"Diversify the portfolio," Grom the Plushie Orc grunted, crossing his soft, felt arms. "And try not to die. Dying is a breach of contract."

  "I hate this form," Grom seethed, squeezing his own fluffy hand. "I cannot intimidate! I can only... encourage! Go forth! Restore the crunch, so that I may once again strike fear into the hearts of debtors…ahem employees!"

  "We’re on it," Kai said, backing away toward the town square. "Maya, we need a tow line. Paint a rope. Make it thick. Make it sticky."

  They approached the fountain. The pyer Speedy_Boi was still there. He wasn't just vibrating; he was phasing in and out of reality like a hummingbird on espresso. His limbs were filing in a run cycle that was pying at 10x speed, but he wasn't moving an inch. He was wearing a bright red starter tunic that blurred into a streak of crimson.

  "Look at his speed!" Gideon marveled, skating closer on his pink pstic wheels. "He runs the race within his mind! He is a monk of motion!"

  "He's a g switcher," Kai muttered. "He thinks he's halfway to the next zone, but the server keeps pulling him back. He thinks he's Fsh Gordon."

  Gideon froze. He turned to Kai, his pstic jack-o'-ntern helmet tilting.

  "Fsh... Gordon?" Gideon repeated the name with hushed reverence. "Is that his title? Gordon of the Fsh? Is he a Saint of the Lightning?

  "No, he's…." Kai started, but stopped. It was easier this way. "Sure. Yes. He is Saint Gordon. He moves so fast the world cannot see him."

  "Gordon of the Fsh!" Gideon shouted, dropping to one knee. "We beseech thee! We are humble pilgrims! Allow us to hitch our wagon to your holy star!"

  "He is ignoring you," Pigglesworth sniffed, adjusting his monocle. "He looks like the tops these peasants py with. This 'Gordon' cks poise."

  "Maya, the rope!" Kai ordered.

  Maya raised her giant calligraphy brush. She looked at the vibrating pyer. "If I paint a rope, it might turn it into a snake or a noodle."

  "Paint... Licorice," Kai improvised. "Red Vines. Industrial strength. The Safety Filter loves candy."

  Maya sighed, dipped her brush into the air, and sshed a long, thick red line. POOF. A fifty-foot cable of bright red, twisted licorice materialized. It smelled of sugar and artificial preservatives.

  "Delicious utility," Gideon marveled, grabbing one end. "I shall secure the line to the Saint!"

  Gideon skated forward. He approached the vibrating pyer with the caution one might show a ticking bomb.

  "Forgive me, Lord Gordon!" Gideon shouted over the humming noise of the pyer’s vibration. "I tether you only so that we may share in your glory!"

  Speedy_Boi did not respond. He just kept vibrating. brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt.

  "Just tie it to his waist!" Kai yelled, grabbing Pigglesworth by the back of his velvet coat. "And hold on! Once the physics engine realizes he’s tethered, it’s going to try to correct his position violently!"

  Gideon looped the licorice rope around the pyer’s waist. He pulled it tight.

  For a second, nothing happened. The rope just vibrated along with the pyer. Then, the Server Logic woke up.

  [ SYSTEM ALERT: COLLISION ANOMALY DETECTED. ] [ PHYSICS CORRECTION INITIATED. ] [ CALCULATION: MOMENTUM DUMP. ]

  The server realized that Speedy_Boi had been "running" at full speed for twenty minutes without moving. According to the w of conservation of momentum (which the game applied arbitrarily), all that stored energy had to go somewhere.

  The rope went taut. SNAP.

  "BRACE!" Kai screamed.

  BOOM. It wasn't a sound; it was a unch. Speedy_Boi didn't run. He shot forward like a bullet from a railgun. The licorice rope snapped straight. Kai, Gideon, Maya, and Pigglesworth were yanked off their feet instantly.

  "WHOAAAAA!" They didn't run. They flew. They were dragged horizontally through the air, trailing behind the glitching pyer like cans tied to a wedding car.

  "I AM A KITE!" Gideon roared, his pstic cape fpping violently. "SAINT GORDON HAS WINGS!"

  They blurred through Oakhaven. The soft, rounded buildings smeared into streaks of pastel color. They passed the City Gate in 0.04 seconds. The world dissolved. The trees and rocks couldn't render fast enough to keep up with their speed. The ndscape turned into gray blobs, then into wireframe lines, and finally into a blur of raw code.

  "My face!" Pigglesworth shrieked, his cheeks fpping in the G-force. "I am being exfoliated by pure speed!"

  They entered the Tunnel. It wasn't a physical tunnel. It was the "Loading Zone" between map sectors, a cylindrical vortex of swirling data, textures, and loading screen tips spinning past them at light speed.

  [ TIP: Don't stand in the fire! ][ TIP: Trolls regenerate health! ][ TIP: Kai owes 500g for this tip! ]

  "It’s the Loading Screen!" Kai screamed, his eyes watering as the data stream roared past. "Don't let go! If you drop off here, you will fall into the void forever!"

  Suddenly, the licorice rope began to stretch. The Safety Mode physics were struggling against the sheer velocity. The red candy was thinning out.

  "It’s snapping!" Maya pointed. "We’re almost there!" Kai saw it ahead. The swirling tunnel of code was ending. A bright, harsh white light was visible at the end. A hard border.

  [ ENTERING ZONE: [CITY_NAME_PENDING] ] [ WARNING: TEXTURES MISSING. ]

  "Prepare for impact!" Kai shouted. Speedy_Boi hit the zone border. Because he was a pyer, he loaded in instantly. Because the party was "Attached Objects," the physics engine hesitated.

  SNAP. The licorice broke.

  Speedy_Boi vanished into the new zone, carrying his momentum into the horizon. A split second ter, a faint message appeared in the bottom left of Kai’s vision:

  [ GLOBAL ] Speedy_Boi: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH [ SYSTEM ] Speedy_Boi has discovered: The Edge of the Map.

  Kai, Gideon, Maya, and Pigglesworth were flung forward by their own inertia, sailing out of the data tunnel and into the White.

  They tumbled through the air. But they didn't fall down. They fell... sideways?

  "Which way is down?!" Pigglesworth screamed, spinning. "There is no down!" Kai realized. "There's no horizon line!"

  They crashed. It wasn't a thud. It was a CLACK. They hit a surface that felt like hard pstic. They skidded for fifty yards, sliding across a perfectly ft, grid lined white floor.

  They came to a halt in a tangled pile of limbs, pstic armor, and licorice scraps. Silence.

  Kai groaned, peeling his face off the floor. He looked down. The floor was white. Pure white #FFFFFF. He looked up. The sky was white. Pure white #FFFFFF. The only way to tell them apart was a bck wireframe grid stretching into infinity.

  "My eyes," Gideon whispered, standing up and shielding his face with his pstic arm. "It is the blindness of snow. Are we in the Winter Kingdom?"

  "No," Maya stood up, her jaw dropping. She spun in a circle. "We're in the Whitebox."

  It was a world of raw geometry. There were no trees. There were grey cylinders beled [TREE]. There were no buildings. There were giant orange cubes beled [HOUSE_MEDIUM]. There was no sun. Just a universal, ft light that cast no shadows.

  "It is... unfinished," Pigglesworth sniffed, dusting off his coat (which now looked stark and high-contrast against the white background). "It looks like the architect quit halfway through the job. It is shockingly zy."

  "It’s the Bleeding Edge," Kai said, checking his UI. [ Zone: CITY_NAME_PENDING ] [ Physics: DEFAULT (Hard) ]

  Kai stomped his foot. CLACK. It sounded like a boot on concrete. Hard. Solid. He punched his palm. It hurt.

  "The Safety Mode," Kai whispered. "It’s gone here." "Gone?" Gideon asked. He reached for his belt. He pulled out The Judge.

  It wasn't a squeaky toy anymore. As he pulled it free, his arm jerked down, unprepared for the mass. "Oof!" His muscles, atrophied by weeks of lifting foam and rubber, screamed in protest. The handle bit into his palm. It wasn't just heavy; it was mean. The weapon felt dead and cold, a block of iron that wanted to return to the earth.

  Gideon dropped it. CRUNCH.

  It didn't bounce. It didn't squeak. It smashed a tile of the white grid floor, sending a spiderweb of fractures outward. A shockwave traveled up Gideon’s legs. The sound was low, dull, and violent a sound that belonged to a world where bones could break.

  "The weight..." Gideon breathed, staring at his trembling hands. He flexed his fingers, feeling the ache in his wrists. "It hurts."

  He looked at Kai, his eyes wide. A slow, terrifying grin spread beneath his pumpkin helmet. "I can hurt things again."

  "Yes," Kai said, looking out at the endless city of white boxes. "But in this pce... everything can hurt us."