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  A kick!

  The wolf’s head slammed into the nearest statue with a dull thwack, smashing it to dust. I was about to pat myself on the back for finding yet another way to avoid taking damage when a ghost materialized where the statue had been. White and transparent he looked like he was bellowing at me enraged, though I couldn’t hear a thing. Anyway, he didn’t actually move in my direction, so I relaxed. After kicking the fawn’s head into the second statue, I confirmed that the first ghost’s appearance hadn’t been a one-off thing. The second disembodied spirit was also screaming and cursing, but we remained in separate planes of reality. In that case, I couldn’t care less! Picking up the wolf’s head that had rolled back to me, I took aim at the third statue. This was turning into a fun game!

  Quest update: ‘The Way of the Shaman (Step 1)’: 3 of 4 trials completed.

  For whatever reason, the developers seemed to imagine steadfastness of spirit as a heap of rice and peas. According to the rules, I was supposed to sort this heap into two halves, receive my Totem and rejoice in my new Shamanic class. Squatting down, I took a minute to establish that I wasn’t much for playing Cinderella. The very idea of how dull and long the task before me was made me want to pass out. I mean, even my hands were falling asleep, the fingers nodding off…No, this couldn’t go on. I would never manage to sort this whole heap on my own.

  I went back to the hall with the second trial and picked up the rod of bone. After wasting another twenty minutes in futile attempts to raise the wolf and fawn from the dead again, I gave up, tossed the bones into my bag and swore loudly. The profanity filter silenced my words yet again, so from the perspective of my surroundings I remained sitting in front of a heap of peas and rice, staring at it like I’d never seen rice and peas before. Am I really going to have to do this on my own?

  Yeah right! Oh man, Mahan had really made this phrase stick in my head.

  The ghosts in the third hall hadn’t left. They remained in their original places slinging soundless oaths against this living world. I walked up to one of them and noticed that he was standing on a small plinth. I prodded it with the wolf’s shinbone and couldn’t help but exclaim with joy—the plinth moved aside, dragging the ghost with it! Perfect! I know exactly who’s going to sort that heap for me!

  I spent the next five minutes pushing the plinths with their ghosts to the last room. The ghosts tried to grab me, but we were still in separate planes of existence and their hands simply passed through me. I just hoped that they wouldn’t do the same with the peas and rice! Having arranged the plinths around the heap, I couldn’t think of anything better than to point at it and say:

  “I need that sorted. Get on with it!”

  I knew the ghosts had heard me because their faces stretched in astonishment, while the only woman among them dropped her jaw and gaped at me. Well, at least they’d cut out their (soundless) clamor!

  “Why are you just standing there? Who are you waiting for? I said, this pile needs to be sorted! Rice to one side, peas to the other! Let’s go people! Don’t make me wait!”

  Haltingly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing, one of the ghosts squatted down, reached for the heap and—miracle of miracles—picked up one pea and placed it aside. Then another one. And another. By and by, the other ‘ancestors,’ whom I think I was supposed to be venerating, joined the first ghost. Well in my view, there’s no greater form of veneration than teamwork. What could be more venerable?

  “Wonderful!” I said, ecstatic, when the last pea had reached its proper heap. “Now you’re free to go!”

  “This is an outrage!” yelled one of the ghosts. I stared at him in shock—I could hear him! “I wasn’t a mighty arch-mage in my former life to sort peas for some petulant girl!”

  “I am not petulant!” I parried, realizing too late that in doing so I was letting the ghosts know that I could hear them…As if they were waiting for this, they all now began to yell at me, curse me with unprintable words, and threaten me with terrible tortures and retributions. I clapped my hands over my ears and yet even then I could hear them raving, so that finally pushed to the brink, I grabbed a pail of water (by the way, where had it come from anyway?) and dump it onto the ghosts. Let them cool off a bit!

  The water swept through the ghosts, doing them no harm at all, and fell onto the heap of rice, scattering it in every direction. I dropped the pail—damn! Taking the bones and using them as a shovel, I began to sweep the rice back into its heap—I still had to complete the trial. The ghosts fell silent and watched me work, or perhaps they didn’t wish to be noticed to keep me from forcing them to work again. I’ll deal with them later though—at the moment, I need to gather the rice back into its heap.

  I was about to celebrate my progress when one of the platforms began to shake. I stared at it puzzled and saw several grains of rice on it covered in dust. They were steadily growing into the platform, cracking it in half. Several moments passed and a green shoot appeared, decked in pretty flowers. The platform, meanwhile, was broken. With a drawn out groan, one of the ghosts was sucked into a flower, and here I became aware of similar groans coming from all around me—all of the platforms had been destroyed by the rice, while all the ghists were sucked into the flowers that had appeared.

  Without thinking, I reached out and touched one of the flowers. Its tip opened like a bulb revealing the projection of a small bear cub. He was so adorable, cute and clumsy that my teeth went on edge as if I’d eaten too much sugar. My gawd! Cuteness overload! My classmates would be losing their minds from happiness, seeing such a miracle. And yet the only thing I felt was loathing. I don’t like bears! The next bulb unfurled to reveal a wolf, the next a bunny, then a panther, a snake, a crow…Ten cute critters that elicited nothing from me but a deep sigh. What is this supposed to be? The ghosts had turned into animals? And what am I supposed to do with them?

  Overcoming my disgust, I forced myself to pet the wolf cub. Yes, he was soft. Yes, he was pretty cool. Yes, he was so cute that you wanted to press him to yourself and never let him go, and yet when the next notification appeared before me, I staggered back from the flower with the wolf cub like from a fire:

  Quest received: ‘Searching for your Totem’. You have chosen your Totem: Gray Wolf. In order to begin your search, speak to your Shaman teacher.

  So this is the Totem? No! I don’t want my Totem to be a Wolf! I want my Totem to be a Dragon, like Mahan’s! Give me a Dragon!

  But there was no Dragon among the ten flowers. There were bunnies, squirrels, wolves and other denizens of the forest—but no Dragon.

  I don’t play like that!

  Sitting down on the ground, I began to scan the forums again—to little avail. No one on the forum had been able to choose their Totem. The system had made the decision for them. I was already a black sheep in this regard…by the way, I think I saw a black lamb among the flowers…

  No! I want a Dragon! And I will have one too!

  I dumped the bones from my bag onto the floor and began to think. Only recently I had failed at re-raising the fawn and wolf from the dead. Something hadn’t jelled. But it’s not like I needed it to anymore. What I needed now was something entirely different—something that Barliona had never seen before…

  I needed to make myself a Dragon, even if he would be made of nothing but bone.

  Let’s get to it then.

  I didn’t have anything to bind the bones with, so I shamelessly pulled up the shoots of rice, stripped off and cast aside the bulbs with their cute critters and used the stems as bindings. The Dragon turned out scary looking and bore no resemblance to Mahan’s Totem whatsoever, but that didn’t stop me. I knew what I wanted!

  I’d have a Dragon of my own, or my name isn’t Fleite!

  Quest update: ‘Searching for your Totem’: You have changed your Totem from Gray Wolf to Undead Bone Dragon. In order to begin your search, speak to your Shaman teacher.

  Quest completed: ‘The Way of the Shaman: Step 1.’

/>   Translated from Russian by Boris Smirnov

  Purgatory

  A tale from the Phantom Server and Crystal Sphere series

  by Andrei Livadny

  They were twenty: the first humans to transcend reality.

  This is the story of only one of them.

  DIETRICH WASN'T THAT WORRIED about the trial. He'd lived a long and not exactly sheltered life with its fair share of problems and vagaries; he knew what it could throw at him and was pretty sure he'd come out clean. He had plenty of money; the rest was paperwork. He'd been through worse.

  "And?" he looked up sharply at his lawyer, annoyed by his sullen silence.

  "They're offering you a deal."

  "How much?"

  "This time it's not about money, Mr. Craw. I'm afraid they got you this time."

  "Keep it short."

  'They're willing to commute the cryo repository into a week of virtual incarceration."

  "What's the catch?" Dietrich leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, locked his fingers and squinted at his lawyer. "So they won't deep freeze me but send me to cyberspace instead?"

  "You'll have to have a neuroimplant installed."

  "What the hell is that?"

  "From what I've managed to find out, it's an artificial neural network. It connects to your brain and feeds it with an entire range of perceptions, allowing you to experience everything as if it were the real world."

  "Never heard of it. Is it dangerous?"

  The lawyer shrugged. "It's either cryo or cyberspace. You choose. To be completely honest with you, I just can't see any other option in this situation. For some reason unbeknown to me your case has attracted the interest of both the space forces and the world's biggest gaming corporation. All your connections aren't worth jack against that kind of folk. Your bank accounts have also been seized."

  Dietrich frowned.

  He had nothing to do with gaming. Or virtual realities. So far, his life had been strictly real. He'd never had the time to waste on all that nonsense. "Just spit it out! Quit pussyfooting around, for crissakes! What's the catch?"

  "I personally think they're testing these things. It's new technology. What they call cutting-edge science. Can you imagine the sense of danger some in-game monsters can instill in a player? If my information is correct and those neuroimplants can indeed feed an entire range of perceptions to the brain, you could very easily die with pain when you get 'killed' in virtual reality."

  Dietrich frowned, thinking. If that's what they wanted, they were making a big mistake. He was good at pain. The metropolis had never been nice to him. Born in the gutter, he'd made his way to the top all by himself. "A week, you say? Any guarantees?"

  "It's a proper deal. If nothing irrevocable happens, after seven days they'll drop all charges against you."

  Dietrich nodded. The legal system had outsmarted itself this time. So they expected him to curl up and die? They thought he wouldn't make it? Well, that remained to be seen.

  His lips curved in a smirk. "Give it to me, I'll sign it. You make sure that in seven days I get my due welcome."

  * * *

  "WHY WOULD YOU even need convicts? This is something I don't understand!" the Infosystems Corporation production engineer cringed. "If you as much as hint at the new equipment's authenticity levels, you'll have millions of gamers lining up outside the door! We're making the game of the future! Why would we need to-"

  "Dietrich Craw is perfect for our purposes," the space forces representative replied calmly. "This technology has an incredible potential, Jurgen. Which means we need to study all of its possible sides. Dark ones, as well," he added, deadpan serious. "Don't you remember what happened during the last series of tests?"

  The engineer waved his question away. "Just a glitch. We've already found the problem and fixed it."

  "Which was what, character generation by the user's mind? How's that for a glitch? You need to study it and then decide whether to use it or lose it."

  "It's against all gaming principles!" Jurgen snapped. "If every user begins to generate new characters, items and events from their own memory, all hell will break loose!"

  "I agree. But there're other ways we could use this. In any case, we can't ignore the latest results. We have a precedent which needs to be properly studied. Have you ever thought that the recreation of one's mental images in virtual reality might be the first step toward immortality?"

  "Then we're aren’t going to run him through the mob gauntlet?"

  "No. But we might push the envelope a little... just to see how far the neuroimplant can go."

  Jurgen leafed through the paperwork. "In that case we'll need a few more test subjects," he pointed out.

  "That's not a problem."

  * * *

  DIETRICH HAD PUT the seventy-two hours that had elapsed between his signing the deal and the beginning of his seven-day "virtual stint" (as he'd nicknamed the upcoming adventure) to good use. He'd asked for A Guide Book to Virtual Worlds and perused it diligently to find out what he'd be dealing with.

  The night had left him strangely exhausted. His eyelids had grown heavy. An unconscious slumber enshrouded his mind with darkness.

  He awoke in a very strange place indeed.

  A bleak landscape stretched to the horizon: a flat plain without a single trace of life or vegetation, cracked and scorched by some fierce ancient fires.

  He jumped to his feet and looked around him. Same thing. This didn't look like a newb location at all. Wasn't a new player supposed to enter a game via one of those?

  Weird digital codes flashed before his eyes, overlapping the view. A few interface icons appeared in his mind's eye. A soft voice said,

  "You've received a new ability: Absolute Memory.

  You've received a new ability: Dream Come True.

  The world around you is adaptable. You can create certain objects or events by willing them to life, but only those familiar to you from real life."

  So that's how it was, then? No manual had mentioned anything like that.

  He couldn't see any mobs. Nor the sun. The air was permeated by a ubiquitous soft light. He was neither hot nor cold; he was puzzled.

  He soon overcame his initial confusion. Not having gaming experience, he saw no point in moving anywhere or looking for anyone, let alone "creating" anything. They could stuff their adaptable world where the sun didn't shine.

  Dietrich slumped on the scorched ground. The wisest thing was probably to do nothing at all.

  He didn't last long, though. First he grew bored. Then he was thirsty. Finally, he felt hungry.

  His sensations were perfectly real, he had to give them that. His physical body was taken good care of, anyway. So he braved it through until a new system message came up,

  You're thirsty. You lose 1% Life every hour.

  You're hungry. Your Strength has dropped 1 point.

  He was parched. His throat rasped. The little red bar in his view had indeed shrunk a little. A quick calculation told him that if it went on like that, he'd die of dehydration within the next seventy-two hours — or even earlier if the debuffs (he proudly used the newly-learned word) he'd received grew exponentially.

  "All right, all right," he grumbled. He could use a walk, if only to stretch his legs. He might also find some food and water.

  The lifeless landscape was exhausting in its monotony. Wherever you turned, it was all the same. Dietrich quickly lost track of time and the distance he'd covered. He wasn't used to walking for so long, growing more tired with every passing minute.

  Was he completely alone here?

  They've given you those abilities, his inner voice stealthily suggested.

  "So how do you want me to use them?" Dietrich found arguing with his imaginary self quite entertaining.

  Try and make some food.

  He stopped. A skeptical grin touched his lips. A true citizen of an urbanized technogenic world, he had no idea where food came from. What did its source even look lik
e?

  His imagination helpfully offered him a view of a familiar automatic restaurant he used to frequent. Obeying his thoughts, the earth parted, pushing out part of a building.

  He recoiled in surprise but quickly pulled himself together.

  So this was their famed adaptivity, was it?

  Admittedly his first spontaneous attempt to will something to life was rather average. The fragment of a city tower looked rather ugly, consisting of only one story covered with dust and listing to one side, its walls running with cracks of unknown origin. Two holographic signs blinked over the restaurant's entrance,

  SYNTHIZE

  In business worldwide

  Well, let's take a look.

  He headed for the entrance. The automatic doors didn't react to his approach.

  "What's wrong with them?" he wondered out loud.

  The immobile door halves resisted his efforts. Finally he lost patience and imagined they were simply not there. The doors disintegrated into nothing.

  He entered, noticing in surprise how reality promptly changed everywhere he looked as if the game processed his mind's images, using them to recreate the restaurant's familiar interior.

  Tables and chairs appeared out of nowhere, bathed in the same soft diffused light. The bar arched along the far wall, complete with a 'droid barman. Still, on closer inspection all the objects turned out to be dummies made of some compressed gray substance. The robot didn't move. None of the automated service lines worked. All the plates and cups crumbled to dust in his hands.