Server Extant

Motor and Ganze watched the slowly circling arena ring front the great, central chamber at the top of it’s axle tower. From here, the entire complex in its awesome sweep, was visible. The corporate sponsors took their ease, chatting, as they awaited the beginning of the carnage. Motor was singing with suppressed tension. Showtime.

‘How is Kys going?’ asked Motor, his preoccupied gaze on the backs of his investor’s heads.

‘I bribed their leaders to sabotage the defenses’ said Ganze, ‘looks like it’s under control. I-’

‘Good’, said Motor.

Ganze was irritated. It’s not that he needed the praise, but he knew that he sure as hell would have gotten the blame, if the invasion had walked into a buzzsaw over Kys, which it certainly would have, had the Block and its destructive potential not been disabled by some frenetic last-minute treachery. But Motor had no bandwidth for anything but this.

‘I’m a bit worried about the spectator Ids’ said Ganze.

’Now you’re worried?’ said Motor, ’Fifteen minutes to start and you’re bringing this up? What’s the problem?

‘Well, they’re very light, as you know, so we can respawn them as throwaways for people who want to buy a stadium logon..’

‘Yeah?’

‘But more tickets were sold than we anticipated.’

Motor looked out at the fields of red seats, in the spectator stands, a great double strip, bracketing the top and bottom of the ring, shielded from the fighting area by a force field wall. The red ribbon was almost twenty percent blue with the bodies of spectators. Given the vast number of seats, that was impressive.

‘How many?’

‘About fifty-three thousand,’ said Ganze.

‘At three-point-two a ticket? Holy shit!’

‘Yeah we took in a lot of money. But look how many of them there are.’

’So?

‘So they have almost no individual density, but there is fifty thousand of them. If they coordinated, massed up, they might be able to break something in our security setup.’

’When has anyone ever coordinated on Knet? Scoffed Motor. ‘It’s like herding cats. Retarded cats on meth who hate each other. They’re not going to co-ordinate.’

‘Yeah, but there’s a reason all the old MPORGs put everything on the server side. People never play the game, they play the system.’

‘There are no links in the stadium are there?’

‘No of course not. There are teleporting plates that link the security towers, but no links. The only way onto the arena stands is to buy a logon and spawn a spectator Id.’

‘Then we’ll be okay’ said Motor. ‘Fifty thousand!’ He sounded jubilant.

They looked up from the corporates below to one of the many screens above the great windows of the chamber. These fed from cams in the arena. On one, two figures, dressed in the blue suits and coiffed hairpieces of classic sports commentators, could be seen, discussing some unknown topic in silence, there being no audio feed from the screen. The figures had no lower bodies, their torsos were fused into the gleaming desk.

This was a channel called The Jerry and Jerry show, a long fixture of the Knet commentary community.

‘Those pricks better not make me look bad.’ said Motor. Paying the Jerries to officially commentate the tournament was a stoke of marketing genius, but they were anarchic and untrustworthy.

‘You can’t argue with seven million uniques per video,’ said Ganze, ‘they’re a powerhouse.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about.’

‘They’ll toe the line,’ said Ganze. ‘Or they don’t get paid.’

* * *

In the upper chamber of one of the stadium mezzanine towers, the Jerries were broadcasting, apparently from a suite with panoramic views of the stadium. Out of range of the camera nodes, recording them in real-time for the various streams they hosted, a half dozen flunkies in spectator Ids organized and selected video feeds from the stadium, ready to follow the action and hack it into the stream.

‘Well, here we are, covering the tournament in real time, the very first P-Fed Mega Tourney and Global Deathmatch Extravaganza!’ said Jerry, ‘Jn’J have come in from the cold!’

‘We’re corporate whores, Jerry!’ replied his partner.

‘And it feels great. Now, it’s called a ’deathmatch’, as if we will be enacting the ancient contest between restless gladiators who crave for nothing, save to feast upon the suffering of their foes. Not so! Because such is the faggotry and cowardice of our modern era that these supposed ‘deathmatchers’, will not agree to chance their precious, high-density Ids on a fight to the actual death. Therefore, the participants will be protected by a sniveling ’twenty percent rule.”

‘Yes Jerry,’ continued Jerry, ’each has been issued with an ‘alert’. When their health falls to twenty percent, or under, they may activate a yellow indicator light and be considered ‘tagged’. They must go to the sideline and recuse themselves from the contest, and no other participant is permitted to fire upon them. It’s like paintball! Only with more gay sex.’

‘Thus, falleth Rome’ replied Jerry, shaking his head.

‘However, I anticipate these arrangements will rapidly break down and they’ll tear each other apart like wild animals.’

’You’re a dreamer, Jerry. Those who laughably refer to themselves today as Knet’s gamer ‘elite’, represent nothing more than the hollowed-out cadaver of a once-vigorous body. Campers, compromisers, calculators and various species of link-sitting trash, staring at shadows in the moonlit wasteland of their failed dreams. They’ll follow the ’rules’, oh yes! Because there is not one true sadist, not one true thirster-for-blood, among them.’

‘You’re a cynic, Jerry! I, however, am a child of faith, who’s hope springs, like a rainbow, ejaculated from the horn of a majestic unicorn. Our people may have lost their way, but they will remember.’

‘Don’t be so sure, Jerry!’

‘Wise advice, Jerry!’

‘Okay, who we got?’

‘Okay, so, the teams are- actually, there’s like fifty of them. I can’t be bothered reading all this. Let’s just put them up on the board.’

‘Duke Nation is okay. I like the Primcorps guys too, headed up by S.U.P.R.E.M.O Captain, Decapiton. The big disappointment being, of course, the lack of a Kysairon team. Everyone loves a grudge match!’

‘You have to admire Motor’s class on that one. People were sniggering about the Kyros taking out Epsilon and bombing his presser, while he has to sit up there like Commodus and watch Kys give him the finger. Instead, he takes out their whole server!’

‘No one’s sniggering now!’

‘I am, but about an unrelated hooker murder.’

‘So, Carnivous’ boast to the contrary, Kysairon fighters won’t be attending. I assume they are in the process of mounting a heroic, last-ditch defense of their storied realm, as it is swamped by the rising tide of fascist militarism.’

‘Sounds cool. I wish we were covering that.’

‘Yes, very inconsiderate of Motor to schedule two bloodbaths on the same day. Anyway-’

‘I don’t want to read out all these teams, dude, seriously, there’s allot, and I hate most of them.’

‘Let’s go through the ones we hate the most then.’

‘As usual, Jerry, the correct course of action, succinctly summarized.’

‘Thank you, Jerry.’

‘Okay. Team Recon.’

‘The fucks! If anyone ever deserved to be swallowed alive, screaming, by some species of giant anaconda, it’s every single member of team Recon.’

‘Especially Ryan.’

‘You know, if there was no Adderol, there’d be no Team Recon. Their entire clan is a testament to the tragic over-medication of our nation’s youth with psychotropic drugs.’

‘Well we can hope that this is one team that ain’t getting out of there alive. Twenty percent rule or no.’

‘Are you kidding? Running away from better players then declaring themselves the winners is half of what makes them so annoying. They’ll survive. A thousand years from now, the only things still crawling about this burned-out husk of a planet will be cockroaches and Team fucking Recon. Who’s next?’

‘Phobos Force.’

‘You know me, Jerry. You know I don’t like wishing cancer on people.’

‘You are as compassionate as the Buddha, Jerry!’

‘But I hope every single member of Phobos Force gets cancer. Who’s next?’

‘Shin Shen Sekaido.’

‘What’s wrong with Tripple-S? I love Tripple-S!’

‘Why?’

‘Two words, Jerry: giant robots with guns for dicks.’

‘Those are pretty cool’ admitted Jerry. ‘I guess I just got burned out on all the hype. ’Ooh, look at us, we’re a sassy all-girl crew who can’t speak Engrish propary!’ Nobody’s talking about all the other chicks who suck at gaming because their stupid ovaries get in the way.’

‘Well, I love them and hope to one day see naked photos of them, so fuck you, Jerry!’

‘Your chivalrous defense of the fairer sex has touched my heart, Jerry. I retract my criticisms.’

‘Who’s next?’

‘The linkiest link-sitter of them all, Mistah Mastah.’

‘Oh, I would love to see someone pin that squirming maggot.’

‘He’s the tourney’s only one-man team. He’s used all of the fifty million poly allowance on himself.’

‘Let me guess, to bring some massive piece of armor for him to sit inside of, to protect his precious anus from penetration.’

‘That would be a good bet.’

’And he’ll sit the whole thing out, trying waiting until the other teams have exhausted themselves, before emerging from some hiding place to clean up the survivors. And if he does take any serious damage, he’ll trigger his little forfeit alert and scuttle off, to fight another day.’

‘Please Orm, let him die this time!’

‘Oh blessed and compassionate Orm, destroy him, amen. Who’s next?’

‘Replicators.’

‘They’re just boring. I actually don’t hate them that much.’

‘Funny, but they’re like the exact opposite of MM, a huge number of low-value Ids employing swarm tactics.’

‘How many are on-team?’

‘About two.. hundred? Shit that’s allot.’

‘So they’re basically roaches. Like I said- boring. They’re just going to run around underfoot, pissing people off, without much skin in the game because of their cheap Ids.’

‘I guess they hope there’s a couple of them left alive at the end, to declare victory, but they won’t have the power to take on any of the real players during the match and give us some decent action.’

‘Exactly. So the tactic won’t even work. I doubt even the most dinged-up boss won’t have enough power to knock off whatever’s left of the Replifags. Lame, stupid, fuck them.’

‘Fuck them indeed, Jerry, fuck them indeed.’

‘How many starting bays did you say, fifty?’

’Fifty, yes, spread about the rim of the stadium, on alternating sides. I have to admit; this whole rotating mega-structure is pretty cool. Only P-Fed has the resources to build something like this. Maybe we should consider rethinking our opposition to them for reasons other than money?’

‘No Jerry, the money is enough.’

‘The central ring is a death maze, filled with booby traps, trigger plates and killer cim organisms. Fifty clans will enter, but only one will take the prize and become the Knet’s first winner of the Player Federation Grand Tourney Cup.’

‘A place in history, Jerry!’

‘Yes Jerry! Just as I, myself, entered the medical books, for being the first human to reverse-infect a dog with rabies.’

‘We’re seven minutes to go. Alright, let’s cut in to.. how’s this thing work? Oh here we go, let’s cut into bay thirty. Team Recon.’

‘Aw dude, don’t do it to yourself.’

‘I can’t help it Jerry. It’s a scab I can’t stop picking!’

The feed cut to a massive space marine-style figure in futuristic armor, standing in front of a dozen others. The name on it’s military-style chest tag was ‘Ryan’. The bull-necked Id had a quavery, teenage voice that was at odds with its muscular physique. From it issued a constant stream of threats and abuse.

’What else are you, huh?’ it was saying, ‘You’re a liar, you’re a cheater, you’re a camper, what else? Huh? Anything else buddy? I asked you nicely if you were going to fight us on an even field, I gave you a chance to get back your honor and the honor of K.R.A.C.K but you weren’t going to. No, you’d rather take your shots and run away. All the way back to Cold Mother to laugh and gloat about how you made yourselves look like faggots in front of the whole world. I told you, you don’t want to get me pissed off. Because Team Recon isn’t known as swift and deadly for naught. You fail at Knet and you fail at life. Just accept it, you’re bad. There’s winners and losers and you’re losers. Just accept it. Just accept it, you’ll feel better. And now you wanna go on the boards and say we won’t come meet you on a neutral server. Here we go, with the fucking try-harding. You’re not good. Again and again, spamming us on BTrak servers and trying to talk tough. How many times do you have to get your ass kicked before you learn? Does that make you happy to know that you can’t compete without stacking the field and rigging links-’

‘Look at the stamina of this asshole’s mouth’ said Jerry.

‘We’re gonna beat you every time till you get the message. We are the master’s you the wannabes. But here’s the thing, son, you aren’t ever gonna be us no matter how hard you try! And if you piss us off enough, we’re gonna come all the way to Cold Mother to fix you for good, and your whole shitty clan, and you don’t want that. So my advice is just settle down and watch the masters at work and try to learn something. Because-’

At that moment, the space bay doors behind the ranting figure and his team mates was blasted in. A great, black wedge crashed into the bay, crushing all before it into twisted wreckage. Team Recon disappeared.

‘Holy shit!!’ Yelled Jerry.

‘Holy shit, don’t believe it!’ yelled the other Jerry, ’Someone just painted the starting bay with Team Recon’s blood!’

’It’s a Kysairon charger! An engine rack used to transport their hyper-dense Ids! Can it be? A Kysairon team? Can it be?’

‘Holy shit yes! The hatch is opening!’

In the video feed, chest of the charger unfolded into a ramp. Several black figures emerged.

‘And there he is!’ yelled Jerry, ‘Carnivous, warrior poet, rapist of Epsilon, harbinger of disorder! There he is, stepping out into the bay to take his rightful place! Like a behemoth! Like a prophecy! Standing above the splattered residue of these pretenders and pygmies! It’s happening, it’s real! A Kysairon team has made it to the tourney after all!’

‘Jerry, this spectacular entrance combines the two things I cherish the most; karma and vehicular homicide. My dick just got so hard, it put on a cape and went out to fight crime!’

‘Mine went on a tour of the wine country! It said it was OK, not great. Can we get sound down there?’

‘No, I think the crash fucked up the recorder node. We still have visual though. Now a stadium official is approaching the Kysairons.. he’s waving his hands, he seems to be saying ’no entry, no entry..’ can it be? Does he dare to deny Carnivous his destiny? No! He’s been decapitated! He’s been decapitated, and the Kysairon team are stepping over his corpse and approaching the starting portal!’

’It seems to be a team of nine, the C-Man himself, I’m calling him the ‘C-Man’ now-’

‘Eh, I don’t know about that Jerry.’

‘I’m doing it -and eight others.’

‘Unless their Ids are super-massive, they can’t be at the full fifty million poly limit, which means they’ll be starting with a disadvantage.’

’Yes, but these warriors are infused with the indomitable spirit of the mighty hawk, Jerry! Cross-bred with a lion! And maybe some sort of shark. Also, I think their Ids are classed as ultra-massive. The Kyros call them ‘Kingpins’ they’re equivalent to the P-Fed Imperator class or the Oiknation Plantation Boss.’

‘Yes, kingpins tend to be big-hitter generalists with allot of prop in mobility and offense. Be interesting to see how they do up in an environment with such a diverse range of setups. Allot of tankers in there, but also allot of high-mobility guys, like The Phospherators and Emo Berserks.’

‘If you were A.F.K or taking a leak,’ said Jerry, ’the Kysairons have just literally crashed Motor’s party and taken Team Recon’s spot by elimination. This is literally all I care about!′

‘I’m going to assume this is all game-legal, because fuck it, right?’

‘Exactly!’

* * *

‘What the fuck just happened!’ demanded Motor.

‘The Kysairons-’

‘I was asking rhetorically, you fuck!’ yelled Motor. ’How did it happen?’

Ganze, flicked around the various cams covering the entry bay. ‘Looks about nine of them. High poly.’

On the great scoreboard above the stands, Team Recon was on zero. The word ELIMINATED, in red capitols, was printed across its name.

‘They tagged Recon’ said Ganze. ‘This is bad. We’re four minutes and thirty seconds to start. I think they are going to try to enter play.’

‘Absolutely not! Tell the Tigs to surround the starting bay!’ ordered Motor, ’Do not, do not, open their door when the siren starts. They are not playing! Cut the stadium cams.’

‘We can’t, the Jerries control the feed.’

‘Who the fuck agreed to that!?’

‘You did. You said-’

‘Get me the Jerries!’

* * *

In the broadcasts suit, one of the Jerries cocked his head as if listening to an invisible headphone.

‘What’s that? Yes? Ladies and gentlemen, we are receiving a transmission from the Great General Motor himself! What’s that sir? You want the Kysairons to play?’

In the control tower Motor was yelling at his comm. ’No! I said they aren’t playing! They aren’t registered! They are absolutely not participating in the tournament, do you hear me?’

’You insist they play?’ said Jerry, in apparent surprise. ’You say they have rightfully taken Recon’s place by elimination and are now recognized as an officially competing team? Why, that’s mighty white of you, sir! I’ll have the leader board adjusted immediately!’

‘You filthy fucking back-stabbing cocksuckers!’ yelled Motor. ‘We haven’t even started this thing and you’re already fucking me? Don’t think I can’t get to you! Don’t think I can’t find you in the R1! Cut all video nodes to their bay, black them out!’

’Focus our coverage exclusively on the Kysairons you say?’ replied Jerry, ‘Well that hardly seems fair to the other teams..’

’I said cut all feeds to the Kysairons! Cut all feeds!’ raged Motor.

‘If you insist’ said Jerry.

Motor cut his comm, swearing. ’I knew those bastards would turn on me! Send the Tigs up there! Kill Jerry and Jerry!’

‘Boss, we can’t do that!’ protested Ganze, ‘How will it look if we execute our own sponsored commentary just before the tournament begins?’

‘What am I supposed to do then?’

‘Let them compete.’

‘What??’

‘You can send the Tigs in now and have a fire-fight at their bay, that everyone is going to get distracted by, or let this thing run its course. Look, this isn’t necessarily bad for us! I guarantee our live stream just got another two million hits. Everyone loves a grudge match.’

Motor forced himself to think. He understood, better than any, the implacable rules that governed online society. To look angry was to invite mockery. You mad, bro..? Ganze was right. He had to maintain control a few more days, hours, even, to get these corporates to sign off on sponsorship deals they would have to honor, regardless of subsequent disasters. To sell them on the impossible dream; that someone could control Knet.

‘Three minutes,’ said Ganze, in the tense silence.

Motor looked down at his guests, in the spectator chamber below. They had no idea of anything going awry. A secondary firefight, between his forces and the intruders, might alert them to it. Besides, once in the arena, the Kysairons would have to contend with forty-nine other teams. With their Ids worn down, they would be easier to kill.

Motor stared at the feed of the wrecked bay and the slim figure, crowned by horns like insectoid mandibles, standing under the nose of the black battering ram. I’ll fix you, fucker, he thought, focusing his animus upon it, as if his pure will could make the little figure burst into flame.

‘Gimme the all-com,’ he said, and Ganze was relieved to see that P-Fed’s dictator was back in control. Motor took the icon from his subordinate and selected +ALL.

Motor’s voice boomed around the vast ring. There was now no trace of anger in it. It was perfectly ironic, contemptuous and detached. The spider smiling at the arrival of the fly.

‘Welcome to our Kysairon team,’ he drawled, ‘a little late but better that then never. I was going to send you home, but then I remembered you haven’t got one anymore.’ A ripple of laughter went across the stadium. ’So I suppose you better stay. And since you’re such purists, I withdraw the twenty point rule for your team. Anyone who can tag the Kysairons will earn a bonus bounty. One billion points of accreted prop. That’s billion, with a ‘B’.’

That was met by a ripple of awe from the spectators. Motor smiled to hear it.

‘Game on, boys’ he said, and cut the link.

* * *

’One billion!’ said Jerry. ‘This whole arena complex is probably only three! Carnivous and his crew just became the biggest bounty cows in Knet history!’

‘If only we could figure a way to kill them ourselves!’ lamented Jerry, ‘Damn these weak, desk-bound bodies!’

’This is all so fucking great that it’s hard to believe that Motor didn’t arrange it. Is this a contrivance? Are we getting reality-showed? Are we getting WWFed? Are we lost, in a maze of some puppet-master’s making?’

‘Probably!’

‘The stream is now clocking an incredible ten million views. That’s live, not total!’

‘Holy fuck.’

’One minute to start! Jerry, what turmoil do you think rages through these gladiator’s minds, as they wait for those armored doors to open? What destiny is written, in fire, above the sands of this fateful arena?’

‘Dunno’ said Jerry.

* * *

In Kyle’s living room, the bruised and aching Kyle watched his brother, standing, rigged up, in utter stillness, attention fixed on some invisible thing that absorbed it utterly. Kyle saw the deadly wires running though his body suit, the capacitors humming with charge, ready to kill.

‘Help! Help!’ he yelled. ’My fucking idiot brother has me chained to a wall!’

No one responded. The effort made his head feel as if it was being spiked with an ice pick and his vision diffused into peripheral coronas of light, which he hoped wasn’t a symptom of brain swelling. He kicked the wall, but only bruised his feet. Then he noticed something. His own player rig lay where Leon had discarded it, strung across the floor like electrical viscera. When he stretched his body to its most limit, half-asphyxiating himself on the bike lock’s metal, he could just about snag the outermost wire with his toe. After a couple of choking, cursing tries, he hooked it and began to draw the rig across the floor towards him.

As if goosed by some invisible spark of electricity, his brother suddenly jerked into movement. His body posture became tense but fluid, his motions in the body rig and control sharp and minimal, the economy and diamond-focus of the pro player. Leon’s feet tapped the floor pedals in staccato motion, his head twitched inside the black headset, his fingers moving with preternatural elegance on the glove controls. In silence, with no sound of siren or fanfare that Kyle could hear, Leon had entered the maelstrom. The tournament was on.

* * *

In the bay next to the Kysairons, about fifty figures were crowding around in loud discussion. The Ids were of large, high detail, heavily accreted fighting models. They were all variations of the same theme, a huge-muscled figure with a red vest, black trousers, a webbing of ammo belt on their chest, black glasses and flat-cropped blond hair. These were the Sons Of Duke, a clan modeled on a mythical FPS hero from the dawn of time. Apart from deriving the aesthetic of their kultura from their paragon, they also strove to personify his ethos.

‘I’m Duke! We gotta help the Kys’ said one, his voice shifted through a remodder to sound like Duke’s baritone rasp. ’That’s fully Duke!’

’I’m Duke ’ replied another, ‘and I say we tag them and coin that bounty! Fuck those Kysfags! One bil buys allot of beer and strippers! Duke has spoken!’

‘Duke vote!’ said another. ’Throw ‘em up!’

About thirty muscular arms went up.

‘The Dukes have it!’ said the first. ‘We ally with the Kysairons! Hail to the King, baby!’

A siren went off and the bay doors opened onto the glare of the great arena. It caught them almost by surprise. As if by magic, by the flicker of some black spell, Carnivous appeared, impossibly swift, in the center of the great doors. They never even saw the little metal sphere between his fingertips. It flashed green.

From their broadcast suit, the Jerries saw the burst, the stadium seats behind the Sons of Duke’s starting bay leapt upwards on a hump of pale fire, blossoming into a red glare. The back of the bay was blown out, firing what was left of the Dukes into space.

‘Yes!’ Yelled Jerry, a shock wave rolled out, across the arena, the sirens wailed and the forty-eight surviving teams took the field. ‘Team twenty-nine, the Sons Of Duke, have been blown out the back of the stadium, into space! They’ve been eliminated!’

’It looked like a blast from a super-compressed beam emitter. Jerry, this is so illegal that even I am in awe.’

‘Yes, it does not bode well for the prospects of an honorable contest that the rules have been violated in, literally, the first second of play. For obvious reasons, super-compressed objects are strictly forbidden in the tournament. The way I see it, Carnivous has just handed the other teams a license to cheat.’

‘Jerry, if you think they needed one, you don’t know Knet. And now there’s fighting breaking out on every part of the board as the other teams hit the field! The first-round eliminator is on!’

‘Get me the Tigs,’ Motor said watching the column of smoke go up from the Duke’s gutted starting bay. Ganze hit a comm.

’This Stad-Force Commander,’ said a voice, sounding impressed by the title.

* * *

In the stadium’s back area, P-Fed enforcers in power armor were mustering. They were about three meters tall, armed with artillery rifles and equipped with jump packs built into their suits. They were patterned with the characteristic tiger-stripe camo that gave them their name. These were members of Motor’s elite shock troops and enforcers, the Tigs.

‘We are going to kill these fuckers’ said Motor’s voice from the leader’s comm.

‘I kind of assumed that’ replied the StadFor Commander, SF01, deducing the identity of the fuckers in question by context. ‘You want us to go onto the arena floor?’

‘No, wait until they get knocked down some by the fighting. Maybe one or two of them tagged. Then kill the survivors.’

‘Got it. Do we get the bounty if we kill him?’

‘No! The bounty is to incentivise third parties. I’m not going to pay you goons extra to do your jobs.’

‘Understood.’ The connection went dead. ‘Airy cocksucker!’ said SF01. ‘And you understand that I am not referring to our beloved leader, but rather another individual in an unrelated matter.’

‘Understood’ said SF02. ‘I say we put about twenty guys together in a volunteer force and get it positioned to go into the arena and hit Carnivous. Keep the rest up here to maintain control of the stands and the mezzanines.’

SF01 thought it over. He had fifty fighters under his command, comprising the stadium’s security force. Tigs were high density and high skill. Equipped with artillery rifles that could put a hole through an AST at a kilometer and one-hit anything under mid-ranker status, they were also well-shielded and highly mobile, due to their jump-pack capability. A group of fifty Tigs, under normal circumstances, would be considered a nearly invincible force, but raging about the area, on the other side of the armored walls and security field, were literally hundreds of the Knet’s most lethal deathmatchers who were also (not uncoincidentally) some of Knet’s worst people. SF01 had the unpleasant and unfamiliar feeling of being distinctly under-strength. He had argued for a larger containing force, but Motor, like many despots throughout history, was wary of giving his praetorian guard too much power and placing it too close to his own person.

‘Yeah, okay. Good idea,’ said SF01, ‘do it.’

SF02 drew a marquis selection of a swathe of the blue dots on his battle map, drawing the curser across the screen until the unit count hit twenty. He opened a spec comm to those dots. ‘Get to bay five, you are the strike force going in after the Kysairons.’ He closed the link. ‘Volunteer’s selected’ he said.

* * *

At bay five, a strike force of twenty Tigs collected in the entry bay, waiting to storm into the area on command. By the fast-select hierarchy rule of P-Fed, the lowest number present in an ad-hoc grouping was automatically in command. That was SF27.

‘So we’re going to just run in and attack?’ demanded SF34, who clearly thought that meritocracy rather than seniority should hold sway.

‘That’s right, attack,’ said SF27, ‘the best offense is a good offense.’

‘But will we know where they are?’ mused SF34, as if thinking out loud.

‘Yeah, how are we supposed to know where they are?’ demanded SF65.

‘We’ll never know where they are, until Motor tells us to go in. So it doesn’t matter where we setup or what plans we make. The best thing is to go straight at them, using the jumps, and hammer them out’ replied SF27, starting to get annoyed.

‘We should send two scouts out before we go in though, to see what the line of penetration has in terms of slowdowns and traps’ said SF34.

‘I volunteer!’ said SF65.

‘No one is going in there’ said SF27, ‘until I say. Everyone shut up.’

‘Quick vote, said SF34, who’s for scouting it out?’

‘No-’ said SF27, but it was too late. About twenty arms went up. Goddamnit, now there’s a fucking vote. ‘Okay’, he said, ‘since you volunteered SF34’-

‘I didn’t volunteer!’

‘You are assigned scout. Go through the bay door to the arena and reconnoiter the exit vector.’

‘I think we should ask for volunteers for that’ prevaricated SF33, who knew there was always some lunatic, in any given group, who would volunteer for anything.

‘I volunteer!’ said SF65.

‘No, Sixty Five, Thirty Four has suggested this course of action’ replied SF27. ‘I couldn’t ask anyone else to risk their Ids, it wouldn’t be fair.’

’Quick vote-’said SF34.

‘No vote,’ SF27 cut him off, ‘hit the bay door control and roll it up about two meters. All guns on the gap. As soon as Three Three is through, close it again.’

‘Right!’ someone called out, and the big blast doors rumbled and wined to life, retracting from the floor. SF34 looked around. His comrades had their guns on the doors, but, seeing as he was between them and the doors, they also had their guns on him.

The sound of fighting from the arena became loud and sharp.

‘Go, go, go!’ yelled SF27, and SF34, seeing no other option, slid under the bay door and into the open arena. Immediately, the shutters reversed and descended back into their groove. He ran for cover, cursing.

* * *

Flogged on by the blood lust of the crowd, the combined murder-power of forty-nine teams fell, like a collapsing skyscraper, on the Kysairons.

‘The fury of the Gods falls upon the presumers! None can survive it!’ yelled Jerry.

‘And yet they are!’

‘Apparently there is no truce to go after the Kyros. That might keep them alive a little longer!’

‘Yes Jerry, it’s hard for them to get at Carnivous and his boys, while still trying to kill each other.’

The Kysairons were trying to break clear of a Circlecutters, a brawling clan out of Mechanismo server, their Id’s in the ironic-minimalist style of robots with angular bodies, stick-like legs, and whirring buzzsaw-bladed arms, when the floor tilted out from under them. Caught off balance, Enemy Crab God was pitched into a seething madness of digestive organs and pseudopods that burst up from below.

‘Looks like the first of many wild card traps have been triggered Jerry,’ said Jerry, ‘this one is a pit full of Piloxy mass-assimilators, one of the worst cim organisms ever to plague the Knet.’

‘Fun fact Jerry; a PMA analog overran Atox Server so completely that the whole thing needed to be reset.’

‘Yes Jerry! This obnoxious, fast-growing bastard is more difficult to eradicate than communism. The Pilos kill, assimilate and start shedding larvae. And it looks like one of the Kysairons is going under!’

‘Yes, he’s gone! Or is he? Holy shit, look at them blast away! And now it’s the attackers being forced to break off, I can see at least three Circlecutters going under.’

In the rough center of a great, ragged swirl of dogfighting gamers, Piloxy assimilators, creatures that were little more than stomachs with multiple, backward-hooking legs, were bursting from the trap in a horrid, writhing mass, forcing the combatants outward and drawing their fire.

‘No, they gotta break- yes,they’re breaking away. One down! the Kysairon team has had a loss! But it doesn’t show on the leader board because they aren’t registered to play.’

‘They are registered in my heart, Jerry!’

‘And it looks like their comrade’s sacrifice has not been in vain, the Kysairons seem to have ducked the center scrum. Can you see them, Jerry?’

’No, Jerry, but look at that shit pop off!!

From the observation suit, impacts and explosions could be seen flashing amidst the melees and striking the crowd shield. Dust and smoke rolled, and tongues of lightning leapt into the sky.

‘Big output weapons, heavy Ids, it’s a very different environment than a battle with mixed strength.’

‘Yes, allot of these guys are used to being tanks. It might take a readjustment for them to get more in the head-space of rankers. And straightaway, we’re seeing an advantage in the low-number, ultra-dense configuration, a small number of super-highs in a traditional skirmisher mode, instead of specialization or combined arms. More mobility and leverage.’

‘You make a suspiciously cogent point, Jerry.’

‘I’m high on life, Jerry!’

‘I’m gonna take your word on that, Jerry.’

* * *

In the observation floor of the center tower, the corporates seem to be enjoying the show. It was a beautiful disaster, thought Ganze, but his boss only had eyes for his horned Nemesis.

‘Where is he?’ snapped Motor, ’what’s going on? Did they get him?

As these seemed to be rhetorical questions, Ganze remained silent. On the great leader board, team logons started to flash as damage accrued. People are getting hurt down there, thought Ganze.

* * *

The war beast bellowed, its mammoth limbs shattered, torn by the impact of a vicious kinetic energy weapon.

It tottered on its broken legs and fell ruinously onto its side, collapsing into its own weight, gushing sky-blue blood from its wounds. Then the power core at its heart destabilized and it blew up awesomely.

‘Bow down to a true pimp!’ yelled Lopslide as elephantine body parts rained down around him, splattering gore.

In the curvature of a ridge beside him, Cubist hugged the ground. Yes, the fucking thing had finally exploded, but he had been shaken by the beast’s toughness, the relentless way it had come at them and, more generally, by the deadly wall of resistance they had collided with, there, in this hellish arena. For Cubist, the aurora of Carnivous’ mad vision had dispelled on impact. Too-used to being an implacable force, too-long arrogant in his kingpin status, Cubist had forgotten what it was to fight for his life. The people they were trading blows with here hit back as hard, dodged as fast, ambushed and withdrew with as much coordination and cunning. They were up against Knet’s most brutal contenders and, for the Kysairons, there was no possibility of surrender. Cubist strained his eyes against the murk. ECG is gone. Just like that. Lost to the Piloxy pit. The thought was numbing. Epsilon should have been the wake-up call, he thought, cursing himself for following Carnivous down the rabbit hole a second time.

Something whined out of the smoke and he threw himself aside, violently. The projectile, whatever it was, skipped of the berm of the arena floor with a vicious flash and whirred off into the depths, to explode upon some unseen surface, a great bloom of light in the battle haze.

‘I’m gonna drill a dick-sized hole in your skull!’ Yelled Lopslide, in the direction of their unseen assailant. ‘Then guess what I’m gonna do!’

‘Get down, you idiot!’ hissed Cubist.

‘Left!’ snapped Carnivous, and they slipped over the rise as quick as thinking. Instinctively they sprung apart from one another, forming a loose-space skirmish formation, vaulting over the low crenelations of the arena floor, the shallow maze of valley, hills and trenches that provided the contestants tactical terrain. In bad visibility, Carnivous’ instinct was to close instantly on opponents, before they got a chance to realize their targets were coming at them instead of scattering. Now they were running, hard and silent as lions, at something that was about to get a very nasty surprise.

Unfortunately, they were as likely to get one themselves.

Cubist let his mind go. We’re animals now. Hesitation was death. If they killed enough, they might get out of this place. There was no room for any other thought.

* * *

Shackled to the wall, Kyle had half-strangled himself before he’d finally managed to don the headset and gloves. It was even harder to use the pedals, lying half prone against the wall, but he managed. The multiple impacts had busted something loose in the headset, his vision flickered and strobed in a way that Kyle hoped was purely in the hardware.

He logged onto his Id. A message appeared, orange on a field of dim grey:

KILLED BY EXPLOSION

‘You son of a fuck!’ yelled Kyle, knowing his brother probably couldn’t hear him even though he was physically no more than three meters away. He the tinny sounds of battle from his bothers enclosed headgear was loud, the volume must be way up.

‘Fourteen minutes,’ muffled Leon, to invisible companions, ‘Close!’

Leon’s body was exhibiting the hyper-efficient twitch of the expert gamer, his fingers snapping in the hand grips almost too fast to follow. Kyle saw his face jerking with pain, his lips pulled back from his gums in a feral grimace of rage and pain as his feedback suit lashed at his body. He looked as if he was in the throes of some seizure, a mix of passion and pain, possessed by spirits. Kyle was chilled by the sight.

He tried to settle his thoughts. His player Id, which he’d built up over the course of years to ranker status, was gone. Morghain was non-contactable without his slab. Not knowing what else to do, Kyle selected the spawning point menu and typed P-L-A-Y-E-R-S-F-E-D- into the search bar, the search results ‘P-Fed Deathmatch and Tournament’ coming up instantly. He hit the first link and was instantly redirected to a site emblazoned with the words WELCOME TO THE PLAYERS FEDERATION ALL SERVERS DEATHMATCH TOURNAMENT! SPECTATOR IDs SPAWN HERE!

Thirty points were listed, but a logon number was needed to activate them. To get one, the graphic helpfully explained, it was necessary to buy one, for the low-low price of thirty new American dollars. Kyle cursed and cursed. He couldn’t get to his slab. He began to rack his actual meat brain, bruised as it was, for credit card numbers, his payspec password, even his Vapourcoin wallet. Anything he could use for money.

* * *

‘We’ve just had news that Kys-1 has been conquered’ said Jerry, ‘P-Fed spokespeople have confirmed that they are going to proceed with the extermination of everything on Extant Server.’

‘Fun fact, Jerry: Extant now enters Knet history as only the third sever ever to undergo full-population genocide.’

’That is fun.’

‘Ah, but what cursed wind will waft such news to our heroes? Imagine their turmoil! There they stand, in a sea of enemies, the last of the Kysairons!’

‘There are probably other survivors.’

‘Don’t fuck with my dramatic framing, Jerry!’

‘Sorry, Jerry!’

‘And what of Motor?’ continued his partner, ’The tyrant can call none friend! What terrors haunt him in his unguarded moments? Is he destined to be but another citizen ghost, in this necropolis of his own making?’

‘There probably won’t be time for interviews.’

‘Yes, this thing is getting out of control. And now there’s fighting in the stands too! Let’s zoom in.’

In the magged-up view, the spectator Ids could be seen, hitting, clawing and butting at each other. It looked like a blue moshpit.

* * *

‘Is the crowd supposed to be fighting?’ asked Dave Saur From Infomechan, in the spectator chamber.

‘Of course they are,’ said Motor, cheerfully. ‘All part of the fun. Our research indicated as twelve-point-three increase in short term concept retention of commercial messages in teens thirteen to seventeen if there was an element of personal interaction.’

Motor and Ganze had descended from the upper control to the main spectator area to rub shoulders with the corporates and exude an aura of confidence and jovial camaraderie. In their own headset feeds they had the Jerries up, as well as a half dozen other, non-verified feeds and were direct messaging each other as needed using the letter pads on the gamesets.

Now Motor typed, with expert, one-handed speed, [WTF is there fighting in stands????]

[they cant kill each other] replied Ganze, meaning the spectator Ids, [theyr 2 light]

’Oh and it appears they can kill each other!’ said Jerry, on the video feed, ‘I guess they’re not too light.’

In the zoomed-in view, one of the spectator Ids had successfully bludgeoned one of its fellows to death. It was now raising its hands in cavemanish victory, splattered with red digital blood. This seemed to set up a cheer throughout the crowd, and it set on itself with increased vigor.

‘Can they hear me?’ asked Ganze, aloud, sounding horrified.

‘Excuse me?’ said Hugh Heitle from digital Growth Strategies.

‘That’s right, Jerry’ replied the other Jerry, ‘to be clear, I queried a few moments ago, as a precursor to your response; ’can they actually kill each other?”

[AND what thfck are THEY doing?] DMed Motor.

One of the feeds was showing the place where Carnivous’ supercompressed weapon had torn a great hole in the upper region of the arena wall, when he’d used it to eliminated the Dukes. Because the blast had come outward, from the entrance bay, the force had pushed the heavy armor of the wall outward, where it had partially collapsed into the ring. A great hole, like a starfish, curved its arms out, into the deadly air of the open battle space. Now Spectator Ids were pouring through it, in lemming-like fashion, plunging heedlessly to their deaths on the arena floor below. The first of them had shattered on impact, their bodies breaking in the joints like rag dolls, but they were followed by a waterfall of more and more blue bodies.

Motor glanced at the corporates. They hadn’t noticed. Most were ooh-ing and ah-ing at a brawl near the middle of the ring, elephantine riding monsters were crushing a swarm of insectoid attackers, their riders blasting them with lightning and exhalations of fire from grinning, demon-faced clouds of bright blue or green smoke they conjured from the air.

[their making a pile] replied Ganze, watching it grow. [shit-- I think theyrepileing up spec ids as ramp1]

That was happening, visibly. The spectator corpses had become a covering, then a mound. Now, as the rain of bodies thumped and rolled down its slopes, some weren’t entirely dying from the impact. Soon even fewer were, rolling and twitching at the base of the pile. One or two were even getting unsteadily to their feet.

[spectators ar getting into arena floor!!1!]DMed Motor. [This is FKING MELDOWN GANZwn, e.]

[i know i take full responsibility] typed Ganze, hoping to get the recrimination phase over as quickly as possible so that Motor could get his mind on the problem, [but right now we need deal > situation]

[tell the tigs to get to breach shoot any who come through]

[u want tigs mowing down customers in front of everybody/???]

[then what?????]

Ganze looked at the body pile, the river of spectators now shimmying and tumbling down it were spreading, like ants, into the battle ring. [Do nothing] he typed.

[stop telling me to d nothing u fuck!!]

[just treat as part of the event i don’t see what else we can do - yheyre just spec ids, they have so little prop theyre not even roaches. they can’t interfere with play. But we should have a cordon at the gap anyway]

[why/]

[stop contestants getting out]

This hadn’t even occurred to Motor. ‘Oh shit’ he said.

’I beg your pardon?’ said Bud Rodgers from GNN Commercial Placement

* * *

‘How long for the PDS?’ shouted Cubist, meaning he recharge on Carnivous’ illegal, supercompressed weapon.

‘Fourteen minutes,’ replied Carnivous, ’close!’

The Kysairons came out of the battle fog like torpedoes to strike the thing that had fired at Lopslide dead on. It was Mistah Master, the link-sitting disgrace of Acula Mons Server. The Mastah himself was invisible, at the center of his monstrous war machine, which was a great mechanoid, a vast, pre-jurassic crustacean in tank form, its back, a curving shield of armor, to glance away blows, supported on articulated legs. At the peak of its shell, where a narrow dorsal ridge ran up to a small blister-like turret, the thing’s only visible offensive weapon was housed, a powerful kinetic projectile cannon that periodically fired off rounds into the chaos of the smoke-obscured battlefield. It was one of these that had nearly struck Lopslide.

But even as they closed, the trap was sprung. The treachery was instantly apparent, even if recognized too late. In typical fashion, Mastah had done a deal to be battlefield bait, in exchange for immunity, to lure an unwary or too-aggressive retaliator into something unpleasant, in this case, a collapsing-ring ambush, the specialty of the Emo Berserks.

There were about thirty of them, appearing out of the air like ninja. Skeletal-thin, black-clad and chalk-faced, their fingers were elongating into lethal razors. They looked like Edward Scissorhands’ satanic stunt-doubles. Their closing pattern was perfect, even Carnivous had to admire it, in the split instant he had to register anything, before the Emos struck.

* * *

In the stands, anarchy was now more or less in full force. Once the novelty value of being ‘physically’ present, of having a spectator body to move around the stands, had worn off, the crowd had grown restless. There were much better ways to enjoy the arena carnage, hundreds of cameras were feeding footage out onto the net. While watching that on their headsets, the spec Id owners found it more fun to roam around the stands and see if they could break things. They were very light, but there were allot of them. By getting in a long line, they could almost, by pulling in unison, rip a line of seats out of the floor. Almost. They needed more numbers. As Carnivous and his companions fought for their lives, the crowd was already experimenting with weight, stacking themselves up on the mezzanines, into huge, crushing piles. To general acclaim, they began to break the connectors in one row and throw seating sections onto the crowd. In addition, the first waves of them were now flowing into the arena floor itself, to get crushed underfoot and blown to splatters by the contestants. The Tigs were not blind to this mounting chaos, but they had been forbidden to mow down the malefactors. They were forced to restrain themselves to verbal warnings, which earned them nothing but abuse and hurled debris.

On the observation floor, the corporate guppies had still not picked up the feeling, but Motor now had the familiar, panicky sense of events going awry. However, there was no brutality that could be effective against the stadium crowd. They weren’t afraid to die because their Ids were worthless. When crushed, shot or mangled, they simply paid another thirty dollars and birthed another Id from a spawning point.

‘We should have charged more for the specs’, he muttered, seeing hundreds, probably thousands, of new ones streaming from mezzanines. ‘Could have made a ton more.’

’We’ve passed three hundred thousand logons to the stadium, said Ganze grimly.

‘Holy shit!’ said Motor, doing the mental math. That was adding up to real money. Joy at the prospect of the cash warred with his dread. Nine point three million American dollars. He could buy a family sedan.

‘It’s not slowing down. You want to shut down the respawning points for a while?’ asked Ganze.

‘Are you crazy? There’s no need for that. No.’

‘But they are already doing damage to the stadium, and Stadfor says they’re making body-walls around our guys. Also, they’re getting into the combat area of the arena through the gap made by the explosion in bay twenty.’

’No! The increasing logons shows that we’re going viral. This thing runs on confidence!The tournament is a big success, that’s the message, anything that takes us off that is bad. Huge numbers! New subscribers! Stadium packed!’

Motor looked down to the corporate gaggle. He was heartened to see that they were laughing and talking loudly and pointing out elements of the spectacle below. As long as those idiots were smiling, he reflected, everything was on track.

* * *

‘We got to blow the roofs of these towers’ said Stadfor SF01 to SF02. ‘So we can use our jumps to get out if we need to.’

‘Makes sense,’ said SF02. He commed to SF03 and SF04, ‘Hey guys, One says blow some escape holes in the towers, so we can get out by jump if we need to.’ He cut the comm and turned his weapon to the roof. He and several of his comrades began blowing a great gap in the roof.

* * *

’What the fuck?’ said Motor, his anxious gaze straying from the carnage below at the sight of the mezzanine tower roofs flash and burst into clouds of dust and flying fragments. ‘Is someone shooting at them from the stands? who’s doing that?’

‘Hey Stadfor,’ said Ganze, opening a comm, ‘whats going on with the towers? Someone shooting at us?’

‘No, we’re just making getout holes, if we need them,’ came the reply.

‘Are you fucking crazy? Knock it off!’ Ganze cut the link.

The clouds of dust abated from the tower tops. Even from this distance, Ganze could sense the rebellions muttering. On the stands, the blue horde flowed across the red seats, like a human tide. They were now piled up in patterns, long dykes of corpses that showed the limit to which they could crowd the control towers without getting shot.

In Ganze’s summaries he saw the subscription numbers climbing past two hundred and twelve thousand. The spawning points were running hot. The stadium stood open, and Knet was coming.

* * *

The Kysairons stood in a storm of steel. Unlike the Kysairons, who drew their fighting style from the more common tradition of anarchic brawling, the Emos were fanatical, narrow-spectrum specialists. In Knet jargon they were called ‘signats’, due to their practice of honing a signature technique to fanatical levels of perfection then applying it as a leveraged tactic. To gain initiation onto the clan, a player had to be able to run through attack pattern cycles going the hand-to-hand combat controller at a metacarpal-blasting twenty per second, more than a thousand a minute, and to keep that up relentlessly, indefinitely. Used in concert, this formed a blizzard of attacks that forced an opponent to defend and corralled him into a killing zone that the Emos could leverage.

For their system to work, the Emo Berserks needed two things, a numerological superiority of at least three to one, and to pen their opponents in a closing formation before they could scatter or use terrain. Both of these they had achieved with the Kysairons. Their ‘leveraging tactic’, any tactic that forced an opponent to fight from a position of disadvantage, was the closing-ring ambush, something they were supernaturally good at. Holding a wider circumference, they could pack more fighters onto each defender and force them into hand-to-hand controller mode just to stay alive. If a single enemy did break the encirclement, he would be cut up from multiple angles, not just the front. If an EB was struck or thrown back, his place would instantly be taken by another, so fluently that there was almost no interruption in the blizzard, conceding their victims no opportunity to exploit the gap. For the target, the punishment was relentless, like being at the center of a ring of hedge-trimmers. They soon got frustrated and desperate to break out, and started making mistakes.

All this Carnivous knew, and his gamer brain calculated the leverages without thinking. The Kysairons might break out, but the damage they would take was unacceptable, and they could not afford to be pinned, with the whole arena looking for them. With the whole arena looking. As that thought flickered across his mind, he knew what to do. The Berserks were fast, but they didn’t have a tenth of the kingpin’s armor. And their formation had one flaw; it faced in, not out. With intuitive genius, Carnivous stepped back into his comrades, then leapt high into the sky.

* * *

‘Carnivous!’ yelled Jerry and Jerry together, as the horned figure appeared in the air above the cauldron.

Carnivous! was the unspoken thought many others. In an instant, more than three dozen skilled gunmen, at all points in the board, had instinctively calculated the landing point of the descending figure and fired into the smoke.

Carnivous hit and went low. An instant later, the Emo Berserks were struck by a converging wall of deadly ordinance. It hurt the defenders, but it hurt the attackers far worse, their bodies being an inadvertent shield between the Kysairons and the incoming fire. The ring was smashed, everything went white, Carnivous felt himself lose orientation with the ground, the sky spinning. He felt his body stung by a storm of hornets, as his pain feedback suit extracted the price.

‘And now what’s happening?’ asked Jerry, as the region Carnivous had fallen into erupted with bright columns of flame, sending debris spinning skyward.

‘We’re supposed to be telling people that, Jerry, not wondering ourselves.’

‘Well I can’t see shit’ complained Jerry. ’All this smoke’s a problem. Gonna have a few ‘notes’ once this thing is over.’

‘Next time some big force projectors on the arena walls maybe, to push it off the floor?’

‘Holy shit, look at Emo Beserk!’ said Jerry.

On the leader board the clan’s health had dropped instantly by half. Now, it nose-dived. Somewhere in the roiling smoke, the Kysairon kingpins were turning on the broken Emo formation like methed-up tigers. No longer able to leverage their victims, the Beserks were forced to fight one-on-one, on a blinding chaos of dust and flailing bodies, against kingpin Ids ten times heavier than themselves. It wasn’t going well for them.

‘Down, down.. they’re crashing! They’re going to get wiped!’ The EB’s team health was descending with terrifying speed, 35- 30-27-18- ‘They’re under twenty percent!’ yelled Jerry, ‘They’ve gone yellow! Fifteen percent now! Thirteen! Holy shit, this is like the bullet count in Aliens!’

A siren sounded, and a flashing yellow strip appeared on the Emo Berserks’ team bar. ’Recluse rule activated’ blared a voice on the stadium towers, ’Team Thirty One, Emo Beserks are withdrawing from play! Do not fire on team Thirty One, Emo Beserks.’

‘And there’s the first pussy-out!’ said Jerry. ‘What’s left of the Emos are going to be allowed to limp off the field. Pah! I spit! I spit in disgust, like a Sicilian grandmother.’

‘That’s really throwing a cold breeze on my murder-chubby, Jerry.’

‘It’s a disgrace- but wait! They’re health is still crashing! I guess someone in there is not getting the message.. and there they are! Running for the wall, like a bunch of Argentinians!’

From the rolling wall of smoke and dust, black figures could now be seen running for the arena rim.

‘That’s it girls, pump those little legs!’ said Jerry, ‘You can make it, you bailing trash.’

But the Emos were still falling as they ran, cut down in sprays of impact dust kicked up around them from unseen projectiles.

The stadium speakers boomed out: ’Say again, Emo Berserks have been reclused! I say again, DO NOT FIRE ON TEAM THIRTY ONE, EMO BERSERKS!’

On the leader board the team percentage dropped from eleven percent to seven. The crowd was roaring.

‘It’s not stopping!’ laughed Jerry, ‘People are still firing on them!’

‘They’re down to one player!’ yelled Jerry.

All eyes were on the final figure, now no more than twenty meters from the bay. But it was crippled, its legs shattered, flopping with injury impairment, crawling, rising to hobble a few steps then falling, its eyes locked on the open exit.

The the spectator mob, a great animal, was surging against the invisible wall of force that separated it from the arena, crushing itself to death, like ants against glass.

‘Last EB player, Formicus. Last survivor’ said Jerry, enthralled. ‘He’s trying to recuse! If he makes the bay door he might survive..’

‘They’ve stopped shooting,’ replied Jerry. ‘What’s- hello, who’s that?’’

A bulky figure in black robotic armor was striding from the smoke. Printed on its faceplate was a white skull.

‘That’s Immaculate Deed, team Pysconaughts.’

The fighting noise faded away, the crowd quieted by some unspoken consensus. The stadium watched, enthralled.

‘Immaculate walking up on Formicus,’ continued, Jerry, ‘what’s Formicus doing.. oh shit, I think he’s begging! He’s actually begging for his life! Can you believe this?’

The injured player did seem to be on his knees, pleading and reasoning with the bulky figure of the Psyconaught. The crowd was booing in a frenzy of rage and disgust. Then the Psyconaught raised his weapon and blew the Emo Beserker player’s head into fragments. The crowd went wild.

‘I guess he’s not a fan of emos’ said Jerry. ‘Then again, who is?’

* * *

‘Oh dear,’ said Philip Tan from Product Target Heuristics, as the body of Fomicus flopped headlessly to the ground, ‘that is a little bit gross isn’t it? Are we sure that sort of thing is appropriate? I mean, I don’t want to be a prude..’

‘The crowd loves it!’ said Motor, ‘all part of the event. No one’s really getting hurt.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Brian Wrest from the Midweastern Strategic Soda Reserve, ‘but still is it really necessary to see actual blood and brains flying out? Can’t they just disappear with a sparkle effect, or something, when they die?’

‘We have no control over how individual clans mod Id behavior’ said Motor, his jaw tightening a little.

‘It seems to be getting a little hard to see’ pointed out Sally Kohn from the Youth Diabetes Initiative. ‘Is it supposed to be that smoky?’

‘Unavoidably, the weapons they are using are going to kick up some smoke,’ said Motor wishing he could blast Sally and her trenchant observations into space.

‘Hmmmmmm, could be a problem’ said Hugh.

‘Well..’ said Motor, ‘I suppose-’

‘The tower has repulsor panels on its walls for maneuvering,’ interjected Ganze, ‘if we turn them all on at ultra-low power, we should be able to force the smoke and dust out of the central ring without shifting our holding position.’

‘Great. Do that’ said Motor, with relief.

Ganze opened his comm.

* * *

Kyle had racked his brain for his Vapourcoin wallet, despaired of his Paysec logon, tried to get the password re-issued before remembering he couldn’t reach his slab so it was pointless anyway, and then, by some miracle, remembered his credit card number, on the third try, just as the system was about to lock him out.

He paid, got the PIN off the tournament site and was born into one of the stadium spawning points. He was wearing a spec Id, a low-poly humanoid figure. They looked a little like crash test dummies in blue uniforms, their faces blank.

The spawning point was birthing dozens of new Ids, identical to himself. He was pushed out, from under the shadow of the mezzanine and half tumbled into the sweeping upper tier of the arena. He had not been prepared for how massive it was. It stretched left and right into a tremendous ring and floating in the center, like the hub of a wheel, was a great tower. In his spec Id, Kyle wasn’t even a face in the crowd, he was indistinguishable from the thousands of others that thronged the walls of the arena, cheering and brawling. The noise was terrifying. He had never heard anything like it, a great roar like static, a million conflicting voices combining into something like a breaking wave of sound, salted with vicious cracking and booming of weapons that kicked his traumatized brain until he thought his skull would split.

‘Woah!’ yelled the spectator next to him, ‘This is epi-i-i-c!’

Kyle felt like throwing up, but he had to agree. The psychic hum of blood lust was animal. From the center ring of the arena, smoke and flying wreckage went sailing up into the sky. The deadly menagerie of warring clans locked, horn and pincer, like battling insects, for the amusement of schoolboy gods. Light flashed out in beams and lances, fire bloomed and debris and body parts ascended towards the great tower before falling back.

Kyle felt a debilitating current of despair. Somewhere in that hell, like a beetle in a thunderstorm, was his brother.