was one of the main costs any player-spankers and grinders alike-had to bear. You could always tell which gamers had been ramboing for a while because they were the ones who were starting to show their age, having gone off contract. Not much at first, maybe just some bags under the eyes and a few laugh lines. But little lines would soon become deep ones, laugh lines would become permanent creases, and the next thing you knew, you just started to look like shit in general. D_Light remembered how one guy he used to rambo with had even developed a few specks of gray in his hair. That served as a wake-up call for D_Light, who knew he was headed down the same destructive path. It was then that he knew it was time to turn back to the OverSoul, back on the road to salvation, an undertaking that was both a great relief and a painful loss.
D_Light peered down on the soft rolling hills, trees, and trails below. He imagined what it would be like to have to depend on artificial light to see in the dark, as was the case generations ago. He had played spank games set in post-industrial era times. These games strove for authenticity, so he felt he knew the old-time night city well enough-the countless eyes of car headlights snaking along the freeway, the R-shaped streetlights, the illuminated curtains of countless windows of synthetic shelled apartment buildings and the distant light patterns of partially lit skyscrapers and high-rises. Most of these unsightly artifacts of the past had since been removed or overgrown by dro-vine.
D_Light was grateful to be living in a day and age when artificial lights were unnecessary, when you could just patch into a skin to navigate in the dark without spraying photons everywhere-wasting them. He was grateful to be living in the age of nanosites, the technology that made this possible.
Indeed, nanosites were the only thing more ubiquitous on earth than dro-vine. They were far too small to be seen with the naked eye, but they were everywhere. Although these simple bots had limited capabilities, what they could do they did extremely well. Nanosites coated everything on the planet-every plant, every rock, every wall, every surface of everything. They climbed onto animals and people and then embedded themselves in the living tissue. As they travelled, looking for a place to plant themselves, they would listen to the tiny, short-range signals that emanated from brethren. Once they found a spot that was neither too close nor too far from others of their kind, they would plop down and stick to the surface on whatever object they had chosen. Once they had found a permanent home, they would send out their own “I am here” signal over and over until their energy source finally exhausted itself.
Nanosites spontaneously formed a regular pattern whereby every nanosite was exactly 0.694 millimeters apart from one another. Although this spacing might seem miniscule to a person, it is like an ocean of distance to a nanosite, which consists of a mere few thousand molecules itself. Together, their intensive global coverage and their talent for announcing their existence created a three-dimensional map of the world that software could easily understand. And they did this with greater precision than any satellite. More importantly, they marked moving objects in real time, whether outdoors or inside.
Hence, there was no need for artificial light at night in this contemporary world. The tiny, invisible chips implanted in D_Light’s eyes when he had his mind interface kit installed could “see” the nanosites and rendered for D_Light a perfectly accurate representation of his world in total darkness.
And it wasn’t just the ability to see, but also the ability to hear. By focusing his attention on a location covered with nanosites, it was likely that there would be some audio output there along with the visual. Even now, as D_Light scanned the vista below him, he heard a male’s voice calling, “Fighter needed. Join the Orc Slayers. Preferably a tank.” There was an icon next to the message hot spot indicating to inquire within. As D_Light’s eyes roved to the right of that message, a video of an armor-clad party of heroes battling a small army of nasties popped up, which arrested his eyes for a moment. This pause encouraged the pop-up to zoom in so that D_Light had the opportunity to see the action up close. This message was just a brag, a spanker willing to spend a few paltry points to display his proudest moments over his doorstep.
Messages like this, ones aimed at other spankers, had been barraging him whenever he was skinning, and since he was not there to spank, it was getting more than mildly irritating. It fact, it had become downright overwhelming, and he felt a slight headache coming on. Jacking out of the SkinWare, he let the world go dark again, save the meager glow of the moon and surrounding stars. He then picked up Smorgeous and held the cat up above the flowers so he could get a good look around. Smorgeous had better sensory hardware onboard than D_Light, and the familiar would not only be able to see everyone in sight, but he would also be able to get a good image of them for the purpose of grokking.
No longer using SkinWare, D_Light was now “realing,” meaning that now he saw only what his natural eyes could see, a meager vista of shadow and silver provided by the moon and stars. This was a little unsettling, but he fought his urge to immediately jack back in. Is this how the demon sees this place? he wondered. Demons typically did not have mind interface chips and therefore would not be able to jack into SkinWare. Maybe seeing the world like the demon did would yield a clue.
After a minute of staring down the mound at the gloomy landscape below, he shook his head and sighed. How depressing, he thought. He wondered how people years ago could stand such bland and colorless monotony. Just plants, rocks, and dirt. Can’t even see those things clearly at night. What did they have to think about?
Master, I have detected the emotion you’ve in the past labeled “sad and pointless dwelling.” Would you like me to take countermeasures?
No, D_Light answered as he jacked back into the base skin. The view sprang to life again, and he felt the pit that had been forming in his stomach ease.
D_Light was tired. He had been grinding hard through the night, and the peps he had been taking were beginning to wear off. The very moment this thought occurred to him, Smorgeous offered to give him another bump, but D_Light declined. He had an overwhelming urge to sleep. Just a tiny nap, he told himself. It was as good a time as any to go unconscious since he had time to kill before he could re-spawn into NeverWorld. He ordered Smorgeous to awaken him in twenty minutes, just long enough to feel refreshed, but not so long as to fall into a deeper slumber. Leaning with his back to the poplar tree, he slumped down in a heavy heap. His eyes closed before he even hit the ground.
Master, awaken. You have slept exactly twenty minutes. The voice was soothing, and it was as though it was coming from his own mouth. A sharp but not quite painful ping echoed in his mind, bringing him to a fully awakened state. There was soft pink in his vision, and so he opened his eyes as slits. The sun had just begun creeping up from behind the mountains on the horizon, a sliver of fire that straddled the distant precipices as though it wished to consume them. The glow warmed his face ever so slightly.
He had been dreaming, as he always did, of sailing on Terralova on a brilliantly sunny day, the wind just perfect. D_Light always looked forward to sleep because his dreams were always relaxing-a welcome respite from the intensity of the Game. He very much wanted to just close his eyes again and let the sun’s warmth ease him back to that place. Maybe just for a few more minutes.
Master, you still have a quest to finish. Do not let your teammates down. As his familiar relayed these words in D_Light’s mind, he hated the machine and its ability to read his thoughts. However, the hatred began to subside and give way to mere irritation as the pep Smorgeous had just given him began to work its chemi magic. D_Light had not asked for the drug. It was the sort of thing that made Smorgeous worth all the points D_Light had spent buying and maintaining his on-sale, higher-end familiar. Smorgeous knew what his master needed, as opposed to what he wanted.
D_Light stood up slowly but did not take a step, instead allowing himself a minute for the fog and heaviness of sleep to lift. The shadows cast by the multitude of flowers around him were long and getting deeper as the sun continued its ascension. A few more spankers had filtered out while D_Light had slept. It was rare for D_Light to be around spankers while not jacked in himself. Watching the drones as they careened about, intent only on their game, reminded him of a horror spank game he once played, a game that featured zombies. The similarity was eerie and a bit unsettling. He found himself breathing as shallowly as possible so as not to attract their attention. Reminding himself that they were not, in fact, zombies, he took in a series of deep breaths and let them out slowly. His uneasiness, however, did not leave him, and so he pushed himself off of the tree he had been leaning against and turned around in a circle, surveying the area with a heavy dose of paranoia.
He spotted a woman only one tree away. Her face was tilted up toward the sunrise, and her eyes were shut-not pressed shut in concentration as one communing with her familiar, but merely to avert gazing directly into the sun. D_Light realized that he had not seen her earlier because the trunk of the tree on which he had been leaning obscured his view. He assumed that she could not see him behind her closed lids, so he did not hesitate to stare. She was beautiful, fair, and there was an innocence about her that D_Light found alluring. Her long, blond
