Clay stared disconsolately at Khorun's broken form. Ordinarily, she could've bumped up his power level in PERSEUS--which she'd originally thought was only to simulate military rank in Tai-shan--but she was locked out of it. The instant transport gone, the level jumping gone--did X arrange for different debug codes not in the documentation, or did he do away with them altogether? If that were the case, everyone not explicitly coded as a creature had just one way to grow:

Grind.

The thought caused immediate annoyance in Clay, but then she thought about it. It'd been so long, going through an MMO grind might be a quaint experience, like mowing a lawn.

If she couldn't access god-mode, she was going to need a better control scheme than mouse and pointer. Clay looked over at the assorted equipment brought over from her home, and her gaze fell on the Crown of Thorns.

It's time, she thought.

She logged out of Everhome, gathered up the Crown and her fine electronics tools, and sat down at the Copper House's kitchen table.

Getting control of Khorun was going to be the main thing. Receiving different kinds of feedback was secondary. She could play on the flat monitor and watch the readouts in PERSEUS to "see" and "hear" what other players would. The other brain-stimulation effects would at this point be a mere distraction.

She connected the Crown of Thorns to its main wire-and-fiber cluster and put the other end into a multi-reader meter and code box. It was talking to the development environment she had running in the bedroom.

She set the Crown of Thorns atop her head, feeling the tiny points pressing against her skin. She would have to get Vonzell to get some conductive gel from the medical supplier, she thought.

She started by getting a baseline reading. All the points and contacts seemed to be functioning, a minor miracle after two decades. She then concentrated on different quadrants, "spaces" around her, and read the results on the display screen. So far, so good.

Next was going to be mapping specific brain "commands" to the controls PERSEUS was expecting.

This was the part that was tricky, and a little wearying. Clay worried about her mental alacrity as she aged. She knew she had lost a step, but didn't think she was at all far along the road to dementia. Genetic testing and occasional mental tests reassured her in this respect, but she knew what she knew, and that was she was not capable of the same recall and focus she used to be.

The command calibration process was tricky. She moved her perspective forward in a simple corridor, then back and in different directions. She experimented with perspective, willing the viewpoint to pull back from the box that represented the control object. She finally tried moving the object forward while spinning the viewpoint over and above it.

It was a success, and Clay was ready to use the Crown of Thorns to control Khorun in PERSEUS. It was exhausting, however. People used to talk about walking and chewing gum at the same time; this was more like folding a fitted sheet from underneath.

She went back and connected the Crown of Thorns to the input box. She logged in to Everhome, went to Jade Kingdom, and went into the world as Madam Greensmoke. She invoked the console in PERSEUS and typed "resurrect." Khorun's stick-and-ball body snapped back up to a standing position. A message came up saying, "rez.inplace.remaining=6."

Well, that was curious. Perhaps the ordinary resurrection involved traveling to a post-death respawn point in a safe place. That was a common approach in MMOs. Clay wished she could see what messages Everhome passed along to players in this case--assuming all Everhome worlds were the same, which was a big assumption. If resurrection could be changed to this extent in PERSEUS, little tweaks to it in Everhome would be little harder than changing how the characters appear in the world.

She would have to carefully measure out the in-place resurrections. To that end, she realized she was still standing inside the cave where the turtle had killed Khorun. This was concerning, because the original "mobs" from MUDs meant "mobiles." She hoped the turtle was not given to much wandering. She set out to arm herself with the "weapon.create" command. A message popped up saying, "Mass conservation error: all creates disabled." Clay goggled. All create commands? She couldn't make anything at all? And what the hell was this about conservation of mass? Obviously she would have to go over the PERSEUS dev kit docs more thoroughly.

A little notice-cluster appeared on her screen. The turtle was back, at full health. A distance indicator was counting down from three meters.

Clay ran an "inventory" command. "Inv.carried=null" and "inv.container=null" came back. Bugger.

The turtle was now two meters away. She never knew they could travel that fast.

She settled back in her chair and tried to relax, keeping her eyes fixed on the monitor. She focused on the Crown of Thorns, willing Khorun to take a step back. He did. She recalled some of her old wing chun training. She remembered how it felt to assume a basic, ready stance, and pretending she was activating her muscles to do so. Her body moved a little in response to the mental triggering of a muscle memory, but it had the desired effect in PERSEUS: Khorun was no longer standing normally, but had his hands up, knees bent and angled slightly inward.

The turtle was one meter away and closing.

She gauged the distance, then thought through the motion of a low kick. Her real foot twitched as she thought the movements for the Crown to translate. Onscreen, Khorun's back foot lifted and swept forward, its snapping forward motion hitting the line-sketched turtle in the face and knocking it back. Clay gave a grim little smile. She'd be damned if she was going to let some tiny little amphibian get the best of her again.

She waited for it to approach, and again guided her thoughts through performing a heel kick. It connected and the turtle stumbled back. If it was effective, Clay was determined to repeat her success and not get fancy. Yet.

It took two more such kicks, but finally the turtle lay dead at her feet. Clay sat back and breathed a sigh of relief. She'd slain much bigger monsters in other games, but this felt like a major accomplishment.

She looked at the turtle's corpse. There was an odd notation next to it now. It was "dead," of course, and "craftable," which made sense, but also showed "mass=2."

Clay reached for her hand unit and accessed the PERSEUS documentation that was part of the developers kit she got from Percy. She found nothing about mass, but her eye fell on a nearby entry for "morph." Yet another command new since Tai-shan. She focused on the little blob representing the turtle corpse to select it as an active object. She typed "morph(sel)=weapon." That gave her an error message, so she refined it until she entered "morph(sel)=weapon2h.staff.bo."

The turtle-blob disappeared and in its place was a long, straight length of wood. Khorun knelt and picked it up. He was now armed.

Feeling a sense of accomplishment, Clay guided Khorun out of the cave. Feeling bold, she let him drop straight into the river. She thought through the motions of guiding him up through the water, then beginning to swim. Khorun took strong strokes against the current, soon finding a spot where it was easy to climb onto the riverbank.

Khorun strode into the teahouse with a confident air. He stood proudly, one end of his staff planted on the floor. Clay was about to say something when she realized she hadn't connected a microphone to the Crown of Thorns. She would get that taken care of post haste. For now, she used some keyboard commands to greet the woman running the teahouse.

"Hello, traveler," the woman said. "You seem to have experienced bad fortune recently." Khorun nodded. The woman continued, "There are several folks here in town who can give you some coin for odd jobs. Wing the tailor especially might be someone you could ask for work." The woman nodded knowingly.

Clay frowned, confused. Why the particular emphasis on the tailor? Perhaps there was a significant storyline or quest chain that began there. She moved control over to the Everhome screen, where only the keyboard and pointer worked. She turned Madam Greensmoke around.

She saw Khorun, holding his plain staff. Aside from his blindfold, he wore only the default smallclothes.

Khorun the Blind Monk, Clay's weapon for conquering a new digital world, was effectively naked.