Twenty years ago, humanity had developed a workable cybernetic brain network interface implant. It pretty much eliminated Alzheimer's, made the already-tottering cell phone industry obsolete, and spawned about ten thousand films where people had their brains hacked or their personalities wiped, or similar things happened. (None of which was actually possible, since the people making the implants had already seen hundreds of movies with some variation of that premise and knew better than to give their product that sort of capability.)

The company that first made them was called Echo. And soon, like Xerox before them, their company name became the commonly used product name.

Naturally, humanity being what it was, most people who adopted the technology early used it for porn. Internet hookups became more of a literal thing and as the technology developed, full-sensory “feelies” replaced video clips.

Then the Ministry had risen from the collapse of the old nation, and put a stop to that.

Well, as much as they could. They couldn't stop people hooking up over the internet, but they could make it damn near impossible to do so unmonitored. And when adultery became a felony, well... people still did it anyway. Just now the Ministry had an excuse that they could use to jail anyone they felt they needed to.

So, with porn out of the question and internet hookups impossible to achieve without hell and fury and his mother's wrath descending upon him, Rich spent his time with the second most popular activity.

Full-sim gaming.

Rich materialized into his avatar, his game body. Instantly he went from a pain-filled pile of flab to seven feet of pure muscle, covered by green skin. Two white spikes appeared in the lower part of his vision, filling out until he could make out the pointy ends of his tusks.

Rich grinned wide, and drew his axe from his harness, checking it over. Finding a few nicks on it from last time, he pulled a whetstone out of his inventory. It materialized in his hand, and he ran it over the blade. A percentage bar appeared in the top corner of his vision and tacked up, telling him that he'd made a successful smithing check after a few seconds.

Rutger the half-orc was back in business!

He looked around the dark-wooden furnishings of his player home, which looked like a two-story log cabin, a really big one. It was about six times the size of his hab back home, and filled with furniture he'd bought from the auction house. Sweeping windows gave a nice view of the mountain range he'd chosen as a backdrop.

It was nice enough, but it never really changed.

And the furniture looked cool, but he didn't really use it much. He'd tried having friends over a few times, but after that... well, there was always something more interesting to do. His furniture was the same stuff that anyone else could get on the auction house, or could make with a little bit of carpentry skill.

Ah, there were more important things to do anyway. Rich gave the axe a few swings, then leaned against a table to wait.

And waited.

And waited.

Confused, he checked his notifications. The Guild should have gotten a notification when he came online. Had he hidden that option?

But no, there it was on the logs. Rutger has come online!

With a frown, he checked his Guild roster. Where were the others?

And to his surprise, the roster was almost empty. Of the hundred and twelve people that comprised the Lords of Boom, only two people were online right now. Himself and the guild leader, Midian.

He scrolled up the menu, using his Echo to flip through the choices until he reached the communications tab. Rich... Rutger threw Midian a private message request.

And got denied.

This was weird.

He tried again, and this time he got a message in response.

Midian>> Let's talk at the Pillars.

That sounded ominous. Had he screwed up somehow? He didn't see how, he was one of the premiere fighters in the Guild. He showed up on time, did his job well, and didn't cause any drama.

Nervously, he ran his hand over his tusks. Then he got up, threw one of his nicer sets of armor, and exited the front door of his house.

Instantly the landscape shifted to the fancy gates of the Avalonian housing district. Neverquest couldn't handle the processing power of displaying every dwelling of every player on actual virtual land, so it had housing district gates in every major city that took you to and from your actual home. It was basic instancing... something Norm was only beginning to learn about in coding 101. Rich, of course, had found out all about it a few years ago, when he had started getting good at programming.

And to be honest, he found instancing to be a pretty lazy way of going about things. With as much money as Neverquest made from their game and expansion sales, they could easily have upgraded the districts to be a little more immersive, at least. Sure, they probably couldn't show every house, but even a sampling would go way more toward making him feel like he was actually in a fantasy world.

As it was, this was just a reminder that he couldn't escape reality. With that cheerful thought rattling around inside his brain, Rich set off towards the Pillars.

Nine standing stones sat on a low hill above Avalonia. Cloaked, hunched over people wielding sickles moved around them, harvesting mistletoe from nearby bushes and muttering nonsensical chants. Druids were a roaming mob here, basically opponents to fight, gain treasure from, and level up. But Rutger and Midian had a lot of levels on these low-level mobs, and as such the algorithms that controlled their behavior made the druids ignore them. Fighting would be pointless, so they didn't. They didn't even react, and Rutger shook his head as one ambled over, bumbled into him, then immediately spun and marched the other way.

Sloppy, sloppy coding, he thought to himself.

Not that he could have done much better, not yet. He was still learning the basics, even if he was a few years ahead of his class. Coding up more realistic behavior was something he might be able to do eventually... but not now.

Still, it didn't keep him from bitching about it. He'd bought the game, so he figured he was allowed to.

“Hey,” a woman called.

Rich turned around and smiled a big-tusked smile, as a winged horse dropped out the sky. The elven woman on its back waved a pale arm, the motion making her breasts bounce inside her toga.

As usual, Rich fought to keep his eyes on her face. But as he saw her expression, he got the idea that he needn't have bothered.

She twisted on the winged horse's back, and it disappeared as she dismounted. Mounts only stuck around while people were riding them. It saved processing power that way. But Rich put it out of her mind as Midian walked over and hugged him.

He hugged her back, staring down at her hair. The hug felt good, and he swallowed hard, wishing he hadn't put on his usual armor. He would have felt her breasts against his abdomen if he'd been in clothes.

Still, this wasn't normal behavior. She hadn't hugged him since she'd welcomed him to the Guild.

“What's wrong?” Rich asked.

She let him go, and looked up at his face. “You have to ask that? It's raid night, and do you know where everyone is?”

“Ummm... no. I was hoping you could tell me.”

“Generica fucking Online.”

“What's that?”

“You don't know? It hit the darknet yesterday. It's like Neverquest, only bigger, with more details, and whoever put it together didn't censor a single thing.” She waved a hand around. “Rumor is it's propaganda from the Cascadia Republic.”

Rich gaped in fear. “Why did you say that? You'll get us both on watchlists!” It was entirely forbidden to talk about the debauched and godless nation to the west of the Ministry's territory. Even a casual mention could ensure a late-night visit by very serious people with very serious questions.

“Why did you think I told you to meet me out here? And wanted to speak in person? The monitoring is horrible out here, I found that out years ago when... ah, never mind.” Midian's jewel-like green eyes shifted, and she smiled a quiet smile. “Let's just say this is a good makeout spot. Remember that if you ever want to bring someone here.”

Rich lost his train of thought entirely. He swallowed hard, and was aware of the dim sensation of a boner starting back in his meat body. It didn't make any difference here, of course. The thought of Midian naked, making love to some lucky guy back in the stones made him almost miss the next few words. He snapped back to listening as she continued.

“...don't think it's propaganda, at least not ALL propaganda. But it's cutting edge stuff, and it's drawn everyone over to check it out. I mean I can't blame them, but...” she sighed. “I was hoping they'd wait until after raid night. We spent all of last month trying to unlock the seven keys to Tartoros, I was hoping to have some nice loot drops to sort through tonight. And it hurts a bit, you know?” She gave him a beseeching look. “Three years I've been running this Guild. Now I get tossed away like nothing. What we've built here, all we've done, the bonds we've built... gone, the second we get access to some new thing with a hint of the forbidden.”

“Yeah, that sucks,” Rich agreed. But his mind was on the game. Was it the one Norm had been talking about? The timing was really close, it could be.

Then he saw that Midian was studying him, looking him over with narrowed eyes. “You're thinking of trying it too, aren't you? The only reason you're here is because you didn't know about it.”

“No,” Rich protested. “I would have come anyway. You guys are like family.” Better than family, he thought to himself. Between a clingy, too-nosy mother and an aggressive, dangerous father he was better off with the one he'd made here.

Except they weren't here, now were they?

The loneliness made him look down. “No,” he said to Midian again. “I wouldn't give up on you guys.”

“You might not have,” she replied, taking her time with her words. “But they sure gave up on us.”

Then she sighed. “No. I'm being unfair. At the end of the day this is a game. It isn't the first we played, and it won't be the last. To be honest, Neverquest has been around a long while. It isn't surprising some people got bored and went roaming. So... what do we do about it, Lieutenant?”

“Lieutenant?” Rich frowned. “I'm a Corporal—

>>You have been promoted to the Lieutenant Rank in Lords of Boom.

“Oh, oh sh... shoot, thank you!” he said, feeling his face heat up.

“Don't mention it,” Midian said, putting her hands on her hips and grinning, and oh did she ever look lovely. “Loyalty like this needs rewarding. You earned it.”

“Thank you,” he said, and risked hugging her. She hugged back... but only for a bit, just enough to be professional.

“So,” she said, retreating a few steps. “If the Guild won't come to us, we'll just have to go to them.”

“What?”

“Let's go see what all the fuss is about.”

“But it's on the darknet,” Rich protested. “I don't have access to that.”

Midian shrugged, her bare shoulders doing some interesting things in tandem with her breasts. “No problem. I know a few hidden ports. Here,” she said, staring at her empty hand. A gem formed in it, appearing like a pin prick of light and expanding outwards. Finally it was done, a glittering black gem.

Rich knew what this was. It was a construct, an envelope around a message. The system wouldn't read the contents of it, there would be no records until it was opened. She'd wrapped up a link to a location on the net, and done it in a way that it wouldn't flag any watching programs.

In real life, Rich took a deep breath. Then another, feeling his body react like a distant pain. He stretched out his hand—

And the world disappeared.

>>DISCONNECTION!

“What? No!” He tried to yell, but he was in that space now, that horrible, stretched space between the game and the real world, the space he only saw when something went wrong...

...and then with a feeling like gauze giving way in his head, he was through.

Through into a place where his dad was bellowing in rage, his mom was sobbing, and fake wood was snapping as his door exploded inward. A figure stood in the doorway, large and distorted, some sort of armor topped by a bulbous gas mask.

“Stay down! Stay down!” the stranger barked, his voice muffled and harsh.

He has a gun! Rich realized, with sick horror.

And terrified beyond belief, confused and caught in a vulnerable place, Rich did as he was told.