Peter says: Hey!

  Earl says: Hey Peter.

  Peter says: What’s wrong?

  Earl says: It’s been a hell of a day, Pete.

  Peter says: Hop into voice chat and tell me all about it.

  We form a group, join voice chat, and I recount my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. He listens, asks questions, and responds appropriately to my ill fortune. I do not mention my new pants.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I found out?” Peter asks after I’ve finished.

  “About?” I ask

  “I told my mom about what happened in the fae dungeon, and I looked into Frankie for you. where should I start?” He waits for my response.

  “Frankie. Tell me.” I’m at the edge of my non-existent seat.

  “So she’s married to the mom of one of my classmates, which was super weird to find out. What a coincidence, right? Her last name is Walton now. Their daughter is in half of my classes.” He says, with a casual tone. He doesn’t know that he just shattered my whole world.

  “When did they get married?” I ask, breathing outside of voice chat to keep my rising duress private.

  “Fire years ago, after her wife’s husband died. He died seven years ago in a car wreck. His name was Luke Walton.”

  ~

  “Luke, do you know where the hair ties are?” Trinee asks me

  “In the bathroom aren't they?” I say from the couch, messing around on my phone while I wait for her to get our daughter ready.

  “Honey I’m in the bathroom. Would you mind looking?” She peeks out from behind the door. I walk over and lift the hair ties from where I knew they'd be in the bathroom, above and behind her head. “No, the kind that don't melt from the oil we put in Millie’s hair.”

  “Oh” I say sheepishly. I go looking around the house, running into Frankie, hair ties in hand. “Thanks Frank”

  “No problemo.” she says, straightening my tie. “I know you think Millie’s elementary school graduation is a waste of time, but try to pretend for her, ok?”

  “I don’t think it’s a waste of time” I insist, taking the hair ties back to my wife. “You know how I feel about social events.”

  “Too many people, too many germs, too much traffic, too much chaos…” she starts listing off every complaint I’ve ever had.

  “Yes.” I freely admit. “You’re lucky they let us take another plus one, otherwise you’d never get a chance to show off your suit.”

  “I’m the plus one? I thought it was you!” She and Millie laugh, getting a smile from Trinee, and a reluctant grin with a head shake from me.

  ~

  “She’s really smart, like, really really smart.” Peter finishes whatever he’d been saying. I keep my voice out of the chat while I sob loudly on the dungeon floor. I’ve been dead for seven years. My best friend married my wife, a widow of two years. My little girl, who was nine years old, is now sixteen. She's two years from having spent half of her life without me. She’s two years from adulthood. How am I in this damned game? Why? The Monitor gave its shitty, half-assed explanation. Sure, my consciousness was a commodity or whatever. That doesn't explain anything. It’s not that simple.

  I have memories, my memories! Not recreations! My fucking facebook profile can’t replicate those! Googling Big breasts ebony incognito does not build a life with my wife, it does not make a child with her! Everything I ever did online does not give someone the power to make these memories. They are real. THEY ARE REAL! I AM REAL!

  “I know you’re real, Earl. Are you doing alright? I know you’ve had a hard day…” Peter says, trailing off.

  “Sorry, inside thought.” I tell him. I don’t know how much of that spread into voice chat, not much I hope. I didn’t even realize I was saying any of it aloud.

  “It’s ok. Do you want to know what my mom said?” Peter attempts to change the subject.

  “Sure” I say without lifting my head.

  “She told me I can’t tell anyone what she said, but you were there, so I think it makes sense for you to know too.” he pauses, waiting for me to tell him what to do one way or the other. I do not. “So, it turns out the rumor was true.” as Peter picks up talking, I hear a ghastly snap from behind me. I turn, watching in horror as the boss's lifeless head rotates fully to look at me behind her, eyes glowing red. Shit.

  “Peter stop.” I say, eyes locked with the newly possessed elf. “Your mom said you shouldn’t tell anyone and that means me too.”

  “What? Why?” he asked, confused.

  “Ask your father how much legal trouble your mother could get in if the company found out what she told you. Everything we say in-game is monitored.” I emphasise the last word, hoping that he picks up on my subtext.. “I bet you I’m being monitored right now.”

  “Ok.” He says, and nothing else for a while. I wait in silence, meeting the Monitor's gaze, waiting for it to make a move. Eventually it leaves, the light dimming. I sigh in relief.

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to be a buzzkill.” I tell him

  “No you’re right, my dad would give me an earful, you’re right.” I nod, listening to his words. Very mature of him. “Anyways… You said you don’t have armor anymore. And you picked up blacksmithing. Let’s level that up and get you into some new duds.”

  “How? I can’t mine any ore without the peanut gallery swarming the node, and I can’t enter the city without an angry mob chasing me with torches and pitchforks.” I ask, moving away from the elf body.

  “Let me log onto my wizard.” He says, disbanding our group.

  Gandalfthegay has invited you to a group.

  “Really?” I ask as soon as we’re in voice chat.

  “It was really funny when I was twelve, ok?” he says defensively. “Give me a second to get to the dungeon entrance and be ready to meet me outside.”

  “Roger.” I say, making my way back to the archway. I practice swinging my staff while I wait, only getting a few moments of practice in before Peter tells me to jump out.

  “There he is! Get him!” says one of many gathered players, waiting outside for me. I don’t know exactly what he means by “get him”, because they can’t do anything to me with pvp turned off, but I admire their persistence. I was in the dungeon for hours while they waited outside for me to emerge.

  I look for Peter in the crowd, spotting his character name hovering over a tall human astride a white horse, wearing sequin pink robes and a cowboy hat that says Pink Pony Club across the front.

  Gandalfthegay, Friend of Halflings. level 90 Wizard

  “Really?” Peter and I say simultaneously, as he takes in my equally ridiculous outfit of modestly leaf and bucket helmet.

  “Your horse isn’t even pink.” I point out to him.

  “It’s Shadowfax!” he insists.

  “Shouldn't it be black? Like a shadow?” I cross my arms. Peter slaps his own face.

  “Just get in the portal.” he says, casting a spell that creates a portal between us. I do as he says, my vision changing to a loading screen of a homey cottage. I wonder where he’s taking us? After a moment, I have to crane my neck to fully take it in. Upon a small hill stands an enormous tower, rising above the clouds. “Welcome to my place!” Peter announces, opening his arms with a pink confetti flair.

  “Your place? Like, you own this tower?” I ask, looking at the glittery ground underneath him.

  “Yeah! They introduced player housing in the most recent expansion, and this is mine. Nobody can come here that I don’t personally invite.” he smiles. “And, it has all of the amenities you’d want in a city. Including a remote auction house, forge, and anvil!” in response to his statement, I blink. Then I blink a few more times.

  “Wow.” Is all I can manage. “Thank you, Peter.” I squeeze out of my dumbfoundedness.

  “No problem dude, that’s what friends are for. What's your blacksmithing level?” he asks while making his way into the tower.

  “One” I answer, following him.

  “But you have a few materials to work with” He points out.

  “Enough to make fourteen copper bars” I announce sadly.

  “Well, let’s check what the auction house has.” He steps across the entryway of his tower, pulling a book from the shelf. The entire first floor is a little library, with no discernible way to climb up the tower. The room shimmers, transforming a different floor of the tower, modeled after the Masstaoir auction house. Instead of auctioneer N.P.C.s, a book awaits my orders.

  Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

  “Cool” I compliment. “I don’t have a lot of gold, though. A little over one thousand.”

  “It’s a good thing somebody crashed the copper ore economy then, huh?” He smirks, jogging my memory. Those jerks listed hundreds of copper ore for next to nothing, just to spite me. Now it was going to bite them in the ass. I purchase every listing, well over eight hundred individual units of ore. Peter turns the page in his magic book, the room shifts around us, changing into a busy mailroom. No postal workers are present, the letters fly through the air of their own accord.

  “Who needs stairs right?” I ask him, smirking. I check my mail, retrieving the mountain of ore. I open my blacksmithing menu, ogling the ridiculous amount of recipes I now have the materials for. “I wonder if they undercut me on anything else. I was mining copper and tin by the time they cut me off.”

  “Can’t hurt to check.” He responds, flipping the page, and us, back to the auction house. I check, and to my gleeful surprise, those idiots listed tin ore, marble and granite rock, and no small amount of quartz. I buy it all, spending thirty gold on materials that should have cost me thousands otherwise. It’s a cut into my current savings, but maybe I can flip the excess later.

  “Blacksmithing floor, please!” I request. Peter obliges me, turning the page until the room turns into an oppressively hot smithy. Sweat immediately slides down my forehead. Peter casts a spell that gives me the Frost Shield buff, negating fire damage and effects. “Why do you play your rogue again?”

  “Because you can’t see the ground from the peak, you know? How am I supposed to experience the world with a fresh set of eyes if nothing is beyond my reach?” He looks at me. “What?”

  “You’re a smart kid, Peter.” I smile at him, expecting him to act like a typical teenager and refute any positivity from an adult. He does not, nodding instead. Arrogant little shit, I think sarcastically. I roll my eyes as I get to work on the forge.

  You’ve smelted Copper Ingot.

  Blacksmithing skill increased to 2.

  You’ve smelted Copper Ingot.

  Blacksmithing skill increased to 3.

  You’ve smelted Copper Ingot.

  Blacksmithing skill increased to 4.

  I smelt bars until I reach ten in blacksmithing, when it stops increasing my skill due to insufficient difficulty. I transition into crafting breastplates, equipping the first one I make.

  “I dig the whole, buff green poison ivy legs, medieval knight hulk torso thing you’ve got going on.” Peter negs me. I look up from my work to look him up and down, his outfit glaringly bright, like a pink disco ball, illuminated by the molten metal and fires around us. “It felt like a joke until it started to feel right, ok?” he says, defending himself. “Is that a problem?”

  “Nah.” I say, getting back to work.

  “That’s it? Nah?” He says, pulling me away from the forge. “Wasn’t being gay social suicide, then not, then outlawed when you were my age?”

  “More like when I was a little older than you, then when I was in my thirties.” I say, maintaining eye contact.

  “I thought you said you were thirty?” Peter asks, confusion twisting his face.

  “I recently found out I’m actually forty one.” I say, without averting my eyes. I didn't lie to him on purpose.

  “What? How is that something you find out?” He waits for me to respond, but I wait for him to remember instead. “Right. Brain damage.”

  “Something like that.” I say, turning to get back to work. “If my head was on even a little straight, I would have told you I was thirty four. But I couldn’t manage that much.”

  “I’m sorry.” He says, getting out of my way.

  “No, I’m sorry.” I turn back to him. “You’ve been nothing but kind to me, and I’ve been an asshole and a lunatic to you. Thank you, Peter.”

  “No big deal.” he says, shrugging and avoiding my eyes. I nod, satisfied he got the message, and finally, for real this time, get back to work.

  You’ve Crafted Bronze Boots.

  Blacksmithing increased to 38.

  You’ve Crafted Bronze gloves.

  Blacksmithing increased to 39.

  You’ve Crafted Bronze Shoulders.

  Blacksmithing increased to 40.

  I manage to put together a full set of armor and weapons for a level twenty character before I run out of recipes that will meaningfully progress my skill. I rest my hammer on the anvil, finding Peter smoke-eyed in the corner, occupying himself with the internet while he waits for me. “Hey, Peter”

  “What's up?” He asks, eyes returning to their shimmering pink, natural state.

  “I can’t make anything better with what I've got.” I tell him, showing off my mediocre plate armor. I look like a spartan that ate too much broccoli and turned green. Thinking about my skin color, something dawns on me. “Wait, aren't our species supposed to be enemies?”

  “That whole concept goes out the window during the second expansion.” He tells me. “Revolution, the first expansion, has the players dismantle the current structures in place, and replace them with something equitable for everyone.”

  “I vaguely remember you mentioning that, yes. So why am I getting into P.V.P. combat with exclusively humans?” I ask

  “You’re under level sixty so you’re still beholden to the base game rules. It’s a continuity thing, new players would be confused if every quest told them one thing but the rest of the game told them another. I can get around it because I’m over level seventy, and we’re friends.” He tells me. I nod, sort of understanding. “So what’s next?”

  “Iron” I tell him. He flips open his elevator book and moves us back to the auction house. Checking the price of iron ore and iron bars feels like a one-two punch to the gut. “Ten gold for one piece of ore? Twenty gold for a bar?”

  “That is a lot for someone at level forty two” Peter remarks, stroking his wizard beard. “Let’s do the math on exactly what it would take to get you to forty in blacksmithing and make a full set of level appropriate gear.”

  “It’s a shame neither of us are very good at math” I joke. Peter laughs. I tell him the recipes available to me and what they require, he looks listings up on the auction house and puts everything in a calculator.

  “This would have been so much easier with an A.I.. Were they really publicly available back in your day?” Peter asks, eyes still clouded over using the calculator app.

  “Back in my day being less than ten years ago, yeah, any ol’ jackass could ask an A.I. whatever meaningless question they wanted. I’m sure your history teachers have mentioned how that turned out.” I roll my eyes.

  “You burnt through ten years worth of fossil fuels in a single year, and the public lost access to trillions of gallons of fresh water.” He responds, as if I did it all personally. “At least they put a stop to it before it went full skynet”

  “Right” I say, noticing a bubble on the surface of the molten metal in the forge looks oddly familiar. Like the front of a red flashlight.

  “Looks like it comes to about a thousand gold.” Peter says, pulling out his book.

  “A thousand gold? That’s everything I have!” I cry, defeated. I guess this little endeavor is over. Before I notice that we’ve moved to the mailroom floor, Peter has opened a trade window with me, and filled it with all of the materials I need. “Really?”

  “Yeah, a thousand gold is pocket change to a max level character.” he says, marking that he’s ready to trade. I haven't offered anything in exchange, and he hasn’t asked.

  “Thank you.” I say, accepting the trade. His generosity has the gears in my head turning. “So at max level you can just, like, pay for a month of game time, no sweat?”

  “Oh no, five hundred thousand gold is still a lot of money. I could afford a month with what I have saved up, but then I couldn't cover my own repair bill.” He tells me.

  “Gotcha.” I say. Damn, there goes that idea. I couldn't ask him to give me his life savings. I still have twenty six days and four hours left, that will hopefully be enough time for me to win the loot lottery and sell whatever strange thing people will pay millions for. I move back to my spot between the forge and anvil once Peter has sent us back to the right floor. Ten levels in blacksmithing later, I’ve consumed all of the materials Peter gifted me, and equipped a full set of iron armor.

  Iron Breastplate - Uncommon Chest - Require Level 40 - Minimum Strength - Minimum Armor

  “If all of my gear says minimum strength, how am I supposed to know what's better?” I ask, comparing my bronze and iron armor.

  “Yeah, every time a new expansion comes out, the median moves, so a ton of armor stats get vague. For now just pay attention to the level requirements, followed by the rarity. A legendary, level ninety, maximum strength piece of equipment is the absolute best you can get ahold of. Common is the worst.” He stops, seeing my face twisting up in confusion. “It goes common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, unique.”

  “Unique?” I ask.

  “An item given to a player by mistake. One time, a player was accidentally given a shirt that instantly killed everything. They got banned for using it.” He informs me.

  “Understood. So my iron stuff is better than my bronze, because it requires ten levels higher to use it.” I watch Peter nod. “Now I’m finally ready to go out and face the world, it’s almost time for you to go.”

  “What? Oh, yeah, it is about that time. But no, it’s friday my dude. No curfew!” Peter throws his hands up in the air, pink sparks shooting out of his fingertips.

  “Hell yeah!” I give him a high-five. “Let’s get to it then!”

  Gandalfthegay has left your group.

  Peter has logged in.

  Peter says: Where are you?

  Earl says: Still in your tower.

  Peter says: Right, sorry. lol.

  Peter logs back into his wizard and portals me out of his tower. I end up outside of the labyrinth our quest was sending us to last night. “How do you portal around? Can you just go anywhere?”

  “It’s only certain locations, technically the labyrinth is the home city of the minotaur and cyclops, so I can open one there. It’s an intellect class thing.”

  “I don’t know all that much about classes” I say, watching Peter move towards me on the map.

  “So you saw when you reached level ten you had three options, plus the one you chose. Most everybody only gets the three, and they pick one based on what they plan on doing. Warriors lean towards strength, rogues towards agility, and wizards intellect. As you play, you can unlock new classes by meeting certain conditions. It usually doesn't happen as early as it did for you.” He pauses, either to take a breath, or to let me digest. “Any class can use any stat, mixing and matching is the second most common way to unlock a special class. Like, a warrior that dips into intellect can become a Spellsword, a warrior wizard mix that uses both melee weapons and spells. A rogue with intellect can become a Trickster, an illusion specialist.”

  “How many classes are there?” I ask

  “Nobody knows. You found the first new one I’ve heard of in a long time, but it happens.” Peter rides up on the same bright white horse, this time on his rogue character. “Ready?” I nod, and we ride together towards the quest marker.

  The Labyrinth discovered! Experience gained.

  We enter what to my eyes looks like a coliseum, but the notification and quest insist it’s a labyrinth. I won’t question it. As we walk through a long tunnel towards the interior, I finally see it. The floor of the coliseum, where a big sand pit full of gladiators would be, there is a labyrinth instead. The quest market isn’t down there, rather it’s in the solitary viewing box across from us in the stands. We make our way over, and find the N.P.C. we’re meant to meet here.

  King Emperor Mournthing. Level ??

  “Welcome,” They wheeze. The creature appears to be a two-headed Frankenstein minotaur and cyclops combination. The cyclops head speaks to us, though it seems blind, the minotaur head watches us, though it seems dead, lolling down on its chest. “to hell”

  “How can we help?” I ask, trying my utmost not to be completely horrified by their appearance.

  “You could kill me” The cyclops head weakly chuckles, the minotaur head coughs out a single, barked laugh. “Kidding. Though, it is kind of you to offer.”

  “What are you?” I can’t help but to ask. Peter elbows me in the side, roughly.

  “Dude.” He hisses.

  “I,” the cyclops head begins “am the result of centuries of study by a mage, whom it would be generous to call mad, and accurate to call completely, utterly, totally, batshit insane.” The arm on the minotaur's side grasps their throne roughly, cracking the marble armrest. “The Mad Mage, they called him, those who came to hunt him.”

  “Understatement…” the minotaur head tries to speak.

  “Yes” the cyclops head laughs, going into a coughing fit. His hand comes away bloody. “But you’re not here for a history lesson. You’re here to prove to the united peoples of the Labyrinth,” he pauses to take a deep breath. “That you are worthy allies for the days to come.”

  “How do we prove that?” Peter butts in, clearly knowing the correct dialogue to progress this quest forward.

  “Escape” The cyclops says, smiling. He reaches for a lever jutting out of the floor next to his throne. Peter crosses his arms over his chest like a mummy, a move that should have been enough warning for me to do the same. Instead, when the floor drops out from under us, I fall, limbs flailing.