PART 2

<<Warning. Incoming Game.>>

Games were now infamous legends told throughout the Metaverse. The dreaded cubes of purple light that engulfed sometimes entire sectors of systems for the Users' nefarious pleasure. Since colonization, the government recognized the Games' danger to the colonists, since early on, Games dropped on the colony systems and caused a few deaths among them. So, using the same brilliant programmers that designed the systems, the government disabled the Game function in all inhabited systems. Dummy systems, similar to the types used by hackers, were set up for these purposes. No Games had been seen in the Metaverse for a long time.

Still, the fear of the Games, which had nullified so many systems' inhabitants without the Guardians, was so ingrained on the sprites--the only surviving race from that chaotic period--that the Game-fear had become a 'racial memory.'

This is why, when the Resonate System suddenly darkened and the sky crackled with energy and an emotionless baritone intoned the dread words heralding a Game, the Aughts started to spaz out.

David and Quinn, while not sprites, somehow felt a fear themselves as they looked up to see a hole appear in the Resonate's sky, admitting a gleaming purple cube of malevolent light. The Aughts screamed, a scream that was echoed by every other sprite in the system as they saw the forgotten danger drop from the sky like a hammer.

The Game cube landed on the Downhill Track and the scene visible through the purple haze faded from view as the cube turned opaque. Within, David Gabbiani, Quinn Rentack, and the older Aught siblings--Zilch, Niente, Naught, Nada, Nil, and Void--were trapped.

Not too distant were two large sprites, with ice-blue skin. One's skin glistened with sweat and his hair gleamed yellow. The other had a cleft in his jaw like a canyon, a scowl that could curdle milk, and fiery glowing red hair. Each wore black tank tops that revealed their large muscles, but wore fur-lined coats over them. As they breathed, the air fogged momentarily. They sat in front of computer screens as well. The virus looked at them. "Log in and let's play."

"Yes, sir," the redhead, Tomasi, grumbled. He tapped keys and his screen lit up with the game.

"Uh, yeah! Yes, sir!" Rollo, the other one, commented. He was not too quick on the uptake, but he caught on and mimicked his partner's movements.

Lean smirked at the character on the screen, a black-clad knight on a horse with a massive sword. Rollo and Tomasi each had similar characters, but Rollo had a lance and Tomasi had a mace. Lean smirked. "Let the match . . . BEGIN!"

"Everybody just calm down," Quinn said. "We'll find a way out of this."

"How?" Nil asked. "We've never played in Games before. We don't even know which game this is!"

"It's Knight Fight." David looked around. "I've played it before. The object of the game is to clear the battlefield of all competitors."

"So, that's easy," Naught said. "We just stay out of the competition." Everyone looked at him. "What'd I say?"

"Bro," Nada said, "if we don't compete, the User wins by default. We'll be nullified."

Naught grimaced. "Basic."

"Zish," Nil added. "So we gotta compete. Uh, how do we do that?"

Quinn racked his memory for an answer. "I read the stories. The Guardian Bob and his friends always played the Games by doing something called 'rebooting.'"

"Rebooting?" Zilch echoed.

"Yeah. I think you tap your icon twice and say 'Reboot.'" Quinn shrugged.

Nada sighed. "Well, we don't have a choice." She tapped her icon on her shirt. "Reboot." A green column of light shone around her, and she emerged as a feminine knight wielding a sword. She looked herself over. "Can't say I like the costume, but it'll do."

Zilch and the others all shrugged and did the same, tapping their icons and saying the magic word. As the light faded, they all looked each other over. Zilch was a large knight on a horse with a massive broadsword. Niente was a similar knight with a spiked lance. Naught appeared as a knight with a visor that constantly clanged over his face as he fumbled with his sword. Nil and Void were archers.

David frowned. "Nothing happened." Then he caught himself. "Oh, of course it wouldn't work! I'm not a sprite. Rebooting doesn't work for me."

"Clever boy," Quinn smirked. He turned to the Aughts. "Okay. You guys have to stop the Player from winning. Just beat the Player, and we can go home."

Then a deep laugh echoed across the battlefield-a ruined castle and its grounds. A large black knight on a black stallion swished a large sword around. Blue-gray eyes glinted beneath the Black Knight's visor. David snarled. "Lean!"

Quinn held him back. "David, we wouldn't stand a chance. We have no weapons. He has one big sword." Then he spread his hands wide. "Besides, we aren't in the competition. We're bystanders. He can't hurt us."

A large mace slammed into a rock beside Quinn. The two humans turned to face another Black Knight, with red hair gleaming under the helmet. "Guess again," Tomasi-Knight said.

They retreated, but a Black Knight with yellow hair blocked the path. "Wrong choice!" Rollo-Knight grinned as he thrust his lance at them. But Niente charged by on her horse and her lance knocked Rollo-Knight down and rolling down a hill. She turned to Tomasi-Knight, who swung his mace at her. David and Quinn beat a hasty retreat as the Player and sprite battled.

Quinn and David hid behind some masonry as the battle waged on. Tomasi-Knight and Niente were evenly matched, especially since the Player had damaged her horse enough that she had to get off. Now her lance and his mace seemed locked as they traded punches. Niente snarled and fisted a gauntleted hand and drove it hard into Tomasi-Knight's face. Rollo-Knight was climbing back up the hill, his lance up to gore her. Nada turned away from Lean-Knight and ran to help her older sister.

Nada's sword descended and Rollo-Knight's lance splintered in two. The Player looked stupidly at the lance as Nada circled her sword overhead and finished the job with a wicked slash. Rollo-Knight's body crackled with energy a bit, and then faded from view with a green flash. The Player's fading scream echoed hauntingly through the ruined castle. He had derezzed, a slang term for 'de-resolution' or 'deletion.'

Tomasi-Knight was going to be a bit tougher. He continued to block Niente's thrusts with a shield and swung his mace down to try and splinter her lance as Nada had done to Rollo-Knight. But Niente was too sharp for that, and pulled her lance back quicker than the Player could attack. Nada came to her aid, her sword clashing against his mace. Niente thrust in again, but Tomasi-Knight shifted his shield around to block her. His laugh rolled over them like a wave, and he pressed forward, trying to shift them off balance.

Quinn watched this with growing concern. "We gotta help them!"

David watched as well, but he grimaced. "But we can't! We can't reboot! We don't have any weapons!"

But now Quinn looked down at the ground. Pieces of masonry roughly the size of baseballs were strewn about. He hefted one, judged the distance between he and Tomasi-Knight, then hurled it at him. The stone ricocheted off his helmet, and he turned briefly to look at them. David got the hint and picked up a stone to do the same. It struck him in the faceplate, and then the two humans started hurling stones one after another, causing Tomasi-Knight to momentarily forget his opponents and shift his shield to protect him from the stones.

Niente wasted no time exploiting the opening. Her lance pierced his armor and he screamed as his sprite derezzed and vanished. They waved and nodded their thanks to David and Quinn and went to rejoin the others in fighting Lean-Knight.

Lean-Knight was still atop his horse, but the horse had arrows protruding everywhere. The Player wouldn't be on that horse for long. Naught was still fumbling with his own weapon, and he appeared to be vulnerable to Lean-Knight's next attack. The virus' Player went for the opening, but one of Nil's arrows struck his shoulder, piercing into the armor. Void let loose another shaft, and it struck the horse in the eye. Lean-Knight leapt off his steed and poised to take them in personal combat.

Quinn and David were picking up stones to bean the Player with, and their throws were distracting him. Zilch charged in, but Lean-Knight dodged aside and sliced open the side of Zilch's horse. A stone glanced off his helmet, but he shook off the daze and blocked Niente's thrust. Things looked grim for the Player.

"I thought you two were good at this game," Lean commented as he continued to be on the defensive.

"We are," Tomasi said.

"Uh, yeah! But we never had to play against them!" Rollo added.

Lean growled wolf-like again as his Player retreated back into the ruined castle. "No matter. Go, and get the next phase of the plan set up."

"Yes, sir!" Tomasi nodded as he marched off.

"Uh, yeah! Yes, sir!" Rollo hurried after him.

The Game continued on Lean's screen.

Nil and Void still loosed arrows, most of which struck his armor or the ground around him. Naught and Nada were circling around him to attack from behind. David and Quinn had given up their rock attack to watch the battle.

Naught attacked from behind, and Lean-Knight pivoted, blocked the attack with his shield, then thrust low. Nada blocked the thrust, and Zilch charged in to slash at Lean-Knight's armor. It ripped like cloth, and the Player screamed. Niente thrust with her lance and staggered him further. Then twin arrows flew in and slipped right through the Player's visor. The scream ended with a sickening crunch. Lean-Knight staggered again, then fell backward. The Player derezzed.

<<Game Over.>>

The ruined castle, the battlefield, their armor, and their weapons all turned to purple fog as the Game cube lifted off the Downhill Track and ascended back into the hole in the sky it had emerged from. The Aughts all visibly relaxed. David and Quinn patted themselves to ascertain that they were still intact, then sighed with relief. Zilch looked up at the sky, which was starting to return to its normal color. "Uh, let's get the deuce outta here, hey? I don't wanna 'nother Game droppin' on us."

"I'll second that, bro," Niente said. They quickly got off the hill and headed back toward the Aughts' home. As they headed back, Zilch and Niente paralleling the car on their bikes, she asked, "I thought Games were forbidden."

"They are," Naught said.

"Yeah," Quinn confirmed. "When humans started the colonization, they had to shut the Games down. I think they called the measure the 'Anti-Game Protocol.'"

"Yeah, that's it," Nada said. "But the AGP is in the system's code. And that sort of thing is very, very tightly secured. You can't access it from the Metaverse."

"Which means," David said, his sunglasses glinting with green light, "that Lean is in Userworld." The term 'Userworld' was a slang term for Reality.

"Right," Quinn said, nodding. "And it's not that hard building a portal-gen. Hell, we know for a fact that Lean can make portals if he wants to. It's making a Gate that's tougher."

"That sort of information is in the government databases," David said. "I learned how to crack those when I was eight." Then he stiffened and his face fell. "Oh, my God."

"What?" Nil asked.

"That's it," David said, putting a hand to his head and falling back in his seat. He looked up at them. "When Lean and I were merging in Omega-Cragis, there was a time when I knew everything he knew, and vice versa. He could have copied my hacking skills out of me and into himself."

"We know all this already," Nada reminded him. "Just before the Game landed, Lean told us this over the comm."

"I know," David said, "but I didn't understand the implications of it until now. Since Lean had access to my skills, he was able to find out how to crack the government d-bases, and therefore, he was able to get the plans for a Gate. With a Gate in Omega-Cragis--"

"--he can get into Userworld," Naught said. He slammed a fist into the dashboard. "Aw, basic!! If he can get into Userworld, he can get into the Resonate's code and disable the AGP. Without the AGP, he and anybody else who cares to play can drop a Game on us!"

"So, we gotta stop Lean, hey?" Zilch said. "Go into Userworld?"

"That appears to be the size of it," David agreed. He and Quinn both produced credcards. "Time to go home."

Once there, Quinn went to a friend of his and asked if any other strange types had come through the Gate recently. The technician scratched his head, then said, "Come to think of it, yeah. Guy in a black outfit, a sprite, I think. His name was Andrew Ginole."

David nodded. "Uh-huh, that's him."

Quinn asked, "Do you have any idea where he went?"

"Well," the tech said, "his pass said he was headed north."

"That's it," David asked, "just 'north'?"

"Yeah, sorry," the tech said with a shrug.

The group convened in a park and pondered. "According to the info I have on 'Andrew Ginole'," Naught said, "he's a researcher. Specializes in old things, particularly old military things."

"And?" David probed, eager to get more data on where Lean Il Lupe could be.

"Well, if I can get my hands on a computer," Nada said, "we can narrow down the list of places Lean could have gone."

David smirked. "Quinn, can you lend us a hand there?"

The writer looked up. "What? Oh, sure. I have a friend in a publishing house not too far from here. I'm pretty sure he'll let us use his computer. It might take a little monetary compensation, but nothing too tough."

"Okay," DaVinci said. "I've narrowed down the list to three bases, but by the time we get to one of them, Lean could be gone."

Quinn looked up. "I found an article. 25 April 2498. Researcher Andrew Ginole, a sprite from the Resonate System, purchased the military installation called Polar Point in Northern Canada today. We got the bastard."

Nil spoke up. "Uh, Quinn, aren't you worried that the Guardians'll pick you up for hacking?"

"No," Quinn said. "I told the office that I'm doing research for a story I'll publish in their news-sheet." He smiled. "And I will. No reason not to get a paycheck out of all this."

"Lessee," DaVinci said as he tapped keys on his computer, "Polar Point military base . . . got it! I found a map to the place."

Aztral chuckled from his computer. "I'm sending in an anonymous tip to the local constabulary, telling them where they can find the virus that was spotted in the Resonate System a few weeks ago."

Zilch spoke up. "They'll delete him, hey?"

"Probably not, bro," Void said.

"What? Why not?"

"Viruses are an endangered species," Nil said. "They can't delete him, no matter how dangerous he is."

"Great," Zilch mumbled. "In the meantime, can you guys fix the AGP so Lean can't drop any more Games on the Resonate?"

DaVinci considered. "Not from here. I'd need to have access to the hardware and software that Lean used."

"That means," Quinn said, "that we have to go to Polar Point."

"Uh, boss, we got the stuff all set," Rollo said, sweating despite the cold.

"Good," Lean said. "You and Tomasi get back to the Gate. I'll be along shortly. I just have to make sure that DaVinci comes right where I want him."

"Uh, yeah, boss, but you can't use your powers in Userworld," Rollo pointed out. "They could delete you."

"I sincerely doubt it," Lean said. "I will be miles from here by the time DaVinci and his friends show up." He looked up at his lackey. "Aren't you supposed to be leaving now?"

Rollo started, made a hasty salute (so hasty, in fact, that he struck himself in the eye), and stumbled out of the room. Lean went back to the computer in front of him. He finished the program he was writing, then stood up. The screen was built into the wall and the keyboard was installed on the floor on top of a plinth. Similar setups were on the two terminals that Rollo and Tomasi had used for the Knight Fight Game. He tapped a few keys, and a countdown clock appeared over the window showing his code. Another keystroke, and the same image appeared on the other two computers, and then on every other computer terminal in the base.

Satisfied that it was working, he raised his cane and brought it down into the keyboard before him. He then turned and did the same to every other keyboard in the room. Lean examined the carnage, then turned and strode briskly out of the computer room and out of the base. Waiting for him outside was a high-speed hovercraft that he boarded and took straight back to Seattle, where he would go back through the Gate and back to the Resonate. "With any luck," Lean remarked to himself, "I'll not have things nicely tied up there by the time they get back."

When David stepped through the door, a scanner beeped as it looked him over. Suddenly, Lean's voice was broadcast over the base's speakers. "Ah, DaVinci, so glad you could make it." The hacker-human tensed and drew his gun out of reflex. The others did similarly. Lean did an imitation of a popular villain in a spy-movie-spoof. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my Arctic lair. It was originally known as Polar Point Army Base, but I prefer to think of it by another name now. I call it 'Nam-Shub' Base.

"Now, as you may have guessed by now, I do have a plan. If you will follow the little yellow light--" Here a string of yellow lights lit up on the wall, "--you will find yourself in what used to be the nerve center of Nam-Shub. There, you can try to understand what I've been up to." Lean's hollow laugh echoed from the speakers as the group trudged down the corridor.

Before long, they reached the 'nerve center,' as Lean called it. David looked at all the wrecked consoles and then up at the big screen, which had a clock on it. 00:05:45 00:05:44 00:05:43 00:05:42... David frowned. "Hmm," he said.

Lean's voice came again. "As you can see, DaVinci, I am no longer here. The timer you see serves two purposes. First, when it reaches zero, the program I have input into Nam-Shub's bases will send a broadcast message to the Resonate System and its neighbors, disabling the Anti-Game Protocol. Less than a minute after that, there are a few bombs planted in Nam-Shub that will blow it to kingdom come." Lean laughed again. "Pop quiz, hot shot. You can either risk staying and try to break my code in the five minutes left, or you can run, save yourselves, and condemn the system you call home to a host of troubles when the Games start to come. What do you do? What do you do?"

Lean's laughter echoed from the speakers again, and David, in a towering rage, fired his pistol into one of the speakers. The laughter ceased immediately.

00:04:58

"Okay," David said, sticking the pistol in his waistband, "we've got less than five minutes to crack this thing. Naught, Nada, I'm gonna need your help here."

"We're on it," Naught said, putting away his own weapon and looking over the ruined consoles. Nada did the same, but after less than five seconds, it was obvious they had no way to input anything. Naught swore. "Aw, basic! He's trashed every keyboard in the room! We can't do anything."

"And we've got no time even if we did!" Nada added. "Sorry, David, but even at our best, we can't crack a code like yours in five minutes. And Lean is, according to you, at least as good as you."

"So we have one option remaining," Quinn said as he looked over the room. Now all the attention was on him. He looked up, still cradling a shotgun in his gloved hands.

"What are you talking about, Quinn?" Niente asked. "There aren't any other options. It's a no-win scenario."

00:04:01

Quinn laughed. "This coming from All-Go-No-Quit-Big-Bike Niente Aught? Guys, I don't believe in the no-win scenario." He walked toward the big screen that broadcast the clock. 00:03:45 "Lean was quoting from an old 20th Century movie at the end there. The scenario was something like a hostage situation, one guy, one hostage, one bullet in your gun. How do you shoot? The answer the hero gave was simple."

All at once, Quinn hefted the shotgun, cocked, and put it right against the metal wall that the screen was built into. He touched the firing stud, and the blue-white bolt of energy pierced into the guts of Nam-Shub Base's mainframe system. There was a thud, followed by a flash behind the screens, and then the screens exploded outward.

Quinn, by a miraculous stroke of luck, was not shredded by the flying glass. He stepped back, then shook his head to clear the bells ringing in his head. Being that close to the blast had had an adverse effect on his hearing. He turned to look at David and the Aughts, who stared at him. David chuckled and shook his head. "So what was the answer the hero gave, Quinn?"

Quinn smiled. "Shoot the hostage." He shrugged. "So the computer here wasn't a hostage, but that would've screwed up the analogy. The point is, now the program's dead. Lean can't pose a threat."

But then Naught gulped. "But we still have the bombs to worry about!"

"Bro," Nada said, "Quinn trashed the timer. They can't go off."

"I'd rather not take that chance," Naught said, backing toward the door.

A moment later, it was clear to everyone that they didn't want to risk it either. They beat tracks out of Nam-Shub and back to the hovercraft, which they quickly turned around and headed toward Seattle and the nearest Gate. Even if the broadcast program Lean had created was dead, he could still drop Games on the Resonate System. They had to get back to the Metaverse and stop him.

He tapped a few controls. Now that he had a foothold in Reality (Nam-Shub Base was but one of the locations that 'Andrew Ginole' owned), he could link through his User-side computers to crack the AGP. He cracked his knuckles and lowered a finger toward the button that would start the Game.

"It won't work, Lean!" DaVinci shouted. The virus looked up to see the Aught hovercar in the air, the human hacker standing up to shout down at him.

Lean smiled. "DaVinci! You're just in time to see the big show!" He shifted his voice to emulate a primitive AI-voice, electronically created. "Want. to. play. a. game?"

He tapped the button. His hollow laughter rolled over them, but DaVinci didn't seem put out. The hovercar just pulled back as if to head for Middie Cruz Hall. But they didn't. They hung there, as if waiting for something.

The alarm tone sounded in the system, and an emotionless baritone spoke.

<<Warning. Incoming Game.>>

Lean continued to laugh as the sky turned dark, and thunder rumbled. Screams came from all over the system as the sprites' racial memory recalled the ancient fear that accompanied the Games. But the Aughts seemed to be in control. It unnerved Lean, a bit. The sky opened to show a cube of purple light that began to fall. Lean laughed, until he realized something. By then, the cube was halfway to its target.

Namely, the Downhill Track.

Lean, having emulated a sprite for most of his viral existence, screamed with the same distant racial memory. Even viruses had feared the Games, even the deranged, psychotic types like Hexadecimal. He started to rise into the air, but then Quinn rose up from a prone position in the hovercar and aimed his shotgun. It flashed, and the bolt struck Lean in the chest. The virus dropped to the ground as the hovercar quickly zoomed out from underneath the descending cube.

Lean, getting up, had no time to flee. His scream was a bizarre mixture of human terror and an animal howl. Like a wolf's howl. "NOOOOOOO!"

Inexorably, the cube slammed into the ground, trapping Lean within.

The sides of the purple Game cube flickered for a moment, the landscape within visible, Lean screaming, but inaudibly, and then the sides turned opaque. The sky remained dark, and the cube flickered a moment more. Then, all was still, all was silent. Everyone was waiting to hear the system intone the end of the Game.

Minutes slowly crept by. The Aughts hovered near the Game cube, waiting. And then, there was a rumble, almost like waves crashing on a distant shore, and the cube started to flicker again. Quinn held his shotgun ready. The system's emotionless baritone spoke again.

<<Game Over.>>

A second crawled by, stretching into an eternity.

<<User Wins.>>

With a tremendous BOOM!, the Game cube ascended back into the sky. Where the immense hill that was the Downhill Track once stood, there was now a conical crater, utterly black, sparking a bit where underground power lines had been severed. A few water mains poured their contents into the bottom. There was no sign of Lean.

"Is he dead?" Quinn asked.

DaVinci frowned. He searched his mind for the eerie link that he and Lean shared from the partial merging weeks earlier, but he could not sense the evil virus' presence. Was that a good thing or a bad? He could not tell. "I dunno, Quinn," DaVinci said, "but he's not our problem anymore."

Quinn became excited. "Hey! Here it is! The review!" He held up the datapad for the Mainframe Manifest. He read from the article. "In Game Over, his first full novel, Quinn Rentack relates the story of a noble hacker that must contend with a terrorist who does his damage in the form of 'games.' The hacker and his comrades must brave the villain's 'games' in order to defeat him. While it does show a few flaws that are expected in a novel debut like Rentack's, Game Over is a good read. Three out of four stars!"

"Hey, congratulations, Quinn!" David said, looking at the article himself.

Quinn's novel, Game Over, was, of course, based off the conflict with Lean. Quinn had been inspired by the event, and the last two weeks had been a frenzy as his writer's block was destroyed. He had written frantically, ignoring Eddy's insistent annoyance, and had gotten the novel off to his publisher just three days ago. He was quite proud of the good review from the paper. But then he frowned.

"Hey, David, you remember me telling you about my friend Mike Richter, right?"

"The writer friend who got a bad review? Yeah, why?"

"Did you," Quinn chose his words carefully, "put any pressure on him?"

David blinked. His sunglasses flickered with a line of green light. "Actually, no. We've been busy with the whole AGP thing, remember?"

Also during the last two weeks, the Flip Side Felons had planted enough evidence in systems to indicate that the disabling of the Anti-Game Protocol was the work of a virus, the same virus that had been spotted in the Resonate earlier. They also managed to show that the virus was also Andrew Ginole.

Before doing that, however, David had gone back to Userworld to find one of Ginole's other purchases. Sure enough, Lean had stored back-up copies of the same programs he had used to disable the AGP. Using them, David patched the hack, reinitialized the AGP, and then told the authorities of Ginole's connection to the virus. Shortly thereafter, all of Ginole's User-side assets were seized.

Quinn nodded once. "Good. Then this is an honest review." His comm rang. The non-private line. Quinn pulled it out. "Quinn Rentack. Hi, Mike! Yeah, you saw the review? Oh, you've read the book. Great. What'd ya think? Really? A bit farfetched? Ha, how little you know, Mikey. Yeah, thanks. Right. Good luck on your next one. Right. Okay. Bye."

Quinn closed the phone and put it away, then reclined in the booth and sighed contentedly. "Things're looking up, David."

A vidwindow opened, smiley face showing. "Hi, there! It's great to see that you're feeling well, Mr. Rentack, and might I say, what a fabulous book you've written! I hope my suggestions were helpful."

Quinn sighed again, this time with annoyance. "Eddy, I no longer have any need for you."

"What?" The smiley face was replaced by a question mark.

"I have transferred all of my files to a computer that doesn't try to annoy me every second of my waking day." With that, Quinn plucked his false icon from his belt and laid it on the table. "In fact, Eddy, I'm about to smash you." He removed a shoe and held it up.

Eddy beeped. There was a pause. Then, "Hi, there--!"

SMASH!

Little components scattered all over the table top. The vidwindow showed an image of a window shattering. Eddy's voice ground into a slur and then ceased. Quinn chucked the ruined false icon into the nearest trash receptacle. He leaned back, put his shoe back on, pulled a new false icon out of his pocket, clipped it to his belt, then folded his arms behind his head. "Ahhhh. Life. Is. Good."