“You look like you’re new here,” A tall woman with dark hair and a green eyes leaned on the bar counter next to him. “I am Madame Jade.”

This was another Legends of the Universe NPC. She was a powerful ninja mastermind in Legends, but her character design in this game was quite different. She was dressed in a green kimono and and an updo hairstyle held by green chopsticks that he was 100% sure would turn out to be stiletto blades. The boots and the guns at her hips were the only concession to the Western background.

Her lips curved into a vaguely threatening smile. “Would you like to join in the game? Don’t worry, you won’t find any nasty rebels here. The Queen has no power in the Wastelands.”

She fiddled with the jade-handled revolver at her waist.

Queen? That must be the game storyline. Legends had something like that, A queen fighting an alien wizard of some sort. These guys must be on the wizard’s side.

Charles moved the cursor over the NPCs, trying to figure out their stats. Ouch, 25% additional damage from Deadmark, 100 points in poison damage from Madame Jade and Sneakerette, and a 30% decrease on defense from The Gambler.

Odds of survival: 0.

Glowing letters appeared on his screen. Accept side quest?

Heck, no. Charles almost sprained his thumb as he hurried to press the “no” button. No suicidal side quest. No way.

He had a different idea.

Madame Jade shrugged and returned to her game.

Charles drank his cactus juice and waited for his chance. When the Gambler finished the round and the players leaned in to pick up their winnings, Charles struck. He walked forward and hit the “stealth pick” combination as he quickly walked out of the saloon. He snuck into the apothecary next door and checked his inventory.

Yep, the bag was there. He had one hundred gold nuggets now.

He looked around. The old man was gone. Maybe that was the end of the tutorial. If so, he was on his own now.

Like the saloon, the apothecary had a counter and a selection of bottles. He walked up and labels appeared in the air—healing potion, sleep potion, double healing elixir.

The prices were listed below the labels. Ouch, that pouch of gold would not last long.

He didn’t know how much gold he’d need to buy the cyborg arm, so he only bought two healing potions—er, bottles of cactus juice. He could always return to the apothecary and buy more if he needed to.

Or so he hoped.

He looked out. The coast was clear, with only a few lonely tumbleweeds rolling down Main Street. With a couple of button pushes, he exited the apothecary and headed for the blacksmith’s shop, glancing back at the saloon as he did so.

It seemed quiet. The old man had not come out.

He shrugged and kept walking. The blacksmith’s shop was at the end of streets. Two haphazardly-drawn horses stood in front, chasing flies away with their tails.

One of them had a saddle, which raised the question, could he ride a horse? He wished the old man were here to answer that question. So far, the game seemed pretty slow. A horse would likely speed things up.

But first, he had to get the arm.

The blacksmith’s shop—a wood structure with a furnace, and anvil and a ton scrap metal lying around—was unoccupied.

It was definitely, a working smithy, although not a stereotypically Western one. There was, for example, a box with two grenades in a corner, not your everyday cowboy weaponry that was for sure.

But, then again, cyborgs weren’t typically Western either.

He stepped close to the grenades and they disappeared, reappearing in his inventory.

Good, his current weapon was a basic six-shooter. He could use some additional firepower. These would come in handy, particularly since he’d found grenades in the smithy, but he hadn’t found a cyborg arm.

He scanned the room. Tools hung on the wall and one section had posters nailed on it. Bounties were offered for the capture of various NPCs, a stagecoach company needed help fending off cyborg bandits, and a nearby town was being hounded by a shape-shifter and was offering a huge reward for getting rid of it.

He examined the posters, torn pieces of paper nailed covered with gothic lettering and nailed to wood slats. The biggest one was a sepia etching of a lady with an elaborate haired-do topped by a tiara. It announced: The Queen Lives!

More game story. He glanced at the other posters. These must be side quests. Once the player got the cyborg arm, he would be able to pick a new adventure. The shape-shifter one looked interesting. He clicked on the poster with the werewolf picture.

Ready for an adventure? Help the kind folks of Valle Escondido fight off the dreaded chupacabras and earn big rewards and eternal gratitude. Difficulty level: High.

Charles smiled. Now that was a cool adventure. However, he would need the cyborg arm to vanquish a high difficulty target. Where was it? There was a space on the wall that looked like an arm, but it was empty.

The cyborg arm silhouette, however, was still there. Had someone taken it?

Or something.

He checked the dirt floor. Yep, sure enough, there were foot prints.

Rabbit prints.

The stupid jackalopes had taken the arm. He chuckled. This was almost too silly for words. Was this game for real? He was going to have to chase rabbits to get his arm? It sounded like something out of an old Bugs Bunny cartoons.

It couldn’t possibly be this way.

He walked around the smithy, turning over boxes and looking into wooden barrels. He found a Bowie knife and added it to his inventory—one could never have too many knives.

But that was it. No cyborg arm.

He was going to have to go hunt rabbits. It was ludicrous. A memory popped into his head. His father reading a book about old Guatemalan legends. A story about a trickster rabbit stealing something.

He shook his head and the memory faded away. Not for the first time, he considered just quitting this game. The visuals were bizarre. The soundtrack was old-fashioned. The plot, what there was of it, was weird.

He could just take off the helmet, turn off the game, and send a nasty e-mail to the developers. They deserved it, for sure.

He walked out of the blacksmith’s shop, determined to quit. Two grenades and a six-shooter were not worth all of this hassle. He’d take Scales’ teasing. Anything was better than this relentless tedium.

Then he saw the horse.

It was still haphazardly drawn It was swatting flies with his tail. It was also, he thought, periodically spitting at the ground.

And it was also a cyborg. The body and part of the face was that of an organic horse, but the legs and the right eye were definitely robotic.

He grinned. What would it be like to ride a robot horse?

Only one way to find out.