Ready Player Fun

by A V Kern

  “Me either. Come on! We have a minotaur that Bartleby Shaw wants us to fuck. We need to high-tail it to the center of this maze, stat!”

  “Didn’t you say it was a labyrinth?”

  “Just shut up and follow me.”

  I took off running down the left passage, sprinting through the torch-lined tunnel at full speed, and grimly noting the double-headed labrys and bull-horn motifs on the walls that confirmed my suspicions of where we were. As we moved deeper down the passageway, a distant roar echoed through the underground structure, and I grinned at Ap0ll0, pleased that I’d been correct. We turned again and again, moving as fast as our mechanically enhanced legs could carry us, racing toward our sensual encounter with our cryptozoological destiny.

  “How do you know we’re going the right way?” Ap0ll0 demanded. “Shouldn’t we have split up?”

  “Wouldn’t matter,” I said. “That’s the difference between a maze and a labyrinth. Mazes are multicursal puzzles with branching choices of path and direction, whereas labyrinths are unicursal designs with only one clear path throughout.”

  “But there were two choices at the beginning!”

  “Same start and end point, dude. You’re perceiving a choice in what’s actually just another bend in the pattern. We had to enter somewhere.”

  “Is there a joke in here, or is this just going to be a pedantic discussion about Greek and Roman pottery design?”

  “Hey, you would care about classic Roman patterns too if you’d spent as much time reading Shaw’s deeply detailed pornographic minotaur fanfiction as I have! That guy was disturbingly thorough.”

  Suddenly we popped out into a large, wide open, torchlit chamber, where an enormous, red-robed minotaur reclined on a golden throne with his horns poking through the robe’s hood. His eyes blazed red and menacing from the shadowy depths of his cowl, and before the throne stood a waist-high bench with a golden plaque on the front that read “The Holy Fucking Bench.”

  “Well, at least the quest isn’t subtle,” I remarked, rubbing the back of my head uncomfortably and staring at the yuge monster cock bulging between the minotaur’s legs and clearly visible through the folds of his Hefner-esque robe. This had to have been the same VR-minotaur that had killed Bartleby Shaw in his famous, heart attack-inducing fuck session.” I crossed to the bench, feeling the minotaur’s baleful eyes follow me, dropped my exo-suit pants, and bent over, presenting myself to the beast. “Okay, minotaur! Gimme your best shot. I want some of that hot, fat, mino-dick, and I’m not afraid to take it. Do me like you did my hero, Bartleby Shaw.”

  “NO,” the minotaur rumbled.

  “Excuse me?” I demanded, hastily pulling my pants back up. This was the second time in recent memory that Felicia McFly had had her sexual advances rebuffed, and if it kept happened I’d start to develop a complex. “Why the fuck not?”

  “BECAUSE. TO FUCK THE MINOTAUR, YOU MUST FIRST DEFEAT THE MINOTAUR.”

  “Why does he speak in all caps?” Ap0ll0 asked.

  “Shh. His voice is just loud. It adds gravitas.” I raised my blaster, ready to do battle once again. “Okay, you weird, sexy cryptid. You wanna rumble? Let’s rumble.”

  “NO,” the minotaur said again. “YOU MUST DEFEAT THE MINOTAUR… AT A DANCE COMPETITION!”

  “What?” Ap0ll0 and I both asked at the same time.

  The massive minotaur rose to his full, nine-foot height, towering above us, and dramatically tore his robe and cowl away, revealing a luxurious, lionesque mane of white-blonde hair atop his head than ran down either side of his horns to fall in straight lines past his shoulders, and I now saw that he wore a poofy, deep V-necked pirate shirt, brown leather vest, and high-waisted tight gray pants that showed off his comically large penis bulge in excruciating detail. He began to prance back and forth in a skipping, high-stepping dance, and Ap0ll0 and I looked around in confusion as poppy, upbeat music began to play and an exuberant horde of lightly armored, raucous goblins streamed into the room and surrounded us, cheering and whistling.

  “Dear god,” I said. “This reminds me of… this reminds me of…”

  “What?” Ap0ll0 demanded. “What is it?”

  “This reminds me of the babe,” I said with weary resignation.

  “What babe?”

  “The babe with the power!”

  “What power?”

  “The power of—”

  “ENOUGH OF THAT. COME! DANCE WITH ME IF YOU DARE, TINY HUMAN!” The goblins cheered and danced along with the hip-waggling minotaur who had turned to shake his booty at me, and they clanged pots and pans and knocked one another around in their dancing furor at the edges of our dance battle space.

  “I should have known we’d never get through this chapter without some serious Labyrinth references,” I grumbled. “Should we do this?”

  “Do we both have to dance-fight?” Ap0ll0 asked. “I don’t really dance…”

  “You don’t dance? You think I want to dance? Come on, help me…”

  “YOU CAN DANCE IF YOU WANT TO.”

  I tried to drag Ap0ll0 forward with me so we could dance together with the wiggling minotaur, at least. He came reluctantly, dragging his feet and grimacing. “I really don’t dance…”

  “NO! YOU MUST LEAVE YOUR FRIEND BEHIND. BECAUSE YOUR FRIEND DOES NOT DANCE AND IF YOUR FRIEND DOES NOT DANCE THAN HE’S NO DANCE-FIGHT FOE OF MINE.”

  Ap0ll0 shrugged at me. “You heard the mino-man. You’re on your own, Felicia.”

  I sighed and turned to the minotaur who was gyrating uncontrollably as Ap0ll0 stepped back. “Okay, what do I do?”

  “YOU CAN DANCE.”

  “I can dance?”

  “YOU CAN DANCE.”

  “I can dance… But what if I get out of control?”

  “YOU CAN DANCE HOW YOU WANT TO. YOU CAN USE THE MOVES YOU WILL. ‘CAUSE A DANCE-BATTLE FIGHT IS A FIGHT YOU CAN WIN BY LOOKING LIKE AN IMBECILE.”

  The dancing goblins all began to chant: “You can dance! You can dance!” And they all started shaking their hands.

  The upbeat, synthesizer-rich music coming from everywhere and nowhere started to get to me. First my feet moved a little. Then my hands. Then my hips! The music was moving me and I was dancing!

  “YES! WE DANCE-FIGHT IF WE WANT TO! THE MOST NOBLE DANCE OF ALL. FOR THE VICTORY THRILL OF THE PUREST ART FORM YOU MUST HEED THE MINOTAUR’S CALL!”

  “This is stupid,” Ap0ll0 muttered. But I was really starting to get into it, frolicking with the minotaur and the goblins in the dance fight circle.

  “Ap0ll0, come on! I know you’ll dance if you want to. Just come let yourself be free. Don’t act all rude and totally removed when instead you could dance with me!”

  “Are you singing now too?”

  “Come on, we can dance!”

  “YOU CAN DANCE.”

  “We can dance!”

  “I am so not going to dance,” Ap0ll0 insisted.

  “You should dance!”

  “YOU CAN DANCE.”

  “Come and dance!”

  “YOU CAN DANCE.”

  “You all look like you have ants in your pants,” Ap0ll0 muttered.

  I grabbed his hands and dragged him into the circle once more, this time forcing him to dance with me. “We need to win this Mithril Dildo together, Ap0ll0! Come on—if I can do it you can do it!”

  “Is it safe to dance?” he asked warily, looking around at the goblins.

  “IT IS SAFE TO DANCE.”

  “Yes, it’s safe to dance!”

  “I guess I’ll dance… if you want to,” he said, slowly beginning to shake his hips and move his arms along with me in time to the synthesizers.

  “YOU HAVE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED.”

  “Come on, you have to admit this is pretty darn fun!”

  “This is tolerable, indeed.”

  But I could tell he enjoyed it—he was moving right along. The both of us danced like we had ants in our pants ‘till the very last bars of the song.

  �
��You can dance!” chanted the goblins. “You can dance!”

  “EVERYBODY DANCE!”

  “And sing!” I sang.

  “Dance, hey!” Ap0ll0 said.

  “OH IT’S SAFE TO DANCE! YES IT’S FUN TO DANCE!”

  As the goblins erupted into raucous cheering and the music faded, the puff-haired minotaur raised his hands and whooped, and Captain Minosexaur appeared before us in a shimmering flash with all of his usual fanfare, grinning wildly and holding out two, silvery dildos to us.

  “Did we win?” I asked.

  “EVERYONE WHO DANCES WINS IN A DANCE BATTLE.”

  “And all who are present must dance, or no one wins.” Captain Minosexaur nodded in sage agreement. “Congratulations, adventurers! You have earned the Mithril Dildo, which I now present to each of you.”

  Ap0ll0 frowned. “Wait a minute! I thought we had to fuck the minotaur to earn these…”

  Captain Minosexaur looked offended. “Cryptid copulation is an honor, young man. Never a requirement!”

  Comprehension dawned on me suddenly. “Ohhh… Ap0ll0, don’t you see? This is just like Bartleby Shaw’s famous 16th birthday party. When his friends asked him to dance with them, he was too shy… and not only did he ruin the party for them, but he regretted it for the rest of his life. This is him teaching us not to make the same mistake!”

  “But we’ve literally never talked about that before. You can’t just introduce an event from Shaw’s life as the solution to a puzzle if you didn’t tease the readers with it in a prior chapter! That’s not clever at all—it’s just sloppy writing that makes you look clever, Felicia.”

  “Yeah, yeah whatever. I’m pretty sure that’s how Ernst Klein did it, and if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.”

  “Who is Ernst Klein?”

  “Just some random author I like who was obsessed with the 80s and videogames.”

  “He sounds a lot like Bartleby Shaw.”

  “Weird, huh?”

  “Anyway, are you sure he did this too? Seems like a pro author would tie up his loose ends and give us more foreshadowing, or his editor would have bitched…”

  “Look, man—it’s been like five years since I read any of his books, so let’s just assume he did have sloppy writing. It’s easier to make fun of his work if we don’t nitpick every little detail. The movie they made from his most famous book definitely fucked around narratively like that, and he was involved in the screenplay, so it’s basically the same, right?”

  “Yeah, but are you taking into account the constraints imposed by Hollyw—”

  “Ap0ll0! Jesus, fuck. We do not have time for this shit. Can we just take our dildos and go?”

  “Oh. Yeah, okay. Good moral lesson, Captain Minosexaur. Are we done here?”

  “Neither of you are going to copulate with the minotaur?” Captain Minosexaur asked. The great red-eyed beast behind him looked very disappointed, and the goblins chittered with one another in shock and dismay.

  “YOU HAVE EARNED THE HONOR. YOU DANCED WELL AND SAFELY.”

  “Well, his cock is so huge…” I whined. “It’s not that I’m not curious, but we’re kinda pressed for time… sorry buddy. That’s okay, right?”

  “How do we get out of here?” Ap0ll0 looked around. “I’d like to be gone before the FU Troopers start showing up.”

  Captain Minosexaur gestured, and a shimmering portal opened that led to the Grand Fuckatorium at the center of the O-Face.

  “I WOULD LIKE TO FUCK SOMEONE, PLEASE. IF I MAY.” He sounded so dejected. Poor guy.

  “I can’t force them to, Minotaur,” Captain Minosexaur protested. “I set up the challenge assuming they’d want to do it if they got this far.” Captain Minosexaur sighed and shrugged, once more pulling on his robe and wizard hat. “More for me, I suppose.” He advanced to the fucking bench, leaned over it, and dropped his pants, hiking the sexy-times robe up over his back. “All right buddy. I’m all yours. Go ahead!”

  “Thanks, Captain!” I said. “Way to be a team player.”

  “YES. THANK YOU, OH CAPTAIN MY CAPTAIN. EVEN IN DEATH YOU HONOR ME.”

  The minotaur stepped up and began to gratefully plow Shaw’s avatar with his giant cock while his tongue lolled out in pleasure, and he waved to Ap0ll0 and me as we stepped out into the decorated marble archways of the Hall of Fornication in the Grand Fuckatorium. High above us, the scoreboard for Shaw’s game ticked up again, launching me ahead of a Ap0ll0 by just a few points, but keeping us squarely in the lead ahead of the FU Troopers.

  “Hey, how did you get ahead of me?” Ap0ll0 demanded.

  I grinned. “I guess dancing first and longer counted for something. Told you you should have danced with me. Sucker. I’m number one, woo! Now let’s go unlock that final gate and win this game so we can take the O-Face once and for all.”

  “Cool! Where is Shaw’s final gate?”

  “Isn’t that one obvious? We’re going to find it in the middle of the castle he owned while he was still alive.”

  “Castle Ass-Burger?”

  “Yep—come on! It’s going to take the FU Troopers a while to figure out that they all need to dance to beat the challenge, so we probably have a little head-start.”

  I summoned my pink and white convertible once more and we both hopped inside and sped down the Rainbow Road toward Planet Aecheffay, where Shaw’s infamous castle remained as a museum dedicated to his life. There was a chamber in the center of the castle which no one had ever been able to enter before, with three huge sealed doors that many players had claimed were just walls. But I and the other cunters had done our homework, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a room inside of there by calculating the volume and dimensions of Castle Ass-Burger and finding a weird space inside those walls. I was certain that if we showed up there, bearing the three dildos, it would fill that hole and open the way to Shaw’s final challenge, whatever it was, and allow us to battle for control of the O-Face.

  But it looked like Dodger’s researchers had had the same realization. As we came within sight of Castle Ass-Burger, I yanked hard on the e-brake, pulling the car to a dramatic sliding sideways stop.

  “Oh shit,” breathed Ap0ll0. “Looks like we have a problem.”

  ‘Oh shit’ was the right sentiment. An entire army of FU Troopers surrounded the castle, complete with high-end war vehicles and missile batteries. It would take the troopers a while to figure out the third dildo puzzle, but not that long, and in the meantime Roger Dodger had moved to secure the one place we needed to get to.

  “It’s not a problem,” I muttered. “It’s just a challenge.”

  “One hell of a challenge. How are we going to get in there?”

  “Okay… okay. I got it. We have all three dildos, and none of the other cunters want to see Roger Dodger win, right? That’s the whole point of Operation Player Fun. It doesn’t matter who wins as long as Roger loses.”

  “So you’re saying…”

  “Yep. Let’s call in the whole fucking server. We’ll get everyone to show up and bash our way in, and then—”

  “Wait! What are they doing?”

  We stopped talking and stared as a giant pink shield slowly climbed up around the castle, forming a perfect sphere behind Roger Dodger’s armies and sealing it off entirely.

  “It can’t be…”

  “The Orb of Innocence?” Ap0ll0 gasped. “I thought it was just a myth…”

  “Looks like it’s real,” I growled. The Orb of Innocence was an artifact rumored to have been created by Shaw as a safe haven for children to play in the O-Face—which had never been a good idea and was immediately scrapped—but the code for the item was alleged to still exist, and it looked like Roger Dodger had gotten his hands on it somehow. “It doesn’t let any avatar who’s ever had sex pass inside of it.”

  Ap0ll0 nodded grimly. “Which means no one in the O-Face can ever get in or out.”

  “Maybe some of the FU Troopers,” I said thoughtfully.
“But yeah. There’s no ordinary player who hasn’t fucked around at least a little.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Dodger can’t get troops with dildos in there either, since they have to fuck to acquire the dildos, so sooner or later the shield has to come down. My guess is he’s going to try to get a critical mass of dildo holders, drop the field long enough to let them in, and then raise it again.”

  “Can we sneak in when that happens?”

  “No…” I shook my head. “We’d still need to punch through his battle lines and if we do that he’ll never drop the field. I have a better idea. I want you to call W33b, tell him to wrap the sidequest up, and get here ASAP with Sherman. Send a message out to the whole cunter network that we need to get ready for a fight, but not until I give the signal. I want everyone to mass here and wait for my word.”

  “What about you?” Ap0ll0 asked. “What are you going to do?”

  “Me?” I smiled and winked at Ap0ll0. “This isn’t a job for Felicia McFly. This isn’t even a job for Bowie Jackson. There’s only one person who can take that forcefield down. And that person is—”

  “You?”

  I sighed. “Dude. I was having a dramatic moment. Yes, obviously it’s me. Can I say it?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Right! And that person is—”

  “Wait, aren’t you Bowie Jackson?”

  “Right now I’m Felicia McFly. But yes.”

  “Then how can it be you? I’m confused.”

  “Don’t you remember how I took an alias? I’m going by Larry Laffer while I’m in the secret hacker underground, a name that ensures anonymity for me.”

  “Oh! I had no idea. I don’t think you mentioned that to me. You sure have a lot of personas.”

  I glared at him. “Can I do my big line now?”

  “Sorry, go ahead.”

  “And that person is… Larry Laffer.”

  Ap0ll0 blinked at me. “That was kind of anticlimactic.”

  “Well, you ruined it.”

  “This is my fault?”

  “Just shut up and get the guys. I’ll ping you when I’ve got the shield down.”