“But what if—”
“Dude, are you a warrior or a worrier?” He turned back to the woman. “Okay honey, work your magic on my staff.”
The Sorceress sank to her knees and sucked Bob’s “staff” right there in the street for anyone and everyone to see. I have to admit I stiffened as I watched her work her lips and tongue like a pro. I wondered how much practice she had acquired in life. A minute or so later Bob cried, “Brace thyself, wench, for thy mouth I shall filleth!”
He closed his eyes and with a grunt made good on his promise. He looked happy as a clam as we walked out of the city through the big gate, assuming said clam had just gotten a blowjob.
“Totally worth it, dude.”
We strode forth down the wide road, toward whatever adventure awaited.
Chapter Sixteen
THE landscape spread out before us in a breathtaking display of the game’s shaders. I wondered how I even saw it at all, considering I no longer had eyeballs. And I doubted anyone could explain to me how I could feel the heat of the sun on my shoulders, or the wind blowing my hair.
“I still can’t get over how real this game feels. I can even feel the humidity in the air.”
Bob nodded as he looked around. “Yeah. I’m just glad I can feel something besides my own hand.”
“Is that all you think about?”
“No, not at all. I think about . . . about . . .” He stroked his newly lengthened beard. “About food. I think about food, too. Like a lot.”
“The food in Knarlsbro was a lot better than in the town we stopped at before. So were the women.”
“And they’re only gonna get better, dude!” We almost bumped toes, but saw a group of warriors heading into the city, so we gave each other a tentative headbutt.
It was weird to think that Bob was old enough to be my dad. I mean, his dad probably knew people old enough to actually be named Bob.
My reveries were interrupted by the sound of something shrieking behind us—behind us and above us. I turned just in time to see a wide, thin shape flying right at my head. I hit the ground as it swished over me. When I looked up I saw it turn in the air maybe fifty feet in front of us, and saw its shape as it tilted. It reminded me of a stingray, including the tail, which I could only assume I did not want to hit me.
I got off the ground and readied my sword. As it came back at us, Bob sent out a small ray of magic but missed. The creature veered toward Bob and swooped down from above. Bob jumped out of the way and I sliced down, missing the body but chopping off the tail as my sword gave a purple gleam.
The thing gave an awful, ear-piercing shriek and turned around in the sky like a sentient kite. It soared directly at me, but this time I stood my ground and I brought my sword down at what passed for a head. My sword burned with a violet light that trailed behind it as I swung, and it sliced the thing clean down the middle, each half splitting off to my left and right. I turned to watch the severed halves glide down the road and crash on the ground with an abundance of green blood. I looked at my new sword and smiled.
Bob wiped some dirt off his robe with a frown, then turned to me with a grin.
“Not bad for a Level Five.”
We carried back on our way until we came to a fork in the road. To the right a narrow path wound around a rocky terrain, and to the left a wider road led down to where in the far distance we could see a forest.
I looked at Bob with raised brows and he said, “Left? Looks more inviting.”
“Left it is.”
Bob gave me a rather pained look and said, “You got to get in the game more, bro. Like this . . .” He cleared his throat. “Left it shall be!”
“Dude, it’s not like you’re in character more than ten percent of the time. Don’t give me a hard time about it.”
“If you were in character more, I would be in character more.”
“Whatever you say, Bob. . . .”
We took the road left. I noticed my feet were getting a little sore; I had been so obsessed with buying that magic sword that I forgot I needed new boots. Well, I thought, they’re a hell of a lot better than those level-one boots.
The scenery was so beautiful. The vast expanses of nature were something I had never experienced in the real world, because there wasn’t much of it left. We ambled down the road looking left and right at the digitized displays of natural beauty, and I marveled at the huge trees and grassy hills, and breathed in the fresh clean air. Of course technically it wasn’t real air and neither of us were breathing at all, but it didn’t matter; I had never felt so alive in life.
It seemed Bob was thinking the same thing, for he took a deep nostrilful of air and breathed it out through his mouth with a happy sigh.
“Man, it’s so nice, no factories, no cars . . . But I did like to drive. I had a sweet twenty-seven Civic.”
“Oh, wow, a classic.”
“Yeah, for sure. Last model before The Big Change. I swapped the wheels so I could get airless tires, of course. How ’bout you?”
“Well, I would’ve loved to have had an even older car than that, but I just had a boring Awesoma.”
“Self or manual?”
“Self. Actually that led to my demise. . . .”
“How?”
“I got hacked by a terrorist. Hijacked my ride and plowed through a bunch of people. Cops thought it was me and took me out.”
“Ouch. That’s rough.”
“I don’t remember a thing, thank God.”
“Speaking of which, what do you think’ll happen when . . . when all of this is gone? I mean, we got a second chance at life, but someday those DA servers are going to . . .”
“Well,” I began, not really knowing how to answer, as I had so far tried not to think about it too much.
I never did answer him. We both stopped and stared into the distance, where a dark shape loomed with an unsettling menace.
“Well, you’re gonna get another chance to use that fancy sword of yours.” Bob’s tone was light, but I could sense the uneasy wavering in his voice.
A moment ago we had walked down the road at a relaxed pace to enjoy the scenery. Now, although our pace was still slow, there was nothing relaxed about us as we stepped ahead with nervous caution.
As we came closer, the details of the thing in the road began to resolve. It was roughly humanoid in shape, standing on two legs, though its arms seemed to hang lower than a man’s. Maybe only a little taller than us or maybe more than a little, but more noticeably it was wide—even at this distance it was clear that from shoulder to shoulder the thing was easily wider than both of us put together. It had long black hair—everywhere, not just on its head.
When we came closer still, something I accomplished only with an increased heart rate, I could see that its skin under the fur was black, too, like the texture and color of a biker jacket. Even its eyes were black, which made its stare unbearable as we treaded nearer. Its loins were mercifully covered, but this too was a cloth of black fur. The creature’s chest was like a pair of truck tires, and the muscles of its arms like bridge cables. It didn’t have a weapon in those huge hands. It didn’t need one.
The face resembled nothing human. The nose was completely flat, just two flaring nostrils in a hairy face, and the mouth was too big, too wide, and it didn’t seem to have any lips at all. Not that I had any intention of kissing the thing.
I checked my palm as we came closer. Health 200, Stamina 176, but Magic only 23. I hoped the blade of the sword was sharp, at least. And then I realized I had forgotten to buy a new breastplate. Facing this creature in anything less than a full suit of armor seemed pitiful, but without even a breastplate I felt completely naked.
When we came within maybe twenty feet of the thing it smiled. We both stopped dead, our feet refusing to move. Even the inside of the creature’s mouth was black, but finally we found something on it that wasn’t black: the teeth.
But the teeth weren’t white or even yellow. They were blue. The so
rt of metallic blue you might find in an insect. But more alarming than the color was the shape, horrible long points that made my palm sweat on the handle of my sword. And there were so many of them. The creature’s overwide mouth was tightly packed top and bottom with those sickeningly sharp blue teeth.
I couldn’t move, held there by those eyes, but I managed to force out some words in a tense whisper.
“Are you sure you want to do this? We can turn back.”
“I . . .” Bob’s voice was hoarse and dry. The wand in his hand trembled. “I don’t know.”
A second later it didn’t matter what we wanted. The thing charged.
Now we moved. At last our bodies obeyed us and we threw ourselves in opposite directions just before the beast trampled the ground where we had stood and lashed out with its big hands at the empty air.
The thing turned toward Bob and the throaty growl it gave chilled the very blood in my veins. Bob waved his wand like a lunatic, but the monster went at him before his spell was complete. The cluster of blue that spread over the beast was faint and incomplete, but I recognized the Spell of Slowness and sprang up from the ground and went at the creature with my sword raised, the blade glowing purple. My battle cry interrupted the monster just as it was about to seize Bob, and it turned to face me with a shot of those evil black eyes.
The monster was slower now, but not slow enough. As my sword came down, the thing swung its massive arm out into my chest. It felt like a wrecking ball hit me as I flew through the air, landing on the ground fifteen feet away and hard. As I recovered my senses I saw the thing coming at me, and I saw my sword lying on the ground closer to the monster than to me. And I knew the slow-motion spell would wear off any second.
I heard Bob shout and I saw him waving his wand behind the monster, which turned as Bob released a bolt of blue light that seemed far too weak. It was. It hit the thing in the shoulder, and though a little trail of smoke came out from the singed black hair, the attack seemed to do nothing more than make the creature mad. The thing roared at Bob and charged, and Bob waved his wand frantically and yet nothing happened.
He was out of magic.
The thing’s speed returned and it bounded over the ground before Bob could run even a yard, and it grabbed him with those huge black hands and yanked him off the earth like a rag doll, up to that awful mouth and then the thing bit down on Bob’s torso in a horror of blood and a scream that was cut brutally short.
“Bob!” I yelled in fury and despair and ran to my sword. On hearing my cry, the monster turned and bared its blue teeth at me, now red with blood. It tossed away what was left of Bob, discarding his remains to deal with me. I swiped the sword from the ground before the creature reached the spot and once in range I lifted and swung. I too was out of magic, and the sword didn’t glow as it sailed through the air and its tip connected on the thing’s huge upper arm. The blade parted the black flesh and sank in, and to my revulsion black blood shot out from a black wound. The thing gave a blood-curdling roar as I pulled back my blade to deliver another blow, but before I could swing again the massive black fist came down on me. It felt like an old tree fell on me, crushing me, breaking me, and then I saw those horrible rows of pointed teeth come in and close over my head and after a flash of pain everything went black.
Chapter Seventeen
WHEN the blackness lifted, after what seemed like both seconds and ages, the pain was gone. I found myself nestled in the hollow of an ancient tree, and I felt refreshed and peaceful. As I stretched my limbs, feeling like I had slept for a year, I realized I was naked.
Slowly it came back to me: the haunting image of Bob in the jaws of the monster; those same jaws spread wide over my face. But I had no wounds, not even any aches and pains—and no clothes or gold or weapons.
I had died.
I had died, but I had an extra life and so was reborn. But Bob hadn’t had an extra life and I feared the worst. I crept from the tree and made my way toward the street, hiding behind some tall grass. Crouched down low, I parted the grass and peeked out onto the road.
The monster stood there perhaps thirty yards away. There next to him lay the mutilated remnants of a player, disfigured beyond all recognition. But I recognized the scraps of deep blue fabric that had once been Bob’s cherished robe.
Bob was dead.
I gave a choked whisper. “Bob. . . .”
I wanted to go down and kill the monster, to make it pay for taking my friend away, but I was alone, without a weapon, and I could do nothing.
I could have gone back to Knarlsbro, worked up my Experience, got a new weapon, and came back when I was more prepared to slay the monster, but I wasn’t in the mood to do any of that.
“Fuck this game.”
I reached into the air, willed a handle into existence, and pulled the world open. I stepped out of the game.
I was done with Conquest.
* * *
I stepped into my room and went directly to bed. I don’t know how long I slept, all I know is that when I woke up I didn’t really want to wake up, and I lay there in bed for a few more hours before I finally got up.
Neither macaroni and cheese or the perfect pizza appealed to me. Neither did the amazing beer, but that didn’t stop me from drinking bottle after bottle. Fortunately I no longer had to worry about hangovers.
I didn’t even want to think about Conquest. I know, this was a game where I could live out my fantasies and bang woman after hot woman, but right then I didn’t care about that. Without Bob or Elise, I had no interest in it anymore. Who knew if I ever would’ve found Elise, and now Bob was dead.
Okay, I realize the irony here. Bob and I had both died years ago. I had never known the “alive” Bob, never laid eyes on the overweight fifty-something virgin. But I had really grown attached to the guy. I hadn’t realized it until he was gone, in fact I’d thought he was pretty ridiculous, but I discovered now how much I missed him.
As the days went on, I didn’t get any less depressed. If anything I seemed to get worse. I didn’t want to eat, I didn’t want to read Cybertronic Catgirl Killer, I didn’t want to do anything. I missed Bob and I missed Elise and I felt completely alone.
I didn’t want to play Conquest anymore, but here, in the closest equivalent to the real world, I didn’t know anyone. I called my Mom a few times, but she was literally worlds away. It was like talking to a ghost, although of course if anyone was a ghost it was me.
I was just about at the end of my rope when I remembered there was at least one person I could talk to in Verterria. For the first time since quitting the game, after about a week, I finally left the house and set out downtown to Comic Fucking Heaven.
Chapter Eighteen
ANAKSA Anderson smiled at me as I went to the counter with another issue of CCK. In truth, I wasn’t in the mood to read it. I just needed a friendly familiar face, and the comic-store clerk’s face, though as dorky as they come, was also as friendly as they come.
“Hey. How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know,” I said.
She studied me a moment. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing, just . . . I’ve just been kind of down lately.” Kind of? More like miserable for a week straight.
“Well, if you need someone to talk to . . .”
“Thank you. Though I don’t really want to talk about my problems, or even think about them.” How could I explain that I was upset because someone died in a game, when all of us here were actually dead for real. And I definitely didn’t want to tell her which game.
“You know, if you could use a distraction, we could catch a movie tomorrow night. I’m off.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, thinking a distraction was exactly what I needed. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
* * *
The next day I met Anaksa in front of the theater. She wore nice blue-gray top and a black skirt, the first time I’d seen her without a Japanese comic or cartoon character on her shirt, though I soon noticed there
was such a character printed on her socks.
We walked into the tiny building. When I stepped through the door, I found the inside was anything but tiny. The lobby was massive, and the choices of movies astounding. They had everything from the dawn of cinema to the most recent blockbuster. The latter often featured actors I had never heard of, since their careers began after I had been buried.
After much consideration, we decided on the new Bruce Lee movie.
Now, I know what your thinking. This was an actor who had died almost a hundred years before. That kind of blew my mind, too, and I think that’s why we settled on that one.
We sat down in front of a screen bigger than the entire outside of the building. The image projected onto the screen and my mouth fell open; there he was, in a whole new movie, looking as human as he ever had, even though I knew it must be a computer-generated replica. The image quality looked exactly like the film stock of the 1970s. By the time I had been born, silver was too expensive to use to make film, which by then could be replicated almost perfectly by digital video. I say almost, because I could see subtle differences in the really old movies, especially when I had an opportunity to see celluloid film run through an antique movie projector. But now the difference was gone. In this afterlife I found myself in, I knew there could really be no projector at all—everything had to be digital, including the theater and the audience. And yet now it looked exactly as if thousands of dollars’ worth of film ran through a projector every minute, projecting a scene that could never have actually been shot.
The writing was pretty bad. But this wasn’t Shakespeare, and the fight scenes were top notch.
When we left the theater, Anaksa and I walked down the sidewalk along Main Street.
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