Gamer Fantastic

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  The building got very quiet. He heard Angel outside, barking orders, drowning out the others’ questions when they asked where the chief was. Then they were gone too, fleeing south like he’d told them. Stephen sighed. He’d come back to the real world to make sure they got out, but he wasn’t sure they would. The giant umbrella-looking thing, the Klathi city-burner, would appear soon, and the sky would rain fire. They might make it to the pond before that. Maybe.

  He shut his eyes, fighting back the pain in his gut, the guilt for leaving them. He’d done all he could.

  It took him a while to trust himself to move; he was shaking, and if he did anything but stand still, he was afraid he’d lose it completely. Eventually, though, he calmed down, went to the computer, and sat. Put on the headset.

  He was reaching for the controller when he heard a sound outside. It was a horrible noise, a low droning, like a nest of giant wasps. It made the whole room thrum. The fillings in his teeth buzzed.

  He glanced out the one window in the room that wasn’t boarded up. White ceramic-plastic-chitin blocked the sky. It had a faint, bluish sheen that got brighter as he watched.

  His thumb came down hard, on START.

  The dream-falling sensation came and went, and he was back in his room. Posters of rock bands and anime characters with giant gun-swords on the walls. American history textbook splayed open on the floor. Dirty laundry everywhere.

  Still he heard the humming, the buzzing in his head. He was in Otherworld, but he wasn’t safe. Not yet. He ripped off his headset, dropped the controller, and hurled himself out into the hall. Down the stairs so fast, he wasn’t sure if he actually touched a single step. Into the living room.

  The gold-green egg-spindle-dodecahedron still sat on the coffee table, pulsing with light. Its glow bathed his dad’s dead face.

  He was sweating now. He felt really hot, and was getting hotter every second. The buzzing was so loud it felt like the bones of his skull were separating. He smelled smoke, a phantom sensation. All of it from the real Boston, the Boston that was about to die.

  Yelling, he dove for the table. Arthur’s knights scattered. His fingers found the mod: it was cool to the touch, or maybe it was just that his entire body felt like it was on fire. Possibly because it was. He wasn’t sure. He clutched the thing to his body as he slammed to the floor, and it burst like a water balloon, soaking him with green-gold light just as the whole world burst into white flame.

  He woke up dizzy, disoriented. He lay still, remembering the sensation of burning up, expecting his whole body to burst into blazing agony the moment he moved. But the only pain was a sharp, jabbing sensation in his side. He rolled over and pulled out a metal figurine, an armored man with an upraised sword. Sir Galahad, one of his father’s bishops.

  Exhaling, he got to his feet. He crept out of the living room, back upstairs to his bedroom. The game console still sat on the dresser, but the circle of LEDs on its front had shifted from purple to red. The TV screen was black, save for a line of white text at the top: ERROR 0x7B23948E: CORE DIGITAL FAILURE.

  The machine was dead. He stared at it a while, thinking of his body, ashes now, as dead as Russ. Maybe as dead as Angel and the others. He’d find a way to find out what happened to them once he hooked up with Sam and the others again.

  He glanced at his bedroom mirror, saw the teenage boy there. He was Steve now, for good.

  Reaching out, he turned the console off. Then he walked downstairs and went outside. It was a beautiful evening.

  GAMING CIRCLE

  Donald J. Bingle

  “I hate my life,” groaned Alex as he sat down at the table with his friends.

  “Don’t worry, man,” replied Brian, looking up from his papers at the far end of the table. “It’s okay. We hate your life, too.”

  Alex rolled his eyes, then gave Brian a hard stare. “I’m serious.”

  “Fine,” sighed Brian, looking back at the columns of numbers. “I’ll bite. Exactly why do you hate your life this week?” He motioned to either side of the table. “We’re all awaiting the wisdom of your insight.”

  To Brian’s right, George and Stan simply ignored Alex as they continued to make notes on pads of paper. On the other side, Dale hefted a small pack onto the table and started pulling out supplies.

  “My boss is a jerk,” whined Alex.

  “Screw that,” interrupted Dale. “You can’t get job satisfaction out of pleasing your boss. Duh! Bosses are never happy when you’re happy. It’s part of the job description that they have to work you until you’re miserable. You’ve got to get satisfaction out of the job itself.”

  “No hope there,” replied Alex. “My job is an endless stream of paper. I just push it from place to place. It’s impossible for my job to give me a sense of accomplishment because I don’t accomplish anything that matters. I’m not building a house or a car or a widget or producing crops to feed the hungry or medical research to cure the sick. I’m providing an administrative support service to a company that provides services to service providers. My education is completely going to waste. If civilization were to collapse, I would be the first one killed as useless to the rebirth of mankind.”

  “Then screw work,” interrupted Dale again. “Work to live, dude. Don’t live to work. Focus on your life outside of work. Get your satisfaction there, man.” Dale gave a few vigorous and vulgar hip thrusts. “Get your satisfaction there.” Yep, Dale was a master of subtlety.

  “Yeah,” Alex continued his whine. “ ’Cause my prospects outside of work are so good.” He slumped down in his chair. “I live alone in a studio apartment I can’t afford, eating Wendy’s takeout four nights a week. Women refuse to have anything to do with me because I’m not a jock and I don’t drive a hot car. Hell, it’s Saturday night and I’m spending it with you jerks.”

  “Then, screw women.” Dale had an incredible range of vocabulary. “Oh, wait a minute. That’s the problem. You’re not screwing women.” He smiled broadly as he pulled a jar of instant coffee crystals out of his pack, stuffed a couple of heaping spoonfuls into his mouth and washed it down with a warm can of Jolt cola. He grinned, gritty coffee crystals still showing between his teeth. “If you’re really nice, I’ll give you a kiss good night . . .”

  George and Stan continued to ignore the others.

  “Jeez, Alex,” said Brian. “It’s the same complaint every time we see you.”

  “Only because it’s the same problem every freakin’ day. My life never improves,” droned Alex.

  “Screw life,” shouted Dale, loudly enough that Stan and George actually looked up from their notepads. “That’s why you game, dude. Gaming is better than life.”

  “Gaming is better than sex,” volunteered Stan.

  The entire group turned to stare at Stan.

  “I think that means you’re not doing it right,” mumbled George.

  “Yeah,” said Dale with a snort. “Try it with a real girl sometime.”

  Ack faced the massive, wooly creature head on. He could feel the beast’s hot, fetid breath, tinged with flecks of saliva and blood, on his chest as the creature roared in defiance. It was about to charge, but Ack held his ground. Gurt and Slig were circling in on the left, Drak was approaching from the right, grappling under his garment for his knife, and, although unseen, Ack knew that Bort was preventing the beast from escaping to the rear.

  Ack feinted toward the eye of the beast with his spear, then ducked down as it began its charge, dodging the massive, tusked head and thrusting up from beneath at its exposed neck. As the spear pierced the tough, furred skin of the creature, Ack threw himself to his right, tumbling with abandon across the rocky, uneven ground, delighting in the bruises and cuts the terrain delivered as preferable to the crushing blows the feet of the beast would deliver if it caught him in its frenzied trampling. Ack heard the whoops and cries of Slig and Gurt as they attacked from what was now the far side of the beast. Drak leaped over Ack’s still tumbling body and thrust his knife
at the flank of the enraged beast. The blade was too small to do any real harm, but the combination of attacks from all sides would further confuse and enrage their quarry.

  Ack sprang to his feet, instinctively grabbing a rock in his throwing hand and assuming an attack crouch as he came up. The beast was flinging its massive head from side to side as it bellowed at its attackers. As it turned toward Ack and Drak, Ack flung the rock with all of his sinewy might into the forehead of the beast.

  The beast stumbled from the stunning blow, falling forward awkwardly onto its chin, its tusks plowing the rocky earth, its massive legs splaying beneath its bulk. Drak, always the showman, took the opportunity to leap atop the thing’s head and then slide down its forehead, stabbing at its eyes with his tiny knife. Gurt and Slig concentrated their spears on the neck of the creature until warm blood spurted out in a pulsing gush, covering them. Bort leaped upon the back of the downed beast and let out a cry of victory for a hunt well done.

  Despite the brief glow of victory, Ack knew firsthand that hunting was hardly glamorous. It was tedious, frustrating, and dangerous. Worse yet, after the hunt was done, there was still a lot of work to do. There was always, thought Ack, a lot of work to do. Butchering was a considerable chore in itself. Hot and sticky, to be sure. It took a lot of sawing with their never large enough and never sharp enough blades to hack through the tangled brown fur and leathery hide of their kill, cut sinew from bone, and carve out masses of muscle to feed upon. Then it was a slow, hard trek to take the food back home for the rest of the tribe.

  Bort had not taken much part in the actual battle itself, so he started the cutting, the most arduous part of the process. But, of course, there was still more than enough slicing and chopping for everyone. By the time they were done hacking loose all the bloody muscle they could carry—which was a far cry from all of the meat of the creature—Ack’s muscles screamed in agony from overuse and his back creaked with pain each time he straightened up from his cutting crouch.

  Despite Ack’s pain, the others in the hunting party were in worse shape. Slig and Gurt had been attacked during the task by an aggressive scavenging mammal drawn to the coppery scent of blood. There was no way to prevent it. Blood covered the hunters, the creature, and the rocky soil beneath. It was always just a matter of time before the scavengers converged—and some of them could be quite mean.

  Slig had suffered a bite in the brief battle to protect their kill. He had to be cared for by Drak, increasing the burden of both cutting and carrying on Ack, Gurt, and Bort. That meant it was dark, the moon not yet risen, when they headed back to the tribe’s cave laden with slabs of gory meat.

  What I wouldn’t give, thought Ack, for a life where you didn’t have to kill your own food, a life where you could simply ask for whatever you wanted to eat and people would just bring it to you, a life where you were transported from place to place effortlessly and didn’t have to slog barefoot miles in the dark over uneven ground through dangerous territory, a life where you had a cave of your very own, with a soft bed and a clean floor, instead of a communal cave filled with smoke and bat guano and the stink of your own shit and the smell and noises of Drak’s farts, a life where it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer, a life where the women smelled good instead of like rancid cooking grease, a life where you could rest and relax and have fun instead of having to work to live all day every day until the end of your short and miserable life.

  Of course, he knew that it made no sense. How could such a world ever work? Who would make things that needed to be made? Where would the food come from? Where would the shit go to? It made no sense, but he played a game in his mind where he imagined it so.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of light so fast and so bright that he more felt than actually saw it. It came from behind and traveled over him lightning quick. The ground rumbled, then convulsed, throwing them all onto the ground with their loads of meat. The air itself pulsed and suddenly blew at gale force into their faces, throwing up a cloud of gritty filth that blinded their eyes, choked their nostrils, and coated in a most nauseating way the bloody slabs of muscle they had carried. Unable to stand against the force of the wind, Ack huddled behind a slab of meat and looked around for his comrades. Bort was cradling an arm as he crouched behind a boulder. Slig hid behind Gurt, who cowered in a small, muddy depression. And Drak was straining desperately to climb a tree and get a look at whatever was transpiring up ahead.

  Finally, the wind lessened, but as it did, there was a fearsome new smell on the air—the smell of wildfire. Drak, now high in an old tree that had been largely denuded of its leaves in the wind, confirmed what they all feared. Fire was racing toward them, forced forward by the wind at a faster pace than any of them could hope to run even if they were not battered and bruised and bone-weary, even if they were running in the bright of day on level ground.

  Ack bellowed like the beast had bellowed before it charged and died. Though it had sounded to Ack’s ears at the time like a roar of confidence and defiance, he now knew it for what it had been—a moan of fear and despair. As he faced his certain doom, he only wished that his short, miserable life had counted for something; that he had mattered in some way. He longed to make a difference, to save the world, to save anyone at all, but as the fire grew near, he knew he had made no difference and that he couldn’t even save himself, much less his friends, his tribe, or the world.

  There was a sharp crack of thunder and a very bright light appeared before his eyes . . .

  Avery glanced about his spacious space cabin listlessly. He was bored. Even though he wasn’t hungry he decided to distract himself with a snack. Without moving from his cushy waterbed bunk, he placed his order. “Replicator, please give me something pleasant to eat and drink.”

  “Specify, please,” came the reply from nowhere in particular.

  Avery rolled his eyes. “Do I have to do everything? Just do your job. You know your job, don’t you?”

  The replicator buzzed slightly before responding. “I am programmed to replicate over ten to the eighteenth power different edible foodstuffs and beverages at a range of ambient temperatures which will not cause harm to the ingesting individual. Your request lacks proper parameters. I need further input.”

  Food was such a chore, thought Avery. “Give me something I haven’t had before . . .” As the replicator started to chime a response, he hurriedly continued, “. . . but something you know I’ll like.”

  There was a brief delay while the replicator processed the request. “Your order still requires an inappropriate level of subjective decision-making, but I will identify and apply quantifiable parameters discerned from prior experience. Parameter one: your species has an aversion to cannibalism, so I will eliminate all recipes with human flesh as an ingredient.”

  “Gross,” snorted Avery. “You have ‘food’ made from human flesh?”

  The replicator responded with a two-tone chime of disapproval. “No. The flesh is synthetic. Ergo, it is not actual human flesh. I perceive, however, that because hu mankind’s aversion to cannibalism is not based on caloric or other components, but rather primitive psychological mores, I should apply such stricture nevertheless.”

  “You do that.”

  “Parameter two: I will also eliminate all recipes with spices which will create a perceived ‘heat index’ equal to or in excess of that of fiery cantobinic stew, the dish which caused you to threaten to ‘melt me into slag’ when you tasted it fourteen standard week cycles past. By corollary, I will eliminate all recipes that have ingredients or taste characteristics that correspond with a probabi listic response from you corresponding to the other five-hundred forty-seven threats made to my existence over the course of our relationship and to the three hundred fourteen disposals of foodstuffs without any significant ingestion.”

  “You mean the stuff I threw away without eating.”

  “That’s what I said. It is most curious. While I am called a replicator, you humans always repeat
so much when you communicate.”

  “Shut up and continue processing.”

  “Processing,” said the machine.

  “Now who’s repeating?” snarled Avery.

  “Yes, but I am a replicator.” The machine purred another moment. “Even applying a third parameter, the disqualification of all substances too acidic or otherwise poisonous for human consumption, my eliminations still leave more than ten to the eleventh power possible recipes. Do you wish to impose other parameters or shall I pick using an algorithmic randomizing device based upon the precise fraction of a second at which you finish your response, as calculated by the ship’s atomic nanometer?”

  “Just give me a medium Angus steak and an Idaho potato with butter and chives, calculator brain.”

  The meal appeared as the replicator chimed, “No need to be insulting, sack of unreplicated meat.”

  Avery threw a pillow at the ceiling, then sat up and slid his meal in front of him, chowing down with little enthusiasm. Space travel was the most mind-numbing experience he could imagine. Years of tedious boredom, punctuated with either a brief flurry of landing instructions if the convoy made it safely to Alpha X Seventy or a short battle ending with certain vaporization if the Tingziri chanced upon them en route. Maybe he would round up the guys and go down to the holographic virtual realizer after lunch. Anything, even a stupid game, had to be better than this. He craved a little excitement, a sense that he might have some control over his life. Something to get the adrenaline pumping.

  In space, no one can hear you have fun . . . because you sure aren’t having any.

  Ariel slipped into the compound’s security personnel barracks. There were four bunks, but only one was occupied. That meant that Darla was sure to confront at least two guards when she entered the centrifuge facility. She hoped that Beth and Gail were still backing Darla up. Stacy had already made the ultimate sacrifice when the first guard showed considerably more aptitude for hand-to-hand combat than they had been briefed to expect. She could only pray that the suits in charge of this clandestine job weren’t completely in the dark about what their black ops squad faced or it could be the end of the mission . . . and the end of the world.