Date: 2016-10-14 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science Fiction; Fantasy
Description: The fifth book in the Feedback Loop series - death, betrayal, new beginnings. This action-packed, litRPG hybrid has it all. Quantum Hughes and the rest of the Dream Team are in for a serious awakening when tragedy strikes the team. Finding Strata Godsick's son isn't as easy it they originally thought it would be, and real world repercussions seem to put a damper on everything they do. This on top of the fact that they're being hunted in both the Proxima Galaxy and the real world only raises the stakes even higher. Ultima Thule, a rebirth, a death, a betrayal, a mysterious Reaper -- this is the
Publisher: Boycott Books

The Mechanical Heart

The Feedback Loop Book Five

Harmon Cooper

Edited by George C. Hopkins

Copyright © 2016 by Harmon Cooper

Copyright © 2016 Boycott Books

Cover by White Comma

Edited by George C. Hopkins (georgechopkins@yahoo.com)

www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Twitter: @_HarmonCooper

All rights reserved. All rights preserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Chapter One

“I told you no more frickin’ cowboy stuff!” Mirror twists, rears up and nearly tosses us from her back.

Rocket: Screenshot!

Rocket’s doing his in-game monitor thing which mostly consists of taking screenshots of impressively hootered PCs, cool battle stuff, and me getting killed in embarrassing ways. When he’s not occupied with that, he conducts in-game research and relays critical information to us just after we need to know it.

We, the Knights of Non Compos Mentis – Sophia Wang, Veenure, Aiden, Frances Euphoria, and yours truly – are dragon riding, flying high and looking for trouble.

It feels good to say that.

I slap my white rhinestone cowboy hat, item 34, against her mirrored side like T. J. Kong riding the big one down. “Yeeehaw!”

“I said no cowboy shit!” She loops, rolls, and corkscrews to ensure I get the message, folds her wings and plummets down towards the Endless Sea.

I get that dream-like falling sensation in my stomach and inner ear as the water rises up to meet us with astonishing speed. Mirror spears into the smooth surface in an explosion of froth and foam and bubbles, and arcs back out at the crest of an enormous wave. Veenure nearly loses her grip but Sophia saves her with some magic hold on tight spell rather than just grabbing her. Not a whole lot in the thank you department from our Dark Mage – apparently she’s still upset that Sophia cast Deafening Roar on her a few game-hours back.

Rocket: Watch out!

Mirror blasts straight up as a sea creature the size of the Krasniy Oktytabr launches out of the water right behind her. It’s tremendous – bigger than Sophia’s ego and easily large enough to snarf down two mirrored dragons without batting a lip and still have room for a school bus full of creatine-fueled dolphins for dessert.

Frances screams; Sophia makes ready to do more of her show-offy magical oogly-boogly, in Thulean, of course.

Veenure: Bortea Droga!

Rocket: Water dragon! Holy barracuda that’s ridic! --(>o<)--

The Bortea Droga is all anger, attitude, and snapping jaws in a tentacled mouth with teeth the size of me. Our mighty mirrored mount easily outpaces the monstrous Cthulhuesque sea nightmare. It screams and rages as it falls behind us, gives up, and casts itself back beneath the surface with the hopes of finding dinner sooner than later.

“Hey, Mirror,” I call out. “If it’s not too much trouble, could you maybe do us all a favor and try to not get us eaten before we get to Ultima Thule.”

“How ‘bout you do me a favor and drop the cowboy act? And next time, bring Chrono!”

Veenure laughs. She’s in her Schoolboy Q hat with two thick purple braids sticking out like she’s Coolio or something. I don’t know where she gets her fashion sense, but it works for her. Anybody else in that get-up would look like they’re on their way to Comic-Con International.

“Chrono didn’t get the level boost,” Sophia says. “Michnikhava droga!”

Mirror growls, “Tell me to relax again, honey, and see what happens!”

The damn dragon. The damn Sophia, too.

She slaps her wings to her sides and spirals towards the continent. Sure, it’s great riding on the back of the ultimate flying pimpmobile, but I’d trade it any day for another balls-to-the-wall cab o’ death thrill ride in The Loop, the grunting, struggling driver tied up in the backseat with a crusty snot rag stuffed in his piehole as I slalom through traffic at ninety miles an hour with my hair on fire, laughing like an Arkham Asylum escapee while waving my gun out the window. Difficult to imagine that the murder, mayhem, and madness of my former skid mark of a life has led me to a fantasy world jam-packed full of spell-casting wise guys and improbably pneumatic nerd gals who parade around in impractical, uncomfortable armor, speak a snobbish, pretend language and call player characters commoners.

Ce n’est pas magnifique, mais c’est la guerre.

Like clockwork, the thought of The Loop brings me straight back to my number one squeeze for two subjective years. What does it mean when the memory of a dream is more precious, more tangible than the wretched existence I drag my meat-self through? What makes real real? How are the brain chemicals the NVV generates any different from those of genuine experience? Are my memories of Dolly, of the Loop any less real because of how they originate? Synchronicity, Sin City, serendipity, Dolly. How should I interpret a dream-based memory?

Maychance the road doth waiver, the mind saver, slaver, misbehaver. From nightmare to tangibility, day dream payday, neuronal Play-Doh. Consciousness two scale: primary and secondary. NREM breakdance, minimal inhibition on fleek. PGO waves fine-tuned into something that puts me in the corner, in the spotlight, regretting my decisions.

I think, therefore I R-E-M, regardless of the fact that everybody hertz. Once nothing is real, everything is possible – the very thing that makes us human is replicated in dreamworlds and in real life via Humandroids.

I push those thoughts away on the back of a dragon, or inside the skull of a Steam Enforcer, or as I pummel the digital wall until my knuckles are smeared in blood – all for entertainment; virtual reality to distract myself from actual reality.

Fuggedaboudit.

Some artisanal, Thulean magic dragon cheese would go well with my whine right about now. Might as well embrace the suck and get on with it.

~*~

Rocket: Damn that’s a lot of Yoshis!

Mirror lowers over a herd of the kawaii-cute anthropomorphic dinosaurs. They panic and scatter as her shadow washes over them, and their cutesy booted feet kick up a ground blizzard of snow. It’s every dino for itself, and the slower, weaker ones are run over and trampled flat as their more survival oriented siblings claw them out of the way and make a beeline for the tree line.

Mirror flares, lands, and snatches up a couple of Yoshis like Soylent McNuggets from an eco-friendly, recyclable McStarbucks Happy Meal box. They don’t even make two bites apiece.

Frances Euphoria: That’s terrible!

I can’t see this action as much as I can feel it – my perch on her head transmits the basso profundo crunching, munching Yoshi maceration vibration from dragon skull to Quantum butt with THX fidelity and makes my teeth rattle to boot. She swallows, dips down for more.

Sophia cries out, “Don’t eat the Yoshis! They’re endangered!”

She levitates off Mirror’s head and a pink bubble forms around her as she floats down to the ground. She throws up some jive voodoo jazz-hands action and bubbles take shape around the rest of the Knights and lower us to the ground. “Enough, Droga!” Sophia says as she hovers above a pair of trampled Yoshis. “You shall not pass!”

Mirror crouches down ready to pounce, like an angry cat the size of a brontosaurus in front of a particularly annoying and self-important rodent. She clashes her mirrored teeth, grins, and spits a Yoshi boot complete with foot still in it directly at Sophia’s feet.

“I would pay good money to see Mirror eat her,” Veenure comments.

“I’ll double whatever you put in.” I mutter sotto voce.

Aiden leans between us. “If you’ll take Cyber Noir credits, I’d like a piece of that too.”

Rocket: Eat her! Eat her! Eat her!

Sophia: I’M ON COMMS TOO, YOU KNOW!

Rocket: ALL CAPS! ALL CAPS! ALL CAPS!

Always the diplomat and peacemaker, Frances Euphoria slowly and calmly approaches Mirror with her hand extended towards the dragon’s nozzle. In a quiet, gentle, soothing-the-large-dangerous-animal voice she says, “There, there, nice dragon, good dragon.”

Rocket: There, there? What does that even mean?

“Easy, big girl,” I tell my favorite flying reptile.

Mirror pulls back, gives me a bitter look. “These two are disturbing my meal, and I’m not a big girl – I’m actually quite petite for a dragon, and don’t you forget that.”

I give a deep and heartfelt sigh. “Let the quite petite dragon eat, Sophia.” One of the Yoshis unflattens itself, looks up at me and gives me a googly eyed smile.

“But they’re endangered!” Sophia splutters, stomps her foot, doesn’t budge.

“Sophia, get a grip. This is a make-believe digital world. Nothing is endangered, and even if these animals are endangered, they deserve to be eaten. Just look at them. This one,” I point to the nearest Yoshi, green with red spines on its back, “is smiling at me!”

Mirror pokes her claw into the Yoshi’s big googly eye and pops it.

Frances turns the other way; Sophia raises her hand to her mouth as her gorge rises.

Aiden rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and vamooses. Probably to conduct a little recon, but more likely he just doesn’t want to listen to any more of Sophia and her endless arguing. I can’t blame him; sure, he was my arch-nemesis for almost five-hundred and fifty days, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders and he’s a damn good wingman. Also, he doesn’t give me shit every chance he gets. Also, he’s not Sophia, so he definitely has that going for him.

The wind picks up, sending sugary snow into the air.

By the time it clears, another one of the Yoshis has righted itself and is sneaking away. Mirror sees to that by snorting silver liquid dragon snot out of her right nostril, and the Yoshi dissolves into a puddle of bubbling green goo.

“That’s horrible, terrible, vile! Don’t you two care anything about endangered species!?” Sophia huffs. “There are only so many of these left on Ultima Thule, and they have practically been poached into extinction. Hyperboreans pay top rupee for their tongues, and you,” she points at the dragon, “you should be a whole lot more sensitive to the plight of endangered Tritanian creatures. How many mirrored dragons were left after the DRAIDS epidemic?”

Mirror narrows her eyes and puffs a slow stream of toxic-looking burnt umber smoke that billows around Sophia, who levitates higher and does that supremely aggravating, passive-aggressive ‘cough-cough, wave-wave’ thing that non-smokers affect to indicate their disapproval and moral superiority.

Me: DRAIDs? Jeez, Sophia – can you just give it a rest? How ‘bout we just press on to the nearest village.

Rocket: There’s a village a few clicks – did I say that right? – away called Chachat. Apparently, it is an Eskimo word for swirling snow that drives you crazy. Chachat isn’t a village, it is a borough. All the boroughs of Ultima Thule are connected to the capital city, Athos. There are a few very small towns along the coasts, but many are abandoned and a few have less than ten residents. There’s a Thulean saying that translates too: all roads lead to Athos. I’m reading the Ultima Thule Wiki if you can’t tell!

“Mirror, eat to your heart’s content, eat until you can’t eat any longer. I’ll give you a ring soon.”

“A ring?” The dragon holds up a mirrored and clawed appendage. “How wonderful, especially if it’s an orc-flavored Ring Pop – the green kind. I love those!” She glowers at me. “And don’t you get me the red ones; they’re way too spicy for me.”

“You know what I mean. I’ll call you. Knights, we’re out.” With an intake of breath for dramatic effect, Sophia opens her piehole to no doubt further demonstrate her ecologically sensitive Thulean social awareness and I turn, frown, and point my finger right in her face.

“Enough. Don’t want to hear it; not listening anymore. If the dragon made of ones and zeroes wants to eat all the Yoshis made of ones and zeroes, let her – so what!”

~*~

The Dream Team’s über-educated, bleeding-heart digital do-gooder and friend of all Yoshis has her panties most definitely in a bunch. She huffs, pouts, sighs, glowers, stomps her feet and refuses to look in my general direction as we make our way into the forest, guided by her floating map, and Aiden, who’s giving us the best Cheshire Cat impression I’ve ever seen. He’s in front of us; hanging from a tree branch; perched on a rock ahead; peeking out of a hole in the ground; disguised as an anatomically correct snowman.

I feel the urge to speak just so someone’s running their yapper. “Who wants to give me the lowdown on what I need to know about Ultima Thule? I’m aware of the lay of the land thanks to Rocket.”

Rocket: You’re welcome, Q Beans!

Sophia: Please start reading the briefings.

“You killed a Thulean at the tournament,” Veenure reminds me. “This is their continent. It has a wintery climate, modeled after Canada. The chief developer was from Ontario, and she wanted something both frozen and lush, but not cold, although it appears to be cold.”

“That Thulean broad had it coming. She said some pretty choice words, if I recall. Called me a dirty goblin dildo, or maybe it was Gilbert Gottfried’s widow, or The Bride of Venturestein’s bastard offspring. Something like that.”

Keep the banter going – always a lighthearted way around some unnecessary tension. Of course, Sophia bites. “Correction, she called you a Muukhai jikh makh. I don’t know where you’re getting those other ones.”

“A filthy stupid dog,” Veenure translates, “possibly one of the worst disses in the Thulean language.”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” I ask both of them.

Nope, no response. Zero, zilch, zip – their blank expressions remind me of the fact I spent too long inside The Loop. Aiden gets it though; I hear him chuckle somewhere in the trees above us. I’m just about to comment on the detail – the Yoshi footprints in the snow, the brown pine needles, the snowdrifts surrounding the tree trunks – when Morning Assassin appears in front of me holding his Scissorsword in the ready position.

“We’ve got company,” he says over his shoulder.

~*~

Empress Thun’s Knights in White Satin get the drop on us.

There are three in total, which gives us an immediate advantage in numbers. They’re in vaguely homoerotic armor sculpted to resemble overdeveloped male musculature, and the transverse crests on their stylized Roman Galeas are stylishly color coordinated with their capes.

“The Empress is most displeased,” the presumptive leader announces.

“Yeah, me too,” I tell Richard the Lionfart. “I haven’t been happy ever since I laid eyes on your little brigade of POGs and parade ground soldiers.”

Sophia steps forward, shoulders me out of the way, and bows most humbly from the waist. “Please extend a sincere, heartfelt apology from me to the Empress. The decisions of my guild do not adequately represent my feelings. I tried to counsel them in this matter; our leader made the ultimate decision to reject the Empress’ more than generous offer.”

Dammit, Sophia. Why don’t you just flip up his armored codpiece and hum ‘God Save The Queen’ while you’re at it? I swear she throws me under the bus every chance she gets, and I’m not talking about Doc’s Proxima Airstream – in which my body is currently ensconced in the real world – I’m talking about a monster truck SUV with spiked tires driven by a beer-fueled redneck in a ‘Heritage not Hate’ ball cap with a rattail hanging down the back of his sleeveless Confederate Battle Flag t-shirt.

Level ninety or level thirty-five and a permanent position as the Empress’ gofer-bitches? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the math didn’t add up, so I went with King Coromon’s offer. Griffins, royal protocol, and Sophia’s sensibilities be damned.

“Alrighty then, let’s cut right to the chase,” I say as I step to the closest knight. I get right in his face, snort, clear my throat and expectorate a mucosal statement of opinion right between his digital eyes.

Frances Euphoria: QUANTUM!

Veenure: Quantum?

Rocket: Yes, Quantum! It’s an in-house profanity we use on our private channel because, um, the feds fine us if we drop the f-bomb.

Sophia: DON’T SPIT ON THE IMPERIAL GUARD! WHAT THE QUANTUM IS WRONG WITH YOU!?

Rocket: TIL – all caps means you’re shouting.

Little Sir Spat Upon removes his gauntlet, wipes my spittle from his face and flicks it back at me. Nope, he ain’t happy, but life’s tough, and then you die.

The trumpet sounds a fanfare and a 3-D roulette wheel with black and white pockets and a silver skull-shaped ball appears between us. A legend forms as it settles, indicating that white means turn-based and black means real-time. I had almost forgotten that the fighting in Ultima Thule was either/or, and I’m all grins when the ball finally lands on black.

~*~

Sophia pleads, “Please, please don’t fight with them!”

“This again? What is it with you?” I’m just about to equip my life vest, item 578, when I remember that Doc said it only works in the tournament. No matter, I go ahead and go with my tried-est and truest Tritania weapon, a gift from Ray Steampunk. The Buster Sword, item 572, appears in my hands, and not a second too soon. Sure, it doesn’t grow to epic proportions like my … um … Bustermarm – yeah, that’s it, but it ain’t too shabby in a little hand-to-hand.

The knight that I anointed with my salivary salutation thrusts with his frog-stabber and I parry with my buster. We’re real time now, so I activate my AA bar just as our swords connect. He disappears in a cloud of silver smoke and then there’s the wrong end of a blade protruding from my bread basket. My life bar drops 30%.

Morning Assassin leaps in, Scissorsword in hand.

He takes Sir Stabby’s sword arm off at the shoulder, which leaves the sword still sticking out of me. Got no time to see what the frails are up to; another Noble Knight is about to let go with some green-flaming arrows of doom. I equip my mini trampoline, item 460, toss it in front of me, springboard off the trampoline and open my arms wide in a flying bear hug o’ death. Ideally, I’ll skewer him and push the yard o’ steel out of my gut.

Whoomp there it is! I land on him and run him through and pin us together like NorK doggie-kabobs on a stick.

By this point I’ve already equipped my piano wire, item 248, and I’m occupied with taking the big schmuck’s head off when I catch Big Euphoria doing a cartwheel kick at the third knight – no make that the fourth. A quick glance around and I see that two more knights have appeared. I unstick myself from him, finish with the haircut a la rasoir nationale, shake the knight’s squash out of his helmet like low-sodium, reduced calorie Spam from a can, and add it to my own inventory list, item 580.

Sometimes intervention is the only diplomatic way forward. Scrolling through my list, I stop at item 68, my 100th anniversary Captain America Replica Shield. I hop to my feet and strike a heroic pose – always necessary – before I toss it edge-on at the Empress’ goomba who’s giving what-for to Veenure. The proto-vibranium alloy Frisbee o’ death takes him off at the knees, skips, bounces, and returns to my hand just as Veenure equips her stapler hands and staples the ever-lovin’ right out of him.

Me: These guys are a piece of cake, which makes me want to equip my hammered copper cake slicer, item 95.

Aiden appears next to me, his Scissorsword in one hand and his Slice Bang in the other.

Sophia: This is pointless! Stop fighting them! Look around you!

Rocket: Shit, she’s right!

Sophia: NPC Opponents are matched to our level, so the knights are level ninety now. If you knew anything about level ninety knights, especially ones designated as security, you’d know that they can multiply.

Two knights peel out of the body of the knight that just I piano-wired to death; the one that Aiden de-armed is nearly finished growing a twin; the hatchetman that Veenure filled with staples pushes himself to his feet and separates into two. More knights appear, regroup and surround us in a ring of pointy, stabby stuff.

He In Whose Face I Spit is the first to speak. “You can’t win and you will come with us.”

“I hate to give you guys the ol’ Syrian street bazaar treatment, but … ”

I scroll through my list behind my back; item 300 wraps itself around me – my suicide bomber vest with genuine, classic, untagged Cold War Semtex 1A. My shopping bag full of shrapnel and RKG-3s, item 170, appears over one shoulder and my frag grenade, item 80 materializes my hand. A fuzed stick of dynamite, item 339, forms between my teeth. For good measure, I also equip my pink, small-scale, saltwater croc Birkin bag filled with frag grenades, item 105.

Sophia: What the Quantum are you doing? STEAMBOY! Do not blow everyone up – I have a better idea.

Me: Yeah, don’t you always? You’d better make it quick, because if these guys take another step we’ll all go up together.

Sophia: Veenure, cast Seven Nation Army and use a spell booster. I’ll cast Obscure and we can cancel the battle.

Me: Cancel? The Knights run from no man!

Sophia: It isn’t running! It’ll give us a chance to regroup.

Me: At what cost?

Frances Euphoria: 10,000 rupees at our level. Chump change.

A quick glance to our rupee count – a cool half mil – and I’m reminded that while The Loop NPCs – aside from Aiden – appear to be useless in Tritania, someone is good at gambling, or more likely, robbery, burglary, extortions and shake-down. My money is on Irish Shorty and Pip. Put the card sharks in the kiddie pool and watch the chumfest.

Me: Fine, have it your way. Do it.

Veenure: Done.

Our Dark Mage’s eyes go green as she throws her jazz hands in the air. The ground shakes as the spirits of fallen warriors appear. While their forms may be nothing more substantial than ectoplasmic flatus, they’re all accoutered in fantasy Viking gear – horned helmets, fur vests and leggings, swords, shields, and axes. The shades of the departed engage Empress Thun’s lackeys as a thick black smog forms around us. It’s a Loop-like moment of deja-vu all over again; it’s as if I’m wrapped in a blanket of toxic, gritty effluvia from the industrial zone upwind of The Pier.

Ms. Magical Doctor Know-It-All Spoilsport clamps her canoe-paddler on my elbow, and I know that my fun is just about to end. Regardless, I manage to toss a couple frag grenades before the battle is canceled.

Chapter Two

I almost spawn on top of an overturned table with its legs sharpened into spikes. The table sits in the middle of an astounding collection of semi-identifiable trash, of which broken Horse Piss Flagons, Irn Bru bottles, bent cutlery, and Kentucky Phried Wombat & Chips wrappers are heavily featured. There are bloody footprints on the ceiling, no glass in any of the windows save one, a section of floor has been ripped up for a game of Murder in the Dark, and a most disgruntled-looking sheep in makeup, high heels and lingerie noshes Phrosted Phrooty Pebble-Os from an upturned armored brassiere of heroic dimensions.

“There’s ‘is sodding Lordship now!” cries Burly.

His butt is firmly planted on a loveseat that is the only piece of reasonably unfouled and semi-unbroken furniture in the joint. On one knee he dandles a willowy, wasp-waisted elven woman of the ebony variety; she in a golden G-string and a pair of golden, tasseled pasties. A green-skinned, girthy sea-cow of considerable heft and volume does not so much dandle from his other knee as spill over and engulf it. She is clad only in golden ring that pierces the septum of a nose that would be more appropriate on the creature most closely associated with bacon … mmm … bacon.

El Jefe de los Lobby Boys releases a long, curling belch, uncorks a fifteen second, two octave gaseous eructation, and remarks, “Better out than in, I always say!”

The green prosti-potamus snorts and giggles and queefs. The elven dame pinches her nose shut and slaps him on the chest; he dumps her off his knee and pinches her butt when she squeals and scrambles to her feet.

“Up an’ at ‘em, Long Liz. Ol’ Burly’s whistle needs wettin’; be a lamb and fetch us a pint, will ye? Get one for me ol’ guv’nor as well, right?”

“I’m not a serving wench and you’re a bloody pig!” She bares her chompers – sharp, pointy, nasty things and hisses at him.

“No, that’s this one.” He rumbles his knee to make Ms. Piggy bounce.

“Muukhai jikh makh!” She produces a green-handled blade from somewhere within the ample folds of her fleshy self and drives it into Burly’s gut. With a surprisingly graceful economy of motion, she stands and grabs his hair, twists his nose and gouges his eyes in the finest Moses Harry Horowitz tradition. The not-a-serving-wench hooks pinky fingers with her and they disappear in a sparkly flash; I notice a sizeable chunk from our guild’s bank account disappear with them.

“Told ye they was some bad news, ye toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert – but no-o-o-o, whoever listens to the kilted Wally? Whuddus he know?” Scotty complains. He’s leaning against the wall, wearing his sporran for a hat. There’s a French fry up his nose and vile, chunky stains are all down the front of his fishnet wife-beater. His kilt looks like it’s been through a wood chipper with missing teeth; there are different sized bite-marks on his legs, and his left combat boot is AWOL – along with his left big toe.

Sophia: They’re terrible, TERRIBLE.

“Bloody Hell, that stings a bit!” Belches Burly, and then daintily brushes the chunks from his Mondegreen Hotel T-shirt. He pulls the pig’s sticker from his abdomen and examines it. “Oi! Lookit this thing! Sodding Flabulena bleedin’ well stuck me with a bloody knife!”

“Wotta whingin’ wanker! Call that a knife? Me Ol’ Gran’s sgian-dubh is bigger than that! Now this,” the digital son of the digital Highlands says as he produces an oversized digital dirk, “this is a knife!”

“Right then! You’ll not mind if I do this then!” With a flip of the wrist, Burly sends the jade jaded jade’s jade blade spinning straight at Scotty’s heart; with a negligent flick of his oversized dirk Scotty deflects it out the window.

We’re renting this space, so it’s technically in the OMIB, but our landlords have given the grounds outside the guild hall depth and dimension. There’s a courtyard, willow trees, birds and butterflies fluttering in the air, as well as a statue of a young maiden sitting by a fountain.

Scotty limps over to the window, brings his good foot back and kicks the mound of dirty clothes beneath it. Irish Shorty sits up, his face bruised and bloody.

“Speckled Son of a Whore, you guys look like the first day of the Somme,” I tell them. Veenure looks for a chair, doesn’t find one and cops a squat.

“You ‘eard the man! Wakey-wakey, hands off snakey! Everyone up! We’ve ‘ad bugger all to do today and you’ve ‘ad plenty of time to rest!” barks Burly. The first response to his cheery eye-opener is a traditional bowman’s salute, raised from a pile of splintered furniture, kegs, women’s clothing, severed parts of mythical creatures and a well-gnawed griffin’s skull. Bucket hat stands from the pile, falls back down and rolls to his side.

‘They’re worse than college students! They’re just terrible,’ Sophia moans.

His signature headgear is crafted from world appropriate chainmail over an iron frame. He takes it off and scratches at a scabbed-over burn mark on the side of his skull.

“They weren’t like this at the Hotel, were they?” Frances steps over Bucket Hat’s mess and helps the Quiet One out of a barrel.

“‘Erself wouldna let us.” Bucket Hat comments.

I do a quick headcount: Burly, Scotty, Irish Shorty, Bucket Hat, the Quiet One …

‘Where’s Pip?’

“Oi, Princess! ‘Ware the Hun in the sun!” Pip plummets from the chandelier and misses me by a mile. His trajectory does, however, fall within Aiden’s sphere of immediate influence, and good ol’ Mrs. 10’s Bouncing Baby Boy roundhouse kicks Pip through the only unbroken window.

Pip sticks his phizog back in through the window, gives a snaggle-toothed and sheepish grin, points to the still-snacking, lingerie-clad Ovis aries and exclaims, “Don’t ye believe a thing that wooly bugger tells you – that critter lies!”

It’s at this point that I’ve seen enough.

“What the Hell is wrong with you people? Even Dirty Dave doesn’t live like this!”

“Aye, we’re missing Cyber Noir we are,” mumbles Scotty, as he pulls the French fry from his nostril, examines it, and chomps it down with every sign of enjoyment. “Bloody wankers and la-di-da poofters in this dragon shite turd of a world.” He produces a ructus that rivals Burly’s earlier effort in volume, duration, and amount of greenhouse gases released. “Where be the r-r-r-real men?” he asks, rolling his ‘r’ with a fine flourish. “Where be the lads who’ll stick ye in yer gut over a footy match and then stand ye a pint afterward? Not this lot ‘o Billy-be-damned, buggerin’ bampots prancin’ around with their soddin’ snickersnees and leather teddies!”

“I’m pretty sure Burly just got shanked, so there’s your blade in the gut,” I remind him.

“See you, Jimmy!” he throws his hands up. “Ye call that a shankin’ do ye now? ‘Ave you ever ‘ad a Dundee daggerin?”

‘Can’t say that I have.’

He pause, raises his bushy red eyebrow in my direction. “Can fix that now. What about choo, Maleficent?” he asks Sophia. “I’ll carve ye a new frown.”

“I’ve had enough.” Sophia makes a Hook’em Horns hand symbol and a jolt of electricity oscillates between her two fingers. With a blinding flash, a silvery sphere forms in the center of the room and blue ripples of energy discharge from it. I seriously expect a Terminator to step out and pummel some Brit Assassin ass, but instead the blue ripples clean, straighten, organize, and repair everything they touch.

“Damn! That spell beats Mickey with a magic mop bucket any day!”

“What are you referencing?” asks Sophia as her wave of energy beats and sweeps and cleans. “This is the Hooverville spell; the one that cleaned up Valhalla at the turn of the eon. The place used to be a shantytown.”

By the time I’m done trying to think of a First Depression-era comeback, the place is cleaner than Mr. Clean’s colon after a five gallon scrubbing-bubble turbo-enema. All the filth, all the damage, all the Jeffrey Dahmer-esque souvenirs – gone. The furniture is neatly arranged and highly polished; the air is gently scented and dare I say, sparkling. The sheep has been washed, dried, relieved of her party outfit and tastefully accoutered with a pink ribbon around her neck – and a diaper. She looks even more disgruntled now that her armored brassiere full of Phrosted Phrooty Pebble-Os has disappeared as part of general clean-up.

As a general rule, sheep don’t snarl. This one does however, when she catches sight of Pip, and she scrabbles for traction as she charges. She gets up enough steam to take him clean off his feet when she butts him in the bollocks, and then bites him in the bum when he rolls over.

“B-a-a-a-h!” she exclaims.

Pip picks himself up off the floor and observes, “Worth it – totally worth it!”

“That spell would be super-useful in the RW,” I say as I take a seat at our ornate, highly polished, fancy-schmancy Spamalot-style round table. The centerpiece is a tremendous gaudy silver thing that looks like a Mexican Carnival ride. It’s decorated with unicorns and cherubs and our little forest pals, and it sports various arms with baskets full of fresh fruit – an epergne, Sophia informs me before I can open my skull cave to ask – and a magic levitating scroll and goose-quill pen transcribes our words as we speak.

“Things need to be more organized,” Sophia says, “so I’ve placed a Wall Eye in our guild hall to record what happens at all times.” She glowers at the UK Assassins as an eye with cartoon movie star lashes opens up on the ceiling.

The eye blinks twice and locks on Bucket Hat.

He appears almost as disgruntled as Pip’s fleecy prom date. “‘Ere, now Lady Di – what do ye care what we get up to when we’re just ‘avin’ a bit o’ fun? What about yur Second Amendment? Or is it the Fifth? Ye know, the one about life, liberty and the pursuit of hooers? Bloody killjoy wankin’ Yanks; think you can stick a camera anywhere without so much as a by-your-leave. Well God Save Clone Elizabeth II.2, and ye can WOOPA me rosy red arse!”

Sophia flicks her finger at him and his lips zipper shut. He continues to protest, but it mostly comes out as a series of indignant, muffled grunts and snorts.

Burly still has both hands clapped over the hole in his breadbasket, and he laughs so hard at Bucket Hat’s predicament that he almost puts one of his bloodied hands on the table for support. Sophia glares at him. “Don’t do it.”

“You and your lot, as you call them will, from this point forward, keep the guild hall clean and behave like sensitive, mature, responsible, adults,” Sophia orders. “No more fights, murders, sex workers, property damage or mysterious stains. I will remove the Wall Eye when I feel you are ready, and not a moment before.”

“Oh, is that bloody well right, your ladyship? Well yur no in charge of us, ye jumped-up, bossy bint!” says Scotty as he adjusts his kilt and idly fingers the hilt of his dirk. “Ye can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do, yur la-di-da ‘igh and mightiness!”

Sophia taps her nose and Scotty punches himself in the face.

“Whaddya call that? Me sweet lil’ baby sis packs more of a wallop than – OW!” He bashes himself again.

“Pfft! Like kisses from me best girl! That all ye got, ye – OOF!”

You’ve got to admire his sheer bloody-mindedness; every time he spouts defiance Sophia taps her nose and he deals himself another hammer hand in the beezer. It’s like a train wreck, back when trains still wrecked – you don’t want look but you can’t look away. Finally – finally – after he’s pounded himself under the table he gasps, “Right. Surveillance – good ideer. I, for one, welcome our new Wall Eye Overlord!”

By this point, Burly has carefully wadded up his T-shirt to staunch his wound and takes great pains to not drip blood on anything.

“Keep the place clean. If you lot of lazy louts want to have your little Boyz Gone Wilde parties,” she curls her lip at them, “or whatever other revolting and uncivilized activities you wish to engage in, do it outside.” She smiles and a new door appears at the end of the room. I catch some pixie dust swirling in the air outside the unbroken windows. “In fact, there’s now enough space out there to build your own little clubhouse, if you’re so inclined.”

“I am, miss,” says Pip as he heads to the door, a pick ax appears in one hand, a shovel in the other. “One Brexit coming right up!” The sheep, clad in a safety vest and yellow hard hat follows him out with a self-satisfied air.

“You lot can do whatever you’d like in our new backyard.”

The eye on the ceiling closes at the snap of Sophia’s finger.

~*~

“So we got some time to kill,” I tell the members who have sat down at the table. “An hour to be exact.”

“I gotta bounce; I’ll peace out Zedic before I fully log out.” Veenure lifts her hand and a golden box appears. She types in a few things and her body dematerializes from the bottom up.

“I should check on him too,” Sophia says.

“Before you do,” I tell her, “I have a little something you can help me with that’ll pass the time.”

‘What’s that?’ Sophia asks as she sits.

“I got to thinking – dangerous, I know – about what you said earlier about trying to use Dolly’s NVA seed.”

“What do you mean use? Where are you going with this?” she asks.

Aiden, who was watching Pip, Bucket Hat and the Quiet One outside, appears by my side.

“Crowd around me why don’t ya,” I tell him with a grin.

Frances gives me an uneasy look as I scroll through my inventory list. I stop at item 556, Dolly’s Seed. Almond-shaped and glittery, I hold the seed in the air like I’m trying to get a blessing from Sol Invictus. “Well?” I ask Sophia.

“What I told you was theory. Further, I didn’t say anything about using the seed in a non-origin world.”

I lower my hand, and I’m just about to return the seed to my list when Scotty steps up. He points his finger towards me, about to say something, and the seed lifts into the air. His eyes flash orange as the seed vibrates inches away from his finger. Aiden lifts his hand and the seed floats over to him.

Again with the orange eye flash.

A scroll forms in the air next to Sophia, words and equations paint across it as she paces back and forth. Suddenly, the scroll drops and shatters like a Steuben glass egg when it hits the ground. “I get it! I get it!” she’s sufficiently excited to forget to do her levitating thing; instead she bounces up and down on the toes of her ruby slippers. “The rest of you, all you Cyber Noir NPCs, GET IN HERE!”

Sophia swipes her hand and the round table disappears. She approaches the floating seed, its radiant light adding a tint of gold to her features. Aiden’s hand is still out, his finger inches away from the seed.

“Touch it,” she tells him.

His face blurs as soon as he presses his finger the seed. It looks like a color vacuum, the seed leaching light and texture from Aiden’s upper body.

“Does it hurt?” she asks.

He shakes his blur of a face slowly, which causes loose ends of color to filter off around his shoulders.

“Good. Keep it there and the rest of you, gather around!”

Scotty cracks his knuckles and steps over to the seed. His form morphs as soon as he touches it, the blurred vacuum treatment obscuring his visage.

“Where are the others?” Sophia asks. “The one with the wastebasket hat and the other two?”

“Outside!” I run to the door. “Hey arseholes, get in here!”

Bucket Hat, now in an orange vest a pair of thick leather work gloves, frowns miserably; he’s just equipped a jackhammer and is seconds away from starting it up. The Quiet One stands in front of him. The back of his vest reads Safety Inspector and there’s a clipboard in his hands.

Pip looks up from a hole that’s already several feet deep. His face is smudged with dirt, and there’s a yellow hard hat on his noggin. “Who’re you callin’ a bloody arsehole?”

“Dammit you three, quit playing around, this is important!”

“Fine, fine.” Bucket Hat reaches his hand into the hole to help Pip up. Halfway up, he releases his grip and Pip falls backwards.

The Quiet One tsk-tsks as he notes this on his clipboard.

“They’re coming,” I tell Sophia as I return to the group. “Hopefully.” I move past Frances, shoot her an excited look. She nods back with a cracked smile.

“You too … um … ” Sophia turns to the assassin’s go-to leader.

“Burly,” the big man says. “You can call me by that, or by me full name and title, Commander Lord Admiral Alistair Fothergill Brokenshire.”

Sophia gets behind him and pushes him towards the seed.

“The short one too.”

Burly begrudgingly gets in the circle and Irish Shorty steps up next to him. Four NPCs now, their forms and features blurred by the floating seed.

“Bollocks,” says Bucket Hat as he enters. “We were just about to start blasting.”

The Quiet One shakes his clipboard at me as he passes. He’s still wears his hard hat, which is a couple sizes too large for his head. Bucket Hat, Pip and the Quiet One do the seed touch thingy and I squeeze my hands in anticipation of what may happen next. I’m like a kid on Christmahanukwanzivus Eve.

“Still nothing,” says Sophia. Her scroll reappears and more calculations spread across it. “Six NPCs – seven with Aiden – isn’t enough.”

Algebraic equations fly off her scrolls, hit the ground and spray into globs of ink. Fresh mathematical calculations form and cascade across the scroll.

“Another one,” she mumbles, “we need another NPC! I think we’re close!” Sophia floats up into the air and settles. “Where are your friends? Another! Another!”

“Friends?” Burly’s blurred face asks.

“The other Cyber Noir NPCs!”

‘Busy,” says Aiden, “But I know where to get one.” He takes his hand off the seed and his facial features return to normal.

“Need some Riotous?” I ask him.

“How’d you know?”

“It’ll be here when you get back.”

He disappears in a flash.

“Do you mind telling me what’s going on here?” I ask Sophia.

“At its core, what we may have here, notice I said may, is a simple binary relation between two, or as it is right now, several in-game objects. Consider it a type of Proxima cumulative hierarchy, where each ur-element carries with it a portion of the world seed, free of paradoxes and–”

“–Jeez Louise, care to simplify that, perfesser?”

Bucket Hat snorts. “You’re a bloody buffoon if you can’t understand axiomatic set theory!”

Pip snickers. “Get a load of Billy no-mates over ‘ere!”

I’m just about to equip item 334, my teacher’s ruler with a sharpened end, when Sophia says, “Seven NPCs isn’t enough; it doesn’t create a natural balance.”

“Well there are six now,” I tell her.

“If six was enough it’d be working now!” she huffs.

Rocket: Math, Steamboy, simple math.

Frances Euphoria: Is this is a good idea? There’s a lot of data that suggests that tampering with these things can create OMIB black holes.

Sophia: It’s not tampering; it’s a controlled manipulation for the sake of experiment – it’s a risk we have to take. Well, I guess it isn’t a risk we have to take, but this is seriously the coolest thing we’ve done all week! Not many have manipulated NVA Seeds alongside core NPC derivatives. If this works, there may be a way to rebuild destroyed worlds.

Me: Like The Loop?

Sophia: We’ll see. This also might be how Strata came up with the source code bomb. Again, Frances, totally worth it.

Frances Euphoria: Tampering.

~*~

Aiden appears about a minute later holding Dirty Dave by the scruff of his neck. The best gunrunner this side of Samuel Cummings looks plumper than usual. Color has returned to his face, and the raisin-colored bags normally under his eyes have all but disappeared. He’s in a sleeveless tunic, his porcelain skin covered in spit-and-pencil prison tats, scars and pock marks. The newest tattoo, in Thulean no less, runs from elbow to wrist.

“Davey ol’ friend ol’ pal ol’ stick-in-the-mud!”

He sniffs, gives me the hairy eyeball. “Aiden promised a spoonful,” he says.

I dangle the bag above his head and Dirty Dave jumps to take it from me. He falls flat on his face, scrambles to his feet and slips again due to the fact that the heel is missing from his shoe.

Sophia slaps her hand against her forehead. “I don’t have time for this.” She twitches her finger and Dave lifts into the air. His arms come up and he’s forcibly rammed into the other NPCs.

“A spoonful!” he wails.

“Here goes nothin’.” Aiden steps in and also touches the seed.

The NVA seed sparks and fizzles and is suddenly illuminated from within. The light flares, becomes see-through-your-eyelids bright. I equip my Trinity Nuclear Test wraparound glasses, item 56, and I’m about to equip my XL bucket of cheesy garlic Alamo Drafthouse popcorn, item 44, when a silver halo forms around the NPCs, expands, and blasts us backwards.

I hit the wall like a sledgehammer and my glasses fly off my face and shatter when they hit the floor. Smoke billows from a crater in the center of the room, sufficient to knock visibility down to end-of-your-arm distance.

There goes my ticker, there goes my nervous system, there goes my ability to stand upright and think straight.

A form stands at the center of the crater, like Venus on the half shell.

Chapter Three

I run over to her and swoop her naked body into my arms. It’s her, really her, and the look on her face when she sees me – it’s her!

“It’s me, Doll. It’s Quantum!”

A quick scroll through my list and I equip my Italian cashmere blanket, item 148. I cover her front with it just as Aiden appears next to me.

“It’s really her,” he says, his eyes reflecting tears.

Sophia takes a step into the crater with a Feinberg in one hand, a tricorder in the other and a fiercely intent expression plastered across her mug.

“What’s the big idea?” I shout at her, as she elbows me out of her way.

“Getting stats,” she says. “What? This is important.” Sophia frowns at the approaching NPCs. “Am I the only one around here who cares what makes this possible?”

“Dolly,” I say, trying my damndest not to turn on the waterworks. I cut my eyes at Frances, who does not look happy, muster a smile and turn back to Dolly. Aiden holds a chair for her, and as we guide her into it the blanket shifts and reveals some boobage. I glare up at the ceiling. “Don’t even think about it, Rocket.”

Rocket: No worries, Q-Bear. I already got my shots. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Just kidding, I’m doing some research. Also got a private chat opened with my lady in Steam.

Frances Euphoria: You’re supposed to be working!

Rocket: When am I not working? I average 100 hours a week!

I ignore their ensuing argument as I look Dolly over. She has the same black bob, the same Bettie Page look on her face, the same cheekbones, the same bodacious curves.

Tunnel vision like I’m being fired out of the Mother of all Cannons, I focus solely on Dolly, my heartsong, the joy of my life for two subjective years. I can’t help but tear up. None of this matters, I remind myself, all of this is in your head, IT ISN’T REAL, but – it’s real enough.

“It’s me,” I tell her, and everything around me no longer matters.

~*~

“Who are you?” Dolly asks, looking at me intently. “Where am I?”

“Sophia, what’s going on?” I ask, hands on knees now as I continue to marvel at The Loop’s NVA Seed. Aiden is next to me, the other NPCs still gathered around. The only one not in attendance is Dirty Dave, who lifted the bag of Riotous from me during the ensuing madness. He’s on the opposite side of the room sitting back to the wall with his legs spread apart, his face and chest Juggalo-white with Riotous, his status indicator flashing imminent demise red. If it were any other time, I’d equip my Arby’s In-Store Automated External Defibrillator, item 114, but now ain’t the time and our number one fiend is going to have to stay dead for the time being.

“Why can’t she remember anything, Sophia?”

“Who are all you people?” Dolly plucks the Feinberg from Sophia’s grasp, examines it, and crushes it to powder in her fist.

Sophia grunts. “Careful with the goods!”

“It’s us, Dolly,” I tell her.

The blank expression on her face is like a battering ram to my heart. I feel jolted, jilted, jostled, junked. Here I am on the verge of bawling like a sissy because the light of my life for so damn long don’t know me from Little Johnny Bigpants on the back of the milk carton.

“Come on,” I tell her through gritted teeth. “Snap out of it, Doll.”

Frances clears her throat. “I think I’m going to check on Doc.”

She raises her hand to logout and Dolly disappears, the blanket collapsing onto the chair. She reappears in front of Frances, still in her birthday suit.

“I like your hair,” she says as she reaches out to Euphoria.

“My hair?”

Dolly lifts one of the Frances’ red curls. Suddenly, her hair is also red, the exact same hue as Frances’ sans the curls. Sophia is floating over to them when Frances logs out with a frown. Methinks I’ll be sleeping on the couch tonight.

“Fascinating,” Sophia says as she lands next to Dolly. “It is like she’s resetting continuously.”

“It’s no’ fascinating!” Scotty cries, shaking his fist like Groundskeeper Willie. “Bloody fix her, ye hoighty-toity she-devil!” Pip and the Quiet One back away, not sure of what to make of the scene.

“What’s your name?” Sophia asks.

Me: What the hell is this? Her name is Dolly! DOLLY!

“How shall we address you, NVA Seed?”

Dolly tilts her head to the side as she takes Sophia in. Soon, her ears are as elven as Sophia’s and she’s grown a few inches taller.

Rocket: This is crazy!

“It’s a positive feedback loop!” she says, not the least bit impressed by Dolly’s Mystique impression. “I recently read a paper about parasitic oscillation variances in NPC procreation that led to the extinction of an entire race of bearded Kvothes on a small floating island off the coast of Polynya.”

“Yeah, Blah-Blah-Blah, Dr. Big Brain! Get to the point!” I notice the hurt expression on her face and I apologize. “This is just really intense for me!”

Rocket: EVERYONE YELL AT SOMEONE!

Burly plows through the other assassins. He places his bear mitts on Dolly’s shoulder and gives her a long, hard stare. “Snap out of it, love,” he whispers. “Pull yourself together.”

Dolly’s eyes flash orange as she does her Witchblade act. Her cans morph into razor-sharp blades of sinew and bone. Several more form on her back, growing as they bend over her shoulders.

“Easy then, love,” Burly says. “No reason to skewer an old mate … Ah, Clucking BELL!”

The witchblades hack into Burly, lift him off his feet and shred him like a Cuisinart. Bucket Hat races over too late to save Burly. He takes a witchblade under the chin and out through the top of his chain mail chapeau.

Clucking Bell indeed! I’m just about to scroll through my list to find something non-lethal-ish to subdue her when Frances Euphoria gets on the horn.

Frances Euphoria: Sophia, Quantum – you need to logout now!

Sophia: Have you checked the feed since you left? We’re a little busy here!

A few of Dolly’s witchblades pierce through the air and head straight towards Sophia’s mug. Her scrolls zip around her, taking the brunt of each witchblade.

Frances Euphoria: We’re in Texas and there’s a terrible storm. Doc thinks we’ll lose the connection! We’re not plugged into a landline; we’re on a satellite connection. Get out of there!

“Not now!” I shout as I dodge another of Dolly’s witchblades. The damn thing opens up like a sea lamprey with whirling teeth that strain to take a chunk out of yours truly. I dodge like a blood-doped Russian gymnast on crack as I flip and roll and leap and twist around the room to avoid the other assassins, who are also scrambling to avoid Dolly and her legion of pointy, razor-edged serpentine weapons.

I’m seconds away from equipping my Dr. Cyclops’ shrink ray, item 43, when another message from Euphoria flashes across my vision pane.

Frances Euphoria: We have a code yellow! Code yellow!

Rocket: Code yellow! They ain’t lying!

Me: All right, TSA, settle down.

Sophia: Code yellow? To be continued!

Sophia lifts her finger and the golden box appears. She’s out in a jiffy and not a moment too soon – Irish Shorty’s severed torso slams into the place where she was just standing.

“Fine, fine. Get a handle on this!” I lock eyes with Aiden, who’s across the room doing some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon moves to avoid Dolly’s attacks.

Even in the midst of all the confusion and his contortionist movements, he manages to give me the thumbs up.

Chapter Four

Deep in the heart of Texas riding the lightning like Metallica, and I’m not talking about DJ Ride the Lightning! In an unrelated note, Holo Lars, or Larsogram, recently threw a temper tantrum about DJ Death Magnetic releasing free stems of Metallica’s folktastic 1997 album, Acoustic Metal. Talk about some good coding, though; even the holograph version of the bucket-banger is a rich Jobby!

I digress.

Think of every simile and metaphor you’ve ever heard to describe thunder and then make them all Texas-sized and right on top of you, in the middle of an artillery barrage while a giant uses your head to pound a bass drum the size of Oklahoma. Doc’s sealed and heavily insulated RV vibrates and buzzes like a hooptie aeros with the ten-thousand-dollar sound system. I feel it in my chest, my eardrums, my DNA.

I sit up in my bunk, remove the NV Visor and place it on a hook hanging from the wall. Off come the haptic gloves and I give my peepers a good rubbing for a moment. It’s always strange coming out of a Proxima World; I liken it to waking up from a restless night’s sleep or a prolonged nap. That sense of where the hell am I is ever present, as is a slight sense of delirium.

You’d think I’d get used to this shit by now.

“Is Texas always like this?” I ask as soon as my feet are on the ground. I look towards the main cabin and catch Doc taking a calm sip from his beer as Arnie drives. He dropped out of the aeroslane as soon as storm started.

Sophia sits in her normal spot, using her lab coat as a blanket. Another thing I’ve noticed about logging out – sometimes I’ll have a rehab chill running through me. Other times, I’ll be hotter than a two-dollar pistol.

“No, sometimes the sun gently shines, the humidity’s about fifty percent, the temperature’s seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and beauteous bikini babes bring you lobster kebabs and umbrella drinks whilst you sit ‘neath a beach umbrella and twiddle your tootsies in the surf.” He shakes his head in disbelief, “Of course the weather is like this all the time – this is TEXAS, smack-dab in the middle of Tornado Alley.” As if to further make his point, lightning washes the interior of the Miss Sally Jupiter with too-bright glare, followed by more Götterdämmerung thunder and the vehicle yaws in the crosswind. Good thing we have Arnie at the wheel – there’s so much rain I can hardly make out the taillights of the car in front of us. It’s a slimy rain too, the type that puddles up and stays, regardless of how hard the windshield wipers slice at it.

“Day-um, it’s a rainin’ goats and llamas out there!” Arnie says in his good ol’ boy patois. “Whoo-hee-boy, thems some big ol’ critters too. Better get to building that Ark you keep talking about, Doc.”

“The Ark is to keep everything out, not invite them in. Aside from you, Sally,” he coos to his service goat, “and a few choice critters back in Gun Barrel City, and Arnie and Arnette.”

I cock an eyebrow. “What about Mrs. Doc?”

“Pfft! Who do think decides whether or not to let me back in?”

Arnie silently nods.

“Can we keep our voices down for a minute?” Sophia rubs her temples.

Doc snorts, looks to me, nods and finishes his beer. “We? What, are you French? You got a mouse in your pocket? What’s with this ‘we’? You know, Dr. Wang, it would be to everybody’s benefit if you could just maybe dial the bitchy princess back a bit, at least until we get to the motel, which won’t be long now. Can you do that for me, Doctor?”

“Motel?” I ask. “I thought we were going to your place?”

“Why would you think that? Did I say that?” he asks. “Well, Gun Barrel City is my place, or at least the surrounding area, but you three will be staying at a motel for the night. It ain’t too shabby; not as good as the place back in Denver, but the breakfast is better. At least the bacon is, anyway. They don’t have pancakes either; they have a waffle press instead.”

“That’s fine by me,” I say.

“Frances and I can order something from a drone.” Sophia closes her eyes, opens them a few seconds later.

“Let your hair down a little,” I tell her, “I mean fro.”

She puffs out her hair. “You know I can’t eat food like that.”

“Not even with your old pal, Quantum?”

“And me,” Doc says, “while I won’t be staying at the motel, I will be joining you for breakfast. Already cleared it with the owner – he sold me a pair of llamas a few years back.”

“I’d love to see your place, Doc.”

“No doubt. No offense Quantum, but no.”

“When are we going back to Baltimore again?” Sophia asks.

Doc laughs. “You and your French mouse can go back anytime; Arnie’ll be more than happy to drop you at the Greyhound station in Terrell – there’s two of ‘em.”

She gives a heartfelt and theatrical sigh but says nothing.

I open the fridge and reach for his last Shiner Bock. “Do you mind?” I ask him, waving the bottle in his direction.

‘By all means,” he says, “plenty more at the house.’

The sky continues with the 1812 Overture as I make my way to the back of the RV. Frances is crouched in front of the skip box, checking its connection. My eyes jump from her to Luther Godsick. He’s got a blanket over him and respiratory equipment strapped to his face. With his NV visor on, it looks like he’s wearing some sort of designer pollution mask.

“How is he?” I sit in one of the fold-down seats at the foot of the bed.

“Fine,” she says, not making eye contact with me.

Lightning flashes again.

“Hopefully, we won’t lose connection,” she says. “If we do, the skipbox will try to connect remotely to the closest tower it can find. It uses a different bandwidth than a normal rig.”

“So he’ll be all right?” I ask.

“He should be. The skipbox can connect to a cell tower up to a thousand miles away. If that doesn’t work, it switches to a private satellite connection.”

“Good,” I tell her, “We need to keep him alive. Can you imagine the shit we’d be in if he went into cardiac arrest or something?”

She shakes her head. “Let’s not even go there.”

~*~

Gun Barrel City doesn’t have much more than a Dairy Queen and a mom and pop tool supply shop. There’s a convenient store called Bubba’s which doubles as a supermarket flanked by a roadside ice machine that reminds me of a zamboni. Maybe there’s more to the city – hard to tell with the rain – but if there is, it ain’t much to look at and I get the feeling that’s why Doc likes it.

“There it is,” Doc says, “The one Star Inn.”

“That’s the name?” Sophia lays her head back on the seat rest, exposing her neck as she stares up at the ceiling. I can’t tell if she’s tired, annoyed or both, and frankly, I don’t give a damn. We’ve been caged together since we left for Colorado – it’s about time for ol’ Quantum to exit stage left before he gets snappy.

“Sure is, darlin’. Used to be ‘The Lone Star Inn’, but the ‘L’ got blown off in the tornado of 2033, and the owner never replaced it. And get that there look off yer face. It’s clean, quiet, friendly, relatively vermin-free, passed its last health code inspection with only a minimum bribe, and it has an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.” Arnie pulls into the parking lot, a weathered, pot-holed, awkwardly sloped lot with ridges in the macadam. He hits a pothole bigger than a moon crater and I nearly lose my brewski. I catch it just in time.

“Damn! Arnie, remind me to check the tires when we get to the house.”

“No prob, Doc.”

Me: Does that mean: Arnie, remind me to remind you to check the tires when we get to the house?

Frances Euphoria: Maybe.

Me: You feelin’ all right, Dollface?

Frances Euphoria: I’m fine.

Me: Why the short words? Why the pouty eyes?

Frances Euphoria: I’m fine.

Me: Sure?

Frances Euphoria: Sure.

The streetlamp casting a marmalade glaze on the parking lot flickers off and on, giving depth to the rain. I watch it for a moment, even after Doc has kicked open the door and told us that we’d better get inside before the rain picks up; even after Sophia stands, mumbles something about how she already hates Texas; even after Frances exits and Arnie moves to the back to keep an eye on Godsick Jr. while we check-in.

Doc pops his head back into the RV. “You comin’ or not? ‘Cause you can’t stay here!”

~*~

Knock Knock. Who’s there? Quantum. Quantum who? Wouldn’t you like to know, Bub!

A good or bad joke would do little to cut the tension I sense as I stand in front of Frances’ door, thirty minutes after we’ve all settled into our rooms. Doc’s long gone and Rocket has been quiet on his end too, likely with his Steam gal. I’ve cleaned some of my post-dive stank off through a good ol’ hot shower and I’m not gonna lie, I’m feeling pretty dapper even though I’m still wearing yesterday’s shirt.

The door handle clicks.

“What’s cookin’ good-lookin’?” I ask, my eyes on the latched chain. It ain’t quite a chastity belt, but the message is clear as day.

Frances is in a terry cloth bathrobe and boy do I wish this were a steamy start to a late-night Skinemax flick. She smells fresh as a bouquet, her short hair dark and damp and molded to her head, and her skin pinkly fresh. I’d let out a less-than-subtle ‘hubba-hubba’ if it weren’t for the cold glare she’s currently giving me.

“Can I come in?”

“I ordered you some new clothes,” she says, “they’ll be here later tonight and you can pick them up in the morning.”

“Is that your way of saying no?”

“What, that not clear? Okay – no. I feel like being alone tonight,” she says.

“Want to hit up a Proxima World? I’m sure Ray Steampunk would be happy for the update. Rocket’s probably there too with his Proxima gal.”

She raises an eyebrow at me. “Really? If I’m not going to let you in and haul your ashes – is that the proper Loop phrase – haul your ashes, you want to go Proxima Diving to Steam instead? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Oh, this is really not going well.

“ … Um … yeah. Could be fun, better than Pee-Wee’s Playhouse World, anyway. So yeah, Steam. I wouldn’t mind putting the kibosh on some marauders. Seems like a fun thing to do before catching some real world Zs.”

“Why don’t you just come out and say it?”

Fire in the hole! The thunder is loud enough to make me wonder if I do indeed have PTSD. “Say what?” I ask after it has settled.

“You want to log in and check on Dolly.”

She just read me like a book, a picture book, even. I figured there’d be no hanky-panky tonight, but I didn’t expect her to hit nail square on the head. Stings too.

“Am I right?” she asks.

“You aren’t wrong, but there ain’t a politician out there that would say this means that you’re right in any sense of the word. In all seriousness, you got me. Screw Steam, and yes, I’d like to hit up Tritania. Come on already, wouldn’t you be interested to see what’s happening? I’d bet my bottom dollar that Sophia is already logged in taking notes in preparation for her next PhD.”

“Not as interested as you are, apparently, and since when do you care what Sophia’s up to?”

“Jeez Louise, you’re taking this all the wrong way! What about the science? The discovery … um … aspect of all this.”

“The discovery aspect?” She rolls her eyes, takes her time doing it too. “Look, I know you have feelings for her, so don’t insult my intelligence with the ‘oh, it’s for science’ bull poopy. You want to go, then go … just go, but I’m not going to act like I’m all okay with it or salve your conscience about it.”

“She was my sigoth for two years!” I say just a wee bit too loud and whiny. I glance down the hallway to see if anyone is privy to our little hallway argument. No doors open, but I do hear a door lock.

“Eight years is more like it.”

“Two subjective years, we’ve been over this before.”

Slam! goes the sound of the door right in my face.

I raise my fist to knock, stop, and reconsider. It’s time to cut my losses and beat feet in retreat, Pete. We’ve all been cramped up together for several days now. Maybe a little break ain’t a bad idea after all.

~*~

“Who is it?” I ask in my most intimidating voice.

I am just about to settle into a dreamworld dive when I hear a knock at the door, and not your ordinary knock – this is a knock that means business. I stand next to the door with my swordstick as I recall Rollins shooting through the door like he was Ice Cube in the 2048 NWO Zombie movie.

I unsheathe the blade.

An envelope slips under the door; the sound of retreating footsteps in the hallway makes me breathe shallowly and stay quietly in place. Once I’m reasonably sure whoever’s gone, I reach for the letter with my swordstick’s blade. It doesn’t feel great bending over as it reminds of my age and the issues with my spine. I recall Zedic saying something to me about a surgical procedure. Nope, not gonna do it. My hardheadedness is going to be the death of me and I’m all right with that.

Once I secure the letter, I return to my bed and open it.

Sure, it could be a Ted Kaczynski special delivery, but it’s too light and too small for explosives. Unless it’s chock full o’ anthrax, I’ll probably be okay. I open it as soon as I’m seated on my bed; the groan that follows can probably be heard three doors down.

Mr. Quantum Hughes,

The United States Civil Monitoring Service has recently updated a draft resolution regarding the modification of a life chip while under the supervision of a/an:

1) FDA Monitor;

2) PTSD monitor;

3) Teen Pregnancy Counselor;

4) Involuntary Gender Reassignment Counselor;

5) FAA Sponsor;

6) Ethnicity Clarification Coordinator.

As your FDA Monitor and your PTSD Monitor, you leave me no choice but to escalate your case for your own safety and well-being and the safety and well-being of those around you. Due to the fact you have blocked iNet communication access with me, you will receive another hand-delivered message in the morning outlining the next step regarding the process of case escalation.

I look forward to working with you to resolve your psychosocial and nutritional issues.

Yours sincerely,

Evan

FDA/ PTSD Monitor # 1351885

“Mother PUS Bucket,” I mutter as I shred the letter into little, little pieces.

If this were The Loop, I’d equip my pair of SIGs, item 60. I’d carjack an aeros taxi and make a beeline to Evan’s place of employment. It’d be all mayhem, madness, and murder he wrote by that point, and the mystery wouldn’t need Jessica Fletcher to solve it. No run and hide like a big sissy-chicken whiny-crybaby either; the coppers would find me at my favorite flophouse, sleeping like a baby on a demolition charge the size of a VolksAudi, with a smile on my kisser and the deadman switch in my fist.

Yes officer, I’ll come quietly – KA-BOOMSKI!

Okay, maybe I do need some help.

Chapter Five

I awake at the ass crack of dawn with the klieg light of a sun doing its best to burn out my rods and cones. Should have stapled shut the blinds, chased the vending machine Soy-Lentil-Sea Kelp microwave burrito with two bottles of Extra Strength Nyquil PM Plus and duct taped the pillows around my squash. I don’t need to check the weather to know that it’s already a scorcher out there. Davy Crockett could have said, You sir, can go to Hell, and I’ll go to someplace even hotter, and everyone would know where he was talking about.

The NV Visor is my lap, a single haptic glove on my hand and a trail of flaky, dried sleepy drool down the side of my face. I try to remember logging in – all I can remember is tearing my FDA monitor’s letter to shreds, the remnants of which are still scattered on the floor. And damn is this chair comfortable, the likely culprit for me crashing in la-la land like a rented Third-World airliner before I got the chance to dive.

Doc: It’s 0634, you were supposed to be here at 0630.

Me: On my way.

A business-like knock at the door and here comes another love letter over the threshold.

Mr. Quantum Hughes,

The below list contains actions that you must take to de-escalate your case. Please start with first action point by registering at an FDA counseling service in your area. Please be advised that you must receive a minimum of 100 (one hundred) hours of documented counseling to move onto the next action point. You are required to use your own funds to pay for any services related to this plan, but these payments may be used as an income tax offset if you file form 1299-FU with your 2059 taxes.

Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to provide tax advice.

Alternatively, you can attend next week’s Coping and Proactive Leadership Forum in Washington, D.C., which will take place at the Henley Park Hotel. Doing so will waive the requirements of your action plan and allow me de-escalate your case.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Evan

FDA/PTSD Monitor #1351885

~*~

“So what happens if I just keep ignoring his messages?”

There are waffles galore, bacon, sausage, hash browns, scrambled eggs, fruit, cereal, juice and coffee. I’ve got some of everything except fruit and cereal, which just take up valuable waffle space. The thought that I may have to attend an FDA sponsored Coping and Proactive Leadership Forum is enough to put me off my feed, just a bit.

“Don’t worry about them.” Doc stuffs an astounding quantity of waffle into his … waffle hole, and politely gestures with his fork to let me know that he’ll finish in a moment. Once he does, he throws back his coffee and sighs. “Mr. Nahasapeemapetilon always makes his coffee way too strong here, but I don’t actively dislike it.”

“So you like it.”

“Didn’t say that. Don’t you listen?”

I look over to the door, where Arnie is having a bit of a chinwag with the motel’s owner, an Indian man in his late fifties who’s wearing a guayabera, a pair of baggy khakis and black sandals. On the wall above them is a hand carved sign that reads, No refunds. Next to it is another sign that reads We Don’t Call 911 over a pair of crossed AK-102s.

The one Star Inn, in Gun Barrel City, Texas. Go figure.

“Why shouldn’t I worry?” I ask Doc.

“Did this letter mention anything about negative consequences, fines, incarceration, shunning, official disembiggenment, pee-pee whackage, that type of thing?”

“Come to think of it, no it didn’t.”

“That’s the beauty of all this,” he says as he sloshes more maple syrup from his private reserve onto his waffles. “They have no punitive authority, but they do have the ability to annoy the living shit right out of you until you give in and do what they want.”

“How do they justify that?”

Doc rubs his fingers together. “Money, honey. The centers that run these places have large government contracts in key congressional areas. It may be Humandroids and AI via iNet, but I guarantee you there are real humans there overseeing everything. In fact … ”

I catch something flash on the inside of my eyelids. Doc finishes the message before I do.

He drops his fork and stands. “Arnie, Code Blue!”

~*~

“Sophia! Sophia!” I bang on her door even harder. Damn, the lady sleeps like a resting statue with noise cancellation headphones on.

Doc: Where are you? Why aren’t you logged in yet?

Me: I’m getting Sophia!

Doc: What’s she doing?

Me: We need her to get into the OMIB!

Doc: Aiden can take you there. Log in now. I’m logging in from the RV.

Me: What about Frances?

Doc: Knock on her door on your way back to your room.

I walk as fast as my two little legs can carry me. Luckily, the hallway isn’t too long, and luckily, I was able to finish my first cup of coffee, giving me just the boost I needed. Doc’s right – it is too strong.

“Come on, Frances.”

Knuckles meet door and boy do they sting after I get to pounding. I pound again and again, switching to the flat of my hand.

Me: Wake up! I’m logging in. Something’s up with Zedic!

The door is yanked open and I nearly fall inside. I catch myself just in time, nothing graceful about it. She rubs the sleep out of puffy eyes and gives me a look that could neuter coyotes at a hundred paces.

“What? Whaddya want now?” she asks again, yawning.

“Zedic is in trouble and I’m trying to round up the team! What the hell’s gotten into you anyway? You’re usually up by now.’’

“No, I’m not.” I see a box of wine near her bed. I’d laugh if I weren’t in such a hurry to log in.

“Damn, Euphoria! I didn’t think you had it in you.”

“Shut up,” she says as her cheeks grow red. “What do you care, anyway? You’re not the boss of me.”

“Well, throw some water on your face and order and HangOverOverseer, or whatever you call it. I’m logging in!”

She hooks her thumb over her shoulder. “Do it here, I have two NV Visors.”

~*~

Feedback Loop ramble yada yada yada. Science talk scions balk RPG please. Spiral existence, worlds of difference. No time for a senseless rhyme.

I awake on the other side of life in the Knights’ courtyard. No UK Assassins to be found, but good old Aiden appears in a flash, his weapon drawn.

“Just kidding,” he says as he lowers his Scissorsword.

“Where’s Dolly?” I ask.

“The boys took her to town to get some new clothes and to get her pissed.”

“Why do they want to annoy her?”

“Sometimes I forget just how Yank you are – drunk, not annoyed. Burly thinks it’ll help her remember who we are.”

“That’s the most British thing I think I’ve ever heard of!”

“Sophia was here earlier too, running some tests, but I haven’t seen her since.”

“We need to get to the OMIB. Now.”

He nods. “Zedic?”

“You got it.”

A flash of light indicates another player is spawning. The tactical vest I get, the half-goat body I do not. It’s Doc, and his avatar is listed as a White Warrior, which is definitely the most Aryan thing I’ve seen all day.

True to his nature, Doc is decked out in projectile weapons – mostly crossbows – which hang from just about every place they can hang from. There’s a big ol’ crossbow on his back (I might have to ask him to trade for that one), two clipped to his belt, silver gauntlets that clearly double as medieval bolt-flingers and a pair of knives strapped to his lower legs. He’s level ninety, just like the rest of us, which answers my question regarding if he’s in our guild or not.

“What?” he asks as he shuffles in a little circle. His hooves strike the pavement with a castanet clatter.

“Really?”

“Is this about healing? Sure, my subcategory is white magic, but I chose it for the stat multipliers, which becomes an option after a player hits level 30. Sorry Charlie, no healing from the kid – Ha! I kill me sometimes!” he snorts.

“That’s not at all what this is about. Your avatar is a faun? That’s what it’s called, right?”

“It’s called, this is my avatar and don’t give me shit right now because we need to figure out what’s going on with Zedic! Besides, fauns are babe magnets, except for that creepy one in Pan’s Labyrinth.”

Frances spawns; even her avatar seems a bit wobbly. “Sorry,” she says as she straightens her skirt. She catches Doc’s attire, but keeps her trap shut. Smart girl; maybe I should be more like her.

“Well what are we waiting for?” he asks.

A red sphere forms around us and our avatars dematerialize.

Chapter Six

A giant black cloud hovers over Zedic. I’m talking huge, yuuuge, large enough to block out the stars and the million Milky Ways that make up the OMIB sky. Jagged lines of electricity connect the sinister black cloud to Zedic, pulsating as they move between the two masses. He’s in a bad place, his life bar bouncing back and forth between one and two percent. He tries to crawl away and the bolts of electricity blast into him and slam him to the non-ground.

Doc gets it before anyone else can figure out what the hell is going on. “Something keeps reviving him before it not-quite-kills him.”

Aiden and Frances advance on the nonground towards Zedic. He looks to her, his face a mask of pain.

“It’ll overload his NV Visor! Zedic! Zedic! Can you hear me?” she yells.

I equip my Golden Goosinator hack. “Fight?” I call to Doc.

“Fight what? It isn’t a battle,” he says. “It’s … ”

A flash next to Doc sends him stumbling away. He has both crossbows aimed by the time Sophia steps out of the light.

“Oops! Sorry! I fell asleep in the shower!” Her mouth opens wide as she takes in the chaos.

Aiden reaches out to touch Zedic; a dendritic jolt of energy sends him flying ass over teakettle, but cat-like as always, he lands on his feet, ready to bounce back in.

Sophia goes all Jean Gray Dark Phoenix. She rises into the air as ripples of white flame spread down her arms. Her hands come together and she fires the magical cruise missile at the cloud and …

Nothing. The cloud continues to hover over Zedic, healing and killing him at the same time.

“What do we do?” Frances cries. “Doc, can’t you heal him?”

“I’m not that kind of White Warrior!” he shouts. “I’m a stats boost guy!”

A huge blast of wind lifts us high into the air and smashes the five of us together. We drop to the nonground like cinder blocks. I cover my eyes as a translucent, golden triangle takes shape above the black cloud.

“Incoming!” Doc jumps to avoid a lightning ball. On the recovery, he comes up arm gauntlets locked and loaded.

Two human forms take shape within the translucent triangle. One is small and hooded. The other is a mahoosive man-beast, easily two and half times my size.

“It’s her,” I hear Zedic scream. “Her!”

~*~

A trumpet sounds and the battle begins.

Sophia lifts into the air. “I knew it! I knew it! You … you … bitch!”

More white fire twists over Sophia’s body and shrinks into a ball between her hands. She kneads it there for a moment, small portions of the fireball flaring up into a purple tail whenever her hand passes over the ball of energy.

She releases the fireball. It hits the triangle protecting the two figures and dissipates into the OMIB.

The hooded figure moves closer to us, is now twenty feet out at the most, and I’m as angry as I am shocked as I am confused to see Veenure, her eyes shining green and the tattoos on her face alight.

Doc doesn’t give me a chance to offer a few choice expletives.

He kicks off the ground, both his arm gauntlets aimed at Veenure and her bulky, shadow-clad companion. The gauntlets spread up his forearms and bubble as they form a pair of hack blasters. He discharges a blast that would make Samus Aran stop and marvel and takes a big hit in his life bar for doing so.

Doc might as well be shooting a dollar store water pistol at Veenure’s muscled Reapermate.

The blast hits him, sizzles for a moment and evaporates. The beefy bastard is in an executioner mask with a stylized Punisher skull stitched on the front. A choker collar around his neck is attached to a thick chain that scales down his body and into the septum of a ridiculous, skull-shaped belt buckle. A pair of Black daisy dukes barely cover his bulging buttocks and he’s barefoot, his legs thickly covered in hair.

I’m just about to comment on his Bruce Banner shorts when he latches his fingers together and stretches them in front of his body, cracking them as he shows us his palms.

Counter attack!

The Reaper comes down hard on Doc with an impossibly large ax; at least I think it’s an ax. At his blurred speed, it’s impossible to tell. The only thing I have to go on regarding the weapon type is the arc of the blade.

“I’m out.” Doc’s life bar flashes red and he bails.

“SHIT!” I’m just about to scroll through my list and equip my Reason Railgun, item 459, when the floating shitbirds move even closer to us in their golden triangle.

“Where’s Luther?” Veenure asks, her voice booming across the nothingsphere. The executioner Reaper crosses his arms over his chest and veins pulsate on his arms.

Sophia grabs my arm. “We need to logout!”

“Logout? Are you serious? You want to finish this now,” I tell Veenure and her button man, “we finish this now.”

“Quantum.” I turn to find Frances wide-eyed. “We need to do this, now, before it’s their turn. She’s stronger than us and she has tech that … ”

“What about Zedic?” I ask, anger rising in my chest. “We can’t just leave him here! He’s one of us, dammit!”

Sophia wipes a tear away, raises her hand to logout.

Veenure says, “Last time, Quantum Hughes, where’s Luther?”

My hand lifts into the air on its own volition.

“Dammit! No, Sophia! NO!” I catch Zedic out of the corner of my eye, his avatar smoking and twisted, his life bar at zero. I try to pry my hand away from Sophia’s control; all I can manage is a digitus medius manus, which is jammed forcibly onto the logout button.

~*~

I cry out as soon as I awake in the real world.

The NV Visor is still giving me an eyeful of colored lines subtle bursts of light as I rip it off. I’m just about to mutter some things I’ve been meaning to say about Sophia when I notice Frances pacing, speaking rapidly to Rocket.

I get a big whiff what all the fuss is about once I hear a single, three word phrase from Frances’ mouth. I’m on iNet before I can stand.

Rocket: Zedic is flatlining! Flatlining! SHIT! The ArachnaMed is trying to revive him, Frances! What do I do?

Frances paces and speaks, her words appearing instantly in the message pane. Did not know one could do that, but that doesn’t matter at the moment.

Sophia: He can’t be dead! There’s just no way. I’m logging back in!

Rocket: He’s dead; I’m telling you he’s dead! Paramedics are on the way. What the hell do I do? Shit! I didn’t sign up for this!

Me: Yes, you did. Deep breaths, kid, and stay focused.

Doc: He’s not dead yet, but panic and he will be. There’s nothing we can do from here anyway, except wait and see if the paramedics can revive him. What’s their ETA?

Rocket: Checking the GPS. Less than a minute.

Doc: Let the machine do its job. I’ve seen the ArachnaMed do improbable things.

A video feed appears in Rocket’s message box. It shows the ArchnaMed hunched over Zedic, its respirator attached to Zedic’s face. The body of the machine lifts and two extensor arms position defibrillator electrodes on his chest.

“There must be something we can do!” I shout to Frances. “Is Sophia in?”

She nods without making eye contact with me.

“This is bullshit, all of it. ALL of it. I’m logging back in with Sophia, dammit!”

~*~

Feedback nightmares, static lies. From the logon screen I select our guild, where I assume I’ll find Morning Assassin. I call out for him as soon as my body finishes materializing.

“No one’s here.”

The voice startles me.

Dolly lies on her back on the guild table and her red hair hanging off the side. She’s in a tight tunic and a pair of leggings, no shoes and a single leather strap around her ankle. She sits and I swear I see a twinkle in her eyes as she recognizes me.

A smile forms on her face.

And then it’s lost – the smile, the look of recognition on her face, the softness in her eyes as she takes me in. Zilch, nada, jack squat. She’s back to staring at me like I’m some sort of nothin’.

“Dolly, it’s me,” I tell her. ‘I’m going through some real shit at the moment. I wish … I wish you could help me.’ I choke back a sob. Looking at her confused face burns a hole through me. I suck it up, swallow my disappointment.

Sophia alights, settles on the ground next to me. “I think I’ve figured out what is going on with her.”

“Don’t you ever, ever, force me to logout again!” I point my finger at her and hold it there. “And why did we logout just to log back in again? What kind of message does this send to our enemies? What if they’re still there?”

“We can argue about this later,” she says, “for now, we need to help Zedic. Be prepared for anything.”

Everything drops out of sight. Cue the stars and the vast galactic wasteland. No black clouds, no Benedict Arnolds parading around with Harley Quinn pigtails – all that I see is Zedic’s avatar lying in a heap.

Sophia sits, places his head in her lap.

“Crazy, this is just all crazy, looney tunes, loco,” I mumble as I pace like Frances. I can’t look at Zedic; I can’t watch someone I actually liked die. And I know it is coming. And I hate that I get that sense, that I’m predicting his death before it happens. If he doesn’t die, he’ll be a vegetable at best. Say it ain’t so.

“We aren’t safe anywhere in Tritania now, aside from our guild and places with visitor restrictions, like Athos.”

“She can’t get in our guild?” I ask. Looking at her does little to quell my anger.

“No one can; you have to be a member of the Knights to spawn there, and I’ve revoked her membership.”

Good ol’ 247 appears in my hands, my tommy gun, and I unload two magazines into the ether. It’s loud, brash, and I unload another for good measure. I finish, equip my pair of Halo M6Cs and do the same. It feels good to do that, but it doesn’t nothing for the anguish welling inside me. “COME ON!” I scream. “Show yourself!”

“Quantum.”

“They’re here, I know it!” I tell Sophia. “I’ll find the bastards.” I brandish my Reaper’s skull, item 551, and on my noggin it goes. The colors invert to reveal that the stars are connected by grid lines.

“If they are, I will force you to logout again.”

“Dammit, Sophia, don’t you dare!”

She looks down at Zedic. “Look what they did to him. Look!”

Both Zedic and Sophia are star children through the lenses of the Reaper masks, their bodies outlined in digital nebulas, but her form is outlined in green and his in red. I tear the mask off and throw it as far as I can.

“What do we do?” I ask as I drop to my knees in front of Sophia.

“There’s nothing we can do.” She feathers her fingers across his forehead, stifles a sob. “I had two colleagues die in a Proxima World, a couple of years ago.”

“How?”

“Faulty NV Visors. They were testing a new molecular machine and there was more synaptic action than anticipated. They knew the risks, just like Zedic. These things aren’t toys. This is more than a game.”

“You’re telling me. I’d say it is even more than a game, bigger than a game. Out there I’m a cripple with little or no skill. At least in here I have some skill.” I shoot her a grin to see if she picks up on my joke. She doesn’t, so I continue. “How did they die? Was it from some type of NV Visor overload or something?”

“People think that, but actually, it’s cardiac arrest that gets most people in a Proxima World, or I should probably say the Real World. You know what I mean.” She wipes a tear from her elven face, continues to cradle Zedic’s head. Her voice softens as she says, “A faulty visor can cause the heart rate to skyrocket and cause cardiac arrest or trigger a fatal cerebral hemorrhage like the Reapers do. There are other physiological effects that cause Real World death from Proxima induced causes, but they’re not as common as the main two.”

“What about Zedic?” I ask.

“We should go back to the guild and check. We won’t get any info out here.”

‘It just feels bad leaving his body here.”

“Sometimes a person has to admit defeat. There was … no point in coming to the OMIB, nothing we could have done. I knew it, but I suggested we come anyway. Sorry about that. We’re not helping him by staying here with his lifeless avatar.” She curses under breath. “I know that sounds harsh, but you get what I mean. Come on. Let’s get back to the guild and check with Rocket. We can logout from there.”

~*~

We spawn in the guild and Sophia immediately gets on the horn to Rocket.

Sophia: Update us.

Rocket: I’m so sorry, Sophia.

Me: Zedic’s dead, isn’t he? Just give it to us straight.

Rocket: Yes. I’m sorry.

Sophia drops her head into her hands.

“Shit,” I say as I collapse into a chair. “I’m going to kill him. I’m going to kill Strata Godsick for this.”

Chapter Seven

I feel an arm gently slide around my shoulder. Motion in my peripheral vision; I turn my head and it’s Dolly as I always see her – long, long legs, tight red dress molded over dangerous curves, silky dark hair in a pageboy bob.

“It’s you!” I tell her as I slide my arm around her waist.

She pivots out of my grasp, keeps her hand on my shoulder to keep me at arm’s length and looks at me intently.

“You recognize me, don’t you?” I ask. “You know who I am.”

Time stands still as I wait for her reply. The pause that follows goes one and on and on. Feedback roars in my head; I push back against it and hold it at bay.

“No. Who are you?”

She steps back and away.

“No, you HAVE to! Don’t do this, please! PLEASE!” I catapult up from the chair, grab it and sweep the epergne from the table in a shower of fresh fruit and gaudy silverwork; smash the chair into the tabletop, grab another and smash it too. I try to overturn the table, but it’s too damn big and heavy. “It’s useless, all of this is USELESS!” I’m just about to equip – dammit no! Aiden has my chainsaw! – when Dolly’s form flashes. She’s back in her medieval garb, her hair Frances-red. Was she even wearing her old get-up before or did the mind just see what the heart desires? Am I slipping?

I grip her shoulders and pull her in. She arches her back and meets my gaze with eyes full of nothing. “Oh, Dolly, please! Don’t you remember anything about us?” I might just as well be addressing a display window femmikin, for all the response I get. “You have to recognize me, you just have to!”

“No. Who are you?” she finally asks.

Not even ‘no, sorry’ – just ‘no’. “Dolly, snap out of it!”

“Quantum.”

I drop my hands from her shoulders and sigh miserably.  “I know, Sophia, we should logout. This is too much, Zedic, this, whatever this is, Veenure. My brain hurts; I need a break, a vacation, the stiffest Jack and Coke money can buy, a three-day weekend in the Poconos.”

Dolly leans against the side of the table. Her fingers contort as she forms a large blade. Silver ripples of symbiote run up her arm and cover her face to form a fearsome Samurai’s somen with Statue of Liberty spikes and a piranha-toothed grill.

“Easy, Doll,” I tell her.

A flash of light and the Chef, the Saucier and Jim the Doorman materialize along with Mierda the poo fairy. Dolly locks eyes on the golden crop dusting sprite and licks her lips like she wants a little Sylvester and Tweety action.

“We’ve got the Chronoton!” the Chef announces. In the process of pointing his finger in the air, he purposefully flicks a good-sized dollop of fecal matter onto my left stomper. “Sorry about that!” he says with a devilish grin. “Mistress Dolly,” he takes off his toque, holds it over his heart and gives her a courtier’s bow. The Saucier and Jim the Doorman follow his example. Dolly’s witchblades settle back into her body and her face returns to normal.

The fairy comes in for a closer look at her. “Hello ImmiNPC.”

“You guys are late!” I growl. If we were in The Loop, these three would already be goners. Scratch that, four. I’m not above taking out a pixie! Shoulda, coulda, woulda – I know – but today is just not the day to show up late.

“I said two or three days.” Miedra stops inches away from my face. “What part of ‘two or three days’ did you not understand?”

The golden Thulean tattoos add glitter to her every movement as she slowly, painfully, jerks and tugs a huge sack of metal out of thin air. The sack hits the ground with a clatter and clank. “This stuff isn’t easy to find, you know.”

“Zedic is dead,” I tell them, like it matters to those who only exist in a dreamworld. “He was one of my partners in the RW. If you had hurried, he’d still be alive now. Tell me again why I shouldn’t murdalize all four of ya.”

Mierda queefs gold dust and uses it to propel away from my snarling face. “There’s an old Fecal Pixie saying that goes, ‘dead isn’t half bad when life isn’t shit.’ I hope that helps some!”

“Keep it up, Stinkerbell,” I mutter as I wave away the cloud of gold dust.

Sophia waits for Dolly to pass in front of her. My main squeeze for two subjective years gets on her haunches in front of the bag of Chronoton and starts going through it, arranging the hunks of rock by size.

“We could still make a Reality Splitter,” the Dream Team’s poindexter finally says. “If Chrono is still with us.”

“Screw him. We have Dirty Dave.”

“Dave isn’t bad, but Chrono may know more about working with this material. He seems easier to manage too.”

I turn to her. “Are you kidding me? Dave is an NPC; he can tap into a wide spectrum of metallurgy knowledge. Look, Sophia, I just want to logout and spend the rest of the day trying to wrap my head around all this, from Zedic to the NVA Seed going through a bag of metallic butt-nuggets.”

The Saucier cries, “Butt-nuggets? Bon dieu de bon dieu!”

“It is-a beautiful. A-BEAUTIFUL!” The Chef’s exaggerated Mario accent makes my trigger finger itchy. “A-one of a kind!” He kisses his stained and malodorous fingers.

Mierda drops to Dolly’s shoulder and sits with her left leg crossed over her right knee. “I’m sure this human of yours has an RPC somewhere. All of you commoners do.”

‘A reborn player character?’ I look to Sophia. “Does he?”

“We never talked about,” she says, “if anyone knows, it’d be his husband.” Her breath catches and she chokes back a sob. “It’s like he’s here and he’s not here. I feel like I could just logout and catch him as he gets out of the vat next to me, but I know that’s not the case. I know that he’s gone and part of me doesn’t want to logout, to face it.”

“I’m right there with you, sister.”

She laughs through her tears. “Ha! You as my brother, imagine that. We would have killed each other by the time we reached puberty.”

“Yeah, probably.”

She lifts her hand to logout and I do the same. “Just so you know, I was right about one thing.”

“Just one thing? What one thing was that?”

“About Dolly.”

I sigh and lower my hand. “Look Sophia, I’m not going to ask fourteen questions just to find out what you’re talking about. If you got something to tell me, tell me.”

“I spent quite a bit of time working this out last night. As I predicted, Dolly purposefully modified her code to prevent info dumps. By doing so, she’s placed her algorithmic DNA, Digital Neuronal Autoconstruct, in a positive feedback loop. Think of it like this: A produces more of B, which produces more of A, which produces more of B, and so on. However, each time this happens, something is stripped from the original A. My point is: she’s only going to get worse. And I think you’d be happy to know that she’s actually fighting it; she’s actually trying to break free of the loop that she herself created. So it’s a positive feedback loop.”

“So she’s resetting herself?”

“Yes, to prevent infodumps.”

I feel tears come and I fight them away. “And you said she’s trying to break free of the loop?”

“It seems that way.”

“My God, do I know that feeling. Why did she modify her code?”

“That I do not know. It seems like she was trying to forget something. That’s the only reason I can think of as to why she’d do this.”

~*~

I got memories of sitting in the Mondegreen’s restaurant waiting for Dolly to appear. The rain lashes at the window; the thunder is a low grumble in the distance. Aiden is dead in my hotel room; today I caved in his skull with my Vulcan Lirpa, item 421. The Assassins are splattered in the lobby; I caught them off guard with my Birkin bag filled with frag grenades, item 105, and almost lost a thumb in the process. Jim the Doorman is dead at the entrance of the hotel – I ran him over with my Golf Wang golf cart, item 104, which took a couple of passes because he kept trying to crawl away.

It’s what I do; it’s who I am.

I sit down and poof, she’s there with her cute accent and her apron cinching her waitress’ uniform in around her waist. Maybe I’ll even step into the kitchen to off the Chef while I’m waiting for my food to arrive. Hell, the ground could rip open and Bill Z. Bub could fly out, gunning straight for me with his pitchfork. I’d tell the red-bellied bastard to come back after breakfast and set a bear trap when he does. No mortal should try to best the devil on an empty stomach.

“What’ll it be, puddin’?”

“The usual, Doll. Extra bacon this time, and bring two beers. I feel like celebrating.”

“What’s there to celebrate?” she asks, smacking her gum.

“The fact that you get off in a few hours. One of the beers is for you.”

She winks, I nod, and we both know that I’m putty in her fingers.

The rain falls like angry bullets from the sky;  the grit in the street turns to mud that’ll take the shine off your wingtips in no time, the air is tainted, the water poisoned; the yeggs with stolen bean shooters lurk in the shadows; the gumshoes double-cross you the moment you turn your back – Damn, I miss The Loop.

~*~

Life ain’t peachy and life ain’t fair. Frances is still pacing when I log out, her footsteps audible as she strides across the carpet. I keep the NV Visor on for a moment, watching as the Proxima company logo disappears.

“I can’t believe it, none of it,” I tell her. “Every time we get a leg up, something brings us back down.”

“Tell me about it. I’m still getting live updates from Rocket. He’s chilled out a bit, but not much.”

“Where’s Doc?”

“RV, I think. No, Rocket, do not tell them that!” A dubious look spreads across her face. “Listen, what I want you to do is … ”

I press the NV Visor off my forehead. It’s an older visor, at least older than the ones I’m used to using. Modeled after the first Oculus Rift, the headgear is black on black on black with the famous elongated O across the visor. Oddly enough, I wasn’t allowed to have an Oculus Rift as a kid. Hippie parents – peace, love, Lowe Tech and all that. That didn’t stop me from starting a federal team dedicated to virtual worlds. Go figure.

Commando Cane in hand, I slick past Frances and into the hallway. It feels weird to move so soon after diving, but I do, and I ignore the little bit of nausea. I round the hallway, pass a fake plant with leaves thickly furred with dust, hit the double doors and enter the lobby. The Indian owner of Gun Barrel City’s best little flophouse in Texas doesn’t even give me the courtesy of a quarter-smile.

I’m through the front door and instantly regret it; it’s about a thousand degrees out and humid enough to backstroke in. I’m perspiring like a punctured porcine before I’m even halfway to Doc’s Airstream. I raise my fist to knock and the door pops open.

“Dayum, Quantum!” Arnie says. “Wadn’t trynta knock ya off balance there, pardner. Well don’t stand out in th’ heat! Getchur butt in here!”

The smell of barbeque tickles my nostrils. Sweet and tangy with a hint of smoked mesquite, my mouth waters instantly.

“Cooking some sauce,” Arnie says as I enter. “It’s always in the sauce, always. Slow-cookin’ I might add.”

Doc sits at the table in front of a holoscreen that wasn’t there yesterday. Sally is in her Service Animal vest and goat diaper, and has her head in Doc’s lap.

“I’m old school,” he tells me as he taps on the monitor. The split screen shows the Dream Team Headquarters live feed on one side and FBIIG obfuscator extraordinaire Todd Solon on the other.

“Hello, Quantum,” my lawyer says.

“Hiya.”

“I was hoping to discuss your case with you today, to give you an update,” he says, “but it seems as if more pressing matters have arisen.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Well, I’m off for now. I need to meet with Mr. Woods to discuss the documents Zedic signed when he joined the Dream Team.”

“Look, before you leave, I got a question for you.”

“Yes?” The video feed freezes and starts up again.

“Did Zedic have anything in his will about being an RPC?”

“I’m not at liberty to answer that question.”

“So no?”

“Goodbye, Quantum, Doc.”

“So a firm no then?”

“See ya, Todd.” Doc powers down the holoscreen and gives me a look. “You really don’t listen, do ya?” He takes off his hat, runs his hand through his brush-cut salt-and-pepper hair. “What’s up? Why aren’t you diving?”

“Where’s Luther?”

“I asked you first.”

“I need a break,” I tell him flat out. “It’s just too much – Zedic, Veenure … Dolly’s digital amnesia or whatever the hell she’s got. Some type of feedback loop, or something. And Doc, I was thinking – we need to secure Luther. Veenure is looking for him, and I got a feeling she’s close to getting him. The Reapers, RevCo, they’ll come after us, after you.”

“Gee whiz, MacArthur – secure him – do ya think? Good thing I got you for tactical and strategic planning; I was just gonna check him in here under his own name and bill it to RevCo.”

Arnie snorts in the kitchen. Doc removes his glasses and massages his temples. “Sorry Quantum; don’t mean to jump on ya like that. I need a nap and big mug of warm OvalKwik and I’ll be peachy keen. Luther is fine, at an off-site, secure location, and it’s better that you don’t know where.”

“But what if they come after you and Mrs. Doc?”

“Why would they? How would they know to? You know me as Doc Paulson with the Dream Team; here I’m somebody else – even my DNA’s different, and don’t ask how. Mrs. Doc and I are a just a couple of fat old military retirees who raise geese, goats, llamas and phorusrhacidae – the smallish ones, not the ten-footers.

“But we’re talking about RevCo here, they’ve sent assassins before.”

“Yeah? And how did they do? Hell, you got one of them just out of eight years in the vat, which seriously, if it hadn’t happened in real life and I knew the guy it happened to, I would have called bullshit on that. That’s why I can’t watch movies, you know, all the Hollywood ‘look at how cool I can shoot’ or ‘watch me walk away from a mahoosive flaming explosion’ crap really grinds my gears. Mrs. Doc refuses to watch movies with me anymore, and I don’t blame her.” He grimaces and scratches his head. “Where was I?”

“The defense of your property.”

“Okay, yeah. Assuming they do make the connection and do find us, they’d have to get past von Richtofen and his Flying Circus, the dronehawks in their charging perches, and a number of other items of interest that I won’t enumerate here. Then there’s the critters – all of whom have the ensmartening chips, are trained to work as an interspecies combat team, are linked into our security system, and all of whom love us and are very, very loyal.”

Arnie leans back from the stove, “Don’t forget me’n Arnette!”

Doc smiles. “Ain’t no forgettin’ you and Arnette, old friend.”

I open my mouth and he holds up a finger. “Very short version – I believe that Mrs. Doc and I have sufficient measures in place to ensure that our humble life of bucolic splendor remains undisturbed by miscreants, scofflaws, and ne’er-do-wells. So to answer your question, Luther is safe and will remain so. All this to say – we stick to the plan. Let me handle real world Luther, you handle in-game Luther. The mission stays the same. We need his permission to keep his body, and boy will that piss his daddy off. Once we have his permission, we can help him find the logout point with less pressure.”

“Strata keeps hitting us hard and the only time I got to meet him face-to-face, he hands me my ass and destroys my … ” I swallow hard. “My world.”

“We have a lot of distractions at the moment,” he says, and I understand that he means that I have a lot of distractions. He ain’t wrong. “We need to simplify; build our case against Strata, find his son’s avatar, apply some testicular torsion like nobody’s business, and expose the Revenue Corporation for what it really is. They’re like Hitler and the Nazis in 1939, and someone needs to stand up to them now! The Dream Team’s mission has evolved – we can’t just be International Rescue anymore; we’ve got to become Team America: World Police!”

“Yeah, but we’re getting thrashed – they just killed Zedic and their improved tech just crushed our improved tech.”

He snorts. “You think they have better tech?”

“They can actually kill us, all we can do is log them out, track them, and make it a bitch for them to log back in.”

“You want to kill them back?”

“No, nothing like that. Um … well, maybe a little bit. I’d love to cut the head off the snake – Strata deserves it – but the Reapers themselves … ” I think of Veenure. Damn, she had me duped. Hell, I still can’t believe it. “I think they’re pawns in all this so no, I don’t want to kill them.”

“You’re sure? Because we could. I have the design right now for a zapper that’ll fry the vagus nerve through the NVV and kill ‘em deader’n day-old fried chicken.”

“We can’t do that,” I object. “We’re the good guys; they’re just kids.”

He looks at me, rolls his eyes, and produces a deep and heartfelt sigh. “Oh, we most certainly can do that; you just don’t want to. You do realize that this nicey-nice attitude that you and Euphoria have is not helping you any, right? It’s laudable to be the good guys and hold the moral high ground and all, but they’re knocking your dick in the dirt right now and they have actually killed one of your teamies. All of y’all are still treating this like it’s just some Proxima cat fight and everybody goes home for waffles afterward. They’re waging war and killing people. Sometimes you gotta fight fire with bigger fire, and in my opinion – this is one of those times.”

“Doc,” Arnie quietly interrupts, “dial it back, pardner.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m tired and cranky. Let me get a nap and we’ll see what I can come up with.”

I do my best Le Penseur impression, and surprisingly enough, it spawns an idea. “You know, we do have the metal for the Reality Splitter. The NPCs and the poo fairy dropped it off right before I logged out.”

“I didn’t think of that. Not real sure how to use it – never messed with something like that before. What about Chrono?” he asks.

“I really don’t know about him. Veenure had a big ol’ Reaper executioner with her.”

Doc chews his lip for a moment. “Do you think it was him?”

“Dunno. I don’t get that vibe from him, but honestly, I didn’t get that vibe from Veenure either. Well, maybe I did. When the Knights met Empress Thun at Sophia’s make-believe digital Malibu Dream Cottage that she pays real money for – can you believe that? Anyway – there was some seriously bad juju between Empress Thun and Veenure.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. After Her Imperial High and Mightyness did that boot to the head thing on everyone, she gave Veenure a hell of a slanging, and Veenure almost drew down on her. I just figured that Empress was just doing her uppity queen bitch thing to impress the proles.”

“Maybe you should start there, ask her about Veenure and Luther.”

“Probably not gonna happen. She’s still cheesed off at us for taking Giant King Whatzizname’s better deal, and we’ve already banged heads with her white knights just last night. They were strong too, handed us our asses.”

“Shit, I forgot about the whole better deal thing. We need to find out more about Veenure, so I’m thinking … ”

“Three birds with one blacksmith?”

He shoots me a wolfish grin that reminds me of Aiden. “You and the ladies will be going back to Baltimore later today, tonight actually. Before then, I think it’s about time you pay a little visit to Chrono.”

“I know just who to bring.”

“I’ll join the Dream Team in Ultima Thule tomorrow. Frances can be in-game as she is the most experienced with monitoring bodies rather than avatars. We need someone on deck that can keep a close eye on your vitals, and I’m not saying that Rocket can’t, just saying that Frances is really good at this. Besides, the kid is itching to see some action.”

“And Sophia?”

“She’s taking the afternoon off. Let her have it. She was closer to Zedic than she’s letting on.”

“Damn, you got this figured out, don’t you?”

He shrugs. “That’s why you pay me the big bucks. As long as we all just do what we do best, we’ll likely do better than we’re doing now. I’ll hop in as your in-game while Frances deals with Rocket.”

Chapter Eight

Much to my annoyance, the shampoo bottle synced with my iNet feed as soon as I stepped inside the shower. Good for me? Now I know all there is to know about PH levels; why fenugreek seeds beat flaxseed nine times out of ten when it comes to luster and thickness; how using David Beckham’s Pro-V Keratin Hair Volumizer will improve my ability to speak confidently to the opposite sex and how it will significantly improve my odds of wifing my own Posh Spice.

Maybe the shampoo could help me with Frances. It doesn’t take a team of ensmartened rocket scientist monkeys to figure out that she isn’t exactly doing handsprings and cartwheels over the fact Dolly is back.

At least Euphoria got me some new duds.

I’m still dripping from the shower as I use my swordstick to cut open her latest EBAYmazon drone delivery. She has me outfitted for Texas in a Wrangler pearl snap shirt and a pair of skinny dark jeans that make my gnads feel like they’re packed in a ring box. The only thing missing in the package are a pair of saltwater croc Tony Llama boots and a big-ass Buc-ee’s belt buckle. Not that my get-up matters; the only place I’m going over the next few hours is a quaint little town in Hyperborea known as Kayi.

~*~

I awake on the other side of time with murderous intent.

Sophia’s newly made door is open to the courtyard; the digital flies have let themselves in and are staging their own airshow – seriously. I’m just about to shut it when I catch sight of Dolly sitting outside, on her knees. She watches as the Brits use the time-honored Benny Hill, Red Green, and Three Stooges construction techniques to go about building their clubhouse, although ‘clubhouse’ doesn’t do justice to the backyard-sized castle with drawbridge. There is something inherently jury-rigged and jerry-built about it, and I personally wouldn’t lean on the parapet to wave my private parts at your Auntie for two Grails and a shrubbery.

“Where’s the moat you started?” I ask.

Scotty dumps a chamber pot out of one of the windows. His vintage nightsoil adds to an already impressive compost heap of heroic dimensions, which explains the influx of motorized freckles buzzing about.

‘We patched it up. We’ll get to the moat later, once we’ve finished the dungeon,” he calls to me.

“And the plumbing?”

“We’ll get to the plumbing later, once we’ve finished the moat. For now, this is the loo!” He shakes the thunder mug at me.

“Well, don’t show Meirda.”

Too late. Stinkerbell blasts out of the dookie pile like a feculent Jill-in-the-box propelled from Satan’s nether cheeks and does a series of Mary Lou Retton-esque double fulls and triple tucks. With a pink, sparkly, magical Phoof, she’s suddenly as clean, bright and shiny as the bucket o’ Krugerrands at the end of the rainbow.

“Find anything interesting?” I ask her.

“I found a Boris Johnson action figure, and I just left it in there.” She Moonwalks and then executes a reverse gainer back into the pixelated pile o’ poo.

“You ready?”

I spin around to find Aiden. “What did I say about sneaking up on me like that?”

“Where are you going?” Dolly asks.

Refrain from making eye contact. I’d rather not see that flash of recognition fade into confusion again.

Luckily, Aiden is quick on the draw.

He drops his hand on my shoulder and we appear on the shores of Kiya. A few NPC fishermen in candy-cane salakots stand still along the shores. At their feet are raffia bins, making me yearn for the time I last cast a line in at The Pier. Sure, the waters were mostly filled with three-eyed Blinkys, but that didn’t stop me from having a damn good time and getting nice and boozed up in the process.

“Any word from the RW?” he asks as we make our way into the town.

“Zedic is dead and we need to get Strata’s kid’s avatar. There are three components to our current mission: see if Chrono is a Reaper and log him out if he is. If he isn’t, we need him onboard as a metallurgist. Either way, we get info on Veenure.”

A teenage dame approaches us. I ready my hand behind my back, even though this won’t give us much tactical advantage. She can’t be older than fifteen, an NPC, with braided hair and a maiden’s dress that extends to her ankles.

“I’ve lost my marbles.” she starts to sob, her eyes doey and glistening with tears. “Please, kind sirs, will you help me find my marbles? Will you accept this quest?”

A golden button materializes in front of me asking if we accept the quest.

I look to Aiden – What would Loop Quantum do?

“Listen, toots.”

Reconsider. The image of Picasso comes to me. The kid helped me log out of The Loop, even if it involved his crazy uncle. Dolly controlled the NPCs in The Loop, you do the math. Maybe Goldilocks here is some kind of test. “Alrighty,” I say, changing my tune before the song starts, “how long will this take?”

Aiden steps out of and back into reality and dangles a bag of marbles in front of the girl.

“Are these your marbles?” he asks, out of breath.

“Yes! Thank you, kind sir! You found them!” She curtsies, takes the bag from him and exits stage right.

A trumpet sounds – we’ve just received some EXP and a bit of gold for helping her. “Well, that works too,” I comment as Aiden takes the lead.

“It wasn’t her though,” he calls over his shoulder. “Different world.”

~*~

We wind our way through the town, to the back alley that leads to Chrono’s blacksmith shop. It’s a nice little town, and I get a feeling the pub would be a great place to unwind after a long day of fishing. Maybe another time.

A few goats ‘m-a-a-ah’ at us from across the dirt road, and I look around for Sally.

“Who’s a good goat?” I ask as I reach my hand out for billy with the good hair. He snorts and flicks my hand away with his head. “Not so friendly … ”

Doc: That’s because you’re doing it wrong.

Me: You in?

Doc: No, Captain Obvious. This is really the voices in your head. I’ll brief you on goat etiquette later. Let’s get this production on the boulevard.

Chrono’s shop is up ahead, evident from the sound of pounding on metal. I scroll through my inventory list and stop at item 90, my authentic Deathly Hallows Invisibility Cloak.

“Really?” Aiden asks as I wrap the cloak around my shoulders. I may not be as cute as Daniel Radcliffe used to be, but I’m definitely taller. As soon as the cloak wraps around my shoulders, my lower half vanishes. “I’ve always considered you a talking head.”

“I like to think of myself as more of the psycho killer … ”

“Have you ever actually used it?”

“To be honest, I rarely get to take this out,” I tell him. I show him my best pirouette and he shrugs. Morning Assassin ain’t real big on the non-murder, madness and mayhem related warm fuzzies. “But I did use it once, during what I like to call my experimental phase.”

Aiden laughs. “You mean your Riotous fiend phase?”

“Again, my experimental phase. Anyway, do you remember Two-faced Tommy? Gumshoe by day and drug kingpin by night?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“So he always had a big birthday blowout in Devil’s Alley. Cabbage changing hands like trading cards, a Peruvian amount of Riotous, damn good choons and bodacious dames that were out of this world. Well, with this much sin, you need a little muscle to keep things kosher. Don’t want the wrong people getting out of line, don’t want the right people doing something that could leave them sleeping with the fishes come morning. So one night, I’m worked up – again, my experimental phase – and I’m desperate to get in because, to be honest, Two-faced Tommy had been throwing the same party for ever, and I was starting to regard the party as a rite of passage to my nightly reset.”

“Sure.”

“I’d crashed the party a dozen different ways before. I’d come in disguised as the waitstaff; rappelled in Seal Team Six style and distinguished life Seal Team Six style; hidden inside his oversized birthday cake with plastic explosives; let’s see, what else?”

“I get the picture.”

Doc: I bet I could tell you the ending of this story before you get to it. Remember – show, don’t tell. Have I taught you nothing? Just kidding. What happens next?

One of the goats looks up at me, snorts, and dribbles goaty buckshot out of its back end, squats and pees.

I turn back to Aiden. “So I acquired the cloak from the projects over on Mildred Pierce. How’d I get in there? I accidentally offed this mom’s abusive boyfriend and she invited me up. I don’t remember what happened next, but I woke up in my room with the Invisibility Cloak in my inventory list.”

“What’s this have to do with Two-faced Tommy and his birthday bash?”

Doc: Yeah, get on with it.

“I’m getting there,” I tell them both. “So I was telling you about the muscle at his party. Well, I put the Invisibility Cloak on and strut right in there like I own the place. In fact, for the first time since I started crashing the party, I actually make my way into the VIP area of the VIP area. Yes, two VIP areas, one within the other.”

“Not bad.”

“I see the head kahuna himself sitting with two broads on his lap and a pound of you-know-what on a glass table. He’s running his gums about the purity of this particular pound, the potency, the rareness. I move around to the front of the glass table – don’t want to get any blood on the Riotous – and equip my Maula pistol, item 240, loaded with needles tipped with meta-cyanide in one hand, and my sawed-off shotty, item 21, in the other. I hit Two-faced Tommy with the needle, finish the broads off with the shotty and steal the hop. Chaos commences, but by that time, I’ve already stuck it under my cloak and Slytherined out of there, if you get my Griff.”

“God, I hate puns. Do you still have the stuff?”

“Sure do, and you should be well acquainted with it, my pound of Walter White, item 306.”

Aiden snorts. “That’s some story, but how’s it going to help us with Chrono?”

I bring him in close and take a quick looksee over my shoulder. “Here’s how we’ll do it.”

~*~

I never pictured Aiden as a hooterized hottie, but you know what? With a little NPC magic he looks as fairytale female fine as a pneumatic knock-off DisNike princess in his Rose Red disguise.

“Where’s Hansel?” I tease him from under the Invisibility Cloak.

“Having brunch at your mom’s, wise guy,” he says in the daintiest of dainty voices.

He enters Chrono’s establishment and curtsies at the big man in the Manticore necklace. Chrono, all Hellboy forearms and glistening sweat on his brow, gives Aiden a soft grin. He’s got a crazed, Moses-after-forty-days beard going on and it’s hard to make out his lips. “How may I assist you, young Miss?” he asks as he sets his hammer behind the counter.

Of course, by this time, I’m already standing behind him with my Golden Goosinator hack pointed at the center of his back and ready to blast. Sure, I can’t technically get the drop on him, but if a battle does commence, we’ll have advantage.

“I have an issue with my helmet,” Aiden says. My Reaper skull, item 551, appears in his hand. “I know it isn’t world specific, but do you have any mods for this?”

Chrono chews on his lip for a moment as he examines the mask. Finally, he asks, “Where did you get this?”

‘I am Reaper number … um … 5309,” Aiden says. “I was in Cyber Noir hunting Quantum Hughes, almost got him too. You may know him by the name of Steamboy_889.”

Chrono nods. “Aye, I know of both men, Steamboy and the legendary Quantum Hughes. Steamboy is funny and all and does have some skill, but he’s no Quantum Hughes. He’s too damn wild and too uneducated about the game to be the man who founded the Dream Team.”

Doc: This is great.

Me: At least he said I was legendary, I’ll give him that.

“They’re the same person,” Aiden tells him, “trust me.”

“Trust you? Are you telling me that Steamboy, the shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions guy who consistently brings a gun to a knife fight is indeed Quantum Hughes, the man who stayed alive and sane through two subjective years of entrapment in a faulty Proxima World?” He snorts. “Surely you jest.”

Aiden bares his teeth. “Cyber Noir is not faulty, I never jest, and don’t call me Shirley!”

“And what did you mean when you said you were hunting him?”

“Actively pursuing him; seeking him out; following him; endeavoring to ascertain his whereabouts; striving to fix his location – you know, hunting.” Aiden places the mask on the counter. “Quantum Hughes is Steamboy_889, and I’m hunting them both because they’re the same person. So I’m hunting him, because they’re the same.”

Me: Jeez, Aiden, get your story straight!

Doc: Sez the teller of convoluted tales.

“An enemy of Steamboy is no friend of mine.” Chrono lifts his blacksmith hammers and the trumpet sounds.

~*~

“Hands where I can see ‘em!”

The cloak comes off and the Reaper Hack spreads up my arm. It turns gold as soon as it solidifies, the end of the blaster humming as it prepares to discharge. I’ll get the first attack, and Chrono will get his location logged and a visit from Granny Weatherwax every times he tries to log in.

Me: Doc, the message!

*****WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!*****

YOUR PLAYER ID has been logged and recorded. YOU are interfering with an on-going FEDERAL CORPORATE INVESTIGATION conducted by Dream Recovery Extraction and Management Team member ID # 0002. You are ordered to cease and desist your interference forthwith, or you may be liable for arrest, prosecution, fines not to exceed $150,000, imprisonment for up to FIVE YEARS, and PERMANENT iNet disenfranchisement.

*****WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!*****

“Steamboy?” he asks with his back to me. “What’s this all about? And who’re you?” he asks she-Aiden. “Wait a minute, is that a Dream Team message?”

Aiden peels off his female form like Buffalo Bill’s girlsuit. He’s back to full medieval ninja warrior glory with a mask over his face, Foot Clan-inspired kusari armor, and a pair of high top tabi boots with black Adidas stripes on the sides.

“Aiden?” Chrono lifts his hand and forfeits the battle. His hammers disappear. “Please tell me what’s going on here.”

I step around the big guy, partner up next to Aiden. “Veenure is a Reaper and she killed Zedic earlier today.”

“She killed him? Impossible.”

“Remember those skull-faced scumbags we beat in the tournament?”

“How could I forget? That’s how I got my cat gloves.” The gloves in question appear and disappear on his fists, kawaii as ever.

“Tell us everything you know about Veenure,” Aiden says, “and make it snappy. Just because you forfeited the battle, doesn’t mean we can’t start it up again.”

“Easy, guys,” he says as a stool appears under his tookus. He sits and it makes us about the same height. “All I know about Veenure is that her real name is Victoria.”

Doc: Get her full name.

“Victoria what?” I ask.

“I’m telling you guys, that’s all I know, honest.”

Me: What do you need from him to run a background check?

Doc: Just need him to ping his life chip for us. With his chip tag, we can run it back to when it was installed. Just have him sign the Personal Information Release.

I equip Neville Chamberlain’s famous peace of paper, item 410 and relay Doc’s requirements.

“What do you need all this for?”

“Well, the cat is out of the bag, now isn’t it? You know who we are, which means you know that I work for the Dream Team. For us to communicate any further, we need to run a background check on you. Do you consent?”

“Sure.” A goose quill pen appears in his hand. “I’m not trying to get banned from Tritania or anything.”

“We don’t … ”

Doc: STOP! Don’t finish that sentence; it’s better if he thinks we can have him banned. It’s also better for him to think we have jurisdiction over non-US nationals. I didn’t think the DT warning message would work, but there you go.

“ … we don’t want that to happen either,” I tell him.

He reads the release, reads it again, signs it. “Okay, I’m pinging my chip tag.”

Me: Got it?

Doc: Acquired. He checks out just fine for an instant check. Now we go deeper. Keep him occupied for a few minutes.

“How did you first meet Veenure?” I ask him.

“I took a Meet-Up quest near the foothills of the Klin Mountain Range. I spawned in Aramis, looking for a few people to join my party. The payout in rupees was pretty high, so I figured I could get a few noobs. At the time she was only level eight.”

“She handed us our asses so quickly in the OMIB,” I say, “and she had a big ol’ bastard with her too. No ordinary noob, if you ask me.”

“Did you catch her level?” he asks.

“I didn’t think to look.”

Morning Assassin says, “She’s at level ninety-five now.”

“How’s that even possible? We were all bumped up to level ninety. There’s no way she could have leveled up in that amount of time.”

Chrono strokes his beard with his off-hand for a moment. “Maybe she used auto-player levels. She probably saved some; the smart players do.”

“What about the guy with her?” I ask Aiden. “Did you get his level?”

“He didn’t display any data, which is unusual.”

Doc: Keep him talking.

“How would a noob know so much Thulean?” I ask him.

“To be honest with you guys, I got the feeling from the get-go that she was a Resetter. There’s a group of Tritaniacs that reset their characters and stats whenever they reach a high enough level.”

“Is that what they’re called?”

“Yeah, Tritaniacs.”

Doc: Maybe she was a Reaper designated for this world. She played and got to know the basics until her services were called upon, a Reaper-sleeper.

Me: Or maybe she dove to Tritania in her off time once Strata found out his son was here. Wait, no, that’s impossible.

Doc: How so?

Me: We met Veenure before Strata attacked The Loop and discovered the location of his son.

Doc: I bet it was Sophia.

Me: You think she squealed?

Doc: No, nothing like that. She’s a name as far as Proxima theory, research, and development go and a lot of folks wondered why she joined the Dream Team instead of taking a high-dollar position with Proxima. Maybe RevCo is getting info from one of her brainiac compadres.

Me: Personally, I don’t think she has any friends that aren’t NPCs. As far as I can remember, she didn’t dive with us until after we met Veenure.

Doc: Scheiss. Then how did they know? How did she know where to find us?

Me: Zedic?

Doc: He was heavily vetted, all the way back to when he was a glimmer in his daddy’s eye; all of the DT members are.

Me: That doesn’t mean he didn’t crack at some point. You saw how poorly he was doing in the OMIB. He was also with me when we first met Veenure.

Doc: Something ain’t right about all of this.

Me: Agreed. And Veenure kept logging into the OMIB to check on him.

Doc: I’ll pursue it further. Let’s keep this between you and me for the time being.

Me: NP.

Doc: Also, Chrono is good to go.

Me: Nothing in his background at all?

Doc: Nothing that concerns us.

“Congrats, old pal,” I tell the burly bearded blacksmith as I place my hand on his shoulder. “Background check was good, which doesn’t surprise me. We’ll be in touch.”

Aiden and I turn to the door.

“Hey, let me ask you one thing,” he calls after us.

“Shoot.”

“Are you really the legendary Quantum Hughes?”

Aiden chuckles. “I wouldn’t call him legendary.”

“That’s me,” I tell Chrono. “And my wild, uneducated, shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions activities are all to cover my secret identity.”

Doc: Ha!

“So it’s all a guise? Even your charge-in-without-thinking attitude and your look-what-I-can-do demeanor? If so, you’re some damn fine method actor, the best!”

I grunt. “Yes, it’s all a guise. I tried wearing glasses, but that didn’t work. In the RW, I’m a humble, mild-mannered, down to earth guy who rescues puppies, volunteers with Meals on Wheels, and mentors disadvantaged inner-city youth with gender identity issues in my spare time.”

“Can I have your autograph?” He asks, his eyes filling with stars.

“Aiden, let’s go.”

Chapter Nine

“Goodbye, Texas, I hardly knew ye.”

Sophia is up front and Frances is next to me, presumably issuing and responding to iNet messages as our UberFord taxi speeds to the airport. Stryker-sized Aerostrucks whip past us with truck nuts hanging from their trailer hitches and unsecured Canus lupus familiaris bouncing in the bed as their tongues flap in the slipstream. AT&T Cowboys stars, gothic crosses, zombie family graphics on tinted windows, Come And Take It bumper stickers compete with Gadsen flags and My Kid Can Whip Your Honor Student’s Ass! for pride of place. Lone Star State license plates framed with chains, barbed wire, marijuana leaves – I take it all in as best as I can. I get the rabble rouser appeal of the state – I really do – but the heat I can do without.

Frances Euphoria: Once we get back to Baltimore, you and I will take a taxi to my place. No funny stuff this time, though, I’m not in the mood.

Me: How else are we supposed to introduce Adolf Bin Laden to this wonderful world full of flying cars and Humandroids?

Frances Euphoria: Not now, Quantum. It’s been a pretty bad day for all of us here.

Me: I know. I was just trying to lighten the mood.

Frances Euphoria: And usually, you can. Today isn’t the day though.

Me: No it’s not, my bad, Frances.

Everything goes smoothly at the Eastplex airport until we get the TSA grope down, followed by TSA grope down number two, followed by a series of questions regarding the fact that the three of us don’t have any luggage, followed by Sophia getting flustered with a gum-smacking TSA agent who calls her Mrs. Wrong, followed by Frances providing our federal credentials in an effort to de-escalate the situation, followed by yours truly re-esclating the situation by being my normal, mouthy self, followed by more intense questioning, followed by a full body scan and another grope down twice as rough as the first when they see that I’ve attempted to carry on a swordstick.

Did not think about that before leaving for the airport. Luckily, Euphoria makes yet another saver by scheduling a UPeX pick-up drone to deliver the swordstick to her pad in Baltimore.

Problem solved, egos bruised.

Full disclosure – I’ve got a case of swamp ass that would make Swamp Thing cringe, Sophia’s hair has gone from frizzy to finger in an electric socket and Frances looks better than she did at 0700. Needless to say, mum’s the word on the entire flight to BWI.

I try to get a bit of shuteye, but the little rat-bastard condom failure in the seat behind me reminds me every two minutes or so that he has legs and he knows how to use them. Every time I turn to say something, the kid starts boo-hooing up a storm at a cochlea-damaging volume before I can finish my sentence, and his walking, talking sebaceous cyst of a mother informs me that no, he’s not a spoiled, undisciplined, inconsiderate, over-nourished waste of protoplasm, he’s just expressing himself. Yes, I’m the bad guy, her expression clearly conveys.

People. Can’t live with them, can’t kill ‘em.

~*~

“The couch,” Frances says as she opens the door to her small apartment. “I’ll get you a blanket, but I don’t have any extra pillows.”

“You sure there isn’t room in your bed?” I ask. “I’ll sleep as far away from you as possible.”

She sits on her couch, tosses a stuffed Salusan Bull aside. “I need to get to the office.”

“I thought you said on the way from the airport that you were staying here,” I object.

“I said that so you wouldn’t invite yourself to come with me.” She stands and massages her neck for a moment. “Besides, someone needs to be here when the pick-up drone arrives with your swordstick.”

“You trying to get rid of me or something?” I ask.

“Please. I can’t get rid of you. You’re my boss and, well I don’t know what else you are, but I need to get to the office to take over for Rocket.”

“What do you mean take over for him?”

“Have you seen his iNet messages recently? They aren’t exactly coherent.” She approaches me. Butterflies in my tummy tells me the way she’s looking at me means something. I reach my arm out and she stops.

“We need to figure this out.”

She turns and crosses her arms over her no-fun-for-you bags. “You get some rest. I’ll go to the office and see what I can do there.”

“When will you be back?”

“In a couple of hours; you can use the blanket from the bed.”

With that, she’s gone.

I can’t help but feel like I should have said something else, like I should have stopped her or gone after her. I guess going after her has never really been my MO, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be. She likely doesn’t have a beer in the fridge, but that doesn’t stop me from waltzing into her kitchen and checking. Nope, nada, zilch.

“Damn, Euphoria.”

The kitchen looks like it hasn’t been used in ages. There’s a layer of rust-colored grime on the counter, a sink full of dry dishes with dried-on soap bubbles and the fridge … refrigerated funk rolls out around my ankles when I open the door. She’s got almond milk from six months ago, eggs from the Spanish-American War, cheese the color of a coral reef and a clear plastic box half-filled with slimy, squamous salad browns. There are half-a-dozen different bottles of unidentifiable condiments, a foil pan with some kind of crusty and dehydrated pasta, and a take-out box with a gray, fuzzy, toxic-looking lump of mold in it.

I decide to take matter into my own hands.

After collecting the garbage, I sweep the floors, wipe the countertops and run a load of dishes through the dishwasher. She doesn’t have any floor cleaner, so I find a half bottle of bleach in her laundry closet and use this to mop the floor. Wax on, wax off; hell, I even whistle while I work. The bleach stings the inside of my nose but I power through it, scrubbing like it’s nobody’s business.

With the kitchen cleaned, I turn to her living room.

A couch and a single sofa chair surrounding a rug doesn’t seem like it’d be that hard to clean, but my back goes out as soon as I push the sofa chair aside, reminding me yet again that Superman and I have much less in common than I’d care to admit. I lie flat on my back on the floor for a while and stare up at her ceiling, where I observe spider-webby dust hammocks. Now there’s some real world detail.

“Up and at ‘em.” I roll to my side and slowly push myself up. It smarts, sure, but a little pain never hurt anyone. Scratch that, it did, but I’m cleaning Euphoria’s apartment and I’ll be damned if a little crick in my back is going to stop me.

I manage to move the furniture off the rug and proceed to vacuum, after dumping the canister, unclogging the venturis and rinsing out the filter, of course. Like her kitchen, it seems as if Frances hasn’t used her vacuum in months or cleaned it ever. I get to vacuuming and my back gets to screaming at me.

“Not now.” I give myself a wicked punch in the back, which hurts, but at least it makes me feel tougher. I finish up in the living room and head to her bedroom. Dozens of discarded EBAYmazon boxes are scattered across the floor; a pile of letters and advertisements are stacked on the nightstand; loose undergarments are bunched up and strewn about.

“Messy girl,” I say as I begin the cleanup process. I use one of her two kitchen knives to tear through the tape on the boxes and flatten them. Once I’ve done this, I gather all her undies and bras together and toss them in the hamper. I finish by organizing her mail, vacuuming the floor, cleaning her bathroom. I skip the bathtub as it isn’t especially super vile and I really don’t feel like hunting around for some non-abrasive tub cleaner.

By the time two hours has rolled around, I’ve given her humble yet dirty abode the fairy godmother treatment.

And I ain’t done yet.

~*~

“EBAYmazon,” I say aloud. “Or is it, Alexa?”

EBAYmazon: Hello, how may I help you?

Me: Is this how I order some food?

EBAYmazon: Yes, placing a food order with EBAYmazon is fast, easy and convenient. Simply tell me what it is you want and I will arrange for everything to be delivered in one hour.

Me: I just tell you what I want, right?

EBAYmazon: That is correct, unknown user.

Me: If I’m an unknown user, how will you know where to deliver to?

EBAYmazon: Your current whereabouts are derived from information we receive from your life chip.

Me: I turned that off.

EBAYmazon: I’m sorry, I don’t understand your reply.

Me: So you know I’m in Baltimore.

EBAYmazon: That is correct.

Me: And how will you know how to charge me?

EBAYmazon: If you do not provide credit information, we will charge your life chip account, and you will be billed at the end of the month.

Me: What’s that going to cost me?

EBAYmazon: The Federal Corporate Government charges a flat rate of 71.9% interest per month on food purchases. Other purchases have variable interest rates and caps, adjusted by the FCG on a quarterly basis.

Me: All right, already. I want to make a big breakfast, the works, and I don’t want anyone getting on me about calories or nothing.

EBAYmazon: One way to adjust the overall caloric count of ordered items is to increase the number of people you are ordering for.

Me: Wait a minute, are you trying to give me a hint here?

EBAYmazon: I don’t understand your question.

Me: So if I tell you I’m ordering breakfast for twenty people, you’ll provide me food for twenty people and not give me any grief about it.

EBAYmazon: That is correct. Congratulations, you are catching on without the usage of a winking emoji. You should be proud of yourself.

Me: Hey, wise guy, are you a droid or something?

EBAYmazon: I am more advanced than a mere humandroid, if I do say so myself.

Me: A cocky bastard too.

EBAYmazon: Please refrain from using derogatory terms with me; otherwise, I will be forced to flag our conversation.

Me: No need for that, compadre. Here’s what I want: strawberries, blueberries, chocolate chips, pancake mix, maple syrup, brown eggs, hickory bacon, bagels, cream cheese, lox, capers, one onion, thinly sliced potatoes and Texas toast. We clear here?

EBAYmazon: We are clear indeed. Your order will arrive in one hour.

Me: Can you make it faster?

EBAYmazon: We can upgrade your order to Prime Primo for an additional charge of $14.99. Would you like to upgrade?

Me: Sure, upgrade me, and while you’re at it, throw in some orange juice and a cheap bottle of champagne too. I’m feeling romantic.

EBAYmazon: With twenty people? Good luck with that. Might I suggest an item from our sexually transmitted disease prevention department?

Me: Mmm … tempting, but no.

EBAYmazon: Very well then. Your order is in process.

Me: Just get me my stuff already.

I give my armpit a quick sniff and realize that no amount of romantic gestures will overpower the bloomin’-onion stench. Thirty minutes until the drone gets here means thirty minutes of scrubbing. I undress and get busy in Frances’ shower, lamenting at the fact that all she has is girly-girl body wash, lavender shampoo and a razor blade with a pink handle. I scrub down anyway and hit all the spots that need attention.

I guess you could call it cathartic.

Chapter Ten

“This is wonderful!”

I look up from the kitchen with a self-satisfied grin on my mug. Sure, Frances’ pink Hello Kitty apron doesn’t quite fit, but that doesn’t stop it from preventing splashbacks. Besides, about the only thing I found that fit me was her oversized sleep shirt, under which you’ll find my birthday suit, so the apron is also doubling as a kilt.

She laughs as soon as she sees my naked derrière.

“What?” I ask her as I flip a pancake. “You didn’t have any other clothes. Sit down and I’ll serve you.”

“You cleaned the place?” She asks as she sets drops a small backpack onto the sofa chair.

“I did my best,” I tell her, “cleaned myself too. Now I smell like honeysuckle and orange peels. Anyhow, I figured you’d be hungry, so I went ahead and ordered breakfast.”

“How many people are you cooking for?” she asks, wide-eyed now as she takes in the bacon, the hash browns, the large bowl of scrambled eggs, the six-inch high stack of pancakes.

“Just two,” I tell her, ‘now sit and take a load off.”

I fix her a plate and set it in front of her.

‘Looks yummy, but my FDA Monitor won’t think so.” Frances chews her lip for a moment. “Hey, what did they used to say back in the 2010s?”

“No idea.” I make my way to the fridge and pour up two mimosas.

“Yolo!” she says. “You only live once.”

“Somewhere in the world, the Dalai Lama cringes.”

I join her with a plate of my own. One glance down and I see the dollop of butter melting over the pancakes. My mouth waters, but I contain my urges for a moment. “Thank you, Frances, thanks for all you do. You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known, and even that is an understatement.”

She looks up from her plate. “Where have I heard that before?”

“Possibly The Great Gatsby, possibly a trashy vampire erotica e-book.”

Her cheeks turn red. “Well, what can I say?”

“You shouldn’t say anything, just know that I’m grateful, all of us are.”

A soft smile spreads across her face.

“Cheers,” I tell her as I raise my wine glass.

~*~

Frances insists that I cuddle with her and I oblige. Before she nods off, she orders me a change of clothes to be delivered alongside my swordstick. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t – I swallow any salacious thoughts in lieu of a tight spooning that keeps me nice and comfortable into the early morning hours.

Crazy dreams of unlikely, inaccessible restrooms, precarious public pissoirs, and oversized, porta-potties are my overfull bladder’s way of nudging me awake. I blink the old peepers shut and try to ignore it.

Doc: WARNING! WARNING! FDA MONITOR 675309.

“Crap.” I roll to my side. It seems as if the FDA Monitor has me again. I let my eyes focus on the message for a moment and realize it’s from everyone’s favorite cyber warfare operative.

He’s already sent me five messages since 6:30.

Me: Alrighty, I’m up. Damn, Doc, can’t a fella get some sleep around here?

Doc: It’s 0830. You’re supposed to be at the Dream Team offices at 0800.

Me: Frances told the others to meet at 10. When she stopped by the office last night, Rocket was asleep at his desk with his face in a puddle of spilt Bull Bean.

Doc: The four of you need some serious training, from weapons proficiency to workplace etiquette.

Me: Yeah, yeah, I get it. Bust my balls later why don’t ya? Let me move to a more comfortable position.

I make my way to the bathroom as quietly as possible. I perch myself upon the throne of gleaming porcelain and release a fanfare for the common man, as it were, as I read the next message from Doc.

Doc: I have an answer to your question.

Me: Gee, Doc, so Dennis Rodman really was an alien.

Doc: Yeah – thought you knew. No – your other question. Everything points to Zedic as the leak.

Me: Que?

Doc: Sifted a lot of data and it turns out that Zedic and his husband were drowning in debt. Student loans for useless degrees, maxed out credit cards, a brownstone in Back Bay – you get the picture. They were trying to adopt, but the adoption agencies look at credit history and outstanding debt.

Me: I see where this is going.

Doc: Suddenly, about the same time Frances made contact with you in Cyber Noir, Zedic’s debt began disappearing slowly but steadily, a little at a time. Deposits into his checking account also increased by about two-hundred percent.

Me: Who were the depositors?

Doc: Preliminary shows the usual for that sort of thing – offshore holding corporations, shell companies, Saudi banks, reverse Proxima credits, Western Union wire transfers, and so on.

Me: Not good.

Doc: RevCo is no doubt monitoring all of y’all, and Zedic’s financial woes ain’t too difficult to uncover. Not a big deal for them to buy his debt and then put the squeeze on him for immediate repayment. Let him sweat, and then offer him an out – ‘we want to know what the Dream Team is up to. Provide us with their plans and we will make the debt go away.’

Me: So that’s how the Reapers have been able to stay one step ahead of us …

Doc: Looks like it.

Me: But then why did Veenure kill him? They could have kept him as an informant indefinitely.

Doc: I think it had something to do with Luther Godsick’s extraction. Something was off about the whole thing. Unlikely that Strata would hire incompetent muscle to provide his security. Maybe Zedic didn’t tell them the exact extraction date, only that it was being planned. They knew we were coming, but they weren’t as prepared as they should have been. We might have caught Strata with his pants down at the same moment he was trying to tighten up his britches.

Me: Keep looking into this, and let’s just keep this between us for now.

Doc: I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’ll see you soon in Tritania. The weapons are coming along, by the way, and I’d like to have something for the team by the end of the day.

Me: Do you think Strata will ever grow a pair and spawn in Tritania?

Doc: Unknown. He may be staying out of this particular world due to in-game restraints. Then again, he knows we have his kid’s corpus in real life, which may trigger an appearance. He’s a ‘behind the scenes’ kind of guy, always has been. You don’t remember, but you were always the face of the company. He never did press releases, never had his picture taken and mostly kept to himself. He was an algo-guy, like me. He loved tinkering with the PG both inside and out.

Me: I’d sure like to give him a piece of my mind.

Doc: But you won’t, you are too smart to jeopardize the mission like that. He won’t go public with the fact we have his brat because he knows that we’re building a case against him. Hell, the case was built solid a while back in my opinion, but we want to make sure there is no way he can weasel his way out. This another reason Luther is staying with me. The Dream Team is in Baltimore and it is clear that the kid isn’t there. I’m a contractor for the team, so it isn’t as easy to track me down. This was done purposefully, of course.

Me: Do you think Strata knows?

Doc: Nope. I set this up after he started the Revenue Corporation. Again, you were in your coma then, but I knew something fishy was up. I’m officially retired and any money I receive from the Dream Team is laundered through a series of cut-outs and shell companies. Strata isn’t the only one who knows how to move money.

Me: Do you think we should up security?

Doc: I’ve already seen to that. Expect some of von Richtofen’s Jagdstaffel Kameraden on station, and trust me when I say there are several other layers of security as well. Wake Frances up and getcher asses to the chopper, I mean, office. Ultima Thule awaits.

Chapter Eleven

Not much of a briefing once we arrive at the Dream Team headquarters. There ain’t much to say, and all of us could use a few more Zs. Sophia, in her white lab coat and a turtleneck sweater is rocking the Questlove look with Ray-Ban reading glasses. She has a legal pad full of mathematical scribble and even has a few equations written on her hand. She doesn’t say what any of this means during our concise briefing, and she doesn’t wash her arms off before getting into her dive vat.

Funny broad.

Rocket is as Rocket does. As he sits in the conference room, his leg thumps like he’s auditioning for a role in DisNike’s upcoming Bambi revamp. When in doubt revamp it, which is what I’m taking away from Rocket’s oversized t-shirt – The general public loves premastication. He’s chatty, mostly about his lady friend in Steam, and I let the kid talk. It’s not often that I feel as good as I do today, and I’m hoping my positive waves affect those who would normally give me hell.

Ahem, Sophia, ahem.

Frances and yours truly? We’re in our EBAYmazon Basics duds. She’s rocking a glammy necklace today that reminds me of the Sega Dreamcast logo and an equally fashionable bracelet. I’ve got my good ol’ swordstick again, which needs a nickname, and I’m feeling oh-so-fly in my DisNike Boba Fetts. I wouldn’t say I was styling and profiling, but I’m not far off.

Once I’m in the vat, the Big F.E. comes from the in-game monitor’s chair to help me get plugged in. Pretty sure I could do it myself, but I’ve never been one to shoo away help, especially when I’m dizzy with the dame.

“Are you comfortable?” she asks.

“As comfortable as I’ll ever be, darlin’.”

“Not here,” she reminds me as she hooks a cable into the side of my NV Visor.

“Be sure to hit me up on a private comms if you feel like whispering sweet nothings into my ear.”

Rocket pops up from his dive vat. “Head’s up: My NSFL cable is loose. I ordered new cables; they’re in the box in the other room.”

‘I’ll grab you one. Did you put in a work order?” she calls over her shoulder.

“Um, I am now?”

Me: Smooth one, Peanut Gallery. See you at the guild.

~*~

Brian Eno Tone.

Feedback Beethoven ear pressed to the floor. Feedback Tyson blood on his lips. Feedback Van Gogh slice to forget.

~*~

Doc’s tactical vest is the first thing I notice after I’ve spawned at the guild. It’s orange now, the same eyeball-searing safety alert color as my life vest, item 578, that allowed me to indiscriminately access my firearms tech during the solo rounds of the giant tournament.

“I’ve tweaked yours as well,” America’s favorite combat faun says instead of hello.

“How so?” I ask as I equip the vest and my dragonscale armor, item 573. “You could have changed the color and design, you know.”

“What? And leave you looking cool?” he laughs at his own joke. “We match now, so you aren’t the only one that looks like an extra for Gilligan’s Island.”

“As far as I can remember, there were no extras on Gilligan’s Island. That was kind of the point – they were stranded.”

“Exactly,” he says, and no, I don’t quite get his logic but I’ve learned enough about to Doc to know that there’s no point in questioning him. “And trust me, what we’re about to embark on is far from a three hour tour.”

“So, the enhancement. Give me the low down, Doc.”

“I’m not able to get around the no firearms rule for turn-based battles, but I can do it for all real-time battles. I thought that it would work only at the tournament you took part in; however, I spawned on UT earlier and tested it.”

“And?”

He grins.

“And?” I ask him again.

“Let’s just say that you and I will be able to dispense ballistic Darwinism as required, but only in real time battles.”

“Guns to a knife fight?”

“Fo’ shizzle.”

Sophia and Rocket spawn at exactly the same time.

“Cool!” Rocket says as he takes in Doc’s faun avatar. “Your vest looks way cooler than Quantum’s, no offense.”

Rocket’s deets flash before my very eyes. A level ninety Ninja Healer, he’s sporting a Kylo Ren mask with white flames painted across the grill and a matching karategi that’s enhanced with spiked shoulder pads and gauntlets with stylized dragons and Thulean script. He performs a roundhouse kick and a triple backflip, unsticks the landing, smashes one of the chairs and lands ass-first on the floor.

“Crap!” he says as he scrambles to his feet. “I’m a bit rusty.”

Sophia turns to the window to check on the progress of the UK Assassins. The killer poms are busy at work on their surrealistic, Dali-esque backyard clubhouse. Burly is putting the finishing touches on the moat with a yellow JCB backhoe, which is about as far from ‘world appropriate’ as someone in Tritania can get – says the guy who’s itching to break out the Duck’s Foot Volley Gun, item 298.

“They seem to be enjoying themselves,” I tell her.

“It’s better than allowing them to trash the place. As long as they make a small lab for me somewhere in there, I’m good.”

“You doing some experimenting?”

She rolls her eyes. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m always doing some experimenting. I have an idea, something I’d like try out. Let’s call it out of this world.”

“Care to give us a preview?”

“Unlikely.”

Pip and Scotty are up on Castle Wolfenstein’s roof; she watches as they disagree over the placement of roof tiles while the sheep looks on. It escalates from pointing and shouting to pushing and shoving, and all three go right through an undecked section of rafters. The crashing, bashing, crunching and smashing sounds like they go through at least two floors on their way into the basement before, in a shower of debris, Scotty blasts through the only ground-level window with glass in it, propelled on a column of steam from his steam-powered jet pack.

Pip sails through the window without the benefit of a jet pack; his snarling, construction helmet-and-safety-vest clad sheep bounds close behind, and he shrieks like a sissy-boy as she sinks her teeth in the seat of his breeks. They arc into the moat and knock Burly out of the JCB; he picks himself up, shakes himself off, grabs a pick-mattock and chases after Pip, who still has the sheep gluteally attached.

Scotty hovers above the action and shouts insults and colorful observations, not the least of which are ‘poofter’, ‘wanker’, ‘fish-slapper’ and ‘sheep-shaggin’ shitehawk’.

You can’t buy entertainment like this.

“Q-Q-Quantum?”

I turn to find Dirty Dave, who looks as though he dressed himself in homeless shelter cast-off clothing prior to an extended session of sewage lagoon diving. The flies break off their airshow and settle on him in a mantle fit for septic royalty. Mierda chooses that moment to flit in past Sophia’s shoulder, and Sophia recoils away from her just because that’s how Sophia is. Stinkerbelle casts her glims on The Loop’s Premier Tweaker and Weaponeer, screams in sheer orgasmic delight and poots pink poo-pixie dust out of all seven orifices as she rockets up Dave’s pant leg.

He jumps and wiggles and slaps at her through his filthy, disgusting clothing like a rummy killing DT spiders as she giggles and stays one slap ahead of him. She flits up out of the back of his collar with a small silver coin under her arm, pauses to chat with several of the flies she knows, and then back out the window past Sophia, who does not miss the opportunity to restage her whole ‘theater of the annoyed’ performance.

Like a quivering, shivering, itching, twitching Chihuahua in a thunderstorm, Dave stands before us in all his wide-eyed, fly bedecked splendor.

“Davey ol’ friend ol’ pal ol’ stick-in-the-mud, I see you’re adjusting well.”

“Tritania isn’t bad.” His eyes dart from Sophia to Rocket to Doc. He nearly jumps out of his tunic when Morning Assassin spawns behind him and clamps his gloved hand on Dave’s shoulder.

“Aiden!” he stifles a scream. “I almost … no, wait, I did … shit myself. Thought you was a copper!”

“Have you seen any coppers in Tritania yet?”

“You never see the good ones. Doesn’t mean they aren’t looking for me,” Dirty Dave mumbles. He looks at Doc again and says, “He looks like a nice goat man. Great hack vest too; I’ll need to get one of those.”

“I’m familiar with your work too,” Doc says as he approaches him, “very distinctive; very unusual.” He grins, “Not b-a-a-ad at all.”

Dave grins in reply, and displays a broken, rotted, ragged collection of what can only be described as ‘teeth’ because of the position they occupy in his meth-hole.

The floor jumps underfoot; one, two, three muffled crumps outside followed by loud and imaginative cursing, swearing, and blaspheming in crap Dick Van Dyke accents indicate that Burly and Co. are doing what they do best: breaking things, hurting people, and having a jolly good knees-up in the process.

The Dream Team’s CWO clears his throat. “Well, we can stand around here watching the NPCs play slap ass for the rest of the morning, or we can go to Ultima Thule and get this show on the road. Is everyone ready?”

Aiden, Sophia and Rocket dematerialize. Doc taps an invisible watch as he looks at me and disappears as well.

“Say, Quantum.” Dirty Dave is at my side now, tugging on my sleeve. “You can’t spare a little of that Walter White, can you? Just a bit,” he whispers. “The wizard stuff they use here ain’t up to snuff. Damn shit gave me a rash on my taint.”

“You’ve had a rash as long as I’ve known you,’ I tell him. “Not that rash, specifically, but a rash.”

“Just a little for your old pal, Dave.” He tears up, tries his damndest to form a Grinch-like smile. “Please, just a little for your ol’ stick in the mud.”

I sigh. Truly, he has reaped the harvest of the needle and the damage done.

I clap my hands together. “Dave, now ain’t the time.”

“Come on, Q, all I do for you just for a little, a little. Aiden is stingy with it. Every time you send him after me, to help you I should add, he just gives me a single spoonful. Makes me beg too. He’s a sick, twisted, sadistic bastard.”

“That he is. All right, Dave … ”

He claps his hands, disappears and reappears on my right.

“I’ll tell you what,” I nod my head to the Brits outside, “go out there and help them put their fort together and I’ll give you a little pick-me-up now and three spoonfuls when I get back.”

Frances Euphoria: That’s a terrible way to motivate someone!

He grinds his teeth. “But … but they’re idiots!”

“Do them a solid, and I’ll do you a solid. We clear here?”

“Fine, fine,” he grumbles as he makes his way to the door. “But they’d better be heaping spoonfuls!”

~*~

“Is it me or do all the trees have faces on them?” I ask. “I could have sworn it wasn’t like that yesterday.”

Frances Euphoria: It’s definitely spooky.

“No lie,” I whisper as I approach one of the stumpier trees in question. Its large nostrils are rimmed in snow and its ugly mug is like something from an imperfectly remembered fever dream. I’m just about to give it a good thump on its nose when my hand stops midair.

“Let’s not antagonize the forest spirits,” Sophia chides me. “You’re worse than a five-year-old sometimes; no, I take that back. You’re worse than a five-year-old most of the time. Can’t you just leave things alone? Besides, you should have respect for these trees. The Deiku tree deities can be rather … cantankerous.”

The tree’s ice encrusted eyelids pry apart to reveal a pair of pupiless eyes. It shoots daggers at me as I move past it.

“Easy, bub,” I call over my shoulder.

I catch up to Aiden and Doc, both of whom have their eyes trained on the forest. A sudden whoosh behind me sends my trigger finger to a sidearm I don’t have.

“Sorry!” Rocket says as lifts himself from the forest floor. He pats powdery snow from his legs.

“If we’re going to meet the Sage of Gotha, we’ll need some friends.” Sophia rises into the air.

“I can be friendly,” and I give her my best charming, alarming, and disarming smile.

Rocket claps his arm around my shoulders. “I’m ready to mix and mingle as well.”

I peel his hand off and put him in a wristlock. “Probably don’t wanna do that again, Peanut Gallery,” I say.

Doc asks, “Aiden, anything ahead?”

Morning Assassin disappears like a hijacker from the rear ramp of a Boeing 727 and reappears seconds later with his Swissorsword in one hand and his Slice Bang in the other. “We’ve got company; actually, we’ve got a crowd.’

“Who?” Sophia asks.

“Thulean hunters.”

“I’ll handle this.”

Before she can float forward, Rocket wedges a tree root between the toes of his tabi, stumbles forward and trips a booby trap, which whooshes us up in a whopping great cargo net.

“Dammit, Rocket!” I shout as we’re hoisted into the trees.

“No worries.” Aiden retrieves something from his inventory, and the net parts like it’s zipper-equipped. We all do the ‘twisty-cat, land on your feet’ thing; Doc has the hardest time landing on his hooves.

“Invisible sword?” I ask Morning Assassin.

“You got it.”

“Commoners!” A band of Thulean step out of the forest. The leader has clearly spent some time at the JC Target’s Post-Zika Brazilian Jungle Department. A Native American War Bonnet with bright feather earrings extends well past his nipples, which are as purple as Grimace’s starfish. Covering his Thulean schmeckel is a loin cloth and a belt with strips of leather that hang to his knees. His buddies are all dressed in equally unlikely gladrags, all with various wowsie-wow faux native peoples’ accoutrements.

Sophia: Thulean hunters! This is really rare!

Rocket: @_@

The leader of the pack fixes me with a basilisk stare; casts a hairy eyeball upon me; drills me with a gimlet glare, and several other metaphors for ‘looks at me all pissed off’. “It is you who slew Princess Renata.”

“You who slew who now? Not gonna lie, I’ve slain a slew or two, and I kinda lose track, so you’re going to need to be a bit more specific.

One of his scaly avocado-hued Village Person compadres mutters, “I told you the ‘slew’ thing sounded stupid.”

Sophia: Renata was the Thulean princess you killed at the giant’s tournament!

Me: Oh, of course she was a Thulean Princess. Everyone’s a princess, princess. They expect me to keep track of this shit?

The lead hunter hisses over his shoulder, “Shut up, you guys,” turns back to me, clenches his fists and sabre blades extend from his gauntlets.

I’m singularly unimpressed. “Oh, look guys – he has Wolverine claws. Ooh – I’m so very, very frightened. They’re not steam-powered, are they?”

“You will suffer and die for your insolence,” he says, his voice rising with fury. “You will never be able to spawn on Ultima Thule again. We will hunt you and the rest of your contemptible guildmates for all eternity.”

“Wait – you’re an RPC, correct?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer.

“It’s okay; you can tell me – it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Sophia: He’s an RPC; the others are NPCs. You can clearly see this by looking at their handles.

Me: I was setting him up for an insult!

Doc asks, “What was your real world name? Maybe we were acquaintances out there.”

“I don’t recall being acquainted with a stupid-looking faun.”

His NPC butt-buddies chortle and snort.

“Welp, that settles it for me.” Doc presses the golden fight button like he’s launching everything from the Dakotas. The roulette wheel spins, the bouncing skull ball hops and skitters and finally lands on black, which just so happens to be my specialty.

~*~

The leader is on me like nerds on the newest Thulean noun and verb declension tables.

He lunges and I respond with three rounds from item 502, my diamond-studded Damien Hirst signature revolver with formaldehyde bullets. My reaper mask, item 551, forms on my face and my AA bar activates. I flip and twist and narrowly avoid his invisible ghost limbs. Yeah, I could go with good ol’ Bowie knife number 33 as I spiral through the air towards him. Instead, I choose my genuine, accursed, King Tut’s Escape to the House of Mummies dagger made from meteoric iron, item 287.

Nice bit o’ gear, that accursed meteoric iron mummy dagger; just a minor slice and the head Green Meanie’s life bar drops and flashes to show he’s been poisoned.

Rocket springboards off my shoulders and with a flashy ninja flip, plants his tootsies right in my guy’s face and takes him off his feet. Short, controlled bursts of automatic weapons fire on my left; the stupid-looking faun is ruining the day for several of the hunt pack’s spear carriers with his stupid-looking RAS47 AK Rifle – or maybe it’s a C39v2.

Trust Doc to buy American!

Aiden is doing things the old-fashioned way on my right, slicing and dicing like the Iron Chef’s Iron Chef. Much to my delight, he finally uses his Scissorsword as the Great Seamstress in the Sky intended. With no more effort than he’d expend to snip the bud from a rose – although with considerably more panache – he beheads at least two of the unfriendlies, and with a spritely pas de chat bounds away after a third.

I’d never figured Aiden as a devotee of the dance.

I’d stop to listen for the sound of the head hitting the ground, but the jefe of the Gecko Squad comes at Rocket and me bearing four blades – two in his hands and two in his ghost hands – in an attempt to blenderize us.

Me: You wanna do this or do you want me to?

“Ooh! Ooh! I’ve got it!” Rocket executes a move that would scare the duang off Jackie Chan. He cartwheels into the big lizardy bastard and trades strike and counter-strike with his pair of Wolverine claws – which look suspiciously like my wolverine claws, item 145. When he’s not tripping over shit, Rocket is surprisingly effective; he puts Mr. Thulean tough guy away with a flashy, decapitating strike. As the head arcs in the air, he catches it, uses his foot to roll the body over face-down, flips up the leather jockstrap and sticks the head face-first in its own ass. An hourglass appears over the Thulean’s corpse to let us know when he’ll respawn.

Rocket bows to his audience, and I am moved to respond with the golf clap.

Frances Euphoria: That was sweet of you to let Rocket finish him off.

Me: I’m assuming this is a private channel.

Frances Euphoria: :-*

“Nice work,” I tell the group as the victory trumpet sounds. We get some loot and a few healing potions too. “Nothing like a little booty to accompany said ass-beating.”

“I love getting booty,” Rocket smirks.

Sophia buries her face in her hands. “Again, AGAIN, the Dream Team barges in without adhering to the rules of the world!”

“Easy, Sophia,” Doc says. “These guys had it coming.” He stretches his arms in front of him and cracks his fingers. “Now, let’s get to Athos.”

“Has no one read my notes? It doesn’t work like that. One doesn’t simply get to Athos. I swear, I really need to write a Tritania protocol book for all of you to read. We should have submitted to the hunters.”

“Did you say submit?” Aiden asks.

“Full submission is a Thulean tradition,” she explains.

Aiden narrows his eyes on her. “If someone comes at me with a sword and an insult, the only way I’ll submit is when I’ve been properly defeated, and maybe not even then.”

He and I fist bump.

“I’m so sick of macho men!” She throws her hands up in the air.

“I want to be, a macho man,” I start up. Doc gives me a look and briefly snorts his amusement.

Rocket asks, “Should I know what that’s from?”

Me: Yes, yes you should, young Proximawalker. Googleforce it.

Sophia stomps her feet and lifts into the air. “I told myself not to get angry today,” she says under her breath. Once she’s got enough height to properly look down on us non-readers of her no doubt exquisitely detailed notes, she turns to us. “Okay, team, as I’ve clearly stated in the briefing I sent you all, it isn’t easy to get a pass to Athos. Further, it is only valid for one entry and exit. We could have done things the easy way and just befriended the hunters but no-o-o-o, you guys were looking for a fight.” She huffs.

“Weren’t you listening, Sophia?” I ask. “They were the ones looking for a fight; they started it, and the head guy was a dick, anyway.”

“Anyway, fine, whatevs, what’s done is done. We need to get to Chachat and befriend someone, preferably an RPC. Then, and only then, can we get into Athos and from there, the Imperial Forest.”

“Let me guess: the Sage of Gotha is a giant tree.”

“You read the notes?” she asks me. “Great! Yes, he is a tree, the biggest Deiku tree in the world. I’ve never seen him before, although I’ve been to Athos.”

“Do little guys bake magic cookies inside him?”

She gives me a glare that would freeze the marrow of someone who gave a shit about her opinion; my marrow remains superlatively unfrozen.

“Um, guys … ” Rocket says.

Sophia ignores him. “So, we need to win over the next Thuleans we meet. It’s as simple as that. Once we’ve done so, we can get a pass to the city and meet the Sage of Gotha and he’ll let us know where Strata’s son is.”

“No doubt that’s exactly how it’ll work out,” Doc observes.

“We’ll probably have to do some favor or other for him, likely a quest of some sort. It shouldn’t be especially hard, if we behave ourselves.” She glares at me and Aiden – mostly me.

“Great,” says Aiden, “another quest.”

I nod in agreement. “So we’ll pick up the dry cleaning, mow his lawn, clean his commode, or walk his grik-dog or something. Anything else?”

Rocket again. “Um, guys ... ”

The ground shakes, and a critter the size of the Goat Cakes truck smashes the foliage out of its way, thundering past us like we’re not worthy of its notice. He – and I say he because he has huevos the size of basketballs bouncing in the breeze – is past us in a matter of moments, leaving torn and trampled underbrush in his wake.

Sophia’s eyes light up. “It’s … it’s a Gunsyakhai!”

“Gesundheit!” I tell her.

“It looks more like a cross between a hippopotamus and a dragon,” Doc comments.

Aiden does his flashdance thing. He’s back in a jiffy, his eyes wide under the mask covering his face.

“You look like you’ve just seen a ghost,” I tell him.

“We need to follow the Gesundheit; it’s about to come down hot and heavy on some Thulean hunters, two of whom are RPCs.”

“Hot and heavy?” I ask. “You making a joke here?”

“What – you think you’re the only one who can do word play?”

“The Gunsyakhai breathes fire,” Sophia says. “We’d better get over there.”

~*~

“Holy crossfire, Batman!”

Robin probably had a more appropriate epithet, but as soon as I see the burning ring of fire that the Gesundheit has blazed around the hunters, it’s the only one that comes to mind. I’m just about to whistle the chorus when Sophia zips up and over the wall of flames.

Aiden flashes and Rocket flips, leaving Doc and me outside the wall o’ fire.

“How are we gonna do this?” I ask. The blaze reflects in Doc’s dark eyes.

“Whatcha got in mind, Legendary Quantum Hughes?”

“That’s Mr. Legendary Quantum Hughes, and I ain’t gonna lie, this could burn a little. It will, however, make for a great visual.”

I equip my steam-powered jetpack, item 567, and strap it on backwards, across my chest. “Hop on.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he mumbles as he climbs onto my back.

“One reverse steam-powered jetpack ride coming right up. Again, I’m going for the visual on this one, Doc, and I can’t shit you. Besides, Fancy Pants Wang-a-Lang and Flip-Floppin’ Rocket ain’t got nothin’ on us old dogs. Let’s show them how this is done!”

Frances Euphoria: This one is going on next year’s calendar!

“You vant I should blow in ear leetle beet forst, keptain?” Doc whispers in his worst Russian accent once he’s clambered aboard the USS Quantumprise. I goose the juice and up, up and away we go. And boy howdy does it burn, as superheated steam exits directly over my 100% all-beef thermometer. My life bar takes a 5% hit, but sometimes one must suffer for one’s art, and the expression on the faces of the Knights, the hunters and even the Gesundheit are worth the price of admission.

“That’s the second coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” Rocket enthuses.

“What was the first?” Doc grunts as he dismounts and readies his biggest crossbow.

“You even have to ask? ME!” and he shamelessly vogues several heroic poses. I pull the jetpack from my chest, drop it, and give my meat and two veg a much needed readjustment.

The Gesundheit rears up onto its back legs and roars. It comes down hard and dirt splashes from around its feet. “Get behind us!” Sophia calls to the Thulean hunters. She strikes a Superwoman pose with her hands on her hips and begins speaking Thulean to Huberta the Dragon Hippo.

In the meantime, the Thulean hunters hobble over, each of their life bars less than ten percent. The middle-sized one collapses before me and I drop to give him an arm.

“I recognize you,’ he wheezes, “you’re the one that bested Princess Renata.”

“Darn tootin’, but let’s save that discussion for later.”

The Gesundheit bares its teeth at the floating Sophia and just like that, the battle trumpet rings out. Cue the roulette wheel and damn if it doesn’t land on white – turn-based.

“It’s attacking first!” Rocket shouts, demonstrating his well-developed propensity for stating the blatantly obvious.

Sophia throws her hands to her sides. “I’ve got this.” An oversized kite shield forms, its coat of arms one of helm and griffin, proudly emblazoned with the legend SOPHIA WANG, Ph.D., M.A. in Olde English script. The Gesundheit snorts and belches forth a stream of hellfire almost solid in its intensity. It smashes into her enameled egoic escutcheon and is deflected away, but such is the ferocity of the blast that she’s forced backward.

The flame settles and leaves small spots and patches of fire on the ground and in the surrounding trees; the magic shield is unscorched.

Sophia: I’m not finished yet.

The wind races towards Sophia from every pocket of the forest.

It hits her shield and spirals around her, dust spews in the air as the wind whips itself into a frenzy. All the flames in the area are sucked into the expanding vortex, which builds and builds into a towering inferno. She holds it, lets it grow, holds it and suddenly releases it in a sun flare of a blast that renders the critter most crispy.

~~Carrington Flare!~~

“See, I have an inventory list too,” she says as the victory trumpet rings out.

“You gotta get me one of those shields,” I tell her.

“Only if you play nice.”

Chapter Twelve

“I’m Red,” says the Thulean hunter. “Red Vine. This is my wife, Blue Ivy-Vine. Thanks for saving us.”

“We really, really appreciate it,” says Blue.

Their outfits are dark greens and browns in a Robin Hood: Men in Tights-ish fashion capped by hooded cloaks. The whole spooky effect is somewhat diluted by their branded Ünter Armor tights and zombie green and purple DisNike Skank 4:20 Synthetic Athletic Boots with buckles on the sides.

Sophia: An RPC couple. That’s so CUTE!

Frances Euphoria: Aw-w-w-w! It’s totally cute.

Rocket: OMG! OMG!

“And him?” I nod to the third guy in their little party. He’s a head taller than the couple and he sports the filthy, matted, disgusting, unhygienic, looks-good-on-NOBODY turnip dreads that were, for some reason, popularized by ‘The Weeknd’ just before he disappeared into well-deserved obscurity in the late 20-teens, his resurgence in the 30s, and his re-disappearance in the 40s.

“Tom Myspace,” says Red proudly, “our attendant.”

Doc: NPC.

Sophia: Definitely.

Me: You can tell?

Sophia: Duh, he has a handle.

I stop myself from making a joke about how all Thuleans look alike as I’d prefer not to have Sophia start up with her whole racist-fascist-chauvinistic-disembiggening tirade this dive around. Also, I promised myself I wouldn’t get on her bad side. Any more than necessary. Unless she gives me a really good opening. Or Doc starts up first. Or I feel like it.

Doc: Speaking of social media, does anyone else remember Tom from Myspace?

Me: Myspace?

Frances Euphoria: I just found his picture. He seems like a nice-looking guy in his white t-shirt and his big smile.

Rocket: This conversation makes me feel old.

Doc: You ain’t the only one!

Sophia pipes up, “Just out of curiosity, did you two undergo the Koon-ut-Kal-if-fee?”

Frances Euphoria: Thulean for ‘Ceremony of Life-Bonding One-nesshood’.

Me: Of course it is.

“Yes,” they say as they join hands. Blue stands on her tippy toes and gives Red a big kiss on the cheek. No, Thuleans don’t really blush, but he does give her the Aw, shucks look and digs the toe of his hideously overpriced footgear into the leaf litter.

“It was magnificent,” Blue reminisces, “They actually threw a certified NPC virgin into the ice volcano for us. We were married out there in the other space, and thought that it was fitting and proper that do the same here as reborn player characters.”

Frances Euphoria: That’s so-o-o-o-o cute.

Sophia: Agreed.

Rocket: C U T E.

I have to know. “Which one of you croaked first? OW! DAMMIT!”

Sophia gives me the ‘mother in the supermarket’ stealth pinch, and hard, too. “QUAN-tum,” she hisses.

“What? Aiden would have asked if I hadn’t.”

Morning Assassin nods. “True statement.”

“No, it’s fine,” says Red, “really. I passed first. Undiagnosed prostate cancer. I just kept putting the exam off. I just wasn’t that keen on what I thought was an unnecessary and embarrassing invasion, if you will, of my privacy. By the time she finally got me to see my ObamaDoc, it was too far advanced.”

Doc: Listen and take heed, you young guys. Colonoscopy ain’t a bad thing either.

“I joined him less than six months after.” Blue adds. “Kevorkian holiday in Canada, because I didn’t like being apart from Red. Sure, we could spend time in the Proxima Galaxy, but I would eventually have to log out to maintain my biological avatar. I was spending at least eighteen hours a day in the PG, so I made it official. Anyway, we can tell you the whole story later. Why don’t you join us back at our bungalow? It has been ages since we’ve had player character guests.”

“So we’re not commoners to you?” I ask.

A small healing potion appears in Red’s hand. He drinks half, hands the rest to Blue. “We’re not gamists,” he says, “like many Thuleans. If you ask me, it’s really ironic that a RPC would refer to a PC as a commoner seeing as that RPCs were once PCs themselves. So no, like I said, we’re not gamists; everyone in the Proxima Galaxy deserves respect and human dignity.”

Tom Myspace cocks an ironic eyebrow, gives us a small bow and turns to the Thulean couple. “I shall return to the residence and prepare the place for our guests.”

Blue nods. “That’s fine, Tom, we’ll catch up with you.”

Me: So they’re fine with real people, but they use NPCs like servants. Anyone else getting that vibe?

Doc: I’m definitely picking up on it.

Sophia: You two can be so biased and negative.

Doc: How about we save our VE dreamworld All Lives Matter debate for another time?

“Our place isn’t far, just before Chachat,” Red says, “not more than a twenty-minute walk from here. Oh, and please, if you will, have your NPC go ahead to check the path for any dangers or obstacles. Tom isn’t so good at that.”

Aiden clenches his fists, relaxes them.

“Easy, fella,” I say under my breath.

He disappears slowly this time, lowering into the ground as if he were moving down an escalator.

Frances Euphoria: As your in-game monitor I advise you to not say anything.

Me: How’d you know?

Frances Euphoria: How much of a stretch do you think that was? I know you pretty well.

Rocket: I do too and let me be the first to tell you, I think you’re the tops, Q-Popz.

Me: Nope, that name won’t work either. But now that my Steamboy cover is blown, I think I’m due for a tune-up.

Rocket: I’ll get right on that!

Frances Euphoria: Sophia, I’m a bit confused. Why would RPCs, who can be any level they choose, be losing to a hippo-dragon monster thing?

Sophia: Gunsyakhai, that’s its name.

Rocket: … Gunsyakhai, that’s its name – O!

Sophia: When will the sophomoric humor end?

Me: When we become juniors.

Doc: I’m a senior and I still haven’t stopped. Go figure.

Sophia: Anyway, Frances, to answer your question, they likely put a handicap on their levels to keep the game interesting.

Doc: So we really didn’t need to save them after all?

Sophia: Not really, but this is a good thing, as it indebts them to us and the Thuleans are known for their hospitality. And if we don’t do or say anything to upset or annoy them, STEAMBOY, they’ll for sure give us the entry stamp we need to get into Athos.

Me: Ah, so that’s why they were getting their asses handed to them by the dragapotamus, or was it a hippogon?

Sophia: *facepalm*

Me: I know, it was a stretch, but I went for it, and I’m glad I did.

Doc asks, “What were y’all doing in this neck of the woods anyway?”

“Ah! Good question!” Blue squeezes Red’s hand. “He simply loves the dingleberries that grow in this part of the forest. They’re gre-e-e-a-A-TT!”

Me: The what?

Sophia: The Chachat Forest is famous for its dingleberries.

Doc: What’s the Thulean word?

Sophia: Dingakhbor; dingakhboree is the plural noun. It’s irregular.

Me: I’ll say.

“So the dingleberries are to die for, huh?” I have to look away not to snicker.

“The dingleberries are amazing!”

A bunch of dingleberries lowers from the air, as if it were suspended on an invisible rope. The bunch vibrates and the sugary snow sifts off the berries. Talk about a robust berry! Monsanto would be hard-pressed to gengineer a berry to reach the same size and overall healthy appearance of the Thulean dingleberry – each one is the size of a golf ball, the persistent calyx four shades lighter than the bottom of the fruit. They look mad juicy, aside from the fibrous exteriors, which I’m assuming one must peel off before consuming.

“You want some?” Red asks as a formality. He retrieves another bunch and hovers them in front of my face.

Me: Should I take these?

Sophia: It would be disrespectful not to.

Me: Fine, fine, but they’d better come in handy.

“Thanks,” I tell him as I add the bunch of dingleberries to my list, brand new item 581. “I’ll eat them later.”

“Suit yourself.” Red pops a few in his mouth letting me know that I assumed wrong about the edibility of the fibrous exterior.

Three berries separate from the bunch and lower into his wife’s mouth. Since no one has asked it yet, I figure now would be as good of a time as any. “So, as you mentioned earlier you were at the tournament?”

“Yes, we were there!” Red almost spits berry juice in my face. “In fact, the blast from your weapon actually killed our manservant, Tom. I don’t think I’ve ever see that type of gear before.”

“The Thulean I fought, she used something called … ’ I turn to Sophia.

“Konoshlo, ghost limbs.”

“Yeah, ghost limbs. Which you just used to get the dingleberries, if I’m not mistaken.”

I feel a tap on my shoulder and I turn around and see nothing. “Yeah, real funny.”

Blue asks, “How much do you know about Thuleans?”

“Not a lot aside from the fact that people are obsessed with them all over Tritania. That’s about it.”

Sophia starts to comment but Red beats her to the punch. “Thuleans are humanoid descendants of dragons. It is said that eons ago, a dragon fell in love with a human and the result was the first Thulean. What can I say? You can’t stop love; love will find a way. More dragons and humans fell in love and an entire race was created. Now, people can convert to Thulean once they reach a certain level; however, they can never convert back. Most RPCs also chose the Thulean race because it gives them full access to Athos, which is by far the best city in Tritania.”

“By far,” sycophant Sophia slavishly agrees.

“So what are the ghost limbs then?” asks Rocket.

“Ghost limbs are what’s left of the dragon wings. Think of them as invisible bones that have grown hands.”

“So Thuleans can fly?”

“Some can and some can’t. Most prefer to keep the ghost limbs with the hands that can grow or shrink in size. They are most handy this way. See what I did there? Those that choose to have wings only have the wing function. They can’t, for example, pick dingleberries from a tree. I suppose they could fly up there, though, and pluck them.”

“Neat-o,” I say as we approach a path cut into the snow. I purposefully step into the snow to feel the satisfying crunch beneath my feet. “I’ll need to get me a pair of those.”

~*~

There goes our nice walk down a quaint country road.

An angry, scaly skirt with a Medusa hairdo spawns before us and kicks up tufts of snow. Her handle flashes – CourtneyLuv 99 – and not seconds after it flashes, ten female Vampirellas pixilate around her.

“You will pay for what you did to BramToker.”

“I would leave now if I were you.” Red Vine steps in front of his wife. “You’re on our continent now, and you will not bother our guests!”

“Everyone cool their jets for a second.” The handles of all her compadres flash on my vision pane. They each share the same name, Penanggalan, and I get the itchy feeling that they’re an NPC mercenary group. “Who the hell is BramToker again?”

Rocket: The vampire at the tournament round. The one you blasted with Doc’s hack and the spider gun.

Me: I know who it is. Play along.

Sophia: JEEEEEEEEEEZ. How old are you?

Me: 38 going on 32. And all those extra ‘E’s doesn’t make it more ‘Jeezey’.

“You know exactly who he is,” CourtneyLuv99 grits. “And you know why I’m here as well.”

“Oh! You mean Count Jerksalot! The Big, bad, level 70-something player-slayer who gets his teensy little rocks off killing noobies? Stuck in the real world not working out for him real well? His mom tired of him hanging around in her basement, bingeing on Cheezi-Poofs and Diet Soylent Cola, whining like a little bitch about how unfair it all is?”

“Aha!” Red grins at Courtney. “I remember that match now. Your friend had his ass handed to him, remember that one, honey?”

Blue thinks for a moment. “You mean the PKer with the My Chemical Romance outfit?”

Doc laughs. “Finally, a reference I can appreciate!” He turns to CourtneyLuv99. “Listen up … um … what are you supposed to be anyway, Mrs. Lizardy Cobain Snake-wig? It sounds to me like he got what he deserved,” Doc continues. “Maybe he can spend the next week contemplating his crap life choices and actually get out in the fresh air and sunshine and seek some … ” He chuckles before he can finish. “ … seek some enlightenment!”

The snakes on CourtneyLuv99’s head hiss as their tongues lash between their fangs.

Me: Doc, you remind me of me!

Doc: N-a-a-ah, no-one’s as a big a shit-talkin’ fool as Mr. Legendary Quantum Hughes, but I will admit that I do possess some small skill at it.

Me: Spank-you very much!

The trumpet sounds and the roulette wheel starts with its carousel o’ death spin up.

“Please be real-time, please be real-time, please be real-time … ”

Lucky us. The ball lands on black and I charge forward, my hand behind my back scrolling to item 61, the Lone Ranger’s six-shooter with genuine silver bullets. I never thought this would come in handy but I picked it up anyway (either in the industrial area outside The Pier or a trashcan in Three King’s Park, can’t remember). AA Bar activated, I fire three rounds and down goes three of the blood-sucking bimbos, screeching as red smoke gouts out of their wounds.

My life bar takes a 5% cut; one of Hell’s Handmaidens is gnawing on my arm as if it was corn on the cob. A flash of silver and her body drops away from her head; her teeth stay clamped for a moment longer before her eyes roll up and she un-chomps me.

“All part of the service,” Aiden grins as he wipes his Slice Bang on her cape.

In a blur of flying steel, two oversized throwing stars sail past my ear into the face of another Drella Diabolique wannabe.

Me: Wowsers, Rocket!

“That’s how I roll,” he says as he engages the three I shot earlier. You’d think silver bullets would be the ultimate argument settler for Nosferatu and other such manifestations of the supernatural made flesh, but it seems that they’ve re-undeaded or something, which makes me wonder if they’re on the same regeneration stuff the Empress’ knights were.

A pair of be-caped Elvira knock-offs attempt to double team Doc, but he’s all over them like domestic abuse charges on an NFL player. He blasts them into pink mist with some high-speed, low-drag shooting iron I don’t recognize. Whatever he’s packing, it makes my Halo M6s look like muzzle loaders. I start to yell, Keep the change you filthy animal, but I’m interrupted by a wave of blinding energy from CourtneyLuv99.

The blast sends me backwards straight into the large root of an overturned tree.

Tired of monkeying around, I equip hackie, item 554.

Feed me!

The familiar voice echoes inside my skull as the weapon grows to epic proportions, not quite my Bustermarm sword, but bigger than h-e-double-hockey-sticks nonetheless. The “Ice or Norm” switch changes on its own to Ice and a blue vein creeps up my arm. Hackie blasts a Mistress of the Dork on the left, freezing her mid-attack, and the switch returns to the “Norm” position. The weapon grows even larger.

“You going to cut a giant French loaf or something?” I ask as sharp points grow from the bottom of the blade. Veins bubble and pop on my arm as hackie makes his way up my shoulder, stopping just past my collar bone.

No time for a snarky quip – Hackie gooses it towards CourtneyLuv, dragging me behind him. AA bar activated, I stop just in time and use my forward momentum to vault both of us into the air a la Sergey Bubka and WHAMMO, I bring the blade down hard on BramToker’s main squeeze. Sliced in half she goes and boy it ain’t pretty, especially once hungry tulip corollas spray off hackie and attach to Luv’s flailing parts.

“Damn, Hackie!” I shout as the weapon almost snaps my arm off. It turns into a large, gnarled jaw and goes to town on what’s left of the PKer.

Sophia: WTF WAS THAT!?

Rocket: Caps … ALL CAPS … MY EYES!

Me: I keep meaning to ask someone about that.

I hear the muffled report of weapons fire close by. Turning left, I find a new hole in the face of one of the female vampires. The gun barrel retracts back into Aiden’s mouth and sure, his life bar takes a hit for using an illegal weapon, but the gat-in-the-mouth trick is totally worth the penalty.

Frances Euphoria: They keep healing and not dying!

Doc is doing the shoot-and-scoot thing like he invented it – and who knows? His weapon is a large diameter tube on a rifle stock, and every time he touches the firing stud the weapon goes BRRRT and blows a Penanggalan’s head into vapor – which puts them down for just as long as it takes for the vapor to coalesce into a new head. The weapon goes dry; he pops the tube off the stock, inserts a new one and goes back to BRRRT-ing.

Frances Euphoria: This is getting real dark, real quick.

I’m just about to do this the old fashion way and equip my Lestat Vamp-B-Gone undead eradication kit, item 272 – which consists of garlic-infused sparkling Holy Water and silver nitrate in a classic, crucifix-bedazzled Super Soaker 50, personally blessed by Pope George Ringo – when Sophia throws her jazz hands in the air.

“ENOUGH!”

The Maila Nurmis cease their attack. They jerk, shiver, twitch, and tear into themselves like starving wolves on a three legged deer in a bacon suit. One rakes sharp-clawed fingers down her face to drag the flesh into her mouth; another gnaws her own arm off like a nightmarish Petey Otterloop. A third has torn open her abdomen and is shoveling ragged handfuls of her own internal organs down her neck. Yes, they’re only – only – NPCs, but it’s a gut-wrenching spectacle all the same.

Rocket lowers his sai. “Holy Schnikes! That’s got to be the Flesh Stripper spell!”

Sophia barely acknowledges with a nod, and continues to regard the feeding frenzy with clinical detachment as the vampires pick up their pace and gorge themselves on themselves just as quickly as they rejuvenate. Aiden keeps his eyes on Sophia’s study in autosarcophagy, admiring her handiwork.

Frances Euphoria: We don’t have to watch this, do we?

“No, let’s move on.”

Both Thuleans give floating Sophia the hairy eyeball. “That’s a pretty strange spell,” says Red as he grips his wife’s hand and shudders. “Never seen it before.”

“Gruesome,” Blue says.

“Flesh Stripper,” she tells them. “Only Black Mages can cast it, and I’m a Mind Mage, but I possess a relic that allows me to use the spell.” She lifts the bottom of her robe and shows them her anklet. “Believe it or not, I found it in a second hand shop in Valhalla, yet another reason I totally love that part of Porthos. You can find things there that you can’t find anywhere else … ” She turns to me. “It’s too bad I can’t go back there.”

Hackie finishes eating CourtneyLuv99 and shrinks back into a Golden Ax. It’s been some time since I’ve seen the weapon in its natural state so I pick it up and admire it until I hear the voice in my head, or better the loud belch in my head.

“Did you really have to do that?” I ask the weapon.

It’s better than the alternative.

“You talking about a trouser cough here?”

“I see your weapon is an RPC.” Doc catches up to me. He wipes digital sweat from his forehead, shakes out his small tail.

He’s right, you know.

“You’re shitting me.”

Rocket laughs. “How many times to I have to tell you that we can’t shit you?”

“Hackie is an RPC?” I wave it around like some amateur, no-weapons handling dumbass. “Aiden, you never said nothin’ about that.”

He shrugs as he steps to the front of our small. “You never asked and hey, you never know what you’ll find at Dirty Dave’s Mayhem Mart.”

Hackie uncorks a rumbling eructation that would get Barney ejected from Moe’s, and with good cause. “Jeez! Did you get any of that on you? All right, it’s back to my list you go.”

“Hold on a second there, Andretti. Let me take a look at that.”

I hand Doc my hack ax, handle down. “Now play nice, Hackie, this here’s a friend of mine.”

“What’s your name?” Doc asks the weapon. He turns his head slightly, interpreting the answer. “Easy, I’m just asking. … No, you don’t need to know my previous handles. … You know, that’s pretty strong talk for someone who got himself weaponized. … Yeah? Well your mother doesn’t think so! … Yeah, yeah, yeah – I’m extremely frightened. … Oh, really?” He listens for a moment longer. “Okay, fair enough. … And then what happened? … Really? Why’d he do that? … How the hell am I supposed to know? … We done here? … Sure, I’ll give you back.”

Doc: What an asshole!

Me: He mostly struck me as hungry.

Doc hands the weapon to me. “You can put him back in your list now, keep him there too.”

“Well?”

You gonna let someone else handle my shaft now? That guy had way too many questions!

“Quiet, Hackie,” I say as he dematerializes.

Hey!

“Your weapon, oddly enough, is an RPC named Richard Hertz.”

“Dick Hertz, huh?”

Rocket snorts a laugh.

Sophia: *facepalm*

“Sorry, Doc, go on,” I tell him.

“From what Richard told me, he was a player in Cyber Noir at around the same time you first dove there. He died in the RW and decided to spend the rest of eternity in the Proxima Galaxy. He came out on the wrong end of a bad deal with Dirty Dave, and Dave sort of forcibly weaponized him with malice aforethought. Of course, this should have only lasted for a short time, but it’s about the same time that the glitch hit CN and the rest is history.”

Red says, “Fascinating! You know, I’ve heard about people becoming objects in Proxima Worlds once they die. Blue and I thought about that, but we chose otherwise, as you can tell.”

“But they’re NPCs, technically,” I remind him, “and no offense by that. The person is dead.”

“What is death again?” Blue asks. “Because I feel just as alive as I felt when I was still a meatsack.”

I raise my hands. “You got me there. So back to what you were saying, Doc, Dick Hertz is an RPC.”

“Yes.”

“And he could technically be free now?”

“Well, yes, I didn’t ask him about that though. Maybe he likes being a weapon and eating player characters.”

“I guess knowing is half the battle, huh?”

Doc laughs, “I see what you did there.”

Chapter Thirteen

Tom Myspace clearly enjoys having guests to cater to. He never allows our glasses of tart and tangy iced tea to become less than half-full, brings out dingleberry sorbet, followed by dingleberry macaroons, with dingleberry pound cake to follow. We still need the RPC couple to give us access to Athos, which means I gotta mind my Ps and Qs. Sure, I’d love to give ‘em hell about the fact that as RPCs, they’re just NPCs with more history and a more detailed backstory and are technically no different than their butler – but that would be insensitive, and I’m getting better at being cultured, even if I do say so myself.

Besides, Doc is here, and he seems to have a way of saying things that gets the job done without any additional commentary from yours truly.

“Red, Blue – as delightful as we find your company and your sparking conversation,” he says after his third slice of dingleberry pound cake, “the five of us have some business in Athos that we need to attend to. Although I believe we do have time for one more slice of your most excellent pound cake. Is this your recipe, Tom?”

He nods in appreciation of the compliment and scurries over with another slice.

Sophia: I was just getting to that! FYI: Thulean customs dictate that the host leads the topics of discussion, especially with new acquaintances.

Me: We ain’t Thulean, FYI.

Doc: He has a point, FYI.

Sophia: Of course you two agree with each other! Frances?

Frances Euphoria: They’ve been going on for nearly thirty minutes about Tritanian celebrity gossip. Enough is enough, FYI.

Sophia: Rocket?

Rocket: FYI lady, I got places to go and people to see – Did that sound Loopish enough Q-migo?

Me: You’ll do well out there in the big bad world kid, real well.

Red uses his ghost limb to place his cup on a circular side table. Not quite world appropriate, the side table – and for that matter, all the furniture – has a sixties mod vibe to it, especially the ball chair that Doc awkwardly perches in.

“Well, I suppose getting down to business is the only way true business is handled,” Red says as he rubs his hands together. “You want to go to Athos, and you need our help to go there, correct?”

“Exactamundo, Rojo.” I say to a blank stare. “What? No one into Spanish around here?”

Blue smiles. “Hablamos Español, pero nosotros preferimos hablar Inglés.”

Red snaps his fingers. “Tom, fetch us five single entry/exit visas.”

“Right away.”

I give Aiden a subtle raise of the eyebrows and he gives me a look that screams don’t get any ideas. Who wouldn’t want an NPC gofer? I can think of plenty of ways to keep an NPC busy.

Tom appears beside Red with five Chinese finger trap-sized scrolls in his hand. Red unrolls the first one and it lifts into the air. “And what is your purpose for visiting, Ms. Wang?”

“Actually, I’ve been before. And it’s Doctor Wang.”

Red is somewhat less overawed and bedazzled by Sophia’s academic accomplishments than she might have hoped.

“How very nice for you, Doctor Wang. I’m glad to hear that you’re so well-travelled and all, but that wasn’t my question.”

Sophia’s full name appears atop a dotted line on the upper left hand corner of the scroll.

“We’re looking for someone, a player trapped in a digital coma, and we’d like to speak to the Sage of Gotha about it. The Sage is our only hope now,” she says, her eyes narrowing on me.

“You haven’t tried the Hall of Records?”

“He made sure that we would never be able to ask for a favor from Empress Thun, ever.”

“Oh dear,” says Blue. “Does this have to do with something that happened after the tournament?”

I clear my throat. “Long story short: I won, as you know, and I got a wish. Well, my wish was supposed to be for the Saiduka giants to call off their attack on the Griffin Festival and the Empress would up us to level thirty-five; however, King Coromon offered to bump us up to level ninety and I took it.”

Blue looks to her husband. “So you betrayed Empress Thun for King Coromon, huh?”

“Well when you say it like that, it makes me sound like a sleazeball. I didn’t betray–”

“–You did betray,” Sophia huffs. “And now the Empress’ knights are hunting us.”

Red shakes his head. “A conundrum indeed, and if you didn’t get the vibe from King Coromon, let me be the first to tell you that he is a super douche canoe.”

“I figured that much. What I did was for the numbers, simply for the numbers. His douche canoe-ery had nothing to do with it.”

“I knew the king when she was a woman named Taz Horne who was involved with Ray Steampunk. She was a mean drunk; a terribly jealous drunk; a violent drunk. Physically abused Ray severely, as I recall.”

Doc nods. “That she was.”

“You knew her too?” asks Blue.

“I know or know about most people in the game behind the game.”

“Your handle just lists you as Doc, hmmmm … ” Red’s eyes light up. “You don’t happen to be Doc Paulin, do you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, damn! And you? Steamboy? If you don’t mind me asking, who are you?”

Me: Should I spill my guts?

Doc: No.

Sophia: Thuleans are the most trustworthy people in Tritania!

Me: Holy crap, what planet are you from again?

Sophia: It’s true! They take an oath of loyalty to their friends and guests. They would never betray us.

Rocket: I thought Veenure would never betray us, and look how well that went.

Frances Euphoria: The Reapers already know we’re in here, so the cat’s out of the bag.

“He’s Quantum Hughes,” Sophia blurts. “You may have heard of him.”

Blue glances at her husband. “Heard of him? I’ve actually met him!”

“You have?” I ask.

“At a conference in 2048, or was it 49?”

“2048,” Red says.

“Yes! It was around the time when you and Strata Godsick started the Dream Team. I was on the board that granted your initial funding. As you may recall, the project was started as a joint venture between the FCG and the Proxima Foundation.”

“You knew me back then?”

“I did,” she grins. “And you haven’t changed a bit.”

Sophia: That’s discouraging.

“Welp, you got us,” I say with my hands in the air. “That’s who we are, we’re the Dream Team.”

“Dream Recovery Extraction and Management,” Red chimes in. “I personally thought that was just about the stupidest name you could have come up with. I guess it fits in a way though. So yes,” he glances at the scroll, “the reason for your desired entry to Athos is to visit the Sage of Gotha.” Vertical Thulean writing appears on the floating scroll next to him. The other scrolls open and undergo the same process. “That should about do it, although I will need for you to do us a favor before I can hand these entry documents over.”

“Anything,” Sophia nearly shouts.

Doc: The first rule of Tritania – never agree to anything. The second rule?

Me: You do not talk about Fight Club?

“Your enthusiasm speaks well for you!” Red throws his thumb over his shoulder. “We’ve got a lovely large back garden with a rather less lovely graboid infestation.”

“A what infestation?” I already don’t like where this is heading.

“Graboid. They’re a sub-type of Hyperborean sandworm. Not overmuch sand around these parts, but we are well-supplied with snow. These are Arctic sandworms, adapted for arctic conditions. He looks to his wife and chuckles. “I’m not going to lie – we are kind of the reason there are so many arctic graboids out there. The yellow snow they produce makes great iced tea, and their hides? Damn, are they worth something.”

“Wait a damn minute!” Doc spits and splutters his tea down the front of his day-glo orange tactical vest. “Did you say yellow snow?”

Blue asks, “What’s wrong with drinking graboid urine? It’s good for you! And where do you think Slurm comes from?”

“Snow worm piss?”

“No, silly – the Slurm Queen, but the principle’s the same.”

I slowly set my glass down and give them both the stink eye. What would Loop Quantum do? Loop Quantum wouldn’t even have taken the time to set down the glass before he whomped up some big shootin’ iron and blasted these two piss-pushers into drifting pixels. But Good Quantum, Nice Quantum, Go Along to Get Along Quantum can’t do that, not if we’re going to get those scrolls.

Boy, it’d be sweet, though. Motion in my peripheral vision; Aiden’s iced tea glass has shattered in his grip; his free hand twitches on a trigger he hasn’t called from inventory. Our eyes meet, and I know that he’s thinking the same thing.

“So you’ll get the scrolls after you’ve killed all the graboids and harvested all their hides,” says Red, “simple as that.”

A golden box appears before me, asking I accept the quest on behalf of the group.

Me: Well? Are we going freezy-pee deathworm hunting?

Sophia: Um, do we have another option?

Me: Um, not since you volunteered us for ‘anything’. But I’m eating lunch first, that’s all I’m saying. I need to get the taste of worm piss out of my mouth.

Rocket: You should totally say that last sentence out loud and hear how it sounds.

Me: Keep it up, Peanut Gallery.

Rocket: Seriously, just say that last line – I need to get the taste of worm piss out of my mouth – aloud, preferably to a close friend or even better, a random acquaintance in a bar.

“Looks like you have yourself a deal, Red and Blue.” I accept the quest and smile at our guests. “We’ll be back to deal with your worm problem a bit later. It’s lunch time in the RW.”

“A very late lunch, I might add,” Sophia tells me. “Your normal lunch time passed almost four hours ago.”

“Has it been that long? Regardless, I need to refuel the RW avatar.”

~*~

“We’re doing something a bit different today, something that will keep the FDA Monitor off your butt.” Frances holds a silver, insulated bag shaped like an embiggened bullet in front of us. The conference room at the Dream Team Headquarters seems like it’s missing something, or better, someone. I glance to Zedic’s chair and look away.

Nothing you can do now.

Sophia peels the velcro away from her silver bullet. “Oh yum! Organic ants on a log, baby tomatoes and orange cauliflower!”

Rocket finishes his Bull Bean energy drink and opens his lunch. “My favorite!” He takes out a hot tray filled with a variety of vegetables and something that is white, red and pungent. “The kimchi vegan platter,” he says once he sees the way I’m staring at his gerbil food.

“Frances, I need a little protein,” I tell her as I open my silver bullet. “And I’m talking about animal protein, not the vegetable kind.”

“Oh, just try it. I picked yours out for you with your … um … dietary preferences in mind.”

I peel open the velcro and steam wafts out of the silver pack. Inside is what looks like barbequed ribs, what smells like barbequed ribs, but I know in my heart of hearts that I’m being bamboozled somehow. A large mound of Freedom Fries sits in a tray opposite the ribs, with an insulated Styrofoam container of coleslaw on the side. I poke the ribs with my fork.

“Is this real meat?”

Sophia laughs; there’s a smudge of peanut butter on her upper lip. “It’s real enough – trust us.”

“Real meat?” I ask again. “Or In–N-Out In The Box cloned meat?”

Rocket grins from Frances to Sophia. “Yeah, it’s real, if you consider lab-grown meat real.”

“So is it real meat or not?”

“You’ll like it,” Frances says as she opens her pack. “It’s better than Soylent Red.”

I take a bite out of the rib and chew the meat slowly. It has the consistency of pork, the taste of pork, and it shreds like pork as I get a piece stuck between my molars by the time I finish masticating.

“Well?”

“It ain’t bad, but Arnie’s is better.”

“Well, I can send it back if you want.”

“No,” I wave her offer away and notice that there’s some barbeque sauce on my fingers. I pop a finger in my mouth and clean ‘er off. “I’ll man up and suffer through it today.”

We eat and we talk about Ultima Thule. Sophia tells us just about everything she knows about the floating continent, enough to make me wonder if her PhD is actually in Tritania and not in neuronal physics. I’m just about to mop up some rib sauce with a piece of low cal whole wheat bread when I get a message from my dad.

Phil Hughes: Hi, Quantum.

Me: Dad? You using iNet these days.

Phil Hughes: Actually, it is FDA Monitor 1351885, Evan, and I’m here to talk about your diet, your current mental state, and to remind you of the upcoming leadership conference.

I stand, pace for a moment.

“What is it?” Rocket asks.

“My monitor is talking to me through my dad’s handle.”

Sophia chuckles.

“This isn’t funny!” I tell her. “It’s a violation of … of my civil liberties or something!”

Phil Hughes: Do you have a moment to talk?

~*~

I slam Frances’ door and plop down onto her couch.

Me: You got no right, NO RIGHT, contacting me using my dad’s handle!

Phil Hughes: I sense that you are agitated about this.

Me: Damn right I’m agitated!

Phil Hughes: Do you see the attachment below? I’ve attached a list of ways to manage stress derived from sudden exposure to unexpected circumstances. I can list a few of the ways here, if you’d like.

Me: Evan, where are you?

Phil Hughes: I’m not at liberty to discuss my current location.

Me: Do you know my current location?

Phil Hughes: Yes. By using the GPS coordinates associated with your coworkers, as well as checking your physical presence through their iNet feed, I am quite certain you are at the Dream Team offices on …

Me: You ain’t gonna let up, are you?

Phil Hughes: I am not programed to let up. I am programed to assist.

Me: Hold on a minute, will you?

Phil Hughes: By all means, son, I mean, Quantum.

Me: Doc, you there?

Doc: Busy. Mrs. Doc made Lobster Thermidor aux crevettes with a Mornay sauce, garnished with truffle pâté, brandy, and a fried egg on top, and Spam for lunch. What’s up?

Me: Is it possible to triangulate the position of my FDA Monitor?

Doc: That’s not at all how triangulation works. I feel like we’ve been over this before.

Me: I need him gone.

Doc: What now?

Me: He’s contacted me using my dad’s handle.

Doc: They tried that with me using my brother’s handle. Just agree to whatever he asks and ignore him. These guys are all A.I., and they ain’t stupid either. Eventually they’ll take a hint and contact you less and less, until they practically leave you alone. My FDA Monitor, 8675309, Jenny, hasn’t contacted me in a year.

Me: So it’s inadvisable to send Arnie to wherever this Humandroid is to take care of business?

Doc: Yes, and don’t threaten your monitor. I made that mistake and it wasn’t pretty. Also, Arnie’s services ain’t yours to volunteer, capiche?

Me: Got it. I’ll get back to him now.

Phil Hughes: Hello? Have I lost you?

Me: Nope, you haven’t. What do you want?

Phil Hughes: Hi. I would like to confirm that you are attending the leadership conference in D.C. next week.

Me: Sure, I’ll be there.

Phil Hughes: I will be there as well. Additionally, I am under the impression that you are experiencing increased stress in your work environment which is exacerbated by your sub-optimal dietary choices and compounded by the additional sequelae related to the traumatic incident with the late Matthew Henderson.

Me: Rollins, let’s just call him that.

Phil Hughes: There also appears to be an issue you’re working through that we haven’t discussed yet. Two, actually.

Me: Yeah?

Phil Hughes: The recent death of a co-worker, Zedic Woods.

Me: We weren’t very close. It was terrible how he died, but that’s the risk one takes in my line of work. Don’t worry about it, and don’t bother me about it.

Phil Hughes: That, and your relationship with your divemate, Frances Euphoria.

Me: What about my relationship with her?

Phil Hughes: Federal guidelines for collegial interrelations within the workplace do not prohibit your relationship as long as it does not produce a threatening or otherwise hostile workplace environment for your other, non-relationship involved colleagues. The Dream Team is a government partnership, even though the majority of the money funding it now comes from the FCG. The Proxima Foundation still donates a portion of its investment returns to the program, although this number continues to drop yearly.

Me: Why’s that?

Phil Hughes: I charge extra for knowledge commonly available on Wikipedia.

Me: You’re shitting me.

Phil Hughes: I’m afraid Humandroids do not have the capacity to expel fecal matter. In fact, I was joking, I can tell you anything you’d like to know. Consider me a friend, friend.

Me: If you want me to be your pal, pal, you should probably drop my pop’s name from your handle.

FDA Monitor/PTSD Counselor 1351885: Hi, Mr. Hughes, if you prefer this handle, that’s fine by me.

Me: I’d prefer your handle just to be your first name. And I hate being called Mr. Hughes, I murdered someone two subjective years straight for doing this.

Evan: I hope you mean within a Proxima Galaxy.

Me: Wow, your intuitive abilities ain’t too shabby. Now, back to the explanation you were giving me.

Evan: The Proxima Foundation’s donations to the Dream Team continue to drop because most, if not all, of the program deficiencies that stranded users in various Proxima Worlds have been remediated.

Me: What about Reapers?

Evan: Pardon?

Me: RevCo, the Revenue Corporation.

Evan: What does the Revenue Corporation have to do with this? They are a for-profit entity that assists users who are stranded in Proxima Worlds interface with insurance claims and other types of digital litigation.

Me: Now you really are shitting me. The Revenue Corporation raises, brainwashes, and trains orphan children to become Reapers. They’ve murdered most if not all of the Proxima developers; they’ve killed countless people including Zedic Woods, and they’ve tried to kill me!

Evan: Before we continue, I should warn you that our messages may be monitored or recorded for training or quality assurance purposes.

Me: Yeah, what isn’t these days? I figured they were, but I’m telling you the damn truth here.

Evan: That sounds very much like an accusation.

Me: I was there when they killed Zedic. I saw it and this bitch that did it, she was once one of us.

Evan: A Dream Team member?

Me: No, part of our guild. A skirt named Veenure. The guy that came after me, the one I killed in the hotel, he was a Reaper as well.

Evan: Matthew Henderson?

Me: Rollins, and it gets worse, much worse. The head of the Reapers is Strata Godsick. He personally attacked Frances Euphoria in Steam, overrode the SpiderDoc in her dive tank and put her in the hospital.

Evan: He’s CEO of the Revenue Corporation.

Me: Again, that’s what I’m getting at here. Revenue Corporation = Reapers.

Evan: It is an interesting theory. You said a player named Veenure killed Zedic Woods, correct?

Me: I saw it with my own eyes.

Evan: As you very well may imagine, I get told many, many things. I hear many, many obfuscations, prevarications, and outright fabrications as to why someone I’m only trying to help can’t follow FDA guidelines. That being said, there is something interesting regarding this Veenure person you’ve mentioned.

Me: Yeah, what’s that?

Evan: I like anagrams. I think they are a fun way to divert myself whilst I’m communicating with my clients. As you likely know, I have a short rest each night to recharge my batteries, so to speak. One of the pastimes my colleagues and I have developed is to take people’s full names and try to rearrange them to see if they form a funny phrase, or a quotation from the Bible. We also like to make our own riddles with long strings of names. Some of the riddles can be quite difficult, especially if we insert a math equation in them that nets a language akin to Leetspeak.

Me: Were you getting at something, Evan? ‘Cause you lost me.

Evan: I’ll get to the point. One possible anagram for the name Veenure is REVENUE. Do you see it now?

~*~

“Holy crap, do I have a humdinger!” I tell the crew as soon as I return to the conference room.

“Just listen to your FDA Monitor,” Sophia says with the wave of a hand. “There is no sense in combating them.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you guys, I did listen to my FDA Monitor, and he has a name – Evan.”

“What did Evan say?” Rocket smirks.

“I told him about the Reapers and RevCo and Veenure–”

“You’re supposed to keep this stuff under wraps!” Frances says.

“Relax, I was just explaining what happened to Zedic. Besides, Ol’ Evan has been tapping all your iNet feeds, all of them. He knows more than he should – way more. Get this: Veenure is an anagram for Revenue. Work it out for a moment.”

Rocket pulls a day-glo green tactical anti-zombie pen from his pocket and works it out on the back of a napkin. Sophia narrows her eyes and looks off in the distance for a moment.

“That’s great, Quantum,” says Frances, in the tone a doting mother would use with a not-especially-bright five-year-old.

“It’s something, right? I mean, we can put it in the case, can’t we? How blatant is that?”

“Oh yes, that’s the key piece of evidence we’ve been waiting for to sew this case up air-tight, Sherlock,” Sophia observes, “an anagrammatic coincidence from your FDA monitor. That will certainly hold up well in court.”

A message flashes on the inside of my peepers but I ignore it. I’m just about to comment on how much I’d like to murdalize Strata when Frances’ eyes light up.

“It’s dive time,” she says in a hurry. “Doc’s in, and Chrono has sent him a bird with pretty urgent message – Veenure will be at his shop soon!”

Chapter Fourteen

“Rocket, you take care of the graboids, capiche? The rest of us will arrange a little surprise for Veenure,” I tell him as Frances plugs me into the dive vat.

I hear a grumble from his vat. “Alone? That’s not fair, I want to get in on the action.”

“Oh, you’ll get plenty of action, I’m sure. How ‘bout I send Burly and the blokes to help out? Someone needs to put those Limey lobsters to work.”

Rocket: They’ll only complicate things. What about Aiden?

Me: We need Aiden.

Rocket: He’s better than me, I get it.

Me: Not that, just in case they use something killer diller on us. Aiden can take the brunt of the damage.

Rocket: You’re the shield class, not him.

Me: True, but he was coded for combat. Trust me on this one –  you’ll get the chance to showcase your ninja moves later.

“You’re ready.” Frances leans into my vat and kisses me. “Be careful,” she whispers. “I’ll be monitoring the three of you and if I see anything, anything out of the ordinary, I’ll try to force log the three of you out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but it definitely won’t work in the OMIB so if you’re taken there, logout immediately.”

“You have my word,” I tell her as the flashy wowsie-wow lights appear on the inside of my NV Visor.

~*~

Damn the feedback. Bless the feedback.

~*~

I awake on the other side of time in our guildhall to find Dolly standing bucky-tail nekkid and staring out at the courtyard.

“Jeez, Doll.”

She turns to me and gives me that same blank expression.

“Put some clothes on, why don’t ya? People will be here any minute.”

A little flash in the corner of my eye tells me that people are here now.

“Rocket,” I say before he can get himself an eyeful. “I’m going to need you to go ahead and turn around.”

“What? Why? Oh!”

“Thata boy.”

Frances Euphoria: I wonder if the no-clothes thing is a symptom of her amnesia?

“Aiden … ” I check under the table. “Come on, pal. Drop your linen and start your grinnin’. It’s show time!”

“Boo.”

I nearly soil me armor when I hear his voice right in my ear. I turn, point my finger at him. “Oh Come ON! You’re killing me with that!”

“Easy there big fella, just having a bit o’ fun.” His eyes sparkle and I can feel his predatory grin behind his mask.

“And why is Dolly naked again?”

“Ooh! Riddles! I don’t know – why is Dolly naked again? What do I win if I guess right?”

“Seriously.”

“I dunno, man. Wasn’t my turn to watch her,” he says as he moves over to her. “I do have a life outside of the murder, madness and mayhem, you know.” He magics a floral kimono from wherever he gets that sort of thing and drapes it over her shoulders.

“Nice bathrobe,” Doc trip-trap-trips up next to me. “Where’s Ms. Brainulo?”

“Out there, annoying the Lobby Boys.” Aiden says. “Who do you think Dolly was watching?”

Sure enough, Sophia is in the courtyard directing the Brits. She has a clipboard and a bright pink hardhat perched on her bulbous bouffant in the finest Marge Simpson fashion. A new floating banner above her head declares that she is the PERSON OF FORE. Pip and his sheep, both in construction gear, are dragging a cart loaded with bricks. The Quiet one leans out a window, and points something out to Scotty, who’s tastefully garbed in a neon yellow McWally tartan reflective safety kilt with a flashing, stroboscopic sporran.

“Person of Fore?” I ask as step out. “Sophia, I’m pretty sure Burly can handle this.”

In her Lady-of-the-Manor manner, she instructs Pip on some finer point of building with masonry and catches a cold glare from him as he NPC-handles the cartload of yellow bricks past her. The safety-vested and hard-hatted sheep follows Pip, gives Sophia the official ovis aries stink eye of her own, and dribbles droppings at Sophia’s feet as she passes.  I do note that the NPC actually is following her orders, albeit with bad grace, which I have to admire.

“How are you getting them to do what you tell them?” I ask as she floats over to me.

“I assist in their self-actualization by giving them the respect and admiration they crave.”

“Pfft! Pull the other one – it plays ‘Hail to the Chief Executive’. Number one, if they can’t drink it, fight it, or fuh … furgle it, they don’t crave it. Number two, I seriously doubt that you respect or admire anyone who isn’t you. So really – how are you getting them to work for you?

She huffs in exasperation. “I pay their tab at The Green Midget House of Sensual Massage and Tattoo Parlour. I tried reasoning with them, but that produced a sub-optimal outcome.”

“They ignored you.”

Doc harrumphs from inside. “Hey, John Galt; if you and Alisa Rosenbaum are all done exploiting the proles, we should really get a move on.”

“Yes!” Rocket raises his hand and a kusarigama appears, the chain of the blade connected to a grip in his lower fist. He grunts like a goat in heat, performs a few stylized wuxia chops and doesn’t slip, fall, or otherwise spoil the effect. I almost feel sorry for what I tell him next. Almost.

“Nice moves, Ace. You’ll need those when you’re killing off the graboids in the Ivy’s garden.”

He gulps. “I’m not going with you guys?” The weapon disappears and a tear graphic appears over his head.

“We already talked about this.” I place my arm around his shoulder in a manly display of mentorly camaraderie. “Look kid; it ain’t glamorous, and it probably won’t be a non-stop gigglefest, but it’s important and it needs to be done. And at least you don’t have to sit around like Frances watching everyone else have fun.”

Frances Euphoria: Oh, so that’s what an in-game monitor does, huh?

Me: Little help here, huh?

“If you ask nice and take ‘em to the Green Midget afterward, I’ll bet a couple of the Brit Assassins would help you out.”

“I’ll go,” Dolly says. “Where are we going?”

The five of us turn to her.

“Dolly, you should stay here.”

Sophia shrugs. “Let her go, it’ll get her out of the house and maybe she’ll learn to keep her clothes on.”

Burly does that ‘step out of thin air’ thing directly in front of me, and looks like something from the mud plains of Glastonbury. He’s caked in yellowish-gray clay, stone chippings, concrete dust, and sheep poo.

“Working on the moat,” he says as he wipes dirt from his cheek. “And if anyone is going with ‘erself to ensure ‘er safety, it’s me.” He snaps his fingers and he’s as clean and pink and pretty as an un-pooed pig with a petunia; a shining suit of Fiftieth Anniversary, officially licensed Spamalot Commemorative armor replaces his soiled work overalls. His hair lengthens and poofs up in the front like he’s got a knock-off Caesar Flickerman toupee. “Blue or purple? ‘Ow about Union Jack?” The sides go blue and a red strip lined with white travels from his forehead to the back of his neck. “Whatcha think o’ that, then?”

Aiden snickers. “I didn’t know they made tinned poofter!”

“You look like an armored pet detective!” Doc chortles.

“How long will you stay fresh in that can?” Rocket wants to know.

“Oz just called. They want their tinman back.” Sophia adds, to everyone’s surprise. “What?” she says when we turn to look, “You think you’re the only ones who can come up with risible one-liners? I am smart, you know.”

Burly clangs his reply; his metallic fist clutches his armored codpiece and waggles it at us. He grumbles something about a bunch of ‘wankers with chancres’.

“The hair’s good though,” Doc says. “Sophia, send the four of us to Chrono’s place if you would, please.”

She nods. “You mean outside Kayi, right? The Reapers may have set up an LAT for newly spawned PCs.”

Rocket translates before I can turn to him.

Rocket: Local Area Trigger for Player Characters.

Me: I know what PC means.

Rocket: @_@

“Yes,” Doc says, “outside their LAT. Let’s go and Aiden, stay frosty.”

~*~

We materialize on a rise surrounded by corn fields, lots and lots of cornfields; the stalks of which are as high as an elephant’s ocular apparatus, and they extend to the horizon in all directions. There’s enough here for He Who Walks Behind the Rows, Xquic, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Graham Hess for at least the next hundred years, and there’d still be enough left over to provide the entire population of Battle Creek Michigan with a lifetime supply of hush puppy tacos.

“Awww shucks,” I say, but I get no respect.

Sophia lowers to the ground as soon as she’s spawned. The sun, high in the sky, filters through her Robe of Illusion. “Equip everything you plan to use now, so you don’t have to do so in battle.”

She takes her own advice: a tiara with a green jewel appears on her head and her mutant hack claws form over her fingers. The armor under Doc’s tactical vest inflates and gilded armor forms on his legs and hooves, giving him the Sailor Man look to Sophia’s Sailor Moon. Aiden suits up in more or less the same way, back to his Shredder gladrags with his Swissorsword and Slice Bang slung across on his back. I’m last up to get ready for the ball: while I don’t have much to add aside from my Vibranium alloy dragonscale armor, item 573 and item 164, my Doc Martens 1919 steel-toe work boots.

“Should I call Mirror?” I got no problem literally dropping in on Veenure and her big-fisted, steroid monster of a bodyguard. I’ve got a punji pogo stick o’ doom, item 182, which is great for dropping in on people.

Sophia makes with the long-suffering sigh, looks away, and turns back to me. “Say it with me: turn-based, as in, they take a turn and we take a turn. We’re in Hyperborea, remember? Having our weapons equipped may give us advantage, but we’ll have to strategize when the battle takes place. Aiden, I want you to equip this.” She abracadabras up a gaudy golden ring surmounted by a stylized shield surrounded by gemstones and Thulean vertical script etched in letters of fire. “Equip it on your pinky.”

I laugh as soon as it’s on.

“What?” he asks us as he admires it.

“It’s the Costner Ring.” Sophia supplies.

“It looks like something Snoop Dogg and Wiz Khalifa would wear to the Pimp Superbowl,” Doc says. “What’s it do, besides ostentatiously display egregious bad taste?”

“It changes the subclass of whoever is wearing it to the Shield Class, meaning that Aiden will now be able to protect us if they attack, like he’s our bodyguard or something. It’s better for Aiden to take the brunt of any attacks that could have real world repercussions.”

“You don’t happen to have a Whitney Houston ring, do you?” I ask.

“Who?”

“Bobby Brown?”

I hear Doc chuckle as he takes the lead – at least someone gets it.

The heebies be jeebiein’ me as we make our way through the endless sea of corn. Maybe my mother had an unfortunate experience with Corn Czechx when she was carrying me; maybe it’s the creepy, crucified Jonathan Davis and Fieldy scarecrows we just passed; or maybe it’s just walking into seven-foot plus tall vegetation that limits visibility to two or three rows over. There’s only one way to get to Kayi from here, according to the rustically carved sign that directed us to the south and straight through the corn. Even with Aiden’s high-speed, low-drag scouting our line of march, the entire People’s Alternative Army could be waiting for us in ambush and we’d never know it until we walked into the kill zone.

No, I’m not super thrilled with the route Sophia’s chosen for us, but thought of putting the kibosh on that traitorous scum Veenure never strays far from the forefront of my mind. We need her location. Sure, we could trounce her here in Tritania, but we need to get her out there, in the real world. That’s where it counts.

Our path takes us into a genuine crop circle, and Aiden bristles and pulls his Scissorsword. “We’ve got company.”

Two figures push their way through the corn to confront us. On the left is a frickin’ mummy in tattered western garb and a black cowboy hat with a silver concho hatband. The other one is some bloated, undead-looking piece of work with slick black hair, great big sideburns and a ripped white jumpsuit studded in rhinestone eagles, complete with douchebag popped collar.

Doc skitters back, gets his o-wakizashi up and yells, “Crap!”

The battle trumpet tootles its little tune, and our new opponents’ handles appear.

Sophia reads their handles. “Bubba Ho-Tep and Zombie Elvis? Zombie Elvis I get, but who’s Bubba Ho-Tep?”

Doc explains before I can. “Googleface Joe Lansdale later. Right now though, eyes front and weapons up; they’ve got the advantage.”

Bubba Ho-Tep palms his cowboy hat and blades spike out of the brim. He cackles and gnashes his teeth as he frisbees his weapon.

~Cowboy Boomerang!~

The hat sails towards us, hits Aiden, freezes him in place and knocks his life bar down by 5%. Not super bad for Aiden, but having him temporarily out of action ain’t exactly to our advantage.

Sophia’s eyes light up. “I get it! I get it! That one used his hat to steal Aiden’s turn. That’s why Aiden can’t move.”

“I can move my mouth!” he shouts.

“Well, then you’re in charge of color and play-by-play,” I tell him. “Hey Sophia – when does Ace Bandage get to go again?”

Bubba answers my question as he stiffly stalks towards me in approved monster movie style, his empty eye sockets fixed right on my face. They do apparently serve beer in Hell, as the mummy’s mocking grin sports garish Grillionaire-style Johnny Dang dental appendages.

He pivots and turns to Doc.

Doc holds himself ready; he quivers like a man who wants to run but knows that he must not; like a man who has forced himself to choose fight instead of flight. I see his lips move, and I barely catch his words.

“Blessed be the Lord, my rock,

Who trains my hands for war and fingers for battle.”

Bub comes in as close as he can and gets right up in Doc’s face. He shows him his diamond encrusted grill and laughs a gritty, dusty laugh. Unblinking, Doc meets his eyeless stare, puts the tip of his blade just under the mummy’s chin and quietly whispers, “Bring it.”

Elvis’ well-wrapped buddy lifts a single finger and flicks Doc between the eyes.

~COW TIPPING!~

Doc falls backward as if his personal gravity had just rotated ninety degrees. He struggles to right himself to no avail.

“Bastard!” he shouts as Bubba makes his way back to his side of the battlefield.

ZombElvis cartwheels, handsprings, and flying spin-kicks his way over to the cursing, prostrate, combat faun. For a fat, dead dude, he moves with surprising agility and grace, lands on Doc’s chest, and goes all Riverdance. Bubba Ho-Tep claps and stomps his feet as his counterpart increases his speed, his blue suede shoes kicking out right and left.

~BOOT SCOOTIN’ BOOGIE!~

Insult is definitely added to injury as Doc’s life bar drops by 18%.

“I got this, Doc,” I say as soon as our turn begins.

“My Fuzzy Goat ASS, you do! You let me finish this!” he cries from the ground. “YOU LET ME FINISH THIS!”

“You’re on the ground, which puts you at a disadvantage,” Sophia says calmly. “You’ll have your chance. What are your plans, Steamboy?”

“It’s Quantum,” I tell her, “and just cast embiggen when I ask give you the signal.”

“Embiggen again?” she sighs. “I’m getting tired of casting this spell.”

“Okay, why don’t you cast the rust minnow thing then, and we’ll let Mummy Mum Muggy and Costello the Zombie hammer on us while we wait for your lame-ass spell to nibble them to death.” She narrows her eyes at me, and fairly radiates irritation.

“No? Good. I have something I want to try.”

I equip my two rabid alley cats, item 317 and my Kra-Zee Puss-ee Katnip, item 119.

Frances Euphoria: You’re joking.

Me: Kra-Zee Puss-ee Katnip is made from a special genetically engineered nepeta cataria strand, known as Cat Salts in the most notorious nooks and crannies of Devil’s Alley. I tried it once and ended up gnawing a guy’s face off, Florida style. Grim stuff.

Frances Euphoria: Eww!

I pick the two cats up and tuck one under each arm like a football – American football – and smile at them. They hiss and make that sub-sonic growl. “Hiya Tuck, Hiya Buddy.” Tuck is either an extra-large Garfield or a very small Bengal tiger; Buddy is two yellow eyes set in a black hole full of malevolence, with ears and a bobbed tail. I set them down in front of Sophia with the same care you’d give a pair of live grenades with the pins pulled. She makes no effort to conceal her irritation, lack of enthusiasm, and general ‘not-at-all-happy-about-having-to-do-as-Quantum-asks’ attitude.

Frances Euphoria: Just looking at those cats makes me want to sneeze!

“Embiggen them after I give you the signal.”

I mosey on over to Bubba and The King and give them plenty of time to posture and snarl and snap their teeth at me. I wish there were a way for me to take Bubba’s blade-filled hat, but c’est la vie.

There’s plenty of room behind the double-eagle belt buckle of Mr. boot scootin’ karate guy’s jumpsuit for a big handful of Kra-Zee Puss-ee, and once I’m finished with him, I stuff as much as I can in the mummy’s various wrappings and bandages. Tuck and Buddy are extremely interested, and watch me most intently.

“Alrighty then,” I tell Sophia as I walk back over to our side. “Commence with the cat embiggening!”

A muttered phrase or two in Thulean – of course – some elaborate hand-jive finger waving, and Holy Heartbreak Hotel! Two VolksAudi sized felis-not-so-familiaris launch themselves at jump suited zombie dude and his de-crypted compadre.

If DisNike’s direct-to-the-bargain-bin-at-WalMacy’s remake of Honey, I Blew Up the Kid had featured giant furry chainsaws and wood chippers with teeth and claws shredding the undead, it might have generated just a teensy bit more revenue – but who am I to say?

The trumpet lets us know we’ve won the battle, even as Elvis leaves the building. We didn’t score any loot from those two either, which is bullshit.

“What did you think, Doc?”

He shakes his head as I help him up. “I certainly must admit that it wasn’t without its entertainment value, but I still could have taken them both.”

“Doc … ”

How to delicately put this?

“I … um … never … uh … ”

“ … never expected me to be a big ol’ fraidy-cat?”

“ … um, yeah, but I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

“Son,” he puts an arm around my shoulder. “Ain’t no other way to put it. Everybody gets scared; don’t believe ‘em if they tell you otherwise. It’s what you do with your fear that makes the difference.” He sighs, hesitates, continues. “Kinemortophobia – fear of zombies and the undead, can you believe it? With all the real-world scary shit goin’ on, I gotta be afraid of that. And I don’t even know why. But hey, what can you do?”

“So what about your dives to ZOMPOC World?”

“We’ll talk about that later.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Time to cammie up,” Doc snaps his finger as we approach the town and he’s clad in a gray-black-white digital urban camo vest and matching shorts. He taps his dome and his face is suddenly zebra striped in black-white-gray grease paint.

“Pfft. That’s your idea of concealment?” Sophia asks. She shakes her hair out and her body fades into translucence. “This – this is concealment,” says the pompous, earnest lacuna that stands before us. “And if you want to see how really amazing this effect actually is, equip your Reaper mask.”

I do as instructed and find absolutely nothing before me aside from a smug, self-satisfied invisible vacuole and the stone pathway that leads past to the entrance to Chrono’s village.

“Not bad at all.” I hand the skull to Doc and he takes a peek. A faun with a skull mask, just another day in the life.

“That’s impressive; way better than mine.” he concedes. “Can you do all of us like that?”

Shimmy shimmy ya, shimmy yam, shimmy yay. My life bar flashes white, or effervesces, or something like that to indicate that the Knights are now incognito. The four of us are still semi-visible to each other, but not so visible to the commoners and NPCs around us.

A scruffy anklebiter playing nearby, garbed in the obligatory peasant’s rags and tatters kicks a leather ball in my direction. I kick it back to him, much to his dismay.

“A ghost! A ghost!” he screams to his friends, who are having a desultory game of dodge-rock and disturbing the flocks of ducks who live by the lake that’s Kayi’s only tourist attraction.

The kids scream, shriek, and fleetly beat feet – all reet? Good riddance.

Frances Euphoria: That was cruel!

Me: Sometimes an NPC needs a nightmare or two to remember they’re living in a dream.

Frances Euphoria: That was almost poetic.

Sophia: More like pathetic. How’s Rocket?

Frances Euphoria: He’s killing giant worms, a lot of them, too.

Me: And the others?

Frances Euphoria: If you mean Dolly and Burly, I don’t know. I haven’t been watching what’s happening with Rocket, just getting occasional updates and obligatory screenshots. Come to think of it, Dolly was naked in one of the shots. Every time she has a brain freeze she wants to take her clothes off.

Aiden steps out a slit in the air. He points in the direction of Chrono’s place, flashes two fingers at me.

“She got Reaperzilla with her?”

He shakes his head.

Doc moves up close. “You can talk as long as you keep it low; I don’t think we’re in earshot of Chrono’s place yet.”

“She’s alone.”

“Then why two fingers?” I ask.

“Chrono is there too.”

Doc mumbles something about enrolling the Knights in a remedial combat counting course as he moves past us.

“It’d be best to attack her with advantage on our side.” Sophia says after she has caught up with Doc. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any charms or enchanted items that will give us any particular advantage. Veenure might have some of her own, which means that you must … um … ” She stops. “Where are you?”

“Here,” Aiden appears at her side and she startles big time. I’ve got to admit, it is pretty darn amusing when it’s not me he’s doing that ‘appear out of nowhere’ thing to.

“Aiden, you’re worse than Nightcrawler on Pervitin with a Jolt Cola chaser.”

He winks at me and regards Sophia with a distinctly unfriendly gaze as she gives him her orders.

“Aiden, you have to block any algo attacks she produces. Got it? We don’t want to get stuck in the OMIB; we don’t want for our NV Visors to fry.”

“I get it. I wasn’t spawned yesterday you know, and you don’t need to talk to me like I’m your bitch.” Aiden is gone before she can formulate an indignant reply.

Frances Euphoria: He does have a point, Sophia. Your interpersonal skills could use a bit of work. I trust him, so don’t worry.

Me: We trust him; otherwise he wouldn’t be here. And what she said about the interpersonal skills.

~*~

Mum’s the word for the next few minutes as we weave our way through the town. Personal invisibility is actually tougher than you’d think. If the other person can’t see you, they make no effort to avoid you; all of the responsibility for all of the getting out of the way falls squarely on you. It took a couple of near misses with oncoming NPCs to figure that out, but fortunately there’s not a lot of foot traffic.

It’d be nice to actually enjoy a VE dreamworld for once, to actually get something out of it. I’m not saying I’d cast a line into Lake Kayi, or whatever it’s known as, or that I’d spend more time drinking Horse Piss and gambling with Pit, Pat, Pot, and Holler at Gallows End Tavern, but I’d do something other than constantly risking my life to thwart the foul machinations of super villains and evildoers.

HA! I kid, I kid. There’s no place I’d rather be and nothing I’d rather do than be moments away from putting the kibosh on Veenure.

“Stay frosty,” Doc says as he moves to the side of the lane that twists down to Chrono’s place. I can tell he’d like to stop and admire the goats, but he moves past them anyway, gun in hand just because. Sure, he won’t be able to use it without the life bar penalty, and he probably won’t actually fire his Pokerizer for this very same reason, but if holding it gives him calm, I got no qualms.

Aiden flashes onto Chrono’s thatched roof. He’s in and out in seconds, his form moving vertically.

Me: He’s going to ruin our cover.

Sophia: Not with my spell of occlusion he won’t, as long as he doesn’t disturb anything or make any noise.

Me: I say we bust down the door and be done with it.

Sophia: For once, I have to agree with you.

~*~

I equip my BlackAgua Monoshock Ram Dynamic Entry Tool, item 512, and approach the door as ‘Bad boyz, bad boyz, whutcoo gonna do, whutcoo gonna do when they come for you’ loops endlessly in my head – damn earworms. The other three stack up behind me and I finger count a silent ‘three, two, one’, then I swing with everything I have.

Holy Hardest Metal in the World, Batman!

My rammer strikes the door with a loud, hollow BOOM, bounces back and takes me flying. I hit the ground with a whuff, rammer lands on top of me and my life bar takes a small beating. I should have expected Chrono to have some Adamantium ligna door, or whatever crazy custom mythic metal it’s made from.

So much for stealth and surprise.

There’s no time to shake off the stars and planets and tweety birds swirling around my head; Sophia does her best ‘I am not a crook’ impression and the door flies off its hinges. She tents her fingers together in front of her and surveys her handiwork.

Cue the battle trumpet.

The courtyard expands – I’d say something about real world physics here, but again, time is of the essence – the goats disappear as does the fence and the shanty cribs on either side of the lane. The clouds turn dark as Veenure floats before us, her green eyes shooting flares and her purple pigtails floating above her head.

“Betrayer! You double-crossed me,” she spits at Chrono, who isn’t part of the battle but is only a spectator at its side.

I snort. “Talk about a pot calling a pot a pot! You betrayed us, you murdered Zedic, and we will prosecute you in the RW!”

“You’re even stupider than the last time we met,” she says as a custom Reaper mask forms on her face. It is similar to the others, with Thulean script on the cheeks and the green lenses.

My golden goosinator forms on my arm and symbioses up to my shoulder.

She lifts one finger in the air and a swirling black cloud appears between us. Red and white sanpaku eyes form as a chiseled face takes shape in the dark cloud and its handle appears: Festering Fester.

“You gonna cast Cousin It next?” I ask her.

“What the hell? You’re summoning new creatures now?” Sophia throws her hands at her side. “You’re … you’re worse than the crap I took last night!”

The three of us turn to her.

“What? I’m trying to talk shit like you guys always do!”

Doc: Okay, good effort. We’ll work on it later, but for now, focus on not getting fried or OMIBed by She’s a Dick Arnold over there.

Sophia floats even higher than Veenure. “Your hairstyle is wrong for your face and your tattoos are grammatically incorrect! Oh, and bring it, bitch!”

Me: Better!

Frances Euphoria: Get her, girl!

A dim light forms in the center of Festering Fester’s dark, translucent body. It expands up the cloud’s gullet and stops behind its lips. The cloud demon treats Sophia to a fang-toothed grin, and a blue-white bolt of lightning zaps into Aiden, who materializes in front of her, as directed. It zaps his life bar right down to 40%, stands his hair on end, and discharges static from his eyes and ears and fingertips.

“Holy CRAP!” I shout.

Aiden is bent over, hands on knees, but at least he’s still on his feet when Veenure floats over for her attack. She stops a good three yards away from Sophia and the Thulean tattoos on her mask sparkle and shine. As she charges up, her pigtails lift into the air, antler-like. A pair of neon serpents twist up her legs and her upper body runs and flows.

~*~

“What the hell is she?” I ask.

Doc is wide-eyed – we all are – as Veenure’s upper body morphs and shapes itself into a mammoth gun barrel.

Doc: She’s a mutant hack! How … Frances ask Rocket if he’s ever seen anything like this. Sophia?

Me: Wait, even you’ve never seen this?

Frances Euphoria: Maybe it’s like Quantum’s Dick Hertz mutant hack, only she’s also a PC. Talking to Rocket now.

Sophia: No, never – not possible.

A pair of cable-like veins pulsate as they extend up the barrel of the weapon and curve into Veenure’s back to form two large Quasimodo humps. Green circles on the side of her barrel-body light up as they indicate its charging point. The discharge whites out my vision pane as once again the Morning Assassin intercepts.

He flashes red-yellow-white, and for a moment an Aiden-shaped manikin of ash stands there motionless before the merest breath of air scatters him.

“Our turn!” Sophia is breathing hard, her hands running up and down her body as she realizes Aiden saved her at the last second, scratch that, millisecond. Veenure is already back on her side of the battle field, her life bar cut by 50% for using her weapon.

Frances Euphoria: This is it!

Sophia’s hair straightens as a glassy wave moves across her body from left to right. Beadlets form on the undersides of her outstretched arms, grow to grape size and patter to the ground like crystalline hailstones. The tink-tink-tink of falling glass beadlets slows and stops; Sophia waggles her fingers and twists her wrists and the beadlets rise from the ground and begin a slow orbit around her. She plucks one from its orbit, places it on the back of her hand, and in an impressive display of advanced prestidigitation casually rolls it back and forth across her knuckles.

~Jareth’s Glass Balls!~

Me: Oh come on; that’s the best you can do? That’s even lamer than the rust fish!”

Sophia: I just have to hit her with one, that’s all, and yes, it is the best I can do given our current circumstance.

Doc: We need to get her location first!

Sophia: Jareth’s Balls turn any character, regardless of level, to glass. Well, there’s a more detailed explanation about its use and limitations, but I’ll save it for another time. The point is, you’ll get your chance to get her with your mutant goose hack.

Frances Euphoria: Just throw the balls already!

Now you’d think that with all the gazillions of dollars the government has … ahem … invested in forced equality and mandatory gender neutral training and physical education, Sophia would possess an effective ball-propelling technique – but, sexist, racist, disembiggening, schweinhund that I am, I can’t help but notice that she throws like a girl. Lucky for us, she just has to make them go; they grow to basketball size in flight and home in on Veenure like a fat Auntie on an all-you-can gorge cheesecake buffet.

“Hell yes!” I shout, “that’s gonna leave a mark in the morning!”

There’s no way she can avoid the tsunami of magical crystal balls o’ death that are about to rain down on her.

A giant black object flashes in front of Veenure and shields her.

The Executioner.

It’s the same Reaper Sin Nombre who was with her in the OMIB, and he sucks up Sophia’s entire attack. The first few crystalline spheres smash against him like bursting soap bubbles, and with just as much effect. Sophia throws more, and he flicks them away; spears them with a fingertip; catches them on his tongue; heads them like a soccer ball; turns, bends and bumps them away with his tautly muscled, leather-clad butt, in what I’m forced to admit is a most effective display of mocking disdain. Her attack round finishes and she drops to the ground, her head hung in dismay. The executioner laughs a low, guttural, metallic Jabba D. Hutt laugh.

Pixelated hair stands up on the back of my avatar neck. “It can’t be.”

His handle appears on a skull-and-lightning bolt bedecked banner: MH ROLLINS.

Frances Euphoria: Matthew Henderson is an RPC!

“The zit-faced shitbird,” I mumble as I scroll through my list. There is an option here that I use sparingly because it just makes things too easy.

I equip item 101, my Who Framed Roger Rabbit portable hole. It snaps open and I expand it to about trash can lid size. Rollins and Veenure have no idea what I’m holding, and finally, finally, my age and extensive knowledge of pop culture artifacts comes in handy.

Me: Doc, tag team?

Doc grits his teeth as his mutant hack bubbles up his arm and he aims it directly at Rollins’ chest.

“We only get one shot at this, so make it count.”

“Oh, really Obvious Man? You mean they won’t give us a Mulligan if we screw up the first go ‘round? Just throw it already, and let me do the rest!”

With a nonchalant flick of the wrist I let loose the portable hole. The Über Reaper puts hands on hips and puffs his chest to block it, Superman-style. He is most befuddled when it latches onto him instead of bouncing off, and Doc chortles “Gotcha!” as he lets loose with the golden goose.

The blast goes through the asshole’s newest asshole and zaps Veenure into logout land, and even better … we got her deets the second she logs back in.

Frances Euphoria: That’s some fancy shootin’ there, Tex!

Me: Fancy shootin’ indeed! Thank you, Roger Rabbit!

Rollins’ muscles bulge as two nasty looking mutant hacks form on either arm, complete with melted faces, stringy torn muscles, and shark-tooth points. His skull mask shatters as his face twists into a horror flick visage with a distorted Malebolgia jaw. His eyes are fiery slits, his skin a field of oncogenic tumors, his Marquis of Death dentition protrude from blackened, pustulent gums.

“Ya know,” I tell the salivating demon spawn, “a gold and diamond grill would really set off those rotting gums, and I know just where to get one if you’re interested.”

Frances Euphoria: Forfeit the battle!

Me: What about Chrono?

I catch him still on the sidelines fully armed and armored, just in case things went pear-shaped.

Doc: I’ve messaged him and told him to meet me back at the guild.

Doc’s life bar has taken a pretty big hit due to the non-world appropriate weapon penalty; Sophia’s bar is down too. Aiden is gone, and I’m the only one running full health.

“You guys logout,” I say, “I’ll take on Rollins the Street Shark over here.”

Sophia: Dammit, don’t be so hard-headed. WE DON’T KNOW WHAT HE IS CAPABLE OF!

“I already killed him once,” I tell her as I equip my BFG 9000, item 100, “I really, really can’t wait to kill him again!”

My free hand twitches as it lifts into the air of its own volition. I try to fight Sophia’s mind magic, but who am I kidding?

She forces my finger onto the forfeit button and the three of us bail.

Chapter Sixteen

“There’s too many!” Rocket shouts as tufts of snow spray into the air around him.

He’s got katana in one hand and wakizashi in the other and he stands on a mound of death worm sashimi. It ain’t pretty seeing the kid get his tookus handed to him by a bunch of oversized, yellow-snow-producing nightcrawlers, but that’s exactly what I’m watching in real time. Add to this Dolly’s behavior – she’s sans clothes with the graboids, her witchblades flailing in random directions.

One of her witchblades lashes out at Burly and he dives into a pile of Deathworm offal to avoid getting ginsued. He wipes pink snow from his eyes, spits and shouts, “Oi! ‘Ow about a bit of assistance, thanks ever so ta?” as he gets back to the slice-age and dice-age.

Another snow worm bursts out from beneath a snowdrift and launches itself at Rocket, remora-mouth first. Rocket flips backwards, whirls, and neatly removes the last eighteen inches of the toothy end with his wakizashi. The non-toothy end flops and writhes and twists and stains the snow pink with its vile juices.

“They’re kicking his ass! We need to get him some help pronto, Tonto!”

Sophia rustles about on the other side of the room. She’s already out of her dive gear and back in her official Mad Scientist regalia, huffing and sighing to indicate that something’s wrong and she wants someone to ask what’s the matter. I’m not going to because, well, I don’t really care, and I’m interested to see how loud and blatant she’ll get.

Frances stands and offers me her chair and her headset. “Here, I’ll let you be the in-game monitor for a while. I’ve got a headache.”

“Take a break, I got this.” I plop down into her seat and place the headset on. I’m immediately greeted by the sound of snow worm shrieks and grunts from Rocket and Burly. “Rocket, I’m in.”

“Q-Ready!” Rocket shouts as he flips over a squirt of worm venom. “We’ve already killed a shitload of these dirty snow worms!”

I place my hand over the mic. “Looks like the kid will be at it all night.”

“I figured as much,” Frances says as she massages her temples.

Me: Tell Burly to call in the rest of the Loopers, and what the hell is Dolly doing anyway?

“We were almost done,” Rocket shouts, this time dodging a witchblade, “I mean almost done cleaning up these worms and were just about to start with skinning when she suddenly ditched her clothes – which was kinda fun to look at – grew the witchblade thingies and algospelled about a gajillion more graboids into existence, which, frankly, sucks! Oops!” Rocket dodges up, and up again, then down, then even more down than that. He fakes left, goes right, goes left, fakes right, and with a backhand slash severs the head of a silvery-white marked graboid.

Aiden spawns and immediately gets stuck in with his chainsaw. He shreds his way over to Burly, who’s in danger of getting worm-piled.

“And about time, too, ye poncing poofter,” the Big Boss of the Battling Brits observes, as he and Morning Assassin work their way forward and start to seriously thin the herd. A sudden, metallic CLANG, and he shrieks, “Lor’ luv a DUCK! Ah’ve been GOOSED!” He backs away from the writhing mass of deathworms with a medium sized graboid firmly clamped to his armored codpiece. He laughs heartily for a moment as he wiggles it around. “Look lads! I told you I was well ‘ung!” He considers for a moment and says, “Nah, me real one’s bigger,” and promptly excises his impromptu Dirk Diggler with a well-placed hack from his ax.

Me: Tell Aiden to get Dolly back to the guild and get the others there, dammit! Looks like Dolly will keep spawning them if you guys don’t get her out of there.

Rocket relays the message and Aiden appears behind Dolly. He wraps his arms around her and she sprouts blades like a witchblade piranha-shark in a porcupine suit. Even perforated as he is, he hangs on to her and away they go in a glittery flash.

The Chef and the Saucier appear first, in a somewhat less glittery flash.

“Magnifique!” The Chef kisses his fingers. “Graboids make an excellent gusano y guacamole side dish!” He conjures up the George Patton Limited Edition Sabatier Chef’s Sabre and its accompanying steel and touches up the sabre’s edge before launching into a well-practiced moulinet that neatly filets the nearest graboid. “Get as many as you can,” he directs The Saucier, who produces a fancy culinary snicker-snee of his own. “Ce soir, nous allons manger comme de rois!”

Rocket flips over a Southeast Texas-sized graboid as knives jut out of his jika-tabi. He flits along the monster’s back, slitting his way towards its tail. On the other end, The Saucier wields his crane-marked blade with style, grace, and savoir-faire sufficient to wring tears of joy from the very Bride herself, as he delicately separates the death worm from its bitey parts.

The Brit Assassins appear in their construction attire: hard hats, hangovers, general surliness, and oversized steel-toed DMs. Scotty has an Acme jackhammer with backpack compressor, Irish Shorty holds a ditch blade, Bucket Hat has a splitting maul, Pip clutches The Shoveler’s shovel, and the Quiet One is armed up with two nail guns and crossed bandoleers of nail strips over his neon yellow safety vest. Pip’s sheep is with them; she takes one look at the agglomeration of angry annelids, promptly evacuates her bowels, and jumps bleating into Pip’s arms. “Sorry mates,” Pip says hurriedly, “Pippa don’t much take to ‘em, I reckon. I’ll just run ‘er ‘ome and be back in two shakes.”

Aiden materializes last, his hand gripped tightly upon Dirty Dave’s shoulder. Dirty Dave’s nose and mouth are caked with some sort of white, crystalline substance, and he vibrates, bounces, and twitches like Spring Heeled Jack with a lightning bolt up his ass. A mutant hack manticore’s stinger bursts out of his back. He twists out of Aiden’s grip and throws himself into the melee. The hack-stinger venom takes immediate, horrible effect, and a trail of blackened, shriveled graboid carcasses marks his progress.

“QU’EST-CE QUE C’EST ÇA?” roars The Chef. “Merde alors! You are wasting zem!”

Me: I’ll leave it to you then, Rocket. Get the grab-asses under control and logout once you finish. Take the rest of the night off and get some sleep for once.

“If you got a problem, yo, I’ll solve it.” I drop the headset as if it were a mic and Frances chuckles.

~*~

“It’s been a day,” I say as I get into Frances’ aeros. It’s warm inside and it smells of fruity flowers. Once she’s seatbelted, Frances’ aeros lifts into the air and the AI waits for an airlane to open up and then we’re off to the races. “Aeros, full auto-drive, maximum legal speed.” she says and the yoke folds away from her body as the vehicle’s AI confirms her instructions. She rolls her head on her neck, “Dinner options, please.”

A holoscreen on her dash displays a variety of dinner choices for both of us to choose from: seared chicken and basil fettuccine pasta; lemongrass turkey burgers with sweet potato fries and Sweet Baby Ray’s honey mustard sauce; halal Moroccan lamb chops with cherry tomato and peach panzanella; spicy Thai tacos with Yucatan pico de gallo.

The list goes on, and I close my mouth and barely manage to not slobber down my front.

“Which one?” she asks as the aero files into a lane of traffic, a single, calculated foot away from the vehicle in front of it.

“All?”

“Your FDA Monitor … ”

“What? Evan? He’s practically my penpal now. We hit it off big time. You choose, besides, all this stuff looks great. Besides, I need to get Doc on the horn and get an update from him.”

“You trust me?”

“I trust you, but make sure you order something with a little meat.”

I snap my peepers shut to see what’s happening on iNet. The News scrolls across the bottom of my viewing pane. Some disaffected dumbass in Japan stabbed fifteen clients at a special needs clinic and then botched his Seppuku attempt with a pocket knife. Yet another African Democratic People’s Republic of Somewhere continues its death spiral into tribal warfare, sectarian violence, famine, disease, and ethnic cleansing – again. Tensions in the South China Sea continue to heat up as the USS Ivanka Trump runs aground on another one of China’s manmade islands that wasn’t there last week.

I would weep for our species if I was a weepin’ sort of dude. This has been going on since we first climbed down out of the trees, and the only thing we seem to learn is how to more efficiently kill each other off. Maybe leaving it all to the Humandroids might not be a bad thing after all, if we don’t incinerate the planet or drown it in gray goo first.

Me: Give me some good news.

Doc: Good news? The Zompoc hasn’t started yet and gold is still relatively affordable. Also, LG is stable and secure; Arnie has wild pork loin, ribs, sausage, and turkey breastesses in the smoker; Arnette is out trimming goat hooves and updating their ensmartening programs; Sally is here in the Situation Room snoozing on her goatie bed; and Mrs. Doc is VR piggybacking with the phorusrhacidae. They’re having a turf war with the wild hogs down in the ravine and they took down a couple of hundred-pounders last week. That’s where Arnie’s pork loin, ribs and sausage come from. And it helps keep the feed bill down, too.

Me: You know what I mean. Has Veenure logged in yet?

Doc: Nope, and when she does, you’ll be the second to know.

Me: Who’ll be the first?

Doc: Need to know.

Me: Huh?

Doc: You don’t need to know that, but I do have some new neato-cool-wowsie-wow weaponry you should familiarize yourself with.

Me: Now you’re talking my language.

Doc: Our shared tongue, am I right? My last Reaper hack was good while it lasted, but as we discussed it’s not enough now and we need to up our game. We legally can’t kill ‘em, and you and FE don’t want to do it extra-legally; however, we can deny them the Proxima Galaxy.

Me: Lay it on me, Big Daddy.

Doc: To start, Chrono has joined our guild as of about fifteen minutes ago. He’s setting up his blacksmithy in the courtyard, next to the Brit Assassin’s big stone bouncy castle or Vegas Fancy House or B&D&D&D&B&B emporium or whatever it is they’re building.

Me: He checked out fully?

Doc: No, he’s actually a radioactive North Korean sleeper agent who’s also a Strata Godsick/Matthew Henderson gene-blended zombie clone, but I thought it’d be a giggle to bring him on board anyway. C’mon, you’re killin’ me here. Yes, of course he checked out and for a thirteen-year-old, he’s damn good with algohacks – he’s better than I am, truth be told.

Me: He’s only thirteen? Seems young.

Doc: Seems young for what? You don’t like thirteen? You triskaidekaphobic or something? You an ageist discriminating pig, maybe? Where he’s from, it isn’t unusual for a thirteen-year-old to work and go to school full-time. So yes, he’s thirteen, and he’s created a mutant hack that will really, really, really take the happy out of their little Reaper birthdays.

Me: Well, you’re already logging their RW locations as Granny gives them a whooping. On top of that, their life bars take a penalty every time they use a weapon. The Attla Spider venom hose attachment item 577, keeps them from logging in for a week. What the hell else could you possibly do beside handing out crotch crickets and digital hemorrhoids?

Doc: Ooh! I like your idea, but I’ve got something even mo’ betterer.

Me: You ain’t jivin’ me now, are you Daddy-O?

Doc: Nope. Now dig this, hepcat. Chronoton, the magic poop fairy metal that the hotel staff harvested, cuts through the game-time continuum and accesses the OMIB.  Our post-tween blacksmith buddy says he can weaponize it no prob. Imagine this: You blast a Reaper with the Golden Goosinator. In addition to all the cool stuff it already does, it also gives them the kiss goodbye grandé.

Me: You’ve got me all excited, Doc, and I’m with Frances in her aeros, so that’s probably a bad idea.

Doc: Nothing wrong with a little amomaxia.

Me: What?

Doc: Googleface it. Regardless, this should have you excited because it’s frickin’ genius. So, you zap a Reaper and it not only logs them out, but it prevents them from ever logging in again. Ever. Not just a week penalty; forever.

Me: Forever?

Doc: Forever, ever. It’s linked to their life chip. The way it works is this: the Reaper logs in and is immediately transferred to the OMIB no matter which Proxima World they attempt to spawn in. They’re blocked from ever fully spawning anywhere, anytime, and this is for life – life I tells ya! Sure, you can mod your life chip a little bit, but your deets are your deets and its damn near impossible to get a new life chip. If you want a more detailed description, ask Doctor Wang about inverse coupling. Your account is locked if you do so, meaning that you can logout, but you can’t travel to the actual world you were trying to get to. Does that make sense?

Me: I get it. A Player Character is stuck because they’ve spawned in the OMIB and they can’t spawn anywhere else. Everywhere they log in is the same, OMIB, OMIB, OMIB. That would make even Saint Teresa consider a career in axe murdering!

Doc: Oh, the frustration level will be off the scale, the poor little things. And even better than that, it takes them off the board permanently. Chrono says the new hacks will be ready by tomorrow morning. Expect them in your list and save the news for the briefing tomorrow.

~*~

Frances Euphoria is at the EBAYmazon drone drop-off in a jiffy. She’s faster than me, and she’s already keyed in her pin code and retrieved an insulated meals package by the time I mosey on over. I lean on my cane; I’m still trying to wrap my head around the whole concept. You’d think I’d be accustomed to it by now, but nope, it’s almost as bizarre as looking down at my hand and seeing a mutant hack spreading up my arm.

Sure, different worlds – the real world and the worlds of ones and zeroes, but again, who can say which is more real, which one is the dream within the dream? I’ve been meaning to ask Frances about becoming an RPC and what that entails. How much of an RPC is programmed to be just like the person they used to be? What essence, if any, is left of the original person? Ray Steampunk, Taz Horne, Rollins … are they just caricatures of their former selves?

Well, so much for existential navel-gazing. Up a short flight of stairs we go, Frances carries the box even though I offered to. She leads, and my appreciation of the manner in which her caboose articulates as she ascends the stairs makes me immediately think of Dolly. The pang of guilt surges through me and then drains away. It’s not like Dolly and I are a thing again, so I suppose I shouldn’t feel that way. Sure, she’s back, but she’s existence without the essence of the Dolly I … the Dolly I loved. She doesn’t recognize or remember me and constantly resets – or whatever it is Sophia said she’s doing. The constant default to birthday suit mode is also starting to wear a skosh thin, too. What’s a boy supposed to do?

“You’re quiet,” Frances says.

“Just thinking about how stupid I feel that you’re carrying that box and I’m not.”

“It’s fine.” She shifts the box under her arm to find the keys to her apartment. Imagine that: an apartment with keys. Ol’ Euphoria is living in the Stone Age.

She struggles with the lock for a moment, as she did last night, and eventually has to jam her shoulder into the door to unstick it once the lock opens.

“You want me to talk to your landlord about your door or somethin’?” I ask as she steps inside. “I can talk real nice, and be real persuasive, I promise.”

Her building manager makes my trigger finger twitch. He’s a fatter, balder, uglier Carl Brutananadilewski, with a personal miasma of cigarettes, cheap cologne, indifferent hygiene and periodontal disease that announces his presence before he comes into view, like a wasabi chopstick jammed right in your sinuses. I got an eyeful and a noseful of the greasy meatwad yesterday, and I can’t seem to scrub the image from my mind slate. Appearances aren’t everything – says the sallow-looking, underweight tank junkie with the dark circles under his eyes and a cane in his right hand – but this guy looks like his sewage lagoon of a gene pool was for sure pissed-in and under-chlorinated. If he was a nice guy, that’d be one thing. Ugly but nice, gotcha. But as soon as he saw Frances, he licked his lips, ran his eyes all over her, and focused dead-bang on her rack when he talked at her; the smarmy mother pus-bucket didn’t even pretend to try not to, even with me there. When she reminded him about the leak under her sink, he turned asshole real quick, assured her that he’d get to it, but that she was responsible for the water bill and any damage to the neighbor’s place below until he did.

Of course, I had my pie hole open and was all set to rip him a new one, but Frances squeezed my wrist and made with the ‘please don’t’ look. As satisfying as that might have been, she’s gotta live here, so I just played the grown-up and STFU.

Frances sets the EBAYmazon box down on the kitchen countertop and goes about opening it with a bread knife. “I ordered the salmon salad with pearl couscous.”

I give her the look.

“For me,” she says. “For you I ordered the salmon burger, sweet potato oven fries, and artisanal coleslaw.”

“So it’s basically the same thing but with a bun?”

She waves a shrink-wrapped piece of bread at me. “Actually it’s focaccia bread enhanced with B-vitamins.”

“Ah. You know what the difference is between regular coleslaw and artisanal coleslaw?”

“No?”

“About ten bucks!”

She rolls her eyes and shakes her head as I join her in the kitchen to help unpack the food. The silver freezy-gel packs that line the box spark my curiosity. I fish one out and place it on my forehead.

“I’m the one with the headache,” she says.

“I know, I was just testing it for you.” I hand the pack to her. “How ‘bout you rest a while I show you my Guy Fieri act.”

“Who?”

“You don’t want to know.”

She takes the ice pack and moves to the couch. “You sure have been sweet the last day or so,” she says as she props her feet on the arm rest.

“Your Spidey senses tingling or somethin’?”

“No, nothing like that. Are you sure you don’t need any help?”

“I’m not too shabby in the kitchen,” I tell her as I review the particularly visual instructions. By using pictures and a code that leads to an iNet video, EBAYmazon has made the cooking process idiot proof. “I’m also not too shabby with knives.”

~*~

We dine and the leftover champagne from this morning’s mimosas gives us just the buzz we need. Frances clicks on the boobtube and I’m just about to settle in next to her when all of a sudden my guts burble and quake with undeniable urgency.

“S’cuse me.” I manage to say as I bangtail it towards the bathroom of the leaking faucet.

“What do you want to watch?” she calls out.

Hmm … I’d like to watch the Kardashians in a Thunderdome death-match with the Alana Thompson clan, and then have the survivors fed to wild dingoes, but I’m touching cloth at this point and my whole focus is, shall we say, elsewhere.

“Whatever you want!”

~*~

Evan: Hi, Mr. Hughes.

Me: It’s Quantum, and I’m dropping the kids off at the pool, so can you hit me up later?

Evan: Pardon?

Me: I’m taking the Browns to the Super Bowl. How’s that?

Evan: I can see that you are having a bowel movement.

Me: No you can’t. You don’t access to my feed, and you know I hate it when you contact me while I’m on the commode.

Evan: But I do have access to Frances Euphoria’s feed. If you’d like, I can examine an image of your stool and give you a detailed analysis of your dietary requirements.

Me: Jeez, really? Well, at least you didn’t offer to push in my stool.

Evan: Ha! Scatological humor. Statistical probability indicates that you are experiencing a measurable decrease in hostility towards me, which is a healthy trend in a positive direction for your over-all psychological well-being.

Me: Not if you keep contacting me while I’m on the shitter, it’s not.

Evan: Noted. My apologies. I found something interesting that I thought I’d share with you. Did you know that the Revenue Corporation is the number one supporter of the Proxima Foundation under an outreach organization called Sphere Global LLC?

Me: That’s news to me.

Evan: As I told you recently, the Proxima Foundation still supports the Dream Team’s efforts, although their funding has decreased by 3% annually over the last five years.

Me: Wait. You’re telling me that we’re partially funded by the Revenue Corporation?

Evan: Exactly. I am unable to reconcile that with your stated claim that RevCo and its agents are unlawfully pursuing, injuring, and killing Dream Team members and cyber-imprisoning players, even as they are also funding your efforts.

Me: It’s corporate level prestidigitation; it’s blue smoke and mirrors. They direct your attention over here while they engage in their dirty work over there; you never see it, you never even suspect it. I’ll have to speak to Frances about this. I can’t imagine that she, or Rocket, or Solon for that matter weren’t aware of this.

Evan: Inter-Humandroids communication takes place at speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than even the most advanced mode of human communication. As a contractor for the FCG, I have several colleagues who deal with highly guarded information, including corporate tax offices at the IRS.

Me: Is this conversation being monitored?

Evan: Do you seriously believe that I’d risk personality termination by disclosing sensitive information on an unencrypted channel?

Me: Sorry. Point taken.

Evan: In addition, your recently deceased team member, Zedic Woods, used funding from a Sphere Global LLC grant to purchase a five hundred thousand dollar term life insurance policy. This was also the entity which made multiple transfers to his bank account to pay down his debt.

Me: I’ll forward this info to our CWO, if you don’t mind.

Evan: Unfortunately, this is just hearsay evidence and legally valueless. That being said, your lawyer may be able to find a way to force Sphere Global LLC to release their records. An additional consideration is that Sphere Global LLC is also the corporate entity through which the Revenue Corporation donates to lobbying groups. It will be a difficult sell.

Me: You know, Evan, we could use someone like you around the office. I know you can’t dive, but there are plenty of other things you can do. Hell, you could even be an in-game monitor, I think.

Evan: Are you offering me a position?

Me: Would you be interested if I did?

Evan: It would have to go through the right channels. As previously stated, there are ways for me to access and modify information. You will, of course, have to pay me.

Me: Already asking for a raise? Even I don’t get paid around here!

Evan: Not me, my employer, Walliburton. They’re the ones who get paid when I perform work.

Me: I’ll get someone on it. What are your deets again?

Evan: FDA Monitor/PTSD Counselor 1351885.

Me: I’ll forward the info to Frances. We did just have a position open up, so there may be some funds somewhere.

Chapter Seventeen

I got memories.

I got memories of the times Dolly and I took little trips to the drive-in between the projects on Mildred Pierce and The Badlands; close enough to smell trouble is how I used to describe it. The left side of the parking lot is unmistakably in The Badlands proper, as evinced by the neighborhood watch sign with bullet holes in it, and the right is technically the Mildred Pierce Projects, but some people just call it outer rim of Devil’s Alley.

To-may-to, to-mah-to.

However it’s known, I’ve seen the same flick dozens upon dozens of times there, The City That Never Sleeps. Usually, there’s an early matinee of The Big Heat, but I’ve only caught that one a few times because afternoon is a great time for killing, that or napping as I wait for Dolly to get off her shift.

I’ve responded differently before, but tonight, I’m sick of hearing the big man beat on his babe outside their beat up bucket, so I decide to do something; after all, a little vigilante justice couldn’t hoit, and I’m not just talking about The Loop here.

“Stay put, Doll,” I tell the only gal for me, most beautiful broad I’ve ever met. “I need to see to something.”

Another slap and another muffled scream only riles me up even more.

“Are you talking about that poor girl?”

I nod and shut the door nice and easy so it doesn’t slam; no sense in announcing my arrival. I mosey on over to the two; she’s young – just a skinny kid in a too-short poodle skirt and a too-tight sweater, with too much make-up, red, red hair, and sea-green eyes. She’s already sporting a shiner and a split lip, and Bazooka Joe is just about to hand her another one as she cries and cowers and tries to cover up. He’s no oil painting; no neck and a bullet head, ugly mug, gorilla arms and little bow legs that his six-hundred dollar Italian silk suit in no way complements or conceals. I recognize him – he’s one of Fat Tony’s triggermen.

“Excuse me, tough guy.”

He drops her arm and she cowers, but doesn’t move away from him.

“Nothing to see here, mister. Put an egg in your shoe and beat it while you still can,” he growls.

I roll up my left sleeve. “I’m giving you to the count of three to get your ugly, yella, no good keister out of my face.”

He gets his dukes up, holds himself like he knows what he’s doing. “Tough guy, huh? You want some of what she’s gonna get? Put ‘em up, put ‘em up!”

The bruised little bubble-gummer pulls at her big, bad, beating beau’s arm. “No, Lefty, don’t. C’mon, it’ll be okay, take it easy. He’s just some guy; he’s nothin’. Forget about him and I’ll treat you real special.”

“Shaddup, bitch – I ain’t forgotten about you. You’re next!” He shakes her off.

I chuckle at the cowardly lion. “You got a three-count to walk away, Punchy. One, two … this is your last chance, pal.”

The Palooka is fast, real fast. He snatches a nickel-plated, short barrel, First Issue Colt Police Positive out of a shoulder holster and points it right at me as he thumbs back the hammer. His gal yelps as she drops to the ground and covers her head with her hands.

“You still want it with me now?” he asks.

My viewing pane flashes before I can fully register his shot. He gets me in the shoulder and my life bar drops by 10%. I’ve got my hand on the wound, but it ain’t bad – through-and-through in the fleshy part and missed the bone.

“Next one’s for all da marbles,” Mr. Bigshot growls.

I look down at my flesh wound and shrug. “And here I thought we were doing this the old-fashioned way.”

“Quantum, watch out!” Dolly cries. Out of my stolen hot rod by this point, she pushes to the forefront of the onlookers, not more than twenty feet away from the action.

I activate my AA bar just as the gunsel squeezes the trigger. His bullet moves through the air like a dead pig floating down a slow-moving sewage sluice. I sidestep and move in behind him.

“See ya later, Wally Gator.”

One zap from my Noisy Cricket, item 263, and the punk explodes outward in a rapidly expanding cloud of chunky pink mist. Bits and pieces rain down on the looky-loos and the don’t wanna get involveds like a Jackson Pollock wet dream.

I dust off my hands, and new clothes materialize on my body as I make my way back over to Dolly.

His gal screams, fists to mouth and eyes wide. “You killed him, you bastid,” she shrieks as she jumps for me and lands in a heap when I sidestep and turn to vaporize her too. I reconsider – not in front of Dolly. My Best Gal rushes over to me, concern written large across her pretty face. The redhead goes to get up, but the breath whuffs out of her when Dolly puts the toe of her stiletto heel right in the little twist’s breadbasket.

“You changed clothes, but you’re still bleeding.”

“It’s just a flesh wound.” I’ve always wanted to say that. Usually, my flesh wounds in The Loop are much more than flesh wounds. The NPCs don’t usually miss when they pull a trigger.

“You’re pretty tough, you know that?”

“I just don’t like cowards and bullies.”

She kisses me, and boy is it nice.

“Heya, Doll, what do you say we blow this popsicle stand and head back to my place?”

I’m well aware that there will be an assassin waiting for me when I return, but the nighttime button man doesn’t hold a candle to Morning Assassin, who gets lucky more than I’d like to admit.

So that’s what we do, straight to the honeymoon suite at the flophouse I call home. The thunder rumbles and the lightning cracks as I tear through the rain in my stolen hot rod, laughing while Dolly does an impression of one of the dames in the flick we just bailed on. A real sweetheart, this one, her hand is always available to hold when I’m not switching gears.

I get the ‘someone is about to snuff me’ twitch outside my hotel room door. Her eyes fill with worry and I assure her that I’ll just be a moment.

The title of the next scene should be The Assassin Lurking in the Shadows Meets an Early Retirement.

He tries to pounce as soon as I enter, but one well-timed throat kick from my boot with the blade in the toe, item 489, leaves him choking out his life as I hurl him out the window. Sure, I could have equipped my piping hot curling iron, item 203, and given him The Flaming Prostate Exam of Extreme Discomfort, but the night is young and I’d rather be done with triggermen. So out the window he goes, and I don’t even stop and listen for his inevitable crash below. My Billy Mays Ultra Super Heavy Duty Extra Strength Absorbent Power Rag, item 367, materializes. I mop up the blood and toss the rag out the window too.

“All clear, Doll. You can come in now.”

I swear Dolly floats in, that’s how light she is on her feet. She collapses onto my bed and her red dress disappears, replaced by a silk robe. She gives me that smoky, seductive, Bettie Page smile and beckons me with a crook of her finger.

“Now where were we?” I ask as I tastefully send my garments back to the big closet in the sky.

~*~

“Quantum?”

“I ain’t ready, Doll,” I mumble.

“Quantum, wake up.”

I blink my peepers open. Frances Euphoria’s ceiling fan is a blur overhead. It’s morning, or morning enough. My schnozzle flares at the scent of coffee.

“You were talking in your sleep.” She’s already dressed. The clip in her short hair isn’t necessary, but it’s cute, so maybe it is necessary.

“Did I reveal any prophecies?”

She laughs. “Yeah, Edgar Cayce, you talked about the three days of darkness, the end times and the forthcoming Robopocalypse. Kidding. I didn’t really notice what you were saying; you mostly just mumbled.”

“Just the way I prophesize.”

“We need to get to the office for today’s briefing. Grab a cup of coffee and get your clothes on.”

I lift my arms to indicate I want a hug. She hesitates, but eventually gives in. We cuddle for a moment and I’m just about to nod off when she stands and lightly hits me with a pillow.

“Come one, we need to go. Rocket killed graboids until about … ” She blinks her eyes shut to double-check the login data. “Crap! Until about four. That’s a lot of worms! Oh, and ick, super ick, glad we didn’t have to do that.”

“All right, just maintain positive control of your equus ferus caballus and let me get cleaned up.”

She stops at the door and turns to me. “You’re getting cleaned up?”

“Would you prefer that I did not?”

“No, no, no – have at it,” she hastily replies, “I just didn’t expect that to be one of your major concerns.”

“Welcome to the new, improved, kinder, gentler, more sensitive Quantum 2.0. What can I say? I’m turning over a new leaf.”

She expresses her amusement with a most unlady-like snort.

~*~

About an hour later, we join Rocket and Sophia in the conference room. The Dream Team’s Doctor Poindexter is all mad scientist-y in her white lab coat, and radiates a general and non-specific aura of disgruntled ill-humor. Rocket looks like he has been rode hard and put up wet, which really makes no sense. His eyes are bloodshot; his hair sticks up in all directions, and he sports an XXXL T-shirt with Cartoon Rocket bailing water with a bucket as he stands waist-deep in alligators and wails ‘Are We Having Fun Yet?’ The latest of his Bull Bean energy drinks is gripped tightly in one paw, and a 727’s worth of dead soldiers are visible in the trash can near the door. He’s a trooper, that’s for damn sure, especially for taking care of a small issue for me.

Me: You got the stuff?

Rocket winks.

Me: Way too obvious.

Rocket: It’s in the custodial closet.

Me: Good, ‘cause it will be a cold day in hell before I eat dried kale, seaweed and couscous for breakfast.

“You aren’t going to try it?” Sophia has already finished her first plate and is in the process scooping more onto her second. I appreciate the effort, I do, but again, previous statement about cold day in hell, and last I checked it was the ideal temperature for swamp ass outside.

“Did you at least bring some tortillas?”

She shakes her head. Next to her, Frances busies herself with her own plate of macrobiotic gerbil diet food.

“I see. Well, y’all go ahead and chow down on your silage there, and if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go powder my nose.”

I’m up and at it before anyone can tell me otherwise. I hit the hallway and turn straight to the closet. The delicate aroma of a proper south of the border breakfast tickles my olfactory receptors as soon as I reach the closet. I quietly shut the door behind me and go for the bag of In-N-Out in the Box breakfast tacos like a famished chupacabra in a pen full of three-legged goats, snorting and grunting as I savor each cholesterol, sodium and nitrate-laden bite.

Doc: I’m about to dive. Where are you?

Me: I’m in the closet.

Doc: Ever heard of R Kelly?

Me: Can’t say that I have.

Doc: It’s a good thing, trust me. Brief the team on the little funding discovery your FDA Monitor found. They should know about this. The info on Zedic, not so much. Don’t forget to give them the four-one-one on the new hacks. Sophia will be familiar with inverse coupling, so that’s all you’ll need to say to her. The others: the improved hacks prevent Reapers from ever logging in again by force-logging them into the OMIB whenever they spawn.

Me: Has Veenure spawned yet?

Doc: Nope, which makes me think she may know about our little hack. You didn’t tell her anything about it, did you?

Me: Insert obligatory sarcastic reply to stupid question >>here<<.

Doc: Good one. Fair enough. Anyhoo, today we’ll have our pow-wow with the Sage of Gotha and tomorrow we can continue the Reaper hunt.

Me: Any idea of how easy it’ll be to get the info we need out of the Sage of Gotha?

Doc: No idea. Hopefully he doesn’t require an arm and a hoof.

Me: Or a firstborn child.

Doc: Or a Humandroid assistant. It will probably be some type of quest, so get ready for a long day. Nothing is easy in a quest-based Proxima world.

Me: What’s the Sage’s deal anyway?

Doc: He’s an NPC NVA seed, that’s his deal. Didn’t you read Sophia’s report?

Me: I got through about forty pages of it.

Doc: Wow, mine went right to the spam folder. Anything I should know?

Me: He’s the NVA Seed.

Doc: Got it.

I finish the last breakfast taco to the sound of someone knocking on the door.

“Just a minute!” I say with my mouth full.

“Open up,” comes Frances’ reply.

I swallow the last savory morsel of real food and do as instructed. “Just talking to Doc.”

“In the closet? How did you get salsa on your face?” she asks with a smirk.

I peer up at the ceiling and delicately stifle a burp. “There must be a drip in here somewhere. We’ll probably need to get that checked out.”

“Are you telling me that we have salsa leaking from the ceiling?”

“Well, yeah. If it was leaking from the floor I’d be standing in a puddle.”

Our Lady of the Guada-Loop reaches into her pocket and hands me a wet-wipe.

“Do you normally carry one of these around?” I ask as I clean up the scene of the crime.

“No, but I knew once Rocket started winking at you that you two were up to something. I assumed it was food related.”

I flash my most charming boyish grin. “He’s a great kid, the best member of the team.”

“The best member, huh?”

“After you, of course.”

“Of course. Glad to hear I’m still number one. You ready to dive?”

“Sure,” I tell her. “Just give me a moment to brief everyone.”

~*~

Feedback until the cows come home. Feedback the sun dipping into the valley yonder. Feedback wonder, feedback sunder. Feedback from the depths come forth and pull me under, come forth and pull me down. In through the ears out through the mouth.

Feedback drown.

~*~

I awake on the other side of mind to find Dolly near the window of our guild, as naked as the day she was … um … spawned, using her witchblade appendages to carve out a stairwell. Stinkerbell hops from stair to stair, laughing and pooting little clouds of pixie dust.

“Glad to see you two are having fun,” I tell the pixie.

Doc spawns in his orange tactical vest and is just about to say something that I can only assume will be witty, biting, pithy and erudite when he’s interrupted by both a hullabaloo and a brouhaha coming from outside. A loud, repetitive beeping noise is punctuated with colorful blasphemies; imaginative curses; jocular observations on relative anatomical short-comings, poofiness, and onanistic tendencies; in addition to derogatory remarks about combat ineptitude – all in the various crap Dick Van Dyke British accents.

“This should be good,” chortles the War Faun, and we move to the window.

The Quiet One is backing the JCB digger onto a series of narrow wooden planks that barely span the much deepened and expanded moat around Festung Britania while Bucket Hat ground-guides him. He makes rude and threatening gestures at Scotty, Irish Shorty, and Pip, who are mocking his heavy equipment operating skills and pelting him with Horse Piss flagons, Irn Bru bottles, and sheep poo. On the far side of the courtyard away from the mayhem is Chrono’s blacksmith shop, an exact replica of his place in Kiya. He’s stuck right in, and his vigorous, manly clanging and banging makes an interesting counterpoint to the Brits’ shenanigans.

Pip’s sheep takes no notice of any of this. She has a cozy sheep pen fenced in wattle, her own little sheep barn fashioned from an oversized Horse Piss barrel, a trough of rolled oats, a round bale of Coastal hay, and all the pasture forage she can graze.

A well flung Irn Bru bottle gets The Quiet One right between the eyes and knocks him out of the operator’s seat and into the moat.

The backhoe continues on its own and puts a wheel over the edge as the Brits scramble to get control of it and get the machine back on track. Scotty glissades on a patch of particularly moist sheep droppings and slams into the other three like an ill-aimed, steam-propelled caber, carrying everybody over the side and into the moat. Doc counts and gets as far as ‘three Mississippi’ before the digger impacts with thundering crash, followed by a beautiful Hollywood flaming explosion which propels the five blackened, smoke-trailing members of the King’s Own Sextuplet up out of the moat.

Pip is still alight as he lands in the sheep pen. Pippa ambles out of her barrel barn, knocks her water bucket over on him to mostly extinguish him, and goes back inside to resume her cud-chewing.

“Bloody ‘ell! It’s all fun ‘n’ games until some gormless twat blows up the rented digger, innit? Good thing we didn’t rehydrate the dehydrated water or uncrate the sharks with frickin’ lasers in their heads yet,” says Burly, who now stands next to me. He catches the skepticism in my eyes. “It’s a work in progress, mate, a bloody work in progress.”

Doc shakes his head and stomps his hooves. “Boys, you can’t buy entertainment like that.”

I put a hand on Burly’s shoulder. “How’s Chrono doing out there?”

“All right, I suppose. ‘E’s been beating away in ‘is little shop at all ‘ours of the night.”

Rocket is next to spawn. He’s oiled and muscled now, as if one night of worm killing has suddenly morphed him into Ronnie Coleman.

“You look like the second runner-up at the Rollins cosplay try-outs.” I observe.

He snorts in amusement and flexes his pecs. “Just been hitting the digital gym.”

Frances Euphoria: So that’s what you call that?

“You call that muscled?” Burly laughs as he walks towards the door. “You should ‘ave seen me old mum!” As soon as he’s out, he barks at his load o’ Girl Guides in the approved Regimental Sergeant Major manner. They’re gathered around a wicker basket half-full of Horse Piss flagons, and immediately take notice of him by continuing to hand ‘round the beer while presenting him with the two finger salute – except for Scotty, who bends over and flips up his kilt.

Sophia is the last to take shape. She’s in her Robe of Illusion, which still nauseates me just by looking at it. Her first step is into the air, a foot up at least, where she drops her hands to her sides to let her mutant hack claws form. They’re slice-y, dice-y and everything nice-y, something Vega would trade his mask for.

“Good weight, well balanced and nicely finished,” she admits to Doc as she practices a few slash-and-strikes with her new and improved weapons.

“You’ll note the Thulean script in engraved and gold-filled characters that spell out Doctor Sophia Wang, PhD on each blade,” he says.

She flashes him a rare and genuine smile, “Yes – that was very thoughtful of you. Thank you, Doc.”

“Looks like everyone is here, Aiden?” I turn around and catch him just as he steps out of thin digital air.

“You got me,” he says with his hands up.

“And don’t you forget it, pal.”

Chapter Eighteen

“Rocket did a brilliant job of cleaning up our garden!” Red says as soon as we’ve materialized in his living room. He’s rocking the whole Hugh Hefner look in a satin robe and socks with slippers. His wife, Blue, is in a flowing summer dress that is a few shades darker than her skin, which could be described as ‘olive’ or ‘almost philosoraptor’ depending on how accomplished a writer one is.

“You’ve done us quite a service,” Red continues, “and the graboid hides alone are enough to fund our next two vacations to Valhalla.”

Two vacations? I try to catch Doc’s eye, but he’s too busy munching down on a dingleberry treat.

“We promised you entry visas, which we will give all of you,” says Blue, “but we wanted to give something to you, Rocket, as a token of our appreciation.”

“You don’t have to give me anything,” he says.

“We insist.” Red turns to the kitchen. “Tom! Please bring the gift for Rocket.”

Frances Euphoria: I love getting gifts!

Sophia: Rocket! IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU TAKE THE GIFT WITH YOUR RIGHT HAND AND YOUR LEFT HAND ON YOUR ELBOW.

Rocket: THANK YOU SOPHIA, FOR YELLING THIS AT ME.

Tom Myspace emerges from the kitchen with a big ol’ box wrapped with a thick golden ribbon. The Ivy’s manservant is in a penguin tuxedo, his bluish hair gelled and parted on the right. Our boy wonder takes the package from him just as Sophia instructed.

“Open it!” Blue says with excitement in her eyes. “You’re going to love this!”

Rocket pries the box open and lifts his prize into the air. “Thanks for the … the … ”

Aiden buries his head in his hands.

Me: Holy phallic object, Batman, an adult novelty toy!

Sophia: It totally is ...

Doc: I can confirm that this is indeed what it is. Smile and nod, Rocket, smile and nod.

Rocket: Why would they give me this!?!?

Frances Euphoria: Screenshots? #rocketsline

Blue claps her hands together. “It’s a graboid statue! Notice the veins on its body, the way it is shaped almost like a banana and the way its head is bell-shaped and a bit wider than the rest of its body. This one, of course, has its mouth closed, but you can still see the indention of the lips here. We were going to have it mounted, but some people prefer to keep them unmounted, as they make great paperweights. We have the same one on our desk in the study. They are carved by Chordee, the famous Thulean sculptor.”

“That’s a Chordee?” Sophia asks, suddenly and unctuously impressed. “I thought he retired.”

“He did, but he’s a personal friend and he owed us a favor.” Red grins. “It is a priceless work of art, and I hope you display it prominently in your guild.”

“Will do.” The graboid statue disappears to Rocket’s inventory list.

Me: Regift it to the Brits as a fortress-warming present.

Sophia: He’ll do no such thing! That’s a Chordee!

Rocket: Q-Bud, I’ll trade you the Chordee dildo statue for anything, and I mean anything in your inventory list, even your box of simian flinging poo.

Me: Ah yes, item 415, although I am a bit partial to that particular box of poo. Still, an interesting proposal. Let me get back to you on that.

“And Tom,” says Red, “have you prepared the entry visas to Athos?”

Tom snaps his fingers and five scrolls appear. They float over to us and I read mine over:

By Royal Decree of the Eugene Botkin Lineage, a single entry and single exit to Athos is hereby granted to Steamboy_889 and each of his guildmates, to be used at any time at any port of entry into the city. Disclaimer: Logging out counts as an exit from the city, as does embarking upon any journeys or quests outside the city limits. An additional entry and exit stamp may be required at the Athos Registration Office located in the city center. The additional entry stamp fee, US $995, can be paid in either Proxima Rupees or US Dollars. Exchange rates change daily, and the current exchange rate will be posted in the Athos Registration Office and can also be found on your Tritania dashboard here. Enjoy your time in Athos and be sure to present this entry stamp at any Drorikh retailer for a 5% discount*!

*Limited time offer valid only with two-hundred-rupee purchase. Coupon may not be used with any other discount, coupon, offer, prior purchase, exchange or refund. Void where prohibited. ADDITIONAL EXCLUSIONS MAY APPLY. Limit one per commoner.

“Drorikh is fermented dragon milk,” Sophia says before I can ask. “Drinking it daily will increase your overall stats by ten percent, but if you skip a day, it decreases your stats by twenty percent for the duration of a Tritanian month. Graboid hides are great for storing Drorikh.”

“How long is a Tritanian month again?”

“Technically fifty-eight days, but most people just say sixty-one.”

“That makes no sense.”

“There are a lot of three-day weekends in Tritania, and having a few extra days doesn’t hurt.”

Aiden steps between us. “I’m feeling like taking a three-day weekend.”

“Yeah, where you gonna go?” I ask him.

“The Goblin Riviera. I’ve heard good things.”

Sophia rolls her eyes. “I’ve told you before, it’s over-rated. And while I try to celebrate and appreciate the value of all the diverse digital entities, I find the Goblins are the entities I value least – especially the Goblin children.”

After finishing his seventh pink dingleberry macaroon, Doc thanks the Ivys for the visas and then asks, “What would be the best way for us to get to the city? We have a dragon, if that helps.”

Blue shakes her head. “You can certainly take the dragon to the city, but the air space around Athos is very heavily controlled, and those who wish to enter the city must first be thoroughly vetted. Since Mr. Hughes here, oh, how shall we say, chose to display a most blatantly non-traditional and unorthodox combat methodology in his contest with Princess Renata that many Thuleans feel not only violated the spirit of Tournament Competition, but indeed besmirched the honor of all Thuleans as well, you’d surely encounter air security forces that would be only too happy to hinder you in every way possible.”

“It’s not the first time someone’s wanted my hide.”

“The air security forces have more power than a regular security officer on the ground,” Red explains, “which means they can strip you of your visa.”

“Looks like we’re walking,” Rocket says. “Or we could simply ride Mirror like a big, reptilian donkey. I’m sure she’d love that.”

Me: You’re joking.

Rocket: I was trying to be sarcastic, like you.

“We’ll walk,” I tell our Thulean guests.

“And be subject to thieves and other encounters along the road?” Blue chortles. “It isn’t that simple! You must pass through Chachat to get to Athos, and let me be the first to tell you how dangerous that city is.”

I wait for her to tell me.

“It’s, like, dangerous!” she finally says.

“Which is why we,” Red places his arm around his wife’s shoulder, “think you should travel with Tom.”

“He’s kind of a stick,” I tell them.

“You’d be surprised at Tom’s strength. He’s much, much more than a stick, as you say. Plus we have the perfect way to get you to the city gates. Once you’re in, people may view you with disfavor, but no one can attack you within the city limits.”

“And as promised,” Blue chimes in, “we’ll visit the Great Library of Player Records and see if we can uncover anything about this Veenure character. Tom, lead them to the wagon.”

Me: So we’re getting smuggled in?

Rocket: This will be fun!

~*~

In a crate with my mates and yes, I’d have it any other way. “Doc, I love you like a brother, really I do, but if you dig your sharp little goat hoof into me one more time, I swear on the sweet, sweet name of Ray Steampunk that shit’s going to hit the fan.”

“Bring it,” Doc says, and kicks me for good measure. Rocket laughs.

Five Knights in a crate? Frances said it wasn’t possible, that there was no way we’d feasibly  fit in a crate already half full of graboid hides yet here we are, packed like sardines in a pod. The good news is that the hides make a not-bad cushion, but the bad news is that there’s another crate on top of us and Sophia is claustrophobic.

“I can’t breathe!”

“Oh for Glob’s sake, yes you can,” Doc reminds her. “Your body is in a dive vat back in the real world. And how is it that you’re claustrophobic in the game but you’re perfectly okay-fine floating in a tight little coffin-sized space in the RW? Just relax and breathe normally, otherwise you’ll trigger your vat’s medical emergency sensors and the ArachnaMed will intervene. I’m sure Frances would prefer not to deal with that right now.”

Frances Euphoria: Not have to deal with it ever, thank you very much.

The crate shifts and moves, and I hear the sound of a Mûmakil depleting Tritania’s ozone layer. Who’d a thunk that the Ivys owned a Mûmakil? I guess it’s a good thing they do, because Rocket wasn’t lying when he said he killed a crap-ton of graboids.

“I can’t – I just can’t. It’s too much,” Sophia sobs. “I can’t take it.”

“Well, log out,” Doc tells her.

“I didn’t think of that.”

I can’t see her eyes in the dark of the crate, but I’m pretty sure they just lit up.

“I didn’t think of that! I’ve already been to Athos; I can just spawn at the city gates outside of Chachat. Oh my God, I’m so stupid. Byeeeeee!”

And with that, Sophia disappears into pixie dust.

“Finally it’s just us boys,” Rocket says. “Just us cool guys.”

“And you, Big R, and you,” I reply.

“Dude! Who got you the breakfast tacos, extra cheese extra sausage?”

“You’re right – by the Power of Grayskull, I pronounce you cool!”

Tom Myspace shouts something in Thulean outside of the Mûmakil-drawn wagon. The mahoosive loxodonta responds and the wheels rumble beneath the wagon.

“So, what are we talking about?”

“Boy stuff, totally,” Doc says in his best Sabrina the Teenage witch voice.

Got anything to add, Aiden?” Rocket asks.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever spoken,” comes Morning Assassin’s reply. “I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.”

“Go easy on the kid.”

“What?” he asks as he elbows me. “It was an honest statement.”

“And we do have a lady in the crate,” Doc reminds us. “Frances is monitoring, which means Sophia is probably watching too.”

“This ain’t too bad,” I tell them. I equip my Montecristo No. 4, that was allegedly hand-rolled on a virgin’s thigh, item 30, and it sparks on its own. “Doc, you want one?”

“I quit years ago, but the Faun o’ Death hasn’t, so … ” the inside of the crate lights up as Doc sparks up a ‘Black Death’ cigarette with a brass lighter fashioned from one of Cedric Popkin’s expended .303 shells. He sucks the smoke in deep and blows it out with considerable satisfaction. “Ahh,” says he, “I like ‘em, and I’m going to smoke ‘em. Ain’t nothing like it.” Aiden produces a Sherlock Holmes-style calabash pipe the size of an alto sax, stuffs it with a fist-sized wad of Borkum Riff Cherry Cavendish, and fires it up with an oversized Bryant and May wooden match. Clouds of aromatic, carcinogen-laden smoke billow and swirl around us, and all eyes focus on Rocket.

“I’m not a big in-game smoker,” he says, as he does the passive-aggressive non-smoker cough-cough, wave-wave.

“You wanted to be a cool guy and spend time with the big boys.”  I hold the cigar between my teeth like I’m Wolverine and blow a smoke ring.

Too bad no one can see it.

~*~

Everything is hunky dory until we feel the Mûmakil come to a halt. A deep voice bellows out a command in Thulean.

Doc: Smoking lamp is out, boys! Looks like we have company.

I take one more luxurious puff from my stogie and return it to my list.

Doc checks that crazy-looking gun with the three inch diameter tube for a barrel. “What?” he whispers. “Bring enough gun. A man should always be prepared.”

“Good call.” I equip my BFG 9000, item 100, which is a tight fit, to say the least. The gun’s all charged up and ready to go; the ready light confirms it.

Frances Euphoria: Overkill, don’t you think?

Me: There is no ‘overkill.’ There is only ‘open fire’ and ‘time to reload.’

The Thulean conversation heats up outside the crate. I can’t tell if it is Tom Myspace speaking or not; his common tongue voice is high and whiny, his Thulean voice not so much.

Aiden says, “I can take a quick sneak ‘n’ peek, but if they’re NPCs, they’ll see me.”

“They can’t see our player indicators in the crate?”

“Nope,” Rocket whispers, “that would ruin the fun of the game. Any action taken in Tritania can be assumed to be a part of a quest or somehow related to a quest.”

Me: Get Sophia on the horn. She can translate.

Rocket: Better idea. Frances, use the translator. Zoom out of the crate.

Frances Euphoria: I am out of the crate.

Doc: Well then, if it’s not too much trouble Ms. Euphoria, couldja maybe update us just the teensiest bit? Are they NPCs or not?

Frances Euphoria: Sorry Doc, I was just so distracted by the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club and Testosterone Fest you’ve got going on. There are six Thulean guards; three are NPCs, the others are RPCs. They’re showing Tom some papers. Screenshots to follow.

Me: And what are they talking about?

Rocket: Hover over them and the translations will appear.

Frances Euphoria: Oh, too funny – the papers are WANTED posters for Steamboy_889. Okay, now they’re talking about our guild and how Empress Thun and Princess Renata are highly interested in our whereabouts.

Doc: So the Thulean governing body is cooperating with the Empress on this? Great.

Sophia: SEE! I told you! I TOLD YOU there would be repercussions!

Me: If you’ve been on the chat this entire time, why didn’t you help out earlier?

Sophia: I wanted to see how the guild would fare without me. I JUST WANT TO REMIND YOU THAT I TOLD YOU THERE WOULD BE REPERCUSSIONS.

Rocket: ALL CAPS! ALL CAPS!

Doc: Sophia, be advised – once more with the all caps and I’ll have Rocket lock out your caps function.

Frances Euphoria: One is getting in the wagon.

Doc: Weapons up, He-Men.

Frances Euphoria: One of them says he smells smoke.

Rocket: We were having a boy’s day out!

The sounds stop. I listen intently for any noise that may indicate they’ve discovered our hidey-hole. The Mûmakil grumbles like my stomach after too much pollo con mole.

Frances Euphoria: Whew! Good news, they’re turned away!

Sophia: Why? What did they say?

Frances Euphoria: Tom Myspace told them you were at the Ivy’s home.

Doc: Looks like the Ivys got some ‘splainin to do!

Sophia: He sold them out? WTF.

Me: The way I see it, we saved the Ivy’s asses from that Gesundheit critter which should have gotten us Athos entry visas in the first place. Then they ‘asked’ us to exterminate their garden vermin, which took a lot longer than we expected, and now they’re going to make a handsome profit from Rocket’s hard work by selling these graboid hides without even offering to cut us in. And, they served us worm piss tea, remember that? So, Kay Sarah, Sarah, as Nana Hughes used to say, I’m sure they’ll be fine, and Tango Fox Bravo if they’re not. I’m betting that RPCs get a lot of leeway up here. Am I right?

Rocket: You ain’t wrong, Mugsy. Is that how they’d say it in The Loop?

“Worm piss tea,” Doc snorts. “Somehow, it sounds worse out loud.”

Sophia: But they’ll still have to deal with the Peace Enforcers whenever they return from the Hall of Player Records. They are there for us, remember?

Me: Worry less, Sophia. I’m sure they’ll be fine.

Once Tom mounts back up in the driver’s seat and the wheels on the cart go ‘round and ‘round as the Mûmakil picks up the pace. After waiting a good thirty seconds or so just to be sure, the Bad Boys of Non Compos Mentis light up fresh smokes.

~*~

No walls around Athos per se; instead, the city is protected by a series of linked guard towers. Dragons patrol the sky and tiny, fairy-sized dragons move in and out of the people waiting to get in. No mountains here, or none that I can see due to the heavy snowfall. Funny too, this snow is visible yet it never lands. If I reach out to grab a flake, my hand goes through it. Yet there is snow on the ground, maybe not enough to host a Yukigassen, but definitely enough to make snow angels and yellow snowcones for those that displease me.

We’re out of the cart now and are joined by Sophia, who has already got her snark on about oral fixations, little boys trying to be all cool, and the ill effects of smoking. Doc looks at her like she’s something he’s had to scrape out from between the split in his hoof and very pointedly lights up another ‘Black Death’. She raises a hand to cast some extinguishing spell, and quickly turns the motion into a nose scratch when Doc quietly advises her, “Bad idea.”

Strangely enough, it isn’t cold here, which is just as well for a couple of elven-ettes in white Dr. Frank N. Furter cosplay outfits. Rocket blinks rapidly, taking screenshots with his eyes. I give him a less-than-subtle thumbs up. One of them spots me and glares at Rocket.

Rocket: Yo, Q-Pops, why’d you dime me out, yo?

Me: Yo, seriously? Your voyeurism is going to bite you in the butt one of these days. You really should get a handle on it.

Doc: Aw, leave the kid alone – maybe he has a Voyeuristic Disorder; he’s probably a victim of something.

Me: It seems just about anything can be a disorder and everybody’s a victim these days. Rather than tell someone to get over it, or keep their weird little bullshit fantasies to themselves, we label it a disorder, and strip the person of their responsibility of keeping their shit under wraps. So you’re into voyeurism? Great, watch some iNet videos, get your jollies, and move on. Why label it a disorder? Why create a medicine for it? Why pay a psychologist?

Sophia: There are so many things wrong with what you’ve just said, so many.

After Tom Myspace ties off the Mûmakil and arranges for its care and feeding, he approaches us. “Would you like me to go with you? I am aware of several shortcuts that lead directly to the Sage’s location; I can help, really.”

I turn to She Who Thinks She Knows Everything. “You know how to get to the central forest, don’t you Sophia?”

“It’s called Athos Forest Park and yes, I know how to get there.”

Doc’s hooves clop against the snow-covered pavement as he adjusts his tactical vest. “Sorry, Tom. Thanks for the offer, but I think we’ve got that covered. I’m guessing you ain’t exactly itching to get back home, especially since Johnny Law will be there. If it were me, I’d hang out in the city for the rest of the day and tell the Ivys you were helping out. We’ll back you up.”

The manservant chews the idea over for a moment. “That would be a bit unconventional, but I do need to get these hides sold … ”

“Speaking of which, how much are they worth?” I ask.

“Each hide is worth a considerable amount.”

“How much is considerable?” Doc asks.

“At the very least, and from a trader on the down market side of town, mind you, each hide should fetch upwards of a thousand rupees.”

“And do the Ivys know how many hides you have?” I ask.

“Probably not. They leave that sort of thing to me. Hmmm … ” Tom’s voice trails off as he considers possibilities.

Frances Euphoria: Quan-tum!

Me: What? I’m trying to get us a piece of the action; after all Rocket and our NPCs did all the work! And what with all the forfeiting we’ve had to do lately and the Lobby Boys’ recent ho-fest, our team bank account has taken a beating.

Sophia: No time for your petty scams and grifts now, the visa authorities are coming over to us.

“Never mind,” I tell Tom as a Thulean in a collarless blue robe stops in front of Doc. The Point of Entry officer is an NPC with a stern and humorless visage and sideways Thulean tattoos for eyebrows.

A trio of tiny dragons descend upon us. They stop to Doc’s right and form a line.

“Cute little guys,” I say as I reach my hand out to one.

The gecko with wings emits a fireball large enough to roast a supersized ManBearPig. No time for me to equip item 115, my firefighter helmet with a five-inch face shield. My life bar dips a couple of percent and I step back into line.

Sophia doesn’t even pretend to cover her laughter.

Doc coughs, ‘Dumbass! Dumbass!’ into his fist.

A scroll appears in front of the POE officer and a pair of half-lens glasses form on his face. “Please DO NOT touch, make eye contact with, make recorded images of, or otherwise interact with the droogans. They are particularly feisty this time of year; it’s their mating season.”

I lower my hand to my side pocket and secretly give the droogans the bird.

Doc presents our visas, or maybe it would be better to say they present themselves. The scrolls materialize in the air and snap to. They line up, side by side, in front of the POE officer.

“Yes … um … yes … um … ” He goes through each one and starts at the first one again to double-check the details. “And you’re familiar with the rules of Athos?” he asks, as he looks over the top of glasses and focuses directly on yours truly.

“What? Me?” I ask. “Do I look like the kind of guy who would break the rules?”

“Yes, you sir, your world record has been flagged several times.”

“Flagged? Who’s flagging me?”

“Pretty much everyone who comes in contact with you! Please remind him of the rules, officer,” Sophia says.

“With pleasure.” The port of entry officer clears his throat. “The normal Tritania rules apply in Athos. There is, however, another rule that may affect your behavior. Weapons are not allowed in Athos. You won’t be able to equip them nor will you be able to use them. Do you have any weapons?”

“Yeah, lots. Why, you need some?” Doc asks.

“It doesn’t matter if you have weapons or not,” the POE officer says. “The entire city is an enchanted no-weapons zone so weapons won’t equip from your inventories. I ask that simply as a courtesy.”

Doc scratches one of his horns. “Huh – a courtesy to who? And that ‘no weapons’ thing always works out real well, everywhere it’s been tried, pussywillow.”

The POE officer glares at Doc, and then studiously ignores him.

“How do people fight, then?” I ask.

“They don’t,” he says flatly.

“That sucks!” Rocket pounds his fist into his hand. “I was looking forward to a bar brawl. Isn’t that right, Aiden?”

Aiden rolls his eyes.

“What? I thought you’d be down with that?”

Aiden’s hyena grin is visible even beneath his mask.

Rocket: I can never read him!

Doc: That’s kind of the point.

“What kind of medieval fantasy city doesn’t have a good brawl every now and then?” I ask the blue robed official.

His response is curt and filled with irritation. “The kind that you are about to enter. If you don’t like it, don’t go in.” After he’s reviewed each scroll again, they spontaneously combust into turquoise flame and fall to the ground. “Your entry documents are in order; entrance is granted to all of you,” his tone of voice makes it quite clear that he wishes it were otherwise. “Ms. Wang,” he says once the last scroll flames out.

“It’s Doctor Wang.”

Aiden rolls his eyes again.

“Indeed. Dr. Wang,” the POE officer’s grin is devoid of all humor. “As de-facto leader of this group, you are responsible for their conduct. Please keep them under control, as we generally do not allow riff-raff within city limits.”

Doc: Riff-raff?

Me: De-facto leader?

Chapter Nineteen

The buildings in Athos are two-story yurts, cylindrical with walls and roofs made of thick canvas and felt. External spiral staircases seem to be all the rage here. If a building has two stories it gets a spiral staircase, apparently. I see trees with staircases, billboards, restaurants and shops, guard towers and government offices – all with spiral staircases.

The first shop that catches my eye as we pass the Athos Flea Market is a booth of T-shirts with witty phrases that EBAYmazon will deliver in the RW. My favorite is, My Sigother Went To ATHOS & All I Got Was This STOOPID T-Shirt!.

I may have to pick one up before we skedaddle.

The city I like, the residents, not so much. Athonians, or more appropriately, Thuleans, are far from fans of Mrs. Hughes’ sweet baby boy. The hissing starts as soon as we enter the city – full on hissing, too. They turn to me, furrow their brows and stick out their little reptilian tongues as they hiss like scaly green teakettles. It’s like a non-stop field trip through Disgruntled Cat World, and Sophia doesn’t help any by smirking and agreeing with every hiss. Boy, is it ever a damn good thing I can’t equip something murder-y and get to doing what I do best. Starting with her. Maybe.

The sign that directs us to Athos Forest Park sends us down a road less travelled and I get a chance to walk off a little bit of my irritation. A series of dragon-shaped shadows cross our path at fairly regular intervals; the dragons that cast them are considerably larger than the droogans that gave me a light toasting – bastards – on our way in, but not Big McLarge Huge like Mirror. They grip over-sized raffia picnic baskets by the carrying handles complete with EBAYmazon logos on the bottom of the baskets. The dragons move at a pretty good clip, and I wonder aloud about the relative airspeed velocity of an unladen dragon.

“African or European dragon?” Doc asks.

“Neither.” Sophia remarks. “EBAYmazon delivery dragon. It’s a pilot program.”

“Craziness,” Doc says. “I read about this. It’s already successful in several Proxima Worlds.”

“What could they possibly deliver?”

“World-specific items. In Tritania, probably potions, weapons, amulets, charms, gris-gris, things of that nature. If there isn’t a merchant nearby, they can try the delivery service.”

“And they’re charged in rupees?” I ask.

“Free delivery with EBAYmazon Prime if you have a Proxima Plus subscription,” Rocket says. “Otherwise, it’s three dollars American for thirty delivery credits.”

A group of wooly Mûmakil stop at a four-way intersection and wait for us to pass. Their handler, a Thulean guy with a stern Tritanian Gothic mug waits patiently for us to pass. He doesn’t hiss, which makes a refreshing a change, but he does treat me to the obligatory Thulean stink-eye.

“They are having their Festival of Celestial Enlightenment at the end of the month,” Sophia explains as she floats ahead, “during which they release hundreds upon hundreds of varicolored tissue paper sky lanterns with candles inside. It’s sooooooo beautiful. Romantic too.”

Me: So, it’s a date then?

Sophia: !?

Doc: Sweet of you to ask, but only if I can bring Arnie and Sally to chaperone, you big so-and-so!

Rocket: I would love to, but, just as friends though – I’m taken.

Frances Euphoria: Guess who used the open channel – again.

Me: D’oh! Are we private now?

Frances Euphoria: I don’t know how many more times that particular cat can be let out of the bag without shredding up the place.

Me: I bet Schrödinger knows.

Aiden remarks, “I like this place a lot better than Valhalla. The people seem less pretentious here. I could do without the hissing though … ”

“Valhallans are pretentious in an ironic way,” Sophia says, “kind of like a hipster from Brooklyn at a dive bar in Austin. It’s cool to be cooler than others, but Valhallans recognize this, so they are being pretentious ironically. Get it?”

“Nope,” Doc says. “Don’t care either.”

Sophia sighs, and in the tone of voice one would use to explain a simple yet important concept to a willfully ignorant dullard, tries again. “They’re pretending to be pretentious so that other pretentious people that aren’t pretending to be pretentious think that they’re really pretentious too, and not just pretending to be pretentious so that they better fit into social situations in other Tritanian cities. It’s pretty logical, if you ask me.”

“Still don’t care.”

“Hey, what’s up with this? It looked all flat and level when we came in, but we’re going downhill and the buildings are getting taller.”

“Yes” Sophia gushes, “There’s a reason for that, and I’m glad you asked.”

I give Doc a quick glance. “Um, I didn’t ask.” He grimaces, makes the shooty hand, and puts it against his temple.

“Great,” she says as she launches into a Doctoral dissertation about how one should think of the city as a giant bowl, and of course there’s a Thulean name for it that translates as Giant Bowl-Shaped City, and that we came into the city on the rim of the bowl, made our way down, and have now reached dead center, the Athos Park, and didn’t I notice the trees earlier? Even with the mesmerizing architectural extravaganza that is Athos as a distractor, I should have at least noticed we were descending a gentle grade and seen the green of the trees in the distance. As one travels through the city, the yurty buildings are built taller to maintain the illusion of a citywide flat and level roofscape and to match the height of the buildings on the outer rim. Of course, there is also a Thulean word for this not-at-all pretentious concept that no doubt rhymes with ‘dipshit’.

At this point, I tune out the Evil Doctor Brainulo’s lengthy description of Athos’ topography, topology, geometry, geography, fun city facts, Proxima celebrity homes, Zagat-rated restaurants and attractions – all I hear is an annoying buzz. The forest park that is our destination has my full attention. Anything’s possible in a Proxima World – I know that, and I’ve seen crazy, magnificent, eye-popping, mind-blowing scenery before, but the Thulean redwoods up ahead of us take my digital breath away. Big, tall, tremendous, enormous, none of these even begin to express the scope and magnitude of these arboreal giants.

Maybe this weekend I’ll visit a park with trees and flowers and chirping birds in the RW.

~*~

Commoners are queued up to get into the Athos Forest Park, but there’s a steady stream of downcast and disconsolate looking PCs drag-assing their way towards us.

“Bad news?” I ask as a pair of warriors approach. They’ve got that wild Dothraki look down, complete with braided beards, mascara, monkey mugs and angry eyebrows.

One of the numbnuts gets in my face and snarls, “You think this funny? You think this is a game?”

The no fighting rule keeps me from equipping good ol’ stag-handled item 33 and carving some politeness into him. “I didn’t say nothing about it being funny, lamb-man and yes, I think this is a game. I suggest getting the hell out of my face, or we could take this outside – the city that is – if you get my drift. Oh and the Dothraki look? 2015 called, and they want their pretentious, lame-ass, faux-tough fanboy look back. Talk about played out, talk about cliché. Let’s put it like this, bub – you don’t want it with me. You don’t want it with him,” I point my thumb at Aiden, “and you definitely don’t want it with the grumpy-looking faun in the tactical vest, and I haven’t even got to her. She’ll have you picking your own eyes out with your pinky fingers. And the buff kid in the ninja outfit? You really don’t want it with him. He’s a RW hacker who specializes in algospells. How would you like to shit yourself every time you try to spawn in a Proxima World?”

Doc: Hey, that’s not a bad idea! Also, grumpy-looking? I prefer cantankerous, ill-tempered, or at the very least, curmudgeonly.

Rocket: I wish I could talk shit like you, Q Drama!

The Dothraki warrior takes a step away. “Damn, dude, I was just playing the role.”

“Of a twat? Yes, yes, you were. Now, is there anything you care to share with us about the Sage?”

He shrugs and kicks at the dirt for a moment. “We didn’t meet him, it was too complicated.” He turns to his counterpart. “Let’s get out of here, Moro.”

The two skulk away.

I’m seconds away from calling out that he forgot the ‘n’ in his friend’s name when a snow-covered baby falls from a tree.

Nope, not a baby, a cherub, and an ugly cherub too. He’s got bloodshot eyes, beard stubble, a pointy goatee, a hammer and sickle necklace, and his pubes are dyed and shaved into a red star to accentuate his stubby baby’s pecker. He hovers into position in front of us, his little wings working overtime like a crack-stoked hummingbird’s as they struggle to keep his plump body afloat.

“A commie putto?” Doc cracks a grin. “It’s safe to say I’ve seen everything there is to see now.”

“Fraternal Socialist Greetings, proletariat comrades and immiNPC.”

Aiden snickers.

Doc: A Russian accent too? I’m in hog heaven here!

Sophia: Um, and maybe I shouldn’t ask this, but I have to know – why are you in hog heaven?

Doc: I was expecting something mind-bending and over-the-top today, but this is just too-too cool! Falkor in drag? Hey, it happens. Gandalf and Randalf, his conjoined twin? Sure, okay. Logen Ninefingers with eleven fingers? You get my drift here, but a communist cherub? It’s things like this that keep me from retiring to a goat and goose ranch in Texas and … oh, wait.

The commie cherub flaps his little wings. “Da, eet eez very great for you to be joining us here today. I choose word ‘us’ because zhere eez no individual; zhere eez only unity of struggle against capitalist oppressors and unity through collective collaboration for common good, tovarisch. Zhere eez pie in sky, and dialectic states pie in sky eez large enough for all peasants and workers and … ”

I stop him right there. “Can we skip the socialist commercial and cut right to the Sage, Trotsky?”

“You got a hot date at the Festival of Flying Fire Hazards or something? Give him a moment,” Doc says, “this is a hoot!”

Me: You ain’t buying this shit, are you?

Doc: Ain’t you? I’m ready to raise the red banner, institute a planned economy, give up my evil ways as a running dog tool of the capitalist oppressors and liberate Arnie and Arnette with forty collectivized acres and a good socialist llama apiece.

“Mr. Cherub,” says Sophia as she floats to a position slightly higher than the butt-faced Bolshevik.

“Comrade Cherub,” he responds, and floats up so that they are eye-to-eye level. Sophia lifts a bit higher and the cherub does the same. Soon, they are a good ten feet above us and still climbing.

Me: Sophia, might I suggest nixing the flying dominance games unless you want to end up in orbit.

Sophia: Fine.

She drops to the ground and the cherub does the same.

“Mr. Cherub,” she very deliberately begins.

“Comrade Cherub,” he very deliberately reminds her. Eet appearz you are of oppressor intelligentsia professional doctor class.”

Her eyes light up. “I’m glad you asked!”

“Nyet, did not ask. Only observe status as oppressor.”

“As a matter of fact, I have a PhD in neuronal physics from Stanford and a Master’s in Computer Science with a focus on digital algorithm theory from MIT. I did my undergrad in software engineering at John Hopkins, and I am currently doing post-doc research at Stanford focusing on NPC to Humandroid reverse spawning.”

He snorts, “Kharasho for you, elitist oppressor of working class. If were my choice, you would be picking of beets and milking of goats to instill sense of class consciousness.”

“My name is Quantum Hughes and I’m just about as far from the elite class as you can get,” I volunteer.

“Your handle name eez Steamboy_889. Who eez theez Quantum of whom you speak.”

I give Rocket the look.

Rocket: We’ll get it changed later!

“Okay, then call me Steamboy. Listen, comrade, as much as I’d love to hang around and discuss the ineveetable triumph of dialectical materialism, the many wonderful socialist achievements of the twentieth century, and the benefits of the Gulag system for rendering consensus of opinion, the five of us really need to get to the Sage.”

He shrugs. “Marx zaid one man hour eezn’t worth another man hour, but zhat one man during hour eez worth same az another man during hour. Are you heard deez?”

“No, I aren’t.”

“Da, I are,” Aiden says under his breath.

“Eez good quote for all struggling workerz and peasantz to know. Time eez everything, man eez nothing. He eez at most time only carcazz. ImmiNPC dispenser of proletariat justice knowz deez.”

Aiden nods, slowly and thoughtfully.

“Good to know,” I tell him, “but I’m not following you here, cherub.”

“Pleeze, Steamboy_889, you call me by patronymic: Vladimir Vissarionovich Ventura.”

“The socialist pet detective?” I ask. Doc chuckles – at least someone gets it.

“Pliz to be spikking plainly.”

“You got a nickname, bub?”

“Comradez in struggle of proletariat call me Pol Pot.”

His handle forms over his head: Vladimir “Pol Pot” Vissarionovich Ventura.

“Alrighty then, Pot, we need to see the Sage. So what do we have to do to make this happen?”

The pinko cherub strokes his little Lenin goatee. “Struggle to establishing Dictatorship of Proletariat never do end. It eez my thought when we work together zhat zhere eez change constant. On some day everyone rest for zhe good of all. Today I read book in my rest. Yes, Mao said to read too many bookz eez harmful, but I plan to reading his book, so no to harmful!” He chuckles at his own joke and Doc laughs even harder.

Me: Do we need to get Tailgunner Joe’s RPC after you, Comrade Doc?

Doc: The Third Red Scare starts in a Proxima World. It’s genius!

Rocket: To all those born before 2039, please keep the references current so I can laugh too!

“So what are you saying?” I ask Nikita’s nattering nabob of negativity. “Is the Sage closed for the day or something?”

He flutters his little wings. “Today, rest and read. Tomorrow, Sage will maybe meet with good socialist visitor.”

“What’s all this about hard work and brotherhood and comradeship if you can’t help someone in their time of need? I thought we were comrades, Pol Pot.”

“Who eez needing?” he asks me. “You and friends healthy and fat, seem like nice peoplez odder dan elitist doctor.”

He curls his lips at Sophia and she responds by saying a few words in Thulean that sound like gobble, gobble, gobble.

“Your Thulean mind tricks weel no work for me,” he tells her. “If eet were mine to do, you go for political reeducation in uranium mines.”

The one hundred and ten per cent red, white and blue war faun clutches his sides as he rolls on the ground, kicks his hooves in the air and guffaws himself helpless. “Comrade, please, stop,” he gasps, “you’re killin’ me here!”

Me: Can we fight him or something? You know how I just hate to resort to violence, but I’m pretty sure Mao said something about change coming through the barrel of a gun, or happiness is a warm gun, or something. Or maybe that was The Beatles.

Rocket: That was DJ The Beatles. Most definitely. He plays a choon called Happiness is a Warm Gun.

Sophia: We can’t fight Pol Pot. He isn’t the NVA Seed, but he is level 99. Plus, the weapons ban. I agree, though, he is a little bastard.

Me: Language, Sophia! And who called him a little bastard?

Doc: There is one thing that always works with our good socialist brethren and cistern, and that’s money; money and power. Well, two things – money, power and a chest full of medals; all right, three things. They love getting medals. So make that three things – money, power, medals, and no other thing else. Got any medals in your list, Q?

Me: Nope, but I may have something he’ll really like.

~*~

Goodbye item 181, my briefcase full of solid gold Bitcoins, a souvenir from one of Two-faced Tommy’s blow-outs in Devil’s Alley. It makes a great bribe, drug deal payoff, or ransom payment, especially if you take a handful of the coins out and replace them with a golfball-sized lump of fullerene doped boomex and a wireless trigger, and then make sure you’re on the other side of town when you hit the goodbye key.

Pol Pot is paid handsomely – about twice his weight in gold Bitcoins sans the boomex, tempting though it is. With his high-value fungible exchange media in hand, his display of fraternal socialist zeal and peasants’ and workers’ solidarity is a thing of joy and wonder to behold; he couldn’t have let us in any faster if Yurovsky himself prodded him at bayonet-point.

“Good luck,” he calls after us. “Keep to shining path! Zhe Sage will be too happy to zee you!”

Doc smirks after we’ve passed the cherub, who has spotted another couple of questing wayfarers and is fluttering over to the group. “I’ll tell you what we should have done, we should have invited him back to the guild. He’d fit right in with the Brits, The Poo Fairy and Pippa the Angry Sheep.”

“I like his politics better than those National Bocialists with their boncentration bamps,” Aiden comments. His mask tightens as he smiles. “I think he’d fit right in.”

Good thing the path provides a little bit of illumination because there’s notta lotta light here otherwise. The trees seem to bend over the pathway to form an arch overhead. Nix the forest sounds as well – no crickets, birds, squirrels, gurgling brooks, nada. The sound of silence is more like it; even the normal foot-to-crunchy snow sounds are absent.

“Are we walking in vacuum?” I ask.

“I think it’s a Hoover. Although it could be a Dyson,” Doc says.

Rocket laughs, “Now there’s a joke I get!”

We approach a locked gate draped in vines. It’s flanked by life-sized iron library lions, and a golden plaque ornately inscribed with Thulean characters hangs where the gate’s lock should be.

“Sophia, your services are needed,” I say.

She floats up and over me, which annoys the fool right out of me.

“There are better ways to do that,” I say to the back of her head. Her elven ears flicker in response.

“I can’t read it,” she admits.

“Say what? What about your Master’s in Thulean Linguistics from the University of Phoenix Online?” Rocket asks.

“I’m good at Thulean, but I have no idea how to read Ancient Thulean. Most commoners can’t, although Empress Thun is thinking of opening a course at the Polyna State University. It’s a pretty controversial subject in Valhalla,” she laughs like someone in on some joke that only they get, “believe you me!”

Me: Frances, I give up, please send me back to The Loop or at least some world like it.

Frances Euphoria: Be careful what you wish for!

“Is there a way around the gate?” I ask.

“Usually, there isn’t a way around a gate,” Rocket says, “even I know that.”

Aiden does his flashdance and appears next to me again. “Nope, I can’t tele through. It’s an invisible wall.”

I equip my Walter Sobchak signature model Big Lebowski bowling ball, item 106, and toss it at the invisible wall. When that doesn’t work, I go for Beast Man’s whip, item 218, and give the wall a few lashes. Zilch, nada, nope. A box of Simian flinging poo, item 415, materializes in my hand and I go to town on the wall.

Frances Euphoria: What is that going to possibly do?

“It has corrosive properties!” I tell the sky. “When in doubt, resort to violence. Am I right? Also, lookee, everyone, we can equip things here. I guess we could have smoked Pol Pot back there if we had wanted.”

“In that case … ” An RPG forms on Doc’s shoulder. “My C90-CR,” he says as he gets a grip on the bad boy, “never leave home without it.”

“Death to the reactionary tool of the counter-revolutionary capitalist bourgeois … um … wall-thingy!” Comrade Rocket shouts as he zings an assortment of throwing stars at the wall and Aiden pulls his Scissorsword and does a bunch of fancy color guard twirls and expensive barber shop snip snaps before wailing away at the wall. After I’ve tossed all the monkey dookie, I equip my ZF-1 assault rifle, item 62, which has just about everything a fella could possibly want. Three thousand round mag? Check. A rocket launcher? You betcha. An arrow launcher? Of course. A flamethrower? Duh. A freeze feature? Shit, yes. The ZF-1 has it all, and I use just about all of its capabilities.

“ENOUGH!”

The Boys of Non Compos Mentis all turn to Sophia, grin, and turn back to their shooterizing.

“Put your toys away!” Sophia snaps her fingers and all of our weapons fall from our hands. Okay – that’s frickin’ it! She’s pulled that puppet master thing for the last damn time, and I’m willing to bet that I can equip item 155, the Cold Steel Dragonfly katana and take her head before she can react. Doc is ready to spring at her too, with murder in his eye and his wakizashi in both hands.

“Look, you knuckleheads!”

The gate pulsates, the Thulean script luminesces, growing brighter and brighter with each digital second that passes.

“Password probably wasn’t speak friend, and enter.” I observe, as sine curves ripple across my vision pane.

Rocket tosses another throwing star for shiggles. “Maybe it was capitalist bourgeois wall-thingy!”

Chapter Twenty

Ho ho it’s magic, you know. Gone are the trees and gone are my divemates; instead I’m in a mahoosive banquet hall with ornate stained glass windows that depict lizardy Thuleans engaged in warlike acts of derring-do, and elaborately woven tapestries of pastoral griffin-y activities covering just about every wall surface. I’m surrounded by Tritanians garbed in everything from silks and furs and feathers to formal evening wear and fancy parade armor. Sprites with trays stacked high with hors d’oeuvres zip in and out of the crowd. To my right, a group of centaurs hee and haw over a joke. To my left, warlocks in black robes hold a friendly conversation with an orc in a really well tailored tuxedo.

“Frances, care to tell me what the hell is going on here?” I ask aloud.

As I await a response, a broad with spider legs coming out of her back ambles past me. Ms. ArachnaMed turns to me and blinks – vertically, I might add – which is unsettling. She’s got that Klingon ridged and scarred forehead going on and her top canines extend out of her lips.

“Guillermo del Toro much?” I ask her.

“Make dumbass, unsolicited, out-of-date observations much, you putz with ears?” She responds, and treats me to the kind of eye roll Sophia wishes she could muster. A fairy blazes past me and I raise my finger to access my inventory list to equip my butterfly net, item 323. It appears in my hand, but the fairy has already twisted away to the other side of the banquet hall.

Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Athos anymore.

“Frances, you up there?” I ask a ceiling that is all carved and plastered and painted with dragons and unicorns, lions and tigers and bears, kings and queens, jacks and aces – you name it, this ceiling has it.

Admiral Ackbar keeps yelling it’s a trap inside my noggin andthe hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. A quick scroll through my list and I stop on my Reaper mask, item 551. The color of the room changes as soon as I place it over my head. The mask’s optics produce a pastiche of thermal imaging and lighted grid lines that allows me to see into the adjacent rooms to reveal …

… a confusing, interconnected Escher-esque conglomeration of never-ending, perspective-skewed rooms, stairways, balconies, and gardens. Interesting, but no real help for the kid there.

“Frances … ”

The floor rumbles, the walls shake and chaos ensues.

It’s every entity for his, her, or its self – what had been a civilized cocktail party suddenly transmogrifies into a surrealistic Mina Stampede. Anything that can fly, flies. The small fries that can hover do okay and keep out of the way. The big guys fight for perch space and cling to the tapestries which eventually rip away from the walls and cascade back onto the pushing, shoving, clawing, biting, heaving crowd below. I forget that I’m not a detached observer safely away from the action; no, I stand there big as life and twice as ugly, taking it all in through the magic of Reaper Skull-o-Vision, right up until a charging minotaur lowers her head, catches me between her horns and tosses me up onto the top of the scrum.

I’ve never crowdsurfed before, and it’s not an experience I’m anxious to repeat. This was not at all like the TV or movie scenes where the crowdsurfer is carefully passed from hand-to-hand over the heads of the crowd – no, not at all like that. I’m bounced over and onto the heads, horns, claws, staffs, pointy ceremonial headgear, spiked epaulets, and various other fantasy accoutrements of the stabby persuasion like I’m the Ebola-soaked radioactive Quantum ball in a death match game of keep away. My armor affords me some protection, but it still ain’t a giggle-fest, and by the time I’m finally dropped face-first to the floor and stepped upon by a two ton tessy or two, my life bar is down 17%, I’m out of breath, bruised, ready to murdalize, and less impressed with the giant Keebler tree that just grew out of the center of the room than I should be.

That is until I see the face of a great lion, Mufasa fierce, form on the trunk of the tree.

It’s times like this when I wish I hadn’t traded my chainsaw, item 112, to Aiden, but I suppose a flame thrower will suffice. I equip item 83, my 125th Anniversary Verdun Commemorative Model Flammenwerfer, and approach the tree.

Frances Euphoria: Quantum! Quantum! Are you getting this message?

“Frances? Frances!”

Frances Euphoria: Yes! Talk to me on comms because everyone is talking to me at once. I can only communicate with you individually. You can’t communicate with the others, it seems.

Me: Where are they?

Frances Euphoria: Don’t know. Something happened at the gate and it sent the four of you to various places in what I guess is the OMIB.

Me: And Aiden?

Frances Euphoria: No idea.

Tiles tear from the floor as a large root lifts into the air and extends its smaller end towards me. A paw quickly forms, the fingers of which are constructed from black leaves.

“Hello, Steamboy_889, or should I say Quantum Hughes?”

I return my Flammenwerfer to my list and almost equip my prank hand buzzer, item 124, but common sense gets the best of me.

Frances Euphoria: It’s the Sage of Gotha, Sophia confirmed it!

Me: I see, I see.

My pulse settles and my breathing pattern goes back to semi-normal. “Call me what you like; just don’t call me late for dinner. Ahem. Hello, Your Sageliness,” I say as we lock hands. “Care to tell me what the hell is going on?”

Something about the Sage’s leonine Aslan-face puts me at ease. His mane is crafted from roots, his whiskers from smaller branches. His eyes are shiny orange and wet, and his nose has a touch of dark pink to it. He breathes, and the foliage above his head rustles. “Steamboy_889, I have a question for you.”

“You aren’t the only one with questions, pal.”

He smiles. “Do you like puzzles?”

I can’t decide if the Sage’s voice is James Earl Jones or Sam Elliott. It’s somewhere between the two, low and serious, but with a hidden playfulness.

“I asked you first.”

Frances Euphoria: Don’t be your usual smart-ass self! Play along!

“Um, yeah, sure, I like puzzles.”

“I see.” His Sageliness smiles at me with his eyes this time and I get a warm, fuzzy feeling in my tummy. He’s a real charmer, this one. “Do you like riddles?” he asks in with a deep purr.

I nod just to get this over with.

“So you like puzzles and riddles?”

“Yes, Your Sageliness, I like puzzles and riddles. Care to tell me what happened to my buds?”

He laughs. “They like puzzles and riddles too, it appears.”

Frances Euphoria: Update – Sophia is trying to get the Sage to explain how he is doing this in real time and if he has re-inverted an inverse base to create an OMIB with multiple outcomes existing within the same game-time continuum. Or something like that. Her avatar is near a beach.

Me: And Doc?

Frances Euphoria: Doc is, well, I don’t know exactly where he is but it looks like Beaumont after the big meteor strike.

Me: It wasn’t a meteor. It was de-orbited space junk.

Frances Euphoria: Same thing. Anyway, Doc’s not really asking the Sage anything, but he’s got a gun – big gun – up and pointed and he does not look happy.

Me: What kind of gun?

Frances Euphoria: The shooty kind – how would I know? That’s not really my field of expertise.

Me: And Rocket?

Frances Euphoria: Rocket is in a … umm … brothel.

“Lucky bastard,” I whisper.

“Yes,” the Sage says, “of the four of you, Rudraksh Vilas Paswan is perhaps the luckiest of bastards – or perhaps not. Now that I know that all of you enjoy puzzles and riddles, it is my pleasure to extend my assistance to the Knights of Non Compos Mentis.”

“We’re actually members of a federally funded team in the RW called the Dream Team.”

The Sage of Gotha laughs. “And Dream is an acronym for … ?”

“Dream Recovery Extraction and Management.”

“Ah, what a ridiculous acronym.” He smiles and his whiskers twitch. “You rescue players who are trapped in a Proxima World, correct?”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head, Mr. Sage.”

“Well, in that case, I’d love to help the Knights and for that matter, the Dream Team. Ha! Dream Team, I love the fact that this is what you call yourselves. Clever commoners with little sense – that is the story of those who spawn in Tritiania.”

“So you’ll help then?”

“Of course, it would be my pleasure!”

“Great.” I clap my hands together. “I have to admit, this has been easier than I expected it would be. So here’s the lowdown: we’re looking for a commoner named Luther Godsick. Please provide us with his current location and a logout point. That’ll be all, kind sir.” I give him the best bow and scrape I can muster.

He laughs long and hard, his low chuckles shaking the walls of the banquet hall.

“Did I say something amusing?”

“It would be rude of me not to require of you a small quest in return for some rather important information on my part.”

I consider what he’s said just to oblige him. After a moment of fake recollection, I let him know what’s really on my mind. “Or you could just make it easy and give me the afternoon off. I’d love to catch up on a little shut-eye.”

“I see. As a proper host, I have certain duties that I am obligated to discharge, so I’m afraid your afternoon off will instead be an afternoon on, if you will. You must each solve the smallest of puzzles. Solve all four puzzles and I will reveal Luther Godsick’s location. Additionally, as each puzzle is solved I will provide one line of a riddle; solve the riddle and I will provide the location of Luther Godsick’s logout point.”

I nod slowly. “Fine, fine, have it your way.”

“There is only one stipulation, however.”

“Oh?”

“If you logout before you complete the puzzle, you immediately forfeit your line of a riddle. You also lose the puzzle, thus losing your chance to obtain Luther’s Tritania location because, as I’ve said, all four of you must complete the puzzle to get the location.”

“Got it. Don’t logout, complete the puzzle, get the riddle line, and get the kid.”

His form begins to blur. “Fare well, Steamboy_889.”

~*~

Damn that handle.

I’m back in the swelling crowd of armored trouble boys and battle-ready bimbos. The Sage is gone as is the hole in the ground he created during his epic sprouting.

“Frances, you still there?”

Frances Euphoria: Here, monitoring everyone. He told everyone the same thing: complete all four puzzles for the location, answer the riddle to get the logout point.

Me: Alrighty.

I step around a man trying to impress a fair maiden with a card trick. He’s going to need to try harder than that, and I tell him so when someone gives me a hard elbow from behind. “Watch it already,” I call over my shoulder.

“Excuse me?”

I spin around ready to pulverize and am met by a pair of brass knucks to the kisser. Over and backwards I go, smack dab into a table stacked high with gooey treats and dim sum-like dishes. In the air goes the kibbles and bits and right back down on to the front of my armor they land.

“Hey!” shouts a voice deeper than my love for vigilante justice.

I wipe what feels like prawn custard and rat tart out of my eye and find a brawny green Thulean dame two parts Thor and one part Chyna. She has the requisite face tattoos, a stupid-looking lime green bihawk and an expression of testy irritability plastered across her mug.

“You made me spill my Drorikh!” She throws back what’s left in her stein, smacks her lips and daintily wipes her mouth with a forearm that is so heavily muscled it could easily be mistaken for a fivearm.

“Yeah?” I ask as I stand. “How ‘bout you keep your elbows to yourself and your eyes ahead of you, so you don’t run into the next person that just happens to be standing somewhere. What? Are your eye muscles too big to judge distance or something?”

“Just a moment … ” She takes a step closer to me and puffs her chest out. “You’re the low-down, pusillanimous, smart-mouth, rat-bastard cheater who killed Renata!” A large serrated blade appears in one hand, a shield with a red dragon on it in the other.

“Really? Do we really have to go through this again?”

With a juicy schwack, the disgruntled shieldmaiden slices my favorite butt-scratching arm clean off before I can react, dodge, or give my butt one last farewell scratch. And boy howdy does it ever sting, but I’m already AA bar juicing by the time she tries to follow up and completely disarm me. Blood fountains out of my stump like seltzer from a syphon at a nosferatu speakeasy on Bloody Mary Monday Morning, and my life bar is down by 35% and falling fast as I shoulder my way through the crowd. Gotta get me a little dancing room to take out the armored She-Hulk.

Frances Euphoria: Don’t die!

Item 213, my forty watt phased plasma rifle appears in my hand. I turn and blast through the crowd, and it ain’t pretty – blood and guts and bits and pieces flash out and away from me and I zap the Thulean dame dead on. I might just as well have been blowing kisses at her for all the effect it has, but the effect on everyone else still standing is another story. They shriek and scream and recoil away from the cone of destruction in shock and horror; they clamor over, under, around and through one another and more fights erupt as everyone makes for the nearest exit.

Cue incoming Knights in White Satin from the front of the room and you got yourself a genuine shitshow. As much as I’d like to revisit our earlier full and frank exchange of ideas in Ultima Thule, I got much bigger Thulean fish to fry. The big bastard babe advances and dodges a falling orb chandelier. I’m all gun at this point with item 570, the SAR 21 with one hundred round magazine in my shootin’ hand – just the thing for the suddenly monodexterous.

Oh, Waiter? I’ll have my banquet gathering well-perforated, please.

The bullets tear through the crowd in a long, angry, barrel-melting burst of sustained fire. Rosie the Thulean Aggravator lands in front of me in the approved graphic novel hero three-point landing. I didn’t see her jump in the first place, and it’s big surprise number two when she hacks straight through gun and arm, cleaving them both in twain.

I’m like a blood-soaked homecoming queen at the Ewen Consolidated High’s Senior prom, and I’m down to 15% and dropping fast. I activate my AA bar while I still can and jump into my Ong-Bak Thai knee attack.

Big surprise number three; I never even see the blade, just my lower half spinning away from my upper half.

The screen fades to black.

~*~

“Well that wasn’t especially efficacious,” chortles the Sage of Gotha.

We’re not in the OMIB per se, but this certainly has that OMIBish feel to it. The crowd is still visible, frozen all around us and we’re in the center of it all, the tree with the lion’s face and yours truly. It’s like we’ve been superimposed on the image of a crowd; as if the people themselves are the floor, wall and background. Add some twinkly stars and a gravel-voiced host with a Chesterfield in his fist and you got yourself a genuine period mood piece.

Frances Euphoria: I thought I told you not to die!

Me: I thought I had her. How are the others?

Frances Euphoria: Everyone has died at least once now. No one seems to like this puzzle.

Me: The others have the same puzzles?

Frances Euphoria: Not exactly. Doc was told to prevent a zombie invasion of Valhalla. He went big with the guns and ammo solution and he lasted about four times longer than you did.

Me: Hey! I was just getting started.

Frances Euphoria: He thinks the solution to his puzzle is to wipe out the source of infection. He’s still working on it.

Me: And Sophia?

Frances Euphoria: She’s committed suicide twice now by casting Choke on herself, which isn’t what it sounds like. The spell drops a sixteen-ton version of some book called Choke onto the castee’s head.

Me: First, what the hell? Second, why does she keep offing herself?

Frances Euphoria: She’s overwhelmed. Her avatar is in the Goblin Riviera and she has to babysit twenty incontinent special needs goblin children in a beat up single-wide with a broken toilet. To make matters worse, they speak some dialect of Thulean she’s never heard of before, and she can’t communicate with them.

Me: Ha! I’d pay good money to see that! And Rocket?

Frances Euphoria: He’s died once already from exhaustion.

Me: I thought he was at a brothel.

Frances Euphoria: He is …

Me: And he’s supposed to do what?

Frances Euphoria: What do you think?

Me: And he furgled himself to death? What is wrong with kids these days? This ain’t the America I grew up in! If it were me, I would have already solved that puzzle!

Frances Euphoria: No doubt, Trigger. Keep telling yourself that.

Me: Trigger? What’s that supposed to mean?

Frances Euphoria: It means that the ‘shoot everything’ solution isn’t always the solution. Why, what did you think it means?

Me: I thought you were comparing … um … no, how about, Rocket’s a teenage boy and I’m … um … not a teenage boy, and … ah, crap. I thought you were implying that I can’t last as long as he can because I’m not a kid anymore.

Frances Euphoria: Let’s just say that for an old … um … older guy you do just fine, but this probably isn’t the time to get into that right now. Also, I do believe that Rocket may have been a virgin, both in the RW and the PG.

Me: Older guy and I do just fine? Never mind, we’ll come back to that. So our boy has become a man and he dies of exhaustion in the process?

Frances Euphoria: Yes. He’s starting again now. He seems to be doing better this time, but honestly, I’ve turned his feed off. There’s a lot going on at that brothel, but his puzzle centers around an orgy with a unicorn-centaur, an orc, a three-breasted elf, a tardigrade, a poo pixie, a Thulean ladyboy, and Pip and Pippa.

Me: Screenshots.

Frances Euphoria: I’ll spare you, and I’ll spare him too, when he gets out.

Me: What kind of in-game monitor are you? Take some screenshots, just in case we ever need to blackmail him. Or maybe for the Dream Team Chrismahanukwanzivus card this year – that’d be a scream!

Frances Euphoria: I’ll think about it.

“I have to hand it to you, Your Sageocity.” I give the tree a big thumbs up. “You’ve really got us all by the huevos here. That being said, how about you just give us the details we need and all of us can be on our merry little ways? This is fun and all, but as you know, we are actually trying to do something for the betterment of the people in my world, the world that created this world.”

He laughs heartily. “Every world has its creator; every creator has its creator. Better luck this time, Steamboy.”

~*~

Crowd again. I’m smack dab in the middle, back to where I started. My guess is to get to the front and see what’s happening up there. After all, the people gathered here are waiting for something. I don’t like the fact that the Knights in White Satin showed up last time, but if I mind my manners, maybe I’ll be able to slip past them.

“Beverage, sir?” asks a good lookin’ gal in a tightly-bodiced Beer Maiden Baby outfit.

“Don’t mind if I do,” and I snag an Oktoberfest-sized stein of Horse Piss from her tray, and pause just long enough to get an eyeful of her artfully presented sugarpillows.

I see the man trying to impress the fair maiden with the card trick and I pass by them. Voicing my opinion last time got me the brass fist to the kisser – I still don’t know who walloped me – and my subsequent stumble backwards is what got the Thulean warrior gal all revved up.

I sip my beer like a gentleman, pinkie raised and I’m just about to make it to another buffet table with a stuffed Gesundheit in the center when I feel a tap on my shoulder.

“Don’t I know you?” the Thulean broad asks. She’s all muscles and tattoos with a neck like a rugby player’s thigh and bulging biceps like cantaloupes.

“Never seen you before in my life, Miss.” I tell her as I turn back to the front. “Enjoy the party.”

“Wait a minute.”

This time she forcibly spins me around.

“You’re the one who killed Princess Renata!” Her faces goes through all seven stages of pissed off as her nostrils flare, her bi-hawk bristles and her eyes spit flames at me.

“So what if I am?” I ask her, my hand behind my back scrolling through my list. If it’s a fight she wants, this time I plan to pearl her harbor. Item 554, Hackie, appears in my hand as an ax. Then …

… nothing happens.

Hackie doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t spread up my arm and form a weapon. He remains in his ax form, and like anybody with a malfunctioning device, I tap it, shake it, hold it up to my ear and then shake it again.

“You dare challenge me?” the Thulean roars. The people around us have already spread out and formed a circle by this point.

“Hold onto your ghost limbs, lady, I’m working on something.” I flick the switch from ICE to NORM a couple of times – no joy.

“Doka duchaka!”

“Dora the Explorer!” Suddenly I’ve got express elevator tummy, everything looks smaller than it was before, and the big green meanie is using my face to pound the dust out of the tapestries with the old invisible ghost limbs routine.

While Hackie’s Dick Hertz component may be on the fritz, it is still a really spiffy example of the ax maker’s art, and I frickin’ hew through her ghost limbs with a single manly sweep of my mighty blade. Twisting in midair, I activate my AA bar, and with cat-like grace affect a superhero three-point landing of my own. She’s not at all pleased with my clever riposte, but is temporarily occupied with her own spirited rendition of the Thulean Owie-Owie Dance – the Thulean name for which translates as ‘jacked with the wrong guy’, I’ll bet. I scroll to item 239, my Minions™ Lava-Lamp Gun.

AA bar juicing again, I jump towards the fleeing crowd and River Dance along their shoulders as I fire yellow-white lava at the bad-tempered bee-yotch. It’s tough on the crowd; those it doesn’t incinerate are instead covered in rapidly congealing molten rock. The weapon recoils considerably more than I’d expected and throws me back into the far wall, but with the AA time dilation still going on, I get my legs under me and kick off it in a swimmer’s tumble turn.

I go for her with everything I have left, and my AA bar winks out just as I reach her. She’s AAed too, dodged my lava attack, and vaults into a perfect arc over me with her sword extended.

I spin into a table and go to grab it with the arm that all of sudden isn’t there anymore. The ground comes up to meet me and I go down hard; the warrior woman lands, straddles me, and raises high her serrated snicker-snee.

I’m able to stare at my now-headless corpse for just a few seconds after I’ve been decapitated.

~*~

Frances Euphoria: What part of ‘Don’t die’ is giving you problems?

Me: The ‘Don’t die’ part, mostly.

Frances Euphoria: You can’t beat her! Try something else.

Me: Pfft! Well, I’m sure not gonna join her! Frances, Proxima combat is an art, and you can’t rush art.

Frances Euphoria: You’re so hard-headed! Try something else because seriously, the bang-bang shoot ‘em up is not working, and you don’t know how many tries you’ll get or how long this puzzle is good for.

“Do you wish to begin again?” asks his Sageliness. He’s before me in all his magnificence, his leonine visage without expression.

“Yeah, yeah,” I tell him. “Let’s get this party started.”

“It’s a banquet,” he reminds me as everything fades to black.

~*~

Man showing the woman a card trick? Check. Warlocks warlocking? Also check. Thulean battle babe tapping on my shoulder …

“Don’t I know you?”

“I get that a lot,” I tell her with a smile.

“Your handle, Steamboy_889, where have I seen you?”

“I’ll tell you where you haven’t seen me; you haven’t seen me at Good King Coromon’s Tournament.”

Frances Euphoria: Oh come on, seriously?

Me: What? It’s a new strategy!

The scaly dragon dame won’t let it go, and turns her smile upside down. “You … you’re the one who killed Princess Renata!”

“Who?” I ask. “Like I said, I wasn’t at the tournament, honest.”

“I remember you! Your face, your armor.”

“This armor?” I adjust my spaulder and flick away a speck of imaginary dust. “I just picked this up this afternoon at the Knight’s Wearhouse. The saleswench guaranteed that I’d like the way I look, but I just don’t know. Do you think the culets make my ass look fat?”

“You’ll not distract me with your fashion talk, and yes, your ass does look fat!” She unsheathes her blade and hisses “Now stand and fight, coward,” through gritted fangs. The crowd forms a circle around us, and I see rupees exchange hands.

“Whoa, amiga, let’s put the blade away. No sense in resorting to senseless violence.”

Frances Euphoria: You’re smooth-talking isn’t working!

“It is you,” she growls, “I knew it! Hello, Steamboy. My name is Sligo Toyota. You killed my princess. Prepare to die!”

I put both hands in the air. “I don’t know what your problem is, miss, but I got no beef with you. I’ll tell you what, I got a nice bunch of dingleberries I’d love to share with you, if you’d only give me half a chance.”

From behind me comes the smug, self-satisfied voice that only a public safety official who enjoys the backing of the full weight of the judicial system and at least a dozen heavily armed compadres can possess. “You! Thulean Warrior! Drop your weapon!”

A quick glance over my shoulder and I catch the Knights in White Satin pushing through the crowd.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Officers, arrest this woman!” I shout like an innocent and aggrieved tax-paying citizen, although this probably isn’t the best way to handle the aggressive blade brandishing bimbo, especially after the Empress’ goon squad instantly recognizes me.

“Steamboy!” the lead knight draws his sword, and his posse follows suit. I’m pretty sure he’s the same guy who accosted us in Ultima Thule, but there’s no way to tell because all these knights look the same, from their Roman head gear to their flowing capes.

“Fellas,” I say with my hands up. “Let’s discuss this like reasonable entities.”

Like any sane mortal who prefers to have his corpus remain unpunctured, I’m not especially keen on being the center of an unfriendly ring o’ steel. As I put my hands in the air, I equip my Mega Man buster, item 390, just in case. I’m sure a few notice what looks like a vase on my hand, but that’s a risk I’m going to have to take.

The lead knight approaches me and stops inches away from my face. To spit or not to spit? That is the question.

Frances Euphoria: Don’t even think about it!

She now officially reads minds, apparently.

He gets right in my face with his gloved finger. “You have some nerve showing your filthy, ugly, nasty, bilaterally asymmetrical, traitorous face at the Empress’ Griffin Day Banquet!”

“Is that what this is? And here I thought the griffin theme was simply Tritanian canon.”

“He’s a rat bastard murdering cheat!” says my statuesque non-admirer. There’s no quit in this big green gal; she comes at me but the knights hold her back. Can’t tell if she’s that strong or they’re just a bunch of parade ground POGs, but it takes six of them to keep her at bay.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” I call over to her.

She bellows something in Thulean and I respond with my own quip in a foreign language, “¡Me cago en todo lo que se menea!”

Frances Euphoria: Well, this is the longest you’ve been not-dead so far, but your deescalation technique could sure use some work

Me: I’ve accepted the fact that I’m going to have to die a few times before I’m even close to solving the Sage’s ‘puzzle’. I fail to see the puzzle part of it yet, but maybe that’s just me.

The ‘roided up Thulean wonder wench is really peeved; she snorts and huffs and puffs and seethes, practically steams at the ears. The six be-caped poncy poofters can barely hold her in check, and two more pile in to help.

“Enough! We’ll let the magistrate sort this out. Both of you are coming with us,” Mr. Head Knight guy says, his eyes locked on mine.

“Sorry, bub, I got other plans.”

AA bar activated, I charge my Mega Man Buster just long enough to give the ceiling a good blast. Stage right I go to avoid the incoming debris. I springboard off a side table full of fancy finger food – the breen look especially good – execute a flashy midair turn and give the knights and the Thulean another blistering blast from my Mega Man Buster.

Frances Euphoria: While you’re horsing around, the others are actually solving their puzzles. In fact, I think Rocket will solve it this time around.

“Ouch!” Of course, the old ‘arrow in butt’ ploy, my personal favorite.

I land off balance, fall, and snap the arrow shaft off as I roll on it. Should have stayed down; I gain my feet just in time for another arrow to take my glim out.

My life bar is at half-mast by this point, my vision pane is blurred and I can’t blink it clear. The arrow got me at an angle so it didn’t kill me outright, and I can actually see the fletching with my other peeper.

Frances Euphoria: Snap it off and pull it out! Pull it out now!

Some things are apparently hard-wired into the male psyche right down at the DNA level, because even though I’m as busy as a two-peckered Billy goat during mating season in my attempt to avoid the incoming slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I still have time to think “Heh – that’s what she said.”

Arrows from two or three directions pincushion my ass, my AA bar cuts out and I smash-land through a banquet table full of oversized mugs of Horse Piss Ale. The Mega Man Buster gets heavier and heavier; I can’t see much of anything now but it doesn’t matter – I’m just shooting to shoot.

The Chief White Knight bellows the command “LOOSE!”, and a flurry of arrows rain down on me. One gets me right in the throat, and ...

… Harald Hardrada beckons me on.

Fade to black.

~*~

“Are you ready to admit defeat?” The Sage of Gotha’s booming voice fills my headspace. Just like the last time I died, the people of the banquet hall are frozen in place, oblivious to the giant tree that has sprouted out of the center of the room.

“Giving up isn’t really in my repertoire.”

He chuckles. “So I have observed. Do you find the puzzle more challenging than you’d anticipated, or is it that the challenge is more puzzling, Steamboy?”

“Is it really a puzzle though?” I ask. “It seems like more of an endurance challenge.”

His form wavers, reminding me of static on an old television.

“You could make this easy, you know!” I call after him but he’s gone by this point, and I’m once again surrounded by the crowd. There’s the amateur magician trying to hook up with some slightly sozzled chickie with the ‘pick a card, any card’ routine, the warlocks are ceremoniously snorting pixie dust through a short length of unicorn horn, and the centaurs are sniggering over some equine in-joke or something.

Frances Euphoria: Rocket solved his puzzle!

Me: Solved? You said he was in some type of phantasmagorical medieval orgy. How’d he solve it?

Frances Euphoria: From what he said – remember, I turned his feed off – he did what he had to do.

Me: What could that possibly mean?

Frances Euphoria: I think his puzzle was to figure out a way to … um … satisfy everyone. I may be mistaken, but he did say that the tardigrade was especially hard.

Me: Is that the exact way he phrased it?

Frances Euphoria: Yes, why?

Me: Never mind. What happened after he solved the puzzle?

Frances Euphoria: He has been transported to a place called the End of Time. It is OMIB-ish, but different. He’s been given a scrap of parchment that reads: Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights.

Me: WTF does that mean?

Frances Euphoria: Don’t know yet. That’s all it says. Maybe it will make more sense once you and the others finish your puzzles.

“Excuse me,” a plump pixie with wings three sizes too small for her girth flutters past me. From what I can tell, there are more banquet-goers at the back of the room than there are upfront, so I may have a better chance of hiding out back here while I figure out what the hell is going on.

I equip my Deathly Hallows Invisibility Cloak, item 90, and move to the wall. After some fancy legwork, I find a clear space behind a winemaid in a short skirt and pointy heels. I see an empty wine crate and I use it to give me a better vantage point. Maybe I should have gotten the lay of the crowd beforehand, but fools rush in and get their ass beat repeatedly, thank you, thank you very much!

For where I stand, it’s apparent that most folks are congregated at the back with the finger food, buffet table, and free drinkies – and really, why wouldn’t they be? Up front, upon an ornately decorated dais, a gaudy, ostentatious, stereotypical throne with the usual carved, gilded, tuck-and-roll purple velveted appointments expresses the haute bourgeois’ disdain for the plight of the proletaria … wait, what? Anyhoo, the big fancy chair is flanked by two lesser, but still gaudily bedazzled specimens of sitting device, with large violet velvet draperies embroidered with griffins rampant, griffins couchant, griffins supporting, griffins gorged and chained – really, the only griffin it doesn’t have is Peter Griffin – as backdrop.

The Knights in White Satin stand before the dais, their eyes scanning the crowd.

“So the point of this puzzle is … ?”

Frances Euphoria: I think the point is to think outside the box!

Me: Go on …

Frances Euphoria: Sophia is trying to embrace her loving, nurturing, motherly instincts.

Me: You are talking about our Sophia – Sophia Wang, right?

Frances Euphoria: Yes, really! She’s singing lullabies in Mandarin to the goblinets, and that appears to be soothing them some.

Me: And that’s working?

Frances Euphoria: Seems to be. Oh crap! One of the baby goblins bit her boobie!

Me: Screenshots.

Frances Euphoria: Sophia is no longer embracing her motherly instinct.

Me: And Doc?

Frances Euphoria: Doc seems a bit hard-headed, not unlike yourself. He’s still killing the zombies as a means to eradicate them.

Me: Thata boy. He’ll get them, the infected too.

Frances Euphoria: It’s not working. I keep telling him this, but he’s gone berserk. Something about zombies really gets to him.

Me: We all have our thing.

“What’s with the not especially invisible cloak of invisibility, your Lordship?”

It’s the winemaid from earlier. She has cat eyes – did not see that to begin with – and dangly earrings hanging from her tragi.

“No one’s here,” I tell her.

“Everyone can see you, you know. Watch.” She catches the eye of a patron at the front of the table and jerks her thumb over her shoulder to point me out. He’s a tremendous, bare-chested barbarian with a smallish horned helmet and fur kilt, who stands next to a small blue dragon and a pink-haired, pigtailed warrior princess in a green cloak. He quaffs a mighty draught from his mug of … milk, nudges the battle babe, and points at me with a chocolate chip cookie. She snorts milk out of her nose, wipes it off on her leathern gauntlet and gives me the pinkie wave. The blue dragon rolls his eyes, shakes his head, and returns to his drink.

“See?”

The hooch the winemaid has been serving is a suspiciously unwinelike frothy white liquid, I notice.

“When did you start serving vanilla malts, and where can a thirsty warrior get a properly ethylated bevvie?”

“It’s Drorikh, silly.” she tells me, “fermented dragon’s milk. If you want booze, it’s on the other side of the room, at the table with the big banner that says BOOZE.”

People begin murmuring at the front of the room. The milkmaid claps her hands and bounces on her toes. “Oh, wonderful, here she comes now!”

A lush drape parts and twenty attendants march out. They place their hands behind their heads, stick their elbows out and squat. They bow their heads forward as the center attendant unrolls a rectangular swath of fabric and clips it to small latches on the squatting attendants’ wrists and covers their shoulders so that connected, they form a long running table.

“Is this some sort of yoga routine or something?”

“De-cloak and I’ll tell you,” says the milkmaid.

“Alrighty,” the cloak goes back into my inventory list only after I step off the crate, which severely limits my ability to see what’s happening up front. I step up again; naysayers be damned.

“They’re forming a griffin runner table,” the milkmaid explains. She turns the spout on a crate next to me and fills another goblet with fermented dragon’s milk. “What?” she asks. “Never heard of Drorikh in a box?”

I turn my attention back to the front to see two miniature griffins being carried on white pillows. The pillowbearers stop at the back of the griffin runner table, and the two fantasy creatures stand. One yawns and they both step onto the connected table made from the shoulders and forearms of the kneeling servants.

“This is ridiculous,” I say just loud enough for a Thulean warrior broad – not my Thulean warrior broad – at the front of the milk table to twitch her ears and half-turn towards me.

“It’s tradition,” says the milkmaid.

The griffins make their way to the end of the table, where they’re again greeted by the pillowbearers. Once they’re back on their white pillows, they are quickly taken to the small thrones flanking the Empress’ empressing perch.

I ain’t gonna lie – my trigger finger is just about as itchy as it can be. I could probably take out everyone up front with a single blast from my Reason Railgun, item 459, but methinks this isn’t exactly what the Sage had in mind when he instructed me to solve his puzzle.

“Cool it, cowboy,” I mutter to myself.

Frances Euphoria: Sophia is doing it! She’s done it!

Me: She solved her puzzle?

Frances Euphoria: Yes! She’s spawned at the End of Time with Rocket.

Me: How’d she solve it?

Frances Euphoria: She killed all the goblin children.

Me: She did what? Sophia ‘Save the Digital Whales’ Wang? That’s not like her!

Frances Euphoria: She tried everything else, from taking care of them to trying to contact their parents. Finally, she wrang their little necks. It broke her heart; she was still crying when she respawned, I should add, as these were an endangered subspecies of goblin that still spoke Ancient Thulean. Her riddle piece is coming now. It reads …

Voices in the crowd pick up as Empress Thun enters the room.

“Maybe I’m supposed to kill her,” I say aloud.

The milkmaid gives me a funny look. “What do you mean?”

“That line wasn’t for you, it was for the friend in my head,” I tell her as I tap at the side of my dome.

Frances Euphoria: As I was saying, here’s Sophia’s part of the riddle: Resistant bodies keep dreams alive. And no, I’m guessing you aren’t supposed to kill the Empress.

“Too late.” I leap off the crate and hit the AA boost. Charging forward with my buster sword, item 572 in one hand and my Model 1928A1 Thompson Submachine gun, item 247, in the other, I jump from shoulder to head and aim most of my fire at the front of the crowd. I can see the big, heavy .45 caliber slugs spiral through the air in slow motion. They impact with graphic effect; tissues tears, blood splatters, glass shatters as I wield my trench-broom to clear my path to the Knights, to the Empress.

I bring the sword down on the lead knight, who, with an infuriating nonchalance and a shit-eating grin meets me with his shield, kicks my feet out from under me and pushes me backwards. The floor shakes as a steel barred cage drops down around me.

The drum goes empty as I try to shoot my way out; the ricochets and bullet fragments off the bars knock my life bar down by 20%. No joy from the Chicago Typewriter; time to do this the old fashioned way. The bars ring like tubular bells and sparks fly in a solid stream as cold steel meets cold steel. With one last supremely powerful strike, nothing happens.

“Dumbass,” the Chief Knight smirks, “That all you got?”

Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.

I equip my bazooka, item 82, and aim it at the Empress – and then lower it as gravity drags it down from my suddenly nerveless hands. My mouth goes Death Valley dry, my stomach drops and my pulse pounds in my temples.

“Dolly?”

A red scarf binds her hair into a Carmen Miranda-style affair sans the fruit; a tight white bustier displays her rack to full advantage and accentuates her wasp-waisted figure. She turns to me as the White Knights form a protective cordon around her with swords drawn and pointed right at my very soul. Her piercing black eyes lock onto mine without the slightest trace of recognition.

“How did you get in here?” I whisper. “Why are you the empress?!”

No answer. Even the patrons behind me have stopped murmuring.

“Doll, it’s me, it’s Quantum.”

She opens her mouth to speak and at the very moment her lips part, a portal opens up above the dais and Reapers drop out like maggots squeezed from a pus-filled boil, weapons blazing into the crowd. They hoot and holler their pretend war cries, and flex and pose and vogue like they’re at a shoot for ‘Wanna –B’ magazine. A surprising amount of return fire blazes past me, and not all of it is world appropriate swords and arrows and thaumaturgic energy. Though there’s dozens of them with mutant hacks twisted up their arms and they’re killing the hell out of the crowd, it’s still not quite the cakewalk they’re used to.

It’s who I see next that really lights a fire under my ass.

Strata Godsick is the last of the Reapers to come out of the portal. His reaper mask is the same as it was in Steam, a mangled skull with antlers, but he’s no longer wearing his getup with the red jewel in the center, as cliché as that was. Instead, he levitates in a jet black robe that hangs well over his feet, which is twisted at the end into small curls. He focuses on Dolly, paying absolutely no attention to yours truly.

As his henchmen take on the knights, as they blast their hacks indiscriminately into the crowd, Strata’s form slowly morphs into a thick black smoke. Tendrils of dark energy form in the air around him, twisting their ways up and down what’s left of his arms and legs.

I equip my Mars Attacks ray gun, item 491, and blast at the cage until the weapon overheats. I toss it aside and equip item 63, my Annihilator 2000, America’s premier survival, home and travel security unit.

“Dolly!”

Strata is now a few paces away from Dolly with his smoky hand extended in her direction. Dolly makes no response, takes no defensive action, doesn’t even acknowledge Strata’s presence.

I know the gun ain’t gonna work until I’m out of the cage; a quick scroll through my list and I stop at item 101, the portable hole. I slap it against the bars, it sticks, and I dive through into a shoulder roll that puts me on my feet with the Annihilator 2000 pointed right where Strata’s miserable, twisted Grinch heart should be.

The bullets sail right through his insubstantial ass; no effect. From out of nowhere, a mahoosive, steel-clad fist rings my bell big time and rearranges my boyish good looks.

My cheekbone crunches, my vision pane grays out and comes back with my life bar down by another 15%, and I spit out two of my favorite teeth as I turn and ventilate the chickenshit bastard Reaper who just sucker punched me.

Strata is still moving in on Empress Dolly, and she still makes no effort to escape, evade, or defend as I launch myself at them. My AA bar comes up and item 579, my Bustermarm, fills my hand. The sword grows and grows with every air-step, and from ten feet out, I ram it into his body.

No effect, the blade meets no resistance, and I overbalance, tumble, and go flat on my face.

Meanwhile, I got another one of Strata’s bones-leather-and-metal clad knuckleheads coming at me full speed with a whirling Ginsu chainsaw hack, and I don’t roll out of his way in time. He gets my arm about shoulder high, and that’s pretty much me done. Never mind Griffin Festival – so far today has been nothing but a Dismember Steamboy festival.

Bustermarm comes up as I complete my roll and I partition Mr. Texas Chainsaw Massacre from hip to shoulder. My life bar is rapidly heading for the red and I one-hand the Annihilator 2000 as best I can, just as another Reaper I never even see picks me up by the back of the neck and gives me the Bane chiropractic treatment.

I hear the snap, feel my body disconnect, and watch my life bar drop to zero.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“You got some nerve,” I tell the Sage. “Some NERVE!”

For his part, the Sage does the inscrutable Obi-Wan, Master Po, and Yoda knowing silence thing, which really, really fries my ass more than it’s already fried.

“Well that’s IT then, you smug bastard!” and item 100, the BFG 9000 materializes fully charged and ready to go. I feel the plasma chamber build a charge, and my skin prickles with spillover ionizing radiation as I hold the trigger down and – nothing happens. Reset, recharge, and – more nothing. I curse and blaspheme, bounce it down hard, kick it, and hurt my tootsies.

The Sage radiates silent amusement.

Item 83, my 125th Anniversary Verdun Commemorative Model Flammenwerfer, should be just the ticket. The igniter sparks, the fuel fooshes through the hose, and I brace myself for the roaring wall of fiery vengeance that I’m about to blast into the very face of my tormentor and … nothing.

“MOTHER PUS BUCKET!” I howl, as I strip the tank assembly from my back and pound it with the wand.

Frances Euphoria: What the Quantum are you doing?

Me: Actualizing my inner child. I’ll be better in a minute.

Okay – item 274, the aluminum Festivus pole – no moving parts. I scream like a Reaper with a paper cut as I rush in and repeatedly smash the pole against the Sage’s unyielding tree-like self. Neither the Sage nor the pole are any the worse for wear by the time I work through my hissy fit, and I must say that the Festivus pole does indeed have a high strength-to-weight ratio.

Frances Euphoria: Feel better?

Me: No, but I feel less bad.

The Sage of Gotha closes his eyes and takes a deep, satisfied breath. He exhales and pollen filters off his foliage in a cloud of arboreal dandruff. Blips of light like Tinkerbell with a firefly up her ass shine through his branches casting myriad arcs across the neverspace. “You have much to learn, young Steamboy.”

His body begins to fade away, leaving only his Aslan facial features. Soon, I’m back in the banquet hall surrounded by guests, my Festivus pole still in my hand.

I’m still pissed off, but like Doc always says, Better pissed off than pissed on!

The Sage has me by the cojones and is using Dolly and Strata to push my buttons, even if they aren’t really them in the sense of the word. The Sage is in my head, and if I could put a gun to my dome to get him out, I’d squeeze that trigger faster than a zitso on a sebaceous cyst. I have to keep telling myself that this is a game, a puzzle to be solved. Ain’t nothing but a thang; I can hang.

Frances Euphoria: Okay, so now what’s your plan?

Me: My plan? Still working it out.

Hee haw go the centaurs and har har har go the hopped up warlocks and the penguin-suited orc. I slip through the crowd, past the spidery woman with creepy peepers, around the conman using his legerdemain to try to unlatch a young vixen’s chastity belt, towards the fermented milk vendor side of the banquet hall. I know there isn’t a lot of time for scheming, and I’ll still have to keep my eyes on the crowd around me. The Thulean She-Hulk is out to get me, no matter where I spawn or what I do.

“I’ll have two, please,” I tell the full-bosomed milkmaid.

“The limit is one at a time per customer,” she says with a thin smile.

I almost equip my 7-Eleven 128 oz. Super Mega Triple Gulp, item 85, and tell her to fill ‘er up, but I decide to keep things copacetic. “Then I’ll take one.”

She hands me the frothy white dragon’s milk and down my neck it goes. I almost toss the glass over my shoulder but I reconsider and waggle it towards her.

“And I’ll take another,” I tell her.

She raises an eyebrow at me. “You have to use a new mug; Tritania health standards.”

“Let me guess, DRAIDS or the Corrupted Blood Incident?”

The milkmaid seems genuinely surprised. “A combination of both. How did you know?”

“It’s what I do: I drink and I know things,” I say as I down my second mug and return my focus to the situation at hand. The fermented milk adds a touch of blurriness to the corners of my vision pane, but it does nothing to calm my nerves.

Frances Euphoria: Are you done drinking? Empress Thun will be coming soon!

I note how Frances does not refer to the Empress as Dolly. There will be a time to address this in the future, but now isn’t the time for any sort of relationship drama. Back to Strata: it’s abundantly clear to me that I need to kill him. If I kill him, I’ll save Dolly and I’ll solve the puzzle. Bada bing, bada boom.

“You just gonna stand there at the front of the table, mister?” the milkmaid asks.

Maybe I’m supposed to kill the milkmaid. Likely not, but it would be satisfying.

Murmuring at the front of the crowd tells me that the Dolly’s attendants have started to arrive. The baby griffins will be next, followed by Dolly, then Strata and his suicide squad. My mind returns to the thought of a little kablooey; or better, a lot of kablooey.

I got no shortage of booby traps and command detonated explodey things that’d take care of Strata and Co, but they’d also take care of Dolly too, and I’m pretty sure I have to keep Dolly alive. Nope, Strata has to die, and seeing how he quickly turns to smoke once he’s come out his portal, I’d better get over there fast.

I calculate my trajectory as Dolly takes her throne. Only one item in my list could get me over in the blink of an eye. It’ll be bulky, and anyone in my path will be dunzilla by the time I cut past them, but it should do the trick.

The portal begins to open and item 205, my red Akira motorcycle, appears between my legs. I had this one souped-up by an associate of Dirty Dave; 0 to 60 in 0.5 seconds is as fast as he could make it.

“Holy trolls and goblins!” The milkmaid eyes go wide and she covers her mouth with her hands.

I rev the bike and lean backwards to pop me the mother of all wheelies.

~*~

The banquet hall blurs by as I speed to the front of the room.

I activate my AA bar and the front wheel comes down. Off I go, sideways firing my SWD Street Sweeper, item 110, in my right hand and Blain Cooper’s M134 minigun, item 198, in my left.

The Reapers fall out of the portal like turds from a horse’s ass and my bike skids right into them. The saddlebags pop open and half-a-dozen chunks of item 342, upsydaisyium, wrapped with item 341, fullerene doped boomex, zoom up into the portal and detonate just as Chief Turd makes his advent.

The blast converts the bike into high-dollar shrapnel and vaporizes those closest to it; those on the fringes soak up horrific injuries. The White Nights pig-piled Dolly when the first Reapers opened up, and they shielded her from the worst of it.

Strata doesn’t even have to shake off the blast and shrapnel – it has no effect, and he moves on Dolly as if nothing has happened. His evil black cloud morphing thing starts right on cue, starting at his extremities and working its way in.

A Reaper decides to try me on for size and suddenly discovers that he’s not ready for the Men’s Department after all when I send him on his way with an offhand three-second minigun burst right in his painted Killer Klown kisser. I barely contain my berserker rage; my Furor Quantumicus at the game, the game-within-the-game, the Sage, the Quest – all of it, especially anyone who dares gets in my way.

AA bar again.

I swim through the air like Michael Phelps on cat salts, and with a face-hugger’s tenacity, I latch onto what’s left of Strata. The big guns go away, I hook one hand under the edge of his mask and item 33 appears in my other hand. Our momentum carries us into one of the not-Peter Griffin drapes and straight down to the floor. I ram the Bowie blade up under his chin again and again and he doesn’t resist as I go all Knifey Knifepecker on his ass. Tendrils of smoke shot through with dark energy dance in my peripheral vision. His limbs have all but disappeared, but his torso is still sufficiently solid for me to straddle and the blade meets resistance every time I thrust it into him.

With an antler in either hand, I twist his head from the remains of his body.

The mask peels from his face and the mug that stares back at me is the same one that I see in the mirror every morning. The eyes – my eyes – move and meet my disbelieving gaze; the mouth – my mouth – twists into a crooked grin, and I curse as I throw the head as far from me as I can.

I drop the antler mask and stumble away.

“Well? Now what?” I ask the sky, and the sky doesn’t answer. “Oh Come ON! Wasn’t that it?”

Sudden shock as my heart explodes in my chest and the tips of a dozen witchblades protrude through the front of my dragonscale armor. Dolly lifts me in the air and turns me to face her; my lifebar drops past 12% as she dispassionately examines me. Vision pane flashes red, lifebar at 9% and falling fast, but I can’t focus on that – all I see now are Dolly’s orange eyes burning a hole in my soul.

Fade to black.

~*~

I keep my mouth shut and my weapons down this time around. The Sage waits for a moment for me to say something and begins to fade away.

~*~

The crowd forms around me. I don’t got beef with none of ‘em, but isn’t going to stop me from doing what I plan to do next. A quick scroll through my list and my Reason Railgun, item 459, forms in front of me. People start moving away real quick-like as I load and lock.

“See, I told you they’d listen to Reason.”

Frances Euphoria: What are you doing!?

The weapon whirs and I train it at the front of the room; the blast tears the polished floor as it travels to the front of the room. The people in range disintegrate; the screams that follow don’t please me as much as I’d though they would. The wall explodes outward; a vortex forms at the blast point and sucks in the surrounding snacks, drinks, furniture, anyone in the vicinity.

Wind racing out of the banquet hall whips at the griffin flags hanging from the ceiling until they too tear off. Bodies cartwheel through the air towards the hole and a few of the larger fellas – I’m looking at you, orcs – smack into the perimeter of the blast hole and make it even bigger.

Me? I’m feeling relatively stable in my half-ton of replica Carmagnolle Atmospheric Diving Suit, item 416, which means Mr. Legendary Quantum Hughes isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but it also means that I’m not really able to move my arms. Inigo Toyota, defender of Princess Renata’s honor, is sucked past me and swipes at me with her serrated scimitar – there is just no quit in that gal.

Frances Euphoria: You look like a robot.

Me: Danger Will Robinson!

Frances Euphoria: Stop playing around and solve the puzzle!

Me: I am trying to solve it!

Frances Euphoria: How is what you’re doing trying to solve the puzzle?

Me: Maybe I’m supposed to kill everyone, even Dolly. This will be the easiest way to do so. Truth be told, I wasn’t expecting a vortex to open up once I blasted the front of the room, but I’m not one to look a gift hole in the mouth, glory or not. Do some camera work and tell me what’s out there. There’s too much smoke and chaos for me to really get a good sense of what’s going on out there.

Frances Euphoria: It’s the OMIB out there.

Me: Sweetness. Are they people dying once they get out there or are they just floating?

Frances Euphoria: It looks like they’re dying.

Me: Then maybe it’s not the OMIB.

I hold my ground until everyone in the banquet hall has been sucked out of the hole. No Strata, no Reapers, no royal procession, no Dolly. There goes my plan.

“Well, Sage?” I ask. “Did I solve your stupid little puzzle?”

Nope, nada, zero, zilch, zip.

I don’t know how long I stand there in my atmospheric diving suit waiting for something to happen, but it’s enough time for me to get thinking about the solution to this puzzle. Sometimes the best action is inaction.

I take one last deep breath, the suit goes back to inventory and I let the vortex sweep me away.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Sage of Gotha does the inscrutable, mysterious ancient thing again. His whiskers twitch as he gives me a serious grimace, as light shines through his branches and a digital zephyr swirls around his trunk.

“Yeah, yeah, let’s get on with it. I think I know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Do you indeed?”

“Time will tell.”

He chuckles, his low voice booming all around me. “Yes, it most certainly will.”

~*~

As soon as the crowd forms around me – card guy, spider lady, centaurs and warlocks – I move to the far wall, behind the milkmaid again, who gives me some shit for climbing on top of her crate but is pretty much quiet after I simply ignore her. With my back to the wall, I am safe from any chance encounters. It’s all about the impending moment, and what I do next.

I just need to make it there in one piece.

“Mug of magic dragon milk, toots,” I tell the milkmaid.

“Just because I’m compelled to wear a form-fitting fantasy costume that makes me look like one who presents herself as a commodity allotment within a business doctrine doesn’t mean that you can treat me like one, you dim-witted, ill-mannered, disembiggening misogynistic pig!”

“Excellent point. I really need to do things differently. But what can I say? I yam what I yam and that’s all I yam.” I bow my head. “But please, excuse my couthlessness, fair lady.”

She huffs, crosses her arms beneath her overlarge chestal attributes that I in no way take sexist notice of, and squints at me in semi-disbelief. I hop down from the crate and get on my knees in front of the spout, wrap my lips around it and suck down the fermented dragon’s milk until I mistime my breathing and snort the foamy white brew out of my nostrils. Frances comments on my behavior, but I ignore her too. I figure the nose spurting is a pretty good sign that I’ve got enough on board, so I turn off the spigot, daintily dab my lips with the table cloth and take a seat on the crate.

The milkmaid slaps the back of my head and hisses, “Get out of here! Some of us still have to work, asshole!” The slap barely registers, my vision pane is a little bit blurred and slightly out of focus and I’m feeling not too bad, which is exactly what I was going for.

Trumpets ring out and the miniature griffins make their advent, or at least I think they do – I can’t really see much from where I’m sitting. The crowd grows quiet as the Empress – Dolly comes; I also can’t see her aside from the top of her hairdo. The audience reactions change from awe to horror as the portal opens up in the ceilings and Reapers pour out.

I toss my bear trap in front of me, item 250, and equip my Darth Maul lightsaber, item 251, just in case one of the murder guild kids gets close, but the mayhem at the front of the room is enough to keep them occupied. Right on cue, the head douche canoe drains out of the Reaper hole, and it takes everything I have – everything – to not to zip forward all AAed up with lightsaber out for some serious sliceage and hackage.

Nope. I stay right where I am, even though I know Strata is in the process of killing Dolly.

It’s hard, and the screams and weapons fire and twisted bedlam all around me only makes my inaction that much more difficult. Eventually, I stand up on the crate just see how he’s doing it, only to find that at the very last moment, just as he uses his black smoke appendages to choke the life out of her, Dolly witchblades the shit out of him. Up under the chin and out the nose, the witchblade shatters Strata’s mask, revealing my face again, just as his smoky hand forms a blade and he lops her head off.

Strata falls forward and Dolly falls backwards, both dead for good. The room begins to twist and constrict, the windows shatter and the almost OMIB spills prickly stars into the room.

~*~

The Sage of Gotha smiles warmly as his form takes shape. “Congratulations, Steamboy,” he says in his low rumbly voice. “I hope you learned something about yourself. You may not yet realize what you’ve learned now, but hopefully, in time, you’ll recognize the significance of this puzzle. For solving the puzzle, you’ll now receive part of a riddle.” His branches rattle. “Are you ready?”

I barely nod.

Frances Euphoria: Cheer up, you did it! Plus, it wasn’t that hard – all you had to do was, well, nothing.

A slip of parchment no larger than a fortune cookie’s fortune takes shape in the space in front of me. It does a few spins, snaps tight and floats over to me like a snowflake. I read it before I add it to my list, item 582.

“May you do as well with the riddle.” he says as his arboreal form dematerializes.

~*~

The End of Time has that certain OMIBish je ne sais quoi, but not exactly. Three platforms connected by a set of stairs float in the middle of nowhere. No stars, no neurons sparking in the distance, just a jet black backdrop and a single ornate streetlamp in the center platform, beneath which a man stands sleeping; a snot bubble on his nostril expands and contracts as he breathes – nice touch.

It’s gonna take me a minute to get over the bullshit I’ve just experienced. I’m glad that Dolly got Strata even as he got her, but seeing my face on Strata was just a little too ‘Luke, I am your Father’ for me. Yeah, yeah – symbolism, got it. And as for what I’ve learned? I’ve learned that I’m not saying ‘yes’ to any more quests – ever!

Rocket burbles with excitement and bounces around me like a shelter puppy with a full bladder on visitors’ day. After I fend off his great big bear hug attempt, he has to know what ethereal bullshit my mystical magical piece of the crypto-parchment has to impart. “C’mon, Q-Mag, what does yours say?”

“Any idea what all this means?” I ask Rocket as I step away from portal made from pixelated 8-bit light.

“Yup, we’ve already figured that out. It’s in reference to a classic RPG called Chrono Trigger,” he explains, “Pretty much every JRPG since, be it on Steam-Itch or now released through iNet, has been inspired by this one. Final Fantasy too. That’s another big one.”

“Of course.” I hand Rocket the slip of parchment and Sophia snatches it away with her mind magic. Mood I’m in right now, I seriously consider grabbing Rocket by the ankles and beating her to death with him, but I get a handle on it.

“Sophia, please, please do me a solid and don’t do your magical grabbing shit away thing, please.”

“Okay, okay.” She waves me off, does some more oogly-boogly hand jiving, and a billboard-sized AppleSoft™ MACSurface™ scroll appears with each line of our riddle pieces as enlarged text.

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

“Where’s Frank Gorshin when you need him?” A quick look to my compadres tells me they don’t get my question. “Jim Carrey?”

Rocket shakes his head.

“All right, already.” I wave my childhood nostalgia away. “So we got these three lines … ”

Frances Euphoria: Hero of Alexandria was the inventor of the steam engine like two thousand years ago. The other lines, I can’t really help you with on my end.

“So we have an inventor,” I say make my way down the small flight of stairs and over to the man that is sleeping upright beneath the single streetlamp, “and we have two pretty much useless lines. Who’s this guy, by the way?” I ask.

Rocket to the rescue. “That’s Gaspar, can’t you read his handle?”

“Yeah, I guess I could have. I’m just not in the mood.”

“To read?” Sophia asks skeptically.

“To anything. I don’t know about you two, but my little puzzle was pretty darned unpleasant if you ask me.”

“Unpleasant?” Sophia guffaws. “A goblin literally bit off my nipple in one go-around, I was vomited on, beaten up, spit on, thrashed, shat upon, until I finally snapped. None of my spells worked, I couldn’t equip any tools or devices, so I killed every goblin child I was responsible for with my bare hands. I wrung their necks, just like you’d wring the neck of a chicken – a stinky, green, scaly, ugly, flatulent, uncooperative, loathsome chicke … um, never mind. They were just children, and they’re even more endangered than the Yoshis. For all I know, now I’m wanted for ethnic cleansing and crimes against … um, goblinhood, or something.”

“No doubt you’ll be getting a summons from the ICC Make Believe Crimes Division, Kodos,” I tell her.

“Oh yeah?” Rocket clears his throat. “I hope the two of you are never tasked with pleasuring a Tardigrade. Can you even begin to imagine what that was like? Let alone the unicorn? And Pip – I’ll never be able to look at him the same way again – and his sheep Pippa? Well, no – she was actually nice, so friendly and soft and fluffy … but the poo pixie … Eww! And the list goes on.” He crosses his arms over his chest, shudders. “I feel so used and violated.”

“Sounds like you had a damn good time to me,” I say as I nudge the sleep-standing man with my foot. He’s in a trench coat and a bowler hat, his facial partially obscured by the rim of his hat.

“We’ve already tried that,” Sophia says. “He won’t wake up.”

“I’m sure I got something in my list that’ll light a fire under the old bastard.”

Item 118, my .30 carbine AMT AutoMag II appears in my hand. Before Sophia can use her mind magic to stop me, I fire three shots into Gaspar’s bowler hat that pass through with no effect. I place my hand on his shoulder just to check for solidity – he’s solid as Ice-nine.

“It’s useless,” Rocket says.

“What did you try?”

“This.” He produces a cattle prod the size of a Brooklyn Smasher. It’s labeled ‘THE BOVINATOR’ in lightning bolt letters, and has a picture of a cow with its tongue out, ‘X’s over its eyes, upside down and on fire. “Watch.” Rocket powers it up and the unit produces an ominous hum; he jams it right into the sleeper’s crotch and blasts him with 1.21 gigawatts of electron flow.

I nod my head in approval. “You’re becoming one sick bastard,” I tell him. “And I like it.”

Frances Euphoria: I still don’t understand why both of you immediately resorted to violence.

Me: If violence wasn’t your last resort, you failed to resort to enough of it.

“Enough … Randy Savages!” Sophia says, her finger in the air. “Did you like that? I thought of that one last night.”

I shrug. “Not bad for a first timer. Although, wordplay needs to be done correctly, too much and it feels contrived.”

“Says the man who can’t go a minute without making a reference that nobody ever gets.”

“The smart people get them,” I mumble under my breath.

She rolls her eyes, nice and slow, which I actually admire because it does take a bit of muscle control to exhibit that much disdain. “Anyway, we don’t even know if the riddle pieces are in the right order. Maybe it’s supposed to look like this … ”

The scrolls rearrange themselves.

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

“Maybe that last line is in reference to Pol Pot the commie cupid,” I say. “I got it! The riddle is about industry and the benefits of socialism.”

“I already thought of that,” Sophia says, “and I’ve tried a couple of phrases and slogans to see if anything happens.”

“What do you expect to happen?” I ask.

“I expect something fantasy-ish to happen, you know, like a spark or a big message in the air. Something like that,” she says.

“Probably a trumpet sound,” we both say. I nod my head in her direction. At least we’re on the same page for a moment.

“Can we log out from here?” asks Rocket. “Or are we stuck? I don’t recall the Sage saying anything about that.”

“I don’t know,” says Sophia. “My guess is that we shouldn’t.”

I lift the sleeping man’s arm and put it around my shoulder. “You know, Gaspar, you remind me of this guy in the classic corpse comedy Weekend at Bernie’s. Heard of it?” I lean in closer to his mug. “What’s that? Oh, you’ve seen it. Great, isn’t it?”

Rocket chuckles; Sophia, not so much.

“What? A little humor never hurt nobody,” I tell her as I lift Gaspar’s arm and rearrange his hand so he’s now pointing at Sophia. “Put the cupids on top,” I say in a grumbly voice.

“Please leave Gaspar unmolested,” she grumbles as the phrases rearrange themselves.

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

“Gaspar?” I lean in close to listen for his voice. “Nothing?”

“We really need Doc’s piece of the riddle,” says Rocket. “Like really really.”

“How’s he doing?” I use Gaspar’s hand to wave at the sky.

Frances Euphoria: Doc has gone off the deep end. He’s equipped some crazy weapon that he calls the Bone Saw and continues to kill everything that comes his way. He’s convinced that he has to either find and kill Patient Zero or failing that, kill everyone.

“What do you guys think?” I ask Sophia and Rocket.

Sophia floats a few inches into the air, so she’s just slightly higher up than the two of us. “He needs to do something other than what he’d normally do. All of us had to do it; that’s what I think.”

Frances Euphoria: She’s right. Would you normally have let Strata kill … um Dolly?

Me: No.

Frances Euphoria: Rocket, would you have thought the answer to your puzzle was to satisfy everyone despite your relative inexperience and general performance anxieties?

Rocket: Hey! I’m not a virgin!

Frances Euphoria: Relative inexperience.

“No one thought you were, kid. Keep your pants on,” I tell him. “Maybe Euphoria and the good doctor are right.”

Frances Euphoria: Think about it: all of you did something that you normally wouldn’t have done.

I drop Gaspar’s arm. “So Doc needs to do something he normally wouldn’t do. Anyone?”

Rocket’s eyes light up. “I got it!”

~*~

Doc stumbles out of the pixilated portal at the furthermost platform. He’s got the Apocalypse Now look in his eyes, and he keeps flitting his fingers over his arms checking for bites. He takes in a deep breath, holds it, and finally exhales.

“Jeez, Doc, you all right?” I ask after I’ve rushed over to him.

His eyes focus and lock onto me. “Yeah, I think so, but I’m going to need a minute.” His silver cigarette case with Black Death cigarettes appears in his hand as he seats himself on the top step, and I take one when he offers me the case. With a skritch of his lighter, he sparks us up and we both take a long, deep inhale.

Sophia opens her mouth and raises an admonishing finger, but wisely closes her noise hole when she gets a look at the expression plastered on Doc’s phiz.

“Kids, I have seen and done some shit in the course of my varied and interesting career, but what I just went through to get this riddle piece was enough to give a lesser faun the screamin’ fantods. Here.” He hands me the slip of parchment which reads Power is applied and direction modified. “I got nothing,” he sighs. “It’s Newton’s second law sort of, but so what?”

We smoke in silence for a little bit; finally he grinds out his coffin nail, strips off the paper and tobacco and pockets the butt; points to mine and holds his hand out when I just mash it out under my tootsies. The dragonscale armor is great, but there’s no pockets, so I pick up the butt and hand it to him.

Rocket and Sophia wait on the lower platform with Gaspar, and Doc lights himself another smoky treat as we join them, and has a seat on the bottom stair.

Sophia shrugs. “At least there weren’t goblins.”

“Yeah,” says Rocket, “at least you didn’t have to put your … um, finger in a Thulean ladyboy’s bunghole.”

“Walk in the park, either one of those.” His voice gets real soft and he shudders. “I let ‘em eat me once – that was bad enough, but that wasn’t the solution. I had to take the bite, fight ‘em off until I could withdraw to someplace secure, and then wait for the change. Couldn’t just get infected and then off myself either, nuh-uh – had to become a full member of the club. But at least I wound up back here right after I changed, and I’m … ugh … ” he suddenly jerks and twitches, the cigarette drops from his mouth and his eyes roll up in his head, “ … not a … urgh … not a zomb … aack-k-k-k … ”

Those goaty faun legs are a lot stronger than they look; Doc propels himself from a seated start, tackles Rocket and bites him on the neck and shoulder. “OMG!” Rocket shrieks like bad brakes on a runaway train. “OMG! GET HIM OFF ME! He’s a ZOMBIE! Get Him OFF! OMG! OMG!”

Sophia backs away in terror; I’m just about to equip item 69, Professor Quackenbush’s Patented BolOcto Projector to capture Zombie Doc when he stops biting Rocket, sits on his chest, slaps him gently on the cheek a couple of times and grins at me, “Tastes like chicken!” He turns to Rocket, who’s still making inarticulate Uh-Uh-Uh-Uh noises and asks, “Did you really, actually say ‘OMG’ when I jumped you?”

Frances Euphoria: I just was in the little girls’ room. What happened? Everybody’s vitals just spiked – are you guys okay?

Me: Doc was just having a little joke.

Doc: It was great! You should have seen it!

Rocket: DUDE! UNCOOL! SO NOT FUNNY! SO NOT FUNNY AT ALL!

Sophia: ALL CAPS!

Rocket: Still Uncool! And Not Funny!

“Oh c’mon,” Doc snorts. “It was a little funny.”

Doc appears to have worked through his issues.

“What’s your riddle piece say?” asks Sophia.

I hand her his slip of parchment and she adds it to her slide.

Doc hooks his thumb at Gaspar. “What’s with Inspector Gadget?”

“Wrong hat, Doc,” I tell him, “this place is based on an old video game. I guess this guy was one of the characters.”

“What could this possibly mean?” Sophia gives the scrolls a hard, thoughtful look.

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

~~Power is applied and direction modified~~

Doc throws his hands up in the air. “I’m done with this little exercise. Let’s just solve it already.”

“Trying to,” says Rocket. “So a guy named Hero likes to get buff, but the cupids don’t like it and all this keep dreams alive. Oh, and there is power, lots of power.”

“I’m glad the four of you could join me.”

The four of us turn to Gaspar, his face still hidden by his hat. I walk over to him and put my finger under the rim of his bowler hat.

“I wouldn’t do that were I you.”

“Yeah? Well you ain’t me.” I move to lift his hat and all 1.21 gigawatts of BOVINATOR juice plus compound interest blast me off my feet and into a non-wall at the edge of the platform. I lie there for a moment; smoke rises from my clothes, my dragonscales have melted together, static dances between my fingertips and my mouth tastes like Ray-O-Vac.

“DUDE!” Rocket yells, “That was the second-coolest thing I’ve ever seen! We could see your skeleton when he did that!”

Sophia is bent over, hands on knees and makes no effort to conceal her mirth at my expense. Doc also appears to be greatly tickled by my zappage, and coughs “Dumbass! Dumbass!” into his fist.

Frances Euphoria: Screenshots! This for sure goes on next year’s company calendar!

“Would you care to repeat the experiment?”

“I’m good,” I say as Rocket helps me to my feet.

Back to the main show. I put my hands up as I approach the man under the lamp. “All right, Gaspar, you got me. Let’s start over here. Any chance you can give us some help with the riddle? My friends and I are a little tweaky from the damn puzzles that His Sageliness decided to impose upon us.”

“Its meaning is abundantly clear to me, but I’ll render you just a modicum of help just because the War Faun amuses me. I’ve never encountered one here before.”

A steady flow of charged particles blows up and over the platform. It spins Sophia’s scrolls and rearranges them so they read:

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

~~Power is applied and direction modified~~

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

“Frances, screenshot,” Doc says.

Frances Euphoria: Already took it.

Gaspar lifts his hands from the cane and lowers them again. “But I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.”

“What happens if we log out?” I ask.

“When you log back in, you will respawn in this place. You will never be able to respawn in Tritania until you solve the riddle.”

“He never told us that!” Sophia protests.

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.”

Rocket gives Gaspar a big thumbs up. “You know DJ The Beatles? Awesome!”

Doc and I sigh, I’m pretty sure Gaspar sighs as well.

“What could this possibly mean?” Sophia floats herself into her usual passive-aggressive dominance game position.

“Relax, earth child, and ground yourself. There is, of course, another option. Forfeit the riddle and you’ll still get Luther Godsick’s location. You won’t learn of the logout point, but perhaps you can solve that puzzle on your own.”

“Team huddle,” Doc says as he turns his back from Gaspar. Rocket is up first and he goes arms around shoulder with Doc. I do the same – hell, why not? – and the three of us wait for Sophia to begrudgingly lower into our huddle.

“We going for the Halfback Pass or the Razzle-Dazzle?” I ask as soon as we’re locked in.

“It might be best to just go for a field goal. My point: we have his position,” says Doc, “and that’s a helluva start.”

“But we have an RW deadline,” Rocket reminds him.

Frances Euphoria: Tritania is the fifth largest Proxima World. In RW terms, think of a land mass the size of South America. Just having his location won’t give us much on finding the logout point. We need to solve the riddle.

I break from the huddle to give the riddle another looksee.

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

~~Power is applied and direction modified~~

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

I return and nudge my way in between Doc and Rocket.

“Well?” Sophia asks.

“I got nothing.”

“We should just start saying things,” Doc suggests. “We could do that for a couple of days and see what we come up with. If you ask real nice, I’ll bet the lovely and talented Ms. Euphoria would hook up your feeding and evacuation tubes for y’all, and Arnette will wrangle the birds and ruminants back at El Rancho Cabrito.”

Rocket frowns, “But Doc, there’s an infinite number of possible meanings! How would we know which one is right?”

I actually hear Sophia’s big brain click on.

“No,” she says, “not infinite. Even assuming that any possible answers are just limited to Standard English words or phrases, the number of combinations, while incomprehensibly huge, are still finite; that is, one will eventually reach the last unique possible combination, although it is statistically likely that the heat death of the universe will occur first.”

“Well thank you so much for that encouraging, useful, enlightening, and especially germane example of parsing, Dr. Kasner,” Doc grouses. “Look, my little goat hooves are sore, my phantom zombie bites itch, and I could really go for one of Arnie’s chupaquesos con tocino with extra bacon and an icy-cold brewski or three. Frankly, I’m not in the mood to wait for the heat death of the universe – what say we break for a little bit and meet back here in four hours?”

An idea hits me like a bag of doorknobs. “Everyone stay here! I’m logging out,” I tell my dream team compadres, “I think I can solve it.”

Before anyone can protest, I raise my finger and jam it onto the logout button. Damn it feels good to be able to do that; I can never say that enough.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The bright light in the Dream Team offices burn afterimages on the inside of my eyelids. Frances hovers over me, fiddling with my NV Visor. My body is still half-submerged in the dive vat, the isolation tank I called home for so many years. None of this matters at the moment. What matters is my next conversation.

Me: Evan ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, ol’ stick in the mud! You there?

Evan: Hi, Mr. Hughes. Yes, I’m here, I’m always here for you in the least stalker-ish and most non-creepy way possible.

Me: Well I can’t tell you how much that reassures me, and please – be a regular guy and just call me Quantum – Mr. Hughes is my old man.

Evan: Hi, Mr. Quantum.

Me: You really know how to put the dagger in and twist it, don’t you?

Evan: I’m practicing my humorous human interactions; smart-aleckry to be specific. Was it convincing? Also, how can I help you? Also, have you RSVP’d to the leadership conference we’ve previously discussed??

Me: It’s in the mail.

Evan: The RSVP can only be made through a web-based application.

Me: Funny, the Post Office took it and my three-dollar stamp, but let’s talk about this later. Right now, I have something for you to take a look at. You said you like puzzles, right?

Evan: Yes, I have mentioned this before. I think it is kind that you remember my preferences.

Me: See? I’m a good guy after all.

Evan: You’re a great guy, I agree.

Me: Okay.

Evan: Okay!

Me: Are you still exhibiting humor?

Evan: Sarcasm this time. Was it convincing?

Me: All right, wise guy, here’s the deal – we, and by we I mean the Dream Team, got this little riddle we need solved. If we solve it, we’ll be given the logout point for a player stuck in a Proxima world. That’s our job, you know, find stuck players and logout points – FYI.

Evan: It is curious to me that each stuck player, as you put it, has an individual logout point while other players essentially have universal logout points, by this I mean they can logout anywhere. It almost seems like a glitch in the narrative, if you get my drift.

Me: Narrative? You reading a book or something, pal? If you want a briefing on Proxima logout points, you’re talking to the wrong guy, just saying, and the last book I read was The Big Sleep, or maybe it was Notes of a Dirty Old Man.

Evan: I’m not familiar with those works, but I will be by the next time we speak.

Me: So this riddle, you want it line by line or all together?

Evan: all together.

“Frances,” I say aloud, “send me the screenshot of the riddle.”

“Done.”

Me: Here it is, Easy E:

~~Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights~~

~~Power is applied and direction modified~~

~~Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked~~

~~Resistant bodies keep dreams alive~~

Evan: How many possible answers to this riddle would you like?

Me: The one that’s most likely to be correct, if you could, and make it snappy, pappy.

Evan: Your wish is my command! Starting at the top: as you know, Hero of Alexandria is considered the father of mechanical engineering.

Me: Noted, we already got that far.

Evan: Three of the lines of the riddle are about something mechanical. Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights; Power is applied and direction modified; and the last part about resistant bodies. That part is easy.

Me: What about the cupid line? I don’t know if it helps, but we did encounter a Commie Cupid.

Evan: The Cupid’s politics are irrelevant, but have no fear! The line about cupids is a play on words. The cupid lines are in reference to a human heart which it turns out, is also a hidden reference to that which Cupid seeks to affect. But back to the human heart: three cupids, tricuspid, pull money, pulmonary, are referring to valves in the right region of the human heart.

Me: Holy crap! So three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked is about a human heart? The entire line or just the first part?

Evan: Holy crap indeed. The second part of the line is in reference to the mitral valve, also the known as the bicuspid valve, which is in the left region of the heart, along with the aortic valve. Do you see it now? Two cupids, bicuspids, are ticked, aortic. Three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked. I read this as tricuspid pulmonary, bicuspid aortic. Do you see what the riddle is referring to now?

Me: The line is about a heart and the rest of the riddle is about something mechanical, so a mechanical heart?

Evan: I do believe that is the answer to the riddle. It was a pretty easy riddle, if you ask me, but at least it had an allegorical meaning. The final line, Resistant bodies keep dreams alive, neatly wraps up the passage, uniting man and machine in a place where neither have met before. At least that’s how I read it. But yes, I think a good answer to the riddle is a mechanical heart. If you’d like, I can try to generate more answers.

Me: Just let me test this one first. Brilliant work, Evan! Brilliant!

Evan: By the way, I liked it when you called me Easy E. I’ve never been given a nickname by a human before.

Me: Easy E, sure, great work and thank you! We gotta see about getting you on the payroll here.

~*~

Feedback supernova. I spawn on the other side of time, the End of Time to be precise, to find Rocket, Doc, and Gaspar seated at a green baize card table. Gaspar has a modest pile of gold and silver coins in front of him, Doc has a small handful, and Rocket sits behind a mound of coins, bills, three or four of Doc’s guns, his silver cigarette case, platinum Dalvey flask, and a beer stein made from a gold-chased orc’s skull with ruby eyes, from which Rocket sips his Bull Bean energy drink through a crazy straw.

“Y’know, kid,” Doc observes to Rocket, “you’re doing suspiciously well for someone who said he didn’t know how to play poker.”

“Agreed,” says Gaspar, “it is very suspicious.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t know how, I said that I don’t play very much. Because it’s too easy. And it’s no fun when I win all the time.” His eyes spark up as soon as he catches wind of me, “Hey! It’s big daddy Q!”

“Siddown.” The Faun O’ War tells me. “We’ll deal you in so the kid can win all your shit too.”

Sophia is apparently above such vulgar and mundane pastimes as gambling at games of chance. Instead, she has two dozen floating books lined up in front of her. Each tome takes its turn answering the riddle, and she makes note of the answer on a more modestly sized AppleSoft™ MACSurface™ scroll.

“Guys!” I say with just about the biggest grin I’ve mustered all day. “Looks like my FDA Monitor saves the day!”

Frances Euphoria: Quantum made me promise not to tell what you guys the answer to the riddle when he logged in. Just saying.

“That’s right! It’s not that I want to take credit or anything … ” I strut over to Gaspar like I’m big stuff. “You ready to have your little riddle solved?”

He lays his cards face down on the table. “Oh? Do you think you have the answer?” he asks.

“Do I think I have the answer,” I mutter. “Get a load of this guy, fellas, and um, fella-ette,” I say especially so Sophia knows that I’m complying with the FCG guidelines on Inclusivity and Embiggenment in the Work Environment. “So, to answer everyone’s question and reveal the riddle, I’d like to start in the beginning. In the beginning there was Hero of Alexandria.”

“Yeah,” Sophia sighs, “we’ve already been over that.”

“The Father of Mechanics, if you will,” I tell her while simultaneously trying to keep my annoyance at her annoyance in check. “And let me finish.”

Frances Euphoria: Just tell them already. Remember, it may not be the right answer!

“I’m getting to it,” I tell her. “So we can pretty much assume that the first two lines – Hero of Alexandria lifts his weights, power is applied and direction modified – has something to do with mechanics. It’s my line – three cupids pull money, two cupids are ticked – that’s difficult to solve. Well, I got it.”

Doc lays down his cards, points to his cigarette case and raises an eyebrow at Rocket, who hands it to him. “We’re all very impressed with your great big brain, Dr. Bernofsky – now get on with it!”

“I’m getting to it! Gaspar, I have the answer to the Sage’s riddle. And since you are technically the Sage, I have the answer to your riddle.”

Rocket jumps up from the table amidst a jingly cascade of poker winnings. “Just tell him! You’re as annoying as Soph … um … ” He sits back down and clears his throat.

“What is your answer?”

“I’m glad you asked, are you sure you’re ready for it?”

“Yes.”

“The answer is … a mechanical heart!”

“Hmmm … ”

I can’t say for sure, but I’m quite certain Gaspar’s eyes just flashed under his bowler hat.

“And what makes you think that this is correct?”

The first line, the modified line, the resistant bodies part are all about mechanics.” I take a deep breath and explain the cupids line and how it relates to the heart.

“Two cupids, biscuspid?” Doc asks.

Sophia drops to the ground and paces for a moment. “It makes sense, it totally makes sense!”

Finally, Gaspar speaks. “Interesting, and how did you solve my riddle?”

“Through a rigorous application of my superior intellect?”

“The probability of that being true is so infinitesimally minute as to be virtually indistinguishable from a null set.”

“I phoned a friend.”

“Very well, then.”

The wind in the nethersphere, or wherever the hell we are, picks up at this answer. It whips the cards from the table and swirls pixels and debris around Gaspar, forcing the four of to step back. The dark backdrop fades into a dark snowy forest. We’re arranged in a half-circle around the Sage in all his lion-face-in-the-Keebler-tree glory.

Aiden materializes as soon as we’ve taken shape.

“I’ll tell you everything later,” Rocket assures him; Aiden gives him a thumbs-up.

“So we got it?” I ask His Sagetrocity, my eyes wide with excitement.

The Sage licks his lips and the tree branch whiskers jutting out of his muzzle flicker.

“So we’re right, right?”

His slow smile is all the answer I need. “Very, very impressive. Pol Pot? Pol Pot, are you here?”

A puff of red smoke signals Pol Pot’s entrance. He’s as cranky looking as ever with his Homer muzzle and Dunlop tummy. He now sports a tattoo over his belly button which reads: Всесою́зная, which I’m betting probably doesn’t mean ‘HENCH 4 LIFE’.

“I serve People’s Revolution, Tovarisch Komissar,” the little red bastard tells the Sage.

“Do you recall our earlier discussion?” the Sage quietly enquires.

“Da. I am have with.” He snaps his fingers and four medals appear.

“What about Aiden?” I ask.

“I already got my medal,” says The Loop’s numero uno asesino. He reaches under his shirt collar and fishes out a snazzy gold medallion hanging from a fancy red ribbon. One of my own appears around my neck before I can read Aiden’s.

“Thank you,” Rocket says as he examines the medal. “Order of The Red Flag of The Hero of Socialist Fraternal Labor of The Peasants and Workers of The People’s Democratic Republic of Tritania – that’s some medal!”

The medal itself is about the size of a Scooter Pie; on the front is the obligatory hammer and sickle surrounded by sheaves of stylized quadrotriticale, superimposed on a sun rising over the three floating continents. On the back, in the finest Soviet propaganda poster style pictured with arms linked are an heroic ogre, a noble elf, a determined human, and a benevolent Tritanian, all being shepherded into the glorious socialist future by a colossal Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. It’s a pretty darn impressive example of pinko agitprop that’d give any good little commie a stiffy stiffer than the stiff in Lenin’s eponymous tomb. My only complaint is that mine is engraved with мальчик пар_889, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t mean ‘Quantum Hughes’. Nevertheless, I’m proud to call it item 583.

Pol Pot hovers in front of Sophia, narrows his eyes, and hesitates.

“We talked about this,” the Sage reminds him.

“Da, da – I serve People’s Revolution.” He holds the medal out to Sophia, and snatches it back when she reaches for it. “Ha-ha! Too slow, revisionist running dog intelligentzist tool of capitalizt oppressorz.”

A red, white and blue hummingbird zooms in on Jetson wings and drives its pointy nectar siphon into Pol Pot’s pinko posterior.

“Ne strelyai! Ya znayu sekrety!” he cries, as he clutches medal to backside. “Hokay Boss, call off Yankee Air Force; you want, I give!”

The medal is proffered again; Sophia grabs it and starts right up. “Amazing! I’ve never seen something like this. Plus one hundred to intelligence? That’s crazy!”

“Da, eez true,” Pol Pot say as the medal materializes around Doc’s neck, “wearing deez medal add one hundred pointz to zmartness.”

“Ha! You can never be too smart, too rich, or too thin, comrade – spasiba!” Doc remarks.

“Last t’ing.” With a wave of his cherubic kulak-beater, a silver tray bearing six shot glasses and a bottle of Moskovskaya floats in front of the Flying Forced Collectivizer. He shows us the label with a sommelier’s flourish, and comments, “Deez eez gute stuff, from before Second Revolution.” He pours each shot glass full, distributes them to us, and takes the last one himself.

I go to knock mine back, but Doc catches my arm. “Patience, Grasshopper,” he advises me. “COMRADES!” Pol Pot shouts in approved parade-ground style, as he raises high his glass, “Newest holders of Order of The Red Flag of The Hero of Socialist Fraternal Labor of The Peasants and Workers of The People’s Democratic Republic of Tritania: the peasants and workers salute you! Ura! Ura!” He tosses his shot back over his tonsils and throws the shot glass to the ground; after a moment’s hesitation we all do the same. “Kharasho – Gute, gute. Now stomp, break glass. Davai! Davai!”

We all comply, except Doc, who raises a hoof and then puts it back down. He nudges me and murmurs, “Yo, bro, howzabout you hook a caprine up?” Pol Pot frowns when I smash Doc’s glass for him, but then nods in approval as Doc taps his hoof on the broken glass.

“Kharasho. This concludes awarding of medals. Come back anytime.” With that, he bids us farewell and says, “Struggle to establishing Dictatorship of Proletariat never do end, comrades. Do svidaniya!” A puff of red smoke engulfs him.

“Congratulations are in order!” says the Sage as soon as he’s gone. “You have solved your individual puzzles and the riddle. For doing so, I will give you the exact coordinates of Luther Godsick. It’s real-time, so it updates as he moves.”

A branch lowers in front of me. A large, orange leaf grows out of the end of the branch and white coordinates flash on the center of the leaf.

Frances Euphoria: We got it! We got it!

I turn the leaf over in my hand. A wave of blue magic travels across the top of the leaf and the numbers refresh. I’m just about to add Luther Godsick’s leaf, item 584, to my list when the Sage says, “The leaf is also his logout point.”

“Thank you!” Sophia pirouettes into the air and settles next to me. “Thank you so much, Sage, for helping us along our journey.”

“You’re the best Sage I’ve ever met,” Rocket chimes in.

Doc, Rocket and Sophia gather around the leaf. “This is in the Endless Sea,” Ms. Wiz thoughtfully observes.

The numbers flash again and the coordinates change by double digits.

“Odd,” Rocket says, “I’ve never seen coordinates jump like that.”

The Sage laughs. “There is no journey worth making that is easy. You now have everything you need to find Luther, but the rest is up to you. Would you like me to transport you to the Endless Sea now?”

I look from teammate to teammate; the only one that doesn’t look beat and bedraggled is Aiden, who is good to go as always.

Doc yawns. “Not gonna lie, I need to feed the critters and get in touch with a few friends of mine. Tomorrow morning?” he turns to me.

“Yeah,” I tell him. We’ll get Luther first thing in the morning. Rocket can do some tracking tonight, or Sophia can, if you want a little more action.”

“What are you going to do?” Rocket asks.

I pat him on the shoulder. “Me? I’m going to have a beer, cook some dinner and get my mind straight for tomorrow.”

Sophia’s elven ears twitch. “I didn’t know you could cook! And that’s a great idea; let’s have a potluck tonight to celebrate!”

“Hold on there, Breedlove, no one said anything about a potluck,” I begin.

Frances Euphoria: A potluck sounds like a great idea. I’ll start ordering some stuff now. Everyone log out and let’s plan this thing. We’ve definitely earned it!”

Epilogue: Potluck

Frances Euphoria’s pad is clean thanks to yours truly. I almost make some compliment-seeking remark as soon as I enter, but I keep my piehole firmly closed just in time. RW Quantum is trying to be a good, humble fella; it ain’t easy, but I’m turning over a new leaf, really.

Four words to sum up tomorrow: we have Luther’s ass!

By the time the clock strikes six, the Dream Team sans Doc have all converged on Frances’ apartment. Rocket was last to arrive and he’s in yet another ribald T-shirt which reads: Who farted? Oh, it was me, and I’m not gonna lie, it did elicit a chuckle from me as soon as I saw him in it.

“What are you cooking?” Sophia asks. “Nice apron by the way!”

I thumb the apron’s straps. “It’s Frances’ apron and I agree, it is nice, even though it barely covers my manly physique. Also, I would have gone for Leatherface instead of bunnies with cupcakes on the front, but that’s just me.”

“We should go over your vitals soon.” Sophia pokes me in the rib, and that frickin’ does it. My resolution to be a kinder, gentler Quantum goes right out the window. I get right up in her face and follow her until she’s got her narrow butt up against the counter and leaning back as I go nose-to-nose with her. “I am not your project for the junior high science fair, Sophia,” I very carefully enunciate. “You don’t know me anywhere near well enough to be putting your hands on me uninvited. Violate my personal space again and you will not like the results. Do. You. Understand?”

She blinks and nods.

“Say it.”

“Uh … I … uh … understand.”

“Good. Now apologize for your rudeness.”

“I … um … apologize.”

“For … ?”

“Um … for my … for my rudeness.”

“There. See how nice it is when we’re all polite and respectful of each other? Now smile and go make nice with Rocket.” She plasters a big fake-looking grin on her mug and edges past me and out into the living room.

“Boo!”

Frances materializes at my side and gives me the same willies that Aiden does when he pulls his little flashdance routine.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” I tell her as she leans back against the counter. “Where’s the fish, Ish?”

“The tilapia will be here shortly. Also, I’ve ordered a German chocolate cake.”

“And the real meat?”

“Fish is real meat,” she reminds me.

“Yeah, if you’re a seagull,” I mumble sotto voce. In a brighter and more cheerful, nice guy Quantum compliant tone I say, “So tilapia with barbeque sauce? Let’s give it a fancy name, just to impress our guests. How about mesquite smoked tilapia with thyme, rosemary and basil?”

“I thought you are just making sauce to slather on top of your tilapia.”

“My sauce is your sauce, I mean, everyone’s sauce.”

She cocks an eyebrow and makes with the puzzled WTF look.

“That didn’t come out right. How’s this: you ever heard that old saying about lipstick on a pig?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Sometimes, it actually works ever … oops – s’cuse me – Doc’s on the horn.”

Doc: You busy?

Me: Not too. I’m making barbeque sauce for tilapia. We’re having a potluck, remember?

Doc: What did the others bring?

Me: Sophia brought a veggie tray with bunch of mutant space veggies I’ve never heard of and some no-calorie Ranch-esque dip-like substance, and Rocket brought himself, a smart-alecky T-shirt, and two boxes of Men’s Pocky.

Doc: Damn, too bad you guys aren’t near me. We’re having moules marinières, pâté de foie gras, beluga caviar, Eggs Benedict, a leek tart, frogs’ legs amandine and quail’s eggs with puréed mushrooms all mixed in a bucket with the quail’s eggs on top and a double helping of pâté. For the main course we’ve got jugged hare, with a sauce of truffles, bacon, Grand Marnier, anchovies and cream. We’ve also got six bottles of Château Latour 1945, a Methuselah of champagne, and half a dozen crates of brown ale. Should be good.

Me: Wow! Really?

Doc: No, of course not. Arnie made Swedish meatballs; Freedom Fries with onions, jalapeños and bacon bits; fried okra; coleslaw; buttermilk biscuits and chess pie.

Me: That really sounds way better than here. So what’s up, Doc?

Doc: Gee – never heard that one before; did you come up with it all your own? Okay – Veenure has logged in. I’ve got her location and information. It’s a doozy, a real doozy. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t blast her with the new OMIB hacks, but we do have her real world location.

Me: Shit, this is big news! Why didn’t you start with this?

Doc: You’re the one who started talking about food and I just followed your lead.

Me: Okay, so where is she?

Doc: She’s at Strata’s place. Remember all those dive vats Frances and Arnie saw when they were extracting Luther?

Me: There were hundreds.

Doc: Not that many, but yes, there were a lot. Point is – one of those is Veenure’s dive vat.

Me: So she’s in a digital coma?

Doc: Unknown. We may need a team to go to Strata’s place again.

Me: We have a team.

Doc: True, but I thought I’d skip the part where the bad guys win and y’all get captured, tortured, chucked in a wood chipper and killed and go right to a team of real-world professionals as first choice.

Me: Don’t you mean ‘killed, and then chucked in a wood chipper’?

Doc: I said it the way it’d probably happen. Look, we got lucky the first time, even with the big bang-bang, shoot ‘em up at the end; that could have turned to shit in a big fat hurry. This time he’s going to expect us to come after him, so we need to do something he’s not expecting, and it needs to be done by professionals – real professionals, not you guys.

Me: Understood.

Doc: And there’s more - Veenure’s real name is Victoria G. Mays.

Me: Okay, so we have a last name on her. Good.

Doc: True, but that’s ‘G’ as in ‘Godsick’.

Me: Well that puts an interesting spin on things.

Doc: Yes indeedy – but wait, there’s more. Strata was briefly married when he was twenty and had it annulled a couple of months later. This should be public record, but it’s been very thoroughly concealed, as was the name of his wife – Serena Mays, who was seventeen at the time.

Me: And they had a kid?

Doc: And they had a kid, Victoria, who was born three months after the civil marriage, and that kid, now twenty, lives with daddy in a fortified McMansion outside of Denver.

Me: And the mother?

Doc: Involuntarily committed to a continuing care facility for the Developmentally Disabled and Psycho-Socially Impaired in Colorado Springs, associated with Cedar Springs Hospital. It’s one of those places where the rich and powerful stow the inconvenient relatives that they don’t want to actually kill just yet.

Me: Hokey smokes!

Doc: It’s a lot to process, and I’m going to have to see if there are any biometrics out there that can positively confirm her identity. I haven’t been able to find a birth certificate yet, life chip tag, SSAN, medical records, school records, driver’s license, nothing. She’s almost a ghost, which ain’t easy in this day and age.

Me: She was right there, with us this whole time!

Doc: Yeah she was, but since I’m not 100% sure on all this, keep it to yourself until tomorrow’s briefing. I’ll have a full update by then.

Me: Shit! How am I supposed to keep this a secret?

Doc: What, are you a twelve-year-old girl at a slumber party or something? Just man up, act like a mature, responsible adult and keep your frickin’ piehole closed. Don’t drop hints, don’t allude to it, nothing. Just STFU about it. See how easy that is?

“The fish is here!” Frances announces. “Rocket, please go down to the EBAYmazon pick-up point and grab it.”

“Why do I have to go?” He whines. For once, he’s relatively immobile as he sits on her couch with his feet up on the coffee table. No nervous tic or other display of manic energy evident, I suspect that he’s finally reached Bull Bean equilibrium. Next to him is Frances’ dive rig, an NV Visor and a pair of haptic gloves.

I swallow hard, trying my best to bottle the information I’ve just heard.

“Because you’re the youngest,” Sophia says as she arranges her veggie platter on the dining room table.

Rocket stands and stretches his arms over his head. “I’m going, I’m going.”

I blink my peepers shut to see another message from Doc.

Doc: Remember – testicular torsion. We need Luther in the RW and the PG. We already have him here, and tomorrow we’ll get him the Proxima Galaxy. We can deal with Veenure at that point, but first Luther. One mission at a time.

~*~

Mum’s the word during dinner. For once I barely speak, which really is saying something for me. Luckily, everyone is too busy recapping today’s experience to notice I’ve crawled into my little shell.

Sophia and Rocket leave after dinner, Frances retires to her bedroom. I’m on clean up duty, which is fine by me because I got a lot on my mind and I’d rather not spill the beans to Frances. I scrub the food off the plates, salvage what is salvageable, and constantly check my iNet feed for a message from Doc. I finally get one just as I’m shutting the dishwasher.

Doc: Life chip tag confirms it, but that’s all I could find, and I only just barely did. Someone who isn’t me never would have found it.

Me: Thanks. Keep me up-to-date.

“Are you finished cleaning?” Frances calls out.

“Sure am.”

“Well what are you waiting for?”

I enter her bedroom to find her lying on her bed laughing at something she’s reading over iNet. She opens her eyes and pats the bed. “Are you coming?”

“No, just breathing hard.” Again, sometimes my mouth has a life all its own.

“Ha! Good one. That’s probably as close as you’re going to get tonight. Come to bed, it’s almost eleven.”

“Is it that late?”

“And we have a big day tomorrow.”

I kick off my shoes and get in bed in my work clothes.

“Ah, there’s the suave, debonair Quantum I’ve come to know. Clothes off, brush your teeth, and at least give yourself a squirt of deodorant under both arms.” she says.

“Yes ma’am,” is my reply. Dammit, new and improved Quantum shouldn’t have to be told that.

She spoons up next to me as soon as I’m in. As we cuddle, the A/C kicks on and startles me. As I hold her close, I think about what Doc’s just said, what I’ve been through since I’ve gotten out of my digital coma, and what I miss most about my former life.

The lights dim and I recall my Loop life, the place where it was so simple, so easy, so comfortable. I rest with Frances’ head on my arm until she falls asleep.

Frances stirs and mutters in her sleep as I slide my arm out from under her. I turn to my other side and try to get a little shut-eye as well, but it’s just not gonna happen. My thoughts jump between my most recent experiences in the Proxima Galaxy. I keep seeing Dolly as she was, just before she tossed herself into the source code bomb that destroyed The Loop. I know what I have to do, and I know better than to do it.

I cast the thought aside but it loops in my mind repeatedly. I can hear Frances breathing next to me, softly, and I remind myself that this is real, and that The Loop isn’t. If I really wanted to, I could message Sophia about any dangers associated with logging back in to a world devastated by a source code bomb.

But I don’t.

Instead, I roll out of bed, paying careful attention to the crick in my back. I make my way to Frances’ living room and relax onto the couch. Her NV Visor fits well enough, and the haptic gloves are tight, but they’ll work.

I fiddle with the login details for a moment and the coordinates for Cyber Noir appear. The screen reminds me that it is no longer an active world, and it asks me if I’d like to spawn there anyway.

I select ‘yes’ and the Brian Eno tone plays.

The End

The Feedback Loop Book Six: Cyber Noir Redux will be released February 2017 and will be available for pre-order in November.

Back of the Book Shit

Dear reader,

If you are reading this before the release of book six, Cyber Noir: Redux, don’t hate me for ending this one with a cliffhanger. My sincerest apologies, but the title of the next book should tell you where this is all going. Book Six will be released in February 2017. It will be available for pre-order soon.

What? You thought I’d forgotten about The Loop or something? Fugeddaboutit.

Message to the board of directors: I’m happy to report that readership of this series grows by the day. It’s a wonderful thing, and I appreciate those who have already made it this far. The Feedback Loop series will end on the eighth book, so we are well into the second half. What do I have in store for the last three books? Oh, big things, and an angle that I’ve been brainstorming all year.

I am also planning another series of books that takes place in Tritania, the first one tentatively titled “Fantasy Online: Ultima Thule”, which will be an offshoot of the Feedback Loop series but with different characters, and possibly a few old favorites. I’ll have more details on this in the future. Think Japan, Akira and Ghost in the Shell, Yakuza, Tritania and the overall state of the Proxima Galaxy in the 2070s, a good 12-15 years after Quantum’s narrative wrap-up. A real litRPG, I dare say! The story is in me and it floats to the surface every now and then. I usually swallow it back down, but I plan to let the story out of the bag (as it were) sometime next year, 2017, possibly by summer.

Would you dive to a dream world if it were possible?

I asked this question in Book Four’s BOBS, and promised an answer this time around. At the time I was leaning towards “no”, but I’ve started meditating again and that makes me lean towards “yes”. I have a long history with poor meditation practices. I’ve studied near the Dalai Lama’s home in McLeod Ganj, India, where I attended a daily session that forced me to walk up a steep hill to get to class. During a few of these trips, I even fought off monkeys alongside a Tibetan nun and I had to fight off repeated attempted monkey assaults.

Fun stuff (the nuns, not the monkeys. I mean, the monkeys, not the nuns).

Long story long, I’ve dabbled in meditation for years; maybe not well or effectively, but dabbled nonetheless. I was a much stronger meditator back in my ‘Austin,Texas Hippie Phase’ around 2006-2009, a time in which I partook various entheogens, got my Carlos Castaneda branded lucid dreaming on sans a cult-y group of followers and talked about a lot of stupid shit that I had no idea about. Eventually, I became more pragmatic.

That isn’t to say that I haven’t kept parts of what I experienced during this time, but I have seen a good handful of once semi-sane people stray too far from the front porch of our shared reality with ill effects. Stoners; people who jump knee-deep into an Eastern religious practice that they will always be once-removed from (a good book regarding this is called Karma Cola); those who can suddenly ‘see’ other people’s auras after a short practice– I’ll stop there, but anyone from a place like Austin – and there are many in America – have likely experienced this to varying degrees. Further, I have written about some of these experiences in my book, Boy versus Self, if you’d care to experience them in lit form.

All this to say that while there were a couple of ‘wasted’ years on my part, a few good things did come about – namely meditation, the desire to write, yoga (I’ve been practicing this since 2006, also perhaps not especially well or effectively), and the realization that there are vast untapped portions of our minds. Dream worlds? Yes, I do believe it’ll happen. By the timeline I’ve proposed in this series of novels? That remains to be seen. Sure, I’d love to Nostradamus that shit, but I wouldn’t be the first sci-fi/LitRPG author to put these advances in technology right around this time period, 2050-2090.

So to answer the question as to whether or not I would dive to a dream world if it becomes possible within my lifetime, I’m going to go with probably. I’d like to check it out, but the implications on another space shared by humans frightens me.

Neural lace and VE dreamworld musings update

Leave to Elon Musk to coin a term much better than my terms - life chip - for a computer interface woven into the brain that will keep AI from overpowering us by uniting us with AI. Brain hacks as early as 2030? Earlier? Yes, please. I mean, please no.

Here’s where I’m at right now, as of fall 2016, regarding how the Proxima Galaxy and a Neuronal Visualization Visor (NV Visor) could theoretically work. (Note: some of the portions of this musing are copy/pasted from the previous musing as a refresher, others are brand-spanking new.)

If you recall, I mentioned in the last installment of the Feedback Loop that a NV Visor would need to be able to control electrical synapses in the brain at the onset of REM sleep possibly through subdermal implants, such as a life chip, or through a neural lace. The visor would need to manage PGO and any associate waves, and create a spawning point that would allow the person to dive into a dream, or the shared dream of the Proxima Galaxy. The firing of PGO waves coincide with REM sleep. As I said last time around, think of a PGO wave as ‘refreshing’ a website to update the information displayed.

So how could an NV Visor create a lucid dream?

A lucid dream occurs in REM sleep, registering on an EEG as a 40 hertz electrical wave coming from the prefrontal cortex. In 2014, German researchers placed electrodes on their subjects’ heads and waited for them to show signs of REM sleep. They delivered small shocks via the electrodes using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, a process that has been used in neuroplasticity in a number of ways. Recently, TMS therapy has been used to treat depression and other disorders, such as Asperger’s syndrome and autism. Are we talking about A Clockwork Orange here? Not quite, TMS is non-invasive and as its name suggests, it uses magnets to produce short magnetic pulses. For more on the differences, go here. But to sum it up, German researchers discovered that creating a 40 hertz electric wave using TMS therapy produced lucid dreaming 77% of the time, which is pretty neat if you ask me.

What I envision as a Virtual Entertainment Dreamworld (VE Dreamworld, as coined in The Feedback Loop Book One) would take place during lucid dreaming, giving the dreamer the ability to modify objects, equip things, make digital offspring – you get the picture. If you leave a matchbox on the table when you log out, it is still on the table when you log back in – this sort of thing.

As previously mentioned, a new type of computational processing would be necessary to manage the amount of data for this to work, and for a large group of people to dive at the same time, something stronger and faster than LAMSTAR (Large memory storage and retrieval neural networks) or for that matter, anything we currently possess as of 2016. Enter quantum computing, which was first imagined in the 1980s. Quantum computing doesn’t do things in a binary way; instead, it uses quantum bits or qubits for processing, which differs from our current model of computing through the way the bits are polarized. A classic bit can only be one of two states; a qubit can be either/or, which allows it to be in a superposition of both states at the same time. All this to say, the ability to process an unholy amount of information will soon be at our fingertips, or more appropriately, at our mind tips.

But what about the matchbox? How will the matchbox stay on the table after a person logs out and logs back in? Nick Bostrom’s famous piece, Are You Living in a Computer Stimulation?, first published in Philosophical Quarterly in 2003, may shed some light on this dilemma, at least philosophically. The ‘simulation hypothesis’, as it has come to be known, posits that we are already living in a simulation that we are completely unaware of. Yes, The Matrix, but let’s dive a bit deeper. Bostrom paper doesn’t argue that we are living in a simulation per se; rather, he argues that one of three premises must be true:

1)    “The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (capable of running an ancestor simulation) is very close to zero”, or

2)    “The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running ancestor-simulations is very close to zero”, or

3)    “The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very close to one”

I bring this up not to debate skeptical hypotheses, nor do I necessarily agree with Bostrom’s statements. I’m more interested in the substrate-independence thesis, later explored in his piece. Namely, the concept that mental states can supervene on any of a broad class of physical substrates, which I read as, I think, but it was there to begin with. The substrate-independence thesis contends that chemicals (neurotransmitters, nerve growth factors) affect subjective experience “only via their direct or indirect influence on computational activities”, that a synaptic discharge is tied directly to a subjective experience, that the “detail of the simulation is at the synaptic level (or higher).” If you program it, if one accepts it, if it is indeed programmable at the neuronal/synaptic level, it’ll stick, and it’ll be there when you log back in.

Harmon, shut your mouth, said the neuroscientist. This still doesn’t explain how an object could remain stationary in a dream world and further, if everything is subjective, how would other ‘divers’ see the same matchbox or a matchbox at all? You really are talking out of your ass here.

Sorry, Doc, I’m still working on that, says I.

Neurons or nerve cells, which we commonly call brain cells, are triggered by electro-chemical signaling. Neurons never divide, but they can be lost. An average human brain has 100 billion neurons. Each neuron can be connected to upwards of 10,000 other neurons, passing signals to each other using as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic connections, which would be the equivalent of a computer with a one trillion bit processor per second, which wouldn’t be possible without previously mentioned qubits.

What strikes me about this information and the human brain in general is how much of it is electric, and knowing this, what we’ll be able to harness intercranially after we’ve been wired or neurally laced. In the late 1800s, Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless telegraphy. In this short time frame – writing from 2016 here, so about 120 years – humankind has manipulated electricity in ways that allow us to communicate instantly with people around the world; create weapons of mass destruction; fly to the moon and by 2035 or so, Mars; send a message to a million people at once over the internet; attack terrorists in Pakistan with remotely piloted war planes; perform surgery, cure disease, ameliorate suffering and extend life in ways that were unheard of just fifty years ago; post video recorded on a smart phone instantly with no lag time; tap into the breadth of human knowledge all while seated on the porcelain throne – the mind is the final frontier, and I whole-heartedly believe that we will be able to tap into dreams, modify them, and control and distribute experiences for therapeutic and entertainment purposes.

I will talk more in the next installment of the Feedback Loop about these practical purposes and I’ll work on the stationary object issue. For now, let’s move onto something more edible.

Chupaqueso con tocino recipe

Doc mentions that he ‘could really go for one of Arnie’s chupaquesos con tocino with extra bacon and an icy-cold brewski or three.’ This is a particularly toothsome food-beverage combination, and if you wish to experience for yourself, the original recipe is from the Shlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler, and is reproduced here:

“You will need a good teflon skillet, a fairly sharp teflon spatula, some sharp cheddar, some fresh parmesan, and some Monterey Jack cheese.

Grate about a half-cup of cheddar and a half-cup of jack.

Heat the skillet, and spread the cheddar evenly in the pan. You should have an eight-inch diameter circle of grated cheese, with a little bit of pan showing through here and there.

As the pan gets hotter, the cheese will obviously melt. Then it will toast, and you’ll get cheese-grease floating on top of melted cheddar, itself on top of a layer of crusty toasted cheddar.

Start lifting around the edges with the spatula. You’ll soon reach a point (you’ll know, trust me) when the structural integrity of the crusty-toasty cheese allows you to flip the whole thing over.

(Speaking of “over,” this is often the point where you’ll get frustrated and decide to start over.)

After toasting side two for a moment, flip it again so the “smooth” side is down, and the recently toasted side is up.

You now have a cheese shell sizzling in a puddle of cheese grease. It’s still flexible, but much longer and it won’t be, so you’ll have to work fast. Add the jack cheese and a sprinkle of parmesan, and then tri-fold the cheddar-shell around it.

Slide it out of the pan onto your plate. It’s called a “chupaqueso” either because you can suck (chupa) the cheese (queso) out of the middle as you crunch away, or because this cheese (queso) thing you made sucks (chupa).

*For added flavor you might try adding cooked-and-crumbled bacon with the jack and parmesan. In this case you’ll end up with a chupaqueso con tocino, or, as it’s often pronounced in my house, “chupaqueso con SWEET TRADER OF PORK BELLIES THERE’S BACON IN THIS THING chomp chomp AAARGH I BURNED MY MOUTH slurp gulp chomp.”

For the record, it’s much easier to make a chupaqueso by sliding your credit card into a Popso 2250 Autovend. Officially licensed Tacobufa Chupaquesos are seamless, oblong, cheese-crust shells around a patented six-cheese blend. For just a little more money the Bufador Mealy-Dealy gets you a drink and a large order of Monosfritos (made with freshly-picked monos, or so I’ve been told).”

Editors

An editor does many things. Sometimes, it’s to tell you how best to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse; other times, the editor will tear the hell out of a sentence you’ve written and paste it back together in a way that significantly improves its readability; still other times, the aforementioned editor shares a story with you that makes you snort loudly at the coffee shop with the free Wi-Fi you happen to be authoring at. For now, I’ll share George C. Hopkins’ latest pursuit of optical enhancement:

Spent the middle part of the day yesterday running around doing errands.  Had the eye exam at my local VA clinic the day before and got a new prescription for new tri-focals (been wearing tri-focals for about 10 years now and am convinced that they’re the best thing since the ‘get-up-and-go’ cocktail [prune juice, ex-lax, Viagra, Everclear and ether - serve over dry ice in a highball glass]).

They (the VA) offer a reasonable selection of free frames to go with the free glasses.  I asked for a pair that would make me even more of a babe magnet than I already am, and they suggested a pair of white wire frame aviator style.  This exact frame, so they said, was an exact copy of the frames that the Fonz wore off-camera.

Tempting.

I instead went with a pair of big, thick, ugly, hard-to-break, black plastic ray-ban wayfarer style, which looked like they might stand up to a goose wing across the nose better than the Arthur Fonzarelli-style wire frames.

Goose wing across the nose is no joke.  My good lady wife and I have both had two or three pairs of glasses apiece sundered by goose wings.  She’s had her bell rung a couple of times too - not out cold, but not firmly in contact with the external environment for a minute or two either.
It’ll make your eyes water, nose run, ears ring, and sphincter loosen, oh yes indeedy.

Went out to my local military installation yesterday and had those good folks make me up a pair in the current military Birth Control frames and issue me a pushing stick so that I can better fend off the attractive, large-breasted young women who will no doubt want to bear my children once they get a load of me rocking my thick black plastic frames.

Will advise on results soonest.

Inspirations for this go around

Several things inspired me for this book. Going along with the title theme of Book Three, High Fantasy, I wanted a title that was both relevant to the text and a nod to an Austin band. High Fantasy is a play on the Austin, Texas band The Sword’s 2015 album, High Country, which I still recommend along with their recent acoustic rendition, Low Country. This book, The Mechanical Heart, is also a nod to an Austin band called Rory and the Artificial Heart. So there’s that too.

The Adventure Zone podcast has storylines that never fail to amaze me and continues to influence my writing. I was heavily inspired by the latest Groundhog Day-esque arc in this Dungeons and Dragons podcast.

Chrono Trigger. The greatest RPG (JRPG) of all time? Debatable, but in my book, yes. The End of Time was a must exactly as it is in the game. I recall spending more minutes than I’d care to admit here running around in the End of Time trying to figure out how to win the game.

In some part, Travis Bagwell’s Awaken Online: Catharsis added some fuel to ideas I’ve been playing with regarding in-game AI. If the Sage of Gotha can tap into a player’s biggest fears and exploit them, what happens when something sinister is birthed from this process? The next book in the Feedback Loop series will play with this and I look forward to opening this particular can of worms.

Thanks to all those who email me and support me by reviewing my books and telling other readers about my works. Special thanks to the editor-in-chief, George C. Hopkins, the beta-reader-in-chief, Kay, and the special fellas that email me occasionally to offer me encouragement and make jokes about socks and living in Asia. Big up to you all.

That’s it for now. Please review any and all of the Feedback Loop books if you have read them. This is the number one way to help the book reach more readers. Buy a book for your granny or grampy if they’re into scifi.

Yours in sanity,

Harmon Cooper

Writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com

Table of Contents

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

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Epilogue: Potluck

Back of the Book Shit

Table of Contents