"Good isn't good enough. It must be flawless. If you don't know that then you don't know what this is. You won't understand and it is a waste of time." Jin Sterling slowly turned the antique Nineties' office chair.

"It is flawless. I made it." Childes frowned behind his mask and his face turned red.

"You understand, you have nothing at-stake in this. Money can't buy the kind of honesty I need." Sterling declared.

"It can safely access: anything that uses Havoc-8, as a 9od." Childes promised.

"As a 9od?" Sterling raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"I'm selling it to you. Is that enough for trust and honesty? I could do five and when I got out I wouldn't be allowed to program anything more complicated than a VCR." Childes breathed.

"What is a VCR?" Sterling looked cute when she didn't know something. Possibly because she knew everything.

"I don't know. I thought you'd like it since you like stuff from Pre2k." Childes wasn't about to have a heart attack. Sterling wasn't impressed and dismissed him with a gesture and the words:

"Only when it's sexy."

"Bye." Childes had left it as a zip drive on her desk. She had already paid him to his wallet while they were talking. She did trust him; but it was dangerous to show trust. That's a fact.

"Call for you, boss." The body-builder at her secretary's desk intercommed her. She looked at him, on her security PIP, in his little blue speedos. Cool.

"Jin Sterling, I fix leaks." She chimed live to the blank screen. Not even a filtration. The call was from a client named Samual Givens.

"This is Samual Givens." The caller identified himself. "We meet this morning?"

"What?" Sterling felt alien-panic sweep her chest. She brought up a holo of her schedule with a hand gesture and saw she was fifteen minutes overdue for an in-person consultation. "I am so sorry. Can we reschedule?"

"For when you arrive. You are still at your office." Givens spoke like Frankenstein's Monster. Or something like that.

"Okay, uh, I am on my way." Sterling ended the call and went to them. She made them wait so long that when she got there: their patience was creepy.

"Ms. Sterling. Your reputation proceeds you. You are the best and the most discreet. We need you and we have accepted your...price." Givens spoke while the other cadavers sat lifeless and stared at her. She lifted her personal device and viewed her wallet. They had indeed paid her ridiculous consultation fee, promising more if she did more for them.

"What seems to be the trouble?" Sterling sat and the green-glowing streak in her hair glimmered like ones-and-zeros.

"An older prototype of Real Life II, a game called Go Amish, is singularizing." Givens said as not-a-joke. Then he added: "Our tech, Gabriel, is still in there."

"Jesus Christ!" Sterling stood and glared at them. She thought she still had gum in her mouth and bit her tongue. "Ow!" She spat out some blood onto the glass table.

They just sat there, barely reacting. They knew how much trouble they were in, it was on their faces. Grim-as-fuck.

"How long has he been in there?" Sterling sat back down and got professional. She was racking her brain. If this program was a Havoc-7 or a Nidus, this could get real bad. She shook her head.

"Six days." Givens sipped his water, his mouth kept going dry.

"One week in a Nidus is what caused Jack Billings. Does Gabriel have family?" Sterling cared about other human beings when she alone could save them. Otherwise they can go play in traffic, it'll be fine.

"His daughter turned five yesterday." Givens frowned (somehow) and added: "Don't you want to know what is going on in there?"

"You people don't know what is going on in there." Sterling objected to their advice. She accepted two pieces of paper that someone had printed out for her. They were two in-game documents Gabriel had sent them during his early hours in Gasthof. Before they lost contact with him. The pages detailed a charter about townspeople responsibilities to their community and to their family. A husband must always stand for his wife, a child for his mother, the woman stands for her family, the community stands together for Jesus Christ. Sterling read both pages.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"They wrote that." Givens said quietly.

"The NPCs wrote this?" Sterling looked up. Her right eye had watered. Everyone just nodded solemnly. She pushed the paper away and after a moment she asked thoughtfully: "Has anyone considered that he might not want to leave?"

"What do you mean?" Givens was confused by her hypothesis.

"You have used technical means to disrupt his presence and he remained connected anyway. Aside from killing him or sending me in after him, there is no way to undo this. They are smart; do they know they were going offline?" Sterling asked. There was no response. They weren't following. "Let's waste no more time. Send me in there right now."

An hour later she was sedated and being connected to the port on the back of the gameseat. They put IVs into her to feed her for however long she was in. She looked over at the other person that would be in the world she was heading to. He was seated and unconscious in a chair like her's, needles in him as well.

"Ready?" The steward asked her. She nodded. The bright flash and lightheadness that followed was always shocking.

"Again I follow down the rabbit hole, again into the breach..." Sterling was saying out-loud as she went in but the words were never spoken out-loud. She took her bearings of the exit and checked her safety, she had two of them instead of just the one. The first one was a glowing transparent light near the back of her left hand. If she willfully touched it then she would wake up. Easy.

The second one was her own. If she touched that one she would become this place's 9od for about ten seconds, maybe longer. It was called a 'deicide'.

Sterling chose the first female character and walked into Gasthof. It was just like the brochures would look, people milking cows and tilling fields and a blacksmith. There was a church and barns and wells and all the men had beards. Actual beards, not manscapes or anything, straight-up beards.

Finding Gabriel wasn't easy. Ezekiel and Jebediah were not helpful. They told her to consult with the womenfolk so she asked Ruth and Sarah who were equally not helpful. Eventually they took her to see the Bishop.

He sat with his beard and his plain-looking wife and kids, in front of his home.

"You were only in here six days." She told him.

"That's not how long it feels. Alone, I just moved at their pace. Things only slowed down when you got here." Gabriel replied calmly.

"Ready to go? I hit this while you are holding my hand and we both wake up." Sterling smiled. She loved it when the scary jobs turned out to be easy. Made her look as amazing as she felt.

"Go where?" Gabriel asked.

"You've got to be...kidding...damn." Sterling muttered, her confidence shattering.

"I want to stay. I barely remember it now. I like it here." Gabriel nodded.

"Your daughter's birthday was yesterday." Sterling folded her arms. "She turned five."

"No she didn't My daughter is dead. Killed by a drunk driver who swerved onto the sidewalk." Gabriel said without pain. The young girl in her little Amish dress stepped forward. "But she is here."

"And that is your wife I suppose, and others you have become estranged from." Sterling pointed to the rest of his make-believe family. She wasn't buying into his craziness.

"She committed suicide a year and a day ago. I could only forgive her for having more courage than I." Gabriel stood and put his arm around her waist and held her beside him. "Here, a man stands beside his wife no matter what."

"Yes, I read the charter, very romantic." Sterling plopped.

"You have never lost someone?" The wife asked without condescension.

"Nobody I couldn't replace." Sterling flicked back. "What exactly are you?"

"I am Carol, Gabriel's wife." Carol said defensively. Her tone sounded like she had confidence that her place was valid. Sterling was the outsider, obviously. Primitive.

"I am losing my patience." Sterling shrugged. She reached for her deicide and activated it. Normally she wouldn't kill a bunch of AIs, but these ones she was already annoyed with and they were already supposed to be unplugged. Nothing happened. "Alright, I am 9od now. Drop dead, all of you."

"You are not God." Carol smiled carefully.

"What is happening? This should work." Sterling concentrated. She had a few seconds left to override anything. She willed an emulation of her personal device to appear. She took it and used it to call out.

"Boss?" The worried face of her secretary-boy answered. She couldn't remember his name.

"It's me. I am in a simulation, working. I need you to go into my office and plug that zip drive into the backup of my device that is in the top drawer. Go, now." Sterling instructed him.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked, a stupid expression was on his face as the call was lost. Her emulation vanished. So her 9od-mode hadn't worked properly. They had something stronger. It would take twenty-four hours to reset. She had to wait.

While she was there she tried to study the Amish, learn their secrets. They followed a simple schedule of chores and prayers. Modesty, kindness and moderation were their way of doing things. If one of them felt unhappy they left the others to go and pray. In general, they kept things simple and about their faith and their community. Everything they did had some kind of social context. It was kinda sexy.

"Modesty is sexy." Sterling muttered, while churning butter. A buff chad with a nice beard walked by and smiled at her. "You're cute."

"God bless you, Sister." He said.

"Yep, Jesus to you too, I guess." Sterling complained. This went on for days and days it seemed. Finally he proposed marriage. Sterling, bored witless and horny, agreed.

She named her second kid Gabriel; after the late Bishop.

Sterling was sewing a quilt beside Ruth while her youngest, Esther, was playing with a handful of flax nearby. Things began to slow down suddenly. A man with no beard they'd never seen walked up. Sterling thought she recognized him, but couldn't be sure.

"You're her, aren't you?" He asked.

"I am Jin Sterling. My husband is Chad Sterling. What do you want, sir?" Sterling shaded her eyes with her hand as she spoke plainly.

"I am Detective Summerisle. I am here to confirm you are still...alive...I guess is the idea." He said. Then he added:

"You have lived in this place for seventy days. There is some discussion about liability and whether you are even alive in here. You see? Your body, it has uh, expired."

"This is Heaven." Sterling shrugged a little and pinched. Just a taste of her old self.

"I was to tell you from an old friend." Detective Summerisle hesitated. He couldn't tell her from the others anymore. He said it anyway:

"VCR is sexy."