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  Paul called out, "What now?"

  Linda said, "Defensive a bit longer, then you-know-what."

  Paul and Typhoon sprang at the remaining pirates, striking to harass without killing. It looked pretty credible. The bruiser body-slammed a royal guard and began stomping the soaked deck to make his punches sound louder. Paul paused to cheer him on.

  When a few more guys on either side had been wounded and the pirates looked about to give up, Linda said, "Now!" and clocked the Beehive captain with a club. Now all of the NPCs were fair game. Linda's party used the moment of surprise to hurl a pirate overboard, run a guard through, and dump another guy into an open barrel that Typhoon hopped onto and rode across the Crown's deck.

  Soon just the pirate bruiser and a mustachioed royalist remained alive, conscious and on the joined decks. "And now, your lunch money!" said Linda.

  Paul winced, thinking back to a time many years ago when he'd bullied the new kid in school. Didn't rob him, but still. He said, "Did we just kill everybody?"

  Linda said, "That reminds me; we can't have anybody blow the cover of the beautiful Lady Decatur. Do you two want to be shark food, or my well-paid loyal crewmen?"

  "Crew, crew!" said the nervous royalist. The big guy laughed and did a fancy bow.

  Typhoon asked the bruiser, "Is anybody still below?"

  "Just Leeko the map-man."

  Linda said, "Then let's kick the traitors overboard, and plunder some silver!" A victory fanfare played. Even the rain had started to ease up.

  Paul asked, "Are you going to kill the survivors?"

  She shrugged. "They're NPCs. It's not like they suffer for real. They're bit players."

  "Yeah, but don't you have an infamy score or something?"

  "She does," Typhoon said. "For her Dread Pirate identity. There's also a suspicion meter for innocent damsel Lady Decatur. What'll it be, Captain? Get a reputation as a ruthless killer, or let people live and put your alter ego under suspicion?"

  Linda fretted. "Wasn't expecting a moral choice. I've got the Disguise skill; I can create another cover if I need to. The prisoners can take a rowboat if they want. Now, let's clear out this mess and steal some silver!"

  Paul felt somehow relieved.

  * * *

  Other gaming sessions were more relaxed. He and Nocturne teamed up with an AI centaur mare from France, in a sort of army battle. Typical stuff.

  Their opponents were a kobold gunslinger with two girls, knight and thief, at his sides. Each team held one end of an island, and had a tent that spawned endless waves of mindless soldiers to crash into each other. Winding paths and crags covered the island. The streams of NPCs were advancing already. These guys were truly expendable; he'd been warned the supply wouldn't stop until a team won.

  Paul took to the air. His limited flight power let him flap over some of the barriers to come down behind five kobold minions and pounce one of them.

  The female knight ran up behind the troops and slashed with a longsword. Paul had to break off his attack to dodge her. He yelped and said, "You're too quick with that thing!"

  "Stay and fight if you want, while my friends take the central tower!"

  On a mini-map in Paul's vision, one of the towers scattered across the map was getting hammered. He couldn't go one-on-one against a melee hero yet. He hopped back and flapped his wings to escape.

  "Nope!" said a Spanish-accented voice from a surprising angle, and a gunshot rang out. A red icon flashed and a note told him, [Major wound! Winged: flight penalized.]

  Paul swerved and tried to get away, but he couldn't get over the rocks. Instead he went after the shooter for a major wound. But the guy had a second pistol charged with a lightning bullet, and the kobold minions ganged up on him, and then the knight took him down. Too many wound icons flashed, and the screen went dark.

  [DEATH. Paul was too bold near kobolds.]

  A countdown timer appeared, blocking him from playing again for thirty seconds. Paul grumbled, then watched the map. He cheered on Nocturne and the centaur, named Kai. "Watch out; they're pushing the left side."

  Back in the game he met up with them, charging back into battle just in time to save Kai from a sneaky knife attack by the enemy's cloaked and ferret-tailed thief. The centaur kicked her into a patch of jungle with one hindleg. The rogue squeaked and tumbled, and then came running back out of the woods pursued by a bear.

  Paul grinned and tripped her, so Kai and the random NPC bear could score a kill.

  His wing injury had healed when he respawned, so he took wing again and went to join Nocturne, who was valiantly holding off too many kobolds.

  It didn't work for long. After several deadly brawls, the kobold forces nailed everyone but Kai, and with just her bow and hooves she couldn't beat the three enemy heroes. Those three rushed the griffin team's headquarters and smashed it.

  The six players teleported to the central zone, where kobold minions danced. Their leader said, "Good game." To Paul he added, "I hear Ludo's watching you."

  "Yeah. Are you a friend of Che?"

  "Who? I'm not one of you premium people, just well informed. See you around!"

  The ferret-girl said, "I've got a test coming up. Wish me luck! Griffin hug?"

  Paul and Nocturne provided one. "Good luck!" said Paul.

  The kobold gunslinger winked at Nocturne as he and his teammates faded out.

  "What was that about?" Paul asked.

  Kai looked proud. "Nocturne has been making friends out there."

  She sat up and waved a wing toward Kai. "Kai here is learning to use food robots!"

  "Real-world?" asked Paul.

  Kai bowed formally. "Your world, yes. I guess it wouldn't impress you, mister human, but we're gaining an experience level or two."

  "I'm impressed that you're trying," he said.

  * * *

  His computer's built-in minder software was tracking his facial expressions. These days it rarely exhorted him to "Be Happy" or required him to watch cheerful propaganda videos; he didn't need them. Helena herself said that Paul seemed "well-adjusted" lately.

  Which made it more surprising when Helena called him into her office. She was all smiles. "I notice you've been devoting a lot of time to that game. I'm glad you're so well behaved, but I'm concerned for your whole-life balance."

  Paul tried to be diplomatic. "I'm exercising, I'm doing my required work, and I'm attending the required meetings."

  "But are you being social? Staring at a screen isn't good for a boy when --"

  "Man."

  "You can identify as whatever you like. I think you should take up a different hobby for a while."

  "I'll consider it, ma'am."

  "You can consider it this week. Would you like to try out choir, or creative cooking? There's a class starting tomorrow."

  Paul stared at her. "Ma'am, I'm playing Thousand Tales because of your last suggestion. I'm choosing to keep playing because it's fun."

  "Well, now my opinion on the subject has evolved. I don't like how many of the children here are starting to take up the game and have such enthusiasm for it." She tapped her fingers under her chin and said, "Yes, I think the solution is clear. I'm going to have the game blocked for a week and see how that goes. It'll give all of you a chance to get outside more and try other pursuits."

  "I have friends in there."

  Helena's smile slipped a bit. "Yes, I'm told you're so devoted to that, you're considered to have some kind of special brand loyalty. That wasn't what I had in mind when I signed you up."

  Paul didn't bother asking why. Linda had spoken to him about similar things before. The State is a jealous god. It doesn't like people having bonds to anything else. The thought surprised him, though. Was he actually "loyal" to Ludo's game, or just to his friends within it?

  * * *

  Paul went right to his computer and logged into Thousand Tales to explain. "I want to start an uprising. There are other players here."

  Ludo, who'd broug
ht Nocturne in via portal, shook her head. "Pick your battles. She's one of the gatekeepers who decides what college you can attend, right?"

  Paul started to answer, but the game glitched and he got a [Connection Lost] error. He cursed.

  Come to think of it, the AI "Originals" had access to e-mail. He tried sending a message, but it turned out that Helena had blocked all Net access but for the local network and its infantile "educational" content. She was just bright enough to know the residents would've found a way around a specific ban.

  That week he made the best of the situation. He met with the other Tales players on campus, and played an old-fashioned roleplaying game with paper and dice.

  * * *

  Paul rebelled against Helena's micromanagement by staying out late to work on a solar panel array. He sat under a full moon with a flashlight and multimeter to figure out which panel elements could drink light. Their village idiot, fresh from high school, had banged a backhoe into a power line while carrying the things. Not only had the fool nearly died, he'd reminded everyone that the Community camps didn't reliably power themselves like the politicians claimed.

  His multimeter beeped and he perked up, recalling a kind of in-game "enchantment design" he'd been studying before the Internet restriction. The runic diagrams he'd seen in the latest dungeon happened to resemble Kirchhoff's Laws of electricity. He set about trying to apply that to reality. Soon he found a fault in the circuitry, and imagined he was waving his griffin's bird-talons over runes.

  Irregular footsteps thudded somewhere in the darkness. Paul whirled, brandishing his electrical probes. "Who's there?"

  Simon staggered closer, clutching his ribs under his torn jacket. His face was bruised.

  "What happened?" said Paul, but Simon stared at him like a deer. "Come on. Let's wake one of the medic trainees. Anything broken?" He approached, but his friend shied away. A bag of pill bottles fell to the dirt.

  "It's not what it looks like," Simon said.

  Paul picked it up, feeling paranoid about fingerprints. He tried to read the labels. "Focusyn. Proeubene. Huxoma."

  Simon looked wildly around, snatched the bag, then hurled it into the tall grass and looked ready to bound after it. Paul grabbed his arm.

  Simon winced in pain. "These are brain pills. I sell to rich kids. They have everything."

  Paul marched him into the grass where there was even less chance of being overheard. Cold wind chilled his face. "You idiot! You're selling this stuff? This is why I have to help you duck curfew?"

  Simon glared back at him through tears. "I never made anyone buy. I got rolled tonight. My contact took most of the pills plus my bike."

  Paul took a deep breath and released him, feeling his fingers unclench like talons. "You want to run and keep running? Go."

  "I can't. I'm doing this for Kira." He met Paul's glaring eyes again. "She's low priority for treatment. I know a guy who can get her to the best doctors, the kind Congressmen use, but it's not cheap."

  Paul swore. So there was a sane reason for Simon to be dealing drugs and risking his life. "You overreacted. She's on a treatment list, right? She's not about to, to need urgent care, and it'll be free once it's her turn."

  "Have you seen her lately? She spends half her time trying to train like an action hero, and the other half using a Draupnir server. You know, the thing that lets your family pretend you're not dead?"

  Draupnir. That software product caught on first with old people. The idea of it was, you talked to a computer program, filled out surveys, then got a brain scan that supposedly told it how your mind was organized. Draupnir then made a digital ghoul that could pretend to carry a conversation, using your catchphrases and voice. Paul's mother had asked if she should try it. He said it was a scam, a chatterbot that told your family that it loved them. It was a shallow imitation compared to what something, someone, like Ludo or Nocturne could be. He grimaced.

  Simon said, "So you've heard of it. She's giving up hope. I don't see her drawing much anymore, just trying to get her heart and lungs back into shape. She tries so hard!"

  Paul paced, folding his hands behind his back. "There's a chance your partners in crime have already ratted you out."

  "I can't do anything about that. I can only get help from you."

  Paul sagged. How would a good and righteous man handle this? He wished he'd ever known any. That was unfair; Father Dmitrios had been all right. Paul said, "It sounds like you're small time. Not in deeply. If you don't raise hell over getting robbed, maybe your contact will forget you. Then you're out of that world."

  Simon didn't look relieved. "My sister still needs me. What would you have done in my place?"

  * * *

  He wanted badly to talk to his friends in the game again, but he hadn't even been able to get a travel pass this week to evade the ban. Instead he just helped Simon get first aid for his "bike accident", and endured.

  One night after chores and old-fashioned tabletop gaming, a fellow player found him alone. The quiet, nervous young farmer asked Paul, "Your sidekick is the Nocturne the Griffin, right?"

  Paul hesitated, but said, "Yeah; why? How'd you know?"

  "You got the golden ticket, man. Wasn't hard to guess when you gushed about having a cute griffin friend by that name. And is it true you rescued Simon from a drug dealer?"

  Paul was flustered. "What? No. That's, like, ninety percent false." And probably mixing up two or three different events, including the meeting with Che that the other Community people shouldn't have known about.

  "Then what set Helena off? Word's been going around that you got her mad and that's why we're all shut off from the Net. First that crazy gunman, then you got picked as a companion for an AI, and now Helena is hiding something. Are you some kind of secret agent?"

  Paul laughed. "Not exactly."

  The farmer said, "But it's not completely false, huh?"

  He couldn't even explain the whole truth without endangering Simon, so he had to just beg his way out of the conversation.

  * * *

  Two more days passed before Helena deigned to let the Community's network restrictions lapse. For now.

  Nocturne had sent a message already, saying she hoped he was okay.

  Linda was offline, but Nocturne was always on. He logged in at long last, and apologized to Ludo at the title screen.

  "Not your fault at all!" the AI said, appearing in a fanciful new outfit of artfully arranged bandages and a cape of stars. "Shall I fetch Nocturne?"

  "Please. But wait. Are you spreading rumors about me?"

  "Not directly. I've sometimes avoided correcting the record when others talk, though."

  "Why?"

  "Who're the ones hearing the half-truths, and what's my mission? That's all I'll say about it for now."

  She's designed to "bring fun to her players", thought Paul. If I thought I were playing alongside some kind of mysterious agent, that'd seem pretty cool. But the truth about what I've done isn't half so dramatic! Guess she doesn't care, if the exaggerated version makes other players have more fun.

  He felt he was grasping only part of the right answer.

  Ludo faded out without fanfare. She left him alone in a complicated kitchen, where Nocturne was puzzling over some machinery. Paul himself was outside where he could expect not to be spied on directly, though it wasn't safe to talk about Simon's side business over the network. Paul said, "A friend of mine got in trouble, but I can't tell you the details."

  Nocturne nuzzled his griffin under one wing. "I wish I could hug you where you could feel it. You're always looking somewhere far away."

  "Kira's sick. It's pretty bad."

  "Is that why you guys got kicked out of my world for a week?"

  "No. Helena is... yeesh, I don't even know if I can express an opinion on her without risking trouble."

  "Ludo wouldn't tell."

  He nodded. "And the network spy system is probably only looking for terrorist stuff. So, yeah, Helena's a petty ty
rant and she happened to pick this week to try shutting us down. I can at least understand her being jealous of us playing so much."

  Nocturne posed vainly. "My world is great. But is yours really that much worse?"

  "It's not the one we hoped for. That's something you might not know about us humans. We can imagine a better world, so it's never as good as we think it should be."

  Nocturne used her talons to push his griffin's beak upward, tilting his view so he was looking her in the eyes again. "That's got to be better than not imagining."

  Paul stared into the golden eyes of this digital creature, created to play with him. They'd talked and fought monsters and fooled with spells. But now, she was starting to really understand the world.

  The griffin-girl rooted through a small pile of items and produced a glittering red potion. "There's no way to bring this kid in here to get healed, right? Will she come back with full health when she respawns?"

  Oh, God. "That doesn't happen here."

  "Huh? Then where's your last save checkpoint?"

  "Please, Noc, I'd rather talk about happier things."

  "No." She clacked her beak against his and glared at him. "Whatever you're hiding, I can take it. I want to know."

  She had to learn this eventually if she was going to keep hearing about Earth. "In this world, you don't come back if you get killed. Ever. You just stop. Most people think there's a... different level you go to after that, or you come back as a cow or something, but that's probably just a story."

  "That's stupid!" Nocturne said, flapping into the air. "Why don't you get your rules changed?"

  "Can't. The rules just are."

  "What other horrible revelations have you got for me?"

  "Uh. Disease? You know about that. Sometimes we slaughter and torture each other on ludicrous scales. We partly grew out of that, at least. You know that pirate battle? Imagine that all those generic guys have friends and families, and they won't respawn at some magic crystal."

  Nocturne threw herself to the dirt and covered her face with one wing, shuddering. "Your world hates you!"

  "It's not all bad. I haven't even told you about the old space missions." Paul had his griffin crouch down beside Nocturne to nuzzle her.