Smorgeous notified D_Light that he had been given command of the veepox controls, which meant that D_Light could now control the temperature, lighting, sound filters, and various other properties of the chamber with no more than a thought to his familiar. I could definitely get used to this lifestyle, he thought. He took a deep, satisfying breath and slumped back in his chair, allowing his legs to fall gently apart. Yeah, this is the life. He took a sip of his complimentary beverage and enjoyed a moment of silence while the warmth of the potent libation worked its magic.
Having appreciated his brief moment of relaxation, D_Light began to think about how they should be acting in this situation. He had spent plenty of time in grokstas before and knew that it was customary to lift the one-way opacity of the plexi windows once your party was seated so that others could see you, and so that is what he did, except for the plexi that covered the floor. He assumed Lily would not appreciate people looking up her virtual dress at her virtual lingerie or whatever her restored skinsuit styled under there.
They had an excellent view of the main floor below, and they could also see the pillbox they had just left. D_Light caught Lyra and Djoser stealing glances. Sweet_Ting did not even try to hide her contempt as she glared up at them. This veepox definitely seemed swankier than the pillbox that the rest of the group still occupied. To be in a superior position to his superiors, so to speak, should have been a moment of glory for D_Light, but he could not relax enough to enjoy it. He couldn’t help but wonder if this was an elaborate trap laid out by Sweet_Ting. What a cruel joke it would be to be treated as celebrities and then, just as the two had been convinced they were stars, find that the whole hall was laughing at them. Fortunately, the bubble-headed noblewoman did not seem capable of such an elaborate ruse.
Smorgeous, give me a summary of what all this NeverWorld celebrity talk is about. It sounds a little too good to be true.
Master, you gave explicit instructions not to access the Cloud.
I know. Try to be discreet while you search.
Smorgeous pinged confirmation.
D_Light took another sip of his tangy drink and sank back in his chair again. He felt like he could sink to the bottom of the sea in this thing. In a place as rich with sensory stimulation as this grocksta, most patrons preferred to real; however, D_Light wanted to ensure the dye-deactivating wand had done its job, and so he decided to jack into a skin to look at Lily. He jacked in and was given a menu of skins from which to choose. He chose the theme “Ancient Rome” and saw Lily’s clothes transform into a loose-fitting dress. Her hair was curled up into coils, and she was suddenly wearing dark, heavy makeup. Apparently, the illusionist who designed (or fantasized about) this one thought that this was how the women of ancient Rome looked. No nOOb sign hovered above her head. The wand had indeed done its job. D_Light then noticed that the table before him was no longer blue-glowing crystal, but white marble. Everywhere he looked, everything and everyone was gilded with the same Roman motif.
Just to amuse himself, D_Light flipped through the menu again and selected “Victorian High Society.” Lily was now in a voluptuous dress that spread out like a mushroom. Her waist was cinched by a painful-looking corset. Piano music drifted in from an unseen source. He flipped through several other selections, but in the end decided that even “Almost Real” wasn’t real enough; he jacked out. There was enough to see here without a skin.
He turned his gaze to Lily again. “So are we having fun, or what?”
Lily’s laugh was short and soft. “I don’t know what I’m having. It reminds me of…what do you call it? A dream.”
D_Light was trying to think of a clever reply when he saw the mime coming toward them. “Mimes,” as they were called, typically looked nothing like mimes from previous eras. Essentially, they were the groksta mascots, and like the mascot of a sporting event, could be dressed as Soul knew what. This one wore a huge, multicolored, shimmering cloak and a mask with an outrageous birdlike beak, something that might have stepped out of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale written while under a hallucinogen. In one hand he held a long leash, on which he walked a large brown bear that was ambulating on its hind legs. Presently, the bear snuck up on a man sitting at the bar and gave him an enormous hug from behind. D_Light could not see the man’s face, but he imagined the poor slob was terrified.
That was the other thing about mimes that made them like mascots-it was their job to keep the party going, often at the patrons’ expense. Indeed, the friends of the man receiving the bear’s affection were laughing hysterically. The mime appeared to be cradling a rifle of some sort in his other arm. Although his bear was occupied with the man sitting at the bar, the mime’s snout was pointing directly at their veepox as though watching them. D_Light quickly turned away, hoping the mime either did not notice him or would soon lose interest. As D_Light looked around at the other groksters, he noticed many others peering back at them as well. D_Light found this unsettling. A dream indeed, he thought. The old dream where I’m naked in front of everyone who matters.
D_Light suddenly noticed the reason for the public interest in Lily and him. There, on a hundred-meter video display that appeared on multiple walls, were Ascara and Boobooma, the duo’s NeverWorld characters. Pheobah and her son Salem were standing before the two heroes. The groksta was playing clips from this morning’s NeverWorld game. The current clip was of the moments just before he and Lily-or Ascara and Boobooma, respectively-got obliterated. Although filters dampened sound from outside the veepox, D_Light heard the words, “You don’t look like much,” being chanted from the groksta crowd in sync with Ascara as the beautiful witch mouthed the same words on the video display.
Lily appeared mesmerized by the far-off video display. “So we’re famous for that?” She looked over at D_Light, puzzled. “But that was just a game, right?”
“Yup, but it’s a game that a lot of people play. I mean, over a billion!” D_Light spread his arms wide for emphasis.
“When you have that many people playing a game, it’s kind of like a parallel world. You get fame in one world and you’ll get fame in the other.”
Lily leaned slightly toward him. “Okay, but we didn’t win the game, right? That Queen Fooba, or whatever her name is, blew us up. It seems to me that anyone could get themselves killed like we did.”
D_Light chuckled and replied, “Yeah, that’s where the old expression ‘better to be lucky than good’ comes in.” D_Light swiveled in his chair to face Lily. “I don’t expect you to understand this since you’re a nOOb when it comes to spank games. Like I said, NeverWorld is just about as complex as any real world.” D_Light took a gulp of his drink before elaborating. “Okay, so we, er…I used a powerful spell to open a portal to one of the most evil and powerful creatures in NeverWorld. That would be Queen Pheobah. Few, if any, spankers in NeverWorld are powerful enough to take on the queen, much less her and her son, Salem, at the same time. But we didn’t open the portal to fight her or to steal from her unfathomable treasure hoard; no, we did it just to insult her.” D_Light put up a finger as though he was making an important point.
Lily nodded. “Right, and that infuriated the queen, who isn’t really a queen at all, but just part of a software program.”
“Right,” confirmed D_Light, “and then she goes on a killing spree, causing a massive panic among the spankers, which-”
Lily put her finger up to D_Light’s lips to shush him so she could finish the sentence. “Which allowed us to escape the sniffer bot because it couldn’t find us in all of that chaos.”
D_Light gently batted Lily’s finger from his face and pointed his hand like a gun and fired at her. “Bingo,” he said with a wink. “OverSoul gave with both hands to you, Lily, both brains and beauty.”
She shrugged in response while her veil covered her blush.
“Right, so that should have been the end of the story,” D_Light said. “I sacrificed my character to create a diversion for our escape. Period. But that wasn’t the end. From what Smorgeous has gathered from the NeverWorld forums, Loki, the NeverWorld god of mischief-well, one of the trickster gods at any rate-saw our little confrontation and thought it was hilarious. Loki loves to watch the humiliation of other deities. And so Loki used his immense magic to resurrect Ascara and Boobooma just to vex Pheobah!” D_Light grinned and shook his head.
“So your software characters are alive again? I suppose that makes you happy,” Lily speculated.
“It does,” confirmed D_Light. “I whiled away countless hours playing Ascara, and I hated to lose her. But all’s well that ends well ’cause now we’re celebrities of NeverWorld. It is a great honor for a mortal to get the attention of any deity, even one as dodgy as Loki!”
