Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Prologue

          In the year 2012, James Halliday and Ogden Morrow released a realistic immersive 3D video game through their rebranded company GSS. Free to play, one-time sign-up fee. Over time the OASIS became much more than just a game, it became a new reality. People did business in the virtual world with their avatars, kids went to school inside the simulation, people had jobs in this alternate life. The economy now revolved around a video game and its credits, now worth more than legal tender.

          When James Halliday died in 2040, he left a recorded message for everyone inside OASIS, his video last will and testament. If anyone could solve his puzzles and find his easter egg, they would inherit his fortune and control over OASIS. His easter egg hunt involved finding keys to open gates in sequence. That moment was when the first frenzy erupted. IOI, the previously subtle and quiet company, rolled out with a force that could be compared to any real standing army. With it’s sole purpose of hunting for Halliday’s easter egg and obtaining the control over the OASIS and GSS. Before, IOI just exploited the system and data mined, they also used their resources to control economies and items like a ruthless cartel. IOI rerouted a majority of their companies resources to legitimately taking over the OASIS. They were far from uncontested. Large guilds, alliances, and powerful soloist, coining the title gunter, the colloquial shortening of egg hunter, and they worked tirelessly against IOI to find the treasure for themselves. After a short six months of searching with no result, the frenzy died down. Everyone was stumped on the first riddle, no progress made. No one really gave up, but no one was trying nearly as hard as they used to.

          Five years passed, five whole years of absolutely no progress and suddenly, in the middle of the night in a particular dungeon, two separate individuals get the first key and clear the first gate. That’s only a fraction of the story, and this is not a retelling.

Chapter Text

Chapter 1

          I was born into the OASIS with a gun in my hand. I was born into the real world with far less, and only a few years after the game engulfed all of reality in a digital haze. I grew up with the game just to my side, everyone else already strapped up and jacked in like junkies chasing the dragon, while I managed to stay out of it’s clutches and grounded in reality. I watched a deteriorating world get neglected further and further, being reduced to pure waste. I watched mindless masses elect a celebrity president to be our new shitlord. Nothing was going to change unless someone got off their ass and changed it. I managed to feel just fine rotting in the dumpster with the rest of humanity.

          Where I grew up, which was more of in a sense, where I would lay my head to sleep, would constantly change. My dad, I only assumed was my real father, hauled me around in a large van, yet inadequate for two people to live in. We jumped from town to town along the east coast where he would do small jobs and sell whatever he needed to sell and he would leave me with people that he told me were my family. For days, weeks, months he would leave - I sometimes wished he would never come back for me. I hated living in that van. It smelled like rotting carpet, gasoline and body odor. There was no room for anything but the necessities. Food storage took up every recess and crevasse, between the old lumpy mattress and the sidewalls of the vehicle, under the seats, in the glove compartments, in the top cubby holes, tapped into stacks along the walls. We didn’t really go hungry, but we were never full. Not having room for baggage made it worse, I had to cycle between two complete sets of clothes, socks and underwear included, and he had a garment bag with a cheap suit in it on top of his casual sets. He needed it, even if it was just a cheap suit. We also shared that awful mattress. I wondered why I couldn’t sleep in the passenger seat, it would have been so much more comfortable, but he would tell me it’s illegal to sleep in a parked vehicle and we would get ticketed or even arrested. I don’t know if I believed him, but I didn’t want to find out.

          One of the occasions when he left me behind he probably forgot to explain our situation to my sitters, because they kicked me out as soon as he wasn’t around anymore. I was probably only eight or nine years old, I have to assume, but they would beat me. They wouldn’t spank me, they would punch me, kick me, lay into me on the ground like a gang. They called me things I will never repeat, they would tell me things I never want to hear again. They would cut me, burn me with cigars and cigarettes, let me starve out in the cold rain and tease me about it. When my dad came back for me, it had been the first time I remember being happy to see him. I don’t know how long I was there, I didn’t ask either. It felt like an eternity, though.

          Fortunately, or unfortunately, I was completely indifferent on the matter in that moment. The last time he left me with family, he didn’t come back for over a year without any contact. I aged some more years, becoming a teenager, at least I thought. I don’t know when my birthday is. I don’t know what my age is. I became too big and too mean for anyone to try to abuse me without painful consequences. The family I lived with had been too preoccupied with mind altering substances and the OASIS to even pay attention to me long enough to even conceive any malcontent. I still have fond memories of them still, they were the closest thing I had to a family. I wanted to move on and be on my own, though. Maybe I would even forget some things. So I left.

          I only took the clothes that were on my back and a small sack full of dried edibles and started walking. I walked for days and emptiness filled all of those miles. This world had really become a wasteland. Trash piled taller than any building I have ever seen and landmarks I remember from traveling with my parent had sank into the filthy water. The sea levels have definitely risen in the handful of years since I had been there last. Outside of the major highways, derelict vehicles littered roadways and medians. I’ve seen movies where a natural disaster or extinction event made the world look like this. What has happened to us? Is this our extinction? With all that time walking I enjoyed entertaining that thought. Little did I know at the time how dangerous traveling between major cities became. Commercial busses needed a small escort of armed guards or mercenaries.

          I had to walk for a few more days to get a change of scenery, a big green sign said Columbus Ohio, 10 miles. The badlands faded in the distance and I finally got to see a big city. Lound and obscure sounds came from it’s direction. I got to see it light up as it shifted from dusk to night. I’ve never been to a place like this as long as I can remember, I must have been kept on the back roads and in the country my whole life. As I got closer my senses became overwhelmed by all of the lights and sounds and smells. The smells were the best, there was always that hint of something nauseating and off at the end, but as a whole it smelled delicious. I walked through camps of people, living in tents made of tarps strung across cables and shanties crudely constructed with scrap wood and sheet metal, it looked like these quarters completely surrounded the city. They were brimming with the least fortunate, most of which could still acquire the hardware and connect to the OASIS. Some sat out around a power pole that looked dangerously spliced and rigged to illegally distribute power. A shiny visor covered their dirty faces and haptic gloves covered their filthy hands while they sat on the ground in their torn rags and jacked in. I imagined this was what medieval times would look like if they had internet access.

          Finally I made my way to the downtown area and I explored. I can’t lie, I lived on the streets for a while, refusing to go back to the outskirts of town. I couldn’t get a job without all the right papers or even the general knowledge of my own imperially documented existence. I had to steal and scavenge to eat and avoid the police nightly while trying to sleep, it all still felt like an adventure to me. Eventually I got caught digging through trash, an older Asian woman took me in and put me to work. She was running some kind of unsanctioned halfway house full of other delinquents. Most would come and go, taking advantage of her generosity and stealing food from her. I never did, stuck around and helped her out in return. Interestingly enough, one of the boys that came and went actually left something of value behind. He left a set of torn up haptic gloves and a beat up OASIS visor. I hid them well so I could save them for a rainy day, but the set never got pawned. I could never bring myself to let go of them, plus I knew I would get a pathetic fraction of what they were worth if I tried to trade them in for cash. They were just a heavily used, general issue rig that was handed out enmasse to all the budding students who signed up to go to school online. I would pass on this form of education.

          When I finally convinced myself to ‘jack in’, boredom motivated me and I needed to make some money. Sherry, the old woman, didn’t go outside and set up her produce cart during the winter, so I didn’t have a job. I impatiently dredged through the frustrating process, it took about an hour with my rig and the unprotected wireless connection, non-GSS, to do a first time sign-up and log-in. I left my avatar as the default white male, plain face, plain everything. I couldn't come up with a name, eventually I settled on an atypical spelling of chaos that rendered it into a completely different word. While holding my breath, from a previous failure, the OASIS took my name and let me in. After that, logging in to OASIS became as simple as putting on the visor. The date and time, my first sight in game, 2038/01/18 23:28. Grinding and farming. Day in and day out, like a self-appointed child laborer in sweatshop. That’s how I remember my early days in the OASIS. Finding rare items to auction bought me canned goods and the ability to travel in-game. In hindsight, the process was probably more work than it would have been to physically go outside and scavenge or beg. All the time it took and the initial investment to get to an area where the items I acquired actually started having monetary value outside of vendor cost must have greatly exceeded, in some formula, the amount of time and effort it could have taken me to have a means to an end in the real world. In my defense it happened to be the middle of winter, the average temperature for that week in particular was -10°F. Indoors it was barely above freezing, like sitting butt ass naked in a refrigerator.  

          Through my many hours of raw eyelids and dry mouth grinds I discovered something new to me, not really buried, an advertisement came across my screen and caught my attention. Arenas and battlegrounds scoreboard for the top 10 players. The organized player versus player scene appealed to something primal inside of me, the action and idea of fighting other people, even if it was through fiber optic cables and we were miles away from each other, flipped my on switch. I got the jitters, I felt nervous, my fight-or-flight instinct would go off. It brought me back to life, and the PVP currency bought me amazing gear and had exclusive perks, but it didn’t happen overnight. At first I was awful, completely useless, I cannot remember how I survived the countless toxic teammates. However, the handful of comments that were actual constructive criticism improved my skills and understanding of the games drastically. I practiced too much, I would forget to eat. It had gotten to me, the OASIS sank it’s teeth into me and started pumping me full of it’s venom. I was too far gone to be saved, I didn’t even notice if anyone was coming or going from the small open layout apartment.

          I never studied a day in my life, and now every moment outside of practicing I had videos from YouTube open, learning new techniques and how to specialize my avatar to be more effective in all kinds of combat. I shot for being the best, like everyone else would also, but I knew I would probably just become okay or better than average at my best. I ended up reading more than I ever have in my entire life. I also discovered the practically limitless amounts of media floating around: Music, movies, comic books, everything, anything. I became an invested nerd practically overnight. Classic Metal, cheesy action flicks, The Punisher. All of it just got jammed right into my brain through my ears and eyes.

          The game type I played the most was a five versus five deathmatch first person shooter, first one to win five rounds, wins the match. If you died, you were out for the whole round, and you came back in the next. The weapon load out was the same for everyone at spawn, basic Glock pistol and an M12 SMG, with various guns and other weapons spread out on the map. Knowing the map, knowing where everything is, knowing how to use the best guns, from the basics to the advanced tactics, the game boiled down to skill. I got yelled at so much, people would scream at me like we were really trying to stop some terrorist cell from blowing up an orphanage, for simple mistakes that would ended up losing us the round. The quiet ones though, the ones that could still wipe the floor with the opponents while I missed grenades and couldn’t take objectives, they always shared that gem of knowledge that would make something I could not figure out click into place, and they always did it with such understanding. “Everyone has to start from somewhere.”

          I played for obscene amounts of time, not just in the previous game, but in Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games. Skimming across the surface of countless games, listening to random music, until I stuck to one, I always felt out the PVP scene. It was so hard to deviate from what I had been ingraining in myself that I stopped trying to do something new and just put what I know into the games I was playing. It worked, most of the time. Sometimes it was over complicated overkill that muddied the simple concepts, sometimes the habit of research and memorizing layouts made playing simple matches feel like cheating. I strayed from what I was doing before purely because of boredom, but not loss of interest. I was playing competitively, raising my rank consistently until I reached my ceiling. I needed to be good enough to win round after round, practically by myself, against a team of five individuals of equal or greater skill. I had peaked, reached my soft cap, now it was time to see what else this universe had to offer.

          After reading in various guides and getting sound advice from forums about the advanced combat mechanics of the entirety of the OASIS. Every world containing a game has it’s own specifications for classes and sometimes even races, but the OASIS avatar race could always be used instead, and inside of each game was a set of skills and spells the avatars could learn as they progressed. Some worlds are technology only, so no skills or spells specifically listed as magic or anything that would consume mana could function. The trade off made it worthwhile, guns, vehicles and gadgets ruled these worlds. On the other side, there were worlds where technology didn’t function and only magic and old fashioned warrior and ranger skills could be used. Then there are worlds where both can be used, side by side, combined, against each other, anything. Opposite of that, null zones existed, no magic, tech, guns could be used, none of it. In the instances being specialized as a marksman and warrior gave the most benefits. Guns would always do the most damage and warriors could always take the most damage, on top of that warriors could use any other weapon and some magic adequately. So that’s what I aimed for, fine tuning it in each game, and buying additional spells along the way, like stuns and other useful crowd control.

          I played passively, only doing PVP in an organized battleground setting and staying out of raid groups unless it was completely necessary. I enjoyed the alone time I got to experience in a vast overpopulated universe while sitting in a crowded room of an overpopulated city, it was serene. I developed an easy and relaxing daily routine of repeatable quests between a few nearby planets in similar games. I could listen to music and watch movies with ease, traveling around alone, I even got into listening to some books on ‘tape’ while I was passing the time.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2

          While jumping world to world (my normal routine), doing as I pleased, I kept seeing an avatar and name over and over again out of the corner of my eye. He happened to always be near a blind spot and off in the distance. I knew he must be following me, two worlds in a row could easily be a coincidence, but not more than three, certainly not five, that’s right out. I had to test him, so I left the world and waited a few minutes for him to pursue. Of course he didn’t. When I landed again and went back to my business, I couldn’t see him anywhere, even on my player scanner. Who was ZealousOrca, and what did he want with me? He obviously wanted me to see him or notice him. He didn’t bother to shut off his name plate, I normally do in PvP zones and I recommend others do the same. I tried to send him a message, but he was a ‘private’ user, he could only receive messages from people on his approved friends list. Did he want me to send him a friend request, or did he want me to waltz over to him and hand him some freshly picked daffodils? So I sent him a friend request, my first.

          I didn’t get an immediate response so I followed my gut instinct and went back to the zone hub for the world I was currently on and got back to the teleporter and jumped to a different zone. I had a schedule I wanted to keep to anyway, I planned on doing some ranked matches in the PVP brackets. Waiting in the queue I changed my mind, the non-encounter shook me up and I felt like I had an observer still. I did something I said I would never do in the OASIS. Go shopping.

          I jumped a few more times from teleporter to teleporter and then used a craft to taxi my way back to one of the world’s I just left. These virtual malls made me nervous, but it soothed me compared to how I currently felt. I made a few laps around the ad painted walls of the Avarice 209 Mega Mall. Nothing but window shopping for me, I wanted to spend some credits on neat things to use in the real world, outside of the OASIS, but the chances of it making it to me after I made the purchase were minescule. Anyone could steal it off the doorstep, it could get stolen or even just call off the truck. The risks outweighed the potential benefits, besides, I knew a guy. He could probably get me whatever I needed: New, used, refurbished, for a good price. It still felt good to not to have my nose to the grindstone for a change, it felt like I had project after project piling up and sucking up my time. The levels of which may have consumed a lifetime to satisfy.

          I eventually logged out and returned the next day. Still no response and I still felt concerned. I felt up to doing my ranked matches this time and worked through them. I lost count of my win/loss ratio, but it must have been good, maybe even impressive. I managed to surpass my previous wall and moved up in the bracket a whole five subdivisions. I didn’t even realize how much time I spent jacked in until I heard my pocket device sound my wake up alarm. I spent all day and all night grinding my way up the ladder. I had a problem, this thing had become a serious addiction. I pulled my visor off and turned off my alarm. I stuff everything back into it’s hiding place and zipped up my sleeping bag all the way to the top only leaving enough room to poke my hand out and let some air circulate through it. Once my body was situated and comfortable I blacked out and slept for 12 hours.

          A few days passed, still nothing interesting. I resume my prior behaviors, like doing some daily quests in some Everquest clone for an item it won’t even let me use off world. I’m cleaving away at a mob in a dark and grey forest when I feel a presence.

          “Xaos.” The mysterious voice just stated my name, no inflection, and he pronounced it correctly.

          “I was wondering when you’d come back…” I turn around with a cocky tone only to be smitten with confusion. I don’t know this avatar and he knew my name with my nameplate turned off.

          He drew his two-handed sword from his back, “Nothin’ personal.”

          “Real funny.” I am actually terrified in this moment. I PVP all the time, but in a controlled environment. If either of us die out here we lose it all, but I’m mainly concerned about myself, obviously.

          I try running, but he stays in pursuit, close behind and gaining. I jump on a faster flying mount and try to zone him out, as I look behind me he has already changed mounts and is even closer than before. I take him out over a cliff and maneuver higher to change direction severely and come back towards him. As I bank, I can see him dismount on the edge of the cliff, priming a long cast spell. He releases it and it connects hard. Hard enough that I am free falling without a mount. I can’t see through the fog below me, if it’s water, I won’t take any damage, other than that, I’m dead. Knowing my odds I return fire with the only ranged weapon that works while moving, my bow. It’s awful, no real damage and I haven’t built up any proficiency. Knocking and loosing arrows as fast as I can, they just bounce off of him, but it is canceling his mount cast. Still falling, now passing the edge of the cliff, I knock and hold my last arrow. I watch him mount and pass the edge and come at me. I fire the last arrow with a concussive spell attached. It stuns him and knocks him off his mount and shoves me further away with the blast. We’re both falling, outside of melee striking range, without being able to do anything to stop it. I try to relax while this idiot is screaming. The thought ran through my head about muting him, but there was no time for that.

          Splash. Unfortunately we both land safely. I have already contemplated the loss of all my progress on this avatar so I’m ready to shred this guy like news paper. He is still stunned from my arrow when I strike him again. Stacking another incapacitating effect. I drag his battlemage heavy armored ass to the shore and start beating him in the face with my cudgel, chipping away at his health. Suddenly he begins to glow white and jumps up. He stops taking damage and starts running. He started this altercation, and I’m going to end it. His invulnerability effect wears off in less than two seconds and he can’t stop to heal because I’ll catch up. I wish I would have saved maybe one arrow to make this easier. He halts abruptly and I almost crash into him, when I look up to see two more mounted avatars with their names tags off on top of a nearby hill. He runs towards them while they turn and run at me. What am I getting myself into, I thought. Three on one is hardly in my favor. They reach him by the time I close the gap with him myself.

          One of the riders bellows, “Complete the contract or die!”

          “Contract?” I ask, and they ignore my question.

          “Yes.” He turns to face me, “of course.” He draws his sword again, I re-brandish my cudgel and short sword. I’m waiting for him to make the first move, my heart is pounding so hard it’s making my visor move. When the other rider kicks him towards me, I side step his lumbering advance and strike his back with my sword.

          “Enough, I’ll kill you both.” The first rider dismounts and conjures a pet demon with his staff in hand.

          I panic a little bit again, I have no idea what I’m in the middle of. The burly blue demon charges me as I strafe back around to my original pursuer, it ignores me, tackling my target. I take the opportunity to turn and cheap shot the gabby warlock and knock him down. Surprisingly that gets everyone's attention. Our resident demon, the battlemage and warlock shift their focus to me and the other rider dismounts and produces a bow. I assess the threat priority in my head: Legolas does the most damage, Dr. Strange and his pet do minimal damage, but can control the field if I let them, and Maximus just needs a babysitter. I say break in my head like I am picking a play and giving the X’s and O’s nicknames. I kick the demon’s face back at Maximus and it returns to chasing him, then I turn and jump, launching my cudgel at Legolas for a quick stun and landing on Dr. Strange. A quick slash, slash, thrust combo puts the warlock on a bleed out. He is reduced to a prone crawling position until he can heal, meanwhile his demon starts to fade, then I roll over and retrieve my cudgel and trip the archer and knock him to the ground, putting my foot on his head forcing his face into the ground. The battlemage stomps over to aid his buddies and he eats my truncheon to the face while I continue to whip on the archer and rend the warlock.

          “Yield” I yell, “or I won’t have any other choice!”

          “Never.” the warlock let out a grunt.

          I stab him with my short sword and end his bleed out and his progress. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” Removing my foot from the archer's head.

          Legolas shouted, “You will die here!”

          I pin him to the ground with my short sword through his shoulder and turn to to retrieve my mace. “It’s you and me again, friend.” I pointed at Maximus and he remained unamused. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to run again.”

          “I won’t have to.” He said with extraordinary confidence.

          Thwack! Thwack, thwack! Three arrows in my back. Now I‘m bleeding out, movement speed is now a crawl and I am losing the remainder of my health slowly. Legolas is almost too close to fire off another arrow, if I can get to him I can finish him off, he’s already down to one knee. Maximus knocks me further away and raises his sword high to impale me. I can’t get away fast enough. He drops his sword at my center mass, I roll. He grazes me, chipping a sliver of my already dwindling health, but it still might be too much to survive the bleed. I hear an arrow loose and hit.

           I’m still alive, it didn’t hit me. I hear another arrow impact and I watch Maximus fall to one knee. One more arrow connects and he slumps next to me, dead. I play dead as the archer tries to stand, I watch him use his bow to balance him like a cane. He turns his back and tries to mount, but the bleed is keeping him from completing the cast. I reach for my sword and slide it towards me, quietly. It catches a rock makes a ringing noise. An arrow pierces the ground next to my hand and I hear the bow creek as he knocks another arrow. I can see him trying to aim, it’s wildly shifting to the left and back to the right, if an arrow even knicks me, I’m done. I toss my sword at him, haphazardly. I’m losing strength and control. The handle bounces off of his leg, tripping him, he falls flat on his face, loosing the arrow. Maximus’s corpse catches the would be killing blow. Legolas is still alive, I can hear him crawling. I peak over the battlemage’s body and see him inching towards me with a dagger drawn. I threw all of my weapons and used all my arrows, plus I won’t be able to move much more than him. I let him come. He exaggerates the stabbing motion as he raises his hand upon me, I grab him at the forearm and wrestle the knife to the ground. As soon as it’s out of his hand I strike him with a head butt. I use my fist, my elbow, my head, whatever I can throw next. Hand to hand is doing close to no damage, but it’s still doing damage.

          The archer and I are about equal on remaining health, but my bleed is more severe. He begins to strike at me, but only with his right fist. We trade blows, my visor is flashing red around the edges, it’s almost over for me, I can see his bleed is almost over and he is going to manage to outlast me and kill me. I roll him and plant my hand on the knife, he sees me and rolls back over. He brings his hands up together to finish me off and I rush the knife between us. He lands on the dagger before he can make contact with me for a final time. I twist it and push in, just to make sure he is dead this time. I like to imagine he can feel this. His avatar goes limp and falls, exhaling in my face.

          I pushed his ugly avatar off of me and open my inventory. My bleed is ticking constantly and I’m losing color in my visor. I find the bandages that I always keep on me and use eight of them just to stop the bleed. I search some more and pull out a roasted turkey leg with one hand and a Superior Healing Solve with the other. I can’t use them both at the same time, I still attempted to do so. Eventually, I sat up to eat and regain the remaining deficit of my health points. Lucky for me this world was full loot PVP. That means anything they had on their persons I could take if it would fit in my inventory. As I rummaged through the carcasses like a vulture looking for any kind of clue to explain that whole incident, I thought in retrospect, I should’ve tried to ask some questions. I collected what I found to be valuable and sold the rest off to an NPC vendor and then headed back to a capital world. During my flight I saw a blinking notification on my interface. He accepted my friend request and sent me a message.

          From: ZealousOrca

          To: Xaos

          Subject: An Offer You Can’t Refuse

          We need to meet. See attachment.

Chapter Text

          I followed the directions inside the message. I traveled to a place I’ve never been before inside the OASIS, which isn’t really saying much because of how selectively I moved around. This place was an underground, not literally underground, but off the grid. It looked like the back alley of a slum, everything was textured dirty and wet and it always drizzled. With a few turns and a couple blocks down, I made it from the teleporter to my destination in a free for all and fully unlocked PVP zone. I looked around and nothing, nothing but a dead end. I walked up and investigated the brick wall to see if there was any kind of loose brick or keypad or just anything. My direction just vaguely say to walk on in. I pressed all along the wall and it was solid so I tried to just walk through the wall, thinking to myself that it won’t hurt. I approached it with an even step, like the wall was just imaginary and my visor blacks out. So I take it off and shake it then put it back on, still nothing. I started getting audio back, distorted audio. Within a few more seconds the visor began displaying my surroundings again and I was in a whole different world.

          Unlike the cliche underworld, this place was bright and loud and full of people like a market place out of an adventure movie. I could see a sky, but I was underground, interesting. Before I could wonder off and explore this new place, my contact sent me a private message instructing me to not to approach him, look at him or talk to him, just follow. I glanced around and recognized his avatar, he faced away from me and began to lose interest in what he was staring at while messaging me. He appeared to be meandering, but I kept my distance and never stopped on him when I scanned the crowd with my eyes. It didn’t look like he was going anywhere too fast so I started looking at the flea market stalls.

          This place was packed with rare items that you never see up for ‘legal’ auction without an obscene price tag, and none of the items were labeled with any kind of monetary amount, just various combinations of repeating symbols I didn’t really recognize. I had a feeling, so I looked up, I was just in time to see my contact enter a terracotta colored building through a beaded curtain. I slowly worked my way to the entry way and waited outside for a few minutes before entering.

          Everything changed when I stepped through that curtain, like I teleported to a different area. There was no door behind me and everything around me reflected light like black glass would. I didn’t see him initially, when I tried moving everything changed again. This time It was a white room, it could have been huge or it could have been small, it was too bright to tell.

          “We’re safe here.” A deep accented voice said out of the nothingness.

          “Where is here?” I asked.

          “No where!” He replied, excitedly.

          I got an invite to a private room from ZealousOrca and I accepted it. My avatar stayed behind while a copy resolved in the chat room. “Wow!” I let it out as soon as my visor feed switched over. His room was stunning, it reminded me of the old lavish offices that Bond villains had in their volcano bases, including the crazy high pile white shag carpet, an exaggerated fireplace and all the matching white contemporary furniture circa 1960.

          “I apologize for all of the stagecraft.” He said to me, walking into the room in a white leisure suit, shoes and shirt matching the decor holding two glasses and a bottle of scotch.

          “I have tons of questions, but I’m confused. Why didn’t you just invite me here from the start?” I sat down on his white chaise lounger, still trying to figure out his accent.

          “It wasn’t safe, it still isn’t, but it’s safer.” He handed me a glass and he poured the drinks. “Someone wants you or your avatar dead, and before you ask, I don’t know any of the who’s or why’s, but I do know that they are going to be equally infuriated and impressed that you foiled those amateurs.”

          “Amateurs? Like us playing tea time.” I threw my drink out over my shoulder.

          “Worse.” He replied, refilling my glass.”I don’t do any of the dirty work for those types of people. I do the leg work.”
          “Is that why I saw you following me?” I asked. I came to the conclusion it was a light german accent, but I wasn’t going to ask him.

          “I do things in game very similar to a private investigator. It pays about a fraction of the total price on a mark, but it is still lucrative. Someone wanted to know your habits, day in a day out routine. So I collected the information they requested in exchange for a fee.”

          “What’s with the accent?”

          “I’m European.”

          “And why haven’t I heard anything about people being victims of a hit before now?”

          “Do you hear about hired hits in the real world, do you hear about all the things mercenaries do for money outside of the OASIS.”
          “Not really. No.”

          “They are the best people at keeping secrets and doing big things under the radar. Those skills translate almost directly into the OASIS. Do you do things safe, smart and fast?.” He leaned back in a chair and let out a sigh. “Anyway, one of a few things is going to happen to you after this, best case scenario: You personally killed who was after you on that hit. This outcome is highly unlikely. Worst case scenario: This is a trap and you’re about to die.”

          I jumped up and tried to leave the chat room. “I knew better.” All my options for leaving and logging out were unavailable and if I just logged out, I would stay standing in a PVP zone for a few minutes until my avatar faded. My face felt cold from the panic.

          “Take joke, guy.” he chuckled the took a drink. “Your avatar is in no man's land. It’s floating in limbo. Unobtainable, if you will. I wasn’t lying when I said you were no where.”
          “Asshole! You’re a real, genuine asshole.” I sat back down.

          “When you walked through that beaded curtain you entered a trick room. The door was a teleportation spell to another similar trick room on the other side of the universe in the center of a blank planet. Those trick rooms are bouncing your avatar back and forth faster than it can load, so it just queues up the teleportation to stacks. Eventually, the last trick room will stop the loop and you’ll be back where we started.”

          “Why all the trouble?”

          “Well, while the possible outcomes for you aren’t great, mine aren’t any better, especially if they knew I had contacted a mark, which they might already know. My avatar will be killed and/or I will be blacklisted and not allowed back to the underground, where it is safe for me to do my version of dirty work.”

          “I’m tired of asking questions, but why did you risk meeting me?”

          “Isn’t it obvious? You’ve got a valuable grade of potential. You’re really good at what you do, but not refined enough to get noticed.”
          “Okay.” I was not sure it that was really meant as a compliment or not, but he thinks I’m good so I’ll take it.

          “What I’m saying is, I have some resources for you. Take them, leave them, It’s your choice. I have some other business to take care of soon, another appointment. You should be leaving.” He hands me an actual data item. “Oh, and don’t log on for a few days. I’ll contact you another way to reassess our options in the near future.”

          I faded away and found myself back in the dead end alley. Not wanting to take any chances, I booked it to the teleporter and found a non-PVP zone.

          I found a safe place to logout for the night.

          The next morning I woke up with everything still on my person, the visor, the gloves, my clothes. I really didn’t have bed to sleep in, just some allocated space and a sleeping bag for me to stay in the main room and all other spaces were shared. I had to pack up my things and store them every time I was done using them. When I said store, I really meant hide. Too many people come in and out of this tiny apartment that I don’t have time to try and trust everybody to leave it alone. I tucked it away in a return air duct and put the vent back on and screwed it into place.

          I did my basic chores the old lady needed done in the apartment before I left. I headed down to the street where her cart was. She sold a variety of items, almost like a garage sale daily, and she needed me to move her large and heavy boxes around. I could sort out the items, almost to her satisfaction, but there was a language barrier. She knew enough english that we could understand her, but she also threw in other words that I didn’t understand at all and I couldn’t recognize what language it was. I definitely didn’t speak whatever language it was and wasn’t patient enough to try to learn it. In the course of a normal day, I would help her out until everything was set up and then I would wander around town and look at the other vendors. When I started to get dark I would come back and help pack everything back up and take it up to the apartment.

          Today wasn’t any different, I did what was expected of me and then I made my rounds. Right around the corner from where I was staying there was a younger man in an old windowless van that I walked to visit. I can’t say the sight and smell of his living situation didn’t stir up bad memories, but I was numb to most everything now. He always had something new, or at least new looking, for a dirt cheap price or trade. One time I traded a couple cans of Pork ‘n Beans for an operating laptop with a working screen, battery and charger, but I don’t use it as much anymore, since I started using the OASIS rig. It just sits around now, but it’s still full of movies, TV shows and music, plus other media not worth mentioning, having all that time to do whatever I wanted or watch whatever I desired taught me something about myself: I am a nerd and a completionist. I watched so many TV shows from very first episode to the finale, and the genres range from sci-fi to drama, even a sprinkle of comedy if the references were right. All of that and I wouldn’t watch them again, maybe an episode here or there if I was thinking about it, but once I had completed something it just stayed in storage. I couldn’t bring myself to delete any of it, physically incapable, so I started calling my addiction and compulsion Brainiac Syndrome, after the Superman villain. Consume, catalog, continue. The exception was my music. I always had it playing in the background during my daily round of quests and I wanted to listen to it more, but didn’t have the means.

          I made my way around the corner just in time to catch my guy opening up shop. He was a post-teen proto-hipster with greasy blond hair in the pompadour style when it wasn’t under his blue beanie cap and mirrored aviators covered his eyes, just like Johnny Bravo. His beard covered the rest of his face, thick, full and blond just like his hair, but with streaks of red running through it, and he always wore a vintage t-shirts or fake vintage reprint with a pair of fitting and worn jeans. I walked closer, wondering what he added to his spread.

          “Anything new?” I asked as I got closer to the table.

          “Yeah, not really. Not since yesterday.” Johnny replied while he continued to lay out the gadgets and oddities. I looked them over and saw what I had been idly searching for. An old cellphone caught my eye and I inspected it. It turned on and everything. “You can’t get service on it anymore.”

          “I don’t need service, I just want to load it up with music. Got any headphones to go with it?” I asked

          “I might have something. You like the shitty little earbuds or like, real headphones?” He gestured cupping his hands next to his ears.

          “I’d like them to knock out background noise.”

          “Got it. Let me rummage through my collector’s box.” He turned away hopped in the back of his van and opened a wooden chest. He pulled out some documents that didn’t look too legit, like passports and social security cards, and he also pulled out some really vintage vinyl records still in the sleeves. I watched him sift through the box, it sounded like a kid going through a box of legos looking for the perfect part, knocking everything else to the side. He kept pulling things out until something new caught my eye. At first I thought he pulled out a gun, but the shape wasn’t quite right and it had a cord and extra buttons and what looked like an old ‘Haptic’ logo across the barrel.

          “What… is that?” I asked him, not breaking my gaze.

          He grabbed it, “Oh, this old thing?” He brandished it and aimed it at me, winking. “Haptic just started giving these things away, practically throwing them in the trash, before they stopped making them.”
          “Why? What does it do?”

          “First off, it’s a piece of garbage. Secondly, this is the Haptic Quick Draw. Released in 2019 as a lame gun handle adapter for the OASIS, it was supposed to make aiming and reloading optimal.” He brought it out of the van and handed it to me to fondle. “However, it took up a glove slot on older machines, making it undesirable for 80% of their current clients, the ones that did use it, hated it.”

          “That seems kind of harsh.” I said as I examined the peripheral more closely.

          “These are the facts, man. It’s in the history books.” He followed up.

          “It can’t be that bad, can it?” I pulled the cocking mechanism on it and it sounded fantastic, along with the weight and the tactile buttons.

          “It’s too heavy and has a limited range of uses for those long OASIS sessions.” He snatched it away from me. “Every OASIS junkie can’t handle anything but the weight of nothing or their dick in their hand.”

          I tried not to laugh, so I asked him, “How much for it, then?”

          “I’m not sure if it’s for sale, I kinda like holding onto these quirky things.” He put his hand out in front of him like he was going to start singing.

          “Please don’t.” I pleaded.

          “Don’t what?”
          “You were going to start singing about the island of misfit toys.”

          “Not even close, man.”
          “You were, and you were probably going to jumble up the words because you haven’t seen it in a decade.”
          “Bro.” He put the Haptic Quick Draw back in my hands. “Don’t try to get into a guy's head like that.”

          “Well, was there an amount or a trade for this thing?”

          “Just take it, guy.” He looked away, like he was done with me. “But if you don’t like it, bring her right back here.”

          “I can’t say I won’t like it, but I’ll bring her back to you if it doesn’t work out.”

          He didn’t respond to me, he just turned his back and started shoveling everything back into his wooden box with the exception of the old records. I just walked away with the device holstered behind me in my pants and under my shirt and jacket. I couldn’t wait to try it so I rushed back to the apartment. I ran up the stairs and through the door, no one was inside so I rushed to my corner and pulled out my rig.

          It plugged in along with the gloves, I was expecting it to make me replace one glove slot like Johnny said, but I guess this old OASIS stations wasn’t all that old. I studied the device thoroughly, now that I was huddled over it like Smeagol coveting his precious. The trigger was two stage sensitivity, the first thing I played with, it would click on the lightest press and again right before full compression. I could feel a few buttons where my thumb rested, the tip of my thumb could flick a two-way switch up and down and the actual rest was a flat toggle switch that only clicked with extreme thumb movement. Above the trigger on the right side sat a button that my finger could reach comfortably while still easily being able to place it back on the trigger. Then the two features I used before, the manual cocking mechanism and the fast reload button where an ammunition magazine would normally be on a real gun. Because it was unfortunately designed to replace a Haptic glove, I assumed the Haptic Quick Draw had motion sensing capabilities.

          I started logging in and I selected to open the OASIS extension. I remembered that the guy told me not to log in for a while. Glock blocked. So I backed off and looked through the screenshots I saved to find those resources he gave me. The first link I notice is a Star Wars book: The Bounty Hunter Code, I started the download. After that was a link to another book: Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, that one queued up next in the downloads. I noticed a pattern to the point of cliches for the reference material, but I still downloaded it all. Next was a list of online communities, they all had weird labels like surface, deep and dark. There was a note above one of the dark links that told me to download a browser proxy extension, so I did, I wasn’t exactly sure what it did, but the words privacy and anonymous were bold and underlined at the download link. I wondered what I had gotten myself into. I figured if I couldn’t log in I would have to kill the time some other way. So I buckled in for a long session of research.

Chapter Text

          I knew I had already passed the point of no return. Walking around in the OASIS would become a kill or be killed drama. My informant still hadn’t contacted me, at least I think he hasn’t tried to. I abstained from logging in and kept to the resources I was provided. One of the forums I lurked in, which required a password just to access before I could even make an account to post, was filled with brokers putting up job postings and mercenaries bidding on said jobs. Every job posting had a page of information, still managing to be vague, and the mercs bidded on how fast they could get it done and how much compensation they would require to complete the job. I searched that forum as far back as a month and couldn’t find anything mentioning me or my routine. I even checked the failure board. There were vidcap recordings of every botched job, most of which ended with the merc getting merc’d by the mark, in numerous pages. The ones that posted bids on this board called themselves the clean up crew. Once someone tried to kill you in the OASIS, you made yourself scarce, change the way you look, break up your routine, sometimes pay to change your name, but these guys liked the challenge.

          I finally found my failed mission video on a more amateur board. It didn’t require a password to access and I didn’t feel the need to make a username and password for this trash heap. I kept searching and looking at the post pertaining to my attack and the attackers. From what I read, there’s a small dark guild that said I broke their code during a ‘cops vs. terrorists’ match. I dishonored them and brought them shame by muting their asthmatic yelling and laughing during a ranked match. I remembered it now, I made us lose on purpose to get out of the lobby with them. They made a spectacle during the job posting, stringing vulgarity after vulgarity into run on sentences. My summary concluded that I should be taken out for free, but they would pay if the merc brought them along to watch. So, I concluded that I killed the person they hired and two members of their lame guild. I copy and pasted the transcripts, downloaded the vidcap of me winning three on one, screen capped the information of the people involved and started compiling my hit list.

          These loudmouthed losers had their own website for their guild, listing every single member. I gathered all 26 names and scratched off, satisfactorily with the red brush tool, the two idiots I had dealt with previously. According to this guild's mission statement and rules, dying in a PvP zone was a bannable offence. I decided I wanted to dissolve this guild. I thought, maybe my informant was exaggerating about how dangerous logging back into the OASIS would be. He could know something I don’t, but these clowns in particular, look self governed, poorly self governed. I definitely had feelings of cockiness running through my head as I tidied up my hit list. I was dying to use the Haptic Quick Draw so I pointed it to type and move windows around in my interface, it was really cool.

          Just as I managed to get to a point where I could do cosmetic work to my list I got a direct message in one of the forums I still had open:

          ZO: I Have someone who wants to meet you.

          He logged off before I could respond, then before I knew it, I had another message in a different window.

          ZO: Join the room.

          A few more messages popped up before I could close the previous ones, they all strung together into one thought, one single message. ZO wanted me to log back in, join a chat room via link. Then he wanted me to read the instructions left on the table. He also wanted me to have a pleasant day and to not get carried away. I thought that last bit excited my interest the most. I didn’t have to be told twice to log back in, I had a problem.

          As soon as the world materialized I jumped into the chatroom from the link in the invitation that sat open on my display. I didn’t pay much attention to the surroundings as I loaded into the room, it looked like a generic beach house, view included. I just started moving towards the table with the instructions on them as soon as I could. I couldn’t put the simulated piece of paper into my inventory, so I screenshot the message in my hand and left the room. I wouldn’t count it as a conventional message, just a connect the dots drawing completed incorrectly. The lines drawn on the would be stegosaurus connected three numeric dots using obvious arrows, I pulled up my cap of the image and headed for the closest transporter. 23, 12, 20 were connected in an order of X, Y, Z coordinates, allowing me to find an exact location in three dimensional space, aka the OASIS and/or the OASIS sectors. When I filed into the transporter I found it inconvenient that the location I desired didn’t have the option of direct teleportation. I still managed to find one very close and I very quickly jumped to it.

          The sector that managed to be closest to where I wanted to go contained a bunch of planets themed and named after some tabletop RPG games. According to my map, I needed to fly through space to nothing. It could be nothing, there wasn’t a planet at the coordinates I had. I got into my generic spacecraft, It looked like one of the Galaga ships, it was pretty standard issue. Sub Light speed and cheap. I rocketed towards my destination as fast as I could. As I approached, a large spacecraft became visible in the distance. It was the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 from the Star Trek Next Generation and it happened to be sitting exactly where I wanted to be. I did a complete pass around the bridge and swung under the saucer to the hangar.

          Once I parked my ship and hopped out, Zo was waiting patiently for me. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon, but I’m not completely surprised.” He said, pointing his scotch glass at me.

          “Well, I have been waiting to hear from you so I could log back in.” I said, walking towards him.

          “Understandable.” He nodded to me. We met and he started walking, me following beside him.

          “So why did you want me to come out here?” I asked.

          “I don’t want to spoil anything, all things will come in their short time.”

          “Okay, I guess I’ll just follow you.”

          “Indeed.” he said discarding his glass as we passed through a door to the interior of the ship. “I assume you found all the information about who attacked you.”

          “You wouldn’t have been able to contact me otherwise, right?”

          “Not necessarily true. You did make it easier.” He replied. He opened the doors at the end of the corridor exposing the platform to the turbolift. We stepped in. He turned to me and smiled, he gave me the kind of subtle smile a sociopath gets when you indulge them in their dilutions. I became a little scared and he was starting to creep me out. “Computer.” He said not breaking eye contact. “Transporter room.”

          “Transporter room?” I thought aloud. The Turbolift didn’t hesitate and took off, abruptly stopping at our destination a few seconds later. The doors opened.

          “After you.” He insisted with a slight bow.

          “You’re being weird.” I observed aloud, take steps forward, looking back at Zo. He followed me out of the lift and directed me through another door that opened with the classic sound effect.

          “Here he is!” An unknown male voice said from through the door.

          “Finally!” Another voice added, this one was female.

          My first instinct lead me to believe this was a trap and I drew my side arm with my new Haptic attachment and aimed at the voices.

          “Put that away, don’t embarrass yourself so soon.” Zo said, putting his hand on my weapon and pushing it towards the ground.

          “Sorry, you didn’t tell me what was going on.” I holstered my weapon.

          “I didn’t want to ruin any of the suspense.” Zo explained.

          “Thanks.” I replied indignantly. I had a chance to survey the room in front of me, without an aiming reticle this time. I saw the bodies to the two voices. I also saw two more bodies, gagged and bound, obviously voiceless. The man who spoke first, had a Snake Plisskin look about him. The hair was right, he had the stubble, he had the eye patch, too. He had a worn leather jacket on, it wasn’t a replica or anything like that, but it appeared to be more functional, with extra pockets. It covered his body armor, which reminded me of what Mandalorian warriors would wear. All in all, he looked like Snakes character if the movie was called Escape from Mandelore City. The lady in the room looked like Carrie-Anne Moss and her character from the Matrix. From the short black hair to the shiny black getup, her body language screamed ‘touch me and that hand will never touch anything again’. Fitting. As for the two guys tied up, I tried not to look at them too much, I bent my neck to look past the two others standing in front of them and saw that they were on their knees centered on transporter pads. I saw that my new friends were sitting on the control station for the transporter and they didn’t care what buttons they were hitting.

          “Excuse my colleague. He was on the wrong side of a contract and is still feeling it’s effects.” Zo tried to make excuses for me. He gestured to the Kurt Russell wannabe and looked at me. “This is Snake, spelled 5-N-A-K-3.” He looked at 5nak3 and gestured to me, then he looked back at me, “I’m just going to introduce you as X. And this is X.” He put his hand on my shoulder.

          “Hi.” I muttered timidly. 5nak3 didn’t respond.

          “And this is the lovely lady is Trilogy.” Zo bowed slightly to her.

          “Nice to meet you all.” I forced the nicety.

          “Shut your fucking mouth” Trilogy replied. Her and 5nak3 stopped leaning on the control panel and walked around to the front of the raised portion of the transporter room. Zo instructed me with his hands to follow.

          “Who are these guys?” I asked, aiming my question at Zo.

          “I think the lady told you to shut your fucking mouth kid.” 5nak3 spoke over me.

          Zo pointed his hands and separated 5nak3 and Trilogy, “Enough.” Then he grabbed me by both of my shoulders and walked me to the gap he created between them. “These are the people I really wanted you to meet.” He whispered eerily in my ear.

          “Okay, you still haven’t dialed back the weird.” I said louder than I intended. I got a closer look at the two schmucks they had tied up. One of them was wearing some serious PvP gear and expensive vanity items. He was squirming and making the most noise. The other guy was just dressed in a simple blue business suit. He was like a statue.

          “I have some ulterior motives, I must confess. One of these men is the lowly guild leader of that tiny group of idiots, that one is for you. The other is the broker that underestimated you and overestimated his clients, that one’s for me.” He stepped on the the transporter pad and grabbed the guild leader by his hair. His squirming stopped and he started whining. “Pathetic.”

          “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

          “Isn’t it obvious, kid? He wants you to kill them.” 5nak3 interjected. The guild leader started freaking out even more and fell over on to his side.

          “It isn’t that simple, Snake.” He added. “I want my new friend, X, to make a choice.”

          “A choice?” I made an uncertain noise.

          “A choice.” Trilogy reassured.

          “A very important choice.” Zo explained. “I know you have plans to kill every single one of the members of that pathetic young man's guild, as fun as it may seem to you, but I have more pressing issues for you to attend to.”

          “What are my choices, exactly?” I inquired.

          Zo came back over and stood behind me. His avatar was just a little taller I just then noticed. “You can make quick work of this plebeian, leave the rest of his guild for another day and come work for me. Take the jobs I broker to you. Or you can go back to looking over your shoulder, waiting for someone with a childish grudge to snuff you out.”

          “Oh.” I was a little stunned. The choice was pretty obvious to me, but I had more questions. “Will I get paid, or at least a cut?”

          “Of course, of course.” He replied. “You get to do as you please, within reason, and when I give you a contract, I ask that you make it your top priority.”

          “Seems easy enough.” I said.

          “It is! Hurry this up.” Trilogy said, tapping two of her fingers against her wrist where a watch would be if she wore one.

          “Yes, yes.” Zo said speedily. “Delete this worm, X.” He pointed to the guild leader, who was now squirming and sobbing on the floor.

          “Why haven’t they just logged out?” I asked, drawing my weapon.

          “This is a PvP zone, you know the rules. They logout here, we get 60 seconds of pinata time.” 5nak3 explained.

          I sat the guild leader back up on to his knees, I pulled off his blindfold and gag. “Pleeeeeaase!” He cried out, I could hear him spitting over the mic. “No! No no no no! Don’t do this.”

          “Why not?” I asked him as I stood up, keeping eye contact.

          “I-I-I’ve had this avatar since I was just a-a little boy!” His sobbing interrupted his speech, I must be doing something that really upset him. I walked around him to his back. “NO!” He continued to cry out.

          “Where did you find this guy, Zo? He’s sick.” 5nak3 said, looking at me.

          “He’s not actually killing anyone.” Trilogy added.

          “He isn’t, but he is going to be ruining someone's life.” Zo explained.

          I placed the barrel of my gun to the back of his head and made sure to manually cock it slowly, the most satisfying way to cock a virtual gun. With a “Vaya con Dios.” I pulled my trigger and crit all over the back of his head. Whenever an avatar is restrained or incapacitated, you are guaranteed to crit. Some areas of the avatars become instant kill zones in these positions as well. The back of the head is one of them. The guild leader’s body fell limp to the floor and started to dissipate.

          “Quite fabulous!” Zo exclaimed. “Now it’s time for your first contract.”

          “Already?” I asked. Everyone in the room who wasn’t bound or dead looked at me and then looked at the man who was still bound. “Oh.”

          “Don’t bother wasting your time taking his blindfold or gag off. He’s a clone.” 5nak3 pleaded, then he held up his hand, telling me to stop. “Some people have hacked rigs that let them create multiple avatars. This was the only one we were willing to grab for Zo at the time.”

          Zo prompted, “You must dispatch him, then the eight others like him. I’ll provided you with everything you need to know once we finish up here.”

          I pointed my gun at the center mass of the bound clone and fired three rapid shots into his back. “There.” I said. “Now we are done here.”

          “Quite.” Zo said.

          “Thank you for the work and stopping by for a visit, Zo. It’s so good to see you still recruiting and being a lunatic menace.” Trilogy said shaking Zo’s hand.

          “Always a pleasure” 5nak3 shook Zo’s hand as well.

          “You’re all too kind.” Zo responded graciously.

          “And X” Trilogy said sweetly.

          “Yeah?” I responded.

          “Get the fuck off my ship!” Trilogy yelled.

          “Right now! Get out of here!” 5nak3 added to the yelling.

          I ran out of the transporter room to the Turbolift, I could hear Trilogy and 5nak3 still yelling and Zo trying not to laugh. Once I made it back to my ship and backed out of the hangar, I took the long way back where I started. I had plenty of fuel just to fly back, and it would take a little bit of time. Time I needed to sort out what had just happened.

          Not much time had passed before I chat link dossier from Zo, I put my ship on autopilot and opened the link. The file downloaded and displayed multiple windows full of information. From right to left, the windows displayed a few screen caps of the eight clones he tasked me to find, all identical looking, a list of recent activities included last known location, and a block of text. I started looking at their faces and the backdrops to all of the screen caps, I noticed something unnerving, actually I noticed a few things that undid all of the work I put into putting myself back at ease. They traveled in a pack. They traveled in a pack and used synchronized movements and coordinated attacks. I also didn’t find any comfort in their names. All of them were numeric, six numbers in sequence all starting with the number five. 501500, 501501, 501502, 501504, 501505, 501506, 501507, 501508. I guess I killed lucky number 501503. I moved on to the eyestraining brick wall of words.

          The TL;DR of my situation, a rough summary from the textbook I forced myself to finish, became increasingly severe. A multi-million dollar company has employees running around a simulation to generate revenue, reputation, items, anything that could equate to real world value. They also have four other divisions: name numbers beginning with 1 are the elite PvP superstars, they have everything handed to them and are used to control territories inside the OASIS. 2’s are the research and development players, they are the architects of player generated worlds and have also been witnessed to exploit the game code. Mr. 3’s are the simulations blackmarket enthusiasts, they buy up, undercut and attempt to control the in game auctions and economy. 4’s are the undecided recruits, they have been seen doing every other job at a very basic level. Which leaves the employees with the names starting with 5, they exploit the hardware and software of the game, normally run in packs of 10 or more all being controlled by one player, to batch powerlevel avatars and pass them on to the rest of the company. All of this information was compiled by multiple people dealing with innumerable cases of run ins with the company paid players, but the disclaimer at the beginning and at the end explained that this information is not from an insider and just the observations that have been made, collected and compared.

          I remember hearing about IOI before, also called by their full name Innovative Online Industries, they were just an internet service provider as far as I knew. Now I knew more, so I guess that wasn’t entirely the truth. With the demand for high speed access internet growing exponentially, the company grew just as fast. They absorbed other large ISP companies and even started umbrella and shell corporations. Their vertical and horizontal expansion rivaled Walmart’s. It was also explained in my dossier that their interest in the OASIS was non-existent until the ingame credit surpassed the USD in value. After that, almost all of their business dealings were done via computer simulation. I didn’t know if I should be terrified or not, that guy on the other side of the screen is going to use all eight of his avatars in unison like a firing squad on me if I just run in, and he still might do that with any other approach I take. I barely survived a three on one encounter. I had to become more educated on my enemy. I had to come up with a plan.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5

          Traveling to the last known location of the clones, I checked through my inventory. I didn’t have a separate cache or a strong hold, not yet anyway, so everything I owned in the OASIS was on my person. Being a ranger, I could equip a two-handed ranged weapon and have a side arm readied. Having warrior perks, the simulations let me have a one-handed melee weapon equipped. Unfortunately, my side arm was the only gun I owned, it happened to be a rare drop with really good stats, the damage was insane for a small gun, but the fire rate was junk, but I didn’t expect a high tech revolver to fire automatically. My two-handed ranged weapon was just a pre-level 99 bow I couldn’t find a suitable replacement for. I hoped that all the grinding I did and all the credits I blew to reach the level cap I would have replaced it by now, but I never made it around to a questline that offered any alternative. Everything else I had equipped had stat and set bonuses favoring my ranger side, more specifically guns, even more specifically, handguns. All of my armor I had maxed out upgrades and alterations to enhance it past the stats they offered, which were still really high and requiring level 99. I didn’t have any artifacts equipped, I hadn’t found any. My inventory was relatively empty, I liked to keep it really organized and I always sold what I couldn’t use, so that made it easier. I thought now, that maybe I should have kept something better than that bow.

          I decided to make a pit stop while en route to purchase an upgrade. I was traveling about a half a sector out of my way, but it could mean life or death for me. I banked around and elongated space station built into an asteroid, it might have been from some movie or game, but I didn’t recognize it. One of the resources Zo gave me said this place is where one of the best arms dealers in the OASIS resides and an arms dealer is what I needed. After I landed on the outer hangar bay, I made my way inside, I knew the guy I wanted to see set up shop at the core. It felt like walking through a mine, all the walls were made up of the raw asteroid, supported by metal and wood beams. It took about five minutes of winding tunnels to finally get to the center of this place. I found a metal blast door there, it was locked so I banged on it. The intercom off to the right let out a shriek and then a voice followed, “Password!” I thought for a moment, I really should have looked that back up on my way here. “You have 10 seconds to comply. 10.”

          “It’s Passamamassy”

          “9.”

          “Quadamapassy?”

          “8.”

          “Passamashloddy.”

          “No!” The piercing voice on the intercom replied. “It’s Passamaquoddy!”

          “Of course, that’s what I meant to say.” I replied, sweat from my brow made it down into my visor. The door opened slowly. The simulated grinding mechanical sound felt soothing compared to that voice from the intercom. After a short time I made it into the armored and password protected den. I didn’t see anyone physically around or manning the shop. I approached the counter and an automatic menu pulled up and projected information right in front of my face. Underneath that I could see a solid glass lid with a weapon displayed, I noticed all the weapons lined up, end to end on a conveyor belt. I scrolled through the visual interface and the belt tracked it back and forth with a delay. I didn’t see any formal search options and I saw gaps in the inventory. Prices were through the roof on all the good stuff, this guy found and was selling a Weirding Module, too cool. I searched for an hour, way longer than I wanted to spend in this place, but I had to look through about 200 different weapons with no refinement. I had to choose between the M56 Smartgun from Aliens or the Morita II Assault Rifle. I knew I wanted to be able to pump out as many rounds as I could in their general direction before they could react. The Smartgun had high accuracy and fire rate, excellent range for the type of weapon it was, but the damage left something to be desired. On the other hand the Morita Tonshi, it was also called, had okay ranged and average fire rate, I would have to get closer and wouldn’t put as many holes in them as I would like. It had a game changer attachment, though. I could fire a grenade or two before they could react, which could just be the end of the job right there. I thought about it a little longer and ended up taking the M56. None of my gear enhancements worked on explosives, I would do more damage a second with a faster firing gun. I made my purchase and shortly afterwards the conveyor belt brought around my new Smartgun and dropped it into a tray like I won it out of a claw machine. I wish, this thing was maxing on my budget.

          I got back in my ship after completing a tunnel maze and took off. I could only hope the clones didn’t get too far from where they were last spotted. I don’t think they, he, it, would even actually log out, so I wasn’t worried about needing to find them again. A few minutes later I came into orbit of a chaos world, Be’er Shacat. Both magic and technology could be used here, and there was no clear theme that I could see in all the worlds being collided, except for one crazy hellish nightmare. A small area of the surface was a glowing green sea of nuclear waste that spread throughout the entire surface via the cracks and fissures of the desolate and blackened terrain. Razor sharp rocky peaks wrapped around the surface like a serpent. As I read the description it became more and more terrifying, this place was fucked. Mechanized soldiers, cyborgs, zombies, demonic beasts, dragons, orcs, giant fleshy abominations stitched together, necromancers and wizards, all roaming freely and in dense patterns between crashed alien ships and space marine freighters. There were also a number of gigantic castles and cave lairs full of epic classed bosses peppered into the already impossible mix.

          I put my ship closer to the surface and started scanning for players. After one full rotation I saw a dense blip on the other side of a black spire jutting from the ground. I touched down in the flattest area I could find and drew my new heavy weapon. I hiked up to the edge of the cliff that joined with the spire and used a standalone scope to survey what lied ahead of me. I would have been surprised at how lacking the population of monsters had been compared to the description, but I soon noticed the swath of destruction cut into the crackled open area in front of me. Like a yellow brick road, the bodies of soldiers and demons lay shoulder to shoulder winding from one end of the ravine to the dip in the mountains opposite of my location. If these guys, or this one guy, is treating this place like a proverbial cake walk, I was fucked.

          I followed the trail of corpses up to the other cliff. When I looked over I saw a tiny white chapel. The ground around it glowed yellow and all the monsters that stepped on to it caught fire and exploded with light. This must be the questing hub for this area. I didn’t see any NPCs outside to confirm that, and I wasn’t going to just walk through the front door and check inside. I waited for a few minutes for the clones to emerge from inside their sanctuary, when they did, I examined them as much as I could before following. All eight of them traveled in a tight formation, two warriors in front, two mages and a cleric near the center, and three rangers rounding the rear. I now had a clear target for my ambush, the sooner the healer was dead, the easier the rest of this would be. Easy as seven against one could be. I saw them edge out of sight into a ravine, if I took the high ground and ran parallel to them, I could stay out of sight and take all the time I needed to prepare and choose when to strike. I came to the beginning of the slope to get on top of the ravine, I hoped I wouldn’t run into a ton of mobs, they might be able to hear my guns going off if I got too close and it would give my position away. Just as that thought ran through my head two giant abominations respawned at the top near the end of the cliffs.

          Grey stretched flesh of multiple other bodies were stitched together with large staples piecing them haphazardly into a disgusting and terrifying murder machine. Four tree trunk like legs with six arms, each holding variant sized blades, adhered with a mass of torsos, then two enormous masses of heads with eyes looking in every direction sat on top. I couldn’t avoid them, and I really didn’t want to fight both of them at once, but it seemed like I didn’t have a choice when one of them spotted me and began to stampeded in my direction. I opened fire with my new M56, I remembered to equip my Venom Sack mod so my rounds did poison damage over time, stacking up to 20 when successive shots connected. I also remembered to activate my Deadly Aim buff, so the spread on my weapons equalled zero. The first giant chunked down to half health with the first burst. Numbers and text flashed across my screen, I didn’t realize the M56 was an artifact, to my surprise it randomly generated two special effects and added them to the item description. I guess it had never been used before, so the the extra goodies were hidden. I managed to pull up my inventory to read what had changed while spreading my shots between the two lumbering abominations. The first item added: Deals double damage to non-player, non-humans. That one was pretty good, but the next one effectively made my purchase a bargain. The second item added: Each consecutive hit increases the damage to that target by 0.5% with no limit. That means the longer I pour rounds into something, the harder it gets hit. I stopped changing targets and concentrated on the closest monster and swept across the largest mass. My rounds tore through it like an invisible chainsaw, ripping and shredding the dead flesh, sending particles and blood flying sporadically. The first giant dropped a few feet away from me and I took a few steps back and aimed at the amalgamation of skulls on the shoulders of the other abomination. I melted that one faster than the last and split it down the middle. I felt like I had lost a ton of time so I almost forgot to loot the two beasts. They both dropped the same thing, one Bile Bomb each. These could be tremendously useful, when detonated, they release a foul smelling gunk that attracts a zombie horde. With my targets being at the mercy of the natural boundaries of the ravine, this could shake things up for them quite a bit.

          I continued my pursuit, only needing to use my sidearm to drop a few straggling zombies and two of the infected soldiers, until I came to a slight gap on my higherground. I surveyed the bottom and saw that I was a head of my targets. I was starting to feel better about my odds until I got a message from Zo. It was a short instant message

          Zo: Clean up crew on their way. Guild is upset you put their leader down like a dog.

          I tried to send a message back, but he already appeared offline. I had to act fast, but I thought it might be too late already. The last thing I needed to do was start this fight and get jumped from behind. The odds were already stacked against me, severely. I assumed my targets were taking the ravine to it’s end, so I made it further down and started making preparations when I get another message from Zo.

          Zo: 3 incoming, been following for a while. Don’t know any of them, dispose as desired.

          Thanks, Zo, I thought to myself, because he was already offline. I continued to make assumptions, I guessed that they would touch down at the chapel, where it would’ve been the safest to do, if I would’ve thought of that. I decided to only one use one Bile Bomb, and save the second for my next encounter instead of pinching the group in the ravine between two hordes. I pulled the safety label off of the device, which was just a pressurized glass jar full of nasty looking green stuff. I wasn’t sure if it would just break if I threw it, so I opened it, one of the first regrets. When it made it to the rocky ground below it exploded dramatically in a cloud of green gas. I instantly regretted that, also. The horde of zombies began spawning on the other cliff above the ravine and began running in like lemmings. They didn’t take fall damage and die instantly, that wasn’t the regret. My regrets involved the number of zombies associated with the labeling of horde. This wasn’t a zombie horde from the movies, those were a mini-van’s capacity in comparison with the football stadium mass of enemies pouring into the ravine. I thought it was going to overflow and I would be forced to fight my own mistake. Instead, the scores of zombies began to rush down the canyon like a flood. I traced them back to where they clashed with my marks, and they were using area of effect spells to mow them down as fast as they came. Now was my chance.

          I lined up my first shot, with the cleric, who looked bored. I guess they didn’t need much healing, I’m sorry I didn’t present them with a challenging enough of an obstacle. My M56’s barrelling sound cut through all the chaos. The world was silent compared to the deafening mechanical bellow of my rounds ripping into the softest, most vulnerable avatar. None of them looked at their fallen party member, instead they all looked directly at me. They burned through the horde even faster, scrambling and changing formation. I lined up another shot at the closest mage and held the trigger down until nothing was left. My visor flashed red, I had been grazed, I ducked out of habit and watched a fireball fly past me. This was going to be easier than I made it out to seem, from my observations it appeared that they could not split focus between multiple targets and multiple avatars. It was all or nothing. I put my Smart Gun to the edge and angled it over, I started firing in a sweeping and circular motion, like someone providing covering fire would. I saw magic missile whiz past me this time. I continued this until I noticed a craft hover a short distance away on my side of the canyon. This must be them, so I changed targets.

          The craft strafed perpendicular to the divide looking in it, instead of around it. I had plenty of time to resituate and begin chipping away at the crafts hit points exponentially. I missed a few shots when I first started and reset the damage multiplier, but I got it ramped up to 250%. I didn’t get to assault them for too much longer before they fired back. I was counting on them not having missiles, which they did have. Mid machine gun burst, I had to dive and avoid an explosive projectile. The clones in the ravine had almost burned through the entire horde, when I came tumbling down a shallow curved dip of natural rubble. I heard bullets and offensive spells collide with my surroundings on my way down, I managed to skid to my feet and take off down the flatter grade of the slope. I took a chance and ran into the remaining zombies, still sprinting at the clones.

          They didn’t attack me. The zombies ignored me as I ran and dipped between them. Their bodies shielded my own from the fire coming from above and behind. I thought I was safe inside the zombie swarm, until one closelined me. I fell back and hit the ground. Zombies continued to pass me, some stepped on me, others just kicked me. They were still take the shots for me, I seriously considered breaking the second Bile Bomb where I lie. I rolled over and looked at my pursuers, the group of six clones was gaining fast and the three from the clean up crew dropped directly into the fray behind them. I drew my side arm, still prone, and tried to line up a shot to the back line. My first two shots knocked zombies out of the way and the third round flew past a warrior, a mage, between two rangers and caught the front line of the clean up crew in the face. Back down to eight. I rolled sideways and jumped up to my feet and ran deeper into the horde. I reached a clearing and a fork,
I didn’t have anymore zombies for cover and picking a path seemed futile. Neither direction looked like it had a shortcut back to the top, and both had aggressive patrols of monsters looking equal in power. The left contained some more abominations traveling in threes, and the right had one giant mechanized hellspawn. I went right.

          A significantly sized devil with bright red skin and swirly menacing horns, strapped with a chaingun arm and a fiery spell casting hand, lumbered around on two enormous metal actuated legs. Sections of the demon were armored and a portion of his head looked cybernetic, including something that looked like a borg eyepiece, with a completely metal and toothy jaw. I placed an item on the left wall of the path I took where I would be able to see it from much further down the ravine. The cyborg demon locked it’s eyes on me as I approached and began to rev up the spinning barrels on it’s enormous prosthetic gun arm. I booked past it and kept to the same inside of the wall I started from. Debris and rubble exploded behind me, the demons rounds tore into the wall, trailing behind me. It turned, moving heavy-footed and precisely, the gunfire from it stopped and new combat sounds rendered at my back. A fireball exploded in front of me, knocking me back and chipping away at my hit points. I could be in worse shape, but my health bar neared the halfway mark. Recovering from the shock, I stood back up and continued running.

          The hail of fire aimed at me ceased in pockets, while I continued to retreat, I decided to turn around and assess my new surroundings. My pursuers didn’t seem to be bothered by the notion that they were attacking the same target, albeit for different reasons. They looked downright chummy to me, throwing spells and firing bullets in tandem. Our demon friend still stalked from behind them, the clones and clean up crew paid no attention to it once they passed it, but it didn’t look like it was giving up. I drew my sidearm with my quick draw and popped a quick burst at the item I placed earlier. Fingers crossed that shooting a Bile Bomb detonates it. I missed, however, the eight behind me scattered. One of the clean up crew jumped behind a nearby rock, the other ducked to the ground, while the clones reorganized formation into a line, queueing behind each other against the near wall. I fired again, using a scatter shot spell, changing my standard 10mm round into a tightly formed buckshot with an expanding spread. I hit the glass jar, it didn’t break but it rolled from the high position and fell to the jagged, rocky surface. I held my breath, watching it tumble, everyone else was watching the same thing. I fired one more time, with a standard round, and watched the jar explode mid-air, coating the demon in bile. I didn’t wait around and continued running.

          A thunderous stampeding sound came from the direction I happened to be running towards. Panicking, I searched for a way to climb up, putting my hands in every small ledge sticking out of the wall when I came under fire again. The path curved enough further up that I would be safe from bullets and spells there, but I came closer to the horde of zombies, coming in at full speed. Nothing was around the bend, so I started climbing again, I got a foot up and another hand further up. The wall wasn’t completely vertical, it tilted out from the bottom, but it was steep enough to prevent me from just scampering up it. A few hand holds later and I was getting shot at again. I only needed to climb one more foot, to make it out. Then a body fell into canyon right over and past me, then another, then two at a time. A zombie horde began to pour over the edge, catching bullets and magic missiles for me as the fell. I looked over my shoulder to see the zombies pooling under me, and to see the clean up crew killing them before they hit the ground from behind a rocky slab. The clones stood out in the open pelting spells and bullets at me, assisting in the massive zombie massacre. I huddled against the wall, trying to think of a way out of this situation, but the answer just came to me when the corpses piled high enough to meet my feet and the fresh zombies just plopped down onto the top of the pile or rolled down to the bottom. Jumping backwards, I landed on top of the pile, dodging an new incoming body and an arcane bolt, then I jumped to grab the edge of the cliff and pulled myself up. My screen flashed red, I looked around fast, zombies ran right past me, or right into me, tripping and flipping over the edge. I had a leg up and tried standing, but my avatar fell to one knee. My left side was beaten near death, I couldn’t use any two-handed weapons anymore, and I wasn’t going to be running anywhere. I slunk to the ground and rolled to my back, my health bar was flashing, I wasn’t bleeding out, but I had a sliver of hit points left. I opened my inventory and blew through my health restoration items, except for one. I only got back to half health, and my arm and leg were still badly injured. I didn’t have any stimpak items that would remove injuries and debuffs, they were really expensive, but I put them on my shopping list while I was just laying there.

          Staring at the sky, a thought came to me. Looking into the cyclone of black smoke, ashes and eerily bright green lightning, I was motivated to stand. The gorge seemed silent, I still drew my sidearm and approached cautiously. I approached, dragging my left leg behind me, when an arm quickly grasped the edge of the cliff I came over. He appeared to be one of the two remaining clean up crew. “Stop!” I yelled, catching him off guard. He hadn’t seen me yet, but his weapon was readied. He fumbled to use both hands on his BR55, so I alleviated his pressure. I relaxed my hand on the Quick Draw and fanned three quick shots. The first two would have been enough, one in the center of the chest and one through the side of his head, but the last shot I intended to use to bounce his weapon closer to me. Instead the battle rifle flew clear across and on to the other side of the ravine. Seven remained, this seemed more possible if they kept coming at me one by one.

          I pulled out the Smart Gun, holstering my sidearm, and limped to the edge of the cliff. I started firing before I had a visual on my targets. My rounds just dug into the rock, no one remained at the bottom, and I realized out inaccurate this weapon became with an injured arm. If I couldn’t hit the same target consistently, then it was useless to me. I continued to scan the ravine, looking back down where we had come from. The last person from the clean up crew, from what I could see, tried to get back into his aircraft. The clones wouldn’t let him, I pulled out my binoculars and zoomed in to investigate further. I had no idea what they were saying, but it remained obvious that they were having an argument. I had to get down there before they escaped, or before the got the idea to use another air-to-surface missile to explode me where I stood. I looked further down the gorge and saw another opening with a shallow grade, easy to just walk, or limp, up. I took baby steps to the edge and sat down, then slowly pushed myself off onto the pile of dematerializing decomposing corpses. I landed poorly and rolled to the rocks below. I took another minute to stand back up, then I drug my leg behind me, up the grade to the top of the other side.

          I kept my eye out for that BR55. I examined every inch of black rock in front of me, holding my left arm with my right hand and pulling a stiff dead leg behind me, dragging on as fast as I could. I finally spotted it, a few steps from where I stood. It blended right in with all the loose black gravel and rubble. The Battle Rifle had a special attribute in the OASIS, it was one of the very few rifles that could be fired with one or two hands, and had different stats accordingly. When I held it with one hand, the accuracy and damage stats reduced themselves, if I put a second hand on it, the stats would increase to almost double. However, I still had all my one handed weapon and gun specialization armor on, so using the BR55 with one hand for me, was just 75% effective instead of 51%, and the accuracy debuff was a non-factor that had been canceled out by my own accuracy buff. I equipped it and moved along the edge of the ravine with a bit of pep in my limp. I didn’t need the binoculars to see the two parties arguing.

          Unfortunately they kept it civilized and the argument didn’t escalate. It seemed like I was almost too late, the clones were picking which once were boarding the ship with the last man of the clean up crew. I assumed the craft had a capacity of four, but it was no matter, I didn’t want any of them to get on that ship. The scope on the BR55 didn’t really work with the one-handed mode, but it still gave me an aiming reticle and a zoomed-in view of the area I pointed to. I knelt down to one knee and put my injured left arm out in front of me bent to a right angle and let the far grip of the battle rifle rest there. I lined up the rifle and my eye, pulling the shoulder rest flush with me and the scope in line. I had a great shot, but not for the enemy I wanted, so I kept still and controlled my breathing. My ranger class buff kept stacking, the longer I stood still and aimed, I patiently watched the group resolve their issue and watched my Sniper Buff max out the bonus damage. I held my breath, closed and reopened my eyes, made one last minor adjustment to my aim, then I fired two bursts of three rounds in quick succession. I fell forward to the ground and laid flat in a prone position.

          I couldn’t confirm a kill or even a hit, until I heard return fire. None of it seemed close, I watched a large fireball travel down the opposite side of the ravine and crash into a rock they must have assumed I was taking cover behind. I turned my head subtly to look in their direction. The aircraft still hovered in place, and I could see the disappearing body of the last member of the clean up crew laying out flat under the craft. The remaining clones moved as a single, damaged unit towards my assumed hiding place, on the wrong side of the gorge. I changed positions with my legs and arms so I could watch and follow them through the scope. They way I held the BR55, put it into two handed mode and the damage stat skyrocketed. The accuracy decreased slightly, but still at manageable levels and my sniper damage buff started climbing again.

          Six remained. One mage, two warriors, three rangers. I had the element of surprise once again. My thought from earlier crept back into my head, the clones traveled in various formations, which changed from time to time, but they always seemed to stack in one direction or another. So, in theory, if I waited from the right perspective I could line up a beautiful shot and hit most of them, if not all, with a quick burst. I waited and watched. They patrolled and inspected their surroundings, killing monsters that wandered too close, and it looked like they were going to proceed with their quest progress from before they were interrupted. They proceeded with an intense caution, there were less of them and someone could still be stalking them. I kept the scope tight on the last mage’s head, he seemed to stay in the center of their party. Both warriors stayed in front and the three rangers stayed in the back, their formation changed to a straight line, my perfect shot was intimate.

          The clone party made their way back down into the ravine and headed down to where they were previously, running right past me. BR55 still tight in hand, scope still centered high on their heads, I waited. The shot appeared, too perfectly, every head in line and tightly packed, it looked like they stopped to read a message. I didn’t want to miss this chance, I held my breath and loosened my grip like last time. One last position shift made it look like there was only one person in my crosshairs, stacking them well. Every burst had three rounds leave the barrel, and I squeezed the trigger until the magazine emptied.

          I looked at the aftermath through the scope, they moved as soon as the first burst of rounds connected, but not all of them moved fast enough. I killed the two rear rangers, and severely injured the third. They didn’t have much cover and still were in shock from the attack, they managed to scatter still. I reloaded and looked back through the scope. It was only a matter of time before they found me, so I didn’t see the need to continue to conceal my position. When I had a shot on the injured ranger, I hit him with two bursts center mass and he dropped dead. I saw the mage wind up to cast a large spell so I tried to line up a shot on him. One of the warriors stood in my way, but I still fired. It didn’t seem to do much damage and he allowed the mage to finish casting. I preemptively side stepped to avoid the spell, continuing fire on the warrior. The clones had a hard time hitting me with ranged attacks under pressure, so I limped in a strafe perpendicular to the ravine, firing burst after burst in their direction until I had to reload. Then I just switched to my side arm and fanned all six shots of the revolver at them. The warrior in front stumbled and fell to a knee. Fireballs screamed past me as I walked towards the remaining party members, reloading both my BR55 and my revolver.

          Rushing me from a knee, the injured warrior jumped forward with a large combat knife drawn. I unloaded five of the six shots from my revolver, it sounded like they just bounced off of him, shortly after he tackled me to the ground. The wrestling match ended abruptly when I landed one last shot between the chinks in his armor, emptying his hit points the rest of the way. I switched weapons, and then cast the dead warrior off of me firing as soon as I saw them standing around me. I hit both the mage and the remaining warrior with a damaging spray of bullets from my Smart Gun. The accuracy was nonexistent, the spread pattern on the gun went from the size of a golf ball to the size of a wall. It still got them to take cover long enough for me to stand and switch weapons again.

          I stepped towards them with persistence and deliberance. I made each step crunch and grind loudly underfoot. Holding the battle rifle down at my waist, I stepped in front of both of them, still crouching behind a fallen slab of black rock. I motioned for them to stand and file out with the rifle, neither complied. The warrior had injuries and a small bleed, he also had damage ticking off of his health from my venom sac. Each time the bleed would tick, he would get a stack of the poison, he was as good as dead. The mage on the other hand, didn’t look like he had taken any damage, maybe from a defensive shield. I noticed the mage was casting too late. I couldn’t interrupt it with damage, but I started firing anyway. Magic missile exploded on my chest, point blank. I skidded backwards a few yards and fell on my back then slid a few more feet.

          I lost most of my health, and I had already blown through all of my health items. I looked up past my feet, to see what was going on now. The warrior laid dead and the mage hung over the edge of the black slab, now flat against the ground, blown down from the explosion. I tried to stand, both legs were injured, now my left leg was in severe condition. The mage looked right at me, I looked away. He must be just as fucked up as I am right now. I’m not going to be going anywhere fast. Then, an ear piercing siren noise echoed and rang with a violent shaking intensity.

          Zo: That clean up crew you killed is nuking your location. That siren means you have only one minuted.

          “Fuck!” I said, looking around. There was absolutely no way in hell I was going to be able to trek it all the way back to my ship and blast off within one minute, even if I wasn’t injured so badly. I looked back at the mage, who was staring up at the sky. I looked up, to see what he saw. The clean up crews craft, still hovering in mid-air. He started standing, I started to try to stand. The mage worked his way to his feet and stumbled to the rock face, he started feeling his way across the wall to an exit. I made it to one knee, and drew my revolver. It clicked and nothing happened. The mage clone turned his head and saw me pointing my empty pistol at him. He kept on his way. I worked my way to the other foot from the kneeling position. I had to chose to pursue an exit instead of a kill. He climbed a lip on the wall to my left and started the last leg of his climb up. I went right and shuffled up the slow grade of black gravel to the top. I circled around the edge of the grade to the top and saw the craft was in arm's reach. The mage crawled to his feet from the cliff's edge and saw me standing near the craft. I never put my pistol away, but I think he knew I didn’t load it. I still pointed it at him.

“Either way, I’m dead.” He said, ignoring my attempts to threaten him.

          “Likewise, I suppose.” I replied.

          Zo: 20 seconds remaining. Evacuate now.

          I jumped up to grab the ladder hanging from the hovering ship, he jumped at my legs and caught my foot. I dangled from the ship with one arm while he tried to pull me down.
          “I’ll take you with me, you son of a bitch!” The mage shouted, followed by another siren blast.

          “I’m not so sure about that, Tim.” I looked down at him, putting one round in my revolver, spinning it and whipping it shut. I cocked it, tried to steady as much as I could, between the shaky arms from all the damage and the seesaw motion of the hovering ship. I tried just kicking him loose, but he wouldn’t have any of that, so I swung him back and forth, until he met my line of site. The shot felt blind, but it also felt lucking. He dropped off of me almost as soon as I squeezed the trigger.

          I scrambled like a madman into the ship and started disengaging and engaging all kinds of switches until the ship started moving forward then I pulled up and exited the blast radius just in time to see bright beam streak across the sky and down to the surface. I always thought that when they referred to nuking something, it was an actual missile item being activated and deployed. This time, the nuke happened to be a devastating orbital particle cannon. Which could move and chase targets, like what it was doing to me.

          The bright blue energy beam closed in on my tail, I tried flipping more switches and hitting buttons to go faster, but I didn’t really know this ship all that well, I couldn’t even name where or what it was from. I finally hit the right buttons or flipped the right switches, I may never know, but the ship took off faster than I’ve ever flown before that point. I saw the particle beam shrink in the rear view camera and then dissipate a short time after. Once I hit orbit, I saw that the ship would move light speed. I set auto-pilot for wherever and wiped the sweat from my face and from under my visor.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6

          “Congratulations!” Zo cheered.

          “For what, exactly?” I asked him with indifference in my voice.

          “Well, for one, you’ve completed your first contract.” Zo stood up from his white chair. We were meeting back in his secret Bond villain suite. He meandered over to the bar and finished his thought. “And, if my math is correct, you have a 175% success rate. Completely unheard of.”

          I counted on my hands, “How do you figure?”

          “I included the three imbeciles that got you here.”

          I reached for my foot to take my shoe off, “Hold up.”

          “Don’t hurt yourself.” He smiled at my gesture. “I also included the unsuccessful amateur clean up crew.”

          “That makes a little more sense, and you said report?” I inquired.

          “Yes. I collected on the job I brokered to you, put your name in a fancy ledger and number of players killed compared to the eight required.”

          “Oh.” I stammered. “Are, umm… Are people going to keep coming after me?”

          “I can’t guarantee that you future actions won’t solicit a violent reaction.” He sat back down comfortably and crossed his legs. “But I can guarantee no one from our side of the tracks will engage you.”

          “So I don’t have to worry about getting ambushed in the middle of a jungle by other mercs?”

          “Exactly. I will warn you, however, there are players dedicated to flubbing our hits and jobs. Some have gone as far as even killing us.” He sipped his simulated scotch following his statement.

          “Interesting.” I made an adjustment to my posture and leaned forward. “So how often are you going to have work for me, because I feel like I need a break after that whole ordeal yesterday. I wasn’t nearly as prepared as I should have been or even could have been. I mean, I stopped and got a new gun with what few credits I had from that arms dealer guy I learned about from the resources.” I continued to babble and he just stared at me like he was really listening. “That was barely enough to deal with the situation. And I made it out by the skin of my teeth with that ion cannon wannabe laser chasing me off world. You said something about collecting for that job and getting paid?” I cut my statement abruptly.

          “I’ve already transferred the credits to you. You will notice there is a high quantity of small deposits, that is only for my safety. I will have work for you frequently, but I don’t have anything substantial at this time. Nothing for your magnitude of skill.” Zo took another sip.

          “Magnitude of skill?” I raised an eyebrow. “Is that jab at me?”

          “Nonsense, X.” He nodded with a smile. “I don’t want to waste your time with oversimplified grunt work. I want to save you for high yield contracts because…”

          I injected “Because you like to watch me almost get killed in new and interesting places?”

          He continued, “No, because I want someone I can guarantee will complete the task. Even if it is complicated and extremely dangerous.”

          “I bet you say that to all the guys.” I smiled weakly.

          “If you continue this level of adroitness, you will be requested by name.”

          “Really?” I said with genuine disbelief.

          “Absolutely.” Zo stood and looked at his large platinum smart watch. “I assume you are overdue for your day off.”

          I stood to meet him. “A vacation’s a vacation.”

          “I will be contacting you soon, with the complete set of resources. The next time I contact you after that will be work related.” He disappeared in a blink, leaving me alone in his pristine chat room. I left shortly after and headed out to my newly acquired ship. I docked it a significant distance from my destination, so I had plenty of travel time to do more thinking.

          I checked my balance and saw zeros. Lots of zeros. I had earned a small fortune, enough to get the highest quality or best version of whatever I needed for my arsenal, maybe even two. I could move out, I live on my own and take care of myself, like an adult. I received that message from Zo, interrupting my daydreaming, and like he said, it contained the full version of the trial library he gave me earlier. I tried downloading it, but my OASIS console said insufficient memory, so I opened it and perused the contents. 10 zettabytes of text, videos, images, maps, 3D models, catalogs of media, a phonebook called the ‘Black Pages’, it all seemed so endless. Zo tucked a message behind the data window, it contained another congratulations and an interesting bit of news. The guild I planned on dismantling offered me the position of guild leader, which Zo declined for me. He explained it would be a conflict of interest if I made any alliances or joined any guilds. He also convinced them to pay me, or rather us, protection money every month. I reserved the right to exterminate their entire roster if they failed to make a payment.

          I processed everything I wanted to do with the money and tried to make decisions and take action in an order that made the most sense. I needed a new OASIS rig to continue my new job with higher proficiency, but I couldn’t have it delivered here, I couldn’t even leave it here. So I hopped on to the giant apartment hunting site and found something reasonable, close and with an immediate opening. It didn’t take nearly as long as I thought, in about roughly an hours worth of searching I narrowed it down to two places. The one I liked the most was the furtherest away, but I could take a taxi if I ever wanted to come back this way, so it didn’t break the deal. The second one was the closest, right around the block, but it had a hefty price tag for the same amount of space. It didn’t take much time to make my choice, and I set up a walkthrough for this afternoon.

          The clothes on my back, a second set of clothes, my outdated OASIS console and haptic equipment, and my laptop are the only things I owned. Most of them fit into a pillowcase, I didn’t have a handkerchief or a stick to complete the traveling bum look, but I still threw it all over my shoulder. I made my way outside, I thought about taking a cab to the edge of town, but I prefered walking. I passed Johnny on my way through town, he had his usual setup, blocking an alley with his cargo van full of antiquities and oddities. He looked at me, walking by, I looked back, but I didn’t say anything.

          “Where ya goin’?” Johnny made it around his table and walked up next to me.

          I replied “I’m moving.”

          “Where to?” Johnny continued to follow me.

          “Just a couple blocks from the edge of the city.”

          “Do you need any help moving your stuff.” He asked.

          I lifted my bag off my shoulder and held it in front of me. “This is it.”

          He let out a soft chuckle, “Wow, you like to keep things simple.”

          “I guess.” I put my bag back over my shoulder and continued. “I’ve never really needed much, but I’ve also never really had much either.”

          “Oh.” His smile died.

          “I don’t even know If I’m moving in today, but I’m hoping they’ll let me if I put the money down.”

          “Dude!” He chirped. “These places are hard up for tenants that can pay. I bet if you went anywhere with a deposit, they’d kick somebody out to get you in there ASAP.”

          “Really?” I asked.

          “Really, really.” He confirmed.

          “Well then.” I rifled through my pillowcase and pulled out the Haptic Quickdraw and gave it back. “Don’t get too far from your stuff.”

          “You didn’t like it?”

          “No.” I cracked a smile. “I loved it!”

          “Why don’t you just keep it then?”

          “I was just going to buy one.”

          “Don’t worry about it.” Johnny put it back in my hand. “You can keep this one.”

          “You’re awesome!” I thanked him.

          “Don’t forget about me, either. Invite me over when you’re settled.” Johnny’s voice grew distant as he paced back to his van.

          “No problem, I’m sure it won’t take long to find a corner to put my pillowcase in.”

          He laughed. “See ya later, man.”

          “See ya.” I replied and he disappeared in the distance through the bustle of bodies moving along the same sidewalk.

          First impressions are powerful, being unimpressed is just as powerful. I saw the apartment, briefly, because that’s the only way it could be seen. Efficiency apartments at this day and age and in this city, particularly, only had two doors. The front door opened to a plain white walled room with one window, the second door led to a closet-sized bathroom. It still managed to be a full bathroom, sink and toilet overlapping slightly and a narrow slot-shaped piece of raised tile floor contained the shower. I would have it all to myself. I asked the property manager what the maximum amount I could put down, and in confusion, she told me the minimum of the deposit and the first month. I told her I wanted to pay up as far as she was comfortable with taking. She looked around dumbstruck, and told me how much I needed to put down for a whole year, and I paid that much. Johnny was right, she let me move right in.

          I dropped my sack of belongings in the corner and put together my tiny setup. I was able to get a direct GSS internet line, and all the other utilities set up and running within the hour. Businesses jumped and rushed to do what they had to, to get my money. I decided that was enough playing around for the moment and left my new place to find a new OASIS console and something to sleep on, maybe even some clothes. The first I visited was a large retailer electronics department store. I knew I was going to overpay here, but I wanted to take the stuff home with me today and not wait the three to five business days just to save a few credits. I made a bee-line to the back corner of the store where all of the good stuff was packed into display cases and behind metal bars. I didn’t want to waste too much time looking around, until the most beautiful thing with buttons I’d ever seen caught my eye. Avenger brand Delta 551 OASIS controller, it looked exactly like the old MX8 prototype assault rifle, but it had a tactile shoulder rest for simulated recoil and a variety of buttons and switches conveniently placed for combat advantage. “She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine.” I muttered under my breath. There was a small cardboard UPC card hanging in front of the display, so I took one and continued to the back of the store. When I looked upon my choices, the consoles had clear labels ranging from ‘filthy casual’ cheap and basic units all the way up to ‘spare no expense’ models that were so cutting edge they had to be contained in a large metal briefcase so no one would get hurt handling them. “Fuck it.” I said aloud, breaking through my own indecision, and I grabbed the UPC card for the deluxe unit. I realized that I would need new gloves, too, so I went an aisle over. The choices were less clear cut then my previous shopping endeavors, and I had done zero research on any of the Haptic gloves. Until I stepped into this aisle, I didn’t know they had ceiling suspended immersion rigs. It was too much, not too expensive, but the idea of being suspended from the ceiling with an adult version of a baby bungee swing was more than I could take. I ventured further down and saw they had brochures on everything that had overwhelmed me and they had package information and special offers when combining items. I then realized the two things I already had picked out were parts of the Solo Hero package. If I chose to go with that package, I would also get an Exoskeleton Haptic suite, with gloves to match and an elevated Teflon basin and suspension structure. I would end up saving money getting it, so I did.

          I opted not to leave the store with any of the items I picked up, but I set up a delivery time for later today. The guys bringing it in would setup the suspension rig, so I didn’t have to worry about fucking that up. Across from the electronics store was a furniture store. I walked through their intentionally one-way maze, grabbing up item information to make my purchases at the end. I didn’t get anything flashy, the queen sized bed might have been the most extravagant thing I ordered, everything else was just for filling up the little space I had. A black headboard for the bed, a black dresser and night stand, a little black counter height table with two black stools, and two single recliners. Everything I got ended up being black, not because my soul is an abyss spiraling into oblivion, not the entire reason, but mostly because the walls were all white and the concrete floor happened to be stained white. I did get a huge red high-pile shag rug for the living room/bedroom/kitchen. None of this stuff would be delivered today, so still had to find a solution for sleeping tonight, since the sleeping bag wasn’t mine so I didn’t take it, but I really didn’t need it anyway.

          After visiting a few more stores, I ended up needing to rush back to the apartment to get all my new toys put in. I consolidated everything into one bag, it was mostly clothes, a pair of shoes, a jacket, and I dumped a bachelor kitchen kit into the bag on top of all that. I got home and still beat the delivery guys there. They came in, setup all the toolless stuff first, asked me some question about where I wanted it placed, and then made it very permanent. I wasn’t getting my deposit back. I put on my new pieces and logged in. To my surprise, the Delta 551 and the Haptic Quickdraw played well together on my new balls-to-the-wall rig, it even prompted me to assign what weapon classes each of them would control. I kept the Quickdraw on my hip for my sidearm and other pistols and checked the little box next to ‘everything else’ for the Delta 551. Once that was all settled, I started the download of all that information and sifted through it while I waited.

          I now knew a guy for every possible thing. I had several weapon specialists and arms dealers that had specialties varying from type of weapon to a collection of weapons divided by genre. I also had a guy who would auction stuff off for me, legitimately or through the new black market stalls I had access to. He took a cut, like consignment, but he also gave me the vendor price immediately and the rest of my cut when it sold, and it always sold. He, like everyone else in my network, was very good at what they did, and they all take their jobs with serious pride. I didn’t come across any in-game realtors in my network, so I had to find my own hideout through official channels. I juggled the concept in my head about just using a really large spacecraft, so it would be mobile, like the ship I was on previously, but I didn’t like the initial price or the price of the upkeep. The next best option, between cost and mobility, was a small space station. It had all of the amenities of a large vessel at a fraction of the cost, and if I really wanted to, if it was absolutely necessary, I could move it. My last option weighed in as the cheapest, least mobile, and least functional. A warehouse style complex was available near the center of the universe. The warehouses and compounds were so cheap and in such great numbers scattered all over the OASIS that I could justify getting a few, or a dozen. I needed a secure location to store all my stuff, I definitely wanted it to be as defenable as possible, but I also wanted to be able to pick up and move at a moment's notice. I was either stuck with the premium of premium options or multiple small scale cheap option. I needed more time to think about this, my brain kept telling me it wanted all of them at the same time. A stationary base of operations where I could dock my mobile castle would be incredibly useful, and having multiple secret bases around the universe would cover my ass if anything did go wrong. I moved on to updating my arsenal to give myself some time to figure it out.

          The black market I walked through before was a fake. A simulation inside of a simulation. The real black market looked like a flourishing mall that happened to be located in a ghost town, well, 256 copies of a ghost town, and it wasn’t in any of them, it was under them. The underground black market was literally underground. Genius. I strolled through the decorated paths lined with ships with a pretty solid idea of what I was looking for. What I needed included a sniper rifle, a new revolver, a secondary side arm for dual wielding, a reliable machine gun, some explosives, and a few magic items to match the caliber of the tech items I was looking for. I also needed some individual magic items for some quality of life changes. I also kept an eye out for any kind of armor upgrades, even though what I currently had equipped was all optimized for how I play.

          I worked into the night, I ordered some takeout and used my shower for the very first time. I had very different feelings about shopping when there was so much money involved. When everything was said and done, I still had over half of the original account balance. Who ever wanted those clones dead has the means to make their dreams come true, in and outside of the OASIS. I made arrangements to have a Federal Corvette materialized in a hanger I could quickly teleport to with my new load out. I could keep most of my new items on me, but there was redundancy in my purchases, so it would be best for me to fill the weapon cache on my new ship with them. The items I knew for certain I would keep in my inventory filled my loadout slots so I could switch between the guns and explosives with a single action instead of drudging through and inventory menu. I could easily swap to a Barrett 122 .50 cal sniper rifle after fanning my revolver The Last Word. All the different weapons were a button press away, or a controller switch in my case.

          Dawn poked through my single window, I still hadn’t been to sleep yet, but I also didn’t have a bed here yet. I took everything off, down to my underwear and tried to find a nice place to lie down where the sun couldn’t hurt me. I needed curtains or something to cover this widow, but that was an afterthought. I rolled over to my stomach, kicked one leg out and up and put my head sideways on my folded arms and passed the fuck out. A banging at the door shook me awake, I couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few seconds, but looking through my only window, I saw the sun high in the sky. I put my clothes on from yesterday and rushed to the door to stop the continuous pounding.

          “Delivery!” A heavy set man wearing white overalls, yelled through the small crack in the door as I opened it partially. I closed it and unlocked the door the rest of the way. “Where do you want it?” He asked me as he entered the tiny apartment.

          “Which part’s first?” I asked back.

          “I meant all of it, where do you want us to put your stuff.”

          I pointed around the room and instructed him where I thought each piece would fit, and if it didn’t, that I would figure it out later. The bed came in first, which I was excited for the most. This would be my first real bed, as far as I can remember. Everything fit just as well as I expected it to, my OASIS set up did disrupt my initial plan for how everything should have been placed. It all worked together and made my space look a million times better, it also cut that annoying reverb down to nothing. The giant rug I ordered, however, didn’t fit in any direction I tried to put it in. So I ended up cutting a square out of it, along with a relief cut, so I could easily put it around my Haptic station without it trying to climb the far wall. This setup pleased me, I had things to lounge on, sleep on, and eat at when I wasn’t jacked into the immersion rig. I signed some papers and the crew left me all alone in my recently fully furnished apartment. Today was pretty much spent for me, I decided to get some more take out then sleep off the rest of the day, but before I went to bed I duck taped a black trash bag around my window. Now I could sleep easy.