The digital hallways of Fantasy-Forum were still as a grave. A dust mote floated past an iron bound door marked with hastily chalked letters spelling out the name “Overlord.” Anyone who might have listened at that door would have heard nothing but absence. The mote continued on its Brownian way, passing iron door after iron door, until a puff of wind knocked it into the dingy wall where it stuck.
@ScarletBea bustled past.
She drew a heavy key from her skirt pocket and slipped it into the eighteenth lock on the right. Bea disliked how quietly the door swung open; she'd have much preferred creaking hinges. Somehow less creepy than silence.
@Arry looked up with a sour smile.
“More cake?”
“No,” said Bea. “Just... more spam. Sorry.”
“No rest for the wicked, hey?” Arry smoothed her grey drabs as she stood. She picked up a cartoonish rubber mallet and headed out the door, barely looking at her one-time friend as she brushed past.
Bea sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. The whole thing had gone from fun to nightmare. At least she wasn’t behind one of those doors. Maybe she could still help. She just had to keep the Goat thinking she was on his side until there was an opportunity.
Please, oh gods, please. An opportunity.
*****
“Drink up, dude!” @Caleb slapped
@Eclipse on the back, and the young Brit’s beer slopped onto the wooden bar.
“You call this beer? It’s pisswater.”
“Hey, it’s the night before my birthday. If I say this is the best beer on the planet, it’s the best damn beer on the planet.”
“In your dreams!”
The hopes of the world, partying in the Texas night.
*****
The next morning, Eclipse peeled one eyelid open and closed it quickly. A few minutes later, he peeled the other one. By an alternating process, he finally managed to get them both open simultaneously. Which was good, since he’d been about to miss the porcelain rim of the commode completely.
Caleb poked his head in. “You ready, mate?” he asked with far more life in his voice than he deserved to have.
“Do you mind?” protested Eclipse, turning his back to the door.
“Nothing I ain’t seen before, mate.” Caleb pulled out and headed down the hall. “Mate. I love that word. Don’t you just love that word?”
“I’m not Australian!” Eclipse tidied up and stumbled after the Texan.
“Hi, Mrs. Chill,” he said to Caleb’s mom.
“Hello dear,” she said, waving a coffee cup at him. “Can I interest you in some nice rattler for breakfast? Mr. Chill found it on the road last night. It’ll be ready in just a jiffy.”
“You don’t have to eat the snake,” Caleb whispered in his ear. “No time, Ma! Captain Britain and me are outta here. We’ll pick up some crispy crèmes on the way.”
“Where are ya’ll going?” she called, but the two were out the door and headed to the Chill Mobile. “Don’t forget your suntan lotion, dear!” Caleb had a country-western station turned to full roar before Eclipse had even made it out the front door of the house. They peeled rubber and blew that popsicle stand.
“How many hours?” yelled Eclipse over the music.
“Well, if we can average 80, I figure we’ll be there in about 16.”
“80 what?”
“This is America, bub! We’re talking miles per hour. About 130 kph right? Hang on, we’re going for light speed!”
It turned out to be closer to 24 hours later when the two reached the high desert in a fug of fast food wrappers, spilled beer, crushed Cheetos and b.o. They stood with their backs against the car, and the rising sun in their faces. Area 51 spread below them, a vast unmapped plain, nothing of interest in sight beyond the line of razor wire cyclone fencing that stretched from horizon to horizon.
“Here we are, mate. The center of all weirdness. Well, except maybe for that tiki bar I walked into in downtown Wichita. That place was freaky.”
“I don’t know about this, Chill.”
“Come on.” He pulled out his six shooter and spun the chamber. “Grab the wire cutters, and let's get walking. World ain’t gonna save itself, now is it?”
*****
Scarlet had managed to start a sort of mail service between the cells.
@Elfy kept writing that she needed to find the Gleems, whatever they were.
@Raptori gave her love letters to deliver to
@Saurus, and
@Nighteyes gave her love letters for
@Charlemagne - all signed “Your Captain of the Seas.” She’d sort of hoped that between them all they might, you know, hatch a plan. But they seemed to treat it as a sort of substitute for the Forum itself, the way it used to be.
She leaned back on the cot in her own cell - unlocked, but still a cell really. Cake tomorrow. She could almost muster some enthusiasm. @Lady Ty at least understood. “Its all right, dear,” she would say. “You’re doing your best.”
The blanked computer screen on her desk blinked. That was strange, she thought. No one needed them, now that everyone'd been absorbed by the matrix. It blinked again. Bea sat up and slid to the end of the cot near the desk. She was expecting another blink, but it still startled her when it came. Then light bloomed across the plasma, and a wobbly picture formed.
“Caleb?” breathed Bea.
“Hey, li’l gal.” The gunschwinger seemed to be crouched over a camera on his end. Everything was at a strange angle and in night-goggle green and black. “I can’t talk long. The Goat’s spiders will start to detect my signal any second. Well, and then there’s the U.S. Army. They might show up any second too.”
“The Army? What?”
“Well, yeah. We kind of broke into a super-secret facility. You should see the shit they have here! Remember how we wondered about if Cthulhu was real or not? You wouldn’t f’ing believe, Bea. Total psych.”
Bea looked around her room and over her shoulder. She moved quickly to the open door and closed it softly. “What are you doing? You’ll get caught!”
“Naw. Eclipse is running around the army base stark naked. You know, as a distraction. That guy’s got balls, let me tell you.”
“No, I mean, you’ll get caught by the Goat. Everyone else has. Wait, Eclipse is with you?” Bea shook her head. Maybe she’d fallen asleep and was dreaming.
“Long story, sweetheart. But hey, I needed to get through and this was the only way. Can you reach into the screen and help?” She just stared at him. “Don’t worry. Reality is totally fucked. Just put your hand on the screen and push.”
Thinking things couldn’t be any weirder than they’d been for weeks, Bea reached one finger tentatively toward the screen. “It won’t bite,” Chill laughed. So she pressed her flat hand onto the surface of the monitor and suddenly felt it grabbed from the other side. She almost pulled away in shock, but Chill held on and flowed out of the real world into the Forum like the dude in Terminator 2. His liquid form gathered in a puddle by her cot, then started to reform into something resembling a man. The form flickered, sharpened, and there was the Doctor, gun in his holster, medical bag in one hand, and a shit-eating grin from ear to ear.
“Gods, am I glad to see you!” Bea almost sobbed as she threw herself onto him in a bear hug. Chill returned the hug for a moment, then broke off.
“Sorry, Ms. Scarlet, but I gotta’ help my mate out on the other side.” The Texan turned to the screen and plunged his arm through it. Curiously, Bea peeked around to see the back of the monitor. Yup, the arm went in and nothing came out the back. It was actually pretty funny. “I think,” said Chill through gritted teeth as he pushed all the way in up to his shoulder, “I think... yes, there, got him.” He pulled his arm out again, pinching a silver thread between his thumb and forefinger. Substance flowed along the thread, thickened and became, after some reassembly, the Forum’s favorite badminton champion, Eclipse.
Now Scarlet really laughed. “Clothes, please!” she said, and threw her Japanese silk bathrobe across the room at her naked friend.
*****
“So it hit me.” The three were sitting cross-legged on the floor of Bea’s little room amidst crumpled boxes of cold pizza crusts. Virtual pizza might not taste quite as good as the real thing, but it was still brain fuel for F-F types.
“It hit me,” Chill continued, “that it all started with the Title War. Well, really, before that. It started with
@Jmack.”
“What do you mean? The Goat Who Must Not Be Named didn’t arrive for months after Jmack did.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Jmack’s a nice dude and all that. Send him some flowers. But that’s the problem, you see. He’s been so f’ing nice that he’s been accumulating Likes like there’s no tomorrow. It's kind of sickening, right?”
Scarlet winced. “You know, there really is
no tomorrow here anymore, right?”
“Really?” asked Eclipse. “How does that work? Because I could totally use that after one of those nights we tie one on after the Latin dance competition”
“Would you guys pay attention? We’re trying to save the world here.” Chill licked a bit of mozzarella from one finger. “So along comes the Goat, and we’ve left the whole Karma system behind. Jmack is racking up Likes, and the Goat - he’s like a vampire, or a parasite, right? He just sucks and sucks all that lovely Like into himself, and shazam!”
“Shazam?” asked Bea.
“I’ve heard this part,” said Eclipse. “It does get better.”
“Yeah, Shazam!” said Chill. “It’s the source of the Goat’s power.”
Bea sat back. It made a sort of sense. The Forum had been fine before the Likes - well, maybe not perfect - in fact everyone liked the Likes - but it had been okay.
“Law of Unintended Consequences,” said Eclipse.
“And I’m studying the law,” said Chill.
“So,” said Bea slowly, trying to work it out. “What do we do?”
*****
“Do I really have to be the distraction again?” Eclipse pulled the silk robe pulled tight around his clammy skin.
“Here’s the key,” said Bea quietly, holding up the heavy thing. “Now go distract.”
“But I’m cold.”
“Go.” Bea slipped back into her room, and Eclipse made his reluctant way down the hall toward The Office.
The door was old-fashioned, with frosted glass and wire hatching. It stood like a promise of efficiency run amok. Eclipse rapped twice tentatively, twisted the knob and pushed. The Bureaucrat looked up. “Yes?” he said. The man had some dried drool in the corner of his mouth. Sleeping on the job, hey. It boosted Eclipse’s confidence that little bit.
“Eclipse, hey? That’s me. Turning myself in.”
It caught the man off guard. “You’re what?”
“Turning myself in.” The stupid git was slow on the uptake, wasn’t he?
“Well,” the man finally got on track. “Well, I live to serve his Goatness. Eclipse. Let's see.” He spun a rolodex and flipped to the correct card. “Ah, yes. Eclipse. Forum member. Criminal.” He smiled a thin smile, and looked Eclipse in the eyes. “You are to be punished.”
“The fuck I am!” yelled Eclipse, ripping off his robe and hurling it in the face of the Goat’s minion. Eclipse skipped back out of the Office and into the Hall. Before the Bureaucrat could react, Eclipse had the first door open.
@Saraband looked up in surprise from the notebook here he’d been planning a delightfully elaborate punishment for
@Eurog, if they ever caught him. On to the next door, Eclipse flung it open and found
@Henry Dale hanging by his fingertips from a belfry, with bats flying in and out and flapping in the poor Belgian’s hair.
On and on went Eclipse. And the further down the hall he got, and the more locks he opened, the more manic he became. It felt wonderful! Fantastic! He might be naked as a jaybird, but he was a freaking hero. His friends were filtering into the hall behind him, and Eclipse was the one freeing them. Heady stuff.
A hoof crashed into his head and he dropped to the floor as though his strings had been cut. A huge goat stood over him. “Come on, get up,” it said. “Let's do this.”
Meanwhile, Chill and Scarlet had quietly moved through the throng of escaping avatars and pulled Overlord and Arry off to the side.
“You have to do it,” Chill insisted. “You have to revoke every one of Jmack’s Likes.”
“Of course,” said Overlord. "Absolutely."
“Can’t,” said Arry. “Even a Mod can’t change a Like. Every user would have to sign on and open every post where they’d flipped the Like button. And unflip it.”
“Too long!” groaned the Texan. “We don’t have that long. I don’t think even Eclipse can keep the Goat distracted that long, and he’s got balls!”
“Did you say distraction?” asked Nighteyes and Elfy, who’d both been standing at the edge of the discussion. “I think we can cover that.”
*****
It was the raccoons and the Gleems that finally did it. The Nords were a good start. Then the Japanese cat bar maids. Cthulhu. The shaking hips. The works. None of it seemed to make a dent in the Goat’s forces. But when
@wakarimasen rode a giant rabid raccoon into the fray, laying about him on all sides with a plush cushion - the Gleems chanting from their perch on his head - the Goats broke.
Creating just enough time for a new legend to be written. For heroes to emerge.
Arry opened a portal into the Forum Code. It formed in mid-air in the middle of the melee, a wavering, fluid thing of deep magic and digita. Overlord stepped through, and Chill joined him.
“You have to turn the wheel back to the Karma setting,” called Arry from the other side. “Before the Goat notices.”
“You ready?” said the gunswchinger.
“Is the Pope Jewish?” replied the forum’s founder. And he advises the Government, thought Chill. Well, there’s no explanation for some things.
“Now push!” The two set their hands to the capstan bar and pushed with all their strength.
At the last moment, Atku came screaming at the portal, but it was too late. In the vast deeps of the Forum, a wheel turned, a cog meshed, and the Like system disappeared as though it had never been. And every user showed a fresh new Karma score of absolute zero.
“Noooooooooo!” cried the Great God of Goats, as all his power was stripped from him in one great outpouring of guts, blood and more guts. His minions disappeared in a gout of vile gas, and silence reigned.
The portal into the Forum code closed with a sickening thud leaving Chill and Overlord on the other side. Scarlet wept, and Arry patted her shoulder. “Are they alive in there?” asked Bea.
“If anyone can make it back from in there, they can,” replied Arry with more confidence than she felt.
“There’s no stopping either of them,” added Eclipse.
“Clothes, please,” replied Bea.
From under the crumpled body of the Goat God, a figure started to emerge. JayMack looked around in a daze. “Is this the Grim Gathering?”
And in the fictitious land of Fantasia, Atku awoke. They thought they were rid of him. But, he was a god, wasn’t he?