Scrambled Lives

by Rue Vespers

  Jenner pulled out a stool and sat down. He was so tired that he felt it in his bones, as if he’d been hollowed out like a goblin’s club and had his marrow replaced with lead. He would sleep well tonight.

  “Character upload percentage?” he requested.

  Permanent Character Addition

  You are being uploaded to the game. Check in at any time for an update.

  Current Upload: 11.3%

  He was too fatigued to even swear at it as the troll came to the bar.

  Rosy leaped right off the counter into Dan the Troll’s big hands. “Hi, up there! How’s the weather?” the cup said chirpily.

  “Well, hello, down there,” Dan the Troll said in amusement. “I forecast rain, but it should be a while before it reaches you.”

  The same serving girl from the night before stopped by the bar. “What can I get you?” she asked Jenner. “A lady? A gentleman? Dinner?”

  What was her name? Ajoran. “I’d like a burger and fries, please, Ajoran,” Jenner said. “Thanks.”

  “A pot of hot water as well, Ajoran, so I can take care of this fine little fellow,” Dan the Troll called after her. The girl vanished into the back.

  Plopping Rosy on his shoulder, Dan the Troll poured a mug of ale and slid it over the counter to Jenner. “And how are you finding the game, young Jenner?”

  He loved it.

  He hated it.

  He had the sense that he’d done more in three days in Scrambled Lives than in twenty-one years in the outer-world.

  “I’m having a blast,” he told the troll, and it was the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “GOOD MORNING, FUCKFACE!”

  “For fuck’s sake, Rosy,” Jenner grumbled at the teacup, which was hopping exuberantly on his ass.

  A puddle of drool had formed beneath his left cheek overnight. He rolled over onto his back in the squeaky, uncomfortable bed, thinking that he needed to find a better inn than The Queen’s Crown. Today. He hated this dirty, shabby room, and having to go to the communal bathroom down the hall to shower or take a piss.

  There was a wealth of options for inns up and down Road of Royals, not to mention on the surrounding streets, so he had no excuse. His purse was laden with silver and pennies, more than enough to afford a higher level of quality in his accommodations.

  The part in the curtain showed a dark gray sky, and the sound of steadily drumming rain was coming through the streaked glass. He closed his eyes, knowing he needed to get up and head over to the gladiator office to enroll as a fighter, but it was still very early. “Just let me sleep a little more,” he complained.

  The overly excited teacup was now pinging around the room like a little rubber ball. It broke into song. “IT’S A VIRTUAL DAY IN THE RUNDOWN ‘HOOD-”

  “Rosy!”

  The teacup soared over his head, bounced off the window, and somersaulted through the air as it soared back. “IT’S A GRAY, RAINY DAY IN A BINARY MOOD-”

  Jenner hid under the pillow. “Rosy!”

  “HOW DO WE HELP THE WANDLESS WIZARD? DAMN, HE IS SAD AS A SPELL-LESS LIZARD! IF HE OFFERS GOLD AND A HEALTHY GIZZARD? WELL, SHOVE THEM UP HIS ASSHOLE! Get up, kid!”

  Jenner pulled the pillow off his face and lobbed it at the teacup, which skidded under the bed to make noisy fart sounds. Conceding, Jenner said, “Okay. I’m getting up. Just stop making noise!”

  The second his feet hit the floor, the teacup giggled and silenced.

  Inner-World News: Good morning! Select a headline below to read more.

  House Susvira Routs Blue Mountain Trolls Into House Calastor Territory

  High Council Snubbed In Court As Dragons Turn Their Backs

  Upper-Level Vampire Staked In Shocking Dinner Party Attack

  TMI Alert! Hot Sea Monster Lovin’ Overturns Pleasure Cruise

  Ask Professor Point: Cutlass Or Scimitar? The Basics Of Sword Identification

  Notable ‘Deaths’: Tennus August, Vamp-Tacular, BEWBS

  “Oh, shit! Tennus August got scrambled!” Jenner exclaimed, blinking in shock at the name. The blocks flew off and reformed into a brief obituary, which he read out loud to Rosy.

  Perma-added character Tennus August, Level 84, ‘died’ in an accident yesterday on the grounds of his own school, the Augustus School of the Gladiatorial Arts. Spawned six years ago as a human player in the Rundown, August rose swiftly to prominence in the gladiator rings. He retired to found a school for gladiators once he reached Level 76. Building the next generation of champions was his passion. August leaves behind his beloved partner Quantica, the noted Level 79 pirate captain of the feared ship Dreadbones, and many devastated friends and students. His school is now in the very capable hands of Tennus Boomer, Level 101.

  Accident, his ass. “Do they have funerals in Scrambled Lives?” Jenner asked as he dressed.

  Rosy was hopping around the bed. “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why bother? The body fades away within a few minutes so there isn’t anything to bury, and no one is really dead. There’s a memorial hall somewhere in Galadras, but August is still alive and present in the game. Maybe he’s hatching from an egg or fondling his first wand. Boomer better watch his back from now on, or hire a team of trustworthy bodyguards to watch it for him.”

  “Because August will go after him?”

  “It’s for the best to let your previous life go, even if you did get fucked over sideways. Sometimes you have to let it go or at least hold off if what you’ve scrambled into can’t take up a vendetta, or won’t. If August is opening his eyes as a baby sea monster or a sand snake right now, he can’t physically get to Boomer anyway; if he’s an elf, he’ll have a harder time stoking the fires of his anger to retaliate.”

  The cup was playing ping-pong with its own spoon, the bed squeaking and the spoon clattering each time Rosy caught it. “But some players won’t let it go, and if August is stepping out into the world as a wizard or a demon or even just a human, then he can make a lot of trouble for Boomer in time. And it’s actually even worse for that idiot.”

  “Why?”

  “August has been in this game for ages! He’s made a lot of allies over the years and he has a fucking pirate for a lady friend. Two lumps of sugar says that she’ll hire assassins from her guild, and they’ll pay a visit to that chum school if she doesn’t do the honors of scrambling him herself. So it was a dumbass move on Boomer’s part to knock off August.”

  Lightning flashed in the window, and thunder rattled over the inn.

  Jenner opened the window and looked down to the road. A single carriage was rolling past, and only a handful of pedestrians were trudging along against the wind. Either it was too early for the usual amount of traffic, or else the traffic was shunning this road for another one that wasn’t rapidly turning into a mud pit.

  “Will the gladiator rings be closed?” he fretted.

  “They don’t close,” Rosy said, jumping onto the sill. “They never close for weather. They just put up gigantic wizard umbrellas.”

  That was good news. Closing the window, Jenner slung on his cloak and gave his room a once-over. It looked just like it had when he spawned here. He hadn’t personalized it in any way, and he wasn’t leaving anything behind.

  An image of a backpack flashed in his memory, blue and with a busted zipper on the front pocket . . . that was his. His backpack from the outer-world when he was in high school. Another memory was seeping through.

  He checked on his upload percentage as he left the inn, pulling up the hood of his cloak to ward off the rain. 12.4%. He still had almost 63% to go before he was safely in the game. This was going to drive him insane.

  As he walked along Road of Royals, he caught himself looking out for soulless. On this dark, dreary day, it felt like not seeing one was good luck, whereas seeing one meant that Jenner was fated to become soulless himself.

  Ridiculous. Illogical. But he still kept looking.

  A block away from the
gladiator office, his heart sank when he saw a solitary figure down an alley. He assumed the woman was soulless; she was walking repeatedly into a brick wall as the rain pattered down upon her bare head. Or maybe it was just a glitch in a non-player character that hadn’t been reported to the INTC yet. Jenner wasn’t going down that alley to confirm it by looking at her eyes for a flat, painted-on stare.

  Seeing a soulless didn’t mean anything. He pushed on to the office and let himself through the revolving door.

  Taking a seat in the waiting area, he brushed raindrops off his face as Rosy hopped away to check out the place. Ring workers in orange vests sat at a series of desks separated by partitions, and Jenner was far from the first to arrive. Several graduates were already being processed at the individual stalls.

  In the chairs around Jenner were two players, both of them holding diplomas from other schools. One was a graduate from Sword and Spear of all places! She was an elf with long blonde hair, her bow caught between her thighs. As for the man, he came from a school called Coagus Rings, his fully black eyes revealing him to be a demon of some sort.

  The two of them sat there, looking cool and confident and muscled, exuding an aura of dangerousness. Jenner felt like a dope between them, a puny Level 4 player in much more illustrious company.

  His diploma appeared in his lap. Casually, he rested his hand over the name of the chum school even though neither player showed any interest in peeking at it. Forging his name upon the diploma seemed like the right thing to do yesterday. Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. But what else was he supposed to do?

  The elf was called away. Jenner read the news articles to kill time. Routing the trolls of Blue Mountain from one wizard territory to another had predictably pissed off the recipients, and while those wizards were retaliating against their own kind, a good number of the trolls continued south unimpeded. Jenner pulled out his map and zoomed in to see where these places were. In the north of Talvenor, he located the names. It was hard to get worked up about events taking place so far away.

  The political article about the dragons and the High Council nearly put him to sleep. Was it really worth writing a whole article about that? A bunch of dragon shifters literally turning in a half-circle as the members of the council reported to their thrones at the Palace of Light? He didn’t recognize any of the names or bits of legislation mentioned in the article, so it was just nonsense to him.

  Summoned to a stall, the demon quit the waiting area. Jenner moved on to the vampire article, which was a little more exciting. While the partygoers played charades at Hylish Estate in Galadras, a team of assassins dropped through the sunroof. Their target was a Level 65 vampire guest who fought so fiercely for her life that three of the five assassins were scrambled along with her. As to why anyone wanted to scramble her so badly, it was a mystery. She was not the leader of any demonic House, but she’d offended someone with her existence.

  “Next!”

  Jenner ferried his diploma to the last stall in the row and sat down. He handed it over nervously as the teacup jumped from the floor to the chair to his shoulder. The bespectacled man gave the paper a cursory glance and tapped Jenner’s name into the computer upon his desk.

  “How high?” he asked.

  “How high is what?” Jenner asked.

  Looking over the rim of his glasses to Jenner, the man said, “How high of a level are you willing for your opponent to be? You set these terms as a gladiator.”

  “Is there a recommendation?”

  “Did your tennus not explain this process to you?”

  Jenner made his face expressionless. “No, he did not.”

  “With a level as low as yours, it is recommended that your opponent in one-on-one battles not exceed your level by more than three. You would fight no one above Level 7 in your case. The exception, of course, would be in the ten-on-one, in which you and nine others of similar low levels attempt to take down one opponent of a much higher level.”

  “I’ll take any level and any kind of opponent except for wizard,” Jenner said. An eyebrow shooting up to his hairline, the man tapped the information into the keyboard. “But what I really need to know is how I can sign up to fight as a substitute for outer-world players.”

  “I can set that up for you right now. Let me pull up the file for Jenner Roggio . . . Yes, here it is, your insurance and banking information are all in order . . . Do you have a minimum dollar bid for players looking for substitutes?”

  “Whatever is normal.”

  “Whatever is normal is relative to the substitute in question. A higher-level substitute can command a much higher price per fight, anywhere from seven hundred and fifty dollars to three or four thousand dollars and occasionally even more if that substitute is a shifter or wizard of renown. As a Level 4 human player, you are more likely to attract buyers through bargain deals. Twenty dollars, or thirty, paid upon your win, of course.”

  Jenner wasn’t going to earn a better quality net at any speed through bargain deals. And he wasn’t just a regular old Level 4 human player! “Will the players looking for subs be able to see that I have a rare demonic sub-race?”

  “Yes. I’ll put it in bold on your profile to attract notice. And your bid?”

  “Five thousand dollars,” Jenner said recklessly. “They want me to fight, then they can pay five thousand outer-world dollars for the privilege.”

  That was crazy money. He might not have all of his memories of the outer-world, but he had enough to know that dropping five thousand dollars on a single fight in a game was sheer lunacy.

  To him. He’d never had much money.

  But other people had plenty. They dashed it out on all kinds of stupid shit. He had a vague memory of a kid at his high school, some nameless, faceless kid, stripped even of male or female in the haziness of Jenner’s mind, who liked to brag that his or her rich uncle owned a car for every day of the week.

  Oh, the Aston? That’s his Sunday car.

  There were people out there who thought nothing of dropping a thousand bucks on a pair of designer shoes, or two hundred thousand bucks on a pedigreed racing pigeon. They tossed fistfuls of money after yachts and horses, jewels and paintings, famous wines and rare toys. Vintage motorcycles. First editions. Sports jerseys. Fucking unusual stamps.

  So why not toss some of that money at Jenner?

  The man hesitated. “I would not recommend . . .”

  “You heard him! Five thousand dollars!” Rosy barked.

  The office worker dutifully entered it into the computer. “Very well. If you wish to change your bid, there is no need to come here again. Simply say Bid Adjustment, and a screen will appear before you. Verbalize the change you wish and your profile will update instantly.”

  “Now what happens?” Jenner asked.

  “Now you go through that door,” he said, tilting his head to indicate the door to the side of the room, “and take the stairs down to the underground gladiator lounge. Your profile page will be viewed by players. It will have a green dot if you’re presently in the lounge, meaning you are immediately ready to fight; a yellow dot if you are not in the lounge but available to fight later; and a red dot if you are on hiatus from the ring. One last thing: I need your gladiator name. You can stick with Jenner, but buyers are often attracted to names that stand out in the crowd. Names that excite.”

  This employee of the gladiator rings didn’t look like he had ever done anything exciting in his entire life. Jenner cast about for a name, but all that came to mind was the troll called Faceplant. “Uhh . . .”

  “Son of Hogdoor!” Rosy suggested.

  “Taken,” the man replied, skimming down his screen. “We have many variations on Hogdoor: Son of Hogdoor, Sons of Hogdoor, Blood of Hogdoor, Hogdoor’s Seed, Hogdoor and You, Girl Hogdoor, Big Gay Hogdoor, King Hogdoor, Road Hogdoor, High off the Hogdoor, Hogdoor Rules, Hogdoor’s Hairy Balls, Hungarian Hogdoor, Hogdoor Heaven, Whole Hogdoor, and DATEMEHOGDOOR. These are just the names that are currently a
ctive; there are hundreds more inactive Hogdoor names. It’s best not to reuse them, though not forbidden. The audience, however, finds it confusing.”

  “Not Hogdoor then,” Jenner said. People’s eyes would glaze over at another Hogdoor-related name. “How about . . .”

  “Death Blow!” Rosy cried, leaping directly onto the keyboard and mashing the keys as it stared up to the screen. “Look up Death Blow! Does anybody have that name yet? We want Death Blow! That’ll put piss in everyone’s panties!”

  “Rosy! Don’t jump on the damn keyboard!” Jenner yanked the cup away and put it back on his shoulder. “Sorry.”

  The employee shook his head after deleting the long stream of nonsense characters that Rosy had accidentally entered into the search box. “We have Death Blow, Death Blow II, Death Blow III, Death Blows, Death Blew, Blow Death Wind Blow, Blows of Death, Blow Me Death, and Death-a-Blow-Blow.”

  Rosy hopped up and down upon Jenner in a fit of excitement, yelling, “Festering Wound! Jenner the Ripper! Gutspiller! Headsmasher! Neckbreaker! Eyeplucker! Dick-kicker! No! NO! NOOOO! We have to mention his grakel scales somewhere in his name! Grakel Man! Duke Grakel! Death by Grakel! Grakel Spackle! Tackled by Grakel! Ram-Grackled! Mr. Scales! Get Scaled! Surrender to Scales!”

  People were leaning back in their chairs to see the cause of the commotion. Most of them giggled at the happily shouting teacup, who was bouncing so high that it was close to hitting the ceiling. Jenner attempted to catch the cup and failed; Rosy launched out of his fingers to the top of the nearest partition. Bellowing names with great glee, it hopped from partition to keyboard to partition. Pinned-up calendars fell off the walls and mugs of coffee spilled as the little cup soared about joyfully.

  The bespectacled man was typing fast to keep up. “I am afraid I can find those names and variations on most of those names, though no one has claimed Ram-Grackled. Shall I put you down for that?”