"Oh, hello dearie," Clay said with a smile. The smile was not returned. "I'm just doing an infection check for the county. Just a few beds. A spot check, really."

"I wasn't informed," the nurse said. She flipped through her handheld, then held it to her ear. "No message came in about this. I'm going to call in and check to see if we knew about this."

Clay nodded encouragingly at the woman as she reached into her knitting bag. She turned the knob on the end of her second knitting needle.

The woman frowned, holding up her handheld and pointing it to the left and right. "No reception. Strange."

"Would you like to use mine, dearie?" Clay asked.

"No. Just do whatever it is you need to do. I have my own duties to take care of, but I'll be keeping an eye out." She stared hard at Clay for a moment, then left.

Clay twisted the top of her knitting needle back, turning off the jammer inside the ball of yarn. She turned toward the banks of patients in the low-lit room. They were all being rocked slowly from side to side by the automated bed-chairs, preventing them from getting pressure sores. Their individual quiet vocalizations created a web of sound in the gloomy vault.

She bent over a young woman with an IV line, pretending to examine it but craning her neck up so she could scan the beds for Raf. The half-light made it impossible to see more than a few beds in any direction.

She spent what she figured was a suitable amount of time peering at the IV going into the young woman's arm, then moved over a few beds, choosing one closer to where she thought she had spotted Raf. She pretended to fuss a bit with machines and looked at connections. She made quiet positive noises in case anyone overheard her. People liked an indication that they were doing things right.

Moving from side to side of the bed of her latest "patient," Clay spotted what might have been tightly napped red hair against a pillow. She bent one last time over an injection site on the current murmuring person and wandered over to where she thought Raf might be.

It was him.

His eyelids fluttered, his eyes darting back and forth under the lids. "Rafael," Clay whispered.

"Yes, my lord," Raf said at nearly normal speaking volume, which sounded like a shout in the silent environment.

"Sh, sh," she said. "Everything is okay. It's great-aunt Clay. I am coming. Do you hear me? I'm going to come help you."

"Wanderways server pop ninety-five per cent of cap," Raf said. More quietly, he muttered, "Snow tiger, dangerous creature but a solo hunter. They hate fire." His lips worked as he whispered something. Clay moved over him.

"Two hundred credit score, thirty hours for one earning increment, max gain of twenty, six hundred hours left..." Clay frowned. Raf was making no sense now.

"Raf?" she whispered. "What do they have you doing? What tasks?"

Raf's eyes snapped open and seemed to focus on her.

"Everything," he whispered, then closed his eyes once more and fell silent.

Clay made her exit after that. She gave a jaunty little wave to the nurse who had accosted her. She picked up the drones from where she'd moved them during the day, hidden behind the back wall of the building. The cool night air felt good in her lungs, her comfy "nurse" shoes gathering dew from the grass.

She called for a car and made it back home. She put herself to bed without calling on Vonzell, meditating to quiet her mind lest she spend the whole night thinking up plans rather than getting some much-needed sleep.

***

Clay slept well, and woke up full of piss and vinegar. "Vonzell, we're going back to Anabasis. Get The Chair."

"Yes, ma'am!" Vonzell said, smiling wide.

They took a car to the games company and Vonzell unfolded the wheelchair. Clay buckled herself in as Vonzell put down the footrests. Vonzell took a length of metal shaped like a shallow "V" and fitted it over the footrests. The custom-welded bar was one of The Chair's more useful features.

Vonzell pushed Clay toward the building. The front doors were built to open inward, and they burst wide with a loud bang as the bar on the front of The Chair forced them aside. The other pair of doors in the vestibule airlock jumped and shivered, until The Chair knocked those open wide as well. BAM.

Vonzell took long strides, wheeling Clay at a brisk walking pace. The receptionist behind her high desk looked like a deer in headlights.

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"Kaminides' office: left or right?" Clay asked as they headed down the main hallway.

"Um, wait," the young woman said. "He's in conference--"

"Thank you! Clay called to the receding reception desk. They noticed X in a glass-walled room with a conference table, set up in front of a camscreen. Vonzell opened the door, rolled Clay in, closed the door and then stood against it, leaning their weight on it to hold it closed.

X looked up, surprised, but didn't break his full-on schmooze mode as he told a journalist, "Call me Xen."

He liked to be called Xen, fancying himself a lofty thinker because it rhymed with Zen. The name reminded Clay instead of an even more difficult and distasteful Xen from her distant gaming past.

X was answering a journalist's question: "So, basically, you have what's called a Guildsoul. This is like a house spirit that organizes the guild's space, but much more than that, keeps track of what the guild is trying to accomplish. It dynamically creates quests for members based on that. It also runs an NPC storefront that sells spare goods crafted or looted by guild members."

Clay could hear the media person's response through X's system. "And the economy? Do players make out all right? Can they set prices?"

"Sure, though the Guildsoul advises them based on what the going price in any of the world's regional markets is like. There can be a set discount for guildmates, or even for friends of the guild. The storefront NPC can manage these relationships independently, kind of like any other merchant whose good graces you might try to get into in the hope he'll cut you a deal."

"So, with these Guildsouls all aware of the price levels, they're kind of talking to each other, right? Isn't that effectively price-fixing?"

X chuckled. "This 'invisible hand' has a very light touch. We try to let player desires, and our perceived player needs based on their activity, direct the prices. If anything, it gives us a nice read on what the players value, what they want and are striving for. Plus, the information that gets gathered helps us keep apprised of the 'health' of the player economy, including any strange fluctuations or spikes that might signal... antisocial activity."

A journalist said, "Ah. Gold farmers."

X nodded into his camera. "A perpetual problem. If the demand for in-game goods is such that people want to spend their disposable income rather than their time getting them, there will be people trying to fill that need. Who better to do so than the company itself? Keep everything in-house, controlled, predictable."

"Now, you say there are 'goods' the players can buy with real currency. Aren't there services as well?"

X smiled and leaned forward. "That is one of the most innovative elements of Everhome: the Flunky system. Anyone can hire servants or henchmen and take them along on adventures. Or they can direct them to gather resources or perform other menial tasks the player doesn't want to do. This is where our Neuronet system really shines: instead of a robot only able to follow simple commands, you have your own intelligent, personalized agent in the world. It allows players to really bridge the experience between being a lone wolf and being tightly integrated into a guild or group of friends."

"And these 'flunkies,' they have other players behind them? Or employees?"

Xen gave a thin smile. "Neuronet is highly proprietary," he said finally. "Yes, there is a bespoke, personal, human touch given to each entity in the Flunky system."

"So it's not quite an AI?"

Xen shrugged noncommittally. "It's more like how cars used to be: you had the intelligent system with guidance and avoidance abilities, but with the human seated right there providing input and reacting to traffic flow. Who was truly driving the car back then? Both and neither at the same time."

The conference continued for a few minutes more. Vonzell remained against the door; at one point X waved away someone the receptionist had sent. X folded down his conference system.

"Clay." X said. "It's always good to see you, but could this have waited? As you can see, I was doing media promotion."

"No, X, it couldn't wait. I've come to get my great-nephew, Rafael Cottman."

X entered something on his hand unit, then slowly nodded. "There’s still a balance on his account."

"How much?" Clay asked.

He named an obscene sum. Clay blanched. "I thought the responsible party was taking care of his medical bills!"

"Oh, yes," X said. "But the rehabilitation costs, you see, required an employment contract so he could work off the amount required."

"I see," Clay said, lips pursed. "And I can well imagine the quality of care he's receiving in a former call center."

"We have highly qualified medical personnel, and up-to-date equipment. Their needs--"

"Their needs?" Clay said. "I've seen how well you're seeing to their needs. This is all about your needs."

"You've seen?"

"Yes. I snuck into your back-alley clinic when I learned one of your oh-so-valued indentured servants was family."

X straightened, his mouth tight. "I see."

"Yes. I hope you goddamned well see."

"Everything we do is within the letter of the law."

Clay shook her head. "That's always the way with you, isn't it, X? Always 'technically' legal and 'contractually' ethical, with no goddamned sense of right or wrong."

They left after that, Clay resting her head against the window in the car, watching the world blur by. X the Ex was doing as he always did: whatever he wanted. He was doubtless protected behind some legal and corporate web.

She didn't know what this "Neuronet" was precisely, but she was damned sure it was going to cause long-term cognitive damage to Raf and everyone else in the Muttering. She'd been in the ICU, and "ICU psychosis" was a real phenomenon nurses never knew how to combat. Perhaps all she could do--the most she could do, for now--was run interference for Raf and try to take some of the psychic load off him until the Faustian bargain he'd made with X had ended.

Getting into Everhome and using the PERSEUS system that underlay it was her way forward. X felt secure in his little kingdom, but he wasn’t the only one with tricks up their sleeve.

“Game on,” she said.