“We know, we just don’t care,” a male voice down the hall shouted.
Other figures laughed, some rasped, and one hacked with amusement.
“Anyone know the next verse?” I shouted toward the unknown audience.
Since there were other people here, maybe we could kill time together. There didn’t appear to be any good method of escape. My attempts at using fingernails to file the bars failed.
“No!” a woman, or possibly man with a feminine voice, shouted. “Just shut up! I want to serve my time in peace!”
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen,” the newest person sang with a terrible tone. “Glory, Hallelujah, sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down, ohh, yes Lord.” They managed to stretch the words out a bit until it almost felt religious.
That seemed odd for a game with all sorts of divinities in the form of Voices. What would they think?
“Shut up!” shouted the woman, or man, or someone.
More than one voice protested.
I checked the walls, then poked and prodded nearby objects in search of a jail cell escape event. The ceiling braces were devoid of keys. Muck piles in the corner squished grossly while I toed through them. I longed for shoes to make this process less nasty, but the ARC happily gave me chilled feedback on every oozing inch.
“Sometimes I’m almost to the ground, oh yes, Lord!” The terribly toned player managed another line.
People were booing, but most of it felt like bored harassment rather than outright maliciousness.
“Give up?” the feminine person said after a minute of silence.
None of the rocks moved. My system gave me a message stating skills like [Brawn], [Coordination], [Speed], [Limberness], and [Endurance] were all reduced. Oddly, my social statistics, except [Respect], stayed the same. [Attractiveness], which had never been that high to begin with, was increased by twenty. That made no sense to me.
[Convict Brand]!
Your body has been marked with a [Convict Brand] tattoo. This marking permanently reduces your statistics under most conditions.
All physical stats are reduced by 75%
All mental stats are unchanged
+20 [Attractiveness] to certain people
– 20 [Respect]
“I forgot the rest,” responded the singer.
A few people collectively sighed in relief.
I went back to the bars and shouted down the bricked hallway, “I didn’t know that was a religious song.”
“Just ‘cus it says Lord don’t make it religious.” A fourth person sniffed.
There was nothing useful to see anyway. None of the bars wiggled. Nothing glowed to key me in on an escape route. Angling myself from the cell’s corner showed me an awkward slice of brick wall extending twenty feet in either direction. We were without guards, and none of the other Travelers talking were visible. I couldn’t even be sure how many prisoners there might be.
“Shut up, it’s got glory, and hallelujah, and even Jesus in there.” The one who had been singing sounded upset.
I heard bars farther down rattling and an abrupt moment of laughter.
“Sounds religious to me.”
“You all don’t know nothin’.”
I had no clue who was speaking. It could have been one person with a multiple personality disorder or a gang trapped in one room. My participation in the ongoing conversation was minimal as I searched for an escape. Maybe once outside, I could [Blink] away to freedom.
“Ain’t that just like real life. A body don’t find religion until they go to prison for sinning,” the manly sounding female said.
I happily hummed through another round of escape attempts. Most of my brimming curiosity was focused on an important question. What was in the box? [Treasure’s Gift] could be gold, but that would be useless once I made it back to a mailbox. The casino royalties provided more than any sane man could ask for. Still, none of these messages gave me an answer.
“What are you in for?” one of the people shouted.
“Technically, I think I killed a commander, and maybe this king, sort of,” I said absently. A moment of hesitation passed through me too late to prevent the admission. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. “Part of that was my autopilot.”
“Good lord, what kind of monster trains their autopilot to kill NPCs?” the woman said.
“Listen, we can’t all be in for a Ponzi scheme!” one of the others shouted.
“Please. It’s not my fault those players were suckers,” she said.
“Hey, newbie! Killing royals is a high crime! Bet you end up on The Wheel for sure!” an unsteady voice shouted from really far away.
They should have given us cells facing each other for easier communication. Or maybe this prison was designed with cramped room in mind.
“Wheel what?” I shouted back.
“The Wheel,” a closer person stated. “Only the worst get that gig. Child molesters and crap, or so I’m told. Lucky saps like us just get confined until enough play time passes.”
“Bet they try you and place you in one of the chain gangs and make you fodder for the dungeons no player in their right mind wants to risk!” That man way down on the far end sounded far too excited. “Then I bet they kill you once you come out just to prevent your stats from going up! NPCs don’t screw around!”
“That sounds bad.” I tried to feel calm but couldn’t. Months of in-game work was going to be battered apart. Overall, it had been worth it when trying for Xin in Advance Online. From what little I could infer, my Continue Online counterpart had succeeded in stopping Commander Strongarm, where my Advance version didn’t win against Commander Queenshand.
“Ain’t all bad,” the closer guy said. “They got rules. Rewards for things like most loot, most contribution, or kill the most players. Sometimes winning means no axe at the end.”
“You’re screwed, brother,” a deeper voice said.
There were lots of jailbirds down here, and part of me couldn’t figure out why. Were they all waiting for judgment? Or did the rules for Travelers require a certain amount of actual time spent in prison? If so, Continue Online had a neat sort of discouragement for rule-breaking.
I simply didn’t have enough experience in major cities to care. Most of my time had been spent wandering around and delivering letters. These weird politics were new to me, despite playing for months in-game.
“Nobody knows the troubles you’ll see!” The unsteady man laughed as the rest of these players took up the mournful words, adding a nasty tone of mocking humor. “Nobody knows your sorrows!”
Worst of all, they were off-key. I didn’t know what else to do but hum along and test everything in the room three more times. Travelers didn’t get toilets. There was nothing on or behind the polished metal mirror. The whole framing came off the wall with barely a whimper of noise. I briefly considered trying to break it down and form some space-liquid metal key to break out, but that was just a fever dream brought about by suffering this cell’s dank atmosphere.
The presence of someone new was announced by loud clinks of armor. Two suits came in rapidly behind the first, and all three arrived at my cell as I backed away from the bars. They wore short swords at their waists. One had it drawn and ready to stab if I tried to dodge past them. Maybe with halberds, I could have broken through.
It was just a virtual reality, but those guys looked kind of scary. Men in large, shiny bits of metal had an imposing aura that naked and slimy me couldn’t possibly hope to match. They must have [Knight] paths far higher than my own. Was there a [Mindless Jailer NPC] type class available?
“Arms out, scum!” one of the trio yelled.
I heard the other Travelers making noises as if we were in grade school. We were stuck somewhere between the depths of prison hell and being ten years old, and goofy people made the difference. I thought about it for a moment while chewing one lip.
“Don’t even try! We’ll just cut you down again like we did your soulless hu
sk,” the guard said and snarled at me.
My face blanched for a moment at being compared to a zombie, but maybe autopilots weren’t that far off. Mine had been getting better before I’d been blocked from Continue Online.
Now I had a clean bill of health, my own admin rights, and my sister was only an emergency contact in case something happened. It made Liz mad, but I’d agreed that there should be someone on file, especially after Lia passed. Now with dad…
My head shook and I held out my arms while the guards strapped a pair of crude-looking handcuffs on me.
“Don’t even think about trying to escape. You’re marked. There’s no prisoner that can escape after being marked,” one the trio said.
A single guard ended up in the front. The two behind me pulled out swords and prodded me into following the leader. My feet felt sluggish, and the new set of chains sent a small trickle of pain through the ARC’s feedback. They had managed to lock me down somehow. At least my [Brawn] and other stats, once unrestricted, would be where I’d left them.
“Good-bye, Mister King Killer! Good luck!” a prisoner shouted at me.
Seconds later, a sword jabbed me in the back.
“Knock ‘em dead!”
“Thank god, maybe it will be quiet again.”
“Nobody knows!” several voices chanted as I clanked up a stairway at sword-point.
Their words echoed up the brick hallway to a top floor that seemed to house a bit more general population. There were tons of people in this prison. Males, females, humans, and other slightly weirder looking creatures.
Continue Online forced nearly everyone to start as human, but by following the right quest lines, it was possible to transform into different races. Most people ended up going for slightly more classic archetypes, like elves and such. My niece was half-demoness, though she’d never explained exactly how that came about. I didn’t want to know. My own path through the game hadn’t allowed any kind of modifications or stumbled across secret methodology.
We walked through the top floor of the prison and out into a yard. The guards poked and prodded me the entire way, past people with oddly shaped irises, ears, and scaled skin or bald heads.
Maybe one day I would get a chance to pursue my own racial benefits. What would Xin think if I lost all my hair and had slightly scaly skin? Could we even play this game together? Hopefully she wouldn’t have a weird in-between existence like Hal Pal and Jeeves. I should be fine since Xin already lived within the Continue Online realm. Sort of.
AIs were crazily powerful inside this virtual reality and insanely restricted. Each one of the Voices had limitations. I remembered the Voice of Balance stomping on Leeroy months ago, during my William Carver era.
“Pay attention!” The guards behind me poked away small slivers of health with their mean swords. “Get in the cart! No funny business!” They pointed to a small cart I hadn’t seen earlier.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I muttered while trying to figure out when these items would be accessible again. Being without any of my gear made me feel as if I were naked. And where was Dusk? I noted a few weird issues with my situation, and if I ran away with this [Convict Brand], my issues would probably increase.
“Stop staring. The nobles don’t need to see your smug face.” The guard was dissatisfied with everything I did.
The cart was open, and a fancy-looking metal cage sat in the back. They shoved me inside as if I were a circus animal for everyone to see. All three guards took up positions around me with swords lain across their knees.
My only goal was to see what the punishment was. If I got put on [The Wheel], whatever cycle of dungeon hell that involved, then an escape could be planned at that point. I would bide my time and watch for a weak spot. Maybe a bunch of other Travelers could help organize some complex jailbreak scheme.
Except one of the prisoners in that brick hall had said that people who got put on [The Wheel] were scum. I got the impression that these were people who tried to do less humane actions in a digital world because it involved less jail time than the real world. It made no sense to me though. If they really wanted extremely deviant sources of entertainment, why come here? Why not unlock their ARC and download an illegal operating system?
“Stop looking so mean. You’ll scare the ladies.” A guard once again objected to my actions.
My eyebrow went up and forehead wrinkled. What exactly did this guy expect me to do? Stop existing? I shook my head and closed my eyes while trying not to dwell on the other players. They had to be a special sort of degenerate. I had seen those terrible programs and done my job of factory resetting people’s accounts when Hal Pal turned up an illegal program. Most of the questionable material ended up on secondary drives or offline modified units. What I couldn’t see, I didn’t want to know about. Yet people did that sort of stuff here as well?
Fighting other players didn’t bother me as much, especially not after the carnage of Advance Online’s space warfare. Jitters remained, but with Hermes, I felt confident in holding my own. Hopefully. [Blink] and [Morrigu’s Gift] could do wonders. Most standard NPC monsters had posed no problems during my travels, though I still hadn’t fought a dragon. That would be impressive. The more I played this game, the more I envied William Carver for his endless travels and challenges.
I spent the rest of the twenty-minute cart ride thinking of exactly what sort of people might be on this Wheel thing and wondering about my own ability to fight players. Hopefully, I wouldn’t try to pull out a Gatling gun here in the fantasy world. [Mechanical Minion] and [Power Armor] were also out. It felt weird to long for Advance Online abilities here, yet long for Continue Online skills while in the other game.
Guards escorted me inside a large castle. I looked around and marveled at how dull everything looked. Grays and dusty browns ruled the color scheme. The pattern of a griffin being skewered was repeated all over. There had been dungeons with higher quality backdrops than this place. Maybe it was a matter of taste—did the king prefer a more militaristic approach?
“Stop gawking and move on!” The guard stabbed at me again.
Simon says stop giving me lip
Total health loss: 75%
I tried to exist in a positive daze while being marched forth into a grand-looking room. Compared to the rest of the castle, this place was opulent. Carvings flowed along the walls toward the center throne. The preserved heads of two great beasts loomed near the doorway, glaring down. One was a medium-sized dragon, and the other an ogre. Both seemed preserved through magic or virtual reality rule bending.
Something about traveling made me zone out. I wasn’t like those heroes in great novels who could take in all the possible escape routes. That being said, my best bet was probably through the roof and across the gardens I had seen on the eastern side. They looked far less populated. Maybe I was getting better. How many monsters had I escaped from now? Part of me had been well-trained by Shazam to look for escape routes. Though thinking of the tall Amazon made me sad. Lia Kingsley was dead, along with my father.
One of the metal-suited guards jerked me back by my shirt and pushed me to the floor. The first thought to occur to me was one of a child trying desperately not to dirty the thick carpet. That brief horror at making a mess confused me. I didn’t want to get the one nice room in this place dirty with my grody clothes.
“Kneel, prisoner,” the man said.
After being pushed down rudely a third time, I gained some perspective and took care to look around. A regal king with short graying hair sat on the throne. On one side was a player in a well-tailored suit. To the other was a man with a clipboard and oversized quill. Dozens of people sat behind us in witness.
“Stay down!” the guard shouted.
“Lord, perhaps it would have been best to at least hose the prisoner down prior to transportation,” said the person standing off to one side and wearing immaculate clothing. The suit was clearly high fashion, well-made, and not some wholesale, poorly cut lengt
h. His sleeves fit well, and white gloves finished off the suit’s image. I tried to use [Identification] but couldn’t establish anything beyond him being a player.
“No, we need to get this filth moved on toward punishment as soon as possible. We are tired of housing his simpleton self in the dungeon with those lesser criminals.” The king somehow seemed to grow taller as he spoke. It might have been due to my face getting closer to the floor. The guards were intent upon shoving me far into the now dirtied carpeting.
“Of course, your lordship is wise to move him on quickly, but only a moment more might have saved a fine carpet. It was a gift, I believe, as part of your reinstatement.”
The king waved dismissively. “We will simply tack the loss on to his debt.”
Next to him, the thin fellow with a ledger nodded and put quill to paper.
“How wise,” the Traveler wearing the dovetailed jacket said.
“Don’t pay such hollow lip service in front of us, counsel. Were it not for the Voice of Balance requiring this mongrel mix of a Local and Traveler to have representation, we would have thrown you out.”
The man bowed at the waist but chose not to say anything. He reminded me of the player Frankenstein mixed with a butler. There was also far less over-the-top silliness involved with this person.
“We are King Nero, and you have been dragged here today so that we could see your face in person. By this, we might judge if you held a shred of remorse for your crimes.”
Maybe Continue Online allowed for the right to remain silent. The guards behind me had made it pretty clear that all actions were not allowed. They were more than happy to interrupt me with no provocation.
“Do you, Hermes? Do you have any remorse for the death of a good woman?” King Nero’s voice didn’t precisely sound condescending but came close. His voice had a vibration that combined attention-demanding with assertiveness. A set of scars trailed down the left end of his neck.
“She fought hard for her beliefs, and I for mine,” I said carefully. There was no good answer to the conflict that had happened between us. Senseless waste existed on both sides. Part of me wondered if the Continue Online version of Auntie Backstab existed somewhere here, hating my Hermes autopilot with all the rage a giant half-ogre or mountain giant could manage.
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