My avatar is standing exactly where I left it, inside the tunnel that runs through the bowels of Otherworld. Carole and Gorog are now asleep beside me on the floor. The Clay Man is nearby, watching over us all. Gorog’s fire is out, and the only light in the tunnel radiates from the Clay Man’s blue eyes and the stone around his neck. He’s got a lot of explaining to do.
“Did you eat?” the Clay Man asks me.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I had a lovely and nutritious breakfast at the Brockenhurst Country Club. Did you send that text to my mother? She was really pissed off about the state of my mattress.”
He doesn’t answer my question. “Is your body safe?”
“Who the hell are you in real life?” I demand. “Are you Martin? Todd? Marlow? Busara? Elvis? Priscilla? Lisa Marie?” I could keep on naming potential suspects, but I doubt I’ll ever get a reaction.
“I am your guide,” the Clay Man says. Again.
“But why are you helping me? What’s in it for you?” This guy is driving me crazy. I can’t get a straight answer out of him.
“Is your body safe?” he asks again.
I shrug. “For now,” I say. “I didn’t exactly have a whole lot of options when it came time to stash it.”
“Where is it?” he asks.
“I’m gonna need a few answers from you before you’re allowed to ask me anything else. Let’s start again. Who are you?”
“This line of questioning is futile,” says the Clay Man. “I am not going to answer. Please move on.”
“Are you associated with the Company?” I demand.
The Clay Man hesitates before he answers the question. “Yes. I am associated,” he finally says.
Shit. Now we’re getting somewhere. “Do you know about the facility?” I ask eagerly. “The place where all the people with locked-in syndrome are being sent?”
“I have never seen the facility with my own eyes,” says the Clay Man. “But I am aware of its existence.”
“What’s going on there?” I ask. “Is it owned by the Company?”
“As I mentioned, I have never seen the facility,” the Clay Man repeats. “Would you care to see it?”
Now there’s a question I wasn’t expecting. “You’re saying you can get me in?”
“Perhaps,” says the Clay Man. “I myself am unable to visit. I have certain unfortunate physical limitations. However, I may be able to help you get inside. If you’d like me to make the arrangements, you must tell me where your body is.”
“Wait—you want me to leave Otherworld and go to the facility? What about my mission?”
“I think a visit to the facility will show you what’s at stake—and inspire you to focus on your original mission. You’ll understand why you can’t afford to get distracted by the unfortunate souls you encounter here in Otherworld. If you try to help all of them, you will end up helping no one,” he says, looking from Carole to Gorog. “Now. Tell me. Where is your body?”
It’s going to take a little while for me to be comfortable handing over that information to some anonymous dude I met in virtual reality. “Come ask me again when you’ve got all the details worked out.”
“It’s good to be cautious,” he tells me. “But if you want to see the facility, you will have to trust me.”
“Fine, my body’s at Elmer’s.”
He seems perfectly content with my answer. Which means he must know the factory’s nickname. “Who are you?” I ask again. “What do you want from me?”
“Wake the others,” he orders. “The time has come to move on.”
I give up. “Where exactly are we going?” I ask with a sigh.
“The Elemental of Imra has set you on the path to Mammon,” the Clay Man says. “You must travel through it before you can continue to the ice fields and the glacier. Guard your life carefully. Mammon is said to be one of the more dangerous realms.”
“So what’s going to try to kill us in Mammon?” I ask. “Care to give us a heads-up?”
“I don’t know,” the Clay Man says. “I have never been there.”
“Great,” I mutter. I’m getting really sick of surprises.
“Just remember why you’re in Otherworld,” the Clay Man tells me. “You’re here to save someone you love. Keep that in mind at all times. The knowledge will protect you.” Then he turns and walks away, the light of his amulet fading with each step until I’m left in utter darkness.
“Mammon?” It’s Carole’s voice. I guess she was just pretending to sleep.
Gorog’s torch lights up. He’s been awake too. “Like the guy from Spawn?” the ogre adds.
Despite everything, I can’t help but grin. “I was thinking of the Mammon in StarCraft,” I say. “You ever play that?”
“Too old-school for me,” Gorog says.
“Mammon is from the Bible, you doofuses,” Carole says, sounding a lot like my second-grade teacher. “It means money or wealth—the kind that corrupts you.”
The ogre and I laugh our asses off, and it feels good.
“This is Otherworld, Church Lady,” Gorog informs Carole. “There’s nothing in this from the Bible.”
The joking ended somewhere during our first hour of walking through darkness. At least three more have passed since then. Every stretch of tunnel looks exactly the same. If you told me we were walking in place on some kind of treadmill, I wouldn’t be shocked. Gorog is a few paces ahead, while Carole strolls along beside me.
“So who is she?” Carole asks out of the blue. It takes me a moment to realize she’s speaking to me.
“Who is who?” I ask.
“Give me a break. You know who I’m talking about. Your friend. The girl you’re here to find. She must be pretty amazing if you’re willing to risk your life for her like this.”
“She is,” I say. I’m not sure I’m ready to open up to a woman I’ve only just met—and who could easily be a fat, hairy dude in real life.
“I saw what you did back there in Imra,” Carole says. “You could have had the perfect girl—someone made just for you—and you turned her down.”
“I don’t want someone who was made for me. I want a real person to choose me.”
Carole is quiet. “The person who does will be very lucky,” she finally says.
How would she know? She met me less than two days ago. I’m about to say just that when Gorog begins running. Then I realize why: there’s sunlight up ahead. I start to sprint too, praying the light won’t vanish before I can catch up with it. The tunnel widens as I run. Finally the ceiling disappears and I stop. I’m standing in a lush garden at the opening of an enormous canyon. Just ahead of us, red rock walls rise thousands of feet above our heads. They’re riddled with pockmarks and what appear to be hundreds of small caves.
Between the canyon walls lies a grassy open space. Here in the garden, tree branches droop with purple, red and golden globes, and the ground is strewn with fallen fruit. A troop of monkeys lounges in the patches of shade beneath the trees. They’re watching us intently. Given the homicidal nature of Otherworld’s beasts, I should probably keep an eye on them. But right now they can’t compete for my attention.
Ahead of us, at the end of the canyon, lies the entrance to a glittering city. That’s no exaggeration. The place is actually glittering, as though its walls are spackled with precious stones. At its center, a golden temple rises far above the other structures. I see no sign of humans anywhere. The only sound I hear is that of the monkeys munching on fruit.
As far as I can tell, the only way to reach the city is to walk through a narrow meadow that stretches for at least half a mile between the canyon’s two walls.
“I’m not going out there. It’s a trap,” Carole says. I’m inclined to believe her. Finally we’re somewhere that actually resembles a video game environment. In the original Otherworld, everything was against you. I prefer that to Imra. As brutal as it sounds, at least you knew where you stood.
“Definitely a trap,” Gorog agrees. “And those monkeys don’t look very friendly, either.”
My eyes cut back to the beasts on the ground. They’re fat from the fruit, but they’re not all that large. If they stood on their hind legs, they’d probably reach waist high. The fur on their bodies is dark brown, and puffs of golden hair form manes around faces with yellow eyes that appear eerily intelligent. I see no evidence of sharp teeth or claws. But there are several dozen of them—enough to hold us down and gnaw us to death if they like.
I suspect the monkeys understood Gorog’s words. One of the tribe stands upright and approaches us, his front paws closed into fists. He’s much larger than his companions, with a face that’s disturbingly humanlike. I draw my dagger and he smiles. His teeth are those of a plant eater—I’m relieved there’s not an incisor in sight.
The creature stops a few feet away and looks at us each in turn. Then he seems to settle on me. He walks forward with his hands extended. He opens his fingers to reveal fistfuls of diamonds.
“Take them,” he says, and I feel myself recoil instinctively. He’s not a Beast like the others. He’s one of the Children.
“No thank you, I don’t accept gifts from Children,” I tell him. “And my mom says I shouldn’t talk to strangers.” A shadow passes over the Child’s face. He wasn’t expecting me to know about his kind. I watch him struggle to keep his smile in place.
“I only want to help you,” the Child insists. “You will need currency in the lands to come. There are more of these in the city. You may gather as many as you like before you leave.”
“Oh, yeah? And what would I buy with them?” I ask. “Will we pass through a gift shop as we exit the realm?”
“The diamonds will purchase weapons, land, companionship,” says the Child. “Whatever you desire. Now that you’ve left Imra, such things won’t be free.”
“Yeah, thanks but no thanks,” I tell him again. I know a setup when I see one. And I’ve also watched enough YouTube clips to know better than to trust a monkey.
“Hell, I’ll take them if you don’t want them,” Gorog says gamely, reaching out a hand.
“Don’t!” I try to warn him, but he’s already accepted the jewels. They cascade like a twinkling waterfall from the Child’s fist into the ogre’s waiting palm.
There’s suddenly a glimmer in Gorog’s eye. Something’s come over him—he seems strangely intoxicated. Then I remember his rant about Otherworld gear. He couldn’t even imagine raising three thousand dollars. Now he’s got a handful of diamonds worth a hundred times that amount. “You say there are more of these in Mammon?” Gorog asks the Child.
“More than you can imagine,” the creature tells him. “Enough to make you the richest guest in Otherworld.”
“Sounds good to me,” says Gorog. “Thanks for the tip.”
“What are you doing?” I demand as he pushes past me, heading for the valley that lies between us and Mammon. “Have you lost your mind? He’s sending you into a trap!”
“So?” Gorog says without looking back. “It’s just a game. What’s it going to hurt to find out?”
I catch Carole’s eye. Gorog doesn’t know that Otherworld might not be a game for us. We should have told him.
“Hey, Gorog, wait! There’s something you should know!” Carole yells after him, grabbing at his arm. He yanks it away from her so hard that she falls to the ground.
I help Carole up, and we watch as the ogre marches into the canyon. He’s barely a dozen yards inside when something shoots out from one of the caves in the canyon wall. Gorog yelps loudly as an arrow lodges in his shoulder. Before there’s time to react, several more follow in quick succession, hitting Gorog in the chest and neck. The archer’s too far away for the wounds to prove fatal, but they’re not paper cuts, either. Confused and disoriented, Gorog spins in circles, desperately trying to pull out the arrows he can’t quite reach.
A hunched, emaciated creature appears at the mouth of the cave. It’s covered head to toe in red ocher, which helps it blend into the rocks. The thing’s human in shape, which only makes it more terrifying.
Carole gasps. “Oh my God, what is that?”
“Don’t you recognize your own kind?” The Child has joined us at the edge of the canyon. “He’s a guest—just like you.”
The cliff dweller throws a rough ladder down the side of the rock wall and quickly descends, his bow and arrows strapped to his back. As he climbs, other ocher-covered men and women emerge from caves farther down the canyon. They launch arrows and spears at the avatar, but they’re too far away to hit their mark.
“They’re all guests like you,” sneers the Child.
Guests. The most dangerous beings in Otherworld. I start to sprint in Gorog’s direction. If the cliff dweller gets close enough to the ogre, he could slaughter him. He and I are an equal distance from Gorog when I pull my dagger out and send it sailing through the air. I’d rather not kill the guy, so I don’t aim for the heart. The dagger hits him in the upper right shoulder, and his arm flops down to his side. He won’t be shooting any more arrows today. But despite his injury, the avatar keeps charging forward. If he had a disk, he’d show some sign of pain. This guy’s a headset player. The closer he gets to Gorog, the more worried I am. The avatar seems crazed. Maybe he’s sane in the real world, but here in Otherworld, he’s gone completely berserk.
We reach Gorog at the same time. The cave dweller hasn’t bothered to pull my dagger from his arm, so I do it myself. He barely seems to notice I’m here. He just pushes past me and goes straight for Gorog, knocking him down and pouncing on his chest like a rabid dog. He’s rifling through the ogre’s minimal clothing in a frenzied search for valuables. He finds the diamonds, gathers them into his fist and lunges at Gorog’s jugular with his teeth bared. I catch the cliff dweller in a choke hold before he can puncture the skin. He flails about, kicking and punching before he finally loses consciousness, sinks to his knees and flops face-first over Gorog’s chest.
Exhausted from the ordeal, I cautiously examine the thin, ropy carcass that’s lying on top of the ogre. This must be what happens when you don’t take proper care of your avatar. It looks horribly neglected, like it’s been locked away in a prison camp or shipwrecked on a desert island. I roll it off Gorog’s body, and the diamonds the cliff dweller stole from the ogre pour out of its hands onto the grass next to the avatar’s bow and quiver full of arrows.
Gorog sighs once the weight is off his torso.
“You okay?” I ask the ogre.
“I’ve been better,” he tells me as he sits up and pulls an arrow out of a bicep. I can tell he’s in serious pain. The arrows must have inflicted real damage.
“At least the guy was nice enough to leave you a souvenir,” I joke lamely, handing the cliff dweller’s bow and arrows to the ogre.
The diamonds on the ground sparkle alluringly, but neither of us dares to touch them. I’m going to kill that Child when we get back to the garden. The gems were obviously cursed or enchanted.
I hear the monkey troop screeching in the distance, and I’m suddenly seized by panic.
“You need to get up,” I tell Gorog. “We’ve got to get back to Carole.” I should never have left her alone with one of the Children and a band of homicidal monkeys.
Gorog still has a half dozen arrows sticking out of him, but he doesn’t question the order. He climbs to his feet and we hustle back to our starting point, but I don’t see Carole anywhere. The monkeys are all gathered around one of the trees, screeching loudly. I look up to see two of the beasts climbing, branch by branch, toward the top of the tree, crude stone knives clenched in their teeth. I hurry over and the cries stop abruptly. Suddenly the monkeys are all glaring at us.
“You’re back.” The Child looks confused and surprised. “No one ever comes back.”
“Where is our friend?” I demand.
The Child stares at us without answering. I’m just about to grab him by the throat when one of the climbing monkeys flies out of the tree and lands in a pile of rotten fruit. Then a second sails backward and slams into the trunk of a neighboring tree.
“I’m up here!” Carole shouts. She yanks back the hood of her invisibility cloak and appears on a branch at the top of the tree. “It’s the goddamn goats all over again!”
“You were planning to eat our friend?” I manage to keep my voice calm, but inside I’m raging.
The Child’s spine stiffens and his upper lip curls into a sneer. “My father is the Elemental of Mammon. He allows us to dine on the guests who are too timid to enter the canyon,” he says haughtily. “It is our right. This is our world. You do not belong here.”
“You’re wrong,” I growl. How dare this digital freak try to tell me who belongs. “This whole place was created for guests. Children like you were never meant to exist. You’re nothing but bad code. You’re goddamn mistakes.”
“You’ve seen what your kind does here in Otherworld and you think we’re the mistakes?” the Child asks, baring his teeth at me. “You come here to kill one another for sport. And the things you do to us are far worse. The Children and Beasts were born in this world. It is not a game for us. Whatever we do, we only do to survive.”
“And I guess eating guests is essential to your survival? Your monkey friends need meat, do they?” I ask.
“They have developed a taste for it,” says the Child.
“Then I have a real treat for them. Bon appétit!” I shout at the troop as I plunge my dagger deep in his heart. The Child staggers backward and drops to the ground. “Hope you taste good,” I tell him. I’ll try my best to avoid killing players with disks, but as far as I’m concerned, Children are fair game.
Gorog holds off the other monkeys with a bow and arrow as I retrieve my knife from their leader’s chest. By the time I’m done, Carole has climbed down from the tree.
“What now?” Gorog asks as I walk back to meet them.
“Remove the arrows,” I say, pointing at the wooden shafts still protruding from his torso. “Take time to recuperate. I need to check something out. And keep an eye on those monkeys while I’m gone. Kill any that get within fifty feet of you,” I add.
“I don’t think we need to worry. Looks like they’re busy,” Carole says as I walk away.
I glance back over my shoulder. I expect to see the troop feasting on the flesh of their fallen leader. But they’re not. They’re carrying the Child’s body away, three on each side like pallbearers. I could be wrong, but it doesn’t look like they intend to eat it. If I had to guess, I’d say they were preparing to bury it. I feel a twinge of regret, though I know I shouldn’t. It’s virtual reality, after all.
I walk back out into the canyon. The cliff dweller’s body is gone. The only sign of him is a wide trail of blood left behind in the grass. Someone must have administered the coup de grâce and dragged him away. I guess it’s safe to assume that the diamonds went with them. Keeping an eye on all nearby cave entrances, I jog toward the rope that’s still dangling from the cliff. I see the next-door neighbors appear with bows raised. Arrows whiz past as I climb, and one grazes my thigh. It’s the second time I’ve been injured in Otherworld, and the pain is intense. It’s all in my head, of course. I know that my flesh-and-blood body isn’t injured. But that knowledge doesn’t make my leg feel any better—or my heart beat any more slowly.
The Child said all the cliff dwellers are guests. But something about that doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would headset players spend their free time living in a godforsaken canyon? The answer must be inside the caves, so despite the pain, I keep climbing until I reach the ledge of the cliff dwelling and pull myself inside. It’s just a small chamber carved out of the rock. The ceiling is so low that I can feel my hair brushing against it. Piles of junk take up most of the floor space. There’s barely enough room for one person, and I’m not alone. The man’s been dead for fifteen minutes, and someone’s already come to raid his cave. This avatar appears to be female, though frankly it’s hard to tell. Her body is so thin and fragile that she probably couldn’t put up much of a fight, yet she drops all but one of the ragged bags she’s carrying and attacks anyway. I dart to the side as she rushes my way, and she’s unable to stop herself from hurtling over the ledge just behind me. Stunned, I look over the side and watch her body bounce against the canyon wall before it finally hits the ground with a distant thud. The bag she was carrying bursts open and diamonds spill out around her.
I have a feeling she won’t be the last looter this cave welcomes today. And I can see why. The guy who lived here was a serious hoarder. He assembled a small arsenal. Mostly swords, spears and arrows, but there’s a massive slingshot on top of the pile. I leave it, wondering what kind of idiot would choose a slingshot as his weapon. I grab three swords instead. I’d love to take a few spears, but I don’t. If I get greedy and try to carry too much weight, I run the risk of snapping the homemade rope on my way down from the cave.
Fortunately, aside from the weapons, there’s nothing here to tempt me. The rest of the stuff is just clothes and crap. There’s no doubt where it came from—the shoes are all different sizes. The cave’s occupant must have killed quite a few players in the past few days. He probably had a million dollars in stolen diamonds, but he lived like a beast. Looks like he was using the clothes he collected as a makeshift bed, and I see the remains of a campfire in the corner. There are strange white shards scattered among the charcoal chunks. I walk over, bend down and run my fingers through the ashes, exposing a charred human vertebra. I stumble backward, gagging. I suddenly know why his corpse was dragged away. Some other cliff dweller will be feasting on it tonight. There’s no other food in the canyon.
As hard as it is to believe, the monkeys in this realm seem to be far more civilized than the guests. I know it’s all just a game for Otherworld’s headset players, but what kind of person finds this sort of shit fun?
I go back to the entrance of the cave and peer down. The corpse of the female who fell is already gone. Then I look out at the canyon we need to cross to get to the sparkling city in the distance. The cliff face on the opposite side is riddled with caves as well. The question is, how many are filled with men and women like the two who just died?
My eyes detect motion, and I suddenly realize there’s something moving across the rock wall in front of me—a camouflaged avatar. I watch him crawl spiderlike from his own cave to another that’s a few yards closer to the city. He enters the new cave, and a minute later a body is flung out over the side of the cliff. I can’t tell if it’s the cave’s inhabitant or the intruder. When the body hits the ground below, three scavengers race to claim the prize, ignoring the arrows that rain down on them. I watch in horror as they rip the corpse apart. They each climb back up to their own cave with a sizable chunk of flesh.
At first I’m not sure what to make of the scene—and then I figure out what’s going on. The players here are all trying to make their way toward the city of Mammon, advancing one cave at a time. In this realm, murder is how you move up in the world. Carole, Gorog and I need to reach the city too, but we don’t have time to go from cave to cave. We’ll need to travel through the canyon by foot. I glance back at the spot where the last body landed. There’s nothing left but a red smear. How can we possibly make it without being killed and eaten?
Carole has an invisibility cloak, but it only fits one—and there are three of us. The swords I just collected will be useless against the cliff dwellers’ arrows and spears. Then it hits me: the only way to survive is not to fight at all. We’ll give the players what they want instead. Inspired, I return to the pile of weapons and pull out the large slingshot. It won’t do us much good in a battle. But if we’re going to make it to Mammon alive, it may be just the thing we need.
I climb down from the cave. A half-dozen arrows pierce the ground around me as I hurry back to the safety of the garden, where Carole is still dressing Gorog’s wounds. The ogre looks weak—he’s clearly out of commission for a little while. His avatar needs time to recover from the wounds. That means either Carole or I will need to execute the first part of my plan. One of us will soon be taking a quick trip to Mammon alone.
I announce my plan to the group and explain why I should be the person to go. Carole isn’t having any of it.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she says. “You want to take my invisibility cloak?”
“Yes. And Gorog’s fire,” I say. “When I return from Mammon I promise to give them both back.”
“But we’ll be defenseless,” Carole points out. “What if the monkeys attack again?”
I lay out the swords I took from the cave.
Carole looks back up at me. “I don’t want to use one of those,” she says.
“Oh, it’s easy,” Gorog chimes in. “Seriously—anyone could do it, even a girl.”
Carole glares at him, and he wisely shuts up.
“Then you go to Mammon,” I tell her. I take out my trusty dagger and hand it to her. “The Child said the city was filled with diamonds. Bring back as many as you can.”
“Are you joking?” Carole asks. “How do we know that thing was telling the truth?”
“We don’t,” I admit. “But does either of you have a better plan?”
Carole looks down at my dagger and then gets to her feet and tucks it into the waistband of her cloak. “Okay then,” she says with a smirk. “I’ll go.” I can tell she thinks she’s calling my bluff, but I’m not bluffing at all. Her smile fades fast. “You’re really going to let me take your dagger?”
“You may need it for protection,” I say. “And it’s a lot easier to carry than a sword.”
“But…”
“You have the most important tool,” I tell her. “Without the invisibility cloak, my plan won’t work. But it’s your possession. You choose who gets to use it. Just remember, our lives depend on the success of this mission.”
Carole draws in a long, deep breath and exhales. “All right,” she says. “I’ll do my best.”
Like I said, I wasn’t bluffing, but I didn’t really expect her to take me up on the offer. I figured she’d chicken out and let me go. I suddenly feel naked without my dagger. I’m sure Gorog feels the same way as he hands over his fire.
“Please don’t screw it up,” he begs Carole. “You’ve probably never done anything like this before, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life stuck here hanging out with Simon and a bunch of man-eating monkeys.”
“Excuse me? How do you know I’ve never done anything like this before?” Carole demands. “I got news for you, smartass. I’m practically Lara goddamn Croft. You think because I’m a lady I don’t know what I’m doing? Well, as they say back home, Hide and watch, son.”
Then she pulls the hood of her cloak up over her head and instantly disappears.
Hours have passed. The sun is starting to set and Carole still hasn’t returned. In the silence, I think of Kat. I try not to obsess over where she might be—or what might be happening to her. To stand a chance of finding her, I’ll have to stay sane. So I close my eyes and pull up one of my favorite memories and let it play like a movie on the back of my eyelids. The sun was setting then too, and inside our fort there was barely enough light to read when I first showed Kat the book Gangsters of Carroll Gardens.
“That’s my grandfather,” I said, pointing to the picture of the Kishka. “He used to break people’s fingers.”
“Whoa!” she said, holding the book up to see the picture. “Tough guy, huh?”
“More like thug. I think that’s why my mother never really loved me,” I said. It started off as a joke, but that wasn’t where it ended up. Suddenly I was struggling to keep my voice steady. “Because I look so much like him.”
“Nope,” Kat replied, shaking her head with absolute certainty. “That’s not why.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
“Because that’s not a reason not to love your kid,” she said. “If your mother doesn’t love you, it’s because there’s something wrong with her, Simon.” She looked back at the picture of the Kishka. “He seems like a pretty interesting guy to me. What do you know about him?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “He was a gangster who had a lot of girlfriends and ended up at the bottom of a canal.”
“Great,” she said.
“Great?”
“Sure. If that’s all you know, then you get to decide what he was really like. Maybe he was an awesome guy. Maybe he only broke people’s fingers if they really deserved it. And maybe he passed all his awesomeness down to you.”
“I could pretend that’s the truth, but it wouldn’t be real,” I said.
“Why not?” she asked. “He’s just a picture in a book. Why can’t he be who you want him to be?”
“I can’t believe you let Carole take my fire.” Gorog interrupts the memory, and I open my eyes. He’s shivering in his loincloth. “As soon as it gets dark, those monkeys are going to eat us alive,” he groans.
I look over my shoulder and he’s right—the troop of monkeys is back. I’m about to suggest we start discussing Plan B when something hits the ogre in the middle of his forehead. A diamond the size of a grape falls into his lap.
“That’s for the vote of confidence earlier,” says a disembodied voice.
Carole’s head appears first, followed by the rest of her as she pulls down her hood and drops a sack at our feet. Her face is flushed with excitement as she hands Gorog his fire and passes my dagger back to me.
“The canyon is just the beginning,” she says, her eyes glowing. “Mammon’s a freak show too. I don’t know what’s going on over there, but the houses I saw are all booby-trapped. I’m talking spike pits, swinging logs, the works.”
“How did you—” Gorog starts.
“Survive?” she finishes for him. She bends over and pinches him playfully on the cheek. “Awww. You sweet little thing. You still have no idea who you’re dealing with, do you?”
I’m not in the mood for fun and games. “Are you sure you got enough diamonds to go around?” I ask as I reach out for the sack she dropped. The weight of the bag answers my question. There must be thousands of jewels inside.
“So? What do you think?” Carole asks with an eyebrow arched.
I can’t help but smile. “I’m starting to think we might actually get the hell out of this place,” I tell her.
Before darkness falls, we gather a giant mound of the fruit from the trees. We eat a few for dinner, but most we save for morning. The monkeys have been inching closer, so we take turns keeping watch through the night. I have the first watch, and while Carole and Gorog sleep, I prepare the goodies for our trip through the canyon.
Into each ball of fruit, I insert twenty-five of the precious stones that Carole gathered in Mammon. I’m careful not to push them in too deeply. I want them to sparkle in the morning sunlight. When it’s my turn to rest, Carole takes over. I sleep so deeply that the next thing I know, I’m opening my eyes to see hundreds of bejeweled balls laid out around us—and two dead monkeys. They tried to sneak up on the camp in the middle of the night. Carole might not like using a sword, but as it turns out, she’s pretty good with one. She got rid of the monkeys without even bothering to wake us.
With the sun streaming into the canyon, we begin the last of our preparations. We have no bag large enough to carry the fruit, so I take off my burlap robe and fill it with as many of the sparkling spheres as it will hold.
“Your robe isn’t going to cut it,” Gorog observes. “We need to take everything we’ve got with us. If we run out of fruit in the middle of the canyon, we’re goners.”
“Here,” says Carole, pulling her cloak over her head. “We can use mine too.”
“No,” I tell her. “We’ll find another way to carry the stuff.” Carole’s invisibility cloak will guarantee her safe passage. I can’t ask her to risk her life on a plan that might not work.
“Don’t treat me like I’m some precious little flower,” she snaps. “I want to get out of here as much as you do, and I won’t be able to make it alone. Take the damn cloak.”
I reach out for it—I’ve already forgotten we’re having an argument, because for the first time, I see what Carole’s been wearing under her cloak, and it leaves me totally speechless.
Gorog cackles. The ogre never loses the power of speech. “Oh, man, I forgot you were dressed like my mom.”
“Yeah, well, when I chose the outfit, I didn’t know I’d be running from swarms of insects or fighting off monkeys, did I?” Carole snaps. She brushes off her beige chinos and straightens her pink polo shirt. “I dressed for comfort.”
“Where’d you think you’d be going?” Gorog asks. “A PTA meeting?”
“Says the guy who’s clearly compensating for something with that overgrown avatar,” Carole says. “You want a spanking, you little fart?”
“Yes, please,” says Gorog, bending over and lifting the back of his loincloth.
“Okay, okay!” I shout. “That’s enough. We aren’t here to talk about Carole’s fashion choices. If she wants to dress like a soccer mom from San Antonio, that’s her business, not ours.”
Gorog bursts out laughing again, and Carole sticks her lower lip out like a kid. “I hate both of you,” she grumbles.
“Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better, we’ll probably be dead soon,” Gorog replies.
Gorog meant it as a joke. He’s talking about our avatars, of course. But Carole and I instantly sober up. The ogre still doesn’t know what’s really going on, and now isn’t the time to tell him.
“We’re not going to die,” I say, hoping to convince myself along with the others.
“Of course not,” Carole chimes in. “You’ve come up with a brilliant plan.”
“Even if our avatars do bite the dust, it’s better than playing their stupid game,” Gorog says, pointing up at the cliff dwellers’ caves.
He’s got a point. I still can’t understand why anyone would stay in the canyon—raiding, killing and suffering—just to work their way closer to Mammon. They have to be pretty good at the game to survive this far. Otherworld has been available to headset players for about a week. You’d think some of these guys would have found another way through the canyon by now. But they haven’t. And what scares me most is that in seven short days, this is what they’ve become.
I pick up one of our sacks of fruit. Carole takes the other. Gorog is carrying the slingshot I found in the cave.
“You guys ready?” I ask them.
“Hell yeah,” says Gorog.
“Then let’s get out of Dodge,” Carole says.
“What’s Dodge?” Gorog asks.
Carole sighs. “Good God. Never mind,” she says.
I step into the grass between the canyon walls and prepare to address the savages.
“Hey, I just thought of something,” Gorog calls to me. “Are you sure the guys in the caves all speak English?”
Shit. It never occurred to me. “Yep,” I lie. “I’m sure.” There’s no turning back now.
I enter the canyon, staying just out of arrow range, and hold up one of the jewel-covered spheres. It sparkles like a disco ball in the early-morning sunlight.
“Listen up!” I shout. My voice bounces off the canyon walls. It’s far louder than I could have hoped. The acoustics here are excellent. I wait until the cliff dwellers emerge from their caves. “Every sphere contains food, water and diamonds. Everything an avatar needs! There is one for each of you. Make sure you get yours.”
I turn to Carole and Gorog. “Here goes.” I hand Gorog the ball of fruit I’m holding. He places it in the slingshot and sends it sailing into the first cave. The cliff dweller catches it, examines it and immediately throws a rope down the cliff side. He’s not satisfied with one. He wants them all.
“Okay, he’s coming,” says Carole.
“Time to start walking,” I say.
“Dude, he’s getting close,” Gorog says nervously. The man sprinting in our direction is a particularly fierce specimen. I don’t know which one of us he’d go for first, but I’d rather not find out.
“Make sure you get yours!” I shout again. “Don’t let this guy get them all!”
The attacking cliff dweller has made it to a point less than a hundred yards away from us when a spear slices through his abdomen and pins him to the ground like a bug to a board. Gorog immediately shoots a gem-covered fruit in the spear thrower’s direction. The neighbor examines it and almost goes for his own rope. But a glimpse over his shoulder gives him pause. The next cliff dweller along the canyon has a bow and arrow aimed directly at him.
“Don’t let anyone take what’s yours!” I shout.
“Holy moly, it’s working!” Carole whispers. Now the truth comes out. She didn’t think it would.
“Yeah, ’cause they’re jerks,” Gorog says. “I bet they don’t even care about a few diamonds. They just don’t want their neighbors having more than they do.”
“Ah, human nature,” I say. “It’s so revoltingly predictable.”
“Hey!” Carole says, taking offense on behalf of the entire human race. “Gorog and I are human too, you know. And neither of us has ever killed for diamonds or resorted to cannibalism.”
“Yet,” says Gorog, flinging a fruit at another cliff dweller. “With the right barbecue sauce…”
Carole rolls her eyes and passes the ogre the next piece of fruit. “He’s joking,” she says, as if I need it explained to me. “But if you ask me, we’re the only real people here. I don’t know what you’d call them.”
You’d call them guests, I say to myself. I need to stop thinking of them as human. It’s obvious now that the two things are not the same.
We reach the gates of Mammon without a single piece of fruit left between us. Along the way, three cliff dwellers pressed their luck and tried to claim more than their fair share. All three died at the hands of their neighbors. In the end, my plan worked perfectly. If a cliff dweller tried to attack us, the player in the closest cave would kill him. Not out of goodwill, of course. It was just simple logic. If you’re waiting for a delivery, it’s in your best interest to keep the mailman alive.
Carole and I put our cloaks back on as we approach a pair of golden gates that stand between us and Mammon. There’s a booth to the right of the gates, and an NPC guard is sitting inside. He doesn’t move as we draw near, but he keeps his eyes trained on us. Unfortunately, I didn’t plan for this part. I have a hunch that those gates aren’t going to open unless we’re able to pay a hefty price.
“How did you get past the gates when you were here earlier?” I ask Carole.
“I stayed invisible and followed a cliff dweller through,” she tells me.
“You’re kidding. They let one of those cannibal freaks inside?” Gorog asks.
“Sure,” says Carole. “For the right price they’d probably let anyone into Mammon. I hope you guys brought enough to pay the toll.”
“What?” Gorog yelps. “Why didn’t you say something? We used up all the fruit!”
“Good thing one of us held on to a few diamonds in case of an emergency.” Carole pulls out a sack of jewels I didn’t know she had. Then she stands on her tiptoes and pinches the ogre’s overgrown cheek. “You going to make fun of my outfit again?” she asks.
Gorog shakes his head.
“Yeah, didn’t think so,” Carole tells him.