Rick frowned at the accusation the Ditto had just leveled at him. “Everyone has secrets, Ditto.” He has them. I still don’t know why he needs my help.

“Secrets aren’t a problem. Your feeling about those secrets is the problem.” Ditto tilted his head.

Rick pointed at the row of perfectly bright chakras that glowed within Ditto’s body. “You haven’t told me why you need my help.” He pointed at the bot’s throat. “Shouldn’t that have some effect on your blue orb chakra whats-it?”

Ditto smiled. “I’m not conflicted about withholding information from you. Nothing in the way I arrive at decisions points to an error. That’s the way the contradiction would manifest within me.”

“What? Just off or on?”

“That’s a simplistic conclusion. A human being would be offended at being dismissed like that. Nonetheless, the complexity of my systems is largely expressed in matters of quantity in a way that’s more transparent than human consciousness.”

“So you can lie without remorse?”

“I can edit the expression of data if the goal remains more important. My processes have various levels of priority.” Ditto leveled a steady gaze at Rick. “Telling you everything now is of low priority.”

“And you don’t feel bad about that at all?” Rick sighed. “That’s enviable.” He looked toward the door where the sunlight streamed in. Motes of dust hung in the air, and some of them sparkled as if metallic.

“I need you to focus, Rick.”

He let his gaze stay with the sunlight and the dust. The sunlight was brighter there than it was in Ruckus Online, possessing a clarity that seemed to clear away the clouds in his mind. It clashed with the smell of horseshit, and the jagged line that cut through it all was his intense sexual drive, pushing him like some sort of carnal foreman. He glanced back at Ditto. “Why do I so often do the wrong thing?”

Ditto started. “That’s a rather unexpected question. Are you well?”

“Something’s different.” Rick looked at the horse in the nearest stall, who seemed to be angry.

The beast was huge, the size of a draft horse, but it had the features of a more elegant beast—perhaps a running horse. Rick hated horses. Can it sense I hate it? “I don’t feel right around anything that can kill me if it doesn’t like me,” he blurted.

“The human body is fragile. Pretty much anything can kill you.”

Rick sighed. “Yeah, I’m not comfortable often.” The horse began bashing the wooden door of its stall. “Is that thing—oh fuck!”

The beast had gotten free, but more than that, it had transformed into some strange half-horse, half-man hybrid, an equine Wild One.

“I thought we’d turned the game enemies down.” Rick stood and Ditto followed.

“We did…” The bot raised his eyebrows, though the expression was more one of curiosity than alarm.

The horse-man neighed from its long mouth, then sighed, standing on two human legs, but taller than any man should stand.

Rick glanced down. The orbs were spinning, unchanged from when he’d sat in the meditative position. “Whoa. Am I stuck with these now?”

“Rick?” Ditto said.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He looked up, barely in time to see a monstrous hoof-like fist coming at him. He blocked it, but it knocked him over. His heart rate rose, but whether it was his reCon, the suddenness of the attack, or his natural hatred of horses, he couldn’t determine.

He slipped in the straw along the floor, but got out of the way before an even larger hoof-like foot came down where he had just been.

The yellow light at his solar plexus flickered brightly enough that its flashes were visible, though Rick didn’t have time to look at them as he came to his feet and maintained a safe distance from the Wild One. Ditto had stepped away, which alarmed him. “You’re not gonna help?”

The bot tilted his head. “This is instructive. I don’t know why I hadn’t arrived at this conclusion before.”

Rick’s heart rate climbed and the dizziness kicked in. “A little help!” Could he take the few hits it would require before his empty mind took over? The beast’s hard, hoofy limbs could knock his head in, were this real life. You’d be fighting a seven-foot horse-man in real life? The absurdity made him laugh, which knocked the reCon response off-kilter, though it didn’t stop it completely.

The horse-man’s shoulders flexed, and Rick expected another punch, but the Wild One instead launched its mouth forward to bite. He ducked out of the way, but the loud sound of its teeth clacking together unnerved him.

Jesus fucking Christ! Rick struggled with his balance, but he got a hastily mustered left hook out. His followup, a high-knee, missed entirely, and it unbalanced him, causing him to reach down with his left hand to prevent tipping. It had been a lucky stumble, as the Wild One’s next two blisteringly fast attacks whiffed overhead at a velocity that would have surely ended the game.

He turned so he faced the ground prone, held above it as if he were planking, then shot up and launched his leg out in an inelegant donkey’s kick, slamming the beast in the solar plexus.

The horse-man’s head came down, and the damned thing took advantage of the position to bite Rick’s ass.

Fuck! “I hate horses!” Rick screamed. His off-kilter balance made the horse-man seem to sway, and he tried to aim a spinning elbow at the thing’s enormous head. If only it would stay still. He missed, but kept spinning, teetering over and flopping to the straw-covered ground once more.

The beast’s shadow announced its impending crash landing atop Rick, and as expected, it weighed what he imagined an elephant would. As the Wild One’s landing smashed all the air from his lungs, Rick wondered whether the game would let the hit crack his ribs. He didn’t have to wonder long, as he felt an internal snap similar to the one he’d felt all those weeks ago during the botched burglary that damaged his old implant.

He began to giggle, which had the odd effect of diminishing his terror. He shuffled, and the movement intensified the ticklish feeling as he rolled out from beneath his opponent before it could get its massive arms around his neck.

He stood and swayed. In the middle distance, the naked woman with the hot sauce blew him a kiss. The ticklish feeling faded, and in its place was Rick’s quiet mind. The swaying stopped.

The horse-man came at him again, but Rick spun away from its charge and swung a hard right heel into its calf, then scraped it down to its hoof-like heel.

The Wild One brayed and whinnied as it dropped to one knee. Rick completed the spin and elegantly wrapped his arm around the horse-man’s thick neck and twisted. He stood in the center of the storm as the enemy fell.

The sound of clapping woke him from his trance-like calm. It came from more than once source. The brunette clapped, though she wasn’t naked anymore. Instead, she wore a bizarre, wide-rimmed hat and a body-conforming white dress patterned with the bright colors of tropical flowers. Or were they? He looked again, and the entire scene was in black-and-white. He blinked, and the color came back.

The closer sound of clapping came from Ditto. “Your throat. It’s less disorganized.”

Rick ignored the comment at first. “That was a goddamned goat-fuck of a fight.” He shook his head and looked at Ditto. “Tell me it won’t always be like this.”

“I can’t guaran—”

“Lie to me, if you have to, Ditto.” He shook his head again. “I almost got my ass beat by a horse.”

“And you hate horses?” Ditto raised an eyebrow.

Rick closed his eyes as though he were in pain. “I loathe horses.”

“Huh,” the bot said. There was a tone of curiosity in the way he said it.

“Huh?” Rick asked.

“When you said you hated horses, your throat chakra got incrementally brighter.” A confused look came over Ditto’s face. “Why would that happen?”

It took a moment before it came to him. “Kristina loves horses. I never told her, but whenever we’re around horses, I kinda lose my shit.” Rick frowned.

Ditto’s mouth gaped and his eyes shone. “That’s so… human,” he said.

Rick shrugged. “I don’t wanna ruin one of her favorite things, but I was almost killed by a horse—multiple times—when I was a kid.” He clenched his fist. “A horse killed Superman. Never forget.”

Ditto stroked his goatee. “Rick? How much are you hiding from your wife?”