Game Slaves (9 page)

Kings are usually like that. Plus, Arthur had more important things to do. Like build up his castle walls and drink grog with his ladies while he watched me lop the heads off any who
would
dare pass.

Heck, it wasn't even much of a bridge I had. More like a log over a river. I was winning, though, and the fights were a blast. The Black Knight doesn't just claim invincibility, he needs to back it up.

Gamer after gamer attacked. I barely picked up a nick in my leggings. They shot arrows and swooped on flying beasts and one of them even tried some kind of magic spell he'd gotten from a mountain witch. It was weak. Sure, it turned my mace into a poisonous serpent and my horse into a rabbit. In response I fed the rabbit to the snake, then cut off its head and shook the bunny way down toward the tail end.

There, I had my mace back.

After I hacked up the gamer, I took
his
horse.

But something happened, and I wished Dakota had been there to hear it. There was a pause in the game as we leveled up, and I was under the bridge, down in the shadows, when a pair of new victims tromped up.

I could pick up their crosstalk.

One said, “Hey, Todd, you get that factory slot?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Lucky, man.”

“It's a factory, brother, hot as a mother in there.”

“Yeah, but now you get the brand.”

“I'm just workin' for chits, same as you. After tax I barely clear rent.”

“Bro, no whining. You're
in
now. On the good side of the wall for sure.”

“I'm a corporate serf.”

“You're
stoked
is what you are. Better days ahead. Nose to the stone. Plus, you got bennies, right? Meds. Protection. Store discounts?”

Then there was a silence.

“Do good in there. It'll lead to more.”

They both forgot their problems because I jumped out and took 'em by surprise. It wasn't more than a few moves and I had them lanced, stood up, and planted in the ground like giant olives on a stick.

In here, these guys' problems were not better jobs or the cost of living or feeling like their lives only served the rich and powerful.

No, they should've been a little more concerned with perimeter defense, squad integrity, and overlapping fields of fire.

DUNGEON OF DEATH XXV
, the ongoing saga of a dungeon. Where there's death. And the gamers must sneak in and free their comrades before my drones can replace their good spinal columns with my remote-controlled fiendish spinal columns.

The tweak here is that I was playing the role of Boss, and while I really prefer to be a top general, the gig had its moments. As a general, I get to alter my troop and weapons placement and our defensive or offensive strategy. I can pace our engagements and watch for weaknesses in gamer tactics. The days when we villains rush blindly into a room or over a ridge one after another are long gone. No fun in that for either side.

As Boss of the dungeon, I had a long string of attack vampires on chains, and I placed these in the outer chambers. That made it quite a sneak mission for gamers to get around them and still stay out of range of their tethers.

I turned a bunch of gamers into werewolves with titanium skulls and spines and, using a catapult, launched them into a three-dimensional skirmish with those who'd survived the first levels. Toss in a few gladiator-style arena fights and that whittled things down to my favor.

But even then, a pack of gamers worked their way through—serious ninja skills—and soon enough, they were surrounding me, stomping my horned feet. Shooting flaming arrows into my pressure points. Eventually, two of them survived, climbed onto my back, and got revenge by extracting
my
spinal column in a closing scene filled with more bloody pulp and amniotic goo than should have been allowed under any rating system.

Nicely played. But again, I don't like boss battles. The big cheese always seems to have certain weak points that are just too easy to identify. It's the journey to the boss that's more fun. Not the final scene.

When I came out of Re-Sim, it started again. That burning over my right eye. It spread to the bridge of my nose and made streams of tears pour from my left eye. It almost knocked me to the ground.

And on came a vision.

I saw water. I saw people in the water, thrashing around.

And even though it was just a vision, my whole body shivered. The water . . . I could
feel
it on my skin. It was so cold. A pool? No, maybe a lake. And those people? What were they doing?

No, it couldn't be.

No.

Not like Dakota's memory scraps.

Not a swim lesson. No.

It'd been at least a week, and the serious gaming rush began to die down. Dakota, thankfully, was in a cheery mood. I'd been worried about her. I liked her. She was cool to have around and a good fighter when she put her mind to it. Now it seemed that after some time for the bad news to sink in, her place in our little gaming-verse had settled in her gut. Good thing. It's hard to fight well, to
live
well, to enjoy the little stuff, if you're getting eaten up about something big like that.

And yeah, it
is
a big deal. What we are. Our actual worth to the world. Coming to grips with our limits.

Did the rest of us know, or realize, we weren't really “human”?

Sure we did. We just didn't have to talk about it all the time. Too depressing. Just like out there in the mortal world, I'm sure people don't spend a whole lot of time dwelling on the fact they're getting closer and closer to lights-out every second of every day. Or that they might get eaten by a shark or hit by lightning or die from some other random act. They don't run around telling everyone about every ailment or doctor's visit. Why focus on bummer news like that? It's no way to live.

And live we did and still do. We are alive. As alive as you or your kind.

What are humans, really? I looked it up in a BlackStar tutorial on how to kill you. You're a biological case with a brain that processes electrical impulses. Those impulses make memories. Those impulses control your actions.

So how are we any different, really? We're the same electrical impulses, we have the same control over our actions, only our cases are not skin and bone and hair. Our cases are plastic and metal and copper circuitry that, if taken care of, can last
centuries
. We can swap hardware, improve our processors, and learn from tactical errors.

Humans, well, you're stuck with your physical limitations. Forever. I guess you can get breast implants and nose jobs, but hey, I'll take the upgrades we get any day of the week.

But now it was time to relax. We all looked forward to it. No costumes, no guns, no aggression at all. Just good friends and funny stories and a lot of shared laughter.

“I totally ran into wackjob trouble today,” Reno was telling the crew. “The gamers sent in some kind of four-legged magnetic land mine. Going ‘woof, woof!' It followed me around, lurking behind like some kind of needy dog but never getting close enough to go off.”

“Whoa, what did you do?”

“I could hear them chuckling,” he continued. “I think they were waiting for me to lead it back to my base and my men and then set it off remotely. Stupid friendly pooch. Cute, too.”

“Some new weapons out there lately.” York yawned.

“No kiddin'. I finally found a place I could change into a regular jumpsuit. No metal. Broke the magnetic lock it had on me. Then I got a nice big iron bone. Looked just like a doggie snack. Walked out into the open, said ‘Here, boy! Here, boy! Now FETCH!'”

“Cool!”

“I threw the bone right into the middle of the gamer squad, and as soon as the dog-mine got to it, Mi blew Fido up with a beautiful rifle shot at like nine hundred yards!”

“Awesome!”

“Got 'em good!” Reno boasted. “All of them, right back to the checkpoint. Nothing left but dust.”

I loved it. Now, that was a move I'm sure none of the gamers expected. And therefore, they got their money's worth. BlackStar would be thrilled with that. Great tactics make great games. We just kept raising the bar.

Team Phoenix—nothing and no one like it anywhere in your world. Or in mine.

And that's the way it went for a while. Drink a few BlackStar colas, throw down some BlackStar-brand nacho chips.

Yeah, having that little BlackStar stamped on everything everywhere was pretty annoying, but what could you do? It wasn't like we had to pay for anything.

And this downtime was good. We got to share stories. We traded ideas. I know why they give us time off. You do too. So we can
evolve
as artificial intelligence. So we can learn from each other's mistakes and triumphs. It's brilliant code. It's self-perpetuating product improvement. BlackStar_1 was no fool.

Something was different, though. It took me a while to notice. Something was wrong with my arm. I shook my hand. Seemed OK, just . . . lighter or something.

I rubbed the shoulder. Muscles all in place. Bones feeling tough. Did maybe the Re-Sim shortcut something and not fully reconstitute my elbow? Nah. I was just being paranoid.

Any pain in my eye? No.

No one trying to teach me to swim? No.

Leftover road signs from
SLAUGHTER RACE
? Not a one. My vision was fine.

Still, what was wrong?

I looked around. York and Reno had a group of younger NPCs listening to some drawn-out, epic saga of how they beat the gamers ten missions in a row, blah blah blah . . .

Other grunts from Rio and Deke's team were coming and going. Assignments clocked in on the screen, NPCs rolled out. Sometimes a platoon returned quickly; other times they got pulled into longer sessions. You could never tell going in. Like any military unit, your group just moved together.

But still, my arm, it felt kind of light.

Mi and Dakota were across the room, chatting, smiling, shooting the breeze. Nothing strange about that.

But yes, actually, there was.

Mi wasn't here with me. By my side. Instead, she'd gone over to sit with Dakota. Now, what would strike me as odd about that?

Well, it explained my arm, why it felt incomplete. When you get used to someone clinging to it night and day, then they leave, you've got less weight to carry around, don't you?

But why be over
there?
What was up with the private conversation?

I wandered across, and wouldn't you know, as soon as I got to their table, they stopped chatting. Both looked up, smiling like they were totally happy to see me.

Mi even returned to her place on my sleeve.

Dakota grabbed another cola. The moment had passed.

It was probably nothing. And it was definitely a good thing they were becoming better friends. The more they worked together, the better my team scores would get.

I should have seen it coming, right? After all, I am Phoenix. Of
the
Team Phoenix. It's my job to spot that kind of devious, backstabbing mutiny.

The mission hit the board. Reno ran the profile for the rest of us. He told the team we were gearing up for a trip into
DOOM SPACE
.

That title's great, but it's about as dark as it gets. A burned-out mining vessel traversing a barren galaxy, and with all this technology and all that weaponry they still can't equip a single room with a sufficient number of light bulbs? Close your eyes real quick. It's easier to see through your lids than it is on most of those ships' decks.

Still, we were the creepies, the Acromorphs, so we had a rudimentary form of night vision. We could hide in the shadows, and there were plenty of shadows.

We suited up, just the five of us, tentacles and fangs and those black, soulless eyes. I led everyone to the portal, shoved my hand in the slot, sucked in a deep breath, squinted to get ready for the darkness, and made the quick jump from our mission center to . . .

Bright, bright light?

What the . . . ? This wasn't right. A midday sun was burning through my costume.

It was roasting hot out here, and with the glare, I really couldn't see anything through the eye slits.

Something was wrong. I could feel it instantly. This was no ship. This was not deep space. More like shallow hell.

And it was boiling inside all that foam rubber.

We'd been dropped in the wrong spot. And that
never
happened. This was not the outer rim of a distant galaxy. It looked more like Death Valley. Add to that, my right eye was pinging with pain. I wanted to find an ice pick to stab in there, maybe make it stop . . .

I shucked off the costume, only to see that the rest of my team had done the same. Where were we? In the middle of a stretch of wasteland. Brush was about the only thing out here, not even a scorpion or snake or circling buzzard as far as our eyes could see.

“Damn!” I yelled. No echo. There was nothing there to bounce sound back. It looked like an unfinished landscape. Like a designer had planned to have a desert level but had abandoned it before finishing the mountains or the town or the enemies or anything other than sand, scrub, and heat.

“Bingo!” Dakota howled triumphantly. She looked anything but shocked. Instead, she seemed pleased as punch.

“Where are we?” I asked her directly. Then I spun on Reno. “
You
ran the profile.
You
said we were headed for
DOOM SPACE
!”

“I lied,” he said bluntly—disrespectfully, in fact. I'd never heard that tone from anyone in my command. Couldn't remember the last time in my life someone had the nerve to speak to me like that.

“Which way?” Mi asked Dakota. It seemed like she was in charge now.

The blond girl, her eyes locked on me, just pointed north.

But there was nothing north. Not a speck as far as the eye could see.