Once again, my avatar is right where I left it—inside the cramped chamber in Gina’s house where Carole, Gorog and I were imprisoned while we awaited our fate. Only now the door’s open and I’m alone. If Carole and Gorog have been eaten, I’ll never forgive myself. The Clay Man sent me to the facility so I’d focus on my original mission. But after visiting the place where their bodies are stored, I feel even more responsible for the two of them. I need to get them to the exit. I need to find Kat. And then I need to figure out another way to take the Company down.
I step into the hall and see Gina smiling at me. Her lifeless avatar has faded to indicate it’s inactive. I guess the headset players’ avatars don’t disappear completely when they take a break from the game. This must have been where she left it when the plug was pulled on Everglades City. I’d love to beat her avatar to a bloody pulp, but instead, I walk away.
I retrace my steps through the house, passing several off-duty NPC guards who pay me no mind, and finally locate my friends in the only furnished room in Gina’s mansion. Gorog is fiddling with a tablet that must control the house’s decorating menu. The room’s décor keeps flipping from Medieval Fortress to French Chateau to Kountry Klassic.
Carole has a tablet too, and I can see the screen from over her shoulder. She’s studying a menu that allows users to custom-design NPC companions. “Hey, it says here that thirty NPCs come with this house,” she tells Gorog. “Each of them can be totally different, but Gina just made the same boring Ken doll thirty times. Can you believe it? What a waste! I figure I’ll make a few changes, if that’s cool with you. You got any requests?”
“Just make sure your new boyfriends are all wearing clothes,” Gorog grunts.
“We don’t have time for any of this,” I say, and suddenly their eyes are on me.
“You’re back!” Carole cries merrily, dropping the tablet and hopping up to greet me with a hug. She’s traded her chinos and polo shirt for a sleek black yoga outfit like Gina’s. On a table in front of her is a glorious feast. “You hungry?”
I am, damn it. I forgot to eat while I was back in the real world. And while Carole’s feast is amazing to behold, none of it’s going to do my real body much good.
“Oh, man, you’re not going to believe what happened,” Gorog tells me. “Gina came to get us and feed us to her friend. Then suddenly her avatar just goes totally still, like she’s been turned to stone or something, and her guards all wandered away.”
“Get up,” I tell him. “Both of you get ready. We’ve got to go.”
“What? Can it wait a little bit? Just for a few hours?” Gorog groans. “I really need a break. I’m still sore from those arrows, and Gina’s got a Jacuzzi upstairs.”
“No. We can’t wait.” Not another second.
Carole realizes there’s something going on. “What is it?” she asks. “What happened to you back in the real world?”
I open my mouth, but I can’t tell them. I can’t. What the hell would I say? Would I tell them that the world’s richest corporation has kidnapped their bodies? That they’re unwilling participants in an experiment that would make Dr. Death proud? That a single wrong move in Otherworld could kill us?
I can’t say any of that. So I say nothing at all.
Gorog and Carole look stunned by my silence. The horror must show on my face.
“That bad?” Carole asks. I nod in reply.
“Okay, then,” Gorog says softly. “Let’s go. You got any ideas about how we’re going to make it out of this city?”
“We need to get to the temple on the other side of Mammon and we’re less than halfway there,” Carole adds. “And if Gina was…well, Gina, can you imagine how bad the people farther up the ladder are going to be?”
“We’ll have plenty of weapons this time,” I point out. “Gina’s got hundreds of garbage bags full of everything we could possibly need.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Gorog says. “Someone’s always going to have more.”
“If we try to fight all of them, it will take forever to leave,” Carole adds.
They’re right. Fortunately everyone in this city shares a weakness. And I think I know just how to take advantage of it.
“Where are all Gina’s NPCs?” I ask. “I saw a few wandering around the house. Where are the rest of them?”
“Most of them are outside.” Gorog points toward the front lawn. “We kept making them leave because they were freaking us out. They all have this same weird blurry patch right here.” He points to a spot under his left ear. “It’s like a robot mole or something. But once you see it, you can’t stop seeing it.”
We’re struggling to stay alive, and the ogre’s talking about robot moles. There’s something seriously screwed up with him. “Find the NPCs that are still in the house and send them outside. Then gather the best weapons—take as many as you can fit under Carole’s invisibility cloak.”
“But I thought we just agreed that we can’t fight our way out,” Carole says.
“We won’t fight unless we have to,” I tell her. “Be ready to leave in thirty minutes.”
I was hoping to avoid any more killing, but my new plan leaves me no other choice. Before I do anything else, I’ll have to dispose of Gina’s avatar. I return to the hall and execute her from a distance by sinking a crossbow arrow through the center of her skull. Her avatar only flashes, but it counts as a kill. With her death at my hands, the house, its contents and Gina’s digital slaves all belong to me.
I head out to the lawn, where the thirty identical NPC clones are loitering.
“Visit every house in the city,” I order them. “Tell all the guests that the gates of this mansion will be opened in thirty minutes and all booby traps will be deactivated. Everything inside the mansion will be free for the taking. But only Otherworld guests will be allowed inside. Any NPCs they bring with them will be slaughtered on sight.”
The soldiers set off the second the words leave my mouth. There are no questions—no complaints or concerns. And I couldn’t care less if half of them never return from their mission. Having a robot army certainly has its advantages.
They’re excellent at their job, too. Word of our little giveaway spreads quickly, and soon the residents of Mammon are scuttling about like cockroaches on garbage day. For the most part, the mansions’ owners are attractive and elegantly attired. Standing outside the closed gates of Gina’s house, they resemble members of the Brockenhurst Country Club. If it weren’t for their icy eyes, you’d never guess they were killers.
Gorog and I are on the lawn, waiting for the fun to commence. Carole, loaded down with weapons, is invisible beside us. As our visitors arrive, they all peer through the gates, examining the ogre first before they move on to me. The gaze is always cold and clinical, and when they finish, they scrutinize their neighbors. Finally, risk assessed, the people of Mammon proceed to pick apart Gina’s mansion with their eyes. At least half of them have far more than Gina. There’s no need to resort to looting. But the cliff dwellers inside them all can’t resist.
“Why are you doing this?” a gentleman asks me, as if my motives are completely inscrutable. “Why give it away?”
“Because Gina’s a bitch,” I say.
He lets out a snort. “That’s true. But I hope you weren’t expecting to find many saints here in Mammon.”
“Saints?” I reply. “Please. I’d settle for someone who isn’t a cannibal.”
He snickers. “Oh? And who are you to judge? We all consume people on our way up the ladder. It’s only natural that some of us learn to like it.”
Gorog nudges me. “I think that might be the dude who was going to eat us,” he whispers.
If so, I should kill the guy. If this were a game, my dagger would already be sticking out of his throat. But if he’s the one with a taste for human flesh, he’s probably wearing a disk. If I kill him here, he dies for real. And I’m not ready to add murder to my résumé.
“I hope you meet something much bigger than you farther up the food chain,” I snarl back at him.
I open the mansion’s gates and step back while the looters flood in. As soon as they’re all inside, I take my friends and my robot army and forge deeper into Mammon. A battalion of NPCs guards every mansion we pass. No one in Mammon left their possessions unprotected. But we meet no resistance on our way to the temple that looks down on the city. The mansions’ owners are all back at Gina’s.
We walk until the road through Mammon ends at the base of a staircase composed of golden bricks, which make me think of The Wizard of Oz. Standing at the bottom, I count five long but manageable flights. Gorog’s bounding up the first set of stairs before I’m done ordering our NPCs to go home to Gina’s. He stops at the landing between the flights, looking around in confusion, as Carole and I begin our climb. As soon as we join him on the landing, I spot the problem: there are still five flights of stairs above us.
“What the—” Gorog says.
“Don’t stop,” I tell him.
We keep climbing, and new stairs keep appearing above us, as if we’re walking up a down escalator. We’re forced to take regular breaks to let Gorog catch his breath. Apparently ogres aren’t built to climb stairs. One by one, Carole dumps all the weapons she’s been lugging. None of our avatars has the strength left to carry any additional weight. Whenever we stop, my eyes immediately turn to the temple at the summit. It’s Roman in style—a simple rectangle set on a podium and surrounded by columns. Slowly, we begin to draw closer, and as we do, the columns supporting the pediment begin to take on human shape. They’re statues of men and women—all of them naked and all clearly struggling under the weight they’re bearing. Their backs are hunched and their muscles straining. Misery is literally etched on their faces.
After hours of climbing, I finally set foot on the top of the hill. Like those of the statues that loom above, my face is probably the image of agony. Gorog and Carole aren’t looking so hot, either. In fact, I’m seriously surprised that Gorog made it up here alive. While he wheezes and coughs, I look back over the City of Mammon. From up here, I can see the realm for exactly what it is—a fucked-up digital board game. You start way down in the canyon. Then you hop from square to square by hoarding, stealing and killing as often as you can. Everyone’s trying to reach the golden temple. But then what? What happens to players when they finally get to the top?
I guess it’s time to find out. Gorog’s no longer hacking up a lung, so I motion for him and Carole to follow me into the temple.
It’s dark inside, and plumes of perfumed smoke waft from marble incense burners. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, but as they do I realize we’re not alone. At the far end of the temple, a giant being sits atop a golden chair. There’s no doubt it’s the Elemental of Mammon. A golden toga conceals his lower half, but his doughy chest and massive stomach are bare. Blue-white flesh spills over the chair’s armrests and bulges through the openings beneath them. If he decided to stand up, the chair would probably need to be surgically removed from his ass. But somehow I doubt this guy ever needs to budge.
Five of what I can only guess are Children skulk about behind the Elemental’s chair, ready to do his bidding. Their size and overall appearance vary. They must have different mothers. But like their father, they’re all totally hairless, with skin the color of skim milk. Hideous creatures with hunched backs and gnarled limbs, the Children watch our every movement from the safety of their father’s side. They don’t dare come any closer. They seem to fear us even more than they hate us.
The Elemental’s gaze is lazy and his eyelids droop as if he’d love nothing more than a nice long nap.
“You have reached the temple,” he drones. I suppose he doesn’t feel the need to introduce himself. “You must go now. You do not belong in Mammon.”
It’s a little rude, but I’m not going to argue. My ogre friend, on the other hand, doesn’t seem satisfied.
“So what do we win?” Gorog asks.
“Win?” the Elemental asks through a yawn.
“Yeah—for making it through Mammon,” Gorog adds. “Has anyone ever done it before?”
“My realm offers guests a unique way of life,” the Elemental tells him. “It is far more than a game.”
“But we met a lady down there who said the whole point is to keep moving up until you reach the temple,” Gorog argues.
“The object is to keep moving up. Not to reach the temple,” the Elemental informs us. “There will always be more gold to collect. Larger houses to build. Richer neighbors to rob. Those who belong here with me understand that.”
Gorog seems hopelessly confused, but Carole is nodding, and I think I get it too. The people here are addicted to acquiring. But no matter how much they have, they’ll never have enough. That’s why they stay in Mammon.
“So you’re really going to let us leave?” Carole asks the Elemental.
He takes a moment to scratch his ample belly. “Certainly. Where do you think you belong?”
It’s not exactly the response I was anticipating. The Elemental of Imra didn’t give us much of a say in the matter. “We can choose where we go next?” I ask.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replies, his voice deep and rich. “The Creator designed Otherworld to be a place where every guest is able to be his or her true self. Whatever desires you may have, there’s an Otherworld realm where you may express them freely. Perhaps it’s something that would not be acceptable in your world. It makes no difference to us. So tell me what it is you desire most, and I will direct you to the realm that suits you best.”
I glance over at Carole and Gorog. They nod, silently letting me know that they’ll follow my lead. “Out in the wastelands there are ice fields that stretch for miles and miles. That’s where we’d like to go.”
Something I just said seems to have caught the attention of the Children. I see ears prick up. But their father yawns again as if performing his duties is an utter bore. “No. The ice fields are a liminal space. They are not within the boundaries of any of Otherworld’s realms,” he says. “I cannot send you there.”
“Could you send us to the realm that’s closest to them?” I ask. “There’s a glacier in the ice fields that we really need to reach.” The Elemental doesn’t respond. He’s bending to the side, letting one of the Children whisper in his ear. When he sits up straight again, he no longer seems bored.
“What business do you have at the glacier?” he demands. I think I may have misread him. He doesn’t sound quite so easygoing anymore.
“Someone’s waiting for me there,” I tell him. My heart skips a beat at the thought of Kat. “And these two just want to go home. Inside the glacier there’s a cave with an exit that leads back to our world.”
The most human-looking of the Children limps toward us. She’s a pale, sickly creature, with large, wide-set eyes that take up most of the space on her hairless head. Her sisters and brothers are far more hideous, but I’m still finding it hard to look at her. Something appears to be very wrong with both of her legs. Thick, oozing scars ring her shins. I’m guessing she got caught in a booby trap outside one of the mansions in Mammon.
My gaze passes over her brothers and sisters. They, too, show signs of injury—fresh wounds and scarred flesh. A couple of them appear to be missing limbs. Life in Mammon is dangerous for anyone without garbage bags full of weapons. No wonder the Children are holed up here in their father’s temple. It’s the only safe spot in the realm.
“Why do you need an exit?” the Child asks. “Guests may leave our world whenever they like.”
“Not us,” Gorog says, shaking his head.
“We’re not playing a game like most of them,” Carole tries to explain. “We’re stuck here, and we’re trying to get out.”
The Child glances up at her father and then back at us. “I don’t understand.”
“We shouldn’t be here,” I tell her. “The people who made this place—”
“People?” the Child interrupts.
“The Creator built Otherworld,” the Elemental booms.
“Right, right, of course,” I say, trying not to sound dismissive. “How could I forget?”
“The cave you describe—they say the Creator has taken refuge there,” says the Child.
What? Now I’m confused. Since when do Creators take refuge in caves? And what about the big red dude that already lives there? The one the Clay Man says I’m supposed to kill? None of it makes any sense, but I’m not going to quibble.
“Ummm, well then, good,” I say, doing my best to think on my feet. “I was meaning to have a word with him anyway.”
“You intend to speak to the Creator?” the Elemental asks, leaning forward as if to see me better. Multiple folds of flesh dangle from his outstretched chin.
“Yeah, I was going to try to talk some sense into him. I’ve met a lot of folks here who believe all the guests need to be sent home. They think Otherworld should belong to the Elementals, Children and Beasts.”
The Children begin whispering among themselves. The idea clearly excites them.
“No,” the Elemental announces. “Otherworld will never belong to us.”
The Children go silent as they register the betrayal. The stricken looks on their faces are horrible to behold.
“But, Father,” says the female who spoke earlier. “You’ve seen what the guests do to us. Dozens of your Children have died so far. We will not survive if they’re allowed to stay. They say there’s a war coming. The Creator must choose between the guests and his own creations.”
“Then he must choose the guests, and you must continue to suffer,” the Elemental tells his daughter. The words may be harsh, but he delivers them kindly.
“But, Father—”
“Without the guests, there is no reason for any of us to exist.” He looks down at me. “I cannot send you to the glacier. I will not allow you to speak with the Creator.”
I’ve come too far and seen too much to take no for an answer. The only person I love said she’d be waiting for me at the glacier. If she tries to fight the red guy on her own, she could die. My mission to save her will not be stopped by a toga-wearing Jabba the Hutt. Gritting my teeth, I drop down and reach for the dagger in my boot. Either the Elemental sends me where I need to go or I teach him the real meaning of suffering.
Carole must catch sight of the steel blade. “Simon, what in the hell are you doing?” she whispers.
It’s the last thing I hear before I’m no longer in Mammon.