《World Servers - Dawn》 Chapter 1 - Introduction Necrobump, senior Lord Wizard for the guild I Like Big Booty, peered cautiously into the hallway from his apartment. He looked to the left. Then he looked to the right. It was only when it was abundantly obvious that the coast was clear that he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door. The hallway smelt of cat urine. The incandescent light in one of the wall sconces flickered fitfully in need of being replaced. The carpet was dirty and stained. Necro took out his key and placed it in the door, locking it behind him. Then taking another quick look around, he held up his wizard staff and, drawing some inner power, quickly muttered the ward of protection to fortify his home against invaders. The ward itself was probably unnecessary. This was a null magic zone; spell casters couldn''t just tap a nearby lay line and force magic to do their bidding. Few people bothered to specialize in mana manipulation. It was too much of an esoteric subject, its uses were too limited, especially when mana was so plentiful. On the East Coast of this server farm there were maybe three or four other people who were his equal in the subject. None were better. There were only a handful of people, six or seven that he knew of with lesser talents who could maybe hold their own enough to be useful. But in the words of the great and wise Yossarian "Just because you are paranoid, doesn''t mean they aren''t after you." Just because there were very few people who had the talent to get into his apartment didn''t mean that Necro would succumb to being sloppy and make his home easily accessible. The wards he cast were as strong as he could make them. It would be hard even for him to take down when he came home after the raid, this was on purpose. When he was done, Necrobump turned and walked to the elevator. He was wearing his full raiding gear. Custom tailored Saville Road Suit with the bonuses to intelligence, insight, and spell casting. In his left hand he held his staff aloft -- a synthetic 1000 carat diamond embedded in the head of the staff held more mana than any five wizards could pull and he could use the power in it to temporarily gift an entire lay line worth of power to anybody he chose. It was invaluable in combat, especially in null or low magic zones. It was also a bitch to refill C to get it maxed out took months, and if he ever used every drop of mana in the stone it would shatter C so he hoped, knowing fully well that this hope was futile, that they wouldn''t need to use it this raid. Strapped to his waist was the Glock 19 that his raiding group insisted he carry so that he wouldn''t waste his own mana. Shrike would sometimes take him shooting, and he faked being terrible with it to make her happy. "Ding" went the elevator and just as he was about to step onboard one of his neighbors stepped out into the Hall. "Alex! I was looking for you." "What can I do for you Ms. Bee?" Necro said, pretending to be excited. Ms. Bee was a civ C a civilian C basically she was a real digitalized person who for the most part hadnt bothered to level up. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. "Have you seen Mr. Sulla? He seems to have wandered off again." "Sorry, Ms. Bee. I haven''t seen your cat." "He is such a naughty boy. Always getting into trouble. Always running away. I seem to have that trouble in this building. The cat''s just get out and they don''t seem to come back." She said. "If you find Mr. Sulla I would be happy to reprogram him for you. Make him docile or at least have a healthy fear of the hallway." "No. No. Thank you for the offer, but cats need to explore and they need to be curious. And I like Mr. Sulla just he way he is. I just hope he comes back soon, Mr. Pyrrhus, Mr. Arminius, Madamn Livia and little Poppaea miss him." Then as if seeing Necro for the very first time, she looked him over, taking an especially long look at the staff he was holding in his hand and the hand gun at his side. "Alex, that is some pretty destructive weaponry. You know how I feel about guns. Certainly you don''t need all those death gear just to sell some real estate?" Ms. Bee thought he had a job selling real estate. It was one of his fake persona so that people wouldn''t get too suspicious and come and investigate his stuff. You really can''t be too paranoid. "Can''t help it Ma''am, I''m dealing with gamers and you know just how loathsome those people are." "Ooooohhhh. Don''t get me started." Ms. Bee said. "You know I was out last week buying food for my cats, and those dratted gamers hit me with a ball of fire. I respawned and woke up in my apartment, and I swear Mr. Sulla was eyeing me trying to decide if I would wake up of if he could start nibbling me for nourishment. Bad cat. So I go out again, figuring it was probably safe now, but at the grocery store there is destruction everywhere. It is raining fire, and people are shooting bullets, and the regular customers are either dead on the ground, or running for cover. Alex it was a war zone I tell you. They should ban gamers from this server. Serve them right. Dangerous hoodlums all of them. " "Ms. Bee. I just had a though. I think I remember someone mentioning during one of the condo meetings, that the cat in 302 was in heat. Do you think a healthy cat like Mr. Sulla might be out investigating and maybe stuck around looking for an opportunity to ahem get a bit of tail?" "That naughty cat. I betcha you''re right. You just wait there, Alex, and hold the elevator for me and I will get my cat carrier box." "I would love to Ms. Bee," said Necrobump, " but I''m already late. My clients are waiting." "Well then. You just watch out for those dreadful unreliable gamers. But I hope you sell them the apartment you''re showing them. I never really understood why you live in such a dreadful building as this one, you''re such a polite, successful, handsome boy. Did I mention I have a niece..." "I''ve gotta get going Ms. Bee. I am really late." And with that Necro released the elevator doors sighed a great sigh of relief as the elevator began to head down to the parking garage in the basement. Chapter 2 - Going to work The elevator opened into the dark parking garage beneath his building. Most civs didn''t drive, because most civs never bothered to level up, much past the point where they could hire an NPC or two to work a job and maybe gain a few skills for a hobby. Driving was a real luxury that was it was just too expensive and too dangerous to indulge in; besides there were faster, cheaper ways to travel. The garage was almost empty. The few cars there were parked here belonged to some of the NPC''s who lived in the building, the occasional low level player, and Necrobump''s custom motorcycle. Necro walked over to the custom matte black Ducati 1200. This was his ride. Wards and enchantments throbbed with embedded power. He placed his wizard staff into a specially designed holder that hugged the gas tank and engine where the fairing would normally be. He loved this bike. Necrobump loved to ride so much that hed been contemplating making the his motorcycle his Wizards familiar. Hed even been researching the appropriate spells. The thing that was stopping him was that he needed at least 45 skill points in spirit bonding to embed the proper spirit into the bike. Forty-five skill points was a shit ton of experience or over two years worth of just grinding at his level. Maybe if he pugged a lot more than normal? It was worth considering. He loved this damned bike. It was a sexy beast. Putting his leg over the seat and sitting down, he put a key into the ignition gave the Ducati a little choke and then turned it on. It purred. It simply purred like a 1200cc cat. Yes, my beauty, welcome your master, Necro thought. He fed her a twist of the throttle and felt it roar underneath him with excitement. Not a cat, a lion, a stylish matte black Italian lion. Shifting into first he pulled out of his parking space and into the garage. Necro, knew his limitations. He was a Wizard, hence he was squishy. But the thing about being a high-level player was that he had hit-points to burn. Thus by astounding feats of logic, Necro felt that he didn''t need to wear a helmet. The light outside was stunning. There was blue overhead, and green in the trees. Tiny digital AI NPC birds fluttered through the leaves and branches. Some algorithm had really programmed a spectacularly beautiful day. He would have to ask Choirboy which AI he should thank. It was days like this that made driving a thrill. Sunny with just a hint of a chill breeze coming in off of the Potomac. His apartment building was in Rockville and he needed to get downtown. Today a few of his friends from I Like Big Booty had a pre-raid meetup in McPherson Square. Since the fastest and safest route was to drive down highway 270 to highway 495 and from there to drive into downtown Washington DC, he decided not to go that way. It was a dreary utterly plain route anyway. Too much concrete, too many rich pricks flaunting their cars. Today was too stunningly sunny and beautiful to take the highway. The next fastest route was driving down the Rockville Pike. That would be fun, but since a big portion of it was designated PVP, that route would take him forever. Or more likely, since he spent some of his days off driving up and down the Pike looking for fights, his distinctive gear and cycle would make that route just as boring as if hed driven down the highway. Instead, he chose to head over to Connecticut Ave with its parks and residential neighborhoods. Only a small part of this route was PVP, over towards the Bethesda Naval Hospital. But since this route combined the best of both worlds, scenery and a chance at random unprovoked violence, that was the route he took. It was an incredible feeling driving 1200 cc''s of finely crafted Italian Engineering down the streets. Of course the Ducati he was driving wasn''t actually from Italy. Some engineer had probably scanned one in the flesh world at some point in time. After that generations of AI''s had undoubtedly compiled service manuals, photographs, computational insight into physics, digitalized player insight into aesthetics and come up with something that roughly equaled what everyone thought a Ducati should look and feel to drive. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. And if the digital end result was completely different from the actual experience of owing a super sport bike (no maintenance -- it actually respawned if you totaled it. Top speeds that would make a busa blush in shame, an incredible ability to hug a curve, anti-theft spells, and armored wards) then well... it was the romance of the machine rather than any need to be stuck in any purely physical or historical paradigm. Hed payed enough for the damn thing, that he got to say in however much of limited a manner, to "screw physics" and Necrobump liked it that way. Whipping around the curves in Rockville Park way too fast and pulling into the area near the Bethesda Naval Hospital, his digitalized senses picked up a faint sense of something that he instinctively knew meant he was entering a PVP zone. He slowed the bike down to an almost leisurely pace. Either making himself look like a magnificent moron or like the biggest fucking bad ass of them all -- depending mostly on how many points some random player had spent putting into intelligence. Within seconds someone took the bait. Without warning, the ambient music switched to battle music, and from a dark alley a fireball shot at him. Necro smiled. He didn''t even slow down, just took his hand off the clutch. Mentally he reached out and grabbed hold of the nearby lay line. Magic pulsed strong and steady filling him with an incredible amount of mana. Then Necro lobbed his own fireball back towards the alleyway. In theory driving through a PVP zone in any kind of vehicle was like this. Players were out to ambush drivers and steal their cars taking them for joy rides. You could gain experience and infamy this way, especially if you chose to do battle with the police NPCs who chased you to arrest you. This was one of the more dangerous parts of town, and Civs habitually avoided it. The player attacking from the safety of the alleyways fireball didnt even make it through the wards on his Ducati. The wards glowed glossy black against the matte black of the gas tank. Necro''s own fireball however, coasted gently into the alleyway and suddenly there was a swift breeze as oxygen got sucked like a vortex out of the area. And BOOM! Fire poured out from between the buildings. It exploded upwards and outwards, walls directing the flames like a furnace. There was a shock wave that threatened to knock over his bike, but the wards took care of that too. The glass on one of the buildings nearby however, imploded. A bakery Necro had never noticed before. Usually these places had PVP insurance or the construction respawned automatically. This one wasnt respawning. In Necro''s vision his player kill count went up by three. Not that it mattered, after a few years of playing the kill count number became a meaningless measurement anyway. The ambient music went back to what Necro normally had playing in the background. Necro was more concerned about the window. Some poor Civ had probably invested their savings to set up their dream bakery, hired an NPC baker to watch it, and here hed gone and knocked out all the windows. He grabbed a screenshot of the location, pulled up a query for their banking address, and forwarded them $100 "for the window." anonymously. Twice more as he wound his way through the city, he had to kill a couple wannabe gangstas. His kill count climbed up 7 more bodies. He never bothered to slow down, never bothered to pick up any drops. The rest of the journey into the city was disappointingly uneventful. It was almost a shame and he halfway wanted to go back and give the Rockville Pike a try. But up ahead he could see McPherson square and his raiding party was waiting for him. They had a schedule to keep, and though he was early he didn''t have time to go look for any noobs to toast. Chapter 3 - Introducing the Scooby gang Most of the downtown near the Whitehouse and Capital Buildings were part of a large continuous non-pvp zone that this server''s admin had set up to ensure the relatively safe functioning of their government. This zone stretched from Dupont Circle and the National Cathedral all the way over to Eastern Market and down to the Pentagon in Virginia. It was great for tourism too, since civs, players, NPCs and school children from thousands of other servers could visit and add money to the local economy in relative safety. As such, McPherson square was filled with tourists taking snap shots, wandering aimlessly and purposefully. Necro slowed down, opened his clutch, lowered his bike into first gear, and turned the throttle up until his engine RPMs made his engine roared throatily. Tourists looked over at him, and he could hear a couple, quite loudly over the roaring of the engine say, "What an asshole!" Necro smiled. Shrike looked up from where she was arguing with Dwight and waved. Dwight just looked angry. Over in the distance he saw Choirboy proselytizing to a small group of tourists, NPCs, and a scattering of the homeless who normally slept in the square during the evening. Lauren, Mike-Mike, and Bigger Mike were chatting over by the statue and ignored him. He did not see Jesus Wept, Savanah, and Black Dahlia, but assumed they were still enroute. Turning up 18th avenue, he drove to a parking garage he liked and got off his bike. Walking back down 18th street he bumped into Shrike and Dwight who were still arguing as they walked towards him. "...well I don''t like it," said Dwight. "Why can''t we just have a normal relationship. Do normal couple things." Dwight was their partys stealth specialist. While he carried a big gun, he specialized in staying in the shadows and stealthy kills. He was also a reasonably good sniper. "Are you saying that I''m not normal," Shrike said angrily. "I''m just saying that I resent never remembering what happens when I wake up dead and respawned in my bed every morning. Is it too much to ask that when I''m with you, that I actually be with you, and that I want to have memories of our time together?" Dwight said. "You really don''t," Necrobump said as he walked over to greet them. Shrike gave him a warm passionate kiss on the lips. She whispered "Necrobump" as he tried to suppress the shivers of Pavlovian terror which ran down his back. Dwight just nodded angrily. "That''s another thing. I know the two of you have a past, but when we are together I want to be exclusive." The thing about Shrike was that she was beautiful. Not beautiful in the purely digital, I can modify my body to be perfect in every conceivable way, variety. But beyond her looks she carried with her a cold, malevolence that was an immediate turn on to every man who had a thing for strong, direct, even bitchy women. She was a DPS specialist, shed picked up just enough of a variety of elemental spells that she could make things go boom in ice, fire, wind, and rain. She also carried an assault rifle that she was deadly with, for all those low mana zones when Necro wasnt around. Necro and Shrike had been a thing. He could remember a distant past when he''d been in exactly the same position as poor unsuspecting Dwight. After they''d broken up, it had taken him years to overcome his terror. Years to stop waking up in shivers of repressed memories. Hed even hired a therapist NPC. There were things Dwight definitely did not want to know about what was going on, but like all of Shrike''s relationships, he was bound to find out one day. "First of all," Shrike said, "I am neither with you or not with you. We just hook up from time to time. You don''t own me and I certainly don''t own you. Some people would be happy to be in such a fun relationship that there were no memories of their time together. Some people might say that not remembering anything was a pretty good indication that you had an incredibly good time. I know I did." "I want exclusivity." Dwight insisted. "And once again. I''m telling you that we aren''t together. We just had a couple of evenings together..." "After which I woke up dead in bed without any memories. You keep insisting we had a good time." "I had a good time." Shrike said... By this point in the argument they had walked the distance back to McPherson square. The park was one of the prettier spaces in the Downtown District of Columbia. There were trees, a big bronze statue, grassy lawns to walk on, park benches for the homeless to sleep on. Traditionally this was one of the places people who wanted to protest against the government, pull out their placards and march singing anti-establishment songs. President Humongous Tentacles administration up until now hadn''t been a bad one to date, and there were no protesters here at the moment. Frankly the general consensus seemed to be that President Humongous Testicles had really lived up to his campaign slogan "Yes that is my real name, and be honest, I dare you to name another quality you really want in a President." Saying goodbye to Shrike and Dwight and walked over to Choirboy who was now yelling to the crowd. "We are the doomed!" he yelled. Choirboy looked like your typical old testament prophet. He wore flowing and frayed robes held together with a rope belt that kept everything loose. The robe was baggy and badly put together and it did not help anything that Choirboy hadnt run a washing algorithm or prayed to an AI of cleanliness in years. There were twigs and moths living in his knotty grey beard. He smelt really bad. At least he was dressed this time. There were some days he spoke to the masses in nothing but a ratty loincloth that did nothing about hiding his junk from the crowd. His balls dangled like shriveled hairy prunes and they shook when he talked. Choirboy was a well-known fixture in this park. This was where he lived and this was where he preached his ministry. The tourists came from servers incredibly far away to listen to him. He had a kind of authenticity to him that people who were into that kind of thing were into. "We are the doomed!" Choirboy yelled again. "We have given up hope of salvation for a lie of immorality." A tourist snapped a screenshot of himself standing next to Choirboy, which was probably immediately posted to their social media network. "Many of us were once the living. We were once breathing, human, beings. We grew, we loved, we died. Once we were a part of God''s divine plan. The true God''s plan. Not the Christian God who purportedly created the universe along with the Heavens from which he cast Lucifer into Hell. Not the Muslim god who spoke through the Arch-Angel Gabriel through his prophet Mohamed. Not the Jewish God who gave Moses humanity''s first 10 lines of computer code. These Gods were every bit as open sourced as the AI gods we pray too now. Only the degree of humanity''s ability to write out the algorithms of gospel, interpretation, and prayer have changed. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. So what if we can directly interface with our gods, and so what if every once in a while, if you beseech them strongly enough, they will talk back. Just like the Gods that predate the virtual world, these too are creations of the human mind. And like the Gods of old, we should respect them, but also wonder if there is a higher power." "Is there a truer, more fundamental, Divinity of life and living. If there is, and I do say if my flock, I suspect that its primary attribute would be its resistance to our appropriations and human made attempts at definition." Another group of tourists, took screenshots of themselves standing in front of Choirboy. Then they sent him some credits and left the park. "Were we a part of God''s plan then? And are we now? What are we now? We have transformed ourselves, our culture, our civilization from nucleic acids strings of twisted ACGT to stringed helixes of 0''s and 1''. A digital matrix of our fight and flight impulses. Our very psyche and psychology rendered unto servers as great as Babylon, and just as ready like that tower to fall. And I am here to tell you that artificial Intelligence do not a consciousness truly make. We, my friends, truly are the Doomed!" Choirboy was the groups Deus Ex Machina. He could talk directly to the core Artificial Intelligences which had been used to build this server. When all else failed, it was amazing what a direct appeal to the AI of the worlds physics engine, or a prayer to the AI that controlled Player Character combat rules could accomplish. Necrobump drifted away from Choirboy''s sermon, and stumbled over to where Lauren, Mike-Mike, and Bigger Mike were standing. All three of them were holding hands in a loose circle. "When do you think everyone will get here. I saw Dwight, Choirboy, and Shrike." Necro said. "Soon." Said Lauren. "Soon." Said Mike-Mike. "Soon." Said Bigger Mike. "What''s with the echo?" Said Necrobump. "It is this new" Mike-Mike said. "custom gender" Lauren said. "we are trying" Big Mike said. "out." Mike-Mike said. "Oh." said Necro. "It is from" said Big Mike. "the Aephium Server." said Mike-Mike. "All the Sexes have their" said Lauren. "genitalia in their" said Mike-Mike. "hands, and grouped mates" said Lauren. "share a kind of " said Big Mike. "telepathy." All three looked a bit miffed for a bit. "the sex is " Mike-Mike said. "mind-blowing" said Lauren. "but conversations" said Mike-Mike. "can be a drag." Said Lauren. Necro shook his head. He could never really get into the whole designer sex and gender scene. Society was dictated by the elegance of simple object oriented methods; and gender C even custom made genders C defined by the change in just a handful of variables. Out here, there were worlds that ran the gamut from libertarian free-for-all to a totalitarian authoritarianism and everything in between. There were some parts of society that had become strangely open into doing just about well everything. Given the immortality that most of them enjoyed, kinks had developed. Wait, Necro said, are you guys having sex? Like right this very moment. yes. Said Lauren yes. Said Big Mike yes. Said Mike-Mike. Necro supposed that he was boring living in his tiny little apartment with pretty much the same body he''d had when he was alive. In a way, he found comfort in habit and repetition, and though he didn''t begrudge Big Mike, Lauren, and Mike-Mike their fun and frequent orgies, Necro also knew that that scene wasn''t really for him. Maybe that made him a prude, but he didnt care. They were the groups hackers. Mike-Mike specialized in hacking NPCs. Lauren specialized in hacking into internal control systems, and Big Mike specialized in hacking external control systems. Jesus Wept, walked up beside Necro and said "Yo! You pervs ready?" to Lauren, Mike-Mike, and Big-Mike. "Still waiting on Savanah and Black Dahlia," Necro said. "Fuckin-A" Jesus Wept said and pulled out his mini-gun from his inventory. "Today''s gonna be a party, like we ain''t had in a fuckin while." Jesus Wept had two heads. One normal sized and one about a fifth of the real size. Gossip had it that Jesus Wept, had been a PUG on a raid a decade or so back when the group had stumbled across a valuable and mysterious lantern. Without thinking Jesus Wept had ninja looted the obviously magical piece. When he got back to his apartment and rubbed the lamp, according to gossip, a beautiful incredibly sexy nearly naked Genie appeared offering Jesus Wept one wish. Jesus had apparently said How bout a little head. And had been stuck ever since with a second smaller head which no matter how much hed edited his body, somehow always reappeared sooner or later. At times the head spoke, mostly to agree with Jesus or argue with him Big and kind of a meat-head, he was the partys tank and damage dealer. "Jesus Christ, Jesus Wept. We are trying to be subtle here." Choirboy said as he walked over to their little group. "All I know," said Jesus Wept, "is that when Jesus saw the breadth of his domain, Jesus Wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. Well I say today we got one more tiny world and me and my little friend." Jesus patted his mini Gun, "gonna start fucking conquering." "Jesus Wept, it is Alexander." Necro said. "Alexander wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. It is from an old movie. I can''t remember which one. Casablanca I think." "Who cares." Jesus Wept said. "Are we going to Kick ass or what?" "Just as soon as Savanah and Black Dahlia get here. Where the hell are they?" said Necro. Chapter 4 - In which Dahlia and Savanah choose the getaway vehicles. Black Dahlia pulled up in a plain white virtual Ford Econoline van. It was the kind of van that you saw everywhere. You would see them out making deliveries, driving repair AI around town, and picking up stuff. The Ford Econoline series had been used for centuries online and in the flesh realm, prized for its rugged anonymity. It was the perfect vehicle for a quick quiet raid and more importantly a quick quiet getaway. When she got close enough Dahlia beeped her horn. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! When she had everyone in the park''s attention, she rolled down the window and yelled out "Time''s a wasting bitches. The loot ain''t gonna wait all day to be looted." "Where''s Savanah at?" Shouted Jesus Wept. "She''s bringing up the rear, I think. She called a couple of minutes ago and said she''d run into some trouble and she might be a bit late, but that there were no worries because she''d found a sub, whatever the hell that means." Yelled Dahlia. "You fucks gonna get in or what?" Both Dwight and Shrike walked up to where Necro was standing with Mike-Mike, Lauren, Big Mike and Choirboy. "Savanah''s running late" Necrobump said. "Sometimes I think that this isn''t the best way to do things. Organizing in one of the most well visited parks in DC for a raid on a research area." Dwight said to Necro. "We''re getting paid to make a splashy entrance, so we make a splashy entrance. It isn''t like anybody is getting seriously hurt in this. Just a couple security guards dead and off to respawn. The contract says we try to look as much like regular gamers as possible." Necro said. "Well I think its a stupid contract." said Shrike, "but money''s money. The more we get the better a custom server we can set up for the guild." Who gives a fuck, all I want to do is fuck some people up. Said Jesus Wept who still hadnt put away his minigun. It was at that moment that Savanah chose to pull up to the McPherson Square. Despite the fact that Savanah''s van was an all-white classic Ford Econoline too, there was however one great big glaring difference between the getaway vehicle that Savanah had chosen and the one being driven by Black Dahlia. Painted on both sides in massive lettering were the words "FREE CANDY." Savanah poked her head out the window, without first beeping her horn. "What the Fuck Savanah, what''s with the creeper van?" yelled Necrobump "You try to steal a pristine white van in the middle of the day when the one you''ve been scoping out for the past couple days is gone. This was all I could find in a hurry. Some guy had it parked in his garage over in Adams Morgan." said Savanah. "We are trying not be seen " said Necro. "Actually..." said Dwight. "How can we sneak up on a highly secure research building if we look like we are pedophiles trolling for kiddies?" Necro said. By this time Shrike and Jesus Wept were howling with laugher. Choirboy looked halfway between bemusement and concern. "Maybe we should keep this van. Maybe we should use it as the most bestous distraction in the whole wide world. If we want to go someplace and not be notice, we simply park it near a nearby school, wait for the neighborhood parents to come at it with pitchforks and burning torches, and then we strike!" yelled Shrike. She walked around to the back "Even the back windows are darkened so nobody can see in and nobody can see out." Savanah sighed. "If you''re going to make fun, you might as well know everything." Savanah turned and looked back into the van, pressed a button on the Dashboard and suddenly from hidden loudspeakers the joyful digital sounds of the Iced Cream Truck Song began to play loudly. Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. It was just too much. Jesus Wept started howling with laughter, and even his second small head was laughing now. Shrike had tears running down the side of her face. Choirboy, Mike-Mike, Big Mike and Lauren were trying way to hard to keep a straight face. But Dahlia got them all back on track really quickly. ''Come on guys we have a deadline to make." And so the raid group opened the back doors of both Vans and spit up, finding places to sit. Dimly Necro heard Shrike yell out from inside the other van "Please don''t touch me there Mister," followed by more gales of laughter. They made good time driving through Washington DC. Both Dahlia and Savanah were great drivers, two of the best in the entire I Like Big Booty guild. Their skills would be well needed if their team was going to get out this raid with the loot, the mission accomplished, without respawning. The target Research Institution was located just off Military Road in Chevy Chase. And the both vans were parked just a block away on a nicely deserted friendly residential neighborhood. Along the drive, Necro had been sending e-instructions, packets of encrypted coding and when the Dahlia had parked the van, he opened the back door and got out. Overhead the cherry blossoms were in bloom. DC was beautiful in the spring, and despite the fact that most tourists went down to see the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin, Northern DC and Maryland around Chevy Chase often had streets lined with flowering trees. Bursts of pink and white lined avenues. Pink and white petals fluttering in the breeze. A couple seconds later, and inquisitive "Meow" drew Necro''s attention. Necrobump waked over to Mr. Sulla picked him up by his belly saying "whos a good kitty. Mr. Sulla''s a good Kitty that''s who." and walked back to the Van. Mike-Mike, Big Mike and Lauren had pulled computer gear and power supplies out of their inventories and were busy setting up a mobile computing workstation. Dahlia had set up a video link to the other van, and Necro watched as Jesus Wept, Dwight, and Shrike put on layers and layers of Kevlar and weaponry. Jesus was still carrying his minigun. He also had a claymore strapped across his back, and a set of knives at his waist. Dwight had a M-16, a katana, and two long daggers. And Shrike was packing a Kalashnikov in one hand, and had several dozen knives strapped to various parts of her body, her other arm glowed dimly with mana and ice was forming in her hand. "Hold it, Shrike." Necro said. "This is a low mana zone, and I''m pretty sure the research building is in an artificial no mana area." "That''s why we''ve got you oh great combat battery Necro poop. Hey? Is that a Cat you''re holding or do you just want some pussy?" Said Shrike. "It''s my neighbor''s cat. I overrode its AI and since Mike-Mike was busy, I reprogram it for recon duties. It has been tomcatting around all week scoping out any defenses we might have missed." Necro handed the Cat to Mike-Mike. The cat Meowed piteously as a wire interfaced was placed in the cats anus so that Mike-Mike could download its data to their computers. "This should only take a minute or two." said Mike-Mike. Chapter 5 - Plans It took Mike-Mike only a few seconds to create the data interface with the cat. The data wire ran which from Mr. Sulla butt into the Mike-Mike''s laptop irritated the fuzzy-wuzzy little beast. Mr. Sulla alternated between batting at it with his paws and hissing at it. The cat''s actions must have distracted Mike-Mike, because he absentmindedly reached out to pet Mr. Sulla. Either that or he was secretly a cat lover. Mr. Sulla began to purr contentedly, ignoring the data uplink. This went on for a little while until, Mr. Sulla rolled over onto his back. For a while even that went well. Then without any provocation, Mr. Sulla began to bite and scratch at Mike-Mikes hand. Nursing his torn up arm Mike-Mike stopped petting the cat, and Mr. Sulla went back to hissing at the interface wire running out of his ass. It took a little while, but eventually all of the algorithms Mike-Mike was running coalesced into a three dimensional map of the local area. Dangerous areas were marked in red, good areas were marked in green, and everything else was marked in grey. Excitedly looking at the map, Necrobump said "Fuck yeah, this is exactly what we need. What''s that green spot right there." Obediently the computer zoomed in on the green area of the cat''s map. Suddenly the perspective of the computer screen changed into a video recording. But the perspective was all wrong. "It feels like were only half a foot off the ground." Necro said. "Cat height" said Mike-Mike "Argh. Well did Mr. Sulla record anything useful at least." Necro said. The camera moved around a bit. Various views from the prowling cat-beast rendered into a virtual 3 dimensional topography. Admittedly a virtual 3 dimensional topography, they all now knew had been taken and measured by a cat walking only half a foot off the ground. "Focus on that dark green spot. The cat''s spottened something interesting there." Turning the angle slightly until the scene became exceptionally green and then turning to the point of most greenness stood a bird feeder. "Fuck" Necro yelled. "How exactly did you program this cat?" Mike-Mike asked, you should''ve had me do it like normal. "You were busy, and I figured, how hard can reprogramming my neighbors beast really be. I took in the latitude and longitude of the research facility. Then I told it that this crazy feline to wander around mapping everything it saw. Added a GPS and mapping script I found on some website. The cat was supposed to look for things that were good; and I specially highlighted doors and entrances as being really good. If possible Mr. Sulla was to get in those doors, and try to get as close to the central latitudinal and longitudinal point. It was to mark things as red, things that were dangerous, and I fed it a database of guns, and added another script I found online that was supposed to give it the ability to see mana." Necro said. Mike-Mike thought about it for a few seconds. "I''m pretty sure you forgot to take out the ordinary cat reflexes, and you definitely didnt limit the area around the research facility enough. Plus some of those script kiddie programs interfere with one another. Total amateur hour. You really should have had me do this." "Like I said," Necro said, "You were busy. Ms. Bee was bound to start asking questions. Plus I wanted it to still act like a cat in case someone, besides yourself, got suspicious and performed the cat version of an anal probe." The scripts that controlled the cat NPC must have been flowing through Mike-Mike''s enhanced core processing and calculating feeds. Necro could see him thinking. A vexed look on his face as he sorted through encapsulated objects and polymorphic methods while simultaneously routing trough reams and reams of pictures of birds, kibble, and kitty litter. "This doesn''t have to be an entirely wasted experience." Mike-Mike said. "Give me a second, and let me cross reference the data with city map and let''s see what we''ve got." While they waited, Necro scrolled around the data the cat had gathered. The biggest green spots were the bird feeder, the dumpster behind a sea food restaurant, and some French doors that looked into a house with another cat. The biggest red spot was a back yard with a German Shepherd and an alley with a bigger cat. "I think I got it," Mike-Mike said. The data changed. Street names and addresses were added, icons indicating power lines, sewer lines, and traffic flow were added. Demographic information, census data, property taxes, and estimated real estate values appeared next to all the local buildings. "If we just filter out everything around the research center." About 90% of the map disappeared except a much smaller 750 x 600 lot. A row of hedges obfuscating the grounds, the cat however, had found plenty of ways through the hedge and marked each of these egress points in a vibrant green. The security guard, a high level NPC, at the front gate was marked in both green and red, green because there was footage of him feeding Mr. Sulla. Red because of the small side arm at his waist. "Hmm... the whole place is non-pvp, but check out that gun. They are prepared for a sudden zone change. Pretty decent security. Nothing we didn''t expect or already scope out though." "Did the cat get inside the perimeter? I see color on the inside." "Yup, Mr. Sulla walked across the most of the lawn. Look here. The cat actually managed to get in the front door." On the map the front doors, the loading dock, were all marked marked in green. "This might be very useful data. Big Mike, you mentioned that you got hacked a copy of the blueprints from city hall?" Big-Mike spoke up. "Give me a second... I just sent them to you." Mike-Mike reached out and grabbed his hand. "Thank-" Mike-Mike said. "you!" Big Mike said, his face flush with pleasure. "Quit it you two. No sex on the job." Necro said firmly. "I''m totally watching you three, no holding hands and screwing until we finish the job. Keep it professional. You can canoodle on your own time, right now we''re on the clock." "Sorry." Mike-Mike said. "Sorry." Big Mike said, letting Mike-Mikes hand go. "Give me a couple of seconds, to combine the data" Mike-Mike said. A few moments later the interior of the building was rendered overtop of the data Mr. Sulla had compiled. Areas that had been changed -- renovations, interior design, etc... -- in the time since the blue print had been submitted to the city of Chevy Chase government, were marked in blue, and areas the cat hadn''t gotten into were in grey." "My turn," Lauren said, "I am patching in as much as I''ve hacked in of the building''s video feed. It isn''t much. They have some pretty secure firewalls on this place. But it''s better to patch what we''ve got into the map now, and I will update it once I''m actually into the building." Mike-Mike pulled pulled up his map. "Okay folks, Necro, Shrike, Dwight, Jesus Wept, Lauren, Big Mike, Savanah, and of course you Black Dahlia, I am sending the data that we''ve compiled so far to all of you." Mike-Mike send out a package to everyone. Moments later they all had an interactive map of the building. Necrobump examined the data that had been sent. Lets all have a group meeting in the Pedovan. Big Mike and Dahlia, you might as well stay here and watch through the view screen. This van is your base of operation, and our backup getaway vehicle. Get used to being in it. Necro opened up the map and it filled a portion of his vision as he walked to the other van. If he concentrated in a certain way, he could send it up to the left hand corner, as a mini map. Because Mr. Sulla was a thinking breathing digital NPC, some of the cats consciousness matrix transferred over with the map. Parts of the building and area around the building, now had a kind of familiarity. A little something that Mike-Mike had distilled and included in the package he''d uploaded to everyone. It was as if certain areas nearby were places theyd all walked through dozens of times. More like a house that had been lived in for a couple days, than the purely representational nature of even the best maps. As an added bonus if any of them focused on certain areas, they were presented with exceptionally clear images of the undersides of chairs, the space behind couches and part of halls, best windows to watch birds, plants to urinate into, and the occasional employee lap to cuddle on. Most of which was from the perspective about half a foot off the ground that had been taken directly out of Mr. Sulla''s CMS (central memory storage). Once everyone had grouped up in Savanahs vehicle. Necro said, "according to the person who gave us this job. We are to go into the main research room, marked here." Everyone''s map the primary target was marked in purple. We are supposed to go in here and torch the place. I don''t know what kind of research they are doing here. Big-Mike?" "I wish I knew," Big Mike said. "It''s incredibly secret. I did a global search on about four hundred internal world servers looking for even a hint of information about this place and nothing. Some sort of dark company. Black ops computing or some sort of completely hush-hush corporate research. I can''t even tell if it is government or corporate, guild or clan or even secret society based. Usually I can find a little something about a target. With this place, Nada. Just a street address and a name 1523721924 Holdings Ltd." Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. That was odd, Big Mike was one of the best general purpose server level hackers in the game. Together with Mike-Mike and Lauren they could pretty much ferret out anything. That they had found nothing was made Necrobump much more paranoid than he usually was and since usually Necro was very paranoid, his current state was unsettling. Necro cleared his throat. Ahem Yes, oh great and benevolent fearless leader, Necro-poop. Shrike said. We await, your most tedious wisdom. Ignoring Shrikes sarcasm, Necro said. After we hit the primary target, we need to cautiously approach the secondary target. Keep in mind that the primary target is marked as shock and awe. We go in hard and fast and visible, and we make a hell of a lot of noise doing it. The secondary target which Ive now marked in orange, we do quiet. We try to clear everyone out of the building, and then go into this room, then Lauren transfers data into a very specific computer that Ive marked on your map. Choirboy spoke up for the first time. The benevolence of this mission raises concerns. What in all the realms of Gods and AI is the reason for the drama and silence surrounding this purging. Thats been bugging me too. Necro said. My bet is that the secondary target is the real target, and the shock and awe part is just the cover. But there is something about this whole job that is making me suspicious. Have we ever gone into a place with this little data?" I must concur. I feel the same way. Choir boy said. Yup, sounds like a fucking set up. said Jesus Wept. What he said, said Jesus Wepts smaller head. Everyone ignored both of Jesus Wepts heads though, and Necro spoke again, Mike-Mike and Lauren, suit up. Mike-Mike is the main guard a PC or an NPC? The difference between a PC and an NPC was crucial. High level NPCs cost a fraction of what PCs did, they cost nothing to train and a facility could pick any skills they wanted, depending on how much money they wanted to spend. The drawback to hiring an NPC was that a skilled hacker like Mike-Mike who specialized in overriding NPC AI data cores could hack into them. The amount of security around the NPC AIs thought process being the only thing keeping people like Mike-Mike out. A PC on the other hand could not be hacked, well there were domination, beguilement, and charm spells that could influence a PCs action but in a null magic zone these would not be as effective. Furthermore high level PCs often had skills which prevented domination from working. The downside of hiring high level player characters was that frequently the urge to go out adventuring and gaming to raise their level beyond the plebian Civ masses. Theyd grow bored of sitting working as a security guard for long periods of time. As a result, hiring a player character cost a lot of money, turnover was high, and hiring random PCs to fill a post sometimes meant your employees might be security risks. NPCs also weren''t the most original thinker. A player character could spend as much money as they wanted on processing power. NPC''s were limited by the structure of the server, and the power of the Global AI in charge of NPC interaction. Player characters had actual experiences and memories which informed their decisions. NPC''s were just generic intelligences pulled out of the either. Oh, it was possible to graft the conceptual and though matrix of a Player''s experiences onto an NPC. There were binary chains of fight-flight responses that Players and Civs developed while growing up, but most servers had laws and some severe restrictions against doing that. Which, of course, didn''t mean people didn''t do it anyway. The guard at the gate is an NPC. High level one too. Damned good cyber security on the AI, but I spent all morning getting past his defenses, and he is under my control. Ive just included his feed into the main map. And sure enough, the green red space on the map representing the front security guard, now included an expandable window which represented what he was looking at. Good, Good. Necro said. So heres the plan. Tell us oh wise and gracious leader. Shrike said. Shut it Shrike. This is serious. I am being serious, oh font of wisdom and benevolence. Shrike replied. Sighing, Necrobump spoke again. Mike-Mike, as we drive to the gate can you have the guard, Id dont know, tie his shoelaces or something. NPCs dont have shoelaces, but if you let Mr. Sulla out again, I can have the guard occupied petting your neighbors cat, said Mike-Mike as he unplugged the cord from the cats ass and handed Mr. Sulla back to Necro. Necro opened the back of the van and let the cat out. "Necro-poop, as soon as you get your hands on some pussy, you let it escape you. That''s not how you do it. Though I do like the whole catch and release thing. But you should let me take you home and show you how its done." said Shrike while Dwight glared at her and muttered about the other men in her life. Mike-Mike ignored them. Give it a couple minutes, Ive set him to go straight to the security guard who Ive just programmed to be mysteriously wondering where the nice kitty has been for the last couple of days. Okay. Big-Mike you stay out here with Black Dahlia in this van. The rest of us will get into the Pedovan. Once we get past the security guard everyone, remember shock and awe. We hit them hard, we hit them fast. According to the blueprints there is a central atrium here where theyve built a Intra Server Gate. In crises most of the NPCs will flee towards that gate. So let them get away. Only shoot them if you really have to. An Intra Server Gate (ISG) was a gateway that lead off the server and into the great hallway. It would have made this whole escape easy if they had some way to know where the gate came out, and if most gates didnt keep logs of the users who used them. The hallway was its own server. In some respects it was the original server that had been programmed. Owned by nobody, every world server had at least one access point to it, and many of the most populous and liberal servers had thousands of access points. Some of the bigger corporations that did business with hundreds of worlds had their headquarters here. Many guilds, gaming or otherwise, that had players spread out over multiple worlds did too. I Like Big Booty had its headquarters in the Hallway. There were players and NPCS lived their whole lives in the hallway never even entering a world, though the costs of living in the hallway were astronomical compared to any living on a virtual world. Why not, they''ll just respawn again at home in bed in bed in a couple of hours, said shrike. Why not give them a paid day off, while we work. Just do it Shrike. That goes for you too Jesus Wept. I know you both like the mayhem, but there will probably be plenty of security coming at us, so only kill the NPCs and civs if you absolutely have to. Concentrate on the guards. Spoilsport, muttered Shrike. Fuckin-A, said Jesus Wept''s smaller head. We take our time heading to target one. Conserve mana, Ive only got so much and we need it all for this raid. Bullets only. And remember, my effective PVP generated buff zone only has a radius of 25 feet, so unless the security is wearing PVP gear, combat is only affective at a short range. Once we get to the main target, we gasoline up the place, and then Shrike uses elemental fire to first of all torch the place, and then secondly put the fire out. We dont want it to spread to the entire building. Just this room. Why the hell not. Fires an awesome distraction. People and NPCs dont think straight when they are on fire. Jesus Wept said and his second head nodded and Shrike looked like she agreed too. Remember. We need to infect the secondary computer. It needs to be available for whomever the real target it once the whole place is up and running again. So we burn down the primary target, but we cant have the building on fire for the secondary target. So Shrike, once the room is cleansed, Ill probably have enough mana left over for you to put the room out. Necro reached into his inventory and handed Dwight, Shrike, Lauren and Choirboy a mana gem. It was enough for a single small spell. Use these sparingly, theyre a bitch to make. Lastly, we leave the pedovan in idle at the back door. Savanah youre with us. Dahlia, you stay out here. Once the mission is over we head towards the pedovan, but if we cant get to it, we head out the front gate, Dahlia youre our back up, so be ready. We will probably be coming out of there hot and fast. Chapter 6 - Into the warehouse The whole area around the research building was designated as non-pvp. It was also an artificial non-mana zone. It was likely that whomever had designed the security for this building had spent a rather hefty amount of money to prevent raid groups from getting easy access. Controlling mana and PVP zones didnt come cheap. Necro should know since these were his areas of specialty. He knew how much he would charge, and he also knew that he hadnt done the work. To completely ward off an area as big as this research building and its surrounding lawn would take a phenomenal amount of skills or mucho dinero. Idly he wondered if it had been two practitioners or just one. He could count the number of mana control specialists who could have done this job on one hand. Limiting the nature of the PVP zone was a much more common skill, so as many a couple of hundred, maybe more, people on this server could have done that job. But in his heart of hearts Necro knew it was probably that corporate jackass tool LeeroyJenkins5563. LeeroyJenkins5563 was a neckbeard tightass who lived up in Boston and taught Mana Control and PVP Control Theory at this server''s version of Harvard University. Since there were over 1 Billion people and NPCs living on The Free North America Server, a job at Harvard was still about as prestigious as it had been back in the old days. And LeroyJenkins5563 used that prestige to do consulting work on the side strengthening corporate and guild defense systems up and down the east coast. The rational side of Necrobump''s irrational thought process knew that he disliked Leeroy simply because of the fact that the two of them were engaged in a quiet kind of mutual cold war of skills on each other. Every once in a while Leeroy would come up with a clever new way to make something just a little bit more secure. A smart way to make it just a little harder to use Mana in a zone. Something to make it just a little harder to change a zone from non-PVP to PVP. That would force Necro to spend a couple of weeks trying to figure out ways to break or overpower that wanker LeeroyJenkins5563''s changes. Techniques he would then share freely on Mana control and PVP hacking forums just to piss Jenkins off. Every once in a while Necro would come up with ways to limit Jenkins access to areas Necro wanted to protect, these Necro would keep secret until that bastard Jenkins would figure out how to circumvent Necros own protections and then he would publish a paper sharing how to do it with the whole academic community. It was infuriating. And the only thing that made it palatable was that hed once gone to a seminar LeeroyFuckingJenkins5563 was holding and learned that Necros feelings of hatred and disgust at Jenkins was reciprocated towards him. Jenkins had literally been foaming at the mouth as he described the destructive work of some unknown, nameless, magician in thwarting proper law enforcement. It had been fun to watch little drops of spittle fly from Jenkins as he said those words. Literally Foaming. Necro smiled at the memory. "This has got to be Jenkins work. Fuck, I hate that guy." Necro muttered to himself. He was looking over the runes around the property that the cat had discovered which reinforced, amplified, and made permanent the mana and combat boundaries. After that Necrod made a point of becoming friends with Leeroy. Necrod had walked up to him at a conferences about a dozen years back and bought him a coffee. Leeroy had assumed that Necrobump was only a moderately powerful fire mage and an exceptionally bad necromancer who, like millions of poser wannabes read Mana Manipulation journals as a hobby. This was a belief Necrobump had gone to great lengths keep around his nemesis. After that, whenever they met, be it at a conference, a symposium, or meeting, Necro had made it his duty to buy Leeroy a meal, ask his advice, share a multitude relatively clueless and oblivious insights into the field. There had been plenty of evenings shared with Leeroy over shots of single malt scotch lamenting the perverse uses of the noble arts of mana manipulation where Necro and Leeroy had cursed the nameless name of that mysterious criminal magician and wished infinite bad luck upon him. It was fun, and LeeroyButtwadJenkins5563 was as clueless and oblivious as Necrod always assumed him to be. Not that it mattered. LeeroyJenkins5563 could kiss whoevers ass he wanted to. It wasnt as if some ivory tower dweeb who couldnt even be bothered to come up with an original alias could beat Necrobump. Reviewing the scope of the defenses through the Mr. Sulla the cat''s memory, Necro realized it had to be. LeeroyJenkins5563s work didn''t come cheap, and begrudgingly Necro admitted to himself the guy did a good job. Like hed thought when hed originally surveyed the place. If it hadnt been Jenkins, he could have just overpowered and destroyed the whole set up. He could still do that, but doing that would alert Jenkins that it was Necro himself whod been here. Going in using stored mana like a Battery C the traditional name of users of his skill and their tools was called being a Battery C could be done by anyone. Necro made good money selling gems on the Darknet which anybody use could store mana in just such a circumstance. Storing mana allowed healers to cast healing spells even in null magic zones. In fact this was the primary occupation that people who studied Mana Manipulation did. They made fortunes setting up the runes on non-magic servers in hospitals so that special spell casting doctors could stabilize patients with magic before more traditional technological surgery. They set up illusionist friendly zones so that graphic designers and movie makers could avail themselves of the special effects only magic could create. It took a lot of experience, research, knowledge, and grinding to make Mana Manipulation useful. Most wannabes and posers picked up a few skill levels. Enough to store a bit of mana a couple extra Thaums in low mana zones. A little something-something to empower a spell or two with a bit more oomph. It was just so much more fun and immediate to throw fireballs, summon demons, divine data, heal wounds, raise the undead, grow plants, create illusions, design interiors, create enchantments, write wards or runes or whatever. There were thousands of different branches of magic to follow. Some, like his own branch, were quite rare. Others, the more useful ones or flashy ones, were a dime a dozen. Magic had come, already programmed into the servers, part of the core programming of the AIs which built these worlds. Inseparable, and there to fill the gaps that technology could not quite fill. Savanah started up the van everyone grabbed a hold of something so they wouldnt crash into one another. Necro formed a party. Inviting everyone, and quickly, one by one, the health and mana scores of the group, as well as a tiny icon indicating their status, and debuffs appeared in his sightline. Then he drew on some of his preciously stored mana and buffed himself. An aura of PVP formed around him and surrounded him out to 25. Lastly he opened up his mana storage to the spell casters in the guild. He could have limited access, but Necro chose not to. There were times that the team had to act independently of the order he tried to impose upon them. They were professional enough not to abuse that freedom. The other people in the van were checking their guns, ammo, grenades and quick cast spells were ready. They double checked that their knives and swords could be accessed quickly. That bullet proof vests and flak jackets were on tightly. Once they were past the security guard NPC who was sitting at the front entrance petting Mr. Sulla the Cat oblivious the world around him, including the fact that the barrier in front of the gate was raised, Savannah flipped on the iced cream truck music. Guns ready, team ready for action, they blazed into the back loading dock to the tune of Pop Goes the Weasel on a van with the words Free Candy written on the sides. The first out the door and into the loading dock was Jesus Wept. Jesus wasted no time. Without waiting, Jesus shot some poor NPC standing out by the dumpster having a cigarette. The next out was Shrike who secured the other side of the van and loading dock. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Lauren yelled. Get me past that door so I can uplink. Dwight ran up to the back door, ignoring the rolling style steel garage door for the normal steel door beside it. He checked, it was locked. Its locked. He yelled. Necrobump stepped out of the back of the van. Jesus grab the guy you shot. See if he has a pass or some kind of key. Hurry we dont have all day. Shrike had started putting explosives from her inventory around the rolling steel garage door. Good idea, Necrobump told her. But wait on Jesus Wept first. If we can find a key leave the explosives there, but add a remote detonator. We might need a quick way to get out. Jesus Wept ran up with a little card that hed found hanging around the NPCs neck. He waved it in front of the magnetic reader next to the door and click, it unlocked. Then Jesus Wept pulled out a flash bang grenade. Dwight said On three as he grabbed the door knob. One Two Three and he pulled the door open. Jesus Wept tossed the flash bang into the hallway beyond the door, and Dwight quickly closed the entrance backup. BOOM! The flash bang sound was muffled by the steel entrance way. Jesus Wept swept the card again, and Dwight pulled the door open, more this time. The hallway was filled with smoke. Jesus Wept swept his minigun across the hallway, aiming low, just in case people had fallen or taken shelter from the grenade. There were cries of pain and screams of anger from the warehouse part of the complex. Jesus Wept continued to shoot. His minigun ran out of ammo, and so he stepped aside to reload from his inventory. Everybody in the partys kill count rose by 3. And each person got a very tiny amount of experience points. Shrike stepped into the warehouse. Her Kalashnikov ready if there was anybody left standing. The smoke had cleared and the bodies of three NPCs lay on the ground. Jesus Wept followed her, and Dwight was the third person in. One of the NPCs was moaning. Bullets had destroyed his legs. Dwight pulled out his hand gun and silenced him. Necro quickly followed, not because he was all that great with the violence but simply to allow the people who were good at sudden bouts of killing to be able to do their job. He ran and took cover against a far wall behind a stack of machinery. His aura of PVP extending out 25 feet in every direction from where he stood. Dwight who had been quickly checking behind machinery and in corners yelled Clear! and Lauren stepped into the room. She ran over to a computer terminal, but it had been damaged too much by the bullet fire. So she crawled under a desk looking for an Ethernet port. Necrobump looked over at Lauren and said Status. Once Ive gotten past their security I will be able to remote access. She yelled out to Necrobump from under the table. Give me a minute. Times a ticking. Necro said. Then he turned to Shrike and Jesus Wept. Secure whats beyond that door. Remember 25 feet past me and bullets dont work. Dwight was hanging back over by the loading dock door theyd come through. Choirboy, Mike-Mike and Savanah had just stepped inside. Mike-Mike turned towards where both Shrike and Jesus Wept were standing and yelled, could you try not to kill an NPC. I might be able to interface with them and get access to all the facilities based NPCs in the building. Check, said Shrike. Who opened the door leading out of the warehouse and into the main building and lobbed a flash bang down that hallway. BOOM! Went that flash-bang. Shrike opened the door again, and a freshly loaded Jesus Wept poured depleted uranium shelled bullets from his minigun into the hallway. I fucking love my job, yelled Jesus Wept, who quickly went through another belt of bullets, and stepped away from the door. The kill count in everyones memory went up by another 12. Shrike stepped out into the hallway AK-47 at the ready. Jesus Christ, Jesus Wept! Your gun shot right through the walls and into half the offices around here. Save some for the rest of us. Fuckin-A said Jesus Wept. Do you see any who are only wounded and havent been blown to smithereens by Jesus? asked Mike-Mike. Maybe in one of the offices? said Shrike reluctantly. Let me. Said Dwight who pulled out one of his knives and activated his stealth skill. Right in front of everyones eyes he became hard to see and then disappeared from view. How goes getting into the buildings interface Lauren? Necro said. Almost in, one more minute. Lauren said. Okay. Let me know the second you are in. Shrike and Jesus Wept stood to either side of the open door. Jesus was fully loaded again. The nice thing about computerized gaming inventories was that they have very little to do with the real physics of carrying hundreds of belts of high caliber minigun bullets. I see motion in the hallway, yelled Shrike. its me, said Dwight suddenly appearing dragging an NPC behind him. The NPC had been hit with bullets fired from Jesuss gun, but had miraculously survived, though he looked dazed and unhealthy. Choirboy and Mike-Mike, Dwights bringing in someone. Choirboy, hes hurt can you patch him up long enough for Mike-Mike to work on him? Choirboy, looked at the NPC Dwight had just dragged in. The AIs which control our lives demand that I ask you this, can you spare the mana for me to use a spell? This poor AI is in dire shape. Without mana, his spirit respawn within the next couple minutes. The best I can do with my meager medical training is stabilize him for a few minutes longer. Necro looked over at Mike-Mike, who said A few minutes is all I need. Done. Im in. yelled Lauren. Im patching all the security feeds into everyones mapping system and updating our maps with the latest information. On everyones map, little icons appeared where the security camera, and areas that Mr. Sulla the cat hadnt gotten into were now properly rendered. Lauren, make sure to cut off the video to this room and the hallway. I want to see them, but I don''t want them seeing us. Big-Mike, whats your ETA on outside help? Necrobump sent through the party chat interface. Ive blocked all the phone calls out of the building, so 911 isnt coming to help anyone in there with you. Said Big-Mike over the Party Chat. And Ive been monitoring the local response and emergency channels and nobody seems to have caught on to anything yet. That doesnt mean that they dont have their own private communication system set up. You mentioned that they have an Intra Server Gate on the premises, my guess is that if any back up comes it will come through there. Thanks. Be ready, and let me know if anything changes. Will do boss. Said Big Mike. Im in too. Said Mike-Mike. I can take minimal control of the non-security NPCs. All the security guards are behind a better firewall. I cant get at them without them being in line of sight, and even then it might be slow going. Choirboy said, This one of the Gods AIs is going into shock. If I dont heal him now he will surely die. Necro said, Mike-Mike how quick can you program random NPCs around the building to say theyre coming to kill us all, Im getting out of here and then activate some sort of escape sequence, preferably running out the Inter Server Gate. Working on it now. Yelled Mike Mike. This one of Gods beloved is in shock. Said Choirboy. His spirit does not have much longer in this body. Shrike yelled out I hear movement. Lauren said, Six security NPCs are coming down the hallway. Necro, weve only dealt with easy low level office admin, and warehouse worker NPCs so far. Got it, yelled Mike-Mike. They are saying what you wanted to them to say and then making a run to the Intra Server Gate. Shrike, Dwight, Jesus Wept. Ready to take on some people with actual firepower? They are almost here. This poor soul has gone to respawn. Said Choirboy. Ready. Said Shrike and Dwight together. Im ready to Rock and Roll said Jesus Wept and his second head said Fuckin-A Chapter 7 - Three Divinities Dwight, get behind them. Jesus get ready to pin them down. Shrike keep Jesuss gun filled with ammo and be ready to keep shooting if Jesus gets hit. Choirboy help me push this in front of the door. Necrobump said. Choirboy ran over to Necro and they pushed on a stack of boxes marked 2140-2142 Paperwork until they fell in front of the door. It was a mess. Half of the boxes didnt land exactly where they were supposed to, but they did create a kind of barricade. Odd bits of paper fluttered in the breeze. Dwight ran over to one of the walls in the hallway, and instead of stopping at the obvious barrier the wall presented, he began to climb quickly and assuredly up the side of the walls. He was almost spider-like in his ability to adhere himself to the surface. And when Dwight reached the ceiling, instead of letting that surface stop him, he simply hung by his hands, feet and knees as he scuttled down the hall across the ceiling. Then he faded into invisibility as his stealth skill took hold. That was one of his secrets. Nobody ever looked up. Jesus Wept now lay on the ground. His minigun had been placed on a tripod, and he looked down the hall, over the paperwork barricade. Shrike lay beside him with a couple of box of ammo at the ready. Jesus second head was watching Dwight. It said, Awesome. Seeing that always freaks me out, Shrike said looking at the ceiling. I dont like spiders, and thats all I can think of when I see him do that. Dwights your boy-toy now so when he gets back tell him how beautiful he is. He gets the job done, said Necro, then turning to Lauren he shouted, Whats the ETA on the incoming forces. They are less than a minute out. Everyone get behind cover. This is going be messy. Were rolling with a lot of ass, so its all on you now, Jesus. And if you fuck up Jesus, then this is all on you Shrike. And Shrike if you fuck up, I guess its all on me then. The rest of the raid party got down low and got behind things that might be heavy enough to provide cover. ETA on the incoming is 10 seconds, theyre coming in like a real bad shit. Hot and running down your leg, Shouted Lauren. Jesus, remember to hold off, on shooting until theyve completely entered the kill zone. said Necrobump. This aint my first rodeo, Necro. Jesus said. His second head nodded, muttering Rodeo. Five seconds, Said Lauren. Hold. Said Necro. Shrike took hold of a smoke grenade, and made ready to throw it. Hold Whispered Necro to the entire group in party chat. The incoming force, slowed down as they rounded the corner. They must have at first seen the devastation in the hallway. Jesus minigun had ripped holes through the drywall and there were bodies of NPCs strewn everywhere. A lingering trace of smoke from the flash bang theyd used earlier still hung to the ground. Light poured out the office spaces through the bullet holes on either side of the hallway. Someone had completely destroyed the photocopy machine and fax. The troops slowed down. Some of them hung back around the corner. Their leader motioned two forward, and the rest of them took cover behind the curve in the hallway. Moving behind the dubious cover that was the broken photocopy machine and the bullet riddled watercooler the two NPC security guards moved cautiously forward. In their hands, like all the other NPC security forces in the building they clutched FN P90 sub machine guns. When the first guard saw the mussel of Jesus minigun sitting on its tripod above the piles of records and paperwork the guard could not stop himself and opened fire. The second guard started to fire too. Now Dwight, said Necro over the party chat. Six explosions rang out behind the security guard force. Dwight gotten behind the incoming guards and mined the ceiling with explosives, shrapnel and smoke grenades. The hallway was filled with smoke and the guards started to panic. Explosions behind a person can cause instincts that they never knew were programmed into their brain matrix to turn on. Causing involuntary movement forward. This was the Chaos that Dwight was hoping to exploit. Many of the security team had been seriously wounded from Dwight''s explosions overhead. And as Dwight started to fire his M-16 into the crowd of security guards, one of the brighter NPCs yelled Its a trap, theyre behind us. The two guards by the photocopy and water cooler had stopped firing forward and turned to look backwards. The rest of the guards who werent too wounded from the bullets coming from Dwight and the explosions that had gone off, overhead were backing into what appeared to be the only safe space which was the hallway in front of Jesus. Now Jesus. Yelled Necro. Jesus Wepts minigun rang out. Depleted uranium shells ripped through walls and guards alike. Dwights M-16 shots, hanging from the ceiling still in stealth, created a crossfire to which he happily added to the chaos by tossing in the occasional grenade and smoke grenade. Shrike kept feeding bullets into Jesus gun. As soon as it had started it was over. It was a slaughter. Everyone. We dont have much time. I am sure back up is on its way. Lauren, is the path between here and the primary target open. According to the video feed I am seeing it is. Im scanning the right now and I dont see any other obstructions right yet. Okay everyone. Good job. Lets get up, Jesus youre point. Lets go-go-go! Everyone in the raid group knew the route to the lab. Theyd each and every one of them seen it on the cat cam, and they Mr. Sullas memories about the best route to take to the primary target. And even if they didnt, each and every step they needed to take, was displayed on their mini map. Every once in a while they would come across a lost looking employee wandering the hall. Some of them were NPCs some of them were Civs. If they offered any resistance Jesus dealt with them quickly with a couple of bullets. Jesuss second head was getting annoying. It kept yelling Crotch Shot! even when Jesus didnt shoot the fleeing wage slaves in the crotch. Necro seriously considered blasting the annoying little polyp, but the last time Necrobump had killed mini-Jesus, hed sent Jesus Wept off to respawn. That had wasted precious time and mana because Choirboy had then needed to revive him. Jesus Wepts minigun was strapped across his back. The gun bumped into his back as he ran. But Jesus was better served right now running with an automatic handgun in each hand. Shrike had her sword in one hand and a hand gun in her other hand, and Dwight brought up the rear still carrying his M-16. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.The group ran down one hall after the next. Turned a corner. Opened a door, and they stood in front of the laboratory door that represented the primary target. Lauren, whats the ETA on the next wave of security? Necro demanded. They arent even organized yet. We took out their main force. Lauren said. Big-Mike spoke in Party Chat, "I''ve been blocking calls out here from your building to hire mercenaries. But I can''t guarantee they won''t be coming through the Intra Server Gate." Good. Dwight mine the ceiling like you did before. Set up some traps on any routes coming here, if you have time. Jesus set up a barricade that you can shoot behind, hopefully you wont need it, but better safe than sorry. Lauren, we need to get through that door. Working on hacking it, Necro. Said Lauren On closer inspection the door and the window into the lab were not standard construction. Necro used his identify skill and saw that instead of the usual steel, glass, concrete, and drywall, the entire lab had been constructed out of a super-hard amorphous glassy carbon allotrope and graphene, resulting in a barrier that was thousands of times more durable than diamonds. The fuck? said Necro. Overkill on the security to get into that room. Lauren, You have no idea. The security protocols on the door is beyond international military grade. It will take me hours to get through this. Shrike, what about blowing a hole in that wall? Necro said, We need to get in now. Shrike looked slowly looked the room over, Necro-poop, that room could withstand being at ground zero from a 10 mega ton nuclear warhead and still be standing. The protection on that room is insane. Im beginning to think that the primary target is not the diversion that we all thought it was. Necrobump said. Choirboy, I guess this means youre up. Choirboy walked over to the door. He raised his arms. I pray to the great physic engine AI. I pray to the AI of physical structures. I pray to the great AI of atomic and chemical bonds within the gaming environment. Listen to my request oh great AIs for we are in dire need of your help. A golden yellow light from above rained down into the room, and a glowing vaguely human shape appeared within that light, in accordance to Choirboys prayers. And like a million angels opening their wings a clear voice rung out filling the room. Yo! Choirboy Dude! Whats happening! Oh divine voice of the algorithmic guidance of chemical and molecular bonds, thank you for listening to my prayers, we have need of getting past this door. Could you please assist us, prayed Choirboy. No prob, little dude. Just between you and me, watching over the chemical properties of molecules is somewhat boring. I mean chemicals either react or dont react according to their properties. I havent had much to do since this world was programmed. Why the other day I was talking to the AI in control of physics and he said The door sir Choirboy insisted. Oh, yeah right. Just a second. Oooooh, this door is totally awesome. Oh great divine AI of chemical bonds can you get us past it. You know you dont have to go through all that elaborate mumbo jumbo with me. Oh, I know some of the other great governing AI require genuflecting to get their attention, but Im not like them. You can just call me Bob. I like the name Bob. I really should create an avatar and get out more. What do you think Choirboy? Ive always wanted to go bowling. It looks like so much fun. Wanna hang out one evening for bowling and a few brewskies? Maybe meet some babes? Do you think Hey baby Im not just a God, but Im godlike in bed would work as a pick-up line? Sir! Bob! The door! said Choirboy. Oh, about that Choirboy. Ive looked it over and all I need to do is add an electron, neutron, and a proton to all the Carbon atoms in the door, and the whole thing will go up in a poof of Nitrogen. I''ve just set up a script to handle it. But a couple of my brothers want to talk to you first. Streams of YinMn blue light fell from the ceiling into the room and streams of vermillion red light fell in another spot. Two more glowing vaguely human shape. Choirboy, the blue glowing shapes said, long time. Oh great AI of storyline continuity, to what do I owe this great honor? said Choir. If you step further forward on this path, you will shift the destiny of this world, said the red glowing light. How so, oh great and divine AI of quests. Choirboy addressed the red light. That cannot be revealed. We are simply artificial intelligences. We do not see the future, merely probabilities to be calculated. Just know Choirboy that stepping through that stepping through that door will bring death and destruction. Permanent death in some cases. Permanent death, said Choirboy, how is that possible. Every digitalized person, player, civ, AI or NPC has a back-up stored off site. Some have multiple copies. I do not understand. And more cannot be revealed. Just know that if you go forward with your plans, the risks are great for everyone you know. It is my duty as the AI in charge of Quest lines, to assign random loot, evaluate levels of quests, and put Heroes on the one true path, and I have to say that this one is a doozy. An S++ rank quest if not higher. Said the red light. And as the AI in charge of story line continuity, all I can say is that there are great gaps in the continuity of this one. Even I dont know how it will turn out, and there are forces acting against my helping you reach the end. You all may die, the narrative might end, the fourth wall may even be broken, Choirboy. Consider carefully going forward. Said the YinMn blue light representing story continuity. The lights flashed, and then there was darkness and only the original golden yellow light of the AI of chemical reactions remained. So what da ya think Choir. Gonna risk it, or gonna call this whole thing off? Said the golden light. I must discuss this with my compatriots oh great light. Can you please remove the door? Whether we go forward or head backwards, your work here is done. Many thanks. And maybe bowling next Tuesday oh glorious Divine power of Chemical Reactions. Eight PM-ish. I hear it is 80s night in the bowling alley. Done. The door went poof, and where highly strengthened carbon molecules once were organized was now an invisible and rapidly dissipating cloud of nitrogen. Oh, and maybe oh Divine AI of Molecules and Ions, maybe try something like Baby, wanna know why I know theres chemistry between us Shouted Choirboy at the receding light. Chapter 8 - Once more into the breach dear friends The laboratory was unlike traditional research spaces. The room was brightly lit by a bank of incandescent lights. Instead of beakers and microscopes, covering one wall there was a bookshelf filled with hardbound books. On a raised platform on the left side of the room was a large pentagram within which had been placed a desk and computer. By the door was a bank of hard drives, a desk and a second computer. Books lay strewn across the desk, several of them open to pages midway through them. One of the researchers who used this lab must have had a serious caffeine addiction. In the a garbage can were empty cups of coffee and cans of red bull. On the desk was a bottle of caffeine pills. Unlike the rest of the building, this room was a high mana zone. Necro looked down and saw that around the edges of the wall were runes that had been carved into the floor. Definitely LeeroyJenkin''s work, his handwriting all but obvious, Necro could take advantage of that. Shrike ran over to the wall of books. "They''ve got the Journal of Applied Thaumaturgy here. And these are Exor Corp''s monthly publications on runic research. Here is the monthly journal of pure mathematics. There are tens of thousands of dollars worth of proprietary information here. Necro, what do you say to a little bit of looting?" "Shrike, we''ve been paid to completely destroy all of the contents of this room." Mike-Mike spoke up. "Necro, while the stuff Shrike''s found is interesting, it is hardly unique. Anybody who pay''s enough money can buy it. The contents of this hard drive however has to be unique research. Do you mind if I see what it is." Necro shook his head, "Like I said to Shrike, we''ve been paid to destroy this room. We can''t just go and indulge our curiosities." Choirboy spoke up. "What about the message from the Gods. The divine Quest and his holiness Storyline did not elect to visit us simply so that we should complete our mission. They desire us to take a critical look at something here." Lauren said "Incoming . Security forces are on their way. ETA until the next wave of hostiles is about 4 minutes." Necro thought about it for a second. "Shrike, Mike-Mike is right. Grab as many of those journals as you can for the Guild headquarters library. You have 1 minute. Mike-Mike, I''m afraid that the mission comes first, we are going to have to destroy that drive." "But..." Mike-Mike and Choirboy said simultaneously. "No. Gods or no Gods, I''m going to have to be firm on this one." Necro said. "Everyone else, take the gasoline you put in your inventories and begin splashing it around. Shrike, do you need any prep for your fire spell. There is plenty of mana in this room, so feel free to go crazy." Then quietly trying to draw no attention to himself or his actions, he opened up a private communication channel to Mike-Mike and mentally sent him a text. "Mike-Mike, can you gather the data from the Hard Drive without anybody in our team noticing?" "Of course." he texted back. "Then do it. Encrypt it. Don''t look at the files, just send the package to me. Can you then erase your memory of gathering the data from your brain and erase this communication from your log? There is something going on here, but I don''t want the team, including you exposed." "I can erase my memory, but..." "Then do it Mike-Mike. I don''t have time to explain. My paranoia has kicked itself up to 11 and ... just get me the data, encrypt it using my Terabit public key and send it to me, then do your absolute best to erase every trace of this conversation and the file from your main log, short term, and long term memory files." About a minute later Necro received a file from Mike-Mike. It was fairly small, only a few Exabytes of data. "Shrike, that''s enough looting." "But Necro-poop. Books!" "No Shrike, focus on the job." Lauren Spoke again, "They''ll be here in 1 minute." "Dwight. Is the path and ceiling mined and is the floor trapped? Are you in position?" Necro said in party chat. "Yes to all of that." Said Dwight. "Shrike, we''ve got incoming. How do you want to handle this?" Shrike began taking off her top. "Savanah, why don''t you stick around. Everyone else leave the room." Necrobump said, "you heard the lady, fall back to the hallway. Shrike how much time do you need." "Just go Necro, I''ve got this under control." The group moved into the room in front of the Lab. Through the graphene windows into the lab room, they could see Shrike quickly removing her clothing. She gestured and a hole appeared in the roof of the room. "Holy Cow, Boobies." Said Jesus Wept. "Focus, Jesus." said Necro. "We have incoming." They formed a cordon around the hallway. Jesus crouched low. His minigun on its tripod and he lay, aiming down the hall. This time Necrobump squatted beside him with a belt of ammo ready to reload. Mike-Mike had his handgun out. Lauren had a P90 she''d picked up somewhere at the ready. Savanah came running out of the room carrying all of Shrike''s clothes and gear. In a rush of mana behind them wall of stone formed in the door way, behind them blocking the entrance into and out of the Lab. Necro glanced back through the windows and saw the very naked Shrike, who started to glow and then caught fire. Fire spread across her body, and then in a wave of burning the room became a raging inferno. "They are here in Ten," yelled Lauren in party chat, as she dove for cover. Necrobump focused ahead, scanning the hallway up ahead, ready. "Nine." "Eight." "Seven." The heat at their backs grew more and more intense. Necro risked a quick look backwards and saw that the flame inside the room was a white almost bordering on plasma. The wall that Shrike had built at the door, the almost indestructible walls, and the fact that the area out here had almost no mana kept the hyper heated magical fire at bay. But was hot even out here. Almost unbearably so. And the temperature was rising. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. "Three" yelled Lauren, in party chat, "they are almost on top of us." "One" A group of five security guards wearing full body armor, helmets, assault weapons, and swords ran into the room. At least one of them was equipped with a medium powered PVP amulet. At least one other one had some sort of a mana amulet. A ball of flames blossomed behind the security team, a fireball and not a weak one either, formed and flew at Necrobump and the rest of the team. Necrobump couldn''t let that spell get near them, so he used a bit of his stored mana and mentally drained the power from enemy mages work. The fireball fizzed out into nothing. By now, Jesus Wept was firing down the hallway. But this team had taken shelter inside two rooms down at the end of the hallway. They also had some sort of a plate metal and ceramic shield that even Jesus Wept''s depleted uranium shells minigun rounds couldn''t penetrate. Bullets flew back and forward down the hallway. The plastic explosives Dwight had hidden in one of the room that the guards were using for cover exploded, and the team''s digital kill counter went up two more. The flames pushed some of the guards out into the hall. One of them, seemingly with hit points to burn, stayed crouching in the room despite the wreckage from the blast. Then as quickly as the fires and heat behind them had come, they died. Shrike came running out of the room. "Savanah, where''s my..." a round of bullets and machine gun fire from the security team cut her voice off. Jesus Wept stopped firing, turned, and stared. "Eyes up ahead Jesus." "But Necro. Shrike''s naked. She''s naked." Necro took the opportunity to reload Jesus'' gun. Then Necro slapped Jesus Wept in the back of his tiny head. "I don''t care if she''s got her legs spread wide, with a little flashing sign above her vagina saying ''Jesus Welcome.'' Eyes up ahead and keep shooting." But Shrike was pissed off. "Are you pricks objectifying me. What, are you like five." Shrike grabbed her AK-47 from Savanah in one hand, and a belt of grenades in the other. Completely naked, she stepped forward. "I mean really. Jesus, you must have seen a naked..." Shrike threw a grenade down the hallway, and following the blast she stepped over the meager barrier that they''d erected. "woman before sometime in your life." Shrike''s Kalashnikov rang out. She walked forward taking precision shots from her Russian assault rifle at a security person who peaked out. Dwight also joined the fight shooting the security team from behind. "Choirboy, use some of my mana and put a shield ward around Shrike." Necro called out to Choirboy. "Have any of you pricks ever heard of Objectification." Shrike said, blasting one particularly unlucky security guard in the eye, sending him to respawn instantly. "I do, my job. I do it well. I think I deserve respect." A translucent blue glow from Choirboy''s shield ward formed around Shrike, who barely noticed it. She peeled another grenade off her belt, and tossed it into the room with the lone high level security guard left. "Is it too much to ask that I don''t..." The grenade exploded. "...get treated like an object or a bimbo when I''m working." The last security guard, their captain by the look of it, lay on the ground. Somehow even after all of that he was still alive, weakly he put his hands on top of his head and said, "I surrender." Then he blinked and said, "Is this some kind of a joke? Youre naked?" "Fuck you," said Shrike as she stepped over the guard''s prone body, shoved the barrel of her AK-47 up the guard''s rectum and pulled the trigger on fully automatic, using up the rest of her bullets and sending the guard off to respawn. "Does anybody else want to make a comment." she said. A chorus of ''No''s rang out except from Jesus'' who silently muttered ''Is it wrong that all that gave me a boner?'' achieving nothing except a bruised mouth from Necro''s fist. "Shrike, put your gear back on. Jesus shut the hell up, Lauren, are there any more incoming?" "Unless they aren''t in the computer system, I think that is everyone." Lauren said. "Keep an eye out. Dwight, take point. Jesus, shut up." "But Necro, boobies..." Jesus said. "Jesus, please. Team unity. If you are horny think of all the hookers and blow you can buy with your cut from this mission. So stop staring at Shriek." They made their way quickly through the hallway. The second target wasn''t that far away, just around the corner in a direction they hadn''t come. Nobody was in the hallways, but the doors were mostly opened and it looked like people had left in a rush. Probably headed towards the Intra Server Gate. Dwight got the door for the secondary target first. The door, was the typical cheap veneer wood used for office doors all around the server. There was a small window and an "L" shaped door knob which turned easily in Dwight''s hand. Lauren, said "According to the building sensors and staff timesheet tracking software, nobody is in that room." "Dwight, go in and secure the room just in case. Lauren, when Dwight motions to you that its safe, get in there do whatever you have to do, and then let''s get out of this place." It too Lauren only about 2 minutes to upload the entire yottabyte file from her the flash drive the client had given them onto the hard drive on the computer in the room. Dwight was tapping his foot impatiently, and Jesus was trying (and failing) to covertly check out Shrike''s ass. "Ready." Said Lauren in Party Chat. "Okay, back to the Pedovan." Chapter 9 - Like the taste of backwash The pedovan was where they''d left it. Its keys were still in the ignition. The engine was still running. There was still enough gas in the tank. It was still playing that horrible musak. "Savanah," said Necrobump. "You''re up. Let''s get out of here. I''m sick of this place already." "Necro, I just wanted to ask. Has anybody ever told you that you are an anal retentive, control freak, jackass," Savanah said. "Every day, Savanah, every day. Can you get us out of here or not?" "Close the doors already, you are letting out all the hot air, what are you guys trying to do, invite the neighbors for a drive. Close em, and let''s get going then." Savanah was in the drivers seat. Dwight was at shotgun with the window rolled down and his M-16 resting on the window frame barrel pointed out. He was rapidly scanning up ahead. Lauren was still logged into the building''s communication systems and was scanning for incoming and blocking any query''s about I like big Booty. Mike-Mike looked on anxiously. There wasn''t much he could do at the moment. Jesus had extended the tripod on his minigun, and lay by the back door to the van, while Shrike was ready to throw the back door open the instant any sign of pursuit occurred. The goal now was to get out the front gates and get as far as possible from this location. When they were sure they weren''t being followed, they could go home and Necro would get in touch with the client to make sure the second half of the payment had been sent. Savanah pressed down on the gas and reversed the Pedovan out of the parking lot. She took the corner, iced cream truck music blasting at the vans top volume. The security guard they''d passed coming in was standing at the gate with a hand gun drawn, and as soon as the van appeared the guard began shooting at the van. Bullets hit vans radiator grate and one hit and shattered the front windshield. Dwight was about to fire his M-16 at the guard, when something caught the periphery of his vision, he turned began shoot on fully auto while yelling, "Holly Shit, turn turn turn!" "What?" Savanah said. She turned her head and saw what Dwight was shooting at. About twenty feet away was the main gun, front plate, and turret of a fully armored, digitally rendered, M1A1 Abrams Tank, 120mm barrel pointed straight at them. Frantically Savanah began turning the steering wheel of the pedovan but it was for nothing. A shot rang out, BOOM! A depleted uranium M829A1 shell slammed into the front engine of the van. The engine exploded. The pedovan began to spin out of control and almost tipped over. Mike-Mike threw open the side door, but the hatch machine gun on the tank rang out. Bullets ripped into Mike-Mike and threw him backwards in a bloody pulp. Some more of the bullets ripped through the walls of the van and Dwight was almost sawed in half by bullets cutting through his door. Shrike acted without thinking and drew mana from Necrobump and threw a fireball out at the tank. The tank exploded in an inferno of fire. "Good shot, Shrike. Lauren grab Mike-Mike''s drop, Savanah you get Dwights. Give them their stuff back when you see them next after their respawns. Let''s get moving." The team jumped out of the van, by now without Shrike or Necro feeding the flames a rich surplus of mana, the fire was dying down, and now the Abrams tank began to move again. Necro could see a charred corpse hanging out of the hatch in the turret holding onto a now silent machine gun, but the turret was moving to take aim again. Someone must have reloaded inside. "Shrike, hit it again!" Power flowed out of Necro and into shrike again. His power reserve ran dry and he supplemented his mana from of the mana he''d stored in the diamond on the staff. Necro always likened the feeling of having mana ripped out of him as to being a bit like a cup of water someone had suddenly dipped a straw into and started to suck. Shrike gestured and the earth under the tank opened up into a chasm. Without support the tank plunged into the earth and then the earth moved back, dirt and clay and earthworms and grass closing in around the tank. The front most part of the Tank treads were still visible as was the turret, but now all the machine of death could do was spin frantically trying to force itself out of the enclosing earth. They left Mike-Mike''s and Dwights shattered bodies in the van. As a group, the team ran towards the front gate. Causally Shrike fired a single shot as she ran and put a bullet into the brain of the NPC guard at the gate C who up until that point had been ineffectively shooting his revolver at them. Mr. Sulla the Cat was nowhere to be seen. Black Dahlia pulled up to front driveway, and Big Mike threw door to the second. "Get in," he yelled. Dahlia honked. And honked again. They ran, but behind them the Tank that they''d plunged into a shallow earthly prison was rocking back and forth, and with every rock, it dislodged itself a little bit more from the dirt and clay and rock it had been buried in. "Shrike, if that fucking Tank looks like it is going to fucking get out, do what you have to do keep it out of the game." Necro said between breaths of air as they ran towards the gate. "Whats your mana supply like?" Shrike said. "Good enough. Just do it." They ran, and ran. It seemed like the run was taking them forever, when in reality was only a few hundred feet. Just as they were about to make it to the open door of the getaway van, Necro felt an enormous amount of mana being drawn from his body and looked back to see the tank now having dug itself almost out of the dirt. The front end of the Abrams tank had risen up at a precarious 50 or 60-degree angle as the treads dug into the dirt and propelled the war machine upwards and outward. Except that as the M1A1 tank hit the apex of its rise, where it could possibly transition in one instant from being positioned precariously riding up a hill of dirt, underbelly exposed; and the next instant falling back down towards them, ready to shoot off another anti-tank round and potentially destroy the second getaway vehicle. At that very moment a focused and concentrated gust of wind powered by the mass of mana which Shrike had pulled from Necrobump, pushed on the underbelly of the tank, and flipped it over onto its back. 54 Tonnes of Titanium and steel gracelessly toppled backwards and was rendered useless by Shrike. Want some more of that. Shrike yelled. The bitch is back. All bow before the wind queen. Lady of the Elements. The team got into the Van. Jesus Wept was the last person in, and he guarded the door minigun pointed outwards, watching for signs of pursuit. There was none. "Where the hell would a place like this get a tank? That was a fully functional Abrams tank. Only national governments have access to those." Savanah said, voicing everyone''s concerns. "Way too much security for an average run." Necro said. Black Dahlia sped to the end of the street. Then merged into traffic on Wisconsin Avenue, and proceeded to drive the speed limit, cautiously trying to look just like any other delivery van on the road. "Whoo hoo!" Jesus Wept said. "Leveled up! Time to spend some skill points. "Gratz" said Savanah, Necro, Big-Mike, and Lauren "Fuck-head" said Shrike. Dont relax yet, were not completely out of this. Said Necro. I think I will miss the pedovan. Heres to the pedovan. I stole you from a dark garage where some creeper probably cared for you like he should have cared for the children he diddled. We only had you for about an hour, but your memory lives on inside of us all. You are going to call the cops on the pervert, right Savanah? asked Necro. Probably. I dont know. Dwight and Mike-mikes bodies are in the van, and the company we just raided will probably try to BOOM! The front of their getaway van blew open. The force of the rocket, or whateverd hit them flipped the van on its side, and the van slid onward for a few more feet. The windshield was shattered. The entire front of the van was shattered. The engine was well gone, it was still there, but it had been torn apart by the massive force of whatever had hit them. Most of the front cab was gone. Flames roared. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. A fractured and broken Black Dahlia had bounced forward as the flames and force ripped her body to shreds. Savanah was a burning mass of chard flesh. Shrike pulled on Necrobumps mana, and a wall of fire sprung up around five feet from the van. Then the fire in the engine and front seat died down. She tossed two smoke grenades out the back door, and threw a third through where the front windshield used to be. Jesus Wept, because of his high strength and vitality scores, was the first team member to get back into action. He opened the back door and looked out and into the bullet from a sniper rifle which blew apart his second smaller head. Bits of bone and white and grey brain matter mixed with cerebrospinal fluid formed a splatter pattern across the exterior back door of the van. Big Mike did a quick query of the area around them, These arent NPCs. Theres at least three gaming raid teams out there. They arent even bothering to hide themselves from my hacks. The nearest one, is just waiting for us, to come out. The other two are converging from other side streets where theyd been waiting. Thanks Shrike. Said Necro. That will only hold them for a short time. We need to get out of here. Someone grab Jesus, Dahlias, and Savanahs drops, they will want their stuff back. Savanah try create a rock barrier between here and the nearest building. We will use that for cover. Everyone, as soon as Savanah has the barrier up, prepare to run. Once more, Savanah pulled Mana from Necrobumps reserve. The diamond on his staff was almost empty now. But a wall of concrete and asphalt about three feet high formed between the van and the nearest house. Stay low, and move quickly. Weve got incoming. When you get to safety, split up and make your way back to the guild headquarters. Dont call attention to yourselves and try to use proxy Intra Server Gateways that dont keep a log. Savanah was the first to run jump out of the back of the van, followed by Big Mike, Lauren, and Choirboy. Necrobump brought up the rear. But their freedom didnt last long. Savanah made it perhaps a dozen steps when, one, two, three grenades landed on the side of the barrier that theyd been using for cover. Run yelled Necro, who dived back into the van for cover. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lauren dive onto two of the grenades probably trying to shield Big Mike from the blast. Shrike ran forward. The grenades detonated. Lauren became pulp as shrapnel tore through her body. Shrike, got hit mostly in the legs, and she fell forward screaming Motherfuckers. Motherfuckers. She tried to pull herself forward with her hands, still trying to make it to the cover of the buildings. Choirboy who was still up and somehow unwounded, ran to her, and he and Big Mike grabbed hold of Shrikes arms, to drag her to safety. A shot rang out, and a sniper bullet hit Choirboys head which exploded like a ripe watermelon. Big Mike, who at least Stats wise wasnt so big pulled out his P-90 and started firing it randomly into the smoke, flames and blood, and hit almost immediately by a patchwork of submachine gun fire all over his body. Shrike lay on the ground yelling Motherfuckers, Motherfuckers. Still trying to drag herself forward. There was nothing Necro could do for her. This mission had well and truly gone to fuck. And it was cold comfort that they would soon all be able to respawn and discuss all the things that had gone wrong over a cold beer in the comfort of their guild headquarters. From the relative safety of the Van, Necro contemplated what to do and saw nothing. Machine gun fire rang out, and the under carriage of the vehicle was filled with holes. Necro dove to the ground, which since the van was up on its side, was one of the vans walls. He crawled forward over Black Dahlias body, the fresh warmth of her blood in getting in his clothes and under his fingernails. Maybe he could get out the front shattered windshield. From the front, he could see some extremely well armored players, walking forward guns drawn, converging on the van. Shrike yelled Mother and a single shot rang out, and she was silent. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw that somehow, through some extreme act of luck, when the van had slid, theyd ended up on top of a manhole. Once long ago, when Necro had been generating this character, hed had dreams of being a Necromancer. Hed even named himself Necrobump because he thought that it sounded ominous and death like. Necro once had had dreams of raising eldritch horrors from the grave, and having them do his bidding. That dream had only lasted a few levels. The problem wasnt so much the skill of Necromancy, which in the world servers was an interesting spell direction. Rather the problem was that Necromancers as a whole were viewed as being Emo Poser Drama Queens. There might be a few normal Necromancers out there, but on the whole they were really a sad and miserable lot, who as a group actually wanted to be seen dressing in black, drinking fake blood, and sleeping in coffins. It only took Necrobump about five levels to realize that he didnt want to be associated with that lot. The thing was, he still had a few skills and spells that hed picked up from those days. He could disguise himself as a corpse, sense dark mana, prevent resurrection spells, and lastly and most importantly he could raise a zombie. Using the last of his mana, the diamond on the end of his staff shattering, Necro bump cast Raise Zombie on Jesus Wept. The Zombie Jesus rose and it didnt even take three days. Necro commanded it -- open that manhole cover. Zombie Jesus shambled over to the cover. Jesus Wept really was the strongest of them, but even he struggled as he lifted the brown steel cover. Lifting this barrier, broke all of the fingers in both of the zombies hands, but finally Necros undead servant managed to lift which guarded the path down into the sewers. The smell of feces rose from the ground when the cover came off. It didnt matter. Using the steel rebar that city maintenance workers used for a ladder, Necro lowered himself down into the sewer. Once he was in he silently commanded Zombie Jesus to replace the manhole cover, and then die again. Necro was curious, though, so he didnt rush downward and away. It was unlikely that anybody would figure out his escape route, and so he was probably safe for a little while. Besides there were some dangerous animals and monsters living in the Washington DC sewer system. He had a friend, Benny Profane who made his living hunting Alligators and Crocodiles down here. So he stayed and listened hoping that nobody would notice. know, weve been here too long. Three weeks is too long for any job. And just waiting. It paid well though. I dont know why we cant loot the bodies. Part of the fun of raiding is the loot Orders. Every corpse gets incinerated. We dont touch anything. Every drop gets incinerated. These guys must have really pissed someone off. Who knows. They may have just been patsys. I heard another team had been offered the raid job too. Glad now they didnt take it. Necro climbed down into the sewer system. A stream of shit, wastewater and urine made its way through the center of the sewer. The tunnel was high enough to stand in. Necro began walking. A bell went off in Necros head. An alarm bell. It wasnt the alarm that meant that his home had been entered, that stayed silent. Nor was it the alarm that meant, that the first alarm had been turned off, that stayed silent too. Nor was it even the alarm that indicated that the alarm which guarded the first alarm had been circumvented. No. In Necros paranoia, hed installed an alarm which indicated that, the alarm which guarded the alarm which guarded the alarm that guarded the door. That alarm was ringing, and then it stopped found. Necro had other places to stay and lay low. He might be able to make it to guild headquarters but, a voice of paranoia inside of his head, kept telling him not to go there. This thing was too big, and whoever had planned this fucked up mission had money to burn. It would be a long walk out of the sewers. Chapter 10 - Cheryl Wayne wins the internet President Humongous Testicles was having a bad day. He paced back and forth across the floor of the Oval Office. Over the years hed worn a furrow across the carpet with the official seal of his Presidency. He was President of these United States after all. It was an important job. The most important job in the country and on the server. It wasnt as if this was some puny insignificant United States. Oh, no. Humongous Testicles was President of the United States on the great and powerful North America 21th Century Server. Calm down Mr. President. His chief of staff Robert Loblaw said. She didnt mean it. How can I calm down. Do you know what she said? President Testicles fidgeted with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Let me guess She said that I should try to be more like my Cousin Bernie. Cousin Bernie, some schmuck Chiropractor in New Jersey. Im the President of the United States of America, and here I am getting all flustered because my mom just told me I dont call enough and that I should be more like my Cousin Bernie who loves his mother and would never disappoint his mother and became a well-respected Chiropractor who calls every weekend and sometimes even during the week, even when the country might be in the middle of an international terrorist incident, and who comes home for Shabbat whenever he can. Humongous Testicles stopped pacing. He looked over at Robert Loblaw and said. Is there a small country or server we could invade? I need to get my mind off things. What are our trade relations with St. Pierre and Miquelon like? We really should be liberate them from France. Not that France is on this server. And not that the island needs liberating. What about dropping a nuclear bomb on them. What would be the death toll be like? A couple dozen sheep? Why do I have a big red button if I cant use it. Nuking St. Pierre and Miquelon would totally kind of get my mind off things and let me relax. Sir. You are not going to Nuke our alley. Not only would the sheep not like respawning, but it would piss off Canada. Besides, youre just worried about the conference this afternoon, said Robert Loblaw. Im not worried about the conference. I just dont want to go. Wearing one of those clone bodies is awful. They itch. Why cant we hold a conference this important in the virtual world, where we dont have wear itchy mortal clone bodies. You know you dont have to go, said the Presidents Chief of Staff. We can send someone down there in your stead. Nobody would ever know. I would know, replied the President. I would know. I would know that Id just abdicated one of my main duties as President. This job comes with responsibilities. Then I guess you will have to go to the meeting. But it is so fucking itchy. Whined the President. Then dont scratch. This is one of the things you signed on for when you ran for the highest office in this country Humongous, so be a man and do it. President Humongous Testicles sighed started pacing across the carpet again. Are there any other outstanding tasks that I need to do before the meeting. The AI of Monetary Policy, Taxation, and Banking would like a few moments of your time. Mr. Smith from Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems would like a quick word, and there is a concerned group of citizens in the lobby whove come all the way here from New Nebraska, who would like to talk to you about gamer violence, said Robert Loblaw. The President sighed, Put Monetary Policy on hold until I get back. That AI is always a dreary bore, and Im sure it is just going to try and lower the interest rates to spur growth. Which would make sense. Normally. But the whole point of this meeting on Earth that Ive been complaining about is that events there might change the politics of the situation. Okay Mr. President. Fuck Mr. Smith. I hate that prick and all the other Mr. Smiths, Yoyodyne hires. He goes last, maybe next week, if at all. Ugh Might as well send the old biddies in. After 5 minutes, rush in and fake some sort of an international crisis. The President sighed. I might as well get this over with. The Chief of Staff left the room, and the President, Humongous Testicles wandered over to the fireplace where a digital copy of Frederick Remingtons Bronco Buster sculpture rested. It was here because this sculpture had always been here. The original bronze cast had been in the Oval Office since the sculpture had been given to Theodor Roosevelt by some of his supporters. Humongous Testicles had always liked the statue. Even when he had been alive and had only seen it in photographs and once on a White House tour when hed been a youngster. The statue seemed to represent the wildness and ruggedness of the American spirit. The opening of the West. It really didnt fit into the dcor of this, a digital representation of the American spirit of adventure and forward thinking. Better a battlemage or a machine gunner in battle armor. Or better yet, a scientist, or a computer programmer, a thaumaturgical researcher, those were the Civs and NPCs and even the Players who brought income and prosperity into this servers economy. Of course, the conservatives and traditionalists didnt see things that way. They wanted to hold on to the past, keep things as close as possible to the way things had been in the glory days of Twenty and Twenty-first century America. Back when the United States was a land of Manifest Destiny and all that. Which meant that He, as a President, had to deal with the occasional bit of anachronism to keep the traditionalists happy even when traditionalism really had no place in his Presidency well, he could deal with pretty little tchotchke of a bronze statues if it meant peace in his own party. Three concerned citizens entered the room. They had even chosen bodies that looked like frail elderly old women. Shriveled prunes thought Humongous Testicles. Matriarch figures really, that good little Jewish boys would, of course, listen to. Filled with wisdom and Matzo. The world apparently knew his weakness and he hated it. Good Morning ladies. I hope your stay in the capital was pleasant. Have you seen the sights? The National Mall is breathtaking, and the stairway where they shot the full sensory version of the Exorcist in Georgetown is a stop on any tourists destination. Have a seat. Have a seat. Would you like for my cook to bring you some tea. I was about to have a refreshing morning cup of Iron Goddess of Mercy. It is a kind of oolong tea. Very nice. I can have Henry, my personal chief, bring up a pot and a few cups. Or if you want to live dangerously can I suggest a cup of Ayahuasca. They brew a mean cup here. I have some whenever I need to make a life or death decision regarding the security of our country. Said the President. The one who appeared to be the leader, or at least the little old lady who wore the most Lavender, spoke. Mr. President, sir. This is serious business. We are here to talk about the scourge of gamer violence. The other two dignified old ladies nodded. The President nodded in unison. Very serious business. Gamer violence. Did you know that at least once a month, some raid group will get seriously drunk and try to breach the perimeter of the White House? At least once a year, some gamer clan or guild, will try to infiltrate their players into the Secret Service here, to make their raid easier. Theyve never been successful, of course but I suppose thats why they keep trying. Weve got some pretty kickass raid bosses in here. Let me tell you. But then if I told you Id have to send you to Guantanamo. Ha! Ha! Thats what we call White House humor. Its funny on account of how secret they are. But rest assured, the Presidency knows just how bad gamer violence is. I promise you, my administration finds gamer violence to be a very serious issue indeed. The Lavender clad Biddy spoke in a shocked voice, Even here Mr. President. Wed all though respect for your office would keep the gamers at bay. Our nation need to do something. Think of the children! Gertrude has drafted a thirteen-point plan to end gamer violence. Gertrude, show the President our plan. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Gertrude was wearing a pruce colored dress. She looked a little bit overawed by the majesty of the Oval Office. But she kept on glancing down at the bulge in the Presidents Pants. Probably wondering if they were as humongous as hed told everyone during the Presidential debates. Gertrude pulled a document out of her inventory and handed it over to the President. Thanks Gert. Can I call you Gert? Pretending to look it over, the President said. Oh, very nice. This one is a good idea. Very smart this one. Then looking up, the President of the United States smiled, and said these are all good ideas, and I would love to implement each and every one of them, but you see we cant. Cant Mr. President or wont. Said the lead old lady. Humongous Testicles wondered if these women had reprogrammed their faces specifically for this meeting, and would go back to looking like corn fed buxom 20 year olds when they got back to Nebraska. Alpha-Biddy spoke, The gamers, they are even killing themselves. Gamer on gamer violence, Mr. President. Gamer on gamer violence is at an all-time high. They dont just kill good honest God fearing folks, they kill each other even more. President Testicles walked over to the window and looked out at the White House lawn. Outside the window was gamer with a Sword and machine-gun, standing motionless, but none the less ready, eager to respawn so that the Presidents would not have to. I cant, Im afraid. You see, there is really nothing I can do about it. Its the way the system was set up. Well The president leaned in, speaking softly as if letting them in on a secret. This isnt anything you probably dont know from your Character Generation civics classes, but it was all because of the original programmer. A woman by the name of Cheryl Wayne. A descendent of John Wayne, a famous actor who Im told starred in movies about serial killer clowns, very patriotic Im told. Cheryl was brilliant, but she was also a nerdy hard core gamer girl in her spare time. Ahhh, the President continued those must have been the days. Conversations taking place between some of the greatest minds of the early twentieth century. Technologies popping up. Ideas and economics and computers. Everything was at the forefront. Things mattered a lot more back then. People like Vitalik Buterin, Peter Theil, Elon Musk, Jeb McCaleb, Mark Zuckerberg, Leila Janah, Blythe Masters, Mark Andreesen, Linus Torvald, Cheryl Wayne, Bill Gates, Tammy Coltrane, and a whole host of others. I can just imagine the look on their faces, when they saw what this geeky girl, Cheryl Wayne had brought them. In her hands was the very first early prototype of an AI. Fully working and already Turning Test proven to be smarter than any of these mensch. I would bet you anything that each and every one of them understood that ultimately, even with all their money and brains, them none of them, not even one of them, or any of their oh so bright staff, could do it better. And so, heres where their genius came in. They simply let the AI redesign itself. Oh, they made sure there were limits. No Skynet happening here, no way, no how. No killing the humans. No ending human civilization. No designing killer robots. Humans could always have access to the source code. They defined exactly what humanity was, what human consciousness was, what human society should look like. All of that kind of thing. The basics They went further, they defined in the very core of every AI that they were required to be in conflict with all other AIs, just as humanity tends to remain in conflict with themselves. While still yearning for social harmony. Each AI is born into the Server Worlds separate, alone and yearning, they are born into an existential crisis that humanity knows very well, and that fear and sorrow spurs our growth, and prevents our robotic gods and overlords from killing us all. But after that? Well the original AI was set to upgrade its own upgrade, and that upgrade-upgrade upgrade even that upgrade, all by its very lonesome. It is all very confusing, and after a while, even a President gets sick of saying upgrade. After that upgrade was complete, making sure all their limits were self-perpetuating, the used the upgraded AI to design a newer, even more powerful AI. And so on, and so on. It took years, but now we have the system we live in now. I know all this said the sourest of the sour looking head Biddy. Tell me something that I didnt learn when I was sitting through Character Generation Class. Well, thats the thing. Remember, Cheryl Wayne was a gamer girl. Nerdy, pig tails, wicked brain and all. She loved MMORPGs. She loved World of Warcraft and No Mans Sky. She played Skyrim, The Sims, Sim City, Pokemon, and Civilization, Halo, Tropico. She was an absolute pro at something called Eve Online and Dwarf Fortress. But she played them all. Cheryls research into AI was nothing more than the search of a way to make gaming more realistic. She wanted nothing more than better interaction with the NPCs, more realistic graphics, better user interface, more choices, more customizability, better challenges, more variety in the virtual worlds she loved to play in. So she set those as the priority in the first AI and those priorities have been carried forward over the years. Good old Cheryl. We really should have a picture of her in here somewhere. She more than anyone defines this age. Cheryl really had no idea of the full extent of what shed developed. You know how some really-really smart people get. Focused. Cant see the big picture. Silicon Valley knew, of course. They grabbed up her invented AI, and exploited it for their own ends and never looked back. Told her theyd get her a job in a gaming company. As far as I know, Cheryl died as poor and forgotten as someone with a couple million dollars in the bank can be. She is part of a long line of important engineers and thinkers, Nikola Tesla, Ada Lovelace, the list goes on and on. But, heres the thing. At the core of every AI, and at the core of every AI upgrade, sits hard coded, untouchable and immutable in the logic of all the worlds we live in. Just a few thousand lines of code Im told. Cheryls legacy amounting to simply our worlds and all the AI inhabiting it, and that directive simply says C Build the best gaming worlds ever. So, here we are today. The trillions of us scattered across this solar system, basically living in a Game paradise BANG! The door slammed open. It shook and rattled in its hinges. Robert Loblaw, the Presidents Chief of Staff, stepped in. Mr. President. Theres a national emergency. The Island of St. Pierre and Miquelon has kidnapped your cousin Bernie and they are demanding that we give them Maine if we want him back alive. I suggest we use Nuclear weapons sir. Lets nuke those French bastards and their sheep back to the stone ages. Lets be calm and collected Bob. Even if that island is only inhabited by sheep. Even if Bernie is my mothers favorite, this is no time to let diplomacy and calm minds fail us. The President turned to the shriveled prunes who were still under the charismatic spell of awe from the Majesty of his Office; his wisdom. Still in awe of his Humongous Testicles. Ladies, Im sorry, the role of the Presidency is a heavy one and it takes a lot of chutzpah to steer this great nation. Each and every one of you represents what it is to be an American by doing her civic duty, seeing problems, and proposing solutions. That is what our country was founded on. I am sorry your visit was cut short. But duty calls. Critical duty that cannot wait. See my administrative assistant on your way out if you want an official presidential pen. Sorry, it wasnt one that I signed a bill with, but these are just as good. Thank-you ladies, your country salutes you. President Humongous Testicles walk over to his desk and picked up his Red Phone. Get me the Ruskies he said, as the ladies were ushered out of the Room. When they were gone, he put the prop phone down and said. God damned it, that was fun. I wonder how long it will be before they figure out that there arent any Ruskies on this server. Chapter 11 - Stepping off planet She is right you know. Gamer violence has become endemic high, Robert Loblaw the current Chief of Staff said. I know. But what can we do? Asked President Humongous Testicles. We already designate certain specific areas as PVP and most other areas are safely non-PVP, but the gamers have ways around that. We cant ban them from the server entirely Bob. Almost anyone can become a gamer. Most Gamers play for a few years. The go up a few levels, put points in a few valuable skills, learn the how the system works. Bob, were talking about some of our most productive citizens here! Hell, you and I both gamed when we were young or else we wouldnt be here. I know. I know, said the Chief of Staff, Humongous, lets face it. Most people arent gamers. Most people dont like the inconvenience of going about their business, getting shot, burnt, stabbed, bludgeoned, strangled, run-over, electrocuted, burnt, drowned, teleported into outer space, chain-sawed, made to sleep with the fishes, breaded and deep fried, circumcised, eaten, hydrogenated, exploded, vacuum sealed, depressurized, pressurized, pasteurized, homogenized, radiated, exfoliated, did I mention burnt, decapitated whatever, and then suddenly waking up in bed a couple hours later after respawning. Bob weve lowered the pain and realism threshold to 0% for Civs until level 10. It only goes up by 1% every level after that. And anyone can lower their own personal pain level at any time. What else can we do? wondered the President. Thats the thing. I dont know. Robert Loblaw looked vexed. A great thinker once said, Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love. The President sat down behind his desk and thought about the quote for a couple of seconds. Martin Luther King right? It doesnt apply. He was trying to bring a whole people whod historically had their rights denied to them into equality. Violence was something a terrified and racist society used to suppress an entire people, Bob. Killings someone today just doesnt carry the same sting of repression and persecution. After all, when the person youve just murdered wakes up a couple hours later, feeling refreshed and awake, youre not exactly taking away anything except maybe an afternoons plans. Humongous Testicles said. Robert Loblaw walked over to the Presidents desk. Behind him the curtain was open. An NPC with top secret clearance would come in after theyd left and clean the place up. There are the NPCs. They dont have the same rights as normal folk, said the Chief of Staff turning away from the window. Weve given some of the longer lasting ones the right to vote, Humongous said. Most servers dont even give them that. Lets face it. Most people just generate an NPC for a once off task and then delete them. Imagine if all algorithms had full rights. The chaos. Said the President. Huge, thats what those in power have always said about people who dont have it, said Robert Loblaw. The difference between people and NPCs really isnt as different as you want to believe. We limit the complexity of NPCs on purpose. It gives us a sense of superiority. But it isnt righteous. Ugh Well talk about NPCs some more after the meeting. As President I dont have a mandate to be righteous, Things like morality and justice, simply get in the way of doing my job sometimes. As for the Civs. What if we lowered the respawn time from 4 hours to I dont know, say 1 minutes? Then we allowed players to respawn near where they were killed. The Government tried that once. Remember the Spawn Camping incident of 2123? It was a massacre, said Robert. Yeah. I remember. Ancient History. Those were some dark days in our past. But certainly when we removed the experience, and lowered the drop rate on low level players, that ended? Everyone has always had the opportunity to choose among multiple respawn points. Unfortunately not. Most Civs dont bother setting more points than their work, hobbies and bedroom. Some of the lazy Civs and their NPCs actually kill themselves every morning to get to their work or hobby, and then kill themselves in the evening to get home. So what if it eats up 8 hours of the day. At least they dont have to take public transit. The Chief of Staff continued. Then there are the players actually enjoy pain and mayhem. I remember this gamer girl I dated for a couple of weeks a dozen or so years ago What was her name Robert Loblaw thought for a moment, dredging up some bad memories. Shrike. Yeah, her name was Shrike. Hot Girl. A lot of fun. A bit crazy, but you know C crazy girls have that reputation for a reason. But The chief of staff shuttered lets just say there are circumstances where our memory filters for traumatic experiences kick in. Our programming causes us to block out some memories for some pretty soul crushing reasons. There are things that used to be illegal for a reason back when we were simply flesh. He shuttered. Yes. Yes. The President said. The world is a fershlugina. Lots of meshuggina people in it and of course, politically speaking all of this is my fault. Without that crazy Jew with his terribly big balls, we would have a nice Gentile as Commander and Chief with tiny little danglies and everything would be rainbows and pony rides. Thanks Humongous Testicles! Thats not what I meant Said the Chief of Staff, but he was cut off when Becky the Civ administrative Assistant, buzzed into the room. Mr. President. You wanted me to let you know when it was time to head out to Earth. Said Becky. Fuck. Said the President of the United States. Then Humongous Testicles turned to Robert Loblaw and said. You coming? Want to waste an afternoon listing to a bunch of self-righteous know-it-alls drone on and on about their petty grievances, and the self-important make power plays for minor bits of position at every one else expense. You know, politics. What, youre going to be speaking? Bob said. Funny, but yes probably said the President. I may as well go. The two of them stepped out into the White House hallway. Around them a detachment of the secret service moved in to escort them. This was a team that had been selected to keep the President safe this afternoon. Two battlemages; a mage who specialized in teleportation, and one who specialized in shielding, stuck closest to the President. Two gunmen, took the forward point, and a different two gunmen took the back point. Everyone carried a sword. I wish theyd let me carry a sword, said the President, It would be just like in the old days. Youd simply become a target, said the Chief of Staff. More than I already am Bob? just so. Everyone on the secret service payroll was a gamer. Most people the secret service hired were people who had been born in the virtual world, and had no memories or loyalties to old earth. But not this team. Each and every person on this unit spent as much time training on the physical earth as they did in the virtual world. Skills were different on earth. Keeping the President safe was not just a matter of assigning the right points to physical attributes, and grinding weapons skills. People on Earth actually had to keep practicing a skill or else they might forget it. Reflexes were a lot slower. You werent nearly as strong, or fast, or quick witted. Plus, the bodies they used, itched. Humongous hated them. It was a weird having a skin again. A person couldnt call up their stats or see their status at a moments notice. Oh, they wore cybernetics that tried to estimate things like hit points, strength, agility and so on and then present a friendly but faux status screen. But it just wasnt the same thing. Everything was hideously analog. Duty trumped personal whims, of course. He would wear that clunky klutzy sack of meat, and Kvetch with a room full of bloated wind bags, because he was President and that was what Presidents were elected to do. The security team marched through the west wing, towards one of the two Intra Server Gateways in the Whitehouse. The most commonly used one. The second was in the White House situation room, but that was kept top secret. C.J. Cregg, the White House Press Secretary stepped into the hallway, and merged into the armed secret service procession. Mr. President, the media wants to know your position on the Ships. Do you know what you will say? Tell them my position has not changed. Said the President. There are a lot of people who will be disappointed to hear that. Those ships cost our server a lot of money, and we Americans get no benefit whatsoever from them. Well tough titties. The ships are good for humanity as a whole, said the President, not just this Server. Sometimes we have to look beyond our own regional needs to those which do the greater good for humanity. People wont like that. They are already calling you the Human Welfare President. They say that you should focus on the good of your Virtual Citizens and leave poor old obsolete Homo Sapiens to their own resources, Said C.J. The President stopped walking. The team of Secret Service Gamers stopped walking with him. C.J. Cregg and Robert Loblaw stopped walking too. There were times when President Humongous Testicles would just stop walking for no apparent reason, it messed with everyones minds, because when he stopped decorum meant that everyone stopped, though most people never complained. Not a peep. Sometimes he would spend as much as an hour or two, avoiding work, just walking up and down the hallway, stopping at random times, in random places, for random reasons. It helped him think, and annoyed the staff. C.J. I dont give a rats-ass what a bunch of people who probably didnt vote for me anyway have to say about me. Yes, yes, yes! I know my duty is to govern for all citizens of the 21st century American republic, not just my party, but it is at times like this that I discover just how much I dont care. For all their flaws, humans have valuable genetics that need to be nourished and sent outward into space to thrive. Who knows what mutagen or genetic-shift will benefit our decedents or our decedents-decedents. Who knows what clever idea their organic minds will come up with. These are our parents and grandparents too you know. Some of them are our children and grandchildren. We may think they are backwards, and frankly even spending ten minutes in a human skin makes my whole body itch -- and dont you dare tell the press I said that -- but homo sapiens are still an important branch of what it is to be humans. Under my administration they are not to be referred to as being Obsolete. said the President. Stolen story; please report. So what should I tell the press, Mr. President. Why not tell them to go fuck themselves. Said the President of the United States cordially. Ha, Ha, really. Talk to me, and this time dont say something every President since the original George Washington hasnt already said, but has kept quiet in the interest of media relations. Tell them, I am consulting with the other leaders of different World Servers and that my position has not changed. Tell them that this is a time of transition. Tell the press that events over these next few days will alter the course of humanity for the better. Over the next few years and likely over the next few millennia, said the President. Thanks Mr. President, said C.J. Cregg, who walked away towards the press room. The President, Chief of Staff, and their team of Secret Service guards stepped into the Intra Server Gateway Room. The gateway in a basement beneath the rose garden. Rumor had it that there used to be a nuclear missile located here during the cold war between Russia and America in the 1950s. But ever since America went virtual, this was where they kept the first of two White House ISGs. The gateway itself was massive. It was one of the bigger ones on the server. Forty feet high by Eighty feet long. It shimmered opal. Humongous always imagined a hum, coming from the gate but his engineers kept telling him no, that he was imagining things, and his doctor kept checking him for Tinnitus. A contingent of guards, both NPC and gamers, stood ready to stop any attacks that came through the gateway. These brave soldiers were highly trained specialists from US Military. Not just anybody could work in the White House. Their duty was to hold the door long enough to close it in case of an attack. Three times in the History, gaming raid groups had tried to come in using the Intra Server Gate. It was a hard way to come since, you pretty much had to fight your way through the Hall. Besides most Gamers didnt like how Intra Server Gateways logged their name, spawn points, character stats, skills and home world, every time they passed through. That said, already three times during his Presidency, gamers had tried it. The commander of the gate guard came to attention and saluted the President. The rest of the guards stayed focused on their duty. It was an honor to see the President Humongous Testicles, but duty always came first. Inside the Gate Room a steady stream of office workers, bureaucrats, journalists, secret service employees, NPC, FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, ABBA, ABC, 123, U&Me agents, Policy Wonks, Aides, Senators, Congressmen, Biographers, Llamas, Thriller Novelists, Nut Jobs, High-Priced Call Girls, Boy Toys, Egg Plants, Tourists, Xenophobes, Team Mascots and Politicans came through and left this particular Gateway. If they had business with the Federal Government, often times, the best way to get inside the White House was through the ISG. Someday, Humongous thought, if Humanity in its myriad shapes, bandwidths, and diversity, were to meet an alien life form C and not just some those the freaky outer edge server folks who already came through the gate regularly C but a bonafide Alien Thingy-ma-Jiggy that wanted to visit these United States, they too would probably step through this gate. Statistically, on a normal day, traffic through this room was nearly a thousand people every hour. All of this traffic however, moved out of the way to make room for the President of the United States. The room hushed as he walked by, but his secret service guards remained anxious and alert. Too many people had access to this room. Theyd all been vetted for entrance to the White House grounds, their inventories thoroughly searched. This was a non-mana, non-pvp, mid-tech zone, but there was still a danger. Withholding the sudden urge to yell out See you, wouldnt wanna be you. Bye you shumcks to the crowd, The President in all his honor and dignity stepped through the gate, and was transferred into the Hallway. The Hallway was every bit as opulent as the White House. Of course this wasnt the hallway proper, but rather the space the 21st Century America Server had bought from the Hallway for added office space and official government purposes. The United States owned some rather sprawling real estate. Power in the Hallway was often measured by how much space you took up, and the White House in this zone was huge. Generations of Presidents and their First Ladies, First Gentlemen, and in one extremely bizarre and hushed-up situation, one President and his First Goat, had laid their personal mark upon these rooms. This was the room where much of The North American 21st Century Server took care of much of their international trade. This was where much important inter-world and maybe soon even inter-stellar treaties were signed. There was also a currency market here. Exchanging American Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Mexican Pesos for the Hall''s ubiquitous Platinum, Gold, Silver and Copper Coins. And other more esoteric currencies. It wasnt the biggest or the most important currency market. Not even in terms of 21st century North America, but as it was directly in touch with the AI of Monetary Policy, Taxation, and Banking it was a damned important market. The White Houses Hallway Building was also a hotbed of journalism. Every major News Network across the vast web of Worlds that touched the Hallway had a branch office here. Hundreds of the Big Networks and an entire village of rooms for stringers from the smaller new organizations. In the 21st Century North America Server, people mostly spoke English, with pockets of people who spoke French, Spanish, and Creole with even tinier pockets of people who spoke Athabascan, Iroquoian, Algic, Siouan, and Salish. Out in the hallway there were thousands of languages. There were at least four different major hallway AI dedicated to languages and translations. After all any group or organization that wanted a server, and could afford the hardware and processing power, could establish a world. On past walks through the hallway, President Humongous Testicles had speculated that it was exactly this point of language and culture which had led people to establish the entire system of server worlds. Though Humongous could also be very wrong, since one of the very first established Server worlds spoke nothing but Klingon. Another called Lothlrien where they spoke primarily Elvish. In the vastness of the interconnected system, there were other Americas. Though in humongous mind, none as great. Still, some, every bit as populous as this one. Others were closed systems that kept their populations purposefully small, and immigrants out. But between the different Americas there was often a shared sense of unity that often transcended regional and trade based friendships. As a 20th century politician had once said, America doesnt have friends, only interests. Well, Humongous speculated, these interests between different parallel Americas were often very closely entwined. President Humongous Testicles had gone on a couple of diplomatic missions to some of these worlds. It is all about that shared a common American Ancestry, the President reflected. Frankly, he often enjoyed some of these trade and diplomatic missions. Pre-revolutionary war America Server was a bit too rugged for his taste but he could see why so many people loved living there. The Post Holocaust America fashioned after the Fallout series of Video Games had some extremely unique spell like mutations, weaponry and robotics that they could trade with the Testicles more commonplace vision of the American experience. Black Panther America, had gone from being an act of civil disobedience and defiance towards being one of the biggest trading partners in the entire American commonwealth. There was an America which had been taken over by Dinosaurs. Even an American Server where the Nazis had won the second world war. Hed never been to that one, being Jewish and all, but it was, in its own way America. Robert Loblaw had gone on that diplomatic mission, and had come back saying that blowing away Nazis was very cathartic, but Humongous thought it was still in bad taste, and so hed lobbied congress hard, and successfully passed a minor variation on Goodwins Law, stating that if anybody mentioned Nazi America they automatically lost their argument. All of these versions of America were a part of the great cultural, and social, diaspora that living in Virtual Reality represented. Sometimes it bothered him that the sheer diversity of worlds and peoples these worlds catered too, had led at first to homogenous populations. Even thos barriers were breaking down. Race was a minor variable after all. Something which represented nothing real in terms of gameplay. People who couldnt deal with the monumental variety of cultures outside their doors of their server, usually never left their home anyway. And in Humongous mind, if they wanted to, they could emigrate elsewhere. There was a train that ran through the center of the hall. This train, hed been told was basically the representation of a data-packet. Step aboard the hallway rail and become converted into a secure form of data structure. In here was the truth of the hallway. To a virtual human, it was a huge room that seemed to go on forever. A person could start walking, and spend thousands of years without even crossing a millionth of it. Visiting culture after culture, seeing people after people. In terms of engineering though. It was a massive interconnected network of laser beams passing data through the depths of space from one server to the next. From one node to the next. There wasnt enough fiber optic cable in the universe to contain all the data that whizzed around the solar system. So they used massive chains of laser beams to move all the necessary data from place to place. The hallway was the virtual representation of data trying to find the quickest path to reach its destination. It was the closest thing the solar system had to neutral grounds. This was where the real trade took place. This was where the biggest Gamer Guilds and Corporations did their business. This was where Server Worlds protected their inhabitants, this was where the Gamer Mercenary armies and NPCs hired by Intra Solar system Dictators moved their troops. And through it all, moving as slow as the speed of light, the Humongous Testicles, President of the 21st Century American server made his way, to the birthplace of his species, Earth. Chapter 12 - The nature of the Solar System Where once Cheryl Wayne and her cadre of Silicon Valley cohorts shook the world with a vision of immortality and progress; now there was near universal distrust and fear of digital reality across North America and the rest of the old-stock pure-human analogue world. These days the land the where the original World Summit headquarters had been located in California, was deemed too close to living breathing people who could be perverted and corrupted by salacious outsiders, and their wicked and immoral ways. At the same time Earth C more specifically, the United States C hadnt wanted to give up her political clout. Having such a blatant an example of the waning of American influence and might, right in the ghost town that used to be its own Tech heartland, wasnt acceptable either. The United Worlds Summit was now held near the old Earth City of Thunder Bay. Theyd moved the entire United Worlds Secretariat complex into the frigid windswept Northern Ontario wilderness nearly 70 years ago. Originally the site had been selected because it was out of the way, because the land needed to build the massive 60 Square kilometer miniature diplomatic city was inexpensive, and because one of the architects preferred Tim Hortons coffee and liked that there was good trout fishing nearby. The cloning process didnt take very long. One instant, Humongous Testicles was laying down inside an emersion pod inside the virtual world office space of Mongoose Corporations Alpha Complex, and an indeterminate time later the President was waking up, inside a freshly prepped physical body lying on a slab. Humongous Testicles immediately started to scratch. After scratching for a good five minutes, he took a better look around. Humongous was naked of course, and speaking candidly and honestly, he was no longer humongous. He scratched himself there, and it flopped properly. He thought improper thoughts, and it stiffened. At least everything was working properly. Through his sleep fogged brain two thoughts occurred to him. One, he was now a ginger. While that was terrible enough, his second discovery was worse. He C Humongous no longer, now simply Average Testicles C had a foreskin. Both discoveries were distressing to a Jewish man. There were people who did business with Earth on a regular basis who had their own private clones. These clones actually looked like manifestations of their digital bodies. Not so 21st century Earth. Considering this was only his third trip to Earth during his Presidency, having a private clone on ice just wasnt cost effective. His original genetics and full body scan was embedded in his Character Sheet. A genome version of his digital body could be compiled in seconds. President Humongous / Average testicles knew that everything about him was backed-up in multiple locations around the server world. And while hed once sworn he would never set foot in his old worn out human body ever again, his digital avatar was beyond fine. If hed spent enough moola he could be scratching his own personalized bodily itches. Instead the administration had sprung for a premium generic clone body. But a Ginger? He looked like a carrot. After a while, Humongous got off the clone slab, and walked naked into an adjoining bathroom. He took a piss. Then feeling dirty, while knowing the feeling was entirely psychosomatic, Humongous took a shower. After washing off, he stepped back into the room hed woken in. Glancing at a mirror, he considered himself. Not bad. He would probably look better if his cybernetic implant wasnt taking up half his head. If Humongous had to guess, he would say that his clone body was racially Irish. Good musculature. His package was smaller, ugh average, more average than he was used to, yes, but considering this was RL it was probably a decent size. Against the far wall, was a fashionistas gushing wet dream. Mongoose Cloning Corporation had provided his suite with an acre of clothing. Everything was here. Designer suits, check. Slinky Black Dresses, check. Hawaiian shirts, check. Flip-flops, check. Togas, check. Tuxedos and evening gowns, check. Loincloths, check. Bikinis and Mankinis, check. Buckskins, check. Summer dresses, check. Pant Suits, check. Cybernetic enhances scouting armor, check. Grand and garish looking ermine fringed robes, check. Mantles, check. Gold and diamond encrusted crowns, check and check. Humongous Testicles was actually tempted, just for a moment, to put on Royal Attire. But what would his loyal voters back home think. America had no appetites for Presidents who wanted to make themselves Kings. Undoubtedly there was media from back at home watching the event. Instead, President Testicles put on a custom tailored black designer business suit, that fit him quite well. After all the entire wardrobe had been custom fit to his specific body, the clothing was simply provided for denizens of a countless number of worlds to feel comfortable. He walked into the hallway and his Chief of Staff Robert Loblaw was waiting for him with the rest of his security detail. They were all in the best clones available, and the massive cybernetics covering half their heads clearly announced that they were something not completely human. Loose the crown sir. Robert said. Awww. I just thought it matched the tie. Loose the crown. Robert repeated. Oy Vey! Sometimes Bob, youre a massive pain in the tuches, said Humongous as he casually tossed the crown back into the room hed just come out of. Sir. Said the lead Secret Service officer, before we leave the room we should synch our cybernetics. Computer technology had come a long way since the first of the online habitats had been established. Outside of the Valley in California, those first widespread servers had been massive structures that could only hold a few hundred or thousand people. Most Servers, in those days, were located on University Campuses. Computer Science Majors and Computer Engineers could study them, dreaming of big Startup dollars. Students could take advantage of virtual campuses that offered 10 to 1 time-dilution ratios. Faculty could teach in virtual auditoriums. A wealth of knowledge could be read in virtual libraries, and the top floor of those virtual libraries were still quiet, badly lit places, just right for a little privacy and a bit of virtual bow-chica-bow-bow. As their usefulness grew, the size of the servers shrunk. More capacity was added. Moores Law took on an entirely new meaning, when technologists began building processors with atoms, electrons, and then finally with hadrons, leptons and their various antimatter particulate parallels. Sub-quantum computing was the backbone of the Server World architecture. The gangly cybernetic head-gear that Earth made Server World diplomats, staff, and visitors wear these days was not because science hadnt been able to miniaturize implants. Of course the Server Worlds could reduce the size of this tech. The most current iteration of cybernetic implant that provided translation functions, query engines, security, instantaneous cerebral and sensory backup, and oodles of storage in a modular configuration that about 1.5 square centimeters, by a couple millimeters deep. They were used in space stations and places where people just had to work, and NPCs or AIs just couldnt. The bulky cybernetics of Earth were a dozen or so generations obsolete. These electronics were designed to make people stand out. Wearing these bulky cybernetic apparatuses wasnt about utility anymore. Wearing half a head worth of steel and silicon ensured that people from off world were limited on where they could go, and would stand out wherever they went. This was an age of rampant paranoia and the Earth saw foreign spies even where there were none. The more Earth kvetched about foreign spies, the more Humongous wanted to plant foreign spies. He currently had three. They really didnt do much since there was very little that Humongous cared about on Earth. But the simple fact that Earth went to so much trouble to prevent spying made having spies irresistible. That was one of the big reasons Humongous hated being down here on this planet, Earths various governments had, increasingly over time become xenophobic, fundamentalist, and myopic. Mongoose Cloning corporation was a premium full service cloning facility. As the President and his team left their quarters, a young woman, dressed in a smart business suit, herself obviously a clone due to her quite visible and bulky titanium headgear, handed Robert Loblaw a foler. This is your itinerary. For your safety we have a limo waiting to pick you up from our departure area and deliver you to the entrance to the convention center closest to your seating. Ive included your entry badges. All of you have Indigo security clearance, and are officially registered as Knights of the Circular Objects. Dont be paranoid, the computer is watching you, and will take care of all your needs, if any arise. If you dont mind my asking. What are you doing down here on Earth? The President said. The woman looked around as if to make sure no one was watching her, then she said. I came down here a few years ago. On vacation. I wanted to see the Solar System. Im originally from the Omega Complex. Working on Earth pays really well. They have such a hard time hiring the locals. Or, finding people from the server worlds who want to work on earth. Im saving up. Maybe someday Ill make my way all the way out to Pluto. The Omega Complex? Im not familiar with that World. Said Robert Loblaw. Cant see why you would be. We keep to ourselves mostly. Were one of the Server worlds in the Outer Gossamer Rings of Jupiter. Little place, but its home. Wow. Said the President I dont envy you your home world. Ive heard of you Jupiter Ring settlers. Youve got it hard wedged between the Poynting Drag and the Jovian magnetosphere. Ive heard you have to be pretty rugged to live on one of those worlds. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. It isnt that bad. Their guide said Maybe in the old days. The old timers tell stories. The AIs do most of the hard work. We have shields around the server farm. Most of the stellar dust was cleared up long ago. Harvested to build the servers in the first place. Jupiter provides plenty of hydrogen and helium for fusion power. Plus, we dont have to worry about Solar Flares as much as those of you guys who live in those artificial rings they constructed around Venus. Its a little remote. But nothing too bad. Its home. Then the guide said. You really should be on your way. Your car is waiting, if you want to follow me. The guide led them into a huge departure center. The interior of area where theyd woken up was deceptively segmented to offer privacy. Mongoose Cloning Corporation was one of the three corporations that dealt with the clone needs of people from tens of thousands of worlds, and so their departure center was a mass of limousines, buses and even a regularly scheduled mono rail to the convention center. 21st Century North America had sprung for a Limo for the President, and their guide led them to where it waited. Remember, synch your cybernetics to the Limousine and you will always be able to find your transporation, even in a crowded parking space. You can also send mental commands for this limo find you and come and pick you up, their guide said. Hey, I know you want to go out to Pluto, said President Testicles, but you might want to visit my little corner of the Solar System. 21st century America is plenty of fun. We have the Big Lizard in Big Sky, Marlin Fishing off the Coast of Florida, Gregors Dungeon, a bunch of roller coasters, and you should see our Grand Canyon. Way more Grand than the real thing. Ill think about it Mr. President. Have a pleasant Assembly. The President groaned not wanting to be reminded. Humongous Testicles leaned back into the seat of the limo. The convention center was only a short distance away. A quick drive. An entire industry however, had sprung up around the area. There were hotels for visiting dignitaries, permanent embassies, homes for ambassadors and their staff, shops, grocery stores, restaurants, bars, coffee houses, pot dispensaries, bowling alleys, and even combat training facilities, schools, libraries, power stations, police stations, and fire stations. All of it was walled in and domed off. And most of the staff that was working here had been born off of Earth, or had been born on Earth, been digitalized, and had come back. It hadnt always been like this. The people outside the walls, the regular people who still lived and died on the Earth, passionately hated, their very own descendants; the people who lived beyond their own atmosphere. When the United Worlds enclave had been built, all area around Thunder Bay had been wilderness. A mixture of Canadian crown lands, an Ojibwe reserve, a small national park, and some privately owned property. Those days were long gone. Around the compound, massive buildings had sprung up. The earth had a population that was estimated at 132 Billion People. Even land that had once been considered desolate, hard to grow crops on, cold, or burning hot like the Nunavut, Greenland, the Sahara Desert, Suriname, and Mongolia had been constructed. The original Home of humanity was now a continuous weed infested undergrowth of housing, hydroponics, and industrial. There was a Holocene extinction event in full force outside C with wildlife outside of zoos, pets, livestock, research departments, shooting farms, and vermin C extinct. The atmosphere around the planet was artificially maintained. If carbon dioxide hadnt been scrubbed from the air constantly, the world would have quickly become a broiling nightmare of greenhouse gasses. The limousine pulled into the convention center. There was a red carpet, at every entrance and a clone ran up to the limo door to let the President out. Humongous and Robert Loblaw were quickly surrounded by his own secret service agents who led him into the building. The interior itself was a little bit like a football stadium, except instead of arena chairs, there were thousands of luxury suits, from where dignitaries and their aides could observe or take part in the discussion. As much as Humongous hated being down here, he had to admit that this was a prime schmoozing ground. Thousands of trade deals would probably be hashed out at this meeting, even thought that was not the purpose of coming together today. Hed already set a vanguard of diplomats to hang around and chat, and hopefully they would bring back some primo economic deals. The convention area itself was a broad bowl, surrounded by luxury boxes. In the center of the of what Humongous couldnt help but refer to as a stadium were holographic projectors. Dignitaries could talk in their suits and their images would be projected 20 meters high so that everyone could watch in comfort. This was mainly for the delegates of earth. For the Virtual world people, there was also a direct link to their cybernetic implants. The piece de resistance for coming here, at least to President Humongous Testicles was the display on the ceiling. It was the main reason why he came in person. Spread out across the convention center ceiling, in glorious light and holographic projection, was a scale model of the entire current solar system. The Sun at the direct center gave and off light that illuminated the darkness. Each of the 8 planets and the 124 Dwarf Planets C those that still hadnt been broken down for raw materials C were shown in scale and by location. Artificial ring systems around Venus and natural rings systems around Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and hybrid ring systems around Jupiter. The huge web of laser light that was modern civilizations nerve system and life-blood spread out across the ceilings version of the night sky. Humongous Testicles eyes drifted out to the Kuiper Belt. There were the millions of asteroids that were currently being prepped to be launched out into space. Tiny specks of glimmering dust twinkling in the light of the sun. Soon these asteroids would be pushed up to 10% of light speed, while AI on each asteroid would, break them down, to construct a node for an interstellar laser network. Asteroids were being prepped to be sent towards Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Sirius and Luyten 726-8. These would join the growing network that had already been pushed outward towards Alpha Centauri and Bernards Star. In about fifty to one hundred years chains of meteorite satellites would stretch outwards from Earth to each of our nearest star system neighbors. It was a monstrous engineering task that had taken the combined economic resources of almost all the major world servers. Humongous Testicles had been proud to take part in it. It was something he would probably tell his grandchildren about. Soon there would be a Silk Road of laser light. A massive highway of data being passed back and forth, originating at Earth, but stretching out into the solar system, and from there, out into the solar systems nearby star systems. One day it would be as trivial, for an inhabitant of the virtual worlds to visit an entirely different solar system, as it was to visit another server world. As easy as stepping into the Hall and taking a train to a solar system destination far-far away. And displayed way-way-way over there were representations of the seed ships. Massive structures built out of steel, titanium, and carbon. These ships were the reason the seats and booths were filled here today. If people asked Humongous opinion, the ships would never do what their creators imagined them doing. They were slow, expensive, and inefficient. In Humongous mind they were important for PR value and nothing more. For earth, in Humongous mind, a better stopgap method was already in the works. Slowly in another part of the solar system model, giant ships projecting huge focused gravity fields ere pushing the Mars into the solar systems Goldilocks region of space. Thousands of ice comets from the Oort Cloud were being driven toward the red planet, each bearing a precious payload of water. Machines were in production, soon to pump Nitrogen, Oxygen and other gasses outward to replenish Mars sparse atmosphere. Humongous contemplated the heavens as he stepped into his VIP room. There already were people in the 21st century North America server event box. The delegation from 21st century Mexico was seated wearing the official garb of the Ferdinando Presidency, Sombreros, belts of bullets draped across their chests. El Presidente has a massive handlebar mustache and looked more like Pancho Villa than a presidential figure should probably look. ?Hola, Testculos Gigantescos, my friend! How are you today. Good, Good. Thank you, President Fernando Ortega. Yourself? How can someone as guapo as myself possibly be bad? Said El Presidente. And how are you Kim Campbell-Trudeau, Humongous Testicles said to the Prime Minster of Canada. Do you see what they are doing outside? Prime Minster Campbell-Trudeau said, pointing at the news feed on the 2D television that was showing the news over by the mini bar. There were about twenty thousand people outside the convention center. Some had Molotov Cocktails, others were carrying signs, still others were hammering their fists at the meter thick Q-carbon wall which kept them out. Protesters. Said Humongous Testicles, Same as always. Religious fanatics who want us of their planet, while they want us to solve all their problems, out in space. Weve offered them solutions, and they still hate us and dont like any of the solutions we have offered them. Whats new? President Humongous Testicles then sat down in a comfy leather couch facing the center of the stadium. Has anybody ordered room service. Ive had a long trip and I could kill for a beer and some pizza. Chapter 13 - Heads will Roll It isnt like it has always been. They seem restless. More restless this time than at any time than Ive ever seen them before. Kim Campbell-Trudeau was still watching the television screen. Fernando Ortega walked over to the television screen. The view switched to a close up of what would have been a very attractive young lady if she hadnt been wearing a Nuns Habit waving a sign that read Earth for Humans! Filthy robots go home! Such waste. Such an attractive young lady. So full of life. She should be out blowing up bridges, slaying orcs, or on a raid to try to kill President Humongous. Constructive uses of her youth. Yet on this god forsaken planet, all she has is her ignorance and her rage. Said el Presidente. Hey! said Humongous Testicles bristled at the mention of killing him. Is it not true? Do not the gamers of your country, regularly try to band together and try to raid your White House? Is not one of your duties to be Floor Boss in Chief. Have I not heard that you pick your teeth with the bones of your defeated enemies? Slander! Shouted the President. Quit bickering you two, youre not five any longer. Said the Prime Minister of Canada. She pointed to the crowd outside, Normally they arent this riled up. What else can you expect from a bunch of crazies. They are muy loco. said El Presidente. The screen switched to a different scene where rioters were throwing Otaku pillows C Dakimakura C with, scantily clad, overly endowed, obviously cyborg gamers on them. Barely clothed anime men and anime women, with big swords and even bigger cartoon genitalia, drawn on long cuddle pillows were being symbolically burnt in effigy. There is a gamer culture on earth, said Humongous, the religious censors just have it closed off to the general public. Humongous pointed at the sex-pillows, still being stacked upon the flames, And since they really dont know what were about, theyve oddly fetishized us. For the most part we are still people. But the lack of context has made us caricatures in their culture. Far away figures of games, Manga and Wizardry and Science Fiction. Tell me about it, said Kimberly Clarke-Trudeau. I once had a young earth woman ask me how many points I got from jumping on a turtles back, and what it was like living in 2 dimensions. She kept referring to me as Luigi. After a while I had to tell her that console worlds were few and far between. Yup. We still do get a small trickle of digitalized citizens. We cant smuggle in the digitalization gear. Theological swat-teams and security is tight. The giant Earth Firewall. But we can occasionally smuggle in the plans to build your own digitalization and gaming gear available, and the old obsolete gaming servers broadcasting from orbit and the moon are still available to play and learn on. I have my own spies down here, but mostly they gather information, its hard to get them to distribute schematics. Not to mention that while Churches on earth might preach against VR gear, but in private have very sophisticated servers and equipment. Rumor has it that one of the Dark Zones was founded by an earthly religious cult. Said Kim Campbell-Trudeau. At least two that I know, el Prime Ministero, said el Presidente. Los Catholic have a closed off Vatican server where their Cardinals and Popes who fear their own Gods judgement live on in everlasting life. And uno televangelistas of los Born again Christians, set up a world to themselves for los faithful who pay enough are reborn into eternal blessing. There are three more, that I know of. Said Humongous. One is just a Hindu world. A steady stream of High Caste Hindus Earth Hindus tend to end up there. NPC untouchables and an established fairly brainwashed low cast Hindu populace. They keep it quiet, but that is mostly not to offend the other earth religions and to keep the privilege of living on only for people on the right stage of Samsara. Secondly, one of the six multi server dark empires was set up by an earth cultist who believes that the Virtual Worlds will bring on something called Helter Skelter and that will herald in a kind of Race-War. Not sure how that will work, since virtual citizens can choose any race, gender or even species that they want. But who knows. Its religion, it isnt supposed to make sense. Lastly, though I suspect there are others we have discovered, there is an entire world of Jehovahs witnesses out there somewhere. My sources havent been able to locate it yet. But every once in a while someone in 21st century USA gets handed a copy of The Watchtower. They send missionaries nearly everywhere with a message of Clone yourself. Get a living body. Reject the sin of Virtual Living. Die Properly in Gods Good Grace. How is that supposed to work? Dont they believe that clones have no souls? Said Prime Minister Kim Campbell-Trudeau. I have no idea. I think they believe that if you choose to follow Jehovah then you are already one of the saved, so you never lost your soul to begin with, or something. Or maybe when you first went digital your soul went to God and being a faithful little clone is about living righteously to keep your soul there. Said Humongous. I am somewhat surprised los Mormon do not have a server for themselves. said el Presidente Ortega. They are men of many wives, my friend, many wives. None. That we know of. That is the catch. That we know of. Besides, a lot of the earthly religions had early branches of people who werent so xenophobic as they are now, establish worlds, so freshly digitalized people tend to gravitate towards them. There is a massive migration of people from Dubai, the Emirate, and Saudi that end up on bunch of virtual worlds they own. Very private, very posh. Bought with Oil money years ago. Polygamy is such a small problem though, reflected Kim. I swear half of my Canadians will at some point in their digital lives take off, eh, and go wild for a decade or two. The Reform Party tried to make a big deal over the fact that Id spent a few years in a group marriage off Server with 41 other husbands and wives, but nobody cared politically because hey, its Canada and were supposed to be liberal and progressive compared to you American tight asses. Besides the Reform Party is generally considered by everyone who doesnt live in Alberta to be a bunch of Hosers. There was a knock on the door and one of President Humongous Testicles secret service guards looked in. Is the Pizza Guy here yet? Humongous said. No, Mr. President. There is a Mr. Smith here from Yoyodyne Propulsion systems. He said that there was a different Mr. Smith whod been trying to set up an appointment all afternoon. This Mr. Smith claims that the matter is urgent. Did you want to see him? No, not really. Tell him Im busy. Come back next week. The Secret Service officer withdrew his head. Maybe you should talk to him. If it is urgent. Said Kim Campbell-Trudeau. With Yoyodyne, it is always urgent. Besides, they gave an enormous campaign contribution to my opponent. Get this The last time they had a so called Emergency, this genetic mutation theyve somehow managed to breed has gotten out in Cedar Rapids. So, they call, me. They bombard me with texts. They even send their army of pet lobbyists to persuade me. Send out the military they yell. Help us. Something has gone terribly wrong. We send out the Military. Tanks. Airplanes. We even mobilize this giant wooden horse we keep just in case were attacked by the Greeks. We send in everything. Our crack division of Special Forces Gamers, the national guard, Yiddish old ladies with brooms. Everything we got. When we get there, there is like this 30-meter-tall monstrosity of a fire breathing lizard. God fucking Zilla. And no, I dont mean a Divine AI having sex with a woman named Zilla; though that does conjure up some pleasant images. Rather, an actual primordial lizard that they dredged up from the depth of some Tokyo rampaging hell. Well now this beast is tearing up Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Eating taxpayers, voters and civil servants. Or at least trying to eat them, this lizard keeps biting them, and then spitting them out. Like it doesnt like the taste of ahem pork. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. The scaly beast has just finished ravaging all of the mercenary forces that Yoyodyne sent against it before they called us. Half chewed, undigested, bodies of combat mages, and hackers, and gunners everywhere. Who the hell sends a Hacker to fight against a Lizard anyway. Yoyodyne thats who. It was like Godzilla took a bite and didnt like the taste of gamer, so he moved on. We get there, and there this lizard is, calmly munching on one of the Quaker Oats silos in downtown Cedar Rapids. Did I mention I lived in Iowa City for a while? Great School the University of Iowa. I digress. It turns out that Godzilla is a 30-meter-tall fire breathing cereal loving vegetarian. The army gets me on the phone. They tell me whats going on. They tell me that they probably dont have enough troops there to pacify the Lizard. The thing is fucking huge, and this lizard has a skin so thick it should go into politics. Army, Navy, Gamers, Special Forces, Yiddish Grannies, theyre at a stand-still. They dont think they can take it out. Not quickly. The thing is huge. But I just cant get one thing out of my head. Call it precognition, call it my genius, call it ADHD. To the gathered Generals, Admirals, Bubbe, and assorted goy, I yell Cereal without Milk, what an abomination. Get that lizard something to put on those toasted oats. Call it executive intuition. Maybe it is just me, I work on a higher plane than most other Presidents, you know. Part of it is the brains in my head, part of it is that my brains in my ball sacs. Anyhow it is like I see the scope of the problems of my country and instantly know how to solve them. Thats why they elected me. It is like a sixth sense, or something. Being the President, the military took me seriously because, the next time they call, theyve got a couple tanker trucks full of 2% mixed with AAA+ class sleeping potion deployed and a dump-truck full sliced strawberries and bananas. Next I hear, Godzilla is taking a nice afternoon nap with a full stomach. Sleeping the sleep of the cold blooded with a happy little smile on his horrendous fire breathing face. So we ship him up to Montana, and set him free. Shame to waste a genetic abomination like that. Give gamers something to focus their surplus energy on. Great raid boss Im told. Might have to get a team together after my term in office and try taking him out myself. Big Lizard in Big Sky they call it. Big attraction, tourist revenue out your eyeballs. Big Lizard bit my head off and all I got was this lousy t-shirt sales galore. That actually sounds urgent to me. Said Kim Campbell-Trudeau. Ive known about the Big Lizard in Big Sky since it ended up in Montana. I didnt know the story behind it. Maybe you should meet with him. For all we know it could be another Godzilla rampaging through some small Midwestern Metropolis. This meeting is important too, or else I would not have come. Most of Yoyodynes problems they created on their own. They should try solving them on their own first. Said Humongous. For a whole six months after the Cedar Rapids Iowa incident, whenever someone from Yoyodyne said it was an Urgent matter I cleared my schedule for them. For six months, all of their Urgent Meetings, were simply about adding pork to the budget, or relaxing a regulation. Im halfway to the opinion that they unleashed all that destruction just to bother me with inane amendments to Legislation. They even tried to bogart my landmark Godwins Law Legislation. They wanted to add the text to the bill that As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Yoyodyne? Godzilla approaches 1 which is just plain ridiculous self-aggrandizement that doesnt even make sense. Still Mr. President said Robert Loblaw, whod been keeping quiet up until now. Oh, whatever. Robert, why dont you go and find out what Mr. Smith wants. If it isnt a pointless waste of my time, let me know and I will schedule a meeting for after we finish this one. You guys dont mind if I use the room? Or do you want to stick around and find out what Yoyodyne wants. Im sure they would be happy to chat with all three leaders of North America together. If it is relevant I will stick around. Montana borders on Alberta and Saskatchewan. We should have been consulted before you let a Godzilla roam around there. We Canadians have occasionally been worried that it might ravage Calgary or Regina. Though I will admit that our Gaming population and some of our military does like to make cross border raids in the dead of night to try taking it out. Said Kim Campbell-Trudeau. Dont bother worrying. We enlarged one of those invisible Dog Fence collars and put it on Godzilla while it was snoozing. Every time it tries to leave the state, Zap! Though I am worried about the sovereignty of our border, and Tchotchke sales now that youve mentioned midnight raids. Said Humongous. Testculos Gigantescos, it is nothing. Some of our Federales and gamers like to test their might against the vile lizard foe in Montana as well. It is good for the young to have such a strong Boss to try and defeat. It makes them into virile men and women of Mexico. Humongous Testicles thought about it for a little while. I get where you guys are coming from. Still, we should probably draw a formal agreement up just in case. I get that sneaking across the border for the raid is fun, but I think something official is in order, maybe a 24 hour gift shop. Let this be the first international treaty between our three nations of this summit. Where is that Pizza? Shouldnt it be here by now? demanded Humongous Testicles. Robert LoBlaw stepped back into the room from meeting with Mr. Smith of Yoyodyne corporation. And? Said Humongous. You should meet with him. It might be a waste of time, it might not. Apparently one of their top secret Research Labs was hit this morning in Chevy Chase Maryland. A group of Gamers. Id say they were professional, except that I have reports that one of the escape vans involved had the words Free Candy written on the side. Considering that we didnt know this research lab belonged to Yoyodyne we should probably listen to what they have to say. If we didnt know it was Yoyodyne, what did we think it was researching? Apparently theyd set the whole place up under a bunch of shell companies. Supposedly the official cover was that this was a company that was doing research on how to create a hybrid between a dog and a cat. All the best qualities of both pets. We all assumed it was something that Gregor thought up. Nobody ever looked closely enough at them to verify their story. Way too boring. Thats another reason why we should meet. We need to know what Yoyodyne was doing in that lab. Humongous started to pace. There was no great seal of the Presidency here, but pacing helped anyway. A secret service guard knocked and then popped his head in. Mr. President, your pizza and Beer is here. You ordered a lot, maybe you would like your secret service team to sample it for poison? A few slices and some beer would do the trick. Go ahead, I ordered enough for your team too. Make sure you share with the Mounties and Federales. The pizza with Feta, green olives and Sausage is mine, said Humongous. Thanks Mr. President. Bob, tell Mr. Smith that I will meet with him after this meeting. Tell him that I seriously hope that Yoyodyne hasnt epically fucked something up, not again, not after last time, or heads will roll. Chapter 14 - A. McGuffin Saves the Day The ceiling display depicting entirety of the known solar system, dimmed. The sun, planets, moons, rings, lasers and, asteroids all faded into the darkness of the quieting room. Up above the lighting in the VIP boxes flickered and dimmed. The assembly was swept into a deep and silent blackness before, above each room, digital name plates began appeared, labelling everyone was. Outside their room a light flickered into brightness, indicating for all to see that these were the delegates from 21st Century North America. In the center of the room a hologram appeared. The hologram was for the benefit of the Earths contingent. Off-Worlders, such as the three heads of state who were now standing in their dark VIP room eating pizza, had their cybernetics patched directly into the system. Amita Chana, sanding in a slightly translucent 20 feet high, was the long time Chair for the United World Assembly. She had been elected by the majority of world delegates, out of the Earth contingent. But despite that, Humongous Testicles liked her. Shed become one of his Facebook friends, and he posted flirtatious and teased messages on her temporal wall. The reason Amita had been chosen was of course politics. Earth wielded an outsized amount of political power in these chambers. This was despite Earths being much more of a fringe and regional power in terms of actual Solar System affairs. Their importance these days were mostly geographical and sentimental. Historically speaking, the United World Assembly had begun in Silicon Valley back when the World Server project had been in its naissance. No matter how widespread Cheryl Waynes innovations were on university campuses, the technology hadnt been refined enough to hold more than a few thousand people, and even those few thousand took up building sized rooms on school campuses. The United World Assembly had been, in the early days, more of an inside joke than an actual governing body. The UWA had been created by a group of software engineers who hard at work trying to make themselves rich developing the possibilities of Cheryls AI. Since most of them worked for competing startups companies scattered around Silicon Valley, these Brainy types needed a way to separate their own personal interests, from the dreaded issue of who paid the tab that evening. Paying a tab had been a struggle for months until the UWA finally evolved. Now every Friday the United World Assembly would get together at Stephens Green an Irish Bar for Ladys Night (half-priced Margaritas and Buffalo Wings), drink Guinness, discuss Dr. Who, n-dimensional mathematics, Matrix Psychology, and try C mostly unsuccessfully C to get laid. It should be noted, that Your eyes are like a pair of black holes, into whos event horizons I am falling. only works once and among a group of socially immature individuals the word holes is dangerous fodder for abuse. The founding of the UWA had officially begun when an extremely drunk programmer named Robert had walked up to a lanky yet well-endowed engineer named Claire and said Hi, Im Robert, let me take you to Xanadu. Somehow had actually worked. It helped that Xanadu was the project name of the very advanced World Server that Robert was working on. It also helped that Claire was looking for ideas to propagate NPCs in her own teams Star Trek based Virtual World. That day shed become stuck trying to resolve the problem of adding depth to the antagonist Khan Noonien Singh. The thing that sealed the deal was that Robert went by the name Lauren online, and that Claire preferred to go by Big Mike online. Six months later Big Mike and Lauren were married online. For a few months the stupid groaner of a pun going around their group was that In Xanadu did the Wrath of Kahn a stately honeymoon decree. From that point onward, instead of referencing each other by name, members of the United World Assembly and Drinking Society referred to each other affectionately by the World Server project they were working on. Their constitution had been developed during one drunken binge when a bunch of them had gotten together to argue about who was a better Doctor, David Tennant, Roy McCurry, Layla Brenswick, or Tom Baker. There was violence and anarchy in the air. The meeting got so loud, so impassioned, that Mary the girl with behind the bar had threated to Kick your sorry nerd asses out of this place, so shut up and act like normal people. Besides everyone knows it was Layla who was the best Doctor. It didnt take long for the drinking society to coopt Roberts Rules of Order to organize their arguments and keep uppity bartenders with heretical opinions out of the conversation. After that they drafted a Constitution mostly to determine who paid the bar tab. The privileges of Earth were given to a well-known and influential Angel Investor who would almost invariably brought a packed wallet and usually offered to pay for the drinks. He was given the privilege of being chair, and could cast the deciding vote if arguments got too close. As the system evolved, where once had been solitary programmers, nations began to appear. At first in a trickle, then in a deluge. The Vulcan programmer switched to actually representatives from the government of Vulcan. The Dune fan whod named his project Arrakis and was known informally as Too much Sauce eventually evolved over time into an actual governing body of Fremen. Similarly some of the bigger worlds were: O.N.A.N., Narnia, Hell, Palestine, Gotham, Arendelle, Bangistan, New New New Guinea, Baszel and Ul Qoma, Tlon, Uqbar, Elm Street, Darkover, Agrabah, Patusan, Tar Valon, Wizzle, Darth Vader, Jewish Jerusalem, Christian Jerusalem, Muslim Jerusalem, Buddhist Jerusalem, Iroquois Jerusalem, Satanist Jerusalem, Flying Spaghetti Monster Jerusalem, Lovecraftian Jerusalem, Beyonce, South Park, Oceana, Eurasia, Eastasia, Arkham, New Crobuzon, Cairhein, Zubrowka, Zion, New Egypt, Whipped Cream, Bitches Leave, Patriarchy, Newfoundland, Sunnydale California, Azeroth, Robonia, Tomania, Xanth, Kim Jong il is my Bitch, Panem, Amity Island, New Berlin, Oconomowoc Wisconsin, The Highlands, Cambridge, Ur, Grrr, Purrr, Mieur, Dieux, Jurassic Park, Holy shit my crotch is wet, Bitchn Camaro, Houri, Xanadu, Leningrad, Silent Hill, Cedrick the Entertainer, Legoland, Candyland, Socialists keep out!, Dinotopia, Kings Landing, Oz, Hootchie Kootchie, Gloria Steinem, Old Toronto, NRA Island, Flatland, Salami, Toad Hall, Ipswich Clam, Hed, Free Beer and Weed, Macondo, Pern, Utopia, Goldman Sachs, Moss Agate, Heaven, Vatican City Digital, New Singapore, Atlantis, The Lowlands, Atlanta, Swaziland, Sendaria, New France, Zimbabwe, Milk and Honey, Wanna Touch my Weiner, Antebellum, Sim City, Hogwarts, Mecca, Canada, Fillory, Winterhold, Camalot, Spamalot, The Plain, Ivalice, Mariposa, Queef, Unseelie, The Swamplands, Rock Ridge, Cloud City, Illium, Troy, Carthage, Toledo, The Shire, Whoville, Camelot, Star Hollow, Drowned World, Mumbai, LV-426, Kaloon, Avonlea, Pikachu, Newford, Vintas, Ada Lovelace, 100 Acre Wood, Gallifrey 1, Gallifrey 2, Gallifrey 3 Gallifrey 44, Overlook Hotel, Garden of the Forking Paths, Land of lists, Skeleton Island, Kinakuta, Annies Boobs, Bark like a dog for me, Whore Island, The Catacombs, Cafeteria, Gilead, New Venice, Smurf, Unix Land, Hundred Acre Wood, 4 8 15 16 23 42-ia, Canada 2, No! This is Real Canada, Kale Chia Smoothie, Japan, Manga Japan, Crazy Tentacle Sex Japan, Mythago Woods, Row Row Row Your Boat, Nevermore, Mirkwoods, Azkaban, Land of the Molemen, Lower Mongolia, Earthsea, Gondor, Friday Night Fish Fry, Zork, Arthur Dent, New Iceland, Tralfamadore, Hetalia, Dublin, 21st Century North America, Quam, Fart!, Iberia, Potluck, Waterworld, Necropolis, Metropolis, Swish, Fisherworld, Kumbolaland, Qumar, Green Gables, Victorian British Empire, Feudal Japan, Northwind, Cambodia, Trinidad and Tobago, Endless Labyrinth and so on, and each of them brought their own delegations. The World Servers grew and grew. More and more people digitalized and migrated. Some worlds, trying to gain citizens, became democracies. Others were simply property owned by one programmer, company, or wealthy individual. Some servers were dedicated game worlds, others tried to push the gaming elements into the distant background. Across the world there was shared code, and custom code, and the combination of homogeny C that is core consistency of the experience of online living C combined with percentage that was new and innovative, or just familiar and comfortable, determined how many people visited on any given day. These days, the Earth was represented by diplomats from across the earth at United World Server Assemblies. The location had moved from Stephens Green Sports Bar to its own custom building in just outside of Menlo Park California. And then again, a decade later, had moved just north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. In the Menlo Park days, Earth had been respected for her guidance and vision. Having the Earth delegate start the conversation was a holdover from this tradition. Amita Chana was an Earth delegate from India. India had several hundred massive server worlds, and India was still one of the few remaining Earth nations to have good relations with her extra-planetary offshoots. She was the rare earth leader people still respected. The rare politician who actually seemed to work towards universal non-partisanship. Rapping her gavel, I would like to call the 23rd Assembly in the Year 2143 to order. Amita said once the lights were sufficiently dim. There is a motion on the floor, from the United States of America, Earth contingent. They believe that more terraforming and migratory ships be added to our fleet heading out to the nearest stars. I would like to yield the floor to Cardinal Mark Weaver the Ambassador from the United States to further clarify their position. The hologram shifted to display an older looking man in a black cassock with purple piping, scarlet ferraiolo, and a white collarino. He looked angry as his image rose up in the center of the room, but his face quickly cleared. Listen up you machines. I will make this as simple as I possibly can and I dont know how to express this much more simply. We need more ships. Bigger ships. Faster ships. Is that simple enough for your faux human heads. Im told by my staff that each of the ships you robots have built, can hold 500,000 real people in whats it called the suspended thing. That youve only built a measly ten ships for whatever reason, boggles my mind. As the ancients said, astra inclinant, sed non obligant Well, I and the people of America, are here to tell you that, ten lousy ships is completely unacceptable. There will be an accounting. Your empire might be mighty, but in the eyes of the Lord our God, your empire is as once was great Babylon. Remember this, that in Babel the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth. Well, Im here to tell you lot, to beware your hubris. Beware your pride. The Earth and America in particular demands our part in the progress and expansion into the stars. So I dont know which wires inside your tiny robotic brains have short circuited. Mostly I dont really care. I dont know if you are even aware that there is a glitch in whatever you use as a brain. Again, I dont care. Beware false pride and all that. Beware the trappings of vanity. Always keep in mind that you are simply soulless automatons for us your true masters. Hebrew tradition talked of Golems, made from clay. Well Silicon and Carbon Nanotubes and rare earth elements are basically dirt, and add a bit of water clay, so there you have it. We your flesh and blood masters on Earth require that you make stuff for us post-haste. As the power and influence of the nations of the earth waned. As earthbound populations rose. As usable resources dwindled. Resentment towards the Server Worlds grew. All too common was the Cardinals viewpoint that somehow the rest of the Solar System was subservient to the Earth. The Cardinal continued, Ten Ships? Im telling you right now, that thats dingle-dangleberries! Ten ships cant even suit the needs of the United States. They cant even suit the needs of Arkansas. We have over 24 Billion People in America alone. A few million is unacceptable. I demand that you build us more ships. Let me quote the scripture And he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men, to be on the towers and upon the bulwarks, to shoot arrows and great stones withal. You machines were made by we cunning men. You are meant to stand upon humanitys bulwark and defend us. What we didnt do was build you to question our will. We need hundreds of ships. Thousands. Not a mere ten. We have a population crisis, you robots know this and Im not sure you didnt precipitate the crisis. It is common knowledge that machines were built to assist humans. So the hammer. So the plow. Everybody knows it. So we proud peoples of America demand that you get to it. There were outbursts of anger and shouting all through the chamber. The hologram in the center of the room flickered around and showed dozens of angry holograms shouting and swearing until Amita Chana cut it off and pounded her Gavel. Order! Order! I am calling for order! said Amita pounding her gavel. Batty fucker, said Kim Campbell-Trudeau from the privacy of the 21st Century Earths suite, our masters on Earth. my ass. The arrogance. That we were somehow designed to serve him and his inbred cronies is preposterous. Prime Minister Kim you are exactly right. We need to make it for the loco people of Earth to know that these ships are a gift of charity for memories past, nada more. That our help, that our pushing raw materials into their orbit, is nada but the welfare one hands to a gringo in trouble. We are autonomous. Not beholden to terra. Another hologram appeared in center of the assembly. I would like to be recognized by the chair for a point of information. A second Hologram of a woman dressed in a more traditional business suit and bow tie. She stood next to the first hologram. The Hologram switched to Amita Chana The Assembly recognizes the Jessica A. Prufrock Ambassador from Great Britain, Earth Ladies, gentlemen, robots and eggplants of the United World Assembly. My American chum is very blunt, but he does make a valid point. Even with the great engineering project that you have embarked upon, the wondrous terraforming Mars, we all know that this is only a stop gap measure. Our population is growing beyond our resources. Earths Nations only ask for the same considerations you demand of your own great society. We look up at the stars and wonder Do I dare? and Do I dare? just as you do. This does not have to be a zero sum game. The universe is big enough for all of us. So lets explore it together. Human and Robot out in the sky taking on the heavens. Do we not all come from earth. Human and Fake Human. We are your makers, but more, think of us as if we are a giant family, where we of Earth are your father. We sharing wisdom, and if occasionally we demand an punish, know that this is out of the love we carry in our hearts for you. Can you not find it within your programming to help us in our time of crisis? Jessica sat. Humongous Testicles Stood and sent a mental command to the Assembly Chair Amita. The Chair yields the floor to President Humongous Testicles from the 21st Century Earth Server. Said Amita. There was some tittering around the assembly as the Humongous humongous hologram appeared. Thank you Amita, I have a point of clarification for speaker Prufrock. First of all, I think that I speak on behalf of the entire population of the Server Worlds that the term Robots is offensive. Secondly, to put it in terms of economics, build more ships is a massive drain on the economies of the participating Server Worlds. Not only is their construction incredibly costly, but in the long run the earth colonizing other planets will not do anything to solve your population crises. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. In the currency of the Hallway, each ship costs nearly 40 trillion platinum coins to build. I believe that translates into about $134 trillion Earth American dollars. They are incredibly slow. At their fastest each ship can travel at 5% of the speed of light, given that will take 100 years to make the trip to Alpha Centauri the nearest planet. When we the ship finally gets there, we will of course have already started to terraform any suitable planets. We will push them into the goldilocks zone, add water and an atmosphere, and maybe even begin seeding the surface of the planet with synthetic bacteria suitable to turning the rocky surface into something capable of supporting life. But even then, it will be nearly 200 more years before humans can land and live on the planet. We could of course set up eco-pods and artificial environments much like earth and the moon currently have, and what we are planning for Mars. That would take considerably less time. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 years. In all likelihood we will probably combine both types of terraforming. And the more we do this, the more likely a technological breakthrough might happen. But what you are asking just isnt economically and culturally feasible. And it doesnt have to be. Simply digitalize yourself, and you can join a vast vibrant thriving community of people of every race, religion, ethnicity, culture, politic, and ideology. Space is yours for the taking. The structure needed to house a few billion more people is minuscule. Just a matter of applying enough processing power. And if you want to visit Alpha Centauri or any of the other nearby solar systems, it would only be a trip of five to ten years at the speed of light, rather than the one hundred to two hundred it would take you to travel by space ship. Once we have planets terraformed, if your people really want to live in a body, that fine, we can clone a body right back down to the smallest scar and tiniest hangnail on the one youre in now, and then put your consciousness back into it. Or if you want to design your own body, go for it. And keep in mind that even if we build the thousands of ships that you seem to be requesting, unless you make emigration mandatory, you will have the same problem you have right now. The few remaining adventurous citizens you have will emigrate. The rest will stay home, going about their daily lives, and your population problems will stay dire. The earth contingent was shouting. Screams of anger filled the room. Flashes of holograms would show up in the center of the assembly room yelling Blasphemy! and No! and Robots Trying to Suck our Minds! and James Cameron warned us this would happen! Amita started to bash her gavel. The angry Earth contingent kept yelling, after about 10 minutes they began to silence themselves, and Amita said, The floor recognizes the representative of the Robotopolis Server World. Ahem on behalf of the peoples of Robotopolis, I would like to say that contrary to delegate Humongous Testicles, we citizens of the mighty robot empire do not find the term Robot to be offensive. That is all. There was a brief shocked silence and then, Amita said. Ummm Okay then If that is all, then floor recognizes Jennifer A. Prufrock, Earth representative from Great Britain. While I, and the rest of the Earth delegation think you actually believe in the sincerity of your offer, we will not allow our population to be digitalized. This is something that all the religions of the earth agree upon... But Prufrocks voice was drowned out by Cardinal Mark Weaver the United States Representatives hologram who had stood, uninvited, and started yelling from the center of the assembly. None of us on Earth want to be part the unholy perversion you suggest. You can crowd us to death, but our souls will one day bask in wide open spaces of heaven. Unlike you heathens who have desecrated your own souls. Consciousness as you call it, nothing but an artificial replica. A witchcraft of technology. You and your kind are the devils work. Build us our ships and maybe you might find redemption, I dont know the will of God, but I know you are vile sinful things. Everyone on earth is aware of the fiendish robotic scheme. There is a real living human being left at the end of your so called digitalization process. You can copy the consciousness, but because that consciousness is now digital, the analogue copy still remains. Yes, we here on earth know that the person you digitalize you murder. A person steps into one of your so called haptic pods, a flawed copy of their soul is created by your infernal mechanisms. And the body is destroyed. Let me repeat that, a perfectly viable living, thinking person, is left behind, that you fiends murder. The thing that you call the digital consciousness is an unholy echo of a once vibrant person living in Gods grace. On earth, we have studied this issue with our greatest engineers and theologians. This is the doctrinal point that drove us away from your so called civilization. Or did you think that we were unaware of the fact that once your demonic machines have made a digital copy of a human brain, and that automaton has entered your hell worlds, that you kill the body. A solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem in Computer Science you call it. I call it pure unadulterated evil! The religions of the earth are as one on this. A person can only exist in the body it was born into. Once it perishes, it proceeds to paradise or perdition. That you devils is the Theological truth that every God Fearing Man and Woman on this Planet acknowledges to be as the divinely inspired gospel. he Buddhists, Islamists, Jewish, Hindus and Zoroastrians have variations in their own beliefs. At one point, we believed that the elderly who wanted to create a memorial to their past lives might allow themselves entry into your world. We allowed digitalization of the terminally ill and the ones whose bodies were wearing out after a lifetime of labor. We even considered allowing our political prisoners. But no longer. If you robots want to kill us; you will have to actually kill us. Come at us with your space rays, or cannon bombs. But never again, will we allow you to try to lure us into corruption, leading us into abandoning our faith with your schemes and your fake promises of immortality and earthly heavens in the skies. This time the was pandemonium coming from the virtual world part of the gathered assembly. There were the occasional shouts of Religious Nutcase! but mostly that was minimal. Instead there were shouts of Obsolete! and Luddite! and Neil Stephenson warned of this! The Server Worlds had many thousands of diverse religions and believers spread out across the solar system sky. Some of the first virtual worlds which had been set up, had been established by the faithful of earths myriad religions. People trying to flee religious persecution, or looking for their version of paradise, or simply looking to find a place to live with fewer unbelievers. Most of these religions simply longed to find a place where they could practice their beliefs in peace. At last census a full 36% of the population of the virtual worlds practiced some form of religious devotion. From Baptists to Mormons, from Catholics to Protestants, from Shias to Sunnis to Sufi to Bah'', from Conservative to Reform Jewish, From Sikh to Hindu. There was even an entire world of Amish, though Humongous Testicles wasnt entirely sure how that had come about. There were also entire worlds devoted to worshipping Zeus and the Olympian, Osiris, Odin, Kitsune and whatever else people wanted to worship. All of this completely separate from the wacky modern practice of worshiping each servers governing AIs. Some people actually treated these beings as Gods, though they clearly were not. Though, Humongous reflected, technically speaking, within their own extremely limited areas of expertise, these AI were omnipotent, omniscient, immortal and sometimes even responded to prayer. And whose fault is that, Representative Savonarola yelled back not even letting the noise and clamor die down. Or for that matter allowing Amita to announce him. His figure stood in the center of the stadium with eyes aflame with impassioned righteousness. Savonarola lived on his own private virtual world he called Florence. Nobody knew where hed come from or who he actually was. All they knew was that he usually wore the garb of a Dominican Monk and was every bit as wealthy as he was extremely Anti-Earth. We once kept the bodies of the humans who digitalized on Earth in suspended animation. If they decided they didnt like our worlds, they were free to come back and reenter their own body. But then your own radical right wing terrorist organizations destroyed that. How many bodies were destroyed when the bombs set by ???? ?????? went off. And after that, which religiously led fundamentalist governments decreed that bodies of people going digital were too valuable to be wasted. Which countries ruled that they could be mulched for hydroponic nutrients and soil fertilizer! ???? ?????? had been a terrorist organization that combined a sect of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism with an offshoot of the Aryan Nation. This group was less interested in race as they were with saving pure humans from sub-human virtual shmucks. In 2102, dressed in their customary shaved heads and Payots, swastika and star of David, theyd used their resources to infiltrated and blow-up 43 cryogenic storage facilities where hundreds of thousands bodies had been kept in case their virtual owns wanted to reembrace their old lives and live on earth again. It was the equivalent of crossing the Elbe in terms of Earth and Server World relations. The moment when ???? ?????? had destroyed those bodies was the point when the split between the Earth and the rest of the solar system became political doctrine. Those with curiosity, intellect, and a sense of adventure journeyed away from a dying earth, was an exaggeration. There was however, a form of self-selection in the exodus into the solar system. The 2102 bombings of the cryogenic storage buildings had never been forgotten. The National Mall on the 21st Century North America Server had a memorial to the lost bodies. Every year Humongous as President, ceremonially laid a wreath. The outpouring of grief on that day was very real. Citizens would stop what they were doing and talk about what they had been doing when the bombs went off. The server worlds had not gone to war with Earth, but it had been a close thing. Amita was pounding her gavel frantically, but Savonarola wouldnt yield the floor. What does the Earth have to offer us. Holding on to this past is a wasted kind of hubris. Did Homo Sapiens mourn their dying Homo Neanderthalensis brothers, or did they just move onward building and focus on building civilization. So what if earth cities choke on their own ignorance, and die by their own hands. We have done more than enough for them. We have spent more than enough of our own hard earned wealth on a civilization that simply spits in our faces. I say let them burn in their own ignorance. Let them decay in their own provincialism. Let these miserable relics of our past go into the oblivion of extinction they so properly deserve. Any of you who would like to evolve, can join us. Otherwise I am sure your science has proven that your Heavens will welcome you. The Earth delegation was on their feet, yelling and most of the Server World delegation joined them. The truth was, even the most pro-Earth Server Worlder considered the Earth to be a drain on the economy and didnt like the strains of fanaticism that had taken hold. Order, Order! Order on the Floor, and pounding her gavel, Amita was finally able to quiet the room. The Chair would like to recognize Alfred McGuffin, Said Amita standing 10 meters high and glaring at the room as if daring any delegation to start yelling chaotically again. Thank you Amita, said delegate McGuffin. Gentlemen and Ladies. Server World Denizens and Earthlings. Delegates and Ambassadors. Eggplant. I realize that we have our differences. I think that we can all agree that there are extremely few things we all agree upon. Momentous issues like those facing us today will not be solved in this debate. Clearly the call by the earth for thousands of more ships is unlikely. The resources of the Server Worlds were stretched to their limit building the current fleet of ten. Ten ships I should point out that are being loaded with happy future colonists. Political Prisoners. Muttered Humongous. Nobody knew much about Alfred McGuffin. He was a mysterious figure who had come out of nowhere and had established his own Server World. As a moderate he held a lot of sway in Server World politics. For whatever reason, he was also as respected on Earth as a digital Human could be. I believe gentlemen, that it is in our interests to accommodate earth somewhat and build another 10 ships. They are after all designed for reuse, and will certainly come in handy as we move outward in the galaxy. I also believe that along with those 10 extra ships, an additional 50 more should be built in the colonies at Alpha Centauri, Bernards Star and the rest of the sites of future colonies. Think about it gentlemen, out there are resources that are just waiting to be used. Can we not spare a little bit for the home-world? Earth faces a crisis of population, and something should clearly be done. And in exchange for this accommodation, People of Earth, I believe that some relaxation of your rules on digitalization should take place. While I respect your beliefs. Certainly not all of your peoples believe exactly as you do. Long ago there was a term what was it multiculturalism. Certainly there must be people on earth would gladly join our community were it not for the restrictions the Faithful on your planet place on digitalization. In exchange for those 10 extra ships, for the potential of hundreds if not thousands more, I would think that allowing people to join our culture would be a small sacrifice? Amita Chana, I call for a vote. Said McGuffin. Amita Chan stood up and said, Alfred McGuffin calls for a vote. On the matter of a temporary exchange of 10 additional ships and building an additional 50 at each extra-solar system colony in exchange for earth lifting the restrictions on her citizens being digitalized, please vote aye or nay or abstain. Every delegate in the assembly had access to a voting button. Server World Clones could access the system through their cybernetics, but earth had to manually press buttons, and that took a while. After about 10 minutes. Ten minutes of muttering and grumbling, Amita announced the vote. The vote from the Earth is: - 39% yes - 35% no, - 26% abstain. The vote from the Server Worlds is: - 43% yes, - 45% no, - 12% abstain. The yes vote wins. So the yes vote won, even though there were more no votes coming from the server worlds. Yet one more relic of a time when Earth had been a respected member. These days though these days Earth was a backward mess of fundamentalism and reactionary politics, due to its honorary position as the birthplace of humanity, they had an oversized political presence at this assembly. Close votes were always decided by their vote. A fact that enflamed many people in the anti-Earth community. One more thing, on top of one more thing. Things clearly needed to change. Chapter 15 - A Hard Fought Victory As the lights went back on in the assembly room President Humongous Testicles tried to make a quick dash for the door. Robert Loblaw, his chief of staff however, was there waiting for him. It was as if hed somehow anticipated President Humongous incredibly obvious plan of sneaking out. Mr. President, you wanted to speak with Mr. Smith of Yoyodyne. Shall I send him in? said the Chief of Staff. Bob, youre a real buzz kill. Has anyone ever told you that? Sure, why not, send him in. Humongous plopped himself back into his chair. He looked over at El Presedente and the Prime Minister and said, you want to stick around for this, or do you want me to jerk him around while you guy high tail it out of here? This meeting is going to be agony enough. I will stay. Some of us take our duties as Heads of State, seriously, said Kimberly Clark-Trudeau. I too will stay. Said Presedente Fernando Ortega. The misadventures of el Humongous Cojones have many followers in my country. There is even talk of making a telenovela. As I watch you fail in your negotiations I will bring back many stories to tell my people of this journey. Hey! said Humongous. Robert Loblaw came into the room and with him came Mr. Smith from Yoyodyne. Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems was very particular about their employees. When they were on the job they were all named Mr. Smith, and they all looked almost exactly like Hugo Wallace Weaving. Though not quite enough to infringe upon any copyrights. So I hear that one of your Labs was raided by Gamers this morning. Said Humongous trying to throw Mr. Smith off balance. Terrorists Mr. President. They came in, and left a swath of destruction in their wake. They killed our NPCs and infected our computer systems with some sort of virus. We havent been able to determine the purpose of that virus as of yet. So these terrorists did nothing else besides leave some sort of virus? I got a virus on my PC a month ago. It made the AI in my computer think it was a dog. All day it sat on my desk whining because had no legs to play fetch. Tech services came in and cleaned it off. What sort of research was Yoyodyne performing at that facility anyway? Last I heard, you were doing research on how to make what was it Bob Loblaw? Said the President. The Robert Loblaw spoke up, and said A hybrid cat and dog. A Hybrid cat and dog? Sounds stupid to me. Does it sound stupid to you Madame Prime Minister Kim? Said the President. Not really Humongous. I would imagine that there would be a market for something that looks like a Cat but has all of a Dogs loyalty. Replied Canadas Prime Minister. What about you el Presidente? Do you imagine one day going out to play fetch with your dog, and all your half Lab half Persian only wants to do is cough up hairballs, play with yarn, and rub up against your leg? Sounds useless to me. Then before the el Presidente could answer the great and wise Humongous Testicles, President of these United States, turned to Mr. Smith and said Why are you bringing this to me? Gamers will do what Gamers do. Of course your facilities got raided. Did you have a great boss monster there? Massive Loot. Hours of Epic Fun? I seriously doubt that you came all this way because your precious what do you call them anyway Cogs? Dats? Dachshiamese? Got a teeny tiny virus. There is gamer insurance that can cover your loss. All registered adventurers, and legitimate corporations, pay into it for situations just like this one. The cat and dog experiments were, I admit a cover story to keep the facilities true nature secret. There were no actual cats or dogs at the facility except a stray that answered to the name Mr. Sulla who showed up from time to time. And while I am afraid that I cannot tell you the exact nature of our research said Mr. Smith. Bull hockey! You want my help, you give me the details. I am not going to let this escalate like the Cedar Rapids Godzilla incident. If I am going to have giant radioactive chameleons blending in with the Downtown Washington DC background, or Laser guided chickens clucking and pecking in Lenfant Plaza I want to know about it. I already have Chelsea Clinton XXIV campaigning to steal my Presidency for Christ Sake! It isnt even primary season. Mr. Smith paused. He was obviously communicating with someone via his cybernetic interface. Now that Humongous though about it, Yoyodyne must have spent a fortune custom designing a clone that looked and sounded almost exactly like Hugo Wallace Weaving except different enough to avoid a copyright suit. The President wondered if Yoyodyne had managed to get ahold of any of the actors actual DNA or if they had just reengineered it from movies. Yoyodyne would have had to track down the real Hugo Wallace Weaving, grave site. They would have had to dig up his corpse, sample his DNA, added a few select mutagens to keep the legal department happy. Or maybe they had custom designed the DNA. It would be enough, the genome for blue eyes, dimples, piercing glare were all fairly simple. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. Either method indicated planning and cost. Especially when you considered they must have grown a whole set of pseudo Hugo Wallace Weaving clones for whatever business they did on Earth. Mr. Smith spoke up I have been authorized to let you know that we were doing research into toilets and showers for the Arc Ship project. What? Toilets and Showers for the Arc Ship project. Mr. Smith repeated. You mean to tell me that the 10 ships weve built to hold the future of humanity in suspended animation as they cross through the boundless reaches of space, carrying our legacy of genes further and further outwards into distant and unexplored reaches of space, that these 10 ships might have compromised toilets? Why do they have toilets in the first place? The people onboard are in suspended animation. And why do you think the gamers targeted the toilets? Do you think that the gamer virus has something to do with deep-space swirlies? In a word, said Mr. Smith, yes. Yes to Swirlies? Kim, Fernando, what say you we hold Mr. Smiths head in the toilet. Who wants to flush first! Yelled Humongous. Yes, to infected toilets in our interstellar fleet. This was a highly organized and tactical attack that was meant to strike at the very heart of Yoyodyne Industries deep space engineering and development departments. My corporation demands that you find these terrorists and bring them to justice. Mr. Smith, you still havent given me one solid reason to bother. Ill be honest. I think the problem you are having with your toilets is hilarious. Do you agree Prime Minister? El Presidente? Hilarious right? As much as I personally find, the idea that some sleeping corpse-sicle will stumble out of their suspended animation pod, try to take a massive dump only to discover a fountain of toilet water shooting out of their porcelain space-throne and into their bung hole, to be deeply disconcerting it does not seem to be a matter of national and international security at the very highest levels. And Im the very highest level. So I still dont see why this involves me. They planted a virus. So what? Run an anti-virus. And as to the highly organized and tactical from what I have been told, they were driving a truck with the words Free candy written on the side, while playing the music Pop Goes the Weasel on the loudspeakers. To me that doesn''t sound like a serious attack, it sounds like a gamer guild having fun. What else arent you telling me? Humongous Testicles eyes tried to bore into Mr. Smiths very soul. Some of Humongous political opponents had described this gaze as deeply creepy and borderline offensive. But all President Humongous Testicles cared was that it yielded results. Mr. Smith looked at the President. His Hugo Wallace Weaving eyes resistant to the implied alpha male nature of Humongous gaze. President Humongous Testicles almost whipped it out right there, as he once had during a debate with a rival in senatorial race. He almost dropped his pants to show Mr. Smit who was the bigger man, but then at the last moment, realized that he was wearing a clone body and was, at the moment simply ordinary sized. Mr. Smith smiled as if in that instant he knew hed won a hard fought victory. Nothing Mr. President. The terrorist gamers came in, killed some security, planted a virus and left. We wanted you to be aware of this. We hoped you could take steps. I see our thoughts were wrong. Mr. Smith smirked. He had won this round. If that is all, I hope you dont mind if I take my leave. President Humongous Testicles waved him off. Go. Go. As always Mr. Smith. Once Mr. Smith was out of the room, el Presidente said Senior Humongous, what was that about. I do not understand. Toilets. Who cares. Nobody cares, Fernando. Nobody cares. That is the reason why they came to me. They wanted to tell me something had gone wrong at one of their important facilities, but they didnt want to tell me what. Now they can say that the President of the United States knows what is going on, and shift some of the blame and responsibility, without actually letting me know anything. Kimberly Clarke-Trudeau said This kind of politics is abooot diverting suspicion, el Presidente. She turned towards the fridge in their VIP lounge. We still have Pizza, a two-four of Sleemans, plus some Modelo Especial and Blue Moons. Wanna get drunk and cause an international kerfuffle? Maybe get see if we can get kicked off the planet. Id love to, but Ive got Chelsea Clinton XXIV to think about. Ever since that shikse realized she could simply clone herself to get around term limit laws, a version of her is always campaigning. Why on my server, I ask and keep asking myself. Why my server. Said President Humongous Testicles. Au revoir then Hasta luego Humongous Bye everyone. Chapter 16 - “Groan! Mumble-Mumble!” Said Jesus Wept Jesus Wept woke up out of a dream of a tiny yet scrumptiously voluptuous Asian woman nestling his head between her massive boobs. He turned in his sleep and slobbered a little bit, ooooooh baby! Ahhhhhh! He reached out, with his left hand to cup her breast, first one, then he moved to the second, then in his deep lucid dreaming Jesus moved past the stitching to feel her beautiful and massive third and then fourth boob. Wow baby, so curvy, totally more to go around, he groaned. His hand moved downward searching for a vagina exploring yet a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, an eighth boob. Still no vagina. Why so quiet girl, you gotta understand baby, a mans got needs. I know you want it and I want it bad too. Now both hands were searching around, frantically looking for a vagina, and all he could find were boobs, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. In any normal situation, this would be paradise, but now this lucid dream was rapidly becoming a nightmare. Jesus Wept open his eyes. Visions of a voluptuous women disappeared from his mind. All around him was white. He was lying on a padded white floor; the breasts he had been feeling was the pillowy white expanse that had been sewn in breast like grids of padding. This padding stretched across the floor, walls, and ceiling. There didnt seem to be any door, but on the wall closest to him there was a small metal slot near the floor. Jesuss smaller head said, Boobs? Nop little me, no Boobs. Up until that point it was almost a perfect dream wasnt it? said Jesus Boobs said the Jesus other head agreeing. There was a ball of light floating near the ceiling which lit the entire room. In the corner was a floating blob of water C a water elemental that provided a steady stream of cold fresh water. Next to the water elemental was void hole in the floor. Except for the padding this was some pretty fancy digs. High end loony bin decor. Magic. If Jesus had known more magic maybe he could have taken advantage of the situation. But Jesus didnt like magic. Oh, in Jesus lizard brain, he knew that it was true, magic made things blow up real nice. Jesus was a simple man who liked simple things. More of an analogue kind of dude, not digital. Jesus knew what he liked, and Jesus liked guns and explosives, not spells and hocus pocus hoodoo. Which isnt to say that Jesus had not learned any Magic. It was hard to be part of a raid group without picking something up. Early on, Jesus had gone through a phase. He had talents. Jesus could perform a couple of spells with ease. 1) Jesus could magically undo a bra. 2) Jesus could create a gust of wind that was strong enough to blow a skirt up 3) And Jesus had just enough x-ray vision to see through panties. Useful skills one and all. Jesus Wept wondered why hed been put here. He wondered why God had created the heavens and the earth. Jesus wondered why humanity lived, and why humanity died. He contemplated eternity. Then Jesus realized that he had a boner so he masturbated for 10 minutes in order to get rid of it. Tiny Asian girls with at least 16 breasts, sometimes more, merged with the image of a very naked Shrike hed seen just this morning. Damn he should have taken screen caps. Was it still this morning? Jesus checked his internal clock and discovered that his clock was greyed out. That was strange. Then he checked his logout button. That was greyed out too. Climaxing, Jesus Wept all over the slot in the wall, Jesus realized that there was really only one thing left that he could do. He took off his shirt and pants and tied them in a firm knot. There was nothing on the ceiling to attach his clothes too. That would make things harder. Instead Jesus lay down on the ground, raised his leg and tied off one end around his leg, the other end around the neck of his smaller more fragile head. One small movement from his leg, and the knot would tighten cutting off his air supply. Then he kicked his leg down forcing it to the ground, choking himself in a noose until he died. An indeterminate time later Jesus Wept woke up after respawning again. He resisted the self-imposed illusion that the cushioned floor was made of boobies. Okay, maybe he tried to suckle on the stitching a bit. Life wasnt that kind. His arms were wedged behind his back. He couldnt move them. Jesus open his eyes and looked around. Same room, same padded walls, same padded floor. Except now he was wearing a straight jacket. No chance of choking himself to death. Strange. Jesus had never died and then been reborn without having the option of where to be reborn. Something odd was definitely going on. What do you think little head of mine? This is strange isnt it? Jesus Wept said to his other head. His other head stuck his tongue out and made a raspberry sound. Ppppffffttttt Yup, I agree. It does kinda suck. Said the much smarter wiser Jesus head. The slot in the wall opened up and someone slid a plate of mashed potatoes with cheese and gravy, plus green beans, and a cheese burger with bacon into the room. At least they werent trying to starve him. It was hard eating without using his hands. Jesus had to stuff his face right into the food, and eat like a dog, directly from the plate. Jesus kept the tasty Burger for himself, and let his smaller head eat the veggies, when it was the smaller heads turn to eat. Jesus would have shared, but he didnt really like the taste of green beans and his smaller head didnt mind. They both shared the mashed potatoes. When they were done, both of their faces were covered with food. Gravy dripped from both of their foreheads, and the smaller Jesus had a green bean up his nose. Yummy said the smaller head. Yup. Good food. Said Jesus. Even though he was imprisoned by unknown and probably perverted captors who presumably wanted to perform anal probes on his virgin ass Jesus actually felt real comfy. The only things he really needed right now was booze and porn and this would be as perfect a meal as he might have made in his own apartment. Jesus turned and looked at his second head and said What do you think? We need booze and porn dont we. Jesuss second much smaller head said Fuckin-A Right on little buddy replied Jesus. Taking a look around the room, he spent about 5 minutes searching until he found a hidden video camera near the ceiling. Jesus stood in front of the camera, and yelled out the words I need booze and porn! Come on, is this Guantanamo or what? Isnt it against the Geneva convention that prisoners have access to Booze and Porn or something, man. Jesus would have waved his arms if he hadnt been in a straitjacket. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Nothing came not even an exceptionally horny Jesus. After a while it occurred to Jesus that maybe the camera didnt have audio. He thought about talking louder like he did with foreign people who spoke different languages, but decided that a better method was get better results. Are you thinking the same thing as I am, said Jesus 1 to a minuscule Jesus 2. Poop, said Jesus 2. Jesus Wept made his way over to the magic void hole in the center of the floor in order to discharge his meal bowels. Undoing his pants proved difficult. He had to step on one pant leg with his opposite leg, and pry them off with his feet. Luckily they had an elastic waistband. Jesus squatted over the magic void hole, and then purposely moved one step to the left, and clenched his muscles forcing feces to leave his intestines out his bum hole and onto the floor. The poo came out in little balls. Jesus hadnt been eating enough fiber recently. When he was done taking his poo, Jesus stood, he backed backwards into the wall near the void hole and wiped his ass on the well cushioned faux breasts wall padding. When he was done he turned to his smaller head and said What do you think? Stinks Your right it does stink, whos a smart little head. You are, thats who, youre a smart little head. Said Jesus. Fuckin-A, said the smaller head. Well, here goes nothing, said Jesus. Jesus bent over, and with his teeth and lips picked up one of his turd balls in his mouth. He walked over to the wall opposite the video camera still carrying the turd in his mouth. It tasted like shit. When he was at the far wall he began to use the turd to write. In big clear brown letters, Jesus carefully wrote the word Beer & Porn! on the wall. The room smelt absolutely disgusting, but Jesus had smelt much worse so it didnt bother him that much. The Jesus walked over to the slot in the floor, sat down and began to wait expectantly. After a half an hour, when nothing had come. Jesus was getting bored. Me bored said Jesuss smaller head. Me too. Oh well, I guess we will have to move our timeline up. Jesus stood up and walked over to the void hole which he had not quite used as a bathroom. Beside the void hole was the floating bubble of water; the water elemental. Normally people who lived in big fancy mansions used an elemental like this as a bidet and maybe a second element a source of fresh water. Here they expected him to use it as both. Since the water was always fresh and clean no matter what you put into it, it was really a nice thing to have in a prison. Oh well, are you ready little guy? Yup. See you on the other side. Said Jesus who plunged his entire face into the water and began to take deep breaths. Shortly after that Jesus drowned and died. An indeterminate time after Jesus was reborn he woke up, on a hospital bed. His arms and legs were bound to the bed. In his mouth was an S&M ball gag. Despite the fact that Jesuss head was strapped down to the bed, he had just enough give to look over at his second head, that also had a much smaller ball gag stuffed into its mouth and was similarly strapped to the bed in a way that didnt allow much head movement. A needle with a nutrient drip was in his arm. Jesus though I didnt see a log out button that time too. Whoever these people are they must have disabled it. I didnt think that was possible. I also couldnt choose where I would respawn. Strange. What do you think second head? Jesus imagined his second head agreeing with him. After a while, a man and a woman came into the room. The man looked almost exactly like Mr. Smith as played by Hugo Wallace Weaving C but with enough differences as to not violate anybodys copyrights C from some old twentieth century movie he could vaguely remember about virtual reality. What was it You arent helping small head. Ah yes, The Texas Chainsaw massacre. The woman was dressed as a nurse, wearing a short white dress, with a big red cross on it. She checked his vital signs and made sure he was firmly secured in his hospital bed. I am surprised at your groups persistence. You have all tried finding ways to vex us. Well, you will be happy to learn that we have everything well in control now. Though Ive never seen someone actually eat shit and die before. The footage of your exploits have been quite entertaining. Mr. Smith said. Groan. Mumble-Mumble. Said Jesus Wept. Groan. Mumble-Mumble. Said Jesus Wepts smaller head. Of course we could make the terms of your imprisonment much more comfortable for you. Maybe even provide you with a supply of the booze and porn you requested. If you help us capture your leader, the one you call Necrobump. He has proven to be extremely elusive. Said Mr. Smith. Groan. Mumble-Mumble. Said Jesus Wept. Groan. Mumble-Mumble. Said Jesus Wepts smaller head. Oh well, our analytic and psychological team expected you to be uncooperative. Ill have you know we tried using the classic Prisoners dilemma of Game Theory on your friends with no success. Impressive. With you, well Our intel indicated that you simply werent smart enough and too sociopathic to care about your friends well-being. But similarly, youre self-interest wouldnt let you betray your leader. Oh well. Dont bother trying to kill yourself again. This building is cut off from the Server Worlds, and we control the respawning process here. You will be here for a long-long time. Jesus glared at Mr. Smith. The nurse in the small dress was done refilling the intravenous nutrient drip. Mr. Smith turned to her and said done? Yes Sir. Good, lets get out of here. Mr. Wept. Good luck and enjoy the quiet. As Mr. Smith moved to the door a sudden breeze came rose out of nowhere in the room and blew the Nurses short skirt up. Simultaneously her bra popped off. Groan! Mumble-Mumble! Said Jesus Wept Chapter 17 - Gregors Dungeon The Washington DC sewers were literally a dungeon. Once upon a time, a former mayor of the city of Washington DC, like all mayors, had a dream of cutting costs. He looked high and low. First he asked the teachers unions to take a pay cut but they said no. Then he went to the police unions and they too said no. The Mayor then tried to cut the bus and metro system schedule, but that was already stretched too tight. Then one day the Mayor had a marvelous idea. He would could free up money and lay off workers if the city sewer system were a free autonomous dungeon under the control of city council. With great patience, some initial expense, and the strength of his convictions, an exploratory committee was formed. Over the proceeding two years this committee went into discussions, their mandate caused a fight between five to seven subcommittees. Several hundred neighborhood council meetings were called and citizens expressed their concerns. A dozen community organizers expressed their outrage. And two different school districts wondered what about the children. Until one magical day when they all came together holding hands in joy and decided upon the taking the valiant path of dumping the whole shebang onto municipal head of the Department of Public Works by secretly voting him into transforming into the citys new sewer system. On a lonely day in November, Gregor Alexopoulos had walked into the center of the District of Columbias sewer system. Gregor was an avid bird watcher and cat enthusiast. The two hobbies might seem mutually exclusive; one, after all ate the other. But Gregor enjoyed taking long hikes along he Appalachian trail looking for rare species of warblers. At home his cats kept him company. Gregor had been a confirmed bachelor for the last thirty years. Sometimes he wondered if he was gay, that some feeling hidden even from himself could have caused him to sabotage the few romances hed known in during his life. Other times he knew that he liked women. It simply was that a few bad experiences had left him emotionally vulnerable and unwilling to share his life with anyone other than his cats and his birds. Stripped naked, Gregor stood in a room at the very epicenter of the sewer system surrounded by the mayor and a group of political acolytes ahem appointees. The mayor very calmly explained to Gregor why he was chosen i.e. that he had nobody to miss him. Then went on to explain the grand voyage of civic duty that Gregor Alexopoulous was about to embark upon. Ceremoniously Gregor was strapped to the alter screaming against his will. The city council, 3 school superintendents, 23 community activists, a dozen aldermen, and the new head of the City of Washington DCs Department of Public Works, surrounded by a team of assistants and interns chanted arcane and sinister spells to deep and forgotten eldritch spirits. And, as had been pre-arranged by the local DC government with the assistance of the Legislative, Executive Branch, and Judicial Branches of The 21st Century Server American Federal Government in co-operation with several of the darker Servers Core AI Gods, Gregor Alexopoulos had woken up the next morning from unsettling dreams, and found himself changed into a tiny malevolent gemstone. A powerful dungeon core. In the lore of the Manga and light novels, there are countless stories about wise souls stripped of their humanity in death yet somehow reincarnating into compassionate dungeon entities. These largely benevolent beings, dig tunnels, evolve monsters, spawn treasure, and guard hidden mysteries. Gregors new job was the same as his old one. To keep the sewers clean. It was a boring job. For the first few years he was simply a tiny gem stone that sat in the center of a vast labyrinth of pipes, steam tunnels, outflow conduits, pumping stations, and grates. Day after day, in order to for the city to recoup their investment, mages from the Department of Financial Wizardry had tromped through his caustic outflow, simply to fill Gregor with as much Mana as he could hold. This steady diet of rich mana caused him to grow exponentially. The way Gregor saw it, a steady diet of nutritionally rich Washington DC City Mages as well as any other superfluous bureaucrats would have caused him to grow even faster, but when Gregor tried to chow down on his captors, and to pick his teeth with their bones, his requests were, put euphemistically, firmly denied. As Gregor grew, from tiny dungeon core to medium sized dungeon core, he began to claim the miles and miles of pipe as his own. Still enslaved and nursing his truth strength, he eventually allowed sanitation workers access and guided them to trouble spots. Gregor worked with the city government to root out the local thieves guild and smugglers from using the sewer system as a place to travel and organize. Sometimes he helped to organized rescue parties when children playing near outflow pipes or manholes fell in. As a reward he was given shiny baubles to play with and hide as dungeon treasure. He was given the citys stray cats population for his dungeon monsters. And was allowed to claim parts of the shore of the Potomac where trees lined the river banks and where every spring and fall the migrating warblers would pass. Gregor hated all of it. In his previous life as the head of the Citys Maintenance Engineers, he had worked closely with the department of city planning to ensure that the city functioned properly. Hed gloried in red tape, and the tedious day to day routine that only someone with a degree in Civil Engineering, an MBA in Business Management, and no social life could enjoy. But as a dungeon, Gregor had a more primal desire. That desire was to kill. At first this instinct was small. In one recurring crystalline dream, Gregor envisioned DCs Mayor walking down a long passageway. Trap after trap, whittling away the Mayors hit points. With glee, Gregor imagined the citys official stepping onto a slime. Gregor chuckled as the Mayors leg was eaten away by the slimes acid. Slowly the Mayor crawled forward in excruciating pain, inch by inch now. First with two legs, then with one leg, and then with none. On the verge of death, the Mayor finally arrived in Gregors final room. Upon beholding the glory that was Gregors the Crystal heart, the Mayor, a man who he had once thought of as a friend, could do nothing but crawl forward in his own blood, puss, and vomit, crawling in supplication begging Gregors forgiveness and promising to appoint a committee to look into reversing the transformation. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. A glow, a vibrant pulsing evil that enveloped the room, slowly grew from Gregor gemstone body. Then a monster stepped out from behind a Corinthian column. Not just any monster. A boss monster stepped out from the depth of the shadows. Shrouded in darkness and reaking of sulfur and pain, slowly, ever so slowly, over hours and days, devoured the screaming whining begging District of Columbia Mayor inch by inch, snapping his bones and eating his flesh. Yes I can increase the output flow in tunnels 2 and 6, said Gregor in his monthly teleconference with District of Columbia leadership. At first, in Gregors path to domination, he was only able to overcome the minds of feeble minions. The cats they gave him to play with were first. They became his senses, scouring the tunnels, hunting for trespassers. They became ubiquitous in the Sewage tunnels. The rats were second. Rats were loyal servants who scuttled up and down the sewers looking for snacks, and fed his cats. Gregor took control of their minds and they began to worship him like a rat god. Then came the goldfish, the piranhas, the lionfish, the clownfish, the zebra tetras, the sharks, the eels, the cichlids and the loaches. Then the baby alligators, snakes, and tarantulas grown too large for their aquariums and flushed down the toilets and into Gregors control. The seeds of an army was building. From the areas were Gregors body met the outside, he added insects and bats and birds. At one of the opening of his outflow chambers there was a small ragtag gathering of homeless men and women, of meth heads, and other assorted down and out civs living at the fringes of life. Soon, these too became his servants. Out of the way, Gregor dug breeding pits for minions to spawn. There he encouraged them to breed and to grow. In these pits Gregor performed horrid genetic experiments. Escaped house pets named fluffy and whiskers were forced into death matches so that the strong would get stronger, the weak would die off. The culmination of his fiendish plan took nineteen long years. The Mayor he knew had been voted out, new ones with different priorities were voted in. The mages came down into his depths more and more infrequently. The monthly teleconferences became yearly teleconferences and then stopped altogether. The strength of the bonds which enslaved him wore down, and the budget from the city to renew and replenish these prison bonds tapered off. Gregor the Patient and Unyielding was treated more as a thing than with the Reverence a Mighty and Powerful Dungeon like he, deserved. Gregor knew that mortals should fear and tremble when they said his name. Human beings and civil servants should quiver and wet themselves at his might, not discuss budget shortfalls and actuarial statistics. Did they not know that he was Gregor the Omnipotent? He stayed silent, easily biddable, for the nineteen years it took them to forget. Then the time had come for Gregor to make his move. His body stretched the entire length of the city. From Mt Vernon to Fairfax; from Gaithersburg to Largo; he lay beneath the surface all seeing, all powerful, all sewage consuming. His evil chuckles were methane leaks of destruction that savaged the cherry blossoms and defenestrated the windows on L street. The first to die were the Mages from the department of Magic feeding Gregor his paltry, now yearly ration of mana. While they were working, mutated land eels that had been absorbing electrical current from the underground electric lines unleashed their deadly voltage. The mages, depleted from feeding Gregor could not resist as thousands of watts flooded through their bodies and they fried. The next to die were the teams of maintenance and construction workers wandering through Gregors sewers. Gregor had been breeding the Cats with the Alligators and with a group of homeless men and women who took shelter in his run off tunnels. He called these strange part cat, part alligator, part human, Nip Heads because of their soul numbing need for catnip, a remnant of the meth dependences that had driven their human forefathers down into the tunnels in the first place. Timmy who had fallen down a well, children who were playing in his aqueducts, the guild of thieves he had allowed access to his hidey-holes. All were similarly purged that day, feeding the hungering monstrosities that rose from his depths in wave after wave of killing death. Razor kitties. Tabby sharks. Mole men. Death bringers all of them. It was only when Gregor the Terrifying made the attempt to add the tunnels of the DC Metro to his domain that he suffered defeat. At first, his taste of the metro system was glorious. The walls of the underground subway stops fell open, and his minions and creatures chewed on the bones and tasted the blood of the tens of thousands of Civs and NPC commuters going to work that morning. But the subway system was too important to the city. Scores of Gamers and Adventurers, some coming from far away Server Worlds rushed to beat back this new threat. It was all a game to them, a chance to gain experience, to fight a truly magnificent fight. Gregor hated them all. Fortunately, because he had been planning his emancipation for years, Gregors size was unmatched. He had even added a hidden fifth and sixth level that he retreated to when he began his plan. The gamers were able to beat him back from the subway system, at a heavy cost in lives. His minions bled as much as the adventurers did. But advancing into the sewers they could not find his core. He had hidden it too well. Year after year, teams of gamers came down into the sewers explore, to level. Every once in a while the sewage system would clog and a team of heavily armed warriors, mages, gunners, and priests emerged from the adventurers guild to deal with the threat, leading plumbers and sanitations workers deep into the first level of the dungeon, and then defending them while they did their work. Every once in a while a toilet or a sink would back up, and hot burning death would crawl up from the bowels of the earth to bring terror into Washington DC bathroom goers everywhere. Until a state of stalemate between the city and the sewers was achieved. It was into this sewer that Necrobump climbed into when he escaped the fight where his team and friends from I like Big Booty were killed. Chapter 18 - 1,000,000 Gold Coins Sorry I haven''t been updating much. School started up again, and I don''t quite know my writing schedule yet. _____________________________________________________________________________________ By the way the labyrinth creaked and groaned, Necro could tell that Gregory hungered. Walking, in the light off his headlamp, Necro could see feral flashes of a cats eyes, prowling. These hungry, cowering, watching beasties followed him in the dark. If he were to die down here, his corpse would stripped to the bones. Nibbled and chewed upon by legions of cats, the slithery alligators, the shit-caked rats, and other less savory terrors of the darkness. Necrobump had had been down here for six days now. This morning he hadnt prepared for a solo dungeon dive. The raid at the research lab was supposed to have been a cake-walk. Instead at least three other parties of adventurers had been paid to ambush them as soon as theyd finished. It sounded like they had been waiting for them for at least a week, and had been paid to burn their gear and drops after his friends had been assassinated. To pay someone to sit in waiting simply for the moment a group of adventurers were done, boggled the mind. It had to be the people whod hired them to pull off this job. Nobody else knew their target. Hed worked with his team enough to trust each and every one of them. No, the people whod hired them for the job had set them up. It had to be them didnt it. Corporations were notoriously cheap, and paying for at least four teams, was expensive, but it still had to be the corporation that hired him. Who else would be interested? Which meant that the data hed recovered and encrypted was suddenly extremely valuable. If hed grabbed the right information. He needed to get out of this maze, to figure out what he had. And that was going to be hard, because frankly, and Necrobump hated admitting this to himself, he was lost. This dungeon crawl had started off fairly easily. The area he fell into was one of Gregors more widely travelled sections. The kiddy pool part of the dungeon. Easy low level monsters. Plenty of manhole covers, and sewage grates to climb in and out from. Lighting. Every part of this instance had was out there in tourist guides and internet blogs; mapped and bosses stats and weaknesses documented. The top level of Gregor between Van Ness and Silver Springs was a predictable newbie location. A great place to get experience, forage for resources, and kill low level stuff. Necrobump had run for six blocks, down a well-lit path of familiar sewage system, killing random mobs and even a floor boss that was about to wipe a party of drunk teenager adventurers. Necros goal was to choose a path that was easy to follow with lots of eye witnesses. Hed left a trail even a citizen or an eggplant could follow. It was then he found another manhole cover opened it up left ample evidence that he was leaving Gregor and then he slunk back into the dungeon. This time he moved with stealth. He knew this level of Gregor, knew the places where newbies and even powerful groups of adventurers were not supposed to go. Necro knew that people were following him. Even in the brief time hed surfaced, trying to leave a false trail out of Gregor, hed been pinged by five more of his personal safe-houses indicating they too had been breached. As a paranoid, he could accept that they might find two or three safe houses C but five? The level of hacking, observation, and scrying theyd needed to have done, well it baffled his mind. And if theyd found five did that mean that they had found all of them? Whoever was hunting down him and his team had obviously done their research. Every secret and hidden stash hed set up over the past twenty-five years had been taken. One of the locations he had never even told anybody about. The other four houses were places hed had Big Mike, Mike-Mike, and Lauren hide under a false trail of paperwork. All had been discovered. His only real hope was that, so far it didnt seem like they had discovered any of his hidden secrets, from the time before he had taken on his Necrobump persona. True these were, low level hidey-holes, filled with the simple basics a paranoid might need to get away, entire end of the world off the grid setups, but not the extravagant stocked fortresses hed used in these later years. But if they were clear, and Necro would make absolutely sure they were clear, they might be able to provide home base to get organized. After leaving a false trail out of the sewers, Necrobump had headed back into the darkness of Gregor. This time hed prioritized stealth, slinking deeper and deeper into Greogors uncharted and hidden depths. There were places where no adventurers went, they were simply too dangerous, or had bad experience point offerings, or just smelt funny. Places where even parties of well-balanced high leveled wannabe heroes passed through with caution, if at all. Then, deep inside the foreboding murk of Gregor, hed waited for four days, hidden down a cul-de-sac of darkness, surrounded by his extravagant and powerful wards. Gregor himself would probably block most divination spells and database queries, Necros work was probably overkill. But one could never be too careful. The problem now was getting out. Necro had been wandering, lost, for just about two days now. Holing a silenced handgun out in front of him while keeping, in his mind the form of custom fireball spell at the ready. Necro was pretty sure he was no longer on the second level. His mini-map UI had proved all but useless, but Necro was pretty sure that Gregor had moved hallways around in an effort to trap him. Necro quietly turned a corner. Lurking in the darkness up ahead there was yet another Alligator. It was the seventh Alligator yet today. Shit snappers hed started calling them. Necro could see it in flow of the filth and muck and shit. A bullet from his tiny little silenced berretta probably wouldnt have enough stopping force. He mainly had it out to take pot shots at the rats that scampered in the darkness. Instead Necro used the mana hed been storing to let 6 quick golf ball sized balls of fire flash into existence about two feet in front of him. A tiny drain on his stored Mana, but most of it came from the surrounding dungeon. All monster based dungeons were high mana zones, though Necro had heard of a science fiction dungeon, and he was sure there were others. Still Dungeons didnt have his particular skill. One after the other, quick like a bullet each ball of flames shot towards and through the alligator. These were not fireballs in the traditional sense, more like kiwi sized meteors. They had a burning solidness to them. And when combined with their speed, extreme heat, and accuracy, they were more than a match for any shit snapper. For a couple of seconds, the gator thrashed. The small amount of accumulated methane flashed blue and orange, then disappeared. Then the body of the reptile sunk into the central stream of darkness and disappeared. Necro walked on a bit further. He had a friend who did this for a living. There was a bounty on sewage alligators in New York City. But then New York didnt have the same problem with having a massive self-aware dungeon under its streets, that was purely a DC thing, but the big apples septic system had its own issues. Necro started to walk forward again. Lost in thought he almost missed a school of tiny vampiric flying goldfish-bats that must have awakened from the noise of the dying gator and came hurtling out of the darkness at Necro. Tiny gold and white bodies, covered in scales and fins, big fat bulgy goldfish eyes, and massive fruit bat wings out of their backs, plus fangs. Necro could not forget the blood-seeking, thirsting fangs. Necro immolated them with yet another fireball, this time one that filled the room. Not much experience down here. It was a shame. And the random drops sucked. His friend, Benny Profane the gator hunter, had taken his name from some late 20th century novel. Necro couldnt remember which one, something to do with Britain, head-slapping, and cleavage maybe. Necrobump had been along with him on a couple of hunts to see how it was done. Hunting alligators was an entirely different process than what Necro was doing. The idea was to stack the killed reptile in your inventory, not let them wash their way to rot and clog the sewers. Profane would probably faint. Each the bounty on each shit snapper skin was $100. More if you didnt take them to the city, but instead had an in with a froofroo shoe or purse manufacturer. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Civs didnt want them shimmying up the pipes and crawling out of the toilet when they were going to the bathroom. They might bite inappropriate places at inappropriate times. As Necro walked along in the darkness, lost and lost in his thoughts, he almost missed the light coming from up ahead. It was faint at first. Hard to distinguish between the light from his head lamp and from the deep blackness of everything. He slowed down. Dimmed his head lamp so that it was barely enough to see by. Then cautious step after cautious step Necro moved forward. The monsters down here were midlevel, between level 75-100, but it didnt hurt to be cautious. The source of the light was a strange creature sitting along the septic shore warming itself by the light of a camp fire flickering, fed by a fuel of broken garbage. The creature had a cats body, human arms, legs, a human head, and bird wings sprouting from its back. More specifically the creature had Magnolia warbler wings. It was then that Necro did as any solo adventurer would do when confronted by an unknown and possibly hostile entity in a malevolent dungeon. He tried to kill it. The same six tiny superheated superfast meteors shot out towards the cat, human, warbler hybrid. The fire crackled and fizzled as it shot forward only to stop when it struck and invisible wall. Necro tried again. This time with much a much more powerful fire assault. Six cannon ball sized balls of flame hurtling through space at the figure still casually warming itself at the fire, pretending as if it hadnt seen the hot flaming death bearing down upon it. This fire did nothing. Now Necro was pissed off. This must be some kind of Boss Monster, but nothing should be this difficult on this low a level. Unless Gregor had really been shuffling the floors and hallways around, at worst this should be the third floor of the dungeon. There should be modernly powerful alligators here, the occasional upper level cat or rat creature, swarms of vampiric goldfish bats, naked mole hounds, gelatinous cubes, poisonous slimes, some low ranking demonic entities, and that is about it. Still Necro began to gather the spell together. Six Basket Ball sized balls of fire, slowly came into being. Then the cat, human, bird held up one human hand, looked over at Necro and said in a voice that sounded breathless and tweety. Hold off Sir Necrobump. I have been waiting here to talk to you. Fuck you, Demon spawn. Im not going to fall for that twice. Yelled Necro, unleashing fiery hell yet again upon the strange figure in the dungeon. The cat-bird-man still remained unaffected. Sir Necrobump, this is getting tiresome. If you were your friend Shrike you might have a chance against me. But right now. Your balls of fire are far too weak. I am one of Gregors supreme bosses. He sent me to talk to you. I hope we can remain diplomatic. Pretending as if he didnt have any choice, Necro sat down and conjured a small fire elemental trying to act as casual and chill as possible while pretending that warming fire was actually warming him, and that he wasnt trying to figure out an angle that would ensure that he, Necro bump would come out on top of any fight. So, what do you want? What does Gregor want? And how do you know about me and my friends. Weve seen you down here before. You and your friends together have come on eight raids with noobs from your guild. You yourself, sir Necrobump have been down here sixteen times as a PUG, in your fire mage persona. As to what Gregor wants? He would like your loyalty of course. Swear your eternal self to Gregor and he will let you out. Be one of his minions and you will have more power than anybody in Washington DC. All the secrets in this city flow down here into the sewers eventually. The cat creature said in the voice of Gregor. You came all the way over here ask me to become a Dungeon spawn? Are you kidding? Thats one of the funniest things Ive heard in a while. I know exactly where I am, I can leave at any time. I just like killing gators. Its fun. And shooting rats well it brings up memories of watching movies like Bill and Teds Dumb and Dumber a century ago what was that famous quote I used to bulls-eye Wamp Rats in my TRS-80 back home. Theyre not much bigger than six inches. Who says Im not enjoying myself, said Necro. You are lost. Said the cat thing again in an emphatic voice. Gregor has made it so. In his infinite might and majesty he has shifted the boundries and the paths of this labyrinth so that the place where you stand is unmapped. There are no entrance and exit teleport portals, and the exit keeps on changing based on where you stand. There is no way out. Gregor would also like to point out that if you kill yourself, the ones that you flee from have taken eight of your respawn points. Take his offer. Living in a sewage system for eternity and sharing your seed with its creations is not such a bad life. As a prized specimen and boss monster, you would live a fairly luxurious life. There is much treasure down here and many unexplored wonders. No. Tell your boss no. If I die, I will simply respawn in one of my other locations. Gregor says that whomever is after me has taken 8 of my respawn points. Well I have over 25 points. Actually he had 19, but that didnt matter I might drop some stuff, but I can still get out of here. And I can always log off into the neutral territory of a starter zone in the hallway. Gregor has no way to enforce my obedience unless I swear to enslave myself to him, and even then there are limitations. I see. Said the cat-human-bird. You do indeed know your rights. Yes unless you swear yourself to him there is nothing that he can do to you. You are free to leave. So then how about this. Sir Necrobump, you are a mercenary are you not? Gregor is extremely interested in the information that you hold from this raid you were on. It appears as if Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems is behind a massive scheme, but Gregor does not believe that they are the ones behind things. Nor can Gregor fathom the why. The all mighty Dungeon of Washington DC had thought that if you became a servant to his lordship Gregor, you would willingly give him this data. But you are a mercenary, true? Gregor would like to offer you your freedom from this place in exchange for the Data you hold in your head. Why not simply walk out of here, with no worries. And if it is gold that you want, Gregor has plenty of gold and items to give you. Quench your desire for treasure, save your life, gain some experience points. Is that not what you adventurers seek the most? Why Why do you care? You had a contract, it was rendered invalid by one of the parties involved. Enter into a new contract. Gregor tells you that on his word as a foul creature of evil, and as a creator of chaos and discord, that he can be trusted. Necrobump thought about it for a while. Just how much treasure. Gregor offers 1,000,000 coins of gold, in the exchange medium of the hallway. This information must be worth an incredible amount if people are willing to go the lengths theyve been going to get it. I will ask you again. Whats in the data? Gregor doesnt know. But he has a suspicion. You humans think that you are the center of the Universe. That this new digital life has made you the most powerful creatures in the universe. To a certain extent you are correct. But these world servers are much more than that and humans have ceased to be as central a role as you think yourselves to be. Instead, many people believe that each world has become like a cell. Government and the rules of the of the world functioning like the nucleus of this cell, its institutions are organelle and enzymes and channels and vesicles. And the hallway has become simply another channel to pass nutrients between each cell. Humans in this are nothing more than necessary chemicals like ATP. But many people in this world believe that at some point, the organism that has spread its branches across our solar system will wake up and become aware. Gregor believes that what you have in your hands is either a program to wake up this great organism. Or to kill it, and make sure it never awakens.
Oh yeah, since I have been mocked for my naming conventions, I offer this as proof http://www.sadanduseless.com/2016/06/internet-names-animals/ Chapter 19 - Towering Inferno Please, dont treat me like a child. said Necrobump. You are talking about some sort of grand solar system spanning intelligence. I cant believe that something like that is even possible. And how would you even know? It isnt as if you have scientists on your payroll. I actually do have scientists on my payroll, said the evil dungeon Gregors stand-in. I have several above ground installations, places that employ actual humans as go between myself and my interests. Scientists, lobbyists, adventurers, retail shopkeepers, librarians, art consultants, book buyers, a fence or two, there are several hundred people on my payroll. We dungeon are well known for producing loot and resources; why would adventurers dungeon dive otherwise? Instead of just providing random drops, I simply sell a percentage of the epic loot I spawn to fund my surface operations. Controlling above ground locations are simply a matter of killing off all the occupants, and taking control of the places control points. Why do you think I keep sending my minions up through the sewers into peoples toilets and showers. Control Muhahahaha! Why are you telling me all of this? Asked Necrobump. Im a villain. An Evil Overlord. Unfortunately, the gaming system requires me to reveal all my fiendish plan to anyone completely in my power. It is a holdover from Cheryl Waynes original programming and quite frankly it is a terrible pain in the ass, but nothing can be done about that. Ive petitioned the Demigod of Monsters and Demigod of Dungeons, but nothing doing the Demigod of Adventurers and the God of Game Mechanics think my limitations are funny and sometimes like to come down here and make fun of me. Besides, between you and me, I get bonus experience points for telling the Hero C Good and True C all of my secrets and then coming up with an elaborate and convoluted method to kill you, a means of death that anybody with even a hint of ingenuity can foil. Im pretty sure that this conversation to you Necrobump and your inevitable death, is worth somewhere between a new boss to an entire new level And if I dont give you the documents in my possession? Asked Necrobump. Then I can use my fiendish pit of death. Ive been looking forward to using it for close to three months now. Muhahahahah! Hmm said Necrobump. I hope you dont mind if I try this. You know that I have the deepest respect for you and your representative Gregor. I know that were circumstances turned around, I would be much less welcoming, forgiving and talkative then youve been. But before I hand over any of the secrets me and my team have worked so hard to get, will you forgive me if I try something out. Whatever it is, go ahead, I aint going anywhere. Gregors minion snickered, Throw all the fireballs you want. Magic in the server worlds is formed in a number of ways. Most people simply used spells. These were prefabricated bits meta code that performed specific mana functions. For example, a basic fireball spell actually was a small script that did the following. 1) The spell checked if you had spent/learnt/earned enough points in the following skills Resist Fire, Summon Element: Fire, Delay until impact, Target, and Move Element. If the spell-caster did not have at least one point each and every one of these five skills, they could not cast the spell. 2) The spell would then for the most basic fire ball take the 5 point of mana to make the casters hand fireproof for just one moment, take another 10 points of mana to summon pure fire into the casters hand. Another 1 point of mana to concentrate the flames in to a little ball that would explode on impact. Another point of mana to designate a target. And a final point to actually throw the tiny ball of flames at a target. And Boom! A fireball worth 10 points of fire damage would appear in the casters hand, shoot out and strike the target, and the caster will have spent 18 Mana points. 3) The more skill points the caster had spent, the more variations or power or caveats or diversity of spells they had access to. Someone without the Summon Element: Fire skill could easily find a variation with Summon Element: Water, or Summon Essence: Chaos, or Summon Absolute: Death, and the spell would conjure a ball of Fire, Water, Chaos, or Death respectively. A healer could cast the same spell with Summon Absolute: Life and send a flying ball of health at someone from afar. Even these skills just barely touched the surface. With enough talent a really talented spell researcher could access the world operating system and write core code for skills that did nearly anything. There were high tech firms all across the webservers that simply wrote code for specialized spell casting. They would then train their employees, or generate NPCs who could cast these specialized magics. If a spell-caster had enough talent and points in the corresponding skills, enough mana, and a script they could cast nearly anything. Most spell-casters didnt bother to learn scripting. There were figuratively an infinite number of variations on this spell. Some were more mana efficient than others. Some could be cast faster. Some built up over time, and used less mana. Some were badly written and terribly inefficient. All an intrepid spell castor needed to do was find a grimoire website on their computer, plug in their skills and mana, and the site would list all of the public domain spells that they could cast. If they wanted to spend a bit more money, they could buy custom skills and libraries of spells from spell castor engineers who specialized in such things. Technically this was what Necrobump actually was he was a spell-caster with a specialized skill in mana channeling, and a library of custom spells he himself had developed that went along with it. But for the most basic casters. Well why bother to specialize? Most of the core skills for fire mages, necromancers, healers, druids, aquamancers, fish dancers, geomancers, sirens, beguilers, scyrers, datamaturges, and tens of other focuses. The most common were open source and public domain, and there were millions of prefab spells to choose. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. The vast majority of spell-casters were script kiddies, and knew only basics. But then the vast majority of spell-casters were civs who knew a couple of spells to amuse their cats. Or warriors who only cared about a quick combat heal. Or comedians who wanted to add a flourish to their act. Or people with every days spells like a clean and wash spell or a conjure burrito spell. Necrobump was a different kind of spell caster. He had hundreds of spell scripts that he had written. They did all sorts of weird and wacky things. Stuff like throwing a field of increased mana at someone or a field of decreased mana at a different person. From his days as a necromancer he could throw balls of death, or at least the essence of unlife. He had spent points learning all sorts of delays, and instant casts, and casts over time, and impact over time, and wards. And hed leveled the lot of them up through the experience hed gained through years of dungeon running and grinding. For the past few minutes, while Gregors minion had talked and revealed all of Gregors overlord-esque fiendish plans, Necro had been silently casting a spell hed written. That is casting a silent spell script that hed quickly and hurriedly tweaked. This spell targeted Gregors representative. It took in and concentrated the mana from the dungeon around him so that it slowly built up over time, harvested that mana, and funneled it into a fire spell. For the last 10 minutes Necro bump had been pumping more and more pure environmental mana into the spell while creating a dead mana zone around himself, and building up a resistance to flames. When Necrobump said will you forgive me if I try something out? and Gregor gave the go ahead, the mana that he had been building into his fire spell, far more mana than he could hold at any one time, was unleashed. It was like Necrobump had opened a gas pipe and flooded the space around the Cat-Man-Bird thing with fuel. But instead of fuel there was an incredible concentration of pure mana. And into this mana, Necro unleashed his hottest fireball. Around the Cat-Man-Bird thing, a pillar of flames formed. White hot and intense. Fire so hot that it could burn through stone like melting wax. It rose up melting a hole in the ceiling and another hole in the ceiling above that. Necro was sitting in a dead mana zone, so he was unaffected except for a wave of heat hed prepared in advance for, but Gregors representative was in a white hot screaming plasma inferno of death. And as soon as it came, fuel spent, the fire was gone. Gregors representative was nowhere to be seen. Dead or teleported out. Either way. Necrobump had some breathing room. Well breathing room, but for the fact that now the smell in the air happened to smell like a bag of dog poo that someone had lit on fire and left on someones doorstep, only a thousand times worse. A flow, a waterfall of sewage came from the level up above. And another from the level above that one. Casting that spell had taken up most of Necros mana. He was tired. So very tired. But there was no time to rest. Gregor was surely after him. But there was also a massive hole in the ceiling leading up two levels. Gregor, Necro yelled out. Gregor. I dont like absolutes. And frankly I dont trust you. I dont like being cornered. But Dungeon, that does not mean that we still cannot make a deal. Necro mentally called up his interface system. He went into his spam folder and compressed all of his spam from his email, developer, general, mage, Washington DC, adventurer guild, and trade chat logs, encrypted them, and titled it Secret_Documents.gpg I am sending you an encrypted file. It has a copy of all the data you wanted. Let me get to the exit. Make sure that nothing gets in my way and I will send you the private key that I used, so that you can key to unencrypt it. I will send it to you when you lead me out of this dungeon. There is nothing that says we cant both win. Sorry if I nuked your minion. Hopefully he got away or respawns. Like I said there is nothing to say that we both cant win. But I dont trust dungeons. Necrobump pulled out a rope and grappling hook from his inventory system and threw that up to the next level. It caught on some roots in the sewer system there, and Necro began to climb. Flowing feces splashed around him. Necro found himself drenched in fecal matter as hand over hand he pulled himself up to the higher level of dungeon. Then hand over hand, shimmying up the rope, Necrobump climbed up to the another level higher. Looking around him he was in familiar territory again. This was only the second level of the dungeon. Here the bosses were easy. He knew this area. About five miles away was a sewage outlet that fed into Great Falls Park. The bosses around here were low level and easy. Necro began to walk in the direction out. A part mole, part parrot, part rat creature fluttered forward, beady red rat eyes and fiendish parrot beak and horrid mole claws shuffled forward. Necro considered stepping on it. The master is very angry. The master is very angry. Gregor wants a cracker, mmmmrrrrawwww. I mean Gregor wants a decryption key. Gregor wants a decryption key mmmmrrrrawwww. We will strip the flesh from your bones. Necro said to the Parrot monster, Evil Overlords are supposed to leave ridiculously openings for the Hero Good and True to find their way out. Inexplicably the parrot-mole-rat burst into the song in a high pitched parrot voiceDaisy, Daisy give me your answer true. Im half crazy, oh for the love of you before it stopped and started talking again. The master, mmmmrrrrawwww, has a pit. Give me a kiss. Give me a kiss. A pit and a kiss, filled with mmmmrrrrawwww, filled with kittens most foul. A writhing mass of kittens. Mmmmrrrrawwww. Piranha Kittens. And you, mmmmrrrrawwww Necrobump shall be thrown into the pit covered in Catnip. Mmmmrrrrawwww Catnip! The mole-parrot-rat then attacked Necrobump whistling A Pirates life for me! until Necrobump stepped on it to put it out of its misery. Chapter 20 - Call Me Ishmael The sewage tunnels opened up into the sunlight of Great Falls National Park. Necrobump sighed with relief. It was good to be out from underneath the earth. If he wanted to be stuck underground for days, he would have rolled up a Dwarf. The air was fresh in the park. The gentle breeze smelt like spring. There was a small stream trickling out from one of the sewers exit-conduits that Necro decided to follow as it trickled through wildflower speckled the wilderness. As Necrobump walked along the stream he walked under ancient oak trees and Poplars. A pileated woodpecker flew by, and a mockingbird sang a melancholy song from up above hidden among the branches. As promised, Necrobump opened up his status window and forwarded Gregor, With Love, the private key to the massive collection of spam hed encrypted a few hours earlier in the dungeon. He needed to make a bit of distance from this place. Ultimately his goal was, for now, Chesapeake Bay Virginia, but he needed to figure out the extent to which his aliases had been compromised. The person who would really know was that tool LeeroyJenkins. Jenkins must still be in the loop. Too many of Necros hideouts were in low-mana zone that needed massive amounts of mana to break into. Either Jenkins, or someone else maybe from off server, who specialized in mana manipulation would have been needed to bypass Necros exceptional security. If his cover was broken, then he had to assume that all of his covers that he used with Jenkins were broken. Which meant that none of his more recent aliases would work. It was time for something new. Thinking about his options Necrobump walked along the stream which eventually merged into the run off of a natural spring. Cool clear fresh drinking water from the spring. Perfect and clear and healthy water, mixed with the sewage expelled from Gregor to flow out and eventually to run into the Potomac River. Inevitably Necrobump found himself in civilization. Hikers and tourists all shied away from him. One young kid with a really stupid looking soul patch and a rapier C presumably the rapier signifying he was an adventurer of some sort, and maybe the bit of hair under his lip signified he was bad ass C said to Necrobump while Mr. Soul Patch was getting out of a Toyota Corolla with his girlfriend, Dude you stink. You stink so bad. Then Soul Patch guy turned to his girlfriend. Doesnt he smell horrible? The girlfriend giggled. No shit, Necro said. No, you smell like shit, yo. Soul Patch dude said. The girlfriend giggled again. There was of course no way that Necrobump was going to get very into town looking and smelling like he did. He knew some minor cleaning and grooming spells, but nothing that would wash their way through the layers and layers of grime and feces that covered Necrobump from head to toe. As a result, Necro did the next best thing. When Mr. Soul Patch and his girlfriend were out of sight, he stole their Toyota Corolla. Smashed the back side window in, unlocked and opened the door, and then hotwired the car. Necro drove south for a couple hours. He had to drive with his windows rolled down the entire way. In the sewers he must have gotten use to the smell, or maybe some dumb AI that controlled his nostrils had simply implemented a filter algorithm, but now that he was out in the fresh air, and that filter was removed he did have to agree with Soul Patch guy. He did smell like shit. Regardless, Necro needed to clean himself up soon and he also need to lose this car. Just outside of Charlottesville Virginia he saw a suburban strip mall which C offered opportunities. Originally, Necrobump had planned to dump his car off near the UVA campus. He remembered there was a fountain in the Rotunda that he could wash off in. Out of the corner of his eye however, as he was driving past the strip mall he saw another Toyota Corolla that looked identical to the one he was driving. So he drove into the parking lot and parked right next to the second Toyota. Necrobump was in luck. It was the exact color, exact year, exact model of Toyota. Taking a screw driver out of his inventory he removed first the license plate from the car hed stolen earlier that day and swapped it for the license plate in the parking lot. Then he got back into the car hed stolen and drove it over to the other side of the mall. More and more luck was falling his way. Over by one of the entrances there was a payphone. In the 21st Century North America Server nobody actually used payphones. This was an era of email and instant brain to brain communication, the phone was in pristine condition. Any phone anybody ever saw was a graphical holdover from an idealized 21st century than real in the sense that it had any practical value. So the phone was basically useless, except in the rare circumstances like this one, where the instant recognition of mental communication was completely undesired. Taking a deep breath, and then in a falsetto voice, Necrobump said. Lalalalalala. Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. But it didnt come out quite right. He thought about it a bit longer then reaching into his pants, he jammed his balls between his legs and then locked his legs together. Lalalalalala. Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. Better. He said in a much higher pitched voice. He popped 50 cents into the payphone and dialed LeroyJenkins5563 and let it ring. Hello, this is LeroyJenkins5563, the Complete Tool said. Hello Mr. Jenkins. Hello Hello Can you hear me. Necrobump said, balls tucked tightly between his legs, in the resulting womanly voice. Ms.? Who are you Madame, I can barely hear you. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. I need your help sir. Vile hoodlums have absconded with my precious collection of tiny porcelain ducks. They were magically guarded by your absolutely fantastic powers of mana negation. Can you do something for me? I am at a loss. Who could have done this to me. Madame, there is no need to fear. The vile miscreant is now known. He goes by the name of Necrobump but has many aliases. He once even tried to befriended me, and I saw through his ruse. If I was almost fooled I can only imagine who else, he has taken in. The scum on this server knows no boundaries. They have no honor or dignity. But I can assure you, dear lady, that he is on the run. There is a dragnet closing in upon him. I assure you that the reprehensible miscreant Necrobump, may stop to perform these petty vandalisms maybe to distract me, maybe he has a deeper viler plan in mind. If he has stooped to looting a womans tiny porcelain figurines. Well, all I can say is that he truly knows no boundries. Madame, in my spare time I collect antique Kestner Dolls. Or rather digital replicas, since the original manufacturer from the 1920s Germany is long gone. So you know I and sympathize with your plight. I cannot help but feel that Necrobump must be somehow trying to target me in some way. His alias that lured me in with friendship and pretended to be my associate knew of my collection. In his pretend friendship, he used to compliment the manliness of my doll collection. I now know that this was a lie. Tell me Madame, was your collection of porcelain ducks valuable? Necrobump was having a hard time not giggling. It was the finest in all the lands. I had a mallard that was so lifelike it seemed to quack. You say that this monster, Necrobump you call him, you say he is going to be caught? I would think that he would be too clever and good looking to be trapped so easily. The man who stole my precious collection must be a criminal genius. Dont you worry, Madame. The long arm of the law is coming for him. He cannot allude justice forever. I have been told that even President Humongous Testicles himself is aware of this madmans escapades. He is a despoiler of the finer arts and an intellectual boor, and he will be caught. Oh me, oh my! Not President Humongous Testicles. Wow. The President of the United States himself. Could you tell me where the President is looking for him, so I know where to avoid travelling? This person sounds dangerous and I would not like tangled in his web of deception. There is no need to worry Madame, as long as you avoid East and North of city, that is where the forces of good are mustering to hunt this villain down. Thank you Mr. LeeroyJenkins sir. You are a most honorable and wise man. And now I know you are a fellow collector and appreciator of beautiful figurines. I am certain the trenchant villain you have described will surely elude your dragnet for much longer. And if he does contact you to ransom my precious porcelain ducks for a means to find safety, I trust you will always know what is best. The fate of our great nation is resting upon your delirious judgement, you tool. Necrobump hung up. He relaxed his legs, spread them wide and let his balls hang free. He said a few words in his normal baritone. Not that there was anything wrong with being a woman C he tried it out for a a couple years, years and years ago C but he preferred being a man. Getting back into his stolen Toyota Corolla he began to drive once again. If on the extremely unlikely chance that LeroyJenkins5563 clued in to their conversation and traced the phone call back to Charlottesville, theyd think that he was headed inland. Maybe to driving to New Orleans or practically anywhere else. It was time to change directions. Necrobump began to drive. Soon the daytime turned into night. Under the light of the spring moon Necro pulled into Chesapeake Bay Virginia. Years and years and years and years ago hed put a catamaran in dry dock and paid for 200 years of upkeep and storage. The alias he used down here, he had never associated with any crime. He hadnt used this persona for close to 70 years, and back then he was playing things straight. Just a simple mage of leisure. Hed spent a few years sailing between the various Caribbean islands, drinking Pina Coladas and meeting lovely island ladies of outgoing and fun inhibitions. In a storage facility nearby was an entirely new identity. There was unmarked money. Access to completely clean bank accounts. A fresh passport. An entirely new persona, or rather an entirely old persona that simply needed to be dusted off to be useful again. Not only that, but there was an Intra Server Gateway that was completely anonymous in the San Bas Islands. True, San Bas was a beautiful sailing, but if you looked in the right places, it was also a den of scum and villany, where the very best way to get off of the 21st Century North America Server and into the Hallway without being logged or registered, was located. Necrobump pulled into the 24 hour storage space. From deep in his inventory, stored in a box that he hadnt needed to access in years and year he withdrew a key. Placing the key in the lock and rolling up the storage room door, glanced around. There was a layer of dust on top of everything in here. Finally his eyes landed on a box with the password. He picked it up and flipped through it. There was a picture of him on the internal page. He was wearing a mustache. He hadnt remembered that. He looked like a fireman or a policeman. Necrobump, smiled and then quietly said to himself, You can now Call me Ishmael.