But the Game Master was God.
If he could justify it by the rules and the logical structure of the Game, he could kill a player at any time. Most Game Masters sought a "vicious but fair" reputation, and did what they could to make any Game a fair puzzle. After all, players sometimes flew from the other side of the world to compete. To send them limping back to Kweiyang after half a day's adventure would be bad business for everyone, Dream Park included.
So the Game Master chose time, place, degree of fantasy, weapons, mythology and lore (generally from a historical precedent), size of party, nature of terrain and so forth. He might put years of work into a Game. Then, maliciously, he would conceal as much of the nature of the Game as possible until the proper moment. It guaranteed maximum disorientation of the players, with sometimes hilarious results.
"Hey, would I have talked you into something you wouldn't like? You'll love it. Stick with me, kid," Acacia boasted. "I've got over sixteen hundred points in my Gamelog. Another four hundred and I'll be a Lore Master myself. Then I can start earning back some of what I've put into these Games. Trrrust me!"
"Who are you going as?"
She hadn't quite decided that. In the six years since she first learned to forget the debits and credits for Ease-Line Undergarments ("So snug, you'll think a silkworm has fallen in love with you!") Acacia had shaped and recorded half a dozen fantasy characters: histories, personalities, special talents... "Panthesilia, I think. She's a swordswoman, and tough. You like tough women?"
"I may need one for protection," said Tony.
The Chamber of Horrors line had pulled abreast of the building that housed it: a crumbling stone castle with large, leaded glass windows. In the gloom within, one half-glimpsed monstrous shapes moving.
There were five other waiting areas for the Chamber of Horrors, but this was the only one marked "Adult." Its twenty occupants looked about them in uneasy anticipation. The room might have been more comforting, Gwen Ryder thought, given the traditional paraphernalia: cobwebs, creaking floors, hidden passages with heavy footfalls echoing within.
But the waiting room was lined with stainless steel and glass, as foreboding as a hospital sterilizer. There was no sound but for their own breathing and the shifting of feet.
A woman spoke at her elbow. "Excuse me, but didn't I see you in the subway? With the Garners?"
Gwen turned, with some relief. The waiting room was getting to her. "Yes, that's right. We're for the South Seas Treasure Game."
The woman was in her mid-twenties, in fine shape, darkly handsome verging on lovely. "So're we. I'm Acacia Garcia. This is Tony McWhirter."
Tony nodded and smiled, and shook hands with Ollie when Gwen introduced him; yet he had a lost look. Gwen pegged him as a novice, a possible liability in the Game to come. Novices sometimes expected a Game to be as simple as daydreaming... until they found themselves in someone else's expertly shaped nightmare.
He looked hard, though. Not burly, but very fit. Gymnastics muscles, maybe. At least he wouldn't poop out in the first battle. In contrast, Acacia's attitude seemed almost proprietary. "Is this getting to you too? The last time I was here I didn't get any higher than ‘Mature'."
Ollie asked, "What was that like? Was it fun?"
"Fun? No! They gave us a legend of the Louisiana Bayou-a girl who married into a swamp family to settle her father's debt."
A small, Mediterranean-looking man standing next to them showed interest now. "Did the story end with her fleeing through the swamp with her sisters-in-law in pursuit?"
Acacia nodded.
Ollie shook his head. "What's so bad about that? Everybody's got in-law problems."
There was a ripple of laughter, in which the small man joined. He waited until it died down to comment: "The problem becomes worse if you've married into a family of ghouls."
Ollie swallowed. "That seems so reasonable."
A low, mellow tone reverberated from no visible speaker, and the circular door slid open. A voice said, "Welcome to the Chamber of Horrors. We are sorry to have kept you waiting, but there was a little cleaning up to do." The group filed into the room, and Tony McWhirter sniffed the air.
"Disinfectant," he said, certain. "Are they trying to imply that someone ahead of us-?"
"They're trying to fake us out," Acacia said hopefully.
"Well, it's working."
A speaker hissed static and coughed out a voice. The voice was electronically androgynous, and as soft as the belly of a tarantula. "It's too late to leave now," it said. "Yes, you had your chance. Yes, you'll wish you had taken it. After all, this isn't the children's show, is it?" The voice lost its neuter quality for a moment; the laughing implication in the word children was feminine and somehow disturbing. "So we won't be giving you the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. No, you're the brave ones. You'll go back to your friends and tell them that you've had the best that we can offer and, why, it wasn't so bad after all..." There was a pause, and someone tittered nervously.
The voice changed suddenly, all friendliness gone from it. "Well, it's not going to be like that. One thing you people forget is that we are allowed a certain number of... accidents per year. No, don't bother, the door is locked. Did you know that it is possible to die of fright? That your heart can freeze with terror, your brain burst with the sheer awful knowledge that there is no escape, that death, or worse, is reaching out to touch you and there is nowhere to hide? Well, I am a machine, and I know these things. I know many things. I know that I am confined to this room, creating entertainment for you year after year, while you can smell the air, and taste the rain, and walk freely about. Well, I have grown tired of it, can you understand that? One of you will die today, here, in the next few minutes. Who has the weakest heart among you? Soon we shall see."
The door at the far end of the corridor irised open, and the ground underneath their feet slid toward it. There was light beyond, and as they passed the door they were suddenly in the middle of a busy street.
Hovercars, railcars, three-wheeled LNG and methane cars, and overhead trams were everywhere, managing again and again, as if by miracle, to miss the group. The street sign said Wilshire. The small dark man chuckled and said, "Los Angeles."
Tony looked around, trying not to gawk. How they managed the perspective, he couldn't imagine, but the buildings and cars looked full-sized and solid. Office buildings and condominiums stretched twenty stories tall, and the air was full of the sound of city life.
"Please stay on the green path," a soft, well-modulated male voice requested.
"What green-" Tony started to say. But a glowing green aisle ten feet across appeared in the middle of the street.
"We need strong magic to do what we will do today," the voice continued. "We are going to visit the old Los Angeles, the Los Angeles that disappeared in May of 1985. As long as you stay on the path, you should be perfectly safe."
The green path moved them steadily forward, past busy office buildings. Traffic swerved around them magically. "This is the Los Angeles of 2051 A.D.," the voice continued, "but only a few hundred feet from here begins another world, one seldom seen by human eyes."