by Justin Coke
“Shouldn’t they leave?”
“We’re slamming bugs on bugs here, give it a second.”
They waited, Hayes slowly panicking at the thought he’d come so close but wouldn’t be able to finish the job.
“Even if you fail, he still lost his armor,” Mad Hatter said, reading Hayes’ mind.
“I want to wear his shit while I gank him,” Hayes said. “And I’m tired of almost winning.”
“They’re gone, just glitched back. Execute the second script. Load the third script.”
Hayes obeyed. The screen began to twitch again, as Tigoldbiddies angled his way through the papier-mâché walls of the computer world. The world appeared as he fell through the ceiling into a cave. A cave full of corpses. Lootable corpses.
He found Teabagz and looted him. He found Mad Hatter and looted him. He found Brocksamson and looted him. He had three bag spaces left and picked someone at random. He went through and stole every dime from forty people. (Nobody carried much cash in Imperius, but money was money. Hayes was the kind of guy who couldn’t not pick up pennies on the floor.)
“Oh my god,” Mad Hatter said, voice wheezing from laugher. “They are so fucking mad. I have never seen people this mad. Holy shit, you can never let anyone know where you really live, they will find you and kill you. This is awesome. You done looting?”
“Yeah.”
“Execute script three.”
“What does that do?”
“Well, right now all those guys are staring at the closed gate into Imperius, naked and angry. Their friends are there too, waiting for you to come outside.”
“I can’t go back to Palladium?”
“Nope. The flaw to get in only exists there.”
“But ... I got through the roof.”
“The rules don’t apply once you’re inside something you shouldn’t be inside of.”
“But...”
“Don’t argue. If it’s possible, I don’t know how. I barely got you this far. You’re going to have to leave by the gate.”
“It’s closed.”
“It’s one way. You can leave now that the fighting is over.”
“And then they jump me.”
“That’s what the third script is for. Holy shit, they are livid. You better hope voodoo isn’t real. Summons incoming. If you feel any sharp stabbing pains, find a priest, okay?”
The summons appeared; his invitation was grayed out. He couldn’t accept.
“Execute the third script,” Mad Hatter said.
“I hope this works,” Hayes said.
“It doesn’t really matter that much if it does.”
“I’d rather die here than give this shit back to Teabagz,” Hayes said.
“Okay, that’s a legitimate point but it’ll work.”
“What does it do?”
“It accepts the summons every two milliseconds. The instant the server thinks you can accept it, which is the instant you’ll be attackable, you’ll get summoned.”
“Ok.” Hayes said and executed the script. It ran, a furious scrawl in his chat box, as he stepped through the portal.
A loading screen. It took too long. He was about to burst when he appeared, dead, in the attic of an inn.
“Well,” Mad Hatter said. “That didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, but it worked well enough.”
“I’ll rez.”
“Don’t bother,” Mad Hatter said. “I already looted everything. Ditch this account and you know what, let’s not create any timestamp/IP trails for anyone to pick up. Go read a book for the night.”
“They won’t be able to trace the gear?”
“Not once I stick it in a vault for half an hour. Typhoon’s customer service ticket time averages eighteen hours. Give Teabagz a little of his own anonymous medicine.”
“I want to touch it.”
“Don’t be an ass. Catch up on your Netflix. Well done. You’re the most famous villain in Mundis. Now all you have to worry about is getting away with it.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hayes spent the night watching season six of the Simpsons, splayed out on the couch and forcing himself not to log on. He settled on checking his email every two minutes. Finally, Mad Hatter sent an email.
Hal E. Sheet buddy, you really knocked over the beehive. Squalid is not only calling for the head of Tigolebiddies but they have taken the incident as an act of war and are currently trying to take Garth back. They aren’t succeeding (so far). The price for information on your name is 100,000 gold ($4,300, at the current exchange rate) and people keep starting Indiegogo campaigns to fund your IRL assassination. Thank god Indiegogo takes their terms of service more seriously than Typhoon! One made it to $85,000 before it got taken down, but I think that was after people realized they’d never have to actually pay for it due to its massive illegality. So I wouldn’t let that boost your self-esteem too much. Nobody would really pay that much money to see you killed.
Some of what I said might have made you think they found out. No worries. They’ve picked like five different random dudes off of Facebook to harass, but nobody has sniffed you. Teabagz has been terribly quiet, even to me. Starting to think this was one coincidence too many for him. I’ve been around too often when weird shit has gone down. Or maybe he’s just crying it off. If this was the climax of my end of the operation, well, it was worth the wait. This isn’t just a big deal on Swann’s Way. The whole game is talking about it. It’s all they’re talking about in Barrens Chat on every server. The Dailydot is doing a freaking article on it. God. So tempted. I have it all on tape! I could upload it to YouTube and make, like, three to four figures. More, if I spliced in our conversation. I was charming as shit.
But the mission comes first. I know that. Unless you’re up for it. You know, help pay off the tab for all the money you put into the heist. 60/40 split on the royalties. Since I did most of the talking. That’s fair, I think.
Anyway, I sat on the vault for a couple of hours. I figured that was either enough or nothing would be enough, so I took my back my tier 2 and I’m sitting on the rest of it for you.
Re: actually using the stuff. As much fun as having that legendary staff is, you can never, ever use that unless you’re about to mount up and ride off into the server change sunset. Like, ever. People track those things like they’re nukes. If you show up with one and cannot trace it’s heritage back like it’s the farking Prince of Wales reciting his family tree all the way back to Charliemange,[97] the jig is up. All the way up. Like, Brocksamson is going to be in your Marconi threatening to rat you out in under three minutes. In fact I’m pretty sure keeping it was a huge mistake that will probably lead to our capture by Typhoon so I left it in the vault. Figure I’ll pop in and steal it in a bit. If it’s still there, I can claim I’m a random thief. If they took it, well, bullet dodged. I’ll keep an eye on Brocksamson, see how whiny he is. That will be a good barometer on the progress of the investigation. Even under the Finders Keepers Rule of America, I think the social pressure to return the staff would be very high right now, even from Palladium. Even if they didn’t assume I was the thief. Which of course they would. I doubt explaining that I was merely the mastermind/accomplice-before-the-fact/long-term mole/accomplice-after-the-fact and not the guy who actually stole the stuff would be an effective defense.So far nobody has sniffed around. Not sure how serious Typhoon is about this. On the one hand, I think they have to love that this will result in tons of free publicity and make the game seem exciting and adventurous. On the other hand, they’ve got forty nerds on the verge of apoplectic seizures. That has to be annoying. On the third hand, they have to show fairness to the players who have been so grievously injured by unsportsmanlike conduct; on the fourth hand, what if they set the whole thing up as some kind of over the top duplication scam? Like, they claim they legit cannot track where this shit went as a matter of design. Even the stuff that we didn’t steal just disappeared off the server forever. They supposedly would have to shut dow
n the server and forensically rebuild the server to find out which gear was taken and which just automatically deleted when you stepped through the gate. So they have to wonder if this was a set up so that forty some odd sets of gear get duplicated, and Typhoon “replaces” the “stolen” sets in some baroque insurance scam? Or, are they lying about being able to track it? Will this be the incident that leads to a surveillance state that ruins freedom for us all? Or were we in that surveillance state the whole time anyway? Do they know it’s us but can’t bust us without revealing that they’ve been lying to everyone the whole time?
We just 9/11’d Mundis, buddy. All cause some preteen shitwit threw you in a hole. I catch myself humming “Rebel Yell.”
There are days when I’m depressed and blue, and then there’s days like this. I am high as a kite on life right now. Just hitting refresh on the server forum and giggling like a teenage girl meeting BLU.[98]--MH
Then Tick Tock:
JESUS FUCK WHAT HAVE YOU DONE
AWESOME
SCREW YOU FOR LEAVING ME OUT
TAKE ME TO PROM
—TICK TOCK[99]
Kid Twist wrote:
Email security is important guys.
But since we already fucked that up, holy shit, congrats. I’m going to be crazy busy here, but I want to hear all about it when I have time.
-KT[100] Mad Hatter again:
Don’t get on until tomorrow evening. Seriously. I know you’re dying. I can feel the waves of desperation from here. Hit the server forum if you must get your Mundis fix. DO NOT REPLY TO ANYTHING, KK?
Let’s not track blood into the Bronco if we can help it.[101]
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The forums were lively.
Brocksamson wrote:
The thieves are out there. They owe their victims tens of thousands of dollars. They might not get jail time for their crime, but I will pay to see that they get what they deserve. Someone who is reading this knows who the guilty party is. Come forward. Do the right thing. We deserve justice. We gave up too much time for our gear and our long-delayed shot at Imperius to be taken by a cheat. I and the other victims of the wall hacker have set a bounty of one million gold for the identities of the guilty parties.
Tallahoosiehooch wrote:
I’m glad you got your shit stolen. They guy who did it showed me your staff, brock. It looks goooood on a human instead of that pile of taco bell shits you call a character.
The takeaway from the reward getting that high is that you know Typhoon doesn’t know who did it. You’re letting the thief know he’s safe. Dumbasses.
P373rfl4n wrote:
h0ly 5h17 y0u 607 f000000k3d, l0lz. d0n’7 7h1nk 17 w45 4b0u7 m0n3y n317h3r 0r 7h3y w0uld h4v3 br0u6h7 m0r3 punk5 70 5734l m0r3 5h11117
Haye’s eyes glazed over and skipped past that gibberish.
The reactions ran from the “this is worse than the Holocaust” crowd to long-time enemies of Swedish Murder Machine crowing about how they got their just desserts for whatever run-of-the-mill shenanigan had caused the enmity in the first place. It was all tediously predictable internet forum bullshit.
No mention of Teabagz, Rabaul, CSI, the Thrill Kill Cult or any indication that anyone had any real idea who was behind the heist. Hell, Hayes realized, they don’t even know that the target was Teabagz. They naturally assumed the guy with the best gear, Brocksamson, was the target. Or the guild in general. Or someone just did it for the lolz.
RodCarew:
I’ve known for a long time they were watching. They know who stole this because they are the them that took it. Typhoon is a front for ISIS which is a front of Obama’s CIA ...
Hayes stopped reading there. Not really much useful information there.
He logged into Rabaul. Guild chat was all speculation on who did it; Hayes felt the strange, devilish pleasure of the smirking thief and sat back and listened. They knew nothing. He got a message.
Quartermain: I couldn’t help but notice.
Rabaul: What?
Quartermain: That Teabagz happened to be one of the victims.
Rabaul: Strange coincidence.
Quartermain: Uh-huh.
Quartermain: He doesn’t think so.
Rabaul: Who?
Quartermain: Teabagz has been on Marconi all day trying to talk to me. Claims someone is stalking him online and trying to ruin his life. Thinks I’m their pawn. It’s a pretty convincing theory.
Rabaul: I’m trying to ruin his Mundis life, that’s all.
Quartermain: The kid is legit rattled. I’m out. Once you hear real fear in their voice it’s hard to get your rocks off on this kind of stuff. If I hear about any more shit towards him I’m going to have to start asking myself moral questions that you probably won’t like the answer to. You got what you needed, that’s the end of it.
Rabaul: Fine.
Quartermain: Promise?
Rabaul: No more in-game harassment.[102] What did you tell him?Quartermain: That someone was settling an old score and that the matter was settled now, as long as he didn’t start it up again.
Rabaul: Let’s hope he lets bygones be bygones then.
Quartermain: Let’s.
Chapter Thirty
“So,” Hayes said as he hit mute on the YouTube recording of Quartermain talking to Teabagz, “it looks like he did not take your peace offering.” He was on Marconi with Kid Twist, Mad Hatter, and Quartermain. Tick Tock was off doing something.[103]Quartermain[104] took a few long, deep breaths before speaking. “No, he did not.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t really know what to do, really. I think I’ll just go to another server and level up a Paladin. Read a book is another option. It’s been a while since I read a good piece of fiction. It doesn’t usually appeal to me, but I’m in a mood for something nice and boring, where the first fifty pages is people nostalgically gossiping at a forty-year high school reunion to a thinly fictionalized version of the author.”
“Phillip Roth then?” Kid Twist said.
“He’s the number one seed,” Quartermain said.
“So ratting us out isn’t on the menu?” Mad Hatter said, desperate to stomp on any literary digressions.
“Of course not.”
“They’ve kicked you out the guild you founded. You lost Freeport. Your reputation is in tatt—”
“You don’t need to remind me,” Quartermain said. “I’m getting enough private messages that I won’t forget. But when you hang out your shingle as a mercenary and an assassin for hire, you can’t really worry about your reputation. What I did was all in the game and in good fun, and I know that. The whole point of Mundis is that it’s where we can let our Ids flow free. I don’t feel bad about anything I’ve done in game. The other players accepted that there were no rules when they logged in. Betraying your confidence crosses the line into real world shit, which I won’t do.”
“We appreciate that,” Mad Hatter said, choosing to leave the sometimes unflattering content of the tape unmentioned.[105] “I think switching servers might be the right thing to do.”
“I’m sorry about what I said about you guys. I was trying to make him feel better,” Quartermain said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Well, it is what it is. I don’t think what you said was enough to identify any of us,” Hayes said. “Though I would like to know how you knew I was a serial killer.”
“Ha-ha,” Kid Twist said, thin laughter forced badly. “He’s kidding. He’s just kidding.”
“Yeah,” Quartermain said, not entirely convinced. “There were other ways to get to him without cheating.”
“Yeah,” Mad Hatter said. “I’m more into the no-rules thing than you are. But if you aren’t willing to go in on revenge then we’ll handle it from here.”
“It’s over,” Quartermain said.
“You said we’d quit if he left it alone,” Mad Hatter said. “He didn’t leave it alone. The game is still on.”
“What els
e do you have to take from him?”
“His freedom.”
“Real life shit crosses the line,” Quartermain said. “I won’t stand by for that.”
“You know he’s doing some real life criminal shit,” Mad Hatter said.
“I don’t know that,” Kid Twist said.
“We all know it,” Mad Hatter said. “Even if you try to deny it to keep Tick Tock from bailing.”
“So?” Quartermain said.
“As a citizen of the United States, don’t I have a duty to report criminal conduct to the authorities?”
“Well, no, actually, unless specifically required by statute.”
“A civic obligation then?”
“Okay, fair enough.”
“So we’re going to fulfill our civic obligation to figure out what the hell he’s putting in that vault and busting their whole weird operation open. My money is on ISIS or some shit.”
“How are you going to get to the vault without tipping them off? Teabagz has got a lot of friends now.”
“I could have done this before, but I wanted to do it right,” Mad Hatter said. “I cheat the lock.”
“How?”
“There are only sixty problems. They haven’t touched lock picking since the game came out. Pretty sure the only reason they haven’t deleted it is because that would require effort. I wrote a script that identifies the problem and then spits out a scripted proof. The five-minute lock becomes a two second lock.”
“So we just jump them.”
“I’ll have it open and cleaned out before they even notice I’m there.”
“I’m not comfortable with cheating. I’m still clean, whatever anyone thinks. If I help with this, I’m just as bad as Teabagz.”
“No, you won’t be. At all,” Hayes said. “He manipulated you into feeling sorry for you and then turned around and fucked you with it. Mad Hatter is using a script to uncover a criminal fucking conspiracy. Two different things.”
Quartermain grunted. “I’m sorry, guys, I’m just going to take a vacation. You take it easy. I think I’m probably just going to sell my account, get my wife that car.”