Erin frowned as she received a new message. Looked like another user support one - she'd moved up from tech support almost a year and half a year ago, but they still made it through sometimes.

She briefly considered complaining to someone about it, but if it hadn't helped the last half-dozen times, there was no point.

The title read, "Help, I'm stuck in the game!" - well, she had kept a macro for that. She sent off the canned response telling the user how to activate the "I am stuck" function. Now, what was next?

Weird, that guy already responded back.

She wondered how there had even been time for him to receive it - let alone enter a response. He'd edited the title too, adding, "Please for the LOVE OF EVERYTHING GET ME A HUMAN"

She opened it back up. Sure enough, there's my response. She scrolled further, to the original message she hadn't bothered to read. She was surprised - it was closer to science fiction than to a help desk ticket.

Well, that settles it - one of the guys is trying to punk me. It hadn't happened to her before, but they were always pulling something on each other.

Using his brain as a server? Putting him in an NPC body and setting him up to die over and over? Why? Seems needlessly cruel. I love the "Stuck in a game" genre as much as the next gamer, but this is kind of sick.

She was about to delete the message, but scrolling to the top reminder her she hadn't read the reply, just the initial message. Despite herself, she read that too.

"I realize this is a lot to take on faith, but I have proof - come to 100, 20,100 in-game. I'll show you. You're my only chance - all the other help functions are locked."

How do these people even reach me? Is there just a magic 'Call Erin' button?

She glanced at her headset on the desk. Technically, they weren't supposed to connect to the production servers without a valid reason. Despite that, they needed to all the time in order to diagnose issues, often enough that nobody would hassle her about it.

To be honest, if someone had written all this up just to get her to meet them in-game, she was a bit flattered. Maybe it's some weird way of asking me on a date - I give him points for creativity.

She stretched at her desk - that bug she was working on had waited 3 months so far, it could wait a few minutes more.

What the heck - I haven't been with a guy in... Yeah, if I can't remember then it's been too long.

She spawned in on Altivis beach. She brought up her console and entered the coordinates for translocation.

They deposited her nose-first into a massive pair of scaly pectorals. Surprise shot her back 3 meters, giving her a good look at the owner. He showed no reaction to her presence, and then she remembered she had Game Manager mode on.

From her perspective, she was floating in a bubble of air, unimpeded by water or physics of any kind. No one else could see her though, unless she turned the mode off.

She decided to use it to her advantage. She'd never been much of one for PVE monster hunting, so she'd never really seen a merfolk character before. They were on a special list of untouchable AI actually - supposedly some deep learning algorithm from the engine handled their behavior, and messing with one could get you fired.

She had always wondered about that restriction.

Everything about the merman's character design just screamed "danger". Instead of hair, he had long bristles that looked like a cross between dreadlocks and lionfish spines. His fingers ended in wicked claws, his tail a sleek shark blade, and she could see fangs just poking out of his mouth. Combine that with scale plates that accentuated his human musculature, and she was honestly a bit intimidated.

Inspect: Lvl 1 Merfolk Reaver

Weird- this was usually the model they used in the promotional art for the leader NPC of the merfolk. The Merfolk had several different species with different fish analogs, and it was pretty rare to see this phenotype in-game. It gave her a case of the nerves.

I'm still in the game, and I have the pain threshold down to the minimum. There's nothing this guy can do to me before I can teleport out.

Nothing, except maybe cost her her job just for speaking with him.

She was in too deep just to logout now though. Nobody should have access to this character, and an NPC wouldn't have been able to send her that message. This is... Really weird.

She disabled GM mode, but kept the air bubble. The merman's reaction was immediate, orienting on her and extending a clawed hand. She flinched at the movement herself. Neither moved for a moment, and she realized his movement wasn't to menace her, but to cover himself, as if to ward off a blow. Something wild was in his eyes.

Fear, she realized after a moment.

They stayed that way for a long moment, and then he lowered his arms. He cocked an incredulous eyebrow at her and then visibly looked her up and down. She wondered what... oh. She had last logged in on the beach, sneaking in on her lunch break to catch some virtual sun. Her swimsuit wasn't exactly Victorian in design. She crossed her arms over her chest. I refuse to be embarrassed about this, she thought firmly. But, would an AI do that? If he's not an AI though...

The moment didn't last. The merman started trying to speak. She immediately clamped her hands over her ears at the noise that screeched through her ears. The sound was horrendous, the most grating thing she ever heard. She shook her head at him.

"I can't understand you - can you understand me?"

He nodded at her. Then instead of speaking, he started making shapes with his fingers. He put his right fist on his left palm, with the thumb up, and then moved his hands up. His expression was plaintive, completely out of place with his fierce appearance. Wait, wasn't that sign language for "Help?" She'd seen her niece do that before she could talk.

"Did you send me that message?" He nodded. "Is it true?" He nodded vigorously. She felt a chill go up her spine. She wasn't on that team, but they added new servers to the game all the time. It was seamless to the users - any user could play with any other user without worrying about what server they were on.

Their conversation was interrupted by a growing slashing sound. She looked up and saw a craft that almost looked like a water bug. Its floating pod legs picked their way over the waves effortlessly. She glanced back at the merman and saw his face morph into a look of pure hatred before he dove down deep. She considered following him, but he was gone before she could decide to do it. The vehicle was almost directly above her, so she toggled GM mode on and floated up to see what was happening.

"Dude, I think this quest is bugged - it's like the 10th time we've killed that mob."

"So what? As long as it keeps paying out, I'm gonna keep doing it."

"It's getting kinda silly at this point but... eh, XP is XP I guess"

Erin had a bad feeling about this. Their vessel was small, but still had a diving bell, and the two were about to climb in. Lined up on the side railing were some disturbing objects. Merman heads- all the same one she had just gotten acquainted to. She pulled up the quest log on one of the players.

Quest Log:

Hunt the Reaper - There is a dangerous creature infesting these waters. Bring back its head to the port authority for a reward!

She pulled it up in her terminal, only to find no entry in the quest database. A brief look in the supporting tables all led one direction:

System Generated Quest.

Sometimes the Superreal engine automatically made quests and assigned them to nearby players. They lacked a certain human touch, but they did add some surprise to the exploration of the world.

But, 10 times, giving the quest to the same players? A quest to kill this one specific person who had just managed to contact her via a very real support message? It begged some questions

It was like something in the Superreal Engine had decided that this one merman just needed to die. Not once, but over and over and over. These probably weren't even the only people who had the quest.

She accepted the quest into her own log, and saw it got worse - she now had a target marker. She could see it zigzagging in the depths below, unerringly pinned to a moving object. It was total overkill for a level 1 mob in this level 50 zone, and the rewards were disproportionately high.

Whoever was in that body, this wasn't a game to them. What was the purpose of this even? It was more like torture than play.

She didn't have time to contemplate it, since the diving bell was descending. Despite looking clunky, it was remarkably maneuverable and was shooting towards the target marker like a homing missile. It also had an array of claws and hook weapons mounted on the exterior, and it was already clear how effective they had been. It was easy enough for her to keep up with them, but she had no idea what else to do.

If she did anything to the players with her mod powers, it would be logged and investigated. She wasn't so sure she was ready for that. If this thing was for real, she wouldn't just be able to take it up the chain.

If it was real, someone higher up was hiding something big. If it wasn't real, she could still be fired just for violating the rules.

She did the only thing she could think of - she zipped ahead of the bell and deactivated her GM cloak, waving her arms at their viewport.

"Hey, Z - we've got boobs at 12'o clock"

"What? Oh, I see. Wonder what's up with that?"

She could still hear their chat through the water - the game just added a slight wobbly quality to it. They hadn't bothered to swap to a more private channel, so she didn't even need to snoop on them. She broadcast back the same way,

"Hey guys, I just wanted to warn you that there's a bugged quest around here. The devs are looking into it, but you may want to watch it out doesn't get tagged as an exploit."

"Aww, hell no man. I told you we should have called it a while ago- I can't have another strike!"

"Hey, forget that - who even is she to tell us what to do?"

Erin really didn't want to have to escalate this, so she just toggled her cloak back on and hoped for the best.

"Man, she just straight up disappeared. Think she was a GM? Had to be."

"You wish, dude."

"So..."

"Yeah, yeah, I gotta log soon anyway. Let's just go back to port."

She let out a long breath as the diving bell started retracting.

QUERY: DebugInfo(CURRENT_TARGET.ID)

{

RaceName: Merfolk

RaceId: Y3246am

Languages: [ Merean ]

AccessabilityOptions: [ ASL ]

More...

}

She quickly screenshotted the whole object, hoping something in it would help. There was a tiny chance someone could backtrack that query to her, but they would have to scan all of the targeting log entries - and there were thousands generated a minute. Likewise, an image of the object would be much harder to find on her machine by algorithm.

Accessibility options, huh? I think I can work with that. Pretty sure I have enough Mother-of-pearl for that sign language skill book.