They called him Spoony, and they had since his thirteenth birthday. On a dare, he'd stuck a wooden spoon in the crack of his butt and ran around shouting “I’m a speedboat!” Unfortunately, it was the middle of January, the ground was icy, and the day that marked his entrance into manhood ended in the emergency room with a perforated rectum. He could never say no to a dare, and couldn’t to this day, no matter how many orifices got violated.

His real name was Casey, and now, fourteen years after a spoon took his innocence, he was holding a steady job in a physics lab north of Portland at UNO—the University of Northern Oregon. Granted, he was only a nighttime security guard, but he got to touch all the equipment whenever he wanted and could play video games on the clock. Dream job.

Life in the Pacific Northwest was nice. Casey had, for the most part, put aside the wildness of his childhood, evolving into a productive member of society. He had his own studio apartment and a 2001 Geo Metro hatchback, sage green. It looked good for being almost thirty years old.

What Casey didn’t have was any luck in the dating department, but he was used to it, and it didn’t bother him much. He preferred his women scantily clad and digitized.

On Thursday night, he entered the lab complex at 9:00 PM. The lab was known as P4, the Positive Particle-Projection Program, but Casey was unsure as to what the scientists did there. Most of the activity surrounded a futuristic-looking contraption in the wide, underground dome that lay in the middle of the facility. The property also had several outbuildings, one of which was the security center at the main gate of the complex. That’s where Casey headed first.

When he entered, he was greeted by Joss, an overweight, middle-aged man in charge of daytime security. It mostly involved sticking to the security center, making sure whoever entered was allowed to be there, and not falling asleep. Joss performed the first two admirably, but when Casey entered, the big, balding man was slumped back in his chair, snoring loudly. His head lolled to one side, and a string of drool dripped out of his mouth and onto the armrest. Casey slid his ID card on a digital clock by the wall, clocking in, then turned to face his snoring coworker.

“Joss,” Casey said softly, but the man didn’t stir. “Joss!”

Joss woke abruptly, and nearly fell out of his seat before he saw who it was.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Oh, hey there Casey.”

Casey gave him a half-hearted salute. “Times up man, I’ll take it from here.”

"Thanks," Joss replied. "Dr. Wurnsworth is still in the building, working late on a project. There's some pizza," he said, gesturing to the mini-fridge. "Extra cheese and ham." Joss got up, took off his security jacket and put on his Trailblazers coat. February in Oregon could get a bit nipply. Casey took his own security jacket, which like the one Joss had hung up, was dark blue, with the word "SECURITY" emblazoned on the back in tall yellow letters. Joss said goodbye and headed to the parking lot, while Casey grabbed his flashlight, nightstick, and clipboard. He headed outside to make his first rounds of the evening.

The routine had gotten dull. Not once in the sixteen months he'd been working there had he had to exert his authority on anything larger than the occasional flock of seagulls that liked to perch on the edges of some of the buildings. Still, he did what he was paid to do, and within forty-five minutes, his clipboard had a series of check marks in the ‘secure’ column. He walked back to the security building to drop it off and grab a slice of pizza.

He took a seat in front of the bank of monitors which displayed the live security footage from strategic locations around the campus. The only movement whatsoever was coming from the P4 dome, where Dr. Wurnsworth was fiddling with dials and typing commands into a keyboard as he sat at the monitoring station facing the device. Casey took another bite and rotated a dial to zoom in.

The screen in front of Dr. Wurnsworth displayed, as it always did, a series of complex calculations and graphs showing who-knows-what. Dr. Wurnsworth was a skinny man with straw-like white hair growing out of the sides and back of his head, leaving the top bald. With his white lab coat, he looked like the stereotypical mad scientist, but Casey had spoken to him a few times, and the doctor seemed like a perfectly reasonable nerd. Casey popped the last piece of crust in his mouth and wiped his hands on his jeans. He grabbed his backpack and proceeded out the door towards the nondescript square building at the center of campus.

It was one of his favorite places in the complex, as it was full of workstations that connected to the R.A.C., short for ‘Ridiculously Accelerated Computer.' What that meant to Casey was a lag-free VR gaming experience.

He entered the grey building with a swipe of his card and a thumbprint verification, then approached his favorite terminal in the center of the room. He smiled as he neared it. This was one of the reasons he loved this job. He had probably spent half of his clocked-in hours gaming, and the university didn't seem to care. He could access the security monitors through his VR feed, which he did, although they never showed anything. The only reason his position existed in the first place was for insurance purposes, so the way Casey saw it, it was a win-win for all involved.

He sat down at the monitor and took his headset and haptic gloves from his bag. It was a nice headset, and it had cost him a month's pay, but oh was it worth it. Paired with the gloves, it gave him an immersive experience on the go. It couldn't compare with the full body haptics or the immersion rigs that had been on the market for the past couple years, but for his purposes, the sheer portability made it perfect. He quickly plugged the two cables into the appropriate slots on the interface station, slipped on his gloves, and he was ready to go.

The MMORPG he had been playing for the past month was Arousia Online, by Eyecandy Interactive. As soon as he got past the log-in screen, he appeared where he had last logged out, in the hub city of Areolon. The city stood atop twin hills, and consisted of a circular walled subdivision on top of each, connected with an ornate bridge made of stone. A tall tower stood up in the center of both hills, so in the overhead map it looked like a giant set of breasts, complete with nipples.

East Areolon was home to the Mage's Tower, while West Areolon housed the Tower of Egress, where the local government sent adventurers out on quests. There were other ways to get quests, and usually those ways were more lucrative, but for sheer grinding and experience, the quests offered in the Tower of Egress couldn't be matched.

This is where Casey appeared. The day before he had led a party to the Gorinda Fen to the east to hunt the Mudnaga—snake-woman hybrids that spit venom. It had proven a tough quest. The human halves of the Mudnaga were usually very well endowed, and Casey's companions had found it hard to concentrate. But not Casey—he was too professional for that. When he returned to the tower he was rewarded with 25 gold and increased reputation with the Areolan government, so he was happy.

You had to maintain your concentration in Arousia Online to be successful. For one, every NPC was female. Every human-hybrid mob was female. The only adult males were players, and you weren’t allowed to choose to be a female in the character creation screen.

The reason behind this was all laid out for the player in the backstory. Malinacious, a vile sorceress that lived high in the Ur-En Mountains far to the south, had wiped out the male population to the man about five years previously with a spell that had caused every human penis on the continent to explode. The males that didn't die from blood loss succumbed to infection or decided to take their own lives. The handful that still managed to survive were systematically hunted down by Malinacious and her minions, who still roamed the land to this day. In an attempt to save their species, the Arousian government had created an immigration system to bring in males from other continents, the players, from far across the oceans. Every player started the games at the docks two miles to the west, fresh off the boat.

You actually got gold and experience for impregnating females in Arousia, and it brought new meaning to the term ‘grinding’. Casey had indulged in this on multiple occasions—when in Rome and all, but he and his guild preferred concentrating on the quests and gameplay, relegating the more adult aspects of the game to more of a fun distraction between quests. Besides, each female had level requirements, and if you didn't actually play the game, you only had access to the level-one females, who looked just as that sounds. Casey had fathered three children since he had been there, one of them a boy. All children were valued, of course, as without the players the citizens had no way to produce any, but the boys more so. Children were taken to the West Areolon Orphanage, a sprawling complex that took up half the west division of the city, where they were schooled and trained in life skills.

Needless to say, the release of Arousia Online drew a ton of backlash from multiple groups—churches, parent organizations, and women, to name a few. This inevitably led to the game’s popularity skyrocketing, making it one of the most popular MMORPGs on the planet.

As Casey got his bearings at the base of the Mages’ Tower, he received an audio message from Jamen, his friend and one of his guild’s few clerics. Like Casey, Jamen was level 25. He was one of Casey’s oldest friends, and they had purchased the game on the same day, going on quests together and generally progressing at the same rate. Jamen was the level-headed one. He'd been present for the spoon incident, and had tried to talk him out of it, to no avail. He was also the mastermind behind a bet Casey had lost during their senior year, and as a result, Casey had to name one character in every game he would ever play ‘Spoony’ in honor of the accident that had nearly wrecked him. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the origin story of Spoony the Barbarian, terror of the Arousian Highlands.

“How’s things?” Jamen asked through the earpieces built into Casey’s headset.

“Oh, you know. Another day at the office,” Casey replied.

“So what we doing today, fighting or fucking?” Jamen asked.

“I’m down for fighting. Besides, you’re not my type,” chided Casey.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Spoonman. Meet me at the transportal station? I’m thinking we can go back to the Monsian Deeps tonight, get that axe you’ve been after.”

That sounded like a plan to Casey. The Battle Axe of Mons was a rare drop from the demon that lived in the Deeps. If you followed the map south from the Boobs of Areolon, you would come upon a triangular patch of swampland called the Monsian Deeps. Casey had wanted something to replace the enchanted twin axes he was currently wielding, and a battle axe was at the top of his list, as it fit with his barbarian persona nicely.

They had completed the dungeon twice before with just the two of them, although the final demon took every ounce of their skill both times they had faced the bastard. And he had never dropped the axe. This time, however, Jamen was equipped with the Amulet of Tol’ar, a one-time-use artifact which guaranteed a rare drop from a boss creature. Casey couldn’t use it, as it was cleric-specific, but he had purchased it for Jamen specifically for this purpose.

It had taken pretty much everything he had earned from fathering Ern, the male offspring from his liaison with Sheni, a beautiful blond from the east division. He had seen her on multiple occasions, but she was level 24. As soon as Casey hit 24, she was his celebration. Nobody ever turned you down in Arousia, if you were at their level.

Casey agreed to meet Jamen at the transportal station after stocking up on potions and supplies for the trip. He was equipped with mostly rare armor that he had either found or won at the auction house, but his helmet had broken on his last trip out, beyond repair. So, a stop at the auction house was also on his list of things to do.

An hour later, equipped with a sack of strength and defense potions and a shiny new helmet, Casey met Jamen at the transportal station. They clasped hands and pulled each other in for a clap on the back as was their customary greeting.

“You all good?” asked Jamen.

“In the pipe, five by five,” Casey responded.

Jamen looked a good deal like his real-world self, although here his straight blonde hair had been fashioned into a bowl cut, and the contacts he wore out in the real world had been replaced with round wire-framed glasses. He wore a white robe embroidered with red stitching at the hems and seams.

Spoony the Barbarian, on the other hand, looked nothing like his real-world self. His normal scrawny frame and head of tight black curls had been replaced with about 280 pounds of rippled flesh and a shiny shaved head. He wore a full chain suit, from the boots to the gauntlets, and the mail on his chest was emblazoned with a large wooden spoon. Sometimes, he always said, one has to embrace the embarrassment, make it your own. The twin axes hung on his belt, and he also wore a small round buckler on his back, which he hardly ever used, preferring to attack two-handed.

They approached one of the portal generators that surrounded the station. The station was popular this time of night—Casey could see representatives from nearly every class either coming or going. About ten feet high, the portal they stood in front of was just a tall oval of metal, until Jamen dropped five silver coins into the mechanism beside it. He then turned a series of dials beneath the slot, finally pulling a wooden lever to activate the portal. The interior of the oval lit up with a sheet of shimmering blue energy, which the cleric stepped through. As the last of his body disappeared through it, Casey followed, and the space around him twisted in a familiar way.

Once they were through, Casey looked around to figure out exactly where the portal had dropped them. It usually put the player within a ten-minute walk of their destination. Turning to the south he saw the crumbling walls that surrounded the swamp which housed the Monsian Deeps, sitting in the middle of the pristine hills and grassland like a festering scab on otherwise unblemished skin. When one first saw the deeps, they were inevitably left with the impression that the game’s suggestive overworld map had tricked them.

The Kingdom of Mons once ruled the southern part of this continent, hundreds of years ago, before the castle burned down, fell over and sank into the swamp following a ruthless attack by the Areolans. The King of Mons had been possessed by a demon, and ended up nearly destroying his kingdom in the wars that followed. The best geomancers in Areolon collectively formed a stinking bog under the King's central keep, causing the stronghold to crumble and sink. The King died that day, but the demon lived on, using his infernal magic to keep up the integrity of the fortress as it sunk deeper into the swampland, while scouring the local villages with hordes of his demonic minions to bring back the supplies and bodies they needed to keep up their strength. They had already completed the quest line that had originally brought them here, but the experience and loot were still decent.

Jamen turned to Casey. “Let’s get that axe,” he said, and they marched south across the grasslands to the swamp.

The Mons Depths were starting to become routine. It was a dark, crumbling castle, and vestiges of its former glory could still be seen under the dirt, mold and slime which covered the grey stone walls. The floors were usually covered with an inch of water, and the place was notorious for the pitfalls the murky water could hide. But the lesser demons which inhabited the top three floors weren't difficult, and Casey tanked three or four at a time while Jamen hit them with one by one with his Holy Fire spell, or attacked them as a group with his Divine Absolution.

Jamen also gave Casey an array of defensive and supportive buffs, which appeared as small glowing tattoos on the back of his left hand. The tattoos would begin to blink as their duration lapsed, but Jamen was so tuned in that Casey rarely had to call out for a rebuff.

So the battle went, as they descended level by level. The loot was good as always, and Casey managed to score a pair of chain gloves that offered +2 to regeneration and had better AC than the ones he was currently using.

The fourth and fifth levels held the greater demons. Jamen and Casey’s tactics were pretty much the same, although Casey only pulled one at a time down here. These demons could often drop gold instead of silver, and their wallets were getting fat as they approached the mystical seal that would transport them to the battle with the final boss. It glowed red on the floor in the middle of the stone chamber in the shape of a seven-pointed star, and the two men stepped onto it without hesitation.

The world warped around them, with tendrils of red light swirling in their vision. The lights dissipated, leaving them standing in the center of a disheveled library. Ancient books were scattered everywhere. Some remained on the shelves but most were in heaps on the floor, some with scorch marks on their pages and covers. At the far end of the room, a large, ornate book lay open on a pedestal. An ornate throne sat on a dais behind it.

They wasted no time in walking up to the book. It lay open to a page on which the invocation to summon the demon was written out in dark crimson lettering.

“Are you ready?” Jamen asked.

“One minute, let me check my scroll,” Casey replied, reaching into his pouch and pulling out the Scroll of Self-Knowledge. It was this game’s answer to status screens.

“Getting close to levelling,” Casey said, “but I don’t think I’ll get enough from this guy. But I’m all healed up, ready to go.”

With that, Jamen read the words on the page. When he finished his invocation, a small ball of dark purple light appeared on the throne in front of them. The ball expanded until the throne was barely visible, then coalesced into a humanoid form.

Before them now sat an enormous demon. Its skin was greyish-purple, and two wicked-looking curved horns sprouted from its forehead, arcing over the top of the beast’s head. The demon stood up.

"Who's the moron who dares summon Gristmagut, Demon of Eternal Inconvenience?" the demon bellowed. It looked to the two men standing in front of the book. "Oh, it's you guys.” The demon’s voice softened. “Hey look, we don't have to do this again, do we? Let's say I give you, oh, 50 gold each and you go on your merry way?"

Casey looked to Jamen and then back at the demon. This hadn’t happened before.

“Negative, cursed beast!” shouted Jamen, before ducking behind Casey. “You shall be gone from the face of this world!”

Casey rolled his eyes. Jamen was always one for the roleplay, so Casey played along.

“Your time of terrorizing the denizens of this land has come to an end,” Casey said, fixing the beast with his Intimidating Glare skill. A message in the corner of Casey’s field of vision informed him that the creature’s defense had dropped by two.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t offer.” The demon’s voice resumed its guttural menacing tone. “Now you shall die!” The demon stood up and took a step toward the pair.

Both of their eyes inadvertently drifted down to the creature’s phallus, which dangled below the creature’s spiked knees. That schlong would bring them more gold than the demon could ever drop. The alchemists brewed a potion from it that guaranteed conception, and that was nearly worth the demon’s weight in gold. Some of the women of the land were desperate enough to mate with these beasts. If they survived the encounter, they gave birth to demihumans, corrupted half-breeds who were immediately banished from any town or city in the land, along with the mother. Rumor had it that there were bands of these abominations and their mothers roaming the continent.

Jamen hit Casey with his array of buffs, and Casey activated his Rage skill, giving himself an additional three points to strength and constitution. They were ready.

The battle went as it had the previous two visits. It was a long battle, and Jamen kept pulling the aggro with his Holy Fire and Divine Absolution spells. Any time this happened, Casey regained the creature’s attention with a refreshed Rage and a pair of axes to the back of the demon’s head.

Twenty minutes later, the demon gave his final roar as an axe to the forehead brought him down. As Gristmagut crumpled to the floor, small piles of gold and silver coins appeared on the ground around him, which the two adventurers collected. Then with a small pop, the purpose of their visit to this stinking dungeon appeared on the throne. There, glowing with an unearthly blue light, sat the Battle Axe of Tralacia. Casey walked up to it, but stopped when Jamen called to him.

“Hey Spoony, look,” Jamen said.

Casey turned around to see Jamen, grinning like an idiot, holding a freshly-severed demon dong to his crotch, swinging it in wide circles. “If you want to borrow it to play speedboat, let me know.”

Casey rolled his eyes but couldn’t stifle his chuckle. He walked up to the throne, his hand stretching out towards the ornate twin-bladed axe.

“Wait!” Jamen exclaimed. “Gotta check it for curses. It is a demon axe, you know.”

Jamen, still gripping the demon phallus in his left hand, walked up and stood beside Casey and placed his right hand on the axe’s haft. He closed his eyes for a moment, murmuring a spell, and a white light emanated from the hand that touched the weapon…the bladed weapon. “I think you’re safe,” he said.

Casey reached out and touched the face of the intricately etched blade, running his fingers over the scrollwork. It was truly a masterwork; he guessed when he got it properly identified later it would prove to be a rare, maybe even an ultra-rare. He’d be using this weapon until at least level fifty.

As he admired the weapon, the ground suddenly began to lurch around him, and Casey fell to his knees. The whole building was shaking violently, mortar falling in sheets from between the decaying stone blocks.

“What the hell is happening? This hasn’t happened before!” Casey exclaimed from the ground at the foot of the throne.

“What’s wrong with you? Are you high?” Jamen asked. He appeared to be unfazed by the earthquake; he stood next to the throne, still holding the purple phallus.

Casey propped himself up using the axe as a crutch and tried to get to his feet but the ground was shaking too violently. “It’s an earthquake…an earthquake!” Casey shouted. “I think it’s in the real world. Arousia, log out,” Casey shouted as his world continued to tremble. “Arousia, log out!” he repeated, louder. “I can’t log out. Why can’t I log out?” he grunted as his personal shaking continued. Casey reached to Jamen for support, but his hand closed around the demon dick instead.

“I’m not feeling an earth…” Jamen began.

Briefly, Casey heard the alarm siren that they tested once a month at P4, but it faded away. Then, all the commotion abruptly stopped, and the room turned purple. No definition, no room or throne or axe, just purple. Then that too disappeared, and the scene was transformed.

***

Jamen stood at the top of a craggy bluff, overlooking an endless expanse of red desert. The air was scorching, and the sun beat down upon him, instantly causing him to sweat. He was still dressed in his cleric's robes. He looked down to his hands once his eyesight became accustomed to the brightness, and saw he was holding the Battle Axe of Mons. It looked as it had in the dungeon they were just in, with one minor difference.

The haft of the axe had been replaced with the phallus of the demon they had just vanquished. Although it felt to Jamen like demon flesh, there was no bend or give to it whatsoever—it might as well have been carved from ivory, then covered with dark purple skin.

“Jamen? Jamen!” a voice sounded. Jamen spun around but saw nothing but rocks and desert stretching to every horizon.

“Down here, fucknugget.” The voice was Casey’s.

Jamen looked down at the axe, which then hit him with a barrage of questions.

“Where are we? Why can’t I see myself? Why are we in a desert?”

Jamen blinked at the axe. The voice was Casey’s and seemed to be coming from the twin blades.

“And Jamen, why in the hell are you holding my dick?”