“Whoa!” Kevin said.

Everyone turned to face him.

Kevin had long since finished his food.

I noticed his thumb and pointer finger pinched together. “You see the menu?” I asked.

“It's like a sheet of paper!” he said.

“Grab the edge and shake. It'll flop around like paper too,” I said.

Kevin extended his hand and grasped the air. As he flailed about, a smile spread across his face. “I can feel it!”

“What's it feel like?" I asked.

“Not like real paper. It's lighter,” he said.

I nodded. “It'll feel more substantial if we get you some more burgers. We have to enable the setting to produce more nanos, though.”

We needed to bypass the safety settings.

“Can I add more to my… interface?” he asked.

Koffer jumped in, “You can add a ton of different widgets!”

“They still call them widgets?” Kevin asked and then laughed.

Lily somehow managed to look bored, and I managed to continue ignoring her.

I'd seen some people with their HUDs full of widgets. By people, I meant Darryl. It was a wonder that he didn’t run into walls.

What are you up to? I sent Darryl. My hand darted to my temple as I waited out the pain.

“Are you okay?” Lily whispered.

When the tinnitus subsided I said, “Sent a friend a message. I’m fine.”

Koffer had been listing off widgets to Kevin, and they missed it. I didn’t like being the center of attention, so I didn’t mind.

I waited for a break in the conversation and then interjected, “Kevin, want to order those burgers?”

“If it’s gonna make this better, heck yeah!” he said.

“Make sure your menu is open and tap settings,” I said.

He made a few taps in the air. “Okay.”

“Tap on where it says nanobots,” I instructed.

After a moment of staring at the space in front of him, he gestured in the air. “Done.”

“How many does it say you have?” I asked.

“It has the number one followed by a q,” he said.

I hummed as I did the math in my head. “We might not be able to do this in one day. You need at least ten q to play.”

“What’s q stand for?” he asked.

“Quadrillion,” Koffer and I chorused.

Kevin blinked. “I have a quadrillion nanobots in me?”

“The glass you took had around one hundred trillion or so,” I said.

Koffer articulated, “You’d need to eat about forty-five burgers to get ten q.”

Kevin's mouth dropped.

“Can someone even eat that much in one sitting?” Lily asked.

“I’ve seen someone do it,” I said.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Someone fell down a VRV rabbit hole.”

I shrugged.

“After you hit around three q, the burgers practically dissolve when they hit your tongue,” I said.

Kevin stared at me. “I’d have to eat, what, like ten burgers before that happened?”

“It’d be easy after that, though,” I said.

Lily scooted closer to the table. “You can set a goal to hit three q and see how you feel after that.”

It was getting close to eleven. I had school at around sixteen, and my meeting with The Remnant was at seventeen. We had more than enough time for Kevin to eat his burgers. Unless his mom needed him home for some reason.

My school and most of the more art-related specializations tended to have a work-at-your-own-pace style to them.

Ambition had four quarters, each one dedicated to a particular skill set. Ours happened to be centered around art. Hold the right person's hand, and they could share a vibrant wonderland of beautiful creations.

Kevin seemed torn.

“Do you need to go home?” I asked.

The red light in my HUD had been replaced with a yellow one a long time ago and hadn't swapped back. I wondered if Mrs. Smith could use Kevin's vision now. Not enough to check, but I was still curious.

During general ed, there wasn't a time I could remember a yellow light not being down there. Parents were more intent on watching their kids when young.

An orange light meant that someone was streaming near me. I had somehow expected Koffer and Lily to be streaming when I first saw them.

“No,” Kevin said.

“Then what's wrong?” I asked.

His shoulders sank. “I'm afraid of choking.”

“Once you hit three q you'll never have to worry about that again,” Lily said.

I decided to take a few more bites of my food. It was a little cold but still delicious. “The standard for most people's bodies is around eight q. I keep mine at fifteen q.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Fifteen?” Koffer said.

Lily shook her head. “Isn't that a little overkill?”

“Yeah, you probably have to eat a ton of food,” Koffer said

I shrugged. “I have a high heme diet.” I'd also modified my taste receptors to avoid the metallic undertones in my food. As a side effect, it made spicy food extremely tasty.

“Let's do it!” Kevin said.

“Sure,” I said and closed my food boxes. “I'll come with you.”

Kevin got up.

“Azerail, can you stay and talk for a moment?” Lily asked.

Koffer stood. “I'll go with Kevin.”

“Uhmm,” I said. Lily was the last person on the planet I wanted to talk to. “I guess…”

“Great!” Koffer said as he joined Kevin.

Kevin turned to me and waited.

I glanced at Lily and then back at him. “Go on. I'll be okay.”

He hesitated and gave me a nod. Then he and Koffer strolled away.

“Lily—”

“Fen Li,” she corrected.

“I don't think I can be what your group wants me to be,” I said.

“All you have to do is keep roleplaying like you've been doing,” she said.

I shook my head. “That's not the problem.”

“Then what is the problem?” she asked.

If I told her about my evolution it would give her a major edge against the Hexed. “I can’t control the undead anymore.”

“Did you check the skill description?” she asked.

Oops, no. “Yeah,” I said.

“Bring it up,” she said.

“I haven't updated yet,” I said.

Lily's mouth dropped. “Really? The first thing I did this morning was roll my pet.”

I started the update. Sometimes I'd have background programs running for schoolwork, but I finished that earlier in the week. “Is it random like character creation?”

“Yeah, you get four rerolls a day,” she said.

When I made a character, I could reroll as much as I wanted. “Why only four?”

Games didn't charge for access or upgrades, so it didn't make sense to limit the rerolls.

“I don't know. Maybe to save bandwidth?” she said.

The Pet system was DO's first foray into VR, and people didn't have to leave the house to use it. It was understandable that they were taking a more conservative approach. I was under the impression you couldn't reroll pets at all.

“What pet did you get?” I asked.

Lily smiled. “My favorite animal. A squirrel.”

I didn’t show it, but I was worried that Kevin might want to play a human in DO as Darryl did.

Then again, Darryl had a reason for swapping sides. After the Izekiel incident, he wouldn't support my insistence to play nightmarish characters.

I'd never had night terrors about zombies, so I didn't feel I needed to worry about playing one.

“Were you talking to your Zix or something?” Lily asked.

I blinked. “What?”

“I asked what your favorite animal was, and you just sorta zoned out,” she said.

I reopened my boxes and mixed a bit of my tofu with my rice. “Sorry.”

Darryl hadn't gotten back to me, which wasn't like him.

“So what is it?” Lily asked.

After I swallowed another bite of tofu I said, “You don’t have to be nice to me, Lily.”

“My name is Fen Li. Lily is a character I play,” she said.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know her name. I just didn’t want to associate a real-life name with her character. Last night was still fresh in my mind, and it was one thing to kill a bunch of NPCs but gathering real players like they did was as close as you could get in a game to a holocaust.

Zix, were you observing last night? I asked.

Zix peeked his little nose up from under the table, and his little teeth showed as he talked, Yes, Ms. Azerail.

He did silly things like that sometimes, I’d have to check his humor settings to see why.

Could you check Dark Offerings Terms of Service and see if what they were doing last night violated them or not? Answer with a notification, please.

“I like spiders,” I said.

Spiders weren’t my favorite. I didn’t have a favorite animal. The nightmare from earlier had put me off arachnids.

Lily’s face scrunched up. “Those cute little jumping spiders?”

“No, I don’t have a favorite animal,” I said.

Lily’s eyebrows went up. “But you just said—”

“I really don’t want to talk to you. I’ve been trying to be nice, but last night was fucked up,” I said as a little envelope popped up in the corner of my interface. I checked it, and it confirmed my suspicions.

She shook her head. “I—”

“It was against the Terms of Service to do what you did. My Zix probably reported it, too,” I said.

Zix hopped on the table and nodded when I looked at him.

Lily put a hand to her mouth, and tears streamed down her face. Without another word, she got up and ran off.

If it was her idea to gather the newbie players she would probably receive a ban or something along those lines. I didn’t feel bad about making her cry. Well, maybe a little. Either way, Infinite Diffusion would get to the bottom of whose idea it was.

Kevin and Koffer came back as I was halfway done with my food.

“Where’s Fen Li?” Koffer asked as he took a seat.

Kevin plopped down next to me.

I shrugged. “I told her what you guys did was against the TOS. She started crying and ran away.”

“You did what?” Koffer asked.

“I told her—”

Koffer raised a hand, stopping me. “She didn’t do it!”

“Then why was she crying?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Because the person who did it received a permanent ban!”

“Please tell me it was Auden,” I said.

Koffer stared at me.

I tried again. “Sandra? She was such a bit—”

“It was her little brother!” Koffer yelled, got up, and left.

Managing to make two people storm away from my location wasn’t a personal best but it was a close second. I wasn’t proud of it. In fact, I’d probably send an apology letter to Fen Li when I had the time.

After Koffer was out of view Kevin asked, “Is this place always like this?”

“People don’t generally stage a genocide in a video game, so no,” I said.

Kevin nodded. “I ordered some burgers.”

“Did you figure out how to set the nano goals in the settings?” I asked.

“Jasper showed me,” he said.

Koffer or Jasper. I wasn’t sure what to call him. If he was running things in the group they had a good leader. He was likable and seemed smarter than most people I’d met.

I opened my proximity app and rewound time. When I found the right moment I pulled Jasper and Fen Li’s profiles up.

“You look so intense,” Kevin said.

Kevin was right.

“I’m going to send them an apology,” I said.

He stifled a laugh.

“What?” I asked.

“You must really want those invites,” he said.

“Hey!” I complained.

Although he had a valid point, my motivations weren’t based on that alone. If I wanted to make something of myself as a Narrative Designer I would need friends with connections.

“Did Jasper share his screen with you?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No.”

“You should enable touch activation,” I said.

“Okay…”

I smiled. “Tap settings and then interface. It should be in the list, near the bottom.”

“Done,” he said.

“Okay, now touch my shoulder,” I said.

He hesitated, his hand inches from my skin.

“I won’t bite. I’m not a shambler here,” I said with a grin.

When he touched me I was surprised by how warm he was.

I opened my menu and turned it toward him.

“Whoa! Yours looks different,” he said,

“You can customize just about everything,” I said.

He tried to grab my menu, but his hand went through it. “I can’t touch it?”

“No, we need to be mutual contacts, and we have to set the permissions up,” I said.

Suddenly his menu popped up as he pinched the air. It was the default plain white template. I’d changed mine to something my Zix had made me. It was minimalistic, with a few entwined blue and pink flowers embroidering the edges.

“Want to meet my Zix?” I asked.

He smiled. “Sure”

***