PWNED: A Gamers Novel

by Matt Vancil

  Noob blinked at her. “I don’t follow.”

  “It’s not guarding a dungeon. It doesn’t drop any treasure. It’s just here, this big awesome beautiful dragon that’ll tear your damn head off if you pull aggro. Maybe they’ll put an instance here in an expansion or something. That’s kind of the theory at the moment. But for right now, it’s just this insanely powerful dragon in this pretty little valley.” She sat down on the grass, put her bow to one side, and stretched.

  The dragon completed its circuit and began another. “So… wait. There’s got to be more to it than that. This isn’t part of a quest or anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “What level is it?”

  “High.” She grinned. “It doesn’t have one. It also doesn’t give experience, so groups can’t just come in here and mine it for XP. No loot, no achievement, nothing. It is super powerful, though. Like end-boss tough.”

  “Then why’s it here? What’s the point?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “There has to be. A game like this… I mean—okay,” he pointed at the dragon, “we’ve gotta be looking at hundreds of hours of design and animation. No company’s going to invest resources like that without a way to monetize it, but you’re saying they just put it out here to pasture?”

  “What does it matter? It’s just nice. I thought you’d like it.”

  “I’m lost.”

  She flung her arms out. “Oh, my God, it’s quiet! It’s pretty! It’s a nice place to be!”

  Noob looked over his shoulder, out the ring of trees. “The Wickeds won’t find us here?”

  “Nobody comes here. I’ve spent hours here without seeing another player.” She patted the ground next to her. “Come on. Sit.”

  Noob sat. There was something oddly peaceful, almost hypnotic about watching the behemoth lumber around the little garden. “It is nice, I guess,” he admitted. “Reminds me a little of Point Defiance. The trees, I mean. Not the dragon.”

  “Isn’t it just the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “No.” Reid grinned. “It’s cool, but not even close.”

  “Okay, then what is? No, I got it—your girlfriend. ‘She’s the most adorable thing ever beheld and we shall have gorgeous and well behaved babies.’”

  “Closer. Still no. Don’t tell her I said she wasn’t, though.”

  She turned to him. “Well then what is? Now I am curious.”

  “My grandmother’s hair.” She blinked at him. “She always had the one same hairstyle. The only one I could remember, at least. It was this bun thing, always just, you know, perfectly in place. And she always wore it that way. Even in pictures… same hair, even when she was my age. Jet black; I always figured she dyed it. Anyway, a week before she died—she was pretty much already gone from the dementia by this point—we’re moving her into hospice care, and my aunt brings her out after a bath, and she’s in her pajamas, and her hair’s just… different. Because up till that moment, I’d never known she was wearing a wig.

  “Instead of the bun, her hair is this beautiful wavy white. Like snow on a riverbank. And it’s hanging to her shoulders, and it was singly the most beautiful and saddest thing I’d ever seen. Because she wasn’t there, you know? I mean, she was, but… shit. You know about dementia?”

  “Yeah. It hit my Gramps.”

  “And I told her she was beautiful, and she smiled at me, and had no idea who I was. It was the most… like, it was the first time I’d ever really seen her, you know? And I’m like, why would you hide this? This beauty? Why keep this part of you a secret? I’m sure my Grandpa knew. Why put forward a lesser version of yourself?”

  They sat in silence for a bit. The dragon completed another loop.

  “So anyway,” said Noob, “that’s the prettiest thing I’ve seen.”

  “Wow. Well, I sure feel shallow.”

  “I don’t know why I told you that,” said Reid. “Sorry if it was weird.”

  “It’s because we’re anonymous. Same reason people go to therapists. It’s safe to unload to someone who’ll never be part of your outside life.”

  “I guess that’s true.” Reid had never told Astrid. He assumed she wouldn’t want to know because she needled him so much about his grandfather’s wardrobe. Now he wished he had.

  Yanker sighed, stretched out on her back. “This valley… it’s perfect. After a long day of grinding, I can just sit here for hours, just to be, relax.”

  “Really? For hours?”

  “Mm hm.”

  “You sound like Astrid. But why play the game if you’re not going to, you know, play?”

  Yanker propped herself up on her elbows. “I don’t play here, Noob. I live here. This is the only world I give a fuck about.” She smiled.

  Or rather, her avatar smiled. Reid was looking at an animated model of a projection of someone else; not a person. He knew that intellectually, but in that moment, it was hard not to take what she said at face value.

  “I really don’t get you,” he said, finally.

  Yanker chuckled and lay back down.

  Noob heard a mechanical buzzing in the distance and wondered if that meant the Wickeds had tracked them down. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  The buzzing wasn’t coming from the computer, Reid realized after a moment. He peeled himself away from the screen and ambled his way to the bedroom. His alarm clock was blaring. 6:00, the day was calling.

  Reid wished for the life of him that he could stay home. Not to sleep—though he desperately needed that—but to stay in the clearing with the dragon. With Yanker.

  In the office kitchen, Reid watched the last of the coffee trickle down into the pot. When it had stopped dripping, he poured the pot back into the coffee maker and started a new batch. Coffee filtered through coffee. It came out looking like used motor oil.

  “What the hell is that?” Lodge had followed the smell of burning grounds to the kitchen and found Reid standing there dead-eyed. “No sleep again?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not entirely convinced I’m not dreaming this.”

  Lodge waited until the last co-worker had left and shut the door behind him. “Listen, Tit-Whistle… Why don’t you come stay with me for a little while? I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m fine, Nipple-Dick,” croaked Reid.

  “You’re making coffee squared.”

  “Cubed. I already had a pot in the reservoir before this one.”

  “This is not healthy behavior. I’m afraid to leave you alone.”

  “I’m not alone.” Reid smirked. “I’ve got a guild. We’ve got matching tabards and everything.” He pulled out the pot and poured the caffeinated sludge into his Nalgene.

  “Is there anything I can say that will get you to take a day off—a real one, not one spent at your computer? And maybe also pour that poison down the sink?”

  Reid swirled sugar into the slurry. “Why couldn’t I have just been happy? I didn’t have anything to complain about. Not really. She’s out of my league, you know. Always has been.”

  “Dude.”

  “It’s just a phase. I could have just ridden it out. Cutting that cord? That’s not me.”

  “Dude. She bailed on your anniversary. Your anniversary.”

  “Personal anniversary.” He took a sip from the pot. “Not like it was anything official.”

  “It’s been—what, a week now?” Lodge asked. “The whole waiting in the game for her to discover you thing? It was cute. Probably seemed romantic at the time, I don’t know. Like running to the airport to catch her before she gets on the last flight to Paris.”

  “What?”

  “Point is, it’s not cute anymore. The cute waveform has collapsed. Now it’s just sad and creepy.”

  Reid stopped stirring. “There’s blame on both sides here.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Lodge. “I really don’t get it. No sex in the world could be good enough. Why you’ve put up with her as long
as you have, I just—I mean, if it were me—”

  “Because she’s all I get!” Reid slammed his hand down and heard a smash. There was hot pain in his hand and leg. He looked down to see shards of coffee pot on the counter and floor. A puddle of coffee was spreading at his feet, and there was glass shrapnel in his wrist. It didn’t hurt as much as the pain in his chest.

  “She was the only girl who ever looked at me,” he said to Lodge. “Pretty has nothing to do with it. I wouldn’t have cared what she looked like. She picked me.” The pain in his wrist was a dull ache. Distant, curious—a minor nuisance. “I’m not good at alone.”

  “Yeah,” said Lodge. He took the handle of the broken coffee pot out of Reid’s hand, led him to the sink, and ran warm water over his wrist while he picked out bits of glass.

  “It was fate,” Reid was saying. “That’s the only thing it could have been. That dumbass ASB rally.”

  Lodge pressed a wad of paper towels against his wrist.

  “That wasn’t just chance. It couldn’t have been. I’ve never shown any athletic ability before or since. It was meant to be.” He didn’t flinch when Lodge applied a disinfectant from the kitchen first aid kit. “And who were we then. Kids? I’ve known her longer than I’ve been out of puberty. She’s been there, she’s been here, for everything.”

  Lodge wrapped a bandage around the worst of it. Blood was already seeping through. “You need to see a doctor.”

  Reid nodded. “She was always there. When we walked into that cheese shop on spring break. In Oregon, at Fort Stevens, when we got biblical in the shipwreck—God damn, that was cold. She was there when my sister got married. We were both in the wedding party. We escorted each other down the aisle during the procession. I told her ‘We should give this a try sometime, just the two of us.’ She punched me.”

  “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  Reid watched Lodge lead him towards the door and say something to a wide-eyed intern.

  “She was there when my nephews were born. Every Thanksgiving. When my grandparents died.” Reid’s face scrunched up. “I don’t know me without her.” Tears squeezed out of his eyes. “I miss my Grandpa.”

  “I know you do, man. He was a great guy. Awesome fashion sense.”

  “I’m very, very tired.”

  “I’ll bet you are.” The intern returned with Lodge’s keys.

  “What happened to my arm?”

  “Bunch of ninjas. Came out of nowhere.”

  “Did we beat them?”

  “Yeah. You kicked six out a window. I’m taking you to the hospital because you overdosed on awesome.”

  “Sweet. Can we stop for coffee?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  The last time Reid had been to Tacoma General was the last time he’d seen his grandfather.

  His grandmother had passed six months earlier. Grandpa Frank had been blindsided by an Alzheimer’s diagnosis around the time Reid started college, and had kept it hidden from the family for years, until his wife’s illness made that impossible. At her funeral, he had a moment of clarity when he saw his wife lying in her casket. Frank had leaned over her, kissed her forehead, and told her he’d see her soon.

  Frank had been pretty much out of it the last time Reid had visited him in the hospital. The family had been coming in from across the country to pay their respects. It had been obvious that Frank didn’t recognize most of them, but he’d always put on a smile and made small talk to cover up for it.

  Every hour or so that Reid spent at his bedside, Grandpa would notice him and his face would light up. “Frankie!” he’d yell, and grab Reid’s hands. Even in his 80s, the retired aluminum worker had a grip like iron.

  “I’m Reid, Grandpa,” he’d say. “Frankie’s boy.”

  “Oh. Is he working, or getting something to drink?”

  “He’s working.” Reid’s dad hadn’t visited.

  “Well, when he comes, send him my way. I’m gonna get him straightened out.”

  After the third day, Reid had stopped correcting his grandfather and started answering as his dad. He heard the same stories over and over. Growing up in Tacoma when it was the big city in the state. His favorite World War II joke. Taking that beautiful Korean girl to the dance on base, and not being able to speak a single word to her not because of the language barrier, but because he was so damn nervous.

  And Reid, in turn, told Grandpa what he wanted to hear from his son. He was working again, a good union job. He’d gotten back together with Cathy. Little Reid would be a big brother soon. He could see the tears swimming in his grandfather’s eyes. His son had gotten things straightened out. He didn’t need to know that Frank Jr. was sharing a house in Idaho with three other divorcés whose favorite pastime was drinking and dwelling on how badly life had screwed them.

  Reid had saved his tears until the rest of the family had gone home and Frank had slipped asleep. He would stay strong for his grandfather, for his grandparents. Making Frank’s transition easier for him was the least he could do.

  Reid hadn’t learned until he was applying for college that his grandparents had legally adopted him when he was seven. He remembered going to live with them, of course. The weekends when his dad left him with his grandparents had become weeks, and then months, and eventually the little house in Tacoma had become his permanent address. Frank Jr. always swore he was coming back, and that he’d be coming back with everything he’d slowly lost to the bottle. Reid remembered standing at the window, watching his father drive away after one of his increasingly infrequent visits.

  “You can always grow into your life,” Grandma Seunghye had told him. It was like her favorite chapter from the Tao Te Ching. The greatest good is like water. It brings life to the Ten Thousand Things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao. If anyone had known about going with the flow, it was Grandma. She’d left Seoul at eighteen, a war bride to an American GI, heading to a country she didn’t know with a man she’d only just met. What right did Reid have to complain?

  And so Reid had grown up with grandparents for parents, and theirs was the life he had grown into. He wore slacks instead of jeans, usually a vest or tie. He actually enjoyed Lawrence Welk. He mastered pitch and dominoes and was routinely beating Frank at cribbage in the years before the Alzheimer’s. If he hardly fit in at school, it didn’t much bother him. He had the people who mattered most in his corner. And when they died, everything had fallen apart.

  The night Frank died, Reid had fallen asleep at his bedside. He had woken up to an iron squeeze on his arm.

  “Reid,” Frank had said to him, his eyes remarkably clear. “I have to go now.”

  Reid had swallowed his tears and nodded. There was no point fighting it. “Okay.”

  “You’ve got a good woman there, Frankie. You hold on to her.” He was seeing Reid’s father again.

  “I promise.” He would never disappoint Grandpa, not if he could help it.

  “Good.” Frank gave his arm another good squeeze. “Hey.” He elbowed his grandson, a twinkle in his eye. “I ever tell you the one about the Norwegian fighter pilot?”

  Only a thousand times. I would hear it a thousand more. “No, Grandpa. Please tell me.”

  Reid watched the bowl turn circles in the microwave. He wasn’t hungry, but he was supposed to take the pain meds with food. The stitches in his wrist itched, like wearing a shoe with the laces too tight—he wanted to dig in there with his fingers, or maybe a drain snake, and just scratch.

  The microwave beeped. He took the bowl of french onion soup out with an oven mitt and dropped a fat slab of gruyere on top.

  A message from Yanker was waiting for him when he got back to the computer. We’ll start with the Marrowstone Underground quest chain. It’s a long one, but you’ll level a bunch.

  Noob propped the soup on his desk and typed back: How long? Do I have to finish the whole thing?

  Reid could almost hear her sigh through the monitor. To qualif
y for the Godsword quest, you have to be at the level cap. That means you need to go up 92 levels in two weeks, which equals twelve to fifteen hours of play per day, EVERY day. So YES, you have to finish the whole quest chain.

  Reid grimaced. He eyed the stack of bloodstained file folders he’d snatched as Lodge was marching him out of the office. Not like I have anything else going on, he typed back.

  Keep that pace, you’ll hit 100 right in time for the Moonchart door to open.

  Swell, he typed. The itching was driving him crazy. He held his arm over the soup. The steam coming off it felt good, but made the urge to scratch that much worse. He put a towel over his wrist and scratched that instead.

  You there? He’d been quiet for about a minute.

  Not like I have a choice, he wrote back, but yeah.

  What’s eating you?

  Not a big fan of life right now. He’d scratched too hard and his wrist was bleeding again. He rewrapped the towel around it, lifted the bowl, blew on a spoonful.

  Well, just remember, Yanker chatted at him. That which does not kill you ruins your life.

  Reid dropped the soup in his lap.

  Yanker was seated under a beach umbrella in the dragon’s glen and looking at him quizzically. “You okay?”

  “Soup in my lap,” said Noob. “My grandchildren are screaming.”

  “Do you need help? IRL?”

  “No, the soup’s cooling off and the meds just kicked in. Now I’m just damp and kind of warm.”

  “I’m gonna go ahead and change the subject, if you don’t mind.”

  “Please.”

  “So. After the Underground chain, there are a number of routes we can take to get you to the cap. I’ll pull the guild together, and we’ll power level you the rest of the way. The only question then will be what we’re going to do with the Godsword when we find it.”

  “I’m gonna get things back to the way they were,” Noob said. “The way they’re supposed to be. And after that, I’m going to stop playing this colossal time suck.”

  “Aw, I bet you’d stay. You could play as a couple. How much fun would that be?”

  “I have no idea.”