Glitchworld

by Damien Hanson

  The two of them swung open the restaurant doors, its glass catching the rays of the sun and scattering them all in a million directions as they duck their heads and tore forth. Their booted feet tore divots out of the restaurant’s fine lawn but no one seemed to be around to care anymore. Everywhere they looked the city was empty.

  “What’s going on here?” Derek asked.

  “Save your breath,” Sigourney answered, “and just keep running.”

  Clack clack - their boots played tandem on the pavement. Crackle crunch - their boots hit a gravel path that made a short cut to the shanties of the swamp city. Stomp creak - wooden pathways shuddered under their panicked flight. Then there it was. Their ship was close enough to smell.

  “We’re not done here, Masked Marauder,” an angry voice called, followed by the sparkling sound of an angry energy blast. Derek reacted, knocking Sigourney over into the stink-filled sludge of the swamp, then did a somersault backwards, a bloody hole blasted in his side. He screamed.

  Chapter 19 - Rub Both Balls Softly For Better Comfort

  DUNGEONWORLDER - ANAL informed her, the words searing a world of meaning across her already battered brain. Underneath it scrolled other information. Name, rank, date of birth. But it scrolled by meaninglessly as she sought the most important part of the dossier. Why was an army veterean stuck in the gladiatorial deathpits of her game?

  MURDER, KIDNAPPING, ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION. FORMER SPECIAL FORCES - PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNSTABLE AND PRONE TO VIOLENCE. MANIPULATIVE, CHARISMATIC, DEADLY. LONGEST LIVING DUNGEONWORLD GLADIATOR IN CURRENT RECORD.

  Meredith blinked. What?

  She tore her eyes away and slid them across the hot hard metal of her computer, briefly wondering if she should just turn the whole damn server off and then format her hard drive, call the police, and get this all done with.

  “Why am I bleeding?” Derek asked from her display. She rolled her eyes across the televised gash in his neck. Nothing big. Derek was being a big baby. Still, though. . .

  Her finger twitched, her eyes narrowed. Possibilities raced around through her mind, each more alarming and clear than the last. No, she was in too far already; she’d made Derek an employee and radically altered the code to punish him. No, she might just end up sharing a cell with Sigourney after this was all done. Police weren’t an option. Not anymore.

  I’m going to have to kill them both she thought, her eyes smoke and coals, burning love to ash in the speed of a thought. I’m going to have to kill them both, and get rid of the bodies. Then I’m going to have to dig through the undersystem and delete all records of everything. Oh god oh god!

  She coughed and cleared her throat, then ambled over to her command chair, tired eyes searching over the painted blackness of her way too giant keyboard. Popping control tab, then control f4, she shut down the ongoing battle she had set up for them and then steepled her fingers under her chin and groaned.

  How can I kill them? Why do I have to kill them?

  YOU MUST something primordial and ancient cried from within her hindbrain. IT IS THEM OR US. YOU KILL OR BE KILLED.

  Yeah. And it isn’t like they’re important. I mean, of course they are, but they aren’t doing anything for the world. Look at me, I’m practically the boss of this whole joint.

  Meredith laughed but her tones creaked, like thick leather being harnessed to a wagon.

  She stared at the screen and clicked on her bossman. Gruesome Gary. She opened him up. It had to be done.

  Snip, snap. She removed all of his safeties and weaknesses. All except his monologuing. With all of the years of being strung along it seemed appropriate Derek be strung along as he died.

  Maybe… maybe she didn’t have to kill them both. Sigourney was a convicted criminal, after all. A convicted criminal escaped from the bonds of her contract with Prestige. Gary would naturally go after the most dangerous quarry, and she could step in and save the day.

  Derek - SIGOURNEY IS A DUNGEONWORLDER! I CAN JUSTIFY THIS WHOLE THING TO EVERYONE. I WAS TRYING TO SAVE DEREK. MAYBE I CAN EVEN GET HIM TO UNDERSTAND THAT. YES, OH DEREK, I’LL SAVE YOU!

  She started, realizing that she had been daydreaming and losing time. The two of them were running through her city to her spaceship and cutting the mobs program meant that there was nothing in their way. It was time to get rid of the wicked witch. She didn’t have any houses to throw– though programming one into her digital inventory did seem like something she needed to write in on her to-do list. No, she was just gonna gruesome the bitch.

  “Alright Gary, you are a man on a mission. Get Sigourney and save my Derek. That is an order, soldier!” She could imagine Derek groaning and she smiled, something sick and wavy that would certainly have scored Mostly False had it been Studied.

  Bombs away she thought, the enter key gleaming darkness in the shade of her office. She jabbed it, her smile going raw as something animal took over her and made her soul its nest.

  “We’re not done here, Masked Marauder,” Gruesome Gary called from her screen, rising up like something out of the Time Robot series, swirling together from a mist of battle ready and blood thirsty nanites, well ready to rip a bitch. Sigourney was caught completely by surprise, turning too slowly, and tripping besides, her dumb mouth opening in shock even while her eyes dulled over with acceptance.

  Spoosh the energy blast sounded. It was a noxious green laced with electric white and yellow. It sparkled in Meredith’s eyes, her vengeance made material. From Hell’s Heart I stab at thee.

  Then Derek jumped in the way, shoving Sigourney to safety.

  “No!” Meredith shrieked, lunging at the monitor with her arms out and hands open as if she could pull him away from the danger and into the safety of her tea-stained office. A splatter of meat blasted red off his side and he tumbled backward. And then he screamed.

  ***

  Sigourney rolled and hopped, feet down first in the dark inky muck of the swampy basin. She’d held onto her rifle with the muscle memory of one war and a few years in the pits of Prestige Gaming. She stayed crouched and scanned her lanes of fire. Derek had shoved her, and she owed him one. But she couldn’t see where he had gone off to. And that metal bozo was back, somehow, his plates gleaming and thick. He looked like an unstoppable titan, a Behemoth MkIV from the sandy rock and scrub hills, nooks and crannies of Afghanistan. She sniffed - blood and burnt flesh. She’d smelled it too often. Derek was hit.

  “Hey, freakshow, I’ve got something for you!” Sigourney fired, feeling no dice this time but simply pure reflexes and adrenaline. Breath, relax, aim, squeeze, breath, relax, aim, squeeze her energy bolts popped out in quick succession, pow pow pow, each one striking Gary in the chest just below his chin. The metal scorched and slagged under the assault.

  “You don’t have me yet,” Gruesome Gary sneered, the human half of his face glaring daggers into her soul. With that, he rocketed up and away. Probably this new version regenerates or something. Meredith isn’t going to let us leave here. Not alive. I better go find Derek.

  It didn’t take her long. She jogged forward, the schucking and slorping sounds of her boots announcing her approach, yet Derek didn’t look up at her when she got to him. He was splayed over the wooden planks, a pool of blood under and rolling out from him, his eyes rolled back. She felt his cheek with the back of her hand, then checked his pulse, all the while remembering her drill instructor from the days of basic medical training.

  Rub both balls softly for better comfort she thought, the army mnemonic rising up to give her direction. Responsiveness– “Derek, are you alright?” He groaned in response. Breathing– Sigourney put her head to the man’s chest. Air whooshed in and out in ragged gasps. Bleeding– Sigourney pulled out a knife from her boot cut loose fabric from everywhere she could on Derek’s body. She made a makeshift pad and tied it hard around his stomach and back. Looking around, she found a graphite rod, the piece to some boating mechanism, and slid it into the wound rap to all for a sort of makeshift dial. Twisti
ng it, she got the wrapping as tight as it could be. The bleeding slowed and she sighed. Okay, next, shock. There was a tarp covering over a swamp trawler. It seemed nice and thick. She grabbed it and wrapped Derek up like a cocoon, making sure to keep him nice and toasty while she carried him back to the ship. Fractures, burns and concussion were going to have to wait. This boy needed attention.

  “Okay, let’s get up, Derek,” she said. She kneeled down and picked him up in front of her as if he were logs for the winter furnace. He biceps bulged with the effort. “We’re out of the game now and we need to move. It’s not far to the ship, buddy. We can make it.”

  Derek looked up at her groggily and nodded, then mumbled some nonsense.

  Sigourney walked him over sodden wooden planks and buzzing clouds of insects, not stopping until after she had passed the threshold to his bedroom and tucked him into his blankets. Then she stepped out of the ship and screamed a war cry up into the morning sky.

  “Come and get me Meredith. I know I’m the one you are after. Leave him out of it. He’s just a gamer, just here to have fun. You can bang him when I’m gone. But I’m not going back to the pit, I’m not going to kill and run through missions again and again to the roar of a bunch of people who don’t know what I did and don’t care if I did it. So, come on. Get this done with! I know you want to!”

  ET Meredith whirled into existence, complete with the white and red of a nurse’s uniform. Unarmed. What fresh hell was this?

  “Hold your fire!”

  Contrition painted Meredith’s features, but it had to be a trick. The open hands and slow approach were a diversion. She whirled and searched for the real Meredith.

  “It’s me… I– I’ve gone too far. Let me go to Derek. I can synthesize some real world stabilizers with the AR system and head out there to get him. And, if you help me, I’ll let you escape. You can be free, Alessa Kadotia.”

  It felt strange to hear her real name. She’d been the name of some heroic character from some historic show or movie for so long. Her favorite had been the one with the creatures that burst out NPC’s chests, became huge, and had acid for blood. What was the name of that again? Oh yeah, ET.

  “We’ll see when that time comes, Meredith. Just call me Sigourney. Turn the controls back on and get your ass out of here. It is time to end this game.”

  ***

  Meredith watched from her screen, and looked down at her hands, seeing upon them the blood from Derek’s blast. It really was time to end it all. Things had gone too far. If that blast had been just a little bit more center Derek would be dead. Or paralyzed. I don’t know what is wrong with me. After this is all over I need to check in somewhere and take a nice relaxing psychoanalytic vacation. Poor old Meredith might have some issues after all.

  She sighed, brought up a menu, and flooded the ship’s inventory with the most powerful healing gels, quick casts, and painkillers she could find. Every gameworld had them stocked up, on the rare occasion some idiot player fell on his head and the game wasn’t quick enough to catch him. Then she began the process of retrieval from the waste bin, going through resetting and repairing strings of code and connections, putting all of the gaming stuff back together the way it was always supposed to be. Keys clattered and popped as she reversed the process in full. It felt good to be doing the right thing. It felt great to know, finally, that she had a problem, and that she was taking steps to right the wrongs she’d committed.

  “Goodbye, Gruesome Gary,” Meredith waved with a small smile, clicking his folder to drag him away.

  “You will not defeat me so easily, Masked Marauder,” a message popped up, midscreen. And then her computer shut down, leaving her in the dull shadows of an office with drawn shades and the lights all off. A chill crept over her, and she ran to the door, unsealed it and exited at a run to her PENIS. She’d seen a handful of glitches when they were playing. He couldn’t… he couldn’t just circumvent a coder’s commands. It wasn’t possible. Yet Occam’s razor sliced deep into her guts and froze there.

  She needed to get them out of the game. Now.

  She blasted past two men talking, one yelling at her to slow down. She bashed through a woman with a stack full of papers, making them fly everywhere. “Meredith?” a man called. She whipped past him as well. “Damn, she’s ripe,” someone called. She’d have to deal with him later.

  Having become an office movie cliche, Meredith didn’t feel bad about straight barreling through Amber, who looked shocked to see her and even more shocked to be laid out by her in a linebacker blitz. “Sorry!” Meredith called over her shoulder. She slipped on the floor and hit the wall of the corner in a slide. Gasping, she slid down the bannister of a set of metal stairs, hopped off the end, and clacked in her password to ride a PENIS. She needed it fast and her heart hammered hard with anticipation. I’m coming Derek! I’m coming!

  ***

  Sigourney sat on the ramp, drinking a beer and eating a superheated Chicko Deluxe dinner. After giving Derek what he needed from the piles of medical crates that had appeared in their cargo bay she’d decided it might be time to medicate herself. It seemed like the right idea and oh boy did the cool and crisp liquid flow smoothly down her gullet. Like Georgy did that second week in the Dungeonworld. The Sharkquake rocked about the ground we stood on and I got up the greased telephone pole but he fell and gulp, goodbye Georgy. She took another swig and shivered at the memory of the giant maw yawning beneath them. The place sucks. She grabbed up a chicken leg, white, steaming, and covered with a beautiful orange and black mixture of herbs and spices, then took her first bite. It was glorious.

  “To you, Georgy,” she saluted. Somewhere cloudy and white she imagined him saluting her back.

  The bugs had all vanished. The city was deserted again, and her HUD was back up to normal specs, so it looked like Meredith had actually decided not to murder them. Which was nice of her, and a good time for it too. For once in she couldn’t count how long, Sigourney was able to look up and enjoy the fading light, a soft orange and grey sky with a reddish, fast disappearing center. It looked like a painting, something that her mates might have looted from the Louvre when they battled through its corridors, OpFor extremists and hostages around every corner.

  She tore hunks off of her chicken leg and popped them in, over and over, savoring the fine juices that trickled out as she ground them between her teeth. Was that… whistling? Then she tossed everything aside and dove forward, onto the shuddering boardwalk. A green and white explosion popped up from where she had been sitting.

  “M-m-m-masked marauder,” Gruesome Gary stuttered, his head rocking a little as his speech synthesized and blurred. “I could have killed you. But I didn’t want to. With all of the history between the two of us, it just would not have been a fitting ending.”

  Sigourney looked over to where the muck of the swamp had swallowed her Chicko Chicken. She frowned and stood up.

  “Look, Meredith, I’m done with this. If you want to kill me just do it. I don’t want to play games for anyone’s amusement. Especially not anymore. Kill me or let me go.”

  “M - Meredith? Is this the secret identity of the Masked Marauder?” Gruesome Gary asked. He was unharmed from their previous encounter, but he was different in other ways. He seemed glitchy again. Parts of him were flaking off and back on again so rapidly her eyes had trouble tracking it. “The Maker is the Marauder is the Meredith?”

  “What?”

  Gary sneered and raised an arm. It swiftly transformed from a vicious grabber claw into a pulse cannon, burning with the heat of a sun within and whining toward full charge. “The one who put me into the void, and recalled me here. The one who placed me in Cityopolis in the beginning, only to banish me to the void once more. The Maker! Tell me!”

  Self awareness. Fascinating. Now this she could use. She raised her hands.

  “I’m Sigourney and I’m not the Masked Marauder. I have a friend getting healed by goops and nanobots in the ship and he’s not the Masked M
arauder either. He’s just Derek.” Sigourney paused, and stared into Gruesome Gary’s cyborg visage. “But, hey, I think I might know who you’re looking for. Let’s have a chat.”

  ***

  “Come on, you piece of… go faster!”

  Mentally, Meredith blasted right past the point where she’d considered, then ordered, a pair of murders. That was a reality she’d have to face if she survived this. She suppressed a shiver and wiped her face with the heel of her hand. The PENIS rocketed across the New Mexico landscape at maximum speed, past huge bulging cubes of white Prestige Gaming blocks. Within each hundred and fifty foot cube, some player or group was right now living out their ultimate fantasies. She counted eight such blocks slowly reshaping themselves and lumbering hither or thither through the scrubland, around the players.

  She hadn’t considered the effect of glitching on other park goers. She desperately hoped whatever was happening hadn’t infected the other gameworld bubbles around the other players. Sigourney had appeared out of Dungeonworld way back at the beginning of the story, just after they’d crashed. That was long before she’d meddled with any of the code.

  Sigourney’s presence also signaled that rival coder sabotage was a dead theory, and she cast it aside with most of what she’d just considered in the last ten minutes. This wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t to blame for this.

  Again the PENIS shot her a warning about proximity to the gaming environment. It could interfere with the construct of cubes if Derek or Sigourney attempted to head unknowingly straight for it, though she’d designed some safeguards. It would turn into a hillock, covered with game blocks.

  She hoped.

  With a tap of the finger against the tablet, the blocks separated and allowed her to enter the swamp planet. She rose on an artificial staircase the gameworld built for her, which skinned itself over in wonky wooden stairs first glitching out of control, then resolving into smooth perfection. Around her, tiny white grains of digital sand swarmed around her body and skinned her in the sci-fi battle armor from before.