How high can you go?

The mist was gone, and the cube face now glistened in the glaring lights, and even the craters and deep crevices were a washed-out matte. Nova stood amidst the shattered fragments of a block of ice, whisps of flame dying around him into little flutter lights, next to Angel, emerald sword in hand, and the dismounted rider who’s gear Gradie now recognized from Dynasty Warriors.

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” a voice boomed from the sky, vibrating the ground and rattling Gradie’s teeth.

“This is an unlicensed segment. You will be awarded all earned tokens and refunded for your time. We will be vacating you from the segment when the timer reaches zero. Please stand by for an urgent advisory following the termination of the segment.”

A big red LCD “00:27” appeared in the air above the plane, and Gradie noticed the edges of other identical timers oriented to the other sides of the cube. A chorus of booing and shouts echoed in the soundstage air.

“Holy shit this is huge,” Nova said on the coms. “I don’t even remember the last time they had a leak like this!”

“What the fuck do they mean advisory?” asked Luke.

“Boilerplate NDA and shit,” Angel said. “Don’t go trying to make money selling mem of the segment, don’t try and get to it again, shit like that.”

“Fuck them. Since when can Gunmaze dweebs tell me what to do with my mem?”

“You can’t sell it without a streaming license anyway, so—”

“It’s the principle of it.”

“Since they became one of the Nine Worlds and worth more than three of the others combined,” Nova said. “It’s mostly just to cover their ass anyway.”

The timer hit zero and the black glass and the rest of it dropped away from them at blinking speed. They landed back on the floating contact lens, but this time it was floating in the middle of a geodesic orb with a curved screen occupying half a hemisphere.

A woman, or the avatar of one, in dark sunglasses and a sci-fi pant suit, appeared on screen with a blurred space behind her.

“On behalf of Gunmaze, I would like to apologize once again for the inconvenience. The segment we have removed you from was an unfinished module from our last patch and is not meant to be accessible. Please be advised that disclosing any information regarding mechanics or assets of said segment may fall into our general nondisclosure policy, which is available at our knowledge base—”

She went on to summarize their policy, passive aggressively reminding them of the process to report any suspicious or unlicensed segments, and stating with grim seriousness that Gunmaze owns the IP of all games hosted in its world, but Gradie wasn’t listening, because he knew from the second sentence that she was full of shit.

“Do you have any questions at this time?”

“No, Sasha. Thank you so much for your time and we apologize you had to step in like this.” Nova said, flexing some of his professionalism in a tone that to Gradie sounded a lot like Klara.

“Please forgive our curiosity,” Angel continued. “We should have reported it the moment we suspected it was unfinished, which was quite early, but as Maker’s ourselves the excitement got the better of us. We kind of just fanboyed out.” He ended his rambling with a sugar sweet smile just on the edge of bashful that left Luke gawking at him.

“We understand,” Sasha beamed. “I see that you two are members of one of our elite guilds. I know we can trust players with such long standing investment in our game to act in the interest of the community.”

“Fuck you and your veiled threats you corporate bitch,” Angel said on the comms.

“Absolutely!” Nova said out loud and nodded like a cult member.

“Well, thank you for your time, and have a wonderful day!”

The screen vanished, and Gradie got the feeling that Sasha was also uttering unspeakables on some secret chat.

“Last patch my ass,” Nova said. “Did she fucking forget the last patch was that 80’s themed bullshit?”

Angel snorted.

“Good to know they give as much of a shit about their corpo segments as everyone else.”

“So they’re not gonna ever make that shit live?” Luke asked. “That sucks ass, shit was way funner than half the shit in there.”

“It's got to be a training area or test ground,” said Angel.

“Or it’s only for the top tier,” Nova said. “Fucking league whores are always—”

“She’s fucking lying,” Gradie snapped. “That shit wasn’t new. It was at least ten years old.”

The three of them stared at Gradie in silence for a moment.

“Well, that’s oddly specific,” Luke said with a smile.

Gradie reddened. He wasn’t sure why he had given a specific age either, but tried to explain himself.

“I mean, it felt old. Didn’t it? Not like it was fresh out of the box, or whatever. It felt like it had been locked up for a long time. Like an old Gary’s mod or something.”

He had expected them to give him shit about it, and though Luke squinted at the “ceiling”, the twins wore expressions of realization.

“Fuck, you’re right,” Nova said. “It didn’t feel sterile like a new segment. Didn’t have that rigid feel to it of a new make either.”

“Yeah, it felt like it was waking up,” Angel said to the air.

Another pause, once again broken by Luke.

“Well whatever it was, shit was fun as fuck. The mods are fucking stupid for not putting it in.”

“It’s too freeform. They dissuade that shit on the edges.”

“That’s how I thought Gunmaze was going to be,” Gradie admitted. “Just like, a big dreamfight I guess.”

Angel nodded.

“It’s kinda like that at the core, but that’s only for the max ranked.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Nova sighed. “It takes a lot of moderation for something like that, and most players don’t like it anyway, so you don’t see it on the outer edges.”

Gradie realized he had misinterpreted “the core” as a metaphorical kernel of experience inside every segment of Gunmaze, but now he suspected…

“You said the Core. Is that like an actual—”

“That’s the original Gunmaze,” Nova said. “The part made like thirty years ago by the OG makers.”

“Why is the core freeform?” Gradie asked. “I would think the first game would be like a Call of Duty clone. Or I guess a Quake clone if it was—”

“Because the first maze was designed to mimic real combat,” said Angel.

Gradie thought he meant Hardworlding for a moment, but that didn’t fit.

“Wait, what do you mean real combat?”

The Twins stared at him

“Like the shit the Saviors do,” Luke said.

“What?”

“The fucking gold plated Boy Scouts in the white ships that are always talking abut how they gave the fucking Demons a swirly fifty years ago or whatever.”

“No, I mean like, there’s real combat in the Other?” said Gradie. “I thought—”

He tried to remember Michael’s video. A figure in a mirror orb, shattering, beams of light and teleportation. Oh shit. He had forgotten about that. Somehow his understanding of Otherworld history had been warped by his memory, and he thought combat had only been possible in the Hardworlds, which was why they went to them in the first place, but if Spirits driven from the Hardworlds were caught in the Other, then of course the ones doing the catching would need some kind of—

“You’ve only been in the Prince’d realms,” Nova said. “Out in the black, it's anyone's game. Other combat is a battle of belief, making, speaking, thought control, mental fortitude, all wrapped in one.”

“And the Saviors are the best at it or…” Again, he was struggling to see how the tinsel and wishes world of the Other could support such a rigid framework.

“Yeah, cause their the best funded,” Nova said. “The Saviors started off as the local guards of the Allworld. Think they were called bouncers then. Like how Roulette has the Dealers, Gunmaze has the Devs, of course, Resort Worlds have the Private Eyes. But the Saviors also now govern the unincorporated zones and the Other in general.”

It was Gradie’s turn to stare.

“So the core is like playing demons and saviors instead of cowboys and Indians?” Luke didn’t sound impressed.

“No,” said the twins.

“It’s way more than just combat,” said Angel. “It’s arguably the purest test of Spiritual ability.”

Even Nova rolled his eyes at that one.

“And of course it costs a pretty penny for the lucky few, right?” Luke gave the twins a “come on now” smirk.

“Yes, because like we said it’s a bitch to moderate,” Nova said. “Which is fortunate for people who want to play a game and not put their Spirit through a triathlon.”

“What?”

“The rest of Gunmaze was built up around it over time

because

there was a queue,” Angel said. “That’s why now it’s the endgame.”

“Damn,” Luke said, thoughtfully. “No wonder they shut us out.”

“What?

“Well, if that fragment we were in acted like the core, that would kinda take the punch out of the core itself if it was live, right?”

Gradie shot Luke an awed look. Angel looked dumbstruck, but Nova shook his head.

“Don’t get all conspiracy theorist on me, bro.” (Gradie noticed Angel scowl at the side of his head). “Like I said, segments like that are hard to moderate—”

“But there wasn’t anyone moderating it when we were there, and it worked fine,” Angel snapped.

“It worked fine while we were there, but shit like that always twists off—”

“How would you know if they rip everything that comes close out of the game?”

“Aight, aight, enough of that shit,” said Luke. “What’re we playing next?”

“Oh shit, what time is it?” Nova looked at his hand.

“Fuck I forgot,” Angel sighed.

“Y’all dropping out?” Luke asked.

“My partners throwing a party at our company orbital.”

“Partner meaning…” Luke raised an eyebrow.

“Our business partner, Bartoth. He’s kind of like our sponsor. Gave us the start-up capital for our shop. Anyway, he’s throwing a party after the first viewing of his new sim, so we have to swing by.

“Y’all can come,” said Angel.

Gradie felt his stomach dive towards his knees. He’d rather face down another PKM in the Hardworlds than go to some high-end Otherworld party. Maybe he and Luke could—

“Fuck yeah, rich girls!” Luke nudged Gradie who returned his smile, hoping it seemed sincere.

“Alright, I'll drop us into the ship and we’ll take the shuttle,” Nova said.

A pop up appeared in the air in front of Gradie’s face.

“A party member would like to leave Gunmaze as a group: accept/decline”

Gradie hit “accept” and everything flew away from him like Gunmaze had been moving a million miles an hour and he had suddenly gotten caught on one of those 1800s railway mail hooks.

They were back in the suburban house cube the twins had picked him up in. The curtains parted at a bay window near the kitchen, and the black void revealed itself.

Gradie looked down at himself and found his ski slope get up had returned, and also that he felt lighter than air. Now that he was free of the avatar, he realized how heavy it had felt, in a sense. How much it had been pressing on him, speaking to him, translating the holographic experiences of Gunmaze into tangible sensations. It was scary how fast he had gotten used to it, and it made him wonder how easily you could get accustomed to being restrained in the Otherworld, and how would you know the difference?

The house spun and Gunmaze floated into view across the left side of the window. The house rumbled and they accelerated towards the horizon.

“So how’d you like it?” Nova asked.

“It was fucking nuts,” Gradie said honestly. “It’s too bad we can’t go back to it.”

Nova laughed.

“No, bro, I mean the rest of it.”

“Oh, yeah it was fun. Kinda like being in a weird VR, but…” Gradie realized after he had said it that the comparison was more than lacking. Nova sounded offended.

“Yeah, the segments were mostly beginner friendly. Next time we’ll take the cap off and see some of the wilder ones. Didn’t want to drop you into some segment that is infinitely fractaled or uses time pockets or anything on your first run.”

Gradie couldn’t think of anything to say, his mind unable to escape the black hole gravity of the last segment. Angel saved him.

“Besides the obvious, which one was your favorite?”

“Uh, probably Soulara.”

Luke smiled like a demon who had just had his contract signed.

“Shit, that’s cause you’re trying to fuck what’s-her-name.”

“Nuke,” said Nova.

“Yeah, you hoping she makes you explode.”

“She’s got a boyfriend,” Angel said.

Luke gave him a “oh you sweet little thing” smile that sent Nova into hysterics.

“Soulara isn’t really part of Gunmaze, technically,” Angel said, loudly to drown out his brother.

“What’s your favorite map then,” Gradie asked.

“That we saw? Probably colors, to be honest. I had a lot of good times with it back in the day. We used to—”

Luke snapped his fingers loudly.

“What’s that one where you’re an alien crash landed and you have to make it through the army barricade and steal the Space X rocket and shit?”

The twins laughed.

“That’s Area 52.”

“Yeah, that shit.”

The sensation snuck up on Gradie like a sickness that shows its symptoms only in retrospect. Ever since they had left Gunmaze, he had felt a weariness that he had written off as part of the Avatar fatigue, but then,

Woke up late, a rushed workout, a sluggish grocery store run interrupted, electrically, by the sighting of a high school acquaintance. A tactical maneuvering of the aisles to avoid detection by the face that hadn’t found a name in memory, a dread of the awkward “what the fuck have you been doing for ten years” conversation. Home, ignored phone calls, attempts at a stoic session of reading undone by frantic thoughts, a half-finished short story with three paragraphs slapped onto it that only seemed to push the end out farther toward a more distant horizon, like dropping pebbles in a fluid filled cylinder. Message from friends, get on, hours of games bleeding into drunkenness and eventually, sleep.

“God damn, forgot about that shit,” he said out loud. The sensation had been far more direct than he remembered, now that it wasn’t buffeted by distance from the Otherworld and the snug cocoon of his Hardworld self.

“What?” the Twins asked.

“Touching the Real. It’s rougher out here.”

“What?” said Nova.

Angel gave his own “poor thing” smile at Gradie.

“Yeah, I heard you haven’t even spent a whole day out of a Hardworld in months.”

The mention caught Gradie off guard, but then he remembered the twin’s crafts were built secure. Dropping the hypervigilance he had used in Gunmaze felt relieving, like letting go of a lie.

“That shit’s not good for you bro,” Nova said, actually looking away from his unseen screen.

“Yeah, I’m surprised Boss let you stay in as long as he did,” said Angel.

“Let the little savant do it his way,” Luke said, scrolling through some kind of scoreboard. “Maybe he can beat the burnout.”

“I’m serious,” Angel said to Gradie, as if Gradie had been the one to respond. “You need to spend some quality time in the Other. All the OG Hardworlders say developing your Spirit outside the bricks is just as important as training inside them.”

“Somebody should tell Philip,” Gradie said dryly. Luke chortled and nodded with his signature raised-eybrow-raised lips “okay fair enough” expression.

“He doesn’t need any advice,” Angel said, sounding pretty smug for someone Gradie had never seen in the Hardworlds. “Philip talks like he’s never in the Other, but that’s because he’s been doing this shit for decades. He spends time in here like anyone else, don’t let him fool you.”

“You sound like Michael.”

“Well then, he’s right. Especially if just getting your mem is annoying. You shouldn’t even notice it. The most actualized Spirits get their mem live, like a drip feed into the back of their mind, but their Spirits are so developed it doesn’t faze them.”

Nova looked up from his screen again.

“Are you talking about that like meditation thing, where they focus on their Real self and can touch the mem voluntarily?”

“I think it starts like that, but—. Anyway, my point is, all the best hardworlders are really in touch with their Spirits. If you want to be the best Hardworlder you can be—”

“It’s not just that bro,” Nova interrupted. “The Other is the pinnacle of human existence! The Hardworlds, they’re fun, yeah, but the rest of the Other is where your soul can fly free, where you can find out who you really are. It’d be like if you spent your whole life in Gunmaze. You’d never even know—”

“I think the Other promises more than it can deliver, and most of what it delivers is bullshit,” Gradie interrupted. He had been annoyed at the twins preaching, but the final straw was Nova’s dismissal of the Hardworlds as “fun”, and on the same level as fucking Gunmaze, not to mention his idiotic idea that they were somehow part of the Other.

The twins looked at him like he had just said 1x1 was 2, then at each other like “how do we help this guy?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not alone,” Luke said with a smirk.

Nova shook his head at Gradie.

“You haven’t even seen it, really.”

“I’ve seen enough,” Gradie said, thinking of the ads on the Allworld and the corporate bullshit they had just experienced in Gunmaze.

“Have you ever read someone else’s memories?” Nova sounded like Gradie had turned down chemo. “Not the processed shit we use in the Vault, but the real raw thing? Have you ever actually felt what another human being feels?”

Luke shifted awkwardly in his seat, and Gradie said nothing, but rolled his memory backwards. He was sure he had, right? At some point? But no, his time in the Other had been spent flying over the Allworld between training sessions, waiting for the next Hardworld, and now, meandering through a gameworld and drifting towards a party he wasn’t even invited to.

“No, but I don’t even know how to—”

“Exactly, that’s what we’re saying. You don’t even know what you’re missing.”

Another silence, then something rolled into view out the bay window, orbiting the massive hum of Gunmaze.

“Ok, we’re here. You two try not to embarrass us too much.”