Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

“Ha,” said Fred. The twins started uphill, past the property line. “C’mon, Mike. We’re marked as county employees. We’ll be fine if we don’t stay too long.”

PYRAMID Hill had all the latest touchie-feelie effects. These were not just phantoms painted by your contact lenses on the back of your eyeballs. On Pyramid Hill, there were games where you could kick lizard butt and steal raptor eggs-or games with warm furry creatures that danced playfully around, begging to be picked up and cuddled. If you turned off all the game views, you could see other players wandering through the woods in their own worlds. Somehow the Hill kept them from crashing into each other.

In Cretaceous Returns the plants were towering gingko trees, with lots of barriers and hidey holes. Mike played the purely visual Cret Ret a lot these days, in person with the twins and all over the world with others. It had not been an uplifting experience. He had been “killed and eaten” three times so far this week. It was a tough game, one where you had to contribute or maybe you got eaten. Mike was trying. He had designed a species-quick, small things that didn’t attract the fiercest of the critics. The twins had not been impressed, though they had no alternatives of their own.

As he walked through the gingko forest, he kept his eye out for critters with jaws lurking in the lower branches. That’s what had gotten him on Monday. On Tuesday it had been some kind of paleo disease.

So far things seemed safe enough, but there was no sign of his own contribution. They had been fast breeding and scalable, so where were the little monsters? Maybe someone had exported them. They might be big in Kazakhstan. He had had success there before. Here today-nada.

Mike stumped across the Hill, a little discouraged, but still uneaten. The twins had taken the form of game-standard velociraptors.

They were having a grand time. Their chicken-sized prey were Pyramid Hill haptics.

The Jerry-raptor looked over its shoulder at Mike. “Where’s your critter?”

Mike had not assumed any animal form. “I’m a time traveler,” he said. That was a valid type, introduced with the initial game release.

Fred flashed a face full of teeth. “I mean where are the critters you invented last week?”

“I don’t know.”

“Most likely they got eaten by the critics,” said Jerry. The brothers did a joint reptilian chortle. “Give up on making creator points, Miguel. Kick back and use the good stuff.” He illustrated with a soccer kick that connected with something running fast across their path. That got some classic points and a few thrilling moments of haptic carnage. Fred joined in and red splattered everywhere.

There was something familiar about this prey. It was young and clever looking… a newborn from Mike’s own design! And that meant its Mommy would be nearby. Mike said, “You know, I don’t think-”

“The Problem Is, None Of You Think Nearly Enough.” The sound was like sticking your head inside an old-time boom box. Too late, they saw that the tree trunks behind them grew from yard-long claws.

Mommy. Drool fell in ten-inch blobs from high above.

This was Mike’s design scaled to the max.

“Sh-” said Fred. It was his last hiss as a velociraptor. The head and teeth behind the slobber descended from the gingko canopy and swallowed Fred down to the tips of his hind talons. The monster crunched and munched for a moment. The clearing was filled with the sound of splintering bones.

“Ahh!” The monster opened its mouth and vomited horror. It was scarey good. Mike flicker-viewed on reality: Fred was standing in the steaming remains of his raptor. His shirt was pulled out of his pants, and he was drenched in slime-real, smelly slime. The kind you paid money for.

The monster itself was one of Hill’s largest robots, tricked out as a member of Mike’s new species.

The three of them looked up into its jaws.

“Was that touchie-feelie enough for you?” the creature said, its breath a hot breeze of rotting meat. Fred stepped backwards and almost slipped on the goo.

“The late Fred Radner just lost a cartload of points,”-the monster waved its truck-sized snout at them-“and I’m still hungry. I suggest you move off the Hill with all dispatch.”

They backed away, their gaze still caught on all those teeth.

The twins turned and ran. As usual, Mike was an instant behind them.

Something like a big hand grabbed him. “You, I have further business with.” The words were a burred roar through clenched fangs. “Sit down.”

Jeez. I have the worst luck . Then he remembered that it was Mike Villas who had climbed a tree to perv the Hill entrance logic.

Stupid Mike Villas didn’t need bad luck; he was already the perfect chump. And now the twins were out of sight.

But when the “jaws” set him down and he turned around, the monster was still there-not some Pyramid Hill rentacop. Maybe this really was a Cret Ret player! He edged sideways, trying to get out from under the pendulous gaze. This was just a game. He could walk away from this four-storey saurian. Of course, that would trash his credit with Cretaceous Returns, maybe drench him in smelly goo. And if Big Lizard took things seriously, it might cause him trouble in other games. Okay … He sat down with his back against the nearest gingko. So he would be late another day; that couldn’t make his school situation any worse.

The saurian settled back, pushing the steaming corpse of Fred Radner’s raptor to one side. It brought its head close to the ground, to look at Mike straight on. The eyes and head and color were exactly Mike’s design, and this player had the moves to make it truly impressive. He could see from its scars that it had fought in several Cretaceous hotspots.

Mike forced a cheerful smile. “So, you like my design?”

It picked at its teeth with eight-inch foreclaws. “I’ve been worse.” It shifted game parameters, bringing up critic-layer details.

This was a heavy player, maybe even a cracker! On the ground between them was a dead and dissected example of Mike’s creation. Big Lizard nudged it with a foreclaw. “The skin texture is pure Goldman. Your color scheme is a trivial emergent thing, a generic cliché.”

Mike drew his knees in toward his chin. This was the same crap he had to put up with at school. “I borrow from the best.”

The saurian’s chuckle was a buzzing roar. “That might work with your teachers. They have to eat whatever garbage you feed them-till you graduate and can be dumped on the street. Your design is so-so. There have been some adoptions, mainly because it scales well. But if we’re talking real quality, you just don’t measure up.” The creature flexed its battle scars.

“I can do other things.”

“Yes, and if you never deliver, you’ll fail with them, too.”

That was a point that occupied far too much of Mike Villas’ worry time. He glared back at the slitted yellow eyes, and suddenly it occurred to him that-unlike teachers-this guy was not being paid to be nasty. And it was wasting too much time for this to be some humiliating joke. It actually wants something, from me! Mike sharpened his glare. “And you have some suggestions, Oh Mighty Virtual Lizard?”

“… Maybe. I have other projects besides Cret Ret . How would you like to take an affiliate status on one of them?”

Except for local games, no one had ever asked Mike to affiliate on anything. His mouth twisted in bogus contempt. “Affiliate? A percent of a percent of… what? How far down the value chain are you?”

The saurian shrugged and there was the sound of gingkos swaying to the thump of its shoulders. “My guess is I’m way, way down. On the other hand, this is not a dredge project. I can pay real money for each answer I pipe upwards.” The creature named a number; it was enough to play the Hill once a week for a year. A payoff certificate floated in the air between them.