Sam Landstrom
MetaGame
CHAPTER 1
Games within games, that’s all life is. And God is keeping score.
Sitting in his shower bowl, D_Light slumped over and retched again. The pungent vomit turned light pink as it mixed with the EasyClean SaniRinse™ and then disappeared down the drain. His body trembled, and his tears were swept away. Crying and vomiting, he muttered, “OverSoul, please help me.”
He was ashamed before the words had even escaped him. It was not as if the OverSoul-the creative intelligence that guided the billions of beings of this planet and others-had the time or inclination to bother with the pitiful pleas of one insignificant baby blubbering in his shower. But he had lost his perspective. Despite the hot, viscous, exfoliating, bacteria-laden water pounding down on him, he was trembling uncontrollably. This was unprecedented. Maybe he was having a reaction to one of the drugs in his system. Perhaps he was dying. A voice in his head told him he was not.
Master, your vitals differ from your personal history, but they are well within the normal parameters of your species. According to all available data, you are in no danger of termination at this time. The soothing voice of his familiar pressed gently into his mind. Master, would you like me to give you a downer?
D_Light’s familiar, a jet-black cat named Smorgeous, sat quietly next to the shower, his eyes fixed impassively on his human master. Like any good servant, he worked tirelessly to anticipate his master’s needs. Mountain Sunset is on sale, 343 points per dose. You have been using 11.3 doses of this drug per month. Averaged over the last six months-
Smorgeous, not now! Just be quiet! D_Light sent the message back without a word. A gentle ping echoed in his mind, indicating that Smorgeous understood and would not initiate communication with his master unless an emergency transpired.
Familiars were able to read and write to their masters’ minds, and although this was designed to be useful, it was sometimes irritating to D_Light, especially when he desired silence. Unfortunately, D_Light had had the interface kit installed in his brainstem fairly late in life, making it difficult for the telepathic input from his familiar to mesh naturally with his own thoughts. This was in sharp contrast to people he knew who had received their kits at birth. For them, the voice of their familiar was a part of them, essentially an extension of their consciousness. But there was nothing natural about how D_Light perceived his familiar. To him, Smorgeous still felt like an alien entity living inside his head-an alien who tended to invade his private space. This was particularly bothersome when D_Light just wanted to be alone, like now.
D_Light attempted to quiet his mind by going into a relaxation trance, concentrating on the rhythm of his breathing and the sensation and sound of the shower as it pulsed over him. One, relax…two, relax…three, relax… Like a slow drumbeat, he recited the mantra. It was a simple and effective way to unwind without a drug boost, a technique he had learned long before his familiar implant. Although maintenance drugs were almost always in a player’s system, spiking a drug to get a desired effect, called boosting, could lead to a violation of his health contract if done in an abusive pattern. Lately, he had been taking too many of these drugs, and although Smorgeous had not yet warned him of any contract violations, D_Light felt it would be wise to lay off for the next couple of days.
D_Light began rocking back and forth as he sat huddled and naked in the shower bowl. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” The hiss of the shower took his words and drowned them.
It took several minutes of this routine before D_Light was able to calm himself to some degree, at which point his nausea subsided. Only then did he attempt to fix this emotional hitch in his mind-not that all feelings were to be avoided. Anger, fear, even jealousy could embolden the human spirit when it needed a kick or could instill a healthy measure of prudence when warranted. However, D_Light suspected that not all emotions were of equal utility. As best he could tell, the emotion he felt now was remorse. Remorse. How could he have remorse for making a bold and excellent move in accordance with the Game? There was little room for remorse on the path to immortality, and unjustifiable remorse was surely useless. Worse than useless, it was detrimental.
Of course, this was not the first time D_Light had experienced a disadvantageous emotion, and his favorite way of dealing with them was also the most expedient-good old-fashioned suppression. D_Light liked to imagine taking a big iron box, putting the emotion inside it, and then sealing that box in another one. He would repeat this process as necessary. He had used this mental trick many times, but it was not working now. It was as though the negative feelings were wisps of dark, incorporeal threads that escaped out through the seams.
Suppression not an option, D_Light decided to try some simple desensitization exercises. This required more time and was more painful than his box technique, but it tended to be more reliable. He began by picturing the corpse in his mind. The girl’s eyes came to him first. Her eyes-eyes that had been arresting in life-were merely large glistening marbles in death, vacant and swiveled downward at the floor. He held the memory for a few long moments, inhaling a few slow, deep breaths. He then silently called upon Smorgeous to execute a gradual uploading of the entire corpse into his consciousness. He wanted to see her in detail.
At first he studied her with great unease. Her jet-black hair was glistening, sticky and matted with coagulating blood. The good side of her face-the side not mangled-was facing up, and the perfect lines and arcs of her face made up an olive-colored stone mask. Next, the image panned out, allowing D_Light to see the scene in its entirety. There was a lot of blood-blood on the face, neck, and pooling out across the stone floor. He focused in on her lifeless hand until the entire image blurred. Slowly, he felt the dark threads slackening as the grisly image became less painful to him, and by the time he finally dismissed the archive, he did so with only the slightest tinge of relief.
Out of the shower, D_Light picked out a lightweight skinsuit, the lightest one he had. It was summer, after all, and he hoped to get outside today and feel the sun. The selected skinsuit was stark white, and it shimmered slightly from the countless microlenses that were embedded in the fabric. Since he was going to a church service this morning, he mentally asked Smorgeous to upload something a bit more formal than one of his common selections. Okay, Smorgeous, we can talk again. I’ll wear the suit from, um, from the play I saw the other day.
D_Light’s recollection of that particular memory was enough for Smorgeous to determine which suit his master had requested. Yes, master, the familiar replied. The suit model Divine Fate costs 630 points per use.
The specifications were uploaded to D_Light’s skinsuit, and the optical lenses immediately rendered the blue slacks, shirt, and sport coat, all of which hung on his body perfectly, as only an illusion could. Looking himself over in the mirror, D_Light wished he could also change his hair. It was getting long and unwieldy, a blight on an otherwise strikingly handsome man. However, that sort of change was out of the question. Changing one’s natural appearance using holograms-even just the style of one’s hair or the hue of one’s skin-was a transgression.
He took a long minute and studied himself carefully in the mirror. Not a blemish or wrinkle on his face. He, like everyone he knew, was locked into the same body he had attained in his early twenties. He was so young-only fifty-four years-and yet he did not feel like it this morning. He did not want to go to church. There would be a lot of attention, mostly positive he imagined, but he still did not relish the thought. And yet, it would be a good thing to get out of this room. A very good thing. Involuntarily, he looked over at the floor near his chamber door. He felt his stomach lurch slightly, thinking he could make out a faint bloodstain. Naw, can’t be. The cleaning bots don’t leave anything behind, he thought. Still, he made a point to avert his gaze as he opened the front door to leave. If there was a stain, real or imagined, he wanted to miss it.
D_Light stepped out of his chamber into the castle hallway. As D_Light punched into the general house skin, images of the girl were washed away from his mind by the swirl of images at his feet-visuals skinning every
