Ready Player Fun

by A V Kern

  Django waggled his eyebrows at me suggestively, and my breath caught. “Good for you, Ap0ll0,” I said. “Anyway, I need to get going, I guess. The Mithril Dildo awaits.”

  I disentangled myself from Django and arose, engaging the body-cleaning protocol of my exo-suit and tucking the Ruby Dildo away in my inventory for later use, when a blinking message from W33b appeared on my commlink indicator. I frowned and opened it, annoyed that he was interrupting my hunt so soon again.

  “W33b,” I snapped. “Stop bothering me. I already told you I only cunt with Sherman… and maybe Ap0ll0,” I said hesitantly, as I had a newfound respect for the golden-haired cunter who had beaten me to the Ruby Dildo and made sweet, sweet love to Django before me all in the name of equality. He might be a good enough ally to enlist after all.

  W33b slowly shook his in-game avatar’s head, obvious grief plastered across his face, and my annoyance shifted to curiosity and then concern as I saw that something was really wrong. His character W33b Kunoichi was usually a bright-eyed, excessively happy female ninja who giggled and made peace signs a lot while wearing cat ears and wielding dual katanas in battle. Seeing her look so sad sent alarm bells ringing throughout my whole subconscious.

  “It’s Sug0i,” she told me, sniffling softly. “I just got a message from an undercover cunter who saw it happen. Roger Dodger raided his house in real life, Felicia.”

  I gasped. “They killed my parakeet, you know. Now Sug0i too? What did those monsters do to him? Did they arrest him? Quietly move him to a facility where they could do whatever they wanted? Poison him? Shoot him and make it look like a suicide? Slit his wrists and dump him in the bathtub?”

  W33b paused, horrified, but then looked thoughtful. “Huh. All of those things would have been good plans for someone as allegedly smart and powerful as Roger Dodger who wanted to get rid of a random nobody, wouldn’t they? But no, he had armed thugs wearing FU Trooper uniforms bust into his apartment and hurl him through a window!”

  “Oh no!” I exclaimed. “I bet that really hurt, even if it was impractical and needlessly flashy. Good thing he lives in a first-floor apartment. Is he all right?”

  “There’s more,” W33b said sadly, tears forming in her eyes. “After they realized they hadn’t killed him, they carried him to the roof and threw him off again!”

  “Even less practical! But frankly it’s in line with their other methods. I suppose that one killed him?”

  W33b lowered her eyes, and I had my answer.

  “Don’t worry, W33b.” I said. “Roger Dodger and his terrible cult are going to pay for this. They won’t get away with it! Or… they’ll probably get away with it, but at least we’ll have control of the O-Face, which will be kind of sticking it to them in a roundabout way that really irritates them by being a foil to one part of their multi-pronged cultural crusade against depravity. And hey, that’s something.”

  It was a small solace in the face of Sug0i’s death, and I knew it.

  “I have to go,” I said finally. “I need to find the Mithril Dildo. I’m sorry for your loss, but I’ll talk to you later, okay? Bye, W33b.”

  “Bye, F—” she began, but I’d already cut the vidscreen and rocketed off to begin my search for the third and final dildo.

  Chapter 5

  Sug0i’s mostly-pointless death had officially raised the stakes and ushered in the third act. I was hot on the trail of the Mithril Dildo, along with Ap0ll0, Sherman, and W33b, but Roger Dodger hadn’t sat idly by while we danced circles around him. He’d had some sort of locator device trained on me without my knowledge, and he’d quickly flooded Planet Zork-Reference with FU Troopers who would spend day and night busily fucking Django for their own Ruby Dildos, like a goddamn Chinese gold-farming operation. We had to move quickly if we had a prayer of beating Dodger’s army of black-garbed, dildo-bearing decency stormtroopers.

  After a short rest, I asked everyone to meet me in the smut mines of Planet 34 for a secret conference, the one place so bizarre and twisted that surely not even Roger Dodger would think to spy on us there.

  “Did we really have to meet here?” Sherman whimpered, staring wide-eyed at two hideous fuckbeasts going at it in an unspeakably twisted position.

  “It was the only place I could be sure Roger wouldn’t have eyes and ears,” I replied. “Planet 34 is too fucked-up even for his troopers.”

  “So say we all,” muttered Ap0ll0, keeping his eyes shut tightly.

  “But aren’t we all sitting in the same room in meatspace?” W33b protested. “Couldn’t we just unjack and talk there?”

  “Ap0ll0 isn’t,” I replied. “And you think we can just call each other like normal people? We’re internet-folk! We do not talk on the phone.”

  Nobody could argue with that logic, and everyone nodded. Another phone conversation would be far more awkward than any of us would be willing to contemplate, and I shuddered at the mere thought of it.

  “No more stupid questions,” I continued. “Now, I called you all here to discuss what we know about the location of the Mithril Dildo. We’ve all got the Ruby Dildo by now, and we’ve all made passionate love to Django, so all that remains is for us to find the next locked door and shove our dildos deep inside of it so that we can claim the third key before Roger Dodger finds it. Does anyone have an idea of where it might be?”

  “I feel like we’re really rushing into this,” Sherman said. “Shouldn’t we take some more time to shoe-horn in a romance somewhere? Maybe a B or C-plot with some of these great wacky side characters we have?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Ap0ll0 snapped. “This whole parody concept got old three chapters ago, and we’re mainly coasting along on shock value and puns at this point. You think we have time for a C-plot?”

  “But we’re not even fifteen thousand words in,” grumbled Sherman. “How is it possible that we’ve hit all the major beats and done most of the memorable scenes from two thirds of a 400-page paperback in less than 50 pages?”

  “Fifty pages? Somebody’s double-spacing and being generous with their counting,” quipped Ap0ll0.

  “To be fair,” W33b said. “The source material is like half 80s fan service and references to other media, so if you remove all that, plus the table of contents, front and back matter, and the about the author pages, I don’t think we’re doing all that badly…”

  “Oh, like we’re any better,” Sherman replied. “It’s been mostly overly self-aware smarmy rambling padded out by an excessive amount of gratuitous, offensive nonsense up until now!”

  “This isn’t freshman composition class!” I shouted. “Shut up, all of you, and help me think. This tongue-in-cheek navel gazing isn’t doing anything to move the plot forward.”

  “Well there has to be a ‘gang gets together to plan’ moment,” Ap0ll0 pointed out. “We’re just fulfilling our literary destiny here. Ker-pow! Take that, fourth wall.”

  But rather than just say the words, Ap0ll0 actually pointed his gun-sword (because he’d recently upgraded his golden sword into a gun-sword for added coolness) and took careful aim at the fourth wall. He pulled the trigger and KER-POW! It exploded in a fiery, shimmering blast that robbed the world of any sliver of artistic merit it might have had left to it. W33b began a slow clap and all of us joined in.

  “I’d still like to have a B-plot,” Sherman grumbled quietly once the last shards of the fourth wall had fallen away.

  “Ugh! Fine.” I was so fed up with his whining I decided to throw him a bone. “Um. Okay. I think I remember mentioning an alot of sex back in Chapter 1. We’re in the smut mines of Planet 34, so it probably exists here somewhere. Why don’t you and W33b go track it down and kill it?”

  “A lot of sex?” W33b stared at me blankly. “What are you talking about, Senpai?”

  “No, it’s… AAAARGH! Sherm, I don’t have time to explain it to her. Will you please just take her and go hunt the alot?”

  “It’s not much of a B-plot,” Sherman complained. “A one chapter side-erra
nd? It’ll probably even happen off-screen…”

  I stamped my foot. “We need to get back to the Mithril Dildo, Sherman! You think Roger Dodger’s troops are sitting around whining that there’s no zany C-plot involving the lovable foibles of the villains?”

  But Sherman wasn’t backing down. “Look, I’m just saying… you can give us a side adventure, but there has to be some reason for it. What’s my motivation, man?”

  “I swear to god, Sherman, I am going to…” I took a deep breath and ran myself quickly through several rounds of mental calming exercises. “Okay. Look. There’s probably some kind of big, epic fight coming up at some point here. Why don’t you and W33b go catch the alot rather than killing it, so that we can unleash it during the final battle for an appropriately exciting moment when we sic it on Roger Dodger’s morally uptight FU Troopers?”

  W33b glanced at Sherman once again with a confused expression on her face. “I still don’t get it… she is saying, ‘a lot’, right? What am I missing?”

  Sherman sighed and grabbed her hand, yanking her off into the smut mines with him to go look for the alot.

  “Now that it’s just the two of us, let’s get down to business,” I said, turning back to Ap0ll0.

  “To defeat the huns?”

  I blinked at him until the stupid grin wiped itself off his face.

  “Sorry—just trying to make a joke.”

  I rolled my shoulders and sighed. “It’s okay. Actually, I’m the one who should be sorry. Thanks for trying to lighten things up. I’m just so wound up with this stupid hunt for the third dildo that there’s been hardly any time for character development.”

  “Well, your priorities are in the right place. It’s admirable. Attractive, even.”

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously at Ap0ll0. “You’re not trying to slip a romance subplot in here too, are you?”

  He coughed into his hand. “Of course not. Besides, what would be the point? You’re a straight chick, aren’t you?”

  “Uhh… what on Earth gave you that idea?”

  “You just… you just fuck so many guys and run around in the avatar of a girl. You have to be a straight chick in real life, or gay, or trans or something? Right?”

  I shrugged. “Nope! Just a straight dude who likes to get kinda crazy in VR sex-land, but the truth is that IRL I’m only interested in girls. I mostly rock a female avatar because Roger Dodger’s orgasm hardware limits allow chicks to have better subjective orgasms than dudes. I may as well tell you since the CRR knows already: My real name is Bowie Jackson.”

  “For real?” Ap0ll0’s jaw dropped open. “That’s crazy! I had no idea. I mean, I knew about the orgasm thing, but sex isn’t everything, right? I had no idea you were a guy.”

  “Sex isn’t everything? What planet do you live on? Wait a minute…” I said slowly. “Why would it be a problem for me to be a straight chick? You’re a dude.”

  Now Ap0ll0 blinked at me. “No, I’m not.”

  “What? What about the rules of the internet? Rules 29 and 30? There are no girls on the internet.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know about all that, but I’m a straight chick IRL. Not into girls at all. Not that I have a problem with being gay, but I uh, just don’t find ladies attractive.”

  “How does that make any sense?” I demanded. “You’re the resident Lothario of the O-Face! You’ve banged more chicks than any other male-bodied avatar in this virtual world, and you’re on top of the Grand Fuckatorium’s bang boards to prove it!”

  Ap0ll0 shrugged sheepishly. “I just like to be good at things. As soon as I realized that dudes look at sexual conquests like a contest, my competitive nature kicked in, and I felt it was my duty as a woman to prove that women could do it just as well as men—if not better.” He broke into a wide grin. “Looks like I’m winning!”

  I raised my hands to my temples, rubbing aggressively, and sat down on a large cavern rock. I didn’t believe him—not really, because I’d had years of training on the rules of the internet—but he’d also literally just told me that sex wasn’t everything. “Wait. This is so confusing. You’re a dude in game, who fucks dudes and ladies, but you’re a straight chick outside of the game who fucks exclusively dudes?”

  He nodded. “And you’re a chick in game, who swings both ways, but in the real world you’re straight guy who’s not the least bit bi-curious?”

  I nodded. “But that means…” I murmured, gazing into Ap0ll0’s eyes. For a moment the tension hung in the air between us, as thick as tension that hangs between two horny teenagers who’ve just realized their parents have left for a three-day vacation and are waiting for the other to make that first, awkward movement.

  Ap0ll0 rushed forward and swept me up in a passionate embrace, dipping me back and returning my soulful gaze, and then he whispered: “It means a real relationship is possible between us.”

  My heart hammered in my chest, and I realized my avatar was so wet that I could barely handle it. His lips quivered over mine, inches away, and I was dying for him to kiss me. I could feel his stiff rod through the bulge in his silky, white pants, straining to be free.

  “I hope I’m interrupting a very special moment,” a female voice said, dripping with contempt.

  Ap0ll0 and I leapt apart, weapons at the ready, and turned to confront the new arrival. A woman dressed in a neon pink and blue catsuit complete with fuzzy ears sat atop a rainbow-colored alicorn with an adorably rendered pack of tiny, huge-eyed baby animals trailing behind her. An antimatter handheld glitter-cannon sparkled and fizzed in her hands, and her dolphin-themed battle-armor glinted in the torchlight of the smut mines while her cutesy palm-tree epaulets swayed softly with the motion of her body.

  “LisaFrank90210,” I hissed. “My arch-nemesis.”

  “Indeed,” she remarked, keeping her glitter-cannon aimed at me as she dismounted. “Also, I am a werewolf. Don’t forget.”

  “I could never forget that,” I growled. “Since you’re the token girly girl character, I suppose that’s a Twilight reference of some kind?”

  She scoffed. “Twilight is two decades too late to fit well in the O-Face! It’s a Teen Wolf reference. Seriously, Felicia, keep your time frames straight. Next you’ll be expecting me to ramble about season six of Buffy or some such nonsense.”

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” I demanded. “The smut mines of Planet 34 are no place for an actual woman.”

  “I’m an actual woman!” Ap0ll0 reminded me, and LisaFrank90210 rolled her eyes.

  “All of your preconceptions about girls are dumb,” she told me. “And Roger Dodger sent me here to kill you so that you’d be zeroed out while his FU Troopers continue the hunt for the Mithril Dildo.”

  A chill ran through me. It hadn’t occurred to me that Roger Dodger might send a mercenary to do his dirty work even if he and his troops themselves avoided the smut mines, but another thing I’d forgotten about Planet 34 was that it was one of the Danger Zones! If LisaFrank90210 managed to kill us here, we’d lose all our items, money, and the dildos we’d collected so far… but so would Lisa if we beat her.

  “So it’s to be a battle, then.” My eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you want to pick a fight with me and Ap0ll0 at the same time? Seems like a dumb move to come at us alone.”

  She chortled. “Oh, I didn’t come alone.”

  Red eyes appeared in the darkness beside her. Her sidekick, Jazon Priestly the Vampire Cleric, stepped out of the shadows, baring his fangs at us in a threatening hiss and raised his hands, prepared holy spells swirling between them.

  “Let’s do this, then!” I shouted, snapping my arm down into my arm cannon and rocketing up into the air as Lisa’s antimatter glitter blast sailed beneath me and took out a chunk of cave wall in a shower of shimmering sparkles.

  As we leaped and dodged, avoiding each other’s energy blasts, Jazon Priestly and Ap0ll0 began their own dance of destruction, gun sword versus vampire magic. Lisa grimaced at her inability to hit me with a single pro
jectile thanks to the advanced evasion systems of my armor, and resorted to taunting me instead: “Your outfit is terrible,” she grumbled. “You look like a space hooker cooked up by Dr. Robotnik.”

  “That’s what I hate about you, Lisa,” I replied, attempting to punch her with my right hand as I leapt past her but missing as she ducked. “You can never quite get your references right. If a mad doctor had cooked me up, it would be Dr. Wily. And what’s with your weird mash-up of 90s references? You’re giving me guff about a Twilight riff when you and Jazon are standing squarely in the wrong decade for this book?”

  Lisa high-kicked, slamming her power-enhanced boot into my abdomen and sending me careening into a stone wall so hard that I cracked it, falling to the ground in a cloud of dust and debris. I groaned, frustrated that my evasion systems only worked well for projectiles.

  “I’m a soldier of fortune,” she replied. “Just here for the profit, which is why I’m working for the bad guys, obviously. You think I care about getting my references right? Hah! I just picked out the first costume and player tag that came to mind after reading that McSweeney’s article about Ready Player Two. If you’re going to be mad at someone for nodding toward the wrong media, blame Nat Silverman!”

  “Nobody is going to get that joke!” I screamed, unloading my arm cannon at her on full-auto in a sudden blaze of intensity. “And she should have made references to She-Ra, Jem, Rainbow Bright, and Cabbage Patch Kids instead of Naruto, Sailor Moon, Buffy, and Harry Potter! It was clever and funny but all wrong for the source material.”

  Jazon Priestly slugged Ap0ll0 across the face, sending him staggering, and glared at me disapprovingly. “The parody worked fine and the subject matter was probably more relatable for McSweeney’s readers! Besides, you could argue there’s a meta-joke about how women in media tend to be younger than the male lead and so it makes sense that Player Two would have 90s interests.”

  “Who are you even writing this for again?” Lisa demanded, hastily throwing up a holographic energy shield. My energy blasts dissipated harmlessly against the surface. “Nobody’s catching any of these jokes, moron. You’re like four levels of satire deep at this point and getting hopelessly obscure and self-referential, especially a few years from now when no one remembers that article.”