PWNED: A Gamers Novel
Page 5
“ORLY?”
“YARLY.”
Noob wandered, overwhelmed, bumping into every imaginable shade and shape of character. He spotted an elf sitting alone on the steps of the library and jogged over.
“Hey,” he started. “Sorry to bug you, but can you help me? I need to find an admin.” The elf faded and vanished.
That was rude, he thought. At first. Before he looked around and noticed they were all sitting and fading from sight. Is the city closing for the night? “I need to find an Admin! Anyone? An Admin?”
“I’ll admin your doom, gaywad!”
Trumpets blared. Dueling stones landed around Noob. “Fyreballz has challenged you to a duel!”
Noob fled.
Noob darted around a corner and ducked into an alley. Fyreballz dashed past the intersection, flames trailing from his hands. No going back that way.
Noob peered deeper into the alley and noticed a city guard with a bright yellow “A” above his head. He hadn’t seen that anywhere else. “Hey, there. Knight guy. Are you an Admin?”
The Knight looked at him. “No, my name is ‘A.’ Of course I am.”
“Didn’t know you guys could talk.”
“We’re not bots, dumbass.”
“Alert!” warned the sky. “Server reset in three minutes!”
“Make it quick,” said the Admin. “Reset in three.”
Noob got to it. “I need to find someone. If I give you her name—her real one, I mean—could you give me her info?”
The Admin snorted. “Yes, I am dying to get fired. Beat it, stalker.”
“Seriously, I know her!”
“Crush on a guildie, huh? Take it from me, she’s never gonna go for you, no matter what you do.”
“Dude, I’m serious! She’s my girlfriend, my fiancée.” It was close enough to the truth.
“Jog on, freak. Any other Admin would have reported you by now and banned your ass. Haven’t ruled it out myself.”
“Fyreballz has challenged you to a duel!”
A ring of dueling stones fell around Noob. “God damn it!”
“It’s on, cock-dick!” Fyreballz was blocking the alley, his hands aflame. “Time to flambé the gay away!”
The Admin slowly shook his head at Fyreballz. “This fucking guy. You tormenting noobs again?”
Fyreballs noticed the Admin. The fires around his hands died. “Hey, he came on to me.”
“You know the rules about push-dueling lowbies.”
“Come on!” said Fyreballz. “Look at his name! He needs fire and pounding!”
“He absolutely does. Doesn’t matter. This is your second warning. Walk, or it’s a one-day ban.”
Fyreballz glared at Noob. “You won’t always have protection. Roast you later, gayfag.” He bounced out of the alley, flinging fireballs at birds.
Blackened pigeons fell around Noob. “Look, man—I hate this game. Most of the things and people I’ve met have tried to kill me.”
“I can see why.”
“I don’t belong here.”
“We are on the same wavelength.”
“And I will leave forever the moment I get my girlfriend back. So if you can think of any way you can help me, please—”
“Shut up. The only way I’m giving you your girlfriend’s info is if you bring me the Godsword.”
“Done! Shake on it?”
“There’s no macro for that.”
“Ah.” Noob kicked at the ground awkwardly. “So. Any idea where I find a Godsword? And is it ‘God sword’ or ‘God’s word?’ They look the same in chat.”
The Admin scoffed. “I’m out, bitches.” He sat.
“Alert! Server reset in one minute!”
The Admin faded and was gone.
Noob returned to find the town square nearly empty. Only a handful of players remained, and most of them were seated and halfway vanished already.
“Hello?” Nobody was listening. “This may sound like a stupid question, but does anyone know where I can find a Godsword?”
“Alert!” cried the narrator. “Server reset in five… four…”
The city began to erase itself. Towers vanished. Houses disappeared. Gray non-space rubbed out the branching side streets one by one.
“Three… two…”
Noob stood alone in what was left of the city: nothing but the cobblestone square, surrounded by gray, formless emptiness.
“One.”
A flash of white.
A message popped up on Reid’s screen: Fartherall Online is undergoing routine server maintenance and has gone offline. The adventure continues at 9:00 A.M. Robo-cowboy tipped his hat with a “Boy, Howdy!” and the game kicked to Reid’s desktop.
Reid checked the clock. He blinked a couple of times to see if the numbers would change. They didn’t. It really was 4:00 A.M. He’d managed to play through the night.
In a haze, he ambled into the bedroom. If I go to bed now, I might be able to steal a couple hours’ sleep before work. Enough to stumble through the day. How could he have lost track of time like that?
On the bed was the basket of unfolded laundry, right where Reid had left it. Astrid’s camisole was on top. Reid had given it to her on her last birthday, along with the graphics card she’d made extra sure he knew she wanted. It was the camisole she was wearing in the picture of them Reid kept on his desk at work. She hadn’t taken it with her.
Reid sat down and started folding the laundry.
4
Making Friends
TIP: If you enjoyed playing with someone, add them to your friends list!
The kitchen on eighth—the one for the non-executives—was a converted office with a microwave, a mini fridge, and no windows. There was a single circular table, but no chairs. The message was clear: if employees wanted to relax, they could do so elsewhere—preferably on their own time.
“I’m surprised you’re even vertical,” said Lodge.
“Yeah, well.” Reid emptied the coffee pot and sugar bowl into his Nalgene bottle.
“You should not be in today. There’s a reason you have personal days. Isn’t she more likely to be playing during the day anyway?”
“I can’t afford the time off.” He really couldn’t, not without Astrid covering her half of the bills.
“Do it anyway,” said Lodge. “I’ll float you. Forget about the game, about Astrid. You need to take some time for yourself. To adjust.”
“I’m getting her back. That starts with getting in touch.” Into the Nalgene went a pint of Half-and-Half. Reid shook it up and chugged half the bottle.
Lodge watched him drink in growing horror. “Dude? You are going to die.”
The world was a blur. Reid willed it to slow to a normal pace. It did, but the wall of his cubicle wouldn’t stop moving. After a second he realized it was because he was bouncing his knee under his desk. He rolled up his grandfather’s cuffs and noticed Lodge standing there staring at him.
“Do you want me to get you some water?” Lodge asked. “Or activated charcoal? Maybe a purgative?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“You look like you ran to work.”
“I don’t actually recall how I got back to my desk. I may have quantum tunneled.”
Lodge started scribbling on paper. “I’m just gonna start filling out the coroner’s report now.”
“I’m fine, ass-hamster. Now let’s just assume I remember what we were talking about.”
Lodge shrugged, crumpled the page. “So that dude who kept killing you?”
“It’s pretty common. People being dicks for the sake of dickdom. I looked it up.”
“I’ve gamed with Cass for fifteen years,” said Lodge. “I’m familiar with the concept of griefing. But not everyone was a dick, right? That one player who helped you. Smurf girl. What happened to her?”
Reid shrugged. “I don’t know.” He left out the part where she might be in hell. “It’s too bad. She was the only decent person I met in there.”
“You have such a way with women.”
Reid stomped on Lodge’s foot. Lodge yelped and hobbled off, right through Habermann’s aggro range. Aw, dammit.
Habermann steamed towards him and steered into his cubicle. “Reid, what does the manual say about horseplay?”
Reid closed his eyes. “Christ, not today.”
Habermann kept looking at him. “The manual, Reid.”
Reid found the relevant mental file. “Horseplay is not allowed in the office.”
Habermann’s nostrils twitched. “And personal hygiene?”
“Employees must maintain a clean and professional appearance at all times.”
Habermann wiped his brow. “You seem to be forgetting the manual a lot, Reid. That’s a shame. That doesn’t reflect well on this office.”
This is where he’ll bring up the Board.
“If they decided to visit today, what would the Board think? The rules in the manual are there for a reason. They govern a healthy business. And business is the building block of civilization. Without it, do you know what we have, Reid?”
“Chaos.”
“Chaos,” said Habermann. “Anarchy. The manual is your bulwark against chaos, Reid. Keep that in mind. You need to be able to demonstrate that you can stick to the rules, that you can set an example.”
Reid looked appropriately admonished. Enough so that Habermann nodded—he’d gotten his point across. He set a thick rubber-banded bundle of reports on Reid’s desk.
Reid recognized the accounts. They’d taken him three months. “I just finished these.”
“You did, and it was well done. But the CEO of Englebrook-Meyer was indicted this morning, so they suddenly need this year’s tax return redone. As well as the last six.” Habermann looked over his shoulder towards the elevators. “In here, Sergei.”
A janitor wheeled in a furniture dolly full with file boxes. Reid gave it a quick once over, and decided he’d had worse. “That doesn’t look so bad.”
“Great!” Habermann grinned. “And when you’re done with those, the rest are in the conference room.”
Reid push-rolled his office chair out of his cubicle. The windowed wall of the conference room was stacked floor to ceiling with file boxes.
Habermann clapped a steak-sized hand onto his shoulder. “Think of this as an opportunity, Reid. To really focus, really challenge yourself.” Another clap and he was off.
Reid felt a less ample hand on his shoulder and turned to see Lodge.
“What was it Nietzsche used to say?” Lodge asked, with a sympathetic grunt.
“That which does not kill me ruins my life.”
Lodge frowned. “I don’t think that was it.”
“It’s what he meant.” Reid slumped in his chair and dropped his head. “Any other week, I could handle this.”
“Sure, the workload sucks. But look at it this way—you can use this. Focus on it. Plug in some headphones, tune the world out, put the whole Astrid thing out of your mind, and rack up some comp days. There’s hours and hours of overtime in there.”
“But I’ve got a lead!” Reid snapped his head back up. “A way to get in touch! I know how to find her!” He leaned conspiratorially towards Lodge, beckoned him into whispering distance.
Lodge leaned forward an inch, and Reid imparted his secret: “The Godsword.” He infused the word with all proper gravitas.
Lodge nodded back, completely unimpressed. “It’s always the hardest right after a break up.”
Reid glowered. “We didn’t break up.”
“Sometimes people go a bit nutty.”
“We didn’t break up.”
Reid left the office three hours after everyone else, barely halfway through the first box. He drove home in a zombie state.
From the bedroom, the mattress called to him, singing a siren song of oblivion. Come to me, lover. Let me take you away from all this. You might even have the dream about pirates.
“I’ll just be an hour,” he told his bed.
Noob strode out of Marrowstone City beneath a brilliantly starry sky. He promised the first star he saw that he would make progress tonight. That he would find her. That this would be over soon. The radiant red star—the eye in a constellation of a dragon—seemed to wink back, although that might have just been the frame rate.
A whistle. Noob turned. Greef was standing in front of the gates, between Noob and the entrance to the city. He wasn’t alone, either. He’d brought a couple of friends: Fugly the ogre and an orc called Crotch. Each had “Level 100” and
Greef waved.
Noob looked for the city guards, spotted them staring mindlessly from their posts. Greef and his backup dancers were well out of aggro range. The
Never thought I’d miss Fyreballz. Reid ran.
There was no direction to his flight, no plan. He hugged the road ahead of him as it ran through a village full of players whacking a piñata with a gnome and into the hills beyond, past a sign pointing the way towards Fullvein Mine.
This was enemy territory—computer controlled orcs were patrolling the path ahead. He ran between them. They roared and joined the chase.
Ahead, a cave. Noob plunged through the entrance and darted blindly through twisting tunnels, as orc miners broke away from their work with a roar to chase him.
Noob ran smack into an orc miner—halving his life meter—and fell prone at his feet. The orc howled and raised his pickaxe above his head.
Something stout and wooden hurtled through the air and pinned the orc to the wall. It was the Fullvein Mine sign.
Noob heard a whistle. Greef waved from the mine’s entrance, said something in gibberish, and held out his thumb and forefinger an inch apart: “Missed you by that much.” Fugly and Crotch ran past Greef and killed the angry miners chasing Noob.
More pissed off miners closed in. Noob leapt up and ran around the nearest corner—straight into a dead end.
Before he could turn around, Greef’s net pinned him. Noob sighed, accepted his fate, and turned to die.
Greef leapt towards him, blades flashing through the air—and another blade, a huge black one, jumped to block it.
Holding that sword was The Truth—the giant train-faced warrior, the knight on his tabard adamantly giving Greef the finger.
Greef screamed a battle cry, and Crotch and Fugly ran to flank The Truth. They never reached him. A clutch of arrows from the shadows caught Fugly full in the face, and a fireball exploded against Crotch. And then three figures were on them, swords and staves whirling and striking. Fugly and Crotch shrieked and fell.
The Truth kicked Greef against the wall of the cave. The dark elf sprung to his feet with impossible speed and drove his blade towards the eye slit in The Truth’s armor. The bubble of a force field sprung up between them, and Greef’s blade skipped off it, sending Greef staggering back.
The Truth swung so hard that his sword sparked as it cut through the air. The blow caught Greef in the neck and golfed his head across the room. It hit the ground a full two seconds after the dark elf’s body.
The Truth sheathed his blade and cracked his knuckles.
“Shit.” It was all Noob could think to say.
“Well, hey.” Yanker stepped into the light of a brazier Noob hadn’t noticed. “It’s that noob I was telling you about.”
“Holy shit,” said a voice from the shadows. “His name really is Noob. Who does that?”
“If I remember,” Yanker said to Noob, “you said I’d never see you again.”
Noob wasn’t sure what to say. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“You even promised.”
“To be fair, I am a noob,” he said. “I suck at stuff. Thanks for helping me not die. Again.”
“Well, we did get to kill some nocs, so it wasn’t entirely pro bono. And I didn’t do it alone. You should thank the rest of the guild.”
A tree person stepped out of the shadows
. Dryads—that’s what they’re called. She was clad toe to throat in white robes and had flowing Spanish moss for hair, and her name was Bandaid of
“Really?” Yanker rolled her eyes. “In case you can’t read, the super polite one is Bandaid, our healer. She’s way into RP.”
“You are hurt, young traveler.” Bandaid raised a crystalline staff and cast a spell. “Be well!”
A corona of light flared around Noob, and his health bar filled.
“Thy wounds are mended.”
“Thank you.”
“Thou art welcome.”
“Think fast, Noob!” Greef’s head flew past Noob’s face and stabbed itself into a spike on The Truth’s armor. “Aw, come on, Truthy. Don’t be a ball hog. Kick it back.”
Yanker indicated the speaker. “Our mage.”
“Word,” said the head kicker, the scantily clad one. “I blow shit up.” She was an elf maid named Mansex, also of
Yanker pulled Greef’s head off of The Truth’s armor. “And The Truth is our tank. He stands in front of shit. If you want to make a joke about how he hurts, or will set you free, now’s the time.”
“We’ve met, actually,” said Noob. “Outside Marrowstone.” The Truth nodded by way of greeting.
Mansex spied a patrol of orc miners wandering a nearby passage and casually toasted them with a fireball. “So here’s a question,” she asked, backlit by miners burning to howling deaths. “How’s a Level 1 make it to the back of this mine? This zone’s like Level 20, minimum.”
“Yes, and however did you escape the clutches of that foul miscreant?”
“The what, now?”
Mansex danced provocatively above Greef’s headless corpse.
“Oh. Him. He kept trying to say something to me, but I couldn’t understand.”
“They scramble in-game chat between factions,” said Mansex. “Keeps the death threats to a minimum. You didn’t answer the question.”
“Oh. No real plan to it,” said Noob. “Just ran. French tactics.”