Otherworld

by Jason Segel

  Carole is quiet. “The person who does will be very lucky,” she finally says.

  How would she know? She met me less than two days ago. I’m about to say just that when Gorog begins running. Then I realize why: there’s sunlight up ahead. I start to sprint too, praying the light won’t vanish before I can catch up with it. The tunnel widens as I run. Finally the ceiling disappears and I stop. I’m standing in a lush garden at the opening of an enormous canyon. Just ahead of us, red rock walls rise thousands of feet above our heads. They’re riddled with pockmarks and what appear to be hundreds of small caves.

  Between the canyon walls lies a grassy open space. Here in the garden, tree branches droop with purple, red and golden globes, and the ground is strewn with fallen fruit. A troop of monkeys lounges in the patches of shade beneath the trees. They’re watching us intently. Given the homicidal nature of Otherworld’s beasts, I should probably keep an eye on them. But right now they can’t compete for my attention.

  Ahead of us, at the end of the canyon, lies the entrance to a glittering city. That’s no exaggeration. The place is actually glittering, as though its walls are spackled with precious stones. At its center, a golden temple rises far above the other structures. I see no sign of humans anywhere. The only sound I hear is that of the monkeys munching on fruit.

  As far as I can tell, the only way to reach the city is to walk through a narrow meadow that stretches for at least half a mile between the canyon’s two walls.

  “I’m not going out there. It’s a trap,” Carole says. I’m inclined to believe her. Finally we’re somewhere that actually resembles a video game environment. In the original Otherworld, everything was against you. I prefer that to Imra. As brutal as it sounds, at least you knew where you stood.

  “Definitely a trap,” Gorog agrees. “And those monkeys don’t look very friendly, either.”

  My eyes cut back to the beasts on the ground. They’re fat from the fruit, but they’re not all that large. If they stood on their hind legs, they’d probably reach waist high. The fur on their bodies is dark brown, and puffs of golden hair form manes around faces with yellow eyes that appear eerily intelligent. I see no evidence of sharp teeth or claws. But there are several dozen of them—enough to hold us down and gnaw us to death if they like.

  I suspect the monkeys understood Gorog’s words. One of the tribe stands upright and approaches us, his front paws closed into fists. He’s much larger than his companions, with a face that’s disturbingly humanlike. I draw my dagger and he smiles. His teeth are those of a plant eater—I’m relieved there’s not an incisor in sight.

  The creature stops a few feet away and looks at us each in turn. Then he seems to settle on me. He walks forward with his hands extended. He opens his fingers to reveal fistfuls of diamonds.

  “Take them,” he says, and I feel myself recoil instinctively. He’s not a Beast like the others. He’s one of the Children.

  “No thank you, I don’t accept gifts from Children,” I tell him. “And my mom says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.” A shadow passes over the Child’s face. He wasn’t expecting me to know about his kind. I watch him struggle to keep his smile in place.

  “I only want to help you,” the Child insists. “You will need currency in the lands to come. There are more of these in the city. You may gather as many as you like before you leave.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what would I buy with them?” I ask. “Will we pass through a gift shop as we exit the realm?”

  “The diamonds will purchase weapons, land, companionship,” says the Child. “Whatever you desire. Now that you’ve left Imra, such things won’t be free.”

  “Yeah, thanks but no thanks,” I tell him again. I know a setup when I see one. And I’ve also watched enough YouTube clips to know better than to trust a monkey.

  “Hell, I’ll take them if you don’t want them,” Gorog says gamely, reaching out a hand.

  “Don’t!” I try to warn him, but he’s already accepted the jewels. They cascade like a twinkling waterfall from the Child’s fist into the ogre’s waiting palm.

  There’s suddenly a glimmer in Gorog’s eye. Something’s come over him—he seems strangely intoxicated. Then I remember his rant about Otherworld gear. He couldn’t even imagine raising three thousand dollars. Now he’s got a handful of diamonds worth a hundred times that amount. “You say there are more of these in Mammon?” Gorog asks the Child.

  “More than you can imagine,” the creature tells him. “Enough to make you the richest guest in Otherworld.”

  “Sounds good to me,” says Gorog. “Thanks for the tip.”

  “What are you doing?” I demand as he pushes past me, heading for the valley that lies between us and Mammon. “Have you lost your mind? He’s sending you into a trap!”

  “So?” Gorog says without looking back. “It’s just a game. What’s it going to hurt to find out?”

  I catch Carole’s eye. Gorog doesn’t know that Otherworld might not be a game for us. We should have told him.

  “Hey, Gorog, wait! There’s something you should know!” Carole yells after him, grabbing at his arm. He yanks it away from her so hard that she falls to the ground.

  I help Carole up, and we watch as the ogre marches into the canyon. He’s barely a dozen yards inside when something shoots out from one of the caves in the canyon wall. Gorog yelps loudly as an arrow lodges in his shoulder. Before there’s time to react, several more follow in quick succession, hitting Gorog in the chest and neck. The archer’s too far away for the wounds to prove fatal, but they’re not paper cuts, either. Confused and disoriented, Gorog spins in circles, desperately trying to pull out the arrows he can’t quite reach.

  A hunched, emaciated creature appears at the mouth of the cave. It’s covered head to toe in red ocher, which helps it blend into the rocks. The thing’s human in shape, which only makes it more terrifying.

  Carole gasps. “Oh my God, what is that?”

  “Don’t you recognize your own kind?” The Child has joined us at the edge of the canyon. “He’s a guest—just like you.”

  The cliff dweller throws a rough ladder down the side of the rock wall and quickly descends, his bow and arrows strapped to his back. As he climbs, other ocher-covered men and women emerge from caves farther down the canyon. They launch arrows and spears at the avatar, but they’re too far away to hit their mark.

  “They’re all guests like you,” sneers the Child.

  Guests. The most dangerous beings in Otherworld. I start to sprint in Gorog’s direction. If the cliff dweller gets close enough to the ogre, he could slaughter him. He and I are an equal distance from Gorog when I pull my dagger out and send it sailing through the air. I’d rather not kill the guy, so I don’t aim for the heart. The dagger hits him in the upper right shoulder, and his arm flops down to his side. He won’t be shooting any more arrows today. But despite his injury, the avatar keeps charging forward. If he had a disk, he’d show some sign of pain. This guy’s a headset player. The closer he gets to Gorog, the more worried I am. The avatar seems crazed. Maybe he’s sane in the real world, but here in Otherworld, he’s gone completely berserk.

  We reach Gorog at the same time. The cave dweller hasn’t bothered to pull my dagger from his arm, so I do it myself. He barely seems to notice I’m here. He just pushes past me and goes straight for Gorog, knocking him down and pouncing on his chest like a rabid dog. He’s rifling through the ogre’s minimal clothing in a frenzied search for valuables. He finds the diamonds, gathers them into his fist and lunges at Gorog’s jugular with his teeth bared. I catch the cliff dweller in a choke hold before he can puncture the skin. He flails about, kicking and punching before he finally loses consciousness, sinks to his knees and flops face-first over Gorog’s chest.

  Exhausted from the ordeal, I cautiously examine the thin, ropy carcass that’s lying on top of the ogre. This must be what happens when you don’t take proper care of your avatar. It looks horribly neglected, like it’s been locked a
way in a prison camp or shipwrecked on a desert island. I roll it off Gorog’s body, and the diamonds the cliff dweller stole from the ogre pour out of its hands onto the grass next to the avatar’s bow and quiver full of arrows.

  Gorog sighs once the weight is off his torso.

  “You okay?” I ask the ogre.

  “I’ve been better,” he tells me as he sits up and pulls an arrow out of a bicep. I can tell he’s in serious pain. The arrows must have inflicted real damage.

  “At least the guy was nice enough to leave you a souvenir,” I joke lamely, handing the cliff dweller’s bow and arrows to the ogre.

  The diamonds on the ground sparkle alluringly, but neither of us dares to touch them. I’m going to kill that Child when we get back to the garden. The gems were obviously cursed or enchanted.

  I hear the monkey troop screeching in the distance, and I’m suddenly seized by panic.

  “You need to get up,” I tell Gorog. “We’ve got to get back to Carole.” I should never have left her alone with one of the Children and a band of homicidal monkeys.

  Gorog still has a half dozen arrows sticking out of him, but he doesn’t question the order. He climbs to his feet and we hustle back to our starting point, but I don’t see Carole anywhere. The monkeys are all gathered around one of the trees, screeching loudly. I look up to see two of the beasts climbing, branch by branch, toward the top of the tree, crude stone knives clenched in their teeth. I hurry over and the cries stop abruptly. Suddenly the monkeys are all glaring at us.

  “You’re back.” The Child looks confused and surprised. “No one ever comes back.”

  “Where is our friend?” I demand.

  The Child stares at us without answering. I’m just about to grab him by the throat when one of the climbing monkeys flies out of the tree and lands in a pile of rotten fruit. Then a second sails backward and slams into the trunk of a neighboring tree.

  “I’m up here!” Carole shouts. She yanks back the hood of her invisibility cloak and appears on a branch at the top of the tree. “It’s the goddamn goats all over again!”

  “You were planning to eat our friend?” I manage to keep my voice calm, but inside I’m raging.

  The Child’s spine stiffens and his upper lip curls into a sneer. “My father is the Elemental of Mammon. He allows us to dine on the guests who are too timid to enter the canyon,” he says haughtily. “It is our right. This is our world. You do not belong here.”

  “You’re wrong,” I growl. How dare this digital freak try to tell me who belongs. “This whole place was created for guests. Children like you were never meant to exist. You’re nothing but bad code. You’re goddamn mistakes.”

  “You’ve seen what your kind does here in Otherworld and you think we’re the mistakes?” the Child asks, baring his teeth at me. “You come here to kill one another for sport. And the things you do to us are far worse. The Children and Beasts were born in this world. It is not a game for us. Whatever we do, we only do to survive.”

  “And I guess eating guests is essential to your survival? Your monkey friends need meat, do they?” I ask.

  “They have developed a taste for it,” says the Child.

  “Then I have a real treat for them. Bon appétit!” I shout at the troop as I plunge my dagger deep in his heart. The Child staggers backward and drops to the ground. “Hope you taste good,” I tell him. I’ll try my best to avoid killing players with disks, but as far as I’m concerned, Children are fair game.

  Gorog holds off the other monkeys with a bow and arrow as I retrieve my knife from their leader’s chest. By the time I’m done, Carole has climbed down from the tree.

  “What now?” Gorog asks as I walk back to meet them.

  “Remove the arrows,” I say, pointing at the wooden shafts still protruding from his torso. “Take time to recuperate. I need to check something out. And keep an eye on those monkeys while I’m gone. Kill any that get within fifty feet of you,” I add.

  “I don’t think we need to worry. Looks like they’re busy,” Carole says as I walk away.

  I glance back over my shoulder. I expect to see the troop feasting on the flesh of their fallen leader. But they’re not. They’re carrying the Child’s body away, three on each side like pallbearers. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t look like they intend to eat it. If I had to guess, I’d say they were preparing to bury it. I feel a twinge of regret, though I know I shouldn’t. It’s virtual reality, after all.

  —

  I walk back out into the canyon. The cliff dweller’s body is gone. The only sign of him is a wide trail of blood left behind in the grass. Someone must have administered the coup de grâce and dragged him away. I guess it’s safe to assume that the diamonds went with them. Keeping an eye on all nearby cave entrances, I jog toward the rope that’s still dangling from the cliff. I see the next-door neighbors appear with bows raised. Arrows whiz past as I climb, and one grazes my thigh. It’s the second time I’ve been injured in Otherworld, and the pain is intense. It’s all in my head, of course. I know that my flesh-and-blood body isn’t injured. But that knowledge doesn’t make my leg feel any better—or my heart beat any more slowly.

  The Child said all the cliff dwellers are guests. But something about that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would headset players spend their free time living in a godforsaken canyon? The answer must be inside the caves, so despite the pain, I keep climbing until I reach the ledge of the cliff dwelling and pull myself inside. It’s just a small chamber carved out of the rock. The ceiling is so low that I can feel my hair brushing against it. Piles of junk take up most of the floor space. There’s barely enough room for one person, and I’m not alone. The man’s been dead for fifteen minutes, and someone’s already come to raid his cave. This avatar appears to be female, though frankly it’s hard to tell. Her body is so thin and fragile that she probably couldn’t put up much of a fight, yet she drops all but one of the ragged bags she’s carrying and attacks anyway. I dart to the side as she rushes my way, and she’s unable to stop herself from hurtling over the ledge just behind me. Stunned, I look over the side and watch her body bounce against the canyon wall before it finally hits the ground with a distant thud. The bag she was carrying bursts open and diamonds spill out around her.

  I have a feeling she won’t be the last looter this cave welcomes today. And I can see why. The guy who lived here was a serious hoarder. He assembled a small arsenal. Mostly swords, spears and arrows, but there’s a massive slingshot on top of the pile. I leave it, wondering what kind of idiot would choose a slingshot as his weapon. I grab three swords instead. I’d love to take a few spears, but I don’t. If I get greedy and try to carry too much weight, I run the risk of snapping the homemade rope on my way down from the cave.

  Fortunately, aside from the weapons, there’s nothing here to tempt me. The rest of the stuff is just clothes and crap. There’s no doubt where it came from—the shoes are all different sizes. The cave’s occupant must have killed quite a few players in the past few days. He probably had a million dollars in stolen diamonds, but he lived like a beast. Looks like he was using the clothes he collected as a makeshift bed, and I see the remains of a campfire in the corner. There are strange white shards scattered among the charcoal chunks. I walk over, bend down and run my fingers through the ashes, exposing a charred human vertebra. I stumble backward, gagging. I suddenly know why his corpse was dragged away. Some other cliff dweller will be feasting on it tonight. There’s no other food in the canyon.

  As hard as it is to believe, the monkeys in this realm seem to be far more civilized than the guests. I know it’s all just a game for Otherworld’s headset players, but what kind of person finds this sort of shit fun?

  I go back to the entrance of the cave and peer down. The corpse of the female who fell is already gone. Then I look out at the canyon we need to cross to get to the sparkling city in the distance. The cliff face on the opposite side is riddled with caves as well. The question is, how many are fi
lled with men and women like the two who just died?

  My eyes detect motion, and I suddenly realize there’s something moving across the rock wall in front of me—a camouflaged avatar. I watch him crawl spiderlike from his own cave to another that’s a few yards closer to the city. He enters the new cave, and a minute later a body is flung out over the side of the cliff. I can’t tell if it’s the cave’s inhabitant or the intruder. When the body hits the ground below, three scavengers race to claim the prize, ignoring the arrows that rain down on them. I watch in horror as they rip the corpse apart. They each climb back up to their own cave with a sizable chunk of flesh.

  At first I’m not sure what to make of the scene—and then I figure out what’s going on. The players here are all trying to make their way toward the city of Mammon, advancing one cave at a time. In this realm, murder is how you move up in the world. Carole, Gorog and I need to reach the city too, but we don’t have time to go from cave to cave. We’ll need to travel through the canyon by foot. I glance back at the spot where the last body landed. There’s nothing left but a red smear. How can we possibly make it without being killed and eaten?

  Carole has an invisibility cloak, but it only fits one—and there are three of us. The swords I just collected will be useless against the cliff dwellers’ arrows and spears. Then it hits me: the only way to survive is not to fight at all. We’ll give the players what they want instead. Inspired, I return to the pile of weapons and pull out the large slingshot. It won’t do us much good in a battle. But if we’re going to make it to Mammon alive, it may be just the thing we need.

  —

  I climb down from the cave. A half-dozen arrows pierce the ground around me as I hurry back to the safety of the garden, where Carole is still dressing Gorog’s wounds. The ogre looks weak—he’s clearly out of commission for a little while. His avatar needs time to recover from the wounds. That means either Carole or I will need to execute the first part of my plan. One of us will soon be taking a quick trip to Mammon alone.