Double barrel rainbradie’s flight up toward the rail gave him a view of the battle spreading out from the far er of the bounce house. Multi-colored figures bounced in every dire off the lower ring of bounce pads, which were much clether due to the spaces step-well like shape. It took some effort and a little bit of fear to cw his focus away from the skirmish a towards the bck rail above. As he sailed upwards, a rocket shot out of the chaos and exploded with a muffled eg bang that gave a hair-raisih to his surroundings.

  The bck ring which the crystal on structure traveled on was only about a foot and a half wide, and Gradie barely caught onto it with ostretched filing hand as he fell out of the end of his flight.

  “All right, were ing down,” Nova said on the s once Gradie had scrambled up onto the rail. Two figures desded from the edge of the skylight, where he now saw a suspended ring of rooms lining the opening like bat houses, and nded gracefully on the blocky structure.

  “Ok, ing up.” Angel said, and got up from his sitting position ten yards or so from where Gradie squatted on the rail. Gradie was trying desperately not to look down, surprised that his fear of heights had maed itself in the game. Luckily, Angel provided a distra by sprinting down the rail and sshing it with his sword at the st sed, ung himself up onto the blocky crystal-on housing.

  Gradie tried to stand but his stomach floated out from under him and he ended up in a half crouch.

  “Shit, one sec,” he said stupidly.

  “We don’t have one sec bro,” Luke said. “They’re figuring it out.”

  Gradie saw colored forms boung towards one of the higher bounce pads where one figure was shooting the block the pad rested on. Others oher side moved across the bounce house toward the bounce pad right below him.

  “Shit!” He sprinted along the rail without looking down to ensure he wouldn’t have time to worry about his steps slipping, and jumped at the face of the oning on structure. His foot caught a hold and he scampered up, disc something amazing.

  Due to the suggestive nature of gravity, he could run up the side like a wushu star without stopping. By the time he cleared the front and flipped over onto the top, he had a big smile on his face.

  “Watch the sides!” Angel said to them, motioning at the edges of the craft. He was at some kind of monitor statioo one end of the glowing prism, which looked like the stereotypical ideal of a hippie crystal, a five-sided prism with two pyramidal points.

  Gradie aimed at oion of the blocky half wall that surrouheir ptform, and Nova stood in front of him but off to one side and aimed behind him. Luke bounced over to the edge just in Gradie’s peripherals and aimed down.

  “If they get he ptform, I’ll bst em,” Luke said.

  The crystal moved in its housing with a whirring sound as Angel worked the trols. Eventually, it stopped moving and its glow intensified with a sound like a on charging up in a game. Of course.

  “Ok we have to go now,” Angel said.

  “It’s got a reflectht?” Nova said in a reminding tone. Angel responded like he was being nagged.

  “Yes, bro, God damn. Ok yall, watch me real fast.”

  He swiveled his head around to make sure Luke and Gradie were watg him, then looked back to the s and poi it.

  “Just pick your color on the orbital using the targeting s and press this unch button.”

  He hovered his hand over a palm sized red button in the dash.

  “So I’m pig a green spot as close to the reflector as I find. Ok, I’m out. Good luck.”

  He pluhe button with his hand and turned a brilliant solid white, then a beam of solid ser light shot through the crystal and out into the bck sky, and he was gone.

  “Ok, Gradie you ,” Nova waved him over.

  “Get fucked,” Luke said, and started ung grenades off the side as fast as his trigger finger and the a would allow.

  “Dammit. Hurry bro!” Nova waved some more and Gradie, despite a ghostly Philip toned voice scolding him for leaving Luke to engage by himself even here, bounced over to the trol station.

  “All right, I picked you a red spot closest to where Angel dropped on.” He poio the s which showed the orbital, a nearly circur floating k of blocks, and had a small reticle poi a sliver of red. Nova’s finger ointing at an oval ke of green, about a quarter inch from the reticle on the s.

  “When you drop in, head for the reflector.” Here Nova moved his fio point at a dark octagohe “top” of the orbital.

  “Got it?”

  Gradie nodded, guessing that asking questions about distand terrain and anything else robably a waste of time, not to mention the fact that Luke’s firing and swearing had suddenly increased in iy.

  “All right, go go!” Nova stepped bad poi the big red button that said “unch” in white letters.

  Gradie pressed it and everything froze in a kind of bd white freeze frame, textured like one of those old eighties music videos where they had tried to make live footage look like animation. Then, with a “Wheeeerrrrroooooo” sound straight out of an old cartoon, the image stretched until everything snapped and shattered like gss, and he was standing in the ter of a fresh crater on a se of red sand, with nothing but bck sky and distant colored blocks in sight.

  There was a moment of stillness, of sudden silehat made him realize just how loud and stantly moving everything had been ba the boun. He had no ndmarks to go on, no dire to head, besides the vague memory of the map Nova had been pointing at, which made him think the prism, whatever that was, was somewhere beyond the bare, steeply curving horizon ahead of him. But for the first time sihe game had started, he had a ce to look around and really see where he was.

  The ”orbital” was obviously spherical, and he was stuck to it with a gravity even weaker than on the main mass, which floated below him, or more like above him, and which he could now see had a defiructure to it, with pits and shafts cut into it at regur intervals. There were other orbitals floating in the bck, their varied shapes obviously a result of their creat to ensure variety.

  It all felt like that. The entire pce felt like something made, and the thick bck surrounding it didn’t feel like the endless void of boundless possibility that enveloped the Allworld, it felt like a b, a felt wall, a formed barrier with a definite purpose, solid and close.

  It was like being in someone’s mind, led in one of their thoughts, their imagination ed around you like a diorama. Though the eherworld was crafted of thoughts, of the vision of its makers, textured by the projes of its thinking spirits, he had never really felt a singur expression of will so clearly. The closest had beee’s beach house, but perhaps because she had had help strug it, or maybe because he had bee in the peripheral of her home, the entrance area and hallway designed fuests, he hadn’t felt it as strongly there. This was a new and eye-openiion.

  What would my mind look like, projected outward? What would I make?

  The question was intoxig, but he wasn’t given time to really drink it in.

  “Gradie! Shoot up a fre!” Angel hissed in his ears. At about the same time, as if the world had been inhaling while he stood there refleg, iving him time to rest before battering him again, a white beam fshed over his head and impacted the orbital somewhere beyond the curve. It sounded, of course, like every other fial ser on bleogether.

  “There’s Luke,” Nova said. “I’m heading out. Meet yall at the prism. Wish I could blow up this fug trol pad!”

  Another fsh across the sky, like a spotlight with a high-powered ser at its core, and ahud somewhere out of sight. Gradie found the button otom of his gun and shot a glittering fre out into the bck.

  “Ok, I see you,” Angel said. “Run towards my fre.”

  A green sparkler shot into the sky ahead and to the left over the horizon and Gradie spriowards it. The light gravity let him clear about five feet per stride and soon he had a rhythm going. The orbital revealed itself to him by rolling smoothly out from the horizon, like he was running on some kind of ied hamster wheel the size of a small town.

  A familiar synthesized saw sound bounced over the horizon at him, at a rate of about once every few seds, and got louder until Angel shot over the curve right at him, clearly at the end of one of his sword jumps.

  “Up here!” He swung his sword like a fg and motioned fradie to adjust his trajectory a little to the left. Soon Gradie was following him across the rippled rolling ndscape as a bck structure rose out of the horizon.

  Another white fsh cracked across the sky, nding somewhere behind him.

  “Oh shit,” Nova said on the s. “Hurry up!”

  The bck base of the structure was now in sight, and Luke was already standing atop the high machicoted walls, as Angel moved up the side, stabbing his sword into the wall and throwing himself up te a time.

  Gradie repeated his maneuver from a few minutes ago and ran up the wall, which felt for a moment like sprinting in liquid darkness, as the sleek bck surface gave way to velvet bck sky at the top, until another beam fshed across the sky and divided it from the wall in a defihreatening way.

  “Shit, they’re really dropping in now!” Nova said.

  “Get to the prism first!” Angel said, and waved them into a doorway. The first level that Gradie had dropped on was a circur path around the tral structure, which had tall arched doorways in its face. There were more protruding machicotions atop this structure and something glowed softly just out of sight, its radiaending across the bck sky.

  Gradie followed the three of them into the doorway, and a rush of nostalgic excitement washed over him. His brain rifled through te night game sessions and childhood outdoor bouts of pure imagination, the Texas woodnds being Tolkienesque forests or other pces scraped from movies and games and smeared across the dry dead grayness for he and his friends to tear across, and the memories glittered anew as if this present experience was lighting them from afar.

  Inside, a giaical crystal hung suspended from the ical roof, four ramps projeg out of the high ringing walkway and stopping a yard of dead air away from it, the walls were riddled with balies and walkways. Angel somehow knew a direct route, through a door to the left, bounding up a steep stairwell, across to a hidden bounce pad, and up through a siairwell shaft, to the top of the structure. Here the top of the crystal was cmped in a metal housing faced with another trol station.

  Angel put his hand on the pad, and the crystal glowed green as his own body glittered for a moment. Theepped bad Nova repeated the process, this time with an e glow and glitter.

  “If you die, you select it as a respawn,” Angel expined. “You’ll pop out of the crystal down there, but you’ll have about five seds of light aura, which will keep you from taking damage but also makes your attacks do nothing.”

  In the sky, another white beam fshed, and muffled ser sounds and grenade booms bounced back at them off the velvet darkness. Oher side of the crystal, on another raised ptform, was another crystal person-uhe roof was shaped like a big octagon with circur ptforms at the ers that were the tops of towers. It was an odd pce for a shootout, feeling more like a pce to observe a meteor shower or firework show than shoot at anyone.

  Gradie’s turn at the prism came a and more sounds bounced up at them, this time ing from the stairwells breaking up through the floor.

  “All right,” Angel said, boung his sword bde on his off hand.

  “Let’s get some fug kills.”

  Would you py this map? ime, rainbow hued team deathmat another world. episode, Saturation.