Once Dean was out of sight, Ryan turned his attention back to the room. Someone had found an instrument similar to a guitar, and started a round of Sweet Caroline, a large portion of the bar joining in on the chorus. But not everyone was joining in the reverie. He should’ve noticed them earlier but had probably missed them as a result of worrying about Dean. A handful of players were sitting silently, staring into the mugs or gazing off in the distance. Some were jostled by their friends, being drawn back into the group’s conversation, but a couple were by themselves.

He worked his way slowly through the room, stopping to talk with each person. He startled most of them when he approached, but they were quick to explain their worries. He only stayed a few minutes at each table, but the other players thanked him for speaking to them as he moved on. Most of their concerns were pretty simple, a job they couldn’t miss, a family member that needed their help, or fear that the game wouldn’t be fixed, and they’d be stuck in here forever. He was about to ask a short, Asian man with a mop of messy black hair that he kept running a hand through, if he could sit when the man spoke first.

“Here for a go, too?” The man said bitterly without looking up from the table.

“I was going to ask if you’re okay.” Ryan said.

The man looked up at him, his bleary, tear stained eyes scanning Ryan. After a moment, his shoulder’s slumped and he gestured at a chair. “My most apologies. Please sit. I am named Shiro. You are?”

The game’s translation software was better than the others Ryan had ever encountered, mainly in the online baseball league he sometimes participated in. The game was changing the man’s words to English and adjusting his lip movement to match. Earlier versions took several seconds to work, enough time that saying ‘catch’ while throwing a ball would result in the other person hearing ‘catch’ as the ball hit them in the back of the head. It was a common enough occurrence back then to earn a nickname, speak gap, in the urban dictionary. In this game, the software took less than a second, fast enough that Ryan might not have noticed, or thought it was an oddity of the man, if not for nuances like ‘most apologies’ or the unusual lack of contractions, unless the specific phrase had been programmed in.

Ryan sat in the indicated chair as he introduced himself. He then asked, “A go at what?”

“Me.” Shiro said, “I am one of the developers, so the other players are most upset with me. They think it is my fault that they are not able to log out, but I do not know what has happened. I am stuck in the game as well.”

Ryan leaned forward in his chair. “Can you communicate with the other programmers?”

Shiro shook his head, “We created a group chat before logging in so we could talk. I can see their messages and send my own, but none of those out of the game respond. Only those in game appear to see them.”

“How many of you are in the game?”

“Most of us. All interns were to remain out of the game. The rest of us drew straws.”

“So, what are they saying? Do they have any idea what’s going on?” Ryan didn’t realize he held his breath as he waited for a response.

“All I know is that The Demon King is not the only game with problem. All of OmniSense Interactive new games are not logging out.”

Ryan whistled softly. OmniSense Interactive was the parent company behind the new dive gear, they’re goal was to create a brand new, fully immersive experience virtually indistinguishable from the real world. They had bought out or licensed several gaming companies to create new games using their technology. The Demon King was this game, a classic sword and sorcery. The only other one he remembered the title of was Into the Black, a space western, since his friends had debated playing that one instead. Otherwise, he vaguely remembered a pirate game, a war game, and a bunch of sporting games. He planned on buying the baseball game at some point soon, and Ben mentioned he had grabbed the hockey game.

“That means the problem isn’t the game, it has to be in the dive gear programming.” Ryan reasoned.

Shiro shrugged, “I should have noticed it.”

Ryan realized Shiro was blaming himself for the issue, even if it was unfounded. He needed to relieve the man’s worry so he wouldn’t blame himself, it was part of his job description to help people in need. It was also the right thing to do. “Really? How? Did you go through every line of code while making the game?”

Shiro shook his head, “No, but every game shares the same core programming. I worked on that.” Shiro must have seen Ryan’s confusion because he explained, “The dive gear is much like a operating system. The games are a program. I helped to make the program that lets them talk to each other.”

Ryan understood that. “Like the translation software?”

Shiro laughed, “Yes, exactly like that. They speak different languages. Even if the game menu does not work for logging out, the dive gear system should recognize this.” He mimed removing the dive gear to logout. “The only explanation is that the game language is not translating correctly with the dive gear language.”

“Didn’t you do a beta test of the program? Wouldn’t you have caught it then?” Ryan persisted.

Shiro’s eyes widened in surprise, “Yes, we did do a beta test and nothing like this ever happened.” He gasped softly, “The last update we downloaded before playing the game. That has to be the issue.” He grinned as he bowed to Ryan. “This is good. It will not take long for the others to realize this and change it back.”

“You’re sure? How long do you think it will take?”

Shiro thought about it before replying, “I do not know exactly how long, but not very long. I would be surprised if it took more than a day, maybe two.” He pulled up his status menu, “I must tell the other programmers in game, they will be most relieved. Thank you.”

Ryan’s shoulders relaxed as a wave of relief flooded through him. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been since discovering the issue. “We should tell everyone. They’ll all be relieved.”

“I will send a message on the world chat board once I tell the other programmers.” Shiro said absently as he navigated his status page. Ryan watched as Shiro typed something out on an invisible keyboard before pressing a few more buttons and repeating the process. “Sent.”

Ryan was about to excuse himself when his friends joined them.

“Where’s Dean?” Will asked as he sat down.

“Did we miss him freezing?” Ben turned to Will, “I told you we would miss it. I was looking forward to it.”

“He went to bed.” Ryan ignored Ben. “And he hadn’t been transferred to a medical facility yet.”

“Then how will we know for sure if he was?” Will asked with concern.

Ryan shrugged in response, “They said they’re going through the list, they’ll get to him. Won’t they Shiro?”

Shiro nodded, “You have a friend that has not been unplugged yet?” He gestured at a few frozen players. “He will be before morning.”

“See?” Ryan said, “He’ll be fine.”

“How do you know that?” Ben asked suspiciously.

“He’s a programmer.” Ryan explained, “And shut it, Ben. It’s not his fault.”Ben snapped his mouth closed, glaring at Ryan as he did so. Ryan asked Shiro, “You know this game really well? Will you answer a few questions I have?” Shiro nodded. “First, how many skills are there? It feels like everything in the game has one.”

“I do not know. The game creates new skills as needed based on a player’s actions. It started with a thousand but has probably created hundred more by now.”

A thousand skills? That explained it. “But why create that many?”

“So that players can be anything. A merchant or woodcutter. Anything. Each job with quests to complete.”

“Why would anyone be a woodcutter? It’d be boring.” Ben complained.

“Are you sure?” Shiro countered, “Every job has quests to complete. Not just reach level one hundred but craft a named weapon or create a new enchantment.”

Ben shrugged, “That might be cool, at least for a while. I’d love to be a Dungeon master. Played one in my last MMO and it was a lot of fun.”

Shiro grinned at him, “Exactly the point. There are hundreds of ways to play this game, thousands even. We wanted to make it so players would always want to try something else, be something else. We were trying for endless replays.”

“What’s a dungeon master?” Ryan asked.

“It’s a person that controls a dungeon.” Ben explained. “It’s like building a kingdom, really, except that you’re creating caves and treasure, then stocking it with traps and monsters to defend it against other players.”

“That explains why there’s so many different stats in the game. I thought that was just overkill.” Will said.

Next, Ryan asked, “What’s the plotline for this game anyway?”

“It was in the opening seq-,” Shiro licked his lips, “It did not play when we started. Why did it not play?” He sent another quick message, probably to the other programmers Ryan thought, before continuing, “There was an opening sequence that explained the whole plotline of the game. The world was once ruled by a king, but he was cursed and turned to a demon. He fled to the center of the world where he opened a portal to the underworld and summoned demon lords. To win, a player must find all the runes and defeat the king before closing the portal.”

“How big is the dungeon and where’s the portal?” Ryan asked.

Shiro pointed to the ground with a smile, “The size of the entire world and the portal is at the center.”

Ryan glanced at the other two to find them grinning, Will actually rubbing his hands together before saying, “Then we better get another round of beers and start discussing strategy.”

Ryan just shook his head and excused himself to bed. Shiro thanked him one more time as he left.

Dean was standing in the middle of an empty room. He couldn’t remember how he’d gotten there, or even where he’d been before that. He turned in a slow circle to find a doorway but couldn’t find one along any of the walls. A fleeting thought crossed his mind that the lack of a doorway was strange. He tried to concentrate on it, but it slipped out of his mental grasp every time he tried.

What was I thinking about?

The room looked vaguely familiar. A bar ran the length of one wall, with two fireplaces set in the opposite. A fire burned in each, but the flames didn’t move at all and they produced no heat. Large wooden beams ran across the top of the room every dozen feet, with large lanterns hanging down every few feet. Otherwise, the room was empty of any furniture or people.

Dean continued to turn in a slow circle until he spotted a small girl standing in front of a double door. She stared back at him in surprise. Something about the double doors seemed odd, but he couldn’t place it.

Dean called out, “Who are you?”

She fled through the double doors. Dean followed her, hoping to get an answer. On the other side of the doors, he stood in a large meadow with flowers in full bloom as the sun blazed above him. It didn’t give off any warmth, and the flowers didn’t smell of anything at all. He stared at his surroundings in amazement.

How had he gotten here? Hadn’t he just been somewhere else?

He spotted the little girl still running from him on the other side of the meadow. He walked towards her, yelling to get her attention. She glanced back at him, fear in her eyes.

She ran into the edge of the forest and disappeared. A few seconds later, Dean passed through the same spot.

He jerked to a stop, almost falling off the side of the mountain. He stood at the edge of a small mountain summit, only a dozen paces wide. A thick layer of snow, almost knee deep, was the only reason he didn’t plummet to his death. He stared out at the bleak landscape in front of him.

As far as he could see, the entire landscape below was a wasteland. Only a few bushes grew among small streams of bracken water crisscrossed the landscape. The clouds above swirled and roared in an erratic frenzy he didn’t think could be real.

“Stop chasing me.” A small voice said from behind him.

He turned slowly to find the girl on the other side of the summit staring at him. He tried to guess her age but couldn’t even begin to guess from her facial features. She was pale, with long blonde hair running down her back and wore a shapeless white slip. Her pale gray eyes stared at him with a mixture of fury and fear.

“I’m not.” He started to say.

“Stop.” She said. A hard gust of wind accompanied her command, threatening to toss Dean off the mountain top.

“Who are you?” He asked instead, “Where am I?”

“Go away.” She screamed. She flicked her hands towards him. He felt something hard smack him in the chest and push him over the edge of the cliff. He screamed as he fell.