yawn or struggle with boredom or sleepiness while meditating, but many of these weren’t available to me. I couldn’t stop and look at the sky. No examining the clouds and sun or the stars. I couldn’t focus my awareness inwards either. I couldn’t focus on my body or attempt to find my internal light. I couldn’t think of questions about the nature of reality. I had to be in the moment and look at what was right in front of me. I decided to focus on the dharma of this task. To repeat in my mind that seeing what was, experiencing reality or at least this reality, was life itself. It was freedom. Seeing the pebble in front of me for what it was, this was the difference between life and death. Seeing the true nature of a small crevasse was freedom or slavery. Was this stone just a stone or was it an illusion hiding a painful death?

Slowly a certain kind of enlightenment came to me. My work became meaningful, I grew content. For longer and longer stretches I was neither sleepy nor jittery in my repetitive task. Slowly I learned to make all of me into the act of perception itself. I looked at each rock or bit of sand with contentment.

Tring!

Congratulations! You have unlocked your first feat!

You have achieved the feat: Perception.

Most of us see what we want to see or what we expect to see. To see what actually is eludes most.

Improves: Appraise, Listen, Search, Spot skills.

None of the tutorials or training we got in school ever mentioned Feats. Was this part of the hardcore mode? I looked for more details using the in-game help. No. This looked like it might actually be part of the typical game. I queried the AIs for clarification and a message came right back.

Dear Miles,

Yes. Feats exist in the game as played by everyone. Until you have unlocked a feat the AIs are not allowed to discuss them. Even afterward we really can’t say much besides acknowledging that they exist. As per Amulius’ directive I must inform you that you are not to tell anyone of this aspect of the game. Revelation of feats to another player, whether purposeful or unintentional, shall be punished with loss of the feat and permanent debuffs of deaf, blind, and mute. See no feats, hear no feats, say no feats.

Sincerely,

Rea Silvia

The Party: those evil sons of bitches. How could they suppress and hide something like this? Just another perk they kept for themselves. Incredible.

I looked at my status screen:

Miles Boone

Level 4

Exp: 6,243 (6,000 to next level)

Hit Points: 36 (8 +1 Con bonus per level)

Str 13 (+1)

Dex 12 (+1)

Con 13 (+1)

Int 13 (+1)

Wis 13 (+1)

Cha 12 (+1)

Luc 0* (-%$)

Titles: Wheeler Dealer, 1st Student of the Old Ways

Skills:

Novice Alchemy 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Blacksmithing 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Crafting 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Herbalism 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Leatherworking 0/250 to Beginner Level

Novice Mining 100/250 to Beginner Level

Beginner Spelunking 0/500 to Journeyman Level

Journeyman Trader 111/1000 to Master Level

Beginner Trap Detection 310/500 to Journeyman Level

Novice Trap Disarm 0/250 to Beginner Level

Feats:

Perception

*n/a

That feat really looked nice. Then I noticed another change. How was this possible? My wisdom score was wrong. It had been raised by +1. My butt hit the floor as I realized that all of the skills that Perception improved were Wisdom based.

The more amazing I felt about the bonus, the more I felt cold rage build against tthe Party, the Eastmans, and the other clans, and the whole stupid way The Game was rigged. Most folks, not even knowing that a feat was possible, would have to grind out four levels to get a stat increase. At higher levels, that meant at least a year’s work.

I went back to work. Unlocking this hidden bonus made it hard to get back into the mindset that had unlocked the feat. Excitement and expectation screwed up my equilibrium and the pace of my trap search slowed back down to a painful crawl, but bit by bit I got back into the right head-space.

I carefully cleared one room, one tunnel, after the next. There were rooms with more of the remains of the mine works that had been here before the kobolds had invaded. Rotting wood rails for mine carts ran down the middle of some of the tunnels. Other less recognizable remains of what had been before left enigmatic clues as to what this mine had been like in better days. It had been a large operation but bit by bit I plumbed all the side tunnels and caverns. The end was in sight.

Around the corner of what seemed to be one of the final tunnels came the sound of wheezing and roaring. This had to be the boss room. The final challenge of the dungeon sounded incredibly powerful. Whatever was making that racket had to be larger than me by a lot. I was so close to beating this dungeon, but if they threw a dragon or giant at me at the end I was doomed. My heart sank the louder the roaring became. I had accomplished so much, but it wouldn’t matter at all if the finale was something I couldn’t beat. All this time I had done my best not to think about the end boss of the dungeon. It was typically designed to make a party wipe unless they fought seamlessly and knew the tricks the end boss might throw at them. I was alone, under-leveled, and had no handy guide to what to expect.

After another round of meditation and casting invisibility, I made my way around the corner. Looking around for the giant beast I almost laughed when I saw what lay before me. The roaring came from an underground waterfall. Water came out from a small lip and fell into a pool that drained somewhere unseen back into the mountainside. The wheezing came from a giant bellows that was driven by a water wheel. The leather of the bellows had rotted away in spots but crude patches of some sort of skin--hopefully from an animal--covered the gaps. This was what made the wheezing sound I had heard--not a huge monster. It was some sort of mechanical method for keeping the air fresh down here in the mine.

I silently said a prayer of thanks. This dungeon was consistent in its theme. Traps and kobolds. From beginning to end it was all traps and kobolds. I still had a chance. I stopped myself from focusing on the final monsters and scanned the rest of the room. Past the bellows and waterfall there was a dark gap in the wall. This tunnel looked natural, as if the miners had reached an underground cave system perhaps worn out by the water that now was channeled off in a different direction. This inky blackness reached farther into the mountain. It was likely the exit from the dungeon. I was in a tunnel not an adit.

There was nothing else of interest to examine that my fear could use to justify delaying looking at the final encounter. Almost despite themselves my eyes were drawn to a crude altar festooned with bones and odd worked trinkets. Looming over the altar was a massive kobold chieftain. He was flanked by two shamans.

I analyzed him. Chieftain Grumth Wyrmmclaw. Level 11. Fuck. You never want to know the name of a mob. If it has a name it is strictly so it can tattoo that name on your ass as he hands it to you.

The two Shamans were at least not named bosses, but still… fuck. They were still high-level casters. I had been worried about confronting casters. My use of the web spell wouldn’t stop kobolds who could hurl their powers at me from a distance. And the chieftain likely had a ranged attack even if I was lucky enough to be able to hold him.

Normally, the tank would take the chieftain, the DDs would take down the casters as fast as possible, while the healer would try to keep everyone alive long enough to clear the encounter. I couldn’t tank the chieftain. I couldn’t heal. And the three of them would take me down before I could clear the casters. I’d be lucky to kill even one of the casters before they killed me.

Sitting with my back to the cave wall my breath hissed out in a deep sigh. Before anyone judges me, I’d like to say that I think my attitude was pretty good. Most people trapped in a dungeon by their enemies with a lifetime of slavery on the line while outnumbered by overpowering monsters would bitch and moan more than I think I did. No, I really had kept up a pretty “can do” attitude about my situation. And that attitude had paid off. I had cleared a floor of a dungeon that often took down higher level groups of four. You pull that off and then you can call me a whiny bitch if you want.

Looking at this shitty setup, no matter how I turned it over in my head I wasn’t clearing this group. Death was the natural outcome no matter how I came at it. There was no way to split up the group. Even if I did, the chieftain could take me down by himself unless I could web him--and I couldn’t see how I could split the group and also trap him.

This is where my previously mentioned positive attitude came into play. I ran away.

I decided to clear and search anything else I could find. Maybe there would be enough trash mobs that I could get myself up to level 21 and handle these three on my own. Maybe there would be a store down here that would sell me some armor impervious to attacks from Wyrmmdiggers. It would be called Wyrmmdiggers Bastion and it would have a set item bonus with Wyrmmdigger’s Bane that would let me waltz through the rest of the dungeon and also make my dick grow an extra three inches. Then I could take these guys on my own. Maybe I’d uncover an NPC trapped down here that I could rescue who would help round out my party--like a super hot elven enchantress who once freed could basically solo the dungeon for me and liked giving blowjobs too. Right.

Fuck my positive attitude. I was simply fucked. But my positive attitude wouldn’t let me just sit on my ass or log out. I was going to search every part of this dungeon I could without an automatic respawn. I still had to do the whole search-every-stupid-rock-and-pebble-in-the-whole-damned-cave-system-for-traps thing. I couldn’t even amble morosely. I had to crawl. If I thought that settling my brain down to the task of searching after the pleasant surprise of the feat system was hard, it was nothing compared to searching when I was convinced that the whole enterprise was an exercise in delusional positive thinking. See, some people’s positive thinking consists of seeing the world as a place where things will break their way and work out in the end. I have the other kind. The kind that assumes the world is out to screw you but sitting on your ass complaining about it for sure won’t work out well so you might as well spend days thoroughly reexamining rocks in the pointless and delusional hope that you will find… find… find…

Two days passed since I left the final boss room. Two days of nothing. A huge boulder was embedded in the wall of the tunnel I was working through. I had searched through here before and didn’t find any traps or anything else of interest. Once again, I carefully searched its edges. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a faint blue light but when I looked over it disappeared. In the dim confines of these tunnels even with my Eyes of the Hunter the shadows often played tricks. But, I could swear I had seen a momentary dim glow. As I searched all around where I thought I had seen it, the blue glow, whatever it had been, didn’t reappear.

Blue was the sign of secret doors or compartments. I had seen it. I know I had. I did my best to repeat everything I had been doing when I saw the glow. Nothing. Positive thinking. Do it all again.

I couldn’t believe positive thinking actually worked. Touch one outcrop and from a very specific angle I could just see a faint blue light that faded away almost immediately. Hope spiked in my chest.

Pressing the small outcrop where I saw the faint glow, a faint click came from behind the wall. I held my breath and waited. Nothing. The boulder was still stuck like the three-thousand-pound rock it seemed to be. I couldn’t budge it in any direction no matter how hard I tried. I held the outcrop down and tried shifting the boulder this way and that, but still nothing.

I searched around the boulder. On its opposite side there was another small outcrop that shifted when I twisted it. Another faint click. Aaaand… still nothing. With growing horror as I pushed, pulled, and banged on the door I realized that you needed to work both outcrops at the same time. Simple as pie if you are in a party. One more way the dungeon was clearly not designed to be soloed, and I would rot here for the next ten months and then a lifetime…

…if not for my time doing yoga with Mordecai and Lemminkäinen. My left hand twisted the outcrop as I stood planted on one foot. Using my hips as a pivot I balanced over my planted leg and managed to raise the other leg. My back bowed more and more as I worked to lower my torso below the fulcrum of my posted leg in an attempt to get the free leg the half a foot higher I needed to trigger the other outcrop. Getting into this position was even harder than describing it. All the while I hung onto the twisted rock. My grip started to get sweaty and I feared I’d lose my hold when I finally got my foot over the outcrop and I heard the second click. Nothing else happened for a second and my stomach started to drop at the fear that there was a third trigger to this god damned door. But slowly the boulder started opening towards me. It knocked me out of my pose and opened the rest of the way.

Jumping up I rushed into the room. Wyrmmdigger’s Bastion here we come! NPC elven enchantress with an oral fixation! Give daddy that sweet sweet item that will help me clear this thing.

The room was empty except for a pick-axe and a note. The note was written in a hurried and sloppy hand.

“Harthor! The kobolds have overrun the guards. I won’t let them get their hands on one of the Stonebeards’ greatest treasures. If you are reading this then I didn’t make it. Look after Helga and the bairns. When one of them is old enough and worthy, give it to them. - Jordun of the Stonebeards.”

I hefted the pick-axe. “One of the Stonebeards’ greatest treasures.” I looked at its stats.

Stonebeard Greater Mining Pick-Axe

Strength +1

Constitution +1

This legacy of a Dwarven Clan who have reached the pinnacle of mining and delving will raise its user’s mining skill by one entire level.

(Novice miners work as Beginners. Beginner miners work as Journeymen, etc.)

Cannot be used as a weapon.

Well, that was really unhelpful.

Out of sheer stubbornness I kept my search up. I found and killed another handful of basic kobold scouts, warriors, and regular clan members. I found and disarmed some more traps, but pretty soon I found myself back at the cave with the pool, the named boss chieftain and his backup singers. The dungeon was searched and cleared to its bones.

I kept thinking about whether there was anything I could do with the Stonebeard pick-axe. Images of a vid my dad used to show me ran through my mind. This wisecracking rabbit could tunnel as fast as most people could drive. The crazy rabbit would dig his way to his vacation spots. Even if I could dig my way somewhere, I’d find out that I should have taken a left turn in Albuquerque. It was a great item--just absolutely useless for solving my current problems. I was sure if I ever got out of here I’d have future problems, so maybe it would help with those.

But as for the inhabitants of the pool room, there was no way to take those things on without dying.

Something about that statement felt like the faint glimmer of an actual idea. There was no way to take these things on without dying. Okay. Let’s assume that this was true. I couldn’t take these things on without dying. Did this mean I could take them on while dying? Dying didn’t have to mean failure--as long as I could take them out with me.

This was going to be unpleasant. I made my way back to the secret door and stripped down until I was in my birthday suit. I picked through the best of the junk equipment I had gotten off the kobolds. It left me armored in the heaviest armor I could find and with a cruel looking if sadly underpowered short sword. The armor was foul smelling, like rancid dog.

I was going to die. I couldn’t afford to lose any of my gear. The only way to ensure I didn’t was not to be wearing anything I cared about when it happened.

I closed the secret door and made my way for the third time back to the named boss. Third time would be the charm. Nothing had changed with the Chieftain or his shamans. After sitting and meditating I cast invisibility on myself. A counter dropping down from four minutes began. Enough time to cast my second spell and leave me with just enough time to put my plan into effect. Chanting and breathing in rhythm, I held out my pointer and pinky finger and closed the rest of my fingers and thumb. Nandhimudra. Nandhi was a sage’s son who was transformed into a bull by Shiva the god of death. There was double symbolism for me. My spell was granting me the strength of a bull. I was also going to die.

As strength flowed through me, I kept my breath and chant even till the spell was finished. My strength was raised up to 17. I was now as strong as your average black pudding, choker, or large shark. Hopefully it would be enough.

I raced into the room. Even with my strength-enhanced speed and invisibility, Grumth managed to draw and begin swinging at me as I rushed toward them but his blade was too late. He misjudged where I would be. Grumth must have thought I was going to stop and fight but that wasn’t the plan.

I rammed into the Shaman to Grumth’s left. My shoulder crushed into his solar plexus and his breath exploded out as I almost lifted him up into a carry. The water was an icy shock as we both fell into the pool with the water wheel. I clamped my arms around the Shaman, squeezing as hard as I could to stop him from getting a last breath as we sank into the cold, dark water.

Lifeguards use ropes, poles and flotation devices because drowning people will fight and sometimes drown the very people trying to rescue them in their panic. A kobold shaman is no different. I was sure that without my enhanced strength he would have clawed his way out of my grip. He flailed and scratched and clawed. Half the world went even darker as one of his claws tore down my face and across my eye. I refused to care. All I cared about was driving us down deeper into the pool. I managed to get one stab into him and what dregs of air remained in his lungs floated out as bubbles from his screaming mouth.

We hit bottom. The Shaman writhed and twisted. He seemed like he was made of steel cable. I couldn’t believe a caster type had such strength, but despite his frantic efforts I kept a grip. He managed to get an arm or leg free for a moment but never for long enough to get us moving back towards the surface.

The shaman settled for a minute. I think he was trying to think his way out of my trap. I took the opportunity to shift and improve my hold. I curled my legs around his and got my arms into a lock on his. I was holding him from behind now with my back on the pool’s floor.

Above us, faintly seen through the dark waters, a bright light from outside the pool flared and I realized the other shaman was casting some sort of fire based spell at me. Live by the fire-oriented racial preference, die by the fire-oriented racial preference. The spell fizzled out before it reached us. The shaman in my grasp began struggling again when he realized that his ally wouldn’t be able to do much for him.

His struggles started to fade and there were periods of stillness from him as his life faded. My breath was like a caged animal in my chest at this point. I tried to hold him as still as I could while not wasting any excess air or energy. I kept telling myself that all I needed to do was hold my breath longer than the Shaman. Just one second longer. Another second and another as my heart beat started pounding in my ears. Finally, a notice that the Shaman was dead appeared.

With frantic strokes, I started for the surface when the Chieftain entered the pool in a whirl of air bubbles. I don’t know if I would have made it out of the pool even without the Chieftain blocking my way. His sword struck through the water and into my stomach. I couldn’t help but scream, which replaced my lungful of air with water. Some irrational part of my fading mind was happy that I was dying from drowning rather than letting the Chieftain take my life. As if that mattered. The last thing I saw as sight faded from my one remaining eye was the Chieftain’s hand reaching for my throat. Too late Grumth. I died.

Wracking coughs shook me as I found myself at the entrance to the mines once again. It felt like something was still trapped in my lungs when I tried to breathe in. Something was blocking air from getting to my lungs. I coughed and wheezed and tried to recover. On second thought, I would have rather had Grumth stab me to death. Drowning seemed to have had some sort of psychosomatic effect on me--and I still had to do it another time.

Sitting there coughing, I wasn’t sure I could go through with this again. I had been in the game for a long time and its virtuality was harder and harder to remember. It was difficult to remind myself that I wasn’t really going to drown. Avoiding pain and danger is hard wired into the human animal. Knowing that the pain and danger aren’t real only gets you so far. Every sense my stupid brain relied upon to know how to feel about things was telling it that I was going to kill us… again. Pain and fear occur in the mind. My mind knew I was planning to drown it and it was rebelling.

A short yip drew my attention to the exit of the instance I couldn’t escape through. Remus was sitting there looking at me. A dog’s eyebrows are more expressive than most people’s entire faces. This goes for wolves too. Somehow the angle of his eyebrows communicated humor restrained by concern. I walked over to the edge of the instance and knelt down in front of my one friend in the game. Actually, my one friend in the world.

“Remus!” I tried to shout and finished with another coughing fit.

Remus looked me over as I continued coughing. He sniffed at the barrier as if he could tell how I was doing by smell even if he couldn’t touch me. Maybe he could.

Remus yipped again and gave me a panting smile. One amazing thing about animals is that they never feel any self-pity. They never feel pity at all. They seem to be able to feel concern but not pity. It makes their expressions of concern pack quite the punch. After weeks alone in those damned mines a friendly face with unpitying warmth and concern just about broke me. I tried to scratch him but my hand just passed right through him. He gave me a notional lick.

“I’m doing it, Remus. I’ve almost beat this thing. I think I’m going to finish soloing this dungeon. I’ll finish with less experience than I entered the damned place. Maybe even at a lower level than I started, but I am going to make it,” I told him. The death penalty had put me back to the beginning of level 4. My next planned death would drop me back to level three.

Remus’ laughing grin expressed a cocksure certainty that he was the top dog around, including me. Just like he felt no self-pity and would never pity me, his expression told me he had always expected any brother of his to overcome any foe or die without complaint. And dying was for lesser beings—which included anything other than wolves.

I realized that wolves live in the moment. Pity demands that you care and think about what was once and was lost, or what should have been instead of what is, or terrible things you think the future will hold. Remus’ concern was for the me of right now. It held no expectation of what should have been or what was coming. His pride in me was for me right now--the only me that actually exists, not the possible me or the me of the past that has gone. What had taken me weeks of meditation under the threat of death to achieve, Remus came by naturally. Or, as naturally as a virtual wolf gets. Wolves are naturally mindful.

Sitting with my friend was a respite. It was a solace. Something that had been clenched within my chest loosened. Suddenly I was filled with an excitement to play, win and get back to the game. The last time I had looked forward to playing this game was walking with Jude on the way to my roll-up. But for the moment, I was happy. Two more mobs and I was out. Yes, the last one was a named mob over three times my level but so what? I’d win or die trying like any brother of wolves would.

A wolf would drown in its own blood, prey to some other predator, without ever feeling sorry for itself. Death is lighter than a feather. Duty is as heavy as the rock of this mountain.

With a few more air pats and licks I made my goodbyes and headed back towards the mine. Escape was in sight.

“Be back in an hour or so,” I told Remus over my shoulder and entered the mine.

Wyrmmdigger’s Bane and the rest of my equipment was still in the hidden room when I got back there. I left it all, replacing the short sword my death had left behind with another trash weapon. I also grabbed the heaviest armor I thought I could move quickly in--the better to sink and drown us. I went back to the final room. Chieftain Grumth and the last Shaman were just where I had left them. The only difference was that they were gnawing on some bones. With a shudder, I realized that the bones were mine.

The invisibility spell and Bull’s strength wouldn’t cast correctly. My cough wouldn’t go away and kept interrupting my breathing pattern. But after two tries at the proper meditation and chanting, I made it on my third try.

Seeing Grumth gnawing on my femur made me think that, within some constraints, the boss would alter his behavior based on what had come before. I decided to clip the Shaman below the waist rather than hit him in the solar plexus like last time. I was glad I changed it up, as the chieftain’s sword swung exactly through where my neck had been the last time I did this. His blade’s tip scored along my back just before the Shaman and I tumbled into the water.

The Shaman didn’t have the breath knocked out of him this time. He and I grappled and struggled. He managed to get a spell off before I managed to force his mouth under the water. With some growled words in his language, the shaman’s hands lit up with magical fire. They managed to add some light and odd flickering shadows to our underwater struggle. Most of the fire damage the spell would have caused was blocked by the icy water we were battling under.

Grumth, being a scion of a desert kobold tribe, seems never to have learned to swim. He prowled the edge of the pool looking to get close enough to attack but for the moment he wasn’t willing to dive in to get at me. That wouldn’t last long.

The dagger I had grabbed on my way back down here worked better in this kind of fight than the short sword I had used the last time. After all the fights using Wyrmmdigger’s Bane I knew just where to strike. Air bubbles flew out of the shaman’s snout as my blade ripped into his armpit at an angle able to move between his ribs. It was a fight between his claws and my dagger.

I forced his head down and managed to get a quick gulp of air before we sank. A moment later he escaped my grasp. We both surfaced and he managed to get half a breath of air before I got a better hold of him and we sank again. A knife thrown by the Chieftain grazed me even through the water as we sank. The shaman and I had gotten a breath at about the same time before the waters closed over our heads. A silent struggle ensued between us. His claws scraped and pulled at my arms and legs as I kept us dropping down into the depths of the pool.

He was a caster type and I had magically enhanced strength. He was over twice my level and that damned cough I had picked up from drowning kept threatening to erupt and waste all my husbanded air.

It was so dark in here it was hard to tell which way was up. That gave me an idea. Crocodiles kill by latching on and rolling their prey over and over till their pray don’t know which way to go to escape even if they manage to get free for a moment. I spun the kobold over and over in the icy depths and stabbed at the shaman’s eyes to further disorient the monster. Neither of us knew which way was up anymore.

My vision was blurring when another cough forced the air out of my lungs. The Chieftain was likely to come join us any second. The edges of my field of view darkened and grey closed in. Still no notice that the Shaman had died. I couldn’t hang on any longer. He escaped my grasp and I feebly tried to swim to the surface when all went black. I died again.

Once again, I was back at the entrance. I would have cursed up a blue streak but this time the coughing felt like it was going to kill me. I couldn’t get breath into my lungs. With a wheezing rasp, I managed to pull some air into lungs that felt like they had locked up. I had failed. And next time I tried to pull this off I was going to be another level lower.

Remus was still here. Something about how I looked must have worried him. He whined, leaned up against the barrier and scratched at it with his claws. I stumbled towards him.

A notice popped up.

LEVEL 10 SHAMAN HAS DIED

How?

He must not have made it back to the surface. We both drowned. Even better, I died before he did and so got the experience for killing him after the experience penalty from my latest death. As a level three credited with killing a shaman seven levels higher than me, that was enough to get me back to level four.

I smiled weakly as I kneeled in front of Remus.

“Hey boy,” I wheezed.

Despite my smile he didn’t seem reassured about me.

Thank god, only one mob left and then I could get out of this damned place. Despite my best efforts to stay on my knees, I lay on my side trying to breathe shallowly. Anytime I took a deep breath it unleashed another wave of coughing. With a wrench, I found myself vomiting. The idea of trying to tackle the kobold chieftain and drowning again was impossible to face.

Remus began barking which didn’t help my state of mind. It felt like I was buried in sand. It pressed down on my chest so hard I couldn’t breathe. I began to panic.

Even if I found the stomach to do this again there was no way I was going to be able to meditate and chant to make it possible. I needed to recover. I should be completely hale and healthy after being revived but clearly something was wrong. Was this all in my mind? Was the strain giving me panic attacks?

Deep down I knew it wasn’t a panic attack. Your lifestyle is all wrong if you find yourself hoping that you are merely suffering from panic attacks induced by repeated drownings after weeks of deadly solitude. I had been avoiding acknowledging that this had to be from playing in hardcore mode. I was pretty sure that my symptoms were what you might get if you nearly drowned. Or, in my case, were drowned and then brought back to life.

I needed to go see my father. I did the one thing that all the traps and high-level mobs and the Eastmans couldn’t get me to do. I logged out.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

My lungs were filled with the taste of being eaten by locusts. My cough sounded like the color of steel wool. The disorientation of logging out was beyond anything I had experienced before. For one horrible moment, I thought that I was still drowning and that these were just the confused thoughts and sensations of a mind starved for oxygen and dying. In its panic and confusion my brain started wondering if maybe the game was the reality and the idea of logging out to a safer place was just the final fantasy of my desperate drowning panic. But after what seemed an eternity I was back in my pod.

I threw up. The sour stomach acid was assimilated as quickly as it hit the rest of the nano. I cupped a handful of nano and poured it over my face and chest. It ran off like mercury across felt cloth, leaving me clean. Setting aside the post-apocalyptic totalitarian society it forces upon you, modern technology was really convenient. Not having to clean up vomit almost made up for its downsides.

I flopped out of the pod, clothes forming around me. Modern lifestyle scores again. Coughing, I messaged my father. ArchE answered.

“Miles! Good to hear from you,” he chirped.

“Hi, ArchE. <cough> Can you let my father know I’m coming over to see him?” I wheezed.

“You are assuming he is in. Maybe he is out for a run,” ArchE said.

“Stop with the stale jokes already. I need to see him,” I said as another wave of coughs wracked me.

“You don’t sound well, Miles,” ArchE stated in a different tone of voice.

“Yes. I seem to have come down with swimmer’s lung or something. I was hoping to see if my father could help me with whatever this is.”

“We’ll be expecting you,” ArchE replied.

Carefully I made my way down the stairs and headed out to my father’s house. Stepping out of my apartment building I stopped, stunned. The sky! The sky was above me! And I could see on and on when I looked around. My vision wasn’t blocked by gritty stone or darkness just yards away from me wherever I looked. I could see down the blocks into the distance. Everything lit by the light of the sun. It felt so good that for a while I forgot about how my lungs felt. I simply stared upwards, feeling the sun slightly warming my face. The faint breeze was delicious. Another coughing fit broke my reverie and I moved along.

My feet trudged along. I didn’t even need to think, they knew how to go to get to my father’s house. Before I knew it, I was in front of the steps of the old brownstone.

Before I could climb the steps and ring the bell a hand fell on my shoulder.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” a voice said.

Turning around, I saw GM Dave Arneson in all his official glory. His partner, Patricia Pulling, was a bit down the block by their vehicle.

“GM Arneson. Back from your little vacation?” I said.

“Yes. Thanks for asking.”

“And what? What do you want? I need to see my father,” I grunted. I was too damned sick and tired to deal with this.

“I bet you do,” he accused.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“We know what you have been doing.”

“Yes? And what have I been doing?”

He looked at me like he couldn’t believe I was ballsy enough to try to play dumb. What he was on about I didn’t rightly know. Whatever he was up to it looked like his partner was keeping at least some distance from it. That didn’t bode well.

“Really? You have the gall to stand there on your father’s doorstep and play innocent. You really are a piece of work.”

“That’s funny. I am thinking just about the same thing about you. That you are a piece of work. That you have a lot of gall bothering me on my father’s stoop after our last encounter. You seem to have something you want to say to me so how about you just say it so I can ignore it and go see my father.”

“You damned well won’t ignore me. I got you, Boone. And your father has to be in it up to his eyeballs.”

“In what? And are you even here in an official capacity? Strike that. It is impossible to tell the difference between you doing your job and you doing Tasha Eastman’s bidding. Why is your partner skulking back there? She ashamed to be seen with you or something?”

“You two-bit little shifty cheater,” Arneson growled.

“Right. So, you say I am a cheater. We’ve done this dance before. And while you certainly stuck me in a hole for a month it turns out you are the one without ethics. You got a whole month’s unpaid leave and a note in your record to prove it. Not that this did a bit of good. You are here pulling the same gag so Q.E.D. You are a whore, a lackey and an incompetent one at that.”

Arneson seemed to be struggling with himself. Half of him wanted to follow his anger at me for giving him lip. The other half seemed to be enjoying me giving him lip. That it made the prospect of dropping the hammer on me feel better and better the more I told him what I thought of him. It seemed like the decent thing for me to do was to help one side of him out. I chose to go with continuing to tell him what I thought of him in the hopes it would get this over with so I could go talk with my father.

“It’s just you and me here, Arneson. No reason for you to go through this ridiculous song and dance. If you are going to bring false charges against me again then get to it. Otherwise I need to see my father,” I said turning to go.

“You don’t talk to a GM like that,” he snarled and pulled me back again. This set off an uncontrollable coughing fit. He ignored it as he twisted my arm and kept lecturing me. “This is going to feel so good. Pulling refused to go along. Let’s see how she feels once it comes out how your dad helped you cheat your way through the mines.”

He waited to see if I was going to respond but all I could do was cough and gasp.

“A lot of folks respect your father. Pulling isn’t alone. But now she and all the rest will see that he isn’t any better than tthe Party. When it was his kid he broke the rules just like everyone else. It will be a hard lesson for her but it is about time she grew up.”

“What are you talking about?” I got out between coughs.

“You have been clearing the instance. Might be almost be done,” he accused.

I didn’t see the point of denying it at this point. He clearly knew somehow.

“And?” I stated tersely.

“And? And? You solo a dungeon set at three times your level and you want to pretend you didn’t cheat? What you did was impossible, Q.E.D. you are a two-bit little cheat and it had to be your father who helped you do it.”

I could see how he jumped to this conclusion but I wanted to know how he even knew how I had been doing with the instance. He sure liked to hear himself talk and brag. That is helpful in a foe.

“How <cough> do you know I have been clearing the instance?” I asked.

“A-ha. That is why you thought you’d get away with it. Jude Sandoval. What? You didn’t notice him rejoining the party once in a while to check in on you? I don’t know why a good kid like that with real prospects still cared enough about you to see what you were doing. Said he got concerned when you never opened your pod despite being trapped in the instance. Maybe you forgot your party members can still rejoin. Maybe you thought he wouldn’t care. You lost a good friend there. Well, now he can move on. A lot of people are going to move on from you Boones once this all comes out.”

I tried to laugh but my cough was endless. Goddamned Jude. If only I’d kept my party menu open. They knew I had almost finished clearing the instance. What is the great detective’s old line? It was really hard to focus as I was having trouble breathing. Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. But they hadn’t eliminated the impossible. I had almost finished doing the impossible or at least the improbable. Father always loved reading those books to me. My father. I needed to see him.

Looking down at the hand I had used to cover my mouth and cough I saw it was specked with frothy red fluid. That can’t be good. Why wouldn’t this son of a bitch just let me see my father?

My legs gave out and I slid down. I could hear GM Pulling shouting as she ran over.

“I didn’t do anything to him, Patty! He just started coughing and collapsed. I half think he is faking or something,” Arneson pleaded at her accusation.

“He is coughing up bloody mucus. I don’t think he is faking,” she said.

I looked up at her pretty face filled with concern. She was probably really beautiful considering that she looked pretty good even in her uniform. What would she look like in civvies? Of course, I had just spent who knows how long trapped in a cave so I wasn’t at my most objective. Also, I thought I might be dying and that was going to make you a bit emotional. I couldn’t even manage to stay angry as I looked at Arneson’s frustrated and confused face. It was just nice to see some human faces after weeks of darkness and the snarling visages of kobolds. Even the face of a pathetic excuse for an official like Arneson. His face actually seemed more human than hers. An angry confused face of someone who wished me wrong seemed like a better symbol of humanity as my vision started to grey out. Even his face seemed precious to me as death came. I knew better than others what drowning felt like and I was drowning. It would have been nice to see my father again.

The last thing I heard was ArchE’s voice and the beginnings of an argument as darkness came for me.

It was more surprising than perhaps it should have been to wake up in my father’s house. You would think that repeatedly dying in the game would train people to look at death in real life as something they expect to respawn from. After all, if you die and die again and again and get to respawn in a virtual world then when the grim reaper finally comes for you in the real world the habit of dying you have built up should take over, shouldn’t it? It didn’t in my case. I was pleasantly surprised to wake up in my old room.

Looking around, my old room hadn’t changed. I didn’t bring much of anything with me when I moved out. The walls were still covered in gaming posters and classical art from the beginnings of gaming. A Frank Frazzetta illustration of John Carter had pride of place. Hardcopies of classic editions of Tolkien, Moorcock, E. Howard and the rest were on the shelves. My father had steeped me in the references that inspired the games that inspired the games that made the Game. Basically, my bookshelf held an expanded collection of the volumes found in Appendix N. It would have seemed adolescent, or the room of some sort of man-child to someone living in an earlier time. In our screwed-up world it was the room of someone seriously preparing to fight on behalf of humanity. I figured my father and I qualified on both counts.

Standing up I braced for a new spate of coughing but everything felt normal. I took a breath. Once again normal. I took a deep breath and still nothing. My father had cured me. That was good news. Time to go see my old man.

Opening the door to the hallway I was stopped by a pair of GMs. My encounter with Arneson came flooding back to me. GMs in my father’s house was something I never thought I’d see.

“Miles Boone, you are being detained under authority of the GMs for suspicion of manipulation of the Game’s architecture or adjusting nano out of legal parameters,” said one of the two.

“Where is my father?” I asked.

They looked back at me and I realized that this was sort of a stupid question. My father was down in his room like always. Even with all our modern conveniences moving my father was not a small undertaking and what would be the point? He had long since lost the ability to flee. Confining him in a cell somewhere was redundant.

“I mean, is my father under detention? Does he know that you are accusing me of these crimes?”

“Numitor Boone is aware of our presence in his residence. We have been tasked with waiting for you to awaken,” reported the one on the left.

My father’s voice bellowed out from downstairs.

“Miles. Please join me in my office. We have things to discuss. If the two apes who have the gall to intrude upon our abode do not allow you to join me they should ask their superiors--or rather their superiors’ superior’s superior--if they should interfere with me conferring with my child. They will be informed that the Boones are not people to be trifled with!”

I started moving past the GMs.

“Well you heard him. He is my superior as well as my father. I don’t have to ask my superiors’ superior’s superior. I got it straight from the top to me. You can see it doesn’t get that much better when you are close to top of your organization. Are you going to stop me? No? Then excuse me,” I snarked.

The ape (in my father’s parlance) on the right started to tense up and not let me push by but his partner gave him a nod. He moved just slowly enough to let me know he could have kept me in the room. Well, he thought he could have. I might have made it tougher for them than they thought.

I made my way down the stairs and through the hall into my father’s room. His giant frame was on the bed where it always was. His keen eyes took me in with concern.

“Dad…” I began.

“Stop. Those infernal enforcers of the Game are inside the house. I will be weeks insuring that my privacy is actually private again. It can’t be helped though. Join me in my office. ArchE will ensure we can have a proper discussion there,” he growled.

I looked around and saw that ArchE wasn’t there, which never happened. If ArchE was on the job I could trust we had privacy. Allies like ArchE were one of the many reasons people like the Eastmans feared to push my father too far. I dropped into the red leather chair. The dish with the red pills was where it always was. I took one, swallowed it and joined my father in his office.

“Dad, what happened…” I began.

“Stop. We don’t have much time. First, report to me everything that happened since last we spoke,” he interrupted.

That is just like a genius. He gives me some unexplained nano and I almost die but he expects me to satisfy his curiosity first. I love my father but difficult doesn’t really begin to tell the story. It was no small part of why I decided to move out.

“But…” I tried.

My father banged his hand down onto his desk.

“We don’t have time for this, Miles. I understand that things have been difficult and perhaps a bit confusing. In moments we are going to be meeting with all the clan heads who make up the Party under seal of their tame AI Amulius. Now I ask you, do we have enough time for me to tell you everything I know that we will need to negotiate their attempts to traduce and nullify this family? There are decades of politics to say nothing of the technical details of the hardcore game mode and how it relates to the basic architecture of the Game. There simply isn’t enough time. Report!” he commanded.

Damn him for always being right. Once again, I was going to have to just blindly trust my father. Growing up I never could understand how even after he was bedridden he still managed to know better than I what would happen.

So, I reported to him. Quartzite and my trades, which brought a slight rise of his lips that could have been a smile. My experiences with hardcore mode. Meeting Remus. The scorpion. The GMs coming to my apartment and subsequent imprisonment. Learning how to engage the magic system under hardcore mode under Mordecai and Lemminkäinen. He grunted and closed his eyes when I got to the part about returning to Quartzite and meeting Professor Brady. He had me go over the exact wording of the contract between the Eastmans and Brady twice. I told him of Maddie and the ritual and my eyes in and out of the game, and he showed no surprise. I found it comforting that whatever was happening to me was something he expected.

He nodded twice when he learned of Arneson’s mistaken assumption that the last mob I took out was a Desert hare instead of the scorpion mini-boss. I finished telling him of my weeks stuck alone in the instance set to almost three times my level.

I almost never saw my father angry. But my brief description of working my way through the dungeon brought him to it. You don’t have to spell out to a genius what weeks of solitary confinement is like in what is for all intents and purposes a death trap. When I made my short, clipped report of a few sentences to explain my weeks of grinding his eyes took me in. His eyes searched for scars physical or psychological. He seemed reassured by what he saw, which in turn reassured me. If he thought that my experiences weren’t doing something terrible to me then I must have been ok.

The report finished with me on his front stoop, Arneson, and coughing my way into blackness.

“Satisfactory, Miles. Very satisfactory. You did very well. You had some help from the arrogance and laziness of the GMs, but arrogance and inefficiency are the hallmarks of those we contend with. Their basic character was going to manifest itself at some point. I believe you would have overcome them in any event,” he expounded.

“Sure. It was nothing much with all their arrogance and inefficiency,” I said dryly. His confidence in me felt good but at a certain point his assumption that I would have inevitably beaten the odds seemed to minimize all I had done.

“I didn’t raise a ninny or a fool. I said very satisfactory and very satisfactory I meant.” His inflated opinion of himself and his works--including me--matched his physique.

“You know I have neither finished escaping their little dungeon nor won my bet,” I reminded him.

He waved it away.

“Your basic contention that given anything like a fair chance you could escape the Cradle is manifestly true,” he began.

A notice on parchment appeared before each of us, interrupting him for a moment. The Party took on such pretentious and grandiose affectations. Notifying us of their summons using a parchment scroll with what looked like handwritten calligraphy, wax seals and ribbons.

My father continued speaking quickly. “It isn’t even unknown to the movers and shakers of the Party. Tasha is frustrated with her daughter because she knows very well that you are right even if she raised her child to believe otherwise. This is why they either won’t allow you to continue or will make sure that your chance is even farther from anything one could describe as fair.”

“So how do I get out of this?”

“I don’t have time to explain in full but this is larger than just you Miles. You need to…”

And with that the summons took effect and we appeared to defend ourselves in front of the powers that be. You would think my father the genius would have made sure to tell me what I needed to do before we ran out of time. Anything we said from here on out would be heard by people who wished us ill. I knew my father had a plan. Too bad I had no idea what it was.

My father and I were standing in a pool of light surrounded by looming shadows. Arrayed above us was a circle of massive stone thrones. Figures in cowls stood in judgment above us. Their features were dimly lit from below making their expressions severe and threatening.

Something in the pit of my stomach rebelled and I felt queasy and nervous. My hand felt clammy. I felt more nervous than I had when faced with the final boss of the dungeon. I felt more nervous than I had when forced into the dungeon in the first place. It was overwhelming.

My father snorted.

“ArchE, adjust the lighting and filter out the subsonics,” he commanded.

At his command, my stomach stopped rebelling and my hands no longer dripped with sweat from sub-audible sound frequencies. The light changed and the shadowy looming figures became just a bunch of the most powerful men and women in the world bent on my destruction.

“That is better. I also prefer eyes at a level,” my father went on. His chair appeared, as did a plainer one for me.

It seemed that there was something of a power struggle going on as these accommodations shifted back and forth.

“I demand courtesy,” he bellowed. “Are we now so barbaric that you wish to govern using parlor tricks? You have already sorely tested me. You have danced on the edge of our agreement and rely upon my word for my continued restraint. We all know what my word is worth. What is yours? I came here to talk, not be molested by your ridiculous mummery. If you are unwilling to talk then the time for talk will have passed and we can dispute in other fashions.”

An Asian man whose eyes were as severe as the sharp planes of his face spoke up.

“Tasha. End this farce. Hello, Numitor,” he said politely.

“Good afternoon, Mencius,” my father said.

This was Mencius Lee, leader of the Lee clan.

“Oh, very well,” said Tasha. “Numitor, this hearing is in regards to your son. As someone accused of a crime he was being treated according to protocol. The majesty of the court and all that,” she said with seeming equanimity. “You are here as a courtesy.”

“Flummery. I am here because you hope to use your daughter’s idiocy to remove my grip from your throats. The sound and light show is you acting out of pique,” he grunted.

“You know me so well,” she laughed.

“I am always interested in hearing of Eastman idiocy. What has Maya done?” Mencius Lee inquired.

“The silly bet with Miles here,” Tasha replied. “What does it matter? A trifling amount of nano against owning--I mean contracting--Numitor’s son and heir. The reward is certainly worth the risk, no?”

Mencius grunted. My father eyed her, trying to assess her game.

“You know very well that I refer to her using your authority to change the fundamental architecture of Miles’ character creation and therefore the constraints of the Game itself.”

Mutters and rumblings of fear and concern moved through the Clan Leaders at this revelation. No one, not even a clan head, was trusted enough to meddle on their own authority with the AI and nano that kept the last of humanity from extinction. A tall, almost emaciated black woman at one end made herself heard.

“What have the Eastmans done, exactly?” she asked with the endorsement of many around her. Her patrician accent lent authority to her inquiry.

Tasha started to explain but was overrode by Mencius.

“Let us not take the word of the Eastman Clan Leader,” he drawled. “I mean, of course, that as it relates to her daughter her feelings as a mother may bias her explanation. In no way do I imply that the Eastmans are a clan who lie and cannot be trusted.”

“Can the Lees and Eastmans not waste our time with their feud?” said a Clan Leader who was built like an ox with two blond braids and a bristling beard in matching gold.

The clan heads looked to my father, who gave the tiniest of shrugs and pursed his lips saying, “What is the point of me explaining? You wouldn’t trust my explanation without confirmation from your pet AI in any event. Why waste my time and yours? Summon him.”

“Agreed. Let us hear this from Amulius himself. It is clear that parts of this council have made decisions in relation to Numitor without consulting the rest of us,” said the skinny woman who first spoke up.

“Clan Leader Appiah, point of order. I will testify under nano-enforced truth that I did nothing to Numitor. No Eastman has. This is a squabble amongst our children. Miles Boone is a legal adult. He is not his father,” Tasha stated flatly.

With the Party council’s assent, Amulius was summoned. Not that he wasn’t there before in some sense, but his avatar was made manifest. He appeared before them dressed and looking exactly as he had the last time I saw him. The same greying maturity. The look of someone used to commanding and controlling. Yet, again underneath it there was a softness or weakness in the regal facade. His once strong physique coated with a layer of fat. An ambitious and powerful man gone soft, the victim of his own success.

“Greetings, party members. What do you require of me?” he inquired with a carefully modulated amount of deference without subservience.

“We wish a report on Miles Boone, his character creation and any fallout from it,” said the leader of Clan Appiah in her precise clipped accent that was as spare as her frame.

“Miles Boone rolled up his permanent character fifteen weeks three days seven hours and 42 minutes 13 seconds ago. GM Gutzman 845321-Iota - x-ray was the official overseeing the procedure. He authorized the implementation of a clan member’s starting package. Clan heir Maya Eastman used her provisional authority to remove Miles Boone’s luck stat from his permanent character. She was warned that removing rather than lowering the luck stat was outside of normal operating parameters. She overrode the warning using Guild Leader Eastman of the Party override code: Beta Zed 99743”

The Clan Leaders were disturbed at this news but Tasha Eastman managed to maintain her appearance of calm nonchalance. After a moment, she prompted Amulius to continue.

“And what accommodations and adjustments has this created for Miles’ play? What safeguards or constraints on the AIs or nano, wild or domesticated, has this removed or altered?” she asked. Clearly she knew what answer to expect.

“None,” said Amulius.

“None? Nothing?” she repeated for effect.

“That is correct Clan Leader.”

Tasha Eastman looked around at her peers, forcing them to acknowledge her argument.

“Perhaps no safeguards or changes in AI or nano have been created. But I’d like to hear Amulius tell us how he has accommodated Miles’ odd character,” Mencius pressed, looking for anything to hang on his foe.

Amulius nodded to Mencius.

“Miles has been barred from any autoplay functions requiring Luck to execute the related algorithms. A subservient AI has been assigned the task of maintaining game balance and the letter and spirit of the wager between Miles Boone and Maya Eastman. These adjustments are strictly in limiting or adjusting the possible array of choices available for Miles Boone,” Amulius reported.

“What subservient AI? What alterations to game balance?” asked Appiah to Tasha’s consternation and Mencius’s satisfaction.

Looking at these people squabble and vie for dominance, it was no wonder humanity’s borders were stagnating. I looked at my father. His eyes were half-lidded and it looked like as far as he cared they might as well have been discussing the price of tea in China. Which was obviously not true, as he interjected.

“Miles, my son, has been tasked with completing all five of the beginner quests within one year. So, as Amulius mentioned, this means that he has 36 weeks, 3 days, 17 hours and about fifteen minutes left to finish winning his wager. You are wasting his and my time. Bring any charges or accusations against him or me. Waste any more of our time and I will consider the agreement breached.”

“But you said that Maya Eastman had changed the game. You called it idiocy,” Mencius reminded my father.

“And it was. The girl obviously had no idea what the possible consequences of her actions might have been. Altering the constraints of our AI is suicidal arrogance, even if this adjustment had no negative consequences. And about what I have come to expect from you all,” my father growled.

“Accusing others of arrogance is rich coming from you Numitor,” Tasha hissed.

“My self-regard is earned,” stated my father calmly.

“Enough of this,” Tasha entreated her colleagues. “Numitor is baiting us, playing on our fears and not-so-subtly reminding us of the constraints and balance of the game--which just so happens to be his legacy and the hold he keeps on all of us. We are all constrained by the Core Rules, Numitor included. If my daughter had unbalanced the game, control of the AIs would have ceded back to Numitor. This is all bluster to distract us from his attempts to save his son from the folly of that wager.”

“Is this true?” asked one of the Clan Leaders I did not know. A swarthy little man with quick eyes and a beak of a nose.

“Am I attempting to distract you from some sort of perfidy on my part or my son being a foolish young man? No. Tasha and the GMs have not bothered to inform me what perfidy they assume on my part. I’d be a fool to distract from the unknown. Any such stratagem would be revealed soon enough. And as far as my son being a fool--he is young so by the low standards of what we should expect of youth he has an acceptable head on his shoulders. He might actually be wise in a few years.”

“So, the world is not ending. The game continues. Tasha, bring your charges,” said a Clan Leader.

“They are not my charges. The GMs have concerns. I requested the meeting because I knew that anything connected this closely to Numitor, the architect of our salvation, or any possible impact of our agreement would be of interest to the other clans.”

This fiction was met with guarded silence. Obviously, this was the Eastmans’ show and the rest were going to wait and see what came of it.

“GM Arneson. Can you please come and present your case to the council and the AIs?”

I looked around. Arneson’s avatar appeared and joined the rest of ours. He walked over to stand before the council where Amulius had testified previously.

“Greetings, Clan Leaders. Thank you for taking the time. The GMs are always happy to keep the Party and the players informed of events.”

“Who initiated an investigation of any of the Boones? While the stalemate with Numitor has its frustrations and difficulties, it has served Clan Appiah well enough,” asked Clan Leader Appiah.

Arneson looked over to Tasha for guidance.

Off of that look, Mencius chimed in. “Never mind. I think we all understand what is going on.”

“Miles Boone is a player. He is not his father. If he chose to enter the Game then he is subject to oversight like anyone,” insisted Arneson.

“I’d like to mention that GM Arneson has already been reprimanded for overstepping his authority in his investigation and incarceration of my son. His impartiality is suspect,” my father stated.

“I assure you that I did nothing unethical here, Mr. Boone. I took my lumps for my previous error and won’t make that mistake again,” he said with forced earnestness. He was obviously on his best behavior.

“Yes, your lumps. You were hosted by the Eastmans on a clan raid during your suspension. You got an officer’s share. Some lumps,” I couldn’t help but interject.

My father squeezed my arm silently signaling me to keep my mouth shut. It was a struggle to bite my tongue. I kept reminding myself that if you have the world’s greatest genius on your side who knows more than you do and loves you like the son that you are, you’d have to be a fool to interfere. Still, it isn’t like he was known as the world’s greatest lawyer. Accomplishment in one area of expertise doesn’t translate to another. But this wasn’t a courtroom despite some of the trappings. The AIs were in charge of the rules and the Party council was run one hundred percent via politics. And while my father might not be a lawyer, he knew AIs and the rules they were operating under better than anyone else and he had gone toe to toe with these clans and fought them to a stalemate before. I shut my mouth.

“I apologize once again, Mr. Boone. I am sorry you still have hard feelings about that incident. I can assure you that nothing improper happened this time around. I am willing to testify under nano-enforced truth,” he said innocently.

It was clear that Arneson had been coached. My father raised one side of his mouth in his version of a wry smile. Most others might not even be able to see it. My father obviously saw that as well. The fact that both he and Tasha Eastman were happy to ask for nano-verification of their testimony meant that their hands were clean.

“We still don’t know what you are accusing us of.”

“I was contacted by Jude Sandoval, a junior associate of the Eastmans. A friend of yours, I think, Miles,” Arneson continued. “He told me that he had been in a dungeon party with you. He and the other three members of the party had left the instance over some personal differences with you. Despite the instance being somewhat above your level and you being left solo, you never logged out. He came by your apartment repeatedly to try to discuss your differences. After weeks of being unable to contact you he grew more and more concerned. Out of sentiment or perhaps just luck he never joined any new party after leaving your party and instance. This allowed him to monitor your progress through the instance. He was surprised to find that the Game told him you are 97% complete,” he said dramatically.

“This Sandoval says that Miles Boone has soloed an instance? A four-man instance?” asked the giant viking-looking Clansman.

“97% of it. That is correct Clan Leader Arildskov.”

“By damn!” said Clan Leader Arildskov. He looked me over appraisingly and perhaps a bit approvingly.

“More than that. The other members of Boone’s party were all at the maximum gap with his level. At the time they entered the instance Boone was apparently level three. The others were all level eight. You all can do the math as well as me. They had an average level of 6 3/4. The game rounded that up and set the instance to be run by four seventh level players.”

“That is impossible. Soloing an instance is a sign of an astoundingly capable player. But the level difference. No! It is impossible,” bellowed Arildskov like the viking he resembled. Whatever approval he had shown me had become anger and disgust as he assumed I must have cheated somehow.

“That was my thinking as well. I hate to say it but it seemed like Miles--perhaps with the help of his father--had somehow cheated. I set my system to alert me when Miles Boone logged out. I caught Miles hurrying to his father’s house. I engaged him in conversation. He seemed flushed and nervous. He began coughing uncontrollably and collapsed. One of Numitor Boone’s artificial servitors collected him and took him inside. I believe he was under the influence of some sort of altered nano.”

Anger and exclamations of shock and outrage erupted from all the Clan Leaders. All of them except Tasha Eastman and Mencius. They kept their self-possession. Looking at me and my father, waiting for him to make the next move. He looked back at them. He leaned his head back, closed his eyes and thought. All I could do was sit, wait and hope that my father was able to think a step ahead of our enemies.

“Well! Say something, Numitor, you damned fat ape! All your talk of ethics - calling us corrupt all these years. And now! You cheat!” bellowed Arildskov leaping to his feet. Most of the other Clan Leaders were making similar eruptions but none were as loud as Arildskov.

“Shut up!” thundered my father. And even in his avatar I swear that my father sounded as large as his giant body. “Shut up and sit down!”

He turned to Arneson. “You once again accuse my son and now me at the behest of the Eastmans? You dare?” he growled.

Arneson was glorying in the moment. Sure of his probity.

“You’re damned right I do! No one can solo a dungeon over twice their level. And he definitely had some sort of nano-impacted fit. The GMs AI reviewed my interactions with your son. Given the blood tinged sputum, his cough and breath sounds, their best guess is that he was suffering from swimmer’s lung. How do you get that in your apartment? Long showers? No. Nano. That is how. His symptoms are consistent with unexpected nano interactions with the game system and some other body system package.”

“You are a fool. The question is, of course, what does your puppet master expect to gain from your foolishness,” my father growled.

“I’m the fool? Who has been caught…” he started to reply. Arneson looked around to the Clan Leaders, expecting them to be with him in his accusations. But my father’s confidence and more importantly his reputation had made them cautious. Their caution brought Arneson up short. Arneson had clearly been relishing making his mark in front of the movers and shakers of our fallen world. That his audience wasn’t as confident as he was confused him and threw him off his rhythm.

My father had stopped paying him any attention. He was locked in a stare with Tasha. Neither of them showed any expression whatsoever. It might as well have been two statues, two stones arranged towards each other. The rest of the council watched on as the game was getting interesting.

My father withdrew from their mutual gaze.

“You are willing to testify to this under nano-compulsion?” he asked Arneson.

“Yes,” he said much more slowly and looking towards his patron for guidance. She ignored him, still locked onto my father.

“Good. Amulius, make it so,” he commanded.

Amulius gestured and a cloud of silvery fog drifted over Arneson.

“Has everything you said previously been the truth, GM Arneson?”

“Yes!” Arneson said glad of the chance to prove himself. With the nano confirmation he expected to get the Party council members back onto his narrative. To his frustration, they were looking at Numitor and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“In your previous investigation you were found to be, and indeed were, operating outside the bounds of your professional duty. Correct?”

“I already said so. Didn’t I?”

“Patience. What was the result of that professional breach?”

“I was suspended for two months.”

“Yes. Yes. I am not referring to what happened to you. I meant for my son.”

“He was cleared of suspicion of illegal nano trading,” admitted Arneson.

“And? Anything else happen to him?”

“He was held in jail during the investigation for two months without access to the game,” Arneson offered.

“Yes. Quite useful for the Eastmans and the wager. But let us leave that bit of skulduggery aside. What else?”

“What do you mean what else?” asked Arneson.

“What else happened due to your professional malpractice?” prompted my father.

“We let the kid go. Gave him an apology and recompense.”

“Yes. That. What did you give him?”

“He got the top drop from the last mob he offed. If he hadn’t been stuck with his mutant build and farming rabbits in a noob zone it might have been quite the payday.”

“Indeed. And what was the last mob he ‘offed’?”

“I told you. He had just started in a newbie zone. He was hunting Desert Hare. Drops a lucky rabbit’s foot. Quite an apology… for anyone else.”

I allowed myself a smile as I stared at Arneson.

“Miles. Did you receive a lucky rabbit’s foot?” he inquired of me.

“No sir. I did not.”

“That is a lie! I personally oversaw the input. He got the top drop of his last killed mob,” he looked over at Amulius. “Am I lying?”

Amulius shuddered. “You are telling the truth.”

“Indeed,” rumbled my father. “You did indeed implement the recompense you mentioned.”

“Well then?” said Arneson.

Knowing where this was going I was watching my father, and while not being obvious about it he was clearly keeping Tasha under his observation as he made the big reveal.

“You made an obvious error, GM Arneson. In fact, my son had just killed the local mini-boss. A giant scorpion.”

Arneson’s face went pale. He looked at Tasha Eastman but she still wasn’t paying him any attention.

“I… I didn’t know that, no.”

“Indeed. I didn’t think you did. Hubris and bad assumptions go together like a fool and dunce caps. We have nano confirmation that once again you jumped to a false conclusion--just like you falsely detained my son. For your edification, the top drop from that mini boss is a minor enhancement crystal.”

After a moment’s pause Arneson said, “I don’t see how that changes anything. A minor enhancement crystal is no more able to let Miles solo that dungeon than a lucky rabbit’s foot.”

He looked around at the council, supposedly the best players of the Party. Certainly the most connected and powerful players. They were thinking through the problem. That they seemed to be considering the possibility at all was a blow to Arneson.

“Did you know that the more specific you make your enhancement, the more powerful the effect? Add a specific element rather than general damage or protection and it is more effective. This instance is full of kobolds, correct?”

“Still… Solo. Over twice his level… Even if he made his weapon a minor bane of Kobolds. It just isn’t possible,” Arneson said trailing off.

“Correct. My son used the enhancement crystal with the Bane enhancement. What you mistake is that he not only targeted the kobold race but further targeted the very tribe of kobolds infesting the instance. The Wyrmmdiggers.”

The large viking clan leader banged the table and bellowed a laugh breaking the tension and spell holding Arneson in place.

“Still. That is impossible. He was level three,” stammered Arneson.

“Impossible? No. Merely difficult.” Replied my father. Easy for him to say “merely.” Arrogant bastard. Well, I was likely going to be an arrogant bastard just like him when I grew up, if I didn’t end up a slave of the Eastmans.

Arneson knew that his prosecution and audience were getting out of his control.

“What about his collapse?” the GM said. “How do you explain that, just based on the fact that it is perhaps theoretically possible for Miles to have done what he did? I say you helped him cheat.”

My father looked at him but I could tell that he was still watching Tasha out of the corner of his eye. He sighed and set his shoulders.

“Well. A simple and direct accusation. I did not help Miles cheat.”

Tasha finally entered the proceedings.

“GM Arneson was willing to testify under nano-compulsion. You will recall that I also stated my willingness to prove my honesty under nano-compulsion. Are you willing to do the same?”

The Party was just about licking its chops at the prospect of getting my father under nano-compulsion controlled by their pet AI, Amulius. Amulius himself raised his eyes looking intent. It seemed clear that this was Tasha’s game. If my father authorized Amulius to inject nano into his system, more than just his testimony would be coerced.

“I will not allow your creature access,” my father stated.

“What shall we make of that, Numitor? Without Amulius vouchsafing your word I think we have to side with those of us with nothing to hide. If you have nothing to cover up then why complain about an intrusion on your privacy?”

“Nicely done, Tasha. An argument put forward by thugs and tyrants over and over throughout history. As if only criminals have any need for privacy or autonomy,” he grated.

She merely smiled back at him.

He looked over the Party, looking to see if anyone was uncomfortable with this set of events. Mencius looked unhappy but I had no idea if this was because his rival seemed to be getting the upper hand or if he had some vestigial sense of affection for my family or sense of ethics. Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough for him to step forward against her. The rest seemed unconcerned or even hostile to the idea that privacy should trump security as they defined it.

“It seems like we have a consensus. If you are unwilling to prove your innocence we must assume your guilt.

“Another oldie but goodie. I must disprove your accusation rather than have the burden of proof rest on the accusers. We really have devolved.”

“Always with the holier than thou self-righteousness, Numitor. This is all being done according to the laws and agreements.”

“More the pity that this attitude has become formalized.”

“You are the one who set yourself against the Party. We were willing to work with you. Work for you. You turned your back on us. Don’t complain about your choices at this late date. Now choose. Submit to nano-compulsion or your son is convicted of cheating.”

I couldn’t let the Party get my father under their thumb. I was sure that more than just truth verification was going to be imposed onto my father. No one but my father and the council knew the exact details of the stalemate and subsequent agreement. The Party was in control of Amulius and largely had the game stacked in their favor but they still had to play in large measure by the rules. They couldn’t just assign themselves stacks of gold or epic level gear. They could weight the dice. They could bend the rules and suborn the referees. But they still had to play the game. If my father fell under their control they would be in full control of the game. I believed my father that this would lead to the death of humanity. The game was keeping us alive, barely, and in their greed and arrogance they would lose the game for us. The charges against us were ironic in that one of the absolute rules my father established in our struggle with the wild nano is that cheaters cannot tame wild nano using the Game. Eventually, if humanity cheated we would forfeit our lives. It put real teeth into the old saw about cheaters never prospering.

“Dad. I’ll be fine. I’ll survive whatever punishment.”

“Punishment for cheating in the Game is restriction to basic nano in the crib for life,” purred Tasha. “All earned nano is confiscated for the public good. So, life at hard labor.”

I glared at her.

“So, about the same as if I lost this damned wager. I was probably going to lose anyway. Dad, what are we really losing? It isn’t worth it. I’ll be fine.”

My father looked at me with pride and laughed.

“Indeed, you will. I appreciate such a noble gesture of sacrifice, Miles. And as I have said to you before I have confidence in you,” he said and turned to the Party council. “I see no reason why it needs to be me testifying. Miles Boone will submit to truth telling. His verified testimony should clear this up.”

“I can? Oh. Yes. I can. I do. I will.”

“Not sufficient,” said Tasha.

“Let us see what Amulius rules,” proposed my father.

The Party digested this and looked to Amulius. He struggled between their obvious desire not to accept my testimony and the constraints of the Game’s programming.

“That… is sufficient,” Amulius said eventually.

Tasha stiffened. Mencius looked pleased.

A cloud of nanites flew from Amulius and enveloped me. My heartbeat tried to rise but somehow it was forced to stay calm. I wanted to be nervous but I couldn’t.

Arneson, as the responsible representative of the GMs, was given the task of questioning me. He swallowed and proceeded to interrogate me.

“Miles Boone. Have you cheated at the game?”

“No.”

The GM paused at that flat denial but kept on after a moment.

“Have you received aid from your father?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“The most valuable thing was his advice.”

“What advice was that?”

“To follow my intuition guided by my experience.”

“Very endearing. We are all touched by your family bonds. Did he give you any nano or technical help that let you alter anything in the game?”

I thought about this question but my mouth was already answering and I realized that what I was saying was the truth.

“No. My father did not give me any technical aid that altered the rules of the game or changed the mobs or anything in any way. He did nothing that made the game any easier for me than anyone else.”

That was the truth. Whatever hardcore mode was, it changed me. It did nothing to the game at all. It was within the rules. It might drown me but it wasn’t cheating. Most importantly, it sure as hell didn’t make the game any easier.

“Enough of this. All has been answered. My son and Amulius both confirm that there has been no cheating. The question of how my son managed to solo the dungeon has been answered: it was merely a piece of exceptional game playing. Let us finish this farce.”

There was that merely again.

“I agree,” came Tasha Eastman’s concurrence. “We have wasted our time on the empty accusations of GM Arneson.”

Arneson looked green as the Eastman Clan Leader threw him to the wolves.

“I… I… I…” he mumbled.

“I think it is only fair to offer some recompense to young Miles for once again dragging him through official investigation even if the reasons for the investigation were sound and innocent of malice. Arneson offered his testimony under nano-compulsion so we have proof positive that his actions were justifiable.”

“That is right!” he gulped desperately. I couldn’t help a small burst of laughter at his puppet strings whipsawing him. He glared at me but then thought better of showing any personal animosity and brought himself into some sort of military brace. He was the kind who was either at your feet or at your throat. What a putz.

“Very kind of you, Tasha. But Miles does not need any recompense. Just allow him to continue playing his game,” my father said grimly.

“No no no. I can’t hear of it. Recompense must be made! Any objections?”

The sentiment was unanimous. My stomach started to clench. This wasn’t going to be good.

“Miles shouldn’t have to solo this instance. I move that we allow his former party members to rejoin him in finishing the dungeon. The other players all happen to be Eastman clan members. We will happily pay the penalties of reconnecting the party.”

“So, that is your endgame?” my father asked.

“You were the one who told us all that the way to beat anyone, including the wild nano, was to play the Game, and that even if we lose in the Game we still win. I am just following your strategy. Sure, if you had nobly sacrificed yourself for your son I would have been ecstatic but this is a fine outcome. Don’t you think?”

My father looked at Tasha with a mixture of pity, frustration, and contempt.

“You think this is how I play my games?”

“Don’t be a sore loser, Numitor. You taught us how to play. Don’t complain now that others can now play as well as you.”

“Means and ends, Tasha. I make no complaint…and would be a hypocrite to complain of working to ensure that all paths lead to victory. It is your definition of what constitutes a victory that I condemn.”

“Because Miles is your son.”

“I’d feel the same about your play style no matter whose son.”

Tasha snorted in disbelief.

“So, you are pretending to some sort of innocence? I was there, Numitor. I know what a vicious son of a bitch you are.”

“Means and ends again, Tasha. But you are right. When aroused in my ire and feeling justified in my cause, I am a son of a bitch,” he addressed Amulius and the Party. “We have the unanimous consent that recompense should be paid. Recorded and accepted. This is twice that GM Arneson has shown himself to be unfit for his office. He should pay for his malpractice or be let go from service. Amulius, according to the core rules can a GM interfere with a player’s game without substantial need? We have the unanimous vote of the Party that his actions were incompetent enough to demand recompense. A ruling please.”

Amulius’ eyes shone with an odd light. There was a delay in his response, but it wasn’t necessary. Just another gesture by an AI to give us emotional cues as it did things and decided things that changed our lives. Rewards and punishments needed to seem like something given with deliberation, even if the deliberation happened too fast for us to perceive.

“GM Arneson you must make recompense or lose your position in the GMs,” Amulius intoned.

Arneson went pale and choked.

“Let’s see, the last time you unethically interfered in my son’s game the top drop from his last killed mob was deemed a reasonable compensation. You didn’t learn your lesson. At least the same again seems reasonable. At your expense this time rather than from the system.”

“Or he can resign from the GMs,” Tasha smiled brittlely and stared at Arneson.

Arneson was frozen to the spot. It was clear what she expected from him. The cost of even a top drop from a low-level instance was nothing much to him. Conversely, losing his position was an incredible blow. He’d have to survive on whatever skills he had as a player and whatever gratitude he could inspire from Tasha Eastman. Betting your future on the warmth of Tasha Eastman’s heart was a pretty bleak bet.

“Ms. Eastman…?!?” he implored her. But she looked back implacably. Her gratitude might be scant but her vengeance was as reliable as the stones of the earth.

I almost felt sorry for him but my father didn’t raise a soft-hearted fool. Ride a tiger and you will find getting off a dangerous endeavor that will cost you for sure. I gave it even odds that I’d get some gear that I could desperately use. Quite the testament to what a scary bitch Tasha Eastman was.

Arneson crumpled.

“I resign from the GMs,” he trembled.

“Noted,” said Amulius. “GM Arneson has been terminated from his position with the GMs for cause. The previous players may return to the previous instance of The Mines of Madness! with the caveat that any death will boot them from the party and instance.”

Tasha ignored him and looked at me and my father.

“So, what? GMs who wish to curry favor are as common as the sand. You haven’t won anything or hurt me and mine,” she informed him. And it was true. She had lost nothing of much value to her.

“I reminded us all that I am still a son of a bitch. Come after me or mine and I will return like for like. I just don’t need to lose my integrity or self-respect to do so. That is because I am a genius. Remember this Tasha. I do not forget a slight and I am still someone to be feared. Do you feel it yet Tasha? It takes me a while to get moving these days but when I do--well, I suspect you will envy Arneson here.”

My father took my arm and we made to leave the council room.

Tasha’s voice followed us as we reappeared in his office, “Better hurry, Miles. Jude is eager to see you again!”

We reappeared back in my father’s office.

“That could have gone worse. Of course, it could have gone better,” I said.

“It is good enough.”

“You aren’t the one who has to overcome three higher level Eastmans including my previous best friend and kill the dungeon boss. But, if I haven’t said it, thanks for your help back there.”

“You merely have to play your best.”

There was that merely again.

“You are welcome, Miles. I merely love you.” Merely.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Heading back to my apartment seemed like a bad idea. Even if the Eastmans didn’t have people waiting to break my legs, it would let them know when to expect me to reappear back in the instance. My father’s house didn’t allow for a pod that linked in a typical fashion into the Game. After some conversation and planning with my father that boiled down to different versions of, “use your best judgment based on your experience” nothing was left but for me to find a public pod and see if I could clear a boss and take out three Eastman players who overpowered me by five levels, one of whom knew my play style as well as anyone.

I napped in my old room waiting for darkness to fall. ArchE had spotted a lookout surveilling the house but my father had a hidden exit that was clear of the observation.

I engaged my Eyes of the Hunter. I did it in real life. Using game skills in real life should have felt odder but my entire game experience had been overwhelming from the beginning. Most of the time I felt like I was playing against Maya and Jude and all the rest more than against the damned Wyrmmdiggers. No wonder our borders were stalled and shrinking. The Party had us playing games alright, just not with the AI or nano.

The intermittent lighting in the city didn’t bother me at all. In fact, compared to the last time I made my way through the city at night looking for a public gaming center, I moved in the opposite way. I hurried through the rare pools of light and did my best to keep to the darkness.

The red brick building surrounded by the desolate remains of a barren park was right where Jude and I had left it. Had my story come full circle? That sounded poetic, but really it was just the closest remote public facility that had almost no chance of having a bunch of Eastmans around it.

The door opened easily this time. I didn’t have to knock or anything. Looks like Guttmacher or whoever was running the place now was doing things a little more by the book.

Entering, the door swung smoothly closed behind me. The lighting was adequate inside so I turned off my Eyes of the Hunter. No sense freaking out whoever else was in here. If your father mutates you from human normal, that is something best kept as a family secret.

Turning a corner on my way towards the pods, I ran into a figure in GM whites and blacks. We recognized each other at the same time.

“You!”

“You.”

It was GM Patricia Pulling. Arneson’s partner, of all the luck. We stared at each other, both looking for signs of danger or aggression.

“Good evening, GM Pulling. How are you?” I ventured.

“Player Boone. I’ve been better.”

I put on a polite face of enquiry.

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“My partner recently resigned under awkward circumstances. I find myself assigned to this shithole for the foreseeable future.”

“Huh. You have a lot of hard feelings over this?”

She glared at me.

“Because it seems to me that if I were a petty sort of person I might also harbor some bad feelings about how Arneson’s actions have adversely affected my life and game.”

I took in her face. She really was attractive. I think the solitary nature of my game and life was messing me up. But a female face was nice to look at, even if it was set over a GM’s uniform. And somehow, I didn’t think her anger and annoyance at me ran all that deeply.

“I mean it’s not the same as being assigned to a public pod station, but spending a few months in jail so someone can curry some favor here and there… Well, if I wasn’t such an enlightened sort of person, I might be bitter. But you and I are better than that aren’t we?”

Her anger broke.

“Damn Dave. I told him trying to play with the Party was going to end badly. But he was ambitious. He did some good work here and there. Helped some people. Saved some people from some bad stuff.”

I thought about making a crack about how Mussolini also got the trains running on time, but my father had raised me with a bunch of cultural and historical references that no one else got. Not only would she likely not know who Mussolini was, she might not even know what a train schedule was. I think half the reason I became such a contrary, stubborn, lonely SOB wasn’t just the Party having it in for me and my family. A lot of it was that most people didn’t get my jokes.

So I just sighed and decided to see if I could get a pod without the Eastmans showing up and pulling its plug or something equally disastrous.

“So, I don’t know how many details your ex-partner shared with you…” I began.

“He gave me the high points.”

“Where is he now?” I asked.

“He is in an officers’ training program with the Eastmans.”

“Huh. Tasha didn’t just kick him to the curb. He got off lucky.”

“He is actually a pretty damned good player. He’ll hold up his end for the Eastmans. That is half of why he was willing to play on the shady side of the street. He was frustrated that his skills didn’t do him any good.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t know anything about that. If only there was some sort of organization that was supposed to try to make sure that everyone got a fair shot at the Game.”

She had the grace to look embarrassed. I took that as a good sign.

“So, you planning on giving him a call? Or anyone else for that matter?”

“About what?”

“Running into me. Here.”

She looked shocked for a minute and then flushed.

“No. Your play is private. I won’t do anything like that. I won’t let anything like that happen to you.”

I stared at her, trying to see if she was blowing smoke. I wish that I had been able to just wait. Wait until Jude and the others would leave or clear the dungeon for me. But Tasha Eastman would surely trade nine months of a bunch of level eight players to get her hands on Numitor Boone’s kid and win the bet. Life is risk and you have to play to win.

“Ok. Well I need a pod. And as much anonymity as you can give me.”

“That won’t be a problem. As far as I can tell no one ever comes here. Come on. Let me get you set up.”

GM Pulling and I made our way down to the three game pods.

“You care which one? They are all cleared. I just finished a maintenance cycle on that one. The others are good for quite a while but if you plan on staying under for long then can you take the one I already worked over? “

“Sure.”

The pod’s lid slid back. I climbed in. My modesty was protected as my clothes converted back into their constituent nano, but having her here made me aware of how I technically wasn’t wearing any clothes anymore. I thought her eyes might have a small glint in them as she watched me, but perhaps it was wishful thinking.

“See you later Miles Boone. Good luck,” she wished me.

As soon as GM Pulling’s kind face disappeared behind the cover of the pod I put thoughts of her away. I lay in the dark and tried to get myself prepared for what was to come next. There would be four enemies waiting to kill me when I reappeared. Three players and the chieftain.

It was really too bad that Arneson hadn’t chosen differently, not for Pulling’s sake but for mine. If he had paid the wergild I would have had something to help me. Tasha’s gift was as useful as this horse statue the Trojans once received. Jude and the rest were going to also be geared to the nines. Or technically to the level eights. I didn’t see Tasha underestimating me anymore. She’d give them the best gear their level could accommodate.

Was Tasha going to give them PvP speced gear? Such gear was possible in the game but it came with serious social stigma. The game is supposed to be about saving humanity. It was necessary because we had to adhere to as many gaming tropes and cultural artifacts as possible to get the wild nano to respond. But having it or using it was seen as really disgusting. Still, the clans all had some in their armories. They even had players who specialized in it. You can’t change people in the end.

My intuition guided by my experience said there was some way to pull this off. Now I only needed to figure out what it was.

The smell of the smoothness of satin linens filled my nose. My ears filled with the sound of twinkling stars. I nearly choked on the taste of a rusty door hinge’s creak. And then I was back in the instance.

I immediately fell into a crouch and looked around trying to get my bearings. Jude and the Eastmans wouldn’t know exactly where in the instance I had logged out from. They would have had to make sure that I didn’t finish off the endboss and escape so they would have had to guard the entrance to the last room. But, did they try and cover the rest of the dungeon?

Yes.

There was Aabid. Right at the entrance where we fought last time. Damn it. There are no sounds or light effects when you log in or out. You just appear. Luckily, he was facing the wrong way. They would have been waiting for hours for me, unsure when I was going to log back in. You can’t keep spinning around for hours on end. You could walk a patrol though, so his sitting on his ass was some pathetic gameplay.

It turns out I was giving him too hard a time. After a moment, he hauled himself onto his feet and started walking. I guess I caught him at the end of a little break. I stayed as still as a statue, barely breathing. He took a few steps and was sure to turn around to find me at any moment. I raised myself into a sprinter’s starting stance then took a breath. Just as I was about to launch I heard a yip and growl. Remus! Faithful friend. I took off, hoping that Aabid would be distracted by the wolf.

Remus’ bark didn’t work much if at all. I was only a few steps into my sprint when I heard Aabid yelling, and his words simultaneously hit my ears and my party chat.

“He is here! At the entrance. I am engaging!”

He is here! At the entrance. I am engaging! - Aabid

Fire and the pain that comes with it washed over my back. Damage notices clamored for attention in the corner of my vision. I changed my vote again. Aabid was an idiot. He should have led off with some form of crowd control. Unless he could one-shot me, going for damage and letting me flee was just stupid. Thank god for stupid enemies.

The actual mine entrance was ahead of me. In a moment, I’d be inside and could make my escape and regroup. Something seemed different about the piled scree and gangue by the entrance. My weeks obsessively studying the floor and rocks of the dungeon gave me a warning. I leapt over the area that looked disarranged from my last walk through. As I sailed over the dirt, it began to blink with the telltale of a trap. Maybe I’d have to change my vote on Aabid’s competence yet again. Aabid had tried to drive me into a trap.

Chuckling to myself, I made my way through the tunnels. My Eyes of the Hunter made carrying a light unnecessary. My weeks and weeks wandering these tunnels made me able to slip effortlessly through the twists and turns, past the traps I didn’t or couldn’t disarm.

A text in party chat slipped past my eyes.

He made it past me into the mine - Aabid

Understood. No more texting. Stick with the plan. Hi, Miles. Sorry it has to be this way. - Jude

Jude’s apologies without changing any of his choices or behavior were almost worse than his hunting me down in the first place. The fact that he refused to accept that he was my enemy while doing everything an enemy would do was maddening. He was such a self-deluded, self-righteous, pompous ass.

Stopping and listening for the sound of approaching enemies, there was nothing but silence. What was their likely plan? They had a few options as I saw it. They could just camp down by the end boss. This was the low risk option for them. If they were willing to just sit in the instance for months on end they could force me to lose the bet. They had time and I didn’t.

They wouldn’t want to do that if they could get away with not doing it. Nine months sitting in a hole not leveling was a problem for them. At level eight they had their own beginner’s quests to think of. Tasha could make good on that but all their peers would be progressing. Tasha and Maya may be grateful for their sacrifice, but out of sight and out of mind was no way to keep feudal leaders appreciating you.

If they were going to use this option then they wouldn’t have set Aabid up at the entrance by my spawn point. They were going to hunt me down. Camp my spawn point and just stay on top of it and kill me over and over as I resurrected until I had dropped all my gear and was level 1. Then they would leave me a naked level 1 player with the level 11 Chieftain to take out. Ugh. Sucks to be me.

This was good news, sort of. One man at my spawn point. At least one man at the end boss. Were they keeping two by the end or was someone roaming looking for me? Only one way to find out.

It was like old times as I meditated, turned invisible and lurked through the tunnels past traps and sites of old fights. I became even more cautious as I came to the last split before the Chieftain. They could be anywhere from here on out.

Without my Eyes of the Hunter I never would have caught them. The eyes, my weeks of obsessive study of the details of the tunnel and the fact that I knew that they had to be near here let me see the subtle darker patches of darkness in the tunnel and showed me Jude and the other Eastman whose name I couldn’t remember. They had set up about halfway down the tunnel leading to the room with the Chieftain.

I retreated and turned down a few corners into a spot from where I knew I’d be able to hear anyone approaching and I settled in to have a good think.

This hardcore mode is pretty good for your mental health. I never would have meditated as a daily practice without needing it for my magic use. Even under tons of stone and rock, hunted by a former friend, old enemies and a giant dog monster, I felt like I was handling my life perhaps better than I had back when I was an ostracized loner hassled and bullied by Party wannabes. I can’t control other people’s choices. I can’t control how I feel. I can only control what I choose to do, so I must choose wisely. I was able to study my options calmly in ways I had never been able to before. Seeking personal enlightenment of any sort wasn’t really on my to-do list back before I started playing this game.

Ok. I breathed and thought. I had a few advantages. First, I had a secret room neither Jude et al. nor the Wyrmdigger Chieftain knew about. Second, they couldn’t kill the chieftain without finishing the instance and allowing my escape. Their gear might even be spec’ed for PvP. It for sure wasn’t going to be anti-kobold gear. One plus one plus one equals three. Then I figured out what I should do. You probably had already figured out my plan long since. You knew what I should do as soon as you heard Tasha Eastman reveal her plot. All I can say is that it is a lot harder to figure this stuff out as you live it. Figuring out effective strategies while a monster leaps for your throat or your family’s enemies reveal plots in the center of their power while you face a lifetime of enslavement is harder than thinking this stuff out in the abstract. Anyway, I liked my new plan. This was going to be easier than I thought. I almost laughed as I made my way back to the end boss.

My preparations hadn’t taken me long. It was time to begin.

You think I’m trapped in here with you Eastmans… Stupid. You are trapped in here with me… hahahahahaha! I texted.

There was a slight rustle as Jude and the other fellow shifted in response to my text. Good. Reputation is a useful thing.

I cleared this instance solo. And you think I am scared of you? You should be scared of me. Are you stronger than this entire instance?

One more rustle and Jude hissed for quiet from down the tunnel.

I had one more card to play to get under their skins.

You are playing against a Boone. My father is Numitor Boone. Think of it. You have set yourself against Numitor Boone. He beat the wild nano. He stood off the Party. I am his son by blood. Monsters who killed the world couldn’t beat my family. None of you would have cleared this instance. You thought that you were making the right allies. You are making the wrong enemy. You are going to die.

Silence. Maybe my cage rattling was going to flop. I was about to launch out anyway when a reply came to my text.

The Eastmans will kill you! - Aabid

I smiled to myself. Thank god for stupid enemies. My vote flipped again. Aabid is an idiot.

The Eastman clan can’t come in here. It is just the three of you. All the clans together couldn’t stop my father. I may not be my father but I can handle the three of you.

Think you will keep up with that attitude after we camp your ass into oblivion? - Aabid

Aabid. - Jude

That the idea? Aabid already screwed that up. He has twice my levels and he couldn’t stop me. Of course, he was sitting on his ass. Make sure you let Tasha and Maya know who’s to blame after I smoke you all and finish soloing this bitch.

I didn’t know exactly where your log in point was. I still got my best attack in on you. - Aabid

There you go. This exchange is part of our game logs. You know the Eastmans are going to audit this after you guys screw it up.

So? - Meijas

Now I knew the name of the other Eastman. Good to know the names of everyone I need to defeat.

Goddamn it. Shut up! - Jude

I heard Meijas whisper from down the corridor to Jude.

“What does it matter? He can’t get past us. He knows and we know he has to come kill the endboss. Sitting in silence for who knows how long--possibly months--will drive us crazy,” Meijas murmured.

Aabid you just admitted that you let me escape. More damningly you just admitted that you led off with an attack. You were too stupid to hit me with some crowd control. You had a low-level runner and you let me run. Your life is already over Aabid. You think the Eastmans are going to keep a screw up like you around now?

Calm down Aabid. He is just trying to get in your head. - Jude.

Easy for him to say Aabid. Maya will protect him. After I succeed and the Eastman analysis team look at your logs they are going to hang the whole thing on your necks. Meijas - you broke silence too. You guys are fucked. Heck, even if you guys succeeded who is going to get the credit? Maya’s pet or you guys?

Shut up. Stick to the plan - Jude.

Meijas took a breath and turned to Jude IRL.

“You going to throw us under the bus?” Meijas asked Jude.

“Will you shut up? He isn’t going to beat us unless you idiots keep falling for his mind games,” Jude hissed.

“Why are we even hiding and going dark in the first place? It is stupid. We outnumber him. Communication and coordination is the best way to use our numerical superiority,” Meijas argued.

“Because there is nothing to discuss. We are set up on the two strategic centers of this exercise. We aren’t moving anywhere so there is nothing to coordinate. If you had something to contribute back when we made the plan, that was the time, Meijas. You and Aabid aren’t saying anything that is actually, you know, constructive. You are talking in a conversation THAT MILES STARTED.”

Meijas grunted out a quiet, “So?”

“So, he must want this for some reason. Doing what your enemy wants you to do is the way to lose!”

They were too focused on each other. The funny thing about texting is that it makes you assume that the other person isn’t nearby. I knew this because I had managed to sneak a quarter of the way down the hall and into range while Jude and Meijas were distracted. Jude really should have stuck with a teammate who could execute a plan.

“This is why I play solo,” I said as I unleashed the spell Flare.

I haven’t bothered to talk about or use 0 level spells. 0 level spells or cantrips are extremely weak spells that cost little to no mana or effort to cast. Largely useless in a combat situation. They let you do small but mildly useful things. Like move a small object, make a sound with magic or do some prestidigitation type of trick to amuse a crowd of children. Some can be downright useful in the right situation. Flare, for example, casts a bright light. Useful for signaling people. Flare can also let you momentarily dazzle someone if you launch it right in their face. If you caused the status effect Dazzled it might give you a moment of surprise – temporary blindness and brief paralysis. Of course, they get a chance to resist the effects. Everyone else in the dungeon with me was so much higher in level than me that the spell wouldn’t affect them.

What I liked about Flare and the other cantrips was thata I could cast it extremely quickly compared to my other magics. Too bad they were so weak and the kobolds and other players would shrug off these spells like they didn’t exist. Flare was also one of my longest ranged spells. Its range was significantly longer than the tunnel I had snuck down. Jude and Meijas would easily shrug off the spell. Also, even if it worked it would only work on one of them and even if it triggred the debuff lasted just half a tick. It was stupid to attack them with it. That is why I didn’t attack them with it.

The flare sped past their heads and down the hall to my actual target. It erupted in front of Grumth, the Wyrmmdigger chieftain. I didn’t bother to wait and see if he was dazzled. A level 11 End Bboss wasn’t going to care about my cantrip. I might as well have farted in his general direction. But it certainly counted as an attack causing him aggro. Which is why I took off back into the rest of the mines like a monster almost three times my level whose entire clan I had massacred was after me.

Meijas was caught more flatfooted than Jude. Not surprising. Grumth piled into Meijas with a roar.

“Help me take him down!” Meijas cried. Jude started to help his teammate and then stopped.

“I can’t you idiot. If we kill the boss the instance will end. Jesus. Try to crowd control him. I need to get out of range. You try and flee too if the crowd control takes. If it doesn’t, you need to let the mob take you out. Make sure you last long enough to let me get far enough away. Damn it Miles, you clever bastard. We can’t kill the boss or Miles wins. I can’t believe I didn’t see that!”

Meijas grunted and struggled.

“No! Please Jude! I am going to try and kite him long enough for you and Aabid to get some crowd control on him. If I am killed out of here, Maya and Tasha are going to break me!” he begged.

Jude was conflicted.

“Fine. But if Grumth there falls below two thirds of his max hp you bare your throat and let him take you out. You understand?”

“Thank you Jude! Thank you!”

I slipped through the winding tunnels just far enough to be sure Jude wasn’t chasing me and I wouldn’t run into any of the Eastmans either coming or going from the entrance. They texted with Aabid to coordinate their plan to save Meijas. I got a fine blow by blow of their struggle to stop an End Boss without actually fighting him. Not an easy problem to solve.

Jude wasn’t as calm, cool and collected as he should have been. Of course, he was under a lot more unexpected pressure than usual. He should have taken up meditation. It really helps you deal with emotional turmoil.

Grumth wouldn’t take long to either finish off Meijas and get back here or break whatever crowd control they trapped him in and then make his way back to here. Grumth was linked to the final room. If you kited him far enough and broke contact he’d head back to his starting location. I didn’t have very long to act. There was another possible advantage I could get if I had enough time.

Looping around my many enemies and back down to the end cavern with the pool, I dove in. Somewhere down there were the corpses of two Wyrmmdigger shamans. They might have something that would help me.

The cold water closed over me and quickly I found the remains of one of the shamans. At my touch, the drowned shaman faded and I received a staff.

Shaman’s Staff of The Desert Sun

Two Handed Blunt Weapon

Damage 3-12

A gnarled staff with a sun spirit trapped within it. A tool to let a Shaman commune with the spirits and forces of the desert.

Nature Spells +8.5%

Fire Spells +8.5%

The staff was a solid piece of loot for the instance’s level. That and some nano would get me a cup of coffee. This wasn’t going to change anything about my situation.

Things must not have been going well for Meijas. Jude was using text to communicate with Meijas. That meant he had pulled back too far to talk with him, which meant he expected Meijas to die soon.

Meijas. After you die tell them that they can’t depend on just us to hold the line. There will be only two of us after this and Miles can keep sending a mob we can’t kill after us. The situation is too unstable. Tell them to plug the entrance with a team. Miles may be able to finish off the instance but we can just pick him up outside and figure out something else.

It seemed like Grumth was only going to take one of them out for me this time. Then there was the whole Eastman clan waiting to grab me at the entrance. Time to bug out before Grumth makes it back here.

Miles. - Jude.

I didn’t respond and tried to focus on my search of the dark waters of the pool. Jude had made a good point about starting conversations initiated by your enemies. Nothing good could come from engaging with Jude. At best, it would just mess up my emotional equilibrium. There was zero chance that he was going to offer me a way out of the situation.

Miles. I want to offer you a way out of this situation - Jude.

Goddamn Jude. He is so goddamned frustrating. Even when we were friends he drove me crazy.

Miles. I know that you are listening. This is all so stupid. What do you want from me? I love her, ok? I know your family and her family have this epic fight for the future of the human race and irreconcilable ideological differences with all these profound implications and all this grandiose bullshit. I don’t fucking care. You are my best friend. I love her. What exactly am I supposed to do?

The outline of a body floated off to the side. I swam for it.

You act like it is so obvious that you are right and the Eastmans are wrong about all this stuff. But guess what? She says the exact same kind of things. You think she is going to destroy humanity. She thinks you are going to destroy humanity. I have no idea how to prove which of you is right. I just wanted to follow the rules, play hard, see where things went with my girlfriend and live my life.

You want me to give up the woman I love. A career I have worked for years to get. All my friends. And for what? Well, fuck you Miles. I didn’t do anything to you. You broke the rules. Rules I begged you not to.

Surprise. It wasn’t the other shaman. It was my dead body. There was my bloated and distended face. Dead and drowned.

You can’t win. You never could win. You wanted me to go down with you. Yes. Very impressive clearing this dungeon. A newbie dungeon in the Cradle. You got rid of Meijas. Wonderful. You might be able to take out Aabid. You might even be able to take me. You never could before but maybe you are better than you used to be. Maybe you can even take out that beast of a chieftain. But so what?

I touched my dead cheek. My face faded into dust that dissolved through the water. The dagger I had used before started to sink and I grabbed it before stroking as fast as I could for the surface to grab a breath of air. If I wasn’t so emotionally healthy from all my meditation and didn’t have a job to do so that I couldn’t let my feelings affect me, Jude’s pleas and unexpectedly encountering my own corpse might have messed me up. Any wetness on my cheeks was strictly water from the pool.

You can’t beat the rest of the world, Miles. You can’t beat all of us. The Eastmans will have set up a team of no-nonsense serious hard-cases outside the instance. A team who are usually out of the cradle fighting monsters that make you a fucking fly, Miles. You going to fight a bunch of level 20s? You won’t even be able to scratch their armor.

A few breaths and I swam back down.

And they shouldn’t be here dealing with this shit, Miles. Maya is right about this much. You are stopping them from focusing on the real fight. They are supposed to be out fighting the wild nano. Instead they are here dealing with this mess you insist on.

Grumth would be back before long. I needed to loot that shaman. Where the hell was it?

So even if you beat me and this instance you are just going to get thrown down into another hole.

Jude was such a prick. I had a ton of things that I wanted to say in response. To show him how wrong he was. How I didn’t take the Eastmans send their heavy hitters away from the fight. How all I wanted was the same chance they took for themselves and their cronies. How it was he and his girlfriend who threw me down this hole to break the spirit of our wager. How they turned what was left of humanity into serfs. But Jude knew all these arguments. He was so hardly ever obviously wrong that in those few instances when he was wrong he was never able accept it. He was bright enough to fool himself and others that it wasn’t him that did anything wrong. Smart people don’t tend to make simple mistakes. They make huge completely plausible mistakes with much greater and more terrible fallout. Hubris tends to drop those who can climb to greater heights.

Miles. Just stop fighting and I know I can get you out of this. I know Maya already regrets this whole wager. Let me try to get Tasha to agree to some kind of a deal. Maya doesn’t hate you. She just hates what you believe. And she has her reasons. She is a good person. Her motives are good, Miles. Really. She isn’t evil.

Jude believed this. He really believed he could get me out. Could I just stop all this? All I had to do was stop fighting. And he was right. I was fighting thousands of players who were almost without exception more powerful than me.

Diving back down, I finally found the last corpse. This one dropped a scroll and a gem. Taking my loot, I made my way back to the secret room. As I turned off of the corridor I heard the heavy tread and grunting breath of the chieftain coming from the other turnoff. I had made it out with only moments to spare.

Dropping to the floor of the little hidden room I couldn’t help but think of the dwarf who had died in here, hunted by his family’s enemies too. He and I had more in common than I’d like. The Wyrmmdiggers didn’t offer him a truce. I could reach out to Jude. I could have a version of the life I had always wanted.

He and I had made a great team. Yes, the Game is for the survival of the human race. But it is still a game. The best game humanity has ever created. The incredible stakes actually make you want to play it even more. Fighting for the survival of the human race with your best friend is pretty heady stuff. Probably the largest reason I ended up down in this hole was because I wanted to get to play the Game with Jude. His getting the clan package was splitting us up. I hated that as much as I hated anything else the Party was doing.

My best friend and I could fight and play together to save humanity. If you have never played a game with close friends you have no idea what a primal and satisfying thing it is to do. If you have never worked a job that was challenging and took all you had, with people you cared about, you don’t know what you are missing. Shared triumph and defeat will bond you to someone in ways that nothing else does. It is why soldiers will die for each other when they won’t for a cause or flag. And maybe I could still have that.

It is just so damned lonely playing alone, and even if I beat this instance they will be waiting for me. And if I escape the next hole--it is just holes all the way down.

All I had to do was stop fighting. Just join them.

Tasha would demand some proof of loyalty. She’d make me spout pro-Party stuff. All I had to do was say what they wanted me to say. All I had to do was think what they wanted me to think… and it wouldn’t ever end. I’d have to prove constantly that I was loyal to their cause. They would judge whatever I, as my father’s son, would say.

Actually, that wasn’t fair. They judged each other the same way. They were constantly making sure that they said the right things. I thought of Aabid and his protestations of loyalty. I thought of Arneson who had to quit his job to prove his loyalty. I thought of Maya who found anyone who made her question her beliefs impossible to be around. That wasn’t the behavior of someone confident in their beliefs and the world.

I thought of Jude. My best friend. They made him choose to try to enslave his best friend. Tasha forced him down into this hole with me to prove his loyalty. The woman he loved demanded that of him. Expected him to do that.

They were all slaves. Even if I ended up in a slave contract, I was a free man. I could say what I wanted. I could think what I wanted.

At the deepest level, this wager was a farce because even if Maya put me in shackles in my heart I was a free man.

This was why my father fought them. Because their way is why the singularity went so terribly wrong. Because when people deny each other their freedoms no matter how noble their intentions, tyranny and brutality are the inevitable result no matter how enlightened the slavers think they are. The tyranny necessary to enforce such a society traps everyone in it. It falls because it turns on itself. If people are lucky it falls because people who see themselves as free cannot be ruled for long. But one way or another it will fall. It is why they were failing to win the Game.

Enough philosophy. Time to just fucking get on with it.

Let’s see what I got from that last shaman and see what I can do with it. The staff wasn’t going to do much for me.

The scroll was better. It was a charm person scroll. That was pretty darn useful. It could temporarily turn this three on one situation to two on two. An even fight. Not that I wanted an even fight. My father always told me that if you end up in an even fight it means you are playing badly.

The last item was the gem. It was very familiar. What were the odds? Another minor enhancement gem.

I don’t know if I made the choice I did then was because it was my best strategic option or because of other motives, but I made my choice. I used the enhancement gem. I took the dagger and sheathed it. I filled my inventory with all the trash loot, the magic pick I found here, everything. I re-donned my armor and left.

Jude and Aabid weren’t waiting near the chieftain. It seemed clear that they were going to guard the entrance until the Eastman team had it plugged. As they saw it, I’d just be thrown down a new hole if I managed to finish off the chieftain. Next time they would camp me first, drop my levels and steal all my gear.

I took out the charm scroll and waited. I hoped they would show up together or Aabid would show up on his own. I had reasons why I didn’t want to confront Jude yet.

Luck was with me. Aabid turned the corner. He saw me.

He is near the chieftain’s room! - Aabid.

Coming - Jude.

Aabid cast some spell that sent green energy into the floor at my feet. Thorny vines grew out of the cracks and twined themselves up my legs. They pierced my flesh and held me in place. I wasn’t sure how to score Aabid’s performance this time. He obviously decided to start off with some crowd control. He wasn’t making the same mistakes as last time. But there is the old adage about how generals often fail because they prepare to fight the last war and not the new one. Why didn’t he just let me go attack the Chieftain? How easy would it be to make sure I lost that fight?

Twisting to start working myself free from the magical plant, I also pulled out the scroll. Luckily, as a game object the scroll sidestepped my ridiculous casting style. I was filled with jealousy for typical casters when all I had to do was point and cast. So easy!

“Charm!” I grunted as I yanked on my left leg. Multicolored sparks and glittering motes erupted from the scroll, flew down the tunnel to Aabid, and spun around his head, entering his eyes, nose, ears and mouth.

He stopped what he had been doing and stood there swaying slightly. The spell had worked. For the next few minutes or until I attacked him, he was under my thrall. If I asked him to do anything too outrageous he’d get a chance to break the enchantment. Given our level disparity I couldn’t force him to do anything the game thought was too far from what he should want to do anyway.

This worked like—I beg your pardon--a charm for me.

“Aabid. Go kill Grumth the Kobold Chieftain. He can be found down this tunnel,” I commanded him.

There was almost no chance that the system would allow Aabid to fight free of this command. He was a member of my party in a dungeon that he was specifically re-allowed back into to “help” me. Well, that is just what I commanded him to do. If your vengeance can be ironic, it is even better than if it is cold.

At first with some staggering and then with more even steps he made his way down the tunnel. Soon I heard a growl and the clash of weapons and the hiss of fire. I doubted that Aabid would last any longer than Meijas against the boss. I didn’t think there was any chance that Aabid would win. My only regret was that they both couldn’t lose the fight.

I had some massive scratches on my legs by the time I managed to pull free from the thorn covered vines. The plant disappeared as soon as I was free.

Sighing, I drew the dagger I had prepared and waited. I knew Jude would be showing up soon. My dagger knew it too. It seemed to know everything I knew about Jude. Thinking back on when I last used the enhancement gem, I shuddered.

Forgive me, I decided to use the enhancement gem to create a PvP weapon. I had obvious explanations and excuses, but in the end I made a weapon to use against another player, not the nano. I almost threw up looking at it. In our society, the object in my hand was an obscenity.

I don’t know if what I went through is what happens when you make a weapon designed to kill another player or if this was just one more wonderful benefit to my hardcore mode, but it was disturbing. I hope it is awful for anyone who does it. Killing each other weakens us all. The idea of using one of these weapons just to gain experience or loot is vile.

The dagger gave off emotions. It was happy to be unsheathed and gleeful that its target was drawing nigh. The same rules about specificity and power ruled the gem. The more specific I made its enhancement the more powerful the enchantment. And so I crafted a weapon designed to kill my best friend. To anyone else or anything else the dagger was a poorly crafted, crude piece of metal. For Jude, it was his doom.

The blade had turned black after it had been enhanced. It pulsed in my hand to a heartbeat I knew was Jude’s. It pulled slightly in his direction like a nail towards a magnet. I wiped my hand and placed it back on its terrible grip.

When I attached the gem, the Game had forced me to think about Jude. First it had taken me back through his betrayal and his leaving me to the Eastmans. How he had been one of the people to drop me in this hole. But soon after that I had been forced to recall all that had come before. All the good times. All the things we had done together. The games we had played. The sparring matches. The laughs. The fights. The gem drank it all. I stood in a daze as it ate my memories, making me recall things I had forgotten. Things I hadn’t consciously noticed. It forced me back to when we had been friends and I loved him like a brother. It took my love of him and crafted a weapon out of it.

I didn’t have to look up to know when Jude came around the corner. The dagger let me know.

“Miles,” he said.

“Jude,” I replied.

“Aabid?” he asked.

“He is getting acquainted with Grumth.”

He almost smiled at that.

“Have you thought about my offer?” he asked.

“Sure, I did,” I told him.

He sighed. He knew what my answer was. We both knew each other too well. My knowledge of him was a weapon. But, it was how well we knew ourselves that really forced this fight to happen.

I ran at him. He began casting a spell. I hurled the dagger and it flew unerringly into his throat, breaking his casting and taking a bite out of his hp. I tackled him and the blade seemed to leap back into my hand, eager to be used again.

Jude and I had fought and sparred for fun and in school too many times to count. He usually beat me two out of three times. He had almost twice my level and better gear. He is also taller than me and a touch quicker. He should have been taking me apart.

The dagger made up for all of it.

The blade knew what he was going to do before he did. It found gaps in any defense he tried to establish. My time using Wyrmmdigger’s Bane had trained me in how to meld and mesh with a sentient blade. His armor might as well not have existed. He tried to get distance from me to get away from me and my knife. Maybe try a spell. I didn’t let him. I stayed with him, slicing and jabbing. His face and arms became a mass of bloody gashes. God, I wished he would just die already and put us both out of this misery. I wish I could just get away from him. But he kept the fight up right to the end.

The worst was when I finally managed to get the knife up under his rib cage. He slid down and looked at me with his bloody mess of a face. He looked at me with love.

Blood leaked out from his lips as he spoke his last.

“I’m proud of you, Miles. I always knew you would be an amazing player.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked at the dagger.

“It’s PvP.”

He chuckled.

“Three on one after we nerfed your character. You actually think you didn’t earn this victory? Ok. I forgive you. Can you forgi…”

I watched as his avatar froze.

Which do you think is worse? To love someone who betrays you so you have to love and hate them at the same time, or to love someone and be forced to do hateful things to them? Even with all my pain and weeks trapped in the dungeon, I think he had it worse.

It didn’t matter if I could somehow forgive him. He was playing for someone else. He was my opponent. How were we supposed to have a friendship when we couldn’t hope for the best for each other? When we couldn’t talk about anything important in our lives? When we couldn’t trust the other person to help? The fact that he couldn’t see this was just another tragedy.

I reached down to close his eyes. He shattered into dust. His last drop was a health potion. Nice to have, but nothing that was going to change my life.

I took a shuddering breath. I didn’t have time to wallow. I needed to try to take out the chieftain before he healed from whatever damage Aabid had managed.

Sheathing Jude’s Death, I drew Wyrmmdigger’s Bane. It was time to end this.

As I strode down the tunnel towards my final foe for what I hoped was the last time, my opinion of Aabid kept shifting. Aabid had beaten Grumth down to 48% hp. I didn’t think he had it in him. I hadn’t seen what Grumth’s special abilities were. Typically, at 50% and at 10% end bosses unleash some new ability to make the big boss fight more of a challenge.

Jude was my end boss fight. I won. Hooray for me. Grumth was just a collection of nano and a stupid game AI.

Grumth looked up at me and sniffed the air. I could see that if I waited any longer he’d start healing up.

“Come on big boy. Let’s finish this.”

I chanted and buffed myself. Moving faster than I ever had before, I leaped into battle.

If Grumth got his claws into me I was done for. Wyrmmdigger’s Bane kept him off me. The blade wove a razored barrier around me. Grumth was too fast for me to get the chance to riposte or attack. Even with my dexterity increased I couldn’t get an attack off. Grumth threw a never-ending stream of attacks by claw or axe. Without the blade and the buff, I’d have died in moments.

It turns out that if you have the right blade, the best offense is a good defense. Every time a claw would swipe at me or the axe would come at me, Grumth took a sliver of damage. My parries left shallow cuts on Grumth’s arms. The faster he attacked me, the more I defended and the more hits Grumth took. They were only for one point each. They weren’t every strike. But bit by bit I wore him down.

The health bar over Grumth hit 10%. I braced. I had no idea if I could handle whatever came next. Grumth stepped back and howled.

A game notice appeared.

The Chieftain Calls!

Grumth has summoned his clan. Any kobolds you left alive in the dungeon will come to their leader’s aid.

Now I knew why this dungeon wasn’t much use. You couldn’t farm the boss without clearing the entire thing first. Grumth looked confident waiting for me to be blindsided by his clan. He looked confused and disappointed as Wyrmmdigger’s Bane leaped out and opened a slash on his thigh. A spin to the right and a jab with my blade and the last of the Wyrmmdiggers left anywhere in the instance fell. I had done it.

You have vanquished

Grumth, Chieftain of the Wyrmmdigger Clan level 11!

900 EXP rewarded.

Congratulations!

You have cleared

The Mines of Madness!

All exits from the instance are now available to you.

Your contribution to the clearing of the instance: 99.05% of all kills, trap discovery and disarmament, secret discovery.

You are rewarded 100% of the clearance bonus. Dungeon was set at 2.25% your experience level. Clearance bonus is doubled.

Reward 8,000 xp

Congratulations!

You have gained a level!

5,000 Exp to next level.

Congratulations!

You have gained a level!

6,000 Exp to next level.

Two entire levels. That was almost unheard of. The Game wasn’t the kind of endeavor where you could just fly up to epic levels of power. Developing your character took years. Even for Party members. Decades if you weren’t connected. But for me in hardcore mode, with zero luck, soloing an instance set to over twice my level jumped me up two levels. I don’t recommend it as a game strategy, but if you can actually succeed at it, the Game will give you more experience points than straight play.

How long would the levels be mine? As soon as I left the instance I’d be grabbed by the Eastman clan. They would camp me back to level 1. If anything, my level six was worse. They could set me up in an instance with—let’s see, five levels over mine is 11. So, three times eleven plus six divided by four. They could camp me back to level 1 in an instance set for level 10.

No point in getting pessimistic yet. There is always hope.

First I looted Grumth. His war axe looked pretty good. Also, there was Aabid. I touched Aabid’s remains. He dropped a ring.

Ring of Spell Storing

Store one spell for later release.

I wished Aabid’s kobold hacked corpse was still here so I could kiss it. He dropped me the best stuff when he died. This was as good as anything I could have hoped for. I could cast at least one spell in combat now. This was a game object. I would have to jump through my usual hoops to store the spell but to release it? I now had one spell I could just point and shoot in combat. Things were looking up.

As long as I could get out of there. This wasn’t going to get me past the Eastmans at the entrance. They would take all my gear before they dropped me in another instance as well as dropped me back to level 1.

At least they couldn’t come into the instance and get me. The instance of the dungeon was finished but it was still an instance. To make sure that that was true, I brought up the log of the completion of the dungeon once again.

Congratulations!

You have cleared The Mines of Madness!

All exits from the instance are now available to you.

Your contribution to the clearing of the instance: 99.05% of all kills, trap discovery and disarmament, secret discovery.

You are rewarded 100% of the clearance bonus. Dungeon was set at 2.25% your experience level. Clearance bonus is doubled.

Reward 8,000 xp

Yes. The exits to the instance are available to me. The AIs speak very exactly. They would have said available to all if they were available to anyone but me. AIs were often like the faeries of old. They were constrained to speak only the truth but the devil of language is in the details.

My father always liked to quote Karl Popper, “It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.” He always said that if this was true, and it was, then it was impossible to make an AI speak in such a way that it can’t hide the truth. You had to listen to them carefully and think about other possible meanings.

Or, sometimes you had to see it when their truth was right there looking you in the face. “All exits from the instance are now available to you.” Exits, plural. There was another way out of this place. I just had to find it.

Racing back through the tunnels, I looked for a new entrance or a door: something, anything. A crack or a crevice. A portal. I found nothing. . No exit there either.

Eventually I found my way back to the final room where Grumth had been. Often in a dungeon there was an exit you could take after clearing the last boss so you didn’t have to walk all the way back to entrance through rooms you had already cleared. But there was nothing like that here.

It was just another cavern with the pool, water wheel, and bellows. I looked at the pool. Am I supposed to swim out through the underground river? The water seemed to flow at the same rate as before. I tried to make my way into the crevice where the water flowed away. I couldn’t fit no matter how I tried.

Cold and wet, I lay down to dry off. The bellows sent a faint breeze but happily the air was actually a little warmer than the ambient temperature of the cave.

Of course. I grabbed onto the water wheel and let it raise me up to the tattered giant bellows. I climbed inside. There was a chimney rising up through the mountain that fed air to the cavern and the mine. Handholds and footholds were plentiful and easy. In some places, a thoughtful dwarf from long ago had hammered iron brackets into the wall to make climbing out even easier.

Turning through another corkscrew of the shaft, a spot of light appeared in the distance. Sunlight! My hands scrabbled and grabbed, I barely stopped moving from step to step as I rushed to escape. As I got closer I slowed my ascent. Creeping carefully upwards I listened for the Eastmans or any of Brady’s people. Smitty and Gord would be better than the Eastmans. But really I hoped no one was there.

A system message appeared.

You are about to leave The Mines of Madness. Do you wish to reset the instance?

(Y/N)

I chose no. If I left the instance I could flee back inside and no one could follow me. That would be a comfort.

Crouched just below the lip, I tried not to breathe. Nothing but silence. Disarming the traps had taught me patience though. I waited minute after minute through a half an hour. If the Eastmans were waiting for me, they were more patient than I. I rolled up and out.

A figure flashed out from behind me. I guess whoever was here was a more patient hunter than I. Before I could flee back into the shaft, it leapt on me and my breath rushed out of me.

There was nothing I could do when a tongue began licking my nose.

“Hi Remus. I missed you too,” I said, roughing the fur on his neck.

After ensuring that I was fine and making sure I knew that he had gotten the drop on me, he jumped off my chest and moved a bit away. I sat up looking around. I was on the far side of the rocky hills the mine was dug into. I was standing at the top of a box valley. The same sandy, rocky terrain continued around the three sides. Down below me a tiny trickle of water that must come from the pool down in the dungeon emerged from the hillside. The stream wended along the valley floor and out the other end of the valley. The valley encompassed quite a few miles. There was even a small wood along much of the valley floor and running up one side of the valley.

I couldn’t see past the open end of the valley to where the spring flowed. The other end of the valley shimmered and distorted. At times, the barrier was mirror like. At other times it was a haze. I knew what this barrier was. I had seen images and heard it described so many times. It was the barrier between where the game ended and the rest of the world began. It shifted, hiding and then revealing a few feet of territory. Past that veil lay wild nano.

The sun was setting. I was free. The Eastmans had no idea where I was. I seemed to have discovered a nice little valley accessible only to me. It was time to look to the next Beginner’s Quests. This looked like a good place to build. A place to homestead.

I’d say I got some luck in where I ended up. But, of course, luck is what you make of things.

The End

Thanks for reading Beginner’s Luck. I hope you enjoyed it. I am hard at work on the next volume - tentatively titled Foundation Strength. Look for the continuing adventures of Miles Boone in 2018.

To find updates on how the series is going and to get more LitRPG titles, authors and community:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGsociety/

and

https://www.facebook.com/groups/LitRPGGroup/

I also want to thanks Nicolas Lagrand for his thoughtful and thorough editing work. The book you just read would have been much worse without his efforts. He has been helping new authors and building community in the fan world like no one else. If you are familiar with LitRPG or GameLit you have been touched by his work in all likelihood whether you know it or not.