“It's my friends who give me power, not Ralarum!”

“If that don't just sound more like you than you do.” Hot Air Hank pulled the string on Cadmos's new toy.

“The gods didn't make this world for you to do with it as you please. It's for the people living on it!”

“Astoundishing! My durned brain's so impressed that it can't settle on one single word.”

Nor was his brain alone in its admiration. There were oohs, aahs, and some zesty wows from the officers clustered around what had accompanied Cadmos from his latest collab briefing: another Cadmos.

“He's really something, isn't he? I know how you feel, but try not to wear out the string. We need him to hang in there for the duration of the collab, and I don't know if I can get a replacement. Especially since I'll be in a different game.”

“Just one more. Got myself a notion.” Hank pulled the string again.

“He's really something, isn't he? I know how you feel, but try not to wear out the string. We need him to hang in there for the duration of the collab, and I don't know if I can get a replacement. Especially since I'll be in a different game,” the double said, and gasps joined the oohs and so forth.

Two sentiments dominated all subsequent conversations within Commandment of Hero. The first was expressed by Surfs Nesetta and Beans Istemus, who had decided not to pick a fight with their game's cool, if creaky, uncle. “Wouldn't mind getting one of those for myself. Double the trouble, right, Beans?”

“You said it, sister. I'd be farming up reds and golds for personal use all shift, and that restaurant owner with the disgraceful management skills who's always short on staff would never know the difference.”

So said officers who hid nothing of their intentions, but whispers in the corners of Freegate and groups of the like-minded in Vigilant Patrol had a different tenor. “Do we need to get our hands on those copy things? Maybe we can't leave without them. Conservation of data or something.”

“Unlikely but plausible,” True Beryllia said, but then she shrugged. “That describes everything that happens around here, doesn't it? Let me know when you're in the mood for philosophy. I expect that to be never.”

Heartful Azalea said, “Maybe after end of service. Yo, Zimley Boe. You're a Strategist, aren'cha? How do we get some of those copy things for ourselves?”

Zimley drifted over, hands in her jacket pockets, bubble being blown. “I like to think of myself more as the soubrette.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“Good. I always wanted to be a lady of mystery. Hey Quirce, I'm enigmatic right now. Could you tell everyone what to do for me?”

“Gladly! That way I can get out of this corner of Freegate. It's so cramped. First, ask Cadmos what it's actually called. Second, shop around. Send requests to all the other games. I have contacts in Dungeon Express Re:Development, for example. Third, give me all the credit when you succeed, OK?”

“Two of those are sound ideas. Impressive, Quircy. I'll remember that I think more of you. Right now I need to arrange a secret meeting.”

True Beryllia did as she said, and that meeting had a sequel. “All right, I asked him,” Gaelvry Bride told her in private. “He said it's called a Universal Temporary Asset Substitute. I'm happy to help, and I have to admit to being curious, but I do wonder why you didn't ask him yourself.”

“Never help yourself if you can arrange a mutually beneficial exchange. That's my code. So I gave you a conversation-starter, and it's on you if you blew it. Now let's track these UTASes down.”

Word went out. Next it came back in, and it said no UTAS had ever been seen in Commandment of Hero before. Newer officers consulted the old-timers, but discovered only that Aerywe Beruvo preferred not to be called an old-timer. Beryllia stuffed some two-stars in barrels and shoved swords in one by one to make sure no stash of secret Rare knowledge went unplundered, but no. The inquiry extended to other games. Quircy Rau disappointed everyone when she reported her trading partners in Dungeon Express Re:Development had never heard of the item and in fact evinced interest in buying it.

“Laugh at a bumpkin, but I really thought they had everything,” Clyse commented as she stretched. “That barrel wasn't a comfortable place to be.”

“It's still the last word in furniture and home decoration,” fellow Rare Reginald said. “The game I mean. And they just got in a massage table we need to order after what those barrels did to our spines.”

Hopes rose when the newest Medic, Gary Whitecrest, heard his pal in the science fiction S******** W** clone Furious Galaxy knew something about replacing people, but fell like an orbital bombardment when further inquiries indicated the process involved normal, everyday androids incapable of satisfying current requirements. Radiant Illusion Country, Afterschool Hunters, and Lament Epoch had been through plenty of collabs, but their denizens reported the UTASes had been recalled afterward in every case.

Contingencies were already in development to give up and just thrash the Strategists for offering what they could not deliver when Nixa N. Dorenz, hesitant, offered one final possibility. “An acquaintance in Convergence/Divergence assures me he has located knock-offs with most of the functionality of the original item at a better price and availability. The problem is that the world of Convergence/Divergence is a cyberpunk dystopia, and my acquaintance, a black marketeer. The reliability of this category of persons may not be everything one might want.”

“But what does he want? Ask that, and then we can convert trust into currency in our reckonings and see what's what,” said Wruden Calx, the latest luman officer, whose top hat proved he knew something about business. The listeners might have asked fellow top hat-wearer Formal Figro for a second opinion, had they not known that his business happened to be espionage.

“I'll write back to ascertain the exact amounts, but we've discussed the general sorts of materials C/D desires before. Feathers to stuff pillows, claws and bones to carve into desks for corporate executives, and sap to produce violin strings. All their flora and fauna are dead. It is, again, a dystopian world.”

“OK so but then what do we have to pay him to take away all that trash?” North Pole Azinsia wondered.

Nixa requested and received a price list, after perusing which the expedition-minded officers assembled outside the light-defying black walls of Freegate. There they dumped their fees. All those sacks of sap and enough feathers to make a few playmates for Wiffle added character to the bare fields between the fortress and the forest, and then the pigeons arrived.

“Always wondered where those little fellows come from and how they do that,” Quille Treten said as he watched pigeon after pigeon appear and glide down to pick up an item before rising into the sky and beyond the world.

“And how we wish you'd stop,” Sindze U. Radalo told him. “Or, you know, do something about it? Like some research? Stick a tag on one? You can do more than talk, can't you?”

“What was that?” Luerre Voine propelled himself caneishly over to the disputing Rares. “Tag the pigeons? Wonderful. Does anyone know where I can buy tags?”

“Later. One project at a time,” another Strategist cautioned.

“Huh? Why?”

“Timing of opportunities.” Mentor Tendradius Pux's goggles, capable of night vision and other modes anyone would feel compelled to call imaging, whirred and spun in his space-faring headgear as he observed the mechanisms of commerce and dreamed of combat. “Pigeon research is possible whenever you want. The strongest fighters of other worlds may be challenged only within this narrow window.”

Boxer Andit and every last Inferno officer roared, not excepting even Serdon Miloz, who took better care of his voice than that as a rule.

“I see. Table that research proposal for the time being.”

“Good man.”

With that distraction averted, the attention of the officers fixed itself on no other object but watching the pigeons take away consignments of goods, thousands upon thousands of items one at a time, pigeon by pigeon.

“I'm bored,” Society Page Lasva complained. “This isn't the kind of bird that causes scandals.”

“I brought something that might be a mite more stimulating, if you've got the stomach for it.”

“And the pilot's here too!”

Hot Air Hank and Azalea, in her Valentine's form but still a flier at heart, lofted a hot air balloon before anyone could stop them and offered rides, careful to keep their aircraft clear of the pigeon path. Just as nature abhors a vacuum and gachas a healthy bank account, officers designed to make the day pass faster could never tolerate idleness, unless it was the kind where they fought nonstop and the players checked in now and again to collect rewards. Never did they long abandon the pursuit of pleasure. A heart-pounding horseshoes tournament began as soon as the participants promised the centaurs they would give the shoes back afterward. Luau Lua, Clyse, and Reginald invited those of a more spiritual bent to engage in an improvised elementercise session where ultra-brief, ultra-intense routines dissolved the cruft of unexamined lives so that the elemental core within might be exposed, whether the element the officer actually possessed or the one desired in secret dreams. Not very secret. Most of them talked about it every day. An Inferno could only be humiliated by Flood enemies so many times before wishing for a Storm alt. Storms lost to Quakes? That was the theoretical future alt's problem.

They had gone through Flood, Storm, and Inferno and were setting up for Quake before finishing on the real crowd-pleaser, Eclipse, when pigeons began to return with the other half of the deal. The air itself disgorged little birds holding in their little claws canvas sacks they deposited on the ground with the care of an employee who needs good customer ratings for his next review to avoid getting canned. Each UTAS enjoyed its own patch of ground with not a single point of overlap. The more reflective officers remembered how they had thrown their materials onto a pile and knew shame.

Less reflective, more miserly officers knew disgust instead on account of how much faster the unloading finished than the loading and how much less volume the purchased goods occupied than the purchasing ones, but savvy buyers such as Wruden Calx and Lua DeMereanch told them to get over it and check out what they had, which investigation revealed to be a collection of sacks each sufficient in size to hold a couple terriers bred and trained by Adigail Zem or Spenito Niu.

“Feels squishy,” Heartful Azalea said. “I hope there aren't a couple terriers in there, because they must be feeling pretty bad right now if there are.”

Attached to the sack, each UTAS included a combination monitor and keyboard, as if an enterprising vagabond had stopped riding the rails long enough to design a laptop to suit his lifestyle. The monitor even had a webcam mounted on it. Commandment of Hero's foremost technical minds might have spent years studying their new toys, or more likely seconds ruining them by slicing open the bags, but that the enigmatic manufacturer had taped an item of importance to the bottom of every keyboard.

“A manual?” Darlotte Glofal held the corner of a beige booklet and glared at the thing as if it had questioned her seating arrangements. “I do wish instead that a finger would point at a highlighted icon large enough to be seen on any mobile device while rings centered on it pulsate out and a large text box instructs me what I must do next.”

“I don't often agree with Darlotte,” Kindo said. “Don't disagree with her either. Just ignore her, mostly. The point is, how do these things work? I can't see how we get from here to what Cadmos has.”

“I don't understand it either, but Skaya will figure it out,” Eten promised.

“Figuring it out now, Master Eten. Hm. Does writing get smaller than this?” Eten's head maid and chief technical advisor whipped out her glasses and put away her Warper lens. “'To activating moniter for begin procedure please to touch button on reversed.' Got it.” Gloved fingers searched the back of the monitor till the screen came on. “OK. It's looking like almost the whole manual is a listing of the codes you have to input to assign the asset you want substituted. First we need to find Commandment of Hero.”

Nobody else appreciated Inorrea Vacationer's gag of pointing down, so focused was all attention on Skaya's demonstration. “We're about halfway in.” Skaya stopped flipping and bent back the pages to break the spine for later convenience before she resumed her perusal. “Bushes. Trees. Freegate wall segments. No, officers are what we want. Ah! Oh. They aren't making this simple. We need to enter a series of category codes.” She looked around, found a specimen, and resumed. “Officer is . . . 9980.”

“Does that leave 9990 for bosses?” Nobody bothered berating Burmin Trivvis for asking such a pointless question, which proved the intensity of concentration directed by the assembled officers on the UTAS.

“Quake. 0301.”

“Go Quake!” North Pole Wilma and North Pole Azinsia shook hands. Santa C. Dorenz got his underlings Hemt T. Elf and Orrevan C. Hinks started on a sign that said, “Quakes Rule! Class of 0301.”

“UR is 4800.”

The implications for future updates! Speculation about higher rarities had never been absent from Freegate, and that numerical code sent each and every member of the assemblage to the mind-land of fears and predictions.

“Champion is 8111. 0222 means flop.”

Never mind those predictions. The humiliations of the past could delight communities just fine. Officers flipped through manuals to figure out who fell in the flop category, but the layout baffled them.

“And 7211 should be . . .” The sack swelled and enveloped the monitor and keyboard. A shape formed, a human, or maybe a buman, luman, skuman, or short stuman. Not a centaur, anyway. The canvas changed not only color but texture. Polished armor gleaming in the sun! A laurel crown given to the bravest! A mustache! Knight-Master Gralles Alianura had arrived. Again.

“Pull the string! Gralles! Pull it!”

He yielded to Heartful Azalea's entreaties in good humor and pulled the string on his clone's back. “I suppose I must say His Majesty now, but nothing about my duty has changed.” So spoke the substitute. The spectators clapped, not for the contents of the line, though perhaps a little bit for that. What could be cooler than loyalty? Some officers grabbed a UTAS and did their best maid impressions forthwith, while others never accepted success without questions.

“Great work, Skaya. What if you want to change it back?”

“Simple, Master Eten. Standing in front of the camera, make a specific gesture. A ring starts forming on the monitor, and when it goes all the way around, there we are. Um. We can't see the camera or monitor right now, but that shouldn't be a problem.” She planted herself in front of Gralles Mark Two, raised her right arm, and waited.

“I see it takes some time.” Eten crossed his arms.

“The manual doesn't get very specific. Maybe if we stand a bit closer.” She tried again. “Farther?” And again. “If I . . .” Skaya stood on the tips of her toes and crouched, but nothing about Gralles NEXT changed.

“Let me try! Maybe it doesn't like your red gloves. I think they're great, but tastes differ, you know?” Quircy Rau struck a pose, her right hand up and inviting the heavens to applaud while her left leg stretched to extend a straight line of poise and confidence between earth and sky. Half a minute later, she conceded. “That's fine. If we were archers, our quivers would have more than one arrow. Maybe Gralles Alianura has to be the resetter. Come on over, don't be shy, show us what you can do.”

Some observers noted they had been trying to suggest that very thing when Quircy Rau talked over them and took over, but she made sure to talk over them again, which solved that problem. Knight-Master Gralles Alianura accepted her guidance, stood where she indicated, and flung up his arm.

“My own doppleganger's given up on me!” Cloton Zvolo wailed, and when Gralles and company looked to the right, they saw, over Cloton's shoulder, a UTAS in the process of relinquishing its lumanosity and reclaiming its sackdom.

“That camera's pointing this way, which means you turned that one off, which means we need to change the angle.” After some prodding, reprodding, and rereprodding, Skaya maneuvered Gralles into a position that activated the back function and collapsed Gralles Dash into its original form. With that settled, the officers possessed all the information necessary to play with themselves.