by Brian Simons
>> Feed Ravager’s Rags? Y / N
Coral winced, but agreed to feed the rags. She wasn’t sure yet what would happen if she declined, and she needed them for what came next.
>> Ravager’s Rags (+) (2 pieces) consume 12 Defense.
She thrust her arm through the glass case and wrapped her fingers around the small diamond key, completely enveloping it in her hand. Plato’s spell shot toward her as she tucked the item into her inventory bag.
>> You’ve been hit! 634 Damage.
Her Defense might be plummeting thanks to her new armor, but her tremendous Spirit had probably just saved her life from the high level wizard’s lightning bolt. She wouldn’t withstand many more of those bolts. She’d have to fight her way out of there.
She pulled out an arrow and heated it up, aiming right between Plato’s eyes. It really was uncanny how the mage’s face had no creases or wrinkles, and even in the heat of this chase and this battle, no emotion on his face. She shot the arrow and it sank into his flesh.
>> Plato takes 0 Damage.
Zero damage? Coral hadn’t seen that before. Sure, sometimes she missed, but the game would say so. This time, she sank a superheated arrow into an enemy’s head.
Plato yanked the arrow from his forehead. There was no blood, only odd stretch marks where the arrow had pierced him. He rubbed his face with his hand and smoothed the skin over like some kind of putty.
Coral had worked putty before that looked much like that. His face was made of qualia.
She readied another Hot Shot and raised her arrow. The last one did nothing, but she didn’t know what else to do.
“Lower your weapon!” one of the guards said, aiming a bow of his own while Plato conjured another orb of dancing yellow light in his hand. She might survive another round of lightning damage, but with reduced Defense, the guard’s arrows would hurt quite a bit. Coral lowered her arrow, but continued to heat it. The guards approached her slowly.
When the guards came closer, she released.
The arrow sank into the red carpet below her feet. The guards looked aggravated, but they didn’t move to stamp out the growing fire. They let Coral burn at the center of her own mistake.
>> You are standing in fire! 102 Damage.
>> You are standing in fire! 95 Damage.
>> You are standing in fire! 99 Damage.
Blat ducked back inside Coral’s bag to avoid the heat. Coral worried the fire would kill her, but then it happened. The charred fibers of the carpet peeled back as the flame fed off of them, and Coral plummeted through the newly-revealed stone floor.
Shiftwalking was a tricky affair. Coral fell through floor after floor, watching scenes of players battling guards flick past her like a viewfinder reel. Each new scene was gone in a flash. Twice her nose came within inches of a wooden support beam that could have stopped her descent if she were one step off. Then she fell into the dark cavern at the base of the castle.
Embra whipped her head around and snapped Coral up in her mouth. Her jaw clenched tight, stopping Coral from crashing into the ground, or worse, through the stone floor at the base of the castle. The dragon’s teeth passed through Coral’s body without pinching her skin, thanks to her Shiftwalking through bone.
The dragon snorted. She twisted her neck and deposited Coral onto her back.
Perched high on Embra’s back, Coral yelled, “Grum!”
“Here!” he replied.
“Take this,” she said, tossing him the diamond key. “I can’t touch the floor or I’ll fall through.”
“I’m on it!” Grum said, scrambling to stick the key into the nearest diamond lock. “It’s hard to use,” he said, digging into the lock with the small pick-shaped key.
“I hope it’s the right key,” Coral said.
“It is,” Embra said. “Keep at it.”
“They’ll know I took your key,” Coral said. “They’ll come down here looking for me.”
“Let them,” Embra said. “Grum is good with tools. He’ll perform.”
“I used to be a Farmer,” Grum said while he worked. “Ages ago. Hmm. I guess I still am one.” He continued to dig into the lock. “Got it!” he yelled and moved on to the next one.
Coral heard guards yelling from the direction of the metal bars she had passed through earlier. “Grum, you have to hurry.”
“I know,” he said. “I want to get out of here too! Did she really wait for me, my beautiful Aga?” Coral didn’t know whether beautiful was a compliment or an insult to ogres. Context was hard to pin down with them.
“She did,” Coral said. “And she’s waiting now.”
“Got another one!” he said. Embra reared back on her hind legs and stretched her newly freed forepaws.
“She’s still a Dirt Mage, right?” Grum asked.
“Yes,” Coral said. Metal rapped against the bars that separated the guards from Embra’s cell. It sounded like they were working through keys of their own, looking for one that unlocked this long-forgotten chamber.
“For my wedding vow,” Grum said, “I told her she was more precious to me than all the manure in the world. She cried she was so happy. Got it! One left.”
“Surround the castle!” a guard’s voice called out. “See if the intruder had help!” Then the metal grate banged open and the sound of feet shuffled toward them.
“All done!” Grum yelled out, climbing up Embra’s tail to take a seat next to Coral. Coral clung to Embra, and Blat clung to the strap of Coral’s bag.
Embra took a small jump to stretch out her back legs and then charged at the fissure in the wall that only she could see. Guards stormed the cavern but they were too late. Embra’s head crashed into the castle wall, knocking large stone blocks free. Blat’s jaw dropped. Embra had just activated the headbutt of all headbutts.
Daylight beamed into the room as the dragoness flapped her wings and flew above the woods in a wide arc. She landed at the base of the castle’s hill, next to Sal and the others.
“You did it!” Sal yelled. His face was dripping with black sweat.
“Are you ok?” Coral asked.
He wiped the inky liquid from his face and shrugged. “I have blight sweats.”
Grum jumped down and threw his arms around Aga. “I thought you ran away from me!” she said, crying.
“Never,” Grum said. “You are the very mud in the pigpen of my heart.”
“What they have is so beautiful,” Varta said.
“Grum,” Embra said, “if I had to pass hundreds of years in prison, spending that time with you was not the worst way to spend it. I hope you and Aga find the happiness you deserve now.”
“I’ll miss you too!” Grum yelled.
The metal clanking of guards’ uniforms cut short their goodbyes. “We have to go,” Coral said.
“Save me some elves!” Varta said, pounding the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. I’ll get my army. We’ll meet you in the forest and march on Sivona together.”
Coral shook her head. “I’m not sure we can break through the forest’s magic barrier, let alone find a way for the ogre army to come through.”
Varta looked disappointed. “The elves begged for war for ages now. I’m ready to let them have it. I guess I’ll settle for getting my army ready to defend home. The Ogrelands will welcome the world in again. We’ll stand guard and wait for our chance to smash up any elves that try to stop us!
“Go to Diardenna, Coral_Daring,” she continued. “Show those elves who’s boss!”
“We will,” Coral said. She wasn’t sure when she decided that, but it felt right. For all the torment the elves had brought to other NPCs, and for all the players that suffered at their hands, this was the only next step that made sense.
“Sal,” Coral asked, “will I have time to log out and send a quick email?”
“Maybe while we’re in the air,” he said. “Even for a dragon it should take a while to fly that far.”
“Perfect,” she said. She already st
arted constructing the message to Hector in her mind. Hector, she’d write, I’ll have plenty of video for you tonight. Certainly enough to raise a few eyebrows on the Board. Domin won’t be running Travail for long.
The ogres turned to leave, but Varta spun back around and threw a large orb toward Coral. Coral caught the item and looked down at it. It was a perfect teleport orb to the Ogrelands.
“Come visit!” Varta yelled, then cupping her hand around one side of her face she mouthed, “with OgreEater.”
Coral nodded and stashed the item in her inventory bag.
“Diardenna is it?” Embra asked.
“Yes,” Coral said. “We’re going to kill the queen.”
31
Hector walked right past Domin’s secretary and opened his boss’s door without knocking.
Domin looked startled at first, then furious. He rolled his desk chair to the side, coming out from behind his computer monitor. He glowered at Hector. “Damn you, Pérez, you can’t just barge in here!”
“Sir, this is urgent,” Hector said. He sat in front of Domin’s desk and put his hand is his pocket, adjusting his phone to make sure the microphone was free. Recording would be pointless if the sound were muffled.
“Speak,” Domin said. “Quickly.”
“I’ve identified an unauthorized server in Philadelphia.”
Domin leaned forward and furrowed his brow. “And?”
“I’d like root access to the server to determine what data it’s processing. I tried to access it earlier, but somehow it kicked me out,” Hector said.
“This isn’t related to our protest problem,” Domin said, “or to the AI personality files you should be working on. Drop it.”
“But, sir, I think it’s related to both. The server may be responsible for the broken content that affected players, and it appears to be processing some personality files of its own. I think,” Hector paused. He knew what he was about to say should sound ludicrous. “I think this server is compiling personality profiles based on neural data of players.”
“Drop it, Pérez,” Domin said.
“Sir, did you hear what I just said? This rogue server is going too far. The fact that it went undiscovered for so long—”
“Do you think I sit behind this desk and play minesweeper?” Domin said. “That I’m oblivious to what goes on here? I hired you because I saw the potential for a talent partner in positioning this company for the future. I was wrong. You lack vision. What we’re doing here is groundbreaking, but you’re lost on the little picture. You care more about these loser gamers and being a goody two-shoes. You make me sick.”
“So you knew?” Hector said. He was getting nervous. He didn’t know what he expected from this conversation, but it wasn’t this.
“Let’s say I knew,” Domin said. “Let’s say I even set the wheels in motion. This game needed to find a way to get harder, fast. The more difficult it is, the more money goes in that never comes back out. That’s what we call profit, Pérez. It’s the whole reason we’re here. And lucky me, this little experiment yielded a new way to churn a profit. It’s processing player data in a whole new way.”
“You can’t just record people’s personalities. That’s a breach of privacy,” Hector said.
“Is it? Do these idiots read the package insert? It’s long, and it’s full of small type and convoluted legalese. But it’s legal. It’s a binding contract. We have the rights to all of the data we extract, including player data. We own these people, Pérez. Memories and all.”
Memories. It hadn’t occurred to Hector that the server was collecting more than personality profile data. Of course. How else do you make the perfect robot workforce? Upload the years’ worth of education and expertise of thousands of workers into a single bot.
“I’m going to the Board,” Hector said, standing from his chair and staring down at Domin.
Domin laughed. “The Board? Not a techie among them. If you couldn’t get into my pet server, none of them will. They won’t even find it in the first place because I’ll bury it deeper. You could tell them you saw it with your own two eyes. You could tell them what a bad, bad man you think I am. But do you think the word of a disgraced programmer will mean anything against me?”
Hector looked back at the door. It was only a few strides away. He couldn’t help himself from asking one last question. “Why?”
“Why else?” Domin said. He looked irritated that Hector even asked. “I’ll be the most powerful CEO in the country. In the world! We’ll be the one-stop shop for every staffing solution. We’ll have the technology to extract personality and memory from test subjects, to create the perfect laborers, craftsmen, and professionals, and we’ll make gobs of money doing it. This is the future, Pérez, and I’m at the helm. There’s nothing more exciting than that.”
“It’s wrong,” Hector said.
“You’re wrong,” Domin replied. He pushed a button on his desk phone. “Send in security.”
Hector ran. Let Domin fire him, it was clear that’s where this was going anyway. He just needed to get out of the building. There were people outside that would listen. Disgruntled players and newscasters. He wouldn’t need to get further than Arbyten’s own front lawn to get his message out. He even had proof. He had a confession.
Domin’s secretary jumped from her seat, alarmed at the sight of the company’s head programmer bolting past her. His shoes clacked against the tile floor as he ran past the elevator bank and pushed the door to the stairwell open with both hands.
He pulled the fire alarm for good measure. Anything to distract from his escape. He ran down concrete steps as fast as his feet would take him, ignoring the white button-down that came untucked from his khaki pants, and the tie that somehow wound up over his shoulder.
Fourth floor, third floor. He was getting closer to escape. Sirens blared from small alarms above every door. Second floor, first floor.
He slammed his palms against the long metal bar that would open the first floor door and lead him to the building’s foyer. It didn’t budge.
He pushed it again and again, but it was stuck. Or locked. He pounded on the door but no one came to open it from the other side.
He ran a hand through his long black hair and curled his fingers. He just needed a minute to think. Then he heard footsteps on the stairs above. He reached into his pocket for the phone. It was still recording. He pressed stop and opened a new email.
The footsteps got closer. Domin’s robotic security force was on its way. There was no negotiating with them, no explaining that Domin was manipulating peoples’ minds and stealing their souls. No pleading with the bots to let Hector free so Domin didn’t get away with it. He addressed the email to his personal account and attached the audio file.
It was a large file. It had only just started uploading.
A cold, soft hand landed on Hector’s wrist. The pliable rubber fingers concealed unyielding metal rods for bones. “Mr. Pérez,” the voice said evenly, as if the bot hadn’t just run full speed down five flights of stairs. “Mr. Ansel insists that you leave the building now.”
The door to the foyer opened. There stood Domin, in a rumpled suit and a scowl. He snatched the phone from Hector’s hands and pressed the screen, likely to stop the upload. “Company issued cell phone,” Domin said. “I’ll keep this.”
The bots continued to drag Hector out the front door of the building, where they dropped him onto the grass. He knelt there for a moment before standing up, tucking in his shirt, and walking to his car.
So much for taking down Domin Ansel.
32
“Farah!” Jack yelled. “Pick up the pace.”
The forest was full of fallen trees to climb over, patches of mud that caved in at first touch, and weird insects that flew in dizzying patterns and then died midair, spinning toward the ground with their wings pointed up. Farah didn’t want to move any faster for fear she’d run face first into something diseased.
“This is it,” L
ieutenant Kronnar said. He lifted his hand and pressed his palm against the air. An amber and gold glow lit the space between his fingers. “The elves’ dirty magic wall.”
“Now what?” Jack asked.
“Now we wait,” Kronnar said. “Set up an ambush to catch some elves and force them to tell us their little secrets. There’s a way through here, dammit, and we’re going to find it.”
Jack put a hand behind Farah’s upper arm. “Come with me,” he said. Kronnar and a handful of dwarves picked bushes to hide in while Jack led her to a separate spot.
“I meant what I said earlier,” he whispered. “We should meet in person. I can help you understand this crazy world a little better.”
“Sure,” Farah said, “let’s meet up sometime.” Just be vague, she thought.
“Any day you want,” Jack said.
“Well, school is pretty demanding. There’s more and more homework than ever before. My sister wouldn’t let me leave without finishing it all first, and by then it’s usually late. I’ll have to let you know.”
“That sister of yours,” Jack muttered. “What a number.”
“You shouldn’t say mean things about people you don’t know,” Farah said. “Sybil works hard to keep a roof over our heads.” Jack narrowed his eyes at Farah and flared his nostrils. Let him get angry. Farah didn’t care. He may spend money on her in the game, but he didn’t own her, and she wouldn’t let him disparage Sybil.
“How’s that roof holding up?” Jack asked.
“Fine,” Farah said.
“What part of Philadelphia do you live in?”
“How do you know I live in Philly?” she asked. This was getting more uncomfortable by the second.
“It’s the Philadelphia server,” Jack said. “We all live in Philly. It’s not like I asked how you like University City.”