“What ‘Oh Crap!?’ both girls said at once.

I simply shared my screen with them.

“Oh crap!” they both said. “Show us the government screen,” Tanya said. “I want to see your mom’s Duchy.”

So, I called it up and shared it with them.

“I can open it, I guess. I’m not a hundred percent sure that is my mom’s Duchy. Last I heard, she was just a businesswoman. A good one, but not a Duchess.”

“Lot’s happened since then,” Tanya said. “For instance, this...” and she just gestured. At what, I wasn’t sure since her gesture took in the building, the new mountains, the former parking lot, basically everything, so I guess I did understand her point, everything had changed. “Plus,” she said, “I don’t have access to the government screens, I bet Janet doesn’t either. Maybe only rulers do. Or their heirs.” And for some reason both she and Janet started laughing.

“Are you sure you don’t have access to the government screen?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “hang on, I’ll try.” Her face went through that look that we’d all come to know meant someone was accessing their system screens.

“Hold the phone,” she said. “I can. It doesn’t show all of the stuff that Monsoon’s does, but I can access it. Let me show you.” My screen disappeared and was replaced by a much simpler screen.

Government:

You have been offered a chance to switch allegiance from your previous government to the newly formed government. Failure to do so may have real consequences. This choice can be accessed again at any time. However, in most cases, it’s permanent.

Do you want to become a resident of the Republic of Tulsa?

“Huh, that’s new,” I said. “I guess THEY were serious. They want the old governments gone and are making the world support their decisions. Close it without making a selection.” Then I looked Tanya again, well, identified her. Her badge information that appeared in my HUD, was now shown in yellow. I did the same thing to Janet and Janet’s was still the normal color basically colorless. Both of them were still green. Sweet. Just one of them was also yellow. Weird.

“Look at me,” I told them both. They did and I said, “do you see anything funny? And by look, I meant Identify.”

“Huh,” said Tanya, “your badge is a kind of goldish, yellowish color”

At the same time, Janet said, “nope, your badge is the normal color.”

“Wow, this really sucks!” I said. They both looked at me puzzled and said, “what?”

“Well, if I’m right, Tanya you know about the choice, have been offered it and have neither accepted or declined. I guess if you’d declined, your badge would show up as red to me, while mine would either stay the same yellow or change to red to you. Janet hasn’t been offered the choice so she gets to carry on as usual. Since I’m an heir, I guess, I didn’t get a choice. I was auto-selected to yes I want to change governments. If you ever select no, Tanya or, I guess, you too, Janet, you’d both show up as red to me and, well, I’d get double experience points if I killed you. I guess this world just became a PVP zone.”

“PVP zone?” asked Janet.

“Player vs Player,” I said. “It’s a gaming term. It means players can kill other players and get experience for it.”

“That’s jacked up,” said Janet.

“Yep,” I replied. “It’s also going to make getting back to my mother’s a lot more complicated,” I said. “I just got the red badge of shoot me showing to every good ol’ boy with an American flag tattoo. And, since this is Oklahoma, I’m thinking that there’s probably a lot of them. But you know, if the governments knew, why didn’t they do something? Why didn’t they prepare us more? That’s just wrong, isn’t it?” I asked. “Good news though is that the good ol’ boy’s guns won’t work. Bad news is that a baseball bat would work just fine. I really don’t want to kill anybody for not liking my mom, you know?”

Both girls didn’t say anything but shook their heads.

I thought about it and a new screen opened and I shared it with the girls.

Government

Duchy of Northern Tulsa:

Duchy Seat: Sand Springs

Duchy Seat County: Osage

Ruler of Duchy: Grace Annette Seebring, Duchess of Northern Tulsa

Heir: Maysoon Alacrity Seebring

Counties in Duchy:

Adair County

Craig County

Delaware County

Mayes County

Noble County

Nowata County Osage County

Ottawa County

Pawnee County

Rogers County

Washington County

Wagoner County

Size of Duchy: 83,252 km2 Population of Duchy: 382,005 Code of Laws Taxes Government Army Treasury Ruler Chat (Heirs and Officials Only)

“Hey doofus, did you notice the last option,” said Janet. I hadn’t or else I would have been all over it.