 
# GlitchWorld: Ground Zero

A GlitchWorld Novella

Nolan Locke

Damien Hanson

A Nerd! Production

Cover Design and Illustration by Brent Meske

Copyright © 2020 Nolan Locke, Damien Hanson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.

For more information, address: damienleehanson@yahoo.com or nolanlocke.author@gmail.com

FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I'd like to thank everyone who followed and liked us on Royal Road, Facebook, and on my author page at https://damienhansonbooks.com/. Usually we do something satirical here as you will see with future releases but as new authors we are grateful for the support and really appreciate the reviews and comments.

I want to dedicate this book to ambassadors, arbor vitaes, bald pate friars, the best leg of three, buttonhole workers, candysticks, credentials, doodle-dashers, dingwallaces and gentleman ushers. Without you, half of our jokes wouldn't make sense.

#  Prelude

#

A small child sits down in the dirt, playing with toys outside of a plastic hovel. Inside we can see the rest of his family clad in VR Suits, running on multi-directional treadmills. Clusters of flies blob about the structure, rotten food clogging the sinks and all over the table.

A voice booms out.

"Is your family playing VR again?"

"Uh-huh," the boy nods sadly.

"Are they letting themselves and their house go to shit because they're stuck in some dumbass computerized server?"

The boy looks taken aback, but nods again.

"Well no more!"

A helicopter swoops over and a team of swat officers begin to rappel down. Where it should read SWAT it instead reads PRESTIGE GAMING. The boy looks scared and scrambles backwards in the dirt as the officers smash through the windows of the home and start kicking ass. The voiceover continues.

"Don't be scared Billy. Be excited! At Prestige Gaming your parents are going to have to give a shit because it's REAL GAMING but in REAL LIFE! Go ahead and take Dad's wallet, Billy. He's not going to stop you."

The camera pans to a haggard and disheveled man, skin and bones clad now in just a yellowed pair of underwear, his VR suit having been stripped off. A foot on his chest keeps him in place and blood is coming from one nostril. "Don't you dare Billy!" the man rasps.

The boy looks unsure as he picks his way past his mother, father, and sister, but he grabs up the wallet, yanks out a money cube, and shoves it into a slot on the family server. "Prestige Gaming!" he yells triumphantly.

There is a flash and then there they are, running through the real world, Billy a Power Ranger as the rest gaze on in awe. Dad wobbles forward unsteadily on legs unused to anything but the strange whir of the VR tread.

PRESTIGE GAMING - WHY PLAY A GAME WHEN YOU CAN LIVE ONE IN REAL LIFE!

***

The screen flickered off and the lights of the room flashed on. Businessmen and women turned as one to face the only one who stood– Jack Koff. And stand he did, very erect and glorious. Everyone watched and waited, staring at his face as he grabbed the shaft of the microphone. One bad word, one angry whisper, and they would be fucked.

Jack glanced over them all and broke into a grand smile. "Tremendous work," he ejaculated, consummating months of hard sweaty work and late nights in the office. The business people let out a groan of relief. Then they rose and cheered, hugging and laughing as their boss gave them his trademark thumbs up. The commercial would debut at some time in the next few weeks.

# Chapter 1 - Eat my Containment Unit for Neutralizing Trauma

Ravindra Pradthala spread his perfectly manicured hands wide to show off the perfectly white game environment surrounding him, and smiled his perfectly whitened smile at the pair of cameras pointed at him. He had on a bone white haptic bodysuit, with thin streaks of light running down various parts of his body in eye-catching angles... and somehow all those angles led the eye directly to the man's crotch. His vacuum-sucked haptic bodysuit-covered bulge. You could do a full shot of him, and it would be the only thing anyone could look at, or you could frame him from the waist up, and yet again somehow you'd be peering at the bottom of the screen to see exactly what all his clothing and body language pointed to.

Surrounding Ravindra was basically a field of snow white, stacked up around him in vaguely recognizable shapes: maybe a house or low, steep hill, maybe a tree over there, and past that, about fifty feet off, a sheer wall going straight up a good fifty or sixty feet, to a ceiling. Pure white. The whole thing surrounded them, to the extent of about half a city block square, maybe a hundred to two hundred feet of blinding white, with only the barest of lines where they were suctioned together.

His dark skin stood out in stark contrast, but even that didn't last long. He gestured to the crew standing by, who handed him a helmet with a big old bubble shield, which schloomped down over his head and seemed to suck itself onto him.

"Everybody hear me okay?" he asked.

"Yes, sir!"

"We can hear you just fine."

One was a NNN (National News Network) field correspondent, a man so perfectly sculpted it couldn't have been real, while his counterpart at Gaming News International (GNI) was a female so stunning you would swear they only found those in heaven. Both were heavily tanned to the point of being unable to guess at their ethnicity, with teeth so white and hair so perfect it just boggled the mind. Not so the camera crew, but they weren't on screen and therefore didn't matter.

"Just say the word," the CEO of Prestige gaming said, and continued to hold his hands out in a stiff welcoming gesture.

Several more moments passed, where NNN and GNI got everything in order. Shanaya Pradthala suppressed a groan watching her uncle do his PR nonsense.

She did not want to be here. She didn't want to be on the same continent as this peacock parade.

They sent her to the ritziest private school America had to offer, bought her all the most expensive designer clothes, and next year they were going to buy her a whatever-car-she-asked-for. Which sounded great, except that she'd seen all the tabloids about her. She'd gotten in with a couple of people on social media and message boards, pretending she wasn't the great Shanaya Pradthala, pride and joy of the Prestige Pradthalas.

People hated her. They had never seen a video of her, didn't know what her voice sounded like, but they sure did hate her. They hated how much money her family had, all the billions, even though she had no idea what a billion dollars even looked like. They hated her family's houses in LA and Miami and New York, and the getaway up in Nunavut with the private airstrip, the Gulfstream VII with the dedicated pilots and crew who were like family to her uncle. People hated the clothing lines, the VR products. It was a lot. They protested outside her boarding school. People lined up at the perimeter of the New Mexico Prestige complex.

They also avoided her at school, and whispered things about her.

Her downward spiral was interrupted when a crewmember took her gently by the elbow and apologized about a hundred times, but they were about to begin and they needed her off set. NNN and GNI launched into their gushing praise for Pradthala and his Prestige success, about becoming the biggest thing since sliced bread.

"Can you tell us what it's all about before the demonstration?" NNN asked.

"Absolutely," the CEO said. "Prestige itself is an acronym: Pradthala Resorts Exclusive Story-based Totally Immersive Gaming Experience. We've taken VR to the next level." He turned in a slow circle, gesturing around to the white blocks. "Here you can see the physical environment without any of the skinning. It's real. I can come up to this small pillar and touch it. Now, if we were to put helmets on your camera there, and engage one of the twelve original genreworlds, you'd see exactly what's going on here."

And Shanaya watched as they did exactly that: specially designed lenses were added to the cameras, and both news people got their own helmets. She reluctantly turned to her family, and they gave her the thumbs up. All seven of them seemed more than geeked to be here, but she couldn't stand it. Why didn't her family just own a chain of perfectly boring restaurants in the Pacific Northwest or something? Why'd they have to have the hottest thing in the civilized world?

"Could I bring my niece over here to make the first selection?" Uncle Ravindra asked.

"Of course!" GNI likewise gushed. The two news outlets were in a gushing contest.

Ravindra motioned, and she dutifully marched over to stand beside him. She remembered her mother's stern warnings as well, and stuffed the resentment down, replacing it instead with an effusive smile. This was all a stunt of some kind, because she was fifteen and 'bubbling with youthful energy'.

"My gorgeous niece Shanaya, everybody. Now Shanny, just pick one of the twelve genres and we'll be off! A verbal cue will do." Except Swords & Sorcerers. She was warned against that one.

"How about Swashbuckling Isles?" she asked.

"Perfect."

The effect began at her feet, and spread rapidly over the white blocks. Soon she was standing on a sandy beach with clumps of tall grass and a limitless expanse of jewel-blue water before her. The pillar thing behind her uncle transformed into a huge, bent palm tree waving in a breeze she could feel, and out on the bay sat a three-masted sailing ship with several longboats in the water, rowing toward them. And behind her, where the house-shaped object had been, was a fisherman's hut, but it was just one of a dozen shanties and shacks on four foot stilts with thatched roofing.

She knew she also had a game skin on: something probably a little too alluring for her tastes, but it didn't matter, because she could change her face at will. She had chosen to leave it, for now, but had already gone with a bandana over long dreadlocks, and cool tattoos peeking out from beneath a billowing linen shirt. Uncle Ravindra had taken a lot more liberties, and had huge gold earrings, tons of tattoos, and for some reason his new pirate clothes naturally pointed out the crotch bulge.

Gross.

GNI and NNN lost their minds with praise. Uncle Ravindra let it go on for a minute before once again spreading his hands out.

"What you don't think about is how the white blocks you saw earlier are following the code and programming, to place real objects you can interact with. This palm tree, for instance... you could climb it. Really climb it. Shanny, how about it?"

She couldn't refuse. Great, now everyone in school was going to see her climb a stupid fake real tree. She tried to be nonchalant about it, and shrugged. "Sure."

Ravindra Pradthala, CEO of the biggest corporation on the planet, laced his fingers together and made a saddle for her foot, which she stepped into, and with ease he boosted her up and onto the sloping palm tree. The game automatically rolled dice for her on the Heads Up Display. The HUD showed a 9 and a 10 on Athletics, a success without complication, because of course everything had to be absolutely perfect for the media.

She was able to get up onto the palm tree, despite maybe planting one foot on her uncle's face for just a second. Accidentally, of course.

She found that her HUD, showing the pirate ship, the longboats, and then her own HUD, was projected onto the sky and the news cameras were focused on it. Only they no longer appeared to be news cameras, but bulky spy glasses on intricate tripods. Her character sheet stood up in the middle of the sky, five stories high with her name on it. She flared up with embarrassment.

"As you can see, the game rolls a ten-sided die for each of your dots in a certain skill, and over 6 is a success. Six to eight includes a complication, but nine and ten are unassailable successes."

Her family, out of camera shot, were running down the beach toward another fisherman's shack, and playing in the gentle surf. They scattered little crabs this way and that, laughing with one another. What she wouldn't give to be out of the spotlight for a few minutes.

"Now, should we be in danger–"

Shanaya's HUD flashed, and immediately rolled Resourcefulness, giving her a 6 and an 8. She saw the puffs of smoke from the pirate ship, and she immediately swung down out of the tree like a gymnast, flipped, and landed nimbly on her feet. One cannonball slammed into the tree and shook it like a hurricane had suddenly come along. The others slammed into the beach and exploded in great showers of sand.

An eight segment clock appeared in her HUD reading Unfriendly Fiends Flay Family along with one of the wedges filled in red.

"Uncle Ravindra?" she called. The media was, of course, eating this up.

"As you can see, the cinematics engine won't simply kill off a PC without first raising the stakes," Uncle Ravindra was saying. He instructed them to take the Augmented Reality lenses off the cameras for a quick peek at the now active game scenario without the game overlay. "In fact, we could even switch genres flawlessly without changing anything up. Let's take the game over into Galaxies Unknown, shall we?"

***

The admin in charge of the CEO's press junket leaned over one of the coders. "We knew this was coming," she muttered. "All right, we'll have landing craft, alien invaders, and they're on a space station. Who's on this?"

"On it," one of the coders called. This had to be one of the Galaxies Unknown crew. With a series of deft taps, the beach reformed into the gleaming angular metallic structure with huge windows overlooking the vastness of space, with a shuttle craft rapidly approaching the nearest airlock.

"Let's have some phaser fire, shall we?"

"You got it!" another of the Galaxies Unknown crew chimed in.

The glittering waves and setting sun were sucked into the pirate ship, which quickly transformed into a sleek battleship firing crimson laser beams at them while also pulling away. The station shot back with blue beams. Many of them splashed against the shields of the bird of prey, or the shuttles, and briefly caused bluish hexagons to appear and melt back to invisibility.

The leader, Tyriah Rodriguez, twisted one of her bangles on one wrist and expanded the size of the screen focused on Mr. Pradthala and tried to get a read on anything he might be hoping to have happen. She was normally down a level and organizing Dungeonworld transitions, during those crazy winner-takes-all matches that constantly shift from genre to genre and utilize all sorts of different skills to navigate. This was a whole different animal, honestly. It sure was hard not to zero right in on his package... weird that.

Tyriah backed away from the screen and paced back and forth across the Bureaucratic Administration Leadership Level Situation & Action Center, or BALLSAC, without taking her eyes off the screen. She noted the sprinting niece of the CEO and the carefree way the rest of the Pradthala family was now admiring their sleek space suits. Tyriah wandered back to her tea and dunked the tea bag several times while staring at the situation as it unfolded. She took a sip and set it next to the small tray of nuts.

Shanaya was undoubtedly the star of this show. Tyriah could plainly make out the strain on the young girl's face, but Ravindra was right about one thing: if nothing else, she was photogenic enough for the task.

"Let's give her a little Gear," she said. "What do we think? Droid pushing a crate of weapons? She could pass a room full of blasters maybe?"

"The space station security could maybe drop some nice stuff when the aliens blow them up?" one of the coders asked.

"Yeah. Do we have friendly security drone NPCs on standby?" she asked.

"We sure do."

"Let's go with that. Rapid response team, once the aliens hit the airlock, do your thing."

"How do we feel about... powered armor?" the one coder asked.

***

Shanaya watched the shuttle craft glide closer and closer without getting destroyed. Another two segments of the clock had filled in when she failed an Athletics check to get there fast enough, and the central computer of the space station announced an unauthorized airlock breach. The hall filled with red klaxons advising all personnel to get to safety, and to send security right away.

The airlock hit a T-junction where her oblivious family stood around cooing at one another. Two of her cousins were now looking about in confusion and a little alarm. This was going to be the worst trip in history if none of them started playing the game instead of just soaking up the ambiance.

Two floaty robots appeared just a moment before the aliens burst through the hatch with blasters blasting. They were little more than gigantic cola can-shaped things bristling with guns and a bluish lit sensor disc for a head, like a tiny flying saucer had been stuck there.

However, in that moment before the aliens surged onto the scene, duffel-sized metal canisters shot off the droid's side and slid across the floor at her family, and one at her. It slid to a perfect stop directly between her feet. A screen on it read 'DON'T PANIC!' before it exploded into action, and transformed into a huge bubble containment cell.

"Don't panic? Sure thing!" she yelled.

A sing-song robotic voice chimed in. "Congratulations! You've been sealed in a Containment Unit for Neutralizing Trauma."

"So... a CUNT? I'm in... a CUNT?" Who came up with this?"

"Help is on the way! You are now in a virtually indestructible safety containment unit. If you would like to aid in neutralizing the threat, tap here. Otherwise, if you would like your safety to be assured, tap here. Help is on the way!" Above her two options, a screen displayed the brutal efficiency the aliens were using in destroying the two security soda cans. The first one was zapped with some electromagnetic attack that brought it out of hovering position. The second got several shots off before a mine of some sort clamped onto it near the sensor array and exploded, leaving the thing headless and charred black.

Two pictures appeared before her, one with a wicked looking humanoid robot with Shanaya, the other a beach ball with lasers bouncing off it. Yeah, that seemed really safe. She tapped at the first thing.

Immediately the ball changed in shape again: a seat appeared beneath her, the walls shrunk around her, and she watched through a cockpit canopy window as several clumps of metal were sucked right out of the walls and ceiling to give her former beach ball a whole bunch more girth. Blocky arms were fixed on next to her, and several control joysticks appeared, along with red buttons. The kinds of red buttons that made sci-fi death appear.

The new armor stood up on its hind legs when she gripped the joysticks, and immediately juked to the right when she pulled in that direction. A targeting reticle danced and jigged wildly until she found that her thumbs would swing it this way and that on a pivoting disc. She centered the crosshairs on the mass of aliens assaulting her and pressed one of the red buttons.

In the powered armor's HUD, two dice rolled up, giving her a 1 and a 6. Apparently that was enough for a Success with Complication! Two more segments of the clock filled in, leaving three. She didn't resist this new complication.

A panel opened in the robot's shoulder, and half a dozen pencil-sized rockets exploded out into the fray. Several of them had on personal shields just like the blue hexagon thing she'd seen before, but one of them was just vaporized.

"Yeah! Eat my CUNT!"

Would you like to spend two Stress Points for an extra die on your next attempt? flashed in front of her. She said, "Yes." Her Stress dropped from 10 to 8.

Her next attack was a Hunt with three dice this time, a pair of 10's and a 2. Critical success, the HUD announced, before the powered armor's claws opened up and blasted several more aliens with greenish laser beams. They fell dead and smoking to the floor. The clock was replaced with a green one, indicating the CUNT's armor (6 segments) and its power level (8 segments). One of the power level segments flashed red.

Now several began to shoot back, but the CUNT pranced forward with huge movements and kept the two remaining alien pirates pinned down. She pressed forward and barreled into one of them, seized the other with a claw, and swung it like a baseball bat.

"It looks like you're attempting to Skirmish," the powered armor's HUD said.

"You're damn right I am. Watch me beat you to death with my CUNT."

The dice rolled, two again, and this time she watched the dice come up 6 and 9. This game, she thought, and winced as the one leathery skinned moth-looking alien with the face tentacles slammed into the six armed mantis alien with the overabundance of eyelashes. Arms came off; glowing blood spattered all up the hallway and on the nearest cocooned relative.

Congratulations! the HUD told her. You have completed the objective 'resist tyranny throughout the galaxy.' You have been awarded with 1 experience point.

She settled the claws of her powered armor on its boxy hips and stood just a little taller.

# Chapter 2 - The Pass of a Lifetime

"All right ladies and gentlemen," Tyriah said, "Let's put them in downtime."

She watched as the coders all sprang into action to shut down further threats the Pradthala family might face, and her leads to the left and right shut down the current threat clocks measuring out the game's current difficulty settings. On screen, the danger klaxons stopped whirring and retreated into the wall. More security drones arrived and retrieved the CUNTs, freeing up the rest of the family members. Meanwhile, Mr. Pradthala slowly strolled along the hallway, gesturing towards this or that feature of the game, interspersed with softball questions from NNN and GNI.

On the HUDs, the message scrolled across the top: DOWNTIME PHASE ACTIVATED - RAMP UP PROCESS WILL RESET IN 2 HOURS.

"We're pleased to announce the roll out of our newest upgrade," he said, and stopped. "And you, folks watching at home, will have the first glimpse of the genre crossover in action. Shanny!"

His niece strolled over on screen, while coders called out and confirmed all systems were good. Most were there for no good reason whatsoever, but were on time and a half, so nobody complained. They knew anything directly involving Mr. Pradthala was top priority and nothing went wrong. He'd also mentioned to Tyriah that this was the first time he'd be leaving anything up to chance with his teenage niece, but he was confident she would easily be able to take over the heavy lifting while also becoming the face of version 2.0. Ravindra didn't have the same drawing power for males aged 18-24, 24-40, or 40-60 that Shanaya did.

"Hey boss, can you take a look at this?"

"Pertinent?" she asked.

"Buggy."

Tyriah waved it off without taking her eyes off the action. "Log it and send it along to the right department."

There was a moment of silence while the news correspondents shifted their attention over to the young savior in the sci-fi singlet, especially with half her head shaved and the other half, long enough to spill halfway down her back, draped over the shaved part.

"Add a touch of eye shadow," Tyriah said. "Subtle. Ease into it. I want viewers to notice it only after it's there. Shimmering silver with a hint of pink."

Everyone held their breath while the PC skinning team went to work, picking a color and waiting for Tyriah to approve of the choice, then dial it up just slow enough that no one realized it was there until they saw how much it worked with her skin tone.

"Boss? I really think you need to take a look at this," the shaky, unsure voice repeated.

"You have five seconds."

"We had an unnatural full system cache spike that put us at eighty-five percent overall." Just like what started happening with Swords & Sorcerers, he didn't say, but didn't have to. That shit show had gotten resolved just yesterday, thank heavens. The other heads popped up and away from their stations. Some didn't even bother to shut off their social media browsers or their YouStreamIt videos.

"But it's gone?"

"Dropped back down to twenty-four percent where we were."

"Did you log it? Send it on?"

"Of course. But if it happens again–"

"Worst is over," she said, and returned her attention to the end of this little demonstration. "Jizz Moppers?"

The coding team for Windswept Hearts perked up. They had the job that was arguably the easiest, most insufferably boring, and had the most disgusting assignments of any team. All that was about to change, but nobody on staff had the magical ability to predict the future.

"Can you take a look at that cache spike and see if you can't pinpoint the coordinates? Cthulhu Zombies can help you out." This was an even worse job than normal, given the sheer amount of server farms Prestige Gaming employed here. The estimation was the surface area of Vermont. However, the coders on loan from Terror Within were also on the case. They nodded and pulled away into a huddle of tablets and quiet, slightly miffed conversation.

Neither would be missed. Shanaya Pradthala had only a single horror movie on her browser history, and the boss man had informed them that it was a date gone bad. She had no interest in replaying through a freakout scenario.

On screen, the news folks were peppering Shanaya with simple questions about the game, the Pradthala family, and her high school life. By now the eyeshadow had appeared, and looked just as spectacular as Tyriah thought it would. Mostly, Prestige's new star smiled and chewed on her lower lip before responding, which was exactly how she'd been briefed on how to act. This was going to work out perfectly; maybe Tyriah could get the fuck out of Dungeonworld assignments.

***

"Is there anyone back at your high school you'd like to give a shout out to?"

Shanaya bit her lip and tried her very best not to look annoyed. Finally she settled on a response. "You bet! I just want to wish the Freemont International High Flying Fish good luck tonight! They'll be playing the Port Valley Prickly Porcupines."

"I'm sure they'll stomp those prick... ly porcupines," the news lady said, and tipped her a wink. They wouldn't, but the news lady had no idea.

There. Now everybody would know that she had no friends, and only wanted the stupid football jocks to win, which they wouldn't. The football team was the school joke, and generally tried to stay off the radar if possible. She felt a brief surge of dark satisfaction in putting the Flying Fish Football team on everyone's minds.

"I think we're ready to announce our special Version 2.0 upgrade," her uncle said.

"Phenomenal!" The news dude said. "Now, explain what's about to happen, if you would please."

"My exemplary niece is about to choose a pair of genres to play in at the same time, and we're going to see the very first two genre mashup. We have magi-techno with Swords & Sorcerers crossed with Galaxies Unknown, or Steampunk if we were to blend Mystery Noir with Cyberpunk. We could have the Great Dark Gods if we mixed Stone, Bronze & Steel with The Terror Within. And now, Shanaya, I hope you'll do the honors."

All three adults shifted their attention back to her.

"What will she choose?" News dude asked. "Her choices have just expanded exponentially! What an exciting addition to the Prestige Games platform."

"I'm honored to be able to witness this firsthand!" news lady gushed.

"How about Cyberpunk Alleys?" She asked. "That's got flying cars and mechanical arms and stuff right?

Uncle Ravindra smiled his usual broad smile. "It sure does, and that's a great choice. And let's mix it with..."

"I still like the idea of swinging around and sword fighting. Can we go with Swashbuckle Isles again?"

***

"Holy fuck," one of the nearby coders breathed. "That's awesome."

"Cut the chatter. You heard the lady," Tyriah called out. "Let's give our hero a cybernetic arm, throw a grapple component on there, and she'll need a vibro weapon, a rapier. Family's going to need a ship with all the presidential expansions, Swashbuckle. We need some dynamic environment. What've you got, Cybros?"

One of the Cyberpunk Alleys cleared her throat and piped up. "Stacked slum high rises choking with smog, and above that, a floating city full of mega-rich assholes."

"Very funny. Keep the stacked slums, and let's start them on roof level. Can we throw everything into an arcology? Slums inside or out?"

"Both?"

"All right, that sounds good. Helm, engage!"

Instantly, on screen, the game environment went white. Blocks now made up the hallway they were in, but began to shift around in the moment they were visible. Instead, the game skin came on, giving them a gritty vista of shipping containers, scaffolding, and RVs piled up into a haphazard skyscraper Tyriah thought she'd seen in a movie once. It didn't matter. In the middle distance, a huge ashy colored dome rose impossibly high into the sky, belching smoke into the air from dozens of chimneys, and other less savory chemicals from others in whitish clouds. Streams of floating cars and larger ships soared overhead, humming loudly from glowing repulsors and shaking the whole slum scene with seismic vibrations.

As for Shanaya, she regained most of the pirate look she'd had before, except now the tattoos peeking out from beneath her grungy clothes and bits of armor were glowing and floating a half inch over her skin. And, of course, one arm had been replaced with a bare metal thing full of actuators, holding a rapier with a humming bluish blade.

"Perkins, give her a cool scar, would you?" Tyriah ordered, and a moment later it streaked down her face, from forehead to chin, like once upon a time Shanaya had had an axe buried right down the center, and somehow survived.

"There we go," she muttered. "There it is. Hey, who took away that eye shadow? Get that back. Girl looks like a goddess."

The news anchors lost their minds.

"A cyberpunk pirate ship's going to need camouflage, right?" One of the Cyberpunk Alleys story writers called. "Otherwise the cops bust them on their first day out."

"Can you script the adaptive camo armor Gear to cover the whole ship?" Another asked the coders.

"Bet your ass I can. Watch this."

The ship beneath the feet of the rest of the Pradthala family had them clipped into loops on the exterior, with tiny winches at their belts to keep them from falling to their deaths. The ship itself was a parody of a three masted ship, except the sails were energy collecting panels and the bow of the ship had a naked lady made of wood painted on it. SS Shanny was expertly painted on the hull. Various bits of graffiti littered the side, including 'Your mom was here' and 'if you can read this, I'm stealing all your shit.' The remainder was slate gray streaked with grime where it wasn't similar repulsor engines. Except that a few moments after it appeared beneath the family's feet, it vanished, piecemeal, into the background. Only a few hazy suggestions of motion betrayed that something occupied the space.

***

Ravindra turned to the news dude and lady, and said, "Well folks, my niece has done a masterful job and now deserves an uncle to be her copilot." He produced a number of cards and fanned them out, then handed them to the news lady. "You'll be receiving a complementary weekend of gaming on me. Three days, two nights. Go and have the time of your lives."

Mr. NNN was actually named Gavin Cooper, and he just about felt his knees buckle. "Oh my... thank you so much, Mr. Pradthala. It's an honor!"

The CEO was already walking away, but turned another gleaming grin their way and waved. The game skin, now a grungy cyberpunk overlay on the CEO, buffed him up in his already toned shoulders and turned his plain old leg into a cybernetic one, but Gavin couldn't help but note (again) just how big the bulge was in Ravindra Pradthala's thoroughly ripped up acid washed jeans. They watched him clip into the side of the invisible ship, take an invisible hand, and vanish into the protection of the cyberpunk pirate ship.

He turned to GNI, whose name was Danielle Longstreet, and together they shared an 'oh shit!' moment of utter glee. They hopped around each other like school kids told they were about to get free ice cream before heading to the waterpark, then took hands and more or less did a squealing Ring Around the Rosie. Of course, this looked a bit out of place atop a stack of slum apartments each roughly the size of his bedroom in a pollution-choked vista with janky flying cars all around, but right now the last thing on their minds was a gritty cyberpunk world.

He then signed off with a 'Todd, I'll see you on Monday with the story of a lifetime!' while Danielle did her own signoff.

The rumors were true. They had to be true. He kept repeating it over and over again, though he dared not say it for fear that it wouldn't actually happen. While the news crew packed up their heavy gear in the NNN van, he kept sneaking glances over at Danielle. They were both married, but what happened in another fucking universe stayed in another universe!

The blue credit cards each read: 3 Day VIP pass– Prestige Gaming.

"Congratulations, Mr. Cooper," a bored Prestige employee said, suddenly beside him. "If you and your crew could just follow me, that would be great. We'll need you to review and sign these waivers."

She had a tablet with over a hundred pages of legalese that he paid no attention to, and rapidly scrolled through before checking 'Accept', followed by 'Agree'. Other Prestige employees were materializing out of the game environment and approaching Danielle and the rest of her crew as well.

The two producers (read: glorified cameramen) also jumped when they discovered park personnel appearing out of nowhere right next to them, and also disregarded all the legal speak. Several acceptance taps later, they were all bid to follow the quiet employees to a large iridescent lozenge of a car.

"You've just agreed not to make any photo or video recording of your time here at Prestige," the first one droned. "That means you'll be surrendering any handhelds, tablets, or other phone devices, and allowing our people to attach restraining bolts to any cybernetic tech you might have integrated onto your persons."

The enthusiasm was infectious enough that Gavin couldn't have his spirits shaken. They glanced at one another, shrugged, still high on the invite and the chance to meet Mr. Pradthala, and of course the insane experience they'd just shared. They turned over their devices, were taken to the HUB, and suited up. Gavin had a few words with the cameramen while they pulled on haptic bodysuits, and asked whether the two of them wanted to stick together or make a go of it alone. One of them had always wanted to be a World War II flying ace, while his cameraman Hugh said he was going to go be the sheriff of a one horse town.

"Would you like your VIP Services guide?" the bored attendant asked him, but he wasn't paying attention. He only had Danielle on his mind. He waved the Prestige employee off and wandered out of the changing room, while employees gathered up his wallet, pants and underwear and put them in bins.

They parted ways and left Gavin to meet back up with Danielle Longstreet. They'd met at a few events, but never had much chance to talk with one another... she'd always been on his Wife-Allowed list.

He approached her, with the haptic suit suctioned onto his body, and his six pack gleaming front and center. "How do you feel about a partner?" he asked.

Danielle opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it apparently, because she then snapped it shut and smiled strangely at him. "Sure, why not?"

***

Shanaya was ready to admit to herself that they were having fun when her aunt had to go and ruin it. First, they'd taken off on their ship, and she'd felt the wind in her hair. They were flying, and maybe sure they were still on the ground somehow with game blocks around them, but anywhere she looked the surface was hundreds of feet below, or ramshackle homes built into unsteady shapes by the ingenuity and poverty of the fake people living in them. The illusion was perfect, and more than that, once they got the ship off the ground, she knew they could get hundreds of real feet in the air.

A message had appeared, and relayed to them by a shadowy bearded guy (who called himself Johnson for some reason) was a message: If you want riches beyond your wildest dreams, and the ability to shove a knife in the ribs of those cocky rich sonsabitches running the arcology, you'd best head to these coordinates and be ready for plunder. He then relayed the schematics of the convoy they'd be robbing, starting from the arcology through a dangerous part of the world: Ryker's Gulch. If they weren't fast enough, they'd have to dive beneath the sea toward the underwater arcology Seatopia. Everything would get a hundred times harder and more dangerous once they were beneath the waves.

Of course Ryker's Gulch was teeming with security precautions, and other pirate teams might be after the cargo, but the shadowy bearded guy Johnson had heard they were the baddest pirates this side of Arizona Bay.

All that was just gravy as far as Shanaya was concerned. It was once the message cut out that her aunt got involved.

"Well this is hardly the sort of thing a girl her age should be doing, is it Ravindra?"

Both of them turned to behold Aunt Rashmi.

Uncle Ravindra's mouth dropped open. "Ahhh... jewel of my heart, I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about."

"Running around in a pirate's outfit? With tattoos all up and down her body? And look at this, you've chopped her arm right off. See that? She's been forced to get a prosthesis. Not only horrific and sad, but disgusting. You'd think with the technology these days, she could get something lifelike, so no one would notice her disability."

She turned toward her uncle, flummoxed, and found he'd also turned to face her. Apparently neither of them had any idea how to proceed. If there was one person who could suck all the words out of the mighty Ravindra Pradthala's mouth, it was his wife.

"Ahh..."

"And look at me? Look at what you've done to me?" She swept her hands down. All her fashionable henna, gold bangles and jeweled bindi were gone. In their place she had a tricorn hat, a shabby flowing shirt sporting several holes, and someone had replaced one of her eyes with a large cybernetic attachment. Presently it was glowing red.

Shanaya thought she looked completely amazing, but apparently this wasn't up to her standard.

"This is... this is a game, my sweet," her uncle said.

"Pah," she dismissed with a wave. "Women should be stately and beautiful wherever they go. And maybe they shouldn't be playing games? Why don't you change us back into something presentable. I for one would love to wear a beautiful sari, red and gold. Oh, and the most expensive jewelry that your little game robots can manufacture."

"Your wish is my command," her uncle smiled while putting his hand behind his back in a place where only she could see. He waved her away and she almost giggled. He was giving her a chance to escape!

Gently easing her way around the corner of a deck cabin, Shanaya breathed a silent sigh of relief and grabbed a hold of some rigging. She'd be best hidden in the crow's nest. And she'd have the best seat in the house. The world around her was pure gorgeousness and she wasn't going to visit in a pink dress with red ruby slippers.

Dice bopped and clanged in her HUD and then a 6 and a 9 rolled through her vision. Success! She pulled herself up and kicked off into a swing, laughing into the tremendously blue sky.

"Hey. Hey!" her aunt called from below. The woman had gotten her avatar changed and was back to herself, but clad in a rich sari and absolutely covered in golden jewelry. Bling bling, Shanaya thought, laughing harder. She didn't even notice when the distractions of below caused a reroll of the dice in her HUD. And then her hands, suddenly slick with sweat, rolled off of the cord and she plummeted to the deck below.

She crashed against the deck. You've suffered a Level 1 Harm, the HUD announced. Would you like to resist?

Honestly, it felt tough to breathe, but she reached up and tapped yes. More dice clattered, then the HUD informed her You have taken 4 Stress. She lay there spreadeagle, out of breath but giddy. Even falling in this game was a blast. And with her haptic setting turned way down that fall hadn't hurt nearly as much as it could've.

"Young lady!" she heard her aunt bellow from somewhere nearby. Nope. That's not going to happen, she thought. She jumped to her feet with ease, dice clattered, and then she was bounding up a pile of spare parts, leaping up into the rigging and spidering her way upwards. This is magnificent she marveled. Grabbing a hold of the circular edge of the crow's nest, she pulled herself in while cheesy happy music filled her brain. "I am King of the World!" she cried, not ripping off a single thing from any movie, new or old.

"Woah," came a voice from behind her. She almost pitched forward out of the crow's nest and into the deck below. Shanaya gasped in shock and flipped her head over her shoulder to see who or what had surprised her. A kid was sitting there, recessed into the bottom corner. He waved a weak hello.

"Who are you?" Nataya asked. Her surprise had turned to intrigue - the kid was dressed in a peasant smock and smelled like a dirty alley.

"I'm Marioli. But, please don't giggle, I don't like it."

She nodded. Being named after the titular character of such VR classics as 'Uber Awesome Marioli Family' and 'Jump On Monsters Eat Star Many Fight' had to have taken a toll on the kid. Plus it was nice to have someone here not recognize her. She'd take that for all it was worth.

"How old are you, Marioli? And what kind of character are you?"

He laughed. "You'll never guess it. This place is amazing!"

"Well, are you ten?" she asked, doubt laced through her words.

"Nope. Would you like to guess again?"

"Nope. Would you like to tell me the answer now?"

"I'm 17. In real life I'm about five foot six!" he stood up and turned himself in a circle, gesticulating over his body. "How's that for a wonder?"

She giggled and her mind wandered over what he might look like inside of all of those nanites. Brown choco-eyes set in a face of bronze? Maybe pale white and freckled skin topped by a bushy mound of freaky red wispiness?

Then she groaned inwardly. Being lonely at school and in life was making her crazy.

"Well, Marioli, I'm Shanaya, Busty Buccaneer of the, uh, Bovian Badlands!"

"You don't look that busty."

"Shuddup. I don't think my parents will let me change my boobs setting but that doesn't mean I can't dream. Anyways, what's your game story? Am I debasing myself with a simple farmer boy? Busty buccaneers have better things to do, you know."

"I am Marenzo, apprentice plumber to Lorenzo, who is son to Costenzo, the head of the guild. But I was kidnapped by slavers so I escaped their hold and jumped off of their ship not so long ago and just kinda fell down into this crow's nest. Been sitting here ever since. It's nice and relaxing. Plus it's apparently a good way to meet new people."

"Well, Marenzo, welcome to the Spooner Schooner or whatever proper name my Aunt will give it soon enough. So you say you hopped your way to adventure?"

"Indeed I did!"

Shanaya pulled herself up onto the edge of her crow's nest and held out a hand to Marenzo.

"Wanna jump again?" she asked.

# Chapter 3 - Do the Bloobie Freefall

Rashmi screamed. Then she pointed. Dropping past their ship through the air were Shanaya and some dirty kid, giggling like school children. Ravindra couldn't help but join their giggles. They were perfectly safe in Prestige Gaming. And the whole point of all of this downtime was to let people relax and have some fun.

"My dear, you do realize that they're not at all in danger, don't you? This, all of this, is safer than they'd be at some dingy school playground, or even hooked up to VR!"

Rashmi shook her head. "Oh, it is plenty dangerous, Ravindra. Her running about like some common sudra is liable to find her face at the end of a well-deserved slap."

Ravindra sighed and turned away. He had more important business to attend to. It didn't really matter that Shanaya was setting out on her own. Hell it might even be an opportunity. He pulled out a pad and keyed up nanite surveillance to follow her and her new friend about. It might give him something good for advertising promos.

As he completed his task a message icon flashed onto his screen, priority, an exclamation mark stuck inside a red jagged circle. Ravindra frowned and almost ignored it, but this was a very important day and nothing should be overlooked on a day like this. He toggled the icon and let it flash into his HUB, taking over the entirety of his vision.

PRESTIGE GAMING– EXECUTIVE WARNING

THE CONTENTS OF THIS MESSAGE ARE ONLY AUTHORISED FOR RAVINDRA PRADTHALA, CEO. THE RECEPTION AND SUBSEQUENT READING OF THIS MESSAGE BY ANY OTHER INDIVIDUAL WILL CONSTITUTE AN INVASION OF PRIVACY, A CHARGE OF INTELLECTUAL THEFT, AND IMMEDIATE PROSECUTION. PRESS THUMBPRINT AND SUBMIT TO RETINAL SCAN TO ACCEPT.

Ravindra rolled his eyes even as he pressed his thumb thoroughly into the pad. It looked into his eye afterwards. The security measure was a good one and for sure the warning would spook the unknowing and the unsuspecting, but most of it was fluff. He doubted anyone able to crack the security to read the message would get anything more than a minor fine.

His HUD flashed and a status report filled the screen. The numbers were rocking themselves out of system nominal, he saw. But that wasn't the worst thing. The nano pop count was through the roof! There was no way this had just happened. This message indicated there'd probably been a nanite spike two days ago because of that Brian Morecock fellow. Ravindra hadn't given an okay to flood the system with additional nanites... but it was a blessing in disguise. In fact he'd welcomed the spike in nanobots considering what happened in the Battle of the Five Armies when they'd run out of enough of them to generate the hellish outer dimension in which they all fought and to keep up with battle effects. No no no, there had to be something wrong here.

Ravindra rolled through his HUD options quickly, his agile mind bounding across loads of Prestige Gaming options and commands that just were not important right now. At last the scrolling ended and he tabbed into the Admin section. 5318008, he sniggered, moving past the password prompt and remembering the days of calculators.

"Computer," he said, "get me Meredith Johnston."

Meredith Johnston is unavailable.

Ravindra's face began to darken. Nobody was unavailable to him. Not on a day like this.

"Open Prestige Gaming People Finder."

Welcome to ANAL: Access Network Administrative Lookup - Type in name, Customer ID, or Government ID and Country of Citizenship here.

ANAL - That had been Meredith's idea. She was always on about using dirty acronyms and she had the sort of personality that you just didn't say no to. Especially since she was a genius with just about everything to do with nanites, programming, and story plotting. It was hard to tell where the company would be without her. And now she was gone.

"Find first name Meredith, last name Johnston, employee ID I8URballs."

All text disappeared from his HUD, replaced by a rotating circle that let him know that it was digging and questing through a lot of servers and monitoring data to give him the best results possible. Meredith had designed the system, he remembered, and he didn't doubt that if it couldn't find her then no program on the planet could.

The HUD stopped loading and opened to a plain white screen with bold black lettering.

Employee first name Meredith last name Johnston not found. Employee ID I8URballs not found. Should I access in-game conversation audio for crosspoint referencing? Y/N

"No, scratch that. The numbers are going crazy enough as is without me banging about looking for more trouble. Computer, get me Tyriah Rodriguez. We're going to have to have a long talk about future Public Relations. And send an alert. I want every available programmer, engineer and nanotechnologist in this place to figure out what is going on, what is going to happen, and how to make it right again!"

***

Tyriah saw the message come in at the same moment all the monitors went haywire. For the first minute or so, when it all snowballed from slowly going out of control to full-on panic time, she saw various systems go from green to yellow, to blinking warnings, then to red. All the code bits she didn't know and hadn't had time to learn, the server problems, the map of the park with the current guest count and locations of the gameworlds they were currently in, creeping across the New Mexican countryside like huge geometric slugs. Each one of them had various readouts attached: current water resources, medical resources, food resources attached to the Drone Interpark Luncheon Delivery Operation System (or DILDOS), with guest preferences, the catering facilities moving about on huge mobile kitchens surrounded by delivery drones, and a thousand other factors. These bleeped in and out of existence, or suddenly went yellow, blinked several times, perhaps slid back to green for a moment, then settled into warning yellow.

Then red.

This overwhelming spectacle caused her knees to tremble. She had to steady herself on the chair back beside her, before the commands started to come. She tried swallowing, but only got a dry click.

"Where's that pinpoint?" she called. "We need it right now! We've got systems in the red."

Everyone stopped the press junket celebration and turned confused faces toward her. Some people stopped mid-make out session.

"We have spikes... everywhere!"

And like her, they stared stupidly for a few precious seconds. Then the place became a madhouse for a few minutes, with people calling out stats like she knew what the hell they were talking about. Others echoed these calls: check and clear out the server cache lines, run code checks on quests, dump excess cookies, stabilize this or that thing she didn't understand.

It dawned on her.

"What about Dungeonworld?" she asked.

"What about it?" one of them asked.

"We've got enough to worry about without doing other people's work for them," another said, furiously tapping.

"Collins, get me status on the Dungeonworld systems. Just one screen."

It took a bit of doing, because admin for Dungeonworld was a few floors closer to the belly of the beast itself, and the whole thing was, in general, carefully partitioned off from Randomized Prestige Gaming (RPG).

What came back was not encouraging.

"Where is it? Where's Dungeonworld?"

"You're seeing what's there... nothing, apparently."

"What do you mean, nothing? We have at least five thousand criminals, sorry, 'contestants' to account for." She made the air quotes.

"The admin for Dungeonworld has all that under control. We can't be responsible–"

She cut him off. "They're either down there in their cells, they're under an avalanche of game blocks dead, or they're on their way up here, and I guarantee they don't give one flying shit whether you're responsible for putting them through digital hell and nearly killing them day in day out, or Tammy from accounting."

Collins gestured to the screen. "Well I wish I could give you some good news, but it's not there. It's just... not... there. Like somebody hit it with a bomb or something."

"I want three coding teams to work on rebooting Dungeonworld," she called out.

This was met with cricket-filled silence, before somebody weakly asked, "What?"

"You heard me!" She shouted. "Jack Sparrow, you and Cybros stay on the boss. John Wayne, you and Zeus get Dungeonworld working again. Either get coms back on line or reboot them. Hitler Channel, I need you guys to contact security and get them to stop up the elevators and stairwells down to Dungeonworld, understand?"

The Saddles & Six-Shooters team looked over to the Stone, Bronze & Iron peeps and shrugged, then began scooting their workstations together.

One of the Beachheads & Dogfights coders piped up now. "Security? We don't even know if there's a prob–"

"Are any of you idiots going to get it through your skulls? Your lives are in danger."

"Uh, boss?"

"What is it?" she screamed.

"We've got jumpers."

She whirled back to the screens showing the CEO's family, and noted the cell count driving up. She'd thought it was just another warning signal, but no. Shanaya Pradthala and some other kid were in free fall, meaning the game was clearing out space for them to fall, driving Ravindra up into the air without allowing them to feel it. Before, during the Galaxies Unknown exhibition, the game had hoisted them up higher in the air, but the moment the teenager had chosen flying pirates, the game had started stacking up a massive amount of blocks beneath them, giving them clearance to fly and fall if need be, and now need be had come. The game environment looked like a skyscraper at the moment, stretching up over six hundred feet.

Except the game was losing it's ever-loving mind, and with the warning lights going all Christmas tree, there was no telling whether the game had its safety protocols in order or not.

"Do I have to do all your thinking for you, you fucking morons? Get them down safe!" she shrieked.

***

Shanaya tried to keep herself from freaking out. They couldn't possibly be that far in the air. Maybe the game was just blowing wind past them and they were still ten or twenty feet from the ground.

"You're starting to make me paranoid," Marioli said as they soared through the clouds. "Why do you keep looking at me?"

Shanaya turned her head away, embarrassed. "Sorry, I just keep trying to figure out how nanites turned a 5 foot six inch man into a 4 foot boy. Did it hurt?"

He laughed. "Nah - without those goggles I'm my regular old size, just surfaced in tiny nanite blocks that broadcast visual and sensory data to that cute little face of yours. Is that really you?" he asked.

She looked back at him and gave him a broad smile. "Mostly. I feel like there's something not very fair about you getting to hide yourself away inside of the body of a ten year old while I get to be regular old me."

"Regular. Ha!"

Whatever he looked like, this Marioli was quite the charmer. Shanaya blushed and peered downwards, looking for somewhere to land. God, wouldn't it be crazy if the ground was just rushing up towards her face and the game portrayed some far-off vista that wasn't even real? She shuddered with a mixture of terror and exhilaration at the concept. She would have no idea she was dead.

Ha! Impossible.

"I don't think this is how we're supposed to play the game," Marioli snickered. "I bet I just got lucky the first time out. Now we're both going to go splat down on the ground–"

"And wake up in a white room full of good food and Kinsley soda," she finished for him. "It's really not a big deal. The same nanites making us look different will keep us from actually physically getting hurt, slowing us down all the while so that we don't actually go splat, and even encasing us and transporting us to the afterlife room when we run out of, I dunno what they are here, hit points? Anyways, I see something down there in the clouds."

Marioli ogled her pirate bangled arm and then followed it through past her pointing finger and into the white murky depths of the cloud cover. How far up were they? It didn't matter, he supposed, since there was indeed a dark shape pulling up and out of the cover. He held his breath a few seconds and then watched as it surfaced, blasting a toot of air out of its blowhole.

"A flying whale. Huh. Neat," Shanaya said. Dice pounded through her HUD even as she seized Marioli's hand with her own. A 1 and a 4 surfaced in her display.

"Shit!" she exclaimed as she realized she was going to miss landing on the behemoth.

Marioli looked at her and grinned. "Don't worry. I got straight tens," he told her. He grabbed her around her waist and steered them into a fleshy plop atop the giant flying blue whale. It grunted in surprise but kept on course, going to someplace unknown.

"Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahaha!" Shanaya chortled uncontrollably.

"What is it?" Marioli asked.

"I just pictured what my aunt must be doing right now and how Uncle Ravindra is probably in a lot of trouble. She's such a stick in the mud. I mean how can anyone come to a free session of Prestige Gaming and not try to be someone else?"

"Yeah, I hear ya. So what do you think? Is the whale going to lead us to adventure? What is a whale doing all the way up here anyways?"

A loudspeaker blared and echoed in answer. Another dark shape was exiting from the cloud cover. "CEASE AND DESIST. THIS ANIMAL HAS BEEN RIGHTFULLY TAGGED FOR WHITEY WHALING CORPORATION. ANY CLAIM YOU HAVE DECIDED TO MAKE UPON THIS ANIMAL IS NEITHER LEGAL NOR BINDING AND YOU WILL BE FOUND GUILTY OF POACHING A LAWFULLY REGISTERED PRIZE."

"I, uh, I get the feeling that the whale is the adventure!" Shanaya said, her eyes gleaming. "And I have a strange intuition that Shanaya the Busty Buccaneer of the Bovian Badlands isn't one to let such wonderful animals fall prey to the horrors of sky whaling."

"So what do we do now?"

"We figure out how to steer this thing and we go fight the bad guys, of course!"

***

Ravindra had gotten his hopes up. He saw the mistake now. He foolishly thought Rashmi would break away from her gossip circles and VR chat groups that discussed Indian or American politics, or the rich families, and she'd get out of reality for once, get into character, and they'd just live a story for once.

Honestly, he couldn't quite place what the point was of insisting Shanaya went to the best boarding school in the entire country, or putting the twins in head start programs halfway across the country. He'd gotten his hopes up, which was clearly a mistake.

Ravindra was getting nagged. He didn't like getting nagged. Too often he didn't understand the who what or why of it and more often than that he didn't remember most of what Rashmi told him. It became a sort of chant or song after a while. Blah blah blah– yes dear. Blah blah blah– yes dear. So repetitive. So boring.

He hadn't founded the company, bribed senators, and successfully lobbied down nano-restrictions to sit inside the best game system ever and get treated like an overgrown child. And it was making him angry.

"Rashmi– no, Rashmi, you listen to me. This is my day. This is Shanaya's day. This is everyone's day, or it is supposed to be. You can nag me when we get back home. You can tell me how horrible I am, how I don't always land my underwear in the hamper or how I like to fart while I watch the holotube, I don't care. But you are not going to wrest this game from me."

His wife looked shocked. She had every right to be so– he rarely minded or cared when she offloaded on him like a dump truck at a landfill site. But there had to be borders. And sometimes you just had to build that wall.

"Ravindra! I never–"

"Shut up," he finished for her, then caught his breath. He stared at her face, his eyes wide in horror. Then she started to laugh.

"Oh my god, man, you have the balls of a king," she said between giggles and snorts. "My word– this really is that important to you then?"

"Important enough that I stole the balls of a king to stand up to you," he smirked, his fear fading fast. It was times like this that made him remember why he'd married her. She was uptight, naggy, prim and proper– but when she could be convinced to put all of that down and not be who she was trained by society to be, when she could just be herself, she was magical. He'd been hoping to bring back this side of her ever since they found out she wasn't able to give him a child. Those ten years felt like forever.

"I'm sorry Ravi– you're right. This is a vacation and it should be fun. I'm being an absolute horror. So how do we play this game? What do we do?"

"Well, my dear, you already heard all of the rules so I'm going to skip that. We're in a mashup world of cyberpunk and pirates. Various steampunk and metallic vessels fly through the air. The people on the ground live in slums, the affluent live in that huge dome on the horizon just there, and we are here to help them all trade pokes and jabs with each other I suppose."

Rashmi nodded. "Well then, use that game pad of yours and make me into a robot. One that boops and squeaks whenever she has some unpleasant nagging on her lips. Ooh, and one with a laser. And shocking hands to make her husband listen if something is important!"

Ravindra took out the pad, smiling. It had almost been a big fight and he detested those. But she'd come through and this vacation was going to be incredible!

It opened slowly, though, and began buzzing with a priority call. He swiped answer at once. Tyriah popped onto the screen. Behind her people were scurrying back and forth as if on the deck of an embattled intergalactic exploration vessel Lenterprize.

"Hey bossman, enjoying your vacation? Everything has gone to shit here. The nanites are acting bonkers, the system is unstable and we were just able to activate some whaling adventure to catch your daughter and her friend because, honestly, I don't know if the nanite failsafes are in place anymore or not. Oh, and Dungeonworld isn't there anymore."

It was a lot to take in at once. Ravindra blinked, opened his mouth to speak, shut it, then opened it again.

"She'd best be safe," he commanded quietly. Rashmi was right beside him.

"She plopped down on a Level 3 Flying Bloobie. She's safe, as long as she doesn't try jumping to her death again. Even having fun from the looks of things."

"And the dungeonworlders– what happened?"

"We're still trying to get a fix on that. Everything is going glitchy and I don't know why. But we'll get it fixed. I think it might be time to evacuate the park–"

"Don't say another word," he said. "We'll do no such thing. We haven't had a catastrophic system failure since we opened. This isn't Mesozoic bloody Theme Park."

"Sir–"

"You'll do your best. Locate Meredith Johnston if you can. She appears to have deleted herself off the AN– the administrative lookup network. She had a guest, if I recall correctly."

Tyriah, to her credit, grasped what he was talking about at once, and didn't say the word ANAL. She nodded grimly.

"Everyone's on this. Sound a general alarm. HR people and payroll and financing, everyone. I'll send out a general mail. "

"Yes, sir." The resignation in her voice told him all he needed to know. Tyriah had made several transfer requests, to get out of her Dungeonworld assignments, and he'd denied them each and every time. She was too good at her job to lose. In addition, nobody lasted very long when it came to Dungeonworld. Tyriah was stubbornly determined to stay with Prestige, and not go back to the shithole she'd come from.

***

Gavin was straight loving this situation: watching as Danielle Longstreet (THE Danielle Longstreet who'd done that photo series for DELUXXX magazine) tried on various outfits here in Stone, Bronze and Iron. He would have goggled at the Ancient Greek columns and architecture, or the way the weather had gone from hot overcast New Mexico to balmy, breezy Mediterranean with a sky so pure blue he wondered if he'd ever approve of a sunny day again. Instead his eyes were glued to Danielle's derrière, covered in a filmy toga cinched at the waist with a thin leather cord. It was trimmed in gold, and her hair was an updo, curling and spilling out from a bun at the back of her head. She also had on strappy sandals that reached all the way up her strong legs to her knees. And this toga, it should be said, went only halfway down her thighs.

Loving. It.

He popped another grape into his mouth and told himself not to rush these things. She was checking herself out in a polished steel dish near a cliff's edge, with vines and creepers hanging over a breezy portico, while fishing boats hovered ant-like below on the crystal ocean.

"Stone, Bronze & Iron," he said. "Excellent choice."

Her mouth twitched into a half smile. "With a hint of superpowers. Girl needs to be able to have super beauty powers."

"Need?" he asked. "I wouldn't go so far as to say you need super beauty."

"They warned me about you," she said.

"Is that so?"

"Handsome, built like an Adonis, agreeable, smooth, and those teeth. Did you know there's a group on social media who just gushes over closeups of your dimples and teeth?"

He did know that, but feigned ignorance. "Oh, really?"

"So we have a couple of options... we could just stick around this Level Zero place, it's totally safe. There's a VIP guide we can order, who will come and help us out with storyline quests. Also physically perfect, all of them."

He arched an eyebrow. "Order up a hunk of man?"

She turned a full-on grin at him, and wandered closer while swinging those hips. "Mm-hmm, I tried to get a guy named Sergio, but he hasn't shown up yet." Here she leaned in and with a conspiratorial expression, whispered, "I was kind of hoping to make a Danielle sandwich."

"Do I get to be the ham to your cheese?" he whispered back, his eyes shining with the promise of sandwiches.

"Hmm," she moaned breathlessly. "I'm lactose intolerant but keep going. I like pain."

Gavin paused. The ground had begun a slight tremor. Bits of soil cracked and fell from the cliff's edge, pixelating to white as they did so.

What the hell?

A small boulder rolled down fast and popped Danielle hard in the knee.

"Oh yeah," she moaned. Gavin shook his head then grabbed her up and started sprinting. Danielle began to laugh.

"What's so funny?" he asked as he sprinted up a low slope. In the far distance NPC sailors screamed in terror.

"This is just a game, silly. There's no need to be all macho man, women and children first."

A rumble sounded from behind them. The cliff they had been relaxing upon split and crumbled into nothingness.

"Then what am I standing on? Danielle, the nanites made this. It is all real. The goggles are just to protect our eyes and to let us see beautifully rendered graphic skins and backgrounds. This," he stomped his foot, "is–"

Gavin's foot broke through the nanite crust as if it were ice. Then nano-blocks swarmed around the hole and sealed it back up, with his leg firmly stuck inside. He dropped Danielle, whose eyes went wide seeing his predicament. She ran up and grabbed at his bare leg, pulling as hard as she could to get him out of the ground. He strained as well.

"What is happening?" she wailed. "Is this part of the game?"

Gavin reached up and pulled off his AR helmet. Looking around he saw white blocks of all different sizes rippling and buckling, seeming to resist against whatever was overcoming them. But they were failing. Above him a white bricked roof, his Mediterranean sky, crumbled and collapsed. The tiny white blocks pitter-pattered like rain about him. Where they fell, the white blocks dispersed and soon he was free. All about him the blocks retreated and broke apart. What the hell was going on around here?

He put his goggles on. Nothing but Danielle changed, the blue-gray of her haptic suit and the goggles over her eyes changing back into the scantily clad sex-pot of Grecian times. All around them was the stiff dirt and hard tack sand of the New Mexican desert. The game, it seemed, had abandoned them for Rodriguezr pastures.

"That was one hell of a party," Gavin grimly grinned, sitting on his ass and massaging his freed foot. Danielle sat down as well.

"So now what do we do?" she asked.

The ground began to shake again.

"What the hell? This here can't be happening. This is real dirt, real land!" Again he pulled off his helmet and scanned the terrain. It was real and the ground was cracking and breaking. Danielle flung her arms around him. Without his goggles on she looked like a blue-gray cat woman, or maybe some sort of extra-terrestrial. It brought his lower half to life in a hurry.

"Stop that," she protested a moment later, pulling away and slapping him in the dick.

You have taken a Level 1 Harm. Would you like to avoid this complication?

"Yes! Sorry," he squeaked. It had been a hell of a hit. "Listen, I don't think the nanites are gone. And I think we might be in real danger here. We need to get up and boogie out of here." He slipped his helmet back on. "And we need to keep the goggles and suits on in case the game mechanics kick back in and we can use our character abilities again. Because, the way all of this stuff is working right now, I wouldn't be surprised if being able to interact in the game on the game's terms will be important to our survival."

A loud crunchy crack blasted across the desert, and a wide swathe of ground simply broke and fell, revealing a deep trench. The pair of them jogged to it and then peeked over the edge. Dull grey corrugated ducts and tubes interlaced through the gap, stuck through the ground at a myriad of angles.

"What are those?" Danielle asked. She clung to his back side now as they peered within.

"I think," he said, "I think those are a way to safety!"

# Chapter 4 - How to Prove You're Not Racist

"This is definitely not Stone, Bronze & Iron," Danielle pouted. "I am going to have such a field day talking to someone's manager about this. Ooh just they wait. I have an amazing Karen voice."

She ratcheted up the arrogance in her voice by a factor of about ten. "Don't touch me! When I'm done with this place everyone in my line of sight will be fired. Have you ever heard of 'the customer's always right? Well, honey, you're about to find out–'"

They had roughly a half second of warning: raining bits of the sky pattered nearby, and all about them the far distance seemed to be sloughing off of a too-close actual wall, maybe forty or fifty feet off. The effect was disorienting and wrong, like stepping onto a glass bottomed observation deck in a tower. The next moment, a huge piece of puffy cumulonimbus cloud crashed down beside them. It was maybe three feet square and briefly became the dark gray stone of a manor house or vampire's castle before it became a three foot cubed version of the game blocks he'd seen earlier. Another second later, it was back to being cloud.

"Jump!" Gavin shouted.

"There's no way–" was as far as she got before he shoved her forward, and headed in directly after her. The light was immediately blocked out by another few huge blocks bashing down where they'd stood and over the mouth of this hole.

She screamed the whole way down, and when next he caught sight of her in the emergency track lighting of the tube, the Grecian goddess look had fallen away. In fact, she looked to be smeared with grease and grime from whatever coated the sides of this improvised escape route.

It began to dawn on him that they might be in bigger trouble than just deciding who to screw and where, or having a talk with the park admins about the quality of their gaming experience. This wasn't the game.

They took a wide loop down, passed through a series of reddish lasers, and heard the ear-piercing alarm go off.

"DILDOS ERROR MESSAGE N00135. TRESPASSING WARNING! WARNING! STAY WHERE YOU ARE. YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO BE IN THE MAINTENANCE AND DELIVERY TUNNELS. STAY WHERE YOU ARE. YOU WILL BE CONDUCTED BACK TO YOUR CELLS. DILDOS ERROR MESSAGE N00135."

They skidded to a stop somewhere in the pitch black, where Gavin couldn't make out his greasy fingers in front of his face.

"Gavin?" Danielle called. She was plainly afraid, and he didn't blame her one little bit. He was pretty close to peeing himself as it was.

He tried to put on a veneer of bravado, on the off chance he could still get into her pants and get an up close inspection of what had been just barely covered up in that magazine photo set. "Yeah, I'm here."

"What's going on?" Her hand found his leg in the darkness. "What the hell is DILDOS?"

"I... don't know."

She punched him, hard, right in the groin. "And when has jumping into a dark hole ever been the right thing to do in a movie or TV show? Idiot!"

Neither the haptic suit, nor the game HUD, were functioning at all. He curled up and whimpered at the explosive pain. He was starting to get the idea that the mind-blowing sex was out.

In due course, a pair of lights rapidly materialized, increased in size, and resolved into a humming drone, a boxy and utilitarian thing about the size of a compact car. It also gave him an unrestricted view over the heavily greased, industrial maintenance tunnel they were in: a place about ten feet wide and high, which went on into the inky black depths of forever.

It quickly blasted them with some unknown liquid so violently antiseptic and breathtakingly cold that Gavin was left gasping for breath and shivering. Whatever it was, it stank and caused him to cough on his hands and knees.

"TRESPASSERS WILL GET IN, OR ELSE THEY GET THE HOSE AGAIN."

Danielle opened her mouth to channel her inner Karen, but got a second dose of the grease-clearing formula, and spat out a mouthful. She scurried into the craft, where they were forced to hold each other for warmth, and where he had no choice but to constantly dodge her attempts to knee him where the sun didn't shine. He was also forced to listen to her stream of obscenities, divided and directed toward him, the situation in general, and a few choice ones for Ravindra Pradthala.

A few minutes into this treatment had him dimly realizing they were headed downwards. A few more minutes later, the drone slowed, stopped, and popped the door open. Danielle stormed out, and he followed after, without listening to the demanding ass robot tell them what they would and wouldn't do... before noting they were in a damp, dark, open prison yard. A few halogen bulbs shone from high above, making all the folks around them seem pale and more menacing.

The walls were mostly natural cave, except many of the stalagmites and stalactites had been ground down. Some places in the ceiling, too, were blasted apart and ground smooth to support the string of technology set in there. Two of the walls were barred, each with a heavily locked door. Regularly placed throughout the room were tough, stainless steel tables with attached, unmovable chairs.

"Welcome, inmates," a speaker told them. "You were caught attempting to escape Dungeonworld. Once we locate your name and identification, an additional year will be added onto your sentences. But don't lose hope! For each competition you enter, you can reduce that sentence. We have successfully commuted the sentences of more than three hundred inmates!"

Several of the people in the room snickered. The dozen of them came in all shapes, sizes, genders and colors.

"Man, they play that every time," one of them said. "Gettin' real old."

"We're not criminals, we're guests!" Danielle roared.

General laughter followed. "Me neither! I'm a VIP!"

Another called, "Preach it, sister!"

"Shut up, Karen!" yelled the last. "Tryin' to sleep here."

***

"Prepare to be boarded!" the intercom system blared.

"I'll board your mom," Shanaya shouted back. Marioli chuckled.

Shanaya eyed Marioli, then swept her gaze over the massive, blubbery surface they were standing on, slowly undulating through the air. "Boarded, huh? That would imply we were on board, or that there were boards."

The little guy laughed with his hands on his hips. "I like you. Trouble is though that we're about to face a cybernetically enhanced boarding party. From the looks of that clock... wait, what's going on with the clock?"

In Shanaya's heads up display, a countdown clock labeled Ship's Ahoy filled in two of its eight slices, then immediately backtracked to one. In the distance the approaching ship rushed back in reverse, its sails still strangely billowed forward in response to a non-existent head wind, then began its approach anew.

"Screw the clock, what's going on with the ship?" Shanaya asked. The clock disappeared and the ship retreated more.

"Prepare to be boarded!" the intercom system blared. Talk about deja vu.

"Um, your mom?" she answered hesitantly. This was weird. Marioli started poking about the back of the whale, checking for hidden loot or anything that could assist them in the possibly upcoming battle.

A countdown clock labeled Ship's Ahoy appeared in their respective HUD's again. Shanaya grunted in frustration as it filled in three slices and then retreated back to one.

"This sucks," she groaned. "I wish they'd just get here and kill us already."

"You might get your wish," Marioli noted with concern as the ship suddenly blazed forward at warp speed, bumping into the whale, then retreating back two slices. Strangely there was no bump or shock, the retreat of time presumably sucking all of that away. It was a worrisome glimpse into the future though.

"So, busty buccaneer, do you have, like, any powers or weapons?"

It was a good question. Shanaya wasn't sure that she knew. She held up a finger to silence him and then willed her HUD to display her character sheet and inventory.

##

Her Gear options appeared as cards beneath the character sheet. Shanaya scrolled through her options. Cybernetic arm, disintegration induction chain katana, unlubricated single-use telescoping peg-leg \- wtf? She selected the katana and wielded it to her hand, smiling as it formed into the grip of her cybernetic arm. She snapped it out and listened to it crackle. Marioli looked impressed. Then he frowned.

"Hey, Shanaya, why does that thing say DICK on its handle?"

"What?!" she scowled, fumbling with the blade as she tried to get a good viewing angle on it. Sure enough, the letters D I C K were inscribed upon it, an acronym for the weapon at hand.

"So are you comfortable holding a DICK in your robot hand?" Marioli laughed. "Do you think you can handle a DICK of that size?"

"Stop it," Shanaya warned. Marioli held up his hands.

"Just one more, okay? So is that your DICK or are you just happy to see me?"

"You know what, you little perv, if this were a book or a movie it would be totally illegal to write about this stuff. It's like something out of a Nolan Locke movie."

"I heard that guy was fake."

"What? Nolan Locke? No no no, Nolan Locke is definitely a real person."

"Well, real or not real, you're worse than Nolan Locke because at least he's not the one holding his DICK in his hand."

"Worse than Nolan Locke? Ew! Ew ew ew!" Shanaya glared at Marioli then let go of the DICK. It dropped down, and double tens showed in her HUD. A critical hit? But she hadn't meant to attack! The weapon sliced effortlessly through the flesh of the Bloobie whale. It shuddered and let out a long cry of absolute pain and anguish. Why, the voice seemed to ask. What have I ever done to you?

"Wow, that was cold," Marioli said.

"Oh my god I am so sorry," Shanaya wailed. She dropped to her knees and tried to push the wound back shut. "I didn't realize DICKs are so dangerous!"

"Well, they've caused basically every single calamity that history has ever known."

"Shut up, Marioli."

"Clock's filled up," Marioli replied. Suddenly the ship was just there, next to the slowly descending Bloobie whale. Whalers swung overboard from ropes in the rigging and landed effortlessly next to the two of them.

"Oh my god," the first of them said, looking down into the pink meat of the crying whale. "What did you do?"

The second looked at the wound, then turned away. Retching sounds followed.

"What the hell is wrong with you, you sick fuck? Not only did you ruin this whale for our harvest, but right now its stomach acids are actively leaking out into its body. This whale is digesting itself even as we speak!"

Shanaya got back up from the whale. "Hey– wait a second. Weren't you guys going to go ahead and kill this whale anyways? Like, oh, hey, the great white whale. Thar she blows. Shoot it with a harpoon. Cut it with ye steely knives. Yar har har and a bottle of rum."

The three whalers stared at her in disgust. Even Marioli looked surprised.

"We wouldn't harm this animal! We are just going to capture it and bring it into our base to harvest its milk! Bloobie milk has exceptional health qualities."

The whaler who had lost his lunch spoke up. "Oh my god, after all of these centuries of progress, I thought maybe us humans had finally gotten it all out or system. But, there it is, racism."

Marioli shook his head sadly. "Just when you think you know a girl. Even the AIs know you're racist."

"You can't be racist against whalers."

"Said the racist," Marioli.

"You know what," Shanaya yelled, stomping her foot down. The Bloobie cried out in pain. "I am sick of you people–"

"You people?" Marioli asked in feigned outrage.

"–getting all up in my grill," she continued. In her HUD she selected a flintlock infrared semi-auto transducing electrostatic rifle, then frowned. Really? First a DICK and now a FISTER? What the hell is wrong with this game?

Her rifle materialized in her hands, butt stock stuffed comfortably into the crook of her shoulder. The whalers' eyes widened in shock.

"I'm," she yelled, blasting the first man off of the back of the beast with a roll of 2 and 8, "not," she continued, fending off a swinging fist (5 and 9) and blasting the second into hell, "racist!" she concluded, dodging a kick and rifle-butting him off into the wild blue yonder with a 9 and 10.

"Holy shit," a man yelled from the whaling ship. The vessel turned away and departed in haste.

"That . . . was . . . awesome!" Marioli exuberated, doing a dance on the dying beast's back. "And it looks like we might be able to do it again," he said, pointing to a ship on the horizon, turning and accelerating into their direction.

***

Tyriah tapped several screens and shifted several through a number of the different sub-levels. The view wasn't encouraging. Security was massing down at one of the freight elevators and had gotten several dungeonworlders down and cuffed. She was on the coms with the head of security, watching the man sweat, while behind her coders went through spasms of activity and freaking out over what steps they needed to take. Beachheads & Dogfights coders, colorfully known as Hitler Channel, sat in stunned silence.

"Hitler Channel!"

The three Beachheads & Dogfights coders jumped up. Two were slovenly, grease-stained blobs of men, because they'd gotten cafeteria food delivered to the action room, and since they always had the choice of pizza and spaghetti, then of course pizza and spaghetti it was. The third coder was something of an enigma: a nearly seven foot mountain of a man with a grizzled expression who spent all of his free time lifting up and setting down immense amounts of weight. He was also, generally, really intelligent, except for right now. RIght this moment he was gaping at a monitor, on which the Stone, Bronze & Iron gameworld was fracturing and threatening to crush several guests, but his head snapped up and some of the vacant expression faded, so he looked like the problem-solver she knew him to be..

"This place is falling the fuck apart," she barked. "Get on it! Shore up your worlds, find those rogue code lines. Identify whatever's going on, and shut. It. Down."

"Yes ma'am!"

They were in damage control now: in Stone, Bronze & Iron the floor had collapsed or turned to lava, so the coders jumped in and had one of their gods freeze it all and reset everybody's Harm by blowing them. The SB&I coders laughed it off while they had another of the gods shoring up the falling sky.

"John Wayne, action report!"

"Dungeonworld... somebody hit it with an EMP. We just got a message through to somebody who turned on one of the emergency phones. And we've got another problem."

"Hit me."

"We've got a dungeonworlder taking a PISS."

"I..." she hated the acronyms so very much right now. Priority Interpark Shuttle Service be damned. "Where?"

"She's in sedation but the drugs are about to wear off."

One of the Saddles & Six Shooters coders brought up the location on the screen. And there, of course, was the Hub in the center, with a small circle around it, signifying Access Level Zero, all safe zones for the various genres. The whole thing was set into a much larger circle in the satellite image, so that the whole deal looked like the world's largest breast. Presently the red X was traveling just above the Access Level Zero and Hub nipple, right near Windswept Hearts and Galaxies Unknown.

Tyriah grabbed a handful of nuts and a sip of her tea. "Who's on it?"

"Sigourney Cleaver," the coder said.

She spit tea all over the monitor, making the map appear to sweat. Several people looked over, and some muttering about Sigourney made the rounds. She glared at everyone who was not presently balls deep in figuring out the damn problem, and came back to John Wayne.

Sigourney was a whole ball of yarn she had neither the time nor the inclination to deal with right now. The Dungeonworld global ratings were such that they simply couldn't kill Sigourney. They had the express orders not to disappear her from Dungeonworld, or else the prime time ratings would tank. Yet at the same time, she was far too dangerous to just drop somewhere willy-nilly.

"Ah... shit. Dump her on Meredith. She's right in Galaxies Unknown, isn't she?" Served her right for abandoning her post right before everything went to shit. "She's got her coding tablet on her, so she should be able to handle it without any trouble."

She hoped.

"Ma'am?" another contingent asked.

She whirled to find the Jizz Moppers wringing their hands. The Windswept Hearts team threw a window up on her screen, and enlarged it. She recognized this from her days as a Dungeonworld showrunner: the Labyrinthine Action Battle Initiation Array, or LABIA. Normally it was a place chock full of game blocks arranged in a huge maze full of deadly traps, with contestants trying to make their way safely toward the center, where a huge trove of weapons and equipment would help them better eliminate their enemies, the NPCs, and their rivals. The best scores and times all factored into a complicated sentence commutation equation that never seemed to amount to much.

But some of them inevitably died in the final sudden death rounds, where the traps gave no mercy and the weapons held by their fellow dungeonworlders spat what amounted to live ammunition. Those haptic suits could be killer.

Now they'd infiltrated and hijacked the LABIA room (goddamn Ravindra and Meredith for allowing all these idiotic acronyms) and had stacked some of the larger dormant game blocks together, giving them access to the shafts above. They then panned the camera over to one of the security drones, which lay on its side with several dungeonworlders atop it. They were in the midst of pulling out wires and poking at it with metal. One of them tore off the drone's sensor hub and handed it up through a chain of convicts working together, to the person beginning the climb up and out of Dungeonworld.

"We need to block off all available entrances and exits," she said.

"And all the ductwork?"

She swore under her breath. These various levels of Prestige gaming were made to allow the drones access to everything. They threw their garbage into chutes that emptied into drones that used these tunnels. They shipped parts and personnel through these tunnels. Sigourney Cleaver was just about to pop out from one of these into Meredith's lap, where at least one thing would be her problem instead of Tyriah's.

"No, dammit. Not the ductwork. Authorize some nanites to have tunnel access and have them build bars across the way. We can try to filter the tube traffic. I'm surprised we don't do that already."

A man ran into the room. An intern by the looks of his age and casual dress. He was out of breath, though, and was definitely taking the situation very seriously.

"We've got a problem!"

Tyriah snorted. Just one? Someone was out of the loop.

"What is this one problem of yours?" she barked, her eyes deadly. The intern gulped.

"Um, I don't know how to say it, but, somehow, two of our guests just fell into Dungeonworld. And they are no longer registering in the system as guests."

"What?"

The intern shakily handed her his small access pad and she swiped transfer. Upon one of her many screens appeared a dark cave like place, filled with the scum of the nation, and Danielle and Gavin.

# Chapter 5- Booty Pirates & FISTER Cannons

"I... do not... have time... for this!" Ravindra shouted. He hacked his way through several privates and back along the deck towards his lovely wife, the immeasurable jewel of the Pradthala family, Rashmi. The privates were busy chortling over the silk-wearing, bangle-encrusted, prize to capture.

The disembodied voice came through his tablet. "I understand, sir, but we're working through it."

He Skirmished his way through the not-pirates with spectacular roll after spectacular roll. He would have enjoyed the challenge on any other day, alongside his intrepid niece, but this had gotten well out of hand. He poked these ones with his rapier, kicked this other one into his buddy, and both of them tumbled overboard. They went screaming with that hideous, overused scream from all the movies. These were supposed to be cyberpunk pirates, but they kept reskinning. At one point they morphed into parrots, human-sized parrots with peg legs and eye patches and everything. These fought against him for a while, before they reskinned into primates. He slashed through several chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans before they changed into privates. Now he felt bad for kicking the butts of several low-ranking World War II foot soldiers, off the deck of his rapidly morphing ship. But kick he did.

"Get, this, handled," he grunted, and threw Private Bryan over the side of the ship.

"We have dungeonworlders involved in hand to hand combat with the security personnel, sir. It's not–"

"Ravi, is this supposed to be happening?" Rashmi, for her part, simply stood there in rapt, horrified fascination.

"We're supposed to be having a satisfying adventure where we stop evil pirates from overrunning a section of the cyberpunk internet, my dove. And Shanaya was supposed to be with us the entire time. Instead... oh lord."

A gaggle of leering perverts now surrounded them, licking their lips and making lewd gestures.

"Tyriah!" he shouted.

"You got it, boss."

They were replaced by a bunch of humanoids with floppy feet, fins sticking out every which way, with the heads of piranhas chomping on their wicked looking teeth.

"And cut down on the number of brutes for the brute squads, shall we?"

He swung a rope with a belaying pin into several of them, smiling as his combat dice came up sevens, then grappled them up around the waist, and swung these idiots into two of their buddies. Now, thankfully, when the four of them went tumbling off the side of his ship, they weren't immediately replaced by double the number from before. A few more rolls (he always had four dice and recovered one Stress every time he rolled) later, they were free of troublesome things that began with the letter P.

He took Rashmi by the hand. "Dearest piece of my heart, I'm afraid I have some work to get to."

She appeared more than ready, for just a moment, to begin getting all up in his business, but then seemed to grasp that this wasn't the typical Prestige gaming experience. Also, even just a glimpse of the perverts seemed to have gotten through to her. Those computerized representations of men grabbing their crotches appeared to have done what years of hard-fought marriage had not. She nodded, but he already had the tablet up and was in full rage monster mode. He threw all the various workstation cams up in front of him to get a good look at all these doomed souls.

This was a part of his wife's personality that he saved up for special occasions. After so many years of marriage, it's inevitable that you take on some of your spouse's personality quirks, but Ravindra Pradthala had masterful self control. Until now.

"I am seconds away from hearing stellar news, or else the sorts of punishments I have in mind," he hissed, "would make ancient barbarian hordes blush, turn green, and vomit all over their rows of heads on bloody pikes. Am I understood?"

"We're sealing off the ducts against the possibility of any more dungeonworlders getting out," Tyriah began.

"This is not the best news available... it can't be."

"Sir, it's time to face facts. We're experiencing a catastrophic set of spikes here. That self-awareness we saw out in Swords & Sorcerers NPCs a few days ago, that sort of spiking is occurring elsewhere."

"Have you checked in on Project Grimdark?"

Tyriah stared at him. "Sir? I'm unfamiliar with Project Grimdark."

"Nevermind. It's well off the reservation, no chance it'll even enter into this equation. More, tell me more."

"Security is trying to push dungeonworlders back out of admin levels, but we think we've got at least a half dozen up in the gamepark itself."

"We can just flag–"

"They gave themselves credentials somehow. Or the, uh, admin lookup module is malfunctioning." The ANAL.

Ravindra's temple twitched, and he pulled a flintlock that wasn't supposed to be a flintlock from the holster at his hip, and blew away a stray piranha pirate. The system informed him that he'd rolled a critical success. Right now he was feeling a bit critical of his success.

"If we don't get this handled," he began slowly, "what sort of consequences are you foreseeing, Miss Rodriguez?"

Tyriah tried to gulp, failed, took a sip of tea, and hacked at some tea for several horrible seconds. There it was, his temple, it was pulsing out of control again.

"We have a more, uh, immediate problem," she said, in between hacking coughs. She explained all about how they were actually standing hundreds of feet in the air, that Shanaya and her little boyfriend had already come close to flattening themselves on the New Mexico hardpan. She brought up a schematic of the insane skyscraper structure the game blocks had automatically built up, along with Shanaya's current position just thirty feet from the ground, but rising. She was presently murdering cyber pirates (not perverts or parrots or even pirate pralines) and yelling about not being racist. On the schematic, game blocks were being shipped in by the hundreds and thousands to get them even more altitude.

Tyriah opened her mouth to speak once more, but he held up a hand for silence. Several dozen coder eyes turned on him while he stood there. It was the type of moment people would be gossiping over for weeks, which would become a sort of cautionary tale to scare the fresh hires and interns.

"Nothing matters as much as Shanaya. We're heading back to plain old Swashbuckling Isles the moment I get her back. I don't want her suddenly in the ocean, or stuck under the earth when we make the shift. As soon as she's on my ship, I want us back on solid ground."

***

BEEP - BEEP - BEEP - BEEP Gavin and Danielle sprung up from their slumber on the filthy rock floor. About them the sparse bulbs flashed red. Dungeonworlders sprang up from whatever tasks they were about and filed close to one of the barred gates.

ALERT. ALERT. BROADCAST FOR GROUP ALPHA SIERRA SIERRA HOTEL OSCAR LIMA ECHO SIERRA IS ABOUT TO COMMENCE. FIVE MINUTES TO PROGRAM START.

Oh god, Gavin thought, watching Danielle roll her eyes as no doubt the same thought passed through her head. It was a strange thing to watch, all of these criminals lining up to queue. It seemed silly since nobody was here with cattle prods, shoving them into place. Why were they bothering to play the game if it didn't really help them to do so?

"Do you think the buzzing and blaring will stop after they leave?" Danielle asked him. Before he could answer, the Dungeonworld intro began.

"ROT IN JAIL YOU SAY?" a sassy female voice yelled. Her words boomed and echoed through the cavern, impossible to block out. "TO THE THITHERS WITH YOU. YOU ASK ME IF I'M READY TO FIGHT FOR MY FREEDOM? HELL YEAH I'M READY– GIVE ME A HAPTIC SUIT AND LET ME LOOSE CUZ I'M ABOUT TO GET NASTAY!"

Theme music boomed– "I LIKE TO PLAY IT PLAY IT I ROLL DICE BOOM PASS I LIKE TO PLAY IT PLAY IT I LIKE TO . . . . PLAY IT!"

Gavin closed his eyes. The song used to signal the start of an awesome watch party. Some brews and buds, maybe some weekend slut on his arm, while they watched the death scenes from last month's games to the techno-country twang of Lil Jeckle BigStalk, totally nude while his hologram rode a stripper pole in the corner. Apparently there was a PG-13 version of BigStalk as well for the kids in the viewing audience, but he couldn't imagine it. The idea that it even existed just seemed wrong.

But now, listening to it from the other side, it seemed dark. He never really thought about the words. Singing gleefully about face-fucking the skulls of criminals didn't seem right. Nor did the hot poker to the eyes bit. And then there was that bit about the only way to leave is in a body bad. That seemed at odds with the whole commute the sentence blurb the criminals were told when they were signed up.

His eyes flashed open and he saw Danielle staring absently.

BEE-DO BEE-DO a new alarm sounded. The gate began to rumble.

READY TO KNOCK OFF SOME TIME FROM YOUR SENTENCE? READY TO PLAY THE WORLD'S PREMIERE GAMING SYSTEM– FOR FREE? READY TO GET SOME REVENGE ON YOUR FELLOW LOWLIFE? TODAY'S TRIAL BY FIRE IS (a drumroll sounded) NAMAH OM SHIVAYA– DEATH BY HEART-TAKING SHAMAN FOLK!

A couple of the dungeonworlders looked at each other and groaned. But most stayed silent, their faces pale and scared in the red light of the flashing bulbs.

A black woman at the rear of the pack stared openly at Gavin and Danielle, then shook her head, mumbling something.

RUNNERS GET READY, the intercom blared.

Next to her a bearded white man in his maybe mid-thirties had followed her gaze and yelled something. But over the intercom, the buzzing, the beeping, the cacophony of Dungeonworld, Gavin and Danielle could hear nothing.

ON YOUR MARKS.

The man elbowed the woman and she looked at the two of them. Her face was taut and afraid, and she shook her head no. The man said something else, and her face hardened into determination. The two of them turned away from the queue and began sprinting to Gavin and Danielle. Danielle grabbed a hold of Gavin, frightened. He clenched his fists, and yelled.

"Get away from us! We're not part of this!"

GET SET.

The gate began to lift and simultaneously popping sounds echoed loudly from every nook and cranny of the cavern. This was followed by a sinister hissing. Gavin sprang to his feet, pulling Danielle up with him. One of the sounds was coming from right behind them!

"Gavin, I– I can't–" Danielle started, breaking into a coughing fit and almost falling to the floor. He strong-armed her to her feet, then swept her legs into his arms, carrying her in front of him like cordwood. The black woman reached him and he could see that she was holding her breath. Then it hit him. He could feel his throat begin to burn, his lungs refuse to take in more oxygen. As his eyes widened so did hers. She grabbed his wrist and pointed at the opening gate. The white man arrived a second later and grabbed Danielle from him, hoisting her onto his back in a fireman's carry. Then all three of them made a break for the gate.

RUN, the intercom blared. Popping open the rest of the way in an instant. Dungeonworlders bolted forward at a sprint into a daylit world full of topiary maze.

Gavin, Danielle, the man and the woman all toppled into the greenery and collapsed on the ground, gasping. The gate closed behind them.

"Why– what– how?" Gavin gasped with each of his preliminary breaths.

Danielle shuddered, took in a loud rattling breath, and began to wail, tears flooding her cheeks.

The man spoke first, taking his time to get a more coherent voice.

"Cyclon gas. Very fatal very fast. It keeps us from taking a sick day."

The woman gave a snort and then a sharp laugh. "I can't even imagine."

Gavin nodded, sucking in air. It tasted so good and fresh.

The man and woman both stood up and reached their hands down. Gavin grabbed him and was pulled to his feet. But Danielle rolled over and cried into the dirt.

"Hey. Hey!" the woman yelled at Danielle, shaking her outstretched hand. "If you don't get up soon and start moving, some AI droid is going to pop out of the ground and tear your heart out through your ass. Trust me, my name's Nino and I've been here a while."

Danielle turned over, saw the seriousness carved into Nino's face, and seized her outstretched palm, getting yanked to her feet.

"I'm Niemad and that's not old English, that's just my name," the bearded man smiled. "I thought you were both full of shit when you said you were guests, but that, back there, with the gas, I'm inclined to believe you might be telling the truth."

"You've never been on a run, have you?" Nino asked the both of them. They looked at her in fear and confusion.

"It don't matter none," Niemad added. "You two stick close– this is a two star promo course. Only noobs die on this run." He paused. "Usually."

***

The distant ship angled downward and this time there were no glitches. It made a smooth swoop and then leveled itself out, turned to present a broadside full of strange, wide gaping ass-shaped cannons.

"Well this should be entertaining," Marioli quipped, dropping himself flat to the back of the dying bloobie. Shanaya followed his lead, scowling at whichever programmer had seen it fit to make such a tasteless enemy.

"Yar," a strong voice called out. "We be the Pirates of da Booty and if'n you don't hand over all yer booty right now we'll be forced to blast you out of the sky."

"Okay," Marioli called back. Then he giggled. Haha - now I get the cannons. Man I kinda want to work here."

Shanaya sighed, but she smirked as well. She wasn't sure what he looked like under all of that nanotech, but he was cute. Maybe it didn't matter. Bah, who was she kidding. It absolutely mattered. "Marioli," she whispered, "Let's lay here until they come to, uh, take our booty, and then leap up and attack. I get the feeling that if we do anything else they'll just serve us up some bad dad jokes and blow us up. Which, yeah, not so bad since that'll get us into the afterlife room with pretty much whatever chill thing we want, but I'm kinda enjoying this. Let's see how long we can survive.

The pirates of da booty turned again and pulled their ship alongside that of the falling bloobie. After a few commands, bearded men with weird robot legs, mechanical parrots, and assless chaps came leaping over the sides to board the dying animal.

"Where be da booty?" one with a cybernetic eye and captain's hat asked. The skull on his black tricorn hat had a cybernetic eye as well.

Shanaya leapt to her feet and Marioli followed.

"Hey punk ass, this dying whale ain't yours to kill and..." Shanaya trailed off. If it were going to die anyway, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if someone got some blubber and meat and whatever out of the deal. Plus, it was only a game. Doubleplus, the bloobie was heading into a nosedive... and while she'd probably survive, maybe she could commandeer this vessel and callously murder its captain.

Gaming really was the best.

Then the whale changed. It shifted for a moment out of its massive, rubbery dark tones to a cascade of shifting white blocks covered in what looked like white sand. In that moment, she saw that they were actually up in the air, actually hundreds of feet up, and that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was that in that stretch of maybe a second, she saw not only the bounds of this gaming environment, a huge rectangle stretching down into forever, and part of it was in the process of falling away.

When the skin reappeared in her HUD, it wasn't cyber pirates; they were standing on a flaming zeppelin and facing off against a number of Nazi Air Force members, all clinging to the rigging for dear life. Everything zigged and zagged out of existence, and when the nazis reappeared, they were all anthropomorphic cats in German WWII uniforms. Marioli was now a mouse in a concentration camp uniform with a Star of David on one arm. In between these transformations she noted the New Mexico landscape through a hole in the game environment wall. They had to be at least a thousand feet in the air.

Her stomach flopped into her underwear and refused to budge.

"Did you see that?" She screamed.

Instead, she felt rather than heard a gunshot zip by her ear. She shot back with something that was no longer a FISTER cannon, and blasted one of the cats off the zeppelin with a roll of 6 and 3.

The scene shifted again, almost lightning fast this time, to deep space, and her clinging to a disintegrating space station or ship. A clock appeared in her HUD, blood red and reading: It's not the fall that kills you, it's the sudden stop. At first it had ten segments, with one filled in, then it had eight, with three filled in. The clock too glitched out to green, and read something else for the briefest of moments, before it was back to being red, with four segments, with three filled in.

She was hoping to look over at Marioli and scream something important or funny, like 'at least I killed a Nazi before I died,' but instead she opened her mouth and a full-throated scream came out. She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see the ever-shifting game announce her death.

When the jerk came, she screamed again, but a moment of pain followed and shocked her out of the certainty she was doomed. She twisted her hanging body to find her uncle staring down at her, holding a rope now looped about her ankle.

"I have you, my bhanjee. You are safe now."

The rope began to slip.

"You are being too gentle and cautious, Ravi. Pull her up now!" Aunt Rashmi scolded, then shouted orders to fire the starboard guns, bring her about, and give them some air, goddamnit. It was a woman Shanaya had never seen before.

Shanaya watched it all as if from a dream. She saw the clouds in the sky falling into blocks and raining down past her. Marioli was running toward her, was hopping over a Meow-Nazi, was just out of reach. Uncle Ravindra's ship traded fire with the pirate ship. She shuddered along with the ship. Her fingertips brushed Marioli's, but they couldn't... quite... grasp and hold on. She looked down even as she was suddenly yanked up, and saw the cat Nazis yowling and mewing as the bloobie whale shifted in and out of white block existence. Marioli was there, well out of reach now, and she tore off her goggles to see him, the real him, before he crashed to his doom. She saw he had taken his goggles off as well. He was cute, sandy haired with gorgeous hazel eyes and a thin but limber body. Somehow, seeing him for real made her fully realize that he was doomed. He saluted, his eyes acknowledging the fact with a sad gleam even as he beheld her for the last time.

"I hated school and had no friends," Marioli yelled. "This last hour and a half with you has been the best fun I have had in awhile."

"I'm so sorry!" Shanaya shouted back. Tears washed down her face.

"Don't be," Marioli smiled. "We'll meet again in that great Augmented Reality Park in the sky."

As Shanaya was pulled up and into her embattled uncle's ship, the bloobie gave up its ghost and scattered into white blocks. And Marioli disappeared into the clouds.

"No!" Shanaya screamed. Ravindra and Rashmi grabbed her physically and dragged her to their ship's cabin. She could vaguely hear the two of them giving orders to the ship's NPCs to disengage and fly them to the nearest ground based port of safety.

# Chapter 6- YOUR WIDDLE FEEWINGS

Niemad huffed as he half-dragged Danielle alongside him. Her face was contorted, she squealed, whined and complained incessantly. Nino shook her head and mouthed the words, "Leave her?" Gavin saw and shook his head.

They headed down a narrow path that suddenly split off left or right, but Nino held them up. She took a rock and threw it at the floor of the T-juncture, which immediately collapsed into a deep pit, filled with dozens of dildo-tipped stakes maybe twelve feet below, all of them different sizes and colors. Several wiggled affably at Gavin as he stared down. He got a whiff of gas coming up from below, then immediately followed Nino, who hopped over the corner of the trap. Danielle nearly overbalanced her savior, and for a mad moment Gavin thought the old man was going to be dragged to his death. It ended with Danielle shrieking at them, legs dangling over the edge and clutching onto Niemad. Gavin helped get her out of the trap, then helped Niemad to his feet.

"I can take her– she's my responsibility more than either of yours."

Niemad practically threw her off of him into Gavin's outstretched arms.

"Doll," Niemad said. Danielle went ramrod straight and glared at him, her face a rictus of rage. He shrugged. "Or lady or whoever you think you are. I bet outside you were some glamorous wonderful tootsie-pop of a person, best grades, best money, best friends, best life, best fucks, but here everything is real. You whining and dragging your feet is going to get you killed, and the three of us with you. This isn't that fake rich people are the best at everything life that you've been spoon fed above. Here you gotta work hard to live. And even that'll only last you so long. So hop to it. Or lay down here and die. Give us all a leg up on catching up. Be bait for the monsters."

Danielle stomped her foot. "We're guests!" she cry-shouted. "Let us ou–"

"Not anymore you aren't," Nino said, sharing a look with Niemad and jogging off in the direction of the goal. Niemad shrugged and joined her. Gavin started to, but was stopped by Danielle's wail.

"It isn't fair, Gavin. We should be on the cliffs, naked, sticky and sweaty. We haven't done anything wrong! We aren't like this scum around here– we studied and worked hard and never broke the rules."

Gavin nodded, then stopped. There was a lot to think about here, but now was not the time.

"Danielle, come on. Those two are good people and they saved our lives. We need to keep going or else we're going to die."

Danielle sat down and scoffed. "Fake news. We're guests, Gavin! They just want us with them to keep themselves safe. Prestige Gaming would never hurt us like that. They are the good guys, not dumb little criminals like your friends."

"I think– I think Prestige Gaming is having some problems right now, Danielle."

"If they were they'd tell us. Where is the evacuation, Gavin? Where are the transports? What, is this some sort of Corporate Conspiracy? In your dreams," Danielle scoffed.

The music had stopped. Something was wrong. Gavin tried the 'zip your lips' gesture, but she didn't even seem to see him. She was lost, deep in her own fury. So lost, in fact, that she didn't even turn when some horrid barbarian slunk out of the shadows bearing a dildo on a stick like a spear, complete with bits of grimy bloodstained feathers and what he took to be beads. They were finger bones.

"Maaro maaro sooar ko, chamdi nocho pee lo khoon," said the savage-looking NPC wearing a skull mask and covered in burns, scars, and war paint.

"Oh shit!" Gavin screamed. The skull-wearing man descended upon Danielle, who was now complaining about the lazy criminality of poor people in general, and punched a hole in her chest. It snapped so loudly that it echoed amidst the topiary of the maze.

"NAMAH OM SHIVAYA!" the intercom blared. "ONE POINT TO THE HEART-TAKING SHAMAN FOLK!"

He stared at Danielle a moment, and saw the light leave her eyes. The shaman looked at him and licked his lips.

Though his body felt loose, he clamped down on himself and sprinted away down the mown grass track of Dungeonworld's LABIA. He wouldn't pee himself. He wouldn't pee himself.

"I just watched someone die!" he screamed. "This place is totally–"

Dice rolled in his HUD (a 3 and a 7), and the game produced reddish rectangles to point out a pair of horizontal notches cut into the walls at waist and chest height. He couldn't have stopped if he'd tried, and he didn't know to. He heard neither the click of the trap he'd stepped on, nor the scything blades that sprung out of the walls with twin sounds like the world's largest knife sharpener. He was thrown off his feet, and felt the pain of his spine hitting the floor before the slices across his sculpted chest and abs.

"THAT'S A SHAME, FOLKS! WE HATE TO SEE THEM FALL SO EARLY!" the announcer shouted.

What? Gavin couldn't quite process what the hell the intercom was talking about. Maybe somebody further on in the maze–

He finally registered the wounds and the skull-masked shaman overtop him at the same time, bent over him and jabbing a pink silicone dildo at him. Yes, something was very wrong with Prestige Gaming. Something very, very wrong. And not just the constant dildo motif.

***

Tyriah knew, when the intercom clicked on and the laughter started, that they were in deeper shit than she'd first imagined. The nanite idea had only worked to an extent; dungeonworlders had access to shovels and were just tunneling through it like dirt. There were too many for them to stop– at least now with system resources on overload, the effects of EMP mucking up a bunch of functionality, and with AI NPCs kicking into independent character types, following programmed desires but thinking well outside what their safety protocols would normally allow. The scene between the whalers and Shanaya had been scary– the whalers should never had had such intellectual autonomy. And the fact that the Dungeonworld AI had queued its own course and broadcast was troubling to say the least. They had guests trapped in there and they needed to get them out fast.

"Ma'am!" drawled a Missouri accent. "One of the guests is in a heap of trouble."

Tyriah took in the scene before her– Danielle was on the ground, refusing to move, in absolute denial about how gone to shit the whole park had become. Tyriah sighed. Useful idiots stopped being useful at the moment that they became liabilities.

"Patch me through. Let me use the PA box to tell her to get her ass in gear and that help is on the way."

"Is help on the way?" the man asked. He looked doubtful.

"Just patch me through."

The intercom laughed harder. Then it spoke to them.

"THE NUMBER YOU HAVE DIALED IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE," it growled. Her eyes darted back to Danielle. A shaman stood over her. Tyriah groaned– this particular model of monster had been one of hers, inspired by the old Wisconsin Smith adventurer films. She forced herself not to turn away though, and to keep her voice steady and calm.

"Whoever this is, if you have the power at your command, do not kill that woman! She is a park guest and is not worthy of punishment."

"THIS GUEST IS GUILTY OF ARROGANCE AND SIN. SHE WILL BE EXPUNGED."

On screen the shaman punched through the woman's chest, ending her life. Gavin freaked out and ran, never noticing the trap tiles that Niemad and Nino had so carefully jogged around.

"And him? What is he guilty of?" Tyriah asked, her heart caught in her throat as she clenched her fist and tried to will Gavin through safely. Moments later scythes slashed him through, and the shaman began prodding him with a rubbery phallus.

"Found a kill switch, ma'am," the southerner drawled.

"Use it," she commanded at once.

"YOU ARE ALL GUILTY OF SOMETHING AND JUDGEMENT SHALL BE RENDERED. YOU WILL KNOW THE NAME GRU–" The voice powered down before it had a chance to finish.

"John Wayne, Zeus, you're scanning the course. Is it powered down?"

"Still up and running!"

"Ma'am," the southerner interrupted. "It weren't the announcer AI that I put down just now. It was a copy of an AI. An AI that keeps copying its sentient self throughout the system. Something I don't have classification to see a lot about. A new, fancy, resource-intensive boss monster."

"OOH, CLOSE ONE," the intercom said, the announcer AI apparently in charge once again. On screen the two dungeonworlders who had helped out Gavin and Danielle, Niemad and Nino, were struggling to stay ahead of the timer, the ground collapsing and falling into a three-hundred foot drop behind them. She found herself praying for their survival. If– no, WHEN they got this under control she'd see to it personally that those two got their sentences commuted fully and found their way out of that hellhole. They deserved better than that even, but it was all she could hope to give them.

"We're going with a full reboot," she announced.

Heads snapped up and mouths dropped open. A hush fell over the command room. It lasted approximately three seconds before another round of laughter came over the intercom, and a pair of security officers trotted in.

"We're recommending an evacuation!" the security officer announced.

The laughter ratcheted up on the intercom. "OH, HONEY... YOU'VE LOST CONTROL HERE, HAVEN'T YOU?"

"Shut that thing up!" she shouted, then turned to the man and woman in their Prestige security uniforms. "What are you talking about?"

"We're looking at a siege situation one level down, and we're hearing reports of dungeonworlders breaking through. We're going on general lockdown, ma'am. All non-essential personnel are confined to quarters, which are locked from the inside."

All those VIP personnel not currently on assignment, regular guest services, all the financiers and human resources workers, the hundreds of physical level maintenance workers, the nanotech specialists. Hundreds of people were now trapped in their dorm rooms, away from the ducts.

"Shut it down!" she shouted.

"We... we can't, ma'am."

"Then hard reboot!"

"OH, PLEASE. DON'T GET YOUR PANTIES IN A TWIST, CHICA."

"You keep out of this!" she told GRU or whoever the fuck he was. She pointed to the security guys, Mr. Missouri, and the hunky guy from Hitler Channel. His name was, and she didn't believe this at first, Stacey. She gathered them silently around her, grabbed up her tablet, thought better of it, and produced an actual paper notebook. She also fished a pencil out of her cargo shorts and scribbled down. 'Hard reboot. How?'

One of the security guys opened his mouth to speak, but she held up a finger to shut him up, and handed him the notebook.

'Room a level below us: main power grid. No good tho. DWers everywhere.'

dungeonworlders. Ugh. Why did they have security in the first goddamn place if they couldn't keep things secure?

"THE SILENT TREATMENT, I SEE. SORRY IF I UPSET YOUR WIDDLE FEEWINGS."

"You be quiet!" she told it, while looking about at them. With nobody else willing to write ideas, she grabbed the notebook and wrote: 'we're going. Now. faster = better.' Plenty of pained hissing and embarrassed floor staring followed. Then, seeing the horrible torture she was putting all these whiny babies through, she wrote. 'Anyone want out can stay. And get fired.'

"LET ME IN ON THE GAME," GRU said, childlike. "I WANNA PLAY. THIS IS NO FAIR."

"Yeah yeah, we'll be right there in a minute."

Two minutes later the security guys had sketched out the route (down a hall, turn right, stairwell down one floor, probably encounter DWers, kick their asses, down another hall to the main power grid) and made notes on what they'd need to do once they reached the power grid. It mainly involved shutting off all the power (easy) and then priming something to get the generator to spool everything up again.

She charged back over to the coms. "Mr. Pradthala?"

"I'm here! Having rather a jolly time of it, if I do say so." On screen, Mr. Pradthala was in the midst of completing a swing around the main mast of his skyship, with a flying dinosaur hot on his tail. On their screens, the CEO of Prestige Gaming looped around the yardarm in a move that defied physics. It ended with him on the back of the dinosaur, where he impaled it with his cutlass.

"Sir, we think we've isolated the core subroutine that malfunctioned," she lied.

"DON'T LIE TO THE MAN," GRU chided. Quietly. In her ear. Like a complete creeper.

"Smashing!" he yelled, though he needn't have done. "Go on, then."

On screen, the glitching, feathered monstrosity crashed down onto the big privateer's poop deck, where the other Pradthala family members and NPC pirate crew scrambled away, so as not to be crushed by the dead feathered pteranodon. He laughed the whole way down, and hopped off the dinosaur corpse when it had slid to a halt.

"Sir, it means rebooting the whole system."

Mr. Pradthala's trademark laughter died in his throat. "All the game blocks surrounding us... I don't suppose they'll hold firm, will they?"

The coders and techs shared a great deal of silent, terrified glances. Who would be the one to tell him? One flipped the game skin off the simulation, and got a look through several of the mobile hidden cams at the volume of magnetized white blocks overhead. Every one of them served the purpose of making the Prestige Gaming experience flawless. Under normal circumstances anyhow.

Now the construct was slowly adapting its shape from a thousand foot skyscraper to much lower geometric shape.

Mr. Pradthala cleared his throat. "You wouldn't happen to have any other options you neglected to mention, eh Ms. Rodriguez?"

One of them leaned forward. "We think that if you climb up as high as you can, there's a lower chance you'll be buried." And crushed.

Silence. More shared glances.

"You're aware Mrs. Pradthala's afraid of heights, yes?"

More silence. "Ah... yessir. There's no–"

"Give me five minutes."

Thank you everyone for having read this story. My coauthor Nolan Locke and I absolutely appreciate it. We have a crazy and terrifyingly ambitious idea with this series and I hope you'll stick around to hear it because we're gonna need your support to finish it.

GlitchWorld is the start of a ten story LitRPG saga that seeks to utilize the pyramid story-telling system. There will be four origin stories as the events of the park's failing forge both heroes and villains from the gamers within. From there their paths will cross and stakes will rise as the new heroes and villains clash against each other within and sometimes against the increasingly dangerous and failing nano amusement park. The story narrows to two books, winnowing out and eliminating some of the characters and setting up the remaining and most powerful for book 10, the final battle. I really hope you will all join us in our epic campaign - we'll keep them coming fast and powerful for as long as we can afford to.

# ORGASM: Organizational Readers Guidance Assistant for System Mastery

#

Glitchworld System: Glitchworld's nascent RPG ruleset is a Forged in the Dark system, and is freely available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. (Head to forgedinthedark.com for details).

Note: A complete system for playing this game with your friends is on its way. Please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/955400514833183/ for details.

Die Roll Mechanic:

1-5: failure (rolling a 1 gives a Plot Point)

6-8: Success with Complication (partial success)

9-10: Full success

Multiple 10's: Critical success

Effect: What does a success mean? When a PC is damaged or at a disadvantage, it can be the difference between punching out an enemy and only getting in a decent hit, which will require another success to accomplish.

  * Lesser effect

  * Standard effect

  * Increased effect

Harm:

Level 1: (decreased effect) minor annoyances

Level 2: (-1d all rolls) gunshot, laceration, minor impalement, etc. Serious stuff.

Level 3: (require teammate to assist you doing basically anything) any crippling wound

Level 4: near death. No actions possible. Medical assistance necessary immediately.

##  Important Acronyms

  * ANAL (Access Network Administrative Lookup): employee portal for finding park guests and their information, usually for security purposes

  * ASSHOLE (Afterlife Satisfaction Survey Hortatory Oversight Leisure Examination): survey of game experience before respawn

  * AR (Augmented Reality): dressing up game blocks in a digital overlay, presented on the user's goggles or injected nanite display.

  * BALLSAC (Bureaucratic Administration Leadership Level Situation & Action Center): a situation room for monitoring game progress.

  * BOOBS (Biosphere Orbital Observation Broadcast System): a holographic map device

  * BRA (Basic Resistance Amplifier): satellite cloaking device

  * CLIT (Core Lithium Internal energy Terminal):The battery/processor of the NPC

  * DICK (Disintegration Induction Chain Katana): Specialized weapon from the gameworld

  * DILDOS (Drone Interpark Luncheon Delivery Operation System): service by which players in roving game areas receive food

  * FISTER (flintlock infrared semi-auto transducing electrostatic rifle): an in-game weapon unique to Cyberpunk Alleys

  * LABIA (Labyrinthine Action Battle Initiation Array): one of many Dungeonworld events broadcast to viewers and gamblers around the world

  * LUBE (Legality User Browsing Encyclopedia): User's manual, can be brought up directly in the HUD

  * NPC (Non-Player Character): A digital character in the gameworld

  * ORGIES (Official Reviewers Guild Investigation and Execution Service): Troubleshooting committee meeting place and group of people devoted to the task

  * PC (Player Character): A guest in the Prestige Gaming Park

  * PENIS (Prestige Electric Non-polluting Iridescent Skiff): Prestige employee conveyance

  * PISS (Priority Intra-office Shuttle Service): The Wonka-vator at Prestige, used by higher ups and by those lower echelon employees during emergencies

  * PRESTIGE (Pradthala Resorts Exclusive Story-based Totally Immersive Gaming Experience): One of the richest and most successful gaming companies in the world.

  * RPG (Randomized Prestige Gameworld): the flagship PRESTIGE theme park.

  * TITS (Totally Immersive Tutorial System): a brief, in-game tutorial session assisted by a Prestige employee.

#

#  Bored? Looking for more?

For more releases from me just go to my shoddy website https://www.damienhansonbooks.com and send me your e-mail so I can tell you when the next one is coming out. Or check out my Facebook at Damien Lee Hanson https://www.facebook.com/worldofgimmok/ or my Amazon Author Page at https://bit.ly/DamienLHanson.

If you want to know more about Nolan Locke, who is definitely a person, please contact nolanlocke.author@gmail.com.

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If you are after more general fantasy books be sure to check out our friends at Fantasy Book Club @  https://www.facebook.com/groups/952373108172759/?fref=nf

For other Forged in The Dark content, check out harvestmenpodcast.com

To learn more about LitRPG, talk to authors including myself, and just have an awesome time, please join the LitRPG Group.

#  Available on Amazon.com - Glitchworld!

##  Prelude

Gruesome Gary, villain extraordinaire, stumbled back under the blast, his metallic visage strained. He laughed a villainous chortle, his dark cloak billowing about him as his dark rumble shook the ground beneath them. Streaks showed over his body where bits of the villain had melted to slag. Meredith Johnston was impressed. He'd already lasted longer than any of the others before him.

She rolled as he returned fire, doing a tight somersault to lodge herself behind the jagged remains of a ruined home. Her dark skin gleamed under the full moon's light as she checked through her inventory, readying a level 2 gauss super rifle for her next attack.

"What do you think you are doing back there, hero?" the villain called. His metallic robotic voice was filled with scorn. "You shall never defeat me, Masked Marauder! I destroyed every single one of your puny League of Loser friends and now I shall destroy you too. It is simply a matter of time."

"Or, if you want to live, I offer you mercy. Come out and bow before your new king."

Meredith clacked her rifle, activating her super speed as she sprinted out from cover.

Pow - pow - pow! Gary's plasma blasts thrummed out from his cannons. He led his target with his fire, trying to guess her moves. She ducked, rolled and dove as blasts pounded into the dirt about her. But the last whinged her and sent her flying into a tall elm tree.

Goddamn, is he good! she thought with pride. Rolling a selector in her mind's eye she stopped at her suit's shield generator, and let it spring. It bounced out around her in all directions with a bizarre boing! Gruesome Gary chuckled darkly, focused two lasers dead center and let loose. The smell of ozone filled the air, with a sound like fzzzzz.

I've only got a few more seconds before he cuts me to shreds, Meredith realized. Thumbing the selector from one to ten, she breathed out, relaxed, aimed the trunk-sized gauss rifle, and squeezed the trigger. Kadoosh! Burnt air and lead expelled out behind her as the elephantine blast struck Gruesome Gary right where she had aimed: in the two ball bearings that simulated his testicles.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! You dirty whore!" Gary yelled. The robotic parts of his metallic body glowed orange and began to melt. Some of him dribbled down his body. It cooled quickly in the night air, but the agony was plain on his partly human face.

He fired a few more blasts, then looked up at the moon. A pained grin came to his ruined and streaked face.

It was a trick.

"No! No nono nononono!" Meredith yelled. Her shield failed about her, even as she tried to sprint away from the ambush she'd spotted too late. A blast pounded her in the shoulder and she spun as she fell, still yelling.

"Oh yes, Masked Marauder," Gruesome Gary boomed. "I don't need to kill you in personal combat. I can accomplish the same by annihilating the whole damn city. Muahahahaha. You lose, Marauder. You lose and I win."

He rose up into the sky on rocket powered boots. He blazed up into the night sky. All around them flickered the lights of Cityopolis. Lights that would soon be quenched forever if Meredith didn't do anything about it.

She bounded to her feet, knocking her bruised and burned shoulder back into place with a hard punch of her fist. "Not yet you don't, you metal bastard," she called, using her suit's interface to call up an electric grappling hook made of pure energy. It blazed and sparked to life, then shot from her hand like a python striking its prey.

And missed.

"Muahahaha!" he cackled. The voice was artificially amplified so it echoed through the entirety of the city as thought he was speaking through a bullhorn.

Meredith Johnson stared down at her gloved hands. The suit was cracked and charred, dark blistered skin showing underneath. Think Meredith think! There's gotta be some way to take this bastard down.

She peered up into the sky and watched. A fiery blaze sparked in the midnight sky and then a stream of red-yellow plasma lanced down toward her. She shook off the fatigue, the weakness and the wounds, and dove at the last second to ride the concussive wave of the blast to the rooftop of the next building.

"Bring it!" she yelled, a bit of blood trickling out through her teeth. She rolled her hands through the air in a circular pattern, leaving glowing blue lines in her passage. Then she shoved both hands forward. "Skaddoken!" she bellowed. A tremendous blue-white glob of flame flew up at her cackling target.

"Gaah!" Gruesome Gary moaned. She could see him sparkle as he fell from the sky.

"Electro-Magnetic Pulse for the win! Didn't your mama tell you the bad guys never get away with it?" the Masked Marauder said, swaggering to where the half-robot tyrant had finally fallen. "You are going to spend the rest of your days behind bars."

"But I'm not," Gruesome Gary said from behind her. She barely had time to turn before she was blasted into the wall of the next building over. It had all been a Gruesome Gary copy! A facsimile! She would give him props if he weren't about to kill her. "Let me add that watching you fight my simulacrum was tremendously entertaining. Instructive as well. But now, Masked Marauder, you die!" And with those concluding words her hand reached out and an orb of energy the brightness of the sun blasted forth to finish the hero.

Damn, this boss might be the best one I've ever programmed, Meredith thought. She rolled forward, stats and mathematical equations rolling through her visor as she tested and probed the latest boss addition to the system.

"Pause," she called out. Everything froze. Behind her, a glitchy Gary jumped in digital stillness jerkily.

"Someone get me a DICK, full charge. I want to run this boss battle just one more time before I take my two weeks."

A little ways away, the moonlit rooftop scene vanished into a large white office with a ridiculously high ceiling, populated largely with computer desks littered with half-eaten snacks, soft drink cups, and empty fast food containers. Several other women stood about, contemplating the scene or the massive panel of statistics cascading downward in code form beside the superhero sim.

A blonde-haired intern stared at Meredith, gaping.

"Amber, didn't you run these noobs through the acronyms yet? Jesus Christ– dude, I'm telling you to get me a Disintegration Induction Chain Katana ASAP–"

"One DICK, full charge. Haha, you really do need those two weeks. And some hard boning," her friend Amber called out. She was a technician here at Prestige Gaming and she worked with Meredith on all of her designs and upgrades. They made for a hell of a team.

"That too," Meredith laughed. "So are we going to spin this back up or what?" she asked the rest of the gawping workers. "I mean, I've got a friend to pick up if you know what I mean."

"A boyfriend?" Amber asked. "I'm shocked! Does this mean you leave the house now? That you might occasionally be open to a night on the town? Meredith Johnston, Age of the Powered Mega Boss slash Party Animal?"

"Haha. Maybe. This guy, well, he was my best friend growing up. We haven't seen each other for a while but . . ."

"Spill it!" Amber leaned forward and demanded.

Meredith couldn't help but blush and giggle. Amber was the only friend she really had and she had a way of making Meredith say everything that was on her mind.

"I always wanted to date him."

"There it is," Amber exclaimed, doing a little dance. "Well, good luck getting your guy . . ." Amber spun around. "Alright people. Back to work! We've got at least another 23 cycles in us and I don't want to be here all night doing them. Finish by ten and the first round is on me? Capiche? I thought so."

Meredith went to get back into position and Amber grabbed her shoulder.

"Hey Meredith, you should come hang out with us tonight. Get out of this work work work shell you carry around yourself."

Meredith sighed and thought to a cute boy with long blond hair and baby blue eyes.

"Give me two weeks, my trophy man on my arm, and I'll be there every time."

#  About the Authors

Damien is a writer, a gamer and an educator. He lives in Gimpo-Si, South Korea with his wife and son. He likes to meet up with friends and roll dice whenever the opportunity presents itself and is the author of the little read and barely loved novel, How to Be an Adventurer.

Nolan Locke is also a huge nerd, and has been into DnD, 7th Sea, Shadowrun, Rifts, Ninjas & Superspies, Furry Kingdoms, Blades in the Dark, Star Wars, Aethermarked, Kids on Bikes, Blimpleggers and others, since around 1992. Only some of those are made up games. He enjoys playing and GM-ing pretty equally, which is conclusive proof that he's not a made up human.

Super coincidentally, he also lives just outside Seoul, Korea with his wife and son.

But he's totally a separate person, who exists.

