There he was: contorted on the ground, paralyzed from the neck down after an elegant leap off a ninety-foot grain silo had turned tragic. He had ten fucking HP and there were helsings coming—a whole gang of them by the sounds of it. He could hear the screams of their soulcycles off in the distance, could almost smell the half-fart, half-corpse odour the bikes gave off.
"Duuuuuuude! Heal me!" screamed Graham Otep, son of Pharaoh Ebanedza, leader of the United Ennead Nation. Graham was an avid gamer, only twenty, still training in the ways of the Magi. His mother was the most powerful woman in the world—a single mom who had raised him all on her own, with only the country's vast riches to support her dreams.
Graham had been born into wealth, and he was well aware of it. The Otep Dynasty could all thank Uncle Otis and his great Sunra Revolution for that.
"Seriously, dude," Graham continued, composed. "Stop being a softcock and heal me for fuck's sake. Let's win this bullshit and move on."
He'd been dealing with this shit for twenty minutes now, him and the other two randos on his team. Shit like getting ditched by the party's solo healer at inopportune moments when it would be twenty bloodsucking stokers against one. Shit like the guy going AFK in boss fights. Shit like blowing non-stop into the mike.
One by one they'd been picked off. And when you start with a group of four, there's not much to spare. Now it was just Graham and the solo healer from the far reaches of the Duat.
Said solo healer, GitUrLulz, was obviously a troll. A mohawked maggot dressed in a puffy tan fishing vest and pink booty shorts—definitely not what you wanted to be wearing while trekking it out in the coldest parts of the Americas, eliminating all those afflicted by the Blacke Forest Fever. No, instead of doing that, GitUrLulz hopped in one spot, spinning around in circles.
"Go to hell and stay there, buddy," Graham told him.
Idiots. Tonight was not his night.
"Dude. What the fuck are you doing?"
Now the guy wasn't moving at all, simply staring up at the sky. Shooting his two revolvers at nothing but moonlit cloud. The clouds drifted off, about as uninjured as expected.
Graham growled to himself. This was why he usually played with Jerome. "Please, man. C'mon. You're ruining the fuckin' game."
GitUrLulz started breakdancing in the middle of the Blacke Forest while he, Graham, lay immobile beside. All he could do was stare as the helsings rolled up on their soulcycles, the bikes' screams now a rumbling choir of haunted moans. The hairy beasts threw themselves up over the handlebars, twenty feet into the air, their black fur blowing every which way. They all landed with the synchronization of an elite Korean boy band doubling as a world-class gymnastics squad, got down on one knee and howled up at the Bloodmoon. Then they descended on the troll and ripped him to shreds as he flopped about in some bad attempt at the worm.
Graham sighed and disconnected before the helsings could get in on him, sucking his colon out of his ass or whatever other weird shit they did. This VR shit was wack.
The Blacke Forest faded. Graham removed the headdress and felt the pressure ease on his smooth black skull. It always surprised him how numb his head got. The feeling faded quickly.
Back to life.
***
It was the usual speech to the crowd, and did Graham get any thanks when he reached his mother's side, on-time as usual? No.
As they stood there waiting for the door to open, she said to him: "I wish you wouldn't play that awful thing."
He didn't respond.
Every time she addressed the people—once a week, usually—she'd wear a new headdress and gown. There were a million old ones stashed away somewhere in some forgotten room of the palace. The old dresses had been simple yet elegant, their accompanying headdresses always complementary. Now Pharaoh Ebanedza wore some stupid cockeyed, papier-mâché toucan on her head and a giant Skittles wrapper for a dress. Skittles, one of the few megacorps still going strong, had paid her the big bucks to wear this travesty.
He hated these fuckin' things. These spectacles. So hollow.
"Your language is so foul."
They did nothing for him. Held no meaning.
"It brings out the worst in you."
Certainly not how they were now. The old ways were dead.
"Sometimes you're almost like some kind of... animal."
"Whatever."
The door opened, revealing a vast city of pyramidal skyscrapers, giant anthropomorphic statues, and towering semi-digital palm trees, all blanketed by a sweltering red-orange sun. They stepped out together to greet the people of Cairo, as well as the entire Ennead society via live broadcast.
The Pharaoh waved.
Graham smiled and pretended to be happy, a deep longing always lingering inside him for something more.
Or at least for more Blacke Forest Fever.
***
Somewhere, in some other part of the world, someone logged into the Blacke Forest Fever VR game server and put in over one hundred hours in one session before logging off.
They now face police questioning over some seriously violent crimes—namely the ripping off of a face from the front of a person's skull and throwing it into the street.
"For the one millionth time," D'Angelo Angelo Rapschire IV said from one side of the interrogation table, "tearing that dude's face off had nothing to do with that shitty VR game. I didn't even really play it. It was idling while my bro and I spent, like, four days huffing jenkem in the closet together. Then I took something else and ripped off that dude's face."
The two interrogators on the other side of the table shared a glance.
One said, "So it had nothing to do with the popular game, Blacke Forest Fever?"
"No. It was the drug. I think it was some kind of bath salt."
The other cop said, "Because we have confirmed reports of sudden deviant behaviour arising after playing this game for long periods."
"Hey, man, don't be telling me my business," D'Angelo said before wishing he hadn't. "This isn't the first time I've gotten wrecked on bath salts and ripped off dudes' faces."
Nobody with a functioning brain saw D'Angelo Angelo Rapschire IV again.
***
The Pharaonic address had been business as usual: placate the people, mention recent achievements, reinforce the goals, thank you, thank you. Things were good these days. No terrorists, no pandemics, no evil aliens from Mars. Graham didn't see why he needed to be dragged out all the time to stand there awkwardly while his mother talked.
Pretending they were a happy family.
Now he sat atop an ornamental pyramid in the centre of the city, vaping an e-joint of sweetgrass with his best friend, Jerome. They puffed out rings of vapour, the mildly intoxicating effects already taking hold.
Cairo buzzed with activity. Cars drove and flew, people walked and scootered. Everywhere one looked people moved, whether it was a huge exodus making its way across the bridge over the Nile, or crowds entering or exiting shopping centres. The Nile ran along not far from where Graham and Jerome sat, a spacious patch of water and land made into a reserve by Pharaoh Ebanedza herself last year. Massive pyramids jutted up from the ground like teeth, small-scale variants dotting the horizon. Beyond that, the red sands of Tershek sprawled on seemingly forever.
A beep from the e-joint. Meant it was spent. Jerome signalled over a recycler, which accepted the empty metal tube into its basket before flying off to clean up other parts of Cairo.
"I'm bored, dude," Graham said.
Jerome replied, "Same, man. Wanna go play more Blacke Forest Fever?"
"Fuck yeah."
***
The mist... The mist was something else. The mist was palpable. So thick you could taste it.
And it tasted like water from a ditch. Like when a stoker jumped you from behind a tree when you were being an idiot, wandering off on your own to grab a health vial, throwing you into the mud, your nose half-submerged, its teeth bared and ready to sink into that big, fat, bloody vein in your neck.
This shit was always better with a real-life friend.
Graham and Jerome and the other two imbeciles (who were now dead, and good riddance) had broken out of a graveyard, ridden a half-busted carriage through a winding mountain trail, killed Dracula's cybernetic grandson, and even found a secret stack of rare gothic fiction.
Now they needed to get their asses to the Titanic III, which would take them across the pond whether they survived or not.
The forest to freedom was full of that mist. And it seemed to mess with sound, alter the frequencies or something. Graham swore he heard the caterwaul of a nightmary. Sounded like it was right behind him, maybe up in the trees somewhere. Maybe down below, hiding in a leaf-covered hole.
But no. Nothing there. Or anywhere.
"Let's find a cloning chamber, dude," Jerome said to him from up ahead.
"I've got the shits," said Graham.
The forest and fog cleared and gave way to the open field of an old drive-in movie theatre. The faded text on the signage read OLD WINESTEAD CARPARK CINEMAS. Lights flickered from the few buildings, all of them built like barns.
They entered the first one they saw and the world turned to darkness.
***
Somewhere, somewhen. Row after row of men and women of various ages, standing side by side, staring ahead of them, all lost in some kind of stupor. Their ghost-white complexions made all the more visible from the massive glowing screen they shared.
Life was on pause here.
***
One hundred hours later, Graham and Jerome were taken away in body bags. Pharaoh Ebanedza watched the men in black drive off, and she returned to an empty palace.
This was the price of freedom and safety.
Her own son, gone. He wouldn't suffer.
His life would help power civilization for years to come.