Glitchworld

by Damien Hanson

  Meredith looked pretty scrumptious too, now that he thought about it. She was into games, or at least into making them. He cursed himself for being such a bonehead; he should have seen her interest long before now. Hell, he should have stopped being so gung-ho about always having a girl to begin with.

  “I assume there won’t be any sharks,” he mused.

  Meredith’s mouth quirked a hint of a smile, and Derek failed a Resourcefulness roll. Well, that told him all the info he needed to know.

  “Nah, it’s safe. And even if it wasn’t, I’ve turned your pain settings down. You deserve a break.”

  “What’s going on over there?” he asked, nodding toward the shantytown. A huge three masted ship was anchored out a ways, and several long rowboats were headed for land.

  “Access Level 1 always has a port of call, in any gameworld. Quests, hotel stay, meals, bathrooms, travel back to the Hub, you know.”

  “Quests, eh?”

  “No!” they both shouted at him at once.

  Derek spent the next fifteen or twenty minutes walking the beach, but playing with the re-skin options. He’d reverted back to the black trench coat, although now it was more like a sailor’s or captain’s coat, with high leather boots folded over, with puffy pantaloons that really caught those breezes nicely, and a tricorn hat. He snatched the feather out of it and tossed it aside.

  By the time he got back, he was bronzed up nicely, and covered with awesome tattoos that told the story of what he’d been through. There was a spaceship in a space dogfight, a wieekoo, the necropolis, a swamp building on stilts, a guy clutching his nuts, a Gary tattoo, and others. He picked board shorts in cobalt blue, which he felt was the perfect color.

  Sigourney gave him a raised eyebrow. “Cultural appropriation much?”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t… wait, is that a guy getting his balls bashed in?” She threw back her head and laughed.

  He shrugged. “It happened. Repeatedly.”

  ***

  Sigourney stuck by Meredith’s side, not because she was worried about the possibility the coder would alert the authorities, but more because the glitch wasn’t over.

  Yeah, that was definitely the reason she hung around and watched the rebuilding process so voraciously. It had nothing to do with her guns going missing, and all the weapons disappearing.

  After they’d been over the whole series of events, and Sigourney felt comfortable changing up her character skin as well, she put on a filmy patterned wrap over a plain bikini with practical water shoes and wrap around sunglasses beneath a baseball cap of her favorite baseball team logo, the Detroit Tigers.

  To be fair to the coder, she was working her magic far faster than Sigourney could track. If she had notified the authorities, what she wanted more than anything was one more chance to snap her pretty neck.

  “You don’t have to look over my shoulder,” Meredith said eventually. “Promise I’m done doing my psycho impression.”

  “I’m worried about your health,” she replied. It was technically true; she was both worried that the Prestige employee might up and die of the wound, and was also distantly concerned she might have to prematurely end Meredith. It looked less and less likely, though.

  And if her training had taught her anything, it was that people in general were pretty opportunistic, and sneaky, and had good instincts for getting the thing done you didn’t want done just as soon as your back was turned.

  “How are you feeling, by the way?”

  “Hungry enough to head over to that shantytown and plow through whatever food reserves are hiding beneath us.” All that stuff must’ve been moved robotically, or else it would’ve made for the perfect escape tunnels. Surely Meredith could have gotten them out through whatever warren of service tunnels existed directly underfoot… probably whatever robots zipped around down there wouldn’t have people sensors, and just grind an escaping Sigourney to mush without stopping. Maybe they had kitchens periodically spaced throughout the admin levels, just like fast food stalls at the theme parks.

  “And?” Sigourney asked.

  “And what?”

  “You have a bullet wound. Which says nothing of the emotional trauma ordinarily sustained by being in a near death situation.”

  “Yeah I’m sure I’ll have a shock of silver hair up through the old fro here.”

  Still, Meredith’s mouth was tight, and Sigourney detected a hint of a twitch around her left eye.

  ***

  She was working on her vacation. Ha.

  Meredith constructed the ultimate relaxing vacation hideaway, something with resort bungalows on stilts, standing five feet above crystal waters, each of them fifty percent porch and a hammock on that porch. The perfect place to shack up with that boy you’d always been dreaming of.

  “Ugh, shut up,” she told herself.

  “What’s that?” Sigourney asked.

  Trying to quiet the horndog inside me, she didn’t say. “Berating myself.”

  “You still think you want him after all this?”

  Meredith considered. There was every possibility she could make it work, honestly. She could get him a position testing levels. She could make him a couple adorable children and he could be his goofy ass self and raise them while she raked in the money (and made sure Gary never happened again).

  “I don’t know. He needs another chance. Hopefully I deserve another chance.” She paused in the new fight against Gary. Outside, some miles distant, Gary was taking on different skins and trying out different moves. She’d shut one of them out, but another had already popped up. It was just about time to call it a day, inform admin of her mistake, and just accept that she was at very least fired. “What are you going to do once we get you out of here?”

  Sigourney plopped down in the sand beside her, looking impossibly beautiful as always.

  “Figure out who Sigourney Cleaver is,” she said. “Watch a movie. Maybe several.”

  “You don’t have to hide it from me,” Meredith said quietly. “Nobody here but us ladies.”

  “There’s someone I have to see about a life sentence,” Sigourney said. “Somebody in the higher ups picked a fall guy, and turns out I was it. The fall girl. Sure we went into countries where we weren’t supposed to be, met up with people we weren’t allowed to meet, and we did stuff nobody should’ve figured out, but every government with enough money and power does that… So the question is what went wrong, and I have to find out why. Maybe over his dead body.”

  Meredith tried not to shiver.

  “Well, get Derek over here before he initiates another quest and locks us into transporting another Stockholm Syndrome alien back to a place we’re locked out of.”

  Sigourney trotted off, and Meredith watched her body bounce and flex. It was enough to make her wonder if she wasn’t going after the wrong person. Maybe she’d been lusting after the wrong gender all this time.

  Or maybe she was just attracted to the exact wrong person at the exact wrong time, every time. She had a lot of thinking to do.

  In due course, the other two were before her.

  “Okay,” she said. “This is it.”

  Derek nodded, and Sigourney looked even hotter as her eyes shone with a fervent eagerness Meredith hadn’t seen directed her way… ever, actually.

  “I… hope the police aren’t involved yet, but maybe they are. Do you want to go over our story before this happens, just in case?”

  “Rogue NPC snatched up your gaming tablet and tried to remove all the failsafes,” Sigourney said. “In the end we chased him down before he gave nuclear launch codes to literally every NPC in this place.”

  Meredith stared at her.

  “What?” Sigourney asked. “That’s the truth. It’s what happened.”

  She cleared her throat. “Okay, yeah. I mean, a lot of the camera feeds aren’t showing anything, and I haven’t doctored anything. This… whatever’s happening, it’s actually not my fault, and it’s actually bigg
er than just us. Derek, are you okay with that?”

  Derek gave her finger guns. “I’m okay with that. I mean, am I sad we only get two days in the park? A little. Am I glad we’re not dead, and we have the chance to get out of here before any more weirdness happens? More yes.”

  “Okay then. When I tap here, we’ll get in the PENIS here, and shoot on over to the main hub. Things are pretty chaotic right now, so Sigourney should be able to slip out with our help. Once everything’s calmed down, hopefully we can get you and I back into the park, but chances are good you’ll be flying solo. I’m going to have to work overtime to fix all this.”

  Derek nodded, chewing his lip. “Yeah. Understood.”

  “Cool then. Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

  She stabbed her finger down on the tablet.

  ***

  Nothing happened.

  Derek always waited an extra ten or fifteen seconds any time his expectations weren’t met. He felt that, generally, if there was a God, they had a wicked sense of humor and amazing comedic timing because of that. Which meant he often looked stupid, but it was worth it.

  He always waited when people said guess what. He similarly stood still when he asked a woman out and she just snorted instead of saying anything. He had a sixteen percent success rate with women that way, and that wasn’t zero.

  And as the seconds ticked by, and Sigourney fidgeted and Meredith bit her lip, he knew it was going to be fine. Everything was going to be alright. Except the seconds continued to tick by, and a whole lot of nothing continued to happen. He began to worry.

  Meredith tapped at the screen again, then swiped her fingers over the surface, swore quietly, and tapped it again.

  “Mare?” he asked.

  “I don’t–” She tapped it several more times. “I can’t–”

  “We can’t get out, can we?” Sigourney asked.

  Meredith swore again, louder this time, and tacked on extra words people didn’t like, such as moist, flaps, syphilitic, clown, rotting, fuster, and worm-ridden. It became a sort of river, and Derek had to swim upstream through it while Meredith growled out the words, took the tablet in a firm grip, and went to bring it down over her knee. Thankfully, Sigourney was there to grab her by the arms, while Derek scrambled to make sure the tablet didn’t crash onto the ground.

  He fell to his knees and bobbled the tablet, then finally came out with it.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Sigourney was saying.

  “Not fine. Not going to be fine!” Meredith said, and launched into the river again. It took some time, but eventually she stopped spewing poison and just stood there, heaving. “Look, the PENIS doesn’t even work.”

  “Flaccid, huh?” Sigourney said.

  Meredith drew herself up to her full height and went to scream in rage, but soon after deflated and chuckled weakly.

  “I guess there’s only one thing to do,” Derek said. “Go grab a new quest.”

  The End.

  ORGASM: Organizational Reading Guidance Assistant for System Mastery:

  Glitchworld System: Glitchworld’s nascent RPG ruleset is a Forged in the Dark system, and is freely available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. (Head to forgedinthedark.com for details).

  Note: A complete system for playing this game with your friends is on its way. Please visit https://www.facebook.com/groups/955400514833183/ for details.

  Die Roll Mechanic:

  1-5: failure (rolling a 1 gives a Plot Point)

  6-8: Success with Complication (partial success)

  9-10: Full success

  Multiple 10’s: Critical success

  Effect: What does a success mean? When a PC is damaged or at a disadvantage, it can be the difference between punching out an enemy and only getting in a decent hit, which will require another success to accomplish.

  ● Lesser effect

  ● Standard effect

  ● Increased effect

  Harm:

  Level 1: (decreased effect) minor annoyances

  Level 2: (-1d all rolls) gunshot, laceration, minor impalement, etc. Serious stuff.

  Level 3: (require teammate to assist you doing basically anything) any crippling wound

  Level 4: near death. No actions possible. Medical assistance necessary immediately.

  Important Acronyms

  ● ANAL (Access Network Administrative Lookup): employee portal for finding park guests and their information, usually for security purposes

  ● AR (Augmented Reality): dressing up game blocks in a digital overlay, presented on the user’s goggles or injected nanite display.

  ● BOOBS (Biosphere Orbital Observation Broadcast System): a holographic map device

  ● BRA (Basic Resistance Amplifier): satellite cloaking device

  ● CLIT (Core Lithium Internal energy Terminal):The battery/processor of the NPC

  ● DICK (Disintegration Induction Chain Katana): Specialized weapon from the gameworld

  ● PENIS (Prestige Electric Non-polluting Iridescent Skiff): Prestige employee conveyance

  ● PRESTIGE (Pradthala Resorts Exclusive Story-based Totally Immersive Gaming Experience): One of the richest and most successful gaming companies in the world.

  ● RPG (Randomized Prestige Gameworld): the flagship PRESTIGE theme park.

  ● TITS (Totally Immersive Tutorial System): a brief, in-game tutorial session assisted by a Prestige employee.

  Cast of Characters

  The game system presented here is a fun one that we actually playtested during writing. Feel free to get game rules by signings up our e-mail list at worldofgimmok@gmail.com

  The following character sheets and monsters are available to you to use freely for your game sessions - have fun and remember to use the acronyms!

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  It was a lot of fun to write Glitchworld and we hope that you all enjoyed it. It took a lot of time and effort though. As that horrific gobshite Nolan (who is definitely a real person) said, “I love to write. But it is work as well.” I hope you enjoyed what we made here and if you did, please leave a review for our book on Amazon.com at (insert direct link to reviews here). Reviews let people know what you liked about it and they tell Amazon that the product is worth showing to other people so that they also can get a kick out of the book. It also tells us pretty directly if this is something we should keep writing. It takes a lot of time to make these books and we really want to keep people entertained - low review rates tell us to move on and write something different. It is about getting the most lulz and your reviews tell us how many lulz we have gotten! Thanks for reading our book and we hope to see a lot more of you in the future!

  Bored? Looking for more?

  For more releases from me just go to my shoddy website https://www.damienhansonbooks.com and send me your e-mail so I can tell you when the next one is coming out. Or check out my Facebook at Damien Lee Hanson https://www.facebook.com/worldofgimmok/ or my Amazon Author Page at https://bit.ly/DamienLHanson.

  If you want to know more about Nolan Locke, who is definitely a person, please contact nolanlocke.author@gmail.com.

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  If you are after more general fantasy books be sure to check out our friends at Fantasy Book Club @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/952373108172759/?fref=nf

  And listen in on great RPG Adventures at https://www.harvestmenpodcast.com/

  Coming soon in the Glitchworld Universe . . .

>   Prelude

  The general rule to accounting at Musky’s Tax Office was to keep your head low and stay hidden. If you didn’t you might end up working the weekend. And the weekend is when Big Brett Musky had you all to his own.

  “Get to work, Brian,” Brett Musky yelled, his wicked smile self-indulgent, greasy and cruel. He wore a large and long fire-orange power tie that screamed douche - underneath it his white shirt was stained with something red and greasy from breakfast. The man was a slob but he always demanded perfection from his employees - Brian in particular it seemed since he was the one who most often shared in these weekend ‘power sessions’. The man had a beard that glistened with oil and his hard expression suggested that this work was of the greatest importance. Which Brian knew wasn’t true because there wasn’t anything here to work on. It was really too bad he’d gotten all his work for the week done on Thursday. Everything had taken care of itself when he’d designed a macro to automate all his report write ups. Then it was just a matter of staring into his screen with the correct amount of glaze in his eyes to make sure the Musky man didn’t come inspect his work. To that end, he kept an unfinished version of the report on screen just in case Musky shoved his beard where it wasn’t wanted.

  “Which is basically everywhere,” he muttered.

  As it turned out, the macro had saved him a lot of work and he’d spent his time playing garbage app games and surfing clickbait, but ultimately it ended him here, on his day off. He surveyed his meticulously cleared, empty desk, up at the mad gleam in Brett Musky’s eye, and sighed.

  “Yes sir,” he said. First order of business: create an event on Monday to clutter up his desk. Further note: do so slowly, so as not to arouse suspicion. Second order of business: manufacture a fake girlfriend and try to beg off the power sessions by complaining that he had a solid date planned. He considered how much lewd detail to include in his fantasy date, to put Musky off the scent. He wrote ‘a low-moderate amount’ but stopped when he realized he didn’t know how much information was TMI. He’d never had I to TM.