by Pavel Kornev
Ah ha!
My spine snapped. I stood up and looked down at all those pitiful little creatures.
Worthless losers!
The pigmy in blazing armor took a swing with his fiery lash. I poked him lightly with my paw which sent him flying.
What an idiot. I’m a bone dragon!
The growl that escaped my throat made all the mortals that crowded the square shrink back.
My attention turned to the Tower of Decay. My tower. It was meant to be mine. And so it would be.
Something slid out of my paw and clinked on the cobblestones below. A black amulet. I was still drunk on my power as something clicked in my head. I remembered.
Neo! It was Neo’s amulet!
So should I risk it, maybe? Given my current strength, I could go for it. But first I had to the Spawn of Darkness to take care of.
At the moment, their whole army froze in hesitation at the edge of the square. Still, it wouldn’t last long: if I missed my chance now, the battle was as good as lost.
I ordered my undead army to set up approach blocks, then began syphoning energy, preparing for a magic attack. That’s when my gaze once again fell upon the wretched amulet lying on the cobblestones.
My head cleared.
I was an idiot! I was losing time! I only had a minute left, less even!
I had to activate the Scroll of Rebirth while I still had the chance!
The question was, could a Bone Dragon do it? The sheer horror of the idea could have stopped my heart, had it not stopped a long time ago already. I searched through my inventory for the legendary scroll and focused, activating it.
It worked!
Error!
Invalid character format!
Searching for the last correct save…
Archiving the filtered data…
Restoring the damaged data…
Progress: 30%... 51%... 75%... 99%...
The reverse change proved awful. Just a moment ago I was topping the game’s food chain, and now I was a helpless lump of flesh. A useless little man — weak, mortal and…
And alive.
My brain exploded with countless system error messages. Their constant flashing blinded me, their bleeping hurting my eardrums, their electric charges piercing my bare nerves. The Deadman’s Set fell apart and scattered all over the cobblestones; I was writhing and convulsing, naked as a newborn baby.
No amount of armor could help me now. The Spawn of Darkness were already charging. I had split seconds left to live. Where would I respawn this time?
No, really? Where?
I had no intention of finding out. I opened the menu and peered through the flashing of system messages, looking for the Logout button, then promptly pressed it nice and hard.
Are you sure you want to leave the game?
Yes / No
Yes, I’d be damned! Yes, I am!
Time left: 00 days 00:00:00
I’D BE DAMNED? You could say that.
I had been damned. I’d been cursed, killed and dismembered. Then they sewed me up together again and brought me back to life.
Which had required none of good old Dr. Frankenstein’s tricks. No bolts of lightning, no alchemical experiments; just virtual reality doing its black magic.
And as a result, a helluva lot of very real pain.
I couldn’t move a finger. Every inch of my body ached, entangled in a mesh of tubes and wires. Another tube was stuck in my mouth, pumping fresh air down my lungs. A paraphernalia of medical equipment beeped methodically all around me.
I should have died in the game. Or should I?
The thought disappeared as promptly as it had come before I could even contest it.
A small crowd of white coats came running and started fussing around me, trying to stir me back to life. The unpleasant aching grew into bouts of piercing pain. I heard a wheezing voice struggling for air — was it my own?
I didn’t care. Whatever the case, being alive IRL was infinitely better than being dead in VR. And as for pain — okay, our world might be poor on healing spells but at least it was plentiful with morphine.
Nurse! Morphine! Please!
The injection sent blissful waves of warmth round my body. I might actually go back to the world of the Towers of Power one day.
The thought caught me unawares. Somehow I firmly remembered that the archived data hadn’t been deleted during the character restoration process. It had only been archived, hadn’t it? Which meant that everything was safe there under lock and key: all of my bone dragon’s XP, all of my 100 levels, both as a rogue and an undead, and then some. Back in the game I still had a key to absolute power.
I might be delusional but I couldn’t help wondering who else my long-suffering character might become. One day I might actually find out, provided I plucked up enough courage to lie back in a VR capsule. Not in the foreseeable future, anyway. One day, maybe. Later.
Because now, I had to get living.
Part Two
The Bone Dragon
Status: offline
As some Russian wisecracker once said, living was good — but good living was even better.
He had no idea.
Living was great in and of itself, no further requirements necessary. Provided you lived and not just existed. Your every breath and every heartbeat, every smell and touch offered you the entire range of experiences, not limited to the salty taste of someone else’s blood in your mouth.
Add to this the soft touch of a breeze and the caress of sunrays. And did I mention beer? Life was a wondrous thing indeed!
If only they could all leave me in peace! Unfortunately, I was asking too much. A peaceful life was some sort of an oxymoron for me. It didn’t look as if I’d get any peace, at least not until I died. And by “died” I meant a proper real-world death with wreaths and all the trimmings, including my own coffin being lowered six foot under.
And I had no intention of dying, whether online or IRL. Oh no, siree.
Which was why I was now doing my best not to give anyone an excuse to rip my head off. By “anyone” I mean those capable of doing it to me right there and then. I wisely avoided any confrontation with the police; when the time came, I testified in court thus ensuring that Mr. Kogan and Co got from eight to twelve years of full board at the government’s expense.
I wouldn’t say I wasn’t entirely pleased to put my ex-employer behind bars — and why shouldn’t I be, seeing as he’d put out a contract on me? — but it hadn’t brought me any particular satisfaction, either. What I did feel was fear.
A sticky, obnoxious, exhausting fear.
I was more than sure that this spoiled oligarch would pull enough strings to get out on parole four years from now at the latest. Not even. His connections would have allowed him to reach me even from a Gulag camp.
True, I wasn’t entirely sure he’d be motivated enough to do that. Although Mr. Oligarch wasn’t the forgive-and-forget type, he might be rational enough to see that he gained nothing from my untimely demise. So he might spare himself the effort. Hopefully.
Another fine mess, Stanley…
Living was good, no doubt about it, but living with the sword of Damocles hanging over my head was just too tiresome. The danger, however hypothetic, just didn’t let me relax and breathe freely, as simple as that. Nor did the state of my bank account promote any leisure.
On one hand, I’d just spent several months lying in a VR capsule which meant I’d spent nothing on groceries or entertainment and I’d had no electricity or water bill to take care of. On the other, I still had some utilities to pay. I’d been unemployed for nearly a year and it wasn’t as if the situation was going to change in the foreseeable future. There weren’t many banks around willing to employ someone who’d just played a starring role in a high-profile case against their former employer. Their internal security just wouldn’t let it happen.
Should I make a career change? I didn’t really want to. I might try to find a ground-level
job and see where it would take me.
It was already a good thing that I hadn’t had to pay for life support and the following rehabilitation, otherwise I might have ended up completely in the shit. My medical insurance was nowhere near enough to cover the kind of bills I might be facing then.
Did you say compensation from the Towers of Power owners? That wasn’t even funny. They’d already appointed me the fall guy. The game admins kept the program failure firmly under wraps while the unauthorized tampering with the capsule’s equipment was there for everyone to see. They even had a proper statement that confirmed it, duly signed and rubber-stamped, so it was down to me to prove that I wasn’t the one trying to cheat the system.
I did try, but it was like banging my head against the wall. I did try to accuse my former employer of trying to kill me but they didn’t even launch an investigation. The only thing I managed to achieve was to strip my old bent lawyer of his status at the bar. They must have dug up something against him judging by the speed with which he promptly emigrated to the Promised Land which, as we all know, has a rather dubious extradition policy. There was no way I could get to him now.
But if the truth were known, I just didn’t want to think about any of it. I had no desire to exact any revenge; I didn’t want to create problems for anyone. The trial had drained me of all my energy. The only thing I wanted was to find myself on a desert island, preferably somewhere in the tropics. Say, the Maldives or the Seychelles.
As if! As I already said, life had made a grab at me with all its claws and had no intention of relaxing its steely embrace. The final straw was an envelope I found in my mailbox. It had no sender’s address on it, only the logo: VRL Inc.
An unpleasant chill ran down my spine. No wonder: a letter from the local branch of the Towers of Power promised nothing good. My foreboding wasn’t lying to me: the letter offered me to settle the damages caused by my illegal actions, otherwise their solicitors would see me in court.
“Illegal actions” I could understand. After all, we’d never found out who’d tampered with the capsule’s mechanism. But damages? Which damages?
I heaved a doomed sigh, reached for my smartphone and pressed the speed-dial icon for my lawyer. My new lawyer.
Status: Online
00 hrs. 00 min 00…01…02…03…
THE MAIN MENU of the Towers of Power met me with the gloomy silence of an empty palace hall. My rogue materialized in the air a couple of feet above the floor and landed on it softly and quietly. When he stood tall, he was already me.
For a while, I looked thoughtlessly around, studying the walls hung with shields and colored banners displaying various coats of arms. Then I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to calm down while willing my heartbeat to ease up.
John Doe, Rogue. Level: 9
Strength: 12
Agility: 14
Constitution: 11
Intellect : 10
Perception : 11
Health : 99
Stamina : 103
Internal energy : 94
Damage : 6-10
Stealth : +9
Critical damage when attacking in stealth mode, backstabbing or attacking a paralyzed target.
Dammit! I focused on the character’s name but discovered I couldn’t edit the word “Doe” to replace it with my old nickname, Shadow. The editing function was inactive.
John Doe. Here, my name was still John Doe.
I’d have to make a mental note of that.
What was worse, they’d stripped me of all the XP I’d earned after the hacker’s intervention, pushing my character back to the measly level 9. I’d have to start all over again.
The PM icon was flashing a ghostly light. I switched to its tab. Immediately a six-month old message from Garth Deathblade unfolded into view:
I’ll rip you to bits, you piece of shit!
Ooh, I’m frightened! I snickered and replied with a brief four-letter message. Unfortunately, a new system notification lit up before my eyes:
The user you’re trying to reach has been blocked or has deleted their profile.
What, my best “friend” had abandoned the game? I don’t think so! Most likely, he’d just created a new char. And I had a funny feeling that his name wasn’t Garth or even Barth this time. Not even Marth or Farth. Which meant I needed to be careful with any new friends.
New friends? Of course. Because I had to go back.
The portal’s pentagram on the floor glowed a level crimson light. I froze, locking my white-knuckled fingers, not daring to approach it.
Why? Why? Why did I need to come back here?
The thought throbbed in my temples in unison with my pulse. Still, the answer was painfully clear. And not just one answer: I had plenty of reasons to go back to the Towers of Power.
Status: Offline
THE MEETING WAS SCHEDULED for the morning of the third day. The local VRL, Inc branch took up a twenty-story tower not far from the city center. My lawyer and I were flagged through without any hassle; they showed us to a conference room and offered us a choice of water, tea and coffee.
I shook my head. My lawyer asked for a cappuccino, casting a meaningful glance at his watch. He looked awfully businesslike so I just prayed this wasn’t a fake bravado. During the trial, he hadn’t done very much — he simply hadn’t gotten a chance because everything had gone rather smoothly and without any unpleasant surprises.
After about five minutes, our opponents finally arrived: a young man with a fake beaming smile, a woman in her early thirties in a rather prim business suit whose accent I couldn’t quite place, and an Asian gentleman in jeans and black T-shirt.
First of all, the smiley one pushed a pen and some kind of form across the table toward us. It said, Confidentiality Agreement.
My lawyer shook his head. ‘You can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid that any attempt to make this information public might only harm your client,” the woman said pointedly. She removed her glasses in a thin golden frame and started wiping them with a little piece of chamois. “Such an attempt might add to the harm already done to the corporation which might in turn lead to another claim against your client — and potentially, against you as well.”
“Mind telling me who I’m speaking to?”
His question was met with understanding smiles. As the opposite party introduced themselves, blood began throbbing in my temples. I didn’t even have to listen to their names to realize that the smiley young man was the only representative of our local branch: the other two were some high-flying HQ top brass.
My lawyer immediately got himself in check. “What is the nature of your complaint against my client?”
As they began recounting my many wrongdoings, I realized that I’d been right all along about their main reason for seeing us. Formally, it was the necessity of altering the VR capsule’s design which had been the culprit of my extended immersion period. Which in turn cast a shadow of doubt on the reliability of their software and equipment. Had this incident become public, it was bound to have caused a dramatic drop in Towers of Power users, leading to multimillion losses.
And apparently, it was all my fault. Talk about a scape goat.
While two of the corporate representatives continued to shower us with tons of advanced legalese, the third one — the Asian man — kept mainly silent. I wasn’t really sure about the part he was supposed to play at this meeting. He'd uttered no more than a dozen words the whole time, sitting there with all the serenity of a Buddhist achieving enlightenment.
In the end, my lawyer grew so tired that he revealed our trump card: our statement for the police regarding malicious tampering with their VR equipment. The young man immediately beat it with the copy of the police refusal to initiate criminal proceedings.
“We can’t tell who damaged the capsule,” my lawyer announced. “You can’t just accuse my client of doing so.”
“But said equipment was his property, wasn’t it?”
> I raised my hand. “Not at all. The equipment was owned by my former employer. Who still owns it now.”
“But you were the only one who had access to it, weren’t you?”