Glitchworld

by Damien Hanson

  “The Dungeonworld healing belts never did that,” Sigourney said, glancing over at Meredith. “I think I would have smashed them if they had.”

  Meredith made a face. “Whatever. Listen, Derek, a lot of stuff has happened since you’ve been out.” Her face scrunched up and reddened, she grasped the end of the bed with clenched hands. She burst into tears. “And I’m so sorry,” she wept, “I’m so sorry about everything. I almost killed you - you were being such an oblivious asshole and you’ve been treating me like garbage for so long, just a friend, just a friend and all I wanted is us, together, understanding and loving each other and I don’t know, I think when this is all over I need to go away somewhere for a little while.”

  “Jail?” Sigourney snorted and glared. Meredith gave her a nasty look.

  “I think I have learned a lot on this vacation of mine, and I will seek the appropriate mental health facilities in which to recuperate.”

  Sigourney laughed, but there was no merriment within.

  Derek sighed.

  “Maybe I’m the problem.”

  Meredith’s head swiveled and her mouth dropped open. Her eyes became eager and interested. Sigourney laughed again. “You think?”

  Derek ignored them both, looking down into his hands. “I’ve been out again and again with woman after woman and all that happens is that I lose out. I get taken for my money, or my stuff. But, maybe, that’s just how I see it all. You know all I’ve really wanted out of all of that was the hot body and pretty face. I don’t even know what they liked or wanted.” Derek looked up into Meredith’s face, his eyes locking with hers. “And I think maybe I knew, and I didn’t ever want to treat you like that, Meredith. I’m a loser. I failed at my business. I don’t have a career and I live with a bunch of guys who are losers like me. You’ve always been too good for me and the way you throw yourself in my path, again and again, it feels like a death wish. I wreck every relationship I start.”

  “I hereby grant you two free dots of Wreck,” Sigourney said, and left them to be with their obviously messed up selves.

  “I’m really sorry,” Mare said. She was still in the midst of a puffy-faced, red-eyed bawling spree, and it was at least somewhat on his account. He felt so much worse than when any of his other girlfriends had thrown all his stuff out of their apartment windows, or tried to set fire to his car, or beamed at him about how there was no way he was getting all his money back out of their bank accounts.

  He shuddered. He hadn’t really considered it before, but he realized now he had entirely too much history for a person who wasn’t yet thirty.

  “I’m not good enough for you,” he replied. “You’re smart, and ambitious, and creative, and I’m, yeesh.”

  “I know,” she bawled. “But we have bigger problems to deal with. This…” she waved her hands around between the two of them. “This has to wait. Gary’s gonna kill us.”

  “Gary’s going to kill you two idiots,” Sigourney said. She’d returned with a plate of brownies, gooey chocolate chip cookies, and muffins studded with big chunks of cheesecake, all no doubt generated by the ship’s replicator. She was attempting to fit all of it in her mouth at the same time.

  “You don’t understand,” Mare said. “I programmed him to be ruthless and hate everyone organic. Now that he has the tablet, he’ll strip out all the protections and safeguard coding on this place, pull out all the stops. It’ll be worse than Dungeonworld. You know the acid pits level? The Great Maw of Azethoth, the crawling nuclear chaos at the center of the universe? The–”

  “Mare, we get it,” he said.

  Sigourney had stopped chewing.

  “Worse than all that.”

  “We need a plan,” Derek said. “Masked Midnight and Blue Jay got out of the clutches of Laugh Riot when all seemed lost. They didn’t even have their decoder rings.” They were staring at him like he was a complete idiot. “Listen, we’re in a game. Gary’s just a block of code, right?”

  Meredith gestures wildly. “I mean, he’s a masterpiece–”

  “But in reality still an image projected on top of a bunch of white blocks. Mare, what’s at the center of an NPC? What makes them go?”

  Meredith took a deep breath. “It’s the CLIT.” She went red in the face at the stunned silence. “What? What did you expect? It’s the Core Lithium Internal energy Terminal. That’s what it is.”

  Derek stretched his arms up over his head and tested out how well this hyper healing had left his body. He felt pretty tight, but amazingly he’d only had a chunk of him shot off and lost a lot of blood maybe two hours ago, max.

  “And, ahem, where is the CLIT?”

  Sigourney threw her head back and brayed laughter. “Please, please tell me it’s practically impossible to find. Because it would have to be.”

  Meredith smiled. “I mean, there’s no chance Derek’ll ever find it.”

  Sigourney dropped the plate of sweets and steadied herself against the bulkhead, laughing herself breathless. One look at Derek’s face caused her to sink to her knees and grab hold of her sides.

  “It is hard to find, mostly because it’s buried under layers of plain game blocks. It’s about the size of a water bottle… the kind you’d take to the gym.” She held her hands apart and made an imaginary box.

  “So then the billion dollar question is how do we tickle Gary’s CLIT?” Derek asked, and grinned while the ladies fell to the floor and laughed. And laughed.

  And then laughed some more.

  Honestly, it was a great antidote to the idea that they might not make it out of here, that the glitching, coupled with Derek’s social blinders and Meredith’s overheated response had put them in real jeopardy. For a while they all just guffawed and roared, and waved their hands for no more while gasping for breath and squeezing out tears.

  “Okay…” Meredith wheezed later. “Here’s the problem. We have to blast Gary hard in, in the center mass. Repeatedly. Then we have to get a real weapon and strike the CL- the Terminal. It’s not easily breakable.”

  Sigourney snorted again. “That CLIT can really take a pounding, eh?”

  The lights dimmed suddenly, and came back on to reveal they were in the captain’s quarters of a well-appointed sailing ship. Derek rushed to the porthole and gawked at the open water, and the tiny dot that might just be another ship on the horizon. He turned to Meredith, but by then they were in a dimly lit warehouse. Meredith had on a skin tight bodysuit with red racing stripes, and half her head was shaved. Her remaining hair splashed out like an explosion. She sported a slew of piercings: eyebrow, lip, septum, and those rings in your earlobes that slowly enlarge them. The shaved half of her head had this rad tattoo of a burst of flame, maybe being breathed by a dragon on her neck.

  It was super hot.

  It was also gone in another moment. Now they were in a dusty command tent with several wall flaps rolled up, with a tactical map tattooed onto a huge piece of leather unrolled before them. Derek was in strappy sandals, a toga, and a bronze breastplate.

  “What–” Derek started, but he already knew.

  “Gary.”

  They were in a high tech submarine, or maybe a sea lab. Meredith was in a jumpsuit with MAKER on the patch above her left breast. They were in a ruined castle, with the night sky bright with stars overhead and a shadowy something swooping by overhead. Meredith had on a pair of night sight goggles and a cat burglar’s uniform on, with a bomber’s jacket over top. She was also turning to survey their surroundings, so he had a chance to see the huge decorative patch on the leather, reading MM.

  “We need to move,” Sigourney said.

  By the time he turned to see her, they were in half a French hotel. The other half was shelled to rubble, and Sigourney was dressed in an olive Allied Forces uniform from over a hundred years ago. She clutched her helmet and chomped down on a cigar as whistling became louder. An explosion shook the house, and sent Derek scrambling to get at his bolt action rifle and follow after Sigourney.

&
nbsp; “Meredith, let’s move! Come on!”

  ***

  The scene in the French hotel spun a bit as if someone had chosen the year and time, but not yet where. They flicked through desert dunes topped by the pocked and broken ruins of tanks and jeeps, then flipped through a burning jungle, cringing as a soldier pried the fillings from some wounded enemy’s mouth. Then it barreled through Chinese cities, their outskirts piles of rock and bodies, their insides starving and under siege.

  “Just pick something,” Meredith yelled. Her avatar translated her words into Mandarin.

  And then they changed one last time. The air took on a cool and wet quality, tinged with the smell of smoke. The wind blew hard then settled. Meredith wore the apron and cowl of a Russian peasant woman, and clutched a bolt action sniper rifle, a light brown wooden stock with simplistic metal workmanship that very much hid the versatility and deadliness of the gun.

  “Nice weapon,” Sigourney admired. “Five shots to a magazine, but damn do those bullets pack a punch. Sigourney was dressed in a mustard green field uniform capped by a helmet of corresponding color. In her hands sat a wooden stock engraved “Papasha”. A circular metal drum magazine barely hung into place in its feed chamber. She held it up and swore. “Wanna trade?”

  Derek wore a ratty tunic and baggy pants, and his face was swallowed in beard. It looked itchy. “I have this thing” he sighed, holding up a heavy rifle with double barrels. “Will that make a big difference in the game rules?”

  “That’s a tiger rifle!” Sigourney snorted.

  Meredith shrugged. “Maybe it will make a difference? I don’t know what settings Gruesome Gary is using here. But, we aren’t changing anymore, so I guess the robot bastard found one that he liked.” She gazed about at the shattered houses and broken bodies of what her HUD said was Stalingrad. Machine gun fire popped in measured intervals - ta ta ta ta ta and then silence. Artillery and tanks echoed their slaughter from somewhere close enough to rattle windows, but far enough to feel safe. For now.

  “How do you even use this thing?” Derek complained. He was holding his rifle upside down and horizontal to the ground, inspecting the magazine and trigger well. “I mean, pull the trigger, duh, but how do you aim it? Is it auto-aim? Do I just imagine where I want to hit?”

  Sigourney snorted and walked up behind him.

  “Hold it up to your face, the stock here to your chin, and give that trigger a pull.”

  Derek blinked. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Meredith sighed, shaking her head. “The kick of the rifle would slap it into your face and leave a hell of a bruise.”

  Sigourney started laughing. “What?” she asked as Derek glared at her. “That would have been hilarious!”

  “Derek, hold it like you did with all of the other stuff and just use the game mechanics for now. We’ll sit you down and teach you riflemanship after he strips out the rules, I promise.”

  Derek scowled but turned the weapon right side up and continued their march forward.

  “Any idea where we are going, then?” he asked them both, taking care to step over the bloated corpse of a Russian soldier. Clouds of flies parted to let him through. He swatted at them anyways.

  “Gruesome Gary is a showman. He doesn’t like to win without theatrics. He’ll want us to feel how hard we lost, not just know that we did so,” Meredith answered. “Somewhere around here he is making hell on earth - well, an even greater hell on earth and we are going to have to wade through it to get him.”

  Sigourney grunted, tapping a finger to her noggin. “Stalingrad, 1942, World War II. Months of hell as the three-hundred thousand soldiers of the Wehrmacht tear into and take the city, then are surrounded, starved, and beaten into submission. Mamayev Hill is going to be the place. It’s going to be a sea of bloodshed as the Germans tear it from the Russians who tear it from the Germans. Back and forth, over and over, until the whole thing is a red blood-soaked sponge covered in tiny bits of human. Does that sound like something that might get Gruesome Gary hard?”

  “Yeah that would get his dick real hard,” Meredith affirmed. “Alright let’s move out!”

  ***

  “Guys, guys,” Meredith said. She held up a hand to her lips and they obediently fell silent. She peered around the corner of the building again, to where the slope angled downward and gave them a perfect view of the hill. She’d scored a success with complication on the Survey roll. Maybe Gary wouldn’t take advantage of it, or strip out the complications rules. She could only hope.

  They crowded behind her, and they both had a good view of the muddy hilltop. The whole thing had been blasted to smithereens, like God had come by and did a Brazilian wax over this particular hill. All trees were gone, and in their place was a series of barbed wire fences in front of a few concrete boxes. From those poked a number of silent artillery pieces. And standing atop the bunker was Gary.

  “The nerve of this guy,” Sigourney breathed, right in Meredith’s ear.

  He was now clad in the colorless Russian winter coat and that unmistakable World War II fur-lined hat. He had that familiar Stalin moustache, like a weasel glued to the bottom of your nose.

  While he appeared to be a good mile off, Gary could be heard through a loudspeaker system. Somehow they’d rigged that to speakers positioned in various places throughout the city. One was right nearby.

  “Ooohhh,” Sigourney hissed. “Historical inaccuracies left, right and center. The hardcore historians are going to have a fit with this one. Derek, cover our six, okay?”

  Meredith tried not to scowl at her. Of course Derek would love to cover her six. Old Meredith, she tried to repeat in her mind over and over, and block out the inevitable images of him shacking up with Wonder Bimbo here. New Meredith don’t have time for that.

  When Gary’s voice came scritching out of the speaker nearby, it had a distinct Russian accent. “We face the enemy on our terms, comrades! The Mother of our great country has us in her cold embrace, just as we like it. Now they freeze as the fire of their arrogance recedes and is snuffed out. We hold, here. You hold, and you do your country proud.”

  “Complete nonsense,” Sigourney whispered.

  “Get inside!” Meredith said, and ripped Derek away from his butt to butt position with Sigourney. Sigourney didn’t protest either, but simply ducked down and swiveled until they’d gotten into whatever this building used to be. Moments later, a large tank rumbled and squeaked by, along with a platoon of Russian soldiers.

  “What?” Derek asked. “What is it?”

  Meredith gestured to herself, and the uniform she now wore. It was a German cold weather outfit, the gray-green heavy poncho and insulated helmet. Gary must have glitched it while they were listening to him blather.

  “Psst!”

  They spun and readied their weapons, but Sigourney was already waving them off. “If he’d wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have signaled.” She called out. “Who’s there? Come out where we can see you.”

  Three ragged characters appeared out of the gloom. They had to be malnourished, with their rags tied up around various body parts to keep them insulated. Two were thick, square-jawed women with hard eyes, and their leader was a blonde-bearded man wearing an eyepatch.

  “Thank the Fuhrer,” he said. “Come with us.”

  They exchanged a series of indecisive glances, before finally one by one shrugging. They didn’t have any better way to assault Mr. King-of-the-hill Gruesome Garyov. He talked as the three NPCs led the three PCs down into the sewers beneath what used to be a print shop. Meredith got, and then promptly forgot, his name. Ivan? Ilya? She didn’t know. They were German spies inside the city. They had a line on an underground stockpile of heavy munitions, including nitroglycerin and TNT, but it was under guard.

  “Mare, do we have to be… you know?” He gestured to the most evil symbol the world had ever known, now a gleaming gold insignia on his officer’s hat.

  Yeah, no. Meredith had n
o interest in playing for this team. “We’re not Nazis, see? We’re just not.”

  No doubt Gary had chosen it specifically for this reason. She waved Derek off; they had much bigger fish to fry, and no idea what the ingredients were. She tried to tune back in to what the NPCs were talking about. They had a crude, hand-drawn map out, and were pointing to the big X in the middle. He traced one finger up and to the left.

  “–we go create the distraction, and you overwhelm anyone who remains.” Here he followed the other, straighter line up toward the X that looped only slightly to the right. “Then you take the explosives and blow that hill to kingdom come.”

  The three PCs again shared a number of wary glances. It sounded too good to be true. It was probably a trap. It–

  A clock appeared in her HUD, reading Gary Destroys Your Pathetic Lives. It then filled up its six segments, and was replaced by another clock, which was also full and gone before she had a chance to read what it said. This was followed by another clock appearing, filling in and disappearing just as fast. Then two more clocks, and three more than that.

  Clocks filled up her field of vision almost completely. She heard Derek and Sigourney both cry out at the same time. Meredith brought her weapon up and strafed to one side until she smacked into the sewer wall, and the clocks continued to come. They wound up, filling in their wedge segment things over and over again, red and green, green and yellow and red, some of them linked together, red and red, others linked together red and green, battling for who could finish their action first: PCs or the opponents.

  And just like that, before she started popping off shots at bad guys she couldn’t see, when the clocks vanished.

  Sigourney was uncharacteristically on edge by now. “What was that? What just happened?”

  “Nothing, okay?” she said. “Okay, well, not nothing, but it doesn’t matter. I think we won’t be dealing with any more clocks.” She was pretty sure Gary had just eliminated clocks all together. Gameworld skins were one thing, but mussing about with the rules themselves told her that time was really running out. Clocks or no clocks, they needed to hurry.