I’d rather be reality tripping
As their laughs echoed in his head and their smiling faces blended with the first faces he had seen in the Allclub, he remembered something he had asked Michael.
“What does it mean, that I was born in a Hardworld?”
Looking back, Michael’s reaction had been uneasy. Had he known then, that it was a sign Gradie would never really mesh with the Other? That his Spirit would always long for highways and real gravity over commoditized enlightenment? Is that why he pushed Gradie so hard to “experience what the Otherworld has to offer”, because he knew if left to his own devices, Gradie would never set foot in the place?
“How’d the interrogation go?” Luke said on the comms. Gradie, halfway down the staircase, looked around and found Luke’s aviators flashing at him from over the sea of partygoers. He was lounging at the bar, and some girl with all but one asscheek off her barstool was leaning towards him and trying to follow his gaze.
“Just some douchebags.”
“Yeah bro, lots of those around. Like moths to a flame. Trying to suck Bart’s money out his asshole.”
“Speaking of sucking,”
“Yeah, she’s nice. Came hanging off some dude who makes adverts for the Ball.”
“Oh I’ve been looking for that guy. You think we could get him in a Hardworld?”
“Rather get her in one to be honest. Can’t stand all this zero g shit.”
So, he wasn’t alone in his disdain. Though to be honest, the zero g shit was the only part of the Other he actually liked.
Gradie saw the girl lean in and whisper something to Luke. All the other stools were occupied, and the sea of people between the staircase and the bar seethed with crossways motion. For the first time, Gradie realized that it was comprised solely of those moving from one area of the party to another. For all he knew, there could be a stadium-sized crowd in each little distant segment of the house, and there could be a citys worth of Spirits flying around somewhere behind the walls. It was sickening to think about.
“Aight, I’m not gonna but in.”
“Nah man, it's cool, I think she’s got a—”
“We’re up here with Bart if yall wanna come say hi,” Nova said on the comms. Gradie’s initial instinct was to decline, but the thought of being approached by another flock of sneering partygoers and the hope that he could convince the twins to let him back in the vault changed his mind.
“Sure. Where are yall?”
“Third floor. Behind the theater.”
Gradie looped around the bottom of the staircase and moved across the edge of the main room, glancing in alcoves and doorways for another staircase. He eventually found a glowing circle set in a three-quarters cylinder with up arrows traced by the pulsing light, like a video game bouncepad, which took him right up to the third floor, though he did have to count the landings as the zipped past, almost missed his jump, and had to somewhat handspring off the third floor ceiling to keep from crashing into it. The house’s realistic gravity was, for the first time, a bit forgiving as he fell, as if even it could tell he was on edge.
The theater was an empty box office set in the side of an empty hallway, flanked by walls of ‘Now Showing!’ posters, which advertised the kind of Sim’s Gradie had spent most of his Allworld time declining.
“Uh, so where—”
“Lightyears poster. Just walk through it,” Nova said on the coms in a hurried tone.
Lightyears, according to the poster, was a sim about an astronaut who flew through “ten thousand years in the blink of an eye” via time dilation and returned to find a utopian earth where “pleasure is constant, but danger is far from dead.”
Gradie lifted his leg and stepped through the poster, which felt like walking under the cold air blown at the entrance to a summertime Costco.
Inside, the floor was split into two curved walkways, one above the other, facing out a massive floor-to-ceiling view, onto which was projected multiple floating screens, showing birds-eye or pov views of Gunmaze and scoreboards and charts and even what looked like the bust of a commentator. Behind the screens, Gunmaze itself rolled and pulsed like an animated desktop background.
They were talking out loud, or at least Barth was, about something and didn’t even look his way, so he walked up behind them and waited, wondering about the rules that seemed to guide Otherworld etiquette on when to speak “in the air” as he’d heard it called and when to use internal comms. Barth mentioned some current unfinished project, which led Gradie to assume this space was securitized, like the—
“Oh yeah, Barth Gradie, Gradie, Barth,” Nova said, motioning to the two of them. In another mystery of Otherworld etiquette, Barth went for a handshake rather than the common bow Gradie had seen elsewhere.
“Good to meet you Gradie. So, I guess you’re on the twin’s other team, huh?”
“Uh,” Gradie looked at the twins, who shook their heads in unison.
“Barth…”
“We don’t have another team, and if we did—”
“Gradie’s just a bro. We met him dragging the Allclub and he’d never been to Gunmaze.”
None of their denials sounded heartfelt, more like a “don’t mention that in public” type of thing. So, was their being attached to a Hardworlding team an open secret? Or was Barth just that close of a friend?
“Really? Your first time? How’d you like it?”
Barth had a hungry look in his eye that Gradie had trouble matching the energy of after his encounter with the testers in the gallery.
“Uh, it was fun.”
The silence burned. Barth gave him a suspecting look that broke suddenly into a smile.
“Oh, don’t worry about that NDA bullshit. Angel already talked my ear off about that isolation you found.”
“Like you’re not jealous, bro!” Nova said.
“Of course I’m jealous! A real lost segment! That thing was definitely a passion project, and from what you told me, it’s been lost for a fucking decade.”
He turned to Gradie.
“You really have no idea how lucky you are to get to see something like that.”
Gradie nodded, but couldn’t think of anything to say. The isolation had felt so enticing because it had been hidden away, untouched by the rest of Gunmaze. Discussing it seemed to spoil that.
Barth turned his smile on the twins.
“Just goes to show, even at the outer crust, Gunmaze can surprise you. The idea that it's contained or “moderated”—” (Here he did air quotes) –”is just as misguided today as it was twenty years ago.”
The twins had their turn being at a loss for a response, so Barth came back to Gradie, his smile now softened into a smug slight curve.
“So, hope you’ve enjoyed the house. If you want a guide or a map, I can—”
Gradie had felt guilty about his silence, or maybe a kind of secondhand embarrassment, and now scrambled for something to say, and Barth’s mention of the house reminded him.
“Oh, I saw yall did like a sim of a Hardworld battle. Was that…”
Gradie trailed off as Barth rolled his bottom lip over his teeth in an open-mouth smile, shaking his head at the twins and scoffing out loud.
“Well, to be honest, I’d have to let Angel talk your ear off about that. He’s the expert on the Hardworlds. I was just happy to take the check and be done with it. The clients were grade A assholes. Sad fucks were so desperate to relive their glory days shooting at each other over a motel parking lot that they chewed my ass if one fucking cigarette butt was out of place.”
Maybe it was the raw nerves from his run in with the testers, or maybe it was the simple fact that if he was anything in this world, he was a Hardworlder, and so were the only people in it that he cared about, but the tone of Barth’s voice and the racket of his harsh mocking laugh set Gradie off.
“People seem to get pretty fucking obsessive about Gunmaze and shit too. Sell their souls for skins, right? At least in the Hardworlds there’s real danger. You know, since they were fighting the Demons.”
He completely failed at keeping the acid out of his words. Barth stared at him, studying him, then glanced at the twins, who stared at Gradie like he had stepped on a land mine. But if they had expected Barth to take offence, he didn’t. When he looked back at Gradie, he had a soft smile on his face, and his tone was patient without being condescending, and even sounded understanding, as if he too had felt the same way long ago.
“Ah, so you think it’s all just dice and baubles.” He motioned out the window at Gunmaze.
“You know, it’s partially because of Gunmaze that the rest of this world even exists.
“Now you got him going bro,” Nova said on the comms.
“I’ll bet you didn’t know,” Barth continued. “That the Demons attacked this place during the first war.”
Gradie just stared, trying to decide if Barth was fucking with him. Hadn’t Michael said Gunmaze was made before the first demon war? So wouldn’t…
The larger of the screens floating in the window went black, then snapped back to life, showing the curve of Gunmaze as if the screen had become transparent, but the Gunmaze on the screen was much different than the one out the window.
While the Gunmaze outside flickered, pulsed, and bounced musically, the sliver of Gunmaze on the screen writhed, flashed, exploded, shuddered, like a sea creature under attack.
Something dark hovered in orbit above the onscreen Gunmaze; a mass of rolling light and darkness, moving not like something living, but like an optical illusion, the way fractals seem to slide across paper as you move your head. Through a subtle dreamsense, the video told him that if he had been there, even looking at the mass from this distance, the illusory motion would have become real motion, as the trick of the eye which made the mass appear to be moving toward him would have possessed his vision and caused his Spirit to fall into the swarm, his subconscious convinced of its Gravity.
“Oh yes, it’s true. And they found the defenses too much for them.”
Suddenly, like it had been deleted between frames, the seething curve of mind-irritating geometry vanished, and angry past Gunmaze was alone in the black.
“They said, “Come on boys, let’s go find some easier pickins”, and then they went and laid siege to the fucking Allworld. So, while the great resort worlds, and even The Swarm and other gameworlds fell like dominoes, and the mega rich scrambled to fund the creation of their purpose-built fortress worlds, Gunmaze, with its Avatar Matrix and network of auto-moderators, among many other things, was left undisturbed. Turns out, what works on the determined cheater works on the determined soul snatcher just the same.”
Barth raised a finger and shot Gradie a confidant’s stare.
“The Gunmaze token was as good as gold for a decade before the Nine Worlds ratified in the MEM system, and if you think it was the people's coin just because everyone likes to play games, you got a lot to learn about the Other.”
There was another silence.
“It’s his favorite story and he rarely gets to tell it, so—” Nova started in the comms, but Gradie spoke out loud.
“Uh, I’m not really that interested in the Otherworld and it’s maybe-made-up history, which—”
“Oh no?” Barth smiled, and his smile and tone weren’t mocking, but more like someone watching a kid talk passionately about something they had once been obsessed with themselves.
“No. I’d rather…”
He caught himself.
“Oh now, not still trying to wake up are you?” Barth’s voice was friendly, like he was now having fun with the kid, and he glanced at the twins, who to their credit remained stone-faced.
“No. Just looking for something worth all the promise and big speeches, I guess. Something that lives up to the idea of a dreamworld where anything’s possible.”
“Anything you can believe in, not just anything in general. Very different things.”
Gradie just stared.
“Look, if you’re really so jaded with this place already, then what you want to do is go out into the black, where you’re completely isolated, and make to your heart's content, test the limits of—”
“Make a Realm,” Angel said out loud.
“Exactly!” Barth exclaimed. “A Realm. Such a strong word, used by those who still believe that anything in this world can ever truly be secure, God bless them. Go out and make a realm and revel in the mysteries of your own mind, let your subconscious speak to you and all that shit. Of course, eventually, you’ll find as all do, myself included, that what one creates in solitude is flimsy, like breathing your own breath. It’s against and with other souls that our best experiences are born, where creativity ignites. In true isolation, the mind withers. But if that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get. This world has a lot to give, but it gives nothing to the cynic, and everything to the dreamer.”
It was an immediate, visceral, full-body reaction to Barth’s words, like a silent scream; his entire being disagreed. It was only with yourself, with those hidden parts, that you could gain anything of substance, only in solitude could anything real be obtained from this place, because whenever two Spirits got together, they just tried to figure out how to get a hold of the other’s memories.
The realization, of something he hadn’t even known he believed, reminded him that Michael had mentioned that making a realm was one of his little assignments for the week, and also that the orientation provided during his first visit to the Feed, as quick as it had been between clubhouse sessions, had tried to offer him some best practices on how to make one. Despite the feeling that the two great authorities of this Otherlife were now trying to force him to do so, the idea of making a Realm was inescapably appealing.
Finally, a place of my own. A real dream realm, where whatever I think, I can create. No more flying around the fucking ball looking for it. A zone of pure possibility, without any of the watching eyes of the Allworld…
Then he remembered the craft he had made in orbit, first brittle then immobile, and his heart sank. The concept of a hologram, make whatever you want playroom morphed into a vault where he was locked with all his failed makes, flightless crafts and wrong shaped houses like a horror film, which in his mind was full of German expressionist visuals and harsh off key music.
“We’ll I’ve lectured enough,” Barth said. “Just know that I’m not telling you anything I didn’t desperately need to hear when I was a newborn. Enjoy the party and let the twins show you around. There are no closed doors here tonight.”
He shook hands and told the twins he would reach out later and then dropped through the floor.
