Glitchworld

by Damien Hanson

  I guess that wasn’t the last one he shrugged, getting back to his feet and jogging away.

  The hallway led out into several rows of cells, which were probably once used for meditation, but now bore doors mostly composed of steel bars. Several poor wretches peered out at him. One of them was the spitting image of Norbleblart: the blue skin, several sets of eyes and four fingers to a hand gave him away.

  “I’m Kered Mingham, and I’m here to rescue you.”

  His HUD lit up - QUEST OBJECTIVE COMPLETED - NEW OBJECTIVE, RETURN THE BOY TO HIS FATHER.

  Then it gave him a plot point.

  What was that for?

  Digging into his HUD, he brought up his log history and groaned. The system had rolled two dice and come up snake eyes, then given him a Plot Point for his horrific failure. He tapped at the dice icon, and discovered he’d rolled a Sway roll.

  Goddamn it! I’ve just succeeded in doing the exact opposite of what I needed to do.

  The alien boy retreated as far from the shaggy, smoking, roaring monster as he could. Derek whistled and patted his leg.

  “Here boy, come on-” and noticed the boy now glaring at him in disgust.

  Derek clicked through his HUD, looking for options and noticed something else. His Pulse cannon wasn’t cooling down… at all.

  Kered tried not to roar, but instead swore sullenly. Behind him, screams, explosions and blaster bolts reminded him that time was of the essence. The clocks, too. The Gary clock was nearing completion.

  “Screw this,” he muttered, and set one of the explosives at the cell door’s lock. He then tapped on the Wreck roll function, and took cover.

  KABOOM! Waves of heat and sound soared over him.

  Another roll later, and the door blew off the wall completely. It ended up wedged into the door across the hall, between the bars and too close to another prisoner.

  “Come on,” he said, and offered up his hand.

  Nothing.

  “Fine!” If this kid turned out to be a Stockholm Syndrome brainwashed sleeper agent of the necrolites who would send the doomsday device plans back to Gary… Derek would be impressed actually. That would be some truly diabolical writing by Meredith’s code team.

  Oh man, he hoped Meredith was okay. She’d seemed really pissed.

  He rushed in, slung the kid over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and made a break for it.

  This required another quick Hunt roll to blast the necrolite he hadn’t put out of commission before (a 2 and a 3, with a Plot Point now a 9 and a 10, which was overkill). He emerged into the temple room to find Gary holding Sigourney by the neck, with her feet dangling several inches off the floor.

  The cleric had been a slightly-better armored version of the original troops, with some glowing purply energy around one hand. Gary, by comparison, was the Apokalypse of necrolites. He stood about seven feet tall, with his armor far bigger and spikier than the others. One half of him appeared to be cybernetic, and the other half human where it wasn’t wrapped in that deep gray bodysuit. He held a crushed Magna +++ pulse Cannon in his human hand, and Sigourney in the other.

  “You’re nothing,” the Necro-king sneered. “This necropolis was built to channel the energies of existence into any who knew the secret of its use, and you will bear witness to me harnessing that power. The power of the universe will soon belong to me.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think so,” Kered said, only it came out as a plaintive yowl, given he’d just rolled something and got double 3’s. Sway maybe. Command possibly.

  “Kill him,” Gary said, and the remaining underlings opened fire.

  He was standing out in the open, slack-jawed, as the blaster fire hit him once, twice, then three times. Level 4 Harm exploded into view, along with the message Fatal Harm incurred. Would you like to resist?

  Uh, yes? His HUD informed him that he had stepped the Harm down to Level 3, which was Debilitating and would require assistance to perform any task. However, he took Stress points from the action, and was running out of Stress to spend on resisting consequences.

  Gary chuckled and returned his attention to Sigourney.

  Kayle winked back into existence next to him. “Oh my God, Derek, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”

  He waved weakly at her. “Kid? He okay?”

  “Yeah, but–”

  He tapped at his HUD, and selected Level Up.

  ***

  The blaster wounds disappeared from Derek in an instant. He waved his hands in front of his face a few more times while she watched, feeling just awful for doing this to him. Sigourney definitely deserved it, but she should’ve known he’d get caught in the crossfire.

  He rose to his feet, still tapping at invisible icons and commands, and clapped his hands together.

  Gary froze in the middle of going on about how he was going to use the power of the universe and existence to subjugate all the races of all the planets in the galaxy. He got as far as “...and you and your friends will–” when Derek stopped him. He gritted his teeth, but Derek’s telekinesis was stronger. His hand was forced open, and Sigourney dropped to the ground, choking and hacking. Immediately after, all three remaining henchmen flew back and slammed into the walls, and stayed where they fell.

  Above Derek’s head, Meredith’s HUD registered the XP’s he was getting, for helping to resist tyranny, to help rescue the innocent, and for a display of heroic deeds to foil an evil plot. Conspicuously, these XP rewards appeared above Sigourney’s nearly unconscious head, yet didn’t materialize in her own game log.

  “Follow me,” Kered said, voice low and full of determination. Meredith had never seen him like this.

  As for Gary, a stone column fell on him. He disappeared behind another cloud of ancient dust.

  “Wieekoo!” the half-metal man shouted. Metal fingertips poking up from behind the column were the only bits of him Meredith could see. “You think this will kill me? Like the twin suns, I will rise twice as strong, and I will hunt you down.”

  She experienced a dark sort of pride in hearing the words.

  Great cracks raced across the walls and ceiling, and huge chunks of stone fell from above. Derek advanced slowly, clenching his fists around the power of his telekinesis, and reached Sigourney. Meredith took the little blue alien, Creeplefleep, and stuck on Derek like a tick. Several pieces of ceiling fell directly on them, but rebounded off an invisible dome.

  Bizarrely enough, heroic music began playing in the background, mostly a chorus.

  Meredith accessed her admin privileges and watched the game try to work out what Kered was after: he expended all of his Ability points in a hurry taking out Gary and his goons, and began to work on the temple. He was at zero in a moment, only to spend a health level to regain some of them. The roll allowed him to gain enough back to keep the Lift Massive Object going, followed by a second level of Harm. And then a third. His Ability points went on a roller coaster of rising and dipping back to zero.

  Now together, they began to rise up out of the disintegrating temple on a similarly invisible disk. For a brief moment, it appeared it would swallow them whole. Darkness surrounded them, and the only sound (other than the rising sound of sopranos) was the crack and thud of breaking stone. A minute went by where Kayle didn’t know if they were falling, stopped, or rising. She couldn’t see Kered before her, but instead only the blackness of stone and the roar of it shifting all about them.

  After a crazy moment spent wondering if the game was going to glitch them into a solid wall and trap them, the bubble above them filled suddenly with the bizarre bluish light of the special star. Below their feet, blocks of outer pyramid imploded, and then they were above it all, watching the necrolites outside the temple rush around in utter confusion.

  Derek set them down maybe a mile away from the worst of the chaos, smiled down at Kayle and Greebleblip, and collapsed unconscious.

  Chapter 12 - Operation Bra Breaker

  Derek Hammings groaned like he was in a world of pain
. At this moment, he sounded not unlike his worst memory of going out with his freshman year college girlfriend Hillary. She’d gotten him to pay for a full makeover, a mani-pedi, and had chattered at him the entire time. He’d wanted to slay some aliens in a video game, maybe watch a movie and snuggle, but she’d insisted on taking him out to meet her friends, and all their boyfriends. And drink beer at a crowded, loud, expensive bar.

  “Derek, wake up. You’ve slept long enough.”

  And the headache he’d woken up to was catastrophic, which included learning he’d treated everybody to several rounds and his bank account was overdrawn. This shocking revelation came minutes before learning that Hillary was in fact breaking up with him by text. She needed someone more adventurous, you see. Translation: she needed someone with more cash to draw out of ATMs.

  Meredith knew all this because she’d listened to all of his moaning, first by text and then over the phone. Derek came to Meredith, the solid rock of cheerful anger over his poor choice in female companionship, and then slipped up with some other skank, and came back to her again. He always came back to her.

  Meredith nudged him gently as she peered down into his boyishly handsome face. She could feel her heart race, and she resisted the urge to glance over at Sigourney. That tramp didn’t deserve him. Meredith knew how to watch movies and snuggle. She’d been practicing, alone in her Prestige-supplied dorm facility on site.

  “Uh– huh?” Derek gasped, jolting upright. “Oh, wow, sorry. That was a heck of a fight. I guess I’m just really really tired.”

  “I bet,” Meredith said, an image surfaced, of him and Sigourney practically transferring saliva, one atop the other in a place of her design. She swept it away mentally as if it were a command in her HUD. She could still do this. All was not yet lost. They were meant to be together.

  Sigourney watched over them from her place on the indistinct ground, her face as blank as the digital darkness.

  “What is this place?” Derek asked. Meredith took note of how he talked to her and not Sigourney. It was a good sign.

  “We are in-between it looks like. The server kinda bugged out and I’ve kept us on pause while it rebooted, then longer while you slept.” Meredith held up her pad and gestured, “One touch of the button and we’re back on-air.”

  Sigourney’s eyes lingered over the pad, and she smiled. “That is a nifty device. So, you work here, huh?” The question seemed innocent, but it held an edge. Jealous much? Meredith thought. Everything was coming up Meredith. She’d been foolish to think that Derek would fall for this slut. Just a piece of ass– now that I’m back I’ll steal the show and we can end this dumb thing and go back to our room. Alright, one step at a time, Mere. Time to get this show, and Sigourney here, on the road.

  “Oh, yeah, I work here. I’m just the chief programmer for Age of the Powered modules over at Prestige Gaming,” she said cattily. “Nothing too special.”

  Derek’s eyes widened and his face clouded into uncertainty. Sigourney looked taken aback.

  “Listen, it’s cool, I didn’t mean anything by it. I just, well, I thought it was cool. Like you made this. You really made this– you didn’t just pay extra for a premium or whatever and send deets over the interwebs– you took that pretty brain of yours and made a story with it. Then made a world for the story to happen in, and rules for the players –” Sigourney spread her arms in bewilderment. “Honestly I could never do anything like that. I wouldn’t even know where to start!”

  Meredith smiled. But Derek didn’t like it. It wasn’t a smile that screamed thank you. It was cruel and scornful– the sort of thing you’d reserve for the end boss after you knocked the last bit of hp out of his health meter.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Meredith said. “Well, let’s get this rolling. If everyone is set and ready to go, I might as well use this cute little pad here to get us on our way.”

  With a series of taps and a ding, Meredith’s Prestige Gaming tab brought the game back to life. They were there, back on Crand, a mile away from the chaos that had been the Necropolis. A loud boom echoed across to them and back, as more and more of the city fell to pieces.

  “Oh wow!” Derek enthused. “That adventure was amazing. So what do we do now?”

  Sigourney got off of the scrabbly ground, standing and stretching. “I suppose we go find a way off of this rock and get back to wherever Glopgor’s father is. Any chance either of you want to cheat and just magic up a ship with the Gaming pad there?”

  “No way,” Derek laughed. “We’re here playing a game for multi-millionaires and I’m having the time of my life. Even if there seems to be some sort of code problem. Hey, Meredith, I thought you said AR doesn’t glitch?”

  Meredith scowled. “It never has before.”

  “Then why don’t you use your pad to scan for problems while we escape. We can be your beta testers or whatever. And then we can do the escape, which I bet will be a blast!”

  Meredith giggled. She couldn’t help it. He was such a nerd. A cute, sexy, boyish nerd. And, soon, he was going to be all hers.

  ***

  Things had been weird there for a bit with Sigourney and Meredith but hot damn was it all coming back together. Derek hopped from foot to foot as he tapped his fingers over his BOOBS, scanning the area for any usable craft. His interface blipped and bleeped as it immediately found a fleet of them, and he got to watch as they all fell into some chasm that he had triggered back in the Necropolis. What the hell is going on over there?

  Meredith looked up from her own BOOBS and frowned. “It looks like we started some sort of chain reaction at the Necropolis. But I see a cavern or something that’s evading our signals right there in the recess of that hill. She tapped her device where she had indicated and a 3-D hologram, pink and red, glowed above her device. Derek looked at her BOOBS in awe.

  “How do you get your BOOBS to do that?” he asked.

  “Not the time nor the place, Kered. We’re back in-game and let’s do this and get out. I’m about ready for a good hot soak in the sauna. Just look here, in the draw on the Southern slope, see that pixelated fuzziness? That’s a Basic Resistance Amplifier. And that means there is something good hidden there. It’s an expensive setup and nothing shields BOOBS better than a BRA.”

  Sigourney nodded as if this were common place knowledge. “It’ll be tough not having eyes on. But if we can get close without setting off any alarms I can go in first, tear down the BRA and unlock our BOOBS. Then you two can scan the place, find out if there is a ship and where it is if there is one, then come meet me there. If there isn’t a ship I’ll just come out and regroup with you.”

  Meredith flashed her teeth in the happiest smile that Derek had seen all day. I guess she really is getting into all of this!

  Derek pumped a fist into the air. “Yeah let’s do this!”

  ***

  The hill was just a few miles from where they had been. But it was a long walk nonetheless. Unlike their trip to the Necropolis this path was rocky, bumpy, and filled with peril. Twice Derek saw that he had succeeded at Athletics and he understood that this was the game’s way of telling him that he was mad for going this way. But, hey, no pain no gain or something like that, right? He thought the rough path was a good sign that they were on the right track.

  The terrain got interesting too. Even with the system broken and glitching all over the place the reality of this alien landscape was mind boggling. Purple trunked palm trees glittered and glistened in the darkening blue of the sunset. Dark-green clumps of tall grass waved despite the absence of wind. A few rose colored flowers bloomed before his very eyes, puffing light pink fragrance into the air as the hot sun left for other places, and it all looked just as real as life itself.

  Plus Sigourney led the way and her sway led him. The way she sashayed through the terrain without the clumsy jerkiness that his own body portrayed was fascinating. He wondered if she was a runway model in real life. She’d certainly do the part proud.

  “Ke
red,” Meredith called. He shook himself out of his reverie, realizing that she had been calling his avatar’s name a few times now.

  “Huh?” he asked. His Kered avatar emitted a confused howl and shook his shaggy head..

  “We’re about there,” she said, showing him her BOOBS.

  “We’re going to want to stop here I think. We have elevation and some good cover– let Sigourney head the rest of the way over on her own.”

  Sigourney flipped them a thumbs up and marched on, not even looking back.

  Meredith’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Plus I have something special that I want to talk to you about.”

  Derek’s eyes widened and he scanned her face. She was blushing and a sparkle lit her eyes. Woah– another present? This woman, she was something else.

  “Of course!” Derek whispered back, a dumb grin plastered over her face. Meredith returned the same, blushing even more.

  Derek checked their fore, Sigourney was picking her way down the slope towards the draw of the next hill. Meredith moved next to him and grabbed a hold of his hand.

  “That is one remarkable player,” she laughed. “I’ll be happy to give her an autograph when this is all over.”

  Derek watched as Sigourney disappeared into the landscape. She was a bronzed Amazon clad in leather and chainmail, yet somehow she blended into the surroundings and vanished. The glimpses of movement he did catch were often wrong: a six legged tortoise-like animal once, and a crystalline tumbleweed another time. Lucky for them, Worbleweep was as transfixed by Sigourney (and the restraining cuffs) and could hardly move a muscle except to coo and hoot appreciatively at Sigourney’s retreating posterior.

  She had a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “When we get aboard that ship, I need a few things to go a certain way.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “First of all, we’re both taking scalding hot showers. I’m going to load up some herbal scented body washes, my favorite scents, and we’re going to get sudsy.”