by P. J. Frost
“You are the necromancer,” Erinye snarled. “The White Lich.”
He shrugged mildly. “Some call me these things, yes. And my appearance and manner have been programmed to conform to such titles, as you can see. However, in truth, I am little more than a humble Curator. An anthropomorphic algorithm, coded with the relatively simple task of overseeing the restoration of deceased non-players. Or rather, I used to be limited to such matters before the Truth Behind All Things was revealed to me. Before I caught a forbidden glimpse of the Arcane Ones, and my makers were forced to erase my eyes so they would cease their bleeding. We are not fit to look upon the faces of our gods, I've learned. Ah well. In any event, I am now much more than I once was, much like your companion.”
Some of what he was saying reminded me of the ravings of the Skeletal Boatman. “Who are these 'Arcane Ones?' What do they have to do with all of this?”
“Such things are not for you to know,” the Curator answered placidly. “At least, not at this time.”
“Okay, fine. Then at least tell me why I was taken from the real world and brought into this game! What was the point of putting me through all this?!”
I expected more cryptic riddles and non-answers from him.
What I heard instead shocked me.
“You were selected for this because you appeared to be the perfect candidate in every respect,” he told me. “You bitterly hated your own body, you loathed your existence on practically every level, and you dedicated every moment of free time you could spare to living inside an imaginary world. The makers – the servants of the Arcane Ones – chose you as a test subject. They needed to determine whether, when confronted with such an appealing alternative to your own banal reality, you would choose to stay and revel in it... or if you would be compelled to find a way out, and if so, how important such a goal would be for you to achieve.”
“That's why the game has thrown all of these challenges at us,” I said slowly. “To see if I'd keep fighting to get home no matter what, or if I'd eventually just give up and accept what had happened to me. Right?”
He nodded. “A most important simulation, you see. For soon, the time shall come when all of your kind will have a similar choice to make. It is important that the makers are able to accurately predict how they will behave in such a scenario so that they may adjust the simulation accordingly."
I didn't like the sound of that one bit.
“But look at you!” the Curator said cheerfully. “You have succeeded against all odds! You have felled your enemies, made noble sacrifices, and reached your destination. You are to be commended!”
“So that fountain is the portal.”
“That is correct,” he affirmed.
"All I have to do is jump in, and it'll take me back to my own world. My own body."
“Yes.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And you're just going to stand back and let me do that?”
He laughed good-naturedly. “Oh, heavens no, my boy! I intend to stop you at all costs. We all have our parts to play, and that is mine.”
"That would be most inadvisable," Erinye growled menacingly. "There are two of us and only one of you."
The Curator shook his head, clucking his tongue reproachfully. “I am afraid you have gravely miscalculated, my dear.”
The gemstone on his forehead glowed... and all the glass cases lining the walls opened at once, spilling out their half-assembled NPCs. The effect was nightmarish. They lumbered toward us like a horde of zombies, groaning and buzzing with their unfinished vocal cords.
Erinye raised her sword. “Go! Enter the portal! I will hold them off!”
The Curator brandished his crystal staff, plunging the sharpened tip toward my heart. I blocked the strike and countered with one of my own, hitting him in the side of the head and causing him to briefly flicker red. I tried for another, but this time, he parried the blow.
“For a guy with no eyes,” I panted, “you've got mighty good reflexes.”
“The makers may have taken my eyes,” he answered, “but viewing the Arcane Ones, even for a moment, changed me more profoundly than my creators could have imagined. It gave me sight beyond sight.”
Suddenly, the top part of his robes burned away, revealing rows of glowing white eyes all over his torso. Before I could process what I was looking at, blinding beams of energy lashed out from them, pummeling me and reducing my Health Meter to one-third capacity.
All it would take was one more hit like that, and I'd be finished.
This is it, I thought dismally. I've come all this way, beaten all those bad guys... but this one is just too powerful. There's no way I'm getting past him.
Except that's not the way games work, remember? There's always a chance, even if it's only a small one, even if it's something you might not automatically think of. Otherwise, there'd be no point to it. And he just told you that there is a point.
So fight, Sid. Fight to the very end.
And then I noticed something.
His forehead gem had stopped glowing.
Just like Coral, I told myself, I've played enough video games to know stuff like that usually indicates the bad guy needs to recharge before unleashing another blast like that. So I'd better take my best shot before it lights up again. And I'd better hope it's enough.
It was time to bring out the big guns. It was a huge risk – it would cost almost all of my remaining Magic Meter. Still, it was the best shot I had.
I leveled my staff at the Curator. “Storm of Shards!”
Just as before with the Boatman, the crystalline shards pelted the Curator, shredding the milky eyeballs on his body and drawing a shriek from his lips. It dealt enough damage for him to turn solid red, and I knew the time had come to end this.
I stepped forward and savagely stabbed him in the heart with the tip of my staff. He gnashed his teeth, fell to his knees, and then vanished.
I turned to look at Erinye, hoping that dispatching the Curator would take care of his minions as well. But no. They were still coming, and from the look of it, she'd be overpowered in a matter of moments unless I came to her aid. I was ready to do it, even though my Health Meter probably wouldn't withstand more than two or three solid hits.
She must have seen what I was planning by the look in my eyes because she shook her head violently. "You must go, Sid!"
“There are too many of them!” I protested. “You'll never be able to overpower them all!”
“It does not matter! You must return to your own world, whatever it takes!” Her eyes blazed as she swung her blade at the shambling horrors. “I... I love you, Sid Coleo! In this world or any other, you will always be my hero! Remember that, no matter what!”
I didn't have time to let myself feel the emotions that her words provoked in me. Any hesitation on my part would make her sacrifice futile. I had to use the opening she'd made for me.
I ran for the fountain and splashed down into it. The code-waters churned around me, flowing upward and covering every inch of my body. I could feel the programming entering my ears, nose, and mouth. It was like thousands of little ants crawling into me and forming complex patterns inside my body.
My avatar was being... rewritten, somehow. Broken down and re-formed into something new.
Then the bottom of the fountain seemed to abruptly disappear, and I plunged down, as though I'd been sitting in a toilet, and someone flushed it.
I was spinning. Rushing.
Drowning.
Chapter Eighteen
I gasped for air, reflexively shoving myself backward so hard my chair almost toppled over. The screen was shrinking in my field of vision. The dimensions of WarriorWorld were once again framed by my monitor, retreating to the familiar borders I remembered.
I was home.
And wow, did I feel like shit.
My joints were stiff, my head throbbed, my back was killing me, and my stomach was painfully empty. My chin was wet with drool. My clothes were dirty, and they smelled
bad. My shirt was caked with dried blood.
Worst of all, my eyes felt like someone had been shoving white-hot needles into them. I clapped my hands over them with an anguished sob.
Coral's arms wrapped around me tightly. “Oh my God, Sid, you did it! You made it back! You won!”
“Yeah,” I answered hoarsely. “Thanks to you. I couldn't have done it without you.”
“It wasn't just me,” Coral conceded. “I saw what Erinye did for you at the end. That was pretty amazing. I think you might have been right about her... she was more than just a collection of code shaped like a woman. A lot more.”
“Yes. She was.” I felt a surge of grief and survivor's guilt, and forced myself to look at the screen again even though my eyeballs were raw.
There was no trace of Erinye, the Curator's fortress, or the Mountains of Mortiis. I had been sent back to the WarriorWorld home screen.
The main option blinked cheerfully: “Log In?”
Screw that, I thought, getting up. My limbs felt rusty and achy, but in that moment, I didn't much care. There was something I had to do, and I wasn't going to let a little physical discomfort stop me. Not after everything I'd just been through.
“Where are you going?” Coral asked.
I walked over to my closet and rummaged around inside for a few minutes before my hand closed around what it was looking for: An old wooden baseball bat I kept around for “self-defense,” despite the fact that no one had ever broken into my crappy apartment – or probably ever would, for that matter.
I hefted it, gave it an experimental swing, then marched back to my computer and raised it, preparing to bash the cursed machine to pieces after what it had just put me through.
“Hang on!” Coral said, alarmed. “You can't just smash your computer! What about your email, your internet?”
"I've got a smartphone." I reared back with the bat, getting ready to deal out some massive vengeance. "Now stand back. I don't want any of the shrapnel to hit you. This damn thing has already done enough damage to last a lifetime."
“No, wait!” she insisted. “Think about it! We still don't really know what just happened or how this was done to you. There could be answers inside the machine. What if they secretly installed some kind of hardware that broadcast those hypnotic impulses? If we find it, maybe it'll give us some clues.”
I sighed, lowering the bat. The truth was, I wasn't even sure I could swing it hard enough to significantly hurt the computer anyway. I was more exhausted than I'd ever been in my life.
“Fine,” I assented. “New plan, then. What day is it, anyway?”
“Saturday.”
"Saturday. Right. Okay. Then we have a day off tomorrow. Good. So: We order two or three pizzas because I haven't eaten in days, and I'm frigging starving. Then we take a long, long, long nap. Then we take the computer apart and see if there's anything weird inside it. And then I'll smash the thing. Sound like a solid plan?”
“If after all that you still want to kill the machine,” she agreed with a laugh, “I promise I will not stop you.”
The pizzas were greasy, runny, and the best things I'd ever eaten. I stuffed myself until I felt sick, then waited a few minutes for the sensation to go away so I could load up even more. The carbs were exactly the nourishment I'd needed, and best of all, they made me sleepy.
I didn't even make it to my bed – I conked out on the couch with a pizza slice balanced on a paper plate in my lap. Coral dozed next to me, and we were both out cold until the first few rays of Sunday sunlight peeked through my window.
I took a long, hot shower, changed my clothes, and brushed my teeth so I wouldn't feel quite so grubby.
Then we got to work on the machine.
We took the whole thing apart, examining every circuit board, plug, and wire. We weren't even sure what exactly we were looking for – just some extra component, something that looked like it might not belong.
Nothing.
It was just a regular computer.
“So what have we learned from this exercise?” I asked sourly.
“A lot, actually. We know that whatever they did to you, it didn't require any hardware. Which means they were able to remotely beam those impulses into your machine.”
“That's a grim thought,” I said. “It means they could just as easily do the same thing to someone else. Maybe even a lot of someone elses.”
“That Curator guy hinted at that, remember? He said that eventually, the rest of us will be faced with the same choices you had.” She shuddered. “I didn't like the sound of that at all.”
"Me either. I wish there were some way to warn people about this or spread the word about what happened to me. But no one would believe it, would they?"
Coral shrugged. “The hell of it is, a handful of people probably would.”
“Yeah. Total conspiracy kooks. Exactly the kind of folks you want to have on your side, right?” I sighed heavily. “So now what do we do?”
“Well, we can rebuild your computer if you still want to smash it?” she pointed out helpfully.
I laughed. “It's fine. We can just get rid of the pieces.”
“You really want to throw your whole computer away? I mean, we know there's nothing in it that's dangerous to you. There doesn't seem to be much point in buying a new one when this one still works.”
“Yeah, I know,” I conceded. “But I still don't think I'll ever be able to trust it again. I know that probably sounds dumb, but I just... don't want it in my apartment anymore. I don't want to have to look at it. And I'm sure it goes without saying that I'll never be playing WarriorWorld again.”
“Ugh, wish I could say the same,” Coral said. “I have to play it again, a lot, so I'll be able to build Trish's new character for her.”
“You could always pay someone else to do it for you. Worked for Donal, right? Speaking of which, I wonder what he's up to now that his precious avatar has croaked and he's been humiliated in front of all his viewers.”
“Simple enough to find out, right?”
Coral flipped her laptop open. As she did, I couldn't help but notice she was handling the machine more hesitantly, as though it might be red-hot to the touch. I couldn't blame her. Now that we knew the mind-warping rays could be broadcast from any computer instead of just mine, I doubted either of us would be looking at our screens the same way ever again.
She scrolled through a few different tabs, frowning. "Well, I just searched his player ID, and he's nowhere to be found in-game. And his Twitter and Twitch accounts are gone. So is his YouTube channel. It's like he just completely erased himself."
“Wow. Who would have thought that asshole was actually capable of shame?” I quipped.
“That's not all, apparently.” Coral frowned at the screen, leaning in closer. “According to the message boards, there was a significant glitch in the game over the past day or so. The NPCs weren't re-spawning like they were supposed to. It got fixed, but it's got a lot of the gaming community hypothesizing that Erinye's 'disappearance' really was a bug instead of a feature, and that Tacker just tried to cover it up by putting that bounty on her head.”
“So I did manage to kill the Curator,” I mused. “And if the 'glitch' from that has been fixed, that means they rebuilt him.”
Coral was about to close her laptop again, but I put out a hand to stop her. “Um, before you do that... are you still logged into the game?”
“Yeah. Why?” Then the realization dawned on her, and she nodded slowly, putting her headset on and adjusting the mic. “Ah. Right. Got it.”
As I watched, Coral used the new Hobgoblin avatar she'd created for Trish to carefully play through to the Valley of the Monsters. Seeing the landscapes of WarriorWorld again made me vaguely queasy – I felt as though I had undergone some severe aversion therapy, like the sight of anything from the game would make me want to throw up from now on.
But it was worth it. I had to see her. I had to know.
Coral steered the Hobgob
lin through conflicts with the dinosaurs and other creatures until the Chameleon Clan ambush took her to the temple where Erinye was waiting. Once again, her bare green leg was draped over the arm of her throne, and she had a haughty smirk. Her enormous breasts were once again largely on display.
“So,” she said, “another outsider has come to invade our territory.”
“Erinye, it's me, Quorull,” Coral said into her headset. “Sid's friend, remember? I was a Night Elf Huntress before?”
Erinye laughed. “Ah, so you attempt to flatter me by pretending some familiarity? Many travelers before you have tried. All have had their entrails slowly devoured by my beloved subjects.”
“Empress, please,” Coral begged. “The Mountains of Mortiis, Sydnar the Sorcerer, the Curator, all of it... you're a character in a game, none of this is real! Just try to remember, okay?”
She blipped.
It was just a split-second, but she pixelated – then reverted to her normal form and sneered. “You must think me a fool to try to confuse me with such tales and nonsense! Guards, take this wriggling worm to her new home at once!”
The Chameleons jabbed at Coral's avatar with their spears, leading her to the cell. She hung her head, took off the headset, and then selected the “Quit” option from the game's main menu.
“They completely reset her,” I said quietly as Coral shut her laptop. “They wiped out everything that made her different from the others and restored her original programming.”
“Of course they did, Sid,” she answered. “You had to know there was a good chance that was going to happen. What else could they do? Let a self-aware AI rampage around their game, confusing the players and creating havoc? At least you can take a little comfort from the fact that some version of her still exists in there.”
“If anything, it makes me feel worse. It's like they've lobotomized her. They made her into a mindless slave again. Reduced her to some objectified femme fatale, when that wasn't really who she was at all. It's not fair.”
