Gamers and Gods: AES

Chapter 1: Darla: we need a healer (2051 AD)

They were on the second floor when it happened. The first floor had been easy.

As the elevator doors parted, Sherman bounded ahead of the team as if invincible. No one commented – a tank's gotta do. Darla and the others pushed their way out of the 'vator and followed him down the ugly orange and brown corridor.

I think I know this map, Rita remarked to no one in particular. There are some offices on the left and a cafeteria further down on the right. The Jerx usually pounce from the cafeteria.

She was right. There were no Jerx in the offices.

Sherman may have triggered an alarm. He had the mass of a refrigerator, and wore size twenty boots. He was good at some things, but sneaking up was not one of them. One thing he was good at was making any room or tunnel feel small. He loomed.

Five Jerx piled out of the cafeteria door and went for him with an assortment of blades and guns. He grinned at them and launched into action. Their slugs dented his body armor, but he swung one massive arm, knocking two Jerx off their feet and slamming them into the corridor's wall. The other arm punched straight through the body of a third Jerx, which was a slight problem – the body weighed down his arm for a second. He grunted, leaned on his right foot, and spun, whipping out the left in a kick that crushed the skull of another Jerx, and shook the impaled body off his arm. Four down.

Or was it? One of the first two Jerx to fall was getting up. Sam fried him with a quick fireball as the fifth Jerx re-thought his odds and fled down the corridor for backup.

Craptastic, muttered Rita. She preferred to take groups one at a time, but Sherman was one of those overconfident tanks who would fight the entire building just for the glory of it. She stretched out her hand and froze the fleeing Jerx to the floor while Sam finished off the recumbent Jerx with firebolts.

The frozen Jerx struggled in his block of ice, trying to reach the staircase in front of him. Sherman growled and swung a football-sized fist, shattering the ice with an ear-splitting KRACK! that sent chunks of ice and bad guy bouncing off the walls. A couple of fingers and a foot bounced in their encasing shards down the steps into a large open area.

Sherman charged down the steps roaring a battle cry. Darla rolled her eyes and glanced at Rita. This is the bumpy part.

There were four groups of MOBs in the large room. Stomping forward to meet a group, Sherman lumbered too close to another group and it got serious. By the time the others scrambled down the stairs, he had eight hostiles aggroed on him already.

Rita froze some of them, while Sam blasted the rest. By then Darla had her swords out and was whirling into a couple of them behind Sherman. She activated her Time Stretch and the room slowed down around her. She danced a lethal ballet, her blades flashing out to slice and dice. Rifling-spun bullets buzzed by like slow motion bumblebees. She twisted and spun, letting most pass by harmlessly, ignoring the mosquito bite impacts in her right shoulder and her left thigh. Her blades reached out for more hostiles.

Sam threw a fireball. Not the best attack in these close quarters. When it exploded part of its area-of-effect scorched the third group of Jerx and they joined the fun. Now the odds were fourteen to four, not so good.

Sherman yelled defiance and punched another Jerx off his feet. But he overdid it – the guy landed in the fourth group, and now the team was in trouble. In the last few seconds, they had eliminated four hostiles, but now Sherman was the center of a mass of maybe ten or twelve assailants. Even a tank can be overwhelmed.

Rita froze the baddies on Sherman and got their attention. Three of them jumped her and backed her into a corner. Sam kept blasting away as another three shot and stabbed him. But casters, the 'glass cannons' of gaming, are squishy and need to keep their distance. The Jerx crushed him at close range in seconds.

Time Stretch ended. The action around Darla sped up with little warning. She tried to fight her way toward Sherman, health dropping with every second. Behind her Rita went down, riddled with shells from frosty and pissed Jerx.

Darla's swords slashed another Jerx as she fought forward, ignoring the impacts of more slugs. Now it was two against nine. Jerx howled, slashing and shooting in a frenzied froth of happy rage.

Darla's strength failed and she collapsed before she reached Sherman. He went on flailing gamely, but he fell a few moments later. The Jerx relaxed and prowled over the bodies of the defeated heroes.

Well, that went well – not, said Sam's voice.

Anyone got a rez? Sherman inquired. We got half of them, so it shouldn't be as hard to clear the room now.

Sherman, how many times have I told you NOT to run downstairs without us? Rita demanded. You know stairs almost always mean a big room of hostiles.

Chill, he advised. We'd be fine if Sam hadn't aggroed a group.

Maybe, Sam admitted. But it didn't help when you punched a guy right into the fourth group. Last nail in our coffin, bro.

Boys, boys, Darla sighed. What do we do now?

We resurrect and keep going, said Sherman.

Not me, said Rita. I've got an exam tomorrow. Sorry, guys, but this is taking too long. Toodles. Her avatar vanished.

Shit, Sherman groused. She always drops out first. Little pebble of the avalanche of quit-ness.

It'll be even harder without her holds, Sam pointed out. Maybe we should call it a day. It's after midnight here already. His body winked out as Rita's had, teleported back to the base.

He's right, you know. Darla told him. And when he logs, we are way too shorthanded for this mission's level.

Sherman groaned. This mission would have leveled me.

Darla sighed. Look, I know you don't want to hear this, but we need more bodies.

I hate large teams, the tank grumbled. And you know why. Bigger teams argue more, goof off more, and take longer to assemble for missions.

Well, you're gonna have to learn to bend, Darla told him. "I know you like small teams, but we need a healer. It would have made the difference between winning and a total team wipe tonight. Unless you like dying a lot."

All right, all right, Sherman growled. But you better find us a good one. A lame doctor is worse than none at all, trust me. You spend half your time worrying about keeping him alive so that he can keep healing. Squishalicious.

Darla shrugged. I'll see what I can do, she said. But do me a favor? Try to remember you're not immortal. You charge right in like a god of war. You really need to let us get positioned before you engage.

She logged and sat up swinging her legs over the edge of the link bed and stretched. Enough. Sherman was a pretty good tank but a little of him went a long way. Hitching up her jeans, she padded down the stairs to the diner.

The smells of cooking oil, spices, and hot metal greeted her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. The place was not quite empty – there was a guy at the counter and a couple in a booth in the corner.

She glanced out the windows. Outside, a gray sky squatted and brooded over the baking streets. For a moment she wished she was wherever Sam lived. Midnight sounded a lot cooler than this Florida afternoon. A police cruiser floated by, its nullifiers humming, the enforcers inside looking even more bored than she felt. Even perps were taking the day off in this heat.

Manny was working the grill. He looked up and wiped some sweat off his forehead. You finally back on duty? He flipped a couple of burgers over, listening to the sizzle, as he glanced back at her, one eyebrow raised.

I guess so, she said, watching him slide two perfect medium wells onto their buns. He nodded toward the couple in the corner, and Darla took the hint, picking up the tray and taking the order over to them. You two need anything else?

The woman looked at her burger doubtfully. I won't ask if it's edible, she remarked, But is it safe?

The man laughed. He had a nice laugh, Darla thought. And he was built well enough to get away with a bad laugh. She could see this because he was bare from the waist up. The guy looked like a W3 veteran. His bare chest glowed with old-style holographic tattoos, the multi-layered deposits flashing rainbow-hued solid images of an eagle fighting a snake. Battle of Mexico?

Relax, he advised his date. No one dies of coronaries anymore. They fixed that years ago. All of this yummy-naughty food is back in style. Live a little.

His date hesitated. He's right, Darla told her reassuringly. The PEGbots finished their clinical trials last year. Clogged arteries are going where the dinosaurs went.

The woman's face clouded. PEGbots?

Darla smiled. Medical nanotech. They coat the tiny robots with polyethylene glycol. It makes them a little bulkier but it keeps them from being attacked by your defenses long enough that they can do their job.

The guy looked impressed. I can't believe you just knew that, he said. Are you in med school?

Not really. I've just been, ah, keeping up with the medical research in a vain attempt to keep my dad alive. He hates 'textured vegetable protein'.

Don't believe her, Manny grunted from the grill. She's just afraid I'll die and she'll be stuck running this place by herself. He flipped another burger over and smiled as it sizzled.

Chapter 2: Farker: the care and feeding of bosses

Every time Max summoned him to the corner office, Farker would pause outside the door to quietly repeat his centering mantra. "Grant me the serenity to accept what can't be changed, the courage to change what can't be accepted ...and the good sense to not choke the living shit out of bosses who can't tell the difference."

This accomplished, he raised his hand, knocked, and prepared himself to wait. Why is it, he wondered, that when I barge up here unexpectedly I can get in to see him right away, but when he summons me, he always makes me wait?

Enter, said Maximilian.

Farker let himself in and closed the door behind him. Please state the nature of the medical emergency, he said, dropping into a leather chair.

Max glared at him, brows knitting together in suspicious bafflement. He had not been with PanGames long enough to recognize Farker's quotes. What medical emergency?

Farker sighed. One more suit without a soul. I mean, what's up? Whaddaya need?

Max pursed his lips. What I need, what this Company needs (Farker could hear the capitalization) is people I can talk to without a fuckin translator. He paused to tap the ashes off the end of a cigar. The Realm of Egypt deal closes tomorrow. Are we ready for the inclusion?

Farker tried not to look at the cigar. He knew intellectually that there were people who still smoked tobacco, but it still shocked him.

He tried not to breathe. Of course we're ready.

Max regarded him. You're awfully sure of yourself. Didn't even pause to consider. No worries at all?

For the nth time Farker wondered how Max had ended up as his new boss. In the three weeks that Max had been at PanGames he had never asked Farker a single technical question. Was it that the man did not even care about where the money came from, or were the rumors true – that managers were conditioned from an early age to automatically delegate any non-financial thinking?

But how do you speak of neuroadaptive computational matrices and quantum hypercomputers to such a person? It's what we do, he said finally. We've done it lots of times."

My point exactly, the man behind the desk retorted. From what I've seen, PanGames has been swallowing all its competitors for years now. Sooner or later everything reaches its limits.

Nowhere near them, Farker assured him. Our system is so fast it meets itself coming the other way.

He could see from the way Max's eyes narrowed that the man wasn't convinced. Max had no idea of what he was running, he thought. Way behind the learning curve. But then, he reflected, so were about 90% of his fellow humans. All of the changes wrought in the last few decades had left most dazed and detached.

First, W3 had melted national boundaries. Free trade and air travel had been softening the cultural barriers for over a century. W3 merely knocked down the crumbling fragments. No one knew what lab screwed up and released the virus. It was hard to believe that anyone would do so without a vaccine for it. Most thought that one of the nukes exchanged in the preliminary minutes of the War had busted the lab seals.

Whatever. The virus had escaped containment. Nobody noticed at the time because they were busy waiting for nuclear annihilation. Angry little countries had spent decades enriching uranium and developing missiles to take out old rivals. And when the first salvos launched, the other, larger countries nuked the little nukers, to shut them up before it could escalate into a global holocaust.

The funny thing was, people had been predicting forever that The Big One would be between the US and Russia or China. But it never happened. In a virtual moment of unanimity, military artificial intelligences joined electronic hands across the oceans to coordinate surgical strikes. The remaining small players were vanquished before the conflict could reach a level that could threaten the biosphere with a nuclear winter.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief that it was over.

And then people began dying of the virus. It was airborne, you see. Once out of the lab that spawned it, there was no stopping it. Entering the body via the lungs and nasal mucosa, it quickly induced fever, palpitations, nausea, vomiting and exhaustion, incapacitating its victims before they could seek medical attention. Doctors were appalled at the ingenuity of its creators. It denied its sufferers the mercy of a quick death, taking days to weeks to kill, so that medical centers were overwhelmed trying to care for all of the dying.

Attempt at vaccines were ineffective until they sequenced its genome and realized they were dealing with twenty seven distinct strains of the damned thing. Finally, they could develop 27 effective vaccines and combine and distribute them in one no-fail full-spectrum dose.

The nuclear mini-war had killed millions. The Virus made everyone left forget all about the nukes. Within less than a year the Earth's population dropped from ten billion to two.

And then the real fighting began.

It was a cold thought but a valid one, in Farker's opinion, that dreadful as the nuclear exchange and the plague had been, they had also been a blessing. All of the remaining missiles were in the hands of the major nations. With the smaller countries effectively toothless, the major countries were able to use conventional forces to crush any resistance easily and implement a world government. International wars and alliances were a thing of the past. United Earth replaced the United Nations – there were no more separate nations so why keep it in the title?

Most of what was called the Internet had survived. Within short order, the global community of surviving programmers had cobbled together the first workable quantum-encrypted e-voting system. United Earth was legitimized as a global representative government. Minor pockets of rebellion would continue to form out in the more rural areas, but the need for continuity and order stabilized things in the surviving cities.

The political transformation of the planet, as drastic as it was, was nothing compared to the effect of global peace on technology budgets. The progress curve ramped up, bequeathing cheaper energy, more powerful computers, and vastly improved crops and farming that could easily feed UE's diminished population. It took determination and ingenuity to starve these days.

Looking at Max, Farker almost felt sorry for his boss. Sure, the principles of business and capitalism had survived the changes in the world practically unscathed. But surviving isn't enough if the evolving science leaves 90% of the world behind in accelerated future shock. Max understood how PanGames's technical infrastructure worked about as much as the nearest cop understood the gravity nullifiers that let enforcer vehicles float down the city's streets.

Let me put it this way, Farker told him. "This is the first acquisition since you came on board a couple of weeks ago, so I can see how all the details might worry you. But even if we were absorbing ten new realms tomorrow I wouldn't bother to come to work early. Our system automatically generates all the procedures to include a new Realm into PanGames. Adding Realm of Egypt to our menus and interfaces will take less time than it'll take to sign the paperwork."

Max scowled. Farker could tell that his boss didn't like being patronized. He tried to imagine how he would feel if the situation were reversed and Max was telling him not to worry about his salary, that the little credits would all go into the right balance, that restructured financials would keep the firm and his bank balance above water.

Try to relax, he advised Max. We, or rather our system, has done this before, many times. We've never had any problems, and there's no reason to expect that we ever will. We're ready for it. Anything else you need to know?

Max puffed on his cigar, then sighed. I suppose not. Let me know immediately if anything, any problem at all, comes up before we close the deal.

Nothing will, Farker said. I'll call you if there's anything, but there won't be. Verily I say unto thee, nothing will happen.

This turned out to be wrong.

It is always wrong. Things always happen.

Chapter 3: Darla: of butterflies and centaurs

She bolted the diner's door and switched the antique neon sign to CLOSED. On her way back to the register she straightened a couple of chairs and cleared the last table.

Manny had fixed her a dinner. Knowing him, she didn't have to look to know it was a burger, medium rare. She grabbed a water from the fridge and padded back to his room.

Manny was already sitting at the little table in the back room that he slept in. He claimed it was cozy, but Darla knew his head was still back in the Riots: Emmanuel Kaplan had been a corporal in the UE forces during the Consolidation. He'd seen such things that to this day he was afraid to sleep above the ground floor. She knew she should be grateful that she had the upper room, but she was sure that part of her father was itching for some rioters to break in so he could make them wish they hadn't.

She sat down across from him, lifted the bun, and busied herself loading slices of tomatoes and pickles on the top of the burger. He tended to forget them.

Manny picked up a bottle and squeezed ketchup onto his fries. Whaddaya need all those tomatoes for, anyway? It was one of his no-fail ways of starting a dinner conversation. She would argue, they would agree to disagree, and then the conversation would turn to its real subject.

You know very well that natural food is healthier than processed food, she told him sternly. You tell me where we can get organic ketchup without the added sugar etc. and I will say yea, hallelujah and fold up the roof garden.

Manny swallowed a mouthful of fries and pointed his fork at her. You listen to me, young lady. Our ancestors did not survive by eating grass and flowers. One stomach and a relatively short intestinal tract means we are mainly carnivores. Meat will keep you alive. Tomatoes won't, no matter how organically you grow 'em.

Oh really? What animal did those fries come from? A free-range potato, perhaps? She paused, grinning. Was it from a ranch, or did you hunt it yourself?

Very funny, he grunted. My daughter, the comedian. How are your classes coming?

Uh-oh. I didn't go today, she admitted.

He glowered at her across the table. Do you think just because education is free now, you don't need good grades? That link bed, you know we're still making payments on that? He had a point there, she had to admit. Information was free but hardware, not.

The test isn't for another week, she told him. It's not like I have to attend every day to keep up. The whole course is archived.

Anyone can scroll through a book, he retorted. It's not the same thing as hearing it explained by an expert.

The lectures are pre-recorded, too, she said. I don't have to avatar into the college on a schedule.

Manny harrumphed. So very convenient. So what are you going to do, wait until the day before the test, only to discover that you don't have enough time left to hear it all? Live or recorded, either way you listen in real time.

True enough, she thought. But she couldn't let him win that easily. Time for a diversion. Agnes called this morning, she said. When are you going to call her back?

It worked. She could see the instant panic that he tried to hide. What did you tell her? he demanded.

Darla took a bite of her burger and chewed thoughtfully, letting him stew and squirm before she answered. Oh, I told her that I was sure you'd call her soon. You really should, you know. Okay, maybe that last bit was unnecessary. But she was tired of fending off Mrs. Neuburg, who was plainly determined to change her last name.

Manny wiped sweat off his forehead. I know you don't want to be rude, but, really, you shouldn't encourage that woman. I just wish she would leave me alone.

Darla laughed. Agnes likes you. What's so terrible about that? You're not dead, you know. You should be dating. If not Agnes, then pick someone else. Use it or lose it, you know. And she knew it was terrible, but she couldn't help winking at the end of the sentence.

Her father groaned. These words I never expected from you. What is it with you? Do I have to date every woman who wants to date me? Can't a man rest?

You aren't dating anyone, she pointed out. What is it with me? What is it with you? Why are you giving up on life? I'm glad we have the diner. Glad we have a living. But are you living...or just surviving?

We're all just surviving, he growled. Don't take it for granted. It's a lot better than the alternative. You just hope you never see the things I've had to see. He touched his shirt pocket and closed his eyes for a moment, as he often did.

Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Darla had learned not to ask about the things he'd seen. She'd heard enough. Especially while she was eating.

He looked like he was ready to weep. Darla reached over and covered his hand with her own. I know you worry about my grades, she said. Well, I worry about you, too. You can't keep this up forever. You need to get out, to meet women again.

His eyes opened and he lifted his chin a little, defying both her and his own sadness. I don't want to hear any more of that, he said with unmistakable finality. There are no more women for me. And you know why. So let it go. Stop encouraging Mrs. Neuburg.

Darla sighed and raised her hand from his to pat his cheek. That is very romantic of you, she said, softly, but also very foolish. However, I will humor your foolishness...since you put up with so much of mine.

She rose and gathered their plates, ignoring his attempt at helping, and dumped them in the recycler before heading up to her room.

Alone again, she felt like screaming. Gods! Why was it, she asked herself, that men either love too much or too little? Her father was like a leper who would rather pick at his sores than see a doctor. It had been so many years that she barely remembered her mother. The image had faded to nothing for her. Not so for Manny. Elizabeth had become his Testament, enshrined so brightly in his mind, burned so deeply into his gray matter that he could not let her go.

She stood in front of her mirror. And it's partly my fault, she reflected. Look at me. Every time he sees me, she thought, he sees her again. Every day, I remind him just by existing.

Not that she was bad to look at. She had Manny's curly black hair, but there the resemblance ended. Her mother's blue eyes stared out of a younger face. She had the same fullness of eyebrow and lip, the same upturned nose, the same tiny ears. Basically, she was her mother, but with Manny's hair. He used to say that she was her mother on the outside, but him on the inside, with all his stubborn defiance.

She stuck her tongue out at her reflection, who returned the favor. The hell with it. Turning, she went over to the link bed and lay down on her back, letting her head nestle into the pillow's cranial transceivers. They were as much a part of her life now as whatever it was that her father kept in that shirt pocket.

Fog enclosed her. No one else would see it, of course. It was a side effect of Linking, a little like the static you got on those ancient museum televisions with analog UHF dials tuned between stations. This static was infinitely finer, though, and three dimensional, so it looked like fog to her.

The fog cleared as she and the bed tuned into each other better. In moments she was floating upright in infinite space, mistress of all she surveyed. Some people found this moment of weightlessness unsettling. Agoraphobics found the infinite emptiness terrifying, she knew, and had to have their systems tweaked to start them in the illusion of an ordinary-sized room. Not Darla. She reveled in a freedom she could never know when she was IRL, unless of course she changed majors and got a job in high-orbit habitat construction. When she was In Real Life there were always boundaries, walls, floors, roofs, limitations to movement's range and speed.

In this magic Web, however, there were practically no limitations. She could be infinitely vast or incredibly small, completely motionless or flying through the galactic atlas at any speed whatsoever. She could handle planets and molecules with equal ease.

So what if it wasn't real. Unimportant. A video map wasn't real – but you could learn real things from it. The diagrammed lines of ink in her tech class illustrations were not real circuits...but she used them to calculate how circuits would behave IRL. And the avatars she teamed up with in PanGames were not real. But they were driven by other real humans, lying in their own link beds.

PanGames she thought, feeling a little guilty as the beginning menu room appeared. She really ought to catch up on her studies. But the team absolutely needed a healer. If they kept total-wiping like they did today the team was doomed. None of them would stay, and she couldn't honestly blame them. They'd wander off and find more successful teams. It was as inevitable as dogshit.

She frowned as she considered her options. Her team played in several Realms, but they tended to favor the one where they could be superheroes.

There were a number of reasons for this. When you went from one Realm of PanGames to another Realm, your avatar was automatically reformatted to fit into the current genre. If the sentient races in the new realm had more options than simply human, of course, you could take the default that it gave you or edit it to another race before you began playing. That was not a problem for them.

The real problem with reformatting-to-fit was simply that not all Realms had the same avatar archetype selections. Nearly all Realms had the standard teaming roles: tank, DPS, healer, crowd control. But the role of Damage Per Second was filled by different types of avatars in each Realm.

As a dual-wielding DPS swordmaster, Darla never worried: swords are too simple to exclude – they work in all Realms. Similarly blessed was the tank Sherman, since fists exist in all Realms. Wherever he went, Sherman would be a one-man mobile riot.

The others had it a little harder. Sam was a blaster for his DPS role in the superhero Realm. All well and good. But if the team went to, say, one of the medieval sword-and-sorcery realms, reformatting would force him to appear as a wizard or warlock. This of course meant that all his powers would be reformatted too, so that he would have to remember to cast Mystic Missiles instead of just blasting a Fire Bolt from his hand. Or something equally unfamiliar. Rita would no longer be doing her Crowd Control role by freezing opponents motionless. She would have to reformat as a Witch or Druid and use completely different CC powers.

Maybe if you switched Realms often enough, it would all become second nature, she supposed. But they didn't. It was less confusing and they leveled more consistently. Maybe she and Sherman could have done some duo-teaming in the medieval Realms. But she found him too much to take, one-on-one. He was too bossy and too reckless. Without more DPS and at least one CC to help with groups he would end up getting them wiped every time.

But she was on her own tonight. She had to find them a healer, and talk him into helping before Sherman's attitude drove him (or her) away.

She decided to look into the sword-and-sorcery medieval Realms. With no modern medicine and no hospital teleporters, maybe they'd have more healers wandering around. All she had to do was find one that wasn't on a team. Male, preferably. At the moment, the team was half-and-half (she suspected Sam and Rita were a partnered couple). If she brought in a female healer (which the majority were, given the tendency of males to prefer fighting), Sherman might feel outnumbered and suspect she was staging some kind of Amazonian takeover of the group.

So she had to find a male healer. A little harder, but still possible.

After some consideration, she decided Realm of Valhalla was a waste of time. Plenty of mayhem, but the healing was all automatic there. It