Kill your friends guilt free

It shifted under the eye like so much else in the Otherworld, but had a definite steady rotation. It was like seeing a city from space, a city not confined to a single hemispherical plane, but spread out across countless separate shapes that didn’t align to a single gravitational direction. Its pulsating colors and textures were strangely familiar; along with the glitter of metal and warmth of cement, there was also the green of forests, the blue of ocean, white of snow or clouds, and even the dark of night in a seemingly random distribution. There was no great artificial sun to be seen. It glowed from within, or maybe from nothing.

“There it is,” said Nova.

“All right, thanks. I see it.” Gradie looked at them then back at Gunmaze. Nova started laughing.

“Bro we’re not going this slow for your benefit. Gunmaze won’t let us approach faster than this.”

“Why?”

“Some kind of scanning procedure,” Angel said. “It may seem like a funhouse to the average visitor, but it’s as locked down as any fortress world.”

“People take the games seriously, huh?” Gradie must have let some of his contempt leak out through his voice. Angel glared at him.

“Gunmaze makes more mem per day than the Allworld. Some people spend every scrap of mem they have here, so yeah, the Makers have to take that seriously.”

“Makes sense,” Gradie said flatly looking back at the swirling cloud, wondering if his contempt was a reflex against his fear, and Angel’s words caught up with him.

“So, how much does it cost to get in?” He wasn’t especially attached to his money, but he had always held some sliver of hope that he would find something worth spending it on somewhere in the Other. Though it seemed an ironic tragedy to think he would spend so much money on games in both his lives.

“Getting in’s free,” Nova said. “Playing’s free. You can pay for skins and ports and other convenience shit. When it comes to shit you use to play, you gotta earn in the hard way. Absolutely no pay to win in Gunmaze.”

Gradie had heard about a thousand similar spiels about games in the Real, almost all of which were at least partialy PR bullshit, but he just nodded along. Stuck in the back of his mind like an itch was the constant reminder that the twins were probably only taking him along because Michael or Klara had pressured them to.

“And you can make some good money if you’re not a nerd about it,” Luke said, grinning.

“What?”

“If you take your winnings and flip em for cash instead of buying outfits and shit, yeah. I usually clean up.”

Gradie couldn’t help himself.

“They let you do that? Trade the game tokens for real money? Wouldn’t that kinda ruin the spirit of the game?” He raised his eyebrows at Angel, who gave back another glare.

“Gunmaze tokens are real money. They used to be the fucking reserve currency before MEM. They have value everywhere in the Other. You just swap them out for mem for convenience.”

“I thought memory was always the currency here?”

“Yes, but not—”

Nova interrupted Angel loudly.

“Ok bro, you wanna get into the financial history of the Other, come by the HQ once Boss lifts your ban. Right now let’s go over how this is gonna go down. First of all, stick together. You’re gonna see a lot of cool shit but don’t go running off on your own. Strength in numbers.”

Gradie felt, once again, that he was tagging along like a little brother, but he kept nodding and watching the swirling mass of light and activity grow in the window, trying to temper the excitement growing in his stomach.

Nova raised a second finger.

“Second of all, be vocal. Our comms will work inside, so call out what you see, what you think, and especially what you’re about to do. We gotta be on the same page.”

Gradie had to focus pretty hard to use the comms normally, which was usually only when Klara or Michael called him out of the Vault for a briefing, and resulted in him standing perfectly still with his hand to his ear while responding with his mind’s voice.

“Grandpas on the phone,” EP had said once, flying past him into the office, but despite the ribbing he had never gotten the hang of doing anything else while communicating. He doubted trying it while in the middle of a tense session of dreamworld PVP would make it any easier.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

But again, he just nodded. They could find that out on their own.

Somewhere during his spaced-out thoughts, Nova had raised a third finger.

“- so don’t be afraid to dip out. And finally,” He raised a fourth finger and smiled at Gradie. “Look for work. You already know that one though.”

If Nova had expected that borrowing one of the Gunmaze commandments from Philips Hardworlding creed would make Gradie feel more comfortable, it had the opposite effect. Suddenly, Gradie wished he was back in the Clubhouse, or flying down the highway, or in Lucy’s lair, ready to drop in.

Luke raised two fingers.

“Fifth, have fun. And sixth, be yourself.”

Nova smiled.

“Five is guaranteed, bro.

Angel rolled his eyes and groaned.

The ship came to a sudden stop just as Angel and Nova stood up in a way that told Gradie they had done this a million times. Something zipped up to the window and shined a light inside. An orb made of a thousand camera lens like eyes. The light became a projection and the orb dissapeared behind a widescreen banner.

‘welcome to’

GUNMAZE

‘please present id’

The word Gunmaze was made of block metal letters with mazelike tracks inside, floating in front of a shifting background of various moving images depicting destroyed cities, space stations, wide fields strafed by fighter jets, and even a medieval siege.

“Uh, ID?” Gradie asked. The other three were already holding up watches and rings to a beam of light coming from the projection.

“Your wallet,” Nova said. “It’s tied to your Real self with a bit of your Real mem.”

Gradie looked at his digital watch like it had betrayed him. Michael had set it up, but hadn’t mentioned that little fact.

“How do they, uh,”

“Boss used some of the mem pulled when you first joined,” Nova said.

First joined? He saw Lucy’s glowing eyes. Great. He felt like throwing the watch into the black and flying off for good. Maybe even dropping into the Hardworlds on his own. Up till then, he had enjoyed his relative anonymity. He had gotten used to the idea that no one in this world ever had to know a thing about his Real life. Flying over the Allworld, watching from afar, he had felt like a visitor, an alien. Now that his real life was tied to this place, he felt a nagging urge to run from it, to escape to the only place he could, the Hardworlds. For some reason, the sensation reminded him of Phillip.

But they were all looking at him and even the repeating animation behind ‘GUNMAZE’ seemed impatient, so he raised his watch and the light swept it with a ‘beep’, and a slightly robotic but very sensual female voice oozed out of the screen.

“New Player, would you like to create an avatar, or observe as a Specter?”

“Uh,”

“Avatar,” Nova said. “Specters are for solo noobs and streamer simps. We’ll show you the ropes.”

The screen was now blinking the text of the woman’s question in neon red.

“Avatar, please,” Gradie said.

“A mirror room has been summoned and will be attached to the team leader’s station. Welcome to the Gunmaze, and pop that cherry with a bang.”

The projection disappeared and something floated in from the swirling haze. A castle melted onto a sci-fi space station. It looked like the Twins from top to bottom and he guessed it was custom made, as out in the black similar rendezvous were happening between ships and stations that looked nothing alike.

The structure rotated and a crystal orb like a geodome was stuck off the side of it.

“That’s the mirror room,” Angel said. “It’s where you’ll make your avatar.”

“Cant I just go like this? I’m not really into dressing up.”

Nova laughed.

“An avatar isn’t an outfit. It’s a second body that meshes with the schema of a Gameworld. You’ll see when we get in there.”

The castle door approached a drawbridge extended right through the front viewport, which Gradie realized for the first time didn’t have any kind of glass pane or barrier. Gravity had returned and Nova bounced on the balls of his feet as they walked across and spoke to someone out loud.

“Yeah, we just pulled up. Gonna be running some small unit shit for today. Oh, fuck I forgot about that. Ok yeah, we’ll probably make an appearance later. All right bye.”

Nova groaned and Angel asked him what was wrong.

“Fuckin Bartoth’s having that post viewing thing today at the orbital. We’re gonna have to swing by after this.”

“Thought you liked Bart.”

“Yeah, Bart’s fine, but he’s still doing that series for that fucking Bombfaction captain, so I know all his guys are gonna be there.”

“It’s our orbital, if they get on your nerves, you can just—”

“No bro, I can’t just, cause like I’ve told you a thousand times, you gotta maintain rapport with those assholes if you wanna get contracts.”

“We don’t need their contracts.”

They were fully inside the castle now, in a wide carpeted circular room, the walls alternating between tall doors and hanging tapestries depicting all kinds of scenes apparently plucked from different parts of Gunmaze. Luke had been eyeing the twins since they stepped inside, and now that it was clear the conversation didn’t have an ending point in sight, he sighed and turned to Gradie.

“All right, guess I’m gonna have to try and explain. So I think it’s in there,” he pointed towards one of the tall doors that looked more like an airlock than a castle portcullis.

“Yeah, that’s it, sorry,” Nova said, while Angel was still in the middle of a sentence. Despite the interruption, Angel didn’t look put off, but instead smiled smugly at the back of Nova’s head as they moved towards the airlock.

“So the mirror room is pretty user friendly. It’s gonna show you a bunch of options and you can narrow them down. Pretty much just like creating a character in an RPG.”

Angel’s smile vanished, but Nova continued

“If you have any questions just call em out and the announcer will help you.”

“All right bro, get in there!” Luke yelled with mock anguish. “I’m ready to blow shit up!”

Gradie looked at the airlock, and it slid open on its own. A childish excitement fluttered in his stomach. The windows flanking the door showed other crafts and stations rotating around the swirling mass of Gunmaze, and small lights in singles and swarms dropped to the surface. It felt alive, active. Millions of them. A dreamworld MMO. The kind of game he had always dreamed about but had proved to be just beyond possibility.

The rest of him tried to beat down the feeling, now more convinced than ever that Gunmaze would be a waste of time, made of the same cheesy escapism as that navy seal revenge sim he had seen advertised on the ball. But maybe that’s what he needed. Despite the thousand other hims he had inhabited since the coin job, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that the next time he would wake up in a burning warehouse, Sam’s corpse staring at him with dead weeping eyes.