Of Hardworlders and Kings

  The music faded to birdsong and beaoise like a DJ had switched tracks. All the psychedelic colors flowed out of the sky and drained bato the sun. In the soft blue left behind, shapes the dim grey color of distance, buildings and orbs and castles, were frozen in pce as if left there to be pyed with whenever some weird god got the whim.

  “First things first,” said Philip. “Let’s talk about your fuck up. You dropped in and immediately started freefalling because you didn’t push a self to drop into like Michael told you.”

  Gradie gred at Philip. He had already pleaded his case in the debrief, but If Philip wao rehash this shit, he could too.

  “I told you, I dropped into that crystal thing and it put me in some kind of dream. Which Michael said wouldn’t happen because only Celeste walk into dreams.”

  “Sounds like your spirit is pretty dense,” said Angel.

  “Dense?”

  “Ah Jesus, not that shit,” said Philip

  “Means the Hardworlds pulls on you more thaherworld,” said Angel, looking off into the trees. “Would expin why Michael found you in one.”

  Gradie didn’t feel like the Hardworlds had pulled on him. Quite the opposite. Getting in the first time had taken all of his focus and he had still almost fucked it up.

  “He’s dense alright,” Philip said. “No, you got caught up in the proje and dropped in with no anchor so the Hardworlds put you wherever they wanted.”

  “Right o the target,” Gradie said. Philip’s face fred into a snarl.

  “You keep on about that shit and I’ll wash my hands of you, kid. You got lucky. It’s not repeatable, it ain't how the fug job is done, and if you try it again, the only job you’ll have on this team is getting EP’s Red Bulls outta the fug fridge. Do you uand me?”

  “God, don’t be such a—” Liarted at Philip. Gradie snapped before she could finish.

  “I didn’t even know what the fuck Michael was talking about! If Hardworlding is so god damned special, why am I expected to be able to do it right the first time when the only training I had before this was setting my car on fire and listening to yall talk about it in a living room?”

  The wind blew salt-sted air into the silence. Philip’s face softened.

  “He’s got a point, bro,” said Nova.

  “I know he’s got a fug point,” Philip snapped. He sighed and turned back to Gradie. “Look, I think we all fot how much a jump priming a self is from dropping in cold. None of us have dealt with a first-timer in years, even decades. We went too fast.”

  Philip’s tone had turned paternal, and Gradie dug his shoes into the sand. It was uling. Yelling and shit-talking fit Philip like a glove. This felt like an apology born out of a frustration he shouldn’t be seeing.

  “Michael, in his infinite wisdom,” Philip tinued. “Decided that you should tag along on the job, whifortunately for you was about two days after you popped into the bck. I guess he thought you should see a live job as soon as possible.”

  “It’s how it used to be done,” Lindsey said. “Michael’s old school.”

  “Yeah, and so am I, but I also know how to use an advantage. Which is why we’re here.”

  “What advantage?” Gradie asked, ready as hell to move on.

  “Our Vault,” said Angel.

  “What’s a Vault?”

  “It’s a box that streamlines priming a self. It’s loaded with memories, so you struct—”

  “What’s a box?” Gradie remembered the cop in the gas station threatening to lock him in one, and wondered what the fuck Philip and these kids had in store for him.

  “Oh,” said Nova. “A box is an enclosed portion of the Other that keeps the Spirit in pd affects the mind. Most of the sims and sins out there are modified boxes.”

  “Sims?”

  “Simutions and Sarios. All those goofy rides they try to sell you out there,” Nova waved at the sky. “But our Vault is way more respohan that shit. Taps into your w memory, meshes it with—”

  “Is it like Lucy’s thing?” Gradie cut in. If whatever was in the Vault was anything like having Lucy peel his childhood apart, it made sehat most people weren’t signing up to be Hardworlders.

  “Nah man, Lucy’s box is something special,” Nova tinued. “It digs through every bit of the Spirit, even the— bro really?”

  Angel had broken into stifled ughter. “Stop talking about Lucy’s box man.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Philip snapped. “There’s a dy present.”

  “Never say that again,” Lindsey said, slow and sharp as drawing a knife. “I grew up with brothers. These kids ’t shock me.”

  “Anyway, The Vault is more additive,” Nova tinued. “It taps into our mem banks as you struct the self you want to drop into from the ground up.”

  “How?” Gradie felt that electric excitement fre up at the thought of creating another life like setting up a character in a game.

  “In the Hardworlds,” Nova said. “The mind has trouble telling the differeween your real memories, what you’ve done iherworld, and your dreams. It all kind of blends together. We use that to our advantage”

  Angel saw the gze in Gradie’s eyes and helped him out.

  “You go in our little simutor, imagine another version of yourself, piece by piece, then vihat little animal in your head we call your mind that what you see are not projes, but memories. When you drop into the Hardworlds, you wake up into that self.”

  He said it like it was the easiest thing in any world. Gradie, however, had learned not to trust other Spirits when it came to what he would find simple.

  “Why didn’t I do that before?”

  “Michael didn’t want you to use it,” Lindsey said, skipping a stone across the water. “He thought it could be a crutch if you used it too soon.”

  “And he’d be right,” said Philip.

  “Why?” Gradie didn’t feel like losing his mind in a dead mall parking lot or spending half a day making phone calls while freaking out about a gun in his bag had really prepared him to be an interdimensional assassin. Philip disagreed.

  “There are Hardworlders, then there are Hardworlders, kid.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Most people get into the Hardworlds by trap doors,” said Nova. He saw Gradie’s question f. “Fragments crafted to help them slip into the Hardworlds, vihem this is a dream and they wake up. Basically, trap doors do what you did the first time, but automatically.”

  Gradie felt like kig Michael ieeth, but found a fw irap door idea.

  “Won't they drop out and think the Hardworld is real? Getting in is only part of the issue, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Angel. “That’s why they have some veterans oher side to get them up. ‘Wake up number eleven’ and all that shit. Usually about one for every ten crash dummies—”

  “Please, no more of this shit,” Philip said, like Angel was describing how to eat roadkill raw.

  “Also, I probably wouldn’t have let you use it the first time anyway,” said Nova. “The Vault is kind of like our trade secret.”

  “Other Hardworlders don’t do this?” If the vault was as simple as the twins cimed, Gradie was sure all those powerful, a Hardworlding groups Michael had hi would be all over it.

  “Oh yeah, they all do it,” agreed Angel. “But each has its own memory bank. Uhey’re in a Corp or a collective or something where they pool their archives. Or if they lease out a generic stream. But the Vault would put a lotta them to shame, thanks to Michaels—”

  “It does not fug matter and he won’t remember anyway,” said Philip. “Today you will push a basic self, drop into a Hardworld and make tact, then Lindsey and I will run you through a basic wargame. That’s it. Then we leave.”

  “Philip doesn’t trust the Vault either,” Nova ughed.

  “You don’t use it?” Gradie asked. Was there some third or fourth way to—

  “Fuo,” Philip snapped. “I’ve got two decades of memories stored right where they should be,” He tapped his head. “I prime the old-fashioned way. There wasn’t any of this shit when I started.”

  “Bullshit,” said Nova. “The Gods ied priming with a membank.”

  “The Gods ied Hardworlding and sliced bread and stig two mags together with cardboard and duct tape. You believe that shit too?”

  “ we get started sometime today or,” Lindsey called from the beach. She had a bow and arrow in hand and was taking shots at a balloon-animal sea monster as it dove in and out of the water, three segments of its body already defted and trailing behind it. Philip cpped his hands.

  “Sure sweetheart—” an arrow flew past his head. “—Let’s get to it.”

  Nova stared at the ground in front of him and a trap door popped open in the beach, flinging up sand. Philip jumped into the bck square and disappeared like the liquid darkness was flush with the beach. Lindsey followed right after, her cloak disappearing st.

  Angel smiled at Gradie.

  “Your turn.”

  Gradie approached the trap door and looked down. The solid bess seemed to tug at him. He stared at it for a while before realizing he had absolutely no iion of going in. It had all the signs of another Lucy situation.

  “You want a green light? Like the paratroopers?” Gradie looked up and saw Nova smiling and two gss hemispheres in a metal box h in the air in front of him. The red o out and the gree up. Gradie didn’t move.

  “Get off my pch!” Angel yelled from behind and kicked him hard in the back. Gradie went filing into the hole and the st thing he saw before everythi bck was Nova’s ughing face.

  He rolled as he fell. Down became up over and ain, as if the source of gravity was rolling in the opposite dire he was. Just as soon as he had lost all spatial awareness, and the beach felt just as far away as his home in the Real, light returned.

  Wake up number 29! Just kidding. "The Gods" were one of the first Hardworlding teams, and this wohe st we hear of them. ime, Gradie gets a first hand look at memory encoded into the fabric of the Otherworld. episode: The Vault