by A. J. Markam
I’d forgotten and left my Gravesite tombstone on the ship’s deck – which meant that I’d resurrected here instead of one of the graveyards closer to Zali’s villa.
“Dammit,” I muttered, and checked out my menu bar. Other players and NPCs could destroy my Gravesite markers, and I was forced to delete an old Gravesite to create a new one, so there was probably an option somewhere to get rid of a save point I didn’t want anymore.
Sure enough, there it was in the submenu: Deactivate Gravesite. I hit the text option and a window appeared.
Do you wish to deactivate your gravesite? Doing so will cause you to resurrect at the nearest communal graveyard. Accept/Cancel
I hit ‘Accept,’ and the tombstone on the deck crumbled to dust.
“Well, that takes care of that,” I muttered, then got up on the railing and dove overboard.
It took me another ten minutes to swim back to the city. It looked exactly the same as last time: a sprawling town of white buildings surrounded by a ten-foot wall, with hundreds of skirmishes around the boundaries.
A couple of hundred feet above the rooftops, just as I was preparing to come in for a ‘landing,’ I bumped into some sort of invisible barrier. I swam over a few feet and tried again – but nope, I couldn’t get through. All in all, I tried about a dozen places, but the city seemed to be surrounded by an impenetrable, invisible dome. The Naga warriors who had escorted us down here had probably had a way through. Either that, or someone below had temporarily turned off the barrier.
So THAT’S why the wall around the city’s only ten feet tall.
The wall was probably for decoration only – or maybe it was what was generating the magical barrier.
Seeing as I had to go down to ground level and get in through a gate or doorway, I decided to check out what was happening around the city. I swam down close to one of the Naga/nymph skirmishes, and was immediately glad I did.
The nymphs were hot. Like the servant girl back in Zali’s villa, they all had pale green skin, dark green hair, and rockin’ bodies.
Unlike the French-maid-outfitted servant, though, the warriors wore next to nothing – a thong bikini bottom and a necklace of shells that somehow ‘magically’ stayed in place to cover their nipples. Super impractical for actual battle, but great for showing off sideboob and underboob.
In my opinion, reality in videogames is highly overrated, at least where breasts are concerned.
The nymphs used swords and small bronze bucklers against the Nagas’ tridents. The two sides were evenly matched – six against six – and they ignored me as they fought each other.
After I got my fill of watching the nymphs’ breasts jiggle, I swam over to the wall and followed its perimeter until I reached the city gates.
Which is where I found out exactly who the ‘outsiders’ were – the ones the Naga warriors had said had shown up a few weeks ago, and who shouted day and night.
There were dozens of them, all underwater races I had never seen before. (I guess the recent changes to OtherWorld had given people more choices in creating characters, too.) Squid-faced humanoids. Blue-skinned babes (albeit in chaste, ankle-length dresses instead of the green nymphs’ barely-there shell necklaces). Crustacean people who looked like upright lobsters.
But they all had two things in common: they were chanting and carrying signs fastened to long wooden stakes.
Disgustingly familiar signs.
Just because it’s in a video game doesn’t mean it’s not sin!
Sex is for marriage, not for video games!
Sex in video games lasts a minute. Hell lasts FOREVER.
Actually, I strongly disagreed with that last one. The sex I had in OtherWorld lasted considerably longer than a minute.
God is watching you, gamers!
Sin is sin, virtual or not!
And the perennial favorite of Bible-thumpers at NFL games:
JOHN 3:16
And they were all chanting in one loud voice, “GOD GAVE US SEX – NOT WESTEK!”
Protestors.
Great.
My boss had mentioned in the meeting yesterday that they were starting to show up inside the game. I hadn’t seen any yet… until now.
Lucky me.
I sighed and walked past them toward the main gate, where two dozen armed Naga stood guard behind wrought iron bars.
As I passed the protestors, half a dozen stepped out to offer me pamphlets.
“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior?”
“Here, have a tract! It tells you all about how you’re going to Hell!”
“Sir, sir – do you realize your soul is in danger just playing this game?”
“You do realize that you are engaged in digital prostitution, don’t you?”
My boss had said ‘Don’t feed the trolls,’ so I ignored the Jesus freaks and marched over to the Naga commander. “I’m here to see Zali.”
“Of course.”
However, the Bible-thumpers didn’t like being ignored. Not at all.
Just as the Naga unlocked the gate, the protestors began to scream at me.
“Fornicator!”
“Adulterer!”
“Pedophile!”
It was the ‘pedophile’ part that got to me.
Somebody calling you a ‘fornicator’ made them sound like they were straight out of Massachusetts in 1750. And ‘adulterer’ was just stupid, seeing as I wasn’t married.
But ‘pedophile’?
Fuck YOU, ASSHOLE.
I turned around and stared angrily at the crowd. “Who said that?”
The crowd stopped chanting, suddenly interested in the impending conflict with a heathen (me).
One of the crustacean people pointed a claw at his shell-plated chest. “I did!”
“Don’t go around shouting that at people,” I snapped. “Not cool.”
“It’s TRUE! You go around having sex with children in this game!”
“I do NOT!”
“Oh yeah?” Lobster Man yelled. “There are kids playing this game! Who’s to say you’re not having sex with them unknowingly?!”
“Number one, because I’ve only ever had sex with NPCs!”
Lobster Man stared at me blankly.
“Non-player characters, generated by the computer? As in, NOT REAL PEOPLE?” I yelled. “What the hell, don’t you even know what you’re protesting?”
Lobster Man tried to recover. “W-well – you probably have sex with child PNC’s – ”
“It’s ‘NPCs,’ asshole, and NO, I DON’T! They’ve ALL been adults! And I know for a fact that anybody who registers for the adult portion of OtherWorld has to prove they’re 18 or older in three different ways – driver’s license or passport, birth certificate, and some sort of official billing notification, either to a bank or a credit card in their name. Nobody’s having sex in this game unless they’re legal adults.”
That part was fact. Westek had gone through hell and back to make sure nobody younger than 18 could bone in OtherWorld.
Lobster Man didn’t have a comeback for that one.
Didn’t matter to Lobster Man. After a couple of seconds of silence, he started yelling, “PE-DO-PHILE! PE-DO-PHILE!”
The entire crowd picked up the chant. “PE-DO-PHILE! PE-DO-PHILE!”
Okay, that fuckin’ tore it.
“You people are fucking idiots, do you know that?!” I yelled.
There was a gasp from the crowd like a bunch of old church ladies clutching their pearls.
“He said the F word!” someone wailed.
I ignored her. “You’re paying every month to come in here so you can yell at people who don’t give a fuck what you have to say, and you’re actually making Westek RICHER in the process! You’re paying the company that put sex in the game, just so you can complain that they put sex in the game! You’re incentivizing them to KEEP sex in the game because they’re making money off of you! You do realize that, right? That’s fucking IDIOTIC!”
T
he crowd all stared at me, jaws gaping like the mouth-breathers they were.
Then Lobster Man started chanting again. “PE-DO-PHILE! PE-DO-PHILE!”
The crowd joined him. “PE-DO-PHILE! PE-DO-PHILE!”
Okay.
That’s how it was going to be?
Now the gloves were coming off.
First off, let’s get something straight: I don’t care what people believe, so long as their beliefs make them better people and lead them to treat other human beings well.
And there are weird, unprovable, crazy things that every religion believes. Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, it doesn’t matter – everybody has at least a couple core tenets that are flat-out dumb. Even atheists have to completely suspend disbelief about things like the apparent ‘purposeless’ of Nature and the insane improbability of the Big Bang. Give us one free miracle, and we’ll explain the rest for free!
And I sincerely believe there are a lot of great Christians out there. People who actually live by the Golden Rule. People who practice kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and charity. People who use their belief in God to bring out the best in themselves.
But these assholes weren’t those people.
No, they just wanted to use fear and shame and guilt to bludgeon others into submission.
I grew up with evangelical fundamentalists in my family, so I know they’re obsessed with Hell. They use it as a threat to frighten the shit out of you so you’ll do what they want.
No matter how much they talk about ‘God’s love,’ in the end, the pliers and blowtorches always came out.
So FUCK these people.
I’d seen a pretty great t-shirt once when I was in college, and I did my best to quote it at the top of my voice.
“But I wouldn’t expect anything less from a bunch of idiots who believe a cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood and telepathically tell him you’re his master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that was put there because a talking snake convinced a rib-woman to eat a magic apple!”
If you believe in a cosmic Jewish zombie, no disrespect intended. I assume you don’t go protesting adults having consensual sex in video games.
These assholes did, and I was trying to make them mad.
I succeeded.
Boy howdy, did I succeed.
First the group went absolutely silent.
I began to wonder if I’d confused them – if maybe I’d talked too fast, or if I was going to have to explain the insult. Which, you know, would kind of ruin it.
Not to worry.
They got it, alright.
They all stared at me, their faces twisted in hatred –
And then they rushed me, screaming at the tops of their lungs.
Shit!
I immediately started casting Soul Suck – my fastest spell, which had an instantaneous cast time.
The good news was that the protestors were all Level 1. None of them had actually put any time into playing the game, after all; they were too busy protesting. So they inflicted next to no damage and had extremely low Health. They were essentially a bunch of trash mobs, just controlled by human players.
Normally, large groups of trash mobs were dangerous. Even if they were less powerful than you, they were like slow-moving zombies: they got you in volume.
But Level 1 trash mobs?
It was like bringing a woodchipper to an egg toss.
My Soul Suck spell normally lasted six seconds, but I could basically hit a protestor for one second and completely wipe him out, then immediately move on to the next one.
So I dealt with them pretty handily. I took some damage from their crappy swords and flailing signs, but any hit points they erased out were immediately replaced courtesy of Soul Suck.
I started mocking them to their face as I mowed them down. “You IDIOTS! You’re all Level 1, and I’m a 27! Level up before you go attacking more powerful players, you dipshits!”
Sixty seconds later, they were all gone, dispatched to the nearest graveyard outside the city walls. They would return soon, but at least for the moment, there was silence.
I didn’t realize how strange that was until I realized that all the Naga and nymphs had stopped fighting and were staring at me.
There was a pause where I wondered if I was going to get rushed again, and this time by a bunch of Level 30 NPCs.
And then all the Naga and nymphs broke into applause.
Apparently it wasn’t just players who hated the protestors.
I laughed and took a little bow, after which the two races of warriors went back to trying to kill each other.
“THANK you,” the Naga commander said as he opened the iron gates.
“My pleasure,” I said – and meant it.
12
The front doors to Zali’s villa were open, so I entered and walked around. Nobody was inside, so I exited the back and went into the X-rated sculpture garden.
There were Zali and Alaria, both wearing little wire-rimmed sunglasses and reclining on two chaise longues. I fuckin’ hate snooty French terms, but that’s what they were – fancy little sofas with wooden frames and satiny cushions.
During my absence, Zali had changed into an all-white suit, so he looked like a fish version of Panama Jack.
Alaria was sunning herself completely naked. Her bikini and thigh-high leather boots lay in a pile next to the chair.
Stig, incidentally, was nowhere to be seen.
“What the hell?” I said as I walked in.
“Hello, Ee-an!” Zali said with a big smile.
“Oh, hey, babe,” Alaria greeted me cheerfully.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked her.
“Just catching some sun.”
“Naked?!”
“No tan lines that way.”
“I thought you hated this guy!”
“Yeah, so?”
“So now you’re sunbathing nude with him?!”
She shrugged. “Might as well. Not like I’m going to kill him on my own.”
“But naked?!”
“No tan lines that way,” she reiterated.
“We were waiting for you!” Zali said enthusiastically. “Now that you are here, you can keel me!”
“Great,” I muttered. “Where’s Stig?”
“The eemp? Heh-heh – he ees eem-bibing.”
Imbibing?
“STIG!” I yelled as I walked back to the urinating faun.
There he was, perched atop the succubus’s head, gulping down the steady stream of champagne.
“GET DOWN FROM THERE!”
“Oh… you’re back,” Stig said with an utter and complete lack of enthusiasm.
“Zali, can you shut off the booze?” I yelled.
Stig’s head popped up in alarm. “What?”
“Yes, Ee-an, I can, but do you really want to do that?” the hatchetfish asked.
“YES!”
“Alright – your weesh is my command!”
Zali snapped his fingers, and the faun broke off mid-stream.
Urinary magic, courtesy of a water elemental Warlock, I guess.
“NOOO!” Stig howled as the stream stopped, and immediately dove face-first into the pool of champagne around the succubus’s thighs.
“Can you drain that, too?” I asked Zali. “And fast?”
“Of course.”
Snap!
The champagne drained away in two seconds flat.
“NOOOOO!” Stig howled in agony.
“Get out here, we have to fight,” I said crossly.
“NOOOOO!” Stig cried out, and began licking between the succubus’s naked thighs.
She liked it quite a bit. “Oh – OH – OH – ”
“Stop licking her there!” I yelled.
“NO, please don’t stop!” she pleaded.
“But she’s wet there, boss!” Stig protested.
“THAT’S NOT CHAMPAGNE!”
Stig bitch
ed and moaned (as did the succubus after Stig stopped licking her crotch), but he pulled himself out of the now-empty pool.
“Alright,” I said, turning to Zali, “where are we going to – ”
“Ahem,” the hatchetfish cleared his throat, and pointed behind me.
I looked over to see that Stig had climbed the marble faun statue and had his mouth on, um, a very inappropriate portion of the goat-man’s anatomy.
“STIG, GET DOWN FROM THERE!”
“But I gotta suck out every last drop, boss!”
“GET DOWN NOW!”
Stig bitched and moaned some more, but jumped off the faun’s crotch and waddled on over.
“Alright,” I said to Zali, “where do you want to fight?”
“Here ees fine with me!” he said, then grew mournful. “I regret to eenform you, though, that seence you were last here, I have taken a sheet. Gone ees the magic. My powers have been deemeenished. I am sure you will beeet me now.”
“Ugh – TMI, dude,” I muttered.
Zali looked confused. “Tee… em eye?”
“Don’t ask,” Alaria called out from her chaise longue.
“Too much information,” I said. “It’s an acronym.”
“An acro… neem?”
“I told you not to ask,” Alaria said.
“I don’t need to hear any more about your bodily functions!” I snapped. “Let’s just duel. On the count of three – one, two, THREE!”
Sheet or no sheet, I was dead 30 seconds later.
13
I resurrected in a graveyard around the corner from Zali’s villa, and ran back into the house and sculpture garden.
Alaria was still sunning herself on the chaise longue.
“Thanks for helping out,” I snapped.
“Sorry,” she said. She sat up and yawned, causing her massive boobs to jiggle alluringly.
An awful lot of incubi nearby had spontaneous ejaculations.
“OHHH!”
“UNNNH!”
“FUUUUCK!”
“Okay, ready,” she said.
“Maybe you should put on your clothes first,” I said, eyeing the little cum sprites. All I needed was more of those little fuckers floating around.
“Fine,” she pouted, and bent over to grab her boots – which exposed her incredible ass.