by P. J. Frost
The remaining hours of my shift crawled by until I could finally clock out and bolt for the nearest exit.
I didn't even stop to see if Coral was still at her desk. I had to get out. I was starting to feel like I couldn't breathe. Maybe it was a panic attack, or maybe it was just that I couldn't rid my nostrils of the mildew smell of Lisa From Accounting's shoes.
Whatever it was, it was squeezing my lungs until they felt like a couple of balloons that were about to burst.
Riding home on the CTA Brown Line wasn't exactly a picnic either. Everyone was packed onto the train so tightly that it felt like none of us could take a full breath – and as usual, because I'm on the hefty side, I got a bunch of dirty looks just for taking up so much space. Like I was some kind of blowfish who was puffing up on purpose for no other reason than to be a thoughtless dick and piss people off. Meanwhile, I got to huff about twelve different kinds of perfume (which I'm allergic to and which gave me an instant headache), not to mention a veritable potpourri of body odor, cheap aftershave, and gingivitis.
The worst part, though, was when the train stopped at Belmont, the station nearest to Illinois Masonic Hospital. The doors opened, and a nurse stepped in, her scrubs covered in puke. The acrid stink of it filled the train car immediately. She kept her eyes firmly focused in front of her, doing her best to ignore the scowls and side-eye she got from her fellow passengers.
A few people near me started to dry heave, and I suddenly had a grotesque mental image of everyone around me throwing up at once like some heinous Roman vomitorium... oceans of bile pouring forth like the blood in the elevator scene of The Shining. The thought of it made me gag, and as my eyes watered, I prayed to get to my stop without losing my lunch.
There's no vomit in the game, I thought miserably, pushing my way past the irritated throngs of commuters and descending the steps of the Kimball station. There are pools of blood from vanquished foes. There is mercurial ichor that pours forth from the wounds of the Silvertooth Dragons, which can be brewed into magical healing potions. There's slippery slime from the trails of the Great Snail-Riders, and sentient ooze that forms into menacing Dungeon Bogeys and absorbs unwary travelers. Even the grossest parts of the game are fascinating and unique.
I quickened my pace toward home, eager to return to that enchanted land as soon as possible.
On the way, I stopped at Taqueria Del Sol to get the same take-out meal I always got from them: A chicken burrito with extra avocado and a side of rice and beans. By that point, I didn't even have to order – as soon as I walked in and waved, the people behind the counter automatically started making my food.
I mindlessly wolfed down the burrito on the way home, then sat at my desk and mechanically shoveled the rice and beans into my mouth. I'd long since stopped getting any enjoyment from this routine. It was cheap fuel, nothing more. Nutrients to sustain me long enough to make it through my gaming session.
Finally, I crumpled up the paper bag and aluminum foil the take-out had come in, tossed it into the trash can, and wiped my greasy mouth on my sleeve.
It was time, at last. The moment I'd been waiting for since I'd gotten up that morning.
I switched on my computer and carefully placed my headset over my ears, adjusting the mic. This had become a kind of holy ritual for me, like a priest laying out his vestments before conducting an exorcism or a pilot kissing a snapshot of his sweetheart before taking off.
I crossed myself, reciting my usual blessing: “Hail Mary full of grace, help me win this stock car race.”
Then I took a deep breath and clicked on the desktop icon. Within seconds, the game's opening screen appeared, spelling out the blessedly familiar words: “Welcome... to WarriorWorld!”
“Thanks,” I murmured with a smile. “Good to be back.”
My avatar appeared in the center of the screen, and I felt a deep thrill settle within me. I was no longer burdened with the pale, pudgy, bleary existence of Sid Coleo, an unappreciated IT geek. Now I was Sydnar, the Sorcerer of Soggoth-Nur... a Level Five wizard standing tall and haughty, draped in the flowing purple Robes of Rashnakk and wielding the formidable energies of the Cosmic Onyx.
The fertile golden plains of The Castlefields stretched out around me in every direction, the waist-deep grasses rippling gently in the breeze. Tusked Grunk-Hogs snorted and stomped in the underbrush around me, and I saw a group of low-level players chasing after them, no doubt trying to kill enough of them to effortlessly build experience points while stocking up on meat to consume and animal hides to trade. From their voices, they sounded like they were still in middle school, laughing and teasing and cursing at each other.
I surveyed the territory on my screen, blissful and content. At last, I had returned to my real home.
A lithe female figure with raven-black hair, large, pointed ears, and lurid blue war paint sprinted up to me. She carried a longbow, and a quiver full of envenomed arrows was slung across her back. As she drew near, I heard Coral's voice in my headset: "All right, are we ready to go kick some monster ass, or what?"
“Sounds like a solid plan to me,” I answered gratefully.
I couldn't have asked for a cooler in-game ally than Quorull, the Level Four Night Elf. I had a sneaking suspicion that she could have reached Level Five or Six by now, but that she had purposefully held back to keep my ranking higher than hers and boost my confidence. She was very considerate that way.
“So, do we know how to get to this Valley of the Monsters?” I asked. I knew I could probably look it up on my own, but I always left the logistical stuff to Coral instead. She could usually look those things up online a hell of a lot faster than I could. In fact, most of the time, she'd already done her research before logging in.
Sure enough, her reply was instant. “It's on an island, apparently. We should be able to reach it if we take a boat from the Sapphire Shores.”
“Cool. Where are we going to get a boat?”
“I'm glad you asked,” she giggled. “Here, let me show you.”
A few seconds later, Coral's character screen appeared in the lower right section of my monitor – displaying her stats, experience points, health and energy bars, wealth, and possessions. She toggled over to that last option and clicked on it, then scrolled down to show off her most recent acquisition.
“You're kidding me,” I marveled. “A Folding Boat? That's one of the rarest items in the game! How the hell did you get that?”
I could almost picture the coy smile on Coral's face, even though it wasn't reflected in the stolid expression on Quorull's. “I bought it from the curio shop in the Village of the Pink Mushrooms. It cost almost every gold coin I had, but I figured it would be worth it if it meant we could go check out the new quest together.”
“Wow. That was incredibly thoughtful of you, Coral. Thank you.”
“Any time! So, shall we?”
“Lead the way, Night Huntress,” I replied happily. God, had it only been twenty-four hours since I'd played this game? It felt like I'd been away from it for weeks.
On some level, I knew that everything about WarriorWorld was calculated to make the players feel that way. The colors, the designs, the pacing, the music, the cathartic violence and reward-based activities... it had all been subtly crafted to foster a kind of breathless addiction in the players, a need to return again and again like a junkie seeking out his latest fix.
There was nothing new about that, of course. Social media platforms had employed such psychological tactics since their inception, and casinos had used similar tactics before that. I wanted to believe that awareness of these elements made me immune to them, but I knew that wasn't true. On some level, I suppose I even reveled in it.
I didn't drink, I didn't do drugs, I didn't gamble or chase sexual thrills (since God knows I wouldn't have been successful even if I had, with my wide face, flabby form, and laundry pile fashion sense). And like I said before, food was not a joy to me, only sustenance.
WarriorWorld was my
only vice, and I was content to plunge headlong into it any chance I could.
My steadfast companion and I sauntered through the tall grass toward the twinkling shores, passing other players on the way as they trash-talked each other (and sometimes us) and went about their adventures. Some of them were discussing things that had happened to them in the real world that day, and it was strange to hear that in such a fantastic setting – like listening to Gandalf the Grey muse about his 401k or something.
That wasn't all the gamers, though. Some of them stayed “in character” with the tenacity of serious LARPers, doing their best to mimic the grandiose dialogue of a medieval realm. They were silly, but they knew and didn't care. It was easy to imagine these same people dressing up for Renaissance Fairs or running around the woods dueling with wooden swords.
Coral and I vacillated between the two. Sometimes we kept our speech casual and contemporary, and other times we'd be seized by a desire for campy melodrama and launch into purple prose in the style of George R.R. Martin or Ursula Le Guin.
It didn't matter which, as long as we were having fun.
When we reached the water, Coral opened her stats screen again and selected the Folding Boat. At first, it appeared to be a long wooden box roughly half the size of a person. But when she activated it, the box expanded outward, hidden compartments popping out every which way and building on each other until it formed a two-person rowboat complete with extendable oars.
Amazing, this game. Every time I sat down to play, I encountered something that made my jaw drop with sheer astonishment.
We climbed in and paddled across the serene azure waves, joking about Lisa From Accounting and watching the rainbow-scaled Ochre Fish leap out of the water in rows. Ordinarily, we probably would have tried to catch some, but our food stores were full, and we were eager to explore the new terrain.
Soon, it appeared on the horizon: A craggy island covered in hazy jungle and ringed by a wide beach. Bat-winged silhouettes flapped and fluttered above it, circling like vultures over a carcass.
“Whoa,” we both said in unison.
There was something hauntingly alluring about the isle – viscerally frightening yet hypnotically inviting, like Skull Island from the King Kong movies or the setting from Lost. We paddled faster until we got to the shallows surrounding it, and once we arrived, Quorull folded it back into a box and returned it to her collection of valuable items.
“Hey, take a look at this,” I said, guiding my character to a pile of skulls and bones half-covered by sand. “Pretty ominous, huh?”
“What do you suppose happened to them?” she giggled.
Before I could answer, something thunked against my avatar's head. The screen briefly blinked red, indicating that I had sustained damage. I saw another spherical object come down on Quorull, injuring her.
It was a coconut.
“What the hell?!” she exclaimed.
I used the controls to get a view of the source of the thrown projectiles and saw a cluster of chattering simians high in the treetops at the edge of the beach. The smallest of them was human-sized, they each had four arms and four legs – and every one of those limbs that wasn't clinging to the branches was holding a coconut. They bared their sharp teeth, hooting and cackling at us.
“Vitruvian Apes!” I said, marveling at the detail that had been programmed into them. They were flawless... I could make out every hair on their bodies, every wrinkle in their snarling primate faces.
Kolbe Tacker, you are a brilliant genius, I thought (not for the first time).
They started to hurl the coconuts at us all at once, and my screen blinked red over and over as they hit my character. I was irritated at the loss of health points, but I also couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the attack.
“I guess this is what you might call 'gorilla tactics,' huh?” I snorted.
Coral's laughter filled my headset. “Well? Are you going to fight back, or are you going to stand there and let them make a monkey out of you?”
I selected “Fire Ball” from my list of spells, aiming the crosshairs on my screen at the biggest of the apes. “Okay, Magilla,” I quipped, “no banana for you today.”
But before I could launch a flaming orb, I heard an all-too-familiar fanfare recorded on a synthesizer – a flourish similar to the opening notes of the theme from The Legend of Zelda.
I groaned. That little stinger of music could only mean one thing.
“Step aside, comrades!” Donal's voice cut in. “Time to let the chimps fall where they may!”
Donal the Pure charged forth in his spiked platinum armor, which included a unicorn's horn grafted to the center of the helmet. He brandished a glowing broadsword that looked twice his size, chopping through the trunk of the tree in a single stroke. The multi-limbed monkeys went down hard, clawing and flailing in confusion. He spent the next several seconds furiously swinging his blade in every direction, and every time he killed an ape, the experience points he gained from it briefly appeared over his vanquished target.
I sighed.
Donal. Of course. Always Donal. Because God forbid I get to enjoy the one thing that doesn't make me feel like garbage without him promptly showing up to ruin it.
Donal was a Level Twelve Paladin with a massive ego and an even bigger following on streaming platforms like Twitch and Discord. His play-through videos on YouTube got millions of views. Some gamers loved him, others loved to hate him... but either way, they watched his exploits compulsively.
Simply put, he'd advanced to Level Twelve in an extremely short period of time because he was rich in real life, and because he used his wealth to cheat shamelessly.
He paid other players to obtain powerful artifacts or rare objects for him or to harvest insane amounts of experience points while he was offline. He hired coders to create unauthorized hacks that gave him enhanced speed and strength or allowed him to circumvent difficult quests while still reaping their rewards. He ruthlessly stalked and killed other players so he could steal their coins and items... then waited for them to rebuild their characters' experience points and stockpiles so he could kill them all over again. He was a sadist, a real piece of shit.
And the more he did this stuff, the more his fans loved to cheer him on and sponsor him. They even sent him more money so he could keep putting on a good show for them. And some of them were so blindly allegiant to him that he could snap his fingers and instantly call up an army of gamers to help him with any task he wanted.
It was only within the past couple of weeks that Donal had started to specifically push in on my missions with Coral. She didn't seem to mind as much – she found his antics amusing – but I hated it. He took a special pleasure in making me look weak and stupid, and he flirted with Coral openly, as though daring me to do something about it.
I wasn't "jealous" exactly because I'd never been interested in Coral that way. It just felt like he was intruding on our time together as friends when we were supposed to be able to unwind after working at that ridiculous office.
Plus, each time this happened, his followers would use it as an excuse to make fun of me... in comment sections, on message boards, and sometimes even by walking up to my avatar in-game and calling me names when I was in the middle of a quest.
It sucked. It took me out of the reality of the game and made me feel like my usual pathetic self. As soon as he showed up, I went from Sydnar the Sorcerer to Sid the Schmuck in no time flat.
“That was impressive, Donal!” Coral commented. “Thanks for the rescue. What are you doing here? I thought you were still doing the Righteous Rings.”
“As you can see, fair lady, I have already bested that particular challenge!” Donal opened his stat screen and went to the items section, showing off the ten rings – each with a different mystical gem that provided immunity to a specific type of damage (fire, ice, acid, and so on). “And, having thus proved myself worthy of newer and more thrilling conflicts, I've come to assist you in divining t
he arcane secrets of the Valley of the Monsters!”
“We were doing just fine on our own, actually, thanks,” I said dryly.
“Nonsense, you were about to be mauled by monkeys!” Donal retorted with a laugh. “Speaking of which: If you want to collect their bones or pelts to sell at the next village, go ahead. I've already got dozens of them.”
“Yeah, and how many players did you pay to collect them for you?” I mumbled darkly.
“Their fangs can be made into necklaces and other trinkets,” Donal went on. “You could probably get a few silver coins for them. Myself, I go in search of grander treasures... namely, the fabled riches of the Empress of the Furies! I go now to find her. Follow at your own peril, friends!”
I guided my avatar to follow Donal's, relieved that its shoulders weren't dejectedly slumped like mine were in real life so Coral couldn't see how discouraged I was. I had just started to really immerse myself in this new quest, and now I was nothing but a supporting character on the Donal the Pure Show.
As we started to walk among the tall and twisted trees of the jungle, I heard a screeching sound and saw several large shadows pass over us. I tilted my view upward again and saw three Feroceraptors closing in for the kill. They were huge, gnarled lizards with colorful feathered wings and claws roughly the size of swords. Their red eyes burned with hunger and malice as they swooped down on us.
Once again, I opened my stat screen in search of an appropriate spell – in this case, “Conjure Chain,” which would create heavy iron links meant to weigh the creatures down. I figured it would be much easier to kill them if they were on the ground.
Except before I had the chance, Donal unleashed an iridescent blast of energy from the horn on his helmet. Quorull was just outside of the cone-shaped radius of the searing attack... but I wasn't, so I sustained damage, losing several health points.
The Feroceraptors were incinerated in mid-air, their charred bones and dislodged feathers hitting the ground.
“'Clever girl' indeed!” Donal joked heartily. “You may share the feathers with me if you like. I'm pretty sure I read on a message board somewhere that they have magical properties.”