They don’t know I’m a Hardworlder

She looked like she had just stepped out of her own dream, and within a few seconds of meeting her gaze, Gradie knew it was intentional. She wore an oversized t-shirt and a messy half-fallen bun, and nothing else.

“What?” he asked her.

She smiled and leaned in, and for a burning second, he thought she was coming in for a hug, until she snaked by him and pointed at the screen.

“One of Bart’s little pranks. Pulls your surface thoughts and runs them through some kind of metaphorizer, then displays the output on-screen. So maybe you were thinking about a road trip, or a journey, or traffic, or—”

She slapped a button on the side and the screen became a mirror.

“Or who gives a shit, right?” She smiled at him some more.

“Uh, yeah, thanks. I’d prefer my thoughts stayed in my head.”

She squinted at him and her smile shifted to one side.

“Well, you’re kind of in the wrong reality then, right?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“The trick is, if you wanna know, to remember that your thoughts are cheap. It’s like talking here, at least the surface ones. No one really cares, no one’s really watching, and if they are,” she shrugged.

Gradie nodded.

“You are new, right?” It was a smile like she had caught him staring at her ass or something.

“Uh, yeah, kind of. How long until someone stops being new?”

She giggled silently. “That’s a good question! For some people, like, never. It’s like a vibe, you know,” she swirled her fingers in a circle at him, and he looked down at his chest like there was going to be a sign that said “fucking new guy” on it or something.

She giggled again at him and pointed at the mirror.

“See, look. I’m all like, done with it,” she shifted her weight and threw her hand back, her hip stretching her t-shirt in a way that seemed deliberate. “Like I don’t care if you go digging, like I’m only not naked because that would be just so boring right? But you,”

She gestured at him again, and he became prickingly aware of his posture, his rigidity, the way his head jutted forward as he searched the mirror for some secret.

“You’re like, on guard. Your outfit is to like, blend in, right? Mirror goggles. You just wanna watch, don’t want to take part yet, cause oh my god what could happen? That’s why you’re up here, right?”

He had taken off the mirror goggles and hung them around his neck, and this time when he faced her, something in his eyes made her smile flick. He thought about telling her that her fucking smile was more reflective and defensive than any googles could ever be, but instead he just pointed out that,

“You’re up here.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re like,” she bounced and twisted and flicked a finger at a group of people standing a few art pieces down. “Waiting on Melissa. You know, Barth’s partner?”

Gradie just stared, waiting for her to explain or say something else, deliver some further critique, and she must have picked up on the hostility, because she leaned in and softened her voice.

“I’m not like, trying to rag on you. It’s just, you know, showing you—” she did some weird half pirouette thing and flashed her palms at him and bowed her head. “–How I could tell. We’ve all been there. It’s not a big deal. Just letting you know, you know, like, it’s ok to put yourself out there.”

“Thanks.” Was all he could think to say. She stared at him for a bit until they were both cut off by one of her friends shouting over,

“What’s up?”

The group of people sauntered over toward them. Three guys and another girl. The tallest guy, who had shouted, gave Gradie a smile he wasn’t sure how to return so he just nodded. Despite first girl’s dissertation on Otherworld attire, none of her friends seemed to have gotten the memo. The tall guy wore a suit with the word “BRUCE” cut into the chest, right through blazer and vest and shirt and displayed in red silk underneath, the second guy wore something cut like a a button-up shirt and pant pajama set from the 50’s but covered in patches of anime frames, a girls drooling mouth, rolled back eyes, machine gun spitting shells, all of which were animated in repeating cycles, and third guy and second girl were both dressed like Mulder and Scully if their trenches were made out of those glow in the dark felt floors from an old arcade.

“Going skiing later?” Tall guy said with that same smile that had all the friendly hollowed out of it.

“Uh,” Gradie spent a few seconds of confusion before catching himself in the mirror. Mirror goggles and high-collared winter jacket. He hated it. It felt like hiding, now more than ever, and he had to force his thoughts away from his mirrormask and dark longcoat.

“Nah, it’s just what I put on.”

They stared at him and he kept his gaze frozen, like his statement was a large rock he had brought out suddenly and they were all waiting to see what he did with it.

“Oh, guys, this is, uh…” Girl number one stared at him and he stared at her, silent as the dead.

“Your name bro?” Hentai guy said, and Bruce-suit cackled.

“Uh, Gradie.” He couldn’t keep the reluctance out of his voice. After months of opsec training and taking randomized routes to and from the office and changing into and out of his Mask in so-called “darkbooths”, it felt like a cardinal sin to say his name out loud.

They must have heard it because they all gave him looks that said, “Why the fuck would you give us a fake name like we even give a fuck?”

“Oh my god, sorry, I can’t believe I didn’t get your name!” First girl squeezed his arm and giggled.

“It’s just like we’ve known each other forever.”

She motioned back and forth between them with her finger and narrowed her eyes like a secret, and he did his best to nod and smile.

“And I’m Sia by the way,” she said, holding her hand out, curved at the wrist and palm down, so that he just squeezed it and bounced it a little, feeling as if she had been daring him to kiss it.

“Radcliffe,” the guy in the trench shook Gradie’s hand.

“Soshi Pretzal!” trench girl sang.

“Benyay,” hentai guy shook next, and Gradie followed the line to Bruce-shirt guy at the far right and waited with his hand out.

Another awkward silence.

“Uh, Bruce,” Bruce said with a smile full of mock pity.

“Oh shit,” Gradie laughed.

“So how do you know Bart?” Sia asked.

“Uh, I don’t. I just know the twins.”

“Oh how’d you meet them?”

Gradie stared at her for a full second before he even thought to say,

“Uh,”

While on his comms, he asked, “How did I meet yall?”

There were two distinct sensations of dead unresponsiveness in his head that told him the twins had their comms on mute, but Luke replied,

“Don’t craft a lie, trim the truth.”

Philips advice from their training on aliases echoed in memory, and he tried to apply it.

“That dirty huh?” Sochi said, and the others cackled. Gradie forced a smile.

“No, I was just like, flying around the Ball and they picked me up.”

“Bullshit,” Bruce smirked. “They just plucked you out of the swarm?”

“I was, uh, trying to make a craft.” Gradie let some of his very real embarrassment color his words, and the group laughed some more.

“So what, they said fuck all that, we need another guy for Gunmaze or something?”

“Yeah pretty much.”

The group had some more laughs and made some more comments that grinded on his ribs.

“Aww so you’re like their trainee!” “That’s so them. They love paying it forward, helping out the newbies.” “And they brought you here! Like you don’t even know who Bart is!” “Imagine if these guys knew some newborn was sipping their brosia for free!”

“So how do yall know them?” Gradie said, trampling over a few half-finished observations.

“Oh, we’re their testers,” Sia said.

“Yeah, I love the guys,” said Bruce. “But they have a lot of romantic ass ideas when it comes to game design that someone’s gotta set straight. Too many people will just kiss their ass, especially now that they’re working with Bart.”

He flashed another one of those smiles that made Gradie wonder where he learned them.

“They show you any of their new stuff?” Radcliffe asked.

“Uh, no, not yet. I’m still kinda new to Gunmaze.”

“Yeah I’m sure they’ll run you through it soon,” Benyay said. “I know they wanted to run some tests on less experienced players. Get a good balance. It’s hard to find guys that won’t just find the optimum—”

“So how new are you?” Soshi asked.

“Uh,” once again, he let a few lies drop. “Like, a couple months, no,” he raised two fingers, then three, and was considering the fourth one.

“Damn I was thinking weeks,” Bruce said, and the rest had a good laugh.

“Why?” Gradie asked.

“Uh, cause you got that doe-eyed look still, like we all just threw you out of bed.”

“Some people take it slower,” Sia said. “I heard Bart spent months just staring at the sky when he was born.”

“That’s bullshit for his blurbs and press releases!” Bruce said with acid.

“So what else have you done since birth? Besides Gunmaze?” Sia said.

“Uh, mostly just flying around.”

“What, like in the black?”

“No, like around the ball.”

They laughed again.

“Yeah,” Bruce said slowly. “But like, what have you been doing on the ball, what kinda sims—”

“Just flying. I just like to look, uh,”

“He just likes to watch!” Benyay sneered.

“But you’ve tried some sims, right?” Sia asked.

“No.”

“He’s like a stoic or some shit,” said Bruce. “Right on bro.” Again, there was absolutely no real friendliness in it.

“How long ago did you meet the twins?” Benyay asked, like an investigator on a hot lead.

“Uh, like a month.” It seemed the easiest to remember.

“So what, you got born, flew around the ball, and that’s it for like three months?”

“Yeah.”

“Not even the Allclub? You know it's free, right?” Sochi said.

“No. I mean yeah I know—”

“You haven’t tried anything?” Sia sounded like he was a kid who admitted to living off Cheetos or something.

“I went to Ray’s.”

He regretted saying it the moment it left his mouth and the group almost fell over laughing. Sia even put her hand up to her mouth, which was somehow even worse than Bruce’s bent-over cackling.

“He had a burger and was like, “yeah, this is truly the pinnacle of

this

fucking existence.”

“Kinda based, actually,” Soshi snickered.

“I blame the twins,” Benyay said, shaking his head with mock disapproval.

“Yeah!” Bruce gasped. “He’s sitting there having an existential, thinking he’s dreaming and shit, and they’re like “Hey buddy we need a drone monkey for Killcity!”

“So what do yall do then, besides Gunmaze?” It came out harsher than he had hoped, and Sia gave him a “don’t get offended, we all truly care about you” smile that set wrinkles under her bangs.

“Well, we’re kinda loaded, so basically whatever we want,” Benyay said. Gradie chuckled but no one returned his smile.

“No like, really,” Radcliffe said. “The token’s been on a run against the MEM for years and we’re in the top K—”

“He doesn’t know what that means,” Bruce sighed. “Basically, yeah we can do whatever, so if you’re asking like, what’s possible in the Other, for example, last week I was a fucking forest.”

Benyay cackled. “I forgot about that shit.”

“What do you mean—” Gradie reluctantly played the part assigned to him by asking, though a dead weight was building in the back of his head that made his tongue heavy and his jaw clench.

“Like I was a whole ass forest. This sim Helvetica made, who you don’t know who that is, but anyway, I was actually the ground and thousands of trees and shit connected by mycelium and I had to regulate fruit production and nutrients and I even piped toxins down the food chain to have some Kodiak stray into this logger's camp and attack them. Then I broke down one of their bodies. Shit was intense.”

“I got to be the Bull on Dion again last week,” Benyay said with a dirty smile. Sia rolled her eyes with a grin and Soshi faked gagging.

“So on Dion,” Benyay began, holding his hand out to Gradie in a “stay with me” gesture.

“There’s more to the Other than being made fake king of the rich bitch orgy,” Bruce said. “Look, it doesn’t have to be a big thing. Think about it like this. What’s something you always wanted to experience, like your deepest most soul strangling desire?”

There was a silent pause, then Gradie smiled as it came to him.

“Flying.”

They all laughed. Bruce made a “hey, I tried,” shrug at Sia and sneered at the others.

“He’s like a six-year-old!” Benyay said between laughs.

“Really though!” Soshi laughed. “Like you ever wanted to, like, Vetruvio has a really good Dragon sim, where like time, what?”

“Dragons fly right?” Gradie smiled. She threw her hands up and laughed. Benyay had been motioning at her to stop while fighting down his laughs.

“He doesn’t want to be a fucking dragon, he doesn’t want to know what its like to be Genghis Khan! He wants to fly around, watch people on their dates, eat at Rays and fuck dudes up in Gunmaze. Right Bro?”

“A man of culture,” Radcliffe said and Bruce cackled again.

“Shut up!” Soshi laughed. “But like for real bro, if you could be anyone—”

“Fuck a day in the life sim!” Bruce wheezed. “Look man, honestly. This reality is so much more than theme park shit. Like there are reflectors that will build on what your subconscious generates, or draw out any memory down to the womb! I love Gunmaze, but it’s so sad to see someone just skip out on all the heightened existence real makers have crafted just to play games. Like dude that makes me so sad.”

Bruce put a hand on his chest and curled up like a commercial for heart pills.

“Are any of them free?” Gradie asked, letting the acid pour out. They all paused and looked at each other.

“I’ll spot you,” Sia said, like she was offering to pay for the smelly kid’s lunch. “Really, don’t worry about it. We all got help once.”

“You know, you can just sell your mem of the Real dude,” Benyay said. “It doesn’t mean shit here, and newbies always have a nice cache of it. Then once you blow through that, you can grind Gunmaze.”

Gradie thought about that other him, tearing his heart out in a small apartment, dragging himself to a shitty job day after day, hoping that some script or poem or short story would catch fire and light his way to something better, something like his real life. And he thought about cutting that other him out of himself and selling it for Gunmaze tokens, and he thought about the flash of his Five Seven and how Benyay would look dying in a Hardworld.

But Benyay, who couldn’t see his fantasies and didn’t pick up on his rage, continued.

“I don’t buy that you can be poor here dude, no offense. It’s usually the fucking addicts trying to cover for their shit, don’t let them lie to you.”

“SHS usually gives good rates,” said Radcliffe.

“Nah, they just sell em wholesale to the spinners anyway. You should go down to Projection Row and shop some samples out—”

“He’s not looking to squeeze fucking percentages. Its—”

“Speaking of Real mem, what are yall like in the Real?”

The conversation stopped, and for the first time since Sia had bounced up to him, the group lost their smug footing. Sia looked at him like he had betrayed her trust, Benyay looked genuinely pissed, Soshi stared like she was getting yelled at by her parents, and Radcliffe’s left eyebrow floated up and his mouth twisted into a frown, but Bruce let out another smile, though this one didn’t even try to hide the fact that it was really just a snarl.

“Oh, I’m a porn star bro.”

Forced laughs rippled through the group and they leaned on each other and held hands up to their faces and even turned away and took steps outside the circle only to turn around and rush back.

“Yeah, I’m like a serial killer dude,” Benyay offered.

“I’m a substitute teacher and I’m fat,” Soshi said, sending Benyay into hysterics.

“What about you bro?” Bruce said. “What are you like in the Real, since we’re on that topic, for some reason?”

He crossed his arms in a pose of mock interest and the group got quiet.

Gradie thought about what “funny” fake answer he would give, but his mind went blank, and a mocking voice told him,

“You have been saying to yourself since they walked up that you don’t care what they think, but you do, don’t you? Otherwise, why would you try and annoy them? And why would you lie to them? If you really didn’t care, you would just tell them the truth, right?”

So he did.

“Uh, well, I work at like a call center, calling doctor’s offices and insurance companies, which I hate, and I don’t do it very well, like I could easily get fired next week, and I try to act like I don’t care, but obviously if I did get fired I would probably just go and try and find another job doing the same thing. I’m basically broke. Single, of course. I tell myself I’m gonna be like a poet or a screenwriter or something one day, like I always wanted to create the setting for an MMO and stuff, but I think the reason I haven’t made any real moves towards any of it is because if I don’t try, I can keep the fantasies, but if I try and fuck up, then I can’t even distract myself from my shitty life by day dreaming about some unlikely future.”

Bruce had been raising his eyebrows at his friends the entire time and they all were on the edge of laughter, besides Sia, who was looking at Gradie with a silent “why would you do that?” frown.

“Damn dude, that sucks.” Benyay said and that broke them. The laughter rolled out and Sia tried to soften it by putting a hand on his arm that felt like bumping into something in a dark garage.

“Most people don’t like who they are in the Real,” Sia purred and before Gradie could tell her that he hadn’t been fucking saying that he didn’t like the Real him, Bruce busted in.

“Oh my god, its not that we don’t like the Real us, it’s that we understand the real us is here, in our Spirit, that’s what defines a newborn kid, thinking the Real is more important than it is. Look bro, you gotta get past that shit! Here, I’ll literally give you a pass to Soulshredder.”

The others made various forced impressed noises.

“Fuck off Bruce!” Benyay scoffed. “He won’t even be able to appreciate—”

“Yes he will dude. Here bro, I just can’t stand seeing a guy mope over his Real self when there is so much more to the journey.”

Bruce had his hand stretched out with a thin ribbon of mirror-metal, reflecting an unseen morning-lit lobby, which Gradie knew from the radiating dreamsense, would wrap around his wrist like an entrance band. The way Bruce cradled it in three fingers, and the others stared at it, and Sia patted him on the back, or maybe from some dreamsensed price tag, Gradie knew it was indescribably expensive.

He wanted more than anything in any world to take it and rip it to pieces, but it had already told him it couldn’t be destroyed. Like their wealth, their Gunmaze tokens, it was untouchable, and thinking about how untouchable they all were, he finally let himself admit that he fucking hated them. What they valued, what they said, what they spent their time and effort on. He wanted to crack Gunmaze in half and turn their precious tokens to worthless dreammetal, make their optimized strats and encyclopedic game knowledge as useless as they were. He wanted to break the fucking Other into pieces and drag them all into a Hardworld and wave a loaded gun in their faces.

The mirror band drooped in Bruce’s hand as Gradie stood there in silence and reflected his own eyes back at him in a flash. The dark hatred pressing out of his chest had found an outlet in his stare, and something in it reminded him of a feeling less than a memory, and the shock jolted him out of his fuming.

You let these people do that to you?

Without even looking up from the band, he turned and walked away. There were a few muffled questions, but nothing directed at him, until he got to the staircase, and Benyay called out,

“Have fun hitting the slopes bro!”

Their distant laughter chased him down the stairs.