D_Light had barely acclimated to his surroundings when the sound of heavy footsteps caught his attention. They were close by and growing louder. Without hesitation, he summoned an invisibility spell. Waving one hand while tracing a symbol in the air with the other, he murmured an arcane phrase. As his spell completed, D_Light was relieved to discover that he could no longer see his own hand. That was a good thing, as he sometimes made mistakes, especially when rushed.
The spell took effect none too soon, for only a few seconds later, a lumbering beast of a creature turned the corner and headed in his direction. A maltoc, as the creature was called, resembled a man only in its general shape, having two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head. This was fitting, given that maltocs were human before their corruption by Salem, the son of Pheobah, the Dark Queen. But the maltoc’s general shape and size was the end of the similarities between these nasties and men. Bristling, greasy hair covered mounds of muscles and other more irregular and freakish lumps. Through the amorphous face peered beady, pink eyes, which glistened slightly in the torchlight of the hall. Around the eyes were crimson red sockets that excreted thin trickles of blood down its wrinkly face-a face that most closely resembled raw hamburger. The creature did not breathe as it stalked, for it had no nose or mouth; only its footfalls betrayed its passing. Maltocs, incidentally, were only lesser devils, but nonetheless, they were not something to be trifled with.
Having played NeverWorld for countless hours in the past, D_Light’s gaming habits were nearly hardwired. He had to fight the urge to blast this nasty in the back as it passed by him. “Nasties” was the term spankers used for computer-generated enemies in the game, and destroying them was one way to get points in NeverWorld and build up the power of the character one played. He had to remind himself of his purpose here-he was not here for treasure or glory in battle, but to look for doors or the absence thereof. For D_Light, this was a sort of agony, akin to sending a gambler into a casino just to count men with brown hair. It was a numbingly mundane task in an exciting world.
Two ghosts stood nearby, one to his left and another just behind. They looked like human-shaped jellyfish with only the very edges of their bodies highlighted by thin, translucent lines, while the fill of the form was nearly transparent. D_Light supposed the ghosts to be Lyra and Djoser, but he could not ascertain which was which because NeverWorld rarely skinned objects or people as they looked in the real world. In fact, one could never predict how the game’s artificial intelligence would skin non-game objects and creatures. From the game’s perspective, it was only important to make clear who was a spanker and who was not. Skinning non-spankers as benign ghosts enabled those submerged in the game to identify the non-players without losing the continuity of the game.
Both ghosts had the appearance of being men. One was an old man with an unrelenting crooked smile, wearing only wisps of rags. The other was younger, although D_Light could barely tell because the man’s face-his entire head, actually-was split down the middle to the root of the nose, much like a log of wood cleaved on the edge by an ax. This ghost was naked, and one of his arms twitched.
No sooner had D_Light focused in on the ghosts than a pop-up sign appeared over each one declaring, “Not in play. Do not interact with this agent.” It really was an incredible use of space, when D_Light thought about it. All of these alternate dimensions occupying the same physical area, dimensions facilitated by software. Consequently, NeverWorld was not the only game available in this ghetto. There was Mission Flipp’n Ridiculous (a spy game), Samurai on Top (a samurai death match), Golden Age (a twenty-first-century war game), Grokstania (a social networking game), and several other less popular options. One would think that with so many people playing so many different games it would be chaos, but unless two spankers were in the same game, they were skinned as a “sideliner prop” to one another-just like the two ghosts appeared to D_Light.
Although spankers avoided running into sideliner props, they otherwise ignored them because the props typically had no real importance to the game they were in. D_Light now found himself in the unique position of caring about the props, at least the ones that represented Lyra and Djoser. How else would he coordinate with them on finding the demon? In response to this, Smorgeous verified that the old man was, in fact, Lyra, and the lumberjack accident was Djoser.
Returning his attention back to NeverWorld, D_Light breathed a sigh of regret as he watched the thicket-dense hairy back of the maltoc continue down the hall. It was uncommon to find one of these devils by itself, and D_Light had the advantage of full surprise. He felt a twinge of frustration as his opportunity for easy experience points disappeared around the corner, but he reminded himself that he was playing a much bigger and more important game this evening.
“Smorgeous, watch for doors that appear in the material world but not in the game. When you see one, go sit next to it,” D_Light stated out loud so that Lyra and Djoser could hear. Because D_Light was now playing a fantasy game in a quasi-medieval setting, he was supposed to role-play using fantaspeech, which included words like thee, thou, nay, and so on. However, he was not going to embarrass himself by speaking this way to the nobles. His score flashed red as NeverWorld exacted a minor penalty.
His familiar pinged confirmation of his master’s verbal command.
Although Smorgeous was not as intelligent as most humans or human-based products, he did have the advantage of being able to process multiple inputs at once. Smorgeous could monitor the game D_Light was jacked into while seeing the real world. However, D_Light had to be personally spanking in order to give Smorgeous access to the game. Spank games like NeverWorld did not allow familiars or other software to access it without a human sponsor being jacked in. Otherwise, spankers could use software to scout out the game before jacking in, which was cheating.
It was a while before they found a private door. D_Light watched the Lyra ghost knock on it. Just as D_Light had expected, the door upon which she was knocking appeared to him as a solid wall. There was some muffled talking, but D_Light could scarcely make out any of it, for real sounds were always somewhat muted while jacked in. Unable to hear much, he did manage to catch Lyra saying the phrases “interested in” and “thank you.” Her voice, husky but silky feminine, sounded surreal as it emanated from the old man’s ghostly mouth.
Additional doors were discovered as the night wore on, and the team soon dropped into an efficient routine. Fortunately, it was getting late and most residents had retired to their apartments. Unbeknownst to the residents, Lyra was having her familiar take images of them as they came to the door and then compare them to images in the demon database. After doing this for a while, Lyra even dropped the ruse of being a salesperson and simply told the often groggy-eyed occupant that she had the wrong apartment. Such a terse exchange was adequate, as it only took a second or two for PeePee to grok the suspect.
Meanwhile, D_Light spent most of his energy on avoiding being seen by the nasties. As his invisibility spell began to wear off, he had to renew it, and his spell manna was dwindling. Worse yet, some of the creatures lurking about could see him, despite the invisibility. He tried especially hard to avoid these, often doubling back down the hall, which confused Djoser and Lyra as they tried to stick with him.
Where the flip are you going? Lyra asked over a blink.
Uh, can’t talk. There’s a goo coming. D_Light sent his mental reply as he ran. The gelatinous mass of undulating slime that slithered after him was not fooled by D_Light’s invisibility, having no eyes anyway.