by Jason Segel
“Oh my God, Justin, dial 911!” the woman screeches at her husband, who’s frantically patting down the countless pockets in his cargo shorts in search of his phone.
I don’t know whether it’s purely coincidence or if Elvis and Busara heard the commotion, but at that very moment, Milo Yolkin disappears. The tourist puts his phone down and looks at his wife. They’ve been in Brooklyn for less than two minutes and they’ve already had the shock of their lives.
“Did you see all that?” the woman asks as Kat and I make our way past them into the hotel.
“You mean the pigeon orgy up there on the roof?” Kat asks with a perfectly straight face.
“What? No!” the man says. “The guy about to jump.”
“Nope, didn’t catch that,” Kat tells him.
The woman’s hand flies up to her lips and her eyes widen in horror. “Justin,” she gasps. “Do you think it could have been a ghost?”
She has no idea how close she is to the truth. Milo Yolkin may have passed away, but he hasn’t vanished. He’s risen from the grave like a restless spirit with a score to settle.
* * *
—
I’m back on the bridge over the Gowanus Canal. The fancy buildings are gone. Everything is dark and the only sound is that of the sewage lapping against the banks.
“Don’t do that again,” I tell the man standing next to me. “Don’t come to see me when Kat’s around.”
“You think I wanna show this face in the light of day?” he asks. “I didn’t visit on purpose.”
That means neither of us is in control. “Shit.”
“You said it. She needs to know,” the Kishka tells me. “You can’t keep it from her.”
“Keep what from her?” I demand.
“That something’s wrong.”
I’ve been trying to ignore it, but the truth never goes away.
“What is it?” I ask him. “Do you know?”
“All I know is that none of this is right,” he says. “I haven’t figured out how, but it ain’t.”
I hear a splash below. My gaze drops to the surface of the water. There’s something down there—something white and fleshy.
* * *
—
I wake up in a sweat. Kat’s bare arm is lying across my throat, and there’s a mattress spring jabbing me in the back. Kat must have opened the window. The smell of the canal always grows stronger at night.
* * *
—
For reasons that are clear to anyone with an ounce of common sense, accessing a Manhattan rooftop is usually no easy feat. But thanks to the Company, Elvis has a blueprint of every building on the island downloaded on his glasses. Not only can the glasses guide you to the access stairs, they’ll show you which security wires to snip when you reach the locked door at the top. The four of us together would have drawn attention, so it was decided only one of us could do the job. Aside from the shaved strip on the back of her head, Kat’s hair is long enough to cover the AR glasses’ unusually large temples. The rest of us are standing across the street, waiting for the show to begin. I don’t like this one bit. Now I know how Kat’s felt when I’ve left her for Otherworld. I won’t breathe easily until she’s completed her mission and returned to me.
Unfortunately, the weather is not cooperating with our plans. The sky has grown dark and the wind is picking up. Powerful gusts race through the city’s canyons, and every few minutes, there’s a rumble of thunder in the distance. A storm is rolling in. We don’t have phones anymore, so none of us checked the weather. There are thousands of people on the street, but none of them are looking up. Everyone is rushing to get inside before the rain arrives.
There’s a clap of thunder overhead, and a drop splatters against my forehead. Milo Yolkin appears on the ledge of the roof, holding his sign. No one down below notices. I’m starting to think it’s all a lost cause. Then Busara steps forward, points a finger in the air and screams.
The sidewalk traffic immediately comes to a halt. Within seconds, a crowd of people gathers, all staring up at the man about to jump. Dozens of phones are filming the scene. I only hear one person dial 911. No one else wants to miss a second of the action. It makes me want to pack up and leave them all at the mercy of the Company. I’m not sure any of these jerks deserve to be saved.
A guy next to me is zooming in on the figure, hoping for a close-up. “Oh, daaamn,” he says. “Is that Milo Yolkin?”
“Milo Yolkin!” someone else repeats, and the news spreads through the crowd. Cars on the street have come to a stop, and people are climbing on top of taxis for a better view.
“What’s he holding?”
“A sign that says noon.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Don’t jump!” a woman shouts. “We all love you!”
“Release Otherworld!”
“The end is near!”
“Hey,” says someone nearby. “I’m in Midtown, and Milo Yolkin is about to jump off a roof….What? Yeah, I’m serious! So short the Company stock….Hell yes, I’m sure. Just do it!” He ends the call and lifts his phone back up in the air and hits Record. “Go ahead and jump, you little idiot,” he says.
Then the clouds break and the rain pours down. Within seconds, the witnesses are drenched and their phones rendered useless. The devices are quickly tucked away, but otherwise no one budges.
“Hey—why isn’t he getting wet?” a girl asks.
She’s right. Milo Yolkin is standing in the middle of a thunderstorm, but he and his sign are still perfectly dry. Thankfully, no one has caught it on camera.
There are sirens heading our way. I’m about to lose it when Milo Yolkin takes a step back from the edge and vanishes from view.
* * *
—
The four of us are back at the hotel by ten a.m., soaked to the bone by the storm that refuses to stop. For the next two hours, we listen to the rain pound the neighborhood while we watch the cable news coverage of Milo Yolkin’s bizarre appearance on a Manhattan rooftop. The Company’s share price has plummeted. The red line on the stock chart in the right-hand corner of the screen looks set to drill through the bottom of the television and down into the center of the Earth.
An ad comes on and like a bunch of addicts, we all reach for the remote at once. Whoever gets it switches the television to the next news channel. The screen is split. On one side of the line is a woman dressed like she’s on her way to a cocktail party. On the other is a handsome man with a scruffy chin and thick black glasses. It’s a carefully cultivated look that’s supposed to tell us he’s both exceptionally brilliant and devastatingly cool. The costume doesn’t quite suit him.
“I’m here with Ryan Booncock, CMO of the Company and a personal friend of Milo Yolkin,” says the woman. “Ryan, were Milo’s actions this morning a cry for help?”
Ryan laughs, taking the anchor by surprise. I lean in closer to the television. Maybe it’s just the studio makeup, but if I didn’t know better, I’d say that Ryan was one of the Company’s less convincing robots. Everything about him is uncanny valley. “A cry for help?” he echoes. “Of course not. It was an announcement. Milo wanted to make it himself, and as we all know, he’s always had a flair for the dramatic. Perhaps he took it a little too far, but you gotta admit—he certainly got everyone’s attention.”
“An announcement?” the woman asks.
“We’re releasing the first trailer for our latest software. We were planning to post it to the Company website at noon.” Okay, I’m officially impressed. This is some serious jujitsu. We come at them, and they use the attack to their own advantage. If the Company pulls this one off, maybe they deserve to be humanity’s evil overlords after all.
“How exciting!” The tone of the interview has instantly gone from gloomy to giddy. “Can you tell us more?”
<
br /> “How ’bout we just give you a sneak peek at the trailer?” Ryan asks. He’s running the show now.
They cut to the video, which opens on an image of Earth from space. “For thousands of years, this little blue planet has been our home,” says a man’s voice.
“Holy shit,” I gasp. “Is that Tom Cruise?”
Elvis has gone sheet white. “Could be,” he admits. I can practically see his mind spinning as he tries to figure out if it’s just a coincidence—and what it could mean if it’s not.
“Shhhh!” Busara orders.
The camera is now hurtling toward Earth, closing in on North America, then the northeast US, then an island off the coast of New York State. It plunges past the Empire State Building in the middle of Manhattan and comes to a stop at street level. It’s a sunny summer day. People stream past, taxis honk, and we hear a faint rumble as a subway train passes beneath us. A beautiful woman in a red dress gives the camera a wink. “Man has long yearned to escape—to explore other worlds.”
Suddenly a shadow darkens the street. “But soon we’ll discover there’s no place like home.”
The camera pans up. We see the underbelly of a giant winged creature that’s sailing between skyscrapers.
“OtherEarth,” says maybe Tom Cruise. “Your world. Only better.”
Someone hits Mute and we all sit in silence.
“God that looked awesome,” Elvis finally says.
I have no idea where I am. My eyes are covered and my hands and legs are bound. I can’t move an inch in any direction. Even my chest is wrapped so tightly that my avatar’s lungs can barely expand enough to breathe. I feel the material against my fingertips. It’s a silk as fine as my mother’s scarves. I curse out loud when I realize what’s happened. The last place I visited in Otherworld was the cave beneath the ice fields. When I was pulled out of the game unexpectedly, the spider Child I met there must have wrapped up my avatar and hidden it along with Moloch’s. Elvis is probably keeping us company. I guess that’s the thanks we get for saving Spider Lady’s butt. I get that she doesn’t like guests. But what do you have to do these days to prove you’re not a psychopath?
There’s a pain in the center of my chest where something hard is pressing into my flesh. The Children let me keep the amulet, which seems like an improbable bit of good luck. A pale blue light filters through my silk blindfold. The stone knows I’m eager to go, and it’s ready. I can’t move my lips, but I don’t need to. I think of the place I need to travel, and suddenly I’m outside Imra. I’d rather be anywhere else, but there’s one last trip Kat and I have to make before we say goodbye to this place forever. Kat’s arranged a meeting with her stepfather. After we see Wayne, I don’t intend to ever come back.
Kat is waiting for me at the gates. She’s wearing her camouflage bodysuit, which blends in so well that most of her appears to be a smudge on the graphics. But her head is uncovered and her copper-colored curls flow freely. In Otherworld, the shaved strip on the back of her head is gone.
“What the heck happened here?” she asks.
I peer through the gates. The suburbs of Imra are deserted. Weeds have grown through cracks in the pavement. Red sand from the neighboring wastelands has blown in on the winds and formed small dunes against the sides of the buildings. I was here not that long ago, yet Otherworld’s nature is already reclaiming realms. I’m starting to think time might be speeding up here.
“One of the guests killed all the NPCs,” I say. “Elvis and I watched him shoot one—then he came after us.”
“The game didn’t regenerate the NPCs after they died?” Kat asks skeptically.
“I guess not,” I realize. It is strange. When the Children die, they’re gone for good. But NPCs are just part of the game. They should have regenerated, but it looks as though they haven’t. I wonder what Imra’s like now that its NPC workers are gone. And I wonder what the headset players will do when there’s nothing in Otherworld left to shoot.
I start walking before I even know where I’m going. Kat doesn’t ask. She just stays beside me. Soon we’re standing in front of the green wall of ivy that once protected Gimmelwald. A wide hole has been burned through the center. Most of the vines surrounding the passage are dead. A few scorched tendrils are twitching. I can’t imagine a torch like the one Elvis used ever causing this much damage. This required a much more powerful weapon.
With Kat right behind me, I enter Volla’s realm. There is nothing left of it. The land is black and empty. The fire spared nothing. The mutant vegetation is gone, and the structures that once resembled green monsters have all burned to the ground. Whatever fierce beasts lived here have been massacred. There’s no sign of Gunter or the cottage that he lived in. I feel a sudden pain, as if someone has reached deep inside my chest and yanked out my heart. Elvis and I probably showed the murderer how to get inside.
“Volla!” I shout, though I know I shouldn’t. The guest responsible for all this destruction might not be far away. “Volla!” I shout again.
There’s no answer.
“Who is Volla?” Kat asks.
“The Elemental of Gimmelwald,” I remind her. I can’t bear to say more. I can’t find the words to tell Kat about the little green baby—or the promise I failed to keep.
“I don’t think guests can kill Elementals.” Kat tries to soothe me, though neither of us really knows the truth. Maybe Volla fled with her child, but the chances are just as good that she’s dead.
The rage takes me by surprise. It’s more potent than anything I’ve felt since my trip to Nastrond. I manage to push it down deep in my belly. But as I stomp back through the hole in the vines, I can feel it burning and boiling—like the molten rock inside Imra’s volcano. It’s only a matter of time before I explode.
* * *
—
Imra and Nemi are separated by a swamp—one of the countless wastelands that separate the realms. It’s unbearably hot and humid, but Kat and I are forced to keep our sleeves down and our hoods up. The insects here are large and hungry. I’ve seen mosquitolike creatures that could drain a man dry. We wade through rancid-smelling muck that reaches well past our knees. It’s hard to believe that anyone would willingly spend time in this hellhole, but we’re barely a mile in when we hear the first shot. It’s followed by at least a dozen more. The spaces in between are filled with hooting and hollering.
I glance over at Kat. She shakes her head and points in the opposite direction. We should do our best to avoid other guests, it’s true. But there’s a chance that one of these assholes may have destroyed Gimmelwald. There may be no judgments in Otherworld, but if I find the person responsible, he’s going to pay for his sins.
“Stay here,” I whisper to Kat. “I’ll be right back.”
“Stop saying crap like that!” She huffs in annoyance and readies her bow. “If you’re going somewhere, I’m going too. We stick together, no matter what.”
Moving slowly and silently, we make our way toward the gunshots. Soon buildings appear in front of us. They’re bayou-style wooden shacks that sit perched atop stilts that rise four feet out of the swamp. They look hand-built and weathered—not the sort of place that headset players would seek out. Yet there are three guests here. Their avatars are standing on a porch that surrounds one of the houses. Two of the guests are burly camo-wearing types. The third is slender, with neatly combed dark hair. He’s dressed in simple gray coveralls, like a mechanic at a fancy car dealership. He watches passively, hands in his pockets, while the other two men shoot at something in the water. Whatever it is, they’ve hit it multiple times. The water is red and thick with blood, and there’s a metallic stench in the air. Standing by the gray man’s side is a Child. I have no idea what two beings might have blended to produce the creature. It’s human in appearance, though its waxy skin is as pale as a corpse and its thick black hair has a bluish sheen. The creature�
�s crisp navy outfit appears military in style, with a kilt that ends just above its knees. The legs sticking out of the skirt are rather ordinary, but the Child’s feet are bare and it’s rocking a massive tail.
“What are they shooting at?” Kat whispers. She gets her answer almost immediately. A giant beast surfaces from the deep water around the building and lunges up at the avatars on the deck. It has the scales and snout of a crocodile, and it looks prehistoric. It snatches one of the camo-wearing avatars by the boot and drags him into the water.
The second man in camo lurches backward and falls on his ass. His gun lands a few feet away, discharging a bullet that splinters the bark of a nearby tree. There’s silence for a moment as waves lap against the house’s stilts. Then the Child begins to laugh. The deafening sound is more dolphin than human. Kat and I both shove our fingers into our ears. The humiliated avatar snarls and reaches for his weapon, but he’s not quite fast enough. The man in gray already has a gun to his head.
“Go to hell, Alexei,” the man on the ground sneers. “The next time I see your little pet, he’s going to Karamojo with the rest of them.” He has an Eastern European bad-guy accent, the origins of which I can’t quite place.
The gray man doesn’t so much as blink. “Set one foot in my swamp, Dimitri, and we will do this again.” He fires once and the other avatar flashes. “Over and over”—he fires again—“until you learn your lesson.” He pulls the trigger of his gun a third time. The fallen avatar flashes once more and disappears.
The gray man then passes the gun to his companion. “Go,” I hear him tell the Child. “Get the ones that were taken. Bring them back.”
“Alexei,” I mutter. That’s what the other man called him. Like the Russian oligarch Elvis mentioned back in New Mexico. I bet they’re one and the same.
