Luciano the Cost Cutter turned back toward my human. I was struck by the symmetry between the two men as they faced one another. The guardsman stood tall, imposing, leaning forward with one arm swept back theatrically, while Commander Zideo rocked away from him on his heels in order to flee their overlapping space bubble. Luciano inched forward, and Zideo inched back, the space between them alternately compressing and expanding. Eventually Zideo backed into Helmgarth, who bumped into Kriegsgeswinnler, who stumbled, flailing his arms, and nearly fell.

I was too entranced by the exchange to intervene. It seemed to me that the two of them danced an ancient dance, a skirmish taking place in the minds of the participants and reflected by their distance. I had often participated in this intimidation phase of combat at the dog park. It was fraught with meaning, asking: “How close are you willing to let me get? Close enough to strike?” I have seen it in the humans on Lisa’s big glowing rectangle, in the sword-sport she watched only once during something she kept calling the “Olympics.”

“At ease, guardsmen.” Addrion, noticing our absence, had returned from the gate, where behind her I noticed men and women and other less describable beings carrying chunks of jagged gray stone the size of their heads. Addrion waved conciliatorily. Gray dust clung to her grieves.

Seeing her, Luciano instantly disengaged his spatial intimidation of my human, and the oversized potted plant hopped back, crossing its leaves in disappointment. It turned its nonsensical green head of petal bulbs and simplistic dots for eyes, now squinting with suspicion and offended pride. I strained against my own canine nature—it was all I could do to keep from lifting a leg and marking my territory on Acornite Dylan. I am certain such an indignity would not have helped our case, standing beneath the gates of Ludopolis.

“Addrion,” said Luciano, his shoulders subsiding. “What are you doing here?” He glanced back at us with renewed interest, calculating the meaning.

“Classified,” she said. She wiped the air in a gesture that took in all four of us. “These belong to me.”

Luciano’s eyes appeared to count us. The circuitry-covered nude with whom Luciano had been debating previously made a sound of displeasure, as though receiving bad service. “But they cut in line!”

He whirled on her. “You’re still here? Get out of here!” The soldier slapped his palms over orange-gold visor of his dirtbike helmet, and departed, shaking his head.

Luciano turned back to Addrion, who crossed her arms and tilted her head in a human gesture I did not quite understand. A question struggled to stay inside Luciano’s mouth. He glanced at Acornite

Dylan for support, but the houseplant had lost interest and was soaking in the sun’s light with visible pleasure.

“Off with you,” he said, and quickly added, “you four,” to make it clear that he was dismissing us and not Addrion.

“Smart man,” she said.

He and Acornite Dylan returned to their post. They appeared to have a long day ahead of them, working through a tremendous queue of unruly and mostly sentient entities with little interest in maintaining an orderly line. As I gazed across the drawbridge, I saw in the distance a handful of gray shapes emerging from the treeline to the south, the rocky scrub land to the east whence we had come, and the lowlands to the west—wanderers and stragglers, limping and surviving the harsh (and often bizarre and nonsensical) leagues of the Screenwilds. I did not envy them, knowing the reward for their journey would be to stand in an unmanageable line for who knew how long.

“Follow,” said Addrion. She used the same tone Lisa sometimes used with me after a bad day at work.

“Oh!” said Zideo. He turned and yelled back to the guardsmen as we entered through the doors. “Plant! You’re the ranged unit from Horticulture vs. Mummies (20_9)!” He held his arms wide. “My mom lost sooooo many hours to that.” The plant stuck a tongue out through it’s perpetual O-hole and gurgled a “raspberry” at him. (Horrific to look at.)

“Stop wasting time,” said Addrion.

We followed her into Ludopolis proper, the last free city of video games.

Plunging into one of the strangest cities in all my memory was overwhelming, doubly so for a dog. My body is more attuned to sounds, smells, and movement than that of my human readers, and being subjected this chaos was an overwhelming experience to say the least. For the benefit of my readers, I will indulge in a little bit of brief retrospection before returning to my narrative.

If you were a bird (God forbid), and could fly high enough and look down upon the city, its general shape is that of an amoebic blob, closer to a circle than a square. At first glance, its streets are arranged in concentric circles. Diving closer, you will find that to be a gross generalization, for they double back, cross over, terminate, give and take inward and outwardly. I have flown above Ludopolis, but more often I have seen its maps (although, through its history, maps tend to become obsolete fairly quickly). There is exactly one object that will describe it perfectly.

Once, Krystal had come to visit Lisa and Zideo from a land known as “the Bayarea” or “Sanfrancisco.” I have not been there and know little about it. Krystal and Zideo, when they spend time together, do almost nothing but play video games.

My dog readers may recognize the act of “video games,” depending on the culture and sophistication of their humans. It is one of the many things you can do in front of glowing rectangles, but it seems to demand the attention of the humans more actively than when they simply sit back and watch the glowing rectangle. During video games, they press buttons a lot, sometimes under the influence of deep excitement and urgency. I find them to be a sleep aid—the combination of repeated sounds and the knowledge that my humans are safe and entertained can be powerfully hypnotic.

During the visit, Krystal and Zideo left the house for a few hours. While absence of humans feels interminable in dog-time, Lisa was still at home and I availed myself of her attentions and passed the time with scratches and rubs and other affections. (Lisa is not on her son’s level as far as ear-rubs. Zideo is peerless in this regard. But she does give a very unique butt-pat, where she slaps the top of my haunches in a way that doesn’t feel good, but fills me with encouragement.)

When Krystal and Zideo returned, they were laughing about a place they had been, called the “Arcade,” which I gather is a place humans used to go to stand up and engage in video games. The logic behind this baffled me—who could stay awake for such an endeavor?—but they seemed to have enjoyed one another’s company. They brought back a prize. “Show her,” said Krystal, and Zideo produced a small, green disk on a short, silver chain from his pocket. It smelled like nothing, but Lisa had a good laugh over it. They each took turns staring into it intently, tilting it to various sides, and then swearing with increasing intensity, which made them laugh all the more.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

When it was unattended, I stole it and took it behind the couch, unobserved in the living room. The green disk was paired with a transparent disk on top of it, and they clasped together to contain a tiny, silver ballbearing. It clicked against plastic walls, begging to be released. I set my back teeth upon it, rending the plastic. I ate the ballbearing and some of the plastic shards, which tasted terrible and made my stomach upset. I will spare you further details.

I surmised later that this was a maze, a kind of physical game to entertain the humans. The goal is to get the silver ball from somewhere to somewhere else, navigating the concentric circles and passages of the plastic walls within the toy. I had ruined it, but it was worth it for the knowledge I had gained. (I got yelled at later, which I didn’t think was entirely fair, as I was very proud of the collection of plastic shards I had spread on the floor.) Seen from above, Ludopolis is more or less the ruined pocket maze. There is no silver ball roaming the streets, but its streets are circles that become smaller rings toward the center, where the tower stands. I could not have known then, but we were taking on the journey from the gate—the maze starting point—to the center.

We passed between the two monumental doors, which I have previously described. The two amicable but weathered faces, worn and rendered to vague countenances, smiled across to one another over our heads. What did they know that we didn’t?

I smelled the crowding anxieties of a big city: hurry, fear, uncertainty. The sweat of creatures I had no name for. Chalky dust freshly disturbed from the breaking drilling into rocks. Newly stripped lumber, the pine tang of xylem and phloem yet to cease pumping. A pungent admixture of industrial chemicals, newly mixed mortar pastes between stones and bricks. Textiles I did not recognize and food I could not discern. (I could only imagine how this was affecting Zideo. He had often complained to Lisa to warn him when she was microwaving eggs, because if he didn’t know eggs were being microwaved, he always thought he smelled… something I won’t repeat at this time.)

The choking, invasive smells were too much all at once. I ran to the side of the road and vomited, to the wide-eyed horror of a child wearing a hardhat. I hustled back to my human with my head low and my tail between my legs. The sensory assault did not stop there.

We walked through the outer streets, and I could not sense the overall curvature. In fact, I could barely keep track of the street itself, so alive was it with activity. Those newly arrived, like ourselves, spilled from the southern gate entrance directly into a construction site. Crowds of short animal people and shorter people-people looked around blankly, and were shouted out of the way by burly construction creatures helping one another carry construction materials. A wheel barrow full of piled stones nearly ran me over, and an anthropomorphic snake flickered its tongue at me reproachfully.

The construction workers darted to and fro in a frenzy, working to clear a tremendous pile of rubble, and replacing it with flimsy wooden housing.

A very conspicuous man in a flowing white cloak followed a row of construction workers, believing himself to be concealed by mimicking their body language and keeping his face concealed by his own robe. He broke ranks with them and leaped out at Addrion, only to find her energy weapon pointed at his face.

“Fuck off,” she said. There was no malice in her voice.

He put his hands up, and twirled his cloak—again, blindingly white—as he departed. He scrambled up the walls of the construction site with ease, and disappeared into the uneven rooftops.

Addrion sneered at him and nearly tripped on a mushroom with shoes. Helmgarth pulled Zideo out of the way of a clutch of medieval peasants with bags slung over their shoulders, complaining in rough tones about “More work?”

The new and impermanent housing was a honeycomb of cubic cells, spilling like water into any available space cleared in the rubble. The construction teams hammered and hacked and pulled down the charred and ruined walls of the old tower while beings gathered in clumps around the temporary structures, unable even to wait for the final nail before claiming a cramped and space therein. Crowds followed every move of the builders, who worked swiftly.

“They work fast here,” said Zideo. As we passed, a family of featureless, pixelated human shapes–two adults and two children, if I was not mistaken–parked their wagon and began transferring primitive pelts into their new home, which smelled like buffalo and bear. They attempted to give smaller pelts and what smelled like uncooked rabbit (but looked like little more than a few blocks of light) to the builders, who refused. Zideo’s eyebrows knitted. “Are they just–waiting for their homes to be built?”

Helmgarth nodded. “Ludopolis is a refugee city, these days,” he said, quietly. “The city was not built for this populace.”

“I respect the grind,” said Zideo.

Passing the southern district which was becoming a residential neighborhood before our very eyes, we heard the din of many voices. Beings crowded into a long line between cords and stanchions, bumping into one another and arguing. Few resembled one another, and many were visibly injured and struggling. A short ninja held up a shogun with a fanged mask, who could not bear weight on one leg. Tall, slender people with ears like a rabbit’s or kangaroo’s dragged their armored comrade through the line. A pair of button-eyed ice climbers—both overdressed in a winter coat and spiked climbing cleats—squabbled over who should carry whom. A bandaged minotaur stretched out on a cot, unable to rise. I smelled an air of uncertainty and frightened boredom as they clung to their next steps, watching the heels of those in front of them and waiting for their turn to move up a few precious steps. I heard sniffles and moans, muttered complaints, swears, and other less describable beeps and buzzes.

“Is this a hospital?”

Helmgarth sighed. “The closest thing to it. This is the infirmary where wounded refugees are treated.”

He stood on his toes to better view the destination of the line. “Where?”

“Well… here, m’lord. What you see is it. The hospital was destroyed in the Total Conversion. The medical institute further in handles most of the non-emergencies for the citizenry now. But this camp addresses the urgent needs of those just arrived.”

Zideo’s eyes snapped to him. “Just… out in the open?”

Helmgarth nodded.

My human halted in the road and gawked. I myself have been in the presence of suffering and wounded creatures at the veterinary office, and in the animal world, we generally know when it is appropriate to make flagrant eye contact. (It usually isn’t advisable, unless one knows the other animal, and/or one is desirous of violence or mating.)

He was frozen to the spot, unable to look away from the wounded and incapacitated. Fearing Addrion’s wrath, he had to be coaxed with urgent words and physical force. Even then, he barely noticed Helmgarth and Kriegsgeswinnler.

“Don’t they…” he said, being pushed by the merchant, “don’t they have medics? Healers? Priests?”

Helmgarth tugged on his arm to catch up with Addrion, who was already turning back with her arms crossed.

“Personnel is as low as supplies are,” he said. “And you must understand. Where you hail from, most anatomies are the same, or close enough to make a sensible prescription. But, look around.”

Zideo did.

“Potions work for me. Injections and bandages work for the good lady,” he nodded, meaning Addrion.

“I take pills!” volunteered the Merchant.

“Indeed,” said Helmgarth. “Treats, food, medications… we all hail from different genres and different… you know.”

Zideo put his finger on his nose. “G-words? I’m with you, fam.”

Speaking of food, I could smell it powerfully and began to salivate openly. We followed Addrion into the market.