by A. J. Markam
“No, I’m going for a walk!”
“What should we do, babe?” Alaria asked.
“I don’t know, just – hang out.”
“I want booze!” Stig yelled.
I retraced my steps, handed him three bottles of wine out of my bags, and turned back around.
“Before you go, Ee-an, would you like to see the artwork I have created of your peee-nis?” Zali called out.
“NO!” I yelled.
“Eet ees gi-GAN-teeeec…” Zali cooed, like he was trying to entice me.
I paused.
Hmm…
“Then it’s not your penis, boss,” Stig said.
Ouch.
“Shhhh,” Alaria hissed.
“What?” Stig protested indignantly. “That’s why YOU say!”
“That’s private, you little asshole!” Alaria seethed.
“I ap-preee-cee-ate it no matter eets size, Ee-an!” Zali called out like a lovelorn suitor.
“So do I, honey!” Alaria called after me.
“So do we!” all the succubi in the garden called out in one voice.
“So do we!” all the incubi shouted, which kind of freaked me out a little.
“Give it to us NOW!” all the incubi and succubi yelled at once.
“QUI-EEEET!” Zalia roared at them.
“You can, honey!” Alaria called after me. “You can stick it in all their holes!”
“All of ‘em, boss!” Stig added.
“NO! NO ONE ELSE’S HOLES!” Zali shouted, then added as he twiddled his mustache, “…on-leee mine. After I take my sheet, that ees.”
I ran as fast as I could and disappeared inside the house.
That last exchange was going down in the QC report.
…uh…
Maybe ‘going down’ wasn’t the best choice of words…
36
“…so to summarize,” my boss said up on the main stage, “we’re trying to figure out a way to divert the protestors to a completely different set of servers, but until then, we just have to put up with them.”
I looked around the auditorium. This was normally the place where Westek held ‘Very Special Events,’ like major product launches and annual keynote speeches broadcast on the internet. Departmental meetings were usually held in conference rooms, but all the teams responsible for OtherWorld were here: the writers, the artists, the animators, the coders, the designers, the QC department, marketing, upper management… everybody.
And though they were muted by the walls of the auditorium, we could all hear the reason the emergency meeting had been called. All 500 of them, chanting outside with their crappy handmade signs.
“A, B, C, D –
“Who died for us to set us free?
“Yeah Jesus!
“Uh huh –
“Yeah Jesus!
“Uh huh!
“E, F, G, H –
“Who do we appreciate?
“Yeah Jesus!
“Uh huh –
“Yeah Jesus!
“Uh huh!
“I, J, K, L –
“Who the heck is going to Hell?
“It’s Westek!
“Uh huh –
“Yeah, Westek!”
It was like a pep rally for the Westboro Baptist Church.
John glared at the unseen protestors through the walls, then turned back to the audience. “By the way, I need to address something. There have been complaints from some of the protestors about being… in their words… ‘massacred’ near an underwater city.”
A dude out in the audience yelled, “YEAH!”
Scattered laughter followed.
I just shrank down slowly in my seat.
John quieted everybody down and kept talking.
“There was also a report filed by dozens of protestors that… ahem… a bunch of ‘sexual deviants’ – their words, not mine – exposed the protestors to visual depictions of, quote unquote, ‘lesbian perversion.’”
This time a woman yelled “YEAH!” and everybody in the entire place exploded into laughter.
I shrank down even lower in my seat.
John smiled and motioned for quiet. “As far as we can tell, though, that was perpetrated by a group of four players… although one of our staff may have been tangentially involved.”
I shrank down so far in my seat that I was almost on the floor.
“Now, as I told the QC department a few days ago, DO NOT engage the trolls. Ever. Period.”
John peered out at the audience with laser-like intensity, as though searching for someone.
Me.
Of course, at that point, I was practically underneath the chair in front of me, so he couldn’t see me.
I hoped.
“Dude, are you okay?” the guy next to me whispered.
“I’m fine,” I hissed. “Just – don’t look at me.”
The guy frowned at me like I was a crazy person and turned back to the stage.
John continued. “So OFFICIALLY I have to say that whoever did this, if they do it again… there will be consequences. However… UNofficially…”
A long pause.
“…good fuckin’ job.”
The entire crowd broke out into a raucous cheer.
People stamped their feet and clapped.
I rose back up a little in my seat, relieved that my firing wasn’t immediately imminent.
Then one of the three execs who had hired me came up on stage with his own mic.
“Alright, dawg, give it for John the Man Perkinnnnnsss!” the bro-tastic Sales Dude roared. “QC in da HOWSE! YEAH!”
The entire crowd roared some more.
“Hey, hey – I got one for the nutbags out there!” the Sales Dude said, then yelled at the unseen protestors. “Goes a little like this: ‘Wine, whiskey, rum, beer – GET THOSE LOSERS OUT OF HERE!’”
Lots of laughter.
“Or how about this?” the Sales Dude said, then shouted at the top of his lungs, “‘Dwarves, humans, orcs, elves – PROTESTORS GO FUCK YOURSELVES!’”
That brought the entire house down.
After everybody quieted down, bro-sy Sales Dude went on about how great the company was doing (“Dude, we are seeing, like, MAD profits, yo!”), followed by the Legal Department calmly stressing why the rights of the protestors had to be respected in the game, lest Westek be deluged with lawsuits. The suit they hauled up there to speak was like a human barbiturate – put me right to sleep.
I woke up as we were dismissed to go back to work and everybody started filing out of the auditorium.
I got up with everyone else and headed for the exit.
“Hey, troublemaker,” a voice said behind me.
I turned to see Satish, one of the writers on the game, grinning at me.
“Dude,” I hissed.
He laughed. “Don’t worry, you’re our fuckin’ hero in the writer’s room. Using that spare dungeon core as a portable shag wagon? Brilliant.”
I stared at him. “You guys don’t – you’re not – ”
“Watching? No, all we get are technical readouts. But even those are pretty scorching hot. I’m telling you, half of the guys would give their left nuts to do some of the stuff you’ve done over the last few months. Some of the girls would give their left ovaries.”
“Well, now they can do it with the Adult Expansion Pack. No gonad sacrifice required.”
Satish laughed. “‘No gonad sacrifice necessary’… I’m gonna have to remember that one. Sneak it into a boss battle or something.”
“Speaking of boss battles, I’ve run into one I have no idea how to beat.”
“Zali,” Satish said with a smirk and a nod.
“Yeah. Fuckin’ Zali. Who came up him, anyway?”
“I did, officially, but… to be honest… it was a suggestion from the art department. They were like, ‘Hey, you guys should do a Salvador Dali landscape with melting watches and shit,’ and I was like, ‘Huh… that could be cool…’ Of course,
we never quite got around to melting watches.”
“No, you had too many fucked-up statues to make, apparently,” I grumbled.
“Hahaha – yeah, the art department had a field day with that one. Did you like your ‘pulchritudinous buttocks’ sculpture?”
I stared at him. “YOU came up with that?!”
Satish laughed so hard he started crying. “I’m – I’m sorry – I know it was fucked up, but – ”
“Yeah, we need to sit down and have a talk someday about just HOW fucked-up it was,” I growled, “but right now I need some advice on how to defeat Zali.”
Satish took off his glasses and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes. “Sorry, man, can’t help you.”
“Give me a break – just a hint!”
“It’s not that I don’t want to help you, it’s that I can’t help you. I don’t know how to beat him.”
I stared at Satish. “What do you mean, you don’t know how to beat him?”
“He’s part of a new test we’re running with the AI. We feed the initial parameters into the system, but then the AI designs him, so it’s the only one that knows how to beat him. It’s sort of like a black box in an airplane – we have no idea what goes on in there.”
“Why did you do that?!”
“We were trying to get away from the regular, predictable bullshit. Cast Chain of Darkness five times, then Soul Suck four times, then – ”
“So you made him impossible to beat instead.”
“Not impossible. Just… difficult.”
“Like how he keeps leveling up faster than I do?” I snarled.
“Look, don’t take it so hard – at least he’s a relatively nice villain. And you get to hang out with a bunch of hot, naked female statues. And Alaria.” Satish sighed wistfully. “The writer’s room smells like farts and weed, dude. YOU get to fuck Alaria and get paid for it. Think about that for a second.”
“Yeah, well…” I grumbled, though he had a point.
I couldn’t really complain that much.
“Do you have any pointers?” I asked. “Any hints?”
“You could always ask the pirates for help.”
He was talking about how Krug and the crew of the Revenge had helped me beat Saykir.
“I think that ship’s sailed. Literally.”
“Asking all your friends from the dungeons worked that other time.”
He meant how I got hundreds of people to help me fight the orcs on the plains of Mor-El.
“I can’t really ask them again. Don’t you have any other ideas?”
Satish thought for a second. “I guess… look at ALL your resources. Utilize ALL your options.”
“That’s real helpful,” I said sarcastically.
“Again: you get to fuck Alaria and get paid for it. You’re not getting any sympathy from me, dude.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Touché.”
As we walked up the steps to the third floor, we looked through the glass windows out at the protestors. There were hundreds of them out there.
We paused to listen to them yell about how we were all going to hell.
Satish shook his head in disbelief. “How can anybody get this worked up about a videogame?”
“Well, God says you can’t stick your wiener in the hole unless you put a ring on it first,” I joked. “And some holes are a no-go FOREVER.”
“You mean, your god says that,” Satish pointed out.
“Not my god.”
“Alright… the ‘Christian’ god, then.” Satish shook his head. “How they can think that something that created supernovas and galaxies could possibly care where you put your genitals? I mean, as long as it’s consensual? It’s beyond me.”
“Don’t Hindus have rules about that sort of stuff? Or is it just Kama Sutra 24/7?”
Satish looked at me as though he were offended. “Why do you assume I’m Hindu?”
“Oh – I – uh – ”
“What, just because I’m brown-skinned and I’ve got an Indian name, you’re like, ‘Oh, that guy’s Hindu’?”
“I’m sorry, man, I just – ”
Satish tried to keep a straight face, but broke down laughing. “I’m just fuckin’ with you. I was raised Hindu.”
“You DICK.”
He laughed some more. “My parents are religious. I’m not.”
“So do they have rules or not?”
“My parents? Yeah – marry a nice Indian girl. Which they talk about all… the… time.”
“You know what I mean. Don’t Hindus have rules about sex, too?”
“Yeah, but do you see any freakin’ Indians out there?” he said, pointing at the protestors.
Touché. Again.
Satish shook his head. “What I wonder is, don’t they have jobs? Are they all rich? How do they afford to protest all day and afford rent?”
“Maybe this is their job,” I mused. “Maybe someone’s paying them.”
“Well, if you’re going to get somebody to do a job, get a professional, right? A bunch of mercenaries to fight for you,” Satish joked. Then he grew serious. “Thank god for the cops holding them back. I mean, it’s like the barbarians outside the gates of Rome. Who the hell knows what they’d do if they broke in here?”
“Yeah… like an invading… army…”
A lightbulb went off over my head.
“That’s it,” I murmured, and clapped Satish on the shoulder. “Thanks, man, you’re a genius!”
“What’d I do?” Satish called out, confused.
“I think you just gave me the key to beating Zali!” I yelled as I ran back to the lab.
37
Back in the game, I skirted the edge of the Naga and nymph battle as we approached the nymphs’ city.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Alaria asked as she followed along behind me.
“Nope. But I have a good feeling about this,” I said, fully aware I was courting disaster from the Star Wars gods simply by changing the iconic line of dialogue. (Ask the writers and producers of Solo. They know.)
“I can give you a better feeling,” Alaria purred as she pinched my ass.
“Ahhh, fuck me,” Stig muttered off to the side.
“Later. Right now we – ”
“You’re going to fuck me later?!” Stig howled in abject horror.
“I WASN’T TALKING TO YOU!” I snapped. “I was talking to Alaria!”
“Oh.” He sighed in relief. “Good.”
I shuddered. The idea of what he’d just said…
UGH.
Let’s just say there are some things I wish I’d never imagined, and that was one of them.
I looked directly at Alaria so everyone was absolutely clear about who I was speaking to. “You and I will have fun later, but we need to try this first.”
Alaria shrugged. “Fine.”
Once we were past the front lines of battle, we reached a vast camp of nymph soldiers – some eating, some fixing broken shields and weapons, some sparring with each other. They more or less ignored us. I guess as long as we didn’t have snake tails, we weren’t their primary concern.
We reached the perimeter of the city and headed over to the side, far away from the main gates. The nymphs had their own wall, too, just like Fathmos – except this one was built out of black, volcanic rocks.
I figured I knew what was going to happen, but I swam up to the top of the wall and tried to go over it anyway.
Nope. An invisible barrier prevented me from crossing into the city, just like with Fathmos. At least before the kraken broke it, anyway.
I drifted back down to the sandy seafloor. Just in case this didn’t go the way I was hoping, I cast Gravesite and created a new resurrection point. Then I headed straight for the main gates, with Alaria and Stig following close behind me.
The gates were open, but the entrance was guarded by a squadron of angry-looking nymphs in bronze helmets, chain-link loin cloths, and metallic half-spheres cupping their tits.
Funny how dudes always got maximum coverage, but female NPCs (and often the players) wound up in the armored version of a bra and panty set.
Not that I was complaining. The visuals were nice. The bronze set off their green skin beautifully, and the skimpy metal cups on their breasts gave a generous view of cleavage, side boob, and underboob.
Though all the bronze spears the women held were just a little bit disconcerting.
“Halt, strangers,” the commander of the squadron barked. “State your business.”
“We’re here to see the princess,” I announced.
All the guards gasped like I’d just said we were there to gangbang her.
“NO ONE sees the princess!” the commander yelled –
And then 30 bronze spears flew through the air and pierced my body all at once.
Everything went black, and I woke up at the tombstone I’d created far from the city gates.
I checked my status bar and saw that Alaria and Stig’s icons were greyed out. Guess the nymphs had gotten them, too.
Rather than resurrect them, though, I decided to wait. For my plan to work, I would have to summon Stig and Alaria from Limbo later on – and I didn’t want them to have to die again unnecessarily.
Instead, I waited out the cooldown period for my Gravesite spell – a full ten minutes since I’d cast it, but only seven since I’d died – and then followed the curved wall back to the city gates.
The squadron of guards were still standing in formation, though they’d retrieved their spears since they’d killed me.
As soon as the nymph commander saw me, she roared in shock and indignation. “How did you survive that?!”
“I didn’t.”
“And you won’t again!” she yelled.
The nymphs all raised their bronze spears and prepared to throw them –
But I cast Invisibility and ducked around the edge of the gates.
I had exactly 20 seconds before the spell ran out, so I swam for all I was worth.
Behind me, the nymphs gasped in surprise.
“A ghost!” one shrieked.
“No, you fool,” the commander shouted, “a sorcerer! He’s inside the city – he must be heading for the princess! GO – AND SOUND THE ALARM!”
One of the guards blasted out a rumbling DOOOOOOO! on a conch shell, and the others sprinted towards the black-spired castle.
