Fuming, I wait the ten minute respawn timer, and I log back in to talk with Kian and tell him it was her, it was Josie. I knew I would find her here, but somehow she found me first.

What the hell?

What am I supposed to

Watching my skeleton reform and my body grow back on it, I see I am floating in the graveyard of Kesmai. I touch down a toe and I regain control, my body wreathed in a white glow. I notice I have a protective respawn buff that does not allow someone to kill me and does not allow me to attack, which will last for five minutes. I look around and see Kian pace back and forth—his debuff is trailing behind him like lace and his brow is in knots as he is thinking and muttering. Kian’s black hair swishes with his head movements. Then he spies me and walks over.

“There you are.” he looks me over. “Who attacked us?”

I explain about Josie and about her gear and what she said. He looks like I expected him to: dejected and upset.

“I don’t know,” I say. “ I don’t want to be picked on in two worlds.”

“I get it, we need a plan.”

“What is this eye-for-an-eye target?” I ask.

“Well, it means that we can attack and kill her in front of any guards anywhere in the game world. We will also not lose any reputation or renown,” he says offhandedly. Then he continues, “And, we will also get a big-time experience boost and potentially other awards depending on how many other people she has killed.”

He continues pacing. “Right now she has a player killer marker on her. PK’s cannot enter most towns because the guards will attack them on sight and the PK flag takes six in-game hours to lift.”

Kian stops, then looks at me and says, “I watched an interview with the devs, and they said the PK system was progressive to keep people in line. However, there are awards for those who decide to be player killers This is an open-world, player-vs-player game. Hunting players is a viable PVP play style, and you even get experience from killing other players.”

“She got experience killing us?”

“Yep, she probably did.” Kian looks up and says, “Briar! Briar, over here.”

Briar jogs up. “Where the hell were you guys? What happened, did that crazy troll thing kill you guys too? Or was it the wizard—”

“It was a Kobold, and no,” Kian cuts him off. “We completed the quest and got the notifications. It wasn’t a ‘what’ that killed us, it was a who.” Kian glances at me. “It was Josie, hunting Esme here.”

Briar’s jaw drops, and he makes several false starts of sputtering before getting out, “S-she is evil. What is wrong with that witch?”

“I am done for the day,” I say.

I watch Kian and Briar in the graveyard for a second; they have nothing to say as I log off.

***

I log off Imagine Online and change to my personal VR and load up the tutors I had sent to my headset earlier at lunch from the SAINT; I want to get advice and see what the gangster would do. As bad as the idea sounds, I don’t have many better ideas; we are being hunted, and I need some kind of solution. He probably won’t be much help, but he should be able to at least walk me through a few ideas. I can’t go ask the ninja, because he will probably explain how to poison her. Poison sounds great, and I have a memory of him talking about how tomato leaf extract was an effective poison used by ninjas. They would add to a victim’s food in ancient Japan, causing a very slow death. As good as that sounds, though, I don’t want to go to jail.

My SAINT syncs and the tutor program loads. These goggles are amazing in how fast they are. My school-provided goggles would have taken thirty minutes to download these combined tutors. Actually, thirty minutes for just the local profiles while still keeping most of the data on the school server. I see an option for “Keep local data.” which I check so the tutor profiles get locally stored in my goggles. I am dropped right into the tutor foyer. This looks almost identical to the system at school.

What goggles did the doctor give me?

I load up Rigs and appear in a room with my tutor; the large man looks at me. He has a scar on his square chin and rough, pockmarked skin on his face.

“Kid. Yo kid, you in there, kid?” he asks, waving a hand in front of my face.

This is different, I’ve never had a real conversation with a tutor like this. I didn’t even know it was possible to not have them be stiff as cardboard in these kinds of follow-up sessions. This was more like being in the SAINT, but normally there you only have the sensation of having talked with them. In a SAINT you never experience the actual act of talking with them. That was part of how it worked, you never really get to drive. This is…different.

“Kid, you gotta get up, we need to cover things.” His raised eyebrows giving him an almost comical look.

“Sorry, yes I am here.” Does he look worried?

“What are you sorry for? You bribed the pigs, snagged the goods, and killed Shovelhead Bill, and then you stopped and had a drink all stone cold,” he says. “That was perfect and just like I showed you, but it’s not that. It’s that Jimmy half-finger—one of the big bosses—he is pissed, and you are on the hook. You stole back the goods he stole and now he wants them before the original owner finds out.”

Holy crap, I’m doing tutoring in real time here. Normally there is a version of me in here that is like the sleeping me going through the motions. Well, sleeping or some form of me that is my subconscious, they say. This is kind of awesome, but these sessions are designed to be without interaction, they are to cram and can last hours. I don’t have that much time.

“Rigs, can we discuss something else?” I ask.

“For you, miss, sure. Anything.”

I quickly explain my situation with Josie and what happened and what I expect will happen. Rigs listens intently, and after I am done he continues to sit and think for a moment.

“Thing is, miss, and pardon me for saying,” he adds, “but people can only treat you how you let them treat you.” He shrugs. “If you let this girl do this to you then you are allowing it. You need to show her, with words or with force –I prefer force –that she can never again mess with you. Never.” He looks very serious and taps his fingers. “Y that she thinks she can come back to win. It has be a complete victory.” He pauses for a second, then adds, smiling, “You know how you got that drink after offing Shovelhead, like that! That shows them they need to be afraid—afraid that you would do that to them. You need to do this girl like that.”

His intonation might be simple, but this construct knows his way around the underworld. He is an expert on how to exist among masses of strong A-types who all want to dominate each other. I can remember my deeds in the nightclub, and as if through a haze I can recall that the drink was a calculated maneuver, a show of power. Rigs had taught me to head off retaliation.

I feel the itch, impossible, but it’s back there in my brain, the SAINT learning itch. It should not happen unless I was in a SAINT machine.

What is going on?

I log off.

I remember being inside, as if I was really there for the eight or ten minutes, but then why the itch. I check the time in the foyer, and it has been only one minute in with Rigs. These goggles can let me fully enter with the tutors as if I was really there. This gives me the ability to ask real questions and learn real strategies directly instead of getting the stock tutorial treatment.

If I could use SAINT outside of prescribed amounts and outside of the officially sanctioned, pre-programmed tutoring sessions, then I could learn almost anything. I could literally use this to become better than anyone at almost anything, provided I didn’t fry my brain by using it too much.

These can’t be the standard goggles for the game. People would have noticed immediately, and it would be all over the internet. There would headlines about how this new game was programming people with SAINT tech. There would be inquiries and government intervention.

This is serious contraband hidden in plain sight as normal gaming goggles. The only people who could do this, and pull it off, were billionaires and captains of industry, the 0.01% and friends.

What on earth did Dr. Friend give me?