“You know too much,” said a woman somewhere in the dark.
He couldn’t hear anything except for that voice, the voice of billions of people’s nightmares.
His boss, Louise Conto. A woman so fearsome he wouldn’t wish her upon his worst enemy.
She was a veritable princess of an entire empire that spawned multiple planetary systems. But one with so much calculation in her head a quantum computer would find it hard to even process one line of code inside that dark thing. It would fizzle out after a while, with lines of drool on its face if it were so forced. Or at least, that was how it always happened in his damnedest dreams.
Her looks… were something else. Imagine those succubi in the legends, with a face so beautiful men and lesbians would find themselves falling into the pit of love at first sight. She could wear the trashiest clothes with no makeup, and even then, to die for her was a mission trillions would willingly fulfil.
Those dark green eyes told stories of a painful past—which she had: an orphaned young girl, raped on the slums of Paris in the Old World, Earth, only to be adopted by the fanciest couple in the entire galaxy, the Contos, who back then had been bona fide legends of an age, controlling billions of planets and hundreds of suns. Even two black holes had been encapsulated by them, mined and used for energy projects that fuelled the rise of the Secret Dynasty, their very own empire.
To look at her… was to love her. But to love something that was so dead inside, so embroiled in its own shit, its own emotional trauma from some long-forgotten past that’d only make headlines for a few days upon the infamous adoption—that had been the pitfall of many, many men.
Sometimes, in the brightest hours, her house would be filled with the most miserable of screams. The most recent husband had been thrashed… again, all her neighbours would sigh.
To Wyatt Yarrow, though, all of that was beside the point. He loved her—revered her, even—as a younger brother would revere an older and wiser sister. She’d lifted him up all those years ago, found him in the piles of employee data that landed on her desk everyday, given him his first assignments, fed him the clues that would lead to his meteoric, if controversial, rise. Indeed, his first wages had been hers to give, his first stirring of love hers to facilitate, even his heartbreaks when those boys had been so cruel… had been hers to fix.
Only, it seemed that he’d stepped on some real pile of shit this time.
Who would have thunk it?
A Normal Quest had led him to the dark secret that had once propelled an entire Dynasty in the real world to the top in a Full Immersion Virtual Reality game. The goody two shoes that this empire always portrayed itself to be even as it reached its grubby hands across multiple Realms was no more than a chess piece that danced in the palms of an NPC so fearsome that even the Old Gods would have to bow.
His mind whirled when he suddenly thought of the smirk that brat Olär gave him that day while informing him of his mission.
An information mining mission, the files had said. His eyes glinted when he connected the dots. He must have hurt some interest, or perhaps some young master—that guy, what was his name again, that Olär worked for?—perhaps that second-generation rich twat wanted to separate him from this woman. The oldest story of the universe, really: the gay best friend mistaken for a down-low boy toy….
Hehe, he wished that guy success. If Louise Conto had another husband right after his death… he could just imagine how deaf those rich neighbours would be the next day, even with all the noise insulation technology in the world.
It was time to go! Time for him to rest and forget about all this. His own story of the famous Know-It-All would come to an end at the point of that laser beam. He could smell it, the scent of air being burnt as the charging plasma rent it apart.
The iron taste of blood dripped in his mouth. The chains that suspended him aboveground in Louise’s torture chamber made him only that little bit uncomfortable. He should’ve been more adamant about her BDSM streak… sigh.
“… You know what I have to do, Wyatt.” The hidden warmth in the voice that was breaking apart, imploding, kept calling out his name.
“Spare me the pity,” he spat back. He felt bad for her: even now, as this goodbye was afoot, the recording cameras were still turned on, he knew. He was trying to clean her slate, wipe her of the crimes that she could ever be charged with, so that no blackmail would come to her.
Fuck. He wanted to look at her one last time, tell her it was all alright, but… how miserable.
“... Fine,” Louise whispered. “I’ll send you to it lightly, I promise.”
Wyatt shut his eyes, counting the minutes.
BANG!
The noise reverberated in the dark room. The flickering camera that hovered above the corpse’s head slowed to a stop before zooming away. A middle-aged woman kneeled down on her knees and wept to a young man’s blood.
Outside, another day had just begun, with trillions upon trillions of people still deep inside their gaming cabin.
. . . . . . . . .
“Argh—”
His back soaked in sweat, Wyatt jerked up.
His mouth huffed out short breaths, what anyone would after, well, being lasered in the brain. His mind was short-circuiting, rewiring itself while he took his sweet fucking time to come to.
Wyatt could feel, no, he could smell a pain that shot through his very soul. The frying of brain tissues that his terminal lucidity allowed him to smell at that last moment was… harrowing. Even the years of dying gruesome deaths in War of Gods did little to help.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” He shouted. His eyes were shut tight, unwilling to confront what he felt was the afterlife. He snorted, drooled, laughed, spasmed.
All of a sudden, a voice punctured his silent weeping—
“What is it?”
There was a loud knock that sounded like a hand banging against a door. Though, the voice was a bored one, even if it… made him feel… warm?
“Not—nothing!” He huffed back out of instinct....
Wyatt’s eyelids flew open.
He noticed that he was no longer in the dark and damp room with candles everywhere. His hands weren’t tied. He also felt the comfort of a rather… shabby bed, which he’d not seen in many, many days, tortured in suspension chains as he had been.
But….
Shabby?
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His mind jolted. A new sensation flooded his mind.
Shabby! Yes! Fuck, yes! Shabby!
He was in a shabby room!
Not just any shabby room, but that damned shabby room that he had not been back to in 20 years!
And that voice! Oh, how he missed that voice. He could just kiss that voice, hug that voice, orgasm to that voice any day of the week! Fuck, no, any time of the year!
That lazy ass roommate that he’d been living with since boarding school—his best friend August’s voice!
Wyatt felt surreal while he looked around at the small room with the light tinge of mould at its four corners. That work desk that he bought with the 1,000 Credits he’d spent months saving. Things came back to him, memories of an age, an era, long gone. If this was the afterlife… fuck, it was too good! It was freedom! Cue the music—let him dance!
This was his first rented room after university! It was messy, it had clothes strewn all over the floor, it wasn’t even well lit. But it was his and August’s first home right out of school!
Oh, how he could just slobber up this whole place!
“Calm down, huff, you need to calm down, Wyatt,” he said to himself, glancing at the antique digital clock that he hung from the book… drawer he’d nailed to the wall.
The time of day? 9.30 in the morning.
The… date… was… De… December… 31… 2249.
Wasn’t this…
His brain slowed down to a stop, and then vroomed to top speed again in no time.
This… was the day before everything… went wrong.
The day before he made the call to join the Secret Dynasty just because he wanted the gaming pod. The promise of reality at its height, with all sensations fed back to not just his brain but his body as well. Given enough nutrition, any gamer in the pod could stay for months, if not years, inside War of Gods, as astronauts did in cryochambers.
It was the day before he’d been lured in by their 10,000 Credits’ weekly salary.
The day before he prostrated himself before his then-idol, Kynan Canto, then-CEO of the Secret Dynasty.
The day before he became an information harvester, the lowest job on the rung in that dastardly place.
One month from now, he’d have his first assignment after acclimatising himself to the work. That was the first time he’d interact with sweet Louise. That was also the first time he… went on a date with that stinky bastard Joel Jackson.
“Hahaha, hahahaha, hahahahaha....”
Wyatt laughed to himself. If he was honest, he was a little scared and exhilarated, two opposite emotions that tore at his still phantom-frying brain. He was losing it, his eyes shining with the light of a lunatic’s eyes, troubled by reality.
A whole five minutes passed before he came to, remembering that… that little shit was standing right behind that rickety door, waiting for him to have breakfast.
Fuck! It was too much stimulation!
Every time he was getting bored of work, every time the lonely space station orbiting the black hole made him feel nauseous, that was the face he thought about. August Adair, light of his life, fire of his—eh, ahem, calm down, Wyatt. That bored voice was still waiting outside, that indifferent face that daily invited him to smash it to bits with its handsome ruggedness, and that smile, too, sometimes so bright it seemed to make the entire world that little bit less lonely… especially after those years….
Shit! He needed to go to the bathroom and re-acquaint with his right hand…
“You alright there, mate?”
The soft voice rang out again, like water dousing Wyatt’s head.
Right. Keep calm, Wyatt. Keep calm. Think, Wyatt, think. That old theory of time paradoxes isn’t proven. You can mess up all the timelines in the world and just watch the butterfly call a thunderstorm that devastates the Myriad Realms….
You don’t have to do all of that again, Wyatt. You have control here. It’s not like that horrid place would know anything about you, anyways, not until you make a name for yourself and smash their arrogance, no, their impudence, to bits!
His body shook with excitement when he thought to here. Right. He could, theoretically, keep all his knowledge to himself. Or he could, hehehe….
Dark storms whirled in Wyatt Yarrow’s mind. Ideas after ideas of how to take over the world trafficked themselves like helpless kids—
Fuck! Be serious!
“I… really… have another chance,” Wyatt mumbled to himself almost imperceptibly.
Fuck. He really, really did!
What to do, what to do, what to do?!
Organise first. It was January 9, the day that game went online. It would, in a few years, break all trends in the entire galaxy, even stop the universe exploration projects that humanity had started on so many years ago. August wouldn’t join the game until—
“August!” Wyatt crept to his feet, opened the door, and shouted. “AUGUST!”
A young man with eyes the colour of wheat and skin so smooth a woman would fall dead from envy stood on the other side of the door. Heights, jawlines, nose, Cupid’s kiss of a mouth, the guy had it all! Alas, the little shit was trying his best not to panic when he responded, “What is it now?”
Hehe, try having your best friend—with a known mental history and a long list of attempted suicides during his darkest years—have that guy suddenly act like a maniac and see what would happen to you.
“… You. Join the game with me!” Wyatt stuttered, a little dazed from that old, indifferent face that was suddenly… glistening… with care.
Little Shit—cough, August was a little taken aback, but his expression relaxed to a resting bitch face again with relief when he realised Wyatt was only a little… maddened?… by a game. “Join what game?”
“That game on the billboard right above our house, Aug. War of Gods. Join the game with me,” Wyatt pleaded. This was his first plan, after all, and he needed August to join for it to succeed.
August Adair, fire of his loins, his soul, his life—cough. This little shit was a well-known engineer that had a little fame even though he’d only joined the game ten years after it was released. Ten whole fucking years, or in game time, more than three decades at that point—and yet the guy had still garnered fame as a fucking beginner, a noob! Imagine, with all the knowledge that Wyatt had, what greatness such a master noob would soar to. He could just feel his spider senses tingling. Oof!
“… Nope!” August spat some saliva on his face. Wyatt’s eyes turned dark, his face a scowl. A little afraid all of a sudden, August added, “I have a space elevator design to learn. You know how much time that takes.”
“You little shit!” Wyatt called when August turned to leave. “Don’t be so quick to reject!”
How to go about this? He panicked inside. August had to join! One step behind, and he’d always fall behind later on. No, he had to get this fucker to join the game!
Before he could think of a plan, August flipped back and asked, “What would I even do there? All it is is just some weird-looking monsters that science hadn’t even found. And I have work to do.”
“No, no, August! Listen to me, you have to join!” Wyatt spoke a little desperately. “You can design anything, make anything there. Space elevators, Dyson sphere, black hole cages, spacecrafts, skyscrapers.... You can even design your own world!”
Hehe, desperation made a man remember everything.
August could forget about him for a few months while researching some engineering design, but the little shit would never be able to turn this temptation down. His biggest wet dream? Littering the universe with Dyson spheres. His biggest pet peeve? Having the ability to but never being assigned the project of designing black hole cages!
While Wyatt continued to look like he was clutching at straws with chicken’s blood running through his veins, August’s face changed from indifference to some astonishment, then doubt.
“What do those have to do with a game that has gods?” August said cautiously.
“Well, think of it this way,” Wyatt said, his mind going at light speed. Suddenly, he shifted his eyes back and forth, trying his best to look as if he had something to hide, some secret. “You might not know it, but I have inside information!”
Act! He’d act! Act and strike while the iron was hot! Brand it into August’s skin like the sex slave—cough, like the… like the…
“What inside information?” August looked dubious. Fuck, there were only so many expressions that a person could have. Here he was being treated to his best friend’s face morphing into the whole spectrum of human emotions right in front of him. It was creepy.
“Game insider information, hehe. The game has a one-to-two time ratio—and that would change later! One day in the real world means two days there,” Wyatt settled his face and continued on. “You get to live twice the life. And build twice the things!”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“… Don’t you want it?”
The devil was in the devil’s voice, as he liked to say. Dramatic pause, final offer. Proud Wyatt had never failed in raising auction bids to the high heavens before, although, come to think about it, he’d only hosted those two auctions… for Dungeon Maps….
“Maybe…,” August started to hesitate. Wyatt cackled like a witch inside. “But… do I have to fight?”
“Only if you want to,” Wyatt cut out a reply at the speed of light. He was feeling ecstatic inside. “You can just be an Engineer in game and settle down. No fighting, just building.”
If you want to stay a little bitch, he tsk’d a little inside. He didn’t say that, of course.
“… Fine,” August finally said. “But I’ll quit if what you said doesn’t match with the game.”
Wyatt felt nervous all of a sudden, but he nodded anyways. August would be a Creator, one of the umbrella Professional Classes in the War of Gods. He’d build many, many things before he’d even have to contest for resources. And with Wyatt’s shortcuts… it was unlikely that he’d need to fight at all. Still, the little fish had bitten the bait! This was a cause for celebration!
“Let’s order our gaming chips, then,” August continued. “They’ll run out if we don’t hurry.”
“Fine, let’s.” Wyatt took up his phone. Then, he turned to August and asked, his face quickly turning black, “Why… why do you know about gaming chips?”
Auggie’s face curved into a smile.