Chapter 2: Sticks and Stones Break all the Bones

  I fell in a crackle of lightning, screaming as I snapped through branches and hurtled towards an alien earth. I struck the ground in a tangle of limbs, but there was almost no pain. A little red bar in my UI that had shown 47 shrank slightly and now showed 45.

  Music started after a moment, coming from nowhere and everywhere. A tribal drumming, interspersed with abstract hoots and the cries of half recognised animals. I scrambled to my feet looking about. What I had thought had been trees as I fell looked more like grasping fungal colonies, branching towards a sky that was just a little too green. It was swelteringly hot and the fungus filled the air with a scent like spoiled hamburger meat.

  Suddenly paranoid, I looked about. What had the voice said? That it had plucked us from our homes to fight on some sort of cosmic gameshow? I remembered the glimpse I’d had of the stadium, of those millions packing the stands singing a theme song. It made something in my gut burn like I’d swallowed a coal. Taking a deep breath, I gathered myself, waiting for a surge of medication that would sweep it all away. But it never came, and the anger I felt grew and grew until I absolutely fucking shook with it.

  A rustle in the undergrowth snapped me out of my spiral and I realised I was standing in the open, like a bloody fool, trapped on a world where my death meant another’s survival. Taking a few steps I picked up one of the thicker branches that my fall had snapped free and gave it an experimental swing. It was wet in my grasp and snapped like it was a rotten carrot. I let it fall to the ground.

  I thumbed my knuckles, at the scar that ran their length as a memory returned to me. My dad always said I had big emotions. When I was a child of perhaps three or four, and too young for an implant to help regulate my behaviour, I used to have these tantrums. Nobody knew why, and sometimes I broke things. Some kids were just like that, he said, and that’s ok. Without the implant, I wonder if I’d have grown out of them. I wondered whether even now I needed the drugs to keep me stable. Looking around at the alien world, at the too green sky and revolting fungal trees, I decided I really didn’t give a damn.

  The music dimmed as the voice returned.

  “Welcome, welcome to Wargames!” The background music changed subtly to sound like the jingle. “Wow, Isn’t this just so exciting?! Now I’m sure you’re just itching to get started, but first we have to get some formalities out of the way. You probably have a heap of questions, but let’s be real here, most of you are going to die super fast and watching you stand around listening to a voice in your head is really boring. So here’s how it’s going to work. You’ll learn the basics now, and then if you survive, I’ll give you an update about once per day where you will learn more about this fantastic game. Sound good? Great! Ok, here we go. Pay attention now!”

  As she spoke a list appeared on my hud so I could read along with her words.

  1. “You’re on an alien world. Yes really! How exciting is that!? And you’ve been randomly distributed across the surface of its largest, southern continent.

  2. You can survive here, despite your disparate biology because of a few little tweaks we made to your genomes when we onboarded you. Don’t think about it too hard, you’re not that smart.”

  I remembered that agonising spike of ice that had momentarily both blinded and deafened me. Little tweaks my arse.

  3. “With those tweaks, we’ve also normalised your attributes against a standard baseline. What does that mean I hear you ask? It means that even though some of you are made from living metal, and others evolved on a planet with more than 16 time the gravity than this one, you won’t be totally indestructible against the meat-sack, low gravity civilisations.”

  I had actually been wondering about that, it made me wonder how many times these bastards had done this. How many civilisations?

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  4. Nobody wants to see you die from boring, mundane causes, so we’ve gameified your health. What does that mean? Trust me you’ll figure it out pretty quick!

  "And that’s it for now! Survive until tomorrow if you want to learn more!”

  The music returned to its normal volume for a few moments, drums and hoots filling the air and then faded away, leaving me in silence. A flashing icon of my body in the top right of my vision drew my attention. Had it been there before? A haptic buzz tickled my brain as I focused on it and a window appeared.

  Numbers filled my vision, most of them incomprehensible. I caught headings like STR and AGI but barely glimpsed their contents before something burst from the trees behind me. I half turned at the sound, the menu winking away. It sounded like the whizzing of a small, unbalanced electric motor. I gasped as two lances of pain dug into my shoulder blades, and shook desperately, trying to dislodge whatever the hell was on me. But whatever it was had a firm grip. It bit down on the back of my neck. I screamed. Reaching over my shoulders with both hands I grabbed and I ripped. A pair of antennae, as thick as my thumbs popped free, but the chewing at my neck didn’t slow. I could feel it burrowing through the muscles towards my spine. The body icon in my HUD flashed red and a siren began to wail. The red bar that had shown 45 was mostly gone and now showed 17.

  I reached over my shoulders again, but only one arm moved. The other just twitched. I was numb, as though I had slept on it. I felt a hard smooth surface beneath my fingertips, a head, and scrabbled for purchase, but failed, and on it chewed. The red bar shrank, 9. Electrical bolts of alternating pain and numbness coursed down the backs of my legs as I back-pedalled, ramming the thing on my back against a tree. We hit with a squelch, the trunk proving to be as soft as the branches. The chewing paused for a moment, so I lurched back again, squeezing the thing between my body and the trunk. Something hissed into my ear. I took two steps and leaped as high as I could into the air, landing flat on my back. The thing screeched as we hit the dirt and a spray of something warm burst upon my back. I shimmied to the side, scraping it free and clambered to my feet, panting, staring at what had assaulted me.

  It was an insect, roughly a foot long with mantid claws and a sack of what looked like custard as an abdomen. The sack had burst, chunks of yellow painting a starburst about the thing. It smelled absolutely nauseating. A name appeared above it in neon green font.

  Zen-Chii: Swarm Host Drone. Level 1.

  Civilisation: Gosporian.

  It had a red bar too, which was low and ticked down as I watched. No numbers though. The thing, a Swarm Host Drone apparently, twitched and tried to rise. I looked about, wary of more that might be coming. It dragged itself a a few feet towards me, broken wings trailing, that ruptured sack oozing more custardy chunks. It chittered, snapping mandibles at me and after a moment, I realised it was speaking, and I could understand it.

  “Not like this, no, not like this. Lay down, die for me meatbag, let me taste the fleshhhh.”

  Revulsion filled me, but it was overwhelmed by white hot rage. I realised I’d taken a step towards closer. This thing had attacked me, unprovoked. It reached my feet and snapped at my toes, I moved them out of the way and watched it try again, and again. It didn’t want to survive, just to feed.

  Something that the great poet Jean-Luisa Motaba, whom I’d seen die not 10 minutes before had written, rose in my mind. She’d said that life required sacrifice, and in that sacrifice lay beauty. Watching this thing as it scrabbled in the dirt I realised how wrong she was.

  I dropped to my haunches and with my good hand I gripped Zen-Chii the Level 1 Swarm Host Drone by the back of it's skull. It was slick with gore, but I have big hands and it was a small thing.

  I lifted and and looked into its fractal eyes. It still twitched and tried to swing those broken mantid arms at me, but it was too weak.

  This was a mercy.

  It deserved it.

  I turned the Gosporian's face away from mine and stared at my scarred knuckles. Took two steps and brought its face down against a rock that jutted from the dirt.

  Again and again, I swung.

  At first, it tried to fight, to bite my scarred knuckles. But soon it was nothing but pulp.

  I let it fall to the ground with a splatter of yellow and green as all around me fireworks began.

  Congratulations! You leveled up.

  You are now level 2!