By David C. Daoust
“What the heck is the number for whoever I’m supposed to call about this?” Maile asked no one at all as she flew her Spidermecha around the massive rover beneath her. The swarm of mechas filled the bright blue sky as the dunes of sand stretched to the horizon. It felt crowded as she passed, bobbed, and weaved through fellow mechas.
She actually sat comfortably in her friend’s small apartment, the action depicted on the Farwall in front of her. She’d just realized that the so called trolls, Penn and Colbert, weren’t actually trolls at all. They had a legitimate problem. They were aboard the rover, also patched into the game—wait, how does this even work?
“Am I crazy?” Maile asked herself. “Wait- this is a joke!”
“Who the heck is messing with me?” Maile asked in voice chat. “You guys are all putting me on?”
Chat was a freaking maelstrom of voices though, mostly just random players trying to get Chance’s attention over the General Channel. Just vocal enough to put their two cents in, but dumb enough to think they’d be picked out of the din. A din of nonsense- mostly just hoots and hollers as they got a look at the massive beast, mixed with odd quips and inappropriate jokes.
She needed to get into a group. Join a private channel. Otherwise she’d just be ignored as background noise. Who to group with, though?
Suddenly she spotted the small landspeeder as it popped up over a nearby dune, following in the wide tracks left by the oversized rover. It was a brown boxlike vehicle, with a white star on the side, and ‘sheriff’ emblazoned on the hood.
Maile was not the only one to see it!
Everyone else though, reported an Arachnoid! One of the creepy in-game spider-monsters, which were a mainstay of the current game they all, currently, thought they were playing. Or actually were playing—but were doing far more than they knew.
Maile could see the truth though. She saw a land speeder, with three passengers within; Three human passengers. She did not know why she could see it, some sort of glitch, but no one seemed to be seeing what she was seeing.
“Oh crap!” she said aloud as the first series of missiles were launched from one of the closest Mechas.
They completely missed their target as the speeder quickly veered from its current course. More and more missiles launched, the driver within, somehow, managed to avoid them, too.
“Don’t fire! Don’t fire! Don’t fire” she yelled into chat as she spun her mecha about to charge straight at the landspeeder. She didn’t have a plan, not really. She just wanted to try and block the attacks. To stop them before those people got hurt, possibly killed, “There’re people in there!”
They probably thought she was crazy, or another troll. That is, if anyone even heard her through the sounds of rowdy gamers laughing about taking free shots at a random ass mob.
Someone must have heard her though, because, seconds later, she was invited to join a party. The invitation popped up in the center of the screen. There were two people already in the group- the infamous trolls, Penn and Colbert!
Maile accepted the invite.
The screen flickered strangely, and she got a flash of what the other players were seeing. She got a good look at the Arachnoid, as she continued her race to intercept it. It did not show any passengers, or any kind of representation of anything, other than the Arachnoid, then it flickered back, to what she was seeing before; to the truth.
“Whoa!” a voice said in the new private channel, “What just happened?”
“Who’s this?” Maile asked, though glanced up and saw Colbert was highlighted. “Colbert– do you know what’s going on? Can… can you see this?”
“I can now!” the voice said back, “How’d you do this?”
“Do what?” Maile was confused, it didn’t help that she was now in the line of fire of just about every other gamer that had the small landspeeder in its sights.
“Make it so I can see the real world!” Colbert answered in amazement.
“I didn’t do anything,” Maile answered as she paced the vehicle, “Just joined the group.”
Maile did her best to put herself in front of the swarm attacking mechas. She had to assume there were protests, even curses, being thrown at her in General Chat, but she did what she could to ruin their fun. She imagined it was just a matter of time ‘til someone decided just to blow her mecha out of the sky too.
“Can you see this too, Grace?” Colbert asked over chat.
“Yeah, wow!” a second voice answered.
Maile decided she must have glitched their interface when she joined the party.
Both Penn and Colberts’ voices sounded odd. They were male in tone, but they were kind of… funny sounding. Fake even.
“Guys, guys,” Maile tried to get their attention as they went off on a tirade about what they were looking at, she could swear they were talking to more people, “Can you see that there are people out here? Or are you seeing a monster?”
“People?” Penn asked, then a moment later, “Oh no! That’s the Sheriff!”
“What do we do?” Colbert asked with a gasp.
“I have an idea!” Maile answered, “Start… just start sending invites! Get as many in the group as you can— maybe they’ll glitch, and maybe they’ll see too!”
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