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  “That was all a long time ago,” Mitch said, swiping the accolades away with a quick push of his hand. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Wait a minute,” Blue Two turned to his wrist screen, tapping furiously. “That means you wrote that book—The Skirmish Manual. My brother has read it, like, a million times. He calls it his Bible.”

  “Based on the royalty checks, he’s the only one,” Mitch laughed.

  “There’s a book?” Blue Four asked.

  “The book was just a place to write stuff down,” Mitch said. “Stuff I’ve picked up over the years. Nothing different than what I’ve been teaching you—roles, tactics, strategy. Stuff we were just talking about today.”

  “Like what?” Blue One asked.

  Mitch took a breath and rose to his feet. He holstered his pistol and began singling out team members from the crowd with the point of his index finger. “I was going to start you on this next week, but I’ll give you a couple highlights. Blue One, you were given the role of Leader today, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Blue One replied, jumping to attention.

  “Then why did you keep running in first?” Mitch asked. “A good Leader isn’t always heading up the charge—in fact, in most cases, the Leader role means the exact opposite of that. You call the shots, you make the plan, you keep the team alive. Don’t be a glory hound. Earn that leader badge next time.”

  Blue One nodded back.

  “Where’s Blue Three?” Mitch asked. A head snuck out from behind a virtual locker with a slight raise of his hand. “You—you were the Bulldozer last round, right?” He waited for a shy nod back from the user. “Well, congratulations, that means you’re the tip of the spear. Don’t think I didn’t see you back there, lingering. You’re not helping anyone if you’re not up front. The team is counting on you. Next time, front and center. Take the damage, deal out the damage.”

  “I ... I didn’t know what I was running into,” Blue Three said with a shaking voice.

  “That will change with more reps,” Mitch said. “Where’s my Sniper?” Blue Two stepped forward. “Snipers live in the rafters. Always. If you’d made a beeline for the stairwell on mission start up, you would have seen the trap back in the Docks before it sprung. Stay mobile; try new angles. Snipers go high—Snipers always go high.” Mitch closed his virtual inventory bag and flung it over his shoulder. “If I don’t see improvement out of you guys, we’re never going to make it to the Trafalgar level.”

  A hush fell over the crowd. “I hear Trafalgar is amazing,” Blue Four whispered under his breath.

  “Yeah, it is,” Mitch said. “It’s ridiculously cool. But you don’t get to go to the playground if you can’t tie your shoes to get out the door. I’m not going to send you into a meat grinder. I have some degree of respect for the game.” Doing the math, Mitch turned to the two remaining team members. “Blue Five, you were Demolitions today, right? A critical role. Timed explosives, grenades. Shock and confuse the other side, give your team the advantage right out of the gate. So what were you doing bringing out that hand cannon? All you did was destroy half the level, and worse, you did it after everyone was dead. And you, Blue Four—you’re on Rover duty? You go where you’re needed. You’re the wildcard. Don’t let them know where you are or when you’re coming.”

  “I don’t get it,” Blue One said.

  “You need to attack the game with a strategy,” Mitch said, “and if you stick to the strategy, there’s no stopping you. But you need to—”

  Blue One cut him off. “No, not that. I get the roles. I don’t get why you’re here. You’re still the highest ranked player in Skirmish. Top of the friggin’ leaderboard. What the hell are you doing, guiding tour groups? You should be out in the arena. You should be—”

  “I don’t pay attention to that stuff anymore,” Mitch said.

  “He’s the closest one,” Blue Three said, checking a readout on his wrist screen and tapping Blue Five to check the numbers for himself. “To the billion point level. 999,985,224.” Blue Three turned to face Mitch. “You got so close ... why would you stop? At a billion you get to do whatever you want.”

  “Not whatever you want,” Mitch said. “And I stopped ... because I stopped. Can’t get points if you stop doing missions, and I’d rather be in here doing this. End of story.”

  “A billion gives you Legendary status,” Blue Four whispered in awe. “No one’s ever done it. Unlimited weapons. Unlimited skill points. The game has never seen anyone at that level. You’d be unstoppable.”

  “And then what?” Mitch asked, checking the game lobby one last time for any remaining loot. “At some point it all becomes a dick-measuring contest. One I’m not interested in. Like I said—Spitfire is ancient history. That was all a long time ago.”

  The questions kept coming. Mitch did his best to politely deflect the tidal wave of queries while slowly stepping back towards the game lobby’s exit. With a few taps on his wrist screen, his avatar began to glow, ready to dematerialize.

  “I’ll see you all next week,” Mitch said. “Be sure to practice your levels—and your aim—and don’t forget to send your credits in before the next session. And as always, remember—”

  “Find your next battle today,” the team chanted as Mitch’s avatar disappeared.

  THREE

  Nothing More Than an Echo

  THE ALL-TOO-FAMILIAR ‘KARMA SYSTEMS SESSION: OFFLINE’ message dissolved as Mitch watched the beautiful, detailed, electric virtual world fade away into dull black. His vision blurred and his head throbbed—like a hangover followed by a punch in the stomach.

  Karma’s been around long enough, you’d think they’d work on the goodbye kiss. Jesus.

  He peeled his helmet off, feeling a welcomed rush of cool air across his temples, and tossed the hardware down onto his legs. It hit with the crinkle of fiber optic wires bending and twisting—like a thick piece of rope coated in a plastic veneer. Pushing back into the faux leather, rubbing hard at his eyes, the world came back in bits and pieces, colors and shapes and smells. Mitch stretched out the past few hours of immobility, taking in a deep whiff of his own sour scent. It wasn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of pleasant, but he found some strange, twisted comfort in it. In the gaming world, the mission came first, and personal hygiene came in, like ... sixth place? Living under a digital veil tended to reset one’s priorities.

  Inside virtual reality, time was just another number. Even knowing it was three in the morning or eleven fifteen at night was at best a piece of trivia, and at worst a distraction from the game. Reality’s concept of time had become so inconsequential inside Karma that Mitch had removed the clock from his heads-up display years ago—most players had. Now it was just another stat hidden way down in his settings where it wouldn’t get in the way, not distracting him from the task at hand. But coming back home, the time change hit hard, every time.

  Dusk had fallen, and his trailer was lit by faded traces of light, tingeing the far wall with deep oranges and pale yellows. The sunset was in its death throes, piercing through the smeared, plastic windows that looked out on the coast and to the endless ocean. A handful of sunbeams highlighted a few unlucky bugs trapped in corner cobwebs. Mitch always hated coming out of his Karma rig to be greeted with darkness, but leaving the lights on was just a big waste of credits.

  Credits he didn’t have.

  Jackknifing himself off his Karma Mark 5 VR chair, Mitch stomped both feet on the floor and held his head deep in his hands. Re-entry was always a bitch, but it was the price he paid for living in two worlds at once. Virtual reality and, well, reality, triggered two different parts of the brain; at least that’s what the experts always talked about. Modern VR systems required wiring that reached deeper into the cortex than organic input, and with the bypassing of sensory layers, the human mind ... eh, you get the point. All Mitch knew was that the bruise of pulling the ripcord—leaving the adrenaline of Karma and landing back in the dull buzz of the real world—l
eft a mark. And it didn’t help that his reality wasn’t exactly charmed at the moment.

  His trailer was a shit hole—that fact was not up for debate. It was also the finest rectangular box he could afford. It didn’t come with an impressive list of amenities, but it did have one hell of a view. So what if his stove worked off an old propane tank, or if he had to huddle under a slow-spitting nozzle for his weekly shower? Perched high on a cliff on the California coast, he was the only light in the night for miles, except for one ridiculous place about a mile or so away, up on the cliffs. The mansion up the road was one he’d always dreamed of making his own. He’d come close at one point—took a few tours and had a full payment all ready to go—until his finances went sideways. Until his whole virtual life slipped right out from under him. With a place like that, he’d told himself, he wouldn’t need Karma. Wouldn’t need another reality to run to. He could just sit there, perched up on the cliff like a hawk in its nest, and be.

  Mitch took a long sip of water from the nearest glass and pulled back the curtains to reveal a long row of waves filling in below him, whitecaps turned pink by the falling sun. Waiting for their turn to hit the beach—to disappear into nothing, and then somehow curl back under to line up and do it all again. It was Mitch’s favorite part of reality, and he drank it up every chance he got.

  Virtual reality systems had really taken off about thirty years ago, back when everyone assumed they’d be the perfect escape for the big, ugly, inevitable dystopian future that awaited humanity. The technology progressed rapidly as software vendors and gaming platforms saw dollar signs in their eyes, rushing to pour in as much money as they could. But the funny thing about the race to escape reality was that the dark, lonely world that everyone predicted just never showed up.

  The world, it turned out, was doing just fine.

  VR now made its way into most people’s daily lives, but not the way anyone had thought. It wasn’t escape; it was the new normal—the new daily commute for billions of people. VR’s main accomplishment had been to connect people, sure, but more importantly, to free them from geographic boundaries. To interact with a certain group, you didn’t need to live on the same cul-de-sac. To work for a company, you no longer needed to move to a new city with new schools and climate and culture. And not with stupid little chat rooms or conference calls that never seemed to work, either. It felt real, and that drove usage up, and up, and up. Virtual reality allowed people to be wherever they wanted, and truly fill a virtual space. People could be anywhere—and everywhere—at the same time. And they couldn’t get enough.

  As it turned out, VR wasn’t great for every industry. The real estate market took a nosedive as people realized they didn’t need to buy property downtown or in other urban centers anymore. Offices all became virtual—both for cost savings and convenience. The shift gutted developers across the world, but it was pretty good news if you wanted a little piece of land with a view on the coast, complete with a dedicated fiber connection, for nearly nothing. That didn’t suck.

  Mitch heard a ping from his makeshift command center at the end of the trailer. No one would be so generous as to call it an “office” … more like a bunch of hardware stacked in the corner. Some worked, some didn’t. At the top was a wall monitor, now glowing with an indicator, begging for his attention.

  NEW PRIORITY MESSAGE

  AUTHOR: RICHARD MCDOUGALL

  MARKED ***URGENT***

  Another one? Don’t worry, Mac—haven’t forgot about you.

  Mitch’s life in Skirmish had started a lot like everyone else’s—as a fan. The game had just spoken to him. It made sense, it clicked like nothing else in his life ever had. That initial spark turned into countless hours, days, years learning every pixel of every level of every game. He’d found comfort in the Razor pulse rifle early, and learned it inside and out. He found groups of like-minded players. Some he stuck with for years, others disappeared after just one or two matches. When he wasn’t playing Skirmish, he was talking about it in virtual forums—reacting to the latest news of redesigned mission maps or venting his outrage if a rule was tweaked in even the subtlest way. Being young had always been an advantage—less responsibility meant more mission cycles, and more cycles meant higher levels. It was normal to find players washed up at twenty-four. At twenty-eight, you were already a fossil.

  Mitch clicked the new message at the top of his inbox, taking another pull from his glass. He could feel the machine text reflecting off his eyeballs as the room fell darker and darker.

  MITCH - NEED YOU IN EARLY THIS TIME.

  BOOKED A MEETING FOR TOMORROW, 9:30AM.

  BIG THINGS HAPPENING.

  Mac’s never been one to miss the chance for some drama. Overreacting as usual.

  A message from Mac had actually started Mitch’s gaming career way back when. One night, right smack in the middle of a pickup game, Mitch received the ping that changed his life. Skirmish’s founder, the man himself, Richard McDougall, had been assembling teams for years, throwing his attention and resources to build dream teams, one at a time. When he brought a group together, that team became a top ten seed right out of the gate. Every time. When one of his teams began to falter, he’d build up another in the background, always ready with a fresh product. Ready for the next wave. But the team that Mitch ended up leading—Mac had never built a team like that before.

  The world had never seen a team like the Nefarious Five.

  VR gaming teams are harder to keep together than you might imagine. You need to be more disciplined than most people give you credit for. Sure, good days don’t feel like work at all, but bad days hit hard. At least fourteen hours of team play, usually bookended on either side with a few hours of solo games under any number of aliases, burning the maps and skills into muscle memory. There were no holidays, no days off. Weekends were prime time, and friends faded away.

  The Nefarious Five—a ragtag team of misfits that fit together like pieces of a puzzle no one had bothered to put together before —had dominated Skirmish for years back in their prime. They crushed every tournament and relentlessly built out skill levels and inventories to keep other teams far, far behind. The good Skirmish teams were like superstars, but N5 was in a completely different league. Their names were known by just about every man, woman, or child that had set a virtual foot in Skirmish.

  The money flowed in so fast, Mitch didn’t have time to count it, let alone spend it. None of them did. As the game grew, the Nefarious Five changed into something less familiar by the day. Mitch had felt it slipping away here and there—missed practices went without apologies or explanation, big matches became more about players’ personal brands than goals and tactics. Every player on a team like Nefarious was expected to host live chats, have a folder full of glossy headshots, and enjoy mixing with his or her fans to be seen as more “accessible.” The celebrity dragged him down, even if the gameplay still sent Mitch’s heart racing. The tournaments were downright addictive, the live crowds growing bigger and bigger every year. Cheering and jeering with every move from each team. It was a constant adrenaline boost that no sane person would have ever walked away from.

  But Mitch never claimed to be sane.

  He stood from his desk and trotted the epic, eight-foot trek to the kitchen, tracing his fingers across the tops of the tallest trophies lined up like fans watching him from the sidelines. As he refilled his water, his eyes drifted to a picture of the old crew, huddled on stage with smiles on faces and arms around shoulders. Medals around their necks.

  He blew at the dust on the glass, coughing as it came right back at him, to read the text.

  SKIRMISH CHAMPIONSHIP 2049

  GRAND CHAMPIONS

  ** THE NEFARIOUS FIVE **

  He still could hear the crowds ringing through the stadium, but knew the cheers were now nothing more than an echo. There was nobody cheering for him anymore.

  No one’s got a gun to your head. Don’t have to meet up with Mac if you don’t want to.
You’re doing fine. Just fine.

  After Mitch had left the team, he’d vowed to reinvent himself. Bigger. Better. He plowed his cash into a new rig of full-immersion technology, hoping it would serve both as an upgrade for his latency stats as well as a welcome distraction. But without the team, the world moved on without him. All Mitch’s new mix of expensive toys, no salary, and poor money management skills got him was a one-way ticket to a trailer on the coast and a pile of debt that wasn’t going anywhere.

  His new life was spent trying to scrape by, one under-the-table transaction at a time. Side games for credits came with a good amount of risk—Mitch could name ten players that had been banned for doing exactly that—but he knew all the tricks to stay off the security team’s lists. Find some rich banker coming home on a Friday or Saturday night and you could make some real coin. Timing games just so, picking up the drunks from each time zone as they rolled in, one after another, just like those waves two hundred feet below him crashing into the rocks.

  Tour groups paid alright—friend of a friend hookups to teach kids to play the game. Mitch figured he had enough knowledge to keep players coming back for more without having to lean on his old name and draw any attention from the narcs or the brass. And on top of all of it, he’d built his catalog of knowledge into a how-to book that nobody was buying, The Skirmish Manual: A Team-Based Approach.

  He was trying, he told himself. Trying new things to pull himself out of the hole he’d dug. Trying every day. “It’s not so bad,” Mitch said to no one in particular, setting his glass down on a towering stack of envelopes. That’s when you knew the debt collectors were getting serious—they gave up on digital pings, and went old school with paper notices, flashing red text like “GARNISH WAGES” and “LAST NOTICE.” Mitch craned his neck past the bills to see a giant rat—a really big son-of-a-bitch—running for a hole on the far side of the kitchen. He shrugged it off and pulled the old sliding glass door open, stepping onto the splintered wood of his makeshift deck. The sun, quickly falling, felt warm on his face, like a thick shot of whiskey. He pressed his eyes shut and soaked it in.