by Ramy Vance
Sleep and awake ceased to have any meaningful distinction. Terra slipped between both states without knowing the difference. She couldn’t tell if her dreams were real; if reality had seeped into her nightmares or vice versa.
Jack’s face kept floating in front of Terra. She wanted to reach out and punch it. As she tried, his face turned dead and gray, great big fangs forcing themselves out from under his overbite. Now Terra really wanted to deck Jack.
A voice roused her from her sleep. Or brought her deeper into it. She didn’t know which. “Hey,” the voice repeated. “You here? Hey. Talk to me.”
Terra answered groggily, “Don’t know who you think I am, but I’m here. What’s it to you?” She peeled her eyes open. The room was lighter now. She could see people shackled to the wall alongside her.
The man next to Terra appeared to be in his mid-forties. He had a scruffy-looking face and a badly maintained beard. His eyes were those of a broken man. It was hard to tell how long ago he had cracked. “Doesn’t matter who I think you are,” he replied. “We’re both here. Together. All of us are.”
Terra strained her eyes to see in the dark. “And where exactly is here?”
The man struggled to sit up, fighting against his shackles. “Another world. Not space. A whole other realm. Another plane of reality, of existence.”
Terra laughed as she hung her head in her hands. “You hear yourself, man? You sound fucking crazy.”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
Flashes of the abduction fired off through Terra’s memory. The bearded man took her silence for an answer. “You gonna tell me I’m the crazy one?” he asked.
Terra still wasn’t ready to swallow the man’s bullshit hook, line, and sinker. “So, what exactly are we doing on this plane of reality? Those guys didn’t look like any Gray aliens, I’ve seen.”
“Not Grays. Worse. You ever hear about Middang3ard VR? The world within a world?”
She frowned. The name sounded familiar, but she had never cared about video games. Her sister may have been into the game. Fantasy bullshit wasn’t for Terra, though. She dealt with the here and now. Fairies and gnomes were for kids.
But telling the bearded man she thought he was full of shit wasn’t going to help. It would just end the conversation. “No, don’t think so. What is it?”
The man’s eyes suddenly lit up, almost brighter than the lights of the walkway. “It’s a VR simulation. People think it’s a game, but it’s real. I mean, it’s a picture of something that’s real. There’s a war going on. Across the nine realms. A great evil is coming. It’s trying to devour everything.”
Terra tried to keep from sighing and rolling her eyes. She couldn’t believe that of all the people to get stuck next to, it had to be a crazy nerd. “Oh, yeah?” she droned. “A great evil?”
The bearded man continued, “The Dark One…he’s coming. He’s going to swallow up everything. That’s what’s happening. He’s coming.”
Something about the silence that followed after the man’s statement chilled Terra to the bone. He sounded crazy. But he also sounded sincere. “Is there anyone trying to fight against…the Dark One?” she asked.
The man nodded, staring off into the dimness of the room as he pulled at his chains. “Yes, there’s a wizard. An old wizard named Myrddin,” he whispered. “He’s trying to convince us, to let us all know. To warn us. To warn us all.”
The man had just finished speaking when a door opened. Light poured into the room. “What the hell is all the noise in here?” someone shouted.
Terra spoke before she realized her mouth was moving. “Hey, fucker! What’s the Dark One want with us?” she shouted.
An orc stepped into the light, his eyes narrowing at Terra as he pulled out an ax. He pressed the blade to her throat. “You lot?” he asked. “You’re probably going to the camps. All the best males go to the camp.”
The orc leaned in closer, studying Terra’s face. “Hm…you look…a little soft for a male,” he murmured.
Terra leaned forward and headbutted the orc. “Who the hell are you calling soft?” she spat.
“Hm, maybe your balls haven’t dropped yet?” The orc scrambled to his feet and pulled out a scanner. A green hue floated over Terra’s body. “Not a male. How the hell did we miss you?”
“Probably because none of you knows the difference between a dick and a clit.”
The orc threw his ax at Terra. The blade hit right above her skull, nicking the crown of her head. Blood trickled down her face. “Not-males go to the games,” the orc barked. “Consider yourself lucky. At least your death will be entertaining.”
With that, the orc left the room. Terra tried to flick the blood off her face, but the ax was still embedded in the wall above her, which meant anytime she moved, she cut her skin a little more.
“You know anything about the games?” she finally asked the bearded man.
He convulsed and shook his head. “They talk about it in Middang3ard,” he said after a long silence. “The orc blood games. An arena, a tournament. Slaves battle monster after monster. There are no heroes, only victors. Only champions. Only the Blooded.”
Terra tried to get comfortable. It was impossible. A sharp piece of metal was slicing the top of her head open. “Great,” she muttered. “Blood games. Sounds fucking great.”
Chapter Eighteen
Abby spent the next few days locked in the Research and Development department by no one’s choice but her own. She had explained her goal to Creon, who countered with the very accurate point that Anabelle knew nothing about the complexities of artificial intelligence.
In short, Creon believed it was impossible. That was until Abby had shown Creon her virtual assistant. The goblin couldn’t help identifying there was something slightly odd about the way the assistant performed its tasks.
Which was the only encouragement Abby required. She called it in early that day and woke up the next morning at 5:30am—old farm habits die hard, she had joked—and had begun running tests on the virtual assistant.
At first, Creon believed Abby was thinking in circles. The first day was host to a selection of repeating experiments, which she refused to take the time to explain to Creon. He didn’t mind. A part of him still believed she was wasting her time. “Let her waste it,” he muttered under his breath. “Some of the best science is just a mistake.”
On the second day, Abby made her mistake. “Creon,” she’d shouted. “You have to see this!”
Abby had realized that her virtual assistant only operated differently when linked to a specific program running through the HUD. It was the program used to run the obstacle course. The program Abby had hacked into by accident.
Figuring out why was the difficult part of the experiment, which was what Abby and Creon found themselves working on the most. Abby had never worked with anyone before. She had assumed it would be unbearable.
As it turned out, Creon was the best company she had ever experienced. The goblin wasn’t only sharp; he was also unbelievably inquisitive. He didn’t seem interested in teaching her anything. Instead, he asked questions, probed her mind, and pushed her in a multitude of directions.
By the third day, Abby couldn’t imagine having done anything else with her life. Creon hardly talked about the project other than in a vague, abstract, conceptual sense. She sometimes wondered if he remembered they were working on an AI.
On the fifth day, Creon came into the lab around ten, carrying two plates of food, both standard goblin fare. A small scoop of bahjar, a thick black paste with kernels of something similar to nuts, and a large slab of raw vrosk heart. Abby had discovered she was a huge fan of goblin food.
Creon placed a plate in front of Abby, and she absentmindedly grabbed the slice of raw heart and bit into it. “Did you try talking to it yet?” he asked.
Abby glanced up from her workstation as Creon mimed wiping his face to Abby, who quickly cleaned the vrosk blood off her chin. “What do you mean, ‘a
sk it a question?’”
Creon pointed at her screen. “We keep just running search questions to the program and taking notes on how it’s processing information. But that’s not what we do to each other. If we’re trying to crack intelligence, maybe we need to treat it like an intelligent creature.”
Abby finished off her vrosk heart and played with the pile of bahjar. “That’s not a bad idea,” she mused. “Wouldn’t hurt to find out. I got an idea.”
She whirled over to the other side of the lab, grabbed a holoprojector, and tossed it onto the floor. Then she uploaded her assistant into the projector, closed every firewall she had open, and turned the assistant on.
Creon stood behind her, watching her work. “Why did you turn off the firewalls? That’s not exactly the wisest decision. There’s a lot of classified information on our servers.”
Abby got up from her chair and approached the holoprojector. “Trust deserves trust,” she offered. “Gotta get off to a good start. You know, proper introductions and all. ‘Sides, we already broke into the system. If we’re getting fired, we already earned it.”
Creon chewed the gristle off of his vrosk heart and spat a piece of fat into his bahjar. Abby hadn’t picked up that particular goblin habit yet. “Makes sense,” he murmured as he went back to his seat and watched the projection. “I believe you should have the honor of greeting our guest.”
Abby turned back to the holoprojector, where two digital eyes had just opened. “Uh, hi. Name’s Abby-Lynn, what’s yours?” she asked.
The eyes closed for a second. Then they disappeared, to be replaced by the answer, “I don’t know. I don’t think I have one yet. Should I have a name?”
Creon’s jaw dropped as he scooted his chair closer to the holoprojector. “And there we fucking have it,” he whispered, in awe of what stood before him.
A human girl from the farms of Utah and a goblin who had managed to escape the orc slave mines had created the first form of non-organic life.
Neither Abby nor Creon had time to celebrate the advances in artificial intelligence they had stumbled upon. The next day, Anabelle called for her team to assemble in the barracks. Something had come to her attention that needed to be addressed.
Abby was told to bring the AI if it had been finished. She loaded the program back onto her smartwatch and took it with her to the barracks.
The three recruits were waiting with one other recruit named Blackwell. Abby didn’t see Anabelle anywhere and figured it was about time she started with the introductions. They would be working together, after all.
Abby strolled up to Blackwell, extended her hand, and repeated the gesture with the other three: Stinsons, Pablo, and Sam. All of them were scanning the barracks for Anabelle, though Blackwell didn’t appear agitated. Abby suspected he’d be the best one to keep talking to.
She sat next to Blackwell and asked, “So, what’s all this about? Didn’t get many details when I got the call.”
Blackwell glanced at the clock on the wall. “Hm, guess there wasn’t time to give us any real details. I have no idea. Got the call and came as soon as I did. We’ll probably be briefed in a few minutes anyway.
Just then, Anabelle stormed into the room, dressed like she had just stepped out of a military fashion show. Abby had no idea how the recruits and Anabelle were wearing the same uniform. Anabelle rocked it in a way the others didn’t. Probably something that came from years of being a model.
“All right, everyone here?” Anabelle barked.
Blackwell and the recruits jumped to their feet. When Abby slowly stood, she peeked around the queue of soldiers to wave at Anabelle.
The elf couldn’t resist a small smile in Abby’s direction as she strode past the other recruits. “Looks like we finally got something,” Anabelle informed them. “We have reports of the same energy disturbance that accompanied the two Dark Gates we’ve already witnessed.”
Abby remembered the way the air had felt when the Gate opened on her farm. Like something hot and evil had stripped the life out of the air. She wanted to make sure another Gate like that never opened up again.
Anabelle was still talking, and Abby kicked herself for zoning out. “We’re trying to find its exact location at the moment, but until then, I’m going to need you all to get geared up,” Anabelle commanded before turning her attention to Abby. “Did you finish the AI?” she asked.
Abby pointed at her watch, grinning. “Yeah, we finished working on it a day or two ago,” she said, feeling a rush of excitement. “All I have to do is upload it to their exosuits and HUDs.”
“To both of them? Isn’t that redundant?”
Abby shook her head as she hurried over to the exosuits in the corner of the barracks. Anabelle and Blackwell followed while the other recruits hung back timidly. “That’s what I thought at first too, but me and Creon got a chance to peek at them suits and found a couple of issues overlooked by Roy’s boys.”
A sly, triumphant smirk spread over Anabelle’s face. “Oh, Roy’s department missed something?” She sneered. “That’s good to know.”
“No offense, but whoever’s messing around with these suits ain’t looking too hard. There were tons of tweaks to get these babies running smoothly. And they installed a neural compensator to help that no one ever turned on. Anyways, that’s what we’re hooking the AI up to.”
Anabelle kicked one of the exosuits lightly. “Sounds kinda dangerous to let an AI connect to anything concerning neurons, right?” she asked.
“Nah, he’s an all right guy. ‘Sides, neural compensator’s just a fancy way to say ‘electric jolty thing that makes sure you don’t fall over.’ Anyway, ‘bout time you guys met our new friend. Get over here.”
The recruits left their safe space by the beds, looking around uneasily when they joined with the rest of the team as Abby held her smartwatch up for everyone to see. She hit a button and a holographic display popped up. A 3D image of a paperclip with large eyes, holding a coffee cup shimmered into existence.
“Meet Martin.”
Anabelle stared at the paperclip, which matched her stare, although with a noticeably more annoyed expression. “A paperclip?” she asked.
“You said to make it user friendly.”
“And Martin?”
Abby shrugged as Martin sipped from his cup of coffee. “Myrddin did a survey, and people felt safe with the name. Don’t ask me. Big boss says name him Martin, it’s the least I can do. I’m just a programmer.”
Blackwell came up to Martin and took a long look at the paperclip. “And this…paperclip is going to help us?” he asked.
Martin drained the last of his coffee, held his cup out, and a French press appeared to pour him another cup. “Uh, last time I checked, I was a computer program that processes information that your brain takes a decade to dream of, within a fraction of a nanosecond, so, uh, yeah, I think I can help.” Martin yawned.
“Huh. He’s a little…rough around the edges.”
Abby closed the holograph using her watch. “Oh, sorry, he’s still trying out personalities,” she explained. “Though he seems pretty settled on arrogant, crotchety drunk genius. He’s a sweetheart deep down, though. Anyways, let me get him all uploaded.”
She swung down her HUD and started typing away on a keyboard projected from her watch. “All right. Martin’s live,” she said.
Anabelle jerked her thumb at the exosuits. “All right, everyone get loaded up. We got a Dark Gate to shut down.”
Chapter Nineteen
Abby, Anabelle, and the recruits sat quietly aboard the helicopter taking them to the location of the Dark Gate. Anabelle was attempting to rally the troops, but it seemed as though nobody was taking notice. Nerves, most likely. Other than Blackwell and Anabelle, the other recruits hadn’t seen combat before.
As silence fell within the copter, Anabelle stood and pulled out a large canvas bag. She dug inside and retrieved a glowing cylindrical battery. “Surprise time,” she said. “I know that your s
uits have been reconfigured to deal with the Dark Gate, but just to be safe, we have some special batteries for you. Proton packs. Slam these in if your suits go down, and you’ll be back on your feet. Also, the batteries and mods on your suits should allow a lot more movement, but make no mistake, they’re still cumbersome.”
Blackwell took the proton pack and weighed it in his hand. “Not a bad idea.”
Anabelle snatched the proton pack back and handed it to one of the other recruits. “Of course, it’s not a bad idea. It’s my idea. Better to be safe than sorry.”
A loud knock came from the front of the helicopter. Abby’s eyes widened as she stood. “Great, we’re almost there. Everyone get ready for the jump.”
The recruits were in their exosuits, and Anabelle was relieved that it only took them a couple minutes to get in and out of them now—a task that was much less arduous than before. Less arduous, but still not easy.
Abby observed the recruits as they prepared, wishing she had something to do instead of watching everyone else. All she wore was a light armored suit that reminded her of SWAT team gear. Granted, she was meant to stay far from the action and monitor the situation with her drones, but still, an orc could break through the line and get at her. She really wished she had something a bit more meaty on her.
But she had her drones. They sat ready for use on the floor of the helicopter.
Anabelle was noticeably excited. Her eyes had lost her usual droll, businesslike veneer. She had fight in her, a want for combat.
Another knock came from the front of the helicopter. “Jump time!” Anabelle shouted as she opened the side door.
Abby stared around frantically. Everyone else had exosuits for the jump. She was the only one who didn’t have a parachute. “How am I getting out of this thing?”
The other recruits were already at the door. Blackwell jumped out, shouting loudly, his voice quickly cut off by the wind. The next recruit took their place and jumped.