Glitchworld

by Damien Hanson

  “Let’s see how they handle this,” she growled.

  Ugh, until she finished running that scan, she wouldn’t have access to this Sigourney chick’s character sheet. She shifted back to her tablet. Still five hours left before she located her. ANAL sucked. Her life sucked. Right this very moment, everything except cheap ass whiskey sucked.

  What good was all the money if you couldn't reel in the only guy who’d ever respected you for being yourself, especially when he was a luckless doof with no self-esteem? It should’ve been a slam dunk.

  Instead he was sharing a laugh and a Spacecraft roll with Sigourney. And look, he’d re-skinned himself as the hot badass she’d imagined for the last few weeks of setting this up.

  The moment Mare is out of the picture you give up the smelly bear rug costume and put on your sci-fi secret agent face to impress the mostly-naked redhead. Sure. I get it. Fuck you, Derek.

  She laid backwards in her chair, letting it creak back as far as it could, closing her eyes and savoring rolling through her whole life as Derek’s handkerchief. His someone to cry on. Her eyes squeezed shut, and a tear leaked out from both.

  No, no, none of that. There’s gotta be something else I can do while I'm waiting here.

  Her eyes popped open wide, stark white against the black of her skin. She popped her chair back forward and paused, dizzy yet excited. Meredith pushed a tab on her desk and a massive keyboard, bowed like a boomerang, full of keys and commands, every symbol lit up from beneath, extended around her, effectively ringing her in. Swinging her chair right Meredith clicked the emergency command interface to enabled, then brought up then black background with white type command screen and parsed her desires. She glared at the screen and then she typed, Ma:\MANUALOVERRIDE SERVER 1015 MEREDITH/DEREK RE: DANGEROUS GLITCH - LOCK ACCESS/EXIT ADMIN CODE 8675309 MAINTAIN OPERATIONS.

  PARK GUEST DEREK HAMMINGS IN PLAY - REQUEST DENIED.

  Meredith growled and pounded her keyboard. She reached for some more Rainbow Red, downed it with a gasp, then smiled. She knew how to do this.

  PARK GUEST DEREK HAMMING RECLASSIFY EMPLOYEE DEREK HAMMING, GAME TESTER ID 2020, ADMIN CODE 8675309.

  RECLASSIFICATION ACCEPTED

  REPEAT Ma:MANUALOVERRIDE SERVER 1015 et all

  MANUAL OVERRIDE CONFIRMED. ACCESS/EXIT LOCKED.

  No escape she thought, looking over the hard coding she’d provided to the system and then she laughed maniacally, swinging back to watch the romantic duo as they made their way to what they expected was back to safety.

  Chapter 15 - The Dick Dance

  The Ehcsrop growled loudly as its engines powered up. Something about its system of propulsion gave it that ratty sound of a shih tzu growling and tearing at a chew toy. Derek and Sigourney had changed positions, he got to pilot while she would baby-sit that alien hulk-wannabe in back just in case things got out of hand. His balls ached, remembering just what could happen when they did. Derek flipped at switches above his head, twisted a few dials in front of him, and played a little with a lever, letting his numbers do their thing without even bothering to watch them roll by. He wanted to finish this mission. Sigourney watched him, nodded, and moved to the rear to keep a watch on Snotslorp. Gears grinded and spun, flames began to roar, and then they were free– the hangar floor flying by at a fast pace as they made for the rectangular exit in the ceiling.

  The space above Derek clunked, and the ship made a deep and sudden lurch towards the ground. An alarm blared and his screen flashed red. -IMPACT HAS OCCURRED-

  Gah! He pulled on the piloting yoke and lurched back upward, slipping through the exit and into the sky. The screen kept flashing before him. “I know, I know,” he muttered at it, finally finding the button to turn the damn thing off. The ship was flying, that was all that mattered.

  “We’re out,” Derek called back, his sweaty blond hair flipping in what he hoped was a sexy arc.

  “You’ll never escape him,” screamed Snotty McAlienface. “Necrolites forever!”

  Another clunk sounded from above, accentuating the alien child’s point. Clung, clung, clung– metallic pounding with what must have been the force of a jackhammer rained blows down on the top of their craft. -IMPACT HAS OCCURRED- the screen flashed again.

  “Hey Sig, we are either in the middle of a meteor shower or we’ve got trouble on the top of our spacecraft!”

  Sigourney growled and rolled her eyes.

  “You, Meepledeeble or whatever the hell, you stay put and don’t do any getting giant and beating the hell out of Derek tricks, or else there will be trouble. You got that?”

  Gleeblegorp, son of Norbledorn, nodded, staring at her chest with eyes wide open. Sigourney followed his gaze to her bosoms and laughed.

  “Men and their dicks.” She grabbed up a level 2 gauss super rifle, checked its magazine, and strolled over to the airlock. “Alright, Kered, I want you to level out and slow down a little so I can go up top and see what the hell is going on. I have a thought on the matter– but I want to make sure and maybe even take care of it. You got this?”

  Derek nodded, slowly releasing the yoke while toggling switched and hitting buttons.

  “Roger that, Sigourney. Captain Hammings has got your back.”

  Sigourney winked. “Yeah, sure, Listen, when we get back, how about you treat the two of us to some wine and beer at whatever your favorite watering hole is?”

  Derek beamed. “I’d like that! I’d like that very much!

  ***

  Sigourney pulled herself up into the grimy white airlock, listening to the hatch hiss shut behind her. She liked that sound. It sounded like freedom.

  But it wasn’t anything to get all teary-eyed about. There were a lot of things that had to happen first. And the next one on her checklist was that sound. It sounded like a boss fight. A bad one.

  She banged the back of her hand on the suit locker, listened to it cycle to release, then pulled it open, picking through them for one that would fit.

  It doesn’t have to be a tight fit, she reminded herself. We aren’t in space yet. But the air is going to be thin, and the suit tether is going to be an absolute godsend.

  She pulled out her choice, a red and blue bodysuit with a fishbowl helmet that contained camera views for all angles and a computer display within her helm, then she lay against it and let the suit wrap seal itself over her body. Plopping the helmet over her head, she breathed in deeply and then sighed, running a quick systems check over the suit’s functionality.

  “Everything is A-OK,” she said aloud, then laughed. Things certainly were looking a lot better than they had in a very long while. Grabbing a hold of the airlock’s cable tether, she attached it to her suit’s carabiner and then climbed a metal ladder to the top, unsealing it with a push of a red button. The release was slow but, when that hatch finally cycled open, the wind tore passed at breakneck speed, reminding her again of how difficult this all was about to be.

  Stick with it, baby, you are in the home stretch!

  She yanked herself up onto the windswept hull of the ship and threw herself to the side, sliding then jerking to a halt as her tether stopped her fall. A clonk sounded from where she had been.

  “You are a shifty one, aren’t you?” Gruesome Gary fumed, raising a metallic fist back upon from its divot in the hull. “But you cannot def-f-f-f-f-” the villain stuttered. “Masked Marauder!” he asked her, his half-robot half-human face clouded in confusion.

  Something about Gary was different also. Above his head, the title of Necrolord disappeared, and in its place was Gruesome Gary. The robes and battle armor disappeared in a cloud of digital insanity, then reappeared, only this time in neon disco style colors. For a brief moment, he was wearing inflatable water wings and an inflatable ducky ring around his waist, only to be replaced by board shorts and a hawaiian shirt. A moment later they were gone, and in their place was his largely robotic body, gleaming with vile reddish lights.

  “What’s wrong? Did someone play with your pro
gramming?” she asked. She had to shout to be heard, and it made her laugh thinking about what she might look like to someone without AR.

  "What do you think you are doing back there, hero?” Gruesome Gary called. His metallic robotic voice was filled with scorn. “You shall never defeat me, Masked Marauder! I destroyed every single one of your puny League of Loser friends and now I shall destroy you too. It is simply a matter of time.”

  Sigourney activated the tether command in her hub and started to reel in fast. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said.

  “Or, if you want to live, I offer you mercy. Come out and bow before your new k-k-k-king," the villain stuttered, frowning.

  She readied her level 2 gauss super rifle and rolled it upward to blast him in the chest, the stock hard against her shoulder and the grip squeezed tightly in her right hand.

  Pow - pow - pow - her confused enemy fired first, three plasma bolts blasting into her body and knocking her off of her feet. Ungodly pain sparked through her entire body and she shrieked while her level 2 gauss super rifle blew out of her hands and flew away. Notifications lit up within her HUD, and she chose them all. Yes, get rid of all of the harm you can. Yes, yes. Luckily she had a Fortitude of 3, and rolled high all three times. Her Stress points fell to a dangerous low, but it was worth it. She’d only have light char marks… for the moment.

  “M-m-masked marauder, now you die!” Gruesome Gary said, his face back to being its normal killer calm. Sigourney closed her eyes, heard the ship’s engines rev harder, and grabbed at rings embedded in the ship’s hull. Things were about to get dizzy.

  ***

  It was all that Derek could do to not run on over, grab a weapon, and follow Sigourney out of the craft. If this baddie was as powerful as it sounded that was not going to be an easy fight. Plus then he could look up her chainmail bikini while she was climbing. A win win for everybody.

  Instead he had to watch as Gleebleglorp got a gleeful eyeful, then turned proud eyes upon him.

  “Oh go to hell, Glorblegleep,” Derek told him, then he laughed. He was getting jealous because a fake alien was getting to perv and he wasn’t. Ah well, time to settle in.

  And he did, for a bit, till things went south. He couldn’t hear or see the battle that was raging above him, or at least if he could he didn’t know how, but when the ship registered plasma fire, he knew that things weren’t going well.

  “I need some help, Kered!” she shouted into the coms.

  “Roger that,” he replied, and jerked the steering yoke to one side, to throw Gary for a loop. “Standby.”

  “No standing by! Do it, and do it now!”

  Think, Derek! This Gary character was basically a robot, which meant metal, which meant an electrical system. He was holding onto the ship by magnets. Okay, he could do this. He tapped his character sheet and found the engineering skill, then twiddled a couple of knobs and flipped a couple of the ship’s switches.

  “Siggie, on the count of three you jump, hear me?”

  “Hurry!” she screamed.

  “Three!” He pulled a lever, heard the dice tinkle and roll. The numbers appeared above him: 1 and 9. Over the coms he heard Sigourney scream, and wondered frantically how that could be, since he hadn’t gotten a success with complication. He had a moment of panicked worry before two things happened: one, her screech turned into a whoop of exultation, and two, he recalled that this was a freaking game.

  “You got him!” she screamed into the coms. “You zapped him off the ship!”

  “Great! Get back down here.” The idea of her hanging off the ship by a steel cable was turning his guts, and then he remembered once again that they were in a game. A very, very, very, very, very realistic game. Yeesh.

  He went to plot the course, and discovered the map looked a whole lot like a naked breast: perfectly circular, with two smaller circles in the center. The central circle was titled Galactic Hub, with the circle surrounding it labeled Great City Alzo. Access Level 0, Alzo, okay, simple enough.

  Sigourney joined him a minute later, when confusion had fully taken hold.

  “We on our way?” she asked.

  “Actually, no… I’m getting something weird on the navcomputer. We can’t plot a course to this Alzo. It’s saying gravoletric interference, and I didn’t want to botch any rolls and risk Gary showing up again on a clock.” The ship swung hard to the left (port?) and he shared a look with Sigourney. The navcomputer now had a destination already in mind.

  “I hate to say this,” she said. “But I think maybe your girl doesn’t want us getting back to base.”

  Derek’s face hardened.

  “I think you are right,” he said, highlighting a selection of navigational text and magnifying it on screen. EMERGENCY REROUTE - GRAVOLETRIC STORM IN PROGRESS. ALL INBOUND TRAFFIC PROCEED TO PORT LAKEWOOD STATION. AN AUTOMATIC FLIGHT PLAN HAS BEEN SENT TO YOUR SHIP’S COMPUTER.

  “Why do you think she is sending us to this Lakewood place?” Sigourney asked.

  “Lakewood was the name of the high school we both attended. I don’t know what is going on but this doesn’t feel good. I think maybe she’s hacking our game. She’s angry about something, and I’ve seen how she gets when she gets angry. She used to get angry with her parents all of the time. Never flipped out on me though. Til now I guess.”

  Sigourney sat in the copilot’s chair and leaned back, letting it groan beneath her muscular weight.

  “She likes you, that’s what happened. Maybe you can apologize and like her back?”

  “I like her too!” Derek boomed. “We’re great friends and we always have been! And now, all of a sudden, she’s at my throat. I don’t get it!”

  The spaceship growled and then whooshed away, off to Lakewood. There was a brief shudder as the ship moved into hyperspace. A compartment popped open and a small first aid kit slammed down fast into Derek’s balls.

  “Ow!” He screamed, holding his jewels. Sigourney started laughing.

  “That’s what you get for not turning down your haptic pain settings, you idiot.”

  “But I did, I swear!” Derek whined.

  Sigourney’s eyes widened. She sat back up and hit a button, shuttling a keyboard out to her side. With a fast flurry of commands she brought up her own game menu on the main screen and magnified it. Her own controls were set to full haptic pain– that explained the searing shock of the plasma blasts before. She selected the pain settings and dialed them down to nothing, then saved it, then reloaded them. Full haptic pain settings again! She hadn’t been able to alter any of her personal settings since getting here, but there was a chance it was Kayle/Meredith’s doing. That Queen B seemed like the type to dive overboard, then swim to the deep end and dive down as far as possible, find a great white, beat it up, then use all of its teeth as spearpoints to poke her enemies with.

  Not that Sigourney was very different, but she didn’t particularly enjoy being on the other end of said treatment.

  Sigourney closed her menu and dialed up Derek’s settings. Full haptic pain was there and also there was something else. He was labeled as having a curse. She clicked on the curse and magnified it on the screen. A WOMAN SCORNED - 25% CHANCE ALL ATTACK, TRAP OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGE OCCURS TO TESTICLES. Derek’s eyes widened and his mouth opened into a big O. Sigourney covered her face to stifle a chuckle. Oh, Meredith, that is good. Well done.

  Derek started flipping switches, panic on his face. “How do we stop this thing? I don’t want to go! I want to get out! It’s not fun when the game is just you getting punched in the balls over and over again!”

  Sigourney tried her hand at it as well. There weren’t even dice rolls for her trying though. They were getting railroaded to Port Lakewood whether they liked it or not.

  ***

  The ship dropped out of hyperspace and was immediately surrounded by a fleet of assorted starships. A message flashed on the screen. HAILING. OPEN COMMUNICATIONS Y/N?

  Sigourney and Derek shared a look, then
Sigourney clicked Y. On the screen appeared Meredith, wearing a sexy Stellar Voyager Captain’s uniform, her breasts half open to the air.

  “Kered Hammings aka Dick, this is Admiral Meredith Johnston of the Lakewood Fleet– Go Dolphins! We are here, Dick, to escort you and your well-known criminal consort, Sigourney aka Bimbo, planetside to the city of Hieskool, where you shall stay under city arrest, awaiting your trial for crimes of the heart. Do not try to resist. Admiral Johnston out.”

  The screen went dark. The ship’s controls went dark as well. The two of them felt their ship jolt and shake as it was grabbed up for transport to the planet’s surface.

  Sigourney stood up. “Do you think that was really her?” she asked.

  “I don’t know but I hope so. Because I don’t want to talk with whatever evil automaton Meredith might have programmed when she was angry.”

  ***

  “Drunk and angry,” Meredith spluttered and then she laughed, watching Dick and Bimbo panic in the confines of their dumb little ship. She was sitting in her desk, half a bottle of Rainbow Red just a finger’s length away. Its cool glassy outside was covered in perspiration.

  This was the fastest bit of coding she’d ever done, and while it was sure to be shot through with some teensy bugs, she couldn’t give less of a squat. Her fingers were practically steaming from all the typing. Sure there’d been a lot of cut and paste, but the mods she’d done on a lot of the modules were just glorious things of pure genius. Flawed or not, they would be the catharsis she needed.

  And if she were being completely honest with herself, Meredith would have admitted that she had already built up several of these particular scenes, and the only time she had ever tested them out was alone after everyone had left for the day. And these were the types of scenes that she would never use ordinarily in the game. Previously they'd just been personal little pet projects for getting out of a little bit of stress after a long day.

  Other people would lay eyes on these particular scenes for the first time ever.