Activity swirled through the Venture Society headquarters like a summer storm on the prairie, Rip thought. Everyone had someplace to go, and they all tried to get there at once.

Emergency hearings took place in four separate rooms, involving people from the palace, RVS, the Lyceum, the Royal Army, the Royal Navy, and even Parliament.

Rip and Blair found themselves in a waiting room between the grand halls, seated with the others from Bixby’s team and Sharp’s. Even here, the buzz of conversation continued, with people walking in and out and conferring with one another.

Several prominent individuals stopped in to express their concern about the attack on Blair’s house, and she soon had a corner of the room to herself with a constant stream of VIPs going in and out to share a word or two.

Rip found himself on a long bench along the back wall sitting next to the Verez sisters. Everyone avoided the two vampires, either instinctively or because they knew of the girls’ nature.

To his delight, Rip found that by sitting next to them, people avoided him too. He luxuriated in an oasis of calm amidst all the hubbub.

“Tell us more about the puppet battleground on your world, Ripley.”

Liza, sitting closest, smiled at him. Hilda looked interested, too.

“It may be a little hard to understand.”

“Talk to us as if we know everything you’re talking about. We’ll ask questions later, if we don’t understand something. You fought your country’s enemy there, right? It seems so strange to us, to fight in a place where nothing is real.”

He raised his eyebrows at this.

“Yeah, it seemed funny to us, too, in a way.”

He leaned back against the wall and thought about it.

“Why not? I can at least describe it to you. So, in years past, we developed our tabulators, only they were much more advanced than what you are used to. And the input changed, so that we could write and read words directly with the machines. Well, easier than how you can do it. And one of the first things people did was to design games to play with the computers. Uh, tabulators.”

“Oh! That sounds fun.”

“Yeah. College kids made most of the early ones, but then they spread. The first computer games were all text based, because that’s all we had. Later, graphics became part of a computer’s output, and games with moving pictures were developed. They continued to grow in complexity as the power of the machines grew. Eventually, players could join something called a massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG, and play online with thousands of other people around the world at the same time. You could talk, fight, interact, buy and sell. It was great.”

“A massive electric puppet theater!”

“Exactly. That came about all before I was born. Later, we started getting more and more immersed in the worlds. We called it ‘virtual reality.’ It started with goggles that could block out the real world and show you only the virtual one, or they could be used to layer something on top of the real world. We had haptic suits that provided feedback you could actually feel with your body. But the real revolution came only recently. The implant.”

“You planted something?”

“Something was planted inside our heads. A neural link connecting our brains to the online world. It was a real breakthrough. You just went to sleep in real life, and in your mind you experienced everything in virtual reality. It felt completely real. And to make all this possible, a special online world in the NeuralNet was built, using enormous amounts of resources, all linked throughout the world. It was called ‘Continent.’”

“That’s what we call Europe. The continent.”

“It was an acronym that stood for Continuous Online Neural Technology in New Electronic Time. Essentially it was a static world, one in which you could explore, shop, and fight in. Everything you could do in the old MMORPGs. But there was no reset button, no way to reboot and start over. Then we discovered that if you die in there, the implant kills you in real life because of the way it was wired in. If you got shot in the heart online in Continent, for instance, you felt it in real life and your heart stopped.”

“Oh. So, hurt the puppet and hurt the man.”

“Exactly. Then the world powers started fighting over this virtual real estate, defending their online turf. Continent was a limited resource, the world designed to scale in virtual reality. And just like with the real Earth, they weren’t making any more of it. So countries with the means to develop weapons there began raiding other countries, and soldiers fought battles for control of key areas. All online, but with real world results.”

“You traded battlefields from one realm to the other.”

“Yup. And I was taken out in an explosion while fighting in the Continent’s territory contiguous with North America, but I woke up here instead of dying, somehow. Thanks to Dr. Oggolopoli, I suppose.”

“It’s a fascinating story,” Hilda said, speaking up for the first time. “Did you keep your . . . what did you call it? Implant?”

“Yes. I still have my implant.”

“Does it do anything here?”

“It keeps track of my progress in the tiers, and provides other feedback.”

“What feedback does it give you about us?”

Rip raised his eyebrows.

“I haven’t really used it to get much feedback on others.”

“Try it. What does your ‘implant’ tell you when you look at us?”

He stared at Hilda for a moment, and made a mental request.

“Nothing. I suppose there’s a skill for assessing others, though. Maybe I could learn it.”

Director Hedgefield opened the door to the waiting room and stuck his head in.

“All of you follow me, if you please. We are about to begin the first hearing.”